Friend and frequent commenter on these pages, Don Larson, recently introduced me to Robert Newman’s “History of Oil”. This video is 45 minutes of stand up comedy on the serious topic of oil in international politics and war. In this video, released in April 2006, Mr. Newman talks about history from the last 100 years or so culminating in why the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003.
I hope you enjoy it.
April 13th is not just another day.
Not for me, and not for America, either
Thomas Jeffereson was born on this day, in 1742, and he went on to write the Declaration of Independence. I’ve read that there were approximately 4,000 Americans killed in that conflict, or about 1.3 soldiers a day died to win almost an entire continent from the British.
The first battle of the Civil War began on this day, at Fort Sumter in South Carolina (Rebs won, no casualties) just 68 years after the end of the the American Revolution. There would be over 600,000 Americans killed in that savage conflict, or about 411 men died a day, in a cataclysmic attempt to see if we could keep most of our portion of that continent.
One hundred and eight-five years later, after the end of the Civil War in April 1865, I arrived in Chicago (four days late, around noon) on April 30th, 1950. This is not a historically significant date which I’m sure would be universally agreed upon by all concerned. But thirteen years later, I was a Bat Mizvah boy on April 13th, now 45 years ago, and that still matters to me.
Which, in my typically convoluted fashion, brings me to today’s movie, since at least one major member of that film’s cast had a bar mitzvah, too. But thirty-five years before mine, when that ancient coming-of-age ceremony was far more obscure in America than it is now, and Jews kept a much lower national profile.
The Magnificant Seven! (1960), one of the most revered Western-themed movies ever made, even though it was based on an equally revered Eastern film, The Seven Samurai (1954). I saw it when it came out (the US film) when I was just ten and I haven’t ever recovered from that first fantastic experience of an avalanche of charisma pouring off the screen by already famous and soon-to-be-famous macho American and European actors.
Yul Brynner (Chris, the so-cool leader), Steve McQueen (Vin, deadly, casual and philosophic) lead the cast. Without them, the movie would be one more so-so Western. But their spontaneous compatible relationship and world-weary attitude gave the film a spin that put a romantic sheen on everyone associated with it.
Horst Bucholz (Chico), a new and very young German actor, played the 7th man to join the ranks of the immortal Seven. Oddly, he was selected by the director, John Sturges, to play a brash young Mexican who distained the very peasant farmers he signed on to protect from the hordes of Mexican bandits who ravaged there village repeatedly, even though he was one of them. His view of life was that the intinerant and frequently impoverished western gunslingers were muy magnifico!! and he could never be a “miserable cowardly farmer” until Killer Cowboy Philosophy Class 101 cured him of that notion.
Plus one very hot (and extremely disrespectful to her justifiably concerned father) chick with a single long black braid and a “Do it to me NOW, baby!” attitude, who convinced him that grinding corn on your knees, under blazing sunshine, can be very sexy indeed.
Sigh. It’s really depressing thinking about the mess we’re in, and the unlikelihood (given the political situation) that anything substantive will be done about it. For instance, here’s 10 things that I think would begin to turn things around. Read them and you tell me the likelihood that any of them will happen.
1. Return to America’s original foreign policy. George Washington warned against entangling foreign alliances. Then two world wars happened. After the first, we rejected the League of Nations and returned home. After the second, it’s an open question as to what the extent “the world” needed us to remain extended overseas to serve as a bulwark against International Communism. But what the heck are we doing, now? That doesn’t mean we can’t strike fiercely at dirtbags who blow up buildings. We did that to the Barbary Pirates in Thomas Jefferson’s presidency. But 1 Trillion dollars for nation building in Iraq? Are we nuts?
2. Get rid of the IRS. I favor a two-pronged approach to allowing the government to have a limited amount of revenue to do the few things it needs to do. One, repeal the 16th amendment and replace it with one that authorizes a flat, no deductions of any kind salary tax that is limited to under 10%. That should appeal to America’s religious roots as well — if God only gets 10%, government gets less. I say salary tax because I’d make employers pay it — no sense trying to police tips and cash income, it’s the IRS police state we’re trying to eliminate. As part of the new amendment, I’d put in a clause that says “under no circumstances will taxpayers be required to save and produce records of any kind for tax purposes”. How liberating is that? To get more revenue, I’d institute a national VAT tax constitutionally limited to 10% with food and medicine exempted.
3. Treat energy independence like the Manhattan project. (That was the crash program during WWII to produce the atomic bomb just in case you didn’t know). The payment of hundreds of billions of dollars to purchase oil overseas is wrong on so many levels it’s hard to begin. We should tax the importation of oil (which will be ameliorated by the great reduction of income taxes) at least 30%. All new home construction should have solar energy, etc. This is a no-brainer, isn’t it? Hybrids, biofuels, pebble-bed nuclear technology must be given Manhattan project importance and schedules for development. Then, our trade balance will improve and we can tell Middle Eastern insane countries to eat sand.
4. Institute real free trade. Not the so-called free trade that is anything but that which we have now. Many foreign countries refund the VAT to their companies which export goods. We should put a tariff in place that taxes those goods by the exact amount they get refunded. Many countries practice currency manipulation that pegs their own currencies to the dollar artificially low so that they can export easier. Again, a tariff which neutralizes that advantage would be in order. Many countries have labor and other costs which are extremely low in part because they exploit their own labor force (lack of rights and protections), and they allow environmentally harmful industrial policy. Tariffs to neutralize these are in order as well. Don’t get me wrong; I believe the ideal is truly free trade and open borders. But that is a long way off given the current state of the world. If we make it clear that as these impediments to real free trade are removed, our tariffs come down quickly and reliably, we can help bring about these good things to the rest of the world (and it’s cheaper than sending in the Delta Force, which is how we usually try to do it).
5. Decriminalize much. Look at Rick’s previous post on Amsterdam. Are they much worse off because they don’t try to throw hookers, drug users, etc. in the pen for draconian sentences? No, of course not. The best way to get rid of evil people capitalizing on prohibitions is to end the prohibitions. Did we learn nothing from prohibition of alcohol? Abolish the DEA. Abolish the BATF. Let states decide what is acceptable public behavior.
I’ll give the other 5 ideas later. I’m still depressed over realizing that none of these things are likely to happen any time soon.
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a day (2008). This movie is still playing, evidently an art house hit, meaning about 5,000 people have gone to see it in the few cities where it’s currently lighting up the screens. And that’s a pity.
Lots of film reviewers have expressed their opinions about the virtues of this film, so why bother adding my obscure voice to theirs? Well, I loved it, but not at first. I responded to different aspects of the movie, and then to the wonderful cast. It is truly a “Hollywood Movie” except they don’t make delicious kitsch like this anymore.
What struck me was the marvelous attention to detail that the set decorator, or art director, or whoever paid for everything devoted to this movie, to create a fantasy type of hyper-reality in (just barely) pre-war London.
From the nightclub scenes to the lamps decorating an entranceway of an upper class house, to the great clothes everyone wore, this movie is a triple-scoop banana split for the eyes. With syrup dripping everywhere. Nothing in real life ever looked this good.
I went to art school for five years and am the son of an interior decorator who dragged me through the Chicago Merchandise Mart from the age of five to fourteen. I must have absorbed something from the million hours I was involuntarily exposed to a myriad of color charts displaying thirty paint chips of very slightly different shades of red, or blue, or even blacks and whites.
Color matters. It affects mood and attitude. People who appreciate the vast variations in colors are able to enjoy a significantly different, more vivid world than most people do.
In this so interesting recreation of another time and place that never really was, both the good guys and the bad guys are handsome, and perfectly integrated into their surroundings, like essential pieces of a mosaic.
To me, a few of the players were like cartoons come to life, instead of flesh and blood actors, and that’s a compliment. One in particular, in a supporting role is Shirley Henderson. She is the cheating and especially petty and nasty grasping girlfriend of one of the romantic leads in the movie, the wealthy lingerie designer, Ciaran Hinds.
Happy Purim!!
In honor of that wonderfully conveluted Babylonian Soap Opera, involving Queen Esther or rather, Hadassah, before she Babylonized her name; Mordicai, Esther’s good and watchful uncle, who uncovered and loyally reported the dastardly plot to kill the King to the governing authorities; Haman, the hated, conniving and vain prime minister to the Persian King Ahkashveyrosh (Jewish version) or King Nebuchadnezzar II (their version) or King Xerxes I (another version) who was the capricious, resolute (and plagued with insomnia) Ruler of all he surveyed.
Fortunately for present day Jews, the King thought shapely Esther was the hottest chick of all the many women from the King’s Empire, who paraded before him to audition for the position of the Queen. I imagine the most common position of the auditioning women was: Missionary.
It’s good to be the King.
In any event, I decided to celebrate by spreading the very good word about the new Israeli-made movie, Bikur Ha-Tizmoret or The Band’s Visit (2007). However, even though all of its dialogue is spoken in three languages: Hebrew, Arabic and English and the movie is entirely filmed in Israel in what appeared to me to be the dry and desolate Negev in Southern Israel, the film was nevertheless rejected by the geniuses at the Academy of Arts and Sciences as an acceptable candidate for an Oscar for the best Foreign Film Award because they decided it wasn’t “foreign” enough!
This movie, by the way, was made possible by Cyrus the Great, the Persian King who released the Israelites from their 47 year exile in Babylonia in 539 B.C., after the great Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in 586 B.C. by his Dad (above) and the surviving Jews were taken as captives.
Without his kindness and generosity, The Band’s Visit movie wouldn’t have been made and for certain, I wouldn’t be reviewing it.
The movie’s simple story is about an Egyptian Police Ceremonial Band being invited to celebrate the opening of an Arab cultural center in a small town in Israel, and becoming lost along the way in the wrong desert town for a period of one day, before friendly Israelis who befriended them send them on their way to the correct town. That’s the whole premise.
2004080413, originally uploaded by richard_munden.
Amsterdam. The Red Light District. Prostitutes, Porn shows. Marijuana Museum. Legalized drugs. A world renown den of inequity. How does a culture that permits such abominations survive?
Quite well actually. (Read on …)