LEGISLATURE'S #1 CLOWN BECOMES MODEL IN TEXAS MASS ATTACKS TODAY
Clownish Brian Boquist, a Republican legislature from Polk County who has had more than his share of ridicule in the press, thought he was being cute by proposing a "knife control" bill in the legislature. Today, a Texas nut took Boquist seriously, it seems, and went on a slashing, stabbing attack at a Texas college. Boquist seems to have missed the point about the specially lethal habit of allowing machine guns to be in the hands of morons. Not one person died in the stabbings of more than a dozen today.
 

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USUAL GANGSTERS SHOW FOR WALMART
The standard set of gangsters showed at the opening of Walmart in Corvallis - the mayor, the Chamber of Commerce, the gazette's usual corporate stooge, and the American Legion. Walmart's traditional assault on the wages and living standards as well as local businesses went unmentioned as the store responsible for 30% of the nation's trade deficit opened. The swapping of living wage jobs at - one example - Albertson's, for minimum wage jobs at Walmart, where employees make an estimated 31% less than their competitors, and cost the public in California alone an estimated $86 million a year in public assistance. $2.6 billion a year go from the federal government to subsidize Walmart's "rush to the bottom". $225 million of that alone comes from free or reduced prices for the lunches of kids whose parents are paid so poorly. These are not new jobs. They take the place of family wage jobs at Walmart's competitors.

 Yet, no one should be surprised to see the city's mayor, the American Legion or the Chamber of Commerce celebrating the loss of wages and jobs. The Chamber has bitterly fought for lower wages (they opposed child labor laws and continue to oppose minimum wage laws), the American Legion has historically been anti worker and last century functioned as the armed wing of the Ku Klux Klan. The Tulsa race riot and its murders were largely the A.L.'s work

To see the mayor in the mix is not shocking for anyone surprising with the history of Corvallis, where the city has done almost nothing for the working population, or for a majority of tenants dependent upon living wage jobs for tuition and loan payments.

As for the 2 Los Angeles runaways who were quoted in the gazette as saying "I feel like we’re a real town now", go back and subsidize Walmart in L.A. instead. You're neither wanted nor contributing here. Leave now. The reason this town is not L.A. is because a majority fought for a community free of LA's crimes and accompanying lifestyles. You are simply parasites, eating the fruits planted and nurtured by others. Go Back.

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AN OPEN LETTER TO GEORGE BUSH, DICK CHENEY FROM A DYING VET
To: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
From: Tomas Young
I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.

I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.

I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.

I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. I did not join the Army to “liberate” Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called “democracy” in Baghdad and the Middle East. I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues. Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every level—moral, strategic, military and economic—Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences.

I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.

I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.

My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.

—Tomas Young

In President Obama's State of the Union address, he expressed his administration's intention to make immigration a priority. Last month, a bipartisan group of senators known as the "Gang of Eight" rolled out a series of principles to overhaul the immigration system.1 Key among their proposed reforms is a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants as well as an increase in border security protocols.

On April 10, immigrants' rights groups from across the country will be joining together for a National Day of Action, calling on Congress to create immigration policy that recognizes the hardships and contributions of new Americans and aspiring citizens. With over 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country waiting for an answer, the "Gang of Eight" has an opportunity to write immigration reform that responds to the needs of everyone.

In anticipation of such a proposal, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) has made immigration reform a key focus of this year's policy agenda. The CBC has formed a task force to address what they're calling the "prison-to-deportation pipeline" and its effects on the Black and brown community. They recognize what we already know — we're stronger together.

Please join us in demanding the "Gang of Eight" write immigration reform that protects the rights of all immigrants. It only takes a moment.

For years, America's broken immigration system has been focused on detention and deportation largely at the expense of our communities. While enforcement drives the political conversation around reform, inflammatory rhetoric attempts to pit Black and immigrant communities against each other as if the terms "immigrant" or even "Latino" can never have a Black face. Economic opportunities for Black folks have not grown increasingly scarce because of competition with undocumented immigrants.9 These tired rivalries are played up in divide-and-conquer power politics to distract us from the work of addressing the real causes of skyrocketing Black unemployment, which include a history of being economically exploited, marginalized and discriminated against.

A focus on border security highlights a fundamental divide in the current immigration conversation. Often absent from immigration reform discussions are the more than three million Black immigrants who comprise nine percent of the U.S. foreign-born population, primarily coming from the Caribbean, North and sub-Saharan Africa. For Black immigrants, arrival often looks very different — many come into the country with some form of documentation, typically a visa. If these documents expire, those immigrants remain in the country undetected and without status. Although these crossings are less controversial, they remain fraught. For these immigrants, increased enforcement translates to an increase in racial profiling — a reality that is not lost on the already hyper-criminalized Black community.

Immigration reform that primarily focuses on enforcement through border patrol dragnets and the use of questionable government databases such as "Secure Communities" — a flawed, high-tech way of tracking immigration violators via fingerprint data procured from every interaction a person makes with Homeland Security in their lifetime — violates the basic promises of fairness in our legal system. Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) has overwhelmingly targeted Black and brown folks through suspect methods that use racial profiling — separating families and continuing a pattern of distrust between our communities and law enforcement.

Demand the "Gang of Eight" propose immigration legislation that includes a roadmap to citizenship for America’s 11 million undocumented immigrants and seeks to reduce the over-reliance on prisons and detention facilities for enforcement.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 — one of the greatest pieces of civil rights legislation introduced in this country — ushered in sweeping reforms of U.S. immigration policy through the implementation and signing of the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965. Prior to this, our laws actively favored immigrants from Northern and Central Europe only. The new law shifted the focus to family reunification, while opening the door to millions of new immigrants from around the world by turning away from race-based quotas and including a provision giving preference to professional skills that were in short supply in the United States. At the time, these reforms were monumental. However, due to the racially-punitive nature of previous immigration policy, a focus on family reunification has created a stratified system where immigration quotas from some countries are higher than others, keeping our communities permanently at the "back of the line."

Under President Obama's tenure, we have seen record-breaking detention and deportations of undocumented immigrants and legal residents swept up under unrealistic deportation quotas for minor traffic offenses, misdemeanors and visa violations. Although Black immigrants constitute such a small percentage of the U.S. immigrant population, they are always in the top ten of most-deported foreign nationals and have the highest per capita deportation level of any other racial group. Truly just immigration reform must address the inefficiencies in the visa system as well as unrealistic quotas introduced in the family reunification sections of the law.

Thanks and Peace,

--Rashad, Matt, Arisha, Kim, Johnny and the rest of the ColorOfChange.org team
Thanks and Peace,  Rashad, Gabriel, Dani, Matt, Natasha, Kim and the rest of the ColorOfChange.org team

DEAR SAVAGE,
I am trying to understand some sexual fantasies I have. They involve having sex with a woman who has a penis. Sometimes I fantasize that my wife grew a penis. The fantasies started when we first tried pegging a few years ago. We recently had our first child and can no longer find the time for such kinky sex. These transsexual fantasies have caused a large strain on our relationship, and I don't understand why I am having them or what I should do about them. I do not want to engage in a relationship with another person, I just want to know if it's normal to have these fantasies.

-Confused but Hopeful

Normal? No, most men don't fantasize about their wives sprouting penises, CBH, so your fantasy isn't normative. But no one's sexual fantasy is. Fantasies are subjective and personal. Some are more common than others—a desire to be spanked, for instance—but even the most common sexual fantasies appeal only to small subsets of people.

Here's what you should do about your fantasies for now: Shut up and fantasize about them. Your sex life has taken a hit because you're new parents; odds are good that your wife doesn't have the time or energy for sex right now without you also asking her to do something impossible (grow a penis) or something risky (give you the okay to get this fantasy fulfilled elsewhere). And considering what that pegging awoke in you, CBH, your wife may be experiencing a bad case of pegger's remorse right now. She may worry where your fantasies will ultimately lead, e.g., cheating or leaving. That's not something a new mom (or a new dad) wants to contemplate. So, again, shut the fuck up and beat the fuck off for now. In a year or maybe two, after your sex life has kicked back into gear, your wife might be willing to either explore your fantasies through role-play games or give you a pass to get with a woman with a dick.
- Dan Savage

Dear Mexican
 Please explain to me why so many mexicanas seem to think it more important to stay home and baby-sit than to attend school (so they may become more in life than producers of offspring). As an educator (lately of students identified as "at risk" for failure in high school), I have faced "absent on account of child care" as the leading excuse for non-attendance and truancy among my mexicana students. Please note that these are not the young women's children; often, they are not even the children of the nuclear family. Consider as well that this is a rare-to-nonexistent excuse among any other student group (in other words, this does not come up among diverse Latina or other populations).
Teach Her

DEAR GABACHO: I'm not really sure what the point is of your question. Are you trying to imply Mexican families don't want their daughters to go to school? I'm hearing in my education circles concern about how Mexican teenage boys are falling behind their hermanas in educational attainment. Do you know for a fact those girls are taking care of kids at home, or did you fall for their excuse by assuming Mexican girls are about as far away from babies to take care of as a Bedouin is from a camel? I'm not trying to deny or excuse the disturbing rates of truancy among Mexicans, among the highest of any ethnic group in the United States, but instead of harping on one particular, imagined cause, how about about attacking the whole enchilada? In "Preventing Truancy and Dropout Among Urban Middle School Youth," a paper in the January 2009 issue of Education and Urban Society by Louie F. Rodríguez of Florida International University and Gilberto Q. Conchas at UC Irvine, the profes identified high truancy rates as a leading indicator of an at-risk student (DUH!) and did what you seemingly don't: Ask the kids why they're truant. They also studied a Boston-area community group that succeeded in reducing truancy among Latinos and African-Americans. The trick? Giving a damn about kids, demanding they and their parents care, and making sure it takes a rancho to get the chamacos to succeed. "Educational research, policy and practice have much to learn from grassroots, community-based organizations that directly battle with the social struggles in urban communities," Rodríguez and Conchas concluded. "Educators must assess the factors and influences within community-based organizations that motivate truant young people as a means to build stronger bonds across institutions."
'- Gustavo Arellano

See archives from preceding weeks here
 

Left: David Aaron Chatman

Mr. Chapman has been arrested on charges of rape and sex abuse. Mr. Chatman was last in the news in 2007, when he was busted as a cheerleading coach for a private team. On the return flight from Florida, he slid his hands underneath the blanket of a terrified teen and fondled her breasts before sliding his fingers into her vagina. He was convicted with the assistance of the FBI. At the time, people raised questions about his hiring, since he "had numerous contacts with the law, including convictions for assault, theft and numerous moving violations in the last decade".

In related news, a Florida (of course) Republican (natch!) chairman has been busted on child porn charges.
 

Right: Gary Lee Hermansen

Mr. Hermansen, of Philomath, has been arrested for stalking. He was arrested 3 years ago in a strange twist of road rage. "A university staff member called dispatch to report a man was trying to give him a traffic ticket. The man told a Department of Public Safety officer he was with the 'Department of State Police' and was issuing a ticket because the OSU van didn't pull into the right lane for several miles as he followed it on Highway 34. When troopers arrived, the man denied saying he was with a law enforcement agency. Gary Lee Hermansen, 60, of Philomath, was banned from campus, warned about contacting OSU staff and told he should call police with complaints."

Left: Randy Arlan Mainwaring

Randy Mainwaring, the bank manager who faked his death and fled to Corvallis to avoid prosecution is back in the news after a stabbing at the prison. He faked his death to avoid prosecution in Florida for trying to set his ex-wife's house on fire, cops say, with her in it. Mainwaring has yet to learn how to handle press relations as his cellmate in prison was revealed to be called Beavis in prison. What do you think they called Mainwaring?

The crime news this week was dominated by tweakers unable to control themselves and religious nuts.

Left: Anthony Joseph Rodrigues Jr.

Mr. Rodrigues was crying uncontrollably when cops pulled him over for driving like he was hopped up on meth, which he was, they say. He told them, the cops say, that he was on a mission to Philomath (where missions go) to serially kill 3 people, including a baby. Cops say he had just walked out of a pawn shop with a Glock pistol and bought ammo at Bimart.

Right: David Howard Cook

Cops say Mr. Cook is just another meth addict looking for free lunches. He was apparently busted for meth and driving while suspended in Troutdale, released and then drove to Albany - natch! - where he was busted for "outstanding Benton County warrants for stealing a car and leading cops on a chase, with charges for "unlawful use of a vehicle, first-degree attempted assault on a police officer, third-degree assault, felony attempt to elude in a vehicle, misdemeanor attempt to elude, felony hit and run, misdemeanor hit and run, third-degree escape, first- and second-degree criminal mischief, reckless driving, failure to perform the duties of a driver involved in an injury accident, failure to perform the duties of a driver involved in a property damage accident, driving while suspended or revoked, parole violation and contempt of court."
Mr. Cook's residence is listed as Philomath.

In the religious nuts- on- a- crime- spree news, an Ohip preacher was found guilty of robbing and killing unemployed guys who responded to job ads on craigslist. A Christian academy student shot his parents in the head after being told he was grounded from video games for 2 weeks. And a Georgia woman and her adult daughter yesterday went to a sheriff’s office to report that the younger woman’s ex-husband had cast a spell on her and her home. All in all, a pretty normal week for the religious wing in the country.

Left: Cooper Neal Myers

Mr. Myers has been busted for domestic assault and strangulation. He is typical of the fugitives from those little Republican holdouts, in this case Roseburg. He was busted there last year for strangulation and harassment, and was busted here for burglary. The latter calls for some leeway. It's how most make their living in these little Republican klaverns. Anyone who gets involved with someone who springs from them should know exactly what they're getting into by now.

Right: Dusty Risland, busted 11 15 16 times since November.

About the Risland Rehab Clinic
Dusty Risland, for whom the Risland Rehab Clinic (see above) is named, is back in jail. Mr. Risland was recently busted for criminal trespassing, criminal possession of a forged instrument (counterfeit $20), felon in possession of a weapon and meth. The Dusty Risland Clinic mentioned in this column is strictly online, consisting of repetitive viewing of the video below, until the technique is mastered. The assumption of the Clinic is that there is a small subset labeled criminals who actually just do not know how to change their adult diapers when they full and are showing up, bewildered, seeking police assistance. That is the only possible explanation a rational person could come to. NOBODY could POSSIBLY be so stupid and inept, as criminals, as people like Mr. Risland pretend to be.

Note: there are several sleazy websites across the country posting mugshots, utilizing photos owned by the public, in the public domain, all run by Portlander Kyle Ritter, which will remove your mugshot for $39 or such from their sites. This is not one of them. Do not send in cash trying to have a mugshot removed. It would just be a waste of your time and your money. Instead, put your time into turning your life around. And your money into your kids.

A woman's zip code shouldn't determine what kind of health care she has access to. Her medical decisions shouldn't be left up to out-of-touch politicians at her statehouse. Agree? North Dakota passed the nation's most extreme abortion ban this week, and it's just one of 300 bills in states across the country aimed at turning back the clock on women's health. Make no mistake: our opponents want to overturn Roe v. Wade, despite the fact that 70 percent of Americans oppose overturning the decision. If you're part of that 70 percent, help us fight back today.

Dear Roy,

They're not even trying to hide it. Here's what North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple said after signing the nation's most extreme — and unconstitutional — abortion ban into law:

"Although the likelihood of this measure surviving a court challenge remains in question, this bill is nevertheless a legitimate attempt by a state legislature to discover the boundaries of Roe v. Wade."

There you have it. Our opponents' goal is to overturn or dismantle Roe v. Wade, despite the fact that 70 percent of Americans oppose overturning it
North Dakota's extreme and unconstitutional six-week abortion ban is a wake-up call to all of us who believe women have the right to make their own personal medical decisions. I'm standing up to say — to shout! — enough is enough.

This bill is one of 300 outrageous bills that would ban or severely limit access to abortion at the state level.

Their ultimate goal is clear: overturn Roe v. Wade and enact a sweeping abortion ban nationwide.

I'm part of the 70 percent of America that opposes overturning Roe v. Wade, and I won't let these out-of-touch politicians get away with their hostile efforts to overturn this critical protection for women.
North Dakota's extreme and unconstitutional six-week abortion ban is a wake-up call to all of us who believe women have the right to make their own personal medical decisions. I'm standing up to say — to shout! — enough is enough.

This bill is one of 300 outrageous bills that would ban or severely limit access to abortion at the state level.

Their ultimate goal is clear: overturn Roe v. Wade and enact a sweeping abortion ban nationwide.

I'm part of the 70 percent of America that opposes overturning Roe v. Wade, and I won't let these out-of-touch politicians get away with their hostile efforts to overturn this critical protection for women.

Women's rights shouldn't be different from state to state. Access to health care shouldn't be determined by your zip code, and medical decisions shouldn't be left up to statehouse politicians. These deeply personal decisions should be between a woman and her doctor — in every state, every county, every town in America.

I believe no woman should be left behind, no matter where she lives — no matter what.

Add your name.

Friday, April 5, through Thursday April 11.

QUARTET: At a home for retired musicians, the annual concert to celebrate Verdi's birthday is disrupted by the arrival of Jean, an eternal diva and the former wife of one of the residents.
STOKER:After India's father dies in an auto accident, her Uncle Charlie, who she never knew existed, comes to live with her and her emotionally unstable mother. Soon after his arrival, she comes to suspect this mysterious, charming man has ulterior motives, but instead of feeling outrage or horror, this friendless girl becomes increasingly infatuated with him
ON THE ROAD: Young writer Sal Paradise has his life shaken by the arrival of free-spirited Dean Moriarty and his girl, Marylou. As they travel across the country, they encounter a mix of people who each impact their journey indelibly
THE GATEKEEPERS:Charged with overseeing Israel's war on terror-both Palestinian and Jewish- the head of the Shin Bet, Israel's secret service is present at the crossroad of every decision made. For the first time ever six former heads of the agency agreed to share their insights and reflect publicly on their actions and decisions

QUARTET- PG-13

quartet

Beecham House is abuzz. The rumor circling the halls is that the home for retired musicians is soon to play host to a new resident. Word is, it's a star. For Reginald Paget (Tom Courtenay), Wilfred Bond (Billy Connolly) and Cecily Robson (Pauline Collins) this sort of talk is par for the course at the gossipy home. But they're in for a special shock when the new arrival turns out to be none other than their former singing partner, Jean Horton (Maggie Smith). Her subsequent career as a star soloist, and the ego that accompanied it, split up their long friendship and ended her marriage to Reggie, who takes the news of her arrival particularly hard. Can the passage of time heal old wounds? And will the famous quartet be able to patch up their differences in time for Beecham House's gala concert?


Trailer


THE GATEKEEPERS --PG-13

gate

It's the real deal, not a simulation or re-enactment. The stark footage of a man being blown up by remote intelligence forces can't help but strike a chord with recent American concerns about government-ordered drone attacks in U.S. cities.

The ruthless efficiency of the killing is the handiwork of Israel's counterterroism agency, Shin Bet. What's remarkable about the inclusion of these images in "The Gatekeepers" is that they are accompanied by commentary from someone once very close to this sort of operation: Yuval Diskin, a former director of Shin Bet.

Even more stunning is what Diskin has to say:
Despite the success of such an action, it takes something from one's humanity to make it happen. That's a recurrent, and haunting, theme in Moreh's cinematic confrontation with Israel's long-term failure to be on a path to peace with Palestinians.

Diskin is one of six past directors of Shin Bet interviewed for this film - speaking for the first time ever - about the history of counterterrorism in Israel. Though they display varying degrees of openness, each man expresses regret that the agency's mandate for decades (spying, making arrests, interrogation and assassination), taken with the expansion of Israeli settlements and virulent opposition to negotiations with Palestinians, has, they claim, unnecessarily intensified the rage of an occupied people.

That regret is something to see and hear from these tough individuals, who occasionally had to stand up to hawkish national leaders demanding Shin Bet be even more aggressive and coldblooded. These interviewees tell many stories, including a scandal surrounding the beating deaths of two bus hijackers, the elimination of a terrorist via phone bomb, and Shin Bet's failure to protect Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin from murder by a Jewish extremist.

Whatever one's political stripe regarding Israel, it's hard to dispute the impressions and perspective of the film's six eyewitnesses.



Trailer

LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE --R

stoker
Stoker is the sort of stylish, cerebral movie that engages your brain instead of your emotions, and yet you're never less than intrigued by the breathtaking visual artistry of this slow-burn thriller. This technically spectacular movie - in Stoker, light and dark matter, and you need to pay attention to the color palette, too - is the work of South Korean director Chan-wook Park, best known for Oldboy, part of the vengeance trilogy.

Stoker is not really about vengeance, though: Instead, it revels in the soul-deep darkness always hidden in the best works of psychological suspense.

The story begins with the funeral of Richard Stoker, beloved father of India (Mia Wasikowska) and husband to Evelyn (Nicole Kidman), who are left rambling around their big old house without much to say to each other. Mother and daughter, we get the impression, have never been close, and tragedy hasn't pulled them together. Evelyn refers to the distance in her marriage to Richard (played in flashback by Dermot Mulroney), and seems to cope best by clinging to a glass of wine. Richard and India shared a stronger bond, and India appears shell-shocked by his death - or is she always so reticent?

Then a stranger arrives: Charlie (Matthew Goode), Richard's younger brother, whom India has never met or even heard mentioned. He's handsome, charming, well-traveled and well-read, but India immediately views him with a heightened awareness and suspicion. Of course, India may be unreliable at distinguishing normal from sinister; the film drops unsettling hints about her. She doesn't seem to have friends and is awfully isolated for a modern teenage girl (most of the time)


Stoker favors generic hairstyles and wardrobe so placing it in time is tricky until one character shows up with a cell phone). India also enjoys hunting (and employing taxidermy to preserve her kills, which decorate her dead father's office). She doesn't like to be touched, but she'll watch in cool detachment as a spider crawls up her leg. She will tell you she is different because she sees and hears what most people ignore. And some sense is telling her Uncle Charlie has ulterior motives beyond merely consoling his brother's family.

For awhile, Stoker is a movie about tension and inaction, about people trying to figure out what's going on in someone else's head. The three main characters circle each other warily, but as the script - written by Erin Cressida Wilson and actor Wentworth Miller, best known for his work as an actor on Prison Break - teases out its secrets, Park offers up deceptively simple but stunning images: a skirt blowing around a girl's legs; a woman's hair melting into waves of grass; blood spatter sparkling against a red wall. Like the rest of this mesmerizing movie, they'll linger in your memory.



Trailer
ON THE ROAD --R

road



It took more than half a century, but Jack Kerouac's autobiographical cult novel of bohemian youth in postwar America has reached the screen in wonderful form.



Brazilian director Walter Salles and Puerto Rican screenwriter Jose Rivera, the team behind 2004's brilliant road movie "The Motorcycle Diaries," build a lyrical mood here. Their film is faithful to the spirit of Kerouac's phantasmagoric prose, creating an elegy to the Eisenhower-era rebels who rejected smothering conformity to seek elusive transcendent truth and freedom.



From the idyll's exhilarating start to its lamentable dead end, the film carries us along for an unforgettable ride. Kerouac's hallmark is an elliptical storytelling style requiring an active audience. Salles' film, while not quite a puzzle, is full of gaps and undercurrents. Like the source novel, it rambles but is never incoherent.



Salles trusts the audience to put everything together, just as the story's characters must do. At the center of the swirl is narrator and Kerouac stand-in Sal Paradise (English actor Sam Riley). Sal is a would-be writer living with his mother, seeking a father figure, and under the sway of his disreputable new friend Dean Moriarty (Garrett Hedlund) based on notorious free spirit Neal Cassady. Sal is fascinated by the charismatic, garrulous roustabout, who seems to know every key member of the Beat Generation, and every backwoods gas station with an unguarded food shelf and fuel pump.

Sal becomes Dean's literary tutor while Dean introduces shy Sal to sex, drugs and bebop. Sal recognizes that his slippery friend's a "con man" while overestimating how long that character trait might remain entertaining. They fly across the nation's back roads like visionary nomads, with Dean's impulsive energy counterbalancing Sal's need to withdraw and observe.



Dean treats the women in his life poorly, bouncing between his neglected wife, Camille (Kirsten Dunst), and his brazen teenage lover, Marylou (Kristen Stewart), reflecting the second-class status of women even among the era's counterculture. A creature of untrammeled libido, Dean also makes time for lovestruck poet Carlo Marx (Tom Sturridge, playing the fictional version of Allen Ginsberg) and an occasional male trick. Their travels bring them into contact with plenty of squares and drug-addled mentor Old Bull Lee (Viggo Mortensen, doing a wicked impression of the mad novelist William S. Burroughs).



Eric Gautier's camerawork captures the film's smoky interiors and wide open spaces with hallucinogenic beauty. The film vividly renders jazz-club hedonism and the eventual hangovers. When Sal and Dean come to their inevitable parting on the streets of Manhattan, the scene is genuinely painful. Sal, who has written a novel based on the experiences Dean provided, is smartly dressed and off to see Duke Ellington with some upstanding new friends. Dean, shivering and shabby, approaches from the shadows to say hello, but is rebuffed like a panhandler. The brilliance of Riley's and Hedlund's performances is that the amount of pain in each actor's eyes is about the same.



There's probably no substitute for reading "On the Road's" incandescent prose. But this filmed interpretation is a very fine version all on its own.

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We need to beat back a bad proposal to expand the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) -- in a hurry. So we're asking the broader Internet Defense League to snap into action next week, especially Monday and Tuesday (April 8th and 9th.)As many of you probably know, our friend (and friend to many of you) Aaron Swartz committed suicide earlier this year, while he was being prosecuted for downloading too many academic articles from the JSTOR cataloguing site. Prosecutors were hanging four decades in prison over his head!

Aaron was charged under the CFAA, a law that passed in the mid-80s, before more than a handful of Americans even had personal computers -- let alone Internet access.

Yet law enforcement interprets this statute so broadly that it claims it criminalizes all sorts of mundane Internet use: potentially even breaking a website's fine print terms of service agreement. Don't set up a Myspace page for your cat. Don't fudge your height on a dating site. Don't share your Facebook password with anybody, ever. You could be exposed to prosecution for a federal crime.

We've been pushing to change this, and have made some progress: Reps and Senators are pulling together a proposal called "Aaron's Law".

But... then last week members of the House Judiciary Committee floated an audacious proposal that would actually expand and harshen certain parts of the CFAA. Think of it as the opposite of Aaron's Law. And we're hearing that it could come up for a vote as soon as next week.

We need your helping mobilizing your visitors as we strive to beat back this awful proposal and to build momentum for Aaron's Law.Reforming the CFAA is a real chance for the US Congress to make laws governing the Internet better and fairer. And it's a chance for the coalition that came together around SOPA to actually pass positive reform. If all of us take action next week, it won't just kill a bad bill, it will help us build real momentum to passing positive change in the wake of Aaron's death.

We are elders of the Maasai from Tanzania, one of Africa’s oldest tribes. The government has just announced that it plans to kick thousands of our families off our lands so that wealthy tourists can use them to shoot lions and leopards. The evictions are to begin immediately.

Last year, when word first leaked about this plan, almost one million rallied to our aid. Your attention and the storm it created forced the government to deny the plan, and set them back months. But the President has waited for international attention to die down, and now he’s revived his plan to take our land. We need your help again, urgently.

President Kikwete may not care about us, but he has shown he’ll respond to global media and public pressure -- to all of you! We may only have hours. Please stand with us to protect our land, our people and our world’s most majestic animals, and tell everyone before it is too late. This is our last hope:

Our people have lived off the land in Tanzania and Kenya for centuries. Our communities respect our fellow animals and protect and preserve the delicate ecosystem. But the government has for years sought to profit by giving rich princes and kings from the Middle East access to our land to kill. In 2009, when they tried to clear our land to make way for these hunting sprees, we resisted, and hundreds of us were arrested and beaten. Last year, rich princes shot at birds in trees from helicopters. This killing goes against everything in our culture.

Now the government has announced it will clear a huge swath of our land to make way for what it claims will be a wildlife corridor, but many suspect it’s just a ruse to give a foreign hunting corporation and the rich tourists it caters to easier access to shoot at majestic animals. The government claims this new arrangement is some sort of accommodation, but its effect on our people’s way of life will be disastrous. There are thousands of us who could have our lives uprooted, losing our homes, the land on which our animals graze, or both.

President Kikwete knows this deal would be controversial with Tanzania’s tourists - a critical source of national income - and does not want a big PR disaster. If we can urgently generate even more global outrage than we did before, and get the media writing about it, we know it can make him think twice. Stand with us now to call on Kikwete to stop the sell off:

This land grab could spell the end for the Maasai in this part of Tanzania and many of our community have said they would rather die than be forced from their homes. On behalf of our people and the animals who graze in these lands, please stand with us to change the mind of our President.

With hope and determination,

The Maasai elders of Ngorongoro District