Archive for the 'Politics' Category

Meet the Lies

Published
by
Kamili
on May 26, 2010
in Politics
. 0 Comments

Bible pages
Creative Commons License photo credit: almoko

On Sunday morning, I heard this NPR re-broadcast of Bob Garfield’s interview with Carol Rosenberg from the Miami Herald on “On the Media.” Rosenberg along with three Canadian journalists reporting on military tribunals at Guantanamo have been barred by the Pentagon from any further reporting on all trials at Guantanamo.  The Pentagon insists that Rosenberg violated reporting rules by providing the name of an Interrogator at Guantanamo.  However, and this is the odd bit, said Interrogator had already revealed his own identity to the Toronto Star two years prior.  This, according to any respectable rules of reason, makes it a categorical impossibility that Rosenberg “revealed” anything by printing the Interrogator’s name.  Rosenberg has been reporting on Guantanamo for over 8 years and is a dedicated, and more importantly, appropriately “seasoned” and skeptical reporter of U.S. military activities in Guantanamo.  In the interview, she notes:

“I guess what maybe you’re asking is whether the people who handle the Guantanamo message don’t want experienced reporters down there.  And I can say that it does thrive on the confusion and inexperience and ignorance of the people who are first-timers.  They have for years brought people down in hope that they’ll tell the same story over and over again.  That’s why the package tours boast that they’ve had hundreds and hundreds of reporters through there.  The only way you cover Guantanamo well, I argue, is by going back again and again and covering it when you’re not at Guantanamo, and reading the files and reading the motions and being prepared before you ever go down there to understand the totality of the story.  They want to create the impression that this is battlefield-style justice. You know, you pull everybody in, stick them in some tents, throw together a court, and have a variation on a court-martial.  You know, they have rotations of guards.  They have rotations of escorts.  Even the lawyers haven’t been the same for all these years.  The only people who are the same in this instance are the detainees and the reporters.  And I don’t think that they’re necessarily comfortable with the fact that we’ve logged more hours and perhaps know the history of this case better.”

Rosenberg is now, one might imagine, heading back to more mild reporting in Miami.  Now perhaps she can finally report on how to get those pesky kittens out of trees.

On the Media’s interview with Rosenberg was immediately followed by a story about two college students, Chas Danner, Paul Breer, who have started an online venture that aims to “fact-check” the guests on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” This weekly news program is the longest-running broadcast show ever.  It boasts an equally long history of inviting politicians, economists, foreign policy experts, etc., on to discuss issues on its weekly program.  Including, as you might imagine, the political and legal “goings-on” at Guantanamo.  But, and this is the additional odd bit, Meet the Press does not fact-check its guests.  It publishes show transcripts online, but does not actually make sure that the claims uttered as truth in those transcripts are, well, true.  Maybe it will seem even a bit more odd if I tell you that Meet the Press frequently attracts nearly 3 million viewers.  That seems like a lot of people to tell almost-truths to.  I think that there is an obvious question here.  If our government can routinely bar serious and pertinent reporting on, well, serious and pertinent issues, and our mainstream news media outlets have an “iffy” relationship with holding those (deeply) involved in these serious and pertinent issues (I’m talking to you, Mr. Cheney) responsible for uttering blatant falsehoods, then what happens to the truth?

In my philosophy courses, I routinely teach my students that we all have a responsibility to discover the truth.  And they, in turn, routinely tell me that there is no such thing as “real truth.”  Truth, they tell me, is just the unchecked, unpolished claims of some authority with no need to be accountable.  I am admittedly a natural-born epistemologist, and I find such accounts of truth very worrisome.  However, after 8 years of Bush-Cheney, and 2 years of not-such-much-”Change,” I’m starting to suspect that their deeply cynical attitudes toward the truth are rooted in something other than their young age and lack of experience in the world.  I would like to hypothesize that their attitudes are likely rooted in something akin to Ronald Reagan’s “trickle-down economics.”  Whole truths will benefit the well-off and the rest of us will get by on half-truths and a few outright lies.  But, as I tell my skeptical students, here’s the rub.  We know what it means to lie.  We know that the truth matters.  (Or why would the Pentagon bother preventing Rosenberg from reporting it?).  So perhaps the most serious and pertinent question of all is the following: Who does it matter to?

Testing As a Weapon

Published
by
MichaelJ
on April 5, 2010
in Acacademic Integrity, Administration, Assessment and Politics
. 2 Comments

Photo credit: Robert King/Getty Images

A bill that will link individual teacher’s salaries to student performance and effectively destroy teacher job security was passed by the Florida state Senate last week.

Besides its obvious anti-unionism (pretty much business as usual for Florida politics), this bill will most likely serve to punish rather than help schools that are facing a number of difficult obstacles while rewarding those that are already relatively successful. It’s unfortunate that the war against public education in recent years is so often waged using the tools of accountability and evaluation, both concepts that might actually be put to good use. Even historian and former assistant secretary of education under Bush Diane Ravitch, a long-time supporter of standardized testing and No Child Left Behind, seems to be reversing her position on the matter in her newest book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.

If the bill passes (as it most likely will given the comfortable Republican majority in the House and the willingness of Florida Governor Charlie Crist) notoriously inaccurate standardized testing outcomes will be used to evaluate teacher salaries and job security, essentially using one inaccurate form of evaluation as a foundation for another; however, it will also have a much more direct effect on learning. When Florida teachers begin “teaching to the test” in a desperate attempt to hold onto their jobs and a decent standard of living, it seems inevitable that the teaching of many important written and oral communication skills will quickly drop out of the curriculum.

The Performance Artist and the Archives

Published
by
Hillary
on February 22, 2010
in Art, Fun, Internet, Media, Music, Politics and Resources
. 0 Comments

During the fall of 2009, I took a course at the Graduate Center with Prof. Jean Graham-Jones, “Contemporary Latin American Theatre and Performance.” Going in, I had assumed that much of the archival material we would be referencing would be from the Hemispheric Institute Digital Video Library (HIDVL), a collaboration between New York University Libraries and NYU’s Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics. This digital venue brings together videos of performance throughout the Americas that would otherwise be “inaccessible to scholars.”

While it’s true that this is a respected and reliable one-stop reference place to find (and preserve) such materials, given the contemporary focus of the class, YouTube offered hours of browsing enjoyment. The two resources serve very difficult functions—and have very different levels of functionality. (Especially since the Hemispheric Insititute’s archive is frequently restricted to performances that they themselves have had filmed at their own events.)

I don’t know if it counts as procrastination or further research, but I whittled away many evenings that semester watching clips of the dynamic performers we had been studying.

First, here’s a link to a performance by Mexican cabaret performer, Astrid Hadad, from the HIDVL. Her performance, ‘Amores Pelos,’ was filmed in Monterrey, Mexico, in July 2001, as part of the Second Annual Hemispheric Institute Seminar. It’s a long clip, but worth the time to see the costumes changes involved in the “wearable art” of her hair. The site provides a bit of context for those first meeting this artist’s work: “Hadad blends popular songs and ranchero, son and bolero music and political satire with highly theatrical precision to create a genre of music she calls ‘Heavy Nopal’.”

And then, below, is another unique Hadad performance, this time from YouTube (and featuring some well-placed self-flagellation). It brings us into the actual performance space, and is part of a larger documentary about Hadad.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OutdQW_jz0g[/youtube]

“Can you believe he just called me an Oriental?” @$%#!

Published
by
Zohra
on September 30, 2009
in Language and Politics
. 5 Comments

mandarin-oriental-washington-dcWe’ve all heard it before, its tough being brown/yellow/olive/black in the nooks and crannies of America, but I will repeat this first-gen immi (my nickname for immigrants) refrain!

*sigh*

It was tough growing up in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn as one of the first Asians (not Asian families since my family could pass as White or as AmerIndian depending on which side of the Eur-Asian the gene pool favored when it came to our face — and my face came out all yellow olive skin and jet black hair). I was the first in line and until Linda Tam happily rescued me, and stood in line in front of me, in second grade. I remember the “ching chong” jokes and the buck teeth gestures. Things I did not understand until one day, Mrs Teacher made me stand in front of class and pointed to me and said, “Zohra is oriental and I will not tolerate anyone making fun of orientals in my classroom!”  Thanks, I thought, I think… for some reason that word, even at that age had an odd feel when it was used. But I didn’t know where I was from myself to be able to correct it (I also did not know enough English to counter anyone at that point).

Fast forward to age 19. I am at my first student protest and we are angry at tuition hikes, fare hikes, and whatever other hikes Guiliani was proposing at the time.  I was called “oriental” again. This time all the rage I channeled into activism surfaced and I yelled for this well-meaning woman to never call me an “oriental”. A Korean American project coordinator chimed in “Yeah, don’t you know that’s just wrong lady!” We were so self-righteous that we could even be bothered with the rest of what she had to say. Calling us oriental shut down our ability to communicate with her. It created a rift between us even if our cause was the same. We bullied this lady back into a corner. Then afterwards, I remember both of us “don’t call us orientals” drinking coffee and wondering why exactly we were offended by the term when Asian was just as vague and nondescript as the term Oriental.

Well, it wasn’t until much later that I learned from the Asian American Sociologist, Setsuko Nishi, (who had been put into the Japanese American internment camps during WWII) that using the term Oriental meant that we would be forever foreign. There is no hyphenation to express the American side. It was also offensive because of the history that had permeated that term and how vague it was — everyone from North Africa to the Pacific Islands were considered “oriental”.  Although, I suppose oriental is better than the police officer forms my friend filled out that asked if she was: Mongoloid, Negroid or Caucasoid. She was confused since she was Pakistani American!

September 8, 2009, Governor Paterson banned the use of the term “Oriental” when it came to describing Asian Americans.

The term “Oriental” is widely considered to be a disparaging term, but has been used in some forms and preprinted documents issued by state government and municipalities.

WROC TV

Hell yeah, it’s a disparaging term! Finally, I don’t have to write anymore polite (but cold) emails to colleagues who think that saying Oriental meant East Asians and Asian meant browner Asians.  Finally, I can stop hissing, “Oriental is for carpets!” And I can stop cramming Edward Said’s seminal work, Orientalism, down my students’ throats each year in my obsession with terms, respect terms in addressing the brown, the yellow, the olive and the angry! (Well, no, I won’t stop cramming Said down my students’ throats!)

Finally, a legal recognition to ban an obsolete word that shut down communication between some very well-meaning people. Thanks Governor Paterson!

Deliverance

Published
by
Rebekah
on May 21, 2009
in Art, Internet and Politics
. 0 Comments

Last year the new media artist Ramsay Stirling revised Richard Serra and Carlota Fay Schoolman’s seminal “Television Delivers People” video from 1973.  In Serra and Schoolman’s six minute piece, scrolling yellow text on a blue screen, accompanied by Muzak, spells out a blunt critique of mass media as a form of social control with such statements as “You are the product of television” and “In commercial broadcasting the viewer pays for the privilege of having himself sold.”  Through “entertainment,” the video declares, television serves the gods of corporations and the status quo.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G64GwcXEitM[/youtube]

In his 2008 net art adaptation, “Internet Delivers People,” Stirling similarly scrolls yellow text on a blue screen set to elevator music.   But he replaces key words from the original video and shifts the apparent locus of critique to the internet, now offering up such statements as “The Product of the Internet, the “.COM”-mercial Internet, is the User” and “The Internet delivers people to an advertiser.”

Take a look.

What are the theoretical stakes and results of Stirling’s substitution of  “Internet” for “television”?  And how might we integrate those answers into the discourse of decentralization and democracy that dominated our recent symposium?

Torture? culture? Torture-culture?

Published
by
Ryan
on April 22, 2009
in Audience, Debating, Higher Education, Language, Liberal Arts, Media, Non-verbal Communication, Politics, Style, To Ponder, Uncategorized and What if . . .
. 1 Comment

In an undergraduate class I teach on the social and cultural history of the US during times of war we always end the semester with a discussion of the contemporary conflicts we’re involved in now — “GWOT”, Iraq, Afghanistan — and attendant domestic issues like privacy, constitutional rights, legal jurisdiction over “unlawful enemy combatants”, balance of power between branches of government, political rhetoric, etc.

This semester we read and discussed the recently released Red Cross report on US treatment of terrorist detainees, treatment which was conclusively shown to be torture. Once we got the basic history stuff out of the way, I asked students to think through whether such treatment can ever be justified — a little dime-store ethical philosophy thrown in to the history classroom. There are usually some who think there’s no justifiable use of such harsh tactics as have been regular lately. Others insist that, if torture could be known to be likely to work, then we have to leave moral absolutism behind for a more utilitarian approach — i.e. it just might be OK to do some pretty rotten stuff to someone if it saves thousands, hundreds or scores of lives. This is always an interesting discussion, but it’s one that also makes clear how much the understanding of the torture question has been framed for my students by popular culture (“24″ (the worst culprit) and the many other movies and shows we all can probably remember).

This year however, in two separate classes, something new arose: Students, on their own started advocating torturing people not to in order get intelligence that would prevent 9/11 Pt. 2, but as punishment. Eye-for-an-eye sort of thinking — you get what you deserve, and there are no real limits to what you might deserve except how egregious your own crime was.

I found this truly unsettling. How did we get here? I think that the way we got here is a good old fashioned slippery slope. On TV, the bad guys get tortured and either give it up or not, die or not, feel terrible physical pain or not — but they’re the bad guys, so in the verbal and visual rhetoric of trashy (and extraordinarily popular) TV, it seems OK to many viewers. Torture becomes a regular adjunct to justice.

In addition, there are movies every year which prominently feature torture of human beings either in the same context or as “horror films” (really sadism films), in which the torturers are bad guys, the enemy. In the second case, torture seems despicable, so in one evening of viewing a person could be treated to a rather schizophrenic overall depiction of the issue – the cruel device of the worst fiends and the necessary tool of the righteous. But also in the second case, the problem is not that torture becomes linked with justice, but rather that it becomes entertainment; it’s a fun way (apparently) to get scared for an hour or two before making out with your girlfriend or checking on the sleeping kids.

What separates us, ideally from the Taliban, among other things, is our idea that justice and vengeance are different things. What renders us humane instead of merely human is, among other things, the idea that there are some acts which are simply morally unacceptable. What separates adults from children, among other things, is that adults see the real social utility as well as the moral truth of the old saw that two wrongs don’t make a right.

As a culture, we’re letting go of these things by the way we accept depictions of torture, as both titilating and just. To have a torture culture is not just to accept depictions of torture without clear disapprobation; it is, as the term “culture” implies, to grow, to nourish torture. And so, I think, when you have a culture rife with torture perhaps you end up seeing the fruits of that tortuculture blossoming in your nice calm classroom one April day.

The hug seen ’round the world

Published
by
KateR
on April 3, 2009
in Cross-Cultural Communication, Non-verbal Communication and Politics
. 0 Comments

I often discuss the importance of non-verbal communication with my students. Body language and simple gestures convey information to your audience, whether intended or not. Such non-verbal communication may lead to misunderstandings, particularly in cross-cultural settings. That’s why most organizations (or at least the smart ones) invest a lot of dollars in training managers and executives on the nuances of particular cultures before attempting to do business abroad. For example, there is a whole protocol to follow when exchanging business cards in Japan, and you better know the drill ahead of time.

Every now and again, however, protocols are broken. But fortunately breaking the rules doesn’t always result in an international gaffe. When First Lady Michelle Obama met Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace on Wed, she placed her arm around the Queen. Now, we Americans may not think of this as a big deal – aren’t people always reaching out to shake hands and hug our politicians and their spouses? This is particularly true on the campaign trail. But our politicians are mere elected officials, not monarchy. In England, one apparently does not reach out and touch the Queen. According to AP writer Jennifer Quinn, “When the former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating put his arm around the queen in 1992, the tabloids dubbed him the ‘Lizard of Oz.’ When his successor, John Howard, was accused of doing the same, a spokesman insisted: ‘We firmly deny that there was any contact whatsoever.’”

Fortunately for the Obamas, the Queen appeared to be quite taken by Michelle, who stands about a foot taller. Perhaps even more shocking, according to British press, was that the Queen wrapped her arm around the First Lady as well, in a “rare public show of affection.” According to Rebecca English of the Daily Mail online, “In 57 years, the Queen has never been seen to make that kind of gesture and it is certainly against all protocol to touch her.” I guess she liked her.

Bravo to the Queen for breaking with tradition!

YouTube Showcases Debate Over International Naval Incident

Published
by
David
on March 27, 2009
in Cross-Cultural Communication, Debating, Internet, Interpersonal Communication, Media, Politics, Technology and Web 2.0
. 0 Comments

I am always amazed at the many ways YouTube continues to evolve and find new relevance on the world stage.  It now finds itself hosting evidence (or propaganda, depending on who you ask) of a controversial encounter between a US Naval surveillance vessel and some Chinese ships.   According to the US Navy, who released the videos taken by someone aboard the USNS  Impeccable on their official YouTube channel, the Chinese ships attempted to interfere with a routine surveillance mission in international waters.   The Chinese government claims that the US ignored international and Chinese regulations by conducting this mission, and they are most likely upset over the Impeccable’s proximity to one of their most advanced naval bases.

Now, thanks to YouTube and the Navy’s willingness to “share” their footage of the incident, we can all take a look at the “evidence” and discuss our opinions online… unless, of course, you live in China where YouTube is currently blocked by the  government.

One of the 8 videos of the encounter is embedded below, which shows someone on one of the Chinese vessels using a hook to disable the Impeccable’s sonar line.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlhjhDrChno[/youtube]

Tips on How to Enjoy the Coming Depression

Published
by
Mikhail Gershovich
on March 19, 2009
in Fun, Funding and Politics
. 5 Comments

We’ve clearly been cursed by the Chinese, because these are extraordinarily interesting times. Financial markets are collapsing. Panic abounds. Budgets are shrinking (if not disappearing altogether). Funding is tight and getting tighter (as are our belts) and the outlook for the future is grim. Very Grim.

But let us not lose hope! We can make the best of the looming global depression with a few simple tips from Gabe Soria (a friend of mine from my Brooklyn days) and Joseph Remnant who give us a timely and remarkably hopeful comic entitled “Tips on How to Enjoy the Upcoming Depression,” which originally appeared in Arthur Magazine No. 32 (Dec 2008). Click on the image below for a larger, eminently more readable version. Click on that to zoom even further.

depressiontips32

The Acceptance Speech: Anything Goes?

Published
by
Michael
on March 17, 2009
in Politics and To Ponder
. 1 Comment
Via Getty Images

Via Getty Images

Before I watched the Academy Awards on Sunday, February 22nd, I read an article in The New York Times that put me in a critical frame mind.  The piece suggested that British public did not like the high emotions displayed by Kate Winslet when collected her other prizes for The Reader (she had already won a Golden Globe and a Bafta Award). As I watched the endless parade of quick monologues by art directors, sound engineers, and movie stars, I began to wonder — what are the conventions of the acceptance speech? Are there conventions? Most speakers had little more to convey than the usual litany of thank-yous. I noticed that some were very emotional while others were not. Some winners had prepared words, whereas some were clearly improvising. When it came Kate Winslet’s turn, she did seem moved, and I wondered if it was too much for her fellow Britons.

REUTERS/Gary Hershorn

REUTERS/Gary Hershorn

What had often captured my interest in years past was the possibility that winners would use their acceptance speech to deliver some sort of political message. Sean Penn met expectations, but also caused further puzzlement. After denouncing California’s Prop 8, the outspoken movie star said he was proud to live in a country that is “willing to elect an elegant man president.” During the last three weeks, I have been surprised never to see a word written about this curious remark either in print periodicals or in the blogosphere. Of all the things about Obama’s election that might make a person proud, why his elegance? Or, is it assumed that Penn meant “eloquent?”

Part of the thrill for me in award acceptance speeches that take a political stand is they remind us of the political realities awards themselves often serve to obscure. (By far the most devastating example of this was Harold Pinter’s 2005 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, in which he meticulously took apart any claims of moral high ground the U.S. might use to justify its War on Terror.) Praising Obama’s elegance would seem deranged as an act of political speech, but maybe as act of an award-acceptance speech — an Oscar no less — praising a president’s elegance is just the thing. Under the conventions of an awards acceptance speech, just about anything goes. The rule must be: we think you are good at what you do, so tell us whatever you want to tell us.