For whose benefit are the current economic policies designed?

One of the mysteries of governmental responses to the current financial crises in the US and Europe has been the call for more austerity and belt tightening, even at the risk of social turmoil. One would think that the natural tendency for policy makers fighting a depressed economy is for increased government spending to stimulate employment and growth. And yet we hear endless blathering about the importance of balancing budgets and closing deficits, by which is meant cutting social programs that benefit the majority rather than cutting spending on defense or raising taxes on the wealthy. [Read more…]

The national security state grows even more threatening

The excellent news program Democracy Now! had a discussion with three people about the increasingly police state nature of the US. One guest was William Binney, a whistleblower who used to work for the National Security Agency for nearly 40 years and revealed their covert and illegal invasion of American’s communications. He was unsuccessfully prosecuted by president Obama’s administration for whistleblowing. The second was Laura Poitras, an Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker who made films about Iraq and Yemen and is currently working on one about increasing domestic surveillance and the attacks on whistleblowers. The third was internet security expert and hacker Jacob Appelbaum who has been a spokesperson for WikiLeaks and has tried to create portals of anonymity for web users. Listen to them describe their experiences. [Read more…]

So, guys, what do women think?

No one on The Daily Show is as convincing in caricaturing clueless sexism as Jason Jones.

(This clip appeared on April 17, 2012. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post.)

Rules for recording police actions

As I have written before most people, especially if they are not young and/or a person of color and/or poor, usually have no reason to fear interactions with the police. And most police officers are unlikely to abuse their power. But there have been occasions when unscrupulous police have abused people because of the presumption that their version of events will be taken as the correct one. [Read more…]

The selective application of individual liberties

It seems like we are moving into an era where basic rights and freedoms are valued not as abstract principles but situationally, depending on the conditions under which the rights are threatened. Equal treatment under the law has always been an imperfectly applied ideal and in the past was violated with impunity but at least in the post-civil rights era, such selectivity was much more discreet. We are entering an era in which there is no longer even any pretense that the laws will be equally applied. [Read more…]