It seems that, whatever rights of women to control their own bodies hang in the balance here, what is at stake most immediately is the 2006 midterm elections and the republican control of congress. These states that are sending their measures tot he Supreme Court are counting on the Alito and Roberts shift in the court to give them what they want. None of this is definitely certain and, if the court were to overturn these precidents, it will be obvious what the rest of us are up against.
If they support the precidents, however, the hundreds of senators and congresspeople who ran on the ticket of getting the courts packed to do the bidding of the right wing base will have most of their support evaporate. Actually in either case, unless they manufacture another sensational scandal to protect people from, there will be little for them to run on. They will have already delivered. This is not to say that Democrats or left wing representatives have any better chance since they still don't seem to have any coherent plan. But in purely political terms, either way this seems to be the kind of thing that will either hurt or do nothing for the party in power and, if anyone is paying attention, it will likely have the former effect. Here's hoping anyway.
Thursday, February 23, 2006
So now it starts...where are the libertarians when you need them!
> South Dakota passes abortion ban
>
> Wed Feb 22, 10:06 PM ET
>
> South Dakota became the first U.S. state to pass a law
> banning abortion in virtually all cases, with the
> intention of forcing the Supreme Court to reconsider
> its 1973 decision legalizing the procedure.
>
> The law, which would punish doctors who perform the
> operation with a five-year prison term and a $5,000
> fine, awaits the signature of Republican Gov. Michael
> Rounds and people on both sides of the issue say he is
> unlikely to veto it.
>
> "My understanding is we are the first state to truly
> defy Roe v. Wade," the 1973 high court ruling that
> granted a constitutional right to abortion, said Kate
> Looby of Planned Parenthood's South Dakota chapter.
>
> [...]
>
>
_______________________
>
> Wed Feb 22, 10:06 PM ET
>
> South Dakota became the first U.S. state to pass a law
> banning abortion in virtually all cases, with the
> intention of forcing the Supreme Court to reconsider
> its 1973 decision legalizing the procedure.
>
> The law, which would punish doctors who perform the
> operation with a five-year prison term and a $5,000
> fine, awaits the signature of Republican Gov. Michael
> Rounds and people on both sides of the issue say he is
> unlikely to veto it.
>
> "My understanding is we are the first state to truly
> defy Roe v. Wade," the 1973 high court ruling that
> granted a constitutional right to abortion, said Kate
> Looby of Planned Parenthood's South Dakota chapter.
>
> [...]
>
>
_______________________
South Dakota says, "That's not your vagina! That's OUR vagina."
So now it starts...We will need to have tracking devices on all women--intra-uteral satellite transponders that will keep track of when women become pregnant (and especially before hand--they are doing ever more reckless, independent things). Then special data collectors to make sure that they don't do anything to harm the fetus during the term (drinking, smoking, staying up late, talking back to their husbands, anything that can be "scientifically proven" to harm the fetus). All of this would be necessary because, if abortion is illegal, we have to know that doctors won't be the only ones doing it; a black market will grow up around this and the people who can pay will get it done. Sounds like the going rate will be about $5K. So the peple who we will need the transponders on the most are the rich ladies, but we might as well have all uteruses equipped with them. All run through the fetal protection administration (FPA) under the Total Uteral Resource Monitoring Act (TURMA).
Once the fetuses start growing, it will be important to monitor the fetal hosts (formerly known as "mothers" or "women") to make certain that no improper care is made of the fetus. In the past, fetal hosts were seen as responsible, perhaps even as the ones most able to make decisions for the fetuses they carried: in the state mandated version of "the culture of life," this cannot be taken for granted. Luckily we have the ability to create the technology to monitor the uteral resources of our nation to be sure they are properly managed for fetal growth. Of course this monitoring will only be for the benefit of the fetus and, upon birth, as now, the responsibility will be left to the "mother." (After they're born, as now, they're your problem!)
The monitoring of the fetal host will need to take place under close observation. These facilities could be doubled as detention facilities for female citizens who do not observe their responsibilities as fetal hosts, again according to the "scientific" definition of what is good for the baby, the rigors of which are evident in the metaphysical definition of life that has generated this state policy. The mandatory sentence limit for this kind of murder will have to be mitigated in some part by the fetal hosts' age and fertility. If both are in order, it makes sense to let her win some concessions by agreeing to participate once again in the Culture of Life. Perhaps public impregnation would be an agreeable punishment for such a fetal host.
The monitoring of the fetal host will need to take place under close observation. These facilities could be doubled as detention facilities for female citizens who do not observe their responsibilities as fetal hosts, again according to the "scientific" definition of what is good for the baby, the rigors of which are evident in the metaphysical definition of life that has generated this state policy. The mandatory sentence limit for this kind of murder will have to be mitigated in some part by the fetal hosts' age and fertility. If both are in order, it makes sense to let her win some concessions by agreeing to participate once again in the Culture of Life. Perhaps public impregnation would be an agreeable punishment for such a fetal host.
The difficult part will be keeping track of all the miscarriages. Because something like 90% of fertilized eggs are either never implanted or are lost during term, this will be a hefty endeavor to be sure. Many women don't even know they have a fertilized egg or are pregnant until well into the pregnancy. This will require some very high tech gear implanted deep in the womb in order to monitor every woman's cycle--which would then immediately let her know so that she can adjust her behavior to limit her risk of prosecution. In the event of a miscarriage, she'll need to make sure to save whatever fetal material is left and transfer it to the Miscarriage Investigation Unit (MIU). Eventually we can probably make it possible for the MIU to be on call to come collect this fetal material, but in the meantime, emotionally distressing as it might be, she'll need to make sure to save everything and notify the local police of the death so they can begin collecting data to determine if it was just accidental manslaughter or intentional murder. (Right now it's just a $5K fine, but I am sure eventually it will be a murder charge on top of it--a life is a life, right?).
The fine will certainly stay in place because we'll need some way to pay for developing all of this technology and monitoring the 70 million or so women of childbearing age 24 hours a day through all their sexual activities and uteral events. Since we aren't allowed to use any public administration in matters of health care, we will probably contract this out to a private company. They will be better motivated to keep these matters on the up and up because the free market will encourage them to innovate their technology and keep a very close eye on the uteruses in their database. A tie in with private detention facilities could also be profitable for them as then they could collect fines and confine women as well. As for the trials that would evaluate the data, well they would all be based on the highly scientific instruments of these institutions so there would be little doubt about the guilt of these baby killers. It might have to be mitigated if more than 50% of the female population was eventually incarcerated, but at least we'd be able to keep a close eye on them. (This is also a way that cases of rape or incest could be more quickly determined. With so much monitoring of uteral resources, we should be able to quickly determine if the fetus is the product of family members. On rape, there must certainly be a way of determining if the fetal host "wanted it," as they say colloquiually. Chemical indicators or possibly other forms of phyisical evidence could be collected in real time and used to determine this in each case. And either way, in a Culture of Life--does it really matter who helped God's miracle come about within the fetal host! Praise Jesus!)
A possible company that could handle all of this would be KBR, the subsidiary of Halliburton that has just been awarded a contract to be on hand in case we need to round up the immigrants in the country:
KBR awarded Homeland Security contract worth up to $385M
By Katherine Hunt
Last Update: 12:19 PM ET Jan 24, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- KBR, the engineering and construction subsidiary of Halliburton Co. (HAL : Halliburton Company, said Tuesday it has been awarded a contingency contract from the Department of Homeland Security to supports its Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in the event of an emergency. The maximum total value of the contract is $385 million and consists of a 1-year base period with four 1-year options. KBR held the previous ICE contract from 2000 through 2005. The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to expand existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new
programs, KBR said. The contract may also provide migrant detention support to other government organizations in the event of an immigration emergency, as well as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency, such as a natural disaster, the company said.
today when President Bush announces his plan (in response to Hurricane Katrina) for disaster relief being run through the Pentagon instead of FEMA, this is what he means--more troops from private security agencies (though at least we know it won't be managed by one of those misogynistic Muslim nations [lots of irony here], thanks to the xenophobic patriots looking out for our national security). It is sure to be efficient though, just as the MIU of the FPA will be. KBR or like companies certainly have the ability to house fetal hosts in cases of mass pregnancy and it makes sense to speak with defense contractors about developing the intrauteral technology necessary to monitor the nation's valuable uteral resources: it is an issue of national security, after all. The Culture of Life must be protected with the fiercest most precise weapons available.
The issue of male seed emissions will eventually have to be dealt with as well, as we wouldn't want to be hypocritical. Keeping close track of lost opportunities to fertilize our nation's valuable ovular resources seems as important an issue as lost fetuses themselves. Ideally it would be mandated that every male seed emission be made inside a potential fetal host, but since social norms have changes some since the thirteenth century, and potential fetal hosts have been encouraged to be in more control of the entry points to their wombs, it may take some time before an actual mandate can be applied and full state/corporate control of all sexual interactions can be more completely secured.
If the question of liberty arises or the intrusion of government into people's private affairs, there might be little defense. But since most women in the country seem completely okay with this as they have been silent on the issue for several years, the evidence would suggest that there would be little resistance.
On the other hand, if there was some resistance to this obvious intrusion--it would be about fucking time. Let's just hope we don't need this far of an intrusion is necessary for the people in this country--and especially the women--to wake up and realize that fascists are hijacking their vaginas.
Monday, February 06, 2006
Amusing ourselves to death 20th anniversary
Here is Andrew Postman--Neil Postman's son--introducing the 20th anniversary edition of Postman's book. It is followed by Jay Rosen answering comments about Postman, McLuhan and media theory in general.
I agree that Postman is relevant, but I think there are important critiques of Postman left off of this list. First, like Innis, he has this image of a time when there was a more democratic discourse--namely during the time of the greeks when the balance between the verbal and written was made to enhance both the interaction of the present and the recognition of tradition. Of course this model was also based upon a whole class of slaves being excluded from the polis and, though the rest of the democratic interaction was indeed deep, it couldn't travel well at all, as Perry Anderson and many others discuss, and therefore it ultimately results in the failure of the Greek attempt at Emprire.
Second, like the other critics of the media ecology after Innis, Postman posits a sort of transhistorical nature to the "bias of communication" which takes the least important aspect of Innis' critique and makes it the primary argument. Innis was concerned to show the way that economics and power had been intertwined with whatever model of media had become dominant--often suggesting that the model of communication adopted was a reflection of the needs of the ruling class. Thus whatever bias the communication had was more political-functional than a technical-teleological. This was true of both the ruling class and the people able to subvert the ruling class: their success was in some way predicated on the strategic manipulation of new communication methods (usually imported from somewhere else rather than invented) or novel refunctioning of previously available communication. This refashioning of communication--in form, media, content, and practice--then limited the kind of thought and power that could exist, it defined the media ecology according to predetermined ends that would remain dominant until a new social group subverted current practice.
Admittedly, I am now reading Innis more through the lens of various forms of historical sociology and the ideas of Bourdieu, but I think he is more in line with those thinkers and that, while Postman is undoubtedly an improvement on McLuhan, he still mostly avoids looking at the more historical, political aspect of media, preferring instead to say that it is a technological change itself that has made things different--the telegraph and the photograph, the TV and the radio are what cause the breakdown of US civil discourse, not because of the way that they are implemented but simply as part of their essence. Though he hedges at several points on this and makes the key distinction between the technology and the media--the latter being the social relations the technology creates--the upshot of the book is undoubtedly that the instruments of communication are basically just found like any other technology and implemented in the only possible way to create the vast wasteland of infotainment that is a stark contrast to earlier forms of communication.
Most importantly, this avoids considering the effect that commercialization of all forms of media in the US has on the quality of discourse or the way that this imperative is often the key to the shaping of the media in the direction he discusses. The work of scholars like McChesney on the history of radio and the Mattalart book mentioned in my previous post points to the way, at each junction the technology got shaped in a certain way--usually along market oriented lines. The unqualified questions of the possibility of the internet for democratic communication are, also as mentioned in the previous post, obviously borne of this kind of historical unawareness and technological determinism. When you compare the conjunctural manifestations of these technologies as media (in Postman's sense) it seems obvious: TV is beamed out from a central location and the internet is supposedly modeled on distributed production and consumption. Further, Postman's argument about the way that TV shapes the consciousness of all other media seems even more relevant to even the discussion of the commercialization of the internet: not only are the media companies hoping to use that model in their reshaping of the web, but most media consumers will probably find little to disagree with in that model. But here is the rub, it is not because TV has some inherent property that infects the consciousness of the average consumer, making them more liable to agree with a TV-ization of the internet; it is the capitalist society in general--as argued by Smythe--and the class interests the media is intended to serve that make the shaping of the communications technology in a certain direction seem both natural and inevitable. Postman and McLuhan are content to point to the surface manifestations of this, but neglect considering the deeper social, political, and economic struggles that help to create this--and which Innis, in his sweeping portrayal, was always interested in uncovering.
This brings us to the third major criticism of the book, which is common to most arguments--for instance that of Habermas on the public sphere and even DeBord's Society of the Spectacle--which is that they all rely on an idealized moment of the democratic performance of the media in the public sphere. As Schudson is keen to point out, as important as the ideal of the public sphere is, we have no historical precedent for it. Though Nancy Fraser and other critics are quick to point out that there were restrictions on who could actually participate, Schudson makes the even more interesting point that, even those who were allowed to participate weren't particularly active. This isn't disabling for Postman or any other critic of the media, but it does pose a deeper problem for anyone proposing to use media reform of any kind, using Postman's logic, because it will mean that we have many other things to do to reinvigorate civil society than just limiting commercial consolodation or the growth of more emphasis on the entertainment imperative (two related moves in Postman, Habermas and DeBord.)
Strategically, as a first shot across the bow, this book is an important intervention in the education of most undergraduates. But it is merely a good introduction to the critique of the current media ecology that would require a deeper understanding of both the history and the interests encrusted in the formation of that media environment and the individual consciousness it helps shape. To his credit, unlike McLuhan, he makes the former the more important instrument than the latter. But, again to refer to the earlier post, knowing what could happen to any media given a change in regulation, ownership or emphasis and how a current structure is neither inevitable nor transhistorical is a more nuanced and empowering way to understand media ecology. In so far as Postman leads us to the latter conclusion, he is an essential critic; in so far as we stop with that critique, we disarm ourselves from both a defensive and offensive ability at protecting or changing anything about the communications systems our democracy (and economy) demands.
I agree that Postman is relevant, but I think there are important critiques of Postman left off of this list. First, like Innis, he has this image of a time when there was a more democratic discourse--namely during the time of the greeks when the balance between the verbal and written was made to enhance both the interaction of the present and the recognition of tradition. Of course this model was also based upon a whole class of slaves being excluded from the polis and, though the rest of the democratic interaction was indeed deep, it couldn't travel well at all, as Perry Anderson and many others discuss, and therefore it ultimately results in the failure of the Greek attempt at Emprire.
Second, like the other critics of the media ecology after Innis, Postman posits a sort of transhistorical nature to the "bias of communication" which takes the least important aspect of Innis' critique and makes it the primary argument. Innis was concerned to show the way that economics and power had been intertwined with whatever model of media had become dominant--often suggesting that the model of communication adopted was a reflection of the needs of the ruling class. Thus whatever bias the communication had was more political-functional than a technical-teleological. This was true of both the ruling class and the people able to subvert the ruling class: their success was in some way predicated on the strategic manipulation of new communication methods (usually imported from somewhere else rather than invented) or novel refunctioning of previously available communication. This refashioning of communication--in form, media, content, and practice--then limited the kind of thought and power that could exist, it defined the media ecology according to predetermined ends that would remain dominant until a new social group subverted current practice.
Admittedly, I am now reading Innis more through the lens of various forms of historical sociology and the ideas of Bourdieu, but I think he is more in line with those thinkers and that, while Postman is undoubtedly an improvement on McLuhan, he still mostly avoids looking at the more historical, political aspect of media, preferring instead to say that it is a technological change itself that has made things different--the telegraph and the photograph, the TV and the radio are what cause the breakdown of US civil discourse, not because of the way that they are implemented but simply as part of their essence. Though he hedges at several points on this and makes the key distinction between the technology and the media--the latter being the social relations the technology creates--the upshot of the book is undoubtedly that the instruments of communication are basically just found like any other technology and implemented in the only possible way to create the vast wasteland of infotainment that is a stark contrast to earlier forms of communication.
Most importantly, this avoids considering the effect that commercialization of all forms of media in the US has on the quality of discourse or the way that this imperative is often the key to the shaping of the media in the direction he discusses. The work of scholars like McChesney on the history of radio and the Mattalart book mentioned in my previous post points to the way, at each junction the technology got shaped in a certain way--usually along market oriented lines. The unqualified questions of the possibility of the internet for democratic communication are, also as mentioned in the previous post, obviously borne of this kind of historical unawareness and technological determinism. When you compare the conjunctural manifestations of these technologies as media (in Postman's sense) it seems obvious: TV is beamed out from a central location and the internet is supposedly modeled on distributed production and consumption. Further, Postman's argument about the way that TV shapes the consciousness of all other media seems even more relevant to even the discussion of the commercialization of the internet: not only are the media companies hoping to use that model in their reshaping of the web, but most media consumers will probably find little to disagree with in that model. But here is the rub, it is not because TV has some inherent property that infects the consciousness of the average consumer, making them more liable to agree with a TV-ization of the internet; it is the capitalist society in general--as argued by Smythe--and the class interests the media is intended to serve that make the shaping of the communications technology in a certain direction seem both natural and inevitable. Postman and McLuhan are content to point to the surface manifestations of this, but neglect considering the deeper social, political, and economic struggles that help to create this--and which Innis, in his sweeping portrayal, was always interested in uncovering.
This brings us to the third major criticism of the book, which is common to most arguments--for instance that of Habermas on the public sphere and even DeBord's Society of the Spectacle--which is that they all rely on an idealized moment of the democratic performance of the media in the public sphere. As Schudson is keen to point out, as important as the ideal of the public sphere is, we have no historical precedent for it. Though Nancy Fraser and other critics are quick to point out that there were restrictions on who could actually participate, Schudson makes the even more interesting point that, even those who were allowed to participate weren't particularly active. This isn't disabling for Postman or any other critic of the media, but it does pose a deeper problem for anyone proposing to use media reform of any kind, using Postman's logic, because it will mean that we have many other things to do to reinvigorate civil society than just limiting commercial consolodation or the growth of more emphasis on the entertainment imperative (two related moves in Postman, Habermas and DeBord.)
Strategically, as a first shot across the bow, this book is an important intervention in the education of most undergraduates. But it is merely a good introduction to the critique of the current media ecology that would require a deeper understanding of both the history and the interests encrusted in the formation of that media environment and the individual consciousness it helps shape. To his credit, unlike McLuhan, he makes the former the more important instrument than the latter. But, again to refer to the earlier post, knowing what could happen to any media given a change in regulation, ownership or emphasis and how a current structure is neither inevitable nor transhistorical is a more nuanced and empowering way to understand media ecology. In so far as Postman leads us to the latter conclusion, he is an essential critic; in so far as we stop with that critique, we disarm ourselves from both a defensive and offensive ability at protecting or changing anything about the communications systems our democracy (and economy) demands.
The end of the internet
On one hand, I think apocolyptic statements like these disillusion people because they make these changes a foregone conclusion for people who want to keep them from happening and, if they don't happen immediately, a round of seemingly baseless cynicism for the unconvinced. On the other, this author points out that there are still some avenues for action and is merely warning, much like many other media critics of the moment, that we are at one of those conjunctures where a permanent change in the function of the internet is possible.
The optimistic part of me has always believed that people wouldn't stand for this. The commercialization of the Internet would most certainly quell the already stunted realm of debate and interaction that takes place over it and choke off some of the more creative elements of our current culture. My belief, also, was that these companies would realize the kind of stifling effect their plans would have on the online community, seeing it as more in their interest to find ways to profit from the existing model rather than reducing the number of people able to participate. Wouldn't they realize that by killing the existing community they would be undermining their possible market base?
Then I remembered that they don't really care about this community: the democratic story line was just an ideological cover along the lines of Saint Simon in Mattelart's Networking the World. These companies could care less about the existing community precisely because they haven't really profited from it. The only reason they got involved in the first place was for profit --and not just reasonable profit but dotcom boom-fistfuls of dollars profits. Since that hasn't materialized in the existing model, it is no loss for them to mow down what is and try to build something that they can commercialize--just like they have done in built space over and over, as urban studies people have often noted.
This led me to also remember that, like Saint Simon, there is always plenty of ideological cover for whatever is ultimately done in the name of profit and, like my optimistic side, most people fail to understand the delicate balance of forces that has allowed the internet to thrive, instead accepting it as a sort of technologically determined function of the network. Further, many people, in their everyday dealings on the net, will probably see little change and, most importantly, a good number will probably have little problem in paying fees for services as they have the means, barely use it anyway, and see it (like these media corporations) as just another box in their house that brings them media. They aren't interactive with it (except through e-mail) and would probably be much happier to be able to watch TV on demand than to have equal access to various producers--after all, they have pretty much accepted that model for all the other boxes that bring them media.
But maybe this move, inspired by greed and commercial pigheadedness will simply further inspire the push for more public forms of the internet. I suppose that if it is, I should be involved in that push.
The optimistic part of me has always believed that people wouldn't stand for this. The commercialization of the Internet would most certainly quell the already stunted realm of debate and interaction that takes place over it and choke off some of the more creative elements of our current culture. My belief, also, was that these companies would realize the kind of stifling effect their plans would have on the online community, seeing it as more in their interest to find ways to profit from the existing model rather than reducing the number of people able to participate. Wouldn't they realize that by killing the existing community they would be undermining their possible market base?
Then I remembered that they don't really care about this community: the democratic story line was just an ideological cover along the lines of Saint Simon in Mattelart's Networking the World. These companies could care less about the existing community precisely because they haven't really profited from it. The only reason they got involved in the first place was for profit --and not just reasonable profit but dotcom boom-fistfuls of dollars profits. Since that hasn't materialized in the existing model, it is no loss for them to mow down what is and try to build something that they can commercialize--just like they have done in built space over and over, as urban studies people have often noted.
This led me to also remember that, like Saint Simon, there is always plenty of ideological cover for whatever is ultimately done in the name of profit and, like my optimistic side, most people fail to understand the delicate balance of forces that has allowed the internet to thrive, instead accepting it as a sort of technologically determined function of the network. Further, many people, in their everyday dealings on the net, will probably see little change and, most importantly, a good number will probably have little problem in paying fees for services as they have the means, barely use it anyway, and see it (like these media corporations) as just another box in their house that brings them media. They aren't interactive with it (except through e-mail) and would probably be much happier to be able to watch TV on demand than to have equal access to various producers--after all, they have pretty much accepted that model for all the other boxes that bring them media.
But maybe this move, inspired by greed and commercial pigheadedness will simply further inspire the push for more public forms of the internet. I suppose that if it is, I should be involved in that push.
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