California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

The Militarization of the American Mind

by John Lawrence

From seemingly rational thought processes that would make it impossible to end the war in Afghanistan to the insurrection at the Capitol to the "American movie" chock full of violence to the "well regulated militia" justification of gun proliferation, there is no end of rationalizations for the American military-industrial complex and gun culture on every level. Why does it come as a surprise to some journalists that many participants in the January 6 insurrection were current or ex military or police officers? They are exactly the ones with the mind set that believes Trump won the election, and that it was OK to do what their leader commanded them to do - invade the Capitol. The Generals who say that Biden shouldn't end the Afghanistan war on the grounds that the Kabul government will collapse are exactly the ones that argued we shouldn't end the Vietnam war because the South Vietnam government would collapse. Sure when the US sets up a puppet government and then props it up with money and a military presence, it probably will collapse when the US leaves that country which it never should have invaded in the first place. Afghanistan is Vietnam all over again or as Yogi Berra would say deja vu all over again.

The division among Americans into two tribes can be understood in terms of the two paths Americans take after high school graduation. There are those who go to college and there are those who go into the military. Those are basically the two choices high school graduates have. Those who go to college are taught to think critically to some extent, while those who go into the military are taught to obey orders. Unfortunately, Trump, as their Commander-in-Chief gave them the order to invade the Capitol, and they felt justified in following it because that is what their training led them to do. The choice to go into the Peace Corps or AmeriCorp is not really viable for most high school graduates because the perks of going into the military greatly exceed the perks of going into more peaceful pursuits, and they are less glorious. This is also a characteristic of the militarization of the American civilian mind. The military-industrial complex including, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, profits greatly from ongoing militarization and military thought processes, employs most of the college graduates and provides debate ending rationalizations for American military preparedness despite the fact that their extremely expensive hardware doesn't work half the time, and the threats to America are primarily cyber in nature as well as domestic terrorism.

The divide and contrast between high school graduates who go into the military and are taught to follow orders and those who go to college is reflected in the political divide between those on the right and those on the left.The military is all about symbolism including snappy uniforms, medals for valor in combat, saluting the flag and honoring themselves for their patriotism. On the left results in the improvement of the lives of the American people - and not just the elite civilian Officer's Corps - are more important than symbols of glory. They are more likely to question authority rather than unquestionably following orders. The January 6 insurrectionists were following Trump's orders at least that's what they were thinking in their own minds and by their own admission. I would like to see the FBI release to the public the number of insurrectionists who were military or former military. I bet that would be most of them, especially the males. A lot of ex military go into police work because of the familiarity with weaponry which they gained in the military. Since guns are a familiar way of life for them, naturally they become arch supporters of the Second Amendment, "well regulated" or not. They are used to classifying groups of people as either friendly or the enemy, and this mind set lends itself to police work.

In the final analysis, America is so used to being the world's policeman and profiting in various ways therefrom, that it is unthinkable that we should cooperate with our supposed adversaries to forestall global warming or to thwart future pandemics let alone the current one. We must always have an enemy or at least an adversary to justify our existence. A peaceful world in which everyone gets along and cooperates to solve the problems we earthlings face and have to deal with is unthinkable. Even though the US has a glut of vaccines while the rest of the world is begging for them, Americans feel free not to have their arms jabbed because after all they are free - free to be stupid, free to ignore the safety of other Americans and free to get infected with the virus and die taking others with them.. They just want to get back to normal entertaining themselves to death and ignoring totally any responsibility to their fellow citizens not to mention fellow citizens of the world, many of which they would like to maintain in their necessary roles as the enemy.

Dr. Fauci wondered why we couldn't all unite to fight the common enemy  - COVID - instead of fighting among ourselves about taking the vaccine. Uniting to fight a common enemy like COVID or climate change just isn't the way Americans and maybe humanity in general do things. We need to disagree even about things that are crucial for our continued existence as a species. As a nation we need an enemy whether it be Russia or China seemingly to justify our existence.

Off the Top of My Head

The Collective Sins of the Male Gender Visited on One Man: The Martyrdom of Harvey Weinstein

by John Lawrence, 2/20/2020

As part of the redefinition of male sexuality, we have the example of Harvey Weinstein, a man who thought he was having consensual sex except he wasn't. So has even the meaning of consensual sex been reversed? What does it even mean any more if someone wakes up the next day and decides that the sex they had the night before was not consensual? I'm sure that many of the women who had sex with Harvey Weinstein had in the back of their minds that it might lead to a job in the movie industry or even a role in a movie. Isn't that the way Hollywood's famous casting couch worked? When those potentialities didn't eventuate, some might have reinterpreted what just happened as sexual predation.

Marilyn Monroe wrote in her memoir, "My Story," “I met them all. Phoniness and failure were all over them. Some were vicious and crooked. But they were as near to the movies as you could get. So you sat with them, listening to their lies and schemes. And you saw Hollywood with their eyes — an overcrowded brothel, a merry-go-round with beds for horses.”

“The womanizing habits coming out that Harvey was prone to have a long history in the film business,” film critic and historian David Thomson said. “Attitudes change. We’re shocked now.”

“Once upon a time,” he said, “the general feeling was that women going into the movies to get a job as an actress … should not be surprised if they were propositioned, if they had to do pretty nasty things to get ahead. It happened across the whole film business. It’s regrettable.”

Jan-Christopher Horak, director of the UCLA Film & Television Archive and a professor of critical and media studies said that “Louis B. Mayer was known as an unbelievable satyr, the Harvey Weinstein of back then. Harvey Weinstein was doing it at a time when you couldn’t do it any more. You had the women’s movement in the late 1960s, early 1970s."

So what about the situation when a man using all his powers of persuasion convinces a woman to have sex with him. You might even consider this a seduction. She might have thought that this relationship was going somewhere - he might have even suggested that - and when it didn't, she might have felt betrayed. Who wouldn't? If she had certain expectations, if she had been led to believe certain expectations, and then, when they didn't pan out, she might have reinterpreted the sex part of it as predation or harassment. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. No one is angrier than a woman who has been rejected in love. She may have not even been thinking that her partner was going to give her a job or a role in a movie. She just may have been visualizing a relationship leading eventually to marriage and a family. That may not be what the man had in mind. So in her mind he was a scumbag. In his mind he was an excellent salesman, and , like all salesmen, he was essentially selling himself.

Mores change; sexual morality changes. Not too long ago it was considered sinful to have sex outside of marriage. "An American Tragedy" by Theodore Dreiser told the story of a woman, not only betrayed but pregnant and drowned by her lover. It's a recurring tragedy in American life. It was made into a movie, "A Place in the Sun" starring Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor and Shelley Winters, the pregnant woman betrayed. It was based on the real life murder of Grace Brown by Chester Gillette in 1906 which resulted in Gillette's conviction and execution by electric chair in 1908. The birth control pill changed sexual mores again. It was now possible to have sex without the potential consequence of pregnancy. I suppose Harvey Weinstein and many other males figured that they were off the hook, that now sex without responsibility was really possible. This after all is what most males wanted. Women went along because they didn't have to fear getting pregnant, and their expectations might have been that sex was the initial part of a relationship that would go somewhere.

Somewhere along the line women started to feel taken advantage of. Most of them wanted something more than a one night stand. No matter how long the relationship lasted, when it ended they felt resentful and bitter. All of these feelings have been collectively visited on the head of one man - Harvey Weinstein - for whom consensual sex is not an argument considered by a court of law to have any validity any more. You can't go back and prosecute Jack Warner or Louis B. Mayer, but you can make Harvey pay for all the collective sins of the male progenitors of the movie industry and by implication all the rest of the males that were influenced by the Playboy philosophy that Hugh Hefner so ably represented. The #MeToo movement sounded the death knoll for consensual sex.

Once again sexual mores have shifted. There is no such thing as consensual sex, or, if there is, it is no longer a no fault situation. Fault and blame is to be attributed, most likely from the woman to the hapless man who thought he was off the hook because he thought the sex was consensual. Even if the sex has not led to pregnancy, a man can no longer be assured that there are no consequences. Jealousy rears its ugly head. Resentment rears its ugly head. Women and men are definitely not on the same wavelength regarding sex. Women feel taken advantage of even when they evidently consented. Consensuality is no longer a meaningful term. In fact it is meaningless, and in the case of Harvey Weinstein, he must become a martyr for the male sex for all their sins, for all of the outrages that have been visited by men on the female sex.

Off the Top of My Head

Movie, "The Hunt," Loaded with Gun Violence. That's Why It Wasn't Released After 3 Mass Shootings.

by John Lawrence, August 13, 2019

Hollywood movies are getting more and more violent. In particular they are filled with gun violence. Is there a connection between this aspect of American culture and what is happening in real life? One might think so. Universal Pictures has pulled the release of The Hunt, which was scheduled to come out September 27. In a statement on the movie’s website, the studio said that this is not “the right time” for the film to be released, especially considering the recent mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. Marketing for the film had already been suspended due to the gun violence depicted in it.

The movie is about two groups of people: the liberals and the deplorables. Does this ring a bell? The liberals set out to hunt down and kill the deplorables. It is set in a world where “liberal elites” hunt Trump voter types for sport, having selected their prey based on the horrible opinions the targets shared on social media.This is all depicted as completely normal, even sporting. It normalizes violence, in particular gun violence.Such a treat to see people gunned down for the sport of it. It is really, really enjoyable. We can laugh as another one bites the dust, especially all those Trump voters.

However, in the movie the Trump voters take out their revenge on the "liberal elites" as well so both sides get to cheer when one of their opposite number gets gunned down. Is it any wonder there are mass shootings? Reality imitating culture? Gun violence in movies and in real life is totally normal? It gives the media something to convey which will raise their ratings. If it bleeds it leads, and the more blood the better. Meanwhile, nothing of importance concerning America or the world gets talked about. The Romans distracted their populace with bread and circuses. American culture distracts its constituents with blood and circuses.

Take any action movie. The guns in it are a whole lot bigger and more destructive than AK-47s. By comparison AK-47s seem like BB guns. You can't watch an American TV show or movie without gun violence being portrayed in it. That's why I mainly go to foreign produced movies. They are still capable of telling a story and formulating a plot line instead of relying on pyrotechnics to amuse and titillate the audience. "The Hunt" will probably be released at a later date in between the mass shootings if such a convenient time can be guessed at. They've spent too much money making it not to release it so that the American audience can be treated to another movie emphasizing gun violence.

The movie, Hobbs and Shaw is also incredibly violent, but it was released anyway amidst the mass shootings. Vox reported:

While the current iteration of Bond films, as well as other contenders to the action franchise throne like Mission: Impossible, frequently become mired in their own self-importance, Fast and Furious manages to float perpetually above such petty concerns as “plot” and “consequences.” Rather than giving a toss about elevating the action genre through serious themes, angsty heroes, and trope subversion, The Fast and The Furious instead consistently focuses on found family, homoerotic male bonding, and blowing shit up. What else, these films perpetually ask, do you really need?

Yes, what else do you need other than a lot of guns and "blowing shit up"?

Off the Top of My Head

The Loss of Two Musical Legends and a San Diego Connection

by John Lawrence, March 8, 2019

Recently we lost pianist and composer Andre Previn and composer and pianist Michel LeGrand. Previn died on February 28th and LeGrand on January 26. Both men were prolific jazz and classical pianists and composers. Both were involved in the film industry. Previn won 4 Academy Awards and LeGrand won 3. They both won numerous Grammys. Their deaths coming within about a month of each other represent a huge loss to the world of sophisticated music, both jazz and classical.

Michel Legrand is the French composer of such tunes as "What are you doing the rest of your life," "The windmills of your mind," and "You must believe in spring." He wrote the music for "Les Parapluies de Cherbourg" starring a young Catherine Deneuve. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is one of my favorite movies largely because of the musical score by Michel Legrand. The poignancy of the song "If it takes forever, I will wait for you" sung by Catherine dedicated to her lover who was conscripted into the French army to fight in the Algerian war is a testimony to two young people very much in love who nevertheless were forced by circumstances to go their separate ways. They were briefly reunited at a gas station when Catherine's character stopped in randomly on her way back to Cherbourg, both having married and with small children. An extensive obituary of LeGrand in the New York Times can be found here.

Previn was a classically trained pianist whose family escaped the Nazis in 1938 settling in Los Angeles where he got interested in jazz. His first wife, Betty Bennett, was a jazz singer currently married to jazz guitarist Mundell Lowe. Both are in their late 90s and live in San Diego. I have a connection with them in that, in my former occupation as a window washer, I cleaned their windows numerous times. Betty once gave me one of her CDs and as part of my former occupation as President of the San Diego Jazz Society, I presented Mundell Lowe in concert with the San Diego State jazz band. Previn and Bennett had two daughters, Claudia and Alicia, also known as Lovely (who became a violinist in the Irish band In Tua Nua). Previn later married Mia Farrow, with whom he had 3 children, after she divorced Frank Sinatra. An extensive obituary in the New York Times can be found here.

Off the Top of My Head

Merry Christmas, Mary Poppins

by John Lawrence, December 25, 2018

Today I'm taking my daughter and grandchildren to see Mary Poppins. It's one of my favorite movies, the original one that is. This one promises to be good too. Emily Blunt is perfect for the role, but she doesn't have the pipes of Julie Andrews. I'm wondering if the music will be as good. Also Lyn-Manuel is no Dick Van Dyke, but I'm sure he will be OK too. It'll be interesting to see if the music and dancing is as good as the original version.

Here's a suggestion: don't go to movies in which violence is portrayed. Don't go to movies in which a gun is drawn or there are battle scenes or there is criminal activity portrayed. If the American people did not support as consumers violent movies, TV shows and internet shows, they wouldn't be made any more. They are only made because they are lucrative at the box office. If nobody went to see them, they wouldn't make them any more. They only make them to make money.

There's a certain percentage of the population that do not like violent movies. That's why some nonviolent movies are being made, movies that tell a story, movies that do not portray a car chase, or explosions or other supposed "action." Many of these movies are foreign movies. It seems only Europeans know how to make movies that tell a story instead of being drenched in blood. American movies, by and large, are violent and concerned mostly about criminal activities. Where do you think criminals and mass murderers get their ideas from? Thank God, no producer has had the audacity to make a movie about a mass murderer ... yet.

So Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. There are at least some wholesome American movies still being made. Mary Poppins is one of them.

Hollywood Moguls and Sexual Predators

by John Lawrence

Retrospective Unwanted Sexual Advances and Seduction

It seems like a lot of women are "coming forward" 20 or 30 years later after the fact of unwanted sexual advances. This really doesn't cut it in the legal or even the moral sense in my opinion, but it does create a media frenzy which is what it is really all about. #MeToo is basically looking backward and deciding at a later date that someone has done something wrong which at the time and even shortly thereafter seemed to be no big deal.

It used to be that there was such a thing as seduction for which there was no culpability as far as I can ascertain. Maybe a woman was reluctant at first to have sex, but then if the guy was so charming and/or convincing, the situation might get to the point where she willingly had sex. In other words the sex was consensual. Later on she might have had the sexual equivalent of "buyer's remorse" and decided that it was a bad idea and blamed the guy for what happened. So where do you draw the line? Whether or not the man is rich and/or powerful has nothing to do with whether or not a woman has been raped. If she has been raped time is of the essence in reporting that rape. If the sex was more or less consensual, then the huge media frenzy around unwanted sexual advances is just that: a media frenzy.

Is anyone accusing rock stars and professional athletes of using their status to have sex with lots of women. The women may have had later regrets, but no one is coming forward to accuse Mick Jagger or Keith Richards of unwanted sexual advances even though they bragged about all the sex they had with multiple women. Are groupies coming forward complaining of being used by famous men? I don't think so.

If women want to be credible about sex with powerful, rich or famous men, they need to come forward immediately after the act occurred, go to the police and get a rape kit started. Then the DNA proof is present in their vagina and a swab will prove that. Otherwise, if too much time goes by, the sex should be considered consensual.

One of the famous liaisons in which much opprobrium was heaped on Bill Clinton was the relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Clinton was figuratively tarred and feathered and impeached although by all accounts the relationship was consensual. The sex between them was proven by virtue of the fact that Lewinsky had saved a semen-stained dress from which Clinton's DNA was extricated. Clinton lied about it and was caught in a lie, but consensual sex today is no big deal whether or not one or both of them is married. Is anyone concerned about the harm done to Harvey Weinstein's wife? Not as far as the media is concerned.

Although there is a big hue and cry about unwanted sexual advances, no one seems to be the least bit concerned about the fact that most of these men were married at the time and, therefore, committed adultery. No one seems to be concerned about the harm done to their wives and families. I guess adultery doesn't count for much any more.

The following is a compendium of some of my Off the Top of My Head columns on the subject.

Off the Top of My Head

Aspiring Starlets and the American Sleaze Machine

by John  Lawrence

For some women Hollywood moguls are sexual predators. For others they are a potential way of becoming a star, a means to an end. There are those that are repulsed by the casting couch as well they should be. It is just the first step, an entree of sorts, into an industry that is characterized by sleaze. So it is altogether fitting that the first introduction to the industry is a sleazy encounter with the likes of Harvey Weinstein. After all if your goal is to purvey sleaze, why not immerse yourself in the real life sleaze that goes on behind the scenes?

For other women a rejection of the casting couch means that they will probably never make it in the sleazy movie industry. They should rejoice in that fact alone because then they might have a chance to lead a more healthy, productive and ethical life.

The first movie that Harvey Weinstein fully financed was Pulp Fiction. Its script was reportedly turned down by Columbia TriStar as "too demented". Miramax co-chairman Harvey Weinstein was instantly enthralled with it. The film is about criminality, drugs and murder, a wonderful combination that is what aspiring starlets who make the cut will be involved in. The entertainment industry is inherently sleazy. Pulp Fiction won a lot of awards; it was considered a great movie. Nevertheless, it characterized the vacuity and emptiness of unproductive lives involved in borderline and in some cases outright criminality. This is what women, who want to become known in that industry and who will do anything to attain their goal, including accepting the advances of Harvey Weinstein and others like him, aspire to.

Some who accept mogul advances and then never become big stars have a case of sour grapes and later decide that they were taken advantage of. Some of these "come forward" with accusations many years later after having a change of heart regarding that encounter which was a potential entree into the movie business. The ethical ones reject mogul advances in the first place and make the decision that it isn't worth it even if that means they are throwing away their chances at becoming a star.

What is purveyed onscreen in many but not all cases is a twisted, illicit sexuality which evidently is more entertaining than sex which is portrayed as part of a love affair. I have no problem with sex as an inherent part of a love story between two consenting married or unmarried adults. But this kind of sexuality is not the kind that sells most movies. This is the kind that brands a movie as a "chick flick" or a European movie which is too dull for most American audiences. American audiences want cultural depravity and this is what producers like Harvey Weinstein know will sell.

The bottom line is that women shouldn't be too outraged when  the vicarious sleaze portrayed on the Big Screen turns out to be the reality of real life in an industry in which fantasy and reality merge. You can only realistically commit to portraying sleaze if you are fully committed to it in real life. You have to live what you then can realistically portray. It's called method acting, the Stanislavski system. Women with a moral or ethical bone in their body should expect to be part of movie moguls' real life, reject it and go on to something better. They might not then become famous though. Too bad. They will just have to live with that.

I AM the Documentary

 

Karl Rove: "Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson are Fair Game"

 

Michael Moore Excoriates Capitalism

Michael Moore doesn't mince words or rather he doesn't shy away from letting others speak for him and then communicating his sentiments via film. His latest movie, "Capitalism: A Love Story," has got to be the biggest spoof-on-words in any movie title because Michael Moore, as every scene in the movie attests, HATES capitalism. He exposes so many reprehensible aspects of capitalism - never reported by the main stream media, which gives you sugar coated nightly pablum - that it's a tribute to him that his movies are still full of fun and humor. One could imagine a much drier intellectual approach to the serious subjects he deals with here, but Moore always keeps it interesting and human centered. He doesn't so much present statistics, although there are plenty of those, as he does humanize the effects that capitalism has on real life people from people being evicted from their homes to people refusing to leave a shut down workplace, Republic Window and Doors factory in Chicago, until they're properly paid.

The most significant part of the film to me is the connection Moore draws between capitalism and Christianity. He has Jesus refuse to heal a sick person due to a "preexisting condition." He has Jesus say in answer to the question 'how can I be saved' - "seek ye first the Kingdom of Wall Street." The absurdity of having Jesus mouth contemporary values in place of the values Jesus actually espoused is revelatory. He interviews three priests each of whom says that "capitalism is evil." Moore is relentless in his condemnation of capitalism, and there is no love story here at all. The title is entirely tongue in cheek. But this is the movie's strong suit. For millenia Christians have been duped into thinking that capitalism and Christianity are compatible. It is becoming increasingly obvious that they are not. In fact the Protestant reformation can be seen as nothing more than the attempt to reconcile Christianity with capitalism. Calvanism attempts to replace helping the poor with working hard and saving your money as the ticket for God's approbation. 

Clearly, the essence of Jesus' teachings and hence the essence of Christianity is that the way to salvation is to help "the least of these, my brethren." Jesus told his disciples that they would be saved because they "saw him hungry and gave him food, saw him naked and clothed him, saw him a stranger and welcomed him, saw him in prison and visited him." When his disciples expressed disbelief that they had ever seen Jesus in those conditions, he said to them "Inasmuch as you've done it to the least of these my brethren, it's as if you had done it unto me." This is the essence of Christianity, an essence too easily obfuscated and disguised by hundreds of years of watering down and vitiation. All the rest of Christianity is really a bunch of fluff compared to this essence which drives a stake through the heart of capitalism.

Moore might have gone into other religions' attitudes towards money and banking, but maybe that will be the subject of another movie. Take Islamic banking, for example. Islamic banks are forbidden to charge interest. They are forbidden to deal in derivatives or other fancy, schmancy financial products that in large measure were the cause of the current economic malaise. And Islamic banks were, therefore, not affected by the current economic crisis.

From the Washington Post:

As big Western financial institutions have teetered one after the other in the crisis of recent weeks, another financial sector is gaining new confidence: Islamic banking. Proponents of the ancient practice, which looks to sharia law for guidance and bans interest and trading in debt, have been promoting Islamic finance as a cure for the global financial meltdown. This week, Kuwait's commerce minister, Ahmad Baqer, was quoted as saying that the global crisis will prompt more countries to use Islamic principles in running their economies. U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert M. Kimmet, visiting Jiddah, said experts at his agency have been learning the features of Islamic banking. Though the trillion-dollar Islamic banking industry faces challenges with the slump in real estate and stock prices, advocates say the system has built-in protection from the kind of runaway collapse that has afflicted so many institutions. For one thing, the use of financial instruments such as derivatives, blamed for the downfall of banking, insurance and investment giants, is banned. So is excessive risk-taking. ... "In Islamic finance you cannot make money out of thin air," said Amr al-Faisal, a board member of Dar al-Mal al-Islami, a holding company that owns several Islamic banks and financial institutions. "Our dealings have to be tied to actual economic activity, like an asset or a service. You cannot make money off of money. You have to have a building that was actually purchased, a service actually rendered, or a good that was actually sold." In the Western world, bankers designing investment instruments have to satisfy government regulators. In Islamic banking, there is another group to please -- religious regulators called a sharia board. Finance lawyers work closely with Islamic finance scholars, who study and review a product before issuing a fatwa, or ruling, on its compliance with sharia law. Islamic bankers describe depositors as akin to partners -- their money is invested, and they share in the profits or, theoretically, the losses that result. (In interviews, bankers couldn't recall a case in which depositors actually lost money; this shows that banks put such funds only in very low-risk investments, they said.) Rather than lend money to a home buyer and collect interest on it, an Islamic bank buys the property and then leases it to the buyer for the duration of the loan. The client pays a set amount each month to the bank, then at the end obtains full ownership. The payments are structured to include the cost of the house, plus a predetermined profit margin for the bank. Sharia-compliant institutions also cannot invest in alcohol, pornography, weapons, gambling, tobacco or pork.

That sure leaves out much of US investment.

One of the most glaring things the movie points out is that some corporations take out life insurance policies on their employees with themselves (not the employees) as beneficiaries. This amounts to placing a bet that their employee will die an untimely death and they, therefore, will profit from it. These have been referred to as "dead peasants" insurance. For a list of companies dealing in dead peasants insurance click here. As the movie showed succinctly, a bereft family left with tons of debt from an untimey death was juxtaposed with Wal-Mart's receiving a $100,000. plus payoff on that employee's life insurance policy. It was pointed out that young women paid off more munificently on such policies than did men. This is tantamount to profiting off the misery of fellow human beings. But then that is what capitalism does so well. We should be surprised?

Whats more, the company might use this policy to pay for retirement benefits and other perks not for you or your fellow workers, but for your companys top executives. Sound outrageous? Such corporate-owned life insurance is also big business: Companies pay a whopping $8 billion in premiums each year for such coverage, according to the American Council of Life Insurers, a trade group. The policies make up more than 20% of all the life insurance sold each year. Companies expect to reap more than $9 billion in tax breaks from these policies over the next five years. The policies are treated as whole life policies. So, companies can borrow against the policies (though the IRS won't let them write off the interest). And the death benefits are tax-free. Hundreds of companies -- including Dow Chemical, Procter & Gamble, Wal-Mart, Walt Disney and Winn-Dixie -- have purchased this insurance on more than 6 million rank-and-file workers.

One wonders how many insurance policies have been sold on President Barack Obama's life. In this casino economy anyone can bet on anything no matter how macabre. After all Goldman Sachs sold mortgage backed securities to unsuspecting clients and then took out insurance policies betting that the securities would fail due to non-payment of mortgages. When that actually happened, Goldman profited by collecting on those insurance policies making them seem more prescient than those companies who had failed to take them out.

What one has here with capitalism is clearly a moral morass. Michael Moore is not afraid of calling a spade a spade while Congress persons are intimidated by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck. Moore is not afraid to question the validity of capitalism and to suggest that better although as yet undefined systems might be out there. Socialism is just a name, and there are many varieties of it. Capitalism/socialism hybrids seem to be working just fine in other parts of the world. What is clear is the moral depravity of a system that causes wide spread human suffering while the top 1% have more accumulated wealth than the bottom 95%.

Citibank has dubbed the modern day capitalistic economy a plutonomy - an economy by and for the rich. In a memo, Citibank touts the fact that the rich account for most of the wealth and income in advanced economies such as the US, Australia, Canada and Britain. Citibank hails these trends and assures the wealthy that they are bound to continue as long as the world wide labor market keeps the price of "outsource-able" labor down. Their thesis is "that the rich are the dominant drivers of demand in many economies throughout the world" so why not cater exclusively to them? Citibank believes, according to the report, that capitalists (the rich) are only going to get richer in coming years as they get a larger percentage of GDP primarily as a result of globalization. According to the report: "This bodes well for companies selling to or servicing the rich."

The Citibank report notes that the growing disparity in income and wealth between rich and poor may lead to some blowback or revolt among the poor as their misery index increases. This is true not only in the US but in the rest of the world where poorer peoples are already fighting back towards the world's wealthier nations. Terrorism is but one manifestation of resentment towards the rich.

In the final analysis the astonishing fact is that Michael Moore tells it like it is at a time when politicians and media shrink from even calling capitalism capitalism much less criticising it or suggesting that there might be a better way to organize a society. The right is all too willing to demonize words - like socialism and communism - and people who dare suggest that capitalism is archaic much less downright evil.

Michael Moore doesn't do much in terms of calling for a different economic system although he does suggest that economic democracy - as yet undefined - might be an alternative to capitalism. A country that has both economic and political democracy might be called a true democracy as opposed to the economic plutonomy/political democracy that we have today in the US. And the political democracy part of the hybrid is heavily influenced by campaign donations and lobbyists so it too is essentially a plutocracy - and a democracy in name only.

Movie Review: Sicko

Michael Moore is one of the few filmmakers making movies of any value in today's world. He's a truth teller. Diogenes went around with his lamp looking for one honest man. A modern day Diogenes could say "mission accomplished" after finding Michael Moore. He takes us on a tour of the health care systems in Canada, Britain, France and Cuba, all of which are superior to the US. Americans have been totally brainwashed by health care insurance and pharmaceutical companies who have millions to spend on mind numbing TV ads. The insularity and self-referencing of the US population has made it easy for the corporate system to be successful in insuring that the US system remains very profitable for those corporations who run it. The Medicare drug benefit program was a total giveaway to the health care corporations and the legislation was in fact written by their lobbyists.

Most of the movie isn't even subject to debate since Moore uses actual footage of such things as a doctor confessing before Congress that her job was to deny care to needy people, and in return she was rewarded with bonuses. The more care she as the gatekeeper denied, the larger were her bonuses. 18,000 people die each year as a direct result of their not even having health insurance. Moore points out that having health insurance doesn't guarantee that you'll be taken care of either. Insurance companies employ people whose job it is to search through a person's records to find a reason, any reason, to deny him or her the more expensive kinds of medical care when they really need it. Even people with health insurance go bankrupt just paying the deductibles and copays. Michael assembles a group of 9/11 volunteers with severe health problems who were unable to receive care and takes them on an odyssey to Guantanamo Bay (where the detainees receive excellent health care) and then Cuba where they finally receive care for their medical problems neglected in the US.

The contrast between the throwaway people with health problems that go untreated in the US and the well and humanely treated people in a third world country like Cuba where there is a doctor in every neighborhood is stark. Cuba even trains and exports doctors to other third world countries. Some US citizens are now training in Cuba to become doctors. Universal health care in other industrialized first world countries like France, Britain and Canada leads citizens of those countries to totally take it for granted. They never have to worry about paying a bill, not even a deductible or a copay, and they never have to worry about not receiving excellent treatment. It's just one thing they they never have to think about; hence they pretty much take it for granted.

Universal health care comes in basically two flavors: socialized medicine and single payer. Socialized medicine is when the government owns the hospitals and health care facilities and the doctors are paid directly by the government. This is what they have in Britain. Moore interviews a British doctor expecting him to be ill paid and unhappy with his loss of independence. What he finds instead is someone driving a luxury car, living in luxury housing, making $200,000. a year and not at all disgruntled. In fact he's very loyal to the British system and wouldn't want to work anywhere else - especially in America. A single payer system is one in which the government replaces the insurance companies but the hospitals and medical practices are privately owned. We already have that in the US; it's called Medicare. In fact some of the proposals to fix the US system simply call for an expansion of Medicare, if not to all citizens, at least to children and the poor. The Veterans' Administration in the US is similar to socialized medicine in that the government owns the hospitals and facilities, and the doctors work directly for the government. So the US has both kinds of systems on limited bases.

The question is why don't US citizens demand the same quality of health care that other advanced countries are getting. We have 47 million uninsured; we're 38th on a list of quality of health care compared to other countries of the world. We wait in waiting rooms longer to see a doctor (that always used to be an argument they used to prove US health care was better); we pay more for prescription medicines. In general American citizens are getting screwed and go along with their own screwing. Why? Why do they vote against their own interests? Why do they participate in a system that is stacked against them? The answer is advertising. The US citizenry are lemmings who can be swayed by the millions of dollars that go into advertising either to vote for a particular candidate, buy a particular product or to be against universal health care. They're basically hook, line and sinker in the pocket of Big Brother and corporate interests. They don't get out in the streets and protest as the French do. They have little regard for their fellow man as the British and Canadians do. They're willing to sacrifice a sizable minority (47 million) if the majority are satisfied, and, let's face it, the majority of people never have to face the extreme health problems as did some of the people in Michael Moore's movie. That's what the health insurance companies and the government are counting on - a passive population willing to go along with any pablum they're fed. And the media is afraid to offend their corporate advertisers and owners. Here's a Michael Moore fact check after a recent CNN interview with Wolf Blitzer.

Michael Moore deserves the Congressional Medal of Freedom, but he'll never get it. Instead they'll politicize, demonize, denigrate, cast aspersions on and castigate him for speaking truth to power, a truth that should be obvious to every moderately intelligent and caring American. The problem is that they're a diminishing breed. Michael Moore manages to deal with important and serious subjects with a considerable amount of wit and grace. His movies are always entertaining and uplifting. Contrast this with the gazillions spent on conventional movies whose goal is nothing more than to offer you the ultimate car chase and/or killing machine, a series of mindless titillations. I guess that's the mentality of the average American. Maybe they are getting what they deserve in terms of health care.