Friday, May 18, 2012

Margaret Flowers and Raymond Offenheiser: Occupy G8 -- Peoples’ Summit Confronts World Leaders at Camp David, Urging Action on Poverty, Hunger

Occupy G8: Peoples’ Summit Confronts World Leaders at Camp David, Urging Action on Poverty, Hunger
Democracy Now

World leaders are convening at the heavily guarded Camp David in Maryland today for the G8 Summit. Leading nonprofits such as Save the Children and Oxfam are urging G8 leaders to live up to a 2009 pledge of $22 billion towards food security in developing nations of which only a quarter has been met. Activists are also urging G8 leaders to build on their previous commitments and partner with developing countries to urgently tackle hunger. We’re joined by Raymond Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America, and Dr. Margaret Flowers, a physician and organizer with the Occupy G8 Peoples’ Summit.

Raymond Offenheiser, President of the international relief and development organization, Oxfam America.

Dr. Margaret Flowers is a pediatrician, single payer advocate, co-director of Its Our Economy and organizer of Occupy Washington, D.C. She helped organize the Occupy G8 Peoples’ Summit outside of Camp David.

To Watch the Episode

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Best of the Left: #605 The climate of our discontent (Climate Change)

#605 The climate of our discontent (Climate Change)
Best of the Left

Ch. 1: Intro – Theme: A Fond Farewell – From a Basement On the Hill

Ch. 2: Act 1: Climate change denial think tank industries – Green News Report

Ch. 3: Song 1: Nantes – The Flying Club Cup

Ch. 4: Act 2: Fox Guest: Obama Wants High Gas Prices – Young Turks

Ch. 5: Song 2: Acorn Factory – Time To Die

Ch. 6: Act 3: Big Oil More Powerful Than Government – Rachel Maddow

Ch. 7: Song 3: Crystalised – xx

Ch. 8: Act 4: Climate Change Predictions Made 30 Years Ago Prove Accurate – Majority Report

Ch. 9: Song 4: Walking On Sunshine – Anthology

Ch. 10: Act 5: Fox News Lie Wind Farms Cause Global Warming – David Pakman

Ch. 11: Song 5: Peace of Mind – Popular Music That Will Live Forever – EP

Ch. 12: Act 6: Climate Change Coverage Plummets On Broadcast Networks Study – Young Turks

Ch. 13: Song 6: Ignore the Ignorant – Ignore the Ignorant

Ch. 14: Act 7: The Conservative Smear Campaign to Discredit Climate Scientists – Majority Report

Ch. 15: Song 7: Circle of Life – The Lion King (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Ch. 16: Act 8: The Human Race & Other Evil Little Bastards – Lee Camp

Ch. 17: Song 8: Across the Universe – I Am Sam (Music from and Inspired By the Motion Picture)

Ch. 18: Act 9: Charlie Foster: The most invasive species – Story Collider

To Listen to the Episode

Mick Jagger: Memo From Turner

Mr Airplane Man: Commit a Crime

Monday, May 14, 2012

Richard Lang, Noam Chomsky, Michel Bauwens and David Graeber: Occupy 2.0 (Peer Produced Politics)

Episode #594 - Occupy 2.0 (Peer Produced Politics)
Unwelcome Guests

We start the show with some reflections of the various Occupy battles as symptoms of society's auto-immune disease. In this context, we hear a November 2011 open letter from Occupier, Reverend Richard Lang to the Seattle Police Department. Encouraging them to work with, not against the occupiers, he notes their common interest, and that the police who accept their orders to brutalize and provoke protestors are no longer serving humanity or their own interests.

Then we hear an interview of Noam Chomsky about the meaning of the Occupy Movement in the context of US politics. He highlights the need for direct civic engagement by the occupiers to transform their wide mandate of support from a habitually inactive populace into a broad active engagement -- which is the best defense against brutal police. Chomsky notes that the established US political parties will try to coopt Occupy to meet their own ends. He recalls David Hume's observation that "Power is in the hands of the governed" and that the only way that an elite can maintain control is through an enormous and ongoing campaign to shape public opinion. Occupy threatens that control to the extent that it presents a counter narrative independent of commercially controlled media.

Our first hour concludes with a recent interview of Michel Bauwens about the significance of Occupy. He highlights the emerging phenomenon of peer production, which substitutes traditional top down hierarchies such as corporations with a pattern of more amicable and egalitarian interrelationships. Bauwens suggests that Occupy is a manifestation of the same, decentralized spirit in the political arena. This continues into the second hour and we conclude with another half hour of Chapter 7 of David Graeber's Debt, The First 5000 Years.

Music: Welcome To The Occupation by REM

To Listen to the Episode

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Yvonne Ridley: Bush Convicted of War Crimes in Absentia

Bush Convicted of War Crimes in Absentia
by Yvonne Ridley
Foreign Policy Journal

Kuala Lumpur — It’s official; George W Bush is a war criminal.

In what is the first ever conviction of its kind anywhere in the world, the former US President and seven key members of his administration were yesterday (Fri) found guilty of war crimes.

Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their legal advisers Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, William Haynes, Jay Bybee and John Yoo were tried in absentia in Malaysia.

The trial held in Kuala Lumpur heard harrowing witness accounts from victims of torture who suffered at the hands of US soldiers and contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.

They included testimony from British man Moazzam Begg, an ex-Guantanamo detainee and Iraqi woman Jameelah Abbas Hameedi who was tortured in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

At the end of the week-long hearing, the five-panel tribunal unanimously delivered guilty verdicts against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their key legal advisors who were all convicted as war criminals for torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.

Full transcripts of the charges, witness statements and other relevant material will now be sent to the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, as well as the United Nations and the Security Council.

The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission is also asking that the names of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Yoo, Bybee, Addington and Haynes be entered and included in the Commission’s Register of War Criminals for public record.

The tribunal is the initiative of Malaysia’s retired Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who staunchly opposed the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

To Read the rest of the Report

Laura Kacere: The Radical History of Mother's Day

The Radical History of Mother's Day
by Laura Kacere
Nation of Change

There’s a good number of us who question holidays like Mother’s Day in which you spend more time feeding money into a system that exploits our love for our mothers than actually celebrating them. It’s not unlike any other holiday in America in that its complete commercialization has stripped away so much of its genuine meaning, as well its history. Mother’s Day is unique in its completely radical and totally feminist history, as much as it has been forgotten.

Mother’s Day began in America in 1870 when Julia Ward Howe wrote the Mother’s Day Proclamation. Written in response to the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War, her proclamation called on women to use their position as mothers to influence society in fighting for an end to all wars. She called for women to stand up against the unjust violence of war through their roles as wife and mother, to protest the futility of their sons killing other mothers’ sons.

Howe wrote:

Arise, then, women of this day!

Arise, all women who have hearts, Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."


To Read the Rest of the Essay

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Graham Fuller: Jean Vigo - Artist of the Floating World

Jean Vigo: Artist of the floating world
by Graham Fuller
Sight and Sound



Jean Vigo’s great work about a pair of troubled newly-weds and the crusty old mate with the Hapsburg jaw and unfettered imagination who travels with them aboard the Normandy freight barge L’Atalante was based on a one-page scenario by Jean Guinée. This was the pen name of Roger de Guichen, who had been intrigued by the sight of a woman helming a barge on the Seine, and had named his fictional vessel after a frigate commanded by one of his ancestors in the Seven Years War. Following the banning of Vigo’s Zéro de conduite in 1933, the director’s supportive producer Jacques-Louis Nounez sent him Guinée’s scenario hoping it would deter him from the kind of radical experimentation that had illuminated Vigo’s scabrous 42-minute satire of boarding-school life.

“What the fuck do you want me to do with this? It’s Sunday-school stuff,” was Vigo’s response when he read the scenario. It was workaday melodrama. Juliette, the young wife, bored with the monotony and domestic drudgery of her life on the barge after the initial erotic charge of her marriage has dwindled, runs away from her conservative husband Jean, the skipper, for an afternoon of window-shopping in Paris, only to find herself stranded when he angrily takes off in the barge. Her handbag is stolen, she’s propositioned, she fears for her survival. The husband languishes, despite the kindly attempts of the mate, le père Jules, to rouse him. In Guinée’s scenario, Juliette is found by the old salt in a church. Penitent, she returns to Jean, confirming she is faithful. But Guinée pessimistically concluded in his synopsis, “Happiness has fled the vessel.”

Despite his reservations, Vigo sensed he could tell the story imaginatively. Nounez struck a deal whereby he would cover the running costs while Gaumont provided studio space, cameras and distribution. Vigo and his co-writer Albert Riéra would eliminate Guinée’s moralising, take advantage of the on-shore plight of Juliette (Dita Parlo) to show the inroads of the Depression and expose the spite of the petit bourgeois mob and the brutality of the police – and use music and magic to bring her home to Jean (Jean Dasté). The genie-like le père Jules (Michel Simon), who discovers her working in a palais de chansons instead of telling her rosary in a church, carries her out on his shoulder, as if she were one of the many cats that cling to him on the barge.

In October 1933, just before shooting, Vigo told a Belgian journalist that he was using Guinée’s scenario “merely as a loose frame allowing me to work with images of the waterways, the environment of the canal-workers, and the actors”. He was as good as his word. The connecting thread of L’Atalante is the realist footage depicting the harsh, unremitting lives of the crew and the waterfront folk as the barge heads to Paris and, minus Juliette, on to Le Havre. Contrasting with the voyage sequences, however, are exquisitely sensual flights into surrealism. Jean, believing an old wives’ tale told him by Juliette in the first days of their marriage, dives into the icy river to seek a glimpse of her underwater, whereupon she is magically superimposed over him in her wedding dress as he swims. (Vigo drew on his 1931 short about a swimming champion, Taris ou la Natation.) Then Jean and Juliette, though miles apart, ‘make love’ by dreaming erotically of each other in parallel scenes, their bodies impressionistically speckled in unifying dots of shadow. L’Atalante.

To Read the Rest of the Essay

Wednesday, May 09, 2012

Joost Hiltermann: Bahrain -- A New Sectarian Conflict

Bahrain: A New Sectarian Conflict?
by Joost Hiltermann
NYR Books (The New York Review of Books)

Until 2011, the tiny island nation of Bahrain was mainly known to the outside world for one thing: an annual Formula One car race, the first of its kind in the Middle East, that signified the country’s arrival among the community of stable advanced nations. But then came last spring’s popular uprising and brutal government crackdown, and a different side of this Gulf monarchy came to light: the longstanding grievances held by many Bahrainis, including above all members of the island’s Shia majority, against its Sunni ruling family, who in turn seem prepared to use force to hold onto power. The regime prevailed, and after inviting an investigation of human rights abuses last fall, it suggested it was bringing the country back to normal; this spring’s Grand Prix would show the world it had succeeded.

But as I discovered during a five-day visit shortly before the race, nothing could be further from the truth. Talking to dozens of people both in Manama and in smaller communities outside the capital, I was told again and again that the situation was becoming worse, not better: police forces have been using large quantities of tear gas against protesters, repeatedly causing deaths; police brutality had not ended but moved from police stations to alleyways and undeclared detention centers; young activists are increasingly resorting to Molotov cocktails, subverting the peaceful nature of the protests; and the government has not opened any dialogue with the opposition or offered hope for political reform. Protests occurred nightly in Shiite villages and neighborhoods during my stay, and a veritable battle of graffiti took place on the walls of shops and houses, with protesters writing slogans calling for the end of the regime, police erasing them with a quick coat of paint, and activists scribbling new ones seemingly before the paint had dried.

And so while the Grand Prix, Bahrain’s single prestige event, did take place in late April, it happened amid clouds of tear gas and wafts of smoke from firebombs, as well as an outcry over the death of a protester apparently as a result of shotgun pellets fired by riot police. On the day of the event, a political activist, Abdulhadi Alkhawaja, was into his eleventh week of a hunger strike to protest his imprisonment on allegations of plotting to overthrow the state during last year’s protests. (As of this writing, the hunger strike is now in its ninetieth day.)

Part of what makes the current situation in Bahrain so disturbing is that the regime has succeeded in replacing the narrative of a peaceful movement for reform with an altogether different one: that the country’s majority Shia are intent on driving the Sunnis off the island and handing the country over to Iran. Although last year’s protests were led by predominantly Shia opposition groups, Bahrain’s urban populations have long been mixed and the uprising also drew Sunnis dissatisfied with how the country was run. But now, by mobilizing Sunnis against Shia protesters on the claim the latter are manipulated by a predatory Iran, the regime has made Shia-Sunni hostility the conflict’s overriding theme.

Consider the recent cases of Ali and Omar: two Bahraini boys, one a teenager, the other a pre-schooler. Ali, of course, is one of the more common Shia names while Omar is a common Sunni name. Their stories, much embellished in the retelling, have been wielded by each side in the conflict to attack the other side.

In March, the Bahraini Internet was full of Twitter comments about 4-year-old Omar, who was said to have been forced to kiss his (Shia) teacher’s feet simply because of his name. The historical Omar was one of the Prophet Muhammad’s companions and Islam’s second Caliph. To Shia, he was a usurper, who muscled aside Ali, the Prophet’s son-in-law, in the succession crisis that erupted following Muhammad’s death.

The teacher denied the accusation, but when it was leaked to the press that the school had launched an investigation (after a complaint lodged by Omar’s parents), the Ministry of Education became involved, and the matter, quickly amplified by social media, soon became a national controversy. The school was forced to suspend the teacher, and a picture of her husband and his daily route to work were circulated on Twitter in an attempt to intimidate the couple.

To Read the Entire Essay

Bauhaus: In the Flat Field

Joshua Land: Migrating Forms - David Cronenberg and the challenge of the impossible adaptation

Migrating Forms: David Cronenberg and the challenge of the impossible adaptation
by Joshua Land
Moving Image Source





What makes a film a successful literary adaptation? Ask a random literate moviegoer, and they're likely to answer that a good film adaptation should be "like the book" (or play). In other words, a successful adaptation is a faithful adaptation. What then is a faithful adaptation? One that follows the story of the original text, of course. It's this fixation on story that prompts the common contention that most great modernist and postmodernist novels, which often either lack a traditional story or integrate story elements with discursive material, are "unfilmable." One possible strategy of adaptation is to "flatten out" the original by simply discarding everything that doesn't move the story along, as in Philip Kaufman and Jean-Claude Carrière's version of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, a conventional 1980s Euro-prestige picture that preserves the novel's plot line while eliding the philosophical digressions and ruminations on love and kitsch that are essential to its meaning. So is it a successful adaptation of Milan Kundera's novel? Well, that depends on what you mean by "successful."

Over the latter half of his career, David Cronenberg has intervened in this tiresome discussion with a series of what have been termed "impossible adaptations." In films like Naked Lunch (1991) and Crash (1996), adaptations of novels once regarded as unfilmable, Cronenberg approaches the problem of adaptation from a different angle. One of these films closely follows the story of its source novel and one does not, but both could be described as successful—and even, after a fashion, faithful—adaptations.

Discussion of adaptations is often haunted by the unresolved question of whether a film should be regarded as merely the extension of a literary work into another form, or as a separate work entirely. Cronenberg's Naked Lunch takes that decision out of the viewer's hands to the extent that it's not really an adaptation of William S. Burroughs's novel at all—at least if adaptation is conceived primarily in terms of story. While most of the movie's major characters and settings (as well as the famous "talking asshole" anecdote) come from the Burroughs novel, it also draws from other Burroughs writings as well as the author's life. Seeing Naked Lunch is in no way a substitute for reading the book, or vice versa—which may be precisely the point.

Talking centipedes and organic typewriters notwithstanding, Naked Lunch is relatively restrained by the standards of Cronenberg's previous work, marking, along with Dead Ringers (1988), a transition between the director's visceral early films and the cooler, more formalist late work. The outré visual effects are played more for laughs than chills. Indeed, Naked Lunch might be Cronenberg's funniest film, beginning with the ironic casting of Robocop himself, Peter Weller, as the alter ego of the outlaw writer. Weller's stone-faced performance positions the film's protagonist, William Lee, as a straight man (pun intended) who takes its bizarre happenings in stride. Recounting a not atypical incident in which his Clark Nova typewriter kills and disembowels a potential rival instrument, Lee deadpans: "I understood writing could be dangerous. I didn't realize the danger came from the machinery."

To Read the Rest of the Essay



Tuesday, May 08, 2012

Smashing Pumpkins: Twilight to Starlight

Public Radio International: Survivor tries to make sense of aftermath of Norway attacks as trial continues

Survivor tries to make sense of aftermath of Norway attacks as trial continues
Public Radio International (PRI)

The trial of Anders Breivik has faded from the headlines, but the trial continues.

On Friday, the court heard details of the deaths of the 69 people he massacred on Utoya Island. Breivik appeared unmoved by the testimony.

But the survivors of the shootings have spent a lot of time thinking about the horrific event and what it means for him and for Norway.

Gathered in a hall in downtown Stavanger a small group of Norwegians are still grappling with what happened.

A moderator had brought together four panelists to talk about the how the media have reported on the massacre and the trial and to examine just what it means for Norway’s future. Eventually, it was Arshad Mubarak Ali’s turn to speak.

Ali stands out not only because of the color of his skin. He is also a survivor of the day of horror on Utoya Island. Ali knows while he may not have died, he was, in Breivik’s mind, the enemy simply because he is different from so many other Norwegians.

Ali, who was born in Norway to parents from Sri Lanka, never noticed that difference until Sept. 11, 2001. A teenager at the time, he remembers telling classmates how upset he was about what happened that day.

So he said he was shocked when one of them identified him with the 9/11 assassins.

“A person said to me, ‘I didn’t think that you thought this was terrible; I thought that you supported these people.’ So that experience made me think,” Ali said. “When this classmate said this to me, I started to think who am I? Why am I so different because I am a Muslim.”

Ali spent the following years exploring that question, studying the history of his faith, listening to a national debate that seemed to equate Islam with terrorism. Then, at the suggestion of his politically active father, he ran for city council and won a seat at the age of 20.

Ever since, he’s worked hard for the Labor Party. That’s why he was at the party’s youth meeting on Utoya Island that day.

Ali recounted the terror of the day quietly and deliberately. He went with others to shelter inside a building after they heard gunshots outside. He was standing next to a closed door when a bullet came flying in.

“And then I just saw a shot, a gunshot that went through the wall and hit this person and he fell down and he started to shout,” Ali said. “Then I knew that, OK, this is something serious.”

To Read the Rest of the Report

Ken Butigan: A May to Remember

A May to remember
by Ken Butigan
Waging Nonviolence

April may be the cruelest month, as T.S. Eliot once claimed, but May is the month of exuberant mass action. We’re currently in the thick of the latest iteration of May mobilizations for justice and peace, with the worldwide protests that got rolling on May 1 and the actions that will take place later this month in Chicago focused on the NATO summit. May actions are a venerable tradition, reaching back to Emancipation Day in 1886 when — also in Chicago — 340,000 workers went on strike demanding an 8-hour workday. Since then, by design or coincidence, numerous May protests — perhaps egged on by the feisty vitality of spring and its alluring promise of rejuvenation — have been momentous.

In the month of May, one million South Africans demonstrated against apartheid (1986); 1,400 people were arrested protesting the construction of a nuclear power plant in Seabrook, New Hampshire (1977); the Freedom Riders challenged racial discrimination in interstate travel (1961); hundreds of schoolchildren were arrested during the civil rights movement’s historic Birmingham campaign (1963); the Poor People’s Campaign challenged economic inequality (1968); a general strike spread across France calling for social change, eventually mobilizing ten million people (1968); and millions protested U.S. immigration policy across the nation (2006). These, as the invaluable This Week in History attests, are only a small fraction of the many historic social struggles that have been launched in the month of May.

Here is one of the most notable.

Forty-one years ago today — May 3, 1971 — thousands of people were arrested in Washington D.C. as they clamored for an end to the U.S. war in Vietnam. Though no one could have known it at the time, this event proved to be the movement’s last monumental mobilization. There would be other national and local demonstrations before the war finally ended in 1975, but nothing would match the sheer size and intensity of this powerful drama played out on the streets of the nation’s capital.

To Read the Rest of the Essay

Monday, May 07, 2012

The Who: Behind Blue Eyes

Jake Olzen: NATO’s crisis of legitimacy spreads in Chicago

NATO’s crisis of legitimacy spreads in Chicago
by Jake Olzen
Waging Nonviolence

As NATO forces find themselves under fire in Afghanistan, NATO’s spokespersons are taking to another battlefield to win the hearts and minds of an increasingly skeptical populace: Chicago Public Schools. Last week, the Chicago Tribune reported from a sixth-grade classroom where representatives from the Chicago NATO Host Committee gave a primer on NATO and its member countries to the Walt Disney Magnet School on the Northside of Chicago.

According a Host Committee press release, the classroom visits and programming are part of a whole series of events “designed to engage and educate residents about the upcoming NATO Summit.” Other events include sponsored sports competitions, culinary classes and specialized menus at Chicago restaurants featuring NATO member countries’ heritages, and a three-part speaker series:

The first will focus on the future of the transatlantic alliance, the second will examine American leadership in the 21st Century, and the third will give Chicagoans an opportunity to hear from visiting NATO leaders.

A Host Committee spokesperson did not respond to multiple requests for comments on the goals or content of the CPS programming.

Chicagoans are not likely to hear about the civilian deaths that NATO “covered up” during the 2011 Libyan uprising against Col. Qaddafi or the migrants left to die at sea after NATO failed to respond to distress calls. Furthermore, a recent NATO report leaked to The New York Times reveals what many already know: NATO is the U.S.’s wingman and can barely function without it. Alongside a faltering mission against Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan, NATO is facing a crisis of legitimacy as citizens of its member countries are mobilizing for protest and anti-NATO education en masse.

“AFSC (American Friends Service Committee) is working to combat the pro-NATO discussion happening not only at CPS but in general as well,” explained Barbara Morenoan, an AFSC intern, by email. Moreno has helped put together a number of resources to challenge the NATO narrative and has taken its presentations advocating protest to Chicago Public Schools. Along with students from Rudy Lozano Leadership Academy, AFSC has created a mural depicting the realities of NATO.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, nearly 500 people were arrested in protests at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels in early April. The protests reveal the increasing anti-militarism and anti-nuclear sentiments among many Europeans.

“We neither want the anti-missile shield, nor intervention by NATO in Libya or Afghanistan, nor nuclear bombs that are illegal in our country,” said Benoit Calvi to Agence France Presse about the April 1 action.

As the NATO summit nears, drawing protesters from around the world, local resistance is increasing. On Monday, clergy, along with labor leaders, announced their opposition to NATO at the Chicago Temple; the United Methodist Church, located in the Loop, is the oldest church in Chicago. Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Phil Blackwell, two long-time Chicago leaders, both stated their intentions to march against NATO. The Chicago Temple, in conjunction with SCUPE — a Chicago consortium of cross-denomination seminaries — announced a Chicago-wide discussion amongst pastors on NATO, the G8 and economic justice, following by strategizing for action.

The May 20–21 meetings are less than two weeks away and the summit’s theme — “CHICAGO 2012 — the Global Crossroad” — is uncannily prophetic as thousands of protesters plan to converge in what may be the largest demonstration against NATO in history. And the lead up to those protests will see more educational events and teach-ins all over the city as to why people should be concerned about NATO.

Occupy Chicago’s “People’s Summit” will take place on May 12–13, featuring speakers and workshops about developing protest actions for the NATO summit as well as visions for inhabiting a world without NATO.

To Read the Rest of the Article

Sunday, May 06, 2012

Unwelcome Guests: Episode #593 - Let Your Life Be A Friction (To Stop The Machine)

Episode #593 - Let Your Life Be A Friction (To Stop The Machine)
Unwelcome Guests

We start this week with a brief except from Mario Savio's 'Odious Machine' speech, followed by the soundtrack to a video by ClassWarFilms which retells the myth of American exceptionalism. It concludes by recalling Thoreau's injunction to 'Let Your Life Be A Friction To Stop The Machine'.

We then hear from UK anti-nuclear activist Angie Zelter on how she started the ploughshares movement which has inspired thousands to damage nuclear weapons and other oppressive military equipment. She reports that juries are increasingly finding in favor of those who put their lives on the line with such direct action.

Then we hear from Gwen Schulman on how she broke the story of Canadian Environmental NGOs teaming up with the largest mining companies. Next a section by John Stewart on his experience opposing airport expansion -- and his summary expulsion from USA.

We conclude with another reading from chapter 7 of David Graeber's Debt, The First 5000 Years.

To Listen to the Episode

Noam Chomsky: The Kingdom of Survival

An excerpt of an interview with ... linguist/political activist Noam Chomsky featured in Slowboat Films upcoming documentary The Kingdom of Survival.

Saturday, May 05, 2012

Nina Power: The Spectre of the “Public” -- The Ideology of Law and Order

[MB -- Interesting analysis of public space, two kinds of perceived publics (by the legal system/law enforcement), and media representations/interpellations of both .... through the context of the recent British riots.]

Nina Power – The Spectre of the “Public”: The Ideology of Law and Order
Backdoor Broadcasting Company

The Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities: Ideology Now – Conference

To Listen to the Presentation

Friday, May 04, 2012