12.11.2011 04:04 PM

This guy kicks ass

I think I need to interview him for the new book.  Anyone with an idea about how I can reach his agent, email me!

28 Comments

  1. TheSilentObserver says:

    I approve, that is all

  2. William says:

    Don’t know how accurate this is but it may help

    Sean Penn’s Agent:

    Bryan Lourd

    Creative Artists Agency

    2000 Avenue Of The Stars

    Los Angeles, CA 90067

    Phone: 424-288-2000

    http://famous-relationships.topsynergy.com/Sean_Penn/Contact.asp

  3. Sean says:

    Justice will only exist where those not affected by injustice are filled with the same amount of indignation as those offended. – Plato

  4. Dan says:

    It’s too bad that only people outside the political system feel comfortable calling it as they see it.

    Cue up the comments that Sean Penn is not a “very serious person”, is just an actor, and so on… Even dig up a dumb quote. Maybe a picture from Fast Times At Ridgemont High.

    Fact of the matter is… we have governments — especially the US government from the past 30 years — who has made bad decision after bad decision. I would sincerely put almost anyone else in charge. Anyone with a lick of common sense who hasn’t bought the Washington consensus that war is security, corruption is enterprise, and bigotry is patriotism.

    • Pat says:

      “Sometimes” is the key word through most of your post, Gord. Unfortunately, the US of A has generally taken a policy of always resorting to war for security, supporting (and defending) the corrupt far more than mainstreet, and allowing bigotry to become the central tenet of the GOP (which is an affront in itself).

      Instead of sometimes doing those things, they have been doing those things habitually for decades. And I’ll remind you that I’m not letting any Democrat President off the hook here. This is a culture problem that they’ve developed… like I said, the descent of the GOP is disturbing to me, because it is slandering a great institution – the party of Lincoln for God’s sake.

    • Dan says:

      How else do you explain the increasing concentration of wealth into fewer hands, corporate sponsorship of political campaigns, two long dumb wars, and the incessant fear of a brown planet?

  5. allegra fortissima says:

    Accurate and may “help” as well:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence

  6. Philippe says:

    How is Castro a “murdering dictator”? It’s not in your best interest to get into a comparison game on how many innocents he’s killed under his lifetime watch vs 8 years of Bush. You’ll lose, and by a lot.

    • Pat says:

      I also find it interesting that righties are so willing to lean on the leftest of the left in order to demonstrate how terrible they are – “Castro is the terrible dictator!” – but they are angered when I use Hitler or Mussolini to describe the extreme right.

      • Harith says:

        Hahahaaha Jonah Goldberg ahahhahahahaha

        You never fail to make me laugh.

        Mussolini was a socialist, not a communist. I know you people like to associate the two as being the same thing but that is not the case.

      • Pat says:

        So you’re going to go with a conservative columnist over about 100 years of political theory? That’s just straight-up bullshit. The academics, who study this for a living, know a whole hell of a lot more than Jonah Goldberg and his politically biased book.

        I know what you’ll say – you don’t agree with all those liberal elite academics; but sometimes, Gord, you are just wrong. A ridiculous conservative commentator who goes into his analysis of fascism with the intent to prove that fascism is from the left rather than right is just about as bad of a source as you can get. Did you go to school? Do you understand what an appropriate source is?

      • Philippe says:

        Gord, you’re grossly misinformed.

        Castro came to power via a revolution which had the overwhelming support of the local populace. Through that revolution, there were several hundred casualties. Castro never killed his own once he came into power, you’re dead wrong on that. You’re clearly not familiar with the history of Castro’s leadership. Flip side of the coin, Bush has the blood of 5000 Americans on his hands (and probably 25 times that number of innocent Iraqis) for a bogus war.

      • The Doctor says:

        Philippe, I call complete BS on your statement that “Castro never killed his own once he came into power, you’re dead wrong on that.” Philippe, YOU’RE the one who’s dead wrong.

        This is from the wiki entry on human rights abuses in Cuba, on the specific topic of political executions by the Cuban government since the revolution:

        “Latin American historian Thomas E. Skidmore says there had been 550 executions in the first six months of 1959.[21] British historian Hugh Thomas, in his study Cuba or the pursuit of freedom[22] stated that “perhaps” 5,000 executions had taken place by 1970,[21] whilst The World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators ascertained that there had been 2,113 political executions between the years of 1958-67.[21] The author of the Historical Atlas, an online personal compilation of various sources, concludes: The dividing line between those who have an axe to grind and those who don’t falls in the 5,000-12,000 range.[21] The Cuban American National Foundation states that since the revolution 12,000 political executions have taken place.[21] Dr. Armando Lago, of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, a group of academics whose board of directors is almost entirely Cuban exiles,[23] states that between 15,000 and 18,000 Cubans were executed for counterrevolutionary activities since the revolution. He also says that 250 Cubans disappeared during the period, 500 died in prison for lack of medical attention, 500 were killed in prison by guards and there were 150 extrajudicial assassinations of women.[24] The Black Book of Communism estimates that some 15,000 to 17,000 Cubans were shot by the Castro regime from 1959 through the late 1990s.”

    • Cam Prymak says:

      No, of course W was not a dictator, but then Philippe didn’t say that did he? He was referring to the number of casualties in the Iraq war.

      Thousands of lives and one trillion dollars later, still no WMD.

  7. JStanton says:

    … well, firstly gord, you really need to get a grip of your conservative low self esteem genetic pre-disposition. We all look inadequate when compared to Mr. Penn, but somehow manage to press-on without vilifying him.

    Secondly, your-knee jerk Conservative lap-dog response against Messers Castro and Chevez is infantile. These are men strong enough and with the integrity to defend their people against the economic war being waged by the US government, who are fronting for US corporations wanting to extract the wealth from these countries, and to dominate their politics. It’s worse than colonialism; its out-right banditry.

    Like any war, there are casualties – human casualties, as well as social, political and economic. But these casualties first and foremost are a consequence of historic US aggression.

    .

  8. Ted H says:

    Posted above: “Fascism comes from the left side of the political spectrum”. Now that is so stupid, so much Orwellian double speak that I can’t let it go by. Fascism = extreme right, Communism =extreme left, high school level political science. 14 characteristics of fascism listed below, sounds a lot closer to the US than to Cuba.

    Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:

    1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism – Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia.

    2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights – Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of “need.” The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

    3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause – The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

    4. Supremacy of the Military – Even when there are widespread
    domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

    5. Rampant Sexism – The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

    6. Controlled Mass Media – Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

    7. Obsession with National Security – Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

    8. Religion and Government are Intertwined – Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government’s policies or actions.

    9. Corporate Power is Protected – The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

    10. Labor Power is Suppressed – Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

    11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts – Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

    12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment – Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

    13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption – Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

    14. Fraudulent Elections – Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

    • Ted H says:

      How about this:

      [Goldberg] -has drawn a kind of history in absurdly broad and comically wrongheaded strokes. It is not just history done badly, or mere revisionism. It’s a caricature of reality, like something from a comic-book alternative universe: Bizarro history. … Goldberg isn’t content to simply create an oxymoron; this entire enterprise, in fact, is classic Newspeak

    • Dan says:

      Jonah Goldberg is a right wing hack. Nobody in their right mind considers him a credible source.

      I guess that explains why you like him.

    • Ted H says:

      Both Left and Right have proven themselves capable of Authoritarianism and ultimately Totalitarianism. Fascism seems to be simply and wrongly used as a synonym here. The actual facts of historical Fascist regimes places them firmly on the Right side of the spectrum, even though many party members may have started from different places. As it has been said, Right and Left Totalitarian regimes kill different people.

    • Pat says:

      Once again – not in any way a reliable source. You can’t use a conservative commentator as an unbiased approach. You have just shown us all how hard you work to read things that simply confirm your personal beliefs rather than look for information that carries less bias. I’ve failed people like you for writing papers that use those kinds of sources.

  9. Lawrence Stuart says:

    Just to clarify — he’s not calling for war crimes prosecution. He’s saying prosecute because they lied to justify the war. Which, in the best of all possible worlds, is something I could get behind.

    But realistically speaking, It ain’t gonna happen. You have a nation deeply divided against itself, almost 50/50, with regards to every legal and moral issue that would underlie such prosecutions. Under such circumstances, it could not be an act of justice. It would be a provocative political act that would almost certainly ‘negatively impact,’ as they say, an already dysfunctional polity.

    Let history judge.

    • The Doctor says:

      I tend to agree with you. And the thing is, why stop there? Many top US officials and military personnel also lied about Vietnam, one of the most pivotal lies being the truth behind the Gulf of Tonkin incident. The Pentagon Papers was, at least in part, the act of pulling up a curtain to show a whole institutionalized pattern of lying and covering up in connection with the real situation on the ground in Vietnam.

      Yet around the same time, certain people in the US were cheering a popular song on the radio about what a “hero” William Calley supposedly was. Construction union members were staging mass rallies in favour of the war and systematically beating up anti-war hippies. Go figure.

      • Lawrence Stuart says:

        The Tonkin business is a good parallel. I think to really get behind the phenomenon, you have to question, not just the political leadership’s use of lies, but the willingness of many groups and individuals (including, crucially, the media and the intelligence community) to willingly suspend disbelief. It’s not just that the politicos use misinformation to force an unwilling populace into an unwanted war. Rather, a positive feedback loop develops between political leadership and many sectors of gov’t and civil society. This feedback amplifies deeply held tribal instincts — in the Vietnam example, a fear of the reds, in the Iraq example, a deeply felt need for vengeance.

        Bush and Johnson (and of course key members of their Administrations) are certainly guilty of poor judgment, and of outright deceit as well. As such, they are poor leaders. But the push to war could not succeed unless it found a resonance among a wide audience. The sources of that resonance, it seems to me, constitute the deeper, if not causes, than at least enabling conditions, of war.

        In democratic societies particularly, many, many people have to want to believe before the hounds are loosed. Punishing the leadership in the absence of a genuine, broadly based public sense of atonement smacks to me of scapegoating.

  10. Patrick Deberg says:

    Gord,

    Was war nesesary in Iraq?

  11. nez1 says:

    Fascism DOES NOT equal socialism, Gord. Kinda opposite. I hear you’re from Alberta–maybe you didn’t take Social 30? Guys like you are why Albertans are wont to apologize when we go anywhere else.
    Well, that and being the birthplace of Nickelback, but that’s another (sad) story…

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