WikiLeaks has been all over the world news headlines this past week after the Daily Beast reported that Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning released 260,000 classified documents to the controversial journalism network. Wired.com has followed up on story with reports about Manning’s conscience and WikiLeaks’ intention to provide him with legal help.

In related news, the Guardian reported on Friday that the FBI is looking for WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange, in hopes of preventing him from publishing those documents. But WikiLeaks has not yet confirmed that they actually received 260,000 internal Army documents — maybe because the U.S. government seems so concerned about the situation. Manning also claimed to have leaked the 2007 Apache helicopter video that I discussed here in April.

Apparentely The New Yorker chose a really good time to publish a 10,000-word feature about Julian Assange. The story “No Secrets” by Raffi Khatchadourian was published on 6/7/10, the day before the news broke about Manning. I’m extremely interested in Assange and the WikiLeaks organization, but I was still surprised when I got sucked into this article. Assange is a fascinating character — the type of person who you don’t usually hear about because governments hate him so much. But he’ll likely be an important figure in the time ahead, so I wanted to present excerpts from the story in a convenient run-down.

On the hope for a new “scientific journalism” and their approach to the Apache helicopter footage:

If you publish a paper on DNA, you are required, by all the good biological journals, to submit the data that has informed your research—the idea being that people will replicate it, check it, verify it. So this is something that needs to be done for journalism as well. There is an immediate power imbalance, in that readers are unable to verify what they are being told, and that leads to abuse.’ Because Assange publishes his source material, he believes that WikiLeaks is free to offer its analysis, no matter how speculative. In the case of Project B, Assange wanted to edit the raw footage into a short film as a vehicle for commentary. For a while, he thought about calling the film ‘Permission to Engage,’ but ultimately decided on something more forceful: ‘Collateral Murder.’ He told Gonggrijp, ‘We want to knock out this “collateral damage” euphemism, and so when anyone uses it they will think “collateral murder.”’

On Assange’s upbringing and self-directed education:

Assange’s mother believed that formal education would inculcate an unhealthy respect for authority in her children and dampen their will to learn. ‘I didn’t want their spirits broken,’ she told me. …[Assange] took correspondence classes and studied informally with university professors. But mostly he read on his own, voraciously. He was drawn to science. ‘I spent a lot of time in libraries going from one thing to another, looking closely at the books I found in citations, and followed that trail,’ he recalled.

This bit shows a prominent aspect of WikiLeaks in its formative stage. Assange was arrested in 1991 for hacking with a group that went by the name “The International Subversives”:

‘Julian was the most knowledgeable and the most secretive of the lot,’ Ken Day, the lead investigator, told me. ‘He had some altruistic motive. I think he acted on the belief that everyone should have access to everything.’

On Assanges’ budding life philosophy and the need for an organization that would foster information leaks:

He had come to understand the defining human struggle not as left versus right, or faith versus reason, but as individual versus institution. As a student of Kafka, Koestler, and Solzhenitsyn, he believed that truth, creativity, love, and compassion are corrupted by institutional hierarchies, and by ‘patronage networks’—one of his favorite expressions—that contort the human spirit. He sketched out a manifesto of sorts, titled ‘Conspiracy as Governance,’ which sought to apply graph theory to politics. Assange wrote that illegitimate governance was by definition conspiratorial—the product of functionaries in ‘collaborative secrecy, working to the detriment of a population.’ He argued that, when a regime’s lines of internal communication are disrupted, the information flow among conspirators must dwindle, and that, as the flow approaches zero, the conspiracy dissolves. Leaks were an instrument of information warfare.

On realizing the shortcomings of traditional journalism and mass media:

In some respects, Assange appeared to be most annoyed by the journalistic process itself—’a craven sucking up to official sources to imbue the eventual story with some kind of official basis,’ as he once put it. …in the Bunker one evening, Gonggrijp told me, ‘We are not the press.’ He considers WikiLeaks an advocacy group for sources; within the framework of the Web site, he said, ‘the source is no longer dependent on finding a journalist who may or may not do something good with his document.’

On WikiLeaks’ main objectives:

Assange, despite his claims to scientific journalism, emphasized to me that his mission is to expose injustice, not to provide an even-handed record of events. In an invitation to potential collaborators in 2006, he wrote, ‘Our primary targets are those highly oppressive regimes in China, Russia and Central Eurasia, but we also expect to be of assistance to those in the West who wish to reveal illegal or immoral behavior in their own governments and corporations.’ He has argued that a ‘social movement’ to expose secrets could ‘bring down many administrations that rely on concealing reality—including the US administration.’

On justifying the potential for damage:

At the same time, Aftergood told me, the overclassification of information is a problem of increasing scale—one that harms not only citizens, who should be able to have access to government records, but the system of classification itself. When too many secrets are kept, it becomes difficult to know which ones are important.

Khatchadourian’s skeptical remarks about the long-term tenacity of WikiLeaks:

But experimenting with the site’s presentation and its technical operations will not answer a deeper question that WikiLeaks must address: What is it about? The Web site’s strengths—its near-total imperviousness to lawsuits and government harassment—make it an instrument for good in societies where the laws are unjust. But, unlike authoritarian regimes, democratic governments hold secrets largely because citizens agree that they should, in order to protect legitimate policy. In liberal societies, the site’s strengths are its weaknesses. Lawsuits, if they are fair, are a form of deterrence against abuse. Soon enough, Assange must confront the paradox of his creation: the thing that he seems to detest most—power without accountability—is encoded in the site’s DNA, and will only become more pronounced as WikiLeaks evolves into a real institution.

On objective and subjective approaches to journalism:

‘It was surprising to me that we were seen as such an impartial arbiter of the truth, which may speak well to what we have done,’ [Assange] told me. But he also said, ‘To be completely impartial is to be an idiot. This would mean that we would have to treat the dust in the street the same as the lives of people who have been killed.’

You can read the entire feature here.

Now that I’ve emerged from my symbolic journey through the desert that took place over the last few months, I need to start cracking away at a variety of topics that have sparked my interest lately. The timeliest of those topics is WikiLeaks, a site that I heard about a few weeks ago via an NPR column. Now that I Google search for it, I see it was actually a partner article (from a group called Foreign Policy), and they made it sound like it was already old news on April 8.

In other words, a video of an American helicopter shooting down a group of non-militant people in a suburb of Baghdad accrued more than two million views on YouTube within five days of being posted online (that happened on 4/3/10). It now has more than six million views. This is the way that information will be distributed in the future, and the distribution itself is almost more interesting than what we see in the video. After all, put in a different context, this could be a scene from a popular Hollywood war movie.

But this is “real life.” This is a group of American marines murdering innocent Iraqis who were “suspected” to be looking for trouble in the streets. Two of them were professional journalists (Reuters photographers) carrying large cameras under their arms, which by a far stretch could be made out to be automatic weapons. If there had actually be a battle going on (and if more than two were carrying large black objects), one might be able to argue that it was an honest mistake — collateral damage in the “fight for justice” while we “bring freedom to the world.”

However, these people were walking casually down the street. There was no warfare in sight. The helicopter requested permission to shoot down these “targets” quite simply because they were out looking for targets. As many have likely already commented, the scariest thing is how absolutely ordinary these events seem to the marines in the helicopter.

The ghost of Bill Hicks is chuckling on my shoulder right now. “I told you fuckers! What do you expect when you give a bunch of emotionally stunted and overly aggressive Americans access to the most expensive toys in the world?! They’re gonna do exactly what those war video games and movies brainwashed them to do: kill everything in site with a grin on their face.”

Yes, Bill. Thanks, and we miss you… very dearly.

It turns out that WikiLeaks is actually based in Sweden and run by a group called the Sunshine Press — a “non-profit organization funded by human rights campaigners, investigative journalists, technologists and the general public” (Wikipedia has much more information about them). And they have a separate site for this specific video: collateralmurder.com. Essentially they published this video after Reuters used Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to obtain it.

Personally I think this will be one of the most important stories of the year. This is the inevitable path of technological advance. Truth will demand to be acknowledged. I think that’s why Obama is pressing for universal access to high-speed Internet, even though he bowed to the bail-out demands from banks and auto companies. He knows there’s a hypocrisy to his actions, but he also knows that the intelligence capabilities of the general public are reaching a point where they will become superior to any one secret agency.

Of course, information will never come without a price — even if it’s free of cost to the public. From journalists on the war front (139 were killed in Iraq from 2003 to 2009, according to the Collateral Murder page), to a group like the Sunshine Press (who, according to information on their Wikipedia page, have already been the target of censorship, surveillance and/or attacks in various countries worldwide), this type of service is going to take a lot of courage, cooperation and hard work.

Currently their biggest problem might be fundraising. As it says on their site:

We have received hundreds of thousands of pages from corrupt banks, the US detainee system, the Iraq war, China, the UN and many others that we do not currently have the resources to release to a world audience. You can change that and by doing so, change the world. Even $10 will pay to put one of these reports into another ten thousand hands and $1000, a million.

So if you’re a fan of truth — not just “fact-based journalism” coming from mainstream media (which, because of near-universal corporate affiliation, is weakened by conflicts of interest), but the kind of truth that is going to reverse the downward spiral of civilization — and you have some money to spare, consider sending it their way.

Of course, many would argue that Wikipedia or some other resource really marked the beginning of what I’ve deemed the “first-ever golden age of journalism.” But I’m not so sure. Wikipedia is great for that purpose, but you really have to know what you’re looking for. I think we’re going to see a very rapid growth of specialized reporting sites like WikiLeaks that have a specific focus or unique way of gathering and distributing content — content that is vital to the interests of the American public, rather than to the interests of the American oligarchy. Either way, we have a lot to look forward to in this area.

In case you haven’t yet seen “Collateral Murder,” here’s the clip from YouTube.

In the New York Times Sunday Magazine published on February 11, an article by Russel Shorto called “How Christian Were the Founders?” looked into recent efforts by the Texas school board to inject into history and civics curriculum the idea that America was founded officially as a Christian nation. Their other aim is to wipe out the idea of separation of church and state, since it wasn’t stated in the founding documents of the United States.

Because Texas buys more textbooks than most (or all other) states in the country, publishers shape their textbooks based on guidelines chosen in the Lone Star State. The logic is simple: they don’t want their books to go unsold. But this has a toxic effect on the rest of the country, because only one textbook version is produced at a time — regardless of what other states want.

Remember in 2008 when we heard all that fuss about whether Creationism should be taught in schools alongside Darwin’s theory of natural selection? That fight was spearheaded by the Texas school board, which at the time was led by Dr. Don McLeroy — a dentist with no background whatsoever in education, history, civics, or economics. According to Shorto, textbook publishers let McLeroy run through their book drafts to make adjustments as he sees fit!

That Creationism effort was a failure for the Republican majority in the Texas school board. It also led to McLeroy being removed from his position as chairman of the board, because of the conflict presented by his extreme religious views. But a New York Times article from March 12 informs us that, this time around, they actually won.

I shouldn’t imply that it comes as a surprise. The conservative/Republican/Christians (take your pick of title) on the board vote as a block, so currently they can do almost whatever they want. Not only that, but their aims are extremely specific. “As Cynthia Dunbar, another Christian activist on the Texas board, put it, ‘The philosophy of the classroom in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next.’”

To state my reaction briefly, this scares the shit out of me. This is different than the disorganized rabble chirped back and forth on cable news programs. This is organized crime… in the public school system!!! It would be one thing if they were arguing on the basis that students are getting an inadequate education, but they admit that their aims are solely political. (The ironic part is that these conservative Christians probably send their own kids to Christian schools. They shouldn’t even get a say in the matter of public education.)

I normally don’t discuss politics in length on this blog, but the topic of education has been dominating my mind lately. The school system may be under attack by these troglodytes, but I would argue that it was already broken. Or I should say, there is no proper system in place to ensure that people are encouraged and have enough opportunity to educate themselves to the level required by modern society.

I just got a copy of R. Buckminster Fuller’s 1969 book Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, and the first subject he brings up is that modern “society operates on the theory that specialization is the key to success” (p 12). He claims that this is the product of the most powerful men throughout history, organizing society in a way that suited their needs. He still has to prove that to me; I think it might be more appropriately viewed as the result of us not being prepared for the complications of consciousness. Regardless, today the specialization is the result of the ridiculous level of power held by corporations and the government, and — on the other end — the cause of the alienation and frustration experienced by the individual trying to fulfill his right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

What I’m saying here is that the education system we assume to be fully-functioning is actually producing a society of individuals in arrested development (yes, I do intend to build on that concept by discussing the popular Fox TV show from the mid 2000s). We’re brought to a point where we can get an hourly wage job or, if we get a college degree, an institutionalized office job — but it stops at that point because, from the view of those in power, too much education is dangerous for the status quo. That system is collapsing from within, since a world full of uneducated people is a world doomed to fail — hence, the Great Recession, global warming, bank and auto bailouts, etc.

Fuller extends the idea of specialization to all our cultural categorizations (which is why I’m boycotting the Census!!!) like race, religion, nationality, and so on. As he writes, “By the twenty-first century it either will have become evident to humanity that these questions (of intellectual specialization) are absurd and anti-evolutionary or men will no longer be living on Earth” (p. 19, I added the parenthetical info).

But before Fuller hijacks this post, let me return to the point. This fight isn’t a move to improve the American public school system; it’s a deliberate move to make it worse. The school board conservatives are basing their argument on one fact: that a concept so ingrained in American life that we take it for granted — the separation of church and state — is not found in any of our country’s founding documents, like the Declaration of Independence or the U.S. Constitution. In fact it was first seen in a letter written by Thomas Jefferson, in reply to a representative of a smaller church who felt his denomination was being persecuted by more powerful churches.

To make matters worse, the Declaration of Independence does use language implying that our nation was founded “under God” and that Americans have “certain inalienable rights” bestowed upon them by that God. So although there is no religion-speak in the Constitution, one tactic used by the school board was to bind the Declaration and the Constitution in history texts — as if they were actually the same thing. Therefore, it can be deduced that the Constitution contains Christian language, and America was founded as a Christian nation.

Of course the founders of the United States were religious people. They had fled their native lands because of religious persecution. They understood more than the founders of any country on earth that church and state must be separate, for the alternative unavoidably leads to tyranny. To me it’s pure nonsense to suggest that the founders had actually intended us to be a Christian nation — just as much as it was nonsense how Bush tried to pitch his fundamentalist creed on us from ’01 to ’09. But then I already knew that our society is defined more by absurdity than any kind of sense.

Trying to juggle all this nonsense hurts my brain, so I suggest you read Shorto’s incredible (but really, really long) article to comprehend the issue better. My intention here was to illustrate that our school system is beyond broken, but — like in many other areas of society — we probably can’t expect that the system will ever improve. It’s too institutionalized. I’m not arguing for home schooling, but we’ll have to brainstorm alternatives to this secretive ideological brainwashing going on in our K-12 schools.

Talk about fighting a 12-headed monster. For their widespread idiocy, Christians are really well organized in their efforts at manifesting hell on Earth. I wish I could laugh when they go on about the “liberal establishment” — I can’t even figure out what that refers to. “Liberals” don’t have an establishment, any force as binding as religion that guides their efforts at progress, politically or otherwise.

Liberals do have great literature though. Sometimes I feel like all great writers have been unequivocally liberal in that they worked solely to push mankind forward. Orwell was prominent in that camp, and whenever I hear about these insane ongoings my mind instantly recalls his warning in 1984: “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”

We have to fight all efforts to control and manipulate the past, or else our future — and the future of our progeny — will be jeopardized beyond repair.

The alien subject interests me because of a theory I’ve been developing. It relates to the idea that our alien shows and movies actually say more about the human race than they do about aliens. How we react to or interact with aliens in fiction is a sort of indicator for how far we’ve progressed as a species. This theory was directly inspired by the “Pinewood Derby” episode from season 13 of South Park (original air date 4/15/09), in which an alien arrives in our favorite animated Colorado town. Stan’s dad Randy has just cheated on their pinewood derby race, using some kind of nuclear reactor to send the car into space at light speed.

The alien guest is a criminal on the run after stealing money from the Intergalactic Bank. He demands that the citizens of South Park hide him from the Space Police, or else he’ll kill them all. He also asks that they fix the light speed on his ship, since he’s aware of Stan’s pinewood derby accomplishment. The city of South Park lies to the Space Police, who then leave temporarily. But Randy is too proud to admit he cheated on the derby car, so instead of showing the alien how they did it, they kill him and South Park seizes his Space Cash. They divide it up among the world leaders, but ask everyone not to spend it. Naturally, everyone does. The Space Police return and ask again about the alien and the cash. The citizens deny everything. To make it brief, the criminal alien isn’t dead after all, but is actually working with the “Space Police.” Every time a new planet discovers light speed, they pay a visit to evaluate the species. Human beings have failed their test unforgivably, and are banned from the Intergalactic Alliance forever.

I personally have no trouble whatsoever believing this outcome. As South Park has brilliantly displayed throughout its 13 seasons, people are stupid. By mastering the art of unrelenting satire, South Park has become one of the most important shows of our time. Of course, if aliens ever did show up on Earth, it would be a lot less…well…cartoon-ey. Enter District 9, which, as I later found out, wasn’t actually directed by Peter Jackson. He produced, while relative newcomer Neill Blomkamp directed and co-wrote the film. As the story goes, aliens arrived in South Africa about 25 years ago in an emergency landing. The interaction was peaceful at first, and the aliens actually lived among human beings. But conflicts soon arose, much in the same way that human groups have clashed throughout history. As a result, the aliens are congregated in District 9, a disgusting slum where they’ll be separated from human society.

The film starts as a fictional documentary, with Wikus Van De Merwe leading us through the process of relocating the aliens to a concentration camp disguised as a clean community. The corporation that built the camp is legally obligated to serve eviction notices to the aliens, who most humans refer to with the derogatory term “prawn.” The first hour of the film is extremely tense and at times difficult to watch. To provide another short synopsis, Wikus is contaminated with some fluid biotechnology that causes him to slowly transform into an alien. This makes him a target, because the corporation has been trying in vain to find a way to use the alien weaponry. Only the aliens can use it, since it reacts to their biological makeup. When the company attempts to harvest his body parts, Wikus escapes and flees into District 9 as a fugitive. This is where the film becomes both interesting and, in some ways, even more frustrating. (Here the filmmakers suddenly and inexplicably abandon the fake documentary format for a standard action movie presentation, only to return to the documentary style at the film’s end.)

Wikus befriends the alien who had produced the fluid biotechnology, partly because the alien says he can reverse the transformation. It turns out he is a leader amongst the aliens, and he’s trying to fly his hidden vessel up to the hovering mothership. Then he will travel to his home planet, seek help, and return to save his kinsmen. Wikus agrees to the exchange of services, and helps the alien recover the confiscated fluid from the corporation. But when Wikus discovers that it will be three years until this alien can return and change him back to a human, he basically throws a fit and blows the plan.

Now District 9 was far from a clunker; it’s currently #65 overall on IMDB with an average rating of 8.5. And judging by the 8.0 score on Metacritic, professional critics were also fond of the film. I’m not saying I hated it or anything. Even if poorly executed, the topic is still interesting to me. Plus, the special effects were pretty phenomenal. But in terms of philosophical weight, the movie provided little payoff. The lasting effect, in my opinion, was little different than the aforementioned South Park episode. District 9 succeeded most at showing how stupid people are. South Africa does little to help the aliens get back home or make them more comfortable, but instead entrusts a corporation to corral them into a concentration camp. The corporation is only interested in unlocking the power of the alien weapons in order to make a fortune selling them around the world. Wikus is too selfish to wait three years for help, so he tries to sabotage the plan altogether.

What a fucking pathetic race we are. Of course we don’t need alien films to show us that. Just turn on the TV, look at a newspaper, or read the headlines scrolling across your email browser. I’m just not sure if it’s more painful having this stupidity demonstrated in a film inspired more by Halo (yes, the video game) than anything else, or in an episode of South Park. Both leave me with a sunken feeling and the conviction that, if given the chance to enter some kind of Intergalactic Alliance, human beings will consciously reject it. (Somehow I’m reminded of Dostoevsky’s Notes From Underground, which I’ve written about here.) People would destroy an alien alliance just to prove to themselves that they could. Humans could never cooperate with aliens until we collectively acknowledge that we’re no different. We are an alien life form with no origin and no destination, and that pisses us off. As a result, we scorch the Earth.

I think you get what I’m edging towards. When we eventually have alien fiction in which Will Smith doesn’t welcome the beings to Earth with a punch in the face, it might be a sign that we’ve finally evolved. What we will evolve into is another question entirely, but until it happens, there’s no way to hide the most prevalent (and embarrassing) characteristics of the homo sapien. And both South Park and District 9 lay them out clearly for all to see.

You can watch the entire “Pinewood Derby” episode online here.

Most of the world was introduced to his wily behavior in Borat, the 2006 film of similar format (and from the same director Larry Charles) in which a TV reporter from Kazakhstan travels to America in order to learn what it’s all about. I was a fan of Cohen’s Da Ali G Show, which HBO has re-aired in recent years after initial broadcasts in the UK. That program featured alternating clips of Ali G, Borat, and Bruno, three characters designed to catch people off-guard, pull them out of their comfort zone, and elicit an outcome that is equal parts humorous, humiliating, and offensive.

So Bruno the character was no surprise to me, but Bruno the movie was. After the stir Borat caused, I couldn’t believe that Cohen could still dupe anyone into signing a filming contract without reading the fine print! I went into it thinking that I’d be one of the few people not offended by the film. I wasn’t totally wrong, but perhaps “offended” isn’t the right word. It’s not that anything offended my customs or beliefs; it’s that I felt extremely uncomfortable at multiple points in the movie.

I wasn’t uncomfortable about the fact that Bruno is a homosexual or because I had to watch a plethora of bizarre, unexpected nude scenes and sexual acts; I felt uncomfortable because watching Bruno was like living through a nightmare. It seemed that I was asleep and had no choice but to process the horror (a feeling that reminds me of an essay I wrote last year). Upon exiting the theatre, I remarked that — whether or not we perceive it on a daily basis — this nightmare is the world around us. And no, I’m not referring to Bruno; I’m talking about everyone that Bruno encountered on his journey through America.

I’m a generally pessimistic person with many strong reservations about American society, and yet Bruno still stirred me out of a general contentment with my surroundings. The film reminded me of Alice in Wonderland, which these days gets a lot of uninspired comparisons to the psychedelic drug experience. Many people gain satisfaction from knowing that they can expose themselves to wilder, more extraordinary sensory stimuli than their predecessors. We can’t necessarily be richer or possess more property or money, but we do have the power to live to greater extremes. Our wealth is our experience and our ability to retell it, to share it with others, to help them learn from it…

But I’m wandering. I thought of Alice in Wonderland even though that comparison isn’t often made to American culture. I usually think of Carrol’s absurdist satire as very specific to that British world of the 1800s. Of course I know America is just as pretentious and depraved, and the American Empire thinks it’s the best at everything. It was still a strange experience having this brought to mind. We don’t like to think of our culture as evil and infected. Even when we do, we usually project it on other groups or places. “The American South is so messed up” or “those west coast people are really strange.” To reference Norman O. Brown’s Freudian study Life Against Death, neurosis is everywhere, and it’s there all the time.

In reality, our world is only as strong as the dumbest, most backwards person around — in other words, the weakest link is the collective weakness. Yes, Bruno provoked people into acting the way they did, but once provoked, they were all too happy to continue behaving that way. That’s because the Mad Hatter is a Dallas talk show host; the White Rabbit is a candidate for the American presidency; Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum are cage fighters entertaining in-the-closet gay men struggling to deal with their inconvenient sexual preference (Is that one a stretch? I’ve always said those extreme fighting shows are soft-core gay porn); the Red Queen is…well…a dominatrix at a swingers party in your neighborhood.

I’m disappointed in the professional critics who bashed this film, reporting that it was basically just more of the same from Sacha Baron Cohen. Many also claimed that it shocked for the sake of shocking. Their unwillingness to challenge themselves and their perception of “good filmmaking” is a big reason why people are losing (or have lost) faith in critics.

This film is nothing like Borat. Obviously the xenophobia has largely been replaced by homophobia. But instead of inspiring laughs and an occasional sneer, Bruno makes us cringe and even infects us with a bit of despair. Bruno is ten levels beyond Borat in every way possible. And let me be very clear: Bruno is arguably a terrible film, but it wasn’t intended to be a “film.”

Even more so than Borat, Bruno is a documentary posing as a comedy. Presenting it as a film was just the best possible choice in terms of distribution. Think of all the oblivious middle Americans who will pick it up from their local Blockbuster store later this winter, expecting an edgy comedy about some idiot foreigner trying to find his way to fame — whether it means moving to Hollywood, feigning charity, or even attempting a conversion to heterosexuality. Every single one of them will have their third eye pried open.

While sex only came up occasionally in Borat (with the exception of that nude hotel fight…), Bruno is all sex, all the time. Likewise, sex is at the very core of what it means to be human. It is responsible for more of our thoughts, feelings, and actions than any of us would like to admit. Sex goes deeper than customs and traditions; it goes deeper than national pride; it goes deeper than religious beliefs. Bruno spanked all our asses, but he was able to do so because of everything we take for granted.

We think we’re so advanced (hell, even the Republicans finally agree that something needs to be done about global warming!). But we have so much more progress to make. Actually it’s not a certain point we need to progress to. It’s that we, as a society, tend to lounge on the couch unless we have a fire lit under our ass. Say what you want about Al Gore’s electric bill — An Inconvenient Truth is the primary reason why our culture is currently obsessed with becoming more environmentally friendly. Environmental destruction is no longer a myth that happens in faraway rainforests; it’s happening in the tailpipe of every car in every driveway in the world.

Again I digress. The point isn’t that people reacted to Bruno’s flagrant homosexuality. Actually I’m not quite sure right now what the point was (apparently the film deserves a quick assessment and additional viewings). As one guest on NPR said last week, there are so many levels to Bruno that it’s hard to be sure who’s getting made fun of, who should be offended, and what we’re learning from the situation. But we are learning, nonetheless, even if we’re not quite sure what the lesson is.

The overall lesson, I think, is that even the most open-minded and enlightened of us still hide behind conventions and institutions. Perhaps this relates to my realization halfway through the movie, that the whole audience was unexpectedly watching a gay love story, and most (if not all) of us were emotionally involved in it.

We are capable of adapting to almost any situation that is forced upon us, so why do we have so much trouble adapting to what arises naturally from our peers and our unconscious? So many humans think of themselves as divine creatures on the path to eternal greatness. We ought to be a lot more aware of the true nature of this world, particularly the cultural world that we alone create. Awareness feeds the inspiration to change, and as we’ve all seen with the Twitter response during the recent Iran election conspiracy, our global awareness is growing at a rate never before possible.

If Bruno accomplishes anything, it will be to further raise awareness about the absolutely horrifying nature of the land we call America. We may be more culturally advanced that some places in the world, but we also have a greater responsibility to advancement. I don’t mean to say that we are entitled in any way, but just that we have absolutely no excuse to give Cohen enough material for not one, but two of these satirical films.

Until the material disappears, I’m so thankful that movies like Bruno exist, and I can’t wait to see what Sacha Baron Cohen comes up with next.

As one critic put it (I forget which one or where I saw it), Soderbergh seemed to be avoiding any of Guevara’s common stereotypes (i.e. – political activist, guerrilla warrior, t-shirt imagery). It did seem that Soderbergh wanted to let the story speak for itself. But 41 years after Che’s death, one wonders if a film should be made at all if it doesn’t dare to take a position on the controversial figure. This is, after all, an extremely important figure in recent history that most American students are taught nothing about (or at least I wasn’t).

According to Wikipedia, Jean-Paul Sartre once “described him as ‘not only an intellectual but also the most complete human being of our age’ and the ‘era’s most perfect man.’ Sartre would also compliment Che Guevara by professing that ‘he lived his words, spoke his own actions and his story and the story of the world ran parallel.’”

The film does provide at least a basic context for why these people were attempting a revolution in Latin America. Therefore my strongest criticism relates to the lack of insight into Che’s mind. I was surprised to see that the films were based on Guevara’s own writings: Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War (Part 1) and The Bolivian Diary (Part 2). Knowing this, I wondered why Che’s thoughts were only revealed during an interview with a journalist that is scattered throughout Part 1. One of Che’s statements stands out from the rest:

“Of course, defeating imperialism is impossible if you don’t recognize its source is the United States of America. In a capitalist system, people live in an invisible cage. For example, they accept the myth of the self-made man. But they do not understand that opportunities for the majority are determined by forces completely beyond individual control.”

The journalist then asks the question, “What is the most important quality for a revolutionary to possess?”

Che responds, “A true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love — love of humanity, justice, and truth. It’s impossible to conceive of an authentic revolutionary without this one quality.”

The paradoxical nature of this statement set off my skeptic alarm. How could a person with great love of humanity seek to change the world through armed conflict? In other words, how could anyone using their rational faculties hope to improve mankind by shooting people with guns? A six-year-old would be able to tell you that that’s not a path to success. It was equally confusing to me that Jean-Paul Sartre would condone this armed conflict. After reading Nausea, I got the impression that Sartre’s existential problems were individual in nature and required an autonomous process of treatment. It’s almost as if Sartre didn’t understand his own philosophy, and that has caused me to lose faith in his writing.

Luckily I have the work of Carl Jung to fill the gap. I finally finished reading, Man and His Symbols, edited and co-written by Jung. The chapter by M.-L. von Franz entitled “The Process of Individuation” directly addresses my problem with Che Guevara, evident in the following quotes:

“Fanatical political activity…seems somehow incompatible with individuation” (p. 241).

“…The unconscious is pointing to the fact that today the dreamer should not try, as X did long ago, to free his country in an outer way. Now, the dream says, liberation is accomplished by the anima (by the dreamer’s soul), who accomplishes it by bringing the images of the unconscious to life” (p. 244).

“…In our time genuine liberation can start only with a psychological transformation. To what end does one liberate one’s country if afterward there is no meaningful goal of life — no goal for which it is worthwhile to be free? If man no longer finds any meaning in his life, it makes no difference whether he wastes away under a communist or a capitalist regime. Only if he can use his freedom to create something meaningful is it relevant that he should be free. That is why the inner meaning of life is more important to the individual than anything else, and why the process of individuation must be given priority. [...] …If a single individual devotes himself to individuation, he frequently has a positive contagious effect on the people around him” (p. 245).

In the film, Che’s character spoke of building a meaningful life through a communist revolution. But if the film succeeded at anything, it demonstrated the blatant absurdity of Che’s quest. The only thing armed conflict leads to is more death, more destruction, and more tyranny. When Fidel Castro took power of Cuba, he abolished elections in order to remain in power until modern day! Down in Bolivia, Che was executed by a common soldier in a dirty shed, when he could have rejoined his wife and children in Mexico or Cuba. And perhaps worst of all, American imperialism never ended.

It seems that we as a society are far overdue in studying the suggestions of Jung and his colleagues. The only revolution that will ever work is one of individual psychology. But if it could happen on a widespread level, it would change the world. A recent quote by President Obama (albeit in a different context) reflects this idea:

“One voice can change a room, and if one voice can change a room, then it can change a city, and if it can change a city, it can change a state, and if it change a state, it can change a nation, and if it can change a nation, it can change the world. Your voice can change the world.”

If our president’s expression of such a profound concept isn’t optimistic enough for you, perhaps (in observation of today’s public funeral) I should also reference Michael Jackson. His song “Man in the Mirror” even has the basic principle down — a fun fact I realized a few years ago when I started getting into literature and philosophy.

I’ll have more on this topic soon. I’ve finally begun a large-scale essay on Jungian Psychology and the need for modern man to learn himself before trying to change anything external. In the meantime, I can’t make any promises about consistent activity on here, but I’ll try my best. I can’t believe it’s been a month since my last post. I’m truly sorry for that — times have been tough.

As you can see, the film starts with the controversy surrounding the mash-up artist Girl Talk — real name Greg Gillis — who has been growing in popularity (or notoriety) since the release of his 2006 album Night Ripper. His albums feature hundreds of samples of copyrighted music that Gillis never got permission to use.

Audio: “No Pause” by Girl Talk, from the 2008 album Feed the Animals.

What’s not seen in the trailer is the four-point manifesto which provides a basic outline for the film. Gaylor calls this “A Remixer’s Manifesto”:

1) Culture always builds on the past.
2) The past always tries to control the future.
3) Our future is becoming less free.
4) To build free societies you must limit the control of the past.

The moment I saw this manifesto, I knew it must have been directly inspired by 1984. (Sorry to sound like a skipping record, but clearly Orwell is an important figure in all these issues.) The quote in Orwell’s book: “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” It’s such a simple statement, yet it encapsulates so much about the world. You may need to see the film to completely understand what I mean. Another resource I’d suggest is a website I made in grad school called Connected to Creativity. It’s still hosted on my personal website, and it contains a lot of valuable information about how the Internet is fostering incredible creativity, while the current application of copyright law is dangerously stifling it.

To illustrate the problem, I’ll use an example that relates to the duration of copyright protection. When copyright was first made a law in 1790, it lasted 14 years from the date of creation. This was changed many times over the next 200 years, and the most recent alteration came in 1998. Now copyrighted works are protected for the author’s lifetime plus 70 years. But the term “author” is a slippery one here, because copyright law has been transformed to benefit corporations much more than any individual creators. Copyright law was instated to protect the economic rights of the creator and the fair use rights of the public (fair use says it’s okay to use copyrighted works for certain purposes). But now the vast majority of copyrighted content in the world is controlled by a handful of media conglomerates: Disney, News Corporation, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS.

Many topics in the film were inspired and informed by the Creative Commons movement and Lawrence Lessig’s 2004 book Free Culture (which I covered here in July ’08). In both that book and this documentary, Walt Disney is discussed at length. Disney himself was a sort of remixer, because many of the first animated films produced by his company were based on stories in the public domain. In other words, they were adapting stories that weren’t protected by copyright anymore or never had been protected. Think Snow White, Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella, Fantasia, and on, and on, and on. But when Walt died, the Walt Disney Corporation took a turn for the worse, and they’ve now become a force of evil in this war.

Creative Commons, on the other hand, are the foremost source of good, and over the past two years I’ve supported them however possible. One way I do that is by licensing all content on Supraterranean.com with a Creative Commons license. Like the founders say in one of the informational videos on their site, they’re laying the framework for an entirely new world culture based on sharing, collaboration, and progress.

As I left Michigan Theater when the film ended, I said to my special lady friend that it was the first time I felt proud to live in Ann Arbor (hey…give me a break…I’m a Spartan to the core). I felt surrounded by people who understood the importance of remixing, free culture, and net neutrality. It became clear that these ideas are at the core of all my work, even if I’m still figuring out how to express my thoughts and feelings. I felt a surge of emotion while watching footage of children in Brazil’s poorest neighborhoods remixing music and art, or dancing together instead of getting mixed up in gang violence. I couldn’t help but imagine what the world could be like if we continue down this brave path.

It seems like a new philosophy is shaping itself, a living philosophy that cannot be invented by any one person. Gone are the days of the dogma; we have no use for that anymore. Now there is only life — how to understand it, build upon it, make it better. Copyright law has prevented humans from being what they should: emergent and symbiotic. Our culture has become stale and rotten, but technology is setting us loose. We’re figuring out new creative ways to expend our life energy, and realizing that this is a far better option than the destruction that human history has seen thus far.

I see a future coming that will belong to no individual; instead, it will belong to all individuals. As time goes on in this new digital culture, we will all own an equal share in the past. And like Orwell wrote, “who controls the past controls the future.” Now we just need to take over the present. Lessig is working on that, too, through efforts to reform Congress and the American lawmaking process. Furthermore, most literary and philosophical genius I’ve encountered (especially surrounding Existentialism) has suggested turning attention to self-discovery, the creative struggle, and free expression. As emphasized in A Remix Manifesto, the creative process has now become more important than the finished product.

Remember this saying? “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Well, Gaylor has taken that advice literally. As announced at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, he has already twice invited other filmmakers to remix this documentary, and some of that material has been worked into the final version of A Remix Manifesto. We were reportedly the first audience to see this third cut. Gaylor also started a website called Open Source Cinema, where anyone can further remix the film. He’s hoping to build it into a platform where filmmakers can remix and collaborate using their own material. Even if you’re not ready to start remixing, you can currently view all chapters of the documentary on the site.

For more information on Creative Commons, here is an intro video from their site.

A week or two ago, I heard that the rock band …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead actually named their newest album after a documentary. The film is Adam Curtis’ The Century of the Self, a four-part BBC miniseries from 2002. The series is one of three that are forging a strong reputation for Curtis; the other two are The Power of Nightmares (2004) and The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom (2007). Century and Power are both available for free download at Archive.org (here and here, respectively). The Trap, however, is not, so I had to procure a copy through…other means — but still via the Internet. And The Trap was the one I found first, so it’s the first one I watched.

All three documentaries have an IMDb rating over 9.0, so I expected them to be spectacular. The Trap was enlightening, and so densely packed with information that I found myself taking notes during the three hour-long portions (it was originally aired over a stretch of three weeks). Curtis’ filmmaking style is definitely different than most American documentaries I’ve seen. He didn’t try to convince the viewer that his argument was indisputable. His edge was having a historical perspective that most people just don’t have. The Trap covers 1950 to today, starting with the first part, entitled “Fuck Your Buddy.” This tells how John Nash’s economic ideas based on Game Theory went on to create a narrow view of human beings as entirely rational creatures. (Even that one sentence is dense!) In this scenario, Game Theory was used to suggest that the logical choice in human interaction will always be to act out of total self-interest (what is called a “betray” move in the game), as opposed to acting in cooperation with others. This mentality was heavily influenced by the oppressive atmosphere of the Cold War, but also by Nash’s battle with paranoid schizophrenia. But instead of helping society run more efficiently and promoting human freedom, this led governments and institutions to try and fit people into that narrow mold of suspicious, paranoid, psychologically damaged individuals that Nash and his RAND Corporation had described.

That’s all in part 1. Part 2 starts with Clinton’s economic advisers, who said he should let the market read and respond to the needs of the public, because it was more efficient than having government do it through the democratic process. This is naturally tied to the way that companies seem to own and operate everything these days. It also seems closely tied to the banking bust of fall 2008. Part 2 elaborates on the psychiatric discussion from part 1, namely that human emotion became medicalized, and the public was made to think that there was some kind of perfect human that no one was capable of being or becoming. Furthermore, Nash’s Game Theory ideas kept echoing through society, leading to decreased social mobility, the development of an entirely new kind of social stratification, and corruption in business and politics (especially in America).

Are you still with me? There’s another part left! Part 3 starts with Isaiah Berlin, who published a paper in the 1950s about two kinds of liberty: positive liberty and negative liberty. Positive liberty is the kind that happened in the American Revolution; it’s frightening, dangerous, volatile, and uncontrollable. This idea of liberty has been suppressed, but people are still inspired by the idea that we can improve the world and its inhabitants. Specifically, people want to be given the opportunity to reach their full potential. However, Western governments have favored negative liberty, which may seem like freedom on the surface, but it’s actually a very narrow kind of freedom, with ridiculous costs that are incurred around the globe. America has been pushing negative liberty for a few decades now, since Nixon and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger began supporting violent dictators who agreed to help suppress anyone who caused trouble (i.e. – communists, revolutionaries, etc). And obviously this has continued with every president since.

In summary, The Trap was probably the best description of the Post-War Western world I’ve ever seen. It also made me think more than ever before that there is just no correct way to run countries or the world. Of course that’s not true, but it’s strange to see, as Curtis points out, that ideologies no longer rule the world. In fact we are living in a world that is ruled by the opposite of ideologies. We are ruled by pointless decrees set forth by politicians, who are now controlled by corporations. We are seeing what Isaiah Berlin warned against: if negative liberty is viewed as an unalterable goal, it leads to the corruption of freedom, not the protection of it. With each stage in this progression, things became more concrete and hard to change. Efforts at improvement usually backfired, or they were used by the institutions to manipulate and control the public.

So even though this is a lot to take in in three hour-long sittings, I do feel like I have a better understanding of why our world is so messed up. The only comforting idea in all this may be that negative liberty is dying on its own. The American-sanctioned Western world of negative liberty is falling apart without any revolutionaries fighting against it. I do think the Internet will hasten the process, and help us bridge toward a sustainable version of positive liberty, where more people are able to live up to their potential and contribute more to society. But it’s going to take a long, long time.

Here is the introduction to The Trap for your viewing enjoyment:

Seeing the picture is exhilarating because, stated simply, I support the shoe-tossing Iraqi journalist. I’d like to chuck a rubber object at Bush’s head too. So you can imagine then why I find this AP story headline a bit humorous: “Bush’s Iraq-Afghan farewell tour marred by dissent.” The headline makes him sound like a rock ‘n roll star playing concerts around the world, only to receive some unexpected (and undeserved) criticism. It occurred to me that we haven’t heard many stories about Bush receiving dissent first-hand. I think that says something about the extent to which “Dubyah” has been hiding from the public lately. The Administration doesn’t give the public a chance to air their grievances, especially not if it could create such a racy photo opportunity.

The AP headline also implies that Bush deserved a warm welcome in Iraq, which I find ridiculous. The idea that the American government might be supported or praised in Iraq in late 2008 seems absurd to me because I’ve seen the 2007 documentary No End In Sight, directed by Charles Ferguson. The film is a prime example of why I’ve been turning to documentaries for in-depth information with perspective and credibility — the kind that mainstream media just cannot provide. The documentary is rich in its sources; those include veteran soldiers, military officers, American government officials, journalists, etc.

The source that sticks out most clearly in my memory is Ambassador Barbara Bodine, whom the film introduces as the person “in charge of Baghdad for the U.S. occupation.” Naturally, she speaks from a very unique position, and she effectively illustrates exactly what has gone wrong there over the past seven years. The most important point is that she was not given the appropriate resources or power to act. She felt more like a puppet, while Dick Cheney and his cohorts controlled the situation from Washington.

What’s worse, the film’s sources collectively suggest that Cheney and friends purposefully made the situation worse in Iraq so they would have an excuse to continue the occupation indefinitely. In other words, the Administration wanted a fortress in the Middle East, and this was the easiest way to obtain one. I’d be more skeptical of the film if more of the sources were from outside the American government. But across governmental branches and departments, everyone gives the sense that the White House ran the show consistently, and also that they ran it terribly. At the same time, every source that criticized of the Bush Administration also seemed to feel helpless towards the situation. Bodine’s story is particularly painful. To know that an American Ambassador could have maintained order after the removal of Saddam Hussein, but who was prevented by the likes of Cheney—that’s such a source of anger and remorse.

Now you might see why I also found the shoe photo humiliating. We’re still an object of worldwide hatred. We’re viewed as the world’s dopey bully who steals lunch money and gives wedgies. The Bush Administration will bear most of the humiliation as Obama transitions into office, but common citizens around the world won’t be too rapid to change their opinions of us. The fact that the Iraqi journalist threw a shoe and not a rock or a grenade (if we assume he could have gotten such an object into the press conference) also deserves attention. In a way, the shoe was more powerful than an actual weapon. The journalist essentially said that Bush was worth less than the dust below his shoes. And that’s an especially strong sentiment, if I remember that aspect of Iraqi culture correctly.

While most of us will never get a chance to inflict our own humiliation on George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and others who have furthered the deterioration of America’s reputation, we can take this chance to educate ourselves on exactly what happened from 2000 to 2008. Watching No End In Sight is a good start. We should all be reflecting on what went wrong, at home and abroad, and thinking of how to prevent such atrocities from ever occurring again—not only in a broad political sense, but also on an individual basis. To reverse the wrongs that have occurred, it’s going to take a collaborative effort involving all concerned Americans. We’ve all been chucking things for a while. Hopefully in the future we won’t have to quite as often.

No End In Sight Official Trailer:

I know what you’re thinking. “Abstain from voting?! But that would mean surrendering one of our great American rights. If we don’t practice our rights, we will lose them. And that would mean eventually losing our freedom.”

First of all, let me specify that this is not a personal recommendation — at least not for the current election. This endorsement is being made as the Administrator of Supraterranean.com, a website founded on principles that are new and confusing to many modern human beings. Take the Goals list on the About Us page, for example:

• To undermine the power of major content corporations who distribute most of the media to which people are exposed.
• To fight the disease of anti-intellectualism rampant in the U.S. and around the world.

I readily admit that this stance has been influenced by the films Zeitgeist (2007) and Zeitgeist: Addendum (2008). I saw the first back in March, and the sequel about two weeks ago. The first film drew connections between Christianity, the 9/11 attacks, and the Federal Reserve bank. The sequel picks up at the same place, going into further detail on our monetary system. They explain (in considerable detail, given the riddling topic) how the very core of our society is fraudulent and corrupt. Essentially, it’s impossible to have a fair, just, or sustainable world that is based on our kind of monetary system. It doesn’t matter if it’s democracy, dictatorship, socialism, or any known government. They are all part of the grand scheme of Globalization. We are all slaves, and we don’t even know it — but those in power are well aware. We have to undertake mindless, repetitive, and often useless jobs in order to survive, let alone “succeed.”

But the film explains this far better than I can in a ranting blog post, so let me progress to the point. Do you ever wonder why the Presidential Election appears to be a choice between only two candidates? In actuality, ANYONE CAN BECOME PRESIDENT. So why is it always one of two or three candidates offered to us by major political parties? The film argues that corporate approval and sponsorship are ultimately what determine who becomes president. To accept this requires a better understanding of what corporations can get away with in our society.

We don’t live in a democracy. America is a democratic republic. The popular vote does not determine the president. The president is chosen by an Electoral College, who supposedly act on our behalf. For proof of this, look back at the 2000 election. Al Gore received 48.4% of the votes, while Bush received 47.9% (See the Wikipedia page for more statistics). And yet Bush became president. Why? Because the American public doesn’t decide who becomes president — the corporations and banks do. Furthermore, it won’t make much difference who becomes president. It pains me to write that, because I feel that Obama is more than qualified for the position. But the problem is with the presidency, not the president.

Zeitgeist: Addendum also argues that this system is failing. We all witnessed the market crash recently. This is the only possible outcome in an imaginary monetary system where inflation is inherent. Bush’s $700 billion bailout will not help anything. All it does is privatize a whole lot of public wealth that should have gone towards making our country a better place.

So the biggest lesson to take from the two Zeitgeist films is that the solution lies at the core of the problem. If a tree has a disease, you don’t trim off the leaves or a branch; you cut the tree at the stump, or even remove the roots altogether. All of our symbols and theories and concepts, all of our governments and religions and ideologies, all of our companies and organizations and clubs, all of our friends and families and loved ones —-  these are all automatically infected by the monetary system.

Unfortunately the second film makes a concrete solution seem even further off than the first film. That might be because the human race still has some evolving to do before we can achieve a solution. However, they do propose five points for positive social action:

1. Boycott CitiBank, JP Morgan Chase, and Bank of America. They are the most powerful and have the deepest ties with the Federal Reserve.
2. Boycott TV News, and turn to independent sources on the Internet that cannot be controlled by the corporations.
3. Boycott the Military. It’s just an instrument for corporate action around the world. It takes advantage of the anger and confusion of young adults, and then abandons them — if they aren’t killed first — to drug addiction, mental illness, and homelessness.
4. Put pressure on the Energy Companies. Seek out sustainable methods of energy and transportation. If the companies don’t provide these, find other ways. (But keep in mind that an energy company might be in the same corner as the public. Their primary goal is to keep the world lit up and running, not to swim in profits). My recommendation: also pressure automobile companies.
5. Reject the Political System. Democracy is a sham. Therefore, voting is not only irrelevant, but also irresponsible.

Don’t delude yourself into thinking that voting is a sufficient way to participate in our world. Don’t underestimate your imagination, since that is the greatest tool bestowed upon humanity. Most importantly, don’t forget that any and all change begins with yourself, the individual. The film states that the revolution will first be one of consciousness. This theme has been constant in literature and philosophy throughout recorded history. The more people who devote themselves to an inward revolution, the better off the world will be.

For more info about the original Zeitgeist film, read my editorial hosted on SpartanEdge.com (published 3/19/08). Read more about The Zeitgeist Movement at their website. Read about the Venus Project (design pictured below) at their website, cuz I’m out of steam.

Design by Jacque Fresco

Other links:

IMDB – Zeitgeist

Wikipedia – Zeitgeist – Zeitgeist: Addendum