A proposal to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees to the United States has ignited a bitter debate in Washington, but more than 10 times that number of people from the embattled country have quietly come to America since 2012, according to figures obtained by FoxNews.com.
Some 102,313 Syrians were granted admission to the U.S. as legal permanent residents or through programs including work, study and tourist visas from 2012 through August of this year, a period which roughly coincides with the devastating civil war that still engulfs the Middle Eastern country. Experts say any fears that terrorists might infiltrate the proposed wave of refugees from United Nations-run camps should be dwarfed by the potential danger already here.
“The sheer number of people arriving on all kinds of visas and with green cards, and possibly U.S. citizenship, makes it impossible for our counterterrorism authorities to keep track of them all, much less prevent them from carrying out attacks or belatedly try to deport them,” said Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies.
Posted inImmigration, Syria|Comments Off on As lawmakers clash over refugees, Syrian immigration quietly tops 100,000 since 2012
Echoing comments already made by others, a senior member of Berlin’s Jewish community has said the “situation where Jews once again feel comfortable living in Germany” could now be in “jeopardy”.
It is estimated that this year Germany will see around a million migrants arrive, of which some 70,000 are said to be living in Germany’s “chronically broke” capital of Berlin, reports Deutsche Welle. Although the city largely embraces Germany’s ‘open door’ policy, German Jews are among the most vocal of those expressing concern.
Rabbi Yehuda Teichtal of the Jewish community of Berlin (pictured right), says that both German authorities and members of the general public have done an “enormous amount” to help Germany’s Jewish Community “feel comfortable living in Germany” despite the history of their treatment in the Second World War. Noting that could now be in “jeopardy,” the American Rabbi described his recent experience of living in Berlin.
“The fact of the matter is that in recent weeks I have been more often than in the past cursed at or screamed at from passing cars, even in this very area here in the center of Berlin.
“It is sad and painful, especially when you are walking on the street with your nine-year-old daughter who is literally shocked to see such a thing and asks, ‘Daddy, what is that?’”
Rabbi Teichtal does say that one should not immediately “connect the dots” with Germany’s recent influx, but warns that incidents such as those he described add to the Jewish community’s fears their position in society is at risk.
He believes that in a worst case scenario Jews will no longer see Germany as the new safe haven it has managed to become in the post-war period, adding:
“Jews living here can only be guaranteed if Jewish people feel safe, if Jewish people don’t have to worry about walking around on the streets when they can be identified as Jews.”
From the description of Rabbi Teichtal’s synagogue given by Deutsche Welle you could be forgiven for thinking he has already lost his feeling of safety. Although it says “anti-Semitism of any kind is comparatively rare here” it points out that most of Berlin’s synagogues have armed guards. Rabbi Teichtal’s home synagogue on Münstersche Strasse goes even further:
Arriving at the synagogue is like arriving at an international airport. First, all bags, jewelry and coats must be put through a scanner. Next, under the watchful eye of two guards, guests are asked to walk through a full-body scanner. The less fortunate may be asked to go through several times, as various items of clothing trigger the proverbial alarm, before being granted entry. For many here these measures are more necessary now than any other time in living memory, the rabbi says.
As Breitbart London previously reported, the President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster, had already warned Chancellor Angela Merkel that migrants from countries hostile to Israel may strengthen anti-Semitism in Europe, saying:
“Among those seeking asylum in Germany, a large number come from countries in which they hear about Israel the bogeyman. They have grown up with this hostility to Israel and often transfer their resentment to Jews in general.”
Not all of Germany’s Jews agree, however.
Deutsche Welle spoke with Judith Kessler, a member of the Jewish Community of Berlin group who came to Germany from Poland in 1972. She volunteers at refugee shelters and clothes collection sites and regularly takes groups of migrant children to zoos, films and parks. She and her husband have even helped one Syrian family find a home and decorate it, and payed for their German lessons.
“All Jews in this country are refugees of some description,” she said, “I don’t understand how we can’t help people who are in exactly the same situation, who are fleeing war or being murdered. I wouldn’t be alive if some country hadn’t taken us in…
“…The Jewish community is totally polarised between people who want to help and people who hate the influx and fear Islamisation.”
People want to believe they are on a mission from God, or that they are fighting for some more secular good (animals, fetuses, women’s rights), and you can’t have much of a mission without good allies and a good enemy.
If God is all good and all powerful, either he allows evil to flourish (which means he is not all good), or else he struggles against evil (which means he is not all powerful).
A three-thousand-year-old question had been given a complete and compelling psychological explanation the previous year by Roy Baumeister, one of today’s most creative social psychologists. In “Evil: Inside Human Cruelty and Agression”.
The myth of pure evil is the ultimate self-serving bias.
When someone’s high esteem is unrealistic or narcissistic, it is easily threatened by reality. In reaction to those threats, people often lash out violently. Baumeister questions the usefulness of programs that try raise children’s self-esteem directly instead of by teaching them skills they can be proud of. Such direct enhancement can potentially foster unstable narcissism.
To really get a mass atrocity going you need idealism – the belief that your violence is a means to a moral end. The major atrocities of the 20th century were carried out largely either by men who thought they were creating a utopia or else by men who believed they were defending their homeland or tribe from attack. Idealism easily becomes dangerous because it brings with it, almost inevitably, the belief that the ends justify the means. If you are fighting for good or for God, what matters is the outcome, not the path.
The world we live in is not really one made of rocks, trees, and physical objects; it is a world of insults, opportunities, status symbols, betrayals, saints, and sinners.
All this moralism, righteousness, and hypocrisy. It’s beyond silly – it is tragic, for it suggests that human beings will never achieve a state of lasting peace and harmony.
So what can you do about it?
The first step is to see it as a game and stop taking it so seriously.
Write down your thoughts, learn to recognize the distortions in your thoughts, and then think of a more appropriate thought.
You will see the fault in yourself only if you set out on a deliberate and effortful quest to look for it. Try this now: Think of a recent interpersonal conflict with someone you care about and then find one way in which your behavior was not exemplary.
Finding fault with yourself is also the key to overcoming the hypocrisy and judgmentalism that damages so many valuable relationships.
Posted inHappiness|Comments Off on The Myth Of Pure Evil
The blogger Patterico seems to be moving from neo-con to conservative.
Last night, watching the debate, I witnessed a bizarre interchange in which Hugh Hewitt appeared to assert that it is a necessary qualification for the presidency of the U.S. that one be willing to kill “thousands” of “innocent children.” I figured I would wait to blog it until I could see a transcript, since I could hardly believe I had heard it correctly. Newsbusters has the video and transcript:
HUGH HEWITT: Doctor Carson, you mentioned in your opening remarks that you’re a pediatric neurologist surgeon —
BEN CARSON: Neurosurgeon.
HUGH HEWITT: Neurosurgeon. And people admire and respect and are inspired by your life story, your kindness and evangelical core support. We’re talking about ruthless things tonight. Carpet bombing, toughness, war. And people wonder, could you do that? Could you order air strikes that would kill innocent children by not the scores, but the hundreds and the thousands? Could you wage war as a commander in chief?
BEN CARSON: Well, interestingly enough, you should see the eyes of some of those children when I say to them, “We’re going to have to open your head up and take out this tumor.” They’re not happy about it and they don’t like me very much at that point. But later on, they love me. Sometimes you, I sound like him [Motions to Trump.] You know, later on, you know they really realize what’s going on and by the same token, you have to be able to look at the big picture and understand that it’s actually merciful if you go ahead and finish the job rather than death by 1,000 pricks.
HEWITT: So you are okay with the deaths of thousands of innocent children and civilians? [Audience booing.]
CARSON: You got it. You got it. [Pointing at the audience.]
HEWITT: That is what war— Can you be as ruthless as Churchill was in prosecuting the war against the Nazis?
CARSON: Ruthless is not necessarily the word I would use but tough, resolute, understanding what the problems are and understanding that the job of the president of the United States is to protect the people of this country and to do what is necessary in order to get it done.
I was pleased to hear a Republican audience booing Hewitt. I often worry that we have become very casual about the killing of innocent people, slapping the label “war” on it to avoid thinking about it too closely. The boos told me that not everyone thinks this way.
This is not mere handwringing in an attempt to show myself to be morally superior. This is an attempt to get people to think more deeply about the justification for killing innocent people.
If Smith and a group of his henchmen aggress against Jones and Jones and his bodyguards pursue the Smith gang to their lair, we may cheer Jones on in his endeavor; and we, and others in society interested in repelling aggression, may contribute financially or personally to Jones’s cause. But Jones has no right, any more than does Smith, to aggress against anyone else in the course of his “just war”: to steal others’ property in order to finance his pursuit, to conscript others into his posse by use of violence, or to kill others in the course of his struggle to capture the Smith forces. If Jones should do any of these things, he becomes a criminal as fully as Smith, and he too becomes subject to whatever sanctions are meted out against criminality.
This seems easy to understand when “Smith” (the “collateral damage” in the example) is a sympathetic figure. Take the Peasants’ Crusade in the last few years of the 11th Century. Peasants on their way to retake Jerusalem massacred Jews and stole their property. They rationalized that they were on a holy mission, and they needed the money — and the people they were taking it from were nonbelievers anyway, so what’s the big deal? They were embarked on a just war, and in a just war, sometimes innocents have to die.
That example makes the peasants seem like criminals — in part because many do not sympathize with their mission, and in part because the Jews seem sympathetic. But in the 11th Century, the cause appeared quite just to Westerners — and the Jews seemed unsympathetic indeed.
What about drone strikes? Many Americans seem perfectly comfortable with the notion that innocent people must die in drone strikes if that’s how you get the bad guys. I think we tend to assume that birds of a feather flock together. If people are close enough to a terrorist to be killed if you drone-strike him, that’s on them, amirite?
Except that, by that logic, if the government had learned that Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik were jihadis, it would have been justified in drone-striking them and anyone who happened to be at a year-end meeting with them. What are those people doing in the company of a couple of jihadis anyway?
Ah, but those are Americans! It’s not the same in Syria, or Yemen, or Iraq, some seem to think. Over there, if you’re near a terrorist, you’re fair game. Over here, maybe not. Which raises the question, if had we drone-struck a San Bernardino mosque, with Tashfeen Malik and Syed Farook inside, would you have supported that, even if a couple dozen civilians died in the process?
Jeff* says: “My feeling is based on the debates that the sort of criticism that Rand Paul, Donald Trump, and even Ted Cruz are making toward neo-conservatives foreign policy is gaining traction among Republicans. Trump is the most important, of course, because he was the first Republican (other than Ron Paul) to attack both the Iraq war and George W. Bush. Republicans have spent too much time justifying the Iraq war and praising George W. Bush, instead of putting daylight between their toxicity and the candidates of 2016. This is another reason the Neo-Cons are in such a panic and even Adelson’s packing the hall last night, didn’t deter a substantial portion of the audience cheering Rand Paul and Ted Cruz when they pointed out the folly and blowback related to intervention in Iraq, Libya and Syria.”
A reader says: The story gives some information but not three pieces of crucial information: It does give the breakdown between women and men on the jury but it fails to (1) give the breakdown of the Jury by race, (2) mention that officer Porter, the first to go to trial is African-American and (3) the jury vote for conviction.
This last is important. If there was one black holdout for conviction, the prosecutor probably won’t retry the case, but if it hung with a majority seeking conviction it probably will. It may be that the court is not disclosing the juror vote for fear of precipitating civil unrest.
Mistrial declared in trial of Officer William Porter in death of Freddie Gray
A mistrial was declared Wednesday in the trial of Baltimore Police Officer William G. Porter, after jurors told a judge it could not reach a verdict on any of the four charges against him.
“I do declare a mistrial,” Judge Barry G. Williams announced in a downtown courtroom.
Porter, 26, was charged with involuntary manslaughter, second-degree assault, reckless endangerment and misconduct in office. He is the first of six city police officers to stand trial in the death of Freddie Gray.
Attorneys are expected to appear in court Thursday morning in front of an administrative judge to pick a retrial date. Porter is not scheduled to attend.
It’s unclear whether Porter’s retrial will affect the trial dates for the other five officers, who are scheduled to be tried separately and consecutively beginning Jan. 6.
The State’s Attorney’s Office did not comment Wednesday, citing a “gag order that pertains to all cases related to Freddie Gray.”
Posted inBlacks, Crime|Comments Off on Mistrial declared in trial of Officer William Porter in death of Freddie Gray
* The brightest kids in California high schools are assured admission to the best schools in California’s public university system. That’s why:
UC Berkley is 40% Asian (32% white)
UC Davis is 39% Asian (29% white)
UC Irvine is 46% Asian (16% white)
UCLA is 30% Asian (27% white)
By population, California is 12% Asian, the US is 4% Asian.
Sine my son was a math and science kid in high school in a university town, naturally most of his “friends” were Asian. They all complained bitterly about quotas and policies that kept their numbers so low in the best colleges. They followed university admissions policies and racial demographics like baseball.
* If you’re one of those people for whom seeing is believing, take your pick of these videos:
Al Jazeera offers a nice, in depth video, hosted by a very pleasant woman in a hijab, for the benefit of Earth’s 1.5 billion Muslims who might be trying to figure out how to get a foothold in the USA:
The video is titled “Birth tourism delivers a new generation of US citizens.”
* “Birth tourism — illegally spending just enough time in America so your child can exploit America’s naive birthright citizenship rule — demonstrates the cash scarcity value of American citizenship that America’s leadership seems intent on giving away to random foreign grifters.”
A nation of drifters and grifters.
* I think the technical term for that is “diaspora.”
* Within the German ethny, you are generally better off with a higher IQ German.
Bringing in higher IQ Chinese introduces a whole suit of different characteristics beyond IQ, such as conscientiousness, inherent honesty, empathy for strangers/kin, aesthetic sensibility, etc.
You don’t see too many people moving to China for the ambiance and cultural appeal. If you are going to do eugenics, let us choose an appealing end stage.
* How about we call chinese-’american’ kids born this way ‘dumplings’?
They are dumped over here.
As for Americans that allow this, I guess they are Dim Sum.
* We can deny visas for any reason. Coming here solely for birth is a form of fraud.
* The parachute kids (high school Chinese kid without parents) and astronaut kids (high school Chinese kid and mom, with Dad back in China) are a great deal for the Chinese national parents, a total scam/rip-off for the USA and USA taxpayers : the Chinese national gets high school and language education; graduating from a US high school gets them residency status in college, so the Chinese national parents can pay in-state tuition. With just one or two years you magically become Asian-American, at least to the colleges (and in college statistics), not a Chinese national or international student. And the parents didn’t have to invest anything. Doesn’t matter if there here legally or not. Of course birth scammers are even worse.
* I spent several hours at that mall last weekend while my wife shopped. To amuse myself I would stand in one spot and keep a mental tabulation of how many identifiably White and non-White people I saw. In the heart of supposedly old White Orange County the White people proportion came to 19%. Also, I didn’t do an actual count, but the number of women in head scarves seemed to be pretty close to the number of Chinese women. OC has imported huge numbers of Islamic techies in addition to the East Asian ones, plus UC Irvine is heavily Asian. What was dismaying was the young women with their mothers, and sometimes the daughters wore scarves while their first gen mothers did not.
The mall itself is showing a heavy drift to the upper scale. One end looks like an upscale Tokyo, Dubai or Shanghai shopping district with a parade of one ultra luxury European store after another, a Nordstrom at the anchor end to provide lower cost relief, and Tiffany’s as the comparatively downscale American entry. Even the La Perla store we drop into once a year to buy $400 Italian ladies underwear has remodeled and gone even further up the scale than it already was. The check-out counter is behind a wall so the crass commercial aspects are hidden from sight, and all the saleswomen are wearing the same severe black dresses with identical make-up, hosiery, jewelry and hair. (Picture what Mussolini’s secretaries would have looked like). What remains of the shabby Sear’s complex at the downhill end of the mall is probably not long for it.
San Marino is another old White center which now has large number of Chinese kids living alone and attending San Marino High. When I used to work in the area I sometimes went to a great burger place that was popular with the San Marino High kids. These Chinese kids would zoom in with their Porsches and BMWs and try to cheat the owners by ordering water with lunch but filling the cups with soda at the fountain. The poor schlub owner would swoop on them and confiscate their sodas while the princelings laughed derisively.
* Birth tourism interdiction is influenced primarily by two forces:
1. ICE bureaucracy, with internal communications snafus, inconsistent policies, personal agendas social engineering, all supported by, or subject to, outdated technology;
2. Washington political weathervane that moves in response to real or imagined need for Chinese support for Treasury market stability.
The two interact with all the efficiency and transparency that we’ve come to expect after years of government training.
* Here’s the shocking thing: it’s NOT illegal. Intending to go to the USA for birth tourism is not a valid reason to deny someone a visa. Our consular officers in embassies are supposed to issue visas to birth tourists, assuming they would otherwise qualify for a tourist visa. Whether they’re pregnant or intending to give birth is not supposed to be considered.
* The US is simultaneously importing a new overclass and underclass. We are witnessing the changes, but even if we are noticing some amount of Überfremdung , over-foreignization, it’s happening slowly enough that few are panicking.
As for unintended consequences, they will be massive. The middle class is vanishing paralleling the European-Americans slow retreat from cultural and economic dominance. We probably wouldn’t be able to recognize our future society. Neil Blomkamp’s vision in Elysium might not be so far off, but perhaps we should expect that the faces of those residing safely and comfortably apart mostly will have Asian traits.
That the Asian-Americans have an acute class consciousness is no surprise. I also work at a part-time retail job in a market that has a huge presence of Asian immigrants. It’s a high-priced kind of place that caters to highly paid professionals at the high end of the SES. Even though the organization is a very progressive non-profit co-op that is very committed to diversity and our stores customers are predominantly south and east Asian, it’s uncanny how very few of the colleagues at the store are also ethnically south and east Asian. Apparently these princes and princesses might be too good to work retail. These are usually at least polite, but when I asked a a colleague who transferred to our store from a branch in New York City how the customers here in the northwest are different, he said they are much snobbier here.
* Despite their collective high IQ scores, the Chinese collectively carry a trait one might call “emotionally autistic.” This would diminish their edge significantly in their ethnic cleansing role.
The history of a race might be the best measure of what to expect in the future, and China doesn’t self-govern very well, and haven’t fared well when challenged and under significant pressure, as the Japanese would tell you.
I recall reading that prior to WWII, we had sent them dive-bombers for their use to repel the Japanese. After training, the Chinese were apt to bomb themselves, so much so that they begged us to send our own pilots to fly our own planes for bombing runs. In one incident, they bombed their own major department store, it was like their version of Macy’s, killing or maiming hundreds of their own citizens.
The Chinese pilot had bombed it because he thought he saw a Japanese Zero fighter, and immediately dropped his bomb load so he could flee. Turned out not to be a Japanese fighter. This didn’t mitigate the dead Chinese in their bombed out “Macy’s.”
That was the final incident that sent their diplomats begging for our help, as flying a bombing run proved too intense for our Chinese friends.
I suspect IQ, and sound judgement under duress, can be somewhat mutually exclusive traits, so I’d hold off on the ethnic cleansing of Germans, if I were you.
* Le Figaro’s top two articles today are about illegal Chinese immigration and Chinese passport fraud. The worst thing about being Chinese is that you have to live around Chinese people, it would appear.
* The Germans are the most accomplished high culture people on the planet of the past three centuries.
The Americans are the most accomplished mid/low culture people.
The idea that these peoples can be improved by importing hundreds of millions of Chinese is foul and demonic.
* Was Hitler practicing his own interpretation of HBD when he tried to exterminate Slavs? Given that Slavic IQ is 2-4 points lower than German IQ. The reason that HBD must be suppressed especially if its real is that how long will it take until people start combining Social Darwinism and HBD and conclude that certain races like the Gypsies or Blacks deserve to be exterminated because of inferior IQ? I.e. the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.
* White civilized society is very attractive to outsiders because white people treat others as they wish others would threat them. Too bad outsiders do not feel the same way. If they did Trump would not be succeeding.
* As for orientals, particularly Chinese, they combine high cognitive characteristics with low creativity and low empathy for others. There is a place for them in the world, and it is called-I know this is shocking to some-China.
Posted inAsians, California, China|Comments Off on The Blessings Of Chinese Birth Tourism
If Graydon Snyder only knew that he would be convicted of sexual harassment for teaching the Talmud, he might have kept his mouth shut.
But Mr. Snyder, a Bible professor at the United Church of Christ’s Chicago Theological Seminary, could not have foreseen the dangers that lurk in talmudic discourse, and he now stands at the center of perhaps the most bizarre and troubling political-correctness case yet.
In a graduate-level Gospels class two years ago, Mr. Snyder told a story from the Talmud’s Baba Kama tractate, a book that covers tort law. Mr. Snyder says the story, which contains one of the Talmud’s more famous and challenging hypotheticals, helps his students understand the differences between Jewish and Christian notions of sin.
Accidental Sex
A man is fixing the roof of a house, the Talmud says, when he falls onto a woman below and accidentally has sexual intercourse with her. What does the roofer owe the woman, the Talmud asks. Medical expenses? Yes. Pain suffered? Yes. But does he owe her for the indignity she suffered? No, the sagacious guide answers, because the roofer’s intent was not to rape or seduce. Mr. Snyder contrasted this with a lesson found in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, in which feelings of “lust in the heart” are considered as sinful as the actual act of adultery.
All this was apparently too much for one of Mr. Snyder’s students, who brought charges against him for creating a hostile sexual atmosphere. The case was heard by the seminary’s Sexual Harassment Task Force, whose members include students, professors and the seminary’s president. The task force found Mr. Snyder guilty and placed him on probation.
In effect, though, the task force also found the Talmud guilty — of being one of the world’s oldest dirty books.
“I asked the task force, ‘Are you aware that this is the Talmud I’m talking about, that I took this story from a Jewish holy book?’ ” said Mr. Snyder, who is Christian. “They indicated that they knew what they were doing.”
Ehsan Abdulaziz, a Saudi millionaire property developer, was cleared of rape charges in London this week after he claimed that he had tripped and fallen on an 18-year-old girl who was sleeping at his apartment after partying with him, penetrating her by accident.
Hm: That’s not how gravity or bodies work at all.
The Mirror reports that Abdulaziz had already had sex with the 18-year-old’s friend and he said his penis might have been poking out of his underwear when he happened upon the young woman sleeping off a night of drinking. The millionaire accounted for his DNA being found in the woman’s vagina because she had allegedly seduced him when he was offering her a T-shirt or a taxi ride home. He also said that he had semen on his hands from having sex with the woman’s friend earlier. In court, Abdulaziz maintained his innocence, saying, “I’m fragile, I fell down but nothing ever happened, between me and this girl nothing ever happened.”
A jury reportedly deliberated for only 30 minutes before acquitting Abdulaziz of one count of rape.
Posted inSex, Talmud|Comments Off on Chicago Censors Talmud
Pamela Geller writes: After the Boston jihad bombing, it appears that the city of Boston has utterly surrendered and submitted to Islam. “Boston Strong,” my eye.
As you know, my organization is heading to the Supreme Court to contest the refusal of the Boston TA to run my anti-jihad ads and pro-Israel ads. They allow vicious anti-Semitic blood libels to run, but not our ads. That’s sharia.
Now this outrage. First off, I do not believe that Pastor Daisy Obi, a 73-year-old ordained minister from Nigeria, threw the Islamic supremacist Gihan Suliman down the stairs. I think she is a liar — I have seen this too any times. Muslim revenge. Muslims in Muslim countries under the sharia do this all the time: accuse Christians of blasphemy in order to get them jailed or punished.
The woman accused of saying anti-Muslim things and “pushing a Muslim tenant down the stairs” rents to several Muslims. So clearly she is not anti-Muslim. And secondly, the alleged victim had upwards of 15 people living her the apartment, so of course the landlord would complain. Suliman did not respond to messages left at her home and workplace (of course not).
Posted inIslam|Comments Off on Sharia in Boston: Judge Orders Pastor to Learn and Study Islam
* I’ll never forget the well-earned farewell moment when Murray whispers into Johansson’s ears.
Perfect encapsulation of wistful.
Everyone has that moment twice in a lifetime.
She is dawn, he is twilight.
She’s uncertain as she’s just beginning to live, he’s certain that he’s lived and it’s over.
Their paths cross, their lives are at the opposite sides of the horizon, and they ‘get’ each other.
Last Tango is a darker twist on this theme.
LIT mostly seems episodic and accidental, but when all that had happened crystallize in that penultimate scene, it’s one of the most quietly stirring moments in cinema.
Chance turns into fate, fleeting though it may be.
“When John is waiting on the next business trip, you go up to that man, and you tell him the truth. Okay?”
* “Lost in Translation” captures very well the feelings of a world traveler or an expat: the sense of wonder, the lure of the strange and the exotic, the sense of alienation, and the longing for and kinship with someone from home. And the ever present fatigue.
* Lost in Translation is one of those blurry films that come into focus in a single magic moment.
In mystery stories, there is the moment that ties everything together logically.
The final piece of the puzzle clarifies what really happened and puts it altogether.
But there are stories where the tie-in is emotional than logical. LIT doesn’t have to solve or explain anything. In fact, much of the movie seems rather ordinary and pointless. Two expats just passing time in Japan. And even without that special scene at the end, it would still be a nice movie but then nothing more.
That single moment changes all else, which take on a different hue and angle.
It’s like going on a meandering hike where you go through interesting places but it just looks like more of the same — trees, bushes, weeds — but then you come upon a spot where you get an overview of the entire area through which you’d hiked. It’d be just a small part of the hike but it changes your view of the whole experience.
The ring scene in SIXTH SENSE had the same effect on me. I didn’t much care as I watching it movie but that moment just pulled everything together and made me reevaluate all that had gone before.
It’s funny how a single keystone or linchpin scene can change everything. It’s like the right note in a song.
* Women in all walks of life seem to have problems understanding the following points:
1.) You don’t demand power, you take it; and
2.) You don’t demand respect, you earn it.
Go to the female financiers, (Larry Ellison’s daughter is sitting on a nice pile all dedicated to financing films) and get them to buy scripts from women and then hire women to direct.
Put the film into the marketplace and earn that respect that you think you deserve and all you need to do to earn that respect is to make good films which earn investors good returns. That’s how men do it.
* Milius is an interesting case. A decent enough film-maker but hardly great. I think he had more interesting ideas and possibly higher intellect than Lucas or Spielberg, but he was simply not a natural film-maker.
His most special and personal film is no doubt THE BIG WEDNESDAY. I think he should have let someone else direct. His direction is shapeless and clumsy, all over the place. The movie does have its moment, and people hoped it would be another AMERICAN GRAFFITI. Handled properly, it could have been a more: a West Coast MEAN STREETS. But Milius just didn’t have movie magic in his fingers. (I still love the ending. And the three fellas look fabulous.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MBZ1jl94Cc
His DILLINGER is pretty entertaining but lacks the dash of Penn’s BONNIE AND CLYDE and the kick of Peckinpah.
Kael was sort of right about Milius. He’s too self-satisfied. He’s too much at home with his myth of manhood. Now, if others were to handle the material, they could add some irony and tension. But when Milius directs his own material, it’s too much a macho-smug manual on what it-means-to-be-a-man. It’s like comic book Hemingway. It’s teddy bear than real bear. He’s too cuddly with himself. His material has to be treated by others with some distance.
Milius was so much into himself that when he was asked about Kael(who regularly bashed him), he would say that she really loves him.
Another interesting figure who was more interesting as writer than director was Paul Schrader. Rosenbaum called Schrader a ‘right-winger’. But then, according to Rosenbaum, everyone right of Trotsky is a ‘right-winger’.
But I see what he meant. Even though Schrader became more liberalish as he rebelled against his strict religious upbringing, his hangups and obsessions have SEARCHERS-like rightwing, conservative, and ‘racist’ roots. He did write TAXI DRIVER and direct MISHIMA.
(Rosenbaum’s interview with Mekas in FILM THE FRONTLINE is pretty over the top. Rosen goes on and on about Schrader’s ‘rightwingerism’ until even a lib like Mekas says he’s not interested in that stuff)
But Schrader, like Milius, just didn’t have the movie magic.
People just have different talents, and they know their limitations. Scorsese is a great director but probably not much of a writer.
The negative impact of ‘auteur theory’ was encouraging directors to take fuller charge when it would have been better to work well with others.
And some artists should just stick to what they are naturally good at. Norman Mailer, a great writer, has no film sense. His films are awful. Dylan, great composer, should leave other arts alone. His RENALDO AND CLARA is not film-making. He did become decent at painting though. McCartney’s MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR is a total embarrassment.
Milius and Schrader were good directors but nothing more. But then, film is the sort of artform where one doesn’t have to be really good. If the material is good, and if the directing is proficient enough, it can be a good movie. Eastwood made his name that way. He never was the magician like Spielberg or the master like Scorsese, but he worked hard at it and became very good. Very honest.
Of course, the French like him for that reason. Their praise of Eastwood is really a kind of putdown of Americans. It’s as if to say, ‘you Americans make good honest hardy movies but leave the real Art Films to us.’ It’s like a French chef over-praising hamburger and Apple Pie as authentic American cooking. As for real artful cooking, leave it up to the French.
It’s interesting that a bunch of key directors had ‘right-wing’-ish tendencies even if they weren’t politically rightist, and their films cast a long shadow.
Peckinpah’s STRAW DOGS was called ‘fascist’. Bergman, though no ‘rightist’, made the left ‘queasy’ with some of his films. Boorman’s DELIVERANCE and ZARDOZ are quasi-fascist. So, is EXCALIBUR. Kubrick’s films may not be conservative, but they certainly aren’t leftist either. Scorsese usually says the proper things veiled somewhat PC-like, but his films tend to be very un-PC. Then, there was Schrader and Milius. Walter Hill made some movies that made Libs happy, but he also made LONG RIDERS and others that might make Libs wince. Though I heard the studio made GERONIMO–Hill’s adaptation of Milius script–more PC, I still think it’s a powerful piece of work.
Lucas talks like a PC-tard but he was inspired by crypto-fascist Joseph Campbell, and he is obsessed with fascist aesthetics. Stone’s mind is leftist, his gut instincts are rightist. Mann is sort of like the same way. Friedkin’s movies are mostly unapologetic celebration of machismo. THE EXORCIST is possibly the most ‘conservative’ movie of the 70s, a porny moral tale against the porny devil. Lynch is a sort of deviant conservative who plays at being Lib. According to BLADE RUNNER FUTURE NOIR, Scott was a ‘conservative’ when he made the film. Probably just a mainstream Brit con, but the Wagnerianism of BLADE RUNNER has some dark subtexts about racial matters.
Perhaps, the reason why directors with right-wing tendencies(even if not politically rightist) strike a deeper chord is because they touch on the darker themes of human nature. They are more empathetic with what lies beneath.
The liberal view is there is the Good, and we should be goody-goody, and then, there is the bad, and the bad is bad. Too simple. John Sayles is a good director but his films are morally so simple and lifeless. His one special movie is BABY IT’S YOU and largely because it’s not about politics.
Robert Redford is another good director, but most of his films are forgettable… but THE CONSPIRATOR was really good cuz it eschewed the easy moralism of his earlier films.
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