Amazing article

The New York Times has dropped its "Times Select" subscription nonsense and, as an added bonus, opened up its archives. Which means I can finally link to an amazing article from 2005:

To More Inmates, Life Term Means Dying Behind Bars

Which contains this fascinating insight:

Indeed, in just the last 30 years, the United States has created something never before seen in its history and unheard of around the globe: a booming population of prisoners whose only way out of prison is likely to be inside a coffin.

"Unheard of around the globe"? And precisely what is a "life sentence" supposed to be if it's not life imprisonment? Last, doesn't this undercut the entire argument that life imprisonment is the humane alternative to the death penalty?

I was amazed when I first read this and felt compelled to share.

Never Forgotten

POW's Prayer
By Jean Ray and L. Vancil

Father,
Your own Son was a prisoner.
Condemned, he died for us.
Victorious, He returned to bring us the gift of life everlasting.
Comfort us now in our longing for the return of the Prisoners Of War and those Missing In Action.
Help Us Father;
Inspire us to remove the obstacles.
Give courage to those who know the truth to speak out.
Grant wisdom to the negotiators, and compassion to the jailors.
Inspire the media to speak out as loudly as they have in the past.
Protect those who seek in secret and help them to succeed.
Show us the tools to do Your will.
Guard and bless those in captivity, their families, and those who work for their release.
Let them come home soon.

Thank you Father.
Amen.

(For more information, click here.)

Who is Paul Haggis and why should I care?

Actually, I don't and there's no reason I should. I'm just marveling at how well regarded he is and comparing that to how mediocre his work is. Maybe I'm jealous.

Haggis makes Message Films, and he makes them like that, with capital letters. He's like the noob who discovers the rocket launcher in Quake and that's all he'll ever use. He's like someone who has just discovered all the font possibilities within Word, so he uses all of them.

Consider Million Dollar Baby, written by Haggis. He got an Oscar nomination for the screenplay and the film went on to win the golden guy for best picture. Now I was attracted to see it because a) it was directed by Clint Eastwood and b) I find Hilary Swank to be very gentle on the eyes, even when she's all buffed up as an unstoppable female boxer. That this film should have been great was a no brainer.

Instead, the film literally had no brains and, much worse, assumed the audience had none.

I can't authoritatively comment on the boxing sequences. Some thought they were ludicrous but from a filmmaking point of view they were gorgeous. Tom Stern's photography is above reproach. I was mesmerized.

Then...The Accident. Just like that, with capital letters. Contrived, sure, but here's where the movie goes straight to hell. Swank's character has been portrayed as unstoppable, the sort of person who doesn't believe in giving up. She's a fighter from her toes to her fists to her head. Now...she just quits. I didn't buy it. This change was completely, utterly, and thoroughly not fitting with the character she just oh so carefully crafted.

Worse, she is -- as stated in the movie -- put in this superb extended care facility. And they let her get gangrene and have to amputate her leg? Uh huh, sure. Can you say "automatic malpractice"?

It keeps getting worse. This is in the here and now, in California, and she wants to die so Eastwood must kill her? No, no, no, no! It's a complete lie.

Do you know what it takes to be taken off life-support in the US of A today? You turn to your doctor -- as Swank's character could have -- and say, "Turn that damn thing off."

Done. Switch thrown, plug pulled, adios, senorita, vaya con dios.

In the end, Million Dollar Baby is a huge mess which makes no sense whatsoever. There's no point to any of it. The assisted suicide -- actually murder -- is unnecessary. The end is a fundamental lie.

Haggis returns to this form -- of building a morality tale around a lie or series of lies -- in his Oscar-winning fiasco called Crash. The entire film is contrived, with impossibly over-the-top racist incidents and characters, that come together and equal less than zero. Early on there's a sequence with Larenz Tate and Chris "Ludacris" Bridges that is brilliant. It plays on every racial stereotype applicable at that moment and turns them all into brilliant satire. It made me hope and pray that this was how the entire film was going to go, and that would have been a magnificent thing, but no, it was but a fleeting moment, a golden opportunity lost.

And so now Haggis parades his "technique" and Message again with In the Valley of Elah and by all accounts it's the same crap again: An artificial morality tale spun out of a tissue of slanders and lies.

Who needs this crap?

But this isn't surprising. What's frightening is that he's listed as the screenwriter for the next Bond film. Which only proves that in Hollywood, nothing is sacred.

Maintaining Focus

Mary Katherine Ham remembers September 11, 2001, in visceral terms:

On that day, 19 young men--inhabitants of our country, recipients of our hospitality, beneficiaries of our prosperity, wearing modern clothes to cloak a primitive hatred--turned planes into missiles, passengers into war casualties, and a beautiful Tuesday morning into a day that changed the world forever. They were driven by a radical ideology, a charismatic leader, the funding of villains, and the protection of rogues. They killed 3,000 people that day.

Anna Quindlen remembers to takes advantage of the sixth anniversary of September 11, 2001, to attack Bush. As is the norm, she does so in haphazard fashion, but it was this bit that caught my eye:

Instead of trying to understand and therefore counter the mind-set of those who hate us, and to rally our allies in their communities, American jingoism has produced an ugly strain of anti-Muslim thought and chatter.

For myself, I'm tired of being told that I must try and understand Islamofascists, members of a cult of death. I'm tired of the moral equivalence. I'm tired of hearing the left cry that September 11, 2001, was our fault, that we somehow deserved it. Martin Amis, in remembering the day and describing those who cry for "understanding", writes:

We are drowsily accustomed, by now, to the fetishisation of "balance", the groundrule of "moral equivalence" in all conflicts between West and East, the 100-per-cent and 360-degree inability to pass judgment on any ethnicity other than our own (except in the case of Israel). And yet the handclappers of Question Time had moved beyond the old formula of pious paralysis. This was not equivalence; this was hemispherical abjection. Accordingly, given the choice between George Bush and Osama bin Laden, the liberal relativist, it seems, is obliged to plump for the Saudi, thus becoming the appeaser of an armed doctrine with the following tenets: it is racist, misogynist, homophobic, totalitarian, inquisitional, imperialist, and genocidal.

We are engaged in fighting World War IV. Iraq is not the war, it is a front within a larger conflict. It is no more the entire war against terrorism than the Mediterranean front was the entire conflict during WW II. WW IV is nothing but asymmetrical warfare and it involves ideologies. It is not a case of state versus state, as in WW I, II, and III, but rather it is truly a conflict of civilizations.

On one side is the dark ages proposed by the Islamofascists, as described above by Amis: racist, misogynist, homophobic, totalitarian, inquisitional, imperialist, and genocidal.

On the other is everyone else, which includes Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, etc., and even atheists, and all their attendant values and beliefs.

September 11, 2001, was not the opening shot of the conflict. Islamofascists had been striking against the west for at least 30 years leading up to 2001. September 11, 2001, was, however, the loudest shot. It was and should remain a clarion call, a brilliant flare revealing the true nature of civilization's dark and loathsome enemy.

I do not have to denigrate Islam to identify the radical ideology hiding within its folds; the villains trumpet their sick interpretations daily. I do not have to invent the hideous nature of the enemy; he reveals it daily with the horrific methods he uses and the innocent targets he selects. I do not have to fabricate his motives; I just have to read his own writings, listen to what he says.

This is nothing new for western civilization, or the United States in particular. There were serious doubts we would prevail against Hitler, yet we did. President Kennedy cautioned about the "long twilight struggle" against Communism, and it was a long struggle, yet in the end, Communism collapsed.

I believe we will prevail again. If we quit Iraq, however, victory will be a long time coming because we will have handed the forces of darkness a tremendous victory. And then one day, be it next year or next decade, they will deliver another blow against our country, something that matches or exceeds September 11, 2001. When that happens, if you actually listen to the Islamofascists, you will hear them say how inspired they were by their defeat of the United States in Iraq.

I wish many of our popular icons would look beyond their hatred for President Bush, the United States, and capitalism in general, and see this. I will not hold my breath waiting for them to open their eyes.

Remembering

There's something about date/day anniversaries that always haunts me. It's one thing to recognize the date; it rolls around every year. But when the date corresponds to the day of the week of the event, the memory is somehow stronger.

Thus, when December 7 rolls around on a Sunday, Pearl Harbor takes on greater meaning. And today is the sixth anniversary of September 11, 2001, and it's on a Tuesday, just as then.

The casualties should have been worse. There have been so many complaints about things that went badly that day, yet the simple fact remains that over 50,000 people could have died, yet so many were saved by planning and training, and quiet acts of anonymous heroism.

The office where I work sits under one of Sacramento International Airport's departure routes. There's always something flying overhead. And that morning I looked up into empty, blue, silent skies.

Evil visited the United States that day, and a clear line was drawn. For over 30 years the United States had stood mute and opted to handle terrorism as a criminal act. For the first time we had a president that said no, that this required a stronger response than issuing an arrest warrant.

So many things went wrong that day, and so many things have gone wrong since then. Yet I thank God for President George W. Bush, flaws and mistakes and all, because he knows the nature of the evil we face, and what must be done to destroy this evil. I agree completely with Dirty Harry:

Six-years later I find comfort in just one thing. The one thing that has kept us safe. It's imperfect, this thing, it makes mistakes. But the only effective weapon we have is George W. Bush's determination to completely and forever destroy the ideology that committed this horrible crime. Knowing that as I write this brave men and women are fighting them where they live means something to me. Means everything.

Today, the animals who hit us six-years ago can be found in Iraq. Al-Queda is in Iraq. Al-Queda is fighting and dying to win Iraq.

God bless our President. God bless our troops.

Amen.

Brian De Palma, BDS victim

Right off the bat I have a confession to make: I think most of Brian De Palma's films are crap. They stink, they're horrible, they're ungood and unwell made. When he makes a good one, it's generally very good, but they are rare exceptions. For every good De Palma film there are several that suck. For every The Untouchables there's...well, everything he's made since, and that's been twenty years.

His latest film, Redacted, premiered at the Venice film festival and left audiences sobbing. What is the source material for this inspirational presentation? The story of several US soldiers in Iraq kidnapping, raping, and murdering a 14-year-old Iraqi girl. As De Palma puts it, he read that account and knew he had a story.

Isn't that nice?

On the surface it sounds like a thin re-tread of his snoozefest, Casualties of War. It, too, involved rape, torture, and murder. It painted the picture that one good soldier comes forward to confess and he's the villain to the "military establishment".

De Palma apparently thinks less of the US military than he does of women, no mean feat. At least with Redacted he's close to telling a true story. But he doesn't make any bones about his intent, which is to smear our troops:

I have done something that just cannot be done. You can never say anything critical of the troops.

He also states quite clearly that he believes his film points out the "truth" of what our troops are doing in Iraq:

The movie is an attempt to bring the reality of what is happening in Iraq to the American people.

[...]

The pictures are what will stop the war. One only hopes that these images will get the public incensed enough to motivate their Congressmen to vote against this war.

Will his film point out that the soldiers in question -- those involved in the heinous crimes that inspired his fictional rendition -- were caught, tried, and convicted. The minimum sentence handed down was five years, the longest is 110 years, which I'm pretty sure translates to life imprisonment. I also believe at least one is facing execution. (This reality, by the way, utterly discredits his portrayal of the US military in Casualties, an irony I'm sure he'll miss.)

It's amazing to me that so many filmmakers take the De Palma tack. They see a criminal act and that inspires them to tell a story. Countless acts of common heroism don't. The parade of sacrifices that are quietly made by our men and woman in uniform don't. The mad acts of criminals do. The abusive and criminal behavior of a few attract their eye, while they are blind to everything else. Then, to their shame, they weave tales that imply that the aberration is the norm. (Why am I surprised? They believe how they think and act are the norms.)

A new wave of crap is coming from Hollywood to round out the year. It will be high quality crap. That is to say, it will be well-made, but it will still be crap because most will be based on a fundamental lie. The lie? That the few aberrant members of the military represent the military as a whole.

This is Hollywood's mantra, its creed, its belief. The participants, like De Palma, are clueless and wonder why they are treated with disgust and disdain.

The Smugness of Apple

Steve Jobs danced across the stage today, introducing a new collection of iPods. There weren't many surprises. Actually, were there any surprises?

Well, yes. The prices were surprising. First, wow, what a slap to anyone who ran out and bought an iPhone. A wait of 69 days saves you a cool $200! At $399, the 8GB iPhone begins to look attractive. It's biggest failing, for me, is the inability to create Word or Excel documents. You can look at them, but don't touch, let alone create. This is just a software revision away, but since the iPhone is a closed development environment -- unless you want to hack it open and risk voiding warranties, etc. -- I'm not holding my breath.

Still, even lacking that the iPhone is now a serious contender as Bob's Next Phone. I gave up on Documents to Go on my Treo 650 since it was the source of almost every problem I had on the Treo. Since then, I haven't edited much of anything on the Treo. If the iPhone has some basic editor, something to jot little notes into that will then sync with Outlook, I might be tempted. Absent that, the music and video features of the iPhone aren't enough to stop me from leaping to T-Mobile (I'm currently an AT&T subscriber) and grabbing a Wing (for $100 after assorted rebates).

In fact, on ninth thought, if I do that I'll have $300 for a portable media player (PMP), assuming I want to spend as much as on an iPhone alone. That means the newly revised and re-priced and re-named iPod Classic 80GB model is within range. $250 for 80 gigs is better than great. Off the top of my head I can't think of another PMP that matches that capacity for that price.

For that price and with that capacity I might opt to re-rip my library into Apple lossless format (ALAC) and fit a fair amount of my stuff onto the iPod. Or I can leave well enough alone and bring roughly 90% of my entire library into the iPod. Or I can get ornery, install Rockbox, and re-rip everything into FLAC. Oh, the vast temptations.

Or I can save some money and just get a new 4GB iPod Nano. Leave well enough alone on my file formats, which sound just fine on my system and to my ears, and save $100 in the deal. Oh, I bet Apple is just smug as a bug in the rug seeing me seethe with this many options.

Me, looking at an iPod. Who knew?