OUT SICK






















Headaches, sore throat, coughing and disgusting mucus; signs of the flu, let's hope it's not the Swine Flu. I managed to update the rest of the site before giving into my symptoms.

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THE REAL POLITIK EDITION: ISSUE 73, VOLUME 103
UNDERSEIGE
by Malik Isasis





















I have a headache and allergies, so I’ll keep this brief. The Slack-Jawed Yokals in the Republicans Party are up in arms over the changing landscape of power, a black president and a Latina justice in one year maybe too much for their reptilian brains to process.

The Republican Party should be the party with the donkey since they are a bunch of asses. Right-wing stooges Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Ann Coulter and Fox News are overplaying their hand by calling Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor a “reverse racist”. You can always tell what the Republicans and their political operatives are thinking, just invert any of their political attacks, they have a very transparent way of projecting their true feelings.

As people of color in this country are becoming a more powerful voting block and are managing to attain some positions of power, some in the white male power structure are feeling under siege and the decompensation has manifested into this lashing out of everything Obama. These yokals needn’t worry; they still hold 99.9% of the power. For now (insert evil laugh).

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THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE
A Film Review by Malik Isasis



It was Saturday, May 23, 2009, evening, when my friend Rosario called me from Union Square in Manhattan to suggest that I join her in seeing the film Terminator: Salvation. After an ennui of explosions and asinine dialogue that carried on for two hours, we regretted not going to the Angelika Film Center to catch more cerebral fare. After the movie ended the film was promptly forgotten. We walked along Park Avenue in the Gramercy neighborhood, which is filled with unaffordable carriage houses, walk-ups and brownstone apartments. It is not unusual in these upscale neighborhoods to see nice furniture on the curbside, and it is not unusual to see New Yorkers walking with sofas, tables, lamps that they’ve found on the curbside.

Rosario and I came upon a nice pile of wooden crates on the curbside that were used to ship wine bottles. We crossed the street and stared at the wooden crates debating on whether we wanted to take some to use as a bookshelf, or storage containers for our apartments. It was still relatively early, and residents were walking their dogs, and passing by with curious stares as we inspected the crates, which brings me back to last spring.

Last spring New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was caught on a federal wiretap soliciting high-priced escorts. Spitzer, a Democrat and ethical crusader (and a damn good one at that) was brought down by his own ethical shortcomings. He resigned in humiliation and shrank into the shadows of obscurity, but when the 22-year old escort, Ashley Dupre was identified as the $1000, an hour escort, she became infamous overnight. The New York Post, New York Daily News and other New York press hounded Ms Dupree, capturing photographs of her on the beach, on the streets—her infamy garnered million dollar offers from Playboy, Girls Gone Wild and other pornographers. For weeks, this woman was all over the news, and when the corporate media was done with her, she too faded into obscurity.

Rosario and I were still debating on whether to carry the wooden crates. Finally we decided that we’d take a few. As we began digging the crates out of the garbage heap, an attractive young woman who was walking her two dogs paused and began talking to us.

“Are you guys art students?”
“No,” I said, “We’re gonna use these as furniture.”
“Aw, that’s a cool idea,” the young lady said. “I wish I would’ve thought of that.”

She had a familiarity about her I couldn’t place. Her body was in good shape so I took noticed and along the way, I noticed her tattoos, and Disco! This was the woman whose face was plastered on the tabloid magazines for weeks. Rosario had not a clue.

“Okay, bye,” she said.
“Have a nice night,” I said.
She waved as she disappeared into the darkness of the tree-lined street.
“You know who that was?” I asked Rosario.
“No.”
“That was the prostitute that caused the Governor to resign.”

Rosario didn’t seem moved either way; she was more concerned about how she would carry the crates back to Harlem on the train, but I couldn’t help but think how normal she was, and how eager she seemed for just a regular interaction. We were complete strangers, yet I had her at a disadvantage, her life had been turned inside, out for the world to see, and be feasted upon. I gave no hint of my knowledge of who she was during our brief interaction on the sidewalk; she deserved her anonymity and normalcy. Rosario and I carried our crates off to the train, looking like New Yorkers do when they find good junk on the side of the road.

Why do I tell this story? Well, because this Girlfriend Experience was exponentially better (and cheaper) than the film The Girlfriend Experience, which is composed of beautifully synchronized shots of New York City. The film is amazing to look at, and Chelsea (Sasha Grey) is even more stunning. Grey who comes from the world of porn has been criticized for her performance, but I think she had very little to work with, the script is a scatter shot of sequences (could be the editing), which plays more like a dreamscape than a story.

This Steven Soderbergh film carries his stamp, the L-cuts that have scenes overlapping dialogue from a previous scene with the subsequent scene, and then there is the plot folding back on itself, which causes further discombobulation. There are just a few moments when Soderbergh let us have a peek behind the emotional curtains to see what is driving his characters, however he closes them quickly to indulge himself in film technique that has very little to do with advancing the story.

Grade: D

Terminator: Salvation
Grade: D

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THE MEDIA EDITION: ISSUE 72, VOLUME 102
MAGICAL REALISM
by Malik Isasis



Let’s forget that the Democratic Party are pussies, and can’t get emotionally or politically beyond their post traumatic loop caused by a two decades long ass beatin’ by the Republicans. Something is afoot. The corporate media is on a rehabilitation program for the Republican Party, so to bring them back into power. Twenty years of deregulation, wars, occupations, systemic corruption and inept governance and these limp dicks continue to be inflated by the corporate media.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney was given the national stage on May 21, 2009, after Obama’s National Security speech to vomit his bile onto the airwaves, but this is nothing new. Since the Democrats swept into the White House and Congress, Dick Cheney has emerged from his dark lair to piss his bitter piss, and mock the truth along the way. The only thing authentic about this man is his scorn for those who do not share his delusion. Cheney is what is flushed down the toilet, but even after eight years of irrefutable failure, the corporate Dr. Frankenstein that is the media keeps him around to scare the natives.

Tales from the Darkside

During the mid 80s—1984 through 1988 to be exact, a television series “Tales from the Darkside” supplanted “The Twightlight Zone” in my household. At the age of 11, I watched the series religiously. Interestingly enough, I only remember one episode. The episode was “A Case of the Stubborns,” season 1, episode 9. The story opens with the death of Grandpa Tolliver in his bed. His daughter and grandson grieve in the kitchen, as they believe that Grandpa Tolliver has died in his sleep. However, grandpa walks into the kitchen expecting breakfast. As you can imagine, daughter and grandson are shocked. Grandpa Tolliver is a sassy old man and asks what are all the water works are about. Mother and son stay quiet.

Grandson, played by a young Christian Slater, sets out to prove to Grandpa Tolliver that he has died. Grandson throughout the episode offers evidence that Grandpa Tolliver, is indeed, dead. However, grandpa keeps denying it, even as rigor mortis sets in, and flies start to follow him. Grandpa denial is thick. He is able to justify everything. Grandpa Tolliver continues to deny his own death, even as his flesh rots before him.

A couple of days later while sitting on the porch in his rocking chair in the company of his grandson, grandpa sneezes into his handkerchief. It is in this moment, that Grandpa Tolliver can no longer deny his death. The camera stays fixed on his traumatized grandson. Grandpa Tolliver finally states that maybe it's time that he goes to lie down and rest. He sets the handkerchief down on the table and gets up and walks into the house. The camera cuts to the handkerchief, and in it, Grandpa Tolliver’s nose. He sneezed it right off.

The scene although disturbingly funny is a poignant moment in the episode because it is when Grandpa Tolliver finally accepts that he has died. Dick Cheney, that inglorious bastard is Grandpa Tolliver, refusing to accept reality of the twisted, bloody and petulant reality that he and Bush created. When former Prime Minister Tony Blair stated that Great Britain would be pulling their troops out of the Iraq theatre, Cheney without missing a beat said:

“I look at it and see it is actually an affirmation that there are parts of Iraq where things are going pretty well,” Cheney said. He said he’d talked recently with a friend who drove seven hours from Baghdad to Basra and “found the situation dramatically improved from a year or so ago, sort of validated the British view they had made progress in southern Iraq and that they can therefore reduce their force levels.”

What is interesting about Dick Cheney is the extent of his lies—he’s pathological, and if questioned about them, he will out right deny it-- even if there is video or audio to play the lie back to him. Never in my young life, have I witness such a politician with so much contempt for government, and the governed. Cheney’s contempt is no doubt fueled by a sense of profound entitlement, more importantly, his rightwing ideology-- the new religion amongst the Republican set. Cheney is not delusional though, it would be much easier to accept, if he were. No, Cheney is simply a sociopath, whose manifestations of antipathy and lack of conscience nests neatly in the guise of national security.

Cheney, the Prince of Darkness, uses the media to wipe his crusty ass. One news organization that happily massages Cheney’s fecal matter into their skin is Fox News. Fox News, and its derivatives have allowed themselves to be used as an envoy for delivering an infection and messages of destruction—for instance, continuing to paint Iran as a nuclear threat. Like Grandpa Tolliver, the corporate media is slow to understand the signs of death, the death of a superpower—the devalued dollar, the debt, broken diplomacy, and two brutal Occupation of two sovereign nations.

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THE AIPAC EDITION: ISSUE 71, VOLUME 101
HOLOCAUST
by Amira Hass, Ha'aretz






















The cynicism inherent in the attitude of the institutions of the Jewish state to Holocaust survivors is not a revelation to those born and living among them. We grew up with the yawning gap between the presentation of the State of Israel as the place of the Jewish people's rebirth and the void that exists for every Holocaust survivor and his family. The personal "rehabilitation" was dependent on the circumstances of each person: the stronger ones versus the others, who did not find support from the institutions of the state. During the 1950s and 1960s we saw the demeaning view of our parents as having gone "like sheep to the slaughter," the shame of the new Jews, the Sabras, over their misfortunate, Diaspora relatives.

It can be argued that during the first two decades, much of this attitude could be attributed to the lack of information and the very human lack of an ability to grasp the full meaning of the industrialized genocide perpetrated by Germany. But the awareness of the material aspects of the Holocaust started very early, with Jewish and Zionist institutions starting in the early 1940s to discuss the possibility of demanding reparations. In 1952, the reparations agreement with Germany was signed, by which that country agreed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to Israel to cover the absorption costs of the survivors and pay for their rehabilitation. The agreement obligated Germany to compensate survivors individually as well, but the German law differentiated between those who belonged to the "circle of German culture" and others. Those who were able to prove a connection to the superior circle received higher sums, even if they emigrated in time from Germany. Concentration camp survivors from outside the "circle" received the ridiculous sum of 5 marks per day. The Israeli representatives swallowed this distortion.

This is part of the roots of financial cynicism that the media is being exposed to today, due to several reasons: the advanced age and declining health of survivors, the intentional weakening of the welfare state, the presence of survivors from the former Soviet Union who are not included in the reparations agreement, the media activism of nongovernmental welfare organizations and the welcome enlistment of social affairs journalists.

They are shocked by the gap between the official appropriation of the Holocaust, which is perceived in Israel as understood and justified, and the abandonment of survivors.

Turning the Holocaust into a political asset serves Israel primarily in its fight against the Palestinians. When the Holocaust is on one side of the scale, along with the guilty (and rightly so) conscience of the West, the dispossession of the Palestinian people from their homeland in 1948 is minimized and blurred.

The phrase "security for the Jews" has been consecrated as an exclusive synonym for "the lessons of the Holocaust." It is what allows Israel to systematically discriminate against its Arab citizens. For 40 years, "security" has been justifying control of the West Bank and Gaza and of subjects who have been dispossessed of their rights living alongside Jewish residents, Israeli citizens laden with privileges.

Security serves the creation of a regime of separation and discrimination on an ethnic basis, Israeli style, under the auspices of "peace talks" that go on forever. Turning the Holocaust into an asset allows Israel to present all the methods of the Palestinian struggle (even the unarmed ones) as another link in the anti-Semitic chain whose culmination is Auschwitz. Israel provides itself with the license to come up with more kinds of fences, walls and military guard towers around Palestinian enclaves.

Separating the genocide of the Jewish people from the historical context of Nazism and from its aims of murder and subjugation, and its separation from the series of genocides perpetrated by the white man outside of Europe, has created a hierarchy of victims, at whose head we stand. Holocaust and anti-Semitism researchers fumble for words when in Hebron the state carries out ethnic cleansing via its emissaries, the settlers, and ignore the enclaves and regime of separation it is setting up. Whoever criticizes Israel's policies toward the Palestinians is denounced as an anti-Semite, if not a Holocaust denier. Absurdly, the delegitimization of any criticism of Israel only makes it harder to refute the futile equations that are being made between the Nazi murder machine and the Israeli regime of discrimination and occupation.

The institutional abandonment of the survivors is rightly denounced across the board. The transformation of the Holocaust into a political asset for use in the struggle against the Palestinians feed on those same stores of official cynicism, but it is part of the consensus.

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THE TORTURE EDITION: ISSUE 70, VOLUME 100
RISING DOWN
by Malik Isasis
















The jingoistic way in which politicians and the corporate media have canonized U.S. soldiers has created an atmosphere in which soldiers have become dehumanized, quixotic beings who fight out of the purity of their hearts, and who are beyond reproach. The praise often rises to the level of absurdity, as terms like American Hero is thrown around loosely. The problem with being dehumanized this way is that the subject of the dehumanization becomes a pawn, a billboard for propaganda.

Over praising, and using hyperbole of heroism is just as bad as over ridiculing because soldiers aren’t seen as human, their pain isn’t seen as human and when they do inhumane things, it is chalked up to the one-bad-apple theory. The mental deterioration of occupying, killing, maiming, being killed and maimed, subjugating other human beings has a cruel way of perverting one’s mind.

Recently a U.S. soldier committed fratricide, by killing five of his comrades. Ironically, the murders took place at a clinic for traumatized, battle-wary and stressed out soldiers.

Suicides both in Iraq and among vets back home have been surprisingly high almost from the beginning of the war and have surged in recent months.
Also truly shocking is the number of veterans with brain trauma. These numbers get reported when a study emerges, then are forgotten. At least President Obama has upped money for treatment.

Last year there were 1,400 rapes of women in the military. See the video Rape in the Military.

While the corporate media and the military keeps churning out the stories of unparalleled heroism of U.S. soldiers they ignore the complete emotional, and mental breakdown of their humanness. When soldiers can throw puppies off of a cliff, imagine what they are doing to civilians, imagine what they are, or were doing during the Bush years.

US soldiers throw puppy off cliff

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THE RELATIONSHIP EDITION: ISSUE 69, VOLUME 99
BROKE, AND BROKEN UP
by Malik Isasis















I’m from Seattle, and I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon here in the big city. New York City is a difficult place to eek out an existence amongst the 8 million others who are also running full speed on the hamster wheel to keep the engines of American capitalism churning. Living on a working income means having roommates at the age of 35, or even 45. It means living in studio apartments that aren’t really studio apartments. It means tolerating long commutes on the train, from one borough to the other for work. It isn’t easy living here if you do not have the financial means.

No wonder so many people here are so miserable. I think Sweden may actually be onto something, but I digress. What I’ve noticed in my two years here are the couples who’ve fell in love, moved in together—either to save money, or to live with each other instead of roommates. Those same couples then fall out of love and are stuck with one another because they cannot afford to move out. This New York phenomenon was born before the Bush economy. Talk about your misery index.

Over the weekend I was having dinner with a close friend who also moved to New York from Seattle with his girlfriend (for the lack of a better term). They’d been together for seven years, and were my role models, an institution of what relationships should be, but over dinner he confessed that they’d actually been broken up for a year, but living together because either couldn’t afford to move out. My reaction of course was damn. I felt like the child whose parents were getting a divorce. For one year we’ve been out dancing, celebrating birthdays, having dinner parties and all along they were broken up, but too broke to move on.

I have another friend who has dated her boyfriend (for a lack of a better term) for eight years. She casually mentioned that they’ve actually been broken up for two years, but again they were together because of economics. It seems like they were stuck in a loop , which suggested that relationship had run its course but as a social worker and working student, they too were broken up, but too broke to move on.

Obviously, not all New York couples stay because they can't afford to move. I know one such friend from Brooklyn who moved in with her boyfriend (for lack of a better term) in Queens, she did a smart thing by subletting her apartment for six months, so when it didn’t work out, she had her apartment to come back to.

I cannot imagine, wouldn’t like to, to have once loved someone so much to want to live with her, but if it ended would have to eventually watch her move on with her life right before my eyes. I cannot imagine the enmesh mess of such a gamble. Apparently, it is not only the unmarried who suffer from this, but also the married.

Couples who fall out of love may not even have a job anymore, much less the funds to hire an attorney to make their split legal. With housing prices down, they can't afford to sell off the real estate and go their separate ways. So some are biding their time by tolerating the other's company on their home turf. It's faux separation, recession style.

Staying together doesn't work for everyone, says Manhattan psychotherapist Mel Schwartz. "If you have people who are not respectful of each other, then I would recommend getting out of the marriage at all costs," he says. "Even when people agree to stay together because of the economy, it can be a little awkward. It works when they act like they are roommates or tenants in same house, but it can be awkward when one wants to bring a friend into the house."

A very dear friend of mind was waiting for her lease to expire so that she could move in with her boyfriend. She asked for my opinion and I opined, that it was a very bad idea, it had not been a year yet, and they were having some communication issues. I first asked, what’s the rush to which there was no rational reason and I told her to seek counseling first before making the move. She listened, rightly so, it seems like the relationship is not going to survive the summer.

I think more weight is put into the cost savings of living together, rather than the compatibility. New Yorkers may save some money cohabitating but if it doesn’t work out and you’re stuck with one another longer than you’d like, the misery index will far outweigh the initial cost savings.

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URBANWORLD
a film by Malik Isasis






















Rarely do I discuss my art here, but I would like to take the opportunity to promote an upcoming screening in Berlin, Germany on May 10, 2009. Urbanworld was written at the height of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, but after years of sitting on the shelf I dusted off the script and rewrote it to feel more contemporary and less sexy.
Urbanworld is the story of two brothers struggling to make ends meet, and are tempted by their poverty to make easy cash. The film will be playing on Saturday for my German readers. Everyone else can go to amazon.com to get a copy of the film.




XXIV. BLACK INTERNATIONAL CINEMA BERLIN 2009
MAY 7-10
RATHAUS SCHÖNEBERG (CITY HALL)
John-F.-Kennedy-Platz
10825 Berlin/Germany

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LEMON TREE
a film review by Malik Isasis













I don’t know why I do it to myself. Going to see depressing, albeit excellent films that is. Maybe I should have went to see X-Men: Origins for a little escapism rather than a poor Palestinian woman fighting the military-industrial complex in Israel.

Lemon Tree is an Israeli film. Israeli filmmaker Eran Riklis, and his co-screenwriter, Palestinian journalist Suha Arraf, straddles the absurdity that is the Middle East with tenderness and compassion. This film exposes the daily indignity, and quiet suffering of the Palestinians’ occupation more effectively than a year’s worth of reporting in the American media.

Lemon Tree is not an ethereal title; it is quite literal, as the female protagonist owns a lemon grove on the West Bank-Israeli border, which her father planted 50 years ago. The grove is a dense beautiful patchwork of green and yellow. When the wind blows the lemons fall to the earth, and every morning, Salma Zidane, a poor widowed Palestinian woman played to the bone by Haim Abbas goes out with her basket and retrieves the fallen fruit as she does so, she realizes that the new neighbors have moved in and brought a watchtower with them, which is erected in her lemon grove.

Her new neighbors are the Israeli Defense Minister and his wife. Soon after the new neighbors move in Salma receives a letter that is written in Hebrew, a language she does not speak. She takes the letter into town to a friend who reads the letter aloud. As she listens to the words, her face slowly begins to break down as she listens to her livelihood and heritage threaten in the name of Israel’s security.

Abbas is an attractive woman, but not in a traditional sense, she has a pedestrian beauty that sells her pain, and history. Abbas has perfected the quietly bereaved archetype; she played similar characters in the Syrian Bride, Satin Rouge, and The Visitor (she can now be seen in Jim Jarmusch’s new film Limits of Control, which I will be reviewing next week).

After receiving the letter from the military, she decides that she would not accept the outcome of the Israeli government cutting down the trees in her lemon grove. Her appeal reaches Israel’s Supreme Court, where the outcome is already scripted.

What makes this movie work is how it approaches Israel’s occupation of Palestinians through the struggle of one woman’s passion to keep her lemon grove. It is clear that Israel has evolved into a dispassionate, hypervigilent State were military decisions of aggression is seen as strength, rather than a weakness, because in the end, Israelis have imprisoned themselves behind the walls they’ve erected to keep out the terrorists.


Grade: A

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