Answers to Questions Pt. 1

(Like the hate mails I received last week, I want to start archiving the discussions I have with people trying to start more genuine dialogues. Visitors, feel free to join in.)

The questions:

I was curious of your opinion on a few things.

First off I have read a lot about the 60's. The whole counter culture is still a big interest to me. One of the groups I found quite intriguing was Jerry Rubin and the Yippys. I read the Manifesto, and I think Rubin went nuts after a while. He became really dark. Abby Hoffman really remained peaceful all through his hiding and the FBI setup and plea deal. Rubin didn't endure nearly that and started calling for a violent takeover of government. He began aligning himself with the Weather Underground. I was wondering what you think of Jerry Rubin and the yippy movement, and what he later became in the form of a business man.

I also wanted to ask why you think activism is not as prevalent in the US as it used to be. I think much of it has to do with the fact that as the income gap increases, it is harder for families to survive. This leads to frustration in peoples own lives and survival becomes a distraction or deterrent from protest. People are becoming less involved in politics and less informed which leads to a simple complacency. Is that a part of the design though? I am very politically active, as you can see, which is why it drives me crazy to see people so unconcerned about politics and what the country is doing. It almost seems that distraction is the tool used to avoid an uprising, and it is working.

As you can see, I am very politically active. I now work to get those that I think will make the changes desperately needed elected. I know that I will disagree with you on some things as I am a liberal leaning moderate. That said, I love learning knew things from those I may not entirely agree with. This is the same reason I listen to right wing talk radio. I look forward to engaging in some enlightened conversation with you.

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The Answers:

1) Jerry Rubin and the Yippies were a particular reaction to the growing spectacle of corporate media. They recognized that the spectacle (the illusions, the hypnotic factor, the commanding effect, the dominance of mainstream discourse) of mainstream media culture required that activists rethink their traditional methods of movement organizing and direct action. Pranks, irreverence, dropping-out, were seen as the acceptable attitudes needed to challenge the hegemonic structure. Unfortunately they underestimated A) the ability of corporate culture to appropriate and exploit these subversive tactics and B) the passivity of the burgeoning consumer culture. Rubin was equivalent to a sideshow barker, in another time he might have been P.T. Barnum and/or a businessman… oh, wait, in another time he did become that. That in itself doesn’t discount his ideas. Of course he was pissed off, the radical counter culture (including very peaceful people) found themselves being hunted and persecuted by the American government (FBI, COINTELPRO, etc). Are you familiar with Situationism in Europe that took a more serious and unbending position in the struggle with what they termed the “spectacle?”

2) The Weather Underground were at least partially motivated by the FBI’s infiltration, persecution, surveillance and execution of major groups/figures that were resisting the military-industrial-media-university complex in the 60s/70s. Remember The Weather Underground never killed anyone (other than two members killed in their own bomb mishap) in their long series of organizational bombings of buildings of institutions/businesses they viewed as complicit and/or active with the war-mongering for profits activities of the M-I-M-U complex. Ironically, when the major figures finally turned themselves in (like Ayers and Dohrn) and went to trial, they were exonerated because of the illegality of the government’s tactics against them. Imagine that, an illegal organization that bombed govt/bank buildings for over a decade, were exonerated because the law enforcement tactics were so seriously illegal/wrong. Most of the members were re-assimilated into mainstream society without giving up the same values they have always championed and to this day fight injustice. I can provide you with some writings/documentaries that could help expand your understandings of governance and resistance, national as well as global, during the 60s/70s.

3) I honestly believe that activism is at least as prevalent today, if not more so, than it was in the 60s. The problem is that the media has been allowed (encouraged) to consolidate to the point where 6 major corporations control 85+% of the world’s media. These corporations act in their own interest, in true hegemonic fashion, and they thus turn away from the actions of those that protest the systems that enable and protect their dominance (and of their allies). So, the questions we need to ask, keeping in mind the 10 million people worldwide who protested in the streets at the start of the current, ongoing Iraq War (despite two U.S. Presidents now having declared it over)-- why didn’t we get a detailed picture of these protests? If ten million trees fall in a forest and no one hears about it—did it happen? I can count off the top of my head in the U.S. ten major protest actions this year on ten different issues… I could probably double that if I did a day’s research (and double again when we turn to global protests…). Only one has been covered, some would say promoted, in the mainstream media—why is that? Are you familiar with Project Censored’s work… ?

4) Having said that, what about the rest of the people who are distracted or overworked? From childhood, we, in our society, are trained to shut up and be quiet. We are trained to unquestioningly acquiesce to authority. We are trained to think “America, the land I love, right or wrong” or if you have a problem with this country you should go somewhere else. We, like Sunday Christians, begin to believe as long as we prostrate ourselves before the symbols of our secular religion, then we are saved regardless if we act out our essential beliefs. We are trained to fragment/compartmentalize our lives (work has no connection to our homelife, America’s global actions are removed from American's everyday lives, our investments/purchases don’t need to reflect our supposed values—the documentary The Corporation portrays this ethical disconnect effectively)? Most people have no training in media literacy, how to find alternative/independent/community news sources, and/or even why they should question the official propaganda that flows through the mainstream media.

5) Beginning in the 70s two major assaults on the gains of previous generations began A) conservative corporate-funded think tanks and their government flunkys began a concerted attack on unions/labor and worked to roll back basic worker rights/securities in order to further enrich the wealthy B) American education was defunded almost across the board and a new emphasis was placed on purely factual knowledge absent of more abstract critical reasoning abilities (except in the schools of the wealthy who supported supplemental higher standards through higher property values and expected their kids to dominate). I encourage everyone to begin to educate themselves about the root causes of current economic, political and social conditions. Develop archives of valued sources/resources that you can easily share with others. Always seek to lend a helping hand to people.

6) The increasing income gap is a serious threat that will explode on the national, and global scene, as larger sections of previously entitled people lose their supposed privileges. Unfortunately because we don’t deal with this through our legitimate channels of communication and governance, it will be brutally bloody and devastating. Who knows what ugly monster will arise from the destruction (and by monster, I don’t refer to the people, but those with power that will attempt to use the chaos to their advantage). Our only hope is to begin to seriously and honestly confront the actions of our corporate dominated government/military/media and begin honest and direct discussion of these issues in the public, in the media, and amongst ourselves (do I even dare to dream it could be done in education?).

Thanks for asking,

At Least We Don't Have To Worry About Anarchy Anymore

Intelligence Squared U.S.: Has The Cyberwar Threat Been Exaggerated?

Has The Cyberwar Threat Been Exaggerated?
Intelligence Squared U.S. (NPR)

As succeeding presidential administrations and leaders in the Pentagon devote increasing resources to defending U.S. computer networks and planning for potential cyber warfare, some observers are questioning whether the cyber threat has been overstated.

While risks do exist, they say, most of them don't truly rise to the level of war. And framing the debate in war terms could provide justification for the U.S. intelligence community to assert greater authority over what people can do on the Internet, they argue.

But those who warn of the country's cyber vulnerabilities argue that criminals, hackers and other nations pose a great threat to disrupt and destroy the data networks the U.S. relies on so heavily — and strong defenses are essential.

Those debating were:

FOR THE MOTION

Marc Rotenberg is executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C. He teaches information privacy law at Georgetown University Law Center and has testified before Congress on many issues, including access to information, encryption policy, consumer protection, computer security and communications privacy. He testified before the 9/11 Commission on "Security and Liberty: Protecting Privacy, Preventing Terrorism." He has served on several national and international advisory panels, including the expert panel on cryptography policy and computer security for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Bruce Schneier is an internationally renowned security technologist, referred to by The Economist as a "security guru." He is the author of nine books — including the best-sellers Beyond Fear, Secrets and Lies and Applied Cryptography — as well as hundreds of articles and essays, and many more academic papers. His influential newsletter Crypto-Gram and his blog Schneier on Security are read by more than 250,000 people. Schneier is the chief security technology officer of BT.

AGAINST THE MOTION

John M. "Mike" McConnell, a retired vice admiral, is executive vice president and leader of the national security business for Booz Allen Hamilton and is a member of the firm's leadership team. McConnell previously served from 2007-09 as U.S. director of national intelligence, a position of Cabinet rank under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. As DNI, he served as the principal intelligence adviser to the president and as a member of the U.S. National Security Council. McConnell's career has spanned more than 40 years, focusing on international developments and foreign intelligence issues, including 29 years as a career intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy.

Jonathan Zittrain is professor of law at Harvard Law School, where he co-founded its Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Internet Society. Previously, he was professor of Internet governance and regulation at Oxford University. He performed the first large-scale tests of Internet filtering in China and Saudi Arabia in 2002, and now as part of the OpenNet Initiative, he has co-edited a study of Internet filtering by national governments, "Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering."

To Listen to the Debate

Jay Rosen: Audience Atomization Overcome -- Why the Internet Weakens the Authority of the Press

(What I am working on with my students today (and monday)............ I have been working with a similar diagram for over a decade based upon a synthesis of Mao's guerilla warfare theories and Derrida's/Foucault's theories of discourse.... interesting to see it in other places... and for the more audio-inclined here is the podcast of an interview with Jay Rosen on Glenn Greenwald radio that first alerted me to this essay)

Audience Atomization Overcome: Why the Internet Weakens the Authority of the Press
by Jay Rosen
Press Think

In the age of mass media, the press was able to define the sphere of legitimate debate with relative ease because the people on the receiving end were atomized-- connected "up" to Big Media but not across to each other. And now that authority is eroding. I will try to explain why.

It’s easily the most useful diagram I’ve found for understanding the practice of journalism in the United States, and the hidden politics of that practice. You can draw it by hand right now. Take a sheet of paper and make a big circle in the middle. In the center of that circle draw a smaller one to create a doughnut shape. Label the doughnut hole “sphere of consensus.” Call the middle region “sphere of legitimate debate,” and the outer region “sphere of deviance.”

That’s the entire model. Now you have a way to understand why it’s so unproductive to argue with journalists about the deep politics of their work. They don’t know about this freakin’ diagram! Here it is in its original form, from the 1986 book The Uncensored War by press scholar Daniel C. Hallin. Hallin felt he needed something more supple—and truthful—than calcified notions like objectivity and “opinions are confined to the editorial page.” So he came up with this diagram.

Let’s look more carefully at his three regions.

1.) The sphere of legitimate debate is the one journalists recognize as real, normal, everyday terrain. They think of their work as taking place almost exclusively within this space. (It doesn’t, but they think so.) Hallin: “This is the region of electoral contests and legislative debates, of issues recognized as such by the major established actors of the American political process.”

Here the two-party system reigns, and the news agenda is what the people in power are likely to have on their agenda. Perhaps the purest expression of this sphere is Washington Week on PBS, where journalists discuss what the two-party system defines as “the issues.” Objectivity and balance are “the supreme journalistic virtues” for the panelists on Washington Week because when there is legitimate debate it’s hard to know where the truth lies. There are risks in saying that truth lies with one faction in the debate, as against another— even when it does. He said, she said journalism is like the bad seed of this sphere, but also a logical outcome of it.

2. ) The sphere of consensus is the “motherhood and apple pie” of politics, the things on which everyone is thought to agree. Propositions that are seen as uncontroversial to the point of boring, true to the point of self-evident, or so widely-held that they’re almost universal lie within this sphere. Here, Hallin writes, “journalists do not feel compelled either to present opposing views or to remain disinterested observers.” (Which means that anyone whose basic views lie outside the sphere of consensus will experience the press not just as biased but savagely so.)

Consensus in American politics begins, of course, with the United States Constitution, but it includes other propositions too, like “Lincoln was a great president,” and “it doesn’t matter where you come from, you can succeed in America.” Whereas journalists equate ideology with the clash of programs and parties in the debate sphere, academics know that the consensus or background sphere is almost pure ideology: the American creed.

3.) In the sphere of deviance we find “political actors and views which journalists and the political mainstream of society reject as unworthy of being heard.” As in the sphere of consensus, neutrality isn’t the watchword here; journalists maintain order by either keeping the deviant out of the news entirely or identifying it within the news frame as unacceptable, radical, or just plain impossible. The press “plays the role of exposing, condemning, or excluding from the public agenda” the deviant view, says Hallin. It “marks out and defends the limits of acceptable political conduct.”

Anyone whose views lie within the sphere of deviance—as defined by journalists—will experience the press as an opponent in the struggle for recognition. If you don’t think separation of church and state is such a good idea; if you do think a single payer system is the way to go; if you dissent from the “lockstep behavior of both major American political parties when it comes to Israel” (Glenn Greenwald) chances are you will never find your views reflected in the news. It’s not that there’s a one-sided debate; there’s no debate.

To Read the Rest of the Essay, View Diagrams, See Comments, and Access Links in the Essay to More Resources