February 2012
1 post
"The farm colonies of the Salvation Army"
I just came across this; a completely bizarre attempt to re-frontierize as a means of dealing with urban poor.
FARM COLONIES OF THE SALVATION ARMY. BY COMMANDER BOOTH TUCKER.
The farm colonies of the Salvation Army in the United States were first organized in the spring of 1898 for the purpose of enabling stranded but worthy families to keep together and ultimately, by their own exertions and...
January 2012
10 posts
The Drone Caucus
Mission & Main Goals
The mission of the U.S. House Unmanned Systems Caucus is to educate members of Congress and the public on the strategic, tactical, and scientific value of unmanned systems; actively support further development and acquisition of more systems, and to more effectively engage the civilian aviation community on unmanned system use and safety. As members of this Caucus, we:
...
"the first shot of Megan Fox in T2: ROTF"
“Consider, for example, the first shot of Megan Fox in T2: ROTF. Understanding that Fox is to supply the film’s sex appeal for adolescents of all ages who love cars and chicks (and especially chicks in proximity to cars), Bay introduces his leading lady sprawled across a motorcycle wearing a tank-top, cut-off shorts, and cowboy boots. In case we still don’t get the message that...
"Militant Stupidity"
“I take it for granted there is really no such thing as “intelligence”. There are a million ways to be smart and no one’s smart in all of them; everyone can be slow on the uptake, and most human beings, whether plumbers or professors, will be remarkably apt at some things and hopeless at others.
But stupid isn’t dumb. Stupidity is different. It involves an element of will. This is why no...
Selmeya and Violence
Ashraf Khalil’s Liberation Square: Inside the Egyptian Revolution and the Rebirth of a Nation:
Much has been made of the near-obsessive dedication to nonviolence on the part of the Tahrir square protesters. For the most part, that’s true. From the very start, one of the dominant chants from the protesters was salmeya, or peaceful. But let’s pause now to acknowledge and honor the fact that...
“Tonight, the OPD, assumably backed by the city, acted with such complete...”
– https://www.facebook.com/events/270707396316948/
“The right to look confronts the police who say to us “move on, there’s nothing...”
– http://nicholasmirzoeff.com/RTL/?page_id=16
December 2011
2 posts
minor concerns: Occupy Oakland: Six Days of Zion →
susie-c:
In the piece I wrote for the Atlantic last week about Occupy Oakland, one of my favorite quotes unfortunately didn’t survive the final round of edits. In the final piece, this part appeared:
“Our overconfidence and impatience will be our downfall,” says Leo Ritz-Barr, 21, an Occupy Oakland…
“”In total, between 1955 and 1970, the port’s operating income went...”
– From Robert Self’s American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland, p155:
November 2011
6 posts
a catskill eagle: a little vignette about... →
djripley:
or do I mean corruption? Well, it would be corruption if I thought it was a bug in the system. But this kind of thing is a feature in the system we currently have.
I kinda think this whole thing ought to be made into a song like that Sweet Honey In The Rock tune “Are My Hands Clean“— is the…
“Stranger: Where are you from? [Translation: You look a bit brown. Why are you...”
– http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/03/racist-question-brown-answer-curious?fb=native&CMP=FBCNETTXT9038
UC Davis English Department's welcome message
http://english.ucdavis.edu/
The faculty of the UC Davis English Department supports the Board of the Davis Faculty Association in calling for Chancellor Katehi’s immediate resignation and for “a policy that will end the practice of forcibly removing non-violent student, faculty, staff, and community protesters by police on the UC Davis campus.” Further, given the demonstrable threat posed by the...
"bureaucrats with weapons"
David Graeber, “Beyond Power/Knowledge: An Exploration of power, ignorance and stupidity”
A constant staple of 1950s American situation comedies, for example, was jokes about the impossibility of understanding women. The jokes (always of course told by men) always represented women’s logic as fundamentally alien and incomprehensible. One never had the impression the women in...
"crime is a first response"
Jonathan Simon, Governing Through Crime, p14:
It is a truism well worth remembering that behind all forms of law, public or private, lurks a background threat of violence within the law, generally embodied in the penal or criminal law. So if you refuse to perform on a binding contract, the other party may bring a civil law suit against you. If your adversary prevails and obtains a monetary...
"Message to Campus Community"
To the Extended UC Berkeley Community: As you know, yesterday an effort was made to establish an encampment on Sproul Plaza, by the “Occupy Cal” movement. This followed and marred the aftermath of an impressive, peaceful noontime rally on Sproul on behalf of public education, which was attended by some 3,000 participants and observers, including many campus leaders. We compliment the...
March 2011
4 posts
"David Brooks" is produced by five guys named...
Tom Scocca on American socialism:
The awkward, mainly unspoken fact of our time is that America is a socialist country, or that Americans operate under the assumption that it is a socialist country. American socialism works the same way that our system of universal health care does—and we do have universal health care.
Here is how universal health care operates, as we currently practice it:...
"Have fatwas become the yardstick by which we...
Laila Lalami on Ayaan Hirsi Ali:
On more than a few occasions, Hirsi Ali makes baffling, blanket statements about women in Muslim countries. “[If] defloration occurs outside wedlock, [the girl] has dishonored her family to the tenth degree of kinship.” Why not eleven? Or twelve? Where did the number ten come from? We are never told, and no source is adduced to support this claim....
"one is “better off” having and not being the...
Jennifer Doyle:
Anne Hathaway was heroic, and when one focuses on her performance co-hosting the Oscars ceremony, the whole show takes on a surreal aspect. Take the ULTRA real dynamic of soporific Franco and hysterical Hathaway: This was a rather extraordinary performance of a high-energy female/femme dragging the sad-dog-weight of her man behind her. It is the flipside of sexist narratives...
Loss For Words
David Mitchell, on Stammering:
They vary from stammerer to stammerer, but we all collect a box of tricks. I subdivide mine into technical fixes and attitudinal stances. Blunt technical fixes would include the “Punch”: where I attack a word to force it out, and the “Foot Tap,” which works like a musician’s a-1,2,3,4, though only when I’m standing, hence my fondness for lecterns. I often use the...
February 2011
5 posts
sad focus
Here’s why Ebert’s statement was out and out harmful and hurtful:
It singles out ‘Middle East attitudes toward women’ at the exclusion of all other regions and all other people.
It promotes a generality about ’Middle East attitudes toward women’ that is unverifiable, but one that easily plays in to orientalist, bigoted and racist attitudes toward Middle Easterners, Arabs and Muslims.
It...
"Reading this book is like drowning in very, very...
I had hoped, while reviewing India Calling, to not make large and expansive statements about “such books”. But it seems I will fail. Partly because essentialising is a very contagious disease, and every page of India Calling is crawling with its icky germs, as also with those other brain-eating bacilli, Generalisation and Extrapolation. Partly because little in this particular book sets it...
" strong and outspoken proponents of a close and...
(C) A graduate of the Mons Officer Cadet School and the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, King Hamad takes a leading role in directing Bahrain’s security policy, and carries the title of Supreme Commander. During his three decades as Crown Prince, he personally built the Bahrain Defense Force from the ground up, relying heavily on U.S. equipment and training. King Hamad believes...
"reverted to practices it employed in the 1990s"
6.(C) At the February 8 press conference, Stork asserted that the Government had reverted to practices it employed in the 1990s. He stressed that the overall rights situation had improved since that time, but insisted that the HRW report’s allegations showed that torture is again being utilized during questioning of suspects. (Note: Bahrain experienced significant upheaval during the...
The Bahrain of 2009
5.(C) The Bahrain of 2009 is a far cry from the unrest of the 1990s. State security courts have been abolished, street protests are considerably fewer and less violent, and Wifaq, as a legal, parliamentary opposition, has proven its ability to channel most Shia political energy into non-violent protests. Since its 2005 decision to join the parliamentary political process, Wifaq has portrayed...
December 2010
1 post
"Separate development" in South Africa
From David Raič’s Statehood and the Law of Self-Determination:
Although racial segregation and discrimination, accompanied by the creation of separate areas exclusively designated for the native black Africans (the Bantus) featured in the policy of the white governments in South Africa as early as the beginning of the 20th century, no independent Homelands were envisioned at that time....