Nachie: Anarcho-Sceneism -- What it is and how to fight it

Anarcho-Sceneism: What it is and how to fight it
By Nachie (with contributions from members of the RAAN online community)
Red Anarchist Action Network

This essay originally appeared in the first issue of Praxis, journal of the Red & Anarchist Action Network (Summer, 2003)

"Sub-cultures... are no more than glorified fan clubs. They are incomplete or escapist at best, and social organs of the enemy collaboration at worst. They are not counter." - David (Green Mountain Anarchist Collective)

When it came time for the Red & Anarchist Action Network (RAAN) to develop a short description of itself, or "blurb", which we could use in efficiently introducing our core values to a large number of people, we included in it one line in particular that has since become a source of confusion;

"The network was born out of a desire to...

...Dismantle the elitist "sceneism" that has governed portions of the revolutionary movement for far too long."

What do we mean by "sceneism" and how do we identify it as a negative force operating both consciously and unconsciously in the established anti-authoritarian movement? More importantly, how does this awareness fit into the daily practice of the Red & Anarchist Action Network; what steps can we take to put an end to Anarcho-sceneism?

Why "Sceneism"?

Sceneism is the name that we are using to describe the prevailing state of the "anarchist movement" today (at least, in North America). What we mean is that our movement now shares several fundamental characteristics with the petty social relations found inside music "scenes"; punk, indie, hardcore, etc. (of course music scenes are not the only ones that exist, but for comparative purposes they're a good place to start)

Specifically, the hostile trends that we have witnessed within the anarchist movement have been elitism, white & male dominance, too close a relationship with a specific subculture (IE punk), and cliques of friends who by their very existence close off new membership in the movement by making it inaccessible to those not already deeply involved.

This is not to say that we are addressing sceneism as the only problem in today's movement, but a specific one that so far very few organizations, especially informal affinity groups, have managed to combat effectively. Furthermore, sceneism must be confronted as yet another system of domination: a bourgeois-spectacular social relation operating within the anti-authoritarian movement; one that we must dismantle.

Our main purpose here is to identify and analyze "sceneist" behavior in the movement, and begin to develop concrete ways of fighting it, specifically within RAAN and especially in light of the fact that our organization has begun to grow, and that this growth is now bringing up an inevitable series of interactions with the "established" anti-authoritarian movement (that is, what is now popularly referred to as the anarchist movement).

What to be on guard against

The idea for this article as a necessary reflection on the state of American anarchism - and how our network should strive to differentiate itself - first came about as the result of a conversation between two members of RAAN. The topic at hand was the possibility of putting on a benefit concert for the network, and what such a show would ideally look like. One of the people involved was already very familiar with the established anarchist movement, while the other was not.

The more experienced activist suggested that she would be able to get a well-known anarchist speaker to come support the benefit. The less experienced activist, while unfamiliar with this famous anarchist, nevertheless pointed out that when one thought of a "well-known anarchist" speaking somewhere, one would also be inclined to think of the "usual suspects" of the anarchist scene as being the people who would show up to see her.

Based on that observation, the two RAAN members began to wonder if getting the anarchist to speak on behalf of the organization wouldn't result in RAAN attracting only a very limited assortment of the people we'd hope to reach with our ideas. After a little more discussion, it was decided that getting this famous anarchist to speak would indeed not be in the best interest of the network. After all, our purpose here is to build a new and independent movement, not to merely place the old one, with all of its baggage, under the banner of RAAN (which is not to say that people already identifying as anarchists shouldn't also be considered potential allies).

What do we see as being wrong within the current manifestation of anarchism? To put it simply, we fear that large sections of the movement have become exclusive social cliques that have reproduced within themselves all the forms of oppression tied to capitalist society. Whether such a result must be inevitable in any organization (anti-capitalist or not) born of class society is not the issue. Rather, we are disgusted by the continual failure of the recognized anarchist movement to combat this tendency and more specifically, by its actual semi-conscious attempts to do so by withdrawing into a series of alienating social circles, which we here will call "scenes". If scenes are the bourgeois social structures that arise as a result of people struggling to come to terms with alienation, then "Anarcho-sceneism" is the held belief that a revolutionary movement can exist within, or even be based on, any such scene (especially, a "revolutionary" one).

The Red & Anarchist Action Network has, at least so far, been very free of the sort of social and interpersonal drama that has in the past plagued other groups with similar goals. RAAN members have been able to build ties through the network and meet together towards the accomplishment of goals, such as the writing of this article, and by all accounts the results so far have been excellent.

This may not necessarily hold up as we grow, but we certainly cannot in any way cultivate the culture of immature personal squabbles that has become standard in so many anarchist circles.

To Read the Rest of this essay

Matt Richtel: Your Brain on Computers

(At the beginning of summer I look forward to all the books I want to read [i am a bibliophile at heart], but after a year of intense film/internet studies I found it very difficult for me to concentrate/focus on sustained reading [at first, I’m now happily curling up with books] ... and I am a lifelong, enthusiastic book reader... the struggle of teaching my course readings to unwilling students is clear in light of the development/immersion of consciousnesses in these types of multi-modal, media environments.

Great article on how these multi-modal, addictive, media environments are affecting heavy users…)

Your Brain on Computers: Hooked on Gadgets, and Paying a Mental Price
By MATT RICHTEL
The New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO — When one of the most important e-mail messages of his life landed in his in-box a few years ago, Kord Campbell overlooked it.

Not just for a day or two, but 12 days. He finally saw it while sifting through old messages: a big company wanted to buy his Internet start-up.

“I stood up from my desk and said, ‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,’ ” Mr. Campbell said. “It’s kind of hard to miss an e-mail like that, but I did.”

The message had slipped by him amid an electronic flood: two computer screens alive with e-mail, instant messages, online chats, a Web browser and the computer code he was writing.

While he managed to salvage the $1.3 million deal after apologizing to his suitor, Mr. Campbell continues to struggle with the effects of the deluge of data. Even after he unplugs, he craves the stimulation he gets from his electronic gadgets. He forgets things like dinner plans, and he has trouble focusing on his family.

His wife, Brenda, complains, “It seems like he can no longer be fully in the moment.”

This is your brain on computers.

Scientists say juggling e-mail, phone calls and other incoming information can change how people think and behave. They say our ability to focus is being undermined by bursts of information.

These play to a primitive impulse to respond to immediate opportunities and threats. The stimulation provokes excitement — a dopamine squirt — that researchers say can be addictive. In its absence, people feel bored.

The resulting distractions can have deadly consequences, as when cellphone-wielding drivers and train engineers cause wrecks. And for millions of people like Mr. Campbell, these urges can inflict nicks and cuts on creativity and deep thought, interrupting work and family life.

While many people say multitasking makes them more productive, research shows otherwise. Heavy multitaskers actually have more trouble focusing and shutting out irrelevant information, scientists say, and they experience more stress.

And scientists are discovering that even after the multitasking ends, fractured thinking and lack of focus persist. In other words, this is also your brain off computers.

“The technology is rewiring our brains,” said Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse and one of the world’s leading brain scientists. She and other researchers compare the lure of digital stimulation less to that of drugs and alcohol than to food and sex, which are essential but counterproductive in excess.

Technology use can benefit the brain in some ways, researchers say. Imaging studies show the brains of Internet users become more efficient at finding information. And players of some video games develop better visual acuity.

More broadly, cellphones and computers have transformed life. They let people escape their cubicles and work anywhere. They shrink distances and handle countless mundane tasks, freeing up time for more exciting pursuits.

For better or worse, the consumption of media, as varied as e-mail and TV, has exploded. In 2008, people consumed three times as much information each day as they did in 1960. And they are constantly shifting their attention. Computer users at work change windows or check e-mail or other programs nearly 37 times an hour, new research shows.

The nonstop interactivity is one of the most significant shifts ever in the human environment, said Adam Gazzaley, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco.

“We are exposing our brains to an environment and asking them to do things we weren’t necessarily evolved to do,” he said. “We know already there are consequences.”

To Read the Rest of This Article

Mamas and Papas: California Dreamin

(thinking of and missing my west coast family)

Democracy Now: Trial Begins for Ex-Chicago Police Lt. Accused of Torturing More than 100 African American Men

Trial Begins for Ex-Chicago Police Lt. Accused of Torturing More than 100 African American Men
Democracy Now

A former police commander accused of overseeing the torture of more than 100 African American men goes on trial today in Chicago. Former Lieutenant Jon Burge is accused of lying when he denied in a civil lawsuit that he and other detectives had tortured anyone. He faces a maximum of forty-five years in prison if convicted of all charges. The accusations of torture date back forty years, but Burge has avoided prosecution until now. For nearly two decades, beginning in 1971, Burge was at the epicenter of what has been described as the systematic torture of dozens of black men to coerce confessions. In total, more than 100 people in Chicago say they were subjected to abuse, including having guns forced into their mouths, suffocation with bags placed over their heads, and electric shocks inflicted to their genitals. We speak to attorney Flint Taylor and torture victim Darrell Cannon.

Guests:

Flint Taylor, attorney with the People’s Law Office in Chicago. He has represented many of the torture victims and was directly involved in spearheading the special prosecutor’s investigation.

Darrell Cannon, one of dozens of men to come forward with allegations of abuse at the hands of the Chicago police. Darrell says police tortured him in 1983 and forced him to confess to a murder he didn’t commit. He spent more than twenty years in prison, but after a hearing on his tortured confession, prosecutors dismissed his case in 2004. He was released three years later.

To Read/Listen/Watch

Chris Hedges: The Christian Fascists Are Growing Stronger

(We definitely should make these distinctions, as we do when discussing the extremes of any group. However, it also seems we should be aware of the ways the pulpit is being hijacked in more mainstream churches to preach forms of hatred and discrimination--whether implicitly or explicitly.

As an anarchist/atheist, I’m still an avid reader of Sojourners, listener to APM: Speaking of Faith, fan of Cornel West’s integration of liberation theology/Marxist historicism, and a student of many faiths [and a firm believer that religion, politics and philosophies are all essentially faith-based]. I value religions for their deep insights into the human condition and their continuing efforts to explore the unimaginable. My problem with the current fundamentalist/evangelical movement in the US is their totalizing vision that eliminates any deviation from their cultural scripts and their aggressive attempt to rewrite history, laws and consciousnesses. I have nothing against religion, instead my problem is with intolerance, violence and hatred, in actions, representations and words, no matter the source.

I have the same problem with people who should be my allies, but instead are controlling, abusive and dismissive. Atheists like Hichens who are arrogant enough to believe their own perspective is not faith-based, socialists who believe they need to eliminate en-masse those who stand in the way of revolutionary change, anarchists who mistakenly believe anarchism is a philosophy of selfish individualism, etc… I simply expect “progressive” Christians to do the same with their extremists (and I am grateful that this is what Hedges has done, he has applied the insights of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning to the current discourses of all-out spiritual war coming from right-leaning Christian communities in the USA].

I was raised, for a time, as a kid in fundamentalist Christian communities. For them it is often a matter of simplistic right or wrong, you are with us or you are against us, you are a part of the elect saved or condemned heathen, … this is easily translated into whatever I do for my faith is right, because God is on my side and those I act against are “evil.” That troubles me…

Just a reminder “14 Characteristics of Fascism”)

The Christian Fascists Are Growing Stronger
By Chris Hedges
TruthDig

Tens of millions of Americans, lumped into a diffuse and fractious movement known as the Christian right, have begun to dismantle the intellectual and scientific rigor of the Enlightenment. They are creating a theocratic state based on “biblical law,” and shutting out all those they define as the enemy. This movement, veering closer and closer to traditional fascism, seeks to force a recalcitrant world to submit before an imperial America. It champions the eradication of social deviants, beginning with homosexuals, and moving on to immigrants, secular humanists, feminists, Jews, Muslims and those they dismiss as “nominal Christians”—meaning Christians who do not embrace their perverted and heretical interpretation of the Bible. Those who defy the mass movement are condemned as posing a threat to the health and hygiene of the country and the family. All will be purged.

The followers of deviant faiths, from Judaism to Islam, must be converted or repressed. The deviant media, the deviant public schools, the deviant entertainment industry, the deviant secular humanist government and judiciary and the deviant churches will be reformed or closed. There will be a relentless promotion of Christian “values,” already under way on Christian radio and television and in Christian schools, as information and facts are replaced with overt forms of indoctrination. The march toward this terrifying dystopia has begun. It is taking place on the streets of Arizona, on cable news channels, at tea party rallies, in the Texas public schools, among militia members and within a Republican Party that is being hijacked by this lunatic fringe.

Elizabeth Dilling, who wrote “The Red Network” and was a Nazi sympathizer, is touted as required reading by trash-talk television hosts like Glenn Beck. Thomas Jefferson, who favored separation of church and state, is ignored in Christian schools and soon will be ignored in Texas public school textbooks. The Christian right hails the “significant contributions” of the Confederacy. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who led the anti-communist witch hunts of the 1950s, has been rehabilitated, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is defined as part of the worldwide battle against Islamic terror. Legislation like the new Jim Crow laws of Arizona is being considered by 17 other states.

The rise of this Christian fascism, a rise we ignore at our peril, is being fueled by an ineffectual and bankrupt liberal class that has proved to be unable to roll back surging unemployment, protect us from speculators on Wall Street, or save our dispossessed working class from foreclosures, bankruptcies and misery. The liberal class has proved useless in combating the largest environmental disaster in our history, ending costly and futile imperial wars or stopping the corporate plundering of the nation. And the gutlessness of the liberal class has left it, and the values it represents, reviled and hated.

The Democrats have refused to repeal the gross violations of international and domestic law codified by the Bush administration. This means that Christian fascists who achieve power will have the “legal” tools to spy on, arrest, deny habeas corpus to, and torture or assassinate American citizens—as does the Obama administration.

To Read the Rest of the Commentary

Martyn Everett: Art as a Weapon -- Frans Seiwert and the Cologne Progressives

'Art as a Weapon: Frans Seiwert and the Cologne Progressives'
by Martyn Everett
Garage Collections



Art has a long history of use as a propaganda weapon by the powerful, who have patronised particular forms of art and particular artists as a means of enhancing or glorifying their own position. The icon-like portraits of Queen Elizabeth I provide an obvious example, as artists were forbidden to paint other than an officially approved likeness. More recently, the harnessing of art to commodity production - to sell products and create a particular, favourable image of the multi-national corporation is a phenomenon we are all familiar with. Occasionally, however, attempts have been made to transform art into a political weapon; to use it as a means of overthrowing a cruel and unjust social system.

In order to achieve this, artists have had to periodically rethink the whole nature and language of art so that they could challenge the state and the dominant cultural values that underpin both state and economy. This is why new cultural avant-gardes have frequently been linked to anarchism or socialism, their radical politics informing their radical artistic stance. The post-Impressionists and the Surrealists provide ready examples. Attempts to construct a politically engaged art have usually been most successful during times of political ferment, when the culture of the ruling class is already under siege, as during the post First World War Weimar Republic (1918-1933) when Germany was deeply divided and torn by armed conflict.

Art historians have tended to focus mainly on the Expressionist movement and Dada during this period, overlooking the work of the political constructivists, the `Cologne Progressives', a movement which grew out of Expressionism and Dada, and was a contemporary of both. As with Expressionism and Dada the Cologne Progressives were heavily influenced by anarchism, and many of the political constructivists contributed to a range of anarchist and socialist publications.

The Cologne Progressives were a loose grouping of artists initially centred on Cologne and Dusseldorf, which for the last years of its existence produced the radical art magazine A bis Z (1929-1933). Its aims and ideals were, however, shared by artists from elsewhere, and the group eventually included members in Prague, Moscow, Vienna, Amsterdam and Paris. The members of the Progressives all saw their primary purpose as developing visual weapons for the political and social struggle of an oppressed working class against the rich and powerful. They sought to express complex political ideas in simple visual terms, exposing not the nature of the capitalist system, but its causes, and suggesting revolutionary solutions.

To Read the Rest of the Essay

On the Media: Greg Sandoval -- How Bad is Piracy?; FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz on Privacy, Net Neutrality and the Future of News

On the Media (NPR)

How Bad is Piracy? No One Knows.

The RIAA and MPAA often warn of the devastating economic effects of internet piracy. But a new government study says...not so fast. The Government Accountability Office found recently that it's impossible to quantify just how bad piracy is for the economy. Plus, they found there may even be some upside to internet piracy. CNET's Greg Sandoval explains why the GAO report is a big deal.

To Read/Listen to the Episode

FTC Chairman on Privacy, Net Neutrality and the Future of News

What does the Federal Trade Commission actually do? A lot, it turns out. The FTC aims to protect consumers and that means keeping an eye on internet privacy, deceptive marketing, net neutrality and even the decline of newspapers. FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz discusses the agency's current top priorities.

To Read/Listen to the Episode

On the Media: I'll Be Watching You

I'll Be Watching You
On the Media (NPR)

Written in 1986, the Stored Communications Act allows the government to obtain emails hosted on the internet more easily than they would those stored on your computer. Ryan Singel, blogger for wired.com, talks about how this law came to exist, and why it has advocacy groups and mail hosts like Google and Yahoo up-in-arms.

To Listen to the Episode

Michael Benton: Kentucky Tomatillo Avocado Salsa

5 medium tomatillos (husked, rinsed and processed)
2 red, orange or yellow tomatoes (chopped fine)
2 large jalapenos (diced)
2 large garlic cloves (garlic pressed)
1 generous slice of white onion (diced)
1/2 cup of fresh cilantro (chopped)
1 tbls of sea salt
1 ripe medium-large avocado
1/2 half of a lime (juice)
Pepper to taste

Paul A. Baran: The Power of Sharks

The trouble with economics is not that it does not yet "know enough," as many of its practitioners love to repeat. Its fatal shortcoming is that is does not incorporate in its knowledge the understanding of what is necessary for the attainment of a better, more rational economic order. Hemingway's Old Man was a virtuoso fisherman. If he had a fault, it was his incapacity to realize the overwhelmingly destructive power of the sharks.

--Paul A. Baran, "Review of Joan Robinson's Economic Philosophy." in American Economic Review (June 1963)

Marco Amador: Yo Soy El Army -- US Military Targets Latinos with Extensive Recruitment Campaign

Yo Soy El Army: US Military Targets Latinos with Extensive Recruitment Campaign
Democracy Now

In addition to the racial profiling encouraged by Arizona’s controversial anti-immigrant law, the Hispanic community in this country is the target of a different kind of profiling, as well: the military’s targeting of Latino recruits. We get a report from independent media activist and community organizer Marco Amador of Producciones Cimarrón and the Center for Community Communications and the Big Noise media collective.

To Read/Listen/Watch

Amy Goodman: Alleged Chicago Police Torturer’s Overdue Day in Court

Alleged Chicago Torturer’s Overdue Day in Court
by Amy Goodman
Democracy Now

Burge rose in the ranks to become a commander in Chicago’s South Side, called Area 2. Electric shocks to the genitals, mock executions, suffocation with bags over the head, beatings and painful stress positions are among the torture techniques that Burge and police officers under his command are accused of using to extract confessions in Chicago, mostly from African-American men.

To Listen to the Report

Michael Sicinski: 25 Songs of Innocence & Experience -- Spike Jonze, Wes Anderson and the Post-Boomer

25 Songs of Innocence & Experience: Spike Jonze, Wes Anderson and the Post-Boomer
By Michael Sicinski
Cinema Scope



...

Seen as entries onto this broad canvas, the stakes change significantly. While Fantastic Mr. Fox is by any reasonable measure the “better” film, it succeeds, in part, by sticking to Dahl’s world of wily animals, who are cute and funny, as compared to the revolting human farmers Boggis, Bunce, and Bean (“one fat, one short, one lean…”). The adult Mr. and Mrs. Fox (Meryl Streep), the lawyer Mr. Badger (Bill Murray), Fox’s opossum friend Kylie (Wally Wolodarsky)—all become “kids” because they’re implicitly pitted against human “adults.” This is by no means to sell Anderson’s film short: in fact, in addition to its ample formal and comedic virtues, Mr. Fox is also a remarkably anarchistic response to the global financial crisis. Spinning off from Dahl’s original tale, Anderson turns the farmers into captains of British agribusiness, and the animals who steal from them are moral heroes by any measure. Contrast this with Dahl’s rather discomfiting validation of Willy Wonka’s corporate chocolate manufacturing and his reliance on colonial Oompa-Loompa labour, a conundrum no film adaptation has been able to, er, outfox.; or, elsewhere in the kiddie-lit pantheon, with Robert C. O’Brien’s Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH and Don Bluth’s more mystical adaptation The Secret of NIMH (1982), in which the colony of intelligent rats and mice feel a moral charge not to steal from a farmer, but rather to enact the Plan (echoes of Lenin no doubt intentional) in order to generate electricity and a self-sufficient society. Lodged safely between the poles of individual enterprise and a nascent vulpine/mustelid socialist alliance, Mr. Fox is winning in large part because it is a Robin Hood story with a typically charming Clooney rogue at its centre. (What’s more, the underground lairs and warrens of Fox and his friends at last provide Anderson with an incontestably apposite rationale for the enclosed, in-frame-only movie worlds he prefers.)

But despite Anderson’s clear triumphs, I would argue that Where the Wild Things Are is the more radical of the two films, due to the fact that Jonze and (hipster alert!) co-screenwriter Dave Eggers chose to zero in on Sendak’s most enduring truth: childhood as a space of uncontrolled emotional danger, a makeshift field of creation and destruction. A handheld, white-and-beige prologue shows us the world of Max (Max Records, a preternaturally gifted first-time actor) from the low angles of the little brother, of the lonely child, of the kid learning to deal with divorce. The sequence in which Max lies under the desk while his mother (Catherine Keener) tries to complete some late work is spot-on and heartbreaking. After Max fails in his competition for his mother’s attention with her boyfriend (Mark Ruffalo), Max bites her and runs, then sails, off to the island of the Wild Things. While Jonze and Eggers have for the most part patterned their creature designs very closely after Sendak’s original renderings, on the narrative level they have quite explicitly made them monsters from Max’s id, an interpretive move for which they have taken a great deal of heat. (One notable critic referred to the film as “Where the Emo Things Are.”)

But look more closely, and it’s evident that Wild Things is a film which not only explores a young boy’s subjectivity but takes it very seriously, regarding it with deep empathy yet refusing to treat it as sacrosanct. Following the post-boomer tendency to hold “childhood” as a suspended term, one with uncertain frontiers and semiotic contours yet to be defined, Wild Things populates Max’s new world (“you are the owner of this world….except for that…and that…”) with bizarre creatures themselves suspended between childhood and adulthood. That is, they embody Max’s “juvenile investigations” (to borrow Freud’s term) about the adult world—he knows Judith (Catherine O’Hara) and Ira (Forest Whitaker) are “in love,” but what does that mean beyond inseparability? And what does it mean that Carol (James Gandolfini) loves and misses K.W. (Lauren Ambrose), but that Max, “the king,” cannot repair their bond? Likewise, in terms of Jonze’s set design and mise en scène, Wild Things foregrounds things ramshackle and tentative. Most notably, the massive twig-fort resembles the architecture of Gaudí or Boullée from a distance, but up close is so porous as to essentially be all interior, a proper structural analogue for a purely psychological space.

It’s possible that one’s reaction to Wild Things may depend in part on one’s position relative to the question of divorce itself. Post-boomers who have had to steel themselves against the very experience they underwent may well find the film mawkish, whereas parents, identifying less with Max than with the desire to protect him, might come away from the film with somewhat different emotional centres having been activated. Max’s relationships with unstable Carol, paranoid Judith, or insecure Alexander (Paul Dano) can and will scan as too-convenient, even schematic Jungian gestures. However one’s scansion of the film is mitigated significantly if it is weighed against the daily observation of a living child’s development, wherein distinctions between peer-group struggles and the fitful formation of a coherent subjectivity are blurry at best. Every social interaction is always also a laboratory for the articulation of self—and that too, it seems to me, is “not just for kids.”

Despite its rather obvious missteps (the science teacher’s speech; Karen O’s too-cool-for-school soundtrack), Where the Wild Thing Are describes the complex and multi-directional arc of a young mind at work, embracing and then eventually shunning his own most destructive tendencies, only to discover that, in a kind of psychological catharsis of the sort that art therapists only dream of, every last bit of himself is completely lovable and worthy of acceptance. It may be pat or overly contrived; I don’t know. But as a member of the post-boomer generation and a struggling parent myself, I found the conclusion of Wild Things both tender and reassuring, since it spoke directly to the experience that we—Jonze, Anderson, all of us—have so clearly taken from our own childhoods. It is not within our power to reunite our parents, but with time and great difficulty, we can make ourselves whole. Whether that prepares us for bequeathing an entirely different set of lessons is harder to tell.

To Read the Entire Essay

Scott Tobias: Gateway to Geekery -- Michael Haneke

Gateway to Geekery: Michael Haneke
by Scott Tobias
The A.V. Club



Geek obsession: The films of Austrian director Michael Haneke

Why it’s daunting: From the beginning, Haneke has been a polarizing figure on the international scene, a moralist whose cold appraisals of man’s basest instincts are a far cry from the gentle humanism that tends to win plaudits and awards. He isn’t given to cutting his dark visions with a sliver of hope, and the audience isn’t spared from his scolding—even at its most direct, in the case of 1997’s Funny Games and its 2007 English-language remake.

Possible gateway: Caché

Why: Even after 15 years of lobbing grenades on the festival circuit, where the battle lines between his supporters and detractors had been firmly drawn, Haneke didn’t achieve a real breakthrough success—commercially, and to some extent critically—until his 2005 thriller Caché. And there’s a reason for that: It’s the most accessible and conventionally satisfying film of his career, while also crisply synthesizing his long-running themes and proving again that no director alive can suck the air out of the room quite like Haneke. For Haneke neophytes, it’s both the perfect way to ease into his work—the word “ease” being extremely relative—and a solid primer on what to expect from him.

With echoes of the first two reels of David Lynch’s Lost Highway, the film begins with a Parisian couple (Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche) receiving a videotape that’s nothing but a long static shot of the outside of their apartment. As new tapes arrive on the porch—some wrapped in disturbing, child-like drawings—the images start to open up into a voyeuristic narrative that stretches back into Auteuil’s past. From there, Haneke deepens a precisely calibrated thriller with a sharp critique of bourgeois arrogance and a politically charged allegory on French-Algerian relations.

Alive with the threat of home invasion, dark secrets, and a malevolent voyeur, Caché sustains an air of such unbearable tension that something as minor as a joke at a dinner party leads to the film’s second-biggest jolt. (The biggest will be obvious to anyone who’s seen it.) It also ends on an image of such ambiguity that fans have looked at it literally frame by frame to figure out exactly what happens. Like Haneke’s other work, it’s blunt and unsparing, but it leaves something for viewers to mull over.

To Read the Rest of the Profile

Robert W. McChesney and John Bellamy Foster: Capitalism, the Absurd System -- A View from the United States

Capitalism, the Absurd System: A View from the United States
by Robert W. McChesney and John Bellamy Foster
Monthly Review

...

The question we should ask is: What is society actually like when the veil of money is removed, and the real face of power is seen? Is society, stripped of its ideological cover and reduced to nakedness, one of equality—where four hundred individuals in the United States (the Forbes 400) own almost as much wealth as the bottom half of the population (150 million people)?5 Is this a rational society, when a trillion dollars each year is spent on the U.S. military?6 Can it be justified when the system, according to modern science, is pointing to mass extinction of the species, quite possibly humanity itself?

Capitalism’s main economic claim to being an indispensable system is that it promotes economic growth, the benefits of which ostensibly trickle down to the vast majority. Today, however, in the mature capitalist economies, economic growth has slowed to a crawl (though sufficient to threaten the environment). The gains of labor productivity flow upwards by myriad pumps, after which they are seldom allowed to trickle down. The result is a deeply unequal society and generalized economic stagnation, associated with a dearth of effective demand—countered only in part by financial bubbles, which eventually burst with disastrous effects. In the past five decades, the U.S. economy has grown, but at slower and slower rates. The stagnation of the last ten years resembles nothing so much as the stagnation of the 1930s (i.e., the Great Depression years). (See Chart One). The same is true to varying extents for all the other rich, mature, capitalist economies.

This long-term slowdown is associated with growing structural inequality. The economic surplus generated by society is amassed more and more at the top. Worker productivity is much greater than it was back in 1975, but very little of this increased wealth actually goes to workers themselves. As Chart Two demonstrates, the wages of U.S. manufacturing workers have fallen rapidly during the last three and a half decades as a share of value added in U.S. manufacturing. The median wage of all nonagricultural workers has stagnated over the same period.

In this Les Misérables economy, it is hardly surprising that the general quality of life for most people has not improved—despite the continuing growth of overall social wealth and the increase in human productive capacities. The Happy Planet Index, developed by the New Economics Foundation, examines how “happy” a country is—as measured by a combination of life expectancy and life satisfaction in relation to its ecological footprint. In the 2009 Happy Planet Index, the United States—the very model of mature capitalism—ranked a dismal 114 out of 143 included countries.7 The “greed is good,” “shop ‘til you drop,” “whoever dies with the most toys wins” ethos that marks free market capitalism is not conducive to genuine human happiness. What it generates in ever-increasing levels—even among its more successful strata—is stress, heart disease, loneliness, depression, and the waste of human potential. “This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism,” Albert Einstein wrote in “Why Socialism?” in volume 1, number 1 of Monthly Review (May 1949).

A lot of this damage to individuals has to do with our lack of concern for collective needs. The physical infrastructure of the United States—the built environment of our cities, roads, railroads, bridges, public water and electrical systems, parks, etc.—is crumbling. The per capita ecological footprint of the United States far exceeds what can be sustained at a global level, contributing to rapid degradation of the earth system. Public education throughout the country is in marked decline. Much of what we produce is nonessential, indeed waste, including wasted labor. The United States has fully lived up to John Kenneth Galbraith’s observation half a century ago that modern U.S. capitalism generates “private wealth” and “public squalor.”8

Massive amounts of labor and resources go toward lethal military purposes, while an increasing amount of human labor and productive capacity lies idle. By virtually all accounts, economic stagnation will be the order of the day for at least a decade, maybe decades, to come. In March 2010, USA Today asked legendary financier Warren Buffett, the second richest individual in the United States: “What if…the U.S. economy goes into a prolonged period of stagnation and weakness, creating a Japanese-like lost decade or two?” Buffett answered: “As long as it isn’t a century, I’m OK.”9

Young Americans are entering an economy in which they have little or no creative or meaningful role to play. It is far truer today than when Paul Goodman wrote his 1960 classic, Growing Up Absurd, that there are “fewer jobs that are necessary and unquestionably useful; that require energy and draw on some of one’s best capacities; and that can be done keeping one’s honor and dignity.” Today even the most wasteful, alienating, and degrading jobs are difficult to get, with growing unemployment, and even faster growing underemployment.10

We face the situation in the next generation of the continued development of tremendous labor-saving technologies, many that are revolutionary in impact. Yet, instead of leading to a higher quality of life for all or most people, these new productive technologies will be deployed primarily to maximize the profits of those atop the system. They will appear, in some respects, to be the enemy of the workers and communities they help to displace. Likewise, in the coming generation, large swaths of our countryside will likely be torn up and developed for tacky residential projects and gated communities, while a good part of our cities and inner-ring suburbs rot. All of this, we are told, is basically unavoidable, the price we pay for having the privilege of living in a free society.

No, it isn’t. It is the price we pay for living in a capitalist society. It is a system in which the “need” of the wealthy to make profit drives everything else, and it is increasingly leading to irrational and disastrous results.

To Read the Entire Essay

Jennifer Wachtell: Hal Ashby -- The Director's Director

The Director's Director
by Jennifer Wachtell
Good





Hal Ashby's movies captured a messy, post-1960s America in alternately hilarious and poignant ways. Here, Wes Anderson, Judd Apatow, Alexander Payne, David O. Russell, and Jason Schwartzman talk about their favorites.

In the 1970s, Hal Ashby made a series of films so brilliant and yet so utterly different from one another that if you didn’t know who the director was, you might not think they were made by the same person. His films move effortlessly from the lavish mansion in Being There, a comic and prescient look at the effects of television on America, to the grim Veterans’ Administration Hospital and boardwalks of Venice Beach, California, in Coming Home. At his best, Ashby was able to make the personal political and the political personal, with humor and without boring the audience.

It is not surprising that Ashby’s films feel relevant at the moment, since our fragmented political climate isn’t that different from the post-Vietnam-and-Watergate years in which they were made. But unlike their latter-day counterparts, Ashby’s movies take on complicated subject matter without being reductive, telling stories through human relationships with no clean resolution. There is more said about American politics in Being There or about the women’s movement in Shampoo than in so many of the films that take on those subject matters directly.

During the late 1960s in Hollywood, the studios realized that there was something going on in the country that their corporate cultures didn’t entirely understand, and that as a result, their movies were out of sync with younger audiences. Then along came the indie hit Easy Rider, and it became clear to executives that they might need to open things up and look for ideas in new places.

Hal Ashby was a beneficiary of this new freedom, but he wasn’t a kid fresh out of film school. He had hitchhiked to California, away from his Mormon family in Utah and what must have been a difficult childhood—there were financial problems, his parents divorced, and his father committed suicide when Ashby was 12.

He had come up through the studio system, starting as a copyboy at Universal, a job he got through the unemployment office. He later worked as an apprentice editor, an especially arduous task before computers, and gradually became the editor on movies such as The Loved One and the original Thomas Crown Affair. He was said to be obsessed with his work, to the point of sleeping in the cutting room for days on end, and it took a physical toll.

Ashby did find the time to become politically active, and was an early supporter of the civil-rights and antiwar movements. He had been married and divorced three times by the 1960s, and in keeping with the era, he switched from heavy drinking to smoking a lot of pot.

In 1967, at the age of 38, Ashby was threatening to leave editing behind when he won an Oscar for In the Heat of the Night. In a fortunate twist of fate, Norman Jewison, for whom Ashby had edited several films, dropped out of directing The Landlord, and helped Ashby step into the project. Finally, at 40, Ashby had started his new career as a director, a rare transition for an editor, especially at his age. He seemed to enter this period of his career with a renewed openness and an experimental spirit. He used his difficult background to emphatically tell the stories of people who live on the edges of society.

Ashby never received the acclaim enjoyed by contemporaries like Francis Ford Coppola or Martin Scorsese—even though he made a bunch of the best films of that period. A few things worked against him: His material was so varied and his touch so light that his body of work isn’t easy to categorize.

The important critics of his day, such as Pauline Kael, didn’t love his work, and he was regarded as difficult to work with because of his strong antiauthoritarian streak. Sadly, his work fell off after the 1970s—some say because of drugs—and he died relatively young, of cancer, in 1988, before he could rebound and find his place again.

We asked some of the writers and directors who have been influenced by his work to tell us about their favorite Hal Ashby movies. Here’s what they had to say.

To Read the Commentaries

Hannah Holleman and Rebecca Clausen: Biofuels, BP-Berkeley, and the New Ecological Imperialism

(From 2008, very interesting in the context of recent events...)

Biofuels, BP-Berkeley, and the New Ecological Imperialism
by Hannah Holleman and Rebecca Clausen
Monthly Review

British Petroleum, Beyond Petroleum . . . Biofuel Promoter, Biosphere Plunderer. Regardless of what the BP abbreviation actually stands for, one thing is clear: this oil giant knows a good deal when it sees one. For a relatively small financial contribution, BP appropriates academic expertise from a leading public research institution, founded on 200 years of social support, to maximize its return on energy investments. These investments, in turn, are focused primarily on promoting the market for biofuel, the newest darling of those in power who stimulate change while maintaining "business as usual." This means working-class people in the core developed countries will subsidize the extraction of even more ecological goods from the developing world to serve elites, who never mind taking food out of the mouths of people to put gold in their pockets. Socializing the costs for private economic gain is not a new phenomenon in the capitalist system. However, this case represents a new twist in the combination of debunked science, ecological imperialism, and the sophistry of "sustainable development."

New Fuel, Old Barrels

In February 2007, BP announced plans with the University of California (UC) at Berkeley, in partnership with the University of Illinois and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, to lead the largest academic-industry research alliance in U.S. history. The $50 million-a-year bone that BP will throw to Berkeley will create the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI), primarily focusing its research on biotechnology to produce biofuels. "In launching this visionary institute, BP is creating a new model for university-industry collaboration," said Beth Burnside, UC Berkeley Vice Chancellor for Research (quoted in Sanders 2007). In light of the historic record of capitalist accumulation, this "new model" for university-industry collaboration looks like old wine in a new bottle: appropriate a social good (public university), privatize the property (intellectual development), and commodify the output (energy-intensive products). And in this instance, BP has recruited a public institution to be its profit-making subsidiary.

Appropriating Academia

This is not the first time UC Berkeley fed at the corporate trough, and as government expenditures for social goods continue to decline relatively, it is likely that it won't be the last. Berkeley entered into a research deal with the seed giant Novartis ten years ago, after which an external review of the UCB-Novartis interaction recommended avoiding such partnerships (Altieri and Holt-Gimenez 2007). Nevertheless, on November 15, 2007, BP, the UC Berkeley, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign announced the signing of a controversial ten-year pact forming the Energy Biosciences Institute. The current deal with BP is ten times larger than the Novartis deal. A brief description of this BP partnership follows:

As part of its continuing drive to find longer term commercial alternatives to oil and gas, BP announced in 2006 that it would invest $500 million over the next 10 years to establish the institute, the first public-private institution of this scale in the world. The institute's emphasis on new fuels meshes with UC Berkeley's and Berkeley Lab's research aims to develop sustainable sources of energy and the University of Illinois' efforts to develop biofuel feedstocks. The three academic institutions formed a strategic partnership to submit to BP a proposal that was selected in February 2007 from among five international proposals. (Burress 2007)

As details of the final contract came to light, the public learned of how BP will gain profit-making technology and expertise by externalizing much of the cost of research and development. The benefits to BP include access to leading scientists and laboratories, first rights for patent negotiations, and the rubber stamp of academia and science on its new projects. The benefit for the university is purely financial, though at least one third of the money goes to BP's own private projects on campus. The benefit for the public is hard to find. Politicians, university officials, and pro-market pundits laud this public-private partnership, while those critical of the "prostitution" of the university, including experts on biofuels' social and environmental impacts, are marginalized. This is not surprising given the undemocratic nature of the process whereby the details of the deal were negotiated without any public input.

Private (Intellectual) Property

Jennifer Washburn, examining the corporate corruption of higher education, explains that the deal with BP will expand the control that private firms wield over university agendas (Washburn 2007). Indeed, as scientists Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin point out in their most recent book, Biology Under the Influence (2007), so-called public-private partnerships are on the rise, and funding, an important factor in guiding research, is increasingly determined by the needs of private industry with the backing of governments. These "partnerships" are ideologically accepted and promoted, as were the earliest land enclosures and contemporary privatization schemes, as a natural and inevitable evolution of society's institutions.1 Debates concerning the cultural, political, and technological viability of market-based solutions to environmental and social problems are directly influenced by how science interacts with dominant ideology to mold and reinforce decisions that affect the world. The seemingly natural process of the degrading trends of capitalist development must be confronted.

No Free Lunch in Crop-Based Biofuels

Like the Aesopian rhetoric used under capitalism to promote war and imperialism in the name of democracy, the way in which the 10-year plan to "research" (aka promote) biofuels blatantly dismisses potential ecological damage is unsettling. There is no evidence that biofuels can actually satisfy the energy appetite of capitalism -- they have so far only helped to destroy both ecological and social relationships. This critique does not only come from those who suffer the immediate consequences of biofuels' advance, but also from ecologists within UC Berkeley's ivory walls. Dr. Miguel Altieri, agroecologist, explains:

By promoting large-scale mechanized monocultures which require agrochemical inputs and machinery, and as carbon-capturing forests are felled to make way for biofuel crops, CO2 emissions will increase not decrease. The only way to stop global warming is to promote small-scale organic agriculture and decrease the use of all fuels, which requires major reductions in consumption patterns and development of massive public transportation systems, areas that the University of California should be actively researching and that BP and the other biofuel partners will never invest one penny towards. (Altieri 2007) 2

The damages from biofuel production are growing. For instance, a recent UNEP/UNESCO report projects the loss of 98% of Indonesia's forests by 2022, due in large part to land cleared for plantations of palm trees to produce biofuel (Nellemann and Virtue 2007: 6). Indonesia is home to one of the largest rain forests in the world and a repository of a great deal of the world's biodiversity. Along with deforestation, habitat destruction, decreased biodiversity, and increased industrial mono-cropping and agricultural inputs (including fertilizer, herbicide, genetically modified seed, and water), we see the removal of sensitive lands from conservation programs and more water pollution.

So, BP-Berkeley project's claim of ecological concern raises many questions.3 Not least is BP's own track record of environmental destruction. And "alternative" fuel represents only the most publicly discussed venture of the new institute. Other research endeavors include: "the conversion of heavy hydrocarbons to clean fuels, improved recovery from existing oil and gas reservoirs and carbon sequestration" (Brenneman 2007). Given this research agenda, it is easy to see why environmentalists, farmers, and other critics around the world understand that the main thing "green" coming out of the EBI will be money.

To Read the rest of the Essay

More resources:

Now compare to the BP corporation's current attitude concerning the devastating Gulf oil spill:

Yves Smith: "On BP’s Many Forms of Less Than Artful Dodging."

Mark Morford: Behold our dark, magnificent horror

Behold our dark, magnificent horror
by Mark Morford
SF Gate



...

What a thing we have created. What an extraordinary horror our rapacious need for cheap, endless energy hath unleashed; it's a monster of a scale and proportion we can barely even fathom.

Because if you're honest, no matter where you stand, no matter your politics, religion, income or mode of transport, you see this beast of creeping death and you understand: That is us. The spill may be many things, but more than anything else it is a giant, horrifying mirror.

Do you wish to try and deflect it? Lay responsibility elsewhere? Really? We can't quite blame an "act of God," as we would for some sort of hurricane or tsunami inflicted upon meager humankind by an angry deity, punishing us all for being too war-like, violent or perhaps naïve enough to want to enjoy the sunshine for five goddamn minutes before He decided He'd better kill some people lest we forget who's in charge.

We cannot blame evil terrorists, some cluster of swarthy foreigners who hate our shopping malls and secretly envy our Porsche Cayenne's. Nor can we blame the spill on some sort of nefarious conspiracy, a secret act wrought by devious agents in black helicopters designed to destabilize the U.N. and induce universal mind control -- unless, of course, you're getting a little desperate and don't get outside much, in which case, you absolutely can.

Finally (and a bit shockingly), I'm not hearing Pat Robertson or any of his cretinous cult of apocalypticans blame the gays, or voodoo, or anal sex, or reality TV for what's happening in the Gulf. Oil is, after all, completely non-denominational. It mocks all religions equally -- except, of course, the only one that really matters: capitalism.

To Read the Entire Column

Jennifer C. Yates: Cafe stirs interest in nations in conflict

(Courtesy of Danny Mayer)

Cafe stirs interest in nations in conflict: ‘If nothing else, it would make people aware’
by Jennifer C. Yates
MSNBC

PITTSBURGH - The takeout restaurant with its bright blue storefront and large, sunny yellow lettering sits among a city block of plain white brick buildings. There's no place to sit, and there's only one item on the menu: a wrap sandwich from Iran called a kubideh.

In a few months, the menu will change to food from Afghanistan, then perhaps North Korea.

This is Conflict Kitchen, a takeout cafe designed and run by artists hoping to start conversations with customers about countries in conflict with the U.S.

"For us, it's not about being experts in Afghanistan, North Korea or Venezuela. It's a chance for the public to start thinking," said Jon Rubin, 46, an assistant professor of art at Carnegie Mellon University.

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Jonathan Eig: A beautiful mind(fuck) -- Hollywood structures of identity

A beautiful mind(fuck): Hollywood structures of identity
by Jonathan Eig
Jump Cut





It has been more than sixty years since Toto tore the cover off the Wizard of Oz and more than forty since Sam Loomis unmasked Norman Bates. Narrative surprises about the identity of major characters are not new in Hollywood film. But three characteristics distinguish movies like The Sixth Sense, Fight Club, Memento, Mulholland Drive, and Donnie Darko from past, more typical, Hollywood identity-surprises.

First, in these films the character with the surprise invariably is the protagonist, as opposed to a supporting character who affects a more “normal” hero. The next two characteristics work in tandem. The hero in question does not know the true nature of his identity and so is not simply keeping a secret from us. And the audience does not know the backstory either. We are not let in on a secret the hero does not know. A sudden boomlet of movies intentionally lie to the audience and manipulate viewers’ emotional investment in the heroes. In critical circles, these movies have developed a trendy name: mindfucks.

The two Davids—Lynch and Fincher—are the modern-day champions of the mindfuck film, but they certainly owe a large debt to Luis Buñuel, who made a career out of yanking the rug out from under his audience. From the avant-garde Un Chien Andalou and the “is it real?” documentary Land Without Bread early in his career, right up until the final shot of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and the double female lead in That Obscure Object of Desire, Buñuel played with our perceptions of his characters, simultaneously involving us in fictional lives and reminding us that what we are seeing is flickering light in the image of actors—a representation of a representation.

The current crop of Hollywood mindfucks from 1999-2001 no doubt has been fertilized by several successful “surprise” movies from the recent past. Both Neil Jordan’s The Crying Game (1992) and Bryan Singer’s The Usual Suspects (1994) boasted Oscar-winning screenplays and significant profits; artistic and financial success mark them as more widely seen than previous cult favorites like Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985)and Adrian Lyne’s Jacob’s Ladder (1990). But the heavy hitter in this recent history is M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense (1999).

The Sixth Sense employs a plot device characteristic of all the recent mindfuck movies. At some point in the first act, after a character’s life is threatened, the story is either interrupted for a flashback to show how we arrived at this point (Fight Club and Memento) or the character appears to survive the threat. In The Sixth Sense, we will come to learn that Malcolm Crowe did not in fact survive, that at least part of his subsequent story has been illusory. That will be the big climactic surprise.

Such a narrative device did not originate with Shyamalan. Modern drama has paid plenty of attention to the nature of man’s life and death, from the mainstream of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town to the absurdism of Samuel Becket’s Endgame. Two earlier films employ an identical device: Robert Enrico’s Oscar-winning short La Riviere du Hibou (based on Ambrose Bierce’s story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and initially shown to a large American audience as part of The Twilight Zone1 television show in 1964) as well as Lyne’s Jacob’s Ladder. But neither led to similarly constructed movies nor did they generate $300 million dollar ticket sales in initial release, as The Sixth Sense did.

To Read the Rest of the Essay

Amy Goodman: In Memory of All That Is Lost

In Memory of All That Is Lost
By Amy Goodman
Democracy Now

NEW ORLEANS—The anger is palpable across the Mississippi Delta. As the Deepwater Horizon oil geyser, almost a mile underwater, continues unabated, the brunt of this, the largest environmental catastrophe in United States history, is rolling onto the coast, impacting the ecology, the economy and entire ways of life.

I traveled across the bayous and towns of coastal Louisiana for four days, meeting the people on the front lines of the onrush of BP’s oil slick. They are angry, out of work and read the papers about people getting sick.

One person, whose job remains intact—at least so far—is BP’s CEO, Tony Hayward. Hayward, who was paid more than $4.5 million in 2009, lamented Sunday: “There’s no one who wants this thing over more than I do. You know, I’d like my life back.” Hayward becomes more vilified with almost each of his utterances, which are clearly aimed at minimizing the perceived impact of the BP disaster. He will probably be increasingly guarded in his remarks, as U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder just toured the area and, in a public statement, said: “We must also ensure that anyone found responsible for this spill is held accountable. That means enforcing the appropriate civil—and if warranted, criminal—authorities to the full extent of the law.”

On Grand Isle, we met Dean Blanchard, who owns the largest shrimp business in the area. He took us out on his boat, where he expressed his strong feelings about President Barack Obama: “I thought he was a man of the people, that he would’ve come out and met the businesses that are suffering, and look at us, and tell us, give us a little assurance that he would help us, but he just hid by the Coast Guard station like all the other presidents.” Blanchard’s parents and grandparents were shrimpers. With his strong Cajun accent, he explained the effect of the tides on the oil:

“I made my living off of watching tides. We hunt shrimp. You can’t see a shrimp. You know how we know where the shrimp’s at? Because of the tides. When the tide goes out, the more water goes out, the more water comes back, and when it comes back, it brings everything with it. It usually brings the shrimp, but this time it’s going to be bringing the oil.”

Blanchard says fishermen are like farmers: “We lose money in January, February, March and April, preparing to harvest our crop in May, June and July. So we spend a lot of money preparing to get to May.” When the Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20, thousands of fisherfolk, their families, and the businesses and communities that depend on them saw their annual income disappear, with bleak prospects.

To Read the Report

To Listen to the Report

Simon Johnson: The Quiet Coup

The Quiet Coup
by Simon Johnson
The Atlantic Monthly

...

In its depth and suddenness, the U.S. economic and financial crisis is shockingly reminiscent of moments we have recently seen in emerging markets (and only in emerging markets): South Korea (1997), Malaysia (1998), Russia and Argentina (time and again). In each of those cases, global investors, afraid that the country or its financial sector wouldn’t be able to pay off mountainous debt, suddenly stopped lending. And in each case, that fear became self-fulfilling, as banks that couldn’t roll over their debt did, in fact, become unable to pay. This is precisely what drove Lehman Brothers into bankruptcy on September 15, causing all sources of funding to the U.S. financial sector to dry up overnight. Just as in emerging-market crises, the weakness in the banking system has quickly rippled out into the rest of the economy, causing a severe economic contraction and hardship for millions of people.

But there’s a deeper and more disturbing similarity: elite business interests—financiers, in the case of the U.S.—played a central role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the economy out of its nosedive. The government seems helpless, or unwilling, to act against them.

Top investment bankers and government officials like to lay the blame for the current crisis on the lowering of U.S. interest rates after the dotcom bust or, even better—in a “buck stops somewhere else” sort of way—on the flow of savings out of China. Some on the right like to complain about Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, or even about longer-standing efforts to promote broader homeownership. And, of course, it is axiomatic to everyone that the regulators responsible for “safety and soundness” were fast asleep at the wheel.

But these various policies—lightweight regulation, cheap money, the unwritten Chinese-American economic alliance, the promotion of homeownership—had something in common. Even though some are traditionally associated with Democrats and some with Republicans, they all benefited the financial sector. Policy changes that might have forestalled the crisis but would have limited the financial sector’s profits—such as Brooksley Born’s now-famous attempts to regulate credit-default swaps at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, in 1998—were ignored or swept aside.

The financial industry has not always enjoyed such favored treatment. But for the past 25 years or so, finance has boomed, becoming ever more powerful. The boom began with the Reagan years, and it only gained strength with the deregulatory policies of the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. Several other factors helped fuel the financial industry’s ascent. Paul Volcker’s monetary policy in the 1980s, and the increased volatility in interest rates that accompanied it, made bond trading much more lucrative. The invention of securitization, interest-rate swaps, and credit-default swaps greatly increased the volume of transactions that bankers could make money on. And an aging and increasingly wealthy population invested more and more money in securities, helped by the invention of the IRA and the 401(k) plan. Together, these developments vastly increased the profit opportunities in financial services.

Not surprisingly, Wall Street ran with these opportunities. From 1973 to 1985, the financial sector never earned more than 16 percent of domestic corporate profits. In 1986, that figure reached 19 percent. In the 1990s, it oscillated between 21 percent and 30 percent, higher than it had ever been in the postwar period. This decade, it reached 41 percent. Pay rose just as dramatically. From 1948 to 1982, average compensation in the financial sector ranged between 99 percent and 108 percent of the average for all domestic private industries. From 1983, it shot upward, reaching 181 percent in 2007.

The great wealth that the financial sector created and concentrated gave bankers enormous political weight—a weight not seen in the U.S. since the era of J.P. Morgan (the man). In that period, the banking panic of 1907 could be stopped only by coordination among private-sector bankers: no government entity was able to offer an effective response. But that first age of banking oligarchs came to an end with the passage of significant banking regulation in response to the Great Depression; the reemergence of an American financial oligarchy is quite recent.

To Read the Entire Essay

Anne Nelson: The Obligations of History: Accuracy versus irony in depictions of the Holocaust

The Obligations of History: Accuracy versus irony in depictions of the Holocaust
by Anne Nelson
Moving Image Source

Somewhere in time, between 1994 and 2010, it became permissible in Hollywood to treat the subjects of the Nazi era and the Holocaust with irony and bombast, instead of the reverence that was formerly expected. Not everyone is comfortable with the shift; Inglourious Basterds, which fictionalizes the end of World War II, failed to harvest its predicted array of Oscars, and a number of critics and historians have regarded it with distaste. But it has pulled in vast audiences and profits around the globe—unlike the more serious films that continue to explore the Holocaust's actual historical legacy.

For decades a debate has quietly raged as to whether the Holocaust should be depicted artistically at all. Even films as reverent as Schindler's List have been criticized for any departure from the historical record. At the same time, there are fears that the Holocaust could be forgotten by future generations, or subsumed into the long list of 20th-century atrocities. Holocaust education is explicitly mandated in 24 states in the U.S. and implicitly required in many others; educators are increasingly using film in the classroom to engage their students.

But today's students encounter radically divergent treatments of Holocaust themes in popular culture. On one side is a wave of dramas and documentaries that explore the historical record more thoroughly than ever before. At the other extreme is a new generation of feature films that take unprecedented liberties with history, treating the period as a vehicle for entertainment—the most obvious example being Inglourious Basterds.

As various critics have noted, Quentin Tarantino's riff on the Nazi era is more homage to film history than to world history. The Basterds score showcases Ennio Morricone's spaghetti-western themes, and the script is a pastiche of action-film genres. In Tarantino's manic vision, Hitler and the Nazi leadership are—very ahistorically—gathered into a Parisian movie theater for a Jewish revenge fantasy. Tarantino's plot device of linking a Holocaust crime to a Jewish revenge fantasy echoes the 2006 film Black Book, by Dutch director Paul Verhoeven. Verhoeven's film also features a (fictitious) beautiful Jewish heroine whose family is murdered by the Nazis. She joins a resistance group, only to be catapulted into Grand Guignol
fantasies of brutality and revenge.

To Read the Rest of the Essay

Left Field Cinema: Hidden Classics -- Haxan - Witchcraft Through The Ages

Hidden Classics: Haxan - Witchcraft Through The Ages
by Mike Dawson
Left Field Cinema



Haxan: Witchcraft Through The Ages is a part documentary, part dramatisation about the nature of witch craft, and of those who sought to destroy it. Moving at different stages through the age of man it addresses different notions of the “Witch”, what they were believed to be capable of, and how they operated.

The more interesting areas in the film examine those who would persecute the so-called “witches” through either genuine religious intolerance and fear, or a corrupt patriarchal dominance; relishing the opportunity to stamp out any independent femininity under the guise of hunting for minions of Satan. One particularly impressive section sees a household of woman calling the local monks (or judges in this case) to take an elderly woman away from their home. The old woman is tortured into confessing her witch craft, then subsequently confesses that the woman who implicated her are her fellow witches as well – then naturally all the other woman are executed despite the obvious retaliatory motivation for the deception. The film also examines how the folklore had come to fruition. Still images of various cultures ideas of hell, heaven, and the celestial bodies are presented until the eventual creation of the “Witch” is revealed.

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To Listen to the Podcast

Matt Zoller Seitz: The Substance of Style, Pts. 1-5

The Substance of Style, Pt 1: Wes Anderson and his pantheon of heroes (Schulz, Welles, Truffaut)
by Matt Zoller Seitz
Moving Image Source





This is the first in a five-part series of video essays analyzing the key influences on Wes Anderson’s style. Part 2 covers Martin Scorsese, Richard Lester, and Mike Nichols. Part 3 covers Hal Ashby. Part 4 covers J.D. Salinger. Part 5 is an annotated version of the prologue to The Royal Tenenbaums.

With just five features in 13 years, Wes Anderson has established himself as the most influential American filmmaker of the post-Baby Boom generation. Supremely confident in his knowledge of film history and technique, he's a classic example of the sort of filmmaker that the Cahiers du cinéma critics labeled an auteur—an artist who imprints his personality and preoccupations on each work so strongly that, whatever the contributions of his collaborators, he deserves to be considered the primary author of the film. This series examines some of Anderson's many cinematic influences and his attempt to meld them into a striking, uniquely personal sensibility.

After the release of his second film, Rushmore, in 1998, it became obvious that Anderson was, love him or hate him, an idiosyncratic filmmaker worth discussing. In the decade-plus since then, dissecting Anderson's influences, and Anderson's influence on others, has become a bit of a parlor sport among cinephiles. Sight and Sound and Film Comment have been particularly rich resources. More recently, the Onion A.V. Club contributed a couple of playful, astute lists. Anderson himself has gotten into the act by paying tribute to his heroes in interviews and magazine articles.

This series will take the process a step further, juxtaposing Anderson's cultural influences against his films onscreen, the better to show how he integrates a staggeringly diverse array of source material into a recognizable, and widely imitated, whole. It will examine some, but certainly not all, of Anderson's evident inspirations. Along the way, it may incidentally illuminate why Anderson-esque movies—from Garden State to Son of Rambow—can seem, no matter what their virtues or pleasures, a weak substitute for the real thing.

Anderson’s scavenger-hunt aesthetic stands him in good company, alongside Quentin Tarantino, David Gordon Green, James Gray, and the other Anderson, P.T. But what makes Wes Anderson distinctive is the sheer range of art that has fed his imagination—not just recent American and foreign films, but films from 30, 50, even 70 years ago, plus newspaper comics, illustrations, and fiction. The spectrum of influence gives his work a diversity of tone that his imitators typically lack. It is a style of substance.

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On the Media: Take My Joke

Take My Joke
On the Media (NPR)

When it comes to copyright law, the world of comedy is an untamed and sometimes violent frontier. Comedians don't copyright their jokes; instead, they rely on an informal system of intellectual property enforcement. Chris Sprigman and Dotan Oliarand, two law professors, decided to study how that system works.

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On the Media: Command and Control

Command and Control
On the Media (NPR)

As a practical matter, who controls the internet is whoever enables you to access it -- and in the U.S. that would be service providers like Comcast, Verizon and Time Warner. The only check on their power has been the Federal Communications Commission. That is, until [April] when a court invalidated that power. Bob speaks with two advocates about the pros and cons of an unregulated net.

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xkcd: Worst-Case Scenario

xkcd

Secular Humanist: The Boot Protest

How does someone counter the preacher Brother Jed who spews his hateful messages on college campuses across the nation? Here is a great example from University of Oregon's Alliance of Happy Atheists:

The Boot Protest

:)

Left Field Cinema: American Masterpiece -- The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

American Masterpiece: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
by Mike Dawson
Left Field Cinema



Perhaps it is a little unfair that Andrew Dominik’s sophomore cinematic offering has been frequently compared to the work of Terrance Malick. For such grand comparisons often result in disappointment for the viewer with the revelation that although they are not ill founded they are not entirely accurate either. Along with statements that the makers of The Blair Witch Project suffered upon release like “the greatest horror movie ever made” they raise the bar to such a significant height that even the most accomplished director would feel the weight of expectation crippling them where they stand. Malick is considered by many to be a lyrical genius, a modern American auteur and the greatest director working in the United States today; he is a colossus in the world of film with unquestionable artistic integrity. Dominik by comparison is a relative unknown New Zealander with 2000’s Chopper as his only previous film; in this sense he is in many ways like Malick, taking an extended seven-year absence before releasing this follow-up. Chopper was met with general critical acclaim, and yet he is still considered an unusual choice to direct a film about such a significant American legend. In actuality Dominik is perfect for the challenge, as with previous films dealing with either significant events in American history or commenting on the psyche of the nation – an outsider does it best. United 93, American Beauty and the like work better because of there is a more objective foreigner at the helm who can look at the events from the outside.

The story of the film follows the last days of the life of notorious gunslinger and outlaw Jesse James, multiple murderer, criminal, and fugitive. He and his brother worked with a small gang and successfully robbed banks and trains for many years, only the brothers remain alive from the original gang, and the elder brother Frank James has had enough of his younger siblings peculiar attitude and decides to leave this world behind. Sam Shepard is coldly menacing in the few scenes he is present, but without words or extended screen time manages to conjure a sense of dread, that the dark days are coming. What follows is the drifting of Jesse, constantly paranoid about who will try to capture or kill him, and aware that his greatest enemies are very probably the ones closest to him. The films second act is very passive, setting the criminal minds in play and switching perspective between our two titular characters, and other subordinates. Jesse then begins to kill the remaining members of his gang one by one as and when he deems them disloyal, whilst his gang attempt to decipher his next move, and are constantly aware that with Jesse often comes death. In the gang is the other titular character, nineteen year old Robert Ford, another younger brother, and a borderline fantasist. He has been obsessed with Jesse James from a young age and is determined to get as close to his hero as he can. As his canonised image of Jesse begins to be unraveled he is left crushed with the knowledge that his life has been wasted idolising a bully, a sociopath, and a madman. As the truth comes to light, so to do Robert’s murderous impulses, leading to climax which is reached as much through fate as it is though callous manipulation with an almost suicidal streak in Jesse’s choices.

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Democracy Now: Glenn Greenwald v. Lawrence Lessig: A Debate on Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court Nomination

(This is a great debate, thorough exploration of the implications, problems and/or promise of Kagan's nomination.)

Glenn Greenwald v. Lawrence Lessig: A Debate on Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court Nomination
Democracy Now

If confirmed, the fifty-year-old Elena Kagan would be the Court’s youngest member. She would become the fourth female Supreme Court justice in US history and the third on the Court’s current bench. She would also be the first justice in nearly four decades without any prior judicial experience. Kagan’s nomination has divided progressives in part because so little is known about her judicial views. Her nomination sparked a heated debate between two noted legal commentators: Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig and constitutional law attorney and Salon blogger, Glenn Greenwald. Greenwald first appeared on Democracy Now! last month making his case against Kagan’s nomination. On Monday, he was interviewed on The Rachel Maddow Show. Right after Greenwald, Rachel Maddow interviewed Lawrence Lessig, who criticized some of Greenwald’s comments. This led to them both penning articles online yesterday criticizing each other and defending their position on Kagan’s nomination.

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Left Field Cinema: Misunderstood Modern Cinema -- Alien 3

Misunderstood Modern Cinema: Alien 3
Left Field Cinema



Underdogs of cinema. Belittled on release, marginalised through their re-releases, they have been unfairly dismissed, by critics and audiences. Most major franchises of film have an entry which does not necessarily live up to the expectations created by their predecessors; these entries however may still be superior films in their own right. The Alien series is no exception. Alien 3 is a pleasure to watch, either a crusty VHS pan scan 1993 edition on a dusty CRT television, or crisp 2003 special extended wide screen DVD on a HiDef LCD - the essentials are still present and correct. The extended version is a superior cut of the film, the extra/alternative sequences rid the audience of some prior confusion as to which character is which, and create a much richer atmosphere. The new opening scene features a wider establishing shot of the penal colony and creates a sense of location which was previously lacking in the ’93 theatrical release. However the ’93 release still stands on its own merits.

The production was troubled, the film however was not. Wide spread condemnation of the film had began long before its release, different scripts were in production and different directors were attached before finally settling on first timer David Fincher. Dismissing the superficial attacks made on the film prior to its release, Alien 3 was still savagely attacked by critics upon release. The numerous negative reviews emerged as a result of one of five major factors. One, most of the major characters from Aliens are brutally killed within the opening credits. Two, they downsized the action budget from Aliens. Three, the film is not scary. Four, that the characters appear too similar. Five that it’s too depressing.

To counter: firstly, there were no survivors from Alien to Aliens other than Ellen Ripley and a cat and no-one complained, the series had never been about its supporting characters it was always the tale of Ellen Ripley, her journey is at the centre of the first three films. Although James Cameron would have probably preferred to continue the Ripley/Hicks/Bishop/Newt dynamic the producers and Fincher felt differently and the logic is sound. Not just move away from Cameron’s second instalment but completely destroy whatever hope had been built up, otherwise Alien 3 would quite possibly become a direct extension of Aliens.

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Democracy Now: Pioneering African American Actress, Singer and Civil Rights Activist Lena Horne, 92, Dies

(This is from May 11th, I was listening to this episode on my walk to work today and was very moved by it)

Democracy Now

Pioneering African American Actress, Singer and Civil Rights Activist Lena Horne, 92, Dies

Lena Horne enjoyed a six-decade singing career on stage, television and in film. She was the first black woman to be signed to a long-term contract by a major Hollywood studio. She helped break racial boundaries by acting alongside white entertainers, but she was segregated on screen so producers could clip out her singing when the movies ran in the South. In the 1950s, she was blacklisted in part because of her friendship with Paul Robeson and W.E.B. Du Bois. In 1963, Lena Horne took part in the March on Washington alongside Harry Belafonte and Dick Gregory and was part of a group, which included authors James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry, that met with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to urge a more active approach to desegregation. We air a rare 1966 interview with Lena Horne from the Pacifica Radio Archives and speak to her biographer, James Gavin.

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Part II: Singer and Civil Rights Activist Lena Horne Remembered

The pioneering African-American actress, singer, and civil rights activist has died at the age of 91. We speak with James Gavin, author of, Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne, about her activism, her friendship with Harry Belafonte, President Obama’s remarks after her passing, and more.

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On the Media: Banking Concern; Ad Hominem

On the Media (NPR)

Banking Concern

NPR’s economics correspondent Adam Davidson has spent the last two years breaking down the financial crisis with clear, simple language. But Davidson is stymied by regulation, which he says has proven resistant to even his brand of explanatory journalism.

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Ad Hominem

Despite how overwhelmingly complex and boring financial regulation is, one group wants to help the public understand the issue – the banks and businesses who would be regulated. They’ve spent millions on ads and lobbyists to spin regulation as just another government takeover. Bob surveys their ad campaign.

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On the Media: All the Rage; Who You Calling Terrorist

On the Media (NPR)

All the Rage

The arrest of members of a so-called Christian right-wing militia last [month] capped a week of anger and violence that ricocheted around U.S. politics. Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which recently published a census of such groups, discusses the alarming rise of U.S. hate groups and the rhetoric that feeds them.

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Who You Calling Terrorist?



The press have mostly referred to the Hutaree members as militiamen, but the label "terrorist" could apply as well. Daniel Levitas, an expert on homegrown terrorist groups, says that there's a double standard regarding which groups get the label.

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Democracy Now: Juan Gonzalez -- Big Banks Making a Bundle On New Construction as Schools Bear the Cost

Juan Gonzalez: Big Banks Making a Bundle On New Construction as Schools Bear the Cost
Democracy Now

"Wealthy investors and major banks have been making windfall profits by using a little-known federal tax break to finance new charter-school construction," Democracy Now! co-host Juan Gonzalez write in the New York Daily News. "The program, the New Markets Tax Credit, is so lucrative that a lender who uses it can almost double his money in seven years."

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History for the Future: Talking Drug Policy and Addiction with Caroline Acker

Talking Drug Policy and Addiction with Caroline Acker
History for the Future

An interview with Caroline Acker, Associate Professor of History at Carnegie Mellon University. We talk about the development of American drug policy, the meaning of addiction, her work in co-founding Prevention Point Pittsburgh (the area needle exchange program), and drug policy under Obama.

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Matt Zoller Seitz: Dennis Hopper -- The Middle Word in Life

Moving Image Source

Link to the introduction and the source video

Louis Brandeis: "The dominant element in our financial oligarchy..."

"The dominant element in our financial oligarchy is the investment banker. Associated banks, trust companies and life insurance companies are his tools... . The development of our financial oligarchy followed ... lines with which the history of political despotism has familiarized us: usurpation, proceeding by gradual encroachment rather than violent acts, subtle and often long-concealed concentration of distinct functions... . It was by processes such as these that Ceasar Augustus became master of Rome."

Louis Brandeis -- Other People's Money (1913)

Green Cine Daily: Michael Jai White

Michael Jai White
GreenCine Daily



Actor and martial artist Michael Jai White (Spawn, The Dark Knight, HBO's Tyson) is the co-writer and eponymous superfly star of Black Dynamite -- a pitch-perfect, two-fisted and two-footed throwback to '70s blaxploitation, directed by Scott Sanders. Premiering in Sundance's "Park City at Midnight" section and already picked up for $2 million by Sony Pictures, the film follows a plot that seemed yanked straight from Fred Williamson's filmography:

When "The Man" murders his brother, pumps heroin into local orphanages, and floods the ghetto with adulterated malt liquor, Black Dynamite is the one hero willing to fight all the way from the blood-soaked city streets to the hallowed halls of the Honky House.

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Dan Sartain: Atheist Funeral

Ty Segall: So Alone

Frontline: The Wounded Platoon

The Wounded Platoon
Frontline (PBS)

Third Platoon, Charlie Company. What happened to them in Iraq, and what happened when they came home...

...

In The Wounded Platoon, FRONTLINE reveals a military mental health system overwhelmed with soldiers suffering psychological injuries from the surge -- at Fort Carson the rate of PTSD diagnosis has risen 4,000 percent since 2002 -- and the widespread use of prescription psychiatric drugs both at home and in combat. "Everybody was on Ambien, everybody. It was hard to find somebody that wasn't taking Ambien," says the 3rd Platoon's medic, Ryan "Doc" Krebbs. "It helps you sleep, and it also f***s you up. It gets you pretty high." After returning home, Krebbs was also prescribed the antipsychotic medication Seroquel, on which he would purposefully overdose in a suicide attempt. "I thought that my time in this place was over, and I'd already done what I was supposed to do, and I didn't want to live anymore."

Before the Iraq war, American soldiers in combat zones did not take psychiatric medications, but by the time of the surge more than 20,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq were taking antidepressants and sleeping pills. These drugs enable the Army to keep soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder on the battlefield. "What I use medications for is to treat very specific side effects," Army psychiatrist Col. George Brandt tells FRONTLINE. "I don't want somebody in a helplessness mode in a combat environment. I want to make sure I don't have someone with suicidal thoughts where everyone is armed."

Kenny Eastridge, who is now serving time for the murder of Kevin Shields and other crimes, tells FRONTLINE that he sought help for mental health problems from a combat stress center on Forward Operating Base Falcon. "I was having a total mental breakdown. Every day we were getting in battles and never having a break. It seemed like, it was just crazy," he says. "They put me on all kinds of meds, and I was still going out on missions. They had me on Ambien, Remeron, Lexapro, Celexa, all kind of different stuff."

Despite the warnings that patients on these medications should be closely monitored for side effects, Eastridge was sent to a remote combat outpost for weeks at a time with no medical supervision or mental health provision. He says he ran out of medication and was also smoking marijuana and taking Valium. In dramatic footage filmed by other members of the 3rd Platoon, FRONTLINE shows Eastridge behaving erratically, wandering into Iraqi homes, lying in their beds, and trying to hug local women and men.

Fort Carson's hospital remains understaffed with almost a quarter of its psychiatry positions unfilled. The 3rd's battalion, which has been reflagged as the 2-12 Infantry, is about to return home from a year of intense combat in Afghanistan. "We're all wondering what's going to happen," says Colorado Springs psychotherapist Robert Alvarez. "It's a scary thought, you know, what's going to happen in this community. Are we going to have more murders? Are we going to have more suicides, or are we going to have more crime? I think the answer to that is probably yes."

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Frontline: The Warning

The Warning
Frontline (PBS)

In The Warning, veteran FRONTLINE producer Michael Kirk unearths the hidden history of the nation's worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. At the center of it all he finds Brooksley Born, who speaks for the first time on television about her failed campaign to regulate the secretive, multitrillion-dollar derivatives market whose crash helped trigger the financial collapse in the fall of 2008.

"I didn't know Brooksley Born," says former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt, a member of President Clinton's powerful Working Group on Financial Markets. "I was told that she was irascible, difficult, stubborn, unreasonable." Levitt explains how the other principals of the Working Group -- former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin -- convinced him that Born's attempt to regulate the risky derivatives market could lead to financial turmoil, a conclusion he now believes was "clearly a mistake."

Born's battle behind closed doors was epic, Kirk finds. The members of the President's Working Group vehemently opposed regulation -- especially when proposed by a Washington outsider like Born.

"I walk into Brooksley's office one day; the blood has drained from her face," says Michael Greenberger, a former top official at the CFTC who worked closely with Born. "She's hanging up the telephone; she says to me: 'That was [former Assistant Treasury Secretary] Larry Summers. He says, "You're going to cause the worst financial crisis since the end of World War II."... [He says he has] 13 bankers in his office who informed him of this. Stop, right away. No more.'"

Greenspan, Rubin and Summers ultimately prevailed on Congress to stop Born and limit future regulation of derivatives. "Born faced a formidable struggle pushing for regulation at a time when the stock market was booming," Kirk says. "Alan Greenspan was the maestro, and both parties in Washington were united in a belief that the markets would take care of themselves."

Now, with many of the same men who shut down Born in key positions in the Obama administration, The Warning reveals the complicated politics that led to this crisis and what it may say about current attempts to prevent the next one.

"It'll happen again if we don't take the appropriate steps," Born warns. "There will be significant financial downturns and disasters attributed to this regulatory gap over and over until we learn from experience."

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