Green Zone

Nice action movie directed by Paul Greengrass and starred by Matt Damon. This time Matt is the “chief” at a US marines unit deployed in Irak. Matt is discontent with the fact that the intel he is getting in order to search and find for non conventional weapons, turns out to be of no value. Irak is at the verse of caos and civil war and Matt is to find out why there are internal forces in the US government that dont want to see the reality on the ground. The US authorities want to place in control an exiled iraki without the approval of the different ethnic groups while Saddam’s military is to be dismanteled. Some CIA agents believe that only using former iraki military members will bring calm and control to the streets. Matt will ultimately work to try to contact a influencial ex- Saddam general in order to use him to rebuild the country.

Expect plenty of action, but nothing to be compared to an “Apocalypse Now”.

Angelina Jolie as Mariane Perl

Daniel Pearl was a happy American journalist, from a New Jersey Jewish family, serving as South Asia Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal in Mumbai. He traveled to Karachi, with his french wife and also journalist, Mariane (Van Neyenhoff), to cover the alleged connection between Richard Reid (the “shoe bomber”) and Al-Qaeda.

The movie based on the book of Mariane Pearl, Daniel Pearl’s widow, on the tragic and brutal capture of Daniel in Karachi, the huge port city of Pakistan, in 2002.

Daniel requested an interview with one of the well know and connected islamist militant named Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, on its way to the restaurant were they were to meet, on February the 1st 2002, Daniel never returned and was captured by the The National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty (NMRPS).

Daniel Pearl

Mariane Pearl

Mariane worries about her husband, were later confirmed by a mail she got from the kidnappers stating Daniel was held by Islamic militant who requested the liberation of some Guantanamo Pakistani prisoners and to stop the F-16 military aid from US government to Pakistan, in order to see Daniel back alive.

The original message:

“We give you one more day if America will not meet our demands we will kill Daniel. Then this cycle will continue and no American journalist could enter Pakistan.”

This hotmail message was accompanied by some pictures showing Daniel captured by the terrorists:

Daniel Pearl Captive	Daniel Pearl captive
Daniel Pearl captive	Daniel Pearl captive

Local authorities were alerted and with the time also American personnel from the FBI and the local embassy in order to run a full scale operation aiming for Daniel search and release. Pakistani interior intelligence, (detective Mir Zubair Mahmood) run a city wide search for anyone involved by tracking both the IP (helped by CIA computer experts) of the mail received and the source of the different mobile phone calls that were made from suspects’ devices.

Later on Colin Powell and Musharraf requested the release of Daniel though we all know all efforts led to nothing.

9 days latter Daniel was assassinated.

A video recording was made and released on February 29th 2002, which his captures named it: “The Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl”. In it the terrorist made Daniel said antizionist propaganda while showing images of dead Muslims, together with violent video excerpts from the middle east. At the end of the video, the terrorist behead Daniel.
This barbaric document was sent to the house were Marine resided and latter on got into the internet and the rest of the media.

Daniel Pearl video

He sentenced to death for his participation, likewise, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, allegedly 3rd in command in Al-qaeda, acknowledge that he had personally beheaded Daniel.(“I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl, in the City of Karachi, Pakistan”)

British Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the mastermind of the kidnapping and killing, surrendered to an ISI agent, that concealed him a week, keeping him away from the Pakistani police. Saeed took part in the 1994 kidnapping of westerners in India, later incarcerated and release while doing time in the Indian jail in exchange for the hijacked Indian plane of 1999.

Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

Daniel body was later found on May 16 2002, not far from the place he was held captured, in a grave 30 miles from the city, cut in ten decomposed pieces. The body was found after one of the militants who took actual part in the dismemberment by knife of Daniel, was caught by Pakistani police and confessed his part in the crime.

Daniel Pearl body found

Daniel family created the Daniel Pearl Foundation with the purpose of cross-cultural understanding through journalism, music, and innovative communications.

On may 17 2010, president Obama signed “Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act”, Mariane and his son Adam were present as well.

Angelina Jolie plays Mariane in this almost solo play searching for her husband, while being pregnant of Adam, their child. She will show in the film a desperate woman, worrying for the whereabouts of Daniel, handling the tens of people at her resident handling the investigation. After the drastic outcome of Daniel’s kidnapping and assassination, she would travel to France where she resides till today with her only son.

May Daniel rest in piece.

Vietnam Crucible

Vietnam Crucible is a documentary out from the US Army, totally censored I reckon as a response to the social despair and dis-conform felt in the american streets during this 10.000 days indo china conflict.

The real jewel of this piece of filmography relays on the rich footage of a powerful entity like the us army produced for the Office of  the Chief of Information by the Army Pictorial Center, in a documentary called “The Big picture”. During my many tours through the Vietnam War films and documentaries, I found it hard to find in one piece a really one of a kind wide angle on many of the US Army activities in South Vietnam.

Hueys in Vietnam

The millitary here pulls its best archive images to try to convince the antagonist US public on the necessity of this war and of the wide range of helping missions of US personnel for the benefit of vietnamese army and civilians alike.

This doc will take you through the training centers in the US prior sending the kids to the jungle, what kind of training rookies would go through and the tactics they exercised = no one was prepared to fight in the jungle (like the song says “the real prison is the jungle”), the real enemy of this war together with the booby traps.

GIs in Vietnam War

10.000 days were the days expended in the first war for the US to loose, after the three main victories of WWI, WWII and Korea. From the time the first penny reached french army pockets in colonial Indochina, followed by the delivery of advisors, military trainners and finally red blooded american soldiers as well.

Lebanon

As usual, any Israeli film to be successful in any foreign country has to follow the formula of “try showing Israel as a real villain” and Lebanon is no exception.

Following the steps of Vals im Bashir (2008), a tank squad enters the Lebanon war of 82, as part of a paratroopers platoon. They will enter civil urban nucleus and will treat innocent civils as shit, for we all know israeli soldiers have a secret pact with Satan and they would commit all crimes against human kind (and animal kinds as well)…

Inside the tank

…in order to fulfill this treaty and destroy anything good in planet earth (and possible other milky way planets). Under this state of things, the tank soldiers are depicted as childish, lacking confidence, doubtful and cruel.

The movie has only 3 scenarios: 1 shot of a sunflower field with and without a tank, another inside the tank where most of the movie occurs, and the village through the view of the tank gunner.

Looking for the light

BTW, most of the actors, you guessed it, have not  served in any war or were or are part of any army.

Touching the void

Touching the Void is a 2003 documentary based on the book with the same title (1989 NCR Book Award) written by Joe Simpson.
Both book and documentary narrates the real tribulations of three Brits, two of them mountaineers: Joe Simpson and Simon Yate, and Richard Hawking, during their 1985 attempt on the conquering of an untouched mountain so far then: Peruvian Siula Grande (20,813 ft/ 6344 m.) by its West side.

Big mountain mama - Siula Grande

This peak was attempted by others in the past with no success and was The doc,was actually reconstructing the events by 3 actors representing the protagonists of the real voyage together with the
interviews of the mountaineers. Both Joe and Simon really came back to the famous mountain chain in order to do the documentary.

The Glacier Hell

And this is what really happened:
Joe Simpson, Simon Yate and Richard Hawking parted on 1985 on a climbing journey into the heart of the Huayhuash mountain range. Donkeys take them 5 miles from the base of the mountain and Simon and Joe leave Richard at base camp and the two began climbing the pick, first the rocky slopes, then passing by the lake, geting into the glacier and finally hitting the vertical icy walls of this beauty of nature. Joe leades, Simon folows, as in the old days: one rope connecting both and no staring back. They actually did fairly well on their ascent, though they were surprised of the dimension of the mountain and its peculiar shapes created by the icy snow.

Joe Simpson descending

The ascend took, due to the bad weather, more than the expected and they run out of gas for their stove = they couldn’t melt snow and in order to drink water. Finally the two of them made it into the top, where they could see the other neighbor peaks composing the Cordillera (mountain range) Huayhuash of the Peruvian Andes:
the tallest Yerupaja of 6617 m., Sarapo, Carnicero, etc,…

Joe Simpson during the slow descending

The weather wouldn’t let a lot of space for mistakes for it was very foggy and there was a snow storm while they began to descend the top. Joe was leading the way and on a decisive instant, committed the mistake of stepping forward without actually seeing what was before him and he felt and in consequent broke his leg. In a situation like that, the low temperatures could make your body freeze under the absent of movement.

Siula Grande area map

Mountaineering history was filled with cases of one partner leaving the injury climber behind so the fit one could get some help and go back to the mountain but Simon decided to take Joe on his descend by using a 300 m rope to let Joe slowly slip down hill. During this process, Simon let accidentally Joe slip to fast into the mouth of a deep cliff without knowing it.

Into the frozen cave

There there was Joe, holding with his whole body weight from the rope, watching the cliff and the 60 m of free falling and could not let Simon know what was happening. Simon, on the other hand, was anchored with his feet into a snow hole made with his feet and feeling the stress of the rope fruit of his partner whole wait pending on air, but Simon didn’t know it; what he knew was that his strength to keep the situation as it will soon reach to an end in which he would be left with only two options: either joining Joe in the free falling into the high cliff or cutting the rope so at least one mountaineer could make it and tell the story.

The base of the mountain

Simon made up his mind and extracted his Swiss knife from his pocket and used it. Here is where Joe’s adventure started with the free falling of tens of meters that must have killed him already, during his several days of solo descending though frozen caves, snowy slopes, rocky areas and all without water and a broken leg, very little odds to make it alive.

Through the glacier

In hindsight however, Simon, after descending till the place where Joe felt, he would even looked into it and search for his partner for he it was clear to him Joe could never have made it from that fall and continued towards the camp.

The three Britons + Joe way back on donkeys and rehabilitating

Finally a 2/3 less of body weight Joe will make it into the base camp after three days and five miles, delusional, thirsty to death and cold as hell to joing his two other partners that were preparing to leave the camp after several days of waiting for Joe, convinced Joe died.

Siula Grande + the lake

The film director, Kevin MacDonald, actually took the two mountaineers during the filming days in the mountain and Joe
experienced post traumatic stress syndrome.The film was release on 2004 and made during its first week 96 k usd and a global total of 13 mil usd to date. Touching the void won the Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film at the 2003 BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) Awards and was featured at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival.

Siula Grande map

After news arrived to England of the happenings in the mountain, the climbing community was furious with Simon but these news were not accurate and the real story was cleared out by Joe and Simon and both continue to this day, Joe after 6 surgical interventions, to climb worldwide. Joe always supported Simon on the decision he took at all moments.

Joe Simpson

In 1999, Carlos Buhler (US) and Mark Price climbed the Siula Grande by the west face and made it into the top, returning to the bottom by rappeling. Not many other climbers actually made it into this mountain due, among other factors, to the political dangerous situation created by the Sendero Luminoso (Maoist guerrilla terrorist movement).

“…3 guys will slide into your cell, wrap your ass into that blanket, and I don’t care how tough you think you are or how strong you might be, they are gonna kick your ass over the side of that bed and do bounty of your asshole by sticking a dick in it. So what do you do? I am gonna give you five options you can take: One, you go to the cop, you tell the officer three guys just ripped me off and you come back with the cop and say: that white guy, that black guy, that black guy…these three guys are going to the hole for 30-60 days and then the’ll be back in population, but the administration won’t let you into population for one of these guys associates will cut your ass from A to Z, so they gotta do something to protect you. Right up there on floor 2, there is a place called P.C., Protected Custody, we call it punk city, and there is were you are going to be all your time, and when you are in PC, you are locked 23 of the 24 hrs a day, you got 1 hr for exercise, and that’s it.But I can see a lot of tough guys right here, and when you are ripped off, the first thing you wanna do is to get even and after you cut one of them and you kill him, you are getting life in prison. Number three is deciding to shut up and keeping that to yourself, but these 3 guys have associates and these will also want to rip you off, and the associates of these associates also. Number four is the one that you all are gonna take, in the 10 years I’ve been here, I’ve seen it a thousand times: you are gonna walk around this joint or any joint you may be in, and you’re gonna find the guys that is real quite nobody bothers him and he don’t bothers nobody, he’s got all the respect in the world, you are gonna approach this guy and say hey my man, I got a very serious problem, Can you help me?

And after you …he is gonna tell you yeah, and you’ll see that five minutes after he said yeah,  after he said yeah, like somebody got in the P.A. system and told 1300 wild maniacs not to bother you. And now you’re telling you something, hey, this guy was alright, he got all this pressure off from you, and now he only did nothing, the only thing this guy did was to tell the whole population that you are his property, you are his kid, and when you become somebody’s kid in one of these joints, there are some things you will do: you gotta get up in the morning and get his coffee, you gotta clean his cell, you are gonna wash his drawers and sucks, and if he want some head, you are gonna give it to him, and if he wanna fuck you in your ass, you’ll let him, and if he wanna sell you to another prisoner, he’ll do that too…and he is here over a week, and became somebody’s kid, and did it for over a year,and the pressure of day to day living in one of these stinking joints crushed in it, makes him get into his cell, took his sheet and one around the pipe and another around his dumb mother fucker neck and he hangs himself, so now he is even, he ain’t gotta do that life beat, he ain’t gotta deal with this police and he ain’t gotta put up with his pimp…”

Scared Straight is a documentary from the seventies directed by A. Shapiro and narrated by Peter Falk.
This documentary takes place in the Rahway, New Jersey’s maximum security prison, a well known penitentiary establishment due to its dome on top of the building, visible from many places around.

The producers of Scared Straight gathered several youngsters from bad neighborhoods of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut and took them to pay a visit to the well known prison. The purpose of the visit was to sit the juvenile delinquents in front of some of the most dangerous inmates and try to straighten them so they won’t end up in a cell block.

The youngsters were interviewed right before their visit to the penitentiary in order to tell a thing or two about themselves . They would introduced themselves and explain about their past felonies and what their expectations and plans for the future were. All of the teenagers seemed very amused with breaking the law and getting on with it, were self secure and had low expectations from the future.

The inmates to be, at the time they were conducted into the prison’s strolls and were placed for several seconds inside of a real cell, after they had been eyed raped and verbally molested (“gimme that one over there, I wanna do that one real nasty”) by the real inmates. Now you could tell they were not that comfortable with it, but this was just the beginning of their experience at Rahway.

The real lesson came when the young offenders were placed in a hall filled with high risk, high profile crime offenders: a drug dealer from Westchester County by the name of Mikie C., an arsonist and bomb builder from Bridgeport (Jon Shipiro), a gang member from Jersey City (Jerome Watts) and car thief from the Bronx (Jesus Rodriguez), among others, and life and death were the price they would pay for it. These inmates were the “lifers”, a group of hard core delinquents who made themselves into a program which goal was to deter potentially high risk youngsters to become themselves.

Once in the hall, the lifers would tell their horrific stories and their insides about hell in prison, waving their hands and shouting in order to scare the hell out of the kids, but this was nothing but the real thing, this was not acting, that was the scary part of it, these lifers were telling truths one again the other, no theater. The would explain about their stupid decisions who took them to dead roads and ultimately into the prison they are in, the real crime and hatred school were you don’t want to step. The real punishment are not the walls, the wardens or the conditions, the real hell is: the other humans, filled with depression, anger, hatred and in such high levels, that they need to share it with you, their victim.

After the visit the kids were really scared and were again asked about making that turn in life 180 degrees from that jail: all of them acknowledged to do so so they don’t have to see neither that dreaded place again nor their grotesque tenants.

At the second part of the documentary, after 20 years of lapse, again the cameras visit the once youngster in order to check on their whereabouts, whether the effect of the program was still vivid in their minds and more importantly, whether the program has preventing them from breaking the law. The results were still quite amazing: most of the youngsters then had no families of their own, were law abiding citizens and still kept a solid residue of the first part of the shooting. And I said most, for some were to become long term prison visitors and even find there his old “lifer”. Both teacher and student had failed.

This doc was released in 1978 uncensored, causing a big impact in viewers, the academy (this piece got its ward from the academy in 1979 for best documentary and 1 Emmy for Outstanding Individual Achievement – Informational Program to the film editor, Bob Niemack and another one for Outstanding Informational Program to the producer A. Shapiro) and even the law enforcement community, for many states introduced the scared straight program to many other high risk areas.

Scared Straight was only one of the many juvenile awareness programs for preventing juvenile delinquency and it was hardly criticized by A. Petrosino by gathering data in his study to prove that Scared Straight’s effects on youngsters were just the opposite of what it intended to be: it was in fact attracting the teenagers to commit more crimes.

Everybody knows Jamie Foxx from “Any given Sunday” but not until I saw this stand-up session I became aware that this guy is funny. Jamie repertoire includes many imitations of famous celebrities like Clinton, Nixon, Prince and others, most of them black due to the almost all black public that filled the theater. Nevertheless the main course of this evening was the parody of Africa: its smells, people, music and animals. Not bad at all, though sometimes you could feel some repetitiveness on the punch lines. All and all this was a solid black culture show and enjoyable by all.

People, this is the “real” hurricane that Bob Dylan talked about in his song of the same title, John Arthur Johnson (March 31, 1878 – June 10, 1946) or better known as Jack Johnson or nicknamed the “Galveston Giant”.
This African American fighter, born in Texas, lived during some troubled times where America was ruled and leaded by an all white regime, for which the “free negroes” where to be kept still apart, totally segregated from the white folks, even in the northern cities. Those northern cities, where the white folks have not even cohabited with the African Americans, where extremely anti black. But, hey, congressmen and even the president of the united states, in fact where quoted using prejudice comments, and the papers were not exception. Looks like Lincoln and the fathers of this nation meant “you are free to live where the white folk tells you to”; liberty under today’s understanding was not existent for an African american during the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.

Jack started his career in a world where you couldn’t fight a Caucasian boxer, he had to make himself into the boxing scenario by fighting other African Americans pugilists, which they were actually tougher that their white colleagues. He reached the point where he had no opponent to fight, he won them all.

The white public worked extra hours trying to figure out how no member of the “supreme” white race was as strong, agile and smart in the ring as Jack was. Nevertheless, what really irritated the whites was not only the fact that Jack was becoming rich, and for a black person that wasn’t very common in those days, but it was the fact that Jack Johnson had a taste for white women. Jack commented many times that he is not to tell whom he can be with or not, he is no slave.

He received critics from both whites and blacks. Other African Americans criticized him for being extravagant, not humble,  dressing all those fancy clothes, speeding expensive cars and being all the time surrounded by white women. his own kind thought that this black figure could bring them only harm and tears with the white institutions. And they were not far from what unfolded.

This Ken Burns´s documentary is almost 100% composed of  black and white stills of the time  while some actual and original film footage is also used. Samuel L. Jackson plays Jack Johnson’s voice reading Jack’s diary and other textual sources of the time, mostly papers.  The camera moves around the old black and white pictures of the time to give the documentary a motin effect. Interviews are also part of this feature, where boxing experts and black celebrities comment on the times, Jack and his career.

Mr. Johnson was not a revolutionary, he was simply a man that lived before his time, he was not prejudiced against other races and colors, he just thought to be natural for any individual, to do his will in a free US, especially if you are rich and famous. He would travel the country with his manager and white companions fighting other boxers, most of them black as well and being generously paid for a night fight, what could take weeks to earn to an average colored man.

Jack was a calm, strong and smart fighter and this caught the eyes of the press. This fighter would not storm into the ring aggressively like many Irish boxers; he would take his time to avoid being punished at all time and deceived you, intelligently, to strike you at the right moment. He was undefeated, had a great smile and he was “cool”.
After his all American trip in search for the next contingent ended and he was the all black world champion, he had naturally to face white fighters and this he tried for a long time, being rejected by these, for they were sure they would be defeated and with them, the title would be lost to the “inferior”black race.

In a totally racist white America, by 1902, Jack won at least in 27 occasions, against white and black contingents until, at least, his first real chance to win the world title when he was 24: in L.A., against Jack Jeffries, the younger brother of at the time current World Champion, Jim Jeffries. Five rounds took Johnson to take down Jack Jeffries, at the end of which Jack Johnson said to Jim Jeffries: “I could take you too”. But Jim F. many times admitted that he would never fight J. Johnson for he didn’t want the title to go to a black man. Jeffries would retire to his ranch and hanged the gloves.

Jack ultimately took the World title from Canadian Tommy Burns in Australia in 1908 in front of an almost all white racist stadium. Knowing that the fight will make it to the american theaters, the police  stopped the camera man from continuing filming the fight in the midst of the 14th round, right at he moment were Mr. Johnson was to knock out the whit boxer in order to avoid more white race humiliation. At the age of 30, Jack Johnson was the heavyweight champion of the world. But the white supremacists will not accept his victory arguing that Burns had never held the title and that Jim Jeffries still was undefeated World champion.

Johnson moved to Chicago and started a new period in his live participating in shows in theaters where he would perform doing physical tricks showing his athletic capabilities. Later on, he would find himself other fighters to be defeated until Jim Jeffries agreed to come back to the ring for a $101.000 price and 2/3 of the filmographic rights. The chosen city to hold the fight would be Reno, Nevada, one of the cities where still boxing was legal. Jeffries had to get himself fit to the fight and managed to loose 25 pounds gained during the retirement years at his farm. In return, Johnson made big Jeffrie hit the ground in the 15th round, and later on Jeffrei would declare to his friends: “I could never win Jack Johnson at my best”.

Riots would follow all over the US, started by bitter white folks, taken the lives of many black people. A white fellow would try to assassinate Johnson at his house in Chicago.

The white public and authorities couldn’t digest interracial marriage and passed a bill prohibiting white women slavery and prostitution. The fact that Johnson had some prostitutes as personal companions, drove the FBI to open a case against Johnson, sent teams to look for someone to stand against the champion in a court of law and since they couldn’t defeat him in the ring, the did it in the court: an all white jury agreed (like Bob dylan would put it) and gave him 1 year in prison. Johnson scape and spent some time in foreign countries till he voluntarily accepted to spend the year in an american jail.

I will leave the rest for you to see.

Two links to nowadays issues on the topic of the documentary
1.- At this time congressman McCain presses Obama to pardon black boxer? and right this wrong made in the past.
2.- Judge refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple.
See this extracted from usatoday Posted by Doug Stanglin October 17, 2009:

Louisiana JP has no regrets over denying marriage license

Baton Rouge’s WAFB-TV reports that state Rep. Regina Barrow of the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus has has signed off on a formal complaint requesting that the judiciary commission review the actions of the justice of the peace.
The justice of the peace at the center of the controversy tells WAFB TV in an exlcusive interview that he has no regrets over his actions and would do it again.
“It’s kind of hard to apologize for something that really and truly down in your heart you don’t feel you’ve done wrong,” Keith Bardwell told WAFB’s David Spunt on Saturday.
“I don’t regret what I did and if it ever came up again, I’d have to do the same thing,” Bardwell tells WAFB.
U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., said in a statement Bardwell’s practices and comments were deeply disturbing.
Not only does his decision directly contradict Supreme Court rulings, it is an example of the ugly bigotry that divided our country for too long,” she said.
Louisiana’s governor and a U.S. senator today have called for the ouster of the justice of the peace who refused to marry an interracial couple, saying his actions clearly broke the law, the Associated Press reports.
The state’s Legislative Black Caucus and constitutional rights groups have also called for an investigation of Bardwell or his resignation.
Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal said in a statement a nine-member commission that reviews lawyers and judges in the state should investigate, the AP reports.
“Disciplinary action should be taken immediately — including the revoking of his license,” Jindal said.

Original post:
A Louisiana justice of the peace who refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple last week says he’s no racist but has drawn a sharp rebuke from civil rights organizations in the state, The Daily Star reports.
The couple say they plan to consult the U.S. Justice Department about filing a discrimination complaint.
Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, defends his actions by saying that it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long, The Star says.
“I’m not a racist,” Bardwell says. “I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house. My main concern is for the children.”
Beth Humphrey, 30, and her boyfriend, Terence McKay, 32, both of Hammond, said they tried to get a marriage license last week but were told the JP will not sign licenses for interracial marriages.
“I simply can’t believe he can do that. That’s blatant discrimination,” Humphrey says, according to the newspaper.
Louisiana ACLU Executive Director Marjorie R. Esman called Bardwell’s move both “tragic and illegal,” the newspaper says.
Pat Morris, local NAACP president, says she was shocked to hear that the choice of a spouse is still an issue in the parish.
Bardwell, who has been a JP for 34 years, says the state attorney general told him years ago that he would eventually get into trouble for not performing interracial marriages, The Star says.
“I told him if I do, I’ll resign,” Bardwell says. “I have rights too. I’m not obligated to do that just because I’m a justice of the peace.”

Many critics reviews would go and keep comparing Sasha Baron Cohen’s latest movie with the previews one, Borat. Of course there are similarities between both pieces, they were both obviously done by the same man, similar structures formed of many hilarious sketches that many said would be more appropriate for youtube and that this is not a real movie. In art there is no “real movie” concept, either you belong to one type of films or you don’t, and this the real point, critics may not have enough drawers to classify some films. Bruno is an amazingly hilarious piece of 7th art. It is always surprising, striking and creative. Sometimes this comes in the form of textual jokes such as when Bruno is asking two stone-heads from a PR company what topics are up today in order to attract camera time, the girls mention Darfur and Bruno asks what’s next Darfur, what’s Darfive?

Sasha got a real pair to get into a ultimate fight championship kind of ring and face a red neck public while french kissing his partner in the film; or when Bruno gets into ultra orthodox Jerusalem neighborhood and had to scape in order not to be beaten up by some angry people. In some other occasion he met what seemed to be a Al Akhsa Bridage Martirs member and asked him who could kidnap him. Later on Sasha would get sued by the target of this interview, some kind of non profit organization worker, and would get real life threats by the real terrorist organization, this worker was supposed to belong to.

As I see it, Sasha targets in his film, first and foremost, the gay community, not leaving any stereotype in place. All of us know most gays are not that provocative, wearing huge platforms and being so effeminate. The second target would be, again, homophobic, making it almost anyone feeling that way, leftists and right wingers, westerns and easterners, Catholics and Jews alike.
I couldn’t help myself of not thinking of Zoolander and of Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends. The first one also focuses on a comedy around the figure of a well known gay hair stylist and the second one, around a weird voyage into the real far left behind America, similar to the one to which the two gay “curators” belong to.

About the rated issue of this movie, again we are facing the same dilemma of rating a movie filled with violence, anti ethical behavior, materialism, those of the kind that can take someone life’s into a highway to hell, if this exist. And in the other part of the balance we have a not more than funny 2 sequences of a guy’s penis dancing, I don’t think anyone could see his libido aroused from these two sequences, even homosexuals. Well we well know the hypocrisy in these rating involved.

It is ok if my kid is filled with hatred and violence from a Schwarzenegger movie, but it is not ok he sees a male of female sexual parts, something that we all posses. I will let psychiatrist deal with this enigma while they cry out “clear” when providing a well earned doses of electricity to the people responsible for these ratings.

Louise Osmond and Jerry Rothwell bring up a magnificent documentary around the first single-handed, non-stop, round-the-world yacht race held in 1968, the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race. Two prizes were giving, a golden globe to the man who finishes first in the race, and a 5000 pounds prize for the fastest man, but that was nothing compared to have your name written in the history books. There were no participation requirements, for this race wanted also to award those sailors who were already  at sea on their private round the globe seas sailing adventure, the sailors were to start the race anytime between the 1  till the 31 of October, in order to avoid the winter weather of cape Horn.

According to the written records we have, the first to solo circumnavigate the globe seas was the american Joshua Scolum in 1895 and took him more than 3 years to accomplish with only the help of dead reckoning at his Spray. The difference this time was that it was non stop. For the inspiration of the participants, in 1967, Francis Chichester was knighted by the Queen for his personal adventures and achievements representing the UK and one of the participants, Frenchman Bernard Moitessier will be inspired by Slocum, calling his barque, Joshua. The adventure was filled with dangers and incognitos, for no one knew whether a boat or a human could take it.

Nine were the sailors who started the race, one was the sole navigator seeing back UK coast. The protagonists of the quest were 6 Englishmen (John Ridgway, Chay Blyth, Robin Knox-Johnston, Bill King, Nigel Tetley and Donald Crowhurst), 2 french nationals (Loïck Fougeron and Bernard Moitessier) and Italian Alex Carozzo. All of them were experienced sailors, but Crowhurst; six of them retired in the course of the race, 1 sank and rescued and one committed suicide. The wild South Atlantic Sea,with its five-story waves, each of them so different from the previous one, and foresees nothing about the next one was in great part responsable of this.

The solitude, you, the boat and the sea; The need for outer communication with other humans; Under these conditions you start to better knowing yourself, how do you come out and cope with situations and challenges you were never tested before? You start analyzing your creeds, your family, your country, yourself,…

The nine participants would follow the already abandoned clipper route (after the opening of the Suez and Panama canals): from the UK, south into the Atlantic ocean, to pass the cape of Good Hope, towards Australia, New Zealand, the rest of the Pacific, cape of Horn to enter back into the South Atlantic back Northwards to the UK.
This is the kind of quest not for adventure, fame, prestige or money, is a voyage into isolation and the delicate mechanisms of the mind, a battle which many thought you would finish mentally handicapped, like happened with Slocum, who suffered of metal lapses after his prolonged periods of time in completely loneliness with the waves as sole companions.

Some others thought that if it wasn’t your demons dwelling inside you, it would be the sea who´d finish you, as it happened with Joshua Scolum himself, lost in the seas eventually.

Before getting into the real protagonist of this documentary I think it deserves to mention the most intriguing figure of them all: Frenchman Moitessier. He was so mingled, so united with its maritime environment, so in peace with himself, the boat, the elements,… that right before he had almost accomplished the target and finished the race, at the point where he had already surpassed the cape of Horn and being located at the coast of Brazil pointing towards the Northern UK, he reported to his wife at Paris: “We shall meet again later”. At the time when he was already 7 months at sea and 6 weeks from home, Moistessier abandoned the race and turned his  bow again towards the cape of Good Hope, he was sailing on around the world, … for a second time (another 21.000 nautical miles).

The main character in this piece is an unknown to sea sports fans, Donald Crowhurst, an ambitious, creative and charming individual married with 4 kids, who never really made it in any of the careers he started. This was for him his chance to make it big time, to come back home as a hero, to start a new with 5000 quids, to be recognized. He signed a contract with a local promoter, for which if the race is lost, Donald will have to buy back the boat built from scratch from the promoter, meaning, he will be bankrupted, so for Donald, loosing was not an option.

In order to get some more buzz and sponsors for his voyage, he was convinced to set sail 140 miles into the opposite direction of the race, to the North, and reached the coastal village in a 2 week time for what it was supposed to take him only 3 days, instant deception involved him together with the fact that he sailed without having completed any of his security devices, he expected to have them finished aboard at least before encountering the dangers of the South Atlantic. This never happened and made him realize this was probably his last endeavor. He was expected to communicate with new paper editors any time possible to report about his position, status, etc, in order to publish articles on the Sunday Times…and this is what he did…at the beginning.

Once he reached the South Atlantic ocean, the place that made Blyth and Ridgway retired, made him realized that he would never make it, so he started sending fictitious reports of his whereabouts so, while not moving from the Brazilian coast, could wait to the other two remaining sailors to make it back northward to the UK, and choose when to join them back, without actually ever sailing the whole race. The whole plan though will require to fake a sailing journey of hundreds of days inventing all the info in the logs, something quite challenging and even impossible, for after the race, these notebooks would be thoroughly revised by judges.

To come up with all that fake info and be accurate of every single day, and make it fit.
Right after rejoining the two remaining boats in the race, Tetley and Knox, Donald made up his mind and came to the conclusion that the farse would be discovered and total humiliation was not something he was prepared to cope with. The he wrote is his notebook these words:

“when I was 5 years old, I knew all about G’d, he was an old man who would punish me if I was naughty. By the time I was twenty, I decided there was no reason to expect any assistance from G’d, if he existed at all.”

“Man was avoiding his responsibility by constantly looking to G’d for assistance. The cosmic integral, the sum of man adds up to nothing (Sum?=[0]+[0]).”

“Do we go on clinging to the idea that G’d made us or realize that it lies withing us to make G’d. By learning to manipulate the space time continuum, man will become G’d and disappear from the physical universe as we know it.”

“I have become a second generation of cosmic being. I am conceived in the womb of nature, in my own mind, in the womb of the universe. I was forced to admit that nature forces on cosmic beings the only thing they are capable of: the sin of concealment. It is a small sin for a man to comit, but it is a terrible sin for a cosmic being.”

“I am what I am and I see the nature of my offense. I would only resign this game if you would agree that in the next occasion that this game is played it will be played by the rules devised by my great G’d. It is finished. It is finished. It is the mercy.”

“11:15:00. It is the end of my game. The truth has been revealed and it will be done as my family required it to do it.”

“11:20:14 There is no reason for harmful”

Robin Knox-Johnston took the race after 312 days.

Three videos in Italian, on “The Long Way”, about Bernard Moitessier’s journey around the globe, non stop, 1 full circumnavigation of the earth + 1/3 more till Haiti: