Innocence

When the film was over, the director, Lucile Hadzihalilovic, stayed for a few questions; she told about how she had asked the daughter of her friends if the movie felt strange, who answered: "non, c'est comme ça d'être une fille..." *

The Stockholm Film Festival: Blogged by Cadmus

As both a cinephile and a chionophile, I'm finding this year's November unusually cheerful.
Originally, I thought of blogging about every film I saw, but I realise now it's overly ambitious as well as not so giving neither for me nor for my readers; better quality than quantity.

The only film I've seen so far I'll post a review about for sure is Appleseed. I still have to check to the programme thoroughlly and make a schedule for the rest of the week. As soon as I've done that, I'll post it. My blogging will be sporadic this week, but that's better than the last forth week, ain't it?

Film I'd possibly like to see today are War, Innocence, 20 Fingers, Tokyo Godfathers, The Story of the Ramones, Chrystal, and Breaking News.

The Friday Four

Via Stefan Geens, I just discovered Fredags Fyran. Since I feel sleepy tonight, I'll jump on this opportunity to do some light blogging.

This friday's questions are:

1) Won the right person the election?

hmmm... feels like my blog as been mostly about this question in one way or another this far, much as I want to write about other stuff. You can try to guess the answer after reading, for example this post, or this one. This one too should help.

2) Do we meddle too much in US politics?

Absolutely not. Americans are very insular, and they need more outside influence. Furthermore, given the US weight in world affairs, it's only natural that people should be interested.

3) Who should the president of Sweden?

Svt showed an interesting pseudo-documentary about a fictious presidential election in Sweden. Carl Gustaf Bernadotte was one of the candidates, pitched against a fictious character named Per Vian.
I think Carl Bildt would be a favourite, if he presented himself.
Personnally, I don't care.

4) What would happen if George W. Bush and Carl Gustaf Bernadotte switched jobs?

People would joke about the king's mispronunciations instead of his dyslexia. Americans would probably think that Sylvia fitted her role as First Lady much better that her husband's one as president.

Gay Marriage Gratuitous Helpful Election Issue for Bush

On tuesday, 11 states held ballots on banning same-sex marriage (and in eight of them critics asserted the wording could led to the banning of same-sex civil unions as well). All were approved. (link*)

There's a lot of talk about wether this is the wedge issue that mobilized Bush supporters and pushed the vote his way. Already this spring when the issue came up I felt this would advantage the Bushites. It is all the sadder as it is totally unnecessary. As Juan Cole writes:

[The Democrats] also need to start defusing deadly cultural and "moral" issues that have been so effective for the Republicans. And they need to be sly about it.

For instance, a lot of Democrats would like to see gay marriage or at least civil gay unions passed into law. This is a matter of equity, since gay partners can't even get into a hospital to see an ill partner because hospitals limit visits to close family.

This issue scares the bejesus out of the red states.

But if Democrats were sly, there is a way out. The Baptist southern presidential candidate should start a campaign to get the goddamn Federal government out of the marriage business. It has to be framed that way. Marriage should be a faith-based institution and we should turn it over to the churches. If someone doesn't want to be married in a church, then the Federal government can offer them a legal civil contract (this is a better name for it than civil union). That's not a marriage and the candidate could solemnly observe that they are taking their salvation in their own hands if they go that route, but that is their business. But marriage is sacred and the churches should be in charge of it.

If you succeeded in getting the Federal government out of the marriage business, then the whole issue would collapse on the Republicans. You appeal to populist sentiments against the Feds and to the long Baptist tradition of support for the US first amendment enshrining separation of religion and state.

But the final result would be to depoliticize gay marriage, because the Federal government wouldn't be the arena for arguing about it. The Federal government could offer gays the same civil contract status as it offers straight people who want to shack up legally but without the sanction of a church. As for gays who wanted a church marriage, that would be between them and their church (remember, the Federal government is not in the business, but would go on recognizing church-performed marriages as equivalent legally to the Federal civil contract). The Unitarian Universalists could arrange it for them. The red states' populations can be hostile to the UUists all they like, it wouldn't translate into a victory at the polls for a Republican president.

The final outcome would be both more progressive (the Federal government should not in fact be solemnizing a religioius ceremony like marriage) and also advantageous to the Democrats, and it would leave gays actually better off. [...]

*for fun's sake, I thought it would be nice to link to Faux News; when I searched for 'same-sex marriage bans', I was "alerted" that I had "entered a seach term that is likely to return adult content". I didn't knew there were so many 8 years-old checking Fox... the poor little things could become gay by reading news about such horrible things... or does it tell something about the maturity of the Fox audience? I know, I know, cheap shot.
But they deserve all shots that can hit them, cheap or not: another article, with that so characteristic and insidious orwellian doublespeak, speaks of them as"pro-marriage ballot initiatives" (emphasis added)...

Four more years. Of what?

From the september issue of the Wahington Monthly: "What If Bush Wins?"

Minarchy rules OK!

Today's post is a comment I wrote at Tacitus' while checking people's reactions to the election (light bulb joke included!!).
Now that the election's over (??), I hope it will again become the good discussion place it was before the campaign made it all about Bush-Kerry.
Bush! - Kerry!.
Bush! - Kerry!.
BUSH!!!! - KERRY!!!.

Cyberisolationism

The Bush campaign site has become unavailble outside the US, which has prompted many comments (here, here, here, here, and here), and could have the funny side effect of a lot of people going to www.georgewbush.org*... However, until a couple of days ago of days ago you still access it through alternate URLs: https://georgewbush.com and http://65.172.163.222.

This suggests that whoever blocked the access was not very technically savvy... more like the kind of guy who is pointy-haired or talks about 'the internets'...

Officially (to the extent that campaign officials have bothered to reply), the reason was "security". In that case it was a pre-emptive (what did you expext from Bush-Cheney?) measure; according to the BBC, 'Data gathered by Netcraft on the pattern of traffic to the site shows that the blocking is not the result of another denial of service attack.'.

So, "security" seems to be a lame excuse; a friend of mine who's taking a degree in computer systems security at Stockholm University calls it "total ottershit".

Wether american citizens or not, people outside the US are massively anti-bush; giving the 403 is a server's way of showing this.

*You can still view the real site from outside the US via this site.

Endorsement

I say like Morrisey, Jon Stewart for president!