Where Angels Fear

…Naomi Klein’s vision of how to win change only gets half way there, argues Sadie Robinson

Naomi Klein, author of No Is Not Enough (Photo: TroyH/Truthout)

Naomi Klein wants a different sort of society. The author and activist helped put together the Leap manifesto in Canada—a set of radical demands activists want politicians to sign up to.

It says that “small steps will no longer get us where we need to go” and urges a bold leap instead.

Klein’s latest book, No Is Not Enough, builds on this idea and looks at how to make it happen.

As well as rejecting the things we don’t want, Klein argues that we must put forward a positive vision of how things could be different. We need “a plan for the future that is credible and captivating enough that a great many people will fight to see it realised”.

US president Donald Trump symbolises much of what is wrong with the world we live in. Klein argues that we need to take on people like Trump. But we also need to say “no to the system that has elevated them to such heights”.

Trump is “a logical conclusion” of the neoliberalism of the past few decades. So it’s a mistake to simply focus on fending off Trump’s attacks.

“If we accept the premise that the battles are all about holding our ground, then we will end up in a very dangerous place,” Klein writes. “Because the ground we were on before Trump was elected is the ground that produced Trump.”

Some on the left refuse to criticise Democratic politicians such as Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Klein refuses to let them off the hook…..

- In Spain there are (still) 120.000 missing people (after all these years). Spain is the second country in the world for the number of missing people, only behind Cambodia.    

- There are more than 2000 known mass graves still to be opened. Not to count the unknown ones. Here’s a map. It’s horrifying.

- Fifty kilometres north of Madrid, in the granite mountains of the Sierra de Guadarrama, is the tallest stone cross built anywhere in the world, it’s called the Valley of the Fallen. It’s more than 150 metres high, it stands guard over a vast basilica hewn into the rock below. It was built by republicans prisioner-of-war and victims of reprisals. The tomb of the Dictator is located here.

- Every year, diehard followers of Franco pay their respects around the anniversary of his death (November 20), either in the Valley of The Fallen or even worse, in the church of Los Jerónimos, in Madrid, where they sing the fascist hymn and there’s a priest celebrating a special mass in his honour. 

.The Popular Party (PP), the most voted political party in Spain, was founded by Ministries and personalities from the Regime. They have never been able to bring themselves to condemn Francoism. Their opinion is that although the wounds are still open, we shall remain silent and forget.

- There is a foundation called Francisco Franco, that gets public money every year. One of the main benefactors is the Popular Party. They organize acts and events defending the right of the uprising and subsequent war.

-After all these year, the government passed a controversial law called “Ley de Memoria Histórica”, calling for the removal of Franco statues and street names, and opening of war graves. The Popular Party, and the new right party ‘Ciudadanos’ (C’s) are constantly blocking any change in most towns where they are governing. They argue it’s “opening old wounds” and “threatening the tranquil co-existence”.

“The #BlackLivesMatter hashtag first appeared in July of 2013, following a jury’s acquittal of George Zimmerman for the 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin. Since the beginning, critics of the message have taken issue with what they say is an implication that other lives do not matter. Along with the hashtag #AllLivesMatter, some have used #BlueLivesMatter to defend police, for instance Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, who shot and killed Michael Brown in 2014.

Supporters of Black Lives Matter have now, in an attempt to call the bluff of those using the #AllLivesMatter hashtag, garnered support for their side by using the hashtag #AllLivesDidntMatter, an open invitation to others on Twitter to share examples in history, especially within the US, where minorities were oppressed or abused.

Nearly 180,000 Twitter posts with the #AllLivesDidntMatter tag were sent by early Monday evening. Here is a small sampling.”

Claes Oldenburg. Floor Cone. 1962 | MoMA

In honor of National Ice Cream Day, here’s Claes Oldenburg’s Floor Cone, currently on view in From the Collection: 1960–1969. Floor Cone is one of three large-scale soft sculptures that Oldenburg produced with his then wife, Patty Mucha, for the second exhibition of The Store, at New York’s Green Gallery. Mucha recalls taking the work for a drive in a pickup truck along West 57th Street, where the Green Gallery was located, and encountering a warm reception from children in passing cars, who “shouted out their approval.”

[Claes Oldenburg. Floor Cone. 1962. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. © 2016 Claes Oldenburg]

“Since Paul Feig’s all-female reboot of the 1984 classic was announced, a small yet vocal group of angry misogynists have derailed the film’s rollout, spamming social media and launching a coordinated effort to make its trailer the most disliked in YouTube history. These crackpots are not representative of the larger viewing public, but they do represent a more extreme version of the ingrained sexism in Hollywood. As we know from experience, if Ghostbusters flops, one narrative will engulf all others, like a tidal wave of ectoplasmic slime smothering all rational voices: Women movies bad! Women no funny! Women box-office kryptonite! Ain’t no bitches gonna hunt no ghosts!

Ghostbusters faces an uphill battle to be considered a success. The film cost $144 million, pricey for a comedy, so the studio will be hoping for a $50 million opening weekend (with low-end predictions around $39 million to $41 million). Opening weekend shapes the story about a film’s fate, which can be a self-fulfilling prophecy when it comes to drawing more viewers in down the road. While some films gain “legs” over time, usually by favorable word of mouth, Ghostbusters will be expected to start strong, given the fact that it’s part of a much-hyped franchise with major brand recognition. If the numbers are middling come Monday, it may be too late.

This wouldn’t matter much if the only thing at stake was Ghostbusterssequels. But female-led blockbusters in Hollywood are still such a rarity, and the view that audiences won’t watch movies helmed by women so pervasive, that every female-led film is seen as a litmus test for every future one. (Particularly a major action-comedy tentpole like this one.) IfGhostbusters flops, nobody will point to the weak script or an excessive budget. They’ll look to the one factor that deviates from the Hollywood norm: the gender of the stars fronting it.”

Read the full piece here

IF YOU ARE PLANNING TO SEE THE MOVIE AND ABLE TO DO IT THIS WEEKEND, MAKE YOUR TICKET COUNT! ADD IT TO THE OPENING WEEKEND TALLY.

The Chartist movement shows the enormous struggle it’s taken to secure democratic rights — and how far we have yet to go.

by Sean Monahan

In 1839, the common people of the United Kingdom, fed up with oppression and poverty, took to the streets by the tens of thousands and united under the banner of a new social movement: Chartism.Their goal was rather simple. They wanted the right to vote.Seven years earlier, a coalition of middle- and working-class radicals had forced the Reform Act through parliament, extending suffrage from the landed aristocracy to middle-class property owners but excluding the vast majority of Britons, who were property-less workers.

At first, many working-class radicals thought their newly empowered middle-class allies — organized in the Whig Party — would pursue a radical democratic reform agenda. They hoped their common enemy — the conservative, landed aristocracy — would be enough to unite them behind a program of expanding suffrage to the property-less and serving the interests of the bourgeois and proletarians.But these hopes were soon dashed. The Whigs joined with the elite to safeguard the Act of Union — the legislation creating a single United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, ruled centrally in London — against Irish protesters, who followed in the footsteps of the abortive Irish republican revolution of 1798.

When the new Reformed Parliament opened, a wave of civil disobedience and popular resistance against mandatory church tithes swept across Ireland, terrifying property owners who feared another republican revolt. Instead of supporting the Irish protesters, the Whigs endorsed the draconian Coercion Bill, which empowered the Lord Lieutenant of the Royal Irish Constabulary to “suppress any meeting deemed by him to be dangerous to public safety,” declare martial law, enforce a curfew, and suspend habeus corpus.Working-class radicals across Great Britain felt betrayed.

The Whigs had shown themselves all too willing to abandon the principles of freedom and equality when their property was at stake. …

Superbe vidéo de Anick Beaulieu pour TRAVELLING HEADCASE. Poupée de Marc Leduc.