In my day to day life I teach film and media, and by and large, I like what I do. Opening people's minds to how different institutions and ideas are represented, the treasuring of imagination, creativity, but also how ideologically the world comes to be represented through what we consume.

A personal major turning point for me in all of this would have to have been when I was researching my Masters thesis on Jean-Luc Godard and realised that the western world very nearly did become something very different than it presently is. I'm talking about May 1968 in France, but also about a number of other folks who were living in the United States and elsewhere who perceived a different way of life that wasn't, amongst many other things, found in the mass consumption of the 1950's. Much of this research meant that politically I became considerably blurrier than I was previously. Although i've never been a party supporter I have always openly admitted to being politically left and many would say liberal, but this liberalism is only kinda right in that it's definitely my public face.

There are many things about 1968 that are usually discussed in an international context and I guess if you want to, you can read my thesis to find out what I mean. There was the Tet Offensive, Vietnam being just one of many countries breaking away from colonial rule. There were assasinations like the Ben Barka conspiracy, the assassination of Patrice Lamumba, MLK, Robert Kennedy; and in very recent memory for the residents of 1968, the Arab-Israeli war which is still reflected in many of the things we're still dealing with today.

The more I read the more I fell in love with revolutionary theory and figures like Ben Barka, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Patrice Lamumba, Guy Debord, Che Guevara and so on. But the funny thing with all of this was when I thought about the type of world they envisioned, and one day while reading Theodore Roszak's 'The Making of a Counter Culture' it quite literally made me cry. I felt like i'd finally come home. The passage in Roszak that made me cry really shouldn't have, but the obviousness of what he was saying was like some kind of epiphany. Roszak has a discussion about the high use of prescription medicines that had been escalating in prescription and usage throughout the 1950's and 60's, notably anti-depressants and drugs such as Valium that were in their hey-day of being prescribed for many people. Roszak's argument essentially turns around and says 'well, lets think about this a second, if this many people are on anti-depressants, maybe they have something to be depressed about because of the lives and the societies they live in'.

The difficulty in coming home for me has meant there is no way back.

Which brings me to Sean Penn. I should say at the outset that I like Sean Penn's work very much, his acting is always good and a great deal of the time, outstanding. Directorially his work is always interesting and, I think, he chooses interesting stories to tell or be a part of. However what I want to discuss is Penn's contributions to the current debate about the involvement of the U.S. in Iraq.

Reading Sean Penn's contributions to the current debate on U.S. involvement in Iraq is like watching a political consciousness, albeit conflicted, come alive for the first time. Whether this is a posture or not is worthy of discussion. It would seem naive to believe he hasn't thought too much about U.S. foreign policy before the latest Bush administration. The only thing I can think of is that the latest steps taken by the Bush led administration are just too much to bare. Another possibility, and this is a very big reach, Penn's father Leo was a talented TV director blacklisted during the McCarthy era and perhaps he perceives a similar threat looming. Perhaps ironically, if there is a blacklist being created of those within the entertainment industry, Sean Penn will probably be near the top of it because of his so-called 'unpatriotic' public statements. Is the U.S. returning to a McCarthy era? Are we currently seeing a return of the U.S. to the 1950's? My opinion? Yes, definitely.

In a social and political climate of so much fear, uncertainty and doubt (that seems to be pathologically exacerbated by the U.S. government and the media) it's very, very gutsy to publicly put your political point of view across -- and this is the root of the problem for high-profile americans not just at the moment, but always. There has always been reluctance on the part of the public to embrace celebrities who 'go against the grain' of current civil thinking. Of course the converse of this equation is true of pre-1950's America, the public seemed to embrace figures who endorsed governmental actions, for example, the images of Gable and Stewart heading off into WWII were not only perfectly acceptable, but had them labeled as heroes. Unfortunately the days of America's revolutionary past are seemingly now just that, the past.

Why is it so egregiously wrong to go against your own government's foreign policy? The justification i've seen on the political right is that it's anti-democratic to go against the wishes of the duly elected government (something that should be questioned anyway, regardless of how many hanging Florida chads there were). My contact with some U.S. individuals seems to revolve around the belief that their president is somehow infallible and beyond the questioning of the citizenry. If this change in policy is due to 9/11 then i'd really like to know if all of those U.S. security organizations have thwarted any terrorist threats since 9/11. Has the U.S. been under any direct threat from foreign or domestic agents since September 11, 2001, or is it more important for U.S. interests to propagate fear for their own advancement? Not so funnily enough the changes in the media landscape of the United States may before too long mean no amount of money can make your opinion heard unless you're a media mogul such as Murdoch and co.