The Revolutionarys Voice; 23rd Edition February 18th, 2012

News Brief
Global Economy and the Fear of Insignificance By Carlo Strenger. . . .p3 Oil and Gas Industry Using Military Psyops Tactics to Break Insurgency Against Fracking By David O. Williams. . . .p4 LAPD and Special Forces Conduct Military Exercises in Downtown L.A Sourced From Dateline Zero. . . .p4 What Does a Progressive Christian Believe By Cynthia B. Astle. . . .p4 Bronx Community Compares NYPD to KKK After Shooting Death of Ramarley Graham From The Huffington Post. . . .p5 The Science of Collective Consciousness By Robert Kenny. . . .p5

The Dig
The Future of Organized Labor in the U.S By Bill Fletcher Jr., Kate Bronfenbrenner and Donna Dewitt. . . .p6 Libya and the Decline of the Petrodollar System By Peter Dale Scott. . . .p10

Real Money
Supply-Side Economics: Myths and Realities By Jack Chambless. . . .p3 &14

As the World Burns A Break with History

Message to Congress on Curbing Monopolies and the Concentration of Economic Power By Franklin Delano Roosevelt. . . .p18

The Bloggurist Institutional Minds

Rap, Rock and Censorship By Mathieu Deflam. . . .p24

Officials Wake Up to Peak Oil Part 1 and 2 By Chris Nelder. . . As Public Policy Fixes Are Impossible, Focus on Individual Solutions By Charles Hugh Smith. . . .p22 .p16

The Class War Battlefield Podcast Episode 20 Obama and the Pursuit of the Jackals
This weeks Class War Battlefield Podcast recounts two stories where the assassination of President Obama was referenced as a means to stop him from doing something deemed distasteful to the establishment. The first is rather well known, a Jewish Publisher remarked that assassinating an American President was a viable option to enable Israel to continue its immature bullying of Arab Nations (my words not his), if youd like more information on this subject read the last issue of Revolutionarys Voice which includes an interesting article by Alison Weir. The second incident is less well known and includes a remark made by one of Obamas Transition Advisors (I wont tell you what was said here but it was chilling). The bases for the comment is my concern over several passages from two prophecy books I read a few years ago (dont roll your eyes, its a weakness I know but I bring those prophecies into focus by comparing them to a plot on my favorite cancelled show The West Wing, exposing how simple it would be to make one of those prophecies come true without any real trouble). I hope you enjoy it, if you have any comments, concerns or questions please send them to Classwarbattlefield@live.com. The Link http://jumbofiles.com/l4nhwege9etu

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The Revolutionarys Voice; 23rd Edition February 18th, 2012

News Brief
Global Economy and the Fear of Insignificance
The Global Upper Class: Do the rest of us matter?
March 1, 2011; By Carlo Strenger in Homo Globalis; From Psychology Today This post is adapted from Carlo Strenger, The Fear of Insignificance: Searching for Meaning in the Twenty-first Century http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/homo-globalis/201103/global-economy-and-the-fearinsignificance Homo Globalis is faced with a difficult idiot when I look at my classmates who predicament. A new class has evolved at the dropped out of medicine and moved to some border of the upper and the upper-middle biotech company or a fund that invests in classes, which led Secretary of Labor and now them. They have more money now than I'll professor of public policy at the University of make in a lifetime!" California at Berkeley Robert Reich to speak of These physicians represent the larger the "New Rich-Rich Gap." He writes: group of the traditional professions who feel "A new group is emerging at the very top. largely disenfranchised. First they feel They're CEOs and CFOs of global corporations, financially stressed. They need to work very and partners and executives in global hard to just get their kids through college, investment banks, law firms and consultancies. and they still feel that they have difficulties Unlike most national symbolic analysts, these maintaining the lifestyles that they were led global symbolic analysts conduct almost all to expect when they chose their professions. their work in English, and share with one Second, they feel that the status that another an increasingly similar cosmopolitan they expected when they entered their culture. professions eludes them. If doctors or Most global symbolic analysts have been lawyers could once reasonably expect to be educated at the same elite institutions -respected in their communities, most of America's Ivy League universities, Oxford, them, except a few stars plugged into the Cambridge, the London School of Economics or system of Reich's "international symbolic the University of California, Berkeley. They analysts," don't make the type of money work in similar environments -- in glass-andneeded to afford a lifestyle with the prestige steel office towers in the world's largest cities, that was associated with the traditional in jet planes and international-meeting resorts. professions in the past. And they feel as comfortable in New York, Existential Psychology has shown the London or Geneva as they do in Hong Kong, depth of the human need to matter, make a Shanghai or Sydney. When they're not working difference, to feel that you have a significant -- and they tend to work very hard -- they live place in this world. We all need to feel that comfortably, and enjoy golf and first-class we do something that matters within the hotels. Their income and wealth far surpass frame of reference that defines our those of national symbolic analysts." (Robert experiential world. The question is what this Reich, The New Rich-Rich Gap. American frame of reference is. Prospect, December 12, 2005.) Those who belong to the group of The impact of this new upper class is felt national symbolic analysts may be highly most strongly by the traditional upper middle competent, and do interesting work, but their class Reich calls the "national symbolic impact and reach is limited to their immediate analysts." The first impact is quite concrete. environment. As a result they often feel left out, Cities that house the large multinational because the global infotainment system has companies' headquarters are unaffordable for a become Homo Globalis' frame of reference. growing number of people, because real estate Add to this that many national symbolic prices and rents shoot through the roof into analysts have lost their independence through stratospheric heights. the new global developments. For lawyers it is The second impact is psychological. I becoming increasingly difficult to be have, for example, worked with physicians who competitive in a market that has come to be felt like complete idiots. "I have studied and dominated by ever larger firms able to provide specialized for fifteen years, and I'm starting to 24/7 services, providing their global clients with make money only now. I feel like a complete legal services at very high speed. The same

Supply-Side Economics: Myths and Realities

By Jack Chambless; From The Valencia Forum

http://net.valenciacc.edu/forum/v02.i01/v02.i0 1.03.jchambless.htm
In 1962 the federal budget deficit stood at $7.1 billion the third largest shortfall since World War II. The U.S. was on the precipice of even greater funding shortfalls as the combined effects of the space race, Cold War outlays and the Vietnam conflict loomed. Faced with the reality that the economy would not be able to sustain the tax revenues necessary to fund these endeavors, John F. Kennedy stood before the Economic Club in New York in December of 1962 and said, It is increasingly clear thatan economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance our budget just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits. In short, it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now. The following year, President Kennedy was successful in producing legislation that would lower the top income tax rate from a staggering 91% to 70%. From 1963 to 1966 total federal tax revenues increased by 16%. Tax collections from those individuals earning more than $50,000 per year shot up by 57%, while revenue from people who made less than $50,000 increased by 11%. During that same time period, the U.S. unemployment rate fell from 5.5% to 3.6%. It is somewhat ironic today that policymakers continue to debate the effects of changes in marginal tax rates on the deficit and overall level of economic activity. Any serious economic analysis of the history of tax cuts would make the job of legislators much more manageable. Beginning in the 1920s, economists have observed an immutable fact concerning taxes and tax revenues. Mr. Kennedy was right. Soaking the rich as an instrument for lowering the deficit or creating new revenues simply does not work.

Continues on Page 14 holds true for consultants, accountants and advertisers whose environment has changed dramatically with the advent of global firms like McKinsey, Ernst and Young and McCann Erickson. Our culture, addicted to global success stories, is making it increasingly difficult for the overwhelming majority of people who make a decent living through hard work, but do not belong to the global ruling class, to feel that they matter. In future posts I will address the question how we can regain our sense of selfworth in the new global economy.

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Oil and gas industry using military psyops tactics to break insurgency against fracking
November 9, 2011; By David O. Williams; From The Colorado Independent http://coloradoindependent.com/105456/oil-and-gas-industry-using-military-psyops-tactics-to-break-insurgency-against-fracking First there was Talisman Energys Joe We have several former psyops folks winter warfare training in the mountains near Camel moment with Terry the Fracking that work for us at Range because theyre very Vail clearly for future deployment to the Dinosaur a clumsy oil and gas industry comfortable in dealing with localized issues and mountains of Afghanistan. attempt to win young hearts and minds over to local governments, Range Resources In 2003, a psyops trooper heading into hydraulic fracturing. Now come revelations of communications director Matt Pitzarella said on Camp Hale a former 10th Mountain Division actual psychological operations aimed at tape. Really, all they do is spend most of their and CIA training ground between Vail and breaking adult resistance to fracking. time helping folks develop local ordinances and Leadville told the website Real Vail that CNBC Monday reported on recordings things like that. But very much having that psyops are all about marketing (with a gun): made by an Earthworks activist at a Houston oil understanding of psyops in the Army and in the We provide information, thats basically what and gas industry confab last week. The tapes Middle East has applied very helpfully here for we are, In a laymans sense, we do marketing. reveal that companies use psyops techniques us in Pennsylvania. We try to sell democracy and the concept of and even former military personnel to break the In another session, Matt Carmichael, how it works. insurgency of community activism opposing manager of external affairs for Anadarko In that same article, a professor who domestic drilling. Petroleum, made similar recommendations. studies psyops techniques had this to say: Its Download the U.S. Armyall bullshit, said Donald Goldstein, a professor slash-Marine Corps of public and international affairs at the Counterinsurgency Manual, because University of Pittsburgh. Warfare has changed we are dealing with an insurgency, to the point that instead of just killing people, Carmichael said. Theres a lot of you have to understand them first. good lessons in there and coming The link between modern warfare and from a military background, I found domestic energy production seems particularly the insight in that extremely topical given the Republican push for more remarkable. drilling on federal lands and in American What are psyops techniques and suburbia to improve security abroad. troopers and how does the military GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain use them? Think strongman Manuel recently said hes a Koch brothers brother Noriega in Panama being blasted from another mother, referring to Koch incessantly by Van Halen and Howard Industries David and Charles Koch the Stern until he finally surrendered to energy and chemical industry giants pumping January 26, 2012 11:42, Source Dateline Zero, From U.S. troops in 1990. Or leaflet drops millions into conservative candidates and the tea Before Its News over villages in Iraq and Afghanistan. party movement. In Beaver Creek, Colo., this http://beforeitsnews.com/story/1681/760/LAPD_AND_SP In Colorado, the U.S. Armys summer, Charles Koch said the campaign to ECIAL_FORCES_CONDUCT_MILITARY_EXERCISES airborne 324th Psychological unseat President Barack Obama and his pro_IN_DOWNTOWN_LA.html Operations Company is based out of environment policies would be the mother of Why is the Los Angeles Police Department the Buckley Air National Guard base all wars. conducting military exercises? This was a question in Aurora. The unit regularly conducts on peoples minds when tactical exercises were carried out in plain view over downtown LA last Wednesday. LAs CBS Local reports that the LAPD teamed with military special operation forces Wednesday evening to conduct multi-agency tactical exercises in the skies above downtown LA. Many questioned what was going on Wednesday night as a Black Hawk helicopter and four OH-6 choppers or Little Birds flew over the city, at one point hovering just above the US Bank building downtown and later flying low over the Staples Center as the Lakers played inside. Someone could May 21, 2011; By Cynthia B. Astle; From The Progressive Christian Magazine be seen sitting inside an open chopper with his legs http://www.tpcmagazine.org/article/what-does-progressive-christian-believe hanging off the side.Sky9 spotted the Black Hawk in Every so often, there's a family regular contributor, the Rev. Jim Burklo, the dark, making what appeared to be a drop off at a squabble among Progressive associate dean of religious affairs at the park before quickly ascending back into the Christians. Over the past two weeks, University of Southern California, who pleads air.Throughout the exercise, the five rotorcrafts were the tempest has been between the Rev. with Jim Wallis to reconsider his public stance. staged at Dodgers Stadium. The LAPD said the Jim Wallis and his magazine, The other column was written by the Rev. purpose of the training was in part to ensure the Sojourners, and the Believe Out Loud Frederick W. Schmidt, an Episcopal priest who militarys ability to operate in urban campaign urging Christians to blogs at Patheos.com. It's of the latter column environments.In a release Monday, the LAPD said acknowledge publicly their support that I now write. training exercises would take place at various sites for LGBT rights. Disclosure: I know Dr. Schmidt and around the greater Los Angeles area through To date, this magazine has respect his work; several of his books sit on my Thursday. The exercises were coordinated with local stayed out of the debate, but this week shelf. In addition, I'm currently enrolled in a authorities and owners of the training sites, two columns appeared that we found spiritual direction program that he leads at according to the release. appropriate to reprint. One is by a Perkins School of Theology. Consequently,

LAPD AND SPECIAL FORCES CONDUCT MILITARY EXERCISES IN DOWNTOWN LA

What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?

Tracing the Theological Core of a Movement

The Revolutionarys Voice; 23rd Edition February 18th, 2012

Bronx Community Compares NYPD To KKK After Shooting Death Of Ramarley Graham
February 7, 2012; From The Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/07/bronx-community-compares-nypd-kkk-ramarleygraham_n_1259770.html

Tensions are growing between Bronx residents and the NYPD after the fatal shooting of unarmed 18-year-old Ramarley Graham Thursday. "I never wanted him to go out like this," Leona Virgo, Graham's 22-year-old sister told fellow demonstrators outside the 47th precinct Monday night, according to The New York Times. "He was only 18 years old," adding, "This is not just about Ramarley. This is about all young black men." A large and raucous crowd-- led by the victim's father, Franclot Graham, his mother, Constance Malcolm and grandmother, Patricia Hartley--marched from Malcolm's Wakefield home to the precinct, where they compared NYPD officers to hate groups. "NYPD: KKK" went one chant. NY1 reports: "They cornered that little man in his house, perfect place to ask questions, but instead of asking questions, they shoot him down right then and there. And they are New York's finest--what is fine about that?" said one protester. "They just judge by our looks, or whatever and think that some of is bad kids like that, they don't really want to give us a chance, as well," said another. A vigil was also held outside Graham's home Monday, where neighbors lit candles, laid flowers, and left posters with anti-police slogans including, "Blood is on your shoulders NYPD killer!" Security footage from Thursday shows Graham entering his home and police following him shortly thereafter. Cops said they had witnessed Graham participate in a drug deal and thought he had a gun. Inside the home Graham went into the bathroom, where he may have been trying to flush some marijuana down the toilet when an unidentified officer--now on restrictive duty while Internal affairs investigates the incident--fired one shot and killed the teen. Graham did not have a gun. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, whose department initially said there had been a struggle with Graham before the gun fired (there was not), said Friday, "At this juncture, we see an unarmed person being shot. That always concerns us." Graham's tragic end is reminiscent of the Bronx shooting death of Amadou Diallo over a decade ago, which similarly galvanized minority communities in the borough against police. From The Daily News: "Anytime you end up having an unarmed person, particularly someone of color, who gets shot and killed by police, it brings back all of the old stories," said State Assemblyman Carl Heastie. Diallo died in a hail of police bullets at his Soundview home on Feb. 4, 1999. After mistaking Diallos wallet for a gun, four officers fired 41 times, hitting the 23-year old Guinean immigrant 19 times. The Thursday before Graham's death, someone videotaped Bronx police officers excessively beating 19-year-old Jateik Reed after Reed allegedly hit an officer. The four officers involved in that incident have been been placed on modified duty. Here is a link to a related video: http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/video.php?v=wshhAyzL55e6E3xfbI1n (Continues from previous page) what follows may seem foolhardy, if not downright suicidal academically, but it's offered in a spirit of healthy theological debate. Questioning Theological Validity In his column, Schmidt questions Progressive Christianity's validity as a faith movement. He argues that responses to the Believe Out Loud dispute show that the movement has no theological core and therefore does not qualify as religious. As TPC editor, I chose to reprint such a highly provocative column because I think he raises the kind of uncomfortable questions that all Christian movements should ask themselves from time to time. Nonetheless, with some trepidation, I now must say that I find Schmidt's thesis that progressive Christianity has no expressed theological core flawed. Here's why. Today's Progressive Christianity has many stars: Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, Diana Butler Bass and Brian McLaren, to name but a few. Each of them comes at progressive Christian theology from different, but often converging, perspectives. Over the past decade, McLaren and writing partners Borg and Crossan have been particularly adept in the areas of Schmidt's critique, especially the nature of God and the reign of God. Yet even with the exciting work of these contemporary thinkers, I contend that Progressive Christianity's theological foundation rests on the work of two oftenunsung giants: James Rowe Adams and Delwin Brown. To learn about these two men is to discover how Progressive Christian theology has developed over the past quarter of a century. Jim Adams, who lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, founded The Center for Progressive Christianity in 1994 while rector at

St. Mark's Church on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. He's credited with coining the term "progressive Christianity" and with devising eight points that define the work of the center. Adams' original goal, "to keep churches from drying up and blowing away," has evolved through the past 25 years to include developing both adult and children's Christian curriculum that focuses on building relevant, effective and inclusive faith. As expressed in the recent second edition of his book, So You Think You're Not Religious? (2010, Saint Johann Press), Adams' basic definition of "God" is not an all-powerful being "out there," but the experience of living in a community in which individuals struggle together to find meaning in life. Sadly, Del Brown died from cancer in September 2009 while working on a new college curriculum for the organization he cofounded, The Beatitudes Society. At the time of his death, Brown was dean emeritus of Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California, from whence he retired in 2003. During his career he also held a variety of academic and administrative roles at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, and taught earlier at Arizona State University. Brown wrote many academic books and articles on facets of Christian theology and on theology's role in creating healthy religious traditions. His last book, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe? (2008 Seabury Books), was the capstone of his work. Among other topics, he summarized his understanding of God as a being or force beyond human comprehension, but intimately present in human experience. Some of Brown's writing remains available online in a blog cosponsored by TPC, Communicating Progressive Christianity in the Public Square. The Theologians Agreed Mostly In Fall 2008, The Progressive Christian magazine published a dialogue between Adams and Brown. Their email-facilitated discussion showed that the two thinkers came to many of the same theological conclusions, although Adams held that Brown's view of God was, in his words, "feeble." Nonetheless, the theologians were agreed on two major points, as Brown wrote in his last book and with which Adams concurred in a review: "Progressive Christians are people formed by the tradition grounded in Jesus Christ," and "The Bible is our foundational resource." On these common statements hang all the Progressive Christian theology that currently exists. Thus, I submit that the assertion that Progressive Christianity has no theological core must be considered unsubstantiated. Instead, the movement has a substantive body of theological writing expressed in keeping with its inherently questing nature. The variations of this core theology, including the nature of God and Jesus, represent Christianity's diversity as much as the works of any long-ago church fathers and mothers. What I suspect lies at the heart of the dispute over Progressive Christianity's

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The Revolutionarys Voice; 23rd Edition February 18th, 2012

theological nature is the same question with which I struggle: that of divine mystery, or encounters with the sacred that can be experienced but not explained. Jim Adams has written that any description of God is both inaccurate and incomplete, implying a divine mystery that exceeds human comprehension. Some progressive Christians view sacred mystery as cognitively unfathomable; therefore they ignore or resist it. Meanwhile others, especially younger believers, are comfortable with the ambiguity of an "Other" that they can encounter but cannot articulate rationally. Collectively we are blind people groping an elephant; each of us thinks that his or her perception of God, from skinny tail to enormous trunk, represents the whole. Not even the synthesis of all we perceive could represent the infinite diversity of God. Therefore, our inability to define the sacred mystery that animates us should make us all the more reliant on the beliefs we hold in common. Disputes such as that between Sojourners and Believe Out Loud, along with critiques such as Fred Schmidt's and Jim Burklo's, will prove beneficial only insofar as they ultimately bear out our common values. As people formed theologically by the tradition rooted in Jesus Christ, Progressive Christians cannot claim the high moral ground in any situation without practicing Jesus' core values of compassion, justice and forgiveness toward one another. Unless we act as we have been instructed by Jesus' teachings, no social action or theological critique will be valid. Or so this Progressive Christian believes.

The Science of Collective Consciousness

By Robert Kenny, From The Enlightened Next Magazine http://www.enlightennext.org/magazine/j25/kenny.asp
With more and more people talking about collective consciousness, it seems natural to wonder, Is there any scientific research to back it up? The answer, increasingly, appears to be yes. In fact, a growing body of recent research suggests not only that a field of awareness and intelligence exists between human beings but also that through it we influence each other in powerful ways. Just as Gene Roddenberry imagined a future in which Star Trek's Spock could mind meld with others, more of us are now becoming aware of our remarkable capacity to intuit each other's thoughts and emotions, as well as to consciously think and create together without communicating through the five senses. Collective consciousness becomes most apparent in our ability to intuitively sense and work with the interactions between our and others' physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual energy fields. Although science has long been convinced of the existence of gravitational, electric, and magnetic fields, significant research in the frontier science known as parapsychology, or the study of psychic (psi) phenomena, indicates that other types of fields including thought fieldsmay also exist. A fundamental psi phenomenon is extrasensory perception or influence, perhaps made possible by the apparent ability of consciousness to operate beyond the constraints of space and time. Examples include telepathy and remote viewing. The existence of psi (or tele-prehension, as Ken Wilber calls it) has been convincingly demonstrated in numerous scientific studies carried out by Marilyn Schlitz, Dean Radin, and others. In typical remote viewing experiments, for example, one individual is sent to a distant, undisclosed location while another individual, who remains in the lab, attempts to remotely view and describe that distant location in detail. Across a large number of experiments, remote viewers have been able to describe another's surroundings with a statistically significant degree of accuracy. Intriguingly, pairs who had an emotional bond have obtained the strongest results. These findings suggest that groups whose members build a sense of connection and trust with each other may have an increased capacity to access and understand each other's perspectives, to see through each other's eyes. Biologist Rupert Sheldrake and others have conducted several ingenious experiments that show how widespread psi abilities areeven in animals. Using synchronized video cameras placed in the homes and workplaces of dog owners, he has proven that dogs go to wait at the front doors of their homes at the precise moment their owners decide to return home from work, even when those times are varied daily. Sheldrake, Radin, and others have conducted numerous telepathy experiments on human beings as well, demonstrating that people can sense the thoughts and intentions of others across space and time. This research includes studies on a common experience called the sense of being stared at. By separating two people in a laboratory setting, with the first person hooked up to equipment that monitors his or her nervous system and the second person staring at the first person at random intervals on a closed-circuit television, researchers have collected evidence for the existence of this phenomenon with statistical odds against chance of 3.8 million to one. Sheldrake has also demonstrated in a number of studies that we can assist each other's learning across distances, without any external interaction or communication. In one study, for instance, a group of individuals completed a newly created crossword puzzle, and their average completion times were recorded. The same puzzle was then broadcast to millions via TV, for the viewers at home to complete. Subsequently, a new group, who had not seen the puzzle at all, finished it significantly faster than the original group, suggesting that as a result of so many individuals having done the puzzle, knowledge of the puzzle was somehow etched into the field of collective consciousness, making it increasingly easier for others to solve. Radin, the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) Lab, and Roger Nelson's Global Consciousness Project have taken research into consciousness field effects even furtherinto the realm of mind/matter interactionsby conducting a series of intriguing experiments with random numbergenerating (RNG) computers. RNGs can basically be thought of as sophisticated coin-flipping machines, programmed to issue zeroes or ones randomly. That is, just as if you were to flip a coin one hundred times and could expect the heads and tails sides to come up fifty times each, so it is with an RNGproducing, on average, an equal number of zeroes and ones. Ordinary people, however, have used the power of thought alone to create order out of this randomness, causing RNGs that were sometimes thousands of miles away to issue significantly more of one number over many trials, simply by intending to do so. Bonded pairscouples in a relationshipproduced effects that were six times stronger than individuals. Like the remote viewing experiments, these results indicate that people with an emotional connection, when acting in concert, are more influential than individuals acting alone. Perhaps not surprisingly, groups produce far stronger RNG results than either individuals or couples, even when the group members are unaware of the RNGs and therefore cannot intend to influence their output. For example, when merely the attention of groups has been captured by high-interest public events, RNG effects have been three times greater than when individuals have demonstrated an intentional influence on RNG machines. During certain widely televised events that have captured mass attention, such as Princess Diana's death and the 9/11 tragedies, the combined output of sixty RNGs around the world significantly deviated from chance. For example, on October 3, 1995, the day that the verdict was read in the O.J. Simpson murder trial, Radin, Nelson, and University of Amsterdam professor Dick Bierman decided to run RNGs in each of their labs to test their hypothesis that something significant would happen in the field of collective consciousness. An analysis of their combined results clearly confirmed that hypothesis. As Radin describes it in The Conscious Universe, Around the time that the TV preshows began, at 9:00 AM Pacific Time, an unexpected degree of order appeared in all the RNGs. This soon declined back to random behavior until about 10:00 AM, which is when the verdict was supposed to be announced. A few minutes later, the order in all five RNGs suddenly peaked to its highest point in the two hours of recorded data precisely when the court clerk read the verdict. These results suggest that millions of minds, when united with a specific focus, can have a powerful effect on the material world, mysteriously influencing normally random physical systems toward higher degrees of order. Just as we can create order in physical systems through focused attention or intention, a number of experiments have suggested that two or more people can create synchronization or coherence between their nervous systems. For example, in research funded by the Institute of Noetic Sciences and others, Marilyn Schlitz and William Braud have shown that individuals who are calm and relaxed can intentionally reduce the anxiety of others in distant places, and that people consciously focusing their attention can help others in remote locations to concentrate their wandering minds. In another arenadistance healing67 percent of 150 controlled studies have shown that individuals and groups can use intention, relaxation, enhanced concentration, visualization,

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The Revolutionarys Voice; 23rd Edition February 18th, 2012

and what is described as a request to a healing force greater than themselves, to heal others to a statistically significant degree. Healing effects and tele-prehension have increased when participants felt empathy and rapport or when they meditated together. On community, societal, and even worldwide levels, more than twenty experiments, published in respected scientific journals, have demonstrated that Transcendental Meditation groups representing one percent of a target population have caused significant improvements in measures of quality of life and physical and mental health and have reduced crime, accidents, conflict, and war in the entire target population, apparently by reducing stress in the collective psyche. These and other studies provide strong evidence that we can develop and work with our collective consciousness to produce a number of important interpersonal, organizational, and social benefitsfrom increased empathy, understanding, and respect to enhanced health, cooperation, and creative collaboration. In our increasingly diverse workplaces, communities, and global institutions, where we are challenged by extremely complex and urgent problems, cultivating these capacities will not only promote the common good but also could ensure our survival.

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The Revolutionarys Voice; 23rd Edition February 18th, 2012

The Dig
The Future of Organized Labor in the U.S.
Reinventing Trade Unionism for the 21st Century
By Bill Fletcher Jr., Kate Bronfenbrenner and Donna Dewitt, From The Monthly Review http://monthlyreview.org/commentary/the-future-of-organized-labor-in-the-u-s
The essence of trade unionism is social uplift. The labor movement has been the haven for the dispossessed, the despised the neglected, the downtrodden, the poor.A. Philip Randolph An important debate has commenced within the ranks of organized labor regarding the future of the movement. From our experience we know that the top-to-bottom approach to revitalizing workers organizations will not foster meaningful membership participation and support. The debate must be joined by rank-and-file union members and leaders, other labor activists, scholars and the broad array of supporters of trade unionism. It must be open, frank and constructive, recognizing that we all have a stake in the outcome of these discussions. The following represents the collective opinion of several individuals from different sections of the labor movement who have joined together to let our voices be heard as the debate unfolds. Our intervention in this debate is at least partly motivated by our sense that the concerns and perspectives of people of color and women are all but absent in these discussions about labors future. The irony, of course, is that our respective demographic groups represent the future of organized labor in the USA, if organized labor is to have a future at all. The economic and political changes over the last thirty years both in the USA as well as globally, have resulted in a far more hostile environment for labor unions specifically and for working people generally. In this context, contrary to the spirit of A. Philip Randolphs notion that the essence of trade unionism is social uplift, the trade union movement is rarely looked to today as a voice of progress and innovation, or a consistent ally of progressive social movements. It is not just that organized labor declined as a percentage of the workforce since 1955; or that it carried out unfocused growth, evolving eventually into no growth; or that it emphasized servicing its current members rather than planting the seeds for future growth. It is that organized labor looks at itself as separate and apart from the rest of the working class, and, for that matter, does not see itself as the champion of workers and their communities, but rather a mechanism for advancing the interests of those it currently represents. For organized labor in the USA, the path away from oblivion must begin with the recognition of the vastly different situation that the working class faces in the early 21st century from what existed even twenty years ago. Time and space do not permit an exhaustive examination of all of these changes. Much has been written about it in various journals and books. Suffice to say that the growth of neoliberal globalization1 has represented a dramatic change in the approach of capitalism toward both the working class as well as towards society as a whole. Multi-national corporations and their allies have concluded that the terms of any social partnership must be altered in their fundamentals at the expense of working people. This viewneo-liberalism has grown in importance, coming to dominate the thinking of both major US political parties and has guided the shift to the political Right in the ruling circles of the USA. The current situation necessitates a new approach to strategy, tactics, and fundamentally, the vision of trade unionism. This is more than the production of new mission statements, but instead rests on the necessity to rethink the relationship of the union to its members, to the employer(s), to government, to US society as a whole, and to the larger global village. Can the union, we must ask, as an institution and as a representative of a larger movement, rise to the challenge of being a means to confront injustice, or is the union condemned to be solely an institutional mechanism to lessen the pain of contemporary capitalism on those fortunate to be members of organized labor? In this context, we propose the following: 1. There is a need for a vision that includes, but is not limited to organizing the unorganized: Missing from the current debate is a clear statement as to what the trade union movement actually believes. Of course there must be massive organizing of the unorganized. But a sole focus demonstrates the same inflexibly that reformers are attempting to root out. In spite of the qualified success of the organize-above-all-else approach, it is still being touted as the panacea to what ails the trade union movement. As essential as is organizing, alone it is not enough. When the Congress of Industrial Organizations began to come into existence (with the formation, first, of the AFLs Committee on Industrial Organization) in 1935, there was a very different social, economic, and political climate. Yet this situation is frequently cited, ahistorically it should be noted, as a parallel to the moment in which we find ourselves. While there are critical matters relative to the structure of unions, the AFL-CIO and organized labor as a whole that must be settled, these are not the issues which should be the starting point for any debate.2 Why, we must ask, should millions of unorganized workers potentially sacrifice so much in order to join or form unions? Why should millions of potential allies of organized labor spend any amount of time away from their own core issues, to unite with the demands of organized labor? What does a reconstructed, if not reborn, trade union movement have to say to people of color and women that goes beyond the tried and true rhetoric of the past? What are unions doing about the increasing degradation of work, i.e., that even unionized workers are working harder, faster and longer than in the past, providing us less free time and increasing the level of stress on individuals, families and friendship circles? If these questions are not answered organized labor will not serve as a beacon of attraction to the millions of non-union workers in the USA, and, in fact, the rebirth of organized labor will be still-born. 2. The union movement must be unapologetically pro-public sector and propublic service: Over the years, since the emergence of neo-liberalism, with the corresponding rejection of positive government intervention in the economy as the dominant philosophy directing globalization, the US trade union movement has addressed the symptoms rather than the disease. Thus, it has spoken out against privatization, cuts in social services, and right-wing tax proposals that reduce taxes on the wealthy and deceive the rest of us. This is all important, but organized labor has not tied this all together into a package. A clear example of this was the failure of much of organized labor to dissect the actual politics and economics of the Clinton administration, as it advanced institutions like the World Trade Organization, and supported notions of free trade, all of which undermined (and continues to undermine) the notion of the public sphere. Organized labor in the USA must study the current economic and political situation, and understand that there is no space for a compromise with any view that rejects positive government intervention in the economy. Organized labor must also refuse to support individuals and/or organizations who believe that progress and social justice can be achieved

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by subordinating workers interests to those of unregulated businesses and financiers. 3. The union movement must stand for the expansion of democracy: Organized labor must stand AND fight for an expansion of democracy beyond the limits of formal legality. It must be the champion of the fight against racism, sexism, hetero-sexism, xenophobia, religious bias, and other forms of intolerance. In the current national and international situation, democracy is under attack. Intolerance and irrationalism seem to be gaining the upper hand in the relations among people. Minorities are being excluded if not exterminated as a growing competition for diminishing resources takes place at precisely the same moment that immense amounts of wealth are being accumulated by the few. Civil liberties are under assault. In the name of opposing terrorism, governments, including our own, are passing legislation that restricts the right to organize and protest. Those challenging the status quo are often viewed with a jaundiced eye, with the assumption being that they are insufficiently loyal and patriotic. Discussions are being shut down in the name of fighting the common enemy, depending on who that enemy happens to be at any one point. Elections are becoming a sham. In the USA the Electoral College effectively disenfranchises millions of voters, particularly in the South, and while the US demands the practice of one-person/one-vote internationally, at the federal level we have nothing approximating this. Compounding this problem is the evolution of gerrymandering into the equivalent of a science and the creation of socalled safe electoral districts, where opposition can be counted out. The piece de resistance is election fraud, always part of the US political environment, but now upgraded with the use of a combination of computer technology and voter intimidation, particularly directed at communities of color. Furthermore, millions of felons who are primarily people of color are disenfranchised. The union movement must engage in struggles against these various undemocratic practices and move us away from a fortress-like society. The future of the right to join or form trade unions is integrally linked to the future of democracy in the USA. In its own obvious interests, the union movement must unite the demand for the right to form or join unionsthe right to organizewith the overall battle for democracy. To be credible champions of democracy the union movement must fight for democracy within its own ranks. If our members believe that they have no control over the future of their own organizations, or are inadequately represented in them then we have failed. We will have created paternalistic organizations rather than organizations of the workers themselves. 4. We must have a U.S. union movement structure suited to advancing organizing of the unorganized workers: The question of the shape and structure of the US union movement cannot be driven by a concern about jobs for the officers and staffs of the current unions. It must be driven by the need to organize into unions the millions of unorganized workers who wish to join or form unions. It must provide legitimate representational structures for people of color and women, and ensure that these structures make-up a significant segment of the leadership of the trade union movement that reflects the diversity and aspirations of its membership. This means not only the inclusion of AFL-CIO constituency groups, but also an organized and active process of recruiting new delegates and leaders representative of the workforce in their respective industries, and the creation of opportunities for younger trade unionists to learn and test their own leadership abilities. The structure of organized labor must orient unions toward their core jurisdictions i.e., toward their regional, occupational or industrial base. The logic of this is to be found in the matter of expertise and efficiency. Those unions that have displayed a commitment to a particular industry, occupation and/or region will tend to be more studied in those arenas and better situated to strengthen the industrial power of the members. Unions should only enter into new industrial sectors, occupations or regions if and when they are prepared to make the LONGTERM commitment to that sector and have demonstrated a willingness to work with other unions in that same sector or region. 5. The union movement must reshape its political program to focus on the needs of the working class: The union movement has made the repeated mistake of assuming that it can tell its members how to vote, and that the Democratic Party structure will automatically represent their interest. What we promote as political education is rarely more than campaign publicity. The promise of the 1995 reform movement was for a different political program. We need to develop popular economic and political education programs that speak to where our members are socially and politically. Such a program should aim to create a framework through which they may begin to understand the political, economic and social issues of our times. We must organize our members politically into popular organizations which are community-centered, concerned with politics, sensitive to different social groupings, and able to branch out into the community where they, their families and friends can find a means to participate in a relevant political practice. This means the creation of electoral political organizations at the grassroots level that can engage in the arduous but necessary fight for power for working people. PACs and 527s cannot replace popular, mass-based organizations. 6. The union movement must organize in the South and Southwest: The November 2004 elections demonstrate two interesting things. First, there is a direct (though not exclusive) relationship between union membership and ones tending to vote in ones own economic interests. Two, the Black and Latino vote in the South and the Southwest while critical at the local, regional and state level, has not had the same effect in Presidential races due to the undemocratic nature of the Electoral College. The union movement has put off organizing the South and the Southwest for too long. Successes in organizing the South and the Southwest will serve as a bridgehead for progressive politics in those regions, and allow the union movement to utilize these bases in order to advance a progressive agenda and build broader political support. Thus, resources need to be put into organizing that assumes that organizing is a long-term, strategic process rather than an event or action. Any organizing in these regions must appreciate that an inability to embrace the African American and Chicano social movements respectively will result in disappointment, if not failure. Simply focusing union attention on the South and the Southwest, while an advance over what most unions are doing today, is insufficient. The unionizing of these regions must be connected to the fight for political power for traditionally disenfranchised groups. During the 1988 Presidential campaign, the Rev. Jesse Jackson put it best: In one hand, you have a union card; in the other hand, you have a voting card. 7. State federations and central labor councils must be democratic, inclusive, young and audacious: Too many central labor councils and state federations, due to their lack of representation, are disconnected from the realities that their members face, not to mention, the realities faced by the bulk of the working class. Central labor councils and state federations must represent strategic centers for local political action, coalition-building, member education and inter-union support. If any of this is to work, then central labor councils and state federations must look more like their memberships. Just as with the national AFL-CIO, the local and state bodies must provide legitimate representational structures for people of color and women. The local and state bodies must ensure that these structures make-up a significant segment of the leadership of the trade union movement thereby reflecting the diversity and aspirations of its membership. This means not only the inclusion of AFL-CIO constituency groups, but an organized and active process of recruiting new delegates and leaders representative of the workforce in their respective industries, and the creation of opportunities for younger trade unionists to learn and test their own leadership abilities. 8. The union movement needs real membership education: It is presumptuous to think that either organized and unorganized workers will blindly follow or adhere to a certain point-of-view without providing them with a coherent and up-to-scale mechanism by which they can access information. Without, however, the necessary resources for a

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significant, member-focused educational effort, it will be impossible to provide union members a different vision of trade unionism, achieve their loyalty, or motivate them. Education not only means imparting information, but dialogue and debate as well. A reinvigorated labor movement needs an integrated education program that joins together an examination of domestic and international economics, as well as a critical look at US foreign policy. In addition, such education program must foster the development of a framework for advancing discussions about class, race, gender, capitalism and the fight for power for working people. As such, the notion that organizing can take place in the absence of education or that education is somehow a distraction or a draw away from organizing is absurd. Paying attention to the education of our base is a profound sign of respect. Calls for mobilization in the absence of a coherent and unified framework are disempowering, irrespective of the intentions, and will not invoke worker militancy or support. 9. The US union movement must build both global union partnerships and solidarity with others fighting global injustice: The US trade union movement has made great advances away from the Cold War trade unionism of the past. In spite of these advances, the US trade union movement continues to be eyed with some level of suspicion by our friends beyond our borders, in part because of a frequent perception that we are engaged in protectionism. Excellent steps at union-to-union cooperation have, however, been taking place, but these must go much further. A platform for the transformation of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and the global union federations/international trade union secretariats must be advanced, and should genuinely strengthen the role of unions from the global South (Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America). The US union movement must adopt an approach that encourages union-to-union relationships and worker-to-worker exchanges, up to and including the reform and/or creation of new international labor bodies that support real solidarity. In addition, the US union movement must develop means and mechanisms for providing concrete support to union movements and other progressive movements involved in the struggle for global justice. Such a stand must represent resistance to the race to the bottom being conducted by global capitalism against workers in all countries. We can not engage in or be perceived to be engaging in selective international solidarity, i.e., solidarity only when it is in defense of US workers and our issues. Genuine international solidarity will also necessarily involve a willingness, on the part of the US trade union movement, to challenge US foreign policy when it undermines national self-determination and human rights. We, who sign this document, do so with an interest in advancing discussion and debate within the union movement. In alphabetical order, Kate Bronfenbrenner, Director of Labor Education Research, Cornell University* Donna Dewitt, President, South Carolina AFL-CIO* Bill Fletcher, Jr., President, TransAfrica Forum* Patricia Ann Ford, former Executive Vice President, Service Employees International Union* Fernando Gapasin, President of the Central Oregon Labor Council and President of AFSCME 1108* Elena Herrada, President, United Catering, Restaurant & Hotel Workers, Local 1064, RWDSU* Robert Phillips, policy analyst Steven C. Pitts, Ph.D. UC Berkeley* Katie Quan, UC Berkeley* Ken Riley, President, Local 1422, International Longshoremens Association* Marchel Smiley, National President AFRAM-SEIU* *Organizational affiliation for identification only Notes 1. Neo-liberal globalization refers to an approach toward the economy, and specifically the reorganization of global capitalism that privileges individual gain, privatization, and the elimination of the public sphere as the social values of society. Globalization refers to the reorganization of global capitalism and does not refer to the notion of a global economy. Capitalism has always been a global system. The Australian labor movement, in response to its own crises, began a process of union mergers and consolidations with the hope that this would advance or aid growth. Several studies have indicated that it has not played a role in stopping the decline of their labor movement.

Libya and the Decline of the Petrodollar System

By Peter Dale Scott, From the Asia Times
The present campaign by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) against Muammar Gaddafi in Libya has given rise to great confusion, both among those waging this ineffective campaign and among those observing it. Many whose opinions I normally respect see this as a necessary war against a villain - though some choose to see Gaddafi as the villain, and others point to US President Barack Obama. My own take on this war, on the other hand, is that it is both ill-conceived and dangerous - a threat to the interests of Libyans, Americans, the Middle East and conceivably the entire world. Beneath the professed concern about the safety of Libyan civilians lies a deeper concern that is barely acknowledged: the West's defense of the present global petrodollar economy, now in decline. The confusion in Washington, matched by the absence of discussion of an overriding strategic motive for American involvement, is symptomatic of the fact that the American century is ending, and ending in a way that is both predictable in the long run, and simultaneously erratic and out of control in its details. Confusion in Washington and in NATO With respect to Libya's upheaval itself, opinions in Washington range from that of Republican Senator John McCain, who has allegedly called on NATO to provide "every apparent means of assistance, minus ground troops" in overthrowing Gaddafi, [1] to Republican Congressman Mike Rogers, who has expressed deep concern about even passing out arms to a group of fighters we do not know well. [2] We have seen the same confusion throughout the Middle East. In Egypt, a coalition of nongovernmental elements helped prepare for the nonviolent revolution in that country, while former US ambassador Frank Wisner, Jr, flew to Egypt to persuade Hosni Mubarak to cling to power. Meanwhile, in countries that used to be of major interest to the United States, like Jordan and Yemen, it is hard to discern any coherent American policy at all. In NATO, too, there is confusion that occasionally threatens to break into open discord. Of the 28 NATO members, only 14 are involved at all in the Libyan campaign, and only six are involved in the air war. Of these, only three countries - the US, Britain, and France are offering tactical air support to the rebels on the ground. When many NATO countries froze the bank accounts of Gaddafi and his immediate supporters, the US, in an unpublicized and dubious move, froze the entire $30 billion of Libyan government funds to which it has access. (Of this, more later.) Germany, the most powerful NATO nation after America, abstained on the UN Security Council resolution, and its foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, has since said, "We will not see a military solution, but a political solution." [3] Such chaos would have been unthinkable in the high period of US dominance. Obama

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appears paralyzed by the gap between his declared objective - the removal of Gaddafi from power - and the means available to him, given the nation's costly involvement in two wars, and his domestic priorities. To understand America's and NATO's confusion over Libya, one must look at other phenomena: rning of an imminent downgrade of the US credit rating; to over $1,500 an ounce; federal and state deficits and what to do about them In the midst of the Libyan challenge to what remains of American hegemony, and in part as a direct consequence of America's confused strategy in Libya, the price of oil has hit $112 a barrel. This price increase threatens to slow or even reverse America's faltering economic recovery, and demonstrates one of the many ways in which the Libyan war is not serving American national interests. Confusion about Libya has been evident in Washington from the outset, particularly since Secretary of State Hillary Clinton advocated a no-fly policy. President Obama said he wanted it as an option, and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates warned against it. [4] The result has been a series of interim measures, during which Obama has justified a limited US response by pointing to America's demanding commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet with a stalemate prevailing in Libya itself, a series of further gradual escalations are being contemplated, from the provision of arms, funds, and advisers to the rebels, to the introduction of mercenaries or even foreign troops. The American scenario begins to look more and more like Vietnam, where the war also began modestly with the introduction of covert operators followed by military advisers. I have to confess that on March 17 I myself was of two minds about UN Security Council 1973, which ostensibly established a no-fly zone in Libya for the protection of civilians. But since then it has become apparent that the threat to rebels from Gaddafi's troops and rhetoric was in fact far less than was perceived at the time. To quote Professor Alan J Kuperman, ... President Barack Obama grossly exaggerated the humanitarian threat to justify military action in Libya. The president claimed that intervention was necessary to prevent a "bloodbath'' in Benghazi, Libya's second-largest city and last rebel stronghold. But Human Rights Watch has released data on Misurata, the next-biggest city in Libya and scene of protracted fighting, revealing that Moammar Khadafy [Gaddafi] is not deliberately massacring civilians but rather narrowly targeting the armed rebels who fight against his government. Misurata's population is roughly 400,000. In nearly two months of war, only 257 people - including combatants - have died there. Of the 949 wounded, only 22 - less than 3% are women... Nor did Khadafy ever threaten civilian massacre in Benghazi, as Obama alleged. The "no mercy'' warning, of March 17, targeted rebels only, as reported by The New York Times, which noted that Libya's leader promised amnesty for those "who throw their weapons away". Khadafy even offered the rebels an escape route and open border to Egypt, to avoid a fight "to the bitter end.'' [5]. The record of ongoing US military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan suggests that we should expect a heavy human toll if the current stalemate in Libya either continues or escalates further. The role in this war of oil and financial interests In American War Machine, I wrote how: By a seemingly inevitable dialectic, ... prosperity in some major states fostered expansion, and expansion in dominant states created increasing income disparity. [6] In this process the dominant state itself was changed, as its public services were progressively impoverished, in order to strengthen security arrangements benefiting a few while oppressing many. [7] Thus, for many years the foreign affairs of England in Asia came to be conducted in large part by the East India Company... Similarly, the American company Aramco, representing a consortium of the oil majors Esso, Mobil, Socal, and Texaco, conducted its own foreign policy in Arabia, with private connections to the CIA and FBI. [8] ... In this way Britain and America inherited policies that, when adopted by the metropolitan states, became inimical to public order and safety. [9] . In the final stages of hegemonic power, one sees more and more naked intervention for narrow interests, abandoning earlier efforts towards creating stable international institutions. Consider the role of the conspiratorial Jameson Raid into the South African Boer Republic in late 1895, a raid devised to further the economic interests of Cecil Rhodes, which helped to induce Britain's Second Boer War. [10] Or consider the AngloFrench conspiracy with Israel in 1956, in an absurd vain attempt to retain control of the Suez Canal. Then consider the lobbying efforts of the oil majors as factors in the US war in Vietnam (1961), Afghanistan (2001), and Iraq (2003). [11] Although the role of oil companies in America's Libyan involvement remains obscure, it is a virtual certainty that former vice president Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force Meetings discussed not just Iraq's but Libya's underexplored oil reserves, estimated to be around 41 billion barrels, or about a third of Iraq's. [12] Afterwards, some in Washington expected a swift victory in Iraq would be followed by similar US attacks on Libya and Iran. General Wesley Clark told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now four years ago that soon after 9/11 a general in the Pentagon informed him that several countries would be attacked by the US military. The list included Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. [13] In May 2003, John Gibson, chief executive of Halliburton's Energy Service Group, told International Oil Daily in an interview, "We hope Iraq will be the first domino and that Libya and Iran will follow. We don't like being kept out of markets because it gives our competitors an unfair advantage." [14] It is also a matter of public record that the United Nations no-fly resolution 1973 of March 17 followed shortly on Gaddafi's public threat of March 2 to throw Western oil companies out of Libya, and his invitation on March 14 to Chinese, Russian, and Indian firms to produce Libyan oil in their place. [15] Significantly, China, Russia, and India (joined by their BRICS ally Brazil), all abstained on UN Resolution 1973. The issue of oil is closely intertwined with that of the dollar because the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency depends largely on the decision of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to denominate the dollar as the currency for OPEC oil purchases. Today's petrodollar economy dates back to two secret agreements with the Saudis in the 1970s for the recycling of petrodollars back into the US economy. The first of these deals assured a special and on-going Saudi stake in the health of the US dollar; the second secured continuing Saudi support for the pricing of all OPEC oil in dollars. These two deals assured that the US economy would not be impoverished by OPEC oil price hikes. Since then the heaviest burden has been borne instead by the economies of less-developed countries, which need to purchase dollars for their oil supplies. [16] As Ellen Brown has pointed out, first Iraq and then Libya decided to challenge the petrodollar system and stop selling all their oil for dollars, shortly before each country was attacked. Kenneth Schortgen Jr, writing on Examiner.com, noted that "[s]ix months before the US moved into Iraq to take down Saddam Hussein, the oil nation had made the move to accept euros instead of dollars for oil, and this became a threat to the global dominance of the dollar as the reserve currency, and its dominion as the petrodollar...". According to a Russian article titled "Bombing of Libya - Punishment for Qaddafi for His Attempt to Refuse US Dollar," Qaddafi [Gaddafi] made a similarly bold move: he initiated a movement to refuse the dollar and the euro, and called on Arab and African nations to use a new currency instead, the gold dinar. Qaddafi suggested establishing a united African continent, with its 200 million people using this single currency. ... The initiative was viewed negatively by the USA and the European Union, with French President Nicolas Sarkozy calling Libya a threat to the financial security of mankind; but Qaddafi continued his push for the creation of a united Africa. And that brings us back to the puzzle of the Libyan central bank. In an article posted on the Market Oracle, Eric Encina observed: One seldom mentioned fact by Western politicians and media pundits: the Central Bank

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of Libya is 100% State Owned. ... Currently, the Libyan government creates its own money, the Libyan Dinar, through the facilities of its own central bank. Few can argue that Libya is a sovereign nation with its own great resources, able to sustain its own economic destiny. One major problem for globalist banking cartels is that in order to do business with Libya, they must go through the Libyan Central Bank and its national currency, a place where they have absolutely zero dominion or power-broking ability. Hence, taking down the Central Bank of Libya (CBL) may not appear in the speeches of Obama, [UK Prime Minister David] Cameron and Sarkozy but this is certainly at the top of the globalist agenda for absorbing Libya into its hive of compliant nations.17 Libya not only has oil. According to the IMF [International Monetary Fund], its central bank has nearly 144 tons of gold in its vaults. With that sort of asset base, who needs the BIS [Bank of International Settlements], the IMF and their rules. [18] Gaddafi's recent proposal to introduce a gold dinar for Africa revives the notion of an Islamic gold dinar floated in 2003 by then Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, as well as by some Islamist movements. [19] The notion, which contravenes IMF rules and is designed to bypass them, has had trouble getting started. But today the countries stocking more and more gold rather than dollars include not just Libya and Iran, but also China, Russia, and India. [20] arguably illegal and certainly conspiratorial seizure of Iranian assets in 1979 on behalf of the threatened Chase Manhattan Bank. [24] The consequences of the $30 billion freeze for Africa, as well as for Libya, have been spelled out by an African observer: The US$30 billion frozen by Mr Obama belong to the Libyan Central Bank and had been earmarked as the Libyan contribution to three key projects which would add the finishing touches to the African federation - the African Investment Bank in Syrte, Libya, the establishment in 2011 of the African Monetary Fund to be based in Yaounde with a US$42 billion capital fund and the Abuja-based African Central Bank in Nigeria which when it starts printing African money will ring the death knell for the CFA franc [the name of two currencies used in Africa which are guaranteed by the French treasury] through which Paris has been able to maintain its hold on some African countries for the last 50 years. It is easy to understand the French wrath against Gaddafi. [25] This same observer spells out her reasons for believing that Gaddafi's plans for Africa have been more benign than the West's: It began in 1992, when 45 African nations established RASCOM (Regional African Satellite Communication Organization) so that Africa would have its own satellite and slash communication costs in the continent. This was a time when phone calls to and from Africa were the most expensive in the world because of the annual US$500 million fee pocketed by Europe for the use of its satellites like Intelsat The French stake in terminating Gaddafi's for phone conversations, including those within African initiatives The initiative for the air attacks appears to have the same country. come initially from France, with early support An African satellite only costs one-time from Britain. If Gaddafi were to succeed in payment of US$400 million and the continent creating an African Union backed by Libya's no longer had to pay a US$500 million annual currency and gold reserves, France, still the lease. Which banker wouldn't finance such a predominant economic power in most of its project? But the problem remained - how can former Central African colonies, would be the slaves, seeking to free themselves from their chief loser. Indeed, a report from Dennis master's exploitation, ask the master's help to Kucinich in America has corroborated the claim achieve that freedom? Not surprisingly, the of Franco Bechis in Italy, transmitted by World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, VoltaireNet in France, that "plans to spark the the USA, Europe only made vague promises for Benghazi rebellion were initiated by French 14 years. Gaddafi put an end to these futile intelligence services in November 2010". [21] pleas to the western 'benefactors' with their If the idea to attack Libya originated with exorbitant interest rates. The Libyan guide put France, Obama moved swiftly to support French US$300 million on the table; the African plans to frustrate Gaddafi's African initiative Development Bank added US$50 million more with his unilateral declaration of a national and the West African Development Bank a emergency in order to freeze all of the Bank of further US$27 million - and that's how Africa Libya's $30 billion of funds to which America got its first communications satellite on 26 had access. (This was misleadingly reported in December 2007. [26] the US press as a freeze of the funds of "Colonel I am not in a position to corroborate all of Qaddafi, his children and family, and senior her claims. But, for these and other reasons, I members of the Libyan government." [22] But am persuaded that Western actions in Libya in fact the second section of Obama's decree have been designed to frustrate Gaddafi's plans explicitly targeted "All property and interests for an authentically post-colonial Africa, not of the Government of Libya, its agencies, just his threatened actions against the rebels in instrumentalities, and controlled entities, and Benghazi. the Central Bank of Libya." [23]) Conclusion While the US has actively used financial I conclude from all this confusion and weapons in recent years, the $30 billion seizure, misrepresentation that America is losing its "the largest amount ever to be frozen by a US ability to enforce and maintain peace, either by sanctions order", had one precedent, the itself or with its nominal allies. I would submit that, if only to stabilize and reduce oil prices, it is in America's best interest now to join with UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon and the Pope in pressing for an immediate cease-fire in Libya. Negotiating a cease-fire will certainly present problems, but the probable alternative to ending this conflict is the nightmare of watching it inexorably escalate. America has been there before, with tragic consequences. We do not want to see similar casualties incurred for the sake of an unjust petrodollar system whose days may be numbered anyway. At stake is not just America's relation to Libya, but to China. The whole of Africa is an area where the West and the BRIC countries will both be investing. A resource-hungry China alone is expected to invest on a scale of $50 billion a year by 2015, a figure (funded by America's trade deficit with China) which the West cannot match. [27] Whether East and West can coexist peacefully in Africa in the future will depend on the West learning to accept a gradual diminution of its influence there, without resorting to deceitful stratagems (reminiscent of the Anglo-French Suez stratagem of 1956) in order to maintain it. Previous transitions of global dominance have been marked by wars, by revolutions, or by both together. The final emergence through two world wars of American hegemony over British hegemony was a transition between two powers that were essentially allied, and culturally close. The whole world has an immense stake in ensuring that the difficult transition to a post-US hegemonic order will be achieved as peacefully as possible.
Notes: 1. "McCain calls for stronger NATO campaign," monstersandcritics.com, April 22, 2011, link. 2. Ed Hornick, "Arming Libyan Rebels: Should US Do It?" CNN, March 31, 2011. 3. "Countries Agree to Try to Transfer Some of Qaddafi's Assets to Libyan Rebels," New York Times, April 13, 2011, link. 4. "President Obama Wants Options as Pentagon Issues Warnings About Libyan No-Fly Zone," ABC News, March 3, 2011, link. Earlier, on February 25, Gates warned that the US should avoid future land wars like those it has fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, but should not forget the difficult lessons it has learned from those conflicts. "In my opinion, any future Defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should 'have his head examined,' as General MacArthur so delicately put it," Gates said in a speech to cadets at West Point" (Los Angeles Times, February 25, 2011, link). 5. Alan J. Kuperman, "False Pretense for War in Libya?" Boston Globe, April 14, 2011. 6. America's income disparity, as measured by its Gini coefficient, is now among the highest in the world, along with Brazil, Mexico, and China. See Phillips, Wealth and Democracy, 38, 103; Greg Palast, Armed Madhouse (New York: Dutton, 2006), 159. 7. This is the subject of my book The Road to 9/11, 4 9. 8. Anthony Cave Brown, Oil, God, and Gold (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), 213. 9. Peter Dale Scott, American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the

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Road to Afghanistan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 32. One could cite also the experience of the French Third Republic and the Banque de l'Indochine or the Netherlands and the Dutch East India Company. 10. Elizabeth Longford, Jameson's Raid: The Prelude to the Boer War (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982); The Jameson Raid: a centennial retrospective (Houghton, South Africa: Brenthurst Press, 1996). 11. Wikileak documents from October and November 2002 reveal that Washington was making deals with oil companies prior to the Iraq invasion, and that the British government lobbied on behalf of BP's being included in the deals (Paul Bignell, "Secret memos expose link between oil firms and invasion of Iraq," Independent (London), April 19, 2011). 12. Reuters, March 23, 2011. 13. Saman Mohammadi, "The Humanitarian Empire May Strike Syria Next, Followed By Lebanon And Iran," OpEdNews.com, March 31, 2011. 14. "Halliburton Eager for Work Across the Mideast," International Oil Daily, May 7, 2003. 15. "Gaddafi offers Libyan oil production to India, Russia, China," Agence France-Presse, March 14, 2011, link. 16. Peter Dale Scott, "Bush's Deep Reasons for War on Iraq: Oil, Petrodollars, and the OPEC Euro Question"; Peter Dale Scott, Drugs, Oil, and War (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 41-42: "From these developments emerged the twin phenomena, underlying 9/11, of triumphalist US unilateralism on the one hand, and global third-world indebtedness on the other. The secret deals increased US-Saudi interdependence at the expense of the international comity which had been the base for US prosperity since World War II." Cf. Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 37. 17. "Globalists Target 100% State Owned Central Bank of Libya." Link. 18. Ellen Brown, "Libya: All About Oil, or All About Banking," Reader Supported News, April 15, 2011, and Asia Times Online, April 14, 2011. 19. Peter Dale Scott, "Bush's Deep Reasons for War on Iraq: Oil, Petrodollars, and the OPEC Euro Question"; citing "Islamic Gold Dinar Will Minimize Dependency on US Dollar," Malaysian Times, April 19, 2003. 20. "Gold key to financing Gaddafi struggle," Financial Times, March 21, 2011. 21. Franco Bechis, "French plans to topple Gaddafi on track since last November," VoltaireNet, March 25, 2011. Cf. Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich, "November 2010 War Games: Southern Mistral' Air Attack against Dictatorship in a Fictitious Country called Southland,'" Global Research, April 15, 2011, link; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 19, 2011. 22. New York Times, February 27, 2011. 23. Executive Order of February 25, 2011, citing International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 US C. 1701 et seq.) (IEEPA), the National Emergencies Act (50 US C. 1701 et seq.) (NEA), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code, seizes all Libyan Govt assets, February 25, 2011, link. The authority granted to the President by the International Emergency Economic Powers Act "may only be exercised to deal with an unusual and extraordinary threat with respect to which a national emergency has been declared for purposes of this chapter and may not be exercised for any other purpose" (50 US C. 1701). 24. "Billions Of Libyan Assets Frozen," Tropic Post, March 8, 2011, link ("largest amount"); Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2007), 80-89 (Iranian assets). 25. "Letter from an African Woman, Not Libyan, On Qaddafi Contribution to Continent-wide African Progress , Oggetto: ASSOCIAZIONE CASA AFRICA LA LIBIA DI GHEDDAFI HA OFFERTO A TUTTA L'AFRICA LA PRIMA RIVOLUZIONE DEI TEMPI MODERNI," Vermont Commons, April 21, 2011, link. Cf. Manlio Dinucci, "Financial Heist of the Century: Confiscating Libya's Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWF)," Global Research, April 24, 2011, link. 26. Ibid. Cf. "The Inauguration of the African Satellite Control Center," Libya Times, September 28, 2009, link; Jean-Paul Pougala, "The lies behind the West's war on Libya," Pambazuka.org, April 14, 2011. 27. Leslie Hook, "China's future in Africa, after Libya," blogs.ft.com, March 4, 2011 ($50 billion). The U.S trade deficit with China in 2010 was $273 billion. Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat and English Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of Drugs Oil and War, The Road to 9/11, The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, and Deep Politics of War. His most recent book is American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection and the Road to Afghanistan.

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The Revolutionarys Voice; 23rd Edition February 18th, 2012

Real Money
Supply-Side Economics: Myths and Realities
By Jack Chambless; From The Valencia Forum
Continuation from Page 2 The Mellon Tax Cuts When the 16th amendment was ratified in 1913, creating the first federal income tax, Congress established a progressive income tax system that ranged from 1% on incomes between $20,000 and $50,000 to 7% on incomes over $500,000. In effect, only the richest Americans were exposed to income taxation. With the top marginal tax rate set at a level that did not distort incentives to create new jobs, the nations wealthiest individuals did not engage in wholesale income tax avoidance. That came later. During World War I the Wilson administration increased the top tax rate on the wealthy to 77%. Subsequently, the number of people with incomes over $300,000 dropped from 1,296 in 1916 to only 246 by 1921 and the demand for tax-exempt municipal bonds increased by threefold, costing the federal government millions of dollars in lost tax revenue. With capital investment being withdrawn from the economy at an alarming rate, treasury secretary Andrew Mellon remarked, It seems difficult for some to understand that high rates of taxation do not necessarily mean large revenue to the Government, and that more revenue may often be obtained by lower rates. What followed were The Revenue Acts of 1921, 1924 and 1926 that slashed tax rates from 77% to 25%. Tax rates on those earning under $4,000 were reduced from 4% to percent and those in the $4,000 $8,000 bracket saw their tax burden fall from 8% to 2%. From 1921 to 1929 total federal income tax receipts surged from $719 million to $1.16 billion an increase of more than 61% in a period that saw record economic growth with virtually nonexistent inflation. Moreover, the Progressives who argued that higher rates would lead to lower tax burdens on the wealthy were proven incorrect as the share of the tax burden paid by the rich climbed to 78% (from 44% in 1921). Hoover, FDR and Tax Evasion While it is popular in some circles to pin the Great Depression on excessive wealth accumulation, irrational exuberance in the stock and real estate markets and corporate greed, the reality is that the downturn in the 1930s stemmed in large part from ignoring the causes of the prosperous 1920s. When the stock market collapsed and the economy began to lose steam, the Hoover administration responded with a bewildering decision to increase the top marginal tax rate from 25% to 63%. Combined with the disastrous effects of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act which raised tariffs dramatically and helped plunge the world into a global downturn and Federal Reserve policies that actually tightened the money supply and increased interest rates, the Depression was more government-created than a result of excessive capitalism. During World War II, Franklin Roosevelt discovered first hand how tax rates impact incentives and economy activity. With the top tax rate already at 88.9%, FDR argued that all excess income should be allocated to the war effort. He called upon Congress to impose a top income tax rate of 100% on incomes over $25,000 per year. When Congress balked, FDR signed an executive order that created the 100% rate. Late in 1943, Internal Revenue Service officials notified Roosevelt that zero Americans had reported incomes of more than $25,000. Reaganomics The 1980s saw the emergence of what became known as Reaganomics, even though the ideas of the Reagan administration were almost two hundred years old. In 1803 the French economist, Jean Baptiste Say theorized that supply creates demand. Simply put, in any economic system, the only way long run economic growth can be sustained is by encouraging suppliers (i.e. entrepreneurs) to take the necessary risks associated with providing new products and services. If those incentives are present, more suppliers will appear and with them the jobs, income and tax revenue that is necessary for the system to survive. However, the U.S. government adopted a demand-side approach to economics from the Great Depression through the 1970s. Any disruption in economic activity was seen as evidence that there was not enough demand and thus, operating under the guidance of Keynesian economics, government simply increased spending in order to stimulate consumption. The results proved to be counterproductive by the 1970s as increased government expenditures ultimately proved to be inflationary. With inflation and unemployment increasing simultaneously for the first time in American history, economists, led by Arthur Laffer, began arguing for a return to the idea that new suppliers are more important than more demanders. With the election of Ronald Reagan who was in the 94% tax bracket in the 1950s - came a sharp turn towards supply-side fiscal policies. In 1981 and again in 1986 Reagan signed legislation that eventually lowered the total number of tax brackets from fourteen to two and the top income tax rate from the Kennedy-era 70% to 28%. Reagan repeatedly claimed that by lowering rates across the board, the incentives to save, invest and spend would increase. With the exception of the Federal Reserve Bank induced recession of 1982, the U.S. economy expanded for the longest period of time in peacetime history. Total federal tax receipts increased from $599 billion in 1981 to $991 billion in 1989. The nations unemployment rate fell from 10.8% in 1982 to 5.0% in 1989. Keynesian economists argued that Reagans tax cuts would stimulate demand more than supply and thus trigger inflationary pressure. The opposite occurred. Inflation was running at 10.3 % in 1981. With massive gains in productivity, labor force participation rates and new technological investments, the nations aggregate supply increased at a rate that brought inflation down to 1.9% by 1986 the year Reagans last tax cut was passed. While the Reagan tax cuts represented smaller cuts as a percentage of the economy than Kennedys rate cuts, Democrats during and after the 1980s argued that rich people gained at the expense of the poor. Here again, the data does not line up with the conventional wisdom. According to the IRS, The share of income taxes paid by the top 10% of tax earners climbed to 57% in 1988 from 48% in 1981. The top 1% saw their share of the tax bill rise to 28% in 1988 from 18% in 1981. As it turns out, supply-side economics also helped the middle class and the poor. According to the Federal Reserve Bank, while people earning more than $50,000 saw a gain in net wealth of 6.6%, people earning $30,000-$50,000 realized an increase in net wealth of 27.7%. Families with incomes in the $20,000 range gained 28.9% and those earning $19,999 and under had a gain in net wealth of 21.1%. Meanwhile, the Decade of Greed gave us a transfer of wealth, in the form of charity, of 5.1% a year, compared with a rate of 3.5% over the previous 25 years. Charitable giving increased faster than jewelry purchases, beauty parlor and health club spending and consumer debt. The Bush/Clinton Tax Hikes In 1980 candidate George H.W. Bush called Reagans supply-side proposals, Voo-Doo economics. In 1990, President Bush proved that he was not convinced of the merits of supply-side economics when he increased income taxes during the outset of the 1990-91 recession. His tax increase was designed to bring down the bloated federal budget deficit, the results did not work out as he and Congress intended. While the deficit increased from $221 billion in 1990 to $269 billion in 1991 and a record $290 billion in 1992, Mr. Bush did not even get to claim that the rich paid for his tax hike. The top income tax rate increased from 28% to 31% in 1990. On July 7, 1993 The Wall Street Journal published the data on what the rich did with the tax hike. Of course, they called their accountants and instructed them to look for ways to lighten their tax load. In 1990 wealthy

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Americans paid $106.1 billion in taxes. In 1991 they paid $99.6 billion. Opponents of supply-side tax policy point out and accurately so that the 1990s broke the record set in the 1980s for economic growth and that tax revenues increased every year until surpluses were once again being accumulated. Of course all of this happened during a time when Bill Clinton increased the top marginal tax rate from 31% to 39.6% in 1993. Why did the Clinton tax hike seemingly create more revenue? It is very simple. In 1986 Congress passed, and Reagan signed, legislation that increased the capital gains tax to 28%. Immediately, a drag on capital formation threatened to slow the progress the Reagan administration had made in boosting aggregate supply. In 1997 President Clinton signed legislation that cut the capital gains tax rates to 20%. In addition, Mr. Clinton helped eliminate the capital gains tax on many home purchases, launched the widely successful Roth IRA and managed to oversee a level of budgetary discipline that kept federal spending from rising at a rate that would damage private sector incentives. While many economists predicted that the capital gains tax reductions would lead to a loss of $50 billion in revenue over five years, the reality was an increase in capital gains tax revenue of over $100 billion. By contrast, the Clinton personal income tax increase was expected to raise $241 billion but raised only a third of that figure. Clinton benefited from the ongoing economic boom launched during the 1980s, as well as reductions in the federal funds rate from 9% to 3% and post-Cold War cuts in military spending, but he also helped prolong the boom by adopting enough of the supply-side mantle to help offset the deleterious effects of his less effective income tax policies. Where We Stand Now During his first term in office, George W. Bush stunned traditional supply-siders by saying, I am a Keynesian and a Supply-Sider. While it would seem to be a totally inconsistent stance his policies have certainly lined up on the side of demand and supply-side expansionism. The top marginal income tax rate has fallen from the 39.6% rate to 35%. In addition, IRS data now shows that the bottom 50% of income earners thanks to expanded tax credits and lower rates now pay only 4% of the nations total tax bill, while the top 5% of taxpayers pay over 54% of all the revenue used by the federal government. While federal spending, adjusted for inflation, actually fell by .7 percent during Clintons first term, the Keynesian side of Bush managed to usher in a 21 percent increase in spending, even when factoring out the war in Iraq and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Therein lies the problem. Economic history shows that sustained deficits are not only inflationary but also tend to drive up interest rates and damage the economy. If spending does not get under control during the next three years the next administration might opt to undo the Bush tax cuts altogether. The record from last century clearly shows what a mistake that would be.

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The Revolutionarys Voice; 23rd Edition February 18th, 2012

As The World Burns

Officials Wake Up to Peak Oil Part 1 and 2
April 2nd and 16th, 2010; By Chris Nelder, From Energy and Capital When I began writing about peak oil professionally in 2006, it was generally considered a tinfoil hat theory. The notion that oil production might peak around 2012 (plus or minus) was only taken seriously by a few analysts who were considered extremely pessimistic. Official forecasts had no cognizance of it whatsoever. All were confident that oil supply would continue to grow steadily to 130 million barrels per day (mbpd) and beyond, at prices that would be considered astoundingly cheap by today's standards. Oil companies rarely mentioned peak oil, and when they did, it was in a casually dismissive way. But as time marched on, the cornucopian arguments fell one by one. My longtime readers have seen the story unfold, but for the benefit of new readers, here's a quick summary... Part 1 http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/the-end-of-peak-oil-denial/1111 Part 2 http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/governments-peak-oil-part-2/1122 Unconventional production from oil shale the government intended to develop an action Part 1: The End of Peak Oil Denial When I began writing about peak oil and tar sands failed to grow as expected, as plan to contend with a near-term peak, and to professionally in 2006, it was generally producers shied away from high-cost, low"calm rising fears over peak oil." considered a tinfoil hat theory. The notion that production projects. Veteran peak oil analyst and taskforce oil production might peak around 2012 (plus or The International Energy Agency (IEA) member Jeremy Leggett explained: minus) was only taken seriously by a few finally included the depletion of mature fields in "Government has gone from the BP position analysts who were considered extremely its analysis, and became increasingly shrill in its '40 years of supply left, the price mechanism pessimistic. warnings about future supply. works, no need to worry' to 'crikey'." He Official forecasts had no cognizance of it A few current and former oil industry urged the assembly to properly assess the risks whatsoever. All were confident that oil supply executives began making public statements of peak oil, and to immediately begin preparing would continue to grow steadily to 130 million about the diminishing prospects for new supply, for the end of globalization and an era of oil barrels per day (mbpd) and beyond, at prices and a few even acknowledged that it would be shortages in the West. that would be considered astoundingly cheap by hard to increase production much beyond According to reports from attendees, the today's standards. Oil companies rarely current levels. summit yielded some important conclusions: mentioned peak oil, and when they did, it was in Then high oil prices proved intolerable to Peak oil is either here, or close a casually dismissive way. an economy stretched thin by the bursting of the enough. But as time marched on, the cornucopian bubbles in the real estate and financial sectors. Prices will have to go higher as arguments fell one by one. My longtime readers Yet official recognition of the peak oil demand outstrips supply. have seen the story unfold, but for the benefit of threat remained muted, couched in warnings Governments will be forced to new readers, here's a quick summary... about "adequate investment" and blithe intervene to maintain critical levels of assertions that demand would soon peak, Military's Latest Energy Report Will Give oil supply, and limit volatility. averting any supply shortage. You the Willies Rationing measures may be Inside, they confess a shocking truth... All that seems to have changed in the last unavoidable. without any new developments, we only have month. A sudden deluge of reports and summit Electrification of transport must be 16 months of oil left! meetings suggest that the oil industry and pursued in order to reduce demand. Before the media catches wind and panic energy officials are now taking peak oil very Communities will need to work drives the price of oil through the roof, I'll show seriously indeed. quickly to reorganize around walking you how one group of companies solving the UK Task Force on Peak Oil: Shortages by instead of driving, producing food and problem could make you filthy rich by 2015 energy locally instead of importing, Christmas. The first bombshell was actually dropped and generally try to reduce their need Click here to find out more. on February 10, when the UK Industry Task for oil. Force on Peak Oil and Energy Security issued a However, the notion that peak oil will Forecasts grew increasingly pessimistic as report called "The Oil Crunch: A wake-up call mean the end of economic growth, as I have for the UK economy." I only mentioned it in it became apparent that regular conventional argued, apparently fell on deaf ears. Still, the passing at the time, but it was a stern warning crude supply had peaked at the end of 2004. very fact that the government has engaged with that "oil shortages, insecurity of supply and Even as the biggest oil price spike in history the peak oil community and formed a price volatility will destabilise economic, ensued from 2005-2008, crude production parliamentary group to study the issue offers a political, and social activity potentially by remained flat and unresponsive. sliver of hope that, at least in the UK, we'll have 2015." OPEC scaled back some of its It only made the news because Sir Richard some measure of consciousness about the issue development plans as costs soared. Non-OPEC Branson personally endorsed it; but the fact that and an idea of what to do about it as we drive production not only failed to deliver any actual the task force comprised top UK executives and off the peak oil cliff. increase, but began to decline. Forecasts were Kuwait Report: Peak by 2014 energy experts lent it enough weight to be rather revised lower. The next was a report that surfaced around Corn ethanol boomed and busted, as it was widely circulated in the press. The British government, including energy March 12. Three authors from the College of revealed to be the net energy non-starter that Engineering and Petroleum at Kuwait serious analysts always knew it was. It also was minister Lord Hunt, responded by staging a suspected of adding pressure to food prices at a closed-door summit meeting with the taskforce University had applied advanced mathematics to reserve and production data for the top 47 oil on March 22. As the UK's Guardian reported, most inopportune time.

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producing countries using a multi-cycle Hubbert model, which demonstrated a much better fit to historical data than single-cycle Hubbert Curve analyses. The model estimates the world's ultimate crude oil production at 2140 billion barrels, with 1161 billion barrels remaining to produce as of the end of 2005. It forecast that world production would peak in 2014 around 79 mbpd. The annual depletion rate of world reserves was estimated to be around 2.1%. The results weren't really news to the peakists, for they matched up quite well with the models of Colin Campbell, Jean Laherrre, and other analysts who have warned about peak oil since 1995. What made this report interesting was that first, it was from Kuwait; and second, it brought a new level of mathematical rigor to the study. The model indicated that non-OPEC production peaked in 2006 at 39.6 mbpd. It forecasts that OPEC production will peak in 2026 at 53 mbpd, up from 31 mbpd in 2005, with the majority of the increase coming from Iraq, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. Then OPEC production is expected to decline to 29 mbpd by 2050. Oxford Report: Reserves Exaggerated by One Third On March 22, another bombshell exploded in the press as former UK chief scientist David King and researchers from Oxford University released a paper claiming that the world's oil reserves had been "exaggerated by up to a third," principally by OPEC. Their "objective analysis" showed that conventional oil reserves stand at just 850-900 billion barrels not the 1,150-1,350 billion barrels that are officially claimed by oil producers and accepted by the politically influenced IEA. They anticipated that demand could outstrip supply by 2014-2015. In a statement that sounded like a direct echo of what peak oil analysts like me have been saying for years, co-author Dr. Oliver Inderwildi remarked, "The belief that alternative fuels such as biofuels could mitigate oil supply shortages and eventually replace fossil fuels is a pie in the sky. Instead of relying on those silver bullet solutions, we have to make better use of the remaining resources by improving efficiency." Again, it was hardly a revelation. I detailed the "political reserves" additions of OPEC producers in 2007, when I was writing Profit from the Peak. But the fact that it was recognized widely in the press was a marked change from the past. The future of fuel will indeed be all about efficiency and alternative energy. This process whether you've noticed or not is well underway. Hundreds of billions will be made as a select group of companies slowly eradicate the rampant waste in our electricity distribution system, which has been estimated at upwards of 60% by analysts. ConocoPhillips Gives Up on Growth On March 25, ConocoPhillips CEO Jim Mulva admitted that pursuing new oil reserves just doesn't pay. The remaining resources have become too marginal and too expensive, and the competition for them has become too intense. Rather than keep slugging it out with bigger and better-funded players in pursuit of growth, Conoco has decided to sell $10 billion worth of its assets over the next two years, all of them in the marginal category, and concentrate on producing its core assets. The proceeds will be used to buy back its stock, reduce its debt, and raise dividends just as rival ExxonMobil has been doing for the last five years or so. When I inferred in Profit from the Peak that the oil majors were spending vastly more money on buying back stock than investing in new exploration because reserves were getting too expensive and risky, veterans of the Street greeted the idea with extreme skepticism. Now it's a plain fact. A Rice University study released in July 2008 found that the five largest international oil companies spent about 55% of their profits on stock buybacks and dividends in 2007, but only about 6% on new exploration and production. "Could we spend $20 billion or $25 billion [on exploration]? Absolutely," Conoco spokesman Gary Russell said at the time. "Could we do it effectively, in a way that provides ultimate value to our shareholders? Probably not." Those of us who have been observing the trend for years greeted the latest Conoco comments with little more than a shrug, but it did get the attention of the laggard mainstream press. Part 2: Governments Worried about Peak Oil In the first part of this series, I reviewed a series of reports from March supporting the peak oil view, and warning that world oil production very well may go into terminal decline by 2015 or sooner. The sources included the UK Industry Task Force on Peak Oil and Energy Security and officials within the British government; researchers within the College of Engineering and Petroleum at Kuwait University; researchers from Oxford University; and ConocoPhillips, the third-largest oil company in the U.S. On March 25, the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) joined the officially worried, with a report in French newspaper Le Monde titled "Washington considers a decline of world oil production as of 2011." The author had pestered Glen Sweetnam, director of the International, Economic and Greenhouse Gas division of the Energy Information Agency (EIA), for details about a presentation he had given at a semi-public DoE round-table with oil economists in April 2009. How he got wind of it, I don't know, but I admire his persistence. The zinger was the chart on the top of the next page. The implication was obvious: The EIA has no idea how production could increase after 2012. In the absence of these "unidentified projects," they expect global oil supply to decline by about 2% per year - from 87 million barrels per day (mbpd) in 2011 to 80 mbpd by 2015 - while demand rises to 90 mbpd. Within five years, then, there will be a 10 mbpd gap between supply and demand roughly a Saudi Arabia's worth of production (currently 10.8 mbpd). (I should note that although Sweetnam's chart gives the EIA's Annual Energy Outlook 2009 as the source, I found no such chart, nor even the data that might produce it, in my copy of that publication. I am unable to explain that discrepancy.) The agency officially continues to lay any concerns about future supply at the feet of insufficient investment. In Sweetnam's interview with Le Monde, he put it this way: "'a chance exists that we may experience a decline' of world liquid fuels production between 2011 and 2015 if the investment is not there.'" It's a weak position to take in the wake of the oil price blow-off of 2008. The world's developed economies simply cannot tolerate the high prices that would entice that investment (see "'Peak Oil Demand,' Yes... But Not the Nice Kind"), and I'm sure the EIA knows it. You'd think the American media would have been all over the story, as it signaled a major about-face in the official U.S. position on peak oil. As recently as 2008, the EIA's base case scenario was for oil supply to rise through 2030, and not decline until 2090! Yet five days later when I Googled it, there was not one story from a major domestic publication. Only blogs and the usual peak oil sites had picked it up. In my seasoned judgment, the American media blackout is deliberate. And speaking of media blackouts... Media Blackout at the World's Biggest Energy Forum On March 30-31, the biennial International Energy Forum (IEF) summit took place in Cancun. Attendees at the world's largest energy forum included ministers from 64 countries, members of the IEA and OPEC, and other dignitaries. In parallel, Cancun also hosted the International Energy Business Forum, attended by some 36 companies including the top executives of China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell. In short, the twin conferences were a Very Big Deal. But when I searched Google News for stories containing the exact phrase "International Energy Forum" and published during the conference, it wasn't until the seventh page of results that I found any stories from major American media outlets, and those stories were strictly focused on specific issues like oil and gas prices. They said not a word about peak oil. A journalist from the oil and gas media organization Platts explained what happened on his blog. All media were barred from the IEF conference room, and exiled to a press room

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The Revolutionarys Voice; 23rd Edition February 18th, 2012

about its seriousness, albeit a somewhat softpedaled one. Most reports on the conference featured the theme that better data and transparency on reserves reporting is needed - a bell that peak oil mavens like Colin Campbell have been ringing for over a decade. Without it, the world is in the dark about the true future of oil supply. To reinforce that point, IEA head Nobuo Tanaka told the Financial Times at the conference that it has invited China to join the IEA because global oil demand has shifted to the East. "Our relevance is under question," he worried, as the opacity of data on Chinese oil demand and inventory threatens to blind the agency to the true state of the world's oil markets. Another key theme was an evident widespread concern about the volatility of oil prices. By the end of the conference, IEA, OPEC, and the IEF were expected to announce a "joint action plan" to control volatility and ensure that prices remain stable enough to encourage new production. While the IEF was under way, the chairman of the Intercontinental Exchange convert today's resources into (ICE) told Reuters that blaming speculators for tomorrow's reserves. price spikes was a "crutch" used to avoid The exact timing of both the looking at the realities of oil supply and plateau and onset of irreversible demand. As I explained in July 2009, traders decline will be influenced by the have turned to the ICE to skirt the stricter factors that determine long-term position limits on the NYMEX. The changes in supply and demand. Commodity Futures Trading Commission Nevertheless, the challenge is (CFTC) has now proposed new regulations to coming, and this emerging world limit the influence of speculators in the energy of limited conventional markets, which are up for public comment until production will require major April 26. adjustments on the part of both You (Still) Can't Handle the Truth consumers and producers. By any measure, March was a watershed The phrasing of the first statement is curious. Serious observers know that "peak oil" month for the truth about peak oil. Estimates on the timing of the peak have has never meant the exhaustion of hydrocarbon narrowed dramatically, and now center on the potential, and has always meant the peak of 2012-2015 time frame. The range of estimates production flow rates. I covered a presentation on the peak rate of production remain a bit by Michael Rodgers of PFC Energy at last year's peak oil conference, so I must believe that broader and shrouded in caveats, but they are rapidly drawing closer to 90 mbpd. And the PFC Energy knows better than to characterize peak oil that way and simply chose to do so for globally averaged, post-peak annual decline rates are settling in around 2%. the appeasement of its IEF audience. In other words, industry and governments appear to be coming around to what my call has Have You Heard of Sunless Solar? Not far from the U.S. Capitol, a tiny $1.20 been all along: 2012, at 90 mbpd or less, then declining at about 2.5% per year. tech firm just did the impossible... Now we know that the oil and gas industry, They unlocked the secret to harnessing as well as the world's governments, are not only solar energy at any time, from any window! aware of the peak oil threat... they too are This technology is so efficient and deeply worried about it. affordable, electric companies are already Worried enough to huddle behind closed shaking in their boots. doors, away from the press. Worried enough to Before the first big ticket contract comes doubling the share price click here to see formulate plans to control price volatility. Worried enough to agitate for more transparent what all the rage is about! data. Worried enough to begin planning for a In any case, we now know that the world's future of relentlessly declining energy. But not worried enough to tell the top energy ministers have seen a serious American people the truth... not just yet. presentation on peak oil, and heard the warning

where the presentations were shown on monitors with no sound. When reporters asked for sound, the monitors were turned off. All sessions were then declared to be private, and the reporters that had come from around the globe to cover the conference were simply shut out. According to journalist Matthew Wild, the presentations included one from PFC Energy titled "Unpacking Uncertainty: Investment Issues in the Petroleum Sector." The document reviews three forecasts for oil supply: The IEA's, which shows it reaching 109 mbpd by 2030; OPEC's, which expects it to reach 111 mbpd; and PFC's own, which expects supply to peak around 2020-2025 at 95 mbpd, then decline to 90 mbpd by 2030. Although it sees the decline of mature fields proceeding at a slower rate than the IEA, PFC Energy still believes it will be "rapid enough to produce a world energy picture that differs vastly from previous long-range energy assessments," and goes on to explain: This is not a world of "peak oil" where global hydrocarbon potential is exhausted, but rather of peak production, where the petroleum industry's ability to continue to increase-or even maintain-production of conventional oil (and eventually gas) is constrained. Exploitation of unconventional oil will provide additional liquids, but in all probability only at increasingly higher costs, and it will depend on significant investments to develop appropriate technologies to

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The Revolutionarys Voice; 23rd Edition February 18th, 2012

A Break With History

Message to Congress on Curbing Monopolies and the Concentration of Economic Power
April 29, 1938; By Franklin Delano Roosevelt http://talk.baltimoresun.com/showthread.php?p=2067073 To the Congress: The statistical history of modern times we included all the smaller estates which, under Unhappy events abroad have retaught us proves that in times of depression concentration the law, do not have to report.) two simple truths about the liberty of a of business speeds up. Bigger business then has We believe in a way of living in which democratic people. larger opportunity to grow still bigger at the political democracy and free private enterprise The first truth is that the liberty of a expense of smaller competitors who are for profit should serve and protect each other democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the weakened by financial adversity. to ensure a maximum of human liberty not for a growth of private power to a point where it The danger of this centralization in a few but for all. becomes stronger than their democratic state handful of huge corporations is not reduced or It has been well said that "the freest itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism eliminated, as is sometimes urged, by the wide government, if it could exist, would not be long ownership of Government by an individual, by a public distribution of their securities. The mere acceptable, if the tendency of the laws were to group, or by any other controlling private number of security-holders gives little clue to create a rapid accumulation of property in few power. the size of their individual holdings or to their hands, and to render the great mass of the The second truth is that the liberty of a actual ability to have a voice in the population dependent and penniless." democracy is not safe if its business system management. In fact the concentration of stock Today many Americans ask the uneasy does not provide employment and produce and ownership of corporations in the hands of a tiny question: Is the vociferation that our liberties are distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an minority of the population matches the in danger justified by the facts? acceptable standard of living. concentration of corporate assets. Today's answer on the part of average Both lessons hit home. 1929 was a banner year for distribution of men and women in every section of the country Among us today a concentration of stock ownership. is far more accurate than it would have been in private power without equal in history is But in that year three-tenths of , per cent 1929for the very simple reason that during growing. of our population received 78 per cent of the the past nine years we have been doing a lot of This concentration is seriously impairing dividends reported by individuals. This has common sense thinking. Their answer is that if the economic effectiveness of private enterprise roughly the same effect as if, out of every 300 there is that danger it comes from that as a way of providing employment for labor and persons in our population, one person received concentrated private economic power which is capital and as a way of assuring a more 78 cents out of every dollar of corporate struggling so hard to master our democratic equitable distribution of income and earnings dividends while the other 299 persons divided government. It will not come as some (by no among the people of the nation as a whole. up the other 22 cents between them. means all) of the possessors of that private THE GROWING CONCENTRATION The effect of this concentration is power would make the people believe-from our OF ECONOMIC POWER. reflected in the distribution of national income. democratic government itself. Statistics of the Bureau of Internal A recent study by the National Resources FINANCIAL CONTROL OVER Revenue reveal the following amazing figures Committee shows that in 1935-36: INDUSTRY for 1935: 47 per cent of all American families and Even these statistics I have cited do not Ownership of corporate assets: single individuals living alone had incomes of measure the actual degree of concentration of Of all corporations reporting from every less than $1,000 for the year; control over American industry. part of the nation, one-tenth of 1 per cent of and at the other end of the Close financial control, through them owned 52 per cent of the assets of all of ladder a little less than 1 1/2 interlocking spheres of influence over them; per cent of the nation's channels of investment, and through and to clinch the point: families received incomes the use of financial devices like Of all corporations reporting, less than 5 which in dollars and cents holding companies and strategic per cent of them owned 87 per cent of all the reached the same total as the minority interests, creates close assets of all of them. incomes of the 47 per cent at control of the business policies of Income and profits of corporations: the bottom; enterprises which masquerade as Of all the corporations reporting from Furthermore, to drive independent units. every part of the country, one-tenth of, per cent the point home, the Bureau of Internal Revenue That heavy hand of integrated financial of them earned 50 per cent of the net income of reports that estate tax returns in 1936 show that: and management control lies upon large and all of them; and to clinch the point: 33 per cent of the property which was passed by strategic areas of American industry. The small Of all the manufacturing corporations inheritance was found in only 4 per cent of all business man is unfortunately being driven into reporting, less than 4 per cent of them earned 84 the reporting estates. (And the figures of a less and less independent position in per cent of all the net profits of all of them. concentration would be far more impressive, if American life. You and I must admit that.

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Private enterprise is ceasing to be free enterprise and is becoming a cluster of private collectivisms: masking itself as a system of free enterprise after the American model, it is in fact becoming a concealed cartel system after the European model. We all want efficient industrial growth and the advantages of mass production. No one suggests that we return to the hand loom or hand forge. A series of processes involved in turning out a given manufactured product may well require one or more huge mass production plants. Modern efficiency may call for this. But modern efficient mass production is not furthered by a central control which destroys competition among industrial plants each capable of efficient mass production while operating as separate units. Industrial efficiency does not have to mean industrial empire building. And industrial empire building, unfortunately, has evolved into banker control of industry. We oppose that. Such control does not offer safety for the investing public. Investment judgment requires the disinterested appraisal of other people's management. It becomes blurred and distorted if it is combined with the conflicting duty of controlling the management it is supposed to judge. Interlocking financial controls have taken from American business much of its traditional virility, independence, adaptability and daring without compensating advantages. They have not given the stability they promised. Business enterprise needs new vitality and the flexibility that comes from the diversified efforts, independent judgments and vibrant energies of thousands upon thousands of independent business men. The individual must be encouraged to exercise his own judgment and to venture his own small savings, not in stock gambling but in new enterprise investment. Men will dare to compete against men but not against giants. THE DECLINE OF COMPETITION AND ITS EFFECTS ON EMPLOYMENT In output per man or machine, we are the most efficient industrial nation on earth. In the matter of complete mutual employment of capital and labor we are among the least efficient. Our difficulties of employing labor and capital are not new. We have had them since good free land gave out in the West at the turn of the century. They were old before we undertook changes in our tax policy or in our labor and social legislation. They were caused not by this legislation but by the same forces which caused the legislation. The problem of bringing idle men and idle money together will not be solved by abandoning the forward steps we have taken to adjust the burdens of taxation more fairly and to attain social justice and security. If you believe with me in private initiative, you must acknowledge the right of well-managed small business to expect to make reasonable profits. You must admit that the destruction of this opportunity follows concentration of control of any given industry into a small number of dominating corporations. One of the primary causes of our present difficulties lies in the disappearance of price competition in many industrial fields, particularly in basic manufacture where concentrated economic power is most evident and where rigid prices and fluctuating payrolls are general. Managed industrial prices mean fewer jobs. It is no accident that in industries, like cement and steel, where prices have remained firm in the face of a falling demand, payrolls have shrunk as much as 40 and 50 per cent in recent months. Nor is it mere chance that in most competitive industries where prices adjust themselves quickly to falling demand, payrolls and employment have been far better maintained. By prices we mean, of course, the prices of the finished articles and not the wages paid to workers. When prices are privately managed at levels above those which would be determined by free competition, everybody pays. The contractor pays more for materials; the home builder pays more for his house; the tenant pays more rent; and the worker pays in lost work. Even the Government itself is unable, in a large range of materials, to obtain competitive bids. It is repeatedly confronted with bids identical to the last cent. Our housing shortage is a perfect example of how ability to control prices interferes with the ability of private enterprise to fill the needs of the community and provide employment for capital and labor. On the other hand we have some lines of business, large and small, which are genuinely competitive. Often these competitive industries must buy their basic products from monopolistic industry, thus losing, and causing the public to lose, a large part of the benefit of their own competitive policy. Furthermore, in times of recession, the practices of monopolistic industries make it difficult for business or agriculture which is competitive and which does not curtail production below normal needs, to find a market for its goods even at reduced prices. For at such times a large number of customers of agriculture and competitive industry are being thrown out of work by those non-competitive industries which choose to hold their prices rather than to move their goods and to employ their workers. If private enterprise left to its own devices becomes half regimented and half-competitive, half-slave and half-free, as it is today, it obviously cannot adjust itself to meet the needs and the demands of the country. Most complaints for violations of the antitrust laws are made by business men against other business men. Even the most monopolistic business man disapproves of all monopolies but his own. We may smile at this as being just an example of human nature, but we cannot laugh away the fact that the combined effect of the monopolistic controls which each business group imposes for its own benefit, inevitably destroys the buying power of the nation as a whole. COMPETITION DOES NOT MEAN EXPLOITATION Competition, of course, like all other good things, can be carried to excess. Competition should not extend to fields where it has demonstrably bad social and economic consequences. The exploitation of child labor, the chiseling of workers' wages, the stretching of workers' hours, are not necessary, fair or proper methods of competition. I have consistently urged a federal wages and hours bill to take the minimum decencies of life for the working man and woman out of the field of competition. It is of course necessary to operate the competitive system of free enterprise intelligently. In gauging the market for their wares, business men, like the farmers, should be given all possible information by government and by their own associations so that they may act with knowledge and not on impulse. Serious problems of temporary overproduction can and should be avoided by disseminating information that will discourage the production of more goods than the current markets can possibly absorb or the accumulation of dangerously large inventories for which there is no obvious need. It is, of course, necessary to encourage rises in the level of those competitive prices, such as agricultural prices, which must rise to put our price structure into more workable balance and make the debt burden more tolerable. Many such competitive prices are now too low. It may at times be necessary to give special treatment to chronically sick industries which have deteriorated too far for natural revival, especially those which have a public or quasi-public character. But generally over the field of industry and finance we must revive and strengthen competition if we wish to preserve and make workable our traditional system of free private enterprise. The justification of private profit is private risk. We cannot safely make America safe for the businessman who does not want to take the burdens and risks of being a businessman. THE CHOICE BEFORE US Examination of methods of conducting and controlling private enterprise which keep it from furnishing jobs or income or opportunity for one-third of the population is long overdue on the part of those who sincerely want to preserve the system of private enterprise for profit. No people, least of all a democratic people, will be content to go without work or to accept some standard of living which obviously and woefully falls short of their capacity to produce. No people, least of all a people with our traditions of personal liberty, will endure the slow erosion of opportunity for the common man, the oppressive sense of helplessness under

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the domination of a few, which are overshadowing our whole economic life. A discerning magazine of business has editorially pointed out that big business collectivism in industry compels an ultimate collectivism in government. The power of a few to manage the economic life of the nation must be diffused among the many or be transferred to the public and its democratically responsible government. If prices are to be managed and administered, if the nation's business is to be allotted by plan and not by competition, that power should not be vested in any private group or cartel, however benevolent its professions profess to be. Those people, in and out of the halls of government, who encourage the growing restriction of competition either by active efforts or by passive resistance to sincere attempts to change the trend, are shouldering a terrific responsibility. Consciously, or unconsciously, they are working for centralized business and financial control. Consciously or unconsciously, they are therefore either working for control of the government itself by business and finance or the other alternative- a growing concentration of public power in the government to cope with such concentration of private power. The enforcement of free competition is the least regulation business can expect. A PROGRAM The traditional approach to the problems I have discussed has been through the anti-trust laws. That approach we do not propose to abandon. On the contrary, although we must recognize the inadequacies of the existing laws, we seek to enforce them so that the public shall not be deprived of such protection as they afford. To enforce them properly requires thorough investigation not only to discover such violations as may exist but to avoid hit-and-miss prosecutions harmful to business and government alike. To provide for the proper and fair enforcement of the existing anti-trust laws I shall submit, through the budget, recommendations for a deficiency appropriation of $200,000 for the Department of Justice. But the existing anti-trust laws are inadequate-most importantly because of new financial economic conditions with which they are powerless to cope. The Sherman Act was passed nearly forty years ago. The Clayton and Federal Trade Commission Acts were passed over twenty years ago. We have had considerable experience under those acts. In the meantime we have had a chance to observe the practical operation of large-scale industry and to learn many things about the competitive system which we did not know in those days. We have witnessed the merging-out of effective competition in many fields of enterprise. We have learned that the so-called competitive system works differently in an industry where there are many independent units, from the way it works in an industry where a few large producers dominate the market. We have also learned that a realistic system of business regulation has to reach more than consciously immoral acts. The community is interested in economic results. It must be protected from economic as well as moral wrongs. We must find practical controls over blind economic forces as well as over blindly selfish men. Government can deal and should deal with blindly selfish men. But that is a comparatively small partthe easier part-of our problem. The larger, more important and more difficult part of our problem is to deal with men who are not selfish and who are good citizens, but who cannot see the social and economic consequences of their actions in a modern economically interdependent community. They fail to grasp the significance of some of our most vital social and economic problems because they see them only in the light of their own' personal experience and not in perspective with the experience of other men and other industries. They, therefore, fail to see these problems for the nation as a whole. To meet the situation I have described, there should be a thorough study of the concentration of economic power in American industry and the effect of that concentration upon the decline of competition. There should be an examination of the existing price system and the price policies of industry to determine their effect upon the general level of trade, upon employment, upon long-term profits and upon consumption. The study should not be confined to the traditional anti-trust field. The effects of tax, patent and other government policies cannot be ignored. The study should be comprehensive and adequately financed. I recommend an appropriation of not less than $500,000 for the conduct of such comprehensive study by the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and such other agencies of government as have special experience in various phases of the inquiry. I enumerate some of the items that should be embraced in the proposed study. The items are not intended to be all inclusive. One or two of the items, such as bank holding companies and investment trusts, have already been the subject of special study, and legislation concerning these need not be delayed. (1) Improvement of Anti-Trust Procedure. A revision of the existing anti-trust laws should make them susceptible of practical enforcement by casting upon those charged with violations the burden of proving facts peculiarly within their knowledge. Proof by the Government of identical bids, uniform price increases, price leadership, higher domestic than export prices, or other specified price rigidities might be accepted as prima facie evidence of unlawful actions. The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission should be given more adequate and effective power to investigate whenever there is reason to believe that conditions exist or practices prevail which violate the provisions or defeat the objectives of the anti-trust laws. If investigation reveals border-line cases where legitimate cooperative efforts to eliminate socially and economically harmful methods of competition in particular industries are thwarted by fear of possible technical violations of the anti-trust laws, remedial legislation should be considered. As a really effective deterrent to personal wrong-doing, I would suggest that where a corporation is enjoined from violating the law, the court might be empowered to enjoin the corporation for a specified period of time from giving any remunerative employment or any official position to any person who has been found to bear a responsibility for the wrongful corporate action. As a further deterrent to corporate wrongdoing the Government might well be authorized to withhold government purchases from companies guilty of unfair or monopolistic practice. (2) Mergers and interlocking relationships. More rigid scrutiny through the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission of corporate mergers, consolidations and acquisitions than that now provided by the Clayton Act to prevent their consummation when not clearly in the public interest; more effective methods for breaking up interlocking relationships and like devices for bestowing business by favor. (3) Financial controls. The operations of financial institutions should be directed to serve the interests of independent business and restricted against abuses which promote concentrations of power over American industry. (a) Investment trusts. Investment trusts should be brought under strict control to insure their operations in the interests of their investors rather than their managers. The Securities and Exchange Commission is to make a report to Congress on the results of a comprehensive study of investment trusts and their operations which it has carried on for nearly two years. The investment trust, like the holding company, puts huge aggregations of the capital of the public at the direction of a few managers. Unless properly restricted, it has potentialities of abuse second only to the holding company as a device for the further centralization of control over American industry and American finance. The tremendous investment funds controlled by our great insurance companies have a certain kinship to investment trusts, in that these companies invest as trustees the savings of millions of our people. The Securities and Exchange Commission should be authorized to make an investigation of the facts relating to these investments with particular relation to their use as an instrument of economic power. (b) Bank Holding Companies. It is hardly necessary to point out the great economic power that might be wielded by a group which may succeed in acquiring domination over banking resources in any considerable area of the country. That power becomes particularly

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dangerous when it is exercised from a distance and notably so when effective control is maintained without the responsibilities of complete ownership. We have seen the multiplied evils which have arisen from the holding company system in the case of public utilities, where a small minority ownership has been able to dominate a far-flung system. We do not want those evils repeated in the banking field, and we should take steps now to see that they are not. It is not a sufficient assurance against the future to say that no great evil has yet resulted from holding company operations in this field. The possibilities of great harm are inherent in the situation. I recommend that the Congress enact at this session legislation that will effectively control the operation of bank holding companies; prevent holding companies from acquiring control of any more banks, directly or indirectly; prevent banks controlled by holding companies from establishing any more branches; and make it illegal for a holding company, or any corporation or enterprise in which it is financially interested, to borrow from or sell securities to a bank in which it holds stock. I recommend that this bank legislation make provision for the gradual separation of banks from holding company control or ownership, allowing a reasonable time for this accomplishmenttime enough for it to be done in an orderly manner and without causing inconvenience to communities served by holding company banks. (4) Trade associations. Supervision and effective publicity of the activities of trade associations, and a clarification and delineation of their legitimate spheres of activity which will enable them to combat unfair methods of competition but which will guard against their interference with legitimate competitive practices. (5) Patent laws. Amendment of the patent laws to prevent their use to suppress inventions, and to create industrial monopolies. Of course such amendment should not deprive the inventor of his royalty rights, but generally speaking, future patents might be made available for use by any one upon payment of appropriate royalties. Open patent pools have voluntarily been put into effect in a number of important industries with wholesome results. (6) Tax correctives. Tax policies should be devised to give affirmative encouragement to competitive enterprise. Attention might be directed to increasing the intercorporate dividend tax to discourage holding companies and to further graduating the corporation income tax according to size. The graduated tax need not be so high as to make bigness impracticable, but might be high enough to make bigness demonstrate its alleged superior efficiency. We have heard much about the undistributed profits tax. When it was enacted two years ago, its objective was known to be closely related to the problem of concentrated economic power and a free capital market. Its purpose was not only to prevent individuals whose incomes were taxable in the higher surtax brackets from escaping personal income taxes by letting their profits be accumulated as corporate surplus. Its purpose was also to encourage the distribution of corporate profits so that the individual recipients could freely determine where they would reinvest in a free capital market. It is true that the form of the 1936 tax worked a hardship on many of the smaller corporations. Many months ago I recommended that these inequities be removed. But in the process of the removal of inequities, we must not lose sight of original objectives. Obviously the nation must have some deterrent against special privileges enjoyed by an exceedingly small group of individuals under the form of the laws prior to 1936, whether such deterrent take the form of an undistributed profits tax or some other equally or more efficient method. And obviously an undistributed profits tax has a real value in working against a further concentration of economic power and in favor of a freer capital market. (7) Bureau of Industrial Economics. Creation of a Bureau of Industrial Economics which should be endowed with adequate powers to supplement and supervise the collection of industrial statistics by trade associations. Such a Bureau should perform for business men functions similar to those performed for the farmers by the Bureau of Agricultural Economics. It should disseminate current statistical and other information regarding market conditions and be in a position to warn against the dangers of temporary overproduction and excessive inventories as well as against the dangers of shortages and bottleneck conditions, and to encourage the maintenance of orderly markets. It should study trade fluctuations, credit facilities and other conditions which affect the welfare of the average business man. It should be able to help small business men keep themselves as well-informed about trade conditions as their big competitors. No man of good faith will misinterpret these proposals. They derive from the oldest American traditions. Concentration of economic power in the few and the resulting unemployment of labor and capital are inescapable problems for a modern "private enterprise" democracy. I do not believe that we are so lacking in stability that we shall lose faith in our own way of living just because we seek to find out how to make that way of living work more effectively. This program should appeal to the honest common sense of every independent business man interested primarily in running his own business at a profit rather than in controlling the business of other men. It is not intended as the beginning of any ill-considered "trust-busting" activity which lacks proper consideration for economic results. It is a program to preserve private enterprise for profit by keeping it free enough to be able to utilize all our resources of capital and labor at a profit. It is a program whose basic purpose is to stop the progress of collectivism in business and turn business back to the democratic competitive order. It is a program whose basic thesis is not that the system of free private enterprise for profit has failed in this generation, but that it has not yet been tried. Once it is realized that business monopoly in America paralyzes the system of free enterprise on which it is grafted, and is as fatal to those who manipulate it as to the people who suffer beneath its impositions, action by the government to eliminate these artificial restraints will be welcomed by industry throughout the nation. For idle factories and idle workers profit no man.

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The Bloggerist
As Public Policy Fixes Are Impossible, Focus on Individual Solutions
Divisive politics and the Tyranny of the Majority guarantee policy fixes will fail or be symbolic only
January 20, 2011; By Charles Hugh Smith, From of Two Minds http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjan11/policies-individuals01-11.html
Though I am drawn to public policy questions, I always regret proposing any policy fixes. Why? For a number of reasons: 1. It's safer and easier to be a critic or doomsdayer. Finding flaws in policies addressing a diverse populace, be it a town, city, state or nation, is like shooting fish in a barrel: it's incredibly easy to shred any policy proposal. The hard part is proposing a coherent, pragmatic one. It's also easy to say that the status quo is unsustainable, i.e. stating the obvious. 2. Pragmatism does not inspire the partisan passion that drives politics. The hate mail I receive often includes some line like "you must be a Republican"--the most hateful, vile slam the invective-spewing AC (anonymous coward) can conjure. Or it might be "you Big Government liberals"--once again, a party-hewed cliche is the most searing condemnation the AC can find to express his venomous rage. No wonder reasonable voices are soon shouted down, or they leave the room; the partisans demand the sort of ideological purity that simply doesn't work in the real world, but which inspires fanatic devotion, fund-raising, etc.--the building blocks of partisan political success. Politics has always been a mean-spirited, ugly business; now, even a whiff of politically charged policy debate will draw the ire of those seeking an outlet for their anger and frustration. A town-hall meeting might offer up an opportunity for spewing the pressurized anger, and if not, then some blogger or writer will stand duty as the straw man/woman to demonize. Those of you who have attended these kinds of shout-fests know how the pragmatists feel; they slip out in dismay and disgust. Who needs that kind of abuse? 3. There is a great confusion between limited government that pragmatically serves its citizenry and a government that serves its cartel/political elites. Many Libertarians take the view that government is the root of all evil, and eliminating all government is the key solution. Without making a fetish of the Constitution, it seems self-evident that the Founding Fathers engaged in a vigorous debate on just this issue, and chose a limited Central State which ceded most government issues to the states. In this structure, there was an implicit option of citizenry to "vote with their feet" (the non-enslaved citizenry, that is) if any one state became overly oppressive. Over the past century, the Central State has evolved into the Savior State and Global Empire, a massive "mission creep" expansion which rather clearly has centralized powers to a degree which threatens state and individual liberty. That said, to claim that we would do just fine without any Central State at all seems impractical. It seems self-evident to me that the Federal government has appropriated too much power and too much of the national income, and that it did so in large part to reward its fiefdoms and privatesector partners, the corporate cartels. We seem to have forgotten the distinction between a kleptocratic State which serves its Elites, and one which makes modest efforts to stabilize opportunities for the well-being of its citizens. A Central State might provide some basic public health services--minimizing epidemics is generally conceded to be a good idea, for example-and provide for the common defense. Somehow the first has morphed into paying a sickcare cartel $120,000 a week for hospital care for every citizen over the age of 65, and "defense" has transmogrified into a concern with "protecting our interests" literally everywhere on the planet. Both of these missions--unlimited medical care provided for profit, and a global Empire of embassies, bases, intelligence networks, and so on-are fiscally unsustainable. 4. There are severe limits on policy fixes. People respond to incentives and disincentives, and if they are getting something for free, then they will resist any withdrawal of the entitlements. Politicians understand this dynamic, and thus entitlements have become "untouchable" as their constituencies have grown into the tens of millions. As a result, our democracy is facing the danger posed by the Tyranny of the Majority, in which 51% of voters who receive State largesse can extract more taxes from the minority, or demand more State borrowing--whatever it takes to keep the swag flowing. Of course the cartels play the same game: they really don't care how the State comes up with the funding for their profit centers, as long as it isn't from their pockets. With voters demanding entitlements and cartels ponying up huge campaign donations to make sure their profit centers have unlimited access to State swag, then you have a recipe for fiscal implosion and/or collapse of the heavilytaxed minority. The standard "policy fix" of the past 100 years is to vacuum up more private-sector income via taxes and spend it on implementing the policy. Now we have reached a point in history in which policy fixes must consume radically less money and resources. Policy fixes which reduce entitlements, profit flows and freebies are insanely unpopular and thus politically impossible. So the recipients of the swag, voters, fiefdoms and cartel Elites alike, in effect choose systemic collapse over cuts. Another limit is psychological. It is a difficult truth that the more dependent one becomes on free money (or equivalent), the less self-reliant one becomes. Thinking for oneself, taking responsibility for oneself, making the hard choices, taking risks--all these essential skills atrophy in dependence. Just as destructively, the dependent person reacts with tremendous fear and then anger if their lifeline is threatened; having grown dependent, they have lost their self-confidence. They fear they will not survive the weaning. So they lash out at the agents of change, and devote every fiber of strength to beating back the threat to their dependency. In this way, they seal their fate as the system, increasingly brittle and top-heavy, eventually implodes under the weight of all who have become dependent on the Central State-citizens, State fiefdoms and private enterprises. This obsession with "what I was promised, what I deserve, it's my right," etc., fosters a selfabsorbed culture of greed in which the focus is entirely on what the individual can extract, never mind the consequences on the larger society. The necessity and nature of self-reliance is the heart of my book Survival+. 5. Pluralism manages slow, gradual changes which threaten no major constituency. The two-party system evolved to offer a pluralistic path to gradual change via compromises and "baby steps." As a result, it is completely incapable of responding to crises which demand prompt, radical adaptations and fast evolutions of the "punctuated equilibrium" kind. For example, pluralism's "solution" to a failed healthcare system is a 1,300-page giveaway to all the key interests, a complex bureaucratic "fix" that offered only incremental, and ineffectual,

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modifications around the edges of a failed healthcare system. 6. Since policy fixes are doomed for the above reasons, then the solutions must be individually instigated and crafted. The constituency for reducing Central State powers or income is small and weak, where the constituency for enlarging State power and tax revenues has reached a critical mass--most citizens feel they have much to gain from the Status Quo entitlements, and the fiefdoms and cartels which feed off the State will fight tooth and nail to keep the funding spigots open, regardless of the costs to the society at large. Individuals and households adapt when they have no other choice. It wasn't that 90% of the populace of Rome was slaughtered or died when Rome fell; people drifted away as the bread and circuses vanished. They fashioned a life elsewhere, undoubtedly a harder one, but a life nonetheless. The decline and fall of the Roman Empire continues to offer if not a template, then certainly a rough recipe for the devolution of the American Central State and global reach. I have covered this topic many times in the past few years: Complacency and The Will To Radical Reform (February 12, 2009) Enmeshed in classical history, all he can do is lapse into vague sermonizing, telling the Romans, as many a moralist had told them throughout the centuries, that they must undergo an ethical regeneration and return to the simplicities and self-sacrifices of their ancestors. There was no room at all, in these ways of thinking, for the novel, apocalyptic situation which had now arisen, a situation which needed solutions as radical as itself. His whole attitude is a complacent acceptance of things as they are, without a single new idea. This acceptance was accompanied by greatly excessive optimism about the present and future. Even when the end was only sixty years away, and the Empire was already crumbling fast, Rutilius continued to address the spirit of Rome with the same supreme assurance. This blind adherence to the ideas of the past ranks high among the principal causes of the downfall of Rome. If you were sufficiently lulled by these traditional fictions, there was no call to take any practical first-aid measures at all. As author/blogger Michael Panzner has noted, the Status Quo is responding to the Long Emergency as if it is merely cyclical rather than structural. This is to be expected, of course, as recognition of the structural nature of our financial difficulties would require a revolution of awareness. Collapse of Complex Systems III: Incremental Change and Collapse (February 25, 2009) The U.S. Economy: Increasingly Marginal Returns (January 15, 2009) At times I am seduced by the hope that pragmatic policy adaptations are possible, and potentially positive; but then the response always convinces me that the Status Quo is terminally in the grip of the Tyranny of the Majority, the hyperwealthy cartel Elites, and the State fiefdoms which have grown powerful feeding off the income streams of the Central State. Those who depend on the Central State demand funding without reduction or interruption, and they react with overwhelming hostility to pragmatic fixes, guaranteeing that the only choice in the future will be binary: either the Status Quo continues on unchanged, or it collapses. Given that choice, I think we had best prepare for devolution and collapse. Make your own plans, strengthen your own communities and hone your own skills, because we as a nation are choosing implosion and collapse over pragmatism, evolution and adaptation. By the time there is no other choice but radical adaptation, there won't be time or resources to effect that systemic change. So the angry citizens demand a steady flow of "good news" and endless checks, until the checks stop coming or the check won't buy a loaf of bread. Or they demand "change" which doesn't effect their share of the swag--let the costs of "change" fall anywhere else but me. The citizens of Rome demanded bread and circuses, too, until the city fell. No one was left to chronicle their dazed response.

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Institutional Minds
RAP, ROCK AND CENSORSHIP:
Popular Culture and the Technologies of Justice
March 2001; Mathieu Deflem, From the University of South Carolina Contact Information: deflem@sc.edu; Available at www.mathieudeflem.net A previous version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Law and Society Association, Chicago, May 27-30, 1993. Revised, March 2001. Please cite as: Deflem, Mathieu. 1993. "Rap, Rock, and Censorship: Popular Culture and the Technologies of Justice." Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Law and Society Association, Chicago, May 27-30, 1993. http://www.cas.sc.edu/socy/faculty/deflem/zzcens97.htm "Eventually it was discovered that God did not want us to be all the same. This was bad news for the Governments of the World... Mankind must be made more uniformly if THE FUTURE was going to work out... It was about this time that someone came up with the idea of TOTAL CRIMINALIZATION, based on the principle that if we were ALL crooks we could at least be uniform to some degree in the eyes of the law. Shrewdly our legislators calculated that most people were too lazy to perform a REAL CRIME. So new laws were manufactured making it possible for anyone to violate them at any time of the day or night... which is one of the reasons why music was eventually made ILLEGAL." --Frank Zappa, liner notes from Joes Garage, Acts 2 & 3 (CBS, 1979)
While the censorship of art is not a new phenomenon, the 1980s experienced renewed and intensified attempts to control popular culture. In particular, rap and rock music then came under increasing attack from various sides representing the entire left and right political spectrum, purportedly for their explicit sexual and violent lyrical contents. In this paper I investigate the moral codes underlying these claims against popular music, how social movements mobilize actions around these claims, and the way in which they are manifested in mechanisms of control targeted at rap and rock music. Moreover, I explore how the performers and fans of these musical styles have in turn articulated counter-claims, and how they have mobilized social forces in defense of the free expression of their art-form. The issue is addressed through an historical examination of the actions undertaken to censor and control rap and rock music from the time of the founding of the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) in 1985 up until the early 1990s. Concerns over rock n roll music have lead to public debate, political and legal actions, and law enforcement activities ever since its "invention" in 1955 (Jones 1991:75-76; McDonald 1988a:294-302). However, since the formation of the PMRC in 1985, a new, more organized and systematic attack to control popular music has been launched. I. SETTING THE STAGE: THE PARENTS, THE SENATE, THE LABEL 1. The Invasion of the "Washington Wives" The Parents Music Resource Center was founded in 1985 as the result of the unusually combined efforts of a few concerned parents (Coletti 1987:421-426; Gray 1989a:151-153, 1989b:6-8; Kaufman 1986:228-231; McDonald 1988a:302-106; Roldan 1987:222-231). Tipper Gore, wife of current Vice-President and then Senator of Tennessee Albert Gore, bought the album "Purple Rain" by Prince for her then 11year old daughter. She was shocked to find out that one of the songs on the album, "Darling Nikki", contained a reference to female masturbation. The same Prince song was also listened to by the daughter of free-lance journalist Kandy Stroud, who was shocked to discover that her daughter was exposed to "unabashedly sexual lyrics" (Stroud 1985:14). Around the same time, Susan Baker, wife of former Treasury Secretary and White House Chief of Staff James Baker, overheard her 7year old child sing along to "Like a Virgin" by Madonna, which lead her to realize "whats going on in pop music" (quoted in Roldan 1987:223). Also around the same time, Pam Howar, wife of a wealthy construction executive, noticed the lyrical contents of the songs she was dancing to during her aerobics classes, and discovered that her daughter was listening to the same kind of music over breakfast. In April of 1985 the concerned parents, together with Sally Nevius, wife of former Washington D.C. council chairman John Nevius, and Ethelynn Stuckley, wife of former Congressman Williamson Stuckley, joined forces: on May 13, 1985, they formed the nonprofit, tax-exempt organization Parents Music Resource Center. Under the Presidency of Pamela Howar, the PMRC compiled a mailing list to appeal to similarly concerned parents and to raise money. Soon after its formation, affiliates of the PMRC included several U.S. Congressmen and Representatives. On the same day of the PMRCs formation, Edward Fritts, President of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), wrote over 800 letters to radio and TV stations warning against pornographic record lyrics, and requesting that record companies affix lyric sheets to all recordings sent to broadcasters (U.S. Senate 1985:133; see Kaufman 1986:236). The main goals of the PMRC were to inform parents about the music their youngsters were exposed to through radio broadcasts, in record stores, or at concerts, and to request the record industry for voluntary restraint with regard to explicit and obscene music. The PMRC specifically proposed a rating system, similar to the movie ratings system used by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and requested that specific warning labels be placed on album covers (Coletti 1987:424-425). The PMRC also suggested that song lyrics be printed on the album covers, records with obscene covers be placed under the counters of record stores, record companies should reconsider their contracts with performers who displayed sex or violence during shows or on records, radio stations be furnished with lyric sheets, backward masking be banned from all songs, and music videos be rated according to both lyrics and performances. To gain exposure, the PMRC started the publication of a monthly newsletter and sent letters to sixty music companies, to the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), and, most importantly, to the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA). The RIAA, which represents record companies responsible for 85% of the total sales of records in the U.S., initially responded fiercely against any of the PMRCs demands, invoking First Amendment rights for the free exercise of speech and music

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(Goodchild 1986:161). On August 5, President Gortikov of the RIAA sent a letter to PMRC President Pam Howar in which he stated that the RIAA agreed to have a warning label put on all future albums which contained songs with explicit lyrical content (U.S. Senate 1985:98). The label would read: "Parental Guidance: Explicit Lyrics". To all other PMRC demands, the RIAA refused to give in. In a letter of August 7, 1985, Pamela Howar, President of the PMRC, expressed the PMRCs discontent with Gortikovs proposal. The PMRC was not satisfied because the label did not have a diversified, specific rating decided upon by a panel. In response, on August 13, 1985, the RIAA sent a letter to the PMRC stating: "Explicit is explicit... There are just no right/wrong characterizations, and the music industry refuses to take the first step toward a censorship mode to create a master bank of good/bad words or phrases or thoughts or concepts" (cited in U.S. Senate 1985:103; cf. Kaufman 1986:230). In response to the RIAAs refusal to further discuss the issue, the PMRC made it clear that it was not advocating censorship in any way, but only sought to find ways to inform parents and children about the products the record industry made available, stressing that their actions were a consumer issue. However, the RIAAs response provoked opposition from record companies, radio and TV representatives, and musicians, who felt that the RIAAs label amounted to censorship and an abridgement of First Amendment rights. The dispute finally shifted to Capitol Hill, where a hearing was held before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on what by then had come to be known as the issue of "porn rock". 2. The Senate Hearing on Record Labeling The Senate Hearing on record labeling, held on September 19, 1985, was arguably the best attended and media-covered hearing ever held before any Senate Committee (Gray 1989a:153-155, 1989b:8-10; Kaufman 1986:231-233; Roldan 1987:231-240; Scheidemantel 1985-1986:467-470; see U.S. Senate 1985 for a transcript of the hearing). There appears to be little certainty on who decided to hold the Senate Hearing, but the fact that many PMRC affiliates were wives of important Washington politicians or businessmen, and that the wives of the Committee members Albert Gore, John Danforth, and Ernest Hollings were affiliated with the PMRC, is probably not coincidental. The purpose of the hearing, according to Committee Chairman John Danforth, was to discuss rock music that dealt explicitly with sexual topics and the glorification of violence. Senator Danforth stressed that "the reason for this hearing is not to promote any legislation... But simply to provide a forum for airing the issue itself, for ventilating the issue, for bringing it out in the public domain... so that the whole issue can be brought to the attention of the American people" (U.S. Senate 1985:1). The Chairman then opened the Hearing, being careful to mention that people could raise their concerns yet asked them to not "needlessly use expressions that may be in bad taste" (p.2). The first witnesses were the U.S. Senators, Hollings, Trible, Gore, and Hawkins (not a Committee member). All raised concerns over the influence of recent forms of rock music for the children of America. A few issues raised deserve attention: Senator Hollings indicated that he would seek a way, if possible, to do away with the "outrageous filth" of "music interspersed with pornography" (pp.4,5), and he was joined by Senator Exon who also advocated legislation or some form of regulation (p.52). Senator Trible referred to the subtle damages to children by songs dealing with rape, incest, sexual violence and perversion. Senator Gore asked for self-restraint on the part of the record industry, and invited Senator Hawkins referred to teenage suicide and overt expressions and descriptions of "violent sexual acts, drug taking, and flirtations with the occult" (p.6). Then Susan Baker, Pamela Howar, Sally Nevius, Tipper Gore, and Jeff Ling took the witness stand as representatives of the PMRC. They alluded to the relevance of rock music for many U.S. teenagers and the enormous amounts of records that are sold. The cause for their concern was related to teen pregnancies, teenage suicide rates, and rape, at the same time pointing out songs by Prince, The Time, and various heavy metal bands. Tipper Gore testified that the PMRC was no longer interested in a rating system but asked record companies to voluntarily label their products on the basis of the recommendations of a one-time panel. Gore specified that "voluntary labeling is not censorship" and that the PMRC "is not advocating any Federal intervention or legislation whatsoever" (p.13). Gore reported on the suicide by Steve Boucher, committed while listening to AC/DCs "Shoot to Thrill", showed several pictures of heavy metal artists and album covers, and pointed out sexual and violent themes in various (mostly heavy metal) song lyrics (newspaper and magazine articles as well as lyrics of some rock songs are enclosed in the senate report). Senator Exon responded favorably to "you ladies for coming here and testifying on the concerns which you have" (p.49), but also wondered what the reason was for the hearings when there was no call for regulation: "can anyone answer that? I did not schedule these hearings." (p.49). Unfortunately, no one said who did schedule the hearings, but Senator Exon later said that he would be interested "in some kind of legislation" (p.52). Susan Baker summarized the PMRCs point of view indicating the PMRCs call, not for legislation, but for responsibility and selfrestraint in the form of voluntary labeling. The standpoint of the PMRC was defended by Millie Waterman, Vice-president for legislative action (sic) of the National Parents and Teachers Association. Waterman raised concern over the well-being of Americas children and referred to the NPTAs 1984 attempt to have the RIAA agree on voluntary restraint. Waterman said she was pleased with the RIAAs label, but wanted a more detailed rating system introduced, so that the potential buyer knows what is precisely on a record. The musicians standpoint was represented by Frank Zappa, John Denver, and Dee Snider. After Frank Zappa had read out the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, he argued forcefully against the PMRCs demands which he considered "equivalent to treating dandruff by decapitation,... whipped up like an instant pudding by "the Wives of Big brother" (pp.5253). He argued that there was simply no reason at all to call the record industry to self-restraint. Zappa argued that the RIAA had given in to the record label merely because it sought to have the "Blank Tape Tax" passed. Zappa here referred to the Home Audio Recording Act, which would levy a 10-15% tax on home taping and give royalties to the recording industry for sales of tape recorders and blank tapes. The Home Audio Recording Act is the proposed bill H.R. 2911 and is sponsored by the RIAA (Gray 1989a:154). Zappa noticed that Senator Strom Thurmond ran the committee responsible for legislation, and that his wife was affiliated with the PMRC (Roldan 1987:231). Zappa also alluded to the fact that three Senators on the Committee had their wives in the PMRC, and therefore later in the hearings stated: "I dont think this is private action" (quote from Frank Zappas song "Porn Wars", which includes several samples of the Senate Hearing testimony; not in transcripts). Finally, Zappa indicated the danger of the stigmatization effects for the musicians that might result from the label system, and the fact that voluntary labeling could lead to "opening the door to an endless parade of moral quality control programs based on things certain Christians do not like" (p.54). The next musicians witness was John Denver. Somewhat more moderate than Zappa, Denver stated that he had unfortunately been the victim of censorship following the release of his song "Rocky Mountain High" which, Denver stated, "was banned from many radio stations as a drug-related song. This was obviously done by people who had never seen or been to the Rocky Mountains" (p.65). Denver acknowledged the concerns raised by the PMRC, but attacked the attempts to suppress ideas and the spoken word in a democratic society, drawing a comparison with Nazi Germany. The last musicians testimony was provided by Dee Snider, lead singer of the heavy metal band Twisted Sister. Snider referred to his Christian beliefs and that fact that all his songs were written in that spirit. He specified that all of Twisted Sisters songs the PMRC had condemned as containing references to sadomasochism, bondage, and rape, were all misquoted or misinterpreted. Snider also insisted that it is the parents job alone to take full responsibility over their childrens upbringing. RIAA President Gortikov also testified at the Hearing. He indicated that by the time of the Hearing already 24 of the RIAAs

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member companies had agreed on the voluntary labeling of records containing explicit lyrics. Any other, more specified form of labeling or rating he denounced as impractical (indicating the RIAAs companies release some 25,000 new records every year). The printing of lyrics on album sleeves is equally unfeasible since the record companies do not own the rights to the song lyrics, and, finally, the RIAA does not have any authority over the retailers of records so that it cannot control the actual selling of records. Gortikov went on to add five issues the PMRC had ignored: the number of offensive records is minute compared to the total mass of recordings released; most lyrics are positive; rock music is unfairly singled out; music reflects rather than introduces social values; and protective measures designed for children would inevitably also affect adults. Finally, some interesting testimony at the Hearing was delivered by expert witnesses, including a university professor and a psychiatrist. Joe Stuessy, University of Texas at San Antonio, gave an exposition on the psychology of music, and concluded that heavy metal music contains subliminal and backward messages as well as explicit references to "extreme violence, extreme rebellion, substance abuse, sexual promiscuity and perversion and Satanism" (p.117). Paul King, child and adolescent psychiatrist, pointed out heavy metals associations with drug abuse, sex, violence, and the power of evil. Dr. King also recounted that a person who had killed 8 people in New York City was a Black Sabbath fan, and that Ricky Kasso, the teenager in Long Island who stabbed his friend to death and took out his eyes, after which he hung himself, followed Black Sabbath and Judas Priest (p.130). After some shorter additional testimonies, the Committee was adjourned after five hours of debate. 3. After the Hearings: Quiet Before the Storm Following the Hearing, on November 1 of 1985, the PMRC, and its ally the National Parents and Teachers Association, reached an agreement with the RIAA on the voluntary record label (Joint News Release, November 1, 1985; Coletti 1987:424; see Goodchild 1986:164-165; Gray 1989a:154-155; Kaufman 1986:233-237; Roldan 1987:240-242). The agreement stipulated that the printing of lyrics remained optional and, because of space limitations, cassettes were exempted, bearing only the imprint "see LP for lyrics". Since then, different record companies designed their own label containing the words "Parental Guidance Explicit Lyrics" or some variation thereof. Frank Zappa designed his own label and first put it on his album "Frnk Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention", an allusion to the name of his former band The Mothers of Invention and his recent confrontations with the "Washington Wives". After the agreement, the PMRC, generally applauding the cooperation of the RIAA, agreed to attack only those products that did not comply to the RIAAs voluntary label. All three organizations decided to monitor and evaluate the policy for one year. On December 10, 1986, the PMRC held a press conference and denounced the RIAA for failing to comply with the joint agreement. The PMRC, by that time claiming to rely on 100,000 supporters, again sent letters of complaint to different record companies, stating that the labels were too small and that it would increase its efforts to control the release of records with explicit lyrics (Goodchild 1986:165). The activities of the PMRC and the record industrys response on the issue since then are not very clear. Some, usually smaller, companies have continued to refuse putting labels on records, and generally the response on the part of the musicians was not favorable, feeling that the RIAA had sold out. Danny Goldberg, leader of the meanwhile formed anticensorship group the Musical Majority, said "Its like compromising with terrorists" (in Roldan 1987:242). The sales of records, however, do not seem to have been affected. The most recent event concerning labels is the RIAAs decision to introduce a uniform label (see insert), to which the PMRC has responded favorably (Jones 1991:78). The new RIAA decision not only specifies the labels text ("Parental Guidance: Explicit Lyrics"), but also its size and color, as well as that its appearance on the lower right hand corner of all albums, cassettes, and compact discs containing explicit lyrics. In a press release, the new RIAA President, Jay Berman, announced the new logo and referred to the results of an independent national survey conducted in April, 1990, which demonstrated that more than half of the respondents were in favor of voluntary labeling (RIAA News Release, May 9, 1990). Whatever the label does to customers, it has already lead to some scientific research on the issue, debating whether a warning label increases or decreases the likelihood that a person will want to buy the labeled product (see, e.g., Christenson 1992; Davis and Dominick 1991). From personal experience, I discovered that, while originally I found it interesting to look for labeled records, this has become by all standards a time-wasting activity. So many records are labeled, without any coherent standard, that one may rightly wonder what the label is all about anyway. In any case, although the PMRCs actions have not managed to directly lead to legislation or a more strict rating system, it is clear that since the Senate Hearing the issue of the nexus between popular music, sex, violence and declining moral standards has been brought to the foreground of public discussion and has generated an enormous amount of media attention. In addition, some communities and states have recently proposed ordinances to identify and monitor offensive music, and several state and Federal instances of legislation have dealt with the control of music in some form or another. In any event, it can be observed that following the PMRCs actions and the Senate Hearing, which was after all a direct result of the PMRCs activities, the stage was set for a climate of law enforcement, legislation, and further social mobilization targeted against and for popular music. Paradoxically, the PMRC has always been careful to avoid bringing in the First Amendment and stressed that it did not seek any legislation. But the world of music must fit the word of law. II. MUSIC ON TRIAL: LOUDNESS, INCITEMENT, AND OBSCENITY I limit this analysis of court rulings on popular music to three often discussed, and from a legal point of view most important, cases. It should be noted, however, that next to these cases other legal interventions in popular music did occur after, as well a before, the PMRCs activities. In 1986, for instance, criminal charges were filed against Jello Biafra, lead singer of the Dead Kennedys for having inserted a poster inside of the bands album Frankenchrist. The poster, painted by H.R. Giger, is called "Landscape # 20: Where Are We Coming From?" (also referred to as "Penis Landscape") and depicts nine sex acts (Wishnia 1987:444). Strikingly, in a public statement, the PMRC expressed its support for the prosecution of Biafra. The case was brought to court by a concerned mother, but the religious right is reported to have already condemned the Dead Kennedys since their 1981 album "In God We Trust", which features the lyrics "Blow it out your ass, Jerry Falwell; God must be dead if youre alive" (Wishnia 1987:445). On August 27, 1987, Los Angeles Judge, Susan Isacoff, denied the prosecutions motion for a retrial after a jury voted 7 to 5 to acquit Jello Biafra on charges of distributing harmful material to minors. Other forms of legislation on popular music have since spread throughout the States: a San Antonio City ordinance was enacted to prohibit children under 14 to attend musical, stage, or theatrical presentations that include obscene performances; the Maryland Senate rejected a bill that would have made it a crime to sell obscene records to minors (Gray 1989b:11); several rock and rap performances have been cancelled or interrupted; in 1989, Missouri State Representative Jean Dixon introduced mandatory record labeling proposals, and similar bills were drafted and introduced in 22 states (Soocher 1990:27). On July 6, 1990, a mandatory record labeling bill was passed by the Louisiana legislature. The bill was introduced by State Rep. Ted Haik to have a label stating "Harmful to Minors", but it was vetoed by Governor Buddy Roemer on July 25 (OGallagher and Gaertner 1991:108-109). 1. Music and Loudness: Rock Against Racism By 1989, the Supreme Court had not yet explicitly included music and lyrics among the classes of protected speech. Only lower courts had recognized the protection of songs (Goodchild 1986:134, 142-145). However, The case Ward v. Rock Against Racism (1989), involving the use of guidelines to control the volume of music, brought the issue within the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court (see Irwin 1989). The association Rock Against Racism had for several years been organizing musical events to promote its anti-racist ideas at the

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Naumberg Bandshell in New York Citys Central Park. Just beyond the park are the apartments of Central Park West and its residents had regularly complained to city officials about the noise caused by various rock performances. On March 21, 1986, the City of New York promulgated Use Guidelines on noise-amplification. The guidelines specified that any concerts held at the Naumberg Bandshell would have to be held using amplification equipment and a sound technician provided by the city of New York. Rock Against Racism filed a motion against the enforcement of these guidelines. The New York sound guidelines validity was initially upheld in court, but the ruling was reversed by the United States Court of Appeals. The case was then brought before the United States Supreme Court (argued February 27, 1989, decided June 22, 1989). The Supreme Court ruled that "municipal noise regulation designed to ensure that music performances in band shell did not disturb surrounding residents, by requiring performers to use sound system and sound technicians provided by the city, did not violate free speech rights or performers" (Ward v. Rock Against Racism 1989:2746). This decision was based on the Courts contention that music is protected speech, and here lies the main relevance of the Ward case since it was the first time that the Supreme Court had ruled on the issue. The Court stated: "Music, as a form of expression and communication, is protected under the First Amendment" (Ward v. Rock Against Racism 1989:2753). However, the Supreme Court also decided that the New York guidelines on noise-control constituted a permissible regulation of time, place, and manner of expression because they passed the three-pronged OBrien test to determine the constitutionality of such restrictions (this test was first used in United States v. OBrien 1968). First, the guidelines were ruled contentneutral, that is, they did not take into account the specific contents of the message but only the level of noise of the musical expressions. Second, the guidelines were also narrowly tailored to serve substantial government interest because the quality of sound at Bandshell concerts, as well as the Citys interests in limiting sound volume for the convenience of residents living nearby, were guaranteed. Finally, the New York City guidelines also left open ample alternative channels of communication because the guidelines still permitted expressive activity in the Bandshell and, of course, did not affect other places where concerts could be held. In dissent, Justice Thurgood Marshall argued that the New York City guidelines were not the least intrusive means necessary to achieve the Citys interests. Therefore, the "narrowly tailored" requirement was not met. Justice Marshall contended that the Supreme Court should have investigated whether the "greater efficacy of the challenged regulation outweighs the increased burden it places on protected speech" (Ward v. Rock Against Racism 1989:2761). Also, the dissent found that the New York Use Guidelines were inconsistent with the First Amendments aversion to prior restraint, and claimed that they lacked any procedural safeguards (e.g. nobody could judicially review the technicians decisions during a concert). The dissent concluded that the dangers of a censorship system were not obviated by the New York City guidelines. 2. Music and Incitement: Ozzy Osbourne and Judas Priest On the night of Friday October 26, 1984, 19year old John McCollum shot himself in the head with a .22 caliber handgun while listening to a record by Ozzy Osbourne (Block 1990:787788; Blodgett 1986; Coletti 1987:442; Holt 1990:70-72). For most of the evening, McCollum had been listening to Osbournes albums "Diary of a Madman" and "Blizzard of Oz" on the family stereo in the living room. He later went up to his bedroom, put on his headphones, listened to Osbournes album "Speak of the Devil", and shot himself. In October of 1985, McCollums parents filed suit against Osbourne and his record company CBS on charges of negligence, products liability, and intentional misconduct, alleging that the music had incited their son to commit suicide. The Superior Court of Los Angeles County first dismissed the case (August 7, 1986), after which the plaintiffs appealed, claiming that Osbournes songs contained themes of satanic worship and death, and that particularly the song Suicide Solution had incited their son because it preached "suicide is the only way out" (quote from the songs lyrics). In addition, the song was claimed to contain "masked" lyrics not printed on the album ("why try, why try, get the gun and try it, shoot, shoot, shoot"). The Court of Appeals ruled that Osbournes music was constitutionally protected and could not be seen as cause of the suicide (McCollum v. CBS 1988). The court first noted that music is protected by the First Amendment, but that freedom of speech is not absolute. Then the court investigated whether the music of Osbourne could have brought about the imminent suicide of listeners. The court decided, on the basis of the so-called Brandenburg test of incitement (a 1969 decision that struck down a state statute prohibiting the advocacy of violence for political and industrial reform), that none of Osbournes lyrics commanded anyone to take immediate action and that the lyrics were at best an advocacy of violent action "at some indefinite time in the future" (McCollum v. CBS 1988:194). Even if Osbournes music could be considered as fatalistic and propagating suicide, the element of immediacy was missing and therefore the lyrics were protected under the First Amendment (note that the song Suicide Solution is in fact about the dangers of alcohol, written by Osbourne after his friend Bon Scott, lead-singer of AC/DC, had died as a result of alcohol abuse). In Nevada, on December 23, 1985, 18-year old Raymond Belknap and his friend James Vance listened to the album "Stained Class" by the British band Judas Priest (Block 1990:778, 788-789; Houser 1990:327-331). They had been listening to the album for over six hours while smoking marijuana and drinking beer. Afterwards, the two men went to a childrens play area near an empty churchyard. Raymond Belknap put a sawed-off shotgun beneath his chin and shot himself. James Vance also shot himself, survived with critical injuries but died three years later on November 30, 1988. The families of the men filed law suit against Judas Priest and their record company. Judas Priest initially tried to declare the lawsuit inadmissible because they were not American citizens, but the Nevada Supreme Court ruled that, having distributed their albums in the United States, the band was subject to personal jurisdiction (Judas Priest v. Nevada 1988). During the trail, the plaintiffs argued that the suicides were the result of hidden messages on the Judas Priest album, a song of which would contain the words "do it, do it". Plaintiffs attorneys had strategically decided not to sue Judas Priest for their songs explicit lyrical content because of the decision meanwhile reached in the McCollum case. After a 17-day trial, Judge Whitehead ruled that Judas Priests music had not incited the two youths to commit suicide because their album "Stained Class" did not contain any deliberate subliminal messages (Vance v. Judas Priest 1990). While the song "Better By You, Better Than Me" did contain the subliminal phrase "do it", the judge ruled that this was merely the result of an accidental noise caused by a guitar part and an exhalation. Applying the Brandenburg incitement test, Judge Whitehead ruled that: "the plaintiffs did not lose this case because defendants proved that subliminal stimuli have no effect on human behavior... Rather, plaintiffs lost this case because they failed to prove that defendants intentionally placed subliminal messages on the album and that those messages were a cause of the suicide" (Vance v. Judas Priest 1990:22, in Houser 1990:330). 3. Music and Obscenity: The 2 Live Crew Go to Court The obscenity case of the 2 Live Crews album "As Nasty As They Wanna Be" is one of the most interesting court cases on popular music. The case is complicated because of the facts that were involved, the court ruling that was reached on the albums obscenity, the reversal of the ruling by the Court of Appeals, and the enormous amount of legal debate it has led to. I will present the history of the case, the ruling of the first trial, and the ruling of the appeal (see Beatty 1991; Butler 1991:368-376; Campbell 1991:177-215; Friedland 1991; Furer 1991:465469; Gordon 1991:506-517; King 1991:120140; Morant 1992:16-20; OGallagher and Gaertner 1991:105-110; Olson 1991:515-529; Rogow 1991:243-250; Skywalker v. Navarro 1990a). The record company Skywalker Records released the 2 Live Crew album "As Nasty As They Wanna Be" ("Nasty") in 1989 and simultaneously released a "sanitized"

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version of the recording called "As Clean As They Wanna Be" (same music, different lyrics). By 1990, sales of the "Nasty" album amounted to about 1.7 million copies, while the Clean album had sold some 250,000 copies. In midFebruary of 1990, the Sheriffs office of Broward County, Florida, began an investigation into the "Nasty" recording as a response to complaints by South Florida residents. Broward County Deputy Sheriff Mark Wichner was assigned to the case. On February 26, 1990, he traveled to Sound Warehouse, a record store in Broward County, and bought a cassette version of the "Nasty" recording. He listened to the album, had six of its songs transcribed, and prepared an affidavit stating these facts. On February 28, 1990, Deputy Wichner sent the affidavit, the transcripts, and a copy of the "Nasty" tape to Judge Mel Grossman of the Broward County Circuit Court, requesting that the judge find probable cause that "Nasty" was legally obscene. On March 9, Judge Grossman issued an order, stating that he had found probable cause to believe the recording was obscene. The Broward County Sheriffs office received and copied the order, and distributed it to all record stores that might be selling the album throughout the county. The Sheriffs office had decided to warn the stores as a matter of courtesy (Skywalker v. Navarro 1990a). Then, Deputy Wichner again visited the store where he had purchased the "Nasty" cassette as well as two other stores. He gave a copy of the order to the managers of the stores, and told them that they should refrain from selling the "Nasty" recording and that selling the album could result in arrest under Florida state obscenity laws. Some 15 to 20 record stores were personally visited by agents and deputies from the Sheriffs office. Within days, all record stores in the county ceased selling the "Nasty" album. On March 16, 1990, Skywalker Records filed against suit Broward County Sheriff Nicholas Navarro, who himself, on March 27, filed suit to seek legal determination whether "Nasty" was obscene (no trial date was set). The Skywalker Records trial was held June 6, 1990 at the District Court of Ford Lauderdale, Florida, to determine a) whether the album "As Nasty As They Wanna Be" was legally obscene as a mater of civil, not criminal law, and b) whether the actions of defendant Navarro were unconstitutional prior restraint (Skywalker Records, Inc. v. Navarro 1990). The ruling was determined as follows. District Court Judge Jose Gonzalez first pointed out that the First Amendments free speech guarantee is not absolute, that obscene speech is not constitutionally protected, and that the State of Florida has enacted an obscenity statute. The 2 Live Crew argued that it is up to the free market of ideas to decide what is obscene and what is not, and that everybody is free not to buy a record. They also pointed to the fact that a sticker was placed on the album containing the words: "Warning: Contains Explicit lyrics". The Judge replied that under Florida law obscenity is a crime and that the court merely seeks to interpret the law. Therefore, the Judge ruled to determine whether the "Nasty" album is obscene by applying the so-called Miller test of obscenity. The Miller obscenity test, first applied in Miller v. California (1973), is applied by determining proof of the three following standards: "(1) the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, (2) measured by contemporary community standards, the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law, and (3) the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value" (Skywalker v. Navarro 1990:587). All three elements must be met and each evaluated independently. Judge Gonzalez decided that prior to application of the three standards of the Miller test (prurient interest, patently offensive, lacking serious value), the first and second element of the test require a determination of community standards. The Judge ruled that the relevant community is comprised of the counties Palm Beach, Broward and Dade, because these counties are geographically connected, they share a common transportation system and common means of communication (radio, TV, newspapers), and have many cultural, economic, and political ties. The Judge also ruled that, to determine the standards within this community, he could rely on his own personal knowledge since he was himself a resident of Broward County since 1958. Therefore, he denied expert testimony on this matter. Judge Gonzalez also decided that the residents in the area are generally more tolerant than other communities in the state. In his application of the Miller test to the "Nasty" recording, the Judge ruled the following. First, the Judge determined, as a matter of fact, that the "Nasty" record does appeal to the prurient interest, specifically because a) all of the references to sex in the recordings lyrics, b) the intention to lure hearers into sexual activity, and c) rap musics emphasis on the lyrics. Therefore, the "Nasty" album "is an appeal directed to the "dirty" thoughts and the loins, not to the intellect and the mind" (1990:591). Second, again as a question of fact, the Judge decided that "Nasty" deals with sexual activities in graphic detail ("like a zoom lens"), that the album is replete with sexual lyrics, and that it is therefore patently offensive. Finally, the Judge ruled that, taken as a whole, the "Nasty" album does indeed lack any serious artistic, literary, political, or social value. This decision was not measured by community standards, but on the basis of a determination of the reasonable persons judgment. Judge Gonzalez explicated that neither the musical style "rap" nor the band 2 Live Crew were on trial, and that the trial only dealt with the recording "As Nasty As They Wanna Be". Several experts, including Carlton Long, Assistant Professor in Political Science at Columbia University, an expert on Black American culture, witnessed on behalf of the plaintiffs. Long contemplated upon the cultural and political significance of the album to demonstrate its redeeming social value. Plaintiffs also pointed to the fact that when parts of the album were played during the trial, the audience was laughing, indicating that the album is a piece of comedy and satire. The Judge argued that the laughter could have been intended to hide embarrassment and shame because of hearing the lyrics. Also, the Judge indicated that rap is essentially verbal and that the riffs borrowed from other recordings do not manage to lift the "Nasty" album to an artistic work. In conclusion, the album "As Nasty As They Wanna Be" by 2 Live Crew was ruled legally obscene. Judge Gonzalez also ruled on the fact whether the Sheriffs actions were a case of prior restraint. He decided that the initial purchase of the "Nasty" album by Deputy Sheriff Wichner was not prior restraint, and neither was Judge Grossmans inquiry into the probable cause of obscenity. However, the order of Judge Grossman indicating probable cause of the "Nasty" recordings obscenity was issued without any legal basis, and neither were there any legal grounds to spread the order to the stores, which in effect meant a county wide seizure of the "Nasty" album. All of the Sheriff Offices actions concerning the "Nasty" album after Grossmans decision were therefore unconstitutional prior restraint. The Sheriff and his deputies were permanently enjoined from threatening employees and managers of record stores with arrest for the selling of obscene records or from informing them about a probable cause order of obscenity. On May 7, 1992, the United States Court of Appeals decided to reverse the decision of Judge Gonzalez (Luke Records v. Navarro 1992; see Morant 1992:24; note that Skywalker Records had meanwhile changed its name because of a legal suit filed by the production company of Steven Spielberg; the lead singer of 2 Live Crew called himself Luke Skywalker and the company he had set up Skywalker Records after one of the characters in the movie Star Wars; the name of the company was changed to Luke Records; Friedland 1991:137). The Court of Appeals heard expert testimony (including Professor Long) and decided that the "Nasty" album did not appeal to the prurient interest and did have (culturally specific) artistic value. Also, the Court of Appeals noted that Judge Gonzalez personal knowledge to determine community standards was insufficient and that he should have relied on expert witnesses. Finally, the burden of proof in the "Nasty" case should have rested with defendant Navarro, but he only submitted a copy of the tape. Therefore, the Court of Appeals concluded: "We reject the argument that simply by listening to this musical work, the judge could determine that it had no serious artistic value. REVERSED." (Luke Records v. Navarro 1992:139; the prior restraint analysis of Gonzalez was not commented upon). In the meantime, The

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Supreme Court has upheld the Court of Appeals ruling (Chicago Tribune, December 1992). III. THE CRIMINALIZATION OF MUSIC: RAPPING AND ROCKING WITH THE LAW The court cases on popular music I presented have all set important precedents which have lead to considerable debate among legal scholars and professionals. The rise of the PMRC and particularly the Senate Hearing, which did not seek any legislation but which nevertheless represented intervention or at least interest by legislators and politicians, have inspired several legal scholars to write on the possibility of future legislation and some legal difficulties in the control of music. The First Amendment has been a central concern in these discussions, and other means of legal control (incitement, obscenity) were considered. Next, the cases on loudness and incitement received some attention, but it was not until the obscenity trial of the 2 Live Crew that the legal ball got really rolling, with over a dozen of articles appearing in professional law journals. 1. The First Amendment The first wave of legal articles on the control and censorship of music appeared soon after the Senate Hearing was held. A review of these discussions will make it clear that a) nearly all legal scholars agreed that there were many constitutional problems with the proposed labeling and/or rating system for records; and b) while several articles focused on the possibilities of future legal control of music, none of these foresaw the original 2 Live Crew verdict. First of all, a number of legal articles discussed the problems associated with the labeling of records (see Block 1990:826-829; Butler 1991:379; Goodchild 1986:166-171; Kaufman 1986:238). The problems that are suggested with the labeling system include: the increased administrative costs and burdens involved with administering and policing of the system; the possibility of reduced album sales due to decreased air play and/or unavailability of records in the stores; the increased incentive for bootlegging; the possibility that children will be lured into buying obscene records precisely because they are labeled; the unfairness of the system since only one small group of people would decide what is acceptable for the entire nation; the fact that labeling is not contentneutral; and the deterrent effect for store owners to carry the labeled records, which violates the Constitution as an impermissible prior restraint. In addition, the labeling of records, as compared to the movie industrys rating system, is considered practically unfeasible because of the enormous amount of records being released every year, the ambiguous nature of music lyrics, and because it is unclear whether entire albums should be rated or only separate songs on each album, and whether videos should receive a separate rating from the song on the album (Kaufman 1986:245-247; Roldan 1987:242-247; Scheidemantel 1985-1986:505507). Furthermore, the regulation of music through labeling was deemed ineffective to protect children from exposure to explicit lyrics because anybody would still be free to buy the labeled record anyway (Berry and Wolin 1986:615; Kaufman 1986:237). It was also claimed that the PMRC, which sought to control records on radio and TV, was not allowed to regulate broadcasting since only the FCC can determine regulations on licensees (Kaufman 1986:242). Moreover, some legal scholars assert that the PMRC proposed voluntary labeling as a form of private action precisely to allow for a form of control which state or Federal authorities could never justify. The proposal for "voluntary" restraint actually amounts to an abuse of private power that foregoes the restrictions of state and Federal action (Goodchild 1986:160-171; Scheidemantel 19851986:494-504). McDonald (1988a:309) even states that the RIAA agreed to the voluntary label only because of a threat of legal action by the PMRC. Other legal scholars have even gone further in asserting the effective ties between private and public action in the case of the PMRCs proposals. Given the general condemnatory atmosphere and the marital affiliation of PMRC affiliates with high-ranking Senators, it is argued that the Senate debates were not neutral and actually constituted an impermissible influence of the state in the final (officially private) agreement between the RIAA, the NPTA and the PMRC (see testimony by Zappa; Lazarus 1987:434-435). Private and state action have actually been able to merge precisely because the issue was transferred over into the private hands of the politically associated PMRC. The Senate Hearing controversy reveals how government can make suggestions to private industry and ask them for "voluntary" restraint, only to sidestep the constitution ("congress shall pass no laws...") and thus in effect enforce regulation (Berry and Wolin 1986:608-615; Goodchild 1986:174176). Finally, the labeling of records poses serious First Amendment issues because of the "chilling effect" the system may have. It is claimed that even when labeling itself is not considered an abridgement of First Amendment rights, it could eventually lead to legislation as the result of a "net-widening" effect (Berry and Wolin 1986:619; Goodchild 1986:176). Directly or indirectly, the PMRCs proposed labeling is thereby running afoul of the First Amendment and engages in de facto censorship (Roldan 1987:247-252). Several legal discussions following the Senate Hearing have focused on the possibilities of legislation on popular music. In light of the previously mentioned court cases that have in effect dealt with issues of incitement and obscenity with regard to popular music, it is striking to note that these articles, published before the cases took place, often considered incitement and obscenity but always concluded that there are solid legal grounds to conclude that such issues could never stand up in a court of law (see Berry and Wolin 1986: 597-615; Kaufman 1986:237-239; Lazarus 1987:504-519). It is suggested, for instance, that the court could decide that rock speech is of lesser general value than purely political speech and can therefore only receive limited protection as a form of commercial speech. This possibility, however, is excluded since music, unlike commercials, does not express any verifiable truths. On the other hand, ad hoc regulations could then still be possible, for instance, to prohibit certain concerts and certain songs, or to supervise the broadcasting of songs on radio (Lazarus 1987:521-522; Gray 1989a:155). The issue of incitement by music was discussed because records that would somehow be proven to cause or incite injurious activity do not fall under the heading of constitutionally protected speech (Berry and Wolin 1986; Coletti 1987; Holt 1990:67-69). But this possibility seemed highly unlikely because there is no proof on the links between, for instance, pornography and rape, and because the contested statement has to be very clear and precise (Coletti 1987:438-443). Therefore, Berry and Wolin (1986:606-608) argue that state and Federal authorities cannot label records because there is no conclusive evidence that exposure to sexual and violent music lyrics causes anti-social or immoral behavior. Popular music would fail the clear and present danger test and therefore does not constitute an imminent danger (Goodchild 1986:182; Holt 1990:69). Although it was acknowledged that the state has an interest in protecting and supervising children, records cannot be regulated because a) the individual has a right to information; b) the state secures its interest in supervising and protecting children through education and not through music; and c) time, place, and manner restrictions can only be made without regard to the content of the message, and if the restrictions are very narrowly defined and leave open alternative ways of communication. In the case of labeling records, all these issues become problematic. Moreover, records are bought privately, so that there is no public forum involved, and they are bought voluntarily, so that no person has to be threatened by their messages because each individual is free not to buy the record (Coletti 1987:443-451; Kaufman 1986:254). Of all the legal debates, the one focusing on obscenity was most clear-cut. All legal articles that considered this issue before the Skywalker trial concluded that music could never be considered obscene. Particularly, it was claimed that records could never pass the "as a whole" test because on even the most explicit albums there will be some songs which are not obscene as defined by the standards of the Miller test (Berry and Wolin 1986:598; Block 1990:794-796; Coletti 1987:427-438; Goodchild 1986:177-180; Holt 1990:61-67; Kaufman 1986:254-257; Scheidemantel 19851986:479-482). Moreover, musical recordings by definition have artistic value, and they fail to pass the "dominant theme" test because lyrics are often secondary to the music or can in any case not be considered separate from the music

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(Judge Gonzalez did so anyway). Also, records do not appeal to the prurient interest, even when they are judged to be indecent (from a legal point of view indecency is not obscenity, see Scheidemantel 1985-1986:476). Other obscenity problems result from the fact that music is an art form and that words to music, unlike the written word, can never be proven to arouse sexual or violent conduct. Because the obscenity of music can never be clearly defined, any form of such legislation on music would be vague (vague laws are unconstitutional). Also, obscenity laws on music would be "constitutionally overbroad" because, when the target is the protection of children, any person regardless of age would be affected too, and because only one or a few of the songs on an entire album may constitute unprotected speech (Berry and Wolin 1986:604; Goodchild 1986:171-174). The overbreadth of any regulation of music, therefore, would constitute censorship (Kaufman 1986:262). In sum, legal scholars after the Senate Hearing, but before the Ward and Skywalker cases, explicitly recognized that music was a form of protected speech, and that any form of regulation, including the labeling of records, interferes with the individuals right to choose. While acknowledging that music can influence behavior, that it affects young people in particular, that the style of music and performers has changed, and that some parents are genuinely concerned, the labeling of records signifies a deprivation for all because of the concerns of a few. While at the time of this debate music was not yet considered protected speech by the Supreme Court, all legal commentators agreed that music, as a medium for the expression of ideas, should be constitutionally protected. 2. Loudness and Incitement As mentioned before, the most important consequence of Ward v. Rock Against Racism (1989) was the fact that the Supreme Court had explicitly ruled that music is protected speech under the First Amendment, at the same time stating that this does not imply that all musical speech is fully protected. Numerous cases involve regulation of free speech and the Courts decision on the New York guidelines precisely concerned such regulation, specifically the time, place and manner restrictions under the OBrien test. Very few legal scholars have commented on the Ward case. The fact that the Supreme Court had explicitly ruled that music is protected by the First Amendment did not lead to much discussion, simply because nobody had expected otherwise. However, the noise restrictions that the Supreme Court ruled constitutionally valid did arouse some discussions (Irwin 1989; Sorondo 1990). It is argued that while the Courts ruling rightly assessed the content-neutrality of the New York guidelines, the narrow tailoring requirement is more problematic since the Court did not investigate any other alternative means the City of New York could have resorted to reach its goal. Also, the decision that the New York guidelines did not involve any prior restraint was considered technically wrong since the City of New York does possess the authority to deny use of the Bandshell in advance of the expression by turning down the volume and, as the dissent stipulated, because the placement of a technician during the concert interfered with the communicated message. Likewise, the fact that the Rock Against Racism concert was held in Central Park was crucial for the event because rescheduling the concert at another place would have meant a reduction of the political message to a "whisper" (Sorondo 1990). Finally, procedural safeguards of the guidelines were not met because the city could always abuse its discretion in the control of sound without judicial review of the concert promoters. The incitement trials have likewise lead to little legal debate. Legal scholars agree that the rulings in the Osbourne and Judas Priest trials were correct and that musical recordings will never be able pass the Brandenburg incitement test (Block 1990:796-803; Houser 1990:333-337). First of all, it is hard, if not impossible, to prove that the intention of a record is to cause injury because the artist can always argue that only artistic values are involved. The message of a record can also not be directed at some definite time, so that the reaction can not be immediate. Given the time lapse between recording, selling and buying of the record, there cannot be a "real time" urging. In addition, the listener can freely turn the music off, look for a different record, and the impact of subliminal messages is not determined and can therefore not be conclusively ruled upon. Finally, it was suggested that the Brandenburg test can and should not be applied to musical recordings because records are private speech, publicly available yet listened to by young people in the private sphere of family and friends. From this perspective, the courtroom was simply not the appropriate place to determine the incitement danger of music (Houser 1990). 3. Obscenity by Law The amount of legal debate that the 2 Live Crew case has produced is by all standards staggering. At least a dozen papers in law reviews have analyzed the case from a multitude of legal perspectives. Interestingly, one of the papers was written by the 2 Live Crew defense attorney Bruce Rogow, Professor of Law at Nova University, in a special issue of the Nova Law Review. Three papers in the issue dealt with the obscenity trial. The editors originally intended to include a cassette version of the album with the review. However, the editors decision "was vetoed for non-academic, nonlegal considerations - in favor of protecting the perceived sensibilities and sensitivities of those upon whose support this University is dependent. Thus, we are reminded again of the power of speech" (Editors Note, Nova Law Review (1991) 15(1):118). Reviewing Judge Gonzalez application of the Miller test step by step, legal scholars have argued against each and every decision the Judge made (see Beatty 1991:637641; Campbell 1991:192-237; Furer 1991:472494; Friedland 1991:132-157; Gordon 1991:517-524; Morant 1992:28-29; OGallagher and Gaertner 1991:113-121; Wolfe 1993). First, it was argued that the Judges determination of the relevant community and its standards was overtly subjective. The Judge decided upon a geographical concept of community, but this was inappropriate because the fact that people live in close physical proximity does not automatically suggest that they share common values. Judge Gonzalez was also inconsistent in determining, on the one hand, that the considered community is generally more tolerant than others, and, on the other hand, that he could rely on his personal knowledge of the community standards which he never defined, of which he did not say whether they could change over time, and of which he did not determine the defining criteria. Second, the three standards of the Miller test (prurient interest, patently offensive, lacking serious value) were not met. With regard to determination of the albums prurient interest, it was argued that there was no clear intention on the part of 2 Live Crew to lure hearers into sexual activity, and, referring to the profit-making motive of the rap band, Judge Gonzalez ignored that motive was irrelevant in aesthetic maters. Next, the patently offensive character of the "Nasty" album was decided upon as the result of a misinterpretation of the lyrics, based upon Gonzalez arbitrary determination of "the" community standards. Actually, the lyrics of 2 Live Crews music should not be taken literally as they are comedic parodies in a culturally specific language. Also, music does not appeal to the intellect but to human emotions and imagination. Finally, the Judges ruling that "Nasty" did not have any serious artistic value was by definition mistaken since the "as a whole" test fails automatically in the case of a recording which after all always has some serious elements (the Judge never heard all the songs). Judge Gonzalez particularly failed to take into account Professor Longs testimony which indicated the specific artistic style of the "Nasty" recording. Long pointed to the call and response style, the tradition of "doing the dozens" (a word game with insults), and the meaning of "boasting" as part of this type of rap music. Judge Gonzalez thus completely ignored the specific African American cultural values that are manifested by the album. Finally, the prior restraint decision of Judge Gonzalez did not meet any resistance in the legal commentaries (Morant 1992:13-15). Gonzalez decision in this respect complies with the legal principle that until speech or expression is ruled obscene, it must be accorded a degree of protection under First Amendment rights. However, it is unclear when a judicial determination must be sought to decide whether something is protected speech or not. In the 2 Live Crew Case, law enforcement activities had already taken place before the Judges ruling. In sum, the decision of the Court of Appeals to reverse Gonzalez decision did not

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come as a surprise. It appears that from a legal point of view it is very hard, if not impossible, to ever determine obscenity with regard to a musical recording. Indeed, some scholars argue that any application of the Miller test on music is doomed to fail, and even that the Miller test itself is unconstitutionally vague and overbroad, since so many of its standards are not clear (e.g. "community", "standard", "patently",...) (Beatty 1991:649-655). The 2 Live Crew Defense attorney Rogow concludes that the obscenity of records can and should be discussed, but never in a court of law. IV. POPULAR CULTURE AND THE WEB OF LAW ENFORCEMENT Next to the court proceedings, law enforcement activities have in remarkable fashion entered the censorship controversy. Particularly interesting from a social control perspective are the various ways in which police have managed to control music without any legal basis, and how law enforcement activities have occasionally preceded rather than followed judgments in court and/or the passing of legislation. Strikingly, very little of the literature deals with these issues explicitly. Many of the law review papers I have consulted, for instance, discuss in detail the legal aspects of the musical court cases but only mention law enforcement issues in footnote or in passing. Police activities on music concern unconcerted, sporadic actions by individual law enforcement agencies throughout the US, as well as more harmonious activities as the result of direct police cooperation. The 2 Live Crew case, the Charles Freeman arrest, and the condemnation of the Body Count song "Cop Killer" have been important catalysts to more or less organize police activities. 1. Sporadic Action Law enforcement officers are neccesarily involved with the enforcement of laws. With rock and rap concerts drawing crowds of up to tens of thousands listeners, the task of controlling the masses is not always an easy one. If only intended for safety reasons, this does not prevent some law enforcers from being quite fed up with the surveillance of music fans interested in "the four ss: smoking, snorting, shooting, and screwing" (San Bernardino County Sheriff, Floyd Tidwell, quoted in Roldan 1987:219). Crowd control during rock and rap performances is a major police concern, one that is easily related to safety and security, rather than censorship. Several examples can be mentioned on how police have occasionally tried to control popular music in one way or another. When the first reports on white teenage gangs were spread, many of which were associated with a particular style of music (e.g. heavy metal gangs, punk-rock gangs), heavy metal and punk oriented gang rehabilitation centers became available. The Los Angeles County Police Department is reported to supervise a program called "Back in Control Training Center" designed to de-program and de-metal or depunk troubled youngsters. The probation officer in charge of this program claims that 80% of the kids who assault their parents are fans of heavy metal (Roldan 1987:220; note that this program is elsewhere identified as being run by two former probation officers, see Marsh 1991:68). In 1987, a record store clerk in Florida was charged with felony for selling another 2 Live Crew cassette, Is What We Are, to a 14year old girl. The parents of the girl had called the police to complain of the lyrics. Charges were dropped (Jones 1991:78). Police were also involved in the Rock Against Racism case. New York citizens had complained about the noise at the Naumberg concerts for several years before the New York City guidelines were passed. The Supreme Court reports that on previous occasions Rock Against Racism had been less than cooperative with city officials, and "at one concert,... police felt compelled to cut off the power to the sound system, an action that caused the audience to become unruly and hostile" (Ward v. Rock Against Racism 1989:2750). This incidence took place in 1984, and some time later the City developed the Use Guidelines (law enforcement activity precedes legislation). The FBI got into action in 1989 following the song "F*** tha Police" by the black rap band N.W.A. (Niggers With Attitude) (Gates 1990:60). FBI Assistant Director (National Public Relations Director?) Milt Ahlerich sent a letter to the N.W.A. distributor saying that the N.W.A. album Straight Outta Compton "encourages violence against and disrespect for the law-enforcement officer". Ahlerich said he "spoke for all law enforcement", but also stated that he just wanted to bring this matter to the attention of the record company (quoted in Adler et al. 1990:58; Right to Rock 1991:7). Also, a network of police faxmachines tracked N.W.A. during their 1989 tour, urging police to stop the shows any which way they could. Several shows were cancelled. In Detroit, the band was held in detention (Right to Rock 1991:7). N.W.A. is reported to have been monitored by the FBI (Donelley 1992:68). The story goes on and on. In the Fall of 1990 members of the heavy metal band GWAR were arrested by officers of the Charlotte Police and the North Carolina State Alcohol Law Enforcement Division. Band members had simulated anal intercourse during their show. On stage the band sentenced to death a "judge" (doll) who had banned dirty rock music. Before the execution, the judge received anal intercourse from a band members plastic fish/penis. As the result of a plea bargain, the band was fined and banned from performing in North Carolina for one year (Crane 1993). 2. Cops Making Laws Curiously, when police actions get more concerted, research on their activities gets more messy. From various sources, I have tried to come up with a clear picture of the law enforcement involvement around the 2 Live Crew case, but this has proven to be a very difficult endeavor. Not much of the literature on the control of music deals explicitly with police activity, and different reports on police action in the popular press and furnished by anticensorship organizations give contradictory accounts. I will present the most important police actions on music since the 2 Live Crew case chronologically. Prepare and Do the First 2 Live Crew Trial The 2 Live Crew case in fact began already in 1988. On June 29, 1988, Tommy Hammond, co-owner of a record store in Alexander City, Alabama, was arrested for selling a cassette of 2 Live Crews "Move Somethin" to an undercover police officer. Hammond was brought before a jury trial on a misdemeanor charge, convicted in Municipal Court, and fined $500.00 (OGallagher and Gaertner 1991:105-106; Soocher 1990:27). On February 22, 1990, an Alabama jury court in appeal decided to overturn Hammonds conviction (Beatty 1991:628; OGallagher and Gaertner 1991:105-106). A Lee County, Florida, judge ruled in October 1988 that probable cause existed that Move Somethin by 2 Live was obscene (Beatty 1991:628). In February, 1990, Governor Bob Martinez asked state prosecutor Peter Antonacci to determine whether the 2 Live Crew music violated obscenity and racketeering laws (Adler et al. 1990:57). The governors interest was aroused by Jack Thomson, an anti-pornography lawyer who had launched a letter-faxing campaign. Thomson sought to persuade Martinez to see if 2 Live Crew violated RICO, the 1970 Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization Act, Beatty 1991:629-630. Thomson had himself received a letter from the American Family Association that included a transcript of the "Nasty" album lyrics. Thomson then sent letters to law enforcement officials in 67 Florida counties and to the governors of all U.S. states (Hardy 1992:13). Antonacci advised Martinez that the issue should be dealt with at the local level, and Deputy Wichner was assigned to the case. According to one commentator, Wichner admitted during the 2 Live Crew Trial that he never received any letters from "concerned citizens", only telephone calls and anonymous messages. Judge Gonzalez did not consider this a relevant issue (and it happened, Martinez and Thompson were working on the case, see Beatty 1991:626). According to 2 Live Crew defense attorney Rogow, Sheriff Navarros actions were triggered by William Kelly, "a long retired J. Edgar Hoover pornography apparatchik who was the Sheriffs "special consultant on pornography". Rogow also mentions that Kelly had close ties to certain conservative, family oriented organizations (Rogow 1991:243). In any case, on February 26, 1990, Wichner bought a "Nasty" cassette at a Sound Warehouse record store and, on February 28, 1990, he sent the material to Judge Grossman (Beatty 1991:628; Friedland 1991:137), who decided, on March 9, 1990, that there was probable cause of obscenity. Grossman issued a probably cause order, and the Sheriff distributed the order to all businesses selling records in the county, warning them to refrain from selling the "Nasty" recording. The Sheriffs warning mentioned that selling the album to a minor

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would be a felony and a misdemeanor if sold to an adult (King 1991:122). On March 16, 1990, the 2 Live Crew filed suit against Sheriff Navarro, and on June 6, 1990, Gonzalez ruled that the "Nasty" recording was obscene. Prepare the Freeman and the Second 2 Live Crew Trials On June 8, 1990, Charles E. Freeman, owner of E.C. Records store in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was arrested by Eugene McCloud, a black detective of Sheriff Navarros office. Freeman had earlier announced that he would not abide to the court ruling on 2 Live Crews "Nasty" album and would continue to sell the recording. McCloud made an undercover purchase of the "Nasty" recording after Freeman had asked him whether he would like to listen to a few of the songs on the album. McCloud listened to the songs, bought a record and a cassette version of the "Nasty" recording, and then arrested Freeman. Then Sheriff Navarro showed up and made the misdemeanor charge (Rogow 1991:250-251) (note that Bruce Rogow, Law Professor at Nova University in Fort Lauderdale, was counselor for 2 Live Crew as well as Freeman). On June 10, 1990, three members of 2 Live Crew were arrested at an adult-only performance at Club Futura, and criminal charges were brought against them (Morant 1992:20; Beatty 1991:626; Furer 1991:492). The arrest was the result of an undercover operation involving eight deputies dressed in sporty outfits and armed with minimicrocassettes and $60 each for tickets and drinks (a backup team of six detectives waited outside the club). Luther Campbell and Chris Wongwon, members of the band, were arrested after the show and brought to the county Jail. Another band member, Mark Ross, went home by car (the detectives could not follow or find him), but was arrested two weeks later at the house of Professor Rogow (defense attorney of 2 Live Crew). The fourth band member, David Hobbs, was not arrested because he did not sing during the show (Rogow 1991). Move to Texas, Go Back to Florida, Stop By at Wisconsin and Rhode Island In June, 1990, San Antonio Police Commander, Lt. Jerry Pittman, sent a letter to Bexar County District Attorney Fred Rodriguez to ask him whether the 2 Live Crews "Nasty" album was obscene (he did so at the request of a citizens complaint). Assistant DA Mike Schill reviewed the transcripts of the album and determined that some of the lyrics violated obscenity laws. Schill then sent a letter back to Mr.Pittman and stated that, despite possible obscenity violations, asking retailers to remove the album from the stores could constitute an illegal action (prior restraint). Mr.Pittman decided not to follow Mr.Schills advice, and on June 12, 1990, at least six vice detectives visited 84 record stores in San Antonio and ordered the store owners to remove the "Nasty" album from their shelves to avoid arrest under the Texas obscenity laws (Anderson 1990; King 1991:143). (see December 10, 1990). On August 10, 1990, the members of Too Much Joy, a relatively unknown band from New York City, were arrested because they had performed several songs from the "Nasty" album at an adults-only show (OGallagher and Gaertner 1991:110). On October 3, 1990, a Fort Lauderdale jury found a shop owner guilty of obscenity for selling the "Nasty" album. The retailer was sentenced $1,000 fine, but he refused to pay and went in appeal (no written opinions and no transcript of the first trial are available, I have no information on the appeal, see Furer 1991:493). At least four other record store owners have been arrested for selling the same album (National Law Journal 1990; Anderson 1990; Beatty 1991:625-626). In Eau Claire, Wisconsin, law enforcement officers were reported to have asked record store owners to keep "Nasty" off the shelves and not sell it to minors (Jones 1991:73). In September, 1990, a privately owned club called the Windjammer, in Misquamicut, Rhode Island, drew up a contract with 2 Live Crew for a concert to be held on October 6, 1990 (Morant 1992:20-24). The town council asked one of the club owners, M.J. Murphy, to appear at a public hearing before the council to discuss the moral aspects and safety precautions of the planned performance. The council president wrote a letter to the owners, and stated concerns on matters including inadequate parking facilities, safety problems, insufficient sanitary facilities, lack of ability to protect public places, inadequate avenues for fire exit, problems with crowd control, and an excessive impact on the normal operation of Westerly Police Department. On September 19, 1990, the clubs owners filed a motion with the U.S. District Court of Rhode Island for a temporary restraining order. On September 28, 1990, the court ruled that the councils review of the effects of the concert before it had taken place constituted prior restraint (Atlantic Beach v. Morenzoni 1990). Do the Freeman and the Second 2 Live Crew Trials On October 3, 1990, Charles Freeman was convicted by a jury trial at Broward County. Rogow (1991) notes that the jury selection was based on racially biased voter registration lists and, consequently, Judge Paul Backman ruled with a jury of three men and eight upper-middle class white women (including "a 76 year-old former sociology professor" who "taught at Howard University during the 1960s", Rogow 1991:257). The jury members were instructed by the judge that they could rule on obscenity without the aid of expert testimony. Unfortunately, the defenses entire case was based upon expert testimony. Freeman, after his conviction, yelled that the "white jury" did not know anything about the ghetto. On October 20, 1990, the three arrested members of 2 Live Crew were found not guilty by a Broward County jury (four white women, a black woman and one white male) for their Club Futura performance (Morant 1992:20; Beatty 1991:626; Furer 1991:492). Written transcripts of the recordings made by the undercover agents during the club performance were excluded from the trial hearings (it had taken the policemen five working days to prepare the transcripts). Tape recordings were accepted but were incomprehensible due to the poor sound quality of the cassettes (Rogow 1991). Prosecutor Pedro Dijols afterwards said that "our officers suffered from stage fright and were distracted by the distorted tapes in making statements to the jury" (quoted in Anderson 1990:29). Expert testimony at the trial was provided by Professor Henry L. Gates, Duke University, who discussed the artistic quality of the 2 Live Crews music (Anderson 1990; Hardy 1992:12; Friedland 1991:153). After the trial, Sheriff Navarro vowed to arrest the band anyway if they would ever again perform in Broward County (Furer 1991:493; Rogow 1991:251261). Get Back to Texas and Bring in Ice-T On November 8, 1990, a case against a retailer of a Sound Warehouse record store (incidentally, the same company as the one Wichner visited) in Dallas, Texas, was dismissed. The record store owner had sold a copy of 2 Live Crews "Nasty" album. Similar charges have been brought against retailers in Canada, North Carolina and Texas (Beatty 1991:629). On December 10, 1990, Bexar County, Texas, Judge Toy Martinez dismissed criminal charges of promoting pornography against San Antonio record store owner Dave Risher who was arrested for selling a copy of "Nasty" to Patrick Weaver. Incidentally, Mr.Weaver is the son of Teresa Weaver, President of the organization Citizens Against Pornography (OGallagher and Gaertner 1991:109). On January 17, 1991, the members of the band Too Mych Joy (see August 10, 1990) were acquitted by a jury in Broward County, Florida (OGallagher and Gaertner 1991:110). The Ice-T case erupted during the presidential elections of 1992. It concerned the song "Cop Killer" on the album Body Count by rapper Ice-Ts heavy metal band of the same name. To date, there has been no judicial determination of the protected status of the song Cop Killer, but various politicians (including former Vice-President Dan Quayle), celebrities (most notably Charlton Heston, see Heston 1992), and members of police organizations have vehemently criticized the songs message and presumed incitement to violence (Police Chief 1992). Tipper Gore of the PMRC condemned Ice-Ts for the "vileness of his message" (in Donelley 1992:66). In early June 1992, a group of law enforcement officials in Texas called for a boycott of Time Warner because of Cop Killer. Doug Elder, President of the Houston Police Officers Association, stated that if you mix Ice-Ts music "with the summer, the violence, and a little drugs, they are going to unleash a reign of terror on communities all across this country" (in Donelley 1992:66). Several police organizations sent letters of

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complaint to the record company that released the album, Warner Brothers, and the debate over the songs impact linger on until today (see, for instance, the discussion between the President of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, Dennis Martin, and criminologists Mark Hamm and Jeff Ferrell; see Martin 1993; Hamm and Ferrell 1994). When the stir erupted, Ice-T agreed to voluntarily withdraw the song from the album (Morant 1992:6). Ice-T meanwhile left Warner Brothers because of a disagreement over the cover of his new album. The album cover depicts a Caucasian kid listening to music and dreaming of black people beating up white folks. V. THE MOBILIZATION OF SOCIETY: CLAIMING AND COUNTER-CLAIMING MUSIC In this section I review some of the ways in which claims for and counter-claims against music are mobilized in different social movements and institutions that have engaged in the music censorship debate. The significance of this issue is offered, first, by the variety of people and institutions that are involved in the debate, and, second, by the alliances between organizations that are usually thought off as representing different, even conflicting interests. 1. The PMRC, Its Allies and Enemies An account of the formation of the PMRC and the way in which it has attracted allies and made enemies cannot ignore the social and political climate at the time of the Senate Hearing and PMRCs rise to infamy (Gray 1989b:12-13). President Reagan was serving his second conservative term in the White House; the debate on family values was springing up; and in the wake of economic depression and a continued Cold War climate, the abortion controversy had allied as an issue of moral panic with growing concerns over the AIDS epidemic. In this climate, the PMRC vigorously sought for and received support for its cause. At the grass-roots level, for instance, the PMRC asked parents to monitor radio and TV shows and write letters of protest to record companies, broadcast stations, and elected representatives (McDonald 1988a:305), tactics which have also been used by anti-censorship campainers. Sending letters appears to be one of the most effective strategies to publicize concerns. Eddie Frits, President of the National Association of Broadcasters, for example, sent off more than 5,000 letters to radio and TV companies (see also the busy correspondence between RIAA President Stanley Gortikov and the PMRC, see Roldan 1987:229). Other mobilization means include appearances on TV (Zappa, Gore) and book publications. Tipper Gore published a manifesto in which she sought to demonstrate the relationship between new forms of rock music and the general decline in morality (Gore 1987). In line with the PMRCs refusal to seek legislation, Gore did not advocate censorship but urges communication between parents and children. Dee Snider, lead singer of Twisted Sister, in response also wrote a book on adolescents and music, and Frank Zappa devoted two chapters in his biography to the censorship debate (Snider and Bashe 1987; Zappa 1989). The PMRC sought to establish coalitions with several other organizations in an attempt to form a broad national front of concern (e.g. it formed a coalition with the National Parents and Teachers Association and the National Education Association, see Coletti 1987:426). The PMRC allies include the Beach Boys, who donated $5,000 to the PMRC, and Adolphe Coors, whose company provided the PMRC office space in Arlington (Wishnia 1987:444). Sometimes the allies of the PMRC come from unexpected sides. For instance, Jesse Jacksons PUSH program also supported the record rating system. Jackson stated there is a correlation between music lyrics and the rate of teenage pregnancy among blacks (Berry and Wolin 1986:596). As early as 1978, Jackson had complained about the Rolling Stones song Some Girls, which he considered a racial insult because it contains the line "Black girls just want to get fucked all night" (McDonald 1988a:301). Another reported PMRC ally is the American Academy of Pediatrics (Norwood 1987:94; but see Marsh 1991 who states this organization is unjustly claimed to have supported the PMRC). In their November 1988 newsletter, the AAP advised parents to supervise their children while watching MTV in order to moderate the negative influence of sexual and violent images (Gow 1990:2). In San Antonio a group called Parents Against Subliminal Seduction (PASS) pressed the city council to create a rating system for live concerts (Gray 1989b:11). Also, Freedom Village, an organization that has engaged a national campaign to "stop murder music", held a petition drive to prohibit some forms of rock music, and wrote on 85 different performers in their mailings to interested parties. Among the Freedom Villages condemned artists are Cindi Lauper ("her songs are filthy"), Sheena Easton ("very clear sexual references"), and Duran Duran ("pornographic and satanic") (Prinsky and Rosenbaum 1987:390-93). The list of organizations of the PMRCs enemies is too long to be here included (way over a hundred), but declining in number over recent years. While immediately following the PMRCs actions, several anti-censorship organizations popped up, most of them have ceased to exist, not rarely because of lack of supprot and finances. The one organization that has continued to exist is Rock n Roll Confidential, recently renamed into Rock n Rap Confidential. The organization is nationally organized, has representatives in most U.S. states, and publishes a newsletter with up-todate information on censorship. Other anti-PMRC organizations include the National Association of Record Manufacturers (NARM), which called for selfregulation without interference (Gray 1989a:155, 1989b:11), and the Musical Majority, formed by Danny Goldberg, President of Gold Mountain Records, and the American Civil Liberties Union. The group opposed both the PMRC and the RIAA because of the rating and labeling system (Kelly 1985; Roldan 1987:230; Stoltz 1986). Support for the Musical majority came from managers, musicians, music publishers, members of the NARM. 2. The Secret Association Between Politics, Religion, Science, and Race The Politics of Culture The political affiliation "through marriage" of the PMRC is obvious. Yet, there are more direct political involvement in the censorship debate. For instance, Albert Gore sent a letter on the issue to one of the legal scholars commenting on the labeling system (letter from Gore to Coletti, dated April 18, 1986) and stated that "This is a consumer information issue - not a First Amendment issue." (Coletti 1987:423). Former U.S. President Reagan condemned the record industry for selling pornography (Coletti 1987:427). Shortly after the Senate Hearings, on October 9, 1985, Reagan stated that the music business was exposing children to a "glorification of drugs and violence and perversity" (cited in McDonald 1988a:304). In 1987, at a symposium organized by the PMRC, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Everett Koop stated that many music videos "are a combination of senseless violence and senseless pornography to the beat of rock music" (quoted in Gow 1990:2). Recently, the political targeting of music came to the foreground of discussion with the controversies surrounding Sister Souljah and Ice-T (see Jasper 1992; Bowman 1992). In an article in conservative maganize The New American, Sister Souljah is called "candidly racist and nihilistic" (Jasper 1992:41), and she is condemned her statement in the Washington Post (May 13, 1992) where she said: "if black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people" (in Jasper 1992:41). However, the magazine article, while mentioning that Sister Souljah attended Rutgers University (smart + black = dangerous?), forgets to mention that Souljah performed at a meeting of Jesse Jacksons Rainbow Coalition and that Clinton had asked Jackson to apologize for his event. Jackson did not apologize and said Clinton was diverting from the issue (see an article in the leftist Z Magazine which states that Clinton played the race card early, see Lusane 1992). The Ice-T affair also erupted during the presidential election, when Bush brough up the matter possibly after he had been told about it by law enforcement officials. Oliver North announced that he would provide attorneys to any wounded police officer to sue Time-Warner if they could show that their assailant had listened to Cop Killer (Lusane 1992:36). The Religious Condemnation of Music The religious movements arguing against music have not been directly involved in the debate launched by the PMRC (cf. Leming 1987: 364). The PMRC seems to have come up with a more publicly acceptable form of attack on music. Nevertheless, there appears to be some form of alliance. For instance, Rreverend Jeff Ling, one of the PMRC witnesses at the

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Senate Hearing, authored the PMRCs Rock Music Report dealing with backmasking (Wishnia 1987:445). Most religious attacks against music, however, seem to follow their own path. Dan and Steve Peters are among the most fervent religious anti-music crusaders (I have several of their publications), and Jimmy Swaggart has often spoken out against rock music. On June 1, 1986, the infamous television evangelist condemned rock n roll as "the new pornography" and "music of the devil" (Roldan 1987:256). Swaggart also met with officials from Wal-Mart, and shortly after the meeting the chain removed all rock magazines from its stores (Wishnia 1987:445). Evangelist John Muncy has been lecturing around the nation claiming that demons are responsible for backward messages on rock records (Walker 1987:1). In 1986, two evangelists are reported to have claimed, during a record and tape burning in West Virginia, that the "Mr. Ed" television theme song had satanic backwordings (also, AC/DC is supposed to stand for AntiChrist/Devils Children, and KISS for Kids In Satans Service, see Wishnia 1987:445). Cardinal OConnor of New York condemned heavy metal for its satanist references (Adler et al. 1990:57). Science and the Study of Music Censorship Professors (and graduate students) have also managed to step into the music and censorship debate. For instance, several scientists were present at the Senate Hearing, and scientific expert testimony was presented at court trials (Henry L. Gates, now head of the Department of African American Studies at Harvard University, provided testimony at the 2 Live Crew trail, see Powell 1991:249). Also, with the rise of cultural studies in the 1980s, but also inspired by the increased attention going to popular music in all its various manifestations (censorship of records, trials involving artists, videos, MTV, etc.), more and more social-science studies have been devoted to analyses of music (e.g. analyzing the contents and cultural, social and political themes of music videos). Bennett and Ferrell (1987), for instance, have identified several prevailing themes which they assert affect the epistemic socialization of adolescents (e.g. politics, romance, motion, personae shifts, videos as constructions of reality). Research also addresses the question whether the assertions of the moral crusaders are true (e.g. research on the relationship between music and values of youths; for a review of these issues, see Leming 1987:364368; McDonald 1988a:306-309; Prinsky and Rosenbaum 1987:385-387). For instance, research by Leming (1987) found that only 12% of a sample of students paid attention to the lyrics, and that they often disagreed with a songs message although they liked the artist. Leming concludes that listeners are not passive recipients of the musical message. Other research found that the favorite music of a sample of adolescents did not involve violence and/or sex (Rosenbaum and Prinsky 1987), and that adolescents interpret songs differently than adults (see Prinsky and Rosenbaum 1987, e.g. Princes Little Red Corvette is thought off as being about a car and not a womans body which reminds me, Little Richards Tutti Frutti is definitely not abouty ice cream). Interestingly, the journal in which this latter research was published (Popular Music and Society) provided a platform to Jennifer Norwood, then Executive Director of the PMRC. She wrote that the professors are biased and indicated problems with the coding of the adolescents responses: "According to Klaus Krippendorff, sometimes referred to as the Father of Content Analysis, probably the worst practice in content analysis is when the investigator develops his recording instructions and applies them all by himself" (Norwood 1987:92). Norwood also mentions that she sent a copy of the study to "Dr. George Gerbner, Annenberg School, University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Thomas Radecki, National Coalition on TV Violence, and Dr. Judith Reisman, The Institute of Media Education" (Norwood 1987:92), who all, according to Norwood, responded negatively to the research because of shortcomings in conceptual issues, research design, and unwarranted conclusions. There is also research on the relationships between satanism, heavy metal, and drug abuse. For instance, Dr. Paul King (witness at the senate Hearing), asserts that drug abuse is related to satanic identification. Epstein and Pratto (1990), on the other hand, found no relation between preference for heavy metal and delinquency (these authors do refer to Dr. King). Further, research has analyzed the political consequences and themes of rock and rap music (e.g. McDonald 1988b), and, most recently, there is increasing attention paid to "violence research" (Gow 1990:2-3; Binder 1993; see, for instance, Verden et al. (1989) found that, among a sample of 187 students, heavy metal fans were just as delinquent as "Top 40" fans). Generally, the nexus violencemusic does not seem to find support in the "serious" literature (see, for instance, McDonald (1988a) who does write: "If the PMRC really wants to be effective as a consumer group, what needs to be done is to study both the causes and effects of the attitudes projected throughout rock and roll", p.310). The list goes on. Gow (1990) found no relationship between violence or sex and preference for music videos. Other research found that there was no correlation between musical preferences for rap and rock and behavior problems (Epstein et al. 1990). Armstrongs (1993) analysis of violence in music lyrics revealed that there is just as much violence in country as in rap, and concludes that the differences between the two musical styles are overstated. Research also discovered that a preference for heavy metal is related to delinquency (Singer et al. 1993) and that suicide and country music are correlated (Stack and Gundlach 1992), issues which tell us more perhaps about the state of sociology that about the music and censorship issue (see the discussion by Maguire and Snipes 1994; Stach and Gundlach 1994a,b; Mauk et al. 1994). One researcher has reported how backward messages can be analyzed technically from the perspective of speech phonetics. He provides the reader with 7 instructions on how to produce meaningful backward messages (Walker 1987), but concludes that backward speech is not perceptible and that the whole notion is absurd (Walker 1985). Finally, research has focused on the effects of the record warning label. Davis and Dominick (1991) conclude that, under experimental conditions, X-rated records were more attractive to students (forbidden-fruit theory). Christensons (1992) research found that students disliked the labeled records regardless of contents. Finally: The Case of Race The PMRC mobilized its actions out of concerns for the protection of children (opposed to the purported satanism and glorification of violence and sex in rock music). Note that the PMRC particularly targeted heavy metal music and not rap (which was not that popular at the time of the PMRCs formation; see also Ray (1989b:153) who states the PMRCs major claims concerned violence against women, pornography, teenage suicide and pregnancy, children rights, consumer protection, and industry self-restraint). The PMRC carefully avoided debating legislation, censorship, and First Amendment issues, and seemed to present not so much moral but "truth" issues (e.g. childrens rights and antipornography). The PMRCs strategies were obviously more politically astute than, for instance, the religious crusaders: instead of "evil messages" and "satan" came individual choices, parental guidance, and child welfare (see Gray 1989a:155-156). Since the controversies have shifted to rap music, racism has been brought in the middle of the debate. For instance, Luther Campbell of the 2 Live Crew called the jury on the trial (where his band was nevertheless acquitted): "too old, too white, and too middle class" to appreciate rap music (Anderson 1990:29). After his conviction for selling a record, Charles Freeman stated "The jury was all white. They dont know where my record shop is. They dont know nothing about the goddamn ghetto" (National Law Journal 1990:6). The issue of race is also interesting in that it brings to light the peculiar creation of new divisions between, one time considered, united fronts. During the 2 Live Crew trial, for instance, the race issue was a central concern of the defense when it argued for the culturally specific meaning of rap lyrics, and lead-singer Campbell said: "Do you think it is a coincidence that theyve gone after a black group producing black music through a black production company?" (Campbell in Hardy 1992:13). On the other hand, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored people (NAACP) has criticized Campbell for associating the groups lyrics with black American culture. Michelle

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Moody-Adams, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Rochester University, expressed her agreement with the NAACP. She writes: "How can anyone defend lyrics that dehumanize women, that reduce them to creatures made to satisfy the violent, sadistic sexual fantasies of men?" (in Hardy 1992:13; cf. Friedland 1991:150, says Moody-Adams sent letter to the editor in New York Times, June 25, 1990). Racial issues were also brought forward after an incident at Nassau Colliseum in New York on September 10, 1988 (Rose 1991). During a rap show, 19-year old Julio Fuentes was stabbed to death. The event received lots of media attention, but all reports came from Nassau County Police Commissioner Rozzi and Detective Nolan. Rose defends the position that the incident lead to venue resistance against rap music as a result of the "hegemonic media interpretation" of the violence of rap and its fans. This incident was the immediate cause for the formation of Stop the Violence movement, an association of black rap artists (see Rose 1991:287; Stop the Violence released a single on black-on-black crime, cosponsored by the National Urban League; on the reception of rap among blacks, see Kuwahara 1992). Of course, racism provokes racism. The Jewish Defense Organization announced a boycott of Public Enemy after Professor Griff, then member of Public Enemy, stated that "Jews are wicked. And we can prove this" (cited in Powell 1991:250, see Powell 1991:250-251). Public Enemy publicly apologized, Professor Ggriff was kicked out of the band, but the band soon released their song "Welcome to the Terrordome" and sang "apologies made to whoever pleases, still they got me like Jesus". Sampling disputes produced an interesting twist to attack rap music. The sudden interest in sampling and copyright laws (e.g. Houle 1992) happens to be focused on rap, a musical style which is largely dependent on sampling techniques. A case was brought to the Supreme Court by Luther Campbell, lead-singer of the 2 Live Crew, concerning the 2 Live Crews version of "Oh, Pretty Woman" (Roy Orbison) which the band released on their sanitized "As Clean As They Wanna Be". There was, then, the distinct possibility that while the "Nasty" album was not legally obscene, at least the "Clean" recording would be ruled illegal (Denver Post, November 8, 1993). On March 7, 1994, however, the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of 2 Live Crews rights to creative freedom (Denver Post, March 8, 1994) . Finally, violence continues to inspire most of the rap attacks (see Cox 1992). Denise Barnes, host of the TV rap show "Pump It Up", recently filed suit against McRen, member of the rap band N.W.A., because on an MTV show he had said that he hoped they will beat her up again (Dr. Dre of the same band had beaten her up at a party January 1991). However, because McRen had made his statement on TV, and not to a crowd, judge Valerie Barker threw out all charges (see article by defense attorney Peter Casthy 1992). Some Concluding Comments I have in this paper presented an historical account of the legal puzzles posed by the censorship of popular music in the USA since 1985. I have sought to substantiate the not uncommon claim that law is more than the words and writings of lawyers and judges, more than what occupies the mind of legal professionals. Law is an institutional domain which is not without relation to other social processes and institutions. The case of music censorship poignantly illustrates that the boundaries of law can be transgressed in various ways, in the case of music censorship perhaps most remarkably by law enforcement officials. Emphasizing a presumed effectiveness of law to integrate behavior and solve conflicts can perhaps justify its operation but can surely not clarify what law is and does. After all, while political and social movement actions, legislation and court rulings, and law enforcement activities do determine the contours of music censorship, they do not have an over-all determing impact on expression. However, I argue that law should be seen to reflect the mediated outcome of struggles and conflicts, expressed by a plurality of lifeworlds, over the boundaries of what is right (Deflem 1996, 1998; Habermas 1992). My analysis on the nexus between law, law enforcement and social movement mobilization in the case of music censorship indicates the formation of sometimes unexpected alliances and the emergence of cracks and conflicts within groups that are usually thought off to represent one cause. These processes influence the effectiveness of movements appeal to law enforcement and law (as matters of access to justice). Ironically, law thereby not only constitutes the rules that regulate these conflicts, it also provides the avenues to challenge those rules themselves whenever cultural values are claimed not to be represented by law. Law, law enforcement and the legal debate on music do not take place in a vacuum, the case of the legal control of musical expressions also demonstrates that law is never a final outcome of a combination of legal and extra-legal processes, and neither does it have any primacy over and against law enforcement activities and social movement mobilization. Essentially, law as a process entails a struggle over resources to justify positions with unequal chances to successfully mobilize popular support and influence police action and state and federal legislation. The legal claim to legitimacy thus remains in conflict with the legality of legal norms. Thus, despite attempts to keep music out of law, the very fact that social movements aspire to legal principles, mainly First Amendment protection, locates them in the middle of a confrontation with law enforcement action and legal processing. Ironically, the right to be left alone inevitably entails appeals to those who have the authority to interfere. Bibliography
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Lyrics of Records (September 19, 1985). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Verden, Paul, Dunleavy, Kathleen, and Charles H. Powers (1989) "Heavy metal mania and adolescent delinquency." Popular Music and Society 13(1):73-82. Walker, Michael W. (1985) "Backward messages in commercially available recordings." Popular Music and Society 10(1):2-13. Walker, Michael W. (1987) "How to produce forward/backward recordings (without supernatural guidance)." Popular Music and Society 11(2):1-3. Waring, Nancy W. (1986) "Coming to terms with pornography: Toward a feminist perspective on sex, censorship, and hysteria." Research in Law, Deviance and Social Control 8:85-112. Wishnia, Steven (1987) "Rockin with the first amendment." The Nation (October 24):444-446. Wolfe, Jon C. (1993) "Sex, violence, and profanity: Rap music and the First Amendment." Mercer Law Review 44:667-686. Zappa, Frank (1989) The Real Frank Zappa Book. New York: Simon and Schuster. X. (1983) Music is dangerous (special issue). Index on Censorship 12(1):1-37. X. (1991) Youve Got a Right to Rock (third edition). Duke & Duchess Ventures. Cases Cited Judas Priest v. Second Judicial District Court of Nevada, 760 P.2d. 137 (1988). McCollum v. CBS, Inc., 249 Cal. Rptr. 187 (Cal. App. 2 Dist. 1988). Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 109 S. Ct. 2746 (1989). Atlantic Beach Casino, Inc. v. Morenzoni, 749 F.Supp. 38 (D.R.I. 1990). Skywalker Records, Inc. v. Navarro, 739 F.Supp. 578 (S.D.Fla. 1990a). Skywalker Records, Inc. v. Navarro, 742 F.Supp. 638 (S.D.Fla. 1990b). Luke Records, Inc. v. Navarro, 960 F.2d. 134 (11th Cir. 1992). Internet Sources Rock Out CensorshipCensorship - We are a grass roots anti-censorship organization seeking to counteract efforts being made across the political spectrum to deprive us of our First Amendment rights. Freemuse - Advocating for freedom of musical expression for musicians and composers. A Brief History of Banned Music in the United States - by Eric Nuzum. Music Censorship Research Aid Music Censorship - by Rigis Vincenti. Parental Advisory - Music Censorship in America. R.O.C. Calls For A National Boycott of The Evil WalMart Empire Wal-Mart Sells "Sanitized" Music, Film - Censorship or Customer Service? Music Censorship in Australia Music Censorship, and Human Rights 1st World Conference on Music and Censorship Copenhagen, November 1998. Yahoo censorship - Links to organizations and issues.

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