The Oscar-nominated actress despairs at the dearth of good female parts offered by the big studios. The solution for her was simple – to direct and star in her own feature film In the garden of Vera Farmiga’s home in upstate New York, the grass is stained by a patch of darkened ash. Every time she is sent a script she doesn’t like – a script that is badly written or underdeveloped or contains unchallenging female characters in a state of semi-permanent undress – Farmiga (pronounced “Far- mee -ga”) puts it to one side. Then, when the pile of unwanted scripts is big enough, she builds a bonfire and burns them. “They do get thrown in and used for fertiliser,” she explains with a quiet, apologetic laugh. “It’s recycling. Bonfires need to be fed and scripts, after all, are wood.” There is a pause. “Especially the wooden ones.” One imagines there are a lot of scripts that end up on Farmiga’s bonfire. Over the last year, the mother-of-two has become one of Hollywood’s most sought-after actresses despite – or, more likely, because of – the extreme care she takes in choosing roles. After a breakthrough performance as a closet drug addict in the 2004 independent film, Down to the Bone , which was greeted with critical acclaim but only modest box-office success, Farmiga spent the rest of the decade playing a series of subtly rendered supporting characters in mainstream movies. She was a troubled police psychiatrist in Martin Scorsese’s The Departed , a philosophical Romanian prostitute in Anthony Minghella’s Breaking and Entering and the wife of a concentration camp commandant in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas . Then, last year, she appeared in Up in the Air, playing Alex, a self-assured, sexually amoral businesswoman racking up the frequent flyer miles alongside George Clooney. The film was an unexpected hit and Farmiga was nominated for an Oscar for best supporting actress. “The response was amazing,” she says. “I think women were just so pleased to see the tables turned. It’s so common to see a movie with a man exploring his unsettled streak, his sexuality in the way that Alex does. Oftentimes, you do see the woman being shafted and it was refreshing to see a woman who was in control and unapologetic about her sensuality, desire and needs.” Now, having finally shrugged off the “up-and-coming” tag, the 37-year-old actress is appearing in her first big-budget, all-action thriller. Source Code , by British director Duncan Jones (who is David Bowie’s son and who made his name with the offbeat, low-budget sci-fi movie Moon ), tells the story of a soldier played by Jake Gyllenhaal, who wakes up in the body of an unknown man and discovers he is part of a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. The catch is that he only has eight minutes in which to do so. What would Farmiga do if she only had eight minutes left to live? “Ideally, I wouldn’t be running around a train,” she says. “If I was on a high-stakes mission to save the world I might reconsider, but I really would just rather spend it in a really foofy bed with my husband and my children, soul-gazing.” In Source Code , Farmiga plays a very un-foofy air force officer who is Gyllenhaal’s only contact with the outside world. She says she almost didn’t take the role because she was felt that her character “was not that stimulating on the written page”. But then she began to see the script as a challenge, so it escaped the bonfire. The resulting performance is classic Farmiga, displaying her uncanny ability to hint at the hidden depths within a character who could, in other hands, be little more than a superficial adjunct to the plot. On screen, she possesses a rare combination of luminescence and a mastery of nuance, expressing internal conflict with a slight twist of the mouth; conveying a sense of deep emotion through the merest flicker of the eyes. “Often, I find it hard to be still,” she admits. “Always, when I get stuck, it’s the thought process [of a character] that I return to.” Although Farmiga has the looks of a leading lady – porcelain skin, blue eyes, a beguiling smile – one gets the sense with all her performances that it is what is going on behind the face that counts. “I’ve always believed that if you are precise in your thoughts, it’s not the lines you say that are important – it’s what exists between the lines,” she says. “What I’m compelled by most is that transparency of thought, what is left unspoken.” No wonder, then, that Farmiga has previously shied away from the big Hollywood studio juggernauts. “I’m least challenged or inspired by those stories,” she explains. “I’ve gravitated towards independent cinema because you have to work harder in studio scripts to flesh out characters, particularly female ones. They are not as sharply edged, they tend to be quite watery. They are not renderings of women as I know them.” Partly in order to rectify the dearth of good female roles, Farmiga has recently directed and starred in her own feature film, Higher Ground , which tells the story of a woman’s struggle with faith from her 50s childhood to the aftermath of a spiritual crisis. Well-received at Sundance earlier this year, the film has recently been acquired by Sony. “I’ve been very pleased with the reception to the movie,” says Farmiga. “I grew tired of asking permission [to play the roles I wanted to play]. With Higher Ground , I thought, ‘OK, let’s create an opportunity.’ It’s frustrating because I feel like I work harder to bring life to…” She breaks off. “I mean, I know the roles [for women] are out there but it’s just so cut-throat and everyone’s vying for them.” She doesn’t strike me as being particularly cut-throat, I say. “Umm…” There is a long pause. “It depends on the subject matter. No, I won’t harm someone else to get my own experience but I am demanding. I demand a lot from myself.” Later, she adds: “Am I ambitious? I used to be afraid of that word but now I think ambition is a good thing. My ambition is to be inspired perpetually and I don’t think it’s too much to ask.” She laughs. “I won’t take anyone down for it, but I will go white-knuckle for it.” The fact that Farmiga remains driven by the need to do interesting work means she is correspondingly uncomfortable with the idea of too much fame. “The more famous you are, the harder it becomes because you’re demystified. The more people know about you, the more face-time you get in the media, the harder your job becomes to create a character in whom people suspend disbelief. Honestly, I cherish the position I’m in – I do have respect but I can hide away.” Her feet are kept planted firmly on the ground by her family. The second of seven children, Farmiga was brought up in New Jersey by her Ukrainian immigrant parents – Mykhailo, a computer systems analyst , and Luba, a teacher. She attended a Ukrainian Catholic school, toured with a Ukrainian folk-dancing ensemble and didn’t speak English until the age of six. For a while, Farmiga had childhood ambitions to be an optometrist or a shepherdess (until recently, she farmed a flock of Angoran goats – “It was a good source of therapy every time I finished a movie and felt depressed”). These days, her parents are rather baffled by what their daughter does. “They’re very sensible and grounded,” she says. “They take it with a pinch of salt. You know, I’m one of seven and they want success for all their children. They’re proud but they’re even more proud now that I’ve given them grandchildren.” Farmiga and her husband, Renn Hawkey, a carpenter who was formerly keyboard player for the synth-pop band Deadsy, have a two-year-old son, Fynn, and a four-month old baby daughter, Gytta. What if one of her children wanted to be an actor? I ask. “I would encourage them, whatever their convictions are,” she says. “I think it can be a noble profession, I really do.” Elizabeth Day guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
The maker of Supersize Me has targeted advertisers who are increasingly muscling in on films and TV shows He took on fast-food giant McDonald’s in the documentary Supersize Me . Then he targeted the “war on terror” in Where in the World is Osama bin Laden? Now hit film-maker Morgan Spurlock has a new target: the advertising industry. Spurlock, whose cinéma-vérité style has made him one of the world’s best-known documentary-makers, has decided to take on the increasingly active phenomenon of product placement, whereby advertisers pay to have products used in films and TV shows. His new film , called The Greatest Movie Ever Sold , was a smash at the Sundance festival earlier this year and will be released in the US next month. It follows Spurlock as he tries to get funding for his film from numerous corporations – an endeavour that results in a sort of exploration of the way advertisers have increasingly started to place their brands in films and television programmes. “What I want to do is make a film about product placement, marketing and advertising where the entire film is funded by product placement, marketing and advertisement,” Spurlock explains in the movie. He managed to persuade 15 brands to stump up cash. Testament to his success, the film’s full-length title is POM Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold ; a California-based pomegranate juice drink agreed a hefty sponsorship . The film is coming out at a time when product placement is becoming increasingly controversial amid huge changes in the advertising industry. The rise of devices like Tivo – which allows people to record shows and skip adverts – and the increasing number of viewers who watch films and TV through the internet has meant that fewer people are exposed to traditional advertising. One recent statistic estimated that perhaps 90% of prime-time TV viewers in the US aren’t prepared to watch the adverts. “People record shows or watch them online. I haven’t watched a TV commercial in a long time,” said Jeff Greenfield, the publisher of Product Placement News . That situation has placed huge pressure on advertisers to get their products in front of viewers’ eyeballs in more subtle ways. American Idol judges now sit with Coke in front of them. Car chases have the hero driving certain makes of vehicle. Actors wear clothes from particular fashion labels. Key scenes take place in well-known coffee stores. The product placement industry has become such a key part of entertainment that the BrandChannel blog doles out annual awards. In 2010 it proclaimed Apple the most successful product placement brand, noting that its products featured in 10 of the 33 number one box-office movies in the US that year. The film with the most placements was Iron Man
Continue reading …
Researchers ‘over a barrel’ after coalition threat to cut £100m grant from Arts and Humanities Research Council Academics will study the “big society” as a priority, following a deal with the government to secure funding from cuts. The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) will spend a “significant” amount of its funding on the prime minister’s vision for the country, after a government “clarification” of the Haldane principle – a convention that for 90 years has protected the right of academics to decide where research funds should be spent. Under the revised principle, research bodies must work to the government’s national objectives, although the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said that ministers will not meddle in individual projects. It is claimed the AHRC was told that research into the “big society” was non-negotiable if it wished to maintain its funding at £100m a year. The director of research at Cambridge University’s history faculty, Professor Peter Mandler, told the Observer that the AHRC was forced to accept the change by officials working for the minister for higher education, David Willetts, regarded as one of the intellectual driving forces behind the “big society”. Mandler added: “The government says they have rewritten the Haldane principle but they have junked it, basically. They say it is now their right to set the priorities for how this funding [is] distributed. They have got the AHRC over a barrel and basically told these guys that they cannot have their money unless they incorporate [these] research priorities. “Willetts was negotiating nominally, but the word is that it has come down from the secretary of state for business, innovation and skills, Vince Cable. Almost everyone who hears the story is upset about it. What about curiosity research, blue sky thinking? What is worrying is what won’t be researched because of this.” There is growing anger at what the Royal Historical Society (RHS) described as a “gross and ignoble” move to assert government control over research in favour of what one academic labelled a party political slogan. Professor Colin Jones, president of the RHS, said the move was potentially dangerous for the future of academic study in the country. “It seems to me to be absolutely gross,” said Jones. “In a way, the AHRC should be congratulated for securing a good settlement in a difficult spending round, but there is something slightly ignoble about making the ‘big society’ a research priority.” He added: “It is government money. They have the right to spend it on what they want, but there is a degree of anxiety about the strings being put on. They are being strengthened, which could be dangerous for independent research.” A principal at an Oxford college, who did not want to be named, said: “With breathtaking speed, a slogan for one political party has become translated into a central intellectual agenda for the academy.” Labour MP and historian Tristram Hunt said he intended to raise the issue in parliament, describing the research priorities as “grotesque”. He added: “It is disgraceful that taxpayers’ money is being spent on this bogus idea.” It is understood that Oxford University intends to discuss the imposition of “big society” research at the next meeting of its sovereign body, the Oxford congregation, in May. Gareth Thomas, the shadow minister for higher education, condemned the development and called for transparency from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. He said: “Vince Cable and David Willetts need to explain why he has allowed an ill-thought-out, half-formed Tory election idea to divert precious funding away from genuine research. “When the government is axing virtually all the funding for the teaching of humanities, social sciences and the arts, wasting critical research monies on the ‘big society’ is simply unacceptable.” Last month, the prime minister rejected criticisms of the “big society” and said the idea was his driving force. He said: “We do need a social recovery to mend the broken society and to me, that’s what the big society is all about.” One of the tasks of research, according to the AHRC’s delivery plan, will be to define “difficult to pin down” values in “recent speeches on the big society”, such as “fairness, engagement, responsibility, mutuality, individualism [and] selfishness”. A Department for Business, Innovation and Skills spoksman insisted that the AHRC itself had proposed the “big society” as a strategic priority. “Prioritisation of an individual research council’s spending within its allocation is not a decision for ministers,” she added. “The government supports [the Haldane] principle as vital for the protection of academic indpendence and excellence.” Research Research funding University funding Higher education David Willetts Daniel Boffey guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Tory peer accused of using ‘meaningless’ comparisons to try to make his argument against the need to tackle global warming Lord Lawson, the former chancellor, has been privately accused by the government’s chief scientific adviser of making “incorrect” and “misleading” claims in his book on climate change . The charge against Lawson, the country’s most prominent global-warming sceptic, was made during an extraordinary and at times fractious exchange of letters between the men following a meeting over coffee at the Lords. Sir John Beddington wrote to Lawson to tell him that his book, An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming , had made “a number of points related to the underlying science of climate change that are incorrect or presented in a misleading way”. An appendix to his letter accused Lawson of making “meaningless” comparisons to prove his thesis. In response, Lawson wrote back to accuse Beddington of attempting to “trump” his arguments without evidence or quantification. He also confessed to being baffled by Beddington’s criticisms, adding that the government adviser had committed a “gross misuse of language” in claiming that the Earth has warmed “dramatically” in the past 150 years. Lawson, who is chairman of the sceptical Global Warming Policy Foundation , is the most prominent critic of the government’s policies on climate change. While not denying that there is evidence of a change in the climate, he has announced himself unconvinced that it has been caused by greenhouse gases. Lawson is set to represent the climate sceptics at a debate hosted by the Spectator magazine, entitled “The Global Warming Hysteria Is Over: Time for a Return to Sanity”. But Christian Hunt of the website Carbon Brief , who, along with investigations website Spinwatch , uncovered the letters, said they showed Lawson did not have a grasp of the science: “It is worrying that a prominent figure like Lord Lawson is seen as a credible commentator on this issue, when his understanding of appears so flawed.” “His climate-sceptic thinktank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation claims a charitable aim ‘to advance the public understanding of global warming’, but they seem to spend most of their time casting doubt upon well-established science.” Speaking from his home in Gascony, Lawson denied to the Observer that he had been “upset” by Beddington’s criticisms and said he had failed to find a single factual inaccuracy in his book, which was first published in 2008. “We got on well in personal terms, but it wasn’t a meeting of minds,” he said.”I wasn’t upset in the slightest, because I seem to recall that I thought that he had missed the point. “I am chiefly concerned with what is a sensible policy. I seem to recall that none of the things in that appendix really affected the question of what policy one should pursue. Moreover, so far as my book is concerned, he was … unable to find a single thing in it that was factually inaccurate.” Of his first meeting with Beddington, before their correspondence began, Lawson added: “He had been recently appointed and he seemed to me to be a reasonably sensible fellow, and I said come along and have a cup of coffee at the Lords and discuss this together.” Beddington’s first letter to Lawson was written a month after their meeting last March. To Lawson’s claim in his book that there has been no “further global warming since the turn of the century”, Beddington wrote: “Short-term temperature trends are meaningless in the context of global warming.” To Lawson’s claim that calculating average global temperature is not straightforward and data from the developing world and former Soviet Union were not reliable, Beddington claimed those issues were taken into account and warming could be seen in other ways, such as in the decrease of Arctic sea ice. To Lawson’s claims that urbanisation raises near-surface temperatures and might be responsible for the recording of global temperature rises, Beddington said it has been studied and found to have a “negligible effect”. And to Lawson’s claim that “neither scientists nor politicians serve either the truth or the people by pretending to know more than they do”, Beddington wrote: “It is clear from the scientific evidence … that the risks are real and, I believe, it is not going too far to say, potentially catastrophic in the absence of strong global action to reduce emissions.” A month later Lawson wrote back thanking him for his “very full response”. But he warned Beddington, as a scientist, against the “journalistic” phrase “catastrophic climate change”. He then described his use of statistics as arbitrary, and his facts as carefully selected. A month later, Lawson again wrote to Beddington demanding that he write to the Guardian to deny a report that the civil servant had been highly critical of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. Beddington refused, claiming he had not criticised Lawson and stood by his criticisms about those who rely on anecdotal evidence to disprove climate change. Climate change scepticism Green politics Climate change House of Lords Daniel Boffey guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
The CDU’s hold on the state may give way to a Green-SPD coalition after the chancellor’s U-turn on nuclear power Baden-Württemberg in south-west Germany is one of Europe’s richest regions. For almost 58 years, it has been governed by Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU). But from 6pm tonight, when the first results from the state’s elections start to come in, this region of plenty might well be heading into the clutches of the opposition. If the pollsters are correct, the risk-averse burghers of Baden-Württemberg – with their locally assembled Mercedes in their garages and their jobs for life – may end up electing, by a narrow vote, Germany’s first Green regional prime minister. Even more shocking is the slim chance that the ultra-socialist Linke (Left) party might win enough votes to be represented in the state parliament. The election might be a local one, but the consequences will reverberate in
Continue reading …
Click here to view this media Bill Maher talked to Canadian actress Ellen Page on Real Time about her work on the vanishing of the bees and their importance to our very survival and our ability to feed ourselves. Maher quoted Einstein during the segment who said this: If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man. If you would like to find out more about Page’s work her web site is here — Vanishing of the Bees .
Continue reading …
Party joins forces with charities and senior figures in local government to warn about risk of more child poverty The government’s flagship plan to cap benefits at £500 a week per family has been thrown into crisis after the Liberal Democrats broke coalition ranks to complain that the policy risks increasing child poverty and homelessness. In a move that suggests a more assertive approach by Nick Clegg’s party, the Lib Dems have joined forces with leading charities and senior figures in local government to argue that a rigid cap could have a disastrous effect on families living in areas where the cost of housing is highest. Jenny Willott, the Lib Dems’ welfare spokesperson, told the Observer that she was pushing ministers to make major changes to avoid throwing more children into poverty and adding to homelessness. “I am very concerned about the effect on child poverty,” she said. “There are a number of possible changes that are being discussed, but at the moment I am certainly not happy with what is being proposed.” Willott made clear she had Clegg’s support and believed that ministers would amend their plans to ensure they pass through the Commons. She wants ministers to build more flexibility into the system – and to consider removing child benefit from the cap altogether. This, she argues, would help families with children in areas such as London who could end up paying £400 a week on housing, leaving just £100 to meet their other costs. The plan to impose a £500 cap was announced by the chancellor, George Osborne, at the Tory conference last autumn. But while the plans have proved popular with grassroots Conservatives, many charities and local government officials believe they are ill-conceived and rigid. Roger Harding, head of policy at the housing charity Shelter, told the welfare bill committee in the Commons last week that the housing benefit cap undermined the underlying principles of the welfare state. “Analysis at Shelter shows that much of the south-east will become unaffordable to three-children families because of the cap. For a typical family of two adults – with one or both working – and three children, if both parents lose their job they will suddenly face not receiving enough housing benefit to live not only in their town, but in their region.” Government sources indicated that changes would be considered. “We can certainly look at transitional arrangements. We are not going to introduce anything that will make people suffer,” said a source, adding that reforms were designed to bring greater fairness and the cap would be lifted as soon as those on benefits found work, creating a real incentive to find employment. Liberal Democrats Welfare Housing benefit Child benefit Housing Toby Helm Daniel Boffey guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Turnout for generally good-natured rally exceeds organisers’ expectations, but mood marred by violent minority March for the Alternative – as it happened Thousands march against spending cuts – in pictures More than a quarter of a million people have marched through central London to deliver a powerful message about the government’s cuts in public spending. The generally good-natured mood was soured by violent and destructive attacks on symbols of wealth including the Ritz, banks and a luxury car dealer; and an occupation of the upmarket food store Fortnum and Mason. Trade union organisers said that the turnout had exceeded their expectations, and thousands had travelled by coach and by train from as far away as Edinburgh to vent their anger at the government’s cuts by marching through London to a rally in Hyde Park. Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, the public service trade union, said that the turnout was “absolutely enormous and showed the anger of ordinary working people”. But the day was marred by a violent minority of anarchists who went on the rampage, smashing windows and attacking property around Oxford Street. Prentis said he regretted that the actions of “a few hundred” risked diverting attention from the message that the “political heat is rising on the government”. At one stage 13 shops in Oxford Street were closed following skirmishes between activists and riot police. Topshop – owned by Sir Philip Green, who has been accused of tax avoidance – and HSBC had windows smashed, while paint and bottles were thrown at a Royal Bank of Scotland branch. A dozen police officers were surrounded and beaten by a masked mob in Sackville Street, off
Continue reading …Hannity goes all-in on the Birtherism, keeps insisting Obama hasn’t produced a legal Hawaiian birth certificate
March 26, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Fox News is pretty rapidly becoming the Conspiracy Nutcase Network, what with Glenn Beck going all-in as a John Bircher , along with Sean Hannity’s headfirst dive into the swamps of Birtherism. After Hannity’s initial foray into Birtherism in defense of Donald Trump on Wednesday , he devoted both of his subsequent “All American Panel” segments to defending Birtherism again. On Thursday, the panelists included former Maryland Gov. Rob Ehrlich, poli-sci prof Caroline Heldman, and ex-Imus producer Bernard McGuirk. It went like pretty much like the first foray: HANNITY: First of all. What’s the deal? Produce the birth certificate it is over and done with. Chris Matthews wants it. MCGUIRK: This is why Donald Trump should throw his hair into the ring. He legitimized this issue. People say why not just show it. The other thing it took away is that Joy Behar was conspicuously silent. She is a bully she will go over — she will go after Sharron Angle, Donald Trump she has nothing to say. … HANNITY: If I asked for the birth certificate, can I get it? HELDMAN: I assume that you could, Sean. HANNITY: Is it go all the way back to 1975? HELDMAN: Sure. HANNITY: Could you get your birth certificate? MCGUIRK: In a heartbeat. HANNITY: Look, what I like about this, every pejorative, birthers and this and that. Chris Matthews was the guy — why don’t we get rid of it and move the issue aside so it never comes up again? HELDMAN: How about common sense takes over and it never comes up again. HANNITY: Wait a minute, but he did talk in his book prayers and he went to a Muslim school and he talk all about all these and he studied the Koran and prayers at sunset were most beautiful things he saw in life. He spent a lot of his youth in Indonesia. HELDMAN: And? MCGUIRK: Show the birth certificate and get it over with. HELDMAN: Wait, what does – have to do with being born in the United States? How is that material to whether or not he was in the United States? What is the logic? HANNITY: Why won’t they release the birth – HELDMAN: What is the logic? HANNITY: Why don’t they just release it and get it over with. The only reason they don’t release it is because it insults him. Last night, it was more of the same, with a different panel, including civil-rights activist Ron Daniels, Fox contributor Peter Johnson, and Republican “strategist” Dee Dee Benkie. Daniels tried pointing out, repeatedly, that Obama has in fact produced his birth certificate — but that seemed to fly right over everyone else’s head: HANNITY: Do I think he was [born in America]? Yes. Do I think this is odd that they won’t produce the birth certificate? It’s beginning to get odd to me. … BENKIE: Yeah, but why not produce it? It’s so easy. Here it is — on TV, on billboards, whatever. Why not just bring it out? Why not show it? DANIELS: It’s shown time and time again. Do we trust the Hawaiian authorities or not? I don’t understand this. There is a problem here. There’s something going on here, that people keep talking about this birth certificate, and there’s a significant amount of people believe in it. HANNITY: Why haven’t they just produced the certificate? DANIELS: They have! They’ve shown it! You can go see it — anybody can go see it, just like you can go see a copy of — HANNITY: That’s not true! BENKIE: That’s not true. It’s never been out. HANNITY: Because they’ve never allowed anybody to see it. That’s the point. BENKIE: It’s never been out. HANNITY: It’s never — see, you’re agreeing with me that it’s odd. BENKIE: It is odd. It’s very odd. Yes, very odd, very odd indeed. Odd that no matter how plainly the evidence is given to people like Hannity, they keep insisting that it hasn’t been presented. OK, I’m going to write this verrrrry slooooowwly, just so Hannity and his panelists and the likeminded Trump fans don’t miss anything: 1. President Obama has in fact presented for public viewing his legal birth certificate from the State of Hawaii. It was released in 2008. Here it is. enlarge 2. A lot of people have in fact examined this birth certificate, including the fact-checkers at Fact Check.org : FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate. We conclude that it meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship. Claims that the document lacks a raised seal or a signature are false. We have posted high-resolution photographs of the document as “supporting documents” to this article. Our conclusion: Obama was born in the U.S.A. just as he has always said. 3. This birth certificate is the same birth certificate anyone born in Hawaii would present as proof of citizenship. “Our Certificate of Live Birth is the standard form, which was modeled after national standards that are acceptable by federal agencies and organizations,” Okubo said. “With that form, you can get your passport or your soccer registration or your driver’s license.” 4. The director of Hawaii’s Department of Health confirmed that Obama was born in Honolulu. “There have been numerous requests for Sen. Barack Hussein Obama’s official birth certificate. State law (Hawaii Revised Statutes §338-18) prohibits the release of a certified birth certificate to persons who do not have a tangible interest in the vital record. “Therefore, I as Director of Health for the State of Hawaii, along with the Registrar of Vital Statistics who has statutory authority to oversee and maintain these type of vital records, have personally seen and verified that the Hawaii State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures. “No state official, including Governor Linda Lingle, has ever instructed that this vital record be handled in a manner different from any other vital record in the possession of the State of Hawaii.” The continued dispute that Hannity and Trump seem to think is so significant is so important, in fact, is over the privacy-protected medical records of Obama’s birth — what the Birthers are calling his “long form birth certificate,” but are in fact the private medical records of his birth kept at the hospital, containing large amounts of personal medical information about Obama’s mother, including gynecological data. And as Hawaii officials have explained numerous times, these records are protected by privacy laws, and for perfectly sound reasons: Hawai’i’s disclosure law (Hawai’i Revised Statutes 338-18) states that “it shall be unlawful for any person to permit inspection of, or to disclose information contained in vital statistics records, or to copy or issue a copy of all or part on any such record … ” The law further states that the Health Department “shall not permit inspection of public health statistics records, or issue a certified copy of any such record or part thereof, unless it is satisfied that the applicant has a direct and tangible interest in the record.” Those who have “direct and tangible interest” are generally limited to the person named in the record, the spouse, parent, descendant, or personal representative, or by someone who is involved in marital, parental or death litigation involving the named person’s vital record or other legal reason established by a court order, and various official agency or organization representatives, including the state director of health, according to the law. Here are a coupla questions for Sean Hannity and Donald Trump and their acolytes: Is a birth certificate acceptable to every known authority for every other citizen of that state somehow unacceptable proof of citizenship for presidential candidates? Or do they believe that every candidate for president should have to release for public review the private medical records, including personal medical information about their late mothers, of their own births? If the answer to either of these is “no,” then why are they demanding it only of Barack Obama — while simultaneously talking about his five years spent in Indonesia? And they wonder why the rest of us consider Birtherism, at its core, profoundly racist.
Continue reading …Frances Fox Piven: Where Are The Angry Crowds of the Forgotten Unemployed?
March 26, 2011 No CommentIn The Nation, Frances Fox Piven, one of Glenn Beck’s favorite targets, raises an important question : How do we mobilize the jobless to political action? As 2011 begins, nearly 15 million people are officially unemployed in the United States and another 11.5 million have either settled for part-time work or simply given up the search for a job. To regain the 5 percent unemployment level of December 2007, about 300,000 jobs would have to be created each month for several years. There are no signs that this is likely to happen soon. And joblessness now hits people harder because it follows in the wake of decades of stagnating worker earnings, high consumer indebtedness, eviscerated retirement funds and rollbacks of the social safety net. So where are the angry crowds, the demonstrations, sit-ins and unruly mobs? After all, the injustice is apparent. Working people are losing their homes and their pensions while robber-baron CEOs report renewed profits and windfall bonuses. Shouldn’t the unemployed be on the march? Why aren’t they demanding enhanced safety net protections and big initiatives to generate jobs? It is not that there are no policy solutions. Left academics may be pondering the end of the American empire and even the end of neoliberal capitalism, and—who knows—in the long run they may be right. But surely there is time before the darkness settles to try to relieve the misery created by the Great Recession with massive investments in public-service programs, and also to use the authority and resources of government to spur big new initiatives in infrastructure and green energy that might, in fact, ward off the darkness. Nothing like this seems to be on the agenda. Instead the next Congress is going to be fixated on an Alice in Wonderland policy of deficit reduction by means of tax and spending cuts . As for the jobless, right-wing commentators and Congressional Republicans are reviving the old shibboleth that unemployment is caused by generous unemployment benefits that indulge poor work habits and irresponsibility. Meanwhile, in a gesture eerily reminiscent of the blatherings of a panicked Herbert Hoover, President Obama invites corporate executives to a meeting at Blair House to urge them to invest some of their growing cash reserves in economic growth and job creation, in the United States, one hopes, instead of China. Mass protests might change the president’s posture if they succeeded in pressing him hard from his base, something that hasn’t happened so far in this administration. But there are obstructions to mobilizing the unemployed that would have to be overcome. The problem of how to bring people together is sometimes made easier by government service centers, as when in the 1960s poor mothers gathered in crowded welfare centers or when the jobless congregated in unemployment centers. But administrators also understand that services create sites for collective action; if they sense trouble brewing, they exert themselves to avoid the long lines and crowded waiting areas that can facilitate organizing, or they simply shift the service nexus to the Internet. Organizers can try to compensate by offering help and advocacy off-site, and at least some small groups of the unemployed have been formed on this basis. Second, before people can mobilize for collective action, they have to develop a proud and angry identity and a set of claims that go with that identity. They have to go from being hurt and ashamed to being angry and indignant. (Welfare moms in the 1960s did this by naming themselves “mothers” instead of “recipients,” although they were unlucky in doing so at a time when motherhood was losing prestige.) Losing a job is bruising; even when many other people are out of work, most people are still working. So, a kind of psychological transformation has to take place; the out-of-work have to stop blaming themselves for their hard times and turn their anger on the bosses, the bureaucrats or the politicians who are in fact responsible. Third, protesters need targets, preferably local and accessible ones capable of making some kind of response to angry demands. This is, I think, the most difficult of the strategy problems that have to be resolved if a movement of the unemployed is to arise. Protests among the unemployed will inevitably be local, just because that’s where people are and where they construct solidarities. But local and state governments are strapped for funds and are laying off workers. The initiatives that would be responsive to the needs of the unemployed will require federal action. Local protests have to accumulate and spread—and become more disruptive—to create serious pressures on national politicians. An effective movement of the unemployed will have to look something like the strikes and riots that have spread across Greece in response to the austerity measures forced on the Greek government by the European Union, or like the student protests that recently spread with lightning speed across England in response to the prospect of greatly increased school fees. A loose and spontaneous movement of this sort could emerge. It is made more likely because unemployment rates are especially high among younger workers. Protests by the unemployed led by young workers and by students, who face a future of joblessness, just might become large enough and disruptive enough to have an impact in Washington. There is no science that predicts eruption of protest movements. Who expected the angry street mobs in Athens or the protests by British students? Who indeed predicted the strike movement that began in the United States in 1934, or the civil rights demonstrations that spread across the South in the early 1960s? We should hope for another American social movement from the bottom—and then join it .
Continue reading …