Congratulations, Barack! As the Onion said, you are about to inherit America’s worst job. Only ten weeks until Inauguration, ten weeks for Bush to continue his reign of destruction. With a 25% approval rating, I’m sure he’s more than happy to gift industry with some more loose regulations. After all, he’s going to need some big donors to break ground on his presidential library at SMU.

After tarnishing his reputation with his U.N. speech about Iraq’s WMD, Colin Powell finally stopped waffling and offered his well-reasoned conclusion on why he’s supporting Obama. While I’ve never been a fan of generals, I did have respect for Powell’s calm, smart demeanor, at least before he shamefully toed the Bush line about the imminent danger of Iraq. Whether pundits want to spin this as a race thing or not, Powell did himself right this time. Tireless diplomacy and engaged multilateralism are the best approaches to ensure world peace, not bullying and jumping into unwinable conflicts. Powell’s experience tells him this and he knows Obama is clearly the better man for the moment.


Speaking of a calm, smart demeanor. The best advertisement for Barack Obama happens to be his appearance on Bill O’Reilly’s show on September 4th. If you haven’t seen this 4-part video, you should. Under O’Reilly’s dogged pressure, Obama remains confident, intelligent, and totally reasonable, even displaying a sense of humor. While the Fox News flat-tax, pro-corporate commentator could have sharpened his chainsaw a bit more, he was obviously impressed by Obama’s command of the issues. The usual stuff is discussed--class warfare, cap gains tax, Bill Ayers, Iran, Afghanistan--with Obama refusing to take O’Reilly’s inflammatory bait. Also mentioned, are my two biggest Obama disappointments, his support of FISA and embrace of nuclear power, both of which clearly show Obama is willing to imperil the citizenry at the profit of big corporate power. (I can only hope that this will not actually play out in his presidency.)

Somehow I missed this photojournalism controversy last week. Jill Greenberg, aka The Manipulator, was hired by The Atlantic to shoot a portrait of John McCain and she posted photoshopped outtakes (a few shown here) from the shoot on her website (all since removed). The editor of The Atlantic released a condemnation of Greenberg’s actions as well as an apology to the McCain campaign. The whole controversy has spawned some lively discussions (here, here, and here) on photojournalist ethics. Though I find her actions unprofessional and childish, I don’t see why Greenberg can’t publicize her strong political views. Of course, she won’t be working for The Atlantic again, but so what? Maybe she’ll have to give up her title of photojournalist, since she can’t remain impartial. But that’s okay, she’s not documenting reality anyway, she’s an artist illustrator.

Artists can and should take stands; too often they end up only making slick PR advertisements for the subjects they shoot. Even if McCain’s image was made into propaganda, it does not change the fact that he’s a Bush lapdog, a man who has totally lost his principles, and someone we should really fear running this country.

For an interesting read on how a real pro dealt with photographing a subject he considered evil, read this about Arnold Newman posing Alfred Krupp.

The view of the lights from Flatbush and Bergen, a very similar view I had of the towers when I left for a photoshoot and the first plane had just hit the north tower...

In a kind of Borgesian rewriting of history, United Artists has apparently doctored old photographs of Claus von Stauffenberg, the attempted assassin of Hitler, so they resemble better Tom Cruise who is playing the German hero in a film called Valkyrie slated to open in February of 2009. Read about the controversy and how it ties in to Scientology here.

According to this article in the NYT,The Iraq Petroleum Company is back! Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total, and BP will return to Kirkuk, Mosul, and other petroleum-rich areas, starting June 30th. The British, Dutch, French, and U.S. companies are returning to what was once part of the Ottoman Empire, after 47 years of being locked out in 1961 when General Qassem nationalized Iraq's oil, a program completed by our man, Saddam Hussein in 1971. The foreign oil companies were given very nice no-bid contracts to begin extraction, almost certainly giving them a nice position to pump out a lot more when the contracts end in two years. With oil at $140 a barrel, the price of war is cheap in comparison. With the leveraged investment of 4100 dead U. S. soldiers, tens of thousands wounded, about 100K dead Iraqis, and a half trillion dollars of taxpayers' money, big oil should be poised to make some very nice profits.

It was called Colony Collapse Disorder, CCD, and was a description of the alarming decimation of bee colonies throughout the U.S. and the world. About a year ago we were very obsessed about it, fearful that the bees' demise was the canary in the coalmine of the irreversibility of global warming. What happened to that story? Was it just one of many soundbites of hype that briefly occupied our ADD minds? Or was it not as bad as we expected?

The answer is that we do have ADD and the bee losses are bad, but perhaps not as bad as expected. A virus is to blame for much of the bees' demise, but also a kind of karoshi, overwork. Now to the part I did not know anything about: the business of pollination. Did you know that bee pollination is a $15 billion dollar industry in the U.S., that approximately 1,000 commercial beekeepers own 90% of the country's 2.4 million bee colonies, that far more lucrative than honey production is the pollination of almond trees, a $1.9 billion dollar business (compared to honey's paltry $160 million and double even Napa Valley's wine production)? As food prices increase and the need to pollinate more and more acres of cotton, fruits, vegetables, and nuts, the value of the beekeeper's services increase. Like the chickens overfed and forced to live on 20-hour days so that they lay more eggs, honeybee colonies are driven around the country from one crop to the next to provide their indispensable services. This week almonds, next week, blueberries, the week after, alfalfa, and so on. In short, the bees are overworked, dropped into neverending fields of pornographically titillating flowers, and on top of this many are given hormones to stimulate their busy bee behavior so that they gather (and disseminate) more and more pollen. It's a fascinating topic, and I could go on, but you'd better get it from its source instead. If our planet is to survive, bees, too, will need shortened work weeks, guaranteed vacations, and much less stress.

Originally released as classified information in November of 2007, the full report is now available, redacted, of course, for general consumption. An analysis of 600,000 captured documents released 6 years after the drumbeat for war began, the report concludes, surprise, surprise, that there was no evidence found to support Saddam, as he's referred to by first name only in the report, was actively linked to external terrorist groups like al Qaeda or was developing WMD to attack the U.S. The timid conclusion on page 45 of the 94 page report says, that although Saddam had threatened the U.S. and Bush I specifically ("We can send people to Washington . . . a person with explosive belt around him could throw himself on Bush's car.") before the 1st Gulf War,

"the evidence is less clear in terms of Saddam's declared will at the time of OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM in 2003. Even with access to significant parts of the regime's most secretive archive, the answer to the question of Saddam's will in the final months in power remains elusive. Potentially, more significant documents and media files are awaiting analysis or are even yet to be discovered."

First a holocaust memoir turns out to be a total fabrication (Misha Defonseca's Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years), now an L.A. gang orphan story turns out to be fiction as well. Margaret B. Jones' Love and Consequences fooled a lot of reviewers for the best reasons: it was well written and compelling. In Defonseca's case, she was not found out until the book was already a bestseller and a movie. For Jones, we'll see how her career fares, especially since the publisher has cancelled her book tour and is recalling the book. (I wonder if you can sue for the mental anguish caused by memoir deception--WRITERS: a possible short story idea?). It's amazing how well a book can sell when it's labeled as a memoir, but when it's fiction, it's assumed to bear little resemblance to reality and is given much less attention. Reality sells. Though I haven't read her book, Defonseca's supposed raised-by-wolves childhood was probably no less vivid than a great book of powerful fiction thought to be based on some version of the author's youth: Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird.

Last night I was lucky enough to see a preview of Moore's new documentary Sicko, which is due to premiere at Cannes on Saturday. On the whole, I think this is his most compelling and reasoned film. Targeted more at mainstream America than globetrotting literati, the film makes a strong case for nationalized healthcare by comparing our sicko, broken "managed care" system here very unfavorably with Canada's, Britain's, and France's. France, home of the Cannes Festival (hello Palme d'Or numéro deux?), shines brightest under Moore's lights, with its 35-hour work week, 5 weeks of paid vacation, free healthcare, and exceptional maternity leave, which includes visits from government social workers who will assist mothers with just about anything--including laundry.

The film's most brilliant irony concerns a group of 9/11 rescue workers denied any kind of compensatory care for their severe health problems caused by their heroic work in the Ground Zero charnel pit. Moore takes them on a boat ride to crash the only place in America which offers excellent free health care: Guantanamo Prison--GITMO. Not surprisingly, the military does not agree to host them, and they end up testing demonized Castro's healthcare system where they are treated--surprise, surprise--with dignity, professionalism, and absolutely no bureaucratic red tape.

Healthcare is big business and big profit in the U.S. and its lobbying dollars are unmatched even by big oil. Democrats (Hillary, among them) as well as Republicans are very indebted to HMOs and pharmaceutical companies for their seats in Congress. National health care is the way of the future, but it will be a long, mean fight against corporate interests. Michael Moore has bravely lobbed the first volley of the national debate. Hopefully this will stimulate constructive dialogue among all Americans.

Though I've seen four of his films where his passion for the little guy is evident throughout, I was curious about what the man was like in person. The baseball hat, the tentish T-shirt, the shorts and hightops were his outfit for the evening and they seem to suit him well for his unpretentious, self-effacing character. Watching him interact with 9/11 rescue workers and others consulted or related to the Sicko production, I could not help being moved by his enormous compassion for people. Sicko is not a film about ideas, it is a call for action. And this man is the real deal, a true patriot dedicated to fight the injustices and indignities endured by all Americans.

China made a strategic test last Thursday evening local time. Now it's not just superior firepower that counts, "smart" bombs, but the ability to protect the satellites that guide them. GPS is very vulnerable if its satellite network is destroyed. Read more here.

Choromatsu, the monkey star of a legendary 1988 Sony Walkman commercial, has died at 29. For those of you who never lived in Japan, you've probably never heard of him. But when I was there and saw the commercial which features the serene Choromatsu donning in-ear headphones and clutching a cassette Walkman as he gazes into a pastoral landscape, I was totally charmed. It is one of the most memorable commercials I've ever seen and I've always wondered why Sony never exported it abroad. Rarely do you see a monkey with such dignity and intelligence. Click here for the commercial, or here for more info.