little red cookbook | fair and balanced thought is free

Better than CNN: The Agonist | Cursor | BuzzFlash
Act: VOTE IN 2004 | 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action | Take to the Streets

Friday, May 02, 2003

Re: Comments...I'm hoping that squawkbox'll have them up and running again, lickety-split.

posted by Jenny at 2:55 PM |

Three Fictional Heroes.

posted by Jenny at 2:53 PM |

Clear Channel goes Latino!

Funny that: neither head of the two merging corporations is Hispanic.

Perhaps, verrrry remotely, this has something to do with that government contract with ChoicePoint to steal intelligence information on hundreds of millions of Latin Americans...

posted by Jenny at 2:48 PM |

"...even in the most frigid periods of the Cold War, we never gave the C.I.A. such sweeping and secret policing powers over American citizens." --Timothy Edgar, ACLU legislative counsel

Yesterday in Congress Democrats beat back a conservative proposal to give the CIA and military the authority to use administrative subpoenas--i.e., "national security letters" requiring Internet providers, credit card companies, libraries and a range of other organizations to produce materials like phone records, back transactions and e-mail logs. For now.

posted by Jenny at 2:35 PM |

Hypocrisy much? William Bennett's "Bookie of Virtue"

And one more via atrios and skippy, who has a myriad of fascinating stuff up today:

Few vices have escaped Bennett's withering scorn. He has opined on everything from drinking to "homosexual unions" to "The Ricki Lake Show" to wife-swapping. There is one, however, that has largely escaped Bennett's wrath: gambling. This is a notable omission, since on this issue morality and public policy are deeply intertwined. During Bennett's years as a public figure, casinos, once restricted to Nevada and New Jersey, have expanded to 28 states, and the number continues to grow. In Maryland, where Bennett lives, the newly elected Republican governor Robert Ehrlich is trying to introduce slot machines to fill revenue shortfalls. As gambling spreads, so do its associated problems. Heavy gambling, like drug use, can lead to divorce, domestic violence, child abuse, and bankruptcy. According to a 1998 study commissioned by the National Gambling Impact Study Commission, residents within 50 miles of a casino are twice as likely to be classified as "problem" or "pathological" gamblers than those who live further away.

If Bennett hasn't spoken out more forcefully on an issue that would seem tailor-made for him, perhaps it's because he is himself a heavy gambler. Indeed, in recent weeks word has circulated among Washington conservatives that his wagering could be a real problem. They have reason for concern. The Washington Monthly and Newsweek have learned that over the last decade Bennett has made dozens of trips to casinos in Atlantic City and Las Vegas, where he is a "preferred customer" at several of them, and sources and documents provided to The Washington Monthly put his total losses at more than $8 million...

Bennett has been a high-roller since at least the early 1990s. A review of one 18-month stretch of gambling showed him visiting casinos, often for two or three days at a time (and enjoying a line of credit of at least $200,000 at several of them). Bennett likes to be discreet. "He'll usually call a host and let us know when he's coming," says one source. "We can limo him in. He prefers the high-limit room, where he's less likely to be seen and where he can play the $500-a-pull slots. He usually plays very late at night or early in the morning--usually between midnight and 6 a.m." The documents show that in one two-month period, Bennett wired more than $1.4 million to cover losses. His desire for privacy is evident in his customer profile at one casino, which lists as his residence the address for Empower.org (the Web site of Empower America, the non-profit group Bennett co-chairs). Typed across the form are the words: "NO CONTACT AT RES OR BIZ!!!"

Ironically, within five minutes of running across that article, I discovered that Bill Bennett's private corporation, K12, which operates virtual schools, has been lobbying elected officials from Florida to establish a virtual school voucher system in the state.

Conflict of interest much? He was probably too busy dialing up his bookie to consider the moral implications of his actions.

posted by Jenny at 2:29 PM |

we long for the days of openess when nixon was in charge. --skippy, in response to this news bulletin.

posted by Jenny at 11:33 AM |

Glorious

Click here to download Representative Henry Waxman's letter to the DoD asking that Halliburton's connections to countries that sponsor terrorism be investigated...(via WorkingForChange)

posted by Jenny at 11:24 AM |

GI Love Notes to Iraqi Schoolchildren

At the school where Monday's shooting occurred, teachers spent the day cleaning up in preparation for the start of classes on Saturday. The headmaster, Mohammed Ahmed, said that before they left, U.S. soldiers had damaged furniture and classroom supplies and left offensive graffiti on the walls.

In one classroom, "I [love] pork," with the word love represented by a heart, was written on the blackboard, along with a drawing of a camel and the words: "Iraqi Cab Company." In another room, "Eat [expletive] Iraq" was scrawled on a wall. And in Ahmed's office, sexual organs were drawn with white chalk on the back of the door.

"They came to liberate us?" Ahmed asked, pointing out the graffiti to a reporter. "What is the point of doing this?"

posted by Jenny at 9:32 AM |

Jayson Blair, the NYT writer who apparently copied a story on a woman whose son died in Iraq, resigned under pressure yesterday...

posted by Jenny at 9:26 AM |

*sigh*

We ought to be beating our chests every day. We ought to look in a mirror and get proud and stick out our chests and suck in our bellies and say: "Damn, we're Americans!" -- Jay Garner

posted by Jenny at 9:04 AM |

Thursday, May 01, 2003

Somebody at the New Yorker recently stumbled across the corporate connection between Bechtel and the bin Laden family...and speaking of corporate connection, looks like Donald Rumsfeld was on the board of directors of a Zurich-based firm in 2000 when it won a $200 million contract to provide North Korea with light-water nuclear reactors. Funny that he hasn't had much to say about that...

posted by Jenny at 2:02 PM |

Insidious.

posted by Jenny at 1:43 PM |

Fascinating. The BBG (Broadcasting Board of Governors), self-styled "BBC of America" is a US government agency which runs Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, and Radio Sawa--Arabic language radio for the Middle East. It also produces the Arabic-language satellite TV news being beamed into Muslim Iraq...in a studio called Grace Digital Media, controlled by fundamentalist Christians who are "rabidly pro-Israel":

Grace Digital Media is controlled by a fundamentalist Christian millionaire, Cheryl Reagan, who last year wrested control of Federal News Service, a transcription news service, from its former owner, Cortes Randell.

Randell says he met Reagan at a prayer meeting, brought her in as an investor in Federal News Service, and then she forced him out of his own company.

Grace Digital Media and Federal News Service are housed in a downtown Washington, D.C. office building, along with Grace News Network.

When you call the number for Grace News Network, you get a person answering "Grace Digital Media/Federal News Service."

According to its web site, Grace News Network is "dedicated to transmitting the evidence of God's presence in the world today."

"Grace News Network will be reporting the current secular news, along with aggressive proclamations that will 'change the news' to reflect the Kingdom of God and its purposes," GNN proclaims.

...

BBG's Joan Mower said that Grace Digital Media is a mainstream production house used by all kinds of mainstream news organizations.

"Grace will have nothing to do with the editorial side of the news broadcast," she said. "They are renting us equipment, space, studio. The Grace personnel we use include technicians, production people but no editorial people."

But Mower said she couldn't get us a copy of the contract between BBG and Grace Digital media. Nor could she say how Grace Digital was chosen as the production studio.

Curiouser and curiouser.

posted by Jenny at 1:28 PM |

Okay, tell me he didn't really land on an aircraft carrier to declare the war "over"...

posted by Jenny at 1:09 PM |

The Perils of Michael Moore

As someone who enjoys Moore's work, yet remains wary of his approaches, I was nodding my head in agreement throughout this article at Dissent...particularly since I'd just seen this post by Kynn, who begs to differ on Moore's account of being raided by the cops at a San Diego book signing...

Update: Kynn's Post, Part II.

posted by Jenny at 8:22 AM |

Wednesday, April 30, 2003

"Why the Web Will Win the Culture Wars for the Left"

I'm sorry I'm pressed for time, because I'd really like to post a longer response to this ctheory article:

Like reading or breathing, web browsing itself is agnostic with respect to politics and culture. Unlike reading or breathing, however, surfing mimics a postmodern, deconstructionist perspective by undermining the authority of texts. Anyone who has spent a lot of time online, particularly the very young, will find themselves thinking about content -- articles, texts, pictures -- in ways that would be familiar to any deconstructionist critic. And a community of citizens who think like Jacques Derrida will not be a particularly conservative one.

...

It's not that Johnny will Google "hardcore" or "T&A" rather than "family values;" rather, it's that Johnny will come to think, consciously or not, of everything he reads as linked, associative and contingent. He will be disinclined to accept the authority of any text, whether religious, political or artistic, since he has learned that there is no such thing as the last word, or indeed even a series of words that do not link, in some way, to some other text or game. For those who grow up reading online, reading will come to seem a game, one that endlessly plays out in unlimited directions. The web, in providing link after associative link, commentary upon every picture and paragraph, allows, indeed requires, users to engage in a postmodernist inquiry.

Sadly, I must agree with the response to this article: to propose that "conservative" ideology will be rapidly transformed because of the form in which information is delivered is quite a leap. Not because I don't think that the information creation and delivery processes enabled by the internet can change modes of thinking, but because I think that it's dangerous to posit ways in which "conservatives", as opposed to "leftists", think. Who's to say that ultraconservative networking, communication, and information processing isn't as labyrinthe, hypermultilinked, and warren-like as that of progressives?

Back to work...by the way, I'm working on a project on brand psychology (a la No Logo), so if you have any literature to recommend, I'm all ears...

posted by Jenny at 12:13 PM |

If you're a fan of Luce Irigaray, then today's your lucky day at veiled4allah...there's a post on a nifty article entitled "Islam, Irigaray, and the Retrieval of Gender"...pretty cool in mapping out those unexpected commonalities between radical feminism and Islam, the gendering of god, and more.

posted by Jenny at 11:53 AM |

And, as I continue to scroll around at the Cursor, I'm reading that a recent Times article smacks of not-quite-plagiarism...

posted by Jenny at 11:21 AM |

Rent-a-patients...the cutting edge of insurance fraud.

posted by Jenny at 11:16 AM |

McCarthyite Bedtime Stories

That night, March 20th, my roommate Asher and I were on our way to see the Broadway show "Rent." We had an hour to spare before curtain time so we stopped into an Indian restaurant just off of Times Square in the heart of midtown. I have omitted the name of the restaurant so as not to subject the owners to any further harassment or humiliation.

We helped ourselves to the buffet and then sat down to begin eating our dinner. I was just about to tell Asher how I'd eaten there before and how delicious the vegetable curry was, but I never got a chance. All of a sudden, there was a terrible commotion and five NYPD in bulletproof vests stormed down the stairs. They had their guns drawn and were pointing them indiscriminately at the restaurant staff and at us.

"Go to the back, go to the back of the restaurant," they yelled.

I hesitated, lost in my own panic.

"Did you not hear me, go to the back and sit down," they demanded.

...Two of them walked over to our table and identified themselves as officers of the INS and Homeland Security Department.

I explained that we were just eating dinner and asked why we were being held. We were told by the INS agent that we would be released once they had confirmation that we had no outstanding warrants and our immigration status was OK'd...

When I asked to speak to a lawyer, the INS official informed me that I do have the right to a lawyer but I would have to be brought down to the station and await security clearance before being granted one. When I asked how long that would take, he replied with a coy smile: "Maybe a day, maybe a week, maybe a month."

We insisted that we had every right to leave and were going to do so. One of the policemen walked over with his hand on his gun and taunted: "Go ahead and leave, just go ahead."

We remained seated. Our IDs were taken, and brought to the officers with laptops. I was questioned over the fact that my license was out of state, and asked if I had "something to hide." The police continued to hassle the kitchen workers, demanding licenses and dates of birth. One of the kitchen workers was shaking hysterically and kept providing the day's date – March 20, 2003, over and over.

As I continued to press for legal counsel, a female officer who had been busy typing on her laptop in the front of the restaurant, walked over and put her finger in my face. "We are at war, we are at war and this is for your safety," she exclaimed. As she walked away from the table, she continued to repeat it to herself? "We are at war, we are at war. How can they not understand this."

More here, via Tom Tomorrow.

posted by Jenny at 9:38 AM |

Mel Gibson, a passion play, and a private temple of worship

The controversy swirling around Gibson, his film and even his personal religious beliefs is built largely on conjecture. It is based on the few comments Gibson has made about the movie, which he claims will be historically accurate. It is also based on a magazine article about a church the actor is building in Agoura Hills, Calif. The article quotes his father, who claims that the Holocaust never happened and that the World Trade Center was destroyed by remote control.

The actor's father, Hutton Gibson, is a member of a traditionalist Catholic movement which operates outside the Roman Catholic Church and embraces a 16th-century form of the religion that celebrates Tridentine (Latin) Mass and denies the legitimacy of all popes and church reforms since the start of the Second Vatican Council, 1962-65. (That council, among other things, eliminated the belief that Jews, collectively, were responsible for the death of Jesus, and directed the church to seek reconciliation.)

The younger Gibson's church, which will not be open to the public, is reportedly also a traditionalist Catholic house of worship. (It is not affiliated with the archdiocese of Los Angeles.) According to tax and other public documents, Mel Gibson is president and CEO of the non-profit foundation that funds the church, and he is the foundation's sole contributor.

Via Atrios (who else?).

posted by Jenny at 3:25 AM |

Tuesday, April 29, 2003

Huh? 11-day hostage crisis?

...those were my thoughts while visiting Atrios a few minutes ago. Now, normally it's no surprise we privilege our news (i.e., the "liberation" of Iraq) over reports of political crises in the Third World. But for pete's sake, there are Americans being held! CNN, it's time to get your groove on...

LAGOS, Nigeria — Striking Nigerian (search) oil workers have taken about 100 foreign workers hostage on several offshore oil installations, company officials and union workers said Tuesday. The hostages include 21 Americans.

The strikers have been holding 97 foreign workers, including 35 Britons, aboard four offshore drilling rigs owned by Houston-based Transocean (search) since April 19. The events occurred in a remote area off the West African nation's coastline.

The rigs were drilling wells on behalf of oil multinationals Royal/Dutch Shell (search) and TotalFina Elf (search).
Western diplomats said the hostages included 21 Americans and 35 Britons. Their conditions were unclear, although there were no initial reports of injuries or deaths.

Stay tuned for an update here--as soon as I have time (must go to bed now, or suffer from a rapidly worsening headache), I'm going to dig up some more recent info on Shell Nigeria and the injustices it has perpetuated in the Nigerian Ogoniland, among other places. Methinks there is more to this story than meets the eye.

posted by Jenny at 2:55 PM |

Apparently United States troops opened fire on a crowd of demonstrators, killing 13 and wounding around 75, after somebody threw a measly rock toward the soldiers. Wow. Don't you think they'd been a lot more effective if they'd just apprehended the offenders and stripped them naked?

posted by Jenny at 12:18 PM |

Oh, I understand...

It was just a matter of emphasis. They knew all along there were no weapons of mass destruction!

So why are those intelligence agents so worked up, anyway?

Can anybody say Gulf of Tonkin?

Thanks to Tom Tomorrow and alternet.

posted by Jenny at 12:14 PM |

Thus, discipline produces subjected and practiced bodies, "docile" bodies. --Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish

This just up at Counterpunch:

Corporate media today is perhaps too vast to enforce complete control over all content 24 hours a day. However, the government's goal is the operationalization of total information control and the continuing consolidation of media makes this process easier to achieve.

Freedom of information and citizen access to objective news is rapidly fading in the United States and the world. In its place is a complex entertainment-oriented news system, which protects its own bottom-line by servicing the most powerful military-industrial complex in the world.

For the majority of Americans who depend on corporate media for their daily news, this monolithic news structure creates intellectual celibacy, inaction and fear. The result is a docile population, whose principal function within society is to simply shut-up and go shopping. The powerful would like us quiet and consumptive and the corporate media is delivering that message on a daily basis.

More.

posted by Jenny at 12:05 PM |

Monday, April 28, 2003

Higher Espionage

...the consequences of the Central Intelligence Agency mixing more openly with scholars and tapping into their expertise trouble many in academia.

If universities are warming to the CIA, and the agency funds more research, critics ask, what will happen to scholarly objectivity and academic freedom? Will the CIA's penchant for secrecy corrode the university's mission to pursue truth and publish it openly?

Closer ties between academia and the agency do not yet rival the clubby atmosphere of the 1950s. The Vietnam War, 1970s congressional inquiries, and scandals over covert funding on campuses in the 1980s (see sidebar, below) contributed to the frosty relationship. Yet all signs indicate that the tweedy set and the CIA are getting cozier.

For one, the revolving door between the agency and the ivory tower has been spinning of late. Last year, two public universities named presidents with CIA ties: At Texas A&M, former agency director Robert Gates took the helm, while Arizona State University picked Michael Crow, vice chairman of In-Q-Tel, a nonprofit venture-capital arm of the CIA.

Then, too, agency insiders and scholars cite a leap in CIA funding of academic-research contracts and conferences, though numbers are hard to come by.

Hmm...

posted by Jenny at 3:57 PM |

Every so often I like to post general info on Bush's neoconservative cohorts. It's not easy to keep track of all those guys, but this NY Observer article is quite helpful, with special emphasis on their connections to the "mainstream media". (Two words: Rupert Murdoch. But there's more, oh so much more...) Check it out when you get a chance--there's even a nice image of what could be the Illuminati eye at the top of the page, mwaha...

Update: And, for something with, well, a bit more spunk, check out Linda Diebel's evaluation of the cast of Bush's not-so-tidy war drama...forget Cheney; maybe I should start envisioning Karl Rove as Emperor Palpatine:

You don't hear his name much. But behind what's called the Office of Global Communications, operating out of the White House with its 24-hour spin campaign, with everybody on message all the time, sits the Buddha, Rove.

Bush calls him the "man with the plan," and he's been close to the Bush family since the 1970s, when Bush Sr. headed the Republican National Committee and Rove used to hand over the car keys (honest) when George W. came to Washington.

Rove is feared. He is the first full-time political adviser to have an office right in the White House.

In a recent Esquire magazine profile, Ron Suskind wrote about waiting outside Rove's office and listening to him berate some political operative who had displeased him.

"We will f--- him. Do you hear me? We will f--- him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever f----- him!"

Wrote Suskind: "As a reporter, you get around — curse words, anger, passionate intensity are not notable events — but the ferocity, the bellicosity, the violent imputations were, well, shocking."

Rove continued the rant for a few minutes, then walked out to greet Suskind, still flushed, but sweet as "Clarence the Angel" with a big, "Come on in!"

Rove marks the spot where character and history meet for the Bush administration.

...

The War on Terror became the "engine" that drives the Bush/Rove White House.

"Rove is Nixonian in his cynicism and manipulation of patriotic themes," a Washington consultant for both parties told the authors.

"It's like Rove is Nixon's heir. Cold-blooded. Ruthless. Paranoid. But, unlike Nixon, Rove has figured out how to mask it all behind Bush's smile."

Is he that important?

"He's the ringleader," says Stanford. "He's the one who understands what the smart people are talking about," he says. "Without Karl Rove, George W. Bush wouldn't be in the Eastern time zone. He'd be in Texas."

posted by Jenny at 3:45 PM |

Guess who might be next to go nuclear?

posted by Jenny at 11:13 AM |

Well, I figured the Vatican was no stranger to marketing...but when they call McDonald's, that's going too far.

Update: In slightly related news, the folks at the Economist have finally found a noble use for the Big Mac--explaining those tricky economic concepts of exchange rates and purchasing power parity (or, as political scientists like to say, "PPP"). Well done!

posted by Jenny at 9:22 AM |

Last night's Primetime Thursday, which featured Diane Sawyer interviewing the Dixie Chicks about their recent woes, was one of those broadcast moments that make you want to put your foot through the television.

...

Still, they have the burden to bear of being from Dallas, where women tend to be a) spirited and b) polite. Not always an easy balance to maintain, but last night Maines did her best. When Sawyer prompted the three of them to ask for forgiveness, in a gruesome moment of utterly fake primetime piety, the trio paused. You could see them struggling with their pride, their conviction, and their desire to get along; I was half-hoping they'd suggest Sawyer kiss their three asses (and I'd be surprised if the notion didn't run through their minds). Instead, Maines kept her cool and her dignity. "Accept us," she said. "Accept an apology that was made ... but to forgive us, don't forgive us for who we are." And she went on to point out, as if it needed to be said, that the practice of dissent is fundamental to democracy.

That wasn't good enough for Sawyer. She spent an hour trying to bend the Chicks with a combination of false sympathy and crass sensationalism. Time and again, she cut back to a typeset insert of Maines' original remark, as if Maines had called for the pillage of Crawford. "Ashamed?" Sawyer said, incredulously. "Ashamed?" In the tradition of a Stalinist show trial, the women were forced to affirm their patriotism and their support for the troops. At every point they—who are, after all, entertainers with no particular training in political science—were thoughtful, modest, and firm. At every point Sawyer tried to force them into a crude, Manichaen choices. "Do you feel awful about using that word about the president of the United States?" she asked at the start of the interview—in a prime example of the sort of leading question no self-respecting first year AP stringer would ask. "Well," replied Maines, carefully, " 'awful' is a really strong word." Later, when Maines was trying to apologize and clarify, Sawyer said, "I hear something not quite, what, wholehearted. …"

Well, I heard something not quite—what—honorable in Sawyer's presentation of the affair: an attempt to take a trivial matter that had blown up into an absurd controversy, and blow it up even more under the guise of simply covering the story. Essentially, she asked the women to choose between abasing themselves on national television or stirring up more hatred against themselves. It was a depressing moment in an ugly time.

Ugh.

Update: One member of the press takes the country to task for its treatment of the Dixie Chicks. Good writing with a twist of rant about the majority of US war coverage, otherwise known as "chest-thumping, jingoistic drivel."

posted by Jenny at 9:18 AM |

Here's a transcript from Democracy Now!'s radio interview with CNN anchor Aaron Brown, Steve Rendall from FAIR, and Jeremy Scahill from Democracy Now!. Amy Goodman moderates this discussion on the anti-war movement, media sanitation of the war, and why Brown "believes this is an inapprorpiate time for reporters to ask questions about war." I believe the vocabulary words for today are spin, and circumlocution...

posted by Jenny at 8:52 AM |

Wal-Mart workers fight back

Glad to hear that employees are fed up with the man...and doing something about it.

Angered by the disparity between profits and wages, thousands of former and current employees like McLaughlin have started to fight the company on a variety of fronts. Workers in 27 states are suing Wal-Mart for violating wage-and-hour laws; in the first of the cases to go to trial, an Oregon jury found the company guilty in December of systematically forcing employees to work overtime without pay. The retailer also faces a sex-discrimination lawsuit that accuses it of wrongly denying promotions and equal pay to 700,000 women. And across the country, workers have launched a massive drive to organize a union at Wal-Mart, demanding better wages and working conditions. Employees at more than 100 stores in 25 states -- including Supercenter #148 in Paris -- are currently trying to unionize the company, and in July the UFCW launched an organizing blitz in the Midwest, hoping to mobilize nearly 120,000 workers in Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana.

Wal-Mart has responded to the union drive by trying to stop workers from organizing -- sometimes in violation of federal labor law. In 10 separate cases, the National Labor Relations Board has ruled that Wal-Mart repeatedly broke the law by interrogating workers, confiscating union literature, and firing union supporters. At the first sign of organizing in a store, Wal-Mart dispatches a team of union busters from its headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, sometimes setting up surveillance cameras to monitor workers. "In my 35 years in labor relations, I've never seen a company that will go to the lengths that Wal-Mart goes to, to avoid a union," says Martin Levitt, a management consultant who helped the company develop its anti-union tactics before writing a book called Confessions of a Union Buster. "They have zero tolerance."

posted by Jenny at 8:26 AM |

Damn straight

Finally, Atrios and CalPundit deconstruct the problem with high school history...it should be taught backwards, folks! CalPundit explains:

It's hard for kids to get interested in century old debates without knowing all the context around them, but they might very well be interested in current day events. So why not start now and explain the events that got us here? War on terrorism? Sure, let's teach it, and that leads us backward to a discussion of how the current state of affairs is the successor to the bipolar world that came apart in 1989. And that leads back to the Cold War, and that leads back to World War II, etc.

In other words, invert cause and effect. Try to get them wondering about the causes of things they already know about, and then use this curiosity to lead them inexorably backward through history.

This is for teenagers, of course, not grammar school kids, who are probably best off with pilgrims, ancient Egyptians, and other picturesque topics. But it might work in high school and junior high school.

All we need now is to get a brilliant historian together with the guy who directed Memento and we'll have it made. We can call it "The Mirror of History."

And Atrios elaborates:

It isn't entirely clear why this is the case, though I bet that part of the reason is that one can't teach the recent past without being explicitly political. All teaching of history is to some degree political, but it's much more obvious - and controversial - when the subject is recent U.S. history.

Bingo! And being political is dangerous. It can get you fired if you go about it in the wrong way. I'm not saying that teachers, principles, even district superintendants (yes, even them) are consciously and willingly complicit in the game of keeping people unaware, keeping students from making the connections between, say, bombs over Baghdad, the Iran/Iraq war, our installation of the Shah, or the gas their parents put in their cars and the human rights issues with Shell and other petroleum companies in Nigeria. But this process of "dumbing-down", of emphasizing test scores over critical thinking, is spreading rampantly and systematically across North American schools. I think we could benefit a lot from reflecting upon why this is happening, and how to change it.

This series of posts has moved me to invoke Daniel Quinn's My Ishmael, an excellent work--if you haven't read it yet, run down to your local library! If you're unfamiliar with the background on Quinn's books, come along with me for a second and imagine a teenage girl named Julie, our narrator, conversing with her chosen Teacher, who happens to be a gorilla named Ishmael. He begins:

"In societies you consider primitive, youngsters 'graduate' from childhood at age thirteen or fourteen, and by this age have basically learned all they need in order to function as adults in their community. They've learned so much, in fact, that if the rest of the community were simply to vanish overnight, they'd be able to survive without the least difficulty...

"I'm sure you realize that adults in your society are forever saying that your schools are doing a terrible job. They're the most advanced in the history of the world, but they're still doing a terrible job. How do your schools fall short of what people expect of them, Julie?"

...I groaned. "Test scores are lousy. The schools don't prepare people for jobs. The schools don't prepare people to have a good life. I suppose some people would say that the schools should give us some survival value. We should be able to be successful when we graduate."

...Ishmael nodded. "This is what Mother Culture teaches, Julie. It's truly one of her most elegant deceptions. Because of course this isn't at all what your schools are there for."

"What are they there for, then?"

"It took me several years to work it out. At that stage I wasn't used to uncovering these deceptions. This was my first attempt, and I was a little slow at it. This schools are there, Julie, to regulate the flow of young competitors into the job market... [my emphasis]

"A hundred and fifty years ago, when the United States was still a largely agrarian society, there was no reason to keep young people off the job market past the age of eight or ten, and it was not uncommon for children to leave school at that age. Only a small minority went on to college to study for the professions. With increasing urbanization and industrialization, however, this began to change ... After World War Two, dropping out of school before the end of twelve years began to be strongly discouraged, and it was put about that an additional four years of college should no longer be considered something only for the elite..."

I was waving my hand in the air. "I have a question. It seems to me like urbanization and industrialization would have the opposite effect. Instead of keeping young people off the job market, the system would have been trying to put them on the job market."

..."Yes, on the surface that sounds plausible. But imagine what would happen here today if your educators suddenly decided that a high-school education was no longer needed."

I gave that a few seconds of consideration and said, "Yeah, I see what you mean. There would suddenly be twenty million kids out there competing for jobs that don't exist. The jobless rate would go through the roof."

"It would literally be catastrophic, Julie. You see, it's not only essential to keep these fourteen-to-eighteen-year-olds off the job market, it's also essential to keep them at home as non-wage-earning consumers...

"This age gap pulls an enormous amount of money--two hundred billion dollars a year, it's estimated--out of their parents' pockets to be spent on books, clothes, games, novelties, compact discs, and similar things that are designed specifically for them and no one else. Many enormous industries depend on teenage consumers. You must be aware of that."

"Yeah, I guess so. I just never thought of it in these terms."

So, we have an educational system which fosters a lack of interest in and critical thinking toward the scientific and political realities shaping our everyday environment, and, if Quinn is on to something (which I think he is), we have a consumer society in which this sort of schooling plays an integral part in regulating the ways in which production and consumption take place. Very interesting. I can't tell you how many gifted educators I encountered in my tenure as a public school student who had tons to offer but little support from a system based around test scores and "approved curricula". And I don't think it's presumptious of me to suggest that these frustrations are pervasive across North America. The question is, where do we go from here? How do we get them to start teaching history backwards, or to even consider the consequences of teaching it forwards to an increasingly apathetic student population? I'm willing to bet my blog that No Child Left Behind won't cut the mustard here...

posted by Jenny at 4:30 AM |

American Power Moves Beyond the Mere Super

Best read while listening to the "Imperial March" from The Empire Strikes Back...does that mean Cheney is Emperor Palpatine?

All levity aside, this article does a good job of outlining those realities I like to joke about, but the magnitude of which I don't like to face. The unequaled military might of the United States is pretty scary to consider. And so is this natural outcome of such a buildup:

Paradoxically, the runaway American victory in the conventional arms race might inspire a new round of proliferation of atomic weapons. With no hope of matching the United States plane for plane, more countries may seek atomic weapons to gain deterrence.

Via LMB.

posted by Jenny at 3:53 AM |

Sunday, April 27, 2003

The media is too concentrated, too few people own too much... There's really five companies that control 90 percent of what we read, see and hear. It's not healthy. --Ted Turner (scroll down)

posted by Jenny at 2:32 PM |

Seen the iraqometer yet?

posted by Jenny at 8:30 AM |

Can of worms?

Whew...I finally got around to reading that post by bean on whether men can be feminists. If I excerpted everything I found interesting from the article to the comments and provided commentary, I'd be sitting here until tomorrow night. In my opinion, a large number of the writing is colored with defensiveness and even outright anger, and some gender determinism about the "feminist movement" that I find troubling.

And at this point, I'd like to pose a question. When does declaring oneself a feminist cross the line and become a modicum judgment and exclusion of others? The desire of many to critique the "feminism" of others, setting up a code for what is acceptable and what isn't of the "movement", strikes me as incredibly determinstic and counterproductive. As bell hooks wrote in Feminist Theory: from margin to center, "Feminist analyses of woman's lot tend to focus exclusively on gender and do not provide a solid foundation on which to construct feminist theory" (14). bell was speaking specifically here of white feminists' tokenism of black women, but I think the cite applies to issues of reverse sexism within feminisms on the whole, as well as racism and classism. I personally have always been a bit leery of referring to myself as "a feminist", as such declarations seem to walk that narrow line between promoting myself as an individual and raising consciousness on feminism/s. Another passage in hooks's Feminist Theory corresponds with my thoughts on this matter:

To emphasize that engagement with feminist struggle as political commitment we could avoid using the phrase "I am a feminist" (a linguistic structure designed to refer to some personal aspect of identity and self-definition) and could state "I advocate feminism." Because there has been undue emphasis placed on feminism as an identity of lifestyle, people usually resort to stereotyped perspectives on feminism. Deflecting attention away from stereotypes is necessary if we are to revise our strategy and direction. I have found that saying "I am a feminist" usually means I am plugged into preconceived notions of identity, role, or behavior. When I saw "I advocate feminism" the response is usually "what is feminism?" A phrase like "I advocate" does not imply the kind of absolutism that is suggested by "I am." It does not engage us in the either/or dualistic thinking that is the central ideological component of all systems of domination in Western society. It implies that a choice has been made, that commitment to feminism is an act of will. It does not suggest that by committing oneself to feminism, the possibility of supporting other political movements is negated. (29)

I'm with bell on this one--just my opinion, but I think it's something useful to consider.

posted by Jenny at 8:17 AM |

There's some fascinating commentary to be found on the Chicks' "recent act of politicized nudity"...interesting thoughts and allusions to Nina Simone and folk hero of traveling geeky academics, J. William Fulbright. Via Daniel Drezner.

posted by Jenny at 7:30 AM |

"We took their clothes and burnt them and then we pushed them out with thief written on them..."

Interesting, how arbitrarily "Coalition" occupants of Iraq mete out justice and protect society...museums were looted, soldiers and journalists (also here) have appropriated the property of the Iraqi people, and humanitarian convoys are held up while fast food chains are escorted into military bases. However, with the help of some Iraqi bystanders, a few American troops have developed a keen way of punishing theft...

AMERICAN soldiers guarding an arms dump in Baghdad stripped four suspected Iraqi thieves, burnt their clothes and forced them on to the streets naked, witnesses said early this morning.

A Muslim member of the Delta Squadron 10 Engineer Corps is alleged to have written “Ali Baba. Haram” in Arabic across the men’s chests before they were evicted at gunpoint from an amusement park in the city.

Reports of the incident provoked outrage from human rights organisations. Treating prisoners in such a way would be a clear breach of the Geneva Convention.

“We suddenly saw four naked Iraqi guys with four American soldiers,” Line Fransson, a journalist for Dagbladet, the Norwegian newspaper, said. “We thought they were going to the bathroom. They went into a building and a minute later (the soldiers) pushed them out into the main street.”

The soldiers’ commanding officer, First Lieutenant Eric Canaday, confirmed that his men had stripped the Iraqis. “We took their clothes and burnt them and then we pushed them out with thief written on them,” he was quoted as telling the journalist.

Lieutenant Canaday said that local residents had suggested stripping would-be thieves as a deterrent.

He claimed that young men had been trying to steal light weapons that the Iraqi Army had stockpiled at the Zawra amusement park. He said that his soldiers had meted out a similar punishment on a previous occasion.

The phrase scrawled across the mens’ chests in black marker pen is a reference to the tale of Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves and can be roughly translated as the vernacular for “sinful thieves”.

Amnesty International condemned the incident. “Such degrading treatment is a clear violation of the responsibilities of the occupying powers. The US authorities must investigate this incident and publicly release their findings,” the organisation said last night.

One of the four men, whose pictures appeared in the Norwegian press, gave his name as Ziad, aged 20. “Ziad said he was so angry being humiliated by the soldiers that the only thing he wanted to do was find a grenade and throw it at the American soldiers and all the other ones in the city,” Ms Fransson said.

posted by Jenny at 6:37 AM |

The gendering of war...coverage

Kate Adie, the former BBC chief news correspondent, has criticised the "macho" coverage of the Gulf war, which she said ignored rape, rarely sought out a woman's viewpoint and patronised female soldiers.

Miss Adie, who made her reputation as a war correspondent in the last Gulf war, said the conflict was a determinedly "Boy's Own area", with tabloid newspapers in particular retaining an 18th-century view of women.

"Time and again I have been conscious of a wholesale concentration on the technical, tactical aspects of warfare, the anorak syndrome, small boys' fascination with toys," she told a Royal Society of Arts debate in Manchester.

"It means that those things which conventionally interest the male audience are concentrated on, and women disappear from a landscape in which tanks are rolling and missiles shooting."

Miss Adie said women who were not soldiers were frequently depicted as miserable, helpless victims. A typical camera shot was of elderly women in shadows sitting forlorn next to ruined houses.

"Women fade into the background of the actual action but they might have opinions that they wish to add. But there is noticeable embarrassment if women intrude into what is conventionally a male playing field still."

The prominence given to women who went missing in action, such as Pte Jessica, the teenage army private rescued by American Special Forces, underlined the different way men and women were treated by the media.

"The sight of a lone female amongst the 'lads' still generates a picture," she said. "There's a depressing obsession that such a female might have sexy, disruptive potential. 'Get a load of this curvy corporal' was a Sun headline.

"The suggestion that tends to accompany this sort of story is that a woman is not a serious soldier, she's likely to be trouble as well."

posted by Jenny at 6:14 AM |

Funny, I was just going on (thanks to my new comments feature) about the opportunism of the "liberal media" and how critical humanitarian and political crises are being ignored in favor of coverage of Saddam Hussein's gilded water faucets, when I ran across this article. Look what Mugabe's been up to while everybody's backs have been turned...

The Zimbabwean government has turned piecemeal repression of opposition activists into a campaign of full-scale systematic violence in recent weeks, taking advantage of the world's focus on the Iraq war.

Human rights organisations have documented a startling rise in attacks on supporters of the Movement for Democratic Change. In the past month, doctors have reported hundreds of patients seeking treatment for injuries they claim were sustained at the hands of state officials.

The government's increased violence is seen as a reaction to the MDC's success in holding a two-day national strike on March 18 and 19, and the opposition party's victories in two parliamentary byelections at the end of March.

An Amnesty spokesman said: "Politically motivated violence and arrests have increased dramatically. Public order legislation is being used to harass and arrest critics of the government. There is no hope for a peaceful future in Zimbabwe unless the international community intervenes immediately."
...

The government denies it is responsible for the attacks, claiming that the MDC is using army deserters to smear it.
The MDC yesterday rejected the claim. "Who can believe we would send out men in uniforms to beat, torture and kill our own officials and supporters?" a party spokesman, Paul Themba Nyathi, said.

The furious pace of the serious injuries has left human rights workers struggling to cope. At least two deaths have been recorded, according to human rights groups, and doctors say they are treating victims at a rate of 10 a day.

The home of Margaret Kulinji, secretary of the MDC's women's league, was invaded by 16 soldiers in uniform at about 1am on March 22. Armed with AK-47 automatic rifles, truncheons and lengths of hosepipe, the men carried a list of MDC officials who were their targets. They beat Ms Kulinji with their fists and rifle butts, kicked her and whipped her with the cord of her iron. They also beat her mother.

"They forced my mother to open her legs and they abused her with the mouthpiece of the AK rifle," said Ms Kulinji, grimacing as she looked at her sleeping in the next hospital bed.

The soldiers then went to the homes of other MDC officials on their list.
...

Raphinos Madzokere was also targeted. The MDC district secretary for east Mashonaland was dragged from his home on March 21 by 25 soldiers at about 2am. For three days he was beaten with batons, wires and logs. "They put wires on my toes, my tongue and my penis and shocked me until I lost consciousness," said a still dazed Mr Madzokere. He was finally dumped by the roadside and was taken to hospital with fractured vertebrae, head injuries and wounds all over his body.

"They ordered me to give up the MDC, but I refused," he said. "I cannot give up our hope for a better government. I would be betraying so many people." His family has paid a high price. They have moved home four times in six weeks.

"The level of violence against the opposition party has taken a quantum leap," said a doctor at a Harare hospital. "It started after the MDC's national strike in March. That weekend we were inundated with injuries from beatings by the army and others. In some cases we had entire families admitted to hospital - mothers, fathers and children."

Local campaigners say the army and police, working from lists of MDC members and officials, went from house to house, subjecting them and their families to savage beatings and torture. Often the squads had informers with them who pointed out the MDC supporters, they say.

The MDC says that more than 600 of its officials and supporters were arrested. More than 250 people needed medical treatment in the four days after the national strike, according to figures from the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, a politically independent body which represents more than 250 civic organisations.

"The majority of the perpetrators were army soldiers in uniform, conveyed in military vehicles to the home of the victims," the Crisis report said. "The perpetrators were well equipped with weapons of torture, such as batons, chains, hosepipes and rifles."

Zimbabwe's Human Rights Forum confirmed the upsurge in violence, saying: "The human rights situation is deteriorating critically".

Diplomats in Harare were alerted to the rise in what the Crisis report calls "state-organised violence and torture" and saw many victims in hospital. But despite the compelling evidence, South Africa last week led a successful campaign at the UN human rights commission to take no action on Zimbabwe.

As the current three-day national strike has highlighted, pressure is growing on Mr Mugabe because of the massive shortages of basic foods and fuel, inflation of 228% and unemployment above 60%. The latest crisis is a shortage of electric power which has caused power cuts to factories. The reason is that Zimbabwe has not paid its bills for the 35% of its electricity requirements imported from Mozambique, South Africa and Congo.

More.

posted by Jenny at 6:06 AM |

Looks like the Wal-Mart thought police have been doing their best to beat back culture jamming satire on the web...it's all because they were encouraging shoplifting, y'see...

posted by Jenny at 3:42 AM |

Tom Paine has commentary up on the US Supreme Court case between Nike and Californian Marc Kasky, in which Nike is challenging the concept of truth in advertising as a violation of their free speech; in short, Nike is arguing for the right to lie in public relations. This is one of those cases in which corporations want to enjoy all the rights that individual humans do; if ruled on Nike's behalf, this case "could dramatically expand corporate power while weakening tools that governments employ to limit corporate influence."

posted by Jenny at 3:34 AM |

And a side of ammonia with that

As if we needed more proof about the quality of American schools:

CHICAGO (AP) - State documents show Illinois education officials failed to notify schools that some food shipped to them had been contaminated with ammonia, even though some cafeteria managers had complained for a year, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Dozens of children were sickened.

The food was contaminated when a ruptured pipe leaked 90 pounds of ammonia refrigerant at Gateway Cold Storage in St. Louis on Nov. 18, 2001.

State education officials have said they assumed a plan to treat the food had worked, but documents showed the state Board of Education knew in early 2002 that ammonia-laden food was still showing up in schools, the Tribune reports in Sunday editions.

A U.S. Department of Agriculture inspector was present around the time of the leak but the agency did not notify schools or other agencies, and the department later allowed food to be shipped out of the Gateway warehouse despite a quarantine, the newspaper said.

Nearly a year after the leak, 42 children at Laraway Elementary School in Joliet were rushed to a hospital after eating chicken tenders from the warehouse that state health officials said contained up to 133 times the accepted level of ammonia.

More here, via Atrios.

posted by Jenny at 3:26 AM |