JAI HO - ONE OF THE GREAT SONGS

Allah Rakha (meaning God-sustained) Rahman's extraordinary career began in Bollywood with Roja (1992) - which revolutionized instrumentation and recording techniques in Bollywood with its innovations, forcing every other composer to follow suit. But its selection by Time as one of the top 10 soundtracks ever was wildly over the top, as it nowhere approached the melodic and emotional content of the great Bollywood songs. Doubts would be expressed in the following years about Rahman's abilities in those areas, where Bollywood is probably unrivalled. He erased those doubts with excellent music in Bombay, Lagaan, and arguably his finest score (both background and songs) - the 2008 Jodhaa Akbar. Lesser efforts including Taal which earned him an undeserved Filmfare award (which should have gone to Ismail Darbar for the vastly superior Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam; only Ishq Bina from Taal approaching the ethereal beauty of the latter's songs) lined this journey.

His background score for Slumdog Millionaire was excellent, but the crowning glory was Jai Ho, which is a universe away from both Roja and O Saya and right up there with Rahman's best songs including Manmohana, Khwaja mere Khwaja, and Mitwa sun Mitwa. Jai Ho is one of the great songs, not just from Rahman but from Bollywood, which means it is comparable to the greatest music written in any form - popular, Broadway, jazz, blues or classical. Mozart and Beethoven would not only have cheered, they might have been envious...

The hype about Slumdog is that it is about 'hope', optimism, and the human spirit. But Rahman knows better than that - the song celebrates the slumdog's victory, but never forgets the hurt and the longing, the terror and horrors, the struggles, the failures and defeats - they are all present in the undercurrents of this most magnificent of songs.

A COUPLE OF THINGS OUR LEADERS NEED TO KNOW

Things don't change much in our make-believe 'liberal-democratic' societies - in the guise of freedom the same tyrannies and idiocies go on, as our leaders and establishment eunuchs continue to act as slaves to politically-correct insanities even as proof of divergent opinion exists but is drowned out.

This applies to feminist ideology but also to the enshrinement of Israel in Western establishment opinion as morally sacrosanct, where the lobbying of Zionists drowns out the protest of dissenting Jews. Here is a letter from a dissident Canadian Jewish woman on 'Israeli apartheid':

From: Judy Haiven
Date: Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 2:23 PM
Subject: [IJV-SC] SAIA Anti-Apartheid week and Your censorship of it

Dear President Roseann Runte,

I am a Jewish- Canadian and an academic. I belong to Independent
Jewish Voices which is a cross-Canada Jewish organisation which is
against Israel's illegal and brutal occupation of the West Bank and
Gaza; we also support Palestinian human rights.

I was horrified to read that you and the Provost banned and
confiscated Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) posters at
Carleton University. These posters announced Isareli Apartheid Week.
Whatever you personally might think of Israeli Apartheid, respected
international figures such as Reverend Desmond Tutu and Jimmy Carter
have named it outright and condemned it.

While I, as a Jew, once had qualms about using the term Israeli
Apartheid --I no longer do. This is because especially since Israel's
last war on Gaza mere weeks ago, it has been clear to me and the broad
international community that Israel's deadly attacks were targetted at
defenceless civilians; that Israel destroyed Gaza and its
infrastructure; that Israel killed 1400 people, horribly maimed about
4,000 (a third of the killed and maimed were children) and
deliberately made 9,000 Palestinians homeless. Israel also used
chemical bombs on Palestinians. These are admitted matters of fact,
not fiction.

I am not the source for these reports however the Red Cross, Amnesty
International, Human Rights Watch and B'Tselem (the Israeli
Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) have
all agreed these murders and maimings and chemical bombings happened,
and that Israel was solely responsible for them.

So it seems Jewish students, or organisations such as the Canadian
Jewish Congress complained about the cartoon on the posters. I
understood they did not like the fact that the fighter aircraft is
about to drop a bomb on a Palestinian child holding a teddy bear. Well
sorry. This just happened IN REALITY, one month ago. Hundreds of
children died and more were terribly maimed and burned. While Israel
can certainly dish it out, Israel cannot "take it." Whenever there is
the slightest criticism of Israel -- its representatives in Canada --
namely the mainstream Jewish Congress or B'nai B'rith -- scream
unfair and demand to close down opposition. Israel's supporters insist
only they have the right to "frame" what is going on. And
unfortunately you -- as the President and the Provost -- fell into the
trap laid by Israel's supporters.

It is very important for students, faculty and the Canadian public to
know the truth about what is going on in Israel and Palestine. These
posters help increase awareness of what Israel is doing "on the
ground."

I think you owe SAIA an apology and should return their leaflets.
Their campaign is vital to human rights in Palestine and Israel and
the world over. Don't censor them.

--
Judy Haiven, PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Management
Saint Mary's University
Halifax, NS
Canada B3H 3C3

tel: 902-491-8650
fax: 902-420-5119
home: 902-429-8868
email: jhaiven@smu.ca

RAW MILK CONTROVERSY - SYMPTOM OF FOOD INDUSTRY CORRUPTION

The prosecution and persecution of Newmarket raw milk vendor Michael Schmidt is symptomatic of long-standing corruption in the gigantic food industry of North America. This should be the argument he makes in his defence, but it is perhaps too big for him to make.

While there are those in the health food industry who are not enthusiastic about milk (raw or not), insisting it is meant for calves (offspring of cows), they are more or less unanimous in declaring that pasteurized milk is useless and may well be harmful.

But that hasn't stopped our authorities from making 'an example' of Schmidt. In the USA the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has moved to pasteurize almonds and peanuts! Simply because a few cases of salmonella occurred, the entire supply of almonds is to be pasteurized - i.e. stripped of its nutritional content - the nutritional equivalent of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

But this is of course the tip of the iceberg...... the FDA has cooperated for decades with giant food companies to inflict millions of North Americans with foods rich in refined flour and sugar (eg. those cereals to be had with pasteurized milk by kids every morning), from which the natural food content was removed and replaced with dangerous preservative chemicals. Canned foods similarly rich in chemicals and containing less than 10% nutrients have been another slow poison the FDA was content to let live and prosper. Others have written about the way cattle have been fed corn and bovine growth hormone to make them as fat and large as quickly as possible, and how the denial of grass to cattle may well have caused mad cow disease.

The high levels of diabetes, heart disease and cancer in North America surely flow from the refined and processed food supply, which has made mega-billions for giant food companies.

It took decades for the tobacco industry to be held accountable - but at least they were forced to put warning labels on cigarette cases. When are warning labels going to appear on food products - eg. "This product contains chemicals which could damage your health, and most of the nutrients have been removed"?

When will this corruption and insanity stop? Are we slaves to corporate America?

REVOLUTIONARY ROAD

Another riveting movie - in which the tension never lets up - as powerful an indictment of American life as Written On The Wind and American Beauty were. Dissects the deep angst, loneliness and desperation that lay beneath the superficial 'American Dream' so extravagantly sold by American culture and the happy-go-lucky movies of Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire.

GRAN TORINO

America will never acknowledge, let alone apologize for, its war-crimes against Korea. The protective umbrella provided by UN approval of the 1950s invasion makes that a non-starter.

Clint Eastwood however does so, kind of - in his latest movie Gran Torino. However unlike his Iwo Jima duet - in which he exposed the blatant propaganda trick that was the famous picture of 'glory' being planted by US marines on a hill on that island (a picture which was taken a month before the island was actually captured) in Flags of Our Fathers, and then in Letters from Iwo Jima presented the human side of the Japanese trapped on that island against overpowering attack by American forces and airpower - this time he presents a fictional fable.

An expose based on history would be almost impossible given the protective 'cover' of the UN sanction for the largely American invasion which killed millions of North Koreans.

So he paints a fictional tale set in modern-day America, with a melting pot now including Koreans and Cambodian Hmongs, in which he himself plays an octogenarian Korean war veteran and widower, apparently racist and misogynist (though not in the distorted feminist sense of that word). The plot includes critiques of the dysfunctional 'nuclear' American family, trashy morals of modern-day kids, the lonely plight of senior citizens, the danger of street gangs and guns, and the futility of ecclesiastical confession. Politically-incorrect racist words like 'gook' and 'mick' are frequently used and serve to underline the present-day hypocrisy of attacking 'slurs' .....when it is actions that count....The most harmful and malicious racists use politically correct language - something like the difference between a bark and a bite.

It would be easy to dismiss this film as a mishmash 'masala' of ideas lifted from The Karate Kid and Boyz'N the Hood with a little Rain Man thrown in, but nonetheless the sum somehow exceeds the parts, as amidst all this emerges a quite wonderful paean of love and a moving fairy-tale of repentance and sacrifice.

Quite possibly the finest thing Eastwood has done.