Category: Uncategorized

Injustice System

September 22, 2011: J. Rosencrantz

Last night the State of Georgia executed Troy Davis, despite lacking any physical evidence linking him to the crime for which he was convicted, and despite the fact that 7 of the 9 witnesses recanted their testimony against him, and despite the fact that they claimed that their original testimony was a result of police coercion.

Davis maintained his innocence until the very end, and among his last words were these directed at the family of the off-duty police officer killed in 1989:

I’d like to address the MacPhail family. Let you know, despite the situation you are in, I’m not the one who personally killed your son, your father, your brother, I am innocent.

Here, btw, is a list of exonerated death row inmates in the United States since 1970. (h/t a35mmlife)

Obama did nothing to stop the state lynching, claiming through his spokesliar that it wouldn’t be “appropriate” to weigh in on the situation since it is a state prosecution — even though earlier this year he had done precisely that in the Texas case of Humberto Leal Garcia Jr. (h/t scahill)

A last minute emergency appeal was presented to Supreme Court Justice Uncle Clarence Thomas, but the Court rejected the appeal with no explanation in a one line decision, aptly described by Jeremy Scahill as exemplary of the “banality of evil”:

To the right is an image of the slain cop’s mother thanking Merciful White Jesus for making the State of Georgia kill some random black guy as revenge for the death of her son.

Other notes:

Micheal Moore is asking his publisher to “remove all copies” of his new book “from every bookstore in Georgia”, and calling for a general boycott of the state of Georgia.

DN has an hour long special of the aftermath of Davis’ execution.

Here is the ACLU’s statement.

Here is a message from Troy Davis himself to his supporters:

The struggle for justice doesn’t end with me. This struggle is for all the Troy Davises who came before me and all the ones who will come after me.

Get involved in the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, and/or sign this Amnesty Petition.

And here is Billie Holiday on the Situation:

The Cloud (and Silver Lining) of Internet Censorship

August 22, 2011: J. Rosencrantz

The uprisings in throughout the Middle East and Europe have demonstrated the power of the internet and social networking sites as tools for organizing against the state. It is because of their efficacy that these information sharing technologies have been suppressed by entrenched powers.

But does the cloud of internet censorship offer a silver lining?

Focusing on the CLOUD, G. Greenwald notes how the powers-that-be are making moves to seize control and snuff out the potential of these tools to disrupt the prevailing social order. The censorship for which the West has “long righteously  denounced China” and “vocally condemned Arab regimes” is steadily being adopted in the U.S. and Europe as a knee-jerk response to any challenge to and hint of social upheaval or mass action.

After the riots in London, for example, “the instant reaction of Prime Minister David Cameron was a scheme to force telecoms to allow his government the power to limit the use of Internet and social networking sites.” This, in conjunction with an campaign to lock people up for “inciting disorder” on facebook — these two guys were given four year sentences.

And more recently in San Fransisco, during a protest of yet another subway station killing at the hands of the out-of-control BART cops, “city officials shut down underground cell phone service entirely for hours“.

These episodes take place in an environment of aggressive prosecutions against all type of free-information activists such as Wikileaks, Bradley Manning, Anonymous, Aaron Swartz and others. At the same time, legislators are proposing bills to make it easier for the government to spy on the online activities of its citizens.  (See also this.)

But at least one target of this cloud of censorship likes to stress its SILVER LINING.  In an interview I posted about recently between the Wikileaks founder and philosopher Slavoj Zizek, Assange pointed out that although the sudden rise of such “McCarthyist hysteria” is worrying, nevertheless such official responses and attempts at censorship are in fact a “positive sign”:

Power that is completely unaccountable is silent. You know when you walk past a group of ants and you accidentally crush a few?  You do not turn to the others and say “stop complaining” or I’ll put a drone strike on your head — you completely ignore them.

And that is what happens to power that is in a very dominant position. It does not even bother to respond — it doesn’t flinch for an instant. And yet we saw all these figures in the United States coming out and speaking very aggressively…

We should always see censorship, actually, as a very positive sign. And the attempts toward censorship as a sign that the society is not yet completely sewn up, not yet completely fiscalised, but still has some political dimension to it, i.e. what people believe and think and feel and the words that they listen to actually matter. Because in some areas it doesn’t matter. And in the United States, actually, most of the time, it doesn’t matter what you say. We managed to speak and give information at such volume and at such intensity that people actually were forced to respond. It is rare that they are forced to respond. So I think this is one of the first positive symptoms I’ve seen from the United States in a while. That actually if you speak at this level, the cage can be rattled a bit, and people can be forced to respond.

In China, the censorship is much more aggressive, which to me is a very hopeful symptom of China, that it is still a political society even though it is fiscalizing, even though everything is being sewn up in contractual relationships and banking relationships as time has gone by. At the moment, the Chinese government and Public Security Bureau are actually scared of what people think.

Arab Spring (and Imperial Frost) in Bahrain

May 14, 2011: J. Rosencrantz

Inspired by democratic successes in Tunisia and Egypt, the people of the tiny island monarchy of Bahrain (a majority of whom are Shia) petitioned their (Sunni) King for more representation in government.  For this they have suffered a brutal repression, including violent crackdowns of peaceful protesters, mass arrests, beatings, disappearances and death sentences.

One of the challenges faced by the Bahraini protesters is that, unlike in Egypt, the state “security forces” — primarily Sunni and increasingly foreign — lack sympathy for the people in the streets.  According to the Guardian, the Bahraini Kingdom “has made a concerted effort to recruit non-native Sunni Muslims as part of an attempt to swing the demographic balance against the Shia majority – who make up around 65% of the population of 1 million.”

Worse still, the Bahraini Royals invited Saudi “security forces” into the country  to crush the uprising. (Saudi Arabia, btw, is the recent beneficiary of the largest U.S. arms deal in history.) The king, meanwhile, blamed the unrest on a foreign plot — leading to absurd headlines.

U.S and British political executives have remained silent, demonstrating their selective and cynically employed “concern” for human rights and democracy.

As Amy Goodman points out, Obama justified military intervention into Libya on the grounds that “innocent people were targeted for killing”, “hospitals were attacked” and “journalists were arrested”, but when the same things transpire in Bahrain, he has little to say.

Obama’s silence is due in part to the fact that, unlike Libya, where the head tyrant has proven unreliable to U.S. (and European) Imperial Interests, the Malik of Bahrain was an early ally in Bush’s Terror War and is a gracious host to the U.S. Fifth Fleet.

Robert Fisk, after taking the Qatar-based al-Jazzeera to task for its silence (they “know where their bread is buttered”), argues that the U.S. (and British) silence on Bahrain is primarily a consequence of the resource alliance with the Saudis.

Other Notes:

Bahraini doctors are being tried in military courts for the crime of treating wounded protesters.

Bahrain Protest Photos.

REALLY fucked up videos.

U.S. labor organizations are advocating for Bahrain workers Caught in the Crossfire.

Liberating the Streets

April 13, 2011: J. Rosencrantz

This weekend, in the second CicLAvia, 7.5 miles of Los Angeles streets were liberated from the relentless hegemony of the internal combustion engine.

If Los Angeles has a future, it looks like this:

But one thing occurred to me in that terrible moment when the yellow Department of Transportation convoy came to reassert automobile supremacy at 3PM. Against my own anarchistic sensibilities, I must admit that (at least in this instance) it took the full power of the municipal government (Mayor, Police, Dept. of Transportation, etc.) just as much to liberate the streets as it did to shut them down again.

“If the true choice is between Muslim fundamentalist theocracy and Western liberalism, we are lost.”

February 7, 2011: J. Rosencrantz

By throwing their support behind Mubarak’s newly appointed Vice President (and C.I.A. rendition-to-torture liaison) Omar Suleiman, U.S. and its European allies are seeking to block the pro-democracy movement in Egypt, which explicitly seeks to replace the Mubarak regime.

As this struggle between democracy and despotism rages, al Jazeera, whose offices were bombed for practicing un-embedded journalism under Bush the Lesser, has been continuing to distinguish itself as an essential source of news and analysis in English.

Al-Jazeera hosted, for example, the following discussion between Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek on Riz Khan’s show, which focuses on a central question: “‘Can Egypt’s revolt lead to new political alternatives?”

The discussion leads to perspectives that can hardly be expressed on U.S. based news networks:

Instruments of U.S. Foreign Policy

December 16, 2010: J. Rosencrantz

In the wake of the release of a small fraction of the diplomatic cables it has attained, Wikileaks has faced a barrage of challenges. In addition to threats and denunciations, as well as incoherent accusations of treason and even calls for the extrajudicial execution of Assange,  Amazon booted Wikileaks from it’s servers,  PayPal “permanently restricted” its account,  EveryDNS terminated its DNS services, and MasterCard and Visa stopped processing donations — all in the absence of official charges, let alone a trial or conviction for any wrongdoing.

In British custody for questioning about a (very convenient) Swedish sexual assault investigation, Julian Assange delivered the following message via his mother:

“We now know that Visa, MasterCard and PayPal are instruments of US foreign policy. It’s not something we knew before.”

At CounterPunch, Alexander Cockburn points out that this episode is a “wake-up call on the enormous vulnerability of our prime means of communication to swift government-instigated, summary shutdown”:

So here we have a public “commons”—the Internet—subject to arbitrary onslaught by the state and powerful commercial interests, and not even the shadow of constitutional protections.

Effectively defy the Imperial Will, and the global corporate institutions which sustain your activities — your communications and financial transactions — will evaporate.

Here is a discussion on Al-Jazeera questioning the right of companies like MasterCard and PayPal to deny service to Wikileaks.

Do It Yourself

June 17, 2010: J. Rosencrantz

Tuesday night’s blathering address from the Oval Office about the disaster in the Gulf has been widely panned for its timidity in the face of what could be the world’s worst ecological disaster - a disaster for which the President clearly bears some responsibility.  And meanwhile Obama has just approved 400 new leases for oil companies to operate in the gulf.

Since it seems like people are starting to realize, finally and begrudgingly, that their boy is a pro-war, anti-civil libertarian, corporatist spokesliar, I’m starting to feel like there is less of an urgent need to propagate that particular piece of increasingly obvious information.

So I thought I’d turn attention to some locals who are doing it for themselves – and, unlike the federal government, successfully fighting to address our culture’s addiction to the vile substance at the heart of many of the world’s problems.

Several months ago, these “Caution: Please Pass With Care” signs started popping up all over L.A.  They are the work of a group of guerrilla citizen-artists who call themselves the Department of D.Y.I.  Here is a video of them walking the walk:

L.A. Streets Blog covered an earlier guerrilla campain by D.I.Y. here, andThe LA.ist published the group’s manifesto here.  Their work can be seen all around the city:

Now it turns out that these guerrilla art campaigns – in conjunction with a sustained lobbying effort by the biking community — prepped the way for actual, official civic change: The LADOT has finally started to install “Sharrows,” which are an essential, although imperfect, piece of biking infrastructure.

Other things are afoot, as well: Only a few weeks after police harassment of a BP protest ride in Hollywood organized by Critical Mass, the L.A.P.D. is going to join Critical Mass as participants of a ride scheduled for June 25.

The la.ist hopes it is a game changer of cyclist/police relations in Los Angeles.

(BTW: If you are interested in following bike news, I recommend these feeds: Bike Commute News, L.A. Bike Coalition, L.A. Critical Mass, L.A. Streets Blog.)

“Green Curve”

May 11, 2010: J. Rosencrantz

Tomorrow, I’m fixin’ to bicycle to Olympic and Robertson to document the collective action at BP’s “Green Curve” station, si alguien tiene ganas de acomanarme:

Wednesday, May 12, 5-7 PM
8770 West Olympic Boulevard, L.A.

(There are similar events in other cities…)

Meanwhile, here is an argument for the public seizure of BP’s assets.

CONTINUITIES 5

November 23, 2009: J. Rosencrantz

The World’s Got Problems has been careful to document the many ways in which the Obama administration has maintained continuity with its disgraced predecessor.

This continuity continues as Obama:

Much more here, but regarding that last point, the latest episode of Bill Moyer’s show presents audio recordings of telephone conversations between President Johnson and his advisors on whether to escalate the war in Vietnam in the months before the ’64 elections. Actually listen to LBJ struggle with the options, and reluctantly make the tragic choice to bomb and invade.

Update 09/28/09: Obama chooses not join more than 150 countries in signing a land mine ban.  Throw that on the pile too.

“NON-LETHAL” WEAPONS AND ITCHY TRIGGER FINGERS

August 24, 2009: J. Rosencrantz

Pictured above, indicating the type of penises they wished they had, are brothers Tom and Rick Smith, founders of Taser International.

At their 2009 conference, they dressed up in gay outfits to hawk their increasingly popular products. Witness the limp-dicked flag-worship fully on display.

At the end of their Keynote Address, they launched into an uplifting sermon about how their company should be “celebrated” for “swimming against the tide of history” by providing weapons intended to “preserve life”.

Meanwhile, between 2001 and August 2008, these “life preserving” weapons were used to kill 334 people, most of whom were unarmed.

Moreover, this myth of taser non-lethality gives cocksucker cops everywhere the excuse (and the legal cover) to torture grandmothers, pregnant women and kids. From Scott Thill:

Did you hear the one about the pregnant woman who was tasered because she wouldn’t sign her speeding ticket, or the pregnant woman who was tasered at a baptism party thrown by her father, a bible-study teacher who was charged with public intoxication in his own backyard and whose wife and son were also tasered? How about the officer who tasered a pregnant woman while inside the police department?

Or the cop who tasered a girl, no lie, in the brain, because he couldn’t chase her down on foot? Or the one that shoved a taser up a man’s ass in Idaho? Or those who tasered and pepper-sprayed an umbrella-wielding man in a Dollar Store bathroom, and after finding out that he was both mentally disabled and deaf still decided to charge him with resisting arrest, failure to obey a police officer and (of course) disorderly conduct, charges which the on-duty magistrate refused to accept? And don’t forget the belligerent baseball fan, the 72-year old grandmother, the bride and groom tasered at their wedding, the bicyclists who were tased after cops tried to run them off the road. And what about that guy who burst into flames? What about the six-year-old who was tasered after threatening to cut his own leg with a glass? (That’ll teach him!)

You can read other stories about tasers here, or watch more cops out of control here.

(By the way, the link between the Taser and Schutzstaffel logos – so subtly expressed in my collage above – was suggested by this post from the Infinite Unknown.)

UPDATE 08/26/09: On second thought, to call these guys ‘gay’ is to flatter them. But I still suspect that they are limp dicked.