Episode #622 - Resisting The Military Financial Complex (Just Say No To Debt Repayment)
Unwelcome Guests
[The] first hour [is] a recent talk by Noam Chomsky on the larger picture of global politics. To understand the truth about the Cold War, he notes, we need only look at what happened when it came to an end; the US maintained the same policies (of global dominance by military means) but changed the pretexts - in so doing effectively admitting that the previous pretexts had been a fiction. Looking at the Middle East, especially Iran and Israel he highlights the hypocrisy of US's stated position. If Iran were to carry out 'cyberwafare' against them, or carry out hostile acts of finance, then this is sufficient ground for a military attack; at the same time, the US has already carried out both such attacks against Iran and is proud of the fact. The same amoral hypocrisy, he notes, is at play within the US - whereby an elite few dictate terms to the vast majority. Large corporations, for example, have been aggressively promoting what they [call] 'free market' doctrines. i.e. state support for bilking tax players. Chomsky concludes that this is likely to continue for as long as taxpayers allow the super rich to get away with it.
[The] second hour [is the soundtrack] of Story of Change, a recent short video by Annie Leonard, who highlights 3 key factors needed for social change: 1) An idea, 2) A group of people who unite behind it & 3) Their willingness to take action. Only the third factor is missing, she says.
Next [is] Aaron, an Occupy activist who reports on what the movement is doing to mark its first anniversary. As well as mass training for proactive resistance, Occupy is organizing a debt resistance movement, which is 'gaining a lot of traction' in [the] US. He also mentions that Occupy activists are getting help from financiers who have given up believing that authorities will ever prosecute any of the fraud that is rampant in the 'financial services' sector. After the soundtrack of part 2 of the Keynes and Hayek economics video which we first heard in episode 617, ... the show [concludes with a] reading from David Graeber's Debt, The First 5000 Years. In this, the final chapter, he looks at how neo-liberal policies served to put the populace on notice that 'all deals were off' as regards standard of living, and how even the rise of finance capital succeeded in putting more and more people in debt, a media machine swung into action that promoted "debt as the new fat" - emphasizing the role of 'discretionary spending' in debt as opposed to the main cause of medical bills. A 'double theology' was created, whereby the ability to make money out of nothing was a sign of divine blessing for the rich, but the poor were not encouraged to be so creative, simply to tighten their belts and keep working harder to pay down debts.
To Listen to the Episode
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Glenn Greenwald: FBI's abuse of the surveillance state is the real scandal needing investigation
FBI's abuse of the surveillance state is the real scandal needing investigation: That the stars of America's national security establishment are being devoured by out-of-control surveillance is a form of sweet justice.
by Glenn Greenwald
The Guardian
The Petraeus scandal is receiving intense media scrutiny obviously due to its salacious aspects, leaving one, as always, to fantasize about what a stellar press corps we would have if they devoted a tiny fraction of this energy to dissecting non-sex political scandals (this unintentionally amusing New York Times headline from this morning - "Concern Grows Over Top Military Officers' Ethics" - illustrates that point: with all the crimes committed by the US military over the last decade and long before, it's only adultery that causes "concern" over their "ethics"). Nonetheless, several of the emerging revelations are genuinely valuable, particularly those involving the conduct of the FBI and the reach of the US surveillance state.
As is now widely reported, the FBI investigation began when Jill Kelley - a Tampa socialite friendly with Petraeus (and apparently very friendly with Gen. John Allen, the four-star U.S. commander of the war in Afghanistan) - received a half-dozen or so anonymous emails that she found vaguely threatening. She then informed a friend of hers who was an FBI agent, and a major FBI investigation was then launched that set out to determine the identity of the anonymous emailer.
That is the first disturbing fact: it appears that the FBI not only devoted substantial resources, but also engaged in highly invasive surveillance, for no reason other than to do a personal favor for a friend of one of its agents, to find out who was very mildly harassing her by email. The emails Kelley received were, as the Daily Beast reports, quite banal and clearly not an event that warranted an FBI investigation:
That this deeply personal motive was what spawned the FBI investigation is bolstered by the fact that the initial investigating agent "was barred from taking part in the case over the summer due to superiors' concerns that he was personally involved in the case" - indeed, "supervisors soon became concerned that the initial agent might have grown obsessed with the matter" - and was found to have "allegedly sent shirtless photos" to Kelley, and "is now under investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility, the internal-affairs arm of the FBI".
[The New York Times this morning reports that the FBI claims the emails contained references to parts of Petraeus' schedule that were not publicly disclosed, though as Marcy Wheeler documents, the way the investigation proceeded strongly suggests that at least the initial impetus behind it was a desire to settle personal scores.]
What is most striking is how sweeping, probing and invasive the FBI's investigation then became, all without any evidence of any actual crime - or the need for any search warrant:
So all based on a handful of rather unremarkable emails sent to a woman fortunate enough to have a friend at the FBI, the FBI traced all of Broadwell's physical locations, learned of all the accounts she uses, ended up reading all of her emails, investigated the identity of her anonymous lover (who turned out to be Petraeus), and then possibly read his emails as well. They dug around in all of this without any evidence of any real crime - at most, they had a case of "cyber-harassment" more benign than what regularly appears in my email inbox and that of countless of other people - and, in large part, without the need for any warrant from a court.
To Read the Rest of the Column
by Glenn Greenwald
The Guardian
The Petraeus scandal is receiving intense media scrutiny obviously due to its salacious aspects, leaving one, as always, to fantasize about what a stellar press corps we would have if they devoted a tiny fraction of this energy to dissecting non-sex political scandals (this unintentionally amusing New York Times headline from this morning - "Concern Grows Over Top Military Officers' Ethics" - illustrates that point: with all the crimes committed by the US military over the last decade and long before, it's only adultery that causes "concern" over their "ethics"). Nonetheless, several of the emerging revelations are genuinely valuable, particularly those involving the conduct of the FBI and the reach of the US surveillance state.
As is now widely reported, the FBI investigation began when Jill Kelley - a Tampa socialite friendly with Petraeus (and apparently very friendly with Gen. John Allen, the four-star U.S. commander of the war in Afghanistan) - received a half-dozen or so anonymous emails that she found vaguely threatening. She then informed a friend of hers who was an FBI agent, and a major FBI investigation was then launched that set out to determine the identity of the anonymous emailer.
That is the first disturbing fact: it appears that the FBI not only devoted substantial resources, but also engaged in highly invasive surveillance, for no reason other than to do a personal favor for a friend of one of its agents, to find out who was very mildly harassing her by email. The emails Kelley received were, as the Daily Beast reports, quite banal and clearly not an event that warranted an FBI investigation:
"The emails that Jill Kelley showed an FBI friend near the start of last summer were not jealous lover warnings like 'stay away from my man', a knowledgeable source tells The Daily Beast. . . .
"'More like, 'Who do you think you are? . . .You parade around the base . . . You need to take it down a notch,'" according to the source, who was until recently at the highest levels of the intelligence community and prefers not to be identified by name.
"The source reports that the emails did make one reference to Gen. David Petraeus, but it was oblique and offered no manifest suggestion of a personal relationship or even that he was central to the sender's spite. . . .
"When the FBI friend showed the emails to the cyber squad in the Tampa field office, her fellow agents noted the absence of any overt threats.
"No, 'I'll kill you' or 'I'll burn your house down,'' the source says. 'It doesn't seem really that bad.'
"The squad was not even sure the case was worth pursuing, the source says.
"'What does this mean? There's no threat there. This is against the law?' the agents asked themselves by the source's account.
"At most the messages were harassing. The cyber squad had to consult the statute books in its effort to determine whether there was adequate legal cause to open a case.
"'It was a close call,' the source says.
"What tipped it may have been Kelley's friendship with the agent."
That this deeply personal motive was what spawned the FBI investigation is bolstered by the fact that the initial investigating agent "was barred from taking part in the case over the summer due to superiors' concerns that he was personally involved in the case" - indeed, "supervisors soon became concerned that the initial agent might have grown obsessed with the matter" - and was found to have "allegedly sent shirtless photos" to Kelley, and "is now under investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility, the internal-affairs arm of the FBI".
[The New York Times this morning reports that the FBI claims the emails contained references to parts of Petraeus' schedule that were not publicly disclosed, though as Marcy Wheeler documents, the way the investigation proceeded strongly suggests that at least the initial impetus behind it was a desire to settle personal scores.]
What is most striking is how sweeping, probing and invasive the FBI's investigation then became, all without any evidence of any actual crime - or the need for any search warrant:
"Because the sender's account had been registered anonymously, investigators had to use forensic techniques - including a check of what other e-mail accounts had been accessed from the same computer address - to identify who was writing the e-mails.
"Eventually they identified Ms. Broadwell as a prime suspect and obtained access to her regular e-mail account. In its in-box, they discovered intimate and sexually explicit e-mails from another account that also was not immediately identifiable. Investigators eventually ascertained that it belonged to Mr. Petraeus and studied the possibility that someone had hacked into Mr. Petraeus's account or was posing as him to send the explicit messages."
So all based on a handful of rather unremarkable emails sent to a woman fortunate enough to have a friend at the FBI, the FBI traced all of Broadwell's physical locations, learned of all the accounts she uses, ended up reading all of her emails, investigated the identity of her anonymous lover (who turned out to be Petraeus), and then possibly read his emails as well. They dug around in all of this without any evidence of any real crime - at most, they had a case of "cyber-harassment" more benign than what regularly appears in my email inbox and that of countless of other people - and, in large part, without the need for any warrant from a court.
To Read the Rest of the Column
Simon Hooper: British ban squatting to tackle ‘anarchists’ -- Squatting in empty properties is now a criminal offence, but homeless people say they are being unfairly criminalised
British ban squatting to tackle ‘anarchists’: Squatting in empty properties is now a criminal offence, but homeless people say they are being unfairly criminalised.
by Simon Hooper
Al Jazeera
London, UK - "Todd" was 18 when he came to the United Kingdom from Lithuania in 2005 in search of a better life. But things didn't work out. By 2009, with the British economy ravaged by recession, he had lost his job and had nowhere to live.
"I had really bad depression so I couldn't hold a job. I ended up sleeping rough on the streets. My mental health was deteriorating... I had suicidal thoughts," he recalls.
Todd - an adopted Anglicisation of his Lithuanian name - ended up in Brighton, a town on England's south coast with a reputation for tolerance, a vibrant arts scene and a homelessness problem. It was there that he began to rebuild his life, finding a vital support network among those squatting in the town's ample stock of empty and neglected buildings and sometimes opening them up as impromptu galleries and cultural spaces.
British squatters face eviction after law change
"I call myself houseless, not homeless. We are a community and we help each other out," he explains. "There is a lot of support and there is always somebody to talk to. Living like this, you're always in control of your own life. You don't have the money to support yourself food-wise, maybe, but you can go and get it from skips. It's still the same food."
But tens of thousands like Todd who seek shelter in unoccupied properties now risk arrest and imprisonment under a government-backed campaign to outlaw squatting.
Under a law in place since the beginning of September, squatting in empty residential properties in England and Wales is already a criminal offence, with those convicted facing months in prison and steep fines. The ministry of justice estimates that up to 2,000 people could be prosecuted each year.
Supporters of the law, including David Cameron, the British prime minister, argue that banning squatting is necessary to protect homeowners and landlords, to prevent associated anti-social and criminal behaviour, and to give the police and courts greater powers to evict, arrest and prosecute those engaged in it.
'Targets the vulnerable'
Recently, Mike Weatherley, the main architect of that legislation, met Chris Grayling, the justice minister, to discuss its extension to commercial properties as well.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Weatherley, whose Hove constituency is adjacent to Brighton, said that the law needed to be tougher because squatters were taking advantage of a "loophole" allowing the occupation of properties that were part-commercial and part-residential, such as pubs.
"The police like it, the public like it, it's a good law, and those who says it's not are just anarchists," said Weatherley. "These properties belong to somebody and the law for too long has been ineffectual."
But opponents say that the ban targets the vulnerable at a time when cuts to public services and benefits, high unemployment and a shortage of social housing mean that, for some, sleeping in a squat may be the last option before sleeping on the streets.
Squatting campaigners say there are also hundreds of thousands of properties being left empty and falling into dereliction even as rising rents and high property prices have left growing numbers struggling to find affordable accommodation.
"All it's doing is criminalising homeless people in the middle of a housing crisis," said Joseph Blake of the Squatters' Action for Secure Homes (SQUASH) pressure group. He cited the case of a 21-year-old man, Alex Haigh, who in September became the first person to be jailed under the new law.
"The people who are being affected are those using squatting as the final means to get a roof over their head. Alex Haigh has gone to prison for sheltering in a building that had been empty for a year-and-a-half. We think squatting needs to be there as a last resort, especially in tough times."
Homelessness in many areas of the UK has risen sharply in recent years, with the latest government figures showing more than 50,000 families and individuals in need of emergency accommodation in 2012, a 25 percent rise since 2009.
Charities and campaigners argue that the actual number of "hidden homeless", including rough sleepers and those sleeping on sofas, is much higher. Up to 50,000 people are estimated to be living in squats, including about half now illegally in residential properties, and research by the charity Crisis showed that almost 40 percent of homeless people have resorted to squatting at some point, often in bleak and squalid conditions.
To Read the Rest of the Article
by Simon Hooper
Al Jazeera
London, UK - "Todd" was 18 when he came to the United Kingdom from Lithuania in 2005 in search of a better life. But things didn't work out. By 2009, with the British economy ravaged by recession, he had lost his job and had nowhere to live.
"I had really bad depression so I couldn't hold a job. I ended up sleeping rough on the streets. My mental health was deteriorating... I had suicidal thoughts," he recalls.
Todd - an adopted Anglicisation of his Lithuanian name - ended up in Brighton, a town on England's south coast with a reputation for tolerance, a vibrant arts scene and a homelessness problem. It was there that he began to rebuild his life, finding a vital support network among those squatting in the town's ample stock of empty and neglected buildings and sometimes opening them up as impromptu galleries and cultural spaces.
British squatters face eviction after law change
"I call myself houseless, not homeless. We are a community and we help each other out," he explains. "There is a lot of support and there is always somebody to talk to. Living like this, you're always in control of your own life. You don't have the money to support yourself food-wise, maybe, but you can go and get it from skips. It's still the same food."
But tens of thousands like Todd who seek shelter in unoccupied properties now risk arrest and imprisonment under a government-backed campaign to outlaw squatting.
Under a law in place since the beginning of September, squatting in empty residential properties in England and Wales is already a criminal offence, with those convicted facing months in prison and steep fines. The ministry of justice estimates that up to 2,000 people could be prosecuted each year.
Supporters of the law, including David Cameron, the British prime minister, argue that banning squatting is necessary to protect homeowners and landlords, to prevent associated anti-social and criminal behaviour, and to give the police and courts greater powers to evict, arrest and prosecute those engaged in it.
'Targets the vulnerable'
Recently, Mike Weatherley, the main architect of that legislation, met Chris Grayling, the justice minister, to discuss its extension to commercial properties as well.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Weatherley, whose Hove constituency is adjacent to Brighton, said that the law needed to be tougher because squatters were taking advantage of a "loophole" allowing the occupation of properties that were part-commercial and part-residential, such as pubs.
"The police like it, the public like it, it's a good law, and those who says it's not are just anarchists," said Weatherley. "These properties belong to somebody and the law for too long has been ineffectual."
But opponents say that the ban targets the vulnerable at a time when cuts to public services and benefits, high unemployment and a shortage of social housing mean that, for some, sleeping in a squat may be the last option before sleeping on the streets.
Squatting campaigners say there are also hundreds of thousands of properties being left empty and falling into dereliction even as rising rents and high property prices have left growing numbers struggling to find affordable accommodation.
"All it's doing is criminalising homeless people in the middle of a housing crisis," said Joseph Blake of the Squatters' Action for Secure Homes (SQUASH) pressure group. He cited the case of a 21-year-old man, Alex Haigh, who in September became the first person to be jailed under the new law.
"The people who are being affected are those using squatting as the final means to get a roof over their head. Alex Haigh has gone to prison for sheltering in a building that had been empty for a year-and-a-half. We think squatting needs to be there as a last resort, especially in tough times."
Homelessness in many areas of the UK has risen sharply in recent years, with the latest government figures showing more than 50,000 families and individuals in need of emergency accommodation in 2012, a 25 percent rise since 2009.
Charities and campaigners argue that the actual number of "hidden homeless", including rough sleepers and those sleeping on sofas, is much higher. Up to 50,000 people are estimated to be living in squats, including about half now illegally in residential properties, and research by the charity Crisis showed that almost 40 percent of homeless people have resorted to squatting at some point, often in bleak and squalid conditions.
To Read the Rest of the Article
Monday, November 12, 2012
Thomas Frank: Too Smart to Fail -- Notes on an Age of Folly
Too Smart to Fail: Notes on an Age of Folly
by Thomas Frank
The Baffler
In the twelve hapless years of the present millennium, we have looked on as three great bubbles of consensus vanity have inflated and burst, each with consequences more dire than the last.
First there was the “New Economy,” a millennial fever dream predicated on the twin ideas of a people’s stock market and an eternal silicon prosperity; it collapsed eventually under the weight of its own fatuousness.
Second was the war in Iraq, an endeavor whose launch depended for its success on the turpitude of virtually every class of elite in Washington, particularly the tough-minded men of the media; an enterprise that destroyed the country it aimed to save and that helped to bankrupt our nation as well.
And then, Wall Street blew up the global economy. Empowered by bank deregulation and regulatory capture, Wall Street enlisted those tough-minded men of the media again to sell the world on the idea that financial innovations were making the global economy more stable by the minute. Central banks puffed an asset bubble like the world had never seen before, even if every journalist worth his byline was obliged to deny its existence until it was too late.
These episodes were costly and even disastrous, and after each one had run its course and duly exploded, I expected some sort of day of reckoning for their promoters. And, indeed, the last two disasters combined to force the Republican Party from its stranglehold on American government—for a time.
But what rankles now is our failure, after each of these disasters, to come to terms with how we were played. Each separate catastrophe should have been followed by a wave of apologies and resignations; taken together—and given that a good percentage of the pundit corps signed on to two or even three of these idiotic storylines—themy mandated mass firings in the newsrooms and op-ed pages of the nation. Quicker than you could say “Ahmed Chalabi,” an entire generation of newsroom fools should have lost their jobs.
But that’s not what happened. Plenty of journalists have been pushed out of late, but the ones responsible for deluding the public are not among them. Neocon extraordinaire Bill Kristol won a berth at the New York Times (before losing it again), Charles Krauthammer is still the thinking conservative’s favorite, George Will drones crankily on, Thomas Friedman remains our leading dispenser of nonsense neologisms, and Niall Ferguson wipes his feet on a welcome mat that will never wear out. The day Larry Kudlow apologizes for slagging bubble-doubters as part of a sinister left-wing trick is the day the world will start spinning in reverse. Standard & Poor’s first leads the parade of folly (triple-A’s for everyone!), then decides to downgrade U.S. government debt, and is taken seriously in both endeavors. And the prospect of Fox News or CNBC apologizing for their role in puffing war bubbles and financial bubbles is no better than a punch line: what they do is the opposite, launching new movements that stamp their crumbled fables “true” by popular demand.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
by Thomas Frank
The Baffler
In the twelve hapless years of the present millennium, we have looked on as three great bubbles of consensus vanity have inflated and burst, each with consequences more dire than the last.
First there was the “New Economy,” a millennial fever dream predicated on the twin ideas of a people’s stock market and an eternal silicon prosperity; it collapsed eventually under the weight of its own fatuousness.
Second was the war in Iraq, an endeavor whose launch depended for its success on the turpitude of virtually every class of elite in Washington, particularly the tough-minded men of the media; an enterprise that destroyed the country it aimed to save and that helped to bankrupt our nation as well.
And then, Wall Street blew up the global economy. Empowered by bank deregulation and regulatory capture, Wall Street enlisted those tough-minded men of the media again to sell the world on the idea that financial innovations were making the global economy more stable by the minute. Central banks puffed an asset bubble like the world had never seen before, even if every journalist worth his byline was obliged to deny its existence until it was too late.
These episodes were costly and even disastrous, and after each one had run its course and duly exploded, I expected some sort of day of reckoning for their promoters. And, indeed, the last two disasters combined to force the Republican Party from its stranglehold on American government—for a time.
But what rankles now is our failure, after each of these disasters, to come to terms with how we were played. Each separate catastrophe should have been followed by a wave of apologies and resignations; taken together—and given that a good percentage of the pundit corps signed on to two or even three of these idiotic storylines—themy mandated mass firings in the newsrooms and op-ed pages of the nation. Quicker than you could say “Ahmed Chalabi,” an entire generation of newsroom fools should have lost their jobs.
But that’s not what happened. Plenty of journalists have been pushed out of late, but the ones responsible for deluding the public are not among them. Neocon extraordinaire Bill Kristol won a berth at the New York Times (before losing it again), Charles Krauthammer is still the thinking conservative’s favorite, George Will drones crankily on, Thomas Friedman remains our leading dispenser of nonsense neologisms, and Niall Ferguson wipes his feet on a welcome mat that will never wear out. The day Larry Kudlow apologizes for slagging bubble-doubters as part of a sinister left-wing trick is the day the world will start spinning in reverse. Standard & Poor’s first leads the parade of folly (triple-A’s for everyone!), then decides to downgrade U.S. government debt, and is taken seriously in both endeavors. And the prospect of Fox News or CNBC apologizing for their role in puffing war bubbles and financial bubbles is no better than a punch line: what they do is the opposite, launching new movements that stamp their crumbled fables “true” by popular demand.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
Two Upcoming Horror Films: World War Z and Warm Bodies
This one looks like a wretched horror film playing on elite fears of the "unwashed masses."
World War Z (USA: Marc Forster, 2013)
This one looks like it is coming from a different direction.
Warm Bodies (USA: Jonathan Levine, 2013)
World War Z (USA: Marc Forster, 2013)
This one looks like it is coming from a different direction.
Warm Bodies (USA: Jonathan Levine, 2013)
Thursday, November 08, 2012
Laura Webb: Landmarks and Memory - On the "When separate is not equal” bus
Landmarks and Memory: On the “When separate is not equal” bus
By Laura Webb
North of Center
On the afternoon of Saturday, October 13, NoC’s Film Department and I went willingly to a type of space we usually avoid: a church parking lot. Granted, we were not there in search of eternal salvation (much to my relatives’ disappointment, I’m sure), but instead as attendants of the Central Kentucky Council for Peace and Justice’s bus tour of Historic Lexington, part of its ongoing “Voices” event series. The theme of this year’s series, “When Separate is Not Equal: Yesterday and Today,” focused on segregation and the struggle for civil rights.
From African American enclaves such as Kincaidtown (now known as the East End) to more recent inconsistencies in downtown restoration and development, Lexington has a long history of creating segregated spaces. Official area histories tend to recognize, and city revitalization efforts tend to prioritize, the upkeep and maintenance of spaces coded white and upper-class, often directly at the expense of black neighborhoods, landmarks and histories.
To cite one example, the popular Cheapside park — home to the recently developed Fifth Third Bank Pavilion and the substantial Lexington Farmer’s Market, as well as other well-publicized events — features prominent statues lauding two Kentucky Confederates, John Hunt Morgan and John C. Breckinridge. In revitalizing the area, the Breckinridge statue was moved to an even more prominent location abutting Main Street. Meanwhile, the square’s historical role as a slave market was only overtly acknowledged with a historical marker in 2003, and even then this marker is effectively hidden behind the old courthouse and beneath a tree. (It goes without saying that the plaque was left untouched during the recent renovation that moved the Breckenridge statue.)
Given the general lack of citywide interest in acknowledging landmarks important to Lexington’s African American community, a tour focused specifically on black landmarks about town naturally drew my attention. I was far from disappointed. Our guide, Yvonne Giles (founder and director of the Isaac Scott Hathaway Museum Gallery), amazed me with her depth and breadth of knowledge.
Wiping the landscape
As our new hybrid bus departed from First African Baptist Church, Giles began to outline the processes that would recurrently arise throughout the tour. Historically, black spaces such as hospitals and cemeteries were physically separated from white ones. As the city developed over time, important black spaces have been lost even as corresponding white spaces have been preserved.
To Read the Rest of the Article
By Laura Webb
North of Center
On the afternoon of Saturday, October 13, NoC’s Film Department and I went willingly to a type of space we usually avoid: a church parking lot. Granted, we were not there in search of eternal salvation (much to my relatives’ disappointment, I’m sure), but instead as attendants of the Central Kentucky Council for Peace and Justice’s bus tour of Historic Lexington, part of its ongoing “Voices” event series. The theme of this year’s series, “When Separate is Not Equal: Yesterday and Today,” focused on segregation and the struggle for civil rights.
From African American enclaves such as Kincaidtown (now known as the East End) to more recent inconsistencies in downtown restoration and development, Lexington has a long history of creating segregated spaces. Official area histories tend to recognize, and city revitalization efforts tend to prioritize, the upkeep and maintenance of spaces coded white and upper-class, often directly at the expense of black neighborhoods, landmarks and histories.
To cite one example, the popular Cheapside park — home to the recently developed Fifth Third Bank Pavilion and the substantial Lexington Farmer’s Market, as well as other well-publicized events — features prominent statues lauding two Kentucky Confederates, John Hunt Morgan and John C. Breckinridge. In revitalizing the area, the Breckinridge statue was moved to an even more prominent location abutting Main Street. Meanwhile, the square’s historical role as a slave market was only overtly acknowledged with a historical marker in 2003, and even then this marker is effectively hidden behind the old courthouse and beneath a tree. (It goes without saying that the plaque was left untouched during the recent renovation that moved the Breckenridge statue.)
Given the general lack of citywide interest in acknowledging landmarks important to Lexington’s African American community, a tour focused specifically on black landmarks about town naturally drew my attention. I was far from disappointed. Our guide, Yvonne Giles (founder and director of the Isaac Scott Hathaway Museum Gallery), amazed me with her depth and breadth of knowledge.
Wiping the landscape
As our new hybrid bus departed from First African Baptist Church, Giles began to outline the processes that would recurrently arise throughout the tour. Historically, black spaces such as hospitals and cemeteries were physically separated from white ones. As the city developed over time, important black spaces have been lost even as corresponding white spaces have been preserved.
To Read the Rest of the Article
Gomorrah and the Gangster Film
Gomorrah (Italy: Matteo Garrone, 2008: 137 mins)
Bochenski, Matt. "Gomorrah." Little White Lies (October 10, 2008)
Curti, Roberto. "File Under Fire: A brief history of Italian crime films." Offscreen (November 30, 2007)
Greenburg, Kathryn Elizabeth. "Rewriting Historical Neorealism in Matteo Garrone's Gomorrah." (A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Romance Languages, 2010.)
Ivey, Prudence. "Gomorrah Actors Arrested." Little White Lies (October 13, 2008)
Ming, Wu. "The New Italian Epic." Opening talk @ the conference "The Italian Perspective on Metahistorical Fiction: The New Italian Epic." Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, University of London, UK. (October 2, 2008)
Stephens, Chuck. "Gomorrah: Terminal Beach." Criterion (November 23, 2009)
The Godfather (USA: Francis Ford Coppola, 1972: 175 mins)
Freedman, Carl. "Hobbes After Marx, Scorsese After Coppola: On GoodFellas." Film International (2011)
---. "The Supplement of Coppola: Primitive Accumulation and the Godfather Trilogy." Film International 9.1 (2011): 8-41
Gamman, Lorraine. "If Looks Could Kill: On gangster suits and silhouettes." Moving Image Source (May 8, 2012)
MacDowell, James. "John Cazale: Stepped Over." Alternate Takes (June 12, 2012)
Goodfellas (USA: Martin Scorsese, 1990: 146 mins)
Freedman, Carl. "Hobbes After Marx, Scorsese After Coppola: On GoodFellas." Film International (2011)
---. "The Supplement of Coppola: Primitive Accumulation and the Godfather Trilogy." Film International 9.1 (2011): 8-41
Gamman, Lorraine. "If Looks Could Kill: On gangster suits and silhouettes." Moving Image Source (May 8, 2012)
"A Life in Pictures: Martin Scorsese." BAFTA (April 6, 2011)
Shane Bauer: "No Way Out" – Solitary Confinement from Iran to United States
"No Way Out"–Freed Hiker Shane Bauer on Solitary Confinement from Iran to United States
Democracy Now
Shane Bauer was one of three Americans detained in 2009 while hiking in Iraq’s Kurdish region near the Iranian border. He and Josh Fattal were held for 26 months, and Sarah Shourd — now Bauer’s wife — was held for 13 months, much of it in solitary confinement. Seven months after being freed from prison in Iran, Bauer began investigating solitary confinement in the United States. Now, in his first major article since his release for Mother Jones magazine, Bauer finds California prisoners are being held for years in isolation based on allegations they are connected to prison gangs. In his first live television interview since his release, Bauer joins us to discuss his report.
To Watch the Episode and an Extended Interview
Democracy Now
Shane Bauer was one of three Americans detained in 2009 while hiking in Iraq’s Kurdish region near the Iranian border. He and Josh Fattal were held for 26 months, and Sarah Shourd — now Bauer’s wife — was held for 13 months, much of it in solitary confinement. Seven months after being freed from prison in Iran, Bauer began investigating solitary confinement in the United States. Now, in his first major article since his release for Mother Jones magazine, Bauer finds California prisoners are being held for years in isolation based on allegations they are connected to prison gangs. In his first live television interview since his release, Bauer joins us to discuss his report.
To Watch the Episode and an Extended Interview
Dorian Lynskey: The GOP Delusion - how conservatives were mugged by reality
The GOP Delusion: how conservatives were mugged by reality
by Dorian Lynskey
33 Revolutions Per Minute
...
This is what happens when you spend the entire election cycle ignoring the facts in front of you. At every turn conservatives have blamed “skewed” polls, and a biased mainstream media for Romney’s problems, never taking seriously the idea that the electorate might have a pro-Obama bias. Look at Slate’s pundit dartboard. Apart from CNBC’s Jim Cramer, all of the outliers are conservative ideologues, predicting a Romney victory with between 273 and 325 electoral college votes. Faced with data to the contrary, they attempted to smear conscientious number-crunchers like FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver. On the night, the result was exactly as Silver had predicted.
Conservatism has became a faith-based ecosystem, resistant to any facts that complicate its version of reality. It is driven by apocalyptic terrors. The future of the republic itself is always in danger. The Constitution is destined for the shredder. The American eagle hangs its head. Ironically, the two issues that come closest to a real existential threat — climate change and the 2008 banking crisis — don’t trigger any anxiety in conservatives, while the phantasm of a socialist dictatorship has them trembling with fear and rage.
As Richard Hofstadter argued as long ago as 1964, the appeal of such life-or-death rhetoric is that it justifies an extreme response: block, sabotage, destroy, crush them. If you convince yourself that a centrist like Obama (who has disappointed his liberal base on several issues) is actually a Mancurian Candidate president out to destroy America from within than any lie about his beliefs, his religion, even his country of birth, is justified. Hofstadter:
This is how you build a fun-packed, self-sustaining echo chamber. It is not how you run a party, let alone a country. There are, of course, people on the left who harbour paranoid delusions, from the 9/11 Truthers to the hardcore Assangists, but they have no sway over the Democrats. Conservative fanatics, however, have commandeered the GOP.
Helped by the Tea Party insurgency, the Republicans’ mid-term gains in 2010 appeared to vindicate, and intensify, the party’s obstructionist tendencies. It was during that campaign that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell notoriously said: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” When you make your top priority fucking up the other guy and then fail, you have to ask yourselves what the hell you’re playing at.
The insanity of the current GOP position is threefold. Firstly, it rules out the bipartisan collaboration on which the efficacy of the US political system depends, and means that Washington wastes its time with fruitless and costly battles like the one over the debt ceiling in summer 2011. Conservatives then have the nerve to complain that it is Obama, whose attempts at consensus have been militantly rebuffed from day one, who has divided the nation.
Secondly, it punishes the moderates. By the standards of the modern GOP Reagan would never have won the nomination, Romney’s father George would most likely have been a Democrat and a British Conservative like David Cameron wouldn’t last five minutes. Romney was forced into the impossible position of having to pander to the hardliners in the primaries and then trying to pull a last-minute moderate switcheroo in the debates, which was the first time the American public actually warmed to him.
Thirdly, it is based on the fantasy that the American public deep down wants paranoid movement conservatism. Already you can hear the voices crying that the GOP would have won if Romney weren’t such a moderate wimp. Extreme progressives don’t really believe that their values are shared by the nation at large but their conservative counterparts, insanely, do.
What we’re seeing now is the explosion that occurs when the conservatives’ alternate reality collides with the actual reality of the ballot box. It’s not just Obama’s victory. Same-sex marriage referenda passed by significant margins in Maryland, Maine and Washington. Colorado and Washington voted to legalise marijuana. Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, whose “gaffes” about rape and abortion were merely stating the party’s platform position, lost Senate races they might otherwise have won. There are now more female senators, including the passionately liberal Elizabeth Warren and the openly gay Tammy Baldwin, than ever before. Demographic changes favour the Democrats, who lead among African-Americans, Latinos, young people, college graduates and women, while a massive 88% of Romney’s support came from white people. Conservatives assumed those groups either wouldn’t turn out or somehow don’t represent the real America and therefore don’t constitute a mandate.
To Read the Entire Commentary
by Dorian Lynskey
33 Revolutions Per Minute
...
This is what happens when you spend the entire election cycle ignoring the facts in front of you. At every turn conservatives have blamed “skewed” polls, and a biased mainstream media for Romney’s problems, never taking seriously the idea that the electorate might have a pro-Obama bias. Look at Slate’s pundit dartboard. Apart from CNBC’s Jim Cramer, all of the outliers are conservative ideologues, predicting a Romney victory with between 273 and 325 electoral college votes. Faced with data to the contrary, they attempted to smear conscientious number-crunchers like FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver. On the night, the result was exactly as Silver had predicted.
Conservatism has became a faith-based ecosystem, resistant to any facts that complicate its version of reality. It is driven by apocalyptic terrors. The future of the republic itself is always in danger. The Constitution is destined for the shredder. The American eagle hangs its head. Ironically, the two issues that come closest to a real existential threat — climate change and the 2008 banking crisis — don’t trigger any anxiety in conservatives, while the phantasm of a socialist dictatorship has them trembling with fear and rage.
As Richard Hofstadter argued as long ago as 1964, the appeal of such life-or-death rhetoric is that it justifies an extreme response: block, sabotage, destroy, crush them. If you convince yourself that a centrist like Obama (who has disappointed his liberal base on several issues) is actually a Mancurian Candidate president out to destroy America from within than any lie about his beliefs, his religion, even his country of birth, is justified. Hofstadter:
The paranoid is a militant leader. He does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, the quality needed is not a willingness to compromise but the will to fight things out to the finish. Nothing but complete victory will do.
This is how you build a fun-packed, self-sustaining echo chamber. It is not how you run a party, let alone a country. There are, of course, people on the left who harbour paranoid delusions, from the 9/11 Truthers to the hardcore Assangists, but they have no sway over the Democrats. Conservative fanatics, however, have commandeered the GOP.
Helped by the Tea Party insurgency, the Republicans’ mid-term gains in 2010 appeared to vindicate, and intensify, the party’s obstructionist tendencies. It was during that campaign that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell notoriously said: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” When you make your top priority fucking up the other guy and then fail, you have to ask yourselves what the hell you’re playing at.
The insanity of the current GOP position is threefold. Firstly, it rules out the bipartisan collaboration on which the efficacy of the US political system depends, and means that Washington wastes its time with fruitless and costly battles like the one over the debt ceiling in summer 2011. Conservatives then have the nerve to complain that it is Obama, whose attempts at consensus have been militantly rebuffed from day one, who has divided the nation.
Secondly, it punishes the moderates. By the standards of the modern GOP Reagan would never have won the nomination, Romney’s father George would most likely have been a Democrat and a British Conservative like David Cameron wouldn’t last five minutes. Romney was forced into the impossible position of having to pander to the hardliners in the primaries and then trying to pull a last-minute moderate switcheroo in the debates, which was the first time the American public actually warmed to him.
Thirdly, it is based on the fantasy that the American public deep down wants paranoid movement conservatism. Already you can hear the voices crying that the GOP would have won if Romney weren’t such a moderate wimp. Extreme progressives don’t really believe that their values are shared by the nation at large but their conservative counterparts, insanely, do.
What we’re seeing now is the explosion that occurs when the conservatives’ alternate reality collides with the actual reality of the ballot box. It’s not just Obama’s victory. Same-sex marriage referenda passed by significant margins in Maryland, Maine and Washington. Colorado and Washington voted to legalise marijuana. Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, whose “gaffes” about rape and abortion were merely stating the party’s platform position, lost Senate races they might otherwise have won. There are now more female senators, including the passionately liberal Elizabeth Warren and the openly gay Tammy Baldwin, than ever before. Demographic changes favour the Democrats, who lead among African-Americans, Latinos, young people, college graduates and women, while a massive 88% of Romney’s support came from white people. Conservatives assumed those groups either wouldn’t turn out or somehow don’t represent the real America and therefore don’t constitute a mandate.
To Read the Entire Commentary
Wednesday, November 07, 2012
Frederick C. Harris: The Price of a Black President
The Price of a Black President
by Frederick C. Harris
The New York Times
...
But for those who had seen in President Obama’s election the culmination of four centuries of black hopes and aspirations and the realization of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of a “beloved community,” the last four years must be reckoned a disappointment. Whether it ends in 2013 or 2017, the Obama presidency has already marked the decline, rather than the pinnacle, of a political vision centered on challenging racial inequality. The tragedy is that black elites — from intellectuals and civil rights leaders to politicians and clergy members — have acquiesced to this decline, seeing it as the necessary price for the pride and satisfaction of having a black family in the White House.
These are not easy words to write. Mr. Obama’s expansion of health insurance coverage was the most significant social legislation since the Great Society, his stimulus package blunted much of the devastation of the Great Recession, and the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul added major new protections for consumers. His politics would seem to vindicate the position of civil rights-era leaders like Bayard Rustin, who argued that blacks should form coalitions with other Democratic constituencies in support of universal, race-neutral policies — in opposition to activists like Malcolm X, who distrusted party politics and believed that blacks would be better positioned to advance their interests as an independent voting bloc, beholden to neither party.
But the triumph of “post-racial” Democratic politics has not been a triumph for African-Americans in the aggregate. It has failed to arrest the growing chasm of income and wealth inequality; to improve prospects for social and economic mobility; to halt the re-segregation of public schools and narrow the black-white achievement gap; and to prevent the Supreme Court from eroding the last vestiges of affirmative action. The once unimaginable successes of black diplomats like Colin L. Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Susan E. Rice and of black chief executives like Ursula M. Burns, Kenneth I. Chenault and Roger W. Ferguson Jr. cannot distract us from facts like these: 28 percent of African-Americans, and 37 percent of black children, are poor (compared with 10 percent of whites and 13 percent of white children); 13 percent of blacks are unemployed (compared with 7 percent of whites); more than 900,000 black men are in prison; blacks experienced a sharper drop in income since 2007 than any other racial group; black household wealth, which had been disproportionately concentrated in housing, has hit its lowest level in decades; blacks accounted, in 2009, for 44 percent of new H.I.V. infections.
Mr. Obama cannot, of course, be blamed for any of these facts. It’s no secret that Republican obstruction has limited his options at every turn. But it’s disturbing that so few black elites have aggressively advocated for those whom the legal scholar Derrick A. Bell called the “faces at the bottom of the well.”
The prophetic tradition of speaking truth to power, regardless of political winds or social pressures, has a long history. Ida B. Wells risked her life to publicize the atrocity of lynching; W. E. B. Du Bois linked the struggle against racial injustice to anticolonial movements around the world; Cornel West continues to warn of the “giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism” that King identified a year before his death.
But that prophetic tradition is on the wane. Changes in black religious practice have played a role. Great preachers of social justice and liberation theology, like Gardner C. Taylor, Samuel DeWitt Proctor, John Hurst Adams, Wyatt Tee Walker and Joseph E. Lowery, have retired or passed away. Taking their place are megachurch preachers of a “gospel of prosperity” — like Creflo A. Dollar Jr., T. D. Jakes, Eddie L. Long and Frederick K. C. Price — who emphasize individual enrichment rather than collective uplift. “There’s more facing us than social justice,” Bishop Jakes has said. “There’s personal responsibility.”
To Read the Rest of the Commentary
by Frederick C. Harris
The New York Times
...
But for those who had seen in President Obama’s election the culmination of four centuries of black hopes and aspirations and the realization of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of a “beloved community,” the last four years must be reckoned a disappointment. Whether it ends in 2013 or 2017, the Obama presidency has already marked the decline, rather than the pinnacle, of a political vision centered on challenging racial inequality. The tragedy is that black elites — from intellectuals and civil rights leaders to politicians and clergy members — have acquiesced to this decline, seeing it as the necessary price for the pride and satisfaction of having a black family in the White House.
These are not easy words to write. Mr. Obama’s expansion of health insurance coverage was the most significant social legislation since the Great Society, his stimulus package blunted much of the devastation of the Great Recession, and the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul added major new protections for consumers. His politics would seem to vindicate the position of civil rights-era leaders like Bayard Rustin, who argued that blacks should form coalitions with other Democratic constituencies in support of universal, race-neutral policies — in opposition to activists like Malcolm X, who distrusted party politics and believed that blacks would be better positioned to advance their interests as an independent voting bloc, beholden to neither party.
But the triumph of “post-racial” Democratic politics has not been a triumph for African-Americans in the aggregate. It has failed to arrest the growing chasm of income and wealth inequality; to improve prospects for social and economic mobility; to halt the re-segregation of public schools and narrow the black-white achievement gap; and to prevent the Supreme Court from eroding the last vestiges of affirmative action. The once unimaginable successes of black diplomats like Colin L. Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Susan E. Rice and of black chief executives like Ursula M. Burns, Kenneth I. Chenault and Roger W. Ferguson Jr. cannot distract us from facts like these: 28 percent of African-Americans, and 37 percent of black children, are poor (compared with 10 percent of whites and 13 percent of white children); 13 percent of blacks are unemployed (compared with 7 percent of whites); more than 900,000 black men are in prison; blacks experienced a sharper drop in income since 2007 than any other racial group; black household wealth, which had been disproportionately concentrated in housing, has hit its lowest level in decades; blacks accounted, in 2009, for 44 percent of new H.I.V. infections.
Mr. Obama cannot, of course, be blamed for any of these facts. It’s no secret that Republican obstruction has limited his options at every turn. But it’s disturbing that so few black elites have aggressively advocated for those whom the legal scholar Derrick A. Bell called the “faces at the bottom of the well.”
The prophetic tradition of speaking truth to power, regardless of political winds or social pressures, has a long history. Ida B. Wells risked her life to publicize the atrocity of lynching; W. E. B. Du Bois linked the struggle against racial injustice to anticolonial movements around the world; Cornel West continues to warn of the “giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism” that King identified a year before his death.
But that prophetic tradition is on the wane. Changes in black religious practice have played a role. Great preachers of social justice and liberation theology, like Gardner C. Taylor, Samuel DeWitt Proctor, John Hurst Adams, Wyatt Tee Walker and Joseph E. Lowery, have retired or passed away. Taking their place are megachurch preachers of a “gospel of prosperity” — like Creflo A. Dollar Jr., T. D. Jakes, Eddie L. Long and Frederick K. C. Price — who emphasize individual enrichment rather than collective uplift. “There’s more facing us than social justice,” Bishop Jakes has said. “There’s personal responsibility.”
To Read the Rest of the Commentary
Monday, November 05, 2012
Language: Peace and Conflict Studies Archive
Alim, H. Samy. "Occupy Language." The Opinionator (December 21, 2011)
Eisenstein, Charles. "The Ubiquitous Matrix of Lies" Reality Sandwhich (June 24, 2009)
Marshall, Andrew Gavin. "Politics and Language." The Corbett Show (July 31, 2012)
Moody, Chris. "How Republicans are being taught to talk about Occupy Wall Street." Yahoo News (December 1, 2011)
The N Word (USA: Todd Nelson, 2004: 86 mins)
Rafael, Vincente. "Translation in Wartime." Arcade (2008)
Roberts, Paul Craig. "Our Time of Universal Deceit Needs an Orwell." Foreign Policy Journal (March 14, 2011)
"Sapiosexuality." Dialogic (January 10, 2012)
Shovic, Charlene. "Contradicting Facebook: A Discourse Analysis." Vimeo (2011)
Vargas, Jose Antonio. "'Illegal' vs 'Undocumented.'" On the Media (September 28, 2012)
Eisenstein, Charles. "The Ubiquitous Matrix of Lies" Reality Sandwhich (June 24, 2009)
Marshall, Andrew Gavin. "Politics and Language." The Corbett Show (July 31, 2012)
Moody, Chris. "How Republicans are being taught to talk about Occupy Wall Street." Yahoo News (December 1, 2011)
The N Word (USA: Todd Nelson, 2004: 86 mins)
Rafael, Vincente. "Translation in Wartime." Arcade (2008)
Roberts, Paul Craig. "Our Time of Universal Deceit Needs an Orwell." Foreign Policy Journal (March 14, 2011)
"Sapiosexuality." Dialogic (January 10, 2012)
Shovic, Charlene. "Contradicting Facebook: A Discourse Analysis." Vimeo (2011)
Vargas, Jose Antonio. "'Illegal' vs 'Undocumented.'" On the Media (September 28, 2012)
Sunday, November 04, 2012
Unwelcome Guests #619 - The Financialization of Nature (And the Nature of Financialization)
Episode #619 - The Financialization of Nature (And the Nature of Financialization)
Unwelcome Guests
... the show [starts] with a 2011 interview of Joan Baxter on the pattern of land grabbing that is ongoing in the developing world, especially in Africa, which rich foreign investors are increasingly carrying out, increasing landlessness and poverty amongst the local population. Arable land especially, she notes, is appealing to those with capital who are looking for an investment or a source of income. As we hear, this often involves uprooting communities and converting what was previously jointly held, sustainably farmed land into commercially managed energy intensive monocultures for export. Those who carry this [out] rely not only on bribery to ensure the support of key government officials, they are also supported by the whole ideology of foreign investment and economic development; sometimes locals fail to distinguish between NGOs with ostensibly altruistic motives and multi-national corporations who don't even bother to make such claims.
... [the] first hour [finishes] with the soundtrack of a short video on the Financialization of Nature, which summarizes the ongoing switch from an economy centered on the real world to one centered on the fictional needs of capital, looking at topics such as emission trading schemes.
In our second hour ... William Black [speaks] from the same conference ... featured in episode 611. He recalls the lessons learned from the savings and loan crisis:
Black notes that far from being prosecuted for their criminality, many of the individuals who profited massively from the S&L; crisis went on to leading positions in the US political system, where they could use their experience to repeat the phenomenon on an even larger scale. Although he remains more or less committed to the modern financial system, Black's insider's view provides more evidence that the financial 'crisis' was anything but a surprise, and was in fact widely predicted by those regulators with enough integrity to follow their conscience rather than the sociopathic culture of those in charge of financial markets. In spite of volumes of compelling evidence, minimal effort has been expended to bring charges against those who committed fraud. Black reflects on the corruption of the legal system in US, noting that the US supreme court ruled that only government could bring civil suits against fraudulent banks - something they have shown no interest in doing.
[The episode concludes] with another short reading from the final chapter of David Graeber's Debt, The First 5000 Years.
To Listen to the Episode
Unwelcome Guests
... the show [starts] with a 2011 interview of Joan Baxter on the pattern of land grabbing that is ongoing in the developing world, especially in Africa, which rich foreign investors are increasingly carrying out, increasing landlessness and poverty amongst the local population. Arable land especially, she notes, is appealing to those with capital who are looking for an investment or a source of income. As we hear, this often involves uprooting communities and converting what was previously jointly held, sustainably farmed land into commercially managed energy intensive monocultures for export. Those who carry this [out] rely not only on bribery to ensure the support of key government officials, they are also supported by the whole ideology of foreign investment and economic development; sometimes locals fail to distinguish between NGOs with ostensibly altruistic motives and multi-national corporations who don't even bother to make such claims.
... [the] first hour [finishes] with the soundtrack of a short video on the Financialization of Nature, which summarizes the ongoing switch from an economy centered on the real world to one centered on the fictional needs of capital, looking at topics such as emission trading schemes.
In our second hour ... William Black [speaks] from the same conference ... featured in episode 611. He recalls the lessons learned from the savings and loan crisis:
Accounting abuses also provided the ultimate perverse incentive. It paid to seek out bad loans, because only those who had no intention of repaying would be willing to offer the high loan fees and interest required for the best looting. It was rational for operators — that's CEOs — to drive their banks ever deeper into insolvency, as they looted them.
— James Pierce, leader of the national investigation into the Savings and Loan Crisis
Black notes that far from being prosecuted for their criminality, many of the individuals who profited massively from the S&L; crisis went on to leading positions in the US political system, where they could use their experience to repeat the phenomenon on an even larger scale. Although he remains more or less committed to the modern financial system, Black's insider's view provides more evidence that the financial 'crisis' was anything but a surprise, and was in fact widely predicted by those regulators with enough integrity to follow their conscience rather than the sociopathic culture of those in charge of financial markets. In spite of volumes of compelling evidence, minimal effort has been expended to bring charges against those who committed fraud. Black reflects on the corruption of the legal system in US, noting that the US supreme court ruled that only government could bring civil suits against fraudulent banks - something they have shown no interest in doing.
[The episode concludes] with another short reading from the final chapter of David Graeber's Debt, The First 5000 Years.
To Listen to the Episode
Saturday, November 03, 2012
Unwelcome Guests #6 - Created Unequal (Law, Money and Mumia Abu-Jamal)
Episode #6 - Created Unequal (Law, Money and Mumia Abu-Jamal)
Unwelcome Guests
The first hour continues [the] lecture series with Michael Parenti. First, some real history on the Founding Fathers - how they created a Constitution designed to protect the rich while appearing offering sufficient concessions to the poor to secure their support. Then "Justice for Sale", which explains how slanted the US legal process is against blacks and the poor.
In the second hour, ... focus on the case of longtime inmate of death row, political prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal. After the background to his arrest, we listen to some of his commentaries, and play a documentary from Bruderhof Radio.
To Listen to the Episode
Unwelcome Guests
The first hour continues [the] lecture series with Michael Parenti. First, some real history on the Founding Fathers - how they created a Constitution designed to protect the rich while appearing offering sufficient concessions to the poor to secure their support. Then "Justice for Sale", which explains how slanted the US legal process is against blacks and the poor.
In the second hour, ... focus on the case of longtime inmate of death row, political prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal. After the background to his arrest, we listen to some of his commentaries, and play a documentary from Bruderhof Radio.
To Listen to the Episode
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)