Alan Waldman : My Favorite Films (and TV Shows) of 2012

Les Misérables was Alan's top pick.
My 13 favorite films
(and 43 TV shows) of 2012

'Les Miz' was #1 and 'I Am' was #2.

By Alan Waldman / The Rag Blog / January 10, 2013

1. Les Misérables (U.K.) is a magnificent movie! I consider the stage version to be the greatest musical ever (followed by Phantom of the Opera, Miss Saigon, and Sweeney Todd). Despite the bland singing of Russell Crowe, the film of Les Miz features moving, amusing, rousing, and achingly beautiful songs, nicely sung by Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried, Samantha Barks, Eddie Redmayne, Helena Bonham Carter, Sacha Baron Cohen, Colm Wilkinson (the original 1985 Jean Valjean) and young Isabelle Allen and Daniel Huttlestone. The direction, by 2011’s Oscar-winner Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech), is masterful. The acting is fine, many of the visuals are stunning and the timeless Victor Hugo story of a convict chased for 17 years by a vengeful flic drives us through the full range of moviegoer emotions.
2. I Am, winner of this year’s Humanitas prize, is a rich documentary in which Tom Shadyac, the director of many silly comedies (Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Nutty Professor), talks to intellectual and spiritual leaders about what’s wrong with the world and how we can improve it and the way we live in it. This is a smart, insightful, revealing study, with many fascinating and surprising facts and observations. More than 88% of those rating it at imdb.com gave it thumbs-up, and 36.3% consider it a perfect 10. I believe many people -- particularly veterans of the 1960s -- will love this film.


3. The Flowers of War (China) is a lush, dramatic, moving film set during the 1937 Japanese occupation of Nanking. It is yet another masterpiece from China’s greatest director, Zhang Yimou (Raise the Red Lantern, Ju Dou). It stars Christian Bale and an outstanding Chinese cast (many in their first roles ever). Bale is an undertaker seeking refuge in a church with 13 young convent students and a group of refugee prostitutes. The visuals are astonishing, and the many DVD extras on how the film was made are fascinating. A gem.


4. The Island President is an outstanding documentary about President Mohamed Nasheed’s dramatic quest to persuade world leaders at a Copenhagen international environmental conference to institute the carbon emissions regulations needed to save his country, The Maldives (the lowest-lying nation in the world), from being permanently extinguished when the Indian Ocean rises another three feet. This film is compelling, surprising, and highly informative. More than 89.2%viewers rating it at imdb.com gave it thumbs-up, and more than 50% give it 10 out of 10.


5. My Afternoons with Margueritte (France) stars Europe’s greatest actor, Gérard Depardieu, as an illiterate, lonely peasant who befriends and is taught to read by a cultured little old lady (the wonderful Gisele Casadesus). The unlikely friendship that develops between teacher and student is life-affirming. The French cast is fine, the characters are compelling, and the cinematography is lovely. This won Best Foreign Film at the 2011 Newport Beach Film Festival. More than 90.3% of those rating it at imdb.com liked it, as did 84% of the 57 critics polled at rottentomatoes.com.


6. Lincoln deals with President Abraham Lincoln’s 1865 struggle to persuade Congress to emancipate the slaves. It is extremely well directed by Steven Spielberg, and Daniel Day Lewis is exceptionally good in the title role. Both of them and the film itself should be shoo-ins for Oscars. Well written by Tony Kushner (winner of six top awards so far for Munich, Lincoln, and Angels in America), it is rich in character, drama and period detail. The stellar cast includes Tommy Lee Jones, Sally Field, David Strathairn, Tim Blake Nelson, Hal Holbrook, and James Spader.


7. The Women of the 6th Floor (France) is a very enjoyable film about a wealthy couple who live in a large building whose top floor is occupied by a group of Spanish housemaids. Fabrice Luchini is excellent as the bored, dull stockbroker who falls in love with his maid and everything Spanish. The maids are very diverse and entertaining. Among them is the great Carmen Maura, who added France’s highest Best Actress Award (the Cesar) for this performance to her 33 other major international honors.


8. Oranges and Sunshine (U.K.) is a provocative, well-crafted documentary about a Nottingham, England, social worker who accidentally discovered that poor English children -- 150,000 of them! -- had been forcibly separated from their parents and deported to Australia, New Zealand, and Rhodesia, where they were told their parents had died. The film deals with hundreds of them who were sent to Australia, where many were physically and sexually abused by a Roman Catholic Christian Brothers group. The British and Australian governments hushed this up for decades. Emily Watson and Hugo Weaving head a strong cast.





9. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (U.K.) has a dream cast of seven of Britain’s finest actors (Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Bill Nighy, Penelope Wilton, Tom Wilkinson, Celia Imrie, and Ronald Pickup), plus Dev Patel who was nominated for 26 awards (winning 10 so far) for this and for Slumdog Millionaire. They all do a terrific job, and the Indian locations are very absorbing. This is a charming, funny, marvelously detailed film about a group of British retirees who go to a supposedly refurbished hotel in India and get into all kinds of enjoyable or dramatic interrelations. So far this film has 12 major award nominations (for director John Madden, writer Ol Parker and the eight lead actors). Madden, who was Oscar-nominated for Shakespeare in Love, is at the top of his game here.       [Insert second photo here.]


10. Salmon Fishing in the Yeman (U.K.) is a fun, quirky romantic comedy-drama from Norwegian master director Lasse Hallstrom (My Life as a Dog, Chocolat, The Cider House Rules, and Once Around) and Oscar-winning scribe Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire). Ewan McGregor plays a British fisheries expert who is hired by an eccentric Yemeni sheik to introduce fly fishing to his desert land. His budding romance with Emily Blunt is sweet and charming.


11. To Rome with Love is a very cute Woody Allen comedy which follows the predicaments, romances and adventures of various Romans and tourists played by Roberto Benigni, Judy Davis, Alec Baldwin, Penelope Cruz, Ornella Muti and a passel of Italians. Fun stuff.


12. Argo is the exciting, dramatized true story of a CIA agent (played by director Ben Affleck) who rescues six Americans hiding in the Canadian Ambassador’s residence in revolutionary 1979 Tehran by pretending to use them as the crew of a Star Wars-type movie he wants to shoot there. Excellent comic relief is provided by Alan Arkin and John Goodman, who, however, can’t stop repeating “Argo fuckyourself.”


13. The Dictator is an amazingly funny comedy written by and starring Sacha Baron Cohen as Middle Eastern despot Hafez Aladeen of Wadiya, who unexpectedly finds himself working behind the counter of a Manhattan bakery. Although there is much crude, sexist, racist, and stereotypic humor in it, this is actually the most accessible of Baron Cohen’s films. Unlike Borat and Bruno, which consist entirely of crazy pranks he plays on unsuspecting dupes (like Pamela Anderson and Ron Paul), this movie is completely scripted, so the comedy is less outrageous and mean-spirited.

As was the case in each of the past 31 years, much of the year’s best writing was on television, rather than in the movies. The 21 American series I liked most were (more or less in order of preference): The Newsroom, Boardwalk Empire, Dexter, Homeland, House, Suits, White Collar, Tremé, House of Lies, Flight of the Conchords, Justified, Law & Order SVU, C.S.I., Elementary, Blue Bloods, Covert Affairs, Vegas, Burn Notice, Californication, Tilt, and Playmakers.

Here are the 22 non-American series I enjoyed most in 2012. Some of them are older, but I watched them last year because my local library offers lots of British DVDs. Unless indicated otherwise, all are British: Little Dorrit (miniseries), MI-5, Inspector Morse, A Touch of Frost, Luther, The Hour, Corner Gas (Can.), Midsomer Murders, Inspector Lynley Mysteries, Dalziel & Pascoe, Downton Abbey, Whitechapel, George Gently, Rebus, The Border (Can.), DNA, Murphy’s Law, Kavanagh Q.C., Lilyhammer (Nor.), Spiral (Fra.), The Eagle (Den.), Judge John Deed, and Vera.

[Houston native Alan Waldman is a former editor at Honolulu Magazine and The Hollywood Reporter. Read more of Alan Waldman's articles on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Paul Krassner : My Tweets of 2012

Paul Krassner tweets @ZenBastard. Graphic by James Retherford / The Rag Blog.
Paul Krassner’s Tweets of 2012

By Paul Krassner / The Rag Blog / December 27, 2012

This is my first tweet. I have Writer's Block. I mean Twitter's Block. I'm waiting for a cure to be developed.

A minimalist summation of American culture in the Los Angeles Times on Conan O'Brien: “The Masturbating Bear will remain the intellectual property of NBC.”

Perhaps Toyota should borrow a slogan from McDonalds: "You deserve a brake today.”

Texting while having sex? Two thumbs up.

Double standard: Charles Rangel pays restitution for unpaid taxes; Wesley Snipes is sentenced to a few years behind bars for a similar response.

Excuse me, I have to take a Wiki-leak.

Join me in signing a letter to stop the inhumane detention of Private Bradley Manning.

I saw the movie The King's Speech and was disappointed that it didn't end with Porky Pig saying, "Th-th-the-that's all, folks!"

Steve Jobs' legacy is a form of alchemy -- he transformed planned obsolescence into a virtue.

Poor Rick Santorum, he's afraid that if Roe vs. Wade isn't overturned by the Supreme Court, there will an epidemic of recreational abortions.

I stopped channeling Lenny Bruce the day he reminded me, "C'mon, Paul, you know you don't believe in that shit."

Today marks the 15th anniversary of Allen Ginsberg's death; he once told me he smokes not to get high, but rather because he likes to cough.

I went to the dentist today, and the hygienist gave me a choice of X-rays or a pat-down.

Summing up the presidential campaign: It'a battle between "Keep the government out of my Medicare" and "Keep the government out of my vagina."

I covered the Dan White trial and coined "the Twinkie defense."

The world desperately needs a campaign beginning with Kickstarter to raise funds to build an Iron Dome for the Palestinians.

Plan B has been aborted.

I voted for Barack Obama again, and yet now, although he wept for the loss of 20 kids, he never wept for the 178 kids killed by U.S. drones in Yemen and Pakistan.

The digitally colored edition of the infamous Disneyland Memorial Orgy poster by Mad magazine artist Wally Wood is available only at paulkrassner.com.

Have a Merry War on Christmas and a Happy, Snappy and Fulfilling New Year.

[Paul Krassner edited The Realist, America's premier satirical rag and was an original Yippie. Krassner’s latest book is an expanded and updated edition of his autobiography, Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counterculture, available at paulkrassner.com. Read more articles by Paul Krassner on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Jack A. Smith : Tough Times Ahead

Embattled Captain America. Cartoon by Bryant Arnold / CartoonADay.com.
A new year of tough times ahead

It is certainly legitimate to worry about the direction in which American politics is heading domestically, coupled with a probable global future of more wars, more poverty, and environmental disaster.

By Jack A. Smith / The Rag Blog / January 24, 2012

The new year has dawned upon a deeply troubled America. Times are not good in the "best of all possible" nation states, which has suddenly discovered that the seven league boots with which it is accustomed to stride the globe have become ill-fitting and down at the heels.

In recent years, particularly since the onset of the Great Recession, it has become clear to many Americans that their country is composed of two different societies with clashing interests -- a very small minority in possession of great wealth and power, and everyone else, with some getting by and many falling by the wayside.

As a consequence, large numbers of people now perceive to one degree or another that big money not only manipulates most elections but influences a great many of the politicians and bureaucrats who craft legislation and execute the policies of the U.S. government. Awareness is spreading that crony capitalism -- the corporations, banks and Wall Street -- controls the economic system which shapes the political system where decisions are made.

But the beat goes on, of course, until mass consciousness transforms into mass action.


In domestic politics, 2012 opened with the Republican Party's three-ring circus in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, the initial contests to select a presidential nominee. On display is the most bizarre collection of clowns in recent political history. At this stage the battle is between Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, who is still favored for now. The struggle within the GOP between ultra right and ultra right "lite" will be determined soon, signaling the start of the best election money can buy.

Which ever party wins in November -- and we think President Barack Obama will be reelected -- the contest is not between right and left but between right/far right and center right. No matter what the result, progressive change will not be the product. The best outcome might simply be keeping the crazies at bay.


In international affairs, the year opened with U.S. cannon shots aimed just above the heads of America's evidently multifarious enemies, identified as being mainly in Asia and the Middle East, warning them not to mess with Uncle Sam, as though they were about to.

As the shots reverberated, the American people were told:

Good morning, everybody. The United States of America is the greatest force for freedom and security that the world has ever known. And in no small measure, that’s because we’ve built the best-trained, best-led, best-equipped military in history -- and as Commander-in-Chief, I’m going to keep it that way...

These "reassuring" but misleading hyper-nationalist words from the Commander-In-Chief were expressed January 5 during a visit to the Pentagon to explain Washington's dangerous new war policy. A secondary purpose of the plan is to facilitate Pentagon spending cuts in the next decade, but future allocations will not drop one penny below George W. Bush's bloated war budgets.

Abruptly, the U.S. is supposed to be confronted with a "threat" from China, necessitating that the Pentagon surround that country with even more of its far superior weaponry, more troops, battle fleets heading in closer proximity, surveillance aircraft, space weapons, and long range nuclear missiles.

All this is part of Obama's recent "pivot" to Asia, as though we ever left, the main goal being to weaken China within its own natural sphere of interest in order to secure Washington's need to remain global top dog. China is no military threat to the U.S. today or in the future, given the Pentagon's two-decade head start in all the technologies of conflict, and the fact that America's war budget is and will remain many times that of China's.

In addition, there seems to be an imminent "threat" to our way of life from Iran, as well as the continuing "threat" to U.S. democracy from some poor tribes in Afghanistan.

Actually, according to "Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense," the document explaining the new war plan, the U.S. faces additional "threats" throughout the world, specifically including (aside from those mentioned): Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and "elsewhere" (our guess is Africa, where Obama's already inserting troops). Primary regions to worry about, says the Pentagon plan, are South Asia, Middle East, Asia-Pacific, Northeast Asia, Eurasia, Southeast and East Asia, plus future, unforeseen demands.

Despite all these "threats," which are largely invented to justify war spending and keep the American people supportive of the militarism that now pervades our society, Obama twice mentioned in his speech that the "tide of war" is receding.

But if that is true, why station 40,000 troops in countries around Iraq after withdrawal? Why deploy attack-ready bombers and Navy aircraft carriers near Iran? Why keep nearly 100,000 troops in Afghanistan and make demands on Kabul to allow thousands more to remain indefinitely after the planned "withdrawal" in 2014?

The U.S.-Israeli crusade against Iran may result in an attack this year. The New York Times reported Jan. 12 on an "accelerating covert campaign against Iran consisting of assassinations and bombings. The campaign, which experts believe is being carried out mainly by Israel, apparently claimed its latest victim January 11 when a bomb killed a 32-year-old nuclear scientist in Tehran’s morning rush hour."

On January 14, Iran charged that the U.S. and Israel were behind the scientist's murder. That same day The Wall Street Journal reported that the White House was worried that Israel will attack Iran before the U.S. gives a go-ahead. But four days later the Times reported Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak declared "any decision on a possible preemptive military strike on Iranian targets was 'very far off.'" Stay tuned, the year's just started.


The American people are supposed to be safer this new year because President Obama just signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act allocating $662 billion in military spending in 2012 (plus an equal amount for other "national security" purposes in other budgets).

Civil liberties groups criticize the Pentagon bill because it also authorizes an "indefinite detention" clause that is one more step toward a police state. Obama's civil liberties record is worse than that of his predecessor because he retained Bush's excesses and added his own.

A few days after Obama's bragging about the "best-trained" military, the Pentagon and the secretaries of defense and state were forced to publicly apologize in the wake of an international uproar over circulation of a video showing four U.S. Marines jovially urinating on the corpses of Taliban suspects.

A couple of days later a U.S. military legal officer recommended that PFC Bradley Manning face a court martial for transferring documents including evidence of U.S. war crimes to the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks. And so it goes, day by day into 2012.


Washington maintains that the Great Recession ended in June 2009 and the economy is on the mend. Stock prices are up, corporate profits are zooming, and the wealthy are exhausting the nation's supply of money bags.

The corporations, banks and Wall Street have been abundantly helped through the tough times by the Obama Administration, but little help has trickled down to average working families. Recession conditions will continue in 2012 for much of the "bottom" 80% of the U.S. population, including high unemployment, more foreclosures, and stagnant wages. Half the families in our Land of Opportunity are low income or poor.

Early in January, the new Pew Research Center survey of 2,048 adults contained a most unusual result. It found that 66% of the people in our "classless society" believe there are “very strong or strong conflicts between the rich and the poor" in the U.S. This is big news, evidently based on growing comprehension of what are in fact class differences.

The top 1% now possess more than 50% of all privately held assets in the U.S. (Assets are everything you own including cash, car, and house minus debts.) The top 20% possess 85% of all assets. This means the bottom 80% of the people have accumulated only 15% of the assets (including the bottom 40%, who have no assets at all because they owe more than they own).


However, there is one aspect of our system that is said to prove beyond doubt that all Americans -- rich and poor alike -- are actually equal in our society where it really counts. We speak of each citizen's right to vote in the quadrennial selection of a Commander-in-Chief, known popularly as the presidential election.

President Obama has transformed his rhetoric into that of liberal populism for the duration of the campaign. He now talks about having government intervene to help reduce inequality and help build a more "equitable" society, not that it's going to happen. He now even tut-tuts about crony capitalism.

Obama sure sounds even more progressive than when he was a "change-we-can-believe-in" candidate in 2008. This was before governing as a center-right patron of the ruling establishment for the last three years, ignoring poor, low income, and minority Americans as though they didn't exist, initiating a completely failed program for the millions who have been foreclosed on, and changing little to nothing, even in his first two years when the Democrats controlled the House as well as the Senate.

Probable opponent Romney has undergone a similar opportunist transformation in the opposite direction in order to obtain the GOP nomination. He's now campaigning as a right/far right populist this year after governing Massachusetts as a healthcare moderate conservative and who earlier supported abortion, and gun control, among many flip-flops. Gingrich has always been an ultra-reactionary hypocrite going back to the early 1990s in the House, and hasn't seen the need to adopt a new persona for 2012.

The main reason we believe Obama will be reelected has nothing to do with his record as president. It is that the Republicans have gone so far to the political right, and have acted like such obstructionist buffoons in Congress, that the crucial independent vote will lean toward the center-right.

The Democratic leadership hopes Gingrich becomes the candidate because he'll campaign as a far rightist while they fear Romney may moderate some of his rhetoric. But even so, Obama's nearly $1 billion war chest should finish him off.

Assuming Obama does return to power, we know now, as in the 2008 campaign, that a "liberal" will not be occupying the Oval Office for the next four years. The pro-99% rhetoric will stop at the second term White House door.

American politics is quite different today than when the Democratic Party adopted a center left configuration for a few years in the 1930s and 1960s. However, in terms of the gradations of political "evil," the center right is a "lesser evil" to the right/far right, given the two conservative options for electing a president offered the American people by those who run the show, though it’s a dismal commentary on democracy.

In the present era it is certainly legitimate to worry about the direction in which American politics is heading domestically, coupled with a probable global future of more wars, more poverty, and environmental disaster. We worry deeply about the problems that will confront our and all today's children and grandchildren.

However, we retain unshakable confidence in what the masses of people can accomplish under difficult conditions when they become united, organized, disciplined, and committed to the struggle for a better, equal, and cooperative society, and a peaceful, environmentally sustainable world.

This option for substantive transformation beckons. It is the objective requirement of our times if we are to avoid a catastrophe down the road. A decisive turn to the left is essential and possible. It could revolutionize society and change the world to benefit all the people.

[Jack A. Smith was editor of the Guardian -- for decades the nation's preeminent leftist newsweekly -- that closed shop in 1992. Smith now edits the Hudson Valley Activist Newsletter, where this article was also posted. Read more articles by Jack A. Smith on The Rag Blog.

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Paul Krassner : Predictions for 2012

Lessee here: Paul Krassner will bring The Realist out of retirement, resurrect cartoonist Wally Wood, and publish a Republican Party Orgy centerfold. The Republican Party will not be amused.

Predictions for 2012

Ron Paul will unite with Ru Paul and they’ll perform on Dancing With the Stars.

By Paul Krassner /The Rag Blog / January 12, 2012

Politics: The electoral college will be replaced by a system where voters will choose the polling firm they trust the most. Barack Obama will be reelected because his vice-presidential running mate Joe Biden will be replaced by Hillary Clinton, thereby gaining the women’s vote. Failed Republican campaigners will all take other jobs. Mitt Romney will start smoking a pipe and portray the character Bob Dobbs in a movie about the cultish Church of the Subgenius. Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain will launch the bipartisan Adultery Party in 2016, joined by Democrats John Edwards and Bill Clinton.

Ron Paul will unite with Ru Paul and they’ll perform on Dancing With the Stars. Rick Santorum will be caught in an airport bathroom stall enjoying a gay encounter. Michelle Bachmann will launch a lie-detector company. Rick Perry will copyright the word “Oops.” And it will be revealed that Donald Trump was actually born on Mars; he will have a birth certificate to prove it, along with a photo of him as a typical Martian baby with a comb-over.

Show Business: Vegetarian converts will include Lady Gaga, who will wear a dress made entirely of heirloom tomatoes, and Meatloaf will change his name to Tofuloaf. Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy will win Academy Awards for best male and female actors. Angelina Jolie will legally adopt Brad Pitt. Kim Kardashian will get married and divorced on the same day. The Tea Party will become a popular sitcom.

Capital-punishment executions will become a top-rated reality-TV series. The Second Coming of Jesus Christ will occur live on a three-hour special to be telecast on every single channel simultaneously, with an offstage voiceover narration by God. Atheists and agnostics will picket the production, only to be struck by lightning. Howard Stern will expose himself on America’s Got Talent. The Taliban and al-Quaeda will be the final competitors on The Biggest Terrorists. Hulu and Netflix will merge as Huflix.

Fashion Trends: Square Hitler-style mustaches will finally become stylish after decades of ridicule. Botox will become a soft drink that will get rid of unwanted wrinkles from the inside. Pornography will be allowed in public libraries, but moaning out loud will definitely not be permitted. Fetus transplants from poor pregnant girls to wealthy anti-abortion women will become a controversial new fad.

Arizona, Mississippi, and Tennessee will refuse to recognize Leap Year. Lottery winners will be fingerprinted. Private prisons will be turned into ashrams. Inspired by Steve Jobs, many industries will continue his legacy by transforming planned obsolescence into a virtue. Prescription drugs will become children’s names, such as Ambien and Lipitor. Travel agents will begin arranging guilt trips for clients who have given up on airplanes.

Combination vibrators and insomnia cures will be invented, trademarked as Dildoze. Pope Benedict XVI will permit condoms to be marketed if there are tiny pinhole pricks in the reservoir tips in order to ensure a fighting chance for spermatozoa to get through. Serial pedophiles, gay bashers, and Internet hackers will form unions.

The Economy: The Department of Energy will release a report concluding that so-called “clean coal” is, in point of fact, “filthy dirty.” The Bank of America will stop doing business with Verizon and switch to Credo. The largest protest in history will take place by ongoing Occupy-the-Federal-Reserve-System demonstrations.

The recession will evolve into a depression, which will end quickly as the war on drugs morphs into the legalization of every single strain of cannabis which will be designated as medical marijuana. Facebook members will be taxed for every friend, Twitter users will be taxed for every tweet, Monsanto will be taxed for every genetically modified food, and masturbators will be taxed for every ejaculation. The Supreme Court will download all corporations into embryos. Several million jobs will be created as Unemployment Insurance clerks.

International Relations: North Korea’s new Beloved Leader will be caught cheating on his SAT examination, but he will redeem himself when he
allows almost 70 McDonalds restaurants to open all over his dictatorial realm; however, in keeping with his father’s policies, he won’t allow them to sell any food. Saudi-Arabia will outlaw laughter. Iraq will become our 51st state. Afghanistan will require all men to wear burkas. Iran will develop a nuclear bomb, than drop it by accident on Libya and Syria.

World War III will be fought entirely by drone planes attempting to destroy each other in the air. Products made in China will be increasingly pirated by American entrepreneurs. Global warming will continue to melt icebergs as well as Sarah Palin’s cold heart. The world will end on December 21st, but will begin all over again on December 23rd, just in time for last-minute Christmas shopping. The most popular gift will be cans of pepper-spray in a variety of flavors. Pakistan will continue to be bribed by us. And the Nobel Peace Prize will be secretly awarded to Anonymous.

[These predictions for 2012 were originally published in Metro Newspapers. Paul Krassner publishes the infamous Disneyland Memorial Orgy poster. His latest book is an expanded and updated edition of his autobiography, Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counterculture, available at paulkrassner.com and as a Kindle e-book. Read more articles by Paul Krassner on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Harry Targ : Brute Facts and Political Choices, 2012

Protesters at the State Capitol building in Madison, WI., demonstrating against Gov. Scott Walker’s anti-union legislation. Photo by Mark Hirsch / Getty Images.
Brute facts and political choices:
Thinking about 2012

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / January 9, 2012

The year 2011 was truly an exciting year for progressives. Arab spring sent shock waves across the Middle East, launching a campaign for democratization that will ultimately impact every regime in the region. Also Arab spring confirmed to the rest of the world, including the United States, and particularly those engaged in Occupy movements, that mass mobilization, challenging economic control and military might with people power, can affect history.

The spirit of grassroots anger, activism, a growing sense of solidarity across races, gender, class, and national boundaries, planted the seeds for the rise of a new age out of the old. As the young people in Tahrir Square knew from the beginning of their protest, the struggle will be long, sometimes bloody, but the 99 per cent, in the end, will win.

But 2011 also showed the world that politics can be ruthless. Masses of people died in Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan, and in various locations in Africa, Europe, and North America. The United States shifted priorities from sending the military everywhere to supporting private armies and high tech drone warfare. Secret intelligence agencies now define the threats to the United States who are targeted for assassination.

Meanwhile the mass media has celebrated executions abroad and at home and the deaths of ostracized leaders. In many ways 21st century global culture has become a “death culture,” in its entertainment as well as its politics. Killing has become fun.

Within the United States, political forces have been unleashed that are trying to return politics to the Dark Ages:

• escalating the shift in wealth and power from the many to the few
• destroying the historic right of workers to organize to better articulate their interests
• privatizing education, health care, and basic concern for the environment
• transferring control of women’s bodies from themselves to various churches and private interest groups
• increasing the power of police to control people’s lives, using pepper spray, SWAT teams, covert operations, and spying to serve the status quo
• eliminating longstanding legal procedures that have given some protection to people, particularly minorities, who have been accused of crimes
• using, abusing, and disposing of immigrant workers.

Protests against the regime of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, February 2011. Image from News4Europe.
So at the dawn of the 2012 the world continues its contradictory path. And as the forces of light and darkness contend, progressives once again are confronted with political choices. As the debates escalate, particularly in the electoral arena, some of the summary data I accumulated just after the 2010 election remains relevant:

From data reported in the media between November 3rd and 10th, 2010 the new United States Senate will be comprised of 51 Democratic Senators and two Independents and 47 Republicans. The Republicans experienced their biggest gains in the House of Representatives winning 239 seats to 189 for the Democrats... The 2011 distribution of the governorships will include at least 29 Republicans and 18 Democrats. In sum, the elections brought Republican control to the House of Representatives and significant shifts in gubernatorial contests which will impact on the redistricting of House of Representative districts for the next decade.

At the state level, Republican candidates won 650 seats in legislative assemblies, taking control of 19 legislative bodies from Democrats. For example, Republicans gained both state houses in Alabama, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. They won an additional house to take control of both houses in Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Montana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

Through gubernatorial and legislative victories at the state level Republicans will control the designation of 170 congressional districts while Democrats will control 70. The rest, about 200, will be determined by bipartisan bodies.

Republicans won three state legislatures in the Northeast, eight in the South, nine in the Midwest, and five in the West. Looking at a USA map of red and blue states, 27 states will be red in the next period.

As I write, Indiana workers are marching inside and outside the state capital protesting the backroom passage of a new right-to-work law. Indiana has not been a right-to-work state since the 1960s. In 2008, the Indiana House of Representatives consisted of 52 Democrats and 47 Republicans. Today the House has 60 Republicans and 40 Democrats.

And as a result of the 2010 election, not only is it likely that right-to-work legislation will become a reality in Indiana but education and resources for women’s reproductive health will be even more vulnerable.

There are similar stories to be told in each and every state, as well as in the national political arena. And, at the same time, there are differences in politics and history in each state and locale. And make note: none of this has much to do with the selection of nominees for president of the United States. That story is the circus, the Super Bowl -- Romney or Santorum, the “moderate” Republican or the “social conservative.”

So progressives have a lot to think about in 2012: how to protect the people, the 99 percent, from all the hurt that they increasingly will experience in the short run while at the same time moving “inch by inch, row by row” to the vision that animated Arab Spring, Ohio, and Madison, Wisconsin.

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University who lives in West Lafayette, Indiana. He blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical -- and that's also the name of his new book which can be found at Lulu.com. Read more of Harry Targ's articles on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...