Lately I’ve been enjoying the program “Double Standards” on the Press TV YouTube channel. It’s a London-based news and satire show hosted by Afshin Rattansi. While it may not be as consistently funny and polished as “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report”, it is on occasion more fearless in its choice of targets and strength of its critiques, as shown in this clip from a recent program on bankers and government lackeys:
Their interviews are also usually more politically substantial, such as this clip from last year featuring Patrick Henningsen of 21st Century Wire discussing the European Commission and UK’s Ofcom regulator’s decision to ban Press TV from European satellite and cable broadcasting:
“Gridlock’d” (1997) is a film most people remember for featuring one of Tupac Shakur’s last starring roles (he was murdered in a shooting just two months after its completion). While Tupac’s performance as Spoon, a level-headed but drug-addicted jazz musician, is impressive and possibly his best, often overlooked are contributions of co-star Tim Roth and actor/writer/first-time director Vondie Curtis Hall. Roth stars as Stretch, Spoon’s impulsive and slightly deranged partner in addiction and music. Both Shakur and Roth inhabit their roles with a sense of authenticity, humanity, and charisma, giving their potentially pathetic characters believable chemistry and a likeable comic edge. The film kicks off when the third member of their jazz combo, Cookie, played by Thandie Newton, has an overdose, compelling the others to go on a quixotic quest seeking treatment for their addiction. Unfortunately for our protagonists the Detroit healthcare system is a bureaucratic maze seemingly designed to thwart their efforts. Odds of their success are decreased further when they’re targeted by cops and gangsters.
Detroit-born Vondie Curtis Hall does an excellent job balancing the script’s gritty realism and dark outlook with comedy and wit. Visually, the film is stylish without looking too glamorous or grim, and he keeps moments of humor and suspense well-paced. Hall is also suitably menacing as gangster D-Reper. Director John Sayles, who previously worked with Hall on the film “Passion Fish”, makes a cameo appearance as one of the cops. Hall hasn’t yet made another film on par with the quality of Gridlock’d, but he continues to do much acting and directing work for television.
As strong as Hall’s directorial debut is, it wouldn’t be as emotionally involving and memorable were it not for Tupac Shakur’s presence. Like his character in Gridlock’d, Tupac was at the time seeking a new beginning; a new creative direction. The fact that his life was tragically cut short can’t help but add a sense of poignancy and dramatic weight to his role and the entire film.
Last week, Seattle’s alternative weekly paper The Stranger published an exposé on their city’s new wireless mesh network, part of a $2.7 million project purchased by the Department of Homeland Security. The Seattle Police Department refused to answer more than a dozen questions about the network (which was fast-tracked by Seattle City Council with very little process for review and approval) including whether it’s operational, who can access its data, what it might be used for, whether the SPD has used or intends to use it to geo-locate people’s devices via MAC addresses or other identifiers, and how accurately it would be able to track people.
On November 12, Anthony Gucciardi and Mikael Thalen released reports on Infowars and Storyleak featuring leaked documents on the surveillance mesh posted by an anonymous whistleblower earlier this year. Some of the findings are recapped in the video below:
Shortly after the leaks went public (Tuesday evening) Seattle Police Spokesperson Sgt. Sean Whitcomb announced “The wireless mesh network will be deactivated until city council approves a draft policy and until there’s an opportunity for vigorous public debate.” While it’s fortunate they were forced to do this due to public pressure, it contradicted previous statements SPD had made to the local press in the wake of The Stranger article. As reported by RT:
The SPD told The Stranger previously that the system was not being used, but anyone with a smart phone who wandered through the jurisdiction covered by the digital nodes could still notice that their devices were being discovered by the internet-broadcasting boxes, just as a person’s iPhone or Android might attempt to connect to any network within reach. In theory, law enforcement could take the personal information transmitted as the two devices talk to each other and use that intelligence to triangulate the location of a person, even within inches.
When the SPD was approached about the system last week, they insisted that it wasn’t even in operation yet. David Ham of Seattle’s KIRO-7 News asked, however, how come “we could see these network names if it’s not being used?”
“Well, they couldn’t give us an explanation,” Ham said at the time.
“They now own a piece of equipment that has tracking capabilities so we think that they should be going to city council and presenting a protocol for the whole network that says they won’t be using it for surveillance purposes,” Jamela Debelak of the American Civil Liberties Union told the network.
Now just days later, the SPD has admitted to The Stranger that indeed the mesh network was turned on — it just wasn’t supposed to be.
“SPD maintains it has not been actively using the network — it was operational without being operated, having been turned on for DHS grant-mandated testing and then never turned off — so shutting it down won’t hamper any current SPD activities,” The Stranger reported.
Are we supposed to believe the SPD “forgot” to shut the system off or trust that they would leave it operational without anyone operating it in light of the fact that they lied to reporters about the system being on a few days earlier? Both seem unlikely, as does promises that they’ll have enough safeguards in place to prevent misuse of the information they collect.
As RT previously reported, the DHS has been quietly rolling out similar surveillance grids in other cities including Oakland and Las Vegas. At this point, all Americans must remain extra vigilant to stay on top of such Orwellian schemes and do everything within power to shut them down.
UPDATE 11/28: Infowars just released this follow-up report revealing SPD had in fact NOT shut down the surveillance grid after publicly announcing that they would. This is further evidence that government lies and/or is incompetent at doing anything not a high priority for them (like shutting off surveillance grids), as if anyone needed more evidence.
UPDATE 12/9: Seattle police just announced today that the last of the surveillance nodes had finally been shut off last Friday (12/6). According to The Stranger:
Today, an SPD spokesperson said the department had turned off the final nodes in the network on Friday—156 could be disabled remotely, which happened weeks ago (though 19 had to be double-checked in person), but 8 had to be deactivated manually by a technician. Those are now off.
Today, I also received a copy of a letter sent from SPD Chief Jim Pugel to city councilperson Bruce Harrell about the mesh network. The full text is below the jump, but the relevant points are: (a) the department says the technology needs “more vetting with the ACLU and other stakeholders before a public hearing” and (b) Chief Pugel’s assertion that the network does not have the capability to track or record a person’s movements, but that SPD’s draft policies about its use “will cover any non-video technology” anyway.
The department, Pugel says, should be ready for a briefing with the council member earlier next year.
Many of us may have read the Richard Adams book “Watership Down” or have seen the film adaptation, but less known is the film version of his even darker follow-up, “The Plague Dogs” (1982). Like a Disney film, it features anthropomorphized animals and lessons about friendship and courage, but less like Disney, it also has lessons about scientific cruelty, mass media hype, mental illness and mortality. Never in a Disney film would the protagonists be hunted by humans after narrowly escaping vivisection and possibly being exposed to bubonic plague, as happens to Rowf and Snitter, the main characters of The Plague Dogs. It’s an undeniably harrowing and sad story, but it’s also emotionally engaging, intelligent, unsentimental, and an underrated animated masterpiece.
Though The Plague Dogs may be suitable for some kids, it’s also for all film lovers because the artwork is beautiful and the voice acting is subtle yet emotive (especially the voice of John Hurt, who played Winston Smith two years later in a film version of “1984”). It even features a great theme song by Alan Price, former keyboardist for The Animals and best known by cult movie fans as the lead singer of the band featured in Lindsay Anderson’s “O Lucky Man”. Most importantly, The Plague Dog’s message of empathy and arguments for ethical considerations in science are as timely as ever.
If you’re interested in learning more about The Plague Dogs, I recommend this detailed review by the Film Walrus (though it’d be best to read only after watching the film as it reveals spoilers): http://www.filmwalrus.com/2008/08/review-of-plague-dogs.html
In honor of Guy Fawkes Day I’d like to bring attention to a few intriguing statements from Alan Moore (writer of the graphic novel V for Vendetta) on the connections between his fictions and reality from an interview he did shortly after the start of the Occupy Movement.
I suppose I’ve gotten used to the fact that some of my fictions percolate out into the material world.
…I suppose when I was writing V for Vendetta I would in my secret heart of hearts have thought: wouldn’t it be great if these ideas actually made an impact? So when you start to see that idle fantasy intrude on the regular world… It’s peculiar. It feels like a character I created 30 years ago has somehow escaped the realm of fiction.
…And when you’ve got a sea of V masks, I suppose it makes the protesters appear to be almost a single organism – this “99%” we hear so much about. That in itself is formidable. I can see why the protesters have taken to it. It turns protests into performances.
The mask is very operatic; it creates a sense of romance and drama. I mean, protesting, protest marches, they can be very demanding, very grueling. They can be quite dismal. They’re things that have to be done, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re tremendously enjoyable – whereas actually, they should be.
I think it’s appropriate that this generation of protesters have made their rebellion into something the public at large can engage with more readily than with half-hearted chants, with that traditional, downtrodden sort of British protest. These people look like they’re having a good time. And that sends out a tremendous message.
The reason V’s fictional crusade against the state is ultimately successful is that the state, in V for Vendetta, relies upon a centralised computer network which he has been able to hack. Not an obvious idea in 1981, but it struck me as the sort of thing that might be down the line. This was just something I made up because I thought it would make an interesting adventure story. Thirty years go by and you find yourself living it.
I have no particular connection or claim to what [the protesters] are doing, nor am I suggesting that these people are fans of mine, or of V for Vendetta…So there’s always… Now I didn’t feel responsible, but…at the moment, the demonstrators seem to me to be making clearly moral moves, protesting against the ridiculous state that our banks and corporations and political leaders have brought us to.
…It would probably be better if the authorities accepted this is a new situation, that this is history happening. History is a thing that happens in waves. Generally it is best to go with these waves, not try to make them turn back – the Canute option. I’m hoping that the world’s leaders will realise this.
…Vox populi, Voice of the people. And I think that if the mask stands for anything, in the current context, that is what it stands for. This is the people. That mysterious entity that is evoked so often – this is the people.
Last July Moore was interviewed by Salon.com to talk about his new Kickstarter project, Jimmy’s End, but he also shared the following relevant observations about emerging NSA revelations, the surveillance state and technology:
There seems to be something going on, even from the briefest appraisal of the news, with the amount of events transpiring. This is such a connected world, it’s useless to isolate any part of it as a discrete phenomenon. You can’t really talk about the problems in Syria, because its problems are global. The waves of discontent and outrage — whether in the Arab countries, or in Brazil, or in America and Europe over the degrees to which its citizens are being monitored — are not separate phenomena. They are phenomena of an emergent world, and the existence of the Internet is one of its major drivers. We have got no idea how it’s going to turn out, because the nature of our society is such that if anything can be invented, then we will invent it. Sooner or later, if it is possible.
So the Internet is changing everything, but I wouldn’t yet want to say for good or ill. I suspect, as ever, that it will be an admixture of both. But we are all along for the ride, even those people like me who do not have Internet connections, mobile phones or even functioning televisions. I’m slowly disconnecting myself. Basically, it’s a feeling that if we are going to subject our entire culture to what is an unpredictable experiment, then I’d like to try to remain outside the petri dish. [Laughs] It’s only sensible to have somebody as a control.
To me, one of the biggest surprises of these recent surveillance revelations is how surprised people are. The level of surveillance we’ve had over here for the past 20 years now is ridiculous — and useless, I would add. Eerily enough, the security cameras on every street corner of Britain was instigated by the incoming Blair government in 1997, which was when I decided, back in 1982 or so, to set the first episode of “V for Vendetta,” which had cameras on every street corner. So yeah, we’ve had those for awhile; they’ve proliferated and multiplied for decades. More recently, there have been troops of police who have said that all these things are useful for is alienating the public. [Laughs] They are not actually useful in the prevention of crimes, or even actually apprehending their suspects.
Here’s the thing: If you’re monitoring every single thing that goes on in a given culture, if you have all the information that is there to be had, then that is the equivalent of having none of it. [Laughs] How are you going to process that amount of information? That’s when you get all these wonderful emerging paradoxes. Recently over here, there was a case where it was suspected that the people who monitor security screens were taking unnecessary toilet breaks and gossiping when they should be watching us. So it was decided that the only sensible thing to do was to put a security camera in the monitor room. [Laughs] This is answering the question that Juvenal asked so succinctly all those years ago: Who watches the watchmen? The answer is more watchmen! And yet more watchmen watch them, and of course it will eventually occur to them to ask: Can those people who are watching the people doing the watching really be trusted? Much better if they were under surveillance.
That’s the level of absurdity these Orwellian solutions bring to our increasingly complex world. George Orwell’s vision was 1947. Yes, the world was more complex than it had been, but nowhere near as complex as it was going to get. We currently have in Northampton — and I think we might be the first to have it — security cameras in some places that actually talk to you. “Pick that cigarette end up! Yes, you!” [Laughs] Which is so much like Patrick McGoohan’s vision for the Village in “The Prisoner,” all those years ago.
…Technology is always a two-edged sword. It will bring in many benefits, but also many disasters. Because of the complexity of our situation, we cannot predict what things will be until they happen. It’s just part of our responsibility as people in the modern world to do our very, very best to deal with them, and think them through, as they occur. While I’m remote from most technology to the point that I’m kind of Amish, I have played a couple of computer games — until I realized I was being bloodied with adrenalin over something that wasn’t real. At the end of a couple of hours of very addictive play, I may have procured the necessary amount of mushrooms to save a princess, but I also wasted hours of my life that I’ll never be able to get back. This is the reason I am not on the Internet. I am aware of its power as a distraction, and I don’t have the time for that.
Despite the constant clamor for attention from the modern world, I do believe we need to procure a psychological space for ourselves. I apparently know some people who try to achieve this by logging off, or going without their Twitter or Facebook for a limited period. Which I suppose is encouraging, although it doesn’t seem that remarkable from my perspective. I think that people need to establish their own psychological territory in face of the encroaching world.
Despite the fact that Moore said he disowned all Hollywood adaptations of his works, in my opinion the quality of his writing can transcend limitations inherent in such attempts, retaining power and resonance even in “watered down” form. Though I was disappointed by the film version of V for Vendetta overall, many who would not have otherwise been exposed to Moore’s work were able to absorb important aspects of his message through it and viral clips such as this:
Director Tsui Hark is truly a visionary pioneer of Hong Kong cinema. He was one of the first in the Hong Kong film industry to use Hollywood-style special effects in “Zu Warriors From the Magic Mountain” (1983) and pushed the envelope again with extensive CGI effects for the sequel “The Legend of Zu” (2001). He helped launch Jet Li’s career with his “Once Upon a Time in China” trilogy and was the producer of one of director John Woo’s earliest blockbusters “A Better Tomorrow” (1986). However, for most of the 90s Tsui Hark’s career was in a slump because of a series of failed attempts to break into the U.S. market and an economic downturn of the Hong Kong film industry. One of the films Hark released during this period was “The Blade” (1995). Though it bombed at the box-office, it’s now widely recognized as one of his greatest achievements (so far).
Like many idiosyncratic cult films, The Blade wasn’t palatable to general audiences and was dismissed as a failure upon release. Such films are usually ahead of their time, needing more time to be discovered by fans or for cultural sensibilities to change. The Blade’s unremittingly grim setting and pessimistic tone may have frightened off film-goers who in the mid 90s were drawn more towards lighthearted fare but it’s a quality that makes it stand out today and gives it an oddly contemporary feel. Feudal China has never seemed so brutal and forbidding (yet exotic and multicultural). It’s a fully realized world full of tribalism, hedonism, feral creatures, small pockets of civilization, crude weapons and an unforgiving social and natural environment, not unlike the post-apocalyptic scenario of The Road Warrior.
Other characteristics that contribute to The Blade’s cult status are its archetypal characters, highly stylized art direction, impressionistic photography reminiscent of Wong Kar Wai films, and unforgettable scenes (including one of cinema’s most frenzied and viscerally powerful showdowns). Though its storyline is pretty standard for a wuxia martial arts film, its subtext contains an abundance of philosophical questions about the nature of morality, violence, religion, sex, commerce, disability, pedagogy and memory among other things. The Blade has never had an official DVD release in the U.S. but fortunately this subtitled version was uploaded to YouTube last year:
After the Crash 