Dassin

rififi

Jules Dassin, one of the great directors of film noir, has died. He was blacklisted during the HUAC for associations with the Communist Party and had lived in exile since 1953. Rififi is one of my favorite movies – I actually thought about watching it this weekend, coincidentally. If you’re a fan of Quintin Tarantino, you’d love Dassin, who is one of Tarantino’s biggest influences. Seriously, just watch Rififi and you’ll find about a third of Tarantino’s themes. Plus Rififi has probably the most incredible scene in the crime/heist genre, as Dassin depicts a break-in at a jewelry store in real-time. The scene is over half an hour long, contains no dialogue, and gave such accurate detail of what it takes to avoid alarms and break into safes that the film was banned in some countries. Dassin was a great artist and I highly recommend his work.

Silent Killers

Humorous Pictures

Athenae has a recap of some of her presentation at EschaCon on the media and how the dynamics of a failing business model, laziness, stupidity, and sensationalism are all contributing to the decline of journalism in America.

My remarks at the panel on journalism can basically be boiled down to “never ascribe to bias what laziness and stupidity will adequately explain.” What I meant by laziness and stupidity is the tendency, all across the board, to embrace the easy narrative.

The easy narrative in the form of cheap sentimentality, as in stories about how to explain school shootings to your children, or stories about how 9/11 made you love your family and go back to church.

The easy narrative in the form of exploitation of fear. Matt and I spent some time talking about all the various things which were called “the silent killer” by newscasts, but it’s the false sense of urgency, and it’s a very short step from “YOUR MASCARA COULD KILL YOU” to “TERRORISTS COULD KILL YOU” and getting people caught up in the outrage of the moment such that everything is always at a fever pitch, making you ripe for whoever can best pretend to solve the crisis you’re not really facing.

While working on the Dodd campaign, the internet team pretty much always had either MSNBC or CNN on in the background – from the time we got into the office, until the time we went home at night, the news was on. Doing that day in and day out for an extended period of time, you’ll really be surprised to find out how many things cable news outlets will label as silent killers. I mean, it’s actually pretty hard to parody (though the LOL cat above does it well) because it’s so absurd. I recall one week this fall where, within a matter of days of each other, separate reports came out on the same network about the hidden killers heat and cold.

I think Athenae is spot-on to connect the cheapening of fear through stories conveying urgent danger from mundane things to the use of fear of terrorists living in caves in the mountains of Afghanistand and Pakistan. If your mascara can kill you, you better be scared shitless of some guy with a different sounding name and different looking clothes who carries with him the most ubiquitous rifle in the world. Right? Except, somewhere along the way, a lot of Americans stopped being scared of the GOP’s and the complicit media’s drum beat of fear of terror attacks. The Bush administration has certainly played it’s “Boy Who Cried Wolf” trick enough times that I don’t know many people who take it too seriously when a Bush administration official sounds the klaxon on behalf of, say, getting telecom immunity passed or facilitating a hasty war with Iran.

I wonder if the same goes for people watching the news. When I see reports about how mascara or soccer goals or the common cold can kill Americans, I usually laugh. Most people I’m watching with usually do the same. We question how these reporters can take themselves seriously, as we surely cannot. I don’t doubt that there is a segment of hyper-frightened parents and germaphobes that views these reports and embraces the fear contained within, but I certainly hope we’re a more courageous nation than this sort of reporting suggests. I think Athenae is right, though: while this sort of reporting is a product of lazy and stupid reporting, there is still great journalism out there and there will be more great journalism if more readers demand it of their reporters.

Smell the Totalitarianism

The AP reports:

A human rights activist says at least 60 people are still jailed in China for protests by pro-democracy demonstrators in 1989 at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. John Kamm said in a speech in Hong Kong today that between 60 and 100 such protesters remain jailed and he urged China to release them before the Beijing Olympics.

Kamm also says he’s concerned that China has released fewer names of political prisoners since 1989.

There are actually major similarities between the Chinese Communist Party’s handling of the Tiananmen Square protests. At first, the Chinese government denied that there had been any violence against the protesters, suggesting instead that the only injuries were suffered by the police. Then news and images began to filter out about the extent and violence of China’s crackdown. Even today, the official accounts of Tiananmen are vastly difference from the account given by the victims.

We’re seeing a similar scenario play out in Tibet. China continues to grossly understate the number of people confirmed killed. Only a fraction of the number that have been arrested or detained around Tibet is being reported by the Chinese government. It’s frightening to think that China continues to hold over 60 political prisoners from the 1989 protests, given that these protests happened with the world watching and those detained are presumably Han Chinese. Imagine what license the CCP may take when it comes to Tibetan monks, nuns, and lay people taken in the dead of night by military forces?

One of the clearest demands of China with regard to their crackdown in Tibet is that they must allow international observers into Tibet to meet with detainees, to monitor their treatment, and to get a full account of how many Tibetan political prisoners are currently being held. Will this happen? Almost certainly not, for what totalitarian government is interested in voluntarily submitting themselves to accountability on the global stage?

Graffiti for Tibet

Stand Up For Tibet

This is a picture from graffiti made today in Zurich, Switzerland. Here’s a description of what happened today at the event, which was put on by the Tibetan Youth Association of Europe.

On the occasion of the global day of action, friends and members of Tibetan Youth Association Europe held a huge graffiti event in Zurich, Switzerland. There were street-artists from different countries working the whole day and after having finished the main-piece, a 30m long graffiti with the slogan “stand up for Tibet”, the spectators could leave their own message on the wall. Many supporters and media people were present – the idea behind was to encourage the swiss people, especially the young ones, to get active and to show, that everyone can leave a message, which will be heard, seen, read. More pics will be uploaded soon on our website: www.tibetanyouth.org

You can see more pics from Zurich here.

China’s Torch Repeatedly Visits Lhasa

If there was any doubt about the hopes China has for using the Olympic torch as a tool to validate their control over Tibet, one need look no farther than the route the Olympic flame is now taking. Jim Yardley of the NY Times reports:

President Hu Jintao of China waved the Olympic torch at a ceremony in Tiananmen Square on Monday, smiling broadly as balloons, streamers and confetti rose into a mostly blue sky.

Then came the uncertain part. Mr. Hu sent the torch on a 130-day journey around the globe where protests and controversy likely await. First stop on what Beijing is calling a “Journey of Harmony” will be Lhasa, the Tibetan capital still simmering from violent anti-government protests…

Earlier on Monday morning, the Olympic flame arrived in Beijing from Athens on board a specially outfitted Air China jetliner decorated with golden flames. This week, the Olympic flame is actually being split into two torches. One will be flown on Tuesday to Almaty, Kazakhstan, to begin an international relay that will cover five continents, including one stop in the United States in San Francisco.

The other torch is being flown to Lhasa and then taken to a base camp below Mount Everest. There, the flame is expected to be stored in a special lantern until May, when a team of climbers — escorted by two specially trained cameramen for Chinese state television — will attempt to carry the burning torch to the summit of the world’s highest mountain and then back down. By then, the international relay should be completed and the two torches will be reunited into one in Lhasa to begin a tour through the Chinese mainland that concludes in Beijing at the opening of the Games on Aug. 8. [Emphasis added]

As far as I can tell from the relay route, other than Beijing, the Olympic torch will spend more time in Lhasa than any other city in the rest of the world. The torch will be inside Tibet, either in Lhasa or at Mount Everest, for the duration of the international tour of the second flame. The only explanation for bringing the torch to Tibet and bringing it to Lhasa is that China wants to world to see it as the definition of their control over Tibet. The fact that there is an uprising going on in Tibet does not matter – China will use the torch as a stamp of approval and them make sure the whole world knows that they control Tibet.

Take action to oppose the torch route through Tibet.

China Torch Smackdown

The No Torch In Tibet campaign has launched, complete with a petition to International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge asking him to withdraw Tibet from the Olympic torch relay route.

Get the Facebook Application here.

Use ClearSpring to embed or social bookmark the Torch Smackdown animation. I already started with some posts. Digg it here and here. Reddit here.

This is obviously a very powerful animation and one that clearly represents the Chinese brutality that is being approved by running the Olympic torch through Tibet. You can get the code to put it on your blog and help it go viral at NoTorchInTibet.org.

Time To Hear from Jacques Rogge

Today’s LA Times includes a column by Philip Hersh, who calls on International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge to respond to growing sentiment among world leaders and Olympic athletes alike that the Beijing games are creating a political problem that demand attention from the IOC. Hersh writes in response to Dutch swimmer Pieter van den Hoogenband’s request for Rogge to put forward a statement from the IOC that addresses China’s more-apparent-than-ever human rights abuses:

Yes, this mixes politics and the Olympics, but that is nothing new. Remember the IOC’s admirable decision to ban South Africa because its Olympic committee hewed to the politics of South African governments who legislated racial discrimination?

The 2001 decision to give the Games to China was largely political and commercial, even if the technical quality of its bid was unquestionably excellent.

It was about giving the IOC’s global sponsors a chance to ingrain themselves in the Chinese market and about allowing the world’s most populous country to loom even larger on the global stage.

So, Jacques, you can keep defying common sense by saying the IOC is not a political organization.

How about an irrelevant one?

Hersh is right. Common sense tells us that the IOC is a political organization and the Olympics have been a political event, at least since the 1936 Games in Nazi Germany. It was there that the concept of touring the torch first took hold, as Hitler paraded the Olympic flame in an effort to glorify the Nazi regime. Now we see the Beijing government plan to run the Olympic torch up Mount Everest and through Tibet as a means of validating their military occupation. Organizations that side with dictatorships and totalitarian governments’ efforts to repress people and prevent freedom tend to end up in the same place as those foul governments – in the dustbin of history. Rogge’s silence in the face of requests from athletes, governments, and Tibetans only solidifies the perception of him and the IOC as blindly subservient to the needs and desires of the Chinese government. In that sense, his actions, as Hersh suggests, make the IOC irrelevant. If they will not embrace their political power, then they must be seen as having no power at all.

McCain’s Illegal Campaign

Jane Hamsher points to a Boston Globe article that looks at how perceived campaign finance guru John McCain  is  engaging in illegal campaigning that gives lie to his reputation. Unfortunately the Globe article, by Susan Milligan, fails to fully grasp how clearly in the wrong McCain is. Jane rightly points to this line:

During the Republican primaries, McCain took out a $4 million line of credit for his then-flagging campaign, using the promise of federal matching funds as collateral. But after his candidacy rebounded, he never actually accepted the federal funds, allowing him to raise and spend more private money.

This looks to me like an instance where a reporter starts down the right path when describing a story, but, upon arriving at the rub that makes McCain look bad, turns back and toes his campaign’s line on what happened and why he’s not actually in trouble.

I also think it’s worth remembering that while McCain has a reputation for being a proponent of campaign finance reform, the presidential matching funds system predates McCain’s entry into Congress by many, many years. As such, it’s not that McCain is flip-flopping by violating legislation that he helped author. Instead, he’s just simply breaking the law by campaigning in large excess past the caps set for a candidate in the matching funds system.

This is an important distinction because the charge of flip-flopping or hypocrisy concedes that McCain has a reputation as a campaign finance reformer. As we’re likely to hear a lot of that from the press both in this story and throughout the campaign, I’d be happier to not reinforce that narrative and just focus on the fact that he’s breaking a law that he played no role in passing.

Activist Media Porn

The Globe and Mail Front Page on SFTers
Above: Three kick ass activists who don’t have time to smile

The Globe and Mail, Canada’s largest national paper, had a huge, front page, above the fold article yesterday on three Canadian women who have been at the forefront of the Tibetan independence movement through Students for a Free Tibet: Kate Woznow, Freya Putt, and SFT’s Executive Director Lhadon Tethong. I had the privilege of working on staff at SFT with all three of these magnificent ladies for two years and am really happy to see them get this kind of recognition for their persistent leadership on behalf of Tibet. All three have taken part in nonviolent direct actions for Tibet in Beijing and continue to lead the global campaign to make Tibet the front and center issue as the Beijing Olympics approach. Go read the full article, as the full scope of its awesomeness doesn’t lend itself well to excerpting.