Stanley Kutler: What Will History Make of Colin Powell?

What Will History Make of Colin Powell?
By Stanley Kutler
Truthdig

How do we remember history? Time diminishes our memories of details and spear carriers. Thirty-five years ago, as Richard Nixon prepared to resign, we readily recited the real-life cast of all the president’s men: Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, Dean, Kleindienst, Colson, Liddy and Agnew. Today, memory of them has all but vanished, except for the few still active in the public arena.

From the Vietnam War, do we remember Gen. William Westmoreland, or do we remember the ironic incantation of “light at the end of the tunnel”? South Vietnam’s Gen. Nguyen Van Thieu rests in the ashcan of history. Khe Sanh and Hue are half-century-ago battles now reserved for military buffs; more prominent in today’s memory banks are our recognition of and trade with Vietnam.

How history plays out is, however, a very real concern for key players. Nixon campaigned for history, beginning with his teary White House farewell on Aug. 9, 1973, and continuing through two decades, with a number of books, carefully calibrated appearances and meetings with prominent leaders at home and abroad. He struggled mightily to turn the public loathing of him into admiration for his achievements. He had virtually nothing to say about Watergate; fortunately, he left an enduring gift of his thoughts and words on tape. He was the greatest self-bugger of all.

Public figures understandably fuss over their reputations and how they will be remembered. Recent news brought to mind memories of two prominent figures of their moment: Colin Powell and Robert McNamara.

Powell certainly is very conscious of his historical reputation. He said on CNN last Sunday that “history” will have to decide whether George W. Bush’s decision to make war in Iraq was correct. Like the former president, he presents a formidable example of history by amnesia. “A dictator is gone, a despicable regime is gone, the Iraqi people have been given a chance to have a representative form of government living in peace with its neighbors,” Powell said.

If “history” will decide whether Bush (with Powell) made the correct decision, then we have to confront a factual reality. Surely, Gen. Powell knows that he participated in an unprovoked war of aggression, resulting in the deaths of over 4,000 U.S. combatants and countless Iraqis. He knows that his United Nations speech describing Saddam Hussein’s menacing weapons of mass destruction was utterly fictitious, concocted in the White House and Defense Department. Powell undoubtedly has the excuse that he was handed a script full of errors, lies and poor judgments. He always has been the “good soldier.” Ironically, he was chosen for the U.N. performance for his credibility, not to mention his loyalty. President Bush, ably seconded by Vice President Dick Cheney, soon launched the “shock and awe” bombing of Baghdad. They quickly marginalized Powell, but he loyally stayed for slightly more than a year and a half.

Powell favors history by omission. His and Bush’s rationale rests on proven lies and factual inventions. In his recent TV appearance Powell offered his judgment of the Iraq war, minus the fact of its undeniably dubious raison d’être. Silent on that fact, Powell proceeded to the standard interpretation for Bush and his followers.

That we lied, that we misrepresented the actual facts—that Condoleezza Rice warned of a mushroom cloud over us if we failed to act against Saddam Hussein—are facts easily discarded or ignored. Powell’s interpretation simply forgets that an unnecessarily provoked war brought needless sacrifices of lives and treasures. We can hope that future historians will use all the facts.

Robert McNamara died in the same week that Powell tried to rewrite history. McNamara loyally served John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. For both, he was the principal architect and desk officer of the Vietnam War and, for six years at least, the most vocal advocate of victory through a military solution. (McGeorge Bundy and Walt Whitman Rostow helped with the heavy lifting.) His public utterances, too, promised “light at the end of the tunnel.”

For an earlier event, the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, McNamara labored mightily to influence our understanding of that history, claiming he helped Kennedy forge a peaceful resolution. But the tapes do not lie: McNamara urged JFK to attack Soviet missile sites. Sheldon Stern, the leading authority on those tapes, has written that they “prove conclusively that McNamara was not JFK’s principal ally in ‘trying to keep us out of war,’ ” as McNamara often said.

McNamara readily hijacked the truth, and tried to stamp his visions upon recorded history.

To Read the Rest of the Article

Bill Moyers Journal: Faith and Social Justice

Faith and Social Justice
Bill Moyers Journal

Bill Moyers talks to Cornel West, Serene Jones, and Gary Dorrien for a fresh take on what our core ethics and values as a society say about America's politics, policy, and the challenges of balancing capitalism and democracy.

To Listen to the Episode

Bill Moyers Journal: Leymah Gbowee and Abigail Diseny - Pray the Devil Back to Hell

Pray the Devil Back to Hell
Bill Moyers Journal



The JOURNAL profiles Leymah Gbowee, a woman who led her fellow countrywomen to fight for and win peace in war-torn Liberia, and Abigail Disney, who produced the documentary of their struggle and triumph in the award-winning film PRAY THE DEVIL BACK TO HELL.

For 15 years Liberia was gripped by civil war between the government of the corrupt and ruthless Charles Taylor, and warlords battling to overthrow him. More than 200,000 people had been killed and one out of three were made homeless.

Leymah Gbowee and her countrywomen were so desperate they decided to try and put a stop to the fighting. Armed with only a simple white t-shirt, they took to the streets knowing they could well be beaten and killed. They became "the market women," cajoling the fighting men and employing a tactic so old it was once used by the women of ancient Greece: No peace, no sex.

Ultimately, Charles Taylor was toppled from power and banished from Liberia. The country then elected a new president, the first woman head of state in Africa, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

To Listen to the Episode

Bill Moyers Journal: Robert B. Reich - influence of lobbyists on policy, the economy, and the ongoing debate over health care.

Robert Reich
Bill Moyers Journal



The big decisions on health care reform are happening right now. Congress is "mixing the concrete" of the health care reform bill, as the economist Robert Reich puts it on his blog, "And after it's poured and hardens, universal health care will be with us for years to come in whatever form it now takes."

But who's doing the mixing? Robert Reich, who served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, tells Bill Moyers on the JOURNAL that the fight to shape health care reform is the biggest test to date for President Obama. Powerful lobbies have lined up to oppose what is being called "the public option," a key element of the president's plan.

The public option, according to Reich, is a government-run non-profit insurance pool, that, by virtue of its size and bargaining power, could control costs and offer people who are either uncovered by, or unhappy with private insurers an affordable alternative path to health care. Medicare is an example of a public option, notes Reich, with one important caveat — the Medicare drug benefit bill passed during the Bush administration expressly forbids Medicare from using its size to negotiate for lower costs, an important key to keeping prices down.

To Listen to the Conversation

Bill Moyers Journal: CALIFORNIA NURSES ASSOCIATION'S DONNA SMITH

CALIFORNIA NURSES ASSOCIATION'S DONNA SMITH
Bill Moyers Journal

Donna Smith and her colleagues have been taking their quest for health care reform to Congress — and to the streets. Donna Smith is best known for her major role in Michael Moore's 2007 movie, SiCKO. Moore documented her return to Denver in 2006 when she and her husband Larry were forced to move into their daughter's basement. Though they were fully insured, the Smiths lost everything they had following major illnesses and surgeries. Today, Donna Smith works as a community organizer and legislative advocate for the California Nurses Association, whose 85,000 members across the country were early champions of a single-payer program.

To Listen to the Conversation

Bill Moyers Journal: Dr. David Himmelstein & Dr. Sidney Wolfe - REFORMING HEALTH CARE

Dr. David Himmelstein & Dr. Sidney Wolfe - REFORMING HEALTH CARE
Bill Moyers Journal

Washington's abuzz about health care, but why isn't a single-payer plan an option on the table? Public Citizen's Dr. Sidney Wolfe and Physicians for a National Health Program's Dr. David Himmelstein on the political and logistical feasibility of health care reform.

To Listen to the Conversation

Bloggingheads TV: David Sullivan and Mark Leon Goldberg - Conflict Minerals

Conflict Materials
David Sullivan, Enough Project and Mark Leon Goldberg, UN Dispatch, The American Prospect
Bloggingheads TV

How your cell phone may be fueling Congolese violence (03:51)
From a mine in eastern Congo to a laptop in America (07:22)
David: Information can trump peacekeeping (02:58)
You’ve heard of “blood diamonds”—how about “blood iPods”? (03:38)
What electronics companies can do (02:43)
Don’t end mining; reform it (04:08)

To Listen to the Conversation

The Wobblies (Stewart Bird and Deborah Shaffer, 1979)

To Watch the Documentary

Bill Moyers Journal: David Simon - creator of the Homicide: Life on the Streets and The Wire

David Simon
Bill Moyers Journal

The executive producer of HBO's critically-acclaimed show THE WIRE, David Simon talks with Bill Moyers about inner-city crime and politics, storytelling and the future of journalism today. After a dozen years covering crime for the BALTIMORE SUN, David Simon left journalism to write books and tell stories for NBC and HBO, including his Peabody-winning cop show THE WIRE, which looked at the drug wars and the gritty underbelly of the inner-city. Simon is now producing the pilot for a series about musicians in post-Katrina New Orleans, called TREME.

To Listen to the Conversation

Derrick Jensen: Forget Shorter Showers - Why personal change does not equal political change

Forget Shorter Showers: Why personal change does not equal political change
by Derrick Jensen
Orion Magazine

WOULD ANY SANE PERSON think dumpster diving would have stopped Hitler, or that composting would have ended slavery or brought about the eight-hour workday, or that chopping wood and carrying water would have gotten people out of Tsarist prisons, or that dancing naked around a fire would have helped put in place the Voting Rights Act of 1957 or the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Then why now, with all the world at stake, do so many people retreat into these entirely personal “solutions”?

Part of the problem is that we’ve been victims of a campaign of systematic misdirection. Consumer culture and the capitalist mindset have taught us to substitute acts of personal consumption (or enlightenment) for organized political resistance. An Inconvenient Truth helped raise consciousness about global warming. But did you notice that all of the solutions presented had to do with personal consumption—changing light bulbs, inflating tires, driving half as much—and had nothing to do with shifting power away from corporations, or stopping the growth economy that is destroying the planet? Even if every person in the United States did everything the movie suggested, U.S. carbon emissions would fall by only 22 percent. Scientific consensus is that emissions must be reduced by at least 75 percent worldwide.

Or let’s talk water. We so often hear that the world is running out of water. People are dying from lack of water. Rivers are dewatered from lack of water. Because of this we need to take shorter showers. See the disconnect? Because I take showers, I’m responsible for drawing down aquifers? Well, no. More than 90 percent of the water used by humans is used by agriculture and industry. The remaining 10 percent is split between municipalities and actual living breathing individual humans. Collectively, municipal golf courses use as much water as municipal human beings. People (both human people and fish people) aren’t dying because the world is running out of water. They’re dying because the water is being stolen.

To Read the Rest of the Essay

Marty Klein: Oprah - Anti-Vagina, Anti-Sex

"Oprah: Anti-Vagina, Anti-Sex."
by Marty Klein
Humanist Network News

Newsweek recently called out Oprah for being a quack. In a cover story titled "Crazy Talk: Oprah, Wacky Cures & You," they cited shows she's enthusiastically done on cancer, autism, and other subjects featuring non-experts offering ineffective or dangerous medical tips. She also endorses mystical New Age "thinking" as a health strategy.

One thing Newsweek didn't mention was Oprah's ignorant, destructive positions on sex.

Take sexual orientation, for example-a subject that's been in the news once or twice lately. As recently as 10 weeks ago, Oprah was asking psychologist Lisa Diamond if women turn to other women sexually "because of a shortage of men." Oprah also wondered why, when women turn away from men, so many seem to choose women who don't, um, look so feminine.

Oprah's sexual ignorance, of course, isn't limited to women. She talks about men as if she's never met an actual adult man:

* When she read mail from viewers complaining about their husbands' lack of interest, she was stunned-"Hard to believe," she said. "We thought, you know, men always wanted it."
* She opened one show by asking the audience: "True or false: once a cheater, always a cheater. What do you think?" In unison, the congregation chanted back the solemn testimony of the Church of Oprah: "True!" Women are, she says, "a big ol' cheated-on club out there."

Oprah is so focused on female victimization, in fact, that she even tells the astounding untruth that doctors pay more attention to the sexual aspects of prostate surgery than to hysterectomy. She also forgets to mention that more men die from prostate cancer than from breast or uterine cancer.

But to fully capture the flavor of Oprah's discomfort with sex, go back a few months to the show that carried this warning: "This program contains graphic content that is suitable for mature audiences only."

And what was this "graphic content" that should only be watched by a select few? A chart from a high school biology textbook that celebrity sex therapist Laura Berman used to show where the vagina is.

To Read the Rest of the Article

Bill Moyers Journal: Rachel Carson - Her Life and Legacy

Carson, Rachel. "Her Life and Legacy." Bill Moyers Journal (September 21, 2007)

Excerpt from the introduction:

The Environmental Protection Agency looks to her as a founding inspiration and the Fish & Wildlife Service as a source of agency pride. The EPA's official history site states: "There is no question...that SILENT SPRING prompted the Federal Government to take action against water and air pollution — as well as against the misuse of pesticides — several years before it otherwise might have moved."

But the common view of Rachel Carson's impact goes far beyond government bureaucracy. Carson and her most famous book, SILENT SPRING, are credited with no less than inspiring the modern global environmental movement. In its collection of the 100 most important people of the 20th Century, TIME magazine said: "Before there was an environmental movement, there was one brave woman and her very brave book." In 2007, the centenary of Carson's birth is being celebrated around the world — and her work is still making waves — just as it did in 1962.

Rachel Carson was born in 1907 in Springdale, Pennsylvania. Carson was always interested in writing — contributing a number of stories to the children's magazine ST. NICHOLAS. She also had a long-standing love of nature. In a speech to the society of women journalists, Theta Sigma Pi, in 1954 she said: "I was rather a solitary child and spent a great deal of time in woods and beside streams, learning the birds and insects and flowers."

Carson attended the Pennsylvania College for Women at Pittsburgh. Originally intending on majoring in English composition, Carson changed her focus to biology and went on to study at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, and received her MA in zoology from Johns Hopkins University in 1932.

Carson went on to a position as aquatic biologist with the Bureau of Fisheries in Washington (subsequently the Fish & Wildlife Service). Both a writer and biologist — Carson started out creating radio scripts — her series was called "The Romance of the Seas." She stayed with the U. S. Fish & Wildlife Service for fifteen years, finishing her career as Editor-in-Chief of all publications for the Service.

Encouraged by friends and colleagues, Carson submitted articles for publication — "Undersea" was published in 1937 by ATLANTIC. Carson followed with three books about the sea: 1941's UNDER THE SEA WIND, best-selling THE SEA AROUND US in 1951, and THE EDGE OF THE SEA, 1955 — all of which were lauded for her ability to write eloquently and clearly about science for a mainstream audience. THE SEA AROUND US won numerous awards including the Gold Medal of the New York Zoological Society, the John Burroughs Medal, the Gold Medal of the Geographical Society of Philadelphia and the National Book Award — and was a best-seller.

David Hawpe: A lesson in love at University of the Cumberlands

A lesson in love at University of the Cumberlands
by David Hawpe (Washington Post)
Louisville-Courier

Well, the University of the Cumberlands is in the news again.

You know the place. It's where Senate President David Williams, in whose district the campus is located, tried to put $12 million in public money for a pharmacy school and scholarships.

It's where a sophomore from Lexington, Jason Johnson, was kicked out shortly before the end of the spring semester in 2006, for acknowledging his homosexuality on his MySpace.com Web page and for mentioning he had a boyfriend. Williams then rallied a campus crowd against the school's critics, promising, "These people that don't want this university to have values and principles will be defeated."

Actually it was the university that got beat — in court, when Special Judge Roger Crittenden ruled that using state money for the pharmacy project violated the Kentucky Constitution. Meanwhile, the Accreditation Agency for Pharmacy Education was committed to policy that "ensures nondiscrimination as defined by state and federal laws and regulations, such as on the basis of race, religion gender, lifestyle, sexual orientation, national origin or disability."

Now this same University of the Cumberlands is in the headlines again, after abruptly jerking an invitation to a youth group from Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, which had planned to come build homes for the poor. And why the rebuff? Because the student-volunteers' church recently was kicked out of the Southern Baptist Convention, for acting to "affirm, approve or endorse homosexual behavior."

One wonders what values and principles Williams had in mind when he rushed to defend the university's orthodoxies.

Maybe Williams and the University of the Cumberlands administration are worried that somebody in the volunteer crew from Texas has a weak wrist and couldn't use a hammer. It was Williams, you may remember, who helped a fellow Republican's campaign for re-election by traveling the state and warning, "What a shame it would be if we traded the strong left hand of Jim Bunning — the punch that he has — for the limp wrist of (Democrat Daniel) Mongiardo."

The limp wrist line doesn't stand historical scrutiny. For example, that great lover of male beauty, Michelangelo Buonarroti, seems to have fallen for Tommaso di Cavalieri when he was 57 and Tommaso was 23. The artist dedicated more than 300 sonnets and madrigals to his young looker, and the two remained devoted until the old fellow's death. And, despite the seeming implications of all this, Michelangelo's wrist seems to have been just fine — stiff enough, obviously, to handle a mallet and various chisels, files and rasps. Otherwise we wouldn't have the David, the Pieta, etc.

Which brings me to this question: If the University of the Cumberlands is determined to wall itself off from anything gay-related, what does it do for curriculum?

...

To Read the Rest of the Column

Democracy Now: Vietnam War Architect Robert McNamara Dies at 93: A Look at His Legacy With Howard Zinn, Marilyn Young & Jonathan Schell

Zinn, Howard, Marilyn Young and Jonathan Schell. "Vietnam War Architect Robert McNamara Dies at 93: A Look at His Legacy With Howard Zinn, Marilyn Young & Jonathan Schell." Democracy Now (July 7, 2009)

Former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara has died at the age of 93. McNamara was one of the key architects of the Vietnam war, which killed at least three million Vietnamese, around one million Cambodians and Laotians, and 58,000 American soldiers. We take a look at McNamara’s legacy with two pre-eminent historians: Howard Zinn and Marilyn Young. We also speak with Jonathan Schell, who covered Vietnam as a reporter in 1967 and met with McNamara in a secret Pentagon meeting.

Howard Zinn, historian and author of many books, including the classic work, “A People’s History of the United States.”

Marilyn Young, Professor of History at NYU and specialist on Vietnamese history. Author of “The Vietnam Wars: 1945-1990” and most recently, “Bombing Civilians: A Twentieth-century History.”

Jonathan Schell, Harold Willens Peace Fellow at The Nation Institute. In ’66 and ’67 he reported from South Vietnam for the New Yorker. He is the author of two books on Vietnam: “The Village of Ben Suc” and “The Military Half.”

The Bat Segundo Show: #293 Guy Maddin

#293 Guy Maddin
The Bat Segundo Show



Subjects Discussed: Whether living in Winnipeg for many year makes one an expert of Winnipeg, expertise and confused feelings, the importance of not straying from your methods, pleasant feelings and hellish depictions of Winnipeg, the strength one obtains from retellings of Icelandic sagas, the difficulties of laughing at smallpox plagues, “My Winnipeg” vs. “My New York,” Marcel Dzama, artists doing their bit for Winnipeg, being murdered by a puck, Winnipeg purse-snatching, being indoors in Winnipeg, Canadians who are being unduly rattled by Americans, James Frey and the problems with American memoirs, finding the disclaimer, naked laps, getting a nude model in Winnipeg and Manhattan, quick cutting in Maddin’s films after 2000, title cards and Godard, walkout ratios in Maddin’s films, smelling the mildew in the tableau, live elements to Maddin’s films, J. Hoberman’s assessment, Maddin reading his own press, the IMDB, Internet ego searches, getting rid of obsessions, having to live with Guy Maddin the character, Darcy Fehr as the only actor to play “Guy Maddin” twice, the Seattle Guy Maddins, having an actor impersonate Guy Maddin at a Chicago event, why Guy Maddin hasn’t played himself, whether or not Darcy Fehr is Maddin’s Jean-Pierre Léaud, similarities between Brand Upon the Brain’s Sullivan Brown and Antoine Doniel, redacted dialogue in My Winnipeg, Ann Savage, the OCD quality that Winnipeggers have, recurring handshakes, ramming the audience over the head, editing lessons learned from Cowards Bend the Knee, title cards, actors who performed scenes in several different languages in the early sound era, Maddin’s shift from storyboards to spontaneity, editing speed and cramming ideas, good actors vs. bad actors, George Toles’s dialogue, the official report on the Guy Maddin Casting Couch, hockey locker rooms, chorizo metaphors, walking and coming up with ideas, Guy Debord, W.G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, how walking gives you courage, the advantages of sleeping in hallways and on ladders, time travel and peregrinations, the grim nature of the future, and not being a great planner.

To Listen to the Interview

CFP: Inventions of Activism (Reconstruction 10.3: Deadline 02/01/10)

Call For Papers
Reconstruction
Issue 10.3

Michael Benton, Alan Clinton, Wes Houp and Danny Mayer

Inventions of Activism

"Creative acts of social justice fulfill every function that can be asked of a work of art. They inspire us, make us think in new ways, and birth new beauty and dignity in our world."
--Rebecca Alban Hofberger, "True Visions”

"Screw Hope; Let's Act"
--Walker Lane "Nope to Hope: False Capital and the Spectacle Triumphant"

This issue of _Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture_ solicits a variety of work which looks to activism as a broad array of creative practices yet to be defined. We seek not to revisit debates between theory and practice, but to view activism as a form of invention which may lead to new cultural formations.

What challenges do activists face as practicing utopians? What more or less local examples of activism can be looked to as models for further practice? How can activism as performance, as technology, as art lead to the production of new political and social theory? How is activism the art of the possible?

We would like this issue itself to be a form of activism inasmuch as it brings together a set of theorized practices in the form of case studies from the present and the past, a community of minds in both its contributors and subsequent readers.

We also encourage contributors to look to problem areas that have not yet been addressed or not addressed sufficiently, and to propose new models of cultural intervention.

Some areas of particular interest expressed by editors should serve as a starting point:

1. Testimonials of individuals and/or groups that document the structures of collective action and resistances (both external and internal) to these movements.

2. Activism as a form of social and political creativity. Considerations of how theory can promote or become activism, or how theories of political and social invention derive, post facto, from such activities.

3. The rhetoric of activism in its statements and endeavors.

4. Narration and development of (potential) actions with respect to labor (broadly defined).

5. Activism as a form of education, as supplement to or alternative for traditional educational theories. Educating activists. Activating educators. Theoretical and practical issues within "the academy."

6. Resistance to resistance: fatigue, Bruce Robbins' "sweatshop sublime," institutional reprisals from the most oppressive (violence, termination) to the most frustrating (hypocrisy and lip service from those in power, mainstream media misinformation, public indifference), mythologies (of the American dream, of freedom of choice, of the free market, etc.)

7. Reform from within the institution vs. revolution from without.

8. What is (non)violence and what roles do violence or nonviolence play in activism?

9. Issues of activism in different social and historical contexts, what can we learn (from Obama's vision of service to the most dangerous underground resistance movements)?

10. Psychologies of activism. For instance, do activists and/or organizers of activism benefit more from an openness to depaysement (the process by which the ethnographer/observer becomes altered and/or mediated by the culture under investigation) or dissociation/dispassion (the idea of "objective" or "critical" distance from the subject under study as providing a "better" vantage point).

11. What are the benefits or disadvantages of “traditions” in activism? Marx notoriously stated that he was not a Marxist, with that in mind, what kind of problems derive from the institution of founders and followers in activism? Even more fundamental, what is the problem of what Eric Hobsbawm called the “inner conflict of traditions,” the inevitable conflict between universal rules and specific, ever-changing circumstances/situations.

12. J.K. Gibson Graham asks in Postcapitalist Politics “If we want other worlds and other economies, how do we make ourselves a condition of possibility for their emergence (7)?”

We hope that activists of all kinds will view this issue as a form of potlatch that may lead to new practice and theory, new activist communities. While we encourage the use of anecdote as example and extended narratives as models for inventing activism, we do not want this issue to be primarily about smoking guns and personal beefs. In the light of the sensitive nature of this endeavor we will consider a variety of approaches to publication---including anonymity and/or "fictocritical" accounts which do not name names or present a situation with altered details.

Please send completed papers and abstracts to the editors at inventionsofactivism@gmail.com no later than February 1, 2010. Earlier submissions and queries are welcome as we may be able to collaborate with authors in order to produce work that not only fits with the intent of the issue but with the standards of Reconstruction. Also, we encourage you to forward this CFP to interested parties and lists.

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture (ISSN: 1547-4348) is an innovative online cultural studies journal dedicated to fostering an intellectual community composed of scholars and their audience, granting them all the ability to share thoughts and opinions on the most important and influential work in contemporary interdisciplinary studies. Reconstruction publishes three themed issues and one open issue per year. Send open submissions (year round) to reconstruction.submissions@gmail.com and submissions for themed issues to the appropriate editors listed on the site at www.reconstruction.eserver.org

Reconstruction also accepts proposal for special issue editors and topics. Reconstruction is indexed in the MLA International Bibliography.

Matthew Nisbet: Food Inc - Will It Connect the Dots on Food System Problems?

Food Inc: Will It Connect the Dots on Food System Problems?
by Matthew Nisbet
Framing Science

Over the past decade, issues such as fast food and obesity, organics and pesticides, genetic engineering, and factory farming have each captured their share of attention from engaged citizens and advocacy groups. Focusing events, such as the 2008 factory farming ballot initiative in California or the 2000 Starlink GM corn episode have generated spikes in news coverage. Popular books such as Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, and Pollan's NY Times article "Farmer in Chief" have reinforced concerns among an attentive public and generated reactions from policymakers. Still, however, with the exception of obesity, each of these issues remains relatively low on the overall news agenda.

The inability of these food-related issues to break out into wider public focus can be attributed to a number of factors, most notably that none of them fit neatly into a traditional partisan divide as issues such as climate change and stem cell research do. But what has also been missing is a larger meta-frame that ties these trends in the food system together into the perception of a bigger problem.

But now comes Food Inc. The title is a potentially powerful frame device for audiences, connecting each of these food-related issues under one perceptual umbrella. Specifically, the title instantly conveys the film's dominant narrative that responsibility for these issues can be attributed to "big farming" and multi-national corporations who are serving their own private interests rather than the public interest. To correct the problem, tighter regulation, government oversight, and greater responsiveness to citizen and consumer concerns are needed.

As the Food Inc trailer above strongly emphasizes, the relevance of these food issues can be reduced down to a matter of "public accountability," a commonly appearing frame applied to issues of science and the environment. The trailer repeats several key phrases often used to actively translate this frame, including notably "controlled by multi-national corporations" and as the woman at the end of the trailer describes ominously: "The companies don't want the farmers talking, they don't want this story told."

To Read the Rest of the Commentary

Zero and One

Chris Hedges: The Truth Alone Will Not Set You Free

(Courtesy of Rebecca Glasscock)

The Truth Alone Will Not Set You Free
by Chris Hedges
Truthdig

...

The public is bombarded with carefully crafted images meant to confuse propaganda with ideology and knowledge with how we feel. Human rights and labor groups, investigative journalists, consumer watchdog organizations and advocacy agencies have, in the face of this manipulation, inundated the public sphere with reports and facts. But facts alone, Ewen says, make little difference. And as we search for alternative ways to communicate in a time of crisis we must also communicate in new forms. We must appeal to emotion as well as to reason. The power of this appeal to emotion is evidenced in the photographs of Jacob Riis, a New York journalist, who with a team of assistants at the end of the 19th century initiated urban-reform photography. His stark portraits of the filth and squalor of urban slums awakened the conscience of a nation. The photographer Lewis Hine, at the turn of the 20th century, and Walker Evans during the Great Depression did the same thing for the working class, along with writers such as Upton Sinclair and James Agee. It is a recovery of this style, one that turns the abstraction of fact into a human flesh and one that is not afraid of emotion and passion, which will permit us to counter the force of corporate propaganda.

We may know that fossil fuels are destroying our ecosystem. We may be able to cite the statistics. But the oil and natural gas industry continues its flagrant rape of the planet. It is able to do this because of the money it uses to control legislation and a massive advertising campaign that paints the oil and natural gas industry as part of the solution. A group called EnergyTomorrow.org, for example, has been running a series of television ads. One ad features an attractive, middle-aged woman in a black pantsuit-an actor named Brooke Alexander who once worked as the host of "WorldBeat" on CNN and for Fox News. Alexander walks around a blue screen studio that becomes digital renditions of American life. She argues, before each image, that oil and natural gas are critical to providing not only energy needs but health care and jobs.

"It is almost like they are taking the most optimistic visions of what the stimulus package could do and saying this is what the development of oil and natural gas will bring about," Ewen said. "If you go to the Web site there is a lot of sophisticated stuff you can play around with. As each ad closes you see in the lower right-hand corner in very small letters API, the American Petroleum Institute, the lobbying group for ExxonMobil and all the other big oil companies. For the average viewer there is nothing in the ad to indicate this is being produced by the oil industry."

The modern world, as Kafka predicted, has become a world where the irrational has become rational, where lies become true. And facts alone will be powerless to thwart the mendacity spun out through billions of dollars in corporate advertising, lobbying and control of traditional sources of information. We will have to descend into the world of the forgotten, to write, photograph, paint, sing, act, blog, video and film with anger and honesty that have been blunted by the parameters of traditional journalism. The lines between artists, social activists and journalists have to be erased. These lines diminish the power of reform, justice and an understanding of the truth. And it is for this purpose that these lines are there.

"As a writer part of what you are aiming for is to present things in ways that will resonate with people, which will give voice to feelings and concerns, feelings that may not be fully verbalized," Ewen said. "You can't do that simply by providing them with data. One of the major problems of the present is that those structures designed to promote a progressive agenda are antediluvian."

Corporate ideology, embodied in neoconservatism, has seeped into the attitudes of most self-described liberals. It champions unfettered capitalism and globalization as eternal. This is the classic tactic that power elites use to maintain themselves. The loss of historical memory, which "balanced and objective" journalism promotes, has only contributed to this fantasy. But the fantasy, despite the desperate raiding of taxpayer funds to keep the corporate system alive, is now coming undone. The lie is being exposed. And the corporate state is running scared.

...

To Read the Entire Essay

Copyright/Copyleft (Archive)

Ongoing project--any suggestions/comments/critique appreciated

Boynton, Robert S. "The Tyranny of Copyright?" The New York Times Magazine (January 25, 2004)

Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. (Penguin Press, 2004)

Lethem, Jonathan. "The Ecstasy of Influence." Open Source with Christopher Lydon (February 2, 2007)

---. "The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism." Harper's Magazine (February 2007)

McLeod, Kembrew. Freedom of Expression (R): Overzealous Copyright Bozos and Other Enemies of Creativity. (Doubleday, 2005)

Miller, Paul D., aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid. "In Through the Out Door: Sampling and the Creative Act." Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture. ed. Paul D. Miller. (MIT Press, 2008: 5-20.)

RiP: A Remix Manifesto (Brett Gaylor: 2008)

Seitz, Matt Zoller. Copy Rites: YouTube vs. Kevin B. Lee The House Next Door (Archive by Michael Benton: January 15, 2009)

---. "The Video Essay." Kunst der Vermittlung (April 18, 2009)

Striphas, Ted and Kembrew McLeod. "STRATEGIC IMPROPRIETIES: CULTURAL STUDIES, THE EVERYDAY, AND THE POLITICS OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTIES." Cultural Studies 20.2/3 (2006)

Vaidhyanathan, Siva. "Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity."

Walker Machinery Company (aka Walker Cat): Mountaintop Mining

(Thanks to Brandon Absher for sending this out and Joseph Trullinger for the blockqouted comments)

To Read the Corporate Manifesto-Pamphlet

"As if it mattered, more
bugs are killed overwhelmingly by car windshields
than on mine sites." (p.18)...

What about the bugs that are killed underwhelmingly? Goodness knows that many of my bug killings do not overwhelm the bugs.

“Flattening mountains” is merely a provocative term. It’s against the law and
has no proof in fact." (p.9)

What does it mean to prove a term, or a fortiori, to prove a term in fact?

"In no way has
mountaintop mining destroyed this land. It is useful, dynamic, and resourceful
and will be for years to come." (p.9)

"The restoration develops
beautifully over time. Unfortunately, most never get to view these areas as
mining areas still under bond are off limits for public safety reasons." (p.10)

"The positive transformational role coal
has played for mankind has not been truly appreciated.
It has brought us through two world wars, the Korean and
Vietnam experiences." (p.16)

... I'm confused. ... since when does anybody except Ernst Jünger (et al.) use wars as their go-to/ready-to-hand examples of a "positive transformational" phenomenon for "mankind"?

"Man has shown himself compassionate and willing to sacrifice for the intrinsic value and beauty of the planet and all lower forms of plant and animal life. Our coal miners protect our environment and make that great sacrifice for our
quality of life every shift." (25)

July Online Film Discussion: Black Book (Paul Verhoeven, 2006)

There is a new website organizing film discussions on a monthly basis that take place on different websites. This month's discussion will be:



Who: Ed Howard
Where: Only the Cinema
When: July 20, 2009
Film: Zwartboek, aka Black Book, d. Paul Verhoeven (2006)

For future film discussions go to The Oldest Established Really Important Film Club