By John Gilstrap
Okay, I’ll start with the apology. When my editor told me that last week was the launch of the front-of-store displays for Damage Control, she was mistaken. In reality, all of the promotional stuff starts next Monday with the launch of a post card to the 1,744 people on my mailing list, followed up the next day (the actual launch day) with a mass mailing of the same post card to Kensington’s 15,000-plus-person list.
If you’d like to be added to the list, send me an email to john at johngilstrap dot com and I’ll make sure that happens. If you want to be removed from the list, there’s a link to that effect on anything you might receive from me.
Forgive me if I seem overly opportunistic, but I’d like to talk to day about what readers can do to most favorably impact the careers and livelihoods of the authors they like. Obviously, buying books is an important first step, but it goes further than that.
Buy on or before the launch date. More and more, the book industry is governed by the numbers. If a book sells well in its first days, it is guaranteed to have a long life in the marketplace. If it doesn’t, life becomes difficult. It’s not just about the money that a book earns. In fact the absolute value of the revenue generated is less important than the velocity with which it is generated. Thus, if there’s an author out there whose book you know you will ultimately buy, you can have a far greater impact on the writer’s career if you pre-order or order in the first week than you can if you wait even two or three weeks after release.
Tell people about your purchase. Even with the retraction of the paper book market and the death of the corner bookstores, word-of-mouth continues to be the number-one source of sales for books. Your post on Twitter or Facebook or Amazon or Barnes & Noble makes a huge difference. And if you don’t like one of my books, please spell my name correctly: G-R-I-S-H-A-M.
Tell your local bookseller. If you’re a merchant, and you’ve got a couple thousand products on your shelves, there’s no way that you can be truly familiar with more than a few. When you hear from a satisfied customer, that voice resonates loudly. This is particularly important for authors who are relatively new in their careers.
If you don’t find a book on the shelves, ask the bookseller to order it. Again, for the first- or second-timer whose books are rarely ordered again after the two or three original copies are sold, these requests literally translate to the life or death of their careers.
Utilize social media. This is an area where I’m still learning my way around the basics. If an author you like tweets something you think is interesting, re-tweet it. Forward it via email. Like it on Facebook.
Write to authors. It’s a lonely world when you tell stories to your screen, and then launch them into the ether. It’s always nice to know that there are real people out there on the other end of the writing equation.
So, what have I missed?
Thursday, May 31, 2012
MATRIXIDE, PART 2: EX MACHINA
-It is nine minutes shorter;
-It has much, much less talking.
Admittedly, the rather exceptional heights of the freeway chase scene in Reloaded isn't remotely matched by anything anywhere in Revolutions; even the only decent-sized fight scene in Reloaded, the famous Neo vs. Army of Smiths sequence, is better than its companion moment in the finale, when the entire arc of this grand, vasty saga culminates in a fight sequence that is, honestly, kind of boring; while Reloaded mostly held its own despite how much the wire-fu aesthetic that The Matrix so effectively popularised had become old hat even as early as 2003, just four years later, Revolutions runs splat into the issue that by the end of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, there pretty much wasn't anywhere else to take the style, and from there it was all so many people hanging about in the sky, zapping towards each other at high speeds with arms and legs in photogenically poised combat positions.
The point being, Revolutions averages out to be a mildly better film than Reloaded, mostly on account of being neither as good nor as bad in its peaks and valleys. As reasons to see a movie go, that's not a very good one, so let me try again: in the history of loud, messy movies with way over-the-top CGI excess, Revolutions is particularly lovely to look at: its effects have aged considerably better than a great many other films from around the same time, including, weirdly, its own immediate predecessor, which I take to have something to do with a slightly longer time in post-production.
Now, Revolutions, being as it was conceived and produced right at the same time as Reloaded, and meant to be viewed as the second half of a single grand arc, doesn't function as a stand-alone story all that well. In essence, it's the payoff from the situation presented at the end of the second film: the underground city of Zion, last human enclave in a ghastly future world ruled by machines, us about to be overrun by the armies of those same robots; the only hope, and it is thin and nobody even knows why they're meant to be hopeful, is if Neo (Keanu Reeves), "The One", can use his extraordinary control of the artificial world called the Matrix to find some means of stopping them. The only problem is that the closing moments of Reloaded, in which Neo learned a great deal about his own powers and many discomfiting things about the Matrix and the real world, left him in an indescribable fugue state, almost like he has found a way to bridge the world of flesh and computer in his own body. So before anything else can happen, his close allies Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) must find him within the Matrix - or within a place that is not quite the Matrix itself, as it turns out and the new insights we get into how this simulation works doesn't make any rational sense if we're still thinking in terms of science fiction, which is why I'm content to say that this film is where the franchise enters the world of outright fantasy - and bring him back to life, in time for him to head right to the heart of the machine's enclave while the Zion citizenry prepares for a desperate pitched battle that has the merit of being big and massive even if it is rather too kinetic for it to be 100% easy to follow the action in any more specific sense than, "it is good when the squid-looking robots blow up".
The massive central war sequence, which resembles nothing else in the Matrix universe, is certainly the most diverting part of the film; it's not, I should hasten to point out, nearly as entetaining as the freeway sequence in Reloaded - though it is longer - by the simple virtue of being less original: in 2003 there were already a fair number of sci-fi battle sequences that resembled this passage in the abstract, and certainly there have been a great many more since then, while the particular physics on display in the freeway chase have still not been copied or even referenced.
On the other hand, the war sequence involves none of the three principals, just the many assorted minor figures who were introduced rather blandly in Reloaded, with the the hope that we'll thus be invested in their fate when this moment roles around. I didn't find this gambit to work out, personally: it's hard enough to feel much empathy for a blank slate like Neo or Trinity, given a huge chunk of screentime and several big emotional scenes, let alone people like Jada Pinkett Smith sleepwalking through what feels like a particularly long cameo. But that is the exact opposite of the point I was making, which is that by virtue of keeping us separate from the central trio, this battle sequence also keeps us separate from the arch symbolism that hangs around them like a cloud.
Because, in case you managed to miss the little hints, Revolutions makes it undeniably clear that Neo is a messianic figure, echoing though not directly mapping onto the ascension and transcendence of Christ. How this hangs together with the philosophical worldview of the first two movies isn't entirely clear to me, though I assume I could read one of the many books or websites that get all excited by the Wachowski's musings if I really wanted to know. But the overt religiosity of this finale doesn't seem to gel with the broader spiritualism of the first two; it remains the case, however, that the primary moral force in these films is neither Christan nor the vague Buddhism of the first movie, but an emphasis on the freedom of the individual to choose their own actions, which isn't incompatible with either. I am saying, I guess, that the films end up being a grab-bag of philosophical impulse and not a coherent system of thought at all, and this is very much in keeping with how the first two functioned, but given the intense focus on Christ imagery in the last third of the movie, it feels like it should be more consistent than it is.
What I will say in the film's favor is that, however much all of this sucks the narrative energy away (just like in Reloaded), I admire the Wachowskis's commitment to their bloviations - whatever else is true of the Matrix trilogy, it cannot be accused of selling out or compromising. It's as urgently personal as any other blockbuster property of the 21st Century, and while the movie the siblings made is not remotely the film I'm interested in watching - a climactic battle with the psychotic Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) that was more of an ingenious, boundary-smashing setpiece like the first film had and less of an allegory would have been nice, for starters - but it's certainly the movie they wanted it to be. That's a special thing, even if the results are powerfully foggy, and far more invested in undernourished philsophy student games than in science-fiction, world-building, or action storytelling. By which I mean, I might actively dislike Revolutions, but at least it's because the film's ambition went so far awry, and not - emphatically not - because it was as shy on ambition as just about everything else with a budget that size made in America.
Modern Land Art on Google Maps
The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) is currently holding an exhibition on Land art, "capturing the simultaneous impulse emergent in the 1960s to use the earth as an artistic medium and to locate works in remote sites far from familiar art contexts". The exhibition runs until September 3rd.
Even if you can't get to MOCA to view the exhibition then you can still view an accompanying interactive application that maps key artworks in the exhibition. Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974 uses Google Maps and Google Street View to pinpoint the original locations of the featured artworks.
For each artwork it is possible to view a satellite image, or a Street View image where available, of the artwork's location. It is also possible to view a photograph of the work of art in situ overlaid on top of the Google Map or Street View.
Do you ever get freaked out at night?
We've talked about living alone and seeing movies alone, but what about sleeping alone...Read More >
Wes Anderson movies
Our friends saw Wes Anderson's new movie Moonrise Kingdom this week and said it was wonderful. (It has also been getting rave reviews.) Have you seen it yet? But my favorite Wes Anderson film was...
Read More >
Read More >
MATRIXIDE, PART 1: A STEAMING LOAD
My thanks to everyone who voted in my recent "Fill In My Blockbuster Gaps" poll. Because nature and my OCD abhor a vacuum, before I review the film that won, I'm going to start out by reviewing the film that came before it, or else I'd have a gap in my review index that would itch like a rash till I filled it.
Many, many people love The Matrix. I am not one of them - I enjoy it well enough, but it doesn't loom very large in my memory - nor was I in 2003, which is where our story begins. For it was in that year that two of the most heavily-anticipated movies of the 2000s were released, having been shot together as a single production, in the grand tradition of Back to the Future, Part II and Part III. I refer, of course, to The Matrix Reloaded from summer, and The Matrix Revolutions from autumn, undoubtedly the biggest sequels of that year outside of the mammoth The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King - yet another "sequel" that was shot as part of a single, multi-film year of production. Things were more barbaric then; now, of course, we enjoy the elegant simplicity of Marvel Studios always making movies all the time without a pause.
But back to The Matrices. If you were of a certain age in 2003 - and I happen to have been at exactly that age - the sheer volume of hype in the first third of the year is almost impossible to describe; The Matrix Reloaded was The Event Movie of the summer. On the other hand, the vacuum of anti-hype in the months separating it from its sequel is almost as impressive: The Matrix Revolutions had gone from being one of the big movies of the fourth quarter to being, instead, something of an obligation: and while I know many people who dutifully went to see it opening weekend (it was a great big hit, though smaller than Reloaded), I don't recall a single one of them actually looking forward to it in anything other than a utilitarian, "I have to see how it ends" sense, kind of like people going back to a show they stopped watching just to see the series finale.
The difference, of course, is Reloaded itself: not, I guess, one of the worst sequels that has ever been put in movie theaters, and not, for me, one of the most disappointing - like I said, I wasn't the biggest Matrix fan in the first place, so my own expectations were fairly muted. But damn, is it ever a grind.
The Matrix, it is assumed you will remember - another tradition of sequels in the '00s it fulfills is to not bother with even a single sentence of recap - is the computer simulation where most of humanity resides some 200 years in the future, enslaved as sentient batteries for the uncountable number of machines that have long since taken over the Earth. Only a small population of homo sapiens is free of the Matrix, living in a subterranean city called Zion, doing all they can to free as many other humans as possible; this, in effect, was the entire plot of the first movie. The situation in Reloaded finds the machines having just about finally run out of patience for the Zionites, and thus launching a major attack to destroy the human enclave once and for all. And so it falls to the heroic crew of the Nebuchadnezzar, one of the ships in the armada fighting for human liberation in the metal caves under Earth's surface, to find a way to stop it: the mysterious, sagelike Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), love interest Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), and especially Neo (Keanu Reeves), who Morpheus believes to be "The One", the human being whose ability to manipulated the Matrix from within is so profound that he along can save humanity from its doom. That, anyway, is the short version.
The long version would probably set my keyboard on fire. Because, as everybody knows, Reloaded is the talky, plotty Matrix film, the one that takes the relatively stripped-down scenario of the first picture (a man whose world is a computer simulation can fight like a batshit crazy wire-fu motherfucker) and lards it up with so much mythology, philosophy, and crazed world-building that you don't even know what to do with it. The standard line is thus that it is the movie that spoils all the fun of the first Matrix film, by bogging down the slick, action-heavy narrative of that movie with lots and lots and lots of exposition that is inordinately dense, according to both definitions of the word "dense".
I'm not about to break with the standard line. What is elegant and interesting about The Matrix is that its structure is, in effect, a video game tutorial turned into a feature film: the plot entirely overlaps with Neo's leaning how to manipulate the Matrix, meaning that exposition is the story, and since Neo learns by doing, all of the action in the film is exposition, and the whole two-and-a-quarter hours is an extended information dump disguised in technologically innovative fight slow-motion fight choreography. That's a pretty darn nifty way to build a movie, from where I'm standing, and it would seem like the sensible thing to do with a sequel would be to use the fact that we now understand the way things work - we've learned the game mechanic, if you will - the Wachowskis, the sibling pair whose very personal baby The Matrix is and always was, could just treat themselves and us to an explosion of ever-heightened and crazily inventive fights that go out of their way not to be bound by the rules of physics.
But that's just not what the Wachowskis found interesting. Instead, they latched onto Morpheus's vague spiritualisms from the first movie, and expanded them into a massive worldview that symbolically reflects several spiritual systems in our own reality, and has them spelled out in exhaustive, miserable detail. This is why I hate Reloaded more than it probably deserves, much like I turned on Michael Haneke after Funny Game U.S.: it's a lot easier to stomach willfully cryptic, half-baked (emphasis, in this case, on "baked") philosophisin' when you assume that the filmmakers are just having you on and using it as goofy filigree; the moment it becomes clear that, no, that's actually what they mean, and what they want you to take away from their movie, tha's when it becomes quite vexing. Say what you will about how thoroughly George Lucas destroyed his universe with the prequels, but at least he didn't try to make Jedism a coherent, layered philosophical system whose explication is the sole point of the movies (instead, he just pissed all over himself by inventing psychic space germs).
That's it, really: I do not object to Reloaded being so fucking full of talking, scene after scene after scene (criminally, the film's great big climax is: something like 10 minutes Neo chatting with a grumpy old white dude with a beard, about inscrutable esoterica). There are plenty of talky movies that are just great. It's that everything they talk about it so insipid, the kind of "life, man, what's it mean?" stuff that is fine for propping up your gaudy sci-fi action thriller but surely not deep enough to actively replace the action, which is precisely what has happened here.
Oh, and there's also one of the most wildly misconceived sequences in 2000s cinema, in which Morpheus gives an inspirational speech to the people of Zion that culminates in a momentum-slaughtering five-minute long rave intercut with a deliriously awkward sex scene staged and shot by people whose interest as filmmakers has never had anything to do with human sexuality
The damnable thing is that, scattered throughout the agonisingly long slog, there are some truly excellent moments: Neo's fight with a small army of Agent Smiths (Hugo Weaving and several CGI Weaving clones) - Agent Smith being the sentient program who, after the events of the last movie, has developed a self-guided will and a really nasty mean streak - is a terrifically fun bit of wire-fu, maybe the last truly great fight scene in that style that so very quickly wore out its welcome in the early '00s; and then there is an epic-length car chase that involves some of the most crazily ambitious camerawork and choreography of any fight scene in the modern era, including the one moment in all of Reloaded that's as wildly creative as the first movie was most of the time, imagining what it would be like to have physical fights in a simulated environment: choreographing a pair of fighters who have the ability to become immaterial in the blink of an eye; though being immaterial doesn't just mean that the good guys can't hit them, they also can't hit the good guys, or stand on solid ground. There are some jaw-dropping moments playing around with that idea. And then the whole thing culminates in the very best bullet-time shot in the picture, as two giant trucks slam into each other. And it is good.
But moments that are aggressively cool like that, even in the tawdry, shallow way of popcorn adventure movies, are exceedingly rare: mostly, this is a film of self-serious ideas presented at great length, and that seriousness infects every inch of the film, from the acting (Fishburne is particularly unbearable in his way of Stating every line rather than delivering it) to things like the imperious cinematography and brooding sound design: this is a movie that has journeyed exceedingly far into its own ass, and is delighted to be there. More power to the Wachowskis for trying to do something serious and thoughtful within the limitations of populist cinema, but surely it could have been watchable in the process? Christopher Nolan wasn't really a thing yet, but his 2010 Inception is everything Reloaded needs to be: confusing, and far less intelligent than it's convinced that it is, and obsessed to distraction with exposition, and fun. Fun, apparently, is too much to expect from a Keanu Reeves movie about fistfights.
But back to The Matrices. If you were of a certain age in 2003 - and I happen to have been at exactly that age - the sheer volume of hype in the first third of the year is almost impossible to describe; The Matrix Reloaded was The Event Movie of the summer. On the other hand, the vacuum of anti-hype in the months separating it from its sequel is almost as impressive: The Matrix Revolutions had gone from being one of the big movies of the fourth quarter to being, instead, something of an obligation: and while I know many people who dutifully went to see it opening weekend (it was a great big hit, though smaller than Reloaded), I don't recall a single one of them actually looking forward to it in anything other than a utilitarian, "I have to see how it ends" sense, kind of like people going back to a show they stopped watching just to see the series finale.
The difference, of course, is Reloaded itself: not, I guess, one of the worst sequels that has ever been put in movie theaters, and not, for me, one of the most disappointing - like I said, I wasn't the biggest Matrix fan in the first place, so my own expectations were fairly muted. But damn, is it ever a grind.
The Matrix, it is assumed you will remember - another tradition of sequels in the '00s it fulfills is to not bother with even a single sentence of recap - is the computer simulation where most of humanity resides some 200 years in the future, enslaved as sentient batteries for the uncountable number of machines that have long since taken over the Earth. Only a small population of homo sapiens is free of the Matrix, living in a subterranean city called Zion, doing all they can to free as many other humans as possible; this, in effect, was the entire plot of the first movie. The situation in Reloaded finds the machines having just about finally run out of patience for the Zionites, and thus launching a major attack to destroy the human enclave once and for all. And so it falls to the heroic crew of the Nebuchadnezzar, one of the ships in the armada fighting for human liberation in the metal caves under Earth's surface, to find a way to stop it: the mysterious, sagelike Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), love interest Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), and especially Neo (Keanu Reeves), who Morpheus believes to be "The One", the human being whose ability to manipulated the Matrix from within is so profound that he along can save humanity from its doom. That, anyway, is the short version.
The long version would probably set my keyboard on fire. Because, as everybody knows, Reloaded is the talky, plotty Matrix film, the one that takes the relatively stripped-down scenario of the first picture (a man whose world is a computer simulation can fight like a batshit crazy wire-fu motherfucker) and lards it up with so much mythology, philosophy, and crazed world-building that you don't even know what to do with it. The standard line is thus that it is the movie that spoils all the fun of the first Matrix film, by bogging down the slick, action-heavy narrative of that movie with lots and lots and lots of exposition that is inordinately dense, according to both definitions of the word "dense".
I'm not about to break with the standard line. What is elegant and interesting about The Matrix is that its structure is, in effect, a video game tutorial turned into a feature film: the plot entirely overlaps with Neo's leaning how to manipulate the Matrix, meaning that exposition is the story, and since Neo learns by doing, all of the action in the film is exposition, and the whole two-and-a-quarter hours is an extended information dump disguised in technologically innovative fight slow-motion fight choreography. That's a pretty darn nifty way to build a movie, from where I'm standing, and it would seem like the sensible thing to do with a sequel would be to use the fact that we now understand the way things work - we've learned the game mechanic, if you will - the Wachowskis, the sibling pair whose very personal baby The Matrix is and always was, could just treat themselves and us to an explosion of ever-heightened and crazily inventive fights that go out of their way not to be bound by the rules of physics.
But that's just not what the Wachowskis found interesting. Instead, they latched onto Morpheus's vague spiritualisms from the first movie, and expanded them into a massive worldview that symbolically reflects several spiritual systems in our own reality, and has them spelled out in exhaustive, miserable detail. This is why I hate Reloaded more than it probably deserves, much like I turned on Michael Haneke after Funny Game U.S.: it's a lot easier to stomach willfully cryptic, half-baked (emphasis, in this case, on "baked") philosophisin' when you assume that the filmmakers are just having you on and using it as goofy filigree; the moment it becomes clear that, no, that's actually what they mean, and what they want you to take away from their movie, tha's when it becomes quite vexing. Say what you will about how thoroughly George Lucas destroyed his universe with the prequels, but at least he didn't try to make Jedism a coherent, layered philosophical system whose explication is the sole point of the movies (instead, he just pissed all over himself by inventing psychic space germs).
That's it, really: I do not object to Reloaded being so fucking full of talking, scene after scene after scene (criminally, the film's great big climax is: something like 10 minutes Neo chatting with a grumpy old white dude with a beard, about inscrutable esoterica). There are plenty of talky movies that are just great. It's that everything they talk about it so insipid, the kind of "life, man, what's it mean?" stuff that is fine for propping up your gaudy sci-fi action thriller but surely not deep enough to actively replace the action, which is precisely what has happened here.
Oh, and there's also one of the most wildly misconceived sequences in 2000s cinema, in which Morpheus gives an inspirational speech to the people of Zion that culminates in a momentum-slaughtering five-minute long rave intercut with a deliriously awkward sex scene staged and shot by people whose interest as filmmakers has never had anything to do with human sexuality
The damnable thing is that, scattered throughout the agonisingly long slog, there are some truly excellent moments: Neo's fight with a small army of Agent Smiths (Hugo Weaving and several CGI Weaving clones) - Agent Smith being the sentient program who, after the events of the last movie, has developed a self-guided will and a really nasty mean streak - is a terrifically fun bit of wire-fu, maybe the last truly great fight scene in that style that so very quickly wore out its welcome in the early '00s; and then there is an epic-length car chase that involves some of the most crazily ambitious camerawork and choreography of any fight scene in the modern era, including the one moment in all of Reloaded that's as wildly creative as the first movie was most of the time, imagining what it would be like to have physical fights in a simulated environment: choreographing a pair of fighters who have the ability to become immaterial in the blink of an eye; though being immaterial doesn't just mean that the good guys can't hit them, they also can't hit the good guys, or stand on solid ground. There are some jaw-dropping moments playing around with that idea. And then the whole thing culminates in the very best bullet-time shot in the picture, as two giant trucks slam into each other. And it is good.
But moments that are aggressively cool like that, even in the tawdry, shallow way of popcorn adventure movies, are exceedingly rare: mostly, this is a film of self-serious ideas presented at great length, and that seriousness infects every inch of the film, from the acting (Fishburne is particularly unbearable in his way of Stating every line rather than delivering it) to things like the imperious cinematography and brooding sound design: this is a movie that has journeyed exceedingly far into its own ass, and is delighted to be there. More power to the Wachowskis for trying to do something serious and thoughtful within the limitations of populist cinema, but surely it could have been watchable in the process? Christopher Nolan wasn't really a thing yet, but his 2010 Inception is everything Reloaded needs to be: confusing, and far less intelligent than it's convinced that it is, and obsessed to distraction with exposition, and fun. Fun, apparently, is too much to expect from a Keanu Reeves movie about fistfights.
Introducing Google World Wonders
World Wonders is a new project from Google that allows you to take a virtual trip around 132 of the World's most famous historical and cultural sites. The sites includes historically important locations, such as Stonehenge and Pompeii and also natural wonders, such as the sandy dunes of Australia’s Shark Bay and the rock domes of Yosemite National Park.
Google World Wonders uses Google Maps, Google Street View and Google Earth 3d models to explore these 132 historical locations. Each location also includes YouTube videos and photographs from Getty Images. Information about each location is also provided by the UNESCO World Heritage Centre.
Google World Wonders also includes a great Education section with downloadable resources for history and geography students and guides for primary and secondary school teachers.
Via: Google: Official Blog
Brazillian Real-Estate on Google Maps
These days I rarely get excited by real-estate maps but I do love Epungo. This Brazilian real-estate map truly is a thing of beauty.
The map includes a radial and polygon search tool that allows the user to closely define the area that they wish to search for properties. The search results can also be refined by using the slide controls to define the price, number of rooms and the floor area.
None of these features are exactly new to real-estate maps but Epungo has brought them together in one gorgeous package. I also really like the step-by-step walk-through of the search tools that the site offers when you first load the map.
hellos, hair curls and oh what a hurry!
Today started so beautifully – sunshine! It feels like such a long time since I woke up to bright sunlight, but it's probably only been a few days. I've had another brilliant, busy day in a brilliant, busy week and my house is in a state of disarray and so this is just a quick hello! I can now do pin curls again (my thumb is all better) so I look forward to doing some hair and makeup posts as promised. There is so much I want to post about! But first, I am getting ready for an exciting photoshoot I am doing tomorrow. It is with the most amazing things, and I'm so looking forward to it – and to sharing it with you! x
BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (1978) TV Guide Art by Byrd
ADDENDUM: Thanks to Space: 1970 reader/Galactica blogger "aficionadofan," here's a link to the painting on artist David Byrd's own site.
BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (1978) TV Guide Art by Byrd
ADDENDUM: Thanks to Space: 1970 reader/Galactica blogger "aficionadofan," here's a link to the painting on artist David Byrd's own site.
STARSHIP INVASIONS (1977) International Theatrical Posters
STARSHIP INVASIONS (1977) International Theatrical Posters
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
An Indie Author’s Checklist – A Look Behind the Curtain of OZ (Post #1)
This is post #1 in a blog post series that I hope you will find interesting—things that I have learned on my indie author journey. Since I’ve been fortunate enough to be published by HarperCollins and Harlequin Teen, I can see and appreciate the differences in what I will be doing as I self-publish. I’m discovering what my houses do behind the scenes for authors on the e-book front and realize that when I become an indie author, I will have to make choices on how to expand my distribution and retail visibility—ways my traditional publishers did for me without me knowing it.
My first recommendation for any indie author is to do your research on what’s involved. It’s not simply writing a story, editing it well, spending some coin to format and cover it, and uploading it onto Amazon and expect readers to find you. You first have to put out the best book you can, because quality will help you build a readership. Secondly, there is a business side that detracts from your writing time and you must be aware of how time consuming this can be. You won’t be able to load your book up and have readers flock to find you. It takes time to build a virtual shelf of quality work and expand your distribution. That’s why I wanted to share my experiences so you can research what will work for you and not spin your wheels, trying to gain traction.
This series of posts are intended to jumpstart your research, but for the purposes of discussion, I will lay out the decisions I had to make as I began. I’d spent time researching and building service provider contacts. I already had an infrastructure in place where I had an online presence, blogs, twitter accounts, Facebook pages, and many other sites that I have grown my online presence. A new indie author would not start where I did. They’d have to catch up and that takes time and money to set up your promotional foundation. This post is not intended to start from scratch. I’m sharing my experiences, starting from a spot where I already had insights into the industry. I hope what follows will help any author build on their expertise.
For me, the process started with me making decisions on which service to upload my books into after I’d done my initial due diligence into self-publishing. I knew I would upload to Amazon and B&N. They provide comprehensive systems that make the process easy and their reach encompasses most of the e-books being sold today. So realize that if you upload to Amazon Kindle and B&N Nook, you are probably reaching 60-70% of the digital books being sold. In a quickly changing world, however, the shift in technology could change this dynamic, but for now I’m comfortable with my digital offerings being on these two sites. For many established authors, who want to step foot into the indie world, this might be enough. But it’s not enough for an indie author with dreams of finding another way to make a living and who might be starting from scratch.
A traditional publisher uses its name to aggregate digital books to retailers and provides the latest offerings in a bundle. They support and build an infrastructure to get their books into as many viable venues as possible, to get books into the hands of today's online readers. An indie author is on their own to figure out how to expand their reach and what to promote, but traditional houses have resources en masse with staff to support that effort. For an indie author to learn what works—and to grow what they know— they must navigate uncharted waters of Distributors and Retailers that are willing to allow self-published authors or small houses to have the same access as larger publishing houses.
I thought it would be interesting to break down what I’ve learned into five posts and create a future page of resource links on my FRINGE DWELLER blog for indie authors that I will maintain for myself and to share. My hope is to demystify the process of self-publishing so authors can make informed business decisions on how to get their work in the hands of readers directly. Ultimately, this will become a comprehensive “how to” book on author promotion that will cover various topics from branding and online presence, to press kits and resources, with practical tips on distribution. This indie process has educated me and will continue to do so.
But in doing this, I’m also realizing what my traditional houses have been doing for me and appreciate their efforts. I’m hoping to maintain a balance that works for me where I can still have projects through traditional publishers, but reap the benefits and gain experience with being an indie author for certain projects. Sustaining my online presence and growing my name recognition will hopefully be a benefit and a WIN-WIN for any house I work with as I self-publish. By expanding my reach, I can also give my agent more to represent.
Even authors who have no plans to self-publish can gain an appreciation for what goes on behind the scenes beyond your desk, your publisher, and your friendly retailer—because today's readers have many ways to discover books outside the brick and mortar stores.
Here are the bullet point topics I will cover in this blog post series:
1.) Introduction (Post #1)
2.) E-Book Retailers – A Checklist Place to Start (Post #2)
3.) Distributors & Library Sales (Post #3)
4.) Retailers with Volume Restrictions or Limited Access (Post #4)
5.) Conclusions & Introduction to My Resource Page (including review sites receptive to indie author books by genre) (Post #5)
Please share your questions and topic suggestions that you hope I will cover so I can target the focus of my series. I’d appreciate your input.
In the mean time, I hope you will indulge me in a little blatant self-promotion for my first ever self-published offerings.
ONE AUTHOR'S AHA MOMENTS (92-page POD, e-book) is geared toward aspiring authors and has an emphasis on the Young Adult genre. These writing tips may also be helpful to experienced authors and those who write other genres. My advice comes from my personal experiences on writing fiction for adult and teen markets and what has worked for me. Topics include: Young Adult fiction themes, voice, and characteristics; how to create characters editors look for & give them a unique voice; plot structure that even a non-plotter can love; how to hook your book; the writer’s life, goal setting, editing, book promotion and more.
.jpg)
My first anthology of short stories—SEX, DEATH & MOIST TOWELETTES (e-book)—is now available. It's a mix of stories from crime fiction noir to paranormal, with my brand of dark humor. As a teaser for anyone not familiar with my adult paranormal writing, I’m releasing DARK KISS (e-book) as a single short story from the anthology for a discounted price.
My first recommendation for any indie author is to do your research on what’s involved. It’s not simply writing a story, editing it well, spending some coin to format and cover it, and uploading it onto Amazon and expect readers to find you. You first have to put out the best book you can, because quality will help you build a readership. Secondly, there is a business side that detracts from your writing time and you must be aware of how time consuming this can be. You won’t be able to load your book up and have readers flock to find you. It takes time to build a virtual shelf of quality work and expand your distribution. That’s why I wanted to share my experiences so you can research what will work for you and not spin your wheels, trying to gain traction.
This series of posts are intended to jumpstart your research, but for the purposes of discussion, I will lay out the decisions I had to make as I began. I’d spent time researching and building service provider contacts. I already had an infrastructure in place where I had an online presence, blogs, twitter accounts, Facebook pages, and many other sites that I have grown my online presence. A new indie author would not start where I did. They’d have to catch up and that takes time and money to set up your promotional foundation. This post is not intended to start from scratch. I’m sharing my experiences, starting from a spot where I already had insights into the industry. I hope what follows will help any author build on their expertise.
For me, the process started with me making decisions on which service to upload my books into after I’d done my initial due diligence into self-publishing. I knew I would upload to Amazon and B&N. They provide comprehensive systems that make the process easy and their reach encompasses most of the e-books being sold today. So realize that if you upload to Amazon Kindle and B&N Nook, you are probably reaching 60-70% of the digital books being sold. In a quickly changing world, however, the shift in technology could change this dynamic, but for now I’m comfortable with my digital offerings being on these two sites. For many established authors, who want to step foot into the indie world, this might be enough. But it’s not enough for an indie author with dreams of finding another way to make a living and who might be starting from scratch.
A traditional publisher uses its name to aggregate digital books to retailers and provides the latest offerings in a bundle. They support and build an infrastructure to get their books into as many viable venues as possible, to get books into the hands of today's online readers. An indie author is on their own to figure out how to expand their reach and what to promote, but traditional houses have resources en masse with staff to support that effort. For an indie author to learn what works—and to grow what they know— they must navigate uncharted waters of Distributors and Retailers that are willing to allow self-published authors or small houses to have the same access as larger publishing houses.
I thought it would be interesting to break down what I’ve learned into five posts and create a future page of resource links on my FRINGE DWELLER blog for indie authors that I will maintain for myself and to share. My hope is to demystify the process of self-publishing so authors can make informed business decisions on how to get their work in the hands of readers directly. Ultimately, this will become a comprehensive “how to” book on author promotion that will cover various topics from branding and online presence, to press kits and resources, with practical tips on distribution. This indie process has educated me and will continue to do so.
But in doing this, I’m also realizing what my traditional houses have been doing for me and appreciate their efforts. I’m hoping to maintain a balance that works for me where I can still have projects through traditional publishers, but reap the benefits and gain experience with being an indie author for certain projects. Sustaining my online presence and growing my name recognition will hopefully be a benefit and a WIN-WIN for any house I work with as I self-publish. By expanding my reach, I can also give my agent more to represent.
Even authors who have no plans to self-publish can gain an appreciation for what goes on behind the scenes beyond your desk, your publisher, and your friendly retailer—because today's readers have many ways to discover books outside the brick and mortar stores.
Here are the bullet point topics I will cover in this blog post series:
1.) Introduction (Post #1)
2.) E-Book Retailers – A Checklist Place to Start (Post #2)
3.) Distributors & Library Sales (Post #3)
4.) Retailers with Volume Restrictions or Limited Access (Post #4)
5.) Conclusions & Introduction to My Resource Page (including review sites receptive to indie author books by genre) (Post #5)
Please share your questions and topic suggestions that you hope I will cover so I can target the focus of my series. I’d appreciate your input.
In the mean time, I hope you will indulge me in a little blatant self-promotion for my first ever self-published offerings.
ONE AUTHOR'S AHA MOMENTS (92-page POD, e-book) is geared toward aspiring authors and has an emphasis on the Young Adult genre. These writing tips may also be helpful to experienced authors and those who write other genres. My advice comes from my personal experiences on writing fiction for adult and teen markets and what has worked for me. Topics include: Young Adult fiction themes, voice, and characteristics; how to create characters editors look for & give them a unique voice; plot structure that even a non-plotter can love; how to hook your book; the writer’s life, goal setting, editing, book promotion and more.
.jpg)
My first anthology of short stories—SEX, DEATH & MOIST TOWELETTES (e-book)—is now available. It's a mix of stories from crime fiction noir to paranormal, with my brand of dark humor. As a teaser for anyone not familiar with my adult paranormal writing, I’m releasing DARK KISS (e-book) as a single short story from the anthology for a discounted price.
UKRAIN'T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT
The pitch: three young Americans are in Europe - Chris (Jesse McCartney), his girlfriend Natalie (Olivia Taylor Dudley), and her recently-dumped BFF Amanda (Devin Kelley). In what is, unquestionably, the film's most effective sequence - sneakily, it's the very first thing that happens - we see these three tourist their way around great cities of that continent, shooting themselves having fun on their smart phones and thereby obliquely pointing out that despite its pedigree, Chernobyl Diaries isn't technically a first-person, found-footage movie, and that it could in fact look worse than it does if it had been (though Jesus, it looks bad). It is a light, trivial, smallish sequence, and it captures in charming detail the feverish energy of being enthusiastic and young and just a bit stupid - Natalie at one point declares to the folks back home, with great joy, "We're at the Tower of London!" while standing in front of what is quite unambiguously the Tower Bridge, but maybe that's a forgivable mistake, and I have no idea if we're supposed to notice it or not.
Anyway, it's enough to make the gang pretty easy to like right from the get-go, and that turns out to be useful since it's the last time we're apt to like any of them. The story properly begins when they arrive in Kiev, where Chris's older brother Paul (Jonathan Sadowski) has been living the flippant life of an ex-pat for some time now. It's he who comes up with the rather poorly-received idea that instead of heading right to Moscow (where Chris plans to propose to Natalie, because there ain't nothing so romantic as the Kremlin), they should go on an "extreme tour" to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster site - or rather, the abandoned town of Prypiat, just outside of Chernobyl, but given how much energy the film has to spend defining for its audience what happened at Chernobyl, I suspect that a film called Prypiat Diaries wouldn't have attracted an audience outside of hardcore Ukrainian documentary fans, and they would end up being disappointed.
Paul, you see, knows this spectacularly colorful fellow named Uri (Dimitri Diatchenko), who has been doing Chernobyl tours for five years now, so the four Americans, plus another couple - Australian Michael (Nathan Phillips) and Norwegian Zoe (Ingrid Bolsø Berdal) - all pack into Uri's military surplus van for what is meant to be a quick trip in and out. Only, the Ukrainian government has apparently decided to crack down on these little radiation playdates, for Reasons That Are Mysteriously Kept Secret, and by the time Uri has snuck everyone in through the totally undefended back road, there's just enough daylight left for a short tour followed by a return to the friendly, radioactively stable confines of Kiev, and if something awful happened e.g. a mysterious Something destroying their engine, that would be awfully bad for everybody. And so it happens, and so it is.
To be fair, Chernobyl Diaries never quite makes it clear what is the exact nature of the beings lurking around - well, duh, there are beings lurking around - they're heavily implied to be former Prypiat residents turned into cannibalistic mutants from the fallout, but that's never clarfied. So the good news is, you aren't obligated to view the movie as a tremendously offensive trivialisation of one of the all-time worst nuclear disasters in human history. Just encouraged to do so.
That said, tasteless is by no means the worst thing about the movie: almost every single element puts in at least a fighting argument for that title, in fact. The characters, who are stupid beyond belief, and also largely shitty, especially Paul (whose arc consists of bullying everyone into doing what he wants, and then feeling bad that he did so - we are allowed to assume that this exact dynamic has happened throughout his and Chris's whole life, which is not called "character development" so much as "chronic sociopathic behavior") suck; the acting sucks, though not as bad as the characters; the production values really, spectacularly suck, because Chernobyl Diaries is some kind of asinine hybrid of cheap digital horror of the Paranormal Activity breed - for as has been heavily mentioned in the marketing, PA auteur Oren Peli is this film's co-writer and producer - with, y'know, actual narrative filmmaking. This is a singularly unfortunate choice, because part of the appeal of the found-footage subgenre is that it's an excuse for having dodgy lighting and worse cinematography in a place that makes narrative sense. But when all the visual shortcuts of that style, including whiplash-inducing POV camerawork and forced, awkward editing (so many fades to black, and none of them work) are used in the service of a movie with normal shot set-ups and scene construction, it just looks cheap. Maybe good enough that if it were a DTV picture, we could overlook it, or at least only snark about it a tiny bit, but as a significant release in proper movie theaters, it's simply unforgivable for anything to look this bad without any purpose other than, "I'm Oren Peli, and this is what I do". Not that Peli directed; that honor falls to visual effects artist Bradley Parker, who has absolutely no interesting ideas at all, though he stages the one really effective jump scare - a new and intriguing number called the Spring-Loaded Bear - well enough, I suppose.
But this is all routine "lit with flashlights and boosted gain on the camera" low-budget stuff, and the result isn't atmospheric so much as it is muddy and illegible. It's about as scary as trying to read a book with your cell phone as a flashlight.
So, in addition to looking like hell, Chernobyl Diaries presents us with a slow build (good) to a lot of running around and screaming (bad), with absolutely no rules governing the creatures' behavior other than that they should be wherever it will cause the actors to jump and be shocked. The rules governing the protagonists' behavior, meanwhile, seems to consist of "determine which is the absolute most stupid direction you could possibly head in, and then head there", over and over again. And this is also something that the seasoned horror fan has to start ignoring or suffer forever, but it's such a massive problem in this film, from the second that Uri decides on absolutely no logic at all to go chasing wolves in the middle of the night, abandoning the relative safety of the van, up to the final chase scene, where the dwindling survivors invariably head down and into the dark patches because... the cannibal mutants don't know their own home turf well enough to find them, maybe? Because it is better to fight strange, inexplicable humanoid beasts in tight, gloomy corridors than out in the open with moonlight? Frankly, I don't know, and that's probably a good thing: if I did, then I'd be as intelligent as a character from Chernobyl Diaries, and if that were the case I'd deserve every bit of what I had coming.
2/10
Top Ten Fantasy Football Busts To Avoid In 2012
My top ten busts to avoid for the 2012 fantasy football season. Why am I writing about fantasy football in May? That's my own business, you go mind yours (after you read this). Feel free to let me know what your busts are for 2012.
1) Maurice Jones-Drew. RB. Jacksonville Jaguars. My distaste for MJD is largely personal. When he condemned Bears quarterback for not being tough for sitting out the second half of the NFC Championship game two years ago despite Cutler's knee later being revealed to be badly torn, and despite pulling up lame himself late in the Jaguars' season, what he needed to do was apologize immediately. This year MJD is already creeping up as far as number 4 overall on many ratings, but I think you'll suffer if you use a high first rounder for him. He's grousing about his contract and has a history of pulling up on his team in non-competitive season. As no one believes Jacksonville will be competitive this year, let someone else waste a top five pick on this aging mighty might and take someone safer.
2) Rob Gronkowski. TE. New England Patriots. A lot of winning in fantasy football has to do with predicting which players will outperform their ranking and draft position for that year, not reacting to what they did last year. Gronkowski helped a lot of people win cash last year, and I think a lot of people will use a super valuable second round pick to grab him this year. Let 'em. Keep piling up top tier running backs in those rounds and come back for a Tight End later. This guy is kind of a strange duck. If you do a Google image search on Gronk you see him doing a lot of things besides football, and I have a growing feeling it's going to catch up with him. The Evil genius who runs the Patriots has no compunction about tossing any player (besides Tom Brady) under the bus and bringing in the next man up. I think Gronkowski is too risky for a lot of reasons to take as high as he will be going.
3) Matt Stafford. QB. Detroit Lions. How quickly they forget. Matt Stafford has a great fantasy season last year. he may have another great fantasy season this year. Or they may scrape him up off the turf week one and everyone who drafted him as high as he's set to go will be playing Josh Freeman against you when you meet head to head. If that's a chance you're comfortable taking this is your guy. Of course, any NFL quarterback can be injured any week, and statistics say most of them will be, but Stafford has a permanent meniscus injury that can't be operated on or healed with rest. The next time that knee pops out he may be done for good. Or he could throw for 5,000 yard and 40 touchdowns. But my opinion is if you want to go QB this early just go the extra mile and get one without a history of injury.
4) Jermichael Finley. TE. Green Bay Packers. Somebody in Green Bay, or several somebody's, don't really like Jermichael Finley. Which would be alright if some of those somebody's weren't throwing him the ball. There was a lot of grousing about Finley at the end of last season that didn't hit the national media very hard, but he's not respected by his teammates. And Aaron Rodgers is not hurting for targets, especially with Jordy Nelson virtually replacing Jennings and Finley in a lot of games. If you didn't have to take Finley with a fifth round pick he might be worth taking a chance on as there will be literally dozens of touchdown catches to go around in Green Bay this year. I just don't think Finley will be getting many of them. There's a rich crop of Tight Ends this year. Avoid this bum.
5) Andre Johnson. WR. Houston Texans. WR1 is an essential position to fill on your roster, and if you look at the top of the WR rankings this year it's a little hinky. After Calvin Johnson you can't convince me Larry Fitzgerald, Andre Johnson, Greg Jennings, and Roddy White all aren't facing the potential of having bust seasons for different reasons. I don't like any of them with a first or second round pick, so I'd advise skipping a wide receiver in rounds one or two and take running backs, or a stud quarterback if you want to go that route, then jump in in round three with someone like Brandon Marshall or AJ Green to anchor your wide receivers. I think they have equal, if not better chances of having a better year than the four I mentioned. In particular I think Andre Johnson is just too hampered by injuries and the Texans too reliant on Arian Foster to consider him worth the second round pick you'll need to give up to get him. Pass.
6) Frank Gore. RB. San Francisco 49ers. Sure, this guy is probably going to make everyone's potential bust list. With good reason. He's old. He got a huge contract. The 49ers acquired vulture supreme Brandon Jacobs. They have drafted a running back to replace him three years in a row. And after all that Gore just keeps putting up numbers. Because of that he should get the benefit of the doubt, but this is the NFL. When you go, you're gone, and this could be the year Gore is gone. he's dropping in the rankings and in mocks and should fall some more, but fantasy players have a habit of drafting older running backs like Gore out of habit. If you want to do that make sure he's fallen to at least the fourth round. That's right, fourth.
7) Roy Helu. Running Back. Washington Redskins. I actually like Helu a lot. But Mike Shanahan is nuts. he has that nuts face. Avoid this nut. Fantasy players have been operating on the past record of him picking out a running back and running him until his wheels fell off for too many years now. Apparently coach twitchy doesn't do that anymore. And it's likely he's going to screw with Helu, too. If he doesn't, I think Helu is a great fantasy option. But let me repeat the operative word here... insane. You can't afford to wake up on Sunday and not find out until after the game begins that your number 2 running back isn't even playing. That's what Shanahan will do to you. Don't let him. Let someone else fall into the Redskin/Patriot running back black hole. And speaking of finding your running back isn't playing after the game begins...
8) Marshawn Lynch. RB. Seattle Seahawks. Marshawn Lynch was a good story last year. It was hard not to root for him. Even if you were one of the teams fighting for a playoff spot who found out five minutes into week 7's game that his stat line wasn't moving. Even if you were hesitant to start him for a couple of weeks after that and continued to get burned when he went off. Lynch could could crazy go nuts this entire year. But that's not what his history says he will do. He got paid, so keep that in mind when you're trying to decide if you want to make him your number one running back. He plays for the Seahawks, so keep that in mind. And he's going in the first round, so it's up to you if you feel confident that Lynch has finally become the player he was always meant to be, but remember he's a career 4.0/yard ball carrier. There's some beast mode upside, and a lost of bust mode history of downside.
9) Steve Smith. WR. Carolina Panthers. Remember when Steve Smith was a fantasy stud? Then remember when Steve Smith became the other Steve Smith? Then remember when Steve Smith became a fantasy stud again? Well, I wouldn't take last year all that seriously in this case. Steve Smith had an awesome comeback season last year, and was Cam Newton's favorite target, but he slowed down considerably the second half of the year and if you played him he didn't help your fantasy team very much at all. I think that trend continues to start the 2012 season. I like Brandon Lafell as a sleeper and to take over as the Panthers' number one receiver. I also like NFL defenses to have solved a lot of the Cam Newton riddle in terms of giving up huge pass plays down the field. None of this bodes well for a 33 year old wide receiver on a team that might be in games enough to not be winging passes down the field the entire second half without concern.
10) Antonio Gates. TE. San Diego Chargers. On occasion you'll see or hear a report that Antonio Gates is healthy and looking good, but the truth is even when healthy Gates appears heavier, slower, and less determined to go up and get the ball than he did when in his prime. It happens to everyone. Gates doesn't look good even when he's not dragging a lame foot behind him. Could he show no symptoms of an injury that is notoriously slow to heal, and in many cases never heals? Sure. But the point is even if he is fine he's no bargain when you'll have to take him, especially with nearly a dozen Tight Ends who might have crazy good seasons this year. May I suggest letting someone else venturing a fifth rounder for gates and waiting a few more rounds for someone like Fred Davis in Washington.
1) Maurice Jones-Drew. RB. Jacksonville Jaguars. My distaste for MJD is largely personal. When he condemned Bears quarterback for not being tough for sitting out the second half of the NFC Championship game two years ago despite Cutler's knee later being revealed to be badly torn, and despite pulling up lame himself late in the Jaguars' season, what he needed to do was apologize immediately. This year MJD is already creeping up as far as number 4 overall on many ratings, but I think you'll suffer if you use a high first rounder for him. He's grousing about his contract and has a history of pulling up on his team in non-competitive season. As no one believes Jacksonville will be competitive this year, let someone else waste a top five pick on this aging mighty might and take someone safer. 
2) Rob Gronkowski. TE. New England Patriots. A lot of winning in fantasy football has to do with predicting which players will outperform their ranking and draft position for that year, not reacting to what they did last year. Gronkowski helped a lot of people win cash last year, and I think a lot of people will use a super valuable second round pick to grab him this year. Let 'em. Keep piling up top tier running backs in those rounds and come back for a Tight End later. This guy is kind of a strange duck. If you do a Google image search on Gronk you see him doing a lot of things besides football, and I have a growing feeling it's going to catch up with him. The Evil genius who runs the Patriots has no compunction about tossing any player (besides Tom Brady) under the bus and bringing in the next man up. I think Gronkowski is too risky for a lot of reasons to take as high as he will be going. 
3) Matt Stafford. QB. Detroit Lions. How quickly they forget. Matt Stafford has a great fantasy season last year. he may have another great fantasy season this year. Or they may scrape him up off the turf week one and everyone who drafted him as high as he's set to go will be playing Josh Freeman against you when you meet head to head. If that's a chance you're comfortable taking this is your guy. Of course, any NFL quarterback can be injured any week, and statistics say most of them will be, but Stafford has a permanent meniscus injury that can't be operated on or healed with rest. The next time that knee pops out he may be done for good. Or he could throw for 5,000 yard and 40 touchdowns. But my opinion is if you want to go QB this early just go the extra mile and get one without a history of injury. 
4) Jermichael Finley. TE. Green Bay Packers. Somebody in Green Bay, or several somebody's, don't really like Jermichael Finley. Which would be alright if some of those somebody's weren't throwing him the ball. There was a lot of grousing about Finley at the end of last season that didn't hit the national media very hard, but he's not respected by his teammates. And Aaron Rodgers is not hurting for targets, especially with Jordy Nelson virtually replacing Jennings and Finley in a lot of games. If you didn't have to take Finley with a fifth round pick he might be worth taking a chance on as there will be literally dozens of touchdown catches to go around in Green Bay this year. I just don't think Finley will be getting many of them. There's a rich crop of Tight Ends this year. Avoid this bum.
5) Andre Johnson. WR. Houston Texans. WR1 is an essential position to fill on your roster, and if you look at the top of the WR rankings this year it's a little hinky. After Calvin Johnson you can't convince me Larry Fitzgerald, Andre Johnson, Greg Jennings, and Roddy White all aren't facing the potential of having bust seasons for different reasons. I don't like any of them with a first or second round pick, so I'd advise skipping a wide receiver in rounds one or two and take running backs, or a stud quarterback if you want to go that route, then jump in in round three with someone like Brandon Marshall or AJ Green to anchor your wide receivers. I think they have equal, if not better chances of having a better year than the four I mentioned. In particular I think Andre Johnson is just too hampered by injuries and the Texans too reliant on Arian Foster to consider him worth the second round pick you'll need to give up to get him. Pass.
6) Frank Gore. RB. San Francisco 49ers. Sure, this guy is probably going to make everyone's potential bust list. With good reason. He's old. He got a huge contract. The 49ers acquired vulture supreme Brandon Jacobs. They have drafted a running back to replace him three years in a row. And after all that Gore just keeps putting up numbers. Because of that he should get the benefit of the doubt, but this is the NFL. When you go, you're gone, and this could be the year Gore is gone. he's dropping in the rankings and in mocks and should fall some more, but fantasy players have a habit of drafting older running backs like Gore out of habit. If you want to do that make sure he's fallen to at least the fourth round. That's right, fourth.
7) Roy Helu. Running Back. Washington Redskins. I actually like Helu a lot. But Mike Shanahan is nuts. he has that nuts face. Avoid this nut. Fantasy players have been operating on the past record of him picking out a running back and running him until his wheels fell off for too many years now. Apparently coach twitchy doesn't do that anymore. And it's likely he's going to screw with Helu, too. If he doesn't, I think Helu is a great fantasy option. But let me repeat the operative word here... insane. You can't afford to wake up on Sunday and not find out until after the game begins that your number 2 running back isn't even playing. That's what Shanahan will do to you. Don't let him. Let someone else fall into the Redskin/Patriot running back black hole. And speaking of finding your running back isn't playing after the game begins...
8) Marshawn Lynch. RB. Seattle Seahawks. Marshawn Lynch was a good story last year. It was hard not to root for him. Even if you were one of the teams fighting for a playoff spot who found out five minutes into week 7's game that his stat line wasn't moving. Even if you were hesitant to start him for a couple of weeks after that and continued to get burned when he went off. Lynch could could crazy go nuts this entire year. But that's not what his history says he will do. He got paid, so keep that in mind when you're trying to decide if you want to make him your number one running back. He plays for the Seahawks, so keep that in mind. And he's going in the first round, so it's up to you if you feel confident that Lynch has finally become the player he was always meant to be, but remember he's a career 4.0/yard ball carrier. There's some beast mode upside, and a lost of bust mode history of downside.
9) Steve Smith. WR. Carolina Panthers. Remember when Steve Smith was a fantasy stud? Then remember when Steve Smith became the other Steve Smith? Then remember when Steve Smith became a fantasy stud again? Well, I wouldn't take last year all that seriously in this case. Steve Smith had an awesome comeback season last year, and was Cam Newton's favorite target, but he slowed down considerably the second half of the year and if you played him he didn't help your fantasy team very much at all. I think that trend continues to start the 2012 season. I like Brandon Lafell as a sleeper and to take over as the Panthers' number one receiver. I also like NFL defenses to have solved a lot of the Cam Newton riddle in terms of giving up huge pass plays down the field. None of this bodes well for a 33 year old wide receiver on a team that might be in games enough to not be winging passes down the field the entire second half without concern. 
10) Antonio Gates. TE. San Diego Chargers. On occasion you'll see or hear a report that Antonio Gates is healthy and looking good, but the truth is even when healthy Gates appears heavier, slower, and less determined to go up and get the ball than he did when in his prime. It happens to everyone. Gates doesn't look good even when he's not dragging a lame foot behind him. Could he show no symptoms of an injury that is notoriously slow to heal, and in many cases never heals? Sure. But the point is even if he is fine he's no bargain when you'll have to take him, especially with nearly a dozen Tight Ends who might have crazy good seasons this year. May I suggest letting someone else venturing a fifth rounder for gates and waiting a few more rounds for someone like Fred Davis in Washington.So, if you look at this list you might say "These are all great fantasy players," to which I would say "Yes, they are," but each one of them has the inherent risk for a myriad of reasons of being a bust. Either this may be their last season of significance in the NFL, or they are injury prone, or don't fit into the system, or may be replaced by a younger player, or even though they may have a good or even great season they just aren't worth the pick you'll have to give up to obtain them. Sometimes it's more fun to speculate than go with the obvious choice. There's one player on this list, Roy Helu, who walks that fine line between being a bust and a bust out player. But many of these players just are heartbreaks waiting to happen. Let someone else take them.
Crazy Cockburn is a sexist as well
Patrick Cockburn has one of his crackpot ravings past off as an article. It's interesting how, until the end, he's trying to be fair and then, at the end, he's calling for the UN to send forces into Syria.
He will most likely insist he never advocated that but that is the only way to read this: "And one hopes that those on the United Nations Security Council, when it reconvenes, will look into the staring eyes of these dead children and remember the hollow words of Assad's wife when she simpered that she 'comforts the families' of her country's victims."
Isn't it cute, he's going after the First Lady. That's really the hallmark of a coward. Whether Mr. Assad is guilty of something or not, his wife is not running the country. But you can't be a Cockburn -- or their idiot niece Laura Flanders -- without finding a woman to attack. That is the family M.O.
That's all in the mood for tonight. I know the writer C.I.'s mentioning at the end of the snapshot (not Chris Hayes, the one she doesn't name) and I'm really pissed because C.I. busted her ass for that ungrateful asshole over the years. He's been in the midst of a spectacular flameout for three years that I semi know about because Sunny follows it and when ___ gets really nutty -- or is being threatened with another lawsuit -- Sunny tells me about it. So his little tirade today has me ticked off. C.I. hasn't spoken to me about it (I think she spoke to Rebecca about it) so I'm not going to write about it in detail. But I know his little stunt hurt C.I. I also think he's a piece of trash -- but then, I've always thought that and said so here numerous times over the years.
"Iraq snapshot" (The Common Ills):
Alsumaria reports Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi states he will return to Iraq soon and that the targeting of Baghdad provincial council member Laith al-Dulaimi (arrested on Nouri's orders by Nouri's forces who tortured him) confirms much of what al-Hashemi has stated about being targeted. Specifically, al-Hashemi states it confirms what he has stated about human rights, about the lack of justice, about the judiciary being politicized and about torture being a key characteristic of Iraqi imprisonment. In protest of the proceedings, al-Hashemi's attorneys walked out May 20th on the trial against him. Like Laith al-Dulaimi, the Vice President is accused of terrorism. Like Laith al-Dulaimi, the Vice President is a member of Iraqiya.
Iraqiya's big 'crime' appears to be coming in first in the March 7, 2010 elections. For months before the election, Nouri al-Maliki attempted to demonize them, had them arrested, had them kicked out of the race and someone -- Nouri? -- was also having the assassinated in the lead-up to the elections. Nouri 'promised' -- the media swore to us -- that there would be no third term. But as we have repeatedly noted, that line has been walked back and walked back. And, no, we didn't fall for the claim when he made it. We questioned it even then pointing out that in the original assertion, he'd left himself wiggle room.
Among the current issues that various blocs can agree upon is that Nouri should have no third term. The one that can't agree with that is Nouri.
If you'll think back to the lead-up to the 2010 elections, you'll remember Nouri was convinced his State of Law would win overwhelmingly. But the reality was they didn't even win by a hair. It's possible that the attacks currently are part of his attempts for the next round of parlimentary elections (which are now supposed to take place in 2014) or even to influence the provincial elections (scheduled for next year currently). Nouri does have problems with the provinces. He's got a war going on with Ethyl al-Nujaifi who is the brother of Speaker of Parliament Osama al-Nujaifi. Ehtyl is also the Governor of Nineveh Province and Nouri -- who is so shocked that people are calling for him to step down -- has twice called for al-Nujaifi to step down as governor.
Al Rafidayn notes the real purpose of Nouri's holding the Council of Ministers meeting in Mosul (as opposed to Baghdad) yesterday: He met with tribal leaders in Nineveh in an attempt to shore up support for him as moves are made to push for a no-confidence vote which would, if succeessful, remove him from the post of prime minister. Nouri also again launched an attack on Osama al-Nujaifi. Which really doesn't seem smart in the province that elected his brother governor. But Nouri's not know for his wisdom.
To distract from the push for a no-confidence vote in him, Nouri and flunkies recently announced there was a push for a no-confidence vote in Osama al-Nujaifi. However, the National Alliance (a Shi'ite grouping of political parties which includes Moqtada al-Sadr's bloc, Ibraham al-Jaafari's group, Nouri's State of Law and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq among others) publicly dismissed that. They noted that the National Alliance was not calling for a move against al-Nujaifi. They noted that State of Law had not even made a proposal to the National Alliance about such a move. And the press kindly let the matter die instead of pointing out that Nouri had been caught in yet another lie.
I think someone should ask Talabani why his son purchased a home in the US -- you can lease in that area -- and how large of a salary his son draws?
He's swearing to Kurds that he's going to stand with them but even PUK (the political party he heads) doubts that. They're starting to point out the obvious: Is Jalal really in a position to demand that Nouri not seek a third term? If he takes up that position, doesn't that mean that Talabani can't seek a third term as president of Iraq?
Without that position, he's just the aged head of political party he's led to lower and lower turnout. The PUK needs new leadership.
He will most likely insist he never advocated that but that is the only way to read this: "And one hopes that those on the United Nations Security Council, when it reconvenes, will look into the staring eyes of these dead children and remember the hollow words of Assad's wife when she simpered that she 'comforts the families' of her country's victims."
Isn't it cute, he's going after the First Lady. That's really the hallmark of a coward. Whether Mr. Assad is guilty of something or not, his wife is not running the country. But you can't be a Cockburn -- or their idiot niece Laura Flanders -- without finding a woman to attack. That is the family M.O.
That's all in the mood for tonight. I know the writer C.I.'s mentioning at the end of the snapshot (not Chris Hayes, the one she doesn't name) and I'm really pissed because C.I. busted her ass for that ungrateful asshole over the years. He's been in the midst of a spectacular flameout for three years that I semi know about because Sunny follows it and when ___ gets really nutty -- or is being threatened with another lawsuit -- Sunny tells me about it. So his little tirade today has me ticked off. C.I. hasn't spoken to me about it (I think she spoke to Rebecca about it) so I'm not going to write about it in detail. But I know his little stunt hurt C.I. I also think he's a piece of trash -- but then, I've always thought that and said so here numerous times over the years.
"Iraq snapshot" (The Common Ills):
Wednesday, May 30, 2012. Chaos and violence continue, empire gets discussed, Marcy Winograd has an announcement, Talabani doesn't want Nouri to face a vote of no confidence, Tareq al-Hashemi feels the continued drama surrounding him is about to wrap up, I offer my thoughs of (and support for) Chris Hayes, and more.
The Honorable Jonathan Sumption is not only a judge (Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom), he's also a historian. Earlier this month, he delivered a [PDF format warning] speech to the London School of Economics' Department of Government
The extreme case is of course the choice between peace and war. In reviewing the military interventions of the English government, the courts have arrived at a position practically indistinguisable from the old non-justiciability rule, although justified on a different basis. The legality of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003 was, to put it mildly, a matter of some controversy everywhere outside the United States. The great majority of international lawyers of repute considered it to be contrary to international law, in the absence of the United Nations authority and did not accept that any of the relevant resolutions conferred that authority. The United States was inclined to respond to this difficulty in the way that the British had done at the time of the Suez crisis of 1956, by simply ignoring it. In 1956, the Attorney-General, Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller and the Solicitor-General Sir Harry Hilton-Foster, both supported the invasion politically although both believed and told the Prime Minister that it was illegal. The Chief of Imperial General Staff, Sir Gerald Templer, issued the deployment orders without troubling himself with the legal issue. These are attitudes characteristic of an imperial power, and we should not be particularly surprised to find them adopted by the United States. It is a sign of how far the climate of British opinion had changed by 2003 that the Chiefs of Staff required an assurance from the Attorney-General that operations in Iraq were lawful. They famously received one that had been prepared on a basis not wholly consistent with his previously expressed views and supported by reasoning which provoked the resignation of one of the Foreign Office legal advisers and was rejected by every serious authority on international law.
And on empires, we'll move to the latest broadcast of David Swanson's Talk Nation Radio which features Marcy Winograd. Excerpt.
David Swanson: You have left the fold of the Democratic Party and gone to the Green Party and after having been a candidate for Congress in Democratic primaries and done remarkably well against a well funded incumbent as a peace candidate. Why the -- Why the decision to go to the Green Party?
Marcy Winograd: David, it wasn't an easy decision and it was one I wrestled with for probably quite some time. But at the end of the day, the short answer is that I really didn't want to be aligned with a War Party any longer. Even if you're an insurgent in that war party, you're still in it. And as an insurgent, I challenged Jane Harman she was a big Hawk, supporter of the military industrial complex, I was on the floor of the Democratic Party convention in California introducing resolutions to end the war, the assault on Iraq. I was shut down, quoroms were called, quorom called, I introduced resolutions to censure senators like Dianne Feinstein when she waffled on whether water boarding was torture. There are many struggles to engage in as an insurgent within a party and I'm not saying that they're not worthy and that they're not of great value but at this point in my life, I really want to live inside my skin. I want to be authentic. And I also want to look towards the future. Face it, the American Empire is declining. This is it. We are collpasing. And we are watching the collapse of the US Empire. How long did it take other countries? Well ou know for some it took a century. For others it took just a few years. Look at the Soviet Union. Two years for the Soviet Union to collapse. A year for Portugal, 8 years for France. 17 years for Great Britain. There are historians. I interviewed one on [KPFK] Connect the Dots, Dr. Alfred McCoy who wrote in The Nation magazine who predicts that by 2025 it's over. Just 15 years from now, the empire will be over. So given that, the US Empire, with its military bases in 3/4 of the countries in the world is just not sustainable. It's imperative that we look to our future and embrace something positive. We know what we don't want. What do we want? And that's what attracted me to the Green Party.
David Swanson: Well clearly the US Empire could end in a variety of ways -- some softer and easier than others. Do you think that the Democratic Party and, in particular, President Obama are better or worse or about the same in relationship to the Republican Party and George W. Bush in terms of the manner in which the empire is over-extending itself and moving towards its collapse? In other words, would we be better off in these final years of empire to have the Democrats doing it or the Republicans?
Marcy Winograd: That's a very tough question, isn't it? I know that I will not be voting for Barack Obama for president. And I did support him when he ran previously. But this time I am going to be voting for the Green Party nominee because I really do want a different vision for our country and now's the time for us to speak out and say this is the alternative vision: a party of non-violence, a party that opposes weapon sales to other countries, a party that wants to build sustainable communities and invest in our communities, not extract wealth and send jobs to other countries. I think, at the end of the day, that it's very dangerous to have somebody in the White House who people don't necessarily who people don't necessarily know or understand and who may project an image of concilation and partnership but in reality is escalating what began under former President George Bush. I'm talking about this "war on terror." Right after Obama took office, he escalated the drone attacks on Pakistan. We now have an increase in Joint-Special Operations Command Forces in other countries -- from 60 countries under Bush to 75 countries. We have codified indefiniate detention, extraordinary rendetion and targeted assassination. We have moved beyond what was considered under the Bush administration as an order for hot pursuit. In other words, if somebody attacked us or an ally, we could cross a border in hot pursuit. Now the whole world is a war theater under Barack Obama. So I'm afraid that under the Democratic leadership -- both in Congress and in the White House -- we are not seeing what we think we want to see or what we think we are seeing. Instead, we're seeing increased militarism. So I think it's very dangerous to think that this is an alternative path. In fact, I think under President Obama, we've seen the Democrats able to advance a Republican agenda, at least on the foreign policy side, at least better than the Republicans could.
"Download or get embed code from Archive.org or AudioPort or LetsTryDemocracy or RadioProject." I really am surprised by Marcy's news and will assume others are as well. Who's running in the Green Party for the presidential nomination? A press release from the Green Party of Michigan answers that question:
For Immediate Release:
Green Party of Michigan Presidential Nominating Convention Saturday
Mt. Pleasant) - This Saturday marks the beginning of the Green Party's nominating convention at the university's campus in Mt. Pleasant which will last through Sunday afternoon. Excitement for the event has been building for months as the presidential candidates have been particularly exciting among members this year.
Dr. Jill Stein of Massachusetts has been travelling throughout the country to stand in
solidarity with Occupy movements, to speak at Green conventions and events and has most recently walked with those protesting the PGA in Benton Harbor. A long-time activist and dedicated member of the Green Party, Dr. Stein is currently the forerunner in the nomination pool.
Comedienne and activist Roseanne Barr of California has likewise been a long-time
supporter of grassroots movements. Her rallies in California have drawn hundreds of
supporters. Although she was the last candidate to announce her running, she has made a
strong showing in state polls.
Dr. Kent Mesplay of California was the first to announce his candidacy and has
remained a strong contender as a long-time Green. Having also vied for the presidential
nomination in 2008, he is the candidate with the most experience. As the son of missionaries, he grew up alongside native peoples in a nature-centered environment. This has shaped the focus of his message.
The three contenders for the presidential nomination will be speaking remotely at the
convention on Saturday afternoon. Candidates for state and some local offices will also be
nominated this weekend. The straw poll for the presidential nomination will take place on
Saturday with the results being announced on Sunday. The decision of the straw poll will guide the choice the delegates will make at the National Convention in Baltimore, MD on July 12-15.
Highlights of the convention will also include entertainment Saturday evening by musical
acts Stephen Colarelli, a singer/songwriter, Rope and the Rulers, and Poor Player.
The Members of the Green Party of Michigan have been active in petition drives to have
several critical issues placed on the November ballot including the Emergency Manager repeal which was thrown out on a questionable technical objection and the current ban on fracking petition gaining strength and support throughout the state.
If you are interested in becoming a member of the Green Party or want to learn more
about our key values, see our webpage: www.migreens.org.
###
For more information, please contact
Convention organizer and Green Party Co-chair Fred Vitale: freddetroit@sbcglobal.net
or Green Party Elections Coordinator John A La Pietra: jalp@triton.net
Your vote is your vote. Use it as you want. Like Marcy, I cannot vote for Barack Obama. I don't reward War Hawks. As I've stated before, I think I'll just sit out the voting for that office. That's what I'm doing, you do what you want, if you're voting you're an adult so you should be able to figure out who speaks to you (if anyone does) and vote (or vote by not voting) accordingly. (And for more on the Green Party race, you can refer to this post by Ian Wilder at On The Wilder Side.)
Today the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) released "Report on Human Rights in Iraq: 2011." As with the Iraq section of the US State Dept's 2011 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices released last week, UNAMI's findings weren't pretty.
But it's difficult to tell who's the bigger joke: Nouri al-Maliki or the UN. Martin Kolber is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's Special Envoy to Iraq. Having sat through Martin Kobler's presentation to the UN Security Council April 10th and seeing the single sentence that couldn't use the term "gay" but hinted that the targeting of Emo and LGBT youth (and those perceived as such) would be addressed in the report (the one released today), this report's an embarrassment. That section is the smallest section of today's report, it's buried deep.
10. Attacks on persons for reason of their sexual orientation
The topic of homosexuality is largely taboo in Iraq. Members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community usually keep their sexual orientation secret and live in constant fear of discrimination, rejection by family members, social exclusion, intimidation and violence. While the Iraqi penal code does not expressly prohibit homosexual relations between consenting adults, a variety of less specific, flexible provisions in the penal code leave room for active discrimination and prosecution of LGBT persons and feeds societal intolerance.
During the reporting period, UNAMI continued to receive reports of attacks against individuals based on their perceived or actual sexual orientation. In one case, a 17 year old boy was relocated with assistance from an NGO after his family tried to kill him on the basis of the boy's perceived homosexuality. The Government takes no action to protect people from violence or discrimination based on sexual orientation, and there are few social services available.
And that's it.
That's it?
As we noted April 11th:
Of course, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declared last month, "To those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, let me say -- you are not alone. Your struggle for an end to violence and discrimination is a shared struggle. Any attack on you is an attack on the universal values the United Nations and I have sworn to uphold."
What pretty words. What a shame his Special Envoy to Iraq spits on those words, betrays Iraq's LGBT community, stays silent as they're targeted and killed, ignores the persecution.
As we noted yesterday, the Special Envoy Martin Kobler appeared Tuesday before the United Nations Security Council where he yammered away for approximately 20 minutes and also handed in a written report/statement which was 17 pages long. Though he was supposedly concerned about violence and targeted groups and though he made his focus the first three months of the year, he couldn't bring himself to mention the targeting of Iraq's LGBT community. He could talk about the so-called 'honor' killings but not in relation to gay men or lesbians. Ban Ki-moon assured the world's LGBT community just last month that they were not alone. Just yesterday, his Special Envoy to Iraq, made clear that, in fact, Iraq's LGBTs are very much alone. Martin Kobler made very clear that the United Nations, as represented by him in Iraq, will gladly and always look the other way while thugs go on killing sprees. One of the slogan of the United Nations is, "It's your world." But apparently that doesn't apply for LGBTs. Someone with the UN to address whether Ban Ki-moon was lying or if Martin Kobler just doesn't understand how offensive what he did yesterday was?
Excuse me, I though Ban Ki-moon was saying LGBT rights were human rights. But that's not what I got from Kobler's presentation or from this report released today. Either UNAMI intends to seriously address the targeting or it intends not to.
For those who missed it, Emo and LGBT were lumped together. LGBT is, of course, a sexual orientation. Emo is more of a social scene. In Iraq, the two were lumped together and worse. Worse? The Iraqi youth were supposedly also practicing witchcraft and also they were vampires as evidenced by the fact that they drank blood.
Did they drink blood?
Years and years ago, have I told this story, there was a presenation on gangs to a group of concerned lawmakers (state lawmakers). A friend who works with gangs couldn't make it and asked if I'd fill in. That's not my area but I was adequate if not good. But what stood out to me was the guy who had never spoken to a teen in a gang but 'knew' everything. It was that "Calvin Kline" who was making people gang members because it helped sell his clothes. It gets better (or at least more humorous), rap artists "like Cindy Lauper" (Cyndi Lauper) were also glamorizing gangs. This man was completely serious. He thought he had studied and arrived at logical conclusions. (Calvin Klein was pushing underwear and baggy jeans at that time, if he was pushing anything. Cyndi Lauper is not now and never has been a rap artist.) This man was so uninformed that he made my adequate presentation seem like an informed lecture.
And the point here is two-fold. First, this isn't ha-ha, we're so much smarter than the Iraqis. No. Humanity's all basically on the same page with some people in every area reading just a little bit ahead of the others. Second, a lot of people (in every country all over the world) hear a topic mentioned and think they're an expert. Emos have been demonized around the world, not just in the MidEast, in Mexico as well. And that panic mind set allows some really stupid things to be said by supposed experts.
In the case of Iraq, it was the Ministry of Interior that went into the schools and demonized Emos (who again are also wrongly said to be gay -- you can be Emo and gay, you can also be Emo and straight). Let's drop back to March 9th:
Meanwhile Kitabat notes that the Interior Ministry is declaring there have been no deaths and this is all a media creation. That would be the same Ministry of Interior that, please note, was declaring earlier this week that Emo was the number one threat to Iraq. Guess someone got the message about how badly this was making Iraq look to the rest of the world? Now the still headless ministry (Nouri never appointed a minister to head it) wants to insist that it is only a small number of Iraqi youth who are even into Emo. The ministry insists that the only truth on the subject of Emo is that which the government tells. But the Parliament's Security and Defense Commission also spoke to the media on Thursday and they spoke of the discovery of 15 corpses of young Iraqis -- Emos or thought to be -- discovered in one Baghdad neighborhood. Activist Hanaa Edwar also speaks of the large number of Iraqi Emo youths being targeted. Al Mada notes the Parliament committee stated that the security forces have failed to protect the Emo youth. Dar Addustour reports that activists Mohammed al-Kazimi has pointed out that the constitution of Iraq guarantees Iraqis the right to freedom of expression and that Emo youth are not unconstitutional.
When this was going on, Iraqi youth were pretty much on their own. Iraqi groups and activists did speak out but internationally you had a lot of silence. (Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International were not silent.) And the US State Dept refused to speak of it but was kind enough to leak an e-mail when pressure was coming to bear on the administration. If that e-mail had not been treated like something amazing (it wasn't) by the LGBT press in America, the administration might have been forced to make a public statement. And as silent as the State Dept was the United Nations.
Iraqi youths were being killed. To be really clear, if you are a gay Iraqi youth, that doesn't mean you can be killed. That's not acceptable. That's not something the world should ever look the other way on. But damned if they didn't try, these supposed groups and governmental agencies there to help.
There are things in the report that will be noticing this week.
But here, I called out Martin Kobler repeatedly for his silence at the UN briefing. And I heard from UN friends about how it's 'referred' to in the written report. No, it's noted that this issue will be dealt with in an upcoming report. That report was the one released today. Two pathetic paragraphs is not dealing with it. Failure to even use the term "Emo" is pretty sad. Failure to note the Ministry of the Interior went into schools and asked for names is shameful.
I took Kobler to task several days in a row here and only stopped when UN friends swore the report would go into what was taking place. The report's out today and yet again, YET AGAIN, the United Nations has failed the LGBT in Iraq (as well as those perceived to be). In failing them, it failed every LGBT. Because it sent the message that though the UN will give lip service and pretend that they give a damn about LGBT rights, the reality is they'll only mention it in a report if they're forced to and, even then, they'll rush through it and ignore most facts and events.
What I've written isn't all that damning (though I'll get phone calls for it). What's really damning is that the United Nations is supposed to help those in need, those in crisis but, read their report, the only one who got helped was a 17-year-old who was helped not by the UN but by an NGO. That pretty much says everything that needs to be said about where the United Nations stands today on LGBT issues.
Alsumaria reports Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi states he will return to Iraq soon and that the targeting of Baghdad provincial council member Laith al-Dulaimi (arrested on Nouri's orders by Nouri's forces who tortured him) confirms much of what al-Hashemi has stated about being targeted. Specifically, al-Hashemi states it confirms what he has stated about human rights, about the lack of justice, about the judiciary being politicized and about torture being a key characteristic of Iraqi imprisonment. In protest of the proceedings, al-Hashemi's attorneys walked out May 20th on the trial against him. Like Laith al-Dulaimi, the Vice President is accused of terrorism. Like Laith al-Dulaimi, the Vice President is a member of Iraqiya.
Iraqiya's big 'crime' appears to be coming in first in the March 7, 2010 elections. For months before the election, Nouri al-Maliki attempted to demonize them, had them arrested, had them kicked out of the race and someone -- Nouri? -- was also having the assassinated in the lead-up to the elections. Nouri 'promised' -- the media swore to us -- that there would be no third term. But as we have repeatedly noted, that line has been walked back and walked back. And, no, we didn't fall for the claim when he made it. We questioned it even then pointing out that in the original assertion, he'd left himself wiggle room.
Among the current issues that various blocs can agree upon is that Nouri should have no third term. The one that can't agree with that is Nouri.
If you'll think back to the lead-up to the 2010 elections, you'll remember Nouri was convinced his State of Law would win overwhelmingly. But the reality was they didn't even win by a hair. It's possible that the attacks currently are part of his attempts for the next round of parlimentary elections (which are now supposed to take place in 2014) or even to influence the provincial elections (scheduled for next year currently). Nouri does have problems with the provinces. He's got a war going on with Ethyl al-Nujaifi who is the brother of Speaker of Parliament Osama al-Nujaifi. Ehtyl is also the Governor of Nineveh Province and Nouri -- who is so shocked that people are calling for him to step down -- has twice called for al-Nujaifi to step down as governor.
Al Rafidayn notes the real purpose of Nouri's holding the Council of Ministers meeting in Mosul (as opposed to Baghdad) yesterday: He met with tribal leaders in Nineveh in an attempt to shore up support for him as moves are made to push for a no-confidence vote which would, if succeessful, remove him from the post of prime minister. Nouri also again launched an attack on Osama al-Nujaifi. Which really doesn't seem smart in the province that elected his brother governor. But Nouri's not know for his wisdom.
To distract from the push for a no-confidence vote in him, Nouri and flunkies recently announced there was a push for a no-confidence vote in Osama al-Nujaifi. However, the National Alliance (a Shi'ite grouping of political parties which includes Moqtada al-Sadr's bloc, Ibraham al-Jaafari's group, Nouri's State of Law and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq among others) publicly dismissed that. They noted that the National Alliance was not calling for a move against al-Nujaifi. They noted that State of Law had not even made a proposal to the National Alliance about such a move. And the press kindly let the matter die instead of pointing out that Nouri had been caught in yet another lie.
Today a new reason for the ongoing political crisis is given: Jalal Talabani. Alsumaria reports that State of Law states Osama al-Nujaifi attempted to call for a no-confidence vote but Talabani stopped it. If true, that conditional is always needed when speaking of State of Law, it's time for Jalal to go. Qassim Abdul-Zahra (AP) also reports that Jalal Talabani rejected the call for a no-confidence vote and cites Kurdish MP Mahmud Othman as the source.
Press TV reported Saturday that Iraqi President Jalal Talabani was calling for a national conference again. He's been calling for that since December 21st. How long he'll continue to call, who knows?
His son, of course, just spent over a million dollars on a DC home (the six bedroom and six bath house -- not all six baths are full bathrooms -- is on Daniel Road in Chevy Chase, Maryland and they closed on it January 27th agreeing to the price of $1,155,000). I guess if I were a child of Talabani's and I was seeing exactly how ineffective he had become, I think I'd probably decide to spend money on a home in another country as well. It is interesting that a public servant like Talabani can afford to purchase a home in that neighborhood. You wouldn't assume that being the KRG lobbyist in the US would pay enough to warrant a million-dollar home.
I think someone should ask Talabani why his son purchased a home in the US -- you can lease in that area -- and how large of a salary his son draws?
He's swearing to Kurds that he's going to stand with them but even PUK (the political party he heads) doubts that. They're starting to point out the obvious: Is Jalal really in a position to demand that Nouri not seek a third term? If he takes up that position, doesn't that mean that Talabani can't seek a third term as president of Iraq?
Without that position, he's just the aged head of political party he's led to lower and lower turnout. The PUK needs new leadership.
Talabani is just Nouri in a ceremonial post. Why did Iraq have elections? To get a new speaker of Parliament? That's really all that changed despite the results.
In news of violence, Alsumaria reports that a roadside bombing today in Ramadi claimed 1 life and left two other people injured. In addition, Al Rafidayn notes that a bridge connecting Anbar Province and Salah ad-Din Province was blown up today. In addition, Alsumaria notes 1 person was shot dead as he left his southern Baghdad home yesterday.
Lastly, I'm offering my opinion on Chris Hayes. The short version is, he didn't do anything wrong. He's apologized for what he stated and I believe that was sincere, he's generally a sincere person. But what he said before his apology? If that was a shock to you, you don't really know a wide cross-section of people who've lost a loved one to war. You may know many, but you apparently only know one grouping. Chris Hayes' comments weren't at all shocking to me. I speak to pro and anti and in-between veterans groups and there's a wide range of opinions out there. I'll assume that those who objected online to what Chris said on his MSNBC program were being sincere. But I think they would have been better served -- and our national dialogue would have been -- if they'd grasped that their opinion isn't the only one out there. I'm not the voice of veterans, I don't present myself as such.
Would I have said what he did? No. I wouldn't have ventured an opinion on the topic and don't believe I ever have. I'm more interested in hearing what people think than sharing my own opinions (and I don't have an opinion on everything or rush to form one). I'm mainly weighing in today on Chris because a writer slammed me in an series of e-mails today on how I hadn't come to his (the writer's) defense. And my reaction to that is, "I don't know your soap opera. I don't have time to research your last three years and all the people you've pissed off. But I do know that woman at the New York Times that won't take your calls anymore? Your rage frightens her. And she's not the only one." But being read ___'s attacks over the phone by Martha (who got the 'joy' of being the one to open those foul e-mails -- thank you, Martha for all you do) with their f-you and the rest attacking me for not coming to his defense (over problems I wasn't even aware of -- I didn't even know he was lying about me -- which he also admits in his e-mails -- in 2011 online until today), I thought finally, "You're on your own." And that made me think, the people who really do care and really don't try to hurt people, those are the ones who deserve support. And that's the type of person Chris Hayes is.
There are a lot of people who don't care. They go on TV and they really don't care. It's a party and a game, they say their piece and they go home and don't even think about it again. (For those who take that as a slam on the right -- I know many people on TV on the left and in the center. I can't speak to the right-wing TV pundits and wouldn't presume to being unfamiliar with them and their lives.) Whether you agree with Chris or not, he does give a great deal of thought to not only events but to how he impacts them and whether or not he said the right thing or communicated correctly. He does not set out to be controversial or to hurt anyone. He's not trying to 'play with the format.' He's honestly attempting to communicate. He meant no harm and he was speaking -- whether he knew it or not -- for a group of people around the country who were mourning the fallen and whose feelings about their loved one are just as valid as those who disagreed with Chris.
If you were honestly bothered by Chris' opinion -- which he identified as such -- he's offered a sincere apology and if the attacks on him continue, I'll assume you're not sincere but working some political angle or trying to. He's done everything he can and then some at this point so if you've got a problem, it's beyond Chris and on you. There are a lot of people I wouldn't vouch for. When I was making a list of that as Martha read the series of e-mails from ____, I immediately thought of Chris Hayes and how he's someone who is worth vouching for.