One of the most distressing disappearances from multiplexes in the last half decade is the studio comedy. I’m far from the first person to point out their absence, but I don’t think streaming and “prestige television” are entirely to blame. Romantic comedies have also vanished, and last year’s Ticket to Paradise is the exception that […]
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In 1971 a second-year grad student at Yale named Alfred McCoy met the poet Allen Ginsberg at a demonstration for Bobby Seale in New Haven, Connecticut. Ginsberg found out that McCoy had studied up on the drug trade and also knew several Southeast Asian languages, as well as the political history of the region. He […]
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“The algorithm, he said, was YouTube’s speech and distinct from what users had posted.” – New York Times, Feb. 21, 2023 If the algorithm is speech just as money is speech, then it has the protection of the First Amendment and cannot be obstructed. (Citizens United, 2010) However, Constitutionally both the free speech of money […]
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In the late 1960s, Paul Coates, after a stint in Vietnam, had left the US Army and was back in the States. He settled in Baltimore, found a job, got married, started a family. But life in the army had awakened Paul to Black consciousness, and he found himself hanging out at the local chapter […]
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A largely innocuous, if somewhat tedious, traffic reduction scheme in Oxford, England has in recent months become a bizarre cause celebre of the international far right. Since last May, three areas of East Oxford have had the bulk of their residential streets closed to through traffic to create what are called Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs). […]
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Factories along the lower Columbia River, January, 2023. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair
One of the earliest climate-related documents in the CIA library is a 1958 Joint Services Publications report on Soviet analyses of so-called global “heat balances.” The report mostly consists of hundreds of footnotes referencing the work of Soviet climatologists who seemed way ahead on the issue. Until the 1990s, most of the CIA research entries for “climate change” and “global warming” are simply translations of Soviet science journals.
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Still, from Emancipation.
Emancipating Film History
The Civil War is among Hollywood’s favorite, most frequently filmed wars, and since the silent era numerous popular motion pictures have dramatized “the war between the states.” This oeuvre includes notable productions such as: D.W. Griffith’s 1915 epic The Birth of a Nation; Oscar-winner Victor Fleming’s 1939 Gone with the Wind, based on Margaret Mitchell’s bestseller; John Huston’s 1951 adaptation of Stephen Crane’s novel The Red Badge of Courage; 1989’s Glory; as well as Ken Burns’ epochal 9-episode nonfiction TV series The Civil War, which won two Emmy Awards. Now add to this list what is arguably Tinseltown’s best Civil War movie ever: Antoine Fuqua’s Emancipation, starring Will Smith and Ben Foster.
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“I’m watching these trees fall over in the park because of being baked in the heat,” observed David, my climbing instructor. He has lived in Joshua Tree for some 30 years, just a stone’s throw away from the entrance to its namesake Joshua Tree National Park, where the Colorado and Mojave Deserts meet. As a […]
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Image by Markus Krisetya.
Every so often, the World Bank puts out a paper that calls for better social protection or at least a somewhat better deal for working people. The public relations people there evidently believe we have very short memories.
No, dear reader, the World Bank has not changed its function, nor have elephants begun to fly. Without any hint of irony, the World Bank’s latest attempt at selective amnesia is what it calls its “Social Protection and Jobs” strategy, in which it purports to advocate that the world’s national governments “greatly expand effective coverage of social protection programs” and “significantly increase the scale and quality of economic inclusion and labor market programs.” Hilariously, the World Bank titles its 136-page report fleshing out this strategy “Charting a Course Towards Universal Social Protection: Resilience, Equity, and Opportunity for All.”
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In 1965, two twenty-somethings, Zoharah Simmons and Michael Simmons, activists seasoned by Mississippi Freedom Summer and Arkansas Black sharecropper organizing, met, completely by chance, at the Atlanta office of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). So began almost 60 – and counting – years of their lives and work together in what was to become […]
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Timothy Leary at The Ranch, during a 1967 interview with ABCNews.
What would Timothy Leary have made of today’s counterculture becoming in some ways like the sole preserve of the right? Was there not something of Leary in the ‘QAnon Shaman’ guy with his painted face and horned hat and tattooed chest at the US Capitol riot on January 6 last year? I don’t believe so. Besides, Leary had he still been alive may have been the first off the block to interrupt the shouting match, possibly even with a resurgent call for peace.
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Declassified US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) documents from the 1980s reveal that the Agency expected that Nelson Mandela (1918-2013), future President of South Africa, would die in prison. The CIA hoped that the Ronald Reagan administration (1981-89) would be able to co-opt the African National Congress (ANC), of which Mandela was a leading figure, and […]
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“Black policemen were another matter. We used to say, ‘If you must call a policeman,”–for we hardly ever did–“for God’s sake, try to make sure it’s a White one.” A black policeman could completely demolish you. He knew far more about you than a White policeman could and you were without defenses before this Black […]
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It spread through our living unit in a matter of weeks. We were sick, and most of us knew it was probably COVID. A staff member that worked in the prison’s Correctional Industries Laundry Service had tested positive and been placed on leave. Prisoners knew they were sick, but no one wanted to report the […]
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Dear António Guterres, You rightly say, “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator”. This is evident to most people. What isn’t so evident is that the UN’s foot has been among the heaviest because of its role, for more than six decades now, in the covered-up genocide […]
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Carl Schmitt, the Nazi whose thought is still inexplicably in vogue at various Anglo-American political science departments, believed that the fundamental political distinction is the division between “friend” and “enemy.” That this division underlies much of politics, even in societies with the most genteel of political systems, is undeniable. On the Left, we view politics as a power struggle, a conflict between workers and capitalists, a battle between advocates of genuine democracy and adherents of economic and political autocracy. But members of the far right in many Western countries seem to be reviving the notion in a more violent, disturbing way. Trump’s rhetoric about the press, the Left, and other bugbears of his being “enemies of the people” culminated quite recently in the January 6 insurrection. Recent concerns about polarization and the calcification of domestic divisions between friend and foe have motivated a slew of op-eds and books about tribalism in the United States and Western Europe. In societies plagued by civil war or gang violence, the friend-enemy distinction is much more apparent. But it’s in the space between societies where the friend-enemy dichotomy becomes most salient: in fact, it is central to most international relations analyses.
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Image by Ibrahim Boran.
Wishing for central banks to act in the interest of working people rather than the financial industry is about as fruitful as hoping a starving wolf won’t eat the chicken that was just placed next to it. Pigs will fly, the Amazon will freeze over and Wall Street will give all its money away before a central bank in the capitalist core goes against its raison d’être.
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A major media story last month, Israel’s deportation of Palestinian attorney Salah Hamouri from East Jerusalem to France – though widely recognized as a war crime – is now old news. Another forgotten news item occurred a year earlier, in 2021, when the Israeli government, offering as evidence only “secret information,” summarily designated six Palestinian NGOs illegal “terrorist organizations,” claiming they were linked financially to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine [PFLP]. These NGOs – Al-Haq, Addameer, Bisan Center for Research and Development, Defense for Children International–Palestine, Union of Agricultural Workers Committees, and Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees – exist solely to defend the human rights of indigenous Palestinian children, women, prisoners, and farmers. Israel’s calling them terrorist seems tantamount to the United States calling the ACLU dangerous and illegal … which, according to Sahar Francis, could someday happen.
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Sometimes when I’m tired and my mind meanders into the weeds, into the scraggly irrelevancies that cling with weak and shallow roots to the flyblown edges of consciousness, I think of Matt Taibbi. We all know Matt: the one-time pseudo-gonzo heir of Hunter Thompson who is now embarked on a predictable, tedious, common-as-muck journey to […]
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Vicky Krieps as “Empress Elizabeth of Austria” in Marie Kreutzer’s “CORSAGE” Courtesy of Film AG. An IFC Films Release.
For some reason, royalty has been much in the news lately. Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee was observed during the first half of 2022. Her Majesty’s September death set off a period of mourning. On November 9, the fifth season of the Netflix series about the Windsors, The Crown, dropped. In December, William and Kate, the Prince and Princess of Wales, visited the USA. Not to be outdone, while they were in the “colonies” the Sussexes released the coming attractions for and then the multi-part Netflix series featuring Harry and Meghan. On December 7, an attempted coup plot to install Heinrich XIII Prince of Reuss as the head of state was foiled in Germany.
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What will ignite the fall of the Islamic Republic following the current mass protests by young women? The revolutionary spark for over three months seems to have become a mass wall of no fear. Backed by virtually the rest of the Iranian population from urban centres to rural areas; from oppressed provinces of Iranian Kurdish […]
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For the last 13 years, ever since James Cameron’s Avatar replaced another movie of his (Titanic) as the most commercially successful movie of all time, movie theaters around the world have shifted to digital projection. By the end of the 2010s, it felt like Avatar had left no cultural imprint, with no memorable images, scenes, […]
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El Paso-Ciudad Juárez. Carefully treading a crossing of slippery stones strung across the shallow Rio Grande between Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and El Paso, Texas, trickles of migrants climbed up the embankment on the U.S. side. Joining with others who had already crossed from down river, the asylum seekers waited peacefully to surrender to U.S. Customs […]
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Image by Anthony Garand.
Donald Trump’s recent rant that the U.S. Constitution should be “terminated” so that he can be installed as president for life merits no response, given the Orange one-man crime wave’s tenuous connection to reality. Laughter is the appropriate riposte as Trump’s futile attempts at becoming the fascist dictator he clearly aspires to be become ever more futile.
But is his latest childish tantrum really something to be laughed off? Having skipped the “tragedy” phase and gone straight to “farce,” Trump is facing what is likely to become a politically terminal case of irrelevancy as new contenders for Mussolini’s crown, most notably but not only Ron DeSantis, emerge. The nascent fascist movement that has coalesced around Trump, and the varieties of extreme right menace that shade into it that are now expressed through the Republican Party, are no laughing matter. And while embarrassed silence or a quick change of subject might be Republicans’ default position when asked to comment on Trump’s increasing irrationality due to their fear of the Frankenstein monster they have let loose, eviscerating the Constitution is actually on their agenda.
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Teddy Katz, as seen in Tantura directed by Alon Schwarz. Photo credit: Yonathan Weitzman. Courtesy of Reel Peak Films.
Alon Schwarz’s Tantura, which won the Philadelphia Film Festival’s Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature, reminds me of the 1990 West German narrative feature The Nasty Girl. In Michael Verhoeven’s movie, Lena (Sonja Rosenberger) is a postwar student who unearths her town’s fascist past. She literally has denazification files dusted off at the town’s archives, and against all odds, insists upon revealing the awful truth she has discovered about the now complacent townsfolk, much to their horror.
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On July 5, 2015, the Greek demos voted by a wide margin to turn down the bailout offered to them by their Troika of creditors – the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, and the European Commission. At the time, the Greek Finance Minister was Yanis Varoufakis, who had spent most of his career […]
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In 2011, during the early days of the Arab Spring, Alaa Abd El-Fattah, 29-year-old software developer, blogger, and activist, made history as one of the leading architects of Egypt’s January 25 Revolution, which led to the downfall of President Hosni Mubarak. This year, on November 18, Alaa turned 41 in one of President Abdel Fattah […]
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There are few things less dignified—and more panic-inducing—than when you hear nature’s proverbial call in public, far away from a publicly available bathroom. Yet given the arrangement of public space in most large cities, such a disastrous situation is practically inevitable if you’re out and about for long enough. I had the misfortune of suffering […]
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Image by Xavier Balderas Cejudo.
This has become, sadly, a yearly ritual by now. The world’s governments gather together to discuss what should be done about global warming, and finish their time together by issuing statements of concern while doing little concrete to actually solve the problem. And so it is with COP27.
The 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, to use the formal name for COP27, ended with what has the appearance of a breakthrough: An agreement on the establishment of a “loss and damage” fund for Global South countries severely affected by weather and environmental disasters triggered by global warming, and for which they bear almost no responsibility. This finally fulfills a pledge made at the 2009 Climate Summit in Copenhagen.
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I am at the barber’s, and a copy of Paris-Match is offered to me. On the cover, a young Negro in a French uniform is saluting, with his eyes uplifted, probably fixed on a fold of the tricolour. All this is the meaning of the picture. But whether naively or not, I see very well […]
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