Greg Mitchell's Blog, page 277
May 11, 2013
Saturday Night Music Picks #3
From Steve Earle's greatest album (and one of best of decade), from 1997, El Corazon, a few hot tracks possible but how's this for starters:
Saturday Night Music Pick #2
We will kick off with John R. Cash, doing "Rusty Cage" live. Then on to my favorite pub-rock song of the mid-1970s (actually saw them do it in London then on junket), Dr. Feelgood with "She Does It Right," also live.
Saturday Night Music Pick #1
After watching Marianne Faithfull doc on Netflix, need to post her "Sister Morphine" (co-written by Mick). And then the Stones' version.
Greenwald vs. Maher
UPDATE: Greenwald talks about his experience on the show in this column. It's all about Maher becoming "one of the most vocal and extreme advocates of the view that - while religion generally should be criticized - Islam is a uniquely threatening and destructive force and that Muslims are uniquely oppressive and violent, and that mentality has infected many of his policy views."
Earlier: A couple of intense exchanges between Bill Maher and Glenn Greenwald last night re: Benghazi and also U.S. militarism and intervention abroad.
Earlier: A couple of intense exchanges between Bill Maher and Glenn Greenwald last night re: Benghazi and also U.S. militarism and intervention abroad.
May 10, 2013
Friday Night Lights Up
One of the best songs ever featured (even played live in a scene) on Friday Night Lights: "Sway" by the Heartless Bastards. Then the classic "Friday On My Mind" live (it was later massacred by young Bowie). Finally, one of the oddest songs (ahead of its time, really) to hit the charts in the U.S. in the mid-1960s,"Friday's Child" by Nancy Sinatra, sans boots.
Paramedic Arrested--Possible Role in Fertilizer Plant Blast?
UPDATE #3 Detailed new story on Bryce Reed raises all sorts of red flags from his past and near-present. Wild job history. Also makes you wonder if the pipe bomb equipment and other materials might not have been linked to plant blast at all but to seeking revenge for loss of friends. UPDATE #2 NYT story has Bryce Reed falsely identifying himself as brother of a man who died in West fire, also named Reed, even made the claim in a eulogy. The Dallas Morning News: "The sister of a firefighter Reed eulogized at a public memorial last month said she had to ask police to guard her deceased brother’s apartment because she feared Reed had been stealing from it since the blast." Their story has the most details on (and complaints about) Reed, and his actions on the night of the blast. Sounds like his wife who was with him part of that night--but has since left him--might be a key witness.
And this story reveals that he was fired from his EMS post two days after the West explosion--odd, since he claimed to be a hero in that. Criminal probe announced today, but not known if linked to his arrest.
UPDATE Arrested man was interviewed by Anderson Cooper last night, go here for transcript (scroll down).
Earlier: Shocker breaking just now as one of the "hero" volunteers who arrived at the scene of the West, Texas, plant explosion has been arrested after admitting he made a pipe bomb and dropped it off at a friend's house. More here. Bryce Reed was widely interviewed after the blast about his role as an early responder--he was star of this L.A. Times piece. Today:
A volunteer paramedic who was among the first on the scene of a fire and massive explosion last month at a West, Texas fertilizer plant was arrested early Friday and charged with possession of a destructive device after telling authorities a pipe bomb and other items related to destructive devices found at another residence were his.
Officials have not said whether the arrest of Bryce Reed is related to the April 17 explosion at the West Fertilizer Co. that killed 14 people, injured around 200 and destroyed hundreds of homes in the vicinity.
The arrest came as Texas law enforcement officials said they had launched a criminal investigation into the massive fertilizer plant explosion.
Reed, 31, made an initial appearance in federal court Friday, but did not enter a plea. Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Frazier said he would not release further details until court documents were unsealed sometime later in the day.This seems to he his Facebook account. Most recent posting on Wednesday: " I just wanted to tell everyone thank you for all the prayers and support. I'm going to take a break from Facebook to reflect. I assure you that I'm ok. God bless you all, and please if you heed nothing else I have said, love one another. God bless. Bryce."
First Attack Ad of 2016
Karl Rove's American Crossroads vs. Hillary Clinton, just out today.
Even Rasmussen
Scott Rasmussen no friend to Democrats but even he, at his polling site, declares today that GOP's partisan circus re: Benghazi likely to be a "bust." A prime reason: Most people just don't care that much about foreign policy and are still fixated on the economy.
As has been the case since he first assumed office, President Obama continues to earn better marks on foreign policy than he gets for handling the economy. The latest numbers show that 47 percent give the president good marks on national security, while only 33 percent rate his performance as poor.
With the public largely tuning out foreign policy topics, it will take some pretty spectacular revelations to change those perceptions. Until that happens, it's likely that economic issues and the president's health care law will be the driving issues of the 2014 elections.
Two More Hollywood Bombs
And now a third free excerpt from my new e-book, Hollywood Bomb: The Unmaking of the 'The Most Important Movie' Ever Made. The book tells the wild tale of how MGM set out in 1945 to make the first epic about the making and use of the atomic bomb against Japan, intending to warn about nuclear dangers--inspired by scientists who had worked on The Bomb. But soon, under pressure from the military and the White House, the movie's script switched to glorifying the new weapon. Despite, or perhaps because of, that, the film "bombed" at the box office, and only two movies from Hollywood since have taken up the subject.
After the box office failure of The Beginning or the End, there would not be another Hiroshima-related movie for more than six years, and it would borrow from the previous film in the most literal fashion. Once again MGM would be its sponsor. Above and Beyond explored the story of Hiroshima from the perspective of Paul Tibbets (played by Robert Taylor). To show the blast effects of the bomb the producers simply inserted footage from the previous film. This saved MGM money but did little to expand the audience's awareness of what an atomic weapon could do.
The idea of the movie came from a close associate of General Curtis LeMay, then head of the Strategic Air Command. Tibbets was a paid consultant. In a key scene, Tibbets, after releasing the Hiroshima bomb and surveying a city on fire, radios in a strike report. “Results good,” he says. Then he repeats it, with grim irony.
But this was not in the original script for the film. It was added later, presumably to show that the men who dropped the bomb recognized the tragic nature of their mission. Tibbets, who never would express qualms about dropping bomb (I interviewed him in the mid-1980s), criticized the scene when it came out. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times criticized its sentimental aspects but, as he had done with the earlier film, praised the “substance and plausibility” of its handling of Hiroshima.
Repeatedly the film underlines its theme—dropping a bomb that can kills tens of thousands in an instant is dirty work but someone’s got to do it. Tibbets even tells his wife at one point to stop bugging him about that. As in The Beginning or the End, using the bomb to save hundreds of thousands of American lives is the main message—although Truman is not a key character here. And like the earlier film, Above and Beyond did not light up the box office.
Hollywood would not produce another film on the subject until Roland Joffe’s Fat Man and Little Boy, more than three decades later—with good guy Paul Newman as Gen. Groves and relative unknown Dwight Schultz as Oppenheimer. So you know who the audience must have sympathized with.
A mass of new evidence about the decision to drop the atomic bomb had come to light since the last major Hollywood film on the subject, and Fat Man and Little Boy drew on it. The film was also no doubt inspired by the antinuclear upheaval of the early 1980's.
Joffe, who had directed The Killing Fields, set out to make an artful, complex picture that questioned the official narrative, while emphasizing the decency of the scientists who made the bomb. Newman in the starring role, Gen. Groves would dominate the film, bullying or cajoling Oppenheimer at every turn. When Oppenheimer expresses doubts about using the weapon, Groves snaps: "Give me the bomb! Just give it to me!"
But the key scene, and the one that would prove controversial, concerned the death of a young scientist from exposure to radiation. (Joffe obviously wanted one character to represent the thousands of Americans who would later suffer from their encounters with radiation.) The exposure incident is kept hush-hush. Then the camp physician blurts out to Oppenheimer that physicians at Oak Ridge were injecting patients with plutonium.
This statement was contested even before the film's release. One authority told The New York Times, "I'm sure nothing like that happened during the war."
On the defensive, Joffe cut a scene that actually showed a plutonium experiment but otherwise stuck to his story, attributing his information to a Congressional investigation that first uncovered evidence about the radiation experiments, some of which did take place before Hiroshima. The Congressional findings had been ignored so completely that the scene in Fat Man and Little Boy seemed like science fiction. Four years later -- when the U.S. Department of Energy released documents confirming the worst about the radiation experiments --Joffe would look like a prophet.
The film, however, received a mixed reception from critics. Vincent Canby of The New York Times observed that Gen. Groves expressed his sentiments so much more persuasively than anyone else that the film was "stunningly ineffective" in promoting Joffe's obvious anti-bomb views. A few years later, when I wrote a bit about the movie for the Times, I got a personal note from Joffe thanking me, even though my commentary had been mixed. Clearly the movie meant a lot to him.
After the box office failure of The Beginning or the End, there would not be another Hiroshima-related movie for more than six years, and it would borrow from the previous film in the most literal fashion. Once again MGM would be its sponsor. Above and Beyond explored the story of Hiroshima from the perspective of Paul Tibbets (played by Robert Taylor). To show the blast effects of the bomb the producers simply inserted footage from the previous film. This saved MGM money but did little to expand the audience's awareness of what an atomic weapon could do. The idea of the movie came from a close associate of General Curtis LeMay, then head of the Strategic Air Command. Tibbets was a paid consultant. In a key scene, Tibbets, after releasing the Hiroshima bomb and surveying a city on fire, radios in a strike report. “Results good,” he says. Then he repeats it, with grim irony.
But this was not in the original script for the film. It was added later, presumably to show that the men who dropped the bomb recognized the tragic nature of their mission. Tibbets, who never would express qualms about dropping bomb (I interviewed him in the mid-1980s), criticized the scene when it came out. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times criticized its sentimental aspects but, as he had done with the earlier film, praised the “substance and plausibility” of its handling of Hiroshima.
Repeatedly the film underlines its theme—dropping a bomb that can kills tens of thousands in an instant is dirty work but someone’s got to do it. Tibbets even tells his wife at one point to stop bugging him about that. As in The Beginning or the End, using the bomb to save hundreds of thousands of American lives is the main message—although Truman is not a key character here. And like the earlier film, Above and Beyond did not light up the box office.
Hollywood would not produce another film on the subject until Roland Joffe’s Fat Man and Little Boy, more than three decades later—with good guy Paul Newman as Gen. Groves and relative unknown Dwight Schultz as Oppenheimer. So you know who the audience must have sympathized with.
A mass of new evidence about the decision to drop the atomic bomb had come to light since the last major Hollywood film on the subject, and Fat Man and Little Boy drew on it. The film was also no doubt inspired by the antinuclear upheaval of the early 1980's.
Joffe, who had directed The Killing Fields, set out to make an artful, complex picture that questioned the official narrative, while emphasizing the decency of the scientists who made the bomb. Newman in the starring role, Gen. Groves would dominate the film, bullying or cajoling Oppenheimer at every turn. When Oppenheimer expresses doubts about using the weapon, Groves snaps: "Give me the bomb! Just give it to me!"
But the key scene, and the one that would prove controversial, concerned the death of a young scientist from exposure to radiation. (Joffe obviously wanted one character to represent the thousands of Americans who would later suffer from their encounters with radiation.) The exposure incident is kept hush-hush. Then the camp physician blurts out to Oppenheimer that physicians at Oak Ridge were injecting patients with plutonium.
This statement was contested even before the film's release. One authority told The New York Times, "I'm sure nothing like that happened during the war."
On the defensive, Joffe cut a scene that actually showed a plutonium experiment but otherwise stuck to his story, attributing his information to a Congressional investigation that first uncovered evidence about the radiation experiments, some of which did take place before Hiroshima. The Congressional findings had been ignored so completely that the scene in Fat Man and Little Boy seemed like science fiction. Four years later -- when the U.S. Department of Energy released documents confirming the worst about the radiation experiments --Joffe would look like a prophet.
The film, however, received a mixed reception from critics. Vincent Canby of The New York Times observed that Gen. Groves expressed his sentiments so much more persuasively than anyone else that the film was "stunningly ineffective" in promoting Joffe's obvious anti-bomb views. A few years later, when I wrote a bit about the movie for the Times, I got a personal note from Joffe thanking me, even though my commentary had been mixed. Clearly the movie meant a lot to him.
'Crisis' for Nuclear Missile Crews
My new piece at The Nation: "crisis" & "rot" among nuclear missile launch crews, 17 fired, but little media attention.
