The Charade of Israeli-Palestinian Talks
(This article by Noam Chomsky is re-posted from ZNet.)
Washington’s pathetic capitulation to Israel while pleading for a meaningless three-month freeze on settlement expansion—excluding Arab East Jerusalem—should go down as one of the most humiliating moments in U.S. diplomatic history.
In September the last settlement freeze ended, leading the Palestinians to cease direct talks with Israel. Now the Obama administration, desperate to lure Israel into a new freeze and thus revive the talks, is grasping at invisible straws—and lavishing gifts on a far-right Israeli government.
The gifts include $3 billion for fighter jets. The largesse also happens to be another taxpayer grant to the U.S. arms industry, which gains doubly from programs to expand the militarization of the Middle East.
U.S. arms manufacturers are subsidized not only to develop and produce advanced equipment for a state that is virtually part of the U.S. military-intelligence establishment but also to provide second-rate military equipment to the Gulf states—currently a precedent-breaking $60 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia, which is a transaction that also recycles petrodollars to an ailing U.S. economy.
Israeli and U.S. high-tech civilian industries are closely integrated. It is small wonder that the most fervent support for Israeli actions comes from the business press and the Republican Party, the more extreme of the two business-oriented political parties. The pretext for the huge arms sales to Saudi Arabia is defense against the “Iranian threat.”
However, the Iranian threat is not military, as the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence have emphasized. Were Iran to develop a nuclear weapons capacity, the purpose would be deterrent—presumably to ward off a U.S.-Israeli attack.
The real threat, in Washington’s view, is that Iran is seeking to expand its influence in neighboring countries “stabilized” by U.S. invasion and occupation.
The official line is that the Arab states are pleading for U.S. military aid to defend themselves against Iran. True or false, the claim provides interesting insight into the reigning concept of democracy. Whatever the ruling dictatorships may prefer, Arabs in a recent Brookings poll rank the major threats to the region as Israel (88 percent), the United States (77 percent) and Iran (10 percent).
It is interesting that U.S. officials, as revealed in the just-released WikiLeaks cables, totally ignored Arab public opinion, keeping to the views of the reigning dictators.
The U.S. gifts to Israel also include diplomatic support, according to current reports. Washington pledges to veto any U.N. Security Council actions that might annoy Israel’s leaders and to drop any call for further extension of a settlement freeze.
Hence, by agreeing to the three-month pause, Israel will no longer be disturbed by the paymaster as it expands its criminal actions in the occupied territories.
That these actions are criminal has not been in doubt since late 1967, when Israel’s leading legal authority, international jurist Theodor Meron, advised the government that its plans to initiate settlements in the occupied territories violated the Fourth Geneva Convention, a core principle of international humanitarian law, established in 1949 to criminalize the horrors of the Nazi regime.
Meron’s conclusion was endorsed by Justice Minister Ya’akov Shimson Shapira, and shortly after by Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, writes historian Gershom Gorenberg in The Accidental Empire.
Dayan informed his fellow ministers, “We must consolidate our hold so that over time we will succeed in `digesting’ Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and merging them with `little’ Israel,” meanwhile “dismember(ing) the territorial contiguity” of the West Bank, all under the usual pretense “that the step is necessary for military purposes.”
Dayan had no doubts, or qualms, about what he was recommending: “Settling Israelis in occupied territory contravenes, as is known, international conventions,” he observed. “But there is nothing essentially new in that.”
Dayan’s correct assumption was that the boss in Washington might object formally, but with a wink, and would continue to provide the decisive military, economic and diplomatic support for the criminal endeavors.
The criminality has been underscored by repeated Security Council resolutions, more recently by the International Court of Justice, with the basic agreement of U.S. Justice Thomas Buergenthal in a separate declaration. Israel’s actions also violate U.N. Security Council resolutions concerning Jerusalem. But everything is fine as long as Washington winks.
Back in Washington, the Republican super-hawks are even more fervent in their support for Israeli crimes. Eric Cantor, the new majority leader in the House of Representatives, “has floated a novel solution to protect aid for Israel from the current foreign aid backlash,” Glenn Kessler reports in The Washington Post: “giving the Jewish state its own funding account, thus removing it from funds for the rest of the world.”
The issue of settlement expansion is simply a diversion. The real issue is the existence of the settlements and related infrastructure developments. These have been carefully designed so that Israel has already taken over more than 40 percent of the occupied West Bank, including suburbs of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv; the arable land; and the primary water sources of the region, all on the Israeli side of the Separation Wall—in reality an annexation wall.
Since 1967, Israel has vastly expanded the borders of Jerusalem in violation of Security Council orders and despite universal international objection (including the U.S., at least formally).
The focus on settlement expansion, and Washington’s groveling, are not the only farcical elements of the current negotiations. The very structure is a charade. The U.S. is portrayed as an “honest broker” seeking to mediate between two recalcitrant adversaries. But serious negotiations would be conducted by some neutral party, with the U.S. and Israel on one side, and the world on the other.
It is hardly a secret that for 35 years the U.S. and Israel have stood virtually alone in opposition to a consensus on a political settlement that is close to universal, including the Arab states, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (including Iran), and all other relevant parties.
With brief and rare departures, the two rejectionist states have preferred illegal expansion to security. Unless Washington’s stand changes, political settlement is effectively barred. And expansion, with its reverberations throughout the region and the world, continues.
A Message from Anonymous to the World
(This article is re-posted from Infoshop.)
Greetings. We are Anonymous. Due to the misconceptions being propagated, we are setting the record straight.
Anonymous is a diverse collective of individuals focused on securing freedom of speech and information worldwide. Our intent is not to disrupt without cause, but to protect the Internet from the tyranny that government and corporate agencies are now seeking to impose on it. We do this not for ourselves, but to assert the rights of the freedom of speech and information globally. We ask you to support us, not for our sake, but for your own rights. Do not allow governments, corporations or the media to control what you are allowed to see, hear and think.
Many in the media have painted a distorted image of what Anonymous is. The Constitution of the United States is said to be a living document because it can be amended to suit the changing needs of the American people. In that same spirit, Anonymous is a living culture of people and ideas; a growing, shifting entity. Anonymous is any individual, regardless of nationality, gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, or creed. Anything attributed, credited, or tagged to Anonymous is rarely based on any consensus of us as a whole–we operate through a democratic meritocracy of ideas, and we follow our own consciences convictions rather than any leader. Anonymous seeks to stand up for truth and transparency and we ask you as an individual, a media organization, or government, to do the same.
During the American Civil Rights movement, activists conducted sit-ins to prevent access to businesses in non-violent protest against segregation. People were certainly inconvenienced and angry as a result, but those non-violent protests were essential to the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Today, many businesses of the world live on the internet, and so the protests too, must move online. Our DDoS attacks are virtual sit-ins, aimed at those entities that have aided in the censorship of information. These actions do no permanent damage or harm: we merely take up bandwidth and system resources, like protestors filled the seats of Woolworth’s lunch counters.
This particular campaign, Operation Payback, is a response to the actions taken against WikiLeaks. A number of the world’s most economically and politically powerful institutions have attempted to destroy the credibility of this organisation and to remove it entirely from the Internet. This repression is done in the name of protecting national interests, but it is actually a way to protect those who are guilty of destroying transparency in an attempt to conceal their own misdeeds from the public. There is no evidence that any individual has come to harm due to the information released. WikiLeaks operates with the co-operation of several press outlets, and have attempted to discuss what should be released with the state department to no avail. It is due to this concerted effort to suppress them that we are standing up for their freedom.
The Internet is the final stronghold of freedom in this increasingly authoritarian world. It is capable of connecting and uniting all of humanity, removing the barriers of language and distance. When we are connected, we are strong. When we are strong, we need not fear tyranny. This is why governments and corporations are moving on Wikileaks. They fear our power when we unite globally; they fear our ability to demand justice. Do not forget this.
This is a historically important moment for the fate of free speech in this emerging information society. These attacks on freedom of expression will have important implications for the future. Our peaceful activism will focus on anyone who intends to infringe on the freedoms of speech and information, regardless of the power they wield. The entities that we campaign against are denying everyone a basic human right. Any person, corporation, government, or other entity that turns against this pattern of censorship, and starts promoting freedom of speech instead, will become our allies. Anonymous wants to educate our opponents rather than hurt them; we are campaigning for freedom for everyone, even those who criticize and attack us. Anonymous’ campaign does not intend to harm the individual citizen, any organization, any website, or government that supports true freedom of speech.
Anonymous urges the people of the world to join in the fight against all forms of censorship, in defense of freedom both online and off. We exist on the fringes of society, both online and off, but if you search for us, you will find us. We will end this note with a final message for those who still intend to continue their campaign against the human rights of freedom of speech, freedom of expression through the press, and freedom of information:
We are Anonymous.
We are Legion.
Join us.
IWW film night: “What Would Jesus Buy?”
Free Film Screening!
What Would Jesus Buy
Thurs. Dec. 16 at 7p.m.
IATSE Hall, 931 Bridge St. NW
The Shopocalypse is upon us … Who will be $aved?
Do you need some inspiration to overcome the commercialization of Christmas and hell-fires of credit card debt this holiday season? Join Reverend Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping for a heartwarming, hilarious and insightful cross-country crusade against consumerism. Co-sponsored by IATSE Local 26 and the Grand Rapids IWW, the film What Would Jesus Buy? will give you a good laugh along with the wake-up call you need to enter the New Year free from the bonds of over-consumption. Stick around after the film for a good discussion of consumerism in America.
Produced by Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me), What Would Jesus Buy? lays bare the commercialization of Christmas. The film’s Web site elaborates, “Bill Talen (aka Reverend Billy) was a lost idealist who hitchhiked to New York City only to find that Times Square was becoming a mall. Spurred on by the loss of his neighborhood and inspired by the sidewalk preachers around him, Bill bought a collar to match his white caterer’s jacket, bleached his hair and became the Reverend Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping. Since 1999, Reverend Billy has gone from being a lone preacher with a portable pulpit preaching on subways, to the leader of a congregation and a movement whose numbers are well into the thousands.
Through retail interventions, corporate exorcisms, and some good old-fashioned preaching, Reverend Billy reminds us that we have lost the true meaning of Christmas. What Would Jesus Buy? is a journey into the heart of America – from exorcising the demons at the Wal-Mart headquarters to taking over the center stage at the Mall of America and then ultimately heading to the Promised Land … Disneyland.
Will we be led like Sheeple to the Christmas slaughter, or will we find a new way to give a gift this Christmas? What Would Jesus Buy? may just be the divine intervention we’ve all been searching for.”
View the trailer.
The Deafening Silence About the War in the Deficit Debate
(This article is re-posted from the Huffington Post.)
There is a lot of talk right now on Capitol Hill about the need to balance the federal budget. Sadly, both Democrats and Republicans alike are largely debating about how best to balance the budget upon the backs of the poor and working people (who are many times the very same people) and the elderly. First and foremost on the chopping block appears to be Social Security and Medicare — the lifeline for millions of seniors in this country and the only hope for any sort of retirement for the vast majority of people in this country.
Meanwhile, belying any real interest in balancing the budget, the extension of unemployment benefits for millions of people out of work through no fault of their own is being made contingent upon tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans.
At the same time, what is largely absent from this debate is discussion of the war, which includes military actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, allied Pakistan, military exercises in the Yellow Sea and elsewhere, and the maintenance of over 800 U.S. military bases throughout the world. To put the latter into perspective, Great Britain and Ancient Rome, at the very height of their Empires, never had more than 40 military bases internationally.
The U.S. is always at war, whether the pretext is fighting Communism or terrorism, or, as is usually the actual case, fighting against national liberation efforts and for the ability of U.S. corporations to expand their domain and control.
While President Obama had promised during his campaign to “change the mindset that leads us to war,” and while many of us, myself included, believed him, Obama could not even wait until his first weekend in office before launching one of his many (many more than Bush) drone attacks into Pakistan, predictably killing mostly civilians. In addition, just after it was announced that he won the Nobel Prize for Peace, Obama, almost to spite the Nobel committee, announced the “surge” in Afghanistan which is putting 30,000 more American lives in jeopardy, leading to a massive increase of civilian deaths in Afghanistan over those killed during Bush’s tenure, and further inflaming tensions in the Middle East.
Indeed, Obama has been more hawkish than Bush in a number of ways as seen, for example, in his re-commencing funding for the brutal “red berets” of Indonesia — which even Bush refused to do on human rights grounds — and in his re-commissioning the 4th Fleet in the Caribbean which Eisenhower had de-commissioned in the 1950’s.
In the end, while Obama is rightly criticized for being too conciliatory to the rich and powerful — to Wall Street bankers and to the Republicans — he is unflinchingly harsh when it comes to unleashing violence throughout the world.
And so, the war goes on unabated. If it were not enough that the war is currently costing the lives of tens of thousands of innocents abroad as well the lives of thousands of young U.S. military personnel, most of which signed up because they could not find work here, the war is eating up more and more of the federal budget. Depending upon how one counts, the war (both current and past military actions which we continue to pay for) accounts for around half of the total budget of the United States.
No matter how you count, it is clear that the current Af-Pak and Iraq wars will cost this country well over $1 trillion. A modest proposal for cutting the deficit would be to start there, and to try at all costs to spare social spending for the growing needy in our country.
As Noam Chomsky explains, the reason the war is not up for debate is the fact that there has been a political consensus between the two parties since World War II that the U.S. economy would continue to be primed through military spending rather than social spending — social spending having the disadvantage, from the point of view of those who rule this country, of distributing wealth downward rather than upward.
Military spending, on the other hand, amounts to a regressive tax which requires the vast majority of working people to subsidize what President Eisenhower decried as “the military-industrial complex” — that is, high tech companies, weapons manufacturers, and the new proliferation of mercenary organizations (e.g., Black Water, DynCorp and many more) receiving lucrative defense contracts. Further, this spending allows the U.S. to engage in military efforts abroad fought (despite the more lofty goals claimed) in the interests of allowing such corporate interests to expand their markets, and increase their profits, even more.
It is this type of corporate welfare system, along with periodic bank bailouts and tax cuts for the super-rich, which suits the two political parties just fine. Welfare for the truly needy, however, is generally abhorrent to them, and thus the limited nature of the current debate about the federal deficit.
Of course, for those of us concerned about basic notions of fairness and justice, and for those of us who are literally dying at the hands of this system, this state of affairs is completely unacceptable, and must be resisted. A good place to start would be the December 16 anti-war demonstration in Washington, D.C. For more information, go to Stop These Wars.
2010 GRIID Film Study
This film study was a project done primarily by GVSU student John DeRuiter, with assistance by Jeff Smith. The last film study GRIID conducted was of films was in 2003, with reports done on Race Representation in Film, Product Placement, Tobacco Use and Hyper-sexual content.
The American movie industry influences millions of people in the U.S. and abroad. The movie industry is wildly lucrative, and incredibly powerful. These movies have the ability to normalize how we see ourselves and the world around us. Also, movies usually have a product or idea to sell to the audience, and they have the capabilities to make people want and need these products and ideas. To understand what the corporate movie industry projects as reality and what ideas or products are being sold, it is important to look at films collectively over a period of time and not just on an individual basis.
This study examined five distinct areas of movies, the areas are: the racial make-up of the cast, the amount of sexual objectification, the amount of gratuitous violence, the amount of product placement, and how the movie dealt with American foreign and domestic policy.
The study investigated 42 movies released on DVD in the first four months of 2010. The movies are:
2012 Armored Amelia Astro Boy A Serious Man Avatar
Bitch Slap Black Dynamite Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
Couples Retreat Crazy Heart Did You Hear About the Morgans?
Everybody’s Fine Fantastic Mr. Fox Gamer Halloween II
Law Abiding Citizen Ninja Assassin Old Dogs Planet 51
Ponyo Post Grad Sherlock Holmes Sorority Row
Surrogates The Blind Side The Box The Final Destination
The Hurt Locker The Informant! The Invention of Lying
The Lovely Bones The Men Who Stare at Goats The Princess and the Frog
The Stepfather The Time Travelers Wife The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Tyler Perry’s I Can do Bad All by Myself Up in the Air Where the Wild Things Are
Whip It! Zombieland
Racial and Gender Make-Up of the Cast
This section of the study looked at who (what race) played what roles, and how the various races and genders were presented to the audience. This section also looked for examples of racism. Racism is any negative comment or portrayal of any minority race. Racism in movies is usually subtle and furthers the notion of white supremacy, with the hopes of normalizing the idea through constant repetition. Prejudices towards whites, though not as common, were also noted. Also, situations that portray physical handicaps in a negative light were considered racism.
The racism in Hollywood movies is not usually in the form of openly racist comments or actions, but is of a more subtle kind. The racism is built in and is not entirely noticed when viewing just one or two movies, but when a large group of movies is studied the racism is evident. This is what would be called systemic racism.
Of the 42 movies studied, 28 (66%) had a white male lead. 36 (85%) contained a white lead, male or female.
The following movies with an asterisk contained a non white lead, and the movies with a double asterisk contained a female lead.
Armored*
AvatarBitch Slap **
Black Dynamite*
Did You Hear About the Morgans? **
Halloween II **
Ninja Assassin*
The Princess and the Frog*
Ponyo**
Post Grad **
Sorority Row **
The Blind Side*
The Box **
The Lovely Bones **
The Princess and the Frog* **
The Time Travelers Wife **
Tyler Perry’s I Can do Bad All by Myself* **
Whip It! **
This means that of the 42 films in the study only 6 movies had non-white lead characters and only 11 had lead female characters. These movies are clearly weighted with white males, and do not paint an accurate picture of the make-up of the diversity in the US population and abroad. They do however paint an accurate description of the white-male dominated movie industry.
Examples and Highlights:
Surrogates – In this film the African American police chief is corrupt and the militant leader of the anti-surrogate community is Black. However, the anti-surrogate Black leader ends up being just a surrogate of a White inventor and is used for political purposes. This is in contrast to the hero, a White cop played by Bruce Willis.
The Men Who Stare at Goats: the only movie studied which contained any Arab characters, and not surprisingly the characters were often depicted as terrorists.
I Can Do Bad all by Myself: This movie contains an almost entirely minority cast and crew. While this movie may have been intended to give minorities a better opportunity to be in a Hollywood production, it does nothing to break down the walls of division, which so clearly stand in American media.
New Moon – Like the other films in the Twilight series, New Moon promotes racial stereotypes. The Native American characters in the film live in poverty. Quite often the young male Native characters are seen with their shirts off, thus overemphasizing their physical nature. The Native characters are also prone to become angry and lose their tempers easily. This is in sharp contrast to the White vampires in the film, which are economically well off and generally have a calm demeanor.
Sexual Objectification
This section of the study examined the movies looking for examples of sexism. Sexism can relate to remarks and situations that cast women in a negative light. The hyper – sexualization of women and their treatment as mere objects are the foremost examples of sexism. Comments and actions which further the traditional ideas of what a woman or a man should be were also considered sexism. The traditional idea of a woman is that she is: beautiful, caring, dependant, etc. The traditional idea for a man is that he is: strong, smart, independent, etc.
Of 42 movies studied, 10 (23%) contained scenes or situations where sexual objectification of women occurred. The following movies contained scenes of sexual objectification:
Bitch Slap*
Black Dynamite*
Couples Retreat *
Did You Hear About the Morgans?*
Gamer*
Halloween II*
Sorority Row *
Surrogates *
The Final Destination*
Up in the Air*
Examples and Highlights:
Sorority Row: This movie paints quite a dim view of American sorority girls. All of the girls are incredibly promiscuous, including one who sells herself out to a doctor in exchange for prescriptions.
The Final Destination: This movie portrays both males and females in a demeaning way. There are many scenes with sexualized content, including one scene showing the “hook-up” of two perfect strangers, (the scene does nothing to further the plot and is unnecessary.)
Bitch Slap: The entirety of this movie contains hyper-sexualization of women. The plot details the story of three prostitutes who have become involved with a murder. This movie is so over the top it is easy to see it as a parody, but it still contains a massive amount of sexual objectification.
However, some films did present women as strong, courageous and independent. Two examples of positive depictions of women were:
Whip It – In this film there are numerous examples of women playing non-stereotypical roles. Most of the women in the film are roller derby athletes and the main character (played by Ellen Page) demonstrates a great deal of self-confidence, determination and persistence, despite the personal risks she takes throughout the film. She is assertive with both her parents and holds her boyfriend accountable for his behavior.
Avatar – There are also strong women in the blockbuster movie Avatar. Sigourney Weaver’s character is independent and confident throughout the film and the lead female character (Neytiri) is a confident, courage’s and athletic character that is also very ground in her culture and spirituality. She becomes the mentor to the lead male character Jake, played by Sam Worthington.
Violence
This section looked at the amount of violence in each movie. This section also looked at who was committing these acts of aggression. The excessive amount of violence in our society is in part normalized by the amount of violence present in mainstream movies.
Of the 42 movies studied, 15 (35%) contained scenes of gratuitous violence. Of those 15 movies, only one contained violence committed by a female (Bitch Slap). Also, of the 15 violence containing movies, white males committed 73% of the violence.
The following movies contained gratuitous violence, meaning excessive violence that was not necessary to communicate a certain dynamic in the film.
Armored*
Avatar*
Bitch Slap*
Black Dynamite*
Did You Hear About the Morgans?*
Gamer*
Halloween II*
Law Abiding Citizen*
Ninja Assassin*
Sherlock Holmes*
Sorority Row*
Surrogates*
The Final Destination*
The Hurt Locker*
The Stepfather*
Zombieland*
Examples and Highlights:
Armored: This movie tells the story of a group of armored truck drivers who decide to loot their own cars. The plot slowly gets more violent and culminates in a chaotic shootout.
The Stepfather: This movie is about a psychopathic murderer who tricks women into marrying him and then takes pride in brutally mutilating his new family.
Gamer: This movie can almost been seen as a parody of America’s obsession with violent videogames and can easily be connected to the insensitivity our society has towards violence. In the movie gamers can control real live prison inmates and use them to fight and kill other individuals. While this movie points out flaws in American society, it is itself a component of the violence driven society we live in, because the violence is highlighted and graphic.
Ninja Assassin – This film from start to finish is filled with intense and graphic violence. The film has over 100 murders, some by decapitation.
Product Placement
This section examined each movie looking for examples of product placement. Product placement is the use of products as either background props or more commonly as items that are written into the script with a contractual agreement. These placements are just like any other advertisement where the brand pays for a spot in the movie. These placements are quite common, and our culture of consumption is promoted and normalized by the ubiquity of these products in commerical movies.
Of the 42 movies studied 28 (66%) contained deliberate examples of product placement. The following movies contained product placement:
2012*
Armored*
Black Dynamite*
Couples Retreat *
Crazy Heart*
Did You Hear About the Morgans?*
Everybody’s Fine*
Law Abiding Citizen*
Ninja Assassin*
Old Dogs *
Planet 51*
Post Grad*
Sorority Row *
Surrogates *
The Blind Side*
The Box*
The Final Destination*
The Informant!*
The Invention of Lying*
The Lovely Bones*
The Princess and the Frog*
The Stepfather*
The Time Travelers Wife *
The Twilight Saga: New Moon*
Tyler Perry’s I Can do Bad All by Myself*
Up in the Air*
Whip It!*
Zombieland*
Some of these movies contained very few or very subtle examples of placement, while others contained very obvious examples. A few highlighted examples of products entering the plot and affecting the movie are:
Up In the Air: this movie seemed to be almost a feature length commercial spot for American Airlines. George Clooney’s character always flies with American Airlines.
Zombieland: In this movie, Woody Harrelson’s character is obsessed with finding Twinkies and spends much time talking about Hostess products in general.
Post Grad: In this movie, Eskimo Pie’s are said to balance “all that is wrong with the universe” and a lengthy promotion of the brand follows.
Couples Retreat: The product placement that took up more actual screen time than any other film during the study was the use of Guitar Hero in the film Couple’s Retreat. Not only do people play the game for several minutes in a row, with parts of the video game are edited in to the film and one of the lead characters (Vince Vaughn) is a video game salesman who actually sells Guitar Hero.
US Militarism
This section investigated the how the US military and militarism were depicted. It has become increasingly clear that when the US military is part of Hollywood film plots that they tend to be presented in a positive way. This is in part due to the US Defense Department’s role in the content of movie scripts as is documented in the book The Hollywood War Machine: U.S. Militarism and Popular Culture, by Carl Boggs.
There were only three films that dealt with the US military or militarism:
Avatar: The plot of this movie places American backed corporations as the antagonist, and the native population of a foreign planet as the protagonist. The final scene ends with the defeat of the Americans and a victory for the natives and their planet. Whether or not the human soldiers in the film are US military or private mercenaries is not clear, but they clearly seemed to be from the US.
The Men who Stare at Goats: This movie is about a secret division of the American military, which had begun research into mind control techniques. The movie makes a farce of the American military and its engagement in the war in Iraq.
The Hurt Locker: This movie takes a very neutral stance about the life of a soldier in the American Military fighting in the war in Iraq. The movie has a documentary feel to it and casually shows the life of a soldier. The positives and negatives of army life are highlighted. The truth about being in combat and then returning home is shown, and the taxing nature of this is shown.
Conclusion
This report was created to highlight some of the shortcomings of the mainstream film industry. The report is not meant to be definitive evidence, but only to point to some inherent flaws in how Hollywood normalizes certain ways of seeing the world.
This report has shown that white-men dominate the lead roles in most movies; 24 out of the 42 movies studied contained a white male lead. The study also looked at gender representation; males dominated the violence in movies, and women were sexually objectified in many of the films. This reinforces the commonly accepted gender roles in our society; men are strong and independent, and women are sexual dependent objects.
Another element the study focused on was the amount of product placement in movies, (66% contained deliberate product placement). This shows how clearly intertwined corporate America is with Hollywood movies and the growing efforts to commercialize all aspects of public life.
This study has shown that our society is not properly represented by the Hollywood film industry. Our population is not half white men, nor do they commit 73% of the violence. Women are not sexual objects and are clearly capable of an independent life in which they are they lead role. Minorities are grossly underrepresented in all aspects of Hollywood movies, which is not an honest depiction of American society.
This study has found and shown that while these movies may provide a form of entertainment, they perpetuate stereotypes and contribute to a very narrow way of seeing the world, a world that is often white male dominated, with violence and consumerism as behavioral norms.
The Press cites “Watchdog” in criticism of MEA
Today, Press education reporter Dave Murray wrote a story for MLive entitled, “Watchdog group says MEA executive earning nearly $300,000 is out of touch with teachers.”
The article is based on a Press Release from a Muskegon-based group called the Education Action Group (EAG), which is calling out the Michigan Education Association’s President and other staff are making too much money.
The Press article does provide a response from the MEA, which says, “Our people are leading a huge, multi-million dollar operation, one of the largest unions in the state, and are compensated accordingly.”
However, the bulk of the article is commentary from EAG director Kyle Olsen. Olsen’s comments are not just critical of MEA staff salaries, but the overall cost of unionized teachers in general in the state of Michigan. This would not be much of a revelation to Press readers if the reporter had bothered to provide some background information on the EAG and its founder Kyle Olsen.
Kyle Olsen has appeared on Fox News numerous times in recent months and has also been a guest on the shows of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. Olsen is also the editor of the online source Public School Spending, which is a clearinghouse for information critical of education unions across the country.
On Olsen’s personal blog he also has links to ATF Exposed, a site dedicated to criticizing the American Federation of Teachers union and NEA Exposed, which slams the National Education Association. Along with these links, Olsen’s blog and the Education Action Group site all have very similar content to the anti-union consultant Rick Berman’s Teacher’s Union Exposed. While there is no evidence that these anti-union forces have any relationship, they certainly share the same perspective and use many of the same anti-union talking points.
If the Grand Rapids Press is going to use the term Watchdog when referring to EAG and Kyle Olsen, they need to qualify what that means and provide readers more information on efforts to discredit the Michigan Teachers union.
Letter of support for WikiLeak’s founder Julian Assange
(This letter is re-posted from ZNet.)
While only a tiny fraction of the U.S. diplomatic cables scheduled for publication by Wikileaks have thus far been made available, some conclusions can already be drawn. These cables and the Iraq and Afghan War Diaries provide an opportunity for Americans to see our government for what it is.
Our government is seen here as controlling a global military and espionage empire that impacts every region of the globe and deceives its own population. Secrecy, spying, and hostility have infected our entire government, turning the diplomatic corps into an arm of the CIA and the military, just as the civilian efforts in Afghanistan are described by Richard Holbrooke, who heads them up, as “support for the military.” Secret war planning, secret wars, and lies about wars have become routine. The United States is secretly and illegally engaged in a war in Yemen and has persuaded that nation’s government to lie about it. The United States has supported a coup in Honduras and lied about it.
We have long known that the war on terrorism was increasing, rather than diminishing, terrorism. These leaks show Saudi Arabia to be the greatest sponsor of terrorism, and show that nation’s dictator, King Abdullah, to be very close to our own government in its treatment of prisoners. He has urged the United States to implant microchips in prisoners released from Guantanamo. And he has urged the United States to illegally and aggressively attack Iran. Congress should immediately block what would be the largest weapons sale in U.S. history, selling this country $60 billion in weapons. And Congress should drop any idea of “updating” the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force to permit presidents to unconstitutionally launch more wars. We see what sort of wars our allies urge on our presidents.
We learn that while dictators urge war, other branches of the same governments, the people, and the evidence weigh against it. We learn from a cable from last February that Russia has refuted U.S. claims that Iran has missiles that could target Europe. We learn from September 2009 that the United States and Britain planned to pressure Yukiya Amano, the then incoming head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to produce reports suggesting Iranian nuclear developments, whether or not merited by the facts, and that National Security Adviser Gen. Jim Jones proposed the propaganda strategy of baselessly tying Iran’s nuclear program to North Korea’s.
Much of the pressure for war appears to come from within the United States, whose representatives treat the entire world as a hostile enemy to be spied on, lied to, and exploited. The secrecy that permits this behavior must be broken if the United States’ approach to the world is to change. Those who have helped to fulfill President Obama’s campaign promise of transparency must be protected from his vengeance, while those who have abused positions of diplomatic trust to advance agendas of espionage and war planning must be held accountable.
While other countries may offer residency and protection to Wikileaks’ Julian Assange, it is the United States that has most benefitted from his work. We encourage U.S. cities to offer him sanctuary.
Our Department of Justice has granted immunity for aggressive war, kidnapping, torture, assassination, and warrantless spying, while pursuing the criminal prosecution of Bradley Manning for allegedly leaking materials to Wikileaks. Were our government to indict Assange or support the extradition or rendition of Assange from anywhere in the world to Sweden, while maintaining that his work and not the Pentagon’s has endangered us, our nation’s moral standing would reach a new low.
Our government should cease any actions it is taking to prosecute Julian Assange for absurd criminal charges, to pressure Sweden to do so, or to sabotage Wikileaks’ servers. Coverups of leaks have a history in Washington of backfiring in the form of larger leaks and scandals. Our State Department should focus on diplomacy and mutually beneficial partnerships with the world community.
The undersigned express our gratitude to those doing the job a representative government and an independent media are each supposed to do. We demand an end to all overt and covert wars, a ban on the use of State Department employees and contractors in spying or warfare, and a full investigation of the facts revealed in the Wikileaks cables.
We support the protest of our current wars planned for December 16th, 10 a.m., at the White House.
Signed,
Medea Benjamin
Leslie Cagan
Tim Carpenter
Gael Murphy
Cindy Sheehan
David Swanson
Debra Sweet
Ann Wright
Kevin Zeese
Coca Cola and the Hijacking of Santa Claus
Tis the season as they say to be shopping, but it is also the time of the year when advertisements are trying to tap into “traditional” notions of Christmas.
Of course there is no greater icon for this time of the year than jolly old Saint Nicholas, more commonly known as Santa Claus. Whether we tell our children or not about the white-bearded man in a red suit, Santa Claus will be part of children’s consciousness at a very early age.
However, the current manifestation of Santa Claus is a drastically different one from traditional European Christian culture. In fact, the image we have of Santa Claus right now, with the red and white suit, is really a cultural creation of the Coca Coal Company.
In the later part of the 19th Century artists were depicting St. Nick in a variety of ways, with the red and white outfit being only one of them. However, Coca Cola, which was seeking to expand its marketing of their soda beverage from just a warm weather drink and Santa Claus became the perfect symbol to help them achieve that goal.
Starting in 1931, the company began running ads during the Christmas season where Santa Claus would be drinking or delivering Coca Cola along with the other presents. The popularity of the use of these images helped the company develop their brand as the preferred holiday beverage that persists til today.
Here is an example of a current Coca Cola commercial that utilizes Santa Claus as the one who, along with Coke, brings people together and makes our lives special. The magic of Santa Claus is demonstrated by his power to influence our lives as if we were characters in a snow globe.
However, all the associations we have of Santa Claus with Christmas is really a manifestation of modern consumer culture, where the emphasis is placed on buying and wanting presents. This is a far cry from the historical St. Nicholas, a bishop from the 3rd Century who provided comfort to the poor, particularly poor children.
After his death St. Nick was interpreted in all sort of ways, often based on regional and cultural myths. However, the Catholic Church celebrates the feast of St. Nicholas on December 6th, where it is common practices still in some European countries to give gifts at that time.
Regardless of how one celebrates or acknowledges this 3rd Century bishop it is safe to say that the modern consumer culture has hijacked someone who would most likely be disgusted at the greed and materialism that currently surrounds his role at Christmas. Religious traditionalist may want to consider reclaiming the message of St. Nicholas, but it also seems that considering the economic hardships families face and the unhealthy message that adults send to children about the hyper-commercial significance of overspending and materialism that now drives Christmas, parents might consider some alternatives.
There are all kinds of suggestions about what to do differently during the Christmas season, but one good source for parents on alternatives to the hyper-commercial aspect of the holiday is the Commercial Free Holiday Guide put out by the Campaign for Commercial Free Childhood.
If you are in West Michigan and you are looking for parents, educators and community activists that are combating commercial pressures targeted towards children, contact STOK (Stop Targeting Our Kids.)
New Report reveals Obama administration gave stimulus funds to companies with a history of polluting
The Center for Public Integrity has released a new report that looks at how the 2009 stimulus funds were distributed and how in many cases the money went to companies with a history of polluting the environment.
“In the name of job creation and clean energy, the Obama administration has doled out billions of dollars in stimulus money to some of the nation’s biggest polluters and granted them sweeping exemptions from the most basic form of environmental oversight, a Center for Public Integrity investigation has found.
The administration has awarded more than 179,000 “categorical exclusions” to stimulus projects funded by federal agencies, freeing those projects from review under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. Coal-burning utilities like Westar Energy and Duke Energy, chemical manufacturer DuPont, and ethanol maker Didion Milling are among the firms with histories of serious environmental violations that have won blanket NEPA exemptions.
Even a project at BP’s maligned refinery in Texas City, Tex. — owner of the oil industry’s worst safety record and site of a deadly 2005 explosion, as well as a benzene leak earlier this year — secured a waiver for the preliminary phase of a carbon capture and sequestration experiment involving two companies with past compliance problems. The primary firm has since dropped out of the project before it could advance to the second phase.
Agency officials who granted the exemptions told the Center that they do not have time in most cases to review the environmental compliance records of stimulus recipients, and do not believe past violations should affect polluters’ chances of winning stimulus money or the NEPA exclusions.
The so-called “stimulus” funding came from the $787-billion legislation officially known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, passed in February 2009.
Documents obtained by the Center show the administration has devised a speedy review process that relies on voluntary disclosures by companies to determine whether stimulus projects pose environmental harm. Corporate polluters often omitted mention of health, safety, and environmental violations from their applications. In fact, administration officials told the Center they chose to ignore companies’ environmental compliance records in making grant decisions and issuing NEPA exemptions, saying they considered such information irrelevant.”
You can read the entire report online at http://www.publicintegrity.org/articles/entry/2565/
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 
Racism and the Readers of the GR Press
For a long time, I’ve complained to friends about letters to the editor in the printed copy of the Grand Rapids Press. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed the bigotry, the lack of compassion, and the deep scorn for social justice issues displayed in them.
Not long ago, a friend said, “You know what? The comments posted by readers on the MLive site are even worse.” This sparked an idea. I decided to set a time frame (10 days), start commenting about multiple articles on the Grand Rapids Press part of MLive, and record both reactions to my posts and comments from the threads as a whole.
My friend was right. The only thing worse than those letters in the Press is when the letters talk back to you.
My comments drew a lot of fire. I decided to alternate between reasonable fact-based posts and ones that were provocative, although I was never openly hostile as many of the readers were. My user name indicated I’m a woman (I’d estimate that about 80 percent of the regular commentators are men), which made me a target. And I clearly came across as someone who was not, let’s say, a member of the Tea Party. Within a couple of days, I was being tackled every time I posted, and called “a liberal piece of shit,” “a radical bitch,” and “a Marxist whore” on a regular basis.
But that was nothing compared to the level of anger and outrage I found on the site in general. And it appeared to be 100 percent White rage. The kind of rage that Bob Grant, an early radio host in the 1970s, used to gin up to increase his listener base, a style Rush Limbaugh copied on his own show on Fox. In fact, it seemed that a lot of the comments posted were nothing more than Fox News sound bites. If you tried to get the authors to elaborate, or produce facts to back up their statements, they usually couldn’t. But they were united in one idea: it was all the fault of the “liberals”…the minorities…the “illegal immigrants” … the U.N.
This us-versus-them mentality came across clearly in all discussions. Here are some comments from various threads:
When discussing unemployment figures, many readers felt the high rate was the fault of immigrants. As one reader said:
Let’s see, 20 MILLION illegal alien scum, you know – “doing the lobs Americans just won’t do”? Remember them? Hmmmmm, I wonder…What if we rounded them all up like the infectious cancer on our society they are, beat them into submission, then dumped their broken bodies back HOME in me-hee-co, maybe, just maybe, there would be – oh I don’t know , MILLIONS of jobs available?
Other comments on this topic included:
•“…they are breaking into our country and TAKING jobs, health care, welfare, and NOT paying taxes.”
•“Minority this, minority that! You get special treatment if your not WHITE!”
•“Path to citizenship? How about a path to Mexico? We don’t need them here. They are CRIMINALS! They might be future Democrats…..but THEY ARE CRIMINALS.”
An article about a high school student that was shot and then run down by a car in Kentwood while attempting to save his brother from being killed found no sympathy with the Grand Rapids Press crowd. One man wrote:
I am getting so sick of hearing about the blacks shooting each other. Ok, the article doesn’t state the color of anyone involved but I’d bet my next paycheck I am correct. This crap is getting too close to where I live, time to get out of the area and let them ‘take over’ another nice area of town.
•A side discussion about how affirmative action was somehow responsible for this violence caused me to object about calling affirmative action “racist.” A reader responded: “Calling affirmative action racist is repulsive to you? That’s all you needed to say. I mean, what’s the problem with telling minorities they can’t perform at the same level as white people?”
•A third follow-up article, about the dead boy’s family and brother, netted this comment: “If I pay for their health care, welfare, why not throw in a couple bucks for the funeral. The American Dream-From the womb to the tomb without ever working.”
•Chillingly, this statement capped one thread about the shooting: “Its called thinning out the Herd.”
During the time I was posting, two article related to the GLBT community appeared in the news. One was about a GVSU group of GLBT students who were attempting to get the dorm rules changed so that they could choose the gender and orientation of their roommates, rather than endure random assignments. The men of the posting community were universally disgusted by the idea. Some of the comments included:
•“SICK SOCIETY. Take it to the Truck Stops.”
•“What a cesspool.”
•“Back to mambi-pambi land for these freaks. I am so sick of kowtowing this crap. I am considering sending my girl to GVSU next year…. BUT…. not if this sickos get to rule the roost…..”
•One reader noted that the students’ spokesperson would just have to go back to “stalking” across town since the dorms would be off-limits to him as a resource.
The second article was about the proposed repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy. The regular commentators were universally against this. The level of “jokes”—and accompanying sexual tension—over this topic was noticeable. Some of the comments included:
•“Homosexuality is a mental disorder.”
•“Testosterone + 5.56 mm rounds + gays = big trouble for all.”
•“youwhoo youwhoo oh youwhoo, attention.”
•“…if a gay couple (male) are married and serving together in Afghanistan, who wears the burka?”
Interestingly, the “jokes” came to an abrupt end when male readers who were or had been in the military made it known that they were nearly 100 percent in favor of the policy’s repeal.
A lot of this seemed familiar from the printed paper’s editorial page. But one topic that generated perhaps the most anger caught me by surprise, and that was a hatred of the unemployed.
The majority opinion among the Grand Rapids Press readers posting on MLive seemed to be that the unemployed were leeches draining our economy of any lifeblood it had left. They were accused of wanting “handouts” and deliberately not looking for work in order to spin out their unemployment benefits longer. One reader wrote:
FIGURE IT OUT! You popped that family out without giving a thought on what could happen if that job you were barely making ends meet with went away, so now its our responsibility to make a game plan for you?
Other comments included:
•I know a few people who have never worked & just because they are a “minority” they were able to get on welfare and are still on it – and there ain’t a damn’d thing wrong with them.
•The U.S. has babied too many freeloaders for too long.
•In one thread on the extension vote, a number of people who were unemployed related their experiences of sending out hundreds of resumes, never getting chances at job interviews, losing their homes, or being barely able to feed their children. One woman asked, “What do you expect us to do without the unemployment extension?” and a regular reader replied, “FU. You sick perverted Biatch!!!”
•Another man said he thought the stalling on the extension was “just the beginning” of discrimination against those who could not find work, and a reader replied, “You damn right, skippy…this is just the start. We will break you.”
MLive’s user agreement states: You agree not to use any obscene, indecent, or offensive language or to provide to or post on or through the Website any graphics, text, photographs, images, video, audio or other material that is defamatory, abusive, bullying, harassing, racist, hateful, or violent. You agree to refrain from ethnic slurs, religious intolerance, homophobia, and personal attacks when using the Website.
It appears that each newspaper is responsible for policing its own articles for these violations. But Editor Paul Keep routinely brags about how many comments there are for Grand Rapids Press’s articles, and has made it clear that the Website is the foundation of the Press’s future.
So it’s not hard to imagine that the terms of use might be ignored deliberately to keep number of posts up…even when the majority of those posts contain bigotry, homophobia, racism, and violent and harassing language. This daily commentary goes way beyond political Kool-aid; it’s the classic and toxic White rage cocktail.