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DO DISCLOSURES OF ATROCITIES CHANGE ANYTHING?

July 31, 2010 – 5:31 pm

The aim of the Wikileaks may be to end the war in Afghanistan but as history shows, such disclosures might not be as effective as one thinks. But more than that, as CounterPunch editor Alexander Cockburn points out, the importance lies in getting the facts and information out in the open and consigning them at once to the judgment of the world.

The hope of the brave soldier who sent 92,000 secret US documents to Wikileaks was that their disclosure would prompt public revulsion and increasing political pressure on Obama to seek with all speed a diplomatic conclusion to this war. The documents he sent Wikileaks included overwhelming documentary evidence - accepted by all as genuine, of:

- the methodical use of a death squad made up of US Special Forces, known as Task Force 373,
- willful, casual  slaughter of civilians by Coalition personnel, with ensuing cover-ups,
- the utter failure of “counter-insurgency” and “nation building”,
- the venality and corruption of the Coalition’s Afghan allies,
- the complicity of Pakistan’s Intelligence Services with the Taliban.

Wikileaks’ founder, Julian Assange, skillfully arranged simultaneous publication of the secret material in the New York Times, the Guardian and Der Spiegel.

The story broke on the eve of a war-funding vote in the US Congress. Thirty-six hours after the stories hit the news stands, the US House of Representatives last Tuesday evening voted Aye to a bill already passed by the Senate that funds a US$33-billion, 30,000-troop escalation in Afghanistan. The vote was 308 to 114. To be sure, more US Reps voted against escalation than a year ago when the Noes totted up to only 35. That’s a crumb of comfort, but the cruel truth is that in 24 hours the White House, Pentagon, with the help of  licensed members of the Commentariat and influential papers like the Washington Post, had finessed the salvoes from Wikileaks.

“WikiLeaks disclosures unlikely to change course of Afghanistan war” was the Washington Post’s Tuesday morning headline. Beneath this headline the news story said the leaks had been discussed for only 90 seconds at a meeting of senior commanders in the Pentagon.

The story cited “senior officials” in the White House even brazenly claiming that that it was precisely his reading of these same raw secret intelligence reports a year ago that prompted Obama “to pour more troops and money into a war effort that had not received sufficient attention or resources from the Bush administration.” (As in: “Get that death squad operating more efficiently” - an order enacted  by Obama’s appointment of General McChrystal as his Afghan commander, elevated from his previous job as top US Death Squad general in charge of the Pentagon’s world-wide operations in this area.)

DEFINE TERRORIST?
There are logs showing that Task Force 373 simply killed their targets without attempting to capture. The logs reveal that TF 373 has also killed civilian men, women and children and even Afghan police officers who have strayed into its path.

There’s some truth in the claim that long before Wikileaks released the 92,000 files the overall rottenness and futility of the Afghan war had been graphically reported in the press. Earlier this year, for example, reporting by Jerome Starkey of The Times of London blew apart the US military’s cover-up story after Special Forces troops killed two pregnant Afghan women and a girl in a February 2010 raid, in which two Afghan government officials were also killed.

It’s oversell to describe the Wikileaks package as a latterday Pentagon Papers. But it’s undersell to dismiss them as “old stories” as disingenuous detractors have been doing. The Wikileaks files are a damning series of snapshots of a disastrous and criminal enterprise.

In the Wikileaks files there is a compelling series of secret documents about the death squad operated by the US military known as Task Force 373, an undisclosed “black” unit of special forces, which has been hunting down targets for death or detention without trial. From Wikileaks for the first time we learn that more than 2,000 senior figures from the Taliban and al-Qaida are held on a “kill or capture” list, known as Jpel, the joint prioritized effects list.

There are logs showing that Task Force 373 simply killed their targets without attempting to capture. The logs reveal that TF 373 has also killed civilian men, women and children and even Afghan police officers who have strayed into its path.

One could watch Assange being interviewed on US news programs where he would raise the fact that the US military has been - is still - running a death squad along the model of the Phoenix Program, his  interviewers simply changed the subject. Liberal gate-keepers complained that the Wikileaks documents were raw files, unmediated by responsible imperial journalists such as themselves. This echoed the usual ritual whines from the Pentagon about the untimely disclosures of “sources and methods”.

The bitter truth is that wars are not often ended by disclosures of their horrors and futility in the press, with consequent public uproar.

What does end wars? One side is annihilated, the money runs out, the troops mutiny, the government falls, or fears it will. With the U.S. war in Afghanistan none of these conditions has yet been met.

Disclosures from the mid-1950s that the French were torturing Algerians amid the war of independence were numerous. Henri Alleg’s famous 1958 account of his torture, La Question, sold 60,000 copies in a single day. Torture duly became more pervasive, and the war more savage, under the supervision of a nominally Socialist French government.

After Ron Ridenhour and then Seymour Hersh broke the My Lai massacre in 1968 in Vietnam with over 500 men, women and babies methodically, beaten, sexually abused, tortured and then murdered by American GIs - a tactless disclosure of “methods” - there was public revulsion, then an escalation in slaughter. The war ran for another seven years.

It is true, as Noam Chomsky pointed out to me last week, when I asked him for positive examples, that popular protest in the wake of press disclosures “impelled Congress to call off the direct US role in the grotesque bombing of rural Cambodia. Similarly in the late ’70s, under popular pressure Congress barred Carter, later Reagan, from direct participation in virtual genocide in the Guatemalan highlands, so the Pentagon had to evade legislation in devious ways and Reagan had to call in terrorist states, primarily Israel, to carry out the massacres.”

Even though New York Times editors edited out the word “indiscriminate” from Thomas Friedman’s news report of Israel’s bombing of Beirut in 1982, TV news footage from Lebanon prompted President Reagan to order Israeli prime minister Begin to stop, and he did. (On one account, which I tend to believe,  the late Michael Deaver, was watching live footage of the bombing in his White House office and went to Reagan, saying “This is disgusting and you should stop it.”)

This happened again when Peres’s forces bombed the UN compound in Qana in 2006, causing much international outrage, and Clinton ordered it ended. There was a repeat once more in 2006, with another bombing of Qana that aroused a lot of international protest. But as Chomsky concludes in his note to me, “I think one will find very few such examples, and almost none in the case of really major war crimes.”

So one can conclude pessimistically that exposure of war crimes, torture and so forth, often leads to  intensification of the atrocities, with government and influential newspapers and commentators  supervising a kind of hardening process. “Yes, this - murder, torture, wholesale slaughter of civilians - is indeed what it takes.” Even though this pattern is long-standing, it often comes as a great surprise. A friend of mine was at a dinner with the CBS news producers, shortly before they broke the Abu Ghraib tortures. Almost everyone at the table thought that Bush might well be impeached.

“The first duty of the press is to obtain the earliest and most correct intelligence of the events of the time, and instantly, by disclosing them, to make them the common property of the nation… The Press lives by disclosures… For us, with whom publicity and truth are the air and light of existence, there can be no greater disgrace than to recoil from the frank and accurate disclosure of facts as they are. We are bound to tell the truth as we find it, without fear of consequences - to lend no convenient shelter to acts of injustice and oppression, but to consign them at once to the judgment of the world.”
- Robert Lowe, 1851

The important constituency here is liberals, who duly rise to the challenge of unpleasant disclosures of imperial crimes. In the wake of scandals such as those revealed at Abu Ghraib, or in the Wikileaks files, they are particularly eager to proclaim that they “can take it” - i.e., endure convincing accounts of monstrous tortures, targeted assassinations by US forces, obliteration of wedding parties or entire villages, and emerge with ringing affirmations of the fundamental overall morality of the imperial enterprise.

This was very common in the Vietnam war and repeated in subsequent imperial ventures such as the sanctions and ensuing attack on Iraq, and now the war in Afghanistan. Of course in the case of Israel it’s an entire way of life for a handsome slice of America’s liberals.

What does end wars? One side is annihilated, the money runs out, the troops mutiny, the government falls, or fears it will. With the US war in Afghanistan none of these conditions has yet been met. The US began the destruction of Afghanistan in 1979, when President Jimmy Carter and his National Security Advisor Zbigniev Brzezinksi started financing the mullahs and warlords in the largest and most expensive operation in the CIA’s history until that time.

Here we are, more than three decades later, half buried under a mountain of horrifying news stories about a destroyed land of desolate savagery and what did one hear on many news commentaries earlier this week? Indignant bleats often by liberals, about Wikileaks’ “irresponsibility” in releasing the documents; twitchy questions such as that asked by The Nation’s Chris Hayes on the Rachel Maddow Show: “I wonder ultimately to whom WikiLeaks ends up being accountable.”

The answer to that last question was given definitively in 1851 by Robert Lowe, editorial writer for the London Times. He had been instructed by his editor to refute the claim of a government minister that if the press hoped to share the influence of statesmen, it “must also share in the responsibilities of statesmen.”

“The first duty of the press,” Lowe wrote, “is to obtain the earliest and most correct intelligence of the events of the time, and instantly, by disclosing them, to make them the common property of the nation… The Press lives by disclosures… For us, with whom publicity and truth are the air and light of existence, there can be no greater disgrace than to recoil from the frank and accurate disclosure of facts as they are. We are bound to tell the truth as we find it, without fear of consequences - to lend no convenient shelter to acts of injustice and oppression, but to consign them at once to the judgment of the world.”

Note: Alexander Cockburn (together with Jeffrey St Clair) edits CounterPunch. The veteran political journalist also writes the “Beat the Devil” column for The Nation and a weekly syndicated column for the Los Angeles Times as well as for The First Post, which is syndicated by Creators Syndicate. He can be reached at alexandercockburn@asis.com. The above article was posted at CounterPunch.

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U.S. TREASURY IS RUNNING ON FUMES

July 31, 2010 – 4:09 am

The Obama regime has made war the business of America but as Paul Craig Roberts points out, it is these wars that are bankrupting America. The US economy and the well-being of Americans are being sacrificed to the regime’s wars.

The White House is screaming like a stuck pig. WikiLeaks’ release of the Afghan War Documents “puts the lives of our soldiers and our coalition partners at risk.”

What nonsense. Obama’s war puts the lives of American soldiers at risk, and the craven puppet state behavior of “our partners” in serving as US mercenaries is what puts their troops at risk.

Keep in mind that it was someone in the US military that leaked the documents to WikiLeaks. This means that there is a spark of rebellion within the Empire itself.

And rightly so. The leaked documents show that the US has committed numerous war crimes and that the US government and military have lied through their teeth in order to cover up the failure of their policies. These are the revelations that Washington wants to keep secret.

If Obama cared about the lives of our soldiers, he would not have sent them to a war, the purpose of which he cannot identify. Earlier in his regime, Obama admitted that he did not know what the mission was in Afghanistan. He vowed to find out what the mission was and to tell us, but he never did. After being read the riot act by the military/security complex, which recycles war profits into political campaign contributions, Obama simply declared the war to be “necessary.” No one has ever explained why the war is necessary.

If Obama cared about the lives of our soldiers, he would not have sent them to a war [in Afghanistan], the purpose of which he cannot identify.

The government cannot explain why the war is necessary, because it is not necessary to the American people. Any necessary reason for the war has to do with the enrichment of narrow private interests and with undeclared agendas. If the agendas were declared and the private interests being served identified, even the American sheeple might revolt.

The Obama regime has made war the business of America. Escalation in Afghanistan has gone hand in hand with drone attacks on Pakistan and the use of proxy forces to conduct wars in Pakistan and North Africa. Currently, the US is conducting provocative naval exercises off the coasts of China and North Korea and instigating war between Columbia and Venezuela in South America. Former CIA director Michael Hayden declared on July 25 that an attack on Iran seems unavoidable.

With the print and TV media captive, why doesn’t Washington simply tell us that the country is at war without going to the trouble of war? That way the munitions industry can lay off its workers and put the military appropriations directly into profits. We could avoid the war crimes and wasted lives of our soldiers.

The US economy and the well-being of Americans are being sacrificed to the regime’s wars. The states are broke and laying off teachers. Even “rich” California, formerly touted as “the seventh largest economy in the world,” is reduced to issuing script and cutting its state workers’ pay to the minimum wage.

Supplemental war appropriations have become routine affairs, but the budget deficit is invoked to block any aid to Americans - but not to Israel. On July 25 the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, reported that the US and Israel had signed a multi-billion dollar deal for Boeing to provide Israel with a missile system.

Any necessary reason for the war [in Afghanistan] has to do with the enrichment of narrow private interests and with undeclared agendas. If the agendas were declared and the private interests being served identified, even the American sheeple might revolt.

Americans can get no help out of Washington, but the US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, declared that Washington’s commitment to Israel’s security is “not negotiable.” Washington’s commitment to California and to the security of the rest of us is negotiable. War spending has run up the budget deficit, and the deficit precludes any help for Americans.

With the US bankrupting itself in wars, America’s largest creditor, China, has taken issue with America’s credit rating. The head of China’s largest credit rating agency declared: “The US is insolvent and faces bankruptcy as a pure debtor nation.”

On July 12, Niall Ferguson, an historian of empire, warned that the American empire could collapse suddenly from weakness brought on by its massive debts and that such a collapse could be closer than we think.

Deaf, dumb, and blind, Washington policymakers prattle on about “thirty more years of war.”

Note: Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. His latest book, How The Economy Was Lost, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com. The above article was posted at CounterPunch.

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SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY

July 29, 2010 – 10:43 am

Jewish racism knows no boundaries. Though many people of many ethnic origins live between the river and the sea, the Jewish State is not exactly a multi- cultural society. The Israeli legal system is racist to the bone; it is a true mirror of Jewish supremacy and Talmudic tribalism. In the article below, The Guardian continues to follow the astonishing story of Saber Kushour, a young Palestinian man who was convicted of rape after having consensual sex with a Jewish Israeli woman who had believed him to be a fellow Jew. Introduction by jazz musician and writer Gilad Atzmon.

Saber Kushour apologises as he asks his guests to move the plastic chairs on his breeze-block balcony a little closer to the door to his house. If he were to sit where they are now, he explains, the electronic tag attached to his ankle would set off an alarm.

Kushour’s edginess is understandable - he is recalling a 15-minute encounter almost two years ago which he says “has destroyed my life”.

Last week the married father of two from east Jerusalem was sentenced to 18 months in jail for the “rape by deception” of a Jewish woman who claimed she would not have had sex with him had she known he was an Arab. What might have been a tawdry episode - casting neither Kushour nor the woman in a favourable light - exploded into a debate in Israel about racism, sexual mores and justice.

“I am paying the price for a mistake that she made,” Kushour, 30, told the Observer. “I was shocked at the sentence - it shows a very vivid and clear racism.” The message from the judge, he says, was that “because you are an Arab and you didn’t make that clear, we are going to punish you”.

In his verdict, Judge Zvi Segal conceded that it was not “a classical rape by force”. He added: “If she hadn’t thought the accused was a Jewish bachelor interested in a serious romantic relationship, she would not have co-operated. The court is obliged to protect the public interest from sophisticated, smooth-tongued criminals who can deceive innocent victims at an unbearable price - the sanctity of their bodies and souls.”

At his home in Sharafat, where he is confined while awaiting an appeal, Kushour tells a different story. The woman has not been identified and has not gone public with her account.

Kushour was buying cigarettes in September 2008 when an unexpected opportunity presented itself for a casual sexual encounter. “Any person in my shoes would have done the same thing,” he says.

A woman in her 20s struck up a conversation as he left the shop to return to his job delivering legal papers around Jerusalem by scooter. “She said ‘you have a nice bike’ and other things which I don’t remember.” Within minutes, he says, he realised that her interest was not confined to small talk.

Kushour speaks fluent, unaccented Hebrew, as do many Palestinians living and working in Jerusalem. The woman asked his name and Kushour replied “Dudu” - a common Israeli name. “Since I was a kid everyone calls me Dudu - even my wife calls me Dudu. It’s a nickname.” At no point, he says, did the woman - who gave her name as Maya - ask if he was Jewish, although he has acknowledged that he said he was single.

The pair went to a small roof area in a nearby office block. “When we were having sex, she was worried that someone would see us, but she never told me to stop. She was more than willing - she initiated it.”

It has been suggested that Kushour presented himself as a bachelor interested in a long-term relationship. If that had been Maya’s concern, Kushour points out, she might have asked him more about his background. After the brief encounter, Kushour tapped Maya’s mobile number into his phone and left. “I didn’t treat her like garbage - this is what she wanted.”

‘My conviction for “rape by deception” has ruined my life’, says Saber Kushour.

Unknown to him, Maya contacted the police after the encounter to lodge a complaint. Kushour says he doesn’t know how or when she realised he was not Jewish. The woman was given a medical examination, presented in court, which showed, according to Kushour, no signs of force or injury.

Six weeks later Kushour was idly flicking through numbers in his mobile’s address book. “I saw ‘Maya’ and I thought ‘who is Maya?’ I had already forgotten about her. I rang the number to see who it was, and then I realised it was the girl. I said ‘Can I see you?’ and we arranged to meet.”

Maya didn’t show up and didn’t respond to Kushour’s calls and texts. But, crucially, she now had a vital piece of information for the pursuit of her complaint - his contact details.

Three days later Kushour received a phone call from the police. “They told me I had a problem and to come to the police station.” He was interrogated for five to six hours, without a lawyer. In the final hour of questioning, the police began to mention a rape claim. Eventually Kushour was handcuffed and taken to a cell.

Over three days the questioning continued. “This was the hardest moment of my entire life,” says Kushour. “I didn’t have a clue what they were going to do.” On the third day, Kushour was taken to court - by this time represented by a lawyer found by his brother - and charged with rape.

He spent the next two months in prison and since then has been electronically tagged and confined to his home. The case came to court last week. His lawyer has told him that, because of the publicity surrounding the case, the appeal may be expedited. In the meantime, says Kushour, “I can’t leave the house, I can’t work, I can’t feed my children.”

Kushour’s conviction has transfixed Israel. Some see echoes of a primeval - and racist - instinct to protect “our” women against outside marauders. Others are outraged at what they see as a blatant injustice, pointing to a backdrop of widespread, systematic and - some say - growing discrimination against Arabs who make up 20 per cent of Israel’s population.

“This is a most amazing decision by the court,” says Tamar Hermann of the Israel Democracy Institute. “Deception is one thing - but to be convicted of rape?” It has, she says, “struck a sensitive chord in the Israeli mainstream of Arabs pretending to be Jews.”

The issue of identity is paramount in a land where both communities regard each other with suspicion and hostility.

Yuval Yonay, a sociology professor at Haifa University, in one of Israel’s few mixed cities, says Kushour’s behaviour “might be improper but it is not rape”. He says that in 16 years of teaching at a university where 20-25 per cent of the student population is Arab, he has “never even heard of a mixed relationship”. Discrimination against Arabs is, he says, evident at all levels.

Some have defended the verdict. “We all have different characteristics, and it is a person’s right to have sexual relations with a person knowing the facts about those characteristics,” Dana Pugach of the Noga Centre for Victims of Crime told the Israeli daily Haaretz.

Kushour says he has had a lot of support over the past week from Israeli Jews. “The problem is not with the people themselves, but those in power,” he says. “I just want justice.”

Whatever the outcome of his appeal, his brief encounter with Maya has turned his life upside down. His relationship with his wife has been severely tested. “I asked her last night to forgive me. She said yes, but I can see the pain and hurt in her eyes.”

Note: Gilad Atzmon was born in Israel and served in the Israeli military. He lives in London, and is the author of two novels: A Guide to the Perplexed and the recently released My One and Only Love. Atzmon is also one of the most accomplished jazz saxophonists in Europe. His latest CD is In Loving Memory of America. Visit Gilad Atzmon at http://www.gilad.co.uk/.

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THE SLEEP OF REASON

July 27, 2010 – 4:15 am

Christopher Nolan’s Inception may be his best film to date but as Critic After Dark Noel Vera says, it’s still a 150-minute house of cards built on the premise of dreaming with little in the picture that has the authentic feel and solidity of real dreams.

It’s okay. Easily the best movie of the summer, though from what I’ve seen so far that’s not saying much. Easily the best thing Nolan’s ever did to date, though from what I’ve seen of his Batman movies, that’s not saying much either.

Plotline bears remarkable similarity to Scorsese’s Shutter Island. Both are overwrought, both strain mightily, both hinge upon Leonardo DiCaprio piercing the elaborate veil of illusion and coming to terms with his private family tragedy.

Plotline also borrows heavily (very heavily) from Philip K. Dick’s remarkable Ubik - down to an elaborate case of industrial espionage involving telepaths and anti-telepaths (Nolan calls them ‘extractors’), and of unsettling, even menacing shifts in reality. Nolan borrows the device of using a commonplace object - in Ubik a coin, in Nolan’s movie a spinning top - to suggest a meta-twist on top of all the other twists.

Nolan’s reached a personal best here. Unlike in the Batman movies, his action sequences here are actually coherent - or at least semi-coherent (he still has trouble with car chases); perhaps the best bit involves Joseph Gordon-Levitt playing both Spiderman and Neo on the walls and ceilings of a hotel hallway - that showed some demented wit. I actually prefer this over The Matrix - the latter was almost all clunky CGI effects, while Nolan’s puzzle-box picture features clean slow-motion footage and on-camera stunts that actually look dangerous.

That’s about as far as this goes: it looks dangerous. Nolan’s constructed a 150-minute house of cards built entirely on the premise of dreaming; for all that, there’s little in the picture that has the authentic feel and, well, solidity of real dreams. Vans may skitter off bridges and elevators drop down shafts and snowbound strongholds go up in flames, but one’s sense of reality is never really threatened, not the way Dick constantly threatens to pull the rug out from under you.

In Ubik, a gritty reality is convincingly presented, a fast-moving plot introduced to capture your attention and whip things along. Unsettling little details show up - milk spoils quickly, technological devices regress to their equivalent in 1939 (a process of devolution, you might say), and the face of one of their associates suddenly starts appearing on coins and on television. It’s a nightmare situation, and the ultimate explanation provided at the end of the book offers little comfort - if anything, only adds to the general sense of paranoia and despair.

Paradoxically, one needs utter realism to sell the fantastic, and Nolan betrays his hand early when he folds an entire city like a taco, then has the veteran extractor (DiCaprio) explain how things work to a neophyte dream architect (a slight and pretty Ellen Page). Dick doesn’t work like that; he throws you into the situation, to sink or swim as best you can.

The movie might have sold its ungainly package if it had style - but that’s Scorsese territory. Nolan manages a handful of striking moments (DiCaprio and Page stepping on and walking up a wall a la Fred Astaire in Royal Wedding; DiCaprio recovering his luggage from the airport carrel, looking around, and realizing that every other face is familiar) but compared to Scorsese he’s strictly a rookie at dream imagery (DiCaprio hugging his wife, who turns into a pillar of crumbling hot coals; a woman mental patient caught pantomiming the drinking of a glass of water; a man carrying children to a lakeside, the man moving backwards, the footage projected forwards), not to mention establishing a sense of menace (DiCaprio’s portentous arrival at the island dock).

All that said, even Scorsese’s intriguingly overdone little thriller pales in comparison to a true Dickian film, David Cronenberg’s Videodrome. Think Ubik crossed with Behind the Green Door - not easy to find examples of science-fiction pornography. Cronenberg’s masterpiece is one transgressive dream image after another (a man kisses a pair of lips on a TV set, his face sinking into the screen; a vagina-like opening appears in the same man’s abdomen, into which he inserts a videocassette - funny how, of the two primal subconscious drives (violence, sex), Nolan’s dream images contain so much of one, so very little of the other). Compared to Scorsese, Cronenberg and Dick, Nolan’s picture - which heavyweight film critic Roger Ebert calls “wholly original, cut from whole cloth” - starts to look rather threadbare, not to mention secondhand.

There’s been criticism of the criticism that the film’s too linear, too literal and bound by logic. “Of course, it’s literal, it’s meant to be. Those are constructed worlds with rules to them that the heroes are meant to circumvent. Thrillers in general are films where the hero bends or breaks the rule at his peril - that’s the very source of the thrill.”

Good point, though I’d point to films like Michel Gondry and Charles Kaufman’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind as the kind of perfeclty valid thriller that doesn’t rely on linear logic, and that Buster Keaton’s Sherlock, Jr. - easily one of the greatest and most beautiful films ever made - is not only a first-rate thriller that doesn’t need much linear logic but is wonderfully funny to boot.

Dodo Dayao of Piling Piling Pelikula labels Nolan’s latest a heist film, and I think he does a better job of calling it better than most critics have done so far. I’d consider it an excellent heist film, then, that attempts an extra twist. Problem with Nolan I suppose is that he doesn’t do twists very well - his mind’s too linear (even his breakthrough hit Memento goes backwards in a more or less straightforward fashion). At most, Inception manages a half-twist that lifts it above, say, Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean movies.

And even redefining the picture as a heist movie… Jules Dassin’s too great an artist, in my opinion, to just do straight genre. His Rififi is the defining heist film, with the actual crime committed in real time, using almost no dialogue. I submit that when things start to go wrong in the story - when destiny (for which the crew’s intricate plan makes few provisions) start to unravel the crew members’ respective lives, Dassin for no apparent reason (a reaction, maybe, to all the grim realism that came before?) throws in a final drive from the countryside back to Paris that feels very much like a dream, more nightmarish (yet free-floating) than anything in Nolan’s movie.

Even Dassin’s most offhand efforts, it must be said, seem superior to Nolan’s big-budget strainings.

Note: You can also email Noel Vera at noelbotevera@hotmail.com.

Click here for more movie reviews.

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ANOTHER PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT FROM $HEEP CITY

July 22, 2010 – 10:56 am

Click on the graphic to watch the video.

This video, A Girl’s Hope, was made by Think Family, a part of the $ingapore government’s National Family Council. It has been seen on television and cable TV since the middle of July. The reference to YOG, Youth Olympic Games, near the end refers to $ingapore hosting the games from August 14 to 26, 2010. The National Family Council and YOG are under the Ministry for Community Development, Youth and Sports.

We invite readers to give their opinion on what message the video delivers. Click on the graphic above to watch the video. All comments will receive a free pass to unofficial live music.

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FUTURE/NOW

July 22, 2010 – 10:55 am

In October 1995, the Recording Industry Association of America was making great advancements in building a wall between music fans and their beloved live music bootlegs. But was it just a battle won by the industry in a war destined for failure? We all know the answer to that now, but things weren’t so certain back then. In that month’s issue of Live! Music Review, editor Bill Glahn, ICE’s Erik Flannigan, and a few anonymous bootleggers surmised about the future.

Rambling Notes (10/95) - The Future of Bootlegs in the United States: Recent events, both overseas and in the United States, have some collectors wondering, “Is this the end of the road for live imports (bootlegs)?” Recent mail to this magazine in response to our reports on changing laws and recent seizures reflects that there is a lot of concern among collectors about the future availability of one of their favorite forms of music collecting. When news of seizures began appearing in such highly distributed publications as USA Today and the ICE Newsletter, the future seemed bleak indeed.

When ICE, probably the most widely read compact disc newsletter in America, ran a report in their September 1995 “Going Underground” column about a new United States federal law and the rash of recent busts in the Northeast, it sent chills up the spines of a large segment of the music collecting community. Respected for the accuracy of their research and information, this column was generally taken as the death knell of the bootleg industry as we know it today. So… is it?

Probably. But certainly not the death of the bootleg industry as a whole. More likely, there will be a return to past form. The likelihood of purchasing CDs which contain inserts featuring a whole catalog of goodies inside, order forms, credit card service and correct business addresses will shortly become a thing of the past (if it isn’t already). With the courts in Europe granting more protection to the artists and official labels, the wide open manufacturing and distribution of “protection gap” recordings is quickly coming to a close. With a new 50-year public domain statute in force, the “gap” has effectively been closed.

Even despite some large and highly publicized raids in Italy earlier this year, a few companies there are still announcing new releases that obviously don’t meet the over-50-year standard. One manufacturer has told us that the secret is to act as if nothing is wrong - in essence, to appear to be official and hope for the best.

“Of course, things are not really OK,” stated our source. “And we are planning to move our business out of the country. But the process of setting up an official business in another country is a time consuming and expensive process. Most likely we will be operating officially in another (unspecified) country by the beginning of next year. It is not our wish to continue in an illegal environment so we must move to a location where the process is still legal.”

But even in a safer manufacturing environment it is unlikely that many of the European “protection gap” specialists will find the business attractive enough financially without the US market. And it appears that, armed with a new federal felony law and greater punitive powers, the authorities in the United States are taking a greater interest in stopping the distribution of bootlegs in America at the point of entry.

Besides the well-documented busts, American distributors of live imports report that US Customs have put discs on hold to check for possible piracy and virtually nothing is being delivered, at least not if it’s landing in New York. “The attrition rate is great at this moment,” states an importer.

Where does this leave the collector? My guess is “down, but not out.” If past history is any indication, there will always be someone willing to fill the collectors’ wants and desires. And we have yet to see any of the new laws tested. One of England’s premier music publications, the New Musical Express, covered a series of raids at British music fairs in which over 70,000 (cumulative) live disc were seized. The British authorities were aided in the raids by representatives of the BPI, th UK equivalent of the RIAA. In a subsequent issue, a small dealer wrote a letter to the editor raising a valid legal question.

“I can’t imagine any other situation where the police receive a complaint (from the BPI) then use the complainants as professional advisors, allow them (not the police) to remove my stock, give them my personal details so that they may telephone me, allow them to interview me in police custody, further allow them to remove my computer/fax machine and anything else they like while letting them search my house. Are they now going to use them as ‘professional’ independent witnesses in a subsequent trial?”

In the US, the RIAA is also used as advisors on cases stemming from their own complaints, although it is improbable that they have ever been given direct seizure and interrogation authority. [Editor’s note: Two years after this article was written, the Chicago Sheriff’s Department acted under direct orders from RIAA operatives. Although the RIAA was not allowed to interrogate the arrested individuals, they were clearly in control of the bust and the Chicago cops were working under their supervision.]

In the US, most busts have resulted in plea bargaining situations and the majority of cases never come to court. Some that have, listed a specific record company or artist/management as the complainant. But one has to wonder, is it proper for the RIAA, an industry organization which exists to increase profits for the major labels, to act as complainant, advisor, and expert witness in broad based complaints regarding live imports.

The idea that customs can hold up shipments until an RIAA representative can advise them on copyright compliance seems absurd. To intrude on the flow of business of small importers [Note: Many who are dealing only in legitimate goods] while the companies that the RIAA represents continue their business unimpeded must certainly be viewed as an obstruction of free trade. The use of taxpayer money to finance a vigorous assault by a business organization on an alleged threat to their profits is something I assumed we left behind at the turn of the last century with government union busting activities. Policing agencies should not be tied up in protecting business interests. They should be capturing drug smugglers, terrorists, murderers, rapists, etc.

But that’s only the way it SHOULD be. The reality is that the flow of live discs has slowed to a trickle when compared to the wide variety of titles available over the last several years. Most assuredly, bootlegs will continue to be made and offered to the music collecting community. Many small independent record shops depend on such things as live discs and used CDs (another target of the RIAA which launched a campaign to collect royalties on secondary sales several year ago, a campaign which backfired with some extensive negative publicity) to turn a profit, finding it impossible to pay their overhead with the pathetically small markup possible on discs manufactured by the “Big 5” music corporations.

One has to wonder, is it proper for the RIAA, an industry organization which exists to increase profits for the major labels, to act as complainant, advisor, and expert witness in broad based complaints regarding live imports.

Without the advertising subsidies that large box stores and higher wholesale costs, the small independent shop/dealer is faced with a dilemma. Pursue every possible avenue or stick to the rules laid down by the companies that are screwing them at every turn?

Those that played by the rules are disappearing fast. Some major independent establishments that had become landmarks in their communities, such as Houston’s Infinite Records and Minneapolis’ Flipside Records, stores that catered to the music fan as opposed to the occasional hit buyer, stores that have lasted over a decade, have closed their doors in the last year. The occasional rare record sale and indie band product were not enough to pay the light bills.

The biggest loss to the music community with the closing of those stores was the availability of new sounds by unsigned bands and a huge variety of different musical styles. This is a MAJOR setback for music fans. The biggest complaint that we hear from avid music fans is “there’s no variety on the radio.” Picture a scenario where there’s no variety in the music stores either. A frightening thought!

Other independent stores that don’t find a moral objection to bootlegs would rather risk the legal problems than close the doors if that is what’s necessary. Unless the government goes completely bonkers and launches another “Operation Intercept” (a costly and ineffective program to stop the importation of marijuana in the late ’60s), bootlegs will continue to be a part of the American music culture.

Most likely, availability will mirror the vinyl days in both supply and the types of artists offered. Erik Flannigan, editor and writer of the Going Underground column in ICE, offered the following speculation in a conversation with this writer: “I think you’ll see the disappearing of the ‘flavor of the month’ bands on bootlegs. With smaller distribution, the labels will be less likely to take a chance on artists that haven’t yet proven to have long-term collectability. I think you’ll see a resurgence in the amount of ‘dinosaur’ bands being offered.”

In terms of quality, Flannigan offers: “It could be a double-edged sword. A return to the collector/fan manufacturer (as opposed to the profit driven entrepreneur) will probably yield a higher percentage of interesting and quality releases. On the other hand, the more limited availability could result in some pretty shoddy releases to fill the fans hunger for something/anything in the way of live discs.”

With decreased availability and continuing demand (not to mention higher risk) prices could possibly escalate back to late ’80s highs of US$30-35. Other fcators, though, may effect price, mostly due to new technology. In a feature article in the October 1995 Musician magazine, writer P. J. Huffstutter wrote: “The Internet has quietly become the world’s largest jukebox, a haven for cyberfans who believe music was meant to be free.” Although the article focuses largely on cyber pirates (the posting and downloading of official releases), Huffstutter states that about 1/5th of the postings are live concerts. Flannigan scoffs at such a premise and with good reason, “The technology just hasn’t reached the point yet where such access to music is practical.”

In fact, a group of Australian artists, worried about the lack of laws governing the Internet, recently went before the Australian Parliament with a demonstration of how music can be transferred over the phone lines from computer to computer. Even though the demonstration was meant to show a need for legislation to govern Internet transfers of music, it proved to be less than persuasive by taking over two hours to download a new song by Neil Finn (with members of Midnight Oil, INXS, and the Hoodoo Gurus) called “Be My Guest” in passable quality, using a typical PC computer with a 14.4 modem and requiring additional software (Apple’s QuickTime).

At the rate in which computer technology is advancing, such a scenario that could (will?) be exploited more effectively by major record companies than by bootleggers. When the companies can sell their music directly to the consumer in such a manner, the majors may decide to bypass the music stores completely, selling music directly to the public in a direct marketing setup that is unprecedented. This is a possibility only if both laws and technology are in place. My own suspicion is that this is years away but a definite possibility. If the Austraian Parliament reaction is any indication (despite the poor showing they made an informal commitment to place a priority on updating transmission rights) the laws will be in place before the technology can be used.

I believe the CD-R will do more to keep bootleg prices (and corporate monopoly?) in check. The recordable CD technology is already available and affordable to a large segment of music collectors. Blank discs can be purchased for as little as $7.50 each in bulk wholesale purchases (the way most serious tape collectors now buy their tape). As a music archivist, my primary attraction to bootleg CDs has been that the CD itself is a better storage mechanism than its tape counterpart. There is a large community of tape traders who buy bootleg CDs only if they contain quality material that is unobtainable in their circle of tape traders. The CD-R will no doubt become the next level for tape traders.

There is also that portion of the collecting community that will utilize CD-R home recorders to make their own version of the commercial bootleg by using their computer skills to make jewel case inserts from PC graphics to give a more manufactured appearance - then sell them as “limited editions.” A few of these are already beginning to appear at record conventions around the country.

The CD-R medium has great potential for the live disc collector, but it does have limitations. The biggest, no doubt, is that the recording will only be as good as the source tape used. It is quite likely that if you saw a CD-R of a Led Zeppelin show from 1977, for instance, listed in five different dealer’s catalogs, the quality of each dealer’s copy would be different. Whereas, if you purchase a Gold Standard manufactured disc from five different vendors, the quality would be identical.

Erik Flannigan brings up another reason why the impact of CD-Rs on the sales of commercial bootlegs may be limited. “Collector’s like to buy commercially manufactured products.” And indeed, the shopping experience is firmly entrenched in the American psyche. The idea that something is manufactured on equipment available to eveyone makes it somehow “less real.” Personally, I subscribe to this theory also, finding a certain fascination with a lot of the bootleg packaging over the years. How do you compare a “video snapshot” image to a classic piece of William Stout artwork?

Indeed, the obstacle of providing a product that can be touched, admired, fondled, and even bonded with would probably be the biggest obstacle standing in the way of the corporate music industry in any attempt to turn music into a bland product to be delivered like so much junk mail. Let’s hope so.

2010 Update: While our crystal ball wasn’t functioning at 100 per cent in 1995, the basic premise of the article stands. Who could have perceived that the music industry would do the unthinkable and fight the oncoming technology. It’s amazing that Hilary Rosen can find a job anywhere these days after botching the future of the major labels so effectively. So now Apple controls the vast majority of online music sales, not the labels. And CD-Rs have plummeted from $7.50 a disc to 15 cents a disc. Laws were passed as speculated, but they’ve been ineffective in stopping the flow of illegal downloads. Which can now be accomplished in seconds rather than hours. What used to be live rarities are now only a mouse click away. Newer artists are embracing the new technology to connect with fans and developing new approaches on the fly. The big winners are the fans. The biggest losers, the labels. Cool.

Note: Bill Glahn wrote, edited and published Live! Music Review, a magazine devoted to bootleg recordings when bootlegs were not so common. And they are still not so common today. Live! Music Review is now on Facebook (click here) and on Twitter (LMRonTwit). Do drop by to say hello and, as Bill says, all comments welcome.

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THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

July 20, 2010 – 4:07 am

A yakuza leader in Teruo Ishii’s Grand Guignol movie, Blind Woman’s Curse, is conflicted between taking revenge, obeying her father’s wishes and following her heart but rises to the occasion when a rival wants to take over her territory and when she finds someone stalking her. Stephen Tan reviews.

As a leader of the Tachibana family, Akemi leads a group of her fighters to take on an opposing clan and, in the process, wounds a young girl who was trying to protect her brother. Akemi is later imprisoned but during a quarrel among the inmates, the other women prisoners discover her identity and accept her as their head.

After she is released, Akemi is back running the family. She has also been instructed by her late father to avoid bloodshed and violence. However, rival yakuza chief Dobashi is not so honorable. He wants to control the territory and creates trouble by pitting Aozora and his gang against the Tachibana. But Aozora is no match for Akemi.

In the meantime, Dobashi finds another thorn in his side in Tani, a drifter who can’t stand any form of injustices. However, there is a traitor, Tatsu, in Akemi’s camp and Dobashi receives unexpected help from a mysterious blind swordswoman, Aiko. Soon, Akemi’s members are killed off, one by one, with the tattoos on their backs ripped off. At the same time, the police raid Akemi’s charges in the market for drugs.

Chie, the daughter of shopowner Ojiki, comes across a woman who is slipping drugs into the market square but before the woman can be brought to Akemi, she is killed by Tatsu. Chie is kidnapped and brought to Dobashi, and Ojiki, a leader of the Tachibana clan, is killed by Tatsu and his men. Unbeknownst to him, Aiko helps Tani to rescue Chie.

Aiko’s hunchback servant brings Ojiki’s decapitated head to Akemi, who then leads a core group, including Tani, to confront Dobashi. During the fight, Aiko reveals that Akemi blinded her when she tried to save her brother earlier and she now wants her revenge. Even though Aiko defeats Akemi, she realises that her revenge was a futile effort and decides to spare Akemi’s life.

There cannot be many movies with their own resident tattoo artist but Teruo Ishii’s Blind Woman’s Curse (1970) has Koyo Kawano on hand to lend his artistic expertise. After all, the tattoos are a key feature of this movie - all the members of the Tachibana clan have tattoos etched on their backs but it is Akemi who bears the head of a dragon. One of the film’s jokes is that Kantaro is treated as a “baby” brother as he bears the dragon tail and one of the film’s designs is that when the members of the Tachibana line up side by side, one can see the dragon “form” on their backs. Even with the widescreen, the limited space of the studio does not allow the actors to really show off their tattoos in the action sequence, which the director tries at the beginning of the film and in the closing stages.

A common comment about Blind Woman’s Curse is that there seems to be too many things happening, with the film appearing to go in various directions. For some movies, that may be a relevant complaint but Blind Woman’s Curse is not that kind of film. Apart from its straight-ahead samurai swordfights (the film seems to be set in pre-World War II Japan where one of the characters struts around in a bowler hat), there is a supernatural element (Akemi thinks she is cursed) and one can hardly miss the Grand Guignol in Blind Woman’s Curse.

While not working for Dobashi, the blind Aiko works as a knife thrower in a carnival show that is probably the film’s piece de resistance. A half-nude woman on the roof beckons potential audiences; there is a peddlar frying what looks like pieces of human limbs at the entrance and there are children bundled up in baskets calling out for their parents. Aiko’s hunchback servant does a scamper of a dance on stage but it is the hunchback’s lair, with its models of deformed human heads that provides a nightmarish quality to the film.

Actress Meiko Kaji is stoic and praised as the embattled Akemi but her role is quite limited. Fearful of being cursed (after a black cat had licked the blood off one of her victims), she is conflicted between seeking revenge and following the dictates of her father and, at the same time, she is torn by the feelings she has for vagabond fighter Tani. But time is not spent dwelling on any of these as the film rushes towards its explosive finale.

On the other hand, Shiro Otsuji seems to be enjoying himself as the traitorous Tatsu and veteran actor Toru Abe gets the jeers as the conniving Dobashi. While the film has its share of blood splatter, Blind Woman’s Curse is pretty restrained when it comes to nudity and sex. However, director Teruo Ishii seems to have relaxed his guard when he shows Dobashi’s camp as an opium den where he turns his prostitutes (many of whom are shown topless) into drug addicts. In their drug-addled state, the girls are not only easier to control, they are also able to service more customers. And to take out his anger on Tani and Chie, Dobashi repeatedly dunks them in a water tank.

Ultimately, it is the titular character, Aiko, who has to come to terms with some tragic truth - that circumstances made Akemi her enemy but either one has the heart to kill the other. How she reaches such a decision is not conclusively shown but it is likely viewers will not be bothered either. A tragic ending might have been more satisfying but this is a feel-good movie after all and there is just too much eye candy and enough action to lift any curse off this samurai-yakuza-Grand Guignol mishmash.

Note: The Blind Woman’s Curse DVD (Discotek) is banned in $ingapore.

Click here for more reviews.

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DEMONOID BLOCKS TAIWAN AND CHINA AFTER DoS ATTACK

July 17, 2010 – 3:59 am

Demonoid is without doubt one of the best known BitTorrent trackers on the Internet. Unfortunately, this Internet fame makes the tracker a target for numerous DoS (Denial of Service) attacks. Following one of the latest attacks Demonoid has decided to block many Taiwanese and Chinese IP-ranges. By Ernesto of TorrentFreak.

Demonoid is one of the biggest torrent sites around. Hosted to the west of Russia in Ukraine, the site has settled outside the reach of the various anti-piracy outfits that previously tried to shutter the tracker.

Threats from the movie and music industry aside, Demonoid has also been the target for dozens of large and small DoS (Denial of Service) attacks. Usually these attacks only slow the site down a bit and, in the worst case, they result in several hours of downtime before Demonoid staff take care of the problem.

In mid-June, reports started to come in to TorrentFreak from Chinese and Taiwanese Demonoid users who complained that the site was inaccessible to them. Both the site and tracker were no longer functioning. Browsers reported a “server not found” error and torrents with a Demonoid tracker returned a “error: hostname not found” message.

For the affected users this could mean only two things. Since Demonoid was working fine in other countries, either Chinese and Taiwanese ISPs have started to block Demonoid’s website and tracker, or the people running Demonoid had decided to block IP-ranges from these countries.

To find out more about the origin of the connection issues, a TorrentFreak reader based in Taiwan decided to contact his Internet provider, who dismissed the first option after some investigating.

“We cannot access Demonoid.com either,” he was informed by his ISP. “We attempted to access the site via the other ISPs in Taiwan but all these attempts failed. We determined that there is no connection problem. The Demonoid server is rejecting all requests from Taiwanese IP-addresses.”

Despite the fact that Demonoid’s owner has never responded to our inquiries in the past, we asked for a comment on the blocking issue and got a swift response. Indeed, as we initially guessed, Demonoid is actively blocking IP-ranges in Taiwan and parts of China because that’s where the DoS attacks come from.

“There is a DoS coming mostly from there,” Demonoid’s admin told TorrentFreak in a brief reply.

We have yet to receive an answer to the question whether the block is temporary or permanent. In the meantime, affected users can bypass the restrictions by using a VPN-service. Both ItsHidden and VPNReactor offer free, but limited accounts.

Note: Visit TorrentFreak.com for more updates.

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YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO SEE THESE PICTURES OF THE OIL SPILL, CITIZEN… DO NOT LOOK!

July 15, 2010 – 11:33 am

On April 20, 2010, an explosion at the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 workers and injured 17 others. It also resulted in what is seen as the largest offshore oil spil in US history. It’s almost three months since the oil spill started and Jonathan Elinoff has rounded up pictures of the spill and its effects at Washington’s Blog.

For about three months there has been a drought of pictures documenting BP’s Gulf Coast oil spill. That will likely change very soon.

Due to popular rage at the ban on reporters and photographers from the vicinity of the oil spill, US Coast Guard admiral Thad Allen on July 12 has rescinded the ban (which came into force on July 1).

In May, Newsweek reported that local and federal officials - working with BP - were blocking access to the sites where the effects of the spill were most visible - “a CBS TV crew was threatened with arrest when attempting to film an oil-covered beach”.

On July 12, the NPR reported:

In early July, the freelance photographer Lance Rosenfield was standing on a public street in the town of Texas City, Texas, on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. He was taking shots of street signs and of a nearby BP oil refinery - one of the largest in the country.

A few minutes later, as he filled his car’s tank at a gas station, Rosenfield found himself penned in by police cars. A BP security guard was close behind. And, beckoned by his colleagues, a local police official assigned to an FBI task force arrived as well. They asked Rosenfield about the story he was working on. Over the next 20 minutes or so, the photographer gave his name, address, driver’s license and Social Security number - and was convinced - or pressured, take your pick - to show his photographs. All of the material was shared with the BP security guard.

For a more immediate report, CNN’s Anderson Cooper’s video clip on July 1, titled “Obama admin bans press from filming BP oil spill areas in the Gulf”, is widely watched on YouTube.

A dolphin pulled from the gulf…. [click on the pictures for a better view]

A Greenpeace activist steps through oil on a beach along the Gulf of Mexico on May 20, 2010 near Venice, Louisiana. (John Moore/Getty Images)

A Brown Pelican sits in heavy oil on the beach at East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast Thursday, June 3, 2010. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Oil is seen on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico about six miles southeast of Grand Isle, Louisiana May 21, 2010. (REUTERS/Sean Gardner)

 Crews try to clean an island covered in oil on the south part of East Bay May 23, 2010. (REUTERS/Daniel Beltra/Greenpeace)

An aerial view of the oil leaked from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead, May 6, 2010. (REUTERS/Daniel Beltra)

Note: For more pictures, visit Washington’s Blog.

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LAW AND ORDERED

July 13, 2010 – 4:32 am

A man, in Masuyuki Suo’s I Just Didn’t Do It, is accused of molesting a student. He is asked to plead guilty and pay a fine. Instead, he claims innocence and his life in the Japanese court becomes a hell on earth. As Critic After Dark Noel Vera says, this is possibly the most harrowing film he has seen in recent years.

Masayuki Suo’s Soredemo Boku Wa Yattenai (I Just Didn’t Do It, 2006) starts with the simplest of cases, a young man groping a girl in an overcrowded subway train. Teppei Kaneko (Ryo Kase) is accused of sexual harassment by a 15-year-old student; he’s dragged off to the police station, where he’s asked to just pay the fine. But he doesn’t; he insists he is innocent, and that, from a very real and practical point of view, is his first big mistake.

It’s amazing what a number, properly wielded, can do for a reputation. The Japanese legal system is proud of one particular number: 99.9 per cent. That’s the rate of guilty convictions they have won over the years, and it’s an impressive figure any way you slice it - it implies that once a man is accused of a crime in Japan, 99.9 times out of a hundred there will be enough of a case, backed up by sufficient evidence, to prove that the defendant is guilty.

Akira Kurosawa showed us some of that ferocious law enforcer thoroughness in his crime drama High And Low (1963), when Detective Tokura (Tatsuya Nakadai, soft-spoken, excellent as always) directs his army of detectives to catch a kidnapper and blackmailer. Kurosawa never does things by halves; the detectives throw themselves bodily into work - interviewing witnesses, examining super 8 film footage, visiting public phone booths from which the kidnapper may have peered up at his victim’s house.

Every sense is alert, every analytical technique primed for immediate implementation; Kurosawa so thoroughly ratchets up the tension in his search for the kidnapper that when someone looking out a window points out a damning plume of pink smoke - the only splash of color in this relentlessly black-and-white film - the moment feels electric, like a climactic release.

The case has broken; the kidnapper (who has just burnt a crucial briefcase designed to emit the aforementioned colored smoke) will soon be arrested. At one point, Detective Tokura encourages his officers by saying they shouldn’t settle for kidnapping when murder would be a better crime to pin on the man. It’s an inspiring bit of motivational talk, only after watching Suo’s film I can’t help but feel that the remark has acquired a more sinister undertone.

Suo’s would make an interesting companion piece to Kurosawa’s thriller; both are procedurals, both record in excruciating depth of detail two opposing ends of the legal process - the former outlining the methods by which the police catch their quarry, the latter the methods by which the police and legal system draw, quarter, and hang the carcasses out to dry.

The process starts innocently enough: Teppei with some difficulty finds himself a defense lawyer in Arakawa (Koji Yakusho, the charming salaryman turned dancer in Suo’s 1996 Shall We Dance?); Arakawa in turn educates Teppei on the intricacies of the system. Odd things start to happen: testimonies are altered, reports are either lost or declared nonexistent, specific questions are pointedly not asked. The judge is changed mid-trial, and the new judge is fond of denying the defense’s line of questioning or declaring their evidence irrelevant in favor of the prosecution’s.

At one point judge questions defendant. Suo shoots judge and Teppei head-on, then cuts between the two with increasing frequency as the judge proceeds to take Teppei’s story apart. It’s a marvelous (and blood-chillingly deft) performance, with the judge treating Teppei’s testimony like a boiled crab - pulling the story open, using one detail as a pick to tease out every contradiction, every damning implication.

By sequence’s end Teppei looks angry and violated; the judge gazes down at him to give a polite smile (you can almost see the remains of his story, piled high and steaming, on a plate in front of him). The man has practically done the prosecutor’s job for him, and Teppei looks that much closer to serving time.

Forget Rob Zombie; forget Michael Haneke or Lars Von Trier - this is possibly the most harrowing film I’ve seen in recent years. Suo, who has always seemed satisfied to do crowd-pleasing (if skillfully made) comedies (the delightful Shiko funjatta [Sumo Do, Sumo Don’t, 1992]; the enchanting Shall we dansu? [Shall We Dance, 1996]), here applies his considerable comic skills to the dry, deadpan, and utterly persuasive depiction of the Japanese legal system’s less salubrious side - turns out that 99.9 per cent number doesn’t mean all those people arrested are necessarily guilty, but that the entire system is geared and motivated and paid very well to maintain the 99.9 per cent guilty rate. That means every one, from the arresting officers to the prison guards to the judges at the bench will suggest relentlessly but ever so politely to you to just cut out the bullshit and confess your crime.

What makes Suo’s vision of hell (and it is in my book a veritable Hell on Earth) unique is how utterly neutral and unexciting it is. At moments of high drama he will bring the camera up close for emphasis, but those are the only times I’ve caught him doing anything overtly entertaining. Usually he seems content to simply state the facts, shooting defendant and the lawyers surrounding him full-on, under bright florescent lights, amidst modern plastic furniture.

Teppei might well be an applicant for a job, or a new driver’s license, or any number of activities and services that run on bureaucratic machinery. And yet Suo keeps us on tenterhooks; we wait with bated breath for the grindingly slow gears of the legal apparatus to turn, turn, turn, and we hope against hope that perhaps, maybe this time, Teppei just might be one of the lucky 0.1 per cent of defendants who are, in the face of overwhelming evidence in support of his case, acquitted.

What gets me is that the system works, more or less; the Japanese people have not risen up in arms to protest the injustice inherent in their legal system, at least as suggested by this film. Someone once said that everyone gets the government they deserve, and apparently the Japanese feel this is basically the system they want, despite the occasional casualties; I don’t see much sign of the status quo changing anytime soon.

Interesting to compare this to Filipino filmmaker Veronica Velasco’s 2009 Last Supper No. 3. That film is also about a relatively minor offense blown up into a Sisyphean situation, with the defendant climbing an endless amount of stairs to face down an endless amount of paperwork, civil workers, court hearings. Velasco’s film is more overtly comical and absurdist as befits the Filipino legal system, which is also overtly comic and absurd; Suo’s film shows a system that makes all too much sense, a vastly efficient mechanism designed to grind down one’s sense of innocence to a paltry 0.1 per cent. Different hells for different people, I suppose.

I’d love to visit Japan again someday - it’s a lovely country, as films and TV shows and my one visit years back suggest to me. But I would definitely think twice about the possibility of committing a crime - even by accident! - there.

Note: First published in Businessworld, July 2, 2010. You can also email Noel Vera at noelbotevera@hotmail.com.

Click here for more movie reviews.

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