THE PIANIST
For us Poles, Chopin symbolizes revolution. It is not surprising that his monument in Warsaw was pulled down during World War II, nor that the wartime struggles led to his music being banned in Poland.
His music is our music -- it's like mother's milk.
-- Roman Polanski
CNN's Headline Article
Muslim Women Uncover Myths About the Hijab
By John Blake, CNN, 8/12/09
(CNN) -- Rowaida Abdelaziz doesn't want your pity. She doesn't want your frosty public stares; the whispers behind her back; the lament that she's been degraded by her father.
What the Muslim high school senior wants you to understand is that she doesn't wear the hijab, the head scarf worn by Muslim women, because she is submissive.
"It represents beauty to me," says Abdelaziz, the 17-year-old daughter of two Egyptian parents living in Old Bridge, New Jersey. "My mom says a girl is like a jewel," Abdelaziz says. "When you have something precious, you usually hide it. You want to make sure you keep it safe until that treasure is ready to be found."
Some women say the hijab makes them feel like they're locked in a cage. But others say it leads to personal freedom.
"It really feels good," she says. "It felt like I was missing something and now I'm complete. I finally understand my purpose."
By John Blake, CNN, 8/12/09
(CNN) -- Rowaida Abdelaziz doesn't want your pity. She doesn't want your frosty public stares; the whispers behind her back; the lament that she's been degraded by her father.
What the Muslim high school senior wants you to understand is that she doesn't wear the hijab, the head scarf worn by Muslim women, because she is submissive.
"It represents beauty to me," says Abdelaziz, the 17-year-old daughter of two Egyptian parents living in Old Bridge, New Jersey. "My mom says a girl is like a jewel," Abdelaziz says. "When you have something precious, you usually hide it. You want to make sure you keep it safe until that treasure is ready to be found."
Some women say the hijab makes them feel like they're locked in a cage. But others say it leads to personal freedom.
"It really feels good," she says. "It felt like I was missing something and now I'm complete. I finally understand my purpose."
Dean Acheson
McCarthy loathed Acheson the most, perhaps because the latter, in McCarthy's eyes, looked the part of an aristocratic traitor. Acheson's elegant clothing, groomed moustache, and manner, which emulated the style of the British upper class, reflected in part the influence of his English mother and in part the Anglophiliac grooming he received at Groton, Harvard College, and Harvard Law School. McCarthy regarded Acheson's demeanor as an act and hated every bit of it; Acheson, he charged, was nothing but a "pompous diplomat in striped pants, with a phony British accent."
excerpt from American Crucible by Gary Gerstle
Censorship and Cinema
"This isn't about politics, but about the right of artists to have their work distributed. This is a shame; its censorship in the most blatant way. I'm not vouching for its accuracy -- it's a dramatization -- but it's an important work and needs to be seen."
LA Times
September 5, 2007
Filmmaker Oliver Stone on the ABC mini-series The Path to 9/11 after the studio decided not to release the DVD due to mounting political pressure from the left
Vision
"One should make movies innocently — the way Adam and Eve named the animals, their first day in the garden…Learn from your own interior vision of things, as if there had never been a D.W.Griffith, or an Eisenstein, or a Ford, or a Renoir, or anybody. "-Welles
Gommorah by Roberto Saviano
Everything that exists passes through here. Through the port of Naples. There's not a product, fabric, piece of plastic, toy, hammer, shoe, screwdriver, bolt, video game, jacket, pair of pants, drill, or watch that doesn't come through here. The port of Naples is an open wound. The end point for the interminable voyage that merchandise makes. Ships enter the gulf and come to the dock like babies to the breast, except that they're here to be milked; not fed.
The port of Naples is the hole in the earth out of which what's made in China comes. The Far East, as reporters still like to cal it. Far. Extremely far. Practically unimaginable. Closing my eyes, I see kimonos, Marco Polo's beard, Bruce Lee kicking in midair. But in fact this East is more closely linked to the port of Naples than to any other place. There's nothing far about the East here. It should be called the extremly near East. the least East. Everything made in China is poured out here. Like a bucket of water dumped into a hole in the sand. The water eats the sand, and the hole gets bigger and deeper.
above Saviano with his personal bodyguards
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