Let’s Jump Ahead And Get Related
Posted on March 17, 2012 in Videos
Wild at Heart’s gem of a song “Get Related.” Learn more about them here.
The Message Of Russia’s Election, Kony2012 And Other Online Voyeur Justice
Posted on March 17, 2012 in Articles
The Article:
Russia’s election, Kony2012 and online voyeur justice by Sarah Kendzior in Al-Jazeera.
The Text: St Louis, MO – On March 4, I spent the day watching the Russian election – not the news coverage of the election, but the election itself. Across Russia, 90,000 web cameras were installed in polling stations in order to ensure transparency and ward off allegations of ballot tampering and fraud. Voting was broadcast through the website www.webvybory2012.ru, where viewers around the world could take-in scenes of Russian life: a Chechen man sprawled out on a couch near a makeshift voter booth, a birthday party at a polling station in Tyumen and ballot stuffing in Dagestan.
These videos, while entertaining, were Russian politics as reality TV: a selective spectacle more revealing in what it did not reveal than in what it actually showed. While a few violations were exposed – the Dagestan ballots were eventually tossed – the videos were more notable for what remained blurry (the ballot boxes, in most cases) and for what happened off-screen. Large increases in absentee ballots and supplementary voter rolls, “carousels” of Putin supporters driven to multiple polling stations, and other questionable practices took place beyond the cameras’ watchful eyes.
Sensitive Heart, You’re Doomed From The Start
Posted on March 16, 2012 in Videos
Tennis’ Origins off of their album Young and Old.
The Late Christopher Hitchens On Religion
Posted on March 16, 2012 in Political Cartoons
The famous atheist Christopher Hitchens gives his take on religion.
Want To Crash The Justice System? Here’s How.
Posted on March 16, 2012 in Articles
The Article: Go to Trial: Crash the Justice System by Michelle Alexander in the New York Times.
The Text: AFTER years as a civil rights lawyer, I rarely find myself speechless. But some questions a woman I know posed during a phone conversation one recent evening gave me pause: “What would happen if we organized thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of people charged with crimes to refuse to play the game, to refuse to plea out? What if they all insisted on their Sixth Amendment right to trial? Couldn’t we bring the whole system to a halt just like that?”
The woman was Susan Burton, who knows a lot about being processed through the criminal justice system.
Her odyssey began when a Los Angeles police cruiser ran over and killed her 5-year-old son. Consumed with grief and without access to therapy or antidepressant medications, Susan became addicted to crack cocaine. She lived in an impoverished black community under siege in the “war on drugs,” and it was but a matter of time before she was arrested and offered the first of many plea deals that left her behind bars for a series of drug-related offenses. Every time she was released, she found herself trapped in an under-caste, subject to legal discrimination in employment and housing.
