Journalism

Los Angeles artist Chris Burden, who died on April 10 at age 69, is best known here for his 202 antique street lamps in front of LACMA—they’ve become an icon of the city—but one of his most fascinating and misunderstood works is The Other Vietnam Memorial– 3 million Vietnamese names etched into a dozen gigantic copper plates that stand 13 feet high.
. . . continued at TheNation.com, HERE

It’s a simple distinction, but somehow it’s been overlooked by a lot of those who support the decision by PEN to give its “Freedom of Expression” award to Charlie Hebdo. Those who signed the protest against the award (I was one of them) agree that Charlie Hebdo had a right to publish cartoons about Islam, no matter how disgusting, and not be killed for doing it. The question is whether Charlie Hebdo should be given an award for publishing them.
. . . continued at TheNation.com, HERE

The ACLU in California today released a free smart-phone app that allows people to send cellphone videos of police encounters to the ACLU, automatically—and the ACLU will preserve the video footage, even if the cops seize the phone and delete the video or destroy the phone. The app, “Mobile Justice CA,” works for both iPhones and Android users. It’s available at Apple’s App Store and at Google Play.
. . . continued at TheNation.com, HERE

Today, April 17, is the 50th anniversary of the first march on Washington to end the Vietnam War, organized by SDS.  Now, there’s a new battle underway, as  peace activists challenge the Pentagon’s whitewashed history.
New at The Nation: “Vietnam in the Battlefield of Memory,” http://www.thenation.com/article/204465/vietnam-battlefield-memory

The mother of all problems in higher education today is high tuition at public colleges and universities, which forces students into decades of debt and makes for-profit schools seem like a plausible alternative.  Making four years of college free is not only fair; it’s also politically possible.
. . . continued at The Nation, HERE

One of the “stupidest” decisions Barney Frank ever made, he says in his new memoir, Frank: A Life in Politics, was bringing Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to Harvard in the fall of 1966, at the height of the Vietnam War. I agree; I was there. But the story Frank tells in his book is, to put it generously, incomplete. What he did was even stupider than he acknowledges.
–continued at TheNation.com, HERE

General David Petraeus has agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified material and will serve no jail time for his actions. Let’s give the same deal to Edward Snowden.
. . . continued at TheNation.com, HERE

Republicans condemn Obama for “class warfare,” but the charge is laughable if you know anything about the American past–or about our present “Age of Acquiescence.”
my review of Steve Fraser’s book in the LA Times Book Review, HERE

Obama has the biggest megaphone on the planet, he is on Page 1 every day of the year, and the op-ed page is for other perspectives.  Nevertheless the LA Times published an op-ed piece of his–one that presents thoroughly familiar liberal common sense.  . . .
My exchange with Nick Goldberg: HERE

Guantánamo Diary is the only written account by a Guantánamo detainee who is still imprisoned there: Mohamedou Ould Slahi. John le Carré calls the book “a vision of hell, beyond Orwell, beyond Kafka: perpetual torture prescribed by the mad doctors in Washington.” We spoke with Slahi’s attorney, Nancy Hollander, and his editor, Larry Siems.
JW: Who is Mohamedou Slahi, and how did he end up in Gitmo?
Larry Siems: Mohamedou is a 44-year-old man from Mauritania. He went to Afghanistan as a young man to join the fight against the communists there. To do that, he trained at an Al Qaeda camp and pledged loyalty to Al Qaeda. He has said repeatedly that he broke all ties with them after the communist government there collapsed in 1992.
. . . .continued at TheNation.com HERE