Remembering the Overlooked Life of Eslanda Robeson, Wife of Civil Rights Legend Paul Robeson
Democracy Now
In a Black History Month special, we remember the lives of the legendary civil rights activist, singer and actor Paul Robeson and his wife Eslanda, whose story is not as well known. One of the most celebrated singers and actors of the 20th century, Robeson was attacked, blacklisted and hounded by the government for his political beliefs. Eslanda Robeson, known by her friends as "Essie," was an author, an anthropologist and a globally connected activist who worked to end colonialism in Africa and racism in the United States. We’re joined by historian Barbara Ransby, author of the new biography, "Eslanda: The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson."
Guest:
Barbara Ransby, author of the newly published biography, Eslanda: The large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson. She is a professor of African-American studies, gender and women’s studies and history at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Her past books include the award-winning Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement.
To Watch this Episode
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Monday, February 11, 2013
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Root's Crime, Deviance and Justice Page: Deviant Altruism
Deviant Altruism
Root's Crime, Deviance and Justice Page
A drunken panhandler stumbles through the Occupy encampment asking for change, and receiving none. Various activists mill around but most seem not to notice him or his humble request. She does. Explaining that she has no cash, she asks if he will go to the store with her so that she can get some. He reluctantly obliges. Pulling into the Neighborhood Wal-mart, she leaves him in the car with her husband while she buys a couple of bags of groceries: chicken, greens, flour, and a whole host of other things “necessities” she points out, ibuprofen, dishwashing detergent, and so on. He is flabbergasted and continually exclaims: “How did you know?” On the way to his girlfriend’s home, who he says is handicapped and poor, she picks him up a bottle of whiskey, just in case that was what he wanted to begin with, “but at least he won’t be hungry either for a few days,” she explains to her husband.
A man sits in his wheelchair, scar tissue covering his face like a quilt and the intersections where it was sewn back together deep and painfully evident to any who can bear to look him in the eye. For those who refuse to do so, his slurred speech is a constant reminder of his presence as he loudly uses awkward humor in attempts to explain the power of car accidents to maim and disfigure. For dozens of people within earshot, he is a source of discomfort, anxiety and perhaps no small measure of annoyance, as their body language betrays. But for her, his is a voice that is literally crying out for help. She walks over and tells him that he won’t be needing his cigarettes, his lighter, or any of the other random objects he is clutching in both hands. Helping him put all of these items away in his carry-on bag, she explains how all he needs out is his boarding pass. He thanks her, and shortly thereafter nods off in a deep narcotic sleep as the boarding pass flutters to the floor in front of him. Her actions seem to make those around her just as uncomfortable as those of the intoxicated and mutilated man.
An elderly woman recovers from a stroke in her hospital bed, surrounded by family. Tears roll down her cheeks as she laments, of all things, her hair. She is African-American, with very thin grey hair. Barely enough to cover her crown she does not want anyone to see her this way, and tries to explain, but the stroke has garbled her speech. Holding a wig catalog, she moans and points to what she wants, indeed, needs. A nurse clocks out from her shift and visits a wig shop around the corner taking care to match the bun to the woman’s fine hair. She explains the situation to the shopkeeper, who advises her of what other accessories will be needed and gives her a 10% discount “because you’re doing this for someone else.” When she returns, the woman and her family are awestruck and thankful. Showing off her new “do,” the patient looks at her daughter and says perfectly, “You’re just jealous.” The next morning, she has no problem stating how “it made me feel better.”
Standing outside the door is a man with a grocery bag. He was told that a homeless man was waiting to be discharged from the hospital, but the clothes that he came in wearing were nowhere to be found. The emergency room explained that this was likely “because they were nasty”. In the bag is two sweatshirts, four t-shirts, four pairs of socks, two pairs of underwear, a pair of blue jeans, a pair of denim shorts, a pair of shoes and a belt. This was his “honey-do” list for breakfast, and he’s bringing the bag at the request of his wife, who is currently busy complimenting her patient on how good her hair looks this morning.
If you don’t know already, this woman is the woman that I love. These random acts of kindness are perhaps random, but they are also part of her default setting. From the mix of wonder, confusion, awe, anger and sometimes even shame in the eyes of onlookers and bystanders (myself included) at the profundity and power of such simple gestures and acknowledgments, I believe it might be ours as well.
I had no intentions of pilfering through my closet to find clothes for someone less fortunate this morning. In fact, my goal was to read a few hundred pages of social movements literature in hopes that I could begin writing a theoretical framework section for a dissertation that voices my discomfort and displeasure with what I perceive as a whole lot of theory without practice.
Ain’t life funny?
Some of my more philosophically and/or sociologically-inclined comrades might accuse her of “hacking at the branches,” but this Root remains convinced that she’s the most radical human being he’s ever had the good fortune to encounter. Often, I’ve given her a hard time for being such a habitual rule-follower. If the sign says “Don’t step on the grass” not only will she not do so, she will quickly voice her displeasure at me if/when I do. She’s a stickler for protocol, regulations, guidelines, etc. Still, in terms of kindness and humanity, it hurts my heart a little bit to recognize that she may be one of the most deviant people I know. Fortunately, it heals quickly with the realization that she loves me.
Link to the Post
Root's Crime, Deviance and Justice Page
A drunken panhandler stumbles through the Occupy encampment asking for change, and receiving none. Various activists mill around but most seem not to notice him or his humble request. She does. Explaining that she has no cash, she asks if he will go to the store with her so that she can get some. He reluctantly obliges. Pulling into the Neighborhood Wal-mart, she leaves him in the car with her husband while she buys a couple of bags of groceries: chicken, greens, flour, and a whole host of other things “necessities” she points out, ibuprofen, dishwashing detergent, and so on. He is flabbergasted and continually exclaims: “How did you know?” On the way to his girlfriend’s home, who he says is handicapped and poor, she picks him up a bottle of whiskey, just in case that was what he wanted to begin with, “but at least he won’t be hungry either for a few days,” she explains to her husband.
A man sits in his wheelchair, scar tissue covering his face like a quilt and the intersections where it was sewn back together deep and painfully evident to any who can bear to look him in the eye. For those who refuse to do so, his slurred speech is a constant reminder of his presence as he loudly uses awkward humor in attempts to explain the power of car accidents to maim and disfigure. For dozens of people within earshot, he is a source of discomfort, anxiety and perhaps no small measure of annoyance, as their body language betrays. But for her, his is a voice that is literally crying out for help. She walks over and tells him that he won’t be needing his cigarettes, his lighter, or any of the other random objects he is clutching in both hands. Helping him put all of these items away in his carry-on bag, she explains how all he needs out is his boarding pass. He thanks her, and shortly thereafter nods off in a deep narcotic sleep as the boarding pass flutters to the floor in front of him. Her actions seem to make those around her just as uncomfortable as those of the intoxicated and mutilated man.
An elderly woman recovers from a stroke in her hospital bed, surrounded by family. Tears roll down her cheeks as she laments, of all things, her hair. She is African-American, with very thin grey hair. Barely enough to cover her crown she does not want anyone to see her this way, and tries to explain, but the stroke has garbled her speech. Holding a wig catalog, she moans and points to what she wants, indeed, needs. A nurse clocks out from her shift and visits a wig shop around the corner taking care to match the bun to the woman’s fine hair. She explains the situation to the shopkeeper, who advises her of what other accessories will be needed and gives her a 10% discount “because you’re doing this for someone else.” When she returns, the woman and her family are awestruck and thankful. Showing off her new “do,” the patient looks at her daughter and says perfectly, “You’re just jealous.” The next morning, she has no problem stating how “it made me feel better.”
Standing outside the door is a man with a grocery bag. He was told that a homeless man was waiting to be discharged from the hospital, but the clothes that he came in wearing were nowhere to be found. The emergency room explained that this was likely “because they were nasty”. In the bag is two sweatshirts, four t-shirts, four pairs of socks, two pairs of underwear, a pair of blue jeans, a pair of denim shorts, a pair of shoes and a belt. This was his “honey-do” list for breakfast, and he’s bringing the bag at the request of his wife, who is currently busy complimenting her patient on how good her hair looks this morning.
If you don’t know already, this woman is the woman that I love. These random acts of kindness are perhaps random, but they are also part of her default setting. From the mix of wonder, confusion, awe, anger and sometimes even shame in the eyes of onlookers and bystanders (myself included) at the profundity and power of such simple gestures and acknowledgments, I believe it might be ours as well.
I had no intentions of pilfering through my closet to find clothes for someone less fortunate this morning. In fact, my goal was to read a few hundred pages of social movements literature in hopes that I could begin writing a theoretical framework section for a dissertation that voices my discomfort and displeasure with what I perceive as a whole lot of theory without practice.
Ain’t life funny?
Some of my more philosophically and/or sociologically-inclined comrades might accuse her of “hacking at the branches,” but this Root remains convinced that she’s the most radical human being he’s ever had the good fortune to encounter. Often, I’ve given her a hard time for being such a habitual rule-follower. If the sign says “Don’t step on the grass” not only will she not do so, she will quickly voice her displeasure at me if/when I do. She’s a stickler for protocol, regulations, guidelines, etc. Still, in terms of kindness and humanity, it hurts my heart a little bit to recognize that she may be one of the most deviant people I know. Fortunately, it heals quickly with the realization that she loves me.
Link to the Post
Geek's Guide to the Galaxy #2: Paolo Bacigalupi
Geek's Guide to the Galaxy #2: Paolo Bacigalupi
Paolo Bacigalupi, author of The Windup Girl and Ship Breaker, talks global warming, literature for boys, and how SF can cause change in the real world...
To Listen to the Episode
Paolo Bacigalupi, author of The Windup Girl and Ship Breaker, talks global warming, literature for boys, and how SF can cause change in the real world...
To Listen to the Episode
Little Atoms: Adam Curtis; The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear; All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
"Adam Curtis is a producer, writer and director of television documentaries such as Pandora's Box, The Mayfair Set, The Century of the Self, The Power of Nightmares and The Trap. Curtis' programs, though always about serious issues, maintain a sense of tongue-in-cheek humor and are characteristic in their extensive use of archive footage. In his film making, Curtis strives to find meaningful connections between historical situations and often focuses on the impact different ideologies have had on modern society. Adam's latest series, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace..."
Link to the Two Interviews at Little Atoms
More resources:
Pt 1 of the Little Atoms Interview explores his earlier documentaries, including his influential The Power of Nightmares
The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear
Is the threat of radical Islamism as a massive sinister organised force of destruction, specifically in the form of al-Qaeda, a myth perpetrated by politicians in many countries—and particularly American Neo-Conservatives—in an attempt to ‘unite and inspire’ people following the failure of earlier, more utopian ideologies?
To Watch the 3 Part Series
Part 1 — Baby It’s Cold Outside
The first part of the series explains the origin of Islamism and Neo-Conservatism and draws the parallels between the two of their “optimistic visions to change the world”. It shows Egyptian civil servant Sayyid Qutb, depicted as the founder of modern Islamist thought, visiting the US to learn about the education system, but becoming disgusted with what he saw as a corruption of morals and virtues in western society through consumerism. When he returns to Egypt, he is disturbed by westernisation and becomes convinced that in order to save society it must be completely restructured along the lines of Islamic law while still using western technology. He also becomes convinced that this can only be accomplished through the use of an elite “vanguard” to lead a revolution against the established order. Qutb becomes a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and, after being tortured in one of Nasser’s jails, comes to believe that western-influenced leaders can justly be killed for the sake of removing their corruption. Qutb is executed in 1966, but he influences the future mentor of Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to start his own secret Islamist group. Inspired by the 1979 Iranian revolution, Zawahiri and his allies assassinate Egyptian president Anwar Al Sadat, in 1981, in hopes of starting their own revolution. The revolution does not materialise and Zawahiri comes to believe that the majority of Muslims have been corrupted not only by their western-inspired leaders, but Muslims themselves have been affected by jahilliyah and thus both may be legitimate targets of violence if they do not join him. They continued to have the belief that a vanguard was necessary to rise up and overthrow the corrupt regime and replace with a pure Islamist state. At the same time in the United States, a group of disillusioned liberals, including Irving Kristol and Paul Wolfowitz, look to the political thinking of Leo Strauss after the perceived failure of President Johnson’s “Great Society”. They come to the conclusion that the emphasis on individual liberty was the undoing of the plan. They envisioned restructuring America by uniting the American people against a common evil, and set about creating a mythical enemy. These factions, the Neo-Conservatives, came to power under the Reagan administration, with their allies Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, and work to unite the United States in fear of the Soviet Union. The Neo-Conservatives allege the Soviet Union is not following the terms of disarmament between the two countries, and, with the investigation of “Team B”, they accumulate a case to prove this with dubious evidence and methods…
Part 2 — The Phantom Victory
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on 25 December 1979 gives a common cause to an extraordinary alliance of radical Islamists in Afghanistan and around the world and to the neo-conservatives in the US, as a key battleground of the Cold War. As the United States provides funding and arms–including even Stinger missiles capable of shooting down Soviet helicopters–to Islamic Mujahideen fighters who would fire them, a young wealthy Saudi called Osama Bin Laden is among the many foreigners drawn to Afghanistan. When the Soviets eventually pull out and when the Eastern Bloc begins to collapse in the late 1980s, both groups falsely believe they are the primary architects of the “Evil Empire’s” defeat. Back in America, the Neo-Conservatives’ aspirations to continue to use the United States military power for further destruction of evils are thrown off track by the ascent of George H. W. Bush to the presidency, followed by the 1992 election of Bill Clinton leaving them out of power. The Neo-Conservatives, with their conservative Christian allies, attempt to ‘demonise’ Clinton throughout his presidency with various real and fabricated stories of corruption and immorality, but to their disappointment, the American people do not turn against Clinton. The Islamist attempts at revolution end in massive bloodshed, leaving the Islamists without popular support. Zawahiri and bin Laden flee to the sufficiently safe Afghanistan and declare a new strategy; to fight Western-inspired moral decay they must deal a blow to its source — the United States.
Part 3 — The Shadows In The Cave
This final episode addresses the actual rise of al-Qaeda, in particular by examining the United States’ role in its creation: After their failed revolutions, bin Laden and Zawahiri had little or no popular support, let alone a serious complex organisation of terrorists, and were dependent upon independent operatives to carry out their new call for jihad. In order to prosecute bin Laden for the 1998 US embassy bombings, US prosecutors had to prove he was the head of a criminal organisation responsible for the bombings. They find a former associate of bin Laden, Jamal al-Fadl, and pay him to testify that bin Laden was the head of a massive terrorist organisation called “al-Qaeda”. With the September 11th attacks, Neo-Conservatives in the new Republican government of George W. Bush use this created concept of an organisation to justify another crusade against a new evil enemy, leading to the launch of the War on Terrorism. But after the American invasion of Afghanistan fails to uproot the alleged terrorist network, the Neo-Conservatives focus inwards, searching unsuccessfully for terrorist sleeper cells in America. They then extend the war on “terror” to a war against general perceived evils with the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The ideas and tactics also spread to the United Kingdom where Tony Blair uses the threat of terrorism to give him a new moral authority. The repercussions of the Neo-Conservative strategy are also explored with an investigation of indefinitely-detained terrorist suspects in Guantanamo Bay, many allegedly taken on the word of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance without actual investigation on the part of the United States military, and other forms of “pre-emption” against non-existent and unlikely threats made simply on the grounds that the parties involved could later become a threat…
Pt 2 of the Little Atoms Interview above is about his documentary series: All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace is a series about how humans have been colonised by the machines they have built — “Although we don’t realise it, the way we see everything in the world today is through the eyes of the computers.”
To Watch the 3 Part Series
Part 1 — Love and Power
Part one explores the dream that rose up in the 1990s that computers could create a new kind of stable world. They would bring about a new kind global capitalism free of all risk and without the boom and bust of the past. They would also abolish political power and create a new kind of democracy through the internet where millions of individuals would be connected as nodes in cybernetic systems – without hierarchy. The film tells the story of two perfect worlds. One is the small group of disciples around the novelist Ayn Rand in the 1950s. They saw themselves as a prototype for a future society where everyone could follow their own selfish desires. The other is the global utopia that digital entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley set out to create in the 1990s. Many of them were also disciples of Ayn Rand. They believed that the new computer networks would allow the creation of a society where everyone could follow their own desires, yet there would not be anarchy. They were joined by Alan Greenspan who had also been a disciple of Ayn Rand. He became convinced that the computers were creating a new kind of stable capitalism. But the dream of stability in both worlds would be torn apart by the two dynamic human forces – love and power.
Part 2 — The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts
Part two shows how our modern scientific idea of nature, the self-regulating ecosystem, is actually a machine fantasy. It has little to do with the real complexity of nature. It is based on cybernetic ideas that were projected on to nature in the 1950s by ambitious scientists. A static machine theory of order that sees humans, and everything else on the planet, as components–cogs–in a system. But in an age disillusioned with politics, the self-regulating ecosystem has again become the model for utopian ideas of human “self-organising networks”, with dreams of new ways of organising societies without leaders and in global visions of connectivity like the Gaia theory. This powerful idea emerged out of the hippie communes in America in the 1960s, and from counter-culture computer scientists who believed that global webs of computers could liberate the world. But, at the very moment this was happening, the science of ecology discovered that the theory of the self-regulating ecosystem wasn’t true. Instead they found that nature was really dynamic and constantly changing in unpredictable ways. But it was too late, the dream of the self-organising network had by now captured imaginations…
Part 3 — The Monkey in the Machine and the Machine in the Monkey
This episode looks at why popular culture finds this machine vision so beguiling. The film argues it is because all political dreams of changing the world for the better seem to have failed, meaning the retreat into machine-fantasies that say we have no control over our actions because they excuse our failure. At the heart of the film is Bill Hamilton, a scientist. He argued that human behaviour is really guided by codes buried deep within us–a theory later popularised by Richard Dawkins as the “selfish gene”. It said that individual human beings are really just machines whose only job is to make sure the codes are passed on for eternity. This final part begins in 2000 in the jungles of the Congo and Rwanda, where Hamilton is to help prove his dark theories. But all around him the Congo is being torn apart. The film then interweaves the two stories–the strange roots of Hamilton’s theories, and the history of the West’s tortured relationship with the Congo and technology…
Adam Curtis: Journalist and Filmmaker (Dialogic Archive)
Link to the Two Interviews at Little Atoms
More resources:
Pt 1 of the Little Atoms Interview explores his earlier documentaries, including his influential The Power of Nightmares
The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear
Is the threat of radical Islamism as a massive sinister organised force of destruction, specifically in the form of al-Qaeda, a myth perpetrated by politicians in many countries—and particularly American Neo-Conservatives—in an attempt to ‘unite and inspire’ people following the failure of earlier, more utopian ideologies?
To Watch the 3 Part Series
Part 1 — Baby It’s Cold Outside
The first part of the series explains the origin of Islamism and Neo-Conservatism and draws the parallels between the two of their “optimistic visions to change the world”. It shows Egyptian civil servant Sayyid Qutb, depicted as the founder of modern Islamist thought, visiting the US to learn about the education system, but becoming disgusted with what he saw as a corruption of morals and virtues in western society through consumerism. When he returns to Egypt, he is disturbed by westernisation and becomes convinced that in order to save society it must be completely restructured along the lines of Islamic law while still using western technology. He also becomes convinced that this can only be accomplished through the use of an elite “vanguard” to lead a revolution against the established order. Qutb becomes a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and, after being tortured in one of Nasser’s jails, comes to believe that western-influenced leaders can justly be killed for the sake of removing their corruption. Qutb is executed in 1966, but he influences the future mentor of Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to start his own secret Islamist group. Inspired by the 1979 Iranian revolution, Zawahiri and his allies assassinate Egyptian president Anwar Al Sadat, in 1981, in hopes of starting their own revolution. The revolution does not materialise and Zawahiri comes to believe that the majority of Muslims have been corrupted not only by their western-inspired leaders, but Muslims themselves have been affected by jahilliyah and thus both may be legitimate targets of violence if they do not join him. They continued to have the belief that a vanguard was necessary to rise up and overthrow the corrupt regime and replace with a pure Islamist state. At the same time in the United States, a group of disillusioned liberals, including Irving Kristol and Paul Wolfowitz, look to the political thinking of Leo Strauss after the perceived failure of President Johnson’s “Great Society”. They come to the conclusion that the emphasis on individual liberty was the undoing of the plan. They envisioned restructuring America by uniting the American people against a common evil, and set about creating a mythical enemy. These factions, the Neo-Conservatives, came to power under the Reagan administration, with their allies Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, and work to unite the United States in fear of the Soviet Union. The Neo-Conservatives allege the Soviet Union is not following the terms of disarmament between the two countries, and, with the investigation of “Team B”, they accumulate a case to prove this with dubious evidence and methods…
Part 2 — The Phantom Victory
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on 25 December 1979 gives a common cause to an extraordinary alliance of radical Islamists in Afghanistan and around the world and to the neo-conservatives in the US, as a key battleground of the Cold War. As the United States provides funding and arms–including even Stinger missiles capable of shooting down Soviet helicopters–to Islamic Mujahideen fighters who would fire them, a young wealthy Saudi called Osama Bin Laden is among the many foreigners drawn to Afghanistan. When the Soviets eventually pull out and when the Eastern Bloc begins to collapse in the late 1980s, both groups falsely believe they are the primary architects of the “Evil Empire’s” defeat. Back in America, the Neo-Conservatives’ aspirations to continue to use the United States military power for further destruction of evils are thrown off track by the ascent of George H. W. Bush to the presidency, followed by the 1992 election of Bill Clinton leaving them out of power. The Neo-Conservatives, with their conservative Christian allies, attempt to ‘demonise’ Clinton throughout his presidency with various real and fabricated stories of corruption and immorality, but to their disappointment, the American people do not turn against Clinton. The Islamist attempts at revolution end in massive bloodshed, leaving the Islamists without popular support. Zawahiri and bin Laden flee to the sufficiently safe Afghanistan and declare a new strategy; to fight Western-inspired moral decay they must deal a blow to its source — the United States.
Part 3 — The Shadows In The Cave
This final episode addresses the actual rise of al-Qaeda, in particular by examining the United States’ role in its creation: After their failed revolutions, bin Laden and Zawahiri had little or no popular support, let alone a serious complex organisation of terrorists, and were dependent upon independent operatives to carry out their new call for jihad. In order to prosecute bin Laden for the 1998 US embassy bombings, US prosecutors had to prove he was the head of a criminal organisation responsible for the bombings. They find a former associate of bin Laden, Jamal al-Fadl, and pay him to testify that bin Laden was the head of a massive terrorist organisation called “al-Qaeda”. With the September 11th attacks, Neo-Conservatives in the new Republican government of George W. Bush use this created concept of an organisation to justify another crusade against a new evil enemy, leading to the launch of the War on Terrorism. But after the American invasion of Afghanistan fails to uproot the alleged terrorist network, the Neo-Conservatives focus inwards, searching unsuccessfully for terrorist sleeper cells in America. They then extend the war on “terror” to a war against general perceived evils with the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The ideas and tactics also spread to the United Kingdom where Tony Blair uses the threat of terrorism to give him a new moral authority. The repercussions of the Neo-Conservative strategy are also explored with an investigation of indefinitely-detained terrorist suspects in Guantanamo Bay, many allegedly taken on the word of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance without actual investigation on the part of the United States military, and other forms of “pre-emption” against non-existent and unlikely threats made simply on the grounds that the parties involved could later become a threat…
Pt 2 of the Little Atoms Interview above is about his documentary series: All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace is a series about how humans have been colonised by the machines they have built — “Although we don’t realise it, the way we see everything in the world today is through the eyes of the computers.”
To Watch the 3 Part Series
Part 1 — Love and Power
Part one explores the dream that rose up in the 1990s that computers could create a new kind of stable world. They would bring about a new kind global capitalism free of all risk and without the boom and bust of the past. They would also abolish political power and create a new kind of democracy through the internet where millions of individuals would be connected as nodes in cybernetic systems – without hierarchy. The film tells the story of two perfect worlds. One is the small group of disciples around the novelist Ayn Rand in the 1950s. They saw themselves as a prototype for a future society where everyone could follow their own selfish desires. The other is the global utopia that digital entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley set out to create in the 1990s. Many of them were also disciples of Ayn Rand. They believed that the new computer networks would allow the creation of a society where everyone could follow their own desires, yet there would not be anarchy. They were joined by Alan Greenspan who had also been a disciple of Ayn Rand. He became convinced that the computers were creating a new kind of stable capitalism. But the dream of stability in both worlds would be torn apart by the two dynamic human forces – love and power.
Part 2 — The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts
Part two shows how our modern scientific idea of nature, the self-regulating ecosystem, is actually a machine fantasy. It has little to do with the real complexity of nature. It is based on cybernetic ideas that were projected on to nature in the 1950s by ambitious scientists. A static machine theory of order that sees humans, and everything else on the planet, as components–cogs–in a system. But in an age disillusioned with politics, the self-regulating ecosystem has again become the model for utopian ideas of human “self-organising networks”, with dreams of new ways of organising societies without leaders and in global visions of connectivity like the Gaia theory. This powerful idea emerged out of the hippie communes in America in the 1960s, and from counter-culture computer scientists who believed that global webs of computers could liberate the world. But, at the very moment this was happening, the science of ecology discovered that the theory of the self-regulating ecosystem wasn’t true. Instead they found that nature was really dynamic and constantly changing in unpredictable ways. But it was too late, the dream of the self-organising network had by now captured imaginations…
Part 3 — The Monkey in the Machine and the Machine in the Monkey
This episode looks at why popular culture finds this machine vision so beguiling. The film argues it is because all political dreams of changing the world for the better seem to have failed, meaning the retreat into machine-fantasies that say we have no control over our actions because they excuse our failure. At the heart of the film is Bill Hamilton, a scientist. He argued that human behaviour is really guided by codes buried deep within us–a theory later popularised by Richard Dawkins as the “selfish gene”. It said that individual human beings are really just machines whose only job is to make sure the codes are passed on for eternity. This final part begins in 2000 in the jungles of the Congo and Rwanda, where Hamilton is to help prove his dark theories. But all around him the Congo is being torn apart. The film then interweaves the two stories–the strange roots of Hamilton’s theories, and the history of the West’s tortured relationship with the Congo and technology…
Adam Curtis: Journalist and Filmmaker (Dialogic Archive)
Saturday, February 09, 2013
Joshua Holland: Scary Flashes of Iraq and Afghanistan Wars in the LAPD's Manhunt for Chris Dorner
Scary Flashes of Iraq and Afghanistan Wars in the LAPD's Manhunt for Chris Dorner
by Joshua Holland
Alternet
On Thursday, police hunting for Chris Dorner, a veteran and former LAPD officer who allegedly launched a killing spree on Sunday, opened fire on a blue pickup truck driving without its headlights in the early morning hours. Two short Latina women delivering newspapers – 71-year-old Emma Hernandez and her 47-year-old daughter, Margie Carranza – were hit in the hail of gunfire. Hernandez was shot twice in the back and is in intensive care as of this writing.
Chris Dorner, who is a large black man bearing no resemblance to the victims, was reportedly driving a blue pickup.
Nearby, officers also opened fire on a black pickup truck. Fortunately, the innocent driver wasn't hit in that shooting.
The first thought that came to my mind when I read about these incidents was that they reminded me of the accounts veterans returning from Iraq shared with me about what it was like manning check-points in Baghdad.
Our wars always come home to us. That's been notably apparent in recent weeks. First, Eddie Ray Routh, an Iraq vet who was suffering from PTSD allegedly gunned down famed American Sniper Chris Kyle. (Kyle was lauded as a hero despite writing that, “our ROEs [rules of engagement]... were pretty simple: If you see anyone from about sixteen to sixty-five and they’re male, shoot ’em. Kill every male you see.") Then, this week, Dorner allegedly went bonkers.
It's important not to demonize military vets as crazy and dangerous – that kind of stigma results in veterans who end up in the criminal justice system getting two more years in jail, on average, than non-veterans convicted of the same offense. But the reality is that we've seen a number of similar incidents in recent years: an Iraq war vet was accused of killing six people in Orange County last March; that same month, another killed his 11-year-old sister before turning his gun on himself; and another killed a park ranger in Washington last January.
Most people are at least somewhat aware of the struggles some veterans have readapting to normal society. But a question that's rarely asked is how the wars we've fought for over a decade may be affecting our domestic policing. Police departments provide a lot of jobs to former vets. According to GI Jobs.com, a Web site for veterans seeking civilian employment, 80 percent of the Dallas Police Department's hires over a two-year period were military vets; approximately 20 percent of LAPD officers have military backgrounds.
The image of the truck Hernandez and Carranza were driving brought to mind the terrifying accounts relayed to me in 2008, when I interviewed more than a dozen returning Iraq war vets, many of whom had served multiple tours. Several told me how the Rules of Engagement had shifted between their first and last tours; early on, they were told to fire only on people who posed an immediate threat – Iraqis carrying weapons. Later in the conflict, “force protection” became the overarching principle, and several soldiers told me they were ordered to open fire on Iraqis caught walking in the wrong area or carrying tools that might be used to bury a roadside bomb.
To Read the Rest of the Commentary
More Resources:
Reason: LAPD Had "No Idea" Who They Were Shooting At In Dorner Pursuit, Says Victims' Attorney
by Joshua Holland
Alternet
On Thursday, police hunting for Chris Dorner, a veteran and former LAPD officer who allegedly launched a killing spree on Sunday, opened fire on a blue pickup truck driving without its headlights in the early morning hours. Two short Latina women delivering newspapers – 71-year-old Emma Hernandez and her 47-year-old daughter, Margie Carranza – were hit in the hail of gunfire. Hernandez was shot twice in the back and is in intensive care as of this writing.
Chris Dorner, who is a large black man bearing no resemblance to the victims, was reportedly driving a blue pickup.
Nearby, officers also opened fire on a black pickup truck. Fortunately, the innocent driver wasn't hit in that shooting.
The first thought that came to my mind when I read about these incidents was that they reminded me of the accounts veterans returning from Iraq shared with me about what it was like manning check-points in Baghdad.
Our wars always come home to us. That's been notably apparent in recent weeks. First, Eddie Ray Routh, an Iraq vet who was suffering from PTSD allegedly gunned down famed American Sniper Chris Kyle. (Kyle was lauded as a hero despite writing that, “our ROEs [rules of engagement]... were pretty simple: If you see anyone from about sixteen to sixty-five and they’re male, shoot ’em. Kill every male you see.") Then, this week, Dorner allegedly went bonkers.
It's important not to demonize military vets as crazy and dangerous – that kind of stigma results in veterans who end up in the criminal justice system getting two more years in jail, on average, than non-veterans convicted of the same offense. But the reality is that we've seen a number of similar incidents in recent years: an Iraq war vet was accused of killing six people in Orange County last March; that same month, another killed his 11-year-old sister before turning his gun on himself; and another killed a park ranger in Washington last January.
Most people are at least somewhat aware of the struggles some veterans have readapting to normal society. But a question that's rarely asked is how the wars we've fought for over a decade may be affecting our domestic policing. Police departments provide a lot of jobs to former vets. According to GI Jobs.com, a Web site for veterans seeking civilian employment, 80 percent of the Dallas Police Department's hires over a two-year period were military vets; approximately 20 percent of LAPD officers have military backgrounds.
The image of the truck Hernandez and Carranza were driving brought to mind the terrifying accounts relayed to me in 2008, when I interviewed more than a dozen returning Iraq war vets, many of whom had served multiple tours. Several told me how the Rules of Engagement had shifted between their first and last tours; early on, they were told to fire only on people who posed an immediate threat – Iraqis carrying weapons. Later in the conflict, “force protection” became the overarching principle, and several soldiers told me they were ordered to open fire on Iraqis caught walking in the wrong area or carrying tools that might be used to bury a roadside bomb.
To Read the Rest of the Commentary
More Resources:
Reason: LAPD Had "No Idea" Who They Were Shooting At In Dorner Pursuit, Says Victims' Attorney
Weekly Signals: Joe Allen - Vietnam: The (Last) War the U.S. Lost
An interview with Joe Allen author of Vietnam: The (Last) War the U.S. Lost.
Weekly Signals
Unlike most books on the topic, constructed as specialized academic studies, The (Last) War the United States Lost examines the lessons of the Vietnam era with Joe Allen's eye of both a dedicated historian and an engaged participant in today's antiwar movement.
Many damaging myths about the Vietnam era persist, including the accusations that antiwar activists routinely jeered and spat at returning soldiers or that the war finally ended because Congress cut off its funding. Allen reclaims the stories of the courageous GI revolt; its dynamic relationship with the civil rights movement and the peace movement; the development of coffee houses where these groups came to speak out, debate, and organize; and the struggles waged throughout barracks, bases, and military prisons to challenge the rule of military command.
Allen's analysis of the US failure in Vietnam is also the story of the hubris of US imperial overreach, a new chapter of which is unfolding in the Middle East today.
Joe Allen is a regular contributor to the International Socialist Review and a longstanding social justice fighter, involved in the ongoing struggles for labor, the abolition of the death penalty, and to free the political prisoner Gary Tyler.
To Listen to the Interview
More resources:
Joe Allen's series on the Vietnam War at Internationl Socialist Review:
"Part One: from the French conquest to the overthrow of Diem."
From the overthrow of Diem to the Tet Offensive
"From Quagmire to Defeat."
Weekly Signals
Unlike most books on the topic, constructed as specialized academic studies, The (Last) War the United States Lost examines the lessons of the Vietnam era with Joe Allen's eye of both a dedicated historian and an engaged participant in today's antiwar movement.
Many damaging myths about the Vietnam era persist, including the accusations that antiwar activists routinely jeered and spat at returning soldiers or that the war finally ended because Congress cut off its funding. Allen reclaims the stories of the courageous GI revolt; its dynamic relationship with the civil rights movement and the peace movement; the development of coffee houses where these groups came to speak out, debate, and organize; and the struggles waged throughout barracks, bases, and military prisons to challenge the rule of military command.
Allen's analysis of the US failure in Vietnam is also the story of the hubris of US imperial overreach, a new chapter of which is unfolding in the Middle East today.
Joe Allen is a regular contributor to the International Socialist Review and a longstanding social justice fighter, involved in the ongoing struggles for labor, the abolition of the death penalty, and to free the political prisoner Gary Tyler.
To Listen to the Interview
More resources:
Joe Allen's series on the Vietnam War at Internationl Socialist Review:
"Part One: from the French conquest to the overthrow of Diem."
From the overthrow of Diem to the Tet Offensive
"From Quagmire to Defeat."
Free Speech Radio
[HUM 221 students, and others, this is a great resource for keeping up to date on world news, with an emphasis on civil rights/human rights struggles. This is an example of Free Speech Radio's 30 minute shows. There is quite a range of materials covered and they still manage to give a good introduction to each issue. Each episode is also preceded by the headlines for the day (similar to Democracy Now headlines. Click on Newscast and Headline links to hear the episodes.]
Newscast for Thursday, February 4, 2013
At Senate confirmation hearing, CIA chief nominee Brennan comes under scrutiny for role in US drone killing program
President Obama’s nominee to head the CIA, John Brennan, faced a senate committee today, with much of the focus on Brennan’s role in the controversial drone killing program. In his opening statement, Brennan was repeatedly interrupted by protesters. One woman held a sign that read “Brennan = drone killing.” Committee Chair Senator Dianne Feinstein cleared the room and refused to let “Code Pink associates” re-enter. Brennan withdrew his bid to become CIA chief in 2008 after rising criticism about his role in the Bush Administration's torture and extraordinary rendition program. According to a report last month from Reuters, Brennan had “detailed, contemporaneous knowledge” of the CIA’s use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques, including water-boarding. For more, we’re joined by Pardiss Kebriaei, senior staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights.
At memorial for Aaron Swartz, calls to reform federal computer fraud law
Since the suicide last month of open-Internet activist Aaron Swartz, many of his friends and colleagues are calling for changes to the federal law under which he was charged: the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Some of them gathered this week in Washington, DC for a memorial service, including Dan Goodwin, Swartz’ coworker at the organization ThoughtWorks. He said the harsh sentences from the decades-old law don't appropriately distinguish between people who take intellectual property for their own gain and those like Swartz who download content to share with the public.
GOODWIN: Because so many years in prison can be threatened, it makes it extremely difficult for someone to take a principled stand, and say, "No that's not what the law say. That's not what the law should say." Instead, they are pressured to take some lesser punishment, and the entire injustice of the law isn't put to the test.
Several Democrats and Republicans from the House and Senate were also at the memorial. There, FSRN's Alice Ollstein spoke to California Democrat Zoe Lofgren, who recently wrote a bill she named "Aaron's Law." In the spirit of open access that Swartz championed, she shared a draft of the bill and asked for feedback on Reddit, the website he helped found. That was California Democrat Zoe Lofgren, speaking to FSRN’s Alice Ollstein. Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden plans to introduce a version of "Aaron's Law" in the Senate. Speaking at the memorial service, he promised to continue Aaron's "march for freedom and a more just world."
WYDEN: When Aaron hacked, a poorly written law called him a dangerous criminal. Common sense and conscience knows better. And we are going to change this unjust law. Because of Aaron and because of his family.
Federal court in Manhattan hears challenge to indefinite detention in NDAA
The federal court of appeals heard arguments this week about the constitutionality of the National Defense Authorization Act. Lawyers for plaintiffs in the case Hedges v. Obama argued against the U.S. government defense of a section of the 2012 NDAA that critics say would allow the indefinite military detention without charges of U.S. citizens. FSRN’s Linda Perry Barr reports.
In India, social media opens space for dialogue on long-running Nagaland conflict
Nagaland is home to one of India’s oldest ethnic conflicts. Naga separatists in the country’s northeast have been fighting for independence since 1947. The conflict has caused continued economic, social and political instability in the region. Many civilians avoid public dialogue. But now the Internet and social media are giving young Nagas a platform to discuss and debate politics openly. With assembly elections scheduled later this month, the online community is raising some key issues. FSRN’s Gayatri Parameswaran and Felix Gaedtke report from Nagaland.
Headlines for Thursday, February 7, 2013
Police raid journalist home looking for protest footage
German police raided the homes of freelance photojournalists across the country yesterday. They’re searching for photographs of a demonstrator who allegedly attacked a police officer in an anti-capitalist protest in Frankfurt, in March 2012. But the raids have called into question the freedom of the press in Germany and drawn criticism from politicians and the German Journalist’s Association. FSRN’s Cinnamon Nippard has more from Berlin.
German photojournalist, Thomas Rassloff, just got back from two weeks in Syria. He’s the photographer who captured the shocking images of over 70 bodies by the river in Aleppo, which is the largest recorded mass execution of the Syrian civil war. Returning to Berlin last night he discovered that police had raided his apartment. They confiscated his computers, hard-drives, SD-cards, USB-sticks, and cellphones. “I have told the police six months ago I haven’t any picture of this crime scene in this demonstration.” Rassloff remembers the demonstration, where he was at the front with the other photojournalists. “But the violence was at the back of the demonstration so no photographer was there. So I don’t know why the police is thinking we have pictures. We couldn’t take pictures.” Rassloff says he has seen increasing police violence against journalists and photographers at demonstrations. The German police have accused some photographers of being members of the left-wing scene. The German Journalist’s Association has condemned the raids, as have the German Greens Party. It is unclear when police will return the files and equipment, but they say they will if their suspicions are incorrect. Cinnamon Nippard, FSRN, Berlin.
Russian NGOs say new crackdown on their staffs violates European human rights laws
A group of Russian human rights organizations is challenging a law that requires them to register as foreign agents because they engage in political work that is supported from abroad. They sent the claim to the European Court of Human Rights today. FSRN’s Ekaterina Danilova reports.
Eleven human rights and environmental groups involved in the suit say the law violates the European Convention on Human Rights. They say it essentially labels them as spies and that organization risks sanctions or closure for violating the complicated bureaucratic requirements. Oleg Orlov is the head of the human rights group "Memorial." "From our point of view all this set of unclear, absurd demands was done only for one purpose - to groundlessly denigrate certain organizations in the eyes of Russian society.” The foreign agents law is part of a larger effort to restrict the activities of organizations, particularly those with ties to the United States. The latest law prohibits Russians who have American citizenship from heading Russian NGOs. Ekaterina Danilova, FSRN, Russia.
Vietnam releases human rights lawyer as crackdowns continue on activists
Vietnam has released a prominent human rights lawyer from prison, but has also intensified its crackdown against activists and bloggers. FSRN's Mike Ives reports from Vietnam.
Authorities here released Le Cong Dinh Wednesday after he served 3.5 years of a five year term. Dinh studied at Tulane University and served as vice chairman of Ho Chi Minh City's bar association. He was arrested in 2009 on subversion charges after calling for political pluralism.The US Embassy said Thursday it applauded the government’s decision. But this leniency by the Vietnam's one-party government contrasts sharply with its recent crackdowns on dissent. Thirty-five activists have been jailed in the last month, including 22 who received sentences Monday, ranging from 10 years to life. Rights advocates say the one-party state has intensified its crackdown on dissident in recent months. Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said releasing Dinh just before Tet, Vietnam's Lunar New Year holiday, is no excuse for jailing political dissidents on specious charges. "The important thing to remember also is that these people are being put away for things that shouldn't be considered crimes in the first place." In other news, Vietnam last week deported Nguyen Quoc Quan, an American pro-democracy activist who was arrested at Ho Chi Minh City's airport last April. Quan is a leading member of Viet Tan, a non-violent, pro-democracy group that Hanoi labels a terrorist organization. Mike Ives, FSRN, Hanoi.
Newscast for Thursday, February 4, 2013
At Senate confirmation hearing, CIA chief nominee Brennan comes under scrutiny for role in US drone killing program
President Obama’s nominee to head the CIA, John Brennan, faced a senate committee today, with much of the focus on Brennan’s role in the controversial drone killing program. In his opening statement, Brennan was repeatedly interrupted by protesters. One woman held a sign that read “Brennan = drone killing.” Committee Chair Senator Dianne Feinstein cleared the room and refused to let “Code Pink associates” re-enter. Brennan withdrew his bid to become CIA chief in 2008 after rising criticism about his role in the Bush Administration's torture and extraordinary rendition program. According to a report last month from Reuters, Brennan had “detailed, contemporaneous knowledge” of the CIA’s use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques, including water-boarding. For more, we’re joined by Pardiss Kebriaei, senior staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights.
At memorial for Aaron Swartz, calls to reform federal computer fraud law
Since the suicide last month of open-Internet activist Aaron Swartz, many of his friends and colleagues are calling for changes to the federal law under which he was charged: the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Some of them gathered this week in Washington, DC for a memorial service, including Dan Goodwin, Swartz’ coworker at the organization ThoughtWorks. He said the harsh sentences from the decades-old law don't appropriately distinguish between people who take intellectual property for their own gain and those like Swartz who download content to share with the public.
GOODWIN: Because so many years in prison can be threatened, it makes it extremely difficult for someone to take a principled stand, and say, "No that's not what the law say. That's not what the law should say." Instead, they are pressured to take some lesser punishment, and the entire injustice of the law isn't put to the test.
Several Democrats and Republicans from the House and Senate were also at the memorial. There, FSRN's Alice Ollstein spoke to California Democrat Zoe Lofgren, who recently wrote a bill she named "Aaron's Law." In the spirit of open access that Swartz championed, she shared a draft of the bill and asked for feedback on Reddit, the website he helped found. That was California Democrat Zoe Lofgren, speaking to FSRN’s Alice Ollstein. Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden plans to introduce a version of "Aaron's Law" in the Senate. Speaking at the memorial service, he promised to continue Aaron's "march for freedom and a more just world."
WYDEN: When Aaron hacked, a poorly written law called him a dangerous criminal. Common sense and conscience knows better. And we are going to change this unjust law. Because of Aaron and because of his family.
Federal court in Manhattan hears challenge to indefinite detention in NDAA
The federal court of appeals heard arguments this week about the constitutionality of the National Defense Authorization Act. Lawyers for plaintiffs in the case Hedges v. Obama argued against the U.S. government defense of a section of the 2012 NDAA that critics say would allow the indefinite military detention without charges of U.S. citizens. FSRN’s Linda Perry Barr reports.
In India, social media opens space for dialogue on long-running Nagaland conflict
Nagaland is home to one of India’s oldest ethnic conflicts. Naga separatists in the country’s northeast have been fighting for independence since 1947. The conflict has caused continued economic, social and political instability in the region. Many civilians avoid public dialogue. But now the Internet and social media are giving young Nagas a platform to discuss and debate politics openly. With assembly elections scheduled later this month, the online community is raising some key issues. FSRN’s Gayatri Parameswaran and Felix Gaedtke report from Nagaland.
Headlines for Thursday, February 7, 2013
Police raid journalist home looking for protest footage
German police raided the homes of freelance photojournalists across the country yesterday. They’re searching for photographs of a demonstrator who allegedly attacked a police officer in an anti-capitalist protest in Frankfurt, in March 2012. But the raids have called into question the freedom of the press in Germany and drawn criticism from politicians and the German Journalist’s Association. FSRN’s Cinnamon Nippard has more from Berlin.
German photojournalist, Thomas Rassloff, just got back from two weeks in Syria. He’s the photographer who captured the shocking images of over 70 bodies by the river in Aleppo, which is the largest recorded mass execution of the Syrian civil war. Returning to Berlin last night he discovered that police had raided his apartment. They confiscated his computers, hard-drives, SD-cards, USB-sticks, and cellphones. “I have told the police six months ago I haven’t any picture of this crime scene in this demonstration.” Rassloff remembers the demonstration, where he was at the front with the other photojournalists. “But the violence was at the back of the demonstration so no photographer was there. So I don’t know why the police is thinking we have pictures. We couldn’t take pictures.” Rassloff says he has seen increasing police violence against journalists and photographers at demonstrations. The German police have accused some photographers of being members of the left-wing scene. The German Journalist’s Association has condemned the raids, as have the German Greens Party. It is unclear when police will return the files and equipment, but they say they will if their suspicions are incorrect. Cinnamon Nippard, FSRN, Berlin.
Russian NGOs say new crackdown on their staffs violates European human rights laws
A group of Russian human rights organizations is challenging a law that requires them to register as foreign agents because they engage in political work that is supported from abroad. They sent the claim to the European Court of Human Rights today. FSRN’s Ekaterina Danilova reports.
Eleven human rights and environmental groups involved in the suit say the law violates the European Convention on Human Rights. They say it essentially labels them as spies and that organization risks sanctions or closure for violating the complicated bureaucratic requirements. Oleg Orlov is the head of the human rights group "Memorial." "From our point of view all this set of unclear, absurd demands was done only for one purpose - to groundlessly denigrate certain organizations in the eyes of Russian society.” The foreign agents law is part of a larger effort to restrict the activities of organizations, particularly those with ties to the United States. The latest law prohibits Russians who have American citizenship from heading Russian NGOs. Ekaterina Danilova, FSRN, Russia.
Vietnam releases human rights lawyer as crackdowns continue on activists
Vietnam has released a prominent human rights lawyer from prison, but has also intensified its crackdown against activists and bloggers. FSRN's Mike Ives reports from Vietnam.
Authorities here released Le Cong Dinh Wednesday after he served 3.5 years of a five year term. Dinh studied at Tulane University and served as vice chairman of Ho Chi Minh City's bar association. He was arrested in 2009 on subversion charges after calling for political pluralism.The US Embassy said Thursday it applauded the government’s decision. But this leniency by the Vietnam's one-party government contrasts sharply with its recent crackdowns on dissent. Thirty-five activists have been jailed in the last month, including 22 who received sentences Monday, ranging from 10 years to life. Rights advocates say the one-party state has intensified its crackdown on dissident in recent months. Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said releasing Dinh just before Tet, Vietnam's Lunar New Year holiday, is no excuse for jailing political dissidents on specious charges. "The important thing to remember also is that these people are being put away for things that shouldn't be considered crimes in the first place." In other news, Vietnam last week deported Nguyen Quoc Quan, an American pro-democracy activist who was arrested at Ho Chi Minh City's airport last April. Quan is a leading member of Viet Tan, a non-violent, pro-democracy group that Hanoi labels a terrorist organization. Mike Ives, FSRN, Hanoi.
Friday, February 08, 2013
Michael Dean Benton: "He Could Resist"
“he could resist”: The Lexington Tattoo Project and A Noosed Life
By Michael Dean Benton
North of Center
...
A few months ago I saw an announcement by Transylvania University professors Kurt Gohde and Kremena Todorva for The Lexington Tattoo Project. They had a dream of their own, a collective art project that would involve 250 participants tattooing onto their bodies parts of a Bianca Spriggs poem written to Lexington.
As an advocate of participatory and communal art, I was intrigued and read through the poem for tattoo options. We were told that we could make multiple choices, with the understanding that we may not get our first choice, that the tattoo would be donated by the artist Robert Alleyne (Charmed Life), and that we could choose where to place it on our bodies.
“he could resist”
Out of the 250 possible choices, only one word cluster spoke to me—or more accurately, seemed worthy of being inked onto my body. It was the phrase “he could resist.” These three words raised so many questions. What could I resist? Better yet, should I resist? And with no clear punctuation for the three words, the statement also seemed supportive, strength-giving even, telling me, yes, he could resist!
I knew this was the only choice that I would accept. It almost seemed as if Bianca had written the words for me, at this particular place and time, to prompt those necessary questions and to provide me strength in answering them. I entered just that phrase into the collective poetry/tattoo lottery and promised myself that if those words were not available I would not participate.
To my surprise, delight and trepidation, I was given my choice. Then the anxiety came. What was I doing? I’m 48 years old and about to get my first tattoo. I considered judicious body locations to have the tattoo placed—where would it easily escape notice?, I wondered—and settled on the back of my left shoulder where I could flaunt it when I wanted and cover it as needed.
But Bianca’s words kept reverberating in my head. I was in the midst of intense research for teaching a class on the contemporary global history of civil resistance. The histories of the incredible people and groups who put their lives on the line to resist oppression began to occupy my waking and dreaming thoughts. Always I would return to Bianca’s words: he could resist. Was it a challenge? And if so, what would be my response?
On the day I was to get the tattoo, I awoke from my dreams with the conviction that I could not hide Bianca’s words and still embrace the spirit of the project and/or my respect for their power as a guiding force. I decided that morning to place Bianca’s phrase on my left forearm, where it would serve me as a reminder and where, when people asked about it, I would be required to explain what it meant “to me.”
Through the tattoo, the poet’s words have begun to occupy a permanent place in my thoughts. They continue to affect me in ways I never expected and are shifting my understanding of art, creativity and language.
“A Noosed Life”
With all this on my mind I visited the Bianca Spriggs and Angel Clark art exhibition The Thirteen at Transylvania University’s Morley Gallery. I moved through most of the exhibition fairly quickly until I entered the video display for “A Noosed Life” (filmed by Angel Clark and Paul Brown, and edited by Paul Brown and Bianca Spriggs). I was creatively poleaxed; the imagery hit me so hard I had to sit down immediately.
“A Noosed Life” is a one and a half minute looped video of two actors displaying basic movements. The first (or the first that registered in my perception) is of a kneeling African-American woman touching slowly and intently around her exposed neck while gazing skyward. The image is overlaid with the white hands/arms of a man stretching and testing a rope.
To Read the Entire Essay
By Michael Dean Benton
North of Center
...
A few months ago I saw an announcement by Transylvania University professors Kurt Gohde and Kremena Todorva for The Lexington Tattoo Project. They had a dream of their own, a collective art project that would involve 250 participants tattooing onto their bodies parts of a Bianca Spriggs poem written to Lexington.
As an advocate of participatory and communal art, I was intrigued and read through the poem for tattoo options. We were told that we could make multiple choices, with the understanding that we may not get our first choice, that the tattoo would be donated by the artist Robert Alleyne (Charmed Life), and that we could choose where to place it on our bodies.
“he could resist”
Out of the 250 possible choices, only one word cluster spoke to me—or more accurately, seemed worthy of being inked onto my body. It was the phrase “he could resist.” These three words raised so many questions. What could I resist? Better yet, should I resist? And with no clear punctuation for the three words, the statement also seemed supportive, strength-giving even, telling me, yes, he could resist!
I knew this was the only choice that I would accept. It almost seemed as if Bianca had written the words for me, at this particular place and time, to prompt those necessary questions and to provide me strength in answering them. I entered just that phrase into the collective poetry/tattoo lottery and promised myself that if those words were not available I would not participate.
To my surprise, delight and trepidation, I was given my choice. Then the anxiety came. What was I doing? I’m 48 years old and about to get my first tattoo. I considered judicious body locations to have the tattoo placed—where would it easily escape notice?, I wondered—and settled on the back of my left shoulder where I could flaunt it when I wanted and cover it as needed.
But Bianca’s words kept reverberating in my head. I was in the midst of intense research for teaching a class on the contemporary global history of civil resistance. The histories of the incredible people and groups who put their lives on the line to resist oppression began to occupy my waking and dreaming thoughts. Always I would return to Bianca’s words: he could resist. Was it a challenge? And if so, what would be my response?
On the day I was to get the tattoo, I awoke from my dreams with the conviction that I could not hide Bianca’s words and still embrace the spirit of the project and/or my respect for their power as a guiding force. I decided that morning to place Bianca’s phrase on my left forearm, where it would serve me as a reminder and where, when people asked about it, I would be required to explain what it meant “to me.”
Through the tattoo, the poet’s words have begun to occupy a permanent place in my thoughts. They continue to affect me in ways I never expected and are shifting my understanding of art, creativity and language.
“A Noosed Life”
With all this on my mind I visited the Bianca Spriggs and Angel Clark art exhibition The Thirteen at Transylvania University’s Morley Gallery. I moved through most of the exhibition fairly quickly until I entered the video display for “A Noosed Life” (filmed by Angel Clark and Paul Brown, and edited by Paul Brown and Bianca Spriggs). I was creatively poleaxed; the imagery hit me so hard I had to sit down immediately.
“A Noosed Life” is a one and a half minute looped video of two actors displaying basic movements. The first (or the first that registered in my perception) is of a kneeling African-American woman touching slowly and intently around her exposed neck while gazing skyward. The image is overlaid with the white hands/arms of a man stretching and testing a rope.
To Read the Entire Essay
George Ciccariello-Maher and Mike King: American Blowback - Cop-on-Cop Crime in LA
[Finally a breath of sanity in the media hysteria surrounding the manhunt for Christopher Dorner in California and an unique application of Frantz Fanon's theories to the policing of South Central Los Angeles.]
American Blowback: Cop-on-Cop Crime in LA
by George Ciccariello-Maher and Mike King
Counterpunch
Yesterday was not simply a day like any other, and yet an entire system is grinding into motion to ensure that the peculiarities of the day be promptly forgotten: another crazy person lost it and committed unthinkable acts. The act of killing stands in and speaks for the person: look what he has done, of course he must be crazy. Case closed.
What they want you to see is just another Adam Lanza, just another inexplicable act, and when the act speaks for the assailant, words are secondary and there is no need to listen. But this is not, and has never been, a good way to understand reality.
What they want you to forget is the sheer strangeness of what is happening in Los Angeles. Christopher Dorner allegedly killed a police officer and two civilians. This was not a random shooting by a right-wing gun-nut mourning the loss of the “Real America.” Here is a man with good things to say about liberal democrats, a supporter of heightened gun control, a former LAPD officer and Navy reservist, targeting his own institution, which he accused of racism, violence, and corruption.
Dorner’s “Last Resort”
We know all of these things because what is most peculiar about this entire case is the written testament that Dorner has left us. In a letter titled only “Last Resort” and addressed to “America,” he makes clear his grievances, his objectives, and the rationale behind his actions – a chilling declaration of war on the Los Angeles Police Department.
The press is busy citing only those bits of the statement which make Dorner seem crazy: when he addresses Tim Tebow or Larry David, for example, or when he laments the fact that he will not survive to see The Hangover 3. (See for example, Buzzfeed’s “Everything You Need to Know,” which conspicuously says very little). But the vast majority of the letter paints a picture of someone who, while clearly undergoing some sort of mental break, is astonishingly lucid as to the causes and candid as to what he intends to do about it. These causes and these intentions, regardless of what you may hear on MSNBC or Entertainment Tonight (both will essentially carry the same message), begin and end with the LAPD.
The LAPD has long played a vanguard role in white supremacist policing in the United States. Whether it be the conscious recruitment of racist cops from the south in the 1960s under William Parker (sparking the 1965 Watts Rebellion) or the continuity of well-worn brutal methods under Darryl Gates (sparking the massive 1992 L.A. Rebellions), there has been little new under the sun. Even after 1992, when change seemed for a moment inevitable and when the Bloods and Crips had, themselves, laid down arms and put forth a plan to rebuild the city, this long-needed transformation didn’t materialize. Instead, South Central became South L.A., Gates was canned, and the LAPD forcibly destroyed the gang truce. Nothing had changed.
It wasn’t long before the next scandal. Toward the end of the 1990s, what many had already known became public knowledge: that the LAPD, and especially the Rampart Division, routinely brutalized suspects and planted evidence. As a result of this revelation, the LAPD was charged under the RICO Act (as a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization) and placed under the federal oversight of a consent decree that would only be lifted in 2009.
Not coincidentally, “Globocop” Bill Bratton, currently en route to advise the Oakland Police Department, amidst widespread public opposition, is credited with cleaning up the LAPD, and Dorner’s statement appears on many websites alongside a picture of the former officer beaming alongside Bratton (it has emerged that Dorner mailed evidence to Anderson Cooper last week, including a gift from Bratton, on which he wrote “Thanks, but no thanks Will Bratton”).
According to Dorner’s statement:
“The department has not changed since the Rampart and Rodney King days. It has gotten worse. The consent decree should never have been lifted. The only thing that has evolved from the consent decree is those officers involved in the Rampart scandal and Rodney King incidents have since promoted to supervisor, commanders, and command staff, and executive positions… Are you aware that an officer… seen on the Rodney King videotape striking Mr. King multiple times with a baton on 3/3/91 is still employed by the LAPD and is now a Captain on the police department? … As a commanding officer, he is now responsible for over 200 officers. Do you trust him to enforce department policy and investigate use of force investigations on arrestees by his officers?”
One indication of this is the fact that, during the course of more than a decade of investigation of the Rampart case, only five officers were terminated, which suggests just how shallow the investigation efforts were. Dorner ominously adds that “I will correct this error,” and deems his actions a “necessary evil” not only to clear his own name, but to force “substantial change” within the LAPD.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
More resources:
Huffington Post: LAPD, Torrance Police Shot At Innocent People In Frenzied Hunt For Former Cop Christopher Dorner
Cato Institute: National Police Misconduct Reporting Project
American Blowback: Cop-on-Cop Crime in LA
by George Ciccariello-Maher and Mike King
Counterpunch
Yesterday was not simply a day like any other, and yet an entire system is grinding into motion to ensure that the peculiarities of the day be promptly forgotten: another crazy person lost it and committed unthinkable acts. The act of killing stands in and speaks for the person: look what he has done, of course he must be crazy. Case closed.
What they want you to see is just another Adam Lanza, just another inexplicable act, and when the act speaks for the assailant, words are secondary and there is no need to listen. But this is not, and has never been, a good way to understand reality.
What they want you to forget is the sheer strangeness of what is happening in Los Angeles. Christopher Dorner allegedly killed a police officer and two civilians. This was not a random shooting by a right-wing gun-nut mourning the loss of the “Real America.” Here is a man with good things to say about liberal democrats, a supporter of heightened gun control, a former LAPD officer and Navy reservist, targeting his own institution, which he accused of racism, violence, and corruption.
Dorner’s “Last Resort”
We know all of these things because what is most peculiar about this entire case is the written testament that Dorner has left us. In a letter titled only “Last Resort” and addressed to “America,” he makes clear his grievances, his objectives, and the rationale behind his actions – a chilling declaration of war on the Los Angeles Police Department.
The press is busy citing only those bits of the statement which make Dorner seem crazy: when he addresses Tim Tebow or Larry David, for example, or when he laments the fact that he will not survive to see The Hangover 3. (See for example, Buzzfeed’s “Everything You Need to Know,” which conspicuously says very little). But the vast majority of the letter paints a picture of someone who, while clearly undergoing some sort of mental break, is astonishingly lucid as to the causes and candid as to what he intends to do about it. These causes and these intentions, regardless of what you may hear on MSNBC or Entertainment Tonight (both will essentially carry the same message), begin and end with the LAPD.
The LAPD has long played a vanguard role in white supremacist policing in the United States. Whether it be the conscious recruitment of racist cops from the south in the 1960s under William Parker (sparking the 1965 Watts Rebellion) or the continuity of well-worn brutal methods under Darryl Gates (sparking the massive 1992 L.A. Rebellions), there has been little new under the sun. Even after 1992, when change seemed for a moment inevitable and when the Bloods and Crips had, themselves, laid down arms and put forth a plan to rebuild the city, this long-needed transformation didn’t materialize. Instead, South Central became South L.A., Gates was canned, and the LAPD forcibly destroyed the gang truce. Nothing had changed.
It wasn’t long before the next scandal. Toward the end of the 1990s, what many had already known became public knowledge: that the LAPD, and especially the Rampart Division, routinely brutalized suspects and planted evidence. As a result of this revelation, the LAPD was charged under the RICO Act (as a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization) and placed under the federal oversight of a consent decree that would only be lifted in 2009.
Not coincidentally, “Globocop” Bill Bratton, currently en route to advise the Oakland Police Department, amidst widespread public opposition, is credited with cleaning up the LAPD, and Dorner’s statement appears on many websites alongside a picture of the former officer beaming alongside Bratton (it has emerged that Dorner mailed evidence to Anderson Cooper last week, including a gift from Bratton, on which he wrote “Thanks, but no thanks Will Bratton”).
According to Dorner’s statement:
“The department has not changed since the Rampart and Rodney King days. It has gotten worse. The consent decree should never have been lifted. The only thing that has evolved from the consent decree is those officers involved in the Rampart scandal and Rodney King incidents have since promoted to supervisor, commanders, and command staff, and executive positions… Are you aware that an officer… seen on the Rodney King videotape striking Mr. King multiple times with a baton on 3/3/91 is still employed by the LAPD and is now a Captain on the police department? … As a commanding officer, he is now responsible for over 200 officers. Do you trust him to enforce department policy and investigate use of force investigations on arrestees by his officers?”
One indication of this is the fact that, during the course of more than a decade of investigation of the Rampart case, only five officers were terminated, which suggests just how shallow the investigation efforts were. Dorner ominously adds that “I will correct this error,” and deems his actions a “necessary evil” not only to clear his own name, but to force “substantial change” within the LAPD.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
More resources:
Huffington Post: LAPD, Torrance Police Shot At Innocent People In Frenzied Hunt For Former Cop Christopher Dorner
Cato Institute: National Police Misconduct Reporting Project
Thursday, February 07, 2013
Ted Rall: Drone Mentality -- A Reverse Perspective
[I was just trying to explain drone warfare to my Kentucky students a few days ago and gave a similar scenario to provide some perspective on what it must be like to live in a place being attacked by unmanned drones -- thanks Ted Rall for another great visualization!]
Ted Rall shares this second part:
Ted Rall shares this second part:
The Expert Witness Show: Richard Stratton - The Capture of Whitey Bulger
[From 2011, Bulger still hasn't been brought to trial. A few days ago Johnny Depp agreed to star in a film directed by Barry Levinson about Whitey Bulger.]
The Capture of Whitey Bulger
The Expert Witness Show
After 16 years on the lam, James “Whitey” Bulger – a notorious Irish mobster from Boston, who was number 2 on the FBI’s most-wanted list for over 14 years – has finally been captured by the FBI.
Tonight, Mike and Mark speak with noted author Richard Stratton, who has not only researched and written about Bulger, but actually met the man face-to-face when Bulger acted to save Richard from a Mafia hit contract. We’ll talk about Bulger’s history, his turning of FBI agents, the methods used to bring him in, whether or not he’s responsible for a whole string of armed robberies as the infamous “geezer bandit” in Orange County, California…and what secrets he still may have to tell about a thoroughly corrupt FBI that aided him in murdering his rivals.
To Read the rest of the show description and to listen to the interview
The Capture of Whitey Bulger
The Expert Witness Show
After 16 years on the lam, James “Whitey” Bulger – a notorious Irish mobster from Boston, who was number 2 on the FBI’s most-wanted list for over 14 years – has finally been captured by the FBI.
Tonight, Mike and Mark speak with noted author Richard Stratton, who has not only researched and written about Bulger, but actually met the man face-to-face when Bulger acted to save Richard from a Mafia hit contract. We’ll talk about Bulger’s history, his turning of FBI agents, the methods used to bring him in, whether or not he’s responsible for a whole string of armed robberies as the infamous “geezer bandit” in Orange County, California…and what secrets he still may have to tell about a thoroughly corrupt FBI that aided him in murdering his rivals.
To Read the rest of the show description and to listen to the interview
Wednesday, February 06, 2013
Open Society Justice Initiative: Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition
Report Tallies 54 Countries, 136 Prisoners in CIA Torture Program
Democracy Now
A new report has revealed a detailed look at global involvement in the CIA’s secret program of prisons, rendition and torture in the years after 9/11. The Open Society Justice Initiative says 54 countries aided the CIA until President Obama halted the program in 2009. The report, called "Globalizing Torture," also discloses at least 136 people were held by the CIA during those years — the largest tally to date. The countries’ assistance ranged from allowing CIA planes to refuel to hosting the prisons where the detainees were tortured. The report’s author, Amrit Singh, said: "The moral cost of these programs was borne not just by the U.S. but by the 54 other countries it recruited to help."
Link to the Headline
More resources:
Open Society Justice Initiative - Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition
The Washington Post: A staggering map of the 54 countries that reportedly participated in the CIA’s rendition program
Democracy Now
A new report has revealed a detailed look at global involvement in the CIA’s secret program of prisons, rendition and torture in the years after 9/11. The Open Society Justice Initiative says 54 countries aided the CIA until President Obama halted the program in 2009. The report, called "Globalizing Torture," also discloses at least 136 people were held by the CIA during those years — the largest tally to date. The countries’ assistance ranged from allowing CIA planes to refuel to hosting the prisons where the detainees were tortured. The report’s author, Amrit Singh, said: "The moral cost of these programs was borne not just by the U.S. but by the 54 other countries it recruited to help."
Link to the Headline
More resources:
Open Society Justice Initiative - Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition
The Washington Post: A staggering map of the 54 countries that reportedly participated in the CIA’s rendition program
Glenn Greenwald: Chilling legal memo from Obama DOJ justifies assassination of US citizens
Chilling legal memo from Obama DOJ justifies assassination of US citizens
by Glenn Greenwald
The Guardian
The president's partisan lawyers purport to vest him with the most extreme power a political leader can seize
The most extremist power any political leader can assert is the power to target his own citizens for execution without any charges or due process, far from any battlefield. The Obama administration has not only asserted exactly that power in theory, but has exercised it in practice. In September 2011, it killed US citizen Anwar Awlaki in a drone strike in Yemen, along with US citizen Samir Khan, and then, in circumstances that are still unexplained, two weeks later killed Awlaki's 16-year-old American son Abdulrahman with a separate drone strike in Yemen.
Since then, senior Obama officials including Attorney General Eric Holder and John Brennan, Obama's top terrorism adviser and his current nominee to lead the CIA, have explicitly argued that the president is and should be vested with this power. Meanwhile, a Washington Post article from October reported that the administration is formally institutionalizing this president's power to decide who dies under the Orwellian title "disposition matrix".
When the New York Times back in April, 2010 first confirmed the existence of Obama's hit list, it made clear just what an extremist power this is, noting: "It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing." The NYT quoted a Bush intelligence official as saying "he did not know of any American who was approved for targeted killing under the former president". When the existence of Obama's hit list was first reported several months earlier by the Washington Post's Dana Priest, she wrote that the "list includes three Americans".
What has made these actions all the more radical is the absolute secrecy with which Obama has draped all of this. Not only is the entire process carried out solely within the Executive branch - with no checks or oversight of any kind - but there is zero transparency and zero accountability. The president's underlings compile their proposed lists of who should be executed, and the president - at a charming weekly event dubbed by White House aides as "Terror Tuesday" - then chooses from "baseball cards" and decrees in total secrecy who should die. The power of accuser, prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner are all consolidated in this one man, and those powers are exercised in the dark.
In fact, The Most Transparent Administration Ever™ has been so fixated on secrecy that they have refused even to disclose the legal memoranda prepared by Obama lawyers setting forth their legal rationale for why the president has this power. During the Bush years, when Bush refused to disclose the memoranda from his Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) that legally authorized torture, rendition, warrantless eavesdropping and the like, leading Democratic lawyers such as Dawn Johnsen (Obama's first choice to lead the OLC) vehemently denounced this practice as a grave threat, warning that "the Bush Administration's excessive reliance on 'secret law' threatens the effective functioning of American democracy" and "the withholding from Congress and the public of legal interpretations by the [OLC] upsets the system of checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches of government."
But when it comes to Obama's assassination power, this is exactly what his administration has done. It has repeatedly refused to disclose the principal legal memoranda prepared by Obama OLC lawyers that justified his kill list. It is, right now, vigorously resisting lawsuits from the New York Times and the ACLU to obtain that OLC memorandum. In sum, Obama not only claims he has the power to order US citizens killed with no transparency, but that even the documents explaining the legal rationale for this power are to be concealed. He's maintaining secret law on the most extremist power he can assert.
Last night, NBC News' Michael Isikoff released a 16-page "white paper" prepared by the Obama DOJ that purports to justify Obama's power to target even Americans for assassination without due process (the memo is embedded in full below). This is not the primary OLC memo justifying Obama's kill list - that is still concealed - but it appears to track the reasoning of that memo as anonymously described to the New York Times in October 2011.
This new memo is entitled: "Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a US Citizen Who is a Senior Operational Leader of Al-Qa'ida or An Associated Force". It claims its conclusion is "reached with recognition of the extraordinary seriousness of a lethal operation by the United States against a US citizen". Yet it is every bit as chilling as the Bush OLC torture memos in how its clinical, legalistic tone completely sanitizes the radical and dangerous power it purports to authorize.
To Read the Rest of the Commentary
by Glenn Greenwald
The Guardian
The president's partisan lawyers purport to vest him with the most extreme power a political leader can seize
The most extremist power any political leader can assert is the power to target his own citizens for execution without any charges or due process, far from any battlefield. The Obama administration has not only asserted exactly that power in theory, but has exercised it in practice. In September 2011, it killed US citizen Anwar Awlaki in a drone strike in Yemen, along with US citizen Samir Khan, and then, in circumstances that are still unexplained, two weeks later killed Awlaki's 16-year-old American son Abdulrahman with a separate drone strike in Yemen.
Since then, senior Obama officials including Attorney General Eric Holder and John Brennan, Obama's top terrorism adviser and his current nominee to lead the CIA, have explicitly argued that the president is and should be vested with this power. Meanwhile, a Washington Post article from October reported that the administration is formally institutionalizing this president's power to decide who dies under the Orwellian title "disposition matrix".
When the New York Times back in April, 2010 first confirmed the existence of Obama's hit list, it made clear just what an extremist power this is, noting: "It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing." The NYT quoted a Bush intelligence official as saying "he did not know of any American who was approved for targeted killing under the former president". When the existence of Obama's hit list was first reported several months earlier by the Washington Post's Dana Priest, she wrote that the "list includes three Americans".
What has made these actions all the more radical is the absolute secrecy with which Obama has draped all of this. Not only is the entire process carried out solely within the Executive branch - with no checks or oversight of any kind - but there is zero transparency and zero accountability. The president's underlings compile their proposed lists of who should be executed, and the president - at a charming weekly event dubbed by White House aides as "Terror Tuesday" - then chooses from "baseball cards" and decrees in total secrecy who should die. The power of accuser, prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner are all consolidated in this one man, and those powers are exercised in the dark.
In fact, The Most Transparent Administration Ever™ has been so fixated on secrecy that they have refused even to disclose the legal memoranda prepared by Obama lawyers setting forth their legal rationale for why the president has this power. During the Bush years, when Bush refused to disclose the memoranda from his Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) that legally authorized torture, rendition, warrantless eavesdropping and the like, leading Democratic lawyers such as Dawn Johnsen (Obama's first choice to lead the OLC) vehemently denounced this practice as a grave threat, warning that "the Bush Administration's excessive reliance on 'secret law' threatens the effective functioning of American democracy" and "the withholding from Congress and the public of legal interpretations by the [OLC] upsets the system of checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches of government."
But when it comes to Obama's assassination power, this is exactly what his administration has done. It has repeatedly refused to disclose the principal legal memoranda prepared by Obama OLC lawyers that justified his kill list. It is, right now, vigorously resisting lawsuits from the New York Times and the ACLU to obtain that OLC memorandum. In sum, Obama not only claims he has the power to order US citizens killed with no transparency, but that even the documents explaining the legal rationale for this power are to be concealed. He's maintaining secret law on the most extremist power he can assert.
Last night, NBC News' Michael Isikoff released a 16-page "white paper" prepared by the Obama DOJ that purports to justify Obama's power to target even Americans for assassination without due process (the memo is embedded in full below). This is not the primary OLC memo justifying Obama's kill list - that is still concealed - but it appears to track the reasoning of that memo as anonymously described to the New York Times in October 2011.
This new memo is entitled: "Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a US Citizen Who is a Senior Operational Leader of Al-Qa'ida or An Associated Force". It claims its conclusion is "reached with recognition of the extraordinary seriousness of a lethal operation by the United States against a US citizen". Yet it is every bit as chilling as the Bush OLC torture memos in how its clinical, legalistic tone completely sanitizes the radical and dangerous power it purports to authorize.
To Read the Rest of the Commentary
Democracy Now: Daniel Ellsberg - NDAA Indefinite Detention Provision is Part of "Systematic Assault on Constitution"
Daniel Ellsberg: NDAA Indefinite Detention Provision is Part of "Systematic Assault on Constitution"
Democracy Now
A lawsuit challenging a law that gives the government the power to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens is back in federal court this week. On Wednesday, a group of academics, journalists and activists will present oral arguments in court against a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, authorizing the military to jail anyone it considers a terrorism suspect anywhere in the world without charge or trial. In a landmark ruling last September, Judge Katherine Forrest of the Southern District of New York struck down the indefinite detention provision, saying it likely violates the First and Fifth Amendments of U.S. citizens. We’re joined by Daniel Ellsberg, a plaintiff in the case and perhaps the country’s most famous whistleblower. Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, exposing the secret history of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
Guest:
Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistleblower.
To Watch the Episode
Democracy Now
A lawsuit challenging a law that gives the government the power to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens is back in federal court this week. On Wednesday, a group of academics, journalists and activists will present oral arguments in court against a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, authorizing the military to jail anyone it considers a terrorism suspect anywhere in the world without charge or trial. In a landmark ruling last September, Judge Katherine Forrest of the Southern District of New York struck down the indefinite detention provision, saying it likely violates the First and Fifth Amendments of U.S. citizens. We’re joined by Daniel Ellsberg, a plaintiff in the case and perhaps the country’s most famous whistleblower. Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, exposing the secret history of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
Guest:
Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistleblower.
To Watch the Episode
Democracy Now: Kill List Exposed - Leaked Obama Memo Shows Assassination of U.S. Citizens "Has No Geographic Limit"
Kill List Exposed: Leaked Obama Memo Shows Assassination of U.S. Citizens "Has No Geographic Limit"
Democracy Now
The Obama administration’s internal legal justification for assassinating U.S. citizens without charge has been revealed for the first time. In a secret Justice Department memo, the administration claims it has legal authority to assassinate U.S. citizens overseas even if there is no intelligence indicating they are engaged in an active plot to attack the United States. We’re joined by Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. "If you look at the memo ... there’s no geographic line," says Jaffer. "The Obama administration is making, in some ways, a greater claim of authority [than President Bush]. They’re arguing that the authority to kill American citizens has no geographic limit."
Guest:
Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the ACLU.
To Watch the Episode
Democracy Now
The Obama administration’s internal legal justification for assassinating U.S. citizens without charge has been revealed for the first time. In a secret Justice Department memo, the administration claims it has legal authority to assassinate U.S. citizens overseas even if there is no intelligence indicating they are engaged in an active plot to attack the United States. We’re joined by Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. "If you look at the memo ... there’s no geographic line," says Jaffer. "The Obama administration is making, in some ways, a greater claim of authority [than President Bush]. They’re arguing that the authority to kill American citizens has no geographic limit."
Guest:
Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the ACLU.
To Watch the Episode
Tuesday, February 05, 2013
HUM 221: Civil Resistance and Social Movements Bibliography
(Ongoing bibliography -- feel free to suggest resources)
Abu-Jamal, Mumia. We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party. South End Press, 2004.
Ali, Tariq and Susan Watkins. 1968: Marching in the Streets. NY: Free Press, 1998.
Allen, Theodore W. The Invention of the White Race: Racial Oppression and Social Control. Volume 1. Verso Books, 1994/2012.
---. The Invention of the White Race: The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America. Volume 2. Verso, 1997/2012.
Aptheker, Herbert. American Negro Slave Revolts. NY: International, 1943.
Brecher, Jeremy, et al. Globalization From Below. Boston: South End Press, 2000.
Carson, Clayborne, et al, eds. The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader: Documents, Speeches, and Firsthand Accounts from the Black Freedom Struggle. NY: Penguin, 1991.
Castells, Manuel. The Power of Identity. Volume II: The Information Age. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003.
Croucher, Sheila. Globalization and Belonging: The Politics of Identity in a Changing World. Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.
Duncombe, Stephen. Cultural Resistance Reader. NY: Verso, 2002.
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. NY: Grove Press, 1966.
Feenberg, Andrew and Jim Freedman. When Poetry Ruled the Streets: The French May Events of 1968. Albany, NY: SUNY, 2001.
Goodwin, Jeff and James M. Jasper, ed. The Social Movements Reader: Cases and Concepts. 2nd ed. Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.
Halper, Stefan and Jonathan Clarke. America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order. NY: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. NY: The Penguin Press, 2004.
Katsiaficas, Georgy. The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Social Movements and the Decolonization of Everyday Life. AK Press, 2006.
Kaufman, Cynthia. Ideas for Action: Relevant Theory for Radical Change. Boston: South End Press, 2003.
Klein, Naomi. No Fences, No Borders: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate. NY: Picador, 2002.
Kunstler, William. Politics on Trial: Five Famous Trials of the 20th Century. Ocean Press, 2003.
Kurlansky, Mark. 1968: The Year That Rocked the World. NY: Ballantine Books, 2003.
Lasn, Kalle. Culture Jam. Quill, 2000: 215 pages
Leistyna, Pepi, ed. Cultural Studies: From Theory to Action. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005.
Linebaugh, Peter and Marcus Rediker. The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. Boston: Beacon Press, 2000.
Martinez-Alier, Joan. “’Environmental Justice’ (Local and Global).” The Cultures of Globalization. Eds. Fredric Jameson and Masao Miyoshi. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998: 312-326.
McCarthy, Timothy Patrick and John McMillian, eds. The Radical Reader: A Documentary History of the American Radical Tradition. NY: The New Press, 2003.
Mertes, Tom. A Movements of Movements: Is Another World Possible? NY: Verso, 2004.
Meyer, David S. Social Movements: Identity, Culture, and the State. NY: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Noddings, Nel. “Global Citizenship: Promises and Problems” and “Place-Based Education to Preserve the Earth and Its People” Educating Citizens for Global Awareness. Ed. Nel Noddings. NY: Columbia University Press/Teachers College Press, 2005: 1-22; 57-69.
Notes From Nowhere Collective. We are Everywhere: The Irresistible Rise of Global Anticapitalism. NY: Verso, 2003.
Roberts, Adam and Timothy Garton Ash, ed. Civil Resistance & Power Politics: The Experience of Non-Violent Action from Gandhi to the Present. Oxford University Press, 2011.
Roy, Arundhati. An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire. Boston: South End Press, 2004.
Rudnick, Lois P., et al. American Identities: An Introductory Textbook. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006.
Sakolsky, Ron and Fred Wei-Han Ho. Sounding Off: Music as Subversion/Resistance/Revolution. Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, 1995.
Shaw, Randy. The Activist’s Handbook. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.
Sklair, Leslie. “Social Movements and Global Capital.” The Cultures of Globalization. Eds. Fredric Jameson and Masao Miyoshi. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998: 291-311.
Snow, David A. The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004.
Solnit, David. Globalize Liberation: How to Uproot the System and Build a Better World. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Publishers, 2003.
Sunstein, Cass. Why Societies Need Dissent. Harvard UP, 2003.
Tétreault, Mary Ann and Robin L. Teske, eds. Partial Truths and the Politics of Community. (Feminist Approaches to Social Movements, Community, and Power: Volume II) Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2003.
Tilly, Charles. Social Movements, 1768-2004. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2004.
Vienet, Rene. Enrages and Situationists in the Occupation Movement, France, 1968. Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, 1992.
Waziyatawin and Michael Yellow Bird, ed. For Indigenous Minds Only: A Decolonization Handbook. School for Advanced Research, 2012.
Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present. NY: Perennial Classics, 1999.
Zinn, Howard and Anthony Arnove, ed. Voices of a People’s History of the United States. NY: Seven Stories Press, 2004.
Abu-Jamal, Mumia. We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party. South End Press, 2004.
Ali, Tariq and Susan Watkins. 1968: Marching in the Streets. NY: Free Press, 1998.
Allen, Theodore W. The Invention of the White Race: Racial Oppression and Social Control. Volume 1. Verso Books, 1994/2012.
---. The Invention of the White Race: The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America. Volume 2. Verso, 1997/2012.
Aptheker, Herbert. American Negro Slave Revolts. NY: International, 1943.
Brecher, Jeremy, et al. Globalization From Below. Boston: South End Press, 2000.
Carson, Clayborne, et al, eds. The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader: Documents, Speeches, and Firsthand Accounts from the Black Freedom Struggle. NY: Penguin, 1991.
Castells, Manuel. The Power of Identity. Volume II: The Information Age. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003.
Croucher, Sheila. Globalization and Belonging: The Politics of Identity in a Changing World. Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.
Duncombe, Stephen. Cultural Resistance Reader. NY: Verso, 2002.
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. NY: Grove Press, 1966.
Feenberg, Andrew and Jim Freedman. When Poetry Ruled the Streets: The French May Events of 1968. Albany, NY: SUNY, 2001.
Goodwin, Jeff and James M. Jasper, ed. The Social Movements Reader: Cases and Concepts. 2nd ed. Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.
Halper, Stefan and Jonathan Clarke. America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order. NY: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. NY: The Penguin Press, 2004.
Katsiaficas, Georgy. The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Social Movements and the Decolonization of Everyday Life. AK Press, 2006.
Kaufman, Cynthia. Ideas for Action: Relevant Theory for Radical Change. Boston: South End Press, 2003.
Klein, Naomi. No Fences, No Borders: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate. NY: Picador, 2002.
Kunstler, William. Politics on Trial: Five Famous Trials of the 20th Century. Ocean Press, 2003.
Kurlansky, Mark. 1968: The Year That Rocked the World. NY: Ballantine Books, 2003.
Lasn, Kalle. Culture Jam. Quill, 2000: 215 pages
Leistyna, Pepi, ed. Cultural Studies: From Theory to Action. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005.
Linebaugh, Peter and Marcus Rediker. The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. Boston: Beacon Press, 2000.
Martinez-Alier, Joan. “’Environmental Justice’ (Local and Global).” The Cultures of Globalization. Eds. Fredric Jameson and Masao Miyoshi. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998: 312-326.
McCarthy, Timothy Patrick and John McMillian, eds. The Radical Reader: A Documentary History of the American Radical Tradition. NY: The New Press, 2003.
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