The Real America

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PASADENA CA - On Thursdays since, June 25, 2009, a group of protesters gathered at the intersection of Orange and Hill Avenues to hold a protest vigil, shown in this film, and which continues there weekly. Drive by and honk if you care to.

So why after 60 years of Republican blocked attempts at nationalized health care are we finally seeing some movement? It looks like things are so bad that the insurance companies aren't even making out. If things get bad enough for people and people can’t afford to pay their bills, guess who gets screwed? The insurance companies who charged the outrageous premiums to begin with. Once again we see the authoritarian right digging their own grave. Keep up the good work guys. With any luck your kind will soon be extinct. Bailouts can't go on forever. At some point these greedy corporations will die if we refuse their services, whether out of necessity or not. The people have the power and always have. It's ultimately about cutting off the money. Now if only we could do this to Wall Street and The Pentagram.

“Health care reform is no longer just a moral imperative, it is a fiscal imperative. If we want to create jobs and rebuild our economy, then we must address the crushing cost of health care this year, in this Administration.” - President Barack Obama, White House Forum on Health Reform, 3/5/09

The following excerpts are from HeathReform.gov:

“With All These People Losing Jobs, A Lot Will Lose Their Health Insurance”
The Wall Street Journal, Thursday, April 23, 2009 - President Obama has said that health reform “cannot wait, must not wait, and will not wait another year.” Today the Wall Street Journal cited evidence that illustrates why so many Americans cannot afford to wait another year for health reform. Layoffs are causing thousands of Americans to lose their health care coverage, and as was reported today, insurance companies are seeing their profits shrink as they lose members.

Insured, but Bankrupted by Health Crises
New York Times, 7/1/09 - It is commonly cited that nearly 50 million Americans go each year without health insurance. What is perhaps less apparent is that millions more are severely under-insured. The unfortunate reality is that even those with insurance are too often brought to financial ruin because of medical expenses.

Medical Bankruptcy
South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 6/23/09 - Americans across the country are struggling to keep up with rising costs of medical bills, high deductibles, increasing premiums, and the escalating costs of prescription drugs. For some Americans health care costs result in medical bankruptcy. According to a new Harvard University study, 62% of bankruptcies in 2007 were caused by medical-related debt.

Iranian Protests in U.S. Streets may Save them from Dehumanized War, unlike the Iraqi and Afghan Victims of U.S. Occupation

Iranians have been holding a protest vigil since the Iran election in front of the federal building at Westwood and Veteran Avenues in West Los Angeles. On Sunday, June 28, 2009, about 5,000 of them took to the streets there in the march depicted in this film. Many would not be interviewed on camera, probably in fear of reprisals against their families in Iran by the Iranian government, as some told us. Of those who spoke on camera, they explained how their presence was only to show solidarity with those in Iran. They feel frustrated that they cannot do something more to stop the Iranian government. Some want the U.S. and the U.N. to impose sanctions on Iran, specifically to companies like Nokia that do business with the Iranian government in providing surveillance technology used wrongfully against the Iranian people, to deny them basic freedoms.

However, sanctions on Iran from the U.S. in the past have hurt the Iranian people as much, if not more than it hurt the Iranian government. Is it possible for the U.S. or the U.N. to have the acuity to distinguish between the Iranian people and the Iranian government; to impose selective and targeted sanctions on companies like Nokia, or at least the offending technologies they sell? If so they would then target the Iranian government's anti-democratic behavior without hurting the Iranian people, unlike what the U.S. did to Iraq after the Gulf War in obtuse sanctions that effectively broke down their infrastructure, and took away basic human needs like water and electricity from all the Iraqi people.

One good thing that these marches do is to show the world and the Iranian government the faces of Iranians, which makes it impossible for the U.S. and other governments, to dehumanize the Iranian people in order to wage war, as the U.S. has done in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq War veterans have testified to this fact in the Winter Soldier testimonies on U.S. military racism (http://ivaw.org/wintersoldier), citing how their superiors demean Iraqis, and now Afghans, by routinely referring to them as "hodgie", a slag term for Hajji.

It is a well known fact among scholars (like Dr. Haig Bosmajian, University of Washington in Seattle) that the U.S. military has, as a matter of policy, demeaned the people of entire countries that we have gone to war with, ever since the Korean War when they referred to Koreans as "gooks", which carried over to the Vietnam War. It is no stretch to call our military racist. But this was also found during WWII when they called the Germans "krauts". The Germans are especially infamous for their pro-war dehumanization campaign of the Jewish people in calling them "rats". The purpose of this as government policy is to make it easier for people and troops to accept war, especially the killing and genocide of innocent people.

See also: Iran Was an Easier Enemy Before We Saw Their Faces by David Bromwich, Huffington Post, June 24, 2009 12:32 PM

Visit the Stop War Project

Why have a bank? Vote with your feet. Walk out.

If you're like me you don't hold onto money long enough to warrant keeping a bank account with the liability of bouncing checks when it nears bottom. So don't have one. Use money orders. Why direct deposit all your cash into some crooks' bank? It's your money. Put in in your wallet, or your safe. By the time I pay my bills all I have left is spending cash for food anyway.

If you must have a bank account, just put enough in to cover the bills you must pay by check or your bank card. Why bother going to a money machine every time you need your own cash? Why pay all the associated fees? Banks have a great racket. They hold all your money, fee you when ever they feel like it, post your checks when ever they feel like, and share all your transactions with any government agency or lawyer who comes down the pike.

We have the power to stop banks in their tracks. Vote with your feet. Walk out of your bank.

It's been suggested that credit unions are a great alternative to banks. I don't think people should blindly follow any one strategy or part of the industry. One credit union may be good. Another may be bad. Generally they sound good, but they all still charge the same interest and fees as banks.

Why should people be responsible for propping up an economy based on credit, which profits the bankers, including credit unions? People should learn to live within their means, not on credit. This is the root of the problem. This is what the Japanese discovered when they went through this. They now live more within their means.

The further contraction of the economy without banks that some fear is merely a contraction of credit. People still have the ability to make a living and profit. In fact, without the incredible interest they now pay, up to around 30% on a typical credit card for example, they will have more money and the 'no bank, no credit' strategy will improve their cash position.

The only thing banks are good for is credit, and right now that is even questionable. The root of our problem is credit. It's time to think outside of the vicious credit cycle box. If banks want to attract customers they should compete for the business, reduce their interest rates, cut out all the fees and overdraft penalties that multiply when they hit. That's how a free market will work. Credit unions have those fees and interest charges too. Until they come up with a better alternative, I say walk out on them. Make them earn our trust and our business.

Who Needs Hollwood? Not these guys.

There's a new movement in filmmaking. It's what you might call a "who need's Hollywood?", DIY approach. A number of new filmmakers have had some awesome success with this. The thing is there is no one way for everybody. Each filmmaker seems to find their own road. But there are some commonalities, like social networking, self-distribution, and audience interaction, and always hard work.

Arin Crumley and Susan Buice successfully produced, directed and distributed their feature film, Four Eyed Monsters, through the internet and a lot of Google time. One thing about this is that technology moves so fast, and things are ever changing, so that what worked for them is already outdated. But their independent spirit in going down their own road, even paving their way through a wilderness, was the thing we can all take away from their experience and apply to ourselves. By the way, Four Eyed monsters garnered two Independent Spirit Award nominations.

The road they took started with vlogs on YouTube. I think they planned this as part of their strategy in marketing their film. Their vlogs were about the behind the scenes "making of" stuff that you might find in typical DVD extras. But there is nothing typical about these guys. The film itself was kind of a similar docudrama of their relationship, much of it in a vlog fourth wall style. That sounds a bit repugnant on paper. But the film is really beautiful. Check out the trailer to get a feel for it.  So while the film was about their relationship's birth, life and death, as the tagline reads, the vlogs were about that too, along with the making of the film and with more reality.

The interesting this is that their "making of" experience is like none you've ever seen, or maybe never will. They forged their way to gather a YouTube and social network audience, which they translated into theatrical sales, by capturing emails and zip codes and persuading  theaters across the country to show their film during four Thursdays September in 2005, I think it was. That itself is quite an accomplishment. But it doesn't end there. in fact it still hasn't ended.

They acquired support form a number of online web film distributor ventures, including YouTube, where they were the first online feature release, and Spout.com, who paid them a dollar for everyone who they referred to Spout, amounting to $35,000. Their vlogs were so popular that they included them as a series of episodes on the DVD, along with the film and a soundtrack CD. The DVD has sold around 1500 copies through their website, mainly. Now they are talking to DVD distributors and I think they are available at Borders and maybe on a cable movie channel in the future.

This is backwards from what the conventional Hollywood big business model professes. In that model, you never release to the DVD market and certainly not the internet, until you have exploited the theatrical market. Not these guys. They offered their film for free on YouTube, along with the vlog episodes, which built interest for the DVD and generated the theatrical and DVD markets.

I've heard filmmakers worry about exposing their film like this, as a quick way to kill all chances for conventional distribution. but what Arin is saying is that conventional distribution is a pipe dream. Susan calls it the prince with the glass slipper. This is so true, and so obvious, it's amazing filmmakers haven't seen this before. We are wasting our time submitting to festival after festival, where are chances are a few hundred out of 5000 to 6000 for the big festivals. Even if we have a good film, and even if it;s picked up by a festival, the chances of finding a distributor this way are so remote. There are usually one or two film at any festival, if that, that get a distribution deal. Then what? Our films are shelved. We don't have to accept this treatment.

Like Arin and Susan we have the greatest marketing tool at our fingertips, and it's free. The internet. Lance Weller and some others have a website, WorkBookProject.com, where these kinds of things are discussed openly. You'd be surprised at how many filmmakers are finding audiences this way.

Here are some websites to check out:

FourEyedMonsters.com
WorkBookProject.com
Spout.com
YouTube Screening Room
Blip.tv
IndieGoGo
BraveNewTheaters.com

At these sites you'll find a lot more links.

Check out my own venture at OutInTheStreetFilms.com, and my film project, Stop War.

The Stop War Project

The Stop War Project seeks to stop all war for all time through the power of communication. I believe the troubles in the world stem from a lack of communication. If we all were more informed of what was going on in the world this might be very different. I believe we could even stop war this way. The Iraq war has gone on for six years, costing thousands of American lives and over a million Iraqi lives, most of them innocent people, children and babies. Would the people in this country stand for such a policy if they were the victims? No. But a bigger question is, do most Americans even know what has been going on?

For six years we've been supposedly "fighting" terrorists by wage a preemptive war in Iraq. Meanwhile the real architect of that terrorism, Osama Bin Laden, is yet to be found. In fact he is supposedly in Afghanistan. We have been bombing innocent people in the wrong country. Why?

There is also evidence that Al Queada stemmed from a CIA organization (see The Three Trillion Dollar War by Joseph Stiglitz). We know that Bin Laden was a CIA operative who worked with George H.W. Bush. Amazingly we can't account for this one man's whereabouts after initially spending $1,000,000,000,000 (that's a trillion), 5000 American lives, 1.5 million Iraqi lives, 20,000+ innocent Afghan lives (God only knows the true numbers. We don't bother counting them. They're just Afghans.), in a supposed war to hunt him down.

Now if we're going to have a war we should at least be honest and upfront about it. If it's not Bin Laden then say so. If the cost is three to five trillion dollars as Joseph Stiglitz says, then fess up to it. Show us the American body count every week. Tell the American people the costs of these wars, the liabilities, the increased terrorism they proliferate and convince us it's worth it. No one can do this.

Iraq is a preemptive illegal racist American genocide and continues to be so. Is this America or a neo-Nazi state?

The more innocent people we kill, the more we motivate their survivors to become insurgents and terrorists and retaliate. What would you do if your town was bombed and your family killed. Would you sit back and take it? Our country was founded on the right to arms, to fight for and protect our freedom and our families. Yet we are oppressing another country, doing this very thing, and when they retaliate we call them terrorists, and retaliate with more bombs and guns, which keeps the cycle going and war profiteers profiting.

We are proliferating terrorism and endangering our freedom, not protecting it. And so our troops do not fight or die for freedom. They fight and die for Halliburton, Texaco, and Shell. They fight and die in vain. Many of them are vain. They are racist warmongers who live to fight and even die for the promise of glory, a false glory. But that's just my opinion. I respect your right to differ. Many troops fight and die with great honor, because they believe they do it for their country. But not all of them. Just look at the pictures and videos I have collected to see evidence of this. Even if they think they are fighting with honor, there's nothing honorable about preemptive racist genocidal war.

We need to get the word and the pictures out, to expose what's gong on. There are many veterans against war, who speak out and protest regularly. You can find them all over YouTube. You will also find racist troops who mock the Muslim culture, even to their faces, and show their strong prejudice and disrespect for theirs lives, for all life.

Join the Stop War Project Network.

The Lonely Right: War Protests n Hollywood

Hollywood, CA, March 21 2009 - Thousands of protesters gathered in Hollywood. This video, part 1 of a series, shows a Iraq war veteran who says he became aware, after serving in Iraq, that the real heroes don't wear U.S. uniforms. The real heroes are on the other side. He said hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis have died at the hands of US troops and that the US is the largest terrorist organization on the planet.

Part 1 also has a Los Angeles school teacher talk about how money being used for AIG bonuses could have kept the elementary school teachers of the 10,000 teachers from having to be laid off, and that the many billions spent by California alone on the Iraq war could solve California's budget crisis.

A lone right wing war monger protester, behind a wall of LA police officers, was there on his bullhorn to tell protesters they were wasting their time and that they can never stop war.

For detailed info on the rally and a list of participants, see http://www.pephost.org/site/PageServe...

Films from Out in the Street Films

Enough! - Protesters at AIG in LA

Enough! - Protesters at AIG in LA from Jon Raymond on Vimeo.

Los Angeles, March 19, 2009, 5:PM - As part of a nationwide SEIU sponsored protest, LA protesters outside of AIG were just as concerned about the billions of bailout dollars to all Wall Street firms as they were about the $165 million in AIG bonuses. They listed three demands from Congress:

1) Pass the Employee Free Choice Act
2) Affordable Health Care for All (citing that 55 million Americans are uninsured)
3) Strong Banking Reform.

They then proceeded to the front doors to ask that the top AIG executives come down to accept their reality check, where they were held back by numerous AIG security personnel. They chanted: Bring them down, AIG you cant hide. We can see you greedy side, and AIG has got to go. They were then informed that the people in the building left early after hearing of the nationwide protests, and that no one was there to see them. They responded with a chant of Dock their pay, followed again with AIG you cant hide.

This film was made from concept to completion in 16 hours by me alone. I wired two lavs through my long sleeved t-shirt, with the mikes clipped to the wrist ends. This gave great stereo separation for the sound, and control over the wires. The camera was a one chip Cannon Optura Xi. Everything was hand held. The shoot was about an hour of almost non-stop recording, and the editing about 10 hours.

Jon Raymond - Filmmaker
Music - Improvisation by Tony Milosevic / Absynth & Orange

Rally Participants:
SEIU - Los Angeles
CodePinkAlert.com

From Out in the Street Films

Dana Stevens' Obtuse review of Charlie Kaufman and his Film, Synecdoche, New York

Apparently Ms.Stevens, in Everyone Sucks, her review of Synecdoche, New York , doesn't understand the difference between a value judgment and an objective criticism. She finds this movie "disappointing". Yet she says, "The movie's sense of temporal dislocation is profound and pervasive and very skillfully done..." Then, in the most self contradictory statement she could ever have written, "Synecdoche contains moments of beauty so aching, you find yourself mentally scrambling to fill in the movie that should have existed around them...."

Does it have beauty or not, Ms. Stevens? You rant on in your little audio log about the great things about this movie. Then you descend into how depressing it was and how down it made you feel and how you wished so much the character had something more, in terms of some kind of uplifting cliche Hollywood ending, I can only guess. How obtuse of you.

If you didn't like it, that's a matter of taste. As you say, there are beautiful aspects. That fact that the movie has you in a quandary coming to this bizarre ambivalent conclusion that's it fails in some way because Kaufman directed it, but is yet so beautiful, is absurd, ridiculous, but most of all ignorant and immature.

What if the film is supposed to make you come to some higher plain of awareness that people do trudge through their lives, secretly believing that something great will happen, that someone special will someday come along and redeem them or make them whole in some way? What if that is all the film is about? A fat dumb and happy Hollywood ending would kill it. It has to be what it is. It is genius and apparently beyond your intellectual grasp.

Sure it wasn't as cinematic as Eternal Sunshine. But that was that, and this is this. Appreciate this film for what it is. It is tremendous. I feel this film (were it not for self infatuated reviewers like yourself or for audiences with the same limited intellect) could change people to a higher level of self awareness, to motivate them into doing something real with their lives instead of just trudging onward toward death with false hopes and dreams.

And then you have the disdain and condescension to tell people to give Charlie Kaufman a hug.

How to Fix the Economy: Get Out of Iraq

One of the major economic indicators that the government and Wall Street depend on, especially to tell us whether the country is in a recession or not, is the GDP (Gross Domestic Product). However, there are many who feel this indicator is inaccurate in reporting the real effect of the economy on people, especially people's happiness. The GPI (Genuine progress Indicator) was developed as one better and more accurate alternative, among others.

If you look at these two indicators, assuming that a steady decrease in the GDP for two consecutive quarters indicates a recession as Bush defines it, you'll find that even now, despite the terrible state of this economy with it's massive foreclosures and record unemployment, the GDP does not yet indicate we are in a recession, or even a downturn Looking at the GDP, we are steadily growing our economy at a healthy clip. Two things stand out for me in this distinction.

1. The GDP includes Crime as a indicator of economic growth (as explained in World Changing online magazine)
2. The GDP includes war and defense spending and it's industries

The GPI includes neither of these. Without defense spending, along with a few much lesser expenses like crime, we see the real picture of the downturn our economy is taking while boosting the military laden GDP, shown in this chart from Redefining Progress a public think tank.

Redefining Progress notes that the GPI has been flat since the 70s. Some charts, like The Progress Report, show a downturn in the GDI.

So what does defense have to do with it?

Defense spending goes into weapons that are expendable. When we go to war we take massive stocks of equipment and basically throw them away, or blow them up. What production or constructive result comes out of war that benefits U.S. citizens? Nothing. Certainly not anything that would warrant the massive expense of the Iraq war. Any of this equipment recovered after the war is pretty much beyond it's useful life. Time to order the new models. In fact, the defense industry is notorious for, not only overspending with inflated budgets, but also for having state of the art equipment. All of this expense is more or less for stuff we trash.

That doesn't even get into the extravagance we see in defense spending on contractors like Halliburton and Blackwater who exploit the government for outrageous sums, as documented in a film called Iraq For Sale, which depicts Iraq as a sort of cruise ship like luxury resort for contractors in the middle of the surrounding war.

CBC News examines the relevance of the U.S. GDP compared to Canada, which exposes the use of the term GDP for what it really is. a political tactic:

Even as a measure of economic output, however, GDP has its limitations. Take a look at the first quarter of 2008, when the Canadian economy contracted at an annualized 0.3 per cent that quarter and the U.S. economy grew by 0.9 per cent.

That leaves the impression that the Canadian economy was doing worse than the U.S. economy, which was struggling with rising unemployment, slumping auto sales, and one of the worst housing downturns in decades.

"Without resorting to hyperbole, this understates the relative performance of the Canadian economy by a country mile," said BMO Capital Markets economist Doug Porter in a report he titled "Does GDP Matter?" (He says yes, but not as much as usual.)

The article goes on to note numerous other better indicators like the GPI. It would seem then that the GDP is simply a tool of politicians and not an indicator of any substance.

We don't hear Bush, McCain or any of the other neocons talk about the fallacy of the GDP, or that war spending keeps it on the rise, while our balance sheet minus war spending looks a whole lot more like a recession. But we do hear Obama talking about getting out of Iraq and how this immense expanse is draining our economy. In the second debate at Nashville, Obama said:

....So one of the difficulties with Iraq is that it has put an enormous strain, first of all, on our troops, obviously, and they have performed heroically and honorably and we owe them an extraordinary debt of gratitude.

But it's also put an enormous strain on our budget. We've spent, so far, close to $700 billion and if we continue on the path that we're on, as Senator McCain is suggesting, it's going to go well over $1 trillion.

We're spending $10 billion a month in Iraq at a time when the Iraqis have a $79 billion surplus, $79 billion.

And we need that $10 billion a month here in the United States to put people back to work, to do all these wonderful things that Senator McCain suggested we should be doing, but has not yet explained how he would pay for.

If we want to fix this economy we have to get out of the Iraq war.

Larry Flynt: The Right to be Left Alone

Did you know that the military's inclusion of embedded reporters as war correspondents was due solely to a law suit against the Pentagram by Larry Flynt? In this upside-down country of lying presidents, and corruption diseased politicians it seems almost natural that the one true champion of real American values is a world class pornographer. After all Larry Flynt went to the Supreme Court and won his counter suit case against Jerry Falwell who sued Flynt for a satirical cartoon he published showing Falwell having his first sexual encounter with his mother. Ironically Falwell copied the Hustler ad giving Flynt the opportunity to counter sue for copyright infringement.

That was all great fun and games, especially when Flynt won his case in the Supreme Court, also dramatized in the film, The People vs. Larry Flynt. Now we have this incredibly corrupt federal government and Flynt is again championing the banner of free speech winning his suit against the Pentagon to allow his reporters to cover the war in Afghanistan, and paving the way for the media to cover the war in Iraq. Incidentally HBO is running a very true to life miniseries called Generation Kill, written by front line reporter Evan Wright, based on a book he wrote on his exploits. No doubt, if not for Flynt, this exposé of the war in Iraq would not be possible.

More irony abounds when you find that Flynt's court case with Falwell was coined "God versus the Devil", considering Flynt is the one standing for truth and justice against the warmonger driven, lie telling, Pentagon trying to cover it's lawlessness and fascism with a media blackout. So which one was God and which was the Devil? Even Falwell ended up becoming friends with Flynt.

All of this comes to the fore when you look at the recent IFC release of Larry Flynt: The Right to Be Left Alone. I caught it's cable premier on IFC and was amazed at what Larry Flynt has done for our country. Besides the landmark court cases he's won, you may recall his career killing exposé of Congressman Robert Livingston during the Clinton impeachment debacle, leading to Livingston's resignation and probably the cooling of the impeachment proceedings. In 2007 Flynt offered a million dollars to anyone who could show they had a sexual encounter with a member of congress. He did this in retaliation for the government's years of investigations into his own life, and found numerous good leads to information.

You can still find God, truth, and justice in this country. They are just in the most unexpected of places.