Wobbly times number 132

It's the "Hooray for me, fuck you" narrow individualist principle of 'freedom' 
which has run amok in the USA.  As long as freedom is defined negatively, 
as top down political power of one over the other, all sorts of physical and
psychological interpersonal violence will be taken for granted as being 
somehow, 'natural'.  

Dominance and submission between humans is endemic within the greater
whole of class society in the world, from social relations between men and 
women, to power relations between workers and their employers.  
Dominance and submission ideology is actively expressed in 

racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia.  It also plays out in acts of 
violent crime between people--most of those people being
from the working class and lumpenproletariat. 


The above is not meant to deny that war is probably the greatest State 
legitimised interpersonal violence, all ordered by ruling classes and 
murderously obeyed by the ruled, mostly against each other inter-nationally.  
Finally, the greatest legitimised robbery in history is based on the wage system,
where in the USA 88% of the wealth produced by 90% of the people 
(aka the working class) ends up under the ownership and control of 
about 10% of the population (aka the ruling class). 


But on to the matter at hand, CRIME AND PUNISHMENT:

1.35 million people are prisoners in the USA.  Are they all violent criminals?

http://www.bop.gov/news/quick.jsp

102,580 50.6% Drugs
30,756 15.2% Weapons, Explosives, Arson
24,311 12.0% Immigration
10,480  5.2% Extortion, Fraud, Bribery
  9,697  4.8% Sex offenses
  8,403  4.1% Robbery
  7,161  3.5% Buglary, Larceny, other property
  5,563  2.7% Homicide, Aggravated Assault, etc.


Drugs, Immigration, Extortion and Burglary categories aren't necessarily violent crimes at all. Immigration is a mixed bag: it's a growing category in part because it's easier to get a conviction; you arrest someone under suspicion of some other crime, then find out they are undocumented and file those charges instead.  How many of them are violent criminals?  No way to know.  Is it 0%?  Unlikely.
---

OIC, here's the source:

http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Prisons_and_Jails

Sex crimes are not counted as being violent? Probably not.


See USC 18.109, 18.110 and 18.117 for details.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sup_01_18_10_I_20_109A.html
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sec_18_00002251----000-.html
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sup_01_18_10_I_20_117.html



Anyway, there are three times as many violent criminals in the state prisons than there are in the *entire* Federal prison system.  The Federal system, while at historic highs, is a relatively small piece of the picture (15%?).
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There are entirely too many people in jail and prison in the US; but, we must remember that more than half of them are actually pretty violent criminals.  Violent crime is a problem in the USA AND so is the 'War on Drugs' (begun during the Nixon Presidency) in terms of locking people up who should have the right to use whatever they want to use to have non-violent fun. 


The roots of contemporary, violent, interpersonal crime lie in the culture of narrow individualism, a culture which springs from the social relations of dominance and submission which pervade class society as a whole. I maintain that a classless society, where common ownership of the collective product of labour would be the norm; where the product of labour would no longer dominate labour as a commodity, alienated from the source of its production as a power over labour i.e. Capital, that such an association of producers would be free of most of the violent crime we experience today and certainly free of puritanical sadists running political States bent on punishing those who wish to live wild, free, libidinous lives. In such a society, equal political power between all men and women would be the norm. 

Wobbly Times number 63

Forgetting is now Forbidden



We are forced
to remember ourselves
Google ourselves
in a digital age
as the cops Google us
at the borders of
political States
to ensure
our law abiding character
Crowded memories
rush back
with technicolor accuracy

Wobbly Times number 59

THEOCRACY, DOGMA AND SELF LIBERATION

Theocracy sucks. Believers create their own gods, but not in a societal vacuum. Dogmatists are more comfortable within a matrix of feudalistic social relations as opposed to capitalist liberties.  We are born, not only limited by our time within the historical flow but by the regions where we come of age. That's why you'll find a wide degree of difference between Muslims of Afghanistan and Muslims who grow up in Paris. Dogma demands ideological purity. Reality undermines the purity of an ideology. Puritan feudalist followers of Islam feel threatened by the realities of civil liberties and more critical approaches to politics and freedom in the more advanced industrialised States. A threatened dogmatist invariably succumbs to reactionary political stands. All major modern religions are patriarchal. Feudalist Islam is the most extremely patriarchal religion that I know of today. As with class rule, patriarchal social relations are incompatible with a free humanity. Freedom is what humans want. Humans don't want to be domesticated animals, chained to puritannical ideologies and class dominated systems of production. Granted, many willingly cling to the authoritarian hierarchies of old.  But other humans buck.

In order to realise our potentials for freedom, democracy and pleasure, I think we'll have to cast a critical eye on the ideologies which fetter and tie our minds to class rule, wage-slavery and moral puritanism.

Wobbly Times number 57

M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.

(son of Costa-Gravis)

THE OTHER is ever present and presents a threat to those in power and their hired armed bodies of men. These armed bodies of men must be paid and paid well to keep their masters safe from THE OTHER. THE OTHERS are all over the planet, facing off against the ruling classes. The State is founded upon violence and the threat of violence. The State is founded on class rule. Class rule is maintained by appropriating the wealth which the majority in any class society produce for among other things, these armed bodies of men must be paid...above all, they must be paid. Whether they are slaves, peasants or workers, those who must submit to exploitation and the political State are THE OTHERS.


*******************************************************



Twelve-year-old Ian Hamrick on his gruesome death in M.I.A.'s

'Born Free' video

May 10, 2010 9:40 am
IanHambrickPic281x211


The most gobsmacking five seconds in a music video
in 2010 happens at 6:51 in M.I.A.'s infamously
gruesome clip for "Born Free." If you've
seen it, you know the moment -- a crew of young
redheads is forced onto a bus, dragged to a field in the
desert, and promptly shown that things are about
to get much worse.

At that instant, one slender, moppet-haired
adolescent meets a fate that takes the "Born Free"
clip from a police state dystopia to a
level of grim violence that might make
Tarantino flinch.

That young man is 12-year-old Angeleno Ian Hamrick.
Few actors earn their first break by getting shot
in the head by a paramilitary squad, but Hamrick is
awfully level and contemplative about his
small, shocking part.

"M.I.A. wanted to show people what an ethnic
cleansing looked like," Hamrick said in a phone
interview Thursday. "She wanted to show that
it can happen in any country, not just a place
like Iraq. Just because this is America doesn't
mean horrible things don't happen here."

Hamrick got the call for the clip, directed by
Romain Gavras, after an agency called for redheaded
boys for a music video, and put them
through a fairly grueling audition where they were
screamed at, batted around a room and told that things
would escalate considerably from there. Hamrick was
excited to work with CGI (even CGI depicting
his own exploding skull), but soon began exploring the
deeper wells of metaphor in video, especially from his
vantage point in an adolescent culture inculcated with
violent media from childhood.

But Hamrick felt a potency in the video absent from
far more graphic media such as "Call Of Duty" or
"Grand Theft Auto." Perhaps it was the verite footage
of downtown Los Angeles, or the visual nods to
news footage from Gaza and Baghdad, or that graphic
violence against children is still one of the last
taboos on screen. M.I.A. shared his sense that the part
might take its toll.

"She came up to me on set and complimented my work,
and we talked a lot about what she wanted the video to mean,"
Hamrick said. "She wanted to make sure I was OK, that I knew
what was happening and why she killed me. I said I did, that
she really accomplished her goal of getting people to talk
about something they don't usually see."

Most 12-year-olds don't have much life experience in
military executions, so Hamrick had to draw on his own sense
of panic and confusion at the situation to nail the part. His
quivering poise (andnotably slight stature) at the moment of
the shot makes it all the more harrowing.

"In the video, I look like I'm seven or eight, and all the
other kids were a lot taller," he said. "So when you see me
get shot, your reaction is like 'Why'd they have to kill the
little kid?'"

That shot also might have profoundly shifted his career.
TMZ reported that his appearance in a high-profile Shakira
video was re-cut so as to less prominently feature Hamrick's
now-infamous face. Hamrick has a wry cynicism about the
potential for thwarted future prospects, and hopes the "Born Free"
clip will instead open up darker, adventurous
indie fare for him. But above all, the most shocking
part about his role might be the preternatural professionalism
he took with him to the set.

"Look at a movie like 'Kick Ass,' that girl is 11 and
she's cussing and killing everyone," Hamrick said. "I created
a character that's not my real person. In some ways, it was just
another job, but in a lot of ways it wasn't, because it had a
message. I don't think I'm making content for kids
-- this is definitely going on my reel."

Wobbly Times number 52

Held at the Western Australian Parliament on April 20, 2010. "You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!" Police Minister Rob Johnson can't handle the truth that his stop and search laws based on nothing but police whim are not popular. Notice Minister Johnson's British accent and remember that it was the British who composed most of the armed bodies of men enforcing the British Imperial law over convict transportees who were forced into becoming the labour power which would build Australia. The ironies just keep rolling along....