I found this architectural/sociological (sociospatial? psychospatial?) analysis of modern urban warfare, Die Hard, and cinematic portrayals of urban movement to be entirely fascinating. Tactics, psychology, Jason Bourne, parkour, and late-capitalist nonplaces—how can you go wrong with that?
Her response to the recent attempted underwear bombing:
Senate Intelligence Chairman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said a "very comprehensive no-fly list" would be "the greatest protection our country has." In an interview, she said the definition of who can be included should be expanded to include anyone about whom there is "a reasonable suspicion."
—Susan Page. “National security adviser: Airline bomber report to ‘shock’”. USA Today, 07 Jan 2010.
“The greatest protection our country has” is to be able to stop people from flying arbitrarily, even though a major problem with the current system is a lack of accountability around how one gets on the list. Also, of course, Abdulmutallab was on the FBI’s “Terrorist Screening Database” and it was some kind of bureaucratic error that prevented his name being added to the no-fly list—not any legal concerns over reasonable suspicion; it is concerns of this sort that Feinstein is attempting eliminate entirely.
This isn’t surprising; Feinstein has a history of voting to increase state power. Like many others, she seeks to use more or less any circumstance to justify some expansion of state reach[*].
| [*] | One could accuse me of a similar but oppositely-directed bias. However, I don’t hide my views on the subject, whereas Feinstein doesn’t acknowledge her political views as being authoritarian and/or fascistic; in addition, I generally propose limitations on state power on the basis of principles and long-term benefits—not claiming that their abrupt removal will magically solve some current dilemma instantly. |
Another classic from Who is IOZ?, kicking off with:
If you think that the passing decade saw America at its full, retarded apotheosis, then I say you’ve got another thing coming.
—IOZ. “Future Hocks”. Who is IOZ?, 28 December 2009.
As to its accuracy, who can say? But it seems as likely to be right as any other predictions I’ve seen, while having the benefit of being rather more entertaining. And I suspect it’s not far off in its depiction of how things stand right now.
I wrote about this in early November, and I think things have only deteriorated since then… from a fairly bad starting point.
Arthur Silber has another take on it, and Who is IOZ also covers it.
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Upon typing that title, I realized that it sounds quite like a modern fairy tale or children’s story. Of course, if it were a fairy tale, then the faithful sponsors would stick with Tiger as he attempted to slay the foul beasts of public opprobrium and frenzied media—but instead at least one major sponsor, Accenture, is walking away.
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Naturally, as soon as it became popular to use Facebook to promote political causes, it became attractive to distort the practice. The ease of online ”participation”—clicking a button or, at most, filling out a form—makes it rather difficult to judge just how committed to their causes participants are.
Furthermore, if it’s easy to click, then it’s also easy to persuade people to click, which is not always a good thing.
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I’ve come across what feels like another wave of articles related to bullying recently. I previously wrote about my thoughts on institutional responses, but this time my focus is on some of the causes, as well as how technical rules are unlikely to eliminate the problem.
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Glenn Greenwald points out some inconsistencies in the government’s stance, which is certainly interesting, but I think the more important critique comes from Arthur Silber. He highlights the key point, which is this:
Other Justice Department officials have said that even if Mr. Mohammed is acquitted, the Obama administration will keep him locked up forever as a “combatant” under the laws of war.
—Charlie Savage. “Holder Defends Decision to Use U.S. Court for 9/11 Trial”. The New York Times, 18 November 2009.
So even if he’s found not guilty, he stays in jail “forever”. If that doesn’t make it a show trial, I don’t know what does.
I wasn’t previously familiar with Stewart Lee before, but I found this clip (via Lenin’s Tomb) right on the mark:
Specifically, “How Food Preferences Vary by Political Ideology”—a poll that correlates self-reported political leanings and self-reported food habits. And verifies a whole pile of preconceptions you might have had… althought the polling organization itself does point out that e.g. much of the variance may be due to geographical rather than political differences.
Even allowing for those, though, the fact that “liberals” are much more interested in eating healthily than “conservatives” is interesting.
Arthur Silber has a typically to-the-point entry about the recent bill passed by the House:
[T]he bill’s primary purpose has absolutely nothing to do with providing "affordable health care." The purpose is to extract as much money as possible from "ordinary" Americans … and shovel it directly to already-engorged insurance companies.
—Arthur Silber. “The Fuck You Act”. Once Upon a Time…, 08 Nov 2009.
No, not tax collectors. At least, in democracies, there’s a notion that collected taxes are disbursed according to the wishes of some significant portion of the populace. Here, I’m talking about the trend of the last few decades for police departments (and other law enforcement agencies) to confiscate property (and cash)—and then use it to fund themselves. Financial Cryptography discusses this issue, outlining its history in measure meant to crack down on money laundering. The Economist also has an article on the issue, and this line should make clear how dubious the whole thing is:
The 2002 Proceeds of Crime Act expanded these powers greatly, allowing courts to seize more or less anything owned by a convict deemed to have a “criminal lifestyle”, and introducing a power of civil recovery, whereby assets may be confiscated through the civil courts even if their owner has not been convicted of a crime.
—“Ill-gotten gains”. The Economist, 8 Oct 2009.
Figuring out what plug (or adapter) to use in a given country is almost like a game; in any case, I found this Gizmodo article well worth the read: “Giz Explains: Why Every Country Has a Different F#$%ing Plug”.
The essay “Gay Imperialism: Gender and Sexuality Discourse in the ‘War on Terror’” examines the now-conventional idea that Western respect for the rights of women and gays drives concern for oppressed groups within other (especially Islamic) cultures, which in turn serves as a justification for imperialist projects.
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Via Glenn Greenwald, this video of Congressional Representative Alan Grayson clearly exposing as unjust and unconstitutional the measures that the Republican party are trying to get passed targeting ACORN:
A recent University of Philadelphia study apparently shows that people in possession of guns were significantly more likely (4.46 times as likely) to be shot in an assault than people without guns. I’m particularly curious about some things that the study can’t really address—namely whether it’s causation or correlation. Is it the presence of the gun that increases the danger of confrontation? Is it that the presence of the gun makes the gun possessor more belligerent? Or is it that the kinds of people more likely to be belligerent are the kinds of people more likely to be carrying guns?
Another question is one of morality—if (as is strongly suggested by the study) resisting robbery or borderline situations leads to a higher likelihood of injury or death (on either side), does this imply that offering no resistance is the more moral act?
Living in a capitalist society, many of our pastimes and interests are based on exploitation of one kind or another.
Some of these forms of exploitation are reviled because of their outright cruelty. This revulsion isn’t consistent. One of the things that keeps us calm about them is a veneer of fairness, which allows us to move along in acceptance instad of trying to figure out how to fight. Even if we don’t believe it, either enough other people do or we think enough other people do, which is one of the things that keeps our current system ticking along.
Does our requirement for “fairness” increase the more direct the connection is between the exploitation and our enjoyment? This question is one that struck me while reading Malcom Gladwell’s “Football, dogfighting, and brain damage”.
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It should be clear to any reasonable observer that Wall Street is a rapacious hive of sharks who will do more or less anything at all for money, and that the financial industry is politically powerful enough at this point to get away with more or less anything. It should also be clear that the term “corruption” doesn’t really do justice to their antics.
That being said, I’m still agog at some of what’s covered in this Mait Taibbi article:
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The new Yankee Stadium opened this year, and with it came a rather large increase in ticket prices. The most outrageously-priced seats are in the “Legends Suite”, and they go from about $500 to about $2500 each.
Reporter Wright Thompson got an assignment to write about what having one of those seats is like, and his article “Seats of Gold” is excellent. Included in it is a damning critique of Wall Street, because the corrupt culture of brokers inducing traders to buy things includes lavishing them with all kinds of entertainment, including prime Yankees tickets:
In exchange for tickets, the trader orders whatever the broker is selling. Everybody wins. The broker gets his sale. The trader gets his seat behind the dugout. Well, almost everybody. You, I’m afraid, get screwed with your pants on. Wall Street was not only trifling with our financial future but also driving up ticket prices.
—Wright Thompson. “Seats of Gold”. ESPN, 5 Oct 2009.
I went to see see Chomsky speak last Saturday night at Oakland’s Paramount Theatre. The speech was on “Obama, the Middle East, and Prospects for Peace”.
It felt like a somewhat low-key talk, in the sense that there weren’t many revelations in it. Plenty of interesting information, and perhaps most illuminating in the way that even thought I knew many of the broad outlines, I was still surprised by some of the specifics that he cited.
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But rather, a very safe and rather normal, indeed innocuous and beneficial, activity. Via MetaFilter I came across a series of sociological essays on attitudes towards cycling, most of them concerned with the idea that cycling is a dangerous activity. The series, by Dave Horton, is titled “Fear of Cycling”:
I haven’t had time to formulate an opinion yet, but I respect past work by danah boyd and am quite certain that she’s onto something important in the research that led to her talk “The Not-So-Hidden Politics of Class Online”, some of the implications of which she discusses in an interview, “MySpace to Facebook = White Flight?”. A key line: “We’re seeing a reproduction of all kinds of all types of social segregation that we like to pretend has gone away.”
That, in itself, is extremely important, and as more people use online arenas as “public spaces”, the fact that these arenas are actually deeply stratified and subject to a variety of hidden pressures becomes more and more significant. Also significant is how the other arenas, while technically easier to encounter because of all the wonderful information-sharing aspects of the internet, become almost hidden because stratification and habituation make each of us less likely, rather than more, to venture into spaces where we don’t have connections.
The following is a short clip of news footage from the Pittburgh G20 protests: