Frontline Rules

Frontline, to me, has gone beyond being a great show, it's become an institution. When I hear those first few bars with their string and the brass staccati, I get goosebumps. It's the only show that I'm currently watching by myself (I watch a couple of other shows but those are with friends and more of a social event).

On the Frontline website you can watch new programs as soon as they come out as well as 61 archived episodes.

There are two episodes that demand to be watched:

Tank Man: The story of Tiananmen Square and its role in shaping the economic reform of China

I was still a child when the protest were staged and then crushed, but the memory has stuck with me and led to intense curiosity about that time in 1989. I still remember the day when I first watched this online. I was absolutely hypnotized. The events surrounding Tiananmen Square are crammed with such extremes of human behavior, it's dizzying. I have never been more proud of humanity than when I saw Chinese protesters confront the the fisrt divisions of the Chinese army not with guns, or Molotov cocktail or even anger but with reason and compassion. They turned back armed men sent their to kill them, if necessary, with nothing but their minds and hearts.
I have never been more ashamed of humanity, though, than when another division of troops, more hard-line this time, came a few days later and shot and killed people whose only crime was asking for the rights of free speech and assembly. A section where unarmed protesters were shot at but refused to retreat, resulting in volley after volley of gunfire forced me to pause the show, sit in the dark, and regroup before I could continue.
The last third of the documentary, dealing with the economic liberalization of China, while lacking in drama, is still equally compelling.

If you want to know what's happening in Burma right now, watch this episode... I imagine it the Burmese military is not behaving much differently than their Chinese counterparts.



The Persuaders: exploring the cultures of marketing and advertising in America

Not quite as weighty but still fascinating. It's worth watching just observe to Clotaire Rapaille in action. A French psychiatrist who lives in the a Versailles-like mansion located in American suburbia, he is what would happen if Dr. Strangelove climbed out of his wheelchair and walked into the boardrooms of Madison avenue.

There's also the hilariously absurd story of Song, an airline with an advertising campaign so clever that consumers could not figure out what it was Song did or sold.

Flower Lamps, Turtle-Necked Dancers and the Awkward Segue Game

Thursday night was art night. I had two invitations from two different friends to two different art exhibitions.
The first I attended was a traditional gallery showing where friend A (a Dutch, mutton-chopped, beret wearing Luddite - and yes, he is as eccentric as he sounds) was exhibiting some lamps he made (pictured on the left at another gallery).

I like his lamps; bright metallic and glass flowers growing out of junk computers and other assorted electronics. Most of the other work on display were classical still life paintings (look, a pomegranate!). One painting could only be described as a close-up of a gaping, swollen anus.


After that, I jumped on the subway, rode it across town to the Tranzac for Sensory Lab for (according to the poster) a night of art, dance and music where friend B (tech-savvy PhotoShop master, illustrator, film editor and Ottawa transplant) was the film curator and print designer. He showed me how he made the poster. I'm not a good enough writer to describe the technical aspects of its design interestingly but rest assured, it's awesome.

The event featured short films, dance, musical acts and some other more nebulous artistic endeavors (I'll save you trouble vicariously living through those by omitting them).

Interpretative dance... I've tried and I don't get it. The only way I can sit through it quietly is to let my mind wander or to view it from a completely anthropological perspective, and therefore reduce the participants to analogs for chimps at a zoo ("I wonder what that one's doing? Oh... he's picking lice off this thigh."). All the reaching, head in the hands and running circles is to me, a little ridiculous. Yearning, an emotion rooted in stillness and introspection, is very difficult to get across through motion. I'm sure there's something I'm missing but for me the whole art form doesn't compute. Whatever, personal opinion. (This is more my style - no yearning here. I wonder if any other possible pandemics have dances named after them?)

The best musical act featured at Sensory Lab was Chinawoman, a local female singer/songwriter with an unfathomably deep voice.
Her live performance isn't nearly as dour as her recorded work (which makes Cat Power sound like the Venga Boys). Live, there were even a few stretches that were (dare I say it?) fun and light-hearted. In sum, an enjoyable set. The musical highlight was an upbeat Russian folk song she played as a finale. The crowd approved, clapping to beat... I was tempted to order cold vodka shots for our group to complete the experience but the the song ended before I could follow through on that ill-fated idea.

Another moment stood out too, but for entirely different reasons. After her song "Party Girl," a quirky song performed with a smirk and a hint of playfulness (and with lyrics that repeat the words Party Girl about 60 times throughout) she addressed the audience and deadpanned:
"That last song was called 'Party Girl.' (pause) And now for my next song 'I Kiss the Hand of my Destroyer.'"
This immediately led to our table breaking the record for most knowing glances in a two-minute span while she earnestly belted out a ditty that, I can only imagine, was inspired by some awful event that involved an-ex boyfriend and was quickly followed by a deep depression. We are still not sure whether Chinawoman meant the segue to be as funny as it was but we were in no doubt that is was indeed hilarious, intentional or not.

Any way, the next day, the "Awkward Segue" game was born. It's easy - basically mad libs via email. Someone starts and then everyone tries to top each other. For example:

"Sugarplum, Sugarplum, Sugarplum, Sugarplum, Sugarplum...
Thank you. That last song was song was called 'Sugarplum'. And now for my next song, 'The Razor Blade Feels Cold against my Wrist.'"

or

"Sweetness and light, sweetness and light, sweetness and light, sweetness and light...
Thank you. That last song was song was called 'Sweetness and light'. And now for my next song,
'You Cheated on me with my Sister when I was Pregnant.'"

Or how about this: "Day at the Beach" and "I Swallowed 80 Sleeping Pills in a Motel Room and had my Stomach Pumped." The possibilities are endless. So play along at home.

Movie Review - Rebellion: The Litvinenko Case

In today's Russia a man yells "Aux barricades!" and the mob replies with all the enthusiasm of a herd of cud-chewing cows.


I like my Russian intellectuals iconoclastic and Andrei Nekrasov fits the bill; a savage, greasy gaggle of keratin that passes for a hairdo, a scarf slung haphazardly around his neck, brow in a perpetual furrow, eyes that suggest relentless insomnia and a demeanour that alternates between despair and effervescence - the man is a pleasure to watch and listen to. He has produced a first person advocacy documentary of the highest caliber. It's passionate, outrageous and riveting. Through the prism of the Litvinenko poisoning filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov tells the story of post-communist Russia and the role the FSB (the Russian secret service and successor to the KGB) has had in shaping it.
This is the movie Michael Moore would have made if he was (a) Russian and (b) talented.


Film rests on three pillars - Nekrasov's personality, charm and energy, the great archival footage he has amassed and the intense interviews (the ones with Litvinenko and now deceased journalist Anna Politkovskaya standout more then the others). All of them are interesting to watch but they also give a glimpse of larger trends in modern Russia.

In one memorable vignette, Nekrasov tries and fails to find a copy of the Novaya Gazeta, an independent opposition newspaper, among the numerous newsstands that surround the central square in St. Petersburg. All he came up with is mountains of Russian Maxim and FHM. He does run into a fellow cynic, an old and almost toothless man. The old man is holding a book about Russian history. Nekrasov comments that's it's a very good book. To which the old man replies "You know what this book is? It's bullshit." Nekrasov, confused, insists that the book is worth reading. The old man clarifies "You know why this book is bullshit? Because it's interesting and in this country anything that's interesting is called 'bullshit.'" And with that he stumbles off, looking for what looks like the 6th or 7th vodka of the morning.

Nekrasov also includes an astonishing segment from a town-hall style show that aired on NTV (the last independent TV station, since shut down by the Kremlin) after a showing of his film about the war in Chechnya. The film was highly controversial as it graphically depicted the civilian toll of the war on the Chechen people. When the crowd is asked to comment on the film a middle-aged man is the first to volunteer. He states his name and occupation (he's a professor of political science at a Moscow university) and goes on to comment, matter of factly, that killing Chechen children is OK because "they will grow up to be terrorists." As the host and some of the audience stare on in stunned silence he goes on to reassert his point. (I would love to sit in on that guys classes... I can only guess what his views on the Khmer Rouge or Stalin are, but I'm sure they'd just as enlightened as his views on Chechnya.)

Litvinenko appears throughout the film, in excerpts from several interviews, some with Nekrasov, others with Russian journalists and in an excerpt from a famous press conference where he led a group of dissident FSB agents, who refused illegal orders, in exposing corruption inside the bureau. With Nekrasov, Litvinenko explains the system used for bribing, corrupting and then owning judges by the FSB. A judge is first asked to return a guilty verdict in a case with marginal evidence in exchange for money, or a better assignment or a better flat. Later, the judge is shown a document accusing him of bribery. An FSB agent explains to the judge that since he's a friend of the service he won't need to worry about it and tears up the document in front of the judge. The judge is now trapped, he can either continue to accept bribes in exchange for greater and greater perversions of justice or he can refuse the bribes and be charged with corruption (and be tried in front of another corrupt judge). It's just one way the FSB slowly choked the fight out of the Russian system. Litvinenko describes other ways too but his main claim underpinning his narrative is that near the end of Yeltsin's presidency, the FSB staged a silent coup and took control over the main levers of power. Not a very controversial claim, Putin himself was a KGB and FSB member since high school, but it's something that's rarely talked about in the press and never spoken about publicly in Russia.

The portrait of Russian society that emerges is of a place that has traded freedom and morals in exchange for order imposed with brutal, corrupt force and that the country seems content with the bargain although unaware of the bargain's full consequences. Incorporation of Western culture may be visible throughout Russia but the non-commercial aspects, (debate, questioning of authority, civil society) are clearly having a harder time catching on.

The most eye-popping aspect of the movie are the harsh accusations leveled at the FSB and Putin. The evidence for some of these charges barely rise above the level of conjecture but others are backed with official documents.

Here's a sampling:

- FSB bombing Moscow and blaming Chechen terrorists in order to justify the war and then the inevitable harsher security measures that come with conflict.

- FSB staging an attack against it's own military in downtown Grozny, Chechnya.

- FSB and the Russian military selling Russian arms and even Russian soldiers, who were used as slave labor, to Chechen leaders.
- Putin and his cronies siphoning millions from the fund set up to buy food for poor St. Petersburg residents during his stint as mayor (this charge has documents to back it up).

- FSB killing journalists critical of them and government policies (Anna Politskaya, interviewed in the film before being gunned down in an elevator, being the most famous example).

- FSB ordering the murders of political opponents of the Kremlin (in an interview Litvinenko alleges he was ordered to kill Boris Berezovsky. This is later corroborated by by some colleagues of his.).

Nekrasov admits when he doesn't have the goods to back all these accusations but he also makes it clear that if the evidence was out there, the FSB keeps it very well hidden.
At the end of the film, though, one is left in no doubt about two things: first, that the FSB killed Litvinenko and that, second, he was a decent man. It was the end of a long struggle that started with him exposing corruption and ended with his poisoning by an ex-FSB agent in a London hotel (the accused assassin is also interviewed for the film and even has the gall to offer his guest tea). I was left with the impression that true liberal democrats have four possible roles in Russia, powerless mutes, exiles, prisoners or martyrs and that the dividing lines between those roles can be very thin.



The movie's not out yet - but it will be soon (I hope) - so when it does, it's definitely worth a gander (even if I just spoiled half of it).

Here's the closest thing I could find to a clip: it's in French, a TV interview is mixed in and it doesn't give you any kind of reasonable facsimile of what the film is like, and all in all, it's fairly useless. But hey, I'm doing this for fun, so standards are pretty low here.

Toronto

It's not Paris or Vienna (understatement) but every now and then Toronto surprises you.


Even if it's in that dreary, industrial, L.A. river kind of way.

Mercenaries - An Unregulated Free Market

As the controversy around Blackwater and other private military companies (hold on, isn't that the definition of mercenary?) has started to die down I'm reminded of an anecdote I read in Rajiv Chandrasekaran's excellent Imperial Life in the Emerald City.
(A great book. Funny, tragic, serious and easy to read. I remember pounding it out in a few days last Christmas. Well worth the effort.)

You can find it in its entirety on pages 142-146, I'll summarize it here.

It starts off with a portrait of Ben Thomas, an ex-Navy SEAL who was struggling to make ends meet as a mix martial art fighter in Florida. On a friend's recommendation he applied to work for Custer Battles, a mercenary group hired to to protect the Baghdad airport. They promised high pay, top of the line equipment and important work.

Aside:
Please check out the C.B. website. Absurdity on a a remarkable scale (combined with horrid web design). Here's a direct quote: "Iraq is a nation and marketplace wrought with challenges, obstacles, and malevolent actors. However, Iraq offers contractors, traders, entrepreneurs as well as multi-national enterprises an unprecedented market opportunity. The ability to identify, quantify, and mitigate this myriad of risks allows successful organizations to transform risk into opportunity."
Well then, sign me up! Anyway...

Well it turns out that Custer Battles may have misled Mr. Thomas. He soon found himself poorly equipped and picking up seized Iraqi weapons for "recycling" (he suspected the company just sold them off on the black market). One day the inevitable happened, his team was ambushed. Thomas found himself pinned under their S.U.V. being fired at from multiple directions. He spotted one of his attackers, squeezed off one shot, hitting the Iraqi in the hip. The others insurgents scattered. After a moment, Thomas and his co-workers went in to take a closer look at the Iraqi he had just shot.
According to Thomas, "[the victim's] guts were spewed out like someone has uncoiled him and spread him out."
Now a bullet to the hip doesn't usually do this. Frequently, with proper medical care, a bullet to the hip is quite survivable. But this was not a normal bullet. Thomas was using a super-charged soft-point bullet (extra gun powder without a full metal jacket). These softer bullets do not hold their shape when they enter flesh but instead mushroom creating large and horrific exit wounds. The U.S. military forbids the use of these bullets. Doing so could result in a court-martial.
But Ben Thomas isn't covered by military regulations. He isn't covered by Iraqi law either (thanks to this Iraqi law put into place by American administrator L. Paul Bremer). And until today, Ben Thomas wasn't covered by American law.

That's why when the military ordered U.S. mercenaries to stop using non-standard ammunition the order was ignored. They couldn't make them. These mercenaries were a law unto themselves.
"Out here, there are no rules," Thomas said. "You do whatever you have to do to protect yourself."
___________________________________________________________

Now that's just one story and a fairly tame one at that. There are thousands more that are a thousand times worse. The documentary No End in Sight (referred to in an earlier post) contains a video made by the employee of one these companies firing a hail of bullets at every every car that come to close to his convoy. No warning, just death... and all tastefully accompanied by the Elvis classic "Mystery Train." (see below)



This is a dirty war and Blackwater et al. are the dirtiest thing the Americans bring to it. Throughout history rich countries have used mercenaries when their own troops are either too few or are considered too valuable for a certain task. And throughout history mercenaries has always been more ruthless and less disciplined than the army they support. (Too bad no one in the White House seems to be a revolutionary war buff.) For the most part, nations have discovered mercenaries to be a high cost, low reward stop gap. In the U.S. the cost is money, in Iraq it's people.