Voices from Guantanamo

Apropos my last post, my father showed me this incredibly powerful video. It is just a series of interviews with British Guantanamo detainees who have been released. The video is called "Voices from Guantanamo", and it does give us some of the voices that have been completely silenced by their captives, voices that have been completely absented from our debates. These people happen to know our cultural mores and way of talking. But most of the prisoners are not so lucky.

The American philosopher Richard Rorty points out that moral progress (so to speak) and activism grow out of stories that force us to include other narratives and ways of speaking in our understanding of ourselves and our communities. According to him, stories are in fact the only way "moral progress" happens.¹ The political activism that follows stems from the moral convictions acquired through stories. These kinds of videos become an important tool in remembering exactly what imprisonment without trial, without limits actually means. Why we have a justice system and why legal checks and balances are important.



1. If you know the work of Richard Rorty, you'll know why I put the phrase in quotes. If not, well: long story.

"That was like financial chicken soup for me"

I like this interview with Elizabeth Warren from the chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel in charge of the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). She's so clearly nervous, but manages to come off as honest and dedicated (warning: rhetorical analysis. Actual person may differ), smart and surprisingly funny. The best bits are in the second part, where she explains why deregulation is bad for you.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Elizabeth Warren Pt. 1
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

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The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Elizabeth Warren Pt. 2
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

Terror-Støre sjokk-smart på nett-video!

Det går visst faktisk an å ha et fornuftig terrorsyn selv om man er toppolitiker:



Andre biter av intervjuet her og her. Og det som jeg antar er en tekstversjon her. Skulle gjerne sett hele om noen vet hvor man finner det. Kan ikke se det på Le Mondes nettsider.

Love song for the internet age

I've been there:

(Amanda Palmer: "I Google You")

Really interesting lecture by Cory Doctorow

He talks about the information economy: copyright, group forming, encryption. He's an incredibly smart thinker and activist on the internet:

Esbjörn Svensson has died

I just got the terrible news that the Swedish jazz pianist Esbjörn Svensson of EST (the Esbjörn Svensson Trio) has died in a diving accident, only 44 years old.

I interviewed Svensson at least once. He struck me as a wonderfully friendly, articulate guy with a lot of humility about his work.

I'm not sure I always liked the direction they were taking the trio in the last couple of years (flirting with varying degrees of success with electonics, moving in a more pop/rock/easy listning direction – even though I'm not really much of a jazz purist, I never thought it worked when they got too "easy"). But I won't soon forget the concert they gave at USF in Bergen in 2002. I was having a bad month of epic, biblical proportions. (The kind of month where the bills pile up, you do badly on exams, a flock of locusts threaten your crops, barbarians pillage your tribe and hear the lamentation of your women, fire and brimstone fall from the sky, etc.) I came late, and walked in in the middle of "And God Created the Coffee Break":



And I felt my foot tapping, and then they segued into an extraordinary version of "Behind the Yashmak":



And after that it just got better and better. And seriously, I think that concert was the only time I felt really happy for like three months.