VAGUE SPACE

Pity the Billionaire

2012-01-26T09:15:00-05:00

Thomas Frank, the best-selling author of What's the Matter with Kansas?, the book that explores why voters in southern and rural states vote against their economic interests by voting for Republican economic policies, is back with a new book that explores the more recent phenomenon of the Tea Party rise and how the collapse of the economy in 2008 resulted inexplicably in a populist surge that celebrated an extension of free-market policies that actually caused the collapse, instead of a reversal of policies toward more economic regulation, taxation, and governmental intervention as happened after the Great Depression. For me, this book went a long, long way to explaining this shocking diconnect in American discourse (and worldwide, for that matter, as Europe has followed the same austerity-based destructive path to recovery as we did) and helped explain the "why" of the Tea Party's rise and why there continue to be a large swath of the American public so disenchanted with government that they have actually bought the Republican talking points of lower taxes and less regulations and "job creators" hook-line-and-sinker, even though these prescriptions are in fact anethema to economic growth (because, and I've said this a million times, without demand from the poor and middle class, the job creators ain't going to create jobs no matter how low you make their taxes...) The book was written before the Occupy Wall Street revolution that came this fall, and if Frank had waited, he would probably say that was exactly the rebellious movement that would have been expected after the collapse of the economy in 2008, the protests against the people and corporations who collapsed the economy, not the protests against the government that the Tea Party represented and that millions of misinformed middle and lower-class Americans continue to thrust their misplaced anger (or on each other, the other poor "living high on handouts with their cell phones and nice sneakers", one of the most BS attack lines created by the wealthy so we don't notice how the government has stacked things so nicely towards them and not the actual poor, who, you know, are fucking poor). But I think Frank would say Occupy came too late at this point and even as it's changed the narrative of some in the media, it's not enough outrage and, crucially, there's no political party in the country and very few actual politicians (Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are a couple exceptions) who are giving voice to the 99% in the halls of power. One wonders what it will take to change the narrative or to actually fix things in this country from the state that they are in. But understanding how we got to this point -- the rise of far-right economic fervor in the face of a massive economic collapse predicated on policies proscripted out of far-right economic theory-- makes this informative book a must-read for all Americans.

Frank is definitely biased in his writing, and a Tea Party member would probably dismiss most of what he's saying, but I'd try to argue that his bias is based on reality (you know, facts) of history and economics that run counter to the fantasies that the Tea Party believes in, but he explains why the Tea Party believes in these fantasies. And here's the truth of it... because the Republican Party, after the humiliating defeats to Obama and Democrats in 2008 in the wake of the economic collapse caused by Wall Street (and Bush and Clinton-era policies) were the only ones smart enough to tap the populist anger over (a) the bank bailouts and (b) concommitant unemployment. TARP may have been enacted under the Bush presidency but it was a bi-partisan effort and Obama agreed with it and continued it once in office. The act basically gave massive sums of taxpayer money to the actual banksters and Wall Street-ers who spent a decade turning our home mortgages into a casino lottery until it collapsed. And what did we get out of it? No accountability, no punishment, no increase in employment, just a continuation of business as usual that started with bonuses going to AIG employees in March 2009, just as Obama had taken over. Now, most of us who were sensible understood that Obama had nothing to do with the economic collapse and very little to do with TARP or AIG and though we elected him to save the economy, we knew we had to give him time to do so. But there was still all this anger out there -- at both Wall Street and the governmental institutions that allowed it to happen -- and Republicans were the able to capitalize on this anger in the spring of 2009 by turning the focus off Bush's failed presidency (Bush was out of sight and out of mind at this point) and reinforcing one simple message, the same one they'd repeated for over 30 years: "The free market will cure all ills." It didn't matter that the free market caused the economic collapse. It didn't matter that more regulated markets between the 1940s and 1970s had resulted in zero economic collapses and that freer, deregulated markets of the last 30 years had created huge booms and busts and multiple recessions and zero overall growth in income for working families. These were all nuanced facts that the common man without an understanding of history or economics might not comprehend. "The free market will cure all ills" got repeated over and over again by the Rush Limbaughs and Beck Hannitys of the world until the unfocused rallying call of anger at Tea Party rallies, which were originally sparsely attended and focused mainly on the bailouts, became "the government is the enemy of free markets" and the bailouts -- government handouts to failing private companies were the epitome of that fact. No matter that more government regulation would have prevented the collapse in the first place or that a Republican president presided over the bailout. The message was simple and to most in the audience (particularly small business owners or practicioners like private plumbers -- "Joe the Plumber") it rang true. And you want to know why it worked? There was no argument against it.

Occupy Wall Street embodies the argument against this "free markets rule all" mantra -- and the facts, the realities, that politicians on both sides of the aisle have passed policies that support corporations rather than small businesses or the middle class or the poor has only been emphasized in recent months. Before that, there was a deep yawning chasm of silence from the leaders of the Democratic party, right up to President Obama, who should have been on the populist side of the argument, arguing as FDR correctly did after the Great Depression, that we needed more regulation, more taxes, more deficit spending to get us out of this economic crisis, bringing all of those most affected -- the poor, middle class, and small business owners, together against the true powers of the economy -- the corporations, the banks, Wall Street hedge funds, and yes, entrenched politicians giving them favors. But what did the Democrats do? The opposite. They hired or re-hired Tim Geithner and Larry Summers and Ben Bernanke -- inside Wall Street people who presided over the collapse -- to run the economy. They compromised their way through the stimulus bill to appease Republicans who didn't vote for it anyway until it was watered down too much to help enough. They took a populist outrage over the health insurance industry and turned it into a massive giveaway to health insurance and pharmaceutical companies, in order to appease corporate interests and Republicans, again trading in populist sentiment for liberal ideals like a single-payer system to some amalgum of private industry expansion that no one (except for health insurers) was happy about. And all the while, Republicans kept fomenting the rage at the government, a government that was not turning the economy around quick enough, and they won massive gains in 2010 as a result. They were running on rage and running against competency. Democrats were too timid or ineffective to deal with the economic crisis with the rage it needed. And so Republicans -- even with wrong-headed proscriptions that would and will never work -- seized the vacuum of ideas and flooded the masses with thoughts that if we just gave the banks a longer leash and just gave corporations more tax breaks and just cut teachers' unions power and just kicked that lazy mother with 4 kids she can't afford off welfare and unemployment that our economy would return to normal and our jobs would be safer. None of that is true, of course -- in no realistic way would any of those things help our economy or make our own jobs safer or increase demand for consumer goods to do either -- but the Republicans and their Tea Party followers were the only ones talking -- loudly -- while Democrats got caught up in the process of trying to pass bills and make laws and compromising and moving to the center. And they failed. Miserably. And of course, as Frank makes clear in the final chapter of this book, part of the reason is that Democrats in power themselves are now almost as rich as Republicans and are nearly as dependent on campaign funding from the same Wall Street banks as Republicans. The reason the GOP won in 2010 was not because their insane policy proscriptions would help the masses or were even understood by the masses. But because there is no party that represents the masses anymore. I was certainly fooled into believing Candidate Obama would be that politician who would finally stand up against the corporate welfare policies that have ruined our economy for 30 years now. But he wasn't. Obviously the Republicans aren't either -- and anyone angry at Obama for their economic misery but not angrier with the GOP side is, let's be honest, an idiot. But idiots vote too. And in the absence of an alternative, a "free market rules!" message, repeated enough, was more than enough to force the country to abandon the policies of FDR in favor of the policies of Herbert Hoover, led by a Democrat of all things in the office of President.

Anyway, it's a great book. I'm still voting for Obama because Romney is obviously much much worse but... yeah. It's hard to feel optimistic about anything in our country's politics anymore. Occupy's latest efforts to try to tackle campaign finance really could be the solution -- taking money completely out of the process by having public funding and shorter campaign seasons would seem to be a way to stop having rich people run our lives -- but the odds of that being successful seem awfully low to me.

Buy it here

Noise

2012-01-25T09:52:00-05:00

I read Darin Bradley's 2010 novel Noise in a single day, not just because I remain housebound and bored in the aftermath of my hellish foot surgery. No, I read this book in a single day mostly because it was an incredible read, brimming with imagination and characterization and a distorted vision of our near future, not quite a dystopian story, not quite a zombie tale (there are no zombies) but it reminded me of one of my favorite movies ever, 28 Days Later, in its story of the immediate aftermath of the collapse of society and how "ordinary" citizens like a small group of college kids attempt to survive. The story is told in first person, by "Hiram", a name the narrator takes as part of the plan to survive, a plan written out by he and his friend "Levi" (nee Adam) in The Book, a Bible of sorts of survival narrative, spelling out what they needed to do before, during, and after The Collapse, written largely from instructions by Salvage, an underground radio and video network using analog signals after the U.S. went fully digital, which has been loudly advocating anarchy and may or may not have actually sparked or perhaps simply prodded The Collapse -- an economic collapse in which the U.S. government was forced to declare bankruptcy, a run on the banks ensues, and then -- basically, according to Salvage, it's every man for himself. And Hiram and Levi are ready. A fascinating and thrilling novel I highly recommend.

Hiram is quite an appealing narrator, written in an imaginative style that flips between the chaotic present-day events and flashbacks to key moments of a suburban adolescence that included the Boy Scouts and T-ball and lots and lots of Dungeons & Dragons but which oddly prepared him for the conspiracy theories and the end-of the-world survival instincts that kick in the moment they hear from Salvage that the Collapse has begun. Passages from The Book - a combination Bible / Constitution / Survival Guide -- mix in with the narrative and help explain the graphic violence that Hiram and Levi partake in, defending heinous acts with a mindset of "us vs. them", "Outsider vs. Group", the theory that when Order collapses, you're going to need to kill and you're going to need to kill "innocents", because if you stop and render help to some poor soul, someone else will attack you to take your stuff. Of course, the novel brings up doubt as to whether the Salvage edicts in favor of anarchy that the boys are following is a necessary last act of desperation in a world without order or if it helped spur the world without order in the first place. The details of the story are told in delicate, yet adrenaline-pumping style, and although the transformation of some characters from mild-mannered citizens to cold-blooded killers is probably unrealistic, there is no excess violence for violence's sake and there are consequences to all of their actions, particularly their decision to take a National Guard Humvee by force. Through it all, in fact, the author spends time to focus on the characters and what they are going through -- particularly Hiram, without any introspective bullshit you'd find in more mainstream tales because - fuck, these kids don't have time for that shit. The world is coming to an end.

Really, really impressive debut novel. You'll fly right through it. I did. And in the author's notes at the end of the paperback copy I had, Bradley admits that much of the background of the narrator comes from his own life (as is often typical, particularly in a first novel) and that the fictional town of Slade is based on the real city of Denton, Texas. A city I wrote about on here before. So that was kind of cool.

Buy Noise

Download The Mountain Goats - "The Best Ever Death Metal Band out of Denton".mp3

the best ever death metal band out of denton
were a couple of guys
who'd been friends since grade school
one was named cyrus
the other was jeff
and they practiced twice a week in jeff's bedroom
the best ever death metal band out of denton
never settled on a name
but the top three contenders
after weeks of debate
were satan's fingers and the killers and the hospital bombers
jeff and cyrus believed in their hearts
they were headed for stage lights and lear jets
and fortune and fame
so in script that made prominent use of a pentagram
they stenciled their drumheads and guitars with their names
this is how cyrus got sent to the school
where they told him he'd never be famous
and this was why jeff
in the letters he'd write to his friend
helped develop a plan to get even
when you punish a person for dreaming his dream
don't expect him to thank or forgive you
the best ever death metal band out of denton
will in time both outpace and outlive you
hail satan
hail satan
tonight
hail satan
hail, hail

New Music Tuesday

2012-01-24T09:43:00-05:00

The Dirty Three has a new album coming out, their first new album since 2005's Cinder, a long break for the Melbourne trio who play violin, guitar, and drums, no singing, just brilliant music, the first and maybe only rock band to feature violin so prominently, or so impressively. The new album is titled Toward the Low Sun and is coming out in February followed by a tour of Australia and New Zealand in March and some festivals in the UK and Europe over the summer. No word yet on an American leg. But here's the first single.

Download Dirty Three - "Rising Below".mp3

Speaking of great bands with new albums after long hiatuses (hiatii?), Guided by Voices' first album in years (didn't they "retire" not too long ago?) is the first in decades reuniting Tobin Sprout with Robert Pollard and has only been mildly disappointing, as there are actually a bunch of really good throwback tracks, including the masterpiece below.

Xiu Xiu also has a new album coming out, titled Always, releasing on 3/6 via Polyvinyl Records. Jamie Stewart's latest has song names like “I Luv Abortion,” “Smear The Queen,” and "Born to Suffer", so it doesn't look like much of a departure from his usual music, which is in and of itself a good thing. The first track, a sort of "poppy" excursion (probably until you read the lyrics), is below. Pre-order Always now.

Download Xiu Xiu - "Hi".mp3

Hospital Bombers are a Dutch band releasing their 2nd album At Budokan, on Excelsior Recordings, recorded in Amsterdam and mixed in Brooklyn, and you can hear the whole thing streaming on the Excelsior website (which I believe is Dutch). I don't know anything else about them, except that yes -- the name of the band is from the immortal Mountain Goats song "The Best Ever Death Metal Band out of Denton" (which will be referenced again in tomorrow's post! Come back!) -- from the line: "And the top three contenders after weeks of debate, were 'Satan's Fingers' and 'The Killers' and 'The Hospital Bombers'." They are definitely not death metal, but the first single sounds like something right from the heart of John Darnielle's catalog, even while the other tracks I've heard are distinctly more poppy.

Download Hospital Bombers - "Traditional Maori Fight Song #9".mp3

Girls had one of the top albums on many year-end charts but it came out too late in the year for me to notice, although I'd heard one or more of their songs on SiriusXMU and loved it (or them). I finally got around to purchasing the album over the holidays and I'd say I was surprised to find myself somewhat disappointed, there were several tracks, including the single "Vomit" that well -- almost made me want to vomit, the grating repitition or Beach Boys-style cheeriness just turned me off completely. Even so, I did manage to find the track that delighted me back in the fall back on XMU and it would have been one of my top tracks of the year if I had noticed before now.

Download Girls - "Alex".mp3

Speaking of 2011 leftovers, Yuck already had one of the great albums of the year, reaching my top 20 for their debut, but late in the year they released an expanded version that included several new tracks which were all just as awesome as the original album. I can't wait to see what these guys do next.

Download Yuck - "Soothe Me".mp3

And lastly, it's going to be difficult for me to get more excited about a cover track than this version of one of my favorite New Order songs of all-time, recorded by one of my favorite artists of all-time. Back in the early '90s I lived and died by New Order and absolutely loved Power, Corruption & Lies, and while I haven't heard the rest of the cover tracks put together to commemorate the album's 25th anniversary (wow!), the Dan Bejar version of this is absolutely perfect.

Download Destroyer - Leave Me Alone (New Order Cover)".mp3

Recall Walker

2012-01-23T09:04:00-05:00

Last winter in Wisconsin, we saw the start of a pushback by the middle class against the rich overlords who had just abducted our government by proxy, a theme that continued later that year on a national level with Occupy Wall Street and all its local derivations. Finally the Americans who were being hurt by the right-wing policies of our government the past 10 or 30 years (depending on how far back you want to go) were speaking up en masse about the inequality of opportunity and the tilt in our political system that gives all the tax breaks and all the wealth to the people who are already rich and have just gotten richer. But it all started in Wisconsin, a politically middle-of-the-road cheese-loving state that unwittingly voted in Scott Walker as governor in the tea party wave of 2010 (by a bare margin) and had some severe buyers' remorse almost immediately. One of Walker's first acts -- with a Republican State Senate and State House eagerly rubber-stamping his actions -- was a massive tax cut for corporations. His next act -- eliminating 100 years of collective bargaining rights for public employees. Yeah he also cut education funding by $800M and has tried to gut environmental legislation and tried to supress voters' rights -- you know, standard Republican governing -- but it was the collective bargaining rights for teachers and other public employees that began the outrage, particularly since it was a fight being repeated all across the country. Ohio recently voted to repeal their collective bargaining elimination law enacted by its brand-new Republican governor. Indiana is having a fight right at this moment between protestors and Republicans in charge who are trying to pass the "end the rights of all public unions to break them and any and all opposition against GOP corporate power" (in fact, some Republicans are even coming out against Mitch Daniels' draconian bill this week). In Florida the same fight is happening under its new governor. A fight between the people and the far-right kleptocrats they (and the rich people supporting them) elected in 2010. And all of these governors are horribly unpopular, polling at massive unfavorables in their states, and all their policy positions are universally disdained, even among Republican voters. All kinds of buyers' remorse. But again, it all started with Wisconsin. And last week, United Wisconsin handed in 1 million signatures in a petition to recall Scott Walker just a year after he was elected. Bravo, Wisconsin, bravo.

There are about 4.3 million voting age citizens in Wisconsin. They got 1 million signatures to recall the governor, or about a quarter of all potential voters in the state. The million signatures is 46% of the total that actually voted in the election in 2010, or just shy of the 1.1 million that voted for Walker. Without even an election, he's got close to the number of people who want him out of office as who actually went to the ballots to vote him in just on year ago. That's how hated this slimy fucker is. And how dedicated the signature-gathering force was, these dedicated citizens who literally stood out in the freezing cold of Wisconsin the past 2 months and collected 1 million signatures in 60 days to end the reign of this horrible governor.

This is all on the heels of an impressive reversal of US Senate opinions on PIPA and SOPA by a single day of protest from Wikipedia and Google and other Internet sites. Seriously, when you think of the great strides that Americans are making to take the country back from the powerful and the moneyed and the downright evil that have controlled our policies for at least the last decade, these past few months are quite heartening to see. Congrats, Wisconsin. If it weren't so damn cold there, I'd fly out and give you all a big hug.

And this is the best video I've seen this year ... Scott Walker sitting mere feet away from civil rights attorney Sherrilyn Ifill's impressive speech about Dr. Martin Luther King, when she brings up the fallen leader's concern for the poor and for unions and for workers and for voting rights... you know, everything Walker has aggressively legislated against as governor. Just really hard-hitting stuff by Ifill, again, mere feet away. Whoever decided to focus their camera on Walker and keep it there is just awesome. He doesn't really react, he does seem shamed (if that is possible) but his lieutenant governor (to his left, also being recalled) seems less able to hide her rage. The guy in the uniform to Walker's right keeps glancing over as if to say "hey, this is all about you... you realize that right?"

Random Music Friday

2012-01-20T08:04:00-05:00

Song: "(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan"
Artist: Dentl (with Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie)
Year: 2001
Album: Life is Full of Possibilities

In 2001, my interest in music underwent a great and wondrous revival that started with my first listen to Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane over the Sea, continued with my discovery of Modest Mouse and Godspeed! You Black Emperor and by the time the year was over, I was a full-fledged devotee to this thing called "indie rock" that I didn't really know existed before but was alive with incredible music being made by underground bands following the traditions of Superchunk and Pavement and Built to Spill and the Pixies and Guided by Voices, one decade after most of those bands had their start. And at the end of 2001, there was no band I fell for more than Death Cab for Cutie. The O.C. was still two years away from premiering and introducing the world to the indie rock underground through Seth Cohen's obsessions with bands like the weirdly named Death Cab for Cutie, but by then I was already a huge fan of their first three albums, including their 2001 release The Photo Album, which might not have been as perfect as We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes but was one of my favorites of 2001/02. Along the way, lead singer Ben Gibbard appeared on Jimmy Tamborello's 2nd album of electronic stylings under the Dntel moniker, singing the 9th track on Life is Full of Possibilities. The success of this song led to a full album collaboration between Gibbard and Tamborello where Tamborello would mail electronic beats to Gibbard, who would throw lyrics and sing on top of the tracks and eventually they had enough music for an album. They called themselves Postal Service in honor of the "old-school" way to exchange data (this was before true Internet file sharing I guess) and that album was called Give Up and became one of the most successful indie rock albums in history, selling over 1 million copies to date on Sub Pop records (the most since Nirvana's debut Bleach) and more by far than any individual efforts by Gibbard or Tamborello at the time. Death Cab went on to sell-out success as their albums after The Photo Album got less and less interesting and more and more popular among teenage girls, while Tamborello waited until 2007 for a follow-up Dntel release, an incredible album called Dumb Luck that didn't come close to charting. I lost interest in Death Cab somewhere around 2005's Plans and didn't even buy or listen to a single track from their 2011 release Codes and Keys, certain I wouldn't like it. I'm not entirely sure whether their sound changed or my interest in their sound faded -- while I still have fondness for the tracks on Something About Airplanes and We Have the Facts..., I don't listen to them much anymore and I can't really say I like The Photo Album anymore. But I still like the Postal Service, successful album that it was -- "The District Sleeps Tonight" and "Such Great Heights" are really great songs. And I still love "Evan and Chan". Too bad Jimmy and Ben have not gotten together for a collaboration since.

Download Dntel - "The Dream Of Evan And Chan".mp3

Oh, and there's also Owen Pallet's riff on the track regarding his then-bandmates in Arcade Fire called "This is the Dream of Win and Regine", which remains one of my favorite Owen Pallet tracks. Of course, Arcade Fire's success eventually enclipsed even the mainstream success of Death Cab for Cutie but somehow they're still great in my mind. Sometimes not selling out is a good thing for your music.

Download Final Fantasy - "This is the Dream of Win & Regine".mp3

While researching this track, I found on Wikipedia that the Evan and Chan of the song are Evan Dando of The Lemonheads and Chan Marshall of Cat Power, the culmination of a dream Ben Gibbard had about the two musicians. Cool. And I remember how all of Gibbard's lyrics back in the day were complete thoughts and sentences, which is one of the reasons I was so intrigued in the first place. Don't know if his songs are still that way.

It was familiar to me
The smoke too thick to breathe
The tile floors glistened
I slowly stirred my drink

And when you started to sing
You spoke with broken speech
That I could not understand
And then you grabbed me tightly:

"I won't let go, I won't let go
Even if you say so, oh no
I've tried and tried with no results
I won't let go, I won't let go"

He then played every song from 1993
The crowd applauded as
He curtsied bashfully

Your eyelashes tickled my neck
With every nervous blink
And it was perfect
Until the telephone started ringing, ringing, ringing
Ringing, ringing off . . .

Paradise Lost 3

2012-01-19T08:45:00-05:00

HBO aired last week the final part of the Paradise Lost documentary trilogy covering the West Memphis 3 and the murders of Christopher Byers, Michael Moore, and Steve Branch, a trio of 8-year-olds, back in 1993. The whole sordid affair is a true tragedy on multiple levels -- the unbelievable death of these young boys, the sham of a trial of three teens for "Satan worshipping" that led to their conviction for the boys' murders, and then the gross incompetence and/or malice of a criminal justice system that spent the past 15 years denying the wrongly accused any chance at a re-trial despite the complete lack of evidence and a public outcry over the results after the first Paradise Lost documentary appeared in 1996. But finally, in August of 2011, after a series of fortuitous twists including new evidence, strident supporters, celebrity involvement -- particularly of Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks -- and most importantly, this movie shows, the election of the original trial judge to the Arkansas State Senate, allowing his position to be replaced by a new judge who didn't feel it as a personal affront to ever grant an appeal to the West Memphis 3, the wrongly accused Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jesse Misskelley, Jr., were finally, belatedly, after 17 years in a prison cell for a crime they almost definitely didn't commit, set free.

Part 3 is titled Purgatory and was filmed and edited before the dramatic reversal of fortune last summer and the narrative is clearly not based on a "but now they're free" edit, it's more a detailed documentation of both the history of the case and the events since 2000, when the last Paradise Lost film was released. The "Epilogue" that includes the hastily shot and edited events of last August doesn't feel tacked on, though, since the film is strong enough that even as the narrative ending changed, the preceding 1 1/2 hours of film is really great on its own. And of course, it's not a completely happy ending, as Echols, Baldwin, and Misskelley are forced to plead guilty even as they maintain their innocence under an "Alford plea" agreement that basically prevents the state from being sued by the men for wrongful imprisonment, closes the case, and puts the trauma of the past 17 years in West Memphis behind them all. Except for the men who still claim to be innocent and the murdered boys whose killer(s) is still at large.

The film opens with what I would say was a very controversial and jarring decision to show footage of the crime scene, particularly the dead bodies of the three boys. I'm pretty sure these images did not appear in the first film and they are incredibly difficult to see (I pretty much had to hide my eyes) but I think the purpose is to ground the viewer in the reality of this case -- that it isn't just the story of innocent men jailed for a crime they didn't commit but also the story of a horrific murder and an unsolved crime. I used to watch Law & Order in the early '90s or whenever it was first on, but I stopped at some point and I don't watch any of the popular police / autopsy procedurals like CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: New Jack City, or any serial killer movies or TV shows (sorry, Dexter). I just really have an aversion to seeing dead bodies autopsied on screen, unless they were decapitated by a vampire or something unrealistic like that. So the opening of the film was very, very unsettling. And in fact most of the first part was a story of the murders, the immediate aftermath of fear and desperation in the small town of West Memphis, Arkansas, and the subsequent "confession" and trial of Jesse Misskelley and the two teens he fingered for the crime, known "troublemaker" and possible "Satanist" Damien Echols and his best friend Jason Baldwin, a quiet, unassuming and seemingly harmless 16-year-old. Misskelley's trial is shown in some detail but the Echols-Baldwin trial is only glimpsed in the sentencing phase as Baldwin is sent to prison for life without a chance of parole and Echols is sentenced to death by lethal injection by the state of Arkansas. At this devastating moment, the first part ends.

And then the doubts begin. Largely due to the release of the HBO documentary Paradise Lost in 1996 by filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, a national fervor about this case begins to foment. The original movie was intended to be a story of these possibly Satan-worshipping evil teens who murdered three Boy Scouts in cold blood, a follow up to the documentarians well-received murder tale Brother's Keeper, but when they got into the case and understood the facts -- the lack of evidence against Echols and, more strikingly, Baldwin, they realized "holy shit, these kids are innocent" and the film's focus changed. But the movie was presented in true documentary fashion, without voiceover, to let viewers judge for themselves whether or not the wrong people were arrested. The trials of Echols and Baldwin are explored more deeply in the second part of Paradise Lost 3, with the advantage of hindsight and new evidence that basically obliterates the prosecution's case. The three boys went missing on May 5, 1993, and their bodies were found after an extensive search on May 6th, naked and hogtied in a ditch by a muddy creek in the Robin Hood Hills woods. Christopher Byers had apparently been castrated and the boys had cuts all over them. After about 30 days the police had no good leads on the killer(s) when they picked up Jesse Misskelley, a mildly retarded teen who they thought might have some knowledge of Satanic rituals among teens in the area. At the time, the local and national media jumped on the grisly details of the murders as evidence of a Satanic sacrifice, and the film shows the mother of one of the dead children talking about how the murderer(s) "killed her son as a tribute to the devil!". Seriously. Horrible grief and tragedy and all, but the way the town got wrapped up in the hysteria of Satan worship is pretty incredible, what with this being 1993 and not Salem, Massachusetts, in the 16th century. Hell, one of the fathers said after the arrests that he hopes to seem them burned at the stake like in Salem. It's all really shocking in hindsight. Anyway, after 11 or 12 hours of interrogation, Misskelley -- despite denying any knowledge of the murders all day, finally confessed to the witnessing and abetting the crime by Damien Echols and his co-hort Baldwin, who were by then unofficial suspects of the West Memphis police, mostly due to a juvenile officer's obsession with the spread of Satanism among teens (he even attended a class about it a year earlier) and his belief that Echols and Baldwin's graffiti on bridges (mostly of their own names) were some sort of signs of Satanism. Oh, and they liked heavy metal music. And Damien wore black a lot. So Misskelley, who was at most an acquaintance of the teens, and had an IQ of a child, after 11 hours of interrogation, told the police interrogators that he'd witnessed Echols and Baldwin murder the children. And rape them (police subsequently ruled out any evidence of sexual abuse). On the morning of May the 5th (they didn't go missing until after 6:30 pm). And a bunch of other stuff that was inconsistent with the reality of the crime. Because he was making it up to, as he states in the film from prison years later, "say what they wanted to hear so I could go home. I just wanted to go home and see my dad." A 17-year-old with a low IQ interrogated for 11 hours without a lawyer or a parent present. I know it's Arkansas and all, but wow. The police had their killers after a month of failure and as they said later, "everyone was relieved."

The other evidence, besides Misskelley's coerced confession, was not only circumstantial but flimsy. Lots in the trial about Satan worship. Echols' love of heavy metal. Echols' dressing in black. Echols' poems and stories. Basically portraying this kid as a source of evil incarnate. Oh, and the police found a serated knife in a lake behind where Baldwin lived, some 6 months after the crime, and claimed the knife matched the cuts on the dead boys. That was it. Misskelley was convicted in a separate trial in which only 45 minutes of his day-long interview were entered into the public record (the rest was "mistakenly deleted"). But he had since recanted the confession and refused to testify against Echols and Baldwin so his confession could not be entered into the evidence at their trial. Of course, the confession was plastered on the front page of the regional paper months earlier and the jury pool was all from people who were intimately familiar with the crime and the confession, since they lived in the area. And Echols and Baldwin were found guilty of the murders. With no evidence linking them to the crime. At all. It's possible that they were guilty, I really can't believe it and I trust that all these people so much closer to the evidence who all became convinced of their innocence are right, but even if they were guilty, the trial rested on such paper-thin circumstantial "evidence" that almost had nothing to connect them to this crime, other than the confession of Misskelley, which was not part of the evidence so it's still shocking to me that the prosecution, judge, and jury could sleep at night after convicting these boys, although I guess they were all pretty much a part of that hysteria I referenced above and truly believed they'd found the killers. So "innocent until proven guilty" be damned. They were going to prison for the rest of their lives. And Echols was going to die.

The latest film focuses intently on new evidence that had come to light based on investigations by forensic experts into the case, paid for by supporters of "Free the West Memphis Three", which was started as a website by a few viewers of the documentary with some media experience and eventually turned into a national phenomenon of supporters who believed the boys in prison were wrongly convicted. Celebrities such as Natalie Maines, Johnny Depp, Eddie Vedder and others lent their names and their talents to the cause, and experts were hired to examine the case. One of the founders of the movement interviewed in this film says "I was just shocked that nothing was being done, nothing had been done, and these kids were rotting in jail for a crime they didn't commit. I felt I had to do something." So what started as a documentary about Satan worshippers turned into a clarion call for justice and provided money for experts who, in a press conference in 2007 at a Little Rock law school shown in this film, debunk any and all of the evidence used in the trial to convict the boys. #1 - the cuts on the bodies were clearly animal claw marks and the castrated boy was a victim of animal predation. None of the injuries were remotely consistent with this serrated knife found in a lake behind Baldwin's house. #2 - Misskelley's confession is a classic case of coerced interrogation and clearly false, due to the inconsistencies with the actual crime. #3 -- an FBI profiler says the boys were clearly murdered by a person with a history of violence, an expert in killing and cover-up, and a sadistic mind with no remorse, which doesn't remotely fit the profiles of the arrested boys -- even Damien, who when you meet him is apparently a shy, smart, and thoughtful human being (which I guess is why he didn't fit in West Memphis), and obviously Baldwin and Misskelley were the opposite of sadistic or violent or experts in killing. #4 -- the jury foreman, according to a lawyer he consulted for another incident (whose sworn affidavit isn't revealed in this film) and that lawyer's clerk, who overheard these conversations, was convinced before the trial that Echols and Baldwin were Satan-worshipping killers, wanted to get on the jury, lied about having previously made judgment to get on the jury, and then became the jury foreman (!), where, during the trial he openly talked about their guilt to this lawyer and how he planned to bring up the Misskelley confession -- illegally -- during deliberations, since it wasn't brought up by the prosecutors. Shocking stuff. And in the notes of one of the jurors laying out the evidence for conviction, unearthed by investigators years later, Misskelley's confession is in there as one of the reasons to convict. A more perfect example of juror misconduct probably couldn't be found. And #5, the smoking gun -- the DNA evidence collected at the scene but unable to be examined with the technology available in 1994, was examined by a lab in Virginia selected by the prosecutors and none of the DNA is consistent with any of the convicted men. They are in fact "excluded" from the population of people who could have left that DNA evidence on the victims and the crime scene.

It is all pretty powerful stuff. Refuting the very flimsy evidence used at the trial that shouldn't have convicted the boys in the first place and then adding some stuff (the DNA evidence) that not only excludes the boys but also points to the potential killer -- Terry Hobbs, the stepfather of one of the victims, Steve Branch. Now, the second Paradise Lost film, released in 2000, was much more of an advocacy piece than the first or third films and raised some concerns about whether Mark Byers, stepfather of another victim, Chris Byers, might be the killer. So it's a bit circumspect that this film now focuses on another stepfather as the culprit. But it does make a compelling case. The DNA evidence taken from a hair on one of the ropes used to tie up the boys matches 1.5% of the population at large, including Terry Hobbs. Hobbs had a history of violence, worked in a slaughterhouse, had seen his wife kissing a "Mexican" (his words) in his house weeks before the murders, and left the town and his wife shortly after the murders, after he was arrested for hitting her in the face. He was later arrested for shooting (but not killing) her brother after an altercation. His now ex-wife, Steve Branch's mother, believes the West Memphis 3 are innocent (as does Mark Byers) and that her ex-husband is the most likely culprit. Of course, the West Memphis police never investigated Hobbs, despite his history of violence both before and after the murders, including to loved ones (his wife). And if they had investigated him, they would have learned from a neighbor that she and her parents observed the boys with Hobbs in front of their house around 6 pm on the night of the murders, the last time anyone had seen them alive. This information didn't come out until years later when the now grown woman who was a neighbor and assumed the police knew about the boys' whereabouts from Hobbs, reported this information. Hobbs denies ever seeing the boys at any time that day, which goes against what the witness says. And he has no alibi for large stretches of time on the night and morning after the murders. His one alibi for some of that time refutes the timeline he gives. It all looks pretty bad, particularly since this all came to light at a trial that Hobbs brought on himself -- a defamation lawsuit against Natalie Maines, who had blogged after the DNA evidence that Hobbs was the real killer. Hobbs' videoed deposition to Maines' lawyers takes up a lot of this latest film and... wow -- it does not make him look good. He may not have been the killer but it surely makes a lot more sense than the convicted boys. And the evidence against him is about 100x worse.

Throughout the last 17 years, lawyers for the convicted boys -- now, men -- have attempted to appeal. But every single appeal apparently went through the same exact trial judge who adjudicated the original cases and doesn't think at all that anything went wrong. So he refuses to grant a new trial. They repeatedly appealed his rulings to the Arkansas Supreme Court but they kept rubber-stamping the district judge's rulings without, apparently, looking at the facts of the case. That is, until the DNA evidence came out. Arkansas law, like many states, says that convicts can appeal based on new DNA evidence not available at the time of their trial, and if this evidence is compelling, the state must then consider ALL the evidence of the case, including -- perhaps -- additional evidence that has come out since the trial, which in this case, was pretty dramatic and exculpatory (see the 5 key points the investigators made above). The state DA argues that the meaning of "ALL" just means the evidence that pointed to their guilt should be considered along with the new DNA evidence, but the Supreme Court disagrees pointedly, saying "All means All" and remands the case to the district judge, who must now re-listen to all the evidence, both for and against, including everything unearthed since the conviction. At that point, the judge can grant a re-trial if he sees fit. Well as great as that ruling was for the West Memphis 3, if this all just sent them back to that same judge, it might not have mattered at all. But that judge was elected to the State Senate at the start of 2011 and a new judge would preside -- one who, in the state's estimation, would have definitely granted a new trial. So several months before the judge was to hear all the evidence, the state basically gave up and let the "killers" free in August 2011. It was a moment for incredible rejoicing but not particularly justice, as the state covered its ass from a lawsuit by forcing the WM3 to plead guilty in exchange for their freedom, thereby closing the case and letting the killer(s) walk free.

Well this turned out to be a pretty long post and I apologize for that. But the original movie meant a lot to me -- it touched me deeply, the sense of injustice, and I've followed the story of the WM3 ever since, donating when I could, blogging when it warranted, and hoping against hope that they might be freed. The film-making skills of Berlinger and Sinofsky are definitely the key to my fascination with this case and this latest film is a brilliant conclusion. Out of this tragedy for all involved, Jason Baldwin at the very end holds out hope for a restoration of sanity among those in power in the justice system. I have my doubts. But I'm glad he still has hope.

SOPA STRIKE

2012-01-18T08:48:00-05:00

OK, I'm clueless about HTML and website design shit even though I've been blogging for like 6 years now. I probably should have read a book or something. But I couldn't figure out how to black out this website for a day to support the strike. If I could have, this is what you would have seen:

Unfortunalely, as I said I'm clueless, but in case you don't know what's going on, read my post from yesterday or the excellent description by BoingBoing about what we're trying to fight and why:

Boing Boing could never co-exist with a SOPA world: we could not ever link to another website unless we were sure that no links to anything that infringes copyright appeared on that site. So in order to link to a URL on LiveJournal or WordPress or Twitter or Blogspot, we'd have to first confirm that no one had ever made an infringing link, anywhere on that site. Making one link would require checking millions (even tens of millions) of pages, just to be sure that we weren't in some way impinging on the ability of five Hollywood studios, four multinational record labels, and six global publishers to maximize their profits.

If we failed to take this precaution, our finances could be frozen, our ad broker forced to pull ads from our site, and depending on which version of the bill goes to the vote, our domains confiscated, and, because our server is in Canada, our IP address would be added to a US-wide blacklist that every ISP in the country would be required to censor.

This is the part of the post where I'm supposed to say something reasonable like, "Everyone agrees that piracy is wrong, but this is the wrong way to fight it."

But you know what? Screw that.

Even though a substantial portion of my living comes from the entertainment industry, I don't think that any amount of "piracy" justifies this kind of depraved indifference to the consequences of one's actions. Big Content haven't just declared war on Boing Boing and Reddit and the rest of the "fun" Internet: they've declared war on every person who uses the net to publicize police brutality, every oppressed person in the Arab Spring who used the net to organize protests and publicize the blood spilled by their oppressors, every abused kid who used the net to reveal her father as a brutalizer of children, every gay kid who used the net to discover that life is worth living despite the torment she's experiencing, every grassroots political campaigner who uses the net to make her community a better place -- as well as the scientists who collaborate online, the rescue workers who coordinate online, the makers who trade tips online, the people with rare diseases who support each other online, and the independent creators who use the Internet to earn their livings.

The contempt for human rights on display with SOPA and PIPA is more than foolish. Foolishness can be excused. It's more than greed. Greed is only to be expected. It is evil, and it must be fought.

SOPA Strike is compiling a list of sites that are also going dark for Jan 18. If you want an Internet where human rights, free speech and the rule of law are not subordinated to the entertainment industry's profits, I hope you'll join us on it.

Go here. Join the fight by writing your Congressman. They really do listen, a bunch of minds have already been changed on one of those rubber-stamp style bills that politicians on both sides really haven't read and don't care about but now that we are fighting back, they are taking notice. The MPAA isn't stopping, though, we need to keep fighting.

Wikipedia, Reddit, WordPress, et. al. to Go Dark Tomorrow

2012-01-17T20:07:22-05:00

Some of the most popular websites on the Internet are shutting down tomorrow as part of a nationwide day of protest against censorship online.

On Jan. 18, the English version of Wikipedia will go down for 24-hours to protest the U.S. anti-piracy laws - Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA). FYI, that's midnight tonight. [...]
Wikipedia joins sites like MoveOn, Reddit, BoingBoing, Mozilla, WordPress, TwitPic and the ICanHasCheezBurger network. Google, Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr will not be joining the day of protest, however, all have expressed their stance against the bills.

This action comes on the heels of a tremendous amount of momentum for opponents of SOPA and PIPA. The DNS portions of the bills have been removed, SOPA has been effectively shelved, the White House came out against the bills as currently written, and opposition to PIPA is mounting ahead of a scheduled Jan. 24 vote.

For your reference, SOPA and PIPA were pushed by the large media companies like Universal and Disney and Fox and Warner Brothers (owners of NBC, MSNBC, Fox, FoxNews, ABC, and CNN), among others, to try to stop the piracy of their movies and music on the Internet through draconian measures that would allow a rights holder to get the government to shut down an entire website at its request if a copyrighted material appeared on that site. The law as written was so ridiculous that little kids singing along to the radio on YouTube or Facebook would be violating it. But you probably haven't heard anything about it because the major media companies own all the major television news stations (see above) and are the ones pushing this legislation. Fortunately, blogs and other non-corporate websites like Wikipedia and Google have drummed up support to try to stop this legislation from moving forward.

The passage of these two bills once seemed like a foregone conclusion. However, a transpartisan tech coalition has fomented a widespread online revolt that might result in not just the defeat of SOPA and PIPA, but also in the emergence of a powerful new constituency that will play an important role on all future public policy affecting the internet.

Please, contact your senators and tell them to oppose PIPA.

10:19 AM PT: Google will not be participating in the blackout, but will have an action link on its homepage.

10:57 AM PT: A complete list of websites participating in tomorrow's blackout can be found at sopastrike.com.

Stephen Colbert for President (of South Carolina?)

2012-01-17T08:04:00-05:00

Stephen Colbert, host of the The Colbert Report, has paved the way for a presidential bid by transferring control of his political fundraising organisation to his former boss Jon Stewart.

Lampooning the campaign finance rules that permit such fundraising groups, known as super pacs, Colbert announced it would be renamed the "Definitely Not Coordinated with Stephen Colbert Super Pac."

The move potentially paves the way for Colbert to enter the Republican presidential primary in South Carolina, his home state. Campaigning politicians are prohibited from simultaneously running super pacs, or political action committees.

Colbert merely hinted at such a decision, which he had hyped ahead of Thursday's show. He announced the formation of "an exploratory committee to lay the groundwork for my possible candidacy for the president of the United States of South Carolina"

Stewart and Colbert discussed the peculiar legalities of their arrangement. With Colbert's lawyer, Trevor Potter, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, they spelled out that while Colbert was legally forbidden from participating in strategy and advertising with the super pac, he could still talk about his plans on his TV show and even volunteer for the group.

Stewart declared Colbert vice-president of youth outreach for the super pac. Along with Potter, the three joined hands like a sports team and, with thick irony, cheered in unison: "Non-co-ordination!

Colbert has been using his super pac, launched in May 2011, to parody the electoral system's contradictions and potential conflicts of interest.

A Public Policy Polling survey released on Tuesday found Colbert is polling ahead of former Utah governor Jon Huntsman in South Carolina. According to the survey, Colbert has 5% of the vote and Huntsman has 4%.

Reading out the figures on his Wednesday show, Colbert said: "This just got real."

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Indecision 2012 - Colbert Super PAC - Coordination Resolution with Jon Stewart

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

Video Archive

Syracuse 19-0

2012-01-16T08:31:00-05:00

I've been watching Syracuse regularly since 1987 and religiously since at least the mid-90s and I do not remember ever watching a Syracuse team this completely dominant, game in and game out. Now I know the Big East is down this year and we've maybe not had the toughest schedule so far but in nearly every single one of the last dozen or so games, the Syracuse Orange have flat-out destroyed their opponent, leading each game by close to 20 at some point of the contest. And this isn't like Colgate or Cornell or other early season patsies. This is Seton Hall (4-2 in the Big East) and Florida and NC State and Villanova and Tulane and #24 Marquette and Providence twice now, sandwiching the Friars' blow out win against Louisville. It's shocking really the way none of these games have been close. Even in our best years -- hell, even in the 2003 championship season -- not only would the Orange lose the occasional game but they'd have a number of barn burners down to the wire, poor performances or great shooting nights by their opponents. But this year, so far, nothing like that. Just look at the stats. #1 in RPI, obviously, and #1 in all the polls but #4 Strength of Schedule among all teams in the country (and nary a close game among them since the season opening pre-season NIT). They are 12th in the nation in points scored, 10th in assists, 14th in FG%, 19th in FG% against, 1st in steals (1st!), 3rd in the nation in blocks, and 5th in assist to turnover ratio. They take care of the ball, they shoot extremely well, they feed assists to the right players to get the right shots, their defense forces turnovers like crazy, particularly on the perimeter and if an opponent happens to sneak into the lane, Fab Melo and the front line will swat that shit away. And I didn't even mention their depth yet. Their bench is scoring around 36 points per game, which is the most for any bench in the past 15 years for one of the BCS conference teams. Hell, Scoop Jardine, 5th year starting senior who has started for us for 3 straight years, is actually 6th on the team in minutes and 5th in points. Scoop was about 90% of the reason we lost close games the last 2 seasons, with the ball in his hands making a "Scoop-id" play at the end because we didn't have anyone else to go to. Now the go-to guy is budding superstar Dion Waiters (who, if he keeps playing like this might be heading to the NBA in June), along with senior stud Kris Joseph. Or 3rd year starter Brandon Triche, who might be the best pure shooter on the team. Until you mention 3-point specialist and all around improvement James Southerland. Or CJ Fair, whose midrange game fits perfectly as a 4th option. Or you could dump inside to Melo, whose offensive game isn't near the defensive one yet but he still has a few good moves around the basket and I think in a year or two will be absolutely dominant in the Big East. But for now he's about the 5th best player on the Orange. Melo's game does bring up the one potential chink in the as-yet invincible armour, though. In a few of these Big East games, Fab has gotten into foul trouble early and this team is not quite the same without his defensive presence. His backup Baye Keita does not have near the bulk or shot-blocking ability to dominate the center of the zone and Keita's backup Rakeem Christmas remains a raw freshman, particularly when he's forced to play center due to Fab's foul issues. The first game against Providence - one of the more egregiously refereed games in the notoriously badly refereed Big East -- saw Fab with 4 fouls early in the 2nd half and Keita on the bench with a bad hip. Christmas eventually fouled out himself and CJ Fair had to slide over to center, the first time he's ever played there at any level I'm sure. The Orange still won handily but it is a disconcerting proposition to think what might have happened if they were playing a better team and Fab was forced to the sideline. But for now, it's all good. The game tonight against a struggling Pittsburgh team (winless so far in the Big East) will not be a gimme (Pitt always beats us) but if we play well, we will win. And Syracuse will set all-time school record for most wins to start a season (20). Way to go, guys. Keep playing great!