Featured Guest(s):
Scott Richard Lyons, Nick Van der Graaf,
Scott Richard Lyons talks to Phil about his critique of the film "Million Dollar Baby", which he refers to as "Million Dollar Bigotry: Demeaning the Poor and Disabled". Lyons castigates the film for promoting the 'death before disability' stereotype of the disabled, as well as going out of its way to reinforce negative stereotypes of welfare recipients. "Hollywood, like any other industry, follows the whim of the market" states Lyons - and it is certainly not dominated by liberals. Lyons draws the connection between Clint Eastwood's role in directing and starring in "Million Dollar Baby", and his testimony before Congress in 2000 lobbying against the 'Americans With Disabilities Act'. You see, Eastwood had been sued because his Mission Ranch hotel in Carmel had failed to comply with the law requiring access for the disabled.
Phil also talks with Nick Van der Graaf of Geospace Planetarium, a non-profit organization that is working to establish a new, modern and 'green' planetarium in Toronto. The McLaughlin Planetarium was closed because of Mike Harris' budget cutting in 1995, and since then Toronto has been one of the few major cities in the world to lack this important institution to help us learn about the stars and humanity's place in the universe.
Links:
Demeaning the Poor and Disabled - Counterpunch.org
Ragged Edge Magazine Online
NotDeadYet.org
GeoSpace Planetarium
The Taylor Report is pleased to bring you Rwanda 1994: Colonialism dies hard, the english translation of Robin Philpot's book Ça ne s’est pas passé comme ça à Kigali. We are now also hosting the german version - Ruanda 1994 - die inszenierte Tragödie - translated by Klaus Madersbacher.
Text from the back cover:
Right thinking people would have us blindly believe the Official Story that the Rwandan tragedy was simply the work of horrible Hutu génocidaires who planned and executed a satanic scheme to eliminate nearly a million Tutsis after a plane crashed in the heart of dark Africa on April 6, 1994. On the other hand, former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali declared to the author that the “Rwandan genocide was 100 percent American responsibility. How can such contradictory interpretations coexist?
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