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Month: July 2016

Baton Rouge … the year is 2016 by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on July 11, 2016

Baton Rouge … the year is 2016
by Tom Sullivan

Remember when In the year 2016… would have introduced filmgoers to a dystopian future? Welcome to it.

Following the Alton Sterling shooting last week, some truly iconic images are coming out of the Baton Rouge protests you need to see.

The image below by photographer Jonathan Bachman is already being hailed as “legendary.” A protester blocking the highway in front of Baton Rouge Police Headquarters is arrested by State Police.

No, no, no. Those “policemen” are not dressed for war. That’s “modern sporting armor.” Or are they filming a Judge Dredd sequel in Baton Rouge? Where are the Lawmaster motorcycles? Are those Lawgiver pistols in those holsters? The single image above says everything about the lunacy behind turning your friendly, neighborhood, beat cop into a Stallone clone. Judge. Jury. Executioner. Isn’t that how we got here in the first place?

Prominent Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson is arrested (below) for obstruction of a highway. The eyes have it.

And finally, this emotionally charged video clip.

Over 100 protesters were arrested late Saturday and early Sunday.

Dystopia now

Published by digby on July 11, 2016
Dystopia now

 

By Dennis Hartley





























In Paul Verhoven’s 1987 sci-fi crime thriller, Robocop, the director and his screenwriters Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner envision a “near-future” Detroit that has become a dystopian nightmare. Vicious gangs of criminals with high-powered weapons plunder and terrorize the city with impunity.  Local law enforcement has been farmed out to a corporatized paramilitary outfit (a la Blackwater). Under-manned and out-gunned, the beat cops have become increasingly ineffectual at keeping up with the crime wave.  A gravely wounded cop becomes a guinea pig for the corporation’s R & D division, which has been experimenting with robotic enhancements.

The meme reappeared in Neill Blomkamp’s 2015 film Chappie. The backdrop is South Africa, but the tableau is similar. From my review:

In this outing, Blomkamp returns to his native Johannesburg (which provided the backdrop for his 2009 debut, District 9). And for the third time in a row, his story takes place in a dystopian near-future (call me Sherlock, but I’m sensing a theme). Johannesburg has become a crime-riddled hellhole, ruled by ultra-violent drug lords and roving gangs of thugs. In fact, the streets are so dangerous that the police department is reticent to put its officers on the front lines. So they do what any self-respecting police department of the dystopian near-future does…they send droids out to apprehend bad guys.

Imagine that.

























Hang on, this just in…the future is now. It started Thursday, in Dallas:





























Now, I’m sure we can all agree that the use of deadly force was appropriate to neutralize the Dallas shooter; as Chief Brown outlined in his CNN interview this morning, the perpetrator was barricaded in such a manner as to render direct assault too dangerous for officers, and despite 2 hours of attempted negotiation, the gunman continued to taunt and threaten the police. With five dead, seven wounded, and all practical possibilities exhausted, the standoff simply had to end.

That said, now that the smoke has cleared, this troubling precedent begs some ethical (and legal) questions. While robotic technology has been an accepted law enforcement tool for some time now, it’s chiefly purposed for reconnaissance and surveillance, so officers needn’t take unnecessary personal risks in precarious situations.
The robots have also proven an invaluable tool for bomb squad units as well; they are used to seek out and/or safely detonate otherwise unreachable explosive devices. Naturally, it was only a matter of time (and circumstance) where the light bulb would go off over someone’s head, somewhere: “It can retrieve a bomb. It can detonate a bomb. Doesn’t it stand to reason that it can deliver, then detonate a bomb?”
I’ll be Captain Obvious and mention the use of drones, which have become de rigeur for facilitating this type of “special delivery” to bad guys in exotic lands. Then again, that is one of the primary missions of our military (to take out bad guys in exotic lands).  Last I checked, the primary mission of domestic law enforcement is to protect and serve.
I am aware that it’s easy for me to Monday morning quarterback Chief Brown’s decision. I wasn’t there, and he was, amid the horror and the carnage. The buck stopped with him. He didn’t have time to stand around pondering the history of social unrest in America, and/or the possible ripple effects of setting such a precedent.  I’m sure that he felt that his priority, his mission, if you will, was to do everything in his power to avoid further horror and carnage. And he did. He brought the standoff to an end, and likely saved many lives.
So why does this still trouble me? The “precedent” is the delivery system only; the bomb (C4) is eerily familiar. From my 2013 review of Let the Fire Burn, a documentary about the 1985 MOVE incident:

[MOVE leader] John Africa (an adapted surname that all followers used) was a charismatic person. He founded the group in 1972, based on an odd hodgepodge of tenets borrowed from Rastafarianism, Black Nationalism and green politics; with a Luddite view of technology (think ELF meets the Panthers…by way of the Amish). Toss in some vaguely egalitarian philosophies about communal living, and I think you’re there. 

The group, which shared a town house, largely kept itself to itself (at least at first) but started to draw the attention of Philadelphia law enforcement when a number of their neighbors began expressing concern to the authorities about sanitation issues (the group built compost piles around their building using refuse and human excrement) and the distressing appearance of possible malnutrition among the children of the commune (some of the footage in the film would seem to bear out the latter claim). The city engaged in a year-long bureaucratic standoff with MOVE over their refusal to vacate, culminating in an attempted forced removal turned-gun battle with police in 1978 that left one officer dead. Nine MOVE members were convicted of 3rd-degree murder and jailed. 

The remaining members of MOVE relocated their HQ, but it didn’t take long to wear out their welcome with the new neighbors (John Africa’s strange, rambling political harangues, delivered via loudspeakers mounted outside the MOVE house certainly didn’t help). Africa and his followers began to develop a siege mentality, shuttering up all the windows and constructing a makeshift pillbox style bunker on the roof. Naturally, these actions only served to ratchet up the tension and goad local law enforcement. On May 13, 1985 it all came to a head when a heavily armed contingent of cops moved in, ostensibly to arrest MOVE members on a number of indictments. Anyone who remembers the shocking news footage knows that the day did not end well. Gunfire was exchanged after tear gas and high-pressure water hoses failed to end the standoff, so authorities decided to take a little shortcut and drop a satchel of C-4 onto the roof of the building. 11 MOVE members (including 5 children) died in the resulting inferno, which consumed 61 homes.

Apples and oranges? Yes; that was then, this is now, I totally get that. But here is the heart of the matter (and the relevancy)-as I continued:

Putting aside any debate or speculation for a moment over whether or not John Africa and his disciples were deranged criminals, or whether or not the group’s actions were self-consciously provocative or politically convoluted, one simple fact remains and bears repeating: “Someone” decided that it was a perfectly acceptable action plan, in the middle of a dense residential neighborhood (located in the City of Brotherly Love, no less) to drop a bomb on a building with children inside it. Even more appalling is the callous indifference and casual racism displayed by some of the officials and police who are seen in the film testifying before the Mayor’s investigative commission (the sole ray of light, one compassionate officer who braved crossfire to help a young boy escape the burning building, was chastised by fellow officers afterward as a “ni**er lover” for his trouble).

Again, what happened in Philadelphia in 1985 and what happened in Dallas last Thursday may be dissimilar in crucial ways, yet certain elements within our sociopolitical climate that contributed greatly to both incidents remain stubbornly constant. I hate to put sci-fi writers out of work, but if we don’t engage in some semblance of a civil and constructive discourse to address these core issues, all I can say is: Welcome to The Near Future.

 

More reviews at Den of Cinema.  This is cross-posted there is you want to comment.

 

—Dennis Hartley

No more Giuliani time. Please.

Published by digby on July 10, 2016

No more Giuliani time. Please.

by digby

I’m just going to put this out there and beg the news networks to not put this man on their programs. What he’s saying is inflammatory, bigoted and dangerous. Please, do the right thing. Don’t put him on anymore:

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani on Sunday said when people use the phrase “black lives matter,” it’s “inherently racist.”

“Black lives matter, white lives matter, Asian lives matter, Hispanic lives matter,” he said.

“That’s anti-American and it’s racist. Of course black lives matter, and they matter greatly,” he said.

“But when you focus in on 1 percent of less than 1 percent of the murder that’s going on in America and you make it a national thing, and all of you in the media make it much bigger than the black kid who’s getting killed in Chicago every 14 hours, you treat it disproportionately.”

Giuliani said only a small number of African-Americans will die at the hands of the police, whereas the majority of African-Americans killed will die at the hands of a civilian, “most often another black.”

“If you want to protect black lives, then you got to protect black lives not just against police, which happens rarely, although with tremendous attention,” he said.

“If you want to deal with this on the black side you’ve got to teach your children to be respectful to the police,” he continued.

“And you’ve got to teach your children that the real danger to them is not the police, the real danger to them, 99 out of 100 times … are other black kids who are going to kill them, that’s the way they’re going to die.”

What a fool believes

Published by digby on July 10, 2016

What a fool believes

by digby

It seems like a good day to run this again.  Just so that people understand who they are dealing with. Trump’s full page ad from 1989:

What has happened to our City over the past ten years? What has happened to law and order, to the neighborhood cop we all trusted to safeguard our homes and families, the cop who had the power under the law to help us in times of danger, keep us safe from those who would prey on innocent lives to fulfill some distorted inner need. What has happened to the respect for authority, the fear of retribution by the courts, socity, and the police for those who break the law, who wantonly trespass on the rights of others? What has happened is the complete breakdown of life as we knew it.

Many New York families- White, Black, Hispanic and Asian- have had to give up the pleasure of a leisurely stroll in the Park at dusk, the Saturday visit to the playground with their families, the bike ride at awn, or just sitting on their stoops- given them up as hostages to a world ruled by the law of the streets, as roving bands of wild criminals roam our neighborhoods, dispensing their own vicious brand of twisted hatred on whomever they encounter. At what point did we cross the line from the fine and noble pursuit of genuine civil liberties to the reckless and dangerously permissive atmosphere which allows criminals of every age to beat and rape a helpless woman and then laugh at her family’s anguish? And why do they laugh? They laugh because they know that soon, very soon, they will be returned to the streets to rape and maim and kill once again- and yet face no great personal risk to themselves.

Mayor Koch has stated that hate and rancor should be removed from our hearts. I do not think so. I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes. They must serve as examples so that others will think long and hard before committing a crime or an act of violence. Yes, Mayor Koch, I want to hate these murderers and I always will. I am not looking to psychoanalyze or understand them, I am looking to punish them. If the punishment is strong, the attacks on innocent people will stop. I recently watched a newscast trying to explain the “anger in these young men”. I no longer want to understand their anger. I want them to understand our anger. I want them to be afraid.

How can our great society tolerate the continued brutalization of its citizens by crazed misfits?

Criminals must be told that their CIVIL LIBERTIES END WHEN AN ATTACK ON OUR SAFETY BEGINS!

When I was young, I sat in a diner with my father and witnessed two young bullies cursing and threatening a very frightened waitress. Two cops rushed in, lifted up the thugs and threw them out the door, warning them never to cause trouble again. I miss the feeling of security New York’s finest once gave to the citizens of this City.

Let our politicians give back our police department’s power to keep us safe. Unshackle them from the constant chant of “police brutality” which every petty criminal hurls immediately at an officer who has just risked his or her life to save another’s. We must cease our continuous pandering to the criminal population of this City. Give New York back to the citizens who have earned the right to be New Yorkers. Send a message loud and clear to those who would murder our citizens and terrorize New York- BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY AND BRING BACK OUR POLICE!

Donald J. Trump

Daily News, Monday May 1st, 1989.

Trump 2016:

One of the first things I’d do in terms of executive order if I win would be to sign a strong, strong statement that will go out to the country, out to the world, that anybody caught killing a policeman, policewoman, police officer, anybody killing a police officer: death penalty. It’s gonna happen. OK? We can’t let this go.


I’m sure you haven’t forgotten that this man is the Republican nominee for president.

Trump has been obsessed with a few different things over the years. He has always thought the rest of the world is laughing at America because it is no longer “strong.” He has always thought that some Asian country (first Japan, now China) is taking advantage of us economically. And he has always thought that the police are hamstrung in dealing with “thugs and criminals.”

Now he wants to build a wall on the Mexican border and he wants to ban Muslims and steal other country’s resources. But the authoritarian nationalism is what he really, truly cares about.

Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor has a message for you

Published by digby on July 10, 2016

Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor has a message for you

by digby

It probably won’t happen, but the GOP base is just that crazy…

A poll of likely Republican voters shows House Speaker Paul Ryan well below 50 percent in his race to maintain his seat in Wisconsin’s first Congressional district.
The poll was conducted by P.M.I., with 424 respondents randomly called from a file of 11,000 likely GOP primary voters. It shows that with one month remaining before Wisconsin’s August 9th vote, Ryan is polling at 43 percent.

Ryan’s challenger, Wisconsin businessman Paul Nehlen, is polling at 32 percent.

The Nehlen campaign notes that Ryan’s 43 percent “represents a drop of more than 30 points since the Nehlen campaign began polling likely Republican primary voters earlier in the year.”

“This poll shows voters are considering their options and choosing to opt out of Paul Ryan’s job-killing policies,” Nehlen said.

The new poll could be viewed as a warning sign to Ryan, as Wisconsin voters may be growing increasingly frustrated with the key elements of Ryan’s longstanding policy agenda.

Nehlen told Breitbart that the reason Ryan has tanked below 50 percent in the latest poll is a direct result of his policies on trade, immigration, and national sovereignty.

Cantor lost on immigration … just saying.

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I just can’t stand it

Published by digby on July 10, 2016

I just can’t stand it

by digby

It’s too much:

There is just too much horror on the streets of our country.

Goddamn these guns. Damn them, damn them…

Neighbors have told investigators that Johnson, a 25-year-old Army Reserve veteran who served in Afghanistan, had an interest in weapons, and officials have said that a cache of arms, ammunition, bomb-making material, and body armor were found in his home in Mesquite, a Dallas suburb.

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I’m not saying we won’t get our hair mussed

Published by digby on July 10, 2016

I’m not saying we won’t get our hair mussed


by digby

I’m pretty sure that in a normal election year this would be a deal breaker. But then in a normal election year this fellow would not be on a short list for the GOP VP nomination in the first place.

It’s possible that Trump thinks this would be a clever choice anyway. A hardcore, Putin-loving General in the mode of Curtis LeMay who is also a “Democrat” and pro-choice. And frankly, I don’t think his hardcore followers will care one bit. They aren’t actually religious and they don’t really care about abortion or they wouldn’t be voting for Trump int the first place.  But it could make it even more difficult for some of those Cruz true believers to make the final leap.

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Politics and Reality radio with Joshua Holland: More Police Bloodshed; Wingnuts Attack Comey; Roger Ailes Is Gross

Published by digby on July 10, 2016

Politics and reality radio: More Police Bloodshed; Wingnuts Attack Comey; Roger Ailes Is Gross

by Joshua Holland

This week, we start with a commentary about the mass shooting of police officers at a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas.

Then we’re joined by Robert Gangi, executive director of the Police Reform Organizing Project (PROP), to discuss the two unjustified police shootings of black men that apparently pushed the Dallas shooter over the edge.

We also talk to Karoli Kuns, managing editor of Crooks and Liars, about FBI Director James Comey’s recommendation that Hillary Clinton not face charges for Emailghazi, and the backlash it set off on the right.

Finally, we welcome Cristina Lopez, a researcher and reporter at Media Matters, to talk about the lawsuit filed by Gretchen Carlson this week alleging that Fox News boss Roger Ailes sexually harrassed her in the grossest possible way.

Playlist:
U2: “In a Little While”
Junior Murvin: “Police and Thieves”
Queen Latifah: “U.N.I.T.Y”
Nina Simone: “I Want a Little Sugar in my Bowl”

As always, you can also subscribe to the show on iTunes or Podbean.

More to it than platforms and candidates by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on July 10, 2016

More to it than platforms and candidates
by Tom Sullivan

The Twitter thread yesterday from the DNC’s platform committee meeting in Orlando was pretty entertaining. There was a lot of passion from the Bernie Sanders delegation. The debate on fracking was particularly heated. Filmmaker Josh Fox (Gasland) spoke in favor of language to ban the practice:

The Orlando Sentinel reports:

Instead, the committee passed another compromise, calling to close a “loophole” preventing the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating fracking, and stating that the practice should not be used in communities which object to it.

Sanders supporters booed as the compromise passed.

However, they did get something on their environmental wish list: an amendment stating that carbon dioxide emissions “should be priced to reflect their negative externalities,” and which also rejected the Keystone XL pipeline.

It passed unanimously, to applause and chants of “Bernie! Bernie!”

And that’s how it went. The Sanders delegates won one and they cheered. They lost one and people shouted “WHORES!” or “Sell-outs!“

Overall, a Sanders campaign advisor told CNN, “We got 80% of what we wanted in this platform.” For some who got up and turned their backs or walked out, less than 100% is a glass half empty. Eighty percent is betrayal.

But while these ideological battles tend to be mostly symbolic — few voters know what’s in the party platform, and candidates and elected officials will ignore it — they point to a shift that is not at all insignificant. Dave Weigel of the Washington Post watched the committee do its work and concluded:

“We still have to have an inside-outside strategy,” Sanders committee member Cornell West told supporters yesterday. Winning party platform fights is heady, but insufficient. Most of this work is not in your head. It’s on the street.

Many people wrapped up in election-year drama, platform fights, and campaign issues are unaware that the parties do much more than elect candidates and fight over ideology and policy. At the grassroots level, more goes on behind the scenes between elections than most voters ever see or appreciate. It’s work — mostly grunt work — that makes democracy possible. My experience below is from North Carolina, so forgive me if your state works differently.

There is a massive logistical effort behind putting on elections, a lot of it volunteers and party-organized. Most voters are accustomed only to seeing the 4 or 5 retirees who work the polling station in their neighborhood on Election Day. Three election judges (a Republican Judge, a Democratic Judge, and a Chief Judge) plus an assistant or two. These people get paid (poorly) for the day, but that’s not why they do it. They are putting in a 14-hour day because they believe what they are doing matters, that their community matters, and that democracy is important.

The handful of people you see every Election Day don’t appear out of thin air. Precinct leaders from each party recruit them (plus multiple backups) in the odd-numbered years here and provide a list of their names to the county Board of Elections. I spend six weekends every other summer compiling the list for local Democrats. It’s a chore and a half. Four or 5 people per precinct, plus backups. In my county there are 80 precincts. In North Carolina alone there are 2,709 precincts.

That’s over 11,000 people to mobilize for Election Day, just inside the polls. Add to that the three county Board members in each of 100 counties, the Board of Elections staffs in 100 counties, plus the party and precinct officers (volunteers, of both parties) in each of 100 counties, plus the state Board of Elections staff in the capitol, and the Election Protection attorneys on standby, and the thousands of party volunteers with literature who answer questions and greet voters outside the polls.

Combined, we’re talking something like an army division mobilized on Election Day so democracy can happen. And that’s just one of the larger states in the country. The U.S. Elections Assistance Commission counted roughly 185,994 polling places and “at least 845,962 poll workers that worked at polling places on Election Day.” In 2004.

Please thank them this fall.

Feathers and fur: “Tickled” and “Unlocking the Cage” By Dennis Hartley

Published by digby on July 10, 2016
Feathers and fur: Tickled (**½) & Unlocking the Cage (***)

By Dennis Hartley






There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
-William Shakespeare, from Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5
With a bit of luck, his life was ruined forever. Always thinking that just behind some narrow door in all of his favorite bars, men in red woolen shirts are getting incredible kicks from things he’ll never know.
-Hunter S. Thompson, from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Oh yes, there are a lot of things going on, involving a lot of incredible kicks, behind a lot of narrow doors, that you and I will never, ever, know. Although…after watching David Ferrier and Dylan Reeves’ Tickled, I’m inclined to think that perhaps it’s all for the best.
That’s because I cannot un-see what I have seen in the course of watching the pair’s documentary, an expose that starts off like a fluffy nightly news kicker, but eventually morphs into something more byzantine and odious. Okay, it’s not All The President’s Men; it’s more aptly described as Foxcatcher meets Catfish . I’m speaking in generalities because Tickled is a difficult film to describe without possibly divulging a spoiler or two.
Ferrier, a New Zealand-based TV entertainment reporter, came across a click-bait item regarding a “sport” called Competitive Endurance Tickling. It was all rather amusing…at first. As he dug a little deeper, he was surprised to find himself becoming increasingly stonewalled by the organizers; soon after he was weathering harassment from lawyers and P.I.’s. What were they covering up? Now completely intrigued, Ferrier decides to go totally Mike Wallace on this (now) shady operation. What he discovers is…some shady stuff, involving some big money types. Nobody gets murdered, but it’s still pretty creepy.
You’ve been warned. Not essential viewing, but you won’t see this story on 60 Minutes!



In my 2011 review of the documentary Nenette (a profile of a beloved female orangutan who has resided in the menagerie at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris since 1969), I wrote:

Humans are silly creatures, particularly with our compulsive need to anthropomorphize our animal friends. You see what just happened there? I had an uncontrollable compulsion to say, animal “friends”. How do I really know they’re my “friends”? […] 

And, throughout the four decades since she was captured in her native Borneo and transplanted to the Jardin des Plantes, Nenette has watched the daily parade of silly creatures that point and gawk and endlessly pontificate about what she might be thinking. The director gives us lots of time to study Nenette’s (mostly impassive) reaction to all the fuss; because the camera stays on her (and to a lesser extent, her three fellow orangutans) for nearly the entire 70-minute running time of the film. The zoo visitors are largely heard, and not seen, save for their ephemeral reflections in the thick glass that separates the simians from the homosapiens. “She looks sad,” says one little girl. “I think she looks very depressed,” one woman opines; “Maybe she misses her husband?” wonders another.

I’m sure that anyone who has ever owned a pet would tell you that animals express “feelings” toward their owners…but how deep and meaningful are those feelings, really? Are we just projecting? For all we know, it’s simply predicated on the fact that we give them food on a regular basis. Are they really that “intelligent”? Can they conjugate a verb? Balance a checkbook? Do they understand philosophy? Has an orangutan ever grabbed you by the lapel through the cage bars, looked you straight in the eye, and said, “I don’t care how you do it…but please just bust me the fuck out of this goddam prison”?
Have I found the perfect real-life champion for that hypothetical orangutan. His name is Steven Wise, an animal-rights attorney. In their new film, Unlocking the Cage, husband-and-wife directing team Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker (the latter most well-known for his 1965 Dylan documentary Dont Look Back ) follow Wise and associates around as they seek furry plaintiffs for an audacious lawsuit that aims to have chimpanzees declared “persons” (as opposed to “things”). The goal? To break them out of their goddam prisons. Well, humanoids call them “farms”, “shelters”, “sanctuaries”, etc. but you get the picture.
It goes without saying Wise and his team has a number of hurdles to overcome (aside from potentially getting laughed out of the courtroom). Hegedus and Pennebaker divide screen time between accompanying Wise and his associates on visits to various facilities to meet potential “clients” (some scenarios are heart-breaking-especially for animal lovers) and observing less glamorous aspects of legal work; like scouring through endless boxes of court papers and related minutiae, looking for precedents and fresh new angles.
The crux of Wise’s argument is a tough row to hoe; he feels that once he convinces a judge that a chimp is cognizant enough to be considered an autonomous being, than “it” (as well as elephants and cetaceans) should be granted personhood, and enjoy all associated rights of Habeas Corpus (easier said than done). After all, as he points out, corporations are now “persons”…that once seemed like a far-fetched concept, didn’t it?
One argument you wish he would stop making is his unfortunate conflation with slavery; while it’s obvious he’s not being purposefully disingenuous, whenever he dares broach it, it gets the knee-jerk reaction you would expect from judges, opposing attorneys, news anchors, etc. At any rate, it made me cringe every time he went there, because you have to watch him patiently explain “What I meant was-” which doesn’t really help his cause.
Still, I did come away from the film impressed by Wise and his team’s passion and dedication to fighting for our furry friends. There’s a lot of food for thought here as well; the next time you go to the zoo you may be tempted to slip the orangutan a skeleton key.
More reviews at Den of Cinema

—Dennis Hartley


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