COINTELPRO all over again!

For the past month or so, I have been researching the late-60s, early-70s underground press scene in Chicago, interviewing staff members of THE CHICAGO SEED and other movement publications, and reading through back issues of the 100s of "Movement"/hippie papers published in the Chicago area in that era. A huge theme that has emerged from this research has been the degree to which the local police and the FBI spied on, harassed and sought to destroy these publications. For instance, members of the Chicago PD's "Red Squad" routinely visited the office of the SEED to "talk" with/interrogate staff. The paper's editor, Abe Peck, was slapped with obscenity charges for an issue featuring a surreal sexual illustration (although, as often happened, the case was ultimately dismissed). Street vendors of the paper were regularly hassled and sometimes arrested. Store and news stand owners were pressured by police to stop selling the publication. Right-wing vigilantes shot out the windows of the paper's office with impunity (and the possible collusion of the cops). And the movements of the staff members were followed with great interest by all levels of law enforcement. The FBI and local police files on the writers, editors, artists and hangers-on associated with just the CHICAGO SEED -- a regional publication with a maximum circulation of 30-40,000 at its peak-- would fill a row of filing cabinets. The famous Church Committee hearings in the U.S. Senate (1975-1976) and a consent decree signed by the city of Chicago in response to a lawsuit brought by the Alliance to End Repression (1981) eventually disclosed that the targeting of the SEED and other underground papers was in fact part of a concerted, coordinated and thoroughly unconstitutional police/FBI/CIA campaign to crush the New Left ( the FBI portion of which was called COINTELPRO).

Now, it looks like the bad old days of Kafka-esque political repression are back (not that they were ever that far behind us, mind you). Turns out MD police have been spying on anti-war and anti-death penalty organizers and then putting their names on official "terrorist" watchlists. I think I'm going to be sick:

Spying uncovered -- baltimoresun.com

Source: www.baltimoresun.com

Undercover Maryland State Police officers repeatedly spied on peace activists and anti-death penalty groups in recent years and entered the names of some in a law-enforcement database of people thought ...

Reading Marx's Capital with David Harvey

Geographer and urban critic David Harvey's work on Marxist economic theory-- especially his magnum opus, "The Limits to Capital," and his more recent "A Brief History of Neoliberalism" -- made a convert out of me. Now, he's made available a series of videos of his lectures on Capital Vol. 1. Brilliant stuff. Check out this lecture on the commodity:



For the entire series of lectures, look here.

Mass Murder Has Been Conducted in Our Name...

This piece by Peter Phillips-- editor of the annual Project Censored list of top 25 most censored news stories-- really hits the nail on the head. Judged by any reasonable standard, U.S. forces in Iraq are guilty of serious war crimes and the leaders who gave the orders-- Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, the Pentagon brass, the whole damn lot of them-- should be brought to justice.

U.S. Perpetuates Mass Killings In Iraq
By Peter Phillips

The United States is directly responsible for
over one million Iraqi deaths since the invasion
five and half years ago. In a January 2008
report, a British polling group Opinion Research
Business (ORB) reports that, "survey work
confirms our earlier estimate that over
1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have died as a result
of the conflict which started in 2003.. We now
estimate that the death toll between March 2003
and August 2007 is likely to have been of the
order of 1,033,000. If one takes into account
the margin of error associated with survey data
of this nature then the estimated range is between 946,000 and 1,120,000".

This report comes on the heels of two earlier
studies conducted by Johns Hopkins University
published in the Lancet medical journal that
confirmed the continuing numbers of mass deaths
in Iraq. A study done by Dr. Les Roberts from
January 1, 2002 to March 18 2003 put the
civilian deaths at that time at over 100,000. A
second study published in the Lancet in October
2006 documented over 650,000 civilian deaths in
Iraq since the start of the US invasion. The
2006 study confirms that US aerial bombing in
civilian neighborhoods caused over a third of
these deaths and that over half the deaths are
directly attributable to US forces.

The now estimated 1.2 million dead,
as of July 2008, includes children, parents,
grandparents, great-grandparents, cab drivers,
clerics, schoolteachers, factory workers,
policemen, poets, healthcare workers, day care
providers, construction workers, babysitters,
musicians, bakers, restaurant workers and many
more. All manner of ordinary people in Iraq
have died because the United States decided to
invade their country. These are deaths in
excess of the normal civilian death rate under the prior government.

The magnitude of these deaths is undeniable. The
continuing occupation by US forces guarantees a
mass death rate in excess of 10,000 people per
month with half that number dying at the hands
of US forces- a carnage so severe and so
concentrated at to equate it with the most
heinous mass killings in world history. This act has not gone unnoticed.

Recently, Dennis Kucinich introduced a single
impeachment article against George W. Bush for
lying to Congress and the American people about
the reasons for invading Iraq. On July 15 The
House forwarded the resolution to the Judiciary
Committee with a 238 to 180 vote. That Bush
lied about weapons of mass destruction and
Iraq's threat to the US is now beyond doubt.
Former US federal prosecutor Elizabeth De La
Vega documents the lies most thoroughly in her
book U.S. Vs Bush, and numerous other
researchers have verified Bush's untrue statements.

The American people are faced with a serious
moral dilemma. Murder and war crimes have been
conducted in our name. We have allowed the
war/occupation to continue in Iraq and offered
ourselves little choice within the top two
presidential candidates for immediate cessation
of the mass killings. McCain would undoubtedly
accept the deaths of another million Iraqi
civilians in order to save face for America, and
Obama's 18-month timetable for withdrawal would
likely result in another 250,000 civilian deaths or more.

We owe our children and ourselves a future
without the shame of mass murder on our
collective conscience. The only resolution of
this dilemma is the immediate withdrawal of all
US troops in Iraq and the prosecution and
imprisonment of those responsible. Anything less
creates a permanent original sin on the soul of
the nation for that we will forever suffer.

Peter Phillips is a Professor of Sociology at
Sonoma State University and director of Project
Censored a media research group. He is the
co-editor with Dennnis Loo of the book Impeach
the President: The Case Against Bush and Cheney.

Keeping the World at Bay...

As anyone who has been keeping count knows, since 9/11, the Bush administration has barred dozens of prominent foreign nationals from entering the country on the specious grounds that they had some sort of tie to a vaguely defined "terrorism." The case of Tariq Ramadan-- an eminent European Muslim scholar who was prevented from entering the US to take a post at Notre Dame-- is perhaps the most famous. But there have been others: Adam Habib, a South African scholar and outspoken critic of the war in Iraq; Waskar Ari, a Bolivian expert on Bolivian indigeonous religious beliefs and activism; several Cuban scholars and on and on. Now it appears that peaceful, nonviolent, secular human rights activists who just happen to oppose U.S. imperialism's various client regimes are also being barred. Will it never end?

Homeland insecurity
Peter Tatchell guardian.co.uk, Wednesday July 2 2008

In another bizarre twist to Washington's often illegal, irrational "war on terror", peaceful, lawful human rights campaigners are now apparently being refused entry to the US – without any right of appeal.

Noordin Mengal, a British citizen and Baluch human rights defender, was detained and deported by US immigration when he arrived at Newark Liberty airport from Dubai last week. Read more here.

Pentagon Used Ex-Military Experts as Megaphones for Propaganda

A few weeks ago the New York Times reported what those of us in the anti-war movement have long suspected: that many of those ubiquitous former generals who are forever appearing on TV news shows to talk about the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan have been carefully coached and cultivated by the Pentagon to echo the administrations' talking points and misinformation. This is of course a violation of longstanding laws prohibiting the military -- or any branch of government-- from engaging in domestic propaganda. Add the "military analyst program" to the large and growing dossier of treasonous offenses for which Bush, Cheney and co. may some day stand trial.

I should have blogged about this long ago.

A group of former North Central College Broadcasting/Media Students-- many of whom took my first ever "Introduction to New Media" course-- have launched an exciting new site devoted to "music and culture". Check it out here.

Among other things, the site features reviews, a concert calender, interviews with up and coming bands, MP3s and a clever V-blog of album reviews (see below). Nice work guys!

The $3 Trillion Mistake

This is old news but still deserving of comment.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz recently co-authored a book (with Linda Bilmes), The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Costs of the Iraq Conflict, which puts the real cost of the invasion and occupation of Iraq to the U.S. economy at roughly $ 3 trillion. They estimate that the war has cost the rest of the world another $ 3 trillion. And they claim that war will ultimately add another $2 trillion to our already enormous $5 trillion national debt. Who has profited from this expensive debacle? The defense and oil industries, the very industries who largely bankrolled the Bush-Cheney Presidential campaigns in 2000 and 2004. Coincidence? Hmmm.

Now, I'm usually not a fan of Nobel-Prize winning economists. The Nobel Prize in Economics was created later than the original 5 Nobel Awards (Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature and Peace) at the urging of and with funding from a group of Swedish bankers. Throughout its history, it has been used to ratify and legitimate what I would call "pro-capitalist," or what some heterodox economists aptly dub "autistic", classical and neoclassical economic dogma. Indeed, a Nobel Prize in Economics is often nothing more than license to perpetuate anti-worker lies and myths under the cover of scholarly respectability. Witness the case of Milton Friedman, who won the prize in 1976 at around the time he was acting as adviser to the bloodthirsty and criminal Pinochet junta in Chile. Usually when I hear "Nobel Laureate in Economics", I prepare myself for an onslaught of reactionary ideology dressed up in the language of "rational game theory" and buttressed by an arsenal of fudged statistics. So, the fact that someone like Stiglitz -- a rather mild-mannered and moderate critic of neoclassical economics-- is taking aim at the Bush administrations' expensive folly in Iraq is noteworthy. And, yes, welcome...Read more below

The $3 trillion war in Iraq

Only two winners have emerged from the conflict: oil companies and defence contractors...

http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/339461

As we approach the 5th anniversary of the illegal, catastrophic and mind-numbingly cruel U.S. invasion of Iraq, it is important to recognize what is really driving American imperialism and militarism: corporate greed, inter-imperialist rivalry and what Eisenhower famously called the military-industrial complex.It's also important to recognize that that U.S. has been an imperialist power almost since its inception and became the world's major imperialist power in the aftermath of WWII (although the USSR certainly was a close second). The American seizure of Iraq was just the latest in a very long line of "intervensions" that have overthrown governments-- often popularly elected governments-- around the globe. This is a point that is that is underscored by this clever little video:

Here's a fine video from media reform group Free Press. Enjoy.

Another expose of FOX NEWS...Of course, criticizing FOX is like shooting fat, disabled ducks in a barrel. But, still, FOX's stupid attack on blogs and bloggers-- who as a group tend to be libertarians, New (or Third Way) Democrats and independent centrists, not socialists or extreme leftists-- is absolutely misinformed. If only DAILY KOS and the other blogs being routinely attacked by O'Reilly were really calling for revolutionary change.

More Bad News: The Demise of Punk Planet
The tiny club of independent, progressive/radical publications based here in Chicago is about to shrink yet again. I just got word that Punk Planet-- a zine that for 13 years combined service to the punk subculture with coverage of news and commentary about feminism, labor, sexual politics, race relations, the environment and a host of other issues--is going to close its doors. Here's a choice snippet from PP founder and editor Dan Sinker's letter to subscribers:

As much as it breaks our hearts to write these words, the final issue
of Punk Planet is in the post, possibly heading toward you right now.
Over the last 80 issues and 13 years, we've covered every aspect of
the financially independent, emotionally autonomous, free culture we
refer to as "the underground." In that time we've sounded many alarms
from our editorial offices: about threats of co-optation, big-media
emulation, and unseen corporate sponsorship. We've also done
everything in our power to create a support network for independent
media, experiment with revenue streams, and correct the distribution
issues that have increasingly plagued independent magazines. But now
we've come to the impossible decision to stop printing, having
sounded all the alarms and reenvisioned all the systems we can.
Benefit shows are no longer enough to make up for bad distribution
deals, disappearing advertisers, and a decreasing audience of
subscribers.

As to the latter two points, we could blame the Internet. It makes
editorial content—and bands—easy to find, for free. (We're sure our
fellow indie labels, those still standing, can attest to the
difficulties created in the last few years). We can blame educational
and media systems that value magazines focused on consumerism over
engaged dissent. And we can blame the popular but mistaken belief
that punk died several years ago.

But it is also true that great things end, and the best things end
far too quickly.

As to bad distribution deals, we must acknowledge that the financial
hit we took in October of 2005, when our newsstand distributor
announced that it was in dire straits, was worse than we originally
thought. As the dust began to clear from their January bankruptcy
announcement, we began to realize that the magazine was left in
significantly worse shape, distribution-wise, than they let on.

Add to that the stagnation that the independent record world is
suffering under and the effect that has had on our ad sales, not to
mention the loss of independent bookstores with a vested interest in
selling our publication, and it all adds up to a desperate situation.
This has been made far worse by the exhaustion felt from a year and a
half of fighting our own distributor. It was a situation that didn't
have an exit strategy other then, well, exiting.

Sinker goes on to explain that the PP website and book publishing imprint will continue on. Still, the world will be a vastly less interesting place without the excellent print magazine; it could always be counted on for thoughtful columns, eye opening feature articles, interviews with cutting edge bands, artists and activists, and sharp tongued reviews of music, books and media of all kinds. It sure beat the hell out of the corporate rock magazines like Rolling Stone and Spin. I'll miss it...

An important announcement from...

National Project in Defense of Dissent
and Critical Thinking in Academia

Opposition Mounts as University of Colorado President
Calls for Ward Churchill to be Dismissed

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:Reggie Dylan: (626) 319-1730
Matthew Abraham: (773) 682-9322
Email: criticalxthinking@yahoo.com
Website: www.defendcriticalthinking.org


In a letter to the Board of Regents, University of Colorado President Hank
Brown has called for the dismissal of tenured Ethnic Studies Professor
Ward Churchill. His recommendation goes beyond that
of the faculty investigative committee that examined
charges of research misconduct; and of the faculty
Privilege and Tenure (P&T) committee that recently
heard Churchill’s appeal. Gov. Bill Ritter of Colorado
joined Brown in calling for the firing of Churchill,
as his predecessor Bill Owens did two years earlier.
The Board of Regents is expected to make a final
decision in this case at a public hearing some time in
July.
A growing number of scholars see CU’s
investigation of Churchill’s scholarship as completely
illegitimate and a dangerous precedent threatening
dissent and critical thinking in the universities.
The CU - Boulder chapter of the American Association
of University Professors (AAUP) has written that "we
believe that the investigation now is widely perceived
to be a pretext for firing Churchill when the real
reason for dismissal is his politics." The
investigation was launched in the wake of controversy
provoked by an essay Churchill wrote after 9/11.
Churchill noted in response to Brown’s
letter that "the University had received no formal or
written complaints about my scholarship when it
initiated this ‘investigation.’ All of the
allegations investigated were either solicited or
brought directly by University administrators." He
also noted that "The Investigative Committee charged
with conducting a ‘fact-finding, nonadversarial’
investigation was chaired by law professor Mimi
Wesson, who - in February 2005 - had compared me to
'charismatic male celebrity wrongdoers' like O.J.
Simpson, Michael Jackson and Bill Clinton, and had
already come up with the faulty 'traffic stop' analogy
the Committee used to justify its conclusions." The
committee included no American Indians or experts in
American Indian Studies, and scholars that had used
Churchill's research in their own work were removed
from the committee.
The report of the committee hearing
Churchill’s appeal found that Churchill proved by a
"preponderance of the evidence" that "but for" his
exercise of his protected first amendment rights, the
subsequent investigation of his scholarship would
never have been initiated.
In a recent open letter to colleagues
around the country Dr. Margaret LeCompte, President of
the Boulder AAUP Chapter, wrote: "What has happened at
the University of Colorado makes a mockery of both due
process and academic freedom protections, AND what
faculty believe. It is a cruel violation of the
delicate balance between faculty rights and
administrative responsibilities… The entire process
was a sham---imitating the form, but not the intent,
of due process and fair, objective, scholarly
investigation."
Two faculty groups that have examined the
report of the investigative committee claim that the
report is seriously flawed. In an unprecedented
action, both have now filed formal charges of academic
misconduct against the members of the faculty
committee. The most recent group to do so, made up of
principally Indigenous scholars from around the
country and Canada, documented "many instances of
fraud, fabrication, plagiarism and/or serious
deviation from accepted scholarly practices" which
"demonstrate a consistent pattern of deliberate
misrepresentation intended to discredit Professor
Churchill’s larger body of scholarship." Eric
Cheyfitz, Ernest I. White Professor of American
Studies and Humane Letters at Cornell University, has
found "the Report turns what is a debate about
controversial issues of identity and genocide in
Indian studies into an indictment of one position in
that debate."
The implications of this case go beyond
the threat to Churchill's reputation and career, as
serious as those are. The attack on Churchill is seen
by many in academia as part of a much broader attack
on academic freedom and critical thinking and dissent.
Dr. LeCompte notes, "It is not limited to Colorado. In
fact, it is a test case by the US right wing to
emasculate faculty rights in US universities."
This is illustrated by the recent denial of tenure
for DePaul University political scientist Norman
Finkelstein. Though he was supported by his
department, Finkelstein was denied tenure after an
intense campaign spearheaded by Harvard Law School's
Alan M. Dershowitz, who called Finkelstein "worse than
Churchill." Many DePaul faculty and others were
alarmed at Dershowitz’s heavy-handed tactics and saw
them as an attempt to punish one side of a
controversial debate. Finkelstein said that DePaul’s
decision was based on "transparently political
grounds" and was an "egregious violation" of academic
freedom.
Churchill noted in his response to Brown’s
letter that "President Brown, his new VP Michael
Poliakoff, and Regent Tom Lucero, like Bill Owens, are
key players in Lynne Cheney’s American Council of
Trustees and Alumni (ACTA). ACTA and similar
neoconservative groups have received generous funding
[from] Castle Rock (Coors), Scaife, Bradley and Olin
foundations to eliminate Ethnic, Gender and Peace
Studies Programs and to purge higher education of
those who think critically, challenge historical
orthodoxy, or otherwise threaten the status quo."
Opposition to this impending firing has
been increasing nationally, as more and more academics
recognize the stakes involved in the Churchill case.
An open letter signed by numerous prominent scholars,
including Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Derrick Bell and
Immanuel Wallerstein was published in the New York
Review of Books in April. Scores of others have
written letters of support, and there was a recent
Emergency National Forum in Boulder of academics and
supporters. The Society of American Law Teachers has
written a letter arguing against a firing.
Richard Falk, visiting Distinguished
Professor at University of California, Santa Barbara
recently wrote: "All of us who value academic freedom
should now stand in full solidarity with Ward
Churchill. The outcome of his case at the University
of Colorado is the best litmus test we have to tell
whether the right-wing’s assaults on learning and
liberty will stifle campus life in this country. Never
in my lifetime have we in America more needed the sort
of vigorous debate and creative controversy that Ward
Churchill's distinguished career epitomizes. We all
stand to lose if his principled defense fails."
# # #
Signed:
Matthew Abraham - Department of English, De Paul
University.
William Ayers - Distinguished Professor of Education
and Senior University Scholar, University of Illinois
at Chicago.
Derrick A Bell - Visiting Professor of Constitutional
Law, New York University School of Law.
Timothy Brennan - Departments of English and Cultural
Studies & Comparative Literature, University of
Minnesota.
Renate Bridenthal - Emerita Professor of History,
Brooklyn College, The City University of New York.
Bob Buzzanco - Department of History, University of
Houston.
Dana Cloud - Associate Professor of Communication
Studies at the University of Texas (Austin).
Drucilla Cornell - Professor in the Departments of Law
and Political Science at Rutgers University.
Sandi E Cooper - Professor of History, College of
Staten Island and the Graduate School, The City
University of New York.
Richard Delgado - University Distinguished Professor
of Law and Derrick Bell Fellow, University of
Pittsburgh.
Richard A Falk - Albert G. Milbank Professor of
International Law and Practice at Princeton
University; Visiting Distinguished Professor (since
2002), Global Studies, University of California, Santa
Barbara.
Seth Kahn - Assistant Professor of English, West
Chester University of PA.
Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies,
Middle East Institute, Columbia University.
Vinay Lal - Department of History, University of
California, Los Angeles.
Gary Leupp - Professor of History at Tufts University,
and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion.
Henry Silverman - Professor and Chairperson Emeritus,
Department of History, Michigan State University.
Immanuel Wallerstein - Senior Research Scholar, Yale
University.
Tim Wise - Author of "White Like Me: Reflections on
Race from a Privileged Son," and "Affirmative Action:
Racial Preference in Black and White."

Depaul Caves in to Neo-Con Pressure and Denies Norman Finkelstein Tenure
This past Friday Norman Finkelstein-- a leading critic of the systematic U.S. and Israeli oppression of the Palestinians and a careful analyst of the way the Holocaust has been used by apologists to justify Israeli disregard for international law -- was denied tenure by DePaul University. This despite the fact that he enjoyed excellent teaching evaluations, is a prominent public intellectual with several books to his credit and had the full backing of his department. Yet his tenure bid was blocked first by his dean and then by his president. Why? As president Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider put it in his letter to Finkelstein:

reviewers at all levels, both for and against tenure, commented upon your ad hominem attacks on scholars with whom you disagree... In the opinion of those opposing tenure, your unprofessional personal attacks divert the conversation away from consideration of ideas, and polarize and simplify conversations that deserve layered and subtle consideration. As such, they believe your work not only shifts toward advocacy and away from scholarship, but also fails to meet the most basic standards governing scholarship discourse within the academic community.

A little later in the letter Holtschneider says that he cannot "in good faith conclude that you honor your obligations to 'respect and defend the free inquiry of associates,' 'show due respect for the opinions of others,' and 'strive to be objective in their professional judgment of colleagues.'"

Having only read one of Finkelstein's older books (The Holocaust Industry) and some of his popular articles, I can't say for certain that this is a total misrepresentation of his work but the stuff of his I have read not only exceeds "basic standards governing scholarship" but is much more politically relevant, more insightful, and better written than most of the dreck cranked out by legions of other, perhaps more polite, professors in history and political science. True, Finkelstein has been engaged in an ongoing feud with the ever obstreperous Allen Dershowitz, Harvard law professor and well known apologist for Israeli militarism. But in this particular spat, it has been Dershowitz who has failed to respect the free inquiry of others and whose behavior has consistently failed to meet the standards of the academic community: instead of attempting to refute Finkelstein's criticisms of his views on Israel, he actually lobbied Governor of California Arnold Schwartzenegger in an effort to prevent the University of California Press from publishing them.

Yet even if the charges Holtschneider makes about Finkelstein are true, is that sufficient grounds for silencing a unique and courageous voice who even the president himself admits is "provocative, challenging and intellectually interesting?" One wonders whether or not any of the more famous conservative/reactionary intellectuals of past few years would be able to pass muster if the DePaul standard were uniformly enforced throughout academia. Former Secretary of Education William Bennett, cultural critic Allan Bloom, historian Paul Johnson -- to name only three such right-of-center authors -- have made entire careers out of spewing hateful polarizing rhetoric and launching vicious personal attacks; hell, Johnson's Intellectuals is nothing but one long, gossip-filled ad hominem assault on every left-wing intellectual from Rousseau to Brecht. How much did Leo Strauss-- advocate of using noble lies to manipulate the allegedly witless masses-- "respect the opinion of others"? And has Pepperdine University's Daniel Pipes-- founder of the neo-McCarthyite outfit Campus Watch-- ever once acted to "defend the free inquiry" of left-wing opponents of U.S. foreign policy?

The standard Holtschneider invokes in his letter is ultimately so malleable as to be virtually useless in practice. The truth is that people whose views are on the receiving end of even the most rigorously argued, clearly delineated and factually based criticisms will inevitably read them as "personal attacks" (even when they are framed explicitly as "considerations of ideas"); this is doubly true if the people in question happen to be right-wing ideological hotheads like the Neo-Con crowd.

But, of course, the real reason Finkelstein got the ax had absolutely nothing to do with the "tone" of his work or his ad hominem attacks on Dershowitz or anyone else; rather, it had to do with the subversive ideas that he advocated. Since 9/11, criticism of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East-- and in particular, criticism of U.S. support of Israel-- has become the third rail of academia in this country. Touch it and your life in higher education may come to a sudden end. That is the clear message implicit in the Finkelstein tenure decision, in the firing of Ward Churchill at Colorado, in the carefully orchestrated public fervor over allegations about anti-Israeli bias at Columbia, and in the countless efforts made by college administrators and reactionary pundits like David Horowitz to punish faculty for speaking out against the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is a very dark day for academic freedom.

Meen Erhabe/Who's the terrorist?
Interesting rap video that raises a vitally important question about Israeli treatment of Palestinians and the double standard involved in the way we in the West discuss "terrorism"...

Burn in Hell, Jerry Falwell, Burn in Hell
If there is a Hell, Jerry Falwell's stunted, blackened, hate-filled little soul is at this moment almost certainly smoldering away in its deepest, hottest pit. How could a just God possibly spare a man who was an unapologetic segregationist (until the political winds started to shift), who supported the apartheid regime in South Africa, who gave his blessing to one U.S.-backed imperialist bloodbath after another, who callously applauded as the government slashed funding for the poor and the homeless, who saw the 9/11 attacks as divine retribution for "sins" committed by secular groups like the ACLU and People for the American way, who equated feminism with witchcraft, whose homophobic tirades (at least implicitly) legitimized hatred of and violence towards gays and lesbians, and who rarely missed an opportunity to spew demagogic misinformation about everything from children's TV characters to global warming in the national media? Unfortunately, as an atheist who is skeptical of the whole notion of an "afterlife," I strongly suspect that Falwell in death has evaded any sort of final reckoning for all the lives he destroyed in the course of his mean-spirited sanctimonious career. He now sleeps the blissful, eternal sleep of nonexistence. We, sadly, have to live with the legacy of evil he has left behind.

Here's to the State of Missouri...*
According to Free Exchange on Campus, on April 12, "the Missouri House passed HB 213, the ACTA-inspired bill that mandates annual reporting to the coordinating board of higher education on issues of 'intellectual diversity' including protecting the viewpoint that 'the Bible is inerrant.' Rep. Jane Cunningham, the sponsor of the bill, wants the good folks of Missouri to believe this is based on the views of students because she has an individual case that she misrepresents as a systemic problem."

Every academic in the country ought to write a nasty letter to the speaker of the Missouri House and to every major newspaper in the the Show Me state protesting this nonsense. And we should be vigilant about this bill becoming a template for other states around the country. Among other things, the act opens the door to the teaching of so-called "intelligent design" as science and legitimates "monitoring" of the content of university classes. Of course, those of us on the socialist left could perhaps use the mandate for "intellectual diversity" in this legislation to protest the pro-business propaganda that often passes for scholarship and teaching in economics and business departments (where many faculty treat, not the Bible, but the equally loony pronouncements of Milton Friedman as "inerrant").

[ * Phil Ochs, at the height of the civil rights struggle in the south, penned a delightfully pointed little ditty called "Here's to the State of Mississippi" skewering that state for clinging to its racist, segregationist policies. The title of this post is an allusion to that song. Below is a choice snippet from Ochs' lyrics:

And here's to the schools of Mississippi
Where they're teaching all the children that they don't have to care
All the rudiments of hatred are present everywhere
And every single classroom is a factory of despair
There's nobody learning such a foreign word as fair
Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of
Mississippi find yourself another country to be part of]

The Death Knell of the Little Magazine?
Bob McChesney sent out an urgent letter earlier today alerting media reform activists and media studies scholars alike to the U.S. Post Office's impending rate hike and what it will do to "little magazines" like In These Times, The Nation, Monthly Review, Z Magazine and, for that matter, right wing publications like The National Review.

Here's some of the more important bits:

The U.S. Post Office is in the process of implementing a radical reformulation of its rates for magazines, such that smaller periodicals will be hit with a much much larger increase than the largest magazines.

Because the Post Office is a monopoly, and because magazines must use it, the postal rates always have been skewed to make it cheaper for smaller publications to get launched and to survive. The whole idea has been to use the postal rates to keep publishing as competitive and wide open as possible. This bedrock principle was put in place by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. They considered it mandatory to create the press system, the Fourth Estate necessary for self-government.

It was postal policy that converted the free press clause in the First Amendment from an abstract principle into a living breathing reality for Americans. And it has served that role throughout our history.

What the Post Office is now proposing goes directly against 215 years of postal policy. The Post Office is in the process of implementing a radical reformulation of its mailing rates for magazines. Under the plan, smaller periodicals will be hit with a much larger increase than the big magazines, as much as 30 percent. Some of the largest circulation magazines will face hikes of less than 10 percent.

The new rates, which go into effect on July 15, were developed with no public involvement or congressional oversight, and the increased costs could damage hundreds, even thousands, of smaller publications, possibly putting many out of business. This includes nearly every political journal in the nation. These are the magazines that often provide the most original journalism and analysis. These are the magazines that provide much of the content on Common Dreams. We desperately need them.

What the Post Office is planning to do now, in the dark of night, is implement a rate structure that gives the best prices to the biggest publishers, hence letting them lock in their market position and lessen the threat of any new competition. The new rates could make it almost impossible to launch a new magazine, unless it is spawned by a huge conglomerate.

Not surprisingly, the new scheme was drafted by Time Warner, the largest magazine publisher in the nation. All evidence available suggests the bureaucrats responsible have never considered the implications of their draconian reforms for small and independent publishers, or for citizens who depend upon a free press.

The corruption and sleaziness of this process is difficult to exaggerate. As one lawyer who works for a large magazine publisher admits, “It takes a publishing company several hundred thousand dollars to even participate in these rate cases. Some large corporations spend millions to influence these rates.” Little guys, and the general public who depend upon these magazines, are not at the table when the deal is being made.

The genius of the postal rate structure over the past 215 years was that it did not favor a particular viewpoint; it simply made it easier for smaller magazines to be launched and to survive. That is why the publications opposing the secretive Post Office rate hikes cross the political spectrum. This is not a left-wing issue or a right-wing issue, it is a democracy issue. And it is about having competitive media markets that benefit all Americans. This reform will have disastrous effects for all small and mid-sized publications, be they on politics, music, sports or gardening.

This process was conducted with such little publicity and pitched only at the dominant players that we only learned about it a few weeks ago and it is very late in the game. But there is something you can do. Please go to www.stoppostalratehikes.com and sign the letter to the Postal Board protesting the new rate system and demanding a congressional hearing before any radical changes are made. The deadline for comments is April 23

I want to reiterate Bob's call to action here. The disappearance of "little magazines" would be a huge blow to the left because-- in the absence of strong left political parties and militant unions--they are among the few institutions that give the left in the U.S. a national identity. And without them, I'd be forced to read Newsweek, Time, the New Republic, U.S. News and World Report, Foreign Policy and other such pro-capitalist, pro-imperialist, pop-culture-obsessed dreck. Please save me from this mind-numbing fate. Log onto www.stoppostalratehikes.com and make your voice heard....

Check this out. Powerful stuff....

On November 22nd 1987, someone hacked into the signals of Chicago TV stations WGN and WTTW and used the hijacked airwaves to broadcast a short piece of absurdist theater featuring a performer in an oversized Max Headroom mask. The people responsible for this bizarre little incident were never caught, despite the best efforts of the FBI and the FCC.




You can watch the video here
And you can read more about this strange episode in Chicago's media history here.