I finally saw the Lord of the Rings FOTR movie yesterday, and I just have a few comments. First of all, Star Wars Episode 2. Well, the movie starts with trailers, why shouldn't I? This new Star Wars movie, "Attack of the Clones" (worst subtitle ever!) has me a bit worried. One of the big problems with the entire 2nd trilogy is that we already know how it generally turns out, who lives, who dies, etc. This takes away a lot of the tension that would otherwise be available, and makes the addition of new villains seem somewhat arbitrary (filling a glaring niche, while perhaps necessary is never more than vulgar).

The prospect of getting more of Boba Fett, my favorite character as a kid (and I still have the limited edition action figure I sent away for in exchange for proofs of purchase cardboard and like a buck or two), is certainly attractive, but we already know how he meets his end (in the belly of a giant burrowing sand beast--or possibly a plant, I don't know), and therefore we are deprived of the pleasure of seeing him meet his deserved fate. Also, now suddenly his status seems to have increased dramatically in this prequel compared to what it was in the Empire Strikes Back. In that earlier film, he was just one of many bounty hunters set in pursuit of Han Solo. Now it seems he will be responsible for building the legendary Clone Army and therefore for starting the Clone Wars. How could this be? I thought he was just space trash! Not Saruman the White!

Which should be bring me to Lord of the Rings, but doesn't, not yet. The Star Wars Ep 2 trailer featured some shots of Queen Adimala running around in the old white Princess Leia outfit, which made me happy (and even one of her struggling with some Jabba-esque chains ala Return of the Jedi--but not duplicating *that* infamous outfit, unfortunately), as well as stormtroopers, C3PO and R2D2, and the growth of the Rebel Alliance, so the references to the original trilogy are strong here, and I sense that the script is trying hard to steer towards continuity. The trouble is that this is actually quite a large task. The gaps between what Episode One established and the state of the Star Wars world in Episode Four (the original Star Wars movie) are huge, and from what I've seen of the plot for Episode Two, a lot of effort is being expended (perhaps wasted) in trying to fill them. Even in the trailer, a preponderance of political complexities seem to be weighing down the fun a great deal. This is supposed to be Space Opera, not Gandhi, and that sort of thing has always been the domain of books and documentary series. The first trilogy has a brilliant capacity for merely alluding to the political backstory that helps to form the setting; now Lucas seems forced to provide the details of that backstory, and guess what? There's just too much of it.

Maybe my eye is better educated now, or maybe the new bluescreen matte technology is not as great as it's vaunted to be, or maybe I'm just too cynical now, but I find it really easy to discern cinematography shot on matte backing in high budget special effects films lately. This first consciously occurred to me while watching Waterworld, where some of the scenes felt like those Soap Opera driving-in-a-car shots, where the road is so obviously added to the background that it can only elicit groans of ur-reality. Check out the scene on the bridge of the oil tanker with Dennis Hopper, for instance. I was used to bad effects in lower budget films, but this one had the highest budget ever--I was disappointed. The same thing has been the case for the new Star Wars movies, and in this case (as in Waterworld afaik), this is the product of the state of the art studio, Industrial Light and Magic. Premier equipment (as in Silicon Graphics workstations, Alias Wavefront and SoftImage software), elite designers (*this* is where they all aspire to work), budgets that make Defense contractors drool, and probably free soft-drinks too, all should combine to make a digital image that I as the audience *believe* is real. Shouldn't it? Well, it doesn't. Some of the scenes in these movies are grossly artificial looking. For some reason they usually include Natalie Portman firing a blaster, but I don't know why. The actors just look like they're posing before a bluescreen--maybe it's an effect of bad acting? That might explain the Natalie Portman aspect of it....

Well, it's gotten late now, so maybe I'll write about Lord of the Rings tomorrow.

One of the best parts of the Lord of the Rings: FOTR movie is the computer generated digital imagery. Outstanding is the depiction Mordor's Barad-Dŭr, the citadel of Sauron, vast, looming, swarming with it's inhuman host engaged feverishly in some unspeakable industry. It has to be the greatest movie Dark Tower I've seen (a slot formerly occupied by the Fortress of Ultimate Darkness in Time Bandits). This same kind of Dark Host Assemblage is duplicated (or metastasized) at Isengard, the stronghold of Saruman, around his darkening tower of Orthanc. The bluescreen matte effects are superb here (far superior to those in Star Wars Episode n, but again it may be due to the acting, which in this movie is excellent), and the scenes with Gandalf teetering on the edge of Orthanc watching the nightmare unfolding below him (the gouging of the Earth, the leveling of the trees (huge mistake, Saruman, just wait!), the abominations born into the ranks of Mordor's army) are just about as overwhelming for the audience as they are for the old wizard. Not to mention the sequences within the Mines of Moria, which are all seamless and vivid, and the interpolation of CGI-altered actors with real actors to make them look like hobbits and dwarves among humans (along with innovative camera angles, etc), as well as etc etc. LOTR-FOTR does with inhuman, computer generated armies, what Braveheart or Saving Private Ryan or Gettysburg does with human, real ones.

In short, Weta Digital Limited is making Industrial Light and Magic look like a bunch of chumps here. I hope heads are rolling over at Skywalker Ranch.

Now for some ponderous stuff. The Dark Tower is a classical literary trope extending from chivalric tales, through Milton (Satan's Pandemonium in Paradise Lost), Browning ("Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came", itself from Shakespeare's King Lear), up to the post-printing-press explosion of everything. At some point the symbol of the Dark Tower, once the edifice for unknowable Evil [sic], evolved into a Dickensian structure of industrialization, and this movie is not quite an exception, but the urgency implied, coupled with repeated images of forges and weaponry, evolves the allegory into Rapid Mobilization, and so the Dark Tower becomes an industrial-military edifice; I eagerly await seeing how they handle the necessary parallel on the side of the Good.... But now that I think about it, the commanders of large military forces in Tolkien are, I believe, always represented as influenced by some sort of madness--with the exception of Aragorn if you want to include him. Denethor II, the last Ruling Steward of Gondor (and I get these names from the Enclycolopedia of Arda, not from memory, lest you think I'm one of those LOTR obsessed nutters), was corrupted by power and the Ring like Saruman, likewise his son Boromir, and their ancestor Isildur (who cut the ring from Sauron's hand during the siege of Barad-Dŭr); and I recall Theoden of Rohan as being crazed as well, but I now lack the time to look it up. The point is, all the Hawks in Tolkein have that unstable gleam in their eye, even as the armies of darkness march toward the last remaining strongholds of men. I'll look into it some more, but this seems really unfair and biased. Damn it, some wars are just necessary! I'm annoyed now, so I'll go do something else.

Stories like this are finally certain confirmation that the Palestinians have completely lost their minds. In a state of open warfare, in possession of large caches of explosives, their reported tactic for engaging Israeli forces involves strapping those explosives onto civilians and sending them running on suicide missions toward tanks. I suppose it never occurred to them that they could *throw* the explosives? Or has their desperate thirst for the world's pity actually made them the first auto-genocidal culture in history? Is Palestinian becoming synonymous for Lemming?

Not to belittle the absurdity of it, but I'm reminded of a video game called Serious Sam, in which the player faces a seemingly endless swarm of headless maniacs who wield a bomb in one hand and their head in the other, and run howling (no idea how without a head) in order to blow themselves and the player up. When I played it, it seemed the craziest, most absurd part of a game that was entirely crazy and absurd.

I suppose humanity is destined to one day mirror video games. One time, I jumped in the air, hit my head on something invisible, and a coin popped out. It was my primary source of income before the "Dot-Crash" boss monster ruined everything.

And so I sit and watch Gallery churn, and Gallery watches me. It's the only thing I've ever really been good at.

Video games with bad stories attached (ie all video games with stories attached) are really beginning to annoy the hell out of me. Many years ago, Bruce Sterling, science fiction author and technology observer, gave a speech before a conference of game developers in which he implored them to follow the path of making games from games, rather than attempting to make stories from them (and I attempt to summarize from distant memory here because I cannot at the moment find this speech). Games like Sim City, he argued, were much better for having accepted and embraced their own medium, for becoming games qua games, rather than imitating some other plastic art like movies or books. This would help to ensure all of their futures, he said, his own included. The multimedia aspects of games give them a certain advantage over storytelling that must take place as black ink on white pages, it relieves the audience of having to utilize that most underworked muscle of the brain: the imagination. But people who tell stories for a living, people like Science Fiction writers, are--let's face it--much better at doing it than most (or perhaps all) game developers. A game cannot tell a story as well as a book; a game cannot show a story as well as a movie.

What a game can--and should--do is be a game: provide interaction, establish and govern rules for play, present challenges that must be overcome, etc. One of its most important goals should be replayability, a simple concept: make the game worth playing again after it's been played once or twice. Story games have a much harder time achieving this because the known story stands immediately between the player and the game, becomes a palimpsest that the player, once having experienced it once, good or bad, must now try to either ignore or enjoy again on some level other than simple discovery. Again, some books and movies can provide this; a game, very rarely. A game might have a good story, as in the Myst games, or a game might have a story that frames the games well, as in Half Life, but I've never played a game that had a *deep* story, a story that functions on multiple levels and provides for a different, unique experience on subsequent experience.

I used to have a lot of sympathy for the Palestinian people and their situation. I used to lean in their favor when it came to issues of territory and self-determination. I used to wonder what I would do in their place. Today I still wonder that, but I *know* I would not sponsor, support, and endorse the suicide of my children for the gain of a few lives of the people of my enemies. If I believed myself oppressed, victimized, and at war with an occupying power, I may very well take arms against it, and I would certainly seek to protect my own. But suicide bombings are at odds with the very goal of such a struggle. What would we have left to defend if we sent our children off to kill themselves for such a petty and outrageous gain?

With life, as the saying goes, there is still hope. Give your son a gun and train him in how to use it. Make sure he knows the difference between those who are fighting him and those who have just been swept along. Expect him to act with honor, and to love the things he's defending, and to know their value. And never let him so little value his own life, that he will give it away without a fight, not for any gain in the world.

What's with the French? Who knew they were so Anti-Semitic? I mean, I've spent probably an inordinate amount of time listing the reasons why French people suck, but apparently they weren't satisfied with all those valid reasons and had to develop a new one. Now they're terrorizing Jews, *French* Jews living in France, speaking French, eating snails and frogs and everything.

Once more we observe the hypocrisy of the pompous self-righteousness of the French. A couple of weeks ago, these same French had determined not to provide the US with evidence implicating Zacharius Moussaoui, the alleged "twentieth bomber", calling the American people "uncivilized" for their use of Capital Punishment. Several days later, a psychotic Frenchman shot a bunch of people at a suburban town council meeting, prompting Prime Minister Lionel Jospin to state that he feared the French were becoming more like the Americans. How civilized. Jospin's government happens to be Socialist, an outdated form of Collectivism. How civilized: four of the eight victims killed were members of the local Communist Party; taken as a sample, if half of the victims of a *suburban* town council meeting are Communist, how many Communists are in the room at any given French town council meeting? No wonder--I wouldn't trust the French people to participate in *my* democracy.

Lately, these outbreaks have mainly been young arabs attacking anything remotely kosher--you know the type of guy, every race in every culture has them; so far, 39 arrests, and hundreds of incidents since the beginning of the month. This is nothing new for the French, which hosts Europe's largest Jewish population--around 650 to 750k people: there were over 330 incidents of Anti-Semitism between September 9, 2000 and November 20, 2001. But now I see that most of the Euros are, in fact, apparently, not much in favor of the continued existence of the Jewish people. There is an effort underway in the EU to *sanction* Israel for defending themselves against the suicidal/psychotic cult of Arafat. (This will probably not succeed since the EU wisely requires a unanimous vote of member nations for such things, and the UK, the Dutch, and, surprisingly or not surprisingly depending on your POV, the Germans, are expected to reject it.) Their argument seems to be that military action cannot stabilize the situation and will, in fact, cause more unrest. This is probably true. But the alternative they embrace is diplomacy--diplomacy with a leaderless group of psychopaths whose greatest heroes are the homicidal brainwashed victims of fanatical propaganda willing to blow themselves to pieces as long as it kills some innocent Jews, preferably in a place where such a thing should never happen. Diplomacy with a group of people who sang happy songs and danced around on September 11th. Diplomacy with a culture gone terribly, terribly wrong. I wonder, when that gunman stood up in that French town meeting and starting gunning people down, how many of those present attempted to reason with him...?

Damn it, some wars are necessary.

I admit that I love Star Wars; why should I make a secret of that? It hit me at exactly the right age (six) to make an impact the size of the Tunguska crater. It may be the primary reason I became so obsessed with science fiction several years later (although of course there was Blade Runner too, which I'll happily argue for hours is the far superior picture). But as a formerly obsessed SF fan, I have always known the truth about Star Wars, that it's a collection of SF tropes and homages to older films; that it is most certainly *not* an expression of the mytho-poetic taproot of humanity's origins (or whatever). All that stuff is postmodern-style discourse, fun for stoners and English professors, but bearing very little connection with reality.

Here is a good and entertaining article on that old rip-off and fraud George Lucas. I think most people now realize what a pastiche the work of Joseph Campbell is, and most people are aware of the tenuous connections between it and the Star Wars franchise (and how I wish movies never became "franchises"--a word which will always rhyme with "burger-joint" in my mind), but Steven Hart here lists some of the true sources for Star Wars, facts which fans of science fiction have known from the start.

They have always well known that the city-planet of Coruscant is just Asimov's Trantor, that Tatooine is just Dune, and that the Jedi are just Lensmen (all watered down and heavily abridged albeit, but such is the way of "epic" movies, which just don't have enough time to do themselves justice). This kind of borrowing is SF tradition, especially when it comes to "Space Opera". The genre has always been incestuous; that's part of its fun. The problem with Lucas is that since around 1980 he has disavowed this aspect of his only great work, instead helping to foster all that homeric tradition and Joseph Campbell crap. Why and how could he even deny that Star Wars is less original film than a hodgepodge of ideas and images from his own childhood, from Astounding Magazine to film noir scene wipes? The beauty and magic of Star Wars is that it makes all this stuff work together, that it takes all these various fun toys and builds a fun playroom for them to live in. Is there honestly any greater value to be had from a movie?

Incidentally, and for the record, Star Wars is not science fiction. It is fantasy. You want to argue with me? Go on, argue with me. Also, I believe that if not for John Williams, Star Wars would probably only be a single film--when most people think of it, they first and often only, hear that rollicking, Wagnerian score. In many ways Lucas owes much of his career to Williams (and most of the rest of it to Spielberg).

Hey, how often do you bash on your favorite movies?

Before Arafat was allowed to meet with Powell today, I wonder if they searched him for C4 concealed under his robes. Little, big, eh? Quite the uber-martyr would Arafat then become, and would not the Palestinians love him then? But I suppose that actually taking the meeting serves Arafat in a different way, for he demonstrates that terrorism is now a valid option for coercing diplomatic negotiations. I think I'll go buy some stock in an explosives company.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization, has issued a travel advisory to its members to exercise "extreme caution" when travelling in France and Belgium. (In case you don't know, a great portion of Belgium speaks French--just for the record.) In solidarity, I would like to offer my own travel advisory to all civilized people: please exercise extreme caution when travelling to any place where people speak French. They don't like you, and you shouldn't like them.
Just to reiterate, over 400 incidents of violence toward Jews and Jewish institutions have taken place in France over the past 18 months. On March 31, a synagogue in Marseille was burned to the ground. According to Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal center, media reports there and all across Europe concerning the Middle-East have been one-sided in favor of Palestine, only fostering more hatred and softening public opinion toward those responsible. How long before the picture below becomes a reality?

I'm sick of actors. Who are these people with the big mouthes who believe everybody cares what they think? Why do I keep hearing their voices on the radio, on the television, keep seeing their painted faces fitted with flapping lips expelling their fantasyland opinions? We don't have to listen to the opinions of Kasparov's Rooks and Bishops whenever the chess champion wins a tournament. We don't have to listen to the first violin's views on Third World economics or school violence whenever a new production of The Magic Flute is opened. What could possibly qualify an actor to make recommendations on foreign policy or even guage the merits of a great film?

Everybody has opinions, and everybody has the right to express them (these are, after all, my own), but what makes an actor so convinced that theirs are so important? When it comes to insights on the nature of identity, on fabrication and artifice, then maybe an actor can tell me something I haven't heard before. But when it comes to practically anything else, I would rather hear from anyone else. When it comes to film, I would rather hear from the writer or director or cinematographer or even from its producers before hearing what the actors have to say about it. It's time we paid less attention to actors and more attention to those who are qualified to say what they say.

The best an actor can do--and this is not a common accomplishment among them; I speak here of Olivier and Guinness and other British dudes--the best they can do is create the illusion of effortlessness, to cause the audience to believe that they are who they pretend to be, in a phrase, to suspend our awareness of their essential artificiality. That's it. Nothing more. They cannot, as some would purport, tell us a story. They tell the story in the same way the protagonist of a novel tells a story, by being directed to do so. The cannot, as some (mostly the same ones) would say, "make a difference". Their actions are bound into an extremely finite space, too finite to have much more effect than a crystal bauble on a display case shelf.

It seems the Iraqis actually believe they are hurting us with their pathetic little oil "embargo". It's sad and it's funny at once; sad because the only ones being hurt are the Iraqi people--a great percentage of this oil is exported as part of the Oil for Food program; funny because it's so transparent an effort to link the cause of Saddam Hussein (which is like kill kill kill I'm the boss love me or I'll kill you, etc) to that of the Palestinians, which for some bizarre reason, has the sympathy of much of the world. Like bin Laden before him (and we saw how well that strategy worked out), Saddam wants to make a single Arab people from the fractious, warring multitude of ethnicities and kooky religious sects that compose them, an endeavor too formidable for much greater men than the Loser of Baghdad. If his assumption is that the other Arab nations will therefore come to his aid when the US attacks, he is not only mistaken, but possibly crazy.

The Iraqis are recently, like other Arab nations, attempting to revise their histories (a feat common to their culture but not mightier than the truth), maintaining that Palestinians are kin and kindred, and that attitudes towards them are the same as those of one US state toward another. This would be laughable if it wasn't so outrageous. Where were these Arab brothers when the Palestinians needed a place to live? Where were they when 650,000 Arab refugees sought emigration into their states and were met solely by walls, denials, and wholesale slaughter? And where were they when you, Saddam, were getting your ass kicked by US marines in your own back yard?

The gesture of embargo by the Iraqi dictatorship is trivial and vulgar to the US, and yet another suicidal impulse by a culture determined to remove itself from the Earth.

The funniest thing I've seen in weeks is the new Bin Laden video, proffered up by that al Qaeda propaganda machine, al Jazeera. I wrote recently about matte bluescreen cinematographic techniques and how some of them are about as convincing as soap opera driving scenes; this bin Laden video is about as convincing as a weather girl report. The layer of bin Laden and his loco Mengelish buddy Zawahiri is superimposed over what looks like a cam-corder track of some spring meadow, evidently in an effort to convince the viewer that these two of the remaining stooges are still alive and chilling.

Certainly the makers of this video, whether "a pro al Qaeda production company", as al Jazeera claims, or al Jazeera themselves, couldn't have hoped to convince the movie sfx saturated American and First World audience of its authenticity (unless they have even less understanding of us than I thought), so the goal must be--complete with the ongoing agenda it implies--to fool the local populations within their broadcast range. To what purpose, I can only guess (incite the Big War, etc, whatever, good luck), but to the unintended implication that bin Laden and/or his Tonto are either dead or horribly disfigured or otherwise in no position to star in such a production themselves. Another possibility is that they still hide in a cave somewhere and wanted to conceal that fact from their enemies--hell, I'd be embarrassed too.

Also included in this week's Terrorist Happy Hour is a recording of one of the Sept. 11 hijackers giving a fairly typical farewell address (which seem to be a pre-requisite for martyrdom): "kill Americans", "praise Allah", etc. The goal here seems to be to encourage others to do likewise, which has the implication that the jihad aint going all that strong and that the usual channels for recruitment have all but dried up.

As far as updates on the success factors for the War on Terrorism go, Donald Rumsfeld or Tommy Franks couldn't have done a better job. Good work, al Jazeera! I feel much safer now.

People with British accents tend to sound more authoritative to the American ear than people with any of the various American accents. There's something about that sound that makes us listen more closely, as if awaiting approval or chiding, or as if something important were about to be said. We tend to regard BBC or Sky news as having more authority than say CNN, we assume British actors are more talented than American ones (see my other post today), and we tend to associate sophistication and education with intrusive "r" sounds. Maybe we're just used to disregarding most opinions carried on our own voices, but it's not as if we pay much attention to any other accent speaking our words--au contraire!

We don't generally feel inferior to the British, either. Perhaps we did prior to the last century, I can't say, still servants in our minds to the Empire we rejected, but today our attitudes are closer to those of, say, a rock star towards an old college professor who really opened his mind when he was younger. By and large, the British have become the only foreign culture Americans actually view with respect, but not with a respect born of intimidation. Perhaps the attitude a young man has toward his grandfather might be closer to the mark.

The Brits can differentiate their own various regional dialects and determine all sorts of things about them: city of origin, class, political party, religious upbringing, probable lifestyle, etc, much as an Indian can determine these things from a countryman's surname. Americans can do somewhat likewise to their fellow citizens, but we tend to grant the benefit of the doubt unless the accent is of the deep south or of the East Coast working classes (Boston, Brooklyn, etc), in which case we normally jump to conclusions similar to those a Brit does when hearing a Cockney. The elitist accent in the UK is known as "Received Pronunciation" for some reason, and it is the one generally taught in public schools and universities, the one found in news broadcasts, and the one immigrants to the UK generally learn. (Incidentally, it always seems really weird to me to meet an Asian or Middle-Easterner who speaks English with a British accent--I don't know why, parochialism I suppose.)

Okay, this is getting ridiculous with this Abu Zabidada guy; he's feeding all kinds of nonsense to whomever is interrogating him, and somehow it's getting to the media if not through government spokespersons. First it's the banks, watch out for banks buddy, we're all about blowing them up. Then it's shopping malls, wherever Americans shop, we're gonna pull the cork out of the Dirty Molotov right in front of Macys, just wait--probably wait till after Thanksgiving or something. Now--and it's not that anybody's scaling down or anything--but now it's all about supermarkets, grocery stores, fruit stands and fish stalls, the guy on the corner of 8th and 41st with the juice bottles stuck in ice-bins, yeah those guys are going down, filthy infidels. Next week? (I know because I've got a preview copy) it's going to be phone booths, kitchen cabinets, and the interiors of hot water heaters. Yeah, just wait.

Enough with this guy. Enough with relaying the nonsense that dribbles from him, enough with *worrying* about these losers! For a guy who got his gonads shot off, he should be a little less cocky, hey?

Interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have received a "special, director's cut" version of the introductory sequence to the HBO television series Oz. The tape, officials say, will be used for the purpose of helping to intimidate suspected terrorists into talking, whose fears of American prisons and of what might happen to them there have proven a key tool for interrogators.

"They're scared to death of being sent to an American prison," one Interrogator told an unnamed journalist during a private conversation. "Surprisingly, they're familiar with US movies about prison, and believe the depictions of sodomy, violence, and torture they portray to be accurate."

One of the interrogation techniques listed by The Army Field Manual, according to the Wall Street Journal, and relayed via MSNBC, is "Fear-Up", which "employs 'heavy-handed, table-banging violence, [during which] the interrogator behaves in a heavy, overpowering manner with a loud and threatening voice' and may 'throw objects across the room to heighten the source's implanted feelings of fear.'" The story continues, "One Federal Bureau of Investigation official says likely scenarios include being sent to a U.S. prison, where inmates might view terrorists as 'lower than a child molester.'"

One of the best and most frightening depictions of prison life is in the television show Oz, especially in the opening credits which are set to a threatening, intense jazz track that rarely fails to inspire uncomfortable emotions in people from non-Western countries. Contained in the video are brief images of rape, beatings, and the generally hostile environment of the ficticious Oswald State Penetentiary. Producers for the show, who delivered a version of the opening sequence sans credits that HBO found "too extreme to air", commented that they were pleased to help in whatever way they could.

This is not the first such tactic employed by interrogators in pursuit of information considered vital to the War on Terrorism and to US security in general. Months ago, a special recording was made by the thrash heavy metal band, Slayer, for use by both interrogators and US troops stationed overseas. The song, called "Payback", is a violent celebration of getting even, and includes the line, "Payback's a bitch, motherfucker!" Presumably, it's effect is different for different audiences.

Contrary to the evidence on this page, I do not consistently support Israel under all circumstances. In fact, Israel has typically annoyed and enraged me in the past with it's consistent denunciation and suppression of the works of my favorite composer, Richard Wagner, whom many Jews consider an Anti-Semite. Despite the bodies of evidence both proving and disproving this claim (of which there is an ample volume on both sides), and despite the apparent (and irrelevant but often voiced) fact that Wagner was Hitler's favorite composer (the Nazi nutter might have been evil and a bad artist, but he knew good music), it is undeniable that operas such as Tristan und Isolde and Der Ring des Nibelungen cycle are among the greatest works in the history of music, and have had a profound impact upon all subsequent orchestral composition. In fact, it has been persuasively argued that to a greater or lesser extent, all modern music is either an extrapolation upon or a response to the work of Wagner. For any culture to ignore this work, to actively *suppress* it, is to cheat itself, to rob itself, and is an act intended to *erase* a part of history because it may make some uncomfortable. A word for this kind of thing is censorship, which is a concept typically at odds with the spirit of a true Democracy.

Following the New York Times, CNN ran a story on Thursday with the headline: "U.S. bracing for tough talk from Saudis". According to them, a State Department "official" predicted, "We're gonna get hammered on Israel." [sic]. They have a photograph of an arrogantly grinning Crown Prince Abdullah posted above these words, next to a nervous looking Bush.

The implication that the US is or should be nervous about meeting with and keeping happy the al-Saudi is outrageous. These are the self-elected, pampered descendents of Ibn Saud, a Wahhabi fundamentalist who conquered Riyadh and the Arabian peninsula in 1925 and proceeded to forcefully convert the people there to radical Islam. The al-Saudi later expropriated US and British oil company infrastructure for themselves, tearing up their contracts, and investing the vast majority of its subsequent wealth into their own "royal family", draping their bodies with jewels and gold. Unlike other Arabian states, they have never made even any pretense of democratically electing any of their lowest officials let alone their rulers, and have played a shell game with both the US and their own population concerning where their true loyalties lie, all in a desperate (and probably full time) effort at preserving their power. Lately, they've been channeling money to Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group, going so far as to hold a national telethon complete with buckets of jewels and a Rolls Royce. They finance and encourage schools of Wahhabi Islam, the radical and ultraorthadox sect responsible for much of the ideology that encourages people like Mohammad Atta to buy one-way plane tickets, and Osama bin Laden to shoot preachy videos.

Consider that the majority of the Saudi money comes from the US. Consider that these terrorist-supporting Saudi dictators have been making demands upon the US and her allies for years. Consider that the so-called Bush Doctrine clearly affirms that supporters of terrorists shall be considered terrorists themselves and be held to the same magnitude of responsibility for their actions. For the so-called al-Qaeda, this necessitated the bombing and overthrow of the supporting Taliban government in Afghanistan. Even ignoring for a moment that the great majority of the monsters who hijacked our airplanes on Sept. 11 were al-Saudi Arabs, the simple fact of the Saudis supporting Palestinian terror makes them every bit as culpable as the Taliban, and every bit as subject to the Bush Doctrine.

When was Taliban Mullah Mohammad Omar invited to lunch at the President's ranch in Texas? When was it even conceivable that such a person be allowed in Texas or any US state at all?

We have a classical co-dependant relationship on an international scale with Saudi Arabia. They sell us cheap oil and fill in production gaps made by unpredictable wackos like Saddam Hussein, and in return we give them enough money to put a palace in every vacant lot. They let us base some military on their property in order protect our interests in their region, and in return we also protect theirs. We ignore their anti-American and anti-non-Muslim propaganda with the short-sighted acceptance that it helps maintain Saudi power and control, and therefore the agreements we've made with them. We ignore their sponsorship of terrorism and their insane Wahabbi schools, and in return... what? What are we getting for this again? Oh that's right, in return we ignore the destruction of the World Trade Center, and the killing of thousands of Americans. The deal's not worth it anymore, the relationship has become unbalanced; it's time to dump the Saudis!

Ghazi Algosaibi, the Saudi ambassador to Britain, is also a poet of high regard to Arabs. "Poetry," he said, "is the soul of the Arabs." He may have a point there; here's a quote from his most recent work, a poem called "Martyrs" which praises terrorists, specifically the 18-year-old Palestinian girl who blew herself up in a Jerusalem supermarket:

"You died to honour God's word.
(You) committed suicide?
We committed suicide by living like the dead."

"Tell Ayat, the bride of loftiness...
She embraced death with a smile
while the leaders are running away from death.
Doors of heaven are opened for her."

"We complained to the idols of a White House
whose heart is filled with darkness

A perusal of the poet/ambassador's embassy web-site provides for some interesting reading.

In a press release from late September, 2001, he states, "Saudi Arabia was among the first nations in the world to condemn the terrorist attacks that led to the loss of thousands of innocent lives in the United States. I would like to reiterate this position, and to offer my sympathy to the British people over the loss of hundreds of innocent British lives. Islam is a religion of tolerance and no real Muslim can tolerate such horrendous crimes."

Then in another, from February of this year, he defends Saudi Arabia's support of the Palestinians, saying, "On the economic front, [Crown Prince Abdullah] was behind the idea of the establishment of the two Funds to support the Intifada. The kingdom's contribution to the Fund was the largest out of the Arab states."

Why the double standard?

In a response to a letter by Neville Nagler, Director General of The Board of Deputies of British Jews, questioning the ambassador's poem, Algosaibi replies by listing all the Israeli's he considers to be terrorists. The essence of the reply is: Oh yeah? Well you guys suck too.

Israel has been accused of War Crimes for their actions in Jenin by various Arab, European, and American mouths, a claim of dubious merit but of great political capital. The particular War Laws which Israel is supposed to have violated are those which expect combatants to avoid the killing of non-combatants and the destruction of their buildings. Whether or not Israel is guilty of such remains to be determined by those who feel authorized to do so, but I find it interesting that those decrying Israel for unproven War Crimes ignore the proven War Crimes on the part of the Palestinians. Have not the Palestinians targeted and killed Israeli civilians with bombs that have destroyed their buildings? QED.

This double standard of accusation is indicative of a larger trend: a double standard of expectations. Israel, as a first world Democracy, is held to higher expectations and higher standards of behavior than Palestine, a third world Dictatorship; the more primitive culture is permitted more primitive behavior because, presumably, it doesn't know any better. This is both valuation and validation. In that this is a war for survival, there is a Radical Choice contained in this distinction, namely that greater value is assigned to the more primitive culture, not in any effort to improve that culture, not to help advance it to the ranks of the first world, but rather to preserve it, to help it maintain itself in its present condition. Does this accurately represent the standards, the values of the first world? QED?

Just when I thought the whole of Islamic leadership was beyond hope, I am reassured by a cleric in Iran of all places. According to the National Review, Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, one of the top Shia dudes over there, issued a fatwa in the Iranian Parliament proclaiming, "Suicide terrorism is antithetical to the teachings of Islam, and those who practice it, and kill women, children, and babies, are doomed to eternity in hell. The struggle between the Palestinian people and Israel must be resolved by other means, above all by negotiations."

Surprisingly, this was broadcast live throughout Iran, presumably surprising and upsetting the crazy-ass dictatorship there. Now if only al-Jazeera would report on it....

Donny the biker, his sister Lucy and the pack of cigarettes, the dining room table that stretches into the living room, my girlfriend's house for dinner. I understand that you think I stole fifty cents from your sister Lucy. I'm amazed by that, but I understand it. Because you keep bring it up every time I see you. But you never accuse me, you never just tell me you think I stole fifty cents from your sister Lucy, you have to try to be subtle, you have to try to remind me of it every time, there's never any time I see you you don't tell me about fifty cents somehow. So here's fifty cents. Does that make you happy? Will that shut you up? Here's a dollar, tell you what, here's two. Here's five dollars. You can buy another pack of cigarettes now, a whole pack of gaggers just for you just for nothing for your sister Lucy, just for being a pain in my ass. Is that good enough for you now? Is that good enough now?