If you read the title in the voice of Drago, you will better appreciate my intent in linking this note about the pathetic tech underlying the upcoming US census. I saw one of these poor souls standing outside my house and staring intently at her PDA. I thought, at the time, that she must be having some sort of technical difficulty. Turns out that that is just par for the course.
Category: Society Page 23 of 69
This is coming a bit late, but I just wanted to note that Yehuda Moon has come to a stop, and is coming off of my links on the right. It’s only in my 30s that I’ve truly come to appreciate the medium that is comics, and the Yehuda Moon strip has been part of that. If you haven’t checked it out before, and are at all interested in the practicalities and politics of cycling, do check it out. And if it comes back, please do join me in kicking in a few $/€’s for it.
A short FP article worth reading:
For years, political theorists have argued that developing a healthy middle class is the key to any country’s democratization. To paraphrase the late political scientist Samuel Huntington: Economic growth and industrialization usually lead to the creation of a middle class. As its members become wealthier and more educated, the middle class turns increasingly vocal, demanding more rights to protect its economic gains.
But over the past decade, the antidemocratic behavior of the middle class in many countries has threatened to undermine this conventional wisdom. Although many developing countries have created trappings of democracy, such as regular elections, they often failed to build strong institutions, including independent courts, impartial election monitoring, and a truly free press and civil society.
The middle class’s newfound disdain for democracy is counterintuitive. After all, as political and economic freedoms increase, its members often prosper because they are allowed more freedom to do business. But, paradoxically, as democracy gets stronger and the middle class grows richer, it can realize it has more to lose than gain from a real enfranchisement of society.
I don’t have enough understanding of all of the situations it gives as examples to endorse it, but this thesis certainly fits with those situations where I do feel like I’ve got a solid grasp. Here’s an exercise for the reader: apply this thesis to America.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWF4x01MkzE[/youtube]
Police not only stop cyclists and give them helmets, they hug the cyclists.
(actually, I suspect this is a clever bit of viral capitalism.)
I’m just going to lift this wholesale from TPM and its reader JS, and hope for forgiveness. It’s dead on, I think.
Let’s say that all of the sudden, due to the catastrophic onset of a once-in-a-generation crisis, it no longer becomes possible to deny that the elites at the head of a societally important institution have a record of rampant violation not just of the law, but of our most cherished American ideals. Do you:
A) acknowledge that the institution itself has failed in fundamental ways, name and prosecute the true bad apples to the fullest extent of the law, and overhaul the system in a way that essentially wipes out many of the vested interests that have kept it going; or
B) attempt to patch up the existing system by agreeing to keep up various now-discredited fictions and illusions in exchange for a few hard concessions from the elites, all in the hope that the whole monstrosity can limp along until the crisis has passed, at which point it can recover and all of the elites can go back to business as usual
Obama is, by nature, a consensus seeker with inhuman levels of ambition and talent, which means that on both torture and on Wall St. bankster criminality he instinctively reaches for B), which is the (impossible) option that attempts to please everybody at least a little. But what we really need is A), which would seem to someone like Obama to be the most dangerous option, necessitating as it does the social trauma of genuine collective soul searching. You’d have to be able to gamble that America can tolerate this kind of huge rupture — like the lancing of a boil — and come through it all intact, and Obama is not a gambler.
This was part of my concern in the primary battles between him and Clinton. In any event, Obama’s in charge now, and all we can do is pressure him. And I hope we do.
ABC has a tape showing:
A man in a UAE police uniform is seen on the tape tying the victim’s arms and legs, and later holding him down as the Sheikh [brother of the crown prince] pours salt on the man’s wounds and then drives over him with his Mercedes SUV.
Go ahead, click the link and watch it. Maybe the guy had valuable information, and this was the only way to get it. And the policeman? Well, I’m sure that the Sheikh issued a legal opinion saying that it was just fine.  Nothing wrong here at all. Just like the Americans do it.
What, you don’t know who John Waters is? Here’s a taste:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnpofBtijF8[/youtube]
(And FWIW, there’s no way what Waters is saying in the first link is true. But it doesn’t really matter.)
I’ve written before that I think there are significant cultural differences between the US and UK, in terms of attitudes towards CCTV. But some things are cross-cultural, like law enforcement’s disdain for cameras when they’re the ones being recorded:
The chair of the police watchdog conducting a criminal inquiry into the death of Ian Tomlinson [a man who was found dead at the G20 protests shortly after he’d been shoved to the ground and hit by police] faced fresh criticism today after it emerged he was wrong to say there was “no CCTV footage” in the area where the alleged assault took place.
[ . . . ]
This morning the IPCC initially stood by Hardwick’s claims. “Mr Hardwick said there was no available CCTV footage of the incident and we stand by that. Any footage that is available, whether taken by police or by the public, will be fully investigated as and when it becomes available,” it said.
However, at 10.30am, after pictures were published showing cameras in the area, the IPCC changed its stance. “At this point, Mr Hardwick believed that he was correct in this assertion – we now know this may not be accurate,” the IPCC said in a statement. “There are cameras in the surrounding area.”
The IPCC would not comment on why, almost two weeks after Tomlinson’s death and one week after it said its investigators had pieced together his last moments by looking at “many hours of CCTV”, Hardwick had been mistaken about the locations of cameras.
Just an innocent mistake, I’m sure. And speaking of “innocent mistakes”, you can follow the link above to see another example of what I’m sure will be characterized as much – a G20 constable striking a woman with the back of his hand and then swinging a baton at her legs. All to keep the public “safe.”
Once again, the active right fights more with its own imagination than anything else:
I’m sort of fascinated by the latest ACORN conspiracy theory, that ACORN activists are crashing right wing “tea parties” in order to sabotage them. I’m fascinated, because like Steve Benen, I don’t know anyone who actually cares about these things. Obama’s approval rating is in the 60s. The country is growing more optimistic about his presidency. I could see being concerned about the tea parties if they legitimately comprised some sort of mass movement centered around widespread public discontent with the president, but it just seems to be a bunch of sour grapes from hardcore conservatives who would hate Obama no matter what. The far right also seems to have a hard time mobilizing without an evil enemy, someone to hate.
Check out the rest, as Ezra Klein walks it back to – yes – a single post on the internet.   It’s just a part of a real blossoming of the wingers imaginations, lately. Community service is slavery! They’re going to put us in camps! There’s a New World Order coming! Or maybe it’s not so much imagination, as following a script. Because I’ve seen this story before, in the early 90s- service is slavery, they’re going to round us up, the New World Order is upon us! Same shit, different administrations.