burn baby burn

I walked by this a few days ago and wished I had a camera.

which victims matter (updated)

In my last post I tried to make a very simple point, which now IOZ has made much more cleverly, and Justin has made much more eloquently. And Ethan found a nice quote that sums it up nicely:

Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims.

If you read only one of those links, read Justin's, which illustrates this dynamic using two recent killing episodes.

update: Jack Crow too!

some people get it

Here are a pair of inspiring blog posts I came across today:

America Via Erica's valedictorian speech (via Ethan)

the Anarchist Mother's unfooding experiment

both of them have other interesting items on their blogs. check them out!

art

I love the graffiti around town. If I had a camera, I'd take pictures of it and post it on my blog. But I don't have a camera, so I direct your attention to... Guelph Graffiti Blog! Naturally, this one is my favorite.

Greenwald on accountability

Greenwald today (emphasis mine):

That Jeffrey Goldberg of all people is the reporter to whom we turn to understand the contours of the Iran debate would be comical if it weren't so troubling, and it illustrates the broader shield from accountability with which political and media elites have vested themselves.

...

Goldberg is still treated as credible and influential despite his unrepentant Iraq falsehoods because the people who determine credibility and influence did essentially the same thing he did, and are thus incentivized to maintain a Look Forward, Not Backward amnesia, ensuring that nobody pays a price for anything that happened (see, as but one example, Slate's Fred Kaplan -- who was also spectacularly wrong in his Iraq-war-enabling reporting -- gushing this week about Goldberg's brilliance: "the best article I've read on the subject -- shrewd and balanced reporting combined with sophisticated analysis of the tangled strategic dilemmas."). Meanwhile, Goldberg's colleague publicly demands that nobody hold Goldberg's past transgressions against him. No profession is more accountability-free than establishment journalism.

Greenwald last month (emphasis mine again):

With the Nasr firing, here we find yet again exposed the central lie of American establishment journalism: that opinion-free "objectivity" is possible, required, and the governing rule. The exact opposite is true: very strong opinions are not only permitted but required. They just have to be the right opinions: the official, approved ones.

It simply isn't true that establishment journalism is accountability-free. It is true that establishment journalists are not accountable to the truth, nor to the public (though they might purport to be). But they are accountable to power, as Octavia Nasr and Ashleigh Banfield and Eason Jordan and Phil Donahue, among others, well know. Thus, nobody is held accountable for the disaster of the Iraq war because the Iraq war wasn't a disaster to the powerful! Further, people are rewarded for their contributions to the Iraq war because the Iraq war was good for the powerful!

I'm sure Glenn knows this because he documented it quite well in the 2nd linked piece, but I feel like his piece today suffers for not explicitly making the connection.

The Matrix

awesome stuff: "there is a superficial reality that is maintained in order to obscure the real workings of modern societies in favor of particular interests"

my pain, the world's pain

I've had a rather rough last 6 months, dealing with the collapse of my marriage (I'm doing okay though). During that time, whenever I've read something like this, I've often remembered IOZ's moving thoughts after a break-up he went through. Somehow it helps. I strongly recommend reading it.

Steal from Work Day!

Is today!

life and the spectacle

J.R. Boyd's LadyPoverty regularly posts excellent stuff, but this one really blew me away, and inspired a lot of thought about my own life. I recommend the whole thing, though I'll excerpt some of it to share my own thoughts.

It starts with this quote:

Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle:

The whole life of those societies in which modern conditions of production prevail presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. All that once was directly lived has become mere representation.

I've occasionally noted a feeling of disconnectedness from my world, or that I just don't quite belong where I am. Boyd's elaboration on Debord's thought is a brilliant explanation of a big part of the proximate mechanisms at work in that feeling, defining the spectacle as "the industrial production of information under capitalism."

This passage hits especially close to home:

I have a younger colleague at one of my jobs. When I am able to speak authoritatively on some matter of commercial urgency -- the release of a new movie or electronic product -- we enjoy a warm working relationship. The rest of our time, however, is comprised mostly of crickets and tumbleweeds. It is a sad testament to the fact that we don't consume enough of the same things with the same enthusiasm, for it is only in consuming things that one exercises that degree of individuality to which others can relate.

I relate to this very strongly, especially in regards to colleagues from my former professions and many people I've considered friends over the years. In academia it is a little bit better, to the extent that matters of academic interest are distinct from matters of commercial urgency, which is debatable. Still, even here, in a factory of science nerds whose shared purpose is, at least ostensibly, the pursuit of an understanding of the world, there are lots of nice people to whom I'm unable to relate without reference to movies or sports or some other mass media spectacles. Which isn't to say I dislike or think poorly of those people; quite to the contrary, I lament that spectacle is our only medium of discourse because I imagine I'd enjoy being able to bond over something more real.

Boyd continues:

Divorced from its commercial utility, individuality does not translate well. In fact, it is often met with silence and a horrified expression.

I think I've always tended to push the boundaries of acceptable individualism. In my first corporate job I did this mainly for its own sake, and a bit as rebellion against a stifling culture. Colleagues decorated their cubicles with sports banners; I strung rubber bands between thumbtacks at the right tensions that when I plucked them I could play the "NBC" network 3 notes. I broke unspoken rules by making the same jokes at lunch as I did in the office, knowing they'd get genuine laughs in the former setting, and nervous laughs in the latter. Basically I pushed them just far enough that they thought I was a bit weird, but not so far that they didn't like me. The reaction when I quit illustrates this tension rather well, and their response to my explanation suggests that lots of people would like to break free and be more individual, but are unable to do so for various reasons.

In academia I wouldn't go so far as to say that non-spectacle individuality is encouraged (again with the questionable exception of academic specialty), but a much wider range is tolerated than in the corporate world. But these days my efforts at individuality often have a moral/political purpose, which is where Boyd's final point rings true for me:

Anything which lacks its own promotional budget cannot be communicated intelligibly without enormous effort, because nobody enjoys a preexisting familiarity with it. As Guy Debord would say, our social relationships are mediated by the Spectacle: we can talk to each other about Haiti as long as it is made real by the TV. The rest of the time Haiti does not exist, so we can't talk about it. And that's because nobody will have anything to say about Haiti unless it is on the TV. If you had something to say about Haiti before it was on the TV, then you are a very odd bird, indeed, because nobody else shared that experience. Nobody knew it could exist, or why it should.

I hold political positions with which most people are unfamiliar because they're excluded from mainstream media. People have limited patience for political proselytism so I've taken the approach of trying to amuse people on a regular basis, and then occasionally throw out something substantive (It raised $50, which isn't much, but grad students basically live below the poverty line, so I was happy with that level of donation). Consistently keep people entertained, and they're more willing to listen to your occasional non-entertaining messages. Interestingly, that's the same basic model as commercial media, only they capture the profits for the enrichment of an elite few.

A challenging aspect of the whole thing is that it is pretty hard to be funny without reference to the spectacle, since a lot of humor depends on a shared base of knowledge. I don't want to use the spectacle, so I often try to make goodhearted jokes about people everyone knows, but sometimes I resort to movies. It's easier, and hell, it's fun. But I don't want to do it too often. I think my favorite of all these silly lists, and perhaps my best effort to combine my goal of raising awareness about important political/moral issues and keeping people amused was this one, in which I used Obama's Nobel Peace prize as a basis for a bunch of simple "opposite" jokes.

Anyway, props to J.R. Boyd for a great post, and check out his second post on the spectacle, here.

Howard Zinn R.I.P. (updated x4)

Howard Zinn died yesterday. I'll echo Michael J. Smith:

What can you say? He fought the good fight, and probably did more good than most of us.

I'm sorry he's gone, and grateful for what he did.

J.R. Boyd has a nice thought too:

Whatever it is you are good at, marshal those forces against the things you hate in defense of the things you love.

Update:
And a nice tribute from Dennis Perrin.

Update 2:
Jonathon Schwarz - I love his point about resenting bullies.

Update 3:
Kevin Carson

Update 4:

Tom Engelhardt

a brave kid

Not a big fan of lawyers, but his career aspirations aside, I'm going to say that Will Phillips is awesome.

Martin Daly - Risk-taking, Inequality, and Homicide

A recent public lecture by my supervisor. 45 minute video.

confusion

Why would someone think it's wise to embrace the defining tactics of a political movement that has been stomped, repudiated and crushed?

Uh, because they're part of that movement and continue to believe in it, and because it hasn't actually been crushed, just rebranded?

expectations

Criminalizing cancer and AIDS patients for using a substance that is (a) prescribed by their doctors and (b) legal under the laws of their state has always been abominable. The Obama administration deserves major credit not only for ceasing this practice, but for memorializing it formally in writing.

- Glenn Greenwald

What other abominable things does BO deserve credit for not doing?

her nipples are legal!

To follow up on this item, charges against the topless lady have been dropped. Turns out that nothing she did was against the law. Needless to say, the men who kidnapped her will not face any consequences.

I thought this part of the story was interesting:

Two other factors played a role in the police prosecutors’ decision to drop the charge against Nicosia, according to Duguay.

They wanted to keep the N.H. Supreme Court from having a chance to weigh in on the law, which could have happened if Nicosia was convicted and appealed, Duguay said. If asked to examine the state law dealing with indecent exposure and lewdness, the court might find that the language in the statute is too broad and then drop the entire statute, he said.

Apparently we came very close to allowing a court to review the law, which risks determining that the law is inappropriate, and having to change it! Whew, disaster averted!

what's mine is mine

Via Radley Balko, I notice this splendid story about how police forcibly catheterized a man suspected of drunk driving, after he had already passed a breathalizer test. When the blood and urine tests also showed he was innocent, police charged him with obstruction of justice, for resisting their efforts to shove a tube up his penis.

The state owns you. It claims your body as its property.

ok so i actually like henry's work usually, but his politics piss me off so i'll start ripping on him. this shit is retarded. so what if he supports gangs? how is that worse than supporting the US gov?

update: to clarify, my issue is with the hypocrisy, not defending my love of violent gangs

Greenwald ripping into GE's coporate censorship of NBC, as part of a sleazy deal with Fox News. GE agreed to prevent MSNBC from criticizing Bill O'Reilly and Fox News, in exchange for Fox agreeing not to report on GE's unpopular businesses.

Fuck GE.

blood-drenched war criminal dies

Robert McNamara, dead at 93.

Rather than read that link, read Chomsky's take on the man.

via D.P

yup

Floyd:

When I saw that the president also invoked the words of Martin Luther King Jr. (“Martin Luther King once said, ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice’”), I very nearly threw up. To quote an apostle of non-violence, who spent his last days standing with striking workers and railing against the American government as "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today" because of its murderous war machine, when you yourself are in command of that war machine, spewing out Vietnam-style death (and "targeted assassinations") in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan; when you are striving with all your might to defend, shield and in many cases continue to heinous torture atrocities of your predecessor; when you are pouring trillions of public dollars into the purses of the financial elite while letting millions of workers go hang; and when you yourself have made repeated statements that you will never take any options "off the table" when dealing with Tehran, including the nuclear destruction of the Iranian people for whose liberties and well-being you now profess such noble concern -- well, that seems a bit much, if I may riot in understatement.