Resources for March 3, 2014

Law and Disorder podcast episodes:

"David Vivar and Laura Raymond -- The Drug War: Policing and U.S. Militarism at Home and Abroad; Kazembe Balagune -- Imagine: Living In A Socialist U.S.A"

"Marty Stolar -- Jury Trial Begins for Occupy Wall Street’s Cecily McMillan; Jody Kent Lavy -- Fair Sentencing Of Youth Campaign."


Roos, Jerome. "Venezuela: it’s the opposition that’s anti-democratic." ROAR (February 21, 2014)

Hedges, Inez. "Amnesiac memory: Hiroshima/Nagasaki in Japanese film." Jump Cut #55 (Fall 2013)

Cho, Violet. "Thauk gya paw hee thwi deh thwi (Blood’s Oath to Beautiful Flower) — drama of insurgency in a Burmese Pwo Karen Film." Jump Cut #55 (Fall 2013)

Musgrave, Beth. "Citing new same-sex marriage ruling, Fayette judge allows step mother to adopt her wife's son." Lexington Herald-Leader (February 28, 2014)

Davies, Andrew and Penny Woolcock. "Gang Culture: On Screen and In Print." London School of Economics and Political Science (Literary Festival 2014: Recorded on 27 February 2014 in Wolfson Theatre, New Academic Building.)

Hudson, David. "Alain Resnais, 1922 -2014." Keyframe (March 2, 2014)

Gillepsie, Alex, Philip Horne and Sandra Jovchelovitch. "Literary Festival 2014: More Tales from the Two James(es)." The London School of Economics and Political Science (February 23, 2014) ["... readings from the work of William and Henry James to explore the links between psychology and fiction."]


Merriam-Webster's Word-of-the-Day

decoct \dih-KAHKT\

verb 1 : to extract the flavor of by boiling; 2 : boil down, concentrate

The author has tried to decoct the positions the players in this complex situation have taken into two camps: those who are for the changes and those who are against them.

"Witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) is far better known as a bottled astringent than a native shrub. Its medicinal uses date back to the Native Americans, who taught Europeans how to identify the plant and decoct its leaves and stems into the now-familiar tonic." — From an article by David Taft in the New York Times, December 1, 2013

"Decoct" boils down to a simple Latin origin: the word "decoquere," from "de-," meaning "down" or "away," and "coquere," meaning "to cook" or "to ripen." "Decoct" itself is quite rare. Its related noun "decoction," which refers to either an extract obtained by decocting or the act or process of decocting, is slightly more common but still much less recognizable than some other members of the "coquere" family, among them "biscuit," "biscotti," "cook," and "kitchen." Other "coquere" descendants include "concoct" ("to prepare by combining raw materials" or "to devise or fabricate"), "concoction" ("something concocted"), and "precocious" ("exceptionally early in development or occurrence" or "exhibiting mature qualities at an unusually early age").

Resources for February 28, 2014

Takei, George. "George Takei on Arizona’s Anti-Gay Bill, Life in a Japanese Internment Camp & Star Trek’s Mr. Sulu." Democracy Now (February 27, 2014)

Naureckas, Jim. "News From Venezuela–but Where Is It Coming From?" FAIR (February 22, 2014)

Greenwald, Glenn. "How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations." The Intercept (February 24, 2014)

Hasemeyer, David and Lisa Song. "Big Oil and Bad Air: Report Exposes Link Between Fracking and Toxic Air Emissions in Texas." Democracy Now (February 27, 2014)

Ackerman, Spencer and James Ball. "GCHQ intercepted webcam images of millions of Yahoo users worldwide." The Guardian (February 27, 2014)


Shoe by Wesley Houp

As a child, my old man
found a shoe with a foot in it
that had belonged to Sam Waldrop
some years before, but now
it was sort of finders-keepers,
and it would amaze any kid
how many odd-shaped bones
make a foot, like turtle bones,
so he’d be reluctant to share
such a discovery, let alone
give it back, without making
all the proper inspections.

What is a foot but a secret
of twenty-some-odd strange turns,
a message of spur and mishap
in a patent leather bottle.

When the train struck Sam,
he came apart at the seams.
He’d been sleeping, drunk,
on High Bridge, and his shoe,
it turned out, came to rest
atop the southernmost pier,
isolated from the rest of the world
by the river’s deep current
and people’s reluctance
to go looking for a drunk’s foot.

But the shoe was loyal beyond
the call of shoes, beyond
his stride, beyond even the body
as a cohesive unit, like a sarcophagus
full of callused history.
What, then, of a man’s comings
and goings, worn by pressures
from every conceivable direction,
carried in a vessel mail-ordered from Sears?


Cromwell, David. "Bias Towards Power *Is* Corporate Media ‘Objectivity’: Journalism, Floods And Climate Silence." Media Lens (February 13, 2014)

Blackford, Linda B. "Proposed state budget would divert $76 million away from cash-strapped student aid programs." Lexington Herald-Leader (February 25, 2014)

Lovan, Dylan. "Funding after evolution debate spurs ark project." Lexington Herald-Leader (February 27, 2014)

Resources for February 27, 2014

Democracy Now Headlines for February 25, 2014



Crespo, Glenn and Larry Hildes. "Inside the Army Spy Ring & Attempted Entrapment of Peace Activists, Iraq Vets, Anarchists." Democracy Now (February 25, 2014)

Seth, Leila. "India: You’re Criminal If Gay." The New York Review of Books (March 20, 2014)

Mitchell, Jerry and Dawn Porter. "Spies of Mississippi: New Film on the State-Sponsored Campaign to Defeat the Civil Rights Movement." and "PART 2: Interview with "Spies of Mississippi" Director and Reporter Jerry Mitchell." Democracy Now (February 25, 2014)

Elliot, Natalie. "Tutwiler Women’s Prison Is a Hothouse of Sexual Violence." Vice (February 25, 2014)

Poenaru, Florin. "To Make Sense of Ukraine, We Need to Bring the Class Back In." LeftEast (February 24, 2014)

"Arizona governor vetoes religious freedom bill." PBS (February 26, 2014)

The Lives of Others (Germany: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006) [Ongoing Dialogic Cinephilia archive]


Democracy Now Headlines for February 26, 2014


Chandler, Bill, et al. "Chokwe Lumumba: Remembering "America’s Most Revolutionary Mayor" Democracy Now (February 26, 2014)

Michael Ratner: Lawyer/Civil Liberties/Human Rights/President of Center for Constitutional Rights

Biographies/Archives/Organizations/Podcasts:

Wikipedia: Michael Ratner

Center for Constitutional Rights

The Guardian: Michael Ratner

@justleft

The Real News: The Ratner Report

Law and Disorder Radio

IMDB: Michael Ratner Filmography

Democracy Now: Michael Ratner


Resources by/featuring/about Michael Ratner:

Assange, Julian and Michael Ratner. "Julian Assange on Being Placed on NSA 'Manhunting' List & Secret Targeting of WikiLeaks Supporters." Democracy Now (February 18, 2014)

Goodman, Melvyn and Michael Ratner. "Ex-CIA Officials Tied to Rendition Program and Faulty Iraq Intel Tapped to Head Obama’s Intelligence Transition Team." Democracy Now (November 17, 2008)

Griffin, Ben and Michael Ratner. "Ecuador Grants Julian Assange Asylum; U.S. Seen as "Hidden Hand" Behind U.K. Threat to Raid Embassy." Democracy Now (August 16, 2012)

Radack, Jesselyn and Michael Ratner. "Spying on Lawyers: Snowden Documents Show NSA Ally Targeted U.S. Law Firm." Democracy Now (February 18, 2014)

Ratner, Michael. "Edward Snowden isn't the only truth teller who deserves clemency: Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and Jeremy Hammond deserve the same public outrage and support as Snowden." The Guardian (January 15, 2014)

---. "Exposed: U.S. May Have Designated Julian Assange and WikiLeaks an 'Enemy of the State'." Democracy Now (September 27, 2012)

---. "Obama’s national security state: Michael Ratner interviewed by Anthony Arnove." International Socialist Review #74 (November 2010)

---. "On Detainee Abuse Reports." Counterspin (December 19, 2008)

---. "Speech on Bradley Manning in Washington DC." Law and Disorder Radio (The event was held at All Souls Church Unitarian in Washington DC, December 2012)

---. "Ten Years after 9/11: War, Operation American Condor (Guantanamo), Civil Liberties and Hope." Law and Disorder Radio (July 25, 2011)

---. "WikiLeaks Attorney on Manning Guilty Verdict: Blowing Whistle on U.S. War Crimes is Not Espionage." Democracy Now (July 30, 2013)

Resources for February 25, 2014

Carlin, Dan. "Blueprint for Armageddon II." Hardcore History #51 (January 30, 2014) [The Great Powers all come out swinging in the first round of the worst war the planet has ever seen. Millions of men in dozens of armies vie in the most deadly and complex opening moves of any conflict in world history.]


Wesley Houp's description of the Tennessee Duck River region:

No sooner than it reaches Manchester, the first of a handful of towns nestled along its banks, the Barren Fork veers to the southwest, dropping dramatically over the Fort Payne Formation (the hard layer of chert undergirding the softer, less consolidated limestone) at Blue Hole and Big Falls. Here, the Little Duck River falls precipitously in from the east, and the two streams form a natural moat around the mysterious, 2,000 year-old Native American ceremonial structure known as Old Stone Fort. As Edward Luther notes in Our Restless Earth: The Geologic Regions of Tennessee, the ancient structure, consisting of heavy stonewalls covered with earth and circumscribing a 50-acre plateau, immediately suggests a defensive fortification, thus its modern name, Old Stone Fort. But more recent hypotheses suggest the structure served more benign purposes as a sort of celestial observatory. The structure’s once-colossal entryway arch, evidenced today by only two overgrown pedestal mounds, aligns with the sun during the summer solstice. Whatever its function might have been, archeologists are fairly certain of its builders. Radiocarbon dating of charcoal excavated from the site points to the McFarland culture, natives who occupied the upper Duck during the Middle Woodland Period between 200 B.C. and 200 A.D. Construction probably began some time in the first century A.D., but after 400 years of continuous habitation along the Duck River, the McFarland peoples mysteriously gave way to the Owl Hollow Culture, who concluded construction of Old Stone Fort around 550 A.D. For reasons that are unclear, by 600 A.D. they, too, abandoned the area.

"It was my job to report what those in power were doing or thinking . . . That is all someone in my sort of job can do." -- BBC Political Editor Nick Robinson (2014)

"My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state, for two reasons. For one thing, because it happens to be the larger component of international violence. But also for a much more important reason than that; namely, I can do something about it. So even if the U.S. was responsible for 2 percent of the violence in the world instead of the majority of it, it would be that 2 percent I would be primarily responsible for. And that is a simple ethical judgment. That is, the ethical value of one’s actions depends on their anticipated and predictable consequences. It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century." -- Noam Chomsky(2012)

Merriam-Webster Word-of-the-Day

solatium \soh-LAY-shee-um\

noun: a compensation (as money) given as solace for suffering, loss, or injured feelings

The judge ordered the company to pay a solatium to each of the unjustly fired workers.

"The amount of cash a politician was required by tradition to dispense regularly in the form of wedding gifts and funeral solatiums for people in his ever-expanding constituency was now, by itself, enough to bankrupt most wealthy men." — From Robert Whiting's 1999 book Tokyo Underworld : The Fast Times and Hard Life of an American Gangster in Japan

In legal circles, a solatium is a payment made to a victim as compensation for injured feelings or emotional pain and suffering (such as the trauma following the wrongful death of a relative), as distinct from payment for physical injury or for damaged property. Like many legal terms, "solatium," which first appeared in English in the early 19th century, is a product of Latin, where the word means "solace." The Latin noun is related to the verb "solari," which means "to console" and from which we get our words "solace" and "console."


Kocher, Greg. "Experts encourage Jessamine community to protect its rare plants, animals." Lexington Herald-Leader (February 23, 2014)

Latin Radical podcast: "CISPES observers at Salvadoran Elections 2014"

Recommended: current issue #92 of Cineaction on Politics & Cinema

"Noam Chomsky (Linguist/Political Economy/Historian/Philosopher/Cognitive Scientist)" [Ongoing Dialogic archive]

"Michael Ratner: Lawyer/Civil Liberties/Human Rights/President of Center for Constitutional Rights" [Ongoing Dialogic archive]

Resources for February 23, 2014

The Host (South Korea: Bong Joon-Ho, 2006) Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)


Merriam-Websters' Word-of-the-Day

teem \TEEM\

verb 1 : to become filled to overflowing; 2 : to be present in large quantity

EXAMPLES

By mid-morning the theme park will already be teeming with visitors.

"Dispensing with the last installment's cumbersome mythology, this one gets back to basics, dumping the hero on a desert planet teeming with lethal critters and determined bounty hunters." — From a movie review by Tom Russo in The Boston Globe, January 12, 2014

The verb "teem" and the noun "team" are not just homophones, they are also etymological kin. "Teem" is derived from Old English "tīman" or "tæman," which originally meant "to bring forth offspring" or "to become pregnant" and which is related to the ancestor of "team," the Old English noun "tēam," meaning "offspring, lineage, or group of draft animals." "Team" can still be used to refer to a brood of young animals, especially pigs or ducks, but both "teem" and "team" have otherwise largely left their offspring-related senses behind.


Rothrock, Kevin. "Pro-Maidan Video Goes Viral Thanks to Pavel Durov, Russia's Zuckerberg." Global Voices (February 22, 2014)

Bohdanova, Tetyana. "#EuroMaidan Medic Shot in Neck Lives to Tweet: 'I Am Alive!'” Global Voices (February 22, 2014)

In The Nation an audio commentary by Charles Grodin: "How to Offend Corporations by Just Doing Your Job" ["What happens when the media is either owned by big corporations or reliant on those corporations for advertising dollars? Unobstructed, honest commentary tends to be the first casualty."]

Chutkan, Robynne. "The Future of Probiotics." The Atlantic (December 12, 2013) ["Hippocrates said that all disease begins in the gut. A gastroenterologist's predictions on how new treatments will begin there, too."]

Ford, Matt. "A Dictator's Guide to Urban Design." The Atlantic (February 21, 2014)

Walker, Shaun. "Ukraine's former PM rallies protesters after Yanukovych flees Kiev: Yulia Tymoshenko addresses crowd in Kiev after release from prison, as MPs vote to impeach Viktor Yanukovych." The Guardian (February 22, 2014)

Proyect, Louis. "The gangster billionaire behind Ukraine’s president." The Unrepentent Marxist (February 19, 2014)

Resources for February 21, 2014

Horton, Scott. "The Torture Doctors." Harpers (November 4, 2013) [An expert panel concludes that the Pentagon and the CIA ordered physicians to violate the Hippocratic Oath.]

Kilkenny, Allison. "The Poster Boy For Unending War." The Smirking Chimp (February 20, 2014)

Sovyn, Olena. "#Euromaidan Protests Spread Throughout Ukraine After Explosion of Violence." Global Voices (February 20, 2014)

"Protests in Venezuela." Global Voices (Ongoing archive: 2014)

Carlin, Dan. "Blueprint for Armageddon I." Hardcore History #50 (October 29, 2013)

Hudson, David. "Zero Dark Thirty and the CIA." Keyframe (May 8, 2013)

"Zero Dark Thirty (USA: Kathryn Bigelow, 2012)." Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)

Benton, Michael Dean. "Introduction and Discussion of The Battle of Algiers." Dialogic Cinephilia (February 20, 2014)

The Battle of Algiers (Italy/Algeria: Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)." Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)

Democracy Now Headlines for February 20, 2014


Chen, Stephen. "A New Cold War? Ukraine Violence Escalates, Leaked Tape Suggests U.S. Was Plotting Coup." Democracy Now (February 20, 2014)


Merriam-Webster's Word-of-the-Day
small beer \SMAWL-BEER\

noun 1 : weak or inferior beer; 2 : something of small importance : trivial

The money we spend on cable is small beer compared to the mortgage payment we have to come up with every month.

"The main drink was 'small beer', which had a low alcohol content—just enough to preserve it—and was drunk by almost everyone, from children to old men, instead of water." — From an article by Alex Fensome in The Dominion Post (New Zealand), January 13, 2014


"Small beer" dates from Shakespeare's day. The Bard didn't coin it (he would have been just a child in 1568, the date of the first documented instance of "small beer"), but he did put the term to good use. In Henry VI, Part 2, for example, the rebel Jack Cade declares that, when he becomes king, he will "make it felony to drink small beer." In Othello, Desdemona asks Iago to describe a "deserving woman." Iago responds by listing praises for ten lines, only to conclude that such a woman would be suited "to suckle fools, and chronicle small beer"; in other words, to raise babies and keep track of insignificant household expenses. Desdemona quickly retorts, declaring Iago's assertion a "most lame and impotent conclusion."

Resources for February 20, 2014

Lee, Kevin. "Finding Freedom the Second Time Around: The Politics of Before Sunset." Senses of Cinema (October 2004)

Carlin, Dan. "Neutral Nets & Reform Bets." Common Sense #268 (January 20, 2014) ["President Obama floats some reform ideas for the gathering of data by the NSA and a judge strikes a blow against Net Neutrality. Dan has a few long-winded thoughts on both these subjects."]




serendipity \sair-un-DIP-uh-tee\

noun : the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for; also : an instance of this

EXAMPLES

We found the restaurant by pure serendipity, rather than careful research, but it turned out to be the best deal in town.

"Many young people today have never had the experience of getting lost.… They have not experienced the pleasure of wandering while lost and discovering by serendipity interesting new places." — From an op-ed by Katie Davis and Howard Gardner in the Seattle Times, January 7, 2014

In the mid-1700s, English author Horace Walpole stumbled upon an interesting tidbit of information while researching a coat of arms. In a letter to his friend Horace Mann he wrote: "This discovery indeed is almost of that kind which I call Serendipity, a very expressive word, which as I have nothing better to tell you, I shall endeavor to explain to you: you will understand it better by the derivation than by the definition. I once read a silly fairy tale, called 'The Three Princes of Serendip': as their highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of…." Walpole's memory of the tale (which, as it turns out, was not quite accurate) gave "serendipity" the meaning it retains to this day.


Democracy Now headlines for February 19, 2014:



Cox, Laverne and CeCe McDonald. "'Black Trans Bodies Are Under Attack': Freed Activist CeCe McDonald, Actress Laverne Cox Speak Out." Democracy Now (February 19, 2014)

Sustainable World Coalition. Sustainable World Sourcebook. Berkeley, CA: New Society Publishers, 2010.

Feldman, Karen. "Walter Benjamin and his 'Artwork' essay." Entitled Opinions (July 3, 2013) [They are discussing Benjamin's 1936 essay: "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"

Anti-Oedipus was lobbed into the fray like an intellectual cluster bomb -- it had multiple targets, from the primacy of the signifier in linguistics to the dependency on lack in psychoanalysis, but its primary objective was (as Michel Foucault astutely points out in his highly influential preface to the English translation) to caution us against the fascist inside, the desire to seize power for oneself. The principle thesis of Anti-Oedipus, around which its many conceptual inventions turn, is that revolution is not primarily or even necessarily a matter of taking power. Insofar as taking power means preserving all the old institutions and ideas in which power is invested it could even be said that revolutions of this type are actually counter-revolutionary in purpose and intent because they change nothing essential. By the same token, Deleuze and Guattari were concerned about the allure of power, its apparent ability to drive us to desire to be placed under its yoke. The most important political question, as far as Deleuze and Guattari are concerned, is how it is possible for desire to act against its interest. (Buchanan, Ian. Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus. NY: Continuum, 2008: 21.)

Benton, Michael Dean. "Notes on Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophernia." Dialogic (February 20, 2014)