Film: Arrival - A Short Review.

One looks at science fiction films in a certain way. Those unrelenting Marvel superhero movies are all the same. A marketable formula: man is down and out; discovers a new and extraordinary aspect of his person; enter the antagonist, a real and usually evil character; a subplot of a girl or woman the protagonist always has loved; once reaching his peak of power, the protagonist fights to the end, almost losing himself and his true love; ending, the antagonist is defeated, and by a pure miracle, his true love remains, with a passionate kiss. This works. Arrival is a different approach to Science fiction, dealing in love, language and time...

Rather than bore the reader with specifics of the actors and director, the story has remained with me for days.

This story examines time. Time not in a linear construct, but an existence of fluid time, where there is no beginning nor end, existence is, just is, and moves.

Based on an incredible short story by Ted Chang, "Story of my Life", examines what if, in time, knowing in the future you would experience a terrible tragedy, yet knowing this, carry on with life, acceptance and love of One..

To attempt a short narrative of the film  would be a disservice to the reader.

A wonderful story and film.

Memoir: LA Diaries.. James Brown. Review.

There's something terribly disturbing about confessional writing. In the hands of a man or woman at the top of their craft, a writer of immense skill and transparency, the experience for the reader can border on the pathological.

Honesty, without the slightest hint of pretence, particularly from an experienced and intelligent individual, knowing full well that what they tell the world is deeply personal and the honest to goodness truth, is rare. There's always some other agenda. For example, the two most famous confessional pieces in world literature are St. Augustine's Confessions and Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Confessions; both author's had an agenda in writing these works, whether for purposes of religious conversion or literary immortality - both achieved their respective ends. 

Brown's book, however, is different.

This is a memoir about writing, addiction, alcoholism, relationships and human responsibility. It is about madness, suicide, compulsion, irony and love. This is a heartbreaking story that leaves the reader with a tiny glimmer of hope. As a true confessional does, it doesn't raise feelings of sympathy or thoughts of self-righteous condescension, but a real empathy, because we've all experienced, in varying degrees, this man's life.

One reads this simple, clear-eyed style of writing and thinks that it would be easy to imitate. Wrong. It appears simple but is awfully difficult to do. Brown's prose adds to the subject matter, making his family obsessions and chemical escapes much harsher, difficult to swallow, but in the end, inspiring and troubling..


The L.A. Diaries is a rare memoir because it is what it is and doesn't pretend to be anything else. 

Brown is a fine writer and this work was a privilege to read.

Musings: Iran – Antiwar - Julian Assange.

Over the last 20 odd years, the neocon agenda has been clear. Complete hegemony over the ME with partners Israel and Saudi Arabia. To date, two countries are now in the bag: Iraq and Libya. The counties left: Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, and the grand prize – Iran. In the last three years, Yemen has been included in the mix, and the US and the Saudi's are nearing success. Since the neocon's neocon, John Bolton, was hired by Trump, the swords have been rattling and the lies flagrant and forthcoming, through the corporate owned MSM. Iran is not a threat to the US or its citizens. The US is a threat to Iran who have over 100 military bases surrounding the country. This is not about freeing the Iran people from an oppressive theocratic regime. Its entirely about oil and dominance. If Iran falls to the west, dominance is assured. But at what price?

In 1954, Iran elected a progressive president. He wanted to free its oil reserves from the United Kingdom, who had been profiting from it since WW1. The US and the UK could not let this happen. So, the CIA assassinated the democratically elected president and replaced him with the Shaw, a puppet of the west. Thus Iran's oil came back under western ownership. In the seventies Iran had a clerical revolution, and Iran's far right religious party took over the government. The precious oil went back to Iran, and the US and UK have been clamouring to get it back at any cost. Over the last 50years, every effort, both covert and overt, has failed miserably. Now, the American Military Industrial Complex has lost all patents, and are ready to take Iran by force. Remember, it's not about humanitarian goals, this is not about democracy, this is about stealing a sovereign nations natural resources, and nothing else. The price of war with Iran is evident: trillions of dollars and the certain death of millions of military lives and innocent lives. Desiring to go to war with Iran, is the goal of madmen. Money means everything, human life means absolutely nothing.

To be anti war in the second decade of the 21^st century is to be in the minority. In the United States, in their two party system, there was always a party against going to war. In history, this was usually the Democrats. Because the Democratic party is funded by the weapon manufactures, they have given cart blanch to Trump, to basically run foreign policy. Recently, Trump sold billions of dollars worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia. According to the US Constitution, this sale required congressional approval. Congress never voted, allowing Trump to make the sale. (So much for Trump being a foreign agent for Russia). The US's current government is hell bent for war.

Where are the checks and balances? Where the people hitting the streets, protesting these war crimes? It is my belief, that some people are too worried about their own survival, merely living; then there are those who have been so thoroughly brainwashed, that there are enemies everywhere, and the US must defend “democracy”. A case in point, is the Russia-gate propaganda and down-right hysteria over said country meddling in the 2016 election. It is now proven that Russia attempted to hack certain electoral states, and failed. As far as their propaganda efforts on social media, was simply laughable. It was the DNC's corruption, revealed through Wikileaks, and the machinations of Comey and the FBI that lost the election for Clinton., not the Russians. This Russia hysteria was created by the MSM to reveal Russia as America's true enemy. And the dumb public fell for it. To keep the war machine rolling, the US must always have an enemy. Now there are enemies at every turn, according to those manufacturing consent for war. This brings me to Julian Assange.

The MSM and its driving force, the CIA, has made the American people hate Julian Assange for all the wrong reasons. There manipulations has worked so well, that rather than hating the corrupt DNC for giving us Trump, they hate Assange, the messenger. On face value, this is absurd. Add to the false accusations, coupled with the Russia hysteria over the last 2 years, and suddenly Assange works for the Kremlin. When asked several times about the source of the Podesta emails, all Assange could say, without revealing his source, that it was not a State source. Meaning, the source was an individual. What I find obvious and disappointing, is how easy it is to plant a seed of deception, guide this deception through credible media, and it suddenly becomes a fact. People bought this BS hook line and sinker. However, this becomes even more diabolical, when you ask where these lies are all leading.

Julian Assange, last week, has been charged under the Espionage Act. If found guilty, he could spend up to 170 years behind bars. Despite the fact that he is an Australian citizen; despite the fact he published the material outside of the United States; despite the fact he is a publisher and not an agent of an “enemy” of the US, he is still being indicted. If you delve deep into those in the US who have been convicted under the Espionage Act, will see a pattern that is disturbing.

Over half of those convicted since the Acts inception, have been political activists: Socialists, anti-war pundits, trade union managers; Social Democrats running for congress; broadcasters and journalists. In sum, anyone challenging the establishment. Those who desire an alternative government; those fighting for the rights of workers, and those against war. These people were not spies, these people did not sell technology to a hostile nation, but merely challenged the status quo, and were antiwar. Where is this nauseating pattern heading?

Trump has declared war on the media, claiming that 80% of all media outlets are enemies of the people. Suddenly, now that Assange has been accused of the Espionage Act, the MSM are up in arms, when only yesterday, they could not stop slandering him. These indictments against Assange fly in the face of the First Amendment. If Assange is convicted, who's next? The New York Times, The Washington Post, PBS?

Right wing governments around the world are currently being voted into office. I have written in previous BLOGS, why I believe this is so. That said, when basic democratic rights of Freedom of the Press are violated; convicting whistle-blowers who have revealed government war crimes, any person expressing their views against the establishment is not safe under such circumstances.

What we are seeing is unadulterated fascism in motion, and gaining momentum. What we are seeing is the foundations of democracy destroyed for the benefit of the few.

As a planet,we need a wake up call, before it's too late.

Douglas Kennedy – The Great Wide Open: Review

Kennedy's latest – The Great Wide Open- in the truest sense is an American Saga, traversing the seventies and eighties, through the eyes of Alice Burns, the youngest of this New York family, where all its members have distinct and widely different personalities, and whose family dynamic is iconic for the times, yet wholly unique in their on-going relationships throughout these two chaotic decades. The essential theme of the novel is the notion of secrets between family members, secrets with friends and secrets between people in general. Can you trust a family member with a secret? Can you trust anyone with your deepest secrets? And once revealing a close secret to another, is it really a secret anymore?

The narrator starts the story in the year 1972, a year before she graduates high school. Alice is a bookish girl, always text in hand, with an artistic bent, listening to Joni Mitchell and modern Jazz. Like most intelligent individuals, she is a loner. In high school, she really has only two friends. Both Jewish: Carly and Arnold, both cerebral types and cast as outsiders in the school. Typically, we have the stereotyped “in” crowd, a group of jocks and “mean girls” causing havoc. Alice and Arnold are first time lovers, while Carly is a closeted lesbian. Although Carly's sexual preference has never been declared to all and sunder, the school population have a pretty good idea. This, of course, leads to the three outsiders to be bullied constantly, and Carly in particular, leading to a major incident, where Carly disappears, seemingly off the face of the earth. A major investigation ensues, the focus evolving into the discovery of a rampant antisemitism in the school. Guilt also, is a recurrent theme, throughout the story. In the case of Carly's disappearance, Alice withholds the fact that Carly has an adult lover in the city, as she promised her she would never tell anyone. Again resultant guilt. Carly is never found, alive or dead, but there is a twist.

The four key characters in the tale are Alice's two brothers, and her mother and father. Peter is the oldest of the three children, a clever man, attending the Divinity school at Yale Peter is a true left wing political activist. Adam is the middle child, circumspect and without ambition, though we are told this is due to a near fatal car accident, killing his drunken friend, and a hippy family of three in a VW van. The van was totalled, while Adam was the only survivor. Father Burn is a WWII vet, and politically Right Wing. And Alice's mother is portrayed as a somewhat neurotic jew, unhappy with her marriage, and blaming her youngest, Alice, for all her misery. The interactions between these five family members over the two decades, ends rather sadly, but it's what transpires over those twenty years that is fascinating.

We follow Alice into university, and her sudden transfer to Dublin. Her time in Ireland is quite funny from an American perspective. It is those slight differences in language and behaviour, that we see in different countries, and her struggles to learn the Dublin culture, that is hilarious. It is in Dublin that she actually meets the love of her life...a charming and philosophical young man from Northern Ireland. But I'll leave that one there...

Another recurring theme in the book, is what it means to be happy. This may sound banal to many, but Alice's journey is not an easy ride. Because she is an intelligent woman, she is always self-reflecting: What if I had made that decision, would it have saved his life? What if I had told the authorities her big secret, would it have made the circumstances any better? To truly be in love, and lose that love, can one love again? Alice's questions regarding her mother, father and brothers, over the twenty years, when taken in the time and context of the novel, can be seen as universal, albeit in a expanded version, as it is a novel.

The text hums along at your standard Douglas Kennedy pace. It is written so well, one has to force oneself to stop reading, merely to get a few hours of sleep. I have read 12 Kennedy novels over the last 20 years, and The Great Wide Open, stands as one of his best.

Slaughterhouse 5- Kurt Vonnegut – Review

Admittedly, I first read this incredible novel in 1973. The Vietnam War was still raging, and Nixon and his "intellectual" henchman, Henry Kissinger, were secretly carpet-bombing Cambodia and Laos. We did not know this then, but it soon came to light with the Pentagon Papers. It continues to be classified; however, the number of civilian deaths due to this war crime reaches millions. There is no doubt that Slaughterhouse 5 is the #antiwar novel of my generation.

It feels extraordinary reviewing a novel I read over 40 years ago. Though I re-read this novel in one sleepless bout just last night. Despite feeling shell-shocked at work today, the read was a new revelation. And to read a life-changing book again over close to half a century, and feel the same inspiration, is truly a remarkable event.

The book's narrator is a strange character, Yon Yonson, from Wisconsin. Yon is a WWII veteran who happened to experience the firebombing of Dresden. He tells the tale of a fellow vet, Billy Pilgrim, a time-traveling neurotic, who also was a prisoner of war during the firebombing of this unique German city that murdered, in one short morning, over 170,000 civilians.

Billy is a time traveler after being abducted by aliens from his backyard in Ilium, New York. The aliens are from Tralfamador. He is taken prisoner and placed in an enormous transparent dome with all the human amenities. Billy is in a Tralfamador zoo for entertainment. It is here he time travels in a schizophrenic fashion, jumping all over the timeline of his life. Vonnegut writes in a true post-modernist style, narrating non-linearly, bouncing from one scene to another in no logical form.

Billy Pilgrim is an interesting character., a symbolic representation of a vet who has been wounded by his war experiences. However, he is also a non-being, an existential nature who understands he has been "thrown" into the world and doesn't want to be here. It is this almost apathetic, innocent view of his existence that, in most cases, saved his life through the war.

Slaughterhouse 5 is truly a work of genius in storytelling, but Vonnegut's humor, irony, and ultimate sadness are more significant when addressing the insanity of war.

At the end of the war, Dresden had no factories making bombs, no garrison of Nazi troops, and only a small group of Russian and American prisoners of war. Dresden was a city of classical beauty, described by the likes of Mozart, Beethoven, Goethe, and the writers and artists of the 19^th and 20^th centuries as an architectural miracle. There was no reason to firebomb Dresden to an unrecognizable moonscape. The bombing of Dresden murdered more innocents than the Atomic bombs in Japan. And remember, Japan had been firebombed every week before Truman decided to prove US power to the Soviets. This was pure (evil) devastation in wartime.

The bombing of Dresden remained a secret (except for the Germans) in the interests of National Security. So whenever I hear a US war rep or politician state, "National Security," I automatically think *War Crime*. And history recent history proves this to be true.

Slaughterhouse 5's publication in 1969, through satire and irony, revealed the absurdity of war.

It is no accident that Vonnegut subtitled the novel "The Children's Crusade" or "A Duty-Dance with Death." Because, like today, we sacrifice our babies in war. 

*We send our children*.

Musings: How the Right Win Elections

It should be well known to the majority of American voters that the GOP's actual constituency are Corporations and the wealthy elite. You only need to examine their one and only major legislation in the past two years since Trump: The Tax Bill. This legislation handed the wealthy 1% a hefty tax break, carved in stone, over the next ten years. The bill barely touched the 99%, offering zero relief for working class Americans. In the GOP'S second attempt at legislation was repealing Obama Care without replacing it. This failed in the Senate by a few votes. There has been no major bills put forth by the GOP since. One begs the question, how does the Right win elections, when it is blatantly evident that they have no concern for the people, and promote bills that actually hurt the common citizen? More specifically, how did a Reality Game Show Host become president of the United States?

Fake Populism

Populism: a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns have been disregarded by wealthy elites.

In Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, he struck a collective nerve in the American people. As the majority were sick and tired of neoliberalim, the economy favouring the rich, and a health system that favours the pharmaceutical corporations and big insurance agencies; add expensive and needless wars over seas, and people were disillusioned and ready for a big change. Enter Donald Trump. Similar to many right wing pundits around the world, Trump promised major change. He bashed Obama Care as unworkable. He claimed that Afghanistan and Iraq were big mistakes, and promised to end US occupation. He promised money for much needed up grades in infrastructure. More importantly, Trump promised to bring back manufacturing jobs that had been outsourced overseas. Over two years into his presidency, none of these promises have been kept. True, the US economy appears to be doing well, but is measured by Wall Street, and the Stock Exchange. This measures the wealthy's economy, not the common citizen. Indeed, unemployment appears to have dropped, but the normal working class family have had to work three jobs, merely to make ends meet.

The GOP will promise everything that voters want and need, but as we have seen, jobs are not created, and the rich are getting richer. So, the Right get into office by appearing to understand the working man's dilemma. This fake populism, the very approach that got Donald J. Trump elected.

Pin-Point-Marketing

The GOP know their target market. They have studied various pockets of the population, gaining a uncanny understanding of their hopes and beliefs. Most right -wing pundits know how to drive a point home, whether true or not. To be sure, bombastic confidence plays a big part. That said, the common tool is manipulating the emotion of Fear. They know their audience and will play on those fears. Who are the Right-Wing's audience?

Neo-Confederates or White Nationals.

Whether one wants to admit it or not, racism plays a major role in contributing to GOP votes. Take the time to observe one of Trump's rallies. Most of his base consist of white voters. Of course, you have the occasional Latino and Black American, but they are few. Trump was supported by many militant right wing organisations: namely the KKK. After the riots in Charlotsville, the majority being white nationalist, announcing that “Jews will not replace us”, protesting the take down of Confederate monuments, the crowd turned violent. This ended with the killing of a young woman. Trump famously said, “their were good people on both sides.”

Trump is a racist and knows his base.

Immigration can be safely put in the category of racism. “Built that Wall” cry resonated with many people across America. By using Fear as a tool to gain votes, Trump has hobby horsed the immigration issue. Many studies have shown that a simple wall will not stop the immigration of people coming over the American border. Trump also claims that the majority of this immigrants are dead set criminals and drug dealers, ready to swarm the US with drugs and violent crime. This again, is simply not the case. He has been quoted many times as calling these refugees “animals”, when in fact, they are families escaping prosecution in their home countries. Trump has reinforced the fears of his racist base.

Evangelical Community.

It is no secret that the popular “Christian” Evangelical community simply adore the right wing and Trump even more. To the extent, really, of calling Trump the “second coming”, descending from above to “save” the United States. Any rational mind would dismiss this idea as absurd. Abortion is the right wing's central issue, pushing the act as murder. It is interesting to note, that the GOP back in the 70's and 80's, never had an sue with abortion. But GOP strategists realised that this portion of the US population, were vehemently pro-life, thus the GOP captured this “value” and made it their own. Guaranteed votes. In the era of Trump, states like Georgia has now legislated that abortion is a federal crime, punishable with 30 years in jail. In addition, any woman caught crossing the border to gain an abortion could face 10 years in jail. This is barbaric, pulling the US back into the 18^th century. What's next, burning suspected witches?

Most disturbing of all, this religious-racist-fanaticism has spread into the realms of War. Since 9/11, the prosecution of Muslim Americans had sky rocketed and, during the Trump administration with the Muslim Ban, Moreover the countries been banned, are countries that the US has bombed back into the stone age. My personal fear is that further war overseas will be justified based on the right wing intrinsic hate of Muslims world wide.

Conclusion.

The GOP's first and only constituents are the Corporations and the wealthy elite. In order to get votes to gain office and remain in office, certain cultural issues needed to be harnessed and sold to these US voters. Since the 90's, the GOP realised this, and have been selling these issues as basic “American” values. More insidious, is they have been so successful, they will attack anyone contradicting these “values”, as UN-American. This has been seriously divisive within the population. Since Trump, this divide has become a chasm, where violence has spread across all 50 states. Ironically, the GOP's central value has always been less government. In my lifetime, I have never seen such interference into the lives of everyday Americans under the GOP.

The GOP and their members, for the most part, do not care about these issues. What they do care about are their donors. Driving policy forward which only benefits the corporations and their vested interests. That said, the current Democratic party is just as corrupt. Where most of their donors are weapon manufactures, war is inevitable, despite the majority of citizens are sick and tired of war.

To be sure, the GOP has pulled off a ingenious ploy, lying to the American people, appearing populist, by and while, screwing them at the same time.

Change is certain to come.

Gore Vidal – Palimpsest – A Memoir: Review

It was 1995, that I first cracked Palimpsest's pages, entering this fascinating writer's life. After watching a documentary about Gore Vidal, last week, his memoir came to mind, almost 30 years later, that I decided to read the book again, as if experiencing it for the very first time. And I wasn't disappointed.

The title of the memoir, Palimpsest, is a curious one, And having studied literary theory in university, the name is appropriate for a memoir. Memory is not the most accurate witness for one's life. When we retrospect, names are forgotten, exact dates are hazy, and time and circumstance is ultimately biased, in favour of the autobiographer. A palimpsest is a parchment that scribes would record upon, erasing the contents, in order to write something else. Hence the notion of memory erased and written over, though the original script is slightly there, and can be discerned with effort. Vidal writes his memoir in a discursive way, layers of memory told in a non-chronological manner, combining anecdotes, present time perspective and free-association. To my mind, this is probably, the most accurate method in telling the history of one's life.

Gore Vidal is considered by many to be America's finest essayist. Although it was a sideline for him, he published numerous volumes of this work. In fact, for me, reading his essays was my introduction into his writing, to only much later, read his many historical novels on what he has famously called, “The United States of Amnesia”. Vidal claimed that he would never be the “subject” of his writing. So it was a welcome surprise for many when Palimpsest landed in bookstores around the world.

The memoir begins in Washington DC., where he lived with his grandfather, TP Gore, the blind senator from Oklahoma. Vidal's education started early because he read thousands of texts to his grandfather, often discussing the difficult contents. Thus began his love for literature. He claims as well, that he knew he would be a writer at that early age.

Many pages are devoted to his adolescent friend and lover, Jimmy Trimble. This was a short yet intensely loving relationship. Vidal goes as far to equate their bond with Plato's Symposium, where Aristophanes, tells the beginnings of humanity. To begin with, there were three sexes each shaped like a globe: male, female and hermaphrodite. The god Apollo grew jealous of their closeness, and punished them by slicing each globe in half. Ever since, we have been searching for our other half to become whole again. Thus comes the modern phrase, “You complete me.” or “How is your better half going?” If you have ever fallen in love, being with that person gives one a feeling of contentment or wholeness. Vidal felt that Trimble was his lost “other” if only for a short time period, as Jimmy Trimble died during WWII at the age of 21, I found Vidal's descriptions and feeling for Trimble quite moving.

Vidal published his first novel, “The City and the Pillar”, at the young age of 22. Because its theme is homosexual love, and the first of its type to arrive in the mainstream, the critics denounced the text outright. That said, the book sold well around the world, catching the attention of many intellectuals and writers at the time.

The book set the stage for Vidal to meet many luminaries of the written word: Tennessee Williams, Anais Nin, Christopher Isherwood, Paul Bowels, Jack Kerouac and Norman Mailer. He also met and dined with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the philosopher Santayana, the Kennedy's and Leonard Bernstein, among others.

Vidal takes the reader into high points of the 20^th century. The reader comes to understand and know the people he meets, their attitudes, politics and general sensibilities. He writes with a clear and realistic style, and natural dialogue, giving the reader the feeling of being a fly on the wall.

Palimpsest is, above all else, entertaining while being informative.

A fascinating memoir from America's most celebrated man of letters.