Our current foreign policy in a nutshell

"Germany owes us billions for helping to defend them."

"Nein."

"Germany owes us nine billion for defending them."

I watch films

Lush adaption of part of John Sayles massive novel about the USA's occupation of the Philippines in the early 20th century.  It's a beautiful but slow moving film.  Good performances and great cinematography can't make up for the snail's pace of the film.  I recommend this one with heavy reservations.

This is the first Fassbinder film I had ever seen.  Sometimes German directors scare me, I'm afraid their films will be too dense and symbolic, but this film is as straight forward as you can get.  It tells the story of an old German woman, she's overweight and not a beauty at all, who meets and falls in love with a Moroccan man who is half her age and who can barely speak her language.  Her family, friends, and neighbors shun her after she marries but she doesn't care, until it all finally gets to her and she suggests a get away with her new husband.  She tells hm people will be more accepting of their unconventional marriage when they return.  Turns out she's right, they are more accepting but only because they all want something from her.  She gives them all what they want but she becomes unhappy and it strains her marriage.  When she finally wises up and puts her marriage back on the right track, her husband gets gravely ill with an ulcer caused by all the stress of being a black African foreign worker in racially obsessed Germany.

I've made the film sound like a downer but it's actually not.  It's a sweet little story about acceptance, love, and remaining true to yourself.  I highly recommend it.

A low level SS officer (Dirk Bogarde) ends up working as a night porter in a swanky hotel after12 years after WW2.  He and some of  his old Nazi buddies work behind the scenes to cover their past, they do this by bringing forth witnesses and documents that could be damaging to them and they dispose of those documents and witnesses.  A woman (the stunningly beautiful Charlotte Rampling) comes in to his hotel one night, she's the wife of a semi famous opera director, the porter recognizes her from his war days.  Turns out she was a prisoner in the death camp he worked in during the war and they were lovers, twisted psycho lovers.  She can't resist the danger of being with the porter once more and once her hubby leaves to go stage his opera in another city, she and the porter hook up once more.  They have crazy disturbing sex.  The porter's old buddies find out about his affair with her and they want it stopped because she was a witness to his wartime atrocities.  He refuses to give her up and at one point he chains her up in his apartment so they can't take her.  Things go down hill for our hell crossed lovers pretty quickly, they're forced to stay holed up in the porter's apartment without food or electricity and when they finally make it out, they get gunned down.

Some of the story is told in flashbacks to the days when the lovers were in the concentration camp and those scenes, as you might imagine, are very disturbing.  Some of the 'love' scenes in the updated story line are disturbing.  He hits her, she cuts his feet, she acts out by crawling around like an animal when she's chained up, it's all pretty repellant.

Not even the extraordinary beauty of Ms. Rampling as the woman in question can save this film from being a shocking repellant disturbing mess.  I saw this film once before back in the late 1980's when I was a huge pothead and I had forgotten most of it.  Having seen it again now that I am sober and clear headed, I can honestly say I never want to see it again.

Cents and sensibility

There is a place, a place that every conservative politician, every teabagger, every Republican should hate. In this place they have strong labor unions that protect workers, high taxes that are used to pay for universal health care, and heavy regulation on business and industry. According to the conventional wisdom, which no conservative or teabagger or Republican really possesses, this place should have a floundering economy that's mired in permanent recession or worse. This place must be hell on earth. But instead, they love this place but they don't ever want to see it's success replicated over here.

What and where is this magical place you ask? Well, it's a country over in Europe and it's an economic powerhouse even though it has stringent regulation on business and industry, even though it has 'socialized medicine,' even though it's workers are overwhelmingly represented by unions and they get three more weeks of vacation that Americans do.

It's Germany.

That's right people, Germany. By all accounts what with the strong unions, the workers getting more time off than we've ever gotten in this country, the high taxes, the redistribution of wealth, the socialized medicine, and the stringent regulations on business and industry Germany should be a basket case. According to the right wing economic pundits and the Milton Friedman acolytes, Germany should be the little country that couldn't. But guess what? Not only is Germany surviving. it's thriving. And it's doing so because of the high regulations, the high taxes, the strong unions, the universal health care, and the numerous holidays it's citizens enjoy.

The reason why the global downturn hasn't hit Germany is simple, there is still demand in Germany for manufactured goods because German workers can afford them. And German workers can afford them because they have strong jobs, employment security, a strong social safety net, and a government that is forward thinking and creating alternative energy jobs. And also because of the fact that on all German, and most European, corporate boards workers have a voice because it's required by law that workers have a seat at the top table.

Germany is doing so well in fact that the buildings and the memorial monument being built at 'Ground Zero' in New York city are being built with steel imported from Germany. Imagine that, the Germans with their highly regulated industry that relies on 'expensive' alternative energy, high unionization, with their highly taxed workforce, can still export steel cheaper than it can be made in the USA.

So the next time you hear a teabagger, a right wing TV or radio pundit scream about unions, keep in mind Germany is one of the most highly unionized countries on earth and it's an economic powerhouse. When they say that fair and equitable taxes and socialized medicine will kill an economy, remember that Germany has high taxes and government run health care and it's the economic leader in the western hemisphere. When they tell you that regulation is strangling business and industry, tell them that Germany has much more regulation that we here in the USA do and that German companies lead the world.

For years they said that if you look closely at the design of a bumblebee it shouldn't be able to fly and yet it does. Well, now I'm telling you we can have a fairly taxed country that has single payer health care for all and one that regulates business and industry in the interests of the highly unionized people. And we actually had that country once, we had it starting in the aftermath of the Great Depression and we kept it going until we allowed Reagan to dismantle it starting in the 1980's. We can do this, we can learn from the successes of post war Germany and we can be great once more.

German paperback cover of the week

Teutonic Numberwang!

Are they getting ready to have elections again in Germany?

They claim terrorism is going to be on the rise in Germany. Hmmmm, isn't Merkel a conservative like Bush? Oh no! Look out Bavaria is loaded with yummy cream and terror! Berlin is full of angst ridden intellectuals, risk taking film directors, and suicide bombers.

But if on the oh so slight chance it is true, then please god keep this one safe:

That's all I'm saying.