Month: May 2014

Adventures of the Deep State


by digby

As the media gets more and more uhm… emotional about events in Russia and Ukraine, it’s past time to start asking some important questions. This dialog between Billmon and Greenwald is a very interesting place to start:

At this late stage in my life I find myself automatically skeptical whenever I feel the hysteria rising among the Village and the national security elites. It’s happened so many times before. And it’s very rarely what it seems.

I’m going to quote Lapham again here:

One of the quickest ways to suppress domestic dissent is to produce a foreign enemy and a foreign war. The whole, slow building of the national security state in America after 1950 is bankrolled by the Cold War and if you would make an objection to things that were amiss within America — if you would say “all is not right, all is not well in the American scheme of things” — the answer would be “well, would you rather live in Russia?” So you used the foreign enemy to accrue power to the state. That’s the same device employed by the Bush Administration with the War on Terror. The War on Terror was regime change, but it was regime change in the United States. In other words, you give more to scare the hell out of the American people to make them more obedient. You get in the habit of putting your arms up in the air when you go through airport security. Over time that instills a proper respect for men in uniform.

That GWOT was wearing a little thin, wasn’t it?

The thing is, there are very few heroes here. Everyone has similar incentives to those expressed by Lapham above.  That’s when things can get out of hand.

But it behooves everyone to keep their heads. If  there is one thing 9/11 should have taught us it’s that there are many people with different motives looking for an opening.  And there are even more who react like a bunch of screaming five year olds in a haunted house at the first sign of danger. This leads to bad results.


I actually feel that the president is handling this as well as anyone could under the circumstances.  The pressures coming from all sides to “do something” are very strong.  So far, he’s been restrained and unruffled. But it’s important to keep your eyes on the big picture and not be dragged along with the emotion of the moment.

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QOTD: Lewis Lapham

by digby

I have seen, over the course of my lifetime, revolutions practically every year somewhere in the world, whether it’s in North Africa, Ukraine, the Sudan, Hungary, Cuba. . . it’s a long list. And what usually happens is that one police force replaces another police force.

Read this fantastic discussion between Thomas Frank and Lewis Lapham. Just do it. You won’t regret it.

Ok, just one more taste:

[T]he way we deal with revolution in the United States is to turn it into a product. It’s sort of an advertisement for rebellious clothes. But nobody is particularly willing to go up against the military force of the state. I open my essay by saying there is a lot of talk about revolution. We know and understand and see in plain sight that our government is in the hands of the banks. That the war of the rich against the poor, the class conflict that’s going on . . . this is in the newspapers every day. The biggest growth industry in the United States is surveillance, and NSA, and everybody’s cell phone is a tracking device. These are means of crowd control.

The American government, which I would call the American oligarchy, is afraid of the American people. And God forbid, they should have too many dangerous ideas wandering around loose in the streets. Thus, we have I don’t know how many hundred thousand surveillance cameras on the streets of New York. That’s only going to get worse in my view, because as we get more and more people and more and more people reduced to food stamps and poverty and as the resources of the planet are finite and the American dream assumes infinite growth which is a contradiction in terms with a finite planet. The divisions between rich and poor are going to become more and more well-defined and heavily patrolled.

I suspect that if any genuinely revolutionary change takes place it will be forced upon us by a collapse of some kind in the system. That’s another form of revolution that you find across time where the civilization or the ancien regime falls apart of its own dead weight. And in the ruins, the phoenix of a new idea or a new thought or a new system of value takes its place. But that’s not something that can be organized by a committee or preached from a column in the New York Times, or even by a four-day conference about American values sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation.

There’s an old axiom of Trotsky’s: “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” And you could say the same thing about revolution. So I don’t think we have to be concerned that we’re not parading around in the streets. It will come of its own accord sooner rather than later.

Read on …

Protest for me but not for thee

by digby

Chris Hedges catches up with the Occupy protester court proceedings:

Cecily McMillan, wearing a red dress and high heels, her dark, shoulder-length hair stylishly curled, sat behind a table with her two lawyers Friday morning facing Judge Ronald A. Zweibel in Room 1116 at the Manhattan Criminal Court. The judge seems to have alternated between boredom and rage throughout the trial, now three weeks old. He has repeatedly thrown caustic barbs at her lawyers and arbitrarily shut down many of the avenues of defense. Friday was no exception.

The silver-haired Zweibel curtly dismissed a request by defense lawyers Martin Stolar and Rebecca Heinegg for a motion to dismiss the case. The lawyers had attempted to argue that testimony from the officer who arrested McMillan violated Fifth Amendment restrictions against the use of comments made by a defendant at the time of arrest. But the judge, who has issued an unusual gag order that bars McMillan’s lawyers from speaking to the press, was visibly impatient, snapping, “This debate is going to end.” He then went on to uphold his earlier decision to heavily censor videos taken during the arrest, a decision Stolar said “is cutting the heart out of my ability to refute” the prosecution’s charge that McMillan faked a medical seizure in an attempt to avoid being arrested. “I’m totally handicapped,” Stolar lamented to Zweibel.

The trial of McMillan, 25, is one of the last criminal cases originating from the Occupy protest movement. It is also one of the most emblematic. The state, after the coordinated nationwide eradication of Occupy encampments, has relentlessly used the courts to harass and neutralize Occupy activists, often handing out long probation terms that come with activists’ forced acceptance of felony charges. A felony charge makes it harder to find employment and bars those with such convictions from serving on juries or working for law enforcement. Most important, the long probation terms effectively prohibit further activism.

I wonder what the defenders of Cliven Bundy have to say about this? My recollection is that they complained a lot about cleanliness. I don’t recall any right winger stepping up to defend the right of these people to protest — and I haven’t heard a thing from the “tree of liberty” folks about the legal system dealing with peaceful protest in this way. I guess if you don’t have a gun in your hand you just aren’t worth defending.

My personal feeling about Bundy is that the Feds and the cops did overreach — they could have found a less confrontational way to deal with collecting the fines. I suspect they simply lost patience and wanted to make a point. That’s usually how these things go. But the armed response by right wing militias and so-called “oath keepers” is even more dangerous. Let’s just say it’s pretty clear these folks weren’t defending my freedom. And they never will.

Meanwhile, peaceful protesters are being harassed by the police and prevented from defending themselves through legitimate legal means by authoritarian judges.

Where do you suppose all this is going to lead?

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How the rich stole your money

by digby

David Atkins has a nice piece up at Salon about how the economics elites managed to keep us all feeling  fat and happy (for a while) through cultural and policy changes that masked the fact that we were actually losing ground.  He notes four specific areas:

1) Push people away from defined-benefit pensions and into stocks and 401(k)s.

2) Push more people into buying real estate, and increase home prices by all means possible.

3) Democratize consumer debt, especially through credit cards.

4) Reduce the cost of goods through free trade policies.

All of those are changes that happened within my lifetime. And he’s right. Stock market investing, owning your own home, credit cards and cheap imported goods were simply not something everyone had or expected to have when I was growing up.

The overall plan was very simply stated by none other than Ronald Reagan who said:

Roughly 94 percent of the people in capitalist America make their living from wage or salary. Only 6 percent are true capitalists in the sense of deriving income from ownership of the means of production …We can win the argument once and for all by simply making more of our people Capitalists.

With all the risk and insecurity that comes with it.

It’s an interesting piece and well worth reading in its entirety. I would just note that one of the reasons this worked when it did was because the very risk averse depression era folk all got old and started to die off. The memory of economic calamity tends to make people think twice about debt. I’d guess that the young people who are shouldering a boatload of debt for their schooling might have some different ideas about all this as well.

Not everyone wants to be a financial analyst or has the skills to be an “investor” even in a capitalist economy. Most of us are workers for wages just trying to live a decent life and give our kids a fighting chance. Getting rich is not the point. So all these policies just transferred risk to average people while the rentier class just got richer and richer. Nice scam.

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Oh, how pretty…depressing: Watermark

This documentary represents the second collaboration between Burtynsky and Baichwal; their first was 2007’s Manufactured Landscapes. In my review of that film, I wrote:

Ditto the imagery paraded before us in Watermark. Like its predecessor, the film is equal parts visual tone poem and cautionary eco-doc; although the emphasis here is on mankind’s cavalier attitude toward that aforementioned link between the life and water cycles. Some happy exceptions are evidenced, within certain venerated rituals of Earth’s more ancient cultures. One such event, the mass river-bathing ceremonies conducted by tens of millions of Hindu faithful who congregate at the confluence of India’s holiest rivers during the annual Kumbh Mela pilgrimage, provides the film’s most beautiful and mesmerizing sequence. Yet, within a stone’s throw of the same Mother Ganges, we also witness the doings at a water-intensive Bangladesh tannery, where poisons are spewed willy-nilly right back into the water table. This is the maddening dichotomy that gets to the heart of the matter. At this point (and as evidenced by Burtynsky’s photographic “laments”) Mother Earth isn’t politely asking, she’s telling: Clean up your room…NOW.

RIP Bob Hoskins: 1942-2014

According to most of the perfunctory obits on the network newscasts and such over the past several days, the only work of note by the late great British actor Bob Hoskins was his starring role in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Yes, I’m sure we can all agree that was an entertaining romp (if a wee bit overrated) and Hoskins (who never gave a bad performance in his life, despite the material he may have had to work with at times) proved that he could hold his ground against a bevy of scene-stealing cartoon characters, but as far as I’m concerned, that was strictly a paycheck gig. Granted, at a casual glance this guy may have reminded you more of your 10th grade shop teacher than say, George Clooney, but hand him a juicy character role that he could really sink his teeth into, and he’d go straight for the jugular, tearing up the screen like a fucking Cockney Brando. Standing 5 foot 6 and built like a fireplug, he could appear as huge and menacing as a killer grizzly, or as benign and vulnerable as a teddy bear. For a true appreciation of what Hoskins was “about”, just check out his more “actor-ly” movies…like my top five picks:

Felicia’s Journey– Due to its disturbing subject matter, writer-director Atom Egoyan’s 1999 psychological thriller/character study does not make for an easy watch, but it does provide an ideal showcase for Hoskins to fully flex his instrument. He plays an introverted, middle aged man named Joseph who works as a catering manager. He is obsessed with his late mother, who was a TV chef. He whiles away evenings in his kitchen, cooking in tandem with Mom via old videotapes of her program (while Egoyan’s film is not a comedy, Hoskins’ portrayal has echoes of Rod Steiger’s creepy “Mr. Joyboy” in The Loved One ). As he strikes up an unlikely friendship with an equally insular young Irish woman named Felicia (Elaine Cassidy), who is in search of the cad who left her in the lurch after getting her pregnant, there are disturbing reveals about Joseph’s past that will have you wishing that Felicia would magically heed your fruitless pleas to get herself far away from this man, and quickly. As he does in most of his films, Egoyan uses a non-linear narrative and deliberate pacing to build up to a powerfully emotional denouement.

Inserts– If I told you that Richard Dreyfuss, Veronica Cartwright, Bob Hoskins and Jessica Harper once co-starred in an “X” rated movie, would you believe me? This largely forgotten 1976 film from director John Byrum was dismissed as pretentious dreck by many critics at the time, but nearly 40 years on, it begs reappraisal as a fascinating curio in the careers of those involved. Dreyfuss plays “Wonder Boy”, a Hollywood whiz kid director who peaked early; now he’s a “has-been”, living in his bathrobe, drinking heavily and casting junkies and wannabe-starlets for pornos he produces on the cheap in his crumbling mansion. Hoskins steals all his scenes as Wonder Boy’s sleazy producer, Big Mac (who is aptly named; as he has plans to open a chain of hamburger joints!). The story is set in 1930s Hollywood, and as deliciously shameless wallows in the squalid side of show biz go, it would make a perfect double feature night with The Day of the Locust.

The Long Good Friday – If I had to whittle it down to my “#1” favorite Hoskins performance (no simple task), it would be the one he gives as “Harold Shand”, in John Mackenzie’s 1980 Brit noir. Harold is a “hard” Cockney gangster boss, on the verge of cementing a “visionary” alliance with an American crime syndicate. Unfortunately, a local rival is bent on throwing a spanner in the works, using any means necessary. Harold finds himself in a race against time to find out who is responsible before “they” succeed in sabotaging the deal. Screenwriter Phil Meheux has a keen ear for dialog, and applies dabs of subtle dark humor throughout that may be easy to miss upon a first viewing. Cinematographer Phil Meheux makes great use of London locales. Helen Mirren is a standout as Harold’s mistress, who also serves as his unofficial (and formidable) consigliere (Hoskins and Mirren reunited onscreen for the 2001 film Last Orders). During the film’s closing scene (a lengthy, uninterrupted close up of Harold’s face) Hoskins delivers a master class in acting, without uttering one word of dialog. Gritty, brutal and uncompromising, this ranks as one of the best British crime films of all time.

Mona Lisa– Hoskins gives a nuanced, Oscar-nominated turn as a “thug with a heart of gold” in Neil Jordan’s brilliant crime fable. Fresh out of stir, Hoskins is offered a gig by his ex-boss, a London crime lord for whom he took the fall (Michael Caine). Hoskins becomes the chauffeur for a high class call girl (Cathy Tyson) who serves select clientele in discreet liaisons at posh hotels. The pair’s “oil and water” personality mix gets them off to a dicey start, but their relationship morphs into something unexpectedly rich and meaningful (and it’s not what you’re thinking). The twists and turns keep you riveted up to the end. Hoskins and Tyson have great screen chemistry (like a streetwise Tracy and Hepburn) which injects this otherwise unsettling tale with much genuine heart and soul.

Pennies from Heaven(Original BBC TV version)- Written by Dennis Potter (Singing Detective), this 1978 production is rife with Potter’s signature themes: sexual frustration, marital infidelity, religious guilt, shattered dreams and quiet desperation…broken up by an occasional, completely incongruous song and dance number (Potter was a fabulous writer, but I would never want to be in his head). Hoskins gives a superb, heartbreaking performance as a married traveling sheet music salesman living in Depression-era England. His life takes interesting turns once he is smitten by a young rural schoolteacher (Cheryl Campbell) who lives with her widowed father and two creepy brothers. It’s best described as a ‘film noir musical’. Far superior to the ill-advised U.S. feature film remake released several years later (with Steve Martin in the lead role).

Saturday Night at the Movies review archives  

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You got a problem with that?

by digby

There are roughly 50,000 words in today’s Wall Street Journal. None are more amazing than these 96. pic.twitter.com/LG3mCpEJOe
— Dennis K. Berman (@dkberman) May 1, 2014

Yes, that’s amazing. I don’t know about you but I think what’s most astonishing is the fact that he would pay for boats to retrieve balls. Is this his way of being thrifty? Or is he an environmentalist who doesn’t want to pollute the ocean with basketballs? Either way I think he’s missing the point.

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8 Men Out for real

by digby

Greg Mitchell shares this amazing footage:

Rare footage of 1919 World Series found–watch the “Black Sox” throw it (especially Eddie Cicotte). Cool atmospheric stuff. Comiskey Park and Crosley Field (then known as Redland). Note no benches in Cincy and players leaving gloves on field when inning over. And so on.

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QOTD: cruel and unusual

by digby

That whole thing about cruel and unusual punishment in the constitution? Eh…

Days after his state bungled the execution of a death row inmate, Oklahoma state Rep. Mike Christian (R) appeared to be uncompromising on his death penalty views.

In an interview with the Associated Press published Saturday, Christian said Clayton Lockett’s case did not sway his support for the practice.

“I realize this may sound harsh,” Christian told the AP, “but as a father and former lawman, I really don’t care if it’s by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions.”

He’s as serious as a Roman Emperor about this:

Prior to the execution horror, Fox News reported Monday that Christian spearheaded an effort to impeach Oklahoma state Supreme Court justices who were aiming to delay Lockett’s death. After the incident Tuesday, Christian released a detailed statement, explaining how the botched execution was “unfortunate,” but the “real takeaway” was Lockett’s killing of a teenager.

Interesting that a man with the last name of Christian would say such things, don’t you think?

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A British Sterling

by digby

It’s nice to know that the United States isn’t the only western country that’s being bought by rich, right wing lunatics. Here’s one from Britain:

Of course the British have a very long history of wealthy old white men openly running everything so perhaps this isn’t all that unusual.

But you have to give this creepy fellow credit: he’s not trying to hide his wingnuttiness on any level. By the way, the party he’s funding, in case you are unfamiliar, is this one.  Lovely chaps.

h/t to FS

They (almost) shot the sheriff

by digby

Wow:

Metro Police officers who were on the front lines of a recent showdown near the Bundy ranch in Bunkerville say they feared for their lives.

At least some of the militia members who pointed weapons at police officers during the confrontation may have wanted a violent outcome and tried to incite one.

In exclusive interviews with the 8 News NOW I-Team, officers who were on the scene shared their thoughts and fears, and they say it is not over.

“These guys with rifles, keep them calm,” was Clark County Assistant Sheriff Joe Lombardo’s request to one of Bundy’s sons the day of the confrontation.

Lombardo’s top priority was to prevent a spark that might set off a bloody firefight.

“There was a possibility of somebody just having an accidental discharge causing a blood bath, because the individuals that were showing up, the militia quote unquote, were armed to the teeth,” Lombardo said.

On one side, armed federal rangers and agents, on the other, a huge crowd of angry militia members and in the middle, 30 Metro officers, exposed and vulnerable, aware that if the shooting began, some of them would die.

“You are standing there going, ‘I just hope it doesn’t hurt when it comes. That it’s quick,’ and it was real for us. It was real,” Sgt. Tom Jenkins said.

“(You thought you might die?) Yeah.” Sgt. Jenkins said.

Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie has been negotiating behind the scenes with rancher Cliven Bundy for a couple of years. On the morning of the big showdown, he and Joe Lombardo drove to Bunkerville to let Bundy know that a deal had been reached with Bureau of Land Management to suspend the roundup of Bundy’s cattle.

Bundy, who has grown accustomed to media attention over the past few months, said he would only talk to Gillespie on stage in front of his crowd. Once there, he ordered the sheriff to go out and disarm every fed he could find.

“And report back in an hour. Disarm everyone working at a federal park,” Bundy told the sheriff.

“I mean, the hair was up on the back of my neck. There was the so-called militia surrounding the stage. There was a lot of firepower out there and it made me nervous. anything could happen,” Lombardo said.

Gillspie and Lombardo say they offered to provide Bundy with legal counsel—free. He turned it down and later urged the crowd to go after his cattle.

“Mr. Bundy, in my personal opinion, incited the crowd,” Lombardo said.

Some of them didn’t need much to get riled. Their hostility toward government was on full display. A few equate the BLM with Nazis.

“That bunch, the SS squad or something to do with Hitler, shouldn’t have guns there aimed at the people,” one man at the showdown said.

They were equally hostile to journalists covering the story. Pistol-packing militia men have blocked 8 News NOW’s access to public roads. Some poured lighter fluid around our news vehicle while others got physical.

A few Oath keepers said they were told the White House had ordered a drone missile strike on the Bundy camp. In an atmosphere this hostile and paranoid, guns pointed at police became the norm.

“At some point, you have to draw a line in the sand. I guess this is it,” one militia member said.

“They’re armed, they have an agenda, and they’re committed to whatever they believe in, no backing down. One or two of them would never have done what they did–point weapons at us–but when you have 300-400 and they can be anonymous in a crowd, you get caught up in that,” Sgt. Jenkins said.

Surrounding media trucks with lighter fluid was a nice sadistic touch …

Here’s some video, via DKos, of Bundy having coerced the Sheriff on to the stage giving giving him his orders:

BUNDY: …disarm the Park service — and all Federal Parks the US Government claims they have jurisdiction over. Take your county bulldozers and tear down the entrance places — the — where they ticket us and where they – ah – entrance and make us citizens pay their fees.

You get the county equipment down there and tear those things down this morning. You disarm those Park service people. You take a pick-up and I want those arms. WE want those arms picked up don’t we? Call Riley Disposal and go up here to this compound and we want all of those arms put in that compound today! We want those arms delivered right here under these flags in one hour! 

And media — are you here media? I want you to go to everyplace that they got a central park service – ah – station and you watch those county machines tear down those — those place today in the next hour. And you [media] report back to these people — we the people in one hour.

If it’s not — if there’s not done then we’ll decide what we’re gonna do from that — this point on…

Or else?

What do you suppose these folks would have said if such “orders” were given by armed Occupy protesters? I think we know, don’t we?

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