Hodge Podge

Vets Say They Feel Misled About GI Benefits

Soldiers, Marines and airmen speak Tuesday at a Capitol Hill rally
They say recruiters told them the GI Bill would cover college; it didn't
Sen. Jim Webb is pushing a new bill that would cover more college expenses

Cheated. Baited and switched. That's how veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan say they feel about military recruiters who sold them on how the GI Bill would benefit them.

Soldiers, Marines and airmen spoke Tuesday at a Capitol Hill rally sponsored by a group called the Campaign for a New GI Bill. They complained that they were not given enough funds from the bill to cover college expenses.

Najwa McQueen said she joined the Louisiana National Guard in 2004 on what she thought was a promise to help pay for her college education.

"They kind of sell you a dream," she said after the rally. "You think you're going to get all of this stuff, and in reality, you don't get that. I just kind of believed what my recruiter told me, which is not the truth."

McQueen left behind her husband and 18-month-old daughter in October 2004 and served 10 months in Iraq. After her service, she enrolled in college and found that her total benefits from the GI Bill would be $400 a month for four months, totaling $1,600. Her classes alone, she said, cost $1,000 each.

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The GI Bill began in June 1944, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944. It was designed to help educate and train military veterans returning from WWII. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, 7.8 million of 16 million troops who served in WWII received educational or vocational training from the GI Bill.

Today, the benefits from the GI Bill cover about half of the national average cost of college including tuition, board and room. As of October 1, 2007, under the current GI Bill, the maximum for active-duty servicemen who were honorably discharged is $1,101 a month for 36 months to help cover tuition, room and board, and books. For reservists and National Guard members, the average is lower: typically $440 a month.

"Not even [enough to cover] community college," said Steven Henderson, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Marine Corps reservist Evan Aanerud, who served in Iraq, enlisted right out of high school.

"After putting my life on the line for America, it would have been nice to be afforded the educational benefits we were led to expect," he said.

One of the early beneficiaries of the GI Bill was Petty Officer 3rd Class John Warner, who served in the Navy in WWII and went on to earn undergraduate and law degrees. The GI Bill covered both degrees in full at that time.

Warner is a U.S. senator from Virginia, and he spoke to the veterans at Tuesday's rally.

"I would not be privileged to have served now these 30 years in the United States Senate, and at one time chairman of the Armed Services Committee, had it not been this great nation giving me the opportunity through the GI Bill to receive that education, preparation and training," he said.

Warner is one of 58 senators co-sponsoring Sen. Jim Webb's Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act.

Webb's proposal is designed to dramatically expand educational benefits for military veterans. A version of the bill in the House has 241 co-sponsors. Covering active-duty National Guard troops and reservists, as well as other service members, it aims to cover the cost of the most expensive public in-state universities and a monthly housing stipend. Those who served on active duty for three or more months after September 11, 2001, would be eligible.

For private colleges with typically more expensive tuition fees, the bill seeks to match private schools' contributions over the course of four academic years.

"This is not a difficult concept. For all the people saying this is the new Greatest Generation, this is not a difficult thing. This is the easiest way to prove that," said Webb, a Virginia Democrat and Vietnam veteran.

The new bill's cost is estimated at $2 billion. House Democrats are discussing a proposal to add Webb's bill and other domestic priorities to the Iraq War Spending Bill, according to several Democratic leadership aides

President Bush warned Tuesday at a Rose Garden news conference that he would veto any additions to the bill.

Source: CNN Online News

Posted by: Ms_Hodge_Podge on 4/30/2008 at 10:00 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink

Where The Buffalo Roam -- And Die

Harsh winter, hunting, annual cull cut Yellowstone bison population in half
Annual winter slaughter halted because of large losses
Program intended to contain bison to park, protect cattle from disease
Advocates say ranchers exaggerate bison's threat to livestock

More than half of Yellowstone National Park's bison herd has died since last fall, forcing the government to suspend its annual slaughter program.

Between harsh weather, hunting and an annual cull, fully half of Yellowstone National Park's bison have died.

More than 700 of the iconic animals starved or otherwise died on the mountainsides during an unusually harsh winter, and more than 1,600 were shot by hunters or sent to slaughterhouses in a disease-control effort, according to National Park Service figures.

As a result, the park estimates its bison herd has dropped from 4,700 in November to about 2,300 today, prompting the government to halt the culling program early.

"There has never been a slaughter like this of the bison since the 1800s in this country, and it's disgusting," said Mike Mease of the Buffalo Field Campaign, a group seeking to stop the slaughter program for good.

Government officials say the slaughter prevents the spread of the disease brucellosis from the Yellowstone bison to cattle on land near the park. Brucellosis can cause miscarriages, infertility and reduced milk production in domestic cattle. Watch Yellowstone bison search for pasture »

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that half of Yellowstone's bison herd is infected with the bacterium.

Previously, under the Interagency Bison Management Plan, wandering bison were sent to slaughter without being tested for brucellosis. (The meat -- which experts say is safe to eat if cooked -- and hides were distributed to Native American groups.)

Late this winter the slaughter was limited to animals that tested positive for the disease.

Now the program has been further curtailed; no bison have been killed in the past week.

"The plan requires all of us to do two things: protect a viable wild bison population and reduce the risk of transmission of brucellosis from bison to cattle. We're required to keep bison and cattle separate," National Park Service spokesman Al Nash said.

The USDA acknowledges that bison-to-cattle transmission is difficult to document, but it says investigations indicate that bison were the likely source of infections in cattle herds in Wyoming and North Dakota.

But critics call the culling an overreaction. There is no documented case of the disease passing from bison to cattle, they said.

"I mean, it's hype, it's a hysteria," Mease said. "And it's not a fatal disease."

Last month, two women chained themselves to a railing inside the park's visitor center to protest the policy.

"The Park Service is meant to protect and preserve wildlife in national parks, not indiscriminately slaughter hundreds of [bison]," one of the protesters, 20-year-old Miriam Wasser, wrote in a leaflet she distributed.

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Yellowstone is the only place in the lower 48 states where a bison population has persisted since prehistoric times, according to the Park Service.

Herds once numbered in the tens of millions across the continent but were hunted nearly to extinction by the late 1800s. Protected since the early 20th century, the species has recovered.

Bison graze high on Yellowstone's grassy plateaus during the summer. When the weather becomes too harsh and food becomes scarce, they often roam outside the park. That's the problem.

Nash explained the situation in its simplest terms:

"Bison are bison. Bison are nomadic animals. Bison are looking for food. Food is difficult and scarce to come by at the end of the winter. They're leaving the interior of the park [and going] to lower places, in part, to look for food. There's limited tolerance for bison outside the boundaries of Yellowstone National Park."

That's because just two cases of brucellosis would trigger stringent limits on export of cattle from Montana.

"Montana has spent millions of dollars over the years to get brucellosis eradicated from our livestock," said Martin Davis, who has a cattle ranch within roaming distance north of the park. "And to put that in jeopardy -- no one wants that to happen."

Control of the bison population is essential, Davis said.

"Bottom line is, there's too many of them. They've got to be managed. They ran out of pasture. ... They're eating themselves out of house and home."

Under the management plan, rangers and cowboys hired by various government agencies try to harass stray animals back onto park property. Officials shoot animals that can't be persuaded. (Ranchers are not permitted to kill wild bison).

Meanwhile, hundreds of bison are rounded up inside the park every winter and slaughtered to reduce competition for food and therefore the need for animals to wander onto private land.

"It becomes a private property issue," said Davis, who has never had a bison encroach on his ranch. "They walked down onto private property. And if you don't want a buffalo on your private property, you shouldn't have to have them there."

Mease, the activist, portrays the conflict as a simple turf war.

"The Montana cattle ranchers don't want the competition for grass," he said. "They want the national forests and public lands to be all their public-lands grazing allotments, and in that process, they don't want bison."

Federal and state officials said last week they will lease private land bordering the park where up to 100 bison eventually will be allowed to graze during the winter. But the problem is not likely to go away.

"The reality of the situation is that whether you have 4,000 bison or whether you have 200 bison, bison are a nomadic species and they will always be looking out to the horizon and expanding their boundaries," said Tim Reid, chief deputy ranger at Yellowstone.

So the culling program is expected to return next winter.

"It is our job to protect the viability of this population," the Park Service's Nash said. "We take that seriously. We are not taking any actions that will have a serious ongoing negative impact on this population.

"The Yellowstone bison population is healthy, it's strong, it's vibrant. We continue to take actions to protect that herd."

But to activists like Mease, it's just not right to kill healthy bison.

"There's less than 5,000 wild, genetically pure buffalo left in America," he said, "and this is how we treat them?"

Source: CNN Online News

Posted by: Ms_Hodge_Podge on 4/29/2008 at 8:00 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink

China Ridicules Dalai Lama, Despite 'Talks'

The Chinese Communist party's official mouthpiece has poured fresh scorn on the Dalai Lama, only two days after the government's abrupt announcement that it would meet his aides within days.

Tibetan exiles had greeted the announcement warily and the Dalai Lama's nephew, Khedroob Thondup, a member of the Tibetan parliament-in-exile, yesterday attacked it as a "ruse" designed "to deflect pressure and give false assurance to western leaders".

Yesterday's People's Daily commentary claimed: "The Dalai clique have always been masters at games with words and the ideas that they have tossed about truly make the head spin ... Those who split the nation are criminals to history."

The renewed attack came as a leading Tibetan official launched an extraordinarily frank condemnation of the handling of recent protests in Tibet.

Bai Ma, chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference committee in Qinghai province, said: "It is regrettable that authorities in Lhasa failed to take firm action to control the situation during the first few hours of the March 14 riots ... They did not have enough police. They had guns, but they could not open fire without permission from above."

He told the South China Morning Post that the situation at the Drepung and Sera monasteries in Lhasa remained tense because of the patriotic education programme targeting monks. "The heavy-handed and arbitrary tactics [of the government] only create more animosity."

The Olympic torch relay also continues to provoke controversy, with Hong Kong this weekend barring a Danish artist, Jens Galschiot, and his two sons who had planned to protest over human rights violations when the torch arrives this week.

Source: The Guardian Unlimited

Posted by: Ms_Hodge_Podge on 4/28/2008 at 9:00 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink

Bombs, Bullets & Our Daily Bread

Tonight, over four million Palestinians, and more than eight million others across the world, will eat supper as refugees. For this special report, Alex Renton visits Gaza, where every day brings a new struggle against hunger.

Read more from Alex Renton on the food of exiles here and here Rebecca Seal looks at refugee diets from Darfur to Bangladesh

Lunch is whistling: the noise comes from Fathiya's old pressure cooker, which has shuddered scarily on a little gas hob for nearly two hours. I go out into the narrow alley between the concrete shacks of the refugee camp. Here most of the al-Absi family are standing round their home-made oven. From this ancient-looking monument of clay and straw Fathiya is bringing out perfect round flatbreads, brown-gold on either side. We open the balloons of bread, and Fathiya's 13-year-old daughter Noura offers round a little box of greenish powder that we sprinkle into the moist interior.

This is the Palestinian great snack, good for mind and body: the bread is baraka, the same as the word for 'blessing', and the powder is za'atar, a mixture of ground thyme, marjoram, salt and toasted sesame seeds. Neighbours have gathered, enticed by the smell, and everyone smiles as we sample that basic pleasure: new warm bread.

We are in Gaza City's Beach camp, one of the world's oldest and most crowded refugee camps; so it's strange to be taking part in a foodie idyll straight from the pages of Claudia Roden. The feeling only grows when at last the pressure cooker is opened, revealing a glorious mess of beans inside: Palestinian foules. Into these Fathiya stirs dried mulukhiya (a spinach-like leaf, called Jew's mallow in England), salt, chilli and crushed garlic.

I sit down with Fathiya and five of her children, a couple of neighbours, an Oxfam community worker and Jamal, Fathiya's husband, on the concrete floor of the al-Absis' shack to eat. The dish cost about 10 shekels, £1.40, and it will make three meals for the family. The bean stew is gorgeous - deep, spicy and satisfying. All it needs is a little bit of lemon, I say. 'Of course it should have lemon,' agrees Jamal. He used to be a cook in a café in Tel Aviv before the Israelis closed the border with Gaza and stopped anyone going to Israel to work. Though Jamal hasn't helped during the long morning's preparation for this meal, he is keen to let me know he is a professional. We all look at the cook: so where's the lemon, Fathiya? She looks up from spooning beans for her 10-month-old daughter, Urud, and shakes her head. 'There isn't money for a lemon.'

Tonight, some 4.5 million Palestinians, and 8.4 million others across the world, will eat supper as refugees - people who, according to the UN's definition, are outside their country of nationality or habitual residence because of 'well-founded fear of persecution'. (There are 23 million more people who are displaced for similar reasons within their own countries.) As Observer Food Magazine's survey of refugee camps across the world shows, some of these people will eat adequately, some quite well, and others hardly at all. Long-term refugees like Fathiya, in well-established camps, do not live in immediate fear of hunger. But they must devote about every hour of the day to the job of getting their families fed.

Other refugees live in much worse conditions, of course. Mukishimana Dusabe, a mother of five whom we interviewed in an 'unofficial' camp aided by Oxfam, in the North Kivu region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, is too frightened to go out to search for firewood to cook with. Her friend went foraging and was caught by soldiers who broke her arm and tried to rape her. Her son had disappeared; her young daughters have to work in the fields all day to get one banana to eat. 'I am a mother; I am scared that I will lose my strength and energy and that I will no longer be able to look after my family,' she told us.

By definition, refugees are a political problem. Very often the business of feeding them is one, too. Delivering food to the displaced is always complex: the logistics are usually horrendous - refugees don't naturally settle where it's convenient. The supplies may be 'taxed' - the word the aid agencies use ironically - looted by whoever wields guns or power locally. The requirements of rich donors may mean the supplies have to be brought from far away, adding to the expense. All American food aid, for example, including much that's delivered to Gaza - has to be bought from American farmers.

And of course, at all levels, soldiers and politicians oppose the feeding of refugees: if you don't give them aid, runs the argument, then perhaps they'll go away. Squeezing the rations or hindering the movement of supplies is a way of applying pressure for political ends - a habitual Israeli tactic in their war with Gaza's militant Palestinian government.

Almost everything in Gaza comes from Israel, but since June last year little other than 'essential humanitarian supplies' have been allowed in. This blockade is Israel's strategy to force out the Hamas government that refuses to recognise Israel or stop its militants firing rockets at Israeli towns over the border. Of Gaza's population of over 1.4 million, 1.1 million are dependent to some extent on food hand-outs. According to the UN, there was a shortfall of one-third in meeting this basic need between January and March this year.

Many observers consider these tactics an abuse of the rights of refugees. These were enshrined by the United Nations in 1951 when the world was just recovering from the horrors of mass, forced movement of population during and after the Second World War. One of the most significant of those rights is to 'protection', which states quite clearly that host governments have a duty to look after refugees. And that includes seeing they get fed. According to the agencies, infant malnutrition in Gaza is up 60 per cent since the siege - as many call it - began.

Though the Gaza Strip is territory occupied by Israel - which thus has specific obligations under international law to the refugees there - the business of feeding the 865,000 refugees who need food aid is the job of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. UNRWA started work with Palestinian refugees the year Israel was created, 1948, and so it has fed Fathiya, who is 40, and Jamal, 50, all their lives. They were both born in the Gaza camps to parents who had fled the 1948 war from villages around Ashkelon in Israel. The town is hardly 12 miles away but there's a 16-foot wall now between Gaza and Israel; neither of them has ever visited their family's' villages.

Every three months UNRWA delivers the ration. Because Jamal cannot work, the family gets an enhanced level of supplies. The basis of the hand-out is flour - a 75kg sack per person. There's also 50kg of rice and 6 litres of cooking oil, and some pulses like chickpeas, and sugar. Fathiya shows me one of the flour sacks - it's marked 'Wheat flour from Japan, for free distribution to refugees' - and we do the maths. This morning she baked 160 pitta breads - half a flour sack's worth. Of the nine sacks she gets every 13 weeks there's usually three left over - these she sells in Gaza's markets, where a 75kg sack will fetch 70 Israel shekels, about £10.

This oversupply is intentional. As is often the case in organised camps the basic agency food basket only provides a proportion of a family's nutritional needs - in Gaza the target is set at 55 per cent. UNRWA's Chris Gunness says: 'We rely on there being a working economy in Gaza and that people have income to supplement the food packages, and buy things like eggs, dairy, protein, fresh fruit and vegetables. But that's getting more difficult: there's a cash crisis in Gaza, since the shutdown began last June. Ninety per cent of businesses have shut, according to the World Bank, and 100,000 jobs have gone in the private sector.'

Fathiya al-Absi's £30 must be stretched to buy everything else for the kitchen. Lunch today needed yeast and salt for the bread, the garlic, chilli and herbs for the bean stew. There's also all the ordinary household expenses, and the cost of clean drinking water and gas cylinders. With the blockade these are now 55 shekels (£8) each, and the family gets through three a month. Electricity is unreliable, too, since the power and fuel supply is also limited by the Israelis. The large fridge in Fathiya's tiny kitchen serves only as a storage cupboard. So Fathiya and her oldest son, Tamer, built the clay oven. They fire it with scrap cardboard and plastic bags. Happily the stink from those doesn't much affect the bread.

The money doesn't stretch a lot further - to meat or fish, for example. The price of raw meat in Gaza has just about doubled since last June, and there's shortages of milk, too. I asked Fathiya's children what their favourite meal was: turkey shawarma, they all said. Ten-year-old Hanan had shared one with his father a few weeks ago - his face still glowed at the memory. But the family hasn't had any meat to sit down and eat together since last Eid, four months earlier, when some lamb was donated by the mosque.

Though Fathiya's children seem healthy enough, it's no surprise that malnutrition rates in Gaza are five times those of neighbouring Egypt. Even before the blockade 17.5 per cent of children under five suffered from chronic malnutrition, while 53 per cent of women of reproductive age and 44 per cent of children were anaemic. When the meal is finished, the two little girls say they still feel hungry. 'They always feel hungry,' says Fathiya.

Her only other income is from her work for an Oxfam-funded sewing cooperative, where people from the Beach camp are paid 12 shekels a day (£1.70) to make clothes that can be sold to residents. Fathiya also makes food for the workers there, for which Oxfam pays her. Much of that money goes to pay for 18-year-old Tamer's course in secretarial skills at Gaza's Al-Azhar University.

Her father, Jamal, is too sick, he tells me, to work, even if there were any jobs. He lifts his shirt to show me the twisted purple scars he says are entry and exit wounds from an Israeli bullet. Privately, I'm told that Jamal has other problems. Like a disturbing number of men in the Beach camp, many of whom used to make a living from fishing before the Israelis restricted the boats' movements on security grounds, he has a drug and alcohol habit. Crack cocaine is one commodity that can enter Gaza from Israel quite easily: social breakdown and rising levels of violence within families are another side-effect that has to be attributed in part to the political impasse.

The striking thing that unites all the women we interviewed in refugee camps is how much of their time is spent on the essential work of providing and caring for their families. For almost all of them the job occupied every waking hour. Fathiya's day begins at 6am, when she feeds Urud and cleans the two rooms where all the family live and sleep. The children she sees off to school without food - they will get a sandwich and milk when they arrive. Then, if, like today, it's a baking day, she starts making the bread. I tried to help her with this - but my kneading and pulling of the elastic pitta dough makes everyone giggle (still, when mine came misshapen out of the oven it tasted pretty good).

Fathiya's family have what many refugees don't have, which is a form of stability. They lack much else, though, that we would think essential: a decent house, to begin with. Their current two-room shack is temporary. UNRWA knocked down their original house, not much bigger, because it was infested with lice. But, since Israel has not allowed any cement into Gaza for nine months, plans to rebuild the house have been put on hold by the agency. So the family have lived through the cold of winter with gaping holes in their walls and no heating. And during all those months the conflict between Israel and Hamas has been worsening. As we left Gaza that evening we watched Qassam rockets rising into the evening sky, aimed at Israel. One of them killed an Israeli civilian in the nearby town of Sderot: by the next morning, 33 Palestinians had been killed in the Israeli reprisals. Four of them were children who had been playing football not far from where we ate. It was, said Israel's defence minister, Ehud Barak, 'a proportionate response'.

The Gazans also lack hope - perhaps the most debilitating problem a refugee knows. There seems to be no prospect of a political solution to their long exile - more than one Gazan I asked said that the refugees' only strategy was to have as many babies as possible. But no one I spoke to had any genuine expectation that this half-life might change. None of them, or indeed most of the four million Palestinians spread around Jordan, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza, have known any life but that of a refugee.

Some of the older ones remember, though. And they all speak with harrowing sadness of 'our village', of the homes they have lost in al-Nakba - the'catastrophe' of 1948. In Bethlehem the walls that enclose Aida refugee camp, another relic of that year, are painted with murals. Each one pictures a different lost village, its olive trees, green hills and chalk-white farmhouses. In Aida I met Ayesha al-Jarma, who was only six years old when her family fled Ajjur, near Hebron in the West Bank. She has been back, only once, when she was 25, to the ruins of her father's farm there. She has brought up nine children in the camp. Now she is a great-grandmother.

'We had a lovely life in the village,' she told me. 'We used to make maftool (couscous) with lamb, because we had sheep and goats. Or with chicken, or doves, we kept them, too. There would be pine nuts and za'atar for the rice. We grew wheat and vines, figs, apples and olives. We had watermelon and tomatoes and cucumbers.' Did her children grow up differently, eating the UNRWA diet? 'Of course,' said Ayesha. 'I always said to my children, you're like biscuits. You break so easily. In the village we'd fall from the roof and not break anything. We were healthy, but you go to hospital every week.' She sighs. 'Oh, how healthy were the children. And how happy.'

· Read more from Alex Renton on the food of exiles here
· For more information on Oxfam's work in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories, visit oxfam.org.uk/oxfam_in_action/emergencies/gaza_crisis.html. Additional reporting by Marie Cacace

Source: The Observer

Posted by: Ms_Hodge_Podge on 4/27/2008 at 9:00 AM | Comments (1) | Permalink

Kiss Me Deadly: 25 Best Big-Screen Bad Girls

The femme fatale is one of the oldest archetypes at the movies here are our picks for the most memorable lady killers, from the Bond Bad Girls to Catwoman to Grendel's mommy dearest

GRENDEL'S MOM
Angelina Jolie
Beowulf (2007)

How bad is she? Well, first she wipes out a beer hall full of hardy warriors, then she tempts the surviving hero with her liquid-hawt flesh, after which she gives birth to a dragon that tries to burn the hero's kingdom to the ground. So, yeah, a little bit bad.

THE BOND BAD GIRLS
Famke Janssen/Lotte Lenya/Honor Blackman
GoldenEye (1995)/From Russia With Love (1963)/Goldfinger (1964)

Sometimes, the women James Bond encounters in his various missions are downy-soft cutie pies, waiting for 007 to 'show them the world.' Other times, they're like Janssen's Xenia Onatopp, who schtupps men to death, or Lenya's Rosa Klebb, who dispatches her enemies with some fancy bladed footwork. And then there's Blackman's Pussy Galore, who is swayed from the Dark Side by the sheer power of Bond's, er, will.

LILLY DILLON
Angelica Huston
The Grifters (1990)

Most film noir femmes fatale are young nymphs who use their bubbling sexuality to ply their deadly trade. But Huston's con artist Lilly is a grown up, through and through. So grown up, in fact, that she's got a grown-up son, Roy (John Cusack), who's also in the game. Here's a side of the bad girl you don't see too often: what happens when time catches up with them.

AUDREY 'LULU' HANKEL
Melanie Griffith
Something Wild (1986)

What'll it take to shake poor Charles Driggs (Jeff Daniels) free from his stifling, yuppified banker existence? Well, a sexy-dangerous weekend with Griffith's reckless hellion oughta do it.

IVY
Drew Barrymore
Poison Ivy (1992)

Barrymore revealed that she was no longer the little girl from E.T., playing a trashy teen who appears out of nowhere and moves in with dweeby Sylvie (Sara Gilbert). In no time, Ivy has seduced Sylvie's dad (Tom Skerritt), offed her mom (Cheryl Ladd), and pretty much destroyed Sylvie's life. She's a figure out of a nightmare or is she just a projection of Sylvie's id, acting out her darkest Oedipal impulses? Gary Susman

MATTY WALKER
Kathleen Turner
Body Heat (1981)

In her screen debut, Turner plays a kept woman who spins a web of deceit to honey-trap William Hurt's horny Florida lawyer. And, whaddya know, it works. A couple of steamy nights together and he's hatching a scheme to kill her rich husband.

JESSICA RABBIT
Voiced by Kathleen Turner
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)

Did the gorgeous wife of slapstick toon star Roger Rabbit kill the man she'd been having an affair with, and then frame her husband for the murder? 'I'm not bad,' she coos. 'I'm just drawn that way.'

O-REN ISHII
Lucy Liu
Kill Bill, Vol. 1 (2003)

The diminutive half-Chinese, half-Japanese Yakuza boss has a bit of a chip on her shoulder about her mixed ethnicity. And if you bring it up, she'll chip your head off your shoulders. Like Paula Abdul said, back in the day, she's a cold-hearted snake.

MALLORY KNOX
Juliette Lewis
Natural Born Killers (1994)

Here's a girl who will kill you just as soon as look at you. On the road with her life-partner, Mickey (Woody Harrelson) who helped her kill her abusive father Mallory slayed her way down Route 666 before ending up in a maximum-security lockdown. Oh, and one thing to keep in mind: she's okay with one-night stands, but you'd better be a patient lover...because she's got something of an itchy gun hand.

CATHERINE TRAMELL
Sharon Stone
Basic Instinct (1992)

'Have ice pick will travel' should probably be on her business cards. With one not-so-innocent re-crossing of her legs, Stone shot to stardom as Catherine Trammel, a wealthy, bisexual crime-fiction writer under investigation for murder.

COFFY
Pam Grier
Coffy (1973)

The queen of blaxploitation cinema solidified her legend here, playing a nurse whose sister is killed by mobsters. What's a girl to do? Ask her boyfriend for help? Turn to the police? Screw that Coffy blasts her way straight through to revenge, even if she has to pretend to be a junkie hooker to do it.

CATWOMAN/SELINA KYLE
Michelle Pfeiffer
Batman Returns (1992)

The movie tweaked her origin a bit instead of just being a streetwalker-turned-enterprising cat-burglar, like in the comics, she's a secretary who gets quasi-mystical powers after being tossed out a window by her crazy-haired boss (Christopher Walken) but Selina Kyle is a force of nature any way you cut it. And Michelle Pfeiffer cut loose in a way we'd never seen before. It's hard to choose which cliche to use to describe her: 'kitten with a whip' or 'feline fatale'?

ANGELA
Salli Richardson
A Low Down Dirty Shame (1994)

It's not too hard to be the best part of a Keenen Ivory Wayans film, since the movies themselves are never much to sneeze at. This thin Shaft riff follows suit but watch for Richardson as the old flame who bring new trouble for Wayans' black private dick. She's all sizzle.

MADISON LEE
Demi Moore
Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003)

It had been a while since we saw Ms. Moore in a big, honking Hollywood flick 1997's G.I. Jane, to be precise but she held the center of this sequel as the former Angel gone rogue. When she strutted out of that surf, with that still-slammin' bod...ooof.

CHRISSY, SISSY, MISSY, AND JUSTICE
Ali Larter, Eliza Dushku, Jennifer Schwalbach, Shannon Elizabeth
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001)

Hot jewel thieves pretending to be animal rights activists? Who may or may not be lesbians? Yes, please.

EVELYN MULWRAY
Faye Dunaway
Chinatown (1974)

Of every woman on this list, Evelyn Mulwray has the least amount of malice in her heart  but the way it got there may be the most distasteful. Raped by her industrialist father (John Huston), mother to her daughter-sister, sleeping with the P.I. (Jack Nicholson) investigating her husband's death.... No, morality doesn't come easy to her.

LYNN BRACKEN
Kim Basinger
L.A. Confidential (1997)

Agreeing to go under the knife to look like a movie star, and then renting one's self out to men willing to pay to sleep with 'movie stars' yeah, that might leave one's moral compass out of whack. Basinger won her Oscar for playing such a woman, the sultry, sad heart of Curtis Hanson's '50s noir masterpiece.

PHYLLIS DIETRICHSON
Barbara Stanwyck
Double Indemnity (1944)

Stanwyck pretty much invented the femme fatale with her role in Double Indemnity, a film written by three of the most hard-boiled scribes in Hollywood history: Billy Wilder, Raymond Chandler, and James M. Cain (whose The Postman Always Rings Twice, which has a similar plot, provided an unforgettable femme fatale role for Lana Turner and, later, Jessica Lange). Of all the dames who ever convinced some poor sap to kill her husband for the insurance money, Stanwyck's Phyllis Dietrichson is the slinkiest, the scariest, and the least remorseful. This is a woman who can make shopping at the grocery store seem sexy and dangerous. Gary Susman

NIKITA
Anne Parillaud
La Femme Nikita (1990)

Sure, she walks off into the sunset with her true love at the movie's close, but before that, Nikita former junkie-hellraiser, adopted by the government and trained as an assassin kills a whole lot of people in very stylish, very French ways.

VIOLET
Jennifer Tilly
Bound (1996)

Being a gangster's moll agrees with Tilly's Violet, who uses her ditz and her derriere to steal millions of mob money from her boyfriend (Joe Pantoliano) and land a new lover (Gina Gershon) in the process.

WENDY KROY/BRIDGET GREGORY
Linda Fiorentino
The Last Seduction (1994)

Really, it's not even fair. None of the men in The Last Seduction is any match for Fiorentino's con artist Bridget Gregory not her similarly larcenous husband (Bill Pullman), nor the feckless white-collar drone (Peter Berg) she hooks up with after she runs off with hubby's ill-gotten gains. She's smarter and greedier than everyone else, with a gift for improvising her way out of trouble, and unburdened by any trace of regret, compassion, or regard for the lives of others. She should be a hissable villain, but in Fiorentino's performance, the standout role of her career, Bridget is darkly funny, an unlikely superwoman beset on all sides by rubes. Gary Susman

MORGANA
Helen Mirren
Excalibur (1981)

The half-sister of King Arthur (Nigel Perry), Morgana wasn't satisfied with just sitting on the sidelines, watching her anointed-by-God kin build his table without corners. No, she concocted a grand plan to imprison Merlin the magician; appear to Arthur disguised as Guinevere and sleep with him (boo for incest!); and then give birth to the son who would prove to be Camelot's undoing.

MRS. ELEANOR ISELIN
Angela Lansbury
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

A boy can always trust his mother, right? She won't be a party to his brainwashing, just to politically position her husband to help overthrow the government, won't she? Won't she? Betrayal is exponentially more painful the closer the betrayer is to you....

SIL
Natasha Henstridge
Species (1995)

The very sexy result of an experiment using an extra-terrestrial set of directions on how to tweak human DNA, Sil emerges almost full-grown with the body of a centerfold and the programming of a great white shark. All she wants to do is screw, kill, and try and make little homicidal alien babies.

SUZANNE STONE MARETTO
Nicole Kidman
To Die For (1995)

Kidman's small-town weather girl Suzanne Stone Maretto wants to be a national TV star in the worst way, and she gets her wish when her murder trial becomes a media circus. Kidman gives her a comical but chilling edge; she plays Suzanne as a perky Barbie doll with a frozen smile. She'll do anything for fame, including seducing a naive teen (Joaquin Phoenix) into killing her husband (Matt Dillon). Fittingly, To Die For was the first movie that showed Kidman was not just then-husband Tom Cruise's arm candy but a skilled actress who deserved to be a star on her own merits. Gary Susman

Source: Entertainment Weekly Online

Posted by: Ms_Hodge_Podge on 4/26/2008 at 8:00 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink

US Claims North Korea Helped Build Syria Reactor Plant

Damascus dismisses video of unit bombed by Israel
Congress told site was set up to produce plutonium

The mystery over the Israeli bombing of Syrian territory last year took a new twist yesterday when US intelligence agencies showed a video claiming to prove that the target was a covert nuclear plant being built with North Korean help. The White House described the alleged reactor as "a dangerous and potentially destabilising development for the region and the world".

After seven months of silence and evasion from the Bush administration, the CIA director, Michael Hayden, briefed members of the Senate and House armed services, intelligence and foreign affairs committees, saying his weapons specialists found the evidence compelling.

After the Israeli attack last September, there had been speculation that the target was a nuclear reactor but this the first time there has been an official statement, complete with details, and the first time that North Korea has been implicated.

The Bush administration also disclosed that Israel had consulted Washington before launching the strike.

The White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, speaking after the Senate and House of Representatives had been briefed, said Syria had built the plant "carefully hidden from view" in a remote desert area in the east of the country, in breach of its international obligations.

"We are convinced, based on a variety of information, that North Korea assisted Syria's covert nuclear activities. We have good reason to believe that the reactor, which was damaged beyond repair on September 6 of last year, was not intended for peaceful purposes," she said.

The White House added that the regime moved quickly to bury evidence of its existence, covering over the wreckage and constructing a new building on the site.

US officials said yesterday the Bush administration was putting the information out in order to clear the decks before doing a deal with North Korea to dismantle its nuclear programme.

The video, made public last night after Congress had been briefed, is a collection of material from various sources, in addition to Israeli intelligence. There is no tape from inside the alleged reactor, only two still photographs, apparently taken by a human hand on the ground rather than a drone or satellite. This was supported by satellite pictures and graphs.

The pictures taken on the ground show an apparently empty brown-grey, solid building, but nothing that seems to indicate it is being used for nuclear purposes.

In the video, which shows the site before and after the bombing, the CIA claims that the alleged reactor is similar to one in Yongbyon, 55 miles north of the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.

One official said the Syrian plant was within weeks or months of being operational. "This thing was good to go," he said. Congress was told that the reactor was designed to produce a small amount of plutonium, which can be used to build a nuclear bomb.

In releasing the video, the Bush administration is taking the risk that the North Korea regime may use it as an excuse to walk out of US-North Korean negotiations about dismantling its nuclear programme, but is banking on any such walkout as being only temporary.

Under a deal agreed last year between North Korea, the US, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia, Pyongyang is required to detail whether it has provided nuclear help to Syria and other countries round the world. So far it has failed to deliver.

A US official who had seen the video said: "We cannot move forward [on a deal with North Korea] unless you acknowledge we are doing this with our eyes wide open. And we are going ahead with our eyes wide open."

The Syrian government yesterday denied it had been building a nuclear reactor with North Korean help. Syria's ambassador to Britain, Sami al-Khiyami, described the video as ridiculous: "Unfortunately the scenario of taking and retaking pictures looks like what happened before the Iraq war, when the US administration was trying to convince the world that Iraq had nuclear weapons."

In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration showed photographs and other material to the UN security council that it claimed amounted to evidence of Saddam Hussein's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, but which were subsequently proven to be false.

Joseph Cirincione, an expert on nuclear proliferation and head of the Washington-based Ploughshares Fund, said: "We should learn first from the past and be very cautious about any intelligence from the US about other country's weapons."

He insisted there had been no justification for Israeli launching the strike on another country, given there was no imminent danger. He added that Syria was a sideshow that should not deflect attention from the bigger prize of North Korea dismantling its nuclear programme. "The administration is trying to clear up old business, so it does not get in the way of an agreement with North Korea."

The Israeli strike destroyed a large building in the desert near the village of At Tibnah in the Dayr az Zawr region, 90 miles from the Iraqi border.

The strike was reminiscent of one on the Iraqi reactor at Osirk in 1981. But, unlike the Iraqi strike, the attack on Syria initially remained shrouded in mystery, with Bush and other leaders repeatedly deflecting reporters' questions.

At the time, the British intelligence service, MI6, privately briefed the British government that Syria had been building a nuclear reactor. The British government accepted this as credible.

If Syria had been secretly building a nuclear plant, it would have been in breach of the non-proliferation treaty, which requires Damascus to notify the UN watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, of any such plans.

The US media and some analysts speculated that neo-conservatives in the Bush administration, led by the vice-president, Dick Cheney, wanted the North Korea-Syria link publicised to try to wreck the prospect of a deal and to undermine the state department official leading the negotiations, Christopher Hill, the assistant secretary of state for Asia

But US officials, as well as analysts, discounted this, saying the neo-conservatives had been discredited and that pragmatists such as the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, who favours a deal with North Korea, remained in the ascendancy.

Backstory

Israel is the sole nuclear power in the Middle East, though it publicly refuses to acknowledge this, and is intent on remaining so. It carried out a pre-emptive air strike against Saddam Hussein's nuclear plant at Osirk in 1981, from which the dictator's nuclear ambitions never recovered, and hinted at similar strikes against Iran, saying it will not allow Tehran to acquire a nuclear weapon.

It was against this background that Israel bombed the alleged Syrian nuclear plant in September. It came as a surprise, given that there had been no speculation that Damascus had been engaged in any such programme. The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, imposed a news blackout and George Bush also refused at White House press conferences to confirm whether the target was a suspect nuclear plant, until yesterday. At the time, there were questions over why Israel should strike against Syria at such an early stage. One theory was that it was meant as a signal to Iran that if it continued to pursue uranium enrichment, a process that could lead to a nuclear bomb, Israel would bomb its nuclear sites.

Source: The Guardian Unlimited

Syria 'had Covert Nuclear Scheme'

The United States has accused North Korea of helping Syria build a nuclear reactor that "was not intended for peaceful purposes".

The site, said to be like one in North Korea, was bombed by Israel in 2007.

Syria must "come clean" about its secret nuclear programme, the White House said in a statement after CIA officials briefed members of Congress.

Syria has repeated denials that it has any nuclear weapons programme, or any such agreement with North Korea.

The construction of this reactor was a dangerous and potentially destabilising development for the region and the world White House statement Full text: US allegations

But the White House said the "cover-up" operation that Syria carried out after the Israeli air strike reinforced the belief that the reactor "was not intended for peaceful activities".

"Until 6 September, 2007, the Syrian regime was building a covert nuclear reactor in its eastern desert capable of producing plutonium," the statement said.

"The Syrian regime must come clean before the world regarding its illicit nuclear activities."

The statement added that the US had long been "seriously concerned about North Korea's nuclear weapons programme and its proliferation activities".

But the White House insists it is committed to the on-going six-nation diplomacy, between North Korea and US, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia that led to a landmark deal with Pyongyang, in February 2007.

Ulterior motive?

North Korea agreed to give up its nuclear weapons in return for aid and its removal from a blacklist of state sponsors of terrorism. But the US has accused Pyongyang of missing the deadline to make a full nuclear declaration as promised.

Officials say the site was the target of an Israeli attack last year

The CIA briefing and statement coincides with the end of a two-day meeting between US and North Korean officials on Pyongyang's nuclear programme, which both sides say have gone well - fuelling speculation that a deal may be imminent.

The BBC's James Coomarasamy, in Washington, says the question being asked by some in the US capital is whether the reactor statement is designed to reinforce those diplomatic efforts or an attempt by some in the administration to undermine them.

Damning images?

The CIA briefings included pictures which the US says prove that North Koreans were working inside the secret site.

There was no Syria-North Korea co-operation whatsoever in Syria Bashar Jaafari Syrian ambassador to UN Syria 'has some explaining to do'

One of the images, which shows two men standing side by side, was said by the CIA to be of the head of the North Korean nuclear plant and the head of the Syrian atomic energy commission together in Syria.

The images - said to have been obtained by Israel - showed striking similarities between the Syrian facility and the North Korean reactor at Yongbyon, the US said.

However, the facility was not yet operational and there was no fuel for the reactor, officials said.

Israeli fears

Republican Congressman Pete Hoekstra, who attended the CIA briefing, said the US needed "good, clear, verifiable information" from the countries involved before North Korea could be removed from the terrorism blacklist, the AFP news agency quoted him as saying.

The US says this is the North Korean and Syrian nuclear chiefs in Syria

Mr Hoekstra criticised the Bush administration for waiting eight months to brief the intelligence committee and warned that it could jeopardise any future agreement with North Korea.

Syria's ambassador to the UN, Bashar Jaafari, denied the links.

"There was no Syria-North Korea co-operation whatsoever in Syria. We deny these rumours," he said.

North Korea has previously denied transferring nuclear technology to Syria.

The BBC's Katya Adler in Jerusalem says the apparent strike on the reactor, deep inside Syria, was seen by many in Israel as a sign of their military prowess.

But she says Israeli defence officials now have expressed concern over the revelation of classified data in the US.

Source: BBC News

Posted by: Ms_Hodge_Podge on 4/25/2008 at 9:00 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink

Spectre Of Food Rationing Hits US

The spectre of food rationing arose in America today as retailers began imposing limits on rice and flour sales following bulk purchases by customers alarmed by rocketing global prices for staple foods.

Wal-Mart's cash-and-carry division, Sam's Club, announced that it would only sell a maximum of four bags of rice per person to prevent supplies from running short.

Its decision followed sporadic caps placed on purchases of rice and flour by certain store managers at a rival bulk chain, Costco, in parts of California.

The commodity cost of rice hit an all-time high on the Chicago Board of Trade this week and in some stores, retail prices have doubled over the course of a few weeks.

Retail experts said there was little evidence of "panic" hoarding by the public - but that restaurants and smaller retailers were buying up stocks at warehouse wholesalers in the expectation that the cost was heading even higher. Shops said Filippino residents in the US were also making large purchases to send to relatives in the Philippines, where a shortage of supplies is causing concern.

"What you're seeing is people who buy in larger quantities, who have a restaurant or a corner store, stocking up because of media reports that prices could go higher," said Dave Heylen, a spokesman for the Californian Grocers' Association.

Since the beginning of the year, rice producing countries including China, India, Vietnam and Egypt have imposed limits on exports in order to keep prices down at home. This week, a top World Bank official predicted that Thailand, the world's largest rice exporter, might follow in restricting shipments.

Restrictions at Sam's Club, which has 580 warehouse stores across the US, apply to Jasmine, Basmati and long grain white rices - the type typically used for dishes such as curry. The chain said the limits were "due to recent supply and demand trends".

At Costco, chief executive James Sinegal said only very large purchases would face sanctions: "If a customer came in and said 'I want 10 pallets of flour', we'd probably say, 'No we can't give you that. We can give you one pallet.'"

The owner of one restaurant in Oakland told a local television station that the price of a typical sack of rice had risen from $20 to $40 in a matter of weeks. Son Tran of the Le Cheval Vietnamese restaurant said his stockpiles were dwindling - and that the price of some vegetables had also risen by as much as 50%.

Industry leaders sought to calm fears. Tim Johnson, chief executive of the California Rice Commission, said there was no prospect of an overall shortage of food - and that stores' supplies were quickly being replenished.

"The reality is, at least for the next several years, we've seen a new level for what food costs are going to be in the US and probably internationally, too," said Johnson, who added that a typical serving of rice cost less than 10 cents. "It's still the best deal on your plate."

Source: The Guardian Unlimited

Wal-Mart Restricts Rice Purchases

The world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart, is restricting sales of rice at one of its chains - the latest sign of a global shortage of the staple food.

Sam's Club, Wal-Mart's cash-and-carry division, says customers can buy a maximum of four bags per visit.

The limit applies to jasmine, basmati and long grain white rice.

The international price of rice has risen by 68% this year and Wal-Mart said the restrictions were "due to recent supply and demand trends".

There are more than 550 Sam's Club stores in the US.

With food prices rising, customers have been buying basic goods in bulk.

Wal-Mart said it was not restricting the amounts of flour or oil customers can purchase "at this time".

The prices of soybeans, corn and wheat have also soared and are currently near their all-time peaks.

Rice-producing countries like Vietnam and India have curbed exports to keep domestic prices under control and there are fears that Thailand - the world's largest rice exporter - could follow suit.

Rice shortages have sparked protests in several countries including the Philippines, Haiti and Egypt.

Wal-Mart said it was working with suppliers to address the shortage. 

Source: BBC News

Posted by: Ms_Hodge_Podge on 4/24/2008 at 8:00 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink

US Military Recruits More Ex-Cons

The US Army and Marine Corps recruited significantly more people with criminal records last year than in 2006, amid pressure to meet combat needs.

Statistics released by a congressional committee show 861 people were granted waivers to enlist, up from 457 in 2007.

The crimes included assault, sex crimes, manslaughter and burglary.

The Army says waivers are only granted after careful review and are in response to the challenges of recruiting in a changing society.

The number of people granted waivers are just a small fraction of the more than 180,000 people who entered active duty in the armed forces during the fiscal year that ended in September 2007.

But the perceived lowering of standards is causing concern in some quarters.

We're growing the army fast, and there are some waivers... It hasn't alarmed us yet Lt Gen James Thurman Deputy chief of staff for operations

"The significant increase in the recruitment of persons with criminal records is a result of the strain put on the military by the Iraq war," said Democratic Representative Henry Waxman.

Mr Waxman chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that released the figures drawn up by the US Department of Defense.

These show that:

• The Army granted 511 felony waivers in 2007, up from 249 the year before

• Some 350 people with convictions joined the Marine Corps, up from 208 in 2006

• The Navy actually recruited fewer people with convictions, down from 48 to 42

• The Air Force did not recruit anyone with a felony conviction

Among the convictions, many were for stealing, including burglary and car thefts, and drug offences.

Waivers were also granted to three people convicted of manslaughter, nine guilty of sex crimes, and nine convicted of making terror threats, including bomb threats.

In addition, the Army and Marine Corps granted 27,671 "conduct waivers" covering what are regarded as serious misdemeanours , up from 25,098 in 2006.

Pentagon officials say that the need to recruit troops for continuing operations abroad, low unemployment at home, and declining interest in serving pose a challenge.

"We're digging deeper into the barrel than we were before," an official told the Washington Post.

The Army also argues that its ranks reflect the society they are drawn from.

Only three in 10 Americans of military age meet the army's medical, moral, aptitude, or administrative requirements, army officials point out.

"We're growing the army fast, and there are some waivers - we know that," said Army Lt Gen James Thurman, deputy chief of staff for operations.

"It hasn't alarmed us yet."

Source: BBC News

Double Number Of Ex-Cons Join The US Army

The US army doubled its use of "moral waivers" for enlisted soldiers last year to cope with the demands of the Iraq war, allowing sex offenders, people convicted of making terrorist threats, and child abusers into the military, new records released yesterday showed.

The army gave out 511 moral waivers to soldiers with felony convictions last year. Criminals got 249 army waivers in 2006, a sign that the demand for US forces in Iraq has forced a sharp increase in the number of criminals allowed on the battlefield.

The felons accepted into the army and marines included 87 soldiers convicted of assault or maiming, 130 convicted of non-cannabis-related drug offences, seven convicted of making terrorist threats, and two convicted of indecent behaviour with a child. Waivers were also granted to 500 burglars and thieves, 19 arsonists and nine sex offenders.

The new data were released by the oversight committee of the House of Representatives. Henry Waxman, the Democratic chairman of the oversight panel, said that while "providing opportunities to individuals who have served their sentences and rehabilitated themselves" is important, the waivers are a sign that the US military is stretched too thin.

The number of moral waivers in the military, mostly for misdemeanours such as speeding fines, reached 34,476 in 2006, or nearly 20% of all enlisted soldiers, according to the Palm Centre at the University of California. Recruits with felony convictions are more likely than other soldiers to drop out or be released from the military.

More than one felony conviction disqualifies recruits from the army or marines, but the navy and air force can admit those with multiple offences.

Source: The Guardian Unlimited

Posted by: Ms_Hodge_Podge on 4/23/2008 at 8:00 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink

Israel: 60 Years Of Hope And Despair

As the anniversary of its independence approaches, Israel remains haunted by conflicts of the past and is split along racial, religious, economic and ideological lines. Terrorist attacks are commonplace. But there is also pride mixed with self-criticism, and a yearning for a fresh start on both sides of the Arab-Israeli divide

Jewish survivors of the Buchenwald Nazi concentration camp arrive at Haifa port in 1945.

Uri Ben Ami washed down a mouthful of squid with a Maccabee beer and sighed as he sank into the folds of a padded deckchair on Tel Aviv's beachfront while Lycra-clad women sprang past on the wet sand. 'This,' he said. 'Is as good as it gets.' He chose to ignore the thrumming approach of two Apache helicopters returning from a sortie over Gaza to the south where dozens of Palestinians have died in attacks by their Hellfire missiles over the past months. Uri, a graphic designer, wanted to enjoy the modern wonder that is Israel. 'The fear and violence I'm ignoring. It's always been there. Today it's good to be in Israel,' he said.

It is very nearly 60 years since Israel's birth, six decades of a controversial, violent, bloody history. On 14 May, 1948, 250 Zionists gathered in the Tel Aviv Museum to attend one of the century's most important meetings. At 4pm precisely David Ben Gurion - who would in a few moments become Israel's first Prime Minister - brought his gavel down for silence and, after a spontaneous rendition of 'Hatikva', the national anthem, began reading Israel's Declaration of Independence from handwritten notes. Twelve leaders of the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine, were unable to attend because they were already besieged by Arab forces in Jerusalem in a conflict which had erupted the year before when the United Nations voted to partition the British mandate of Palestine into Arab and Israeli zones. As the ink dried on the independence scroll, the armies of Syria, Jordan and Egypt threw themselves into a battle to wipe out the Jewish state. And it is a war which continues, in the view of many, to this day.

Last week at least 22 people, including five children, three Israeli soldiers and a Reuters journalist, died in fighting between Palestinians and Israelis. The journalist and several Palestinians were killed or injured when an Israeli tank fired a flechette shell, containing thousands of darts, at the Reuters team.

Yesterday Hamas militants rammed a bomb-laden car into an Israeli border crossing, killing three of the militants and wounding 13 Israeli soldiers. It was the third major attack in less than two weeks on crossings used to transfer limited supplies of humanitarian goods and fuel to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, home to 1.5 million people. These were the latest attacks in a conflict which has been fed by Arab nationalism, Islamist hostility to Israel and its allies, and the threat of a nuclear Iran.

The 'Zionist entity', as its enemies call it, remains an object of awe and envy. 'Israel makes us Arabs feel bad. It has no oil, no resources, no nothing, but it wins wars and, if we're honest, looks like a nice place to live. It exposes our own failings and that's why so many of us hate it,' says Ibrahim Rajoub, who was visiting Palestinian relatives on the West Bank last week from his home in Jordan.

By the time the armistice was signed in the 1949 fighting, the 29,000 men, women and children of Israel's disparate militia and settler groups had grown into a force of 110,000. By then Palestine's Arabs had suffered the Naqba (catastrophe); 250,000 of them were driven from their homes by Israeli troops, sometimes using selective massacres and intimidation, into exile in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Their descendants still dream of returning to the fields and villages seized when Israel increased its land area by 50 per cent in under 12 months from what it had been allotted in the UN's 1947 partition plan.

It violated the spirit of the Balfour Declaration of 1917 in which Arthur Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, said the government viewed 'with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people', but added: 'it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine'.

The Zionist founders of Israel were in no mood for compromise. The Holocaust had driven home their desperate need for a safe haven - even if it meant fighting to hold on to it for generations. 'You cannot underestimate how important it was to us, and is to us, to have a National Home after being persecuted the world over,' says Meir Lau, former Chief Rabbi of Israel and now Tel Aviv's chief rabbi.

Lau arrived in Palestine in July 1945 with his 19-year-old brother, Napthali, on a chartered Australian fishing boat straight from Buchenwald. He was the youngest boy among 200 survivors of Hitler's exterminations on the boat. 'When we landed at Haifa trains were waiting for us. They were cattle trucks, just like the ones that took people to Auschwitz, metal boxes with wire-covered slits for air. We were being interned by the British, who were trying to stop Jewish immigration into Palestine. When we arrived in the Atlit camp I saw men in uniform with guns and pistols. I said to my brother, "I thought you were bringing me to the National Home for the Jews - are we going to be killed?" It was months before we got out, but the lesson was that no one, not even the British, would help us. We would have to do this on our own.' Tel Aviv was then no more than a few jerry-built blocks and huts, filled with the frequently starved and broken shells of humanity who had made it through the death camps. Today it is a thriving metropolis, part of a coastal belt which has the second highest number of internet start-up companies after the US, great beaches, and heaving night clubs amid some of the finest Bauhaus architecture in the world.

Israel has risen from almost nothing. There was no industry to speak of in 1948. Today Israel is a nuclear power with an economy still growing at 3 per cent, in spite of the costly 2006 war with Hizbollah in Lebanon. But above all the self-analysis and self-criticism of Israel, within what is the closest thing to democracy in the region, have given the Jewish state its greatest strength. It is hard to conceive of a British commission of inquiry daring to hand out the sort of drubbing given Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his top generals by the Winograd Commission, which accused Olmert of incompetence and knee-jerk strategy in the last Lebanon war.

But Israel is still defined by religious or racial parameters which mean that the Arabs who remained after 1949 found themselves subjected to military law for 18 years, were constantly harassed, and stripped of most of their land before being included as, almost, full Israeli citizens with a vote. Among them was the family of Sayed Kashua, 33, an Israeli Arab, one of Israel's leading Hebrew authors with two novels and a successful TV sitcom under his belt. 'My family stayed on, and didn't become refugees, because the armistice was signed just as the Jewish forces were approaching our village, el-Tira which sits on the 'green line', the armistice line of 1949 separating Israel from the West Bank. They had already shot my grandfather and uncle dead in the fields where they worked.'

The unfortunates who became refugees from the 1948 war still keep the keys to the homes they fled as symbols of their 'right to return' enshrined in UN resolution 194. That right has been flatly denied by Israel, adding fuel to the Arab world's general desire to destroy the Jewish state. But Rabbi Lau is delighted by the success of the national home for the Jewish people. 'We have absorbed people from 140 countries. We have revived Hebrew as a living language, which is now a national tongue. We are a noisy democracy and there are six million Jews living in a country which is their home as promised to them in the Torah. That is most definitely a success'.

Israel expanded again in 1967 when it launched a pre-emptive assault on Egypt, whose ramshackle coalition of Arab armies was routed in just six days. Ironically, just as in 1948, the fighting provided the excuse for a second wave of land seizure by Israel, including East Jerusalem, Syria's Golan Heights, the Sinai peninsula (later returned to Egypt) and Gaza, as Israeli troops burst through the green line to take over the West Bank of the Jordan river. Although the Israeli cabinet originally discussed trading the newly occupied lands for peace with the Arabs, degrees of occupation have continued to this day, despite the Oslo accords and evacuation of Gaza.

As a paratrooper in 1967, Avishai Margalit, a Zionist intellectual with no qualms about defending the country he had seen being born during the fighting in Jerusalem in 1948, took part in the Israeli capture of Jerusalem from Jordanian forces, then marched on Hebron to the south. Hailed as Zionism's final great achievement - establishment of a united Jewish capital in Jerusalem - Margalit (now a professor of philosophy at Princeton and the Hebrew University) saw things differently - even then.

'I knew then we were marching into a trap of our own making. Being an occupying power would be, and has been, the greatest threat to our survival and to the health of the country,' he says. 'Now we are struggling to figure out how to get out of this trap we've been in for 31 years.

'Worse still, while everyone sane recognises that we're going to have to get out of the West Bank and establish an independent Palestinian state, Israel is still building settlements on West Bank land taken from Palestinians, sowing the seeds of yet more hatred and violence.'

Since 1967 Israel has, illegally under international law, settled an estimated 250,000 people in the occupied West Bank and made it clear that only the smallest populations would be removed as part of a peace deal. And the Israeli Defence Forces have erected a vast 'security barrier' of concrete and wire slicing off yet more Palestinian territory.

And today, with the 60th anniversary of independence fast approaching, there are a significant number of Israelis on both left and right asking whether in the intervening period the Israel declared by its founding fathers as a largely secular, communitarian project has not somehow lost the plot.

Israel's 1.7 million Arabs are these days seen as a 'demographic threat' to the Jewish nature of the state in a country where some politicians have begun to talk openly of 'transfer' of ethnic Arabs to Palestinian areas, or of slicing off Arab villages in Israel and handing them over to Palestinian control.

'This kind of talk has started to make me feel frightened, where in the past I only felt like a second-class citizen. We relive the Naqba of 1948 every day I have been an Israeli Arab. For how long I don't know,' says Kashua, whose home village, like most Arab-Israeli towns, is scruffier than nearby Jewish areas.

'I cannot buy a flat in a Jewish neighbourhood - not even me, who is pretty well known and writes in Hebrew. There is probably greater resentment between the Jewish and Arab Israeli communities now than ever before. We're seen as a problem, not as citizens,' he says.

If Israel sees its Arabs as a threat, there is an even bigger problem closer to home. It is a familiar scene all over the world. A farmer passes down the line of stalls filling buckets with fodder, raising appreciative cries from his animals. Except that the farmer is Shlomo Kimschi, he's Jewish, this is the Holy Land, and the grunting creatures are pigs, destined for a slaughterhouse in Israel's booming pork industry.

Such an unforeseen and, for many Jews and Muslims, abhorrent scene has its roots in Israel's first war. The village of Iblin was annexed in 1948. Tiny numbers of Christian Arabs who chose to remain were given dispensation to rear pigs in what the Ministry of Agriculture now calls 'red zones'. Spotting an opportunity in the 1960s, Kimschi's secular parents rented land from Christian Arabs, about 20 miles east of Haifa. It was a smart move. In the 1990s a million new immigrants flooded in from the former Soviet Union, many devoted to guzzling pork. They created a boom in the market and Israel is now home to some 150,000 breeding pigs in northern Galilee.

'Those were good times for us. Ironically our industry is protected by Israel's kosher laws, which forbid the importation of meat from abroad. So we have the market to ourselves,' says Kimschi.

But for many Israelis this is a sign that the Zionist enterprise has gone badly awry - on top of the threats from the Arab world and Palestinian terror, Israel is losing its Zionist soul. Some of the most important institutions are coming under pressure. The army, once at the heart of the Zionist enterprise, is today beginning to take its toll on conscripts amid the burden of fighting in Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank. Historian Michael Oren, of the right-wing Shalem Centre in Jerusalem, points to a 'reluctance to join the army' as a sign of a general 'collapse of the Zionist principles of self-sacrifice, probity and collectivism which have built and protected Israel'.

A quarter of the men and women called up for national service now slide out of it, claiming mental problems or religious exemption. And a growing number of seasoned soldiers from elite units and the air force are refusing to fight on moral grounds.

Zohar Shapira spent 15 years as a member of the Special Forces, the Sayeret Metkal, ending as a warrant officer in charge of 13 other highly trained men before he decided Israel's occupation beyond the green line was bad for Israel as well as the Palestinians.

'I didn't kill anyone, thank God. But when you're kicking down doors and shooting live rounds over the heads of young children in their own homes, you have to question what you're doing. For many years I believed that the missions I went on were defending the Jewish state, but the immorality of what we did on the West Bank endangers the Jewish state. A country with no moral flags can become barbaric - it becomes a question of the laws of the jungle,' he says in a coffee shop in Raanana. 'If things go on like this, with violence feeding violence - I'm not sure I want to bring up my children here.'

Since the huge Russian immigration of the 1990s, there are at least 300,000 non-Jewish Israeli immigrants in addition to the 5.7 million Israeli Jews. The aggressive recruitment of immigrants means that Israel now has its own neo-Nazi movement. Last week three Russian immigrants in their late teens and one adult were sentenced to between 18 months and four years for assault and racism after filming one another beating up ultra-Orthodox Jews and homeless people. Four more members of the gang, Patrol 36, including the leader, Arik Bunyatov (known as Arik the Nazi), face similar charges after shocking videos were found on a Russian neo-Nazi website. A fifth, an IDF sergeant, has fled to Russia, where neo-Nazi websites hosted the group's videos.

Zalman Gilichenski, himself an immigrant from Moldova, who monitors extremist anti-Semitic groups in Israel, says these are not isolated incidents. 'I get at least four calls a week about the desecration of Jewish graves, fascist graffiti and lots of personal attacks. Graffiti says things like "Death to the Yids, Heil Hitler". There have been 500 incidents of attacks and abuse in the last two years and there are several hundred neo-Nazis in Israel. People who came in the 1990s, a lot of them did not feel Jewish or want to be Jewish but were in fact anti-Semites getting out of Russia. They've passed their ideology on to kids brought up here. You have to ask what's the point of Israel if this goes on,' he says.

Meanwhile, if Jesus Christ were alive today among his earliest miracles would be to survive his own baptism, because of the profligate use of the River Jordan's waters for irrigation in Israel and the kingdom of Jordan. At the site attributed to St John's baptism of Christ, the Jordan is no longer a river. Thick, green, about 2ft wide, Israel's government calls it an 'effluent channel'.

'It's mad,' says Mira Edelstein. 'Israeli farms who get subsidised water use 70 per cent of all water in the country and produce 2 per cent of the GDP. The mountain aquifer on the West Bank is getting polluted, the coastal aquifer is getting salty, and our rivers are poisonous. We might have greened the desert, but at what cost? The state will collapse if it has no water.' So, facing an enemy within, a demographic 'time-bomb', chronic water shortages, and a dwindling level of patriotism in defence, one might think things look bleak for Israel at 60.

Isaac Herzog, the Social Services Minister and son of the late Chaim Herzog, Israel's sixth President and a former British army officer, complains of a lack of 'serious partners for peace among the Palestinian leadership'. Even so, 'Israel had only enemies in the region when it was born. It had no international supporters, we were under siege, and no Arab country spoke to us. Now we have diplomatic relations with Qatar, Egypt, Jordan and part of a coalition that wants a two-state solution for the Israelis and the Palestinians. We have forged a country together from a mosaic of people from everywhere. Israel is a success. We survived and thrived in the toughest possible conditions. That has to be something of a miracle.'

Source: The Guardian Unlimited/The Observer

Posted by: Ms_Hodge_Podge on 4/21/2008 at 7:00 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink

Bank Roles: 25 'I Did It for the Money' Films

What the hell is he/she doing in THAT?! From Sean Connery in 'Never Say Never Again' to Faye Dunaway in 'Supergirl' to Bill Murray in 'Garfield' to Judi Dench in 'Riddick,' here are our picks of the 25 Most Shameless Paycheck Roles of All Time

25. SEAN CONNERY
in Never Say Never Again (1983)

After 1971's Diamonds Are Forever, Connery said 'never again' and traded his Walther PPK for more lucrative non-Bond paydays. It rarely worked (see: Zardoz). Twelve years later, we saw a man publicly eating crow. And it wasn't pretty. The then-53-year-old Scot's physique was saggy, his thinning hair resembled the last sad wisps of cotton candy, and his macking on a young Kim Basinger was just plain creepy. And then, freakin' Octopussy made more money.

24. JASON ALEXANDER
in Dunston Checks In (1996)

The 'hiatus film' is a long and noble TV tradition. During rerun season, many small-screen stars cash in their chips for a big-screen quickie. And we expect these movies to be terrible. Still, nothing could have prepared us for Seinfeld's George Costanza costarring with an ape. And don't give me any of that 'Eastwood did an ape movie' nonsense. Watching this flaccid flick, you can't help experience a little 'shrinkage.'

23. BILL MURRAY
in Garfield (2004)

Should there be an exemption for kids' movies? No, since there's actually such a thing as good kids' movies. Murray put his late-career indie street cred on the line to voice the crudely animated, lasagna-eating feline opposite Breckin Meyer and Jennifer Love Hewitt. You have to wonder just how big a check was needed to get Murray to sign off on weak one-liners like 'I think I'm going to blow cat-chow chunks!'

22. MARLON BRANDO
in Superman (1978)

Okay, this movie's actually respectable. If only the same could be said of the Method meatball's motives for signing on as Superman's baby daddy, Jor-El. Brando, who was never shy about his desire for big paydays in exchange for minimal work, shook down the producers for an eventual total of about $14 million for 13 days on the set. That translates into roughly $1.2 million per minute of screen time.

21. MATT DILLON
in Herbie: Fully Loaded (2004)

It was hard not to be moved by Dillon's Oscar nod for Crash. After all, here was an actor who'd never been taken seriously  a lunch-pail lunk we'd all secretly been rooting for since The Outsiders  finally getting some respect. But then, he made this Lindsay Lohan turkey. It's more than a little humiliating watching our favorite greaser getting sprayed in the face with motor oil and losing a war of wits to a VW Bug.

20. CUBA GOODING JR.
in Chill Factor (1999)

Three years after his Jerry Maguire Oscar, Gooding (right) was still asking folks to show him the money. How else to explain this slice of tripe featuring a weapon of mass destruction and an ice cream truck? Look at that again: a weapon of mass destruction and an ice cream truck. At one point, Gooding threatens Skeet Ulrich with 'I'm about to get in your ass like last year's underwear!' What does that even mean?

19. ELIZABETH TAYLOR
in The Flintstones (1994)

Yes, she's a living legend...blah blah blah. But despite her five Oscar noms, Taylor (right) remains about as hopeless at picking out quality roles as she is at choosing husbands. In fact, I'm blaming Larry Fortensky for getting her mixed up with this one, where she plays Fred's mother-in-law, Pearl Slaghoople. Taylor slums her way through a litany of groan-inducing puns (she calls John Goodman's Fred a 'skunkasaurus').

18. BEN AFFLECK
in Paycheck (2003)

This one's almost too easy. I mean, it's right there in the title. My guess is Affleck who admits regretting 'the times I took movies just to work' never even made it past the script's cover page before signing on for this jackpot. Coasting in smug lug-nut mode, Affleck plays a 'reverse engineer' (we know he's a brainiac because he wears glasses) who wakes up with his memory wiped and goons on his tail. To say that he phones in his performance is too generous. It's more like he's using a couple of tin cans and some string.

17. BUSTER KEATON
in Beach Blanket Bingo (1965)

During the silent era, Keaton was arguably a greater comedic talent than Charlie Chaplin. But the introduction of sound made him obsolete. By the LBJ years, this genius was reduced to taking any fluff film that would have him in exchange for a payday. Take this Annette Funicello-Frankie Avalon hormone-apalooza, which features Keaton wearing his signature porkpie hat and deadpan expression. Well, his expression is deadpan at least until a bombshell in a bikini crosses his path. Then his eyes bug out like the world's oldest living horndog. Ah-ooo-gah! How depressing.

16. JEREMY IRONS AND JOHN MALKOVICH
in Eragon (2006)

This one's a twofer. Maybe Irons (right) is a closet nerd with a thing for fire-breathing flops. After all, he also starred in 2000's Dungeons & Dragons. But what's Malkovich's excuse? Between the Sam Shepard plays and the artfully cocked beret he likes to wear while combing used-book stores on the Left Bank, we kind of assumed he was, well, too much of a snob for this stuff.

15. CHRISTOPHER WALKEN
in Kangaroo Jack (2003)

Sure, the guy works with directors like Spielberg and Tarantino, but he's also made so many clunkers, it's hard to pick the worst. The Country Bears? Joe Dirt? Gigli? Tough call, but in the end we went with this Bruckheimer crap confection because he costars with a badly animated marsupial who wears shades and sings 'Rappers Delight.' This guy needs an intervention. He may be the least selective actor alive.

14. RICHARD PRYOR
in Superman III (1983)

Pryor deservedly gets a lot of praise for his no-holds-barred stand-up comedy, but in the early '80s he was like a heat-seeking missile of bad instincts. No, we're not talking about the freebasing. We're talking about movies like The Toy, Brewster's Millions, and this unfortunate chapter in the squeaky-clean Man of Steel saga, which renders the once proudly profane Pryor hamstrung and neutered.

13. FAYE DUNAWAY
in Supergirl (1984)

Peter O'Toole is lousy in this too, but at least he disappears for most of the film (no doubt to head to the bank). Dunaway (center), on the other hand, is trapped for the entire nightmare, hamming it up like Cruella De Vil on a laughing-gas jag. Dunaway (who, it should be noted, is also in Dunston Checks In) plays a harpy fond of kimonos and world domination...and not nearly as fond of Helen Slater's Supergirl.

12. WILLIAM HURT
in Lost in Space (1998)

Here's a guy who seems to get Oscar noms just for waking up in the morning looking lost. Hurt must have taken a gander around Hollywood and seen his peers buying up Aston Martins and wondered, 'What the hell am I doing playing imprisoned transvestites in art films? I could be stinkin' rich!' Unfortunately, he winds up looking stiffer than the movie's robot. I swear you can see the self-loathing creep across his face.

11. LAURENCE OLIVIER
in Clash of the Titans (1981)

It had to suck to be Laurence Olivier. Sure, you're one of the world's greatest actors. But the catch-22 is that you can't just say 'Screw it, I'm gonna cut loose, throw on a toga, and ham it up as Zeus.' Or can you? Olivier lets his Athenian freak flag fly as the original god father. While Harry Hamlin undergoes the trials of Perseus, Olivier kicks back on Mount Olympus making googly eyes at Ursula Andress' Aphrodite.

10. DEMI MOORE
in Striptease (1996)

In which Moore was paid a then-record $12.5 million to go topless. Okay, she also did some 'acting' in this dreadful flashdancer-with-a-heart-of-gold saga. But nothing she should be proud of. Not only does Striptease suck, it makes Showgirls look like Schindler's List. And all that Annie Lennox music didn't help. Watching Moore writhe around on all fours, you don't just feel embarrassed for her; you experience a profound existential malaise.

9. MICHAEL CAINE
in Jaws: The Revenge (1987)

Caine has done so many paycheck roles, he's almost like Walken's cockney doppelganger. Still, we'll pick this fourth Jaws outing because, after all, 'this time it's personal.' Caine plays a bush pilot named Hoagie. And he must be a ham-and-cheese hoagie because those are the two settings on his acting. Ironically, this dud cost Caine more than he made: When his name was called to accept his Oscar for Hannah and Her Sisters, he was shooting this great white mess.

8. JUDI DENCH
in The Chronicles of Riddick (2004)

Hey, Dames gotta pay the rent too. Here, Dench ditches the Merchant Ivory frippery to go head-to-head with Vin Diesel in the bloated sequel to 2000's Pitch Black. Dench does double duty as Aereon, a shape-shifting soothsayer, as well as the narrator of the film's opening, where she expounds on Necromongers and the Underverse. Judi, you had us at Necromongers.

7. ORSON WELLES
in Transformers: The Movie (1986)

Dig this voice cast: Judd Nelson, Casey Kasem, Eric Idle, Leonard Nimoy, and Scatman Crothers. Crazy, right? But perhaps no one was as out of place here as the director of Citizen Kane, well into his Paul Masson-shilling decline. Welles wields his gargantuan baritone as the voice of Unicron, a ravenous robot-planet that devours everything in its path. Yes, his last role was a fat joke.

6. PETER O'TOOLE
in Club Paradise (1986)

Some actors see movie shoots as little more than paid vacations (how else to explain Ocean's Twelve?). But even by those lax standards, O'Toole's appearance in this Robin Williams reggae romp is particularly painful to watch. Lawrence of bloody Arabia himself lumbers through the flick like a sunburned ghoul. The tagline to this stink bomb says it all: 'The vacation you'll never forget no matter how hard you try.'

5. DENNIS HOPPER
in Super Mario Bros. (1993)

When you appear in more than 30 movies in the '90s alone, quality control is gonna get lost in the shuffle. As a half-lizard villain named King Koopa, Hopper gets tarted up in snakeskin suits and has his hair pulled back into blond Flavor Flav cornrows. In the single worst videogame-turned-movie ever made (which is really saying something), Hopper does his worst overacting to date (again, saying something).

4. TONY CURTIS
in The Bad News Bears Go to Japan (1978)

Walter Matthau wisely wanted no part of this inept sequel (neither, apparently, did Tanner or Lupus). But Curtis was only too willing to check his pride at the door to play a sleazy promoter in what wound up being a smorgasbord of racial gags (those crazy Asians and their endless bowing! And get this, they eat raw fish...what savages!). It's amazing Japan remained an ally after this came out.

3. BEN KINGSLEY
in BloodRayne (2005)

They say Gandhi used to get in bed with two naked women just to test his willpower. We wonder if Kingsley's decision to star in BloodRayne was a similar test. Directed by hack extraordinaire Uwe Boll (House of the Dead), this miasma of vampire hokum stars Sir Ben as Kagan, king of the vampires. Between this and Thunderbirds, the Queen's gotta be kicking herself a bit about the whole knighthood thing.

2. RICHARD BURTON
in Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)

Looking like he just came off of the world's longest (and sweatiest) whiskey bender, Burton plays a Vatican investigator charged with reopening the Regan MacNeil case. Burton's soldier of Christ battles a ridiculous demon named Pazuzu and is even forced to wear a snug safari outfit. Wanna bet those stormy years with Liz Taylor sorry, Pearl Slaghoople were looking pretty sweet mid-shoot?

1. ROBERT DE NIRO
in The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle (2000)

He was the young Vito Corleone. He was Travis Bickle. He was Jake La Motta, Rupert Pupkin, and Al Capone. He's been nominated for six Oscars. He is our greatest living actor. No question, no room for debate. And yet, there is that one little aberration. Little? Who am I kidding? One huge-ass aberration called The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle an insult so epic that he could spend the rest of his days going door-to-door with FTD bouquets, Whitman's Samplers, and personal mea culpas to every ticket buyer...and then, maybe then, we could forgive him for Fearless Leader, a performance so mind-bogglingly bad that it's almost avant-garde. Perhaps then we could erase the image of De Niro dressed in Nazi garb with a monocle, looking like Heinrich Himmler (for the record, Himmler wasn't funny). And we could forget the sight of De Niro getting jiggy with it (neither is this). And, worst of all, his 'You talkin' to me?' bit, where you can actually witness a legend crapping all over his legacy. No, come to think of it, all of those acts of contrition still wouldn't be enough. There's really no excuse he could offer to heal our broken hearts.

Source: Entertainment Weekly Online

Posted by: Ms_Hodge_Podge on 4/20/2008 at 5:00 PM | Comments (1) | Permalink

18 Sexy Trips to the Library Stacks

THE BREAKFAST CLUB (1985)
An entire day in the school library doesn't sound like punishment to me, but I'm not an athlete, a basket case, a princess, a criminal, or even a brain with suicidal thoughts. The breakfast club tear pages out of books (that sound you hear is my breaking heart), smoke pot, and play loud music; all big no-nos for a hall of learning. However, the teens learn from each other (awww) and that's why the library rocks.

GHOSTBUSTERS (1984)
The New York Public Library's ghost is not nearly as scary as the mess she leaves in her wake. Who's going to re-shelve all those books and reassemble the scattered card catalog? Not the Ghostbusters, who run screaming from the nasty hag...and their responsibility to the Dewey Decimal system.

JUMPER (2008)
Wet books smell gross, so I don't envy the poor librarian who will have to clean up the flood that David Rice (Hayden Christensen) brings into the library stacks. Although, he could be forgiven because it's kind of hard to be thoughtful when a) you're drowning in a frozen lake, and b) you don't even yet realize that you can teleport.

THE MUMMY (1999)
We first glimpse librarian Evelyn Carnahan (Rachel Weisz) in a less than adventurous moment, but her reaction after toppling several bookcases ('oops!') reveals her sense of fun. And just in case you didn't know, libraries can be full of dangers, such as sexist curators and selfish brothers (John Hannah) who will hide in a sarcophagus just to scare their sister. Evie's drunken declaration of her profession should serve as a battle cry for librarians everywhere.

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (1991)
Nope, that's not a library Belle visits in the beginning of the film. The local bookseller just lets her borrow because she's probably the only person in that town who reads. As a young bibliophile, I nearly died seeing the library that the Beast gives to Belle. Books stacked so high it's probably a hazard to even attempt to get them down. All girls should be so lucky.

HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE (2005)
When problems plague Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermione (Emma Watson) consults the school library because the wizarding world doesn't have Google. In Goblet of Fire the teens pull an all-nighter looking for a spell to breathe underwater. Yes, Neville tells Harry how it can be done, but Harry might have been sleeping with the fishes if it weren't for the library.

SEVEN (1995)
Ah, the glories of good old-fashioned research in a quiet library set to the music of Bach. Compared to the cold blue palette of David Fincher's film, the green banker lamps in the library are warm and inviting; a brief moment of calm in a movie filled with tension. It's only appropriate that the first viable lead toward catching John Doe (Kevin Spacey) comes from his library card.

INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE (1989)
If you ever wondered why librarians treat their territory like hallowed ground, perhaps it's because it actually is. The Last Crusade really takes off during this scene in the church-turned-library/catacombs. Indy (Harrison Ford) finds the secret entrance faster than you can say 'Holy Grail,' but the stained-glass windows and stone columns are a gorgeous diversion before we descend to the rat-infested tunnels below.

PHILADELPHIA (1993)
Libraries are not always the perfect environments we would hope them to be. In one of the many heart-breaking scenes from Philadelphia, Tom Hanks' character Andrew Beckett endures the suspicious and fearful stares of other library patrons and the librarian who helps find a book about AIDS discrimination. Witnessing the struggle, Joe Miller (Denzel Washington), who had previously declined to take Beckett's case, agrees to the job.

DESK SET (1957)
In Desk Set, Katherine Hepburn plays Bunny Watson, reference librarian at the Federal Broadcasting Network. As expected, she is a veritable encyclopedia, witty, and far superior to a computer that threatens to replace her. In one scene, Hepburn and Spencer Tracy have a drunken conversation while sitting against the bookcases, which just proves that even intoxicated she's got one superior brain.

THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW (2004)
A mischievous ghoul haunted the New York Library in Ghostbusters, but that was nothing compared to the global-warming disasters that plague the building in The Day After Tomorrow. Jake Gyllenhaal and Emmy Rossum do their best to stay alive inside the library while the world outside crumbles. I'll let the book-burning slide barely because they're trying to keep warm.

NATIONAL TREASURE: BOOK OF SECRETS (2007)
Does the Library of Congress contain a top-secret book that has all the answers to our nation's biggest conspiracies? I wouldn't be shocked if it was true, but maybe that's because it's easy to believe that such a beautiful building is likely to be home to some pretty confidential stuff. Nicolas Cage doesn't really seem the library-going type in National Treasure, but he's a man on a mission, and that mission happens to lead him to the country's greatest library.

THE MUSIC MAN (1962)
I've never been a big fan of The Music Man, but even my cranky heart melts a little watching Robert Preston sing 'Marian the Librarian'. Just the sheer cheesiness of book-related choreography is enough to make this scene brilliant, but the full-out partnered dancing makes it a classic.

ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (1976)
As far as libraries go, the Library of Congress is the Grand Pooh-Bah of them all. While Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) are carefully going through circulation records, the camera pans out from a tight close-up on their hands to a fantastic wide view of the circular reading room. It's a beauty shot of the library, and the exciting part is that such a place actually exists.

LORENZO'S OIL (1992)
Lorenzo's determined parents, Augusto and Michaela (Nick Nolte and Susan Sarandon), cannot accept the certain death of their son so they tirelessly search for a cure to an incurable disease called adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD). They practically set up camp in a medical library, spending hours researching any and all possible treatments that may save their son. It's not always thrilling to watch other people read, but when the effects of ALD flash across the screen as Augusto is researching, the feeling of urgency is palpable.

THE NINTH GATE (1999)
Okay, this Johnny Depp satanic-book-mystery is not a great film  one might hesitate to even use the term 'good film' but Depp does his best as Dean Corso, a rare book dealer who travels to some luscious libraries in his quest to validate a rare copy of The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows.

A BEAUTIFUL MIND (2001)
It's no surprise that a genius like John Nash (Russell Crowe) spent a lot of his time in the library. In A Beautiful Mind he practically lives in Princeton's stacks when he is trying to develop an original thesis. His eureka moment happens at a bar (not exactly like a library, but good ideas aren't picky...and there are usually shelves). Later in his career, Nash returns to Princeton, allowed only space in the library rather than an office. The set-up leads to popularity among students and a return to lecturing. Thus, a library saves another career!

Source: Entertainment Weekly Online

Posted by: Ms_Hodge_Podge on 4/19/2008 at 4:00 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink

'Guilty' Pleasures? 14 Shows We're Not Ashamed to Love

No embarrassment here. Sometimes, fluff like 'Rock of Love,' 'The Bachelor,' and 'Moonlight' is exactly what the television doctor ordered...

MOONLIGHT
Stalwart PopWatch doyenne Mandi Bierly had this to say about Moonlight back in January: 'I haven't always watched Moonlight. I intended to when it premiered last fall, but by the time I got around to it, the handful of people I knew tuning in had stopped. Then I spent a few Friday nights at home, and was too lazy to turn the channel after watching David Conrad on Ghost Whisperer, so I finally saw it. Yes, I wish Moonlight (starring Alex O'Loughlin, pictured left, with Jason Dohring) was as well written as Buffy and Angel, but who isn't fascinated by the idea of a vamp becoming human?' With Moonlight returning, here are some more EW staff revelations: the shows we're not ashamed to love.

Posted by: Ms_Hodge_Podge on 4/18/2008 at 1:00 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink

UN Body Urges Agriculture Reforms To Stave Off Food Crisis

A UN body today called on world leaders to urgently reform farming rules to boost the state of global agriculture and prevent a food crisis that could threaten international security and the fight against poverty.

The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) said in a report that failing to take action would put future generations in jeopardy.

Calls for immediate action have gathered momentum after riots in Haiti, Pakistan, Egypt and the Philippines as families struggle to feed themselves. Food prices have rocketed in recent months as climate change, China's increasing consumption and the growth in biofuels intensify demand for limited supplies.

Wheat prices have risen by 130% since March last year, according to the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco), while soy prices have jumped 87%. The World Bank said last week that global food prices had climbed by 83% over the last three years.

The study, which was backed by the World Bank and World Health Organisation, examined measures that could reduce hunger and poverty, improve rural livelihoods and work towards achieving the UN's millennium development goals.

The UN Food and Agricultural Organisation, which contributed to the report, said food represented 60-80% of consumer spending in developing countries, compared with about 10-20% in industrialised nations. It said investment in agricultural science had decreased and more sustainable, environmentally sound and equitable ways to produce food were needed.

The report calls for a more holistic view of agriculture and urges governments, NGOs and the private sector to work together to ensure the needs of the future are better served.

Professor Robert Watson, the director of the IAASTD secretariat and the chief scientist at Defra, said: "Business as usual would mean more environmental degradation and the earth's haves and have-nots splitting further apart. It would leave us facing a world nobody would want to inhabit.

"Although considered by many to be a success story, the benefits of productivity increases in world agriculture are unevenly spread. Often the poorest of the poor have gained little or nothing, and 850 million people are still hungry or malnourished, with an additional 4 million more joining their ranks annually."

Source: The Guardian Unlimited

US In $200m Food Crisis Response

US President George W Bush has ordered the release of $200m in emergency aid to alleviate food shortages in Africa and other parts of the world.

The White House said the money would be used to meet unanticipated needs for food aid.

Rising food prices have sparked recent riots in several countries, including Haiti, the Philippines and Egypt.

The World Bank has said a doubling of food prices in three years could push 100m more people into poverty.

"This additional food aid will address the impact of rising commodity prices on US emergency food aid programmes and be used to meet unanticipated food aid needs in Africa and elsewhere," the White House said in a statement.

The announcement followed a call by the World Bank's Development Committee and the International Monetary Fund for rising food prices to be addressed at the highest political level.

Food riot deaths

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Monday that the rapidly escalating crisis called for short term emergency measures to prevent people in many parts of the world from starving.

The UN's World Food Programme has launched an emergency appeal for $500m, saying the money is needed by 1 May to avoid food rationing.

Prices have risen sharply in recent months, driven by poor crop-growing weather in certain countries, increased demand and a reduced production area resulting from an increase in the use of land to grow crops for transport fuels.

World Bank head Robert Zoellick had on Sunday proposed a "new deal" action plan for a long-term boost to agricultural production.

Emergency help would include an additional $10m to Haiti, where several people were killed in food riots last week, and a doubling of agricultural loans to African farmers.

The US provided more than $2.1 billion in food aid in 2007.

Posted by: Ms_Hodge_Podge on 4/16/2008 at 8:30 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink

When Your Spouse Is A Slob

Broom battles when one spouse is neat, other is messy
Expert: Suggest neat freak take cleaning responsibility
Limit mess to his "man cave" or her refuge room
Last resort: Hire a cleaning lady

When Susie Toth's boyfriend told her a few months after she moved in that they "needed to talk," she was crestfallen.

Sean Gettings says he's fine as long as his wife Amy confines her junk to her "messy hideaway" on wheels.

"I thought he was going to break up with me," says the 23-year-old Milwaukee real estate agent. "I honestly thought it was going to be something horrible."

It was: Susie's housekeeping.

Her boyfriend -- Erik, 33, an engineer who's "kind of a neat freak," she says -- felt she wasn't dusting, vacuuming or picking up after herself nearly enough.

"I thought I was keeping the house pretty clean," she says, "but it didn't feel right to him. It wasn't meticulous."

Welcome to the dirty-dish divide. While some couples' biggest challenges have to do with money, sex or child-rearing, others get into huge, sweeping battles over the broom: Person A feels Person B isn't wielding it nearly enough; Person B feels Person A is unhealthily obsessed with cleanliness.

Sam R. Hamburg, a clinical psychologist and marital therapist in Chicago, says discussing housekeeping before moving in together can help couples avoid this kind of nitty-gritty grief.

"The earlier you face up to differences like this and talk frankly about them, the better off you are," says Hamburg.

But what happens when you're already living with a Pigpen or a Swiffer-obsessed spouse? Is there such a thing as a moderately clean middle ground?

Do it yourself

One tack Hamburg takes when the neat-versus-messy motif comes up in therapy is to suggest that the neat freak take responsibility for the cleaning.

"My first line of defense is to say, 'Well, if you want the place up to a certain standard of neatness, you have to accept the fact that you're going to be the one who does it.'"

Toth's boyfriend started writing down her daily chores on a dry-erase board. Unfortunately, his expectations soon got out of hand.

"He wanted me to vacuum the living room once a week even though we never use it, plus dust all of his antiques. And he wanted me to scoop the litter boxes every day -- and there are three of them, one for each of his cats," she says.

"In the beginning, I was like, 'Yeah, no problem. I'm trying to make this relationship work,' but after a while I got resentful. So I talked to him and he agreed that he would do the things he was really nitpicky about."

Meet in the middle

For Sean Gettings, a 37-year-old stay-at-home dad from Portland, Oregon, communication and compromise saved the day.

"I feel like the living room is a mess if there are cups on the coffee table," he says. "And my wife (Amy, 37, a nonprofit director) is the opposite. She can go a couple of weeks without vacuuming and leave the laundry on the dresser for two, three, four days.

"But we're all about compromising. That's the key to a relationship."

The couple started writing down the chores they wanted done each week and had discussions (never fights) about their disparate styles. Little by little, each started to modify their behavior -- although Gettings admits his wife may have compromised a bit more than he.

"I'm not a very fun person to live with if the house is a mess," he says. "So I'm sure Amy came more to the middle than I did. ... She's become more clean and organized and I've become less anal."

'Messy Hideaway'

Also helpful was the fact that the couple owned two cars.

"Her car is the one place she can be as messy as she likes and I don't have to look at it," he says. "It's her messy hideaway."

Helen Flaws, a 66-year-old pet portrait artist from Freeport, Florida, says her messy husband's "man cave" has helped their marriage as well. Send us photos, videos of your man cave

"He has one room, just for himself and his projects," she says of Jack, 69, a retired machinist. "I don't clean it or vacuum it -- nothing. He can go in there and be as messy as he wants, and I can keep the rest of the house company-ready."

But the concept of a refuge works both ways, says Forrest Jackson, a 36-year-old contractor from Seattle.

"I'm a minimalist and my girlfriend is a collector," he says. "Hats, clothes, kitchen stuff, every sort of thing imaginable. I refer to her as Princess Periodical because of her magazines and newspapers. But I have an office downstairs where I can focus all of my manic energy.

"Whenever I'm tempted to bring a trash can into the house and start throwing things out, I just go downstairs and file."

For those who just can't make it work, Hamburg has one final solution: Call in reinforcements.

"Often, the one real effective solution for people with a little bit of means," he says, "is to just hire a cleaning lady."

Source: CNN News

Posted by: Ms_Hodge_Podge on 4/15/2008 at 8:00 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink

Bush Greeting Pope In Big Way

Bush driving to meet pope's plane, something he's never done for a visiting leader
White House crowd will be largest of Bush's presidency
Bush's explanation: "He speak for millions ... he comes as a man of faith"
Talks expected to include treatment of Christian minority in Iraq

When Pope Benedict XVI comes to Washington this week, the White House crowd will be the largest of President Bush's presidency. Bush is pulling out all the stops for the pope: driving out to a suburban military base to meet the pope's plane, giving him a 21-gun salute and hosting a fancy East Room dinner.

The leader of the world's 1 billion Roman Catholics has been to the White House only once in history.

That changes this week, and President Bush is pulling out all the stops: driving out to a suburban military base to meet Pope Benedict XVI's plane, bringing a giant audience to the South Lawn and hosting a fancy East Room dinner.

These are all firsts.

Bush has never before given a visiting leader the honor of picking him up at the airport. In fact, no president has done so at Andrews Air Force Base, the typical landing spot for modern leaders.

A crowd of up to 12,000 is due at the White House on Wednesday morning for the pope's official, pomp-filled arrival ceremony. It will feature the U.S. and Holy See anthems, a 21-gun salute, and the U.S. Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps. Both men will make remarks before their Oval Office meeting and a send-off for his popemobile down Pennsylvania Avenue.

The White House crowd will be the largest of Bush's presidency. It even beats the audience last spring for Queen Elizabeth II, which numbered about 7,000.

The evening festivities will mark the first time the Bushes have put on a high-profile meal in honor of someone who isn't even a guest. Wednesday is the pontiff's 81st birthday, and the menu celebrates his German heritage with Bavarian-style food.

But Benedict's prayer service that evening with U.S. bishops at a famed Washington basilica preclude him from coming to the dinner, according to the White House. Catholic leaders will be there instead.

The president explained the special treatment -- particularly the airport greeting.

"One, he speaks for millions. Two, he doesn't come as a politician; he comes as a man of faith," Bush told the EWTN Global Catholic Network in an interview aired Friday. He added that he wanted to honor Benedict's conviction that "there's right and wrong in life, that moral relativism has a danger of undermining the capacity to have more hopeful and free societies."

President Carter hosted the first White House by a pope. Pope John Paul II was greeted at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington by Vice President Walter Mondale. His stay at the White House featured 10,000 guests -- split between separate arrival and departure ceremonies on the North and South Lawns.

The Bush-Benedict get-together will be the 25th meeting between a pope and a sitting president.

The first did not come until shortly after the end of World War I, when Woodrow Wilson was received at the Vatican by Pope Benedict XV in 1919. The next wasn't for 40 more years, when President Eisenhower saw Pope John XXIII in Rome.

Since then, such audiences have become a must-do. Every president has met with the pope at least once, often more. This week makes Bush the record-holder, with a total of five meetings with two popes.

There are more than 64 million reasons for this. Catholics number nearly one-quarter of the U.S. population, making them a desirable constituency for politicians to court.

"The pope represents not just the Catholic Church but the possibility of moral argument in world affairs and it is very important for American presidents to rub up against that from time to time," said George Weigel, a Catholic theologian and biographer of Pope John Paul II.

The Vatican -- seat of a government as well as a religious headquarters -- has an interest, too.

"It wants to be a player in world affairs, and everyone understands that to do that you have to be in conversation with the United States," said John Allen, the Vatican correspondent for the independent National Catholic Reporter.

On social issues such as abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research, Bush and Benedict have plenty of common ground.

But they disagree over the war in Iraq, just as Bush did with Benedict's predecessor, John Paul.

When Benedict was a cardinal before the 2003 invasion, the now-pontiff categorically dismissed the idea that a preventive strike against Iraq could be justified under Catholic doctrine. In his Easter message last year, Benedict said "nothing positive comes from Iraq."

Benedict told Bush at their first meeting last summer at the Vatican that he was concerned about "the worrisome situation in Iraq." Bush characterized the pontiff's concerns as mostly limited to the treatment of the Christian minority in Muslim-majority Iraq. The statement out of the Vatican suggested a broader discussion.

Weigel predicted talks this time would be focused almost entirely there.

Prominent Christians have been slain in Iraq in recent weeks and tens of thousands of Iraqi Christians are believed to have fled the country because of attacks and threats. "The Vatican is a very adult place," he said. "The arguments of five years ago are over."

The current pope's approach may be softer than that of John Paul, who turned from Bush's presentation to him of the Medal of Freedom in 2004 to read a statement about his "grave concern" over events in Iraq. But Benedict is no less committed to the church's stand on issues such as abortion, stem cells and the death penalty, as well as war.

In fact, the death penalty is another area of long-held disagreement, with Bush a strong supporter. Benedict also speaks forcefully against punitive immigration laws and the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, and for environmental protection and social welfare -- all in ways that often run counter to Bush administration policies.

But differences between popes and presidents are nothing new.

John Paul and former President Clinton clashed -- with strikingly sharp Vatican statements -- on abortion.

Also, the church's opposition to almost any war but self-defensive ones has been a persistent theme in U.S. relations.

Pope Paul VI wanted to help mediate an end to the Vietnam War. John Paul also urged President Reagan against the arms race and spoke out vigorously against the Persian Gulf war under the current president's father. All these urgings, like the current anti-Iraq argument, were to no avail.

"Modern popes have seen themselves as voices of conscience and peacemakers," Allen said. "U.S. administrations haven't always been excited for them to play that role."

Weighty discussions aside, the talks with Bush are not likely to be the most-remembered or most influential part of the pontiff's six-day, two-city U.S. tour, Weigel said. That is expected to come when Benedict addresses the United Nations on Friday.

"I think it's nice they're going to meet. They have a lot of things to talk about," he said. "But the notion that the world operates by the big guys getting together and cutting a deal is wrong."

Source: CNN News

Pope Urged To Act On US Sex Abuse

American Roman Catholics, angered and demoralised by priest sex abuse scandals, say one man can help revitalise the Church: Pope Benedict XVI, who visits the US this week.

The Pope's trip to Washington and New York marks the first US visit by a pontiff since a wave of sex abuse scandals began in 2002, provoking lawsuits that have forced dioceses to pay more than $2bn in settlements.

Some advocates for the victims want the Pope to apologise; others want him to ban child molesters from the priesthood or publicly identify them.

The Vatican has said Pope Benedict will discuss the scandal during his visit, but there is uncertainty over whether he will meet any victims of abuse.

The Church commissioned a study which found 10,667 people accused 4,392 priests of child sexual abuse from 1950 to 2002. Church leaders have said the study illustrates how seriously they take the problem. The Church has changed its rules so that it is easier to dismiss priests whenever there is a credible claim of abuse, according to Sister Mary Ann Walsh, spokeswoman for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Walsh could not say how many priests were removed - many had died or retired by the time the report came out - but she said the Pope would address the victims' suffering. 'It's very close to Holy Father's heart. He is horrified by this crime,' Walsh said.

Barbara Blaine, who formed the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, suspects the Pope may meet carefully selected victims in a public relations gesture. She said the Church continued to protect the identities of abusers and the bishops who know about the abuse.

'The stakes are so high. Children are at risk. There's a public safety crisis still in America today,' Blaine said.

'We need something bold from the Pope and we hope it will come during his visit.'

Source: The Observer

Pope Ground Zero prayer seeks terrorists' redemption

Pope may find willing ear among young U.S. Catholics

FACTBOX: America's Roman Catholic population

Pope Benedict is coming to America and American Catholics may be in for some surprises.

Like Catholics globally, American Catholics are still mesmerized by the 27-year papacy of the late John Paul II and will get their first close-up look at Benedict next week when he visits Washington and New York.

Known as a fierce conservative when elected three years ago, he has surprised people with his gentle manner and stressing of the positive in Catholicism rather than the negative.

"The differences between the two popes is more stylistic than substantive," said Rev. Tom Reese, senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University.

"They both hold the same theological views, the same views about Church doctrine, Church teaching and Church practices but their styles are very different," he said.

Indeed, John Paul was a larger-than-life personality who, because of his acting background, knew how to dominate the stage and ignite a crowd.

Benedict, who will mark both his 81st birthday as well as the third anniversary of his election during the trip, is reticent and shy but also charming.

"I do think that to some extent there is a disconnect between the public impression of this man and the private personality. You will never meet a more gracious figure," said John Allen, a prominent U.S. Catholic author and journalist. 

DARTH VADER TURNED PUSSYCAT

Allen, speaking last week at the Pew Forum On Religion and Public Life in Washington, said even Church liberals had stopped seeing Benedict as "a sort of Darth Vader" and now give him high marks for his papacy.

When he was elected, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger brought with him the baggage of his role as the Church's chief doctrinal enforcer, a position he held for nearly 25 years.

He now seems not so much an enigma but someone who takes time to get to understand.

An opinion poll by the Pew Forum this month showed that fewer Catholics in the United States now automatically attach the "conservative" label to his name and an increasing number identify him as moderate or even liberal.

George Weigel, a leading American lay theologian and senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, has described the change as a Catholic "hunger to be fed by a master teacher".

"This man so widely regarded as a kind of enforcer, a kind of heavy, turns out in this role (teacher) to be the gentle and brilliant grandfather who knows how to explain things and make the most complex parts of Catholic doctrine and practice make sense to ordinary people," Weigel said at the Pew Forum event.

Since his election, Benedict has seen his role as a strong re-assertion of a traditional Catholic identity but with a positive spin -- what Allen calls "affirmative orthodoxy".

CATHOLICS COURAGEOUS 

While some Muslims, Jews and Protestants have seen some of his actions and comments as alienating, Benedict has offered his own flock a clearer sense of what makes them Catholic.

"I think Benedict's diagnosis is that people are far too familiar with what the Catholic Church is against rather than what it's for ... so I think his effort is to try to present a positive vision of what the Catholic Church represents," Allen said.

Benedict, a professor and prolific author before he was elected, seems to have settled well into his role of being chief teacher and leaving more administrative affairs to his aides.

Although he was formed socially and culturally in Europe, he has a deep awareness of the religious vitality of U.S. society.

"I think he is going to be an inspiration but at the same time challenging," said Reese.

"We are the richest, most powerful country in the world and he has an obligation to come here and challenge us to use our wealth and our power for good," he said.

Vatican officials also said the pope will seek to heal wounds from the sexual abuse scandal that shook the Church in the United States and urge reconciliation with victims.

Before his election as pontiff in 2005, then Cardinal Ratzinger went out on a limb to decry the "filth" in the Church.

Source: Reuters

Posted by: Ms_Hodge_Podge on 4/14/2008 at 7:30 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink

50 Actors We'd Watch in Anything, Part 2

The second part in our series, running down the performers -- like George Clooney, Amy Adams, and Steve Carell -- who make movies or TV shows better just by being in them

AMY ADAMS
Amy Adams' recent appearance on The Late Show With David Letterman helped me realize just why she's so much fun to watch: In her interview, she reminisced fondly about her days in Minnesota doing dinner theater or, as she called it, 'skits 'n' grits' and even showed off photos of her in a pig costume for a performance of State Fair. Clearly, this is a woman who will go to great lengths to entertain an audience, and her delightful, happy-to-be-here spirit (on display in Catch Me if You Can, Junebug, and Enchanted) makes her one to root for. Dawnie Walton

Posted by: Ms_Hodge_Podge on 4/13/2008 at 8:00 AM | Comments (1) | Permalink

50 Actors We'd Watch in Anything, Part 1

The first 25 performers like Alec Baldwin, Denzel Washington, and Catherine Keener  whose name in the credits forces us to give even the most dubious TV or movie project the benefit of the doubt

KATE WINSLET
Beautiful without being untouchably glamorous, warm without being cutesy, Kate Winslet is the kind of actress that women would actually want to befriend. Because she's so real and accessible in her performances, it's easy to empathize with her characters, even when they're having ill-advised affairs (Little Children) or acting like basket cases (Heavenly Creatures, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) or, you know, at the center of a terrible chick flick (The Holiday). Also: Winslet is, hands down, the best crier on the big screen. Just seeing her face start to screw up sends me running for a tissue. Dawnie Walton

Posted by: Ms_Hodge_Podge on 4/12/2008 at 7:00 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink

Bush Hails 'Major Shift' In Iraq

US President George W Bush has declared a "major strategic shift" in Iraq following the US troop surge.

He said the US now held the initiative and was looking to deliver a "crippling blow" to al-Qaeda.

US troop levels in Iraq are due to be reduced by about 20,000 by July, but Mr Bush said after that, the "drawdown" process would be frozen.

Then, he said, senior commander General David Petraeus would have "all the time he needs" to assess the next step.

Gen Petraeus had called for a 45-day "period of consolidation and evaluation" after July, before any more troops left.

Mr Bush said: "I strongly support that. And therefore I won't commit beyond July."

Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton said the announcement left the main question unanswered: "What is the endgame in Iraq?"

Signs of progress

The president said that since the launch of the US troop surge 15 months ago, there had been significant military, political and economic progress in Iraq, and that "today we have the initiative".

Today, thanks to the surge, we've renewed and revived the prospect of success US President George W Bush Read a transcript of President Bush's speech [24k] Most computers will open this document automatically, but you may need Adobe Reader Download the reader here

He said sectarian violence had decreased, and Iraqis were increasingly turning against al-Qaeda. Meanwhile businesses were reopening and national laws were being passed.

By July the US presence should be reduced from 20 brigades to 15 - leaving about 140,000 troops in Iraq, about the same number as were present before the surge began in early 2007.

Mr Bush is portraying the withdrawal as a sign of the success of the surge, and is trying to make as much capital from it as possible, says the BBC's Adam Brookes in Baghdad.

But by referring to a "major strategic shift" he has used language that Gen Petraeus and US ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker have deliberately avoided, our correspondent adds.

Gen Petraeus said the situation in Iraq was still unsatisfactory

Mr Bush also said he was cutting tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan from 15 to 12 months, effective from 1 August, and that service personnel would have a year at home for every year served overseas.

The decision to halt withdrawals means the US presence in Iraq is likely to last well beyond January, when Mr Bush will leave office and a new president will take over.

Iraq is one of the key battlegrounds of the election campaign, with Republican John McCain arguing for continued engagement while Democratic rivals Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama call for full withdrawal.

Progress

Mr Bush said the two main threats to US progress in Iraq were al-Qaeda and Iran.

He said US failure would allow both to increase their influence in the region.

"Al-Qaeda would claim a propaganda victory of colossal proportions," while "our failure would embolden [Iran's] radical leaders and fuel their ambitions to dominate the region", Mr Bush said.

Instead, the president said: "We have put al-Qaeda on the defensive in Iraq, and we're now working to deliver a crippling blow.

"Fifteen months ago, Americans were worried about the prospect of failure in Iraq; today, thanks to the surge, we've renewed and revived the prospect of success."

Democratic leaders welcomed Mr Bush's shortening of combat tours, but said keeping troops committed to Iraq was unacceptable.

The speech "can only be described as one step forward and two steps back," said the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, Harry Reid.

Source: BBC News

Bush Backs Pause In Withdrawals From Iraq

President Bush credits so-called surge with "major strategic shift" in war
House speaker: "We need better answers from the president"
President warns Iran against arming Shiite militants in Iraq
Bush announces combat tours will be reduced from 15 to 12 months

President Bush on Thursday said "serious and complex challenges" remain in Iraq that will prevent further withdrawals of U.S. troops this summer despite a reduction in violence in the past year.

President Bush said Thursday that there is "much work ahead" in Iraq but that progress is being made.

Speaking after two days of congressional testimony by the top U.S. officials in Iraq, Bush credited his deployment of nearly 30,000 additional troops last year for a "major strategic shift" in the conflict.

The president also announced he will reduce combat tours from 15 to 12 months, citing the heavy strain on troops and their families.

The shortened tours would apply only to troops deployed on or after August 1 and would not cut back tours for those currently in Iraq.

"Our nation owes a special thanks to the soldiers and families who have supported this extended deployment," Bush said.

Bush's progress report on Iraq comes after he met with Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Iraq. Watch what Bush says about the pause in withdrawals »

Petraeus and Crocker spent two days this week on Capitol Hill testifying on the status of the 5-year-old war.

The president said there is "much work ahead" in Iraq but noted cooperation from the Iraqis is stronger than ever.

"All our efforts are aimed at a clear goal: a free Iraq that can protect its people, support itself economically and take charge of its own political affairs. No one wants to achieve this goal more than the Iraqis themselves," he said.

The president said Iraq is moving forward on the economic front and is expected eventually to shoulder the full burden of its security costs.

Bush also warned Iran against arming Shiite Muslim militants in Iraq, saying that the Islamic republic "has a choice to make."

"If Iran makes the wrong choice, America will act to protect our interests, our troops and our Iraqi partners," he said.

Petraeus on Tuesday recommended that troop withdrawals from Iraq be paused for 45 days after July when U.S. forces in Iraq will be reduced to 140,000. Watch Petraeus explain the role of U.S. troops in Iraq »

Bush accepted this recommendation Thursday, saying Petraeus will "have all the time he needs."

Asked whether further reductions could resume after the pause, Petraeus told lawmakers earlier this week that future troop levels should be based on conditions on the ground.

"War is not a linear phenomenon," he said. "It's a calculus, not arithmetic."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates ordered Army tours in Iraq and Afghanistan extended to 15 months in April 2007 to sustain the additional deployment to Iraq -- but top Army officials have warned that the war has left the service "out of balance," as Gen. Richard Cody, the service's vice chief of staff, told a House committee Wednesday.

Democrats were quick to downplay Bush's address.

"The president still doesn't understand that America's limited resources cannot support this endless war that he's gotten us involved in," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada. Watch Reid's harsh words for Bush »

"His announcement -- while some look to as a great victory -- is, I say, two steps backward and one step forward."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, said that "we need better answers from the president."

"The president has taken us into a failed war, he's taken us deeply into debt and he's taking -- that debt is taking us into recession. We need some answers from the president," she said.

The war in Iraq has claimed more than 4,000 U.S. lives and cost an estimated $600 billion since 2003. It is widely unpopular at home, with a March CNN poll showing about two-thirds of the country opposes the conflict.

After Petraeus and Crocker finished their first progress report to Congress in September, the president addressed the nation in prime time.

Bush is set to head to Texas later Thursday for a few days of rest at his Crawford ranch.

Source: CNN News

Bush To Reduce Tours Of Duty For US Troops

US President George Bush makes a statement on Iraq in Washington.

Doubts about the US military's ability to fight wars on two fronts in Iraq and Afghanistan were revived today after President George Bush announced that he is to cut tours of duty for troops from 15 months to 12.

It is only a year since Bush, attempting to fill gaps in troop deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, extended the normal tour of duty from 12 to 15 months.

But that decision has put too much strain on troops and their families. The US military will have to find other ways of filling the gaps, possibly by using more private security firms or making even more demands on the already over-stretched National Guard.

In a speech today Bush acknowledged that "the stress on our force is real" but insisted that his commanders had assured him that the morale of US troops remained high.

Rejecting Democratic calls for a speedy withdrawal, Bush said: "Those who say that the way to encourage further progress is to back off and force the Iraqis to fend for themselves are simply wrong."

The cut in tours of duty came as Bush confirmed he was accepting the recommendation of the US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, to suspend US troop withdrawals from Iraq from July.

Petraeus earlier this week told Congress the halt to troop withdrawals will be initially for 45 days but could be indefinite. Bush, signalling that significant troop withdrawals during his remaining nine months in office are unlikely, said Petraeus will "have all the time he needs".

Bush was speaking after meeting Petraeus at the White House in the morning.

There are 160,000 US troops in Iraq at present and these will be reduced to 140,000 by the end of July. No further withdrawals are planned beyond that. This will be a disappointment to many US troops and their families.

Bush, to soften the blow, also announced the cut in the length of tours, which he said would take effect on August 1, not affecting US forces already deployed on the front lines.

Bush said US forces have made major gains since he ordered a build-up of about 30,000 US forces in January last year. "We have renewed and revived the prospect of success," the president said.

All 30,000 extra troops are scheduled to be withdrawn by July 31.

Democratic leaders in the Congress, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, both criticised Bush's speech. Reid, the Senate leader, complained that US forces were overstretched and unable to meet their commitments round the world.

He said that the 140,000 troops that will be in Iraq in August amounted to more than were in Iraq early last year, which stood at 132,000 before Bush sent the extra 30,000.

The US has limited resources and could not continue to support this endless war, Reid said.

Clinton described the 'surge' as having failed but welcomed Bush's decision to cut deployments, though adding: "It is deeply unfortunate that the president only made this change when the strain he placed on our forces required it."

Bush's speech came as an Associated Press-Ipsos poll gave Bush his lowest approval ratings yet. It put him on 28% compared with 30% last month.

Earlier this week Petraeus told Congress it was too early to talk about future withdrawals because the situation in Iraq remained fragile. He said that while security had improved and Iraqi forces were shouldering more of the fight against extremists, Iraq could still descend again into chaos.

Source: The Guardian Unlimited

Posted by: Ms_Hodge_Podge on 4/11/2008 at 8:00 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink

U.S. Near Recession Amid Global Slump

International Monetary Fund shows U.S. sliding into recession and pulling down economic growth around the world.

The world economy will slow sharply this year, according to an International Monetary Fund forecast, with the United States sliding into a recession amid housing, credit and financial slumps.

The IMF, in a World Economic Outlook released Wednesday, slashed growth projections for the United States - the epicenter of the woes - and the global economy as a whole.

Economic growth in the United States is expected to slow to a crawl of just 0.5% this year, which would mark the worst pace in 17 years, when the country last suffered through a recession, the IMF said. The United States won't fare much better next year; the IMF projected the U.S. economy will grow by a feeble 0.6% in 2009.

"The U.S. economy will tip into a mild recession in 2008 as the result of mutually reinforcing cycles in the housing and financial markets," the IMF said.

Many private economists and members of the U.S. public believe the country has already fallen into its first recession since 2001. For the first time, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke acknowledged last week that a recession was possible.

An increasing number of analysts think the U.S. economy, which grew by 2.2% in 2007, started shrinking in the first three months of this year and is still contracting. Under one rough rule, if the economy contracts for six straight months it is considered to be in a recession. A panel of experts at the National Bureau of Economic Research that determines when U.S. recessions begin and end, however, uses a broader definition, taking into account income, employment and other barometers.

To limit the damage, the Federal Reserve has been slashing interest rates since last September and has taken a number of extraordinary measures to avert a financial meltdown, which would have dire consequences for the U.S. economy.

"The financial market crisis that erupted in August 2007 has developed into the largest financial shock since the Great Depression," the IMF declared.

Problems started in the United States with risky "subprime" mortgages made to people with blemished credit and quickly spread into other areas, hitting more creditworthy borrowers. Foreclosures in the U.S. hit record highs and financial companies racked up multibillion-dollar losses as mortgage-backed investments soured with the collapse of the U.S. housing market.

The fallout gripped investors on Wall Street and in other countries, creating a panicky atmosphere that threatened to paralyze financial markets in the United States and beyond.

Against that backdrop, the IMF now expects the world economy, which grew by a hardy 4.9% last year, to lose considerable momentum. The fund is projecting the global economy to grow by 3.7% this year and 3.8% next year.

"The global expansion is losing speed in the face of a major financial crisis," the IMF said.

There's a risk that things could turn worse, it cautioned.

"The IMF now sees a 25% chance that global growth will drop to 3% or less in 2008 and 2009 - equivalent to a global recession," the fund said. "The greatest risk comes from the still-unfolding events in financial markets, particularly the potential for deep losses" on complex investments linked to the U.S. subprime mortgage market, the IMF said.

Looking at other countries, the IMF trimmed its projection for Germany, with economic growth slowing to 1.4% this year and weakening to 1% in 2009. In Britain, growth will slow to 1.6% this year and next. France also will see growth decelerate to 1.4% this year and 1.2% next year.

Japan's economy will expand by 1.4% this year and 1.5% next year, which would mark a loss of momentum from last year. Canada's growth would slow to 1.3% this year and pick up slightly to 1.9% next year.

Global powerhouse China, which barreled ahead at an 11.4% pace last year, would see growth moderate to 9.3% this year and then strengthen a bit to 9.5% next year. India, which grew by a blistering 9.2% last year, is expected to grow by 7.9% this year and 8% next year. Russia, which logged growth of 8.1% last year, will see growth moderate to 6.8% this year and then 6.3% next year.

While the IMF is worried about the dangers of weakening global economic growth, it also expressed concern about the potential for inflation to heat up around the world, given sharp increases in energy and other commodity prices. "Risks related to inflationary pressures have risen," the fund said. 

Source: CNN News

IMF Slashes World Growth Forecast

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said that the world economy will grow much more slowly in the next two years as a result of the credit crunch.

In its latest economic forecast, the IMF says that world economic growth will slow to 3.7% in 2008 and 2009, 1.25% lower than growth in 2007.

The downturn will be led by the US, which the IMF believes will go into a "mild recession" this year.

Growth in the UK will slow sharply to 1.6% in both 2008 and 2009.

It said that the UK economy would be affected by a weakening housing market, the contraction of the financial sector, and the impact on UK exports of weaker growth in the US and Europe.

Its UK forecast is substantially below the Treasury forecast of around 2% growth this year and 2.5% next year made at the time of the March Budget.

'Worst since Great Depression'

The greatest risk comes from the still-unfolding events in financial markets (which might lead to) the current credit squeeze mutating into a full-blown credit crunch IMF World Economic Forecast How deep will the pain go? Darling still optimistic Send us your comments

The IMF admits that the global downturn might be still more severe than it is currently predicting, and says that there is a one in four chance of a "global recession" when world growth falls below 3%.

"The financial market crisis that erupted in August 2007 has developed into the largest financial shock since the Great Depression," the report says.

The world downturn will be led by problems in the US housing market, but the IMF warns that excessive house price inflation in some European countries, including Spain, Ireland and the UK, has made them more vulnerable to a slowdown.

House prices have already fallen by around 10% in the US by some measures, and the IMF says that they may be over-valued by more than 20% in the UK, Ireland and Spain.

It is forecasting further falls in US house prices of 14% to 20% this year.

The head of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) said that crisis required measures to protect workers from the downturn.

"We need to find a better balance between the democratic voice of society, the productive dynamic of the market and the regulatory function of the state", ILO Director-General Juan Somavia said in a statement to the IMF meeting.

US recession

The IMF forecasts that the US economy will grow by just 0.5% during 2008 and will actually contract in the first half of the year.

WORLD ECONOMIC OUTLOOK Report in full [5.8MB] Executive summary [200KB] Chapter 1: global prospects and policies [1.8MB] Chapter 2: country and regional perspectives [800 KB] Most computers will open this document automatically, but you may need Adobe Reader Download the reader here

Its recovery will be slow, with growth of only 0.6% forecast in 2009.

"The US economy will tip into a mild recession in 2008 as a result of mutually reinforcing housing and financial market cycles, with only a gradual recovery in 2009, reflecting the time needed to resolve underlying balance sheet strains," the report notes.

It says that, comparing the US economy year-on-year from the four quarter of 2007 to the fourth quarter of 2008. it will be 0.7% smaller, as the recession bites in the first half of this year.

And it warns that with the scale of the credit losses to the financial sector approaching $1 trillion (£500bn), there is a risk that the crisis could get worse.

Few countries will escape the impact of the global slowdown

"The greatest risk comes from the still-unfolding events in financial markets," it says, warning that the current credit squeeze could "mutate into a full-blown credit crunch".

The IMF says that losses are spreading from sub-prime mortgage assets to other sectors, such as commercial property, consumer credit, and company debt.

The IMF also says that given the potential severity of the problems, "additional initiatives to support the US housing market, including the use of the public balance sheet, could help reduce uncertainties about the evolution of the US financial system" although it warned that "care would be needed to avoid undue moral hazard".

The US Congress and the Bush administration are currently deadlocked over plans for further aid to the housing sector, with Democrats in both branches of Congress proposing an expansion of financial support for home owners facing foreclosure.

European impact

The biggest impact of the US slowdown is likely to felt in Europe, which is the biggest trading partner with the US.

"Activity in the other advanced economies will be sluggish in both 2008 and 2009 in the face of trade and financial spillovers," the IMF says.

It is predicting growth in the eurozone of just 1.4% in 2008 and 1.2% in 2009, with Europe's largest economy, Germany, growing by just 1% in 2009, a sharp revision of its forecast just three months ago.

2008 GROWTH FORECASTS United States: 0.5% Eurozone: 1.4% United Kingdom: 1.6% Source: IMF

And it says that in light of the slowdown, the European Central Bank - which has kept interest rates unchanged due to concern about inflation - "can afford some easing of its policy stance".

And it suggests that in future, central banks should take more account of rising house prices when setting interest rates, in effect "leaning against the wind" to prevent house prices moving out of "normal valuation ranges".

This is an implicit criticism of the US Federal Reserve which kept interest rates at 1% for several years under former chairman Alan Greenspan.

Worldwide impact

The IMF says that the big emerging market countries like China and India which are growing rapidly will be less affected by the slowdown, although they will be affected by a slowdown in trade among the rich countries.

The rate of growth of imports into rich countries is expected to slow sharply, leading to a cut in the rate of growth of exports by developing countries.

And it warns that the spillover will more severe in Latin America or in countries linked to the dollar, which has declined sharply on world currency markets.

Source: BBC News

Posted by: Ms_Hodge_Podge on 4/10/2008 at 8:00 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink

China Vows To Keep Torch On Track

Beijing has said "no force" can stop the Olympic flame relay, as it faces protests on the US leg of its journey.

Seven demonstrators have already been arrested in San Francisco after tying "Free Tibet" banners to the cables of the Golden Gate Bridge.

The flame arrived in the city early on Tuesday amid heavy security, following anti-China protests in Europe.

International Olympic Committee (IOC) members will discuss the torch relay in meetings in Beijing in the coming days.

IOC President Jacques Rogge said he was "deeply saddened" by the protests in London and Paris and concerned about the next leg of the flame relay in San Francisco.

The IOC is unlikely to scrap the rest of the international leg of the Beijing torch relay, says the BBC's Olympics correspondent Gordon Farquhar.

What is most likely is that the Beijing international relay will continue, and a decision will be taken after the Games in China about the desirability of holding international relays before future Games, our correspondent adds.

Disrupted route

The flame was lit in Olympia, Greece, on 24 March and is being relayed by torch through 20 countries before being carried into the opening ceremony at the Beijing Games on 8 August.

Using the torch this way is almost a crime. This is the property of the IOC, it is not a Chinese torch Swedish IOC member Gunilla Lindberg

But the torch had to be put out three times in Paris because of the protests.

The flame itself was kept alight in a safety lantern.

Demonstrators are protesting at China's security crackdown in Tibet after recent unrest against Chinese rule.

Tibetan exile groups say Chinese security forces killed dozens of protesters. Beijing says about 19 people were killed in rioting.

Chinese state TV said the protesters in London and Paris were a "handful of Tibetan separatists".

Condemning the disruption to the relay, Beijing Olympic organising committee spokesman Sun Weide told reporters the torch relay would continue as planned.

"No force can stop the torch relay of the Beijing Games," he said in Beijing.

But the International Olympic Commitee, currently holding a meeting in the Chinese capital, is to discuss whether torch relays should continue for future Games.

IOC press commission chief Kevan Gospar said that this year's 137,000km torch relay will continue as planned, "but certainly, the IOC executive board should review the torch relay programme for the future".

Protest climb

Swedish IOC member Gunilla Lindberg said the protests were "damaging the Olympic movement".

"Using the torch this way is almost a crime. This is the property of the IOC, it is not a Chinese torch."

Scheduled route - subject to change

Police in San Francisco, where the torch is due to be relayed on Wednesday, arrested seven people on Monday and charged them with conspiracy and causing a public nuisance.

Three climbers among them faced additional charges of trespassing.

They had scaled the bridge to perch 150 feet (46m) above traffic, attaching "Free Tibet" banners and a Tibetan flag.

One of them, Laurel Sutherlin, spoke by mobile phone to reporters.

"If the IOC [International Olympic Committee] allows the torch to proceed into Tibet they'll have blood on their hands," he said.

US Democratic Party presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has called on President George W Bush to boycott the opening ceremony of the Olympics unless China improves its human rights record.

Black banners

The Paris relay started to go wrong almost from the start, despite the presence of 3,000 police along the route.

Doubts cast on future torch relays History of protests

It was cut short with the torch finally carried by bus to the relay's end point.

Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe cancelled a ceremony to welcome the torch relay after Green party activists hung a Tibetan flag and a black banner depicting the Olympic rings as handcuffs from the city hall.

Activists also hung Tibetan flags or black banners from several other Paris landmarks including the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame cathedral.

On Sunday, 37 people were arrested in London as protesters disrupted the torch relay there.

OLYMPIC TORCH ROUTE Torch lit in Olympia on 24 March and taken on five-day relay around Greece to Athens After handover ceremony, it is taken to Beijing on 31 March to begin a journey of 136,800 km (85,000 miles) around the world Torch arrives in Macao on 3 May. After three-month relay all around China, it arrives in Beijing for opening ceremony on 8 August See detailed route on Beijing 2008 official site

Source: BBC News

San Francisco Is Braced To Greet Olympic Torch - And Thousands Of Protesters

Relay draws wide range of anti-China demonstrators
Minister orders inquiry into police action in Paris

Thousands of protesters are expected to line the route of the latest leg of the Olympic torch's "Journey of Harmony" today as officials in San Francisco brace themselves for a repetition of the tumultuous scenes in Paris and London.

A broad coalition of protest groups - from Burmese monks to Amnesty International members - have converged on the city ahead of the only US leg of the torch's 21-nation tour.

All police leave has been cancelled in the city as authorities brace themselves for thousands of protesters along the waterfront route. The mayor's office said it was still examining changes to the ceremony should they be necessary.

Arriving in darkness early yesterday morning, the torch was taken to a secure location ahead of today's six-mile parade through the city. The low key arrival, aboard Air China 2008, offered a rare moment of calm in the torch's controversial journey. There were no protesters to greet the flame at San Francisco international airport, just a handful of local dignitaries.

"We treated it like a head of state visit," airport spokesman Mike McCaron said.

But on Monday, protesters unfurled two banners demanding freedom for Tibet from high on the Golden Gate bridge. Seven were arrested.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu and actor and Tibet activist Richard Gere were due to attend a vigil in the city last night, while Burmese monks are to lead a march across the bridge today.

The torch relay has attracted a range of activist organisations. Groups protesting against China's policies in Darfur, Burma and Sudan are expected to protest alongside human rights groups, some with a specific focus, such as Falun Gong and the International Campaign for Tibet.

Although officials denied reports that today's procession might be cancelled, the International Olympic Committee president, Jacques Rogge, said his executive board would meet on Friday to discuss ending the international legs of the tour. The torch is due to travel to Buenos Aires next.

San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom met China's ambassador to the US on Monday to discuss the relay. A spokesman for the mayor said the ambassador had expressed concern about events in Paris and London and asked how they could be avoided in San Francisco.

The city was an obvious if problematic choice for the US leg. It has the largest Chinese population of any US city - about 20% of residents are of Chinese descent. But it also has a history of liberal protest, dating back to the Vietnam war.

In Paris, the French interior minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, yesterday defended police conduct against claims of heavy-handedness.

The newspaper Le Parisien accused the 3,000-strong police presence of "brutality". A police authority investigation was begun yesterday after a cameraman from France 2 TV was hit over the head by police and briefly lost consciousness.

Officers sprayed teargas to break up a sit-in by about 300 pro-Tibet demonstrators who blocked the route and police tackled protesters who ran at the torch.

Alliot-Marie yesterday announced an internal investigation into the claims that some officers improperly ripped away Tibetan flags from protesters. Police confiscated some of the flags and at times dealt roughly with the demonstrators. The TV news showed a protester being carried by police, shouting "free Tibet" through a bloody mouth.

The minister said the police had "done their jobs well" during the relay, adding that there had been "a certain number of fights" between spectators. Of 18 protesters arrested, one was still in custody yesterday.

Source: The Guardian Unlimited

Torch Relay In San Francisco Draws Massive Protest

Thousands march to the Chinese consulate ahead of Wednesday's run
Torchbearer drops out, fearing protests, official says
San Francisco, California, is only U.S. venue on 23-city global tour
Demonstrators protest China's Tibet policy in cities along route

Thousands of protesters demonstrated against China's human rights record and its crackdown in Tibet after the Olympic flame arrived in San Francisco Tuesday.

Pro-Tibetan demonstrators shout outside the Chinese consulate in San Francisco Tuesday.

Chanting and waving flags, the protesters ended their march at the Chinese consulate, where they sat in a dense group, holding flags and banners, as police watched from nearby.

"Stop killing," one sign read, while another said, "No human rights, no Olympics."

The protests came after passionate demonstrations in London and Paris in which protesters tried to snuff the torch's flame and dozens were arrested.

Meanwhile, the Olympic flame was being kept in an undisclosed location in advance of Wednesday's planed 6-mile relay in San Francisco. Watch how the city is preparing »

The run is the only U.S. appearance for the flame, wrapping up the first week of a 23-city global tour.

Beijing organizers have said the monthlong international relay will not be stopped despite the protests, but some International Olympic Committee members have suggested an early end should be considered.

The IOC's executive board will discuss the torch relay "in general" Thursday or Friday, but there is no proposal on the agenda to end the global tour early, IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies said. Watch the flame get the red-carpet treatment »

The official Beijing Olympics Web site, controlled by the Chinese organizers, gives little indication of any torch relay disruption. It characterizes the demonstrators as "a small number" of Tibetan separatists.

Beijing blames the Dalai Lama and his followers for violence that erupted in March amid protests for Tibetan independence.

China has drawn international criticism for its crackdown on the demonstrations, which began peacefully on the 49th anniversary of a failed Tibetan uprising.

China's Foreign Ministry Tuesday reacted forcefully to the torch relay protests.

"We express our strong condemnation to the deliberate disruption of the Olympic torch relay by Tibetan separatist forces regardless of the Olympic spirit and the law of Britain and France," China spokeswoman Jiang Yu said.

"Their despicable activities tarnish the lofty Olympic spirit and challenge all the people loving the Olympic Games around the world."

The flame will return to China in May to begin a relay through the host nation, ending in Beijing with the August 8 opening of the Olympic Games.

One of the San Francisco torchbearers has dropped out of Wednesday's relay because of fears of protests, a torch relay spokesman said.

David Perry, spokesman for the San Francisco Olympic Torch Relay, said he did not want to release the name of the person.

"I understand anyone that might feel that they don't want to expose themselves to something more than protest," Perry said.

On Monday, three protesters scaled San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge and raised a large banner.

Those who climbed the cables from which the bridge's deck is suspended were members of Students for a Free Tibet, said group spokesman Tenzin Dasang, 22. They unfurled a banner that read: "One World. One Dream. Free Tibet."

The three climbers, along with four people on the ground, were charged with felony conspiracy and misdemeanor nuisance charges, said California Highway Patrol Officer Mary Ziegenbein. The climbers also were charged with misdemeanor trespassing.

The Golden Gate Bridge protest came on the same day that thousands of protesters forced an abrupt halt to the flame's passage through Paris after 10 miles of the 17-mile planned route. Some stops were skipped and the flame was transferred from the torch back to the lamp to be carried on a bus several times to avoid protesters.

Protesters pierced the thick security bubble surrounding the torchbearers, at times getting their hands on the torch itself.

The Paris demonstrations were similar to those Sunday in London, where at least 36 people were arrested, according to London Metropolitan Police. Protesters cited China's actions in Tibet, its policies on the Darfur region of Sudan and the lack of civil rights and freedoms for the Chinese people.

But other demonstrators, bearing Chinese flags, turned out in support of the Chinese government, and many others were spectators there just to see the torch.

An Olympic committee member suggested Monday that the public relations nightmare that has followed the Olympic flame on its way to the Summer Games in Beijing may make 2008 the last time such an ambitious global torch relay is attempted. Follow the torch relay itinerary »

Source: CNN News

Posted by: Ms_Hodge_Podge on 4/09/2008 at 9:00 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink

Asda Wants Ethical Code For UK Suppliers Only

Trading guidelines should not apply abroad, it says
Supermarkets accused of betraying poorest farmers

The supermarket chain Asda wants overseas suppliers excluded from a new code of conduct which is designed to ensure that the big grocers do not use their buying power to impose unfair trading terms.

The UK arm of the US-based Wal-Mart empire has included the demand in its response to the Competition Commission's "remedies" statement, published after a near-two-year inquiry into the 125bn grocery market.

In that statement the commission suggested setting up an ombudsman service to help protect small suppliers and farmers, and supermarkets may be forced to appoint compliance officers to ensure they treat suppliers in accordance with a new and wide-ranging code of practice.

In its response Asda says overseas suppliers should be excluded from the proposed code because they have customers in other countries. It is understood that Asda is the only one of the main supermarkets to have made the demand.

The current code of practice, which is widely thought to have failed to make any impact on trading terms, does apply to overseas contractors, but only if they are direct suppliers and no middleman is used.

ActionAid, which lobbies on behalf of overseas suppliers to UK food retailers, said Asda should not oppose measures that could help workers in other countries on low incomes. Jenny Ricks, corporates campaigner at ActionAid, said: "Faced with a true test of their ethical credentials, Asda have failed miserably. Their response clearly shows why we urgently need sensible regulation that will ensure supermarkets clean up their supply chains overseas.

"Ethical trading cannot continue to be a sideline for big UK supermarkets. This unmasks the fact that despite their ethical protestations, business as usual is continuing. We urge Asda and other supermarkets to prove they are serious about cleaning up their act by accepting the commission's remedies and stop fighting proposals that would help poor workers overseas."

ActionAid had written to Asda's chief executive, Andy Bond, pointing out that "responsible retailers have nothing to fear" and that British firms should help raise standards worldwide.

It argues that if the code does not apply to all, retailers are likely to shift sourcing to those that are not protected.

Last year ActionAid published a report highlighting the conditions in which some overseas workers produce goods for UK supermarkets. It found women in Bangladesh who were paid as little as 5p an hour for up to 14 hours a day to make clothes for Asda and Tesco. It also reported on cashew nut processing workers in India who were paid 30p a day, 1% of the retail price of the cashews.

Asda has made clear recently that it is turning the screw on suppliers in order to keep prices down in the face of rising global food costs.

Bond said recently: "We will be as aggressive as we possibly can ... I am not going to squeeze suppliers, but I am going to be very assertive."

In its submission to the Competition Commission Asda also claimed the new code of practice would harm competition. It rejected the idea of a full-time supermarkets ombudsman, suggesting instead that the Office of Fair Trading monitor compliance with the suppliers' code.

Yesterday a spokesman for Asda said the commission had not provided any evidence that a tougher code of practice was necessary, but the supermarket chain was committed to treating overseas suppliers fairly. "We have always complied with the spirit and the letter of the existing code of practice and believe in treating all our suppliers fairly, particularly those who are small or from developing countries."

The supermarkets emerged almost unscathed when the Competition Commission published its preliminary conclusions about whether the grocers abuse their market position, drive small rivals out of business or abuse their suppliers.

The commission has also suggested changes to the way planning decisions are made, to prevent supermarkets imposing conditions on land they sell that stop rivals buying the sites.

Source: The Guardian Unlimited

Posted by: Ms_Hodge_Podge on 4/08/2008 at 9:00 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink

US House Of Representatives Approves $50bn For Aids

America could more than triple spending to fight Aids in Africa and around the world after the House of Representatives voted in favour of committing $50bn in funding.

The bill, which passed by a 308-166 vote, goes farther than the White House had demanded in channelling funds to help those with Aids, and children left orphaned by the disease.

In the waning months of the Bush White House, the campaign against Aids could stand out as one of the most successful foreign policy initiatives of his presidency.

Michael Gerson, a former speech writer for Bush has called it the most successful foreign aid programme since the Marshall plan.

However, it faces opposition in the Senate from fiscal conservatives - who are alarmed at the $50bn price tag - as well as Democrats opposed to funnelling money for Aids programmes through faith-based groups.

At first the bill appears to deliver a defeat to one of the hallowed principles of Bush and social conservatives that abstinence programmes be at the forefront of the fight against Aids.

Bush's first Aids initiative, which called for $15 billion over five years, had mandated that a third of all funds go towards abstinence programmes.

The bill approved yesterday drops that requirement - although it requires notification to Congress if the funding is not evenly allocated for programmes encouraging single people to abstain from sex before marriage and to remain faithful after they are married.

That has some women's organisations concerned that the net effect could funnel more funds - not less - into abstinence programmes.

"The reporting requirement in practice, in the field, means that people are likely to believe that they have to put more money - not less - into abstinence only and fidelity programmes," said Adrienne Germain, president of the International Women's Health Coalition.

Other organisations are pushing for more funds to be devoted to family planning programmes.

The White House estimates the current programme, launched by Bush in 2003, has paid for Aids testing, counselling and treatment with retroviral drugs for more than 1.4 million people in a dozen countries in sub-Saharan Africa as well as Vietnam, Guyana and Haiti.

The bill passed by the House would broaden the scope of the programme, chanelling funds towards providing food aid and clean drinking water to Aids patients and micro credit to women who are widowed by the disease.

It would also extend $5bn to the fight against malaria and $4bn against tuberculosis. More countries would be added to the list of those covered under the programme, especially in the Caribbean region.

Source: The Guardian Unlimited

US set to spend $50bn against HIV

The US is set to spend $50bn to battle HIV/Aids in the next five years.

The US House of Representatives has passed a bill to more than triple government spending in Africa and other badly affected parts of the world.

The bipartisan measure, which is backed by the White House, was passed by 308 votes to 116.

The bill marks a huge increase from the $15bn authorised during the first five years of an initiative launched by President Bush in 2003.

"There is a moral imperative to combat this epidemic," said Nancy Pelosi, the House's Democratic speaker.

The initiative would be the largest US investment ever against a single disease.

Last May, Mr Bush asked Congress to set aside $30bn for the plan, aimed at providing treatment for 2.5 million people and preventing more than 12 million new infections.

The programme currently supports life-saving treatment for nearly 1.5 million people, the White House said.

Initially focused on Vietnam, Guyana, Haiti and 12 African nations, the programme will be expanded to include Malawi, Swaziland and Lesotho as well as some Caribbean nations.

Opponents of the bill argued that it was too expensive, and that more pressing needs closer to home needed to be addressed.

The UN estimates that two-thirds of the 33 million people infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) - the virus that causes Aids - live in sub-Saharan Africa.

Source: BBC News

Posted by: Ms_Hodge_Podge on 4/07/2008 at 11:00 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink

Baseball Movie All-Stars: Our 10 MVPs

With the MLB season under way, we cast our ballots for the best players ever to hit (and pitch on) the big screen, from 'Wild Thing' to Roy Hobbs to the Pride of the Yankees and our ultimate sluggers at No. 1

RICK 'WILD THING' VAUGHN

PLAYED BY Charlie Sheen
MOVIE Major League (1989)
POSITION Pitcher

TEAM The Cleveland Indians, here a group of broken-down misfits (including aging catcher Tom Berenger, left) recruited precisely for the likelihood that they'll drive down ticket sales, giving the owner an excuse to move the team to Florida.

STATS He's called 'Wild Thing' because of pitches that fly at 100 mph but are liable to hit anything but the strike zone. (Those thick specs don't seem to help much.) He's also a pot-smoker and convicted carjacker.

ACCURACY Well, pot-smoking ex-cons aren't completely unknown to baseball, and Sheen, at the height of his own offscreen career as a Wild Thing, gives one of his best comic performances.

MEMORABLE MOMENT The entire stadium sings along to the Troggs' 'Wild Thing' as Vaughn pitches in a championship game.

MALE KLEENEX FACTOR 2 out of 10 hankies (10 out of 10 if you're an Indians fan)

GEORGE 'BUCK' WEAVER

PLAYED BY John Cusack
MOVIE Eight Men Out (1988)
POSITION Third base

TEAM The Chicago White Sox, whose 1919 lineup would be known after the scandal as the Black Sox

STATS When his team is accused of throwing the 1919 World Series, it's Weaver who most steadfastly maintains his innocence.

ACCURACY Could the real White Sox have been this obvious, making such blatant errors?

MEMORABLE MOMENT Watching an obscure outfielder at play, Weaver is asked if that could really be his disgraced teammate Shoeless Joe Jackson playing under an assumed name. 'Nah,' he says, 'those fellas are all gone now.'

MALE KLEENEX FACTOR 10 out of 10 hankies ('Say it ain't so, Joe. Say it ain't so.')

JACKIE ROBINSON

PLAYED BY Jackie Robinson
MOVIE The Jackie Robinson Story (1950)
POSITION Second base

TEAM The Brooklyn Dodgers, though there's also his personal support team: wife Rachel (Ruby Dee) and Dodgers president Branch Rickey (Minor Watson)

STATS Robinson is best remembered for his courage as the first African-American major leaguer of the 20th century, but the film is an artifact of its time, tending to ignore racial issues in order to focus on Robinson's athletic prowess and star quality.

ACCURACY Robinson's no actor, but his quiet courage and dignity are apparent, and there's surely no one who could better reenact his feats on the field.

MEMORABLE MOMENT Robinson faces a potentially violent confrontation with some white hecklers.

MALE KLEENEX FACTOR 7 out of 10 hankies

JIMMY PIERSALL

PLAYED BY Anthony Perkins
MOVIE Fear Strikes Out (1957)
POSITION Right field

TEAM The Boston Red Sox

STATS Piersall, a promising player whose career is cut short by a nervous breakdown, fights his way back to mental health, and back to the outfield.

ACCURACY The real Piersall wrote the book that inspired the film, but he disowned the movie, complaining that the pre-Psycho Perkins made him look like a sniveling wuss.

MEMORABLE MOMENT Piersall finally confronts the well-meaning but bullying dad (Karl Malden) whose pressure to perform may be what made him crack.

MALE KLEENEX FACTOR 9 out of 10 hankies

AMANDA WHURLITZER

PLAYED BY Tatum O'Neal
MOVIE The Bad News Bears (1976)
POSITION Pitcher

TEAM The Bears, a team of pint-size, potty-mouthed misfits

STATS Brought in as a ringer by Coach Buttermaker (Walter Matthau), she helps turn the Little League team's fortunes around.

ACCURACY O'Neal is like a little adult; she's the most mature person on the team, including the coach. Given the revelations in O'Neal's memoir, the character probably wasn't a stretch.

MEMORABLE MOMENT She's the only girl on the team, but Amanda wins the Bears over on her first day of practice with a few well-placed fastballs.

MALE KLEENEX FACTOR 6 out of 10 hankies

ROY HOBBS

PLAYED BY Robert Redford
MOVIE The Natural (1984)
POSITION Right field

TEAM The fictional New York Knights

STATS Hobbs should have been a star in his youth, but he was brought down by his own hubris and a wicked temptress (Barbara Hershey). Sixteen years later, as an aged rookie wielding an invincible bat of his own making (dubbed 'Wonderboy'), the slugger seeks redemption and the glory he'd swung at and missed the first time around.

ACCURACY Hobbs' fortunes take a very different path in the Bernard Malamud novel that is the movie's source.

MEMORABLE MOMENT With a mighty blast, Hobbs knocks out every light in the ballpark.

MALE KLEENEX FACTOR 9 out of 10 hankies

SHOELESS JOE JACKSON

PLAYED BY Ray Liotta
MOVIE Field of Dreams (1989)
POSITION Left field

TEAM In life, the Chicago White Sox; afterward, the ghostly crew who play pick-up games in the Iowa cornfield owned by Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner, right)

STATS Jackson was one of the game's great hitters, but he was barred from baseball after the Black Sox scandal (as depicted in Eight Men Out).

ACCURACY Jackson threw right-handed but batted southpaw. Liotta, however, bats righty in the movie.

MEMORABLE MOMENT Jackson tells his host, 'Man, I did love this game. I'd have played for food money. It was the game.... The sounds, the smells... Shoot, I'd play for nothing!'

MALE KLEENEX FACTOR 10 out of 10 hankies

LOU GEHRIG

PLAYED BY Gary Cooper
MOVIE Pride of the Yankees (1942)
POSITION First base

TEAM The New York Yankees, in what may have been the team's greatest dynastic period they won six World Series in the 17 seasons Gehrig played.

STATS Known for his work ethic, the 'Iron Horse' played 2,130 consecutive games, a record that lasted six decades until broken by Cal Ripken Jr. He was also a top infielder and strong slugger, hitting four home runs in one 1932 game.

ACCURACY Moderate, despite the presence of many of Gehrig's real-life teammates in the cast (most notably Babe Ruth). Since Cooper couldn't bat left-handed, he shot his scenes in mirror-image, wearing a reverse-lettered uniform and running to third base instead of first, and the footage was then flipped in the editing room.

MEMORABLE MOMENT After being diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's Disease, the future Hall of Famer retires, famously telling the Yankee Stadium crowd: 'Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.'

MALE KLEENEX FACTOR 10. Anyone who doesn't weep at Gehrig's farewell speech is a stone.

DOTTIE HINSON and JIMMY DUGAN

PLAYED BY Geena Davis and Tom Hanks
MOVIE A League of Their Own (1992)

POSITIONS Catcher (Hinson) and manager (Dugan)

TEAM The Rockford Peaches, a real team in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which lasted from 1943-1954

STATS Hinson is the best player in the women's baseball league that starts up while the men are overseas during World War II. Jimmy, a potential Hall of Fame hitter whose career was cut short by a drinking problem, proves an adept manager, leading his team to the women's World Series with a lot of managerial help from Hinson.

ACCURACY Director Penny Marshall supposedly made sure she cast actresses who could really field and hit. The old women playing baseball at the Hall of Fame sequence at the end of the film are real-life alums of the AAGPBL.

MEMORABLE MOMENTS Dottie does a split while catching a pop fly. And an apoplectic Jimmy tells a bawling player, 'There's no crying in baseball!'

MALE KLEENEX FACTOR 3 out of 10 hankies, until the coda with the survivors gathered at the Hall of Fame then it's an 8

CRASH DAVIS and EBBY 'NUKE' LALOOSH

PLAYED BY Kevin Costner and Tim Robbins
MOVIE Bull Durham (1988)
POSITIONS Catcher (Davis) and pitcher (LaLoosh)

TEAM The Durham Bulls, minor-league misfits whose fortunes improve along with Nuke's pitching

STATS Davis, a seasoned catcher who's quietly chasing a minor-league home-run record, is brought in to teach discipline to rookie LaLoosh, a prospective major leaguer with 'a million-dollar arm and a five-cent head.' The two find themselves in a romantic triangle with groupie supreme Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon).

ACCURACY Writer-director Ron Shelton was a minor-league player himself, so dialogue like 'You'll never make it to the bigs with fungus on your shower shoes' has a ring of truth.

MEMORABLE MOMENT Crash teaches Nuke how to spout bland cliches when sportswriters interview him.

MALE KLEENEX FACTOR 1 out of 10 hankies (Unlike most baseball movies, Durham isn't the least bit sentimental.)

Source: The Entertaiment Weekly Online

Posted by: Ms_Hodge_Podge on 4/06/2008 at 9:00 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink

Movie Musicals: The 25 Best of All Time

As 'Sweeney Todd' slices onto DVD, we revisit the 25 greatest 'all singing! all dancing!' extravaganzas ever made, from 'South Park' and 'A Hard Day's Night' to 'Singin' in the Rain,' 'West Side Story,' and our No. 1

25. Once (2006)
Made for less than $200,000, this scruffy indie from writer-director John Carney redefines the musical form. It stars an actual musician Glen Hansard, of the Irish rock band the Frames as a fictional busker who falls for a quirky pianist (Marketa Irglova) on the streets of Dublin. They have a tortured romantic flirtation, and pour their hearts out to each other in mournful original tunes that feel utterly real because they're not played as musical fantasy. A must.

24. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)
The star here is choreographer Michael Kidd, who turns the big barn-raising scene into something that's part dance sequence, part gymnastic contest, and part action spectacle: It starts out real neighborly, but degenerates into a brawl when the building teams start sabotaging each other. The rest of the movie gene-splices Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with The Taming of the Shrew, as a frontier gal (Jane Powell) copes with making a home for her sexist-pig husband (Howard Keel) and six mangy siblings.

23. The Music Man (1962)
Robert Preston repeats his Broadway role as Professor Harold Hill, a swindler who organizes small-town kids' bands so he can steal their uniform and instrument money. Costar Shirley Jones has great chemistry with Preston, little Ronnie Howard lisps and mugs shamelessly, and composer Meredith Wilson gives his melodic all to 'Seventy-Six Trombones,' 'Marian the Librarian,' 'Till There Was You' (later a hit for the Beatles) and lots more. Best corn you'll ever consume that's not popped.

22. Gigi (1958)
Screenwriter-lyricist Alan Jay Lerner and composer Frederick Loewe basically cloned their stage hit My Fair Lady for this adaptation of French author Colette's 1945 novel about a teenage Parisian courtesan. It's got the same ugly-duckling-to-swan transformation for the leading lady (Leslie Caron), and the same half-sung 11th-hour epiphany for the confirmed-bachelor leading man (Louis Jordan). But thanks to director Vincente Minnelli, it feels original and works better as cinema than George Cukor's film of Fair Lady does.

21. Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Still the only animated feature to be nominated for Best Picture, and one of the great love stories in any medium. It's the last full score that lyricist Howard Ashman completed with composer Alan Menken, and it's his finest hour: Witty, intensely emotional, and perfectly integrated with the story. Downside: The movie was such a hit (along with Ashman and Menken's The Little Mermaid) that Disney replicated the cartoon-musical formula till they wore the concept out.

20. Funny Girl (1968)
Can you imagine today's pop machinery making a star out of someone as unusual looking as Barbra Streisand? She keeps this biopic of Fanny Brice, her movie debut, from becoming completely soggy in the second half, and takes her vowel-bending vocals to spine-tingling places in 'People' and 'I'm the Greatest Star.' Homage alert: The belting-out-on-a-tugboat shot that caps 'Don't Rain on My Parade' shows up transposed to a garbage truck in Hairspray.

19. The Sound of Music (1965)
Its initial runs played in theaters for several years, it was so popular. Some of the more maudlin passages may make you wince like ex-nun Maria (Julie Andrews) comforting adopted daughter Liesl, or Captain Von Trapp (Christopher Plummer) singing 'Edelweiss' but the Austrian scenery will beat you into submission, and the Rodgers & Hammerstein score will penetrate your noggin and remain there forever. The opening hillside shots haven't been topped, though they have been cribbed in Beauty and the Beast and Enchanted, among other places.

18. The Busby Berkeley Disc (2006 compilation)
The trouble with all those old '30s movies with Berkeley production numbers is you have to sit through a lot of creaky, tedious exposition to get to the good parts. But this DVD roundup (sold as part of a Berkeley boxed set) gives you just about every sequence you need from 42nd Street, Gold Diggers of 1933 and 1935, Footlight Parade, and many others. Highlight: The expressionistic mini-epic 'Lullaby of Broadway,' a sort of retro club-kid cautionary tale.

17. Chicago (2002)
There's not much left of Bob Fosse's original Broadway choreography, and not all the John Kander-Fred Ebb songs made it, either. But that's OK, since director Rob Marshall and screenwriter Bill Condon find ingenious ways to make the overtly stagy source material work as a mind's-eye musical fantasy on film. Dandy performances by Catherine Zeta-Jones, Renee Zellweger and John C. Reilly help elevate okay work by Richard Gere, and the cross-cutting only occasionally gets too busy. By and large, razzle-dazzling.

16. A Star Is Born (1954)
Judy Garland's character, Vicki Lester, wins an Oscar for Best Actress, but Garland lost offscreen (to Grace Kelly for The Country Girl). Dopey vote, given Garland's powerhouse takes on 'The Man That Got Away' and 'Born in a Trunk.' She's also got a freaky ability to cry so hard onscreen she gets hiccups. The studio chopped half an hour, but a theatrical and video reissue put most of the scenes back (some as still-photo montages). If those are missing, you're watching a butchered version.

15. Hairspray (2007)
Swathed in a fat suit, John Travolta looks like a startled hamster as early-'60s housewife Edna Turnblad. But his weird Baltimore accent works, and he plays Edna as an actual woman instead of the drag creature of John Waters' original 1988 film and the Broadway show (from which this is adapted). The Marc Shaiman-Scott Wittman score pays shrewd homage to period pop, even if it folds in some later-'60s sounds, and director Adam Shankman brings irresistible energy to the dancing.

14. Grease (1978)
Who cares if the students at Rydell High look like they're already past graduate school? John Travolta doing a chicken dance to 'Summer Nights,' Olivia Newton-John announcing she's an exchange student from Australia, Stockard Channing crowing 'Look at Me, I'm Sandra Dee' with bad-girl panache, Frankie Avalon showing up for 'Beauty School Dropout'  this is the stuff of repeat-playback heaven. Don't look for much 1950s rock-music flavoring, though: The title tune smacks of disco and the rest is show-tune pastiche.

13. On the Town (1949)
Three randy sailors (Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Jules Munshin) have 24 hours to find love in New York City. Producer Arthur Freed chopped out much of the original Broadway score by Leonard Bernstein and Comden & Green. (Too sophisticated, and too raunchy.) But what remains of it  buoyed by the leggy dancing of Ann Miller and Vera-Ellen, and a hilarious turn by horse-faced Alice Pearce as a loser named Lucy Schmeeler  is, as a Brooklynite might put it, 'cherce.'

12. Swing Time (1936)
The lightest, sweetest outing for Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Lots of folks say the pinnacle is 1935's Top Hat, with a score by Irving Berlin, rather than this outing, with songs by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields. But Swing Time deserves the edge for the passionate romantic longing on display in 'Never Gonna Dance.' It's enough to make your loins ache. Dancing with the Stars? Amateur night by comparison a joke. This is dancing with starlight itself.

11. An American in Paris (1951)
There's a lot of romantic twaddle involving Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron before you get to the climactic 18-minute ballet, but wow the finale is an unparalleled rhapsody in Technicolor. Set to George Gershwin's instrumental music, it depicts a fantasy Paris rendered in the styles of great French painters (Utrillo, Lautrec, Renoir, among others), and stands as the most dynamic fusion of ballet and cinema that anybody's come up with yet. Another from Vincente Minnelli, whose name we'll soon see on this list again.

10. Love Me Tonight (1932)
You won't believe how frisky the pre-Production-Code banter is between Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald in this delightful fable about a tailor who falls in love with a haughty princess. Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart wrote the songs, and director Rouben Mamoulian finds ingenious ways to use them especially in a segment that follows 'Isn't It Romantic?' as it's passed along from a taxicab to a train to a marching regiment of soldiers, the orchestration shifting with each dissolve.

9. Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
Even if you hate people breaking into song, you've got to admire how gracefully director Vincente Minnelli handles the trick in this nostalgic portrait of a turn-of-the-century family. 'The Boy Next Door,' delivered by Judy Garland on a sunny porch in midsummer, feels completely natural, as does her rendition of the downbeat 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas' in a darkened bedroom late on Christmas Eve. Pure high-fructose eye and ear candy, with a bittersweet kick.

8. South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999)
The penis-joke title is one of the tamer gags in Matt Stone and Trey Parker's totally obscene, utterly inspired musical take on their Comedy Central TV show about the world's trashiest-talking grade-schoolers. (By one online count, the F-word is uttered here 146 times.) It's better than any episode, thanks to outrageously dirty ditties by Parker and Marc Shaiman like 'Uncle F---a,' 'Kyle's Mom's a Bitch,' and the Oscar-nominated 'Blame Canada.'

7. A Hard Day's Night (1964)
A black-and-white farce spun out of a pop band's latest album? It shouldn't have worked. But screenwriter Alun Owen turns the Beatles into the most anarchic comedy quartet this side of the Marx Brothers, and director Richard Lester wraps it all in shaky, hand-held shots that perfectly match the brash humor. As 'the boys' scramble from gig to gig, they roll out more great tunes than most modern popsters do in their entire careers. Behold their fecundity and marvel.

6. The Band Wagon (1953)
In which screenwriters Comden and Green (see Singin' in the Rain) and director Vincente Minnelli (see also Meet Me in St. Louis, An American in Paris, and Gigi) send up the New York theater world. Meet Jeffrey Cordova (Jack Buchanan), a pompous windbag of a director-producer-actor who convinces a washed-up movie hoofer (Fred Astaire) to star in a musical Broadway version of Faust. It bombs, then becomes an old-school revue. Peak scene: Astaire glides through Central Park with Cyd Charisse to the strains of 'Dancing in the Dark.' Patently fake set, sublimely convincing star chemistry.

5. Mary Poppins (1964)
Okay, so Dick Van Dyke mangles his cockney accent. He's still magic as Bert, a chimney sweep in 1910 London infatuated with nanny Poppins (Julie Andrews, in her Oscar-winning movie debut). What makes the treacly lilt of tunes like 'Jolly Holiday' and 'Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious' work so well? The sexy subtext of Bert and Mary's romantic fling. And dig the swipes at English imperialism, as in a fantastical cartoon scene where Bert and Mary rescue a bedraggled Irish fox from stuffy British hunters. Cheeky!

4. Cabaret (1972)
A truly adult movie musical yet rated PG! charting the 'divine decadence' of 1930s Berlin as the Nazis come to power. A kinky M.C. (Joel Grey) is your host, along with delusional fag-hag chanteuse Sally Bowles (winningly played by future tabloid staple Liza Minnelli). Bob Fosse's direction copped him an Oscar, and the smash-and-grab editing helped usher in modern music videos. The songs, by John Kander and Fred Ebb, never wear out their Wilkommens.

3. Singin' in the Rain (1952)
A happy mix of pitch-perfect elements, attached to a sendup of early talking pictures: Songs by Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed; a zinger-laden script by Betty Comden and Adolph Green; peerless high comedy from Jean Hagen as a silent-screen star cursed with a hard-as-nails voice; abundant charm from Debbie Reynolds as a feisty ingenue; agreeable hamming by Gene Kelly as a vain actor; and sidekick Donald O'Connor doing extreme backflips. Nimbly codirected by Kelly and Stanley Donen.

2. West Side Story (1961)
Natalie Wood doesn't make the most believable Puerto Rican Juliet to Richard Beymer's pretty-American-boy Romeo. But choreographer and codirector Jerome Robbins injects the opening gang-warfare finger-snapping ballet and other big numbers with so much energy, it carries the whole thing along. Genius scene: The edgy, angsty, jazzy setpiece 'Cool,' which feels like a nihilistic '50s teen-rebel movie on drugs. Kudos to composer Leonard Bernstein and lyricist Stephen Sondheim for the most sophisticated score ever to go mainstream.

1. The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Who'd pine for drab, dusty Kansas after visiting fab, glamorous Emerald City? Homebody Dorothy Gale, that's who and it's a testament to Judy Garland's hyper-emotional acting that you believe the kid really does want out. Entire books have extolled Oz's splendors, but here we'll just cite the eternally charming songs of Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg (anchored by the bathetic, Oscar-winning 'Over the Rainbow') and the endlessly rich background score by Herbert Stothart (another Oscar).

Source: Entertainement Weekly Online

Posted by: Ms_Hodge_Podge on 4/05/2008 at 9:00 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink

What If The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Had Lived?

The United States Congress has marked the eve of the 40th anniversary of the death of civil rights leader Martin Luther King with tributes and speeches.

Dr King's son, Martin Luther King III, was among those to speak in Washington.

He will also take part on Friday in events in Memphis, Tennessee, where his father was shot dead on 4 April, 1968.

Among those expected to attend are John McCain, the likely Republican nominee, and Hillary Clinton, seeking to be the Democrats' choice to run for president.

Senator Barack Obama, Senator Clinton's rival for the Democratic nomination, will not be in Memphis on Friday, campaign aides said.

Embrace a dream

Giving speeches in Capitol Hill's Statuary Hall on Thursday, leaders of the US Senate and House of Representatives paid tribute to Dr King's memory.

A candle-lit vigil will be held at the site where Mr King was shot in 1968

"Because of the leadership of this man we rose up out of fear and became willing to put our bodies on the line," said Congressman John Lewis, from Georgia, who worked alongside Mr King in the civil rights struggles of the 1960s.

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid noted that Dr King's body had not been brought to lie in honour at the Capitol Rotunda after his assassination.

"Yet because our country dared to embrace his dream, his statue now stands there permanently, just steps from where we are," he said.

Michigan Democratic Congresswoman Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, head of the 43-member Congressional Black Caucus, also spoke at the ceremony.

Powerful legacy

A candle-lit vigil is to be held at the National Civil Rights Museum, the site of the Lorraine Motel where Mr King was shot, in Memphis on Friday evening.

Martin Luther King III and civil rights campaigner the Rev Al Sharpton are to lead what the latter is calling a "recommitment march" to the site, highlighting Mr King's ideals of social justice.

To mark the anniversary, Mrs Clinton posted a video on her campaign website urging people to reflect on Mr King's legacy.

"Americans all across our great country and people around the world have been inspired to achieve great things because of Dr Martin Luther King Jr - because of his teachings and because of his life," she says.

"On 4 April, we observe the 40th anniversary of his death, and it is important that we take a moment to reflect on his legacy."

Referring to the economic woes facing many Americans today, Mrs Clinton said she was running for president because she remembered Dr King's challenge always to do more to help others.

Source: BBC News

Washington's Black Community Remembers 1968 Riots

Marshall Brown was in the streets when the tidal wave of anguish swallowed Washington. He remembers the shooting of Martin Luther King, 40 years ago today, as "gasoline poured on a burning fire".

That fire raged for four days on the streets of the US capital in 1968, forcing army troops to guard the White House from a black community roused to looting and arson.

But Brown doesn't call it a riot, no matter what the history books say. To him, the violence was a rebellion.

"America is as racist now as it was then," Brown said. He was 23 that year, when "white people in general thought [King] was a militant rabble-rouser. Now, all of a sudden, they talk about him as if he was a saint."

Today Brown is a grandfather of five, with a son on the city council. He can still buy lunch at Ben's Chili Bowl, spared from destruction by the rowdy crowds of 1968 after its black owner scrawled "Soul Brother" on the window in soap.

But the neighbourhood Brown sees 40 years on  now called U Street, but once dubbed "Black Broadway" - would be unrecognisable to his younger self.

The corner where the match was lit after King's death, starting that burning fire that spread through 110 other US cities, is in the midst of a glossy new redevelopment.

Across the street from an Italian restaurant selling designer pasta, the former stomping grounds of jazz legend Duke Ellington have been turned into a pricey apartment building, The Ellington.

The spot where angry young men threw the first brick through a store window in 1968 is now a chain pharmacy.

Leon Leftwich, a private bus driver who watched the city's black areas explode after King was assassinated, doesn't begrudge the development that has sent middle-class whites pouring in.

"When the riots happened, unfortunately, we destroyed our own restaurants and businesses," Leftwich said.

"It's a welcome sight. This [neighbourhood] used to be all johns and prostitutes. I can walk the streets and feel safer."

Leftwich remembers growing up in an era of urban segregation, when some residents of predominantly black northeast Washington spent their lives without travelling across town to the wealthier northwest, where the president lives and tourists flock.

At the height of the unrest, president Lyndon Johnson ordered thousands of troops into Washington to keep the peace. Tanks rolled through shady, tree-lined streets. Order was not restored until April 8.

But the black community needed something to cool its pain  and they found healing in the late soul singer James Brown. Leftwich was there at the free concert Brown gave to help stop the rioting. "We had a ball," he remembered.

Robert Rollins was only four years old in 1968. His aunt and uncle, Ben and Virginia Ali, stayed behind the counter at Ben's Chili Bowl selling food to the soldiers and police who occupied U Street.

Rollins has kept the family business going, dishing out chocolate milkshakes and French fries to the hungry masses. Ben's "belongs to the community", he said, referring as much to the black community as the Washington community.

"We're like a little time capsule," Rollins added. "A dilapidated building is no good & but we need to preserve some of the legacy, the history [from before 1968] with the business."

Indeed, Ben's remains a touchstone of the black experience in America. The wall is lined with photos of Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Chris Rock stopping in for a meal at Ben's. A sign hanging over the stove holds a warning: "People who eat free at Ben's  Bill Cosby. Nobody else."

Jerry Coleman, who was a college student in New Jersey 40 years ago, said "institutional racism" is still very much alive for him.

"It starts from the top, from the government on down," Coleman said, finishing up his hot dog at the Ben's lunch counter. "They won't enforce the changes they need to enforce."

Change is the watchword of Barack Obama, who stands closer to the presidency than any African American in history. Yet Coleman does not know if the ultimate change - total comity between whites and blacks - is possible everywhere.

Citing areas of the far southern US that still struggle with integration, he said, "You can talk until you're blue in the face. They're never going to accept the races living together".

Even Marshall Brown admits progress has been made in the four decades since King fell to that assassin's bullet. Still, like Coleman, he can't help but list the losses for black Americans: 1.5 million men in prison, collapsing schools, the epidemics of drugs and Aids.

"I thought [1968] was going to be a revolution," he said. "The revolution never came. So I had to mess around in a house in the suburbs."

Source: The Guardian Unlimited

Four decades after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. fell to an assassin's bullet, colleagues and biographers offer many answers to the question: What if he had lived?

The preacher in him would have continued speaking out against injustice, war and maybe even pop culture. He would likely not have run for president. He probably would have endured more harassment from J. Edgar Hoover.

King would be 79 now, but those who knew him say his power would remain undiminished.

Four decades after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. fell to an assassin's bullet, colleagues and biographers offer many answers to the question: What if he had lived?

For his children, however, the speculation is more personal. They know their lives would have turned out differently had they had their beloved father to guide and teach them.

Instead, history moves on, remaking the world in myriad ways. The nation has grappled with issues of race and inequity without the benefit of King's evolving wisdom. A generation has come of age celebrating him in a national holiday, like other figures of the frozen past.

But given the trajectory of his life -- from his appearance on the national scene during the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott of 1955 to his death on a second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968 -- some of those closest to him have a good idea what King might be doing now, and where we might be as a country.

In the months before his death, King was speaking out against the growing U.S. involvement in Vietnam and was working with other civil rights leaders on a Poor People's Campaign, with a march on Washington scheduled for that May. He was in Memphis that spring day to support striking sanitation workers.

Were King alive today, the disciple of Mahatma Gandhi would most certainly be speaking out against the Iraq War, says King biographer David J. Garrow. However, citing the famous "Drum Major Instinct" sermon King delivered from the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta just two months before his death, Garrow says people might be surprised to hear echoes of presidential candidate Barack Obama's controversial former pastor.

"God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war," King said of the fighting in Vietnam. "And we are criminals in that war. We've committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I'm going to continue to say it."

While King didn't go as far as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright in suggesting that God "damn America," he predicted that the almighty might punish this country for "our pride and our arrogance."

"And if you don't stop your reckless course," he imagined the deity admonishing, "I'll rise up and break the backbone of your power."

Garrow and others feel comfortable saying that King would not have sought elective office.

In 1967, King was being courted by the "New Left" to make a third-party run for president on an anti-war ticket with the renowned pediatrician, Dr. Benjamin Spock. FBI wiretaps reveal that King gave serious thought to running, but ultimately decided that his role lay outside the political arena.

The Rev. Joseph Lowery, who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with King and marched alongside him, doesn't think time would have changed his friend's mind.

"I think Martin was a preacher, and I doubt very much if he would have wanted to subject himself to the need to compromise and play certain games that are requisite to political candidacy," says Lowery. "I think he would have preferred to do what he did best, and that was point out to ALL candidates and ALL officials ... `Thus sayeth the Lord."'

Had he chosen that path, his enemies -- chief among them FBI Director Hoover -- would have laid bare potentially embarrassing details of King's personal life.

Then-U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy authorized the wiretapping of King's home and offices in a campaign to ferret out communists. The secret recording campaign failed to prove that King was a communist, but it did provide evidence of the civil rights leader's extramarital affairs.

William C. Sullivan, head of domestic intelligence under Hoover, told a congressional committee that King was subjected to the same tactics used against Soviet agents and, "No holds were barred."

Hoover's office was unable to marginalize King with his supporters or cow him into silence with threats of exposure. But how might King have fared in the Internet age, when every peccadillo is exposed and every word parsed in a 24-hour news cycle?

The late Hosea Williams, one of King's chief lieutenants, once told Martin Luther King III that his father was "unstoppable" because he had conquered the two things that made men most vulnerable: the fear of death and the love of wealth.

Some, however, feel King's influence was on the wane and that at the time of his death he had already reached the zenith of his public career. He had "run out of things to do," the late Chauncey Eskridge, a King attorney, told Garrow.

"The painful truth is that in his last two months or so before he was killed, King was so exhausted -- emotionally, spiritually, physically -- that a lot of the people closest ... to him were really worried about his survival, his survival in the sense of would he have some sort of breakdown," Garrow says. "It would be expecting something truly superhuman, literally superhuman, for King to have continued the pace of life he had lived over those 12 years for another 12 years, never mind for another 20 or 40 years."

Journalist, author and commentator Juan Williams wonders whether King would be able to connect in a meaningful way with today's youth.

Although he was just 39, the 1964 Nobel Peace laureate's insistence on nonviolence was bumping up against the burgeoning black power movement, says Williams, author of "Eyes on the Prize" and more recently "Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America--and What We Can Do About It."

"The big issue would be whether or not when he spoke out against the excesses of the rappers, for example, or when he spoke out on the high number of children born out of wedlock, whether or not he would be lumped in with the Bill Cosbys of the world ...," Williams says.

But he has no doubt King would be a force on the international stage.

"I don't think he'd be in the petty fray in the way that we think of some of these civil rights guys who are kind of ambulance chasers," says Williams. Instead, he sees an elder King as a man of "some standing, some stature, that people wait to hear from him... I think of Nelson Mandela in this way."

Lowery says that when King died, part of the nation's conscience died with him. Four young children lost something much more personal.

To Marty, Yolanda, Dexter and Bernice, the baby, Martin Luther King Jr. wasn't the icon or the dreamer. He was Daddy -- the man who smelled of Magic Shave and Aramis and chlorine from the YMCA pool where he taught his sons to swim, and of the long-stemmed green onions that somehow fell outside the prohibition against eating before the evening blessing.

One of Bernice King's fondest memories is of the ritual she and her father shared when he'd return from a trip, like the time he came home for her fifth birthday party on March 29, 1968 -- a day late because of a march in Memphis. She would jump into his arms for the "kissing game," in which each member of the family had a different spot on his face. Bernice's "designated spot" was his forehead.

Had her father lived, the 45-year-old minister is fairly certain she would be married and have children by now. But his graphic death and ponderous legacy, she fears, have made her a less than "viable candidate" for domestic bliss. Part of the problem is that her father set the bar so high. She remembers something her mother often said.

"She said, `I didn't marry a man. I married a mission,"' the daughter says. "So for me, a spouse is more than just a companion. It's someone to fulfill your destiny with. And I think in my case, because the destiny is so great, because you had a man whose life was cut short and there was some work that had to be completed, that you now have a responsibility to participate in, that makes it a little more difficult."

Martin III, likewise, feels he wouldn't be having his first child at age 50 had his father not been killed. "I wasn't clear that I even wanted to bring a child into the world," he says.

Both siblings are quite certain, however, that their father's death did not determine their career paths.

"I don't feel like I could have been exposed to what my father and mother were doing without being involved in this movement," says Martin King, president of the nonprofit group Realizing the Dream.

Each year as the assassination anniversary approaches, legions flock to the Lorraine Motel, which now houses the National Civil Rights Museum. Among those who made the pilgrimage last week were two lions of the civil rights movement -- U.S. Rep. John Lewis and the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

If King were alive today, Lewis has no doubt he would be speaking just as forcefully and with as much authority as ever about the issues that matter most to Americans, old and young.

"He would be the undisputed leader," the Georgia Democrat says. "Martin Luther King Jr. 40 years later would still be speaking out against poverty, hunger, against violence, against war."

Jackson, then 26 years old, was in the parking lot of the Lorraine that day, talking up to King when he was shot. During his recent visit, the aging activist stepped over a low wall meant to keep out ordinary tourists, climbed the stairs to the balcony where his mentor lay dying, and wept.

King would be 79 now, but Jackson feels his power to move would remain undiminished.

"He might not be leading the marches, but he would have set the frame of reference," says Jackson. "His voice would be a voice of great moral authority."

Of all the "might be's" and "what if's," MLK III feels sure of one thing. Had his father lived, the country would be closer to realizing the "beloved community" he'd envisioned.

Still, he feels his father's guiding force pulling us inexorably in that direction.

"From my perspective, his light still shines," he says. "His voice, his message, we're living every day. We're embracing more and more. We're not as close to it as I would like to see us, but we're still living it. We're still moving toward it."

So, in that way, he lives.

Source: CNN News

Posted by: Ms_Hodge_Podge on 4/04/2008 at 9:00 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink

US Interrogation Memo Made Public

The Pentagon has declassified a legal memo from March 2003 which approved the use of harsh interrogation techniques for terror suspects held abroad.

The US Justice Department memo, since overruled, said President George W Bush's war-time authority superseded international laws on interrogation.

It gave legal justification for aggressive methods, so long as interrogators did not intend torture.

Its release follows a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union.

It is the first time the 14 March 2003 document has been released in full to the public. It was rescinded nine months after it was issued.

An update to the army field manual published in 2006 prohibited the use of many aggressive interrogation methods. However, Mr Bush recently vetoed legislation that would have limited the techniques used by the CIA.

'Shove or slap'

The 81-page Justice Department memo was written by John Yoo, then deputy assistant general for the Office of Legal Counsel, to the Pentagon's general counsel, William Hayes.

Mr Yoo wrote: "Our previous opinions make clear that customary international law is not federal law and that the president is free to override it at his discretion."

The memo also offered a defence in case interrogators were charged with breaking US or international laws, saying "necessity or self-defence could provide justifications for any criminal liability".

The document defines torture as "the sum" of a variety of acts and suggests that so long as torture is not the intent of prosecutors' questioning, they cannot be prosecuted.

Mr Yoo included legal arguments that some interrogation methods, such as sleep deprivation and hooding detainees, are not considered torture.

"This standard permits some physical contact," the memo said. "Employing a shove or a slap as part of an interrogation would not run afoul of this standard."

'No limit'

Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Democratic-led Senate Judiciary Committee, described the memo's declassification - requested by him four months ago - as "a small step forward".

He said the document reflected "the expansive view of executive power that has been the hallmark of this administration".

Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's national security project, told the Associated Press that Mr Yoo's legal argument put "literally no limit at all to the kinds of interrogation methods that the president can authorise".

The memo formed part of a debate among civilian and military leaders about the kinds of interrogation methods that could be used by US forces at overseas facilities.

Mr Bush has repeatedly said that the US does not torture prisoners.

The US military has banned the use of water-boarding - a technique which simulates drowning and has been condemned as torture by rights groups - and other harsh methods.

The CIA, which admitted for the first time in February that it had used water-boarding in the interrogation of three high-profile al-Qaeda detainees, has not prohibited use of such techniques.

Source: BBC News

Memo Gave Pentagon Exemption From Criminal Laws

The US justice department extended the sweeping wartime powers claimed by George Bush to military interrogators, giving them freedom from criminal laws when questioning al-Qaida suspects, in a 2003 legal memorandum released for the first time yesterday.

The brief, provided to the Pentagon days before the invasion of Iraq, allowed the slapping, poking, and shoving of detainees without legal consequences.

Maiming a detainee - defined as disabling or cutting out the nose, eye, ear, lip, tongue, or limb - was also deemed a defensible interrogation tactic if the military could prove it had no advance intention to maim.

The terrorist attacks of 2001 allowed the White House and the military to invoke a broad right to self-defence, the brief argued.

"The defendant could claim that he was fulfilling the executive branch's authority to protect the federal government and the nation from attack after the events of September 11, which triggered the nation's right to self-defence," read the brief, written by former Bush administration lawyer John Yoo.

While the memorandum was revoked nine months after it was sent, the Bush administration has built on its arguments to assert exemptions from US and international law during interrogations conducted at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere overseas.

Often referring to the president as "the sovereign", Yoo gave Bush the legal right to override international laws "at his discretion".

"It is well established that the sovereign retains the discretion to treat unlawful combatants as it sees fit," Yoo wrote.

The 81-page brief was released by the American Civil Liberties Union, which has battled the administration in court to secure documents under US freedom of information laws.

A companion brief written in 2002 allowed CIA interrogators to use any brutal method that did not cause pain on the level of death or organ failure.

The brief released yesterday cited past legal rulings that said hooding of detainees, sleep or food deprivation, and forcibly prolonged postures such as the "frog crouch" did not amount to torture.

The military was also permitted to threaten detainees with death, so long as the threat was not imminent.

"Thus, a vague threat that someday the prisoner might be killed would not suffice" to violate a law, Yoo wrote.

However, the memo does rule out mock executions and Russian roulette as legitimate interrogation tactics.

The brief takes a notably narrow view of the Congress' power to influence American policy during wartime. The US judiciary is also described as prone to "generally defer to executive decisions concerning the conduct of hostilities".

A few senior members of Congress had seen the brief in its classified format and argued for its public release. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, said the brief "threatens our country's status as a beacon of human rights around the world."

Several US legal experts expressed alarm at the brief's sprawling vision of presidential authority.

"If the supreme court adopted John Yoo's theory of presidential dictatorship, it might send us spiraling down toward the end of our two centuries' old constitutional experiment with democracy," Jack Balkin, a law professor at Yale University, wrote on his blog.

Eugene Fidell, a military justice professor at Yale and American University, told the New York Times that the brief "is a monument to executive supremacy and the imperial presidency".

Part one of the Justice Department memo

Part two of the Justice Department memo

Source: The Guardian Unlimited

This is the 1st Anniversary of this blog, I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much I have enjoyed putting it together. I am always open to suggestions, if you find any interesting stories anywhere, please feel free to comment here or leave a message at the Blog's email address MsHodgePodge@comcast.net .

It's important to engage your mind in life, read a newspaper, even if it's online.

Ms.Podge

Posted by: Ms_Hodge_Podge on 4/03/2008 at 8:00 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink

British Scientists Create Human Hybrid

First embryos could pave way for stem cell supply. Move will aid research into untreatable conditions.

Britain's first human-animal hybrid embryos have been created, forming a crucial first step, scientists believe, towards a supply of stem cells that could be used to investigate so far untreatable conditions such as Alzheimer's disease.

Lyle Armstrong, who led the work, gained permission in January from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to create the embryos, known as "cytoplasmic hybrids".

His team at Newcastle produced the embryos by inserting human DNA from a skin cell into a hollowed-out cow egg. An electric shock then induced the hybrid embryo to grow. The embryo, which is 99.9% human and 0.1% other animal, grew for three days, until it had 32 cells.

Eventually, scientists hope to grow such embryos for six days, and then extract stem cells from them. The researchers insisted the embryos would never be implanted into a woman and that the only reason they used cow eggs was due to the scarcity of human eggs.

The team's success comes days after Gordon Brown, the prime minister, was forced to give MPs a free vote on the human fertilisation and embryology bill, which has faced condemnation from Catholic bishops. Cardinal Keith O'Brien used his Easter sermon to denounce what he called experiments of "Frankenstein proportion" and called the bill a "monstrous attack on human rights, human dignity and human life".

Catholics object to the idea of putting human and animal DNA in the same entity and to the notion of creating what they regard as a life for the purposes of research, a life that will then be destroyed.

John Burn, head of the Institute of Human Genetics at Newcastle University, said the embryos had been created purely for research. He told the BBC's Six O'Clock News last night: "If you look down the microscope it looks like semolina and it stays like that. It's never going to be anything other than a pile of cells. What it does is give us the tools to find out the simple questions: how can we better understand the disease processes by working with those cells in the body?"

The research has not yet been published but the team plans to submit the work for peer review in the coming months.

Other scientists in the field welcomed the work but also urged caution in interpreting the results.

Colin Blakemore, former head of the Medical Research Council, said: "The creation of hybrid embryos is not illegal and researchers in Newcastle and London were granted provisional licences for such research in January, after extensive consultation by the HFEA ... these preliminary reports give hope that this approach is likely to provide stem cells for research without the use of human eggs or normal human embryos. The new bill is intended to confirm the arrangements for regulation of this important area of research."

Mark Walport, director of the Wellcome Trust, agreed that it was too early to assess the significance of the results. "The aim of the research is to advance human health. This work emphasises the importance of the parliamentary scrutiny of this area of research over the coming weeks."

Peter Andrews, professor of biomedical science at the University of Sheffield's Centre for Stem Cell Biology, said: "The production of embryos by transferring the nucleus of an adult human cell to a human egg ... has already proved very difficult, let alone combining a human nucleus with an animal egg. Apparently these researchers have achieved some success - but by using the nucleus from a very early embryonic cell, which might be easier to reprogramme than an adult cell. At the moment it is impossible to assess the significance of this report until we know more details ... the results have been repeated and, importantly, they have been reviewed by independent researchers."

Josephine Quintavalle, of the pressure group Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said the research should not worry those opposed to hybrid embryos because the Newcastle work did not seem convincing. "The embryos didn't survive, they were created from embryonic stem cells rather than adult tissue, and there's a lot of question marks over the research."

But she added: "What it has done is wake up the public to this reality, that while parliament is getting in a tizz about this, while the whole country is up in arms discussing it, the HFEA is already issuing licences."

FAQ: The controversy

What is the purpose of the research?

Researchers say the creation of hybrids is essential to advance research into conditions such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and motor neurone disease.

Why has it caused such a row?

Religious groups object to the notion of putting human and animal DNA in the same entity. Cardinal Keith O'Brien denounced what he called experiments of "Frankenstein proportion".

Why has it been allowed to go ahead?

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority ruled that the research should be allowed, following a three-month public consultation.

Source: The Guardian Unlimited

Posted by: Ms_Hodge_Podge on 4/02/2008 at 8:00 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink

50 Most Vile Movie Villains: Part 2

From Gollum to Freddy, Nurse Ratched to Anton Chigurh; see all 25 names completing our rogues' gallery of the best (or is that worst?) baddies of the big screen, then cast your vote for the ultimate cinematic sociopath

ANTON CHIGURH
Javier Bardem
No Country for Old Men (2007)

A man with a haircut modeled on a punch bowl rightfully belongs in some sort of Monty Python-esque alternate reality, but Bardem is the furthest thing from funny as the psychotic Anton Chigurh, who kills most of his hapless victims by blowing their brains out with a cattle gun. The fact that you never once gain insight into what or who created this monster makes his presence on the big screen all the more terrifying. Adrienne Day

DOC OCK
Alfred Molina
Spider-Man 2 (2004)

Dr. Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina) alone was a loving husband and brilliant academic, but with four artificially intelligent mechanical arms fused into his vertebrae, he went insane. The arms tapped into the doctor's own vanity and compelled him to nearly destroy all of Manhattan to prove his sustained fusion machine could work! Jef Castro

MITCH LEARY
John Malkovich
In the Line of Fire (1993)

In Malkovich's gallery of rogues, spy turned presidential assassin Mitch Leary may be the most memorable because he's so...reasonable. He's all purring malice and chivalry throughout his cat-and-mouse game with Secret Service agent Frank Horrigan (Clint Eastwood), even when he's casually murdering innocent bystanders. Yet he's also chillingly persistent; he won't be deterred by reason, appeals to ideology, or the all-but-certain knowledge that he'll be killed once he carries out his scheme. Gary Susman

LIBERTY VALANCE
Lee Marvin
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1963)

Marvin specialized in cold-blooded killers, and his Liberty Valance was one of the coldest, a gunslinger so memorably mean that he dominates John Ford's classic Western even when he's not on screen, which is most of the time. No wonder Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne both sought credit for shooting him down. Gary Susman

ARCHIBALD CUNNINGHAM
Tim Roth
Rob Roy (1995)

Thanks to Quentin Tarantino, Roth's often been typecast as modern-day hoods and thugs, but his villains don't come any more dastardly than this one, nemesis to the 18th Century Scottish folk hero of the title (Liam Neeson). The foppish, bewigged Cunningham is a thief, a womanizer, a despoiler of villages, and an expert swordsman. For good measure, he even rapes Mrs. Rob Roy (Jessica Lange). All that's missing is a waxed mustache for him to twirl. Gary Susman

SGT. BOB BARNES
Tom Berenger
Platoon (1986)

Throughout Oliver Stone's Oscar-winning Vietnam movie, Berenger's scarred, bitter war criminal Barnes and Willem Dafoe's still-idealistic, by-the-book Sgt. Elias are the devil and angel perched on the shoulders of raw recruit Taylor (Charlie Sheen), battling for his soul. Of course, it's a lot harder for Good to overcome Evil when Evil goes ahead and frags Good. Gary Susman

FREDDY KRUEGER
Robert Englund
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Freddy Krueger has the wit of a lame stand-up comic and a viciously poor fashion sense (sweater and fedora every day?). But those knife claws and his annoying propensity to attack the Elm Street teens absolutely anywhere especially their dreams kind-of tip the scales towards 'overwhelmingly demonic.' Joy Piedmont

VINCENT
Tom Cruise
Collateral (2004)

Cruise's 180-degree career turn as Vincent a salt-and-pepper-haired hit man who enlists Jamie Foxx's cabbie for help while unleashing an all-night killing spree made us wonder what happened to that perennial good guy from A Few Good Men and Jerry Maguire. Kate Ward

FRANK
Henry Fonda
Once Upon a Time in the West (1969)

One thing that makes methodical hired gunslinger Frank so astonishingly frightening is, of course, that he's played by Fonda, who'd spent 30 years in Hollywood playing icons of rectitude and moral authority. Who knew (besides Sergio Leone) that Fonda's ice-blue eyes could reveal such cold-hearted ruthlessness? Gary Susman

HAL
Voiced by Douglas Rain
2001: Space Odyssey (1968)

His real name is 'Heuristically programmed Algorithmic Computer,' but you can call him HAL. In 2001: Space Odyssey, HAL seems innocent enough; a smooth-talking red light with impeccable manners and charming conversational skills. He boasts an array of features: HAL can recognize human speech and facial expressions, he has an appreciation for the arts, he can play a mean round of chess...and, uh, he can reprogram his own directives to have you killed. A killer spaceship computer who does a chilling rendition of 'Daisy Bell,' HAL is one technological advance you won't be cheering about. Gretchen Hansen

MING THE MERCILESS
Max Von Sydow
Flash Gordon (1980)

Emperor Ming the Merciless (Max Von Sydow) has rocket ships, death rays, robots, a harem, and some of the galaxy's fiercest outfits at his disposal. He also happens to be an unfortunate 'yellow peril' stereotype, which adds a whole other level to his villainy. And, to top it all off, his motivation for wanting to destroy Earth is simply boredom. Jef Castro

KEYSER SOZE
Kevin Spacey
The Usual Suspects (1995)

Few have seen the elusive Keyser Soze, but his brutality is legendary (he killed his own family just to prove that he would) and his cunning is unrivaled. After all, would you pretend to be the dim-witted, handicapped loser 'Verbal' Kint if you didn't have a darn good reason to? Annika Harris

GOLLUM
Andy Serkis
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-2003)

He may only be a CGI character, but the conflicted, bipolar Gollum managed to be both cute and scary, a feat we hadn't seen accomplished since Gremlins. Love him or hate him, you can't deny that his tendency to break out into cheerful song in between ruthlessly chasing the ring of power was, well, precious. Plus, he bit off Frodo's fingers. And that's pretty bad-ass. Kate Ward

T-1000
Robert Patrick
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Sure, Ah-nold was intimidating as the Terminator in the first film, but place him alongside the sequel's shape-shifting, cold-blooded T-1000, and his futuristic robot suddenly appears to be as dangerous as a very-well-armed Energizer Bunny. Kate Ward

DAMIEN
Harvey Stephens
The Omen (1976)

You thought your babysitting gig was bad. Spawn of Satan Damien was so evil, he drove his nanny to hang herself, without saying a word. One look into that evil, icy stare and even you'll believe that it really is all for him. Kate Ward

PEYTON FLANDERS
Rebecca de Mornay
The Hand that Rocks the Cradle (1992)

Okay, she breast-fed another woman's baby. And if that's not enough to convince you that this nanny was no Mary Poppins, she also deliberately lodged an earring in an infant's mouth in order to make a show of saving him. We don't even want to know what else is in her carpet bag of tricks. Kate Ward

NURSE RATCHED
Louise Fletcher
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

Fletcher was sixth in line to play Nurse Ratched in Milos Forman's masterpiece Anne Bancroft and Angela Lansbury, among others, turned down the role but it's a good thing she bagged the part. After all, who else could have so perfectly channeled author Ken Kesey's character, a villain who spoke softly, but carried a big, oh-so-evil stick? As soon as audiences watched the mental institution's tyrant seamlessly drive the troubled Billy Bibbit to commit suicide, it became obvious that Fletcher was destined for Oscar (she was awarded Best Actress in 1975). Kate Ward

SCAR
Voiced by Jeremy Irons
The Lion King (1994)

With a sly nod to Hamlet, Scar killed his own brother king-of-the-jungle Mufasa then chased the heir to the throne into exile, turned the lush Pride Rock into a wasteland, and clawed his way into the pantheon of dastardly Disney villains. Adam Markovitz

MRS. ISELIN
Angela Lansbury
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

Fans who only know her as Jessica Fletcher would never guess that Lansbury could muster the soft-spoken menace that helped her earn an Oscar nod and a place in movie history for her role as a manipulative mom in this Cold War classic. Adam Markovitz

HENRY F. POTTER
Lionel Barrymore
It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

Even stuck in a wheelchair, the great Lionel Barrymore (yup, he's Drew's great-uncle) loomed large over Jimmy Stewart as a cold-hearted scrooge in Frank Capra's yuletide tearjerker. Adam Markovitz

JOHNNY FRIENDLY
Lee J. Cobb
On the Waterfront (1954)

With a name like 'Friendly,' who needs enemies? Certainly not the corrupt mobster who rules the waterfront with an iron fist, and whose idea of communicating with his employees involves throwing them from rooftops. He finally meets his match in ex-prizefighter Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando), who takes a hell of a whopping and not only lives to tell the tale, but takes the rest of the dockworkers with him leaving Friendly rather friendless, indeed. Adrienne Day

JACK TORRANCE
Jack Nicholson
The Shining (1980)

Nicholson's trademark line 'Heeeere's Johnny!' gets all the attention, but the real thrill of Stanley Kubrick's horror masterpiece is watching the actor quietly morph from dad to demon with mesmerizing intensity. Adam Markovitz

THE WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST
Margaret Hamilton
The Wizard of Oz (1939)

No Halloween parade would be complete without at least one green-faced homage to the queen of cinematic sorcery. With her army of flying monkeys and that nails-on-a-chalkboard cackle, the Wicked Witch (played by former kindergarten teacher Margaret Hamilton) has earned a spot on this list by scaring the crap out of generations of Oz-loving kids. And their little dogs, too. Adam Markovitz

SHERE KHAN
Voiced by George Sanders
The Jungle Book (1967)

George Sanders often played an urbane, purring villain (see: All About Eve, Rebecca), even when voicing a jungle cat. His tiger, who spends the whole movie hoping to make a meal of man-cub Mowgli, is the most feared creature among all the animals in this Disney adaptation of the Rudyard Kipling classic, and he terrifies without ever raising his voice (though Sanders' aristocratic sneer and arched eyebrow do make the transition to animation). His cool, cruel cat was a model for later fearsome felines in the Disney canon, including Prince John (Robin Hood) and Scar (The Lion King). Gary Susman

JOHN RYDER
Rutger Hauer
The Hitcher (1986)

It sounds like a line from The Terminator: He absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead. That's what C. Thomas Howell's cross-country driver Jim learns when he innocently gives Ryder a lift. As fast as you can say 'severed finger,' Jim's life is turned upside-down by this scourge of the blacktop who hunts him wherever he goes, killing everyone in his path. And the moral of this story is, don't stop driving, folks. Marc Bernardin

Source: Entertainment Weekly Online

Posted by: Ms_Hodge_Podge on 4/01/2008 at 10:00 AM | Comments (1) | Permalink

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