RT TV– The Transportation Security Administration has been the subject of criticism by seemingly all who fly in the USA. They’re accused of violating privacy when asking travelers to go through naked body scanner machines all for the supposed sake of “national security.” One of the companies behind the controversial equipment is now pushing to have these scanners installed nationwide. So do these scanners actually make us safer? Charlie McGrath, founder of WideAwakeNews.com, joins Abby Martin in the RT studio to discuss.
Abby Martin interviews Charlie McGrath about the TSA
RT TV—Mumia Abu Jamal is an African American writer, journalist and activist whose infamous prison case has sparked international outrage for decades. In 1981, Mumia was charged with first degree murder for allegedly killing a police officer, but many have disputed the evidence that put him behind bars and demand for him to be re-tried.
He has spent the last 29 years of his life on death row, but in January of this year the sentence was reduced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. At the “Occupy the Justice” rally in Washington DC, Abby Martin of RT spoke with protesters who gathered in solidarity with the Occupy Movement to “Occupy the Justice Department” on Mumia’s 58th birthday.
Hundreds rallied in front of the Department of Justice to call attention to not only Mumia’s case, but also to the inequalities of the US justice system, the privatization of the prison industry and to end mass incarceration in the US, where currently one out of every 100 Americans are in jail.
People have long used Mumia’s case to lobby attention to the inherent corruption and racial inequality in the American prison system.
Mumia supporter Matthew Johnson equated the racial injustice surrounding Mumia Abu Jamal to the controversial case of the shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. “It’s the whole idea that if you’re black, you’re somehow more dangerous than a white person. [In the case of Trayvon] you’re carrying iced tea and Skittles and wearing a hoodie and somehow you’re a threat to a man who weighs 60 pounds more than you who has a gun. It just wouldn’t happen the other way around.”
He continues to explain that this particular case needs to be broadened in the context of social justice for everyone, regardless of color or creed.
Some came to protest more generally what they called the prison industrial complex, in which government and corporations collude to keep the private prisons occupied to capacity with prisoners. Activist Kevin Price elaborates on the growing trend of for profit prisons. “As violent crime rates have fallen and imprisonment rates have skyrocketed, it just doesn’t make sense unless you are looking at [the issue] in the context of for profit incarceration,” he says.
Although the reduced sentence for Mumia was seen as a hopeful step for some, others claimed that it was simply a political strategy to appease the public while still not making any significant overtures towards justice for Mumia.
“That’s their way of trying to turn their back on the issue and get political with [it]… but justice requires that the innocent be free,” declares Baba Zayed Muhhamad, national minister of culture for the New Black Panther Party.
He continues to describe how the two most prominent African American politicians, Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama, have turned their back on the black generation. “Barack Obama made the mistake of saying that we’re the ones that we’ve been waiting for, and we’re not going to wait on them. We’re going to see that we get justice for that generation and… better opportunities to create justice for our children. We’re not going to compromise with that.”
MEDIA ROOTS — In John Cusack’s 2008 movie, War, Inc., an outrageous pop star, singing and dancing, is situated in the middle of all this chaos and criminogenic environment, addled with occupying corporations, zealous military forces, and war-torn absurdity. Giving real-life meaning to the War, Inc. pop star, real-life pop star Katy Perry seems to be fearlessly treading the boundaries of mindless military propaganda. Or is Katy Perry innocently just havin’ a good time?
In Katy Perry’s dramatic new video for her corporate record label—the same label Radiohead is on, by the way—Capitol under EMI under Citigroup—her character has an epiphany when she sees a bumper sticker on a bulletin board:
“All women are created equal But then some become Marines”
I suppose any artist daring enough to flirt with military imagery must either be an incredibly courageous artistic genius or a misguided tool. If numbers say anything, Katy Perry’s “Part of Me” video already has over 39 million views. But, clearly, that military joke isn’t funny anymore. And Naomi Wolf, who has done her fair share of dirt on behalf of women’s rights and human rights, wasn’t laughing either. Even boycotts are being called against Katy Perry.
“When you shine in the public eye, my dear Please remember these nights…”
Messina
***
READER SUPPORTED — Who knew that an opinion about pop music video could get Fox News so worked up? Recently, I wrote that I was appalled by Katy Perry’s new video for the No 1 hit song, “Part of Me”. In it, the narrative has the singer discover a boyfriend’s infidelity; she responds to this by cutting her hair and – heading for basic training to become a Marine.
The creepy parts of the video, in my mind, are many: girl power is represented as what Perry accomplishes in the rigors of basic training. Feminine impulses toward romantic revenge are depicted as rightly channeled into getting armed and being shipped to some mystery Afghanistan-like set overseas, locked and loaded. Trade in your bad boyfriend for a hot AK-47!
The whole videography of the scenes at Camp Pendleton – in which Perry crawls through an imaginary minefield, trains underwater, learns she can do the impossible, etc – is straight out of Leni Riefenstahl: the same angled, heroizing upward shots, the same fetishization of physical power, of gleaming armaments, and of the rigor and mechanism of human beings cohering into living militarized units.
There is something else about the video: it feels … like an ad; specifically, a focus-grouped, consumer-tested ad to attract more women to join the Marines. Real artistic productions, whether bad or good, are messier, quirkier, more subjective. I am familiar with the way political ads get researched and filmed (it was part of what I advised on in my time as a political consultant), and this looks like a political ad put together by DC PR insiders – like, say, the Pentagon communications team – after expensive market research has been done. In political advertising, every single image and message is focus group tested. I would bet that someone did some research on the hypothetical of a marriage or relationship breakup as a catalyst for women’s military enlistment, given an economy in which the military offers low-income women some of the few options for advancement in a context in which a breadwinner may have decamped.
So I wrote that I felt that this was a piece of “war propaganda” and that, if Perry had received money or message guidance directly from the military to make the video, she should disclose that information. It might be inferred from the fact that she filmed at the USMC’s California base, Camp Pendleton, that this would have contributed at least several tens of thousand of dollars in support – in the form of free sets, use of equipment, personnel time and, possibly, food and housing; it takes a lot of people a fair amount of time to make such a video. Now, to be fair, while journalists are expected to disclose any such conflicts, I have absolutely no evidence of any such transaction, and artists are subject to no such expectation. (Albeit, this would be a subsidy that you, the taxpayer, have underwritten.)
RT TV – On Friday, student protesters confronted police in Montreal, Canada. Riot police used stun grenades, pepper spray and batons to beat student protesters in the city’ downtown. The outrage comes from anger over rising tuition costs in the country. A crowd of protesters attempted to interrupt a speech by Premier Jean Charest. Citizen journalist Bernard Desgagne joins us for the breaking update.
Abby Martin interviews citizen journalist Bernard Desgagne about the recent riots.
MEDIA ROOTS — Duplicitous White House policy continues to metastasize under Obama, as it has with Reagan, the Bushes, and Clinton. For the past 30 years, the government has consistently enacted policies that give more power to Washington D.C. in the name of bettering the lives of regular Americans. The current regime pulls our attention away from this practice with the Obamacare drama in the Supreme Court, the rhythmic and feverish beating of Iranian war drums, and a Republican presidential campaign that resembles reality TV more than effective politics that can actually help Americans.
Washington D.C. has once again created a euphemism to paper over a pernicious policy: the “Council on Strong Cities, Strong Communities” (SC2), which was established by the White House in March, is the latest example of regressive trickery. By name, it involves “help” for municipalities that are struggling financially. This “help” is necessary because, even as the mainstream media touts economic recovery, the risk of multiple municipal collapses festers below the surface. In short, hundreds of municipalities across the country face bankruptcy if they can’t get their finances in order. And some won’t. If one of those towns happens to be yours, thanks to the new executive order, the Fed will come to your town and assist in its bankruptcy proceedings.
According to the rules of the SC2 Initiative, each bankrupt city will be placed into receivership and a federal trustee will be in charge of the hobbled city’s sovereignty. This trustee will have complete and absolute power to determine how to eliminate the city’s debt. Even worse, all city contracts will be null and void—this includes those for policemen, firemen, and teachers. It will be like pushing the reset button.
However, instead of a compassionate, helpful friend, these unfortunate cities are receiving an unfeeling auctioneer, who will make sure they are on the raw end of a deal gone bad. Assets will be auctioned off to the highest bidder: parking lots, bridges, utilities, expressways, toll booths, parking meters, whatever the city owns, will be hacked up to bits and thrown to packs of opportunistic wolves. This pattern is already underway in Greece, as the country is getting carved up and auctioned off in exchange for bailouts.
This should be a premonition of things to come in the United States, where the 1% is hungry to fill their vaults and portfolios. In fact, private and corporate interests are already buying up (former) publicly-owned assets in the United States. And they certainly don’t give a damn if it comes at the expense of regular citizens. So, something is definitely awry when the Fed is making contingency plans with so much foresight. It seems they don’t want to waste the opportunity to profit in a good, home-cooked crisis.
Adam Miezio
Edited by Alex Starace
***
THE INTEL HUB — On March 15th, the day before he signed the National Defense Resources Preparedness executive order, President Obama signed the executive order, “Establishing a White House Council on Strong Cities, Strong Communities.”
This order essentially paved the way for a take over of municipalities that are drowning in debt.
Joe Joseph, Popeye, and Tim Watts discussed this executive order in the latest Intel Hub News Brief Podcast which can be heard below [Tuesday, March 20, 2012]:
INFOWARS — Asawin Suebsaeng, who is an editorial fellow at Mother Jones, seems to have a problem understanding the Constitution and the national security state. He takes the political “right” to task for warning about the National Defense Resources Preparedness executive order signed by Obama earlier this month. This particular EO is no big deal and if you really want to place blame, place it on Harry Truman, Suebsaeng writes.
He’s right about Truman. The National Security Act of 1947 was passed by Congress and signed into law by president Truman. It has allowed the Pentagon and the CIA to encroach on our civil liberties ever since. It created a national security establishment that has issued a number of unconstitutional executive orders. Mr. Suebsaeng mentions these in passing. It enabled the military-industrial complex president Dwight D. Eisenhower warned about in his farewell address in 1961.
If Mr. Suebsaeng were a fair and impartial observer instead of a Democrat apologist for maximum state power over the individual, he would mention that presidents regardless of party affiliation have repeatedly violated the Constitution – from Abraham Lincoln to Woodrow Wilson to Bush and Obama.
The NDAA gives the government the power to arrest without warrant (as stipulated under the Fourth Amendment) any U.S. citizen and hold him or her indefinitely, a concept abhorrent to the founders and more likely to be the practice of a military dictatorship.
Both the so-called liberal and conservative sides of the establishment ignored the NDAA – not because they are unaware of the legislation and its purpose (which has nothing to do with al-Qaeda), but because the establishment does not want the NDAA discussed.
MEDIA ROOTS — In John Cusack’s 2008 movie, 
MEDIA ROOTS — Duplicitous White House policy continues to metastasize under Obama, as it has with Reagan, the Bushes, and Clinton. For the past 30 years, the government has consistently enacted policies that give more power to Washington D.C. in the name of bettering the lives of regular Americans. The current regime pulls our attention away from this practice with the Obamacare drama in the Supreme Court, the rhythmic and feverish beating of Iranian war drums, and a Republican presidential campaign that resembles reality TV more than effective politics that can actually help Americans.