2011 Person of the Year

I know I am a couple of weeks late writing on this story, but I would just like to take a moment to give credit to Time Magazine's choice for the 2011 Person of the Year: The Protestor.

 

Photo from Huffington Post

Clearly the biggest news story of the year were the protests that arose in the Arab World, and that soon spread to other parts of the globe as well (including in the United States with the Occupy Wall Street movement).  Discontent at those in charge is something that so often gets talked about, but very little ever get's done about it.  Sometimes, a person get's kicked out of elected office, and the next person to replace them is either just as ineffective, or worse than the person they replace.  Occasionally, you see a massive uprising against one's government in a foreign country, but that ultimately falter via government crackdown through brutality and fear (e.g. Iran, 2009).

But this year was different.  Why this year, and not any other year?  It is hard to say.  Time Magazine writer Kurt Anderson writes this:

It's remarkable how much the protest vanguards share. Everywhere they are disproportionately young, middle class and educated. Almost all the protests this year began as independent affairs, without much encouragement from or endorsement by existing political parties or opposition bigwigs. All over the world, the protesters of 2011 share a belief that their countries' political systems and economies have grown dysfunctional and corrupt — sham democracies rigged to favor the rich and powerful and prevent significant change. They are fervent small-d democrats.

For most years, Time would bestow this distinction to one individual, but in more recent years, it seems they have given the "person" of the year (singular) to groups of individuals.  Examples include "The Peacemakers" (1993; represented Yasser Arafat, F.W. de Klerk, Nelson Mandela, and Yitzhak Rabin), "The American Soldier" (2003), and the lazy and pandering "You" in 2006 (representing people who post things on the internet).  Of course, this year falls under that category of multiple winners as "Person of the Year", and "protesters" they couldn't have picked a more appropriate choice.

But what if you did have to pick just one person to represent the whole protest movement?  Quite a daunting task considering that the number of individuals involved in protest movements around the world this year are (at a minimum) in the hundreds of thousands, if not in the millions.  In addition, there is not one person who is primarily in charge of any of these movements, nor one individual that is the "face" of any of these movements, other than the faces of some of the despots who the protestors are demonstrating against to begin with (e.g. Mubarak, Gaddafi, Putin, etc.).  These were truly democratic movements in every sense of the word.  But there is one person, however, that can earn this distinction, because without him, all of these demonstrations may have never even started (or had the impact that they did).

Many people have suggested (and I happen to agree) that the Person of the Year for 2011 is the man in the picture at the top of this post: Mohamed Bouazizi.  Who is, or rather, who was Mr. Bouazizi?  Here is a description from an article on him from the website African Success, where I also copied the picture from above:

Mohamed Bouazizi  was a Tunisian street vendor born March 29,1984- died January 4,2011, poured petrol over himself on December 17, 2011 and set himself, alight in front of the office of the Governor of his region, life turned upside down in Tunisia and the fires that he lit has burned until it engulfed the entire country from town to town.

 Photo from African Success

He was a student from Sidi Bouzid and upon his father’s death, was obliged to stop his studies and find a job.Faced with the difficulty of finding a job, he ended up becoming a street seller, without official authorisation and desperate he plied his trade as best he could.

His plight echoed the hapless fate of so many thousands and thosuands of young Tunisians, seduced by the promises of western education, yet frustrated and thwarted by a visionless, un-productive, corrupt power structure which dominated the country and suffocated creativity and innovation.


In Tunisia, the President Zine el_Abidine Ben Ali and his family rules his country with an iron bar.

Papers to do this and that, land to build houses on, authorisations of all sorts were obtained by the ‘kind patronage’ of the President and his family.

Mohamed didn’t have the right papers and on the 17th December[2010] the police confiscated his good and threw him out of the market because he wasn’t paying the right dividends to the people the President had put in place. Apparently slapped on the face by Faida Hamdy, it has been upheld that the indignation was the 'spark' that led to him setting fire to himself. Her family have always upheld that she never touched him and a witness who had originally affirmed that she did slap him and has since added that it wasn't true that she didn't slap him.

Mohamed decided to protest by the only means he knew and poured petrol on himself, took out his lighter and burnt himself, becoming the hero and initiator of the ‘Jasmin revolution,’ which brought down the President and his family on 14 January 2011 and made him a martyr and hero of the nation.

The tragic story and suicide of Mr. Bouazizi lead to the ousting of Tunisia's president, and that could have been the end of the story.  A small story of and tragedy and triumph for justice in a small African country took place, but the rest of the world kept going along with business as usual.  But that did not happen.  Here is a piece from an article Reuters on why the The Times of the United Kingdom named Mr. Bouaziz their Person of the Year:

Bouazizi' death from his wounds in January prompted protests across Tunisia, forcing autocratic President Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali to flee the country. Soon afterwards, millions took to the streets in Egypt, Libya, Syria and elsewhere to protest against repression, corruption, poverty and joblessness.

The uprisings unseated despots in Libya, Egypt and Yemen as well as Tunisia, while Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad's writ is disintegrating and other authoritarian rulers in the region are eyeing the tide of public anger with nervousness.

Tunisia has since elected new leaders through peaceful democratic elections.

In an October interview with Reuters, Bouazizi's mother Manoubia urged the new leaders to honor her son's sacrifice by helping poor people like him.

"Nothing would have happened if my son had not reacted against voicelessness and a lack of respect," she said.

"But I hope the people who are going to govern will be able to keep this message in mind and give consideration to all Tunisians, including the poor."

 

Photo from Reuters

Without the death of Mr. Bouazizi, not only would there have not been an uprising in Tunisia, there probably would have been no Tahrir Square, no Arab Spring, no Indignant's protest in Spain, no austerity protest in Greece, no protests on the Kremlin and no Occupy Wall Street.  Without Mr. Bouazizi, both Hosni Mubarak and Moammar Gaddafi would probably still be in power, and it is possible that no one in America would be talking about the wealth disparity between the 99% and the 1%.

While I sincerely hope that no one ever imitates the drastic actions that Mr. Bouazizi took, we who care about these protest movements need to realize what he did, why he did it, and pay tribute to him and what has happened since then.  May the memory of Mohamed Bouazizi live on.  And may the movements around the globe that he helped create continue to gain momentum in 2012 and beyond!

Movie Review: Super 8

Photo from Rotten Tomatoes

Rating: *** out of 4

The title of this movie is Super 8, but the subtitle for the film could easily be "An homage to early Spielberg".  Many directors have been influenced by Steven Spielberg films such as Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and E.T. (for good reason), and have tried to make films just like his.  Without Spielberg (and George Lucas), the big-budget, action-adventure summer flick probably wouldn't exist.  But J.J. Abram's latest film goes to new levels of adulation.

Super 8 is about a group of boys, plus 1 girl, working on an amateur zombie, horror film in a late 1970s small town.  They plan on submitting their masterpiece to a amateur film contest in Cleveland.  One of the boys, Joel (played by Joe Lamb) is the main character of the story, and is trying overcome the recent death of his mother, who died in an accident while working at the local mill factory.  He is now under the lone care of his father and a local deputy, Jackson (played by Friday Night Light's Kyle Chandler).  It is apparent early on in the film that Jackson does not know have the strongest relationship with his son, nor can relate to his son's hobbies and interests like horror films.

The girl from the group is Alice (played by Elle Fanning), is the daughter of the town "troublemaker", for lack of a better term.  Louis (played by Ron Elard) also works at the mill plant.  Jackson hates Louis, Louis hates Jackson, and neither one wants their child hanging out with other one's child.  Jackson, for reasons that were never explained, even arrests Louis when he shows up at their house for the funeral reception of Joel's mother.  Later in the movie, we find out the feud between the two men is not because one man is law enforcement, and the other a repeat criminal.

Joel, Louis, and the other group of young people sneak out of their homes one night, and go to the local train station to film part of their zombie film.  While shooting, the boys witnesses a pickup truck drive onto the track and collide with an incoming train.  A massive train wreck with lots of special effects ensues, and the gang find the man in the pickup truck to still be alive.  It turns out he is an old science teacher from their school, who points a gun at the kids and tells them to run away and never speak of what they saw (unless they want to be killed, along with their family).  Once the kids make their escape, the train wreck (and soon the whole town) is taken over by the military, and strange things start to happen.  People start to either disappear or get killed, car batteries disappear and there are constant power outages.  Clearly, the somethings bad was released into the town as a result of the train wreck.

In many big-budget, action films, (too many, in fact) the characters of the film are so uninteresting that the real stars are the special effects themselves.  Fortunately for Super 8, the group of young boys are definitely the most stars.  They are like many entourage of young boys that exist on the silver screen that are on an adventure or quest (like Stand By Me, The Sandlot, and of course, ET).  Except, these boys are a lot funnier.  Each boy is their own unique character, and provides their own moments of laugh-out-loud, comic relief.

Joel, as already discussed, is the main protagonist of the story, and provides more serious moments.  Then there is Charles (played by Riley Griffiths) who is the ringleader of the group, the lead director of the zombie film and definitely the biggest potty-mouth.  Cary (played by Ryan Lee) is the apparent pyro of the gang, who always has plenty of fire-crackers on hand to ignite.  And Martin (played Gabriel Basso) is the group's more serious-minded, nerdy character (as established by the pair of glasses he wears) who will throw up anytime there is trouble.  And yes, he throws up a lot in this movie.

As for the special effects Super 8, and there are plenty of them, they not anything to boast given how prevalence of CGI already is.  The moments of action and suspense are neither that action-packed, nor suspenseful.  And the storyline of the movie takes too many predictable turns, including the ending of the film.  Indeed, Abrams was trying too much to make an homage to Close Encounters and ET that there wasn't much of his own, personal touch in the film (with the exception of the boys and their efforts to make the zombie film).

Still, this film is enjoyable to watch, and much better than most big-budget films that Hollywood craps out every summer.  Enjoy this film if you want a fun time, and if you do see this movie, wait a minute at the end when the credits start rolling it.  Trust me!

Andrew Hutman, Teach for America and the case against the "reform" movement

Everyone who cares even the slightest about education policy in the United States needs to read this article by Illinois State History Professor, Andrew Hutman on the Jacobin Magazine website.  It is entitled "Teach for America: The Hidden Curriculum of Liberal Do-Gooders", and has recently gained much more traction in education circles with it's reprint in Valerie Strauss's Washington Post education blog, The Answer Sheet under the title "Teach for America: Liberal mission helps conservative agenda".

It is an article that primarily discusses the fact that the Teach for America (TFA) program, and the influence it has had on this newest "education reform" movement.  Hutman talks about how TFA, and the reform movement as a whole, seems to care about the education of poverty-stricken students in the United States (and many in the reform movement, including Wendy Kopp, probably do care in their deep down).  But the reality of what their policies actually do is to push for "reforms" in favor of austerity and business-friendly interests.  Most of those involved in public education, including those who have been involved in the SOS movement, already know this.  But for those who don't, Hutman has done an amazing job of essentially laying out the case against the so-called "education reform" movement like no one else has since Diane Ravitch in The Death and Life of the Great American School System.

Here are some excerpts from Hutman's article.  First, his take on the true identity of TFA:

TFA is, at best, another chimerical attempt in a long history of chimerical attempts to sell educational reform as a solution to class inequality. At worst, it’s a Trojan horse for all that is unseemly about the contemporary education reform movement.

On the myth that TFA would "enhance the image of the teaching profession":

On the contrary, the only brand TFA endows with an “aura of status and selectivity” is its own. As reported in The New York Times , 18 percent of Harvard seniors applied to TFA in 2010, a rate only surpassed by the 22 percent of Yale seniors who sought to join the national teacher corps that year. All told, TFA selected 4,500 lucky recruits from a pool of 46,359 applicants in 2010. [In 2011 the acceptance rate was 11 percent.]

Although many applicants are no doubt motivated to join out of altruism, the two-year TFA experience has become a highly desirable notch on the resumes of the nation’s most diligent strivers. The more exclusive TFA becomes, the more ordinary regular teachers seem. TFA corps members typically come from prestigious institutions of higher education, while most regular teachers are trained at the second- and third-tier state universities that house the nation’s largest colleges of education. 

Whereas TFA corps members leverage the elite TFA brand to launch careers in law or finance — or, if they remain in education, to bypass the typical career path on their way to principalships and other positions of leadership — most regular teachers must plod along, negotiating their way through traditional career ladders. These distinctions are lost on nobody. They are what make regular teachers and their unions such low-hanging political fruit for the likes of Christie, Walker, and Kasich.

Hutman on the idea of how programs and reforms fix the problem of "teacher quality" by kicking out bad teachers, and bringing in good ones:

Following the economic collapse of 2008, which contributed to school revenue problems nationwide, massive teacher layoffs became the new norm, including in districts where teacher shortages had provided an entry to TFA in the past. Thousands of Chicago teachers, for instance, have felt the sting of layoffs and furloughs in the past two years, even as the massive Chicago Public School system, bound by contract, continues to annually hire a specified number of TFA corps members. In the face of these altered conditions, the TFA public relations machine now deemphasizes teacher shortages and instead accentuates one crucial adjective: “quality.” In other words, schools in poor urban and rural areas of the country might not suffer from a shortage of teachers in general, but they lack for the quality teachers that Kopp’s organization provides.

After twenty years of sending academically gifted but untrained college graduates into the nation’s toughest schools, the evidence regarding TFA corps member effectiveness is in, and it is decidedly mixed. Professors of education Julian Vasquez Heilig and Su Jin Jez, in the most thorough survey of such research yet, found that TFA corps members tend to perform equal to teachers in similar situations —that is, they do as well as new teachers lacking formal training assigned to impoverished schools. Sometimes they do better, particularly in math instruction. 

Yet “the students of novice TFA teachers perform significantly less well,” Vasquez Heilig and Jin Jez discovered, “than those of credentialed beginning teachers.”  It seems clear that TFA’s vaunted thirty-day summer institute—TFA “boot camp”—is no replacement for the preparation given future teachers at traditional colleges of education.

 On how successful most Charter Schools are:

But successful charter schools, Kopp maintains, also stop at nothing to remove bad teachers from the classroom. This is why charter schools are the preferred mechanism for delivery of education reform: as defined by Kopp, charter schools are “public schools empowered with flexibility over decision making in exchange for accountability for results.” And yet, “results,” or rather, academic improvement, act more like a fig leaf, especially in light of numerous recent studies that show charter schools, taken on the whole, actually do a worse job of educating students than regular public schools.

On Teacher Unions and the reform movement:

Rather, crushing teacher’s unions — the real meaning behind Kopp’s “flexibility” euphemism — has become the ultimate end of the education reform movement. This cannot be emphasized enough: the precipitous growth of charter schools and the TFA insurgency are part and parcel precisely because both cohere with the larger push to marginalize teacher’s unions.

On TFA, Race to the Top, and the "business" of High-Stakes Testing:

TFA’s complicity in education reform insanity does not stop there. From its origins, the TFA-led movement to improve the teacher force has aligned itself with efforts to expand the role of high-stakes standardized testing in education. TFA insurgents, including Kopp and Rhee, maintain that, even if imperfect, standardized tests are the best means by which to quantify accountability. 

Prior to the enactment of Bush’s bipartisan No Child Left Behind in 2001, high-stakes standardized testing was mostly limited to college-entrance exams such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). But since then, the high-stakes testing movement has blown up: with increasing frequency, student scores on standardized exams are tied to teacher, school, and district evaluations, upon which rewards and punishments are meted out. Obama’s “Race to the Top” policy — the brainchild of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, the former “CEO” of Chicago Public Schools — further codifies high-stakes testing by allocating scarce federal resources to those states most aggressively implementing these so-called accountability measures.

The multi-billion dollar testing industry — dominated by a few large corporations that specialize in the making and scoring of standardized tests — has become an entrenched interest, a powerful component of a growing education-industrial complex.

On Testing and Cheating:

More recently, cheating scandals have likewise discredited several celebrated reform projects. In Atlanta, a TFA hotbed, former superintendent and education reform darling Beverly Hall is implicated in a cheating scandal of unparalleled proportions, involving dozens of Atlanta principals and hundreds of teachers, including TFA corps members. Cheating was so brazen in Atlanta that principals hosted pizza parties where teachers and administrators systematically corrected student exams. Following a series of investigative reports in USA Today , a new cheating scandal seems to break every week. Cheating has now been confirmed not only in Atlanta, but also in New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Orlando, Dallas, Houston, Dayton, and Memphis, education reform cities all.

On TFA, inequality and corporate money:

In contrast to such “success,” the TFA insurgency has failed to dent educational inequality. This comes as no surprise to anyone with the faintest grasp of the tight correlation between economic and educational inequality: TFA does nothing to address the former while spinning its wheels on the latter. 

In her writings, nowhere does Kopp reflect upon the patent ridiculousness of her expectation that loads of cash donated by corporations that exploit inequalities across the world — such as Union Carbide and Mobil, two of TFA’s earliest contributors — will help her solve some of the gravest injustices endemic to American society.

Kopp shows some awareness of the absurdities of her own experiences — including a “fundraising schedule [that] shuttled me between two strikingly different economic spheres: our undersourced classrooms and the plush world of American philanthropy” — but she fails to grasp that this very gap is what makes her stated goal of equality unachievable. In short, Kopp, like education reformers more generally, is an innocent when it comes to political economy. She spouts platitudes about justice for American children, but rarely pauses to ask whether rapidly growing inequality might be a barrier to such justice. She celebrates 20 years of reform movement success, but never tempers such self-congratulatory narcissism with unpleasant questions about why those who have no interest in disrupting the American class structure — such as Bill Gates and the heirs to Sam Walton’s fortunes, by far the most generous education reform philanthropists — are so keen to support the TFA insurgency. Kopp is a parody of the liberal do-gooder.

 The philosophy of TFA:

In working to perfect their approach to education, TFA insurgents miss the forest for the trees. They fail to ask big-picture questions. Will their pedagogy of surveillance make for a more humane society? Having spent their formative years in a classroom learning test-taking skills, will their students become good people? Will they know more history? Will they be more empathetic? Will they be better citizens? Will they be more inclined to challenge the meritocracy? Or, as its newest converts, will they be its most fervent disciples? What does it mean that for children born in the Bronx to go to college they must give up their childhoods, however bleak?

 

Iraq War, 2003-2011

Photo from Here and Now

After 8 long and difficult years, U.S. Troops (most of them, anyways) are coming home from Iraq, and the war in Iraq is now officially over.  The events that have lead up to the war, and what has happened since then are numerous, disheartening, and outright sick.  From the amount of patriotic browbeating and full-out lying that took place in the lead up to the war, to the arrogance and mismanagement (to put it mildly) of the initial invasion; from the bloodshed and chaos of proceeding years of our occupation, to the relatively quiet, but marginally better (to put it kindly) final years of the occupation.  America's departure from Iraq is something that is long-overdue.

My initial reaction as someone who has always opposed this war is to say "good riddance" and try to push it as far into the distance past as possible.  However, it is also important that one revisits it's relatively short, but nonetheless eventful history.  We must do this in order to pay respect to the dead on all sides, and to show the brutal reality of what war is really like.  But we must also do this so that America (for all the good we stand for and for all the wonderful things we've ever done for people around the world) can realize the horrendous mistakes that it made, and try to never repeat them again.

I have decided that the best way to share write this post is to share a number of videos about the from individuals who could as good of a job of telling the story of the Iraq War, if not better, than I could have.  I will provide some of my own text, but I want to give credit to those who made these videos, and as well as those who did an outstanding job of reporting on this war when it was taking place(oftentimes, risking their own lives in doing so).

First, there is how we actually got into the war.  We all know now about the fact that there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction, almost no link to Al Qaeda, and absolutely no role in the September 11 attacks (as the Bush Administration had claimed).  But how many people actually remember the time and energy taken by the Administration (along with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Great Britain) to really sell the war?  It was immense, and it lasted for almost the entire year of 2002 and the beginning of 2003 leading up to the war.

The Administration was not alone in helping to push for this war.  One new word to enter the American mainstream lexicon as a result of this war was "neoconservative", and they were prevalent through the media and the Bush Administration foreign policy team leading up to the Iraq War.  They believed it was America's duty to push for democratic reform throughout the world, using military action if necessary.



The goal of promoting democracy in undemocratic countries is good enough in itself, and I'm sure many of those who were neoconservatives felt as if they had good intentions.  For instance, it is a shame that the late Christopher Hitchens (one of my heroes) so staunchly supported the invasion of Iraq, and was still one of the war's strongest supporters long after it was clear that the invasion was a disaster.  He originally supported it because he was friends with Iraqi Kurds who were being oppressed and slaughtered by Saddam Hussein.  The idea of what such an ambitious goal would look like, and the hard truth of what it really means to invade another country are two different things.

We were supposed to have an independent media that would ask questions about the legitimacy and acumen about what the Bush Administration was trying to do.  This isn't to say that members of the media shouldn't have lost all sense of objectivity, and come out staunchy against the war as say, a Democracy Now or The Nation would have.  But it seems like liberal outlets such as DN, The Nation, and the like were the only ones in the media who were truly doing their job in questioning the motives of the administration leading up to the war, and have done about as good a job as any media outlet on reporting on the war objectively in the first year or so of the war.  The same cannot be said about the mainstream media

While things have gotten a little better since then in regards to bringing truth to power, it wasn't that long ago that "liberal" MSNBC made Phil Donahue have two conservative, pro-war guests on the show for every one liberal, anti-war guest on his short-lived, prime-time show (Donahue was supposed to count as the second liberal, and thus, the debate was equal).

So, the United States went war in Iraq, bombed the hell out of Baghdad through the campaign of Shock and Awe, and within a matter of weeks, Saddam Hussein was thrown from power.  The war had just started, and it was already over.  At least, that's how it seemed at the time.  For a while, it seemed that the anti-war protesters and those damn hippies were wrong, and the neoconservatives and the Bush Administration were right.  In the months to come, the world realize just how far away from over this war really was.



What America soon found out was that "liberating" another country not as easy as it sounds, but it helps to listen to those who know the most about combat and military occupation.  This is one thing that the Bush Administration did not do.  Rather, they relied more on the opinions of those (primarily neoconservatives) who were most loyal to the administration and the Republican Party.  This ended up with disastoruos decisions being made that would cost vast numbers of lives, and greatly soil the reputation of the United States around the world.  This includes not sending nearly enough troops to Iraq to begin with; sending them with scare amounts of necessary equipment (often times, that was shoddy anyways); breaking international laws through the use of torture; dismantling the Iraqi Army; and basically not having anything resembling a realistic, long-term occupation plan.











Is it possible that America could have succeeded with the occupation aspect of this war, and not just the initial invasion?  Is it possible that, today, Iraq could be a truly safe and functioning democracy if  different decisions had been made, and the Bush Administration had actually listened to those who knew what they were talking about?  Perhaps, but of course, we will never know this for sure.

What started off as a half-assed, invasion and occupation quickly turned into chaos, and eventually turned into civil war.  One of the things the Bush Administration, and many of the supporters of the Iraq war did not realize before the invasion was the complexity of the country they were invading.  Specifically, they did not consider the different tribal, ethnic and religious conflicts that existed within Iraq , well before Saddam Hussein ever took power (if they even realized such conflicts existed to begin with). 



All of these decisions would lead to years of violence and blood shed for both American Soldiers and Iraqi civilians.  Baghdad would become the most violent and deadly city in he world. At least  one hundred thousand Iraqi lives would be lost, and so many more would be injured and displaced from their homes.  Nearly 4,500 American soldiers would parish, and many thousands more would be seriously injured.  This is not what so many American soldiers asked for, but it is what they got.









In more recent years, the situation on the ground in Iraq has ended up getting better, relatively speaking of course.  The arrogant and incompetent Donald Rumsfeld was replaced with Robert Gates as the Secretary of Defense, American commanders in Iraq started reaching out to different sects within Iraq to try and minimize the violence that was taking place, and more of the country were given over to Iraqi authorities.  In addition, violence and casualty levels on both sides have decreased, and deadlines for withdraw (which the Bush Administration had so stubbornly fought against for the first few years of the war) were finally being put into place.  In addition to changes in leadership and changes in policies, these successes must be given immense credit to our American soldiers, as well as Iraqi civilians, who have risked their lives to make Iraq a much more stable nation for the years to come.



This is not to say Iraq has turned out to be a successful, Jeffersonian democracy, or even safe and stable nation.  And it probably won't be one for many years, if ever.  For instance, Baghdad is still ranked as the most dangerous major city in the world, as it has been since the war started.  Gunfire, Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), and suicide bombs are still a daily reality in the country of Iraq.   And despite the improvements that have been made, many experts are questioning whether Iraqi security forces will be able to keep the country as stable as it is.

Then there are the costs of the Iraq War: not just in money and resources, but in lives and limbs.  There are those who would argue that all of the bloodshed and sacrifices that have gone into this war will be worth it in the years to come.  While I do wish that the Iraqi people will continue to progress and make successful strides in the stability of their country, I cannot say at this time that the war was worth it, nor am I sure I will ever be able to.  







So, to recap in a more lighthearted, but still thought-provoking manner:

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May those that have perished in the war (whether American, Iraqi, or elsewhere) Rest in Peace.

Photo from The Public Record

 May we never forget the lessons this unfortunate conflict has taught us, so that we can never repeat them again.

 

Photo from Impeach For Peace

Movie Review: Hugo

Poster from Rotten Tomatoes

Rating:**** out of 4

When I first saw that Hugo would be the new Martin Scorsese movie, I had two reactions.  Naturally, the first was to be excited because the great Scorsese was coming out with another movie.  But also, I was a bit skeptical about how good the film would actually be.  It is Scorsese, so I knew the film wouldn't be bad, but he has never done a children's film before (not even close).  But could he pull off the caliber of film that he has made with so many of his other classics with Hugo?  The answer to that is a resounding yes.

The film is about a boy named Hugo (of course) who lives alone, inside the clock tower of the train station in Paris, France.  He is able to survive day-to-day by stealing food, along with other materials which I will discuss in a moment.  Hugo (played by Asa Butterfield) also maintains and runs the clocks of the train station, which he has been doing since his alcoholic uncle (played by Ray Winstone) who had been taking care of him, ran away.  He hopes to keep up the facade that his Uncle is actually running the clocks so he is not taken to an orphanage.  Why is Hugo being raised by his Uncle to begin with?  More on that in a minute as well.

One of the places Hugo steals from inside the station is a toy and gadget store run by an older man named George Melies (played by Ben Kingsley).  He has apparently been doing this for a while, and one day, is caught red handed stealing gadget parts by Melies.  In addition to confiscating the parts he stole, Melies also confiscates a sketch book that Hugo has mechanical with drawings to some kind of robot.  This, of course, is why Hugo is stealing the gadget parts.  But why is he building a robot?  And just as important, why is Melies so shocked and insistent on keeping the notebook after Hugo has repeatedly begged him to give the notebook back?

 The movie soon reveals that Hugo actually is building a robot, specifically a small robot called an automaton (which are real, by the way).  It was the something that his father, a clock builder and gadget repairman (played by Jude Law) was working on fixing.  Hugo's father, who appears only briefly in the film, found the automaton in a burnt-up museum.  He doesn't get to work on it very long, as he is killed in a building fire, and thus, forces Hugo to move into the train station with his drunk Uncle (without the dignity to even process this news properly).  Without moving in with his Uncle, he risks being sent off to an orphanage.  Hugo then dedicates his life to fixing the automaton that his father did not fix.  In addition to the need to finish what his father started, he feels there is some bigger meaning that will reveal itself by fixing it.

As to why the drawings of this robot are so important to Melies, I will let movie fell in that detail, along with telling the rest of his story.  Melies was a real person, and you may look him up if you like.  Students of classic cinema already know who he is, and revealing his story will not necessarily spoil the twists and turns in the film, although I would prefer to not do so during this review.  However, I will offer this picture as a hint.  It is also a picture that is very relevant to the storyline of the film:

Photo from Wikipedia

  

This is one of those family films that adults and children can  watch together, and both will actually enjoy.  Although it may not be appropriate for small children (7 and under probably), Hugo is a film that is fun, adventurous, and quite friendly to younger viewers.   An example of this includes a chase scene through the station in the first few minutes of the film where Hugo is being hunted down by the Station Inspector (played by Sacha Baron Cohen), and his faithful sidekick, Maximilianus the Rottweiler.  By the end of the scene, your child will be probably be laughing out loud (you may be too) as Hugo makes his escape.

It should be noted that the Station Inspector, who is obsessed with tracking down thieving children and sending them off to the orphanage, comes off as the stereotypical children's story villain at first.  By this, I mean he is mean, unnecessarily authoritative, and seems to take at least some pleasure in making the lives of the young miserable (think of a villain from a Dickens novel).  The Station Inspector also has a leg brace, which come off as part of the joke in the opening chase scene and several proceeding scenes.  He even struggles to chase after Hugo due to his leg and the inconvenience of the brace.  

But as the film progresses, we learn that he is disabled because of any injury from "the war" (World War I), and he will never be healed again.  Here, we learn a lot about who the Station Inspector really is, and we begin to feel sympathy towards.  While it doesn't excuse the cruelty he gives towards young children, it at least explains it to a point.  Scorsese, through the Station Inspector, also seems to provide some important lessons to younger viewers on the disabled, as well as the true nature of people who act "bad" or "mean".  This may or may not be intentional, but kudos nonetheless, sir!

There are several different themes to this film which are quite relevant to the human condition that adults, and children to some extent, will be able to relate to.  One theme is human isolation, and the need for human connection.  Different individuals in the film, including Hugo, struggle with the desire to connect with someone else.  Hugo is able to fill the need for connection when he befriends Isabelle, who is also George Meile's Goddaughter.  Chloe (played by Chloe Moritz), is a perky young girl who relishes the fun and excitement she reads in the adventure novels she borrows from the train station library.  She offers to help Hugo out with his quest to retrieve the notebook, repair the automaton, and discover the secret behind her Godfather.  Through Hugo, she also finds friendship, as well as a fulfillment of her own desire to be adventurous.

Another important theme to the movie is the need to fulfill one's purpose, and the sorrow one feels when they are "broken", and cannot do this anymore.  It is similar to an athlete who is severely injured and can no longer play their sport, or musician who had broken his or her instrument and cannot afford a new one.  Like the automaton that Hugo is trying to fix, Melies is certainly broken and cannot fulfill his own purpose (I will not reveal what that purpose is in this review).  At one point, Hugo states something very important to this theme of when referring to the majesty and harmony of clocks and other gadgets:

I'd imagine the whole world was one big machine. Machines never come with any extra parts, you know. They always come with the exact amount they need. So I figured, if the entire world was one big machine, I couldn't be an extra part. I had to be here for some reason.

Those who are more spiritually minded will no doubt see religion and the purpose a person has bestowed upon them by a higher power.  Indeed, Scorsese is a devout Catholic, and such beliefs may or may not have gone into this part of the film.  Fair enough.  For those who are more skeptical of spiritual beliefs, such as myself, they should not fear this concept being brought up.  Even if you don't believe any God gave you a purpose, does it not stand to reason that it is human nature for one to feel they have something in life they feel skilled at and can use to help the greater good (for me, it is teaching and writing).  I will now digress from this topic before I delve further into a philosophical wormhole that I cannot escape.

Going back to the film, Hugo is exciting, emotionally-driven and slightly thought-provoking all at once.  This film is already receiving massive amounts of Oscar buzz, as it should.  The movie is well-acted (Kingsley and Butterfield both deserve consideration by the Academy for nominations), well-written (excellent story by John Logan and Brian Selznick) and well-directed, of course.  Martin Scorsese is capable of making a fabulous children's movie, which convinces me there probably isn't any type of film he couldn't make.  Perhaps next time Hollywood has a script for the next "out of this world" Sci-Fi flick, or that next big Romantic Comedy, someone should give Marty a call.

Merry Christmas, Everyone

Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics
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Movie Review: Midnight in Paris

Poster from Rotten Tomatoes

Rating: **** out of 4 stars

Woody Allen's most recent film is a romantic comedy that looks at the idea of nostalgia, and the fun possibilities of reliving a supposed golden age that one's choice.  For some, it might be going back to the 1950's post-war Eisenhower's America, where Rock N' Roll was in it's infancy, and Elvis roamed supreme.  For others, it might be all the way back to the Renaissance, being able to talk art with Leonardo da Vinci, or Michelangelo.  I myself don't see a definitive "golden age" to look upon, but I do have a few nominees that I would gladly consider (France during the Enlightenment, early 1800's New England, 1960's San Francisco just to name a few).  For Owen Wilson's character, Gil, it is the 1920s in Paris.

Like so many of Allen's other films, this film is absolutely charming and witty.  And like so many of his other films, the dialogue and subject matter, one could argue, borders on elitism and pretension.  But then again, intelligent dialogue and subject matters are some of the things that makes his films so memorable to begin with.  This film may not be for everyone, but as Roger Ebert put it when reviewing this film, 

There is nothing to dislike about it. Either you connect with it or not. I'm wearying of movies that are for "everybody" – which means, nobody in particular. Midnight in Paris is for me, in particular, and that's just fine with moi.

In other words, if you want high octane action and simple-to-understand dialoge, go rent Transformers.

And just as so many of Allen's films appear to be part love letters to New York City, this film appears to be his love letter to Paris.  For instance, the first few minutes of the film features different locations (some famous, some not) of the city of Paris, and which appear to be sequentially displayed from sunrise to sunset.  It is as if he is trying to show the audience the grace and beauty of Paris all in a brief day before we really delve into the heart of the story.  It is very similar to the opening of Allen's Manhattan, although it doesn't come close to the beauty of that opening sequence, with black and white shots of New York City as Gershwin plays "Rhapsody in Blue".  Very few opening sequences in the history of movies do.

One thing that does help to make the film easier to watch is having some knowledge of famous artists, musicians, and writers during the 1920s, specifically those that perused the streets of Paris.  Notable figures to make appearances during the movie include Gertrude Stein, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, and Ernest Hemingway.

Some of the most memorable moments in the movie are when Hemingway, acted perfectly by Corey Stoll, is behaving exactly the way one would expect Hemingway to behave (and then some).   One minute, he is talking about the honor and horrors of war, and proclaiming the immortality a man feels when "you are making love to a woman of true greatness".  The next minute, he is taking a swig of booze and yelling "who wants to fight?"  In arguably the funniest scene of the film, Adrian Brody does a masterful job of portraying the odd but passionate Salvador Dali, as he obsesses over the majestic nature (and mating habits) of rhinoceroses. 

There is also the love story that Owen Wilson's character, Gil, has in the movie.  He has a fiance (played by Rachel McAdams) who, while she loves Gil, does not really seem to feel that his romantic aspirations to be a serious novelist (rather than the marginal screen writer actually he is) will really pan out.  Then, once Gil starts magically going back to the past of the 1920s late night Paris, he meets Adriana (played by the stunning and incomparable Marion Cotillard).  Adriana is the mistress of Pablo Picasso when Gil first meets her, and a girl who probably never existed to begin with (unlike so many of the other characters in the film).  They soon fall for each other, and Gil is left with a dilemma. Should he be with his fiance, who he has clear disagreements with over what the future holds for the two of them? Or, should he be with Adriana, who he has quickly fallen in love with, but only exists when the clock strikes midnight in Paris, and then only for a few hours afterwards?

Some might feel less sympathetic towards Gil based upon the behavior he displays during his flirtations.  Besides falling in love with another woman, there is a scene in the movie where Gil attempts to obtain a present for Adrianna by stealing a pair of his fiance's earrings.  Despicable as that is, Gil's character is no less an example that exists in many romantic comedies where the protagonist's heart is torn between two loves (although that won't stop some from seeing Gil as a lying pig and a bastard). 

Without giving anything away, the film's ending is very anti-climactic, which might displease the casual movie-goer.  But as I mentioned earlier, this film is not necessarily for the casual, movie-goer.  The journey that Gil has during the film is so pleasant and unique, that one is not so concerned that there isn't more of an ending to the film than there is.

And also without really giving anything away, Allen seems to suggest that nostalgia and reliving a "golden time" in history may seem fun for a while.  However, there is never really a "golden time" that has existed, or will exist, especially when you ask those who actually lived through it.  The year 2011 in America might seem like a tough time now to many who live in it.  But who isn't to say that 20, 50, 100 years from now, others won't look upon our time as "golden" for one reason or another.  As the pretentious and snobby Paul (played by Michael Sheen) says at one point in the film:

Nostalgia is denial - denial of the painful present... the name for this denial is golden age thinking - the erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one ones living in - its a flaw in the romantic imagination of those people who find it difficult to cope with the present.

Oh, and how does Gil travel back to 1920s Paris? Who cares?  Just enjoy the movie.

American History on Christmas Eve

Picture of John Horse from Beyond Tourism: Florida's Yesteryear

In the sad history of America's treatment of both Native Americans and Africans, here is an amazing tale of Christmas Eve, 1837:

Each Christmas Eve marks the anniversary of a battle for liberty in 1837 on the banks of Lake Okeechobee, Florida, that helped shape the United States of America. An estimated 380 to 480 freedom-fighting African and Indian members of the Seminole nation threw back more than a thousand U.S. Army and other troops led by Colonel Zachary Taylor, a future President of the United States. The Seminoles so badly mauled Taylor’s invasion force that he ordered his soldiers to fall back, bury their dead, tend to their wounded . . . and ponder the largest single US defeat in decades of Indian warfare. The battle of Lake Okeechobee is not a story you will find in school or college textbooks or Hollywood movies, so it has slipped from the public consciousness. But in a country that cherishes its gallant freedom-fighting heritage, Black and Red Seminoles of Florida in 1837 sent everyone a message that deserves to be remembered and honored.

Despite what really happened, Colonel Taylor would claim victory, receive a promotion in the military, and eventually become elected President of the United States based on his reputation as an "Indian Fighter".  But the fight put forth by this mixed raced group of Seminoles is an amazing symbol of struggle against both the institution of slavery, as well as the American slaughter of Native Americans and the takeover of their land.  Read more about it at William Lorenz Katz's website here.

Obama, Matt Damon, Education Policy, and Electoral Politics

 Photo from Huffington Post

In the past year, Matt Damon's support for the Save Our Schools movement has made him a favorite of teachers all over the country who are opposed to the hurtful policies implemented by so-called "education reformers" across the country.  I count myself as one of those whose personal fandom of Damon has increased for this very reason. 

Today, I was reading an article on Huffington Post where Damon criticizes Obama's failure to be more audacious and anti-establishment during his first term as president.  One of the policy areas that Damon addresses is his policies on education:

"I really think he misinterpreted his mandate. A friend of mine said to me the other day, I thought it was a great line, 'I no longer hope for audacity,'" Damon told CNN host Piers Morgan. "He's doubled down on a lot of things, going back to education... the idea that we're testing kids and we're tying teachers salaries to how kids are performing on tests, that kind of mechanized thinking has nothing to do with higher order. We're training them, not teaching them."

Everyone who supports the SOS movement, including myself, would certainly agree with Damon's words here.  We do have an over reliance on standardized testing in this country that hurts both students and teachers.  Indeed, the policies that President Obama has implemented on Education since his inauguration are, on the whole, not any better (and possibly worse) than President Bush's were.  These policies include the aforementioned testing procedures, as well as his support for funding charter schools and merit pay, and the destructive and simultaneously inefficient Race To The Top.  But what is most surprising in all of this is not Obama's support for these positions, but rather, that many of those who supported Obama in 2008 are suprised by his education positions. 

This is because President Obama's platform on education in 2008 was essentially an endorsement of the education reform movement.  For instance, he publicly supported the idea of merit pay in a speech to the National Education Association, the nation's largest teacher union, in 2007.  In addition, he was a supporter of both charter schools and school choice.  From USA Today in October, 2008:

[Obama] wants to expand federal funding for charter schools from $236 million to $450 million. He says he'd "work with all our nation's governors to hold all our charter schools accountable," adding: "Charter schools that are successful will get the support they need to grow; charters that aren't will get shut down." He also wants to expand non-profit child care, parenting and education efforts such as the Harlem Children's Zone in New York to other cities.

Just like his support for the Afghan War, Obama proposed policy initiatives on education during the 2008 campaign that are unpopular to many progressives and supporters.  But then (SURPRISE) he ended up mainly keeping his promise when entering office.  I am not sure if those who originally supported Obama thought he would renege on these particular policies when he entered office, or if they were so caught up with "Hope", "Change" and "Yes, We Can", that they didn't notice those particular aspects of his platform to begin with.  In any case, nobody who did pay attention to the Obama campaign in 2008 should be surprised at his current education policies.

To be clear, I supported Obama then (with full knowledge of his platform), and would do it again if I had to.  The prospect of a McCain presidency, or any presidency led by the 2008 GOP contenders, is too unnerving to contemplate.  I supposed I am in the category that hoped he would renege on some aspects of his education platform, but alas, he kept his word (and then some).  In addition, I hope President Obama wins reelection in 2012.  This, however, does not mean I will necessarily vote for him.  Like Damon, I am extremely disillusioned with many of Obama's policies (including education and Afghanistan), as well the continuation of the Democrat's love-affair with pussyfooting and unnecessary compromise. 

This does not mean I will vote for a Republican.  There is not a chance in hell of that given the current lineup of  pitiful and moronic contenders for the nomination, as well as the ignorant and cruel platforms that seems to be considered "mainstream" in today's GOP.  But now that I am a voter in the state of Kansas (as opposed to Missouri, where I am originally from), my vote as a progressive does not really count when voting for the Presidency.  No amount of campaigning or electioneering in the next year and a half will get the state of Kansas to elect a Democrat for the Presidency.  Not unless something happens between now and then of such earth-shattering magnitude, that Kansas electoral support for Obama in simply unavoidable.  I may, based purely on the principals I hold as a liberal, as well as being fed up with Mr. Obama, vote for a third party in the 2012 election (e.g. Green Party).  This is not final decision yet, and the President still has time to win disillusioned liberals such as myself over for an electoral landslide in 2012 (although, admittedly, that support will be more important in key swing states rather than states like Kansas). 

For starters, there is one policy proposal on education that Obama put at the center of his education platform in 2008 that he could start pushing for.  I am referring to his support for the expansion of early childhood education programs.  Here is an excerpt from the same 2008 USA Today article quoted above:

[Obama] proposes a $10 billion "Zero to Five" plan that would quadruple the number of slots in Early Head Start, increase Head Start funding and improve the quality of both; he'd make states compete to create or expand child care and education for pregnant women and children. He'd "encourage" states to adopt voluntary universal preschool; he'd expand the Child and Development Care Tax Credit, making it refundable and allowing low-income families to get up to a 50% credit for child care expenses.

We already know how important the exposure to early childhood education can be to the potential of a young person, and there chances at academic excellence in the long term.  It is somewhat surprising, and unfortunate,  that Obama has yet to pursue such a proposal during his first term (at least, as far as I know).  Perhaps he is fearful that, given the current political environment in favor of austerity and worriment over budget deficits, proposing federal spending for early childhood programs wouldn't pass, at least, without some type of backlash. 

But one thing the President is long-overdue in understanding is that there will be a backlash by Republicans in anything he proposes.  That is what the Republicans do.  He is too worried about compromising with Republicans without ever putting up a fight to begin with.   Although he has shown glimmers of hope in changing this trend in recent months, he needs to keep up, and advance the good fight.  His Presidency, as well as the good of our country, depends upon it.  A comprehensive, early childhood education bill would be a step in the right direction.  Come on, Mr. President, time to get audacious!