Category: You Should See This

[rating:4/5]

For a while, it’s fun watching legendary cinematographer Haskell Wexler berate his son Mark, who has turned the camera on his father. After the thrill of that gets old, you’re pulled into the father-son dynamic.

Starring: Peter Bart, Verna Bloom Director: Mark Wexler

Plot Synopsis: Mark Wexler’s cinematic blend of biography and autobiography centers on his relationship with his father, legendary Oscar-winning cinematographer and filmmaker Haskell Wexler, whose long and illustrious career is a virtual catalogue of 20th-century classics. Haskell’s collaborations with such world-class filmmakers as Elia Kazan, Milos Forman, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola and Mike Nichols include such works as WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, AMERICAN GRAFFITI, COMING HOME, BOUND FOR GLORY and ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST. The film features interviews with many of these artists, along with such luminaries as Jane Fonda, Michael Douglas and Sidney Poitier. But the true “star” of TELL THEM WHO YOU ARE is Haskell himself, a controversial, larger-than-life character who challenges his son’s filmmaking skills while announcing with complete conviction that he could have done a better job directing most of the movies he’s shot. As these two men swap positions on camera and behind it – sometimes shooting one another simultaneously – the film looks with honesty and compassion at their attempts to reconcile before it’s too late.

While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within, by Bruce Bawer.
[rating:5/5]

Bawer describes fast-growing Muslim communities throughout Europe that are basically isolated and closed off from European society. Muslims in France, Denmark, the Netherlands, haven’t been integrated into the countries they’ve emigrated into. They live in ghettos that are often beyond the control of local authorities. And they bring with them cultural norms from their old countries, like the lack of rights for women and honor killings, which violate the law of their adopted West European countries:

In London in 2003, a lively sixteen-year-old London girl named Heshu Yones- who’d fallen in love with a Lebanese Christian boy and planned to run away with him- was stabbed eleven times by her father, who then slit her throat. In a farewell note to her father, Heshu referred to the frequent beatings he’d given her:

Bye Dad, sorry I was so much trouble.
Me and you will probably never understand each other, but I’m sorry I wasn’t what you wanted, but there’s some things you can’t change.
Hey, for an older man you have a good strong punch and kick.
I hope you enjoyed testing your strength on me, it was fun being on the receiving end.
Well done.

The book definitely walks a fine line of being labeled a paranoid right-wing screed against foreigners invading these long-white countries. In many similar situations, people pointing out these kinds of situations and statistics have been labeled racist. The fact that Bawer is a gay man sometimes makes it seem okay, and sometimes you’re left wondering if you should be agreeing with his points.

Bawer details of the use of the host country’s welfare system by those looking to bring down the very western society that is supporting them:

After the 2005 terrorist attacks on London, it emerged that the four suspects had raked in more than half a million pounds in welfare benefits from the British government. The Telegraph reported, too, that Hizb ut-Tahrir founder Omar Bakri Muhammed (who preached that “we will conquer the White House… we will be in charge and Muslims will control the earth”) was getting “£331.28 a month in incapacity benefit and £183.30 a month in disability living allowance”; in addition, he collected a “housing benefit” and a “council tax benefit,” not to mention his wife’s welfare intake of “at least £1,300 a month.” (Curiously, no mention was made of child benefits for his seven progeny.) Even his car had been acquired free of charge under a government program.

Bawer talks of the European way of dealing with its growing Muslim population- appeasement:

“Muslims have a dream of living in an Islamic society,” declared a Danish Muslim leader in 2000. “This dream will surely be fulfilled in Denmark… We will eventually be a majority.” A T-shirt popular among young Muslims in Stockholm reads: “2030- when we take over.” In many places in Europe, agitation for the transfer of sovereignty has already begun. In France, a public official met with an imam at the edge of Roubaix’s Muslim district out of respect for his declaration of the neighborhood as Islamic territory to which she had no right of access. In Britain, imams have pressed the government to officially designate certain areas of Bradford as being under Muslim, not British law. In Denmark, Muslim leaders have sought the same kind of control over parts of Copenhagen. And in Belgium, Muslims living in the Brussels neighborhood of Sint-Jans-Molenbeek already view it not as part of Belgium but as an area under Islamic jurisdiction in which Belgians are not welcome.

And as the United States wages a war on terrorism, European distrust of US intentions leads them to often, in Bawer’s words, side with the terrorists:

Jordan wanted Mullah Krekar on drug-smuggling charges ( a year later, he and fourteen others were charged by Jordan with planning terrorist acts against United States and Israeli targets), and U.S. officials wanted to talk to him too. But the Dutch, frowning alike on Jordan’s indelicate treatment of suspected terrorists and on America’s death penalty, would not extradite him. Instead, they held him until January, then put him on a plane to Norway on the understanding that he would be arrested at the airport in Oslo. But Norwegian authorities- who shared their Dutch colleagues’ unwillingness to hand him over to either Jordan or the United States- allowed Krekar to walk free.

Coming in for some serious criticism from Bawer is France, who he repeatedly mentions had business dealings with Saddam Hussein’s government before the US removed him from power:

One might have thought this kidnapping would help Frenchmen see that all Western democracies were in this together; instead, the French government strove to get the message through to the hostage takers that in the war between Islamism and America, France was on the Islamists’ side. Le Monde applauded this spineless tactic. While pointing out thtat no democracy- not even France- was safe in the holy war that had begun on 9/11, the newspaper’s editors went on to celebrate (in typically frlowery French-editorial prose) the fact that the hostage taking, instead of exacerbating tensions between French Muslims and non-Muslims, had instead “caused of movement of national communion, almost of sacramental union.” Why? Because French Muslim leaders (who, practically speaking, could hardly have done otherwise) had unanimously denounced the nabbing of Malbrunot and Chesnot, expressed their loyalty to France, and sent envoys to Baghdad to help free the journalists. That’s it: all it takes for the French intelligentsia to wax poetic about “sacramental union” and about “the Muslims of France” being “the first in line to defend the Republic” is for French Islamic leaders to be willing to dissociate themselves from a patently barbaric act.

Looking to the future:

Over dinner, in response to Hedegaard’s dark view of Denmark’s future, Brix was more hopeful. The media would eventually come around; crisis would be averted. “You ahve to be a little patient,” she said. Not until the Eiffel Tower and the Tivoli in Copenhagen were blown up, she said, would the elite get it. hedegaard agreed. But then again, he said, the destruction of those landmarksmight have exactly the opposite result- the media might simply intensify its perverse cries of “Why do they hate us so much? What have we done to deserve this hatred?” the Wester European attitude, he observed, is that “of a repentant criminal”: too many Europeans are simply too willing to compromise their freedom. He mentioned a Danish firm with which he was familiar. It had recently taken on some new Muslim employees, and one of the longtime workers there had asked, in all seriousness: “When the Muslims start working here, can we still wear shorts in the summer?” Such readiness to adjust to Islamic norms- an attribute rooted in the fact that the reigning social ideal was not liberty but compromise- did not bode well for Denmark’s future.

One more, somewhat unrelated quote:

Jose’s language skills were in his blood. His father had been a journalist under Batista. When Castro and Guevara came to power, they arrested Jose’s father, tortured him, and put his eyes out. On the day I met him, in his modest ground-floor apartment, he sat in an upholstered chair in a book-lined room and spoke to me with a courtliness and respect to which I was not accustomed. Ever since then, every time I’ve seen a Che T-shirt on some clueless young person, I’ve thought of Jose’s father sitting in his living room, surrounded by books he could no longer read.

While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within, by Bruce Bawer.
[rating:5/5]

The Jetlag travel guide to Phaic Tan: Sunstroke on a Shoestring.

This is the second Jetlag travel guide, coming on the heels of last year’s spot-on paradoy of an Eastern Europe guidebook: Molvania (link below).

If you’ve ever read a travel guide in anticipation for a trip, you’ll appreciate the humor and the level of detail in the Jetlag books. Why hadn’t someone thought of this before? Check it:

Many western visitors to Phaic Tan are terrified of the possibility that they may— even accidentally —end up eating dog. A good test when served any roast meat is to look closely at the animal’s head. While pigs and goats will traditionally have an apple stuffed in their mouth, dogs tend to be cooked holding a tennis ball.

Phaic Tan is all about a fictional country that is quite obviously a mix of Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Among the sights along Thong On’s “Mildew Coast”, one can “settle back in a lazy deck chair under a shady coconut palm and, on any given day, take in the sight of an overloaded passenger ferry slowly sinking in the glittering azure sea.”

Can’t really say enough about these books, and I can’t wait for the upcoming titles in the series. I mean, they actually came up with the phrase “after his former career as a Khmer Rouge Information Officer.” Check this:

If you think Phaic Tan’s heat and humidity are hard to take now, spare a thought for those who lived back before the arrival of electric cooling. In those days rooms were kept ventilated with a ceiling fan pulled by a young servant boy (mataak) who customarily sat outside. With the coming of electricity in the 1920s this system was modified; the young servant boy still sat outside pulling the fan but he had a wire cable attached to one toe and was given a jolt if he slowed down.

Phaic Tan, by Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner, and Rob Sitch, A.

And don’t forget:

102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers, by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn.

This book is a meticulous account of what happened inside the World Trade Center from the time the first plane struck until the second tower collapsed, 102 minutes later. From the authors’ note:

Like the passengers on the unsinkable Titanic, many of the individuals inside the World Trade Center simply did not have the means to escape towers that were promised not to sink, even if struck by airplanes. In the struggle to live, those who survived and those who did not sent out hundreds of messages. They gave us the history of those 102 minutes.

The level of detail holds your attention, and even though you know how the story ends, the writing invests you in the final fate of a variety of characters: firemen, businesspeople, and even the lowly security guard who stays at his post on an upper floor helping people evacuate. This book brings the horror home:
They peered out. Debris had rained onto the plaza— steel and concrete and fragments of offices and glass. Above them, they could see the east side of the north tower, and also its northern face. Instead of the waffle gridding of the building’s face, they now saw a wall of fire spread across ten or fifteen floors. Then they saw the people coming out the windows, driven toward air, and into air. The plane had struck not two minutes earlier.

The authors of this book are reporters for the New York Times who had previously covered the 1993 bombing attempt. As they recount the final moments of the Twin Towers, they also shine light on the various ways the towers were built on the cheap, with safety features being removed in the name of more rentable space. Also interesting is the NYFD response, and how inter-agency fueds may have contributed to the high death toll among firefighters.

This book puts you into the buildings, and with each turning page you are frantic, knowing the end is closing in:

The word to leave finally got to Steve Modica, the aide to fire chief Paolillo, who had watched, uncomprehending, as police officers pounded down the stairs at the 30th floor. A fire captain, coming down after the police officers shouted at him.

“Evacuate! Evacuate! I want everyone to evacuate the building.” Then the captain continued down. Modica tried to reach Chief Paolillo, but couldn’t raise him. He switched to all three channels used by the department. He still could not get anything. He considered the circumstances, and would recall thinking: “We were doing nothing. Nothing. What’s the plan? Nobody had a plan.” He started down the stairs.

102 Minutes, A.

An Exploration of the Last African Wilderness, by Peter Stark, Grade: A

Peter Stark’s account of a trip kayaking down Mozambique’s Lugenda River is an amazing tale. The previously uncharted 750-kilometer route is filled with rapids, waterfalls, crocodiles, hippos. And throughout the river adventure, he recounts the tales of historic explorers and wanderers throughout history. “Why are humans compelled to explore?” he wonders.

As I was raised on the European version of world events, it’s always fun to find yourself seeing the other side of the story. Hearing about Stanley and other explorers as a child, watching cartoons, Tarzan movies, and reading Edgar Rice Burroughs, I always thought that the Africans and their menagerie of beasts were the most dangerous things to encounter in Africa. Now that I’m older and have learned more, the most deadly thing to meet up with in Africa was probably the European unless you had a load of gold, rubber, or diamonds to give to them.

Stark recounts from da Gama’s visit:

The local king offered da Gama a ransom of gold plus the delivery of the Muslims whom he alleged were responsible for the grievously mistaken attack on the Portuguese trading post. Da Gama would have none of it. Instead, he captured eight or ten trading vessels coming into Calicut that did not realize the Portuguese fleet was anchored there; ordered his men to chop off the hands, ears, and noses of their crews; and sent the body parts in a boat to the King of Calicut, telling him to make a curry of the cargo. Da Gama had the still-living handless, noseless, and earless victims bound by their feet and their teeth knocked down their throats so they couldn’t untie the knots with their mouths; he had them piled in another boat, set it afire, and sent it ashore, too. When three members of one late-arriving Muslim crew pleaded that they wished to convert to Christianity before they were killed, da Gama showed them the mercy of having them baptized and strangled before they were hauled aloft and shot full of arrows like their fellow crewmen. Finally, the King of Calicut sent a large fleet against the Portuguese. Da Gama’s artillery blew that to splinters, too.

“No wonder the people we had just passed fled into the trees.

There is also in this book a great pair of river guides who embody every white South African macho archetype. These two are the only ones with the knowledge, skill, and physical ability to make the trip a success, and the author’s attempts to reconcile his own personality to theirs is well written with honesty and candor. His attempts to spend more time with actual Africans that they pass on the river is usually met with derision by the others in the group, who see little to learn from the locals and their often primitive ways.

Stark:

“We don’t have a word in our language for ‘wilderness,’” a native Mozambican villager would later tell me. “What you might call ‘wilderness’ we call ‘the place where no one lives and you are free to gather things.’”

What more can I say? Great book, A.

Night, Elie Wiesel, Grade: A

“If in my lifetime I was to write only one book, this would be the one.”

This new translation of Wiesel’s Night is a masterpiece in 120 pages. I know my holocaust books, and this is one of the most chilling I’ve read. This story of the young Elie being taken from a Hungarian ghetto to Auschwitz and Buchenwald is full of despair and horror. And as events unfold, unspeakable events, Wiesel recounts the death of his faith in the God he was raised to believe in.

I’ve been to Buchenwald and Auschwitz. There is a feeling there that cannot be described in words. The rare book like Night imparts a little of it, just enough to break your heart.

Remind me to send this book to the guy who made sure to tell me that Jews owned Werther’s Toffee company. He needs to read it and suck on some hard candy.

State of War: The Secret History of the C.I.A. and the Bush Administration, by James Risen, Grade: A

Written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who broke the Bush domestic spying scandal, this book is amazing. Filled with secret details about the mismanagment of the war on terror, the distraction of Iraq, the complete lack of WMD intel. Wow, this is how we’re going to look back on this era of American history, provided we open our eyes. Read it.

One thought has come to mind as to why the Bush administration refuses to go through the FISA courts. I wonder if they are monitoring way too many communications to get a warrant for every call/e-mail collected by NSA computers. Can’t wait to see what this is all about, once the secrets come out.