table OF contents

TUESDAY

Letter From the editor:

the event: america’s mid-life crisis

tired, huddLed, and necessary:why immigration is american

the interview:jamilah king

PLacing the red-white-and BLue dunce hat:this country’s failing education system

it haPPened JuLy 4th

have you seen?ikiru

La rencontre:arnold montgault

the environmentaL crisis:can we afford to save the planet?

gasPing For Freedom, drowning in PoLitics:fighting over borders in the middle east

THURSDAY

dancing with god: in defense of gay marriage

a history oF heaLth care reForm:how name calling delayed progress for a century

PoLitico:the young invincibles

the smart BomB:terrorism misconceptions

our sacred FLag

america: hoLLywood styLe:plymouth rock

god in FiLm:experiencing god in front of the camera

on the way to the FinaL Frontier:america’s hold on hope

Dear Readers,

One of the most surprising things I've discovered while living outside of the United States is howpatriotic I've become. I’ve always loved America, but didn’t realize how much I took for granted (ourtechnological prowess, our diversity, and the understood agreement that we can be whatever we want)until it wasn’t there anymore. During my last five years in France, subtle superficial transformationshave taken place to become more French (drinking wine with every meal, adopting the phrase “Oola la” to my vocabulary), but my core values remain true to the essence of being an American: todream the impossible dreams and believe they can come true. This very concept is how our countryhas moved from thirteen little colonies to a superpower in only 235 years. That is impressive on anystandards.

But like any dreamer, we as Americans must be able to separate the fantasy from the reality, andcurrently the reality is not so good. We can no longer ride the waves of our former greatness. Instead,we must be willing to get our hands dirty and clean the mess we've avoided for so long.

“America, Is the Party Over?” focuses on where our country has excelled, where we've come up short,and how we've allowed the dreams of our forefathers to be deferred. Are we still a country of equalopportunity? Are we as arrogant and ignorant as the rest of the world claims? Are we at the end of theage of American dominance? The Mercutio writers attempt to answer these questions as they take onmany of the hot button issues facing the country: healthcare, immigration, gay marriage, foreign policy,and education just to name a few.

You constantly hear the talk of “American Exceptionalism,” but to be truly exceptional is to have theability to truly examine our past, present, and future while appreciating our triumphs, learning from ourmistakes, and constantly moving forward.

Perhaps America really is a shinning light on a hill, but like every light when it starts to get a little dim,you either change the bulb or it burns out.

Joshua GrantEditor-in-Chief

The Event

Is America Having a Mid-LifeCrisis?

We Might Be Suffering froM a Mid-Life CriSiS if...

the perSon in the Mirror iS a Stranger

Who are we in an Obama World? Are we as different as we had hoped? Are we becoming socialist? Are we really this arrogant? Ignorant?

We are Worried Where our Life iS headed

The fears of entitlement spending/cuts, The definition of “marriage,” New threats of terror-ism, Could Sarah Palin really be the President?

We feeL a ConStant Surge of fruStration

Joblessness, homelessness, Denial of rights, A shrinking middle-class, The excessive cost of secondary education, The snail-like process of law, Politicians who constantly lie, Tax cuts

for the rich

We experienCe regret

Credit card debt, Iraq, Nation building while our country sinks into the toilet,

We think that tiMe iS running out

12-21- 2012, The impending collapse of our financial system

We queStion the Meaning of Life

The constant debate over small and large government

We feeL trapped

How can I make a difference?

Tired, Huddled, NecessaryStephen Saia

It’s a cool fall day in New York in the 1840’s. A ship rolls in to the harbor with passengers from all over the world looking to start a

new life in America. The streets are bustling and the mar-kets are flooded with people. While this was a great time for America, there was a reason that people were immigrating here at record numbers at that time. The Potato Famine had hit Ireland and the Irish now accounted for more than half of all immigrants. The expan-sion of America created many opportunities for the Irish to get back on their feet by doing la-bor on projects such as digging canals. As more Irish immigrat-ed into the U.S., they tended

to stay around the same areas as prior countrymen. From this, we have Catholic Churches, Irish traditions, and St. Pat-rick’s Day. Never before has the U.S. seen such a massive influx of immigrants as they did from 1847 to 1854 when we saw the largest influx of immi-grants. Then, 1875 rolls along and the United States has just passed its first immigration law.

The mere thought of the word immigration brings up fiery emotions amongst just about everyone, but it is frequently displayed in the wrong light. All too often, Americans for-get that there are two types of immigration: legal and illegal. Legal immigration brings us some of the most intelligent

and hard-working minds in the world. One of the founders of Google, Sergey Brin, immigrat-ed here legally with his family when he was six from Russia. Andy Becholsteim, co-founder of SUN Microsystems, hails from Germany. The founder of EBAY Pierre Omidyar arrived in the U.S. with his parents at the age of 6. Noticing a trend? The United States economy needs legal immigration.

No one can argue that the United States isn’t the great “melting pot”. Nowhere on the planet is there a more diverse collection of individuals from other countries, which in turn I believe makes the American people more tolerable of some-one who is different than them.

Because of immigration, we are able to attract the best and the brightest from other coun-tries who may have been lim-ited by their local government to research things they wanted to or go into a certain field. His-panic owned businesses alone have produced upwards of two hundred and twenty-two billion dollars worth of revenue. How can you say that is bad for our country? Walk down any given street in a large American city and what do you see? Little Italy, Chinatown, etc. These culturally rich, iconic areas are home to thousands of immi-grants from all over the world who have come to America to make a better life for them-selves and their families. Most of the eclectic shops you see provide goods and homemade products you otherwise would not be able to get in this coun-try and the restaurants provide food that tastes how it should; like it’s from its native land.

Legal immigration is not with-out flaw though. Less-skilled American citizens earn less money and have fewer job op-portunities because they must compete with immigrants in the job market. Some would argue that the opportunity for terrorism also increases with immigration because these black sheep can hide in plain sight. As we learned, most of the 9/11 terrorists came to our country legally. The U.S Cen-sus Bureau estimates that by the year 2050, if our current birth rate and immigration rates remain unchanged for another 70 years, the U.S. population will double. This will lead to an-other problem of overcrowding in our hospitals, prisons, and workforce.

A few years back, Gallup took a poll asking people all over the world if they had a choice to move somewhere, where would it be. Over 165 million people from over 148 differ-ent countries chose the United States, making it the most desirable place to migrate to. I love America as much as the next person, but why such an alarming number? Some might say it’s the chance for a better job while others would make the case plain and simple by stating: A better life.

No other country on Earth al-lows as many illegals as we do. In 2008, the Center for Immigration Studies estimated the illegal population in the United States to be 11million. According to The Department of Homeland Security, 62 per-cent of those 11 million come from Mexico.

But America has a dirty little secret, which some refer to as “the magnet for illegal immigra-tion”. The practice of compa-nies hiring illegal immigrants for more than they would get paid in their country of origin happens widely. Of all of the issues regarding immigration, this is the one that gets the most people upset. The fact that American jobs are being given to illegals solely because their employer doesn’t want to pay benefits and fair wages is disgraceful. Remittance is Mexico’s largest source of in-come totaling in at over twelve billion dollars being sent from Mexican workers in the U.S. back to Mexico.

All too often illegal immigra-tion discussions are one sided though. “They don’t pay taxes,

they take our healthcare, and they take our jobs!” A study done by a professor at UCLA, it was concluded that if all un-documented immigrants were put on a path to naturalization that it would result in upwards of $1.5 trillion in our GDP within the next ten years.

Over the years, politicians and activists have come up with different ways that they think will fix our illegal immigration problem. Some of the ideas have included increased bor-der patrol, mass deportation, employer fines, prosecuting and deporting on an individual basis, and also instating a work program that puts them on a path to citizenship. Based off of a combination of polls, employer fines is the most popular of the group. The general idea behind this is if employers are fined for hiring illegal immigrants, then they will not hire them, which will in turn make it less desirable for them to immigrate here il-legally. Mass Deportation has been estimated at costing the country $23,148 per person. This cost is simply illogical and a different route must be taken.

It’s been argued that the pro-cess of naturalization is too lengthy, which in turn deters people from going through the proper channels to become legal. Ninety-percent of ap-plicants for citizenship fall into a category that requires you to be a permanent resident for five years before applying! During this time, you would be learning proper English and also preparing for your civics exam. You could compare the process of immigrating to the United States and becoming

an American citizen to the start of a foreign NBA player’s ca-reer. First, you play a few years in the Euro league and try and make a life for yourself. Then you come to realize that Amer-ica is the place to be on the basketball scene. Once you get drafted by a team, some commentator makes some arbitrary comment about how your mother’s cousin’s sister’s college roommate once played in the WNBA and then you get interviewed by a bombshell reporter. Now it’s your big mo-ment to showcase your English skills, and you blow it. Over the

first five years, you brush up on your new country that you’re living in, practice your English, work on your game (just like an immigrant would start his own company), and if Team U.S.A. is lucky enough, you apply for citizenship. The naturalization process is a long one, but it is a thorough process that truly makes willing and deserving people an American citizen equal to the same rights and privileges that native-born peo-ple receive.

In November 2005, Homeland Security launched the Secure

Border Initiative, affectionately referred to as “The Wall”. This multi-billion dollar project has been viewed as a necessity by some when you take into consideration that our border patrol officers catch only one out of every five illegals trying to cross into America. But with the U.S./Mexico border span-ning 2,000 miles, the country knows this will be no easy task. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff estimates that a high-tech fence running the entire 2000 mile border would cost an estimated four to eight billion dollars while a standard 10-foot tall prison fence would only cost around $851 mil-lion. Currently, the U.S. has completed somewhere in the neighborhood of 670 miles of The Wall along the southern border varying from vehicle to pedestrian type fencing.

Building a fence won’t stop illegal immigration. Over the past 10 years, Homeland Se-curity has found approximately forty underground tunnels that bypass the fences completely. The cost to our country of building a fence is too astro-nomical if illegal immigrants are just going to be able to find another way to get in. The cost to America isn’t just hitting our wallets but also our image. America is the land of opportu-nity and a wall does not con-vey a portrait of freedom. As long as there is such a large wage differentiation between the U.S. and Mexico and U.S. employers continue to hire illegals, they will find a way to get through.

Lately, I’ve been watching America: The History of Us from the History channel and

couldn’t help but notice the way that our policies have changed throughout the years. When the Transcontinental Railroad was being built with the majority of the laborers be-ing Chinese, where were our Homeland Security officers? This country was built on immi-grants trying to make a better life by being free. It wasn’t until there was a heavy influx of undocumented workers taking American born citizens’ jobs that they wanted (not just the ones no one wanted), that we had a problem.

At one point and time, nearly everyone’s family was an im-migrant, including our settlers. The legal immigrants that are coming over now are setting the ground work for their family for generations to come. In the Guide to Naturalization hand-book put out by The Depart-ment of Homeland Security it states “America becomes stronger when all of its citizens

respect the different opinions, cultures, ethnic groups, and religions found in this country. Tolerance for differences is also a responsibility of citizen-ship.” People ask themselves why our immigration rate is so high, but can you honestly say that if you were a foreigner that you wouldn’t want to be a part of “the land of opportunity”?

Tell us how you got started in political activism? What was the moment that made you

decide to make politics a passion?

There were a series of moments, so it's hard to identify just one. But I think one very formative moment happened shortly after my grandmother passed away when I was in the 8th grade. She'd raised three kids mostly on her own before opening a group home in the 1970's for teenage black girls. She and my grandfather became one of the first black couples to own a home in a very well off suburb of San Francisco, and her very conservative neighbors weren't pleased. Having these two new black people in the neighborhood was enough to set people off.

After she passed, I found a bunch of papers that pretty much documented the entire experience. She took meticu-lous notes, so I saw papers spanning nearly a decade in

which she wrote about hav-ing to fight neighbors, child protective services, and law enforcement to keep her fam-ily -- which included these girls -- safe. Sometimes she won her battles; other times she didn't. In total, she cared for about 100 girls and what was most striking in all of the pa-pers I read was how much love was there.

It really put things in perspec-tive for me. In some ways, it was my first act of investigative journalism.

In your work, you've talked a lot about your upbring-ing (growing up in a single parent household, being exposed to violence at an early age). How much of your background informed your decision to become an activist?

I've always been a very inquisi-tive person, so the drive to an-swer the "why" of what's hap-pened in my own life and in the lives of folks around me was very strong. It was important for me to move past looking at

my experiences as unique or circumstantial and realize that there are much larger structur-al forces at work. If anything, it helped make me feel a lot less alone.

When you look at how far this country has come in terms of race relations, there are some who argue that racial inequality is a thing of the past. Would you agree? And if not, how does rac-ism manifest itself in today's society?

We're definitely not a color-blind society. You can see this most obviously when you see the majority of this country's poorest residents are black and Latino, particularly women of color. It's easier to call out more overt forms of individual racism, like what someone else says. But it's much harder and more important to talk about institutional racism. Our nation's poorest schools are still in communities of color, and black homeowners were disproportionately impacted by the foreclosure crisis because of biased banking practices.

Our experiences shape whO we are. They can alsO shape The acTivisT wiThin all Of us. This was The case fOr Jamilah King. BOrn and raised in san franciscO,

Jamilah grew up in a single parenT, wOrKing class hOusehOld. she has wriTTen aBOuT her family's

persOnal experiences wiTh viOlence in hOpes Of spreading The message Of racial JusTice and sOcial equaliTy. she is The fOrmer assOciaTe ediTOr Of

wireTap magazine and currenTly The news ediTOr Of cOlOrlines.cOm. we saT dOwn wiTh ms. King TO TalK

aBOuT race, pOliTics, and her addicTiOn TO music.

There is a misconception that policies such as welfare and affirmative action are primarily in place to benefit the black community. From where do you think this idea emerged? Do you think the portrayal is intentional? How can we change it?

History has shown that there was a concerted and strategic effort to take apart, one by one, the victories of the Civil Rights and New Deal eras. You could say that it started with Presi-dent Reagan, or you could go back much further and point the finger at several presiden-tial administrations who were either slow to act or acted in defiance of policies that brought about some sort of equity. United for a Fair Econ-omy has an excellent report on the State of the Dream, where they're basically identifying how and when the policies of the Civil Rights era have been trampled, and where that's left us.

How can we change it? That's the million-dollar question. It's been a constant struggle. But I think it's important to know history, stay informed, and be able to see that history repeat-ing itself. Once you do that, you're better equipped to act on it.

As a generation who has grown up with integration, would you say the message of equality has shifted be-yond blacks and women, but now to gay rights as well? Is the fight the same for gay rights?

They're related struggles, and while there's often overlap, they're quite different. While I think it's important to recognize the fight for marriage equality, the truth is that many queer people of color are struggling to stay safe, healthy and free. Those are quintessential civil and human rights struggles that have been fought publicly for decades. The group Queers for Economic Justice has done some really amazing work over

the years to show that queer folks have astonishingly high poverty rates and are often the target of police harass-ment and discrimination. So I think that when marriage equality is won, that'll be great. But it's really only half the bat-tle and can't be fought in isola-tion of issues facing communi-ties of color, generally.

You are the news editor of Colorlines.com. The site focuses on racial justice. What exactly is racial jus-tice?

Very loosely, that's the ongoing struggle to create an equitable society while acknowledging that we cannot and should not ignore the fundamental role that race has played in the U.S. So that does include what's happening in cities, like the battles over education reform or gentrification. But it also includes what's happen-ing nationally and globally. We think it's important to talk about rural agriculture and how folks of color from all over are creat-

“It’s easier to call out more overt

forms of individual racism,

like what someone else says. But it’s

much harder and more important to

talk about institutional

racism.”

ing more equitable food sys-tems. So there's a lot to what we do, which you can see on the site daily.

Often times young people's aversion to politics is the feeling that their voice isn't heard. What is some of the work that you've done with Colorlines and Wiretap to change this perception?

On a very basic level, I think both Wiretap and Colorlines have really encouraged read-ers to take action and tell their own stories. That's done in a number of ways. You can become involved on the site by commenting or contribut-ing your own opinions. You can pitch your own story and help us lead the conversation. Or you can tell us your story and become involved with our Pub-lic Insight Network, where we ask readers to own their exper-tise and help us shape whose

stories are told in mainstream and progressive journalism.

Let's say a young person wants to get involved in the political process. What are some issues they should familiarize themselves?

I'd say there are two important issues to keep in mind when-ever someone gets involved in the political process. First, what's happening in your im-mediate area? It's crucial to put real people's faces, stories, and histories to any political struggle. It's also necessary to know your neighbors, and to feel like you're part of a collec-tive. Secondly -- and this one took me years to really un-derstand -- have a very basic understanding of how our na-tional political process works. Who makes policies and how are they drafted? More impor-tantly, what drives people to do it? You've really gotta be

a student of history and know that virtually every political battle we face today is, in one way or another, just the latest iteration of struggle that's likely already happened in the past 150 years.

“I think that when marriage equality is won, that’ll be

great. But it’s really only half the

battle.”

President Obama seems to be taking a popularity hit recently because some feel disappointed that he didn't bring the "change" he cam-paigned on. How do you feel he's doing?

I think the president's been very good at creating what's certainly one of the strongest political brands in this country's history. That's obviously got its good side: more folks tend to relate to him, and his so-called "leading from behind" style of governing. But the actual policies beneath that political brand leave much to be desired. Unemployment is still staggeringly high, and his administration has already deported more people than any other in history. Instead of couching people's hopes and dreams in fancy rhetoric, I'd like to see the president strongly and courageously endorse -- and defend -- real efforts. Personally, I've been very discouraged to see how little Democracts have tried to defend safety net programs like Social Security and union rights against an onslaught of Republican-led attacks.

Do you have big summer plans?

If all goes according to plan, I'll be taking a road trip from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Santa Cruz, California in a few weeks. I've become a big fan of the Southwest over the past year, so I can hardly wait.

You refer to yourself as a music junkie. Who are some of your favorites?

It's hard to lockdown all-time favorites. But I can name a bit of what I've been listening to lately. A few months ago, I came across British tastemak-er Gilles Peterson's Afripop series, in which he did a stellar remix of Nigerian singer Keziah Jones' "Lagos vs. New York." From there, I've had Jones' al-bum Black Orpheus on repeat. I've also been revisiting some Bill Withers. There are always a ton of DJ's whose work I respect and admire: local folks, like my friend DJ DMadness' CeeLo Green mixtape; DJ Phatrick's awesome (and free) Devil's Pie series; and J. Peri-od's (also free) tribute to Biggie Smalls. And last, but certainly not least, New York-based em-cee Jean Grae's latest mixtape "Cookies or Comas" blows my mind. Regularly.

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PlaciNg THe red-WHiTe-aNd-Blue duNce HaT

Zachary Hughes

Despite the American education system’s noble beginning as the first universal K-12 education

system, recent international scholastic achievement rank-ings called Uncle Sam to the front of the world’s classroom, sat him upon a tall, wobbly stool, and replaced his red-white-and-blue top hat with a red-white-and-blue dunce hat. This international shaming ignited a regular Red-Scare blame-game, as politicians and anyone with a digital soapbox rushed to point grubby fingers at whomever and whatever they deemed responsible for earning Uncle Sam this star-spangled badge of shame.

Okay—so that extended meta-phor is a bit hyperbolic, but in 2010, after the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released the results of its 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the triennial evaluation of the academic ability of 15-year-olds worldwide, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan called America’s scores “a massive wake-up call,” which led both federal and state politicians, along with the media, to crow a collective cock-a-doodle-doo that resounds to this day. So, what were the outrageous test results? Brace yourself: Out of the countries that participated in the 2009 PISA , the U.S.

placed 17th in reading literacy, 23rd in science literacy, and a below-average 31st in math literacy.

The OECD’s report states that, in order for America’s rank-ing to rise, Americans must demonstrate that education is the top national priority; thus, American politicians must act and vote as though education was their utmost priority (it would seem that today’s politi-cians will not care enough until there’s a War for Education, at which they can throw trillions of dollars, or until there’s oil to wring from or a Second Com-ing to be had in the Land of Education). One of the OECD’s aims in conducting such a

massive study is to provide data that can assist educa-tional policy-makers in creating smart, well-informed policy. Empirical data suggest that today’s educational policies in America are overwhelmingly not-so-smart.

In 2001, Congress passed the Bush Administration’s No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) with bipartisan support (that phrase will soon be dropped from the American lexicon). The legisla-tion’s lofty goal is to see that all—I repeat, ALL—children prove their proficiency in math and reading by 2014…or else. That last bit sounds Orwellian and ominous, right? Just you wait.

NCLB instructs states to report student test scores by school according to student sub-groups: ethnicity, students in special education, students in poverty, and students who are English-language learners. The subgroups in each school are expected to achieve adequate yearly progress (AYP), which varies from state to state. A school’s AYP is measured by annual high-stakes standard-ized testing, which also varies from state to state—this “varies from state to state” business is one of NCLB’s flaws, as stand-ards determined by individual states can fluctuate drastically.

If a school has one or more subgroups not meeting AYP for more than two years, then the school must provide after-hours tutoring for students (a seemingly good thing, until you realize that the tutoring is geared toward passing the high-stakes test). Also, the school must inform parents

that they have the choice to transfer their child to a higher-performing school. If the school continues to violate AYP, then it might have to undergo a reconstitution (a euphemism for shit-canning and replac-ing most of the staff). In some cases, the school, though an important fixture in the commu-nity, is shut down.

Inevitably, No Child Left Be-hind is antithetical to its naively hopeful name. The National Research Council, a nonprofit institution that is a part of The National Academies (whose purpose is to improve public policy decisions by providing expert advice on important is-sues), came out with a report in 2011 entitled “Incentives and Test-Based Accountability in Education”. Upon observ-ing evidence from incentive programs that punish or give rewards to students, teachers, or schools on the basis of test performance, the report con-

cludes that incentive programs do not positively affect student achievement. For instance, gains from NCLB are minis-cule—that is to say, the kind of gains that would move a student performing at the 50th percentile to the 53rd percen-tile.

The report acknowledges that what often results in high-stakes testing is a tendency for teachers to “teach to the test”. Teachers shouldn’t be criticized for teaching this way when test results are tightly tied to incen-tives. Here’s how that cause-and-effect chain works: Using incentives or punishment, the federal government puts pres-sure on state governments to perform well on high-stakes test (thereby meeting AYB); state governments pass that pressure on to school admin-istrators; school administrators pass it on to principals; princi-pals pass it on to teachers; and teachers teach their students

what they need to know in order to be deemed “proficient” on a test that will decide not only the student’s fate, but also the fate of their teacher, their principal, and, possibly, their school. So, while it’s unfor-tunate that teachers end up “teaching to the test,” it’s only a natural consequence of incen-tive programs based on high-stakes tests, such as NCLB.

Of course, such pressure to perform can lead to doctoring scores and, even, cheating. What’s more, subjects that are not tested (art, history, science, and foreign languages) are effectively Bush-blocked by NCLB. Ultimately, the report says that low-stakes testing (that is to say, giving unan-nounced tests that are not tied to incentives) is more effective than high-stakes testing, as the former method tends to ac-curately represent a student’s ability.

Last March, Univision hosted a town hall meeting with the president in Washington DC. A high school senior asked President Obama if there was any way to reduce the number of high-stakes tests that stu-dents have to take. Here is his response: “…we have piled on a lot of standardized tests on our kids. Now, there’s nothing wrong with a standardized test being given occasionally just to give a baseline of where kids are at. Malia and Sasha, my two daughters, they just recently took a standardized test. But it wasn’t a high-stakes test. It wasn’t a test where they had to panic. I mean, they didn’t even really know that they were going to take it ahead of

time. They didn’t study for it, they just went ahead and took it. And it was a tool to diagnose where they were strong, where they were weak, and what the teachers needed to empha-size.

“Too often what we've been doing is using these tests to punish students or to, in some cases, punish schools. And so what we've said is let’s find a test that everybody agrees makes sense; let’s apply it in a less pressured-packed atmos-phere; let’s figure out whether we have to do it every year or whether we can do it maybe every several years; and let’s make sure that that's not the only way we're judging whether a school is doing well.“Because there are other criteria: What’s the attend-ance rate? How are young people performing in terms of basic competency on projects? There are other ways of us measuring whether students are doing well or not.

“So what I want to do is—one thing I never want to see hap-pen is schools that are just teaching to the test. Because then you're not learning about the world; you're not learning about different cultures; you're not learning about science; you're not learning about math. All you're learning about is how to fill out a little bubble on an exam and the little tricks that you need to do in order to take a test. And that's not going to make education interesting to you. And young people do well in stuff that they’re interested in. They’re not going to do as well if it’s boring.”

President Obama’s analysis of

high-stakes testing and ac-countability is astute. In fact, this public display of intel-ligence reminds me of the man for whom I voted in 2008, the one for whom, on elec-tion night, I shed Yes-We-Can tears. To my existential cha-grin, his Univision town hall sermon is as hollow as many of his campaign promises (for example, his promise to close the inhumane detention center at Guantanamo Bay).

On his education blog, Living in Dialogue, education leader Anthony Cody, who taught in inner-city Oakland for 18 years, points out some contra-dictions between that particu-lar bit of Obama’s Univision town hall spiel and the Obama Administration’s re-imagining of NCLB called Race to the Top (didn’t the genius who came up with that name know the fable of the tortoise and the hare?). Cody is one of the National-Board-certified teach-ers spearheading the July 30 Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action, which, according to the rally’s website, will demand an end to the de-structive policies and rhetoric that have eroded confidence in our public schools, demoral-ized teachers, and reduced the education of too many of our children to nothing more than test preparation.”

Cody quips that he is going to ask the Univision-town-hall version of President Obama to speak at the rally to protest the Obama Administration’s educational policies. He points out that Race to the Top would, among other things, increase high-stakes testing and deter-mine a teacher’s pay based on

the performance of her or his students on high-stakes tests. The idea that teacher pay will be determined by student per-formance on high-stakes tests betrays the fact that American politicians feel they have found in the teachers those responsi-ble for earning Uncle Sam his red-white-and-blue dunce hat.

There is a sinister trend toward teacher-bashing and school-bashing amongst an emerging gaggle of so-called education reformers who would like to see the charterization and pri-vatization of American schools. These reformers are made up of public figures and politi-cians, along with, of course, their corporate backers. The politician reformers are trans-fixed on espousing what col-umnist and bestselling author David Sirota calls the “Great Education Myth” or “the wrong-headed idea that if we just fix our schools, all of our other so-

cial problems will miraculously disappear.” It turns out that the idea is nothing more than a distorted shadow thrown upon a cave wall. Let us walk out of the cave and into the sunlight.

Recall that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) determined that America’s youth are academically me-diocre. When this happened, the reformers began spreading news of the “education crisis” and the “failing schools” in or-der to promulgate their agen-da. It turns out that the root of the problem went beyond the bells that bookend a student’s day at school. A startling pic-ture emerges when America’s reading scores are broken down socio-economically.

Schools where less than ten percent of the students re-

ceive a free or reduced lunch scored second in the world-wide rankings only to number-one Shanghai, China. Schools where more than 50 percent of the students receive a free or reduced lunch scored amongst the lowest-ranking countries in the world. In other words, Americans who live in poverty are among the most poorly educated in the world. This inequity exposes the Grand-Canyon achievement gap between the nobles and the plebs, the rich and the poor, in this great country.

Of the nations that participated in the 2009 PISA that track poverty rates, Finland had the lowest poverty rate (3.4%) and the highest overall score (China does not keep up with poverty rates—go figure). America has the I-shit-you-not highest poverty rate (21.7%) and one of the average over-all test scores. If you take into

account only our students who attend a school with less than a ten percent poverty rate, we crush Finland’s score. There is no “education crisis,” but there is a poverty crisis in and around too many American schools that are under-sourced and replete with disadvantaged students. How such schools can survive the assaults of such policies as No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top is beyond me.

Finally, I would be remiss not to discuss one of the most outspoken critics of bad edu-cational policy and the wave of so-called reformers, the edu-cational historian and former Assistant Secretary of Educa-tion Diane Ravitch. For years, Ravitch was a supporter of incentives based high-stakes testing and accountability, but, based on all the empirical data discrediting such an approach, she has in the last few years made it her personal mission to point out the flaws and failures in current educational policies and reforms.

One of the most recent stud-ies to support her advocacy is called “Children Left Behind: The Effects of Statewide Job Loss on Student Achieve-ment”. The study, conducted by The National Bureau of Economic Research, found that unemployment adversely affects student performance in the classroom, and not just for those students whose parents are unemployed, but students who live in an area with high unemployment.

With a recent New York Times Op-Ed entitled “Waiting for a School Miracle,” published last

May, Ravitch began a veritable crap-storm amongst the sane education leaders and the so-called reformers. She eviscer-ated Obama for touting the rise in performance of an impover-ished school in Denver during his 2011 State of the Union Address. It turns out that the inner-city school’s stats had been cherry-picked to obfus-cate reality. Ravitch concludes her op-ed thusly: “If every child arrived in school well-nourished, healthy and ready to learn, from a family with a stable home and a steady in-come, many of our educational problems would be solved. And that would be a miracle.”

The red-white-and-blue dunce hat needs to be placed where it belongs, on the collective head of our politicians whose use of rhetoric that, like a shadow on a cave wall, does not reveal the most crucial inequitable problem of all, that of poverty and its accompanying societal ills.

IT HAPPENED JULY 4th....

1776 – The Declaration of Inde-pendence is adopted. It would not be signed until August 2; There were 2.5 million people living in the country.

1802 – West Point Academy opens

1803 – The Louisiana Purchase becomes official

1817 – The Erie Canal begins con-struction

1826 – John Adams and Thomas Jefferson die

1831 – James Monroe dies

1872 – Calvin Coolidge is born

1916 – Nathan’s Annual Hot Dog Eating Contest begins on Coney Island

1918 – Pauline Phillips aka “Dear Abby” is born

1966 – Lyndon Johnson signs the Freedom of Information Act, giv-ing the American people access to once classified documents

1984 – US spacecraft Pathfinder sets down on Mars

2008 – Study released shows 26% of “Amercians” do not know who we won our independence from

2009 – Report reveals July 4th is the deadliest holiday due to alcohol related fatalities

2010 – Markets confirm China is the largest importer of U.S. flags and fireworks; Mexico is the lead customer of U.S. flags exported from the U.S.

2011 – The country boasts 311.7 million residents

Have you seeN.....?

IKIRUJonathon Saia

Ikiru ( Dir: Akira Kurosawa 1952)

“Plain noodle soup. In all these years, I’ve never seen him eat anything else.”

What would you do if you knew you only had six months to live? I would

travel. I would take all of the money I had and spend it on a ticket to Europe and back-pack. I would live off the land, barter, sleep in shanties, hitch-hike, and somehow get to the Holy Land; not for any religious reasons, but being one of the oldest places on Earth, it has always been one I have want-

ed to visit. Maybe somewhere beneath the soil of these war torn nations lies the profundity of life’s mysteries.

If I were an old man like my grandpa, Tod – who, despite two bouts with cancer, heart failure, COPD, 30+ pills a day, episodes of dizziness that cause him to faint and break his leg, and survives by some-how breathing on half of one lung, is miraculously still alive – I would throw myself into a final project à la Robert Altman and Warren Zevon, vowing to make one last impression on the world to solidify my memory and give my life value. This is exactly what Watanabe, the middle-aged protagonist of Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece Ikiru, does.

Watanabe (Takashi Shimura) has worked for the past thirty years in the Public Affairs Dept. of City Hall, pushing papers, never missing a day, and barely passing as alive. His nickname around the of-fice is “The Mummy.” His wife died many years ago and his relationship with his adult son is strained to say the least. He has no friends or meaningful relationships that we know of. Even his brother seems a dis-tant figure. All Watanabe has is his job. Not his career, which is meant to bring fulfillment and insight passion, but his job. Something that is done to col-lect a paycheck and survive.

He wasn’t always this way. We gather that he use to have

initiative and drive. Many years ago, he wrote a proposal to make governmental change, the details of which we are never given knowl-edge, but ones that must have chal-lenged the status quo, given what we later see. Over the years, all of his passion became the supreme model of the three great Japanese bureaucratic principals: “Don’t be late, don’t take time off, and do no work.” All the passion has been worn down and beaten out of him by a system that is only interested in doing as little as necessary to keep the boat from rocking for fear of the waves. Wata-nabe uses the pages of this twenty-year old proposal that still remains tied up in his desk – the way it remained tied up in the politics of ineffectualness – to clean his stamp he uses to push meaningless paper from his inbox to his out, like a fac-tory worker tightens the head of a doll, never knowing if the person down the line will give it hair.

The other employees in the office also work like drones at the hive, separated and suf-focated by piles of papers, sleep walking through life. Except Toyo. The lone woman in the office and the youngest employee in the department, she dares to laugh at a comic strip while working, which she shares with the others: “I hear you’ve never even taken a vacation. Is that because City Hall couldn’t function without you?” “No, because everyone would realize that City Hall

doesn’t need me at all.” One of her fellow underlings repri-mands her, “You shouldn’t do that here.” (This reminds me of the line in Dr. Strangelove when Peter Sellers screams, “You can’t fight in here. This is the war room!”) It’s as if the very nature of good humor and levity is antithetical to the stuffy bureaucratic somberness they have all agreed to inhabit. Or maybe the joke just hit too close to home.

Kurosawa does a wonderful job of illustrating the bureau-cratic system’s flaws in an extended sequence where a group of women come to the office to address a cess-pool that is near where their children play. The women are passed from one desk to another, lost in a world of red tape and unaccountability (“the mockery of democracy” as one petitioner calls it), until they finally give up.

Our narrator tells us that Wata-nabe will die of stomach can-cer, but he doesn’t know it yet. The choice of this type of can-cer is by no means arbitrary. In America and the West, we see the heart as the nucleus of our feelings, our desires, our soul. In Japan, it is the stomach. Watanabe’s physical malady serves as an emotional paral-

lel to the death of his soul and the presence of the cancer gives him a tangible problem to overcome an intangible di-lemma. Kurosawa uses the device of narration to give us distance from the gravity of the subject matter.

In the waiting room of the doc-tor’s office, Watanabe listens to a fellow patient describe the symptoms attributed to stom-ach cancer. We see in Wata-nabe’s face that they are his own. He gets closer and closer to the camera, letting us in, helping us align with him, really for the first time despite what we already knew.

Once in the doctor’s office, his practitioner bold face lies to him about his prognosis. This left me scratching my head in disgust and wonder. How could he get away with this? And why would he go to the trouble to lie at all? I hoped Watanabe had a good attorney and would sue his doctor for medical mal-practice! In actuality, until the 1980s, Japan had a system of non-disclosure. People thought that cancer was a death sen-tence and knowing the truth would cause the condition to worsen so there was an under-stood don’t ask, don’t tell poli-cy. The great reaction shots of the other medical aides show that they know exactly what is going on and are even uncom-fortable and sympathetic with this tacit agreement. When the doctor asks his constituents what they would do if they were in his shoes, the nurse

puts it best: “The barbiturates are over there.”

Meandering out of the doctor’s office, Kurosawa drowns out the sound as if all of the re-maining life has been drained out of Watanabe. Then when he is almost hit by a car, the sound comes back in full blast. This is symbolic foreshadowing of Watanabe’s future dedica-tion to the park caused by his wake up call to live and live now.

Once home, Watanabe pain-fully sifts through a series of flashbacks involving his son, Mitsuo (Nobuo Kaneko), illus-trating their fractured relation-ship: his wife’s funeral; Mitsuo playing baseball (He fails trying to steal a base. Watanabe has a look of shame on his face: shame for himself, shame he feels by proxy for his son, or shame that he never took chances in life like stealing a base?); Mitsuo’s appendec-tomy (Instead of staying with Mitsuo, Watanabe goes back to work. I found this a little far fetched like they were trying to

make him unlikeable. Perhaps he had to go to work to pay for the surgery like Sal does when Dorothy has her tonsils out on The Golden Girls, but given the prior knowledge of his workaholic nature, I doubt it was for financial reasons. It was more likely an example of his misappropriated hierar-chy of priorities), and Mitsuo’s departure for war. (Clearly scared, his father offers no council and he watches his son metaphorically leave him for the last time)

Kurosawa then cuts to present day Watanabe running up the stairs to his son’s bedroom, only to stop outside his door, afraid or beaten up enough to not attempt an apology for the years of distance. Interestingly, Kurosawa has Watanabe back down the stairs instead of turn around, serving as a rewind, so to speak, allowing him to replay his steps, but never change them.

Getting ready for bed, he winds the alarm clock without looking at it as if his entire life

has been one long day of work. Sud-denly, the emotion of the preceding flashbacks and the reality of his malignancy overcome him and he runs away under the covers like a small child to cry. This is an example of Kurosawa

once again keeping us distant from the grief to give the film a somber, yet non-indulgent tone, light years away from his Hollywood contemporaries like Douglas Sirk who loved to milk sentiment for all they were worth in films like Written on the Wind (1956) and All That Heaven Allows (1955).

Days later after not showing up for work and leaving no word with anyone, we rejoin Watanabe at a bar. Here he meets an unnamed novelist Yûnosuke Itô, struggling with his latest book over one of per-haps many drinks. Watanabe confides in him, the first of only two people in the film, neither of which are his relatives, that he has cancer. “I’d never even bought a drink with my own money...drinking this expen-sive sake is like paying myself back with poison for the way I lived all these years.” Watan-abe has already begun to learn that something in his life must change. But how?

He enlists the help of his new friend to show him how to frivolously spend money, something he has never done, and they embark on a night of debauchery. Games, booze, dancing, strip shows, and women.

Two moments stand out from this sequence: The first is at a piano bar where Watanabe sings, “Life is Brief,” a presci-ent song from his youth. His voice is rich, full, yet inhuman, a sound you would imagine hearing in the deep bogs of the woods as the wind rushed through ancient trees. Kuro-sawa gives us one of the rare blatantly emotional moments of

the film in this scene. Watan-abe – singing, crooning, croak-ing – unashamedly cries in the midst of young onlookers. The novelist jumps up (“That’s the spirit, man!”) and drags him off to continue living, perhaps inspired by the somber lyrics of the old man’s lullaby to a life gone by.

The other takes place at the end of the evening. After many hours of more adventure and even more drinking, Watanabe – now in the back of a cab with (the writer) and two young, beautiful woman on their way to who knows where to do who knows what – asks the driver to pull over to the side of the road. Watanabe staggers out of the car into the distance to expunge the seeds of his first and possibly only night of fun in his life. The novelist hurries out to retrieve his friend only to be greeted with a glare of dis-approval. It’s as if Watanabe is saying, “Damn you for making me endure this evening only to return to my death.” Then his face lightens. He even cracks a smile as some silent apology for the scowl. Kurosawa cuts back to the novelist’s look of drunken dismay for his joie de vivre, reminding him that Wata-nabe, and someday he, is still going to die.

The most important character next to Watanabe is Toyo, the girl from the office (Miki Oda-giri). She is the other charac-ter with whom he shares his prognosis. They go on fre-quent “dates” – friendly, almost paternal meetings without the thought or prospect of intimacy – much to the chagrin and misunderstanding of his son. He calls their relationship “de-

graded”, and even yells at his father, clearly an effect of the younger generations’ budding Westernization in Japan. His-torically, we think of Japanese culture as being extremely reverential toward their older generations – something if America truly believed in would not for a second think of less-ening Social Security benefits for its seniors – making these exchanges all the more shock-ing.

Through her chronic zest and zeal, she ignites a fire within him. Something he longs to channel. “Why are you so in-credibly alive?” he asks. “Be-fore I die, I want to live just one day like you do.”

“All I do is eat and work.” Her position at her new factory job, making mechanical rabbits, has left her tired and busy. Yet not without a loss of spirit. “Even making these is so much fun. Making them, I feel like I’m playing with every baby in Japan.” I couldn’t help but think of the Energizer Bunny that no matter what happens keeps going and going and going. Until the battery runs out.

Paradoxically, while Toyo was doing a job she hated – work-ing in City Hall – her social life was fast and full. Now that she is doing a job she enjoys, she is emotionally exhausted and has lost some of her extro-verted excitement. Toyo stands in as a reminder that happi-ness and fulfillment are ever evolving and can come from different places, but they must always first come from within. Just because Watanabe spent 30 years in City Hall doing a job he hated didn’t mean he

had to be miserable doing it. That was his choice.

Suddenly, Watanabe realizes what must be done and that it is not too late to make a mark on the world and give his life meaning. He grabs the bunny in his moment of anagnorisis, rushes out of the restaurant, and heads straight for the of-fice where he will work until his dying day on getting the peti-tion for the park passed.

The second half of the film takes place five months in the future at his funeral and is dedicated to deciphering how much Watanabe was actu-ally responsible for the build-ing of the park. Everyone has a different opinion, mirroring a Citizen Kane/Rashomon quality, yielding in many flash-backs designed to assemble the pieces that the film skips over. More importantly, how-ever, this section of the film is about deciphering the mean-ing of Watanabe’s life. What caused this shift within him from lifeless animatron to the dedicated work ethic of a new immigrant thrilled to call their home America? If he knew he had cancer, how did he get out of bed in the morning and get on with the day? How did he stay so persistent in the face of constant rejection from innumerable officials? How in a system that methodically drowns its workers and issues in a mountain of paperwork did Watanabe achieve something no one wanted? The men learn that life is for the living and to feel alive is to act. They vow to make a difference in the gov-ernment, to “sacrifice the self to serve the many.”

Of course, once the booze fades and they return to work, everyone goes back to perpet-uating the status quo of doing as little as possible. Kimura, the gentlemen who began the praises of Watanabe at his fu-neral, attempts to remind them of their blunder, but is stared down until he is silenced. As the man sits, Kurosawa pans the camera down to obstruct him from us behind piles of paperwork. He, like the rest of them, will be defeated.

Or will he? The last shot of the film sees Kimura (Shin’ichi Himori) pass by the park that Watanabe built, head down, wandering with a swagger of defeat. Will he let the system beat him or will he like Wata-nabe brave on to attempt to make a difference in the world before it’s too late?

The most famous image from Ikiru (partially because it is used as the DVD cover) is Wa-tanabe on the swing. We learn this was the evening of his

death and that he died peace-fully, happily. More significantly, this tableau sums up the entire theme of the film: despite the snow, we can always find the swing. In order words, despite life’s trials and our ever-im-pending death, if we are willing to look, we can always find the thing that will keep us in mo-tion.

“Happiness and fulfillment are ever evolving and can come from

different places, but they must always first come from within.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Were you always interested in be-ing a filmmaker, or was it simply

an opportunity that present-ed itself?

I always thought that it was something I wanted to do. But it was a fantasy more than something I wanted to achieve. So, I guess that it's more an opportunity than anything else. I started as a TV Journalist, ed-iting reports, doing interviews. There I discovered my taste for "image." I was frustrated with the very short amount of time I was dedicating to the top-ics I was treating and wanted to do something deeper and did not want to feel obligated

to have an objective point of view. I knew a director, Léa Domenach; we were friends and wanted to work together. It is thanks to her that I started to believe in myself as a film-maker.

Tell us about your two films Les Printemps des Bon-zais and ni dieu ni maitre ni actionnaire? Where did the ideas for the two films come from? What was the experi-ence like making them?

When we decided to make films together, Léa and I had the same will: talk about some-thing that made sense, that could change society, and throw a positive message. We

started to work on social busi-ness because we felt it was something that would grow and we liked the concept of indigenous revolution. We did not believe that we could build a fairer world with a better economy by protesting and hoping for the system to col-lapse. Social entrepreneurs suggested to change the sys-tem from within, applying new rules, turning profit from the ultimate goal to an obligation for sustainability and making social impact the reason for doing business. We liked it and we decided to talk about it.

Then, both films were very dif-ferent experiences. Le Print-emps des Bonzaïs was our

when given the chance to make a movie, instead oF running to make a Big Budget French studio FiLm, arnoLd montgauLt choose to make a documentary. starting his career as a tv JournaList, mr. montgauLt witnessed how image couLd change the

worLd. mercutio caught uP with mr.montgauLt on the streets oF Paris to discuss FiLm, French cuLture, and the american dream.

first. So, we grew with the project. It took a lot of time to do. In the beginning we did not have any TV channel support-ing us. It took a year and a half before having any money to start shooting. The film changed as the shooting was going on. We wrote and wrote it again mak-ing our point more and more precise as we were learning about it. We also had to travel a lot; we went to Brazil, Cam-bodia, Bangladesh, and there was a strong sense of adven-ture in it.

For Jean-Marc Borello: Ni Dieu Ni maître ni Actionnaire things were radically different. It was far more professional. We had interviewed Jean-Marc for Le Printemps des Bonzaïs and meeting such a strong charac-ter in your life isn't something that happens often. So, when we were done with Le Print-emps des Bonzaïs, I decided to write a documentary about Jean-Marc. I asked Léa to produce and to direct it with me. Then it took us a single meeting with a TV channel to get their financial support. We agreed on what to shoot and we stuck to it.

One of the things you learn when visiting other countries is the perception of your own country. Would you say Americans have an accurate perception of themselves?

Not an easy one… Do I even have an accurate perception of what the US is? I haven't lived in the states for a while now. I think that there are several

Americas. At least two. There is one America that I can't even debate with because we don't have enough common grounds.

During the Bush years there seemed to be a heavy anti-American feeling in France. Would you agree? Were you ever anti-American?

I don't think I've ever been anti-American, but for sure I've been anti-Bush or anti-Republican. There's always been an anti-American feeling in France. Though it is more complicated than it looks. Most French people dream about visiting New York and are totally fascinated by the US. We fantasize about a sense of "absolute freedom" and "self-belief." Moreover, culturally, we know it well because most of what we watch on TV is Ameri-can, and it's mostly what we read about in the International section of our newspaper. But French people have a strong sense of resistance, and we really don't want to be accul-turated. We have to claim our differences even if sometimes they are narrow.

It is also a question of power. It is hard for France to accept that we aren't such a meaning-ful power in the world anymore, and it is hard to see another power dictating what will hap-

pen. For years, our international policy was defined in reac-tion to the Ameri-cans. We would go with or against it to maintain a cer-tain balance in the world. The Bush Administration decided to ignore

international organizations and to impose its will to the world. That's what's Hubert Védrine, a former Minister of foreign affairs, called the "unilateralism of the American Hyperpower." It felt like a betrayal; it felt anti-democratic and self-sufficient. Our opinion did not matter anymore and when Bush got reelected, I guess people felt like Americans were not living on the same planet anymore. They were dealing with a war that had no justifications, with a government that acted like bandits, and they still made the choice to reelect it. Of course, I guess Americans did not analyze things this way. Have you ever noticed how easy it feels when it comes to politics in another country? If you had asked me whom I would have voted for in the last presiden-tial elections in the US, I'd say "Obama right from the start of the primaries" and if I had to vote in Spain I'd say "Za-patero all the way"... But sud-denly when it is your country, the choice seems tougher to do; the candidates aren't so perfect anymore... your grid of analysis is thicker with social and psychological aspects you cannot take into account when you are a foreigner.

“The Bush Administration decided to ignore international organizations and to impose its

will to the world. It felt like a betrayal.”

The election of President Obama was a universal cel-ebration. Everyone hoped for huge change. Now, almost four years later how do you think he's doing?

Obama's election was such a huge event! The interest there was in France during this election is for sure proof that French people aren't so anti-American. It also raised a lot of questions in our country. Would the election of a black man be possible in France? It sort of rehabilitated the US in our hearts because they were showing progress again. But, when you raise that much expectation, people will be disappointed. Change was a big word. I think that shift is more accurate when it comes to what you can actually do in power. Of course it felt that a lot more could be done in terms of regulating the economy for example, but Rome wasn't built in a day. From a Eu-ropean point of view, we felt that our opin-ion mattered again. Obama and Clinton's diplomacy felt way more open and talka-tive than the previous one. So, finally, I think it ain't so bad and we gotta hope for a good reelection next year with a strong majority of Democrats in the Congress.

Much of the distaste for America comes because of our foreign policy decisions. America is accused often of empire building. Would you say that's true? Has that changed from Bush to Obama?

First, America will always raise suspicion when it comes to foreign policy because of its overwhelming power and the possibility it has to abuse it. So it is something that you have to accept. Then, when it is as obvious as during the War on Terror, it gives everybody a scare… The war in Iraq hap-pened with no true justification

and the memory of Colin Pow-ell "threatening" the Council of Security with a model vial of anthrax sent shivers down our spines! The attitude of the cur-rent administration isn't raising much criticism among Europe-ans because it’s much more open to discussion even with countries that aren't especially friendly, like Iran. It seems much more modest. And far

more reasonable.

Then, I think that every diplo-matic act has a dark and secret side. There are strategies for the US to keep an influence on other countries and maintain its economic interests, but every country has. There were a lot of talks over France's relations towards African countries for the last 50 years for example and there are things that need to be questioned about it.

Rather one likes it or not, there is a massive amount of American culture in Europe from Hollywood films to tel-evision series to pop stars. Is the American Dream still real to non-Americans?

Of course it is. It is still a fan-tasy. But it might turn as less and less true. I think that the economic crisis has damaged

the image of the American dream… It was criticized before but now things are more obvious. The US is not seen anymore as the country of Freedom. It's seen by many as the country of aggressive liberalism, massive con-sumption, and individual-ism. It shows a path we don't want to follow any-more… Though, people are not going to stop

consuming American goods, watching American TV shows etc tomorrow...

What do you think is some-thing France, as a nation, could learn from America?

Definitely belief and positive spirits. France is dying of skep-ticism. People don't believe in anything anymore. Polls show

“I think that the economic crisis has

damaged the image of the

American dream… It was criticized before but now things are more

obvious.”

that people think our economy is a wreck, that unemployment is higher than ever, that we are going down hill for sure… Is this true? Not too long ago an article in the Economist was questioning this negativity ask-ing why French people were so depressed when obviously things weren't going so bad. France was the country in Europe that suffered the least from the Economic Crisis of 2008. Its demography is higher than any other in Europe, it has leading industries…

France is currently in a very political climate, as you will be choosing your next president at the beginning of 2012. Are French young peo-ple very active in the politi-cal process?

I think they will be. I think they are. Maybe not always for good reasons, but they will. The presidential election in

France is a very exciting mo-ment. It's not a competition between parties, but between persons; therefore, I think people go vote because for the whole political campaign you feel like you are taking part in a sort of ultimate "American" (in this case French) Idol con-test! In 2007, the turnout was around 75%… Not too bad.

American politics can be quite sensationalist. What about French politics?

Hum… It is taking the same trend. Look at the DSK case. People were shocked by the images of DSK with handcuffs without even being proven guilty, but they loved it. Any-thing about DSK's case in the media was making a hit. People followed every step as if it was the mini series of the moment. Newspaper sales and TV audiences went through the roof. In the end, French people

may have a different sense of morality than in the US, but they are still people with the same instincts.

Finally, what is the next film we can look forward to from you?

Good question. To be honest, I have no idea! Making my last documentary was a race against time. I finished edit-ing this film a month ago. So, I am taking some time off now and I'll work again as a sports journalist also. Then in Sep-tember, I'll start thinking about this again.

“Can I bury this

leaky drum in

your back yard?”

THe eNviroNmeNTal crisis duriNg our ecoNomic crisis

Jason Cameron

The word wilderness conjures up vastly different images from one person to the next. For some,

it represents timeless solitude and a place to find ones center or to experience an invigorat-ing challenge. Many others only imagine serpents, spiders, and disease and would avoid it altogether if they could or even say, “Pave it all over, good!” But whether you experience it or not it is, if not intellectu-ally and spiritually, physically what sustains all living things. Intact ecosystems are be-coming rarer and more frag-mented worldwide and being transformed into a reflection of our fragmented society. For

most of post-colonial Ameri-can history, wilderness on this continent has been viewed as a challenge and an oppor-tunity to be exploited, tamed and developed. Prairies were turned into farmland and entire mountain ranges in the east have been flattened digging for coal. If you were raised near any undeveloped place, even if it’s not pristine wilder-ness, then you have probably seen development eat away at it or smother it one parking lot and strip mall at a time. If you lived near a wilderness, then you probably lived on land that was once wilderness. Homes and businesses are a neces-sity of modern life, but America has a voracious appetite for

undeveloped land and a seem-ingly infinite capacity for road building in a way that perma-nently disrupts any natural system that lies in its path. We also have an uncanny ability to create toxins without fully understanding the unintended consequences of their use.

One of the most sinister things about toxic waste sites is that they often look just fine, espe-cially in urban settings, en-couraging people and wildlife to live there, unaware of what mutations are going on inside of them at the genetic level. With vast intermingled masses like air and water, the effects of pollution become difficult and expensive to track. Before

1970, the feder-al government had little cohe-sive power to regulate indus-try in regards to pollutants and manufacturing waste. Because of that lack of regulation vast amounts of harmful sub-stances like DDT, PCB, lead, mercury and benzene and many other carcinogens were dispersed or dumped into our air and wa-ter. Everyone, no matter how organic they try to live, has man-made toxins in their blood and stored in their body fat. We’re born with it there. One doesn’t have to look back in history very far to find smog days in major cities that actually obscured city skylines completely from view, rivers so polluted that they caught on fire, and unusually high rates of cancer and birth defects in places where homes and even whole towns had been built on or near toxic waste sites.

In the GOP presidential candi-date debate in New Hampshire on June 13, Tea Party candi-date Michele Bachmann said if she were elected president, she would eliminate the Envi-ronmental Protection Agency calling it a job killing federal agency (even though it em-ploys some eighteen thousand people across the country and many more in the private sector as companies work to

comply with regulations). That sentiment, that it’s bad for business, has been echoed by many on the Right who feel unfettered, unregulated industry might somehow lead to another industrial revolution in this country and generate vast amounts of wealth and job opportunities. Unfortunately, most of the natural resources that fueled the first industrial revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are gone and America only retains and protects about five percent of its original wilderness. The long leaf pine forests of the Southeastern United States are one prime example. They once covered approximately sixty million acres from Virginia to Texas but after decades of logging to build fleets of ships and provide lumber for facto-ries and housing during the industrial revolution and up until the 1970’s, they’ve been reduced to far flung pockets that only add up to about five-

percent of their original range. It’s easy to see how a bad economy can make us des-perate for sta-bility and how easy it would be for those with ideological and corporate agen-das to exploit our collective anxiety in an attempt to oblit-erate regula-tory obstacles. That’s why ever since it’s crea-tion by Repub-lican President Richard Nixon in 1970 the EPA has been a

politically controversial expan-sion of government mandate. It has broad powers of enforce-ment to protect people and the environment from misuse and toxic harm.

The might of our industrious-ness has little to stand in its way except for a handful of regulatory agencies like The EPA and a small list of wilder-ness advocacy groups like The Wilderness Society, formed in 1935 to educate the public about wilderness preservation, and The Sierra Club, founded in 1892 by renowned naturalist John Muir, all vying for rela-tively finite donor contributions that have declined sharply due to current economic con-ditions. It’s hard to say what would happen over the next few decades if the EPA and its sister agencies responsible for maintaining the health of our environment would cease to be

as many on the Right, griping about heavy handed regula-tion. Would DDT, a pesticide banned in this country but is still sold in other places around the world like China and Africa, be reintroduced? Would de-velopers lobby for and receive rights to build on pristine wil-derness? Would those harmed by industrial waste be unable to seek compensation from unaccountable corporations? You bet!! And there are those lobbying frantically to make it happen while “their guys” are in congress and we’re over a barrel with economic woes. All it might take to tip the scale in their favor is a slight majority in congress and a president that shares the same sentiments. It might not matter that more than seventy percent of Ameri-cans approve of the work the EPA has done.

Cleaning up a decades old toxic dump site or removing a harmful substance like asbes-

tos from homes and buildings across the nation can take a tremendous effort, one that only the federal government has the resources to handle, and if you are the one respon-sible for causing the problem you will probably become very familiar with the EPA. Even if you don’t want to expel toxins and merely wish to create a large development like a mall or highway, you will need to do an environmental impact study and satisfy the guidelines es-tablished for you by the EPA. Even though the agency must consider the economic impact of its decisions, opponents complain that compliance can be expensive and raise costs so dramatically that it becomes a less profitable and worth-while venture.

Despite forty years of major success in cleaning up the air, land and water in this country, the EPA is still under attack from big business namely,

coal, oil, chemicals and devel-opers. With the economy in the dumps and slightly more than usual Right wing and off the map conservatives, who are super friendly to those particu-lar industries, in charge of the House of Representatives and positioning themselves to take the Senate and White House in 2012, there has been a zeal-ous lobbying campaign by big business to un-fund and even destroy the EPA. If it goes, there could be a domino ef-fect on other agencies like the Fish and Wildlife Service and Bureau of Land Management and legislation like the Clean Air and Water Acts, essentially anything that might hinder business in an effort to protect flora, fauna, habitat, scenery or us.

What the Right proposes is voluntary regulation and pay-ment of costs associated with properly disposing of haz-ardous waste created from

manufacturing processes and mitigation during development. Corporations are fond of out-sourcing such expenses and cutting corners until something disastrous happens. Then, of-ten, they’ll try to downplay the severity or outright cover it up. What did BP do immediately after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico?

Given self-regulation’s history, it doesn’t seem plausible that all producers of toxins will put health ahead of profit. With our national infrastructure in need of upgrading and repair, what will happen to our landscape if developers of roads, dams, and pipelines go unchecked? Will they have any incentive to keep sludge out of streams or not build houses in seabird sanctuaries? If deregulation is the answer then the ques-tion must be “Do we value our health and the environment?” As we celebrate our nation’s birth this fourth of July, it’s more important than ever to let politicians on both sides know that we value our health and environment and remind them that choosing between prosperity and health is a false choice and that both can be accomplished with rigorous oversight and regulation. The EPA, at least, is one positive legacy that older generations have left to future generations. We should all strive to keep it going and strengthen it.

“Cleaning up a decades old toxic dump site or removing a harmful

substance like asbestos from homes and

buildings across the nation can take a tremendous effort, one that only the federal government has

the resources to handle.”

gasPiNg for freedom, droWNiNg iN PoliTicsKevin Haggerty

Peace in the Mid-dle East. A slogan you’ve surely heard so many times you can’t even recall the

first time the idea was thrust upon you. How much thought have you actually given this idealistic and ambitious notion?

If you’re anything like me, I’m sure you got as far in compre-hending the issue as a classi-cal artist may have got in ex-ploring quantum physics. Half the complexity stems from the multifaceted nature of the prob-lem while the other half comes from the sources providing the information. It is hard to come by an unbiased perspective that presents the facts simply and in easily understood lan-guage, so that’s exactly what

I’m going to attempt.

As things currently stand, Israel is positioned on the Eastern most shore of the Mediterranean Sea with Pales-tine as its neighbor to the East. Much of the territory along that shared border was acquired by the Israelis at the conclusion of the Six Day War of 1967. This war was spurred by an Egyp-tian blockade, forcibly denying access to vital shipping routes for the Israelis through the Straits of Tiran. Considering the hostile nature of the action it should come as no surprise that the negotiations to remove the blockade failed; thus, Israel retaliated with force of their own ,conquering Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights, expanding the borders of Israel.

What we know to be Israel was not declared a nation until 1948 at the behest of the United Nations. This region of the Mediterranean coast had come into the hands of the British after the fall of the Otto-man’s and it was in their best interests to designate these lands a Jewish State. A first attempt at this was known as the Balfour Declaration, sent to the League of Nations (the UN’s predecessor) at the con-clusion of WWI. The declara-tion states that, “the establish-ment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,” will occur and that, “nothing will be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” So, with all this European activity going on

you must be wondering, where does the United States stand in all of this?

Israel has always been an ally of the United States and Pales-tine has continued to be some-thing of an irksome trouble-maker that we’ve tried to keep within our sight at all times. It’s for that reason in the fiscal year 2010, Palestine received more than a half billion dollars in aid from our Federal Gov-ernment as a means to combat and bring an end to terrorism, maintain stability in the region aiming for peace, and to meet any humanitarian needs. Basi-cally, while they are an enemy to our friend, we’ve been try-ing to give them incentive to back off and play nice, and it seemed this had always been our position. We’ve upheld a staunch favoritism of the Israe-lis, until now.

During Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit in Spring, the Obama Administra-tion took a contrary stance and began backing a public policy of returning to the pre-1967 borders to ease tensions in

the Mideast. Former admin-istration’s considered this, in agreement with the Israelis, to be a dangerous prospect and most certainly an indefensible scenario for Israel as por-tions of the nation would be carved into geographical kill zones. Lyndon Johnson as-sured that it would bring about “renewed hostilities” not peace and Ronald Reagan said, “in the pre-1967 borders, Israel was barely ten miles wide at its narrowest point…I am not about to ask Israel to live that

way again.” Most recently, George W. Bush penned a letter in ’04 stating the goal as “defensible bor-ders.” What, you may ask is the cost of these “defensible borders” to the Palestinians that they are in such strong opposition?

Diplomatically, they’ve put forth the argument that the land was theirs first. However, they aren’t just complain-ing about the acreage they’ve lost. It’s about

the specific plots of land that hold valuable resources like aquifers, (water being unques-tionably vital to both commerce and survival), as well as the sentimental value of former residences of the now refugee Palestinians. This is where the “right of return” issue, the Pal-estinian refugees position that they be given back the homes they were pushed out of during the Six Day War, comes into play and how the Oslo Accords become a critical element in diffusing the conflict.

The Oslo Accords were signed in 1993 by leadership from both parties, who tried to gar-ner peaceful transitions toward order, but the only result was greater hostility. Within the Accords, there is no mention of the “right of return.” The Palestinians believed that it was already agreed upon by UN resolutions, so its absence in the new Accords made the refugees feel slighted, a posi-tion made concrete by their non-admittance into the UN. In order to be admitted, Palestine must declare statehood, be approved by the UN Security Council, and get recognized by two-thirds of the General As-sembly. The major pitfall here is that the Palestinians won’t declare statehood within their current borders, demanding that they receive the lands

back as part of their state.

Now that you have the facts, this is where my opinion will begin. First and foremost, and potentially all that need be known, is that Radical Reli-gious groups cannot come to peaceful accords. The only solution is elimination and so long as Mideast governments harbor terrorist organizations composed of radical sects i.e. Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Muslim Brotherhood (all groups that want to see the annihila-tion of the Jewish people), no diplomatic negotiation will ever come to fruition.

You really have to ask then, what is our president think-ing when he suggests exactly that? Bringing the Taliban to the table for discussion is part of his solution for Afghanistan,

so surely his thoughts are no different for Palestine. These organizations only function in absolutes and any deal medi-ated by our government will stand as nothing more than an empty promise pushing these Radical groups one step closer towards their aims.

Next, I will ask you to imag-ine this same situation but played through the lens of the Founding Americans and the British Colonialists. The USA has been a sovereign nation for more than 200 years, like Israel for nearly a half century, so who could argue that we have not made this land our own, building infrastructure, harvesting resources, and cre-ating lineages that have known no other land but this?

Furthermore, who could argue that with all that considered,

we should hand all of this land back to the British, or French, Dutch, and Spanish as is ap-propriate? Would all Ameri-cans, Northern and Southern Hemisphere’s not be refugees then? Would the Europeans then have to cede that land to the Native descendents cur-rently living on reservations? What of those who have an-cestry from multiple nations, foreign and domestic? Or those who don’t know what country their families hail from? You see the madness in this argument, don’t you?

The bottom line is Israel, as a nation, is not so different from America. They declared an Independent State and it was up to the world to recognize it. What has happened in the past cannot be undone, but it can be prevented in the future. Would a patriotic American not shudder at the thought of someone defiling the Liberty Bell, or destroying the White House and Capitol Building? This is what happened to the holy sites of Jerusalem prior to Israeli Independence and what would happen again should the Obama Administration’s suggested pre-1967 borders be accepted, though the presi-dent seems to view the conflict through rose-colored glasses dismissing these realities to gain favor with the Middle Eastern nations.

Their freedom is no different than ours, and to disregard this and to turn our backs to an ally in freedom, is to turn our backs on freedom. Real talks, not about land, retribution, reciprocity, or what is owed, but about the fundamental dif-

ferences in religious principles must be had. Until those differ-ences can be viewed without hatred, the rest is mostly petty and irrelevant. For what dif-ference does land make when those who live on it want to destroy one another?

“Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily

earned and refreshed – else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will

wither and die.”

President Dwight D. Eisenhower