Month: October 2005

Part of the natural coalition speaks.  

The Democratic Party has cast off in word, deed and, worse!, in silence the old partners in the Civil Rights coalitions.  They never developed a populist economic message to extend to the South post Reagan… over and over thru decades they enabled.  Gays were neglected, sold out…. Don’t ask don’t tell.  Carter telegraphed Clinton immediately upon election advising him to open mil service to gays thru executive order.   Move swiftly Carter advised, the nation would survive and over 4 years he would indeed be re-elected.  

Civil Rights.

The great umbrella under which we might all have stayed Democrats (and slept at night).  Or been independent but honest partners of a modern Democratic Party.  One with broad coalitions.  

Read this from Glen Ford and Peter Gamble of the Black Commentator and hear the reverberations.  I have sent it to the DC office of Senator Obama (from his recent missive):

And further, it will require us to innovate and experiment with whatever ideas hold promise (including market- or faith-based ideas that originate from Republicans).

As well as to my representatives, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer and Nancy Pelosi.  

And to Harry Reid.  Who should go back to NV if he will not assist in mounting a Democratic challenger to Ensign.  

Who are these people that they lecture us.

Let’s talk about our favorite movies — or, in my case, a movie I haven’t seen yet because it just opened, and only in major cities.

A couple evenings ago, I was treated to a half-hour interview by Charlie Rose of a very articulate and observantly attuned Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of my favorite actors, about his starring role in the new film, Capote. Hoffman studied for the role by viewing clips from Truman Capote‘s earlier years, and his years in Kansas while interviewing and writing the stunning book, In Cold Blood — a pioneering work of documentary novel or “nonfiction novel” and later a great film — with the considerable help of his friend since childhood, Harper Lee. Hoffman said he avoided the later clips of Capote, during his decline and his gossipy, sometimes drunken, TV interviews. Hoffman also said it took him two months to perfect Capote’s very different voice (and you can hear Hoffman as Capote in an All Things Considered clip on Sept. 30).

The film was written and directed by two of Hoffman’s oldest friends, neither of whom had written or directed a feature film before. The film also draws on the popular book by George Plimpton, Truman Capote: in which various friends, enemies, acquaintances, and detractors recall his turbulent career. Both the reviews — and the high ratings at IMDb — indicate that this is a must-see film.

About Hoffman’s acting, Rolling Stone says that “Hoffman gets the flamboyantly gay public image of the whiny-voiced gadfly who swanned through New York literary circles.”

It surprised me to learn yesterday, as I looked up all of this, that Capote’s first novel was shunned by major book critics because it touched on homosexuality. Good lord! At least in that regard, times have changed. For now.

[From the diaries by susanhu . . . TIger Leaping Gorge . . . for its name alone it must be saved.]

By Other Lisa, cross-posted at the paper tiger…

The invaluable Three Gorges Probe, a news service/website originally reporting on the infamous Three Gorges Dam, has for some time expanded its focus to deal with other hydroelectric projects in China and their environmental and cultural consequences. They continue their excellent coverage with this translation of a CCTV documentary about local people in one of China’s most beautiful natural attractions, Tiger Leaping Gorge, whose ancestral lands may be flooded by future dam building projects on the upper Yangtze (Jinsha) River. Here’s an excerpt:  

1. Who is going to break the villagers’ rice bowl?

Legend has it that Shangri-La is heaven on earth, a mythical, exotic, dreamy landscape. In Lost Horizon, American novelist James Hilton depicted Shangri-La as a wonderland in which people live in harmony with nature and each other.

Late last century, people found a real Shangri-La in the Hengduan mountain range, where the Jinsha [upper Yangtze] flows in southwest China. Jinjiang town in Diqing Zang autonomous prefecture, Yunnan province, is the real Shangri-La in many people’s minds, where a multitude of minority groups, including Yi, Tibetan, Bai, Naxi, Lisu and Miao, have lived together for generations in peace and harmony.

Recently, however, local people have begun to feel uneasy, upset by a piece of news. They have heard that a big dam is to be built on the Jinsha River so that water can be diverted to central Yunnan province and, in particular, to the provincial capital of Kunming. Roughly 100,000 people will have to move if the project goes ahead.

Engineers are conducting surveys of the proposed dam site, and red marks [indicating the future water level of the dam’s reservoir] have already been painted on some walls, despite the fact that the central government has not yet approved the project. Although the scheme is still at the feasibility-study stage, everybody here is extremely worried, particularly because they have been given so little information about the project.

Chezhou village, part of Jinjiang town, is one of the places that will be affected if the dam is built. Villagers set off together for the village office, hoping to learn more from village leaders. One of the villagers is 67-year-old Ding Changxiu. Her children are grown now, and have left the village for jobs in the county seat. It would be better for her and her husband to move there to live with their children, but Ding would rather stay put because she loves her native place so much.

Villager: We know nothing about the project. I’m wondering if the village leaders know anything about it. We old peasants deserve to know something about it, don’t you think?

Ding Changxiu: I feel as if there’s a stone weighing down my heart. I was told we’d have to leave tomorrow! The whole village is on tenterhooks. I just met an elderly woman in the village who swore she’d rather die at home than be driven away. … Continued BELOW:

As is being discussed over at dkos, Libby sent a letter to Judy Miller in jail that is most bizarre & raises quite a few questions.

The letter courtesy of Thistime at dkos.