Birth Control: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
by Katha Pollitt
The Nation
...
It’s hard to imagine anyone opposing broader access to contraception. But it’s lucky that the HHS can accept these recommendations without Congressional approval, because this is America, where anything involving sex and/or women drives some people crazy. How crazy? Two weeks before the recommendations came out, Leonard Blair, the Catholic bishop of Toledo, Ohio, urged Catholic schools and parishes to cease raising money for Susan Komen for The Cure, the country’s largest breast cancer charity, because someday it might fund embryonic stem-cell research. Better actual women should die of breast cancer today than that an embryo be theoretically imperiled in the vague and misty future. Antichoicers have their own theology—not one major so-called prolife organization supports birth control—and their own biology too. An antichoice evangelical tweeted on the hashtag #BCBC that “for every year a woman takes the Pill…her cervix ages 2 yrs.” (But according to the natural-family-planning website she sent me to, for every pregnancy it gets two years younger! Depending on your choices, by the time you’re 40 your cervix could have its own AARP membership or be back in high school.) And let’s not forget the plain old misogynists, like New Hampshire Executive Council member Raymond Wieczorek, who cast a deciding vote to slash funds for Planned Parenthood with the immortal words “If they want to have a good time, why not let them pay for it?”
How about: If people drive cars, let them pay for their own whiplash? If people eat meat, let them pay for their own heart disease? If people fall off a cliff hiking, leave them there! Almost everyone has “good times” that entail risks, but sexually active women—which includes the churchgoing, cake-baking wives antichoicers want us to be—are just about the only ones against whom the “pay to play” argument is marshaled. The great thing about the IOM recommendations is that they acknowledge that sex is part of normal life, not some weird and semi-criminal activity. The Family Research Council claims it’s a violation of conscience to make people pay into plans that cover contraception. But what about the costs of not using contraception? Unwanted babies, stalled educations, poverty, ill health, misery—we all pay for that.
Forty-nine percent of pregnancies in America are unplanned—for teens, it’s 83 percent. Both are by far the highest rates in the developed world. The IOM recommendations would be worth taking even if they had no effect on those statistics—it’s wrong that women are nickel-and-dimed for a medication that only they take, as if preventing pregnancy was like getting a mani-pedi. But it’s hard to believe the new rules won’t help bring the numbers down. In Britain, where contraception has been provided on the National Health Service since 1974, the teen pregnancy rate is just over half ours. Still, 40 percent of pregnancies there are unplanned. It’s rare that technical fixes really solve social problems. But this is a good start. Our nineteenth-century forebears with their douches and womb veils would be cheering for us.
To Read the Entire Commentary
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Eva Gabrielsson: Before Death, Acclaimed "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" Author Stieg Larsson Lamented Right-Wing Extremism
Before Death, Acclaimed "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" Author Stieg Larsson Lamented Right-Wing Extremism
Democracy Now
In the aftermath of the Norway attacks, we look at the work of Stieg Larsson, an author known less for his extensive research into right-wing extremism in Scandavia and Europe than for his international blockbuster books, published after his death and known as the Millennium Trilogy: “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” “The Girl Who Played with Fire,” and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest.” As part of his passion to "counteract the growth of the extreme right and the white power-culture in schools and among young people," Larsson founded the Swedish Expo Foundation and edited its magazine, Expo. We go to Stockholm, Sweden, to speak with Larsson’s lifelong partner, Eva Gabrielsson, about the research they did together before his death.
Guest:
Eva Gabrielsson, author of a recently published memoir, There Are Things I Want You to Know about Stieg Larsson and Me. She is the partner of the late Stieg Larsson, author of the international bestselling Millennium Trilogy: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest.
Watch/Listen/Read
Democracy Now
In the aftermath of the Norway attacks, we look at the work of Stieg Larsson, an author known less for his extensive research into right-wing extremism in Scandavia and Europe than for his international blockbuster books, published after his death and known as the Millennium Trilogy: “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” “The Girl Who Played with Fire,” and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest.” As part of his passion to "counteract the growth of the extreme right and the white power-culture in schools and among young people," Larsson founded the Swedish Expo Foundation and edited its magazine, Expo. We go to Stockholm, Sweden, to speak with Larsson’s lifelong partner, Eva Gabrielsson, about the research they did together before his death.
Guest:
Eva Gabrielsson, author of a recently published memoir, There Are Things I Want You to Know about Stieg Larsson and Me. She is the partner of the late Stieg Larsson, author of the international bestselling Millennium Trilogy: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest.
Watch/Listen/Read
Thursday, August 18, 2011
John R. Hamilton: Great Directors - Paul Schrader
Paul Schrader
by John R. Hamilton
Senses of Cinema
What is this desire Paul Schrader has for writing or directing films about losers or those on the edge of society: Robert de Niro in Taxi Driver (1976), Richard Gere as an American Gigolo (1980), the runaway girl in Hardcore (1979), the suicidal Mishima (1985), the washed-up prize fighter in Raging Bull (1980), the deviant savior in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), the Stockholm-syndromed kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst (1988), or the burnt-out urban savior in Bringing Out the Dead (1999)? Is it something in his Calvinist upbringing in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where to warn him of the flames of hell, Schrader’s mother passed his little hands over a burning match? Yet at the same time he learned there the promise of salvation and redemption.
From the beginning, Schrader’s characters have shown a profound spiritual hunger. Kevin Jackson’s summary of Schrader’s career voices a typical observation, that already by the mid-1970s, his scripts were all “harsh and anguished, full of metaphors for imprisonment, preoccupied with vengeance and the thirst for redemption.” (1) (This same evaluation might also aptly describe many of the films of Clint Eastwood.)
Paul Schrader is the philosopher’s “movie brat” director. His contemporaries, film school alumni whom Hollywood gave a shot in the late ‘60s and ‘70s to try to bolster their failing box office, include Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, and Steven Spielberg. Instead of coming up through the ranks of the craft guilds, these young directors studied film history, auteur theory, and audience-pleasing techniques at New York University (NYU), University of Southern California (USC), University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), and Cal State, respectively. After Calvin College, Schrader’s masters thesis at UCLA was on the esoteric style of Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu, Frenchman Robert Bresson, and Swede Carl Theodor Dreyer, whose austere “transcendental style” resonated with Schrader’s Calvinist leanings. The thesis was published in book form by the prestigious University of California Press, (2) when even very few doctoral dissertations see the light of print.
All of the movie brat directors named here became wildly commercial and mainstream, although Coppola’s career somewhat stalled out. Only Schrader can be said to have remained fairly consistently committed to deeper, psychologically darker material. He is an unabashed modernist, believing in existential struggles and reality, never lightening up or embracing a postmodern ethos in order to grab for a pop culture audience. That he has been able to continue to find financing, actors, and distributors with this approach is astonishing and encouraging, albeit not without constant application of the protestant work ethic, and sometimes years of knocking on doors and multiple rejections before finding the right combination to unlock the green-lit path. (For example, it took him four tries to get the right lead actor for The Walker (2007), and that after years in development.)
But Schrader seems to have internalised Jesus’ teaching that one must first “seek the kingdom” and be committed to one’s values and goals, rather than worrying about fame and fortune (Matthew 6:31-34). He says bluntly, “I would rather do something really small of some value than do what Marty Scorsese’s doing. I don’t see the fun in that. “ (3)
Schrader also has continually to compete against himself. Perhaps it is the curse of peaking too early. With the brilliance and success of his first produced screenplay, Taxi Driver, (4) Schrader has had the onus of having to live up to that work ever since. There are many examples of this artistic phenomenon in literature and cinema, such as William Golding’s lifelong burden of his first novel, which he found “boring and crude,” Lord of the Flies. (5)
When he speaks of doing something of value, Schrader often returns to his school days, when he wanted to stand up for the oppressed, defend the outcasts, and challenge the establishment. “There’s always been something adversarial and evangelical about my interest in film.” (6) However, this is not garden variety liberalism. One of the strong strains in reformational Calvinist philosophy is the idea of the radical third way, neither conservative nor liberal, but breaking out into a new paradigm which is informed by Biblical principles. (7)
Thus, Schrader’s early essays in film criticism for the L. A. Free Press stood apart from typical auteur or sociological analysis of the day, but also from the leftism of the underground press. He trashed Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969), for example, as being cliched and indulging in predictable stereotypes of hippies vs. rednecks.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
by John R. Hamilton
Senses of Cinema
What is this desire Paul Schrader has for writing or directing films about losers or those on the edge of society: Robert de Niro in Taxi Driver (1976), Richard Gere as an American Gigolo (1980), the runaway girl in Hardcore (1979), the suicidal Mishima (1985), the washed-up prize fighter in Raging Bull (1980), the deviant savior in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), the Stockholm-syndromed kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst (1988), or the burnt-out urban savior in Bringing Out the Dead (1999)? Is it something in his Calvinist upbringing in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where to warn him of the flames of hell, Schrader’s mother passed his little hands over a burning match? Yet at the same time he learned there the promise of salvation and redemption.
From the beginning, Schrader’s characters have shown a profound spiritual hunger. Kevin Jackson’s summary of Schrader’s career voices a typical observation, that already by the mid-1970s, his scripts were all “harsh and anguished, full of metaphors for imprisonment, preoccupied with vengeance and the thirst for redemption.” (1) (This same evaluation might also aptly describe many of the films of Clint Eastwood.)
Paul Schrader is the philosopher’s “movie brat” director. His contemporaries, film school alumni whom Hollywood gave a shot in the late ‘60s and ‘70s to try to bolster their failing box office, include Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, and Steven Spielberg. Instead of coming up through the ranks of the craft guilds, these young directors studied film history, auteur theory, and audience-pleasing techniques at New York University (NYU), University of Southern California (USC), University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), and Cal State, respectively. After Calvin College, Schrader’s masters thesis at UCLA was on the esoteric style of Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu, Frenchman Robert Bresson, and Swede Carl Theodor Dreyer, whose austere “transcendental style” resonated with Schrader’s Calvinist leanings. The thesis was published in book form by the prestigious University of California Press, (2) when even very few doctoral dissertations see the light of print.
All of the movie brat directors named here became wildly commercial and mainstream, although Coppola’s career somewhat stalled out. Only Schrader can be said to have remained fairly consistently committed to deeper, psychologically darker material. He is an unabashed modernist, believing in existential struggles and reality, never lightening up or embracing a postmodern ethos in order to grab for a pop culture audience. That he has been able to continue to find financing, actors, and distributors with this approach is astonishing and encouraging, albeit not without constant application of the protestant work ethic, and sometimes years of knocking on doors and multiple rejections before finding the right combination to unlock the green-lit path. (For example, it took him four tries to get the right lead actor for The Walker (2007), and that after years in development.)
But Schrader seems to have internalised Jesus’ teaching that one must first “seek the kingdom” and be committed to one’s values and goals, rather than worrying about fame and fortune (Matthew 6:31-34). He says bluntly, “I would rather do something really small of some value than do what Marty Scorsese’s doing. I don’t see the fun in that. “ (3)
Schrader also has continually to compete against himself. Perhaps it is the curse of peaking too early. With the brilliance and success of his first produced screenplay, Taxi Driver, (4) Schrader has had the onus of having to live up to that work ever since. There are many examples of this artistic phenomenon in literature and cinema, such as William Golding’s lifelong burden of his first novel, which he found “boring and crude,” Lord of the Flies. (5)
When he speaks of doing something of value, Schrader often returns to his school days, when he wanted to stand up for the oppressed, defend the outcasts, and challenge the establishment. “There’s always been something adversarial and evangelical about my interest in film.” (6) However, this is not garden variety liberalism. One of the strong strains in reformational Calvinist philosophy is the idea of the radical third way, neither conservative nor liberal, but breaking out into a new paradigm which is informed by Biblical principles. (7)
Thus, Schrader’s early essays in film criticism for the L. A. Free Press stood apart from typical auteur or sociological analysis of the day, but also from the leftism of the underground press. He trashed Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969), for example, as being cliched and indulging in predictable stereotypes of hippies vs. rednecks.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
Democracy Now: Jeff Sharlet -- Norwegian Shooting Suspect’s Views Echo Xenophobia of Right-Wing Extremists in U.S., Europe
Norwegian Shooting Suspect’s Views Echo Xenophobia of Right-Wing Extremists in U.S., Europe
Democracy Now
Before the deadly attack in Norway that killed 76 people, suspect Anders Behring Breivik left a long trail of material meticulously outlining his political beliefs. His 1,500-page political manifesto, titled "A European Declaration of Independence," seeks common cause with xenophobic right-wing groups around the world, particularly in the United States. It draws heavily on the writing of prominent anti-Islam American bloggers, as well as Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. His writing reveals he is a right-wing nationalist fueled by a combined hatred of Muslims, Marxists, multiculturalists and feminist women. Even after the massacre in Norway, some right-wing pundits in the United States have come out in defense of Breivik’s analysis. We speak with Jeff Sharlet, an author who has written extensively about right-wing movements in the United States, who has read much of Breivik’s 1,500-page manifesto. "What struck me most about this document is just how American it is in every way. I mean, a huge amount of it is from American sources," Sharlet says. "He’s a great admirer of America, because he says United States, unlike Europe, has maintained its 'Christian identity.'"
To Watch/Listen/Read
Democracy Now
Before the deadly attack in Norway that killed 76 people, suspect Anders Behring Breivik left a long trail of material meticulously outlining his political beliefs. His 1,500-page political manifesto, titled "A European Declaration of Independence," seeks common cause with xenophobic right-wing groups around the world, particularly in the United States. It draws heavily on the writing of prominent anti-Islam American bloggers, as well as Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. His writing reveals he is a right-wing nationalist fueled by a combined hatred of Muslims, Marxists, multiculturalists and feminist women. Even after the massacre in Norway, some right-wing pundits in the United States have come out in defense of Breivik’s analysis. We speak with Jeff Sharlet, an author who has written extensively about right-wing movements in the United States, who has read much of Breivik’s 1,500-page manifesto. "What struck me most about this document is just how American it is in every way. I mean, a huge amount of it is from American sources," Sharlet says. "He’s a great admirer of America, because he says United States, unlike Europe, has maintained its 'Christian identity.'"
To Watch/Listen/Read
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Left Field Cinema: The Wire
Television Special: The Wire
by Mike Dawson
Left Field Cinema
...
In terms of The Wire’s contemporaries it is easier to make the distinctions; I don’t think it’s particularly fair to compare HBO drama series to programmes produced for networks like ABC or Fox, as their content is dictated by an entirely differing set of rules and establishments, but when compared to another HBO dramas like The Sopranos the differences are clear. The Sopranos examining the same set of characters more or less over its six seasons and only gently tuning its thematic explorations as the seasons pass. If the Sopranos brings Shakespeare kicking violently to the turn of the 21st Century, Richard III and MacBeth as literary touchstones for Tony Soprano, then the allusions that can be brought to The Wire as them of the doomed Greek characters, the myths and tragedy which is played out wholesale through its institutions. Those indifferent Olympus Gods being captured in every commstat meeting in season 3. No character is bigger than the story. The focus shifts ever so subtly on The Sopranos however everything ultimately rests with Tony, where as The Wire has no hesitation at shifting its focus almost entirely from one season to the next. The first time it attempted such a shift was its bravest move, between seasons one and two. Season one focuses on the procedurals of a police investigation, and a drug dealing organisation; by presenting us with a fifty fifty split in terms of screen time, between the law enforcement and the law breakers. It examined issues surrounding the corruption of impoverished youth, the internal and external politics of policing, and US’s abandonment of the war on drugs in favour of the war on terror. From this in season two an entirely new case is given to the team of detectives, this time corruption at the city harbour and an operation to bring down the union leader who’s been using his position to steal cargo and get illegal cargo past the port authorities in order to siphon money into his union. The themes explored in the season involve the death of traditional industry as man is replaced by machine, and the working class made increasingly desperate, not given enough work to survive. This change in gear was startling, original, and totally at odds with the traditional television series. Shows often change story lines from one season to the next, but they generally don’t change location, energy and characters in such an abrupt fashion. The tone of the show had changed, and it would again and again until the final episode, the creative team cunningly changed the performance of its title song: “Way down in the hole”, keeping the song but using a different artist with a different style for each of its seasons, basically stated that the show is the same but the pitch has changed. This style of television is what perhaps contributed most significantly to The Wire being compared more to literature than its own medium or cinema. This would come as no surprise to anyone reading the names of writers who have contributed scripts – George P Pelecanos, Richard Price, David Simon and Dennis Lehane all celebrated novelists and authors in their own right. They bring a unique sense of plotting, interaction and dialogue to The Wire that is not found in even the most brilliant of television. The humour which pervades The Wire also is an aspect which comes from its inherently literary outlook, the humour is always character based and each character is fully realised. The Wire is a literary creation at its heart, densely plotted, character driven.
Character is an important and integral piece of the puzzle, officially Detective Jimmy McNulty, a petulant, arrogant, narcissistic, intransigent, Irish copper is our main character who is deeply fond of recalcitrance. The unpleasantness of his character is not unusual for HBO, who with Tony Soprano managed to make a racist, sexist, cheating, murdering gangster likable; but where Tony is clearly the head of his family, McNulty often takes the side lines and only really the main character in Seasons one and five, in seasons two and four in particular McNulty became a recurring supporting character at times, especially season four which had almost totally disregarded him from the narrative. Imagine Jack Baur not appearing in four or five episodes of the next season of 24 if you will. But the expanse of characters grows with each passing year as the focus changes, the addition of the harbour workers and harbour police officers in season two; the focus changes to City Hall and the failure of politicians in season three with additions like Major Colvin, Mayor Royce, Councillor Carcetti, and many more. Season four switches again to the failure of the School system, introducing possibly the largest amount of characters with teachers and students a like. Season five switches to the local newspaper, the Baltimore Sun, this time examining the failings of the media in relation to the urban criminal environment with even more characters from reporters to editors.
This all culminates in a vast tapestry of faces and places which produces a Dickensian style and world (although the show would mock the use of that word in its fifth season, I think it remains an accurate adjective). Through the vast nature of long running television, Simon and company have managed to paint possibly the most accurate picture of inner city America, using their multi-faceted narrative and characters which are inextricably complex and also completely engaging. Individually the characters are achievements in themselves, the aforementioned McNulty whose lecherous ways often leads to infidelity and loss of personal dignity. He is not an action man, in fact not once does McNulty engage in a fist fight or shoot out in five seasons, the most danger the man is ever in is when he’s behind the wheel of his car after drinking a pint worth of Jameson’s whiskey. He is only just a centre piece for the show, but his is also a necessary narrative force, a catalyst that brings key pieces of the picture together through his insensitive and obstructive tendencies. In fact Jimmy McNulty on the surface seems to be another clichéd police officer, however The Wire is not a drama which rests on its laurels but rather outdoes expectation at every turn. The character is a rebel who is not above the self destructive tendencies however he is also a character whose pride is his undoing; McNulty is naïve enough to believe doing the right thing will save him in the end. A great deal of credit must go to Dominic West for his spirited and fearless performance as McNulty. Also from the world of the police is the Major and later Colonel Rawls, a sarcastic, temperamental, flawed, occasionally human often infuriating police chief who along with the Commissioner Burell manages to give an insightful commentary on the nature of running a police department and the immeasurably complex politics involved with crime statistics, and quick fixes to appease politicians and the general public. Often forced to opt for the easiest and cost conscious solution to a problem rather than the most effective. This is an aspect rarely scene in police drama, and one which has certainly never been tackled so well.
The WireIn the world of crime, we have Avon Barksdale and Stringer Bell, a complex power dynamic and differing values, street credibility verses business and profit, make their relationship one of the most interesting to follow especially during the third season. Perhaps the greatest performance on The Wire comes from Idris Elba playing the complex Stringer Bell. Bell is a merciless killer when necessary, a part time economics student and a comsummate businessman at all times. Stringer is a character who believes that he can out run, out maneuver the world he comes from. Ironically his system of business would lead to less murders, but to achieve this utopia for drug slinging he must commit more murders. At one point he’s advised that what kills more police than bullets and booze is bordom. “Keep it really boring String.” He tries as hard as he can, but his own mistakes and the trigger happy tendencies of those around him make it impossible. The Barksdale/Bell relationship is often immoral, but also human, remorseful and occasionally kind hearted. This illustrates another strength of The Wire, the lack of heroes and villains. With a few exceptions, a season two character called The Greek being one such, no character is beyond a sense of humanity and if their actions are immoral or amoral then it is because of the environment they’re formed within. Even season four and five’s lead drug dealer Marlow and his ruthless lieutenants Snoop and Chris are explained to a certain extent. Sometimes committing brutal murders as kind hearted favours or showing the lightest twinges or remorse at killing helpless victims.
To Read the Rest of the Analysis
To Listen to it as a Podcast
by Mike Dawson
Left Field Cinema
...
In terms of The Wire’s contemporaries it is easier to make the distinctions; I don’t think it’s particularly fair to compare HBO drama series to programmes produced for networks like ABC or Fox, as their content is dictated by an entirely differing set of rules and establishments, but when compared to another HBO dramas like The Sopranos the differences are clear. The Sopranos examining the same set of characters more or less over its six seasons and only gently tuning its thematic explorations as the seasons pass. If the Sopranos brings Shakespeare kicking violently to the turn of the 21st Century, Richard III and MacBeth as literary touchstones for Tony Soprano, then the allusions that can be brought to The Wire as them of the doomed Greek characters, the myths and tragedy which is played out wholesale through its institutions. Those indifferent Olympus Gods being captured in every commstat meeting in season 3. No character is bigger than the story. The focus shifts ever so subtly on The Sopranos however everything ultimately rests with Tony, where as The Wire has no hesitation at shifting its focus almost entirely from one season to the next. The first time it attempted such a shift was its bravest move, between seasons one and two. Season one focuses on the procedurals of a police investigation, and a drug dealing organisation; by presenting us with a fifty fifty split in terms of screen time, between the law enforcement and the law breakers. It examined issues surrounding the corruption of impoverished youth, the internal and external politics of policing, and US’s abandonment of the war on drugs in favour of the war on terror. From this in season two an entirely new case is given to the team of detectives, this time corruption at the city harbour and an operation to bring down the union leader who’s been using his position to steal cargo and get illegal cargo past the port authorities in order to siphon money into his union. The themes explored in the season involve the death of traditional industry as man is replaced by machine, and the working class made increasingly desperate, not given enough work to survive. This change in gear was startling, original, and totally at odds with the traditional television series. Shows often change story lines from one season to the next, but they generally don’t change location, energy and characters in such an abrupt fashion. The tone of the show had changed, and it would again and again until the final episode, the creative team cunningly changed the performance of its title song: “Way down in the hole”, keeping the song but using a different artist with a different style for each of its seasons, basically stated that the show is the same but the pitch has changed. This style of television is what perhaps contributed most significantly to The Wire being compared more to literature than its own medium or cinema. This would come as no surprise to anyone reading the names of writers who have contributed scripts – George P Pelecanos, Richard Price, David Simon and Dennis Lehane all celebrated novelists and authors in their own right. They bring a unique sense of plotting, interaction and dialogue to The Wire that is not found in even the most brilliant of television. The humour which pervades The Wire also is an aspect which comes from its inherently literary outlook, the humour is always character based and each character is fully realised. The Wire is a literary creation at its heart, densely plotted, character driven.
Character is an important and integral piece of the puzzle, officially Detective Jimmy McNulty, a petulant, arrogant, narcissistic, intransigent, Irish copper is our main character who is deeply fond of recalcitrance. The unpleasantness of his character is not unusual for HBO, who with Tony Soprano managed to make a racist, sexist, cheating, murdering gangster likable; but where Tony is clearly the head of his family, McNulty often takes the side lines and only really the main character in Seasons one and five, in seasons two and four in particular McNulty became a recurring supporting character at times, especially season four which had almost totally disregarded him from the narrative. Imagine Jack Baur not appearing in four or five episodes of the next season of 24 if you will. But the expanse of characters grows with each passing year as the focus changes, the addition of the harbour workers and harbour police officers in season two; the focus changes to City Hall and the failure of politicians in season three with additions like Major Colvin, Mayor Royce, Councillor Carcetti, and many more. Season four switches again to the failure of the School system, introducing possibly the largest amount of characters with teachers and students a like. Season five switches to the local newspaper, the Baltimore Sun, this time examining the failings of the media in relation to the urban criminal environment with even more characters from reporters to editors.
This all culminates in a vast tapestry of faces and places which produces a Dickensian style and world (although the show would mock the use of that word in its fifth season, I think it remains an accurate adjective). Through the vast nature of long running television, Simon and company have managed to paint possibly the most accurate picture of inner city America, using their multi-faceted narrative and characters which are inextricably complex and also completely engaging. Individually the characters are achievements in themselves, the aforementioned McNulty whose lecherous ways often leads to infidelity and loss of personal dignity. He is not an action man, in fact not once does McNulty engage in a fist fight or shoot out in five seasons, the most danger the man is ever in is when he’s behind the wheel of his car after drinking a pint worth of Jameson’s whiskey. He is only just a centre piece for the show, but his is also a necessary narrative force, a catalyst that brings key pieces of the picture together through his insensitive and obstructive tendencies. In fact Jimmy McNulty on the surface seems to be another clichéd police officer, however The Wire is not a drama which rests on its laurels but rather outdoes expectation at every turn. The character is a rebel who is not above the self destructive tendencies however he is also a character whose pride is his undoing; McNulty is naïve enough to believe doing the right thing will save him in the end. A great deal of credit must go to Dominic West for his spirited and fearless performance as McNulty. Also from the world of the police is the Major and later Colonel Rawls, a sarcastic, temperamental, flawed, occasionally human often infuriating police chief who along with the Commissioner Burell manages to give an insightful commentary on the nature of running a police department and the immeasurably complex politics involved with crime statistics, and quick fixes to appease politicians and the general public. Often forced to opt for the easiest and cost conscious solution to a problem rather than the most effective. This is an aspect rarely scene in police drama, and one which has certainly never been tackled so well.
The WireIn the world of crime, we have Avon Barksdale and Stringer Bell, a complex power dynamic and differing values, street credibility verses business and profit, make their relationship one of the most interesting to follow especially during the third season. Perhaps the greatest performance on The Wire comes from Idris Elba playing the complex Stringer Bell. Bell is a merciless killer when necessary, a part time economics student and a comsummate businessman at all times. Stringer is a character who believes that he can out run, out maneuver the world he comes from. Ironically his system of business would lead to less murders, but to achieve this utopia for drug slinging he must commit more murders. At one point he’s advised that what kills more police than bullets and booze is bordom. “Keep it really boring String.” He tries as hard as he can, but his own mistakes and the trigger happy tendencies of those around him make it impossible. The Barksdale/Bell relationship is often immoral, but also human, remorseful and occasionally kind hearted. This illustrates another strength of The Wire, the lack of heroes and villains. With a few exceptions, a season two character called The Greek being one such, no character is beyond a sense of humanity and if their actions are immoral or amoral then it is because of the environment they’re formed within. Even season four and five’s lead drug dealer Marlow and his ruthless lieutenants Snoop and Chris are explained to a certain extent. Sometimes committing brutal murders as kind hearted favours or showing the lightest twinges or remorse at killing helpless victims.
To Read the Rest of the Analysis
To Listen to it as a Podcast
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Stephen Gaunson: Cocksucker Blues -- The Rolling Stones and Some Notes on Robert Frank
Cocksucker Blues: The Rolling Stones and Some Notes on Robert Frank
by Stephen Gaunson
Senses of Cinema
...
In 1971, the Rolling Stones had found themselves in all sorts of bother. Due to some bad management by Allen Klein, following the release of Sticky Fingers (1971), they owed more taxes than they could pay. Forced into exile, they fled the United Kingdom and lived a nomadic existence, mainly between the South of France and US. During this time, they recorded their double-album, which was appropriately entitled, Exile on Main Street. Including songs originally intended for their previous albums, Let it Bleed (1969) and Sticky Fingers, Exile is a rough and tinny sounding album that certainly captures the band’s raucous lifestyle from the time. Recorded mostly in Keith Richard’s mansion in the south of France, and produced by Jimmy Miller, it is hardly what many expected from the Stones. Absent of the polish or mainstream appeal of their previous albums, Exile was certainly a risky album to release, especially considering that the band’s future and stability was under significant question. Despite Exile on Main Street later being celebrated as one of their finest, at the time it was met with a mixed reaction. Indeed, Jagger’s voice sounds tired and worn, whereas the album itself lacks the imagination, direction and creativity of their previous few.
Jagger who had became friendly with Robert Frank whilst mixing the album in Los Angeles, asked him to design the cover. For the front, Frank chose a wall in a dingy New York City tattoo parlour, which was covered with photographs of strange and unusual people. He felt it illustrated the raucous jumble of the Stones’ recording. For the back, Frank filmed the Stones with his Super 8 camera, and then made stills out of the individual frames to match his original wall photograph. Jagger was impressed with Frank’s concept, and asked whether he would make a documentary of the band’s forthcoming American tour. Since their infamous Altamont concert, the Stones had not played in America. For Jagger, Frank personified the picturesque and romantic America that he loved. Yet, perhaps he had other reasons to ask Frank: since departing America in 1969, Jagger had feared threats against his life. Indeed, since Altamont, the Hells Angels were incensed that Jagger would not use them, as promised, as security for future American concerts. Indeed, Robert Greenfield’s 1974 book, A Journey through America with the Rolling Stones, that documents the 1972 tour, often discusses the various death threats that Jagger faced during this time. In fact, just before the tour began, Greenfield tells a story of four young girls accosting Jagger in a Los Angeles car park and asking whether he is afraid of being shot, to which he sincerely replies, “Yeah, I am”. (2) Maybe Jagger felt that a documentary crew might deter any would-be assassins. Or more vainly: capture his tragic end for the world to mourn.
The film’s title, ‘Cocksucker Blues’, that plays over its credit sequence, is taken from a Stones’ song which Jagger wrote to fulfil the group’s contractual obligations with Decca Records. Early in the film, the Stones’ auxiliary manager, Marshall Chess, explains Jagger’s intention to write a song that was “unreleasable’”. With lyrics that include, ‘I need to get my cock sucked… Where can I get my ass fucked?’, the Stones left Decca and formed their private label, Rolling Stones Records. Having also dumped Allen Klein as their manager, by the early seventies the band were becoming a more professional unit. Actually, Frank’s film documents the last real wild tour of the Stones. However, besides one brilliant performance of ‘Midnight Rambler’, Cocksucker Blues is not the brilliant tour film that many want to believe. And although film director, Jim Jamusch, may be right that it is “one of the best movies about rock and roll”, it is monotonous and dull. Indeed, scenes which depict the Stones as living an ugly, vacant and decadent existence, fuelled by their notorious cohort of drug dealers, groupies and celebrities are hardly enthralling. What’s more, in addition to the band themself, Frank is equally interested in the sleazy world of the groupies and crew who spend most of their time strung out in hotel rooms, often waiting for the band to turn up.
Demonstrated in one scene by Jagger’s then wife, Bianca, who sits sullenly in a corner, playing a musical box over and over, there is little to stimulate an intelligent or intellectual mind, and certainly, Frank paints a vivid, unattractive and monotonous portrait of the rock world. Shot mostly in black and white, with the concert footage filmed in colour, Cocksucker Blues is aesthetically ugly and barely watchable. In every sense, it is a dreadful and unpleasant viewing experience, that visually bears no resemblance to Frank’s other beautifully composed still and moving pictures.
Furthermore, unlike his other films, in Cocksucker Blues Frank depicts his characters as fairly shallow and insular, which is as much a departure for a Stones documentary as it is for Frank. Actually, while Jagger in Gimme Shelter, and more recently Being Mick (Kevin Macdonald and Jim Gable, 2001) and Shine a Light (Martin Scorsese, 2009) is given an opportunity to speak intelligently and insightfully about himself and his work, in Cocksucker Blues Frank exposes the pop star as a fairly banal personality. For instance, in one scene, an irritable and seemingly stoned Jagger, dressed in only his briefs, pretentiously babbles away, asking Frank a series of mundane questions, such as whether “he wears the same socks everyday?”.
However, such observations are more about Jagger and his broader cinematic presence than merely Frank’s pursuit to demystify the pop star. In fact, the contrast to scenes featuring Keith Richards is quite apparent. Opposed to Jagger, Richards is a compelling character who certainly relishes his role as ‘rock outlaw’. Whether it is throwing television sets off his hotel balcony or confusing the maître d’ with his obscure room service requests, Richards is never dull. Jagger though, unlike Richards, is a more complicated personality because he resists his ‘rock outlaw’ persona. Actually, at the time of this film, Jagger, who was living more of a high society glamorous lifestyle, in a poll compiled by over 200 international fashion editors was even named one of the best dressed men of 1972. (3) On stage, Jagger dressed in his flamboyant and camp jumpsuit, looks remarkably different to his band members, who dress like rockers in denim jeans, jackets and t-shirts. In fact, on stage the Stones look more like a Jagger backing band, than a unified rock group. But, according to Adam Blok, Jagger’s contrast to his band members and resistance to his rock outlaw role is symptomatic of the way he has always embraced contradiction: “the middle class student of economics playing leather tough; a white Brit singing black American music, a heterosexual who liked to flirt with boys”. (4)
In Cocksucker Blues, Jagger’s striking contradiction is how his stage and private personas seem almost unrecognisable. As Truman Capote remarked in an interview with Andy Warhol about the 1972 tour:
He’s one of the few people I’ve seen who’s able to do the extrovert thing, and then revert into another person almost instantly. And so, in that sense, he’s really an extraordinary actor. And that’s exactly what he is because: a) he can’t sing; b) he can’t dance; c) he doesn’t know a damn thing about music. But he does know about coming on and being a great showman. (5)
As commentators often note, Jagger’s peculiar personality, has continued to make him an awkward cinematic presence. Writing on the film Performance (Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg, 1969), Adrian Danks felt that Jagger is unlike many of his pop star contemporaries: “Whereas Dylan and The Beatles engage and command the camera, and the space and people around them, Jagger’s presence and his performances are much more undecided, uncommanding even.” (6) In Performance and other films such as Ned Kelly (Tony Richardson, 1970), Jagger is incapable of channelling the charismatic and alluring Jagger stageman, and interestingly, in both these films, Jagger’s only moment of illumination comes when the narratives allow him to perform a musical interlude: ‘Memo to Turner’ in Performance and ‘Wild Colonial Boy’ in Ned Kelly.
In Cocksucker Blues, despite Jagger featuring more prominently than the other Stones, Frank refrains from making him the star. In fact, Frank devotes equal time to the assortment of degenerates who travel along with the tour. Hanging mostly around hotel rooms, their stories and general conversations are dull and quite excruciating to endure. Curiously though, Frank makes no distinction between these figures and the die-hard fans of the band, who seem just as degenerate and drug dependant. For instance, one fan outside the venue and without a ticket, describes herself as a very ‘sad’ and ‘lonesome’ person, after the authorities took away her ‘acid baby’: “what’s wrong with a mother on acid, who loves her child… she was born on acid?”, she disturbingly remarks. Yet, within the context of the film, this character does not seem any more disturbing from the groupies, band and crew who shoot up in their hotel rooms and sniff cocaine backstage. Like the vacant world of these characters, Frank’s film is insular and claustrophobic. Moving between hotels, rock venues, cars, and in one scene, an airplane, which includes the film’s most gratuitous scene of group sex, the touring party are constantly confined within closed spaces.
For a band celebrated as ‘rock outlaws’, there is something very constrictive and paradoxical about their existence. Actually, apart from the few exciting snippets of live clips, there is nothing all that exhilarating or electrifying about the Rolling Stones. No wonder Capote said that the Stones did nothing to “excite his imagination” and refused to write on them for Rolling Stone magazine. Furthermore, Cocksucker Blues does nothing to fetishise and mythologise the Stones, and really, it comes in direct contrast to Gimme Shelter that depicts the band as the ‘good guys’. In fact, regardless of the 1972 tour being their most successful to date, that also attracted many positive reviews and brought a number of high profile celebrities to the shows, Frank concentrates almost exclusively on the seedier, lonely and unpleasant moments.
To Read the Entire Essay
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by Stephen Gaunson
Senses of Cinema
...
In 1971, the Rolling Stones had found themselves in all sorts of bother. Due to some bad management by Allen Klein, following the release of Sticky Fingers (1971), they owed more taxes than they could pay. Forced into exile, they fled the United Kingdom and lived a nomadic existence, mainly between the South of France and US. During this time, they recorded their double-album, which was appropriately entitled, Exile on Main Street. Including songs originally intended for their previous albums, Let it Bleed (1969) and Sticky Fingers, Exile is a rough and tinny sounding album that certainly captures the band’s raucous lifestyle from the time. Recorded mostly in Keith Richard’s mansion in the south of France, and produced by Jimmy Miller, it is hardly what many expected from the Stones. Absent of the polish or mainstream appeal of their previous albums, Exile was certainly a risky album to release, especially considering that the band’s future and stability was under significant question. Despite Exile on Main Street later being celebrated as one of their finest, at the time it was met with a mixed reaction. Indeed, Jagger’s voice sounds tired and worn, whereas the album itself lacks the imagination, direction and creativity of their previous few.
Jagger who had became friendly with Robert Frank whilst mixing the album in Los Angeles, asked him to design the cover. For the front, Frank chose a wall in a dingy New York City tattoo parlour, which was covered with photographs of strange and unusual people. He felt it illustrated the raucous jumble of the Stones’ recording. For the back, Frank filmed the Stones with his Super 8 camera, and then made stills out of the individual frames to match his original wall photograph. Jagger was impressed with Frank’s concept, and asked whether he would make a documentary of the band’s forthcoming American tour. Since their infamous Altamont concert, the Stones had not played in America. For Jagger, Frank personified the picturesque and romantic America that he loved. Yet, perhaps he had other reasons to ask Frank: since departing America in 1969, Jagger had feared threats against his life. Indeed, since Altamont, the Hells Angels were incensed that Jagger would not use them, as promised, as security for future American concerts. Indeed, Robert Greenfield’s 1974 book, A Journey through America with the Rolling Stones, that documents the 1972 tour, often discusses the various death threats that Jagger faced during this time. In fact, just before the tour began, Greenfield tells a story of four young girls accosting Jagger in a Los Angeles car park and asking whether he is afraid of being shot, to which he sincerely replies, “Yeah, I am”. (2) Maybe Jagger felt that a documentary crew might deter any would-be assassins. Or more vainly: capture his tragic end for the world to mourn.
The film’s title, ‘Cocksucker Blues’, that plays over its credit sequence, is taken from a Stones’ song which Jagger wrote to fulfil the group’s contractual obligations with Decca Records. Early in the film, the Stones’ auxiliary manager, Marshall Chess, explains Jagger’s intention to write a song that was “unreleasable’”. With lyrics that include, ‘I need to get my cock sucked… Where can I get my ass fucked?’, the Stones left Decca and formed their private label, Rolling Stones Records. Having also dumped Allen Klein as their manager, by the early seventies the band were becoming a more professional unit. Actually, Frank’s film documents the last real wild tour of the Stones. However, besides one brilliant performance of ‘Midnight Rambler’, Cocksucker Blues is not the brilliant tour film that many want to believe. And although film director, Jim Jamusch, may be right that it is “one of the best movies about rock and roll”, it is monotonous and dull. Indeed, scenes which depict the Stones as living an ugly, vacant and decadent existence, fuelled by their notorious cohort of drug dealers, groupies and celebrities are hardly enthralling. What’s more, in addition to the band themself, Frank is equally interested in the sleazy world of the groupies and crew who spend most of their time strung out in hotel rooms, often waiting for the band to turn up.
Demonstrated in one scene by Jagger’s then wife, Bianca, who sits sullenly in a corner, playing a musical box over and over, there is little to stimulate an intelligent or intellectual mind, and certainly, Frank paints a vivid, unattractive and monotonous portrait of the rock world. Shot mostly in black and white, with the concert footage filmed in colour, Cocksucker Blues is aesthetically ugly and barely watchable. In every sense, it is a dreadful and unpleasant viewing experience, that visually bears no resemblance to Frank’s other beautifully composed still and moving pictures.
Furthermore, unlike his other films, in Cocksucker Blues Frank depicts his characters as fairly shallow and insular, which is as much a departure for a Stones documentary as it is for Frank. Actually, while Jagger in Gimme Shelter, and more recently Being Mick (Kevin Macdonald and Jim Gable, 2001) and Shine a Light (Martin Scorsese, 2009) is given an opportunity to speak intelligently and insightfully about himself and his work, in Cocksucker Blues Frank exposes the pop star as a fairly banal personality. For instance, in one scene, an irritable and seemingly stoned Jagger, dressed in only his briefs, pretentiously babbles away, asking Frank a series of mundane questions, such as whether “he wears the same socks everyday?”.
However, such observations are more about Jagger and his broader cinematic presence than merely Frank’s pursuit to demystify the pop star. In fact, the contrast to scenes featuring Keith Richards is quite apparent. Opposed to Jagger, Richards is a compelling character who certainly relishes his role as ‘rock outlaw’. Whether it is throwing television sets off his hotel balcony or confusing the maître d’ with his obscure room service requests, Richards is never dull. Jagger though, unlike Richards, is a more complicated personality because he resists his ‘rock outlaw’ persona. Actually, at the time of this film, Jagger, who was living more of a high society glamorous lifestyle, in a poll compiled by over 200 international fashion editors was even named one of the best dressed men of 1972. (3) On stage, Jagger dressed in his flamboyant and camp jumpsuit, looks remarkably different to his band members, who dress like rockers in denim jeans, jackets and t-shirts. In fact, on stage the Stones look more like a Jagger backing band, than a unified rock group. But, according to Adam Blok, Jagger’s contrast to his band members and resistance to his rock outlaw role is symptomatic of the way he has always embraced contradiction: “the middle class student of economics playing leather tough; a white Brit singing black American music, a heterosexual who liked to flirt with boys”. (4)
In Cocksucker Blues, Jagger’s striking contradiction is how his stage and private personas seem almost unrecognisable. As Truman Capote remarked in an interview with Andy Warhol about the 1972 tour:
He’s one of the few people I’ve seen who’s able to do the extrovert thing, and then revert into another person almost instantly. And so, in that sense, he’s really an extraordinary actor. And that’s exactly what he is because: a) he can’t sing; b) he can’t dance; c) he doesn’t know a damn thing about music. But he does know about coming on and being a great showman. (5)
As commentators often note, Jagger’s peculiar personality, has continued to make him an awkward cinematic presence. Writing on the film Performance (Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg, 1969), Adrian Danks felt that Jagger is unlike many of his pop star contemporaries: “Whereas Dylan and The Beatles engage and command the camera, and the space and people around them, Jagger’s presence and his performances are much more undecided, uncommanding even.” (6) In Performance and other films such as Ned Kelly (Tony Richardson, 1970), Jagger is incapable of channelling the charismatic and alluring Jagger stageman, and interestingly, in both these films, Jagger’s only moment of illumination comes when the narratives allow him to perform a musical interlude: ‘Memo to Turner’ in Performance and ‘Wild Colonial Boy’ in Ned Kelly.
In Cocksucker Blues, despite Jagger featuring more prominently than the other Stones, Frank refrains from making him the star. In fact, Frank devotes equal time to the assortment of degenerates who travel along with the tour. Hanging mostly around hotel rooms, their stories and general conversations are dull and quite excruciating to endure. Curiously though, Frank makes no distinction between these figures and the die-hard fans of the band, who seem just as degenerate and drug dependant. For instance, one fan outside the venue and without a ticket, describes herself as a very ‘sad’ and ‘lonesome’ person, after the authorities took away her ‘acid baby’: “what’s wrong with a mother on acid, who loves her child… she was born on acid?”, she disturbingly remarks. Yet, within the context of the film, this character does not seem any more disturbing from the groupies, band and crew who shoot up in their hotel rooms and sniff cocaine backstage. Like the vacant world of these characters, Frank’s film is insular and claustrophobic. Moving between hotels, rock venues, cars, and in one scene, an airplane, which includes the film’s most gratuitous scene of group sex, the touring party are constantly confined within closed spaces.
For a band celebrated as ‘rock outlaws’, there is something very constrictive and paradoxical about their existence. Actually, apart from the few exciting snippets of live clips, there is nothing all that exhilarating or electrifying about the Rolling Stones. No wonder Capote said that the Stones did nothing to “excite his imagination” and refused to write on them for Rolling Stone magazine. Furthermore, Cocksucker Blues does nothing to fetishise and mythologise the Stones, and really, it comes in direct contrast to Gimme Shelter that depicts the band as the ‘good guys’. In fact, regardless of the 1972 tour being their most successful to date, that also attracted many positive reviews and brought a number of high profile celebrities to the shows, Frank concentrates almost exclusively on the seedier, lonely and unpleasant moments.
To Read the Entire Essay
San Francisco BART System Censors the Public; Anonymous Responds With Retaliatory Action Against BART; Hacktivism’s Global Reach, From Targeting Scientology to Backing Wikileaks and the Arab Spring
Democracy Now
Bay Area Rapid Transit Accused of Censorship for Blocking Wireless Services to Foil Protests
The operators of the San Francisco area subway system are facing intense criticism for temporarily cutting off underground cell phone and mobile-internet service at four stations in an attempt to foil a protest. On Thursday, authorities with the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) removed power to underground cell phone towers at four stations to disrupt a protest against the recent death of Charles Hill, a homeless man who was shot dead on a train platform by a BART police officer in July. Police say Hill threw a knife at an officer. According to media reports, BART may be the first government agency in the United States to shutter mobile-internet and phone service in a bid to quash a demonstration. Some have compared the move to former Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak’s blockage of internet access across Egypt in January during the popular uprising against his rule. The Federal Communications Commission says it will investigate BART’s decision. We go to San Fransisco to speak with Davey D, a hip-hop journalist and activist who has been covering the protests. He runs the popular website "Davey D’s Hip Hop Corner" at DaveyD.com and is co-host of Hard Knock Radio on KPFA in Berkeley. We’re also joined by Catherine Crump, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy & Technology Project.
To Access the Segment
Disguised Member of Hacktivist Group "Anonymous" Defends Retaliatory Action Against BART
On Monday, officials with the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) were forced to close four train stations during the evening rush hour as free speech advocates attempted to disrupt the evening commute. The protest was called by the activist hacker group, Anonymous, in retaliation for BART’s decision to shut down cell phone and mobile-Internet service at four stations last week in an effort to disrupt a protest over the shooting of a homeless man. As part of its self-described "OpBart" campaign, Anonymous hacked into the BART website, myBart.org, and leaked the names, phone numbers and passwords of train passengers. We’re joined by a disguised Anonymous member who took part in "OpBart," speaking under the pseudonym “X.” "We gave them a taste of their own medicine," X says. … “We’re information activists just trying to make our world freer and a little better,” says X. On the question about the FBI investigation over the hack, X says, “I don’t want to get caught … I am literally running from coffee house to coffee house, from city to city, from state to state to try to avoid this massive, multi-million dollar manhunt they have put out for Anonymous. … What have we done, Amy? Point to one thing where we’ve hurt a human being … BART kills it’s innocent people. … How dare they do this in the United States of America?”
To Access this Segment
Hacktivism’s Global Reach, From Targeting Scientology to Backing Wikileaks and the Arab Spring
In recent years, online hackers who identified as being part of Anonymous and other groups have carried out dozens of high-profile online operations. When Mastercard and Visa suspended payments to WikiLeaks last December, hackers with Anonymous briefly took down the websites of both credit card giants. Other targets have included Sony, PayPal, Amazon, Bank of America, The Church of Scientology and the governments of Egypt, Tunisia and Syria. Now law enforcement agencies across the world have begun cracking down on the hackers. In July, 16 suspected members of Anonymous were arrested in the United States. We take an inside look at how online hacker activist groups operate with three guests: Peter Fein, an activist who works with the group Telecomix, a volunteer organization that has supported free speech and an open Internet in the Middle East. He also sometimes acts as a liaison to Anonymous and was one of several moderators on the Internet Relay Chat for OpBart–the latest Anonymous campaign targeting the San Francisco subway system. We’re also joined by Gabriella Coleman, an Assistant Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. Her first book, "Coding Freedom: The Aesthetics and the Ethics of Hacking" is forthcoming and she is currently working on a new book about Anonymous and digital activism. And we’re also joined on the phone by a member of the hacktivist group Anonymous, going by the pseudonym "X."
To Access this Segment
Bay Area Rapid Transit Accused of Censorship for Blocking Wireless Services to Foil Protests
The operators of the San Francisco area subway system are facing intense criticism for temporarily cutting off underground cell phone and mobile-internet service at four stations in an attempt to foil a protest. On Thursday, authorities with the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) removed power to underground cell phone towers at four stations to disrupt a protest against the recent death of Charles Hill, a homeless man who was shot dead on a train platform by a BART police officer in July. Police say Hill threw a knife at an officer. According to media reports, BART may be the first government agency in the United States to shutter mobile-internet and phone service in a bid to quash a demonstration. Some have compared the move to former Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak’s blockage of internet access across Egypt in January during the popular uprising against his rule. The Federal Communications Commission says it will investigate BART’s decision. We go to San Fransisco to speak with Davey D, a hip-hop journalist and activist who has been covering the protests. He runs the popular website "Davey D’s Hip Hop Corner" at DaveyD.com and is co-host of Hard Knock Radio on KPFA in Berkeley. We’re also joined by Catherine Crump, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy & Technology Project.
To Access the Segment
Disguised Member of Hacktivist Group "Anonymous" Defends Retaliatory Action Against BART
On Monday, officials with the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) were forced to close four train stations during the evening rush hour as free speech advocates attempted to disrupt the evening commute. The protest was called by the activist hacker group, Anonymous, in retaliation for BART’s decision to shut down cell phone and mobile-Internet service at four stations last week in an effort to disrupt a protest over the shooting of a homeless man. As part of its self-described "OpBart" campaign, Anonymous hacked into the BART website, myBart.org, and leaked the names, phone numbers and passwords of train passengers. We’re joined by a disguised Anonymous member who took part in "OpBart," speaking under the pseudonym “X.” "We gave them a taste of their own medicine," X says. … “We’re information activists just trying to make our world freer and a little better,” says X. On the question about the FBI investigation over the hack, X says, “I don’t want to get caught … I am literally running from coffee house to coffee house, from city to city, from state to state to try to avoid this massive, multi-million dollar manhunt they have put out for Anonymous. … What have we done, Amy? Point to one thing where we’ve hurt a human being … BART kills it’s innocent people. … How dare they do this in the United States of America?”
To Access this Segment
Hacktivism’s Global Reach, From Targeting Scientology to Backing Wikileaks and the Arab Spring
In recent years, online hackers who identified as being part of Anonymous and other groups have carried out dozens of high-profile online operations. When Mastercard and Visa suspended payments to WikiLeaks last December, hackers with Anonymous briefly took down the websites of both credit card giants. Other targets have included Sony, PayPal, Amazon, Bank of America, The Church of Scientology and the governments of Egypt, Tunisia and Syria. Now law enforcement agencies across the world have begun cracking down on the hackers. In July, 16 suspected members of Anonymous were arrested in the United States. We take an inside look at how online hacker activist groups operate with three guests: Peter Fein, an activist who works with the group Telecomix, a volunteer organization that has supported free speech and an open Internet in the Middle East. He also sometimes acts as a liaison to Anonymous and was one of several moderators on the Internet Relay Chat for OpBart–the latest Anonymous campaign targeting the San Francisco subway system. We’re also joined by Gabriella Coleman, an Assistant Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. Her first book, "Coding Freedom: The Aesthetics and the Ethics of Hacking" is forthcoming and she is currently working on a new book about Anonymous and digital activism. And we’re also joined on the phone by a member of the hacktivist group Anonymous, going by the pseudonym "X."
To Access this Segment
Left Field Cinema: Ingmar Bergman's Shame (1968)
Ingmar Bergman: Shame
Left Field Cinema
The late 60’s was a busy time for Bergman, in the space of four years he’d produced films such as Persona, Hour of the Wolf, The Rite, and The Passion of Anna. Whilst typically Bergman fans would accredit Persona with the high honors for this period of his career, and Persona is a truly remarkable film and one of Bergman’s best with truly cogent thematic explorations. However predilection is Shame for its darker story and combination and manifestation of both internal and external conflicts through possibly the most depressing, down-beat and unrelentingly bleak of all of his films.
The plot follows Eva and Jan Rosenberg played by Liv Ullmann and Max Von Sydow; they are a childless couple, and a pair of musicians. War has broken out on the mainland and to escape it they’ve migrated to an island and set-up a farm. But the war has followed them and hostilities begin again near their new home. Soon Eva and Jan find themselves in the midst of the bloody conflict again, being attacked by one side and then accused of collaborating by the other side, abused by figures in authority and corrupted by their environment. They want to acquiesce to the demands of those around them but no matter which approach they attempt they help themselves and condemn themselves simultantiously. It is a film of two very clear and distinctive halves, the first being a long and rather plodding portrayal of our central couple’s existence as they elude the war directly but indirectly its consequences are still felt. The second half very literally starts with a bang and then doesn’t let up for what is a terrifying decent into hell. For this half any point where the situation doesn’t seem like it can get any worse it can and it will.
Shame is set in an unknown time in an unknown place which closely resembles 1960’s Sweden if only for the language and the weaponry. To clarify: it’s not set in any particular era and therefore presents a vivid demonstration of how quickly any civilisation can break down and destroy itself under duress. This is seen through the microcosm of Eva, and Jan, but also that of Jacobi (here played wonderfully by Gunnar Bjornstrand) a colonel who is a friend of the couple and lives locally. They are the central characters, typically of Bergman films he uses a minimal cast, there are plenty of supporting characters too, but the concentration is most definitely on the central three and using them to show the ability of human beings to violently change in times of war. Someone we perceive to be an honest decent person (given the right circumstances) could be a rapist, thief or murderer when given too much strain, or presented the right opportunity for them to be so. Someone with murderous impulses could have secretly restrained them for their entire lives as so not to break any of society’s laws against such activities, a war time situation then gives them a chance to be everything they’re murderously capable of being with the full endorsement of the state.
A similar film to Shame is Michael Haneke’s 2003 film Time of the Wolf a post-apocalyptic feature with a difference, cold blooded and brutal, this was the opposite of the Hollywood portrayal which often exhibit post apocalyptic worlds as rather cool places to be, The Matrix for example, worlds where conventional and common problems and worries like finance and job promotions are replaced with noble struggles and sexual freedoms. “Fuck anyone you want you could be dead tomorrow!” when the reality, as presented in Time of the Wolf and Shame is “rape anyone you want, you could be dead tomorrow.” The romantic vision of mankind united in a costly but righteous struggle to survive is replaced with the more accurate and realistic version of mankind falling apart and unable to stand together because of a collective greed brought about by our own innately selfish desire to “look out for number one” so to speak. This ignorance of the plight of others spreads to everyone, ignorance then begets ignorance and all are complicit in the destruction of civilisation as neighbors turn their backs on neighbors, friends are betrayed to save families and lives are lost to the ever increasing circle of violence.
To Read the Rest of the Analysis
To Listen to It as a Podcast
Left Field Cinema
The late 60’s was a busy time for Bergman, in the space of four years he’d produced films such as Persona, Hour of the Wolf, The Rite, and The Passion of Anna. Whilst typically Bergman fans would accredit Persona with the high honors for this period of his career, and Persona is a truly remarkable film and one of Bergman’s best with truly cogent thematic explorations. However predilection is Shame for its darker story and combination and manifestation of both internal and external conflicts through possibly the most depressing, down-beat and unrelentingly bleak of all of his films.
The plot follows Eva and Jan Rosenberg played by Liv Ullmann and Max Von Sydow; they are a childless couple, and a pair of musicians. War has broken out on the mainland and to escape it they’ve migrated to an island and set-up a farm. But the war has followed them and hostilities begin again near their new home. Soon Eva and Jan find themselves in the midst of the bloody conflict again, being attacked by one side and then accused of collaborating by the other side, abused by figures in authority and corrupted by their environment. They want to acquiesce to the demands of those around them but no matter which approach they attempt they help themselves and condemn themselves simultantiously. It is a film of two very clear and distinctive halves, the first being a long and rather plodding portrayal of our central couple’s existence as they elude the war directly but indirectly its consequences are still felt. The second half very literally starts with a bang and then doesn’t let up for what is a terrifying decent into hell. For this half any point where the situation doesn’t seem like it can get any worse it can and it will.
Shame is set in an unknown time in an unknown place which closely resembles 1960’s Sweden if only for the language and the weaponry. To clarify: it’s not set in any particular era and therefore presents a vivid demonstration of how quickly any civilisation can break down and destroy itself under duress. This is seen through the microcosm of Eva, and Jan, but also that of Jacobi (here played wonderfully by Gunnar Bjornstrand) a colonel who is a friend of the couple and lives locally. They are the central characters, typically of Bergman films he uses a minimal cast, there are plenty of supporting characters too, but the concentration is most definitely on the central three and using them to show the ability of human beings to violently change in times of war. Someone we perceive to be an honest decent person (given the right circumstances) could be a rapist, thief or murderer when given too much strain, or presented the right opportunity for them to be so. Someone with murderous impulses could have secretly restrained them for their entire lives as so not to break any of society’s laws against such activities, a war time situation then gives them a chance to be everything they’re murderously capable of being with the full endorsement of the state.
A similar film to Shame is Michael Haneke’s 2003 film Time of the Wolf a post-apocalyptic feature with a difference, cold blooded and brutal, this was the opposite of the Hollywood portrayal which often exhibit post apocalyptic worlds as rather cool places to be, The Matrix for example, worlds where conventional and common problems and worries like finance and job promotions are replaced with noble struggles and sexual freedoms. “Fuck anyone you want you could be dead tomorrow!” when the reality, as presented in Time of the Wolf and Shame is “rape anyone you want, you could be dead tomorrow.” The romantic vision of mankind united in a costly but righteous struggle to survive is replaced with the more accurate and realistic version of mankind falling apart and unable to stand together because of a collective greed brought about by our own innately selfish desire to “look out for number one” so to speak. This ignorance of the plight of others spreads to everyone, ignorance then begets ignorance and all are complicit in the destruction of civilisation as neighbors turn their backs on neighbors, friends are betrayed to save families and lives are lost to the ever increasing circle of violence.
To Read the Rest of the Analysis
To Listen to It as a Podcast
Ideas: How to Think About Science - Episode 6 - James Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis
How to Think About Science: Episode 6 - James Lovelock
Ideas (CBC)
Forty-years ago British scientist James Lovelock put forward the first elements of what he would come to call the Gaia theory. Named for the ancient Greek goddess of the earth, it held that the earth as a whole functions as a self-regulating system. At first many biologists scoffed. Today, Lovelock's ideas are more widely accepted, even in circles where he was initially scorned. But even as he has been winning scientific honours, James Lovelock has been growing more pessimistic about the prospects for contemporary civilization.
In this episode David Cayley presents a profile of James Lovelock. It tells the story of a career in science that began a long time ago.
To Listen to the Episode
Ideas (CBC)
Forty-years ago British scientist James Lovelock put forward the first elements of what he would come to call the Gaia theory. Named for the ancient Greek goddess of the earth, it held that the earth as a whole functions as a self-regulating system. At first many biologists scoffed. Today, Lovelock's ideas are more widely accepted, even in circles where he was initially scorned. But even as he has been winning scientific honours, James Lovelock has been growing more pessimistic about the prospects for contemporary civilization.
In this episode David Cayley presents a profile of James Lovelock. It tells the story of a career in science that began a long time ago.
To Listen to the Episode
Monday, August 15, 2011
Scott McLemee: Culture War to Shooting War
Culture War to Shooting War
By Scott McLemee
Inside Higher Education
Shortly before the bombing and shooting spree in Norway last month that left 77 people dead, Anders Behring Breivik e-mailed a thousand people the document he called his “compendium” -- a more accurate label than “manifesto,” as some have called it, since large chunks of text were cut and pasted from various sources rather than composed by the murderer himself. In its opening, Breivik says he spent three years preparing the work. It runs to 1,518 pages in PDF. There is no table of contents or index. Its final pages contain a number of photographic self-portraits. In one, Breivik is dressed in a uniform with a patch that reads “Special Issue Multiculti Traitor Hunting Permit.” He holds a weapon, aiming it somewhat to the reader’s left.
Just having the file open on my computer’s desktop for the past couple of days has proven to be depressing. I was in no hurry to read Breivik’s magnum rantus, and the decision to download it was not a matter of morbid curiosity. If anything, I tried to avoid learning more about the massacre than absolutely necessary. Certain kinds of sensationalism leave you feeling contaminated. In any case, the inescapable details proved all too familiar. Breivik’s anti-feminism and Islamophobic rage, his conviction that “multiculturalism” and “political correctness” are destroying civilization, and must be stopped -- all of this is the usual stuff of contemporary resentment. Even his "traitor hunting permit" is standard-issue misanthropy.
But there turns out to be more to Breivik’s text than the usual hateful boilerplate. The killer was also a perverse sort of public intellectual.
He devotes almost 30 pages of single-spaced text to a peculiar tour of 20th-century thought. It is poorly informed but passionate. Breivik thinks of himself as an enemy of critical theory, which, by his reckoning, has ruined modern culture by undermining the rightful authority of European males. In particular, he appears obsessed with the influence of the Frankfurt School of philosophers and social scientists who fled the Nazis in the 1930s. (Many ended up in the United States; their research foundation, the Institute for Social Research, was affiliated with Columbia University between 1935 and 1950.) From the account in Breivik’s compendium, the school emerges as a tireless, ruthless, single-minded force seeking to destroy the good old days. This is unintentionally funny, given that a number of Frankfurt School thinkers were culturally -- and by the 1960s even politically -- rather conservative.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
By Scott McLemee
Inside Higher Education
Shortly before the bombing and shooting spree in Norway last month that left 77 people dead, Anders Behring Breivik e-mailed a thousand people the document he called his “compendium” -- a more accurate label than “manifesto,” as some have called it, since large chunks of text were cut and pasted from various sources rather than composed by the murderer himself. In its opening, Breivik says he spent three years preparing the work. It runs to 1,518 pages in PDF. There is no table of contents or index. Its final pages contain a number of photographic self-portraits. In one, Breivik is dressed in a uniform with a patch that reads “Special Issue Multiculti Traitor Hunting Permit.” He holds a weapon, aiming it somewhat to the reader’s left.
Just having the file open on my computer’s desktop for the past couple of days has proven to be depressing. I was in no hurry to read Breivik’s magnum rantus, and the decision to download it was not a matter of morbid curiosity. If anything, I tried to avoid learning more about the massacre than absolutely necessary. Certain kinds of sensationalism leave you feeling contaminated. In any case, the inescapable details proved all too familiar. Breivik’s anti-feminism and Islamophobic rage, his conviction that “multiculturalism” and “political correctness” are destroying civilization, and must be stopped -- all of this is the usual stuff of contemporary resentment. Even his "traitor hunting permit" is standard-issue misanthropy.
But there turns out to be more to Breivik’s text than the usual hateful boilerplate. The killer was also a perverse sort of public intellectual.
He devotes almost 30 pages of single-spaced text to a peculiar tour of 20th-century thought. It is poorly informed but passionate. Breivik thinks of himself as an enemy of critical theory, which, by his reckoning, has ruined modern culture by undermining the rightful authority of European males. In particular, he appears obsessed with the influence of the Frankfurt School of philosophers and social scientists who fled the Nazis in the 1930s. (Many ended up in the United States; their research foundation, the Institute for Social Research, was affiliated with Columbia University between 1935 and 1950.) From the account in Breivik’s compendium, the school emerges as a tireless, ruthless, single-minded force seeking to destroy the good old days. This is unintentionally funny, given that a number of Frankfurt School thinkers were culturally -- and by the 1960s even politically -- rather conservative.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
Yves Smith: Why "business needs certainty" is destructive
Why "business needs certainty" is destructive
By Yves Smith
Salon
If you read the business and even the political press, you've doubtless encountered the claim that the economy is a mess because the threat to reregulate in the wake of a global-economy-wrecking financial crisis is creating "uncertainty." That is touted as the reason why corporations are sitting on their hands and not doing much in the way of hiring and investing.
This is propaganda that needs to be laughed out of the room.
I approach this issue as as a business practitioner. I have spent decades advising major financial institutions, private equity and hedge funds, and very wealthy individuals (Forbes 400 level) on enterprises they own. I've run a profit center in a major financial firm and have have also operated a consulting business for over 20 years. So I've had extensive exposure to the dysfunction I am about to describe.
Commerce is all about making decisions and committing resources with the hope of earning profit when the managers cannot know the future. "Uncertainty" is used casually by the media, but when trying to confront the vagaries of what might happen, analysts distinguish risk from "uncertainty", which for them has a very specific meaning. "Risk" is what Donald Rumsfeld characterized as a known unknown. You can still estimate the range of likely outcomes and make a good stab at estimating probabilities within that range. For instance, if you open an ice cream store in a resort area, you can make a very good estimate of what the fixed costs and the margins on sales will be. It is much harder to predict how much ice cream you will actually sell. That is turn depends largely on foot traffic which in turn is largely a function of the weather (and you can look at past weather patterns to get a rough idea) and how many people visit that town (which is likely a function of the economy and how that particular resort area does in a weak economy).
Uncertainty, by contrast, is unknown unknowns. It is the sort of risk you can't estimate in advance. So businesses also have to be good at adapting when Shit Happens. Sometimes that Shit Happening can be favorable, but they still need to be able to exploit opportunities (like an exceptionally hot summer producing off the charts demand for ice cream) or disaster (like the Fukushima meltdown disrupting global supply chains). That implies having some slack or extra resources at your disposal, or being able to get ready access to them at not too catastrophic a cost.
So why aren't businesses investing or hiring? "Uncertainty" as far as regulations are concerned is not a major driver. Surveys show that the "uncertainty" bandied about in the press really translates into "the economy stinks, I'm not in a business that benefits from a bad economy, and I'm not going to take a chance when I have no idea when things might turn around."
The "certainty" they are looking for is concrete evidence that prevailing conditions have really turned. But with so many people unemployed, growth flagging in advanced economies, China and other emerging economies putting on the brake as their inflation rates become too high, and a very real risk of another financial crisis kicking off in the Eurozone, there isn't any reason to hope for things to magically get better on their own any time soon. In fact, if you look at the discussion above, we actually have a very high degree of certainty, just of the wrong sort, namely that growth will low to negative for easily the next two years, and quite possibly for a Japan-style extended period.
So why this finger pointing at intrusive regulations, particularly since they are mysteriously absent? For instance, Dodd Frank is being water down in the process of detailed rulemaking, and the famed Obamacare actually enriches Big Pharma and the health insurers.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
By Yves Smith
Salon
If you read the business and even the political press, you've doubtless encountered the claim that the economy is a mess because the threat to reregulate in the wake of a global-economy-wrecking financial crisis is creating "uncertainty." That is touted as the reason why corporations are sitting on their hands and not doing much in the way of hiring and investing.
This is propaganda that needs to be laughed out of the room.
I approach this issue as as a business practitioner. I have spent decades advising major financial institutions, private equity and hedge funds, and very wealthy individuals (Forbes 400 level) on enterprises they own. I've run a profit center in a major financial firm and have have also operated a consulting business for over 20 years. So I've had extensive exposure to the dysfunction I am about to describe.
Commerce is all about making decisions and committing resources with the hope of earning profit when the managers cannot know the future. "Uncertainty" is used casually by the media, but when trying to confront the vagaries of what might happen, analysts distinguish risk from "uncertainty", which for them has a very specific meaning. "Risk" is what Donald Rumsfeld characterized as a known unknown. You can still estimate the range of likely outcomes and make a good stab at estimating probabilities within that range. For instance, if you open an ice cream store in a resort area, you can make a very good estimate of what the fixed costs and the margins on sales will be. It is much harder to predict how much ice cream you will actually sell. That is turn depends largely on foot traffic which in turn is largely a function of the weather (and you can look at past weather patterns to get a rough idea) and how many people visit that town (which is likely a function of the economy and how that particular resort area does in a weak economy).
Uncertainty, by contrast, is unknown unknowns. It is the sort of risk you can't estimate in advance. So businesses also have to be good at adapting when Shit Happens. Sometimes that Shit Happening can be favorable, but they still need to be able to exploit opportunities (like an exceptionally hot summer producing off the charts demand for ice cream) or disaster (like the Fukushima meltdown disrupting global supply chains). That implies having some slack or extra resources at your disposal, or being able to get ready access to them at not too catastrophic a cost.
So why aren't businesses investing or hiring? "Uncertainty" as far as regulations are concerned is not a major driver. Surveys show that the "uncertainty" bandied about in the press really translates into "the economy stinks, I'm not in a business that benefits from a bad economy, and I'm not going to take a chance when I have no idea when things might turn around."
The "certainty" they are looking for is concrete evidence that prevailing conditions have really turned. But with so many people unemployed, growth flagging in advanced economies, China and other emerging economies putting on the brake as their inflation rates become too high, and a very real risk of another financial crisis kicking off in the Eurozone, there isn't any reason to hope for things to magically get better on their own any time soon. In fact, if you look at the discussion above, we actually have a very high degree of certainty, just of the wrong sort, namely that growth will low to negative for easily the next two years, and quite possibly for a Japan-style extended period.
So why this finger pointing at intrusive regulations, particularly since they are mysteriously absent? For instance, Dodd Frank is being water down in the process of detailed rulemaking, and the famed Obamacare actually enriches Big Pharma and the health insurers.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
Democracy Now: Billy Bragg -- British Rocker on Norway Attacks, Activism & His Song on Murdoch, “Never Buy The Sun”
Billy Bragg: British Rocker on Norway Attacks, Activism & His Song on Murdoch, “Never Buy The Sun”
Democracy Now
We spend the hour with legendary British rocker and activist, Billy Bragg. His music career began in the late 1970s in London when he formed the punk rock band Riff Raff. His 1984 album, "Brewing Up with Billy Bragg," included the song "It Says Here,” a critique of politics and tabloid newspapers that still rings true today in the wake of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. In 1998 and 2000, he participated in two well-known albums — Mermaid Avenue, Volumes 1 and 2 — that gave voice to another folk troubadour who sang about the poor and working class: Woody Guthrie. Bragg composed music for lyrics written by Guthrie, and performed many of the songs alongside the album’s other main contributor, Wilco. But to speak of Bragg simply as a singer-songwriter misses his passion for speaking out against injustice, and fighting for many causes. In the 1980s, he called for support for the 1984 strike by the National Union of Mineworkers, one of the most significant chapters in Britain’s trade union history. It was ultimately defeated under the watch of then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and Bragg went on to organize for the defeat of Thatcher and her Conservative government. He is on tour now in the United States and joins us for an extended interview and performance. He reflects on his long history of activism and the attacks in Norway, and sings several songs, including his latest, "Never Buy The Sun," about the phone-hacking scandal engulfing the Rupert Murdoch media empire.
To Watch/Listen/Read
Democracy Now
We spend the hour with legendary British rocker and activist, Billy Bragg. His music career began in the late 1970s in London when he formed the punk rock band Riff Raff. His 1984 album, "Brewing Up with Billy Bragg," included the song "It Says Here,” a critique of politics and tabloid newspapers that still rings true today in the wake of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. In 1998 and 2000, he participated in two well-known albums — Mermaid Avenue, Volumes 1 and 2 — that gave voice to another folk troubadour who sang about the poor and working class: Woody Guthrie. Bragg composed music for lyrics written by Guthrie, and performed many of the songs alongside the album’s other main contributor, Wilco. But to speak of Bragg simply as a singer-songwriter misses his passion for speaking out against injustice, and fighting for many causes. In the 1980s, he called for support for the 1984 strike by the National Union of Mineworkers, one of the most significant chapters in Britain’s trade union history. It was ultimately defeated under the watch of then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and Bragg went on to organize for the defeat of Thatcher and her Conservative government. He is on tour now in the United States and joins us for an extended interview and performance. He reflects on his long history of activism and the attacks in Norway, and sings several songs, including his latest, "Never Buy The Sun," about the phone-hacking scandal engulfing the Rupert Murdoch media empire.
To Watch/Listen/Read
David Harvey: Feral Capitalism Hits the Streets
Feral Capitalism Hits the Streets
by David Harvey
Reading Marx's Capital
“Nihilistic and feral teenagers” the Daily Mail called them: the crazy youths from all walks of life who raced around the streets mindlessly and desperately hurling bricks, stones and bottles at the cops while looting here and setting bonfires there, leading the authorities on a merry chase of catch-as-catch-can as they tweeted their way from one strategic target to another.
The word “feral” pulled me up short. It reminded me of how the communards in Paris in 1871 were depicted as wild animals, as hyenas, that deserved to be (and often were) summarily executed in the name of the sanctity of private property, morality, religion, and the family. But then the word conjured up another association: Tony Blair attacking the “feral media,” having for so long been comfortably lodged in the left pocket of Rupert Murdoch only later to be substituted as Murdoch reached into his right pocket to pluck out David Cameron.
There will of course be the usual hysterical debate between those prone to view the riots as a matter of pure, unbridled and inexcusable criminality, and those anxious to contextualize events against a background of bad policing; continuing racism and unjustified persecution of youths and minorities; mass unemployment of the young; burgeoning social deprivation; and a mindless politics of austerity that has nothing to do with economics and everything to do with the perpetuation and consolidation of personal wealth and power. Some may even get around to condemning the meaningless and alienating qualities of so many jobs and so much of daily life in the midst of immense but unevenly distributed potentiality for human flourishing.
If we are lucky, we will have commissions and reports to say all over again what was said of Brixton and Toxteth in the Thatcher years. I say ‘lucky’ because the feral instincts of the current Prime Minister seem more attuned to turn on the water cannons, to call in the tear gas brigade and use the rubber bullets while pontificating unctuously about the loss of moral compass, the decline of civility and the sad deterioration of family values and discipline among errant youths.
But the problem is that we live in a society where capitalism itself has become rampantly feral. Feral politicians cheat on their expenses, feral bankers plunder the public purse for all its worth, CEOs, hedge fund operators and private equity geniuses loot the world of wealth, telephone and credit card companies load mysterious charges on everyone’s bills, shopkeepers price gouge, and, at the drop of a hat swindlers and scam artists get to practice three-card monte right up into the highest echelons of the corporate and political world.
A political economy of mass dispossession, of predatory practices to the point of daylight robbery, particularly of the poor and the vulnerable, the unsophisticated and the legally unprotected, has become the order of the day. Does anyone believe it is possible to find an honest capitalist, an honest banker, an honest politician, an honest shopkeeper or an honest police commisioner any more? Yes, they do exist. But only as a minority that everyone else regards as stupid. Get smart. Get Easy Profits. Defraud and steal! The odds of getting caught are low. And in any case there are plenty of ways to shield personal wealth from the costs of corporate malfeasance.
What I say may sound shocking. Most of us don’t see it because we don’t want to. Certainly no politician dare say it and the press would only print it to heap scorn upon the sayer. But my guess is that every street rioter knows exactly what I mean. They are only doing what everyone else is doing, though in a different way – more blatently and visibly in the streets. Thatcherism unchained the feral instincts of capitalism (the “animal spirits” of the entreprenuer they coyly named it) and nothing has transpired to curb them since. Slash and burn is now openly the motto of the ruling classes pretty much everywhere.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
by David Harvey
Reading Marx's Capital
“Nihilistic and feral teenagers” the Daily Mail called them: the crazy youths from all walks of life who raced around the streets mindlessly and desperately hurling bricks, stones and bottles at the cops while looting here and setting bonfires there, leading the authorities on a merry chase of catch-as-catch-can as they tweeted their way from one strategic target to another.
The word “feral” pulled me up short. It reminded me of how the communards in Paris in 1871 were depicted as wild animals, as hyenas, that deserved to be (and often were) summarily executed in the name of the sanctity of private property, morality, religion, and the family. But then the word conjured up another association: Tony Blair attacking the “feral media,” having for so long been comfortably lodged in the left pocket of Rupert Murdoch only later to be substituted as Murdoch reached into his right pocket to pluck out David Cameron.
There will of course be the usual hysterical debate between those prone to view the riots as a matter of pure, unbridled and inexcusable criminality, and those anxious to contextualize events against a background of bad policing; continuing racism and unjustified persecution of youths and minorities; mass unemployment of the young; burgeoning social deprivation; and a mindless politics of austerity that has nothing to do with economics and everything to do with the perpetuation and consolidation of personal wealth and power. Some may even get around to condemning the meaningless and alienating qualities of so many jobs and so much of daily life in the midst of immense but unevenly distributed potentiality for human flourishing.
If we are lucky, we will have commissions and reports to say all over again what was said of Brixton and Toxteth in the Thatcher years. I say ‘lucky’ because the feral instincts of the current Prime Minister seem more attuned to turn on the water cannons, to call in the tear gas brigade and use the rubber bullets while pontificating unctuously about the loss of moral compass, the decline of civility and the sad deterioration of family values and discipline among errant youths.
But the problem is that we live in a society where capitalism itself has become rampantly feral. Feral politicians cheat on their expenses, feral bankers plunder the public purse for all its worth, CEOs, hedge fund operators and private equity geniuses loot the world of wealth, telephone and credit card companies load mysterious charges on everyone’s bills, shopkeepers price gouge, and, at the drop of a hat swindlers and scam artists get to practice three-card monte right up into the highest echelons of the corporate and political world.
A political economy of mass dispossession, of predatory practices to the point of daylight robbery, particularly of the poor and the vulnerable, the unsophisticated and the legally unprotected, has become the order of the day. Does anyone believe it is possible to find an honest capitalist, an honest banker, an honest politician, an honest shopkeeper or an honest police commisioner any more? Yes, they do exist. But only as a minority that everyone else regards as stupid. Get smart. Get Easy Profits. Defraud and steal! The odds of getting caught are low. And in any case there are plenty of ways to shield personal wealth from the costs of corporate malfeasance.
What I say may sound shocking. Most of us don’t see it because we don’t want to. Certainly no politician dare say it and the press would only print it to heap scorn upon the sayer. But my guess is that every street rioter knows exactly what I mean. They are only doing what everyone else is doing, though in a different way – more blatently and visibly in the streets. Thatcherism unchained the feral instincts of capitalism (the “animal spirits” of the entreprenuer they coyly named it) and nothing has transpired to curb them since. Slash and burn is now openly the motto of the ruling classes pretty much everywhere.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
Scott Horton: A Setback For Obama’s War On Whistleblowers; Dennis James and Barbara Harvey: BDS Movement Ignites Amid U.S. Food Co-ops
Law and Disorder Radio (WBAI: New York Public Radio)
A Setback For Obama’s War On Whistleblowers
The Department of Justice’s campaign to stigmatize whistle blowers and force reporters to open up their notebooks under the Espionage Act is failing. Recently, Judge Leonie M. Brinkema in an opinion released a couple weeks ago, said prosecutors could not force author and New York Times reporter to testify about how he learned certain classified information for a book on the Central Intelligence Agency. In another example, a former senior NSA official was charged under the Espionage Act and accused of leaking classified information to a newspaper. He recently walked out of court a free man, sentenced to a year’s probation and community service, after hearing the judge excoriate the government for its handling of the case.
Attorney Scott Horton:
Guest – New York attorney Scott Horton, known for his work in human rights law and the law of armed conflict. Scott is also the contributing editor to Harper’s Magazine.
BDS Movement Ignites Amid U.S. Food Co-ops
An emerging BDS movement is making waves at a Food Coop in Brooklyn, similar to the successful Boycott Divestment Sanction effort last summer in Olympia, Washington. The Olympia movement was pioneered by Nobel Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu in the home city of the Corrie family. The Brooklyn BDS protest is causing backlash amid the Jewish community. Some Jewish leaders opposed to the movement say it reveals antisemitism and that the assumption of Israel’s right to exist isn’t shared.
The boycott, in this case urges people around the world to stop buying products that support Israeli infrastructure such as Loreal, Motorola, Caterpillar, and many more. Sanctions, would target those companies exporting to Israel and applying tariffs or trade barriers. Divest or disinvestment, is the call to divest from companies, institutions and universities that support Israel’s occupation and lobby power.
Attorney Dennis James:
Attorney Barbara Harvey:
WeDivest.org / WhoProfits.org / BDSMovement.net / Al-Shabaka.org
Guest - National Lawyers Guild attorney Dennis James. Dennis has been active in anti-war, civil rights, and social justice issues. He recently traveled to Gaza with a UN delegation in 2009.
Guest - Attorney Barbara Harvey in Detroit who has worked with BDS activists and a former JVP Board Member
To Listen to the Episode
A Setback For Obama’s War On Whistleblowers
The Department of Justice’s campaign to stigmatize whistle blowers and force reporters to open up their notebooks under the Espionage Act is failing. Recently, Judge Leonie M. Brinkema in an opinion released a couple weeks ago, said prosecutors could not force author and New York Times reporter to testify about how he learned certain classified information for a book on the Central Intelligence Agency. In another example, a former senior NSA official was charged under the Espionage Act and accused of leaking classified information to a newspaper. He recently walked out of court a free man, sentenced to a year’s probation and community service, after hearing the judge excoriate the government for its handling of the case.
Attorney Scott Horton:
Obama criticized the oppression of whistle blowers on the campaign trail.
He talked about how early in his career he had represented whistle blowers, and they play a part in our society and they need our protection. When confronted now, he shoots back I was talking about whistle blowers in areas other than national security.
There have dozens of whistle blowers in the national security area, but I would say the pattern that unfolds, is there’s an internal investigation, the person is stripped of their security classification, they usually lose their job.
These prosecutions don’t lead to long prison terms.
I think what we see is a turn to the Espionage Act in order to justify far more serious terms and have a 10 or 20 year sentence.
The Espionage Act can be used to justify going after reporters. Access to their internet accounts, phone records, and compelling reporters to give evidence against their sources.
The Drake case and the Sterling case are two most important ones right now. The NSA took the position that Drake was disclosing secrets by revealing all of this.
At least half a dozen senior figures in the Obama Whitehouse provided extremely sensitive and classified information to Bob Woodward for that book. No investigation, no prosecution.
You can open the New York Times and the Washington Post everyday and find some national secret that’s been leaked by a member of the administration to help score a point for the administration. There’s never any investigation.
Nothing is more clear that only political motivations drive these cases. The cases that are most embarrassing are the cases that are most rigorously prosecuted.
The person prosecuted Thomas Drake was a selfless civil servant, spent his entire life serving the government, served in the Air Force, the Navy, the NSA and had sacrificed through his life to advance the interest of government.
He was being prosecuted because of his concern for taxpayers. He saw fraud and waste in contractor management he tried to stop. He went through every proper channel and then when he went to the press, he’s prosecuted for doing that.
The prosecutor William H Welch is the man known for having bungled the prosecution of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens. The Washingtonian did a whole career profile on William Welch.
The Obama Administration came in, it made certain promises. You see inside the DOJ, they’ve assigned people to change the policy guidelines. And they have, if you go back and look at the policy guidelines for state secrets invocations and the policy guidelines, they’re there for these whistle blower cases and the guidelines have been changed.
What I hear from lawyers there (DOJ) is that the attitude they have now toward the CIA and the NSA are that these two agencies are their clients. They do the bidding of these agencies, they never question their characterizations or assessments.
I think that’s what we see in the prosecution decisions here. We see senior officials at the CIA and NSA who have been embarrassed by these disclosures and they want to get even with the people who have embarrassed them and the Justice Department is perfectly happy to go out there and do their bidding.
Guest – New York attorney Scott Horton, known for his work in human rights law and the law of armed conflict. Scott is also the contributing editor to Harper’s Magazine.
BDS Movement Ignites Amid U.S. Food Co-ops
An emerging BDS movement is making waves at a Food Coop in Brooklyn, similar to the successful Boycott Divestment Sanction effort last summer in Olympia, Washington. The Olympia movement was pioneered by Nobel Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu in the home city of the Corrie family. The Brooklyn BDS protest is causing backlash amid the Jewish community. Some Jewish leaders opposed to the movement say it reveals antisemitism and that the assumption of Israel’s right to exist isn’t shared.
The boycott, in this case urges people around the world to stop buying products that support Israeli infrastructure such as Loreal, Motorola, Caterpillar, and many more. Sanctions, would target those companies exporting to Israel and applying tariffs or trade barriers. Divest or disinvestment, is the call to divest from companies, institutions and universities that support Israel’s occupation and lobby power.
Attorney Dennis James:
I’m a co-op member and the co-op has been around since the seventies. It’s the oldest and largest food co-op in the United States, it’s got 16 thousand members and a waiting list.————-
In the past 2 or 3 years, there has been a running dispute reflected in the editors of the Linewaiters Gazette of counter charges and charges regarding the issue of handling Israeli produced goods.
There has developed a movement to try to resolve this. To do it in a democratic way that’s provided for by the procedures of the co-op which was founded in a political sense. It’s had about 11 boycotts.
The proposal made by the proponents of the boycott is that it should be by referendum of all 16 thousand members rather than at a general membership meeting in which 3 or 4 hundred people attend.
Where we are now, slogging our way through the procedures of the co-op is that there has been a meeting specified in the process is a pure discussion of whether or not there should be a referendum.
There’s the Hava products and people are doing research on what particular products there are.
There are certain fresh foods that come in off season. Two principle objectives come up, why Israel? – meaning while there’s this misery around the planet of the Chinese imposing on the Tibetans, Turks imposing on the Kurds and the other one is – it will destroy the co-op.
The elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about and that is US support for everything Israel does, which is not characteristic of almost any other conflict as bad as it might be of majorities vs minorities throughout the world.
We support this, we finance this. We back it up with a guaranteed veto in the U.N. whenever Israel wants it.
There is 81 Congressmen in Israel right now on vacation. Paid for by AIPAC. They give Netanyahu 29 standing ovations, no president gets that. They’re shaking in their boots, whether AIPAC is going to come to their district.
The anti-boycott people (co-op) are saying we’re going to walk out, we’re going to destroy. (the very people who want to prevent the vote – referendum)
They don’t want to debate you, they want to destroy you. They want to shut you down to shut you up.
In Israel: People can lose their tax exempt status if they are of an organization like an NGO that has advocated boycotts of say settlement produced goods as do a number of Israeli NGOs.
They can be fined. There is a number of particular civil sanctions that are available to those who advocate a boycott.
Attorney Barbara Harvey:
The BDS movement really took off after calls went out for a global BDS in 2005 from Palestinian Civil Society.
176 of the major civil society Palestinian organizations issued a joint call for a global BDS. They asked for non-violent economic resistance to occupation.
The U.S. Zion organizations, AIPAC, the Jewish Federation, the JCRC and other Jewish organizations in this country would not have jointly created a six million dollar fund dedicated to defeating the BDS movement in the United States.
Something we should not allow ourselves to be distracted by in my opinion. It is an effort to revive, reenact anti-boycott provisions of an old export administration act. These anti-boycott provisions expired a decade ago, but they were continued by presidential emergency orders including one signed by President Obama.
They intend to prohibit collaboration by U.S. people that includes corporations, with the Arab League Boycott Against Israel. If intended to prevent exporters from cooperating with and supporting the Arab League Boycott. It is not directed against human rights campaigns such as BDSs.
The Olympia Food Co-op is actually an important story. Olympia, Washington is the hometown of Rachel Corrie who was the young Evergreen College student who was bulldozed to her death by the Caterpillar D9 weaponized bulldozer.
(The Olympia Food Co-op) adopted a boycott on the purchase for re-sale all goods from Israel, in accordance with the goals of the BDS movement a year ago. It has been successful, it has been under the gun ever since. The fact is, it hasn’t hurt business and it hasn’t backed off.
This highlights the hysteria fomented by the opponents of the BDS that they’d like us to lose sight of. The majority of American Jews in this country, genuinely want a fair and peaceful resolution of the conflict.
The whole Netanyahu Administration has been a real trauma for American Jews.
TIAA-CREF is a retirement behemoth. It has more than 400 billion dollars assets. The goal is to persuade TIAA-CREF to divest its portfolios from the occupation.
WeDivest.org / WhoProfits.org / BDSMovement.net / Al-Shabaka.org
Guest - National Lawyers Guild attorney Dennis James. Dennis has been active in anti-war, civil rights, and social justice issues. He recently traveled to Gaza with a UN delegation in 2009.
Guest - Attorney Barbara Harvey in Detroit who has worked with BDS activists and a former JVP Board Member
To Listen to the Episode
Michael Ratner: Ten Years after 9/11: War, Operation American Condor (Guantanamo) , Civil Liberties and Hope; Chip Berlet: Right-Wing Firms Train Public Servants on Terror Threats
Law and Disorder Radio (WBAI: New York Public Radio)
Ten Years after 9/11: War, Operation American Condor (Guantanamo) , Civil Liberties and Hope
We hear a talk from our own Michael Ratner who spoke at the James A Little Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was also in conversation with radio host Mary Charlotte Domandi. The event was titled - Ten Years after 9/11: War, Operation American Condor (Guantanamo) , Civil Liberties and Hope.” Michael is introduced by Mary-Charlotte Domandi producer and host of the Santa Fe Radio Cafe on KSFR 101.1 FM (Santa Fe, NM, Public Radio)
Michael Ratner is President of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in New York and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) in Berlin. Both are non-profit human rights litigation organizations. He was part of the small group of lawyers that first took on representation of the Guantánamo detainees in January 2001, a case that resulted in a victory in the Supreme Court in 2004. CCR established a network of over 600 pro-bono lawyers to represent Guantánamo detainees and continues that work.
He has filed criminal complaints in the courts of Germany, France and Spain against former US officials including Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld seeking the initiation of criminal prosecutions against them for the Abu Ghraib abuse and torture as well as for their actions at Guantánamo. Recently, CCR and ECCHR prepared papers to file in Switzerland against George W. Bush for torture. As a result Bush canceled his trip. A major area of Mr. Ratner’s litigation and writing is the enforcement of the prohibition on torture and murder against various dictators and generals who travel to the United States. He has sued on behalf of victims in Guatemala, East Timor, Haiti, Argentina, among other countries. He has also litigated numerous suits to prevent or stop illegal US wars ranging from Central America to Iraq. A constant in his work has been litigation against government spying and surveillance of activists.
Michael Ratner’s books, authored or coauthored, include the soon to be published, Hell No: Your Right to Dissent in 21st-Century America (2011) and Killing Che: How the CIA Got Away with Murder (2011). Other books include International Human Rights Litigation in U.S. Courts, Second Edition (2008); Against War with Iraq (2003); Guantánamo: What the World Should Know (2004); and The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution by Book (2008). Ratner has taught human rights litigation at Yale and Columbia Law Schools. A past president of the National Lawyers Guild, Ratner has received many awards including Trial Lawyer of the Year, the Columbia Law School Medal of Honor (2005), the North Star Community Frederick Douglass Award, Honorary Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School (2005), and The Nation Institute/Puffin Foundation Prize for Creative Citizenship (2007). In 2006, the National Law Journal named Ratner one of the 100 most influential lawyers in the United States.
Right-Wing Firms Train Public Servants on Terror Threats
There is a sprawling hidden world of counter-terrorism organizations growing beyond control in the United States. Twenty-four of them were created by the end of 2001, including the Office of Homeland Security and the Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Task Force. The next year, 37 more were created to track weapons of mass destruction and collect threat tips. By 2009, nearly 260 organizations were created as 854 thousand civil servants, military personnel and private contractors with top-secret security clearances monitor national security concerns. However, according to a report from the Public Research Associates, those same concerns have bolstered a class of self-proclaimed terrorism experts who decry Islam as an evil religion of terrorists and routinely brand Muslims as primitive, vengeful, duplicitous, and belligerent people who oppress women and gays, and have values irreconcilable with “western Judeo-Christian civilization.”
In fact, when PRA discovered earlier this year that the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) had contracted with Security Solutions International to conduct a training on radical Islam, they notified the Muslim American Society, ACLU, and our other advocacy partners, who used PRA’s research to compel the MBTA to cancel the agency’s training.
Chip Berlet :
Guest – Chip Berlet, (senior analyst) is a veteran freelance writer and photographer who specializes in investigating right-wing social movements, apocalyptic scapegoating and conspiracism, and authoritarianism. A PRA staffer since 1982, he has written, edited and co-authored numerous articles on right-wing activity and government repression for publications as varied as the Boston Globe, the New York Times, The Progressive, The Nation, The Humanist, and the St. Louis Journalism Review.
To Listen to the Episode
Ten Years after 9/11: War, Operation American Condor (Guantanamo) , Civil Liberties and Hope
We hear a talk from our own Michael Ratner who spoke at the James A Little Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was also in conversation with radio host Mary Charlotte Domandi. The event was titled - Ten Years after 9/11: War, Operation American Condor (Guantanamo) , Civil Liberties and Hope.” Michael is introduced by Mary-Charlotte Domandi producer and host of the Santa Fe Radio Cafe on KSFR 101.1 FM (Santa Fe, NM, Public Radio)
Michael Ratner is President of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in New York and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) in Berlin. Both are non-profit human rights litigation organizations. He was part of the small group of lawyers that first took on representation of the Guantánamo detainees in January 2001, a case that resulted in a victory in the Supreme Court in 2004. CCR established a network of over 600 pro-bono lawyers to represent Guantánamo detainees and continues that work.
He has filed criminal complaints in the courts of Germany, France and Spain against former US officials including Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld seeking the initiation of criminal prosecutions against them for the Abu Ghraib abuse and torture as well as for their actions at Guantánamo. Recently, CCR and ECCHR prepared papers to file in Switzerland against George W. Bush for torture. As a result Bush canceled his trip. A major area of Mr. Ratner’s litigation and writing is the enforcement of the prohibition on torture and murder against various dictators and generals who travel to the United States. He has sued on behalf of victims in Guatemala, East Timor, Haiti, Argentina, among other countries. He has also litigated numerous suits to prevent or stop illegal US wars ranging from Central America to Iraq. A constant in his work has been litigation against government spying and surveillance of activists.
Michael Ratner’s books, authored or coauthored, include the soon to be published, Hell No: Your Right to Dissent in 21st-Century America (2011) and Killing Che: How the CIA Got Away with Murder (2011). Other books include International Human Rights Litigation in U.S. Courts, Second Edition (2008); Against War with Iraq (2003); Guantánamo: What the World Should Know (2004); and The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution by Book (2008). Ratner has taught human rights litigation at Yale and Columbia Law Schools. A past president of the National Lawyers Guild, Ratner has received many awards including Trial Lawyer of the Year, the Columbia Law School Medal of Honor (2005), the North Star Community Frederick Douglass Award, Honorary Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School (2005), and The Nation Institute/Puffin Foundation Prize for Creative Citizenship (2007). In 2006, the National Law Journal named Ratner one of the 100 most influential lawyers in the United States.
Right-Wing Firms Train Public Servants on Terror Threats
There is a sprawling hidden world of counter-terrorism organizations growing beyond control in the United States. Twenty-four of them were created by the end of 2001, including the Office of Homeland Security and the Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Task Force. The next year, 37 more were created to track weapons of mass destruction and collect threat tips. By 2009, nearly 260 organizations were created as 854 thousand civil servants, military personnel and private contractors with top-secret security clearances monitor national security concerns. However, according to a report from the Public Research Associates, those same concerns have bolstered a class of self-proclaimed terrorism experts who decry Islam as an evil religion of terrorists and routinely brand Muslims as primitive, vengeful, duplicitous, and belligerent people who oppress women and gays, and have values irreconcilable with “western Judeo-Christian civilization.”
In fact, when PRA discovered earlier this year that the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) had contracted with Security Solutions International to conduct a training on radical Islam, they notified the Muslim American Society, ACLU, and our other advocacy partners, who used PRA’s research to compel the MBTA to cancel the agency’s training.
Chip Berlet :
As part of the Homeland Security Initiatives and working with the FBI in other aspects of the national security apparatus, there was a need to train thousands as part of a local state and federal counter-terrorism “experts.”
Some of these trainings are quite good. The problem is that there are a handful of groups that train hundreds and hundreds of local, state and federal counter-terrorism experts, with rhetoric that is basically Islamophobic.
In the late 1970s there was an attempt to restrain this illegal surveillance. I’d have to say right now it’s worse.
What used to be done illegally and covertly is now done ostensibly legally and openly and in fact proudly by both Democrats and Republicans who should be ashamed.
The whole strategic suspicious reporting initiative which basically is a pipeline for unverified rumor and innuendo through local police departments up through a chain of information agencies to the federal government. We know in Europe this kind of reporting is unconstitutional and bad for society.
Now, everyone that was considered illegal and unconstitutional for which there were Congressional hearings and reforms under Jimmy Carter, now we do it.
In proper training that is actually looking for criminal activity, not people of color who wear garb that we’re scared of. What’s going on here is untrained, badly trained officers are reporting the names of people up into a huge infrastructure of information data storage, based on bias they’ve not been trained to resist or confront within themselves.
We described this whole process as a platform for prejudice in a report by Tom Cincotta
Tom has on his wall a wall chart of all the agencies of this information reporting system and it has 150 dots so inter-connected, no one can control this.
I’m urging people to form broad coalitions across the political spectrum.
Guest – Chip Berlet, (senior analyst) is a veteran freelance writer and photographer who specializes in investigating right-wing social movements, apocalyptic scapegoating and conspiracism, and authoritarianism. A PRA staffer since 1982, he has written, edited and co-authored numerous articles on right-wing activity and government repression for publications as varied as the Boston Globe, the New York Times, The Progressive, The Nation, The Humanist, and the St. Louis Journalism Review.
To Listen to the Episode
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Steve Crawshaw & John Jackson: 10 Everyday Acts of Resistance That Changed the World - How regular people, from Denmark to Liberia, have stood up to power—and won
10 Everyday Acts of Resistance That Changed the World: Václav Havel called it “the power of the powerless.” How regular people, from Denmark to Liberia, have stood up to power—and won.
by Steve Crawshaw and John Jackson
Yes!
The Arab spring of 2011 has already changed the region and the world. Ordinary people have lost their fear and shattered the perception that their rulers are invincible. Whatever happens next, the changes across the region in the first few months of 2011 will prove historic.
In Tunisia, the now famous “jasmine revolution” began with protests in December, triggered by the self-immolation of a 26-year-old vegetable seller, Mohammed Bouazizi. Bouazizi, remembered by his younger sister Basma as “funny and generous,” could finally take no more of the official harassment and humiliation meted out to him.
Four weeks of protests, fueled by Facebook and other social media networks, concluded with the unthinkable: Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, president for the past 23 years, fled the country.
Even after the collapse of Ben Ali’s dictatorship, it seemed that Egypt would surely be a different matter. The 30-year-old, U.S.-backed rule of Hosni Mubarek was reckoned by many to be too ruthless for protests to succeed in creating real change. But millions in Tahrir Square and across Egypt were determined that they should be allowed to make the choices that others around the world had made for themselves.
After 18 days of protests, Hosni Mubarek was gone. All across the country, crowds erupted in celebration.
Victories like this, born of small acts toward monumental change, are not new. Throughout history both recent and distant, ordinary people have found innovative and inspiring ways to challenge violent regimes and confront abuses of power: bringing down dictators, changing unjust laws, or simply giving individuals a renewed sense of their own humanity in the face of those who deny it.
The people here treat the impossible as full of possibilities that haven’t been realized yet. Some have achieved the change they were struggling for. For others, it’s yet to come.
To Read the Rest
by Steve Crawshaw and John Jackson
Yes!
The Arab spring of 2011 has already changed the region and the world. Ordinary people have lost their fear and shattered the perception that their rulers are invincible. Whatever happens next, the changes across the region in the first few months of 2011 will prove historic.
In Tunisia, the now famous “jasmine revolution” began with protests in December, triggered by the self-immolation of a 26-year-old vegetable seller, Mohammed Bouazizi. Bouazizi, remembered by his younger sister Basma as “funny and generous,” could finally take no more of the official harassment and humiliation meted out to him.
Four weeks of protests, fueled by Facebook and other social media networks, concluded with the unthinkable: Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, president for the past 23 years, fled the country.
Even after the collapse of Ben Ali’s dictatorship, it seemed that Egypt would surely be a different matter. The 30-year-old, U.S.-backed rule of Hosni Mubarek was reckoned by many to be too ruthless for protests to succeed in creating real change. But millions in Tahrir Square and across Egypt were determined that they should be allowed to make the choices that others around the world had made for themselves.
After 18 days of protests, Hosni Mubarek was gone. All across the country, crowds erupted in celebration.
Victories like this, born of small acts toward monumental change, are not new. Throughout history both recent and distant, ordinary people have found innovative and inspiring ways to challenge violent regimes and confront abuses of power: bringing down dictators, changing unjust laws, or simply giving individuals a renewed sense of their own humanity in the face of those who deny it.
The people here treat the impossible as full of possibilities that haven’t been realized yet. Some have achieved the change they were struggling for. For others, it’s yet to come.
To Read the Rest
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