hold on to the center

Total Time: 60 mins w/ video

This is an incredibly blunt interview.  We need more people like this guy.

My friend Darryl sent me this video, and as he says, you don’t need to be aware of the show to understand the context.   I have not watched The Wire because I don’t own a TV or follow shows otherwise.  It almost made me think that somehow something worthwhile had crawled out of the muck.  These clips are from Bill Moyer’s Journal.

The show is written by a former crime reporter named David Simon who was frustrated that he couldn’t illuminate inner city issues with regular factual reporting.  His answer was to write a fictional serious that would be able to express the truth in a more powerful way.

The gist is that since the U.S. doesn’t really make things anymore, and uneducated inner city inhabitants don’t have a role in a market society, they are poorly served by their government.  The main reason is that there is no financial or political benefit to changing laws or policies that would greatly improve these lost parts of our society.

Part I      28 mins

Part II    26 mins 

You can get a lot by just watching part I or even the first 15 minutes of it if you time or interest is short. 

Is there a serious national figure in politics or academia who thinks the War on Drugs is anything but a disasterous failure?

In the winter of 1932-1933 Stalin’s Soviet government carried out a regionally motivated mass killing that seems to have surpassed the more well known Holocaust in scope and cruelty. It happened 10 years before the Nazi’s concentration camp ovens and was widely reported in the western press, unlike the Jewish Holocaust which was known regionally and in political circles but did not appear widely in the world press.

With a sinister narration and chilling first hand accounts, The Soviet Story begins with the Ukrainian starvation plot carried out on the people by their own government. This was brought to light in the relatively recent accounts of Soviet mass killings The Black Book of Communism weighing in at 912 pages. For the faint of heart and short of time, this documentary carries the point effectively in under 90 minutes.

Millions of tons of grain and all food stuffs were removed from the entire region. Its inhabitants were prevented from pursuing food or leaving the region by law. The Soviet authorities blocked passages out of the region and shot those who tried to leave. Over the course of that year, 7 million people died as a result. Most from slow, agonizing starvation or execution.

Most popular history of this period is focused on the Hitler’s Third Reich and includes the Soviet aspect in relation to it or World War II in general.  The Soviet Story tells a part of the story in a way that seems fresh and noteworthy. This video also focuses on the commonalities of Marxist theory as realized by Lenin and especially Stalin and his followers. I was surprised at how directly the principles of class warfare with extermination of those at the bottom and the top of the class pyramid were communicated and carried out. I’ve read Marx widely and was aware of his general references to those who must “perish in the revolution”, but the approach of Lenin and ambitious scale of Stalin actions are shocking.

Another interesting aspect illuminated is the similarities between Soviet and Nazi beliefs. The different philosophys about who should be killed and why gets great detail. The Soviets drew the lines by class, the Nazi’s by race or other ethnic discrimination.

I won’t try to summarize the content, but these observations come from only the first 1/3 of the video.  The overall scope is how Stalinism effected WWII and shaped the Soviet Union for the the Cold War.

It also contains an excellent telling of the USSR’s involvement in the first part of WWII allied strongly with Germany and determined to divide Europe between them.  I would recommend this documentary strongly to anyone who enjoys the popular WWI films like those on the history channel. 

I saw this video over the net last year and was fascinated by the parts I could understand. The interviews with non-English speakers were not subtitled. I wrote the makers of the film who explained that they had received similar concerns from all over Europe and were working to localize. Could I help with a donation? Absolutely. The DVD was released recently and I am grateful for my copy.

Sponsors? We don't need no stinking sponsors.

What is news to you and how do you get yours?  What context (local, national, or global) is most important to you? What is a healthy amount of time to spend in order to be an informed part of our democratic society?

Are you approaching this in a constructive way?

These are questions I’ve asked myself over and over since taking to heart my responsibility as an adult voting for a representative government in a free country.  After 10 years of viewing and listening to Democracy Now! It is my own solution to all points raised above and I recommend it highly. 

Amy Goodman, and co-host Juan Gonzalez are what most would describe as a Progressives.  Their views match my own in many ways.  This viewpoint comes across in the general editorial process of choosing the topics but rarely (can’t think of an example) expresses opinion on the program.  She has the refreshing quality of actually working to draw out the experience or expertise of the interviewee rather than interspersing self aggrandizing commentary. 

Use the web, catch a broadcast, or download and watch it in HD while fixing dinner like I do!  Podcasts are available as well.

Journalism is a natural antagonist to government, which deceives and often resists change.  Why?  Because the decisions are made by politicians and their sponsors who almost uniformly are driven by keeping  power and seeking more .   Of course journalists are left of center. That is where they belong because the progress of time is the progress of change.  Nothing can deter it.

It alarms me everyday how poisoned commercial news and reporting has been during my lifetime.  Practically none of it provides a practical or detailed frame to topics at hand.  They use very few first hand accounts of events and even less expert opinions unless they are “media savvy” and already on board with the establishment game-plan.  Tools of influence have always been leveraged by those in power, but I fear the rise of commercial influence on what we take as fact is enhanced as profits head skyward and our electorate becomes less informed and more distracted.

Here’s a shout-out to some of my favorite go-for-broke journalists covering the Middle East and elsewhere who seem to embody the ethic every day of their lives.  Robert Fisk, Seymour Hersh, Greg Palast, and the new generation Jeremy Scahill and Nir Rosen.  They bring the story no matter what it does to them, how ugly it is, or what ideology it implicates.

You haven’t heard or read these guys?  Start listening to Amy and you soon will.