Slave Revolt

Slave Revolt Radio: The Sean Bell Shooting

2007-01-10T14:52:00.000-08:00

50 Shots vol.1 - The Brutal Murder of Sean Bell

Download Audio: 01:52 mp3

The recent Urban lynching of Sean Bell and the near fatal slaughter of his two friends should come as no surprise to anyone half way awake. This is part of the American war for subjugation, containment, and exploitation agenda against the targeted populations on Sam's plantation. Like Amadou (41 shots) Diallo who was a victim of New York's 'War on guns' program. And Iraqis citizens who are victims of Sam's 'War on terrorism/War on WMD's' claims. The tactics of deceit must be in full throttle for the Rulers to carry out their goals. Thus these claims of a 'War on ...' is just a pretext for the Capitalist systems of controls on the populace.

In this (Beyond The Shadow) piece called 'The Sean Bell Shooting: Police sponsored violence and the American Intelligence Psy-ops operation against Black Resistance (A Slave Case Study)' 'SR' attempts to examine this process. From the F.B.I.'s program out of Quantico Virginia's Psy-ops program on Black People in North America, to the role of the Corporate media, the police, Mayors, and so-called Negro leaders. The Psy-ops game is in full effect. The Negro Marketed intergrationalist 'leaders' who are collaborators with the Imperial State Order know their role and place. Weather they have a Democratic or Republican flag stuck up their behinds matters not.

Destruction of lives on a daily bases is all these cesspool Market Capitalist and their believers have to offer the world. Weather you live in the Congo, Iraq, The Nuba Mountains, Darfur, or New York the method for our destruction is basically all the same. And so are the various Psy-ops programs against us.

UN Child Sex Slave Scandals Continue

2007-01-04T15:32:00.000-08:00

From INFOWARS.COM

The UN is to investigate itself again after it was revealed by the London Telegraph today that more than twenty different cases of child sex slavery involving UN staff have been reported in southern Sudan.

Last November a BBC Investigation found that children as young as 11 have been subjected to rape and prostitution by United Nations peacekeepers in Haiti and Liberia. A previous BBC investigation in Liberia discovered systematic abuse, involving food being given out to teenage refugees in return for sex. In both instances the UN promised to investigate.

Previous to this, in early 2002 a massive pedophilia scandal within the UN was uncovered involving sexual abuse against West African refugee children in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. UPI reported that Senior U.N. officials knew of the widespread pedophilia and not only did they not take action against the perpetrators, they covered up the atrocities.

More at Infowars.com

Slave Revolt Radio: The Evil Filth of Two Lessers

2006-11-29T13:53:00.000-08:00

Download audio

11-05-06

The Low life character of American Electoral politics and the players with in it is being laid bare for all who wish to see it. The level of deceit, corruption, and intimidation politics knows no bounds on Sams Plantation. These actions are reflective of the overall tone of the American life and being. 'Just win baby'.'Just do it'. 'The ends justify the means'. Are all part of the corrupt fabric of the American way of expression and action.

In this (Ruins of Empire) segment called 'The Evil Filth of 2 Lessors: Democrates, Republicans and Americas Electoral Politics' Slave Revolt navigates it's way through this repulsive system. From a 'lessor' denying his own heritage, to race baiting politics, to voter suppression attempts. The 'Lessors' (Democrates and Replubicans)will do anything to be the hired (voted into office) contract workers for the 'Order'. Which for the Slaves of the Earth means more war of all kinds. Until the Slaves 'vote' for and move towards true freedoms outside the bounds of mystical hierarchical belief contructs and the privatized systems that go with it.

Slave Revolt Radio: Staying the Course On The Road to Capitalist Hell

2006-11-07T14:42:00.000-08:00

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10-22-06 The privatized structural crisis that the U.S. Empire finds itself in and the threat to it's global dominance is the driving force to the Orders genocidal crusades. Sam's Imperial Grand Chess Board game of death is to restructure the world in it's imperial image. For this to take place what is needed is permanent war.

CNN Interview With Ret. Col. Sam Gardiner Iran War Underway

In this (Ruins of Empire) segment called 'Staying the course on the road to capitalist Hell: The military build up for full spectrum Eurasian dominance' Slave Revolt shoots it's way through these developing events. The U.S. led Corporate Anglo/American Mid East regional pact are rapidly building up for a possible attack against Iran. Absorb how NATO is a component of the imperial axis of the United States. Explore how the 'nuclear option' is now in play with these imperial ghouls. Clips from retired Col. Air Force Commander Sam Gardiner help high-lite some of these unfolding events.

War and genocide is all these capitalist demons have to offer the planet. This is the sick logical step of a dying empire. For the well health and being of the slaves and the planet this dying empire and all those who support it must must enter the dust bin of history.

Slave Revolt Radio: The Devil is In The Details

2006-10-11T15:30:00.000-07:00

Download audio: MP3 at 50.9 mebibytes (download torrent)

10-01-06 When President Hugo Chavez referred to Boy George as being the Devil himself there was great outcry from many sectors from the American society. Yet many people around the world who have felt the horns of the American imperial beast didn't feel those comments were that far off.

In this (Ventures in Corporate Media Land) segment called 'The Devil is in the details' Slave Revolt explores this Satanic capitalist experiment from the pits of hell called America. Hear how torture is 'debatable', habeas corpus is a inconvenience, imperial coups are justifiable, and stolen elections are forgetable.

In a privatized world where wars are made easy, and genocide in the name of market expansion is a way of life. Boy George Bush was speaking to other State Heads (at the U.N. House of Destruction) who know all to well how expendable the masses of the worlds population are under their systems of domination. the devil is in the details.

Slave Revolt Radio: The Empire's Deadly Shop of Horrors

2006-09-20T18:20:00.000-07:00

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Empires come and go but they follow similar patterns of exploitation that puts them on a common ground of barbarity. All savage States have to have their laboratories of human/land mass carnage if they are to become top notch genocidal imperial occupational colonialist. In this (Ruins of Empire) segment called 'The Empires deadly shop of horrors' Slave Revolt with clips from Greg Gradin author of the book 'Empire's Workshop' deals with this subject in regards to Sam's relationship to Latin American. That's followed through with a Tracey James commentary called 'The School of the America's is a School straight outta Hell'

Then we wrap it up with a (Beyond the Shadow) piece called 'The glass jaw bully Chris Baker cuts and runs'. Liberal Bay Area talk show host Berine Ward takes on Texas loud mouth pro 'war on terror' Chris Baker on MS-NBC. Check out how Baker gets his little jaw broken and then 'cuts and runs' when Ward doesn't fall for the bullies antics. Then hear how we explore what these 'debates' really mean when at the end of the day both Baker and Ward support the war machine of empire (Sam) and the administrators (Democrates and Republicans) for the imperial Order.

More on Bernie Ward smack down of Chris Baker at Crooks & Liars Blog

Cynthia Mckinney in Sept 2005, just after Katrina

2006-09-18T17:36:00.000-07:00

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Cynthia McKinney on the Floor of the House Sept 7, 2005:

Cynthia Mckinney speaking on the floor of the House just after the Katrina 'exercise' as Cheney called it. Cynthia talks about Ollie North's plan for martial law in case of a national uprising.

REAGAN AIDES AND THE 'SECRET' GOVERNMENT

2006-09-18T17:31:00.000-07:00

Front Page Miami Herald: July 5, 1987

by ALFONSO CHARDY, HERALD WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON -- Some of President Reagan's top advisers have operated a virtual parallel government outside the traditional Cabinet departments and agencies almost from the day Reagan took office, congressional investigators and administration officials have concluded.

Investigators believe that the advisers' activities extended well beyond the secret arms sales to Iran and aid to the contras now under investigation.

Lt. Col. Oliver North, for example, helped draw up a controversial plan to suspend the Constitution in the event of a national crisis, such as nuclear war, violent and widespread internal dissent or national opposition to a U.S. military invasion abroad.

When the attorney general at the time, William French Smith, learned of the proposal, he protested in writing to North's boss, then-national security adviser Robert McFarlane.

The advisers conducted their activities through secret contacts throughout the government with persons who acted at their direction but did not officially report to them.

The activities of those contacts were coordinated by the National Security Council, the officials and investigators said.

There appears to have been no formal directive for the advisers' activities, which knowledgeable sources described as a parallel government.

In a secret assessment of the activities, the lead counsel for the Senate Iran-contra committee called it a "secret government-within-a-government."

The arrangement permitted Reagan administration officials to claim that they were not involved in controversial or illegal activities, the officials said.

"It was the ultimate plausible deniability," said a well-briefed official who has served the Reagan administration since 1982 and who often collaborated on covert assistance to the Nicaraguan contras.

The roles of top-level officials and of Reagan himself are still not clear. But that is expected to be a primary topic when North appears before the Iran-contra committees beginning Tuesday. Special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh also is believed to be trying to prove in his investigation of the Iran-contra affair that government officials engaged in a criminal conspiracy.

ADVISERS FORMED SHADOW GOVERNMENT, PROBERS SAY

Much of the time, Cabinet secretaries and their aides were unaware of the advisers' activities. When they periodically detected operations, they complained or tried to derail them, interviews show.

But no one ever questioned the activities in a broad way, possibly out of a belief that the advisers were operating with presidential sanction, officials said.

Reagan did know of or approve at least some of the actions of the secret group, according to previous accounts by aides, friends and high-ranking foreign officials.

One such case is the 1985 visit to Libya by William Wilson, then-U.S. ambassador to the Vatican and a close Reagan friend, to meet with Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi, officials said last week. Secretary of State George Shultz rebuked Wilson, but the officials said Reagan knew of the trip in advance.

The heart of the secret structure from 1983 to 1986 was North's office in the Old Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House, investigators believe.

North's influence within the secret structure was so great, the sources said, that he was able to have the orbits of sophisticated surveillance satellites altered to follow Soviet ships around the world, call for the launching of high-flying spy aircraft on secret missions over Cuba and Nicaragua and become involved in sensitive domestic activities.

Many initiatives

Others in the structure included some of Reagan's closest friends and advisers, including former national security adviser William Clark, the late CIA Director William Casey and Attorney General Edwin Meese, officials and investigators said.

Congressional investigators said the Iran deal was just one of the group's initiatives. They say exposure of the unusual arrangement may be the legacy of their inquiry.

"After we establish that a policy decision was made at the highest levels to transfer responsibility for contra support to the NSC..., we favor examining how that decision was implemented," wrote Arthur Liman, chief counsel of the Senate committee, in a secret memorandum to panel leaders Sens. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, and Warren Rudman, R- N.H., before hearings began May 5.

"This is the part of the story that reveals the whole secret government-within-a-government, operated from the [Executive Office Building] by a Lt. Col., with its own army, air force, diplomatic agents, intelligence operatives and appropriations capacity," Limon wrote in the memo, parts of which were shared with The Herald.

A spokesman for Liman declined comment but did not dispute the memo's existence.

A White House official rejected the notion that any of Reagan's advisers were operating secretly.

"The president has constantly expressed his foreign policy positions to the public and has consulted with the Congress," the official said.

Began in 1980

Congressional investigators and current and former officials interviewed -- members of the CIA, State Department and Pentagon -- said they still do not have a full record of the impact of the the advisers' activities.

But based on investigations and personal experience, they believe the secret governing arrangement traces its roots to the last weeks of Reagan's 1980 campaign.

Officials say the genesis may have been an October 1980 decision by Casey, Reagan's campaign manager and a former officer in the World War II precursor of the CIA, to create an October Surprise Group to monitor Jimmy Carter's feverish negotiations with Iran for the release of 52 American hostages.

The group, led by campaign foreign policy adviser Richard Allen, was founded out of concern Carter might pull off an "October surprise" such as a last-minute deal for the release of the hostages before the Nov. 4 election. One of the group's first acts was a meeting with a man claiming to represent Iran who offered to release the hostages to Reagan.

Allen -- Reagan's first national security adviser-- and another campaign aide, Laurence Silberman, told The Herald in April of the meeting. they said McFarlane, then a Senate Armed Services Committee aide, arranged and attended it. McFarlane later became Reagan's national security adviser and played a key role in the Iran-contra affair. Allen and Silberman said they rejected the offer to release the hostages to Reagan.

Briefing book theft

Congressional aides now link another well-known campaign incident -- the theft of confidential briefing materials from Carter's campaign before the Oct. 28, 1980, Carter-Reagan debate -- to the same group of advisers.

They believe that Casey obtained the briefing materials and passed them to James Baker, another top Reagan campaign aide, who was White House chief of staff in Reagan's first term.

Once Reagan was sworn in, the group moved quickly to set itself up, officials said. Within months, the advisers were clashing with officials in the traditional agencies.

Six weeks after Reagan was sworn in, apparently over State Department objections, then-CIA director Casey submitted a proposal to Reagan calling for covert support of anti-Sandinista groups that had fled Nicaragua after the 1979 revolution.

[THE IRAN-CONTRA CONNECTION: NORTH HAD BIG ROLE IN INNER CIRCLE, INVESTIGATORS SAY]

It is still unclear whether Casey cleared the plan with Reagan. But In November 1981 the CIA secretly flew an Argentine military leader, Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri, to Washington to devise a secret agreement under which Argentine military officers trained Nicaraguan rebels, according to an administration official familiar with the agreement.

About the same time, North completed his transfer to the NSC from the Marine Corps. Those who worked with North in 1981 remember his first assignments as routine, although not unimportant.

North, they recalled, was briefly assigned to carry the "football," the briefcase containing the secret contingency plans for fighting a nuclear war, which is taken everywhere the president goes. North later widened his assignment to cover national crisis contingency planning. In that capacity he became involved with the controversial national crisis plan drafted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

NATIONAL CRISIS PLAN

From 1982 to 1984, North assisted FEMA, the U.S. government's chief national crisis-management unit, in revising contingency plans for dealing with nuclear war, insurrection or massive military mobilization.

North's involvement with FEMA set off the first major clash between the official government and the advisers and led to the formal letter of protest in 1984 from then- Attorney General Smith.

Smith was in Europe last week and could not be reached for comment.

But a government official familiar with North's collaboration with FEMA said then-Director Louis O. Guiffrida, a close friend of Meese's, mentioned North in meetings during that time as FEMA's NSC contact.

Guiffrida could not be reached for comment, but FEMA spokesman Bill McAda confirmed the relationship.

"Officials of FEMA met with Col. North during 1982 to 1984," McAda said. "These meetings were appropriate to Col. North's duties with the National Security Council and FEMA's responsibilities in certain areas of national security."

FEMA's clash with Smith occurred over a secret contingency plan that called for suspension of the Constitution, turning control of the United States over to FEMA, appointment of military commanders to run state and local governments and declaration of martial law during a national crisis.

The plan did not define national crisis, but it was understood to be nuclear war, violent and widespread internal dissent or national opposition against a military invasion abroad.

PLAN WAS PROTESTED

The official said the contingency plan was written as part of an executive order or legislative package that Reagan would sign and hold within the NSC until a severe crisis arose.

The martial law portions of the plan were outlined in a June 30, 1982, memo by Guiffrida's deputy for national preparedness programs, John Brinkerhoff. A copy of the memo was obtained by The Herald.

The scenario outlined in the Brinkerhoff memo resembled somewhat a paper Guiffrida had written in 1970 at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., in which he advocated martial law in case of a national uprising by black militants. The paper also advocated the roundup and transfer to "assembly centers or relocation camps" of at least 21 million "American Negroes."

When he saw the FEMA plans, Attorney General Smith became alarmed. He dispatched a letter to McFarlane Aug. 2, 1984 lodging his objections and urging a delay in signing the directive.

"I believe that the role assigned to the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the revised Executive Order exceeds its proper function as a coordinating agency for emergency preparedness," Smith said in the letter to McFarlane, which The Herald obtained. "This department and others have repeatedly raised serious policy and legal objections to the creation of an 'emergency czar' role for FEMA."

It is unclear whether the executive order was signed or whether it contained the martial law plans. Congressional sources familiar with national disaster procedures said they believe Reagan did sign an executive order in 1984 that revised national military mobilization measures to deal with civilians in case of nuclear war or other crisis.

ORCHESTRATED NEWS LEAKS

Around the time that issue was producing fireworks with the administration, McFarlane and Casey reassigned North from national crisis planning to international covert management of the contras. The transfer came after North took a personal interest, realizing that neither the State Department nor any other government agency wanted to handle the issue after it became clear early in 1984 that Congress was moving to bar official aid to the rebels.

The new assignment, plus North's natural organizational ability, creativity and the sheer energy he dedicated to the issue, gradually led to an expansion of his power and stature within the covert structure, officials and investigators believe.

Meese also was said to have played a role in the secret government, investigators now believe, but his role is less clear.

Meese sometimes referred private American citizens to the NSC so they could be screened and contacted for soliciting support for the Nicaraguan contras.

One of those supporters, Philip Mabry of Fort Worth, told The Herald earlier this year that in 1983 he was told by fellow conservatives in Texas to contact Meese, then White House counselor, if he wanted to help the contras. After he contacted Meese's office, Mabry received a letter from Meese obtained by The Herald advising him that his name had been given to the "appropriate people."

Shortly thereafter, Mabry said, a woman who identified herself as Meese's secretary gave him the name and phone number of another NSC secretary who, in turn, gave him North and his secretary, Fawn Hall, as contacts.

Meese's Justice Department spokesman, Patrick Korten, denies that Meese was part of North's secret contra supply network and notes that Meese does not recall having referred anyone to North on contra-related matters.

In addition to North's role as contra commander and fund-raiser, North became secret overseer of the State Department's Office of Public Diplomacy, through which the Reagan administration disseminated information that cast Nicaragua as a threat to its neighbors and the United States.

An intelligence source familiar with North's relationship with that office said North was directly involved in many of the best publicized news leaks, including the Nov. 4, 1984, Election Day announcement that Soviet-made MiG jet fighters were on their way to Nicaragua.

McFarlane is now believed to have been the senior administration official who told reporters that the Soviet cargo ship Bakuriani, en route to Nicaragua from a Soviet Black Sea port, was probably carrying MiGs.

The intelligence official said North apparently recommended that the information be leaked to the press on Election Day so it would reach millions of people watching election results. CBS and NBC broadcast the report that night.

CLARK HAD KEY ROLE

The leak led to a new clash between the regular bureaucracy and the president's advisers. The official State Department spokesman, John Hughes, tried hard to play down the report, pointing out that it was unproven that the Bakuriani was carrying MiGs. At the same time, employees of the Office of Public Diplomacy, acting under North's direction, insisted that the crates were inside the ship and that MiGs were still a possibility.

To take a closer look, the source said, North requested a high-flying SR-71 Blackbird spy aircraft be sent from Beale Air Force Base near Sacramento, Calif., to fly over the Nicaraguan port of Corinto while the Bakuriani unloaded its cargo. The pictures showed that the Bakuriani unloaded helicopters, not MiGs.

North was not the only adviser who operated outside traditional government channels, investigators have concluded.

Others were known as the RIGLET, a semi-official unit made up of North; Alan Fiers, a CIA Central American affairs officer; and Elliott Abrams, the current assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, according to Abrams' subordinate Richard Melton. Melton revealed the existence of the RIGLET in a deposition given to the Iran- contra committees. The name is a diminutive for RIG, which stands for Restricted Interagency Group.

Among the RIGLET's actions was ordering the U.S. ambassador to Costa Rica, Lewis Tambs, to assist the contras in setting up a front in southern Nicaragua. Tambs, who resigned suddenly last year after his links to North were revealed, testified about the instructions to Iran-contra investigators.

But perhaps the key to the parallel government was the role played by Reagan's second national security adviser, William Clark. It was during Clark's tenure that North began to gain influence in the NSC.

Clark also recruited several midlevel officers from the Pentagon and the CIA to work on a special Central American task force in 1983 to push aid for El Salvador, a task force member said.

"Judge Clark was the granddaddy of the system," he said. "I was working at the Pentagon on another issue when my boss said that because of special circumstances, I was to be reassigned to the task force."

A former administration official familiar with Clark's activities said Clark also had approved contacts between Vatican Ambassador Wilson and Libya before Wilson's November 1985 journey, which came after McFarlane replaced Clark at the NSC.

The former official said Wilson also had carried out secret missions for the Reagan administration in a Latin American country where Wilson reportedly maintained contacts with high-level officials. The source asked that the country not be identified because the system is still in place and had reduced tensions by circumventing the regular bureaucracies of both countries.

Calls to Wilson's and Clark's offices in California were not returned.

Slave Revolt Radio: The lost souls of a militarized empire

2006-09-10T05:20:00.000-07:00

SRR 08-27-06

Download audio: MP3 at 37.5 mebibytes (download torrent)

Part of the consequences of living in a top down militarized market based society is that much of the population values parrot that of the rulers in that society. One of the most dominant forms of expression in a imperial based society is that of violence. A population or persons with in that society that do not develop a independent code of resistance and ethics (Slave Codes) on their own are often lead into either cheer leading drones for the state, pie in the sky passive/'protest' observers of the brutality of the rulers, or jackbooted soldiers of annihilation for the 'Order'.

In this (Ruins of Empire) segment called 'The lost souls of a militarized empire' Slave Revolt attempts to address these multilayered issues. Here how a man with no 'direction' in life finds temporary 'meaning' and a 'sense of purpose' by being a machine gunner of humans he's never met. A gi jane woman who had to carry a gun to protect herself from sexual violence by men serving in the same military, and serving the same empire as herself. Yet she never stops to question how can this type of human product and institution bring 'freedom' anywhere?. And is this really the true agenda of the American Empire?.

These soulless ones stories along with others high-lite a land where lost souls devoured by the Beast is the daily feast of Empires, Regimes, and Religious based privatized hierarchical societies. Societies that the Slaves of the world must not allow to consume their souls.

Obesity Rankings

2006-08-30T06:37:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON - America's obesity problem is only getting worse, according to a new report from a health advocacy group.

The five states with the highest obesity rates -- Mississippi, Alabama, West Virginia, Louisiana and Kentucky -- have much higher rates of poverty than the national norm.

Slave Revolt Radio: Abraham's children of war

2006-08-28T18:50:00.000-07:00

SRR 08-20-06 (Beyond The Shadow) piece called Abraham's children of war, genocide, and Imperial State colonization: Israel and Sudan'. Slave Revolt addresses this subject.

Download audio: MP3 at 50.8 mebibytes (download torrent)

Hierarchical beliefs in the form of the State construct or religious beliefs construct is a form of discipline on the mass population. In monopolistic privatize societies dominating elites weather in the form of Kings, Queens, Corporations, Presidents, Sultans, etc. Or in the form of all power full universe creating invisible spacemen (Gods), or of course 'Gods' administrators of 'his word' Priest, Prophets, Popes, Ministers, etc, serve as a system of institutionalized thought. In hierarchical societies the institutionalized population can often be lead into imperial wars. The State is but a institution of advance warfare for the interest of the elite. Many religions are a form of mass disciplining of the masses that benefit those elites within those privatized Hierarchical State constructs of death and control.

In this (Beyond The Shadow) piece called Abraham's children of war, genocide, and Imperial State colonization: Israel and Sudan'. Slave Revolt addresses this subject. We deal with how in the name of a 'greater Israel' the state of Israel justifies it's imperial ambitions to the 'believers' in part by it religion and a ethnic identity tied to that religion. At the same time Those in power in Sudan have expanded their wars on the indigenous populations by the logical use of their Abrahamic religion and ethnic (Arab) identity claims. Both Ab's really want to expand their privatized power, influence, and monopolize the resources for the interest of the few. This is how States function. Yet in many Abrahamic societies religions help shape their populations into war making cheer leading drones.

A religious glove fitted over a steel State fist. And a fist that like the glove demand submission from the slaves. Is a world that the Slaves, the ones who live without Sorcery based myths. Who have tasted the chains of your genocidal war producing 'civilizations' can no longer absorb.

Poverty in Boston, What Poverty?

2006-08-22T04:13:00.000-07:00

by Sofia Jarrin-Thomas Email: sofiajt (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified!)
That’s exactly what an editor for the business section at the Boston Globe said during class at Harvard when I proposed writing a story about the correlation between the rise in crime and poverty in our city. I was dumbfounded and almost answered, “All you have to do is look outside your window,” as I remembered the men standing day after day on the street corners looking for work at my Somerville neighborhood. Then again, I didn’t know where the editor lived and the suburbs isn’t exactly a Boston hub for the homeless. The story idea was shut down, and we both moved on with our privileged lives.

Meanwhile, crime in Boston is still on the rise as Mayor Thomas M. Menino gave the order this past spring to hire 70 new police personnel. The increased police presence forced Rev. Bruce Wall to tell a Boston Globe reporter that, “Every Friday night when I walk the neighborhoods I see the police pulling over a number of young people, stopping, frisking, inquiring, checking on weapons” and went on to complain that the police force looked more like an Aryan Nation, turning good kids into bad kids. The good kids and their mothers sure complained last week when Officer Jarrod Gero interrupted a 4-year-old child’s birthday party in a courtyard on Sonoma Street, in Roxbury, pepperspraying several guests in the process, according to the Boston Phoenix. Only one arrest was made: 24-year-old Jerome Goffigan, who according to several witnesses was playing musical chairs with the children, charged with six crimes, ranging from marijuana possession to assaulting an officer. Party goers complained bitterly to the Phoneix about the unnecessary force of the "ensuing 18 officers who swarmed the courtyard — still filled with children — their guns drawn and shouting orders." The Boston Police Department’s “surgical approach” to crime by “taking out the bad characters” has focused largely in Dorchester, Mattapan, and Roxbury, where 85 percent of the crime is concentrated. So how does this relate to poverty? Curiously, all three are distressed neighborhoods where the average median household income ($35, 537) is almost half that of Cambridge’s ($61, 646). In 2003, the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University reported that blacks and Latinos are five to six times more likely than whites to live in Metro Boston poverty neighborhoods (with poverty rates of 20% or higher), and Asians are three times more likely. “The costs of living in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty include higher rates of dropping out from high school, teen childbearing, and adolescent delinquency, among other costs,” said the report. The Center for Economic Research in Washington, D.C., released in 2003 a report that showed how when job quality improves, incomes rise, particularly for the lowest earners; and poverty, welfare rolls, and crime all fall. And as early as 1999, a review of findings at the Federal Reserve Board conference in New York found that “increased levels of crime, poor health, mortality, poor schools, and poor housing are associated with higher levels of inequality across cities, states, and nations.” But the original question wasn’t about the correlation between poverty and crime, it was about how poverty is not apparent to a Boston Globe editor. In Massachusetts, the gap between upper- and lower-income families has grown more in Massachusetts than in 47 of the 50 states over the past two decades, according to the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center. The average income of the 20 poorest families has grown 16 percent from $16,938 to $19,690 per year, compared to a soaring 105 percent growth for 5 percent of the wealthiest families at $233,108 per year. The Boston Indicators Project reports that income inequality in Massachusetts began 40 years ago, and that in 2004, more than 40% of Boston families had incomes below Self-Sufficiency Standards. In Roxbury alone, 50.8% of the population live under the poverty line, according to the EPA’s Urban Environmental Program in Massachusetts. Ironically, that same year Massachusetts was the only state in the country to shrink in population size, as those who could afford it ventured better opportunities and cheaper housing elsewhere. In New Orleans it took a catastrophe for people to face impoverished America. One would hope that we can get past our pre-conception of living in the “richest nation in the world” and see how economic inequality in this country affects our neighborhoods. As Boston continues to face high energy, housing, health care, and higher education costs — and a poverty-blind editorial board at the Boston Globe — one needs to ask who will be left behind to deal with our strained communities. A stronger police force certainly can’t be the best answer

Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center: a crude and dishonest work

2006-08-12T18:47:00.000-07:00

By David Walsh
12 August 2006

Five years after the fact, the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, DC, remain largely uninvestigated. The most critical questions surrounding events that supposedly “changed everything” continue to go unanswered and even unaddressed.

Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center, following in the wake of United 93 (directed by Paul Greenglass), does not deign to approach any of the troubling issues surrounding September 11. On the contrary, Stone’s work is artistically crude and politically dishonest.

The film follows two Port Authority policemen, John McLoughlin (played by Nicolas Cage) and Will Jimeno (Michael Peña), who are ordered on the morning of September 11 to help with the evacuation of the first World Trade Center tower to be struck and end up buried in rubble themselves. For the greater portion of the film we see McLoughlin and Jimeno, in pain and speaking to one another, stuck in the tons of wreckage of the massive skyscrapers.

At one point in Stone’s film, President George W. Bush shows up on a television screen. “The resolve of our great nation is being tested, but make no mistake,” he asserts, “we will show the world we will pass the test.” New York City’s Mayor Rudolph Giuliani makes a brief appearance. Horrified television viewers around the world watch the event.

Much of the film cuts between the two trapped men and their distraught wives and families in suburban New York and New Jersey. Donna McLoughlin (Maria Bello), the wife of the 21-year veteran of the police force, has four children, one of whom accuses her of indifference because the family sits at home and waits for news. Eventually, Donna heads into Manhattan to find out her husband’s fate.

Jimeno’s wife, the younger Allison (Maggie Gyllenhaal), is five months pregnant. With her family and in-laws, she waits anxiously across the river in New Jersey. Given false information that her husband has been rescued, Allison and other family members rush to lower Manhattan, only to be told that Jimeno remains trapped in the ruins.

An ex-marine from Connecticut, Dave Karnes (Michael Shannon), changes into his old uniform and unofficially reports for duty at Ground Zero. Patrolling the site at night, he makes contact with Jimeno and McLoughlin, who are eventually brought to the surface by emergency workers risking their own lives in the process.

The real McLoughlin and Jimeno survived the ordeal, and the screenplay, by Andrea Berloff, is based on their accounts of the experience.

Stone has never been a serious artist. His “good” films (Salvador, Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, JFK) were not very good, unsubtle and bombastic, and his bad films (The Doors, Natural Born Killers, Any Given Sunday, Alexander) have simply been awful.

About Any Given Sunday, six years ago, I wrote: “In any event, the final result is at once clichéd, impersonal and hysterical. Nearly everyone acts detestably throughout.” About Alexander, in 2005: “Alexander tells us little about its central figure or the sort of society he emerged from or envisioned. Its goings-on are rather silly. It’s not at all clear what Stone is getting at, other than suggesting that conquering the world is exhausting and psychologically damaging work. He wants us to admire youth and heroism, but a sensibility that finds it difficult to distinguish between the exploits of Jim Morrison of The Doors and Alexander of Macedon may be lacking some fundamental ingredient.”

Berloff’s screenplay for World Trade Center, although based on facts, is cliché-ridden and contrived, and the direction follows suit. Even the opening banter among the Port Authority cops feels false. Certain moments are objectively moving, and the performers do their best, but the film is emotionally manipulative and maudlin. “Is Daddy coming home?” asks Allison’s daughter at one point. “They did what they had to do,” we are sternly told at another. Although no expense or theatrics have been spared, the condition of McLoughlin and Jimeno is never genuinely communicated—because the film, at its core, is deeply evasive and untruthful and this finds expression at every dramatic turning point.

Stone and his colleagues assert that World Trade Center is “not a political film.” In a variety of interviews, the director has sounded this theme. “The beauty of my original premise was to take you inside the lives of these two men,” Stone told the Chicago Sun-Times. “I wanted to narrow it down to two men and feel their fear, their strength and their courage. I thought this was a fresh way to purge our systems of this tragedy.”

In comments to the New York Times, the filmmaker went farther: “It’s not about the World Trade Center, really. It’s about any man or woman faced with the end of their lives, and how they survive.”

The notion that this is merely a tribute to the courage and strength of individuals on a tragic day is absurd, and it’s doubtful that Stone believes it. If the work is simply about individual heroics, or how men and women face the end of their lives, why spend $63 million in recreating the rubble of the World Trade Center?

The filmmaker’s own view, which comes out from time to time, seems to be that September 11 was an extraordinary opportunity for national unity, which was hijacked by a crowd of neo-conservatives in the Bush administration: “All I can say is that we had the sympathy of the world on that day. The rest of the world was with us. We had a right to pursue those murderers. We should have closed the circle. We didn’t need more and more terror, Constitutional breakdowns and more pain.” Iraq, he argues, like numerous leading Democrats, is the “wrong war.”

In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks, Stone had a more “left” take on the events. On October 6, 2001, at a New York Film Festival forum, he denounced the “new world order” and asserted that “the revolt of September 11th was about ‘Fuck you! Fuck your order—’” He suggested that those in the Arab world who celebrated the downing of the World Trade Center were reacting like those who had responded joyfully to the French and Russian revolutions. Stone also apparently drew a link between the attacks and the hijacking of the 2000 elections by the Bush camp, which he described as a confirmation of the demise of democracy.

To ascribe any degree of political legitimacy to the heinous attacks of September 11, in which 2,700 innocent human beings horribly lost their lives, was wrong and disoriented. Stone’s transformation into a manufacturer of patriotic myths is not an improvement. He asserts, “Don’t pigeon-hole me; I change.” We feel that a lack of principles and any sense of political responsibility, however, are constants.

In any event, Stone, with whatever degree of consciousness, has made a highly political film. Granted, this takes a peculiar form. In World Trade Center, no effort has been made to provide the slightest historical or political context for the 9/11 attacks; on the contrary, Stone’s film is devoted to the principle of explaining nothing. The viewer, it is made clear, will know only what McLoughlin and Jimeno knew that day. Why is that an advantage? What is the point of art in that case? This was the premise of United 93, and it failed in that instance, too.

If sticking to the bare empirical facts, or claiming to do so, is a poor guideline for a historian or a journalist, it is nearly always fatal for an artist. Art exists to illuminate, to expand, to magnify. It lives or dies by the degree to which its imaginative and recreative powers are exercised, even in non-fiction or documentary—in those cases, the conscious intervention of the artist to arrange his or her material is perhaps all the more essential.

It is impossible to understand the smallest incidents of September 11 apart from their broader context. The film, of course, does not take this up, but the very unpreparedness of the city for such an attack led to the high death toll among firefighters in particular. The latter were unable to communicate with each other or the police. Firefighters in the World Trade Center’s north tower, for example, 121 of whom died, were never able to hear the order to evacuate because of faulty equipment—at a time when all the civilians who could possible have been reached were already out of the building.

Meanwhile, Rudolph Giuliani treated September 11 as one extended photo opportunity. As the WSWS has noted, the mayor “did little other than appear repeatedly before the television cameras.” At the national commission hearings in May 2004, Giuliani was heckled by a number of relatives of those killed in the attack. (In a new book, as noted by the New York Times August 6, commission heads Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton admit that they failed to “ask tough questions” of Giuliani out of fear of “public anger”—i.e., the right-wing media.)

The general social and socio-psychological situation is a fundamental fact for cinema; it has to saturate a given work. Stone’s film, however, portrays an American society without sharp contradictions. The better Hollywood films about World War II never painted such a false picture. Even the titles of some of the works, They Were Expendable, the ironic The Best Years of Our Lives, acknowledged difficulties and social discontent. In World Trade Center the myth of a nationally unified, harmonious America filters into the images and falsifies critical moments, including intimate ones.

Explicitly political elements are not missing either in this “non-political” film. A Sheboygan, Wisconsin, policeman, focused upon for some reason, calls the terrorists “bastards.” The images of the ex-marine, Karnes, in his uniform, determinedly searching the smoking ruins are particularly loaded. Having come upon the trapped men, in the company of another marine, he shouts down to them, “We are marines. We’re not leaving you. You are our mission.” Later in the film, Karnes looks straight ahead and menacingly avers, “They’re gonna need some good men out there to avenge this.”

Stone’s work is thoroughly conformist and encourages various forms of backwardness. One shot stands out in particular: one of Allison’s in-laws on her knees, tearfully praying. The camera lingers on the woman, in Stone’s inimitable style, which consists of hitting the spectator over the head until he or she cries “Uncle!” We are also treated twice to a vision of Jesus Christ, which apparently came to Jimeno in his obviously desperate circumstances.

Patriotism, militarism, religion, Bush and Giuliani: this is nothing for Stone to be proud of. The extreme right, however, thinks highly of World Trade Center. Reactionary columnist Cal Thomas termed the work “one of the greatest pro-American, pro-family, pro-faith, pro-male, flag-waving, God Bless America films you will ever see.” L. Brent Bozell III, president of the right-wing Media Research Center and founder of the Parents Television Council, described World Trade Center as “a masterpiece.” These comments strike one as a clutching at straws. It’s dubious, in fact, whether such an insincere film will have a significant impact on those who see it.

Parenthetically, the effort by Paramount on behalf of World Trade Center is a further repugnant instance of the Hollywood studios’ knuckling under to the ultra-right. The Los Angeles Times reports that Paramount “was so worried about Stone’s bomb-thrower reputation that the studio hired a media firm [Creative Response Concepts] that played a prominent role in various conservative causes, notably the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth group that attacked Sen. John F. Kerry’s Vietnam record during the 2004 presidential campaign, to do outreach in the conservative community. Paramount also tried to avert a backlash in Washington by having screenings of the film and its trailer for members of Congress.”

Why has Stone made this film? As he says, he “changes,” and it may very well be that his own confused, disoriented views are drifting generally to the right. The atmosphere of intimidation that followed the September 11 attacks and which has never dissipated has clearly had an impact on an entire social layer, in Hollywood in particular. How many leading film figures have denounced the Bush administration for its criminal activities?

There is another issue, however, perhaps an even more troubling one, and not only associated with Stone’s evolution (although he may be particularly susceptible): the obsession with celebrity in the US, the desire to be in the limelight, the fear of isolation and disapproval. As we noted seven years ago, at the time of informer Elia Kazan’s honoring by the Academy Awards—“In America, after all, if you are not an immense success, a star, you are nothing, a human zero.”

Stone has been wandering in the wilderness for a dozen years or more. Recent films, Alexander in particular, have not been successful in the US. Directing World Trade Center did not fall into his lap. As he admits, he campaigned for the job. Clearly, he felt, here was a chance to get back in the industry’s good graces, to return to the fold. And, by all appearances, the strategy has worked.

The filmmaker made a revealing comment in an interview with the New York Times, whose reporter noted that Paul Haggis (Crash) is directing an adaptation of former intelligence analyst Richard Clarke’s book, Against All Enemies, which took the Bush administration to task for its failings. “Asked if that weren’t the kind of film he might once have tried to tackle, Stone first scoffs: ‘I couldn’t do it. I’d be burned alive.’ Then he adds: ‘This [World Trade Center] is not a political film. That’s the mantra they handed me.’ ”

How can anything worthwhile emerge from this type of cowardice and cynicism?

Slave Revolt Radio: The Empire Spreads it's Wings

2006-08-09T01:13:00.000-07:00

Download audio: MP3 at 51.2 mebibytes (download torrent)

The recent events unfolding in Lebanon and Israel are part of a larger imperial struggle on the Grand Chess Boards privatized stage. The attack by Israel is part of a larger Geo-political war tactic to dominate the life energy blood of all industrialized societies, hydrocarbons. this strategy Outlined and backed by the powerful Elite in the Anglo/Western financial military corporate axis are determined to maintain and recement their power block by all genocidal means.

In this (Ruins Of Empire) segment called 'The Empire spreads it's wings: The long march towards permanent genocidal imperial resource wars in the Middle East' Slave Revolt aims it's sights at this subject. Listen as we explore the financial crisis Sam is in and how this is spurring on more adventurist actions. Hear how this expansion of capitalist death is based around China, Russia, and the evolution of the (SCO). And soak in as we explore how Syria and Iran are planned to be 'visited' next on this march of Imperial death.

Empires are forged by war. Empires are maintained by war. Empires are destroyed by war. Wars of privatized financial and of military decimation. Unless the Slaves of the planet realize and respond to these dynamics without any illusions and mystical beliefs this may turn out to be humanities final war.

Dr. Khallid Muhammad on Donahue (1994)

2006-07-09T17:32:00.000-07:00

Say what you want, but his knowledge of history, insight on geopolitics, understanding of global capitalism, not to mention his critique of phony black leaders like Jesse Jackson was as sharp as they come.

Watch video here

Slave Revolt Radio: Blood Money, 4th of July

2006-07-04T14:07:00.000-07:00

Download audio: MP3 at 50.9 mebibytes (download torrent)

Slave Revolt kicks back into gear with a episode dealing with the global imperial impact of the war capitalist institutions.

In this (Beyond The Shadow) segment called Blood Money: The corporate structuring of world societies for permanent imperial wars and conquest'. The privatized corporate system is taken to task. Relationships between war and 'cost plus' contracts to disaster capitalists like Halliburton, arms capitalists like Lockheed Martian, and private resource capitalist like big oil are brought into focus. Antonia Juhasz Author of the book 'The Bush Agenda' and Brigadier General Smedley Butler's 1930's classic 'War is a racket' help expose this past and present global corporate game of death for the many, riches for the few.

Slave Revolt then brings it home with a 4th of July nightmare for the slaves with a Tracey James commentary called 'Happy 4th of Jul-lie: it ain't our independence day'. Cause for the slaves independence will only come when the flesh-peddlers the world over exist no more.

Slave Revolt Radio: And then they came for me

2006-06-17T13:26:00.000-07:00

Download audio: MP3 at 43.1 mebibytes (download torrent)

For years Chaplin James Yee was a proud GI Joe solider for the U.S. imperial machine. He saw no contradiction between his hocus pocus faith in religion and his faith and service to the imperial 'Order'. Yee had no problem serving Sam and Allah.
Until they came for him.

In this (Beyond the Shadow) segment called 'And then they came for me: Islam's Chaplin James Yee mystical journey' Slave Revolt shoots it's way through these joint ventures of sorcery and imperial genocide. Pacts between 'God' and State. And the 'morality' of the mystic, and the morality of the slave.

For one can be a capitalist and be a christian. One can be a imperialist and be a Islam. One can be a colonialist and be a Hebron. But one can not be a capitalist, a imperialist, and or a colonialist and be a Slave. Slave Revolt!.

Councilman Compares Cleveland Teens To Terrorists

2006-06-07T17:44:00.000-07:00

CLEVELAND -- Cleveland City Councilman Zach Reed wants to help curb crime and drugs, especially among teens in his community.

"These are modern-day terrorists," Reed said.

He said there is little that separates the drug dealers and street criminals that keep citizens in his southeast Cleveland ward from leaving their homes and the terrorists who would look to attack our country.

Reed is urging council to fight violence the same way they would fight terrorism.

"Therefore, the time has come to make Ward 3 a police state and submit a true zero-tolerance policy," Reed said.

He said he's received permission to use a $50,000 federal grant to hire off-duty police officers with arrest powers to patrol the streets of Mt. Pleasant.

"We will be implementing the same policing strategy as my Shaker Heights neighbors, which do not allow loitering on their street corners," he said.

Reed also has another grant to install more security cameras in his ward.

Crime was reduced more than 70 percent in the area where the first cameras were installed.

City leaders said Cleveland is no different than most cities when it comes to youth violence, and while they support the councilman's intention, they take issue with his wording.

"To take it to the step of declaring martial law, that's not in the interest of our community," said Public Safety Director Martin Flask.

The extra patrols could hit the streets as early as next week.

THIS IS THE SAME SAMBO WHO SPENT TIME BEHIND BARS FOR DUI

CLEVELAND (AP) - Jail time wasn't too tough for a Cleveland city councilman who had been locked up 10 days for violating his drunken-driving probation.

Councilman Zack Reed was assigned to a seven-bed infirmary instead of a dormitory with up to 65 inmates sleeping on bunks or floor mattresses.

Reed (pictured, right) got to see visitors in a more private library setting and after regular hours.

Cleveland Safety Director Martin Flask calls the treatment different but not preferential. The warden says that he wanted to protect Reed from political enemies.

Cops make mistake of Niggerizing the wrong White Girl

2006-06-06T18:05:00.000-07:00

Watch Video Here

Slave Revolt Radio: Facism in America will be as simple as a jog in the park: The Central

2006-06-01T13:07:00.000-07:00

Download audio: MP3 at 50.1 mebibytes (download torrent)

In September of 2002 when the Central Park rapist and violent assaulter Martias Raye's admitted to being the lone attacker of Trisha Meili. Many thought that police reforms would be imp lamented in the face of five black and Latino teens being framed up and convicted in this racially explosive case in April of 1989 in New York.

Yet the truth that was exposed about the corruption of the State brought no real changes locally or nationally. Even though the frame up of the teens rung in many draconian police command society laws, tactics, and mind sets. In this (Beyond the Shadow) segment called 'Fascism in America will be as simple as a jog in the park: The Central Park jogging case'. Slave Revolt deals with this tale of horror in this horrible American experiment.

Listen and hear how wretched opportunistic savages in American politics, from the world of capitalistic money, to sick assistant attorney's like Linda Fairstein, mixed in with the iron fisted brutes (the police) took advantage of this case of lies and frame up. Find out how calls for justice for the slaves and their defenders keep falling on deaf ears in a sick society that only hears the vocal tunes of the fascist. The drum beat of the goose stepping 'Order'. And the sights and screams of the modern day lynch mobbers of innocent Black and Latino teens. Which for many in America is as simple as a jog in the park.

ALSO:

Duke lacrosse team rape case reveals depth of racial stereotypes

Rachel over at Rachel’s Tavern has a great post on the hypocrisies of the way crimes by white men are portrayed in the media versus those by black men:

One of the most troubling ways this is done is by the use of special terms coined in honor of Black men’s crimes or criminal involvement. The most famous example of this is the term “wilding.” The term wilding was used to describe the attack of a White woman in Central Park in the late 1980s… Another example of this is the whole “Stop Snitching” phenomenon, which has been labeled as a huge threat to the criminal justice system…
The trend of giving special labels to Black men’s bad behavior (or in some cases alleged bad behavior) makes it seem as if Black men invented gang rape or the code of silence that prevents snitchin. If the young wealthy White men can hide beyond their attorneys and say they are not “snitchin” on advice of counsel, the outcome is the similar—the crime is harder to solve. If a group of these White guys decide to have a party where they invite strippers and engage in wilding, the outcome is similar–another woman is sexually assaulted. Unfortunately, most people(especially White folks) in American culture don’t see these behaviors as similar. They think that one Black person’s bad behavior is somehow representative of all Black people, not the individual Black person or people involved. They think subconsciously or consciously that Black men are dangerous and White men are the innocent boys next door. So next time you hear a special lable for Black men’s bad behavior. Please think twice.

Remember the Victims of America's Brutal Military

2006-05-29T01:40:00.000-07:00

US Marines to stand trial for massacre of Iraqi civilians in Haditha

Nine-year-old Eman Waleed and her younger brother Abdul Rahman survived the attack on their house, as all of the adults in the room shielded the children with their bodies. Hours after the massacre, Iraqi soldiers found the children under the pile of corpses—wounded but alive.

Eman has been quoted recalling the Marines shouting, breaking down doors, and murdering her terrified grandparents as they emerged in their nightclothes. Then, as the Marines turned to her, her parents and relatives leapt to shield her from the bullets. As her parents lay dying on top of her, and even though she had been shot herself, she knew to keep quiet. Abdul, one year younger, has been unable to communicate since November.

Slave Revolt Radio: American made wars, American made myths, Vietnam and Iraq

2006-05-20T15:46:00.000-07:00

Download audio: MP3 at 44.9 mebibytes (download torrent)

This hour Slave Revolt goes deep into the American mindset to dissect how the American empires wars for imperial conquest are believed by most of the public as wars for humanities freedom.

In a (Beyond the Shadow) segment called 'American made wars, American made myths: Vietnam and Iraq' we explore this American made construct and deception game head on. Clips from H. Bruce Franklin author of the book 'Vietnam and other American fantasies' helps provide some of the ammunition to shoot down the American made lies about the Vietnam war.

So load your clips and mind and be prepared to shoot down the myths of the American way of life, it's wars from Vietnam to Iraq. The myth making machine these myths are manufactured in. And those who wish to carry on in this 'great American lie'.

White ex-cons as likely to find work than black men with no criminal record

2006-05-14T13:09:00.000-07:00

By Brenda Porter

April 27, 2006 -- A study from a team of Princeton University sociology professors revealed that race and criminal history continue to play a role in gaining employment.

As part of the study, which began in February 2004, 13 applicants went on nearly 3,500 job interviews with 1,470 private companies. All jobs were entry level.

The men were given the same qualifications and experience, while criminal history was randomly assigned. The most striking results of the study were that white males with criminal records were just as likely as blacks with no criminal history to find employment. Also, having a criminal record reduced the number of positive responses from employers by 57% for black applicants but only by 35% for their white counterparts. Latinos also fared better than blacks.

"A felony conviction confers roughly the same penalty to job applicants as does minority status," wrote Professors Devah Pager and Bruce Western in Discrimination in Low-Wage Labor Markets. "These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that employer discrimination along the lines of race, ethnicity, and criminal conviction status remains a salient source of inequality in contemporary urban labor markets."

Gerald D. Jaynes, a member of the BLACK ENTERPRISE Board of Economists, says he is not surprised by the results. "What's going on here is the employer thinks, 'I have a young white man who made a mistake. I can give him a second chance. On the other hand I have a young black man who grew up in the ghetto committing crime and I don't want to take a chance,'" says Jaynes.

Western says he hopes the study highlights these issues to the entire nation. "I hope our research can alert people to the problems of discrimination," he says.

United 93: Everything but how and why it happened

2006-05-12T15:57:00.000-07:00

WSWS : Arts Review : Film Reviews

United 93: Everything but how and why it happened

By Joanne Laurier
12 May 2006

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United 93, written and directed by Paul Greengrass

The extremely limited merit of United 93, the account of the hijacked airliner that crashed in a Pennsylvania field on September 11, 2001, lies more in what it doesn’t do than in what it does. The film is not a flag-waving epic. It does not exploit the doomed passengers, refashioning ordinary people responding to a dire situation into heroes driven to save the White House or the Capitol building. Nor does it simply dehumanize the terrorist hijackers, guilty as they were of an atrocious, anti-human crime.

Drawing from interviews with more than 100 family members and friends of the passengers and crew of the ill-fated flight, the carefully (but evasively) crafted film at least has made less likely future recreations of a more distorted, super-patriotic nature.

The film’s British director, Paul Greengrass, is best known for his 2002 docudrama, Bloody Sunday, about the 1972 shooting of 13 unarmed civil rights demonstrators by British soldiers in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. He also directed The Murder of Stephen Lawrence, a 1999 television film exposing police racism and brutality. But what happened to his socially critical views when he turned to the 9/11 events?

United 93 begins on the morning of September 11 by introducing us to the hijackers, all young men, preparing for their part in a deadly mission whose objective is the commandeering of one of four commercial planes to be directed at major American targets. They are crusaders in a holy war.

As passengers on Flight 93 assemble at the gate, the four men sit among their soon-to-be victims. What are they thinking? Products of a toxic political and cultural environment, one assumes that they feel no compassion for those among whom they plan to die. How else could they carry out their plan? This is one of the few genuinely thoughtful or dramatic moments in the film. The would-be terrorists blend unobtrusively into the crowd of passengers except for their air of palpable discomfort, as they pray under their breath to fortify their resolve.

The United Airlines flight is delayed on the ground by airport congestion, leaving the hijackers out of sync with their comrades in the other jets. Once in the air, normalcy prevails, the activities of the flight crew, the cross-conversation among passengers, etc. The hijackers wait and, presumably, steel themselves.

Ultimately, scenes of mayhem on board the plane, as the four men—including one trained to fly the jet—seize control, alternate with disorganized activity at the Air Traffic Control Center in Herndon, Virginia, regional air traffic control stations and NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) headquarters in Rome, New York.

The interplay between the Herndon command center and the military reveals, at best, a gross incompetence that leads to a 40-minute gap between the crash of American Airlines Flight 11 into the World Trade Center and the launching of fighters from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. Both command centers hear the first reports of the airplanes crashing into the World Trade Center and follow events via cable television news.

Even as United Airlines Flight 175 and American Airlines Flight 77 turn up off-course and presumably hijacked, military commanders are unable to contact the president or vice president for authorization to use force against civilian aircraft. (Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 famously shows Bush sitting paralyzed in an elementary school classroom in Florida for seven minutes after being informed about the World Trade Center attack.)

As word spreads among the passengers and crew aboard United 93 about the terrible events in New York City and Washington, they guess at their fate. With nothing to lose, they ultimately storm the cockpit and overwhelm the hysterical terrorists as the plane goes down. An epilogue states that it was not until four minutes after the jet crashed in rural Pennsylvania that military commanders were notified that Flight 93 had been hijacked.

While a few critics take United 93 to task for its portrayal of the terrorists—the San Francisco Chronicle claims that the men do not “deserve the dignity of being humanized in art”—commentators and reviewers, both liberal and right-wing, praise the film as a ‘taut’ and ‘tasteful’ work. Right-wing columnist George Will of the Washington Post goes so far as to proclaim viewing United 93 a civic duty. Director Greengrass was interviewed by extreme-right blowhard and radio host Rush Limbaugh. In part, Will and Limbaugh are clutching at straws within a political environment that is turning against them, but nonetheless Greengrass has provided them with a certain opening, to his serious discredit.

United 93, the first major film to deal with any aspect of September 11, circumvents every contentious issue. Its focus is narrow—recounting, documentary-style, the 90-minute ordeal.

Greengrass has created a work that can satisfy a wide spectrum of opinions. Far too wide a spectrum. Its openness to interpretation is not a strength. The film seems tailored to avoid offending official public opinion. In the movie’s production notes, the filmmaker demurs: “There are lots of ways to find meaning in the events of 9/11 ... I believe that sometimes, if you look clearly and unflinchingly at a single event, you can find in its shape something much larger than the event itself—the DNA of our times ... Hence a film about United 93.”

But Greengrass has not taken a ‘clear and unflinching’ look at his subject matter. How is it to be explained that the Limbaughs and Wills (could there be a worse fate for a filmmaker than to be fêted by that foul crowd?) interpret his work as meshing comfortably with the Bush agenda. One’s views of the film depend largely on what one already knows about that terrible day. Reproducing surface reality, even painstakingly, does not yield something “much larger than the event itself,” and with United 93, Greengrass has not excavated more truth than he put into the project.

The manner in which Greengrass treats September 11, omitting any reference to the process by which the tragic event came to pass, does not qualify as a discovery of the ‘DNA of our times.’ How is it that these young men are able to destroy themselves and others so barbarically? This is never probed, nor is the bizarre conduct of the administration and the military.

The film fails to treat the 9/11 events in a serious artistic manner. The filmmaker’s refusal to provide a broader, historical context for the events inevitably results in a superficial treatment of characters. Powerful characterizations emerge from historical circumstance. The director takes shortcuts, looking for types who will stand in for all that is not developed. So, to avoid stereotyping the lead terrorist as simply a monster, Greengrass casts a soulful-looking performer (Lewis Alsamari) in the role, who, one frankly feels, could not have carried out such a brutal act. So much more socio-historical understanding and depth would have had to go into the appropriate treatment of the hijackers.

A ‘clear and unflinching’ look at 9/11 would inevitably allude to Washington’s decades-long sponsorship of Islamic fundamentalism, underscoring the fact that the hijackers of Flight 93 were not even born when the US began courting and encouraging reactionary Islamicism, first to weaken left-wing and secular nationalist forces in the Middle East and later in Afghanistan to undermine the Soviet Union.

Even within the film’s ‘docudrama’ framework, this would have been feasible. Greengrass places titles at the end of the film, commenting on various facets of the 9/11 events. Why could he not have similarly begun his film with titles conveying the fact, for example, that in 1979 the US commenced giving financial and military backing to the Islamic fundamentalists engaged in guerrilla warfare against the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul? Or why not a title indicating that Osama bin Laden was essentially on the CIA payroll in the early 1980s, through Pakistani intelligence? Why not a reference to the 500,000 Iraqis who died as a result of US-led sanctions or Washington’s unstinting support for the suppression of the Palestinians? Why not a title explaining that on August 6, 2001, George W. Bush’s daily intelligence briefing was entitled “Bin Laden determined to strike in US”? What questions such an approach would have raised in the spectator’s mind!

Greengrass has made it a guiding principle to offer no explanation and no background—none whatsoever!—to a world-historical event that provided the justification for two neo-colonial wars and the deaths of tens or hundreds of thousands. Artists of another day would have found such an approach unthinkable. Disasters of far less geopolitical consequence, like the sinking of the Titanic, were treated more seriously decades ago. Insofar as the film implies a cause or source of the violence, it lies in some inexplicable or perhaps eternal religious fanaticism, the bankrupt argument of right-wingers such as Christopher Hitchens.

Considering the isssues covered in United 93, it is worth noting that Greengrass co-wrote the screenplay for Omagh (2004), a film about a family whose only son is killed in a 1998 terrorist bombing in Northern Ireland. That work reveals that the authorities had been alerted and, in fact, allowed the bombing to take place. In a brief comment on the WSWS two years ago, the film’s devastating implications for the September 11 attacks were noted. In other words, Greengrass ought to be familiar with the workings and machinations of Western intelligence services. Confronted with even more explosive historical material in United 93, however, the director-writer has largely evaded his artistic and intellectual responsibilities.

Nearly five years have elapsed since September 11, 2001 and it is well established that at least several of the future hijackers were known to US government agencies, including the CIA and military intelligence, yet nothing was done to disrupt their operations. The most plausible explanation is that powerful forces within the US military/intelligence complex felt a terrorist incident on American soil would help shift public opinion, permitting the ruling elite to embark on a long-planned campaign of military intervention in Central Asia and the Middle East, as well as attacks on democratic rights at home. Whether or not the authorities could have known the scale of the impending attacks and what the precise targets or damage would be, they acted in such a manner as to prevent the apprehension of known terrorist operatives, thus permitting them to carry out their plot.

United 93 avoids even hinting at the unmentionable, that the Bush administration was aware of the possibility of a terrorist hijacking and ‘stood down’ its military and intelligence apparatus. At most the film suggests that the military was inept.

Greengrass’ artistic evasiveness has produced a film that is subject to almost any interpretation, including one that claims the post-9/11 world necessitates the prosecution of a one-size-fits-all-evils “war on terror,” a euphemism for the pursuit of American global domination.

“That final image haunts me—a physical struggle for the controls of a gasoline-fueled 21st century flying machine between a band of suicidal religious fanatics and a group of innocents drawn at random amongst us all ... I think of it often. It’s really, in a way, the struggle for our world today,” muses the director. Yes, as the film demonstrates, these are haunting images. But how different is this ahistorical clash-of-cultures outlook from that of the pro-war media? In the most neutral—and politically forgiving—of interpretations, United 93 hardly differs, in its final portions, from conventional thrillers and disaster films.

Greengrass subscribes to the notion that “you can’t sustain events like 9/11 without responding on some level militarily, otherwise democracy ceases to function, as one of the primary functions of the state is to protect us all.” The ultra-rightist Limbaugh agrees. He introduced Greengrass to his radio show by informing the audience that the director “suggests that we need a ‘consensus’ in coming up with ideas on how we’re going to ultimately defeat terrorism.”

Despite Greengrass’ shameful cozying up to the right-wing, United 93 has faced reprisals. Alsamari, the Iraqi-born, British actor who plays the lead hijacker, was denied a visa by the US government to attend the film’s New York City premiere.

The problem is Greengrass would not understand, or would not choose to understand, the bitter irony of this exclusion.

Slave Revolt Radio: Negroes quit playing, The problem with Cynthia McKinney

2006-05-02T14:30:00.000-07:00

Download audio: MP3 at 41.0 mebibytes (download torrent)

If one were to glide through the Sudan, Congo, Haiti, New Orleans, and the rest of Sam's plantation one would notice the same thing. Black folks are being exterminated in a cold calculated way by our enemies.

Some of the question we need to start asking ourselves is how should we respond. Have the 'protest' tactics worked?. If we don't have the right to live do the people who are involved in these campaigns have a right to live?. In a (Ruins of Empire) piece called 'Negroes quit playing' Slave Revolt deal with this topic head on.

Then in a (Beyond the shadow) segment called 'The problem with Cynthia McKinney' we deal with why the State hates one it's own Representative in Congress. Why the corporate media loves to bash her. And why Rumsfeld bumbles in her company. Outlining that in this late stage of a degenerated capitalism order independent questions by one of their own can't be tolerated.

Tonight's show includes background music from Ali Farka Toure.

Martin Lee Anderson
1992-2006

Bay County, Florida Medical Examiner Dr. Charles Siebert's characterization of Martin Lee Anderson's death as the end result of a "cascade of events," implies inadvertency. It paints a vague, non-judgmental picture of events that (in Dr. Siebert's view, apparently) no one could have foreseen or halted once the process started, and now we must accept this unfortunate accident with a tear and a sigh, and move on.
Accident or no accident?
If you see 6 or 7 vultures gathered in one place, at one time, doing one thing, you can be fairly certain that their activity and its outcome aren't accidental. I offer this imperfect analogy with my sincere apology to vultures, who, after all, perform a useful and necessary function in the scheme of things. The same can't be said for teen boot camps.
The video shown here gives a candid view of boot camp activity: the goading, taunting, being marshaled about, and more. Those push-ups and track work aren't fitness training by any stretch of the definition. What happens at boot camp has a very different purpose. And if you're a newly-arrived, lanky black kid who plays high school basketball and wears a fancy hairdo, you'd better watch your step. The vultures began making plans for you the moment you came through the gate. Get prepared to run until you drop, or they just might drop you. Toward the end of the video, we see it happen. We see a 14-year-old's last conscious moments in this life.
Jordan Riak, April 5, 2006
VIDEO: Life in a Florida boot camp and the death of Martin Lee Anderson WARNING: This 8-minute video clip showing the fatal beating of a teenager may be deeply disturbing to some viewers. Do not play it if children are present. Allow download time.

IN THE NEWS

Lawmakers close to deal to eliminate juvenile boot camps, By Brent Kallestad, Associated Press, April 26, 2006
EDITORIAL: State-sanctioned abuse, St. Petersburg Times, April 9, 2006
Doctor: Boot Camp Teen Likely Suffocated, By Bill Kaczor, Excite.com, March 17, 2006
Boot camp death not natural, second autopsy finds; Fed probe under way into Florida incident, CNN.COM, March 16, 2006
Beating at boot camp is blamed for boy's death, From Jacqui Goddard in Miami, TIMESONLINE, March 16, 2006

Lawmakers, Parents Outraged by Nurse in Boot Camp Beating Video, By Victoria Langley, WJHG.COM, (Undated posting. Probably late Feb.) 2006

Attorney Benjamin Crump, right with Martin Anderson's parents, Gina Jones and Robert Anderson, left, announces plans to have Martin's body exhumed, Friday, March 3, 2006, in Tallahassee, Fla. The body of Anderson, a teen who officials say died from hemorrhaging caused by the usually benign condition of sickle cell trait, and not from the 30-minute altercation with guards at a Panama City juvenile boot camp, will be exhumed so a new autopsy can be performed. (AP Photo/Steve Cannon)

Shauna Manning, right, tearfully recounts what her son Aaron Swartz witnessed concerning the death of Martin Anderson at a news conference as Martin's parents, Robert Anderson, left and Gina Jones, center listen, Tuesday Feb. 21, 2006 AP

BOOT CAMP NURSE LOOKS ON
Surveillance video appears to show nurse Kristin Schmidt yelling at Martin Lee Anderson just before a deputy’s knee takes the 14-year-old down. She stands off to the side for several minutes as deputies use force on the limp teen, eventually walking away. (WGJH.COM)

Martin Lee Anderson walks while being held up by guards at Bay County Sheriff's Department Boot Camp, Panama City, Florida. AP

FORCED EXERCISE AT BOOT CAMP
Feb. 17, 2006: A videotape released Friday shows guards at a Panama City juvenile detention boot camp kneed and hit a boy who appeared to have gone limp while others restrained him.

Slave Revolt

Slave Revolt Radio: The Sean Bell Shooting

UN Child Sex Slave Scandals Continue

Slave Revolt Radio: The Evil Filth of Two Lessers

Slave Revolt Radio: Staying the Course On The Road to Capitalist Hell

Slave Revolt Radio: The Devil is In The Details

Slave Revolt Radio: The Empire's Deadly Shop of Horrors

Cynthia Mckinney in Sept 2005, just after Katrina

REAGAN AIDES AND THE 'SECRET' GOVERNMENT

Slave Revolt Radio: The lost souls of a militarized empire

Obesity Rankings

Slave Revolt Radio: Abraham's children of war

Poverty in Boston, What Poverty?

Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center: a crude and dishonest work

Slave Revolt Radio: The Empire Spreads it's Wings

Dr. Khallid Muhammad on Donahue (1994)

Slave Revolt Radio: Blood Money, 4th of July

Slave Revolt Radio: And then they came for me

Councilman Compares Cleveland Teens To Terrorists

Cops make mistake of Niggerizing the wrong White Girl

Slave Revolt Radio: Facism in America will be as simple as a jog in the park: The Central

Remember the Victims of America's Brutal Military

Slave Revolt Radio: American made wars, American made myths, Vietnam and Iraq

White ex-cons as likely to find work than black men with no criminal record

United 93: Everything but how and why it happened

United 93: Everything but how and why it happened

By Joanne Laurier12 May 2006

Slave Revolt Radio: Negroes quit playing, The problem with Cynthia McKinney

By Joanne Laurier
12 May 2006