MEDIA ROOTS — If you’re like me, you don’t always have the cash or time to catch a flick the first time round. “Paul Goodman Changed My Life,” directed by newcomer Jonathan Lee, is a film of heart and soul whose protagonist has been associated with the American New Left. It debuted last October and is now available online.

Paul Goodman captured teenage angst in his famous and influential book for the ’60s generation, Growing Up Absurd. Martin Luther King, Jr. has said, “When Paul Goodman wrote Growing Up Absurd, he electrified the public.”

Lee’s film focused on Goodman’s anarchist tendencies before and after discovering Bakunin and Kropotkin, his writing, and his Oscar Wildean personal drives and desires of being something of a family man and a free-spirited bisexual. Ultimately, although I appreciated the human interest story aspects, the weakness of this documentary seemed to be how it fell into the common trap of alienating the thinker from the thinker’s environment, socioeconomic class, and, thus, from the power structures of the thinker’s day and how the ideals being considered succeeded and/or failed in affecting those power structures—particularly the two-party system, which undergirds daily socioeconomic realities addressed by disparate dissenters. 

As Gore Vidal has long held since at least the ’50s, in the USA we have one party, the party of property, of corporate and banker elite, of the 1%—one party with two wings, both right-wing, one Republican, one Democrat.

Gore Vidal, 1977:  “There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party … and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt — until recently … and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties.”

“We can’t deny that there’s been every kind of effort to create an insane consensus,” said Paul Goodman, “And whenever you students try to do anything about it, in order to save my kid from being fried, whether what you’re doing is right or wrong, it’s something!”

Although there were fascinating moments when Goodman faced militants on the Left and Right, they weren’t fleshed out. Instead, the film zoomed in on the individual, on the corporeal, almost divorced from objective political reality in its preoccupation with the culture war and the subjective. The film seemed to avoid the more difficult questions and lessons we may draw from the 1960s New Left for today’s sociopolitical landscape, such as parallels with the Occupy Movement and 9/11 Truth.  

From the intro to Growing Up Absurd:

“We see groups of boys and young men disaffected from the dominant society. The young men are angry, and beat. The boys are juvenile delinquents. But these groups are not small and they will grow larger. Certainly, they are suffering. Demonstrably, they are not getting enough out of our wealth and civilisation. It is hard to grow up in a society in which one’s important problems are treated as non-existent. It is impossible to belong to it. It is hard to fight to change it. In this book I shall ask, is the harmonious organisation to which the young are inadequately socialised perhaps against human nature or not worthy of human nature? And therefore there is difficulty in growing up? If this is so, the disaffection of the youth is profound and it will not be finally remedial by better techniques of socialising.”

They say the personal is the political. But we may have countless dreamers on the margins writing beautiful prose and compelling possibilities, yet devoid of political clout, as neocons and neoliberals strip us of our rights bit by bit, even the right or capacity to dream or imagine. To me, the most compelling expositions are those of actions which, not only challenge the imagination of the individual, but directly challenge relevant centres of power. Thus, the opening clips, such as showing Goodman lecturing power players of the industrial-military complex or freely writing ideas considered seditious by the state, were the most salient. 

Paul Goodman spoke at the Causerie at the Military-Industrial in October 1967 during the Stop The Draft week and boldly asserted in “A Message To The Military-Industrial Complex”:

“You are the military industrial of the United States, the most dangerous body of men at present in the world, for you not only implement our disastrous policies, but are an overwhelming lobby for them. And you expand and rigidify the wrong use of brains and resources and labour, so the change becomes difficult.”

“These remarks have certainly been harsh and moralistic. And none of us are saints and ordinarily I would be ashamed to use such a tone.  But you are the manufacturers of napalm, fragmentation bombs, the planes that destroy rice. Your weapons have killed hundreds of thousands in Vietnam. And you will kill other hundreds of thousands in other Vietnams. I’m sure that most of you concede that much of what you do is ugly and harmful at home and abroad. But you would say it is necessary for the American way of life, at home and abroad and, therefore, you cannot do otherwise. Since we believe, however, that that way of life is, itself, unnecessary, ugly, and un-American, I and those people outside, we cannot condone your present operations. They should be wiped off the slate.”

However, my central complaint with this documentary film is the seeming refusal to contextualise the narrative within the political superstructures dominating the political landscape, the refusal to analyse the role of political parties, given their centrality in all of this historical contextualisation—or tacitly giving the false progressivism of the Democrat Party a free pass. Malcolm X never did that, which is probably why he has remained one of the most compelling and enduring of the people’s heroes:

“Anytime you throw your weight behind a political party that controls two-thirds of the government, and that party can’t keep the promise that it made to you during election time, and you’re dumb enough to walk around continuing to identify yourself with that party, you’re not only a chump, but you’re a traitor to your race.”

In the film, Paul Goodman describes the need to move from “formal” or nominal democracy, to substantive democracy in practice, participatory democracy. Yet, the filmmakers seem disinterested in the role of democracy, of voting and the political parties which follow from the voting process. So, audiences lose another opportunity to learn from the mistakes of the past, such as the mistake of supporting the corrupt Democrat Party or the mistake of not working toward a non-dualistic/multiparty system of free and fair democratic elections. Instead, the life of Paul Goodman is alienated from the USA’s state of democracy as engendered by the dualistic two-party system, or dictatorship (depending on your sensibilities). 

Under this lense, we may pine for the ideals yearned by Goodman, but we are not asked to think about them within the context of the USA’s rigged political system monopolised by two corrupt and predominant political parties—the Democrats and the Republicans. Instead, the focus is on the supplicant aspects of dissent, on protests and so forth. Political reality is avoided like the plague, perhaps to protect the entertainment value of the biopic, but despite the distortions produced. Don’t get me wrong; protests are crucial, but so is the need for protesters to understand and articulate the corruption of the Democrat and Republican parties. And crucial, too, is the need to reject the Democrat Party, to break the dualistic trap of the two-party system.

Greenwich Village Peace Center Draft & Military Counseling is one example featured in the film. Like single-issue groups of today, lacking analysis of contemporary political parties, groups seem willing to advise the public on how to avoid the draft, but not on how to avoid corrupt political parties, like the Democrat and Republican parties, which enabled the draft in the first place.

Also featured in Lee’s film are Goodman’s extramarital affairs and his wife’s pain as a result; his decade as a Gestalt psychoanalyst/psychologist; and his pacifist outspokenness; and his pamphlet Drawing the Line against the military draft. Lee also featured Goodman’s differences with radical “militants,” such as SDS, which he said “makes no sense.” Being able to appreciate aspects of the SDS and of Paul Goodman’s work, it’s great to hear and parse opposing points of view.  Nothing is ever good enough. Some are too radical, we say. Others are not radical enough. But the beauty of this narrative of Paul Goodman’s life is the depiction of his Socratic spirit, his ability to publicly dialogue, to debate, and to interact intergenerationally. Also notable was the discussion about those liberals or leftists, which later became conservatives or quasi-fascists, as documented in a photograph taken of Paul Goodman and others at a civil disobedience conference, including a very young Donald Rumsfeld, of all people (provided Rumsfeld wasn’t there as a spy to begin with).

These are my initial thoughts after viewing Lee’s film. Perhaps readers may help articulate a clearer analysis of what alienates us from one another. But in the meantime I recommend this film as worthy of your time, especially, for new generations unaware of Paul Goodman’s contributions to ‘60s progressive, or Leftist, thought and, therefore, to modern progressive thought. May Goodman encourage you to, as one KPFA radio scoundrel in Berkeley likes to say, “Pick up a good book and read it.”

Written by Winston Raskolnikov for Media Roots

Photo by Wikicommons

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MEDIA ROOTS — If you were ever wondering exactly how large corporations ‘cover up’ malfeasance, look no further than the India Times.  Ag-giant Monsanto has colluded with one of the largest papers in Asia, the India Times, to heavily downplay the notion that Indian farmers have been committing suicide at abnormally high rates as a result of Monsanto’s clamp down on crop sharing.  This is a perfect example of powerful interests conspiring with a major media outlet in order to conceal the truth. 

Robbie Martin of Media Roots 

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COUNTER PUNCH — Three and a half years ago, at a time when the controversy over the use of genetically modified seeds was raging across India, a newspaper story painted a heartening picture of the technology’s success.

“There are no suicides here and people are prospering on agriculture. The switchover from the conventional cotton to Bollgard or Bt Cotton here has led to a social and economic transformation in the villages [of Bhambraja and Antargaon] in the past three-four years.” (Times of India, October 31, 2008).

So heartening was this account that nine months ago, the same story was run again in the same newspaper, word for word. (Times of India, August 28, 2011). Never mind that the villagers themselves had a different story to tell.

“There have been 14 suicides in our village,” a crowd of agitated farmers in Bhambraja told shocked members of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture in March this year. “Most of them after Bt came here.” The Hindu was able to verify nine that had occurred between 2003 and 2009. Activist groups count five more since then. All after 2002, the year the Times of India story says farmers here switched to Bt. Prospering on agriculture? The villagers told the visibly shaken MPs: “Sir, lots of land is lying fallow. Many have lost faith in farming.” Some have shifted to soybean where “at least the losses are less.”

Read more about How the Times of India Colluded with Monsanto in Fake Reports of BT Cotton Successes 

© 2012 Counterpunch 

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Photo by Flickr US National Archives

MEDIA ROOTS — When you’re Julian Assange, you just can’t do right.  The USA’s establishment has got it in for him now.  Doubtless, they’d like to grab him like Bradley Manning.  Assange says he’ll be called a traitor for interviewing radicals.  Journalist Glenn Greenwald says the attacks on Assange and RT reveal as much about the critics:

“The real cause of American media hostility toward RT is the same as what causes it to hate Assange: the reporting it does reflects poorly on the U.S. Government, the ultimate sin in the eyes of our ‘adversarial’ press corps.”

“In other words, like Assange, [at RT] they engage in real adversarial journalism with regard to American political power. And they are thus scorned and ridiculed by those who pretend to do that but never actually do.”

Messina

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SALON — A new news show hosted by Julian Assange debuted yesterday on RT, the global media outlet funded by the Russian government and carried by several of America’s largest cable providers. His first show was devoted to an interview with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah (video below), who has not given a television interview since 2006. The combination of Assange and a Russian-owned TV network has triggered a predictable wave of snide, smug attacks from American media figures, attacks that found their purest expression in this New York Times review yesterday of Assange’s new program by Alessandra Stanly.

Much is revealed by these media attacks on Assange and RT — not about Assange or RT but about their media critics. We yet again find, for instance, the revealing paradox that nothing prompts media scorn more than bringing about unauthorized transparency for the U.S. government. As a result, it’s worth examining a few passages from Stanley’s analysis. It begins this way:

“When Anderson Cooper began a syndicated talk show, his first guest was the grieving father of Amy Winehouse.”

“Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, unveiled a new talk show on Tuesday with his own version of a sensational get: the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.”

That contrast — between one of America’s Most Serious Journalists and Assange — speaks volumes already about who is interested in actual journalism and who is not. Then we have this, a trite little point, impressed by its own cleverness, found at the center of almost all of these sneering pieces on Assange’s new program:

“Mr. Assange says the theme of his half-hour show on RT is ‘the world tomorrow.’ But there is something almost atavistic about the outlet he chose. RT, first known as Russia Today, is an English-language news network created by the Russian leader Vladimir V. Putin in 2005 to promote the Kremlin line abroad. (It also broadcasts in Spanish and Arabic.) It’s like the Voice of America, only with more money and a zesty anti-American slant. A few correspondents can sound at times like Boris and Natasha of ‘Rocky & Bullwinkle’ fame. Basically, it’s an improbable platform for a man who poses as a radical left-wing whistleblower and free-speech frondeur battling the superpowers that be.”

Let’s examine the unstated premises at work here. There is apparently a rule that says it’s perfectly OK for a journalist to work for a media outlet owned and controlled by a weapons manufacturer (GE/NBC/MSNBC), or by the U.S. and British governments (BBC/Stars & Stripes/Voice of America), or by Rupert Murdoch and Saudi Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal (Wall St. Journal/Fox News), or by a banking corporation with long-standing ties to right-wing governments (Politico), or by for-profit corporations whose profits depend upon staying in the good graces of the U.S. government (Kaplan/The Washington Post), or by loyalists to one of the two major political parties (National Review/TPM/countless others), but it’s an intrinsic violation of journalistic integrity to work for a media outlet owned by the Russian government. Where did that rule come from?

Also, while it’s certainly true that the coverage of RT is at times overly deferential to the Russian government, that media outlet never mindlessly disseminated government propaganda to help to start a falsehood-fueled devastating war, the way that Alessandra Stanley’s employer (along with most leading American media outlets) did. When it comes to destruction brought about by uncritical media fealty to government propaganda, RT — as the Russia expert Mark Adomanis documented when American media figures began attacking RT  – is far behind virtually all of the corporate employers of its American media critics.

Read more about Attacks on RT and Assange reveal much about the critics.

© 2012 Salon Media Group, Inc.

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Julian Assange’s The World Tomorrow: Hassan Nasrallah (E1)

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RT – Assange ‘traitor,’ show ‘foul’ – The World Tomorrow Sparks Media Frenzy

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Photo by Flickr user Espenmoe

MEDIA ROOTS — Proving the power of social networking, online writing, and blogging, the U.S. military is pushing to dismiss U.S. Marine Sergeant Gary Stein with ‘other-than-honourable‘ discharge as well as banning the Marine from all U.S. military bases, in violation of his First Amendment rights, for dissing Obama on Facebook.  Until the dismissal is finalised, Stein has been removed from his San Diego post as a recruiter and reassigned to a desk job without computer access.

Messina

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RT — US marine Sgt. Gary Stein should be dismissed for criticizing President Barack Obama on his Facebook page: that is the verdict passed by a military board looking into Stein’s case.

Following a special hearing at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, the corps board recommended that the marine is given the other-then-honorable discharge stripping him of benefits. If the ruling passes, Stein will also be banned from any US military base.

Stain’s lawyers insist that their client, who superimposed images of Obama’s face on a poster for the movie called “Jackass”, did nothing more than exercise his right to free speech.

“We are truly surprised and disappointed but it was an honor to fight for a hero like Sgt. Stein and every other marine’s right to speak freely,” Stein’s defense lawyer marine Captain James Baehr said, as quoted by the Associated Press news agency.

Baehr stressed that Stein had, in fact, not broken any existing law.  

Both the American Civil Liberties Union and United States Justice Foundation, two groups of which Stein’s lawyers are members, claim that his First Amendment rights are being violated.

However, prosecutor Captain John Torresala told the panel that the nine-year marine had repeatedly violated Pentagon policies which limit the free speech rights of service members. He said that Stein should be dismissed after ignoring a warning from his superiors about his Facebook activities.

Read more about Unlike: Marine ‘to be dismissed’ in shame for criticizing Obama on Facebook.

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MEDIA ROOTS — From warrantless wiretapping to SMART meter invasion of privacy, it seems everywhere we turn we are allowing erosion of our rights to privacy.  Meanwhile, the state wants it both ways, as it’s pushed to stifle police transparency by outlawing videotaping of on-duty cops in some states.  Legal scholar and professor Jonathan Turley, has noted the absurdity of that move:  “The police are basing this claim on a ridiculous reading of the two-party consent surveillance law—requiring all parties to consent to being taped. I have written in the area of surveillance law and and can say that this is utter nonsense.”

As the U.S.A. undergoes unprecedented erosion of human rights, ACLU affiliates filed hundreds of public records requests last summer with law enforcement agencies regarding their policies for tracking cell phones.  And now the results have been made public.  “While virtually all of the over 200 police departments […] said they track cell phones,” according to the newly released documents, almost none demonstrate probable cause nor obtain warrants.”

Messina

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ACLU — In January, the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision in U.S. v. Jones, ruling unanimously that when the D.C. police and the FBI attached a GPS device to Antoine Jones’s car and tracked him for 28 days, they violated the Fourth Amendment. But now the government — instead of fixing the way it conducts this kind of invasive surveillance — has simply set its sights on another way to obtain people’s location information: their cell phones.

Late last week, during preliminary proceedings before Jones’s retrial, his attorney revealed that prosecutors have also obtained records showing the location and movement of Jones’s cell phone over the course of five months. Since the GPS data from Jones’s car was thrown out by the Supreme Court, it seems the prosecution intends to use Jones’s cell phone data to get another bite at the apple. Like the GPS device on the car, the government was able to obtain the cell phone information without a probable cause warrant. Instead, it only had to claim that the data was “relevant and material” to an ongoing investigation.

Unfortunately, this story is all too common. As a recent nationwide ACLU public records request revealed, hundreds of law enforcement agencies engage in cell phone tracking on a regular basis. Many of these agencies obtain cell phone location data without getting a warrant and demonstrating probable cause.

The government is clearly trying to avoid the main point of the Jones decision. If using a GPS device to track a car’s movements over time requires a warrant based on probable cause, then surely law enforcement must be held to the same standard when obtaining the same type of information about an individual’s cell phone. If anything, that data is even more sensitive, since most people take their cell phones with them wherever they go. Moreover, many popular smartphones now include GPS, which means that in some cases we’re talking about exactly the same technology.

Requiring the government to obtain a warrant based on probable cause before engaging in any kind of electronic location tracking is necessary to protect Americans’ privacy, and it’s also what the Constitution requires. A few of the law enforcement agencies that responded to our public records request told us that they do hold themselves to a standard requiring a warrant and probable cause. This strikes the right balance between privacy and public safety. Rather than dancing around the issue, it’s time for the government to fully accept the Court’s Jones decision, and respect that ordinary Americans shouldn’t have to worry about the government tracking their every move.

State and federal lawmakers should pass laws requiring a warrant for police to engage in location tracking in non-emergency situations. In Congress, there are two pending bipartisan efforts, entitled the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance (GPS) Act, which would require law enforcement agents to obtain a warrant in order to access location information.

TAKE ACTION: Tell your representatives in Washington to support these important pieces of legislation.

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