Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

…is dead. The brick-and-mortar schools, that is, are all dying from cost. It will try to survive, but it’s going to have to change radically.

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2010/03/journal-education-and-media-in-a-resilient-society.html

…turning it back to farmland has a quiet humor to it.

Detroit, the very symbol of American industrial might for most of the 20th century, is drawing up a radical renewal plan that calls for turning large swaths of this now-blighted, rusted-out city back into the fields and farmland that existed before the automobile.

Operating on a scale never before attempted in this country, the city would demolish houses in some of the most desolate sections of Detroit and move residents into stronger neighborhoods. Roughly a quarter of the 139-square-mile city could go from urban to semi-rural.

The rest is here.

…what our government is doing to us, without our knowledge…

In 1951, a quiet, picturesque village in southern France was suddenly and mysteriously struck down with mass insanity and hallucinations. At least five people died, dozens were interned in asylums and hundreds afflicted.

For decades it was assumed that the local bread had been unwittingly poisoned with a psychedelic mould. Now, however, an American investigative journalist has uncovered evidence suggesting the CIA peppered local food with the hallucinogenic drug LSD as part of a mind control experiment at the height of the Cold War.

The rest is here.

…is going down the crapper?

I’m no lawyer (and would probably commit seppuku if I was) but it seems to me that we’re already at that Orwellian nightmare that he loved to warn about. We can be tracked online, with our cell phones, have our bank records disclosed…there’s really no limit to what the police, CIA, FBI, or anyone else, can procure with a little pushing.

Judge Alex Kozinski: The Fourth Amendment is Gone. “Welcome to the fish bowl.”

…threaten the established order.

We have already seen this, in one view. Corporations are legally individuals and they’re working towards, if they haven’t already, taking over our democratic institutions. After all, while FEMA was busy scratching it’s balls and and wondering what all the fuss on TV was about, it was corporations who were already shipping water and food and supplies down to hurricane-ravaged Louisiana. They had the power and the logistics in place to do what our cumbersome government could not.

One source superempowerment will be from winner take all economics and parasitic predation (see below for more on this term).  The top 0.01% of income earners will see have already seen their wealth accelerate faster than ever before (particularly now that their downside risk is backstopped by the coffers of morally weak nation-states).

Another driver of superempowerment stems from an ability to use systems disruption to cause economic damage.  Individuals that manage open source guerrilla networks — connectors/networks/coaches — have the ability generate economic damage at least as large (if not larger) as the most elite of income earners.  For example, the anti-entrepreneur ‘Jomo Gbomo’ manages the Nigerian guerrilla network MEND.  This network disrupts oil production by BP Shell, Chevron, and AGIP as a means to coerce the corrupt regime in Lagos into good governance.  ’Jomo’ been able to generate damage worth nearly 2x Bill Gates has generated in income.

Random Thoughts on SuperEmpowered Individuals

…is pretty bullshit.

Sure, if you create something you should have some measure of control of how it’s distributed. But honestly, the steps that these companies take nowadays are ridiculous. We see in this article that the fears are old, stemming mostly from selfishness and greed.

In 1906, famous composer John Philip Sousa took to Appleton’s Magazine to pen an essay decrying the latest piratical threat to his livelihood, to the entire body politic, and to “musical taste” itself. His concern? The player piano and the gramophone, which stripped the life from real, human, soulful live performances.

“From the days when the mathematical and mechanical were paramount in music, the struggle has been bitter and incessant for the sway of the emotional and the soulful,” he wrote. “And now in this the twentieth century come these talking and playing machines and offer again to reduce the expression of music to a mathematical system of megaphones, wheels, cogs, disks, cylinders, and all manner of revolving things which are as like real art as the marble statue of Eve is like her beautiful living breathing daughters.”

The rest is here.

…to hate the establishment.

When deciding how to organize activities of questionable legal nature, it’s not always wise to choose a popular and widely available communications medium that even the police know about. When 41-year-old anarchist Elliot Madison got himself arrested in late September, he learned that lesson the hard way. Madison had been found using a police scanner and Twitter to help numerous protesters avoid police during the Group of 20 summit and has now been charged with hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility, and possession of instruments of crime.

Madison was found in a hotel room by Pennsylvania State Police on September 24, armed with police scanners and computers so that he could disperse critical information to protesters. According to the FBI, Madison was “directing others, specifically protesters of the G-20 summit, in order to avoid apprehension after a lawful order to disperse.”

Though the FBI says so, it’s not entirely clear from the complaint that Madison’s tweets were actually illegal. Madison’s lawyer told the New York Times on Saturday that he and a friend were merely “part of a communications network among people protesting the G-20.” As implied through the Times piece, Madison’s tweets merely directed protestors as to where the police were at any given time and to stay alert. “There’s absolutely nothing that he’s done that should subject him to any criminal liability.”

Read the rest here.

…can suck my anarchist dick.

However, I do want to see the new Michael Moore movie. I admittedly haven’t seen any of his other movies but I’ve been following the Wall Street corruption bullshit for some time, and it seems like this movie kind of encapsulates most of the thoughts out there. Well, not the whole ‘burn Wall Street to the ground’ thoughts, but the other stuff.

An excellent review on www.aintitcool.com:

For two months straight I received e-mail every single day without fail about that review. Half of it was derisive hate mail that accused me of being, as one reader put it, “a goose-stepping, Fox watching, brown shirt.” The other half, in equal measure, accused me of being something far more sinister: a champion of the people. “A brave voice standing alone against Liberal Hollywood.” Another direct quote. I learned a lot from that piece. For a few brief moments I understood what it was like to be in the shoes of a Hannity or an Olbermann. That piece got more traffic than anything else I’ve ever written, before or since. I also learned that I never, ever wanted to be that guy again. At the time we thought it would be the hundred umpteenth review calling the film out for its agenda. Turns out it wasn’t. And knowing what I know now, if I could go back, I would have written a very even handed explanation of my beliefs about the dangers of propaganda marketed to children – no matter whether I believe in the message or not.

So when I see fire and brimstone newscasters lobbing accusations back and forth, I understand the attraction. But I also detest it. I look around and see our nation’s leaders being shouted at by the people (a good thing) who don’t understand anything that they’re actually talking about (a bad thing) and are merely just repeating what they’ve heard on TV (a REALLY bad thing.) I see knuckle heads pulling over to pick fights with protesters, even when they don’t know what the protesters are actually protesting (true story – guy got his finger bitten off. He thought a health care rally was an anti-war protest and objected to being called an idiot when he accosted them.) And I see Rupert Murdoch lobbying congress to abolish anti-trust laws so he and allied news organizations can get together and price fix online news so he can begin cornering the internet market the same way he dominated the print industry.

And I think: what the world needs now is a hero. What the world needs now is Michael Moore.

No, not that Michael Moore. Not the Michael Moore that campaigns for democrats and long ago traded away his credibility for a seat at the table. That was the Michael Moore picked in 2004 by USATODAY to cover the Republican National Convention in an experiment to send someone from “the other side” into the belly of the beast. Who was the person USATODAY picked to go to the Democratic National Convention? Ann Coulter. You see? The Michael Moore we all know today is someone USATODAY equates with Ann Coulter. That Michael Moore won’t do.

No, we need 1989 Michael Moore, the Michael Moore who made ROGER & ME, a film so powerful that high school economics teachers used it as a teaching tool throughout the 90s’ (which is how I first was exposed to Moore’s films.) We need 1996 Michael Moore, the man who wrote DOWNSIZE THIS and made a film in which he lambasted ALL the political candidates in what he called a contest of “the evil of two lessers.” We need the Michael Moore who isn’t the tool of a large political machine, but rather the one who campaigned for Ralph Nader because he wanted to get out a message about The People. That’s who we need right now. An independently minded Michael Moore.

And that is almost the guy who showed up to direct CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY.
Read the rest here. Long, but well written and interesting.

…needs to change.

I have a brother going to Purdue University, and he’s spending close to $10,000 a semester for the education.

Chaos knows where the school thinks we’re going to get that kind of money, but for the majority of middle-class yahoos such as he and I, we have to borrow and dig ourselves into debt to do it. Sure, even though he’s getting into an industry that will help drive the American machine, let’s just punish him for having that passion. And once I get myself and the thirteen voices in my head back into school, I’ll need a doctorate for the field I want to get into. (Neuroscience, bee-yatches!) I don’t want to think about the loan repayments for that.

Is a college education really like a string quartet? Back in 1966, that was the assertion of economists William Bowen, later president of Princeton, and William Baumol. In a seminal study, Bowen and Baumol used the analogy to show why universities can’t easily improve efficiency.

If you want to perform a proper string quartet, they noted, you can’t cut out the cellist nor can you squeeze in more performances by playing the music faster. But that was then — before MP3s and iPods proved just how freely music could flow. Before Google scanned and digitized 7 million books and Wikipedia users created the world’s largest encyclopedia. Before YouTube Edu and iTunes U made video and audio lectures by the best professors in the country available for free, and before college students built Facebook into the world’s largest social network, changing the way we all share information. Suddenly, it is possible to imagine a new model of education using online resources to serve more students, more cheaply than ever before.

“The Internet disrupts any industry whose core product can be reduced to ones and zeros,” says Jose Ferreira, founder and CEO of education startup Knewton. Education, he says, “is the biggest virgin forest out there.” Ferreira is among a loose-knit band of education 2.0 architects sharpening their saws for that forest. Their first foray was at MIT in 2001, when the school agreed to put coursework online for free. Today, you can find the full syllabi, lecture notes, class exercises, tests, and some video and audio for every course MIT offers, from physics to art history. This trove has been accessed by 56 million current and prospective students, alumni, professors, and armchair enthusiasts around the world. “The advent of the Web brings the ability to disseminate high-quality materials at almost no cost, leveling the playing field,” says Cathy Casserly, a senior partner at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, who in her former role at the Hewlett Foundation provided seed funding for MIT’s project. “We’re changing the culture of how we think about knowledge and how it should be shared and who are the owners of knowledge.”

Change can’t happen fast enough.

The rest is here. Long, but worth the read.

…is down the shitter.

Yeah, as if any of us really thought we were going to get back to the moon any time soon. The public at large doesn’t give a crap about the possibilities that being a space faring nation would offer; instead we drown our sorrows in reality TV and Halo. Thanks, America.

NASA’s human spaceflight program appears headed on an “unsustainable trajectory” under its current budget, according to a committee charged with reviewing the US space program for the Obama administration.

While NASA has big plans to retire the Shuttle Program in 2011, de-orbit the ISS in 2016, and begin a fresh round of lunar surface exploration, there simply isn’t enough money to go around. “It is perpetuating the perilous practice of pursing goals that do not match allocated resources,” the Review of US Human Flight Plans Committee report stated.

As if the government could get us there anyways. If there were any smarts in the White House we’d sell off NASA to private ownership. Throw the space race into the public domain fully; capitalism, not national mandates, will get us there quicker.

The rest is here.

…is alive and well in this country, despite opinion to the contrary.

What would you say about a religion that believes in environmentalism, animal rights, and a reverence for the natural world? What if I told you that this religion has no concept of sin, allows everyone of any skin color or race, and is even recognized by the Army?

What if I told you this religion was called Wicca, and those who practice Witches?

Would that change things around in your mind?

She might be a witch, but Stephanie Conover says that’s no reason for officials at an upcoming Toronto beauty pageant to reject her as a potential judge.

Conover, who was crowned winner of the Miss Canada Plus Pageant last year, said she was recently invited to be a judge at the Miss Toronto Tourism pageant on Feb. 2.

“I said I’d definitely be there,” Conover told the Star yesterday.

“Then, last week, on Monday, they asked me for a biography. I told them everything I do, how I’m an entertainer and a singer and a dancer. I talked about my charity work and I said I also have hobbies, including songwriting, knitting, painting, yoga, reiki and tarot cards.”

That’s where things got sticky.

“We just got her bio a week ago and we don’t agree with it,” said Karen Murray, Miss Toronto Tourism pageant director. “We want someone down to earth, not someone into the dark side or the occult.”

So much for freedom of religion. Bigotry and ignorance at work, once again.

Read the rest here.

…is a douchebag.

Are any of us really surprised by the contents of this article? Despite my agreeing with much of Republican politics, how they operate disgusts me beyond mortal comprehension.

WASHINGTON — Tom Ridge, the first secretary of homeland security, asserts in a new book that he was pressured by top advisers to President George W. Bush to raise the national threat level just before the 2004 election in what he suspected was an effort to influence the vote.

After Osama bin Laden released a threatening videotape four days before the election, Attorney General John Ashcroft and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld pushed Mr. Ridge to elevate the public threat posture but he refused, according to the book. Mr. Ridge calls it a “dramatic and inconceivable” event that “proved most troublesome” and reinforced his decision to resign.

Read the rest here, but brace yourself – you’ll be completely unsurprised.

…is the name of the game.

• Stagnant incomes.  Median per capita income has stagnated for 30 years and is now headed lower. The only increase in household income came from adding the income of a spouse (that typically gets less than the male income earner). The value generated by mighty productivity increases over the last thirty years was routed to the financial markets (aka casinos) and not shared with American workers.
• Increased fixed expenses.  The costs and amount spent on variable consumption have fallen (clothing, food, autos, etc.) over the last thirty years — which puts the lie to the “over consumption” charge.  Instead, the median cost of housing, health, and the costs of work (childcare, two cars, etc.  brought on due to a need for sending two people to work) have skyrocketed with very little improvement in the quantity or value of the goods/services received.

The rest is here.

…should be universal! Leave it to the Daily Show to show the absurdity of some of the fears behind the health care bill.

…and we’re back!

In an article torn from the pages of both 1984 and the Onion, we find here that Britian is officially a Nanny State. I’d say it’s a sign of things to come, but I’m less and less sure that the human race will live past 2012. (See that kids? It’s called a teaser. More things to come.)

£400 million ($668 million) will be spend on installing and monitoring CCTV cameras in the homes of private citizens. Why? To make sure the kids are doing their homework, going to bed early and eating their vegetables. The scheme has, astonishingly, already been running in 2,000 family homes. The government’s “children’s secretary” Ed Balls is behind the plan, which is aimed at problem, antisocial families. The idea is that, if a child has a more stable home life, he or she will be less likely to stray into crime and drugs.

Where I’m from, a government official coming to install a camera in your home for purposes of snooping would be welcomed with a loaded shotgun. What’s going on, Britain? You once ruled most of the world – did your balls drop off?

The rest is here.