Half Moon

Bahman Ghobadi

I watched a beautiful, tragic movie yesterday called "Half Moon," directed by the Persian director Bahman Ghobadi (who has also done the wonderful "No One Knows about Persian Cats.")  Half Moon is a story that morphs subtly into an allegory about the tragedy of the kurdish people, divided perhaps forever by three different national borders, all of which house non-kurdish majorities who find these people difficult and generally a problem--so much so that now and again one country or another (Iran, Iraq, Turkey) decides to wipe a few thousand of them from the face of the planet.  It's the story of cultural minorities everywhere of course.  If you are different, some people find that annoying, or incomprehensible, or frightening.  And of course politicians have always found scapegoats handy levers to power.  The list of examples is endless.

In Half Moon the "plot" involves a venerated Kurdish composer, Mano, who gathers many of his sons together along with one wonderful woman singer to perform a concert in newly freed Iraqi Kurdistan.  They travel by bus through this remarkable, ancient, rocky mountain wilderness, reaching at one point a mountain top with a sign pointing to all three national states--an area otherwise totally barren and without any mark of civilization.  On their trip they come upon many remarkable sights--one of the most remarkable being a city of stone houses where thousands of women singers have been exiled.  Mano has to bribe a guard to even enter the place--but there he finds his singer and takes her on the trip to the concert.  All this, too, is a metaphor for the tragedy of women in this area of the world.  Mano tells us that 1334 women have been exiled in this place, and all sing with one voice.

So the trip progresses.  It does not end with a wonderful concert, but in a nightmare vision of failed efforts to reach Iraq.  Indeed, this part of the movie is such a nightmare that I had nightmares of a similar sort, concerning such activities as appearing on stage in concert only to discover that I had no memory of the words to a song I was about to start singing.  We all understand this kind of anxiety dream of course.  It's the "Oh fuck, I don't have any pants on" dream.  But I think we all should try to see these films from places in the world (such as Iran) where at the moment we have only the anxieties conferred on us by our political leaders, and the implications we draw, right or wrong, from events like the 9/11 attack.

An American director would not make a film like this, I don't think.  Not, at least, about Americans as a people.   This is a film about a beautiful dream which is in the end thwarted by larger forces, and in the face of many indications that the dream will be fulfilled.  Mano's "muse," a beautiful young woman named "Half Moon" who was born in the border region, does not manage to get him to the concert, though the film ends in some ambiguity, which amounts to hope.  There are strains of "I have seen the promised land--I may not be there with you."  The kurds are a people for whom hope is mostly a necessary delusion.  While certainly Americans have experienced this existential reality in specific circumstances, it is only American minorities who have known the bite of this qua their identities. ( Oh, and of course American women know it, and are seeing once again their dreams of equal status being dashed by political and religious forces that for various reasons object to the idea that a woman has the fundamental right to own her own body.  But that's something of another story.)

Half Moon is a beautiful movie about the Kurdish dream, filmed in the kurdish landscape.  It should give any viewer much insight into another part of the planet--a place different from here, but not ultimately foreign.  It's the politicians who trade in the "foreign," and who see places like this as primarily about the mineral content of the terrain, the people inhabiting it being distractions or impediments to be brushed aside.   This journey starts with the elimination of Saddam.  During the trip, Americans shoot at the travellers.  So it goes.

Keep an eye out for the next Ghobadi film.  He's simply wonderful.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahman_Ghobadi

So Tax is Theft?

Rand Paul, R, Kentucky

I'm probably going to write about this at some length, but for now here's just a little starter.  I've heard quite a number of "conservatives" assert that "tax is theft."  If so, what is it when some guys kick down your door and steal all your stuff?  And are you just calling more thieves when you call the cops to report the crime?  When we get done with this tax is theft policy the GOP is putting into practice, there won't be any more cops to call.  Meanwhile, the fact will remain--people will make every effort to survive, and for some, kicking down your door is exactly what that effort entails.

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It's Saturday now, and getting towards 95 outside, with more or less 100% humidity, plus a veritable bloom of midsummer ticks, both the big'uns and the teenincy ones.  Might as well carry on with this here in the kitchen, with a cup of coffee and a doughnut.

What worries me, and particularly about the future as the generation now in its 20s and 30s faces it, is that this destructive ignorance which seems to be carrying the day with regard to our shared social world--our life as Americans if you like--is demolishing important and subtle features of life which it took many decades to create, and at a time when most people did believe in the "common good."  Today, on every hand, are examples of this ignorace knighted with power that simply boggle the mind.  Just this morning I read a transcript of some congressional conversation concerning cuts in Social Security which used, as an example, the wonderful, shoulder-shrugging idea that "if you can't afford a Mercedes, well, just by an Acura this time around."  Hey, great idea.  Where's my head-slap key.  In fact, real people are choosing between getting that hurting tooth fixed and getting enough food in the house to last till the next month's red letter day--the day that next little social security check arrives.  People talk about gramps moving in with the kids as though even that is at least an option--might be, but only if you have kids and if they aren't going to be sent over their own edge by such an eventuality.

Then, over at another place in this squeezed balloon, we're now fine with totally messing up a child's life just because their parents came here when they were an infant looking for work (and maybe they were in that boat because some rich people in America decided the NAFTA law was a great idea?)  Just sayin'.  I saw a moment the other day where a sweet little 9 year old girl was having to translate her parents through a complicated situation because neither of them could speak enough English to get what was happening.  Let's think about that, shall we.  First, this little kid sure does have a lot of responsibility on her--how'd that affecting her childhood?  Second, she's speaking English just like a "native," and that's because she is one to all intents and purposes.  So what happens to her if her mom and dad get arrested for not having documents?

And why is that the current state of affairs in America, that we would ever think blowing up a child's family was ok, and particularly in pursuit of some abstract concept defined as "well, they shouldn't have walked across the desert with their baby 8 years ago just to get a job they desperately needed to survive.  They should have jumped through all the hoops, period."  If they didn't, well it's just too bad for this little earnest child who deserves a medal for bravery and courage, and might well grow up to be as fine an American as we could ever imagine.  Where are these selfish people coming from?  (And why do so many of them claim in the most strident of voices to be Christian, of all things?) 

It's a great concern to me that our Democratic President is apparently willing to collaborate with these champions of selfishness and self-concern.  Who's going to make a stand if not Mr. Obama?   Certainly no one in the Republican Presidential Hopeful ranks.  All they offer, every one, is arguments justifying cruelty, selfishness, self-servingness, and the general attitude that each person fending for himself is the true American Way.  There are so many arguments to this awful conclusion that I think millions of our fellow citizens--worried as I am about the future--just memorize this stuff as an aid to better digestion and sleep.

If it's all torn down, this already tattered social fabric, does any one think it will be reparable?   This isn't like a bridge in Minneapolis, or a tornado ravaged town in Missouri.  And there are other symptoms--symptoms which indicate to me that the big money already owns the whole game.  Consider that last week gas taxes went up about $.02 on the dollar.  I don't know what happened where you live, but here in central NC, gas prices immediately went up about a dime.  What's that, if not a clear message to government--Do not mess with us, we will hurt you back, and instantly.  Seems like the oil companies might see it another way--that our oil-dependent world is their cash cow, that in a way they owe us for their success.  Exxon keeps setting profit records, year after year.  And they probably also chip in a few million to people who can articulately sneer at any idea which might mitigate our oil dependence.  The result?  It's physics: try taxing them and they'll cube the tax right back at the consumer, and give Mrs. Soccer Mom a nice free pamphlet with her fill up suggesting that her gas price might go down if she votes for folks who want to drill the continental shelf.  And it's all codified now, via Citizens United.

It's going to be an interesting month, August.  We haven't even started watching the hurricane map around here, and I'm still heating with the trees that Fran knocked down in '96.  Here's something you can do at this very moment.  It might matter:

http://www.credoaction.com/campaign/obama_debt_ceiling/?rc=homepage

The Endless Manipulation

from topleftpixel.com

Just read this piece, from Edroso:

http://alicublog.blogspot.com/2011_07_01_archive.html#2368099410783931700

Maybe we're really geezer nation--a land of short-term memory loss, where the problems are all about finding the dang grocery store where we left it yesterday, on some street that has changed over night, trees in different places, new parking lots, a freeway over pass that definitely was NOT there yesterday.  Who can remember anymore anything so abstract as how to think about firefighters.  And anyways, you have to be careful to stay out of the way of their speeding trucks, with those awful sirens.  What's my phone number?  Where are my keys?

A Patriotic Post

Fireball Roberts, 1961 

I'm sure this isn't my original idea.  Why doesn't Congress close out its fantastic health care insurance program and come join the rest of us in the real medical system of the U.S. of A.  It seems to me that, at the moment, far too many in Congress think they are among the "elite" in America, and are legislating in that vein, "from above" as it were.  But there is no "elite" in America, not officially, and certainly not endowed by vote.  The people who represent us should be "of us," that way they'll have a much better idea of how we as a people live.  The folks who think they are "above," mostly by virtue of their bank accounts, are in fact flat wrong.  While these folks will probably always encourage legislators to think they are also "elite," it's actually pretty sad when legislators fall for that.  (Not to mention a whole dang party.) 

That's it for today.  The Firecracker 400 ought to be pretty good--check it out tonight.

[photo from www.floridastockcars.com]

Update: just read this post:

http://www.slate.com/id/2298195/pagenum/all/#p2

The thing about people with money is, they have the leverage to create faux realities, such as fake think tanks or even fake news networks.  After a while, nobody in the real world knows what's going on.  I'll bet Ms Lohan didn't even get paid to further the cause either, poor dear--and as a celebrity, her "tweets" have value.  Surely she deserved at least a case of single malt, for the cold winter days ahead.  Ain't rite.

Update--the Firecracker 400 (I emphasize "cracker") was excellent.  Jeff Gordon pushed Kyle Busch (my main man) to 5th place.  A really good shew.