David Zirin

Every few days I wonder which David Zirin article I should link to. Here's his latest on the new stadium for the Washington Nationals:

While Boswell and Fisher were given prime column real estate to gush [about the Nationals in the Washington Post], columnist Sally Jenkins didn't even get a corner of comics page. It's understandable why Jenkins, the 2002 AP sports columnist of the year, didn't get to play. Four years ago, she refused to gush: "While you're celebrating the deal to bring baseball back to Washington, understand just what it is you're getting: a large publicly financed stadium and potential sinkhole to house a team that's not very good, both of which may cost you more than you bargained for and be of questionable benefit to anybody except the wealthy owners and players. But tell that to baseball romantics, or the mayor and his people, and they act like you just called their baby ugly. It's lovely to have baseball in Washington again. But the deal that brings the Montreal Expos to Washington is an ugly baby."

Jenkins words have come to pass. But this isn't just an "ugly baby", it's Rosemary's baby. It's $611 million of tax payer money in a city that has become a ground zero of economic segregation and gentrification. $611 million over majority opposition of taxpayers and even the city council. $611 million in a city set to close down a staggering twenty-four public schools.

That's $611 million, a mere five months after a mayor commissioned study found that the District's poverty rate was the highest it had been in a decade and African-American unemployment was 51 percent. That's $611 million, in a city where the libraries shut down early and the Metro rusts over. That's a living, throbbing, reminder that the vote-deprived District of Columbia doesn't even rest on the pretense of democracy. This isn't just taxation without representation. It's a monument of avarice that will clear the working poor out of the Southeast corner of the city as surely as if they just dispensed with the baseball and used a bulldozer. This is sports as ethnic and economic cleansing, as Hurricane Katrina, as Shock Doctrine, as Green Zone. Fittingly, Fisher wrote, President George W. Bush came out to throw the first pitch. Fittingly, he was roundly booed. He stood tall on the mound nonetheless, proudly oblivious, taking center stage yet again in what can only be described as occupied territory. (Source)

Indeed. Who else is going to remind us of this? Something tells me all those really "tough" guys on ESPN will forget to mention the booing, the real price tag, the oppression and the repression in our dilapidated capital. It baffles me how the owners could suck some 600 million out of a city that has nothing but problems. Actually, it doesn't baffle me, it just continues to shock me in spite of my repeated exposure to the crimes of the elite.

No, there was nothing organic or natural about this return of baseball, a sport increasingly reliant on fans that are white and immigrant labor that is not. Baseball, a miror image of our politics and racial divides.

A blogger to encourage

I was browsing the internets the other day and stumbled upon a student's blog. (I was searching for something I had written. Mirror, mirror on the blogs...)

Check it out:

I've distracted myself in this two-thirds sleepy, dark room with "news" of the Speedo LZR Racer controversy, American and Delta's decrepit plane technology, Basra Shiite scariness, whatever Private Investment in Public Equity solicitation is, and another Laker "technical difficulty" loss. I really don't see the point in straying from the Lakers blog whenever Jon Abrams feels it necessary to test his wit this early on a Thursday. Phil Jackson diatribes after losses are always refreshing after losing so lamely to freaking Charlotte Bobcats.

The Home section actually reminded me that I live in LA, where credit it given solely to those of whom are overpopulating the bumps and beaches of Malibu. ie The Arnoldi's.

Friends of Gehry's, aluminum fiends, who employ lonely succulents to serve as backyard sculpture, rather than subliminally emphasizing why xeriscaping is key in such flambable lands. People who are speaking of their artistry too loudly in this economy, rather than letting the three pages of photography do the talking.

You've probably already noticed some good writing and sly insights. Go Tyler.

Home at last

I spent a lot of the day in the car. Had a great conversation along the way.

As you've probably noticed looking at my "conference blogging" posts, I felt really energized by the topics and the people. There's a lot of ideas I hope to explore in the coming weeks and I'll try to review them here as I go, "thinking out loud" right here on blogger. I'll save that for later in the week. For now, just a few last words...

As the conference ended, protests were cranking up out in Union Square against China. I snapped a few pictures (which I'll keep small here to protect folks), of course, and I won't pass up the chance to comment.

First of all, I salute all the members of the Chinese and Tibetan community for coming out to show their protest. Given the serious consequences their appearance might have for loved ones back home, their actions are more than just righteous, they are courageous.

I don't have time to dwell on this right now--grading and preparation are calling--but the moment yesterday in Union Square got me thinking about Margaret Thatcher and the Olympics. As I was reminded by a BBC reporter last Monday or Tuesday, Margaret Thatcher's opinion was that athletes could boycott games if they like, but Business should not.* That is a typically chilling statement by the former British PM, the same one who said that "There is no such thing as society," that "There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first" (Source).

Spreading the idea that the individual acts out of mere selfishness has long been a part of the project of folks like Thatcher, Reagan, Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman and their ilk. Yet here we see folks risking their lives for others, for places where they no longer have a home. Right here (on the internet) we see a commons maintained and thriving thanks to a spirit of community. Yes, individualism, entrepreneurship, profit are part of almost all our identities, but so are community, belonging and selflessness. What's more: these folks are protesting some of the neoliberal policy put into action by Deng Xiao Ping concurrent with Thatcher and Reagan (See David Harvey). Just one look at China and it is readily apparent that a free market does not need political freedom to operate. Of course, Chileans know this first hand, and, I suppose, so do many folks right here in the U.S.

Ok, I'm too tired and too busy to blog more or to be more succint. I just wanted to share that.

*I may be thinking of her views on South Africa. Sorry for my tired brain.

NITLE Summit Conference Blogging Cont...

I've finally gotten 30 minutes to myself and, as promised(!), a few more notes from the meeting.

Starting backwards, last night's keynote from Michael Wesch was entrhalling. If you don't read Wired or have a clue to who he is, check out his blog, or, better yet, check out what his students have done:

Exciting stuff...

I've been playing ayiti: the cost of life. Lot's o' fun. I'm not--or rather my family is not--doing very well, but, then again, I just started.

I think I'll give this to my students in a couple of weeks and see where it leads us, and adding in a discussion question with moodle for tips, tricks and lessons learned... Should be interesting.

That's it for now. I've got to get ready for more conferencing.

NITLE Conference blogging

It's been a good summit so far and I plan on updating this a little later to flesh out the information. I would have been doing that as I went if wireless had been working. Of course, it wasn't.

Here are some themes I will blog on more extensively : ayiti (a game based on life in haiti), twitter, email outsourcing, jaiku, shadow IT, accessceramics.org, nanogong...

For now, I'm off to the poster sessions where I really want to hear about a new wiki-style book tool.

Ciao, for now.

The Politics of Language Learning

To be sure, in our lower-level language courses there is lots of communication and interaction going on, but how good are we, at these levels, at providing students with rich and multimodal contexts of language use? How good are we at creating communities of practice, the kinds of "temporarily shared social worlds" that create mutuality as well as provide affordances for learning? How good are we at engaging students' ongoing negotiations of their social identities? (Walther, Ingebord. "Ecological Perspectives on Language Learning." ADFL Bulletin, Vol 38.3 and Vol. 39.1, Spring-Fall 2007.)

I've been struggling with this a lot and wondering, as does Walther, about our textbooks, our language curricula, and, more generally, the notion of global education in the liberal arts. I highly recommend the article for its consideration of communities of practice in language classrooms and within the larger social context, including the politics (academic and national) that shape perceptions of languages.

I believe wholeheartedly that the skills one acquires while learning a language must go beyond communication, a fairly a-political notion of human interaction, and quickly introduce students to higher-level processes for organizing their experiences and the world. Certainly the communicative model allows for the introduction of individual experiences and multiple perspectives, but his alone is not enough. Textbooks and our general methods of teaching should allow space for addressing the larger questions raised by linguistic and social diversity. Class, race, gender and power rarely make it into our 100-level or 200-level courses, and this is a shame, for it contributes to the notion that language is a secondary tool and that language courses are merely grammar and multi-cultural tourism. (Of course, we are imperfect, and some of what we do fits this superficial stereotype.)

In a primarily mono-lingual culture such as we have in the U.S., students already realize, however faintly, that the very act of learning another (an Other's) language is political. Such an act, especially when it comes from personal agency rather than as a curricular requirement to be fulfilled, questions monolithic constructions of identity, family and nation. By acknowledging the inherent politics of our profession we can begin to construct a more solid framework of theories to share with out students, and by doing this we can capture the energy of inquiry and participation embedded in socially constructed knowledge. It dawns on me, though, that many of my colleagues would resist such a politics of language learning even as they would acknowledge its presence. The reason for this, I think, is such paradigm changes bring risk to departments institutionally as language departments begin to function more like a social science or as an engaged member of the humanities. Also, such paradigms will no doubt bring teachers to question their own assumptions about themselves, about their social class and the meaning of what they do.

We should do better, and we should start by asking more of our textbooks and ourselves.

[more to come]

Tag Cloud Poetry: Fed Reserve Helps Bear Stearns Buyout

motherf****** elite billionaires theft bailout crony capitalism
a**holes bear stearns class billionaires fed buyout collusion
jerks bear stearns profit federal reserve mutual help
employees bear stearns federal reserve collaboration
media public reponsibility fraud
corporatocracy

Quote du jour...

Ok, Students. Here's your thought-provoking quote of the day.

[Neoliberal racism] is a racism that works hard to remove issues of power and equity from broader social concerns. Ultimately, it imagines human agency as simply a matter of individualized choices, the only obstacle to effective citizenship and agency being the lack of principled self-help and moral responsibility. [Henry Giroux, The Terror of Neoliberalism 58]

Now, go forth and look for this phenomenon, digging up phrases like "Say 'no' to drugs!" and "Abstinence works!" and "Ownership society" like the weeds they are.

In the not-unrelated category but as a total non-sequitur, here's what I'm thinking:

As the economy worsens and the niceties brought by prosperity disappear, it is likely we will see straight-up power structures gaining ground. That is, as commercial exchange lessens in this environment of willful government non-intervention, as our "ownership" society reverts to bankrupt society without a fiscal or social safety net, relationships of pure power will take over. In the poorest neighborhoods these will be gangs; in the slightly better-to-do, more crime and generally less security will bring more policing.

When the Financial Times doesn't like a republican...

You know s/he must be bad. Yes, contrary to the writer, I think Bush is a worse president and has been allowed to be a worse president in part because he seems so dull. Where do you begin to engage a person like him, who repeats so many lies and does so with such a dumbfounded look on his face?

But McCain has characteristics that make him an extremely dangerous candidate as well...

Financial Times:

It may seem incredible to say this, given past experience, but a few years from now Europe and the world could be looking back at the Bush administration with nostalgia. This possibility will arise if the US elects Senator John McCain as president in November.

Over the years the US has inserted itself into potential flashpoints in different parts of the world. The Republican party is now about to put forward a natural incendiary as the man to deal with those flashpoints.

The problem that Mr McCain poses stems from his ideology, his policies and above all his personality. His ideology, like that of his chief advisers, is neo-conservative. In the past, Mr McCain was considered to be an old-style conservative realist. Today, the role of the realists on his team is merely decorative.

Driven in part by his intense commitment to the Iraq war, Mr McCain has relied more on neo-conservatives such as his close friend William Kristol, the Weekly Standard editor. His chief foreign policy advisor is Randy Scheunemann, another leading neo-conservative and a founder of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. Mr McCain shares their belief in what Mr Kristol has called “national greatness conservatism”. In 1999, Mr McCain declared: “The US is the indispensable nation because we have proven to be the greatest force for good in human history . . . We have every intention of continuing to use our primacy in world affairs for humanity’s benefit.”

Mr McCain’s promises, during last week’s visit to London, to listen more to America’s European allies, need to be taken with a giant pinch of salt. There is, in fact, no evidence that he would be prepared to alter any important US policy at Europe’s request.

Reflecting the neo-conservative programme of spreading democracy by force, Mr McCain declared in 2000: “I’d institute a policy that I call ‘rogue state rollback’. I would arm, train, equip, both from without and from within, forces that would eventually overthrow the governments and install free and democratically elected governments.” Mr McCain advocates attacking Iran if necessary in order to prevent it developing nuclear weapons, and last year was filmed singing “Bomb, bomb Iran” to the tune of the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann”.

Mr McCain suffers from more than the usual degree of US establishment hatred of Russia, coupled with a particular degree of sympathy for Georgia and the restoration of Georgian rule over Abkhazia and South Ossetia. He advocates the expulsion of Russia from the Group of Eight leading industrialised nations and, like Mr Scheunemann, is a strong supporter of early Nato membership for Georgia and Ukraine. Mr Scheunemann has accused even Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, of “appeasement” of Russia. Nato expansion exemplifies the potential of a McCain presidency. Apart from the threat of Russian reprisals, if the Georgians thought that in a war they could rely on US support, they might be tempted to start one. A McCain presidency would give them good reason to have faith in US support.

Mr McCain’s policies would not be so worrying were it not for his notorious quickness to fury in the face of perceived insults to himself or his country. Even Thad Cochran, a fellow Republican senator, has said: “I certainly know no other president since I’ve been here who’s had a temperament like that.”

For all his bellicosity, President George W. Bush has known how to deal cautiously and diplomatically with China and even Russia. Could we rely on Mr McCain to do the same?

Mr McCain exemplifies “Jacksonian nationalism” – after Andrew Jackson, the 19th-century Indian-fighter and president – and the Scots-Irish military tradition from which both men sprung. As Mr McCain’s superb courage in North Vietnamese captivity and his honourable opposition to torture by US forces demonstrate, he also possesses the virtues of that tradition. Then again, some of the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century were caused by brave, honourable men with a passionate sense of national mission.

Not just US voters, but European governments, should use the next nine months to ponder the consequences if Mr McCain is elected and how they could either prevent a McCain administration from pursuing pyromaniac policies or, if necessary, protect Europe from the ensuing conflagrations.

Vigi-pirate, vigilance, fear

Is any context necessary to explain the following?

The introduction of Plan Vigipirate (1) in France imprinted the equation “vigilance = security” on the national consciousness and made it everybody’s business. The government information service says that “Vigipirate calls upon all French men and women, whatever their occupation or level of responsibility, to participate in this state of vigilance that allows us to make an effective collective response to the threat of terrorist acts” (2).

Since a terrorist threat can come from anywhere – from where it is least expected – vigilance is a state of mind with no specific object. It bears upon everything. Whereas surveillance requires a specific object (a prisoner, a student, a warehouse, a rogue state) at a specific place and time, vigilance is a state of continual attention diluted through space. Vigilance only persists while the threat remains indeterminate, vague and abstract. We must remain vigilant, all the time, day and night.

“Plan Vigipirate allows all us to remain vigilant without unnecessary disruption to administrative and economic activity, or social norms” (3). While surveillance is an activity, with a beginning and an end, vigilance is a permanent state that creates a new relationship between the individual and the world. Even if the exact nature of the threat is unknown, its existence is certain and it is, at any moment, imminent. Every object, every person, every micro-event could be part of or a precursor to this vague threat. (Link)

Vigilant societies are distrustful and suspicious, and their members are simultaneously on the look-out and terrorists. Obsessed by a threat that never actually materialises, people will settle for the nearest suspect if they can’t find a plausible one.

Mike Davis

ZONES, a French publisher, has a good interview with Mike Davis on car bombs, hacking and asymmetry. Don't worry if you don't speak French, the interview is in Enlgish.

10 Ways Our Government Does Business that You Shouldn't

10. Secrecy. Somebody once said that secrets “are government's excuse to lie.” All of you in web 2.0 have seen the success of platforms that are open to scrutiny. That's democracy in action, and we know it works. From the arcane and hidden accounting fiascsos of Enron, WorldCom and now Bear Stears, from Dick Cheney's secrecy fetish and his energy roundtables, secrecy's hidden cost is everywhere these last few years. Private citizens deserve privacy; public entities deserve and, I would say, flourish from scrutiny. Put your stuff out there. Did anyone say Diebold?

9. Unclear Mission Statement. “I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace.” (George W. Bush). Anything as big as our government will have some inherent contradictions, but, as a business leader, you should be careful to have a single goal and communicate it effectively.

8. Phoney Services. A good example of this is the Walter Reed Scandal. Our government touts its patriotism as awe-inspiring and our president never misses a chance to be photographed with a boy in uniform. Yet, when it comes to taking care of our veteran amputees, our president leaves the room faster than you can say “cut and run.” Lesson: don't advertise big love for your customers when all you are really doing is giving them peanuts. Don't say you are a green company when you invest .005% of your budget in that area...

7. Know your customer. Somewhere near 100% of the U.S. senators are millionaires, and nearly all of them get even richer when they leave government. This leads to a situation known as “being out of touch.” As economists have shown, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and that real wages compared to inflation have been in decline, especially since 1980. This is not a good way to do business and, eventually, it will catch up with you, as it did for congress in 1994 and 2006. Your customers are busy and, because of you, working harder every day, but, eventually they realize that “trickle down” means “piss on.”

6. Use your own product. This is not unrelated to number 7. Once you become a top government official in the house or senate, you will get healthcare—and good healthcare it is—for life. If you are in charge of producing a product (or refusing to produce a product) or regulating such a product's availability, you should live by those laws too. If the version of Windows you run at MS headquarters has magic features that allow it not to crash and bring on the blue screen of death, you should at least give your customers the same version, right? (See number 8)

5. Watch out for hostile takeovers. When a new boss comes in and starts replacing all the key staff members with people you know you shouldn't trust, look out. For example, when Bush puts the lawyer for mine companies in charge of mine safety, or when complete hacks with false resumes get put in charge of FEMA, watch your rear. Before you know it mass displacement (layoffs, firings, forced migration, etc.) will come. Sure, some forseeable "natural" event (a hurricane, a recession, foreign competition) will be the excuse, but--and you knew it all along--this group of bosses actually likes the hurricanes and has lots of friends running that foreign factory...

4. Don't kill your customers (too quickly or at all). This is an interesting one because the government actually does better here than in other areas. Philip Morris has shown that killing your customers slowly can still be a viable business model. The government's food pyramid, drug-approval system and its lack of universal health-care tend to emulate this model. If people die slowly and in ways that are hard to correlate with your product, then you might do quite well. If, however, your product kills quickly, make sure that the public is willing to make the sacrifice. Developing a strong mystique of manliness that is deeply interwined with the national identity is good way to do this. Marlboro man almost worked, but the government actually wins this battle with the second amendment and the military.*

3, 2 and 1. Get rid of unecessary paperwork and bureaucratic nightmares and focus on what you are good at. Now I know this is going to be controversial, but I'm not talking about taxes here, though I think there is a lot of room for improvement there too. I'm talking about cutting the size of the world's largest military. I'm talking about getting out of wars that are not doing us or the world any good. When the need arises, you can still create a large military—that's what happened in all the wars we won—so focus on your strengths. I'm talking about getting rid of health insurance companies that spend 25% of their budget on paperwork and management compared to medicare, which spends less than 10. (That is right, the government is more efficient at delivering healthcare than insurance companies.) So, lesson numbers 3-2-1: Cut out the middlemen and focus on what you are good at and on delivering it efficiently to your customers. The same goes for school vouchers. Why would the government give tax dollars to citizens to then send those dollars to private schools which have the right to refuse those students. Public education works—when you do it right and fund it. Focus on your strengths, such as not doing top 10 lists when you are really good at top 7 or top 8 lists. So, when I say focus on what you are good at, I really mean focus on being good.


*If you do happen to kill customers or if happen to some homicidal costs on your balance sheet, it helps if they are poor and brown and live in places like New Orleans, Baltimore, Iraq and Bhopal. This is immoral and not recommended, but the national media will probably let you get away with it as long as it does not adversely affect their shareholders or put "the system" into question.

Le rat des champs

It's been one of those days...



Here's more of her work:
http://www.elratondecampo.com

Crashing the System

Students in Global and Cultural Studies beware. The real world might be on your test. What do these things have in common?

ITEM:
Saner voices within the capitalist class, having listened carefully to the warnings of the likes of Paul Volcker that there is a high probability of a serious financial crisis in the next five years, may prevail. But this will mean rolling back some of the privileges and power that have over the last thirty years been accumulating in the upper echelons of the capitalist class. Previous phases of capitalist history-one thinks of 1873 or the 1920s-when a similarly stark choice arose, do not augur well. The upper classes, insisting on the sacrosanct nature of their property rights, preferred to crash the system rather than surrender any of their privileges and power. In so doing they were not oblivious of their own interest, for if they position themselves aright they can, like good bankruptcy lawyers, profit from a collapse while the rest of us are caught most horribly in the deluge. (Harvey, Introduction to Neoliberalism, 152-53)

ITEM:
There are two ways to read last night's sale of Bear Stearns to JPMorganChase for $2 a share:

1. There were no other bidders. Bear Stearns only other option was to file for bankruptcy this morning. And Bear Stearns's executive were convinced that that was not an option--that not playing along meant that everybody everywhere would look with glee on the filing of every criminal fraud charge against them anyone could think of.
2. Even with the Federal Reserve offering a put on the worst $30 billion of Bear Stearns assets, there is so much garbage in the closet that $2 a share is a fair price.

The market this morning believes in (2). I tend to believe in (1)--especially as JPMorgan is said to have set aside up to $6 billion to deal with litigation when Bear Stearns's shareholders and others claim they got a raw deal... (Brad Delong)

ITEM:
The nation’s fifth largest investment bank Bear Stearns nearly collapsed last week. It was saved only after the Federal Reserve took extraordinary measures to help JPMorgan purchase the eighty-five-year-old firm. The Fed has become the lender of last resort for other investment banks in a move that marks one of the broadest expansions of the Fed’s lending authority since the 1930s. We speak with Nomi Prins, an author and former investment banker at Bear Stearns, and Max Fraad Wolff, an economist and writer.

[Transcript of interview with Max Brad Wolff]
Well, I mean, I think it’s always tough to know exactly what’s going to happen. The way I like to do this in other lectures or my classes is to make the following point: there’s an epidemiology to this. And the discussion so far reminds me of the AIDS as “GAIDS” discussion, where we pathologize early victims as deviants who get some just punishment and pretend that it’s not a sort of pathogen entering a population where the sickest and most vulnerable fall first.

The sickest and most vulnerable people in the US money game are highly indebted, low-income consumers who tend to get subprime loans. In the journal—the mainstream journalist discussion, it sounds like there’s subprime people, like they’re born subprime in a special incubator with some kind of deformity. In fact, that’s a FICO credit score. And the poorest people get hit first and hardest by every economic disruption, because poverty means vulnerability in a market economy. So what we’ve seen in the beginning of a turndown of a long boom, a boom that really began in the early ’80s, is the weakest and most vulnerable with the most debt and the least income, the subprime crowd, hit—got slammed first, and then it sort of moves to the population, as “GAIDS” becomes AIDS becomes recognized.

And so, we’re—I think we’re in the early innings of this, maybe a third of the way through—half, if we’re lucky. Now, that doesn’t mean that the pain will continue to be so localized in finance. It’s already spilling out into the US macroeconomy. It is already an international phenomenon. And it’s heavily falling into retail. I expect severe difficulties in retail soon, and I expect greater difficulties in housing markets, because, actually, although it gets less press than I think it deserves, already 40-plus percent of delinquencies and default issue notices are moving out of the strict subprime market into what’s called Alt-A, Alt-B, and then prime—so, in other words, people between subprime and prime, and then cascading over into prime. We know this is a problem, because ten percent of all US homeowners are what we call “underwater”—they owe more than their house is worth. That’s a pretty serious amount.

And so, I see increasing bailouts with willy-nilly rewriting of federal legislation, which was done in those meetings. The JPMorgan-Federal Reserve meetings with Bear Stearns, in effect, redid American financial regulatory law, bumping an inactive Cox-led SEC out of the way, asserting Federal Reserve control in places and ways that had not been asserted before, and therefore front-running Congress and the presidency, which has been sitting on its hands, which is a little bit like the Glass-Steagall situation.

But now we have the Federal Reserve coming in to basically take out, not bail out, one firm to support all the other firms, immediately making available to them all kinds of access to cash and support they never got before, which, by the way, would have saved Bear Stearns, and in so doing—blasé, private meeting, no transparency—rewriting American financial legislation, while the President tells crazy fictional stories about Iraq and the Congress does fundraising for its next election, and is a byproduct that will be told later, what legislation to pass. I mean, it’s kind of surreal at this point.(Democracy Now)

Obama's Speech

h/t Obeygiant

It is rare that I link to the speeches of politicians in a positive way, but I think the rare occasion has arisen with Obama's discourse yesterday on race. Of course the media think he did not distance himself enough from Wright, and, of course, the media are wrong on at least two counts: 1) They cannot acknowledge the existence and need for resistance within poor and oppressed communities (because the media is blind to institutional oppression); and 2) because they do not hold other candidates to the same standard. Think: McCain and Haggee, Bush and any number of racist kooks. Anyway, read the words:

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend
Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time. (Link)

We all know something

I want to go to a conference like this.

"In his 2004 book The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowieki captured the spirit of the collaborative trends in media and society. The combined individual activities of many can provide an accurate understanding of even the most complex issues. “We all know something” is the underlying theme driving much technological and societal change. Although the well-crafted reasoning of experts will continue to play an important role in conferences, the more informal discussions and presentations at “unconferences” offer valuable exposure to—and, more important, the opportunity to contextualize—cutting-edge ideas.

The real emphasis should be less on technology and more on the affordance of the open dialogue that now defines the primary value of conferences. Whether a small-table discussion, a chat at the bar, or a contribution to the conference wiki, blog session, or Twitter-fest, the common defining theme centers on control. Instead of listening passively, conference attendees in each of these scenarios experience a high level of engagement and ownership. Web technology, to date, has best symbolized this important shift, since its decentralized structure does not reflect as strong a central position for the speaker or teacher."

It is surprising that those of us who preach about the open classroom so often subject others or let ourselves be subjected (some may say abjected) to such structure.

Like many, I believe that knowledge is social and that institutions that push toward proprietary or even secretive ends are so anathema to democracy that they should be avoided at all cost. Indeed, the costs of insular "knowledge" is high. Look at what the class of experts known as Wall Street has recently wrought. Look at the "experts" who got us into the war now entering its fifth year.

So it goes that we do not need to comprehend every detail of a topic to be informed about it. Understanding physics is necessary to understand how to build a missile. It does not take physics to understand that bombs are bad. Of course, we cannot be experts or even well informed about everything, but, on the other hand, we cannot abdicate our responsibility to inquire and to inform ourselves about the world around us.

My point is that if we are truly believers in democracy and building knowledge from within the social realm, we must learn to live in it, teach in it, and to demand it from others, whether in politics or academic conferences.

Large conferences, like large classrooms, are built on a flawed model. While they are efficient at delivering specific types of information, they are inefficient at creating new knowledge. The opportunities for networking and Q&A are simply too limited, and, as everyone knows, networking and social connections are why everyone goes to conferences. That probably why I've always felt more at home at, say, SE17 rather than the MLA. It's probably why I am happy at Whittier College too.

Here's a quote from John Dewey that alway lingers in the forefront of my thoughts: "A class of experts is inevitably so removed from common interests as to become a class with private interests and private knowledge, which in social matters is not knowledge at all."

While expertise is a real and valuable thing--would I want a neophyte building a bridge or a plane I was about to use?--it is all too easy for experts to forget that their power and "value" is socially determined and not intrinsically tied to their so-called knowledge. This is as true for the teacher as it is for the economist or the carpenter. While it may sound like knowledge represents one more market in which ideas are traded, that only remains true to a point. Dewey's phrase means more, because, implicit in the idea of an expert class lies the idea of class power. Once a group of, say, economists gain political favor (in academia or in Washington or Moscow), it becomes easier for that group to wield more power, to use political and social influence to skew the marketplace for ideas. The market, thus skewed, becomes less a bazaar and more a cathedral (to use the famous computing metaphor).

Expertise leads to more specialization and, often, self-aggrandization: I understand x and am therefore valuable to you; you should pay me more. I write complicated arguments based on math, philosophy and Science(!); you should pay me more. Our society tends to believe the experts even when the evidence should easily convince us of the contrary. How many CEO's leave companies in ruins while they grow richer? How long will it take to see that Greenspan's long reign and his bubble(s) are not the work of a good economist but that of a good politician? How many profs from Harvard or Yale supported the war in Iraq?

Don't believe me that specialists think they are really special? Look at this article by Harvard prof G. Mankiw:

NO issue divides economists and mere Muggles more than the debate over globalization and international trade. Where the high priests of the dismal science see opportunity through the magic of the market’s invisible hand, Joe Sixpack sees a threat to his livelihood. This gap in perspective grows especially wide whenever the economy experiences short-run difficulties, as it is now. By all indications, the issue could come to dominate the presidential campaign.

See? Economists are magicians, priests, scientists! Everyone else is a muggle-minded "Joe Sixpack." Again, let me ask how long will it take to see that Greenspan's long reign and his bubble(s) are not the work of a good economist but that of a good politician? How many profs from Harvard or Yale supported the war in Iraq (or go about blindfolded yelling "free trade!")?

Those are simple questions, and some would say naïve, but that is my point. Power, beliefs, news, hierarchical structures can make us blind to our own power and to the powers that be. Power makes us forget to be like children and to ask the simple questions, the ones that matter. Simple questions, like the simple needs of shelter, food and community, are the foundation for democracy and democratic economies, and, while simple answers are rare and should generally be avoided, simple questions are often the most revealing.

Sorry to be so long-winded, but I think this is important. I will be attending some unconferences this summer to hopefully learn something from some experts and to ask them some simple questions. Just think: what if Colin Powell had presented his "proof" that Iraq had WMDs at an unconference rather than the U.N.? What if the NYT's W. Kristol actually had to answer to some of the lies he gets from Newsmax? (I'll refrain from linking to that trash.)

Now I'm not saying that organizations and institutions have no place, for I think they do, but permit me to believe that if our world contained a little more democracy, a little more Web 2.0, it just might be a better place.

Gmail: Or the Importance of Interface

I'm not going to say anything new here, but I was just checking my email (I get from 40-150 messages a day) and I realized how much simpler and easier life is now that all my email gets forwarded to gmail.

Until recently I was using our college's outlook server to for 90% of my email. I was constantly missing emails, dealing with junkmail and spending time looking for old email.

Why was I having so many problems? Let me explain. At our campus, if you're not on your office computer, you need to use the outlook web interface. Since I am constantly all over campus teaching, working, meeting, or I'm at home, I almost always need to connect over the internet. Naturally, I just want to check email "quick and dirty like," as they say.

So the problem is that the Outlook interface is highly browser dependent. If you don't use IE (Internet Explorer), you're out of luck for quick browsing, using ctrl-select for multiple deletes and other "advanced" features brought to you by Microsoft. The worst part is that if you use Firefox (or if you can't use IE because you use a Mac), THERE IS NO SEARCH OPTION. (See the blurry picture)




That's right, you can't search your old emails.

That seems like a real hassle, and it is, but to tell you the truth, the search one gets using Outlook (through the web or off a brand new computer) is so crappy that it's pretty worthless anyway.

So no easy interface, limited usability, junk mail problems, no search, browser dependency...did I forget to mention that if you forget to log in as a "safe" user/computer, your connection times out after 10 minutes. How many long emails have I lost because my connection automatically timed out? Countless.

Luckily a free solution existed....Gmail.

Gmail is excellent for organizing, searching, tagging, reading, compiling conversations. It solves all the problems mentioned above. On top of that, I can download messages to any email program I want, use really effective filters, keep all my email, avoid almost all spam, search incredibly quickly. My gmail even spoofs my campus address when I reply to people at work so that they think I'm sending the mail from work.


What's more, I get a great calendar, on-line docs, pictures, etc.

Really, if you don't use gmail for ALL your email addresses, you should.

Thanks gmail.

Finally, no, I was not paid by Google or anyone affiliated with Google. If I'm waxing eloquent it is simply because a great wave of relief washed over me once my life was simplified. How often does life get simpler, huh?

Puzzling Evidence

Mike Wallace wants my body.
Elvis meets Nixon.
Tri-lateral commision.
Suburban soul-sucking.

The greatest movie ever made:

The End is NIE

Iran,Neocon,Bush,Politics

Well, the new NIE is certainly a revelation.  Now the neocons have to figure out another strategy for bombing Iran.

Creationists : Dinosaurs : Flagellation

I was thinking about Saint Mary Francis of the Five Wounds earlier today. Then I read about a mummified dinosaur currently being scanned in a giant CT scanner at Boeing here in Los Angeles. Art and life have a way of juxtaposing the strangest of phenomenons.

So now I'm trying to find the connection between these two disparate things: a self-flagellating lunatic and an immaculately preserved dinosaur (or immaculate deception and immaculate preservation). The only link I could find is that humans will now have even more DNA to prove yet again how insane the idea of creationism, of gods, of demons and the whole fundamentalist religion movement is.

Fragrant Monkey Tail

AtomFilms.com: Funny Videos | Funny Cartoons | Comedy Central

Elaboration on a comment...

I was over at "Election Central" this morning pre-coffee time and wrote

I guess I see this in a different light. The apparent contradiction between Larry C's lifestyle, voting record and party affiliation seems merely to be a surface phenomenon. In truth, the modern republican party gains its strength from men like Craig and others who have something to hide and the party has capitalized on these "dirty" secrets to make arm twisting a much more efficient mechanism. If a party thrives more on internal authority than coalition building, then that party can take advantage of secrets, lies and dirty laundry to ensure that business gets done. Starting with the president himself and going down, the power can be AND IS exerted through the skeletons in the closet. That is not to say that there is some central file cabinet with all the dirt (though, hey, that would be interesting!); rather, diffuse knowledge and constant surveillance of everyone by each other leads to internal social promotion the discipline of the republican village. Promote larry craig, he'll do what we say because...

Of course, there are plenty of people who get off from the very repression we see in the external tropes of republican behavior and those people are naturally attracted to an authoritarian party that makes their secrets all the more titillating. There are also plenty of men who will say they are not gay but who are quite happy with occasional man-on-man action. The latter are quite simply hypocrites. But let's not confuse hypocrisy and what has become a structural device for control, punishment and promotion within the "party of values."

I would add that the evidence for this is what I would call correlative but compelling: how do you explain the significant numbers of Larry Craigs or just gays in the party that hates gays? How do you explain the attraction of Bill O'Reilly's and Scooter Libby (both of whom having written quite explicit and sexually disturbing passages in their novels)*? How do you explain the fascination with authority? How do you explain the multiple porn stars who have met the president?

There is a connection, I think, between this behavior and the workings of the party and how power gets distributed. Ah, authority, uniforms, fascism! I think they think it's cute--really cute!

Coffeeeeeeee.

*I can't seem to find Bill's book. My loofah filter must be blocking it.

Peace

Peace would be good.

 

Just a thought.

In the Entertainment Section

You have to love de.licio.us. This is a screenshot of a recent page. Check out the entertainment section.

Overheard

It is always interesting to read the comments in these stories. I sympathize with those who believe that Whites fled "danger" and disorganization cities back in the 50's, 60's and 70's. That is what we are told, but, of course, it is only a half-truth.

Let's start with that "truth." Yes, starting in the 50's, then especially for the next couple of decades, a massive de-industrialization of cities were taking place. Cities like New York, which had significant social safety nets thanks to the revenues of large industries, found themselves feeling and looking poorer and poorer as industry declined and people began moving (with the help of "suburban planning" and policy incentives) to the suburbs. So, yes, it is "true" that cities were in fairly bad shape, but this was not intrinsic to cities as a concept; this was a global economic process where jobs were shifted overseas. (This has been going on for a long time). Cities thus seemed to become the locales of joblessness rather than jobs. Meanwhile, new income, building and overall growth created an illusion that suburbs were a more viable economy, while they are actually much harder to sustain in terms of energy and social networking.

Yet while cities did suffer because of global and national economic policy shifts (think of G. Ford's comment "Ford to NY: Drop Dead"), it was rather quickly realized that suburbs were not all they were cracked up to be. The news industry, which ideologically springs from and targets both the wealthy elites (who never abandoned the city) and the various classes of suburban Whites, portrayed and continues to portray the suburbs as a sort of paradise even though just a little investigation shows this not to be true. Poll after poll shows that people who live in dense urban environments feel safer and HAPPIER than those who live in the suburbs. Anecdotally, we also know that almost all serial killers come from suburbs, not cities. Make Davis takes the example of the infamous Night Stalker in L.A. He seemed unstoppable and made his terrible reputation in rich gated communities. When he actually tried to kill someone in the poor, densely packed neighborhoods of East L.A., he was caught.

But let's also talk about rural vs. urban. The murder rate is much, much higher per capita in rural areas than it is in urban ones. It only seems the opposite because the concentration of media attention makes urban centers look less dangerous. Why is this? Well, there are a lot of reasons, but one of the main ones is that rural life ceased being rural. Sure, it takes place out in the country and in fields, but its reason for being is no longer rural. What do I mean? I mean that rural communities exist mostly to feed urban ones. Factory farms and giant shipping infrastructures are part of the rural landscape, but they are urban inventions. This is why farmers, on the whole, are far, far more stressed than their urban counterparts. They are at the bottom of the production cycle, and believe me, everyone I know who has a chicken business, for example, says they are not working for themselves but for Goldkist. Any wonder then that rural poverty and insecurity are plaguing our country and our countrysides? Of course, you won't find that in the media. Our rural areas have been taken over by CEO's. They are beginning to fight back, but it may be too late. Regardless, let's not hide the fact that much of what is taking place in the countryside now is actually an extension of urban markets and urban market ideologies into the farm belt. Changing cities (inner and suburban) for the better can only happen in concert with agricultural reforms.

We've got to overcome racism (white-black AND sub/urban-rural) to move ahead. This is both a raising of political and geographical consciousness.

Capitalist Tool

Rich,Power,Capitalism,Solidarity,Class,War,Exploitation

"Forbes, Capitalist Tool."

Who thinks these things up? It's hard to read, but on the bottom right of the advertisement (which I found some airline's magazine), you can see "Forbes, Capitalist Tool."  I've alway thought of the Forbes family as tools too, so I'm glad they agree.

 

Anyhow, comments on the ad?  Here the neoliberal capitalists exploit the tropes of early socialism, suggesting that the capitalist class is in need of solidarity.  I assume this is so that they can pursue a war on the poor.

Ah, yes, those poor, poor rich people.  They need help! They need to come together!  Poor people ahve too many lobbyists in Washington!

Actually, exploiting the culture of victimization, it's the rich and powerful way. Between monarchy, eugenics, country clubs, private schools, slavery, tax policy and just flat out cultural capital, I'm wondering how the rich could have any more solidarity.

Mythmaking

Every time I complain about the lack of honest political discourse in the U.S., I need to remind myself that our "news" is 95% propaganda:

From Time:

The four most famous words of Ronald Reagan's Presidency almost were never uttered...

Honestly, is everyone in the the mainstream press a Republican? Do people think that the Soviet Union was not already imploding? Give me a break. I'm sick of mythmaking.

Disturbing News From Wall Street

Disturbing to me anyway. What Happens on Wall Street stays on Wall Street? (Unless you are one of the poor folks harmed by non-transparent financial systems and don't know where to trace it back to...)

From the WSJ:

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. ranks as the most profitable securities firm on Wall Street -- reflecting its mastery of trading on the world's public markets.

Now Goldman is turning that franchise on its head, creating its own private system to trade the stocks of companies that don't want the scrutiny and regulatory burdens of going public.

The new system, GS TRuE -- short for Goldman Sachs Tradable Unregistered Equity -- was announced two weeks ago and made its debut on Monday with an $880 million sale of a 15% stake in Oaktree Capital Management LLC, an alternative-investment manager.

Prisons or schools

With California poised to spend more on prisons than on schools for the first time in state history, I thought it a good time to debunk that old left-wing talking point about choosing between prisons or schools.

As the San Quentin website tells us, you can have prison and school. Indeed, here are just a few of the possible opportunities you will have once you enroll in its exciting combination of practical training with liberal arts (Religion, Languages) education:

• PIA: Furniture manufacturing, mattress manufacturing.

• Vocational: Dry cleaning, electrical, graphic arts and printing, landscaping, machine shop, plumbing, sheet metal.

• Academic: Adult Basic Education, High School/GED, Pre-Release, English as a Second Language, Literacy Program.

• Other: Community Service Crews, Youth Diversion, Religious, Arts in Corrections, Victim Awareness, Drug Treatment/Diversion, Joint Venture, Computers for Schools, Eyeglass recycling, Bicycle repair.

San Quentin has some 5000 "students," each on an individually costumized track, and with some 2000 staff and adminstrators, you know that you will not be neglected.

I also see that Arnold is bringing out a new license plate with the DMV: "California: The Prison and Education State."

Seriously, what the hell is wrong with this state? (Answer: Republicans, Lobbyists, Media, Democrats--in that order.)

Let it be known:

Let it be known that there is no nation so poor, so desperate, so direly in need of help that the United States cannot hinder its development.

Still more correlations...

The NBER, of whom I can be suspicious at times, has an interesting paper out:

http://papers.nber.org/papers/w13097

Environmental Policy as Social Policy? The Impact of Childhood Lead Exposure on Crime
Jessica Wolpaw Reyes NBER Working Paper No. 13097
Issued in May 2007

Abstract : Childhood lead exposure can lead to psychological deficits that are strongly associated with aggressive and criminal behavior. In the late 1970s in the United States, lead was removed from gasoline under the Clean Air Act. Using the sharp state-specific reductions in lead exposure resulting from this removal, this article finds that the reduction in childhood lead exposure in the late 1970s and early 1980s is responsible for significant declines in violent crime in the 1990s, and may cause further declines into the future. The elasticity of violent crime with respect to lead is estimated to be approximately 0.8.

If it is true, even partially, let's put one more nail in the coffin of "tough" law enforcement and high-incarceration rates of non-violent criminals as the cause for dropping crime rates. Like so many things, crime is a complex system with phyical and social environmental factors. Three-strike laws are easy sells, but they are hard to prove effective.

Lou Dobbs and Cancer

Since spurious correlations have been on my mind this week, I thought I would bring up another one.

Lou Dobbs has made himself more popular these last two or three years by consistently bashing immigrants and telling people (while quoting only part of the statistical evidence) how much they are hurting the American worker. While most people don't see the wool being pulled over their eyes as this neo-liberal journalist diverts our eyes from real global trade issues, there can be no doubt that he is putting on a populist show that in the end always promotes an increased security apparatus for poor folk and increased liberty for the flow of goods and capital.

Anyway, right now he is quoting a completely debunked study about how Mexicans are bringing leprosy to the U.S. Just add it to the list of items he uses to manipulate the public into thinking he is a man of the people.

My own spurious but funny correlation, you ask. Well, last year my mother died of a brain tumor. She was a wonderful, generous person, generous to a fault, almost, and to say that she had more than a few friends would be an understatement. The number of people that she helped in her life cannot be counted, really. What's more, she was a Democrat and proud of it. That said, as she grew sicker and the cancer spread, she also gained an intense, cult-like interest in Lou Dobbs. His word became gold. For a while, I would quote statistics and argue with her. Eventually, I realized I was being silly: she was sick. I decided to just let her be and enjoy the last part of her life as she struggled to survive.

Now I would like to go on to say that maybe brain tumors cause you to put undue belief in jingoistic, unsubstantiated and hate-mongering punditry. Statistics would not bear me out here, though, as that would mean that nearly every Republican in America has a brain tumor. What I will say, metaphorically, is that we all suffer from the cancer that is 90% of CNN and 99.9% of Fox.

Republicans and Sunspots

Unlike the author of Freakonomics, gavin, over at realclimate, really knows the value of correlations: comic fun.

Here's a sampling:

We are forever being bombarded with apparently incredible correlations of various solar indices and climate. A number of them came up in the excoriable TGGWS mockumentary last month where they were mysteriously 'improved' in a number of underhand ways. But even without those improvements (which variously involved changing the axes, drawing in non-existent data, taking out data that would contradict the point etc.), the as-published correlations were superficially quite impressive. Why then are we not impressed?

To give you an idea, I'm going to go through the motions of constructing a new theory of political change using techniques that have been pioneered by a small subset of solar-climate researchers (references will of course be given). And to make it even more relevant, I'm going to take as my starting point research that Richard Lindzen has highlighted on his office door for many years:




Go give this a read! It's worth the time just to think about the stats.

Sex scandal about to explode in Washington...

And look at this: another Al Qaeda person killed in Iraq.

Is is it me, or do these big "kills" always happen at a convenient time? It'll be interesting to see how many Dems are on the DC Madam's list, because there have to be some. Will they be blue dogs? Or will it be them thar librulz who are tearing at the country's moral fabric?

I'll dedicate this post to prostitutes: those who work in the government, and those who work under them.

If drinking, fat food and sex don't kill you...

then what does? The answer here:

Violence

Violence, in the U.S., is an institution unto itself. So I think we have to be careful not to let our grief for the victims become an inadvertent homage to the criminal act or the criminal actor. Our loathing of the perpetrator blinds us. We see madness--a complex condition with individual and social origins--and call it "evil." We see television and movies, and call them "fun." We see poverty, hunger, starvation, death, repression, and call them, alternatively, "business," "democracy" and "economics."

In a society in which the cult of the individual explains all, Americans too often come to the conclusion that the anecdote is more important than the trend. Because of the insanity of one person (to the degree to which such a thing exists), we will be told how violence is getting worse when in fact it is getting better:



New rule for journalism school: several courses in social statistics.

Meanwhile, how far has the gap between rich and poor grown? How many people have died trying to cross the border? How many Iraqi children are in their graves? How many American's are without insurance? The perpetrators of these crimes have no courts, except those for which they appoint the judges.

Quote du jour

The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the 'state of emergency' in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We must attain to a conception of history that is in keeping with this insight. Then we shall clearly realize that it is our task to bring about a real state of emergency, and this will improve our position in the struggle against Fascism. Walter Benjamin. Thesis on the Philosophy of History (1940)

The Red and The Black: Regent Grads of the World, Unite!

Paul Krugman brings up an interesting point about the current attorney purge scandal: the widespread hiring of Regent U. (Pat Robertson's private university) grads to important positions in the Bush administration.

For God’s Sake, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: In 1981, Gary North, a leader of the Christian Reconstructionist movement — the openly theocratic wing of the Christian right — suggested that the movement could achieve power by stealth. “Christians must begin to organize politically within the present party structure,” he wrote, “and they must begin to infiltrate the existing institutional order.”

Today, Regent University, founded by the televangelist Pat Robertson to provide “Christian leadership to change the world,” boasts that it has 150 graduates working in the Bush administration.

Unfortunately for the image of the school, ... the most famous of those graduates is Monica Goodling a product of the university’s law school... who appears central to the scandal of the fired U.S. attorneys...

The infiltration of the federal government by large numbers of people seeking to impose a religious agenda — which is very different from simply being people of faith — is one of the most important [and underreported] stories of the last six years... (h/t: http://economistsview.typepad.com/)

One of Krugmans important points is that last paragraph ("The infiltration of the federal government by large numbers of people seeking to impose a religious agenda — which is very different from simply being people of faith"). People of faith are not necessarily interested in power, though they may believe in a higher power, nor do they use--and I mean use in the basest way--their belief in a higher power to determine hiring practices and legal agendas.

So what makes this rather striking proclivity for the Bush administration to hire Regent U's grads so interesting?

To me it is not at all that many of the supposed "good Christians" sinned, lied and cheated; they are merely human after all. Rather, what I find interesting is something I have felt all along: that the Christian Right is less a movement based on faith, but faith in a movement--a movement that will allow you social mobility. In an administration that embues "faith-based" organizations with power and money (hiring practices from Ashcroft on down, posting Robertson's charity at the top of the list on FEMA's website following Katrina...), such institutions become important means to social promotion.

This has been happening increasingly since the College Republicans and the Christian Coalition of the 1980's began using a theocratic litmus test, and social promotion within those organizations have matured to the present day. How do we know that they have reached their maturity? Simple, we can see the fruits of the movement coming into positions of power. That these fruits are many times quite corrupt (Reed, Goodling, Ashcroft and many, many more) is just evidence that the "Christian" Right's movement is a tool for social promotion in which certain behaviors (quoting the Bible, for example) allow you in to the movement, while other behaviors (ruthless, cold, backstabbing Republican-party fidelity) get you promoted within it.

The Catholic Church has long been this way, as have many other religious cults. Just read The Red and the Black. Julien Sorel could quote the Bible by heart--that's exactly how he works his way up the social ladder and into the beds of women (married to powerful men).

Le Pen approves of Sarko...thus the attacks

Le Pen, toujours plus bas dans ses attaques: "AU FIL DE LA CAMPAGNE • Pour la troisième fois depuis dimanche, le leader du FN revient sur le thème des origines hongroises de Sarkozy • Et estime que ce dernier ne devrait pas se présenter à la Présidence de la République française...."

I wonder if Le Pen is not doing this intentionally in order to make Sarkozy more popular precisely because he prefers Sarko to Ségo. His xenophobia make Sarko look so much more palatable, and it gives the UMP candidate more press to say "See, I'm not such a bad guy..."

Is Le Pen that cunning? Yes.

Global Temp Agencies

I am no fan of most government immigration policies as anyone who reads this site probably knows. Obivously, building a wall is one of the worst solutions around: Mexico's demographics are changing and the initial shock of NAFTA is reaching its equilibrium point (that is, its low point). In such a scenario, wall-building will be an expensive process that gets a few contractors a lot of money for a decades-long process. Xenophobia will be reinforced and human rights will continue to suffer.

The only worse solution to government control of the border is privatizing the immigration process. Now this is already starting to happen in the policing of the border, but today's topic is not police state methods or the prison-industrial complex supported by the taxpayer. Rather, let's take a brief look at a proposal that came up in the WSJ yesterday:

Free Markets Need Free People, by Gordon H. Hanson, Commentary, WSJ: If there is one point of consensus in the fraught politics of immigration, it is that illegal immigration is bad. Yesterday, President Bush voiced his support for tough enforcement at the U.S.-Mexico border and called on Congress to resolve the status of the 12 million illegal immigrants now in the country. Last week, Rep. Tom Tancredo (R., Colo.) entered the presidential race, promising to make resentment of illegal immigrants a major campaign issue. And yet, from a purely economic perspective, illegal immigration is arguably preferable to legal immigration. Because Congress and the president refuse to see this, further reform this year could make a bad situation worse.

Illegal immigration is persistent because it has a strong economic rationale. Low-skilled workers are increasingly scarce in the U.S. while they are still abundant in Mexico, Central America and elsewhere. ...[I]mpeding illegal immigration, without creating other avenues for legal entry, would conflict with market forces that push labor from low-wage countries to the high-wage U.S. labor market. ...

Illegal immigration responds to economic signals in ways that legal immigration does not. Illegal migrants tend to arrive in larger numbers when the U.S. economy is booming and move to regions where job growth is strong. Legal immigration, in contrast, is subject to bureaucratic delays... The lengthy visa application process requires employers to plan their hiring far in advance. Once here, guest workers cannot easily move between jobs, limiting their benefit to the U.S. economy. ...

Congress should redesign temporary immigration from the ground up. Successful reform would have to mimic current beneficial aspects of illegal immigration. Employers would have to be able to hire the types of workers they desire, when they desire. One way to achieve this would be for the Department of Homeland Security to sanction the creation of global temp agencies...

Matching foreign workers to U.S. employers efficiently would require flexibility in the number of guest workers admitted -- and one way to make the number of visas sensitive to market signals would be to auction the right to hire a guest worker to U.S. employers. The auction price for visas that clears the market would reflect the supply of and demand for foreign guest workers. An increase in the auction price signals the need to expand the number of visas; a decline in the price indicates that the number of visas could be reduced. [...] (h/t Economist's View)

The article has some interesting points, and does indeed point to the shortcomings (human and economic) of current immigration. Of course, the author, seemingly compassionate about the fate of workers, is actually taking an overall neoliberal perspective in which access to labor resources becomes even more of a commodity than it currently is. Flows of human capital could be increased or decreased through a bureaucratic decision rather than passing through the messy political world. Adjusting the immigration algorithms to fit their needs, meat-packing, farming, and construction companies could increase immigration more or less at will in order to undercut current labor prices. While increased legality would bring some benefits to the immigrant worker, he or she would still maintain a second class status and lend further power to the corporations to be "flexible" (to hire and fire at will).

One question to be asked is how have temp agencies helped you, the worker? I went to the Bureau of Labor Statistics this morning and looked up the information on "employment services." Here is a graph of this industry's employment numbers since 1959:

Now, I haven't adjusted this for population or anything in making this graph, but to my eyes the chart is clear enough already. Beginning in the 70s with Nixon's liberalization of monetary policy, combined with decreased social spending, temp agencies have blossomed. Meanwhile, unionization dropped and income disparity has risen dramatically to levels unseen since the Gilded Age.

(I should say that I found employment through a temp agency once, and I will not deny that they offer some benefits to workers and employers seeking to find each other. While that may seem fine and dandy, what it means, ultimately, is that the relationship between employer and employee is mediated, creating further distance and less responsibility. While the job-seeker may very well be in search of a permanent position, the employer is more than likely using temp agencies to avoid long-term relationships and the social and economics bonds that such relationships create.)

What could motivate a move to privatize the border? Profits? Hmmm. Here's an article that recently appeared in Business Week:

One of the dominant themes emerging from Davos this year is the power of demographics. Population isn't exactly destiny, but it's a huge determinant in how nations, economies, and companies fare. And the demographics often reveal trends that, on the surface at least, contradict the general appearance of a nation's prosperity.

Take the case of Russia. Under President Vladimir Putin, Russia is harnessing its oil and gas reserves to reclaim its status as a power with which to contend. But at a dinner presentation on Wednesday night, demographer Nicholas Eberstadt painted a starkly different picture. Russia's mortality rate is catastrophic, its birth rate abysmal. There will come a time in the not-too-distant future when Russia's depleted population will threaten the Kremlin's neo-imperialist designs.

So how do companies respond to these deep, slow-moving shifts? A talk with some of the top brass of Manpower (MAN) of Milwaukee is very revealing. In 2005, Manpower's network of temp services and human resources operations put 5 million people to work around the globe. With more than $17 billion in revenue, it ranks with Swiss-based Adecco (ADO) as the world-class provider of workers to the top corporations on the planet. Manpower's studies of global workforce trends are some of the best available. [Business Week]

Given that access to cheap labor is one of the fundamental goals of globalization, as evidenced by the policies discussed at Davos and the WTO, none of this is surprising. The question is, do we want to give up a lot of our political power to yet another corporation that will then pull the strings of immigration policy? As much as I despise people like Tancredo, at least I can fight to beat him at the ballot box. Having a voice in privatized immigration will be even harder.

The growth of temp agencies seems to be correlated with a lot of things I don't like: stagnant salaries, a weak NBLR, the breaking of social bonds between employer and employee, income disparity and overall precarity for the average laborer. Do we really want these companies, who are already global players, actually determing flows of human capital? As poorly as our democracy treats workers, do we want to give up the little power democratic representation gives us?

Republican/Lieberman High Horse

217. Let us be careful in dealing with those who attach great importance to being credited with moral tact and subtlety in moral discernment! They never forgive us if they have once made a mistake BEFORE us (or even with REGARD to us)--they inevitably
become our instinctive calumniators and detractors, even when they still remain our "friends."--Blessed are the forgetful: for they "get the better" even of their blunders. (Neitzsche, Beyond Good and Evil)

Crawford, TX: How Born Agains Interpret the Resurrection

Here are a few thoughts for Easter and what it portends:

Braving Cindy Sheehan and other heretics, George Bush crawled into his tomb at Crawford this week. Next week he will re-emerge, purified, God-like in the press. He will be a new man, ready to confront the final years of his presidency:

Bush's getaway in central Texas is just about everything Washington is not. There may be no better way to explain why he loves it so much. Life is remarkably different here for a president struggling through his second term. He can slip out of sight for days, as he has since he arrived Wednesday. The White House press corps is still around, ready to cover the most innocuous visit to the coffee shop, but there haven't been any. Bush is tucked away in his home away from home. And it's a long way from his black-gated compound on Pennsylvania Avenue. "Sometimes, you just have to be by yourself," said Bill Johnson, owner of the Yellow Rose souvenir shop at the one-light crossroads in Crawford. "You've got to get out of the rat race, get some peace and quiet. He can just go and sit by the lake and hear the owls." Nature couldn't have come through more for Bush this week. He showed up to springtime breezes and entire pastures covered with bluebonnets in bloom. On Saturday, a rare April snow sneaked up on Crawford, giving the place an even more tranquil feel. Even in the summer, when the heat is scorching, Bush wants to be outside. After morning security briefings, he spends hours riding his bike, chopping cedar, clearing brush and chatting with family — all in privacy. The visits add up. Bush has spent part or all of 409 days of his presidency on the 1,600-acre ranch, according to CBS White House correspondent Mark Knoller, who keeps meticulous records of Bush's travel... ("On the Ranch, Bush has perfect escape")

Bush's villégiature at Crawford always signals rebirth and restoration, and, as the AP implies, it is meant to bring comfort to the American people ("entire pastures covered with bluebonnets in bloom. On Saturday, a rare April snow sneaked up on Crawford, giving the place an even more tranquil feel"). The rural setting is portrayed as a temple, as a retreat, as a monastery (albeit a monastery made for non-reflective behaviour) in which the elements seem to welcome the President and harmonize with his spirit. Indeed, "Nature couldn't have come through more," as the AP stenographer, Ben Feller, writes.

Of course, the harmony is only a fleeting reflection of surface movement. Note the contradiction that nature welcomed Bush, but that he spends all summer cutting it down. It is alternately Bush's cathedral and his punching bag. Nature: ineffably pretty, and totally at Bush's mercy.

Such articles must reassure the masses. Bush, master of the territory, developer of the land, overcomer of weeds (read: Democrats), is always busy cutting nature down, yet always welcomed by nature's bounty.

All this seems like a contradiction, but it is actually a paradox, a dialectic of modernity in which incessant gestures of control hide our dependance on natural resources.

Mark Slouka lines out why this is such a vital image in our repertory of thoughts about who we are. In this wonderful Harper's article he writes:

Leisure is permissible, we understand, because it costs money; idleness is not, because it doesn't. Leisure is focused; whatever thinking it requires is absorbed by a certain task: sinking that putt, making that cast, watching that flat-screen TV. Idleness is unconstrained, anarchic. Leisure-particularly if it involves some kind of high-priced technology-is as American as a Fourth of July barbecue. Idleness, on the other hand, has a bad attitude. It doesn't shave; it's not a member of the team; it doesn't play well with others. It thinks too much, as my high school coach used to say. So it has to be ostracized. [...]

[In June of 1913], Marinetti explained that Futurism was about the "acceleration of life to today's swift pace." It was about the "dread of the old and the known ... of quiet living." The new age, he wrote, would require the "negation of distances and nostalgic solitudes." It would "ridicule ... the 'holy green silence' and the ineffable landscape." It would be, instead, an age enamored of "the passion, art, and idealism of Business." This shift from slowness to speed, from the solitary individual to the crowd excited by work, would in turn force other adjustments. The worship of speed and business would require a new patriotism, "a heroic idealization of the commercial, industrial, and artistic solidarity of a people"; it would require "a modification in the idea of war," in order to make it "the necessary and bloody test of a people's force." As if this weren't enough, as if the parallel were not yet sufficiently clear, there was this: The new man, Marinetti wrote...would communicate by "brutalty destroying the syntax of his speech. He wastes no time in building sentences. Punctuation and the right adjectives will mean nothing to him. He will despise subtleties and nuances of language." All of his thinking, moreover, would be marked by a "dread of slowness, pettiness, analysis, and detailed explanations. Love of speed, abbreviation, and the summary, 'Quick, give me the whole thing in two words!'" (Mark Slouka, in Harper's: http://harpers.org/archive/2004/11/0080280)

Man, as epitomized as George W. Bush, is reborn as pure individualism, pure action, pure machine. "Solidarity," is not communal, but a technical force of individuals acting in concert, in rythm, like the gears of a motor. The logical undergirding of the AP article says it all: nature may be pretty, but ultimately it should be subjugated by Man, and Man, as Slouka writes, is more and more a machine. As opposed to idleness, leisure and retreat are no longer walks in the wilderness, they are times to reconsolidate power and reaffirm dominion while embracing what George Bush would call human destiny, freedom, patriotism, war and a "business-friendly environment." Crawford is not a temple of nature, but a temple for Bush, for exploitation of the land. It is not the king's place to praise nature, but nature's place to praise the king. Such is the state of things in a simplistic born-again world.

And so George Bush will be reborn again, given the benefit of the doubt, a fresh start for springtime.

Meanwhile, what would Jesus do? Maybe nothing. Maybe he would be idle and sit and contemplate the wilderness.

Yet, as Bush well knows, this truth is hidden deep within the syntax, within the language (of nature, of speech) that he works so diligently to break down, clearing the brush, as it were.*

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*Read Slouka's article. He makes the point much more elegantly than I.