John Cusack (2016)

OK I'm here!

zero. saved by gender I'm sure

he's unleashed and exploited a generalized anger over 30 years of neoliberal policies that have decimated working-class and poor...
its a mistake to assume all the people who voted for him are vile. many are scared and hurting. desperate for change.. of course that element is there.. but its not the only story

he's unleashed all these vile forces. but its a mistake to reduce things .. not all his supporters are crazy and fascistic. many are scared and repudiate the neoliberal system that's decimated working class and middle class.. remember trump sprinkles in truths with his daily lies.. his critique of NAFTA is correct.. i don't think he plans to actually do anything about it... but he spoke directly to communities that have suffered...he used generalize outrage- i do think bernie sanders had the same energy at his back with his critique of capitalism.. calling for a new new deal...

Challenge, speak honestly, unmask lies, speak about political crimes, corporate greed. Unmask yourself.. Do not accept murder as a legitimate economic policy, even if it is legally sanctioned by the dignitaries and Apparatchiks.

that's so hard to say, like music it depends on your mood ..

too many to count been so lucky... i remember as a younger man doing a scene with paul newman and wondering what the hell i was doing there. i was so wide eyed and in awe of him -- but the good one (soul wise) are always so kind and generous. he made me feel at ease...ive gotten to work with many of my heroes growing up.. al pacino, newman so many others...anytime I've been on sets with great artists I've felt so lucky

oh man i would love that...

of course..as should chelsea manning and so many others..
in this world upside down
People with real courage go to jail while killers are awash in polite applause, go to cocktail parties, State dinners with dignitaries and VIPs.

nah not unless i produce it like the first one..

To me its an ongoing sense of seeing deeper into things and through official narratives and assumptions ...

i think trump is either the end of something or the beginning
ill quote agin from inside room 1001

DE: Surveillance is abuse. Things are sure to get a lot worse… We are not in a police state now, not yet.. I’m talking about what may come, I realize I shouldn’t put it that way... white middle class educated people like myself are not living in a police state... black, poor people are living in a police state. The repression starts with the semi-white, the Middle Easterners, including anybody who is allied with them, and goes on from there… We don’t have a police state. One more 9/11, and then I believe we will have hundreds of thousands of detentions. Middle Easterners and Muslims will be put in detention camps or deported. After 9/11, we had thousands of people arrested without charges... But I’m talking about the future. I’m talking the level of the Japanese in WWII... I’m talking of hundreds of thousands in camps or deported. I think the surveillance is very relevant to that. They will know who to put away—the data is already collected.

ES: Right. We are not using it, but it is available.

i would go to https://freedom.press
everything i said here less then a week after the story broke applies now more then ever> http://boingboing.net/2013/06/17/the-snowden-principle.html
or this https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/18/eric-holder-guarantee-nsa-reporters-rights
and this https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/15/nsa-mind-keith-alexander-star-trek
all these powers are being given to donald trump.. if that doesn't wake people up i don't know what will

we talk about it a lot in the book and in the conversations in the room
ill include some of it here...DE is Dan Ellsberg, AR is Arundhati Roy, ext

DE: The flags, Star Spangled Banner…
I want to give you this historical footnote which I bet you haven’t heard. You can look this up on Google. The Pledge of Allegiance in America dates back to about 1898, somewhere around 1896, very late in the game. We’re the only country, as far as I know, in the world that takes a pledge to the flag; everybody has a flag, but nobody pledges allegiance to a flag, what does that mean, allegiance to a flag? It came out that the pledge was written by the editor of a magazine that had been around in all the schools, and the spirit behind it was...we have to remember it was the 1890s....you had all these immigrants...Eastern Europeans….

JC: Yeah.

DE: …like my grandparents. So the idea was, they’re all different, so we want them to have a feeling of unity for the flag—“I pledge allegiance to the flag...one nation under all...indivisible”—it wasn’t under God in those days. Eisenhower brought that in the Cold War to distinguish us from...

ES: From the godless Communists! (Laughing)

DE: That was the idea of it.... and it was somehow recognized in Congress. You were not obligated, actually, but they endorsed the idea of the Pledge of Allegiance, so every classroom...

JC: Strongly suggested that you’d better say it….

DE: ...should have a flag, right? This was new. Every classroom should have a flag so the children could pledge allegiance to the flag.

OU: And is that still today in the United States?

DE: Of course it is. If you read accounts of this, and I’ve read some accounts, they do not emphasize the point that, by coincidence, the guy who wrote that pledge was the largest flag maker in the United States.

OU: (Laughing)

ES: Really!

DE: And he sold flags to every classroom...

ES: That’s so capitalist.

(All laughing)

AR: Now they’re made in China. Outsourced nationalism.

DE: Indian flag makers haven’t realized the possibility...

AR: These days we’re being force-fed the Indian flag in India. They play the national anthem after movies…people who don’t stand up get physically attacked by others in the audience. I think I may have flag allergy…I need ointment..

JC: We love creating totems and symbols to which we must genuflect and bow down…legitimizing authority that is at best arbitrary…hiding what it’s up to… cultivating mass obedience…

AR: What are the ways in which the idea of the Nation teaches us to obey? There was just one more thing I wanted to say about cultivating obedient populations—I’m making a mental leap here—it has to do with creating societies that live on credit. It has been very carefully and very consciously done in the US. In the early 1900s, instead of giving workers’ the higher wages that unions were fighting for, they were given access to credit. It created a society constantly burdened by debt, brainwashed into equating self-worth with material possessions, running to keep up with their life-styles. You have students who ought to have the right to free education, whose minds should be free, who should be asking the most fundamental questions about the meaning of life about the society in which they live—but instead they are buried in debt, desperate to fit in to the system, desperate for jobs that will pay back their debts—an obedient population…and now they all know that on top of it all, they are being spied on. I wonder sometimes if the NSA is only pretending to be contrite about the public outrage about their spying—maybe they’re quite pleased—“Let people look over their shoulders, let them worry about what we know about them, let’s trip them up, keep them on the hop, always unsure, forever de-stabilized…”

DE: Arundhati has raised a very delicate point. What you have given the world here Ed is a challenge…

hi! Really the only thing we changed was that the brits were more obsessed with music and our record shops were more into british punk, post punk stuff.
and i wrote some new material. but i thought we were very faithful to the book just took out the british vernacular.

after reading the extraordinary book by Arundhati Roy
The doctor and The Saint -i was struck again how the true heroes of history are not usually sanctioned by the states, but rather erased .
its interesting to note he was never included in the film ghandi. here in the west.
https://www.amazon.com/Doctor-Saint-Annihilation-Between-Ambedkar/dp/160846797X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1479502701&sr=8-1&keywords=doctor+and+the+saint+arundhati

thanks for saying that. glad you liked them:)

she's less public about her thoughts.. but she is very interested in psychology and how to be a great mom...

a pulse

its very critical that you take him at his word even though he lies with relish everyday.

i could but why focus on negative. too much going around!

I would like to see it abolished and go to popular vote.