Classic and modern plays target Bush and (other) terrorists By Lucy Komisar The Public Theater in recent months consciously chose three plays to comment on the Bush war. Not by name, of course, but hardly mistakable. So did The Classic Stage. An import brought from Ireland by the Atlantic Theater Company skewered war in general. […]
Songs of love, loss and war shimmer in this witty cabaret By Lucy Komisar This charming, poignant, elegantly staged theater piece of love-and-loss songs envelopes one so completely that you feel as if you‘d wandered into a Paris cabaret instead of the slightly seedy Zipper Theater, where the lobby bar and cozy corners establish a […]
By Lucy Komisar Director John Rando, known for the brilliantly campy “Urinetown,” has another success here with a witty, lively send-up of 1980s style — a Boy George look-alike (Kevin Cahoon) with long hair and swishy demeanor – mixed with a 1950s “gotta get a husband” attitude. The long joke is about a small-time band […]
Exuberant sounds mix with realistic vignettes of remarkable lives By Lucy Komisar If you came of age in the 60s, this smart, vibrant, clever memoir of the ways things sounded will evoke shivers of delight. And also some fascination, as the pulsating, exuberant sounds of Motown and doo-wop are skillfully linked to the story of […]
Play gives errant gay prof a pass on pedophilia By Lucy Komisar Of all the plays I‘ve seen this season, “The History Boys” has been the most controversial, the most likely to provoke debate. On the one hand, the rotund, erudite, slightly overweening sixtiesh professor, Hector (excellently portrayed by Richard Griffiths) propounds a philosophy of […]
“His voice was soft, his manner mild
He seldom laughed but he often smiled
He‘d seen how civilized men behave
He never forgot and he never forgave
Not Sweeney
Not Sweeney Todd
The Demon Barber of Fleet Street…”
John Doyle‘s production of “Sweeney Todd” is a thrilling artistic achievement. The Stephen Sondheim (music and lyrics) – Hugh Wheeler (book) collaboration is a powerful political parable about how a corrupt, lascivious upper class oppresses the poor and powerless.
This is not the Harold Prince 1979 Broadway staging where Angela Lansbury, Len Cariou and Victor Garber went through their paces in story-book fashion. Not another theatrical fantasy. Not the John Doyle treatment, which has you on the edge of your seat.
Class struggle, love and the search for the Holy Grail prove a witty mix. By Lucy Komisar There‘s nothing like an outrageous political satire written by left-wing Brits! John Patrick Shanley, who won this year‘s Pulitzer Prize for “Doubt,” wondered at a Drama Desk panel on theater and politics, which I moderated last year, why […]
Hokey Burlesque Mixed With Ethics Livens the Score. By Lucy Komisar I don’t like rock ‘n roll. I loved Hairspray, where rock is the major musical motif. I don’t care for men dressing up in drag. I thought Harvey Fierstein as Edna Turnblad, the overweight, tacky, attentive mother of a teenager, was terrific. This is […]
Brassy blues, R&B & gospel enliven poignant melodrama By Lucy Komisar This brassy, bluesy, R&B and gospel melodrama, based on Alice Walker’s novel, is a feminist cry of pain and rebellion, an operetta-style protest in the tradition of “Porgy and Bess.” It‘s a moving and memorable production. Playwright Marsha Norman generally succeeds in pulling the […]
This behind the scenes revisionist view of The Wizard of Oz is a political allegory about racism and discrimination. It’s fascinating as a literary work and stunning as theater. Based on the novel by Winnie Holzman, it’s an updated Animal Farm. It’s a play that exists on two levels, one for the kids and another for adults, who will find it intellectually stimulating. It’s Oz before Dorothy got there.
You might think this was a typical high-tech Broadway extravaganza. After all, a dragon belches smoke from the top of the proscenium and a huge witch’s hat flies around. (The set wizardry is by Eugene Lee.) Susan Hilferty’s costumes are great gobs of color and feathers.
The new Elton John smash musical in London is a stirring political work built around the Yorkshire miners‘ strike of 1984-5. It‘s a very British play, with workers mocking a giant puppet Maggie Thatcher and singing odes to labor solidarity. It tells also a universal truth that political struggle must defend personal freedom.
Doo-Wop will never go out of style in Las Vegas By Lucy Komisar She arrives in a cloud of smoke in a glittery pink and purple pants suit and long evening coat. She has great charm, charisma and boundless energy. She also has a powerful, eloquent voice. And she is the star performer at the […]
Should the Mother Superior act on strong suspicion if children are at risk? By Lucy Komisar ˜Playwright John Patrick Shanley, educated in Catholic schools in the Bronx, could hardly ignore the recent revelations of years of widespread abuse of children by Catholic priests. Clearly on the left of the political spectrum, he takes a careful, […]
Is Citibank Spain a tax cheat?
New Internationalist, Aug 2006
With help from a whistleblower, I followed the money trail through the offshore operations of Citigroup, the world‘s biggest bank, and discovered that Spanish bankers handling their client’s offshore accounts were getting commissions via an internal accounting system instead of on the regular books.
It is the same internal system that Citigroup used in the 1970s to compensate currency traders in Paris, London, Frankfurt and elsewhere who booked trades in the tax haven Nassau, the Bahamas. They were exposed by an insider, were investigated by the SEC and Congress, and had to pay millions in back taxes. Is this happening again?
This report describes and details a history of tax evasion by the world‘s largest
financial conglomerate, Citigroup. Going back decades, it is a story of
repeated, aggressive tax evasion for itself and clients, depriving governments
and therefore citizens of huge amounts of funds and carried out with relative
impunity.
Inter Press Service (IPS), Dec 29, 2006
Investigators find evidence that Siemens (German electronics & engineering firm), Total (French oil company), and BAE (British arms conglomerate) paid multi-millions of dollars in bribes through bank accounts in Switzerland and other offshore centers.
France and the UK argue national security to block inquiries. Concern is more likely the “security” of top officials who got kickbacks.
Spain‘s discovery that funding for Basque terrorist group ETA goes through tax havens is dramatic proof that “national security” lies not in protecting but in dismantling the global offshore secrecy network.
Dec 27, 2006
Who might have killed former Russian spy Litvinenko? Julia Svetlichnaya, a Russian living in London, told the press there that she had met Litvinenko and learned that he was collecting information about mega-rich Russian entrepreneurs to use for blackmail.
It has not been reported before that Litvinenko’s collaborator, Yevgeny Limarev, had visited Elena Collongues-Popova (shown here), a Russian woman in Paris, to seek information connecting ex-Yukos official Alexei Golubovich to bribery of the former president of Lithuania. And Svetlichnaya hasn’t told the press that she worked for the very same Golubovich.
Northern California is a magical place that is a model for the sophisticated urban-plus-country living we‘d all have if the world was organized by smart people. Spending a long weekend there in the fall makes one put it on the short list of where to live if you ever moved from where you are. We landed in San Francisco for a taste of classy city chic, then moved on to the wine country, passing through forest and beach on the way.
Inter Press Service (IPS) – Nov 6, 2006
The company is under investigation by the SEC, the United States Attorney in Newark, New Jersey, and a U.S. federal grand jury for allegedly paying bribes to Jean-Bertrand Aristide, former president of Haiti. Five nationally prominent US Republicans, the independent board members of a corporation that has been charged with paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to get a sweetheart telecom deal in Haiti, are leaving its board. The company is IDT, the world’s third-ranked international phone company.
IDT is run by James Courter (shown here), a former New Jersey Republican congressman. The other Republicans are Rudy Boschwitz, former senator from Minnesota; James S. Gilmore III, former Virginia governor; Thomas Slade Gorton III, former senator from Washington State; Jack Kemp, former congressman from New York and 1996 vice presidential nominee; and Jeane Kirkpatrick, the former U.S. ambassador to the UN under President Ronald Reagan.
Inter Press Service (IPS), Oct 26, 2006
The U.S. Justice Department is withholding agreement to share assets seized from Haitian drug traffickers to finance a lawsuit by the Haitian government charging former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide with taking bribes.
The suit is based on allegations by a former executive of the telecom company IDT that before Aristide left the country in 2004, he took hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks from IDT, which is connected to prominent U.S. Republicans.
The soul of Athens is embedded in its ancient monuments. The Acropolis and other historic sites are not museum pieces tucked away for tourists‘ visits. They are an integral part of the city‘s life. Visit the National Gallery, and you‘ll see a 19th-century painting of Athenians lounging on a terrace, with the Acropolis in the background, “Athenian Evening,” 1897, by Iakovos Rizos (1849-1926).
The city shows its pride in the venerable stones of the Parthenon and other more-than-2500-year-old temples by designing its streets and buildings with the goal of assuring direct sightlines. That appears to be the de rigueur view from the best hotels.
Come January, there‘s no better place to be than Key West. If the stars are right, you might arrive there as I did early this year, first to bask in the intellectual lights of the Key West Literary Seminar and then to revel in the glories of the annual Key West international regatta.
The seminar was about adventure, travel and discovery. If you were there, you would have heard Kate Wheeler, who trained as a Buddhist nun in Burma and wrote the novel, “When Mountains Walked,” about foreigners adrift in exotic cultures. Or maybe you‘d have chatted with her at the champagne party the seminar throws every year at the Key West Museum of Art and History at the historic red brick Custom House. (That is Kate second from the right at the 2006 party.)
Sept 18, 2006
Is top Justice official protecting a former client accused of bribery?
The Justice Department’s Criminal Division, headed by a Bush political appointee who gave legal advice to a company accused of bribing Haiti’s former president, is blocking an agreement to share seized Haitian drug money that would help Haiti pursue the bribery case in U.S. courts. The accused company is run by a former Republican congressman.
The Criminal Division chief, Alice Fisher, formerly a registered lobbyist for HCA, the healthcare company founded by the father of Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, is a recess appointee. Her approval was blocked by Senators concerned about her qualifications and about her participation in a government meeting on abusive interrogations at the U.S. military prison camp at Guantanamo.
![Fees for Friends: Vendetta [Andrew Cuomo Scandal]](https://www.thekomisarscoop.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/catherine_austin_fitts2.jpg "Fees for Friends: Vendetta [Andrew Cuomo Scandal]")
Aug 30, 2006 [Part 2]
When Andrew Cuomo became HUD Secretary in 1997, he axed a federal program that had saved the US $2.2 billion between 1994 and 1997 and reinstituted a system that lost the government money while earning billions for favored friends.
He used the power of his office to target a former HUD official who had assisted his predecessor in operating the successful program. A HUD legal vendetta destroyed the official’s company before the Justice Department finally admitted there was no case and dropped it.
Now he is running for Attorney General of New York State.
By Lucy Komisar
Aug 22, 2006 [Part 1]
When Andrew Cuomo became HUD Secretary in 1997, he reversed the policy of selling defaulted mortgages so that families could keep their homes. Instead, he chose to foreclose on mortgages, which meant that families lost their homes and insiders cleaned up on fire-sale priced properties. The program he axed had saved the U.S. $2.2 billion between 1994 and 1997. Cuomo fired the former HUD official whose company designed the program.
That wasn‘t the only money big money lost under Cuomo. HUD reported at the time that $59 billion was missing! It couldn‘t say where the money went, because it failed to produce audited financial statements.
