Friday Review: Slavery by Another Name

You’ve heard of the “banality of evil,” the theory that great evils aren’t perpetrated by supervillains or the criminally insane, but by ordinary folks who think they’re doing the right thing. I’d like to add a corollary to that – the “redundancy of evil” – in that when unjust attitudes and policies are enshrined in law, the evil wrought by them is so repetitive and so mind-numbingly predictable that it tends to become second nature. At the very least, it loses some of its sting in the retelling.

That’s the only real fault of Slavery by Another Name, an exhaustive survey of one of the country’s overlooked indignities. It focuses on a period where, although slavery had technically been abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment, it nonetheless continued to exist in de facto fashion in many southern states. Many states had convict labor programs, in which prisoners serving criminal sentences were leased out to private industries. More specifically, someone would be arrested for a minor crime, sentenced to pay a fine and court fees (which escalated the more one insisted on his innocence – shades of Brazil), and then, when he was unable to pay it all, sign a “contract” with a private concern who would pay the fine/fees in return for a period of labor.

As Blackmon demonstrates, this system was used to hoover countless black men into the system on, at best, minor charges that were unevenly enforced and, at worst, completely fabricated charges (many records, he reports, don’t even note the actual charge for which someone was later convicted and sentenced). Unable to pay the fines and fees, they essentially became chattel, bartered and traded from state officials (local sheriffs, mostly) and private concerns. They were sent to cotton plantation, mines, and other concerns that fueled the industrial development of the South after the Civil War.

To call conditions brutal would be an understatement. As Blackmon explains, in mind numbing detail, work conditions were little better than they were during antebellum slavery and, in some cases, even worse. A slave owner, after all, at least had a motivation to protect the investment he made in a particular slave. An industrialist leasing convicts, however, had no such motive. When one died (and they did, in scores), he’d simply order up some new ones.

As I said, sometimes Blackmon gets bogged down in the atrocities he uncovered, which is only natural. Maybe that’s why the middle section of the book, which details the federal government’s attempts to prosecute the perpetrators in the early years of the 20th Century was the most interesting portion of the book for me. Essentially, Teddy Roosevelt tried a bipartisan reach out that would make Obama proud – appealing to “reasonable” southern Democrats in order to create a bipartisan (and bigeographic) solution.

Of course, it didn’t work. For one thing, while the Thirteenth Amendment eliminated legal slavery, Congress had not at that point actually made engaging in slavery a crime. That left federal prosecutors (‘cause the local ones sure as shit weren’t doing anything) tied to a statute originally enacted to deal with peonage in former Mexican territories. In the end, although lots of guilty pleas were generated, the sentences were mostly small fines that went unpaid. One person (if I’m remembering correctly) actually went to prison. Some of those who otherwise pleaded guilty went right back to business afterwards.

The other problem, of course, is that these were not simple criminal prosecutions. They struck directly at the heart of the post-war South’s conception of itself and the role of freed blacks in it. Woven through the tales of torture and death in work camps are asides about lynchings, race riots, and virulent white supremacy (not all confined to the South, of course). Potential witnesses feared for their lives, as did some law enforcement officers. It’s no surprise that the system perservered during those years.

In fact, after that initial Roosevelt attempt to curtail the practice, things ran smoothly until the beginning of World War II, when the federal government stepped in again. Not based on any great principles of justice or racial equality, mind you, but because they recognized the propaganda value of the practice to the Nazis and Imperial Japanese (one prosecution in Texas is praised in the local paper solely for denying the Japanese a means to appeal to our own disaffected minorities). By that time, some other demographic shifts made it possible to squash the industrial slavery system once and for all.

Understandibly (given the title), Blackmon’s focus in the book is on how the slave labor system was used to keep nominally free blacks in a state of subservience. But two other things jumped out at me throughout the book that I think speak to other aspects of the system.

For one thing, the entire scheme was designed to use the law, or the patina of the law, to keep blacks in their place. The men who sent convicts into industrial hells were sheriffs, judges (usually of the low level magistrate types), and other officials. They weren’t working outside the law, they were using the law for their own ends. It was the gloss of legality that allowed them to perpetuate the scheme on a populace that was largely ignorant (and kept intentionally so) of how such things work. Not to go all Godwin, but there’s a frightening similarity to the horrors of the Third Reich, many of which were written into the statutes to make them “legal.”

For another, the entire system is an example of the sickening synergy of a public trust (the treatment of prisoners) and unregulated free enterprise. Presented with a vast supply of nearly free labor, with no recourse to and legal protections for abuse and mistreatment, industrialists did what they tend to do – push ethics and morality to one side and do what’s best for the bottom line. It’s a cautionary tale for a country where one major political party still thinks the solution to any problem is less regulation and getting out of the way of “job creators.” History shows what happens when that’s taken to an extreme.

Often when we look at history, especially the history of atrocities committed in our own past, we do so with a modern perspective of moral superiority. Such barbarity wouldn’t happen again, surely. We’re better people now, right? Evidence suggests otherwise. For-profit prisons are all the rage, to the point where one company offered to buy several states’ prisons (in return for a guarantee of occupancy, of course). Such privatization of public obligations have led to scandals like the one in Pennsylvania where two judges got kickbacks from a private prison company for sending them juveniles to lock up. Or situations like this, in which a private prison company simply packs up and moves out of state when a federal judge calls its juvenile facility a “cesspool of unconstitutional and inhuman acts and conditions”. And did I mention that debtor’s prisons are making a comeback?

Blackmon has made a great contribution to our understanding of our own history. It would be a shame if people see it only as that, tut tut about how evil the olde days were, and shuffle it down the memory hole.

The Details
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Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II
By Douglas A. Blackmon
Published 2009
Winner, 2009 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction

Life Beats Death, Hope Beats Both

Last week I wrote about how the voters of California will have a chance this fall to repeal that state’s death penalty via the initiative process. If the initiatives passes, those currently on California’s death row will have their sentences reduced to life without the possibility of parole (“LWOP”). That would be a step in the right direction?

Not so fast, says David Dow, writing at The Daily Beast. He argues that it would simply be replacing one form of barbarity for another:

On the plus side, LWOP saves lives, but that’s about it. In every other way it’s a nightmare: It gives up on everyone, regardless of whether they exhibit any capacity for growth and change; it robs people of hope; it exaggerates the risk to society of releasing convicted murderers; and it turns prisons into geriatric wards, with inmates rolling around in taxpayer-funded wheelchairs carrying oxygen canisters in their laps.

I don’t actually disagree with Dow about the cruelty of LWOP. Back when I was first really cementing my position against capital punishment, I relied on LWOP as a bright line that could still be drawn, a way to deal with the really evil people in society. I didn’t really give it much thought until I started doing appellate work in the local public defender office and actually began representing clients doing West Virginia’s version of LWOP.* Two things became clear.

First, the decision about whether to lock someone up forever or provide them some hope of future release is about as random as the decision about whether that person gets the death penalty or not. I had a client doing LWOP who had shot a guy in the back who was beating up his brother. My client (mistakenly) thought the guy had a weapon. But I also had a client who burned down an apartment building with four people inside. He got life with a chance of parole. How can anyone justify a system that produces such random results?

Second, telling someone they will die in prison is both a poor way to try and achieve any kind or rehabilitation and run a prison. Yesterday I was in a hearing for a client who is currently doing life in prison for drug offenses. Under the 2011 amendments to the Sentencing Guidelines he could have his sentence reduced to 30 years. The judge recognized that when you take a 22 year old and tell him he’s going to spend the rest of his life in prison that it makes him unlikely to worry about finishing his GED or behaving well towards other inmates and guards. After all, what does he have to lose?

As Dow points out, in spite of the popular conception of murderer as unredeemable killers, most actually aren’t. The problem with LWOP, then, is that it prevents an individualized determination as to whether someone has truly reformed and is remorseful. Furthermore, it gives that someone a motivation to not give a shit about whether he does or not – he’s got no chance of getting out. And make no mistake, that’s all I’m talking about – a chance. Some killers are beyond redemption or rehabilitation and should, rightly, never see the light of day again. But it’s impossible to know who they are at the front end of a sentence that is going to last for decades.

So I actually agree with Dow about what LWOP is, but I still think his conclusion about the California initiative is misguided. He writes off the fact that LWOP, compared to the death penalty, at least allows the state to correct a mistake when it convicts an innocent person (as happened yet again recently). Granted, it’s not perfect, but death is far more permanent and irreversible. I think he also overlooks the fact that any criminal justice reform is an incremental process. Voters may not ditch the death penalty in California. Asking them to go a step further and eliminate LWOP at the same time would pretty much guarantee nothing gets accomplished.

I’m not a religious person, so I don’t really believe in “redemption” in a spiritual sense. But I do think that people change and they can change if given the proper motivation. Hope of release one day could provide that motivation for some. It’s better in the long run to give it to them and see what they do with it. Giving up on people won’t get us very far.

* In West Virginia, defendants in “capital” cases – first degree murder and kidnapping with injury – can receive sentences of either life with or without the possibility of parole, a decision made by a jury. If a defendant gets “life with,” he serves 15 years before being eligible for release.

Friday Review: King of Number 33

Since I went to my first prog fest outside Pittsburgh a few years ago, I’ve gone back and forth about whether to try and get up to speed on bands playing at a festival before I actually go. I’ve both gone in completely cold and completely prepared and both approaches have their plusses and minuses. What I’ve settled into is looking at how deep a particular band’s catalog is and, if they’ve got more than a couple of albums, pick one up ahead of time to try and get my feet wet (aurally speaking, of course).

So why, you might ask, did I pick up the new album from this year’s ROSFest lead off hitters DeeExpus (don’t ask what the name means – I have no clue), given that it’s only the band’s second? A good question with an easy two-word answer: Mark Kelly. As a long-time Marillion fan and keyboard player Kelly’s one of my musical heroes (and a nice bloke, to boot). I thought it would be interesting to hear him back in the overtly neo-proggy widdly-twiddly keyboard role.

That being said, the main man behind DeeExpus is Andy Ditchfield ,who made a brief appearance at ROSFest last year during Tinyfish’s excellent Friday night set. Ditchfield is the main writer for the band, in addition to handling guitar, vocals, and keyboards on most tracks. Kelly throws in on a few of tracks, most notably the 25-minute title track. Regardless of who’s playing what at any given time, the tracks hum with strong melodic bits that define neo-prog (for better or worse).

They also reflect a trend in recent years of neo band leaning more and more on hard-rock style riffing. “Me and My Downfall,” the lead off track here shows that particularly well. I don’t know if this is just a natural progression or a change that’s been brought about by the success of heavier prog bands like Dream Theater, Porcupine Tree, and Opeth (that’s my guess). Regardless, DeeExpus never slips over into too much balls ‘n chunk, which I appreciate.

As I mentioned, the centerpiece of the album is the epic “King of Number 33,” which is the best long-form prog tune I’ve heard since The Tangent’s “In Earnest” back in the last decade. In this case, the song tells the story (inspired by actual events, I believe) in which “Number 33” is a bus and the “King” is a mentally ill man who, after years of being a mostly harmless oddity, explodes into some kind of violence (just what is left quite vague). Maybe it’s because I have a particular affection for epics about lost souls (“In Earnest” certainly qualifies as well), but the lyrics really grab me in a way that lots of others don’t. Regardless, it’ll be brilliant to get it live in all of its glory in Gettysburg next week!

Details
------------
King of Number 33, by DeeExpus
Released 2011

Tracks:
1. Me and My Downfall (7:09)
2. Maybe September (7:39)
3. Marty and the Magic Moose (4:41)
4. The King of Number 33 (26:47)
   i - Pauper's Parade
   ii - Accession
   iii - The Physician and the Traitor
   iv - The Hunt
   v - Never Ending Elysium
   vi - Rex Mortuus Est
5. Memo (7:28)

Players:
Tony Wright (vocals)
Andy Ditchfield (guitars, keyboards, bass, vocals)
Steve Wright (guitar, vocals)
John Dawson (bass)
Henry Rogers (drums)
Mark Kelly (keyboards)
Mark Joliffe (keyboards)
Gregg Pullen (cello)
Nik Kershaw (vocals)
Ainsley Wells (guitar)

An Interesting Test Case

For years, the running meme when it came to the death penalty was that it had a majority of popular support (if not an overwhelming majority), but that support becomes a lot less solid once the possibility of life without parole is put on the table. This fall, we’ll get some idea of whether that dynamic really exists, at least in California, where there will be an initiative on the ballot this fall to repeal the death penalty and commute the sentences of the state’s current death row residents to life without the possibility of parole.

Although this is, to my knowledge, the first time the issue is going directly to voters, there has been a growing legislative trend in favor of repeal:

During the last five years, four states have replaced the death penalty and Connecticut is soon to follow.

Connecticut’s repeal is particularly interesting, because it is crafted to keep current death row inmates on schedule for death and only apply the ban prospectively. I’m not sure the courts will let that fly, but I guess we’ll see.

California’s death penalty is not the most robust in the world – it ain’t Texas, after all – but a repeal by initiative would be an important step in the ongoing tussle over capital punishment. Why now? Not because liberal do-gooders like me are growing in influence:

Backing the new measure are Ron Briggs, who ran the 1978 campaign for a successful ballot initiative that expanded the reach of California's death penalty; Donald J. Heller, an ex-prosecutor who wrote the 1978 initiative; Jeanne Woodford, a former warden of San Quentin State Prison who oversaw four executions; and former L.A. County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, who said his experience as D.A. helped change his mind about the fairness of the system.

Although their views on the proposition are unknown, former California Chef Justice Ronald M. George and current Chief Tani Cantil-Sakauye, both Republican former prosecutors, have stated publicly that the death penalty system is not working.

Part of the swing comes from the increasing number of cases where people get off of death row years after their convictions thanks to scientific breakthroughs that shed light on unreliable witnesses, shady cops and prosecutors, or just wrong conclusions reached by jurors. Of course, there’s a financial component as well:

A three-year study by a judge and a law professor concluded last year that the death penalty in California costs $183 million more to administer than life without possibility of parole, and that California's 13 executions cost taxpayers $4 billion. The additional expense includes legal costs for expanded trials and appeals and for housing inmates in single cells.

I’m against the death penalty and have been for a long time. Aside from equal protection issues, however, I think it’s undoubtedly constitutional. So the only hope to get rid of it is through political action. And while I’d like to see a full-throated rejection of capital punishment on moral/philosophical grounds, if it comes down to financial reasons, I’ll take that. So, as much as also despise initiative setups like California’s, I hope this one turns out the right way.

Maybe, like so many other things, California will lead the rest of the nation where it needs to go.

The Reason (If Not Rhyme) of 26.2

If you’re like me, you probably thought that the length of the marathon – 26.2 miles (you’ve seen the stickers on the back of runners’ cars everywhere) – was that peculiar for history reasons. After all, the race commemorates the feat of Pheidippides, who ran the 25 miles from Marathon to Athens to inform the citizenry of their victory over the Persians in 490 B.C. There were no gold medals for him, however – he dropped dead after delivering the good news.

Whatever actual truth might be buried in that legend, it would make sense if the length of the race run in honor of Pheidippides would be 25 miles long right?* In fact, it began that way in the 1896 Olympics in Athens, covering 24.85 miles. Likewise, the courses in Paris (1900) and St. Louis (1904) covered roughly 25 miles. It wasn’t until the 1908 Olympics in London that the 26.2 mile length became set.

Why the change? As with most things odd and British, the royals played a part:

For the 1908 Olympic marathon, the Princess of Wales watched the start, which began near the window of the royal nursery [at Windsor Castle] so that her children could watch, according to David Miller’s history of the Olympics, ‘Athens to Athens.’ Thus, Miller wrote, the marathon distance ‘was determined in a bizarre manner.’

* * *

It was about 26 miles from Windsor Castle to the Olympic Stadium in West London at Shepherd’s Bush. The original plan had the runners coming into the stadium at the royal entrance and running about 585 yards, circling the track counterclockwise and finishing in front of the royal box, Davis said. But the royal entrance was deemed unsuitable; instead the runners entered at the opposite end of the stadium and, to enhance the view for the Queen and others, ran clockwise for 385 yards to the royal box.

Thus, 26.2 miles. Now, it’s not for certain why the race started at Windsor Castle, but it did. And the last run ‘round the stadium produced a controversial finish (and an American winner – although the Italian who was disqualified got a song written about him by Irving Berlin) so it all worked.

And it shows the distance of the marathon isn’t set in stone, which is perhaps why some of today’s top runners think it should be lengthened. Says the current world record holder:

‘People are used to running’ 26.2 miles, [Kenyan Patrick] Makau said. ‘They run it like it is a short distance. Longer would be better.’

Sounds like what lots of drivers say about endurance races like the 12 Hours of Sebring or the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Still, nobody suggests making those longer – the 14 Hours of Sebring just doesn’t have the same ring to it. Nor does 30 miles. It’s much too round a number, compared to 26.2. Besides, do you really want all those car decorations to be obsolete?

* Real tough guys run another race in honor of Pheidippides’s earlier feats before the Battle of Marathon – the Spartathlon, which covers the 153 miles between Athens and Sparta.

My Musical Philisophy

Hell, it's pretty much my general philosophy for just about anything:

More classic Bloom County goodness here.

Friday Review: Take Shelter

King Crimson’s sole full-length album in the double trio format, THRAK, is one of my favorites. But I don’t listen to it precisely as Fripp and friends intended. The album kicks off with the instrumental “VROOM” and returns, in the end to a reworking of its themes with “VROOM VROOM.” Somewhat oddly, for me at least, the album then proceeds to the short “VROOM VROOM: Coda,” which is completely superfluous. “VROOM VROOM” is a perfect summing up of things and a matching bookend to the opener. So, when I listen to THRAK, I just stop the CD after “VROOM VROOM.” Problem solved.

TRHAK and its ending popped into my head while I was thinking about Take Shelter and realized that they had a lot in common. The film, for nearly all of its (admittedly a little overstuffed) two hours, is a slow but fascinating character study of a decent man grappling with emerging mental illness. Then in the end . . . well, something happens that may or may not make all that meaningless. Whether it does or not might not even change your mind about the overall worth of the film, which is saying something.

Michael Shannon (who, between this, Shotgun Stories, and Boardwalk Empire really needs to be cast as the witty gay friend in a romantic comedy just so he won’t explode) plays Curtis, who appears to have a pretty good life. Solid job in construction, loving wife, cute daughter. But he’s also begun having seriously vivid apocalyptic dreams, from which he awakes in terror. They involve a huge storm rolling in, accompanied by rain that looks like fresh motor oil, and a host of other odd things. They never end well. Even worse, some of the bits of his dreams – unexplained sounds of thunder, for example – are starting to crop up in real life.

Curtis begins to suspect he’s going mad, and not without reason. His mother is schizophrenic, having been diagnosed during his youth. He is determined not to abandon his family the way she did and, so, while dealing the prospect of insanity, Curtis also builds an expensive storm shelter in the family’s back yard. In essence, he’s covering both his bases. Thus, the movie plays with you, playing it loose with the question of whether Curtis is really nuts or whether something supernatural is going on.

There is a storm, severe enough trigger the town’s tornado warning system, and the family does run for cover into the storm shelter. But it’s hardly apocalyptic. When Curtis’s wife finally convinces him to open the shelter and see what’s up, he sees like going on pretty much like normal. Neighbors are picking up downed limbs. The sun is shining. It seems to confirm that it’s all in Curtis’s head. He and the wife go to a psychiatrist and commit to some intensive treatment, just after a family vacation to the beach.

But that’s not where things end. The “VROOM VROOM: Coda,” if you will, happens at the beach where another storm shows up. This one is more like the ones in Curtis’s dreams, down to the oily rain. Except this time, there is no waking up, only the end credits (with only the sound of thunder for a soundtrack – very creepy). So, is this real? Is this another dream? If it’s real, does it ruin the whole damned movie? Those questions (and others) are hashed out ad nauseum over at IMDB.

Personally, I’m not sure it matters. As with THRAK, a little extra appendage at the end of an otherwise brilliant work doesn’t ruin the whole thing. Furthermore, I’ve convinced myself that it really was another dream (so he doesn’t wake up before the movie ends – you think Curtis exists only within the confines of the film’s run time?), one that shows how Curtis has accepted both his illness and the knowledge that his family is there to support him in dealing with it. Dare I say it, when looked at that way it kind of works as a happy ending. And I’m not one to go looking for those.

The Details

------------------------

Take Shelter

Released 2011

Directed & written by Jeff Nichols
Starring Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain, Shea Whigham, et. al.

The Iceberg Was Framed

There were no heroes, no villains . ... Instead, there were a lot of human beings trying to do their best in the situation as they saw it.

Sunday marks the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, and the death of more than 1500 of its passengers and crew. As one might expect when that kind of milestone rolls around, there’s lots of renewed talk about the wreck and what happened that night. Hey, if the occasion warrants a rollout of the 3D version of Cameron’s movie (which Jezebel watched again so you don’t have to) and a Blu-Ray version of A Night to Remember, we might as well try to better understand the actual event, right?

That better understanding comes in the form of two new theories about how Titanic came to be slashed by an iceberg. One, from a Brit named Tim Maltin (whose quote is set forth above), involving a cold air mirages:

Most people know mirages as natural phenomena caused when hot air near the Earth’s surface bends light rays upward. In a desert, the effect prompts lost travelers to mistake patches of blue sky for pools of water.

But another kind of mirage occurs when cold air bends light rays downward. In that case, observers can see objects and settings far over the horizon. The images often undergo quick distortions — not unlike the wavy reflections in a funhouse mirror.

* * *

Mr. Maltin’s book shows how mirages could have created false horizons that hid the iceberg from the Titanic’s lookouts. By this theory, the intersection of dark sea and starry sky would have looked blurry, reducing the contrast with the looming iceberg.

If the crew had understood the phenomenon, Maltin argues, the crew would have slowed the ship and been better able to deal with the ice.

As for the ice itself, researchers from a Texas university and Sky & Telescope magazine offered an additional complication:

The team discovered that Earth had come unusually close to the Sun and Moon that winter, enhancing their gravitational pulls on the ocean and producing record tides. The rare orbits took place between December 1911 and February 1912 — about two months before the disaster.

The researchers suggest that the high tides refloated masses of icebergs traditionally stuck along the coastlines of Labrador and Newfoundland and sent them adrift into the North Atlantic shipping lanes.

I lead off with the quote from Maltin because I think it gets to the heart of things, even if his particular theory doesn’t pan out. “Human error” is a broad heading under which falls everything from outright stupidity (maybe even malevolence) to errors made in good faith. There’s a world of difference in saying that someone did the wrong thing for understandable reasons versus simply fucking up. As I’ve said before, real life is rarely black and white.

Titanic calls Carpathia in the night
Through nothingness, through 57 miles
And the sparks still fly, down through history
And down through every walk of life

It’s also worth remembering, on this 100th anniversary, that of the 2200 people on board Titanic, about one-third actually survived the wreck. That’s largely due to the fact that Titanic was equipped with a state of the art wireless setup and Jack Phillips, the senior operator, stayed at his post until the ship went down:

Wireless was still a relatively young technology at the time of the Titanic's maiden voyage.

The Marconi company, the Edwardian equivalent of a top technology brand, had put its wireless operators on board some of the more prestigious ships.

The Titanic, as the showcase of an ambitious, optimistic era, had the biggest and best wireless equipment in the world.

At the time, the wireless was used more as a high-tech amusement for passengers (who sent news along to friends and loved ones during the voyage). Ships did share information, but the idea that the wireless was first and foremost a safety system hadn’t yet caught on.

It did after Titanic went down and Carpathia was called to rescue the survivors. It was, perhaps, an epoch defining moment. The theme off the last album by The Tangent, COMM, is (not surprisingly) communication. The highlight, for me at least, is “Titanic Calls Carpathia” (quoted above), in which lyricist/vocalist/keyboardist/prime mover Andy Tillison argues that the rescue of the Titanic survivors was really the dawn of the digital age. Without the ability to reach out “through nothingness, through 57 miles,” many (if not most) of those who survived the initial sinking of Titanic would not have survived.

We take that communication, and that connection, for granted today. Our first instincts when some kind of calamity occurs is to call 9-1-1 and record the event on video, which then gets uploaded for all the world to see. It wasn’t just a different time and place where Titanic went down, it was a different world. It’s worth remembering that on this 100th anniversary and marveling in the speed of progress.

Finally, a Growth Industry

It took a couple of economics classes in college, wherein I learned about how economic impacts of certain activities are measured. Ideally, simply creating a job isn’t enough. You want to create a job with some kind of multiplier, implying that it will lead to the creation of other jobs in related sectors. I’m pleased to see that, as long as we’re going to make an industry out of locking up more people than any other nation on the planet, there is at least some ancillary job creation going on as a result.

Saturday’s New York Times had an article about the booming industry of prison consultants:

The business — which entails advising people who are facing jail time on how to prepare for life on the inside, deal with medical issues, transfer to other prisons and even reduce their sentences — has been around for decades. It enjoys a burst of publicity when a boldface name like Bernie Madoff or Michael Vick hires a consultant.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a job you can get with a fancy degree. The only experience that matters is hard earned (although others, such as former prison guards and lawyers are in the field as well), but nobody knows just how much is enough to make someone an expert. The article talks about Larry Levine, a prison consultant who spent 10 years in (federal, apparently) prison and who laments the qualifications of new folks entering the market:

‘This industry’s exploding,’ mourned Mr. Levine, who operates two Web sites, American Prison Consultants and Wall Street Prison Consultants. He reached to a nearby coffee table and picked up a piece of paper listing the names of several dozen competitors and the length of their prison sentences. This is not a rap sheet, it’s market research.

The business, he said, is ‘becoming saturated with people who don’t know what they’re doing.’

He and his competitors (some of whom find his prison time equally unimpressive) walk a fine marketing line, bragging about an extensive criminal record to attract customers.

Another consulted explains how Levine is “like a used-car salesman” and that he “wouldn’t share a chow table” with Levine. Needless to say, there aren’t any regulations for this sort of thing, nor does there appear to be any professional organizations setting up standards that people can use to judge which consultant to hire, if any.

After all, do these guys really provide a valuable service? Maybe. The article asserts that people can find the relevant information themselves, but doesn’t offer any examples (or any expert to back that up). It does raise a good point, however:

‘You think a warden is going to change a decision based on advice from a former resident? That is just not going to happen,’ said Joel Sickler, who runs Justice Advocacy Group and has been a prison consultant for 30 years and, before that, a prison guard. He said his unblemished past would go over better with prison officials when he’s trying to petition for, say, a client transfer.

The ex-convicts in the business see things differently, arguing that relevant experience matters.

I can see both sides of that. Sickler is almost certainly right, but sort of dodges the question. Surely the role of folks like Levine isn’t to deal directly with the warden or other prison staff, but to provide his clients with the information needed to do it themselves. It also seems that what might be most worth knowing when going to prison is how things really work and how inmate life really operates, rather than the official rules and regulations that are honored more often in the breach than every day. Given that, a former inmate is could be a valuable source of expertise.

What’s really striking is that we’ve come to this as a nation. Incarceration shouldn’t be a business, but that’s what it is becoming more and more, from prison consultants to private companies running prisons (and seeking guarantees of occupancy). We, as a citizenry, should be righteously pissed off of this kind of stuff. That we’re not doesn’t speak well of us.

Tunes From the Road

When I travel on business these days, at least when I’m going to be gone more than a day or so, I’ve started taking my Korg Kaosilator with me. It’s a great bit of fun to carry around – battery powered, fits in the palm of your hand, and has lots of nifty sounds which can be looped and layered one upon another. The Kaosilator’s touchpad input scheme also unleashes creativity in a way that a traditional keyboard does not. For a diversion on the road, it’s hard to beat.

This song, “Suitcase Life,” started out in a hotel room in downtown Richmond a few weeks ago. In fact, the restatement of the main groove at the end of the song was recorded there, with my headphones sandwiched around the tiny mic on my MP3 player. Sounds like shit, but it’s a nice effect. Once I got home (and finally managed to incorporate the Kaosilator in my studio setup), I recreated that groove and used it as the basis for this song.

Aside from the drum and stab bass blurb, the rest of the song comes out of the Korg M50, Nord Rack 2X, and, in its Infinity Ranch debut, the Moog Minitaur. I don’t argue that it’s brilliant, but I had fun putting it together. Hope you enjoy it:



FWIW, the title (at least) draws inspiration from Thomas Dolby’s “I Live In a Suitcase”:

That’s Not How the Constitution Works

In a short speech yesterday, President Obama argued that the health care reform law that is his signature legislative accomplishment will survive scrutiny from the Supreme Court (and outlined some of the popular parts of it that will likely go down the tubes if it doesn’t). Along the way, he made a statement that is breathtakingly simpleminded, at least from a legal standpoint (via):

Ultimately I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically-elected Congress.

I realize this is a political, not a legal, argument, and one made by both sides when it suits their purposes, but even with those caveats it’s pretty vacuous. In any other context would anyone – Democrat, Republican, whatever – agree that the fact that a law is passed by a properly elected Congress makes it immune from judicial review? I know that some folks, in a quest to avoid the obvious when it comes to allegations of “judicial activism,”* want to define that term with regards to whether a court strikes down legislation or not, but that’s sort of the point of judicial review, right?

Consider the most obviously egregious breach of the Constitution written into law by Congress. Let’s say, for example, that Congress passed legislation that not only repealed the Criminal Justice Act and did away with appointed counsel in criminal cases, but went further and required all criminal defendants to represent themselves at trial and banned lawyers from the courtroom. Assume it passes with the kind of broad bipartisan support that Obama only dreams the health care reform package had. Constitutional?

Of course not! Such a requirement would violate the Sixth Amendment, which provides:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall . . . have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

No statute or regulation, no matter how popular, can wipe that away. Would we want the Supreme Court to sit by idly and let it happen? I sure as hell wouldn’t. Furthermore, the whole idea that a Congressional mandate should be immune from judicial review assumes that those voting in favor of the legislation are actually concerned about whether it violates the Constitution or not.

Remember back in the 1990s, when Congress first ham-handedly tried to regulate the Internet via the Communications Decency Act? When it passed Congress and was signed by Clinton, civil libertarians loudly protested that it violated the First Amendment. The Supreme Court eventually agreed and struck down the law.

Sometime around when that decision came down – just before or after, I can’t really remember – Nadine Strossen, then head of the ACLU, spoke at my law school. The focus of her speech was the CDA and the ACLU’s battle against it. She related a shameful anecdote from an unnamed (of course) member of Congress. When asked if he didn’t think the CDA had some First Amendment problems, he shrugged and said that the Supreme Court would take care of it. He could never be seen voting against “decency,” after all.

In theory, the judicial branch is supposed to do precisely what Obama is urging the Supreme Court not to do – reign in the other branches when they overstep their authority. It doesn’t mean the courts should strike down legislation willy-nilly or that an act legitimately passed isn’t entitled to some level of deference, particularly in close cases. Maybe health care reform is one of those cases, I don’t know.

But in the end an appeal to popularity is just irrelevant to the Court’s job. Or, at least, it should be.

* It’s not that hard, really. “Judicial activism” is what a court does when it reaches a conclusion with which you disagree. It’s a political jeremiad, not a term of legal art.

Friday Review: Autobahn

It was inevitable when I started diving into electronic music a few years ago that I’d eventually wind my way to Kraftwerk. To lots of people the German pioneers are electronic music, at least of the accessible pop-flavored variety. No album is more responsible for that than Autobahn. It was, rather inexplicably, a hit in the United States and in Europe.

Autobahn is technically not the first Kraftwerk album, but it might as well be. In fact, main men Florian Schneider and Ralf Hütter have essentially disowned the three albums that came before (they’ve never been released on CD, IIRC). From what little I’ve heard of those albums, there is some recognizable Kraftwerking going on, but they had not yet fully embraced electronics they way they did on Autobahn (and later, of course).

There’s also a conceptual rigor that starts to be flexed on Autobahn that would really bear fruit on the next several albums, at least when it comes to what was (back in the olde days) side one. The title track, an epic of proggy proportions, sprawls out across that side, conveying musically a car trip across Germany. Lyrics are sparse and in German, although the refrain of “fahren fahren fahren auf der Autobahn” has the effect of sounding like a Beach Boys reference (not intentional, from what I understand). The music is undeniably electronic, although Schneider’s flute still makes a couple of appearances.

The concept doesn’t hold over to side two, which appears to be kind of neglected by listeners as a result. Regardless, it contains the track that convinced me to keep digging in the Kraftwerk katalog. “Kometenmelodie” is another epic, split into two parts. The first part sounds like something I might come up with on a particularly inspired evening, which is maybe why I like it so much.

Autobahn isn’t my favorite Kraftwerk album from stem to stern. But it was the onramp, so to speak, for my discovery of the band. Apparently, it was the same for lots of other folks, too.

On a related note, if you’re interested in Kraftwerk and the German experimental music scene from which they sprang, I highly recommend the documentary Kraftwerk and the Electronic Revolution. It’s long (3 hours!), but it covers a lot of ground and provides some interesting insight into the whole milieu that was German music in the late 1960s/early 1970s. The film’s biggest flaw is that neither Schneider nor Hutter participated, although Karl Bartos (who joined just after Autobahn) provides some interesting insight.

Details
------------
Autobahn, by Kraftwerk
Released 1974

Tracks:
1. Autobahn (22:43)
2. Kometenmelodie 1 (6:26)
3. Kometenmelodie 2 (5:48)
4. Mitternacht (3:43)
5. Morgenspaziergang (4:04)

Players:
Ralf Hütter (voice, electronics, synthesizer, organ, piano, guitar, electronic drums)
Florian Schneider (voice, vocoder, electronics, synthesizer, flute, electronic drums)

with
Wolfgang Flür (electronic drums "Kometenmelodie 1–2")
Klaus Röder (electric violin "Mitternacht")

Leave the Dead Alone (the Living, Too)

I’ve written before about the bizarre Mormon practice of posthumous baptism, which is in the news again thanks to the persistence of Mitt Romney in the presidential race. That, plus, they keep doing it for high profile dead people, like Daniel Pearl, which tends to piss people off. Although it’s all woo and mystical hand waving to me, I think it’s perfectly reasonable for folks to get upset about it.

Which is to say I disagree with Ed at Dispatches (and Eugene Volokh, whose post Ed links to) about the whole mess. Per Volokh’s reasoning, either the Mormons are wrong about the impact of these things, in which case no harm no foul, or they’re right and they’re actually doing dead folks a great service. Or, as Ed puts it:

All these people are doing is wasting their time doing silly rituals that have no effect at all on anyone else. Some say that it’s arrogant or disrespectful, and they’re right, but why should anyone really care?

I think Ed and Eugene miss the point, in a couple of ways. Most obviously, they’re applying a rational analysis to what is, inherently, an emotional reaction. Presumably, most of the people who are upset about posthumous baptism believe is some form of afterlife and/or higher power and thus are particularly sensitive to things that mess with those beliefs. It’s awfully easy for atheists to sit on the sideline and say “what’s the big deal?” when we don’t believe a word of it.

Second, I think it overlooks the fact that, to a whole lot of people their religious beliefs aren’t simply a label to check off on a demographic form, but it truly informs who they are and how they live their lives. It is arrogant for somebody from another branch of woo to come along and provide a posthumous opportunity to “fix” something that person didn’t consider broken.

Finally, I think Ed and Eugene both overlook the particularly insensitive nature of the posthumous baptisms as they relate to people like Pearl or Holocaust victims. After all, those people were murdered in cold blood because of their religious identification. Holocaust victims in particular are a shitty target for post hoc salvation, given that one’s fate under the Nazi racial laws had less to do with actual belief than it did with ancestry.

So I can certainly see why some people – family members and co-religionists in particular – would be upset about the whole posthumous baptism thing. And while I agree that the whole process is a whole bunch of nothing, doing a whole bunch of nothing that pisses off grieving loved ones doesn’t rate highly in my book under the heading “nice things to do.” Mormons have the perfect right to do whatever they want, of course, and, at the very least, the whole thing gives me a wonderful idea for a story.

And, to the Mormons credit, at least they’re just messing with the dead. Other believers (not Catholics! This time, at least) are messing with real live kids:

A southeastern Pennsylvania church subjected members of a youth group to a mock kidnapping and interrogations without telling them it was staged, and the outraged mother of one 14-year-old girl has filed a complaint with police.

* * *

[Pastor John] Lanza [of the Glad Tidings Assembly of God] said there were about 17 students at the meeting and the mock kidnappers covered the students' heads, put them in a van and interrogated them. Neither the students nor their parents were told about the raid beforehand, he said, though it was discussed with the parents of one youth who might have health issues.

You read right. A church group decided to “mock” kidnap a bunch of kids. Putting aside the fact that, unless somebody consents to it a “mock” kidnapping is just old fashioned kidnapping (did nobody in the Glad Tidings brain trust think to consult a lawyer?), why on Earth would kids need to learn how to deal with that kind of situation? According to Lanza:

the intent was to prepare them for what they might encounter as missionaries.

Now, in spite of my lack of belief I am 100% in favor of people being able to get out there and preach whatever flavor of gospel they believe in. Violent reaction to that kind of stuff is both stupid and uncalled for. That being said, the vibe I get from “missionaries” is that it means going to other countries to try and recruit. In said countries, outsiders coming to try and sell their faith might not go over so well. In other words, if your missionary work is meeting with violent rejoinders, you’re probably doing something wrong.

Take a tip from the Mormons and stick to messing with dead folks. They’re less likely to fight back, you know.

Some Brief Health Care Thoughts

With the Supreme Court winding up its massive arguments about the Affordable Care Act, I thought I’d toss out a couple of things I haven’t seen others emphasized from yesterday’s session, which focused on the individual mandate. As to the fate of the mandate itself, I’m not going to argue with court watchers who suggest that it’s in “trouble” and the case may be closer than expected. They may be right. It’s always dangerous to read into questions asked at oral argument. I’ve had judges ask me questions during an argument that made me think, “shit, I’ve lost that one,” only to have them rule my way in the end.

But that’s not really what interests me. Let’s assume the mandate goes down in flames. I wonder, at the end of the day, if the folks challenging the law will be any happier. Consider several interesting things that came up during the argument (transcript here, recording here).

First, everybody – attorneys for both sides, the justices asking questions (meaning excluding Thomas) – agreed that the Feds can, in fact, force you to purchase medical insurance, if that happens when you actually seek medical care. So, rather than require purchase ahead of time (when it would be cheaper and broaden the risk pool), purchase could be required when you arrived at the ER with a bloody stump. It might look something like this:

Second, just about everybody (and maybe everybody – it was hard to tell) agreed that in order to tackle the problem addressed by the mandate – free riders – Congress could simply tax everybody to cover the short fall.

Third, again, just about everybody, agreed that Congress could simply bypass all the nonsense and setup a national health service, paid for by broad taxation.

Whether any of those alternatives are politically viable, I have no idea. But if the mandate and the rest of the ACA goes down in flames, we may find out, ‘cause the underlying mess that his our health care system isn’t going to magically get better. I can’t imagine those other options would be any more popular amongst the Tea Party folks and others who have most vocally assailed the ACA.

The irony of one of those solutions being the final outcome is that it may come about because the conservatives grabbed the torches and pitchforks and gunned down what was their own idea, after all.

There’s No Justice Like Mob Justice

I was on the road in Richmond last week for court, which meant I spent more time watching cable news than I normally do. That was when I started to hear all about Trayvon Martin, the 17-year old kid shot in his own neighborhood by self-selected “neighborhood watchman” George Zimmerman. Once I knew the names, I noticed the blog posts and Facebook requests for outrage at the fact that Zimmerman had not been charged with any crime. Arrest, trial, and conviction was the only answer, it seemed.

Given my line of work, I didn’t sign up for any of those petitions. I will admit that the whole situation seems messed up beyond belief. It’s hard to believe that somebody who shoots and kills an unarmed kid doesn’t get immediately arrested, although release on bond might make sense. But two things keep me from grabbing a pitchfork and joining the growing crowds calling for an arrest.

First, it just goes against my constitutional makeup (although not the Constitution, of course) to demand someone go to prison based on news reports. I’m not sure whether that’s a result of my years as a criminal defense lawyer or if it was there beforehand and supports the work. Either way, it’s just not in my nature. Second, I’m a skeptic and more than anything else, skeptics want to hold out for all possible information before coming to a conclusion.

Now, we’re starting to see a counter narrative, as the local police release reports about the incident (via):

In Mr. Zimmerman’s account to the police, he returned to his S.U.V. after he was unable to find him. Trayvon then approached Mr. Zimmerman from behind and they exchanged words. Then, Mr. Zimmerman said, Trayvon hit him hard enough that he fell to the ground — which would explain what Mr. Zimmerman’s lawyer, Craig Sonner, has said was a broken nose — and began slamming his head into the sidewalk.

Of course, one needs to be skeptical of this account as well – Zimmerman, after all, is hardly a disinterested party and, given the outcry about their handling the shooting, the police department might not be, either. What it shows, however, is that there might really be two sides to this story.* The only way to make the incident cut and dried either way is to choose sides ahead of time and then cherry pick the alleged facts in a way that supports that side.

Which is, of course, what a trial would all be about, providing it gets that far. Florida’s self defense law is one of the most defendant friendly in the country, so the state has high hurdles to clear to even bring the case that far. And if it does, is any potential jury pool contaminated beyond repair?

If Zimmerman is indicted by state authorities for homicide, or for a federal hate crime, where in the world will the judiciary find an impartial jury? So many people have already convicted Zimmerman; so much prejudicial evidence and speculation have been so widely disseminated.

You can listen to the enhanced audio tape of Zimmerman’s 911 call, including an arguably audible racial slur. You can read about Zimmerman’s ‘long, lonely war against black people doing things.’ You can hear politicians and pundits ranging from Rick Santorum to Al Sharpton discrediting Zimmerman’s ‘stand your ground’ defense and demanding his arrest, and hear President Obama suggesting that Martin could have been his son. Or, you can join the nearly 2 million people who have signed a petition posted at change.org by Martin’s parents calling for George Zimmerman’s murder prosecution. Who doesn't harbor preconceptions about this case?

As Wendy Kaminer points out, that’s the danger inherent in populist cries for justice in high profiles cases like this. Not only might it prompt a prosecution to satisfy political pressure, but it might make a truly fair trial nearly impossible. Having said that, impartial jurors have been found in other high profile cases (as OJ or Casey Anthony), and I’m not sure that, at the end of the day, this case will linger in memory any more than those. In addition, sometimes the popular groundswell gets it right and forces the state to actually do the right thing.

It’s a problem worth pondering and one to which there are probably no good solutions (as is usually the case). But at the very least, people should actively remind themselves to try and avoid coming to conclusions before all, or at least most, of the facts are in. We should be particularly eager to seek out facts from the “other” side of the issue, if only to wind up discarding them as false, misleading, or just irrelevant.

In the end, I think Jeralyn at TalkLeft summed it up best in response to a commenter who asked if she had formed an opinion about the case:

I am an advocate. With the possible exception of a few police and military misconduct cases, I view criminal cases through the lens of the Constitution and in a way that promotes the rights of those accused of crime.

I wasn’t there, no evidence has been introduced in court and my concern in cases like this is more with the fairness of the process. If Zimmerman is to be convicted of anything, it should be based on evidence admitted in court, not what one side or the other is telling the media. Trials should take place in courtrooms, not living rooms

On that last bit, at least, we should all agree.

* Old Vorlon proverb: there are three sides to every story – your side, their side, and the truth.

Friday Review: Senna

For my first two years of college, I lived in dorms. Back in those dark days, kids (we called them the 1990s), dorms weren’t wired up and hooked in the way they are now. TV viewing, such as it was, happened in common rooms. That was the only place there were cable hookups. There was no Internet to speak of, certainly no Youtube or streaming services. It was truly like the dark ages.

Which is why on May 1, 1994, a Sunday, I woke up earlier than any reasonable person should, threw on some clothes, and headed downstairs to one of the Stalnaker Hall common rooms, flipped on the TV, and flopped down on a couch. It was a Formula 1 morning. The Grand Prix of San Marino, particularly, in Imola. This was my only opportunity to watch it. It was either that or wait for the race report in the late lamented On Track a few weeks later. Some people get up early on Sundays for Jesus, I do it for Formula 1. That Sunday, I wish I’d slept in.

Imola that year was already in a bad way when Sunday morning rolled around. In Friday practice, Jordan’s Rubens Barrichello (recently moved to IndyCar) walked away from a horrific crash that saw his car launched over the tire barrier. Saturday was even worse, as Austrian Roland Ratzenberger, driving for Simtek, was killed in a crash during qualifying. The race start on Sunday was auspicious, too, when Pedro Lamy slammed into the stalled car of J.J. Lehto when the green flag fell.

Ayrton Senna was on pole position at Imola. His third race with a new team, Williams, after several years, and three World Championships, with McLaren. Stripped of the electronic aids that made it so dominant the past two years, the Williams was an unruly beast that had failed to finish the first two races of the season. Senna had yet to tame it, but he at least wrangled it well enough to be fast. That was what he did, after all.

On lap seven, after a restart following the Lamy/Lehto crash at the start, Senna was leading Michael Schumacher. In a corner called Tamburello, a lightning fast left hander, something on the Williams broke. Senna and the car slammed into the outside wall. A suspension piece broke free from the car and struck Senna in the head. The greatest racing talent of his generation, and one of the all time greats, was dead, the final casualty of that weekend at Imola.

As you might expect, any documentary about Senna leads to that bloody weekend at Imola. It’s a credit to director Asif Kapadia that Senna still manages to be emotionally riveting and compelling even when you know how the film must end. That’s particularly true if, like me, you saw it all happen on TV. He does it by keeping things focused on archival footage, mostly of Senna on track and around it, but also with some old home movies (young Senna in a kart is a thing to behold). There are no cutaways for talking head interviews (although they are used as voice overs), nor any fresh footage of any place or person relevant to the film.

That rawness and immediacy is the flim’s best feature (it’s kind of amusing to read reviews by critics amazed by the all the in-car footage). It’s also its biggest downfall. Because Kapadia is focused so much on what happens on track and plumbing the F1 film archives, we learn very little about Senna the man outside of the car. Via some interviews we learn that he was deeply religious (Tim Tebow’s got nothing on him) and there are a couple references to his charity work, but not much else. To be honest, there might not be much there. Senna came from a privileged background, broke through to the top levels of the sport pretty quickly, and never really suffered through any kind of slump or personal turmoil. Still, I wonder if the lack of depth would keep non-race fans from really being sucked in to the film.

What takes center stage is Senna’s rivalry with Alain Prost, the calculating French driver who would win four World Championships. Their time together at McLaren is the stuff of legend. The film makes a good case that Senna couldn’t cope with the sport’s political currents, while Prost navigated them with aplomb. In a wise move, Kapadia doesn’t get bogged down in the blame setting details of their confrontations (nor does he dwell particularly on what exactly happened to cause Senna’s fatal crash). It’s not important who was right, but simply that they were at odds. Whatever their animosity, however, we learn just before the closing credits that Prost is now one of the trustee’s of Senna’s charitable organization.

I’ll be honest – I was never a Senna fan. When I started following Formula 1 he was one at the top of the heap, the kind of guy I generally tend to root against. Had he moved to Ferrari instead of Williams, all would have been forgiven, however (Ferarri was an underdog back then, so I gravitated that direction). But I never questioned his talent or his dedication. In his final season with McLaren (embarrassing his teammate Michael Andretti most of the time), he won the European Grand Prix at Donnington in a driving rain. He was untouchable (as he had always been in the rain), driving a car that was not really that good.

That’s what comes through the most in Senna.  A supreme talent, gone much too soon. If you are any kind of race fan, it’s a must see. If you’re not, odds are you’ll still get wrapped up in it.

The Details
-------------------
Senna
Released 2011
Directed by Asif Kapadia

Give Him Credit, He’s Really Selling It

For the past several years, soccer fans and officials alike have been on a crusade against diving, or, as the upper crust call it, “simulation.” And with good reason. It doesn’t do the sport any good to be seen as a place where cheats and good actors make a big impact on games. There is such a thing as taking it too far, however.

Although I was never a particularly gifted player, I have played more than my fair share of soccer games. I know what happens on the field and the weird ways that two players can come together around the ball. Are there divers? Absolutely and I have no problem showing them a card.. Is it a dive every time somebody goes down and instant replay shows he wasn’t fouled? No. Contact happens, even if it doesn’t rise to the level of a foul. More to the point, sometimes a player with the ball is off balance or what have you and naturally will go to ground more easily that you might suspect. Again, no foul, but that doesn’t mean it’s a dive. There is some middle ground.

I suppose what I’m saying is that the pendulum has swung so far towards punishing diving that refs sometimes get carried away. Take this example (via):

That’s right, a player gets knocked unconscious in the box and is taken away on a stretcher, during which the ref shows him a red card (does the card still count of the player was unconscious and unable to appreciate the punishment?). I can completely understand how the ref may have, from the angle he had on the incident, initially thought it was a dive. But, really, once the guy’s being wheeled away by paramedics, is there any doubt about whether he’s faking?

I don’t want to see divers rewarded in soccer. But neither do I want to see every contact that results in somebody on the ground get sorted into the “foul” or “dive” boxes. It’s a contact sport. Sometimes shit happens.

The World Scoffs at Simple Solutions

I may be the one person on the Web who hasn’t watched the “Kony 2012” video, probably because I already knew who Jospeh Kony is and what his brutal (Christian – that gets left out a lot) militia has been up to over the decades. I’m not surprised that the video’s basic message – that Kony is a bad dude and something needs to be done with him – is resonating around the Web, given the horrible things he has done.

I’m also interested in the slowly building voices that are taking aim at the Kony 2012 project and the group that produced it, Invisible Children. A main critique is that the video distills what is a long-raging conflict with a complex history and distills it into a simple “good versus evil” narrative, complete with the heartstring plucking use of IC’s 5-year old son as a prop, which suggests a simple solution to the problem. Mark Kersten, writing in Salon, explains:

Many have said it is manipulative and patronizing. But the most problematic and potentially dangerous aspect of the film is what it doesn’t do, which is give an adequate understanding of the dilemmas and situation facing those who live in LRA-affected areas. Invisible Children’s smooth message brutally obfuscates key realities about the conflict and other real and less costly solutions, in both human life and monetary terms.

* * *

As many critics have pointed out, the crisis facing LRA-affected areas, which include northern Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, Sudan and South Sudan, is far more complex than the ‘KONY2012’ filmmakers portray. It is a conflict that reaches as far back as 1986, and one in which atrocities have been committed not only by the LRA but by the government of Uganda.

Or, as Alex Dewaal of the World Peace Foundation puts it:

In elevating Kony to a global celebrity, the embodiment of evil, and advocating a military solution, the campaign isn’t just simplifying, it is irresponsibly naive. ‘Big man’ style rulers – of which [Ugandan] President Yoweri Museveni [who is no saint himself] is one – prefer to dismiss their opponents as disturbed individuals, and like to short-cut civil politics by military action. The ‘let’s get the bad guy’ script is a problem, not a solution.

That’s important, given that the main action urged by IC is some kind of military intervention. But that’s been tried before, with bad results:

In 2002, following the U.S. declaration that the LRA was a terrorist organization, the Ugandan People’s Defence Force won the reluctant cooperation of Sudan and launched ‘Operation Iron Fist’ on both sides of the Uganda-Sudan border. It didn’t succeed. In 2008, after the LRA had relocated to north-eastern Congo and the adjoining areas of southern Sudan, a joint offensive by the armies of Uganda, Congo and South Sudan also failed. Another episode was a 2006 operation by special forces attached to the UN mission in Congo. Experts in jungle warfare, Guatemalan commandos were dispatched to the Garamba national park with the objective of executing the recently-unveiled ICC arrest warrant against Joseph Kony and senior commanders. The operation ended in disaster with the UN soldiers fatally shooting each other.

I’m very sympathetic to those criticisms. The world seldom breaks down into simple Manichean struggles of good guys versus bad guys. Simpleminded solutions often tend to make things worse, not better, or at least prolong the suffering. But I’m also sympathetic to IC and its desire to make Kony public enemy number one. He’s a religious nutcase who kills and enslaves people. There is no good there. That doesn’t make the situation in which he exists simple, however, nor does it point to a simple solution.

I’m less sympathetic to criticism like these (again, from Kersten’s Salon article):

While much of the criticism has taken a vitriolic character, some have tapped into larger debates about human rights activism in Africa and ‘[t]he White Man’s Burden.’ The Nigerian-American novelist and photographer Teju Cole, for example, argues that ‘[f]rom Sachs to Kristof to Invisible Children to TED, the fastest growth industry in the U.S. is the White Savior Industrial Complex.’ Writing in the Christian Science Monitor, Semha Araia, founder of the Diaspora African Women’s Network, noted that Invisible Children ‘must be willing to use their media to amplify African voices, not simply their own. This isn’t about them.’

Don’t get me wrong – I’m hip to the problems of culture imperialism. It’s just that I seem to remember decades of pleas for the West to do something in response to various crises in Africa, from Ethiopia to Rwanda to Sudan. Often the pleas are literally that – do something, anything – without any real specifics attached. So which is it – hands off and let the locals hash things out? Or swoop in and provide some assistance?

There must be a happy medium. I think Araia is perfectly right that, in the end, problems like Kony “isn’t about” the would-be saviors who come in from the outside. They’re about the locals who have lived (and died) with the problem for decades and will be there long after the spotlight shifts to a juicier atrocity. There’s a world of difference between providing valuable assistance to the locals that empowers them to find long-term solutions and just sending Steven Segal in to jump out of a C-130 and kill Kony with his bare hands while grateful locals grovel in thanks, after all.

Which, when it comes right down to it, is just another reason why simplicity really shouldn’t be the guide star for solving problems like this. History is messy. Local rivalries are complex and long standing. Viable solutions have to take all of that into account. They don’t always make for such compelling viewing or the most effective sound bites, unfortunately.

Friday Review: Le voyage dans la lune

If you’ve seen Martin Scorsese’s Hugo (which is pretty damned good, by the way), then you know of Le Voyage Dans La Lune. Produced in 1902, it’s generally regarded as the first science fiction film ever made. It’s floated around for decades in grainy black and white, admired nonetheless for its groundbreaking effects and whimsy.

But grainy black and white wasn’t the way Georges Méliès intended Le Voyage . . . to be seen. In what must have been a truly pain in the ass process, Méliès and his collaborators colorized the original black and white print – painting it by hand. In 1993, a full-length version of the color print was found, but it was in terrible shape. It took nearly 20 years for it to be restored to the point where it could be shown again in public.

The premier took place at the Cannes Film Festival last year. To mark the occasion, the French electronic duo Air was commissioned to do a soundtrack (Le Voyage . . . is a silent film, after all). When I heard that, it was like a perfect storm of geekiness – a classic old film refurbished, a landmark piece of sci-fi, and a new electronic soundtrack? Sign me up! I figured I’d wait a few years before Criterion or Kino made the whole thing available on DVD.

So imagine my surprise when I discover a new album by Air called Le Voyage Dans La Lune, which takes the soundtrack for the 16-minute film and stretches it out to about twice that length (still pretty short for a modern day album). And, oh by the way, it comes with a bonus DVD that contains the film, in all its restored glory. Needless to say, I jumped on it, with more interested in the DVD than the album itself.

Needless to say, Le Voyage . . . is almost a completely different beast from movies being made 110 years after its debut. There’s no real narrative flow, just a series of connected scenes. The original film has no credits whatsoever (the restoration crew and the band get some added on). And, what’s most striking to me, is that there are no interstitial bits with written dialogue or explanation, as later silent films would have. It really is a completely visual experience.

Having said that, it’s really a hoot. The color palette has a lot more in common with animation than the real world (or even Technicolor), which would give the whole thing an otherworldly vibe, if it wasn’t already there thanks to, you know, it being about a trip to the moon. It’s easy to see why it caused such a sensation and stirred such wonder in the people who saw it on the screen. It’s also easy to imagine that with the first sci-fi film no doubt came for the first sci-fi fan nitpicker, who would deride the scene in which the massive cannon fires the “craft” towards the moon with no recoil whatsoever.

But this, technically, is a review of the album, not the movie, so what of the music? It’s good. As a soundtrack, it doesn’t mesh particularly well with the film until the first scene is over, which is a little off putting. Otherwise, it works quite well. The score itself is all instrumental, but the extra material on the album includes a couple of vocal tracks and some spoken word bits. They sustain the mood and feel of the film in fine fashion (the music on the album is not sequenced in the same way as the film). I’ve found Air’s output to be a little hit and miss, and while this is no masterpiece, it certainly qualifies as a “hit” in my book.

Bottom line – this is a pretty cheap way of owning a part of cinema history. And you get a pretty good album in the bargain, too.


Details
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Le voyage dans la lune, by Air
Released 2012

Tracks:
1. Astronomic Club (3:12)
2. Seven Stars (4:22)
3. Retour sur terre (Back on Earth) (0:45)
4. Parade (2:31)
5. Moon Fever (3:50)
6. Sonic Armada (5:06)
7. Who Am I Now? (3:03)
8. Décollage (Takeoff) (1:39)
9. Cosmic Trip (4:10)
10. Homme lune (Moon Man) (0:27)
11. Lava (3:03)

Players:
Jean-Benoit Dunckel (vocals, Mellotron, Wurlitzer, piano, synthesizer, organ bass, Solina, vibraphone, drums)
Nicolas Godin (guitar, harpsichord, synthesizer, timpani, bass, vocals, piano, Mellotron, electric sitar, percussion, drums, banjo, electric guitar)

with
Au Revoir Simone (vocals)
Victoria Legrand (vocals)
Vincent Taeger (drums)
Alex Thomas (drums)
Isabelle Vuarnesson (cello)

Orwellian Nightmare? There’s an App for That!

Oh, joy, just what my state needs – easier electronic snoopery, courtesy of your fellow citizens (via) :

In less time than it takes to play a turn in Words With Friends, smartphone users can report a ‘suspicious person’ to the West Virginia Department of Homeland Security.

The domestic counterterrorism agency’s West Virginia branch, in association with the West Virginia governor’s office, unveiled a new mobile app called the Suspicious Activity Reporting Application this week. ‘With the assistance of our citizens, important information can quickly get into the hands of our law enforcement community allowing them to provide better protection,’ Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin said in a statement. The app is available in the Apple App Store and the Android Market.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with harnessing current technology to make real emergency reporting easier. After all, first responders of any stripe can’t be everywhere at once, but there are regular folks damned near anywhere. Still, it just sounds creepy. It doesn’t help that there’s no really well explained quality control, thus:

On its face, there’s nothing about the app that protects either the civil liberties of citizens or the busy schedules of West Virginia homeland security operatives. You don’t have to affirm that you have evidence of a crime, or even a suspected crime, to send information to the Fusion Center.

* * *

In other words, there’s nothing in the app to stop you from snapping a picture of your annoying neighbor and sending it to the attention of federal and state counterterrorism agents in West Virginia, who can keep information on your neighbor’s face, body and perhaps his vehicle for an unspecified period of time.

The potential for abuse is even more of a concern when you consider that West Virginia is hardly a hotbed of terrorist activity (or criminal activity in general). So why, of all things to be in the lead on, have we decided to focus on improving the ability of average citizens to snoop and report on each other? Forget Mountain Mama – bring on Big Brother!

On Respect

When religious believers talk about nonbelievers, and vice versa, often a word that gets thrown around a lot is “respect.” I think we all agree on what respect sounds and looks like. Where we disagree is on what is deserving of respect. The question was thrown into sharp relief recently in, of all places, a discussion of progressive rocker Steven Wilson.

In a recent discussion at Innerviews* Wilson (of Porcupine Tree, No-Man, and now a solo career fame) was discussing motivations, which lead into this exchange (paragraph breaks added):

Are you an atheist?

Yes. I guess I am in some ways your archetypal atheist. I think the whole myth of religion is absolutely absurd. I say this with the caveat that I understand it brings happiness to people who would otherwise be unhappy. There is comfort in it for people who would otherwise be tortured by their own existence and all that stuff. I appreciate those reasons and arguments, but at the end of the day, I’m afraid it’s just a silly fairy tale that mankind has dreamed up because of our fear of death. It’s as simple as that. It seems so obvious to me that’s why we created this myth.

Religion, lest we forget, is a relatively new thing. You can go back as far as the Stone Age to see that man has always worshiped something, such as the sun. But the contemporary idea of religion has been around for less than 2,000 years. I’m speaking as someone that grew up with the idea that if you’re going to be religious, you’re going to be Christian. Well, the Bible was written 200-300 years after the events it supposedly depicts. That’s certainly true for the New Testament and The Gospels. People were employed by politicians and leaders of the church to write it and that says it all to me.

I’ve done a lot of reading and research about religion, because it’s something that fascinates me. What fascinates me is the compulsion or need for many to believe in this nonsense. A great deal of us seem to have this need to fall back on this crutch of faith and belief. People say to me ‘Well, it’s all a matter of faith. You don’t need proof.’ Well, faith for me in that sense becomes a synonym for believing a lie and that’s no explanation at all.

The interview, which touched on lots of interesting musical things, naturally prompted a thread over at Progressive Ears, naturally enough. In the course of that discussion, someone said (bad spelling in original):

I thought the interview was well done with the line of questioning, but once again I am dissapointed with the answers. Steve shares that he is an athiest, and being a Christian, I find that a little dissapointing. But what really dissapoints me is his condescending view of religion. Everyone has the right to believe what they want to believe. I do think you should show a certain amount of respect to others belief system. Ian Anderson is an athiest but is respectful to those who have chosen to believe. Steve gives his pseudo intelectual nonsense as his explanation of why religion is silly. I'm not as dissapointed in his religious beliefs as I am his lack of respect to others.

I’m not sure why “belief systems” themselves are deserving of respect. I’m not sure the author of that post really does, either, hence the reference to Wilson’s “pseudo intelectual [sic] nonsense.” Seems more of a emotional reaction to somebody calling his particular belief system “absurd” and “silly.” I doubt most religious believers respect the belief that the Holocaust never happened or that the moon landing was a hoax (Buzz Aldrin certainly doesn’t!). Or that Xenu brought people here in spaceships that looked just like DC-8s before killing them with nuclear weapons. Or how about this one:

‘God has always been discriminatory’ when it comes to whom he grants the authority of the priesthood, says [religion professor Randy] Bott, the BYU theologian. He quotes Mormon scripture that states that the Lord gives to people ‘all that he seeth fit.’ Bott compares blacks with a young child prematurely asking for the keys to her father’s car, and explains that similarly until 1978, the Lord determined that blacks were not yet ready for the priesthood.

‘What is discrimination?’ Bott asks. ‘I think that is keeping something from somebody that would be a benefit for them, right? But what if it wouldn’t have been a benefit to them?’ Bott says that the denial of the priesthood to blacks on Earth — although not in the afterlife — protected them from the lowest rungs of hell reserved for people who abuse their priesthood powers. ‘You couldn’t fall off the top of the ladder, because you weren’t on the top of the ladder. So, in reality the blacks not having the priesthood was the greatest blessing God could give them.’

And that’s fine – I don’t respect any of those beliefs, either. Why should any other set of beliefs be off limits?

I suppose there is an argument that religious beliefs are so integral to someone’s identity – people often identify themselves first as Catholic or Baptist or Hindu – that is should be off limits to criticism. That would put religious belief on the same level as race and gender, immutable characteristics that aren’t chosen by the individual. But religion doesn’t work that way. People change their religious beliefs all the time. If you look at the “Why I Am An Atheist” series at Pharyngula, you’ll see that many, if not most, atheists come from religious backgrounds.

Or take my own family. My parents were both raised as church goers. Baptists, even. My mother’s told tales of being scared to death by the hellfire and brimstone to which she was subjected on Sundays. But in spite of that, neither of my parents now are religious. They didn’t take me or my two older brothers to church when we were young. Yet, in spite of that, my brothers have both become regular church goers in their adulthood. Who knows where their children will end up? That doesn’t sound like an immutable characteristic to me.

So if religious beliefs (or lack thereof) aren’t immutable, then what other basis is there for giving them special treatment, shielded from the rough and tumble marketplace of ideas? It is important to people, sure, but that doesn’t make it special. Animal welfare is important to a lot of people. Celebration of good music is important to others. That something is important to one person doesn’t mean anyone else has to respect it.

Since there’s no reason to treat beliefs themselves with respect, then what exactly is deserving respect? On a meta level, there’s respect that’s due the right of others to believe whatever the hell they want. Not only is it OK for people to disagree with you, it’s OK for other people to be wrong about all kinds of stuff. They think you’re wrong about all kinds of stuff, too. As long as we’re not trying to force any particular belief down each other’s throats, it’s all good.

There’s also no reason why a lack of respect for a person’s beliefs on the big issues – religion, politics, music – requires a lack of respect for that person as a whole. I respect a whole lot of people who I think are wrong about that kind of stuff. That’s because I know them as people, not walking ciphers for an idea. We are more than the sum of our philosophical beliefs, after all.

In the end, when people complain that others don’t “respect” their beliefs, I think what they mean is that they’re hurt that someone else could be so dismissive of something so important to them. After all, why is it worse for someone to call your belief “silly” rather than “wrong” or simply “I don’t believe that?” It’s an emotional reaction, not an intellectual one. It’s an understandable one, too, and you’ve got a right to it. What you don’t have a right to is a life free from offense or hurt because of what others think of your beliefs.

UPDATE: John Scalzi addresses a similar point with regards to Kirk Cameron, who has a sad because people tend to tell him what they think of his ideas. As John points out:

To put it another way: The First Amendment guarantees a right to speech. It does not guarantee a right to respect. As I am fond of saying, if you want people to respect your ideas, get better ideas. Likewise, freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequence. If you’re going to parade around on television engaging in hateful bastardry, then, strangely enough, people will often call you out on it.

* If you’ve never been to Innerviews and you’re interesting in off the radar kind of music, by all means get yourself over there now. Anil has a great track record of getting interesting musicians to say interesting things.

Nobody Tell Nancy Grace About This

There are times when the whole media circus that surrounds the criminal justice system in this country, particularly in high-profile death penalty cases, makes me want to puke (to borrow a phrase from Rick Santorum). It is worth it, however, to remember that however deprave we may be when we come to this kind of thing, it’s worse elsewhere.

Consider one of China’s most popular Sunday night TV programs (via). It’s called Interviews Before Execution. Give it credit for one thing – it’s not false advertising:

The glamorous Ms Ding conducts face-to-face interviews with the prisoners, who have often committed especially gruesome crimes. Her subjects sit in handcuffs and leg chains, guarded by warders. She warms up with anodyne questions about favourite films or music, but then hectors the prisoners about the violent details of their crimes and eventually wrings apologies out of them.

She promises to relay final messages to family members, who are usually not allowed to visit them on death row. The cameras keep rolling as the condemned say a farewell message and are led away to be killed by firing squad or lethal injection.

China executes more people than any other place on the planet, even Texas. Interviews Before Execution regularly garners 40 million viewers, a number that most American networks would kill for. Of course, this isn’t just the free market at work:

Officials in the ruling Communist Party regard the series as a propaganda tool to warn citizens of the consequences of crime.

Inmates are selected for Ms Ding by judiciary officials who pick out what they consider suitable cases to ‘educate the public’.

As popular, and useful, as the show may be, it has it limits, apparently. It is coming to light thanks to a BBC documentary, which may have gotten a little too close for comfort, according to one Chinese TV official:

It’s fair to say the BBC programme has created a problem for us. Officials here do not want the foreign media saying there are no human rights in China, particularly at this sensitive time politically.

According to the story, only five inmates who have been offered a chance to be on the show have refused. That shouldn’t come as a great shock. Given how cut off they are from the outside world, unable in some instances to even see their family members, it makes sense that they might jump at any chance to talk with someone. I do wonder how many of them actually know what they’re signing up for. Maybe they do – self-righteous twits still do interviews with The Daily Show, for some reason – although I have my doubts.

Which is why, if some enterprising producer in this country decided to import the Interviews Before Execution Format – we’re famous for not being swift enough to come up with our own cheap trashy reality shows, of course – I could see it happening. So, please, I beg of you, keep this post away from Nancy Grace! Although, if she heard about it, the mere idea might drive her mad with ecstasy. And I’m sure that’d get on TV, too.

A Simple Equation

 

+

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and also . . .