Out of the Past: A Classic Film Blog

Found this while googling information about Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three. Personal responses to classic films, from a 20-something in publishing: http://outofthepastcfb.blogspot.com/.

Mark McKeon: Prosecute American Torturers in US Courts

In today's Washington Post:

I hope that the United States has turned the page on those times and is returning to the values that sustained our country for so many years. But we cannot expect to regain our position of leadership in the world unless we hold ourselves to the same standards that we expect of others. That means punishing the most senior government officials responsible for these crimes. We have demanded this from other countries that have returned from walking on the dark side; we should expect no less from ourselves.

To say that we should hold ourselves to the same standards of justice that we applied to Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein is not to say that the level of our leaders' crimes approached theirs. Thankfully, there is no evidence of that. And yet, torture and cruel treatment are as much violations of international humanitarian law as are murder and genocide. They demand a judicial response. We cannot expect the rest of humanity to live in a world that we ourselves are not willing to inhabit.

Arianna Huffington on Obama's 100-Day Minuses

After listing the pluses, Arianna draws attention to these minuses in Obama's 100 Days:

*The bank bailout. In his appointments at almost every agency, Obama has demonstrated a desire to receive a wide range of opinion. But the exception is a doozy: at Treasury, the range of opinion goes all the way from Goldman to Sachs. Several hundred billion dollars later, the banks still aren't lending, the zombies are still on their feet, preferred shareholders are still being catered to, the knowledge of where our money has gone is spotty at best, and oversight and transparency remain unfulfilled promises. The Obama White House's vision for the rescue remains startlingly myopic. The result is the continued funneling of hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to the very people who got us into the mess we are in -- with very little accountability demanded in return. The biggest black mark on Obama's first 100 days is his head-scratching reliance on the bank-centric beliefs of Larry Summers and Tim Geithner.

*Afghanistan. Obama has committed 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan but as many, including Obama himself, have noted, there is no exclusively military solution to Afghanistan. What's more, unlike with Guantanamo, Obama has adopted Bush's policies regarding the enemy prisoners being held at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan.

*Torture accountability. Obama has said he wants to look forward and not back, and it's reasonable for him to not want his agenda sidetracked by torture commissions and investigations. But the way we respond to the revelations about the Bush administration's use of torture isn't merely a question of policy; it a question of morality. The minute the president starts framing the issue as a matter of right vs wrong, his choices will be clear. Because if there is one thing Obama cannot afford to abandon it's the moral high ground. And he can trust the American public to walk and chew gum at the same time -- to be able to support a national health care plan, a new energy plan, the reforming of our education system, and at the same time support accountability for those who undercut our fundamental values.

*Sensible gun control. Despite a recent run of deadly gun rampages and an appeal from the president of Mexico, whose country is paying a heavy price for bought-in-America guns, Obama has chosen the path of political expediency and turned his back on his campaign promise to reinstate a ban on assault weapons.

Swine Flu, Deja Vu...

Someone I know and I were reminiscing about the time we were innoculated for Swine Flu at college, during an epidemic in 1976, the handling of which had apparently been botched, at least according to this 2002 Washington Post account on the UCLA School of Public Health website:

Events began with the death, on Feb. 4, 1976, of an Army recruit at Fort Dix, N.J., during an outbreak of respiratory infections following the holidays. Throat washings were taken from 19 ill soldiers, and a majority tested positive for that winter's dominant strain of the influenza virus, which was called A/Victoria. But four samples were different, and New Jersey public health officials sent them to the CDC to be identified.

On Feb. 12, the CDC delivered a chilling report. The four samples -- which included one from the dead soldier -- were swine flu. As the name suggests, swine flu was endemic to pigs. However, the devastating pandemic of the Spanish flu in 1918 and 1919 is believed to have been caused by a strain of swine flu that, through mutation, gained the ability to infect people.

In 1927, a scholar put the Spanish flu's global mortality at 21.5 million. In 1991, a systematic recalculation raised it to 30 million. The latest estimate, published in the current Bulletin of the History of Medicine, sets the minimum mortality at 50 million, with an upper limit of 100 million.

The possibility that the Spanish flu had reemerged was a matter whose importance is hard to overstate -- and wasn't missed by anyone in 1976. Within days of identifying the strain, federal health officials were meeting at the CDC to discuss what to do.

According to various accounts, the idea that a swine flu epidemic was quite unlikely never received a full airing or a fair hearing, although numerous experts apparently held that view. Instead, the notion that an epidemic was likely enough to warrant population-wide vaccination grew from dominant opinion to unquestioned gospel.

At the same time, the rhetoric of risk suffered steady inflation as the topic moved from the mouths of scientists to the mouths of government officials. In a memo prepared for his superiors at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW), David Sencer, head of the CDC, talked about the "strong possibility" of a swine flu epidemic. Later, HEW's general counsel commented that "the chances seem to be 1 in 2." A memo from the HEW secretary to the head of the Office of Management and Budget noted that "the projections are that this virus will kill one million Americans in 1976."

A few experts suggested the vaccine be made and stockpiled but used only if there was more evidence of an epidemic. This was considered but rejected early on. The argument was that the influenza vaccine had few, if any, serious side effects, and that it would be far easier (and more defensible) to get it into people's bodies before people started dying.

On March 24, President Gerald Ford announced on television that he was asking Congress for $135 million "to inoculate every man, woman and child in the United States" against swine flu.

Over the next nine months, very little went right -- or as planned.

Pharmaceutical companies undertook crash programs to make enough of the vaccine by the start of flu season in October. But it turned out the Fort Dix bug grew poorly in chicken eggs, the growth medium for the influenza virus. This meant that yields were going to be about half of what was planned. In addition, one company used the wrong virus and had to start over.

The insurance industry announced it wouldn't insure manufacturers against liability arising from the vaccine. An act of Congress shifted most of the liability to the government.

Studies of Fort Dix's soldiers showed that about 500 had been infected with swine flu. But with only one death, this called into question the deadliness of the strain. In addition, swine flu didn't appear that summer in the Southern Hemisphere, as would be expected if a pandemic were starting.

Tests showed that single injections of some vaccine formulations didn't protect children. This required time-consuming studies of a two-shot regimen.

Albert Sabin, the father of the oral polio vaccine and a high-profile advocate, broke with the party line and called for stockpiling, but not immediate use, of the vaccine.

Three elderly people in Pittsburgh died on the same day within hours of getting swine flu shots. It was a chance event, but just the sort of guilt by association that arises whenever a public health intervention is done on a mass scale.

What killed the program, though, was the observation in early December that people given the swine flu vaccine had an increased risk of developing Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare, usually reversible but occasionally fatal form of paralysis. Research showed that while the actual risk for Guillain-Barre was only about 1 in 1,000 among people who had received the vaccine, that was about seven times higher than for people who didn't get the shot.

On Dec. 16, the swine flu vaccine campaign was halted. About 45 million people had been immunized. The federal government eventually paid out $90 million in damages to people who developed Guillain-Barre. The total bill for the program was more than $400 million.

There are a lot of lessons to draw, said Harvey Fineberg, a former dean of Harvard's School of Public Health, who co-authored an analysis of the "swine flu affair" for Joseph A. Califano, HEW secretary under President Jimmy Carter, who succeeded Ford in January 1977.

Among them: Don't over-promise; think carefully about what needs to be decided when; don't expect the consensus of experts to hold in the face of changing events. The biggest, he said recently, was perhaps the most obvious: Expect the unexpected at all times.

Coming This Wednesday...

To the Arts Club of Washington, DC, Wednesday, April 29, 2009, from 5:30pm - 8:30pm:

EVENINGS WITH EXTRAORDINARY ARTISTS: 3 HOLLYWOOD VIENNESE: WILDER, ZINNEMANN, PREMINGER

Arts Club Cinematography chair Larry Jarvik will moderate a panel devoted to the life, work and creative legacy of producer-directors Billy Wilder, Fred Zinnemann, and Otto Preminger. Towson University professor Peter Lev will discuss “Otto Preminger’s Fatal Women.” Prof. Lev is co-editor of The Literature/Film Reader: Issues of Adaptation and author of History of the American Cinema: The Fifties. Dr. Lawrence Suid will focus on “The Search for Fred Zinnemann.” Dr. Suid, author of Guts & Glory: The Making of the American Military Image on Film, is now writing Zinnemann’s biography. Jarvik’s topic is “One, Two, Three: Billy Wilder’s Coca-Cola Comedy.” The evening will feature clips from a number of the Viennese auteurs’ best films, as well as an opportunity for audience participation.

Cost of the program is $20, including wine and hors d’oeuvres; reserve at 202-331-7282, ext. 16, by 3 p.m. on Tuesday, April 28th. Free validated parking is available at the Nation Parking garage on 20th Street NW (located between Eye and K Streets, NW).

Location: Arts Club of Washington
2017 Eye St NW
Washington, DC

(Please forgive the self-promotion...)

Rabbi David Golinkin on the Bergson Group in Israeli History

On the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day and Israeli Independence Day, Dr. Rafael Medoff sent me last week's interview in the Jerusalem Post with Rabbi David Golinkin, who stars as Rabbi Stephen Wise in the Jerusalem production of Bernard Weinraub's The Accomplices. An excerpt:

Your father, Noah Golinkin, was a young rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary in those days. He and his classmates Jerry Lipnick and Buddy Sachs fashioned their own unique response to the news about Europe's Jews. Why?

After Stephen Wise snubbed them, my father and his fellow-students felt they had no choice but to create their own activist group, called the European Committee. No budget, no staff, no office, just some 20-somethings in their dorm rooms with a rickety typewriter. They organized an amazing conference in February 1943, bringing Christian and Jewish students from 11 theological seminaries together to learn what was happening to Europe's Jews and to discuss ways to help. My father and his friends also managed to persuade the Synagogue Council of America to launch a nationwide campaign to get synagogues to hold memorial rallies in May 1943, to insert special passages about Europe's Jews - written by my father - in their prayers, to wear black ribbons and more.

This was all a very important part of making the Jewish public aware of what was happening and of putting rescue at the top of the Jewish community's agenda. It's really remarkable to think that a handful of college students could make that happen.

Your father had just recently escaped from the Nazis and reached America. Usually one thinks of immigrants as being afraid to "make waves" in their new country. What made your father different?

He only arrived in the US in 1938. Through intensive lobbying in Congress, he managed to get his parents out in 1939 and his sisters out in 1942. This proved to him that lobbying did work. The second reason was simply his personality - he was a doer. If he saw a problem, he tried to solve it. When he saw the Jewish leaders staying quiet, he prodded them to act before it would be too late.

The controversy over president Roosevelt and the Holocaust continues to provoke debate, more than 60 years after the fact. Now it's coming to the Jerusalem stage. How do you think Israelis will respond to it?

Israelis care deeply about these issues, and they should. The Allies' response to the Holocaust has affected so many issues, from the creation of Israel, to the nature of America-Israel relations, to the influence of American Jews on US foreign policy. Also, many Israelis will naturally see Peter Bergson [Hillel Kook] as "one of ours" - he and the other leaders of the Bergson Group came to America from Mandatory Palestine, and after their work was done, they went back to Eretz Yisrael. Bergson and two of his colleagues even served in the first Knesset. The story of the Bergson Group is not only part of American Jewish history, it's a very important part of Israeli and Zionist history as well.

Chris Buckley's "Mummy Dearest"

In today's New York Times Magazine, a memoir of growing up as the Crown Prince of Conservatism. It's the first thing written by Chris Buckley that I enjoyed reading, perhaps because it reminded me of my one and only dinner with Bill and Pat Buckley more than a decade ago...one at which she barely said a word, except to the servants, whom she called on what looked like a TV remote control, while wearing dark sunglasses at the dinner table. Odd, and memorable. Like Chris Buckley's memoir. A sample:

I remember the time I first caught Mum in some preposterous untruth, as she called it. It, too, featured British aristos. She grew up a debutante in a grand house in Vancouver, British Columbia, the kind of house that even has a name: Shannon. Grand, but Vancouver-grand, which is to say, provincial.

So one night, when I was 6 or so, sitting with the grown-ups at the dinner table, I heard Mum announce that “the king and queen always stayed with us when they were in Vancouver.” By “king and queen” she meant the parents of the current queen of England. My little antennae went twing? I’d never heard my grandparents refer to a royal visit, which is a pretty big deal. I looked at Mum and realized — twang! — that she was telling an untruth. A big untruth. And I remember thinking in that instant how thrilling and grown-up it must be to say something so completely untrue — as opposed to the little amateur fibs I was already practiced at, horrid little apprentice sinner that I was, like the ones about how you’d already said your prayers or washed under the fingernails. Yes, I was impressed. This was my introduction to a lifetime of mendacity. I, too, must learn to say these gorgeous untruths. Imaginary kings and queens will be my houseguests when I am older!

When Mum was in full prevarication, Pup would assume an expression somewhere between a Jack Benny stare and the stoic grimace of a 13th-century saint being burned at the stake. He knew very well that King George VI and Queen Elizabeth did not routinely decamp at Shannon. The funny thing was that he rarely challenged her when she was in the midst of one of her glorious confections. For that matter, no one did. They wouldn’t have dared. Mum had a regal way about her that did not brook contradiction. The only time she ever threatened to spank me was when I told her, in front of others, following one of her more absurd claims, “Oh, come off it!” Her fluent mendacity, combined with adamantine confidence, made her really indomitable. As awful as it often was, thinking back on it now, I’m filled with a sort of perverse pride in her. She was really, really good at it. She would have made a fantastic spy. Really, she would have made a fantastic anything. She was beautiful, theatrical, bright as a diamond, the wittiest woman I have ever known. (Whatever talent I possess as a “humorist” — dreadful word — I owe to her.) She could have done anything; instead, she devoted herself, heart, soul and body, to being Mrs. William F. Buckley Jr. (A full-time job.)

At any rate, I hadn’t written to rebuke her over the Cat and Kate dinner, so that was one letter from me Mum never had to not open. What, really, would have been the point of writing?

I forgive you. I was glad to have the chance to say that to her at the hospital, holding her hand, tears streaming down my face. I can hear her saying, Are you quite finished, or shall I fetch my Stradivarius?

Howard Kurtz's Washington Post story on Buckley's memoir at this link. You can buy the book from Amazon.com here:

Judith Miller On Obama's 100 Days

The formerly jailed New York Times correspondent writes that she likes what she has seen so far:

How's he doing? Very well, given the mess he inherited. He has implemented key campaign pledges, at least rhetorically, while leaving himself considerable wiggle room. On his first day in office, for instance, he announced that he would close Guantanamo and end "enhanced interrogation techniques," known to most English speakers as torture. But he pushed Gitmo's closure off by a year and created a task force to decide whether, where, and how the "worst of the worst" and future detainees are to be held. While he abolished torture, he formed another group to study which techniques are legitimate and devise a broader framework for their use. Wisely, Obama has usually created a trap door for himself, in case a decision or policy turns out to be unrealistic or unwise.

Despite his inspirational rhetoric, he is remarkably pragmatic, centrist, and in some instances, quite steely. In Iraq, for instance, he set a compromise deadline for withdrawing, but made clear that a deterioration in security might prompt him to reevaluate the pace of withdrawal. In Afghanistan, while he vowed to limit the war to "disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda and its allies," he effectively embraced nation-building by pledging to train Afghan security forces, fight the drug trade, restructure the agricultural sector, reduce corruption, and do what is needed to prevent the Taliban from returning. Under President Obama, the war in Afghanistan has officially become his Af-Pak war. He has "surged" forces while eschewing the word. The number of combat, training, and support troops in Afghanistan is scheduled to increase from the 31,000 deployed at the end of President Bush's term in December, 2008 to some 68,000 this fall.

Several top appointees have military backgrounds or are veterans of the Bush era so despised by the left-wing of his party – Pentagon chief Robert Gates, for instance, General Jim Jones, his national security adviser, and Admiral Dennis Blair, his director of national intelligence. For his secretary of state, he chose former rival Hillary Clinton, whose foreign policy/national security views – having supported the war in Iraq, for one — are much to the right of his own. While he has endorsed greater effort to cooperate with such multilateral institutions as the United Nations, he refused to attend its despicable racism conference in Durban. President Obama clearly knows how to say no.

Harman Warned CIA Not To Destroy Torture Tapes

From the Council on Foreign Relations website (ht The Moderate Voice):

Representative Jane Harman, Chair of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence, released this letter to then CIA General Counsel Scott Muller on January 3, 2008. It is dated February 10, 2003 and exhorts the CIA to not destroy evidence from the interrogation of al Qaeda member Abu Zubaydah. The interrogation videotapes were destroyed in December 2007; Harman then requested that her letter and the subsequent response be declassified.

Mr. Scott Muller
General Counsel
Central Intelligence Agency
Washington, DC 20505

Dear Mr. Muller:

Last week’s briefing brought home to me the difficult challenges faced by the Central Intelligence Agency in the current threat environment. I realize we are at a time when the balance between security and liberty must be constantly evaluated and recalibrated in order to protect our nation and its people from catastrophic terrorist attack and I thus appreciate the obvious effort that you and your Office have made to address the tough questions. At the briefing you assured us that the [redacted] approved by the Attorney General have been subject to an extensive review by lawyers at the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Justice and the National Security Council and found to be within the law.

It is also the case, however, that what was described raises profound policy questions and I am concerned about whether these have been as rigorously examined as the legal questions. I would like to know what kind of policy review took place and what questions were examined. In particular, I would like to know whether the most senior levels of the White House have determined that these practices are consistent with the principles and policies of the United States. Have enhanced techniques been authorized and approved by the President?

You discussed the fact that there is videotape of Abu Zubaydah following his capture that will be destroyed after the Inspector General finishes his inquiry. I would urge the Agency to reconsider that plan. Even if the videotape does not constitute an official record that must be preserved under the law, the videotape would be the best proof that the written record is accurate, if such record is called into question in the future. The fact of destruction would reflect badly on the Agency.

I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,
JANE HARMAN

Is America the New France?

Apparently, this is the idee du jour in Washington, DC...and subject of a symposium at the Brookings Institution next Tuesday, according to an announcement I received today:

Is America the New France? How President Obama’s Policies Are Transforming the United States

When President Barack Obama unveiled his budget proposal in February, many observers described it as a radical departure for the American experiment, one that put the United States on a path to become like a European social democracy. One columnist lamented that "one France is enough,” and a political opponent derided the budget as "a blueprint for the France-ification of America.” The new administration bears more than a passing resemblance to its European counterparts in setting aside funding for universal health care and high-speed trains, increasing federal intervention in the markets and embracing green industrial policy and greater social equality. But, is the Obama administration really taking the American model in the direction of European social democracies? If so, would that be such a bad thing?

On April 28, the Brookings Institution will host a discussion to assess the scope and meaning of the "Obama revolution,” possible reactions by the American public and an apparent narrowing of U.S.-Europe differences. Panelists include Brookings Senior Fellows William Galston and Pietro Nivola; Guest Scholar Jonathan Rauch, a senior writer for National Journal and The Atlantic Monthly; and Clive Crook of the Financial Times, The Atlantic Monthly, and National Journal. Senior Fellow Justin Vaisse will provide introductory remarks and moderate the discussion. After the program, panelists will take audience questions.

When Will the Obama Administration Release Congresswoman Harman's Wiretap Transcripts?

Cong. Jane Harman asked that her NSA phone call transcripts be released on April 21st. So far, I haven't seen any answer...or any reason given why they should not be made public. Here's a copy of Harman's letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, from her official website:

April 21, 2009

The Honorable Eric Holder
Attorney General
Department of Justice
Washington, DC 20530

Dear General Holder:

I am outraged to learn from reports leaked to the media over the last several days that the FBI or NSA secretly wiretapped my conversations in 2005 or 2006 while I was Ranking Member on the House Intelligence Committee.

This abuse of power is outrageous and I call on your Department to release all transcripts and other investigative material involving me in an unredacted form. It is my intention to make this material available to the public.

I also urge you to take appropriate steps to investigate possible wiretapping of other Members of Congress and selective leaks of investigative material which can be used for political purposes. As you know, it is entirely appropriate to converse with advocacy organizations and constituent groups, and I am concerned about a chilling effect on other elected officials who may find themselves in my situation.

Let me be absolutely clear: I never contacted the Department of Justice, the White House or anyone else to seek favorable treatment regarding the national security cases on which I was briefed, or any other cases. You may be aware that David Szady, the FBI's former top counterintelligence official, is quoted in the media saying of me "…in all my dealings with her, she was always professional and never tried to intervene or get in the way of any investigation."

Sincerely,

JANE HARMAN

BTW, John Loftus's book The Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed The Jewish People
provides interesting background reading that may be related to this case:
UPDATE: House Intelligence Chair Silvestre Reyes has announced an investigation into the Harman wiretap. Let's hope the public is able to see what results from this inquiry...I see from a Google search that Chairman Reyes stood up to the PBS bureaucracy in the case of Ken Burns' WWII film, acting as a supporter of the Defend the Honor Campaign. Let's hope he can stand up the the so-called Intelligence Community's version of Dickens' "Circumlocution Office" as well...He may have a hard time getting NSA to turn over the name of the culprit, especially since unauthorized release of wiretap information is a felony offense, according to the Federation of American Scientists' Secrecy News:

Ironically, the single identifiable crime in this whole story is the unauthorized disclosure of the classified contents of an intelligence intercept to CQ, and then to the New York Times. While there is no categorical legal prohibition against all classified leaks, several specific categories of classified information are protected by statute and their release is a felony offense. Under 18 U.S.C. 798, one of those is the unauthorized disclosure of communications intelligence, like that gathered by NSA.

Obama is Right to Oppose "Truth Commission"

IMHO, Allegations of torture are a matter for the Justice Department and Congress to investigate...any more "commissions" would be a sign that it is "business as usual" in Washington. The 9/11 Commission was a double-cover-up, that allowed serious questions to be papered over and resulted in a war strategy that left the US bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan some eight years after the destruction of the World Trade Center. Any so-called "Truth Commission" would be as unsatisfactory as the Warren Commission in clearing up public doubts (remember LBJ's resignation in disgrace?). It would end up as nothing more than a "Cover-Up Commission," whatever the intentions of its supporters, as anyone who has lived in Washington for more than a few months knows.

Yes, the Democrats were briefed and failed to stop torture under Bush. So what? Two wrongs don't make a right. President Bush didn't pardon Dick Cheney or his cronies, and that leaves the door open for criminal prosecutions and congressional investigations.

The time for cover-ups is over, there really needs to be some actual house-cleaning. When I worked at the Heritage Foundation, they were fond of quoting Richard Weaver's motto: "Ideas have consequences."

So should advocating and approving torture.

New Film Documents Plight of French Jewry

A friend from New York City forwarded this press release about Being Jewish in France:

MEDIA CONTACT: Gabriele Caroti at 212.875.5625 or gcaroti@filmlinc.com
April 23, 2009

May 13 – 19. North American Theatrical Premiere.
Winner of the Jewish Experience Award, Jerusalem Film Festival.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center is proud to present The North American Theatrical Premiere of Yves Jeuland’s Being Jewish in France showing at the Walter Reade Theater from Wednesday, May 13 through Tuesday, May 19. This sweeping documentary explores 100 years of the rich and complex history of Jews in France, the first nation to grant them full citizenship. The undisputed sensation of this year’s New York Jewish Film Festival, the film examines the explosive Dreyfus Affair, the Vichy government’s collaboration with the Nazis, the absorption of Sephardic Jews from Arab countries in the decades after WWII, and continues all the way through contemporary times.

Being Jewish in France offers a multifaceted and thoughtful approach to a subject that continues to spark controversy. In recent years, despite the fact that France continues to have the largest Jewish community in Western Europe, a number of anti-Semitic attacks have once again raised questions about French-Jewish identity.

Director Jeuland masterfully gives a vibrant human dimension to this examination of Jewish life in France by bringing together an extraordinary constellation of French-Jewish voices and experiences, from leading politicians, intellectuals, and artists. Being Jewish in France is primed to become the quintessential film on the subject.

Press Screening (held at the Walter Reade Theater)
Thursday, April 30 at 10:30am
Please note that this film is in two parts – there will be a 5 minute intermission.
To RSVP, please email pkim@filmlinc.com

France | 2007 | 185 min. (Part I: 73 min. Part II: 112 min.) | In French with English subtitles
Directed and Written by Yves Jeuland. Produced by Michal Rotman. Narrated by Mathieu Almaric.
A National Center for Jewish Film release.
Press releases and hi-res images may be downloaded from filmlinc.com/press
Password: press
Being Jewish in France will be shown daily from Wed, May 13 – Tue, May 19.
Wednesday, May 13/Thursday, May 14/Tuesday, May 19: 3pm 7pm
Saturday, May 16 Sunday, May 17: 1pm, 4:45pm 8:15pm
Friday, May 15: 7pm
Monday, May 18: 1pm

Single screening tickets for Being Jewish in France are $11; $7 for Film Society members, students and children (6-12, accompanied by an adult); and $8 for seniors (62+). They are available at both the Walter Reade Theater box office and online at filmlinc.com. For more information, call (212) 875-5601.

The work of The Film Society of Lincoln Center is made possible by the generous support of the Irene Diamond Fund, 42 Below, Stella Artois , Illy, and public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center, under the leadership of Executive Director Mara Manus and Program Director Richard Peña, was founded in 1969 to celebrate American and international cinema, to recognize and support new directors, and to enhance the awareness, accessibility and understanding of film. Advancing this mandate today, The Film Society hosts two distinguished festivals—The New York Film Festival and New Directors/New Films—as well as the annual Gala Tribute, and a year-round calendar of programming at its Walter Reade Theater. It also offers definitive examinations of essential films and artists to a worldwide audience through Film Comment magazine.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater is located at 165 West 65th St. between Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway.

Bernard Weinraub's "The Accomplices" Premieres in Jerusalem

Judy Lash Balint was there, and writes about the play's Israeli premiere at Frontpage.com:

These days, I no longer go to the official ceremonies. Fewer and fewer survivors are there too, since not many have the stamina to endure the lengthy security procedures, the wait for the president and prime minister to arrive and the hour-long ceremony itself. Besides, how many times can we listen to the pronouncements of the politicians and watch the endless laying of wreaths ?

This Yom Hashoah, as dusk descended and the somber memorial day unfolded, I found myself at the Israeli premiere of a powerful play by Bernard Weinraub called 'The Accomplices,' that dealt with the failure of the US government and the organized Jewish community to intervene in the Holocaust.

On the way home, it's easy to sense the heaviness that descends on the city. Flags fly at half mast; all cafes and places of entertainment are closed; only somber music plays on the radio.

On the morning of Yom Hashoah, the country comes to a standstill at precisely 10 a.m as the sirens wail marking the only ritualistic aspect of the day. I'm standing on Rachel Imeynu Street during the two minute call to attention. It's a moment of solidarity and comfort as the nation joins together in remembrance and resolve. In Musrara, on Jerusalem's seam between the eastern and western parts of the city, Israel's schizophrenia is exhibited for all to see. My son who lives in that neighborhood reports that the Arab commercial area doesn't miss a beat even as the Jews bring traffic to a halt just a few yards away.

My teacher and mentor, Rabbi Avi Weiss, has written extensively about the need for ritual in assuring Holocaust memory:

"I am concerned about how the Shoah will be remembered. Survivors are growing older. Neither can Shoah memory be entrusted to the museums. While they are of importance for memory, there are those controlled by universalists who take their orders from non-Jewish institutions. We dare not allow the Shoah to be politicized. Nor will the camps where the horror took place tell the story. Too many have already been Christianized and the emphasis on financial restitution has raised other serious challenges. No doubt assets should be recovered. Still, our community should be concerned that as this effort continues, the Holocaust will be remembered for stolen money rather than for stolen souls. The only way to ensure the Shoah will be remembered is through Jewish ritual; by speaking and re-enacting what our people endured sixty years ago, much in the same way as we do for yetziat Mitzraim (the Exodus from Egypt)."

Rabbi Weiss goes on to suggest various meaningful rituals that would go a long way to effectively preserve memory.

Here in Israel, along with the need to appropriately memorialize the Shoah, there's a rising awareness of the urgent need to take care of the remaining survivors. It's estimated that more than 80,000 of the 240,000 survivors in Israel live in dire poverty. The meager monthly compensation allowance from the Finance Ministry stands at 1,040NIS (about $250), but even this is only paid to those who arrived before 1953. Recent Knesset legislation has provided more assistance, but to date only 2,000 out of 8,000 survivors eligible have actually received any payments. As one radio talk show noted in his Yom Hashoah morning broadcast, "When Yom Hashoah is over, almost all our politicians will go back to their petty squabbles and fights over their own pensions and their budgets that pay for phones and newspapers for life."

All afternoon, despite the bright sunshine outside, I can't help but stay glued to the TV, watching documentary after documentary of almost unfathomable tales of every facet of the human experience that took place during and after the Shoah. I long ago found it impossible to read any more Holocaust memoirs, but there's something compelling about hearing the incredible stories of those who survived and made it to Israel; seeing on film how second generation Israelis are trying to unearth the truth about their parent's experiences.

At the end of the day, as the memorial candle on my window-sill burns down, after all the talk and ceremony, there are, of course, no new answers to the greatest tragedy to befall the Jewish people in the modern era. What remains is a sense of protracted shiva. We get up and resume our lives, internalizing our collective memories.

Her blog is called JerusalemDiaries.

ACLU Petitions to Investigate Torture Allegations

I thought I'd share today's email with my readers, and I'm signing the petition, myself:

Dear ACLU Supporter,

Since the ACLU forced the release of four critical Bush torture memos, the demand for an independent investigation has been growing louder and louder. Even President Obama said it's up to Attorney General Eric Holder to decide whether to prosecute the memos' authors.

Tomorrow, the ACLU and a number of partner organizations will raise the stakes.

We’ll deliver hundreds of thousands of petitions to Attorney General Holder as he testifies before the House Appropriations Committee on Thursday afternoon -- his first public testimony since the memos were released.

Sign the ACLU petition calling on Attorney General Holder to appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate high-level involvement in torture.

The more disclosure there is about deep, high-level involvement in torture and detainee abuse, the more indefensible it becomes to avoid investigating and prosecuting those responsible.

Involvement in torture is among the most severe violations of the law imaginable. And that should make it one of the last things we would ever think about overlooking. This isn’t about retribution or recrimination. It’s about standing up for what we believe in and restoring our country to an America we can be proud of again.

Make the midnight deadline. Add your name to the ACLU’s anti-torture petition now.

Tomorrow, people from all across the country will demand that the Attorney General takes action. Count yourself among them. Act now.

Sincerely,

Caroline Fredrickson
Director, Washington Legislative Office
ACLU

P.S. It took five years of hard work for the ACLU to force the Justice Department to release the Bush torture memos.

Please support our ongoing efforts to hold those who ordered, authorized, and carried out these horrible crimes accountable. Make a donation to the ACLU today.

© ACLU, 125 Broad Street, 18th Floor, New York, NY 10004

Hilary Clinton Blasts Pakistan

In today's Congressional testimony, according to Reuters:

The Pakistani government is "basically abdicating to the Taliban" in agreeing to the imposition of Islamic law in part of the nuclear-armed country, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday.

"I think that the Pakistani government is basically abdicating to the Taliban and to the extremists," Clinton told lawmakers when asked about the introduction of Islamic law in Pakistan's northwestern Swat valley under a deal to end Taliban violence.

Hello? Didn't anyone think of this possible outcome when the US gave a green light to the overthrow of General Pervez Musharraf? What's the contingency plan?

If there isn't one, I'd suggest that the Secretary of State begin reading Professor James Kurth's article, "Coming to Order" in the Winter, 2007 edition of The American Interest, in which he advocates returning Pakistan to India:

While there were particular ethnic communities that served as loyal allies of imperial powers in imposing order upon disorderly cities and turbulent frontiers, there were also particular ethnic communities that always seemed to be in opposition to the imperial order, or, indeed, to any order other than their own peculiar one. The British called these “unruly peoples.” The most notorious of these unruly peoples—indeed, the British called them “ungovernable”—were the Pashtuns (then called the Pathans), who inhabited both the southern and eastern parts of Afghanistan and the Northwest Frontier Province of British India. And so the Pashtuns have remained, right down to the present day. We might now call them a rogue people.

They have been a rogue people at great cost to the rest of the world. The Pashtuns are virtually the only ethnic community in Afghanistan that supports the Taliban, and indeed virtually everyone in the Taliban is a Pashtun. It was, of course, the Taliban regime and therefore the Pashtun community that hosted and protected al-Qaeda before the American invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, and it is the Pashtun community in the Northwest Frontier Province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan that hosts and protects al-Qaeda there today.

Like many close-knit ethnic or tribal communities, the Pashtuns have an intense sense of communal identity and almost no sense of an individual one. They also naturally have an intense sense of their enemies’ communal identities, including their collective guilt. It is impossible to deal with the Pashtuns as individuals, responding to calculations of individual benefits and costs. This is why, after more than five years, no one has stepped forward to turn in Osama bin Laden or Mullah Mohammed Omar (the leader of the Taliban), even though the United States has offered a $25 million reward for each. The only way to deal with the Pashtuns is the way they deal with themselves and with everyone else, as a community that is capable of both collective honor and guilt...

...With its vast Muslim population of 130 million, India has had ample and generally successful experience with the problem of maintaining law and order invoving an internal Muslim community. In its ongoing Islamist insurgency in Kashmir, India has also had ample and often painful experience with this problem—a sort of Indian “near abroad.” India certainly is a willing ally in a grand coalition against Islamist terrorists, so long as we do not insist on formally calling them an ally.

India’s biggest contribution could issue from any future disintegration of Pakistan. This state has always been an artificial and brittle one, and in many areas—most obviously, in the Northwest Frontier Province, the autonomous tribal areas, and, increasingly, in Baluchistan, as well—it is a failing one. With a strong Islamist presence in the country and even in the military, Pakistan could one day become an Islamist state already possessing nuclear weapons. An Islamist Pakistan, perhaps with al-Qaeda operating on its territory, would probably be the most dangerous state in the world, a rogue state in the fullest sense of the term.

If the United States should ever determine that this state had to be put to an end, India would be the best ally to help do it—to “crack the Paks”, as it were. The ruins of this artificial country would produce four or five separate ethnic provinces, each of which could be reconstructed and ordered by a new Indian Raj with a mixture of direct and indirect rule—in a way not unlike the British Raj that once ruled these very same provinces.

Freddie Mac CFO Found Dead

Obviously, something is still seriously wrong in the financial sector, otherwise, why would 41-year old David Kellermann, 16-year veteran Freddie Mac employee appear to have hanged himself?

Arianna Huffington: Stay Outraged Over Financial Crisis!

Arianna just published a list of things to be outraged about. Example number four:

The three big credit rating agencies -- Moody's, Standard & Poor's, and Fitch -- stand to gain hundreds of millions of dollars in the government's latest plan to ease the credit markets.

You may remember these three as primary cast members in the ensemble production that's practically destroyed our economy. Without the AAA rating these three agencies gave to billions of dollars worth of junk, we might not be where we are today.

But fear not. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke says he has looked at the models the three are using now and is "comfortable."

Not exactly the word I'd use. Especially since, as the Wall Street Journal notes, the ratings agencies are still paid by the companies whose products they're supposedly giving disinterested ratings to for the benefit of investors.

"Until the rating firms bite the bullet and develop forward-looking signals and methods," says former credit-rating analyst, Ann Rutledge, "it's going to be same old, same old, and their models can be gamed."

After all, them's the rules. And Ben Bernanke is "comfortable" with them.

I'm not. And you shouldn't be either. I know from personal experience that it's easy to become worn down by the steady drip, drip, drip of scandal after scandal after scandal. But our weariness plays perfectly into the hands of those who got us into the mess we are in (the same people, by the way, who remain in charge of Wall Street). They welcome our outrage fatigue. They are counting on it. Their future depends on it.

Which is why we need to stay outraged. Even if it means losing out on a good night's sleep. And you know how much that means to me.

Is Rahm Emanuel the New Stuart Eizenstat?

Articles about Obama chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel and Israel like this one from the Jerusalem Post remind me of all the fussing over Stuart Eizenstat during the Carter administration. Eizenstat was Carter's Chief Domestic Policy Adviser and Executive Director of the White House Domestic Policy Staff. He went on to a number of jobs in the Clinton administration. But in the end, he was eclipsed by NSC adviser Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, whose gross incompetence brought us Ronald Reagan (not such a bad thing). Likewise, for all the talk about Rahm Emanuel, I'd say Obama NSC Adviser General James Logan Jones' and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton's views may carry more weight with the President at the end of the day.

Let's hope they do a better job than Brzezinski or Vance...

Los Angeles Remembers Peter Bergson

A phone call from a friend just brought this development to my attention. At this Yom HaShoah season, Los Angeles is paying tribute to Peter Bergson, protagonist of my documentary film. What do you think? asked my friend.

Better late than never.