Star Trek: SNW Reviews G

I am now starting to do “reviews” of episodes of the new Star Trek series “Strange New Worlds.” Unlike earlier ST review posts this time I’ll be doing, at least MOST of the time, one relatively long essay for a single episode that merits some significant commentary (I wouldn’t be surprised if out of a final total of 46 episodes I’ll do one or two posts that are very brief). I’ll be focusing almost exclusively on the political aspects of the episodes but will usually not comment on the pervasive multiculturalism and gender equality of ST.

“Lost In Translation” Episode Six, Season Two. See this for a plot summary.

My Environmental Record

There isn’t much here. The idea is that in that small part of space some kind of living, sentient race (which apparently can’t be seen with the naked eye or any StarFleet technology) has become attached to a substance that becomes starship fuel and the alien race is being killed by that industrial process. Crew members are getting contacted by this race who cannot communicate with us as we do and are trying to stop the collection and exploitation of the substance.

I think it’s an environmental issue. And the thing is, I’m not that familiar with environmental issues. I mean, I AM a tree-hugger- in fact, I start making out with the tree!  :  ) Just kidding. 

To be serious, I AM a bit weak on environmental issues. I think it might be partly that I never completed High School chemistry (I have almost no idea what “parts per million” means and no idea what’s a high number for that and what’s a low number). In Jr. High and High School I probably got a no better average grade for science classes than a B- or C+. In college I DID take a course about physics and the environment and I got a C- and in “Environmental Geology” I got a C. I wasn’t a great student in general (for a lot of reasons, some of which can’t be held against me) but I think I deserve a little credit for trying to be a good environmentalist- which is the main reason I took those two courses. I also spent, around 1998, a total of about 4 years working an average of about 25 hours a week at a company in Boulder called Jade Mountain (it sold environmentally-friendly tech like energy efficient light bulbs, solar panels, etc.). I did practically zero sales work that involved answering technical questions from customers, and 90% of what I did was data-entry, shipping, copying, mailing, filing. But, I accepted a relatively low wage compared to what I would have gotten at an entry-level job at Dairy Queen (no one at JM got paid what they should have but were there at least partly for the environmentalism) and made an okay/almost good contribution (a vague measurement of how valuable I was to the operation (not very) and how frequently I screwed up (overall extremely INfrequently), etc., etc.)

In the last 30 years I have a fairly good record as an environmentalist. I probably recycle about 75-95% of what I can recycle (I have been told, twice, “when in doubt, throw it out,” and I probably have thrown away some recycling). I have been using energy-efficient lighting about 1/3-3/4 of that time. I am not half as good as I should be when it comes to not driving a car. I sign a lot of the environmental petitions I hear about and have gone to some marches and protests, etc. and done a little bit of “light lifting” organizing on environmental issues. In the 18 years-archive of this blog there are a total of 14 posts labelled “environmental.”

I almost forgot, I took a class called “Race, Class and Pollution,” and failed it- a few small flaws in me as a student and a few small problems in my life chipped away at the B I probably should have gotten and I failed it.

Musical Diversity

In the last 33 years I have probably listened to music an average of four hours a day (how is that possible? One factor is that I did about 40 hours a week, for a total of 4 years, at a job that allowed me to listen to music I chose as I was working). There was one period of about 3 years around 2006 where I didn’t listen that much, but in High School and the last 16 years I listened about 6 hours a day on average.

(The value of this post is fairly low- only about 45-55% of it will be political)

Before I get to the best part of it, let me first explain a few minor details and some background to my addiction to music. I pretty much exclusively listened to cassette tapes until some time around 1999. I also have bought very few CDs (my commitment to being a good fan went down at some point in the late 1990s and has pretty much stayed there in terms of buying CDs, etc. instead of mostly just listening to YouTube which is what I’ve done about 4/5 of the time in the last 7-8 years). I have never had an iPod, I don’t listen to streaming music sites (“muve” I believe is one example, or Last FM perhaps). I have been doing almost all of my music-listening the last 16 years on YouTube. About 2/5 of what I listen to is stuff that I paid for earlier when I bought tapes and/or CDs, and with a big chunk of the stuff I DIDN’T ever pay for, I’m very comfortable ethically with that (see “The Music of my Enemy” below).

When I was very young (about 9) I was a fan of Michael Jackson. At 13 or 14 I went to a massive concert which included Vanilla Ice, I BELIEVE MC Hammer, and I THINK En Vogue. I’m almost embarrassed by that, although in the last 35 years there is one En Vogue song that I really like (“Free Your Mind” (the main reason I like it is the moshing in the official music video)). I kind of liked Vanilla Ice and I just learned some stuff about him that is kind of cool. And in a brief spoken word bit on either Home Invasion or Original Gangster Ice-T said something positive about MC Hammer. But I’m still kind of embarrassed about it.  In one, two or three year(s) of Jr. High School I listened to a lot of rap- of the Beastie Boys (“License to Ill”), 2-3 albums by rappers Run DMC (and 1-2 albums by The Fresh Prince, but I think I stopped listening to him in 9th grade and since then I think I’ve listened twice (in the last several years) to two of his hits, just out of curiosity and/or nostalgia).

At the risk of getting a little personal, in 9th grade my two best friends got into Megadeth and some other heavy metal bands. I was sort of open-minded about it, but not very. For various reasons I won’t go into, at the beginning of 10th grade (1991-1992) we had a falling out. I WAS a little guilty in the first 1-2 months after that of suddenly discovering a strong interest in heavy metal and wearing combat boots and that might have been pathetic. But I kept listening to rap, I started listening to more hard-core rap like Public Enemy and Ice-T, and I started listening to miscellaneous stuff that was labeled “alternative.” The bands labelled that way in the 1990s that I still listen to a LOT today include: Rage Against the Machine, Soundgarden, Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Fishbone, L7, Faith No More, Ministry, and Biohazard (I didn’t listen to  Biohazard until 1993).

Starting in the Summer of 1992 I listened to the punk bands The Dead Kennedys and The Dead Milkmen (just an amusing coincidence). More recently I started listening a lot to a CELTIC punk band called Dropkick Murphys. Some of the bands that I lazily put in the metal category have some major connection to punk music. This includes DRI and Suicidal Tendencies who I enjoy listening to. Biohazard is also kind of a punk band.

Going back to my ex-friends in 1991/1992, I am, in one way and one way only, proud of the fact that when they started listening to Slayer and some death-metal bands I didn’t follow them (the thing is, since I didn’t follow them in that direction, it couldn’t be called pathetic). In early 1993 I bought one Slayer album (Seasons in the Abyss) and bought no more until 2 years later, when I was in college. Around the same time that I bought the Slayer album I bought one Napalm Death tape (From Enslavement to Obliteration) (Napalm Death are death-metal) but that was it for death-metal until about 25 years later.

In High School the main two heavy metal bands I listened to were Megadeth and Metallica. I listened a fair amount to some others including Anthrax, Sepultura, Pantera, Nuclear Assault, Body Count, DRI, and Suicidal Tendencies (unlike every other band I mention in this essay, I no longer listen to Sepultura).

There’s one minor heavy metal band that I listened to a little bit in High School that really should have been part of me transitioning towards being a socialist (a transition that took place in High School), but I don’t think it was. In a few minutes I’ll talk about how in general listening to music contributed to me becoming a socialist. The minor  band I just mentioned is called Sacred Reich, and even though in High School I had been less familiar with this, I’ve known for 1-2 decades now that they were progressive. In HS I had an EP of their’s with four songs. One was totally non-political and about evil or monsters or something. One was a cover of the anti-war Black Sabbath song “War Pigs.” The one I remember listening to was a (1980s) anti-intervention song called “Surf Nicaragua. The fourth song turns out to be a very progressive song, but I only identified it as such in the last 16 years. “One Nation” is anti-war, anti-racist, and even a little critical of economic injustice (there’s a brief reference to “greed”).

I can’t remember which came first, but the first bit of political activity I engaged in MAY have happened after I took a music-connected step towards identifying strongly with the cause of anti-racism. That step was going to the first concert I care to remember. It was in 10th grade and it was an Ice-T and Body Count concert. I saw the first band play and there was moshing which I quickly decided I liked and I saw Ice-T do some rap (which also inspired moshing), and then I had to leave before Body Count played because I had to get home before it was too late (my parents didn’t know I was at a concert and wouldn’t have believed that what I told them I was doing would go that late). (In High School and college I was into relatively non-violent moshing (and I felt very strongly about picking up people who fell down)).

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The High School Years: Becoming A Socialist

So, a focus on music and my political development. If I ever get around to typing it, a future post about how I became a socialist will overlap heavily with this post.

One aspect of this that I think about is, why did I come to focus more on racism than other symptoms of capitalism and get an Ethnic Studies degree instead of a Women’s Studies degree? I have no idea how I found myself listening to rap music in Jr. High. I wasn’t watching MTV and my parents were no more than moderately anti-racist. I didn’t have older siblings who listened to rap (actually, I might have been watching a LITTLE MTV because I have memories of watching 1-2 music videos by The Fresh Prince). On one hand, as far as I can remember, the rap I was listening to in Jr. High was non-political and only about 3/4 of it involved Black people, but It probably contributed to how I started listening to Public Enemy and Ice-T in late 1991.

I think that listening to that “Hard Core” rap is a huge part of why I did my first political act (and that may have been AFTER the Ice-T/Body Count concert I went to). In the Spring semester of 10th grade, in early 1992, I walked out of my 4th period class (I think it was 4th period) and joined about 50 of my peers walking around Boulder protesting the not-guilty verdict in a California trial of the racist white police officers who beat Rodney King a year earlier. That night I went to a march and rally for the community in general and/or the CU-Boulder campus and I was actually on the front page of the paper the next day (next to me was someone who later was the first or second person to get an Ethnic Studies degree at CU-Boulder, and there was someone wearing a Primus shirt and one person wearing a Body Count shirt).

This is a little embarrassing because I have heard things here and there indicating they’re not progressive, but I think some political stuff by Megadeth and Metallica nudged me towards the left in High School. Those songs are:

Metallica
“Fight Fire With Fire” is about the need to avoid nuclear war.
“Ride the Lightning” is in opposition to the death penalty.
“For Whom the Bell Tolls” could almost be mistaken for an anti-fascist song because it is indirectly inspired by an anti-fascist novel by Ernest Hemingway. The thing is, the MOVIE based on that book retained the anti-war message but not the ANTI-FASCIST message of the book.
“Disposal Heroes” is anti-war.
“Blackened” is about nuclear war.
“…And Justice for All” is basically about politics and power in this country, but I am very unsure about what EXACTLY is it saying. This one may have had no affect on me becoming a socialist.
“One” is anti-war.

Megadeth
“Set The World Afire” is about nuclear war.
“Holy Wars…. The Punishment Due.” The first half I’ve heard might be about international conflicts like Israel and the Palestinians and/or (possibly more specifically) Northern Ireland. Beyond that I’m not sure what to say about it.
“Take No Prisoners” is anti-war.
“Rust in Peace” is about nuclear war.
“Symphony of Destruction” is about politics but I can’t figure out what they’re trying to say.
“Architecture of Aggression” is sort of the same- it probably IS anti-war, but I am less certain than I am when it comes to “Take no Prisoners.” Megadeth just wasn’t consistently and explicitly progressive.
“Foreclosure of a Dream” is I BELIEVE about US federal farm policy in the 1980s. I am just not familiar with farm policy. I DO like the license plates in Colorado that say “No Farms, No Food” but I just don’t know anywhere near enough to comment on this song.

I think that is a pretty complete list of the relevant Megadeth and Metallica songs I listened to in High School that may have nudged me towards the left.

As I have said earlier, the harder rap I listened to, including three Ice-T albums, and 3-4 Public Enemy albums probably had a better effect on me than the Metallica and Megadeth stuff I just referred to. And then there was the Dead Kennedys stuff- some of their songs might not inspire progressive politics but about half of them do. And there was at least a couple that were about economic injustice- “Let’s Lynch the Landlord,” and “Kill the Poor.” There were several other political DK songs whose lyrics I’m too lazy to confirm- with the exceptions of “Police Truck” (police brutality), “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” and “We’ve Got a Bigger Problem Now” (about Ronald Reagan), which I definitely remember (as I was typing this I started listening to the DKs for the first time in about 4-5 years) (I believe that in High School and college I listened to 3/4 or 4/4 of the Jello Biafra DK studio albums).

There were a handful of songs by Suicidal Tendencies that contributed to me becoming   progressive:

“Two Sided Politics” is basically contrasting the life of a rich person with that of a working-class person, and there’ some anti-Reagan stuff, etc. One thing I think is noteworthy is that there’s one line that says “I’m not anti-government, government is anti-me.” I like to think that might be in part an anti-anarchist statement.
“Fascist Pig” could be a little more political (that is, deeper) but Mexican-Americans criticizing the police may have pushed me a bit to the left.
“I Want More” is about the class conflict with some references to the minimum wage.
“Give It Revolution” was a little vague but probably nudged me in the right direction.

There were a handful of songs by a thrash-metal band called Nuclear Assault that pushed me to the left in High School. Although I have listened to their other stuff in recent years, in HS pretty much the only album I listened to was “Handle with Care.”
“New Song” which was a fairly good anti-racist song.
“Critical Mass” is a pretty good environmentalist song.
“Inherited Hell” is also like that.
“When Freedom Dies” Although I’m not sure what it’s saying about US foreign policy during the Cold War, it IS saying that freedom and civil liberties, etc. shouldn’t be weakened in the name of national security.
“Search and Seizure” is sort of similar, but basically about law enforcement harassing metal-heads (I’m not sure whether or how the lyrics-writer would generalize that statement to include punks, hippies, etc.)

Another band that influenced me in High School was a “cross-over” hard-core punk/thrash-metal band called DRI (Dirty Rotten Imbeciles). In HS I saw them play live twice and listened to three of their albums.

First there was the album “Definition” which included the following songs:
“Acid Rain” was about the environment.
“The Application” is about multiple forms of employment discrimination and DOES include a line about racism and a line about homophobia, and one about religion and one that is probably about being HIV+.

The album “Thrash Zone” has several political songs.
“Labelled Incurable” might be about AIDS (as far as I can tell DRI were probably anti-homophobic).
“Kill the Words” is sort of generally about censorship and dictatorship but seems to be at least partly if not totally about that sort of thing in the Muslim world; I have no idea if they’re anti-Muslim or just consistently opposing fundamentalism, censorship, and dictatorship (there IS another song where they condemn religious discrimination in employment, so they probably aren’t anti-Muslim)
“Worker Bee” although it’s not written as a socialist song, I think it’s basically about economic justice and is by a band that I’m pretty sure is in favor of social justice as well (I’m suspicious of bands, people, etc. who are economically progressive but not socially liberal).

There was one Soundgarden song about the environment called “Hands All Over.” Although I don’t feel like looking at the lyrics, I believe that there were at least a few L7 songs I liked politically (one example is “Pretend We’re Dead”).

This will require at least one paragraph. Although I’m not real familiar with this, I have gotten the impression that Rage Against The Machine were a bit to my left politically. One social-dem critic told me that the political forces RATM admired either would have told RATM to fuck off, or alternately, should be killed (I think that may have been a reference to the Peruvian leftist army/terror organization called Shining Path). I sort of stumbled onto RATM a little earlier than most of their fans. Somehow I knew that their performance at a small club in Boulder around late 1992 or early 1993 would inspire moshing, so I showed up. I don’t remember thinking about it much but I guess I liked the music enough and the general vibe and bought their album shortly after the show. At some point at least a couple months later they came to Denver with House of Pain and it was great listening and moshing KNOWING that they were promoting dissent in this country. At that concert I learned about Leonard Peltier, and generally drifted towards the Left. (Right before House of Pain came on stage they played the music sans vocals of a song I mention below called “Just Look Around” by Sick of it All). Yes, RATM was alternately politically vague and/or leaning towards the hard-left. But they contributed to me becoming a dissident of some sort and it’s slightly possible that wouldn’t have happened if not for them. And musically they were pretty cool.

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The Last 16 Years

This next section will be pretty brief. It’s about what music I have been listening to in the last 16 years.

Between about 1998 and about 2009 I only listened something like 4 hours a day to music. In 2008, for I think the first or almost first time I got on YouTube. Since then I have listened to almost all of the Megadeth and Metallica that I missed, plus the older stuff. I started listening to practically all Slayer and I started listening to a LOT of death metal. The following bands are the death metal bands I listen to: Carcass, Napalm Death (I love their music and I think that if I paid attention to their lyrics I’d agree with a lot of them), Deicide (MUSICALLY I LOVE Deicide, but I assume I would be offended by their lyrics if I read them), Obituary, Cannibal Corpse, and Morbid Angel.

I got caught up on Body Count albums that I missed after Born Dead and also listened to the first two albums. Although I don’t listen to them much I listen some to stuff I missed earlier from Anthrax, Nuclear Assault, and Testament as well as what I listened to earlier. Although I’ve barely looked at the lyrics I some times listen to stuff I missed by Sacred Reich, and I am even more sure than before that they’re progressive politically.

Yes, my very favorite genre is thrash metal (and/or speed metal- at the risk of sounding stupid, I am not sure what differences there are, if any, between speed and thrash).

I listen to the following Suicidal Tendencies albums, both now and in High School: Their first (self-titled) album, How Will I Laugh Tomorrow When I Can’t Even Smile Today, Controlled By Hatred/Feel Like Shit… DeJaVu, Lights! Camera! Revolution! and The Art of Rebellion. I haven’t listened to any ST that I didn’t listen to in High School. On a related note, I would say the same about DRI albums Definition, Crossover, and Thrashzone.

Today and in high school I listen(ed) to three Ice-T albums: The Iceberg, Original Gangster, and Home Invasion.

Until recently I took a 10-15 year break from listening to more than three songs by Public Enemy.

In the last 5 or so years I listened a little bit to Run DMC (albums Tougher Than Leather, Raising Hell, and probably King of Rock) and the Beastie Boys’ License to Ill and Check Your Head. I listen A LOT to the House of Pain song “Jump Around,” but it has been so long since I listened to the entire album.

I have a huge number of YouTube mix-tape playlists. A large chunk of it is miscellaneous 1990s stuff (some mainstream, some not), and another large chunk is some stuff where the theme of the fan-made video was anti-racist skinheads.

I found a massive playlist of mainstream 1980s pop hits and placed the ones I liked (about 58 of them) in my own playlist. To some extent (not a large one) I was exposed to many of those songs as a little kid (I was born in 1975) when watching a 1980s movie or when I occasionally was listening to the radio. I listen to that playlist about once a week. And one of the songs on it I have kind of fallen in love with- the music, the images in the video, but I have not examined the lyrics. It’s Holding Out for a Hero by Bonnie Tyler.

I also fell in love with a great song by the Dropkick Murphys called “Out of our Heads.” In the last year I have probably listened to it an average of once a day and I listened to their first three albums once as well.

Since the early 1990s I have been a fan of two Tom Petty albums- Full Moon Fever and Into the Great Wide Open.

I was at least kind of exposed to ska starting when I got into Fishbone in High School and I’ve been increasingly curious about it in the last 23 years. Although they might be more accurately called “Ska PUNK,” I do enjoy listening to The Mighty Mighty BossTones for about half an hour a day on average in the last 5 years.

I listen to a small amount of Irish Republican music. I bought an entire album by Black 47 but for some reason, even though I get the impression they’re progressive, all I listen(ed) to were/are the two republican songs (one of which I believe is a Celtic rap song).

In the last several months I’ve started listening to about seven Beach Boys songs, I have fallen in love with the song “Wooly Bully” by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs and I like “Smokey Joe’s Cafe” by The Robins.

I have studied (i.e. read articles on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s web-site) skinheads in general and totally opposed Nazi skinheads specifically, and I listen to a fair amount of “Anti-Fascist Oi!” Oi! In general, both fascist and anti-fascist, might bear some resemblance to punk and might be defined by the lyrics (about violence, the working-class, and being a skinhead). The main such band I listen to is The Oppressed.

I listen to a small number of songs by the progressive (largely folk and/or punk) singer-songwriter David Rovics.

In the last 4-5 years I have spent a fair amount of time listening to YouTube playlists of music from the Vietnam era. For some reason I have used that word to find good mix tape playlists of classic rock, including classic rock that I vaguely remember from movies about Vietnam. (I believe that what we did there was wrong and I have evidence from more than just left-wing sources)

Alternative
Rage Against the Machine (the first two albums) Soundgarden (Badmotorfinger and Louder Than Love, and a little bit of some others that I didn’t listen to in High School), Nirvana (all 3 studio albums), Alice in Chains (Dirt and Facelift), Fishbone (Truth and Soul, The Reality of my Surroundings, and Give a Monkey a Brain and He'll Swear He's the Center of the Universe), L7 (Smell the Magic, Bricks are Heavy), Faith No More (The Real Thing and Angel Dust from High School, and We Care a Lot in the last several years), Ministry (The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste and ΚΕΦΑΛΗΞΘ), and Biohazard (I didn’t listen to  Biohazard until 1993) (Urban Discipline, State of the World Address, and Mata Leao)

I THINK that covers about 99% of the songs and albums that I should mention here.

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The Music of my Enemy

Since late 2008 I have spent probably an hour a day on average listening to Nazi Skinhead music. For multiple reasons, some a little vague, I enjoy listening to the music of my enemy. I stumbled onto it shortly after I first got on YouTube in 2008 and I recognized the name Skrewdriver that I had learned about in 10th grade when researching the racist right for a paper I was writing (primarily about the racist right in this country, but I’m not surprised some of the sources I read mentioned the BRITISH Skrewdriver). Anyway, I liked most of the music (not the lyrics) and just really enjoyed listening to the music of my enemy (yes, I also listen to a small amount of anti-Catholic N. Ireland loyalist music). I also learned a handful of things by studying the lyrics and the imagery in fan-made videos. Crucially, I quickly started to alter the lyrics into anti-fascist poems- in many cases, so that my poems were saying the exact opposite of what the original was saying (when there was a change in topic, there was always at least some conflict between my poems and what the authors of the original lyrics believe (and some times a LOT of conflict- a lot of the N. Ireland poems were based on lyrics by people who supported the British and Unionist causes)). The first poetry post is here.

I wish I could explain in better detail why I enjoy listening to the music of my enemy.

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The High School years- the PMRC and “musical intolerance.”

In 11th grade one of my best friends (James, of Portland, OR) and I did a “‘zine” (a very small and unprofessionally written/edited magaZINE). It was kind of political, kind of creative (well, James’ stuff was creative, my stuff less-so but the ‘zine in general (called The Conformist Monthly) seemed pretty popular with our friends and probably about 10% of the BHS students). One thing I did that I am a little embarrassed about is an essay about what I called “musical intolerance.” Although actually typing that and making copies of an issue that contained it is something I probably shouldn’t have done, I DO believe that most of my peers in High School were close-minded about different kinds of music, and at the time I believed that I was better because I listened to metal, rap, alternative, and punk.

Something I wrote for The Conformist Monthly that I AM proud of was an essay about the Parents Music Resource Center. The PMRC was created in the mid-80s, primarily by Al Gore’s wife Tipper Gore, and Susan Baker, the wife of senior GOP leader James Baker. It was largely supported by the religious right and practically no one to the left of Bill Clinton supported it. It’s been decades since I studied it, but the main thing it did was successfully push for an industry agreement to place “Parental Advisory: Explicit Content” stickers on certain albums.

I really am not insensitive to the desires of many parents (probably around 95% of them) to keep young children from listening to songs about sex and drugs and songs which use swear words (I believe there is a spectrum between two situations- one involving children under 13, and one involving young adults who are around 15, and at the latter end of the spectrum I’ll be honest I am not sure if I care about parents wanting to keep their teenage kids away from that kind of content). And these stickers were a problem. In the past, MANY music stores wouldn’t sell those albums. In the past MANY of the artists negatively affected were people of color, and in general, many of the albums targeted contained songs with political messages that were liberal or progressive. This country might have been a better place in the 1990s if those songs had been heard by more people.

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“There Goes The Neighborhood”

(The title of a Body Count song about their presence in the punk and metal genres)

As I near a conclusion, the climax to this is something I want to talk about that is very special to me. That is the intersection of rock (or at least the heavier and/or faster variants of it) and rap (I’ll be honest, I think I’ve always failed to understand that many fans of rap and/or hip-hop define one as corporate and the other as something closer to the street, and I’m just going to use the term “rap”).

I don’t listen to a lot of music made between 1998 and today, so I’m going to focus almost exclusively on stuff from the 1980s and 1990s. Here is I think a complete survey of that topic up until some point in the mid- or late 90s.

1. In 1986 Run-DMC and Aerosmith collaborated on a new version of the latter’s song “Walk This Way.”
2. In 1989 industrial metal band Ministry did a song with a rapper- the song is called “Test” and is a great combination of rap and industrial.
3. In 1991 Anthrax and Public Enemy collaborated on a new version of the latter’s song “Bring Tha Noise.”
4. Shortly after that, Public Enemy and Anthrax went on a national tour together.
5. Ice-T and his musician friends created Body Count in 1990.
6. In 1991, Rage Against The Machine was formed with music that was sort of heavy and/or sort of fast and vocals that would often be labeled “rap.”
7. I am having some difficulty nailing down the details, but in the early and mid-1990s Biohazard, who were more or less a hard-core punk band, did at least two songs with a rapper (Onyx) and, crucially, did music videos for the two songs that involved Onyx that I can remember (one reason this is VERY significant is that I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s true that Biohazard had, years earlier, toyed with white supremacy as a marketing tactic in NY City’s competitive music scene, and may have done these 4-5 collaborations (including TWO videos) to make up for that).
8. In 1993 the soundtrack for a movie called “Judgement Night” was entirely devoted to collaborations between rockers and rappers.

I could and probably WILL do a lot of research on this topic in the next year or two and write something very substantial, but I have always had very positive political thoughts about this series of collaborations because I THINK they had some potential to positively affect race relations in this country. IF they HAD that potential it wasn’t something permanent, as 35 years later we are struggling to prevent a white supremacist from occupying the White House. I am not sure what is the status today of that potential- I’m not sure I should be making a big deal about the need for such intersections today, especially because there might be plenty in recent years and/or they are having no impact on American race relations.

When thinking about this topic, I wish I had a better grasp of sociology and psychology.

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Some miscellaneous thoughts

1. For about 10-15 years until recently, I took a break from being a fan of Public Enemy, although in hind-sight that didn’t involve changing the “Favorite Music” section of my blogger/blogspot profile page. I have listened over the years to about four albums by PE, all of which were either in the 1980s or the very earliest 90s. On one of them, there’s a song that includes two lines I have always found offensive, but which really got me pissed off about 10-15 years ago. One line is applauding homophobic VIOLENCE and another one implies it’s okay for a man to beat his partner if he takes her on vacation around the world. I am still very offended by those lines, but decided to listen to those albums from High School again).
2. In the early 1990s there was one song by the hard-core punk band Sick of it All that I really liked and which I have always really liked. For some reason I have practically never listened to any other SOIA songs. The one I listen to is called “Just Look Around.” The thing is, in 2001 I was at a party for progressives and one person asked the room what is the most progressive hardcore punk band? Part of me DID know that the correct answer was Fugazi, but because of that one SOIA song I said it was SOIA. The guy who asked the initial question said something about a pirate flag and slapping women. For some bizarre reason I didn’t respond. But if you look at the lyrics you’ll see that something like 2/3 of the lyrics are completely acceptable to progressives. The other third is some slightly questionable lines (i.e. mentioning anti-Semitism among blacks when that might not be helpful (for all I know it IS helpful)) and the very worst of the lyrics in that 1/3 is a reference to the “workingman” when “worker” or “working person” would be a lot better (this might be what the guy at the party was talking about when he suggested I wanted to slap women).

In the official music video, when the lyrics refer to “diseases and modern plagues of our times” they flash the “Silence=Death” symbol of the movement calling for a better national response to the AIDS crisis. I guess it could be a negative statement, but I have always assumed it was a positive statement about that symbol, which would probably also mean that SOIA are anti-homophobic. Lastly, another song on that album seems to be about attacking Reagan over Iran/Contra.
3. I organized my first fund-raising show (it was a VERY small venue) in 1995 to support the Left Hand Bookstore (in Boulder) and the college-years ‘zine that James and I did (it was called Subliminal Prison). The opening band was called Sonnus and I don’t have much to say about them. The other two bands were A) a High School band from the Denver area who were probably influenced by punk, and an amazing band called D-Town Brown. The latter’s music I have difficulty describing. I believe it was possibly influenced by rock (at least one of the 2-3 times I saw them playing a regular show there was moshing and 1-2 band members had earlier been involved with a band that was either thrash/speed-metal or death metal)) but I think it was more influenced by some other stuff (mariachi perhaps? (There were 4-5 members in the band and all but one were Chicano (the last member was black)). Although James and I did a publicity campaign in waves, very few people showed up. Not sure why.
4. The second fundraiser I did Involved Sonnus, D-Town Brown and a punk band called Dead Silence. It was for the Colorado Coalition for Single-Payer (the Canadian health-care system) and I gave Denver CCSP a LOT of flyers to put up in Denver (the venue was in Denver, where I didn’t live) and I don’t think any of those flyers were put up anywhere. I’m not saying I was totally blameless, but I do think that most of the blame was CCSP’s. The only reason that a significant amount of money was raised is that the owner of the venue (The Mercury Cafe) took less money than she usually did in that situation.
5. In high school and college, when I went to a show/concert I would dress in the spirit of taking nonconformity as far as I could. If I was at a Dead Milkmen show, I’d wear a Megadeth shirt, if I was at a Primus concert I would wear a Public Enemy shirt, etc.
6. You might like a post I did about whether or not Slayer is racist.

UPDATE 12/25/24 I unintentionally left out a handful of bands I should have mentioned, but with one of them I feel like I really need to do this update. In 10th grade I started listening to the heavy metal band Ugly Kid Joe, and after about two decades I just recently re-discovered them. I started listening to their EP "As Ugly As They Want To Be" (their first release) and their first full length album "America's Least Wanted" in High School. They describe themselves as neither glam nor thrash and I think that's accurate. In a minute I have something more important to say, but first a little story. In the Summer of 1992 there was a tour with (from top to bottom) Ozzy, Slaughter, and Ugly Kid Joe. I have pretty much never liked Slaughter, but I have always had at least some positive thoughts about Ozzy and in the last several years probably 1% of all the music I listen to is Ozzy. The concert was at an amazing venue called Red Rocks and although it doesn't facilitate moshing (I THINK I remember that right) I'm glad I went to a concert there. But I got lost on the way there, so A) I somehow missed almost all of UKJ's set (I think they may have started early??), and B) after I heard ALL of Slaughter's set I had to leave after about 30 minutes of Ozzy because my Mom didn't know where I was I and I was afraid if I got lost again I'd get home so late she would worry. BUT I GOT TO SEE ALL OF SLAUGHTER'S SET!!!!! (The important part of mentioning UKJ is that on the first full-length album there's a fairly good anti-racist song ("Same Side"). It's not militant, it's not angry, but I think it's pretty cool despite that. As I was typing this and listening more and more to the song, I started asking myself some critical questions about the idea that it's an anti-racist song and then I remembered that the vocalist, Whitfield Crane contributed to a special re-recording of the Motorhead song "Born to Raise Hell" where he and ICE-T did some of the vocals and in the official music video they appear together)

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Conclusion

Although there was one gap that lasted about 3 years where I listened to very little music, it was a huge part of my life in High School and college and in the last 16 years. I find listening to it very enjoyable and it contributed to the several factors that led me to embrace progressive political values, and it generally makes me feel very good. Although I don’t think I’ll be expanding my interest in music any further (I don’t think I’m going to try bluegrass for example) I am (perhaps too) proud of the fact that I have fairly wide-ranging interests in music.

Most of the time I was typing this up I was listening to a song from the very early 1990s by a band called EMF. It’s called “Unbelievable” and I think it’s sort of a dance song but could also inspire moshing. The song, and to a greater degree the video as well, is very energizing and I got so much done with the multiple writing assignments I gave myself.

Law and Order: SVU Reviews V

 This is a set of reviews of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes. My general thoughts about that show are here. I’ll often do no more than make brief notes about an episode, although occasionally I’ll go deeper. Also, often there are dissenting main characters on almost any political issue, but you can usually tell what the general position of the show is. All the rest of the reviews are available by clicking on the l&osvu label at the bottom.

(Now that I’m watching the episodes that involve the character John Munch, I’m going to ignore most of his political statements)

(I’m temporarily skipping the publication of 4 reviews from Seasons 4 and 6 that I’ll come back to in about a week)

“Venom” Season 7. Wikipedia summary is: “Tutuola's son Ken Randall (Ernest Waddell) calls Benson for help after he is picked up in an alley late at night. He claims that he was looking for a corpse after overhearing a man talk about murdering a woman and dumping her body. Although Tutuola and his ex-wife (LisaGay Hamilton) are sure that Ken is not a killer, they are puzzled about why he refuses to take a DNA test. Tutuola suspects that this has something to do with Ken's cousin, Darius Parker (Chris "Ludacris" Bridges) who has a long criminal record. When Ken eventually submits his DNA, it reveals a shocking family connection. Darius confesses to having murdered the woman and her baby but he is clever enough to get this confession thrown out. He vows revenge upon the family that has been humiliating him for his entire life.”

At one point one of the detectives says: “Prisons are full of innocent people and we both know what color most of them are.”

“Fat” Season 7. Wikipedia summary is: “With Benson transferred to the Computer Crimes Unit, Stabler is temporarily partnered with Detective Lucius Blaine (Anthony Anderson). Blaine is first to arrive on the scene of a girl (Rooney Mara), who was brutally assaulted by two overweight teenage culprits (Wallace Little and Shahidah McIntosh). The suspects are later discovered to be the siblings of an older brother (Omar Benson Miller) who has diabetes and needs a wheelchair. The detectives find out that the victim, along with her friend (Billy Wheelan) were victimizing obese people and had surprising motives for doing so.?”

There’s a couple items worth noting.
1. A black detective says of a black family, “they have no reason to trust the law.”
2. A detective says that homosexuality is not a choice.

“Infiltrated” Season 8. Wikipedia summary is: “Casey Novak is forced to get Olivia Benson, still undercover with the FBI, to come back to New York to testify on behalf of a woman who was raped in a bank. While undercover with an Oregon environmental group, she and her group members (Maria Thayer and Chris Bowers) are injured by an overzealous deputy sheriff (Steven Rishard) and charged with assault. She is eventually released but is questioned about her group's involvement with a murder. She then sets out to clear her group's name and investigates the murdered man. Despite the efforts of his widow (Debra Jo Rupp) trying to shield her daughter from the truth, Benson learns that he was a pedophile with a room under his garage that he used for kidnapping. The local sheriff (Charles Martin Smith) finds two sets of prints at the scene, the murdered man's and those of a ten-year-old girl (Molly Camp) who went missing seven years ago. Benson's case agent (Vincent Spano) tells her that she is indeed spending time with harmless activists and that her undercover work is no longer needed. As she is still unaware of the urgency of Novak's case, she decides to stay and help the FBI find the missing girl. In the end, Benson finds the girl, who had developed Stockholm syndrome and makes it back to New York just in time to testify.”

Although it’s a little mixed, this episode is sort of environmentalist and sort of critical of police who use unnecessary force. It seems like the environmental group that Benson infiltrates is a little more militant than most environmental groups and yet Benson says that they don’t deserve the label “eco-terrorist.” She defends them while being interrogated by the cops or debriefed by her FBI case agent. She also got assaulted and arrested by a cop for no reason. This highlights such behavior by a lot of cops in the real world.

“Choreographed” Season 8. Wikipedia summary is: “The body of an attractive woman (Kristine Szabo) with a mysterious cause of death is discovered in Central Park. Detective Stabler begins the investigation by talking to the victim's husband (Chris Sarandon) as his friends (Bob Saget and Catherine Bell) pay a condolence visit. Stabler's investigation unravels a case of drugs, infidelity and an elaborate plot that impacts everyone involved in the troupe. Stabler also discovers that Detective Benson is back in town and she is assigned to be his partner once again.”

There’s a brief appearance by a gay character.

“Loophole” Season 8. Wikipedia summary is: “Stabler is injured by a drug-crazed suspect (Bill Goldberg) and Benson follows up on an anonymous letter which leads to an apparent child-pornography case and the testing of pesticides on unwitting apartment tenants. After arresting the landlord (Wayne Duvall), Olivia is exposed to the pesticide and develops medical symptoms similar to those exhibited by the victim (Marquis Rodriguez) and his mother (Karen Olivo). Despite the health risks, an official (Casey Siemaszko) informs the squad that this was done legally. Casey Novak eventually pursues the CEO (Ray Wise) of a pharmaceutical company and his lawyer (James Naughton) in order to challenge a controversial United States Environmental Protection Agency rule that allows intentional dosing of human beings in pesticide experiments.”

First, there’s a moment where one of the detectives assures a victim’s mother that she’s not going to get in trouble with SVU for being an undocumented immigrant.

About 1/3 of the story is about something that’s not a sex crime. Some of the residents of an apartment building in a low-income and diverse neighborhood are used to test the effects of a new pesticide. Several people get really sick and it might be the cause of cancer in a little boy. The EPA, of George W. Bush’s administration, is also criticized by the detectives. The Tuskegee experiments, which involved Black men and Syphilis, are mentioned as another example of that sort of thing.

Roseanne Reviews P

This is a set of reviews of Roseanne episodes. My general thoughts about that show are here. I will focus only on the political aspects and will mention what percent of lines spoken by non-family members are spoken by people of color.

“Aliens” Episode 25, Season 4. Wikipedia summary is: “DJ's spelling-bee triumph is a welcome bright spot as Rodbell's luncheonette closes down and Dan's bike shop continues its slow descent. Meanwhile, Nancy is heartbroken when Arnie leaves her, especially when he claims he was abducted by aliens.”

There are two main notes I’m going to make about this episode. The first is about a economically progressive bit of dialogue between Roseanne and a state representative (member of the state House) and the second is something that comes up when the state representative meets Roseanne a second time- small businesses.

State Representative: I’m going door-to-door trying to get to know my constituents.

Roseanne: Door-to-door, huh? That takes a lot of time. Why don’t you just go down to the unemployment office and see everyone at once?

SR: I hear you, and you’re right, we can’t let this area’s workforce lay idle. That’s why bringing in new business is my #1 priority.

Roseanne: How?

SR: Through tax incentives. See, we’re going to make it cheaper for out-of-state businesses to set up shop right here in Lanford.

Roseanne: So they get a tax break?

SR: Yeah that’s why they come here.

Roseanne: Well, who’s gonna pay the taxes that they aren’t paying?

SR: Well, you will. But you’ll be working- good steady employment.

Roseanne: union wages?

SR: Well, now, part of the reason these companies are finding it so expensive to operate in other locations-

Roseanne: So, they’re gonna dump the union so they can come here and hire us at scab wages, and then for that privilege we get to pay their taxes.


(A scab is a strike-breaker)

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I’m not as pro-small business as a lot of progressives are. I understand the arguments in favor of small businesses but A) there are some “small” businesses with dozens or hundreds of employees and at some point there’s enough employees that I think there should definitely be a union, and B) there are some things about larger chain stores that are better than small businesses.

How are small businesses better?
1. In general it’s a good thing that they’re more likely to respond to what the community wants.
2. Although this may be less true than some think, they at least sort of keep money in the community when they bank locally.
3. At many small businesses the boss is working right alongside their employees most of the time and isn’t getting paid tons more than them.

How are large businesses better?
1. They tend to have cheaper prices than local businesses of the same type.
2. They’re more likely to be unionized (or at least that used to be the case and might still be)

In Boulder, CO, about 25 years ago someone started the Boulder Independent Business Alliance, as an alternative to the Chamber of Commerce. It’s founder was a well-known and respected anti-corporate activist, and it was very popular with progressives. Around the same time there was a labor battle taking place in Southern Colorado. Steelworkers in Pueblo were locked out of their plant. I can’t remember many details but it was a pretty messed up situation. At one point I asked the founder of BIBA if he would encourage member companies to boycott a bank that was tied to the employer. He said no. I probably didn’t do a great of trying but I don’t think that explains why he said no. A little before or a little after I asked, a very skilled student organizer did the same thing and got the same response. Even the small businesses that are anti-corporate in Boulder won’t do anything to help LOCKED OUT (not striking) workers. Locked out workers are prevented from doing their job until they cease non-strike agitation as part of a labor dispute; it’s initiated by the employer, not the workers.

I am open-minded about one idea that I think pro-small business progressives would like. There should be some way to identify which small businesses are going to have trouble paying a decent wage because of some reason other than greed at the top, and some mechanism to funnel money from the government to those employees being paid a low wage. Also, although businesses will probably be taxed more to pay for universal health care, that would be an employee benefit businesses wouldn’t need to worry about providing.


There are about 20-25 lines spoken by non-family-members  and none are spoken by people of color.

“Terms of Estrangement, Part 1” Episode 1, Season 5. Wikipedia summary is: “Roseanne and Dan adjust to losing their bike shop while seeking new jobs. Meanwhile, when Mark receives a great job offer in Minneapolis, he and Becky elope."

The job offer that Mark gets is for a union job that pays three times what he was making working for Dan (see the review above this one about small businesses and corporations).

(Mark and Becky get married and after this episode I won’t count Mark or his brother David as non-family members)

There are 20-25 lines by non-family members and about 15% are by people of color.

“The Dark Ages” Episode 3, Season 5. Wikipedia summary is: “The Conners' electricity is cut off when they cannot pay the bill. Darlene and David stay up all night in Darlene's bedroom working on their comic book. When Roseanne and Dan do not believe Darlene when she insists they did not sleep together, she lashes out, feeling punished for Becky's mistakes. Dan phones Becky, finally thawing the ice between them."

In Becky’s apartment, there’s a poster about saving the rainforest.

“Mommy Nearest” Episode 4, Season 5. Wikipedia summary is: “Jackie starts dating Fisher, a much younger guy played by Metcalf's real-life then-husband Matt Roth. Bev makes a large profit after selling her house and gives Roseanne and Jackie $10,000 each.”

This is the first time that Jackie and Roseanne talk about opening a restaurant. In addition to my comments above about small businesses, I would say that in general I don’t have too many negative thoughts  about them.

Liberals, Progressives, and Clintionites

In recent years I have struggled with how progressives define liberal. In very early 2003, I organized an anti-war panel discussion sponsored by the Young Democratic Socialists at CU-Boulder and by an embryonic group I started called “Liberals Against War.” I’ll keep this brief for now, although I might do a post about it later (UPDATE 10/29/20 That post is here), but I felt like the main anti-war group at CU-Boulder was trying to convert people to progressives as a way of making them oppose what Bush wanted to do, instead of convincing them that an invasion of Iraq was wrong, and I felt the focus should be on a massive part of the population that would listen to the anti-war movement- liberals, as I define them. But one of the panelists thought I was talking about listening to what pro-war liberal and moderate Democrats had to say. I clarified what I meant. I just found an article about moderate Democrats here.           

The very beginning is:

Twenty-four years ago, I published an essay titled “Liberals, I Do Despise” in the Village Voice, which Common Dreams reprinted as an enduring oldie in 2009. The title was a play on an old doggerel, in this case rendering it:

Liberals and flies, I do despise

The more I see liberals, the more I like flies.

I wrote the essay in disgust after Bill Clinton concluded his and other New Democrats’ deal with the devil by signing the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act—welfare reform—that ended the federal government’s sixty-year commitment to direct income provision for the indigent.

I am frustrated by this progressive obsession with referring to Clinton as a liberal. He was not a liberal as President. Besides being economically moderate or even right-wing (on the internal DP spectrum) and generally being the candidate of the moderate part of the DP in 1992, he was also a militarist and was only sort of socially liberal. Although I’m far from familiar with his environmental record, I get the impression it was pretty bad. Although he was fiercely pro-choice, he took a moderate position on affirmative action (my thoughts about AA are here) and opposed gay marriage. He was “tough on crime.”

His Vice President was married to a woman half responsible for the “Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics” stickers on many music albums. I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with not wanting your kids to hear a bunch of swear words and references to sex and drugs, but there were some serious problems with those stickers. First, those behind them wouldn’t have been successful without massive support from the religious right. Second, many music stores refused to sell albums with the label. Third, I’m willing to bet that the majority of albums affected were by artists who were people of color. And fourth, many of the songs on many of those albums were incredibly political with messages of the sort embraced (to one degree or another) by liberals and progressives.

Welfare reform, although largely a question of economic injustice, was also an example of social injustice if you consider A) the popular, racist image in America of a welfare recipient, and B) the fact that all mothers are working mothers.

Clinton was not a liberal. They are at least socially liberal, often passionately so, slightly skeptical of the military (and favor efforts to avoid war), and I would argue they are a bit to the left of Clinton on economic stuff although not much. They believe strongly in what you might call (STATE) CHARITY, but only sort of in CHANGE (like Single-Payer, laws that would strengthen unions, etc.). (based on what he did with welfare reform, it can be argued that Clinton doesn't consistently believe in (STATE) CHARITY very much)

Progressives seem to think that to the left of center there are only progressives and Clintonites and there is no space in between to be filled by those I would call liberal. Did everyone who opposed welfare reform (strongly) support unions and/or support single-payer health care? Did all straight supporters of gay marriage support economic justice, i.e. oppose the North American Free Trade Agreement? Same thing with affirmative action. To one extent or another there are some other things like that.

(UPDATE 10/5/25 I have a feeling that a lot of readers still don't see a couple things I'm trying to illuminate with this- the difference between a progressive and a liberal and the difference between a liberal and a Clintonite. One argument I make when I think about what my readers may say is that as important as it was that (most) progressives tried to stop Clintonite welfare "reform," welfare is not revolutionary- it did not EMPOWER people and/or TRANSFORM any structure. It was and is reformist- I can easily see MANY liberals opposing "reform" in the Clinton years without supporting single-payer or opposing NAFTA. It was a kind of CHARITY, it was not CHANGE)

Although Obama isn’t a progressive, is he a Clintonite? I could just point to the 2008 primaries, but some would say that it was two Clintonites and the anti-racist/Black vote helped Obama win against the wife of a Democratic President very popular with Democrats. But Obama was a liberal candidate. About 10 years before he ran for President he HAD been a progressive. His Justice Department went after racist police departments and let large numbers of people out of jail. Obamacare is MUCH better than what Hillary Clinton pushed in the 1990s. Unlike Hillary he had opposed the Iraq war. At the end of his presidency he commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning, the Army whistleblower previously known as Bradley Manning. Some would point to Hillary’s role in the Obama administration, but consider this- it’s not uncommon for Heads of Government to give some positions to people in other factions of their party, and she was only there the first half.

The Clintons are not liberals, but liberals exist. And as a progressive, I believe that here and there many of them are my allies.

Strategically Comprehensive

In a recent poem I created this rhyming couplet about Sinn Fein and the IRA (if you're not familiar with my poems, I should explain that I almost always write with someone else's voice, not my own)- “We started with defending our areas, now we’re on the offensive/The republican struggle is strategically comprehensive.” (The first line isn’t relevant to this but I think it’s a good rhyme) (it's a reference to the diversity of their tactics and strategy, for more on that keep reading). Not long after that I discussed with a friend in Dublin (who is also a left-wing supporter of Sinn Fein) the calls by some for SF MPs in the British Parliament (now, *7* of them!) to take their seats (the Democratic Unionist Party took 10 and there is one independent unionist). The argument that I read here and there in favor of SF doing it is that, in the context of a conflict over Brexit between most N. Ireland voters and most British voters (including what must be a majority of the Tory party), N. Ireland needs representation from more than one anti-Brexit politician (the DUP are pro-Brexit and the independent Unionist is anti-Brexit). More generally and especially after the DUP used it’s MPs to prop up the Conservative government, the argument is also that N. Ireland needs anti-Tory representation to try and help stop more austerity and other Tory initiatives.

My friend in Dublin felt that abstention should be seen as a tactic and that SF could embarrass the DUP in the state-wide Parliament and reduce the strength of the Tory/DUP arrangement.

Initially I wrote the following:

“I’ve been thinking of SF and abstentionism. My opinion of Devlin-McAliskey is not hurt by the fact that she took her seat, but I’m inclined to go with what SF says about them taking their seats. I mean, clearly their voters seem just fine with that policy. I also wonder, what is behind that policy? Would they see it as recognizing British rule over the Six-Counties? is it that they have [outside the European Parliament] absolutely zero desire to vote on laws that effect the British people the way British politicians [in the Westminster Parliament] pass laws that govern Irish people [in the North]? Also, isn’t there a good chance it would result in another split in SF- not necessarily a tiny one?

I’m open-minded about what you’re saying, but so far I’m more inclined to just back whatever decision they make about it.”

(although I usually read a LOT about N. Ireland current events in the Irish News and the BBC News, I don’t have the money or time to also read more than a few things a month from republican sources of news and opinion and thus am not REAL familiar with the current thinking in SF)

(Bernadette Devlin-McAliskey is described here)

I’ll return to talk of abstention TODAY shortly.

After the 1981 Hunger-Strike which saw prisoner Bobby Sands elected to Westminster, SF started contesting elections in N. Ireland- I believe for the first time since the ’69/’70 split that saw the Provisionals created. This was a major step forward strategically for the Republican Movement (what back then would have been called the Provisional Republican Movement and what are called in more recent decades Sinn Fein and the IRA). I believe that during most of the years 1982-1997 the PRM was doing almost everything they could do to A) put pressure on the British and the Unionists, B) strengthen their movement, and C) help people. (although I wasn’t doing N. Ireland activism at the time, I would have supported the 1994-96 cease-fire by the IRA (the now permanent cease-fire started in 1997))

I’ll be briefly describing (and here and there evaluating) each part of this effort.

Armed Struggle

First, I did some research and some estimating and some math and concluded that only in .3% of their operations did the (P)IRA attempt to kill civilians. A post about that is here. Also, even though SF’s vote was only (on average) 40% of the Nationalist vote this is not the end of the story. There is plenty of evidence that almost the entire nationalist community supported the 1981 Hunger-Strikers (see the middle third of this). There is also evidence that almost no one in the Nationalist community went to the police about crime and instead almost everyone went to the IRA (this is supported by a statement by Eamonn McCann on pages 22-23 of the 1993 edition of his book “War and an Irish Town” and by an article around 2003 in the Irish Times). Most Nationalists who didn’t support the IRA’s campaign nonetheless agreed more or less with the IRA’s goals and wanted Volunteers (IRA members) around- for defense during times of sectarian tension and for when crime HAD to be dealt with violently.

Armed struggle was many things. It was a statement to the world that (independent of  how that statement was made) Republicans and Nationalists in general had serious problems with being ruled by Britain and with the inequality they experienced at the hands of the British and most of their Protestant neighbors. It was a refutation of Thatcher’s “Normalization” policy. The deaths of British soldiers, RUC officers and UDR (a locally recruited British Army unit) members made the news and underlined the occupation as such (and kind of suggested the possibility that if it weren’t for the British Army the IRA could defeat the local security forces and loyalist paramilitaries to such a degree that it would change the attitude of the Unionist population towards (and in) negotiations with their Nationalist neighbors and the Southern state). Those deaths were also aimed at sapping the will of the British to remain in N. Ireland. The bombing campaign in England had similar goals- sapping the will of the British, making the news and occasionally (in ways that RARELY resulted in civilian death) giving the British people some small sense of the terror their Army inflicted on the Nationalist population. Bombing of economic targets specifically in both England and the North was aimed at pressuring the business community into pressuring the British and the Unionists to change their attitude to negotiation with SF (bearing in mind what I write in the next paragraph (with parentheses), some IRA bombs in the North and in England were aimed largely at just disrupting life for people, to hopefully put more pressure on British and Unionist politicians). Armed struggle might have shown the security forces that they couldn’t  brutalize the Nationalist community with impunity.  Attacks on loyalist paramilitaries were relatively infrequent and probably rightly so- I think an argument has been made that they helped the British with their propaganda about being peace-keepers between two mutually hate-filled tribes.

(about 99% of the time that the IRA bombed civilian property the plan was to place the bomb, leave, phone in a warning, the place would be evacuated, and the bomb would go off. About 99% of the time that that was the plan that is what happened)

When I offered .3% as a relatively solid estimate for IRA operations where civilian life was targeted, I was not counting their efforts to help keep loyalist mobs outside Catholic areas and (towards the very beginning of the conflict) their efforts to help keep the security forces outside of some Catholic areas. The former saw them viewed as defenders of the Nationalist community. The latter made the “no-go” areas (especially Free Derry) possible for about two years. Including that stuff would lower it from .3% to something like .2%

As part of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process after the first democratic election in South Africa, the ANC partly justified it’s use of force by saying that by attacking the infrastructure and security forces of the Apartheid state they were encouraging others to resist in other ways- that is, they showed that it was possible to strike at the state oppressing them.

Mass Struggle

Mass Struggle might be defined as the mobilization of large numbers of people for non-violent political conflict where their numbers (not arms or money or political power) are their weapons and public spaces are their battlefields- what we saw with the civil rights movements in both the US and N. Ireland. Marches and rallies around the prisoners issue (roughly 1978-1981) were organized (frequently by members or supporters of the Provisional Republican Movement). In terns of getting people in the street it was a massively successful effort, but when the prisoners struggle was over mass struggle appears to have decreased. The nationalist community broke back down into it’s constituent parts and marched separately or not at all. But SF still did organize marches and rallies and such and some WERE very large. Such actions demonstrate how DEEP a movement’s support is, and can result in helpful confrontations with the security forces, in a way more widely accepted than armed struggle.

Young People Rioting

I don’t know how many of those young people were members or supporters of the PRM but I think this is very relevant to putting pressure on the British. This was closer to being mass struggle than armed struggle was and could have been the result of mass struggle. But it also contained some plusses that were found more with armed struggle. It was probably more likely to get in the news than mass struggle, it could have resulted in serious injuries for the security forces (and often did) and even in the absence of an injury it could have sapped the will of the non-local part of the British Army, who were reminded more deeply than usual that they were unwanted in certain areas. But as it was less lethal than armed struggle and less likely (probably a LOT less likely) to result in civilian deaths caused by nationalists and republicans, it was more acceptable than armed struggle to many people.

Elections

Although I feel safe assuming that the PIRA campaign had the support of about 40% of the nationalist community in the 1970s, it is helpful to be able to point to votes for SF as proof that almost half that community DID support the PIRA’s armed campaign in the years 1982-1997. I believe in both “parliamentary” and “non-parliamentary” methods for creating political change but I, and a LOT of people attach a lot of value to how much popular support underground armies have. Election campaigns also give another chance to interact with voters and with the media and explain a party’s platform. Elected politicians, even those who don’t take their seats, might get more respect and/or a larger audience of (for example) potential converts and and might get more assistance of one sort or another from other politicians or activists, etc. (although less relevant, elections were also contested in the South)

Local Government Battles

SF not only contested local government elections, when elected they took their seats. This resulted in two different kinds of important battles engaged in by SF councilors and activists. First, to gain equality within the council- MANY SF councilors were blocked from access to the chamber, and/or to funding they and their areas were entitled to. Second, battles over issues relevant to local government. For example, around 1990 (according to the 1993 edition of McCann’s “War and an Irish Town” (p. 43)) a SF councilor in Derry led a successful campaign against the building of a toxic waste incinerator outside the city. Lastly, in general I think that sitting on local government councils proved that they were willing to try non-violent democratic engagement with their Unionist political opponents.

Propaganda

Propaganda is often defined neutrally and just means putting out a party’s message. SF did one newspaper during this time. One thing that might be sort of unusual in such situations was the HUGE number of murals in areas that were at least heavily if not mostly republican. Murals about the IRA, murals about international struggle, murals comparing the experience of nationalists to the experiences of people of color elsewhere, murals about community issues like poverty or eating disorders, murals about other topics. (I am almost certain that at least 90% of those murals were commissioned by SF, SF members or SF supporters)


International Solidarity

SF has done a fairly good job of generating international solidarity with them and with the nationalist community in some countries outside Ireland and Great Britain. But as I have explained elsewhere on this blog, in my opinion they are handicapping this work by making their approach in America much more moderate than progressive. (although significantly different, semi-successful efforts were made to mobilize supporters in Britain)

There is one tool that was used against Apartheid and that is being used against Israel that they have not pushed and that is boycott of, divestment from, and sanctions against the UK (not UN sanctions of course because of the veto the UK has in the Security Council). SF might have been silent about BDS because they knew that they didn’t have enough support globally to make it work. I go into that in a post here, starting with the paragraph that begins with “Was S. Africa much worse?”


One reason I have done this post is to say that members and supporters of the Republican Movement (and others in the Nationalist community in the North, but I have focused on SF because I support them) have done almost everything they could do to get the British out. Which makes it even more infuriating when I think of how little was done by the Left in western Europe and by the Left in America.


Abstention Today

Going back to abstention in Westminster today, exchanging some emails about it with my Dublin friend got me thinking more about SF taking their seats. I wonder if Westminster could be/should be seen by SF as just another battlefield on which to push the peace process, equality and even Irish Unity. In general it could be a forum to raise those issues. Also, it could help build a broad-based movement of British people supporting the Nationalist community if SF were to consistently vote progressively on things affecting British people like austerity, the environment, etc. (there’s a small mystery for me- the Troops Out Movement, which had good relations with SF, seems to have evaporated??????)

I should say that I believe that what we are talking about here are tactics and strategy but not principles (I have supported the 1997 IRA cease-fire since day one). I believe that the PRM usually did a great job of using them during the conflict and has usually been doing a great job using most of them since the conflict died down and basically ended (I would say around 2005) (with the exception of armed struggle and rioting the others are still being used by members and supporters of SF).

IF SF decide to take their seats, I would not criticize them about that (possibly about some of their votes, but with the exception of abortion I doubt even that would happen).

Star Trek: The Original Series Reviews Q

This is one of my posts where I “review” Star Trek episodes. I will be giving each one a star rating. I sometimes will make some comments about non-political parts of them that I like or don’t like. I’ll sometimes use the issues raised in the episode to discuss similar issues in real life. And I will sometimes simply high-light the progressive politics of ST. ST is in-line with the three original themes of this blog, as I explain in the first ST post where I offer some general thoughts about ST. 

I have been more or less ignoring this- the need for me to become familiar with The Original Series. In general I don’t like much of what I’ve seen. In any case, I am now watching it and will be doing reviews of those episodes. I will be giving pretty low scores, probably no higher than three stars out of five- I just don’t like TOS.

Lastly. multi-culturalism is such a pervasive theme in ST that I only comment on it when it goes beyond the norm (i.e. inter-species partners).

“The Cloud Minders” See this for a plot summary.

This episode is basically about privilege. You could also mention national oppression, but privilege seems more appropriate (“elitism” is also very accurate). At one point Spock says: “this troubled planet is a place of the most violent contrasts. Those who receive the rewards are totally separated from those who shoulder the burdens. It is not a wise leadership.” You could also use the phrase “environmental racism.”

There is a scene where torture is being used. Although Kirk and Spock make it very clear they and the Federation won’t stand for that, the planet which is witnessing the use of torture by the government is IN the Federation. The torture is stopped and Kirk ends up leaving the planet when he is ordered to.

So, it is largely about inequality. At the end it appears that progress is being made, and there are moves towards equality.

I give it one star out of five.

"The Savage Curtain” See this for a plot summary.

This episode contained a lot of political or at least sort of political stuff.

At the end, there is the question, from an alien culture’s point of view (without these concepts)- which is stronger, Good or Evil?

The alien concludes that both use the same methods, and achieve the same results. In the battle that the alien had just watched, as far as I could tell, the methods were largely the same, although one fourth of Kirk’s team tried to resolve the conflict non-violently and was killed by the other side. There’s a large amount of truth that in war, most methods are used by both sides. The majority of the time, I’d say there’s no problem with that- the problems arise with things like torture and intentionally killing innocent civilians. In response to a series of sectarian murders of Catholics in south Armagh, some republicans (likely the PIRA (now known simply as the IRA)) killed 10 innocent (and possibly ANTI-sectarian) Protestant civilians. That (the "Kingsmill Massacre") was incredibly wrong (it was also the sort of thing the IRA absolutely or almost absolutely never did (there may have been about 5 times when a much smaller number of people were killed in resprisals for the sectarian murders of Catholics, but even with that, only about .2% of the IRA's operations intentionally resulted in civilian death)). As far as results go, there’s always or usually some (at the very least) large differences (I think you have a good idea of what I consider “Good” and what I consider “Evil,” so I won’t explain that here).

Some other items worth mentioning:

1) Lincoln. In general I have pretty good thoughts about Lincoln. I’m reading an article about how he was friendly to labor and got along via letters with Karl Marx. Although he wasn’t an abolitionist, he leaned in that direction for years before the Emancipation Proclamation- he often was critical of slavery and as President took some earlier steps in the direction of ending slavery.

2) There is one conversation involving Lincoln and Uhura which at first I thought was problematic in a racist way, but a friend convinced me it was was basically saying that the 23rd Century was more enlightened than the 19th Century.


I give it three stars out of five.

“All Our Yesterdays” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I give it three stars out of five.

“Turnabout Intruder” See this for a plot summary.

There are a few things I wanted to note in this review.

First, it’s said that there are no female Captains. Kirk doesn’t disagree with her on this, although we know that in ENT there was a female Captain. It seems likely that even though she was kind of wrong, there WAS a big problem with equality for women in StarFleet (looking at the main characters of all the series also suggests that problem, although it’s only a very serious problem if we assume that in the future women will be half of the military instead of a minority of it (I've been meaning to ask several women what they think about that, I might change my mind about that and assume that they WILL be about half))

There is one line that stands out- a woman says something about the “indignity of being a woman.” After looking at the definitions of the word “dignity,” I’m still not sure what she meant. It almost sounds as if she’s saying that women don’t deserve esteem or respect. I’ll be honest, I’m not as familiar with gender studies and feminist theory as I should be, but if that is what she’s saying, that’s obviously untrue, but beyond that statement I’m not sure what else to say.

We also are reminded that with one crime as an exception, the death penalty is abolished in the Federation. Connected with that, we see something sort of close to a mutiny by some officers, including Chekov and Sulu. That’s fairly inspirational.

This is the last episode of the series, and apparently they didn’t feel like doing something special. Anyway, I give it three stars out of five.

Star Trek: The Next Generation Reviews EE

This is one of my posts where I “review” Star Trek episodes. I will be giving each one a star rating. I sometimes will make some comments about non-political parts of them that I like or don’t like. I’ll sometimes use the issues raised in the episode to discuss similar issues in real life. And I will sometimes simply high-light the progressive politics of ST. ST is in-line with the three original themes of this blog, as I explain in the first ST post where I offer some general thoughts about ST.

I’m not very familiar with The Original Series and there might be some small amount of material there that would affect what I say about Star Trek (i.e. how often religion is mentioned)

Lastly. multi-culturalism is such a pervasive theme in ST that I only comment on it when it goes beyond the norm (i.e. inter-species partners).

“Schisms” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I give it three stars out of five.

“True-Q” See this for a plot summary.

There is one bit of environmentalism when an alien society is criticized for using technology to scrub their air of harmful pollution instead of reducing the emissions of pollution.

I give it two stars out of five.

“Rascals” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I give it one star out of five.

“A Fistfull of Datas” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I give it three stars out of five.

Star Trek: The Next Generation Reviews Z

This is one of my posts where I “review” Star Trek episodes. I will be giving each one a star rating. I sometimes will make some comments about non-political parts of them that I like or don’t like. I’ll sometimes use the issues raised in the episode to discuss similar issues in real life. And I will sometimes simply high-light the progressive politics of ST. ST is in-line with the three original themes of this blog, as I explain in the first ST post where I offer some general thoughts about ST.

I’m not very familiar with The Original Series and there might be some small amount of material there that would affect what I say about Star Trek (i.e. how often religion is mentioned)

Lastly. multi-culturalism is such a pervasive theme in ST that I only comment on it when it goes beyond the norm (i.e. inter-species partners).

“A Matter of Time” See this for a plot summary.

There’s one bit of politics with a reference to efforts to avoid global warming.

I give it three stars out of five.

“New Ground” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I give it two stars out of five.

“Hero Worship” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I give it two stars out of five.

“Violations” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I give it three stars out of five.

Star Trek: The Next Generation Reviews E

This is one of my posts where I “review” Star Trek episodes. I will be giving each one a star rating. I sometimes will make some comments about non-political parts of them that I like or don’t like. I’ll sometimes use the issues raised in the episode to discuss similar issues in real life. And I will sometimes simply high-light the progressive politics of ST. ST is in-line with the three original themes of this blog, as I explain in the first ST post where I offer some general thoughts about ST.

I’m not very familiar with The Original Series and there might be some small amount of material there that would affect what I say about Star Trek (i.e. how often religion is mentioned)

Lastly. multi-culturalism is such a pervasive theme in ST that I only comment on it when it goes beyond the norm (i.e. inter-species partners).

“When the Bough Breaks” See this for a plot summary.

There’s a little bit of politics in this one, as it refers the depletion of the Ozone layer on Earth in the 21st century.

Overall I give it two stars out of five.

“Home Soil” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I give it two stars out of five.

“Coming of Age” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I give it two stars out of five.

”Heart of Glory” See this for a plot summary.

This episode discusses how Worf was treated poorly by the Federation residents of the planet he grew up on. On the other hand, the two Klingons gave him a hard time because of his associating with the Federation.

Star Trek: Voyager Reviews KK

This is one of my posts where I “review” Star Trek episodes. I will be giving each one a star rating. I sometimes will make some comments about non-political parts of them that I like or don’t like. I’ll sometimes use the issues raised in the episode to discuss similar issues in real life. And I will sometimes simply high-light the progressive politics of ST. ST is in-line with the three original themes of this blog, as I explain in the first ST post where I offer some general thoughts about ST.

I’m not very familiar with The Original Series and there might be some small amount of material there that would affect what I say about Star Trek (i.e. how often religion is mentioned)

Lastly. multi-culturalism is such a pervasive theme in ST that I only comment on it when it goes beyond the norm (i.e. inter-species partners).

There are several episodes in VOY that involve the question of whether or not holograms are alive, and/or feature conflict between holograms and organic beings. I’m going to ignore that part of VOY, it’s a bit too philosophical, and comparing the maltreatment of holograms to the maltreatment of, for example, Black people, seems stupid. Although I kind of make an exception for The Doctor (it’s impossible to be a fan of ST and not do that) I lean towards saying that holograms are not life forms, but I don’t feel like going into it.

“Friendship One” See this for a plot summary.

I’m having some trouble deciding what the political aspect of this episode is. It could be about using certain energy sources without the right controls, or using them at all (in this episode it involves anti-matter, but you could interpret this episode as being anti-nuclear power). I don’t know anything about matter and anti-matter, but it seems like in the ST universe it’s a safe enough source of energy. I wouldn’t be surprised if the problem was that the knowledge they recieved from the probe was radically ahead of where they were technologically and they skipped a few steps- steps which might have resulted in them avoiding the accident.

I give it three stars out of five.

“Natural Law” See this for a plot summary.

This episode has a lot to say about technologically advanced societies not treating indigenous people (at least those who live in a traditional way) with respect for their culture. It also illustrates how many from the advanced society will think that invading an indigenous society and radically changing it is good for the indigenous people.

For some reason I’m having trouble describing this episode better than I have, so I’ll just leave it at that. I give it three stars out of five.

“Homestead” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I give it two stars out of five.

“Renaissance Man” See this for a plot summary.

A non-politiccal episode. I give it three stars out of five.

“Endgame” parts 1 and 2. See this and this for a plot summary.

A non-political two-parter, but one that deserves some comment since it’s the series finale. Looking at the series finales for each of the 1990s series, I think this one is the best of the three.

I give it five stars out of five.

Star Trek: Voyager Reviews Y

This is one of my posts where I “review” Star Trek episodes. I will be giving each one a star rating. I sometimes will make some comments about non-political parts of them that I like or don’t like. I’ll sometimes use the issues raised in the episode to discuss similar issues in real life. And I will sometimes simply high-light the progressive politics of ST. ST is in-line with the three original themes of this blog, as I explain in the first ST post where I offer some general thoughts about ST.

I’m not very familiar with The Original Series and there might be some small amount of material there that would affect what I say about Star Trek (i.e. how often religion is mentioned)

Lastly. multi-culturalism is such a pervasive theme in ST that I only comment on it when it goes beyond the norm (i.e. inter-species partners).

There are several episodes in VOY that involve the question of whether or not holograms are alive, and/or feature conflict between holograms and organic beings. I’m going to ignore that part of VOY, it’s a bit too philosophical, and comparing the maltreatment of holograms to the maltreatment of, for example, Black people, seems stupid. Although I kind of make an exception for The Doctor (it’s impossible to be a fan of ST and not do that) I lean towards saying that holograms are not life forms, but I don’t feel like going into it.

Unfortunately I am skipping 4 episodes which are on a DVD that doesn’t work. Hopefully soon the video store will have it fixed or replaced soon. Fortunately, the odds of those episodes containing something that I need in order to understand episodes after those four is very low.

“Juggernaut” See this for a plot summary.

Another environmental episode. There’s also an element of environmental racism.

I give it three stars out of five.

“Someone to Watch Over me” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I give it three stars out five.

“11:59” See this for a plot summary.

This is kind of a political episode. It touches on big capital pressuring small-business to sell so big business can build something new. If the small business(es) involved all agree to sell and the government doesn’t pressure them, that seems like most of the time it’s fine (exceptions would include historical structures (that was recently a really big deal in Dublin with a building used by republicans during the Easter Rising)).

An interesting, unique ST episode but I don’t like it much and am almost tempted to give just one star, but I’ll give it two (out of five).

“Relativity” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode, but one of my favorites. I give it four stars out of five.

Star Trek: Voyager Reviews V

This is one of my posts where I “review” Star Trek episodes. I will be giving each one a star rating. I sometimes will make some comments about non-political parts of them that I like or don’t like. I’ll sometimes use the issues raised in the episode to discuss similar issues in real life. And I will sometimes simply high-light the progressive politics of ST. ST is in-line with the three original themes of this blog, as I explain in the first ST post where I offer some general thoughts about ST.

I’m not very familiar with The Original Series and there might be some small amount of material there that would affect what I say about Star Trek (i.e. how often religion is mentioned)

Lastly. multi-culturalism is such a pervasive theme in ST that I only comment on it when it goes beyond the norm (i.e. inter-species partners).

There are several episodes in VOY that involve the question of whether or not holograms are alive, and/or feature conflict between holograms and organic beings. I’m going to ignore that part of VOY, it’s a bit too philosophical, and comparing the maltreatment of holograms to the maltreatment of, for example, Black people, seems stupid. Although I kind of make an exception for The Doctor (it’s impossible to be a fan of ST and not do that) I lean towards saying that holograms are not life forms, but I don’t feel like going into it.

Unfortunately I am skipping 4 episodes which are on a DVD that doesn’t work. Hopefully soon the video store will have it fixed or replaced soon. Fortunately, the odds of those episodes containing something that I need in order to understand episodes after those four is very low.

“Thirty Days” See this for a plot summary.

An environmentalist episode. I give it three stars out of five.

“Counterpoint” See this for a plot summary.

A sort of political episode. Voyager is helping some telepaths who are persecuted by a government that doesn’t like telepaths.

I give it three stars out of five.

“Latent Image” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I give it three stars out of five.

“Bride of Chaotica!” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I give it three stars out of five.