Demjanjuk Asks Judge to Reconsider Citizenship Bid - ABC News
Convicted Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk wants a federal judge to reconsider a decision denying his bid to regain his U.S. citizenship.
U.S. District Judge Dan Aaron Polster rejected the retired autoworker’s citizenship claim just over two weeks ago, saying Demjanjuk lied about where he was during World War II.
Demjanjuk’s attorney asked the judge Thursday to reconsider the citizenship request, saying he had not seen all the newly discovered documents that could help his cause.
6th January 2012
Notes: 13
Think Again: Intelligence - By Paul R. Pillar | Foreign Policy
BY PAUL R. PILLAR
I served in the CIA for 28 years and I can tell you: America’s screw-ups come from bad leaders, not lousy spies.
“Hidebound Intelligence Agencies Refuse to Change.”
You’d be surprised. Criticism of U.S. intelligence agencies — at least the non-paranoid kind — tends to portray them as stodgy bureaucracies that use their broad mandate for secrecy to shield themselves from the oversight that would make them do their jobs better. But the great majority of effective intelligence reforms have come from inside, not outside.
The organizational charts of the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies have undergone frequent and sometimes drastic revision, a recognition of the need to adapt to the rapidly changing world the agencies monitor and analyze. The CIA merged its analytic units covering East and West Germany in expectation of German reunification well before German unity was achieved in 1990. Other measures, such as developing greater foreign-language ability or training analysts in more sophisticated techniques, have been the focus of concentrated attention inside the agencies for years. The most effective, and probably most revolutionary, change in the intelligence community’s work on terrorism was the creation of the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center in 1986 — a successful experiment that broke bureaucratic crockery, gathering previously separated collectors, analysts, and other specialists together to work side by side.
Twitch Presents ATTACK THE BLOC: COLD WAR SCIENCE FICTION FROM BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN
Attention science fiction fans! If you happen to be in the Toronto area Twitch will soon be taking you on a guided tour through the Cold War era scifi offerings of the Eastern Bloc with a lengthy retrospective of rarely seen titles at the TIFF Bell Lightbox beginning January 19th.
Andrei Tarkovsky’s classics Solaris and Stalker get three screenings each - both on 35mm - along with single screenings of diverse host of rarely - if ever - seen titles from Czechoslovakia, Poland, East Germany, Russia, and Estonia. It’s an incredibly diverse lineup of films ranging from philosophical scifi to open propaganda to swinging adventure, bearded ladies, comic books come to life and a vampire car.
Francis Coppola’s Notebook on ‘The Godfather’
(Source: youtu.be)
Obit: Man behind Darth Vader’s light sabre leaves legacy in Canada
Michele ApSimon remembers the day in sixth grade when she brought Darth Vader to her Ottawa school — in person.
“I went to Alta Vista Public School, and he agreed to come as my show and tell,” ApSimon said of the time sword master Bob Anderson made her the coolest kid in school.
“They were absolutely stunned. I was the hero for the week. It was my 15 minutes of fame.”
Anderson, the stuntman who wielded Darth Vader’s light sabres in the original Star Wars films — part of a lengthy career in film and television — died New Year’s Day in hospital in England, the British Academy of Fencing confirmed. He was 89.
In the wake of his passing, Anderson was remembered fondly Monday for the roughly two decades he spent living not in a galaxy far away, but right here in Canada, in the Ottawa area and elsewhere in Ontario.
“He was a great guy,” Michele ApSimon’s father, former Canadian Fencing Association executive John ApSimon, recalled Monday. “He loved Canada.”
Francis Ford Coppola’s notes for The Godfather
I find it interesting that Coppola refers to Hitchcock on both pages of Mario Puzo’s novel. I’ve never considered Hitchcock’s influence on The Godfather but Coppola was obviously thinking of him when prepping for the film.
The alternate cast list is also interesting. I can see Martin Sheen in the role of Michael Corleone, but Dustin Hoffman? James Caan was great as Sonny but I can definitely see John Saxon in the role. Saxon could have played Tom Hagen as well.
What if…?
Sources:
http://ruinawish.tumblr.com/post/10054412563/coppolas-notes-on-the-dons-shooting-in-the
http://ruinawish.tumblr.com/post/7402324061/coppola-plots-out-the-intensity-of-the-scene-in
http://unobtainium13.com/2011/07/02/what-could-have-been-the-godfather/
This image from 1943 shows Jews escorted from the Warsaw Ghetto by German soldiers (Keystone)
Swiss acknowledge those who helped Jews flee Nazis - Yahoo! News
Switzerland said it had finally finished the process of rehabilitating more than a hundred people punished during WWII for having helped Jews escape Nazi persecution.
But only one of the 137 people vindicated by the report actually lived to see their name cleared.
“All these people are today dead,” Alexandre Schneebeli, the secretary of the Swiss parliament’s rehabilitation commission, told AFP.
Marching Orders for Paul’s Volunteers: Do Shave, Don’t Tweet - NYTimes.com
Ron Paul’s Young Iowa Volunteers Clean Up for the Cause.
And they say they are under strict orders: To look, dress, shave, sound and behave in a way that will not jeopardize Mr. Paul’s chances. Even before flying here on their own nickel, some students said they had been instructed to cover up tattoos and told that their faces should be fresh-shaved or beards neatly trimmed, wearing only nice clothes that one described as “business casual.”
“No tats,” another volunteer, Rocco Lucente, said as he ticked off the rules after arriving at the airport Tuesday night. No liquor, no drugs and, he said, no “fraternizing in the dorms, nothing like that.”
He said the standard expected of volunteers was: “What would Ron Paul do?”
Flavorwire » Candid Portraits of Iconic Personalities from the ’70s and ’80s
Chances are you’ve seen at least one of Norman Seeff’s photographs of the 1970′s and ’80s most iconic personalities. The former doctor from South Africa left a career in medicine to pursue his art and landed in New York City in the early ’70s.
