Nicholas Kristof in NYTimes: Putting Torture Behind Us

Putting Torture Behind Us, a column in the New York Times by Nicholas Kristof, is well worth reading. I support both suggestions about harvesting insights through a post-Guantanimo commission and repurposing the facility for health research.

Inaugural Speech of President Barack Obama

Inaugural Speech of President Barack Obama, January 20, 2009, video and text from NYTimes.com .

Eloquent as always, but with enough specifics about how government, business, and personal behavior ought to be changed.

How happy I am with this dramatic improvement in the quality of our national political leadership!

There was also a touching and classy musical performance during the Inauguration ceremony (you can listen here, or watch here) as well as eloquent invocation, benediction, and poem.

An editorial in the New York Times gives a good summary of why this inaugural address was one that spoke to Americans as thoughtful and needed citizens, and not simply as consumers of political rhetorhic.

HBO.com and HBO - 7pm ET, 11:30pm ET January 18, 2009 Inauguration Celebration Concert

See also: New York Times: At Lincoln Memorial, Uplifting Music and a Talk of Challenges

President-elect Barack Obama's remarks, as prepared for delivery to "We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial"

Broadway Show: In The Heights

In the Heights won the 2008 Tony Award for Best Musical, and I highly recommend it. With dancing, a variety of music, a strong ensemble cast, and story line blending elements of Fiddler on the Roof (Old Country-New Country, Adults-Young People), Rent, and West Side Story, it is a most enjoyable and touching show. The action takes place in Washington Heights in the late 1990s, as Puerto Rican and Dominican Republic Immigrants deal with a hot July and struggles of keeping their small businesses solvent. The music and lyrics were written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who also plays Usnavi, a Bodego owner, in the show.

IBM's Approach, and Results, with Corporate Responsibility

Tom Raferty of Greenmonk interviews IBM VP Stan Litow (MP3) on IBM's approach to Corporate Responsibility, Sustainability, and meeting social challenges, posted on December 2, 2008, is an excellent overview of what IBM is doing. Details are in the IBM Corporate Responsibility website.

Paul Krugman: The Madoff Economy (Dec 19, 2008)

The Madoff Economy by Paul Krugman captures much of what I have been thinking for several years. By luring bright individuals into the financial sector, rather than into other fields, we have reduced the true wealth and the true capacity of our civilization. We can all be angry at those who were dishonest, but maybe we want to ask some questions about the honest people whose work is mostly about concentrating or allocating funds but not about applying them more directly to actual social and human needs.

Film: In A Dream (2008, Jeremiah Zagar, Herzliya Films)

Herzliya Films with Red Lights Films created a truly touching and provocative portrait of an artist and his family. Filmmaker Jeremiah Zagar began in 2001 to film the work and philosophy of his father, Mosaic-maker extraordinare Isaiah Zagar, and his mother, gallery owner Julia Zagar... and through the honesty of his father and his mother, during a period of personal and family challenges, we understand how, for some people, making art becomes the salvation from some of the unresolved demons which haunt their lives.

Very highly recommended. Will be shown in July 2009 on HBO.

Film: Under Our Skin: The Untold Story of Lyme Disease (dir by Andy Abrahams Wilson, Open Eye Picutres, 2008)

Under Our Skin: The Untold Story of Lymn Disease is an interesting film which follows a series of patients struggling with what apparently is chronic or persistant Lyme disease, and a series of physicians trying to treat them, and another series of physicians convinced that chronic Lyme disease does not exist, and another physician who on his own time is studying the behavior of the bacterial agent which causes Lyme disease and comparing it to other bacterial vectors of disease.

This is a film about medicine, microbes, mavericks and money.

Film: Ne le dis à personne / Tell No One (Guillaume Canet 2006, based on a novel by Harlan Coben)

Ne le dis à personne / Tell No One is a thriller directed by Guillaume Canet, staring Francois Cluzet in the role of Docteur Alex Beck. This film has suspense in almost every second, includes excellent supporting performances by Marie-Josée Croze, Kristen Scott-Thomas, Nathalie Baye, André Dussollier, Jean Rochefort, Marina Hands and others, and I highly recommend it. It is currently playing in select US theaters with subtitles - the film was made in France, and a DVD release is planned for mid-October.

Trumbo (dir by Peter Askin, Written by Christopher Trumbo, 2007, Samuel Goldwyn/Red Envelope)

Trumbo is the movie which blends interviews, original footage, and beautiful letters written by the eccentric and brilliantly eloquent blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo .. and it beautifully explores this unique personality as seen by his colleagues, friends and family, and conveys the human effects of the Red Scare Mongering that gripped the US Congress and the Entertainment Media in the 1950s and 1960s. Very highly recommended.

Audio Essay: A Kind and Generous Heart (Christine Little, This I Believe, 2008, 4:41)

The NPR Audio Series This I Believe consistency has insightful and honest essays, contributed by both little known and well known individuals. I particular was touched by Christine Little's statement A Kind and Generous Heart.

Film: The Singing Revolution (James and Maureen Tusty, 2007)

The Singing Revolution (made by American filmmakers James and Maureen Tusty with partners from the Estonia film community) documents Estonia's history in the 20th century, through interviews with about 20 participants in the critical period during which the Baltic Nations broke away from the Soviet Union. The question is: How did the people pull off a non-violent overthrow of foreign rulers... and the answer, in large part, is by using music and massive public song festivals as a way to reinforce unity and national identity. This is a most unusual documentary, very touching.

National Geographic's Strange Days on Planet Earth - 2 new episodes

   

National Geographic and Sea Studios Foundation have produced two brilliant episodes of Strange Days on Planet Earth with Edward Norton. The series producer is David Elisco.

I highly recommend these engaging, beautiful, documentaries, which connect everyday small actions taken by millions of people around the world to the significant changes affecting our estuaries, rivers, lakes, oceans and atmosphere which are beginning of have profound and disturbing consequences for fish, bird, animal, plant and human health.

Book: Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace..One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin (Viking, Penguin 2006-2007)

Greg Mortenson had a passion for climbing. Something went wrong at the end of an attempted climb on K2 in 1993 -- or perhaps, something went right -- because while weak and disoriented, he met remote villagers in the Baltistan region of Northern Pakistan who nursed him back to strength, and Greg decided to repay them for their kindness and address a critical needs by raising money and returning to build their first school building, and began a truly heroic cross-cultural adventure spanning California, Montana, Pakistan, Afghanistan. In the course of the last 15 years, he has directly changed the lives on hundreds of young women, and indirectly changed the perception of America in scores of remote villages and towns of Central Asia.

"Three Cups of Tea is one of the most remarkable adventure stories of our time. Greg Mortenson's dangerous and difficult quest to build schools in the wildest parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan is not only a thrilling read, it's proof that one ordinary person, with the right combination of character and determination, really can change the world." - Journalist and Author Tom Brokaw.

Highly recommended.

Film: Taxi to the Dark Side (dir by Alex Gibney, ThinkFilm/Jigsaw Productions, 2007)

Taxi to the Dark Side is Alex Gibney's Critical study of extra-legal expansion of American Power in America's Global War on Terror.

The film focuses around the controversial death in custody of an Afghan Jitney taxi driver named Dilawar. Dilawar was beaten to death by American soldiers while being held in extrajudicial detention at the Bagram Air Base.

Taxi to the Dark Side also goes on to examine America's policy on torture and interrogation in general, specifically the CIA's use of torture and their research into sensory deprivation. There is description of the opposition to the use of torture from its political and military opponents, as well as the defence of such methods; the attempts by Congress to uphold the standards of the Geneva Convention forbidding torture; and the popularisation of the use of torture techniques in shows such as 24.

The film is said to be the first film to contain images taken within Bagram Air Base.

For those of us who feel that part of winning the vast majority of worldwide moderate Muslims over to a situation of tolerance and respect for Western peoples and governments requires that innocent civilians be treated with utmost respect and care, even in areas where terrorist militants have operations, this is one of those films that shows why it is going to take years of work by the next few American government leaders to undo the damage that was done in the Bush Administration.

The Tyranny of America's Great Expectations

On January 8th, the Wall Street Journal's Bret Stephens wrote a piece about American politics and how we look at Iraq. He cites cases of "the perfect becoming the enemy of the good", something that also troubles me.

While the op-ed is somewhat oversimplified, I was taken by these two paragraphs towards the end of the piece:

There is great virtue in the American way, which expects CEOs to perform on a quarterly basis, presidents and Congresses to reinvent politics in 100 days, generals to wipe out opponents in 100 hours without taking significant casualties, doctors to save life and limb every time, search engines to yield a million results in less than a second, and so on. There is also great virtue in the belief that what is bad can be made good, and that what is good can be made great, and that what is fractionally less than great is downright awful.

But these virtues can spawn vices. One is impatience. Another is a culture of chronic complaint. A third is the belief that every problem has a solution, that trial is possible without error, that risks must always be zero, that every inconvenience is an outrage, every setback a disaster and every mishap a plausible basis for a lawsuit.

Film: Helvetica: A Documentary Film (Gary Hustwit, Swiss Dots, 2007)

Quite an interesting documentary about visual culture has been made by Gary Hustwit. See Helvetica: A Documentary Film website.

Film: HotHouse by Shimon Doton (86 min, 2006)

  

Media That Matters' David Courier writes:

Nearly 10,000 Palestinians are incarcerated in Israel today. Most Israelis regard these "security prisoners" as murderers and criminals. To the Palestinians, however, they are freedom fighters, heroes, and martyrs in the making. Granted extraordinary access to the highest-security institutions, renowned filmmaker Shimon Dotan uncovers a startling truth: Israeli prisons have become a breeding ground for the next generation of Palestinian leaders and a hotbed for terrorist plots.

Dotan focuses his camera on everyday prison life. What emerges is a surprising glimpse of the prisoners as informed thinkers who are immersed in the details of the centuries-old conflict through newspapers and television. Dotan interviews inmates who are committed to negotiations as well as others who are shockingly unrepentant about their participation in suicide bombings. The cold-blooded testimony of a female Hamas leader, proudly serving 16 life sentences for blowing up a Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem, is perhaps the most chilling.

Israel's prisons have evolved into virtual incubators for Palestinian nationalism, strengthening inmates' ideology and forging a political force that impacts far beyond their walls. Eschewing the simplistic "white hat, black hat" mentality that dominates discussions of terrorism today, Dotan's brilliantly constructed, disturbingly provocative film is both a humanizing force and an alarming wake-up call.

For more information about this amazing documentary, see First Run Icarus Films HotHouse page.

Film: Mapping Stem Cell Research: Terra Incognita (Maria Finitzo, ITVS, 2007)

Maria Finitzo has made, and PBS Independent Lens television series has aired, a beautiful and brilliant story about people involved in fundamental medical research. The film is called Mapping Stem Cell Research: Terra Incognita and the central character is Northwestern University Neurologist Dr. Jack Kessler, but what makes this such a strong film is how the story is told from the point of view of 10 individuals.



Information about this extraordinary film is at Independent Lens' Mapping Stem Cell Research: Terra Ingcognita website.

The Great Rivers Partnership: IBM and the Earth

It is going to take changes in consciousness, changes in legislation, changes in strategy, deeper scientific understanding, deeper communication of scientific understanding to business owners and managers, new production technologies, new philosophies AND MORE to prevent the ever growing negative footprint on the earth by industrial civilization.

But at least IBM is prepared to develop IT technologies that allow us to monitor and understand what is happening. You may find interesting The Great Rivers Partnership.