Bring The Machine Home (It's Time For Internet 2.0)

 

<i.>

Vince Gill is feeling a bit grumpy these days, and so am I. But it's not just the issue he raises, though if you spend any amount of time creating music, like I do, it's definitely relevant, especially in light of the whole great rock 'n' roll swindle of streaming. You've probably seen the oft-discussed David Crosby meme, in which he talks about netting a fiver, based on royalties of nineteen-thousands of a cent from one of those streaming services -- yee-ikes! And I thought Mafia bosses skimped on fair division.

Devaluation of music isn't the only problem rattling around my brain, though, as I ponder what's happened to this lovely thing called the Internet, of which I became aware in 1995. My wife got there before I did, being the trailblazer that she is -- but that's how we started, going to the library, then tapping out your latest e-mail message, and shooting it off. Click, click, boom! Off it went, without a second thought. 

I'd started doing freelance magazine work, to supplement whatever the day jobs weren't paying (see the Jobs To Nowhere series), so I picked up on the coming of the digital era pretty fast. One minute, you were stuffing stories into some plain brown envelope -- a FedEx sleeve, for longer pieces -- the next, you were copying and pasting them into a blank white space, or attaching a document, and hitting your return key.

Click, click, boom! By the end of the '90s, you weren't using envelopes, plain brown or otherwise, and spending more and more time at all those new cyber cafes that were popping up like mushrooms -- or LANs (Local Area Network), if they had games, to lure the kids. You paid by the hour, so you had to work fast (though you could bend the rules somewhat, once you got to know the management.)

I enjoyed the explosion of blogs, fan sites and forums that sprang up, catering to every cult taste on the planet. I have fond memories of that experience, like the afternoon I spent at my crappy suburban Chicago office job, gently badgering one of my co-workers to print out all this info from a Badfinger site, simply because it had images of releases I'd never seen -- one of many ways that made the minute hand go faster, when the bossman wasn't lurking around.

Many of those virtual highways and byways are long gone, like the Little Splinters site, that catered to Paul Weller fans. (I spent a fair amount of time printing out the contents of that one, too.) Right away, you realized that permanence and tangibility weren't going to play a big role in this equation, as attention spans grew shorter and shorter.

But it didn't seem like such a pressing issue, when anything and everything seemed possible, because society had yet to come apart at the seams. Meanwhile, you kept on clicking and surfing, clicking and surfing. The world is yours, you told yourself. At least...that's how it seemed...at the time.

<"Bring The Machine Home,

Take I"/The Reckoner>

<ii.>

These days, it's a different ball game, of course. The promise and possibility that the mid- to late '90s signified now seems largely suffocated by the usual suspects -- Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft -- whose Mafia-like antics, and never-ending determination to twist whatever (and whoever) they can in pursuit of their goals consumes more and more and more of our attention, energy and time. 

We've seen this development at a basic level, with the forced format changes that they constantly impose, like Facebook's recent switch from its signature dark blue background (Classic Facebook) to its newer versions (or Clown White, or Off Black, as I call them). 

I'm used to it now, but it irritated me then, especially when the resulting pop-up box asked why you wanted to switch back to Classic Facebook. I wrote in the comment field, "If you really cared what we thought, you wouldn't be doing this, right?" I'm still waiting for a response on that one.

The encroachments on our time and energy don't end there. It's hardly surprising that the so-called gig economy's growing by leaps and bounds, as the conventional job market continues to crater, but it's not driving any greater growth in earning power, nor personal satisfaction. It's harder and harder to square the slogans that these outfits constantly tout ("Do as much or as little as you want," "Work in your pajamas") with the relentless race to the bottom that they actually practice ("If you don't like it, you can't leave," "Your account can be closed any time"), because that's the only way their business model works. Or can work. Either way, it doesn't work for you.

This struggle cuts both ways. Last year, I watched a longtime friend hang up his journalistic hat; two decades of low pay and little advancement will do that. He decided to seek a regular job instead, a possibility that has yet to materialize after a year of elevator pitches, endless shuffling of resumes, and various related trips to job fairs, and support groups. The problem, of course, is that he's one among millions of fiftysomethings out of work at this point. No one's hiring them.

I'm experiencing my share of aggravation lately, as well. I'm trying to boost my overall rating on one transcript site, and reclaim the top tier, where the best work, pay-wise and quality-wise (such as it is) exists. I had a bad run of three niggling grades that pushed me into the middle tier, and its less desirable discards. (There's also a bottom tier, for the rookies, where I've seen the odd person or two get busted. We won't imagine how that experience feels.)

The way these sites operate, it takes forever to work those lesser grades off, forcing you to dedicate more time than you really want to spend on them. (So much for the claims of not having to squat on Bid Site X every day, right?) And you have to get extremely nitpicky about the work you do, because you don't want to fall further down the rabbit hole. Thankfully, it's not the only thing I do, but right now, I'm thinking of taking a week or so off from that particular rat race. Getting dinged, after putting in a couple grueling all nighters, will do that to you.

<"Bring The Machine Home,

Take II"/The Reckoner>

<iii.>

I don't only have Vince Gill to thank for my inspiration on this post. The other source came from watching a PBS "American Masters" special, late at night, on John Lennon's connections to New York City, and how it influenced his activism, as well as his art. Among the clips is a brief one from an April 22, 1972 peace rally that he and Yoko attended, where he said something that caught my attention: 

"We're here to bring the boys home, but let's not forget the machine! Bring the machine home, and then we'll really get somewhere."

Obviously, at that moment, Lennon was talking about ending the Vietnam War, and pulling the plug on American involvement there. But the last part of his statement, "Bring the machine home," has wider implications. I also see it meaning, "bring our technology closer to home, in a way that works better for us." I'm thinking of Point #5 in the White Panther Party Platform, in particular, which still rings true today: "Free access to the information media -- free the technology from the greed creeps!"

The greed creeps have never done better, as the pandemic is showing us. Relevant examples include Etsy, the online portal for handmade goods, whose second quarter earnings report showed a total gross profit of $317.4 million, and total revenues of $428.7 million. Those figures, released in August, reflected increases of 159.1 and 136.7 percent, respectively. 

That's a thrilling outcome for those sitting in the boardroom, but less so for the community relying on it for some kind of income. It's a dynamic that's guaranteed to keep our collective earning power flowing somewhere else, helping to make an all-powerful entity even more overweening, and less responsive. 

Just imagine how much better off we could make ourselves, if we took even 10 percent of that $300- or $400-some million, and put it into our own DIY ventures -- like a co-op, for example, run by the workers involved, instead of some anonymous digital platform lorded over by some faceless anonymous middlemouth. Now there's a thought, eh?

On the plus side, Etsy supports Black Lives Matter as "the civil rights movement of our time," and has donated $1 million to causes like the Equal Justice Initiative, making them a tad less greedy and creepy. But even so, I find it odd that in the 21st century, we're still run along the same unforgiving lines of the 15th, with some overweening overdog wielding life or death power over the serfs who worked the land, even as it slowly worked them to an early death.

Monopoly money also brings monopoly power. As Free Code Camp reports (see below), half of all Internet traffic now flows to just 30 websites (emphasis mine), with the remaining half spread across some 60 trillion unique web pages that Google indexes. I imagine this is why I've seen a drop in my own monthly website traffic lately, from 20,000-25,000 to 15,000-17,000 monthly page views. The same story holds for other notable categories, like online advertising, where Facebook and Google account for 85% of all new dollars being spent there. The rest fight fiercely for the rest of the crumbs, as the race to the bottom accelerates. Wash, rinse, repeat.

<"Bring The Machine Home,

Take III"/The Reckoner>

<Coda>

To some degree, this is a chicken and egg question. "Which came first?" I'm tempted to ask myself. "The day jobs that barely paid enough to make to ends meet, or the 'gig jobs' that don't pay enough, and don't pretend to?" 

Neither model serves our needs, leaving us trapped in a world of binary Tweedledee-or-Tweedledum (non) choices. Psst. Hey, kid! You want AT&T or Verizon? Chocolate or vanilla? Democrats or Republicans? Food or medicine? Medicare only, or sliding scale fees? You know the drill. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Or, as Bernie Sanders so bluntly put it, when he ran for President: Americans don't only want a choice between Aetna and CIGNA. We can do better than the standard binary paradigms that the world continues to offer. 

That begins by realizing how much buying power we have, and finding better places to funnel it, as Michael Bloomberg did, by sinking $16 million into a fund that aims to help former Florida prison inmates fully pay all their fines and costs, as the state demands, and reclaim their voting rights. That's real power, and will make a real difference in those ex-offenders' lives.

Obviously, most of us don't have anywhere near $16 million, but that's not the point. For a start, we can still make better decisions about whom and what to support with our existing energy and money. That thought occurred to me when I stumbled across a multi-part podcast series aimed at zinemakers, including outlets to sell them. Sounds great, I thought. I can use that info. Let's see what they've got.

Unfortunately, the "resources" turned out to be the usual suspects, like Etsy, where the podcaster focuses their 'zine sales -- and, not surprisingly, directed much of their ire. To top it all off, the podcast site opened with a royalty free musical greeting, a gesture that totally undercuts their own message. How can you bitch about Etsy fees, I asked myself, when you're OK with screwing the pooch for yet another musician? 

But swapping one bid site for another isn't the answer. Shifting priorities from Etsy to Fiverr to Scribie to Submittable to Upwork and back again, or some equally closed loop, isn't the revolution I have in mind. Finding alternatives that empower real people in real life is, and that's the prize we should all focus on achieving. 

Time will tell what those alternatives look like, or how they'll take hold, but getting that discussion going -- and keeping it going -- is the first step in forming bigger and better ideas that lead to action. Like the man said, bring the machine home. Then we'll really get somewhere. --The Reckoner

Links To Go (Hurry, Hurry,

Before Some Algorithm Punishes You Again):

Business Insider

Etsy, Inc. Reports Second Quarter 2020 Financial Results:
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/etsy-inc-reports-second-quarter-2020-financial-results-1029474868#

CNET

Four Memorable Moments

From The Congressional Hearing On Big Tech:

https://www.cnet.com/news/four-memorable-moments-from-the-congressional-hearing-on-big-tech/

Free Code Camp

The Future Of The Open Internet

Is In Your Hands:

https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/inside-the-invisible-war-for-the-open-internet-dd31a29a3f08/

Think Globally Act Locally:

https://peterfeld.tumblr.com/post/21601283204/john-lennon-and-yoko-ono-at-a-rally-in-bryant-park

Race To The Bottom: The H-1-B Blues

It's a big vision in the first world
But no one's seein' the other connection

Somebody's stuck in the fourth world

And the sun's goin' down in the wrong direction

There's a big vision

There's a big vision

In the fourth world

<Screaming Blue Messiahs:
"Smash The Market Place">

<i.>

If you live in a town dominated by one large corporate employer, like I do, don't blink too quickly....or you'll miss the funny things going down. Though it's theoretically nice to have one company employing hundreds or thousands at a time, that arrangement also carries big drawbacks. The obvious one, of course, is that they can leave (or go under) as quickly as they've arrived.

And once a company becomes entrenched, it quickly morphs into something less desirable: the 800-pound gorilla (think Consumers Power in Jackson, MI). Before long, the corporate gorillas who never stop thinking of how to benefit off the sweat of other begin to exert an outsized influence, one way out of proportion to their actual numbers. 

A good example is the battles that communities are often forced to wage against big box stores seeking to avoid paying their share of taxes via the so-called "dark store" valuation method -- one that forced Marquette Township to refund $755,828 to Lowes, and wound up drastically curtailing the local library's hours (among other blowbacks). 

As always, it's the taxpayers who foot the bill, with a giant screw driven through their spine. What else is new? (For a snapshot of how this hustle works, see the link below, although I think the blogger's elation is way premature -- it's not dead until the Michigan Supreme Court, to whom the big boxes will surely appeal, shoots down the practice. With a solid Republican majority dominating the court, the big boxes have no reason to break out into a cold sweat just yet. Trust me on this.)

Of course, with disposable property comes disposable labor. One sign, at least in our little town, are the masses of Indians moving into our complex. Unlike many people I know, they don't seem to be going without: they always seem to drive the latest model cars, and never return home without shopping till they drop. The American Dream seems to be working out pretty well for them. (Ditto for the gas station owner whom I saw stepping out of a massive black Hummer in front of the bank last week.) So what's the discordant note in this homespun picture?

They got a big vision,

big vision in the fourth world

Don't miss the connection, 

'cause the sun's goin' down in the wrong direction.

Smash it into tomorrow

Smash it into spite!

<ii.>

Well, as always, I asked around a little bit, and got the answer. Most of them are here on contracts with our town's mega-employer. The main entry point is the H-!-B visa, which allows U.S. companies to bring foreign workers temporarily. The program dates back to 1990, when President George Bush (The Elder) created it to solve a serious shortage of skilled labor....or so he and his minions said.

However, as an article in the Charlotte Observer suggests, the program has become the latest unsavory vehicle for American companies to undercut their own workers by flooding the nation with cheaper outsourced labor. How cheap, you ask? Well, as longtime advocates like U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren have finally admitted, the going rate for a computer services analyst in her district -- which includes Silicon Valley -- is $52,000 for the H-1-B visa worker, versus $92,000 for his U.S. counterpart.  No wonder CEOs are busting such a collective gut.

What's more, as the Observer details, IT workers are often asked to train their replacements before they're laid off for good -- how's that feel before the door smacks against your nether regions? Still, I wonder why people play along with such a dog and pony show. What's the point of greasing your humiliation if your job's gone up in smoke? (Speaking from experience, I wouldn't, and I haven't.)

When pressed, employers naturally claim that they're lacking the labor to get their work done. Of course, this defense is often a dodge, since much of the work being outsourced doesn't always involve skilled labor. As one of the displaced IT workers told the Observer: "The jobs that we're replacing here aren't rocket science. It's database developers, skills you can learn through a four-year program....at any major American university."

This is only one snapshot behind the phenomenon that fueled Donald Trump's rise during this election cycle. The Donald, of course, has zigzagged on this issue -- promising to crack down against H-1-B abuses, on one hand, while holding out some leeway for certain sectors of the economy, like Silicon Valley, on the other -- so I wouldn't look him for salvation, anymore than his (cough, cough, ahem) Democratic counterpart, Hillary Clinton.

I'm trying to square all of these images and statistics with a more disturbing one: a good friend whom I've paid to step in whenever my computer starts sending coded messages from another galaxy. He charges by the project, not the hour, and has never had to do anything over. He can explain what he does in a way that makes sense (unlike a lot of IT denizens I've encountered). 

He's an unassuming guy who's caring for his mom right now, which is one reason why he's not working full-time....but if he ever did, I'm sure any company would find him an asset to their payroll. But I don't see anybody rushing to offer him a contract, let alone the crumb of a temp job, nor anything similar....and therein lies the problem. And why the groundswell, and the popular outcry against such practices, will only continue to grow. --The Reckoner

Links To Go (Start Your Race
To The Bottom Right Here):

Electablog: Appeals Court Ruling
Brings An End To Big Box Stores 
Ripping Off Local Communities:
http://www.eclectablog.com/2016/05/appeals-court-ruling-brings-an-end-to-big-box-stores-ripping-off-local-communities-tax-dollars.html

Charlotte Observer:
In Charlotte, Foreign Workers
Replace Americans In Tech Roles:
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/business/article81676692.html

Professor Norm Matloff's H-1-B Web Page:
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b.html

Screaming Blue Messiahs:
Smash The Market Place:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ng5j1l622Go

Ramen Noodle Nation Review: "Evicted" (Matthew Desmond)

"There are losers and winners. There losers because there are winners. 'Every condition exists,' Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote, 'simply because someone profits by its existence. This economic exploitation is crystallized in the slum.'"
(Matthew Desmond, Evicted)

If you want an answer to that pesky question, "Why are things so bad for so many?", start by visiting the online pride of Milwaukee: its Consolidated Court Automation Program, which displays evictions and misdemeanors for 20 years (and felonies for 50 years). Let that image stick in your brain for a moment. Got it? Good.

Now replace that picture with a different one: an inner city landlord who lets properties go into foreclosure when they accumulate too many fines or repairs. She escapes liability by registering each property under a different LLC (Limited Liability Company) created online with the city's Department of Financial Institutions.

However, her name never appears on the paperwork, so the city never seems to realize it's dealing with one person who owns multiple properties (an oversight that could be eliminated by changing the LLC rules, and requiring the creator to give their name -- but I digress).  If this isn't gaming the system -- once the associated costs to the city and its taxpayers are considered -- what it is?

Suffice to say, these details aren't part of Milwaukee's online scarlet letter. It's one of many unsettling details that you'll find in Matthew Desmond's book, Evicted, which is written in a classic old school approach. The author (who's an academic and social researcher, not a journalist) spent roughly a year getting to know two major landlords -- including the one cited above, who specializes in the inner city, and her white male counterpart, who lords over a trailer park -- and those who rent from them.

What Desmond found, and what the reader will encounter, is a perfect storm of one-sided lawmaking, legal loopholes, and economic forces that leave his subjects living in conditions that might make Charles Dickens blush. Between 2009 and 2013, for example, roughly half of Milwaukee's renters experienced a major housing problem. About one-third lived with clogged plumbing that lasted a day or more, for example. One in five dealt with broken appliances or windows for three days (or longer). Households with African-Americans and children were the most likely to face these problems.

The biggest costs are often the psychological ones, as Desmond suggests -- citing the eight-person family forced to constantly "bucket out" their kitchen sink and toilet, which their inner-city landlord refuses to fix. The experience of "living in degrading housing in dangerous neighborhoods sent a clear message about where the wider society thought they belonged," Desmond writes. "People who were repulsed by their home, who felt they had no control over it, and yet had to give most of their income to it -- they thought less of themselves" (p. 258).

At its core, however, Evicted is a simple snapshot of economic power -- who has it, and who doesn't. In Milwaukee, these imbalances seem far more one-sided than most cities, starting in the 1930s, when the death rates for its African-American residents were about 60% higher citywide, due to poor housing conditions....because the provisions of FDR's New Deal didn't apply to them (pp. 251-52). This is not an accident. This is policy, plain and simple.

Conditions grew markedly worse during the 1990s, as the city's industrial base hollowed out -- just in time for the welfare-to-work movement. As a result, 1 in 2 African-American men are unemployed, such as Lamar, a legless ex-veteran who coughs up $550 of his $628 monthly welfare check for rent...leaving him with the princely sum of $78, which he supplements (like many of Evicted's subjects) with various off-the-book endeavors (p. 78). 

As Desmond suggests, America could correct this imbalance with a federal voucher program that would allow renters to stop spending so much money to rent -- which would pump more money into the economy, and make cities more livable again. One in five of renting families in America spends half its income on housing, yet 67% don't get any federal help. This is an unacceptable state of affairs when -- contrary to neoliberal urban legend -- resources do exist to address it.

Of course, when a one-sided marketplace is allowed to fester, new sub-economies spring up to take advantage of someone else's misery, which Evicted also vividly documents. Consider Eagle Moving & Storage, which only did one or eviction moves per week when it started up in 1958. Today, as Desmond reports, 40% of its business comes from eviction moves, fueled by 35 employees and a 308,000-square-foot building that -- wait for it -- that a now-defunct furniture factory once occupied (p. 113).

Eagle makes additional bank by charging hefty storage fees and insurance to store evicted renters' property, which most of them wind up losing. How would you afford additional fees when all your stuff is sitting on the sidewalk? It's a reminder of the one-sided dynamics that spring up when the powers that be figure (rightly, in most cases) that nobody's really paying attention. "Exploitation. Now, there's a word that has been scrubbed out of the poverty debate," Desmond asserts.."It is a word that speaks to to the fact that poverty is not just a product of low incomes. It is also a product of extractive markets." (p. 305)

The crushing irony here, according to Desmond, is that half of all evictions in Milwaukee are informal ones -- which those on the receiving end prefer, because there's no formal record to stop them from moving into an equally Dickensian space, a situation that's never addressed through the assembly line rough justice dished out by the city's eviction court. "Something has gone very wrong with our justice system when it makes more sense for tenants to skip court and quietly move out when their landlord says go than it does for then to plead their case themselves," Desmond states, "which often leads to an order to move and an eviction on their record" (footnotes, p. 398).

However, this problem could be corrected by giving low-income people the right to civil representation -- as they've already done in many obvious places (France, Sweden), and some not so obvious (Azerbijan, India, Zambia), Desmond notes. Putting pressure on the powers that be also reaps some badly-needed social dividends. For example, Desmond's research persuaded Milwaukee in 2011 to exclude 911 calls involving domestic violence, stalking and sexual abuse from its so-called "nuisance ordinance." Otherwise, renters who find themselves calling the cops in those situations would still potentially face eviction -- or homelessness -- by having those crises going on record, and (fucked-up as it is) count against them.

Of course, this problem isn't confined to Milwaukee. Consider Lagos, Nigeria, where 60% of those residents living in Africa's largest city spend most of their money on rent, with the vast majority confined to one-room units. As the world grows more urbanized, and less affordable, Evicted offers a timely reminder to redress the balance -- especially when many of the protections that Americans take for granted nowadays (child labor laws, the minimum wage, workplace safety regulations) only came about "when we chose to place the well-being of people above money," Desmond contends.

Keep those words in mind, and burn them into your memory bank forever. The first step in correcting injustice is the admission that it exists -- which is only one of many reasons why neoliberalism, which has singularly failed in addressing economic injustice, belongs in the dustbin. On that level, Evicted offers an appropriate starting point to marshal our collective outrage, and put it to good use. --The Reckoner

Shock, Horror, Film At 11: The Wall Street Journal Doesn't "Get" '60s & '70s Radicalism

<i.>

Reading this book reminds me of a comment in 1971, a documentary recently aired on PBS about the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI -- a group of activists whose break-in of the agency's satellite office in Media, PA, unmasked the agency's COINTELPRO program...and its snooping into millions of Americans' lives, to an unprecedented degree: in short, more or less like today's climate (just substitute the names of Edward Snowden, and the National Security Agency). Anyway, one of the former activist burglars makes a telling point by saying that, in many ways, he feels that America has never gotten over 1968.

The Wall Street Journal's review of Days Of Rage makes me feel the same way. Reviewer Peter Hellman co-authored Chief! with the late Albert Seedman, the New York Police Department's own Chief of Detectives, who spent a fair amount of quality time pursuing the era's radical bogeys -- including the Black Liberation Army, the FALN, and the Weather Underground, who get much of the ink here.

It's always fun to read what establishment voices think, and Hellman's review is no exception. Consider how Hellman characterizes the book's more significant scenes -- such as the November 4, 1984 capture of Ray Lavasseur, ending the bank robberies and bombings of his own United Freedom Front (whose fugitive partners also raised children on the run -- ponder the implications of that one for a moment). As Hellman writes, "Two days later, the United States reelected Ronald Reagan in a landslide. So much for Lavessur's dream of fomenting popular revolution." 

To which I would humbly retort, "Um, not so fast, grasshopper." While a massive effort to overthrow the U.S. government didn't materialize, it's a  stretch to imply that the Gipper's re-election invalidated concerns about America's social ills, which seem more noxious than ever (unprecedented levels of social equality, jobless recoveries, massive expansion of state and federal power at citizens' expense -- need I say more, or go on?). At that time, barely half the U.S. population voted -- so, when considered in that light, Mr. Reagan's so-called "mandate" looks far less impressive.

Hellman also misses the mark with this observation: "Arriving on the 50th anniversary of Selma, this book provides a rare chance to appreciate the true radicalness of Martin Luther King's non-violence, a strategy for creating social change that was scorned by the radical underground." His review glosses over the reason why groups like the Black Panthers and the Black Liberation Army ridiculed the idea -- because the feds didn't respond with love and kisses to anyone seeking to stop the Vietnam War, or halt any of their crazier schemes (as even a casual listen to Nixon's many infamous White House recordings will quickly attest). 

<ii.>

Similar responses occurred around the world, especially in Germany, where the Baader-Meinhof Gang/Red Army Faction rose in response to the federal police's excesses -- such as the June 1967 shooting of Benno Ohnesorg, a student demonstrator whose wife was pregnant with their first child. New research by federal prosecutors and Der Spiegel shows that a) police didn't shoot in self-defense, as claimed; b) the medical examiner was ordered to falsify the post-morterm report; and c) subsequent investigations covered up key points that implicated the responsible parties. Naturally, none of these facts will prove sufficient to hold any of them accountable.

While these facts weren't common knowledge among the German New Left of '67-'68, sufficient grounds existed to suspect them. The presence of numerous ex-Nazis in lower- or mid-level government positions and unrelenting hostility from a conservative media establishment also did nothing, one suspects, to dissuade radicals from believing that peaceful dialogue was possible...or desirable. Ulrike Meinof presumably had this climate in mind for her spring 1969 article, "Columnism," which offers a cogent critique of the mass media space that she herself occupied as a noted journalist:

"My criticism is aimed at the way publishers internalise the conditions of the market, and at the way editors internalise the publishers' focus on profits. We are not looking for saints. We simply want an oppositional stance. We do not want our subjugation to market demands to be presented as free journalism, or the art of meeting deadlines to be confused with the of presenting people with the truth. We do not want editorial democracy to grind like sand in the gears, and we want the columnists' freedom to be recognised for what it is: a prestige and profit factor, a fraud for the readers, a self-deception, a personality cult."

Whatever you think of Meinhof's subsequent murderous odyssey, the article offers a glimpse into her thinking -- which, by now, rejected the idea of working within the system, or trying to influence it in a non-militant way:

"It is opportunistic to claim to be struggling against the conditions that one is actually reproducing. It is opportunistic to use the methods that stabilise a system and claim to be seeking change. It is opportunitistc to clamp down on editorial freedoms and the extra-parliamentary opposition and cave in to the market, i.e., to profits. It is opportunistic to limit the anti-authoritarian position to the authoritarian form of the column." 

<iii.>

Of course, the radical leftists made numerous mistakes. The biggest came in assuming that Maoist- or Stalinist-style Communism could simply be transplanted, root and branch, into consumer societies that had not experienced traditions of revolutionary violence (except Germany, perhaps). Also, it's hard to think of a successful radical group that didn't have a political wing -- as exemplified by the African National Congress, or the Irish Republican Army.

At least Hellman acknowledges that the government committed plenty of excesses in pursuing these small radical groups, though it's curious that he doesn't see fit to question the John Wayne Complex that often grips law enforcement. A good example is the so-called 1974 siege that led to the Symbionese Liberation Army's demise. It's curious that police never entertained the idea of simply blockading Donald DeFreeze and his would-be revolutionaries until their food, water and ammo stocks ran out...then again, it probably didn't sound as attractive as the full-scale operation to kick weirdo butt on live TV.

Naturally, Hellman does dwell at length on the middle- or upper-class backgrounds that characterized radical poster children like Bernadine Dohrn -- but, far from discrediting their ideology, it only makes the whole story more poignant. If people from monied backgrounds doesn't think they have options, what does that mean for the rest of us? The answers aren't pleasant to contemplate.

Finally, Hellman also ignores one other point: if the nation's radical business really is a finished affair, done and dusted, why do so many conservatives and ultra-right-wingers continue running so hard against it? Think back to the 2008 election, when Obama's Democratic and Republican opponents tried to tar him with the Weather Underground brush. If those ghosts really are dormant, why do commentators like Pat Buchanan continue to resurrect them, when the need arises?

Read Hellman's review and draw your own conclusions -- though, per usual, it seems like a missed opportunity for the substantive discussion that the subject deserves. Perhaps he missed the implied memo of JFK's famous 1962 quote: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable." Then again...what else can we expect from the Paper Of The One Percent? --The Reckoner

Links To Go (Just Don't Shake That Molotov Cocktail):
Der Spiegel International Online:
New Probe Into 1967 Student Killing:
Police Covered Up Truth Behind Infamous Student Shooting:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/new-probe-into-1967-killing-police-covered-up-truth-behind-infamous-student-shooting-a-810877.html

Lib.com: Ulrike Meinhof: Columnism:
https://libcom.org/library/columnism-1968

PBS: 1971: FBI Office Break-In Changed Everything
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/1971/film.html

The Wall Street Journal: A Pestilence of Bombs:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/book-review-days-of-rage-by-bryan-burrough-1429307327

Something To Think About...

And Obama is as busy as Bush was sending troops all over the world when the USA is even more broke. The gold thing always made me wonder, suppose it was chosen arbitrarily eons ago for it's special shine and use in jewelry to represent "wealth".

The Bible has some interesting verses about GOLD:

James 5:3 - Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.

Sounds like the globalist looters we have now busy cleaning out the till.--The Squawker

Global Free Trade is a Myth!

Sometimes I think today's leaders of companies and mega-corporations have to be among the most stupid people in the world. Whose going to afford their products when everyone is broke? It isn't the guy making 20 cents an hour in Bangladesh! --The Squawker