Tag Archives ⇒ culture of peace

Feds targeting activists at airports

July 25, 2003
· Martin Kelley

There is now some hard evi­dence in the charges that the fed­er­al agency over­see­ing air­lines has com­piled a list that tar­gets and har­rass­es activists. A Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act request has not turned up the names or who they rep­re­sent but has dis­cov­ered that the list itself is 88 pages long.
There have been a num­ber of activists who have expe­ri­ence extra scruti­ny and spe­cial search­es, espe­cial­ly in the San Fran­cis­co and Oak­land air­ports. The FOIA case, filed by the North­ern Cal­i­for­nia ACLU, is the first to start shed­ding light on the prac­tice. Dis­sent is always chal­lenged as unpa­tri­ot­ic in times of war and scan­dal. Con­trary to the opin­ions of the many cranks who write in to Non​vi​o​lence​.org, it’s not the mil­i­tary who has ever pro­tect­ed our right to free speech – it’s groups like the ACLU fight­ing to bring harass­ment to pub­lic attention.

Army of None

July 17, 2003
· Martin Kelley

Recruit­ing Satire. I’ve always found U.S. Army recruit­ing adver­tis­ing fas­ci­nat­ing. It’s not just that the ads are well-produced. They catch onto basic human yearn­ings in a way that’s the teen equiv­a­lent of self-help books. “Be all that you can be” is won­der­ful – who would­n’t want that. And the cur­rent ads mak­ing the Army look like a extreme sport also hits the nexus of cool and inspir­ing. The cur­rent US Army slo­gan is “An Army of One,” which might almost make poten­tial recruits for­get that a basic cor­ner­stone of mil­i­tary train­ing is wip­ing away indi­vid­u­al­i­ty to mold recruits into inter­changable units. The link above is to “Army of None,” a smart par­o­dy of the offi­cial recruit­ing site.

It’s hard not to make the connection

June 21, 2003
· Martin Kelley

In Iraq, U.S. sol­diers are blar­ing the sound­tract to ‘Apoc­a­lypse Now’ to psych them­selves up to war:

“With Wag­n­er’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ still ring­ing in their ears and the clat­ter of heli­copters over­head, sol­diers rammed vehi­cles into met­al gates and hun­dreds of troops raid­ed hous­es in the west­ern city of Ramadi”

Mean­while in my home­town of Philadel­phia four teenagers lis­tened to the Bea­t­les’ ‘Hel­ter Skel­ter’ over forty times before attack­ing and beat­ing to death one of their friends.
   Hor­rif­ic as both sto­ries are, what strikes me is the choice of music. ‘Hel­ter Skel­ter’ and most of the music on ‘Apoc­alpse Now’ were writ­ten in the late 1960 and ear­ly 70s (the movie itself came out in 1979). Why are today’s teenagers pick­ing the music of their par­ents to plan their attacks? Can’t you kill to Radio­head or Linkin Park? Could­n’t the Philly kids have shown some home­town pride and picked Pink? Why the Oldies Music? Seri­ous­ly, there have been some topsy-turvy gen­er­a­tional sur­pris­es in the sup­port and oppo­si­tion to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Is there some sort of strange fetish for all things 70s going on here?