Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 859
February 19, 2016
A white buddy for Miles Davis: Don Cheadle’s struggle to get “Miles Ahead” financed is absurd — and not surprising
Don’t do Ronda Rousey any Photoshop “favors”: UFC fighter says altered Instagram shot “goes against everything I believe”
Hillary Clinton’s lead is shrinking in Nevada: Why the results of that caucus could shape the entire race
“Morning Joe’s pathetic Trump temper tantrum: Joe & Mika pretend to be objective — and fail miserably
For all those people out there who have been claiming that Joe Scarborough is soft when it comes to Donald Trump, let this clip from Friday's "Morning Joe" show you just how wrong you are. In it, Scarborough is passionate, pugnacious and completely fired up about the GOP frontrunner:
Oh, wait. Never mind! That's actually Joe Scarborough being fired up about his own relationship with Donald Trump, not about any of the horrible things Trump has said or done.
Yes, Friday provided Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and their regular crew of "Morning Joe" acolytes with a golden opportunity for that most hallowed of media traditions: A cable news hissy fit.
The catalyst for this lengthy tantrum was the chatter that's been going around lately about how friendly Scarborough and Brzezinski appear to be with Trump. Scarborough and Brzezinski seethed on Friday that this narrative has been ginned up by media rivals like CNN who are "humiliated" because "Morning Joe" caught on to the seriousness of Trump's appeal more quickly than they did."This is Trump Derangement Syndrome!" Brzezinski exclaimed.
"If you don't stand on top of him with your knees on his chest and stab him in the side of the neck until he bleeds out, it's never going to be enough," Scarborough said.
Poor Joe and Mika, so besieged by the haters. What have they ever done to deserve this kind of slander?
First of all, if you have to take ten minutes out of your news program to yell about how wrong your critics are, you've landed yourself in a bad place. Contrary to what Scarborough and friends might have you believe, these charges are not coming out of nowhere.
It's not just that Trump himself described the "Morning Joe" crew as "supporters" of his recently. It's not just that Scarborough has recounted calling Trump up to give him pointers about how to conduct himself during debates. It's not just that, according to CNN, Scarborough has stayed many times at Trump's resort in Florida.
It's also that the two camps are so obviously friendly on the air. The Washington Post's Erik Wemple, whose dissection of the Trump-Scarborough relationship triggered a particularly acidic response from Scarborough on Friday, compiled a fairly damning montage back in December showing Trump, Scarborough and Brzezinski yukking it up on air, month after month. Scarborough has repeatedly defended Trump against his critics. His clear warmth towards the billionaire candidate has been so pronounced that radio host Hugh Hewitt even speculated that Trump might pick him to be his vice presidential nominee—and Scarborough didn't completely laugh off the idea.
"Oh, I’ll take a weekend at [Trump's resort] Mar-A-Lago," he joked, adding that Trump was "the smartest guy I’ve ever seen in my political life." Such a stinging assault!
Then there was the town hall that Scarborough and Brzezinski did with Trump earlier this week. The overall tone of the session was more like an amiable chat than the serious grilling one might expect or hope for. While both hosts spent minutes on Friday claiming that they were sharp and tough, most observers felt otherwise. Slate called the hourlong event "disgraceful." Wemple noted that Trump's extremist bigotry went virtually unmentioned. It was not a good display of Scarborough and Brzezinski's supposed forensic abilities.
Not that this should be especially surprising. Scarborough has something of a habit of playing favorites, after all. "Morning Joe" was notorious a few years ago for the red carpet it kept rolling out for Chris Christie long after the shine wore off the New Jersey governor. There have also been rumblings about his personal feud with Marco Rubio.
Of course, while "Morning Joe" is certainly a prime example of the clubbiness that defines much of the elite media's relationship to politics, Scarborough isn't the sole villain in this world. Trump's rise has been definitively aided by the unbelievable amount of news coverage given to his every waking thought. His status as instant ratings gold—well, except, ironically, for that "Morning Joe" town hall, which lost to CNN—and his obsessive desire to be interviewed have ensured that, no matter how horrible his views get, he'll have a series of ready platforms waiting for him. Scarborough's problem is that his platform is the coziest one of them all.
For all those people out there who have been claiming that Joe Scarborough is soft when it comes to Donald Trump, let this clip from Friday's "Morning Joe" show you just how wrong you are. In it, Scarborough is passionate, pugnacious and completely fired up about the GOP frontrunner:
Oh, wait. Never mind! That's actually Joe Scarborough being fired up about his own relationship with Donald Trump, not about any of the horrible things Trump has said or done.
Yes, Friday provided Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and their regular crew of "Morning Joe" acolytes with a golden opportunity for that most hallowed of media traditions: A cable news hissy fit.
The catalyst for this lengthy tantrum was the chatter that's been going around lately about how friendly Scarborough and Brzezinski appear to be with Trump. Scarborough and Brzezinski seethed on Friday that this narrative has been ginned up by media rivals like CNN who are "humiliated" because "Morning Joe" caught on to the seriousness of Trump's appeal more quickly than they did."This is Trump Derangement Syndrome!" Brzezinski exclaimed.
"If you don't stand on top of him with your knees on his chest and stab him in the side of the neck until he bleeds out, it's never going to be enough," Scarborough said.
Poor Joe and Mika, so besieged by the haters. What have they ever done to deserve this kind of slander?
First of all, if you have to take ten minutes out of your news program to yell about how wrong your critics are, you've landed yourself in a bad place. Contrary to what Scarborough and friends might have you believe, these charges are not coming out of nowhere.
It's not just that Trump himself described the "Morning Joe" crew as "supporters" of his recently. It's not just that Scarborough has recounted calling Trump up to give him pointers about how to conduct himself during debates. It's not just that, according to CNN, Scarborough has stayed many times at Trump's resort in Florida.
It's also that the two camps are so obviously friendly on the air. The Washington Post's Erik Wemple, whose dissection of the Trump-Scarborough relationship triggered a particularly acidic response from Scarborough on Friday, compiled a fairly damning montage back in December showing Trump, Scarborough and Brzezinski yukking it up on air, month after month. Scarborough has repeatedly defended Trump against his critics. His clear warmth towards the billionaire candidate has been so pronounced that radio host Hugh Hewitt even speculated that Trump might pick him to be his vice presidential nominee—and Scarborough didn't completely laugh off the idea.
"Oh, I’ll take a weekend at [Trump's resort] Mar-A-Lago," he joked, adding that Trump was "the smartest guy I’ve ever seen in my political life." Such a stinging assault!
Then there was the town hall that Scarborough and Brzezinski did with Trump earlier this week. The overall tone of the session was more like an amiable chat than the serious grilling one might expect or hope for. While both hosts spent minutes on Friday claiming that they were sharp and tough, most observers felt otherwise. Slate called the hourlong event "disgraceful." Wemple noted that Trump's extremist bigotry went virtually unmentioned. It was not a good display of Scarborough and Brzezinski's supposed forensic abilities.
Not that this should be especially surprising. Scarborough has something of a habit of playing favorites, after all. "Morning Joe" was notorious a few years ago for the red carpet it kept rolling out for Chris Christie long after the shine wore off the New Jersey governor. There have also been rumblings about his personal feud with Marco Rubio.
Of course, while "Morning Joe" is certainly a prime example of the clubbiness that defines much of the elite media's relationship to politics, Scarborough isn't the sole villain in this world. Trump's rise has been definitively aided by the unbelievable amount of news coverage given to his every waking thought. His status as instant ratings gold—well, except, ironically, for that "Morning Joe" town hall, which lost to CNN—and his obsessive desire to be interviewed have ensured that, no matter how horrible his views get, he'll have a series of ready platforms waiting for him. Scarborough's problem is that his platform is the coziest one of them all.
February 18, 2016
The secret of “Deadpool’s” success — and why Hollywood is almost certainly learning all the wrong lessons
In defense of grave dancing: It’s true that Scalia was a human being, but I still refuse to mourn a-holes like him politely
Like many people, I found out about the death of Antonin Scalia through social media, a Facebook chat to be specific. “DUDE! Scalia may be dead,” my friend messaged me." After a few minutes of silence, my friend returned, in all caps, once again, to proclaim, “HE’S DEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
While Scalia’s unexpected death provoked a pseudo-constitutional crisis among the right wing, it provoked an existential crisis in me. I felt simultaneously happy, relieved, hopeful and guilty. He’s someone’s father! Someone’s husband! RBG’s bestie and opera partner! Even worse than what I felt was what I wanted to do! “OMG!” I typed to my friend. “Would a listicle of Scalia’s Worst Quotes be the worst?” Ironically enough, my friend’s verdict was Scalian; swift, punishing and punctuated with hyperbole and exclamation points: “NO! YOU MUST DO IT!” F&*( DECORUM!”
A woman of checks and balances, I sought counsel from other sources via other means of communication. I skyped an editor to ask for her ruling on the issue. Her judgment was Kennedyian and moderate: She urged me to wait 24 hours, reminding me that “dancing on people’s grave [was] not a good look.” When I texted another friend, a journalist, he concurred with the editor, writing, “I wouldn’t celebrate it.”
The majority, it seemed, had ruled. It would be in poor taste and bad judgment, an ethical breach, to openly rejoice about Scalia’s death.
I had no grounds for appeal. The decision was final… or so it seemed.
But then, I felt a flickering of hope, as I saw a flickering of light from my cellphone. With bated breath, I watched as dots of i-message judgment popped up on my screen. The journalist, it seemed, hadn’t finished his ruling: He thought I could make the argument that his death may have “saved the planet” with the court now unlikely to strike down Obama’s far-reaching emissions plan. “He was a bigot who made millions of people suffer.” With this Breyersian analysis, my friend granted my piece, which I had planned to kill, a last-minute reprieve.
I decided I’d “nudge,” if not totally violate, decorum. I compiled some of the late justice’s most “memorable quotes.” I can’t say I’m proud of my word choice. The cop-out-est of adjectives, “memorable” allowed me a convenient vagueness. But, in all fairness, Scalia’s equal opportunity bigotry made it hard to come up with a headline-length title that did him any justice: “Scalia’s most homophobic and/or sexist and/or racist and/or savage decisions, quotes or off-the-cuff statements” is a mouthful.
The guilt I felt over turning Scalia’s death into shareable content started to dissipate as I sorted through the bottomless pit of sexism, homophobia and racism that was his legacy. His cruel and draconian incarceration opinions, which had caused so much suffering, now offered me comfort, solace, conviction and a sense of righteousness.
But what really emboldened me was his near fetish for death and the death penalty. Not only did Scalia defend capital punishment for youth and people with mental disabilities, he also has famously said, out loud, that it wasn’t unconstitutional to execute the innocent as long as they had a fair trial: “[t]his court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent.”
Why should Scalia, who was so brazen about his disregard for human life, even innocent life, deserve respectful or solemn commemoration in the public sphere?
Scalia wasn’t merely defending the death penalty in theory as an acceptable and appropriate punishment for guilty people; he was defending it for the innocent if it came to that. And, as one of the nine people on the Supreme Court, his ideas contributed and buttressed the state-sanctioned murder of innocent people.
Surely, whatever deficit of empathy I revealed paled in comparison to Scalia’s chasm of compassion. If he could sleep soundly with the deaths of innocents on his mind, who was I to feel guilty about a death I had nothing to do with. It seemed wrong. And also, profoundly un-Scalia-like. And that was when it occurred to me: What better way to honor the late justice than by asking #WWSD? What would Scalia do? The answer was obvious: He’d react to the loss of human life with heartlessness, cruelty and adherence to his own conviction.
To be fair, this issue of how to mark the passing of the wicked and depraved does not belong to Scalia alone. The question of public celebration of death was raised when Osama bin Laden was assassinated. I'm in no way comparing Scalia and bin Laden, but the contrast between the two sheds light on how and why society determines norms around mourning. I did not celebrate the death of bin Laden because we have laws to deal with outlaws and trials to teach defendants and the public about the nature of crime and punishment. But most Americans rejoiced at the death of a man who masterminded an attack on the United States that killed 3,000 people.
The truth is, these norms are based on politics, vested interests, an unquestioning acceptance of the status quo and powers that be. They are not based on ethical principles or moral absolutes. How many leaders have ordered the killing of thousands of civilians? When the leaders are ours, we call it collateral damage. When the leaders are our enemies, we call it murder.
There are, of course, rules of engagement and the rule of law. And Scalia isn’t technically a murderer. As a judge, he gets to implement state-sanctioned murder, also called the law. But as any student of civil rights history knows, the issues of legality and justice are separate. What Martin Luther King did was illegal. But it wasn’t unjust. What Scalia did may have been legal but it was unjust. And because he was a judge, Scalia had the power to codify his own murderous behavior, enshrining it into the law.
But let us return to the question of whether the late justice, despite his numerous crimes and offenses, still deserves to be mourned with some level of decorum. After lengthy analysis and hand-wringing, I can only conclude: hell no! It is hypocritical and sanctimonious to require anyone to grant Scalia the compassion he relished denying others. Mourning itself becomes distasteful and disrespectful when the person who has died was not simply a flawed person or a misunderstood person or a deeply misguided person, but a person whose life and legacy were built on the pain, damage, humiliation and injustice he caused others and our world at large.
When we decorously mourn Scalia, or other powerful and public figures like him, what are we doing to the family members and loved ones of those people whose appeals Scalia voted against? Is there not something morbid about mourning a (state-sanctioned) murderer?
If only our culture cared as much about the lives of the living as it does the lives of the dead, or the unborn, for that matter. The culture of decorum that elevates a person’s life after death is, in some way, a perfect corollary to the culture of “life."
Our tradition of mourning, rooted in religion, has codified centuries of war and pillage. Paying homage to people once they are dead doesn’t absolve us from killing them. Death cannot and should not change history. Solemnifying and ennobling the act of leaving the mortal sphere has the dishonest and painful effect of whitewashing the actions of those who were hateful, destructive, or worse. The damage wrought by people like Scalia will long outlive them.
Rest in peace can’t undo a career’s worth of damage; and pointing this out is not an act of disrespect. Ignoring it is.
Unlike Scalia or our leaders, however, I don’t believe the desire for vengeance should be embraced on a legal or policy level. I know Scalia was very Catholic in his thinking and siring (of nine children). And I, on the other hand, am a godless Jew. But when I heard about Scalia’s death, I immediately thought of a Christian hymn, of all things. Written in 1869 by the American Baptist minister Robert Wadsworth Lowry, "My Life Flows on in Endless Song (How Can I Keep From Singing)" was amended by Quaker Doris Penn, popularized by the folk singer Pete Seeger and, later, the new-age singer Enya. Since I’m not a strict constructionist, I will quote the verse that Penn added nearly a century after it was first written:
When tyrants tremble, sick with fear,
And hear their death-knell ringing,
When friends rejoice both far and near,
How can I keep from singing?
In prison cell and dungeon vile,
Our thoughts to them are winging;
When friends by shame are undefiled,
How can I keep from singing?
Katie Halper is a writer, filmmaker, comedian and host of the Katie Halper show, a weekly WBAI radio show and podcast. She writes for The Nation, Rolling Stone, Vice, The Guardian, and has appeared on MSNBC, HuffPost Live, RT, Sirius Radio. https://www.facebook.com/thekatiehalp... https://www.instagram.com/kthalps/ https://twitter.com/kthalps http://katiehalper.com/
Like many people, I found out about the death of Antonin Scalia through social media, a Facebook chat to be specific. “DUDE! Scalia may be dead,” my friend messaged me." After a few minutes of silence, my friend returned, in all caps, once again, to proclaim, “HE’S DEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
While Scalia’s unexpected death provoked a pseudo-constitutional crisis among the right wing, it provoked an existential crisis in me. I felt simultaneously happy, relieved, hopeful and guilty. He’s someone’s father! Someone’s husband! RBG’s bestie and opera partner! Even worse than what I felt was what I wanted to do! “OMG!” I typed to my friend. “Would a listicle of Scalia’s Worst Quotes be the worst?” Ironically enough, my friend’s verdict was Scalian; swift, punishing and punctuated with hyperbole and exclamation points: “NO! YOU MUST DO IT!” F&*( DECORUM!”
A woman of checks and balances, I sought counsel from other sources via other means of communication. I skyped an editor to ask for her ruling on the issue. Her judgment was Kennedyian and moderate: She urged me to wait 24 hours, reminding me that “dancing on people’s grave [was] not a good look.” When I texted another friend, a journalist, he concurred with the editor, writing, “I wouldn’t celebrate it.”
The majority, it seemed, had ruled. It would be in poor taste and bad judgment, an ethical breach, to openly rejoice about Scalia’s death.
I had no grounds for appeal. The decision was final… or so it seemed.
But then, I felt a flickering of hope, as I saw a flickering of light from my cellphone. With bated breath, I watched as dots of i-message judgment popped up on my screen. The journalist, it seemed, hadn’t finished his ruling: He thought I could make the argument that his death may have “saved the planet” with the court now unlikely to strike down Obama’s far-reaching emissions plan. “He was a bigot who made millions of people suffer.” With this Breyersian analysis, my friend granted my piece, which I had planned to kill, a last-minute reprieve.
I decided I’d “nudge,” if not totally violate, decorum. I compiled some of the late justice’s most “memorable quotes.” I can’t say I’m proud of my word choice. The cop-out-est of adjectives, “memorable” allowed me a convenient vagueness. But, in all fairness, Scalia’s equal opportunity bigotry made it hard to come up with a headline-length title that did him any justice: “Scalia’s most homophobic and/or sexist and/or racist and/or savage decisions, quotes or off-the-cuff statements” is a mouthful.
The guilt I felt over turning Scalia’s death into shareable content started to dissipate as I sorted through the bottomless pit of sexism, homophobia and racism that was his legacy. His cruel and draconian incarceration opinions, which had caused so much suffering, now offered me comfort, solace, conviction and a sense of righteousness.
But what really emboldened me was his near fetish for death and the death penalty. Not only did Scalia defend capital punishment for youth and people with mental disabilities, he also has famously said, out loud, that it wasn’t unconstitutional to execute the innocent as long as they had a fair trial: “[t]his court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent.”
Why should Scalia, who was so brazen about his disregard for human life, even innocent life, deserve respectful or solemn commemoration in the public sphere?
Scalia wasn’t merely defending the death penalty in theory as an acceptable and appropriate punishment for guilty people; he was defending it for the innocent if it came to that. And, as one of the nine people on the Supreme Court, his ideas contributed and buttressed the state-sanctioned murder of innocent people.
Surely, whatever deficit of empathy I revealed paled in comparison to Scalia’s chasm of compassion. If he could sleep soundly with the deaths of innocents on his mind, who was I to feel guilty about a death I had nothing to do with. It seemed wrong. And also, profoundly un-Scalia-like. And that was when it occurred to me: What better way to honor the late justice than by asking #WWSD? What would Scalia do? The answer was obvious: He’d react to the loss of human life with heartlessness, cruelty and adherence to his own conviction.
To be fair, this issue of how to mark the passing of the wicked and depraved does not belong to Scalia alone. The question of public celebration of death was raised when Osama bin Laden was assassinated. I'm in no way comparing Scalia and bin Laden, but the contrast between the two sheds light on how and why society determines norms around mourning. I did not celebrate the death of bin Laden because we have laws to deal with outlaws and trials to teach defendants and the public about the nature of crime and punishment. But most Americans rejoiced at the death of a man who masterminded an attack on the United States that killed 3,000 people.
The truth is, these norms are based on politics, vested interests, an unquestioning acceptance of the status quo and powers that be. They are not based on ethical principles or moral absolutes. How many leaders have ordered the killing of thousands of civilians? When the leaders are ours, we call it collateral damage. When the leaders are our enemies, we call it murder.
There are, of course, rules of engagement and the rule of law. And Scalia isn’t technically a murderer. As a judge, he gets to implement state-sanctioned murder, also called the law. But as any student of civil rights history knows, the issues of legality and justice are separate. What Martin Luther King did was illegal. But it wasn’t unjust. What Scalia did may have been legal but it was unjust. And because he was a judge, Scalia had the power to codify his own murderous behavior, enshrining it into the law.
But let us return to the question of whether the late justice, despite his numerous crimes and offenses, still deserves to be mourned with some level of decorum. After lengthy analysis and hand-wringing, I can only conclude: hell no! It is hypocritical and sanctimonious to require anyone to grant Scalia the compassion he relished denying others. Mourning itself becomes distasteful and disrespectful when the person who has died was not simply a flawed person or a misunderstood person or a deeply misguided person, but a person whose life and legacy were built on the pain, damage, humiliation and injustice he caused others and our world at large.
When we decorously mourn Scalia, or other powerful and public figures like him, what are we doing to the family members and loved ones of those people whose appeals Scalia voted against? Is there not something morbid about mourning a (state-sanctioned) murderer?
If only our culture cared as much about the lives of the living as it does the lives of the dead, or the unborn, for that matter. The culture of decorum that elevates a person’s life after death is, in some way, a perfect corollary to the culture of “life."
Our tradition of mourning, rooted in religion, has codified centuries of war and pillage. Paying homage to people once they are dead doesn’t absolve us from killing them. Death cannot and should not change history. Solemnifying and ennobling the act of leaving the mortal sphere has the dishonest and painful effect of whitewashing the actions of those who were hateful, destructive, or worse. The damage wrought by people like Scalia will long outlive them.
Rest in peace can’t undo a career’s worth of damage; and pointing this out is not an act of disrespect. Ignoring it is.
Unlike Scalia or our leaders, however, I don’t believe the desire for vengeance should be embraced on a legal or policy level. I know Scalia was very Catholic in his thinking and siring (of nine children). And I, on the other hand, am a godless Jew. But when I heard about Scalia’s death, I immediately thought of a Christian hymn, of all things. Written in 1869 by the American Baptist minister Robert Wadsworth Lowry, "My Life Flows on in Endless Song (How Can I Keep From Singing)" was amended by Quaker Doris Penn, popularized by the folk singer Pete Seeger and, later, the new-age singer Enya. Since I’m not a strict constructionist, I will quote the verse that Penn added nearly a century after it was first written:
When tyrants tremble, sick with fear,
And hear their death-knell ringing,
When friends rejoice both far and near,
How can I keep from singing?
In prison cell and dungeon vile,
Our thoughts to them are winging;
When friends by shame are undefiled,
How can I keep from singing?
Katie Halper is a writer, filmmaker, comedian and host of the Katie Halper show, a weekly WBAI radio show and podcast. She writes for The Nation, Rolling Stone, Vice, The Guardian, and has appeared on MSNBC, HuffPost Live, RT, Sirius Radio. https://www.facebook.com/thekatiehalp... https://www.instagram.com/kthalps/ https://twitter.com/kthalps http://katiehalper.com/
Kanye’s Kubrick obsession: An examination of West’s love for the legendary filmmaker
Kanye can be heard ranting, “Are they f—–g crazy? Whoa by 50 percent [I am more influential than] Stanley Kubrick, Picasso, Apostle Paul, f—–g Picasso and Escobar. By 50 percent more influential than any other human being. Don’t f–k with me. Don’t f–k with me. Don’t f–k with me. By 50 percent dead or alive, by 50 percent for the next 1,000 years. Stanley Kubrick, ‘Ye.”The fact that he’s comparing himself to such enormous figures isn’t that surprising. (Since St. Paul basically inaugurated Christianity, this one actually may be a difficult for West to live up to.) Given the title of the album, the Picasso and Escobar references are not that startling. But if you squint, something becomes clear: West has a longtime obsession with Kubrick and may now be engaged in some mix of homage and Oedipal struggle with the director of “The Shining,” “A Clockwork Orange” and “Eyes Wide Shut.” At first this may seem odd, since West is a ubiquitous figure who shows up on Twitter constantly. He held the release event for his new album, complete with fashion show, at Madison Square Garden, and he's hardly shy about television appearances. Kubrick was a recluse who retreated to England in the mid-‘60s and would probably not have spent a lot of time on social media. But the record shows West’s long fascination with the eccentric director. Maybe it's a "Rosebud" of sorts for the enigmatic West. When he toured a school in Armenia last November, for instance, West told one of the teachers, "They’re shooting my wife’s show, and I keep on, like, asking them to shoot it like it’s Stanley Kubrick." (He’s said for years that he doesn’t much like the way “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” is filmed, and he’s dodged appearances on the show because he doesn’t like the cinematography.) That’s not West’s only reference to the director. Both the video for “Flashing Lights” and the short film of “Runaway” – one of the best things West has done – are apparently indebted to Kubrick. He told MTV:
“Look at it graphically, how it starts,” he said of “Flashing Lights.” “With the car, the orange sky, the color palettes, the blue sky, the car pulling up with the orange headlights. And just the beautiful women, taking the Helmut Newton type photo and bringing it to real life and crashing it against Jim Henson and George Lucas type whimsy and taking, like, a [Federico] Fellini, [Stanley] Kubrick pacing and a very graphic novel/ comic book type setup on all the shots. There’s a lot of shots that are borderline illegal for a film student. It just breaks rules, because I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing.”Having “no idea what I’m doing” is about as far as West could get from Kubrick, who was a very deliberate, controlled filmmaker. It makes you wonder: Is West just using Kubrick’s name as shorthand for a serious, arty filmmaker? But West actually seems to be a real student of Kubrick, or at least to have watched “Eyes Wide Shut” a bunch of times. “Runaway” has the grave, stately tempo that Kubrick was known for, and uses a repeated piano figure from Kubrick’s last movie. When he was making the “Runaway” film, West tweeted shots from the Kubrick movie. Whether West’s video achievements can compare to the director of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Barry Lyndon” and all the others is hard to say. And why would a developing Kubrick obsession provoke West’s recent acting out, given what an introvert the director was? But he’s clearly got Kubrick on the mind in recent years. Maybe his next album will be called “The Life of Stanley” and make its premiere at an English manor? Probably not. But with Kanye West, anything is possible.Kanye-watchers have been a bit confused lately, with the musician/fashion designer's puzzling shout-out to Bill Cosby, his fight with Wiz Khalifa and the revival of his feud with Taylor Swift. Was all of this a big publicity push in anticipation of his new record, “The Life of Pablo”? Or was it – as is often the case with West -- something more complicated? Since the audio of his backstage freakout on "Saturday Night Live" leaked, something, at least, is becoming clearer. Here’s Page Six:
Kanye can be heard ranting, “Are they f—–g crazy? Whoa by 50 percent [I am more influential than] Stanley Kubrick, Picasso, Apostle Paul, f—–g Picasso and Escobar. By 50 percent more influential than any other human being. Don’t f–k with me. Don’t f–k with me. Don’t f–k with me. By 50 percent dead or alive, by 50 percent for the next 1,000 years. Stanley Kubrick, ‘Ye.”The fact that he’s comparing himself to such enormous figures isn’t that surprising. (Since St. Paul basically inaugurated Christianity, this one actually may be a difficult for West to live up to.) Given the title of the album, the Picasso and Escobar references are not that startling. But if you squint, something becomes clear: West has a longtime obsession with Kubrick and may now be engaged in some mix of homage and Oedipal struggle with the director of “The Shining,” “A Clockwork Orange” and “Eyes Wide Shut.” At first this may seem odd, since West is a ubiquitous figure who shows up on Twitter constantly. He held the release event for his new album, complete with fashion show, at Madison Square Garden, and he's hardly shy about television appearances. Kubrick was a recluse who retreated to England in the mid-‘60s and would probably not have spent a lot of time on social media. But the record shows West’s long fascination with the eccentric director. Maybe it's a "Rosebud" of sorts for the enigmatic West. When he toured a school in Armenia last November, for instance, West told one of the teachers, "They’re shooting my wife’s show, and I keep on, like, asking them to shoot it like it’s Stanley Kubrick." (He’s said for years that he doesn’t much like the way “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” is filmed, and he’s dodged appearances on the show because he doesn’t like the cinematography.) That’s not West’s only reference to the director. Both the video for “Flashing Lights” and the short film of “Runaway” – one of the best things West has done – are apparently indebted to Kubrick. He told MTV:
“Look at it graphically, how it starts,” he said of “Flashing Lights.” “With the car, the orange sky, the color palettes, the blue sky, the car pulling up with the orange headlights. And just the beautiful women, taking the Helmut Newton type photo and bringing it to real life and crashing it against Jim Henson and George Lucas type whimsy and taking, like, a [Federico] Fellini, [Stanley] Kubrick pacing and a very graphic novel/ comic book type setup on all the shots. There’s a lot of shots that are borderline illegal for a film student. It just breaks rules, because I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing.”Having “no idea what I’m doing” is about as far as West could get from Kubrick, who was a very deliberate, controlled filmmaker. It makes you wonder: Is West just using Kubrick’s name as shorthand for a serious, arty filmmaker? But West actually seems to be a real student of Kubrick, or at least to have watched “Eyes Wide Shut” a bunch of times. “Runaway” has the grave, stately tempo that Kubrick was known for, and uses a repeated piano figure from Kubrick’s last movie. When he was making the “Runaway” film, West tweeted shots from the Kubrick movie. Whether West’s video achievements can compare to the director of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Barry Lyndon” and all the others is hard to say. And why would a developing Kubrick obsession provoke West’s recent acting out, given what an introvert the director was? But he’s clearly got Kubrick on the mind in recent years. Maybe his next album will be called “The Life of Stanley” and make its premiere at an English manor? Probably not. But with Kanye West, anything is possible.Kanye-watchers have been a bit confused lately, with the musician/fashion designer's puzzling shout-out to Bill Cosby, his fight with Wiz Khalifa and the revival of his feud with Taylor Swift. Was all of this a big publicity push in anticipation of his new record, “The Life of Pablo”? Or was it – as is often the case with West -- something more complicated? Since the audio of his backstage freakout on "Saturday Night Live" leaked, something, at least, is becoming clearer. Here’s Page Six:
Kanye can be heard ranting, “Are they f—–g crazy? Whoa by 50 percent [I am more influential than] Stanley Kubrick, Picasso, Apostle Paul, f—–g Picasso and Escobar. By 50 percent more influential than any other human being. Don’t f–k with me. Don’t f–k with me. Don’t f–k with me. By 50 percent dead or alive, by 50 percent for the next 1,000 years. Stanley Kubrick, ‘Ye.”The fact that he’s comparing himself to such enormous figures isn’t that surprising. (Since St. Paul basically inaugurated Christianity, this one actually may be a difficult for West to live up to.) Given the title of the album, the Picasso and Escobar references are not that startling. But if you squint, something becomes clear: West has a longtime obsession with Kubrick and may now be engaged in some mix of homage and Oedipal struggle with the director of “The Shining,” “A Clockwork Orange” and “Eyes Wide Shut.” At first this may seem odd, since West is a ubiquitous figure who shows up on Twitter constantly. He held the release event for his new album, complete with fashion show, at Madison Square Garden, and he's hardly shy about television appearances. Kubrick was a recluse who retreated to England in the mid-‘60s and would probably not have spent a lot of time on social media. But the record shows West’s long fascination with the eccentric director. Maybe it's a "Rosebud" of sorts for the enigmatic West. When he toured a school in Armenia last November, for instance, West told one of the teachers, "They’re shooting my wife’s show, and I keep on, like, asking them to shoot it like it’s Stanley Kubrick." (He’s said for years that he doesn’t much like the way “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” is filmed, and he’s dodged appearances on the show because he doesn’t like the cinematography.) That’s not West’s only reference to the director. Both the video for “Flashing Lights” and the short film of “Runaway” – one of the best things West has done – are apparently indebted to Kubrick. He told MTV:
“Look at it graphically, how it starts,” he said of “Flashing Lights.” “With the car, the orange sky, the color palettes, the blue sky, the car pulling up with the orange headlights. And just the beautiful women, taking the Helmut Newton type photo and bringing it to real life and crashing it against Jim Henson and George Lucas type whimsy and taking, like, a [Federico] Fellini, [Stanley] Kubrick pacing and a very graphic novel/ comic book type setup on all the shots. There’s a lot of shots that are borderline illegal for a film student. It just breaks rules, because I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing.”Having “no idea what I’m doing” is about as far as West could get from Kubrick, who was a very deliberate, controlled filmmaker. It makes you wonder: Is West just using Kubrick’s name as shorthand for a serious, arty filmmaker? But West actually seems to be a real student of Kubrick, or at least to have watched “Eyes Wide Shut” a bunch of times. “Runaway” has the grave, stately tempo that Kubrick was known for, and uses a repeated piano figure from Kubrick’s last movie. When he was making the “Runaway” film, West tweeted shots from the Kubrick movie. Whether West’s video achievements can compare to the director of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Barry Lyndon” and all the others is hard to say. And why would a developing Kubrick obsession provoke West’s recent acting out, given what an introvert the director was? But he’s clearly got Kubrick on the mind in recent years. Maybe his next album will be called “The Life of Stanley” and make its premiere at an English manor? Probably not. But with Kanye West, anything is possible.
Could a horror movie set in the 17th century explain America’s current insanity? See “The Witch,” if you dare
Porn stars protest condom rule: New safety regulations — including “eye protection” — proposed for adult films
Prominent American professor proposes that Israel “flatten Beirut” — a 1 million-person city it previously decimated
(A screenshot of the Haaretz headline, which was later changed)[/caption] As of Feb. 18, the headline is "Should Israel Consider Using Devastating Weapons Against Hezbollah Missiles?" Etzioni served in the Haganah — the army that formed Israel after violently expelling three-quarters of the indigenous Palestinian population — from 1946 to 1948, and then served in the Israeli military from 1948 to 1950. He mentions his military service in both the article and his bio. In the piece, Etzioni cites an anonymous Israeli official who estimates that Hezbollah has 100,000 missiles in Lebanon. In January, the U.S. government put that figure at 80,000 rockets. The anonymous official also says the Israeli government considers these weapons to be its second greatest security threat — after Iran. Etzioni furthermore cites Israel's chief of staff, who claims that most of Hezbollah's missiles are in private homes. Whether this allegation is true is questionable. Israel frequently accuses militant groups of hiding weapons in civilian areas in order to justify its attacks. On numerous occasions, it has been proven that there were no weapons in the civilian areas Israel bombed in Gaza. Assuming it is true, the American scholar argues, if Israeli soldiers were to try to take the missiles out of these homes one at a time, it "would very likely result in many Israeli casualties." In order to avoid Israeli casualties, Etzioni writes: "I asked two American military officers what other options Israel has. They both pointed to Fuel-Air Explosives (FAE). These are bombs that disperse an aerosol cloud of fuel which is ignited by a detonator, producing massive explosions. The resulting rapidly expanding wave flattens all buildings within a considerable range." "Such weapons obviously would be used only after the population was given a chance to evacuate the area. Still, as we saw in Gaza, there are going to be civilian casualties," Etzioni adds. "The time to raise this issue is long before Israel may be forced to use FAEs." Etzioni concludes his piece implying Israel has no other option but to flatten the city of Beirut. "In this way, one hopes, that there be a greater understanding, if not outright acceptance, of the use of these powerful weapons, given that nothing else will do," he writes. Lebanese journalists and activists have expressed outrage at the article. Kareem Chehayeb, a Lebanese journalist and founder and editor of the website Beirut Syndrome, said in response to the piece "Should Israel kill me, my family, and over a million other people to destroy Hezbollah's missiles? How about that for a headline?" Chehayeb told Salon Etzioni's argument is "absolutely absurd" and reeks of hypocrisy. "If some writer said the only way to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is just to bomb Israel," he said, "people would go up in arms about it." He called it "ludicrous" that a prominent American professor "can just calmly say the solution is to flatten this entire city of 1 million people." "I'm just speechless. It sounds ISIS-like, just eradicating an entire community of people," Chehayeb added. Salon called Etzioni's office at George Washington University's Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies several times with a request for comment, but no one answered. Salon also reached out to the university. Jason Shevrin, a spokesperson, told Salon "the George Washington University is committed to academic freedom and encourages efforts to foster an environment welcoming to many different viewpoints. Dr. Etzioni is a faculty member who is expressing his personal views." The spokesperson did not comment any further. Etzioni is by no means an unknown scholar. He notes on his George Washington University faculty page that, in 2001, he was among the 100 most-cited American intellectuals. He has also served as the president of the American Sociological Association. Israel has already flattened Beirut before Writer Belén Fernández, an author and contributing editor at Jacobin magazine, published a piece in TeleSur responding to Etzioini's op-ed, titled "No, Israel Should Not Flatten Beirut." Fernández points out "that Israel has already flattened large sections of Lebanon, in Beirut and beyond." She recalls visiting a young man in a south Lebanon village near the Israeli border who "described the pain in 2006 of encountering detached heads and other body parts belonging to former neighbors, blasted apart by bombs or crushed in collapsed homes." Israel killed approximately 1,200 people and wounded 4,400 more in its 2006 war in Lebanon, "the overwhelming majority of them civilians" according to leading human rights group Amnesty International's 2007 report. One-third of the Lebanese civilians killed by Israel were children. On the other side, 43 civilians were killed in Israel in Hezbollah attacks. One million people were displaced in Lebanon in the war — one-quarter of its population at the time. Tens of thousands of homes were destroyed, and Amnesty reported that "much of Lebanon's civilian infrastructure was damaged or destroyed," including Beirut's airport, seaports, major roads, bridges, factories and more. Roughly 50 schools were destroyed and up to 300 were damaged. Amnesty furthermore noted that up to one million cluster bomblets dropped by Israel remained in south Lebanon after the war, "posing a continuing risk to civilians." In just one year after the war, hundreds of people in Lebanon were killed and wounded by Israeli bomblets and laid mines. Israeli authorities did not provide maps of the areas they targeted with cluster bombs, making it much more difficult for Lebanese authorities to clear up the remnants. Critics argue that Hezbollah rarely initiates attacks, but rather instead responds to Israeli military attacks and assassinations of its leaders. Israel claimed its invasion of Lebanon was retaliatory, initiated when Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers in July 2006, but former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert admitted that Israel had in fact planned the war several months in advance, and used the kidnappings as an excuse. Olmert told the Winograd Commission investigating the government's actions that he had proposed the war in January and had the military draft plans in March. Similarly, despite the Israeli government's many claims that it tried to reduce civilian casualties in its 2008-2009, 2012 and 2014 wars on Gaza, numerous investigations by the U.N., human rights organizations — including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International — and journalists found that Israel deliberately targeted civilians and used banned weapons like white phosphorous. Reporting on Israel's summer 2014 war in Gaza, Amnesty International said "There is consequently strong evidence that many such attacks in Rafah between 1 and 4 August were serious violations of international humanitarian law and constituted grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention or other war crimes." The Israeli military has previously massacred civilians in Lebanon. With the support of the U.S., Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982. It subsequently waged a war in alliance with far-right, Phalangist Christian militias. In September 1982, Israeli-backed Phalangist militias massacred thousands of civilians in Beirut's Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Reflecting on the anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila Massacre in an interview on Democracy Now, renowned scholar Noam Chomsky called it "a horrifying massacre, actually one that should resonate with people who are familiar with Jewish history." Chomsky notes that "it was almost a replica of the Kishinev massacre in pre-First World War Russia," a pogrom the Czar carried out against the Jewish population. "This was a kind of a replica, except far more brutal and vicious," he added, noting Israeli Prime Minister Ariel "Sharon escaped more than a mild censure." Chomsky referred to the Phalangists as a "Lebanese Christian terrorist force, allied with Israel." Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi furthermore pointed out that documents in the Israel State Archives "pin direct responsibility for much more of what happened in Sabra and Shatila on not only Ariel Sharon and the Israeli government, but reveal American responsibility for what happened." "The Israeli government knew perfectly well what was going on," Khalidi explained, and "the Israelis stonewalled to prevent the massacre being stopped." Ellen Siegel, a Jewish-American nurse who worked at a hospital at the Sabra camp at the time of the massacre, told Democracy Now the Israeli-allied Phalangists massacred Lebanese residents and Palestinian refugees who weren't Christian. The Phalagists lined Siegel and her co-workers up on a wall, preparing to execute them en masse with a firing squad, until an Israeli soldier suddenly intervened. "I suppose the idea of gunning down foreign health workers was something that was not very appealing to the Israelis," Siegel remarked. "But the fact that they could see this and stop it shows that there was some communication." After the 1982 war, Israel illegally occupied southern Lebanon until 2000. Israel continues to illegally occupy the Palestinian West Bank and Syrian Golan Heights, which it annexed in 1967. Today, it also continues to occupy Shebaa Farms, an area at the Lebanon-Syria border and the Golan Heights, and impose a siege on Gaza, which U.N. experts say is illegal, maintaining effective control over the strip. Chehayeb says he has seen other friends and acquaintances in Beirut "expressing outrage" at the op-ed. "It's obnoxious how we are all being painted as problematic people that should just be exterminated in the middle of Beirut," Chehayeb said. He noted that, although the U.S. and Israeli media frequently depict Beirut as a "Hezbollah bastion," there are a lot of conflicting feelings about Hezbollah and political differences in Lebanon — just as there are in any country. "A lot of people who are annoyed by Israel's bombing of Lebanon in 2006 never said we should just flatten Tel Aviv," Chehayeb added. The journalist admitted "It's scary to hear this kind of rhetoric... and the fact that it's coming out of Haaretz, which is Israel's most liberal newspaper."A prominent American scholar who teaches international relations at George Washington University has publicly proposed that Israel "flatten Beirut" — a city with around 1 million people — in order to destroy the missiles of Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah. Professor Amitai Etzioni — who has taught at a variety of prestigious U.S. universities, including Columbia, Harvard and Berkeley, and who served as a senior advisor in President Jimmy Carter's administration — made this proposal in an op-ed in Haaretz, the leading English-language Israeli newspaper, known as "The New York Times of Israel." Haaretz represents the liberal wing of Israel's increasingly far-right politics. Etzioni's op-ed was first published on Feb. 15 with the headline "Can Israel Obliterate Hezbollah's Growing Missile Threat Without Massive Civilian Casualties?" (the answer he suggests in response to this question is "likely no"). "Should Israel Flatten Beirut to Destroy Hezbollah's Missiles?" was the next, much more blunt title, chosen sometime on or before Feb. 16. [caption id="attachment_14405917" align="aligncenter" width="620"] (A screenshot of the Haaretz headline, which was later changed)[/caption] As of Feb. 18, the headline is "Should Israel Consider Using Devastating Weapons Against Hezbollah Missiles?" Etzioni served in the Haganah — the army that formed Israel after violently expelling three-quarters of the indigenous Palestinian population — from 1946 to 1948, and then served in the Israeli military from 1948 to 1950. He mentions his military service in both the article and his bio. In the piece, Etzioni cites an anonymous Israeli official who estimates that Hezbollah has 100,000 missiles in Lebanon. In January, the U.S. government put that figure at 80,000 rockets. The anonymous official also says the Israeli government considers these weapons to be its second greatest security threat — after Iran. Etzioni furthermore cites Israel's chief of staff, who claims that most of Hezbollah's missiles are in private homes. Whether this allegation is true is questionable. Israel frequently accuses militant groups of hiding weapons in civilian areas in order to justify its attacks. On numerous occasions, it has been proven that there were no weapons in the civilian areas Israel bombed in Gaza. Assuming it is true, the American scholar argues, if Israeli soldiers were to try to take the missiles out of these homes one at a time, it "would very likely result in many Israeli casualties." In order to avoid Israeli casualties, Etzioni writes: "I asked two American military officers what other options Israel has. They both pointed to Fuel-Air Explosives (FAE). These are bombs that disperse an aerosol cloud of fuel which is ignited by a detonator, producing massive explosions. The resulting rapidly expanding wave flattens all buildings within a considerable range." "Such weapons obviously would be used only after the population was given a chance to evacuate the area. Still, as we saw in Gaza, there are going to be civilian casualties," Etzioni adds. "The time to raise this issue is long before Israel may be forced to use FAEs." Etzioni concludes his piece implying Israel has no other option but to flatten the city of Beirut. "In this way, one hopes, that there be a greater understanding, if not outright acceptance, of the use of these powerful weapons, given that nothing else will do," he writes. Lebanese journalists and activists have expressed outrage at the article. Kareem Chehayeb, a Lebanese journalist and founder and editor of the website Beirut Syndrome, said in response to the piece "Should Israel kill me, my family, and over a million other people to destroy Hezbollah's missiles? How about that for a headline?" Chehayeb told Salon Etzioni's argument is "absolutely absurd" and reeks of hypocrisy. "If some writer said the only way to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is just to bomb Israel," he said, "people would go up in arms about it." He called it "ludicrous" that a prominent American professor "can just calmly say the solution is to flatten this entire city of 1 million people." "I'm just speechless. It sounds ISIS-like, just eradicating an entire community of people," Chehayeb added. Salon called Etzioni's office at George Washington University's Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies several times with a request for comment, but no one answered. Salon also reached out to the university. Jason Shevrin, a spokesperson, told Salon "the George Washington University is committed to academic freedom and encourages efforts to foster an environment welcoming to many different viewpoints. Dr. Etzioni is a faculty member who is expressing his personal views." The spokesperson did not comment any further. Etzioni is by no means an unknown scholar. He notes on his George Washington University faculty page that, in 2001, he was among the 100 most-cited American intellectuals. He has also served as the president of the American Sociological Association. Israel has already flattened Beirut before Writer Belén Fernández, an author and contributing editor at Jacobin magazine, published a piece in TeleSur responding to Etzioini's op-ed, titled "No, Israel Should Not Flatten Beirut." Fernández points out "that Israel has already flattened large sections of Lebanon, in Beirut and beyond." She recalls visiting a young man in a south Lebanon village near the Israeli border who "described the pain in 2006 of encountering detached heads and other body parts belonging to former neighbors, blasted apart by bombs or crushed in collapsed homes." Israel killed approximately 1,200 people and wounded 4,400 more in its 2006 war in Lebanon, "the overwhelming majority of them civilians" according to leading human rights group Amnesty International's 2007 report. One-third of the Lebanese civilians killed by Israel were children. On the other side, 43 civilians were killed in Israel in Hezbollah attacks. One million people were displaced in Lebanon in the war — one-quarter of its population at the time. Tens of thousands of homes were destroyed, and Amnesty reported that "much of Lebanon's civilian infrastructure was damaged or destroyed," including Beirut's airport, seaports, major roads, bridges, factories and more. Roughly 50 schools were destroyed and up to 300 were damaged. Amnesty furthermore noted that up to one million cluster bomblets dropped by Israel remained in south Lebanon after the war, "posing a continuing risk to civilians." In just one year after the war, hundreds of people in Lebanon were killed and wounded by Israeli bomblets and laid mines. Israeli authorities did not provide maps of the areas they targeted with cluster bombs, making it much more difficult for Lebanese authorities to clear up the remnants. Critics argue that Hezbollah rarely initiates attacks, but rather instead responds to Israeli military attacks and assassinations of its leaders. Israel claimed its invasion of Lebanon was retaliatory, initiated when Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers in July 2006, but former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert admitted that Israel had in fact planned the war several months in advance, and used the kidnappings as an excuse. Olmert told the Winograd Commission investigating the government's actions that he had proposed the war in January and had the military draft plans in March. Similarly, despite the Israeli government's many claims that it tried to reduce civilian casualties in its 2008-2009, 2012 and 2014 wars on Gaza, numerous investigations by the U.N., human rights organizations — including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International — and journalists found that Israel deliberately targeted civilians and used banned weapons like white phosphorous. Reporting on Israel's summer 2014 war in Gaza, Amnesty International said "There is consequently strong evidence that many such attacks in Rafah between 1 and 4 August were serious violations of international humanitarian law and constituted grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention or other war crimes." The Israeli military has previously massacred civilians in Lebanon. With the support of the U.S., Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982. It subsequently waged a war in alliance with far-right, Phalangist Christian militias. In September 1982, Israeli-backed Phalangist militias massacred thousands of civilians in Beirut's Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Reflecting on the anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila Massacre in an interview on Democracy Now, renowned scholar Noam Chomsky called it "a horrifying massacre, actually one that should resonate with people who are familiar with Jewish history." Chomsky notes that "it was almost a replica of the Kishinev massacre in pre-First World War Russia," a pogrom the Czar carried out against the Jewish population. "This was a kind of a replica, except far more brutal and vicious," he added, noting Israeli Prime Minister Ariel "Sharon escaped more than a mild censure." Chomsky referred to the Phalangists as a "Lebanese Christian terrorist force, allied with Israel." Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi furthermore pointed out that documents in the Israel State Archives "pin direct responsibility for much more of what happened in Sabra and Shatila on not only Ariel Sharon and the Israeli government, but reveal American responsibility for what happened." "The Israeli government knew perfectly well what was going on," Khalidi explained, and "the Israelis stonewalled to prevent the massacre being stopped." Ellen Siegel, a Jewish-American nurse who worked at a hospital at the Sabra camp at the time of the massacre, told Democracy Now the Israeli-allied Phalangists massacred Lebanese residents and Palestinian refugees who weren't Christian. The Phalagists lined Siegel and her co-workers up on a wall, preparing to execute them en masse with a firing squad, until an Israeli soldier suddenly intervened. "I suppose the idea of gunning down foreign health workers was something that was not very appealing to the Israelis," Siegel remarked. "But the fact that they could see this and stop it shows that there was some communication." After the 1982 war, Israel illegally occupied southern Lebanon until 2000. Israel continues to illegally occupy the Palestinian West Bank and Syrian Golan Heights, which it annexed in 1967. Today, it also continues to occupy Shebaa Farms, an area at the Lebanon-Syria border and the Golan Heights, and impose a siege on Gaza, which U.N. experts say is illegal, maintaining effective control over the strip. Chehayeb says he has seen other friends and acquaintances in Beirut "expressing outrage" at the op-ed. "It's obnoxious how we are all being painted as problematic people that should just be exterminated in the middle of Beirut," Chehayeb said. He noted that, although the U.S. and Israeli media frequently depict Beirut as a "Hezbollah bastion," there are a lot of conflicting feelings about Hezbollah and political differences in Lebanon — just as there are in any country. "A lot of people who are annoyed by Israel's bombing of Lebanon in 2006 never said we should just flatten Tel Aviv," Chehayeb added. The journalist admitted "It's scary to hear this kind of rhetoric... and the fact that it's coming out of Haaretz, which is Israel's most liberal newspaper."
