Goodnight and Good Luck, Mike Wallace

Really enjoyed the 60 Minutes piece on Mike Wallace. He had a personality, and that 1950s Leonard Bernstein-Edward R. Murrow-style cigarette-smoking tough-guy sophistication that made the Tiffany Network the jewel in the crown of American television. Where did it all go? I can't say that I disagree with Andy Rooney. 60 Minutes won't be the same without Mike Wallace. Indeed, I tremble at the thought of Katie Couric on Sunday nights.

Interestingly, Mike Wallace made possible Ben Hecht's short-lived 1950s television show.

A Good Week

I Liked It . . .

Saw it yesterday at our local movie house. Yes, it's got a really ludicrous plot (I laughed out loud, just like the Cannes audience). Yes, it is anti-Catholic (they could have changed the name of Opus Dei to something fictional, like "Carpe Diem"). But it is a roller-coaster of a movie, lots of entertainment--car chases, castles, airplanes, priests, tombs, museums, professors, French, English, Italians...I liked The Da Vinci Code.

It has nostalgia value, too, like those 60s thrillers with Cary Grant and Audsrey Hepburn running around Europe accused of a crime he didn't commit, running from people without knowing why. American innocence confronting European horror.

BTW Ron Howard did a good directing job. And Tom Hanks is just fine, as is Mlle. Tatou and the supporting cast. Ian McKellen steals the show with his good-guy/bad-guy/who knows what? English lord star turn.

Favorite line: "I've got to get to a library!"

Not to be taken seriously. But a lot of fun. Plus, I love the cinematic references to "A Beautiful Mind" in the puzzle-solving scenes when Tom Hanks sees glowing letters and swirling orbs. The protagonist of that earlier Ron Howard/Akiva Goldsman film--as all you Harvard symbology professors reading this surely know--was a paranoid schizophrenic.

A Visit to the Lisner-Louise-Dickson-Hurt Home

Yesterday, at the invitation of a friend, we spent the afternoon at the annual garden party for The Lisner-Louise-Dickson-Hurt Home. It was the most pleasant afternoon we have passed in a long time. There were several bands, and the residents of this venerable (the Louise home for women was founded in 1869) institution had more energy than we did. They were still dancing when we left. It has to be the nicest and best-maintained home for the aged I'd ever seen. People seemed happy to be there. There are only 100 places, we were told, and a long waiting list. And the food, catered by the kitchen, was delicious.

The Desperate Hours

Took another look at William Wyler's production of The Desperate Hours, starring Humphrey Bogart and Frederic March, based on the Joseph Hayes Broadway play with Paul Newman and Karl Malden. (Interesting IMDB trivia: Spencer Tracy had been slated for March's role, but pulled out in a billing dispute.) In the Encylopedia of Film Noir, Alain Silver bashed the picture as pro-famiy and so omitted it from his list of noir. IMDB corrects this omission, lists the genre as noir. It is indeed noir. The film takes place mostly at night, has a nightmarish quality, stars Humphrey Bogart as a criminal. It's noir.

It really holds up well. What may have been intended as a Cold War parable--peaceful suburbanites=USA/ruthless gangsters=USSR--can be read in the context of the Global War on Terror just as readily. Bogart could be a Bin Laden-type. The complacent surburbanites are just as apt today. Message: you can't rely on the authorities alone to defeat terror, suburbanites must think for themselves. Frederic March actually stands up not only to Bogart, but also to the police, in order to defeat the desperatdoes.

In the 50s it meant standing up to Joe McCarthy and Stalin both. Today, it means standing up to George W. Bush as well as Osama Bin Laden.

It's not called "Hollywood's Golden Age" for nothing...

More on Turkey's Anti-Islamist Revolt

From Yahoo! News (ht LGF):

Turkey's Islamist-rooted government faced a wave of anger and calls for resignation after a deadly fundamentalist attack on the country's highest administrative court stunned a nation fiercely proud of its secular system.

The anti-government backlash Friday coincided with ceremonies marking the 87th anniversary of the start of the War of Independence, which ushered in a secular republic on the ruins of the theocratic Ottoman Empire.

On Thursday, tens of thousands of Ankara residents took to the streets in protest against the attack on the Council of State by an Islamist lawyer whose shooting spree killed one judge and wounded four others.

Alparslan Arslan, 29, shouting "I am a soldier of Allah", sprayed the judges' meeting with handgun fire, saying later that he wanted to "punish" the court for upholding a ban on the Islamic headscarf.

Contemporary Conflicts

I came across this website containing essays from the Social Science Research Council while doing some online research today. It has background on places like Darfur that I found interesting and thought-provoking. Your tax dollars at work, if you happen to be a US Citizen. Here's their blurb:

Not long after the attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, the Council launched a website of commissioned essays dealing with the causes, consequences and interpretations of the tragic events (archive for "After September 11"). Response to the site was favorable, reminding us that there is strong demand, even in these information-rich days, for careful, reliable and scholarly analysis of contemporary issues. With the launching of the SSRC website Contemporary Conflicts, we have extended coverage to other conflicts in the world besides those directly related to the events of September 11—reaffirming that these, too, merit serious scholarly attention. But coverage has continued on events related—or putatively related—to September 11, as many conflicts in the world have become enmeshed in what until recently was called "the war against terror."

Bush's Falling Stock

How low can public approval for President George W. Bush go? It's pretty low now, that's for sure. For example, last night I went to the Washington Opera at the Kennedy Center with someone I know. It was a crummy production of Rossini's "Italian Girl in Algiers." Everything was vulgar, crude, in poor taste, and not working. We had seen a lovely and charming production a few years ago in Charlottesville, so this was a disappointment. In any case, during a break my companion turned to me and said, out of the blue:

"I really hate George W. Bush."

What makes you say that? I asked.

"I blame him for this production."

Note to non-Washington readers: The Kennedy Center budget is subsidized by US government appropriations.

Turks Demonstrate for Secularism

The London Times reports:

Some 40,000 protesters took to the streets of Turkey today to noisily support their country's secular traditions, a day after a suspected Islamist militant shot dead a judge.

Members of Turkey's pro-Islamist government were booed as they attended memorial services, and the Turkish President issued a warning that "no one will be able to overthrow the (secular) regime".

The entire leadership of the Turkish military, which has led three coups in the past and regards itself as the guardians of secularism, lined up beside the flag-draped coffin of Judge Mustafa Yucel Ozbilgin, at his funeral today.

If it comes down to a conflict between Islamic fundamentalist democracy and military secularism in Turkey, I'd side with the latter--and I would hope (and pray) that the Bush administration will finally drop its "faith-based" "democracy-building" foreign policy--aka spreading worldwide Islamic revolution.

Agustin Blazquez to Star at Palm Beach Film Festival

Our favorite Cuban-American film director is having a really big show in Palm Beach next week (you can view his trailers via Google, here):

In person the filmmaker Agustin Blazquez at the Palm Beach International Film Festival by María Argelia Vizcaíno

The awaited first Palm Beach International Latin Film Festival, to be held from May 25 to 28, 2006, will rely on the participation in person of the recognized filmmaker, Agustin Blazquez.

The festival will last four days and will have several of the most important films of South America and Spain, and Blazquez’s films, made in the United States.

Blazquez was born in Cardenas, in the province of Matanzas, Cuba, grew up in the towns of Coliseo and Limonar. He left Cuba for Spain in 1965, and as many Cuban exiles, followed his destiny to the United States.

Agustin Blazquez is not only a daring, dynamic and truthful filmmaker, but an actor, a screenplay writer, a historian, and a writer who knows how to inform and educate the Anglo community that doesn’t have other ways to learn the real story denied by the massive communication media and their interests favoring the left.

Articles like “Collaborating With The Enemy,” “Children Kidnapped By Castro” and about a women’s prison in Cuba, “A Women’s Prison Known As Black Mantle,” etc. are some of his articles he has written in English especially for Americans.

With the same goal, he makes his documentaries that shows with facts the reality that is denied to the American people. That’s why in 1995 “COVERING CUBA 1" was born, and ”COVERING CUBA 2: The Next Generation” (2000), “COVERING CUBA 3: Elian” (2002), “CUBA: The Pearl of the Antilles” (1999) and “COVERING CUBA 4: The Rats Below” (2005) in English with Spanish subtitles.

In this last one he confirms what many Cubans already knew, how the power of money and greed of the American politicians brought a tragedy to little Elian. In this film reveals how the domination of an unscrupulous corporation influenced the government of President Bill Clinton to kidnap an innocent boy - violating his human rights – voiding the possibility of solving his status peacefully under the laws established by the Constitution of the United States.

That’s why “The Rats Below” is the continuation of “COVERING CUBA 3: Elian” and both will be exhibited in this Palm Beach County International Latin Film Festival during the last week of May.

The first film opening the festival will be “COVERING CUBA 3: Elian” on Thursday, May 25, 2006 at 5 p.m. For his second film there will be a Cocktail Reception with the talented filmmaker Agustin Blazquez on Saturday, May 27 at 5:30 p.m. in the lobby of the theater sponsored by Semanario Accion. In it, the director Blazquez, can exchange impressions with the audience. The screening of his film “The Rats Below” is programmed for 6 p.m.

The tickets for each film are $10.00 per person and include the access to all parties and celebrations. The screenings will be at the Cuillo Center For The Arts at 201 Clematis St. in the center of West Palm Beach. There are three options for parking: Valet Parking, street parking meter and city garage parking.

For the complete schedule of the other films, visit: www.PalmBeachLatinFilmFestival.com

Agustin Blazquez’s documentaries will be available for sale at the lobby or visit: http://www.cubacollectibles.com/

Joe Galloway on Rumsfeld's Iran War Game

The same friend who told me about Office Space told me the story of Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper's experience with Pentagon War Games, described in this column by Joe Galloway of Knight Ridder:

One event that shocked Van Riper occurred in 2002 when he was asked, as he had been before, to play the commander of an enemy Red Force in a huge $250 million three-week war game titled Millennium Challenge 2002. It was widely advertised as the best kind of such exercises -- a free-play unscripted test of some of the Pentagon's and Rumsfeld's fondest ideas and theories.

Though fictional names were applied, it involved a crisis moving toward war in the Persian Gulf and in actuality was a barely veiled test of an invasion of Iran.

In the computer-controlled game, a flotilla of Navy warships and Marine amphibious warfare ships steamed into the Persian Gulf for what Van Riper assumed would be a pre-emptive strike against the country he was defending.

Van Riper resolved to strike first and unconventionally using fast patrol boats and converted pleasure boats fitted with ship-to-ship missiles as well as first generation shore-launched anti-ship cruise missiles. He packed small boats and small propeller aircraft with explosives for one mass wave of suicide attacks against the Blue fleet. Last, the general shut down all radio traffic and sent commands by motorcycle messengers, beyond the reach of the code-breakers.

At the appointed hour he sent hundreds of missiles screaming into the fleet, and dozens of kamikaze boats and planes plunging into the Navy ships in a simultaneous sneak attack that overwhelmed the Navy's much-vaunted defenses based on its Aegis cruisers and their radar controlled Gatling guns.

When the figurative smoke cleared it was found that the Red Forces had sunk 16 Navy ships, including an aircraft carrier. Thousands of Marines and sailors were dead.

The referees stopped the game, which is normal when a victory is won so early. Van Riper assumed that the Blue Force would draw new, better plans and the free play war games would resume.

Instead he learned that the war game was now following a script drafted to ensure a Blue Force victory: He was ordered to turn on all his anti-aircraft radar so it could be destroyed and he was told his forces would not be allowed to shoot down any of the aircraft bringing Blue Force troops ashore.

The Pentagon has never explained. It classified Van Riper's 21-page report criticizing the results and conduct of the rest of the exercise, along with the report of another DOD observer. Pentagon officials have not released Joint Forces Command's own report on the exercise.

Van Riper walked out and didn't come back. He was furious that the war game had turned from an honest, open free play test of America's war-fighting capabilities into a rigidly controlled and scripted exercise meant to end in an overwhelming American victory.

Daniel Cohen: Bush's Embrace of Kadafi Dishonors America

From Daniel Cohen's oped in today's LA Times (ht LGF):

HOW WOULD YOU feel if the man who murdered your child was forgiven — and embraced — by your government?

That's what happened to me Monday when the State Department announced that Moammar Kadafi's Libya was being taken off the list of state sponsors of terrorism and that the United States would establish full and friendly relations with the regime.

Libya, you may recall, was the country that blew up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988. The blast killed 270 people, 189 of them Americans. It was the worst terrorist attack on American civilians before 9/11. My daughter, Theodora — everyone called her Theo — was a Syracuse University drama student returning home from a semester in Britain on the flight. She was our only child, and her killing shattered our lives.

I know national policy cannot be influenced by the personal grief and rage of a single family. But the Bush administration has dishonored our country. The excuse the administration gives for its actions is that Libya has changed: It has given up its weapons of mass destruction. But Libya never really had weapons of mass destruction. Yes, it had materials bought from Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan's nuclear supermarket, and maybe Kadafi was nuts enough to believe that he could build nuclear weapons someday. But he didn't actually have any, and his program had been completely compromised long before he magnanimously agreed to give it up.

Libya had no biological weapons either, apart from some World War I-era mustard gas. The truth is, Kadafi gave up nothing of value. It's hard to see how his example will inspire North Korea or Iran, countries that really do have nuclear weapons or the means to make them. The message they will take away is that the United States can be rolled.

Has Libya embraced democracy? Not according to human rights groups, which say that Kadafi remains a brutal and unstable dictator. So much for President Bush's doctrine of spreading democracy. The message here is that the U.S. doesn't really mind doing business with tyrants.

America by Ray Bradbury

Bradbury's ode to immigration on today's Opinion Journal channels poets Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman...

His final stanza:

Run warm those souls: America is bad?
Sit down, stare in their faces, see!
You be the hoped-for thing a hopeless world would be.
In tides of immigrants that this year flow
You still remain the beckoning hearth they'd know.
In midnight beds with blueprint, plan and scheme
You are the dream that other people dream.

Michelle Malkin Connects Illegal Immigration to 9/11

In her latest Hot Air video Vent.

Office Space

A friend of mine who works at a Washington think-tank told me to see Office Space to understand what goes on at the US State Department. Note the "TPS reports," he said.

I quickly ordered the DVD from Netflix and watched it the other night.

He was right. Mike Judge's film is terrific. Funny but not nasty, charming really. I'm sorry I missed it in 1999. It's like Dilbert with live action figures. Plus, Jennifer Anniston is great as the girl next door working at "Chochkes" wearing 15 pieces of "flair."

Add it to your Netflix queue. Five stars.

Bill Cosby Speaks!

The comedian was in town at the University of the District of Columbia's "Call Out!" event. He created a stir with his criticism of drug dealers, crime, and hypocritical church-goers (Cosby lost a son tragically under mysterious circumstances, possibly shot in a drug deal gone wrong). Here's one account from the Washington Post:

Entertainer Bill Cosby yesterday chastised churchgoers who preach religion but fail to confront problems that plague their communities.

And another from Casey Lartigue in BlackElectorate.com:, contrasting Cosby to Eric Dyson:

Over his 4 decade career, Cosby has made it clear that he believes that there are barriers (Dyson literally swoons when discussing Cosby’s 1976 dissertation bashing institutional racism). But Cosby has also made it clear that we can’t just “stay where we are.” After those four decades of giving his own money and time to the effort, Cosby may be telling people to stand up because he is tired of stepping over them.

Vartan Gregorian on Russia in Eurasia

The president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York presents a thoughtful analysis of the impact of separatist movements in the post-Soviet space in the current Carnegie Reporter (ht Johnson's Russia List):

While the Soviet Union may have stifled open internal debate about these divisive issues, it could not prevent the West, during more than forty years of the Cold War, from appealing to nationalism and making religious and ethnic freedoms, along with the defense of national cultures, into effective anti-Soviet propaganda tools. Thus positioned as defender of the rights of Christians, Jews, Muslims and other groups, the United States and its allies stoked the fires of national identity and ethnic and religious rights that burned in the memory of those who mourned a lost nation or dreamed that a motherland, gone for decades or even centuries, could rise again.

In the 1970s, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and its aftermath rekindled the late 19th century Great Game that pitted the Russian Empire against Great Britain, though now the protaganists were the Soviet Union and its successor, Russia, vying with the United States for the future of the region. Afghanistan was the tipping point: throughout the war, which was fought, on the Afghan side, largely with Western arms and financing, the thousands of guerilla fighters who poured in from other Muslim nations and their political backers used Islam as a motivating factor and argued that the presence of “atheistic” Soviet troops in Afghanistan was an offense to Muslims all over the world. In an ironic twist, for the West—particularly the United States—Islam was, for a time, a useful buffer against “the red menace” of Communism, a weapon to be wielded as necessary, and sheathed when it was no longer needed. But that decision turned out not to be one that could be made without long-term consequences: once the Soviet Union collapsed, other nations such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan saw that money and influence could be used to promote the rebirth of Islam as a potent political weapon to be used in the name of Muslim solidarity in the region but also to support their own national and regional ambitions.

Now, as competing international interests—the United States, China, and any number of Muslim states—continue jockeying for power, the newly minted Russian Federation is forced to face its own future. It may chose to be autochthonous, echoing with the Slavophile aspirations of those 19th century advocates of the supremacy of Slavic culture and historical institutions as a better model of development for Russia than the Western European one. Or it can continue the process of Westernizing begun under Peter the Great, and carried on by both the Czarist and Soviet governments, and thus continue bridging the divide between Europe and Asia. Which path Russia will follow is critical for the future of democracy in the region. Perhaps, defying hegemonies of all sorts, the new Eurasia will seek to find a way to embark upon new forms of regional cooperation suited to its common economic needs, including outreach to global markets, while at the same time leaving breathing room for discordant national, ethnic and religious interests to coexist. But even if this type of collaborative effort is a possibility, one thing is clear: throughout the region, Russian culture, language and Soviet models of governance and development still remain influential. (Let us remember, for example, that many of the newly independent states were or are still run by former KGB leaders or other strongmen.) For all these non-Russian republics—some of them multi-ethnic, including a major Russian population—the challenge is to transition from authoritarian rule to a rule of law and begin to build a future based on democratic principles that include not only free elections, free speech and freedom of assembly, but the creation of the institutions that make democracy possible. In capitals around the world, the impact of the choices made in post-Soviet Eurasia are waiting to be measured.

Apple Sued Over iPod

Creative Technology is suing Apple alleging patent infringement in the iPod and iPod Nano.

Henry Kissinger: Work with Russia & China to Contain Iran

In today's Washington Post, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger advises President Bush to quit trying to bully Iran, forget "regime change," and instead work with Russia and China as well as the EU to find a diplomatic solution to the current nuclear standoff:

A more coherent forum for negotiation would combine the three European nations with the United States, China and Russia as the countries most directly affected and in the best position to act jointly in the Security Council. This could be set up after the passage of the Security Council resolution now under discussion. It would permit elaboration of the one hopeful scheme that has emerged in Iranian diplomacy. Put forward by Russia, it is to move certain enrichment operations out of Iran into Russia, thereby preventing clandestine weaponization. The new, broader forum could be used to establish an international enrichment program applicable to future nuclear technologies to curb the looming specter of unchecked proliferation.

Obviously, nuclear proliferation cannot be prevented simply by multiplying negotiating forums. The experience with existing conferences demonstrates the capacity for procrastination and obfuscation. To be effective, diplomacy must involve a willingness to provide clear penalties for obstruction.

Only after we have created the requisite negotiating framework and explored all aspects of diplomacy should the issue of military measures be addressed. But neither should force be rejected in principle and for all time before we know the circumstances in which this last resort should be considered.

The issue before the nations involved is similar to what the world faced in 1938 and at the beginning of the Cold War: whether to overcome fears and hesitancy about undertaking the difficult path demanded by necessity. The failure of that test in 1938 produced a catastrophic war; the ability to master it in the immediate aftermath of World War II led to victory without war.

The debates surrounding these issues will be conducted in the waning years of an American adm1inistration. On the surface, this may seem to guarantee partisanship. But thoughtful observers in both parties will know that the consequences of the decisions before us will have to be managed in a new administration. The nuclear issue, capable of destroying mankind, may thus, one hopes, bring us together in the end.

The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878

We are sure to hear more about this after President Bush speaks tonight, so here's a link to the Wikipedia site for The Posse Comitatus Act:

Sec. 1385. - Use of Army and Air Force as posse comitatus

Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.