Flashback Five - Best Vietnam War Movies

Flashback Five - Best Vietnam War Movies

by Robert Silva, blogs.amctv.com
May 27th 2011 12:01 AM

Decades later, the Vietnam War is still a charged subject for Americans. For better or worse, the conflict has served as rich source material for some of Hollywood's most memorable war movies. You can't make a a generic guys-on-a-mission story about Vietnam. Hell, no! Vietnam movies are mind-blowing experiences like Apocalypse Now and Platoon. Tomorrow, Sat., May 30, at 8PM | 7C, check out one prime example, Apocalypse Now Redux, on AMC, as part of War Heroes Weekend. It's the best Vietnam War movie there is. See what else ranks near the top in the list below.

1. Apocalypse Now (1979)
The panorama of napalmed jungle paired with the Doors' "The End" tells you Francis Ford Coppola's epic is no solemn drama about American foreign policy. Instead, the movie brilliantly turns the war into the stuff of trippy myth, mixing harsh realities with Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The descent into hell -- Martin Sheen's haunted search downriver to find Marlon Brando's Kurtz -- would drive anyone mad.

2. Platoon (1986)
Oliver Stone's pic is one of the more realistic portrayals of the average soldier's experience. (Being a Stone film, it winds up nearly as nightmarish as Apocalypse Now). A sweaty jungle atmosphere oozes off the screen, while viewers are overwhelmed by the paranoia of guerrilla warfare. The film's centerpiece is the tense near-massacre of a village, a horrifying illustration of how quickly any moment can deteriorate into savage violence.

3. Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Understandably, people tend to focus on the first half of the movie: a hilariously chilling psychodrama about basic training. Indeed, R. Lee Ermey based an entire acting career on his overheated drill instructor. But the second half, a recounting of combat, is hopelessly fragmented -- and that's the point. A series of disconnected scenes culminate in a deadly standoff between marines and a sniper that, when over, doesn't offer much meaning. Meaninglessness being the point.

4. The Deer Hunter (1978)
The movie ends with a game of Russian roulette, the perfect symbol for the insanity of war. Oddly, the film opens innocuously, at a Polish wedding where working-class buddies (Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, and John Cazale) bond before going to battle. Naturally, their lives are destroyed. In fact, The Deer Hunter is arguably the most shattering drama about Vietnam.

5. Rescue Dawn (2006)
A true rarity among Vietnam flicks, Rescue Dawn is strangely uplifting. Based on the true story of a pilot (Christian Bale) who crash-lands during a bombing raid then taken prisoner by the Vietcong, the film's power comes from Bale's eerily upbeat demeanor while being tortured and starved in a POW camp. He's incomprehensibly confident that he will escape! One of the more underrated Vietnam movies, and perhaps the most underrated performances by Bale.

Honorable Mentions

1. Hamburger Hill (1987): With a terrific ensemble, Hamburger Hill depicts soldiers endlessly fighting to take Hill 937. Dozens die and the victory is a Pyrrhic one.

2. Casualties of War (1989): Director Brian De Palma's object lesson in wartime morality finds Sean Penn and Michael J. Fox battling over whether kidnapping a Vietnamese girl as a sex slave for GIs is a good thing or not.

3. Good Morning,Vietnam (1987): Robin Williams is an armed-forces DJ who won't bow down to his superiors. Funny and sad, this movie really is Williams in top form.

4. Born on the Fourth of July (1989): Oliver Stone shifts his attention to the home front with this heartbreaking exploration of Ron Kovic (Tom Cruise), a man who went from gung-ho soldier to antiwar activist.

5. The Boys in Company C (1978): Among the first Vietnam War movies, this all-but-forgotten flick follows soldiers from basic training to an active duty that proves more than they bargained for.



Original Page: http://blogs.amctv.com/movie-blog/2011/05/best-vietnam-war-movies.php

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Malcolm and the music

Malcolm and the music

sfbayview.com | May 19th 2011

by Norman (Otis) Richmond aka Jalali

Malcolm X, loved then and now by the people, eulogized by Ossie Davis as our “Black Shining Prince” El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X) was assassinated 46 years ago, on Feb. 21, 1965, because of his attempt to internationalize the struggle of African people inside the United States. Malcolm was born 86 years ago on May 19, 1925. While U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama has acknowledged Kwanzaa, I doubt very seriously if he will show Malcolm the same love.

Manning Marable’s new volume, “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention,” has sparked a renewed interest and debate about Malcolm. Previous works like Karl Evanzz’ “The Judas Factor: The Plot to Kill Malcolm X,” Zak Kondo’s “Conspiracies: Unraveling the Assassination of Malcolm X” and Bill Sales’ “From Civil Rights to Black Liberation: Malcolm X and the Organization of Afro-American Unity” are all being reopened.

Contrary to popular belief, it was Malcolm, not Martin Luther King, who first opposed the war in Vietnam. Malcolm was the first American-born African leader of national prominence in the 1960s to condemn the war. He was later joined by organizations like the Revolutionary Action Movement, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. This was in the tradition of David Walker, Henry Highland Garnet, Martin R. Delaney, Bishop Henry McNeil Turner, W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Ella Baker and Paul Robeson.

Malcolm continued to link the struggles of African people worldwide. King came out against the Vietnam War in his famous April 4, 1967, speech at Riverside Church in New York City. Malcolm spoke against this war from the get-go.

Musicians have done their part to keep Malcolm’s legacy alive. Long before Spike Lee’s 1992 bio-pic, “X,” hip hop, house, reggae and R’n’B artists created music for Malcolm, high-life and great Black music (so-called jazz) artists first wrote and sang about Malcolm. The dance of Malcolm’s time was the “lindy hop,” and he was a master of it. “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” which Malcolm wrote with the assistance of Alex Haley, gives a vivid description of his love of dancing.

Years later, on a visit to the West African nation of Ghana, Malcolm spoke of seeing Ghanaians dancing the high-life. He wrote: “The Ghanaians performed the high-life as if possessed. One pretty African girl sang ‘Blue Moon’ like Sarah Vaughan. Sometimes the band sounded like Charlie Parker.” Malcolm’s impact on Ghana was so great that one folk singer created a song in his honor called “Malcolm Man.”

After Malcolm’s death, many jazz artists recorded music in his memory. Among them, Leon Thomas recorded the song, “Malcolm’s Gone” on his “Spirits Known and Unknown” album; saxophonist-poet-playwright Archie Shepp recorded the poem, “Malcolm, Malcolm Semper Malcolm,” on his Fire Music album. Shepp drew parallels between Malcolm’s spoken words and John Coltrane’s music.

Said Shepp: “I equate Coltrane’s music very strongly with Malcolm’s language, because they were just about contemporaries, to tell you the truth. And I believe essentially what Malcolm said is what John played. If Trane had been a speaker, he might have spoken somewhat like Malcolm. If Malcolm had been a saxophone player, he might have played somewhat like Trane.”

Malcolm wrote: “The Ghanaians performed the high-life as if possessed. One pretty African girl sang ‘Blue Moon’ like Sarah Vaughan. Sometimes the band sounded like Charlie Parker.” Malcolm’s impact on Ghana was so great that one folk singer created a song in his honor called “Malcolm Man.”

Shortly before Malcolm’s death, he visited Toronto and appeared on CBC television with Pierre Berton. During the visit, Malcolm spent time with award-winning author Austin Clarke talking about politics and music. Time was too short to organize a community meeting, but a few lucky people gathered at Clarke’s home on Asquith Street. Clarke had interviewed Malcolm previously, in 1963 in Harlem, when he was working for the CBC. Clarke recalled they “talked shop,” but also discussed the lighter things in life, like the fact that both their wives were named Betty.

It is not surprising that Malcolm made his way to Canada. His mother and father, Earl Little, met and married in Montréal at a Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) convention. Both were followers of Marcus Garvey. His mother, Louise Langdon Norton, was born in Grenada but immigrated first to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and later to Montreal in 1917. Jan Carew’s book, “Ghosts in Our Blood: With Malcolm X in Africa, England, and the Caribbean,” documents this aspect of the life of the pan-Africanist.

While on a visit to Nigeria, Malcolm was given the name Omowale, which means in the Yoruba language, “the son who has come home.” It was in this period of his life that he visited Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, Senegal, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Guinea and Tanzania. It was during this period that he met with Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Julius K. Nyerere, Nnamoi Azikiwe, Sekou Toure, Jomo Kenyatta, Dr. Milton Obote, Abdul Rahman Muhammad Babu and others. During this visit he also met Ras Makonnen, a legendary pan-Africanist from Guyana, Richard Wright’s daughter Julie Wright, Maya Angelou, Shirley Graham Du Bois, the wife of W.E.B. Du Bois, and Chinese Ambassador Huang Ha.

It must be mentioned that Paul Robeson, W.E.B. Du Bois, his wife Shirley Graham Du Bois and Robert F. Williams all supported the 1949 Chinese revolution. Malcolm also was a huge supporter of the People’s Republic of China. He was delighted when China tested its first nuclear weapon.

Babu talked about the significance of this event at the Malcolm X: Radical Tradition and a Legacy of Struggle Conference in New York City in 1990.

In Nigeria, Malcolm was given the name Omowale, “the son who has come home.” This photo was taken in 1964. Says Babu: “When Malcolm X came to Tanzania, I took him to meet President (Julius) Nyerere on another historic date. Because that very day, China exploded her first nuclear bomb. And as we went to see Nyerere, Nyerere said, “Malcolm, for the first time today in recorded history, a former colony has been able to develop weapons at par with any colonial power. This is the end of colonialism through and through.”

Malcolm was the chief organizer of the Nation of Islam and the founder of the group’s newspaper Muhammad Speaks. He split with the nation and its leader Elijah Muhammad in 1963. At the time of his death he headed two organizations. The secular group, the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), was his political arm. He also organized the religious group, Muslim Mosque Inc. (MMI), which practiced Sunni Islam.

Today Islam is the second largest religion in the United States and Canada. Many credit Malcolm with helping spread Sunni Islam as well as revolutionary Black Nationalism and pan-Africanism among African people in the Western Hemisphere.

Like Augusto Cesar Sandino of Nicaragua or Sun Yat-sen of China, Malcolm was embraced by all sectors of the Black Nationalist and pan-Africanist movements. All Nationalists and Pan-Africanists claimed to follow his example. Revolutionary Nationalist groups like the Black Panther Party and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers emerged in the late 1960s, after Malcolm’s death. Even after the BPP and the League embraced Marxism, Malcolm was still their man. The cultural Nationalists who maintained that the cultural revolution must precede the political one also embraced Malcolm.

Fidel Castro was demonized when he came to New York City in October 1961 to speak at the United Nations, but he felt safe in Harlem when he and his delegation moved from a hostile hotel to the Hotel Theresa, where he was welcomed by Malcolm. He was a controversial figure. Actor Ossie Davis eulogized him as our “Black Shining Prince” while the director of the U.S. Information Agency, Carl T. Rowan, referred to him as “an ex-convict, ex-dope peddler who became a racial fanatic.”

He was loved by the oppressed and hated by the oppressors. Malcolm spoke about the MMI and OAAU in these terms: “Its aim is to create an atmosphere and facilities in which people who are interested in Islam can get a better understanding of Islam. The aim of the OAAU is to use whatever means necessary to bring about a society in which the 22 million Afro-Americans are recognized and respected as human beings.”

“The Autobiography of Malcolm X” by Alex Haley and other books by and about Malcolm continue to sell worldwide. Some of his books have recently been published in Cuba. Malcolm was one of the few Black Nationalist leaders who welcomed Cuban leader Fidel Castro to Harlem in 1960.

Many Nationalists didn’t want to be identified with communism. Carlos Cooks, the leader of the African Nationalist Pioneer Movement, absolutely refused to have anything to do with Castro. But African people in the West could easily identify with the slogan, “When Africa called, Cuba answered.” Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) was fond of reminding us that the only place in the United States that Fidel felt safe was in Harlem.

Toronto-based journalist and radio producer Norman (Otis) Richmond can be heard on Diasporic Music the last Thursday of every month at 8-10 p.m., Uhuru Radio every other Sunday 2-4 p.m., Saturday Morning Live on Saturdays 10 a.m.-1 p.m. He can be reached by e-mail at norman.o.richmond@gmail.com.



Original Page: http://sfbayview.com/2011/malcolm-and-the-music/

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Malcolm X - Separating the Myth from the Man

Malcolm X - Separating the Myth from the Man

by Barrington M. Salmo, washingtoninformer.com
May 19th 2011 1:28 PM

In his book Ghosts in Our Blood, Guyanese author Jan Carew explains the conundrum that surrounds Malcolm X’s legacy.

“The real Malcolm X was far more complex than the millions of empty words written about him and the speeches he made at different stages of his life, or the plethora of distorted images strewn in the wake of his untimely death.  Over the decades since his death, there has been a concerted effort to iconize him and, in so doing, distance him further and further from the mother who had given birth to him, his brothers, sisters, his wife and children, and his ancestors …

… The higher the iconized figure is lifted above the earth, the weaker and more indistinct the real Malcolm X becomes in their imaginations. As a result, they are less inclined to heed his warnings, and are more reluctant to live the austere life he had chosen.”

Malcolm X, also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (1925-1965), was a seminal figure in the 20th century. This Black Nationalist and revolutionary sought nothing but a radical shift in the power paradigm that governed how blacks and whites in America, and later the world, dealt with each other.

Malcolm’s life was one of conversion and growth. Before rising to prominence as a minister in the Nation of Islam, he was a petty criminal and drug addict. However, his life served as a clear example of the transformative nature of change.

As Carew, a novelist and critic, said, “During my conversations with Malcolm, he never failed to state unequivocally that the system he was attacking was one based on unbridled greed, on the exploitation of one race by another, and one class by another, and that it had to be radically transformed.  He also made it clear that his role as a leader was not just to analyze the world, but to change it.”

Following his assassination on February 21, 1965 in Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom, Malcolm became a global symbol of resistance against the forces he fought against his entire life.

Malcolm X’s impact on them is such that Baba Imamu Kuumba and Baba Lumumba-- through the United Black Community (UBC) in Northeast -- have used workshops, seminars and other vehicles to keep the late activist’s legacy alive.

On May 21, the UBC will present the Umoja Award to Political Economist Acklyn Lynch, who is a retired professor emeritus and chairperson of Africana Studies at University of Maryland, Baltimore County; to Mama Nia Kuumba; Kalonji Olusugun; and Mama Ashante Holly. All of them have made their mark as community organizers and builders. The keynote speaker will be Howard University Psychiatrist Dr. Alyce Gullattee. The event takes place at the Umoja House in Northeast.

This year’s theme for the day of activities will be on eldership.

There will be a tribute to Malcolm, a discussion of Manning Marable’s book, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention and speakers from Nigeria, South Africa and Ghana will explore eldership from the perspective of traditional societies.

“We will discuss what it means to be and to have respected elders.” “We understand that some people get old but have nothing to offer,” Baba Lumumba said.

Scholars insists there is exceedingly more to Malcolm X than popular culture has presented. / Courtesy photo

Since 1977, UBC has paid homage to Malcolm on his birthday, May 19.  Over time, they said, it has gotten more difficult to generate the kind of community interest that was so common in the 1960s through the mid-70s.

Baba Lumumba, 67, has a long history of involvement in community activities in the District. He worked with the Black Panther Party in Oakland, Calif.; helped develop community centers and drug abuse prevention programs and has also been instrumental in advancing the agenda of Pan Africanists and Black Nationalists locally and nationally. Baba Imamu has worked at the grassroots level in the Washington metro area since the 1960s.

“Malcolm has always been one of our icons,” said Baba Imamu. “We admire his organizational and oratorical skills. Malcolm was a giant.”

Baba Lumumba said he was once a member of the Nation of Islam and that he had three conversations with Malcolm.

“I cherish that (the conversations),” he said. “It is one of the foundations of my life.”

“I was drawn to the man. His presence in a room was something.  What he was saying had a biting truth. He was not afraid to say these aren’t our friends.  He was compelling and magnetic.  People had to respond to him. You never went back to the way you were because of the truth he spoke.”

Baba Lumumba said Malcolm wasn’t perfect and wasn’t always right. However, he had the uncanny ability to tell people what they wanted to hear when they needed to hear it.

“He made you proud, made you want to act, be a man, be a woman,” he asserted.

It is difficult, both men said, to have lived through the heady times of the ‘60s and not be disappointed at the state of black people locally, nationally and globally.

“I’ll be blunt and say that I and my generation are sadly disappointed,” Baba Lumumba said.

“I didn’t expect there to be such a setback ... We don’t have a base strong enough to counter the pressures of the modern day (and) there are so many forces against Pan African groups.”

Baba Imamu, 62, agrees.  He cited factors such as drug use, the high rates of incarceration, and the FBI’s COINTELPRO program as just a few of the reasons for the breakdown of the black nuclear family.

“One of the problems is that we have failed to organize, economically, in terms of health and politically,” he said.  “We have been lulled to sleep.  We thought that when President Obama came in there would be no need to do anything.”

Obama, Baba Lumumba said, is “quantitatively no different than (Supreme Court Justice) Clarence Thomas.”

“He’s not serving our interests.  He personifies personal ambition.  Personal ambition is a sin that cannot be tolerated,” he said.

Baba Lumumba lamented the dearth of men, primarily, who are willing to dedicate time and resources to transform their communities.

“Where are the men Garvey called for? Where are the men drawn to black improvement and development?” he asked.  “Black men have been systematically dismantled.”

The activists said blacks need to develop an infrastructure that caters to its members’ needs. It makes no sense, they asserted, to expect the oppressor to give blacks the things they need.  Hence, the need to build their own institutions.

Young people represent the battle being waged in black communities between them focusing almost exclusively on their personal needs versus working for the stability and collective well-being of the wider community, Baba Lumumba said. Though they may appear to be at odds, black youth must find a way to walk that fine line.

“How you do this is a critical element in our future,” he said.

“There’s a lot of talking we need to do.  The point is for us to get you involved in the discussion … to discuss collective goals and where we’re going.  It would be madness to do anything less.”



Original Page: http://www.washingtoninformer.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6010:malco-x-separating-the-myth-from-the-man&catid=64:entertainment&Itemid=136%3E

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Origin of Song: “George Jackson”, “Hurricane”, and Bob Dylan ’s Return to Protest Form

http://www.crawdaddy.com/index.php/2011/05/24/origin-of-song-george-jackson-hurricane-and-bob-dylans-return-to-protest-form/

Conscience of a community activist

Commentary: Conscience of a community activist

by Carlos J. Lice, amigos805.com
May 23rd 2011

/ Amigos805.com

Recently I shocked a fellow worker and a few others by outing myself as a Latino community activist. An “Activist,” he said accusatorially. “You cannot be a Latino community activist and an advocate for other causes.”  Some people, he added, may object to a person who has a strong commitment to a particular group.

His response both surprised and offended me.  While there is a good point in the sense that there is a negative side to being obsessive about commitment, we cannot forget that both he and I are committed to making sure the Civil Rights legislation of 1964 benefits all Americans – regardless of the word preceding the hyphen that precedes the word American and that is used so often and divisively  in our diverse society.

I am reminded that while some may color the word “activist” with a subjective shade, activism is at the core of the evolutionary rather than revolutionary change in our society.

Let’s consider my personal hero: Martin Luther King Jr., the driving force leading activism in the struggle against bigotry and hate. He was a man of great wisdom and failings, a minister and orator and most definitively a man of God who refused to “leave things alone” in the United States of America and made it his life calling — and ultimately his martyrdom — to make sure people were not judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

He had a dream and we aim to see that dream a reality and reach the promised land of equality that he showed us from the steps of the Lincoln Monument one hot summer afternoon in 1968.

Dr. King was criticized by some in the civil rights movement for his expression of support for the peace groups who opposed the war in Vietnam.  The cause, they said, was not the ending of fighting in Asia but rather civil rights at home.  Dr. King wisely pointed out that black men were fighting and dying while their rights were being denied at home and that made natural allies of the antiwar groups and the civil rights group, because all Americans have to march together for a common purpose whether it is in war or in peace.

Many more activists have followed that dream and made sure the dream not die or be subjugated to a single cause or group.

Richard Pimentel, the driving force behind the Americans with Disabilities Act is another. Building upon the foundation laid down by Dr. King, he is another activist who made sure people with disabilities are not left behind on the road to that dream.

Some of us labor in the dream of equality in our respective communities. We aim, respectfully and persistently, to make sure that equality is here for the 35 million Latinos who are an integral part of this society. As UFW leader Cesar Chavez pointed out, “My people are of many colors” — hence his favorite church hymn was ‘de colores’ because the catchy tune means Latinos come in many colors, races and origins, reflecting the colorful tapestry of the American nation. And disability does not make an exception when it comes to our ethnicity and race.  Disability comes in many colors and languages.

I am a Latino with a disability. I cannot separate one part of me from the other because my disability is wrapped under my skin and speaks with the accent of a proud, hard-working immigrant who is not afraid to speak out and will not meekly accept the scraps on the table I have set the food of freedom and justice for all. When I see a wrong, just like MLK, Pimentel and Chavez, I will point it out and actively seek to peacefully change it so that those who follow me in the pursuit of the American dream are able to share equally at this table.  We do it just like Dr. King taught us, with peaceful persistent determination, and listening, like Pimentel did, to our music within.

That means that when I see  a half-hearted effort to reach this portion of the disability community that is close to my heart I will speak on their behalf with the same passion as I do for the others because my interest lies in justice for all.  The same way we reach out to any group, I want to see it done on an equally respectful level, tone and voice because that is the  best way we can be equal.

Our conversation must always be at the same level and tone. Let’s do it at the same level, tone and meaning. I do not take kindly to unwarranted patronizing or misguided paternalism. Conversation is, after all, a two-way street between equals.

A Latino community activist is no better and no worse than a disability activist or as the South Chicago community organizer Barak Obama was at the start of his political career that led to the White House.

My aim is that a Latino kid from Santa Paula will pick up my baton and wind up in the White House some day. I have been up in the mountains of Ventura County and have seen that same promised land Dr. King saw.

I may not see it, but I know a Latino kid from the barrio will get there — one whose father picked strawberries in Oxnard or whose grandfather was a bracero; a kid who may even have been derisively called “anchor baby” by some.

This is my dream.

— Carlos J. Licea has previously worked with such publications as the Ventura County Star’s Mi Estrella weekly newspaper, the Daily Press in Ashland, Wisc., El Nuevo Herald in Miami, La Prensa in Orlando, Fla., El Mundo in San Juan, Puerto Rico, The Orlando Sentinel, the Miami News, the Miami Herald and the Tampa Tribune. The views expressed by Carlos J. Licea do not necessarily represent the views of Amigos805.com



Original Page: http://amigos805.com/?p=4770

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The Political Bob Dylan

The Political Bob Dylan

huffingtonpost.com | May 24th 2011 6:03 PM

Bob Dylan turned seventy on Tuesday. The following essay is adapted from The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame, which Nation Books will publish early next year.

When the makers of Hollywood movies, documentary films, or TV news programs want to evoke the spirit of the 1960s, they typically show clips of long-haired hippies dancing at a festival, protestors marching at an antiwar rally, or students sitting-in at a lunch counter, with one of two songs by Bob Dylan--"Blowin' in the Wind" or "The Times They Are a-Changin'"--playing in the background.

Journalists and historians often treat Dylan's songs as emblematic of the era and Dylan himself as the quintessential "protest" singer, an image frozen in time. Dylan emerged on the music scene in 1961, playing in Greenwich Village coffeehouses after the folk music revival was already underway, and released his first album the next year.

Over a short period--less than three years--Dylan wrote about two dozen politically oriented songs whose creative lyrics and imagery reflected the changing mood of the postwar baby-boom generation and the urgency of the civil rights and antiwar movements.

At a time when the chill of McCarthyism was still in the air, Dylan also showed that songs with leftist political messages could be commercially successful. Unwittingly, Dylan laid the groundwork for other folk musicians and performers of the era, some of whom -- like Phil Ochs, the subject of a wonderful new documentary -- were more committed to the two major movements that were challenging America's status quo, and helped them reach wider audiences.

By 1964, however, Dylan told friends and some reporters that he was no longer interested in politics. Broadside magazine asked Ochs if he thought that Dylan would like to see his protest songs "buried." Ochs replied insightfully: "I don't think he can succeed in burying them. They're too good. And they're out of his hands."

Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman and raised in Hibbing, a mining town in northern Minnesota, in a middle-class Jewish family. As a teen he admired Elvis Presley, Johnny Ray, Hank Williams, and Little Richard, and taught himself to play guitar. In 1959, he moved to the Twin Cities to attend the University of Minnesota but soon dropped out. He stayed in the area to absorb its budding folk music and bohemian scene and began playing in local coffeehouses and improving his guitar playing. A friend loaned Dylan his collection of Woody Guthrie records and back copies of Sing Out! magazine, which had the music and lyrics to lots of folk songs. He read Guthrie's autobiography, Bound for Glory, and learned to play many of Guthrie's songs.

By then young Zimmerman had changed his name (apparently after Welsh poet Dylan Thomas) and had adopted some of Guthrie's persona. He mumbled when he talked and when he sang, spoke with a twang, wore workman's clothes (including a corduroy cap), and took on what he believed to be Guthrie's mannerisms. At first Dylan seemed to identify more with Guthrie as a loner and bohemian than with Guthrie the radical and activist. Soon after Dylan arrived in New York City in January 1961 at age nineteen, he visited Guthrie, then suffering from Huntington's disease, in his New Jersey hospital room.

At the time, New York's Greenwich Village was the epicenter of the folk music revival, a growing political consciousness, and (along with San Francisco) the beatnik and bohemian culture of jazz, poetry, and drugs. The area was dotted with coffeehouses, some of which charged admission fees and others which allowed performers to pass the hat while customers purchased drinks and sandwiches.

Dylan made the rounds of the folk clubs and made a big impression. His singing and guitar-playing were awkward, but he had a little-boy charm and charisma that disarmed audiences. Dylan's initial repertoire consisted mostly of Guthrie songs, blues, and traditional songs. At the time, he began weaving a myth about his past, including stories about being a circus hand and a carnival boy, having a rock band in Hibbing that performed on television, and running away from home and learning songs from black blues artists. He was, as he continued to do throughout his life, reinventing himself.

Dylan got a huge break when music reporter Robert Shelton wrote a flattering review of a performance at Gerde's Folk City in the New York Times on September 29, 1961 under the headline, "Bob Dylan: A Distinctive Stylist." Shelton said that Dylan seemed like a "cross between a beatnik and a choir boy" and referred to four of the songs he performed that night: the traditional "House of the Rising Sun" and three humorous songs Dylan wrote--"Talkin' Bear Mountain," "Talkin' New York," and "Talkin' Havah Nagilah." Shelton made no mention of any topical or protest songs. He did write that Dylan was "vague about his antecedents and birthplace," which contributed to the singer's myth-making. The review put Dylan on the map and landed him a record contract, although his first album, Bob Dylan, wasn't released until March 1962. None of the album's thirteen cuts (including two original compositions) could be considered political, protest, or topical songs.

In July 1961 Dylan met seventeen-year-old Suze Rotolo, the daughter of Communists and a leftist herself. They soon moved into a Village apartment together. She introduced Dylan to writers and poets (especially Bertolt Brecht and Arthur Rimbaud) that expanded his own lyrical horizons. She also raised his political awareness. Rotolo was working as a secretary at the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) office and each night gave Dylan the latest scoop about the civil rights movement. The sit-ins had erupted the previous year. By the spring and summer of 1961, the Freedom Rides were in the news. The Village folk scene was abuzz with singers writing and performing songs ripped from the headlines.

In January 1962, hoping to be asked to perform at an upcoming CORE benefit, Dylan wrote "The Ballad of Emmett Till," about a fourteen-year-old African American who was beaten and shot to death in Mississippi in 1955 for whistling at a white woman. It was Dylan's first "protest" song. Within a year, he wrote several other topical songs, including "Talkin' John Birch Society Blues" (poking fun at the right-wing organization), "Let Me Die in My Footsteps" (a critique of the Cold War hysteria that led Americans to build bomb shelters), "Oxford Town" (about the riots when James Meredith became the first black student admitted to University of Mississippi), "Paths of Victory" (about the civil rights marches), and "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" (about the fear of nuclear war, which he premiered at a Carnegie Hall concert a month before the Cuban missile crisis made that fear more tangible). These songs were published in a new magazine, Broadside, that sought to encourage topical songs as part of movements for change.

In April Dylan wrote what would become his most famous song, "Blowin' in the Wind," which appeared in the May issue of Broadside and the June issue of Sing Out! He took the tune from "No More Auction Block," an anti-slavery Negro spiritual. Dylan performed the song at Gerde's Folk City before it was published or recorded, and soon there was a major buzz around the Village about the new composition. Unlike "Emmett Till," "John Birch," and "Let Me Die," "Blowin' in the Wind" was not about a specific incident or public controversy. The lyrics reflected a mood of concern about the country's overall direction, including the beating of civil rights demonstrators and the escalating nuclear arms race.

By avoiding specifics, Dylan's three verses achieve a universal quality that makes them open to various interpretations and allows listeners to read their own concerns into the lyrics. "How many times must the cannonballs fly before they're forever banned?" and "How many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died?" are clearly about war, but not any particular war. One can hear the words "How many years can some people exist before they're allowed to be free?" and relate them to the civil rights movement and the recent Freedom Rides. "How many times can a man turn his head pretending he just doesn't see?" could refer to the nation's unwillingness to face its own racism, or to other forms of ignorance. The song reflects a combination of alienation and outrage. Listeners have long debated what Dylan meant by "The answer is blowin' in the wind." Is the answer so obvious that it is right in front of us? Or is it elusive and beyond our reach? This ambiguity is one reason for the song's broad appeal.

Before singing "Blowin' in the Wind" at Gerde's, Dylan explained, "This here ain't a protest song or anything like that, 'cause I don't write protest songs...I'm just writing it as something to be said, for somebody, by somebody." Dylan may have been being coy or disingenuous, but it didn't matter. The song caught the wind of protest in the country and took flight.

Dylan recorded "Blowin' in the Wind" on his second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, released in May 1963, but it was the version released a few weeks later by Peter, Paul, and Mary that turned the song into a nationwide phenomenon. The single sold 300,000 copies in its first week. On July 13, 1963, it reached number two on the Billboard pop chart, with over a million copies sold. Millions of Americans learned the words and sang along while it was played on the radio, performed at rallies and concerts, and sung at summer camps and in churches and synagogues.

The song's popularity turned the twenty-two-year-old Dylan into a celebrity and confirmed his image as a protest singer who voiced the spirit of his generation. Dylan cemented that impression when, on July 5, he and Pete Seeger performed at a SNCC-sponsored voter-registration rally in Greenwood, Mississippi. Dylan sang "Only a Pawn in Their Game," about the assassination of Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evers, which occurred just the previous month. Dylan also sang at the August 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Martin Luther King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech.

That year Dylan also wrote "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" (based on a news story from early 1963 about the death of a black barmaid at the hands of a wealthy white man), "Who Killed Davey Moore" (about a black boxer who died after a brutal match), "Talkin' World War III Blues" (about the threat of nuclear annihilation), "Masters of War" (a protest against the arms race), and "The Times They Are a-Changin'," which was not about a specific event but rather challenged the political establishment on behalf of Dylan's youth cohort. The finger-pointing song is addressed to "senators, congressmen," and "mothers and fathers," telling them that "there's a battle outside and it is ragin'" and warning them, "don't criticize what you can't understand." Dylan's lyric "For the loser now will be later to win" sounds much like the biblical notion that the meek shall inherit the earth, or perhaps that America's black and poor people will win their struggle for justice. Like "Blowin' in the Wind," "The Times" became an anthem, a strident warning, angry yet hopeful. It came to symbolize the generation gap, making Dylan the reluctant "spokesman" for the youth revolt.

Dylan's third album, also called The Times They Are a-Changin', was recorded between August and October 1963 and included the song "North Country Blues," which draws on Dylan's Minnesota upbringing and describes the suffering caused by the closing of the mines in the state's Iron Range, turning mining areas into jobless ghost towns--a theme that Bruce Springsteen would reprise years later. Remarkably, Dylan tells the tale from the point of view of a woman.

Dylan's ambition for success sometimes conflicted with his political and artistic principles. In 1963, when CBS told Dylan he couldn't sing "Talkin' John Birch Society Blues" on the popular Ed Sullivan Show because the song was too controversial--an indication that McCarthyism hadn't completely faded--he walked out of the rehearsal and refused to appear on the Sunday night show. Yet Dylan was never comfortable being confined by the "protest" label. He disliked being a celebrity, having people ask him what his songs meant, and being viewed as a troubadour who could represent an entire generation. "The stuff you're writing is bullshit, because politics is bullshit," Dylan once told Phil Ochs, who continued to write and perform topical songs and identify with progressive protest movements. "You're wasting your time."

In December 1963, a few weeks after the Kennedy assassination, Dylan reluctantly agreed to accept the Tom Paine Award from the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee at a fancy event at the Americana Inn Hotel in New York. Nervous, Dylan got drunk and gave a rambling, semi-incoherent speech to the 1400 liberals and radicals in the audience. First he insulted their age: "You people should be at the beach. It's not an old people's world...Old people, when their hair grows out, they should go out." Then he insulted their politics. "There's no black and white, left and right, to me anymore. There's only up and down, and down is very close to the ground. And I'm trying to go up without thinking about anything trivial, such as politics." Then he mentioned Kennedy's killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, and said, "I saw some of myself in him." Some of the audience booed. Dylan later sent the group an incoherent letter of mock apology that was more a long prose poem defending his new anti-political mood. He no longer wanted to sing about "we," he said. He wanted to write about "I."

By his fourth album, the aptly titled Another Side of Bob Dylan, he had decided to look both inward for his inspiration and outward at other kinds of music. He began to explore more personal and abstract themes in his music and in his poetry. He also became more involved with drugs and alcohol. His songs began to focus on his love life, his alienation, and his growing sense of the absurd. In subsequent decades, Dylan would reinvent himself several more times. With occasional exceptions, he abandoned acoustic music for rock and roll, country, blues, and gospel. His hit "Like a Rolling Stone" from the 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited revealed his talent as a rock musician. Several times he discovered Jesus. For a while he claimed to be an Orthodox Jew.

Even after 1964, however, Dylan occasionally revealed that he hadn't lost his touch for composing political songs. His 1965 song "Subterranean Homesick Blues" references the violence inflicted on civil rights protesters by cops ("Better stay away from those/That carry around a fire hose") but also reflected his growing cynicism ("Don't follow leaders/Watch the parkin' meters"). The extremist wing of Students for a Democratic Society took their name-- Weatherman--from another line in that song ("You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"). Other songs, such as "I Shall Be Released" (1967), the Guthrie-esque "I Pity the Poor Immigrant" (1967), " George Jackson" (1971), "Hurricane" (1975), "License to Kill" (1983), and "Clean Cut Kid" (1984) indicate that Dylan still had the capacity for political outrage.

Dylan performed at several concerts to raise money for liberal causes--hunger in Bangladesh in 1971 and in Ethiopia in 1985, and the Farm Aid concert to raise money for U.S. family farmers later in 1985. In 1991, upon receiving the lifetime achievement award from the Academy of Recording Artists and Performers, while U.S. troops were fighting in Iraq, Dylan performed his "Masters of War." On election night 2008, Dylan was playing a concert at the University of Minnesota. As Barack Obama's victory was announced, Dylan said, "I was born in 1941. That was the year they bombed Pearl Harbor. I've been living in darkness ever since. It looks like things are going to change now." Then, deviating from his usual live encore of "Like a Rolling Stone," Dylan played "Blowin' in the Wind."

Dylan's off-and-on engagement with politics is intriguing. But his peace and justice songs have had a life of their own. "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'" in particular will forever be linked to the progressive movements of the 1960s and used to rally people to protest for a better world.

Peter Dreier teaches politics at Occidental College. This essay was originally posted on the DISSENT magazine website.



Original Page: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-dreier/the-political-bob-dylan_b_866494.html

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The Gospel According to Dylan

The Gospel According to Dylan

consortiumnews.com | May 25th 2011

Bob Dylan, the great poet/songwriter, turned 70 this week, prompting remembrances of how his words, music and anti-authoritarian vision helped shape generations of Americans, especially the one that came of age during the Vietnam War in the 1960s, as Gary G. Kohls notes in this guest essay.

By Gary G. Kohls

The week of Bob Dylan’s 70th birthday – he was born on May 24, 1941 – is being celebrated across the nation, especially in Duluth and Hibbing, Minnesota, where Bob Zimmerman was born and raised.

A four-hour radio documentary was broadcast on Minnesota public radio last weekend, and Democracy Now’s “War and Peace Report” on Tuesday was entirely devoted to Dylan’s tremendous impact on our culture.

Bob Dylan was the voice of conscience of my era (the 1960s and beyond). He obviously was a poet/prophet who felt an obligation to warn his listeners about the dangers he saw coming.

Just listen closely to his “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” and his calls for peace and justice in his familiar folk anthems “Blowing in the Wind” and “The Times They Are A-Changing”.

He was, as were many other 1960s-era folk-singers in and around the time of the war crimes that were being perpetrated by the U.S. military in Vietnam, an influence in the development of the political thinking of millions, including me; and I’m happy to say that his messages also influenced my children and hopefully also my grandchildren who are coming of age.

I have been trying to introduce them to Dylan’s music, including his powerful plea to always question authority.

Anybody who has studied Dylan’s songs, even from the earliest phases of his 50-year career, has noticed the amazing number of lyrics and themes that relate to the Bible. But one thing that I have noticed is that Dylan uses as many New Testament quotes and themes as he uses from the Hebrew scriptures.

Dylan was raised in the Jewish faith, of course, but I have always been impressed at his knowledge of stories and themes from the New Testament.

Dylan fans are aware of the consternation he elicited from fans concerning his short-lived “born-again Christian” period that started in 1979. He was accused of heresy almost as vociferously as when he went electric in the early 1960s.

But during those few years he wrote dozens of (mostly theologically conservative) Christian-themed songs, which he recorded in three albums, “Slow Train Coming.” “Saved” and “Shot of Love.” Judging from the lyrics in those albums, Dylan understood conservative Christian dogma quite well.

Judging from many of his songs, Dylan was most comfortable with the precepts of progressive Judaism. His deeply-embedded, open-minded concerns about peace, justice, empathy, love, forgiveness, nonviolence and his criticisms of hatred, prejudice, war, militarism, economic oppression, empire and racism were themes that pre-dated – and then post-dated – his born-again period.

He soon became estranged from the more intolerant, punitive and conservative form of Christianity. Dylan then returned to Judaism long enough to explore his Jewish roots and subsequently wrote a powerful affirmation of the nation of Israel with his “Neighborhood Bully.”

I understand that Dylan now belongs to no organized religious group.

But Dylan’s progressive political and theological ideals didn’t disappear with his “loss of Christian faith.” His songs protesting against the insanity of war reflected the pacifism of the original form of Christianity 2,000 years ago and include the anti-war classics “Masters of War” (which he said he wrote as a pacifist song), “With God on Our Side,” and “John Brown,” all of which he still sings in concerts.

But what I always heard in Dylan’s music was his frequent expression of lyrics that seemed to echo Christ-like concern for the down-trodden, the persecuted, the colonized, the impoverished, the war-torn, the hungry, the huddled masses and other victims of the ruthless institutions, tyrants, the wealthy, the war profiteers and other assorted predators of the world.

He spoke out courageously for truth, liberty and freedom, a reality that inspired multitudes of other truth-seekers, healers and selfless peacemakers.

Listen to some of the following lyrics of Dylan and note how similar they are to the gospel (which means “good news”) message that Jesus taught, especially Jesus’s warnings to help potential victims to defend themselves nonviolently against institutions that perpetrate violence.

The first excerpt below is from “Clean-Cut Kid” a song critical of America’s wars and the psychological consequences of engaging in war – which helped me, back in 1984, to better understand the American plague called combat-induced Posttraumatic Stress Disorder:

“Everybody wants to know why he couldn’t adjust. Adjust to what, a dream that bust?

He was a clean-cut kid but they made a killer out of him. That’s what they did.

They said what’s up is down, they said what isn’t is. They put ideas in his head he thought were his.

He went to church on Sunday; he was a Boy Scout. For his friends he would turn his pockets inside out.

They said, ‘Listen boy, you’re just a pup’ and they sent him to a napalm health spa to shape up.

They gave him dope to smoke, drinks and pills, a Jeep to drive, blood to spill.

They said ‘Congratulations, you got what it takes’ and they sent him back into the rat race without any brakes.

He bought the American dream but it put him in debt; the only game he could play was Russian roulette.

He drank Coca-Cola, he was eating Wonder Bread, ate Burger Kings; he was well fed. He could’ve sold insurance, owned a restaurant or bar; could’ve been an accountant or a tennis star.

He was wearing boxing gloves, took a dive one day off the Golden Gate Bridge into China Bay.

His mama walks the floor, his daddy weeps and moans. They gotta sleep together in a home they don’t own.

Well, everybody’s asking why he couldn’t adjust. All he ever wanted was somebody to trust.

He had a steady job, he joined the choir. He never did plan to walk the high wire.

They took a clean-cut kid and they made a killer out of him, that’s what they did.”

And Dylan is equally hard on other often hypocritical authoritarian institutions, including the judiciary, the clergy, physicians, lawmakers, racists, anti-Semites, the rich, the fascist-leaning, the militarists, the greedy corporations, the punitive police state agencies such as the Gestapo, the CIA and the FBI, as one would expect of the prophetic peacemaker Jesus.

Read these lyrics for a small sampling of the “Gospel According to Dylan”:

“You’re a man of the mountains, you can walk on the clouds; Manipulator of crowds, you’re a dream twister.

You’re going to Sodom and Gomorrah but what do you care? Ain’t nobody there would want to marry your sister.

Friend to the martyr, friend to the woman of shame. You look into the fiery furnace, see the rich man without any name.

Well, the Book of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, the law of the jungle and the sea are your only teachers.

Well, the rifleman’s stalking the sick and the lame. Preacherman seeks the same, who’ll get there first is uncertain.

Nightsticks and water cannons, tear gas, padlocks, Molotov cocktails and rocks behind every curtain. False-hearted judges dying in the webs that they spin. Only a matter of time ‘til night comes stepping in.” (From “Jokerman” a song about various satanic realities that are all around us.)

“Democracy don’t rule the world, you’d better get that through your head. This world is ruled by violence, but I guess that’s better left unsaid.

From Broadway to the Milky Way, that’s a lot of territory indeed and a man’s gonna do what he has to do when he’s got a hungry mouth to feed.” (From “Union Sundown”)

“I saw thousands who could have overcome the darkness. For the love of a lousy buck, I’ve watched them die.” (From “When the Night Comes Falling From the Sky”)

“All that foreign oil controlling American soil. Look around you, it’s just bound to make you embarrassed. Sheiks walking around like kings, wearing fancy jewels and nose rings. Deciding American’s future from Amsterdam and to Paris.

Man’s ego’s inflated, his laws are outdated, they don’t apply no more.

You can’t rely no more to be standing around waiting. In the home of the brave, Jefferson turning over in his grave. Fools glorifying themselves, trying to manipulate Satan.

Big-time negotiators, false healers and woman haters. Masters of the bluff and masters of the proposition.

But the enemy I see wears a cloak of decency, all nonbelievers and men stealers talking in the name of religion.

People starving and thirsting, grain elevators are bursting. Oh, you know it costs more to store the food than it does to give it. They say lose your inhibitions, follow your own ambitions.

They talk about a life of brotherly love, show me someone who knows how to live it. There’s a slow, slow train coming up around the bend.” (From “Slow Train Comin’”)

“Counterfeit philosophies have polluted all of your thoughts. Karl Marx has got you by the throat, and Henry Kissinger’s got you tied up in knots.

You got innocent men in jail; your insane asylums are filled.

You got unrighteous doctors dealing drugs that’ll never cure your ills.

You got men who can’t hold their peace and women who can’t control their tongues.

The rich seduce the poor and the old are seduced by the young.

Adulterers in churches and pornography in the schools.

You got gangsters in power and lawbreakers making the rules.

Spiritual advisors and gurus to guide you every move.

Instant inner peace and every step you take has got to be approved.

You can’t take it with you and you known that it’s too worthless to be sold.

They tell you, ‘Time is money’ as if your life was worth its weight in gold.

When you gonna wake up and strengthen the things that remain.” (From “When You Gonna Wake Up?”)

“Well you’re on your own, you always were in a land of wolves and thieves.

Don’t put your hope in ungodly man or be a slave to what somebody else believes.” (From “Trust Yourself”)

“Oh, ye playboys and playgirls ain’t a-gonna run my world. You fallout shelter sellers can’t get in my door. Your Jim Crow ground can’t turn me around.

The laughter in the lynch mob ain’t a-gonna do no more. You insane tongues of war talk ain’t a-gonna guide my road.

You red baiters and race haters ain’t a-gonna hang around here.” (From “Playboys and Playgirls”)

“Disillusioned words like bullets bark as human gods aim for their mark .

Made everything from toy guns that spark to flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark. It’s easy to see without looking too far that not much is really sacred.

Old lady judges watch people in pairs limited in sex, they dare to push fake morals, insult and stare while money doesn’t talk, it swears. Obscenity, who really cares.

Propaganda, all is phony. (From “It’s Alright, Ma, I’m Only Bleeding”)

“Now, I’m liberal, but to a degree I want everybody to be free. But if you think that I’ll let Barry Goldwater move in next door and marry my daughter you must think I’m crazy! I wouldn’t let him do it for all the farms in Cuba.” (From “I Shall Be Free No. 10”)

“I’m monstrously against the House Un-American Activities Committee and also the CIA; and I beg her please not to ask me why for it would take too long to tell.” (From the jacket notes to “Some Other Kinds of Songs”)

“And suddenly a middle-aged druggist, up for district attorney, starts screaming at me: you’re the one that’s been causing all them riots over in Vietnam. Immediately turns to a bunch of people and says if elected, he’ll have me electrocuted publicly on the next Fourth of July. I look around and all these people he’s talking to are carrying blowtorches.” (From the liner notes to “Bringing It All Back Home”)

“Half-racked prejudice leaped forth. ‘Rip down all hate, I screamed.’ Lies that life is black and white spoke from my skull. I dreamed  romantic facts of musketeers foundationed deep, somehow. Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now. “ (From “My Back Pages”)

“Man thinks ‘cause he rules the earth he can do with it as he please and if things don’t change son, he will.

Man has invented his doom; first step was touching the moon.

Now he’s hell-bent for destruction, he’s afraid and confused, and his brain has been mismanaged with great skill. All he believes are his eyes and his eyes, they just tell him lies.

Now he worships at an altar of a stagnant pool and when he sees his reflection, he’s fulfilled.

Oh, man is opposed to fair play; He wants it all and he wants it his way.” (From “License to Kill”)

Dr. Kohls is a retired physician from the Duluth, Minnesota, who writes about issues of war, peace and mental health.



Original Page: http://consortiumnews.com/2011/05/25/the-gospel-according-to-dylan/

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Peter Fonda encourages his grandchildren to take up arms against Obama

Cannes 2011: Peter Fonda encourages his grandchildren to take up arms against President Barack Obama

by Richard Ede, telegraph.co.uk
May 22nd 2011

“I’m training my grandchildren to use long-range rifles,” said the actor, 71. “For what purpose? Well, I’m not going to say the words 'Barack Obama’, but …”

He added, enigmatically: “It’s more of a thought process than an actuality, but we are heading for a major conflict between the haves and the have nots. I came here many years ago with a biker movie and we stopped a war. Now, it’s about starting the world.

“I prefer to not to use the words, 'let’s stop something’. I prefer to say, 'let’s start something, let’s start the world’.

“There’s no room any more for a cissy and, like I said, don’t forget that I’ve got grandsons who I’ve trained with long-distance rifles. We have to run like mofos to change this world.”


Original Page: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/8528327/Cannes-2011-Peter-Fonda-encourages-his-grandchildren-to-take-up-arms-against-President-Barack-Obama.html

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Easy Rider Star Fonda Disses Obama

Easy Rider Star Fonda Disses Obama

by Authors, ultimatemotorcycling.com
May 24th 2011 Click the images below for bigger versions:

Peter Fonda Vs. President Obama

Since his appearance in the 1960s counter-culture biker flick, Easy Rider, Peter Fonda has progressively gone greener and greener.

The motorcycle film icon, who piloted a stretched 1951 Harley-Davidson Panhead to New Orleans in Easy Rider, is now an active enviromentalist. In his latest film effort, he has co-produced the film "The Big Fix, which tells the story of the last year's BP oil rig disaster off the coast of Louisiana.

And at the recent Cannes Film Festival in France, Fonda stirred up some controversy when he allegedly called President Barack Obama a traitor in an email, it was reported by The Telegraph.

The Telegraph reported that Fonda sent n an email to President Obama last week, stating: "I sent an email to President Obama saying, 'You are a (expletive) traitor. You're a traitor, you allowed foreign boots on our soil telling our military - in this case the coastguard - what they can and could not do, and telling us, the citizens of the United States, what we could or could not do."

Peter Fonda was also reported to call the BP staff Brits who he "thought we kicked them out a long time ago."

These are some heavy words for a man who did some much for motorcycle culture. And it's going to be a talker...opinions are welcome.



Original Page: http://www.ultimatemotorcycling.com/2011/easy-rider-star-fonda-disses-obama

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Landmark Clinical LSD Study Nears Completion

Landmark Clinical LSD Study Nears Completion

by David Jay Brown, santacruz.patch.com
June 30th 2011

The first clinical LSD study on the planet in over 35 years is almost complete. The Santa Cruz Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) is currently sponsoring this research, which began in 2008, when Swiss psychiatrist Peter Gasser, M.D., became the first medical researcher in the world to obtain government approval to do therapeutic research with LSD since 1972. 

Before 1972, nearly 700 studies with LSD and other psychedelic drugs were conducted. This research suggested that LSD has remarkable medical potential. LSD-assisted psychotherapy was shown to reduce the anxiety of terminal cancer patients, the drinking of alcoholics, and the symptoms of many difficult-to-treat psychiatric illnesses.

For example, early LSD studies with advanced-stage cancer patients showed that LSD-assisted psychotherapy could alleviate symptoms of anxiety, tension, depression, sleep disturbances, psychological withdrawal, and even severe physical pain. Other early investigators found that LSD may have some valuable potential as a means to facilitate creativity, problem-solving abilities, and spiritual awareness.

Between 1972 and 1990 there were no government-approved human studies with any psychedelic drugs anywhere in the world. Their disappearance was no mystery. The worldwide ban on psychedelic drug research was the result of a political backlash that followed the promotion of these drugs by the counterculture of the 1960s. This reaction not only made these substances illegal for personal use, it also made it extremely difficult for medical researchers to obtain government approval to study them.

The situation began to change in 1990 when, according to MAPS President Rick Doblin, “open-minded regulators at the FDA decided to put science before politics when it came to psychedelic and medical marijuana research.” There are now over a half dozen clinical studies occurring worldwide that are examining the medical potential of psychedelic drugs.

Gasser’s almost-completed, MAPS-sponsored LSD study is being conducted in Switzerland, where LSD was discovered in 1943 by Albert Hofmann. The study is examining how LSD-assisted psychotherapy effects the anxiety associated with suffering from an advanced, life-threatening illness. There are twelve subjects in the study with advanced-stage cancer and other serious illnesses. 

According to Gasser, so far the results look promising. Early researchers found that LSD-assisted psychotherapy has the incredible ability to help many people overcome their fear of death, and this is probably a major contributing factor in why the drug can be so profoundly helpful when people are facing a life-threatening illness.

On May 26th the final subject in Gasser’s study completed his last experimental therapy session. The clinical team at MAPS is now conducting a preliminary data analysis, finalizing the study’s database for the FDA, and assisting Gasser in preparing a manuscript for publication.

MAPS is also sponsoring other medical research into the psychotherapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs, and more studies are on the way. The medical and therapeutic value of LSD and other psychedelic drugs appears to be quite substantial--although, personally, I’m really looking forward to the day when this research can go beyond its initial potential as a psychotherapeutic tool, as well as a spiritual aid, and delve into the mysteries of creativity, psychic phenomena, and the possible reality of parallel universes and non-human entity contact.

Meanwhile, it seems like these mysterious substances hold enormous potential for treating numerous psychiatric disorders. Evidence suggests that they have the ability to help us treat posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, end-of-life anxiety, cluster headaches, and other difficult-to-treat mental disorders, including, I suspect, the general neurosis that comes from simply being a human being.

To read the interview that I did with LSD researcher Peter Gasser, see: 

www.maps.org/news-letters/v20n1/v20n1-42to43.pdf

To find out more about MAPS and medical research into psychedelic drugs, see: www.maps.org

If you enjoy my column, and want to learn more about psychedelic and cannabis culture, “like” my Facebook page:



Original Page: http://santacruz.patch.com/articles/landmark-clinical-lsd-study-nears-completion

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The Psychedelic Explorer=?UTF-8?B?4oCZcyBHdWlkZQ==?=

The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide

erowid.org | May 19th 2011

With the publication of The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide, James Fadiman has inaugurated a new era of spiritual and practical exploration of inner space. Mind you, he didn’t invent or even rediscover the spiritual use of entheogens, nor the psychotherapeutic exploration of psychoactive plants and chemicals, but this guidebook represents a bold re-emergence of an ancient healing practice.

Fadiman, a co-founder of the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology and author most recently of an undergraduate psychology textbook and The Other Side of Haight: A Novel, is a champion of psychedelic guiding. He’s been around since the giddy big bang of psychedelic culture, and now, gladly, and with hope, turns the keys to guided journeys over to the grandchildren of that distant revolution. There’s plenty by and about him on the web, if you’re curious.

Fadiman gets right to the guided session instruction without disclaimers and apologies—a courteous gesture considering we’ve waited for more than a generation already. The guidebook is replete with suggestions for both guide and voyager regarding everything from music, food and lighting to finer aesthetic points. The six aspects of the well-conceived voyage are set and setting (which you knew), but also: substance, sitter, session, and situation. The six stages of a voyaging session are all simple and easily spelled out, as well, but this is rather like saying most of the paintings in the Louvre are made with canvas, brushes and paint: within Fadiman’s simple protocol exists a universe of possibilities.

Not all these possibilities are happy ones, naturally, so there is plenty of material on what can go wrong, and how to recover. Some chapters, contributed in part by other writers, speak to the experiences of pioneering elders and suggest how voyaging can address healing, creativity, problem solving and everyday life. Other chapters bring history, science and future directions for research and experimentation into context.

No single volume could hope to address all the issues, and especially the practical concerns, of the myriad combinatorial nodes of the Six S’s, so The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide wisely points out to the Web for other resources, and to a dedicated wiki, to which you, too, may contribute.

As noted, this topic has been around for a while; the World Health Organization published Ataractic and Hallucinogenic Drugs in Psychiatry in 1958! The 60s saw several widely read personal narratives of voyaging, a handful of guidebooks, quite a bit of science, and a larger number of rants, both pro and con, religious and secular, erudite and fulminating. The intervening decades brought hundreds of books about hallucinogens, cannabis and other drugs in religious, cultural, medical and literary contexts, but relatively few had practical advice or spiritual use in mind, although you could read between the lines, and many did.

The “How I Tripped Good” genre is alive and well—scarce copies of such books by folks who tripped to death fetch handsome prices—as is the perennially larger “How I Fucked Up Getting Fucked Up” school, which are quickly remaindered. But, The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide belongs to an altogether higher order of endeavor, puns happily winked at. Truly destined to be a classic. Don’t leave everyday reality without it.



Original Page: http://www.erowid.org/library/review/review.php?p=334

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The Almighty Black P Stone Nation: The Rise, Fall and Resurgence of an American Gang

The Almighty Black P Stone Nation: The Rise, Fall and Resurgence of an American Gang

by Tracy Baim, windycitymediagroup.com
May 18th 2011
By Natalie Y. Moore and Lance Williams, $26.95; Lawrence Hill . Books; 294 pages

Authors Natalie Moore and Lance Williams have documented an important chapter in Chicago's history in their new book, The Almighty Black P Stone Nation. While primarily about a South Side street gang operating over several decades in Chicago, this book does an excellent job of connecting the dots of poverty, FBI and police harassment, unemployment, drugs, violence, and even anti-terrorism efforts pre- and post-9/11.

This book is not a sugary presentation about repressed and oppressed African-American male youth, but rather it links their situation to the problems of the greater society. There are no simple causes of gang participation, and there are no simple solutions. This book just provides us with a great understanding of the inner workings of the Blackstone Rangers. This was a powerful group that ultimately encompassed 21 individual gangs into their Black Stone Nation.

Across multiple generations of disaffected youth, the Rangers were a legendary gang, sometimes with notions of helping their community, other times participating in territorial bloodbaths. Lyndon Johnson's White House and J. Edgar Hoover's FBI both feared their power, worried that they would disrupt the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and cause even more trouble beyond that event. Meanwhile, the Black Panthers and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan wanted to partner with them. The Chicago police tried to destroy them, threatened even by the good things the gang tried to do in their communities.

Read more story below....

"In gangster lore, the Almighty Black P Stone Nation stands out among the most notorious street gangs," the authors state. "Louis Farrakhan hired the Blackstone Rangers as his Angels of Death. Fifteen years before 9/11, the U.S. government accused the Stones of plotting domestic terrorist acts with Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi. And currently, founding member Jeff Fort is serving a triple life sentence at the only U.S. federal supermax prison. Were the Stones criminals, brainwashed terrorists, victims of their circumstances, or champions of social change? Or were they all of these, their role perceived differently by different races and socioeconomic groups?"

Here is a short excerpt from the book, this section set in 1968: " [ Dick Gregory ] announced a plan to run for U.S. president as a write-in candidate. Gregory also said that he planned to organize massive protests leading up to and through the Democratic National Convention to be held that August in Chicago. Gregory, who lived in Chicago at the time, wanted to force the city to enact a stronger fair housing ordinance and take other steps to address civil-rights issues. Gregory's plan included recruiting the Vice Lords, the Blackstone Rangers, and the Disciples to participate in these protests.

"These kinds of announcements by black leaders, ones that encouraged alliances between gangs and Black Nationalists—not the escalating violence between the Stones and Disciples—scared the shit out of the feds.

"The year 1968 was pivotal in U.S. history and for the Blackstone Rangers. Television news covered people protesting the Vietnam War and marching for civil rights and a wide range of radical groups vandalizing government and corporate buildings.

"And while it was never their intention, the Stones got caught up in 1968. To the Stones, their only enemies were the Disciples. To the government, the Stones were a perceived threat to local and national security. The Stones had a history of social activism and well-known associations with Black Nationalist leaders. These leaders recognized the Stones as potential allies, troops, and sometimes fodder. The Stones had already demonstrated their willingness to commit violence."

The authors ( Moore is a reporter for Chicago Public Radio and Williams is an associate professor at Northeastern Illinois University and the son of a former Vice Lord gang member ) do an excellent job of placing the gang and its leaders in the context of the larger society, thus providing an invaluable look at many important events, people and institutions in Chicago's history.

See http:// www.blackstonebook.com .



Original Page: http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/gay/lesbian/news/ARTICLE.php?AID=31850%3E

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Sacramental herb

Sacramental herb

m.metrotimes.com | May 24th 2011

I'm crossing the English Channel on the Stena Line steamship as I write this, moving on from London to Amsterdam for the next 10 days, and then on to Italy. It was a rough April in the Motor City with one cold, gray day after another and the Tigers foundering until I left, but London was bright and sunny almost every day, and the weather should just get better from here.

England is a rough place to cop good medicine, and marijuana is considered illegal in every application — not at all what you'd call smoker-friendly. I ventured outside the city one day to visit my religious leader, the Rev. Ferre (as we'll call him) of the THC Ministry, and he made sure my medicinal needs were well taken care of.

In fact, I just sneaked my last smoke from that stash in my little cabin on the ship so I could write this column, and soon after I arrive at the Hook of Holland in the morning I'll be back at my regular stand at the 420 Café in Amsterdam, where you can always buy your weed over the counter whether you're sick or well and the price is always the same.

The THC Ministry is based in Holland and operates under the slogan, "We use cannabis religiously — and so can you!" I'm proud to be a member of the ministry, and it takes me back before the advent of socialized medicinal marijuana, when we thought perhaps the solution was to highlight the spiritual and indeed religious aspects of the sacrament as a way to escape the heavy hand of the narcotics police.

The brilliant hallucinogen called peyote had been established as a religious sacrament used for spiritual purposes by several Southwestern Native American nations, and many beatniks, hippies and fellow seekers had gained experiential knowledge of its potency as a spiritual force.

Many of us felt the same way about marijuana: that its spiritual properties and potentialities qualified weed as a religious sacrament for ritual use and equally beneficial in navigating the vicissitudes of daily life as well, much as prayer itself seems to work for the Christians and other faithful. Our daily marijuana use went well beyond the concept of recreational drugs — it was integral to our work and play in equal measure, and helped us keep our minds to the mental grindstone at all times.

Eventually, we sought to register an entirely different definition of marijuana from the orthodoxy enshrined and promoted by the forces of law and order. Not only were marijuana and associated psychedelic or euphoriant substances neither narcotics nor "dangerous drugs," they were in fact benevolent and had manifestly evident healing powers and could serve to help bring their adherents into alignment and closer harmony with the natural forces of the universe.

I can't remember exactly when, but at some point in 1969-1972 we formed the First Zenta Church of Ann Arbor, a nonprofit ecclesiastical corporation chartered by the state of Michigan that held marijuana, hashish, peyote, psilocybin and other psychoactive natural substances as sacraments central to the church and the religious and spiritual lives of the congregation.

Now these tenets we held true, plain and simple, but the underlying social idea was that members of the Church of Zenta could thenceforth rely on the constitutional doctrine of freedom of religion as their protection against conviction for possession and use of narcotics — or later, "controlled substances" — under the state's marijuana laws. Zenta members used marijuana religiously, as the THC Ministry puts it today, and were entitled to protection as religious practitioners following the basic tenets of their creed.

There were other benefits of ecclesiastical corporation: Organized religious bodies didn't pay sales or income taxes; their real estate transactions were exempt from taxation as well; and their forms of worship, however diverse or divergent from the Christian norm, were given wide latitude by the temporal government. Churches were churches, another order of being from the rest of the social order, and our church was determined to join their number and enjoy equal protection under the law of the land.

Like our other efforts to combat the narcotics laws and the incipient War on Drugs based in their idiotic assumptions — for example, as I've said many times before, marijuana was never a narcotic — the establishment of the First Church of Zenta was meant to deny and counteract the demonization of recreational drug users by the dominant social order as the first line of offense against us.

If you can create a mythology centered on the demonization of illicit drug use and the characterization of illicit drug users as dangerous criminals and enemies of conventional society, deploying ever-increasing numbers of narcotics police to stomp out this evil seems to follow.

When this tissue of horseshit (to quote William Burroughs) is stripped away and the stigma of evilness is removed, the marijuana smoker is revealed instead as a harmless seeker of spiritual truth or a suffering patient in need of medicine. These are not reasonable targets for prosecution as criminals, and the police must move back at least a few steps and sheathe the dreaded nightstick of drug law prosecution.

Now that we have legalized medical marijuana as a potential source of relief for a whole panoply of aches and pains, both physical and mental, and recommends that the state of Michigan certify the applicant as a registered medical marijuana patient, we've taken a big first step away from the reviled War on Drugs. Perhaps it's time to renew the religious argument as well.

Briefly put, we need all the help we can get i to wrest the jackboot of the War on Drugs off the necks of marijuana smokers in our society.

In closing I'd like to point out that I've completed this column upon my arrival in Amsterdam, working my way through my various obligatory stops — the 420 Café, the Cannabis College, the Hempshopper on the Singel Canal — checking in with my peeps around the Centrum and trying to honor my commitment to the paper and my readers at the same time. At the end of the month, I'll be on my way to Florence, Italy, on a personal mission, and I'll file the next column from there. Happy trails! —420 Cafe, Amsterdam



Original Page: http://m.metrotimes.com/mmj/sacramental-herb-1.1151881

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Widening the circle

Widening the circle

by ALLIE SHAH, startribune.com
May 16th 2011 The drum beat loudly as paradegoers in Minneapolis sized up the unlikely trio marching.

Three women -- two Somali and one American Indian -- walked arm in arm.

This small, bold act was designed to send a message to the American Indians and Somalis living near Franklin Avenue: We can and should be friends.

It's along this stretch of pavement, in one of the city's poorest neighborhoods, where a people who have been on this land the longest regularly bump up against a people who have only recently arrived.

Now, ambassadors from both communities are striving to move from animosity to friendship. Calling themselves the Native American Somali Friendship Committee (NAFSC), they meet monthly to speak frankly about the latest clashes and find common ground.

Group members say they've been through a transformation themselves since they started up last year.

"I was one of the top ones saying, 'I can't stand these people. They park in our parking lots. They stop in the middle of the road and talk to each other,'" said Mike Forcia, a committee member who runs the Wolves' Den cafe at the American Indian Center on Franklin. "Getting to know these people on a personal level has really changed that."

Suddenly neighbors

Old and new federal policies created the collision of cultures along Franklin Avenue.

During the 1950s and 1960s, the federal government relocated many American Indians from reservations to cities.

"The idea was to assimilate us. Get us off the reservation," said Terri Yellowhammer, an attorney and Friendship Committee member.

Thousands of Indians moved to Minneapolis. Most settled in the East Phillips neighborhood, making it home to one of the largest concentrations of urban Indians in the country.

Franklin Avenue became known as "Indian country," and to this day, the street holds a special place in American Indian history. Civil rights activists met there in the 1960s and 1970s and founded the American Indian Movement.

The first housing project in the nation to give preference to American Indians was built near Franklin.

Today, the avenue is seeing a renaissance, having just been designated the "American Indian Cultural Corridor," with banners hanging from streetlights and new Indian-owned art spaces and businesses opening.

Wade Keezer, another Friendship Committee member, remembers when the first wave of Somali refugees started appearing on south Minneapolis streets in the early 1990s, the women covered head to toe in flowing fabrics.

"I thought they were some new type of Catholic nun," he said.

The federal government chose Minnesota as a resettlement site for the thousands escaping Somalia's bloody civil war. Many came to the East Phillips neighborhood where rent was cheap.

Soon, Somali-owned businesses started opening, and the grumbling began.

Some Indians started calling the Aldi's grocery store on Franklin "Ali's," because it attracted Somali shoppers.

In some Somali circles, where alcohol is taboo, Indians were viewed as drunks.

"A lot of people really started noticing when they started opening halal markets and getting into the subsidized housing," Keezer said. "A lot of Indian people couldn't get into there because they couldn't pass the background checks. People started saying, 'How do they get all this property and how do they get the push?'"

Somali immigrants had an edge over Indians applying for housing because, as newcomers, they had a clean slate.

Oil and water

Tensions reached a boiling point in the summer of 2009 when an American Indian woman reported that she had been beaten and robbed on Franklin by three Somali teenagers.

The hateful comments about Somalis that Keezer overheard told him it was time to do something. He fired off an e-mail reflecting on what was happening, sparking a community conversation.

It was the start of monthly gatherings that alternate between the American Indian Center and the Brian Coyle Center, which is frequented by Somalis.

"People come and tell their real stories," said Amina Saleh of the Family Partnership.

Yellowhammer was one of the founding members.

"The message I got from the Somalis I met with fairly early on was, 'This does not reflect our values. These attacks on your people -- this is not who we are,'" she said.

The Somalis talked of youth who were growing up as orphans, unschooled and unconnected to Somali culture.

That resonated with Forcia, Yellowhammer and Keezer, who saw similar problems among American Indian youth.

"We have the same dynamics, but instead of finding common ground, we were just oil and water all the time," Forcia said.

The group's work has attracted outside attention. Last year, NASFC finished second out of 223 entries for a $25,000 grant from the InCommons program.

NASFC members also have been consulted to ease tensions between American Indian and Somali kids on school buses. Residents from Eden Prairie and Rochester have asked about NASFC's work, hoping to apply it to their own communities.

New friends

Before she got involved with the group, Saleh didn't have any Indian friends.

"Now I have Mike. I have Wade. I have Terri," she said.

"We can talk about incidents, and those need to be talked about," Keezer said. "We've gotten to a level of comfort where we can be honest about things."

Getting there took perseverance.

When Khadra Abdi went to her first meeting, she just listened, but even that was difficult.

"I left the meeting and said to Amina, 'Did you hear what that guy Mike said? He said we don't know how to drive! What does that mean?'" she asked.

In those first months, Abdi and Saleh wondered how much honesty people could take. But they kept coming back, and Abdi started seeing things differently.

"Before, if I saw a Native walking on the same side of the street, I was going to the other side of the street," she said. "All I know is they don't want me. I'd rather not deal with it."

She began to understand why her behavior might offend some Indians. Now, when she sees a Native American coming her way, she looks up and says hello.

"Before, I really didn't care," Abdi said. "But now, I care. This is my little theory: I'm going to be friendly to this person so maybe, they will be friendly to another Somali person. I don't know if it's going to work, but I try it every day."

Allie Shah • 612-673-4488



Original Page: http://www.startribune.com/local/minneapolis/121967269.html

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Jane Fonda feeling herself at 73, gets nine hours of sleep and lots of sex

Jane Fonda feeling herself at 73, gets nine hours of sleep and lots of sex

by Dave Masko, huliq.com
May 23rd 2011

EUGENE, Ore. – Baby Boomers and seniors today may be heading in a backward direction due to their focus on money over love, states Jane Fonda during a recent interview at the Cannes Film Festival; meanwhile, both Fonda, 73, and other Baby Boomers -- confessing to befuddlement at the speed of modern life that focuses more on the future than to be here now -- has Fonda admitting that she takes life one day at a time as one means to stay mentally and physically healthy.

Jane Fonda is going public about her old age, active sex life and other truths she has about life. At the recent Cannes Film Festival, the double-Oscar-winning actress looked slim and fresh at age 73, reported London’s Daily Mail newspaper May 17. When asked how she manages “to look fabulous in her 70’s, Fonda told the Daily Mail that it’s “good genes and money,” as two factors, and the other “is sex.” In fact, Fonda wants more Baby Boomers and seniors to admit to still enjoying sex into their 60’s, 70’s, 80’s and older. Moreover, Fonda was asked about how much money she spends on staying young. “See these teeth? They cost $55,000. It was teeth or a new car, and I opted for the teeth,” Fonda said.

Jane Fonda’s “Workout” is now how she lives her day-to-day life as a senior, age 73

The whole truth from Jane Fonda these days is contained in yet another book about her life and lost loves, as well as numerous magazine and Internet interviews.

Her new book, “Prime Time: Creating A Great Third Act,” is set for release in August, with Fonda coming to a book store near you to promote the book and her lifestyle.

While she never states her age at 73, she does talk a lot about being old. Instead, Fonda likes to talk about mental and physical health for those aging Baby Boomers like herself who are facing the final years of their lives.

For instance, in the March 2011 edition of Whole Living, Fonda noted that “I finally felt at home with myself when I turned 60. I spent the previous year trying to figure out what the first two acts of my life meant and what I wanted to become during my third and final one. I started to own who I was: brave, strong, not fat (that was my father’s issue, not mine). Being a late bloomer has its advantages,” she said.

As for her divorces and trouble with men, Fonda said one thing she can do now that she couldn’t 20 years ago is “be in a relationship. It was more difficult then because I didn’t know who I was. I’ve worked hard at becoming a whole person, and it’s made relationships easier.”

By being a “whole person,” Fonda explains many of her fellow “older” Baby Boomers are finding themselves at a “lonely crossroads in life” because they’re too centered on money and living for tomorrow over what’s happening in their lives right now.

At the same time, those of Fonda’s age and generation – people in their mid to late 70’s, who were born between World War I and World War II – are simply not into “wasting their time on Facebook, unlimited text messaging and buying more stuff,” says Alice, a Jane Fonda fan from Eugene who’s proud of her age at 76.

“She’s a roll model for us girls that age. I wish I had her looks,” adds Alice with a lazy laughter in her eyes.

Fonda’s breast cancer scare prompts her and others to live more in the now

Other than a story last year in the Los Angeles Times – that “Fonda has reportedly undergone treatment to remove a breast tumor, but declares herself ‘cancer-free' -- how she overcame her illness is raising more questions than answers because she keeps private on certain things."

In turn, she told Whole Living recently that she sleeps “nine hours a night,” and although she produced the famed Jane Fonda Workout video nearly 30 years ago, Fonda admitted that “I don’t like to exercise.”

She also noted that “she doesn’t take kindly to being told hot to think – especially by cynics.”

“I’m an optimist. I’d be funnier if I were cynical, but I’d rather not be cynical than be funny,” Fonda says in Whole Living, while also pointing to her passion right now of “stopping violence against women and helping adolescents believe they have a bright future head of them.”

Fonda’s had a long, but sad life but she carries on “because there’s always something to see and learn.”

While Jane Fonda rose to fame in the Sixties with films such as “Barbarella” and “Cat Ballou,” and went on to win two Academy Awards and numerous other awards during her 50 plus years as an actress, it’s her opposition to the Vietnam War – and her recent protests against the Iraq War, due to violence against women – that still makes her controversial.

Image source of Jane Fonda hanging out with Robert Redford at a Hollywood event in 1990: Wikipedia



Original Page: http://www.huliq.com/10282/jane-fonda-feeling-herself-73-gets-nine-hours-sleep-and-lots-sex

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