March 30, 2006
(Because This Blog Is Nothing More Than A Instrument Of Liberal Propaganda)
Some old allies of mine asked me to pass on the word about a protest this coming Monday at the Portland Public Schools headquarters (501 N. Dixon St., 5:00pm). At issue is Vicki Phillips decision to raze a whole new slew of Portland schools.
Surprise, fifteen solid years of aggressive budget destruction have finally prompted an exodus out of the city by those wealthy enough to send their kids somewhere with "private" schools. Obviously the solution is to create a permanent underclass by eradicating affected schools so that the rich kids are never able to come back. ...The poor kids have to go out of their way to distant and overpacked schools. ...The good teachers jump ship. ...Special programs are forced even further into the desperate race to cater to the bottom. ...The state Republicans continue to bitch about how those uppity commie paupers are getting training above their position, while District administrators respond to cuts by giving themselves comfy severance packages and screwing over the Teacher's Union.
So another protest.
But entirely organized, I feel obliged to note, by parents, teachers and other 'adults' whose vested interest is the maintenance of their status quo authority and whose intents in regards to "shaping young minds" is far from noble.
I am reminded of the situation in France. So convoluted and disgusting that one is hard pressed to find any tactical or reformist clarity among any 'side'. Where the only sane response is to step back, wipe ones hands of the particulars and call out the whole goddamn system at hand.
Unlike in France, Portland students have largely ceased pulling strikes.
Apathy and disillusionment, perhaps.
But forgive me if I voice a little hope in that disillusionment part.
Some old allies of mine asked me to pass on the word about a protest this coming Monday at the Portland Public Schools headquarters (501 N. Dixon St., 5:00pm). At issue is Vicki Phillips decision to raze a whole new slew of Portland schools.
Surprise, fifteen solid years of aggressive budget destruction have finally prompted an exodus out of the city by those wealthy enough to send their kids somewhere with "private" schools. Obviously the solution is to create a permanent underclass by eradicating affected schools so that the rich kids are never able to come back. ...The poor kids have to go out of their way to distant and overpacked schools. ...The good teachers jump ship. ...Special programs are forced even further into the desperate race to cater to the bottom. ...The state Republicans continue to bitch about how those uppity commie paupers are getting training above their position, while District administrators respond to cuts by giving themselves comfy severance packages and screwing over the Teacher's Union.
So another protest.
But entirely organized, I feel obliged to note, by parents, teachers and other 'adults' whose vested interest is the maintenance of their status quo authority and whose intents in regards to "shaping young minds" is far from noble.
I am reminded of the situation in France. So convoluted and disgusting that one is hard pressed to find any tactical or reformist clarity among any 'side'. Where the only sane response is to step back, wipe ones hands of the particulars and call out the whole goddamn system at hand.
Unlike in France, Portland students have largely ceased pulling strikes.
Apathy and disillusionment, perhaps.
But forgive me if I voice a little hope in that disillusionment part.
March 29, 2006
(I Think Therefore I Yell At Nihilists)
I apologize for that earlier little rambling. Twas immature, and I'm sorry. Somedays I just get sick of people expecting me to prove their own existence for them.
Childish philosophical spats aside, I've been working pretty hard on a security paper and thus the sudden decline in posting coupled with the surge in geopolitics. Also, Twin Cities Indymedia is now up and running. And there's all the usual activist foolery. But over all I'm really starting to feel optimistic about the state of the Anarchist community at Macalester and the wider --and more legitimate-- Minneapolis & St. Paul Anarchist community.
More posting in a second. Or... you know... not.
I apologize for that earlier little rambling. Twas immature, and I'm sorry. Somedays I just get sick of people expecting me to prove their own existence for them.
Childish philosophical spats aside, I've been working pretty hard on a security paper and thus the sudden decline in posting coupled with the surge in geopolitics. Also, Twin Cities Indymedia is now up and running. And there's all the usual activist foolery. But over all I'm really starting to feel optimistic about the state of the Anarchist community at Macalester and the wider --and more legitimate-- Minneapolis & St. Paul Anarchist community.
More posting in a second. Or... you know... not.
March 28, 2006
(Answer Me This)
When did Free Will become such a radical concept?!
I've seen people flare, shake, spittle, and grow red just in response to the idea that we might have truly Free Will.
Do we really worship the vacuum that much?
Why do we fight for liberty if there's not someone to be free?
Why are we so afraid of living as a person rather than another piece of coggery?
When did Free Will become such a radical concept?!
I've seen people flare, shake, spittle, and grow red just in response to the idea that we might have truly Free Will.
Do we really worship the vacuum that much?
Why do we fight for liberty if there's not someone to be free?
Why are we so afraid of living as a person rather than another piece of coggery?
March 26, 2006
(Putin's Big Blue Counter-Revolution)
Though the results of today's parliamentary elections will stem primarily from the Ukrainian people and less from Washington or Moscow, I still love how the opposition party is run by a KGB asset.
Though the results of today's parliamentary elections will stem primarily from the Ukrainian people and less from Washington or Moscow, I still love how the opposition party is run by a KGB asset.
March 24, 2006
(Shocking Documents Not So Shocking)
Did Russian Ambassador Give Saddam the U.S. War Plan?
Well... yes. And Russia also spent days before the invasion negotiating for control of Saddam's royal force assets. Whether or not the deal was adequately completed, Saddam effectively cut his army lose to fend for themselves. Which was part of why I was surprised not to find him hiding in Belarus or some other chaotic and shadowy dictatorship.
As to the other documents at hand... Of course Saddam hid papers from the UN. We knew this. The UN knew this. It's standard operating procedure to hide stuff from UN inspectors. That's why they get paid money. It's called a job. They have to do hard work instead of sitting around drinkin' martinis and waiting for folks to show them all their secret papers. I may let police officers into my house, but I'm not exactly going to make it easy for them to find my Jena Malone fanfiction. It's the absence of gimped six-year olds in my basement that matters, not torrid fantasies of a twenty-something actress.
Approaching the real gristle, Andrew Sullivan calls the revelation that Secular Saddam had contact with a certain Jihadist terrorist group "interesting." But it's not. In international politics everyone deals with everyone else. They may not like the other folks. Or even be capable of trusting them to any significant degree. Hell, war between such radically opposed powers may be inevitable. But that doesn't mean the secular one won't occasionally sell small munitions to the other in order to fund Central American insurgents.
It is, however, a safe bet that the secular country will remain violently opposed to the thought of the other one getting their hands on nukes.
Saddam would never have given Al Queda WMD. And in the end, when shit hit the fan, he didn't even have a significant measure of the most weak-ass, over-glorified-pepper-spray WMDs. Which is maybe why he found himself getting theatrically pulled out of a crawl hole rather than eating cheetos in Minsk.
Did Russian Ambassador Give Saddam the U.S. War Plan?
Well... yes. And Russia also spent days before the invasion negotiating for control of Saddam's royal force assets. Whether or not the deal was adequately completed, Saddam effectively cut his army lose to fend for themselves. Which was part of why I was surprised not to find him hiding in Belarus or some other chaotic and shadowy dictatorship.
As to the other documents at hand... Of course Saddam hid papers from the UN. We knew this. The UN knew this. It's standard operating procedure to hide stuff from UN inspectors. That's why they get paid money. It's called a job. They have to do hard work instead of sitting around drinkin' martinis and waiting for folks to show them all their secret papers. I may let police officers into my house, but I'm not exactly going to make it easy for them to find my Jena Malone fanfiction. It's the absence of gimped six-year olds in my basement that matters, not torrid fantasies of a twenty-something actress.
Approaching the real gristle, Andrew Sullivan calls the revelation that Secular Saddam had contact with a certain Jihadist terrorist group "interesting." But it's not. In international politics everyone deals with everyone else. They may not like the other folks. Or even be capable of trusting them to any significant degree. Hell, war between such radically opposed powers may be inevitable. But that doesn't mean the secular one won't occasionally sell small munitions to the other in order to fund Central American insurgents.
It is, however, a safe bet that the secular country will remain violently opposed to the thought of the other one getting their hands on nukes.
Saddam would never have given Al Queda WMD. And in the end, when shit hit the fan, he didn't even have a significant measure of the most weak-ass, over-glorified-pepper-spray WMDs. Which is maybe why he found himself getting theatrically pulled out of a crawl hole rather than eating cheetos in Minsk.
March 23, 2006
(Imperialism Cont.)
The PRC has managed to turn their mass execution of dissidents into a profitable industry. They sell the organs to Japanese businessmen.
The PRC has managed to turn their mass execution of dissidents into a profitable industry. They sell the organs to Japanese businessmen.
March 22, 2006
(Alliance For A Democratic South Dakota)
Seriously. It's a failed state.
Nothing against the populace, per se, I know the supreme leader doesn't really represent his constituents, but when one of our state governments so brazenly shits on our constitution, limited government and the whole idea of individual freedom... shouldn't our liberty-defending heroes in Washington be launching the couple cruise missiles and rolling peacekeepers in?
Well, whenever we get around to switch up the ruling demographic, I humbly suggest installing the Oglala Sioux whose president, Cecilia Fire Thunder, is already at war. "I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction."
That's an awfully large part of South Dakota.
[Hat Tip: No gods, no masters, a brand new anarchist blog with snazzy aesthetics and the wicked awesome tagline: 'Fight Club is not Anarchism.' Go send some love.]
Seriously. It's a failed state.
Nothing against the populace, per se, I know the supreme leader doesn't really represent his constituents, but when one of our state governments so brazenly shits on our constitution, limited government and the whole idea of individual freedom... shouldn't our liberty-defending heroes in Washington be launching the couple cruise missiles and rolling peacekeepers in?
Well, whenever we get around to switch up the ruling demographic, I humbly suggest installing the Oglala Sioux whose president, Cecilia Fire Thunder, is already at war. "I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction."
That's an awfully large part of South Dakota.
[Hat Tip: No gods, no masters, a brand new anarchist blog with snazzy aesthetics and the wicked awesome tagline: 'Fight Club is not Anarchism.' Go send some love.]
March 21, 2006
March 20, 2006
(Belarus)
However unfathomable Putin's personal goals may be, his tactics are analyzable and he clearly retains an admiration for Soviet near-abroad positioning. One could call it his weak spot. It is, after all, why he's practically ceding South America to the Chinese. Russia doesn't have the assured juggernaut position of the PRC, and what Putin can't claim in Economic strength he's absolutely determined make up in regional power.
Belorussia is the key which any future Russian empire must turn.
The US has gained admirable ground over the last two years. But though US action in Georgia was a huge triumph for Washington, and we've largely stalled Putin across the scope of the resource war, the Ukrainian 'Revolution' was only an aesthetic victory. Granted, we did eventually get off our asses and drive Putin back across the Dnieper (and then we split the Orange Revolution up to provide a political buffer against insurgent Russian militancy), but the real horror in that whole affair was that Putin even held Ukraine in the first place. We're talking about the fucking Ukraine, here. Post-Soviet. Probably the most naturally un-friendly nation to Russia on Earth. Condoleezza musta shit herself.
But Belarus? Belarus is Russia. And no sane Russian President would allow some pesky border to get in the way.
Population, economy, national identity... in every way possible Belarus is a geopolitical necessity. And Putin is well on the way to annexing it. (There's a formal treaty and everything.) But the local dictator has been exploiting this national relevance to string Putin out and extend his own dictatorship as long as possible.
So, conundrum. Does Putin try his hand at throwing out his mustachioed one and stand the risk of heating up a vital proxy conflict with the US? Trading stooges is a dangerous game and such fresh upstarts are even more annoying when the competing foreign interest only needs to ruin what you've got rather than steal it for themselves.
If he wins, he's back in the game. If he loses he's out for good. But if he keeps on waiting he's as good as gone.
This rigged election is nothing new. They've all been rigged. But the neo-conservatives in Washington are also in a crucial period. And Russia is hella involved with Iran. (And making sure we get the message by parading up and down the Middle East, stomping and raising its voice.) Putin needs Belarus to stay in the game. And we need Iran.
Though something might emerge from a game of Ribbentropian chicken, if our domestic instability is as strong as some claim, then both sides will obviously default to rabid paranioa. Thus, should Lukashenko go down in the next few weeks and Russia remain absolutely commited to him, above and below ground, though it would obviously seal the end of Putin, it would be a prime indicator of a truly weak, desperate and insecure White House.
So anyway if you really think the neoconservative planners are out for the count, I suggest watching Belarus.
Addendum: Just because Putin might lose his position as an indepedent actor does not mean Russia will lose relevance. That's crazy. Rather it'll move into the strata of states like Chavez's Venezuela. Which is fun for no one. The US, even when not working with him, has a deep and objective interest in keeping Putin empowered as a player. My point is, should all those US forces desperately seeking a cheap Wilsonian win overseas succeed in kicking Putin out of Belorussia, then one one could truly call our neo-conservative regime dead. I don't think it is. But if so, Belarus is currently the major possible signifier.
However unfathomable Putin's personal goals may be, his tactics are analyzable and he clearly retains an admiration for Soviet near-abroad positioning. One could call it his weak spot. It is, after all, why he's practically ceding South America to the Chinese. Russia doesn't have the assured juggernaut position of the PRC, and what Putin can't claim in Economic strength he's absolutely determined make up in regional power.
Belorussia is the key which any future Russian empire must turn.
The US has gained admirable ground over the last two years. But though US action in Georgia was a huge triumph for Washington, and we've largely stalled Putin across the scope of the resource war, the Ukrainian 'Revolution' was only an aesthetic victory. Granted, we did eventually get off our asses and drive Putin back across the Dnieper (and then we split the Orange Revolution up to provide a political buffer against insurgent Russian militancy), but the real horror in that whole affair was that Putin even held Ukraine in the first place. We're talking about the fucking Ukraine, here. Post-Soviet. Probably the most naturally un-friendly nation to Russia on Earth. Condoleezza musta shit herself.
But Belarus? Belarus is Russia. And no sane Russian President would allow some pesky border to get in the way.
Population, economy, national identity... in every way possible Belarus is a geopolitical necessity. And Putin is well on the way to annexing it. (There's a formal treaty and everything.) But the local dictator has been exploiting this national relevance to string Putin out and extend his own dictatorship as long as possible.
So, conundrum. Does Putin try his hand at throwing out his mustachioed one and stand the risk of heating up a vital proxy conflict with the US? Trading stooges is a dangerous game and such fresh upstarts are even more annoying when the competing foreign interest only needs to ruin what you've got rather than steal it for themselves.
If he wins, he's back in the game. If he loses he's out for good. But if he keeps on waiting he's as good as gone.
This rigged election is nothing new. They've all been rigged. But the neo-conservatives in Washington are also in a crucial period. And Russia is hella involved with Iran. (And making sure we get the message by parading up and down the Middle East, stomping and raising its voice.) Putin needs Belarus to stay in the game. And we need Iran.
Though something might emerge from a game of Ribbentropian chicken, if our domestic instability is as strong as some claim, then both sides will obviously default to rabid paranioa. Thus, should Lukashenko go down in the next few weeks and Russia remain absolutely commited to him, above and below ground, though it would obviously seal the end of Putin, it would be a prime indicator of a truly weak, desperate and insecure White House.
So anyway if you really think the neoconservative planners are out for the count, I suggest watching Belarus.
Addendum: Just because Putin might lose his position as an indepedent actor does not mean Russia will lose relevance. That's crazy. Rather it'll move into the strata of states like Chavez's Venezuela. Which is fun for no one. The US, even when not working with him, has a deep and objective interest in keeping Putin empowered as a player. My point is, should all those US forces desperately seeking a cheap Wilsonian win overseas succeed in kicking Putin out of Belorussia, then one one could truly call our neo-conservative regime dead. I don't think it is. But if so, Belarus is currently the major possible signifier.
(You Know This Wouldn't Be A Story If The Mother Wasn't Hot As Fuck)
By and large I don't care much for parody religions, rebellious cults, or even regular ol' atheism. Just seems a little immature. Stuff like the flying spaghetti monster usually have next to no innate humorous value. I find them not so much a matter of sophistication but an animalistic bristling against religiosity.
Oh, I suppose public forms of release can be seen as necessary forms of therapy for those who grew up attending one of the parishes of today's faith-based corporations. But I got beaten over the head with the Bible as a child as much as anyone and yet I've mastered the urge to go around pissing on crosses, drawing Mohamed naked and getting into fights with the faithful.
Still, nobody should loose their kid just because they have an immature thing against Christians. I'm a firm proponent that any judge what even thinks the law has a place in regulating matters of purely cultural behavior should be immediately dragged out into the streets by the general populace and shot. (Like in the leg or something.) No piddling around with the ACLU or such liberal shit. Governments won't learn their lesson until we bitchslap 'em a couple times.
Whatever your political tendencies, reformist or revolutionary, no one's gonna get anywhere if we don't occasionally draw a line in the sand and hold the government accountable to its own goddamn constitutional principles.
I mean, come on. Who, out of any of us, is safe when they start abusing the civil rights of attractive people?
By and large I don't care much for parody religions, rebellious cults, or even regular ol' atheism. Just seems a little immature. Stuff like the flying spaghetti monster usually have next to no innate humorous value. I find them not so much a matter of sophistication but an animalistic bristling against religiosity.
Oh, I suppose public forms of release can be seen as necessary forms of therapy for those who grew up attending one of the parishes of today's faith-based corporations. But I got beaten over the head with the Bible as a child as much as anyone and yet I've mastered the urge to go around pissing on crosses, drawing Mohamed naked and getting into fights with the faithful.
Still, nobody should loose their kid just because they have an immature thing against Christians. I'm a firm proponent that any judge what even thinks the law has a place in regulating matters of purely cultural behavior should be immediately dragged out into the streets by the general populace and shot. (Like in the leg or something.) No piddling around with the ACLU or such liberal shit. Governments won't learn their lesson until we bitchslap 'em a couple times.
Whatever your political tendencies, reformist or revolutionary, no one's gonna get anywhere if we don't occasionally draw a line in the sand and hold the government accountable to its own goddamn constitutional principles.
I mean, come on. Who, out of any of us, is safe when they start abusing the civil rights of attractive people?
March 19, 2006
(iPod: The Follow Up Report)
Angry politics this and angry politics that. I thought I'd take a break and return to the whole getting-an-iPod affair. Give you a product review.
As some might exasperatedly remember, I've made a big deal out of shuffling features. The fifth model boasts some improvements. And iTunes' software has been gradually expanding to take in some of the revisions I suggested might be coming. So I had high hopes. And now, after six months of continual play I think I can accurately judge the long term shuffling quality in both short and 500+ playlists.
It sucks.
If my severely beaten laptop wasn't locked in a perpetual state of near-combustion, I'd be whipping it out just to run my playlists in Winamp.
In the absence of good shuffling I've even found myself moving on to pre-established setlists and even... god forbid... those awful "album" things. I'd love to tell you of a single way Apple screwed up the shuffle feature, but there's naught to be picked out from this formless muck of bad choices. Shuffling just sucks on the iPod. I actually find myself pressing "shuffle forward" on playlists that, transferred to Winamp, work perfectly. I never press shuffle-forward. It's a total diss to the great DJ in the rand algorithm.
Shuffling should be simple. I've illuminated several ways it can be opened to fiddling. But no, Apple just had to mess with it. The iPod is closed when it should be open and open when it should be closed. So if you're expecting even a half-assed shuffling system you'll be disappointed. And I've heard naught but annoyance from my fellow DJs. The only time it works passingly well enough is with fresh lists of under 50 songs. ...So a plus for ignorant, snooty latte-drinkin' hipster but not so much for the rest of us.
Of course that is Apple's core demographic.
They do have a brand to maintain.
I'm really big on aesthetics, almost to the point of treating it as a science and, however I may recoil at their arrogant closed-box attitude, there's no getting around the fact that the iPod is sexy.
I mean who the fuck makes their electronics white? Yet Apple still found a way to make those earphones glow undaunted even after months of abuse.
Their apt use of font alone seems to lend this unsettling air of legitimacy to my grungiest, most obscure favorite artists. The letters glisten with so much implied class that one can't help but feel that this very band is being discussed in some opera house’s winebar.
I'm talkin' people so goddamn cultured they wipe their ass with pages of the New Yorker. The type of people who recall listening to NPR in their rebellious early days when they still bought coffee at public cafes.
Speaking of which, it's my humble conclusion that as a part of the expanded market the iPod stands to lose from being too classy.
I know it's what most of the competing brands seem to be shooting for (if not particularly well -Rio I'm looking at you). But frankly, that's just too much gloss for me. I'm serious. Contrasted to far with the "don't wear anything I can't wipe my hands upon" ethic, the iPod threatens a distinct reaction of queasiness. I could make an attempt to mod the case but it's not the same thing. Apple's built every element of their superslim iPod with aesthetics in mind.
I can't help but feel that there's a large market opportunity going unexploited. For the same price I'd have jumped at the opportunity to pay for a rough-edged, ground steel case with more focus on packed chunky simplicity than spaced empty simplicity.
I can't believe that one of the start up competitors hasn't said screw space, thrown in cushioning and relative waterproofing and cast out the uber-shiny stylings.
Everyone seems to be trying to mirror Apple, shift the exact modes of style by a few degrees and hope that fads will shift their way in a few years. Playing their game. As if Jobs isn't smart enough to keep his tight reign on fad.
Angry politics this and angry politics that. I thought I'd take a break and return to the whole getting-an-iPod affair. Give you a product review.
As some might exasperatedly remember, I've made a big deal out of shuffling features. The fifth model boasts some improvements. And iTunes' software has been gradually expanding to take in some of the revisions I suggested might be coming. So I had high hopes. And now, after six months of continual play I think I can accurately judge the long term shuffling quality in both short and 500+ playlists.
It sucks.
If my severely beaten laptop wasn't locked in a perpetual state of near-combustion, I'd be whipping it out just to run my playlists in Winamp.
In the absence of good shuffling I've even found myself moving on to pre-established setlists and even... god forbid... those awful "album" things. I'd love to tell you of a single way Apple screwed up the shuffle feature, but there's naught to be picked out from this formless muck of bad choices. Shuffling just sucks on the iPod. I actually find myself pressing "shuffle forward" on playlists that, transferred to Winamp, work perfectly. I never press shuffle-forward. It's a total diss to the great DJ in the rand algorithm.
Shuffling should be simple. I've illuminated several ways it can be opened to fiddling. But no, Apple just had to mess with it. The iPod is closed when it should be open and open when it should be closed. So if you're expecting even a half-assed shuffling system you'll be disappointed. And I've heard naught but annoyance from my fellow DJs. The only time it works passingly well enough is with fresh lists of under 50 songs. ...So a plus for ignorant, snooty latte-drinkin' hipster but not so much for the rest of us.
Of course that is Apple's core demographic.
They do have a brand to maintain.
I'm really big on aesthetics, almost to the point of treating it as a science and, however I may recoil at their arrogant closed-box attitude, there's no getting around the fact that the iPod is sexy.
I mean who the fuck makes their electronics white? Yet Apple still found a way to make those earphones glow undaunted even after months of abuse.
Their apt use of font alone seems to lend this unsettling air of legitimacy to my grungiest, most obscure favorite artists. The letters glisten with so much implied class that one can't help but feel that this very band is being discussed in some opera house’s winebar.
I'm talkin' people so goddamn cultured they wipe their ass with pages of the New Yorker. The type of people who recall listening to NPR in their rebellious early days when they still bought coffee at public cafes.
Speaking of which, it's my humble conclusion that as a part of the expanded market the iPod stands to lose from being too classy.
I know it's what most of the competing brands seem to be shooting for (if not particularly well -Rio I'm looking at you). But frankly, that's just too much gloss for me. I'm serious. Contrasted to far with the "don't wear anything I can't wipe my hands upon" ethic, the iPod threatens a distinct reaction of queasiness. I could make an attempt to mod the case but it's not the same thing. Apple's built every element of their superslim iPod with aesthetics in mind.
I can't help but feel that there's a large market opportunity going unexploited. For the same price I'd have jumped at the opportunity to pay for a rough-edged, ground steel case with more focus on packed chunky simplicity than spaced empty simplicity.
I can't believe that one of the start up competitors hasn't said screw space, thrown in cushioning and relative waterproofing and cast out the uber-shiny stylings.
Everyone seems to be trying to mirror Apple, shift the exact modes of style by a few degrees and hope that fads will shift their way in a few years. Playing their game. As if Jobs isn't smart enough to keep his tight reign on fad.
March 18, 2006
(But That New Income Tax Oughta Fix Things)
I'd feel amiss not to relate the latest in Portland Public School's fifteen-year decent into oblivion.
As much fun as the I-told-you-so game can be, looking back now all I can gleam is a weird feeling of unsettledness. State Run Education operates in such a perilous social position that it seems to upset everything it touches. It's interesting that, as the first political issue I seriously committed myself to, it has remained the most glaringly unsolvable.
Everything about Public Education screams compromise. Sacrifice. Each and every way you look at it.
Oh sure, one can construct rich theories as regards the root causes and utopian solutions, but the situation on the ground remains undeniable.
Vouchers solve economic issues at the cost of strengthening localized intra-personal power structures. Abolishment creates an underclass. A stronger state system simply leads to a more centralized social power structure. Parallel societies are unstable and too thin to effectively cauterize the wounds at hand.
Tearing down the ageist structure of modern society is a great long term moral solution, but accomplishes nothing in the short term. The upbound technological curve will, of course, erase the power structures at hand, even erase the whole having-children thing. But it provides nothing significantly tangible in the present. Generations rise into our power structures, our failed societies, right before our very eyes and we stutter uselessly. In our own manner we all run away and hope things will fix themselves.
The dilemma of public education is a mire of reformist muckery. And it's what I cut my teeth on. I just wish, looking back, that I could claim my teeth cut it back.
I'd feel amiss not to relate the latest in Portland Public School's fifteen-year decent into oblivion.
As much fun as the I-told-you-so game can be, looking back now all I can gleam is a weird feeling of unsettledness. State Run Education operates in such a perilous social position that it seems to upset everything it touches. It's interesting that, as the first political issue I seriously committed myself to, it has remained the most glaringly unsolvable.
Everything about Public Education screams compromise. Sacrifice. Each and every way you look at it.
Oh sure, one can construct rich theories as regards the root causes and utopian solutions, but the situation on the ground remains undeniable.
Vouchers solve economic issues at the cost of strengthening localized intra-personal power structures. Abolishment creates an underclass. A stronger state system simply leads to a more centralized social power structure. Parallel societies are unstable and too thin to effectively cauterize the wounds at hand.
Tearing down the ageist structure of modern society is a great long term moral solution, but accomplishes nothing in the short term. The upbound technological curve will, of course, erase the power structures at hand, even erase the whole having-children thing. But it provides nothing significantly tangible in the present. Generations rise into our power structures, our failed societies, right before our very eyes and we stutter uselessly. In our own manner we all run away and hope things will fix themselves.
The dilemma of public education is a mire of reformist muckery. And it's what I cut my teeth on. I just wish, looking back, that I could claim my teeth cut it back.
March 17, 2006
(The Wall Street Journal Explains This Whole "Anarchism" Thing)
Jesus fucking Christ.
They will publish anything. Screw the facts and screw any semblance of reality. It's not like anyone's going to call them on it at their next cocktail party.
Addendum: I'll let a certain Portland-area Jedi do the deconstructing. Quinlan's been in the process of abandoning the movement for Marxist double-talk a long time now, but he still manages the most fair (and most importantly level-headed) fisking of the WSJ piece I've seen yet.
Jesus fucking Christ.
They will publish anything. Screw the facts and screw any semblance of reality. It's not like anyone's going to call them on it at their next cocktail party.
Addendum: I'll let a certain Portland-area Jedi do the deconstructing. Quinlan's been in the process of abandoning the movement for Marxist double-talk a long time now, but he still manages the most fair (and most importantly level-headed) fisking of the WSJ piece I've seen yet.
(The Crimes Of V For Vendetta)
It's dreadfully boring. For starters.
Viewed artistically, V for Vendetta is simply not there. It's a reflection. A phantom of better work. In a better world, it would sleep at the bottom of the B-Movie DVD rack. In a better world, V for Vendetta might only be heard from again in some cheap Sunday marathon.
But the point at hand is that we do not live in a better world.
And, as an Anarchist, I am distinctly aware of this. Would that I could address this movie through some lens of absolute artistic criticism. But V for Vendetta was never meant to stand on its own. Borrowed entirely from works such as 1984 and The Count Of Monte Cristo, neither is V for Vendetta an agile surrealist impression.
Instead of ponying up some direct political motivation, the movie occupies an uncomfortable middle ground. One might say it 'cops out.' If this attempt to straddle all artistic operandi ever demonstrates a particular agility it is one that smacks of sluggish and defensive fear rather than adroit ability. It fails as a stylish action flick. It fails as a nuanced and loving homage. It fails as a rebellious political film. And most of all it fails as a hybrid.
But it still falls to me to pull off and dissect what gristle remains. I am, as it is unfortunately relevant, an Anarchist. And there's just no getting around that crimson circle V. The twisted iconography makes this inevitable.
When Alan Moore wrote the original graphic novel (of which, I must admit, I only really read the first half) the alteration was both concise and understandable. Moore wanted to craft a quick English lovesong without the unbounded modern optimism of Bakunin, Goldman or de Cleyre. Moore wanted the droll Victorian conflict of the broken man. His narrative needed the nihilism of oily British sludge under wheel and the fiery passion of an antiglobalist Edmond Dantès. Moore moonlights as a literary fanboy so the alliterary and metaphorical power of the sharpened and inverted (V) was perfect. The balanced and intrepid (A) plummeted to coldest depth, unbalanced, inverted and cast down.
The frigid corpse of Anarchism's hope.
If one should but for a moment doubt my connection between such a fable and the popularly unwieldy yet historically vast political movement, one need only watch the damn thing. It's an upside-down circle-fucking-A. The masked protagonist is at his most adept when he's quoting our beloved dead old white guys. Hell, when Emma Goldman's infamous 'can't dance: no revolution' paraphrase is used to drive a dramatic scene just about my entire fucking theater groaned. I shit you not.
Let's not tiptoe around the damned thing. V for Vendetta is gonna live and die on the back of the Anarchist movement.
Though nothing it says may be anyway unique or monopolized by Anarchism, when it comes time to point fingers of analysis there's simply nobody else at the table. When folks critique the movie driving home they won't see the geekily preserved afterimages of a literary homage. It's Anarchism they're gonna see. It's images of our violence in Seattle that they will be mentally critiquing.
And let’s be frank. Being no friend of the British political system, watching Parliament get ceremoniously blown to little chunks was a delicious tactile feast for my eyes. It's worth the price of admission alone. I swear I almost fucking drooled. What was that about our Tea Party you Tory Redcoat sonsofbitches? Here's your fucking legacy of democracy. Here's your elitist enlightened European tradition. Eat it. Eat it for fucking tea time you arrogant gits.
Fact of the matter is I'm something of a fan of violence.
And though the recent NY Times article that dotingly labeled Anarchists as simply "Quakers who cuss a lot" had it more or less spot on, we also have a history of believing in the right to fight back. And if the state, the corporatist system... if the very act of holding power over one's fellow man is to be universally considered an unimaginable act of violence, then burning a few slave plantations to the ground is but self defense.
Of course "Anarchy" proper has as little to do with violence as it does with chaos. But a century and a half of propaganda from both greedy robber baron and power-hungry communist has laid us a rather inescapable bed.
"Propaganda Through The Deed." How those unfortunate words still ring today. It's like terrorism except instead of terrorizing "the people" it's supposed to terrorize the "government."
Rather than precise and tactically responsive violence, rather than direct resistance, it is the repositioning of violence from the physical to the psychological. Where the act of violence is not initiated to break external chains but to provoke internal reaction. Though, like all evil tactics, it may prove necessary in some situation, it's important to note its dramatic contrast to regular and external resistance.
When one commits acts of 'symbolic' violence like say just destroying a statue (if we are to accept for the moment the perception that acts against 'passive' matter are violent), the intended action is a direct assault on internalized psychological constructs. It is done to force a mindset on its victims. Whether to supposedly uplift (by breaking mistaken concept that state violence is legitimate, inevitable, or somehow not-evil) or to sabotage and disrupt (by instilling irrational fear in the minds of some horridly oppressive group).
When those ELF kids (ah, yes, I'm afraid it's time to touch on the great Green Scare) get pumped up and destroy some rich family's SUV they do so not because it'll mean one less polluting hog on the road, but because they think it'll inspire a much wider fear and guilt complex.
It's in the vein of social engineering and it's an extremely dangerous tactic because it casts the activist into the very personal role of conspiring to coerce someone else's thoughts.
Most of the time this pisses me off. Hell, all of the time.
But it's in this that V for Vendetta is entirely marinated. Though the Dantès must complete his personal vengeance, the overarching story is one of symbolically breaking the British people free from a fascist regime largely unschooled in subtlety.
It's a story of extreme violence and inter-personal coercion. (Ah, Miss Portman, you're just too pretty for a real Guantanamo.) And, you know what? As evil as such tactics must be considered, in the situation we are given --with an unrealistically inept fascist government and a rebel intellect with infinite resources-- the ends more than adequately justify the means. We'd all assassinate Hitler if we had a chance. We'd all have blown up the Kremlin if it would give the people inspiration to rise against Stalin's regime. The frightened Republican/Democrat demagogues condemning the movie's populist violence are either immoral or idiots.
The real danger in V for Vendetta is the indescription of just what these "ends" are that justify the quasi-terrorist "means."
Getting rid of Saddam was a great ends. And might have justified a few thousand flag-draped coffins. But it wasn't the only end result of our little invasion. The tactic of nationalistic warfare had a certain inescapable effect upon the ends. Nationalism begets more irrational factionalism. And certain ulterior motives have further secured US imperial power. An ends that I consider at least as effectively evil as Saddam's concentrated little fiefdom.
When theBlack Block mob of darkly dressed citizens magically pours past the riot cops and soldiers there's no mention of what's to come. With the oh-so-cute Guy Fawkes masks we are handed a squeaky clean image of rebellion. But such noble revolutions are only as permanent as we make them. It's no use pointing out what we oppose if we don't have a positive vision of the future to prop ourselves up with.
That third side of the brashly circled triangle. It must be balanced.
V for Vendetta hollows out Anarchy. It grabs an empty husk of associated tactics and tries to breath life into it with an overly blunt Hollywood dystopia. (Speaking of which, America is apparently embroiled in civil war! The flashbacks say Iraq helped start it! Sooo deep! Sooo radical! Sooo relevant! You can almost hear the shocked magazine editors gushing synonyms for "daring" and "provocative.")
That'd be okay if the Wachowski brothers didn't default on the whole making-a-movie thing by trying to very obviously capitalize off of Anarchism's blossoming presence in the popular conscience. But no, V for Vendetta has become precisely that. Far from Alan Moore's original geekery, the adaptation for celluloid has seen a bastardization fit for Hot Topic. From a gothic love-affair with everything gloomy and British we've reached "edgy" faux political dilemmas posed by a nihilistic stand-in for Anarchism.
Maybe the "it happened here" realism of V for Vendetta's fascist Britain will help people wake up. Maybe folks will realize that governments have been burning the Reichstag as long as we've allowed them to oppress us. Maybe folk'll finally accept that power is by nature in conflict with freedom. ...Hell, as long as we're dreaming, I'd like to see a populace that understands the difference between the nihilistic worship of chaos and the hardened embrace of life.
It's unlikely. Seems to me that V for Vendetta will prove a net detriment to Anarchism. Getting further connected to some inane construct of "Propaganda Through The Deed" bullshit should be damage enough. But maybe, just maybe, the film will have some outweighing positive effects upon the populace.
Even so. I don't know if it would excuse such artistic and aesthetic terrorism. Because at heart V for Vendetta is just another crappy unfocused movie.
It's dreadfully boring. For starters.
Viewed artistically, V for Vendetta is simply not there. It's a reflection. A phantom of better work. In a better world, it would sleep at the bottom of the B-Movie DVD rack. In a better world, V for Vendetta might only be heard from again in some cheap Sunday marathon.
But the point at hand is that we do not live in a better world.
And, as an Anarchist, I am distinctly aware of this. Would that I could address this movie through some lens of absolute artistic criticism. But V for Vendetta was never meant to stand on its own. Borrowed entirely from works such as 1984 and The Count Of Monte Cristo, neither is V for Vendetta an agile surrealist impression.
Instead of ponying up some direct political motivation, the movie occupies an uncomfortable middle ground. One might say it 'cops out.' If this attempt to straddle all artistic operandi ever demonstrates a particular agility it is one that smacks of sluggish and defensive fear rather than adroit ability. It fails as a stylish action flick. It fails as a nuanced and loving homage. It fails as a rebellious political film. And most of all it fails as a hybrid.
But it still falls to me to pull off and dissect what gristle remains. I am, as it is unfortunately relevant, an Anarchist. And there's just no getting around that crimson circle V. The twisted iconography makes this inevitable.
When Alan Moore wrote the original graphic novel (of which, I must admit, I only really read the first half) the alteration was both concise and understandable. Moore wanted to craft a quick English lovesong without the unbounded modern optimism of Bakunin, Goldman or de Cleyre. Moore wanted the droll Victorian conflict of the broken man. His narrative needed the nihilism of oily British sludge under wheel and the fiery passion of an antiglobalist Edmond Dantès. Moore moonlights as a literary fanboy so the alliterary and metaphorical power of the sharpened and inverted (V) was perfect. The balanced and intrepid (A) plummeted to coldest depth, unbalanced, inverted and cast down.
The frigid corpse of Anarchism's hope.
If one should but for a moment doubt my connection between such a fable and the popularly unwieldy yet historically vast political movement, one need only watch the damn thing. It's an upside-down circle-fucking-A. The masked protagonist is at his most adept when he's quoting our beloved dead old white guys. Hell, when Emma Goldman's infamous 'can't dance: no revolution' paraphrase is used to drive a dramatic scene just about my entire fucking theater groaned. I shit you not.
Let's not tiptoe around the damned thing. V for Vendetta is gonna live and die on the back of the Anarchist movement.
Though nothing it says may be anyway unique or monopolized by Anarchism, when it comes time to point fingers of analysis there's simply nobody else at the table. When folks critique the movie driving home they won't see the geekily preserved afterimages of a literary homage. It's Anarchism they're gonna see. It's images of our violence in Seattle that they will be mentally critiquing.
And let’s be frank. Being no friend of the British political system, watching Parliament get ceremoniously blown to little chunks was a delicious tactile feast for my eyes. It's worth the price of admission alone. I swear I almost fucking drooled. What was that about our Tea Party you Tory Redcoat sonsofbitches? Here's your fucking legacy of democracy. Here's your elitist enlightened European tradition. Eat it. Eat it for fucking tea time you arrogant gits.
Fact of the matter is I'm something of a fan of violence.
And though the recent NY Times article that dotingly labeled Anarchists as simply "Quakers who cuss a lot" had it more or less spot on, we also have a history of believing in the right to fight back. And if the state, the corporatist system... if the very act of holding power over one's fellow man is to be universally considered an unimaginable act of violence, then burning a few slave plantations to the ground is but self defense.
Of course "Anarchy" proper has as little to do with violence as it does with chaos. But a century and a half of propaganda from both greedy robber baron and power-hungry communist has laid us a rather inescapable bed.
"Propaganda Through The Deed." How those unfortunate words still ring today. It's like terrorism except instead of terrorizing "the people" it's supposed to terrorize the "government."
Rather than precise and tactically responsive violence, rather than direct resistance, it is the repositioning of violence from the physical to the psychological. Where the act of violence is not initiated to break external chains but to provoke internal reaction. Though, like all evil tactics, it may prove necessary in some situation, it's important to note its dramatic contrast to regular and external resistance.
When one commits acts of 'symbolic' violence like say just destroying a statue (if we are to accept for the moment the perception that acts against 'passive' matter are violent), the intended action is a direct assault on internalized psychological constructs. It is done to force a mindset on its victims. Whether to supposedly uplift (by breaking mistaken concept that state violence is legitimate, inevitable, or somehow not-evil) or to sabotage and disrupt (by instilling irrational fear in the minds of some horridly oppressive group).
When those ELF kids (ah, yes, I'm afraid it's time to touch on the great Green Scare) get pumped up and destroy some rich family's SUV they do so not because it'll mean one less polluting hog on the road, but because they think it'll inspire a much wider fear and guilt complex.
It's in the vein of social engineering and it's an extremely dangerous tactic because it casts the activist into the very personal role of conspiring to coerce someone else's thoughts.
Most of the time this pisses me off. Hell, all of the time.
But it's in this that V for Vendetta is entirely marinated. Though the Dantès must complete his personal vengeance, the overarching story is one of symbolically breaking the British people free from a fascist regime largely unschooled in subtlety.
It's a story of extreme violence and inter-personal coercion. (Ah, Miss Portman, you're just too pretty for a real Guantanamo.) And, you know what? As evil as such tactics must be considered, in the situation we are given --with an unrealistically inept fascist government and a rebel intellect with infinite resources-- the ends more than adequately justify the means. We'd all assassinate Hitler if we had a chance. We'd all have blown up the Kremlin if it would give the people inspiration to rise against Stalin's regime. The frightened Republican/Democrat demagogues condemning the movie's populist violence are either immoral or idiots.
The real danger in V for Vendetta is the indescription of just what these "ends" are that justify the quasi-terrorist "means."
Getting rid of Saddam was a great ends. And might have justified a few thousand flag-draped coffins. But it wasn't the only end result of our little invasion. The tactic of nationalistic warfare had a certain inescapable effect upon the ends. Nationalism begets more irrational factionalism. And certain ulterior motives have further secured US imperial power. An ends that I consider at least as effectively evil as Saddam's concentrated little fiefdom.
When the
That third side of the brashly circled triangle. It must be balanced.
V for Vendetta hollows out Anarchy. It grabs an empty husk of associated tactics and tries to breath life into it with an overly blunt Hollywood dystopia. (Speaking of which, America is apparently embroiled in civil war! The flashbacks say Iraq helped start it! Sooo deep! Sooo radical! Sooo relevant! You can almost hear the shocked magazine editors gushing synonyms for "daring" and "provocative.")
That'd be okay if the Wachowski brothers didn't default on the whole making-a-movie thing by trying to very obviously capitalize off of Anarchism's blossoming presence in the popular conscience. But no, V for Vendetta has become precisely that. Far from Alan Moore's original geekery, the adaptation for celluloid has seen a bastardization fit for Hot Topic. From a gothic love-affair with everything gloomy and British we've reached "edgy" faux political dilemmas posed by a nihilistic stand-in for Anarchism.
Maybe the "it happened here" realism of V for Vendetta's fascist Britain will help people wake up. Maybe folks will realize that governments have been burning the Reichstag as long as we've allowed them to oppress us. Maybe folk'll finally accept that power is by nature in conflict with freedom. ...Hell, as long as we're dreaming, I'd like to see a populace that understands the difference between the nihilistic worship of chaos and the hardened embrace of life.
It's unlikely. Seems to me that V for Vendetta will prove a net detriment to Anarchism. Getting further connected to some inane construct of "Propaganda Through The Deed" bullshit should be damage enough. But maybe, just maybe, the film will have some outweighing positive effects upon the populace.
Even so. I don't know if it would excuse such artistic and aesthetic terrorism. Because at heart V for Vendetta is just another crappy unfocused movie.
March 16, 2006
(Scientific Fallacy In Two Parts)
Slate's running an article claiming we're all related circa 1000 BCE. But, of course, rather than trying to find consanguinity to Kevin Bacon, the writer shoots for the DaVinci Code crowd and goes on to use flimsy math, historical inaccuracy and tons of fudge factors to wrestle a certain Jesus into everyone's family tree.
Now I know it's sometimes hard but one can appreciate the interconnected genetics of humanity without making idiotic and sensationalist claims. Hella simplistic mathematics and wishful thinking just won't change the basic facts of localized genetic environments. Humanity clumps. And it's true that we've all been closely and constantly interrelated since 'prehistory' but that's no call for idiotic grandiosity. People make far too much out of genetics already.
Speaking of which. I feel obliged to mention the double helix nebula found at the galactic core. I know it's hard not to read such a discovery as a "face on mars," but seriously humanity, get over yourself. Double-helixes happen. Magnetic lines 'n' shit. There's a uncountable slew of varying nebulas in this here Milky Way. And a good portion of them are near the core. No call to go fucking new-age over it.
Slate's running an article claiming we're all related circa 1000 BCE. But, of course, rather than trying to find consanguinity to Kevin Bacon, the writer shoots for the DaVinci Code crowd and goes on to use flimsy math, historical inaccuracy and tons of fudge factors to wrestle a certain Jesus into everyone's family tree.
Now I know it's sometimes hard but one can appreciate the interconnected genetics of humanity without making idiotic and sensationalist claims. Hella simplistic mathematics and wishful thinking just won't change the basic facts of localized genetic environments. Humanity clumps. And it's true that we've all been closely and constantly interrelated since 'prehistory' but that's no call for idiotic grandiosity. People make far too much out of genetics already.
Speaking of which. I feel obliged to mention the double helix nebula found at the galactic core. I know it's hard not to read such a discovery as a "face on mars," but seriously humanity, get over yourself. Double-helixes happen. Magnetic lines 'n' shit. There's a uncountable slew of varying nebulas in this here Milky Way. And a good portion of them are near the core. No call to go fucking new-age over it.
March 15, 2006
(Public Speculation Is Rarely A Good Idea)
Bush is deliberately running his Presidency into the ground. Impeachment and resignation is increasing a possibility if not already an inevitability.
Most Liberals, of course, have chosen to view this turn of events as entirely natural. Fifty years of civics classes have taught us that the teeter-totter goes both ways, after all. In conventional America, though the parties may win arbitrary battles, the system doesn't change. Being Liberals they have no idea what revolutionary struggle is really like. It exists entirely outside of their (to channel O'Reilly) comfy latte-sipping worldview. That's why they can't take the neo-conservatives seriously. And that's why neo-conservativism emerged so violently from the leftist tradition.
But the neo-conservitives are very serious. If they make a mistake it's that they're so preoccupied with higher-strata political conflicts that the core movement rarely muddies themselves in the tomfoolery of our everyday "politics." But that doesn't mean that they don't pay attention to it. Or that they in any way intend to leave the question of American "National Leadership" up to partisan debate. Geopolitics is too important to be left in the hands of democracy. And the global campaign that Iraq signifies has always been far too serious to be conducted peicemeal by changing administrations over the next century. Such a concession would make the neo-conservative action plan utterly unsustainable. Such was true when the invasion strategem was being written before Bush was elected and it's unquestionably true today in the face of a crashing presidency. With almost three years left, resignation may be the only way to revitalize neo-conservative power.
The important thing is that, if such an occasion arrives, it is increasingly obvious that it will be not fueled by a public recognition of the Administration's true crimes, but rather a general opinion of incompetence and a perception of centrist appeasement rather than action.
If the President leaves office he will not prompt a radical realignment in the politics of the Republican Party but rather a deepening and emboldening of the neo-conservative imperial dream.
If George W. Bush resigns he will do so over matters of National Security. National Leadership. National Power. He will be seen as resigning not because he strengthened America's position on the chessboard, but because people will be manipulated into thinking he made our position worse. Impeachment will leave the country's political sphere hungering for stronger international realpolitik. The manufactured debate is already aggressively panting the issue at hand into one of misguided Wilsonian Liberalism. Even though "the spread of democracy" was always ancillary to the greater game of establishing unchallenged American Supremacy.
Furthermore if George W. Bush leaves office, Dick Cheney will leave with him. There is no way the public would see a Cheney presidency as anything new or desirable. Cheney is not a public relations man. This leaves one choice.
Rice publicly calls herself a "realist." She's beloved by Congress and the pundits. She's great at publicity. She's been a yes-man to the right people in the Administration. She's a believer. Born in fucking Alabama. Those on the Left who've had the guts to stand up to her have repeatedly done so in manners completely unsuitable for oppositionary propaganda. Calling her a whore and degrading her as a racial suck-up will cement her Presidency in a way no other inner-circle member could dream of.
We all know the Republicans favor her of all candidates against Hillary. But if she takes office beforehand then Hillary is forever dead.
There are so many reasons and ways to hand the Presidency over to Rice the mind boggles.
The UAE ports deal was just one dangling bait of the hundreds being thrown right now. Yes, there were some sharp splits in the White House. And, yes, some of that has boiled out into realistic political friction. But publicly sucking up to the Muslims over politically killer stuff like the Mohammad cartoons was utterly preposterous. Anyway one looks at it Bush Administration is committing a deliberate and methodological suicide.
And at the same time they're openly playing on the chessboard like they're ready for two, three many more military actions. Whether such take place before or after George W. Bush leaves office may be irrelevant. The long campaign of American Fascism is here to stay.
Bush is deliberately running his Presidency into the ground. Impeachment and resignation is increasing a possibility if not already an inevitability.
Most Liberals, of course, have chosen to view this turn of events as entirely natural. Fifty years of civics classes have taught us that the teeter-totter goes both ways, after all. In conventional America, though the parties may win arbitrary battles, the system doesn't change. Being Liberals they have no idea what revolutionary struggle is really like. It exists entirely outside of their (to channel O'Reilly) comfy latte-sipping worldview. That's why they can't take the neo-conservatives seriously. And that's why neo-conservativism emerged so violently from the leftist tradition.
But the neo-conservitives are very serious. If they make a mistake it's that they're so preoccupied with higher-strata political conflicts that the core movement rarely muddies themselves in the tomfoolery of our everyday "politics." But that doesn't mean that they don't pay attention to it. Or that they in any way intend to leave the question of American "National Leadership" up to partisan debate. Geopolitics is too important to be left in the hands of democracy. And the global campaign that Iraq signifies has always been far too serious to be conducted peicemeal by changing administrations over the next century. Such a concession would make the neo-conservative action plan utterly unsustainable. Such was true when the invasion strategem was being written before Bush was elected and it's unquestionably true today in the face of a crashing presidency. With almost three years left, resignation may be the only way to revitalize neo-conservative power.
The important thing is that, if such an occasion arrives, it is increasingly obvious that it will be not fueled by a public recognition of the Administration's true crimes, but rather a general opinion of incompetence and a perception of centrist appeasement rather than action.
If the President leaves office he will not prompt a radical realignment in the politics of the Republican Party but rather a deepening and emboldening of the neo-conservative imperial dream.
If George W. Bush resigns he will do so over matters of National Security. National Leadership. National Power. He will be seen as resigning not because he strengthened America's position on the chessboard, but because people will be manipulated into thinking he made our position worse. Impeachment will leave the country's political sphere hungering for stronger international realpolitik. The manufactured debate is already aggressively panting the issue at hand into one of misguided Wilsonian Liberalism. Even though "the spread of democracy" was always ancillary to the greater game of establishing unchallenged American Supremacy.
Furthermore if George W. Bush leaves office, Dick Cheney will leave with him. There is no way the public would see a Cheney presidency as anything new or desirable. Cheney is not a public relations man. This leaves one choice.
Rice publicly calls herself a "realist." She's beloved by Congress and the pundits. She's great at publicity. She's been a yes-man to the right people in the Administration. She's a believer. Born in fucking Alabama. Those on the Left who've had the guts to stand up to her have repeatedly done so in manners completely unsuitable for oppositionary propaganda. Calling her a whore and degrading her as a racial suck-up will cement her Presidency in a way no other inner-circle member could dream of.
We all know the Republicans favor her of all candidates against Hillary. But if she takes office beforehand then Hillary is forever dead.
There are so many reasons and ways to hand the Presidency over to Rice the mind boggles.
The UAE ports deal was just one dangling bait of the hundreds being thrown right now. Yes, there were some sharp splits in the White House. And, yes, some of that has boiled out into realistic political friction. But publicly sucking up to the Muslims over politically killer stuff like the Mohammad cartoons was utterly preposterous. Anyway one looks at it Bush Administration is committing a deliberate and methodological suicide.
And at the same time they're openly playing on the chessboard like they're ready for two, three many more military actions. Whether such take place before or after George W. Bush leaves office may be irrelevant. The long campaign of American Fascism is here to stay.
March 13, 2006
(Verbatim)
"What?! Oh, that's right. Fuckin' sales tax."
"Yeah..."
"I can't believe this bullshit state. Fuckin' savages. Never get used to it. Fuckin' sales tax."
"You mean there are places without sales tax?"
"Of course. Fuckin' ...civilized states. Oregon."
"..."
"Oh, and Montana. New Hampshire. um..."
"...Delaware."
"And fuckin' Alaska!"
"So tell me, how does that work?"
"Well when something says it costs so much, it actually fuckin' costs that much."
"Sounds nice. I should move there. You wanted the whole thing, right?"
"Thanks. You're out of napkins."
"Yeah, we're supposed to get some more later. Sorry. Oughta be some before you come in tomorrow."
"What?! Oh, that's right. Fuckin' sales tax."
"Yeah..."
"I can't believe this bullshit state. Fuckin' savages. Never get used to it. Fuckin' sales tax."
"You mean there are places without sales tax?"
"Of course. Fuckin' ...civilized states. Oregon."
"..."
"Oh, and Montana. New Hampshire. um..."
"...Delaware."
"And fuckin' Alaska!"
"So tell me, how does that work?"
"Well when something says it costs so much, it actually fuckin' costs that much."
"Sounds nice. I should move there. You wanted the whole thing, right?"
"Thanks. You're out of napkins."
"Yeah, we're supposed to get some more later. Sorry. Oughta be some before you come in tomorrow."
March 11, 2006
(The Great Uprising)
'We want our welfare state untouched!'
Man, sometimes I feel like France has made a career out of sucking at revolution.
Addendum: That said.
Protest porn is hawt.
'We want our welfare state untouched!'
Man, sometimes I feel like France has made a career out of sucking at revolution.
Addendum: That said.
Protest porn is hawt.
(The Vicious Reactionary Politics Of Battlestar Galactica)
I can feel myself waxing towards writers block and, as everyone knows, the best way around not-writing is boot up and pound the keys until you feel like writing again.
So please forgive the following lapse into geekery.
Last night Battlestar Galactica aired its extra-long season finale. This season had been showcased as a serious turn around for NBC's Sci-Fi channel, a cable station that had long been derided by just about everyone, SF elitists, mainstream geeks and the general public. For most of its lifespan the Sci-Fi channel had been Example A of everything that was tacky or inane in the "genre."
In fact, I can think of no greater force behind the field's internalization of the "Sci-Fi"-"SF" split between terms. One representing cheap b-movie stupidity and the other high-minded literature.
Visual Sci-Fi was just a sub-culture of aesthetics. A "scene". Prosthetic ears and utterly idiotic fanboyishness.
Star Trek dominated the nineties and the return of Star Wars helped reinforce this feeling of restriction. Such was the best we were ever going to get. Name the the most intelligent, the most artistic "Science Fiction" movie you've ever seen. Without exception that movie will wither and pale when placed beside the most mediocre of SF books.
Science Fiction, no matter how lovingly transcribed before the camera, could never be truly good. There was something about the medium (or the market) that resulted in shit. Cheap, meaningless entertainment. This was the consensus. But September 11th changed that.
Long-time readers will remember just how dearly I hold Joss Whedon's "Firefly." (Get me drunk enough and I'll spend an hour enunciating on how it was, hands down, the best 11 hours of television ever made.) But though Firefly was a loving craft unto itself, its position in the broader genre of Science Fiction was revolutionary.
Libertarian anarcho-capitalism produced by a hardline feminist socialist, FOX's revulsion was inevitable and the death sentence had been cast before it ever aired, but Firefly took the impassioned political world-creation of Babylon 5 and made it blossom. There is geopolitics in Firefly. There is scientific legitimacy. There is interpersonal realism.
In an ingrown community preoccupied with death throws of Star Trek and Star Wars, Whedon's cannonshot took a while to reverberate to attention. When it was through we got Battlestar Galactica. Remake of cheesy 70s Mormons-in-space show. Lauded by Time magazine and the like as the best show on television. Hell, it openly stole Firefly's CGI effects team. The debt it owes Firefly is no secret.
But at heart Battlestar is nothing like Firefly. It is not boldly uplifting the genre.
Battlestar is not revolutionary, it is the genre's counter-revolution. It is reactionary.
Within Science Fiction it has historically been a mortal insult to accuse one of contemporary political bias. SF is, after all, about breaking free of the conventional and examining the radical. But Ron Moore's reimagining of the humans-fleeing-machines concept fails unquestionably in this respect.
Even though the Twelve Colonies in his series supposedly take place completely outside our social space, there exists not one difference in political paradigm. Forget the classic "along time ago, in a stellar cluster far, far away" situationing, despite the show's secret tangled web of mythically shared history between the Twelve Colonies and Earth, the society showcased is exactly the fucking same.
(Quick backstory on the in-show mythos: Humanity and a Parthenon of Gods develop on Planet named Kobol. Civilization falls, Gods disappear and Humanity flees Kobol in two clumps to the Twelve Colonies and to a long lost and distant colony of Earth.)
Now one can obviously forgive small cultural artifacts if one is to assume the in-show mythos to be flawed and Earth to secretly be the birthplace of humanity (and therefore root culture). But there are limits. Real Science Fiction doesn't rely on an audience's desire for senseless entertainment to drive "Suspension of Disbelief". Real Science Fiction takes everything into account. Small details in tech and social psychology are deeply woven in a larger tapestry. The more removed your society is from our own the more work you have to put into your tapestry.
Even if your society is four thousand years in the future of our own history (regardless of internal roll-backs) there's gonna be serious differences. Serious motherfucking differences.
The moment you start skipping around this issue is the moment you dissolve into valueless fluffy political soap opera.
Of course it's possible that Ron Moore has this all covered and is just sitting on the connections. It's possible. There are gods/posthumans in this setting, so there's always the chance of an intelligent deus ex machina. But far more likely Battlestar's production team actually thinks they've covered their bases. After all, it's not like there's a Democratic party and a Republican party in this new world. Things are far more complicated than that!
But complication doesn't equate difference. Battlestar does a wonderful job of shuffling around contemporary political issues and views. What it does an absolutely horrid job at is developing new ones or moving beyond the same old late twentieth-century United States paradigm.
The aforementioned plebian publications like Time Magazine who've been orgasming all over Battlestar Galactica inevitably compare it to The West Wing.
That's not a good thing.
At least not for a show that's currently carrying the banner of Science Fiction on television.
Star Trek may have sucked pretty harshly, but at least it was grounded in an attempt by Gene Roddenberry to break outside of the contemporary straightjacket of politics. Oh sure their form of utopian, post-scarcity Socialism may have had its unrealistic flaws. And later on writers may have tried to hijack the medium to expound on contemporary political situations like the Cold War.
But at least they never ran an episode devoted to the abortion debate!
(I aint shitting you. They actually ran an episode about the pro-choice President finding herself pressed into criminalizing Abortion. As if the recent myth that individual existence begins at conception would, in any way, emerge under different historical circumstances. Yarg!)
In choosing to copy American philosophical presumptions, political methodology, economic system and culture so precisely, Battlestar Galactica is not a step forward but a step back. Whatever new ground Firefly may have blazed in regard to world-crafting and embrace of political radicalism (who gives a fuck what direction it's in) Battlestar Galactica has been effectively tearing it down.
Science Fiction, long the field of the anti-authoritarian (again, progressive, libertarian or utterly new -it didn't matter), is somehow being repolarized into extremely conservative waters.
Though the lense it presents and the views it allows on screen Battlestar Galactica effectively supports militarism, conservatism and strong political power without significant reservation. Is it any wonder then that every leftist SF fan I know has developed a deep distaste for the show? (The libertarians remain iffy.) ...While it's been the centrist Democrats and Rightwing Republicans who flock to the show in droves.
Something that would have been preposterous and unthinkable in the pre-9/11 world of Sci-Fi television.
It's a switchover that has mirrored the centrist and Neo-Conservative subversion of the upbound and financially elite geeks. The sort of secure Silicon Valley career techs who cling to safely packaged identities in a safely packaged world. Secretly nihilistic capitalists who feel obliged to cling to the liberal progressivism of their youth while believing moral advancement to be impossible. Political radicalism to be unsound. Thinking outside the box to be an exercise in earning social capital. And reality to ultimately favor those who are the most hard-headed and vicious in their pursuit of whatever arbitrary goals they might identify with.
It's an attitude that has partially seeped out into the rest of the "scene." And it's scary as all-fuck to see it getting championed by Battlestar Galactica.
Ron Moore has continually reiterated that one of his goals for the show is to eradicate and muddy up the idea of good guys. Everything is relative. Everyone is a flawed character. And ultimately there can be no progress because history is cyclical. The best we can do is hang on, fight out our arbitrary allegiances to this ideal or that, and hope that we'll get to win for a little while.
Ye gods that pisses me off.
And not in a good way.
I can feel myself waxing towards writers block and, as everyone knows, the best way around not-writing is boot up and pound the keys until you feel like writing again.
So please forgive the following lapse into geekery.
Last night Battlestar Galactica aired its extra-long season finale. This season had been showcased as a serious turn around for NBC's Sci-Fi channel, a cable station that had long been derided by just about everyone, SF elitists, mainstream geeks and the general public. For most of its lifespan the Sci-Fi channel had been Example A of everything that was tacky or inane in the "genre."
In fact, I can think of no greater force behind the field's internalization of the "Sci-Fi"-"SF" split between terms. One representing cheap b-movie stupidity and the other high-minded literature.
Visual Sci-Fi was just a sub-culture of aesthetics. A "scene". Prosthetic ears and utterly idiotic fanboyishness.
Star Trek dominated the nineties and the return of Star Wars helped reinforce this feeling of restriction. Such was the best we were ever going to get. Name the the most intelligent, the most artistic "Science Fiction" movie you've ever seen. Without exception that movie will wither and pale when placed beside the most mediocre of SF books.
Science Fiction, no matter how lovingly transcribed before the camera, could never be truly good. There was something about the medium (or the market) that resulted in shit. Cheap, meaningless entertainment. This was the consensus. But September 11th changed that.
Long-time readers will remember just how dearly I hold Joss Whedon's "Firefly." (Get me drunk enough and I'll spend an hour enunciating on how it was, hands down, the best 11 hours of television ever made.) But though Firefly was a loving craft unto itself, its position in the broader genre of Science Fiction was revolutionary.
Libertarian anarcho-capitalism produced by a hardline feminist socialist, FOX's revulsion was inevitable and the death sentence had been cast before it ever aired, but Firefly took the impassioned political world-creation of Babylon 5 and made it blossom. There is geopolitics in Firefly. There is scientific legitimacy. There is interpersonal realism.
In an ingrown community preoccupied with death throws of Star Trek and Star Wars, Whedon's cannonshot took a while to reverberate to attention. When it was through we got Battlestar Galactica. Remake of cheesy 70s Mormons-in-space show. Lauded by Time magazine and the like as the best show on television. Hell, it openly stole Firefly's CGI effects team. The debt it owes Firefly is no secret.
But at heart Battlestar is nothing like Firefly. It is not boldly uplifting the genre.
Battlestar is not revolutionary, it is the genre's counter-revolution. It is reactionary.
Within Science Fiction it has historically been a mortal insult to accuse one of contemporary political bias. SF is, after all, about breaking free of the conventional and examining the radical. But Ron Moore's reimagining of the humans-fleeing-machines concept fails unquestionably in this respect.
Even though the Twelve Colonies in his series supposedly take place completely outside our social space, there exists not one difference in political paradigm. Forget the classic "along time ago, in a stellar cluster far, far away" situationing, despite the show's secret tangled web of mythically shared history between the Twelve Colonies and Earth, the society showcased is exactly the fucking same.
(Quick backstory on the in-show mythos: Humanity and a Parthenon of Gods develop on Planet named Kobol. Civilization falls, Gods disappear and Humanity flees Kobol in two clumps to the Twelve Colonies and to a long lost and distant colony of Earth.)
Now one can obviously forgive small cultural artifacts if one is to assume the in-show mythos to be flawed and Earth to secretly be the birthplace of humanity (and therefore root culture). But there are limits. Real Science Fiction doesn't rely on an audience's desire for senseless entertainment to drive "Suspension of Disbelief". Real Science Fiction takes everything into account. Small details in tech and social psychology are deeply woven in a larger tapestry. The more removed your society is from our own the more work you have to put into your tapestry.
Even if your society is four thousand years in the future of our own history (regardless of internal roll-backs) there's gonna be serious differences. Serious motherfucking differences.
The moment you start skipping around this issue is the moment you dissolve into valueless fluffy political soap opera.
Of course it's possible that Ron Moore has this all covered and is just sitting on the connections. It's possible. There are gods/posthumans in this setting, so there's always the chance of an intelligent deus ex machina. But far more likely Battlestar's production team actually thinks they've covered their bases. After all, it's not like there's a Democratic party and a Republican party in this new world. Things are far more complicated than that!
But complication doesn't equate difference. Battlestar does a wonderful job of shuffling around contemporary political issues and views. What it does an absolutely horrid job at is developing new ones or moving beyond the same old late twentieth-century United States paradigm.
The aforementioned plebian publications like Time Magazine who've been orgasming all over Battlestar Galactica inevitably compare it to The West Wing.
That's not a good thing.
At least not for a show that's currently carrying the banner of Science Fiction on television.
Star Trek may have sucked pretty harshly, but at least it was grounded in an attempt by Gene Roddenberry to break outside of the contemporary straightjacket of politics. Oh sure their form of utopian, post-scarcity Socialism may have had its unrealistic flaws. And later on writers may have tried to hijack the medium to expound on contemporary political situations like the Cold War.
But at least they never ran an episode devoted to the abortion debate!
(I aint shitting you. They actually ran an episode about the pro-choice President finding herself pressed into criminalizing Abortion. As if the recent myth that individual existence begins at conception would, in any way, emerge under different historical circumstances. Yarg!)
In choosing to copy American philosophical presumptions, political methodology, economic system and culture so precisely, Battlestar Galactica is not a step forward but a step back. Whatever new ground Firefly may have blazed in regard to world-crafting and embrace of political radicalism (who gives a fuck what direction it's in) Battlestar Galactica has been effectively tearing it down.
Science Fiction, long the field of the anti-authoritarian (again, progressive, libertarian or utterly new -it didn't matter), is somehow being repolarized into extremely conservative waters.
Though the lense it presents and the views it allows on screen Battlestar Galactica effectively supports militarism, conservatism and strong political power without significant reservation. Is it any wonder then that every leftist SF fan I know has developed a deep distaste for the show? (The libertarians remain iffy.) ...While it's been the centrist Democrats and Rightwing Republicans who flock to the show in droves.
Something that would have been preposterous and unthinkable in the pre-9/11 world of Sci-Fi television.
It's a switchover that has mirrored the centrist and Neo-Conservative subversion of the upbound and financially elite geeks. The sort of secure Silicon Valley career techs who cling to safely packaged identities in a safely packaged world. Secretly nihilistic capitalists who feel obliged to cling to the liberal progressivism of their youth while believing moral advancement to be impossible. Political radicalism to be unsound. Thinking outside the box to be an exercise in earning social capital. And reality to ultimately favor those who are the most hard-headed and vicious in their pursuit of whatever arbitrary goals they might identify with.
It's an attitude that has partially seeped out into the rest of the "scene." And it's scary as all-fuck to see it getting championed by Battlestar Galactica.
Ron Moore has continually reiterated that one of his goals for the show is to eradicate and muddy up the idea of good guys. Everything is relative. Everyone is a flawed character. And ultimately there can be no progress because history is cyclical. The best we can do is hang on, fight out our arbitrary allegiances to this ideal or that, and hope that we'll get to win for a little while.
Ye gods that pisses me off.
And not in a good way.
March 07, 2006
(Boring Article Redeemed By Shocking Statistic)
"The number of what the Chinese government calls "mass group incidents" has risen by about 10 percent a year for more than a decade. In 2004, that number reached 74,000 and involved some 3.7 million people, according to the Chinese security minister. That's more than 200 protests across the country per day, involving an average of 50 people."
-Ian Bremmer.
"The number of what the Chinese government calls "mass group incidents" has risen by about 10 percent a year for more than a decade. In 2004, that number reached 74,000 and involved some 3.7 million people, according to the Chinese security minister. That's more than 200 protests across the country per day, involving an average of 50 people."
-Ian Bremmer.
March 06, 2006
(Knotted Veins)
The latest New Yorker has a piece about the Haymarket Tragedy. I can't say there weren't moments of me yelling at the computer screen. But I guess it's as true and well surmised a historical account as one is like to find in such elitist liberal rags. Avrich will be missed.
The latest New Yorker has a piece about the Haymarket Tragedy. I can't say there weren't moments of me yelling at the computer screen. But I guess it's as true and well surmised a historical account as one is like to find in such elitist liberal rags. Avrich will be missed.
March 04, 2006
(iClassTraitor)
Identity is a fickle mistress. Four months ago I crossed a line in my mind that I know can never be uncrossed. I'm not apologizing for buying an iPod. Granted, being on the receiving end of those stares has been pretty harsh and at first I wanted to respond to every comrade's flickered gaze by grabbing hold of them and pleading for understanding. Do you have any idea how long I've pined for an MP3 player? Seven years of dreams and pangs over library copies of WIRED. This was no fashion purchase. I know the value of three hundred dollars, goddamnit!
But no. It's true. The mark of the glowing white earphones is upon me and I chose it (turns out the gaudy little things are really good). Fact of the matter is I've become another little rich college kid. If the whole, you know, actually going to a uber-rich private liberal college didn't cinch it, this has. I mean, I bought a fucking iPod.
A wicked awesome thirty-gig video iPod.
I've got no space, no wiggle room. I've summited the wealth ladder. I've won the Great American Dream of having three months rent in advance. I can buy myself fat-dripping onion rings as a midnight snack.
I no longer get to stew in a righteous fury whenever another shit-brained Marxist takes it as a matter of course to write off himself and every other activist he meets as privileged middle-class children.
It seems like all my life I've been an outsider, a pretender to the lower-middle-class. It's something that looms over everything you do. It controls everything you say.
Somewhere over the last four months the elephant left the room for good. At first it felt empty. But then I got used to it.
It'll leave more room for the sound system.
Identity is a fickle mistress. Four months ago I crossed a line in my mind that I know can never be uncrossed. I'm not apologizing for buying an iPod. Granted, being on the receiving end of those stares has been pretty harsh and at first I wanted to respond to every comrade's flickered gaze by grabbing hold of them and pleading for understanding. Do you have any idea how long I've pined for an MP3 player? Seven years of dreams and pangs over library copies of WIRED. This was no fashion purchase. I know the value of three hundred dollars, goddamnit!
But no. It's true. The mark of the glowing white earphones is upon me and I chose it (turns out the gaudy little things are really good). Fact of the matter is I've become another little rich college kid. If the whole, you know, actually going to a uber-rich private liberal college didn't cinch it, this has. I mean, I bought a fucking iPod.
A wicked awesome thirty-gig video iPod.
I've got no space, no wiggle room. I've summited the wealth ladder. I've won the Great American Dream of having three months rent in advance. I can buy myself fat-dripping onion rings as a midnight snack.
I no longer get to stew in a righteous fury whenever another shit-brained Marxist takes it as a matter of course to write off himself and every other activist he meets as privileged middle-class children.
It seems like all my life I've been an outsider, a pretender to the lower-middle-class. It's something that looms over everything you do. It controls everything you say.
Somewhere over the last four months the elephant left the room for good. At first it felt empty. But then I got used to it.
It'll leave more room for the sound system.
March 03, 2006
(And Thus There Was Fun In The Comments Section)
"Allusions to the Weimar Republic’s twilight can easily be abused in our current political situation, but let’s remember why people started using them in the first place. The Nazis did not scrap the Weimar constitution, they merely added to it. They added parts in contradiction to the spirit of the earlier parts, but technically still legal. And the dark cloud that gathered over Germany did it slowly over several years."
-Catallarchy.
"Allusions to the Weimar Republic’s twilight can easily be abused in our current political situation, but let’s remember why people started using them in the first place. The Nazis did not scrap the Weimar constitution, they merely added to it. They added parts in contradiction to the spirit of the earlier parts, but technically still legal. And the dark cloud that gathered over Germany did it slowly over several years."
-Catallarchy.
March 02, 2006
($20 Trillion)
I know it's already made it's way to Slashdot, but still. Twenty Trillion Dollars. Fuck your small-minded primitivist models. Fuck the Crash and fuck dying in the cradle. Fuck anyone who doesn't think we can or should have it all. Fuck any "utopia" that makes concessions. Fuck all those people who so delight in social power that they would keep us all crippled and chained to weakness.
The resource model is not closed. The future is not the past. There is room for progress.
Another world is possible.
Many, many, many other worlds.
I know it's already made it's way to Slashdot, but still. Twenty Trillion Dollars. Fuck your small-minded primitivist models. Fuck the Crash and fuck dying in the cradle. Fuck anyone who doesn't think we can or should have it all. Fuck any "utopia" that makes concessions. Fuck all those people who so delight in social power that they would keep us all crippled and chained to weakness.
The resource model is not closed. The future is not the past. There is room for progress.
Another world is possible.
Many, many, many other worlds.
- The author does not recognize or accept the legitimacy of any law relating to the regulation of information.
Neither is any copyright or pretense to 'intellectual property' assumed by the author in the slightest nor will any degree of capitulation be wrestled from the author in regard to another's presumptions of authority on matters of supposedly illegal speech. 100% anticopyright
