Tomorrow, Monday May 13th, FDL Movie Night presents the 2012 Peabody Award winning film My Neighbourhood, the story of Mohammed El Kurd, a teenage Palestinian boy growing up in the in the heart of East Jerusalem. The 25-minute film shows the surprising turn of events when Mohammed’s family is forced to give up a part of their home to Israeli settlers.

Our guest is do-director Julia Bacha, and My Neighbourhood is the latest short film from Just Vision. Just Vision uses film and media to  promote the efforts of Israelis and Palestinians to peacefully resolve conflicts posed by occupation and resettlement.

You can watch the whole film here. MY NEIGHBOURHOOD

FDL Movie Night is 8-9:30pm ET, 5-6:30pm PT.  If you are registered on Firedoglake.com, simply log in to participate. (Registration is free and easy, just click the button on the top of the page).

To participate in the discussion, ask questions, and make comments use the comment box; and to reply to a specific comment, hit “reply” in that comment’s box.  Refresh the screen every minute or so to see new questions, replies, comments,

A pipeline carrying heavy Canadian crude oil ruptured near Mayflower, Arkansas, spilling more than 10,000 barrels. So far clean-up crews had recovered less than half, approximately 4,500 barrels of oil and water. The leak was discovered on Friday, reports Reuters.

The Pegasus Pipeline which can carry more than 90,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil from Pakota, Illinois, to Nederland, Texas, has been shut down. According to Reuters:

A company spokesman confirmed the line was carrying Canadian Wabasca Heavy crude. That grade is a heavy bitumen crude diluted with lighter liquids to allow it to flow through pipelines, according to the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association (CEPA), which referred to Wabasca as “oil sands” in a report.

This is Exxon’s second spill in a week, highlighting the utter stupidity and horrendous environmental danger of the Keystone XL pipeline project currently under consideration by U.S. State Department. This leakage  occurred under a housing subdivision, it has not yet reached the nearby Lake Conway. The earlier spilled happened Wednesday, a train carrying Canadian crude derailed in Minnesota, spilling 15,000 gallons of oil.

According to Tod Hunter, via Twitter, Exxon is trying to stop photos like this one from being seen.

At an Easter brunch I attended, the Good Friday spill was a major topic of conversation, and one of the guests brought up that members of the First Nations of Canada, including tribes from British Columbia, Northwest Territories and Alberta had walked down to join Native Americans and an

unusual coalition of environmentalists, property rights advocates and ranchers.

opposing Keystone XL. Kandi Mossett, an organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network said:

Specifically, as tribal, First Nation, indigenous communities, we need to ban together to ensure we do hold the State Department and President Obama accountable to making the right decision by denying the permit to build the KXL and by shutting down the southern leg from Oklahoma to Texas.

IndianCountryMedia reports:

Their message was consistent: The federal government has done a poor job of consulting with tribes about the possible health and cultural impacts of the pipeline if it were allowed to carry oil through their homelands. Many of them fervently believe that such development could adversely affect health, have cultural ramifications and destroy sacred sites. 

 

Star Trek is awesome. I remember the first episode I ever saw–I must have been about 7, and my mom always sent me to bed before it came on, but that night she fell asleep on the couch and I got to watch as a pointy eared guy and his captain somehow ended up on modern day Earth trying to catch a mad scientist and his lady friend who would turn into a black cat.  A few years later, the entire series was in reruns, and every night at 6pm, before I Love Lucy, there would be an hour of aliens, be it children who developed weird blue spots as they turned into “grups,” Greek gods forsaken by their worshipers, android women chanting

Harcourt Fenton Mudd

amazing costumes, epic fisticuffs, and of course tribbles. Reading the book, The Trouble with Tribbles, by tonight’s Movie Night guest, David Gerrold gave me, at whatever age I was when it was published, a background into television production and excited me beyond measure about writing as a career. Gerrold wrote the script for The Trouble with Tribbles on spec; it was produced and became one of the most popular episodes ever.  And Star Trek, through eleven films, four lives series (weirdly, my ex-husband has appeared on all four, and is a Star Trek trading card!), an animated series, and ongoing conventions around the world (as well as web series Star Trek Phase 2, for which Gerrold penned a two-part episode) has shaped  our world by boldly going where no man has gone before.

Please join us Monday, March 25 form 5pm-6:30pm west coast time on the front page of firedoglake.com to talk Trek and sci-fi with one of the greats, David Gerrold.

(FYI: All of the Star Trek series are free this month on Hulu!)

NOTE: To participate in Movie Night by asking questions, please make sure you are logged in. If you don’t have a log-in, register using the red button up top. It’s fast and free! At 5pm west coast time, sign in to Firedoglake.com, Type in your questions or comments, hit the “send” button, and please refresh your browser every minute or so to see new questions and responses. To reply to a question, hit the “reply” button. Thanks!

Side note: I don’t mind the IRS making a training video based on Star Trek. WHat I mind is that it sucks.

 

On Saturday, February 10 2008, I had a life changing experience. My friend Maria called me up and said, “Check out this website WhyWeProtest.com, then I’m coming over and we’re walking to the protest.” Uh okay. Little did I realize that just two weeks earlier in my living room, my housemate, journalist Mark Ebner had dullah’ed the nascent Chanology movement, the first real life appearance of “the internet hate machine” aka Anonymous, by flowing the now infamous Tom Cruise Scientology video to Gawker. I thought he was just chasing some story as he babbled into his cell phone, banging away at the computer. But what he actually did was launch Anonymous into the public eye. And the protest Maria dragged me to was the two-headed baby that Mark helped shoot out of the womb of the internet. Or some other equally tortured metaphor.

I spent nearly nine months protesting with Anonymous. I threw myself into it, especially after I ran into people I’d known in earlier phases of my life behind the masks. I was shoved, followed and chased by those we protested and their private goon squads; encouraged, supported (and berated for my hideous typing skills in IRC) by a core group of Anons. We marched in parades and changed a Los Angeles City street closure code through legal means, and generally had fun, goofing late into  the night making jokes in chat rooms. By September 2008, my time in Anon/Project Chanology felt complete, and I stopped visiting our IRC, though I stayed in touch with a few of people I’d gotten to know in real life. When one of the main Anons in Los Angeles, and a foundational 4Channer, known as ODB or The Captain, who I  knew from the record industry as Sean Carasov died, Anons formed an honor guard at his memorial.

But of course I paid attention to what Anonymous was up to via the news: Wikileaks, Tunisia, OpPayback, OpBART. I flew up to San Francisco to cover OpBART for FDL where I saw some of  Monday’ s movie We Are Legion being filmed and got handfuls of fliers for Occupy Wall Street.

We Are Legion is an in-depth look at Anonymous, tracing its history back to the early hacking culture, through 4Chan, Chanology, through Wikileaks/OpPayback, Tunisia, LulzSec, betrayals, backstabbings, FBI raids, and prison sentences, and their support of Occupy.

Please join us and We Are Legion‘s director/writer/producer Brian Knappenberger Monday at 8pm ET (5pm PT) on the front page of Firedoglake.com. To ask questions/comment you must be logged in (you can register–it’s free!–using the button up top).

We are honored to have Codebreaker as our FDL Movie Night discussion. Nominated for the 2013 GLAAD Media Award for Best Documentary, Codebreaker is the story of British mathematical genius Alan Turing whose vision shaped the world we now live in, and who was prosecuted and persecuted  by the British  courts for his sexuality under the same statutes as Oscar Wilde decades earlier.

Turing–whose work during World War II at Bletchley Park, the National Codes and Cipher Centre, had broken the German’s Enigma codes and turned the tide of the war in the Allies favor–was forced to choose between a year in prison or an experimental treatment to “fix” his sexual orientation after police, during the course of burglary investigation, discovered Turing was gay.

Turing’s 1936 paper, “On Computable Numbers,” introduced to the world the idea of computers, and became the cornerstone for our digital world. Fourteen years later, he published “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” a cornerstone paper in the field of artificial intelligence. In 1952, Turing was arrested, plead guilty to the crime of “gross indecency with a male” to minimize the harm to his career.

Rather than go to prison, Turing endured the hormones which drove him to despair and grief and turned his once, fit and trim body bloated and fat. After his conviction, he was stripped of his security clearances, and banned from his offices at Bletchley Park. He committed suicide on June 7th, 1954, a week after his 41st birthday by taking a bite out of a cyanide laden apple.

In 2009, the British government apologized for their treatment of Turing. In December, 2012 Stephen Hawking joined a growing list calling for the government to pardon this hero of the modern age.

Please join us Monday night at 5pm West Coast time on the front page of Firedoglake.com to discuss Codebreaker, Turing’s legacy, his life, and death with Codebreaker executive producer Patrick Sammon.

(To ask questions or comment during Movie Night, you must be logged into Firedoglake.com. If you haven’t already done so, it’s free to register, just click the red REGISTER button at the top of the page).

Brrrr, it’s cold outside! And what better in the winter of our discontent that to dream of far-off lands, where floral scents drift on sea breezes, where the sun is warm, the beaches clean, and people kind?

Grab an exotic beverage and join us Monday night on a tropical excursion as we discuss The DVD of Tiki, Vol 1: Paradise Lost, The Rise and Fall of  Backyard Polynesia with directors and Tiki cogniscenti Jochen Hirschfeld and Schlango. Using  The DVD OF TIKI, Vol. 1 Paradise Lost  as our guide, we’ll discuss  the origins of the myth of the South Seas paradise and follow the United States on the transition from the puritanical 1950s to the sexual revolution of the 70s. Plus gain insight into the effects of Christian missionaries on native artwork, how the popularity of Tiki shifted attitudes in the islands, and how Tiki fell out favor, during the Vietnam War-era.

Trader Vic’s, Don the Beachcomber, mai-tais,  exotica music, wahines on velvet, dances,  Elvis, Disneyland, and the cultural phenomenons of the original Tiki movement  all feature in this exciting, informative documentary, full of original interviews with the likes of  Martin Denny (the godfather of exotics music), Leroy Schmaltz and Bob Van Oosting of Oceanic Arts, Eric Askew, The Bali Hai Boys who began as a band and ended up as hoteliers in Tahiti, Sven Kirsten, Otto Von Stroheim (founder of the annual Tiki Oasis getaway conference weekend), artist SHAG, and many more. (And while Tiki fell out of favor,  its modern resurgence began in the early 1980s, due in part to punk rock, go figure!)

Movie Night is 5pm West Coast, 8pm East Coast on the front page of Firedoglake.com.  To join in the disccusion, please register at firedoglake.com (it’s free!), and log in at 5pm. You’ll be able to ask questions and comments in the comment box.  Just remember to refresh your browser every couple of minutes to see new replies and comments.

Tonight at 5pm, West Coast time, join us in discussing Black Tulip with writer, producer, director and star Sonia Nassery. Facing threats and intimidation by the Taliban, Cole, her crew, and cast shot the film, based on a true story, in Kabul. Black Tulip was Afghanistan’s official 2011 Oscar entry.

Coerced false confessions are the second leading cause of false convictions, and in this Monday’s FDL Monday Night, Scenes of a Crime, filmmakers Blue Hadaegh and Grover Babcock present a clear, concise, and compelling look at how police use the Reid Method of interrogation. You’ll recognize it if you’ve ever watched more than one episode of Law and Order: Pretending to sympathize with the suspect, creating the least-bad possible scenario for how the crime occurred, and lying in order to get Adrian Thomas to confess to the beating death of his four-month old son. After 10 hours of interrogation (plus a 16-hour  stay in a mental ward) without a lawyer present, which included a detective telling Thomas

I’m not going to arrest you … I don’t want to arrest you

and that if Thomas, a giant of a man, just shows them how he threw his baby on the bed, he can then go see wife and dying son in the hospital, Thomas demonstrates how he slammed his four-month old down on the bed three times. By this time, Thomas’ son is already dead. Based on his confession written up by police, the Albany County District Attorney is fired up to prosecute.

The problem within the state’s case: the evidence, aside from the  on-the-run statement of a rushed,  overworked ER doctor (who declined to be interviewed for Scenes of a Crime) and some highly inconclusive CT scans, clearly shows that septic pneumonia was the cause of the baby’s death.

(During  his videotaped interrogation, when the police say that only one of two adults is the house could have caused the baby’s injuries, Thomas states that he’s only admitting to the crime to protect his wife from being a suspect and going to jail. But there were no injuries as an autopsy later proves.)

During the trial, Thomas not allowed to testify, and Child Protective Services manipulate his wife into not speaking up in his defense. An expert in coerced confessions is kept off the stand because the trial judge, up for re-election and new to murder trials, doesn’t feel the jury needs expert instruction. Despite the testimony of expert defense witnesses who use hard science to show that sepsis caused the baby’s death, Thomas is convicted, though one juror admits there’s

always just a little bit of doubt

and that she is not 100% convinced of Thomas’ guilt. But gosh, the trial took up a month of her life, a month she couldn’t be on the golf course.

Adrian Thomas is currently serving a 25-to-life sentence. In October, 2012 the  New York Court of Appeals announced they will hear Thomas’s appeal this year, though the date has not yet been scheduled.

Scenes of a Crime, which premiered on MSNBC, is available for home viewing thru iTunes and  Distrify.com

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FDL Movie Night starts at 5pm West Coast time on the front page of Firedoglake.com. To comment and participate in the live, on-line discussion with Blue Hadaegh and Grover Babcock, you must be registered and log in. Registration is easy (and free!); simply click the registration button at the top of the page, or any page on Firedoglake.com, and a fill out the form. Your password will be emailed to you, then just log in and you’re good to go.  See you Monday at 5pm.

The ball in Time Square is going to drop in a just a few hours, and since New Years Eve is time of both hilarity and glamor, what better way to celebrate it than by embracing tonight in the form of Lucille Ball? Groundbreaking media pioneer, the first woman in television to head a production company, Lucy is one of the greatest American icons, full of glamor, strength and style. Heck, even FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, in the midst of the 1950′s Red Scare — Ball gave sealed testimony to House Un-American Activities Committee  because she’d registered to vote in 1936 as member of the Communist Party – said Lucy and her husband Desi Arnaz were

among his  “favorites of the entertainment world.”

Tonight we’ll be discussing Lucille Ball, I Love Lucy, and her other shows, and as a special treat, we’ve uncovered this: Lucy’s Really Lost Moments, featuringthe  only appearances of the cast of I Love Lucy in color and as guests on The Bob Hope Chevy Show sponsored by Chevrolet, along with other moments (some of which have been colorized). Segments of this compilation are fascinating because they really reveal the heavy, obvious level of sponsorship of early TV programs: The plot of one segement revolves around Ricky wanting a deal with Westinghouse for their new show, while Lucy just want new appliances. Another segment, I’ve Got a Secret, sponsored by Clairol with lots of signage, shows Lucy trying to affect the panel (including a young Johnny Carson), with her changing moods. And as a bonus, on his program, Bob Hope appears to the strains of “Aulde Lang Syne!”

See you tonight!

(And special geek alert: Desilu Productions, which Ball formed with husband Desi Arnaz, was the production company behind the original Star Trek, producing the show’s first season. By the second season, Ball sold the company to Gulf+Western, which renamed it Paramount Television. The couple had founded Desilu in 1950 to produce I Love Lucy; Ball bought out Arnaz after their divorce, and became the company’s head. Desilu also produced The Dick Van Dyke Show, and several other classics.)

Tonight at 5pm west coast/8pm east coast we’ve got an amazing discussion scheduled with activist/producer Darryl Cherney and director Mary Liz Thomson centering around their film Who Bombed Judi Bari, Earth First!, and the couple’s federal lawsuit against the Oakland Police Department and the F.B.I. Movie Night is on the main, front page of firedoglake.com.

I learned about the film from FDL’s The Dissenter who wrote:

In May of 1990, Earth First! organizer Judi Bari and her fellow activist Darryl Cherney were preparing for the biggest demonstration they’d ever mobilized: a convergence of thousands of eco-warriors from all over the country on an expanse of California old growth redwoods targeted by the timber industry for clear cut. They were calling the event “Redwood Summer,” after the Civil Rights Movement’s Freedom Summer of 1964.

Redwood Summer took place, but without Bari. Instead of standing on the front lines of a massive battle against the destruction of the Headwaters Forest in Humboldt County, she spent the next several months recovering from a car bomb blast that had crippled her body and nearly took her life. At the same time, she was fending off accusations from the Oakland Police and the FBI that she was an eco-terrorist responsible for her own permanent and life-changing injuries….

Bari filed a civil lawsuit against the FBI and the Oakland Police Department in 1991, alleging that officers and agents knew that she and Cherney were innocent, and had arrested them as part of a misinformation campaign to discredit Earth First!. (Some believe the FBI’s complicity in the bombing went further still.) The suit was still wending its way through the courts when Bari died of breast cancer in 1997.

Please join us for this exciting discussion. To comment/ask questions you need to be resitered on FDL (it’s free) and logged in.  The film opens in December, and there is $50,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the case.