Todos Somos (We Are All) Raza Studies

Todos Somos (We Are All) Raza Studies

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/09/28-0

by Roberto Rodriguez
September 28, 2010

The lines have been drawn. Or rather, the date has been set and the
countdown has begun. If Arizona State Schools Superintendent Tom
Horne has his way, after Dec 31, 2010, Tucson Unified School
District's highly successful Mexican American Studies K-12 department
will cease to exist.

Despite Gov. Jan Brewer having signed HB 2281, the anti-Ethnic
Studies measure ­ in May of this year ­ supporters have good reason
to feel confident that on Jan 1, Raza Studies will be alive and well.

The measure bans schools from teaching hate, anti-Americanism and the
violent overthrow of the U.S. government. Horne, 2281's "intellectual
author," claims that Raza Studies advocates these things, and
promotes "ethnic solidarity" and results in racial segregation in schools.

The Draconian measure and Orwellian effort does not call for the
outright elimination of Raza/Ethnic Studies. Instead, it calls for
the withdrawing of 10% of district funds every month that a program
is found to be out of compliance. For TUSD, that would amount to $3
million per month, a sum it can ill-afford to lose.

The day after 2281 was signed and after Horne threatened to show up
to TUSD headquarters to do a victory lap ­ hundreds upon hundreds of
K-16 students and community activists laid siege to both TUSD
headquarters and then later the state building, resulting in 15
arrests. During this siege, TUSD's Board of Governors issued a May 14
statement from the acting superintendent. In its entirety, it reads:

"TUSD proudly supports our Ethnic Studies classes. We have no plans
to eliminate or reduce course offerings. We believe these courses are
relevant, engaging, meet state standards and are in full compliance
with the law. Additionally, they are part our unitary status plan. We
stand firmly behind our Ethnic Studies Department, staff members and students."

The statements are a clear indication that if the program is ruled
out of compliance, it will be the anti-thesis of local control and
the epitome of foreign [state] intervention. His goal ­ as he has
repeatedly stated ­ is to rule Raza Studies out of compliance and to
eliminate it by the end of the year.

As a result, a historic lawsuit against Tom Horne is forthcoming. The
consensus amongst Tucson's Mexican American community is that come
Jan. 3, Raza Studies will be fully operational ­ continuing to
educate and inspire minds and continuing its successful mission of
preparing its students to attend colleges and universities
nationwide. This program is virtually an anti-dropout program (more
than a 90% graduation rate) and more than that, it is now virtually a
college student factory (upwards of 70%). But Horne doesn't care
about that. Instead, his primary concern is ensuring that only
Greco-Roman knowledge ­ the purported basis for Western Civilization
­ is taught in Arizona schools.

Raza Studies grounds students in Critical Thinking, and
in Indigenous Pedagogies ­ on maiz-based or Maya-Nahua knowledge(s)
that is thousands-of-years old and that originates on this very
continent. Despite this, Horne and his legislative allies claim that
Raza Studies is un-American. In court, Horne will have his hands full
in defining these terms. Can things that originate in Greece and Rome
be considered American, while knowledge that originates on the
American continent be considered un-American and not part of Western
Civilization.

The measure makes a clumsy attempt to isolate Raza Studies; it allows
for the teaching of the Holocaust and purportedly exempts both
American Indian Studies classes [required by federal law] and African
American Studies classes [that are open to everyone). These are false
exemptions because all Ethnic Studies classes are open to everyone
and there are no American Indian Ethnic Studies classes required by
federal law. Despite this, the measure appears to be a clear
discriminatory effort to eliminate Raza Studies.

In the realm of definitions ­ will maiz-based knowledge also be ruled
as not Indigenous or "American Indian"?

The forthcoming lawsuit will be historic in nature. Think Monkey
Scopes Trial or Brown v. Topeka Board of Education. What happens here
in Arizona will set a legal precedent of not simply what can be
taught in public schools ­ but also whether states have the right to
restrict, censor, dictate, intimidate and overrule what districts
and educators can teach in local schools.

HB 2281 is the epitome of [cultural] mind control or forced
assimilation. Ultimately, the struggle ­ as depicted in the in the
forthcoming Precious Knowledge documentary (http://vimeo.com/15062646
) -- is about the inherent right ­ also enshrined in treaties and
international laws ­ of children to learn about their own histories
and cultures. At TUSD, it is about the right of all children to learn
about these histories and cultures and thus the forthcoming lawsuit
(Saveethnicstudies.org).
--

Notes:
A national mobilization in support of TUSD's Raza Studies is
currently underway and the primary focus of National Ethnic Studies
Week. For more information, go to: http://ethnicstudiesweekoctober1-7.org/

A National conference on hate, censorship & Forbidden Curriculums
will take place at The University of Arizona Dec 2-4. For info:
http://drcintli.blogspot.com/ or: rodrigu7@email.arizona.edu or
--

Roberto Rodriguez, a professor at the University of Arizona and a
member of the Mexican American Studies Community Advisory Board, can
be reached at: XColumn@gmail.com

.

Is it ever OK to use the n-word?

Is it ever OK to use the n-word?

http://annistonstar.com/view/full_story/9614860/article-Is-it-ever-OK-to-use-the-n-word-?instance=top_center_featured

by Tim Lockette
tlockette@annistonstar.com
Sep 22, 2010

There is one word Eula Stevens has heard enough. A word she never
cares to hear again, no matter who is saying it, no matter why.

And it starts with the letter N.

"I don't even like for my own color to say it," said Stevens, an
Anniston resident who is black. "That's a word that comes from
slavery, and as far as I'm concerned, you can put it away forever."

Stevens' take on the n-word is a common one here in Anniston, a city
where Freedom Riders were attacked in the 1960s, and where political
divisions still often run along racial lines.

So it's no surprise that residents took note when Councilman John
Spain uttered the racial epithet during a meeting of the Anniston
City Council Monday. Though Spain was using the word as an example of
things a police officer should never say, his use of the n-word ­ a
lightning-rod term in most Southern communities ­ was a surprising
moment even for one of Anniston's contentious council meetings.

The word emerged during Monday's meeting of the council's inquiry
into alleged police corruption. Spain was asking police officer Roy
Bennett about a Facebook post that labeled Councilman Ben Little
"moron of the year." Spain compared the statement to a police officer
protesting outside a police station.

"You would not be allowed to get out here in front of this police
station and carry a sign that says 'I hate niggers,'" said Spain, who is white.

Bennett's lawyer pointed out that "moron" is not the same as a racial
epithet. And City Councilman Ben Little, who is black, expressed
support for Spain, saying "don't go around thinking that this is
going to cause an uproar, because it's not."

And it didn't cause an uproar. But when The Star asked local
residents like Stevens for their opinions on the matter, people made
it clear that regardless of Spain's intention, he could have chosen
his words better.

"I don't get it," said Anniston resident Cinda Hunter, who was
shopping on Noble Street Tuesday. "To be a politician and … why would
you even say that?"

Hunter, who is black, said it's a shame that the issue of the n-word
­ and when and where it's appropriate to use it ­ even has to be
discussed at this point.

"You shouldn't even have to ask," she said.

Some in the white community have long complained that there's a
double standard in the use of the word, making it acceptable for
African-Americans to use among themselves, but not acceptable for
white people. And some whites even claim the word has nothing to do with race.

"It's about the way people act, not what color they are," said a
local resident who would give his name only as "Adam." The word is
offensive "only to the people it applies to," he claimed.

But among the randomly selected people interviewed by The Star, most
agreed that everyone, black or white, should leave off using the word.

"If he (Spain) was doing it to show what you shouldn't say, I guess
that's different," said Alexandria resident Jennifer Clifton, who was
shopping in Anniston Wednesday. "But basically that's just something
that you don't say. It isn't right, no matter who you are."

Experts on racial reconciliation say that no matter the intent, using
the n-word rarely comes out well.

"I don't know what the rules are," said Susan Glisson, of the
Mississippi-based William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation.
"But I know that in our work, we generally use 'n-word' rather than
quoting the word."

Glisson, who is white, works with communities to foster dialogue
about the South's racial history ­ with an eye toward healing the
wounds between the black and white communities.

The n-word is definitely part of the South's history, but Glisson
said use of the actual epithet isn't helpful in her work, because it
tends to "shut down the conversation."

"In the event that it is used in some sort of context that may seem
appropriate, it usually winds up being quoted outside of that
context," she said.

Atlanta-based mediator David Hooker, who works with the William
Winter Institute, said that even though the n-word sparks deep
feelings, it doesn't have to be a conversation-ender.

"I see it as an invitation," he said. "When people use it, they're
informing you about some sort of pain, or some sort of
misinformation, that really should be talked about."

Hooker recalled a recent encounter he had in a restaurant in Oxford,
Miss. Hooker, who is black, went to the restaurant's bar to order
some food, when an older white man commented on his presence and used
the n-word.

Hooker struck up a conversation, which lasted for 45 minutes, and
bought the man a drink. He said he isn't sure the talk changed the
man's mind, but he said it probably had a more positive impact than
if the pair hadn't talked at all.

Hooker didn't compare Spain's comment to the one made by the man in
Mississippi. But he noted that the word's impact depends on the speaker.

"If a black city councilman had given the same example, people would
probably have reacted in a different way," he said.

Hooker said using the n-word in normal conversation is like using a
.357 when you're accustomed to firing a .22. You have to know that
you're dealing with something powerful, he said, or you'll do more
damage than good.

"I kind of like people who are willing to step out beyond what is
safe," he said. "But you have to be aware of what you're doing."
--

Contact assistant metro editor Tim Lockette at 256-235-3560.

.

Revisiting a time of turmoil in 'Freedom Summer'

Revisiting a time of turmoil in 'Freedom Summer'

http://www.thonline.com/article.cfm?id=296747

BY DENNIS HEALY
September 26, 2010

One of the promises I made to myself when I retired was to read more
-- not texts that I taught, but books of my choosing.

Shortly after we relocated and settled in California, my wife and I
walked to the San Rafael Public Library and got library cards.

We perused the children's section for books for our granddaughter,
then headed for the adult section.

In the non-fiction section, I selected "Freedom Summer," by Bruce
Watson, published in June, 2010. As I scanned the pictorial section,
the images brought back memories of that time.

I was 13, and through the visual medium of television, I had seen the
coverage of the assassination of JFK in November of 1963 and The
Beatles appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in February of 1964.

Now, the pictures of Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James
Chaney -- three civil rights workers murdered in Mississippi in June
of 1964; and the menacing faces of Lawrence Rainey and Cecil Price --
sheriff and deputy sheriff of Neshoba County, the setting of the
murders; took me back to a time when my emerging consciousness began
to question the ways of the world.

I needed to move beyond the impressions of those visual images.

I checked out the book and began reading it that evening.

Watson frames his narrative with the two critical events that defined
that summer: the murders of the three civil rights workers on June 21
and the attempt of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to be
seated at the Democratic Convention at the end of August.

In the chapters that fall between, Watson focuses on the smaller, yet
no less dramatic stories of individual Freedom Riders, Student
Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) members and ordinary
citizens who complete the portrait of the incendiary events of that
summer, from church bombings to shootings, beatings and mass arrests.

Through the leadership of SNCC, the Freedom Riders settled in
Mississippi to open freedom schools and register voters, despite
almost constant harassment from their nemesis, the Ku Klux Klan.

At times, the narrative is graphic.

A group of Klansmen kidnaps devout Catholic Fran O'Brien, takes her
to a remote place and whips her with a rubber hose. As they prepare
for the beating, one of them says to her, "That's a good little girl.
Stay nice and still now, so we can whup you." After the beating, they
dump her in the driveway from which they abducted her.

In his Epilogue, Watson speculates whether the tumult of Freedom
Summer was worth it for those who participated in it -- many who
suffered physical and psychic scars -- and for the state of
Mississippi, which came under close scrutiny from a nation that could
not believe such segregation existed in the United States.

Watson also chronicles the long trail of justice that followed the
murderers and conspirators who took the lives of Schwerner, Chaney,
and Goodman.

Many were ultimately convicted, but some not until 30 or 40 years
after the crimes.

At the end of the Epilogue, when Watson notes the election of
President Obama, I experienced a closing emotional connection with
the book. It was not a political Epiphany. It was a social one.

As the president-elect strode to the podium in Grant Park that night,
I saw Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, Andrew Goodman,
Michael Schwerner and James Chaney walking with him.

Watson concludes with praise for the advances Mississippi has made
since that fateful summer.

In the final statement of his Acknowledgments, Watson says, "... more
Americans should go to the Magnolia State. It's a wonderful place, to
which I hope to return again and again."
--

Healy retired after 35 years of teaching English at Dubuque Senior
High School and two years at the University of Dubuque. He is the
author of "Becoming a Master Teacher: A Guide to a Successful Career
in the Classroom."

.

War (on drugs) is over [by John Sinclair]

War (on drugs) is over

http://www.metrotimes.com/news/story.asp?id=15401

New column to cover the latest in marijuana

By John Sinclair
9/29/2010

Highest greetings from Amsterdam. My name is John Sinclair and I've
been a marijuana legalization activist ever since I founded Detroit
LEMAR (LEgalize MARijuana) in January 1965, following the receipt of
a LEMAR flyer sent from New York City by poets Allen Ginsberg and
Edward Sanders, the progenitors of this movement.

Between 1964 and 1968, I was harassed by the Detroit Narcotics Squad
for smoking, dispensing and advocating marijuana use. I served six
months in the Detroit House of Correction in 1966 for possession of a
half-ounce of weed, and I served 29 months of a 9-1/2-to-10-year
sentence for possession of two joints of marijuana ­ a crime then
defined as a Violation of State Narcotics Laws (VSNL) ­ between July
1969 and December 1971.

During this time I was held without appeal bond in maximum-security
prisons in Jackson and Marquette while my legal appeal wound its way
through the Michigan court system. In March 1972, the Michigan
Supreme Court decided that marijuana was not a narcotic. My
conviction was reversed and the marijuana laws were declared unconstitutional.

Thus there were no marijuana laws in Michigan for three weeks until
the current state legislation punishing marijuana users with a year
in prison for possession went into effect. This dreadful new law was
commemorated by the first Hash Bash gathering on the Diag at the
University of Michigan on April 1, 1972.

That was 38 years ago, before many of today's marijuana smokers were
born. The Michigan State Police, county sheriffs and municipal
authorities have ruled our world with their war on drugs ever since ­
or at least until the 2008 elections, when 62 percent of Michigan
voters approved medical marijuana use and mandated a system of
licensing and regulation for medical marijuana patients that is
currently legal throughout the state.

The point of this initiative is that medical marijuana users in
Michigan are no longer criminals to be subjected to the misdirected
and often vicious treatment dealt out by the drug police,
prosecutors, courts, drug treatment and prison systems.

Citizens who qualify as medical marijuana users may now be licensed
by the state of Michigan, and their suppliers, or "caretakers," may
also be licensed by the state to provide patients legally with a
reliable supply of two-and-a-half ounces of marijuana at all times.

Medical marijuana is a good thing, and this is a good law. I have
always believed that marijuana is a medicine particularly well-suited
to the needs of people suffering from many maladies. Like Louis
Armstrong, I always thought of weed as more of a medicine than a
dope, and I believe, with Dennis Peron ­ the activist and leading
force behind California's medical marijuana proposition more than a
decade ago ­ that all marijuana use is medicinal.

(For the record, I'm involved in Trans-Love Energies Compassion
Collective in Detroit's Eastern Market, though conflict of interest
precludes me from writing about it here.)

The new marijuana laws across the country enable medicinal users to
emerge at last from under the cloak of opprobrium thrown over us and
become legal, registered, state-approved smokers of the sacred herb
that has served us so faithfully through the long and bitter years of
the war on drugs.

We urge all our fellow medicinal marijuana users to consult your
doctors, gain certification as medical marijuana patients, register
with the state of Michigan and carry your patient cards with you at
all times. Caregivers should register with the state along with your
patients, and convert your legal status from criminal drug dealer to
authorized medicine provider.

At the same time, with respect to medical marijuana patients and
their caregivers, we must point out to the state, county and
municipal police forces throughout Michigan that the war on drugs is
over, whether you want it or not. Lay down your arms, turn your
swords into plowshares, and join us in securing a sufficient supply
of medicine for our citizens who require marijuana for health.

At this historic juncture, we urge the forces of law and order to
accept, in good faith, the will of the voters, the changes in
established law and the altered legal status of registered medical
marijuana patients and their caregivers. You are no longer authorized
to arrest these people and treat them like criminals. The game is up!
The war is over, and we insist the law enforcement community
recognize and respect the rights and the dignity of these citizens
now and at all times in the future.

The police raids on compassionate care centers and other gathering
places for medical marijuana patients and their caregivers are
reprehensible and must be stopped at once. Law enforcement means
enforcing the laws on the books, and the books have now been
rewritten by the citizens of Michigan. Read them and weep. The war on
medicinal marijuana users is over. Stop the raids!

I have never understood what laws and law enforcement have to do with
what's going on inside our heads. What difference should it make to
anyone what we use to get high on? I'm not a fan nor a user of
alcohol, for example, but I wouldn't ever want to try to make someone
stop drinking it, and I really couldn't consider arresting and
jailing and imprisoning them just because they want to have a drink.
If they get drunk and do something wrong, arrest them for what they
did wrong, not for drinking.

The same goes for recreational drug users. If they do something
wrong, whatever they might be on, arrest them for that. If they
aren't doing their job, punish them for that. If they're robbing and
stealing to support their drug habits, bust them for the criminal
acts. But what's going on inside their bodies is their business and
their business only. Like the poet says, we have a right to our bad habits.

The sick thing is that the laws against recreational drug use have
been used to create a vast police-state apparatus on the backs of
people who get high. As a result of these laws, we have legions of
drug police, drug courts, drug prosecutors, drug judges, drug
probation officers, drug treatment programs, jails, prisons, parole
officers and other factotums of this vicious war on recreational drug users.

This ugly picture won't disappear as a result of the new medical
marijuana laws, but the frame will move off those of us who use
marijuana within a medicinal context for the many things that ail us.
As we have seen, the police forces will have a hard time letting go
of their long-held attitudes, beliefs and practices regarding the
ingestion of marijuana and the criminal status of its users, but once
they accept the new rules of engagement we will all have a better
world to live in.

Me, I've been criminalized by the marijuana laws all my adult life.
I've lived in constant fear of arrest, spent three years in prison on
marijuana convictions, and snuck around ever since trying to keep
them from seeing what's in my pockets.

Now I've got my medical marijuana patient card and a caregiver who's
registered with the state as my official supplier ­ and that's a
great big step in the right direction. But my goal will always be the
full legalization of recreational drugs and the complete dismantling
of the machinery of the war on drugs.

­Amsterdam, Sept. 17-18; London, Sept. 21, 2010
--

John Sinclair celebrates his 69th birthday with live music (of
course) Saturday, Oct. 2, at the Bohemian National Home, 3009 Tillman
(22nd), Detroit; call 313-420-7487 for information.
--

Former Detroiter John Sinclair is an author, broadcaster, longtime
activist, subject of a John Lennon song and one-time manager of the
MC5, featured elsewhere in this issue. He will appear bi-weekly in this space.

The ugly emotion that dare not speak its name

The ugly emotion that dare not speak its name

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/the-ugly-emotion-that-dare-not-speak-its-name-20100924-15qkx.html

Some residents believe old passions and prejudices are returning to a
town, writes Saffron Howden.

September 25, 2010

There is a polite reserve among Moree residents that stretches back
through the decades to a time when Aborigines weren't welcome in the
town's stores. Locals will admit to disadvantage, funding shortfalls,
poor educational opportunities, rural poverty.

Yet few will speak the word that ripples beneath the day-to-day
existence of the dry, dusty community in northern NSW, where 20 per
cent of the population is indigenous.

Noeline Briggs-Smith, who grew up in one of Top Camp's tin sheds on
Moree's outskirts, has decided enough is enough. ''I think racism is
rearing its ugly head again here in Moree,'' the 70-year-old, a
respected Kamilaroi elder, said. ''I'm feeling, just like I did when
I was growing up as a child and having the experience how Aboriginal
people were treated back then, and I honestly feel that that is
happening again.''

She was a young woman when, in 1965, the Freedom Riders, led by a
young Charles Perkins, drove into town on their bus from Sydney.
Community elders were wary of the activist university students who
staged a protest at the town's famous hot bore baths, where
Aboriginal children were considered too unhygenic to bathe.

Townsfolk manhandled and spat on the protesters, then pelted them
with eggs and rotten fruit. A 19-year-old Jim Spigelman, now Chief
Justice of the NSW Supreme Court, ''was smacked to the ground while
the 500-strong crowd roared its approval'', the Mirror reported on
February 21 that year.

But the battle was won and, three months later, the council
begrudgingly threw out a local regulation banning Aborigines from the baths.

Ms Briggs-Smith wasn't there to see history being written in her
town. And the voice of her conservative elders still rings in her
head. ''I wasn't up there because the elders said: 'You keep away
from up there,' '' she said.

But she does remember the invisible bar across Moree shop doors. ''I
used to go into a butcher shop with my father and have to wait until
every white person had been served,'' she said. ''I wasn't allowed to
go into the pool, even though my parents owned their own home and paid rates.''

More than 45 years later, the genteel restraint and resignation lives
on in Moree.

When the Herald stopped by one afternoon to watch a Boomerangs
juniors training session at Taylor Oval - where Woolworths plans to
build a Big W discount store - the co-coach, Stan Smith, just shrugged.

"There's nothing we can do about it," he said of the development,
which would bury the century-old sportsground.

Ms Briggs-Smith has been resisting Woolworths' plans - which are
supported by the state government and Moree Plains Shire Council -
for more than five years. She is now on a personal crusade to save
the unique Northern Regional Library Indigenous Unit, where for 15
years she has been tracing family roots, collecting and archiving
photographs, writing histories and teaching Aboriginal children about
their culture.

The council was ''dismantling'' the service by de-funding it, she said.

While the Human Rights Commission considers her formal discrimination
complaint about the decline of the library service - it is now all
but closed - the council says it is working hard to ensure its fully
funded, autonomous future.

One of the main charges levelled at the council is that it has failed
to consult with the local indigenous community over the changes. It's
a charge a council spokesman does not deny. ''There's been no
concrete plan to talk to them about,'' he says.

The local National MP and Moree resident, Kevin Humphries, will not
use the word racist to describe his home town. But he would not deny
it either. ''To say it's racial is a cheap shot,'' he said.
''Everybody's racist. It's what you do with it that makes a
difference. It's part of our human psyche.''

Mr Humphries, who is also the NSW opposition's spokesman on
Aboriginal affairs and counts himself among Ms Briggs-Smith's
friends, said the issue was one of disadvantage, not race.

''Our community and a lot of communities in western NSW are more
divided on opportunities,'' he said. ''The gaps are in health
opportunities, education opportunities.

''Moree's a far, far more … integrated place today than it was 10
years ago … It doesn't matter whether you're black or white. Moree's
always been a symbol for change.''

.

Classic Blaxploitation Films

Queue Your Netflix with Class(ics):
Blaxploitation Films

http://buquad.com/2010/09/26/queue-your-netflix-shaf/

by Monica Castillo
September 26th, 2010

"Don't let your mouth get your ass in trouble."

Of the founding fathers of the blaxploitation genre, Shaft was
mainstream Hollywood's first foray into ethnocentric entertainment
geared towards black urban audiences. Before then, Hollywood merely
churned out stories from a white viewpoint. From the first silent
blockbusters throughout the sixties, minorities only played
supporting rolls; the maid, the laundry attendant, and the occasional
villain or seductress were the limited acting choices of the day.

But from the ashes of the Civil Rights struggle in the '60s, the '70s
gave the first opportunities to black writers, directors, and actors
to explore what was once considered noncommercial topics. At the
start of the Disco daze, audiences began to clamor for these
nontraditional movies. Stories from destitute projects, the pervasive
drug culture, and gang violence were theirs to share. For the first
time, real struggles and concerns were not only portrayed on screen­

They were conquered.

Like in Shaft, where a headstrong detective is called upon by a gang
to help find the leader's daughter-kidnapped by none other the rival
mob. Shaft shoots the bad guys, ambushes the men sent to kill him,
and reports to his white boss at the NYPD with a kind of biting snark
that told the precinct: "I can do this by myself." But the tough guy
has a soft spot for his wife, and a laughably classic seventies-esque
love scene is our reward. The movie looks its age: the images are
grainy, the mob and Shaft chase after each other in platform shoes,
Times Square looks like it does before the clean up of the eighties
(think porn theaters instead of tourist shops), and bright red
"blood" would pour out of those unfortunate enough to get shot. Oh,
how the times have changed.

In many of the blaxploitation films, powerful hyper-sexualized
protagonists fought discrimination, drug dealers, corrupt cops, and
mobsters. Minorities both led and triumphed in these films like they
had never before in history. They were both cool and unmoved when
situations took a serious tone. Fighters like Foxy Brown must fight
against her brother's killers and Vietnam vets return home to a
racial war zone. Even Shaft has a moment where the titular detective
comes to term with his mortality. Throughout impossible odds (see
also: improbable), characters walk away with their revenge and lover
for a happily ever after.

But for all the positive messages of triumph over evil
discrimination, the movie portrays its characters through a distorted
lens. As I mentioned before, most of the leading actors and actresses
are hyper-sexualized, almost caricatures of stereotypes. Feminists
may find these movies nauseating to watch as the women are treated as
objects or worse. Domestic abuse is glamorized or expected in
relationships. Even the strong leading lady, Foxy Brown, is
considered a "woman that must be tamed." Shaft clearly talks down to
all in his life, his wife included. Racial slurs run freely from both
sides, good and bad. Another downfall of the genre is the tendency of
the characters to partake in illegal activities. Pimps and drug lords
in Superfly were rampant. Many critics blame these movies for
perpetuating the stereotypes of criminal culture.

Some forty years from the age of Aquarius, a new cult film was making
rounds in late night showings. Black Dynamite, a spoof on the genre,
has reinvigorated interest in the history of the movement. Poor
production value, over-the-top acting, timely editing, and the
tackiest clothing of the seventies have made it into one of the most
enjoyable commentary on the genre and its commercial draw. I say
commercial because for the first half of the seventies,
blaxploitation films usually made quite the box office. But thin
plots and an over-saturation of the movie market whittled down the
genre to phase out by the end of the decade. Sporadic tributes,
sequels, and spoofs punctuated the following years. Black Dynamite is
just the latest success story of making fun of a serious subject. Its
wit is hidden behind the ridiculous plot and dialogue. The color is
just a tad faded, off-color jokes end up in a climax that leads all
the way to the top of the list of corruption.

I recommend checking out Shaft, the fore-father of the genre, and
Black Dynamite, the screwy send-up of the aforementioned genre.
Serious issues like drugs and poverty are Kung-Fu'ed to destruction.
For the strides towards regaining fortune and honor, there were many
steps backwards in terms of gender equality and breaking stereotypes.
Pros and cons, you get to make the decision for yourself. View a good
example of the original era and a recent satire over some popcorn and
see what has influenced filmmakers like Spike Lee to Quentin
Tarantino. The rich and varied history of underground cinema hold
many secrets, and blaxploitation is merely one of many.

"They say this cat Shaft is a bad mother… / SHUT YOUR MOUTH! / I'm
talkin' 'bout Shaft. / THEN WE CAN DIG IT!"
--

Strap on your Disco leisure suit, there's plenty of good music too!
Shaft:B+, Black Dynamite: A-

.

An icon comes to Florida. Let it be [Peter Max}]

An icon comes to Florida. Let it be

http://www.theobservernews.com/news/front-page-news/543-an-icon-comes-to-florida-let-it-be.html

Iconic artist Peter Max will appear at Baywalk in St. Petersburg this
weekend.
He talks about being free, successful, and an Average Joe with a full-time DJ.

23 September 2010
By MITCH TRAPHAGEN

Peter Max lives in your brain. That isn't necessarily his choice; he
prefers Manhattan. He lives in your brain because, for virtually
every living soul in this nation blessed with sight, he has given
color to memories. Memories from the 60s and beyond that may
otherwise be fading, or even monochromatic, are filled with color
because Peter Max put his brush to canvas.

If the Beatles provided the soundtrack for a generation, Peter Max
provided the Technicolor. The dawning of the Age of Aquarius would
have been much less bright without his cosmic interpretation of the
spirit of the culture in the late 60s. He is so entwined with that
era that it is impossible to know if he painted the fashions of the
day or if the fashions merely imitated his paintings.

Born in Germany and a child of the world, he is unabashedly American.
In conversation, he is open and honest. He does not feign an
unrealistic depth that the public often expects of artists. He is
both a dreamer and a realist, easily switching gears from talking
about the infinities of space to giving instructions to his staff on
a letter of intent for an upcoming project. He is not arrogant but he
knows that he has reached a pinnacle of success that few people can
imagine. He is not embarrassed by it.

In some respects, Peter Max can only come from New York. Like him,
the city is famous and infinitely prolific. And, like him, it is all
about accomplishment and execution.

New York is a city that can be anything to anyone. It is a place
where the homeless sleep undisturbed among the arbitrage traders,
where 80-year-old ladies with canes hail cabs on Central Park West,
where a person can come from nothing to be something but only if they
really had something such as talent to begin with. It is the city of
Lady Gaga and J.D. Salinger. For Peter Max, New York City must appear
as a canvas of substance.

His art sales over the years have rivaled the GDP of Belize. His
success and iconic status have placed him above concern over the
words of an art critic ­ or a newspaper feature writer. That doesn't
mean he doesn't care. He does care. He likes to talk about his art,
or about space and time. He likes to talk about his childhood and his
parents and his years growing up in Berlin, China, Tibet, Israel, and
France before finally landing in New York. He talks about his passion
for saving animals from abuse and for human rights and his lifelong
fascination with astronomy. He is among the most open and accessible
celebrities in America, yet it is the art and the 60s and the Boeing
777 jet that he painted a few years ago that has garnered attention
rather than intimate secrets of his private life. Even there, he is
open, having been quoted in an Illinois blog describing his wife Mary
as his muse. According to the article, his voice changed from that of
a septuagenarian to that of a teenager when speaking of when they first met.

He describes himself as just "an average Joe." He has captured the
spirit of an entire generation and has redefined the world of art. He
has painted six presidents, from Ford to Obama, and has designed a
U.S. postage stamp. He has been the official artist for events from
the Grammy Awards to the Super Bowl and has made millions of dollars
in the process. Despite, or, perhaps because of, all of that, it
turns out that he really is an average Joe in the most important respects.

"I'm not wowed by it or thinking about it every day," Max said of his
success. "I'm just the average Joe. When a couple of my buddies go
out and we get some Chinese or vegan food ­ I'm a vegetarian ­ we're
just going out together. It's not like I've got a pad under my arm
and I'm going to draw on a piece of paper on the table while all my
friends watch, I'm just a regular guy with my buddies. But when it's
time to paint, two things happen: The paints get uncovered, the
brushes are there ­ and I have a full-time DJ that plays music for me."

OK, so most average Joes don't have a full-time DJ. But then most
average Joes aren't called America's Painter Laureate and most aren't
known as cultural icons.

"I don't own that domain," he said in reference to being an icon. "I
did it, it happened to me. I was surprised. I had no experience in
that kind of position ever before. When it came upon me it came
slowly and I accepted it; but I tried not to make a big deal out of
it egotistically. I study yoga, I want to be a yogi. I want to be
free of that. I don't walk around wearing it on my shoulders."

On the street or on the phone, he is Peter Max: the man who once
saved a determined and spirited cow from the slaughterhouse, the man
with a calming voice and an easy, warm and friendly manner. But in
the studio, he becomes Peter Max: the artist. There is a distinct
difference between the two sides of this man. For him becoming the
artist doesn't mean he becomes an elitist or one of the beau monde
lording over the Average Joe. It is simply as if the man walks from
one universe into the next. It is extraordinary.

"When I look at my paintings, and where I'm sitting right now I'm
looking at 15 or 20 canvases, and each one is completely different,"
he said. "I hardly know when I did them. I hardly remember doing
them. But I remember really well the brush strokes and I know the
shapes. I am living in my artistic world. I am living in a world in
which everything is possible creatively and the paint, canvas,
brushes, subject matter, shapes, colors, compositions, directions,
atmospheres, feelings..."

And then he walks into the next universe, just another one of
millions of universes.

Max has the unique ability to transcend scale in a manner almost
beyond comprehension. In addition to painting a Continental Airlines
777 jet, he created the stage for the Woodstock 99 concert ­ it was
nearly 700 feet across. To create the stage, he worked from a canvas
that was only eight feet wide. An object painted on that canvas as
small as his little finger would be zoomed to more than 12 feet tall
in the final product.

"So I played around with a hundred drawings and then I walked away
and looked at them from a distance and then I started visualizing how
would this thing look if it were two city blocks long," he said.

And then he enters yet another universe.

"For me, it's a wonderful time when I paint. It is timeless. I don't
know if I'm in the 21st century or the 19th century or the 23rd
century when I'm painting. I'm in the middle of this atmospheric
thing with color, canvas, paints, backgrounds, foregrounds, subjects
­ and I love them. And when I'm in love with it, then I know it is
time to stop. It's just the right amount of paint, the right amount
of color and brushstrokes ­ let it be."

Talking with Peter Max is like talking with the Beatles. And yet it
isn't. On the phone, in person, he is an average Joe, a guy you are
happy to talk to, a person who, when he stops mid-sentence, inspires
you to say, "What happened next?" When he goes into the studio he
enters another universe ­ a happy and free man painting to the sound
of music, speaking his words of wisdom through his art. Let it be.

"Here's the thing, when I just paint for the sake of painting, like
on a white canvas, and I approach it with an empty mind, that's when
I'm at my most creative. Stuff comes out that surprises me. I can
change it. But when I'm painting Obama, I have to have a certain
amount of discipline saying, 'Look, I'm painting Obama or I'm
painting McCartney.' I take certain liberties with that but just
enough so that it doesn't make it crazy. I once did 65 Mona Lisas. Of
course Mona Lisa stayed Mona Lisa, but how I underpainted and
overpainted, and what came around her were of my own inventions.
Otherwise, they would just be 65 identical paintings. Each one was
completely unique and different but yet each one was the Mona Lisa."

Success has given him freedom, a valuable commodity that he does not
squander. He continues to be highly prolific; now producing what
comes from his soul. He doesn't have to make art, he chooses to. He
is following the path of his heart, he doesn't need the path of convenience.

"I allow myself to just be who I want to be at that moment," he said.
"With every single painting that I do, I allow myself to just be
totally free and let what wants to happen, happen. If I suddenly feel
some color that needs to be in a corner, I pick up a brush and put it
there. I'm being completely free, I paint what I want to paint. I've
seen people who are writers and they sit down at a computer to write.
I say, 'What are you doing?' They say, 'I just feel like writing, I
don't even know what I'm going to write.'

"It is this way with my paintings," he continued. "I have a canvas,
it's white, I have a brush in my hand, I look at my colors and I
reach over and whatever color I feel like having at that second, I
dip my brush into it and then I feel where should that paint go? I
just feel it. I do the brush strokes and I answer it with more brush
strokes. Sometimes I answer it with a shape, sometimes with a stroke,
sometimes with a color blend, sometimes I see a whole theme behind
it, and I pull it together by making it something very specific. The
beauty is I am constantly, completely free. I am as free in the
middle of the painting,[and] at the end of the painting, as I was
when I started."

Peter Max gained fame in the Age of Aquarius, but he has managed to
transcend time in ways that contemporaries such as Warhol and others
could not. He started out thinking he was reinventing himself, but
the truth is he simply became what he really wanted to be. The result
is passion, commitment, feeling and a little doubt along with talent,
heart and a splash of patriotism shared with whoever wants to take a
moment to look at it or to talk about it.

"I came out of that realistic lineage," he said speaking of his seven
years of art school. "I can paint like Rockwell. I have paintings in
my studio that people see and they ask, 'You do that?' Yes, I do
that. But there was something in me and maybe it had to do with
growing up in the Orient and around the world and, of course, there
was this whole hippie movement.

"It was the atmosphere," he continued. "I started drawing my own
style, my own characters, my own worlds and it had a little bit of
astronomy with stars and planets and characters flying through space
and one day some art director was looking at my work, saw them and
said, 'Why haven't you shown me that?' I was a serious artist, I was
a serious realist, I didn't think you would show that type of art. I
was so classically trained. It's like a violinist, and then people
find out he plays great bongos."

Peter Max ­ America's Painter Laureate, an Average Joe, the Virtual
Violinist with bongos ­ is coming to the Tampa Bay area next week for
an exhibit with the Michael Murphy Gallery at 153 2nd Avenue North in
Baywalk in St. Petersburg. The exhibit is Saturday, September 25 and
Sunday, September 26. The public is invited to meet him.

"I would say my exhibition has a nice broad perspective of things
I've done over the years and there are a lot of new things that no
one has seen and some iconic images that are loved by people," he
said. "If people have the book, The Art of Peter Max [by Charles A.
Riley II], bring it to the gallery and I'll sign it with a little
doodle for everybody who brings it in."

He is a veteran of dozens of one-man shows and, invariably, he draws
record crowds. His autograph has become nearly as iconic as his
artwork, yet he signs and draws and happily poses with those who come
to meet him.

"I love it," he said with sincerity. "I love making people happy.
They enjoy my work and I make a drawing for them, I sign it, I
personalize it. And then, of course, the people who acquire a piece
of art, they not only get a drawing on the back ­ I make a big
beautiful drawing ­ but they get a book personalized with a drawing, too."

Peter Max is a frequent visitor to the Sunshine State. Through his
visits, and the autographs and doodles, he leaves a little bit of
himself behind.

"I enjoy Florida. I love it, it's a beautiful location," Max said. It
is one of the prime locations in America. It's known for many
beautiful things. You know Florida is a gorgeous place and if I
wasn't as busy as I was, I'd probably get myself a studio there."

Don't expect that to happen anytime soon; Peter Max is effectively
New York's artist-in-residence. Besides, he is already here, in your
mind and in your memories. He painted them. Let it be.

.

War Crimes, America's Moral Meltdown

WAR CRIMES, AMERICA'S MORAL MELTDOWN

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/09/28/gordon-duff-war-crimes-americas-moral-meltdown/

MASS KILLINGS IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN "WINK AND NOD" ARMY POLICY

By Gordon Duff
September 28, 2010

Over 40 years ago, I was in Vietnam, part of an American military
effort draped with shame and failure. My Lai was the crowning
achievement of the war, nearly 600 women and children mowed down by
automatic weapons fire. The man we know as General Colin Powell
helped shove it under a rug. Lt. Calley, worse than many of
Himmler's SS executed for war crimes during World War II, became a
hero to many Americans. Killing civilians was "policy" in
Vietnam. You could murder anyone you wanted as long as they could be
made to look like enemy combatants. If you killed them with a knife,
even if others held them to the ground, you were awarded a Silver
Star. This isn't conjecture, I know this to be a fact.

When the Bush Administration sought legal protection from accusations
of war crime, shopping the dregs of the legal world and coming up
with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, someone willing to sign off
on virtually anything, we could see it coming. We had an
administration of "Chickenhawks," psychotic war mongers who were
physical cowards, shirking wartime service through trickery,
influence and excuses. Thus we ended up with a President who claims
to have been a National Guard mail clerk in Alabama, missing the 10
years of combat during Vietnam, a war mongering Vice President who
piled up student deferments and a Secretary of Defense, Donald
Rumsfeld, who did a short peacetime stint in the Navy.

Congress was worse, with the "war party," the GOP, lined from one end
to the other with draft dodgers. Their only noticeable veteran was
John McCain. The real mastermind of the Bush Administration was
radio host Rush Limbaugh who claims he was rejected for service in
Vietnam because of an anal cyst.

What those of us who actually fought in a war knew is that the
leadership of the military itself, called by Colonel David Hackworth
"the Perfumed Princes of the Pentagon," was utterly corrupt and
bereft of real combat experience, leadership ability and moral
character. That leadership has, if anything, gotten worse.

As our two most recent disastrous wars played out, one seemingly
forever, we began with stories of prisoner abuse, kidnappings,
torture on a mass scale. The Wikileaks video showing two Apache
helicopter crews murdering unarmed Samaritans was quickly
ignored. In fact, dozens, perhaps hundreds of incidents of
criminality have been covered up, the press delightfully complicit,
never asking why nothing is done, never asking why the military never
calls anyone of rank and power to account.

When reports come in, such as those from FBI translator Sibel
Edmonds, that planeloads of narcotics and moved across the world by
the US military or we hear that bales of American aid money are being
transported out of Afghanistan to, well, we don't know, do we? Are
we really sure that it isn't the military itself that is stealing the
money, running the drugs, managing the $65 billion dollar a year drug
operation in Afghanistan? Is there any reason, any scrap of proof
that can show they aren't doing it?

When the Bush administration decided to "outsource" the war,
"outsource" the CIA, turning a third of our massive defense budget
over to political cronies, shouldn't all of this been expected?

When the American "Taliban," we can't call them anything else,
Christian Evangelists, read "Christian Zionists," not really
Christians at all, but a distorted, a perverted form of Christianity
more science fiction, heavy on apocalypse, heavy on "end times" and
very light on real scripture, a "Christ free" version of
Christianity, was pushed onto our military, mass killings, drunken
orgies, drug use, torture and inhumanity had to be expected.

What is the worst possible situation imaginable? How could we have
found so many wartime cowards to lead a nation during a period of
threat? What was the threat? Was it real or one concocted by the
endless nest of military and intelligence geniuses, best call them
what they are, phonies and vermin, the golfing partners of the
military industrial complex.

Hadn't we better admit that we have allowed ourselves to be led into,
not only wars, but a total sacrifice of American freedoms and values,
entirely for the glorification of cowards, phonies and
sociopaths? Does this seem a bit harsh?

Excuse me for being angry.

Last week, Dr. Aafia, a housewife from Boston who was kidnapped while
visiting her father in Pakistan, was convicted of trying to kill
several Americans. She had been in detention, raped and tortured for
years. Were the people she was accused of trying to kill, a totally
fictional crime, themselves like the death squads that roam Iraq and
Afghanistan, shooting innocent civilians from armored vehicles,
helicopters, tossing hand grenades into crowds?

Today we learn that the current murder squad being investigated in
Afghanistan operated in Iraq. This is one such unit, there could be
dozens. Today we learn that the Army knew about this all along,
members of these military units that claim they were under threat of
death, forced to participate in war crimes, had reported the incidents.

Nothing was done. ABC News carried the story today, parents were
told, the Army was called.

Were hundreds killed? More?

It is one thing losing a war. It is one thing seeing America pass
laws nullifying our constitution and civil rights. It is one thing
watching so many Americans cheer war crimes, atrocities, injustice, torture.

Imagine how this is going to play out. Afghanistan has a population
between 30 and 40 million. Pakistan has nearly 200 million
people. They are all going to hear about this. We spend billions,
not millions, not tens or hundreds of millions but billions winning
the 'hearts and minds' of the people, all so we can be "safe from terrorism."

What a crock.

We hope people are afraid of us because if they aren't, they
certainly hate us. Do people in Pakistan and Afghanistan get
afraid? Don't we hear, every day, all day long, about how crazy they
all are, wanting to blow themselves up? Are we stopping terrorism by
sending Americans over there, so they can be murdered conveniently,
none of those phony visas, passports or magic trips through Israeli
run airports for them.

Who is ultimately responsible? The answer is easy, the American
people. All the signs were there. The 2000 election had a smell
about it, the jackals behind the scenes during Iran Contra, you
remember that, don't you? The Reagan administration? Whatever you
want to call it, it was our government getting into the "crack"
business and, as a sideline, peddling arms to Iran, you know,
missiles and such, by the shipload.

Oh, you forgot?

It wasn't more than a few months before we got 9/11, the largest
coordinated attack on America in its history, confounding our air
defenses, intelligence services, even the laws of physics were
violated. Learn what you can do when defense contractors own TV networks.

There is another aspect of "war crimes" we have missed, how it allows
the public to blame veterans. 40 years after Vietnam, most of that
army is dead, endless numbers dying soon after the war, suicide,
diseases, so many diseases, the reasons, we will never know.

Nobody cared, nobody cares.

With half the survivors of Vietnam, what few are still around, sick
and dying, congress talks about little else other than trying to get
out of paying medical expenses for their lingering deaths caused by
Agent Orange poisoning. The Gulf War vets are having identical experiences.

Our new vets, well, you can read about them every day. Today they
are mass murderers. Yesterday they were killing their
families. Maybe when they get out of prison or the insane asylums,
they can all join service organizations and drink, smoke and talk
about the war while planning bingo and pancake suppers.

Or, they can buy motorcycle gang attire and ride around Washington
pushing for new wars so others can die slowly like they did, like
their fathers did.

Is this how it really is?

When did America get the idea that the only way to be "safe" was to
make the entire world fear it? How did that work out for ancient
Rome? As soon as things got a bit dicey, money got tight, political
trouble set it, the barbarians descended on the Empire like
locusts. This is where the Dark Ages came from, you remember them, don't you?

When the barbarians sacked Rome in 476 AD, there was nobody left to
defend it. Everyone had gone, died off, whatever people do after
becoming useless.

The parallels between Rome and the United States are not minor ones,
not anymore. America has offended and alienated the entire
world. Our only hope is sinking hopelessly in debt to finance war
after war, all fought with armies that are crumbling around us.

Was this the plan all along? America is certainly an empire, albeit
a failed one, with troops stationed around the world. I still love
joking with German friends how they have been occupied for 65
years. They are doing well by it, money to burn, prestige and vast
economic power while the United States sits, broke, broken and facing
continual rumors of civil war or Balkanization. You haven't heard
that? Listen to the news, what do you think all this means?

Who do we blame? Our entertainment industry has worked hard to
foster fear and hatred, to keep America on a permanent war
footing. Of course that same industry is controlled by a small
nuclear power in the Middle East with delusional dreams of world conquest.

They control the news also, prettymuch all of it. We can't forget
this factor, not at all. We aren't just going crazy on our own, we
have professional psychotics helping us every step along the way.

Are we simply supposed to stop fighting for America? Maybe is that a
wrong question. Were we really fighting "for" America at all? David
Ray Griffin, in his new book, Cognitive Infiltration, makes a case
that the "attacks" America supposedly responded to after 9/11
couldn't possibly have come from the Arab world. Imagine, if you
will, December 7, 1941. Buy Griffin's book. Read it. "Grow a pair."

What if, after the Pearl Harbor attack, the US invaded Canada?

This was 9/11.

What can we expect? Billions have been spent, thankfully not our tax
dollars, but privately, to get Americans to hate Islam and to force
Islam to fear and hate America. Thank that same "special country"
for this. They have a plan. It involves America "going away" as
soon as possible. It seems to be working very well for them.

What America can't expect is leadership, civilian, military,
economic, anything. That time is gone. We are in an age of
gangsterism, we don't build, we steal, we don't defend, we torture
and brutalize.

How do you know if you are part of it? Do you watch the news? Are
you enraged because they tell you to be enraged or are you enraged
because you know you are being lied to?

What is the difference between a human and a beast? Is there a
difference at all? At one time, some saw religion as the defining
difference except that half the killing, maybe most of the killing in
our history has been driven by religion. Certainly the moral
meltdown we now suffer is a result of the "Talibanization" of Christianity.

A majority of Americans who consider themselves "religious" favor
torturing innocent people. No, these are the poll results. You
can't make up stuff like this. This was how witch hunts
worked. What we used to do here in America, we used "faith based"
initiatives to test the guilt of suspects. If you held a guilty
person under water, they would survive. Then you burned them alive.

If you held an innocent person under water, they drowned, dead….

This is how we work now, exactly. This is what Americans, at least
those who profess religious affiliations, demand of our government
and they are getting it. Was that marriage between Christian Zionism
and our military leadership fostered by Cheney and Rumsfeld, really
meant to be more a political ploy than real religion, a mistake or
were things supposed to end up like they have?

This is who we have become.

How is it working out for you?

.

The legacy of John Lennon

The legacy of John Lennon

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/sep/26/john-lennon-at-70-beatles

Next month, the ex-Beatle would have been 70. Here, a writer who knew
him in his prime reflects on Lennon's enduring importance and how he
might have reacted to events since his death ­ from 9/11 to Britpop
and the advent of Twitter

Richard Williams
26 September 2010

Poor John. He's got old Macca on one side, fruitlessly trying to
reverse the hallowed songwriting credits to make it clear, in case
there were any doubt, that he wrote "Eleanor Rigby" and forever
claiming (with some justification) that, of the two creative pillars
of the Fab Four, he was the one who was really interested in the
avant garde. On the other, there's old Yoko, flogging off his image
to motor manufacturers and fountain pen makers and adding ludicrous
credits to his albums (on my CD of Rock 'n' Roll, the oldies album
John recorded in 1973, with and without Phil Spector, it actually
says: "Production personally supervised by Yoko Ono").

And in the middle there's Julian, his son by his first wife, already
­ can you believe this? ­ older by seven years than John was when
Mark Chapman fired the fatal shots, emerging to complain about the
cost of collecting memorabilia connected with a father for whose
prolonged absences during his childhood a legacy reputed to be £20m
appears to be, understandably enough, scant compensation.

In two weeks' time, on 9 October, John would have been 70. On 8
December, it will have been 30 years since his death. The remains of
the record industry he helped create, its pistons still warm from the
fevered launch of the Beatles Remasters series and the Beatles: Rock
Band video game a year ago, is cranking itself up again. Next week,
the troubled EMI Music will put on a happy face and issue not just
remastered versions of eight existing Lennon solo albums, but a bunch
of new compilations and boxes, squeezing yet more blood from the
carcass of the group whose phenomenal success brought it the
prosperity that has subsequently been frittered away.

Yoko has been heavily involved in all this activity. How could she
not be when a line on the cover of all the reissues of her late
husband's work states: "The copyright in these sound recordings is
owned by Yoko Ono Lennon/EMI Records Ltd"? Much more satisfactory, of
course, to have it owned by the widow and the original record company
than by some bunch of hustlers to whom the Rat Pack represented the
pinnacle of 20th-century popular culture, which is what happened to
the Rolling Stones' early recordings. If barrel-scraping has to be
done, then better that the royalty cheques should be paid into a bank
account bearing the name Lennon.

It was Yoko, however, who agreed to let an advertising agency working
for the PSA Peugeot Citroën group buy the rights to a clip from an
interview given by John in 1968, for use in a television commercial
earlier this year. "Once a thing's been done, it's been done," the
long-haired Lennon is saying. "So why all this nostalgia? I mean, for
the 60s and 70s, you know, looking backwards for inspiration, copying
the past. How's that rock'n'roll? Do something of your own. Start
something new. Live your own life." The message: buy our "anti-retro"
car, the Citroën DS3.

Except he was actually saying something else. A YouTube detective
posted the original footage, shot by the BBC, in which John is
actually talking about reading Sherlock Holmes in Tahiti before
writing his own book, A Spaniard in the Works. The new words are from
a different source and to anyone familiar with Lennon's speaking
voice, it seems that they have been slightly slowed down to create an
approximate match with the film.

Sean Lennon, his younger son, apologised for that one. Well, sort of.
He tweeted in defence of his mother: "She did not do it for money.
Has to do w hoping to keep dad in public consciousness. No new LPs,
so TV ad is exposure to young. Having just seen ad I realise why
people are mad. But intention was not financial, was simply wanting
to keep him out there in the world."

Pull the other one, Sean. This is a man, your father, whose
Wedgwood-style lavatory, originally installed at Tittenhurst Park,
Ascot, his last home in Britain, was auctioned for £9,500 last month.

The last album he autographed ­ Double Fantasy, inscribed at the
request of Mark Chapman a couple of hours before the 25-year-old
returned to the Dakota building to make himself famous ­ went for
$525,000 seven years ago. One of last year's most successful British
films was Nowhere Boy, Sam Taylor-Wood's scrupulous and sensitive
account of his early days. John Lennon's name is hardly one that
needs to be artificially hoisted into the public gaze.

But that hasn't stopped his widow exploiting it in fields that have
nothing to do with music. In the last couple of weeks, the Montblanc
company has been promoting a John Lennon special-edition fountain
pen, with a clip shaped like a guitar fretboard. The newspaper ad has
a CND symbol in the background and a slogan: "To John, with love." An
earlier pen was dedicated to the memory of Mahatma Gandhi, with a
picture of the spiritual leader engraved on its 16-carat gold nib.

John would have laughed at that, wouldn't he? Perhaps with scorn,
certainly with amusement at the incongruity of the project. But only
diehard Beatles fans seem to be upset. The rest of the world accepts
it as part of a new culture in which everything ­ particularly if it
evokes a set of desirable values ­ is for sale, everything is
negotiable, everything is there to be sampled and remixed and put to
some new purpose.

Here is one of the many aspects of life that have changed since
Lennon celebrated his 40th and final birthday. And here are some of
the other things he missed. Madonna. Mike Tyson. Princess Diana, more
or less from start to finish. Beverly Hills Cop I, II and III. The
flowering of Thatcherism. The internet. The second summer of love.
The Blair Witch Project. Grunge. The fall of the Berlin Wall. Nice
girls wearing tattoos. Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel
Craig as 007. David Beckham. Gangsta rap. There's Something About Mary.

Dunblane and Columbine. World music. Tim Henman. The Oklahoma bombing
and 9/11. The neocons and New Labour. Radiohead. The Asian tsunami.
The iPod. Rom-coms and reality TV. Mamma Mia!. Auto-Tuning.

And Twitter, of course, to bring it right up to date. He would have
loved Twitter. He was an inveterate sender of postcards, often
decorated with doodled self-portraits, and he wasn't the sort of
person to write a letter and then put it away in a desk drawer
overnight before inspecting it the next morning and removing anything
that might have been set down in haste. His generosity and his venom
were equally impulsive in their nature and second thoughts didn't
really interest him.

I happened to be there when he was learning to type, in the suite he
and Yoko occupied in the St Regis hotel in New York as a temporary
accommodation after making the move to the US in the autumn of 1971.
He was sitting on their bed with a small portable machine on his lap,
tapping away. One of the things he wanted to be able to do was type
letters to newspapers.

My paper, the Melody Maker, subsequently became the recipient of
several lengthy broadsides, usually disputing assertions made in
interviews by Paul McCartney or George Martin. He saw everything and
let nothing go without comment. Twitter's immediacy, and its
encouragement of the urge to respond, would have suited him down to
the ground. Once Sean had shown him how, you wouldn't have been able
to get him off it.

But in what other ways would he have adapted to a changing world, had
he not turned in response to Chapman's call that night on the corner
of West 72nd Street and Central Park West, after being driven home
from the Record Plant with a set of cassettes containing the fruits
of that evening's work, his life about to come to an end only months
after his re-emergence from half a decade of reclusion?

He was making music again, and although the songs on Double Fantasy
could not match the riveting originality of "Norwegian Wood",
"Strawberry Fields Forever", "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" or "I Am the
Walrus", they were good enough to suggest that, once he had worked
himself back into the groove, there would be better to come.

A new version of the album is among the latest set of reissues,
stripped back to the original basic rhythm tracks and unadorned
vocals and making it even more apparent that with these last songs,
including "(Just Like) Starting Over", "Watching the Wheels", "I'm
Losing You" and "Woman", he was consciously harking back to the music
he loved in his early teenage years.

Rockabilly and doo-wop provide the sturdy structures, with a nod to
the skiffle of the Quarrymen as he sings "Long, long lost John" over
the fade of "I'm Losing You", in a deliberate echo of Lonnie
Donegan's version of a song borrowed from Woody Guthrie.

Now, too, we can hear him prefacing "(Just Like) Starting Over" with:
"This one's for Gene and Eddie and Elvis… and Buddy!" This was Lennon
excavating his roots and he might have carried on with that for a
while. He would certainly have admired the way some of his
contemporaries make new music while retaining the integrity of the
sounds that first inspired them. The chances are, however, that ­
after effectively missing out on punk and the new wave, which
happened during his voluntary engagement with house-husbandry while
Yoko worked at consolidating their fortune ­ he would have found a
way to engage with more innovative sounds, rather than settling for
the kind of traditional AOR textures that were added in the final
stages of the production of Double Fantasy.

Not that he was ever a completely dauntless adventurer. For all his
endorsement of Yoko's wailing, he cheerfully confessed that he had
been unable to get through even the first side of John Coltrane's
Ascension, one of the key works of the 60s avant garde. But having
enlisted Phil Spector's help in 1969 to turn the reverb-laden sound
of Elvis Presley's Sun records into the pared-back starkness of "Cold
Turkey", "Instant Karma" and the John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band album,
he might have found a way to perform the same trick for a second time
at a later stage in his life. There is always an audience for primal,
bare-bones rock'n'roll, something for which he had an instinctive feel.

In the Britpop wars, he would probably have preferred Blur's
originality to Oasis's revivalism ("So why all this nostalgia? I
mean, for the 60s and 70s, you know, looking backwards for
inspiration, copying the past. How's that rock'n'roll?"). It's easy
to imagine him enthusing over Radiohead and the White Stripes.

Contemporary R&B would have been another matter. To Lennon, R&B was
James Ray's "If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody", Chuck Berry's
"You Can't Catch Me" and the Miracles' "You Really Got a Hold on Me".
In a limo ride across London one evening in 1970, he was full of
praise for Lee Dorsey's "Everything I Do Gonh Be Funky" and Ann
Peebles's "I Can't Stand the Rain". This was the real stuff, the raw
sound that had made a Liverpool teenager's heart beat a little faster.

His views on Auto-Tuning would have been interesting. Jack Douglas,
the producer of Double Fantasy, in which John's songs were alternated
with Yoko's, remembered barring them from each other's sessions, not
least because John was unable to restrain himself from pointing out
when Yoko was singing flat. But he was a big fan of something called
ADT ­ automatic double tracking, a device which split a singer's
voice in two to create the sort of effect that distinguished many pop
records in the late 50s and early 60s.

If it made him sound like the records he admired, it was OK.

He had been away from England for almost a decade when he died and
visitors from the old country were often regaled with his yearning
for Chocolate Olivers. London certainly missed him. As long as the
Beatles were headquartered at 3 Savile Row, with its parade of
bizarre hangers-on, the city seemed to have a centre of vibrancy and
an unfailing source of headlines. New York turned out to be a better
place to live, but he had been bruised by the battle to obtain his
residency permit and by the discovery that J Edgar Hoover's FBI had
been watching him as a result of his association with the Yippies and
the Black Panthers.

The brief flowering of a well-meaning but incoherent political
consciousness seemed to have gone dormant in the last phase of his
life; he had become suspicious of those who arrived proclaiming high
ideals but wanted only to exploit his celebrity and perhaps grab some
of his loot.

According to his most recent biographer, Philip Norman, his 40th
birthday found him growing "increasingly nostalgic about his
homeland, pining for British institutions and values he had so
angrily spurned".

There was talk of returning on the QE2 for a voyage that would end
with the ship docking in the Mersey. He even speculated that he and
Yoko would spend their later years, after Sean had left home, living
among the artists in St Ives. Perhaps he would have resumed the
engagement with art that began at Liverpool College of Art in 1957,
or found time to explore once again the love of surrealistic wordplay
that crackled through In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works.

No doubt, some version of those notional events would have taken
place. If all other lures had failed, the death in 1991 of his Aunt
Mimi ­ the loving but stern Mimi Smith, his mother's sister, who
brought him up from childhood through adolescence ­ would have drawn
him to Poole in Dorset, where she lived out her last years in a
bungalow paid for by a nephew who adored her despite that celebrated
early warning: "Music's all very well, John, but you'll never make a
living from it." Perhaps it was the formative supervision of the
disciplinarian Mimi that gave him the habit of putting his trust, not
always wisely, in strong, self-assured characters: Yoko, Spector, and
the New York hustler Allen Klein, whom he brought in after Brian
Epstein's death to sort out the Beatles' affairs, to McCartney's disgust.

And then there was George Harrison's death in 2001. Lennon and
McCartney eventually settled their differences, major and minor, but
as long as the four of them were still alive John always stood in the
way of what he believed would have been the inevitable anticlimax of
a public get-together with Paul, George and Ringo, even when implored
by Kurt Waldheim, the secretary-general of the United Nations, to
perform at a fundraiser for the survivors of the Cambodian genocide.

Loyalty to Yoko surely played a part in turning him against a project
that would inevitably have reminded his audience of how much they
missed the old relationships between the four musicians, before the
arrival of powerful women pulled the two principal figures into a new
phase of their lives from which retreat became impossible. Whatever
else the future might have held, there would have been no Beatles reunion.

.

May Pang on Lennon

[2 articles]

LENNONYC premiere in NY- May Pang says "I'll re-write my book to correct this."

http://www.examiner.com/john-lennon-in-national/lennonyc-premiers-ny-may-pang-says-i-ll-re-write-my-book-to-correct-this

by Shelley Germeaux
September 27th, 2010

May Pang promises to re-write her book about the time she spent with
John Lennon after seeing the premiere of "LENNONYC" at the New York
Film Festival Saturday night.

LENNONYC, the PBS film for American Masters that has been widely
promoted (showing on PBS November 22) is a documentary about John
Lennon's New York years, where he lived from 1971until his murder in 1980.

Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, has strongly promoted the documentary; and
the film's director, Michael Epstein, conceded that while she did not
technically have "editorial control", she was "there" while he made
the film---which might explain what we've heard.

LENNONYC premiered at the New York Film Festival Saturday night, and
it was a gala affair attended by the full gamut of rock and roll as
well as "Lennon" royalty: Yoko Ono was guest of honor of course, and
also present were May Pang, Stevie Van Zandt, Josh Groban, David Peel
("The Pope Smokes Dope"), immigration attorney Leon Wildes, members
of Elephants Memory, Hugh McCracken, renown Beatle artist Shannon,
Double Fantasy producer Jack Douglas, photographer Bob Gruen, and many more.

The film consists of many interviews of people who knew John and Yoko
during those incredibly eventful New York years. Consider what
occurred..John's radical period erupted here when he met the likes of
Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman and David Peel. He took up with Elephant's
Memory and began singing the protest songs that landed on "Some Time
In New York City", a double album that bombed the charts in 1972.

Deportation proceedings were begun against John, technically because
of his England drug bust, but it was pretty clear that Nixon's people
wanted him out of the U.S. The "Lost Weekend" of 1973-74 came next,
when John ran off with his cute and trustworthy assistant May Pang
and went to LA. He went on some benders with notorious partying L.A.
rock stars but produced some of the best solo material of his life
and reunited with his son Julian, at Pang's behest. When that all
came to an end and John went back home to Yoko, they had a son, Sean
on John's 35th birthday in 1975, after which he hung up his guitar
and became a househusband. In 1980 he and Yoko put out Double
Fantasy, his last album. And then he was gone--just as he was making
his big comeback, with promises of touring.

Yoko Ono is featured heavily throughout the film, I'm told, with
photographer Bob Gruen (who took the famous NYC t-shirt photo)
running a close second. Oddly enough, close confidant Elliott Mintz
(who did the radio program "The Lost Lennon Tapes" way back when)
only gets a couple of minutes. He comes in last place pretty much,
with May Pang's little segment where she talks about grocery shopping
with John and eating caviar. Other heavy-hitters in the film include
Double Fantasy producer Jack Douglas, and drummer Jim Keltner.

May Pang talks about LENNONYC

May's reaction (see Roger Friedman's report also) basically dashes
any hopes that this contains much new material or new slant on
Lennon's life…think back to the Lennon Musical, the Imagine film, and
The U.S. vs. John Lennon. One person was overheard afterwards saying
"Isn't it supposed to be about LENNON? It's all about Yoko."

If you've read Pang's prior books, Loving John, Instamatic Karma, and
her many interviews (see some of ours here), you won't be surprised
to hear that she was very unhappy when she came out of the film. The
whole ordeal was upsetting enough to cause her to say, "I'm going to
do a complete re-write of my book again. Completely. I need to set
history straight."

Pang was invited to the premier (after all, she's in the film), but
was not invited onto the "red carpet" for photos, as that would not
have been cool. As John Lennon's girlfriend during 1973-74 during
John's separation from Yoko, she and Yoko are not exactly best friends.

The first words out of her mouth after the show were bristling:
"Lies", she said, "so much of it is the same old lie. No matter that
I have published my book (Instamatic Karma) with photos, proving that
things happened differently. It's the same old spin."

Ironically, May was seated next to photographer Bob Gruen, who took
the famous photos of John with the New York City T-shirt on her roof.
(see more below) "So many times during the film," she said, "I turned
to look at Bob and said out loud, 'that's a lie…that's a lie.' And
Bob looked straight ahead and ignored me. In fact, so many people are
buying into the same old stories. The people featured in the
interviews all have jumped on the Yoko Ono bandwagon."

What's the fuss about?

Pang contests the way that the "Lost Weekend", the time period she
was with John, is being portrayed (1973-74) in LENNONYC. Since the
publication of her books, which contain enough photographic evidence
to prove what she's saying, she perhaps hoped that the documentary
might reflect her story a little better. But, she says, "nothing's
changed." Here's a short list:

"Lost Weekend" is overblown: The documentary continues the legend
about how drunk John was "all the time" in L.A. and that he was
always begging Yoko to come home, but Yoko would reply "You're not
ready." May says, "Paul (McCartney) revealed in Many Years From Now
that Yoko went to London to ask him to come out to L.A. and talk John
into coming back to her. And no­he was not always hollering her
name. They spoke on the phone all the time. And he wasn't always kind either."

The Phil Spector sessions were also brought up, and Lennon is
portrayed as the one who came to the studio with a huge bottle of
vodka every night. "It was Phil carrying guns and liquor, not
John! Bob Gruen was never in L.A. and we only saw Jack Douglas there
once or twice, and that was it. They are not experts about that time period."

May points out how productive he was musically, producing Walls &
Bridges, which included the #1 hit, "Whatever Gets You Through the Night".

Date of John & Yoko's reunion:

"Elton John says that John and Yoko got back together after the
performance at the Madison Square Garden show (November 28, 1974),"
May said. "He said he couldn't remember how Yoko got the tickets.
John and I got her the tickets ourselves. He knew that." (Elton John
is Sean Lennon's godfather.)

While John and Yoko did chat back stage together and have a nice
reunion of sorts, May recalls, "John and Yoko did not 'get back
together' that night. John and I continued to live together until
February of 1975. We took Julian to Disneyworld over Christmas break.
That's all in my book."

In the film, Yoko sent John and May out to L.A.

May: "No she didn't. John made that decision on his own. She didn't
even know we were going."

The famous NYC photo session and t-shirt

In the film, Bob Gruen says he went to "John's apartment to take
pictures" with no reference to the fact that May was living there
too. (He is referring to John and May's apartment that they got
together.) May clarifies, "Those pictures were taken on our roof.
This was where we saw the UFO that summer."

Gruen then says he asked John, "Do you still have that shirt I gave
you?" (referring to the iconic NYC shirt) According to Bob, John went
straight into the apartment to retrieve it.

May remembers otherwise: "Bob took that shirt out of his bag! When
we went to L.A. we took very little with us, and John didn't have it.
When we came back, we went straight to a hotel and then to my
apartment. So there's no way the shirt could have been there. Only
after that photo session did John wear the shirt a few times (most
notably on Ringo's Goodnight Vienna album photos)."

John assured her that "the truth would come out."

Wistfully, May recalls a time after their breakup, when John came to
see her. He said "Don't worry, May, the truth will come out about us
one day." "Because at the time," May acquiesced, "I understood that
John had to 'stick to the story' that he and Yoko had agreed upon. I
thought after his death" she continued, "none of this pettiness would
matter, but it only got worse."

This is the third time in less than two weeks that May has been in
the same company as Yoko Ono. First for Julian's photography exhibit,
"Timeless", secondly for the "Nowhere Boy" premiere along with the
Quarrymen, and now for this premiere as well.
--

Pang will be in New York on October 9th­Lennon's 70th birthday­for
the big free outdoor screening of "LennonNYC" at Central Park
Summerstage for 5000 people. Ono will be in Iceland.

--------

May Pang comments on Nowhere Boy premiere with Quarrymen - "fantastic job"

http://www.examiner.com/john-lennon-in-national/john-lennon-film-nowhere-boy-premiers-ny-with-a-performance-by-the-quarrymen

by Shelley Germeaux
September 27th, 2010

Nowhere Boy, the film about John Lennon's youth, premiered in New
York Friday night at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center. (Watch
trailer here) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6Km9L1Sqd0

The original Quarrymen, the band that John formed during that time
period, also performed a few of the old skiffle numbers that they did
with Lennon. (Read our review of Nowhere Boy here)

Nowhere Boy, written by Sam Taylor-Woods, starring Aaron Johnson,
focuses on the relationship between the two women who fought over him
while he grew up--his mum Julia, and his aunt Aunt Mimi, who forced
Julia to hand little John over to her. During the film, while this
battle is going on, we watch as John gets in continual trouble at
school over his antics, and meets the boys who would feature in his
first band. His meeting with Paul McCartney changes everything, and
the Beatles are born. Julia is killed by a drunk driver as she leaves
Mimi's house, and John's world is shattered. His band gives him a
place to put his pent up anger and creative talent.

The original members of the Quarrymen are doing several gigs in the
U.S. to honor John's 70th birthday and are helping to kick-off the
premiere of the movie that features their beginnings. Guitarist Rod
Davis, guitarist and vocalist Len Garry, and drummer Colin Hanton are
pictured at left with May Pang. It was the first time they've met.

May Pang has been busy this last week, attending events honoring
Lennon: Julian Lennon's Timeless art exhibition, the New York Film
Festival's premiere of LENNONYC, and this one.

May reported that this premiere of Nowhere Boy was definitely yet
another "who's who" event. She saw Harvey Weinstein, Billy J Kramer,
Willie Niles, Stevie Van Zandt, Ken Dashow, and Mark Hudson. "There
were about 800 people in attendance", she said, "it was quite packed."

What was her impression of the film?

"I had some concerns, but overall, they did a fabulous job telling
the story." Her concerns had to do with the fact that Cynthia Powell,
John's first wife and mother of Julian, was not even featured at all.
And she was very prominent in John's life after 1957, from art school days.

Her impression of Mimi (Kristin Scott-Thomas): "a little too unlike
her….she was much stronger than what was portrayed. Consider for
example that she refused to go to John and Cynthia's wedding because
she was so angry at them for it. Uncle George on the other hand, well
John was very fond of him."

What about Julia (Ann Marie-Duff)? "From what I understand about her,
she was not nearly as flighty as the way she's portrayed here. I mean
I'm watching this and saying, wow, they've made her so flighty it's
like she needs a net thrown over her! And the scene where she and
Mimi are sitting in the chair having tea and everything's A-OK?
Right! I don't believe it. It couldn't have happened that way."

May relayed an interesting memory of receiving a guitar lesson from
John in 1974. She said, "John said, 'I wanna teach you Ain't That A
Shame. (Fats Domino). It was the first song mum taught me on banjo.'
And in the movie, it was a different song she taught him. They never
even played Fats Domino in the movie! But that's what he told me."

.

Glenn Beck attacks the entire left

Show Me Your Friends

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,601643,00.html

by Glenn Beck
September 29, 2010

GLENN BECK, HOST: Hello, America.

I ­ I'm glad you're here tonight. And I want to have a ­ I want to
have a conversation with you, but I want to have a reasoned
conversation because, quite honestly, I feel stupid when I say
communist, I mean ­ two years ago, I didn't think that ­ I mean, I
wouldn't have believed half of this stuff. I don't want to believe it now.

During the election 2008, some people were questioning whether or not
Barack Obama were a socialist. There were some strong evidence, his
past association and his own words:

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, 2001: I think that there was a tendency to lose track
of the political and community organizing and activities on the
ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power
through which you bring about redistributive change.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: Everybody's so pinched that business is bad for everybody. And
I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BECK: OK. Redistributive change. There's also his voting record that
rated farther left than socialist Bernie Sanders.

Now, don't take my word for it ­ I mean, this is from the annual
National Journal ranking. Here, most liberal senator in 2007, Barack
Obama, past the socialists, left of the socialists. That's pretty
good hint that this guy is a radical.

Well, what was the reaction from the left? Deny, deny, deny. That's
crazy. He's not a radical. He's mainstream. He's not a socialist,
never, where would you possibly get that idea?

Well, then he was elected and immediately, Newsweek celebrated with
this title. I remember holding that up on TV and saying, We are? I
thought nobody was a socialist. I thought that was wrong to call
somebody a socialist. I thought it was politically incorrect.

Then ­ then the president started to govern, and the more he
governed, the more he ­ I mean, quacked like a duck, walked like a
duck. And so, people started pointing that out.

And Obama's reaction? Well, of course, that's crazy, over the top.
It's dangerous. Listen:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

HARRY SMITH, CBS NEWS: In the kindest of terms, you're sometimes
referred to, out in America, as a socialist.

OBAMA: I think that when you listen to Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, it's ­

SMITH: It's beyond that.

OBAMA: ­ it's pretty apparent and it's troublesome.

You're not mopping fast enough. That's a socialist mop.

(END VIDEO CLIPS)

BECK: America, I want to make this very clear to you: This is ­ this
has become ­ this started about Barack Obama and the more I got into
it and the more I saw this network that he had cobbled together ­ no,
no, no ­ that had been cobbled together and he was brought in, it is
­ this isn't about Barack Obama. This isn't about the next election.
This is about our country and this has been going on for a very long time.

Progressives in the Republican Party are socialist-lite. They're
progressive, big government. The Democrats have lost their soul.
They're not even the Democrats anymore. And it's time for Americans
to share that with their neighbors and make sure this election they understand.

I don't think you're going to be able to stop what's coming. But you
at least have a fighting chance. If we just face the truth, it's not
about the president.

Now, even The New York Times was asking the president if he were a
socialist. After the interview, he later called The Times back to
clarify his answer. This is what he said:

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

OBAMA: It's hard for me to believe you're entirely serious about that
socialist question. We've actually been operating in a way that is
entirely consistent with free-market principles and that some of the
same folks who are throwing the word "socialist" around can't say the same.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

BECK: OK. The same people that are using the word socialist ­ well,
he found that hard to take seriously, yet, he's to the left of a
socialist, Bernie Sanders.

Bernie doesn't have ­ I actually have respect ­ I disagree with
everything Bernie Sanders says, but I have respect for him. He at
least admits it.

And I'm sorry, but the "George Bush started it" thing ­ while true ­
doesn't get you off the hook. No one is forcing you to continue it, Mr.
President.

So, what is it? Are you a socialist or not? Will you denounce
socialism as a failure that it is ­ or not?

Well, he'll never answer that question. No one in the press will even
ask that question. I've got a phone here. You know who has the phone
­ do you know who has this number on this phone? The only one that
has that phone is the White House ­ they have the phone number.

Have they called? Never. Never.

We have been the number two show in cable news now, I don't know how
long. Why wouldn't you ­ why wouldn't you show the evidence? Why
wouldn't you just come out and say this is ridiculous, I denounce it?

Well, they can't. We've shown you their words ­ not my words ­ their
words. And I tell you every night, do not take my word for it. You go
and look these things up yourself. You've seen the policies. We've
shown you his friends.

Let me ask you this, if your child was hanging around with stoners
and druggies all day, would you not question that maybe your child
had a problem? Maybe your child was a stoner or a druggie? Would you
at least be concerned about a circle of friends of influence around
your child? You should be if you're a decent parent. "Show me your
friends and I'll show you your future," should come out of your mouth.

You can judge somebody by the company that they keep, not by the
stray person here and there that they might have crossed paths with,
but the people that inspire them ­ and all the president's friends
just happen to be anti-free market Marxists.

I never ever thought this would be the case in our country. I mean, I
­ OK, maybe one gets in, but where are all of these people coming from?
True Marxism I never thought would be a legitimate movement in this
country, but it is ­ and it is being completely dismissed and
overlooked intentionally by the media today.

But there was a barrage of questions from the media ­ oh, it was like
shock-and-awe when we did 8.28. Oh, the questions never stopped.
Who's paying for it? What is the involvement of the NRA? Where is the
money going? It better not be political. Who's planning all of this?
Why on this date ­ on and on and on and on, the ridiculous number of
questions for months.

Well, last night when I got home, I went in and I read my e-mail and
I read Twitter and Facebook, and it came to a fevered pitch. Why did
it come to a fevered pitch last night? Because here I am, I am
pointing out that the Communist Party USA is involved with the left's
big counter-8.28 rally that's coming up this weekend. It's called One Nation.

The e-mail I received was phenomenal, filled with vitriol and hatred,
called a liar, all kinds of just awful things. I'm assuming these
people have the Internet because they e-mailed me. So, why didn't
they do their own homework ­ why wouldn't they follow my own dictate
to you? Do not take my word for it. Find the question with boldness
and find it out yourself.

And what I told you to do last night is go to CPA ­ CPUSA's Website,
Communist Party USA. Radical ideas ­ you go there. Now, just a couple
of clicks, you click there, right on their front page, One Nation
join the movement today, and you will see the Young Communist League
is organizing for One Nation Working Together in the rally in D.C.

[For more information on the groups endorsing/participating in the
rally, visit onenationworkingtogether.org/partners and review the list]

Now, you go down, got it? You go down this page, and you click on One
Nation Working Together, takes you right to the deal. Now, here are
the groups endorsing 10.02.10. This page reads more like an FBI
most-wanted list.

If you are a Marxist, you're free to be one. I strongly disagree with
you and I will fight you with every last fiber I have on the
battlefield of ideas. I think you're an enemy to ­ of the republic
and you know you are or you wouldn't be cowering like little girls in
the shadows.

Every president until now has echoed this objection. Every single
president from George Washington to now has recognized enemies that
are within. They have recognized that the communists are a problem.

But this president is doing the opposite. And do not the take my word
for it ­ question with boldness. Look at some of the 300-plus groups
associated with this rally that is trying to recreate the image of 8.28.

Now, this is a rally that is supported by Charlie Rangel and Howard
Dean and Obama's own group, Obama's own group of Organizing for
America. They sent out this e-mail. This is Obama's group, Organizing
for America, promoting this event.

The event organizers were so excited that they posted this on their
Web site. Obama ­ where is it? "Obama organizing group pushes liberal
march next weekend."

Remember, 8.28: no politics. Here's the White House, the biggest
progressive demonstration in decades.

So, who's coming? Well, let me show you ­ because there's a lot of
the usual suspects here, but you really need to know who everybody is.

First of all, Green For all. Who is that? That, of course, is our
communist revolutionary friend 9/11 truther, Van Jones.

And then there is Sojourners. This is, of course, Jim Wallis, the
Marxist preacher for the president.

And then you have SEIU, who is the former member of SDS, who is also
now under investigation by the FBI for ­ I'm sorry, Andy Stern is
under investigation with the FBI for corruption.

Then, you have, of course, the National Council of La Raza. La Raza,
what is La Raza? Translation: the race.

And then Color of Change ­ this is just another one of the communist
Van Jones' organizations. In fact, this is the ­ this is the first
organization that boycotted this show. We have four. This guy's
organization has also been boycotting the show. We have four
organizations that are boycotting this program right now.

Van Jones also. Before he started this one, he got involved in this
one. He did STORM. I've asked you to read about STORM. Again, don't
take my word for it that the guy is a communist, read STORM, a group,
a communist group, a communist revolutionary group ­ according to
their manual that says STORM members brought experience in militant
street tactics, revolutionary agitation and coalition-building. Oh,
coalition-building, like One Nation Working Together. OK.

And then you have the National Organization of Women. You also have
Code Pink, Women for Peace.

Code Pink ­ remember, this is the group that had ties to the flotilla
that eventually attacked Israel that also has ties to Hamas and
William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, Weather Underground members that
blew things up.

And then you have, of course, Planned Parenthood, which was started
by racist Margaret Sanger, who just ­ Planned Parenthood, all they
were trying to do was just get rid some of the undesirables through eugenics.

There are too many progressive groups to count. There's Progress
Ohio, Progress Congress Action Fund, Progressive Democrats of
America, Progressive Democrats of America, New York and New York City chapter.

And then there is the Committee of Correspondents for Democracy and
Socialism, the Democratic Socialists of America, the Chicago
Democratic Socialists of America, the Detroit Democratic Socialists
of America, the New York City Democratic Socialists of America ­ I
mean, the list goes on and on and on.

But it is absolutely inconceivable that a reporter asks the
president, "Are you a socialist?"

Do you know what a democratic socialist is? When the former Soviet
Union fell apart, they were given a choice: We can have fundamental
change of the Soviet Union or we can remain communists and then we'll
have a riot in the streets. The communists, like Vladimir Putin, took
off his uniform, removed his gun, burned his communist card and
became a democratic socialist. It's communist, without the uniform and the gun.

So, look who else? We have the Communist Party USA standing with this
rally this weekend.

I'd like to say something here. We get blamed whenever one person ­
one person ­ shows up at any Tea party with one sign that somebody
perceives as crazy or over-the-top or racist, one person. They have
the communists ­ the communists as an endorser on their own Web site
and nobody says a word?

But it only gets worse from there. They also have the Peace and
Freedom Party. That one is a great organization. Sounds great, peace
and freedom ­ who's not for that? But they are the same party that
nominated as their presidential candidate, this guy in 2004. His
name, Leonard Peltier. Peltier kind of had a hard time campaigning at
the time because he was in prison for murder. He just slaughtered two
FBI agents back in 1975. But who hasn't done that?

Then there is International ANSWER ­ do I have an International
ANSWER's? I don't have International ANSWER's magnet, didn't have ­
we're running ­ we're running a business here, we don't have that
many magnets. This International ANSWER is an anti-war group with
close ties to the Workers World Party. Workers world unite, what?
Yes, I heard that from Andy Stern and this guy and this guy and this
guy, isn't that weird?

But the Workers World Party was a revolutionary Marxist Leninist
party founded in the 1950s and they're still kicking. They've sought
to link the Palestinian clause with the other anti-colonialists, and
anti-occupation clauses.

Anti-colonialists ­ anti-colonialists, where have I heard that? Oh,
that's right, anti-colonialists from Barack Obama in "Dreams From My
Father" ­ not "Dreams of My Father," "Dreams From My Father." That's
right, because his father was an anti-colonialist and so was his
grandfather, they hated Great Britain and so does he ­ I'm sure it's nothing.

Oh, also, International ANSWER has routinely supported terror groups
like Hezbollah and Hamas.

These are all groups that they're very, very proud of. Plus,
America's ­ Campaign for America's Future is involved. That's a great
one. They're focused on progressive transformation, funded by George Soros.

But there's also campaign, Campus Progress, which is also an offshoot
of the Center for American Progress funded by George Soros.

And then there is, of course, the Gray Panthers, they are great.
Age and youth in action, they quote, "work for social and economic
justice and peace for all people." They have a slogan and I want you
to remember the slogan, "People over profits."

"People over profits" ­ remember that slogan, will you?

Then we have the Courage Campaign ­ they're partners with MoveOn.org.
They push for full equality and progressive change in California,
like they ­ they need any more.

Then you have the Ya-Ya Network. The Ya-Ya Network ­ never heard of
that one? It's a social justice group active in the counter-military
recruitment movement. Don't know what that is? That means if somebody
is coming to recruit kids in your school, what do they do? They teach
your kids that the military is evil and what you should know about
military recruiting. You shouldn't be involved in that. They're a
bunch of hate mongers.

In fact, here's an ad. The Ya-Ya is now hiring youth organizers,
calling all organizers, leaders, rabble rousers, troublemakers and
rebels with a cause, must be 15 to 19 years old. Wow, troublemakers ­
troublemakers at 15 to 19 years old. What could they possibly want
with troublemakers between July 2010 through August 2011? What could
they possibly be looking for with teenager troublemakers? Giving them
jobs when this ­ when this Congress and this president have made sure
that 16 to 24 year olds just can't find a job.

And then, of course, there's Solidarity, you know, the one with the
red star as the logo. They were ­ they were, quote, "founded in 1986
by revolutionary socialists who stand for socialism from below."
Socialism from below ­ growing something from below, where have I
heard that? I remember where I've heard that before ­ play Van Jones, please:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VAN JONES, FORMER GREEN JOBS "CZAR": You handle the top-down, but
it's also bottom-up and inside out. Top down, bottom up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BECK: And inside out. I knew I had heard that before.

Solidarity wants the self-organization of the working class and
oppressed peoples. Oppressed peoples ­ oppressed peoples, where have
I heard that before? Oh, yes, the Weather Underground, oh and
Jeremiah Wright, too. Here he is, Jeremiah Wright. Did you know that
­ did you know that his church is also proud sponsor of the United
Church of Christ?

The National Jobs for All Coalition is also involved in this. They
just seek shared prosperity and more leisure time for you.

Then, of course, the Humanist Party is involved. They want to give
you the right to vote. No, well, not you, but you if you're a
non-citizen i.e., illegal in New York.

Also, the Student Action Labor Project ­ Student Action Labor, notice
is spells SLAP? Do you think it's a coincidence it's called SLAP?
Do you think it's a coincidence that it's called SLAP? This is part
of jobs for justice ­ SLAP engages student organizations and economic
justice campaigns.

And then there is Campus Camp Wellstone. This is a ­ this is a camp
for a labor program customized to meet the needs of individual unions.
They partner with progressive labor organizations to help build
infrastructure. So, basically, you can say that it's a labor camp.

And then there's Wishadoo. This looks so nice, be the missing piece.
This has everything to do with mutual benefits supporting and
sustaining the common good, shifting the traditional model of
profit-only corporations, mutual benefit cooperation. Yes, yes, yes.

This one is next. Oh ­ oh, I don't know. I mean, if you had any
doubts to what this is all about, wait until we come back, because
there's no way to deny these connections and so much more ­ next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BECK: OK. Here is Organizing for America ­ this is Barack Obama's
campaign organizing committee: "Friend, this Saturday, come to join
One Nation Working Together on the National Mall."

One Nation Working Together ­ well, who is working together? I have
been showing you the groups that endorse and One Nation has all of
this information on their website.

Do not take my word for it. Do your own homework. TiVo and record
this and look all these groups up and tell me you want the president
saying, "Come join."

This is Organizing for America. He's urging people to attend.

Now, here's a great one. The International Socialist Organization ­
they say socialism is not only possible, but worth fighting for: "The
ISO stands in the tradition of revolutionary socialist Karl Marx, V.I.
Lenin and Leon Trotsky, in the belief that workers themselves, the
vast majority of the population, are the only force that can lead a
fight to win a socialist society... be brought out from above, but
has to be won by the workers themselves."

I believe these people, when they say violent or when they say
revolution and they talk about Lenin and Trotsky, they mean the fist and force.

Now, I'd love to see the president come out and denounce socialism,
Marxists, communists, revolutionaries. Once, Mr. President, once ­
deny Marxism, communism, revolutionaries! Tell us you are against all of this!

Marxism is evil and the only thing that it is contributed to in the
history of mankind is mass graves. All of these groups ­ and the
president of the United States ­ want nothing short of fundamental
transformation of America. It's not about cleaning up corruption. It
is only a beginning ­ a beginning of a radical revolutionary Marxist land.

Do not allow them to get away with the lies. Do not allow them to say
that we are just One Nation Working Together. We're just trying to
put America back to work and putting America back together. These
people, a lot of them have fought their entire life to destroy America.

Now, I get the guilt by association. If there's a lone whacko in a
group that sneaks in, I get it. If you happen to be standing next to
somebody and get your picture of them and they're a whack job, you
don't know that necessarily.

But when you have the overwhelming majority of groups organizing this
event believe in Marxism ­ then, yes, we can. Yes, we can judge you
by the people that you keep company with.

Do you remember this from the last campaign?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CROWD: Yes, we can! Yes, we can! Yes, we can!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BECK: OK. Well, it didn't start on this campaign. Yes, we can!

No, no ­ a watchdog gave me this book. It's from 1981: "Yes, We Can."
And there's also in this book, right in the center of this book,
there is ­ here it is ­ "people before profits."

Where have I heard people before profits? Where have ­ oh, yes,
that's right. Here, people before profits, the Gray Panthers. The
Black Panthers ­ the Black Panthers met with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last week.

But this is just about "Yes We Can" ­ the book, by the way, look at
the top of it, please. "Strengthen the Fightback, Build the Communist
Party." The book is from the Communist Party USA ­ the same people I
sent you to that are still around and kicking today, that are proud
to be standing here in this crowd. You can package poison to look
like candy, but it is still poison.

Let me go back to Wishadoo. Where is Wishadoo on this? Here it is,
Wishadoo, be the missing piece. They want to shift from a profit-only
corporation to a mutual benefit cooperation system. Well, that brings
me to the last piece of the puzzle ­ America's union movement.

Union members, you're not the problem. You're not the problem, but
your silence is going to be the problem. You must not allow these
people to do this to America. They are killing you and us. You'll
just be the last one. You're being used.

AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka, let me tell you exactly what he said
recently. Here it is: "We need ­ we need to fundamentally restructure
our economy and reestablish the popular control over the private
corporation" ­ popular control ­ "which has distorted our economy and
hijacked our government. That's the long-term job, but we should start now."

Let me tell you something: I told you a year and a half ago, please
read this book. This is "Coming Insurrection," the Invisible Committee.
This is written in Europe and it is written by many of these people
who are their contacts over in Europe. These are the same people who
have written this book, the same kind of people.

They're not the literal people, but they have all the same context
and the same beliefs, and it is the most frightening ­ in this book,
it talks how you must destroy the family unit. It's evil. And they're
communists. They're democratic socialists.

Please, America, I beg of you, get down on your knees and you pray
not only for this country, for the republic ­ but you pray, quite
honestly, for the safety of this president. You can say whatever you
want about me, but my family and I, we pray every single night for
the safety of this president. I have met Secret Service agents that
work at the White House, I have begged them, "You keep this man safe."

Why? Why have I believed that this president is in danger? Look at
who he has cobbled together. These people are not fooling around.
Read their own words. They're not fooling around. What are you going
to say to these people on Saturday?

You can pretend for a while, but if you are not a radical socialist-
Marxist-communist, somebody who wants a revolution in America, if
you're not a radical revolutionary, then you've been leading some of
the most dangerous people in our country on, the coming insurrection.

Our president is in trouble and if he's not in trouble, if he's ­
because he's lying to either them or to us. If he's lying to them,
he's in trouble. If he's lying to us, we're in trouble. You can call
it wish-a-do. You can call it ya-ya. You can call it SLAP. You can
call it heaping pile of poo-poo, but it's still the same thing. It's
communism. It is evil.

George Soros has been at this game with these people for a very long
time. This is not about the president of the United States. They have
been going after our children under our nose for a very long time.

Gang, they are this close to winning ­ this close to winning.

And you can't win just through an election. You must know the whole
scope of it. You must ­ why do you think I say faith, hope and
charity? Why do you think I say take the 40 day and 40 night
challenge? Because God is the only one ­ the only one ­ that can
solve this problem.

We can stand in the door. We can put our foot in the door, but we
will not conquer this alone. We won't make it alone. But we can do
certain things.

Soros and the Tides Foundation have been trying to indoctrinate our
kids. Do you remember that stupid ­ what was the name of that ­ what
was the name of the film that they did? There it is ­ "Story of
Stuff." Remember this?

Well, I said at that time somebody else has to do it. And I waited
for somebody else to do it and they haven't, so we have. I like to
call it reverse propaganda on the Tides Foundation and our children.
I'll show it to you before the end of the hour.

Stay here.

.