http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Wed, 6 Sep 2006 04:50:10 EDT http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/09/06/045010.php Loretta DillonIt used to be years ago I could pick up a new Stephen King novel and look forward to a thrilling escape for a week. King tended to write tomes at least 500 pages long, filled with complex back-stories, parallel plots, flawed and likeable characters, and wry social commentary. Not so with his latest release, Cell, which is as disappointing as a 45-second roller-coaster you wait in line two hours to ride.Throughout the narrative, mostly told from the point of view of a comic-strip artist Clay Riddell, seeps an underlying cynicism and indifference, unlike most of King’s better works. Gratuitous violence and gore clutter up the already abbreviated storyline, as though King had surrendered to sound bites and podcasts for the short attention span of the audience he cautiously parodies. The premise had potential: a “pulse” that reprograms people’s brains, compared to erasing the disk on a computer, is generated simultaneously to every person’s cell phone, creating a subhuman culture of cortex-driven animals who display various behavior, at one time of birds, at another of beasts. The reader is never certain of the origin of the pulse, who developed it, what its purpose was, or how many people were affected. These are just a few of the gaping holes in the storyline that beg explanation.Departing from all good fiction, including his own, King completely omits a villain in this book. The reader has no idea who the bad guys are, what their agenda is, or whether they suffer any backlash or consequences because of the unpredictable behavior of mind-wiped humans. The “flock” (what the characters call the living dead) becomes the enemy: a sort of nameless, faceless horde of wraiths who were once their friends, spouses, neighbors, or children. It just doesn’t work well at all.There is only a small ensemble of main characters. The reader follows them from the beginning to the end of the story, but none are well developed save, maybe, Riddell, and even then we are given but snapshots of his life before “the pulse”. If you ever read The Stand, you know King goes into great detail about the background and personality of all the characters, especially the most important participants. Where was that eye for detail in Cell? Where’s the flesh? There was already far too much blood.I would not have been so disappointed in the ending had King given us more to care about, imagine, and hope for prior to cutting us off like a sudden break in wireless service. Cell left me with the sense of incompletion, disconnection, and frustration imagining what he could have done with this story if he had wanted to.Rating: 2-1/2 stars, and that half star is only because the dialogue is, as usual, pretty good. Books52481@blogcritics.org Wed, 6 Sep 2006 04:50:10 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/04/02/074502.php Loretta DillonI may be late to the party, but I finally got around to watching Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 today and I'm glad I waited. I never read the reviews or the hype on either side, and I'm not a big fan of Moore's, so I had no preconceived notions about the film. I was surprised that his documentary didn't really focus on the events of September 11 other than to frame them as a pretext for invading Iraq, which any literate person knows by now as an irrefutable fact. I think Moore exploited 9/11 to market his movie, but I don't think that he would be averse to any conspiracy theories that suggest that 9/11 was an inside job. Who knows, maybe he's working on a new film to highlight the 9/11 Truth movement; if not, he should be.I remember watching Roger and Me on video back in the summer of 1994. That inspired a trip to Moore's hometown of Flint, Michigan, to see for myself the wasteland portrayed in his first (and perhaps most authentic) documentary. Moore uses some of the same techniques in Fahrenheit 9/11 that he used in Roger: interviews with senior citizens, the disenfranchised poor, various authorities, and a family of military veterans, interspersed with comic relief in spoofs, pop music backdrops, and unflattering innuendo of his target. In Roger and Me it was Roger Smith, CEO of General Motors; in Fahrenheit 9/11 it's George W. Bush. Both are portrayed as avaricious, secretive demagogues oblivious to the plight of the common man. By all accounts, this is an accurate assessment.Fahrenheit 9/11 is even more relevant now than it was in 2004 because of the subsequent release of the disappointing and disingenuous 9/11 Commission Report, and the surfeit of evidence that points to counterfeit intelligence and deliberate duplicity that led our nation to war. It's also more disturbing because the situation in Iraq is worse than it was two years ago, the death toll is rising, and there is no end in sight.Critics of the film have produced a rebuttal entitled, Fahrenhype 9/11, featuring conservative shills like Ann Coulter and Dick Morris, claiming to "tell the truth about terrorism." Director Alan Peterson's answer to Moore's award-winning film is utterly laughable in light of all we have learned in recent months about the so-called "war on terror" and the role of high-level government conspirators who likely engineered the ultimate Wag the Dog scenario to launch their arrogant campaign of global domination. But, it's always enlightening to see both sides of the story, especially once you're informed. Unfortunately, Fahrenhype 9/11 is already an anachronism, whereas Fahrenheit 9/11 should be required viewing of any concerned citizen. Video45833@blogcritics.org Sun, 2 Apr 2006 07:45:02 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/03/05/040939.php Loretta DillonAfter three years of discussing murder cases on my blog, I have learned a lot about "circumstantial evidence" and how it is given the same probative weight in a trial as "direct evidence." Circumstantial evidence includes a myriad of interconnecting facts and situations from which inferences or conclusions can be made. In isolation, one link of circumstantial evidence does not make or break a case; but taken in the context of other related events, many coincidences or decisions form a composite chain of evidence. Direct evidence includes eyewitness statements and valid photographs or videos that capture events, as well as taped confessions. Timelines, maps, models, and scientific tests that recreate situations or explain the properties of motion, thermodynamics, fires, and ballistics are often used in trials to demonstrate how an event could or could not have occurred based on inelastic data: time, the laws of physics, mechanical realities, and limitations of the human body.The Scholars for 9/11 Truth and other scientific organizations have compiled an overwhelming "preponderance of evidence," including circumstantial and direct, that disputes the official findings of the 9/11 Commission. In his 2004 release The New Pearl Harbor, David Ray Griffin, one of the Scholars for 9/11 Truth, presents a thorough and very readable exposé of government complicity in the events of September 11. Griffin's shocking and well researched work is recommended reading for anyone who is confused about disparate conspiracy theories or needs a place to begin. Griffin presents a nice summary of the evidence in The New Pearl Harbor that thoughtful readers would agree call for a full investigation. The number of unlikely coincidences that occurred just prior to and after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have already filled pages of books and web sites, but let's review a few especially interesting ones presented in Griffin's book: Plans to invade Afghanistan and Iraq were already in place before September 2001. The attack on 9/11 provided the pretext for invading Afghanistan (and later Iraq), but the geopolitical motives were primarily based on protecting and accessing vast sources of gas and crude oil. There is a plethora of evidence for this, not least of which is the blatant imperialist agenda of "The Project for the New American Century," aka PNAC."War Games" were taking place on the morning of 9/11 that caused confusion with our otherwise vigilant air defense. We can either accept that our sophisticated and well-trained military was sleeping at the wheel, or we can believe it was given commands that deterred the standard operating procedures for intercepting hijacked aircraft.That Flight 77, if it really was Flight 77, was permitted to enter air space over Washington, DC without meeting any interference from the most heavily defended buildings on the planet over an hour after the first plane struck New York.Pentagon officials, FBI agents, government officials and various celebrities were warned not to fly on commercial airlines that week.Two steel skyscrapers collapsed after less than two hours in a smoldering but oxygen-deprived fire in free-fall speed of ten seconds for the first time in history. A third building, WTC7, collapsed at 5:30 that afternoon in under six seconds without the accelerant of spilled jet fuel or having been hit by an aircraft. One section of WTC7 had been designed as a bunker for Mayor Giuliani, with reinforced windows and walls, and a separate air and water supply for emergencies. What are the odds?Muhammad Atta, alleged mastermind and pilot of Flight 11 (the plane that hit the North Tower), received $100,000 from the head of the Pakistani ISI just days before 9/11. Why the payoff if he was about to commit suicide? Why would Atta pack luggage with incriminating information and leave it in the airport in Boston? Why would Atta even need luggage? How did Atta's passport miraculously survive the crash and inferno of the North Tower and float unscathed, later to be found on the street below by the FBI?Speaking of luggage, there was no luggage or any evidence of human remains found in the crash of Flight 93 or Flight 77. Debris from Flight 93 that "crashed" in Pennsylvania was found strewn up to eight miles away from the site, and not a single identifiable piece of a Boeing 757 was found in the rubble of the Pentagon. The engines on a 757 are nine feet in diameter and made of steel. Are we supposed to believe that they disintegrated in a fire? Where are the wings? Where is the tail? The Patriot Act in all its glory appeared within weeks of 9/11, as if it had been sitting in a Word file just waiting to be dated and distributed.Osama bin Laden was recovering from a kidney problem in a US hospital in Dubai the July before the attacks. Did the CIA continue to harbor bin Laden after 9/11? There is evidence to suspect that he and other Afghanistan rebels were escorted out of Afghanistan to Pakistan during the US invasion. Never mind that bin Laden's family was allowed to fly out of the US to Saudi Arabia while the rest of us were grounded. Links between the Bush and bin Laden families have been documented facts for years. If there are practical explanations for the questions that have arisen from the official 9/11 Commission report that can be borne out by science, documentation, testimony and common sense, then why aren't we getting them? Why did the Commission instead omit and distort many facts that pointed to (at the very least) complicity among government officials and massive obfuscation? The New Pearl Harbor asks these and many other disturbing questions. Books44482@blogcritics.org Sun, 5 Mar 2006 04:09:39 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/01/29/000342.php Loretta DillonTraditionally, true crime books are written in retrospect often years after a trial. With the advent of the Internet, however, numerous crime forums, message boards, and Web logs created the opportunity to follow a criminal case live from the earliest news reports through the verdict and aftermath. One subject that consistently appealed to a large, diverse and dedicated audience was the Laci Peterson murder case. Mainstream media following the trial failed to see the spiritual, cultural, and metaphorical significance of the case. They didn't appreciate Laci's influence or the lessons to be learned in Peterson's modus operandi. Those of us who were fortunate to see beyond painted plywood sets of Peterson's defense and could distill the truth from superficial syllogism were rewarded when the jury, the only people who really mattered, shared the vision. As time goes by, and bad books on the case come and go, we can hope that thoughtful viewers, misled and misinformed throughout the trial, will learn the truth behind the Hollywood hype.In Sharon Rocha's book, For Laci, eager followers of the Peterson case finally witnessed, first-hand, the private and extraordinary experiences of Laci Peterson's mother and family while her husband Scott continued to baffle a nation. Sharon's account, describing her overwhelming disillusionment, rage, disbelief, confusion, and ultimately the courage to be Laci's voice, aptly summarized the divergent emotions and prejudices many of us applied to this story. Her thorough testimonial validated our bold assumptions about so many things, such as Laci's personality, how she would have reacted to her husband's affair, the peculiar Peterson family dynamics, and Scott's bizarre affect from the early days of the investigation to the moment of his final sentencing.We embraced Laci as a figurative sister, daughter, mother, and ourselves betrayed by love; she was a woman in whom we could vicariously invest our aspirations of fulfillment and domestic perfection. Why else would she attract such an enormous following for over two years? Most spousal murder cases are merely a tragically familiar blip on the crime radar; Laci's case captured the attention of millions. In Sharon's book, Laci proved to be exactly as we imagined her.For Laci traces her life as a happy, irrepressible child, her bout with a large tumor that required delicate surgery, a typical '80s adolescence, her first serious romance with the (now infamous) Kent Gain; through college, meeting and marrying Scott, moving back to Modesto, and eventually joyfully expecting her first baby. Sharon paints Laci's experiences with the vivid brush of a loving mother, giving us an intimate and bittersweet appreciation for Laci's essence. Sharon's narrative is an accurate and grief-stricken record of the devastation of her daughter's murder from the first phone call when Scott said Laci was "missing," to her dramatic, tearful victim impact statement at the penalty phase of his trial. Sharon's retelling made us cry, seethe, wonder, and even occasionally laugh, along with answering most of the important questions we had about the case.Predictable, yet nonetheless shocking, was the sickening crush for Sharon to learn the horrible truth of Peterson's pathology beneath the mask he presented to Laci and her family and friends. Sharon suddenly realized, when attempting to describe Scott to the police and press, that despite eight years of interaction she didn't really know him at all. To counter the wildly inaccurate histrionics of cable TV coverage, news stories and other books about Peterson that presented little more than a glorified soap opera, Sharon depicts the crucial events from the perspective of an insider to the investigation and as a representative of the victim. There cannot be a more reliable report; For Laci is the ultimate chronicle of the case. Books42885@blogcritics.org Sun, 29 Jan 2006 00:03:42 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/01/24/112513.php Loretta DillonThe first sentence of a book often sets the tone of the author's work. In Matt Dalton's exercise in futility, Presumed Guilty, his first sentence reveals (perhaps unintentionally) the reason his book fails as a treatise proclaiming Scott Peterson's "factual innocence": The jury moved into the jury box. Yes: the jury. The jury at Peterson's trial for murdering his pregnant wife, Laci, 27, decided his guilt. Not obsessed television viewers, not the author, not the press, not the Modesto police that investigated and arrested the defendant, not the crowd that gathered in outrage outside the Stanislaus County jail when Peterson was arrested, and not the media. The jury in Redwood City, California, heard all the testimony, was privy to the voluminous exhibits and documentation, and given instructions on the law and its obligation to it. Dalton, who worked for Peterson's defense team for less than six months, should have read his first sentence and realized, as an officer of the court, what his role was in this case. He was merely an investigator hired by the defense team, and a temporary one at that. His duty to his former client, to the California Bar, and in the service of justice was to protect confidentiality and adhere to the judge's orders. By releasing this book, he violated any number of rules of ethics and insulted readers' intelligence in the process. Peterson's highly publicized but woefully misrepresented trial was the most important aspect of this case and closed or negated all the alleged holes that Dalton accounts in his book. For chief defense counsel Mark Geragos to overtly ignore exculpatory evidence that Dalton claims existed would have been the height of incompetence. While I may think Geragos is a pretty bad lawyer (and a fountain of comedy fodder), I don't believe he would intentionally omit anything relevant that would have helped acquit his client; real proof of that would have meant disbarment. As a former prosecutor, Dalton is keenly aware of the laws of evidence. He knows that none of his allusions to a third-party defense had any merit. Otherwise, there would have been a showing at the trial. His book is, at best, glorified tabloid fodder with no nexus established between the behavior of local thugs and dubious statistics on satanic cult activity in the Modesto area and Laci Peterson's murder. Over a third of the repetitive and irrelevant material is devoted to discussing disparate criminal activities in the central valley area and anecdotes about cults; yet, with all the investigation techniques at his disposal, Dalton never finds a single probative issue that would have withstood the scrutiny of a court of law. The book is filled with misinformation and inaccuracies, not least of which are Dalton's statement that the baby's body was cremated (it was not; he was buried with his mother) and that Amy Rocha had pizza and watched a movie with Laci and Scott the night of December 23. More disinformation, out-of-context exerpts from police reports, anonymous witnesses who are never directly quoted, and impotent defense spin render this book, for those with even a passing acquaintance with the case, a complete farce. Books42678@blogcritics.org Tue, 24 Jan 2006 11:25:13 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/01/11/063810.php Loretta DillonIn his unremarkable life as an average white, middle-class, keg party-loving, self-absorbed frat boy who never grew up, James Frey has a lot in common with many of my former classmates and neighbors in suburban Ohio. But, from his sensational autobiography, A Million Little Pieces, that has been recently exposed as fiction, Frey bears little resemblance to people I know who have entered treatment programs and meetings of AA or NA with the kind of alcohol and drug addiction he describes. Frey's unconventional recovery method is not only unrealistic and possibly fatal to anyone suffering from devastating substance abuse; it reveals him as the worst kind of fraud. Throughout the innumerable suspension of facts, logic, and reality in Frey's yarn, he pretends to be a junkie and a notorious criminal "wanted" in several states and besieged by a legendary past that rivals the fear and loathing of Hunter Thompson. (I doubt the late Thompson ever read Frey's book, but if he had, he would have laughed out loud at its sophomoric absurdity.) Apparently, Frey's imaginary saga was originally proposed as fiction and rejected by 17 publishers; presumably because even bad fiction has to have some semblance of credibility. When Frey resubmitted the work as an autobiography, Nan Talese at Doubleday saw her Judith Regan opportunity and seized it.Doubleday (and later, Oprah Winfrey) touted the book as shocking, relentlessly honest, and other sickening superlatives that would catapult the author into super stardom. That Frey was able to scam Winfrey (and all her producers) is astonishing; that he would pass muster with any friend of Bill W's is utterly impossible. The Smoking Gun published an exposé on the numerous lies it uncovered in Frey's book, but one of the most glaring ones that belies his claims of juvenile delinquency and party warrior status is the fact that he attended Denison University in Granville, Ohio, and graduated in four years. There is no way on earth Frey could have been accepted to Denison had he been a fraction of the problem child he boasts of being, much less achieved the GPA required to maintain good standing at the university, regardless of his father's status as an executive. At least two famous millionaires' sons flunked out of The College of Wooster and Baldwin-Wallace, mirror institutions to Denison, during my tenure. Frey's bold admission that he was "an alcoholic and addict for 10 years" by the time he was 23, as he claims in his speeches and advertisements for his book, is simply ludicrous. Do the math, Oprah.While Frey is laughing all the way to the bank, millions of readers have been duped. Thousands of substance abusers who think Frey's "Hold On" slogan for staying sober is an easier, softer way to recover than attending meetings, therapy, finding a sponsor, practicing rigorous honesty and avoiding temptation are flirting with disaster. There may be alternatives to the 12-step program in achieving long-term sobriety, but none of them entail preternatural will-power, manipulating gullible people, or flaunting your abstinence in bars and drug houses. The only person who could do that is a narcissistic con who was never an addict in the first place. Books42111@blogcritics.org Wed, 11 Jan 2006 06:38:10 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/12/12/001934.php Loretta DillonThe prevailing controversy surrounding Stanley "Tookie" Williams' impending execution on December 13 is a good example of why the death penalty should be eliminated in states like California. Williams has been on death row for over 20 years. He can thank the state for his longevity, since he probably wouldn't have made it to age 30 on the streets of Los Angeles as a founding member of the Crips. Somewhere around 1993, Williams officially renounced his gang affiliation (although his writings tend to belie this claim), and he has spent his ample leisure time penning anti-gang books for children. As a result of his efforts (and an aggressive public relations campaign), Williams was twice nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. For argument's sake, let's give Williams the benefit of the doubt and accept his redemption and humanitarian mission as sincere. Does this mean that whenever a condemned inmate reaches out from prison and affects a group of people in a positive way he merits clemency? What is the point of having capital punishment if the state can discriminate against those poor schmucks with no constituency, friends in high places, literary skills, web sites or fan clubs? Will other gang members on death row take a page from Tookie's strategy to escape execution? Since I don't have access to the trial transcripts of California v. Williams, I can't verify any of the testimony of the trial described in articles supporting both sides of the story. According to most accounts, there were five witnesses to the four murders Williams was convicted of committing. Williams allegedly confessed (bragged) to several Crips and knew too much about the murders not to have been directly involved. It is reasonable to conclude that the lead prosecutor was monomaniacal, and that the venue change to Torrance (a predominantly white community) and the removal of the only three black jurors on the panel was prejudicial to the defendant. Nonetheless, these issues were denied on appeal. Evidence that Williams was actually innocent of the crimes was never sufficiently demonstrated, so it really boiled down to whether or not he received a fair trial. However, I do have access to Williams' "apology" and his essays published on a web site dedicated to his work behind bars that, by reading between the lines, may reveal his true mindset. Here is the opening of his "apology": Twenty-five years ago when I created the Crips youth gang with Raymond Lee Washington in South Central Los Angeles, I never imagined Crips membership would one day spread throughout California, would spread to much of the rest of the nation and to cities in South Africa, where Crips copycat gangs have formed. Call me cynical, but that first sentence smacks of pride. It's as if he is saying, "Look at the vast empire I helped create!" You would think that an apology would begin with, "I'm sorry." Not with Tookie. He doesn't get around to that until the fifth sentence: So today I apologize to you all -- the children of America and South Africa -- who must cope every day with dangerous street gangs. I no longer participate in the so-called gangster lifestyle, and I deeply regret that I ever did. Note that he doesn't apologize to the victims' families or anyone specifically whom he harmed during his years of lawlessness. He doesn't direct his contrition to cops, lawyers, judges, parole officers, prison guards, business owners, city workers, or anyone else whose life he made more difficult from his legacy. No - he apologizes to "the children". Doesn't this sound like something Michael Jackson would say?In his "Letter to Youth #2", Williams compares the prisoner-guard relationship with that of "master-slave", evoking the idea that he is a victim of racism instead of his own behavior: On the other hand, the resemblance of the prisoner to the slave is that both are subjected to strict rules, confined like animals, controlled, often brutalized physically as well as psychologically, and deprived of basic human rights. The distinct difference Williams fails to point out is that prisoners forfeit their freedom by breaking the law, not because they are bought and sold like chattel. That murderers like Williams deprived their victims of basic human rights is conveniently disregarded. Williams' comparison falls short of reality even for him, so he goes on to enumerate "modern-day slave traits", concluding with an allusion of guilt: "A modern-day slave will foolishly commit crimes that cause him to end up behind bars, incarcerated, in mental and physical bondage."One of his supporters suggested that because Tookie was an avid body builder and idolized Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor should spare his life. I can see it now: in 15, 20 years, the governor of California is a scratch golfer and Scott Peterson's groupies use the fact that he was a good golfer as an argument to commute his sentence to life without parole. Or, wait - would that be an avid fisherman? Culture40846@blogcritics.org Mon, 12 Dec 2005 00:19:34 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/09/11/205023.php Loretta DillonFour years later, ground zero remains a dusty void, a remnant of lost souls and lofty ambitions. Reconstruction of the site is in some endless stage of limbo, typical of all major municipal projects in Manhattan and other big cities. At first, the entire nation was united in its desire to rebuild the World Trade Center as a defiant monument to our greatness and invincibility. As time went on, and people returned to their daily lives, those not living in the New York area lost interest in the haggling over designs, heights, leasing fees, contractors, cronyism, artistic differences and other issues surrounding the project. The pettiness of human nature had once again eroded the fragile, ephemeral patriotism and outrage inspired by the attacks.Four years later, the country is drowning in the aftermath of the natural and human disaster known as Hurricane Katrina. Since late August, viewers have been inundated by images of haggard evacuees, buildings submerged in brown, oily water, terrified faces of little children, corpses wrapped in sheets or hastily covered in blankets, squalor and stink and stupefying stupidity.Four years later, we are no closer to a secure, cohesive nation than before our complacency and arrogance were shattered by two jet airliners crashing into skyscrapers on that devastatingly beautiful September morning. We didn't realize it at the time, but it was by the grace of God that the events of September 11 did not kill 50,000 people, and that nothing similar had occurred prior in this country's brief but belligerent history. What did we learn from this tragedy? Do we have the resources, programs and policies in place to respond quickly and decisively to another attack or a disaster of any magnitude? Judging by the mortifying scenarios of Katrina, we do not.Four years ago we were promised that The Patriot Act would bolster our national security and deter terrorism. Has it? Did it, instead, divert resources that would have been better used to restore and reinforce a crumbling infrastructure and demolished ecology? Four years ago we declared war on a nameless, faceless enemy and then invaded and occupied a country that had no proven nexus to the September 11 terrorist attacks. An administration that promised less government created a behemoth and redundant agency and staffed it with incompetent, unqualified cronies. Meanwhile, corporations went bankrupt, unemployment rose, poverty increased and the standard of living for the average American taxpayer declined. If our government cannot manage the job with which we have financed it and elected our representatives to do, we should privatize most of its functions that do not involve national defense. The prevailing myth that terrorism was only a problem in the Middle East and Europe was brutally dispelled four years ago today. Religious fanaticism is not a vague ideology exclusive to other continents - it is alive and active within our boundaries and we are too busy worrying about the constitutionality of burning flags, gay marriage, and prayer in public school to recognize its threat.What solidarity was established by the events of September 11 was torn apart by the most acutely divisive presidential election campaign in our lifetime. Four years ago, national patriotism and unity were short-lived. Racism, elitism, and avarice remained deeply embedded cancers in the nation's personality and were revealed in all their ugly glory in the debacle of Katrina.All civilizations have ruins. The lessons of ancient Israel, Greece, and Rome, modern Germany, Great Britain and Turkey have not been lost on us. Yet, our government has lost sight of its purpose to serve the people. The catastrophic failure of its leadership from the smallest parishes in New Orleans to the Oval Office has demonstrated its widespread indolence and corruption, not unlike the precursors to the fall of Rome.Four years ago, we heard that "America must be protected from its enemies!" Today we realize the enemy is within. Culture35969@blogcritics.org Sun, 11 Sep 2005 20:50:23 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/09/04/152144.php Loretta DillonPut your tinfoil hats on for my theory that the hurricane aftermath was a form of genocide. Katrina itself was not a planned event, but the lack of preparation, and the criminally negligent response by federal agencies designed to administer assets and manpower to disaster areas was not merely the result of massive incompetence.Hitler blamed the Jews for all the woes of Germany, including losing the First World War, having a monopoly on banking and finance, causing inflation and a depressed economy, and the growth of Communism. The targets of Katrina's genocide have been depicted as burdens on society and are being blamed for their victimization.Poor, uneducated blacks are universally resented (especially by their own race), regarded with indifference, or avoided overtly and covertly. Traditionally, African Americans have been their own worst enemies, assisting in their own oppression and destruction. Gangsta Rap is a subversive culture promoting anarchy, murder, and misogyny. Welfare reform (and near extinction) during the last decade was designed to eliminate the generations-long dependence on government aid, but it really served to further sabotage an already crippled group. So what? Thinks the ruling class. They are expendable, unproductive leeches. That population is a blight on progress. The majority vote Democrat or not at all. Affluent minority families and most whites had the means to leave New Orleans before the storm, similar to when many wealthy Jews escaped Nazi Germany. Those remaining were considered "subhuman." The media happily promoted this image with selected video clips of looting and chaos in the streets. It was difficult to sympathize with that group, or with those with the ability to leave the city that chose to ride out the storm, instead. It's difficult to feel anything but disgust for the "survivors," especially since many of us have already been taught to despise them.Contributing to this insidious campaign was a collective disregard for decades of deteriorating infrastructure of the levees; worsening conditions as a result of oil drilling, erosion, and warming waters. Combined with the frequency of tropical storms and overdevelopment of protective wetlands that eradicated a natural buffer, you had a recipe for a casserole of catastrophe hotter than any Cajun gumbo.Despite thousands of pages of scientific studies, articles, surveys, projections and other documentation warning of specific (and prophetic) consequences, the leadership of New Orleans, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and the alphabet soup of agencies involved in the environment, energy, engineering, etc., continued to procrastinate taking the necessary action to confront the inevitable.The unarguable, intrinsic and traditional corruption of local government in New Orleans and throughout Louisiana ensured that short-term economic and political goals would always supersede long-term projects.Not yet publicly made, watch for the plutocracy to play the Christian card, evoking images of Sodom and Gomorrah to bolster their anti-gay, anti-vice policies of vast hypocritical proportions.Recently, the President proclaimed that New Orleans will be a better, stronger city. Perhaps that's because he hopes that it will be cleaner, whiter and holier now that the riff raff have been run off or drowned.It's not far-fetched to believe that Bush and his cronies cut the budget for the levee improvements and that he and Rumsfeld withheld military aid because he wants to drill in Alaska. Katrina may have just given him a green light.Radical? Maybe. Students of history may not think so. Politics35471@blogcritics.org Sun, 4 Sep 2005 15:21:44 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/07/31/233556.php Loretta Dillon My patients want no more and no less from me than the customers who buy my books or the defense attorneys who retain me to humanize their clients. They want me to probe deeply enough and listen carefully enough to formulate stories they and others can resonate with, ones that feel authentic.~ Dr. Keith Ablow In his new release, Inside the Mind of Scott Peterson, celebrity forensic psychiatrist and horror novelist, Keith Ablow, formulates one of his signature "stories" that serves to probe the thought processes of convicted double murderer, Scott Peterson. Unfortunately, Ablow's analysis is based on a false premise, along with specious assumptions, hearsay, unsubstantiated rumors presumed to be fact, and Ablow's creative fantasies. In order to "humanize" Scott Peterson, to portray his motives and desires in a way to make them "resonate" with his readers, Ablow has to dehumanize Laci Peterson. Throughout his brief and repetitive analysis, Ablow depicts Laci as shallow, superficial, out of touch with her feelings, in denial of her alleged painful childhood, devoid of nurturing skills, with no psychic connection to a man with whom she lived for eight years, and as a perfectionist whose chief ambition in life was to "make things pretty."As a glaring contrast, Ablow unveils Amber Frey as a goddess of healing and restorative love. Even her name denotes mythical energy. He resurrects the wholly debunked "love spin" by asserting that Amber was "the one [Peterson] had to have, had to keep. The one he convinced himself he was willing to kill for." (p. 169.)If this theory, obviously purloined from the pages of a Harlequin Romance, were not enough to cast doubt on Ablow's conclusions, the foundation of his theory on Scott Peterson's subconscious belief that "birth equals death" should give you pause. Scott Peterson must have learned early on that being anything but the perfect child would not be tolerated by his parents. I believe he was in a perpetual state of unconscious panic that his mother (who had given away two other children and who had considered giving away her third) would abandon him and that his father would do nothing to save him. (p. 45.) As a kind of sub-plot to this hypothesis, Ablow imposes psychological damage and attachment disorder to Peterson because he was separated from his mother for a few days after birth and kept in an incubator. Ablow's primary premise that Peterson was "psychologically murdered," "spiritually suffocated," and "castrated" by his parents ignores a few important facts. First, Scott did not know about his mother's first two babies, or that she contemplated giving up John (if that's even true) until he was an adult, just a few months before he married Laci. How could Peterson's pathology be rooted in a fear of abandonment when he never experienced this form of abandonment and was not even aware of his mother's actions prior to his birth?By all accounts - including testimony at Peterson's trial, consistent anecdotal narratives, and objective news stories - Lee and Jackie Peterson were doting, attentive, generous and devoted parents to Scott. Their boundaries are blurred and they are eccentric and emotionally crippled, but they did not abandon Scott. In fact, they followed him like puppies until he moved to Modesto and later underwrote an extravagant (albeit ineffective) defense. Some of us would have felt smothered by this parental adoration, but we cannot assume Peterson did. For all we know, he enjoyed the security that he could tap his parents like a spring. There is no evidence to impute a "perpetual state of unconscious panic" to Peterson.The fantasies and inanities begin on page 5, with Ablow's self-plagiarized title for Chapter 1: "A Psychological 'Perfect Storm.'" Ablow recycled the perfect storm metaphor from his testimony in the murder trail of Commonwealth v. Sharpe. Ablow postulates that Peterson had been "emotionally strangled" and was a "psychological cadaver" because he had to "shut down his real feelings in order to short-circuit unbearable pain." What "unbearable pain" Ablow does not explain. Ablow attempts to formulate a psychic connection between Jackie's loss of her parents and abandonment of her babies to Scott's murder of his unborn child. Making more assumptions and theorizing with scanty information, Ablow characterizes the victim, Laci Peterson, nearly as one-dimensional as the "missing" posters of her picture taped to telephone poles in Modesto. Laci had a way of focusing on the prettiest part of any picture, fixing things up until they looked pristine, at least on the surface. She had chosen to spend her professional life decorating with flowers. Borrowing from the tabloids, Ablow uses Laci's prior romantic choices to deduce a pattern of dysfunctional attractions: Laci's resolve to overcome or ignore darkness and focus on petty things, in fact, may be one reason she had attracted a violent man before ever meeting Scott Peterson. Taking a page from Freud, Ablow constructs for Peterson a twisted Oedipal conflict: In Scott's mind, every woman would forever be Jackie: a person he believed he needed to trick...who might abandon him at any time...who might secretly be plotting to destroy him. However, another contradictory argument emerges on the following page:Scott would have a hard time believing that any woman could choose to leave him. He was, after all, the Golden Boy who had grown into the perfect man. So, is Laci a facsimile of Jackie, or is Laci the perfect mate? Laci's willingness not to look at the dark side would have reassured him that he would never be forced to confront his suffering, would never be seen as anything but a golden boy. Laci would never peer behind his mask of sanity or hold up a mirror and make him look at himself. With only the edges of the puzzle in place, Ablow's remedy is to make rash generalizations:When Laci was a child, her father had walked out on her and her mother. She would do anything she could to avoid believing she was losing another man's heart. Since Ablow did not find Laci interesting enough to research her background beyond the pages of Catherine Crier's book, he deduces that she was no more emotionally healthy or self-aware than Peterson. Could Peterson be healed? It requires some raw material to work with - a person in whom the light of life still burns, however dimly...it requires a certain amount of luck - the right moments between the right human beings. Perhaps Ablow's professed career as a therapist for dozens of violent criminals and the author of a series of novels that center on psychopathic behavior is an admission that he has fallen too deeply into the abyss. He has missed the forest for the trees. He arbitrarily assigns Scott Peterson the exact diagnosis he has for most of the defendants he is paid to declare "insane." Only this time he wasn't hired by the defense. His readers are paying for this reassuring diagnosis, because they prefer to think of Peterson as someone who is incapable of reason. As long as he can be categorized as a "sociopath," he cannot be their brother, their neighbor, their husband or their son. To whom will Ablow's "story" of Peterson's mind "resonate?" Definitely not to the Amber detractors who will recoil at the depiction of her as a healing goddess; not to the countless women who related to Laci on many levels and the millions who were dazzled by her smile, her luminescence, and her genuine accessibility; probably not to the people who supported the Rochas; surely not to the Peterson apologists who believe Scott is innocent and no more a sociopath than the Maytag repair man; and not to the seekers of justice and truth who would reject this analysis as patently false.There really is no constituency for this book. Books33444@blogcritics.org Sun, 31 Jul 2005 23:35:56 EDT