Thursday, November 3, 2005

7 million, and counting: We need these kinds of milestones? (4:31 pm)

On Wednesday, Nov. 2, the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) released findings that the total number of adults under some form of American correctional supervision reached 6,996,500 last year. (To put this number in perspective, that’s more than the entire population of Israel.)

Last month, the BJS also announced a record-breaking high of 2.3 million incarcerated Americans, at a lock-em-up rate that outranks any other country in the world. Since 1995, in fact, the number of people imprisoned, or on parole or probation, has grown by over 1.6 million adults. One out of every 31 American adults is now under some kind of correctional supervision.

If you’re still one of those of us left in the “free world,” this might be an opportune time to take a good, hard look at the situation. The way things are going, life in a cellblock may not be as much of a far-fetched reality as you might think.

posted by Silja J.A. Talvi | 5 comments

The World Can’t Wait, but Hot 97 Can Certainly Pull the Plug (4:17 pm)

Hot 97 ( WQHT, at 97.1 FM) is the most listened to hip-hop/rap station in NYC, in addition to co-producing a popular, daily hip-hop video countdown show on BET. Finally, it seemed like the station was standin’ up for something beyond profit and playlists, when Hot 97 gave the go-ahead for the airing of PSA put together by underground hip-hop legend Boots Riley of The Coup.

The plug was for the 11/2 Union Square demonstration against the war in Iraq and the Bush Administration’s policies. But the short audio clip, World Can’t Wait, Drive Out the Bush Regime, never aired. Minutes before the spot was about to be played, Hot 97’s parent company, Emmis Corporation, yanked it from the air. Boots would have dropped’ some real (political) science, but radio listeners never got to hear it:

Come on, you seen the pictures.
Bush made torture into a sport and justifies it.
You saw Iraq destroyed by a war based on lies.
We all watched Bush leave people to die in New Orleans and treat people like criminals
This regime is what’s criminal.
The Bush Regime is out to remake the world.
Unending war, a devastated environment, forced religion, no right to abortion, no dissent, no critical thought.
We have to stop this now. If we don’t we will be forced to accept it.
The future we get is up to us.

Testify, Boots. We’re listening.

posted by Silja J.A. Talvi | 1 comment

Exit, Raped by a Bear (10:19 am)

The peculiar sexual fantasies of one Mr. Irving Lewis “Scooter” LIbby:

At age ten the madam put the child in a cage with a bear trained to couple with young girls so the girls would be frigid and not fall in love with their patrons. They fed her through the bars and aroused the bear with a stick when it seemed to lose interest.

posted by Brian Cook | 4 comments

Wednesday, November 2, 2005

50 and Bush: A Match Made in Heaven (1:46 pm)

Along the lines of Lakshmi Chaudhry’s thesis that “Raunch is Republican,” I think it’s also viable to make the claim that gangsta rap is increasingly Republican as well.

Here’s 50 Cent’s take on Kanye West’s outburst about George Bush:

“I think people responded to [Hurricane Katrina] the best way they can,” 50 told ContactMusic.com. “What Kanye West was saying, I don’t know where that came from.” Instead, 50 said, “The New Orleans disaster was meant to happen. It was an act of God.”

We see here the apotheosis of Republican ideology. Because human agency has been completely dissolved, people just got to get in where they fit in. And what is simply is, no questions asked. There’s only one perogative in this life, as mandated by capitalism: “Get Rich or Die Tryin’.”

Maybe Chuck D can sit 50 down on his knee, and tell him about one of the greatest MCs ever: W.E.B. DuBois

posted by Brian Cook | 3 comments

Tuesday, November 1, 2005

Puppets on the Left, Puppets on the Right (12:20 pm)

Wal-Mart has launched an opinion war by hiring political operatives (a.k.a. media mercenaries) from both the Kerry and Bush 2004 presidential campaigns. The list of Wal-Mart’s operatives stretches from a former Reagan media operative and the national director of President Bush’s campagin to one of Clinton’s media managers and the director of John Kerry’s national delegate strategy .

The New York Times article goes on to describe that such operatives are targeting “swing voters,” middle class shoppers who are wary of Wal-Mart’s actual benevolence, after well-organized critiques of the corporate giant have had significant resonance among the public. (For two examples of those critiques, check out UFCW’s Wake Up Wal-Martcampaign and SEIU’s Wal-Mart Watch.)

What does this say about the American political system when media consultants for both parties join together to use political campaign tactics to shore up a corporation’s deservedly-soiled image?

You can read the story, “A New Weapon for Wal-Mart: A War Room,” here.

This blog was actually written by In These Times Intern Extraordinaire, A. Staley Groves.