Urban/Global Politics

There’s no turning back now. Things are finally starting to happen The security state is too transparent to hold. As soon as the police led the marchers into the trap, the story came out almost immediately that they were trapped. The publicity value of marchers arrested has blown back into marchers martyred. The movement knows […]

The 99 Percent kids are doing the occupy Wall Street thing and today it spread uptown, to Union Square, where there were approximately 80 arrests, according to Colin Moynahan. I’m keeping track of this virtually at the Livestream site, which depicts the real-time scene at “Liberty Park.” At this point it’s hard to make a […]

“The application for stay of execution of death presented to Justice Thomas and by him referred to the Court is denied.” No doubt Justice Thomas knows something about high-tech lynchings. He’s been around a few. This was the “high” technology used: an injection of  pentobarbital, an “ultra-short action barbiturate,” which rendered Troy Davis unconscious; pancoromium bromide, […]

All loss of life should be mourned.

Generally, I enjoy checking out the main page of Huffington Post. Over the last few years it’s been a pretty good source of criticism of political incompetence, both by the Republican and now Democratic administration. It can also be a good way to tap into the Zeitgeist through videos that capture great moments in cable […]

Hurricane Irene is an entirely new–perhaps annoyingly postmodern–phenomenon. It is clearly the first of a super-breed of Eastern Seaboard mega-storms, caused by increasingly higher temperatures of the temperate area of the Middle Atlantic. It has a much wider swath than tropical hurricanes, and it brings with it the possibility of tornadoes, destructive torrential wind and […]

Keeping It Surreal, posted with vodpod Today Puerto Rico police superintendent Emilio Díaz Colón angrily told reporters at a press conference that there was no investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice of violations of civil rights on the island territory. This despite the fact that there has been one going on for several years, and […]

Imus Refers To Chris Wallace’s Mexican Son-In-L…, posted with vodpod Four years after Don Imus slurred the Rutger’s women’s basketball team, he was at it again with Fox News anchor Chris Wallace. Midway into their jocular back and forth about the wedding of Wallace’s daughter in Mexico City, he referred to Mexican conceptual artist Miguel […]

Here’s an impressionist painting of Joel Klein in the back seat with the Murdochs. The story this is linked to finally explains some of his ties with the Empire, as well as Barbara Walters. Is it me or are we tired of hearing about the thorny contradictions of apparently liberal or moderate figures like Klein […]

This remarkable moment from the Murdoch father and son testimony at the House of Commons’ hearing today was an amazing act of political theater orchestrated by a comedian who is also a leader of an activist group named UK Uncut. Amazing because it evoked the transgressive shock of, say, a violent attack, but, in the […]