Contributor

Michael Moore’s latest film, “Capitalism: A Love Story,” should be a true eye-opener for millions of Americans. In the film, Moore does an incredible job at presenting critical information (which in some cases is common knowledge) in a way that causes us as a country to look in the mirror and see some very disturbing truths.

Corruption, greed, and corporate lies have all become staples in a system supposedly framed around freedom, equality, and justice. Moore presents the case that capitalism has taken the place of democracy in a country where the freedom of choice has been diminished to the choosing of which company you wish to indenture your soul.

The film starts out with the common, yet brilliant comparison of America with the fallen empire of Rome. It was Rome’s unquenchable thirst for growth and power that led to its downfall. It was an unsustainable empire and by ignoring the warning signs, the inevitable collapse was colossal and quick.

Today, the rise and fall of Rome is nothing more than a chapter in our history books. Many believe that America will fall to a similar fate, but it’s films like “Capitalism” that seek to change our devastating course towards destruction.

The film is a call to duty, a plea to awaken, and a personal triumph. Moore described “Capitalism” as “the movie I’ve been making for the past 20 years.” How will the public react to it? Probably in true Michael Moore fashion. Some people will absolutely love it while others will passionately hate it. It is his arrogant and comedic, yet sympathetic style of filmmaking that makes his work so debatable. Moore puts real people in the forefront of his films, something that is guaranteed to produce real public reactions.

While Moore can be seen plenty of times throughout the film with his megaphone in hand, it is usually the voices of others that make the most impact. His ability to attach faces to the struggle that so many of us read in the paper and hear about on the news is Moore’s greatest talent as a filmmaker.

His decision to include footage from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1944 speech on the proposed “second bill of rights” was genius as it plainly presents the true progress that could have been made had the former President not died one year later without being able to pass the revolutionary bill.

That proposed bill (which included some of the most basic and beautiful human rights that are now ridiculously far from reach for so many Americans) has been long forgotten in Congress. According to Moore, so has true democracy.

Towards the end of “Capitalism,” Moore insists that he loves this country, but he is disgusted by what it has become. “What are we doing?” he bluntly asks. The choice is always ours. We can either love him or we can hate him, but the need to answer this question truthfully is brutally crucial.

“Capitalism” is a very long scroll of far ranging information chopped up and stapled into two hours of national soul searching. It is the type of film that could spark a massive revelation, waking us up from our blind march toward oblivion. It could make you want to quit your job, stop paying your taxes, and even keep your life savings in a shoebox under your bed. Or maybe it will do none of these.

One thing is for certain: the revolution will not be televised, but it most certainly is coming to a theater near you.

Siobhan Ladjache
Co Editor-in-Chief

CNN announced on Tuesday that it would not air ads produced by the media watchdog group, Media Matters. The group’s ads pressure CNN to direct Lou Dobbs away from further questioning the legitimacy of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

The host’s now infamous “birther conspiracy” broadcasts struck a chord with racist paranoiacs around the country when he insisted that Obama produce his original birth certificate for the sake of what Dobbs terms “transparency.”

Many groups have criticized Dobbs’ birther broadcasts including the Southern Poverty Law Center, whose president, Richard Cohen, stated that “Dobbs bears a degree of moral responsibility for pouring fuel, in the form of baseless accusations, on a raging fire.”

Accusations surrounding the President’s right to serve in the White House have been debunked repeatedly, even by CNN legal analyst, Jeffery Toobin. Yet when Media Matters had booked a week’s worth of ad time on CNN, Fox, and MSNBC, in an effort to pressure the news organization to reign in its host, CNN executives privately demanded that cable companies not air the ads, and cable operators immediately pulled the ads from their CNN slots.

CNN/U.S. President, Jon Klein, insisted in an interview that Lou Dobbs retain his right to continue broadcasting racially paranoid content: “I trust him, as I trust all our reporters and anchors, to exercise their judgment as various stories evolve.”

In an email to “Lou Dobbs Tonight” staffers, Klein stated that Hawaiian officials had provided sufficient evidence of Obama’s birth, and that the birther conspiracy buzz was “a dead story.”

In the interview Klein went on to defend the public’s right to disagree: “Other people may have a different point of view about that, and they’re welcome to offer it, because I don’t think as management you ever want to be closed down to discussions about editorial issues.”

Interestingly, when Media Matters attempted to express their opinion on the editorial integrity of CNN, and pay for the right to express it on CNN, the network quickly released a statement saying “”CNN retains the right to object to any ad run by the cable operator on our network whose purpose is to attack CNN or our employees.”

The Media Matters ads will still run on Fox News and MSNBC in New York, Washington D.C., and Atlanta during the Lou Dobbs timeslot.

EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson and Puerto Rico Governor Luis Fortuno (Image: Congress.org, EPA.gov)

Washington, DC. (July, 14, 2009) - The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa P. Jackson and Puerto Rico Governor Luis Fortuno will announce today that the agency has awarded nearly $72 million to Puerto Rico through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Learn more facts about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 on IRS.GOV by clicking here.

Image: state.gov

Washington, DC – The Bureau of Public Affairs announced that on Friday, July 10, at 10 a.m., U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will host a State Department town hall focusing on a new initiative to review our strategic approach to diplomacy and development. The town hall will be in the Dean Acheson Auditorium.

Image: courtsey of NBA.com

With tomorrows NBA Draft there is little debate about whom the Los Angeles Clippers will take with their first overall pick in this year’s seemingly mediocre draft. At 6’9” and 250 lbs, Blake Griffin is already an NBA prototype and will undoubtedly be the number one pick on Thursday evening. But is this slashing forward enough to drag the Clippers out of basketball abyss? I don’t think so.

Griffin will surely have an immediate impact on the league with his brute strength and sincere passion for the game, but even if he averages a double-double in his first professional season, it is still hard to imagine the Clippers being any better than they have ever. Clippers can always dream, however, and Griffin is their best bet this year to suit up along side Marcus Camby and Chris Kaman in the front court.

The Memphis Grizzles have a couple of great options with the second pick in the draft. After trading Pau Gasol to the Lakers two years back, this team has been floating awkwardly in the Western Conference. But I’m confident that with a good pick this year and perhaps a trade or two in the offseason they are not far from doing some damage next season (even if that just means making it to the playoffs as an eighth seed).

The leading candidates for this pick appear to be Spain’s Ricky Rubio and Connecticut’s Hasheem Thabeet. Both are NBA ready and can immense help, it is simply a matter of whether the Grizzles are looking for a guard or a big man. My guess is that they use this pick on Rubio. As an established point guard in international play, Rubio plays the style of basketball the Grizzles like and could work as a replacement for the slower Marko Jaric.

If Rubio goes at number two, that means Thabeet will end up with the Oklahoma City Thunder at number three. Without a dominating big man this past season the Thunder should be ecstatic to get a player like Thabeet with their pick. The 7’3” Center has the potential to be a very good player in this league with his rebounding and shot blocking abilities. The Thunder will also be happy to have him in their lineup to take some of the attention off of Kevin Durant on offense.

The rest of the lottery could play out in a number of different ways as players like Davidson’s Stephen Curry and Arizona State’s James Harden could fall anywhere from four to fourteen. There is definitely an interesting draft class at hand with no definitive superstar to praise and an unprecedented bundle of NBA ready point guards available. As always, expect some significant trades on draft night as well, which could shake up the league in an instant.

In a move not seen since the Vietnam War, the US military will begin to enlist immigrants in the United States on temporary visas.

Stretched thin in its operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, the military hopes to entice people living in the United States as non-residents who have a native understanding of languages and customs that the Pentagon considers strategically essential by offering expedited citizenship to those recruits who meet certain qualifications, including medical training and native language skills in Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Igbo, Kurdish, Nepalese, Pashtu, Russian and Tamil.
 
“The American Army finds itself in a lot of different countries,” says Lt. Gen. Benjamin C. Freakley, the top recruitment officer for the Army, “[and] cultural awareness is critical.”
 
For immigrants with temporary visas, citizenship is often unattainable. When it is possible, the path to citizenship usually takes upwards of ten years, and can be costly. In this program, enlistees may be granted citizenship in as little as six months, with all fees waived by the government.

 

Lt. Gen. Benjamin C. Freakley presenting a certificate of citizenship. (Photo Department of Defense)

 
 The one-year pilot program is set to start in New York City with 550 temporary immigrants, but the Pentagon hopes to expand this program to all branches of the military.

In 2002, President Bush signed the Expedited Naturalization Executive Order, providing accelerated naturalization to qualified noncitizens serving in an active-duty status on or after Sept. 11, 2001. Prior to this order, personnel would have to serve one year of honorable service.
 
According to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services website more than 35,100 members of the military have become naturalized U.S. citizens since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. If this program succeeds, that number is sure to rise drastically.

Image courtsey of Epic/Domino Records

Artem Altman
Co Editor-in-Chief

Five years might seem like a good time to try new things. With already two acclaimed albums behind them, Franz Ferdinand fails to deliver on the promise of great things with their new release Tonight: Franz Ferdinand.

Five years might seem like enough time, but with a product the likes of Tonight, Franz Ferdinand might want to forget what just happened and move on to the next album. It took three years to release this one, and the hope is that in all that time FF also wrote enough material for a second album that they are now about to release - an album that doesn’t discard the band’s creative capacity.

On Tonight the Scottish quartet departs from the potent indie-rock sound for which they’re known and venture into pop-disco exploration, a move that no one could have possibly predicted after their formative firsts: self-titled debut, Franz Ferdinand (2004) followed by You Could Have It So Much Better (2005). Tonight is likely to alienate some fans with its synth-pop sound, but this is something that should be expected with such a quirky album.

“Ulysses” is a comatose telling of a drug-induced state. “Can’t Stop the Feeling” could be a bastard child of Madonna that you can almost imagine being played at a 80s club. “Katharine Kiss Me” is reminiscent of “Eleanor Put Your Boots On” with its acoustic arrangement. “No You Girls” starts with an intro eerily reminiscent of Desireless’ “Voyage Voyage.”

“Live Alone,” is an ABBA-esque, creepy song about the joy of loneliness (“I wanna live alone/ I could be happy on my own”). With “Turn It On,” the band follows that theme but with a seemingly lazy search for a different rhyme scheme (“I’ll never be alone, yeah/I followed you to Rome”).

“What She Came” is probably the closest that the band comes to sounding like pure Franz Ferdinand. However, they then follow it up with “Lucid Dreams,” an unnecessarily long and sleazy track that tries to go somewhere but really ends up going nowhere.

Somewhere in the middle Tonight heads into a certain direction, but then things just fall apart and the tediousness of the music turns the FF ship on an opposite and ultimately unfulfilling course.

Overall, and this can’t be understated, Tonight is a let down when compared to the kind of music for which Franz Ferdinand is known. A product of uninspired songwriting, Tonight moves far into the uncertain future, leaving us to wonder what direction will Franz Ferdinand go next?

Can Franz Ferdinand possibly pick themselves up after falling down so hard? Possibly. One thing is for sure: they could make their music so much better.

]]> http://overtonemag.com/main/2009/02/franz-ferdinand-not-tonight-album-review/feed/ http://overtonemag.com/main/2009/02/artificial-demand-artificial-consumption-%e2%89%a0-economic-recovery/ http://overtonemag.com/main/2009/02/artificial-demand-artificial-consumption-%e2%89%a0-economic-recovery/#comments Fri, 20 Feb 2009 19:36:14 +0000 admin http://overtonemag.com/main/?p=67 Matthew Schumann
Contributing Writer

Staten Island, NY - The great Dwight D. Eisenhower warned the United States in his farewell address that we needed to be weary of the ever prevalent military-industrial complex. To have a large chunk of the economy, in this case the military, so reliant on such a relationship with the government can have potentially disastrous effects. Well, today the Obama Administration is pushing for yet another stimulus package that would unfortunately create a government-industrial complex. We passed the first stimulus deal to stabilize the economy - which it did. Now, the banking sector is not “tanking.” It might not be in good shape at all but it is floating and the tax payers did their job. Or did we?

Not only must we, the taxpayers, and our “government” stabilize the economy, but we must now make it pretty - at least that is what the Administration suggests. We must weather proof our houses and build windmills! Oh the windmills! Now of course this would create jobs, but at what cost?

This kind of economic growth is artificial. A government-industrial complex is dangerous and artificial in the sense that it cannot be sustained in the free market. The federal government cannot be spending over 1 trillion dollars to propel an economy indefinitely. To spend this type of money to create an artificial demand, hence artificial consumption, will only make the economy and affected businesses reliant on the government as a means of survival (especially once expansion in government sponsored sectors occurs). Let us look at the weather proofing products market. What happens when the government is done weather proofing its 200,000 homes? The manufactures of these goods will have to downsize due to the sudden loss of this artificial demand and we will be left in the same conundrum we find ourselves in today.

By instituting this type of policy, the Obama Administration is ensuring that government money will be unable to actually leave the market. To take money out of an economy that relies on it would be political suicide. If we are not careful, we will find ourselves in the same predicament that France and Germany are in. These governments routinely route money into inefficient government-controlled or partly-controlled industries and programs.

A stimulus package is meant to stabilize a plunging economy. We did that with the first $700 Billion, SOME OF WHICH HAS NOT YET BEEN SPENT! The $300 Billion or so left over is perfect for further unfreezing the credit markets. Now rather than letting the economy generate some real capital, Obama has decided to do it artificially. In the long-run this will waste our money, and make a true economic recovery harder if not impossible. If we divert our nation’s capital and man-power to foolish ends, how will we create true capital and lasting jobs built on a truly thriving economy?

Change to our economy is needed, but not this! AVOID THE GOVERNMENT-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX!

Thomas Sodano
Contributing Writer

Brooklyn, NY - Michael Phelps smokes marijuana and the fact that this comes as a surprise to anyone amazes me. For God’s sake, the man eats 10,000 calories a day and his favorite food is pizza, not to mention that he has the lung capacity of an Orca. I mean, imagine the hit that guy could take. If anything, America should be buying him a bigger bong.

Kellogg’s announced recently that they will not renew Phelps’ endorsement contract as a result of the incident and I think this is a terrible move on their part. Think about the massive munchies Mr. Phelps must get. That is a hell of a lot of Fruit Loops, Frosted Flakes, and Eggo’s. But instead he’ll be reaching for Honey Nut Cheerios, Lucky Charms, and Bisquick. And I have a feeling that all of the other potheads out there will follow suit. Take that Toucan Sam.

But seriously, I am tired of everyone being so damn obsessed with image. Yes, Michael Phelps smokes marijuana. So what? He also was arrested for a DUI at the age of 19 and is dating an inked-up stripper from Las Vegas. But isn’t there a little bit of lettuce, liquor, and lust in all of us? That is what makes America great.

I think the biggest problem here is jealousy. Maybe Michael Phelps is just the most successful fuck up this country has ever produced and we wish our mother’s were just as proud of us as his is of him.

As far as I am concerned, Michael Phelps is a perfect example of what it takes to be a truly great man in this country: First, you have to be a regular guy. Being born in Baltimore is a good start; the son of a policeman and a principal from humble beginnings. Second, you have to do something great. Eight gold medals and seven world records in one Olympic games will do just fine. Third, you have to remind everybody that you’re still that same guy from Baltimore who used to hang out in his neighbor’s basement dreaming of what would be. And it is then that we realize that greatness can come from anywhere. Big or small. Fast or slow. Bong or blunt.