(Great program! Too bad we insist on stigmatizing, persecuting and locking them up here in the good ol' democratic US of A.)
Drop-in Center: Major Russian Paper Wrote about Ukrainian Experience in Harm Reduction
by Maryna Reshetnyak
Rising Voices
...
10 AM. There is a short line next to entrance of the pharmacology clinic called “Sociotherapy”. I see a poster on the wall in Ukrainian: “Not all people are alcoholics or drug addicts, but all alcoholics and drug addicts are people”. This is “the site” – a place where patients of substitution therapy receive pills of Methadone and Buprenorphine.
There are no very young people in line. Most of them are in their 30's, but there are a few of 40's and older. Each person has a story. There is a person with crutch, a mother holding a small child …
I am entering the site together with Pavel Kutsev. He is a journalist. He is 48 and he is an opiate addict. He and his wife Yanina, the editor-in chief for a newsletter for drug addicts “Motylek” has been in the program for a year and a half.
“Sometimes I hear that substitution therapy is a legalization of drugs” says Pavel. “No, it is the legalization of drug addicts. Addiction is a snowball of problems. Starting substitution therapy you start dealing with them. Later on you can start thinking about givin drugs up completely.”
“What are the most common associations that people have about drugs?” asked Pavel “Everybody would say: death, crime, children without parents, infections, asocial lifestyle. Now let's take a person taking substitute medications. He will not die because of drug overdose. He does not participate in criminal activity. He re-establishes relations with the family. He is able to treat HIV, TB and hepatitis. Moreover, he stops taking drugs intravenously, thus reduces risks of spreading infection. Substitution therapy reduces the most dangerous consequence of the drug addiction.”
A nurse is greeting us. She has to assess the health of the patient, provide the medication, and make sure the patient has taken it (sometimes she crushes the pill with a glass) and make proper records. The nurse is taking three pills from a bottle and, with a piece of folded paper, put them directly to Pavel’s mouth. He is swallowing them up with a bit of water and showing his tongue to the nurse. There is nothing in the mouth. The nurse is nodding and the next person enters the site.
To Read the Rest of the Report
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Greg Gordon: How Goldman Sachs Sold Off Billions in Mortgage Securities After Anticipating Housing Collapse
Low Road to High Finance: McClatchy Expose Reveals How Goldman Sachs Sold Off Billions in Mortgage Securities After Anticipating Housing Collapse
Guest: Greg Gordon
Host: Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez
Democracy Now
A five-month investigation by McClatchy Newspapers has revealed that Goldman Sachs made secret bets against the housing market while simultaneously selling off billions in soon-to-be worthless securities. In 2006 and 2007, the bank reportedly peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in US housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting.
Greg Gordon, Investigative journalist with McClatchy Newspapers. He just published a multi-part investigation of Goldman Sachs and how it secretly bet against the housing market.
To Read/Listen/Watch
More:
Greg Gordon: How Goldman secretly bet on the U.S. housing crash
Guest: Greg Gordon
Host: Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez
Democracy Now
A five-month investigation by McClatchy Newspapers has revealed that Goldman Sachs made secret bets against the housing market while simultaneously selling off billions in soon-to-be worthless securities. In 2006 and 2007, the bank reportedly peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in US housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting.
Greg Gordon, Investigative journalist with McClatchy Newspapers. He just published a multi-part investigation of Goldman Sachs and how it secretly bet against the housing market.
To Read/Listen/Watch
More:
Greg Gordon: How Goldman secretly bet on the U.S. housing crash
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Solidarity with UIUC Grad Employees -- IFT/AFT Local 6300
UIUC Grad Employees IFT/AFT Local 6300
Dialogic supports the University of Illinois Graduate Student Union's overwhelming vote to strike
Over the course of a three day vote, an overwhelming 92% of participating GEO members chose to authorize a strike against the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. With the vote, GEO members have given the strike committee of the GEO a clear mandate to call a strike at any time. The Graduate Employee’s Organization, American Federation of Teachers/Illinois Federation of Teachers Local 6300, AFL-CIO, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is a labor union representing all teaching and graduate assistants (TAs and GAs) on the UIUC campus. With over 2600 GEO members, and over 2600 graduate employees represented in the bargaining unit, the GEO is one of the largest higher education union locals in the United States.
The GEO has been negotiating with UIUC administrators for over six months. The GEO seeks a contract that will set the minimum salary for a 50% nine month appointment at the University’s estimate of a living wage for a graduate student in Urbana-Champaign and protect tuition waivers for TAs and GAs. While the GEO presented the administration with a full contract proposal on the first day of negotiations, the UIUC administration declined to offer a counterproposal until August 11th, just four days before the GEO’s previous contract expired. The UIUC administration’s initial contract proposal sought to freeze GEO wages for three years, reserve the right to furlough and layoff graduate employees in good standing, and to count “in-kind” compensation such as housing or meal vouchers toward the minimum salary mandated in the contract.
The GEO understands that the state of Illinois is in dire economic straits, but as University administrators pointed out in their FY 2010 budget request, this is the result of long standing deficiencies in state level budget prioritization and not a sudden result of the recent national recession. Instead of championing the university’s historic land grant mission, UIUC administrators have embraced the national tendency toward the corporatization of the public higher education system. Their consequent failure to secure adequate state funding leaves the social science, humanities, and fine arts especially vulnerable. Worse, it jeopardizes access to higher education for many who have the capacity and desire, but not the financial resources to attend the University. If increased state funding is also necessary to providing at least a living wage for all campus employees, then the GEO expects the UIUC administration to forcefully make that case to the Higher Education Appropriations Committee, other state legislators, and the Governor.
Instead of advocating on the behalf of students and workers, administrators were granting costly favors to state politicians. The former Chancellor diverted $450,000 of discretionary funds to provide jobs and scholarships for politically well-connected but undeserving applicants. Another $400,000 went to the attorneys who represented the University before the Governor’s investigative committee, and another $550,000 to new faculty appointments for the former President and Chancellor. In this context, the GEO finds it hard to trust the UIUC administration when it argues that there is not enough money to provide a living wage. From the GEO’s perspective, it appears that budget priorities are simply out of place. When campus revenues rose by 7% in FY 2009, only 0.8% ($2.7 million) went to undergraduate instruction. Meanwhile, the Chief Information Officer’s budget rose by 10.9 percent ($1.6 million), and the Division of Intercollegiate Athletics budget increased 6.2 percent ($4.1 million).
GEO bargaining unit members teach 23.1% of all undergraduate course hours at UIUC, and perform comparably to faculty in official student evaluations of instructor performance as measured by the University of Illinois’ Center for Teaching Excellence. Yet our salaries draw only 6.5% of state funding, including salaries for GAs and Research Assistants, who don’t teach. By contrast, faculty salaries draw over 55% of the University budget. Graduate employee labor is vital to the fiscally efficient provision of the University’s core service, academic instruction. Should graduate employee salaries be set to a living wage, the University would still have a large pool of inexpensive and high quality instructional and administrative labor.
GEO members have been working hard to avoid a strike. Hundreds of GEO members have participated in three major rallies, and GEO members have also lobbied the Illinois House of Representatives Higher Education Appropriations Committee, spoken with state legislators from Champaign, actively informed campus community members about the issues, and maintained a constant presence in Urbana-Champaign print, radio and television media. The Illinois Student Senate has passed two resolutions in support of the GEO and the decision to authorize a strike, and GEO supporters in the faculty senate are working to pass a similar resolution. GEO members and allies will hold a rally at the University of Illinois Board of Trustees Meeting in Springfield, IL on November 12.
As with any labor negotiation, however, the most effective pressure has been the threat of a strike. Only after GEO members at a General Membership Meeting voted unanimously to file an “intent to strike” notice did the University administration offer their first compromise proposals. Accordingly, the Coordinating Committee and Steward’s Council of the GEO voted unanimously to hold a strike authorization vote from November 4-6. By voting to authorize a strike, GEO members have taken a vital step in holding the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign administration accountable to its stated commitment to excellence in research and undergraduate education.
For more information
More:
Michael Verderame Address to the Board of Trustees
Dialogic supports the University of Illinois Graduate Student Union's overwhelming vote to strike
Over the course of a three day vote, an overwhelming 92% of participating GEO members chose to authorize a strike against the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. With the vote, GEO members have given the strike committee of the GEO a clear mandate to call a strike at any time. The Graduate Employee’s Organization, American Federation of Teachers/Illinois Federation of Teachers Local 6300, AFL-CIO, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is a labor union representing all teaching and graduate assistants (TAs and GAs) on the UIUC campus. With over 2600 GEO members, and over 2600 graduate employees represented in the bargaining unit, the GEO is one of the largest higher education union locals in the United States.
The GEO has been negotiating with UIUC administrators for over six months. The GEO seeks a contract that will set the minimum salary for a 50% nine month appointment at the University’s estimate of a living wage for a graduate student in Urbana-Champaign and protect tuition waivers for TAs and GAs. While the GEO presented the administration with a full contract proposal on the first day of negotiations, the UIUC administration declined to offer a counterproposal until August 11th, just four days before the GEO’s previous contract expired. The UIUC administration’s initial contract proposal sought to freeze GEO wages for three years, reserve the right to furlough and layoff graduate employees in good standing, and to count “in-kind” compensation such as housing or meal vouchers toward the minimum salary mandated in the contract.
The GEO understands that the state of Illinois is in dire economic straits, but as University administrators pointed out in their FY 2010 budget request, this is the result of long standing deficiencies in state level budget prioritization and not a sudden result of the recent national recession. Instead of championing the university’s historic land grant mission, UIUC administrators have embraced the national tendency toward the corporatization of the public higher education system. Their consequent failure to secure adequate state funding leaves the social science, humanities, and fine arts especially vulnerable. Worse, it jeopardizes access to higher education for many who have the capacity and desire, but not the financial resources to attend the University. If increased state funding is also necessary to providing at least a living wage for all campus employees, then the GEO expects the UIUC administration to forcefully make that case to the Higher Education Appropriations Committee, other state legislators, and the Governor.
Instead of advocating on the behalf of students and workers, administrators were granting costly favors to state politicians. The former Chancellor diverted $450,000 of discretionary funds to provide jobs and scholarships for politically well-connected but undeserving applicants. Another $400,000 went to the attorneys who represented the University before the Governor’s investigative committee, and another $550,000 to new faculty appointments for the former President and Chancellor. In this context, the GEO finds it hard to trust the UIUC administration when it argues that there is not enough money to provide a living wage. From the GEO’s perspective, it appears that budget priorities are simply out of place. When campus revenues rose by 7% in FY 2009, only 0.8% ($2.7 million) went to undergraduate instruction. Meanwhile, the Chief Information Officer’s budget rose by 10.9 percent ($1.6 million), and the Division of Intercollegiate Athletics budget increased 6.2 percent ($4.1 million).
GEO bargaining unit members teach 23.1% of all undergraduate course hours at UIUC, and perform comparably to faculty in official student evaluations of instructor performance as measured by the University of Illinois’ Center for Teaching Excellence. Yet our salaries draw only 6.5% of state funding, including salaries for GAs and Research Assistants, who don’t teach. By contrast, faculty salaries draw over 55% of the University budget. Graduate employee labor is vital to the fiscally efficient provision of the University’s core service, academic instruction. Should graduate employee salaries be set to a living wage, the University would still have a large pool of inexpensive and high quality instructional and administrative labor.
GEO members have been working hard to avoid a strike. Hundreds of GEO members have participated in three major rallies, and GEO members have also lobbied the Illinois House of Representatives Higher Education Appropriations Committee, spoken with state legislators from Champaign, actively informed campus community members about the issues, and maintained a constant presence in Urbana-Champaign print, radio and television media. The Illinois Student Senate has passed two resolutions in support of the GEO and the decision to authorize a strike, and GEO supporters in the faculty senate are working to pass a similar resolution. GEO members and allies will hold a rally at the University of Illinois Board of Trustees Meeting in Springfield, IL on November 12.
As with any labor negotiation, however, the most effective pressure has been the threat of a strike. Only after GEO members at a General Membership Meeting voted unanimously to file an “intent to strike” notice did the University administration offer their first compromise proposals. Accordingly, the Coordinating Committee and Steward’s Council of the GEO voted unanimously to hold a strike authorization vote from November 4-6. By voting to authorize a strike, GEO members have taken a vital step in holding the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign administration accountable to its stated commitment to excellence in research and undergraduate education.
For more information
More:
Michael Verderame Address to the Board of Trustees
Veteran's Day
Veteran's Day--To those that hurt--I'm sorry because as a citizen of this country we do not give you the healthcare you need...To those that hurt someone that should not have been hurt--I'm sorry I didn't do more to stop these wars... To those that hurt--American, Iraqi, Afghanistan, [anywhere where we have our 400+ ba...ses]--I remembered you yesterday... and I remember you today and I will think about you tomorrow.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
David Bakan: On Concealing Knowledge in the Interest of the Public
Bakan, David. “Power, method, and ethics: a reflection on Bateson’s view of moral and national character.” The Individual, Communication, and Society. Ed. Robert W. Rieber. NY: Cambridge UP, 1989: 31-47.
We consider the possibility that the very power inherent in a mode of thought might be a determining factor in connection with the academic neglect of that mode of thought. We consider how the urge to conceal knowledge is benign. Thus, the argument can be made that librarians should censor books on explosives that might be useful to terrorists. However, we have always to ask whether terrorists do not already have that information; and whether the public interest demands a widespread knowledge about explosives in order that the public may be in a proper position to defend itself against terrorists. We soon conclude that every argument in favor of concealing knowledge is unacceptable. The only reasonable, reliable, and enduring protection against dangerous knowledge is the widest dissemination of knowledge. (35)
We consider the possibility that the very power inherent in a mode of thought might be a determining factor in connection with the academic neglect of that mode of thought. We consider how the urge to conceal knowledge is benign. Thus, the argument can be made that librarians should censor books on explosives that might be useful to terrorists. However, we have always to ask whether terrorists do not already have that information; and whether the public interest demands a widespread knowledge about explosives in order that the public may be in a proper position to defend itself against terrorists. We soon conclude that every argument in favor of concealing knowledge is unacceptable. The only reasonable, reliable, and enduring protection against dangerous knowledge is the widest dissemination of knowledge. (35)
Kirk Boyle: Children of Men and I Am Legend: the disaster-capitalism complex hits Hollywood
Children of Men and I Am Legend: the disaster-capitalism complex hits Hollywood
by Kirk Boyle
Jump Cut
...
In addition to indulging the fantasies of late capitalist consumers, Legend targets its audience with “anamorphic advertising.” Lawrence replaces Cuarón’s background commentary on forced migrations and terrorism — newspaper clips that read, “Refugees Blamed for Increase in Terror Attacks” and “Immigrants Protest Against Government New Racist Policies” — with identifiable storefronts, billboards, and products. The “hyper-commercialization” of Hollywood is not a new phenomenon. Product placements, tie-ins, merchandising, and cross-promotions have proliferated in the age of media conglomeration to the point where younger generations no longer experience them as baleful, let alone disruptive. That the Shelby Mustang is clearly the choice of the post-apocalyptic sportsman — along with the Ford Explorer and Escape Hybrid — will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with this latest version of the culture industry.
Nonetheless, Children makes Legend’s participation in these dubious marketing trends look egregious. Brandchannel.com lists thirty-two corporate brands that appear in Legend (on average, a new one every three minutes) while Children features “almost zero brands” (Sauer 2007: unpaginated).[17] Beyond the quantity of ads lies an issue of quality. Where Children harnesses the political potentials of anamorphosis — especially in scenes where anamorphic advertisements of invented products ironize the consumerism of late capitalism — Legend exploits the same artful techniques to peddle products and promote corporate brand recognition.[18] Most disturbing of all, Lawrence uses anamorphosis to naturalize the corporate structure of neoliberal capitalism. Signs of multinational corporations litter the backgrounds of Legend. A mega-disaster has destroyed the signs’ referents within the film's diegesis, but their spectral presence sends the subliminal message to an early twenty-first century audience that corporate capitalism is all but indestructible. The first few minutes of Legend where Neville’s Shelby zips past strategically placed advertisements for XM Satellite Radio, Staples, and Hyatt, assure us that the world is more likely to end before capitalism does.
One final indication that Legend cuts ties with reality in order to enact a consumerist fantasy stems from what Popular Mechanics calls the “junk science” of the film. Popular Mechanics’ assistant editor Erin McCarthy consulted
Pointing out the scientific inconsistencies of a film does not meet the criteria most moviegoers take to the theater, nor will it prove to be an ideological indicator in many cases. But as with Legend’s prevalent product placements, its “junk science” is symptomatic of a larger ideological problem. New York City would be in worse condition due to water and fire damage, and Neville would run into problems with powering his home that the film glosses over. Disbelief could be suspended if these vital infrastructural issues had not been ignored precisely because Neville exists in the fantasy space of a consumer and not a producer. In one representative scene, he harvests ears of corn in Central Park. That the corn is ripe is no accident. Legend cannot represent how the things Neville consumes were produced because labor does not exist in the consumerist fantasyland of the Last Men. Everything Neville needs or wants is simply there for the picking.
Legend creates a capitalist utopia by immersing its protagonist in a world that defies the laws of physics, a playground of consumer goods that hides the labor power of its construction and sustenance (and the problems that would inevitably plague its sole survivor). The film’s “anamorphic advertising” weaves its consuming public into this fantasy world to naturalize neoliberalism as if to say, “the world as we know it will never end, and we will always feel fine.”
Where Legend celebrates the Last Men and their late capitalist utopia, Children critiques their narcissism, cynicism, and classism (as soon will become apparent), by depicting their world — our world — as dystopian. With the dreamworld of wealth comes the catastrophe of crimes against humanity in the guise of free markets, illegal immigration, homeland security, and the War on Terror — all of the specious policies which Cuarón catalogues in his backdrops, the very same policies that Naomi Klein argues bankroll the well-orchestrated “disaster-capitalism complex.”
I Am Conservative-Corporatist
In The Shock Doctrine, Klein claims that the neoliberal era ushered in a “capitalist Reformation” that doubled as a counterrevolution to Keynesianism and Third World developmentalism (Klein 2007b: 53). Like Harvey, she views neoliberalism as a theory of political economic practices that seek to restore class power through deregulation, privatization, and cuts to social spending, a free-market trinity bent on redistributing wealth as much as generating it. Put into practice, neoliberalization morphs into corporatism, a vast collusion between Big Government and Big Business to transfer public wealth to private hands while an ever-widening chasm opens up between “the dazzling rich and the disposable poor” (Klein 2007b: 15). The recent $700 billion financial bailout of banks by the U.S. government provides a clear example of this collusion.
Klein charts how the rise of corporatism spawned a disaster-capitalism complex that at once extends and supersedes the military-industrial (and congressional) complex President Eisenhower diagnosed in his 1961 farewell address. With the emergence of the disaster-capitalism complex, the latent “creative destruction” that fueled the engines of capital since its inception surges to the surface to become the recognized modus operandi of the economy. Today, crisis opportunism entwines superprofits with megadisasters to the point where
Although “disaster capitalism” has been part of neoliberal policy for over three decades, it did not develop into a full-scale complex until after 9/11 with the War on Terror. As Klein writes,
Under the auspice of fighting terrorism, the disaster-capitalism complex insidiously developed into a fully articulated state-within-a-state, a corporate shadow-state, that carries out the normal functions of a nation-state but at a heftier price.
To Read the Entire Essay
Naomi Klein: Shock Doctrine (Videos on YouTube)
by Kirk Boyle
Jump Cut
...
In addition to indulging the fantasies of late capitalist consumers, Legend targets its audience with “anamorphic advertising.” Lawrence replaces Cuarón’s background commentary on forced migrations and terrorism — newspaper clips that read, “Refugees Blamed for Increase in Terror Attacks” and “Immigrants Protest Against Government New Racist Policies” — with identifiable storefronts, billboards, and products. The “hyper-commercialization” of Hollywood is not a new phenomenon. Product placements, tie-ins, merchandising, and cross-promotions have proliferated in the age of media conglomeration to the point where younger generations no longer experience them as baleful, let alone disruptive. That the Shelby Mustang is clearly the choice of the post-apocalyptic sportsman — along with the Ford Explorer and Escape Hybrid — will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with this latest version of the culture industry.
Nonetheless, Children makes Legend’s participation in these dubious marketing trends look egregious. Brandchannel.com lists thirty-two corporate brands that appear in Legend (on average, a new one every three minutes) while Children features “almost zero brands” (Sauer 2007: unpaginated).[17] Beyond the quantity of ads lies an issue of quality. Where Children harnesses the political potentials of anamorphosis — especially in scenes where anamorphic advertisements of invented products ironize the consumerism of late capitalism — Legend exploits the same artful techniques to peddle products and promote corporate brand recognition.[18] Most disturbing of all, Lawrence uses anamorphosis to naturalize the corporate structure of neoliberal capitalism. Signs of multinational corporations litter the backgrounds of Legend. A mega-disaster has destroyed the signs’ referents within the film's diegesis, but their spectral presence sends the subliminal message to an early twenty-first century audience that corporate capitalism is all but indestructible. The first few minutes of Legend where Neville’s Shelby zips past strategically placed advertisements for XM Satellite Radio, Staples, and Hyatt, assure us that the world is more likely to end before capitalism does.
One final indication that Legend cuts ties with reality in order to enact a consumerist fantasy stems from what Popular Mechanics calls the “junk science” of the film. Popular Mechanics’ assistant editor Erin McCarthy consulted
“experts in the fields of structural engineering, virology, and wildlife to determine what could happen — and what certainly won’t happen” regarding Legend’s portrait of the future (McCarthy 2007: 1).
Pointing out the scientific inconsistencies of a film does not meet the criteria most moviegoers take to the theater, nor will it prove to be an ideological indicator in many cases. But as with Legend’s prevalent product placements, its “junk science” is symptomatic of a larger ideological problem. New York City would be in worse condition due to water and fire damage, and Neville would run into problems with powering his home that the film glosses over. Disbelief could be suspended if these vital infrastructural issues had not been ignored precisely because Neville exists in the fantasy space of a consumer and not a producer. In one representative scene, he harvests ears of corn in Central Park. That the corn is ripe is no accident. Legend cannot represent how the things Neville consumes were produced because labor does not exist in the consumerist fantasyland of the Last Men. Everything Neville needs or wants is simply there for the picking.
Legend creates a capitalist utopia by immersing its protagonist in a world that defies the laws of physics, a playground of consumer goods that hides the labor power of its construction and sustenance (and the problems that would inevitably plague its sole survivor). The film’s “anamorphic advertising” weaves its consuming public into this fantasy world to naturalize neoliberalism as if to say, “the world as we know it will never end, and we will always feel fine.”
Where Legend celebrates the Last Men and their late capitalist utopia, Children critiques their narcissism, cynicism, and classism (as soon will become apparent), by depicting their world — our world — as dystopian. With the dreamworld of wealth comes the catastrophe of crimes against humanity in the guise of free markets, illegal immigration, homeland security, and the War on Terror — all of the specious policies which Cuarón catalogues in his backdrops, the very same policies that Naomi Klein argues bankroll the well-orchestrated “disaster-capitalism complex.”
I Am Conservative-Corporatist
In The Shock Doctrine, Klein claims that the neoliberal era ushered in a “capitalist Reformation” that doubled as a counterrevolution to Keynesianism and Third World developmentalism (Klein 2007b: 53). Like Harvey, she views neoliberalism as a theory of political economic practices that seek to restore class power through deregulation, privatization, and cuts to social spending, a free-market trinity bent on redistributing wealth as much as generating it. Put into practice, neoliberalization morphs into corporatism, a vast collusion between Big Government and Big Business to transfer public wealth to private hands while an ever-widening chasm opens up between “the dazzling rich and the disposable poor” (Klein 2007b: 15). The recent $700 billion financial bailout of banks by the U.S. government provides a clear example of this collusion.
Klein charts how the rise of corporatism spawned a disaster-capitalism complex that at once extends and supersedes the military-industrial (and congressional) complex President Eisenhower diagnosed in his 1961 farewell address. With the emergence of the disaster-capitalism complex, the latent “creative destruction” that fueled the engines of capital since its inception surges to the surface to become the recognized modus operandi of the economy. Today, crisis opportunism entwines superprofits with megadisasters to the point where
“all conflict- and disaster-related functions (waging war, securing borders, spying on citizens, rebuilding cities, treating traumatized soldiers) can be performed by corporations at a profit” (Klein 2007c: 50).
Although “disaster capitalism” has been part of neoliberal policy for over three decades, it did not develop into a full-scale complex until after 9/11 with the War on Terror. As Klein writes,
“Although the state goal was fighting terrorism, the effect was the creation of the disaster capitalism complex — a full-fledged new economy in homeland security, privatized war and disaster reconstruction tasked with nothing less than building and running a privatized security state, both at home and abroad” (Klein 2007b: 299).
Under the auspice of fighting terrorism, the disaster-capitalism complex insidiously developed into a fully articulated state-within-a-state, a corporate shadow-state, that carries out the normal functions of a nation-state but at a heftier price.
To Read the Entire Essay
Naomi Klein: Shock Doctrine (Videos on YouTube)
Pascale Bourgaux: Rape in the Ranks: The Enemy Within
“Rape in the Ranks: The Enemy Within”
Host: Amy Goodman
Democracy Now
As with suicides, the rate of sexual assaults within the US military now exceeds that of the general population. A Pentagon report earlier this year found one in three female service members are sexually assaulted at least once during their enlistment. Sixty-three percent of nearly 3,000 cases reported last year were rapes or aggravated assaults. Rape in the Ranks: The Enemy Within is a documentary that focuses on the cases of three female service members victimized by rape and other forms of sexual assault. We air excerpts of the film and speak to filmmaker Pascale Bourgaux.
To Watch/Listen/Read
Host: Amy Goodman
Democracy Now
As with suicides, the rate of sexual assaults within the US military now exceeds that of the general population. A Pentagon report earlier this year found one in three female service members are sexually assaulted at least once during their enlistment. Sixty-three percent of nearly 3,000 cases reported last year were rapes or aggravated assaults. Rape in the Ranks: The Enemy Within is a documentary that focuses on the cases of three female service members victimized by rape and other forms of sexual assault. We air excerpts of the film and speak to filmmaker Pascale Bourgaux.
To Watch/Listen/Read
Gregg and Jannett Keesling, Parents of Soldier Who Killed Himself in Iraq Speak Out About President Obama's Refusal To Send a Letter of Condolence
Parents of Soldier Who Killed Himself in Iraq Speak Out
Host: Amy Goodman
Democracy Now
Gregg and Jannett Keesling are the parents of Chancellor Keesling, a US soldier who took his own life on June 19th of this year. Chancellor was on his second tour of duty in Iraq. During his first deployment, he suffered mental health issues so severe he was placed on suicide watch. After getting back to the United States, Chancellor had turned down a bonus offer to return to Iraq in the hopes he wouldn’t be redeployed. But he was called back in May. One month later, he took his own life. Since Chancellor’s death, Gregg and Jannett Keesling have yet to receive a letter of condolence from President Obama. After making inquiries, they discovered that this was not because of an oversight. Instead, it’s because of a longstanding US policy to deny presidential condolence letters to the families of soldiers who take their own lives.
To Watch/Listen/Read
Host: Amy Goodman
Democracy Now
Gregg and Jannett Keesling are the parents of Chancellor Keesling, a US soldier who took his own life on June 19th of this year. Chancellor was on his second tour of duty in Iraq. During his first deployment, he suffered mental health issues so severe he was placed on suicide watch. After getting back to the United States, Chancellor had turned down a bonus offer to return to Iraq in the hopes he wouldn’t be redeployed. But he was called back in May. One month later, he took his own life. Since Chancellor’s death, Gregg and Jannett Keesling have yet to receive a letter of condolence from President Obama. After making inquiries, they discovered that this was not because of an oversight. Instead, it’s because of a longstanding US policy to deny presidential condolence letters to the families of soldiers who take their own lives.
To Watch/Listen/Read
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Ted Striphas: The Late Age of Print - Everyday Book Culture from Consumerism to Control (Columbia UP, 2009)
In the midst of hysterical rants about the end of print culture it was a pleasure to read Striphas' book. Essential sections include the strange history of ISBNs and their transformation (especially as "control" devices), the development and effect of big-box bookstores, the Oprah-effect on book sales, the global Harry Potter lawsuits, and corporate attempts at controlling culture.
Late Age of Print--The Video
Late Age of Print--The Video
Mythmakers and Lawbreakers (AK Press: ed. Margaret Killjoy, 2009)
Received this in my AK Press friend subscription this month and immediately devoured it. It is a collection of interviews and an annotated bibliography of anarchist fiction writers. A valuable resource that will help me extend my imaginative derives and has even inspired me to start writing fiction again.
Mythmakers and Lawbreakers (AK Press)
Mythmakers and Lawbreakers (AK Press)
Walter Benn Michaels: What Matters
What Matters
Walter Benn Michaels
London Review of Books
...
But it would be a mistake to think that because the US is a less racist, sexist and homophobic society, it is a more equal society. In fact, in certain crucial ways it is more unequal than it was 40 years ago. No group dedicated to ending economic inequality would be thinking today about declaring victory and going home. In 1969, the top quintile of American wage-earners made 43 per cent of all the money earned in the US; the bottom quintile made 4.1 per cent. In 2007, the top quintile made 49.7 per cent; the bottom quintile 3.4. And while this inequality is both raced and gendered, it’s less so than you might think. White people, for example, make up about 70 per cent of the US population, and 62 per cent of those in the bottom quintile. Progress in fighting racism hasn’t done them any good; it hasn’t even been designed to do them any good. More generally, even if we succeeded completely in eliminating the effects of racism and sexism, we would not thereby have made any progress towards economic equality. A society in which white people were proportionately represented in the bottom quintile (and black people proportionately represented in the top quintile) would not be more equal; it would be exactly as unequal. It would not be more just; it would be proportionately unjust.
An obvious question, then, is how we are to understand the fact that we’ve made so much progress in some areas while going backwards in others. And an almost equally obvious answer is that the areas in which we’ve made progress have been those which are in fundamental accord with the deepest values of neoliberalism, and the one where we haven’t isn’t. We can put the point more directly by observing that increasing tolerance of economic inequality and increasing intolerance of racism, sexism and homophobia – of discrimination as such – are fundamental characteristics of neoliberalism. Hence the extraordinary advances in the battle against discrimination, and hence also its limits as a contribution to any left-wing politics. The increased inequalities of neoliberalism were not caused by racism and sexism and won’t be cured by – they aren’t even addressed by – anti-racism or anti-sexism.
My point is not that anti-racism and anti-sexism are not good things. It is rather that they currently have nothing to do with left-wing politics, and that, insofar as they function as a substitute for it, can be a bad thing. American universities are exemplary here: they are less racist and sexist than they were 40 years ago and at the same time more elitist. The one serves as an alibi for the other: when you ask them for more equality, what they give you is more diversity. The neoliberal heart leaps up at the sound of glass ceilings shattering and at the sight of doctors, lawyers and professors of colour taking their place in the upper middle class. Whence the many corporations which pursue diversity almost as enthusiastically as they pursue profits, and proclaim over and over again not only that the two are compatible but that they have a causal connection – that diversity is good for business. But a diversified elite is not made any the less elite by its diversity and, as a response to the demand for equality, far from being left-wing politics, it is right-wing politics.
The recent furore over the arrest for ‘disorderly conduct’ of Henry Louis Gates helps make this clear. Gates, as one of his Harvard colleagues said, is ‘a famous, wealthy and important black man’, a point Gates himself tried to make to the arresting officer – the way he put it was: ‘You don’t know who you’re messing with.’ But, despite the helpful hint, the cop failed to recognise an essential truth about neoliberal America: it’s no longer enough to kowtow to rich white people; now you have to kowtow to rich black people too. The problem, as a sympathetic writer in the Guardian put it, is that ‘Gates’s race snuffed out his class status,’ or as Gates said to the New York Times, ‘I can’t wear my Harvard gown everywhere.’ In the bad old days this situation almost never came up – cops could confidently treat all black people, indeed, all people of colour, the way they traditionally treated poor white people. But now that we’ve made some real progress towards integrating our elites, you need to step back and take the time to figure out ‘who you’re messing with’. You need to make sure that nobody’s class status is snuffed out by his race.
In the wake of Gates’s arrest, among the hundreds of people protesting the injustice of racial profiling, a white cardiologist married to a black man put the point best when she lamented that even in the ‘diverse area’ where she lives (Hyde Park, Obama’s old neighbourhood) she’ll hear people nervously say, ‘Look at those black guys coming towards us,’ to which she replies: ‘Yes, but they’re wearing lacrosse shorts and Calvin Klein jeans. They’re probably the kids of the professor down the street.’ ‘You have to be able to discern differences between people,’ she went on to say. ‘It’s very frustrating.’ The differences she means, of course, are between rich kids and poor kids, and the frustration she feels is with people who don’t understand that class is supposed to trump race. But while it’s easy to sympathise with that frustration – rich black kids are infinitely less likely to mug you than poor black kids or, for that matter, poor white kids – it’s a lot harder to see it as the expression of a progressive politics.
Nevertheless, that seems to be the way we do see it. The neoliberal ideal is a world where rich people of all races and sexes can happily enjoy their wealth, and where the injustices produced not by discrimination but by exploitation – there are fewer poor people (7 per cent) than black people (9 per cent) at Harvard, and Harvard’s not the worst – are discreetly sent around to the back door. Thus everyone’s outraged that a black professor living on prosperous Ware St (and renting a summer vacation ‘manse’ on Martha’s Vineyard that he ‘jokingly’ calls ‘Tara’) can be treated with disrespect; no one’s all that outraged by the social system that created the gap between Ware St or ‘Tara’ and the places where most Americans live. Everyone’s outraged by the fact that Gates can be treated so badly; nobody by the fact that he and the rest of the top 10 per cent of American wage-earners have been doing so well. Actually, it’s just the opposite. Liberals – especially white liberals – are thrilled by Gates’s success, since it testifies to the legitimacy of their own: racism didn’t make us all this money, we earned it!
To Read the Entire Essay
More:
New Left Review: Walter Benn Michaels - Against Diversity
Walter Benn Michaels
London Review of Books
...
But it would be a mistake to think that because the US is a less racist, sexist and homophobic society, it is a more equal society. In fact, in certain crucial ways it is more unequal than it was 40 years ago. No group dedicated to ending economic inequality would be thinking today about declaring victory and going home. In 1969, the top quintile of American wage-earners made 43 per cent of all the money earned in the US; the bottom quintile made 4.1 per cent. In 2007, the top quintile made 49.7 per cent; the bottom quintile 3.4. And while this inequality is both raced and gendered, it’s less so than you might think. White people, for example, make up about 70 per cent of the US population, and 62 per cent of those in the bottom quintile. Progress in fighting racism hasn’t done them any good; it hasn’t even been designed to do them any good. More generally, even if we succeeded completely in eliminating the effects of racism and sexism, we would not thereby have made any progress towards economic equality. A society in which white people were proportionately represented in the bottom quintile (and black people proportionately represented in the top quintile) would not be more equal; it would be exactly as unequal. It would not be more just; it would be proportionately unjust.
An obvious question, then, is how we are to understand the fact that we’ve made so much progress in some areas while going backwards in others. And an almost equally obvious answer is that the areas in which we’ve made progress have been those which are in fundamental accord with the deepest values of neoliberalism, and the one where we haven’t isn’t. We can put the point more directly by observing that increasing tolerance of economic inequality and increasing intolerance of racism, sexism and homophobia – of discrimination as such – are fundamental characteristics of neoliberalism. Hence the extraordinary advances in the battle against discrimination, and hence also its limits as a contribution to any left-wing politics. The increased inequalities of neoliberalism were not caused by racism and sexism and won’t be cured by – they aren’t even addressed by – anti-racism or anti-sexism.
My point is not that anti-racism and anti-sexism are not good things. It is rather that they currently have nothing to do with left-wing politics, and that, insofar as they function as a substitute for it, can be a bad thing. American universities are exemplary here: they are less racist and sexist than they were 40 years ago and at the same time more elitist. The one serves as an alibi for the other: when you ask them for more equality, what they give you is more diversity. The neoliberal heart leaps up at the sound of glass ceilings shattering and at the sight of doctors, lawyers and professors of colour taking their place in the upper middle class. Whence the many corporations which pursue diversity almost as enthusiastically as they pursue profits, and proclaim over and over again not only that the two are compatible but that they have a causal connection – that diversity is good for business. But a diversified elite is not made any the less elite by its diversity and, as a response to the demand for equality, far from being left-wing politics, it is right-wing politics.
The recent furore over the arrest for ‘disorderly conduct’ of Henry Louis Gates helps make this clear. Gates, as one of his Harvard colleagues said, is ‘a famous, wealthy and important black man’, a point Gates himself tried to make to the arresting officer – the way he put it was: ‘You don’t know who you’re messing with.’ But, despite the helpful hint, the cop failed to recognise an essential truth about neoliberal America: it’s no longer enough to kowtow to rich white people; now you have to kowtow to rich black people too. The problem, as a sympathetic writer in the Guardian put it, is that ‘Gates’s race snuffed out his class status,’ or as Gates said to the New York Times, ‘I can’t wear my Harvard gown everywhere.’ In the bad old days this situation almost never came up – cops could confidently treat all black people, indeed, all people of colour, the way they traditionally treated poor white people. But now that we’ve made some real progress towards integrating our elites, you need to step back and take the time to figure out ‘who you’re messing with’. You need to make sure that nobody’s class status is snuffed out by his race.
In the wake of Gates’s arrest, among the hundreds of people protesting the injustice of racial profiling, a white cardiologist married to a black man put the point best when she lamented that even in the ‘diverse area’ where she lives (Hyde Park, Obama’s old neighbourhood) she’ll hear people nervously say, ‘Look at those black guys coming towards us,’ to which she replies: ‘Yes, but they’re wearing lacrosse shorts and Calvin Klein jeans. They’re probably the kids of the professor down the street.’ ‘You have to be able to discern differences between people,’ she went on to say. ‘It’s very frustrating.’ The differences she means, of course, are between rich kids and poor kids, and the frustration she feels is with people who don’t understand that class is supposed to trump race. But while it’s easy to sympathise with that frustration – rich black kids are infinitely less likely to mug you than poor black kids or, for that matter, poor white kids – it’s a lot harder to see it as the expression of a progressive politics.
Nevertheless, that seems to be the way we do see it. The neoliberal ideal is a world where rich people of all races and sexes can happily enjoy their wealth, and where the injustices produced not by discrimination but by exploitation – there are fewer poor people (7 per cent) than black people (9 per cent) at Harvard, and Harvard’s not the worst – are discreetly sent around to the back door. Thus everyone’s outraged that a black professor living on prosperous Ware St (and renting a summer vacation ‘manse’ on Martha’s Vineyard that he ‘jokingly’ calls ‘Tara’) can be treated with disrespect; no one’s all that outraged by the social system that created the gap between Ware St or ‘Tara’ and the places where most Americans live. Everyone’s outraged by the fact that Gates can be treated so badly; nobody by the fact that he and the rest of the top 10 per cent of American wage-earners have been doing so well. Actually, it’s just the opposite. Liberals – especially white liberals – are thrilled by Gates’s success, since it testifies to the legitimacy of their own: racism didn’t make us all this money, we earned it!
To Read the Entire Essay
More:
New Left Review: Walter Benn Michaels - Against Diversity
Behind the News with Doug Henwood: Susan Marks, author of Aqua Shock, on the water crises; Walter Benn Michaels, on neoliberalism’s use of “diversity”
Behind the News with Doug Henwood
Susan Marks, author of Aqua Shock, on the water crises
Walter Benn Michaels, on neoliberalism’s use of “diversity”
To Listen to the Episode
Susan Marks, author of Aqua Shock, on the water crises
Walter Benn Michaels, on neoliberalism’s use of “diversity”
To Listen to the Episode
Democracy Now: After 20 Years of Filmmaking on US Injustices, Michael Moore Goes to the Source in Capitalism: A Love Story
After 20 Years of Filmmaking on US Injustices, Michael Moore Goes to the Source in Capitalism: A Love Story
Democracy Now
Beginning with the 1989 classic Roger & Me, the Academy Award-winning director Michael Moore says his films “come back to this central core concern, which is the economic system we have is unfair, it’s unjust, it’s not democratic.” With his new film, Capitalism: A Love Story, Moore tackles the financial system and the interchanging circles of Washington politicians and corporate managers that run it. Moore says, “I thought I’d just cut to the chase and propose that we deal with this economic system and try to restructure it in a way that benefits people and not the richest one percent.”
To Watch/Listen/Read
Democracy Now
Beginning with the 1989 classic Roger & Me, the Academy Award-winning director Michael Moore says his films “come back to this central core concern, which is the economic system we have is unfair, it’s unjust, it’s not democratic.” With his new film, Capitalism: A Love Story, Moore tackles the financial system and the interchanging circles of Washington politicians and corporate managers that run it. Moore says, “I thought I’d just cut to the chase and propose that we deal with this economic system and try to restructure it in a way that benefits people and not the richest one percent.”
To Watch/Listen/Read
Monday, November 09, 2009
George Lakoff: Politics of Language
George Lakoff -- Politics of Language
Fora TV
George Lakoff makes plain how the words used by politicians translate to the public's support for various political issues. Language matters - especially when it comes to politics.
A founder of the field of cognitive science, Lakoff takes an in-depth look at the ways in which our brains understand politics, breaking down the politics of language.
To Watch the Lecture
Fora TV
George Lakoff makes plain how the words used by politicians translate to the public's support for various political issues. Language matters - especially when it comes to politics.
A founder of the field of cognitive science, Lakoff takes an in-depth look at the ways in which our brains understand politics, breaking down the politics of language.
To Watch the Lecture
The Bat Segundo Show #298: China Mieville -- The City and the City
#298: China Mieville
The Bat Segundo Show
Subjects Discussed: When The City & The City was written, speculating on the novel’s setting, ratty technology and shambolic modern cities, passenger policy, comparisons between The City & The City and “Reports of Certain Events in London,” subconscious intent and conceptual framework, police procedural dialogue vs. melodramatic dialogue, whether an author’s voice is “reigned in” because of genre, the myths of genre constraints, steps taken in advance to alter voice, the dangers of reading while writing, maintaining two sets of momentum while writing two different books, the enabling qualities of thematics, multiculturalism in Canada, satire and political engagement within fiction, resisting critical labels within a cultural framework, Jacques Lacan, metaphors in fiction, Mieville’s frustrations with perceived author endorsements, readers who cling to rigid interpretation, disappointing mystery novels, designing endings as moral dilemmas, circumstances in which you can exonerate the author, Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow, uneasy books, the dangers of unease as an abstract concept, not distinguishing between aesthetic and emotive qualities within text, resisting post-structuralism, seeing text as part of social totality, and keeping people turning pages.
To Watch/Listen/Read
The Bat Segundo Show
Subjects Discussed: When The City & The City was written, speculating on the novel’s setting, ratty technology and shambolic modern cities, passenger policy, comparisons between The City & The City and “Reports of Certain Events in London,” subconscious intent and conceptual framework, police procedural dialogue vs. melodramatic dialogue, whether an author’s voice is “reigned in” because of genre, the myths of genre constraints, steps taken in advance to alter voice, the dangers of reading while writing, maintaining two sets of momentum while writing two different books, the enabling qualities of thematics, multiculturalism in Canada, satire and political engagement within fiction, resisting critical labels within a cultural framework, Jacques Lacan, metaphors in fiction, Mieville’s frustrations with perceived author endorsements, readers who cling to rigid interpretation, disappointing mystery novels, designing endings as moral dilemmas, circumstances in which you can exonerate the author, Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow, uneasy books, the dangers of unease as an abstract concept, not distinguishing between aesthetic and emotive qualities within text, resisting post-structuralism, seeing text as part of social totality, and keeping people turning pages.
To Watch/Listen/Read
Preaching turns violent on Keathley University Center Knoll
Nothing like people trying to convert you to the love of jesus by calling you vile names... I guess it is alright for the preacher to grab her breast, but not for her to push him away...
Student arrested for assault on Knoll: Preaching turns violent on KUC Knoll
(Courtesy of Lyle)
I'm always puzzled by "Jesus hates...(whatever)".
Jesus hates you
this I know
for the bible tells me so
he will send you
straight to hell
with jews and fags
and liberals
(sing along now)
Yes jesus hates you
yes jesus hates you
yes jesus hates you,
the bible tells me so.
Patrick Bigger provides this report on earlier confrontations involving Smock (the preacher):
Arizona Daily Wildcat: Evangelist, Students Debate
Most illuminating is Smock's racist/misogynistic/homophobic viewpoints and his description of his conversion ;)
Student arrested for assault on Knoll: Preaching turns violent on KUC Knoll
(Courtesy of Lyle)
I'm always puzzled by "Jesus hates...(whatever)".
Jesus hates you
this I know
for the bible tells me so
he will send you
straight to hell
with jews and fags
and liberals
(sing along now)
Yes jesus hates you
yes jesus hates you
yes jesus hates you,
the bible tells me so.
Patrick Bigger provides this report on earlier confrontations involving Smock (the preacher):
Arizona Daily Wildcat: Evangelist, Students Debate
Most illuminating is Smock's racist/misogynistic/homophobic viewpoints and his description of his conversion ;)
Slavoj Zizek: First as Tragedy, Then as Farce
“First as Tragedy, Then As Farce”: Philosopher and Cultural Theorist Slavoj Žižek Speaks at Cooper Union
Democracy Now
... Slavoj Žižek has written over fifty books on philosophy, psychoanalysis, theology, history and political theory.
In his latest book, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, Žižek analyzes how the United States has moved from the tragedy of 9/11 to what he calls the farce of the financial meltdown.
He spoke on that same theme at Cooper Union during a recent trip to New York.
To Listen to the Lecture
Democracy Now
... Slavoj Žižek has written over fifty books on philosophy, psychoanalysis, theology, history and political theory.
In his latest book, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, Žižek analyzes how the United States has moved from the tragedy of 9/11 to what he calls the farce of the financial meltdown.
He spoke on that same theme at Cooper Union during a recent trip to New York.
To Listen to the Lecture
Democracy Now: Glenn Greenwald on Afghanistan, State Secrets, Healthcare and the Media
Glenn Greenwald on Afghanistan, State Secrets, Healthcare and the Media
Democracy Now
Hosts: Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez
One of the leading political and legal bloggers in the country, Glenn Greenwald, joins us to talk about about the war in Afghanistan, the Obama administration’s use of state secrets, the healthcare debate, the renewed military commissions at Guantanamo, and the coverage of it all by the corporate media. Greenwald is a constitutional law attorney who writes for Salon.com and is the author of three books.
To Listen to the Conversation
Democracy Now
Hosts: Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez
One of the leading political and legal bloggers in the country, Glenn Greenwald, joins us to talk about about the war in Afghanistan, the Obama administration’s use of state secrets, the healthcare debate, the renewed military commissions at Guantanamo, and the coverage of it all by the corporate media. Greenwald is a constitutional law attorney who writes for Salon.com and is the author of three books.
To Listen to the Conversation
The Daily Show: The 11/3 Project
Wicked parody of the Glenn Beck persona/style--thanks to Laura W. for reminding me of this video!
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| The 11/3 Project | ||||
| ||||
Sunday, November 08, 2009
The Party's Over (USA: Rebecca Chaiklin and Donovan Leitch, 2001)
Watched this film tonight and will be showing/discussing it as a tool to discuss American political culture--it covers a lot of ground for an 80 min film... it is also an interesting snapshot of the American political landscape before eight years of Bush and the 9/11 political paranoia...
Amy Wilson: Child protection or censorship? -- Library employees lose jobs over book
{I'm glad these two are in the minority, I have always been impressed with most librarians' (including my mother) fierce defense of our civil rights...
these two receive my complete "disdain" and contempt (I should throw pity in as well as I wonder how lacking their lives must be if Alan Moore's comic seems obscene to them)]
Child protection or censorship? Library employees lose jobs over book
these two receive my complete "disdain" and contempt (I should throw pity in as well as I wonder how lacking their lives must be if Alan Moore's comic seems obscene to them)]
Child protection or censorship? Library employees lose jobs over book
Glenn Greenwald: Criminal convictions of 22 CIA agents in Italy
(Courtesy of Laura W.)
Criminal convictions of 22 CIA agents in Italy: The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
by Glenn Greenwald
Salon
...
For many Americans -- probably most -- the word "terrorist" conjures up images of the people responsible for the 9/11 attack. For that reason, labeling someone a "suspected terrorist" can justify doing anything and everything to those individuals (after all, other than civil liberties extremists, who could object to the "seizing of a suspected terrorist" -- or their indefinite detention or torture?). It's therefore unsurprising that the U.S. Government would use the term "terrorist" so promiscuously and selectively (see John Cole's excellent contrast between what we deem to be "terrorism" when it happens to the U.S. versus what we deny is "terrorism" when done by the U.S.). It's a powerful term that can justify almost any government action.
But the U.S. media's willingness to mindlessly apply the term "terrorist" in exactly the subjective, self-serving way the U.S. Government dictates -- starkly contrasted with their refusal to use the far more objective term "torture" on the ground that the term is in dispute (i.e., disputed by the U.S. Government torturers) -- illustrates the establishment media's principal function: to serve American political power and justify whatever our government does. That's a major reason -- perhaps the primary one -- why the U.S. Government has been able to get away with everything it's done over the last decade. Those unseen victims of torture, rendition, indefinite detention and other government crimes are all just "terrorists," so who cares? In reporting on these convictions, CNN immediately and helpfully proclaims Nasr to be a "suspected terrorist" in a way that guts any meaningful definition of that term and -- in many minds -- justifies whatever was done to him, no matter how illegal.
It's worth asking this question: which sounds more like actual "terrorism": (a) kidnapping people literally off the street and shipping them thousands of miles away to be tortured with no legal process, or (b) what Nasr is "suspected" of having done?
Second, this incident underscores -- yet again -- that our political and media elite simply do not believe in the rule of law or accountability for high government officials. To the contrary, they explicitly believe that such officials should be entitled to break the law and be exempt from consequences. As but one example, here's a discussion on CNN last night about this matter between Wolf Blitzer and Jeffrey Toobin:
TOOBIN: This is a real criminal conviction in a country where we tend to honor reciprocal legal arrangements. So they are in a -- they are in no jeopardy as long as they are inside the United States, but, if they were to leave, they are potentially at risk for being jailed and brought to Italy.
BLITZER: Because even if they went to a third country, like England, let's say, or France, Interpol could have a warrant out for their arrest. They have been convicted by an Italian court.
TOOBIN: That's why this is such -- so troubling. It would one thing if they only had to stay out of Italy, but, because of Interpol, because of the reciprocal nature of these agreements, they are potentially at risk almost anywhere they go.
So according to Toobin, this is all "so troubling." Why? Because the people who were found by a duly constituted court to have committed a serious crime are faced with the risk that there might actually be consequences. After all, these are Americans who were part of the U.S. Government, and consequences for lawbreaking are simply not meant for them. Echoing Joe Klein's infamous Orwellian claim that torture shouldn't be prosecuted because the CIA is "asked to behave extra-legally for the greater good of the nation," Toobin added that "one of the things you do when you are a CIA agent, at least in part, is break the law of other countries" -- Toobin says that as though they have the right to do that without accountability, and without mentioning that causing people to be tortured is also a violation of U.S. law (after Nasr's kidnapping, the chief of the CIA's Milan office traveled to Egypt for three weeks to participate in his "interrogation").
To Read the Entire Article
Criminal convictions of 22 CIA agents in Italy: The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
by Glenn Greenwald
Salon
...
For many Americans -- probably most -- the word "terrorist" conjures up images of the people responsible for the 9/11 attack. For that reason, labeling someone a "suspected terrorist" can justify doing anything and everything to those individuals (after all, other than civil liberties extremists, who could object to the "seizing of a suspected terrorist" -- or their indefinite detention or torture?). It's therefore unsurprising that the U.S. Government would use the term "terrorist" so promiscuously and selectively (see John Cole's excellent contrast between what we deem to be "terrorism" when it happens to the U.S. versus what we deny is "terrorism" when done by the U.S.). It's a powerful term that can justify almost any government action.
But the U.S. media's willingness to mindlessly apply the term "terrorist" in exactly the subjective, self-serving way the U.S. Government dictates -- starkly contrasted with their refusal to use the far more objective term "torture" on the ground that the term is in dispute (i.e., disputed by the U.S. Government torturers) -- illustrates the establishment media's principal function: to serve American political power and justify whatever our government does. That's a major reason -- perhaps the primary one -- why the U.S. Government has been able to get away with everything it's done over the last decade. Those unseen victims of torture, rendition, indefinite detention and other government crimes are all just "terrorists," so who cares? In reporting on these convictions, CNN immediately and helpfully proclaims Nasr to be a "suspected terrorist" in a way that guts any meaningful definition of that term and -- in many minds -- justifies whatever was done to him, no matter how illegal.
It's worth asking this question: which sounds more like actual "terrorism": (a) kidnapping people literally off the street and shipping them thousands of miles away to be tortured with no legal process, or (b) what Nasr is "suspected" of having done?
Second, this incident underscores -- yet again -- that our political and media elite simply do not believe in the rule of law or accountability for high government officials. To the contrary, they explicitly believe that such officials should be entitled to break the law and be exempt from consequences. As but one example, here's a discussion on CNN last night about this matter between Wolf Blitzer and Jeffrey Toobin:
TOOBIN: This is a real criminal conviction in a country where we tend to honor reciprocal legal arrangements. So they are in a -- they are in no jeopardy as long as they are inside the United States, but, if they were to leave, they are potentially at risk for being jailed and brought to Italy.
BLITZER: Because even if they went to a third country, like England, let's say, or France, Interpol could have a warrant out for their arrest. They have been convicted by an Italian court.
TOOBIN: That's why this is such -- so troubling. It would one thing if they only had to stay out of Italy, but, because of Interpol, because of the reciprocal nature of these agreements, they are potentially at risk almost anywhere they go.
So according to Toobin, this is all "so troubling." Why? Because the people who were found by a duly constituted court to have committed a serious crime are faced with the risk that there might actually be consequences. After all, these are Americans who were part of the U.S. Government, and consequences for lawbreaking are simply not meant for them. Echoing Joe Klein's infamous Orwellian claim that torture shouldn't be prosecuted because the CIA is "asked to behave extra-legally for the greater good of the nation," Toobin added that "one of the things you do when you are a CIA agent, at least in part, is break the law of other countries" -- Toobin says that as though they have the right to do that without accountability, and without mentioning that causing people to be tortured is also a violation of U.S. law (after Nasr's kidnapping, the chief of the CIA's Milan office traveled to Egypt for three weeks to participate in his "interrogation").
To Read the Entire Article
Mark Selden: "Japanese and American Wars -- Atrocities, Remembrance and Reconciliation in the Long Twentieth Century" (University of Kentucky:11/11/9)
(From Doug Slaymaker)
"Japanese and American Wars: Atrocities, Remembrance and Reconciliation in the Long Twentieth Century"
Dr. Mark Selden
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
4:00 p.m.
Lexmark Public Room
Mark Selden is a Senior Research Associate in the East Asia Program
at Cornell University, a Coordinator of The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan
Focus, and Bartle Professor of History and Sociology at Binghamton
University. A specialist on the modern and contemporary geopolitics,
political economy and history of China, Japan and the Asia Pacific, he
was a founding member of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars
in the 1960s and was for more than thirty years an editor of The
Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars.
"Japanese and American Wars: Atrocities, Remembrance and Reconciliation in the Long Twentieth Century"
Dr. Mark Selden
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
4:00 p.m.
Lexmark Public Room
Mark Selden is a Senior Research Associate in the East Asia Program
at Cornell University, a Coordinator of The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan
Focus, and Bartle Professor of History and Sociology at Binghamton
University. A specialist on the modern and contemporary geopolitics,
political economy and history of China, Japan and the Asia Pacific, he
was a founding member of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars
in the 1960s and was for more than thirty years an editor of The
Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars.
Saturday, November 07, 2009
Michael Edwards: Civil Society - Theory and Practice
Civil Society: Theory and Practice
by Michael Edwards
Encyclopedia of Informal Education
... civil society is simultaneously a goal to aim for, a means to achieve it, and a framework for engaging with each-other about ends and means. When these three ‘faces’ turn towards each-other and integrate their different perspectives into a mutually-supportive framework, the idea of civil society can explain a great deal about the course of politics and social change, and serve as a practical framework for organizing both resistance and alternative solutions to social , economic and political problems. Many of the difficulties of the civil society debate disappear when we lower our expectations of what each school of thought has to offer in isolation from the others, and abandon all attempts to enforce a single model, consensus or explanation. This may not deter the ideologues from using civil society as a cover for their own agendas, but it should make it easier to expose their claims and challenge the assumptions they often make.
This is one reason why, to answer the question I raised at the outset, getting clearer about civil society does matter in more than the academic sense. When, as recently reported in the press for example, the National Endowment for Democracy claims to be building civil society in Venezuela but is only supporting groups mobilized against President Hugo Chavez, or politicians on both sides of the Atlantic continue to be engaged in a forced march to civil society in the Middle East, it is clear that the ways in which these ideas are interpreted does have a real impact on the lives of real people in the here and the now. As Keynes’s famous dictum reminds us, “practical men in authority who think themselves immune from theoretical influences are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”, just as present-day civil society builders are motivated by ideas deeply rooted in different schools of thought, but often unacknowledged, untested and insufficiently interrogated.
The second reason why this debate matters is that lasting solutions to problems of poverty, discrimination and exclusion are impossible to conceive of, at least for me, without a full appreciation of the roles of civil society in this new, threefold sense, especially when we compare these ideas to the failings of their competitors such as neo-liberalism, nationalism resurgent, legalism, centralized planning or continued authoritarian rule.
In all three schools of thought, civil society is essentially collective action – in associations, across society and through the public sphere – and as such it provides an essential counterweight to individualism; as creative action, civil society provides a much-needed antidote to the cynicism that infects so much of contemporary politics; and as values-based action, civil society provides a balance to the otherwise-overbearing influence of state authority and the temptations and incentives of the market, even if those values are contested, as they often are. Warts and all, the idea of civil society remains compelling, I think, but not because it provides the tidiest of explanations or the most coherent of political theories – it doesn’t and probably never will. It remains compelling because it speaks to the best in us – the collective, creative and values-driven core of the active citizen - calling on the best in us to respond in kind to create societies that are just, true and free.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
by Michael Edwards
Encyclopedia of Informal Education
... civil society is simultaneously a goal to aim for, a means to achieve it, and a framework for engaging with each-other about ends and means. When these three ‘faces’ turn towards each-other and integrate their different perspectives into a mutually-supportive framework, the idea of civil society can explain a great deal about the course of politics and social change, and serve as a practical framework for organizing both resistance and alternative solutions to social , economic and political problems. Many of the difficulties of the civil society debate disappear when we lower our expectations of what each school of thought has to offer in isolation from the others, and abandon all attempts to enforce a single model, consensus or explanation. This may not deter the ideologues from using civil society as a cover for their own agendas, but it should make it easier to expose their claims and challenge the assumptions they often make.
This is one reason why, to answer the question I raised at the outset, getting clearer about civil society does matter in more than the academic sense. When, as recently reported in the press for example, the National Endowment for Democracy claims to be building civil society in Venezuela but is only supporting groups mobilized against President Hugo Chavez, or politicians on both sides of the Atlantic continue to be engaged in a forced march to civil society in the Middle East, it is clear that the ways in which these ideas are interpreted does have a real impact on the lives of real people in the here and the now. As Keynes’s famous dictum reminds us, “practical men in authority who think themselves immune from theoretical influences are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”, just as present-day civil society builders are motivated by ideas deeply rooted in different schools of thought, but often unacknowledged, untested and insufficiently interrogated.
The second reason why this debate matters is that lasting solutions to problems of poverty, discrimination and exclusion are impossible to conceive of, at least for me, without a full appreciation of the roles of civil society in this new, threefold sense, especially when we compare these ideas to the failings of their competitors such as neo-liberalism, nationalism resurgent, legalism, centralized planning or continued authoritarian rule.
In all three schools of thought, civil society is essentially collective action – in associations, across society and through the public sphere – and as such it provides an essential counterweight to individualism; as creative action, civil society provides a much-needed antidote to the cynicism that infects so much of contemporary politics; and as values-based action, civil society provides a balance to the otherwise-overbearing influence of state authority and the temptations and incentives of the market, even if those values are contested, as they often are. Warts and all, the idea of civil society remains compelling, I think, but not because it provides the tidiest of explanations or the most coherent of political theories – it doesn’t and probably never will. It remains compelling because it speaks to the best in us – the collective, creative and values-driven core of the active citizen - calling on the best in us to respond in kind to create societies that are just, true and free.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
Stripping Bare the Body: An evening with Mark Danner and Amy Goodman
Stripping Bare the Body: An evening with Mark Danner and Amy Goodman
Mark Danner discusses his new book, Stripping Bare the Body: Politics Violence War, with Amy Goodman, host and co-founder of Democracy Now! at Tishman Auditorium, The New School, New York, on October 15, 2009.
To Watch/Listen to the Conversation
Mark Danner discusses his new book, Stripping Bare the Body: Politics Violence War, with Amy Goodman, host and co-founder of Democracy Now! at Tishman Auditorium, The New School, New York, on October 15, 2009.
To Watch/Listen to the Conversation
Great Christina: 101 Positions That Won't Spice Up Your Sex Life
101 Positions That Won't Spice Up Your Sex Life
by Greta Christina
...
But sexual variety can mean so much more than rotating your bodies in different configurations before inserting Prong A into Slot B. And these books seem blind to these possibilities. They hardly ever talk about erogenous zones outside the obvious ones. They hardly ever talk about dirty talk, dirty outfits, foreplay (or, as we dykes like to call it, "sex"), sex toys, slowing things down, speeding things up, role-playing... all that good stuff.
And they almost entirely ignore the crux of any good relationship, sexual or otherwise: communication. Talking about desires, talking about fantasies, talking about the outfits and the toys and the dirty talk and the slowing things down, not to mention actual communication skills -- how to ask, how to listen, how to negotiate, how to set limits, how to move forward together with experiments -- little or none of this gets included in the discussion of how to bring variety into your sex life.
Even when they do talk about this stuff, it's no more than a cursory, "get it out of the way" mention before getting on to the important business of describing and demonstrating the Double Reverse Astronaut Position. These books might as well be titled, "101 Ways to Have the Exact Same Sex You've Been Having, But With Your Bodies Arranged Somewhat Differently."
To Read the Entire Essay
by Greta Christina
...
But sexual variety can mean so much more than rotating your bodies in different configurations before inserting Prong A into Slot B. And these books seem blind to these possibilities. They hardly ever talk about erogenous zones outside the obvious ones. They hardly ever talk about dirty talk, dirty outfits, foreplay (or, as we dykes like to call it, "sex"), sex toys, slowing things down, speeding things up, role-playing... all that good stuff.
And they almost entirely ignore the crux of any good relationship, sexual or otherwise: communication. Talking about desires, talking about fantasies, talking about the outfits and the toys and the dirty talk and the slowing things down, not to mention actual communication skills -- how to ask, how to listen, how to negotiate, how to set limits, how to move forward together with experiments -- little or none of this gets included in the discussion of how to bring variety into your sex life.
Even when they do talk about this stuff, it's no more than a cursory, "get it out of the way" mention before getting on to the important business of describing and demonstrating the Double Reverse Astronaut Position. These books might as well be titled, "101 Ways to Have the Exact Same Sex You've Been Having, But With Your Bodies Arranged Somewhat Differently."
To Read the Entire Essay
Thursday, November 05, 2009
Noam Chomsky: On the Basic Role of (Non-Participatory) Sports
Excerpt from:
For [Chomsky], the basic social role of sports is diversion aimed at "Joe Six Pack," rather than, say, relaxation, aimed at forming and sustaining families, communities, and friends. In the film Manufacturing Consent, for example, he suggests that there is a range of ways in which popular culture seeks to divert people, to "get them away from things that matter," to "reduce their capacity to think." From this standpoint, sports is for him "an example of the indocrination system," "something to pay attention to that's of no importance," which keeps people from worrying about things that matter to their lives that they might have some chance to do something about. A scene recorded in the film is as follows:
...
[A] careful examination of what he says, even in this short quote, reveals a basic attitude one can discern and probably admire outside of the example that he provides: he hates arbitrary authority and submission thereto, he has scorn for irrational beliefs and jingoistic replies to complex issues, and he looks for ways in which corporate America abusively incurs into our lives in search of new ways to make profit.
...
Still another aspect is his noting from the example of professional sports the real creativity, intelligence, and concentration that people devote to their assessment of sports, which leads them to call into radio stations and grill with carefully articulated approaches the erroneous assessments made by coaches and "authorities," a point he reiterates:
If only, he thinks, people would do the same with their politicians, if only they'd stand up to their "commander in chief" when he lies to them, or if they'd call their "leaders" when the strategy they are using is leading to obvious failure. (x-xii)
Quotes of Chomsky from:
Manufacturing Consent (click to watch in another screen)
For [Chomsky], the basic social role of sports is diversion aimed at "Joe Six Pack," rather than, say, relaxation, aimed at forming and sustaining families, communities, and friends. In the film Manufacturing Consent, for example, he suggests that there is a range of ways in which popular culture seeks to divert people, to "get them away from things that matter," to "reduce their capacity to think." From this standpoint, sports is for him "an example of the indocrination system," "something to pay attention to that's of no importance," which keeps people from worrying about things that matter to their lives that they might have some chance to do something about. A scene recorded in the film is as follows:
You know, I remember in high school, already I was pretty old. I suddenly asked myself at one point, why do I care if my high school team wins the football game? [laughter] I mean, I don't know anybody on the team, you know? [audience roars] I mean, they have nothing to do with me, I mean, why am I cheering for my team? It doesn't mean any--it doesn't make any sense. But the point is, it does make sense: it's a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority, and group cohesion behind leadership elements--in fact, it's training in irrational jingoism. That's also a feature of competitive sports. I think if you look closely at these things, I think, typically, they do have functions, and that's why energy is devoted to supporting them and creating a basis for them and advertisers are willing to pay for them and so on.
...
[A] careful examination of what he says, even in this short quote, reveals a basic attitude one can discern and probably admire outside of the example that he provides: he hates arbitrary authority and submission thereto, he has scorn for irrational beliefs and jingoistic replies to complex issues, and he looks for ways in which corporate America abusively incurs into our lives in search of new ways to make profit.
...
But the point is, this sense of irrational loyalty to some sort of meaningless community is training for subordination to power, and for chuavinism. And of course, you're looking at gladiators, you're looking st guys who can do things you couldn't possibly do--like, you couldn't pole vault seventeen feet, or do all these crazy things people do. But it's a model that you're supposed to try to emulate. And they're gladiators fighting for your cause, so you've got to cheer them on, and you've got to be happy when the opposing quarterback gets carted off the field a total wreck and so on. All of this stuff builds up extremely anti-social aspects of human psychology. I mean, they're there; there's no doubt that they're there. But they're there. But they're emphasized, and exaggerated, and brought out by spectator sports: irrational competition, irrational loyalty to power systems, passive acquiescence to quite awful values, really. In fact, it's hard to imagine anything that contribute more fundamentally to authoritarian attitudes than this does, in addition to the fact that it just engages a lot of intelligence and keeps people away from other things.
Still another aspect is his noting from the example of professional sports the real creativity, intelligence, and concentration that people devote to their assessment of sports, which leads them to call into radio stations and grill with carefully articulated approaches the erroneous assessments made by coaches and "authorities," a point he reiterates:
In fact, I have the habit when driving of turning on these radio call-in programs, and it's striking when you listen to the one's about sports. They have these groups of sports reporters, or some kind of experts on a panel, and people call in and have discussions with them. First of all, the audience is obviously devoting an enormous amount of time to it all. But the more striking fact is, the callers have a tremendous amount of expertise, they have detailed knowledge of all kinds of things, they carry on these extremely complex discussions. And strikingly, they're not at all in awe of the experts--which is a little unusual. See, in most parts of the society, you're encouraged to defer to experts: we all do it more than we should. But in this area, people don't seem to do it--they're quite happy to have an argument with the coach of the Boston Celtics, and tell him what he should have done, and enter into big debates with him and so on. So the fact is that in this domain, people somehow feel quite confident, and they know a lot--there's obviously a great deal of intelligence going into it.
If only, he thinks, people would do the same with their politicians, if only they'd stand up to their "commander in chief" when he lies to them, or if they'd call their "leaders" when the strategy they are using is leading to obvious failure. (x-xii)
Quotes of Chomsky from:
Manufacturing Consent (click to watch in another screen)
Michael Dean Benton: Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story -- Exposing the Ugly Realities of America’s Economic Fairy Tale
Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story -- Exposing the Ugly Realities of America’s Economic Fairy Tale
by Michael Dean Benton
Originally published in North of Center; posted on Smirking Chimp
Capitalism: A Love Story (2009) is a fitting film to mark the 20th anniversary of Michael Moore’s celebrated first film Roger and Me (1989). In Roger and Me, Moore examined the effects of the decision of General Motors CEO Roger Smith to close the Flint, MI factory, which caused 30,000 workers to lose their jobs, and how this decision economically devastated Moore’s hometown of Flint, MI.
Capitalism: A Love Story catches America in the throes of a larger-scale economic disaster in which everyday workers are losing their jobs, homes and lives, across the nation, while those in the upper echelons of the economic elites continue to reap huge profits. To make matters worse, the Bush initiated and Obama administrated Bank/Finance bailout has totaled in the trillions of dollars. As too-big-to-fail institutions continue to return to the trough for new tax-payer funded handouts, working citizens continue to lose everything without any safety net offered to help them out.
This is the major focus of Moore’s newest documentary. He seeks to understand and explain how we essentially moved from a struggling democratic nation, at least outwardly, that attempted to develop a more equitable society, to a literal “modern day plutonomy” centered upon what John Tasini has termed “The Audacity of Greed.”
The phrase “modern day plutonomy,” as explained in the film, is lifted from a leaked 2006 Citigroup report (http://www.scribd.com/doc/6674229/Citigroup-Mar-5-2006-Plutonomy-Report-Part-2 ) in which the financial giant recognizes the fact that the top 1% of the upper-class dominate American wealth and are supported by the rest of the top 10%. The smart investor, the report continued, will invest in stocks of companies that cater to these wealthy elites because all signs indicate that they will get richer while the rest of America will lose economic ground.
In fact, the Citigroup report cites an IRS report that the income inequality in America is at its highest levels since the Great Depression of the 1920s and that it is steadily worsening. The original Citigroup report was circulated to only the wealthiest of clients and was not intended for the broader public’s eyes. The report points out the plutonomy’s greatest strength is that those who are not a part of the plutonomy (everyone else) are generally kept in “the dark” about the realities of our economic situation. The cynic amongst us might add that not only is everyone else kept in the dark, but that they are actively misled to irrationally target others with their insecurities and anger (immigrants, gays, socialists, France, muslims, liberals, etc…).
The sad reality is that most of this manipulative propaganda, including the talk show pundit led teabagger rallies, are funded by the same people who are reaping enormous profits before and after the economic crisis.
Once again, as cited in the Citigroup report for their wealthiest clients, what the wealthy elites should fear the
most is that the ignorant public will become aware and angry about the true cause of the last 30 years of stagnant wages, the increasing income inequity, and the current economic crisis. The reason they worry about the “laborers” awareness of these realities is, again, from the report:
To Read the Rest of the Review
by Michael Dean Benton
Originally published in North of Center; posted on Smirking Chimp
“There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning.” ---Warren Buffet, (listed by Forbes Magazine’s in 2008 as the Richest Person in the World worth $62 Billion: NY Times Interview, November 26, 2006)
Capitalism: A Love Story (2009) is a fitting film to mark the 20th anniversary of Michael Moore’s celebrated first film Roger and Me (1989). In Roger and Me, Moore examined the effects of the decision of General Motors CEO Roger Smith to close the Flint, MI factory, which caused 30,000 workers to lose their jobs, and how this decision economically devastated Moore’s hometown of Flint, MI.
Capitalism: A Love Story catches America in the throes of a larger-scale economic disaster in which everyday workers are losing their jobs, homes and lives, across the nation, while those in the upper echelons of the economic elites continue to reap huge profits. To make matters worse, the Bush initiated and Obama administrated Bank/Finance bailout has totaled in the trillions of dollars. As too-big-to-fail institutions continue to return to the trough for new tax-payer funded handouts, working citizens continue to lose everything without any safety net offered to help them out.
This is the major focus of Moore’s newest documentary. He seeks to understand and explain how we essentially moved from a struggling democratic nation, at least outwardly, that attempted to develop a more equitable society, to a literal “modern day plutonomy” centered upon what John Tasini has termed “The Audacity of Greed.”
The phrase “modern day plutonomy,” as explained in the film, is lifted from a leaked 2006 Citigroup report (http://www.scribd.com/doc/6674229/Citigroup-Mar-5-2006-Plutonomy-Report-Part-2 ) in which the financial giant recognizes the fact that the top 1% of the upper-class dominate American wealth and are supported by the rest of the top 10%. The smart investor, the report continued, will invest in stocks of companies that cater to these wealthy elites because all signs indicate that they will get richer while the rest of America will lose economic ground.
In fact, the Citigroup report cites an IRS report that the income inequality in America is at its highest levels since the Great Depression of the 1920s and that it is steadily worsening. The original Citigroup report was circulated to only the wealthiest of clients and was not intended for the broader public’s eyes. The report points out the plutonomy’s greatest strength is that those who are not a part of the plutonomy (everyone else) are generally kept in “the dark” about the realities of our economic situation. The cynic amongst us might add that not only is everyone else kept in the dark, but that they are actively misled to irrationally target others with their insecurities and anger (immigrants, gays, socialists, France, muslims, liberals, etc…).
The sad reality is that most of this manipulative propaganda, including the talk show pundit led teabagger rallies, are funded by the same people who are reaping enormous profits before and after the economic crisis.
Once again, as cited in the Citigroup report for their wealthiest clients, what the wealthy elites should fear the
most is that the ignorant public will become aware and angry about the true cause of the last 30 years of stagnant wages, the increasing income inequity, and the current economic crisis. The reason they worry about the “laborers” awareness of these realities is, again, from the report:
“RISKS -- WHAT COULD GO WRONG?
Our whole plutonomy thesis is based on the idea that the rich will keep getting richer. This thesis is not without its risks. For example, a policy error leading to asset deflation, would likely damage the plutonomy. Furthermore, the rising wealth gap between the rich and poor will probably at some point lead to a political backlash. Whilst the rich are getting a greater share of the wealth, and the poor a lesser share, political enfranchisement remains as was -- one person, one vote (in the plutonomies). At some point it is likely that labor will fight back against the rising profit share of the rich and there will be a political backlash against the rising wealth of the rich. This could be felt through higher taxation on the rich (or indirectly though higher corporate taxes/regulation) or through trying to protect indigenous [home-grown] laborers, in a push-back on globalization -- either anti-immigration, or protectionism. We don’t see this happening yet, though there are signs of rising political tensions. However we are keeping a close eye on developments.” (“Plutonomy Report, Part 2”: Citigroup, March 5, 2006: pg 10)
To Read the Rest of the Review
Counterspin: David Swanson on health care debate; Bruce Dixon on the 'public option'
Counterspin
David Swanson on health care debate
Making sense of the health care debate. In the past week we've supposedly seen the comeback of public and political support for the public option, in some form or another. We're also told that Democratic majority leader Harry Reid must gather 60 votes to pass any bill. Is any of that true or is media coverage of political possibilities off base? Author and activist David Swanson will join us to try and untangle these story lines.
Bruce Dixon on the 'public option'
Progressives and others interested in truly universal healthcare, as in healthcare that would cover everyone, have been more or less prodded in recent months to give up the idea of a single payer system—dismissed as it's been for years by not corporate press corps as not politically viable—and to get behind the public option, presented as single payer's less ideal but more achievable variant. But does the public option as it's now presented have anything at all to do with healthcare that covers everyone? We'll talk with Bruce Dixon, managing editor of Black Agenda Report, about that.
To Listen to the Episode
David Swanson on health care debate
Making sense of the health care debate. In the past week we've supposedly seen the comeback of public and political support for the public option, in some form or another. We're also told that Democratic majority leader Harry Reid must gather 60 votes to pass any bill. Is any of that true or is media coverage of political possibilities off base? Author and activist David Swanson will join us to try and untangle these story lines.
Bruce Dixon on the 'public option'
Progressives and others interested in truly universal healthcare, as in healthcare that would cover everyone, have been more or less prodded in recent months to give up the idea of a single payer system—dismissed as it's been for years by not corporate press corps as not politically viable—and to get behind the public option, presented as single payer's less ideal but more achievable variant. But does the public option as it's now presented have anything at all to do with healthcare that covers everyone? We'll talk with Bruce Dixon, managing editor of Black Agenda Report, about that.
To Listen to the Episode
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Nel Noddings: Caring in Education
Caring in Education
by Nel Noddings
The Encyclopedia of Informal Education
It is sometimes said that “all teachers care.” It is because they care that people go into teaching. However, this is not universally true; we all have known teachers who are cruel and uncaring, and these people should not be in teaching at all. But even for the majority who do “care” in the virtue sense—that is, they profess to care and work hard at their teaching—there are many who do not adopt the relational sense of caring. They “care” in the sense that they conscientiously pursue certain goals for their students, and they often work hard at coercing students to achieve those goals. These teachers must be credited with caring in the virtue sense of the word. However, these same teachers may be unable to establish relations of care and trust.
Caring relations and encounters in education
The relational sense of caring forces us to look at the relation. It is not enough to hear the teacher’s claim to care. Does the student recognize that he or she is cared for? Is the teacher thought by the student to be a caring teacher? When we adopt the relational sense of caring, we cannot look only at the teacher. This is a mistake that many researchers are making today. They devise instruments that measure to what degree teachers exhibit certain observable behaviors. A high score on such an instrument is taken to mean that the teacher cares. But the students may not agree.
Sometimes they agree grudgingly. “She’s tough,” a student may say with some admiration. “She makes us work hard.” Students in such situations often do what they are told, but they have no real interest in what is being taught. They just plod along, driven by the teacher, and escape studies whenever an opportunity arises. They come to equate caring with coercion and good teaching with hard work and control. Guiltily, they recognize the teacher as “caring,” but they do not themselves feel cared for.
Many studies in recent years have described schools and classrooms in which teachers profess to care and work hard, but students still complain, “Nobody cares!” (Eaker-Rich & Van Galen, 1996; Institute for Education in Transformation, 1992; Lyman, 2000; Valenzuela, 1999). Researchers studying such schools must look at teachers, students, and situations. Sometimes the conditions of schooling are so bad that teachers who want to care and students who want to be cared for cannot form the kind of relations we would properly label caring. Then something must be done to change the situation. Perhaps teacher and students need more time together to develop a relation of care and trust? Perhaps classes should be smaller? Perhaps the pressure of standardized testing should be reduced so that teacher and students can explore topics of mutual interest more deeply? Perhaps more attention should be given to students’ interests? Developing a rigorous curriculum that builds upon or, at least, includes student interests is a challenging and satisfying pedagogical task, but teachers need extra time and encouragement to work this way.
The phenomenological analysis of caring reveals the part each participant plays. The one-caring (or carer) is first of all attentive. This attention, which I called “engrossment” in Caring (Noddings, 1984), is receptive; it receives what the cared-for is feeling and trying to express. It is not merely diagnostic, measuring the cared-for against some pre-established ideal. Rather, it opens the carer to motivational displacement. When I care, my motive energy begins to flow toward the needs and wants of the cared-for. This does not mean that I will always approve of what the other wants, nor does it mean that I will never try to lead him or her to a better set of values, but I must take into account the feelings and desires that are actually there and respond as positively as my values and capacities allow.
In a caring relation or encounter, the cared-for recognizes the caring and responds in some detectable manner. An infant smiles and wriggles in response to it mother’s caregiving. A student may acknowledge her teacher’s caring directly, with verbal gratitude, or simply pursue her own project more confidently. The receptive teacher can see that her caring has been received by monitoring her students’ responses. Without an affirmative response from the cared-for, we cannot call an encounter or relation caring.
Why is the relational view difficult for many educators?
The relational view is hard for some American thinkers to accept because the Western tradition puts such great emphasis on individualism. In that tradition, it is almost instinctive to regard virtues as personal possessions, hard-won through a grueling process of character building. John Dewey rejected this view and urged us to consider virtues as “working adaptations of personal capacities with environing forces” (1930, p. 16). Care theorists expand this Deweyan insight and emphasize the role of our partners in interaction as a central factor in “environing forces.” We recognize moral interdependence. How good (or bad) I can be depends in substantial part on how you treat me. Acknowledging our moral interdependence means rejecting Kant’s claim that it is contradictory to make our ourselves responsible for another’s moral perfection. Care theorists insist that we must, indeed, accept such responsibility. Without imposing my values on an other, I must realize that my treatment of him may deeply affect the way he behaves in the world. Although no individual can escape responsibility for his own actions, neither can the community that produced him escape its part in making him what he has become.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
by Nel Noddings
The Encyclopedia of Informal Education
It is sometimes said that “all teachers care.” It is because they care that people go into teaching. However, this is not universally true; we all have known teachers who are cruel and uncaring, and these people should not be in teaching at all. But even for the majority who do “care” in the virtue sense—that is, they profess to care and work hard at their teaching—there are many who do not adopt the relational sense of caring. They “care” in the sense that they conscientiously pursue certain goals for their students, and they often work hard at coercing students to achieve those goals. These teachers must be credited with caring in the virtue sense of the word. However, these same teachers may be unable to establish relations of care and trust.
Caring relations and encounters in education
The relational sense of caring forces us to look at the relation. It is not enough to hear the teacher’s claim to care. Does the student recognize that he or she is cared for? Is the teacher thought by the student to be a caring teacher? When we adopt the relational sense of caring, we cannot look only at the teacher. This is a mistake that many researchers are making today. They devise instruments that measure to what degree teachers exhibit certain observable behaviors. A high score on such an instrument is taken to mean that the teacher cares. But the students may not agree.
Sometimes they agree grudgingly. “She’s tough,” a student may say with some admiration. “She makes us work hard.” Students in such situations often do what they are told, but they have no real interest in what is being taught. They just plod along, driven by the teacher, and escape studies whenever an opportunity arises. They come to equate caring with coercion and good teaching with hard work and control. Guiltily, they recognize the teacher as “caring,” but they do not themselves feel cared for.
Many studies in recent years have described schools and classrooms in which teachers profess to care and work hard, but students still complain, “Nobody cares!” (Eaker-Rich & Van Galen, 1996; Institute for Education in Transformation, 1992; Lyman, 2000; Valenzuela, 1999). Researchers studying such schools must look at teachers, students, and situations. Sometimes the conditions of schooling are so bad that teachers who want to care and students who want to be cared for cannot form the kind of relations we would properly label caring. Then something must be done to change the situation. Perhaps teacher and students need more time together to develop a relation of care and trust? Perhaps classes should be smaller? Perhaps the pressure of standardized testing should be reduced so that teacher and students can explore topics of mutual interest more deeply? Perhaps more attention should be given to students’ interests? Developing a rigorous curriculum that builds upon or, at least, includes student interests is a challenging and satisfying pedagogical task, but teachers need extra time and encouragement to work this way.
The phenomenological analysis of caring reveals the part each participant plays. The one-caring (or carer) is first of all attentive. This attention, which I called “engrossment” in Caring (Noddings, 1984), is receptive; it receives what the cared-for is feeling and trying to express. It is not merely diagnostic, measuring the cared-for against some pre-established ideal. Rather, it opens the carer to motivational displacement. When I care, my motive energy begins to flow toward the needs and wants of the cared-for. This does not mean that I will always approve of what the other wants, nor does it mean that I will never try to lead him or her to a better set of values, but I must take into account the feelings and desires that are actually there and respond as positively as my values and capacities allow.
In a caring relation or encounter, the cared-for recognizes the caring and responds in some detectable manner. An infant smiles and wriggles in response to it mother’s caregiving. A student may acknowledge her teacher’s caring directly, with verbal gratitude, or simply pursue her own project more confidently. The receptive teacher can see that her caring has been received by monitoring her students’ responses. Without an affirmative response from the cared-for, we cannot call an encounter or relation caring.
Why is the relational view difficult for many educators?
The relational view is hard for some American thinkers to accept because the Western tradition puts such great emphasis on individualism. In that tradition, it is almost instinctive to regard virtues as personal possessions, hard-won through a grueling process of character building. John Dewey rejected this view and urged us to consider virtues as “working adaptations of personal capacities with environing forces” (1930, p. 16). Care theorists expand this Deweyan insight and emphasize the role of our partners in interaction as a central factor in “environing forces.” We recognize moral interdependence. How good (or bad) I can be depends in substantial part on how you treat me. Acknowledging our moral interdependence means rejecting Kant’s claim that it is contradictory to make our ourselves responsible for another’s moral perfection. Care theorists insist that we must, indeed, accept such responsibility. Without imposing my values on an other, I must realize that my treatment of him may deeply affect the way he behaves in the world. Although no individual can escape responsibility for his own actions, neither can the community that produced him escape its part in making him what he has become.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
Rollergirls of Central Kentucky (ROCK)
Forget the coal corporation UK Wilcats :P I'm a fan of ROCK! Buy independent, eat local, DIY, support independent/amateur sports! Most importantly become/make/distribute your own culture!
KY Kernel: Can’t keep them down: Lexington women find release in rough and tumble sport
KY Kernel: Can’t keep them down: Lexington women find release in rough and tumble sport
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Poetics of Relations (Notes)
Poetics {pedagogy/politics} of Relations (Community, Place, and Identity)
(Place, Community, Identity, Image, Memory, Archive, Being, Knowing, Communicating)
Ultimate aim is to write towards the personal truth of being—becoming placed and relating, yet aware of shifts and openness.
Identity:
Mass-Mediated Reality
Group(s) Identification
Environment/Atmosphere (influence)
Social Connections (Networking)
Cultural Capital
Class Status
Familial Bonds
Perceived Personal Portfolio (Perception of Others)
Self-Worth
Gender/Sexuality
Collective:
Social Frames/Metaphors
Discursive Formations
Cultural Memory
Ritualistic Patterns
Organizational Narratives
Mythic Identification
Environmental Relations
Institutional Paradigms
Ideological Worldviews
Hegemonic Structure
Rhetorical Fantasies
(Place, Community, Identity, Image, Memory, Archive, Being, Knowing, Communicating)
Ultimate aim is to write towards the personal truth of being—becoming placed and relating, yet aware of shifts and openness.
Identity:
Mass-Mediated Reality
Group(s) Identification
Environment/Atmosphere (influence)
Social Connections (Networking)
Cultural Capital
Class Status
Familial Bonds
Perceived Personal Portfolio (Perception of Others)
Self-Worth
Gender/Sexuality
Collective:
Social Frames/Metaphors
Discursive Formations
Cultural Memory
Ritualistic Patterns
Organizational Narratives
Mythic Identification
Environmental Relations
Institutional Paradigms
Ideological Worldviews
Hegemonic Structure
Rhetorical Fantasies
Chuck Kleinhans, John Hess and Julia Lesage: Torture and the National Imagination
Torture and the national imagination
by Chuck Kleinhans, John Hess and
Julia Lesage
Jump Cut
...
How efficient is torture as a policy and practice? It has at least four functions:
1) to gain information,
2) to obtain a confession of guilt,
3) to function as punishment for the victim, and
4) to gratify the torturer.
It does work to extract confessions of guilt, since eventually the victim will usually confess anything to make the pain stop. We could call this the Spanish Inquisition model after one of the most famous torture regimes. But we also know that some US police departments have used (or tolerated) torture to attain confessions.
Some facts of torture can be established as incontrovertibly true:
1. Who tortures? Basic social psychological research, notably by Dr. Stanley Milgram in the 1960s, concluded that about 70% of ordinary people would torture (administer high levels of pain to a complaining subject) if directed by persons they don’t know who seem to have legitimate authority. Milgram concluded that it would probably be much higher if the authority of the government sanctioned it. Thus it is the exceptional person who refuses to torture, especially under the conditions of military organization.
In 1971 the Stanford prison experiments studied the psychological results of incarceration on both guards and prisoners. The ethically controversial group event was ended when the role-playing subjects quickly exceeded expected behaviors in the mock prison. Many “guards” became actively sadistic; many “prisoners” were traumatized. The results have been used to argue that situation rather than pre-existing disposition shapes behavior. The lead researcher, Phillip Zimbardo, in response to the Abu Ghraib events argued against the “few bad apples” characterization of what happened.
2. It’s simply not true for the United States that “we don’t torture.” The United States has a long history of using torture against some enemy combatants and force, including torture and murder, against civilian populations in a war zone. The history of Native Americans, U.S. intervention and occupation in Central America and the Caribbean, and the colonization of the Philippines provide many examples. Indeed, waterboarding was first developed as a standard interrogation technique against the Philippines resistance to U.S. colonization.[4] In addition, the United States has offered substantial support to regimes and movements that did and do routinely practice torture. The U.S. military School of the Americas brought Latin American military officers to the U.S. for advanced training that included torture techniques. In fact, with the CIA rendition program, the United States outsources torture to other governments.
3. Techniques endorsed by the Bush administration and commonly used which they claim are not torture, are in fact, torture. Sensory deprivation, reducing sound, sight, feeling (gloves) and sleep deprivation leads to a loss of personal control of self for the individual subjected to it. These techniques leave no identifiable scars or evidence of having been used. Another technique, forced standing, leads to physical breakdown including ulcers on legs, kidney failure, etc. All of these are torture, as commonly defined. In the extraordinarily narrow legal definition developed by the administration, it is not torture if it doesn’t cause organ failure. The key thing here is that the administration separated out each of the individual techniques or elements of torture, stressing those that left no physical evidence, including waterboarding, and then said that no one of them constituted torture. However, the techniques were choreographed, that is, used in concert, simultaneously, and serially, which behavioral and medical experiments prove to be vastly potentiating. That is, they are torture.
4. As it developed in prisons like Bagram in Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib in Iraq, and Guantanamo on the island of Cuba, the actual practice of interrogation was two-staged. First there was a physical and psychological “roughing up” which was intended to “prepare” the prisoners to be ready to talk. Then, a second stage of traditional interrogation began. For the most part, as at Abu Graib, the military guards were routinely assigned to the first stage, and then the interrogators took over. So behind the infamous photos from Abu Ghraib lies the fact that those (often untrained) MPs arrived at a prison with a systematic regime already in place.
5. Torture is not a useful method for intelligence gathering. Experienced interrogators such as senior FBI agents, military investigation services such as the Navy Criminal Investigation Service, and other intelligence operations such as the Defense Intelligence Agency overwhelmingly conclude that it doesn’t work. The preferred practice for interrogators is to establish a relation with the prisoner, pointing out that the detained have no good options, and that if they cooperate by providing information the questioner can help them: protecting and providing for their family, giving them better prison conditions, etc. During WW2 the German Gestapo quickly found that “revenge” and “collective punishment” for underground resistance activity to military occupation was immensely counterproductive. They found that simply offering rewards produced informants. But using collective punishment and targeted torture immediately functions to shut down local sources of information. This finding is upheld as well by the large database on intelligence and interrogation from the Vietnam War.
The most obvious question is if it is known rationally, historically, scientifically, and in the embodied experience of successful professional interrogators that torture is ineffective, why would it become policy and practice? Why would you have the smartest people in the Bush administration sitting around dress rehearsing specific tortures to be used on specific prisoners? The answer can’t be that it gets meaningful results. Rather, we have to look at what torture has been demonstrated to do. First, it is effective at intimidation: of the specific prisoner, and of their community. And it has the downside of closing down communication or cooperation with the occupied population. Second, it is effective as punishment. It makes the victim pay a price for whatever was done. But of course this is rough justice, nonjudicial punishment, pain inflicted not after the social/political formality of a trial and as an affirmation of reasoned state interests and power, but just as revenge, meted out by the will of the powerful against the helpless, the hapless, and — without a prior determination of guilt or innocence — against some who are innocent.
So why the Principals Group virtual torture meetings? For the interrogator/torturer, for the Grand Inquisitor, and significantly for the person ordering the torture, it makes them feel they are in control: “torture makes the man.” They can impose their power on the prisoner. The initial goal is psychological and coercive — to reduce the prisoner’s sense of control. But it quickly becomes “I have power and none of you have power.” The very mechanism of torture says to the prisoner that he has no control and to the torturer that they have all the power. It is, then, achieving this psychological state that is important.
To Read the Entire Editorial
by Chuck Kleinhans, John Hess and
Julia Lesage
Jump Cut
...
How efficient is torture as a policy and practice? It has at least four functions:
1) to gain information,
2) to obtain a confession of guilt,
3) to function as punishment for the victim, and
4) to gratify the torturer.
It does work to extract confessions of guilt, since eventually the victim will usually confess anything to make the pain stop. We could call this the Spanish Inquisition model after one of the most famous torture regimes. But we also know that some US police departments have used (or tolerated) torture to attain confessions.
Some facts of torture can be established as incontrovertibly true:
1. Who tortures? Basic social psychological research, notably by Dr. Stanley Milgram in the 1960s, concluded that about 70% of ordinary people would torture (administer high levels of pain to a complaining subject) if directed by persons they don’t know who seem to have legitimate authority. Milgram concluded that it would probably be much higher if the authority of the government sanctioned it. Thus it is the exceptional person who refuses to torture, especially under the conditions of military organization.
In 1971 the Stanford prison experiments studied the psychological results of incarceration on both guards and prisoners. The ethically controversial group event was ended when the role-playing subjects quickly exceeded expected behaviors in the mock prison. Many “guards” became actively sadistic; many “prisoners” were traumatized. The results have been used to argue that situation rather than pre-existing disposition shapes behavior. The lead researcher, Phillip Zimbardo, in response to the Abu Ghraib events argued against the “few bad apples” characterization of what happened.
2. It’s simply not true for the United States that “we don’t torture.” The United States has a long history of using torture against some enemy combatants and force, including torture and murder, against civilian populations in a war zone. The history of Native Americans, U.S. intervention and occupation in Central America and the Caribbean, and the colonization of the Philippines provide many examples. Indeed, waterboarding was first developed as a standard interrogation technique against the Philippines resistance to U.S. colonization.[4] In addition, the United States has offered substantial support to regimes and movements that did and do routinely practice torture. The U.S. military School of the Americas brought Latin American military officers to the U.S. for advanced training that included torture techniques. In fact, with the CIA rendition program, the United States outsources torture to other governments.
3. Techniques endorsed by the Bush administration and commonly used which they claim are not torture, are in fact, torture. Sensory deprivation, reducing sound, sight, feeling (gloves) and sleep deprivation leads to a loss of personal control of self for the individual subjected to it. These techniques leave no identifiable scars or evidence of having been used. Another technique, forced standing, leads to physical breakdown including ulcers on legs, kidney failure, etc. All of these are torture, as commonly defined. In the extraordinarily narrow legal definition developed by the administration, it is not torture if it doesn’t cause organ failure. The key thing here is that the administration separated out each of the individual techniques or elements of torture, stressing those that left no physical evidence, including waterboarding, and then said that no one of them constituted torture. However, the techniques were choreographed, that is, used in concert, simultaneously, and serially, which behavioral and medical experiments prove to be vastly potentiating. That is, they are torture.
4. As it developed in prisons like Bagram in Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib in Iraq, and Guantanamo on the island of Cuba, the actual practice of interrogation was two-staged. First there was a physical and psychological “roughing up” which was intended to “prepare” the prisoners to be ready to talk. Then, a second stage of traditional interrogation began. For the most part, as at Abu Graib, the military guards were routinely assigned to the first stage, and then the interrogators took over. So behind the infamous photos from Abu Ghraib lies the fact that those (often untrained) MPs arrived at a prison with a systematic regime already in place.
5. Torture is not a useful method for intelligence gathering. Experienced interrogators such as senior FBI agents, military investigation services such as the Navy Criminal Investigation Service, and other intelligence operations such as the Defense Intelligence Agency overwhelmingly conclude that it doesn’t work. The preferred practice for interrogators is to establish a relation with the prisoner, pointing out that the detained have no good options, and that if they cooperate by providing information the questioner can help them: protecting and providing for their family, giving them better prison conditions, etc. During WW2 the German Gestapo quickly found that “revenge” and “collective punishment” for underground resistance activity to military occupation was immensely counterproductive. They found that simply offering rewards produced informants. But using collective punishment and targeted torture immediately functions to shut down local sources of information. This finding is upheld as well by the large database on intelligence and interrogation from the Vietnam War.
The most obvious question is if it is known rationally, historically, scientifically, and in the embodied experience of successful professional interrogators that torture is ineffective, why would it become policy and practice? Why would you have the smartest people in the Bush administration sitting around dress rehearsing specific tortures to be used on specific prisoners? The answer can’t be that it gets meaningful results. Rather, we have to look at what torture has been demonstrated to do. First, it is effective at intimidation: of the specific prisoner, and of their community. And it has the downside of closing down communication or cooperation with the occupied population. Second, it is effective as punishment. It makes the victim pay a price for whatever was done. But of course this is rough justice, nonjudicial punishment, pain inflicted not after the social/political formality of a trial and as an affirmation of reasoned state interests and power, but just as revenge, meted out by the will of the powerful against the helpless, the hapless, and — without a prior determination of guilt or innocence — against some who are innocent.
So why the Principals Group virtual torture meetings? For the interrogator/torturer, for the Grand Inquisitor, and significantly for the person ordering the torture, it makes them feel they are in control: “torture makes the man.” They can impose their power on the prisoner. The initial goal is psychological and coercive — to reduce the prisoner’s sense of control. But it quickly becomes “I have power and none of you have power.” The very mechanism of torture says to the prisoner that he has no control and to the torturer that they have all the power. It is, then, achieving this psychological state that is important.
To Read the Entire Editorial
Creative Screenwriting: Screenwriter Nancy Oliver -- Lars and the Real Girl
Lars and the Real Girl Q&A
Creative Screenwriting
Senior Editor Jeff Goldsmith interviews screenwriter Nancy Oliver about Lars and the Real Girl
To Listen to the Interview
Creative Screenwriting
Senior Editor Jeff Goldsmith interviews screenwriter Nancy Oliver about Lars and the Real Girl
To Listen to the Interview
Counterspin: Mark Cook on Honduras; Diana Duarte on "Saving the World's Women"
Counterspin
Mark Cook on Honduras
The media lie that will not die about the Honduras coup is that ousted president Manuel Zelaya was attempting to change the Honduran constitution in order to extend his time in office. But there is nothing new about this current set up; the same lie was used 45 years ago to remove another democratically elected president from office. Journalist Mark Cook has written about the eerie parallels in the September issue of FAIR's magazine Extra!. We'll talk to Mark Cook about his piece and the latest on Honduras.
Diana Duarte on "Saving the World's Women"
'Saving the World's Women' was the theme of a recent special issue of the New York Times magazine. The centerpiece was an article co-written by Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. While the focus on supporting women in the developing world might be laudable, what are the blindspots in Kristof's analysis? We'll talk to Diana Duarte of MADRE.
To Listen to the Episode
Mark Cook on Honduras
The media lie that will not die about the Honduras coup is that ousted president Manuel Zelaya was attempting to change the Honduran constitution in order to extend his time in office. But there is nothing new about this current set up; the same lie was used 45 years ago to remove another democratically elected president from office. Journalist Mark Cook has written about the eerie parallels in the September issue of FAIR's magazine Extra!. We'll talk to Mark Cook about his piece and the latest on Honduras.
Diana Duarte on "Saving the World's Women"
'Saving the World's Women' was the theme of a recent special issue of the New York Times magazine. The centerpiece was an article co-written by Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. While the focus on supporting women in the developing world might be laudable, what are the blindspots in Kristof's analysis? We'll talk to Diana Duarte of MADRE.
To Listen to the Episode
Michael Atkinson: Wings of Desire -- Watch the Skies
Wings of Desire: Watch the Skies
BY MICHAEL ATKINSON
Criterion
...
Still, it’s not a pedagogical work but a poetic one, filthy with Keats’s “negative capability.” The film’s revelation of a heaven and earth infrastructure does not absolve mysteries but compounds them. Nevertheless, despite this spirituality, the film’s mysteries turn out to be largely cinematic. Wenders has always been a quintessential Euro movie-lover of the New Wave generation, and Wings of Desire has a rich vein of cinephilic self-reflexivity running through it. After all, although the angels we see can subtly affect human behavior (Damiel steers a suicidal subway rider toward the future, and calms a dying bicyclist after an accident), they, like the moviegoer, are mostly observers.
To watch is to love, as we see in the scene where Damiel, having fallen for Solveig Dommartin’s trapeze artist, Marion, loiters in her trailer, and is galvanized when she begins undressing. He tries to touch her but cannot. Like James Stewart in Rear Window, the angel can only watch, and he is as much defined by his helpless voyeurism as we are in the audience. On one level, the angels are pure-hearted documentarians, bearing witness to life (cinema began as documentary, after all), yet their work is not action but attention. Is there a culpability inherent in the distance of being an observer? (Michael Haneke, among others, has clearly thought so.) Damiel is an idealized surrogate for us and our role, hypnotized and passive and all too human; and if Hitchcock’s film was about the anxiety of viewing, then Wenders’s is about its melancholy, its beauty, its final limitations.
The allegorization of our experience as viewers is bedizened by the spectatorship of the traveling circus (which is regularly breached by the chaos of the active participation of children, something Damiel experiences as rapturous), the film history references (Damiel explains his desire to mix in by saying he wants to be like Philip Marlowe and “come home to a cat”), the news footage of postwar Berlin’s rubble and ruin, and of course the film being shot within the film, some kind of dire concentration camp thriller starring Peter Falk, who senses the angels because, as he explains, he converted to humanity himself “thirty years ago” (and 1957 was indeed when Falk made his first appearance on American television). But Damiel ultimately becomes dissatisfied with his role, and his position as an observer begins to dissolve once he sits beside the costumed Nazi-victim extras, who are “living” in multiple time periods at once, self-observing ruminators as well as subjects, for the film-in-the-film’s cameras, for the angels, for Wenders, and of course for us.
As the angels haunt Berlin, Wings of Desire also has its haunters—the audience, observing the observers. As it dawns that we, at least in the viewing moment, might be closer to the ineffectual angels than to the people they hover over, Damiel edges nearer to surrendering his angelic immortality and omnipotence for a short life of love, books, coffee, wind, children, and urban messiness—in effect, exiting his own private movie house and entering the throng of unaestheticized life. He desires, in a sense, to leave the movie he’s in and join us on our way home. Is the plot arc of Wings of Desire a cry against cinema, even as it equates watching with love? Or does it suggest, to the choir, only a more engaged participation for us, the give-and-take of art film as opposed to the utterly passive experience of Hollywood dross, the Godardian sense that cinema is not an escape from life but life itself? Once Damiel goes human, awakening in the no-man’s-land between the east and west sections of the wall, we as viewers may have an experience akin to Greta Garbo’s after she’d seen the Beast in Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast transform into the clean-shaven Jean Marais: “Give me back my Beast.”
To Read the Rest of the Essay
BY MICHAEL ATKINSON
Criterion
...
Still, it’s not a pedagogical work but a poetic one, filthy with Keats’s “negative capability.” The film’s revelation of a heaven and earth infrastructure does not absolve mysteries but compounds them. Nevertheless, despite this spirituality, the film’s mysteries turn out to be largely cinematic. Wenders has always been a quintessential Euro movie-lover of the New Wave generation, and Wings of Desire has a rich vein of cinephilic self-reflexivity running through it. After all, although the angels we see can subtly affect human behavior (Damiel steers a suicidal subway rider toward the future, and calms a dying bicyclist after an accident), they, like the moviegoer, are mostly observers.
To watch is to love, as we see in the scene where Damiel, having fallen for Solveig Dommartin’s trapeze artist, Marion, loiters in her trailer, and is galvanized when she begins undressing. He tries to touch her but cannot. Like James Stewart in Rear Window, the angel can only watch, and he is as much defined by his helpless voyeurism as we are in the audience. On one level, the angels are pure-hearted documentarians, bearing witness to life (cinema began as documentary, after all), yet their work is not action but attention. Is there a culpability inherent in the distance of being an observer? (Michael Haneke, among others, has clearly thought so.) Damiel is an idealized surrogate for us and our role, hypnotized and passive and all too human; and if Hitchcock’s film was about the anxiety of viewing, then Wenders’s is about its melancholy, its beauty, its final limitations.
The allegorization of our experience as viewers is bedizened by the spectatorship of the traveling circus (which is regularly breached by the chaos of the active participation of children, something Damiel experiences as rapturous), the film history references (Damiel explains his desire to mix in by saying he wants to be like Philip Marlowe and “come home to a cat”), the news footage of postwar Berlin’s rubble and ruin, and of course the film being shot within the film, some kind of dire concentration camp thriller starring Peter Falk, who senses the angels because, as he explains, he converted to humanity himself “thirty years ago” (and 1957 was indeed when Falk made his first appearance on American television). But Damiel ultimately becomes dissatisfied with his role, and his position as an observer begins to dissolve once he sits beside the costumed Nazi-victim extras, who are “living” in multiple time periods at once, self-observing ruminators as well as subjects, for the film-in-the-film’s cameras, for the angels, for Wenders, and of course for us.
As the angels haunt Berlin, Wings of Desire also has its haunters—the audience, observing the observers. As it dawns that we, at least in the viewing moment, might be closer to the ineffectual angels than to the people they hover over, Damiel edges nearer to surrendering his angelic immortality and omnipotence for a short life of love, books, coffee, wind, children, and urban messiness—in effect, exiting his own private movie house and entering the throng of unaestheticized life. He desires, in a sense, to leave the movie he’s in and join us on our way home. Is the plot arc of Wings of Desire a cry against cinema, even as it equates watching with love? Or does it suggest, to the choir, only a more engaged participation for us, the give-and-take of art film as opposed to the utterly passive experience of Hollywood dross, the Godardian sense that cinema is not an escape from life but life itself? Once Damiel goes human, awakening in the no-man’s-land between the east and west sections of the wall, we as viewers may have an experience akin to Greta Garbo’s after she’d seen the Beast in Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast transform into the clean-shaven Jean Marais: “Give me back my Beast.”
To Read the Rest of the Essay
Jay Walljasper: The Victory of the Commons
The Victory of the Commons: Nobel Prize-winning economist Elinor Ostrom proved that people can—and do—work together to manage commonly-held resources without degrading them.
by Jay Walljasper
Yes!
The biggest roadblock standing in the way of many people's recognition of the importance of the commons came tumbling down when Indiana University professor Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Prize for Economics.
Over many decades, Ostrom has documented how various communities manage common resources — grazing lands, forests, irrigation waters, fisheries — equitably and sustainably over the long term. The Nobel Committee's recognition of her work effectively debunks popular theories about the Tragedy of the Commons, which hold that private property is the only effective method to prevent finite resources from being ruined or depleted.
Awarding the world's most prestigious economics prize to a scholar who champions cooperative behavior greatly boosts the legitimacy of the commons as a framework for solving our social and environmental problems. Ostrom's work also challenges the current economic orthodoxy that there are few, if any, alternatives to privatization and markets in generating wealth and human well being.
The Tragedy of the Commons refers to a scenario in which commonly held land is inevitably degraded because everyone in a community is allowed to graze livestock there. This parable was popularized by wildlife biologist Garrett Hardin in the late 1960s, and was embraced as a principle by the emerging environmental movement. But Ostrom's research refutes this abstract concept with the real life experience from places like Nepal, Kenya and Guatemala.
"When local users of a forest have a long-term perspective, they are more likely to monitor each other's use of the land, developing rules for behavior," she cites as an example. "It is an area that standard market theory does not touch."
Garrett Hardin himself later revised his own view, noting that what he described was actually the Tragedy of the Unmanaged Commons.
Columbia University economist Joseph Stiglitz, also a Nobel winner, commented, "Conservatives used the Tragedy of the Commons to argue for property rights, and that efficiency was achieved as people were thrown off the commons...What Ostrom has demonstrated is the existence of social control mechanisms that regulate the use of the commons without having to resort to property rights."
To Read the Rest of the Article
by Jay Walljasper
Yes!
The biggest roadblock standing in the way of many people's recognition of the importance of the commons came tumbling down when Indiana University professor Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Prize for Economics.
Over many decades, Ostrom has documented how various communities manage common resources — grazing lands, forests, irrigation waters, fisheries — equitably and sustainably over the long term. The Nobel Committee's recognition of her work effectively debunks popular theories about the Tragedy of the Commons, which hold that private property is the only effective method to prevent finite resources from being ruined or depleted.
Awarding the world's most prestigious economics prize to a scholar who champions cooperative behavior greatly boosts the legitimacy of the commons as a framework for solving our social and environmental problems. Ostrom's work also challenges the current economic orthodoxy that there are few, if any, alternatives to privatization and markets in generating wealth and human well being.
The Tragedy of the Commons refers to a scenario in which commonly held land is inevitably degraded because everyone in a community is allowed to graze livestock there. This parable was popularized by wildlife biologist Garrett Hardin in the late 1960s, and was embraced as a principle by the emerging environmental movement. But Ostrom's research refutes this abstract concept with the real life experience from places like Nepal, Kenya and Guatemala.
"When local users of a forest have a long-term perspective, they are more likely to monitor each other's use of the land, developing rules for behavior," she cites as an example. "It is an area that standard market theory does not touch."
Garrett Hardin himself later revised his own view, noting that what he described was actually the Tragedy of the Unmanaged Commons.
Columbia University economist Joseph Stiglitz, also a Nobel winner, commented, "Conservatives used the Tragedy of the Commons to argue for property rights, and that efficiency was achieved as people were thrown off the commons...What Ostrom has demonstrated is the existence of social control mechanisms that regulate the use of the commons without having to resort to property rights."
To Read the Rest of the Article
Leigh Goldstein: Documenting and denial -- discourses of sexual self-exploitation
Documenting and denial: discourses of sexual self-exploitation
by Leigh Goldstein
Jump Cut
In December 2008, the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and CosmoGirl.com published a report summarizing the findings of a survey they had commissioned on adolescents, twenty-somethings, technology and sexuality. Entitled, appropriately enough, “Sex and Tech,” the report and related articles were made available on each organization’s website, along with press releases highlighting some of the statistics that the survey of 1280 subjects had generated. The report was immediately followed by an Associated Press article citing its findings. The story was then picked up by several newspapers, online magazines, cable news programs, each calling particular attention to one statistic: twenty percent of teens overall (i.e., boys and girls) have “sent/posted nude or semi-nude pictures or video of themselves.”[1][open endnotes in new window]
Judging from the spate of articles that have followed since its publication, the “Sex and Tech” study seems to have lent statistical credence to a practice that legal scholars and some journalists have been addressing for the past few years.[2] Generally referred to as “sexting” or “self-produced child pornography,” this practice involves adolescents taking pictures of themselves naked or barely clothed or engaged in a sexual act and then posting the images online or texting or emailing them to friends. As the label “self-produced child pornography” indicates, the production, distribution and possession of these images is a criminal act if the subject photographed is under eighteen. Minors participating in this seemingly innocuous form of flirtatious or erotic exchange have been formally charged with production and distribution or possession of child pornography.
For example, in a 2004 Florida state case, a sixteen-year-old girl (A.H.) was adjudicated as a delinquent for taking pictures of herself having sex with her seventeen-year-old boyfriend and then emailing them from his computer to hers. And in 2002, in Seattle, Washington, August Anthony Vezzoni, then sixteen years old, was adjudicated as delinquent for showing nude photographs of a former girlfriend to friends at school. Or, to take a more recent example that has received much media attention, three teenage girls in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, were charged in January 2009 with producing and distributing child pornography for taking and then sending nude pictures of their own fourteen and fifteen year old bodies and then texting the images to their friends. Three boys (aged 16 and 17) who received the images were charged with possession of child pornography. In the last six years, similar charges have been brought against minors in Alabama, Connecticut, Denver, Florida, Georgia, New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin.[3]
These cases, and the media coverage they receive, all attest to the fact that child pornography has become a crime in which minors are constructed as perpetrators as well as victims. This paradoxical stance towards minors, predicated on a construction of children as innocent and punishment of those who defile that construct, is propped up by complex argumentation on the part of judges and legal scholars as well as some equally convoluted thinking on the part of journalists. Before further engaging with both those forms of discourse and the ways in which they construct children, I would like to address the question of statistical research and the dearth of up to date studies on child pornography within U.S. academia.
The circulation of dubious statistics and conjectures regarding child pornography should be read as an inevitable consequence of the legal penalties for having any encounter with pornographic material featuring subjects who are minors. The very act of approaching persons under eighteen and asking them if they produce, possess, or distribute erotic material featuring themselves (or another minor) constitutes a crime. One’s standing as scholar or researcher makes no difference from a legal perspective. Ask a minor about naked photos and you are soliciting contraband and harassing a child.[4]
While the current legislation against child pornography is certainly a research hurdle, I want to make clear that its consequences extend beyond the fate of the minors who produce it or the scholars who would hope to study them. By criminalizing self-produced child pornography, our government has effectively censored minors’ right to record their sexualities or erotic identities. It is as though the existence of underage sex dealt a bad enough blow to our culture’s construction of childhood; the production of a visual record of such acts has been designated as beyond the pale, a social practice that must be eradicated.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
by Leigh Goldstein
Jump Cut
In December 2008, the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and CosmoGirl.com published a report summarizing the findings of a survey they had commissioned on adolescents, twenty-somethings, technology and sexuality. Entitled, appropriately enough, “Sex and Tech,” the report and related articles were made available on each organization’s website, along with press releases highlighting some of the statistics that the survey of 1280 subjects had generated. The report was immediately followed by an Associated Press article citing its findings. The story was then picked up by several newspapers, online magazines, cable news programs, each calling particular attention to one statistic: twenty percent of teens overall (i.e., boys and girls) have “sent/posted nude or semi-nude pictures or video of themselves.”[1][open endnotes in new window]
Judging from the spate of articles that have followed since its publication, the “Sex and Tech” study seems to have lent statistical credence to a practice that legal scholars and some journalists have been addressing for the past few years.[2] Generally referred to as “sexting” or “self-produced child pornography,” this practice involves adolescents taking pictures of themselves naked or barely clothed or engaged in a sexual act and then posting the images online or texting or emailing them to friends. As the label “self-produced child pornography” indicates, the production, distribution and possession of these images is a criminal act if the subject photographed is under eighteen. Minors participating in this seemingly innocuous form of flirtatious or erotic exchange have been formally charged with production and distribution or possession of child pornography.
For example, in a 2004 Florida state case, a sixteen-year-old girl (A.H.) was adjudicated as a delinquent for taking pictures of herself having sex with her seventeen-year-old boyfriend and then emailing them from his computer to hers. And in 2002, in Seattle, Washington, August Anthony Vezzoni, then sixteen years old, was adjudicated as delinquent for showing nude photographs of a former girlfriend to friends at school. Or, to take a more recent example that has received much media attention, three teenage girls in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, were charged in January 2009 with producing and distributing child pornography for taking and then sending nude pictures of their own fourteen and fifteen year old bodies and then texting the images to their friends. Three boys (aged 16 and 17) who received the images were charged with possession of child pornography. In the last six years, similar charges have been brought against minors in Alabama, Connecticut, Denver, Florida, Georgia, New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin.[3]
These cases, and the media coverage they receive, all attest to the fact that child pornography has become a crime in which minors are constructed as perpetrators as well as victims. This paradoxical stance towards minors, predicated on a construction of children as innocent and punishment of those who defile that construct, is propped up by complex argumentation on the part of judges and legal scholars as well as some equally convoluted thinking on the part of journalists. Before further engaging with both those forms of discourse and the ways in which they construct children, I would like to address the question of statistical research and the dearth of up to date studies on child pornography within U.S. academia.
The circulation of dubious statistics and conjectures regarding child pornography should be read as an inevitable consequence of the legal penalties for having any encounter with pornographic material featuring subjects who are minors. The very act of approaching persons under eighteen and asking them if they produce, possess, or distribute erotic material featuring themselves (or another minor) constitutes a crime. One’s standing as scholar or researcher makes no difference from a legal perspective. Ask a minor about naked photos and you are soliciting contraband and harassing a child.[4]
While the current legislation against child pornography is certainly a research hurdle, I want to make clear that its consequences extend beyond the fate of the minors who produce it or the scholars who would hope to study them. By criminalizing self-produced child pornography, our government has effectively censored minors’ right to record their sexualities or erotic identities. It is as though the existence of underage sex dealt a bad enough blow to our culture’s construction of childhood; the production of a visual record of such acts has been designated as beyond the pale, a social practice that must be eradicated.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Peace & Conflict Studies: Part Three
[For students: 1) Capturing Reality is a good resource for understanding documentaries as an "art form" 2) I wanted to show you This Is What Democracy Looks Like, but ran out of time, it is a compilation of the footage from a 100+ independent media/journalists covering the 1999 Seattle WTO Protests 3) Manufacturing Consent is a great introduction to Noam Chomsky and the Propaganda Model of the Media--good supplement for thinking about what I have been discussing throughout this section 4) I provided more info on Chomsky and Propaganda 5) linked the previous two Peace & Conflict posts 6) the G20 articles can be found online here and the paper North of Center is a free bi-weekly newspaper that is available around town at the entrance of downtown independent businesses 7) comments/questions can be posted in the comment section of this post and/or feel free to stop by my office OB236B to talk. I really appreciated the level of engagement for this section, thank you!!!]
Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary (click to watch in another screen)
This Is What Democracy Looks Like (click to watch in another screen)
Manufacturing Consent (click to watch in another screen)
Noam Chomsky and Media Propaganda (Optional Resources)
Noam Chomsky and Robert Trivers: On Deceit, Groupthink, Maintaining Credibility and Denial (Seed Magazine)
Noam Chomsky: On the Global Economic Crisis, Healthcare, US Foreign Policy and Resistance to American Empire (Democracy Now)
Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Researching the Issues (Michael Benton's comments/archive)
Propaganda: Researching the Concept (Archive)
Noam Chomsky’s Website
Resources for Studying Propaganda from HUM 220: Peace/Conflict Studies (Historical Perspectives)
Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman: The Role of Mass Media
Noam Chomsky: Language, Politics and Composition
Project Censored: Top 25 Censored Stories of 2009
Michael Benton: Do We Need a Strong Public Media? (Commentary/Archive)
Past posts for the course:
Peace & Conflict Studies: Part One
Peace & Conflict Studies: Part Two
Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary (click to watch in another screen)
This Is What Democracy Looks Like (click to watch in another screen)
Manufacturing Consent (click to watch in another screen)
Noam Chomsky and Media Propaganda (Optional Resources)
Noam Chomsky and Robert Trivers: On Deceit, Groupthink, Maintaining Credibility and Denial (Seed Magazine)
Noam Chomsky: On the Global Economic Crisis, Healthcare, US Foreign Policy and Resistance to American Empire (Democracy Now)
Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Researching the Issues (Michael Benton's comments/archive)
Propaganda: Researching the Concept (Archive)
Noam Chomsky’s Website
Resources for Studying Propaganda from HUM 220: Peace/Conflict Studies (Historical Perspectives)
Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman: The Role of Mass Media
Noam Chomsky: Language, Politics and Composition
Project Censored: Top 25 Censored Stories of 2009
Michael Benton: Do We Need a Strong Public Media? (Commentary/Archive)
Past posts for the course:
Peace & Conflict Studies: Part One
Peace & Conflict Studies: Part Two
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)