the sawpit

Bergman Confronts the Shadow

Since the recent death of Swedish director Igmar Bergman, I’ve been thinking of his many films I’ve seen over the years. The one that still haunts me today is his 1961 Academy Award winner, The Virgin Spring. I first saw it twelve years ago, shortly after being laid off from my print shop assistant job. One day I decided to borrow a few movies from the local library. In my melancholy state, I was naturally drawn to the small foreign film section. Later that night, I was transported to a much simpler time where the young virgin daughter of a devout Christian farmer rides horseback for miles to bring candles to the nearest church. I didn’t know what to make of the film at first, but it made me forget my unemployment woes for a little while.

The only other Bergman film I’d seen at the time was The Seventh Seal, but it didn’t affect me the way this story had. I realize now that Bergman was not just re-telling a 14th-century Swedish legend, he was presenting universal archetypal symbols which transcend the simple Christian allegory of redemption. I found that C.J. Jung's use of the shadow to represent repressed aspects of all the darker and neglected parts of our lives was very useful to understanding this film. The shadow is not all evil, for it can contain sound instinctive reactions also, which is why we must always be on guard against it.

Karin's dark haired, pregnant sister, Ingeri, prays to the Norse god, Odin. Because Ingeri hates Karin for being the favorite daughter, she slips a toad into her bread. One might say that the Ingeri character is the shadow cast by Karin’s virgin light. Ingeri follows her sister and watches her being raped and murdered by two herdsmen with whom she had innocently shared her lunch. Ironically, the herdsman and the child they are traveling with end up at Herr Töre's farmhouse where they ask to be put up for the night. When they try to sell Karin's clothes to the mother, they realize that the herdsmen had murdered her. Herr Töre waits until his guests fall asleep, then kills them both, along with the child. That morning the family sets out to find Karin’s body. Falling to his knees, Herr Töre vows to God that he will construct a church on that same ground. As he and his wife lift up her body water begins to spout from the grassy earth where her head had laid. The dark sister Ingeri is suddenly converted to Christianity, as she desires to purify herself with the water.

Protect America Act is Unconstitutional

Some people say that I'm too easy on the Democrats. My answer is, well, you have to pick your battles. The current situation demands a solid Democratic opposition to the current administration and the conservative Republicans in Washington. You don't douse the burning trash can when your house is on fire. Right?

That was then, this is now. This past weekend, in a rush to get to their summer homes, 16 Democrats Senators and 41 Democratic House members voted for the Protect America Act which amends the previous Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. The new law is designed to enhance our national security, but key provisions violate the very core of the Fourth Amendment. In 1978 we were still under the threat of nuclear holocaust courtesy of the Soviet Union, yet that was the year Congress passed a bill that at least provided some oversight into wire tapping, with some sort of paper trail. But the fear has been whipped up for so long that those Democrats who voted for this bill are willing to shirk their fidelity to the principles of the constitution. The last thing the Democrats should be doing right now is expanding President Bush’s unchecked executive powers.

Marty Lederman at balkinization breaks it down for us:

The key provision of S.1927 is new section 105A of FISA (see page 2), which categorically excludes from FISA's requirements any and all "surveillance directed at a person reasonably believed to be located outside of the United States."

For surveillance to come within this exemption, there is no requirement that it be conducted outside the U.S.; no requirement that the person at whom it is "directed" be an agent of a foreign power or in any way connected to terrorism or other wrongdoing; and no requirement that the surveillance does not also encompass communications of U.S. persons. Indeed, if read literally, it would exclude from FISA any surveillance that is in some sense "directed" both at persons overseas and at persons in the U.S.

The key term, obviously, is "directed at." The bill includes no definition of it.

So if the primary target of the spying is not the person in the U.S., there is no need for judicial oversight of the surveillance. That means no official records, and no accountability for politically motivated eavesdropping -- the very reasons why the secret FISA court was created in the first place. Does the name Richard Nixon ring any warning bells with you? Would you trust Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to decide who is calling from outside the United States, let alone connected to terrorism? I think we all need to get more involved with pushing this Democratic Congress to fix this law before long before it's set to expire in 6 months. We all need to get more involved with writing our representatives. Our liberties are being taken for granted and we need to wake people up before it's too late.

The Real Root of the Immigration Crisis: Abortion

By John Scott Lucas

I recently discovered a Max Blumenthal video featuring interviews with conservative kids at the College Republican National Convention who support the war in Iraq making the mostly flaccid excuses for why they can't personally serve in the military. Check out the article and video here. There's a brilliant moment when disgraced Republican Tom Delay neatly ties the right to life movement to the immigration issue, saying that if all those babies who have been aborted in our country had been allowed to grow up, their numbers would be more than sufficient to fill the jobs currently taken by illegal aliens. So, if we made abortion illegal, we would no longer have an immigration problem in this country.

The discredited former power broker didn't mention anything about all those Americans who are unemployed yet refuse to pick grapes or sew low-cost tee shirts or work as domestic servants or gardeners. Still, his line of reasoning is truly an inspiration. Here's my answer to Delay: if we made abortion illegal today, we'd still have to wait for all those babies to grow up enough to take back all those jobs from the illegal immigrants. But if we freed all the American prisoners currently serving long mandatory sentences for minor narcotics offenses, we could fix the illegal immigration issue right now! Now, I know that Tom is a proponent of the Rockefeller Laws (they don't call him "The Hammer" for nothing), yet maybe he might be willing to consider more lenient sentencing guidelines, seeing as how he's looking at serving some jail time himself pretty soon.