this blog is mostly dead now. it was an interesting experiment, but i've moved back to LiveJournal. user name katuah. come see me there.

"Londoners are seen on the city's vast amalgam of surveillance cameras an average of 300 times a day. Which means that the terrorists behind yesterday's bombings almost certainly knew they'd be caught on tape -- and went ahead with their attacks anyway."
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"One cannot build democracy in order later to manage resources sustainably and create peace. Managing resources accountably and responsibly, and sharing them more equitably, are essential to nurturing a culture of peace. This in turn is possible only if there is adequate democratic space for everybody; space where the rule of law and the rights of all, including the weak and vulnerable, are respected. ... There can be no peace without sustainable management of resources, justice and fairness. Indeed most of today’s conflicts and wars are over resources: who will access, exploit and utilise them? Who will be excluded? Those who feel excluded, exploited and humiliated can threaten peace and security."
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Tarheel (War on) Terror

Smithfield hams!
Smithfield sausage!
Smithfield spies!
Spies? Well, covert operatives, at least.

What a wonderful new employment opportunity for us Tarheels. Torture Flights Inc. - sightseeing the REALLY hard way(TM).

Seriously, though - this here lil' state seems to have quite the, um, _____ (fill in the blank) infrastructure, from Blackwater to the 82nd Airborne and RTI. * So, where are the CIA recruiters? I'd make a pretty good analyst. 'Course, you probably wouldn't care to know what I'd figure out anyway, so what the hey. Plus I'm really bad with needles and knives.

hot days, pushy

i wish i could write something more coherent, but TPTB in my office have decided that AC is too expensive to waste on those of us condemned to work on this holiday, and my office is about 95 stagnant degrees.

so this: i'm far more afraid of the (blue-vmeme) organizational skills and proselytizing power of the right-wing Christians than of the internecene debates of Islam. when the oil starts to run out and society gets weirder, Colorado is a lot closer than Iran. So, if the Ukraine can have a nonviolent revolution through better pre-planning and organization, why can't we? (or is the secret story really that the power that won is the same as the power that lost, only in new clothing?)

A scary review of Wright's Ripped and Torn - scary in that it so offhandedly notes something i've been disturbed by for a while now in my studies: the lack of a robust ideological grounding for leftist and/or progressive discourse in this post-ColdWar globalised world...

"...I found myself reflecting that in this post-Soviet world, when the ideology of socialism is almost an embarrassment ("I'd be called a commie," she writes with mock horror), this book is constantly searching for a language or a structure with which to describe these fundamental issues, which have not simply disappeared with the fall of the wall. Just a generation ago this would probably have been a less readable book, a tract laced with words such as alienation, surplus value and colonial imperialism. But it would have had a coherence underpinned by an understandable philosophy. Today the left has no language, and the multinationals do."

A nicely-put example of the value of social development and the dangers of too much postmodernism slipping into dangerous moral relativism:

"it is empirically demonstrable that men yearn--lazily--for that which is garishly available (cf Paris Hilton, Carl's Jr.). Women, for their part--at least in the Western world--understand that the social contract ensures safety and filters out brutishness. To fall, simplemindedly, for the naked male (cf Denzel/Jude in thong) is to be lured into an open Darwinian zone. This zone--these images--offer prospects of coupling without nurture or long-term guarantees, without the implied masculine pledges on home, hearth and the support of offspring. In backward cultures, women are overprotected and invisible; so men lose all resistance to images--and all self-restraint. In downtown Kandahar, for example, a display of female ankle is proof of flooziness most damnable. In that world, men are rarely required to resist temptation. Consider this clip from Dubai TV, in which an Egyptian rapist on death row is interviewed:

Rapist: Even if she's unmarried, or a little girl, when someone sees her short clothes, he will find the courage, and won't leave her alone. A girl like this makes a guy. . . .

Interviewer: She seduces him?

Rapist: Yes, she makes him take her, even if it's in the middle of town. Even if he has to kill or die, he will still take her.

In the West, by important contrast, men modulate their behavior when faced with seductive images. They have to. Women judge them by their ability to do so. And they are trained, at an early age, to take responsibility for their own lust."

And a review worth quoting at length, of John Ralston Saul's new book:

"...there is a radical critique in this book, although not a critique of globalization per se. Globalization is just a proxy two other targets.

Saul's first target is the assumption that economics is the main determinant of a society's civilization. If a society fixes the correct economic relationships, the rest will fall into place: freedom, democracy, peace, human well-being. According to Saul, the apostles of globalization argued that reducing barriers to international trade would lead to freedom, peace and prosperity at both a national and global level, and indeed to "the end of history." Saul lampoons this assumption. People care about many things beyond the freedom to engage in market exchanges -- such as their religion, culture, homeland and community -- and are quite willing to sweep aside economic relations if necessary to protect these deeper values. According to Saul, the fact that decision-makers in the West had an almost blind faith in the primacy of economic relations explains why they were unprepared for the devastating ethnic and religious conflicts and "irregular warfare" that have broken out since the end of the Cold War.

The idea that economics is the foundation of civilization is not only naive, Saul argues, it also puts the cart before the horse. Free markets cannot be the basis on which successful social, political and legal institutions are built, because markets can only function when these institutions are already in place. Markets require a strong state capable of enforcing the law, collecting taxes and providing public goods like roads, public health and a clean environment. These, in turn, depend on having a sufficiently cohesive society in which citizens co-operate with and trust each other, and participate in collective efforts for the public good.

For these and other reasons, Saul argues, most scholars and decision-makers have rejected the naive view that market reforms are the royal road to peace and prosperity. When Saul says "globalism is dead," it is this assumption, above all, which he has in mind. Global economic integration may proceed apace, but no one maintains the "romantic enthusiasm" that this is a guarantor of a new and better civilization. Even some of the high priests of globalization, such as Milton Friedman and Francis Fukuyama, admit it was a mistake to give precedence to market reforms over broader issues of democratic transition, conflict resolution, national integration, civil society and the rule of law.

Some readers may wonder whether Saul is tilting at windmills. Did anyone really say that markets could, by themselves, generate the end of history? Saul insists this was, indeed, the mind-frame of many people in the heyday of globalization, and he has some nice quotes from the World Economic Forum meetings in Davos in the 1970s and '80s to back it up.

Yet Saul agrees that many of the people who endorsed globalization did not share this romantic illusion. The real work of reducing tariffs, privatizing industries and harmonizing trade policies was done by non-ideological bureaucrats, academic advisers, management consultants and elected officials. Most of these foot soldiers of globalization did not subscribe to any overarching theory about the link between the economy and civilization and, indeed, their specialized training discouraged them from asking such big questions. They are trained to reduce problems to manageable, bite-sized issues, then find the most utilitarian, cost-efficient means of achieving their limited task.

[....] In short, Saul's critique of "globalism" is not an attack on this or that set of trade rules, but rather on two deeply rooted mindsets: a narrowly economistic interpretation of how societies develop, and a narrowly utilitarian and technocratic conception of public administration and corporate management."

Feel the love, oh yeah.

bits & pieces

"So how do we explain the differences between Japan and the west? The heart of the matter lies in their different ethos. Individualism animates the west, now more than ever. In contrast, the organising principle of Japanese society is a sense of group identity, a feeling of being part of a much wider community. Compared with western societies, Japan is a dense lattice-work of responsibilities and obligations within the family, the workplace, the school and the community. As Deepak Lal argues in his book Unintended Consequences, the Japanese sense of self is quite distinct from the western notion of individualism. As a result, people behave in very different ways and have very different expectations, and their behaviour is informed by very different values. This finds expression in a multitude of ways."

Link

"But if one rock was thrown, if one window was broken, Gandhi would call off the entire national strike and say, "you know what--we're going to come back in two years when we're ready." Because you know what--it wasn't just the point to engage in the national struggle, it wasn't just the point to raise the critique. The question was who are we going to be while doing it. Let's be good people while carrying it out."

Link

"Will there be a backlash? Tiefer predicts that the Republican party will turn so far to the right that Americans -- whom, he believes, are mainly centrist -- will revolt. He points to how the country moved to the right after the liberalism of Johnson's Great Society and the Earl Warren Supreme Court, and predicts a contrary movement to the left (or at least, the center) will occur now. Unfortunately, however, there are few - if any - signs of an incipient backlash. Even as conservatism has grown, from the 1970s to today, civil liberties have weakened - and attention to the needs of ordinary Americans, and to human rights, has diminished. Maybe the great American experiment in secular democracy is coming to an end."

Link

There is no shelf.
And even if there was, some people wouldn't bother to look for it.

We Americans seem to have a rather cavalier "it can't happen here" outlook on such possibilities as economic collapse, political unrest, or fascism, as though there is something so inherently special about our system that we are immune to these collective follies of human weakness. And as you might expect, when those weaknesses are revealed, we don't handle it very well. Prospect reviews "America Right or Wrong" on the roots of this bizarre nationalist exceptionalism:

"There is a sense in which southerners resemble Scottish Highlanders after the Battle of Culloden in 1746. Defeated and despoiled, Highland Scots compensated for their humiliation by becoming the shock troops of the British empire. In rather the same way, southerners have reacted to the successive blows of civil war defeat, northern contempt, poverty and the imposition of civil rights by becoming a disproportionate part of America's armed forces, and a disproportionate part of the Republican right's grassroots support."

Being an Appalachian hillbilly transplanted into the South, this quote resonated particularly with me. I have found it increasingly odd that the Appalachians, with their long history of labor organizing (Mother Jones, UMWA, John L. Lewis) and "outsider/insider" unity (aka "hillbillies stick together"), have thrown their lot in with Southern political/social attitudes to such an extreme. Yet I'm coming to realize that the Southern attitude is not bred specifically from location, but from a unique sense of loss, and given the Appalachians have definitely lost, in terms of power, economics, and influence in modern America, it isn't as hard to understand.

And frankly, the Left self-destructing into moral relativism hasn't really helped much.

If you are a "loser" in the globalized, hyperchanging society, well, you'd probably prefer to at least be associated with a winner, ay? And if that winner is someone who makes a good show of providing safety and empowerment, well, all the more reason to ignore reality.

"What matters, at least politically, he argued, is that "Americans need to feel assured that our leaders will crush those who would hurt us. Correctly or incorrectly, Americans wonder whether Democrats have the stomach for this. They don't wonder about Mr. Cheney or Mr. Bush.""

Risk society, indeed.

Why I am writing this instead of my overdue papers, I'm not quite sure. Perhaps because "community collaborative ecosystem management" just doesn't seem as worthwhile when the power structures are so chaotic as to preclude any sort of certainty in long-term negotiations. What good to make agreements with government when the government has decided it will simply ignore (or invalidate, or remove) any agreements it doesn't like? even if they are written into the Constitution?

thoughts on the long emergency

I recently re-read the Rolling Stone excerpt of Kuntsler's The Long Emergency. I think I'm supposed to be more scared than I am. Admittedly, to an American middle-class materialistic individualist, the post-oil future is probably the worst possible nightmare: no ability to thoughtlessly consume cheap stuff, and a profound need to act in community in order to survive. However, to many long-thinkers, a similar vision of a localized, healthy, relatively equitable and ecologically sustainable society is actually to be wished for, not feared.

From this perspective, the BIG issues are not what will exist in the aftermath, but what will happen on the way, and which vision for social organization will "win out," one in which a spiritually progressive sense of fairness and justice underlies our communal interactions, or one in which social control is maintained in a strongly hierarchical, and perhaps theocratically-based, manner similar to Middle Ages feudalism. I'm trying to imagine a combination of the two.... but failing rather miserably.

perhaps what I really need to visualize is the interaction between numerous small states of each kind....

In any case, Kuntsler predicts that two of my favorite regions of the country, namely, the Southeast and the Southwest, will each be hit hard by the intersection of their currently dominant cultures with the end of oil. SO, what the hey... do i move or stay? not a question to be answered today...

oldschool weblogging 5.10.5

"Demand [for energy] is rising around the world; supplies are not growing fast enough to satisfy global requirements; and the global struggle to gain control over whatever supplies are available has become more intense and fractious. Because the first and second of these factors are not likely to abate in the years ahead, the third can only grow more pronounced."
Link

"It's time to leave the stone age. Will we do so because we fear what will happen if we don't? Or because we look forward to what will happen if we do?"
Link

"With "the death of environmentalism" being debated across the land—and with the mainstream movement under siege from without and within—it's time to meet the winning side in America's new green wars. Here they come, ready or not: the 20 most powerful voices leading the environmental counterrevolution."Link

"Just as their cars aren't kludgy and their food isn't flavorless, their homes aren't drafty or dimly lit. Call them hygridders. And look for them soon in a neighborhood near you. Because - trendmeisters, take note - hygrid is the new Prius."
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"At the integral stage of consciousness, there is not an attempt to articulate the politics of homosexuality and defend it using operational/functional logic; instead, there is an acknowledgement and embrace of a plurality of politics of homosexuality (actually, of views of homosexuality embodied at a wide spectrum of levels of consciousness)...."
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