Who's a thug: Santelli vs. Sherman

You may remember that Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman was quite excited after his team just won the NFC Championship game. Sherman was instrumental in helping his team to achieve that victory. He spoke emphatically and aggressively. He also spoke dismissively of rival football player, wide receiver Michael Crabtree of the San Francisco Forty Niners. Sherman was fined. He was also excoriated in social media and by more than a few pundits as a thug. A great many people made racist ugly comments about Sherman's intelligence, his family, his class, his race and black people in general. The people making these sorts of attacks on Sherman did not care that he was a Stanford graduate, was obtaining a Masters Degree, or most importantly had no record of criminal arrests or convictions. AFAIK no one has accused him of domestic abuse, drug sales, bar fights, child abuse, drug usage or anything else that might indicate violent or criminal tendencies. All that is public record about Sherman is that occasionally he likes to run his mouth on the football field. These public attacks on Sherman weren't just your normal attacks by conservative/racist whites. They also included people like liberal/moderate law professor Jonathan Turley. Unconscious stereotyping and unexamined bigotry cross all political lines.

You may not recall that CNBC commentator and derivatives trader Rick Santelli is also a very excitable man. He happens to lean conservative. His initial rant about the possibility of bailing out underwater homeowners is credited with helping to start Tea Party movements across the United State. Recently, as Princeton Economist and NYT opinion columnist Paul Krugman has been predicting, more financial commentators and economists are starting to notice that the very specific predictions about the economy made by conservative pundits like Santelli have simply not come true.  In fact, sometimes the exact opposite has happened. When Santelli was called out on television about his consistently incorrect financial predictions he became very agitated, aggressive and extremely loud, probably about as loud as Sherman was. But from what I can see twitter and other social media has not exploded with racist vitriol towards Santelli. There don't seem to be many people questioning his intelligence or whether he got special assistance in admission to or graduation from his alma mater. I don't seem to find too many people calling Santelli a thug or making offensive links between his ethnic background and his behavior. Santelli is not of course someone with the same national profile as Sherman but still. Talking smack may well be more of a black athlete thing than a white one but there have been more than a few white athletes who can talk smack with the best of them and aren't called thugs. Although there have been successful introverts in the career paths of both Santelli and Sherman, their chosen jobs tend to be filled with people who are confident, loud, aggressive and don't mind letting you know about how good they are.

Now anyone who knows me in real life would tell you that I am generally pretty introverted and quiet. If I get angry with someone initially it usually comes across as ice and coldness instead of heat and fire. It takes a lot before I raise my voice or start sputtering insults. That's what I've been told anyway. That's neither good not bad. It's just the way I am. Sometimes I think it would be useful to be more fiery like some people I know. But that's not me. The chances of me sounding like either Santelli or Sherman are extremely low. Outside of a few relatives or other special people I'm not overly fond of excitable, boisterous, loud people. That said, I also know that everyone is different and just because someone's personality or mode of expression is different than mine doesn't tell me anything about that person. I think that I can usually get my point across without yelling or raising my voice. Other people have much lower thresholds for increases in volume or irritation. So it goes. The problem I have with the different reactions to the Santelli/Sherman rants is that these reactions have very real impact on all black people, regardless of gender, age, or personality type. These double standards count. The white law professor and the white police officer may have very different ways of seeing the world. They may vote for diametrically opposed candidates. But if they both immediately think "thug" when they see or hear a loud black man, that could lead to things like this. An unarmed black man allegedly resists arrest and is immediately swarmed, taken down and killed. An armed white man tells the Federal government what they had better not do and is still walking free.

These double standards and perception differences around the same behavior in different people are one of the definitions of racism. They need to be identified, called out and resisted as often as possible. Not getting hired or promoted or treated equally in the workplace is more common and much less painful than getting harassed, beaten or killed by the police. But the same ugly mentality is behind both responses. It's a mentality that still sees a black person as the dangerous other, who is not to be trusted or treated the same as whites. To be called a "thug" by apparently no small number of people all a black man has to do is speak loudly. For society to even think about granting a white man that title he would actually have to go out and beat or kill someone, you know, actually meet the definition of the word. But even then that might not be enough. Sherman is not a thug.
This is a thug. See the difference?

Israel Attacks Gaza and Kills Palestinians: Again

As you may have read in the news the State of Israel has launched military attacks by land, air and sea against the Palestinians in Gaza. Israel claims to be trying to degrade Hamas' military capacity and prevent Hamas from launching rocket attacks against Israel. As virtually every US politician who sees himself or herself as a national figure has rushed to the nearest microphone to intone, "Israel has the right to defend itself" and "No country could accept rockets being fired into its territory". Those are true statements. What you won't hear many, if any, US politicians say is that Palestinians also have the right to defend themselves against Israel. As Palestinians are literally children of a lesser God in the view of many in the "West" the idea that they have the right to resist is something completely alien to the narrative. The other idea which is completely alien to the narrative is the idea that massive and exponentially disproportionate retribution isn't always actually a moral or even useful method to respond to violence or resistance. At the time of this writing, a little over 400 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, most of them non-combatant men, women and children. That's what happens when people with a first rate air force, navy and army drop bombs on and shell people who lack any air force who live in an area roughly the size of Detroit. Children have been deliberately targeted while playing on a beach. Hospitals and disabled centers have been attacked.                                          
It's simply impossible to oppress, demean and humiliate a group of people without simultaneously coming up with an ideology that transforms your oppression into sober, fair minded treatment and the people being subjugated into either irrational, mindless beasts howling for blood or folks who are sadly simply culturally deprived and don't understand all the benefits your "oppression" provides them.

This is something which is true in Israel today but it bears repeating that this is something which is true across humanity in every time and place. It's exactly because we all have shared humanity that in order to brutalize another human being we have to find some sort of method of denying their status as human beings. This was true with British colonists in Kenya or French colonists in Algeria who murdered, tortured and raped indigenous people who resisted their invasions and depredations. It was true with European settlers in Australia and the Americas. It was true with White American slave owners or supporters of Jim Crow and Black Americans. It was true with Arab slave owners in Africa. It's true with Hindu caste systems. And so on. Any time someone is on top and doing their best to keep someone else on the bottom they come up with justifications. And nobody likes being dominated, humiliated or exterminated. They resist, often even when resistance seems or actually objectively is, futile. So the current "round of violence" against Palestine is thoroughly predictable. But even using that frame of "round of violence" ignores the root cause of all the violence. It's the occupation stupid! The Israelis have been occupying and/or controlling the West Bank and Gaza for longer than I've been alive. Palestinians inside those territories are regularly and routinely brutalized or killed. In Gaza, particularly, they lack access to clean water, medicine, food, housing, almost everything that makes life worth living. 

The Palestinians have no representation, no way to address grievances, no protection against the Israeli military. That's what happens under military occupation. This is made worse by the fact that thanks to American and European diplomatic and military support Israel is convinced that it can have peace, military occupation and increasing numbers of Jewish settlements. The moribund peace process has only seen an increase in the amount of West Bank Jewish settlements. Israel has embarked on ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. Some Israeli politicians are openly calling for ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza. Knesset Member Moishe Feiglin is open about what he wants: 

After the IDF completes the "softening" of the targets with its fire-power, the IDF will conquer the entire Gaza, using all the means necessary to minimize any harm to our soldiers, with no other considerations.

Gaza is part of our Land and we will remain there forever. Liberation of parts of our land forever is the only thing that justifies endangering our soldiers in battle to capture land. Subsequent to the elimination of terror from Gaza, it will become part of sovereign Israel and will be populated by Jews. According to polls, most of the Arabs in Gaza wish to leave. Those who were not involved in anti-Israel activity will be offered a generous international emigration package.

Knesset Member Ayelet Shaked echoes and goes beyond Feiglin's statements by explicitly calling for the death of Palestinian mothers and the destruction of their homes. She has endorsed a call for utter war against all Palestinians, viewing them all as worthy of death. How about that idea that female leadership will lead to less war and violence? Yeah, not so much. Shaked may lack testosterone but she has no deficit of hatred and bile.

"They have to die and their houses should be demolished so that they cannot bear any more terrorists," Shaked said, adding, "They are all our enemies and their blood should be on our hands. This also applies to the mothers of the dead terrorists." "Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there."

One would wait in vain for any prominent American politician to condemn those ugly racist statements. All they will do is bleat about how Israel has the right to defend itself and the Palestinians must accept Israeli hegemony. I see no difference between what these Knesset members called for and the insane justification for a local murder of a two year old. The Israeli brutalization of the Palestinians also requires a torturing of the English language. NJ Governor and possible Republican Presidential candidate Chris Christie, a supporter of Israel, was nonetheless compelled to apologize after he mistakenly used the term "occupied territories" when referring to the occupied territories.  Occupation supporters such as casino mogul Sheldon Adelson prefer the terms "disputed territories" and certainly won't be writing checks to any politician who doesn't use the proper terminology. So, what is the solution to this? While one prominent anti-war libertarian thinks that Israel as it exists today must be dismantled, I think that just as the Palestinians aren't going anywhere, neither are the Jewish Israelis. I think the two-state solution is dead and has been dead for quite some time. Israel has no intention of removing its hegemony from either the West Bank or Gaza. The only long term solution is one state for both Jews and Palestinians, with equal rights for all. That seems like a pipe dream now. But as the family of murdered Jewish teen Naftali Frenkel said in a statement, "There is no difference between Arab blood and Jewish blood. Murder is murder". That is the message that needs to be nurtured and grown in Israel, not the weed of Jewish supremacist ugliness. In the same way that IRA bombing attacks in England did not result in massive indiscriminate bombardment of Dublin, Israel needs to find a different way. Because morality aside, what it's doing isn't working.

The Palestinians do not currently have nor are they likely in the near future to gain the military power to break the siege of Gaza or eject the West Bank settlers. And despite the constant invocation of "tiny Israel surrounded by 300 million Arabs who hate them", it's also very unlikely that other Arab nations will be riding to the Palestinian rescue. You may have noticed that those nations have their own problems. And none of them have a military that is remotely comparable to Israel's, let alone America's. But unless Israel thinks that it can openly get away with genocide or expulsion, the Palestinians will still be there. So long term, one state with equal rights for all and special rights for none is the only way. Otherwise, sometime in the distant future, when the Israeli and West Bank Arab population has far outstripped the Jewish population, there may be a settling of accounts that might not be to Israel's benefit. Right now the US needs to enforce a cease fire. Short term, politicians in the West, particularly the US, must turn off military, diplomatic and financial aid to Israel. Stop giving them weapons. Stop letting the tail wag the dog. Stop sharing intelligence. That's the only thing that has a remote chance of making Israeli politicians see the light. It is close to being too late. My only remaining hope that if the filthy apartheid state of South Africa can reform and become an imperfect democracy for all of its people, then so can Israel. But it's going to have to be forced into doing so. Of course at a minimum that would require a President who wasn't afraid to tell Israel "No". And we haven't had that for a while. #FreePalestine.

Movie Reviews: Devil Ship Pirates, China Moon, Gettysburg

Devil Ship Pirates
directed by Don Sharp

I purchased Devil Ship Pirates around the same time my brother sent me the package which included Bad Blonde. Although it was made in Hammer's classic era, this film is not overly reliant on oozing blood or heaving cleavage. By Hammer standards, there's little of the former and just the normal amount of the latter, mostly provided by actress Suzan Farmer, who plays the local lord's daughter, Angela. The simple story provided a modest level of suspense and tension that was gradually turned upwards as the movie progressed. It's really a hostage film. It reminded me of Key Largo or Went the Day Well? The Spanish Armada has just been beaten by the English navy. The survivors are limping home to Spain. Everyone goes home except for the people on the ship Diablo, which is commanded by the Spanish pirate Captain Robeles (Christopher Lee showing off his Ike Turner haircut). Robeles thinks his ship is too damaged to make the long trip back to Spain. When one Spanish navy commander disagrees with this assessment, questions Robeles' martial spirit and tries to take command of Robeles' ship, Robeles promptly kills him. Robeles, as he patiently explains to everyone throughout the film, is not big on people telling him no.

The other Spanish navy liaison, Don Savilla (Barry Warren) is wiser. Although he disagrees with Robeles and despises pirates he's not stupid enough to press the issue while he's outnumbered 60-1 on a pirate ship. He registers his objections and shuts up. Robeles lands in a remote English harbor to make repairs. Robeles' plan goes awry when two of his men are discovered by the villagers. Showing the value of a good bluff when your hand is crap, Don Savilla lies to the villagers and tells them that the Spanish won. 
Without twitter the English villagers don't know that England was victorious. The pirates tell the villagers that they are simply the first wave of the approaching Spanish invasion force. Submit peacefully and the villagers will be well treated. The town's young men are mostly absent.

In every conflict there are always people who will easily submit to power rather than fight for what's right. Robeles recognizes this. He quickly takes steps to establish his authority. The people at the top of the social structure, the local lord/mayor and vicar immediately become willing collaborators. The vicar talks about God's will and nonviolence while the lord tries to ensure that his daughter is not dishonored by the randy Spanish. Robeles quarantines the village so that no news of the Spanish defeat can penetrate. It's the men from the lower social classes who plan resistance. A younger man previously crippled by the Spanish is suspicious of the so-called Spanish victory. Along with his father and a few other hardheads, he organizes secret cells. These men hide their weapons. They recruit a village boy to visit a nearby town that still has a contingent of armed combat age men. If England didn't lose the battle the boy will request the neighboring village to send some men with bad intentions to help eject the Spanish.

Robeles forces the villagers to repair his ship. He must depart before any English relief force arrives. The pirates make goo goo eyes at the village women, who comprise most of the town's population. Don Savilla becomes more disgusted with the pirates, especially with their treatment of women. He might be willing to help the resistance, quietly. An English woman aware of the truth escapes from Spanish captivity and tries to return home. Robeles is starting to notice Angela. This upsets Angela and makes her beloved, the crippled and intensely anti-Spanish Harry (John Cairney) blow a gasket. There is no nudity or horribly explicit bloodshed. There are beatings, executions, fist fights, sword duels and plenty of leering. Rather humorously, given the predominantly English cast, there was an accident on set one afternoon when tea arrived. Everybody onboard the pirate ship immediately rushed to one side of the ship for tea, causing the ship to capsize. Almost everyone fell into the water. I'm sure they got their tea eventually though. The film's bright colors and detailed costumes impress. Although Lee is probably best known for his Dracula roles and as Saruman in LOTR, playing the coldly ruthless Robeles allowed him to act more than the Dracula gigs ever did. This was a good old school classic pirate film that's perfect for a lazy weekend afternoon.
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China Moon
directed by John Bailey

Although this noir movie is not great it does have a solid cast. Despite some gaping plot holes it's almost worth any shortcomings just to watch good actors like Ed Harris and Charles Dance (Tywin Lannister himself) play off each other. Both men are playing characters that are tightly controlled but just this close to losing it. Dance and Harris always bring intensity to their roles and this film was no different. Harris is of average height while the lanky Dance stands 6-3. It was amusing to watch Dance's tall, extremely wealthy, self-assured and powerful character not even bother to draw himself up to his full height to dismiss the much shorter and much poorer character played by Harris. Talk about looking down on your adversary. China Moon was released in 1994 but was filmed in 1991. Similar to many neo-noir films released in the early nineties and late eighties, China Moon had a tremendous amount of truly horrible saxophone music on the soundtrack. Really, this music was so cheesy and intrusive that the film might have done well to break the Fourth Wall. A character should have held his ears, made a face and then punched out the saxophone player before looking at the camera and saying "Isn't that better"? Watching this film reminded me of how much time steals from us. Nobody gets out alive but there was a time when Dance and Harris actually weren't bald. How about that?

Ok, what is this movie about you ask? Well what is every story about? It's about a man and a woman. Kyle Bodine (Ed Harris) is a Florida area homicide detective. As we see Kyle is pretty sharp on the job or least he thinks he is. He treats his younger partner Lamar Dickey (Benicio Del Toro) with a mixture of semi-polite condescension and open arrogance. He doesn't mean anything by it. It's just the way he is. As the somewhat smug Kyle tells Lamar, sooner or later every murderer makes a mistake. In Kyle's experience, murderers generally aren't very smart people. Well at least they're not as smart as Kyle and that is a fact. One night in a bar Kyle notices a leggy sultry brunette giving him the once over. Well Kyle is not shy. He goes over to inquire as to how the young lady is doing. But she won't divulge her name or number. After a small bit of flirtatious back and forth, she leaves. But she's not mad at Kyle. She just says she has to go and may return some day. That gets Kyle's interest up. Kyle makes the bartender give him the woman's name from her credit card slips and tracks her down.

When Kyle pops up out of nowhere, Rachel Munro (Madeleine Stowe) is apparently not bothered by his persistence. One woman's stalker is another woman's sweet thang. Rachel's marriage to international banker Rupert Munro (Charles Dance) is falling apart. Though she doesn't share the details with Kyle, Rachel has visual proof that Rupert is cheating on her with one of his employees, a good looking woman who's a little younger and curvier than Rachel. Rupert also emotionally and physically abuses his wife. So Rachel is ready to let another mule kick in her stall. Kyle can do that job. He's never been married and falls hard for Rachel. Kyle starts feeling protective of Rachel. He finds reasons to watch over her and snoop around her home. Rachel and Kyle call each other at work. When Kyle and Lamar hear a 911 domestic violence call concerning Rachel's residence, Kyle insists on taking the call though that's not their job as homicide detectives. This makes Lamar suspicious. When Kyle sees that Rupert has punched Rachel and bloodied her nose, he can barely hold back from giving the languid Rupert a serious tune up. But when there's another domestic incident Rachel takes matters into her own hands. And she calls loverboy Kyle for help after the fact. People joke that true friends help each other bury bodies. Well that may be. But I don't know about becoming an accessory to a felony. Kyle slowly learns that he wasn't as smart as he thought he was. There's a very thin line between love and hate. Would you be ready to throw everything away, your life, your integrity, whatever success you had, for that thing called love? Do you think you're really the smartest person you know? China Moon features violence and murder as well as toplessness and nudity from both genders. Stowe is suitably slinky and sexy but doesn't quite have the level of competence or coldness I expected from a true femme fatale. Some other characters suffer from some motivational deficiencies. Del Toro gets some good lines though. 
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Gettysburg
directed by Ronald Mazell

This was originally supposed to be a television miniseries. Gettysburg was produced by media tycoon Ted Turner who is a Civil War enthusiast and something of a Confederate sympathizer. So this film is tarnished slightly by creative decisions which give the actors playing Confederate leaders many of the best lines. But of course I am biased, aren't I. On the Union side Sam Elliot brings his trademark high testosterone baritone gruffness; Jeff Daniels shines as a Union colonel who combines strong anti-slavery belief with leadership capacity that's based more on inspiring men than intimidating them. This movie was followed up by the prequel Gods and Generals which went completely over the top with revisionist nonsense--a slave woman giving a fond goodbye to a Confederate soldier. Yeah. Realizing that you can't really make tragic heroes out of men who were effectively fighting to ensure that slavery remained part of American life, Gettysburg adroitly sidesteps and downplays (at least on the Southern side) the fierce dedication to white supremacy and enslavement which animated the Confederacy. One Confederate general says that "We should have freed the slaves first and then fired on Fort Sumter" while a Confederate soldier claims that he "doesn't care about the darkies one way or the other and is only fighting for his rights". Splendid. Inconvenient and incorrect rationalizations aside, this is still a good war film. When I watch old war movies I always think that there must have been a better way to fight than to line up a relatively short distance from your enemy and shoot at him while he's doing the same to you or grimly march headlong into aimed artillery fire that includes solid shot, shell and cannister. However those methods hadn't yet been discovered in the 1860s.

The Confederate Army is riding high. Its leaders think that if the South can win a decisive battle on Northern soil and place its armies close to Washington D.C they can force the Union to admit defeat and accept terms. Commanding General Robert E. Lee (Martin Sheen) has almost legendary status among both armies and is beloved by his troops. His best friend and most trusted general, Pete Longstreet (Tom Berenger), is more cautious than his boss. Longstreet quietly worries that General Lee may have started to believe his own legend of invincibility. Accidental skirmishing breaks out between advance elements of the Confederate and Union armies near the town of Gettysburg. The Union forces, temporarily led by General John Buford (Sam Elliot) are able to hold the high ground and drive off the Confederates. Both groups send messages for assistance. The next day everyone and his brother is there ready to throw down. General Lee is upset because his scouts under J.E.B. Stuart gave him no warning but he's not going to back down now. Lee blandly ignores Longstreet's initial subtle hints and later increasingly frantic warnings that this is not the time or place to fight. Well if the Confederates want a fight, the Union is keen to give them one. In the film's best setpiece Colonel Joshua Chamberlain (Jeff Daniels) and his depleted Maine regiment desperately hold off seeming endless waves of oncoming Confederates on the hill of Little Round Top. Chamberlain finally orders a bayonet charge when his men are almost out of ammunition.

Gettysburg magnificently depicts the famous and doomed Pickett's Charge, which started out as the high point of the Confederacy and ended with victorious Union soldiers taunting the broken and retreating Confederates. My favorite film line was a real quote. General Lee peremptorily ordered General Pickett (Stephen Lang) to reform his division. General Pickett sharply responded "Sir, I have no division!" Because this film was originally made for television it's not bloody or explicit. Sheen captured Lee's regret and belated realization that he let his pride interfere with common sense. Berenger almost steals the film. There's a melodramatic subplot about a Confederate general conflicted about fighting his best friend, a Union general. This cast was huge. It also included such people as Ken Burns, Kevin Conway, Richard Jordan, C. Thomas Howell, Ted Turner, Donal Logue, and George Lazenby among others. Apparently most men back then had beards. During the end credits you see the actor next to the historical figure they depicted. The casting and costume departments really did a good job. In real life General Longstreet ended up working for the Union and briefly commanding Black troops. Life is often stranger than fiction. This film may pique your interest about the war that remains even today the bloodiest conflict the US ever fought. Its repercussions are still with us today in many ways. So this was a good movie if you like war movies. Or I suppose it was a good movie if you like male facial hair...
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Book Reviews: Beat The Reaper

Beat the Reaper
by Josh Bazell

This book reminded me of Pest Control, The Catcher in the Rye, or a few other madcap satirical adventures. But it's also a biting critique of the health care system, a coming of age story, an Elmore Leonard style absurdist mob hijinks tale and one huge middle finger to anti-Semitism. That's a lot for one book but it flows well. The book was written by a doctor who also has a B.A. in English Literature. I don't know if the described details of hospital life would seem familiar to doctors or other people who are familiar with real life hospitals. Some of the displayed false concern for patients rang true to me from my brief experiences of hospital care. I imagine that anyone who is constantly making life or death decisions would find a way of achieving some distance from patients because otherwise how could they do their job? Bazell takes pains to point out that he's writing fiction. He writes that hopefully you're not going to rely on occasionally made up information for medical knowledge. This tale is told in first person and has some very funny parts mixed with real tragedy. Dr. Peter Brown is a sleep deprived, sarcastic, irritable and overworked (not that there's any other kind) intern at a Manhattan hospital. There's more to Dr. Brown than meets the eye as he is a little older, larger and rougher than the average intern. He can handle himself physically in a way that most men, doctors or not, simply can't. On Brown's trip to work a criminal attempts to mug him by placing a gun to his head. That criminal or "f***head" as Brown calls him makes a tremendous mistake. Brown easily maneuvers out of danger and disarms the mugger. Brown seriously injures his assailant via a combination of martial arts and medical knowledge but pulls back at the last second to avoid killing his attacker. Peter Brown is not just a doctor. Peter Brown is an Anglicized version of his real name "Pietro Brwna". "Brown" is a Jewish-Italian (he strongly identifies as Jewish) hitman, who having run permanently afoul of his Mafia employers in ways that are slowly revealed throughout the book, has joined the Witness Protection Program. 

However both Brown and the Feds are so thoroughly contemptuous of his former employer's retaliatory powers and intelligence that Brown hasn't bothered to leave NYC or do much to protect himself beside the modest name alteration and keeping a low profile.

This plan develops a big problem. On his shift Brown runs into an old Mafia associate, Eddy Squillante, who has been assigned to Brown as a patient. Both men are quite surprised to see each other. Squillante is suffering from stomach cancer. Squillante thinks Brown will seize the opportunity to get rid of him. As insurance against this Squillante quickly takes steps to provide that Brown's location and identity will be revealed in the event of Squillante's death. Brown probably would indeed have killed Squillante if he thought he could have gotten away with it but his incentives are now changed. Unfortunately for Brown, Squillante's surgery has been assigned to an out of hospital media savvy "rock star" doctor, Dr. Friendly. Dr. Friendly receives a lot of positive press coverage. However, according to Brown's med school mentor, Friendly is a near incompetent hack who's fond of inappropriate racist or sexist jokes and sexually harassing women. If Dr. Friendly operates on Squillante, it's goodbye Squillante. So Brown has some decisions to make. Brown's past is catching up with him in more ways than one. Brown also learns from Squillante that one of Brown's old enemies is not dead (Brown threw him out of a sixth floor window) but rather very much alive. He's looking for Brown so that he can show Brown that he doesn't hold grudges and wants to continue their relationship in the true Christian spirit of forgiveness. Yeah. Not. This man wants to gut Brown like a fish. Despite his former profession and somewhat cold persona (he describes his patients' shortcomings in graphic detail), Brown actually takes the Hippocratic oath quite seriously and refuses to leave the hospital until his shift is over, because that would hurt his patients and his fellow doctors, students and staff. 

Brown makes his shift rounds. He retraces his bad decisions. Such subjects as romance, racism, sex, adultery, malpractice, doctors, lawyers, anti-Semitism, hospital politics, flirty drug company reps, and know it all bosses are all wildly skewered. Whether it's Brown describing a patient as the one he currently hates the least or telling his boss that she's not boring him any more than usual there's a lot of droll offbeat humor here. You'll laugh out loud at reading some things before realizing your humor was likely inappropriate. If you can accept the premise of a Mob hitman who has become a skilled doctor, this is a oft humorous book. It's made more so by the footnotes and Brown's asides to himself. You can see the great tragedy of Brown's life coming before he reveals it but it will kick you in your gonads anyway. The humor gradually drops away and the book's tone becomes darker near the ending. This is a taut story at about 300 pages.

Snowden Reveals NSA Spying On Americans

In the movie Baby Boy the self-described OG named Melvin played by Ving Rhames sneers at his possible future stepson. Melvin says that everything that the younger man is currently experiencing on the streets, the older man has already seen. To him, he boasts, it's just a rerun. 
I thought of that scene when I read the latest news that contrary to what its apologists have been saying about the NSA and the associated security structure, the NSA and FBI actually are spying on American citizens with political views and/or ethnicity that are out of the ordinary. This is something that Americans have seen before with surveillance (legal and extra legal) on civil rights and anti-war or left-wing activists from the 50s through the 80s. Rinse and repeat. Additionally the NSA is NOT just collecting metadata but actual data that lays bare the lives of millions of Americans who are neither suspected of or charged with criminal activity. So when the NSA spokesmen say they don't collect the actual contents of Americans' communications they are lying. These lies were obvious. Of course if anyone ever bothers to ask the President about this I am sure he will say that he knew nothing about it and is outraged. He will launch a commission to get to the bottom of it. Maybe. Someday. He will want to be perfectly clear that no one is more outraged than him. Yada, yada, yada. Rinse and repeat. Look over here there's news about Kim Kardashian! Look over there there's news about that celebrity's love life! Buy this pill it will make you a sexual dynamo! Start this secret Hollywood diet to lose weight to fit into this dress! These are the things that most Americans care about much more than the NSA activities, unfortunately.

I'd like to share Glenn Greenwald's challenge to people who serenely state they have nothing to hide from the government. If you have nothing to hide and just can't understand why other people don't want the government snooping around their personal effects I think you're lying to yourself. Self-deception is not the worst thing. We all do it sometimes. But on the off chance that you're not lying to yourself, please drop me an email with all of your financial, employer, personal email and social media passwords, intimate communications between you and the provider(s) of your nookie (pictures are preferred), medical records, discussions with close family members, your resume, academic transcripts, job performance reviews and of course a picture of you bending over and coughing twice. We just can't be too sure these days. Don't want to do that? Think it's a little odd that someone wants that info? Don't trust me? But you must trust the NSA because they are getting all of that exact information. Without a warrant. Without your consent. Just like Snowden said they were. Who's the liar now? Hmmm. Similarly, while the NSA is casting a wide net to vacuum up sexy pictures that women sent their boyfriends or husbands, it and the FBI are specifically targeting prominent Muslim Americans. These people have not been charged with a crime.  Five of the Americans monitored were willing to step forward.

The National Security Agency and FBI have covertly monitored the emails of prominent Muslim-Americans—including a political candidate and several civil rights activists, academics, and lawyers—under secretive procedures intended to target terrorists and foreign spies. According to documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the list of Americans monitored by their own government includes:

• Faisal Gill, a longtime Republican Party operative and one-time candidate for public office who held a top-secret security clearance and served in the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush;
• Asim Ghafoor, a prominent attorney who has represented clients in terrorism-related cases;
• Hooshang Amirahmadi, an Iranian-American professor of international relations at Rutgers University;
• Agha Saeed, a former political science professor at California State University who champions Muslim civil liberties and Palestinian rights;
• Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil rights organization in the country.

The five Americans whose email accounts were monitored by the NSA and FBI have all led highly public, outwardly exemplary lives. All five vehemently deny any involvement in terrorism or espionage, and none advocates violent jihad or is known to have been implicated in any crime, despite years of intense scrutiny by the government and the press. Some have even climbed the ranks of the U.S. national security and foreign policy establishments.

“I just don’t know why,” says Gill, whose AOL and Yahoo! email accounts were monitored while he was a Republican candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates. “I’ve done everything in my life to be patriotic. I served in the Navy, served in the government, was active in my community—I’ve done everything that a good citizen, in my opinion, should do.”

In one 2005 document, intelligence community personnel are instructed how to properly format internal memos to justify FISA surveillance. In the place where the target’s real name would go, the memo offers a fake name as a placeholder: “Mohammed Raghead.”

LINK

There have been people who have questioned the validity of Snowden's claims or whether or not he is a whistleblower. Some of those people are quite expert in law, commerce, government or military. I respect their concerns. Truly I do. But I think that these latest revelations should end that discussion. The government is lying to its citizens. The NSA and FBI are out of control. The NSA can't be trusted with the information it has. No government could. Snowden revealed and has proved that your government was and is lying to you. He's a whistleblower in my book. The entire alphabet soup framework of security apparatuses and government agencies needs to be dismantled and brought back under strict constitutional control. I do not view this as a partisan issue. There are Republicans who are outraged by these reveals and Democrats who couldn't care less. And vice versa. A lot of Republicans like invasive overreaching busybody government as long as it's not trying to provide birth control. Although I rag on President Obama in truth this issue is something that didn't start with him and won't end with him. It's a problem that has gotten worse with each President in the 20th century but took off after WW2 and the creation of the national security state. This security state may indeed see itself as independent of whoever is in the White House. Presidents change but security interests and institutional interests, as defined by spies and law enforcement, do not. 

The bottom line is that in a free country we can't allow the government to spy on its people in this manner. Citizens who are afraid to express themselves politically, who censor private communications for fear of government surveillance, who consider other citizens unworthy of robust constitutional protections, are citizens who may have forgotten what it means to be American.

What do YOU think about these latest revelations?

George R.R. Martin Tells Fans What He Thinks

Have you ever reached a point when someone has worked your last nerve and made you lose your religion? Of course you have. Likely we all have at some point. Maybe it's your controlling blameshifting micromanaging boss who tells you for the fifteenth time to do something which you already did. Maybe it's a spouse or significant other who just HAS to have the last word in an argument and simply won't let sleeping dogs lie. Maybe it's someone smoking or spitting after you've asked them not to do that around you. Maybe it's a devious work rival who patiently waits until the department meeting with upper management to publicly ask you a question which is solely designed to make you look bad in front of the big shots. Maybe it's a child in the back seat who asks you "are we there yet?" every twenty minutes on a four hour car ride. Maybe it's a relative or alleged family friend, who upon the very day of a loved one's death has the gall to ask you if you've decided what you're going to do with their prized collection of books/cars/musical instruments/photographs/writings/etc. Maybe it's an underwriter who's calling you for the third time in an hour to ask about the $100 withdrawal you made from your bank account three months ago. Maybe it's an internet troll who is impervious to the most basic logic and can only communicate in slurs and profanities. Whatever or whoever it might be we all have our limits and for lack of a better word berserk buttons. Even the most mild mannered milquetoast man can occasionally lose his patience and wonder if it's time, as H.L. Mencken wrote, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag and begin slitting throats.

Who knows if fantasy author George R.R. Martin is a mild mannered man or not. I don't know him. I do know that he has no patience with people speculating on his work ethic, his writing style, his weight, his age, his mortality or how likely he is to finish A Song of Ice and Fire before he leaves the planet. But just in case people didn't know, Martin very helpfully shared what he thought of his fans who ponder those questions or worse, ask him directly...

Book Reviews: Doctor Sleep

Doctor Sleep

by Stephen King

Some things are obvious upon reading Doctor Sleep, Stephen King’s follow up to his novel The Shining. The first is that King is and always has been an incredibly masterful writer. The second is that (and he states as much in the epilogue) King is still rather peeved at Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation of The Shining. He thinks Kubrick got some very basic things wrong. King appears to resent that the film is probably better known in the American zeitgeist than the book. King seems to have made it his goal to change that in his remaining time on this planet. The final obvious takeaway from this book is that apparently King did not spend much, if any, time around black people during his formative years. I don't think he can easily(?) write realistic black characters. Many of his black characters are either literal Magic Negroes or creations that are just white characters dipped in blackness. For example, Dick Hallorann is the hero's mentor and I suppose, literally a Magic Negro. All four of Dick's grandparents were black. Despite this Dick unironically describes his paternal grandfather as “Black Gramps” because the man was bad. This grandfather was a child molester and all around evil man. Dick describes his maternal grandmother as “White Granny” because she was good. It’s from her that Dick inherited his psychic abilities. OK. Imagine a Jewish character describing one Jewish relative as “Jew Uncle” because he was cheap, petty, vindictive and grasping and another one as “Christian Auntie” because she was kind, polite, friendly and helpful. Does that ring true to you? Well YMMV but it certainly didn’t give me a warm comfortable feeling. Anyway. 

If you haven't read The Shining you're missing something good. Nevertheless reading The Shining is not necessary to enjoy Doctor Sleep. The inevitability of death and the circle of life are important themes in Doctor Sleep. We also get King’s first hand knowledge of the pain of alcohol abuse, broken bones and the helplessness of being hospitalized and immobilized. King was hit by a van in 1999. This accident almost took his life. He narrowly avoided losing limbs to amputation. 

Dan Torrance (the little boy Danny from The Shining) is all grown up now. He still remembers the horrific events that took place in the Overlook hotel. His parents are now deceased. Unfortunately Dan is still fighting the demons his father fought. It’s not the literal demons of the Overlook, though a few still crop up from time to time. No Dan has become, just like his father before him, a quick tempered violent alcoholic who has trouble keeping a job or saving money. Dan hits bottom one night when he steals money from an equally destitute one night stand partner and has an unpleasant encounter with her son. Afterwards Dan starts trying to make his life better. He drinks to dull his psychic abilities. One would not imagine why a person with such abilities would wish to do that until you consider how much "fun" it would be to look at someone and know the time and fashion of their death or see in Technicolor all the ugly things they’ve done in their life or have unwanted visits from and conversations with people who are long dead. Still, Dan decides that he must stop drinking. Starting a new job as a carnie and later as a hospice orderly in a New Hampshire town, Dan gets his life together with the help of AA. And his powers, his shining as it were, also start to become stronger. He helps to ease patients' transition. His shining becomes stronger not only because he’s no longer drinking but also because he’s (initially unknowingly) in the vicinity of a young girl, Abra Stone, whose shining ability dwarfs Dan’s own, just as Dan’s strength once made his mentor Dick nervous. As a baby, Abra foresaw 9/11 and as a toddler was able to read minds and amuse herself by levitating spoons, telekinetically playing the piano or making every channel on the TV play The Simpsons. Her parents try not to believe in her powers but her great grandmother does, along with Dan, obviously. The shining is strongest in children. And Abra is something of a prodigy.

Unfortunately for Abra there is another group of people who know the power Abra possesses. They seek out children like Abra. Calling themselves the True Knot and led by a beautiful but sadistic and evil woman known as Rose the Hat, these people are not human any longer. They are psychic vampires of the sort featured in Dan Simmons' Carrion Comfort or F. Paul Wilson’s Adversary Cycle. They travel incessantly across the US. They literally feed on people’s pain and fear. 9/11 was a bouquet for them. But what they most enjoy, what gives them sustenance and power, is to consume the pain and soul of a child with the shining. After hours of torture, just before death, the True Knot are able to consume what they call “steam” or the essence of such a special child. This gives them power and something approaching immortality. Most of them are hundreds of years old but can appear as old or as young as they please. When Abra clairvoyantly sees Rose leading the True Knot in a ritual murder, Rose becomes psychically aware of Abra. But when Abra is able to smash Rose aside as easily as you or I would an annoying gnat, Rose decides to take a special interest in locating Abra. Rose thinks Abra's power could sustain the True Knot for decades if not centuries.

Abra turns to Dan for help. As Abra is only twelve, it's difficult for the forty something Dan to assist without tripping everyone's pedophile alert. But Dan intends to help Abra just as Dick once helped him. It’s something he feels compelled to do to make up for past sins. And once he discovers that the True Knot has a link to the Overlook Hotel, it becomes very personal indeed. Much like Stoker's Dracula and King's Salem's Lot, a small circle of heroes attempt to protect an innocent against supernatural evil. The twist is that although this innocent is far more powerful than her protectors, seeing herself as Daenerys Targaryen, Abra lacks experience and may not be as wily as she thinks she is. The bad guys are very bad indeed, and you won’t want to put the book down. It moves quite quickly despite being over 500 pages. Children are harmed in this book. It’s not the most explicit thing King’s ever written but he’s not writing at the shallow end of the gross out pool either. Doctor Sleep is not as scary as The Shining. Black House, which like Doctor Sleep revisits a grown up special child, was much scarier. Unlike a lot of modern horror or fantasy authors King places virtually no grey in the bad characters in Doctor Sleep. Rose and one or two other baddies have a brief hint of complexity but they are and remain monsters. This book is Tolkienesque in that "Evil" is generally depicted as something twisted and broken which is produced by bent people, not something which is part of everyone's heart. So if you want a respite from more cynical authors, this might be worth reading. If you believe that death is not the end or that the arc of the universe does indeed bend towards justice you may be satisfied with this story. I did like the shout out that King gave to a villain in his son Joe Hill’s book NOS4A2, which I need to get around to reading sometime soon.