 Red Room Writer Profile
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Julia Stein's Blog
February 14, 2010
- Submitted by msquitieri on January 19, 2010 - 18:11 This call to action issued by students and educators of the California Coordinating Committee (below) was endorsed by the Executive Board of UC-AFT Local 1474 on ...
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January 20, 2010
- We'll find out in the next few days whether Obama can listen to the rising criticism of his administration. Polls showed that 65% of U.S. citizens were against his socalled health care reform bill but he, his administration, and Democrats in Congress didn't listen and kept pushing this pro-corporate insurance bill the voters hated. In 2008 the major banks failed while in 2008-9 unemployment ...
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January 2, 2010
- Margaret Mascarenha's novel The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos is a fascinating tale about two girls and thirty years of recent Venezuelan history. In the first chapter Lily tells her story which seems like a girl-growing-up-story and but is in reality a Dickens-like novel about all of Venezuela. Mascarenha is like Toni Morrison or Alice Walker telling the repressed stories of a culture. The ...
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January 1, 2010
- A few days ago in the afternoon I was stumbled upon PBS and saw the marvelous documentary "The Civilian Conservation Corps" (CCC) about this jobs program started by FDR in 1933 that had 3 million men and lasted until 1940. In the begining of the film FDR asks his radio audience, "Give me your help in this crusade to restore American to its people." The show was riveting, ...
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December 29, 2009
- These were the best films I saw in 2009 but not all were released in 2009: 1. Bright Star (2009)- Wonderful film about poet Keats and the young woman he loved directed by wonderful Australian director Jane Campion. Brings alive Keats, his circle, his brilliance, and his tragedy.2. Julie and Julia (2009)- Fine film about cook Julia Child and blogger Julie who cooked every receipe in Julia Child's ...
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December 27, 2009
- The film Revolutionary Road based on Richard Yates novel is the only masterpiece of American cinema I saw in 2009. The film is about American men giving up their dreams in the 1950s and one woman's refusal to let go of those dreams. Most critics being men fail to look at gender roles in the film and compare this film to The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit failing to see that there is no hero but a ...
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December 26, 2009
- I just saw the movie Ghandi directed by Richard Attenborough for the second and third time in the last couple nights. It's a beautiful movie. In this I saw the impact of the great Indian filmmaker Satijit Ray on the British director Attenborough in many of the scences, particularly the scenes of Ghandi's domestic life in his ashram. The direction, the actors, the cinematography are all ...
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December 23, 2009
- During the nomination process I thought Obama rather vague, as if he was a blur. But he now reminds me of LBJ. I really disliked Bill Clinton because I thought NAFTA was a horrible treaty and also thought his welfare "reform" was a right-wing assault on women, and voted against Bill in 1996 and voted against Gore in 2000--both times I voted for Nader. So when the race for Demoratic ...
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December 19, 2009
- The film "I Saw the Sun," Turkey foreign language entry for the 2010 Oscar, is a fascinating, moving film. The film opens with two young men fleeing the hills being tracked by army helicopters. Is this Iraq? Afghanistan? Palestine? Pakistan? None of the above.The film is about Kurdish villagers living in Turkish Kurdistan caught up in the 30-year war between Kurdish guerillas ...
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December 18, 2009
- Keith Olbermann argues that we must kill the current Senate Health Care Bill. He says it's not health, not care, and not reform. It's a monster that will destroy the middle class. In his video Olbermann promises if the bill passes he promises not to buy the insurance. He calls Senator Lieberman a prostitute for the health insurance industry.http://www.truthout.org/topstories/121709vh1 Olbermann ...
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December 17, 2009
- I've been watching with fascination Amy Goodman's reports Democracy Now daily from the Copenhagen Climate Change conference. First of all, I'm learning what's left out in U.S. corporate news: climate change has been harming people and communities all over the world. In the U.S. Biloxi Indians on Isle de Jean Charles off Louisiana have been hard hit by rising waters and hurriances, so 1/2 the ...
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December 13, 2009
- Last night I just saw Errol Morris's flawed but fascinating documentary film about Robert McNamara, former Secretary of Defense for JFK and LBJ and major architect of the Vietnam War. The film largely about the Vietnam War is helpful in understanding U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. The film is structured around eleven lessons that McNamara has about his experiences with war--silly really but ...
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December 12, 2009
- In Farmfelix December 6, 2009, tour of Los Angeles ecohomes the fourth and last home I visited was Julia Russell's ecohome, the most fascinating of all. In the early 1970s Russell was living in a 1911 craftsman bungalow--a modest home. For the last three decades she has retrofitted her home and land to make it ecologically and also ran the Ecohome ...
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December 12, 2009
- December 6, 2009, I went to Farmfelix's tour of eco homes in the Silverlake, Los Feliz, and Atwater districts of Los Angeles. Farmfelix, a small organization in which neighbors help to eco retrofit their homes and in which neighbors build gardens in the local schools, had a tour of 10 homes but I went to four. http://farmfeliz.org/default.aspx1. First home I went to was the Rebecca Rudolph ...
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December 11, 2009
- The latest two books I've read are both very good.Phillip K. Dick's science fiction novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is the inspiration for the movie Blade Runner. Dick's novel deal with a polluted earth run by a demented dictatorship. The pollution from a nuclear war got so bad most of the animals died off so wealthy people pay huge amounts of money to get a live animal like a sheep. ...
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