Mom,

I am just glad we can talk to you about these things and I hope that we are all able to become more knowledgeable on the many subjects we have to in order to be informed citizens. Just so you know, as an additional Mother's Day gift, Jill and I made a contribution to the investigative fund of a good alternative publication that looks into a variety of progressive causes. They definitely have an agenda, but their investigative reporting is top notch. You will soon be receiving bi-monthly issues of their magazine, Mother Jones. If you are interested in checking out one of their recent stories, you can look at the recent set of cover stories on the way that Exxon-Mobil and other oil companies have helped to fund a large contingent of think tanks, public policy groups, PR people and even faux media outlets in an attempt to counter any and all claims that global warming exists.

Here is the full spread, with 4 or 5 stories
http://www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2005/05/world_burns.html

and here is the main story
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2005/05/some_like_it_hot.html

It is a lot to absorb and should still be read critically, but the linkages they uncover--and blatent statements by these groups that they intend to spread falsehood in order to meet their public relations goals--make for a sick picture of corporate greed at its worst. Virtually every other country in the world--and all the other industrialized "civilized" nations (now even the Russians!) have seen that this is an important issue for the future of the planet. The US claims that changing anything will be bad for business.

But if our government had made this a priority ten years ago, like the Japanese, then we wouldn't be begging the Japanese to make more Hybrid cars this year and Ford and GM wouldn't have their stocks rated as "Junk bonds." The fact of the matter is that, by trying to distort the science in their favor, Exxon-Mobil have actually hurt the long term viability of US industry by trying to keep things as they are. While the president talks about the need to fund clean coal and we worry about how to protect the new oil pipeline flowing out of the Caspian, Japan has sponsored initiatives that have inspired Kyocera to make shingles out of solar panels so that it becomes possible to run much of a house's energy off of solar power. The Japanese government predicts that by 2030, they will be able to get 50%(!!!) of their country's power needs from solar energy.

As you know from walking in the Texas sun, you live in one of the biggest solar markets in the world (where you get direct sunlight almost year round.) But because of powerful interests in our country, there have been no initiatives to spur this kind of innovation. In five or ten years when the American people decide it is worth doing, it is Japanese corporations--and a few California firms--that will reap the rewards. But even this won't happen until we get the energy corporations that have benefited from deregulation over the past decade to loosen their grip on the mind of the government--and of consumers who think the only way they can power their homes is by buying energy from corporations like Enron.

A movement has been brewing for more than a decade to make it more reasonable for US homeowners and businesses to build energy supply like wind, biomass or solar into their structures. It is meant to overcome one of the persistent problems with these forms of renewable energy: they aren't always consistently available and when they are, sometimes they generate much more energy than you can possibly use. So, in addition to certain tax breaks for, say, powering your home with solar panels, many states are now requiring energy companies to offer you "net metering" or "net billing."

(link here: http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/renewable_energy/page.cfm?pageID=104 )

Basically, it works like this. When you have your own power source hooked up to your house and you are hooked up to the power grid, if you produce more power than you need, you are actually putting energy back onto the grid for other people to use: in these cases, your electricity meter actually turns backwards. A net metering agreement with your energy company, depending on how it is set up, would allow consumers to only pay for the energy they pull off of the grid and to get credit for the energy they put back onto it. About 30 states have agreements that make this possible (as I understand it), but energy companies often fight it tooth and nail in state legislatures (whose representatives they often make donations) and courts when consumers and businesses try to do it--and very few people know about it at all.

When people think about solar power they ask where we could possibly put all the panels we'd need to supply energy for entire cities. They imagine that we would need enormous solar farms like they have in Germany. But this is because they--and our political leaders--imagine that the only way to make energy is to have it supplied by a large corporation or centralized facility. But if you imagine instead of a centralized energy field, solar panels on every roof in Texas, it becomes a little easier to imagine how it might happen. This is just the kind of issues that, if the president had any political will to actually work on solving the energy problem, if it was something that companies with a stake in the status quo didn't try to dominate, then we would be able to use all of our creative resources and just might figure out a way to have energy without relying on centralized plants--whether public or private--running on fossil fuels or nuclear power except in extreme circumstances. Of course I could be loony or clueless, but it is something that just might work. I would have to defer to the scientists and engineers in the family who have far more knowledge on such matters.

anyway, off to bed. I was supposed to be grading student speeches. I guess that will have to wait.

I love you and hope that you're all doing well.

best,

-s

On intellegent design and the scientific field

Article in the New Yorker addresses something that the scientific community cannot: the scientific claims of intelligent design. In a quote that could have been lifted out of Bourdieu's essay on the scientific field, H. ALLEN ORR notes that addressing the claims of ID are actually an act of consecration that most [actual] scientists would rather not perform.

If a scientific claim can be loosely defined as one that scientists take seriously enough to debate, then engaging the intelligent-design movement on scientific grounds, they worry, cedes what it most desires: recognition that its claims are legitimate scientific ones.

The article looks at two of the main theorists who have challenged the theory of evolution and it seems that the main challenge is that it seems implausible on some level that these things have evolved in the way that they have in some "natural" manner. The main focus is on the questions of cellular structures which are so complex that it doesn't seem possible that they evolved. It is quite a leap in logic to say that because something seems implausible the only possible explanation is that they were created by an intelligent individual. On some level, the problem from my perspective is that there is a belief in God being some uber-human sitting on a cloud somewhere, thinking things up and coordinating the movements of 6 billion humans and trillions and trillions of other life forms. A more dispersed notion of god--as an energy that flows through the universe that we channel in some way--as touchy feely and utterly unacceptable to a judeo-christian tradition of monotheism would be much more able to explain the intricacies of development and the possibility of there being some sort of intention or goal in the design of organisms. This is an idea which I never feel comfortable considering and realize the ways that it is very likely a partial result of the intellectual current I am swimming in and, possibly, the result of the current state of capitalist social relations, a point recently made by Zizek

But I also have seen some of these ideas reference to Feurerbach's Essence of Christianity. The latter, according to Robert Tucker was a key influence for Marx in that he helped to make Hegel's philosophy of history viable again. Here I will quote at length from Tucker's description of F's innovation:

Briefly, Marx created his theory of history as a conscious act of translation of Hegel's theory into what he, Marx, took to be its valid or scientific form. In this he followed the procedure of the German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, author of The Essence of Christianity (1841), who had argued that Hegel's philosophy could reveal scienticif truth if subjected to "transformational criticism." This consisted in the inverting of its principle presuppositions, meaning that one transposed subject and predicate in them. For Hegel man is spirit (or God) in the process of self-alienation and self-realization, i.e. man presents himself in history as self alienated God. The truth, says Feuerbach, is just the reverse. Instead of seing man as self-alienating God, we must see God as self alienated man. That is [and here's the key section that I find stimulating] when man, the human species, projects an idealized image of itself into heaven as "God" and worships this imaginary heavenly being, it becomes estranged from itself; its own ungodly earthly reality becomes alien and hateful. To overcome this alienation man must repossess his alienated being, take "God" back into himself, recognize in man--and specifically in other human individuals--the proper object of care, love and worship.--Marx Engels Reader, 2nd ed., Norton, xxii-xxiii.

This idea of god being something that works through people or through nature is a longstanding pagan belief, but it is also pivotal to what I understand to be the fundamental of Gnostic Christianity. The ideas of that tradition, which are, arguably, coeval with the dominant Christian traditions today and possibly even connected to buddhism and what we now call hinduism, are very much about overcoming this self-alienation and preventing this division, projection and idealization of god by seeking knowledge of the self and the world; as Pagels summarizes, "According to the gnostic teacher Theodotus, writing in Asia Minor (c. 140-160), the gnostic is one has come to understand who we were, and what we have become; where we were... whither we are hastening; from what we are being released; what birth is, and what is rebirth. Yet to know oneself, at the deepest level, is simultaneously to know God; this is the secret of gnosis."

Though maybe I am weaving too many disparate threads here together, it seems that there is a way that this connects with a tradition of study and theory of the way that spiritual forces are distributed throughout "creation." This understanding of god is, again according to Tucker, central to Marx's theory of civil society as being the source of the production of value. [ Rosenberg says this creation is contingent on the development of a separate political realm of the sovereign state, i.e they are mutually constitutive rather than cause and effect and by separating civil society from the possible realm of politics (even, as Polanyi points out, if the constitution of that divide was also, in part, a political act enacted by people who believed in the existence of the divide)]. Tucker says that Marx "inverted the Hegelian proposition on the relation between the state and "civil society" (bürgerliche Gesellschaft, by which Hegel meant the realm of private economic endeavor). Civil society was not an outgrowth of the state, as in Hegel's view; rather, the state was an outgrowth of civil society. The primary sphere of man's being was not his life as a citizen of the state but rather his economic life in civil society." (Ibid, xxiv)

There is a lot to unpack here--and I am certain contradictions abound above, but all of this is to say that it doesn't make much philosophical sense to join a libertarian philosophy of human relations with fundamentalist Christianity. In some ways, I am a bit shocked that adherents of free market capitalism can adhere to these notions of God as they do. The author of this article on ID often makes analogies to other forms of human social formation and techological creation and one such discussion seems ripe for comparison to both Hayek and Marx:

It’s true that when you confront biologists with a particular complex structure like the flagellum they sometimes have a hard time saying which part appeared before which other parts. But then it can be hard, with any complex historical process, to reconstruct the exact order in which events occurred, especially when, as in evolution, the addition of new parts encourages the modification of old ones. When you’re looking at a bustling urban street, for example, you probably can’t tell which shop went into business first. This is partly because many businesses now depend on each other and partly because new shops trigger changes in old ones (the new sushi place draws twenty-somethings who demand wireless Internet at the café next door). But it would be a little rash to conclude that all the shops must have begun business on the same day or that some Unseen Urban Planner had carefully determined just which business went where.

What I find interesting is that both Hayek and Marx would probably agree with the historical narrative of how this city developed and the only difference would be that Hayek would say that there was no need for a state at all and the city would develop on its own without any intervention and based solely on the mechanism of the market, Marx, in my crude understanding of both, would probably agree if only one could dispense with political power in general and the presence of classes who would insist on the alienation of some others.

[would be interesting to consider the problem of use-value production in both cases and the emergence of vapid strip malls in place of a vibrant urban setting with something more than commerce in mind.]

Either way, it is entirely contradictory to claim that human society, with it's complex rules, mores, inventions, practices, etc. is possibly the outcome of a simple interplay of natural motivations which balance each other out and lead to the "survival of the fittest" while simultaneously claiming that in nature this idea seems so unplausible that it can only be explained by introducing a single intelligent planner.

If I do get a chance to elaborate on this, I would point out the way that Darwinism, according to Hielbroner, as an idea, both fed into and on the economic philosophies of the nineteenth century, leading eventually to the social darwinism that helped to justify all sorts of economic and political injustice and, in many ways, still informs the mainstream belief in the fundamental character of the market--what's best and most worthy, rises to the top. Yet the people who advocate most strongly for the market as a mechanism in this country are also those who seem most adamently opposed to the idea of Darwinism in explaining natural development. The opposite, or vice versa, of course, is true of some unreflexive leftists. But all of this is to be saved for another time. I have class to teach tomorrow.

Danny Glover pulls out of Haiti visit citing concerns over legitimacy of currently installed government as well as human rights concerns. I was really surprised to hear him speak passionately about the trip he was making and the work he was doing to make this cruise happen when I heard him on the local NPR station last mont. But I am equally, if not more impressed to see him take such a principled stance. When I heard he was pulling out I thought it would be for some bullshit celebrity reason. But this is pretty reasonable and must have been a big deal for him and his group to make this decision. On the other hand, it was the right thing to do and really adds to their cause even more than actually carrying through with the cruise. He manages to give a short history of the Haitian revolution and makes an interesting correlation that can't be completely without merit--it even sounds completely reasonable, even if it is not something that the US would ever accept as history proper:

The defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte's army, and the French failure to regain control over San Domingue, as Haiti was then known, contributed to the end of French colonial ambitions in the western hemisphere. In 1803 France sold its North American province of Louisiana , a region of more than 800,000 square miles west of the Mississippi River, to the United States .

ShopNetDaily.com - A WorldNetDaily Exclusive!: "God has brought hundreds of people back from the dead, mostly in the last 15 years. These are not near-death experiences, but real resurrections of actual corpses. "

eeek. WTF. This has to be some wierd "Virgen de Guadelupe" kind of thinking. ANd this guy is celebrating it as a positive development! I hope there is intelligent life on other planets because someone will need to piece together the history of our decimation at the hands of fundamentalists of all kinds.

Other articles...

http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/05/issue/feature_earth.asp?p=1

Environmental Heresies
By Stewart Brand
May 2005

Over the next ten years, I predict, the mainstream of the environmental movement will reverse its opinion and activism in four major areas: population growth, urbani­zation, genetically engineered organisms, and nuclear power.

...

This one quite disturbing. Perhaps the best reason to stay away from Diamonds yet. would be great to start a campaign about the effect they have on these women. They may last forever, but they certainly aren't a girl's best friend.

http://www.msmagazine.com/spring2005/congo.asp
“Not Women Anymore…”
The Congo’s rape survivors face pain, shame and AIDS

Ms. Magazine
by Stephanie Nolen

British Intelligence Warned Blair of War: "British Intelligence Warned Blair of War
Prime Minister Was Told of White House's Resolve to Use Military Against Hussein
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 13, 2005; Page A18
Seven months before the invasion of Iraq, the head of British foreign intelligence reported to Prime Minister Tony Blair that President Bush wanted to topple Saddam Hussein by military action and warned that in Washington intelligence was 'being fixed around the policy,' according to notes of a July 23, 2002, meeting with Blair at No. 10 Downing Street."

The Onion | What Do You Think?: "'If we outlawed everything some people find offensive, there wouldn't even be a Texas in the first place.'"

It seems that Texas is trying very hard to look like some sort of fundamentalist paradise. If things don't change, it certainly won't be worth going back to.

Captured Al-Qaeda kingpin is case of �mistaken identity� - Sunday Times - Times Online: "THE capture of a supposed Al-Qaeda kingpin by Pakistani agents last week was hailed by President George W Bush as �a critical victory in the war on terror�. According to European intelligence experts, however, Abu Faraj al-Libbi was not the terrorists� third in command, as claimed, but a middle-ranker derided by one source as �among the flotsam and jetsam� of the organisation. "

oops. I'm sure the major networks will print a retraction soon.

GMU Salary Information

I can't imagine how long this took to compile, but it is a fairly interesting database. I am most upset by the fact that Vernon Smith gets paid more than the provost and John O'Conner gets paid more than Dean Muir--the first more than the second.

F�rum Social Mundial: "This is, in our view, a potentially disastrous development. One of the great beauties of our movement - and of the forums that have emerged from and helped to sustain it - is the way in which people from all sorts of backgrounds and with the most diverse preoccupations come and mix together, participating in a process of mutual contamination in which we learn and gain confidence from one another. This dynamic was greatly weakened by the thematic fragmentation and vast size of the WSF site in Porto Alegre this year "

Callinicos has a good point--one that seems to follow all sorts of academic and intellectual trends: as a subject area grows, it fragments into little ghettos of interest so that people can focus on their pet persepectives.

Unitarian Jihad Name Generator

brilliant--I love people who have extra time on their hands

http://www.uuism.net/uuwiki/index.php/Unitarian_Jihad

it's refreshing when an ideology catches on that isn't out to make people hate each other.

for further reading later on...
http://www.uuff.org/fs_servetus.shtml
http://www.uuff.org/fs_castellio.shtml
http://www.uua.org/info/origins.html

Nice statement on the War on Drugs:
http://www.uua.org/info/origins.html

Most of this from the meta filter thread on the subject. I remember making fun of Joel's religion growing up. He was a good sport. So much of what I mocked before now seems so reasonable. Makes me know that someday I will think the me I am now was such a dope. Silly me-now.

Blackspot Sneaker

The other option to this, which I quite like, is to simply begin producing nike shoes
under different conditions. Produce a version of Nike shoes, from the ground up,
with labor that is completely sweatshop free. You couldn't do it in mass quantity, but
you could probably do it enough to make a statement about the vacuuity of what Nike
is actually claiming to sell and own.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050404/us_nm/media_gore_dc_7

This could be really amazing if they don't fuck it up. Video is becoming an even more important medium and this generation seems to be only engaged for about 15 minutes at a time.

Salon.com News | "Citizen journalists"? Try partisan hacks

The sound of truth interrupts the partisan drumbeat of the echo chamber

Guardian Unlimited | Life | Two-thirds of world's resources 'used up'

Oh if only a culture of life existed in the most powerful country on the planet.

on bullshit

ILAB - The Inadequacy of the Current International Monetary System

Welcome to Public Mind

this could be a really interesting service if it caught on. I wish it would have options, however, so that you could have more of a conversation and/or you could give input on an item you don't want. It is an interesting project in creating a critical mass, but it is still a poor substitute for civil society.

oops! Don't you hate it when other people in the so-called free, civilized world find more secret evidence of your government approved torture program. Better call in the apologists.

Memo Shows U.S. Inmate Interrogation Plans in Iraq

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top U.S. commander in Iraq authorized prisoner
interrogation tactics more harsh than accepted Army practice, including using
guard dogs to exploit "Arab fear of dogs," a memo made public on Tuesday showed.

The Sept. 14, 2003, memo by Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, then the
senior commander in Iraq, was released by the American Civil Liberties Union,
which obtained it from the government under court order through the Freedom of
Information Act.

"The memo clearly establishes that Gen. Sanchez authorized unlawful
interrogation techniques for use in Iraq, and in particular these techniques
violate the Geneva Conventions and the Army's own field manual governing
interrogations," ACLU lawyer Amrit Singh said in an interview.

Shades of Bernays

Another journalist is caught shilling for Bush Co.

TV Reporter Earned Money from State

At the same time one of Florida's most visible television reporters brought
the news to viewers around the state, he earned hundreds of thousands of dollars
on the side from the government agencies he covered.Mike Vasilinda, a 30-year
veteran of the Tallahassee press corps, does public relations work and provides
film editing services to more than a dozen state agencies.His Tallahassee
company, Mike Vasilinda Productions Inc., has earned more than $100,000 over the
past four years through contracts with Gov. Jeb Bush's office, the Secretary of
State, the Department of Education and other government entities that are
routinely part of Vasilinda's stories.Vasilinda also was paid to work on
campaign ads for at least one politician and to create a promotional movie for
Leon County. One of his biggest state contracts was a 1996 deal that paid nearly
$900,000 to air the weekly drawing for the Florida Lottery.Meanwhile, the
freelance reporter's stories continued to air on CNN and most Florida NBC
stations, including WFLA-Channel 8 in Tampa.On Friday, Vasilinda told the
Herald-Tribune that his business dealings with state government don't influence
his reporting.

Wired 13.02: VIEW: "'Music,' he explained, 'is different' from other intellectual property. Not Karl Marx different - this isn't latent communism. But neither is it just 'a piece of plastic or a loaf of bread.' The artist controls just part of the music-making process; the audience adds the rest. Fans' imagination makes it real. Their participation makes it live. 'We are just troubadours,' Tweedy told me. 'The audience is our collaborator. We should be encouraging their collaboration, not treating them like thieves.'"

An perfect quote for the IP paper for Arizona. Excellent.

Welcome to GUN GUYS
These guys are nuts.

MEMRI TV

The following are excerpts from an interview with Sheik Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi. Al-Jazeera TV aired the interview on February 2, 2005:

Sheikh Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi: In order to really implement religious law we must provide an atmosphere of freedom. First of all, people must have the opportunity to say: "We want religious law." The secularists say: "No, the people don't want religious law. We provide them with liberty so they..." What do you want? Do you want to be ruled by Muhammad's law, or by Marx's law, or by Napoleon's law, or by the Americans' law? In which direction do you pray -- to Mecca, to Washington, to London or to Paris?

When the tyrannical regime in Iran fell, the Shah's regime, which worked for the Americans, and ruled the people by bloodshed, oppression, prisons, and blood, when this regime fell, and Khomeini came to power, they held a referendum: Do you want to be ruled by Islamic law? Ninety-nine percent said: Yes, we want Islamic law. Therefore, freedom should be in the service of Islam. I think that our peoples, for the most part-- there is a faction that has become secularist, Western, and Marxist -- but the vast majority of this people still believes that Islam is the solution and the source of authority and the foundation. They don't want to import anything from the East or from the West.

A la Gauche: Political News and Commentary from the Far Left

good stuff. quite funny. it would be great if the dems actually picked up on some of this. it might make it halfway feasible to support them as a party.

Here is a bit of data to support my assertion below that blogging, as influential as it appears to be in generating scandal, is a marginal phenomenon in terms of the people who get their news from it--whether online or off.
Barron's Online - Fighting the Tape

from my furl archive (not sure if this will work)

In February Fox drew an average of 1.57 million viewers a day, more than double CNN's 637,000. Fox has been widening its lead over CNN since 2002, when it first leaped ahead.
But last month, about ten million Americans each still tuned in every evening to those dying dinosaurs, NBC's Nightly News and ABC's World News Tonight. And nearly eight million watched the CBS Evening News.

That show didn't lose too many viewers even after its anchor, Dan Rather, was caught up in the scandal over 60 Minutes' questionable preelection report about President Bush's National Guard service during the Vietnam War.

Meanwhile, for those who can't get enough coverage of the Michael Jackson and Scott Peterson cases, NBC's Today show gets about six million viewers a day and ABC's Good Morning America about five million. Three million people a day still watch CBS's perennial also-ran, The Early Show, over their morning coffee.

If you add the ratings of the leading broadcast news shows together--even assuming some duplication among viewers--it's clear that many, many more Americans watch the mainstream network news shows than view either Fox News or CNN.

True, viewership of the network news has been declining for years, and their audience may not be the most "desirable demographic," as the marketing people say.

But even in the cool, dynamic world of the Internet, the mainstream media rule.
The following table from Nielsen//NetRatings shows the 20 most popular news web sites among U.S. users in January.

Top 20 U.S. News Sites -- January 2005
Brand/Channel
Unique Users
Yahoo! News
23,220,000
CNN
22,047,000
MSNBC
20,425,000
AOL News
15,488,000
Gannett Newspapers and Newspaper Division
12,353,000
Internet Broadcasting Systems Inc.
12,159,000
NYTimes.com
9,774,000
USATODAY.com
9,524,000
Knight Ridder Digital
9,429,000
Tribune Newspapers
9,093,000
Google News
7,811,000
ABCNEWS Digital
7,585,000
Hearst Newspapers Digital
6,720,000
CBS News
6,292,000
WorldNow
6,220,000
washingtonpost.com
5,864,000
Associated Press
5,738,000
BBC News
5,660,000
Fox News
4,848,000
Advance Internet
4,787,000
Source: Nielsen//NetRatings

Poor, benighted CNN is a juggernaut here; its site pulls in a whopping 22 million users a month. MSNBC.com, whose namesake cable news network long has been a distant third, drew 20.4 million.

Yahoo, which had 23 million users in January, and America Online, with 15.5 million, aren't news organizations themselves but rely on feeds from established providers like Reuters and the Associated Press.

Other big mainstream media outlets whose websites rack up big numbers are The New York Times, USA Today, Knight-Ridder, Tribune and ABC News.

"It is the large branded providers that people are going to [online]," says Charles Buchwalter, Nielsen//NetRatings' vice president of client analytics.

Conclusion: Tens of millions of U.S. Internet users trust the news they're getting from the mainstream media, and this silent majority simply doesn't buy the "liberal bias" argument conservatives have been pushing for decades.

Some might call these millions deluded or brainwashed, but if you believe in free markets, you believe consumers are smart enough to know the difference between a good product and a bad one.

By the way, Fox News's website ranks 19th out of the top 20, trailing even the BBC among U.S. Internet users. Ironically Fox uses the mainstream AP for the news feeds on its own site.
And while we're on the subject of Fox, you might have seen the recent front-page story in The Wall Street Journal about the apparent falling out between Rupert Murdoch, News Corporation's chairman and chief executive, and Liberty Media's chairman John Malone (see "Stock Gambit Strains Relations Between Two Media Titans," March 3).

In that story, the blunt-speaking Malone gave the game away:

"Mr. Malone suggested Mr. Murdoch start the FX entertainment channel, which later became part of a joint venture between News Corp. and Liberty, and in the mid-1990s encouraged Mr. Murdoch to launch the Fox News Channel.

"The mainstream media, Mr. Malone says, 'had drifted off into too much political correctness, too much socialism and we needed a spokesman...for the free market.'"

"A News Corp. spokesman disputes Mr. Malone's characterization of Fox News and says Mr. Murdoch 'always envisioned it as a middle-of-the-road' channel.'"

And I have a middle-of-the-river bridge to sell anyone who buys that.

Fox News has real appeal to certain people. The point of view it and many Internet blogs propound probably has been underrepresented in the opinion sections of many established newspapers, magazines and broadcast networks.

But when it comes to the news, there's no substitute for the mainstream media. Despite our problems, we do our best to report as honestly and professionally as we can.
The American people clearly agree. Numbers don't lie.

-----
I will also note that, this is something I have been saying for at least two years. No one will ever read this paper as it is long winded and probably mostly banal, but there is a shorter version I tried to edit for a GMU online magazine, but which they ultimately rejected because they wanted it to be written down to undergrads for funding purposes.

Okay so obviously it's been a busy semester. First post of the new year.

I don't know why I have become accustomed to jumping into the blogosphere from Andrew Sullivan. At first it was because I was already getting some information I agreed with and I thought he was a good guage of where the Pro-Bush, neo-cons were headed. He would often piss me off, but at least I could better understand the logic of the people who seemed to be such craven cheerleaders for fascism.

Then, as the shit started to hit the fan last spring/summer, between the absence of WDMs in Iraq and the release of the Abu Ghraib I was sort of shocked to see him as one of the few people who was actually re-thinking some of his positions. So I watched him as a hopeful guage of the direction of the other side of the possible voting public in November. That was, of course, a serious disappointment--the election, that is, not the fact that one guy out of the posse was asking a few moral questions that have since become almost unconscionably spun into something to be valued: that is, the use of torture to get information that leads to saving lives. For some reason the cognitive dissonance learning about these things causes makes people use the most juvenile, transparent arguments as justification. Since there was no information to get out of people in Ghraib; since there have been no convictions for terror since the Patriot Act was instituted, I don't think these "ticking bomb" scenarios are all that relevant.

The problem is that once you tell someone to do whatever they can to get "the information" it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy-and rarely in the way that it does in Sartre's "The Wall." The hitch the the "ticking bomb" scenario is that most of the time the interrogators, almost as a structural response to the situation, have to assume that something bad is about to happen and that the reason that they have resorted to these methods is to find out for sure. It is the logic of the pre-emptive Bush/PNAC doctrine taken to its micropolitical conclusion: you torture, you bomb, you kill relentlessly because you don't know--or claim not to know--what is a reasonable threat and what is simply an irrational, primal response to a fucked up situation, then afterwards you say things like Col. Jessup i.e. Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men and anyone who asks questions is some liberal softie for believing in the value of the law. In the end, I think it has to be a complicated negotiation between the two positions, but if you don't have, to extend the metaphor, the Kaffee (Cruise) position, then there really isn't anything worth protecting on this side of the wall, as far as I am concerned. Then again, I am obviously one of the softies so I would think that.

I digress, but not far, because what I was initially going to say was that there are a couple of pieces that Sullivan has recently put up, neither of which are all that original, but which remind me of patterns that are continuing to emerge.

http://www.andrewsullivan.com/main_article.php?artnum=20050220

In the first, he sets the ground for the second by noting something that Cultural Studies folks noted long ago about the Sony Walkman and which is, anyway, a fairly obvious observation made by someone who doesn't normally try to talk about these things. The piece is about how the Apple iPod has become "ubiquitous" and has changed our culture fundamentally so that there is an end to society. Since we are no longer forced to interact with our fellow humans in the public sphere because we are stuck behind our ear buds, the social fabric is rotting. I have already lived through this and haven't been keen to jump onto that bandwagon: after riding the bus to elementary and middle school in my own little insular bubble, embarassing myself by singing out loud to my favorite (often very bad) songs, I have come to appreciate the value of not having music in my ears every second of the day. That and I am a grad student who simply can't rationalize spending $300 on a machine, however awesome, that I don't really need. Besides, I have too much reading to do. Anyway, the wide-eyed Sullivan is largely trapped behind a whole other set of blinders which is basically the perspective of an upper middle class fellow who notices his fellow iPod users more than the immigrant mothers and homeless vets and assesses that they are society and since they are listening to the iPod, something new and exciting (or disturbing) must be happening. But this techno-centered view of the world is to be expected from a blogger, especially one as triumphalist and elitist as Sullivan. As with the financial outlays for an iPod, many people (technically, including myself: this machine was bought totally on credit and has yet to be paid off) can't afford a computer with regular internet access. So to think of either of these things as widespread causal factors of anything in the broader society is fairly elitist. Yes they may have an interesting conversation with a good 1-5% of the population, and they certainly have an effect, but they certainly aren't something anywhere close to a mass medium. It doesn't seem to occur to him that, as Putnam and others have pointed out, and Hardt and Negri and others hope to change, civic society has been disintegrating and dessicating for years.

Nevertheless, he is trying to think this stuff through and, in the second column, he manages to come up with, roughly, the same sort of conclusion that Habermas comes to in his Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Namely, that the distinction between public and private has been erased, which, destroys much of the private sphere as a necessary counter balance to the public sphere. His final words in this section are, I think, useful: "the technology that has liberated us in so many ways is also capable of suffocating that inviolable personal space that once had another name. That name was freedom." I try not to think in these terms, but it is still an important argument, I think, for what it points to.

But Habermas doesn't give a technological explanation to how this came to be. Though technology obviously played a role, the distinction between public and private had to do with two movements which, in sequence, began the dissolution of the liberal order. With the commodification of culture people were no longer asked to participate in the cultural sphere as more than consumers and cultural objects were simply there to be consumed. (with the strengthening of copyright, this is becoming even more pronounced.) And this movement was met with another, which made the distinction between public and private even more tenuous and degraded the function (or even existence) of civil society. The latter was defined as a space for the discussion of the society that was not subject to the interventions of either the state or the market. As large corporations and non governmental organizations (lobby groups, activist groups, etc.) began to refuedalize the notion of representative democracy, i.e. instead of representing the people, they represented their power over the political process to the people through publicity, much like the monarch of the fuedal order. This left less space for civil society to have power to change the political order. An interventionist state is the last component of the structural stransformation. In an almost libertarian argument, Habermas points to the loss of privacy, or at least the disctinction between public and private, with the expansion of the welfare state. (232-236 basically sums up this part of the argument.)


I will have to pick up on this argument later and bring it back to one of the books I am reading at the moment by Tyler Cowen.

...and a happy new year to Michael Crichton (and all his stupid fans)

EnergyBulletin.net :: Methane Burps: Ticking Time Bomb: "There are enormous quantities of naturally occurring greenhouse gasses trapped in ice-like structures in the cold northern muds and at the bottom of the seas. These ices, called clathrates, contain 3,000 times as much methane as is in the atmosphere. Methane is more than 20 times as strong a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide.

Now here's the scary part. A temperature increase of merely a few degrees would cause these gases to volatilize and 'burp' into the atmosphere, which would further raise temperatures, which would release yet more methane, heating the Earth and seas further, and so on. There's 400 gigatons of methane locked in the frozen arctic tundra - enough to start this chain reaction - and the kind of warming the Arctic Council predicts is sufficient to melt the clathrates and release these greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Once triggered, this cycle could result in runaway global warming the likes of which even the most pessimistic doomsayers aren't talking about.

An apocalyptic fantasy concocted by hysterical environmentalists? Unfortunately, no. Strong geologic evidence suggests something similar has happened at least twice before.

The most recent of these catastrophes occurred about 55 million years ago in what geologists call the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), when methane burps caused rapid warming and massive die-offs, disrupting the climate for more than 100,000 years. "

Merry Christmas, Rich People!

Holiday Haul Goes to High-End Retailers (washingtonpost.com)

Pay is rising more than twice as fast for the top fifth of wage earners as it is for all others, and the pace of gains at the high end is quickening, according to economists' analyses of government income data through September.

Meanwhile, the top 20 percent of households, ranked by income from all sources and earning $127,000 or more as of 2003, accounts for more than 40 percent of all consumer spending, according to Labor Department figures.

Fox News Partners With Clear Channel

Great now the biggest radio network in the country is going to get its news from the most ideologically right-wing news service in the country. Certainly nothing will come of this.

In other media news, most of the complaints (99.8%) about CBS indencency that Michael Powell cited as evidence of the public outrage over seeing a nipple, came from one activist group. I am not sure how unique this is, but it certainly points to there being a less substantial public outcry in the broad sense than was previously indicated.

Lawrence Lessig, The Future of Ideas

Lessig has a difficult task. He has to present an argument that most market fundamentalists will find sacreligous, but strongly position himself as pro-market. I am not sure how much of his self-confessed "virulently-pro market" attitude is effected for the sake of this particular audience, or if he is being strategic to keep them from dumping him into the "end of history" pile that lay underneath their pulpits.

Either way, intentionally or not, he is basically asking for us to allow a sliver of socialism to persist--one in which there is a certain anarchy (qua freedom) allowed to continue in the realm of the internet and other new technological innovations. He has compelling arguments for why this is necessary and avoids the kind of history that people like Mattelart or McChesney have written where they recognize the way that every technology of communication--regardless of how communally developed it was--eventually became colonized, enclosed by one economic and political interest group at the expense of others. But what he does focus on is the history of the communal development of the internet, foretelling the coming enclosure of these commons and its subsequent dessication and commodification. He is basicially sounding a warning bell.

Overlooks other types of value creation--that all value is, for the most part a social creation. much of history of capitalism has placed the holder of values at the top of the totem pole, overlooks risks taken by others in the production process

More here on the way that value is changing--as the production has become globalized and the only power north holds is over the intellectual property, this becomes the central stake in the struggle--much harder to keep enclosed.

He is right that this will be a central stake in the struggle of the next century and he is basically asking the market fundamentalists to resist making it so while at the same time subtly encouraging the rest of us to resist this commodification (maybe, though I'm not done. I assume he will have some sort of call to action.)

http://www.unit731media.com/
http://www.terroristmedia.com/nukem/index.php

Two sites I have happened upon to this evening. I must say that I am more distubed by these images on these sites than I have been in a long while. Stayed up way too late looking at them, feeling such great sadness and fear. The beheading videos are particularly troubling and make me wonder just how anything will ever get any better. Once a cause becomes so ingrained in someone that they are willing to do this to someone else it is doubtful that any amount of empirical change will lead them to change their mind. I still don't think that war is the answer. I don't think this is because I have some pacifist tendency ingrained in me. it just seems like a stupid strategy, on par with targeted beheadings in its potential to incite rage. They both stem from the same desire to make power visible.

On the other hand, seeing something like this, a beheading, that is done in someone's basement instead of in the halls of state, with the legitimacy of state power around it, it is horifying. It is like something that could happen a few feet away. The ceremony that it performed beforehand means nothing to me; but it is the attempt to give it this kind of legitimacy that only state ceremony can. But it isn't a state ceremony: herein lies my newly reborn ambivalence, which sits alongside what might be a basically pragmatic pacifism.

If a state were to do this, if an American citizen were brazenly executed on television with the sanction of a state, I would feel little compunction to say that the United States should not retaliate with some sort of force, probably militarily. This, of course, is not a natural response--either the one that the US would take or my internal response to their response--but it is one for which the history of my culture has prepared me. That innocent civilians would probably be killed in this retaliation would be ethically and morally repugnant, but in some strange way justified because they can be named as political subjects of the offending regime. Here, again, I am sort of thinking through the dominant logic which I had lived through for most of my life: it's a hard habit to break. Furthermore in this equation, it obviously doesn't matter if the people who are assumed to be legitimate extensions of the state had any hand in placing that state in control, i.e. it doesn't matter if it is a democracy, which, in this scenario, it most likely would not be. State officials worried about re-election don't often provoke wars by publically assassinating the citizens of other countries (though I guess we have special privileges).

When Individuals do this, however, even if they are theoretically part of a movement, I cannot reason this. Not only is there no sense in going to war with a state, but I cannot fathom what the terms of the discussion should be for justice. To talk about punishment seems paltry--what kind of punishment is suitable? Reform is laughable. Revenge? The easiest step to take, right there with the death penalty. But that just seems to bloody more hands. No, I take that back, the easiest thing to do is to simply ignore it, to make those bad men disappear and head off to my half warm bed, where my wife and dog await me. If I was any more able to talk about this at this point, I would want to explore some of the ways that Foucault might discuss this--or not discuss this. I sound totally stupid here, but I am stymied by what this does to my worldview--not because it makes me suddenly think that GWB is the best thing since sliced bread but that I can't understand why the people I read who claim to care about people wouldn't care about these people as well. My knee jerk 2 am answer is that it's just way too hard. I'm going to go with that for now...

As Drudge put it, "Merry Communist Christmas"

I don't know how I feel about this, but it certainly seems hypocritical for a company so wedded to Republican, free market values. Either way, it's just one more reason to stay away. 70% of Wal Mart goods are made in China, according to the article--I'm sure they have great labor conditions and sweet retirement and health care for their workers as well.

Wal-Mart's China inventory to hit US$18b this year: "Xu Jun, Wal-Mart China's director of external affairs, ruled out the rumour, saying the CEO has never visited that or any other site for a warehouse.
Nevertheless, he said China is Wal-Mart's most important supplier in the world. The overseas procurement home office in Shenzhen, a city of South China's Guangdong Province, has played a key role in the firm's global purchasing business.
...
'If Wal-Mart were an individual economy, it would rank as China's eighth-biggest trading partner, ahead of Russia, Australia and Canada,' Xu said. "

Putinism On the March (washingtonpost.com)

A rare article in which I agree almost totally with George Will on this. I am glad that the Ukranian elections are getting some press here and I hope that it will help us to adjust our understanding of Putin as a leader. For years we have supported his iron fist in Chechnya because he said it was necessary. Then we tacitly supported his subversions of democracy--via control over press, and political intimidation--in his recent election and consolidation of power bacause, again, it was necessary ("this is a new kind of threat.") His only recent error was being more interested in Iraqi oil contracts gained through bribes instead of bombs (our message: bombs are always better.) Now we seem to be moving in a different direction as we realize that perhaps he might be up to something else. Just because you don't call it a dictatorship or fascism, doesn't make it so.

On seeing FahrenHype 9/11...

It is so good to see Michael Moore's film de-bunked. For almost 0.2 seconds I had a sliver of a doubt that governments don't always do the very best thing for their people, that power corrupts, and that George W. Bush wasn't the Lord Almighty's gift to the world. It was scary to have any doubt at all and I have struggled with how to keep my faith in the face of so many facts and alternative opinions. I try to watch FOX news everyday to keep me informed so that I can fight with treasonous liberals and know what to say to counter their "facts." Thankfully, this film clears up about four mistakes in Moore's film (see below)and then makes me feel that, if I didn't believe all was well with the 2000 election, with Bush and the war on Iraq, if I didn't side completely with the president, that I would, indeed, be unpatriotic. Thank God for this film. Now I can sleep at night again!

No really, the film has some interesting points, but it is even more shamelessly propagandistic than the film it criticizes. And Ron Silver, who narrates, is even more annoying than Michael Mooore. Clearly the first film had some factual errors, but the bulk of these do nothing to counter Moore's main argument.

1. Recount: claims that the recount was settled in Florida. This is not really the case. The independent audit by several newspapers after the fact, was mostly inconclusive. the issue that both the Florida Supreme Court and the US Supreme Court said was most important was that they hadn't established a uniform method for counting the votes. The US said that, in that case, they should just stop. The Audit done by five or six major news organizations came up with several different scenarios, depending on whether overvotes and undervotes were counted. I forget all the different ways that they would have counted the votes and in which one Bush definitely won, but basically, if they had applied the same guidelines that Bush had recommended in Texas when he was governor, he would have lost. Make of that what you will. Obviously we've moved on and the bigger problem today is that the most recent election still had severe voting irregularities, compunded by the relentless gerrymandering on both sides that makes elections closer and closer. Big problems. The film doesn't talk about any of them, doesn't at all address the serious problem of African American populations being systematically disenfranchised or the scandalously inept process of purging the Florida voter rolls. As Ron Silver says in the film, there is nothing there. Stop thinking about it. (He sounds pretty serious too; I wouldn't mess with him.) Needless to say, the film is misleading here and doesn't prove anything to counter Moore's film.

2. The Pentograph--this is obviously a flop. Moore inflated a headline from a letter to the editor to make it look like a front page headline. This is probably the only really damning thing the film has to offer. But the headline was about the election in 2000 and, on balance, isn't wholly off the mark based on the evidence. It is like what Moore did in the last film, adding text to a 1988 campaign commercial: the text wasn't authentic, but it still represented a fairly true, or at least arguable statement. Here the tactics of the film maker are certainly questionable. But, as even this film points out, it was for about 10 seconds of footage.

3. Clinton is to blame for terrorism. Okay. Fine. Clinton is the Second worst president of the past decade. You win.

4. Islamofascists, yadda, yadda, yada. Okay we know. there are some serious folks out there who can hurt us. Isn't our real concern how well we're doing at fighting them? Were many of them in Iraq? (crickets, silence) Most of this segment is the ideologue gallery, with the balance of the conversation being that anyone who doesn't agree with Bush therefore doesn't believe that there are bad people and therefore (watch for jump in logic) is unpatriotic, a dope or both.
5. Saudi Arabia: as Hiedegger points out, Moore is taking most of his arguments from Unger (just like he took most of his arguments in _Columbine_ from Barry Glassner's _Culture of Fear_.) This is such a fast portion of the video it is almost laughable. There is very little substantive investigation, mostly blanket condemnations and oversimplifications. There are obviously powerful Bush supporters in the Carlyle group and there have been some suspicious relationships between them and the Suadis. The film denies anything is going on and, like the election, encourages us to dismiss these claims point blank. For a more recent Carlyle Group scandal: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041101&s=klein

As for the denial about the Afghan pipline, that is also bullshit and Moore connects it to Clinton just as readily. Here ideology and talking points basically win out over any close examination of one of the most factually rich and densely argued (if not overly so) of Moore's film. I am sure the latter made lots of mistakes and oversimplifications since that is his MO, but looking at those would require actually admitting the ones he's right about, something this film is unwilling to do. Instead it throws up all these canards about how John Kerry, George Soros and Move ON are actually more invested in Carlyle. This is presented as hypothesis, stretching logic beyond possibility, but it stands in the film as if there is some factual basis to it, making clear what the film is intended to do.

6. Bush didn't take very much vacation. And when he was on vacation, it wasn't really a vacation. Again, this is one of the places where they have probably got Moore for hyperbole. But it is hardly a damning correction and anyone who was awake during that time, found Bush's oft vacationing ways a bit unsettling. He was in Crawford, TX for all of August and HE said he was on vacation; Moore shoudl be able to call it a vacation if the president does--it's one of the few points they agree on.

7. Oregon Coast: the film points out that, contrary to Moore's assertion, the Oregon State Troopers aren't responsible for patrolling the Oregon Coast--that's the coast guard. However, it doesn't tell us if he is wrong about there being only one trooper patrolling the stretch of highway along the Oregon Coast and it implies that federal funds for homeland security wouldn't be well used in having first responders staffed to the full. this is a continuing problem and the film seems content to say that Moore stretched the truth than to examine the more substantive underlying problem.

SIDE NOTE: This is also the first time that the film makes use of the easily explicable, but key production flaw in Moore's film: He didn't shoot all of it nor was he even there for the whole thing. He bought a good deal of his footage, e.g the interview with the Trooper, interviews w/ injured soldiers at Walter Reed, footage from Iraq. The implication of this segment and every other segment that relies on this problem, is that Michael Moore, by buying existing footage rather than shooting it himself is somehow lying or misleading us. This is a total bullshit argument meant to make him look dishonest when it is standard documentary practice. All those people interviewed signed releases; the footage was owned by someone and sold to Moore. There may be ethical problems with this, but it is not Moore who is making these standards, they exist already.

8. The patriot Act: again, the balance of this is just that there are never any problems: it's a good thing; don't worry about it. The problems that Moore's film points out aren't addressed, such as the Peace activists in CA that are infiltrated by a local sherrif. Ann Coulter, however, does brag about all the "terrorists" being rounded up by Bush's administration, noting that it "isn't public knowledge" but failing to note, as one poster has already, that they have about a 0 to 5000 conviction rate. None of their evidence will hold up in court: this isn't a problem with the courts, who are just enforcing the constitution, but with the unconstitutional methods being employed to arrest people. Perhaps some folks see this as a good thing--then the terrorists don't win! But the truth is, if we're abandoning the constitution to do this, they've already won.

9. Saddam/Iraq: Here the film almost competely leaves Moore's text to speak to general arguments about the war. The most interesting argument, and probably the only one that has anything more than ideological support for it, is that France, Germany, and Russia had oil deals with Iraq. I am sure this is true. But the argument is a bit like little Billy beating the shit out of some kid on the street and then saying that the reason he did it was that none of the other kids would help him beat up this kid because this kid had bribed them not to agree to beat them up. The question of whether the kid should have been beat up in the first place is gently overlooked. This is done by dividing the problem into two halves. France, Germany, etc., wanted to lift the sanctions on Iraq and didn't want to go to war to disarm him because they had something to gain. Therefore we couldn't go through the UN to disarm him. Okay, fine. But then jump ahead in the film...Bill Morris is asking Ed Koch--great foreign policy expert that he is--if we should have gone to war even though there were no weapons. This of course leads to all the diatribes on how bad Saddam was. (Telling quote here: Koch says that they've found 300K bodies in mass graves, "they expect ot find one million--we can't walk away from that anymore." Anymore? Yes. Anymore--like we did when he did it in the early 90s. well, Koch doesn't say this, but let's just pretend he did.) Anyway, on balance, the argument is that Saddam is the equivalent to some copperheads Zell Miller found under a rock in his garden. They are a threat and he shouldn't have to ask the city council or even his wife before he goes in there and chops their heads off with his hoe. Beautiful. Ann Coulter says that, even if everything Moore and "liberals" say is true, Iraq was "a purely Humanitarian war." Leaving aside the fact that these are basically the things we've all heard before and it presents absolutely nothing new in the way of facts or voices, the glaring gaping hole in this segment is that everything after the france-germany-russia bit basically admits that there were no weapons and we knew there weren't any weapons. So why shoudl we fault France-Russia-Germany for not supporting our resolution to disarm him of weapons he didn't have: because we're right, dammit!

The only other fact pointed out in this segment is that Clinton signed some policy that said Iraq regime change was US policy. Here's the deal, for all you republicans who think this is about you: Bush is taknig the heat because he's in the white house. But most of us don't find Clinton to have been any gift to humanity. He bombed Iraq incessantly; His secratary of state Albright sid that the lives of 500K children who starved or died because of the sanctions we're "worth the cost" of keeping Saddam isolated. The NAFTA and WTO, both Clinton brain children, were a gift to corporations and plenty has been written on his economic policies: check out Contours of Decent by Robert Pollin. Clinton is an asshole too. He was just nicer about it. Moore gave him plenty of shit in the last movie he made when he connected Columbine to the largest bombing day in Kosovo. The problem is that the people who made this movie think that Republicans=patriotic americans and therefore anyone who critiques the government (especially while republicans are in charge of it), must not be a patriotic American and, since you're either with us or against us, you must be a democrat aka unpatriotic aka terrorist. This is a brilliant way to make any argument you make criticizing the government actions easily dismissed. This is basically the perspective that the film is coming from; one speaker even says that "Terrorists count on people like Moore to make his films this way."

And that is basically the thrust of the film. The last section of the film begins with calling Moore a propagandist. This is, in a way, fair game, since it is the same sort of tactic Moore himself uses. Except this time, instead of using footage from the press, speeches by the president or quotes by government officials to back up these sentiments (something that Moore did well--by reminding us just how over the top the press was about the war) they use footage from Hitler's propagandists and explicitly say that Moore is working to help the terrorists win. This is basically ridiculous for anyone who has seen the film, as is the claim that Moore doesn't respect the military or the ethos of "America" (remember, that means "war" "support the president" "Republican.") Though Moore is just as ridiculous in the last part of his film, this one is almost denying that that segment even exists. It critiques of Moore's depiction of US soldiers have no factual basis and totally depend on your perspective. It is also difficult to tell if these people even saw the film. That is okay because these filmmakers have made this film for everyone who didn't risk seeing the original and has just been waiting for something to rebut its arguments. Then they can simply deny Moore's legitimacy, overlook any substance to his argument, and go on believing what they did in the beginning.

Finally, before anyone claims that this film won't be premiered because of a liberal bias I will say this: if this film doesn't appear in theatres it is not because the people who own the movie distributors or movie theatres don't agree with it. It will be because this film is surprisingly dull and is basically just fodder for anyone who vehemently wants a quick way to deny anything critical about the past four years. Unlike F 9/11 which makes pains to be funny and use pacing and the interweaving of clips and quotes to keep things moving, this film is basically an extended chant or mantra. Though Moore definitely had a point and his humor might be lost on those who disagreed with him, at least he tried to make it entertaining. This film is just dull by comparison. And dull, ideological mantras don't fill the theatre seats.

Habermas, Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere

The book would be better titled the structural transformations... as it is really about a couple of different movements in the socio-structural totality and the way that the public sphere fits into them. The final couple of chapters provide a nice overview of the changes that happened most recently, but all of them are somewhat related. His basic argument is that the public sphere isn't just an incedental attribute of modern bourgeois society (here "bourgeois" as the translator indicates, is often synonymous with "civic" or "civil" society, but since the German doesn't have a precise translation into English, he uses this to be safe) Actually this ambivalent terminology is somewhat central to his argument. Several of the pivotal terms in his social history are important precisely in the way that they change in their meaning over time. "Public opinion" is the most central but "publicity" and "representative power" are also extremely important in his account of the movement from Feudal society through the various bourgeois revolutions and the formation of liberal society to the "interventionism" of the welfare state. And, of course, the relationship between the terms "public" and "Private" is central to his argument.

As I said above, the title would be better as "transformations" because it moves through these various permutations. It is also deceptive for it to pretend its focus is solely on the "structural" level. For throughout he adopts a very nice dialectical understanding of the mutual constitution of various formations at both the structural and subject level. In fact, though the social structure is very important, he is very vehement about the importance of the stance of the individual and the state of mind it inspires. He is also very careful to speak to both of these levels and any in between throughout the process.

Though he has a much longer account of how this happened, he basically has a few important levels on which he stops to account for these changes, not really giving any determinant primacy ( so far as I can tell) to any one level. To start, he begins looking at the level of the absolutist state and its monarchical authority. The public at this point would be anyone not in the monarchy, all of the subjects of the kingdom (subject here being another pivotal term). the Private sphere as such was something that was left only to the monarch. This was not only because of the lack of the notion of private property or the inability of anyone other than the powerful to claim any private sphere. Power was assumed to be legitimate by some higher authority or simply based on the control of the state. PUBLICITY at this point was basically the REPRESENTATION of that power in a public forum. Likewise, representation was simply a matter of portraying this power BEFORE the people rather than FOR the people.

In a complex and decades long transformation, based largely on the expansion of the bourgeoisie--both in itself and across the globe via merchantilism--this gradually began to change. This change was not only based on the rough economics that most discussants stop with but had as much to do with more cultural and social factors. In terms of ideology, the bourgeois notions of the family and the rise of the practice of letter writing and the interiority of the individual. The rise of letters also aided in the distribution of news and information--especially in the very physical locales of the coffeehouse and the solon. The rise of the novel--which, incedentally, began in the European tradition in an epistolary form (this is my addition; might be wrong, but its what I remember, especially in the rise of the American Novel)--also inspired a sort of critical discussion about cultural affairs. Here it is important to note that it isn't so much the substance of these letters--whether in the form of newsletters or belles lettres--but the critical subjectivity of the interaction around them. In turn, this interaction is only made possible by the individuation of the new bourgeois family (this, he notes is also reflected in its architecture.)

They formed the public sphere of rational-critical debate in the world of
letters within which the subjectivity originating in the interiority of the
conjugal family, by communicating with itself, attained clarity about itself
(51). [through an "audience oriented privacy]

The development of both this consciousness as well as the interactions that they helped to constitute in either the coffeehouses or in the salon led this newly formed public sphere to begin to demand more of power, namely the notion that this rational critical debate and the formation of a public consensus was the best way of establishing a general norm. Thus the idea of a "law" based on something other than absolutist decree was becoming more prominent.

A political consciousness developed in the public sphere of civil society which,
in oppostion to absolute soveriegnty articulated the concept of and demand for
general and abstract laws which ultimately came to assert itself (i.e. public
opinion) as the only legitimate source of this law. (54)

I find this a very important point because it makes clear the goal of this public sphere was precisely to have an effect on the way that power worked. Moreover, it was in this context that the notions of bourgeois liberalism were formed and thus all of our constitutional norms and forms of government are based on this notion of the way that civil society and the state should function. This is important because it is not only a problem of the transformation of the way that the state works, or the relationship between the state and civil society, but the interactions of civil society are paramount in and of themselves, interactions which are founded on a certain notion of the private individual and the preferred stance they should have. The media certainly play a role in this process as the dominant modes of publicity and the mediation between the spheres of civil society and the state, but the transformation is far from being only located at that interaction alone. This, perhaps, shows the way that Habermas is very much rooted in the Frankfurt School tradition which takes the psychological stance of the individual as a very important jumping off point.

In this case, Habermas focuses on what he calls the "ambivalence of the privatized individual" as both a Bourgeoisie (citizen, owner of goods) and a homme (one human being among others). The former was more related to the male realm of the public sphere, mainly in the political journalism and coffeehouse tradition in which they would debate as owners in the political realm concerning the regulation of their private sphere. Habermas readily admits that, though this was a more open dialogue than before women were traditionally (and perhaps even legally) excluded from this dicsussion. On the the other hand, women and even other non-property owners such as apprentices and servants, took part in the discussion and debate over the world of letters in salons etc. And, although Habermas says that these dual roles, were each equally important and not necessarily separate, this is certainly one of the places that he is roundly dismissed, especially by feminists.

It is also clearly based on a notion of class that excludes a large portion of the population, a contracition that Habermas highlights in section 11. In between, he looks at the development of the PS in various different contexts and points to the ways that civil society in Britain, France, and Germany insisted on both the publicity of the government and the legitimation of public authority and laws through some sort of deliberative process, often mediated by (oppositional) political journalism. Here he works up to the moment of the institution of the bourgeois consitutional state in its various contexts and its relationship to the understanding of the market economy, which basically limited the ability of the state have dominance over anyone without their consent.

Though it may not be accurate in historical terms (I'm not sure--it does seem to match the ideological history as I understand it but I'm not sure if that means it's necessarily false) I like his understanding of this process because it firmly places the agency of this change in the formation of legitimacy in the hands of the civil society. Unlike other theorists, like Foucault, who seem to make no distinction between the absolutist monarchy and the rising bourgeois except from the perspective of the style of legitimacy "power" uses under each regime. Habermas sees the uniqueness of the challenge provided by liberalism and eventually explains its "refeudalization" as the logical conclusion of its own philosophy and its attempt to overcome the inherently "contradictory institutionalization of the public sphere in the bourgeois constitutional state."

The contradiction is multifaceted, but it can roughly be summed up in the already mentioned ambivalence of the citizen/human individual of civil society and the presumption that the rational critical discussion of that civil society would be more legitimate than absolutist domination. This understanding of power, as Habermas tells it, was an extension of the belief in the self-regulating functions of market competition which assumed that no one would be able to enact any form of coercion or domination via the market. Leaving aside the faulty assumptions of this underpinning, the point was that, according to Habermas

The bourgeois idea of the law-based state, namely, the binding of al state
activity to a system of norms legitimated by public opinion (a system that had
no gaps, if possible), already aimed at abolishing the state as an instrument of
domination altogether. Acts of soveriengty were considered apocryphal per
se. [. . . .] The domination of the public, according to its own idea, was an
order in which domination itself was dissolved. (82)

The first problem is that there would have to be some form of power enacted via this public sphere to have an effect on the current system meaning that it would have some form of domination in that regard (82-83). But, "nowhere did the constitutional establishment of a public sphere in the political realm [. . . .] betray its chracter as an order of domination more than in its central article stating that all power came from the people"(84). This is, for Habermas, because there was obviously a large number of people who were disenfranchised in this process so that it wasn't really all of the people

This from an article by Jared Diamond called "why Societies make disasterous decisions." Although he talks about the "tragedy of the commons," which neo-classical and libertatian economists are quick to point out as one of the few important hypothetical scenarios for us to think about in terms of the choice of economic system, he also, below, alludes to the much more widespead problem of what we might call the "fortress society." Market Fundamentalists affinity for the former scenario is that they claim it as evidence for the need to have property rights for all property rather than leaving some property "common" or, heaven forbid (no, they really think it does) creating any sort of communal society. I have spoken a little about this before.

The latter scenario, of the Fortress society, which, in effect, is what Diamond speaks to below, is one that these economists are less likely to find problematic--or at least problematic in a way that the market can't solve on its own. But the truth of the matter is that if problems like these are to be solved, the guilt must be spread evenly, the externalities compensated for by their creators. In this case I have found it very curious that the most publicized public fines have been the indecency fines levied by the FCC. I suppose it makes sense for the media to pay extra attention to the fines being levied against it, but it seems like there is a more public interest in these fines as being something that actually goes after the "bad guys." But does it really make sense for these to be the big fines? Who really believes that Janet Jackson's tit was that damaging? Could it even be proven? Of all the public agencies to stand up and start enforcing the penalties on its books--and even raising the penalties to make them actually punitive, why this one? And if there was any WAY that these penalties could be enforced, why this one? Certainly there are many media conglomerates that could be defined as defying all sorts of ownership rules--why not penalize them for this? Instead, its all about content, a fairly banal measure in material terms but something that makes good press in the red states.

On the one hand, I am glad that a public agency is trying to protect the public from an industry and its externalities; but on the other it seems like there are so many other industries that do far more damage. In the latter case, the difference seems to be that these economists would stand up and oppose that sort of leveling of the playing field or enforcing of penalties for other industries but, for ideological reasons, probably find the FCC fines appropriate. Not only is this contradictory and probably indicative of a deep seeded conflict of interests, but it is yet another example of one of the many ways that our own growing fortress society, which sees the protection of the public as secondary to the protection of a select group--notice I am diffusing the agency of who is making this emphasis possible--as drifting towards the route of "sociteies which make disastrous decisions."



"Failure to solve perceived problems because of conflicts of interest between the elite and the rest of society are much less likely in societies where the elite cannot insulate themselves from the consequences of their actions. For example, the modern country of which the highest proportions of its citizens belong to environmental organizations is the Netherlands. I never understood why until I was visiting the Netherlands a few years ago and raised this question to my Dutch colleagues as were driving through the countryside. My Dutch friends answered, "Just look around you and you will see the reason. The land where we are now is 22 feet below sea level. Like much of the area of Holland it was once a shallow bay of the sea that we Dutch people surrounded by dikes and then drained with pumps to create low-lying land that we call a polder. We have pumps to pump out the water that is continually leaking into our polders through the dikes. If the dikes burst, of course the people in the polder drown. But it is not the case that the rich Dutch live on top of the dikes, while the poor Dutch are living down in the polders. If the dikes burst, everybody drowns, regardless of whether they are rich or poor. That was what happened in the terrible floods of February 1, 1953, when high tides and storms drove water inland over the polders of Zeeland Province and nearly 2000 Dutch people drowned. After that disaster, we all swore, 'Never again!' and spent billions of dollars building reinforced barriers against the water. In the Netherlands the decision-makers know that they cannot insulate themselves from their mistakes, and that they have to make compromise decisions that will be good for as many people as possible."

Into the Blogosphere

Snow Likes His Strong Dollar Weaker
Dan Ackman, 11.15.04, 9:55 AM ET

NEW YORK - Once a year or so we like to check in on the dollar to find out if it is strong. Inevitably it is, but it is strong in different ways each time.

More From Dan Ackman


Four years ago we had a strong dollar that bought about 1.19 euros. Two years later, by mid-2002--around the time that former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who was later fired, was wondering publicly about the strong dollar policy--the dollar was still strong, and it could buy .91 euros. Today, a dollar buys about .78 euros. Technically, the dollar is "weaker" than is has been in recent years. Officially, though, and as a matter of policy, the dollar is still strong.

Today in Dublin, O'Neill's successor John Snow said, "Our policy on the dollar is well known. We support a strong dollar. A strong dollar is in America's interest." That was the second thing Snow said, according to reporters traveling with him on his European tour. The first thing he said was "I've had a tradition of never commenting on the relative exchange value of the dollar." The second comment seems, in a general way, to contradict the first comment. Next he said currency values should be set in open markets: "Markets are driven by fundamentals...and fundamentals are best determined by the operation of open, competitive markets," he said on Monday.

These are Snow's first remarks on the currency since George W. Bush was re-elected president on Nov. 2. In his statements he essentially repeated what he has said ever since coming into office in January 2003. He is also essentially repeating remarks made by O'Neill, and by President Bill Clinton's Treasury secretaries Robert Rubin, now chairman of the executive committee at Citigroup (nyse: C - news - people ), and Lawrence Summers and by Lloyd Bentsen, Clinton's first Treasury Secretary, before that.

While the policy never changes--at least in rhetoric--the value of the dollar against major currencies certainly has. In the last week, the euro hit an all-time high of $1.30 (meaning a dollar bought just 0.77 euros, 35% less than four years ago).

It all seems a tad confusing, but specialists have no trouble deciphering Snow's meaning.

"[The strong dollar policy] is an implicit compact with the market not to say anything unpredictable," says Daniel Katzive, an economist who specializes in foreign exchange strategies at UBS (nyse: UBS - news - people ) in Stamford, Conn. Whenever the dollar weakens, as it has been, Snow "will always say 'strong dollar' because to say anything else would be dangerous."

While the dollar--though forever strong--has been falling, the U.S. trade deficit has continued to get worse. The difference between U.S. exports and imports grew from $380 billion in 2000 to $519 billion in 2003. More remarkable, in recent years, the value of U.S. exports, adjusted for inflation, actually declined, though that trend has reversed itself in recent quarters. (See: "So Long, Don Evans.")

This is a big problem for U.S. manufacturers, and the National Association of Manufacturers is one group that has objected to U.S. dollar policy, saying it has reduced America's international competitiveness and its share of world exports. While the U.S. currency has declined against the euro and, to a lesser extent, the Japanese yen, it has declined much less compared to other Asian currencies, notably China's, which tend to be more "managed." (Some leading exporters like Boeing (nyse: BA - news - people ), Caterpillar (nyse: CAT - news - people ) and Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) have seen their fortunes rise recently, but the share prices of other top multinationals like Coca Cola (nyse: KO - news - people ) and IBM (nyse: IBM - news - people ) have declined.)

The trade deficit has continued to expand even as the dollar weakened. "The sensitivity of the trade deficit to currency movements is very weak," Katzive says. Though owing to the large and growing deficit, most economists, including UBS, expect the dollar's slide to continue. Thus the strong dollar will be weaker, and Snow will like it just fine.

10x10 / 100 Words and Pictures that Define the Time / by Jonathan J. Harris

http://www.adamyoshida.com/2004/11/four-more-years-aka-take-that-you-sons.html

http://www.adamyoshida.com/2004/11/four-more-years-aka-take-that-you-sons.html

This is certainly a super sentiment. I am not sure whether I am more disturbed by this:

"If anyone needs to work to “bring the country together” it’s those on the left who have divided it so badly. Those who sought to destroy this great man should get down upon their knees and beg the victors for mercy. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll let a few of them linger on for the simple reason that they amuse us. My life’s goal is to see the Democratic Party virtually obliterated and left as a rump of people like Stephanie Herseth who both mostly agree with us anyways and are easy on the eyes.

That’s the future of the Democratic Party: providing Republicans with a number of cute (but not that bright) comfort women."

or this:

"Let’s face a hard truth: this was the bitterest Presidential campaign in living memory. The Democrats and their allies staked everything on the defeat of this President. All of the resources they had accumulated over a generation of struggle were thrown into this battle: and they have failed. Despite all of their tricks, despite all of their lies, the people have rejected them. They mean nothing. They are worth nothing. There’s no point in trying to reach out to them because they won’t be reached out to. We’ve got their teeth clutching the sidewalk and out boot above their head. Now’s the time to curb-stomp the bastards."

nope, no fascism here. Just a joyous celebration of democracy in action. god bless america.

This is really quite scary and it seems to me that, despite all the rhetoric of the neoliberal cohort in the administration, there is a vast number of people in the country who could care less about foriegn policy and are perfectly happy with good old fashioned bigotry as the main motivation behind their electoral outlooks. This oversight seems to be a continuation of the misunderstanding much of the rest of the country has about what is important to all those folks in the red states--and what they are willing to support to get it. Perhaps not explicitly "curb stomping" but certainly its political equivalent.

The Republican party is mostly attempting to be both a forward looking party based on a re-articulation of liberalism (at least where it is convenient) and a conservative party, hell bent on restricting liberty wherever it doesn't fit with their values. Aside from our own organizing, it seems that the best thing that can happen in the next four years is that this deep division, this fundamental internal contradiction, will encounter its own dialectical implosion and the Dems can truly take hold of liberalism as a value (a moral value even) and begin to peel off more of the Republicans that don't want the constitution replaced by the bible (assuming there are some). In the long run, it may be very good that Arnold won in CA because it is only that contingency of Repubs which gives the party its "moderate" appeal--and who have any hope of winning in the next four years.

This is, of course, assuming that American society on the whole doesn't drift any further to the right. This depends on what we should only understand as a hegemonic struggle to keep whatever shred of Enlightenment rationality and traditional liberalism alive as ideologies in themselves. At this point, the left has to understand that all of their beliefs are ultimately founded on those premises. The problems we have with them are almost all based on what we take for granted as "rational" meaning that form of rationality that we inherited from the Enlightenment and is every day being challenged when it doesn't gel with Evangelical interpretations of the bible. In order for a claim that these theocrats are irrational, we must keep the ground we stand on, problematic as it is, logocentric as it is, from being pulled out from under us. Otherwise, we are just party to our own extinction and the next fifty years may very well be a clash of fundamentalisms reminescent of the crusades. I have no doubt which class of society will get the boot first and it isn't the anti-intellectuals.

This is true not only for our own country, but for countries around the world up against their own forms of fundamentalist fascism. As we halt the retrenchment on enlightenment rationality in our own country, we should simultaneously be looking for similar traditions in those that face much more entrenched foes in their own cultures.

Polanyi predicted/observed that the double movement that society would make would be economic in character in response to the ascendency of the free market liberalism. But this attempted defense, he proposed, wasn't really about economics. The free market, in many ways, provided some material benefits in the long run. The protections were there to keep the market from overrunning society and wreaking destruction on established cultures. He considered fascism, isolationism and nationalism to be the final consequences of a scientific brand of economics that couldn't account for labor, land or money as anything more than common commodities. Going off gold was part of the same movement that ultimately produced WWII and the rise of fascism of one form or another in, according to him, many countries around the world in which it is not normally considered, namely, the US where FDR attempted to take complete control over the economy and its social role.

The conjuncture we seem to be at, though mostly very different, seems to have produced a sort of double movement, but this time society doesn't see the economy as the main culprit of the production of cultural and social degradation thus their cures don't include labor rights challenges to the free market system. These ideologies seem too ingrained and reified to be contested on any large scale. On the other hand, religion is a powerful force and has always been able to get people to overlook their material oppression or degradation to find a more visible object of scorn. Perhaps the only difference here is that, I assume, inlike in past mass xenophobia, this "other" doesn't have a readily available visual signifier. Thus part of the fear is that not only does one not understand it or agree with it, but it is difficult to know where it might be lurking (one of the Oklahoma candidates for the senate Tom Coburn was quoted as saying: lesbianism is “so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they’ll only let one girl go to the bathroom.”) This kind of fear-mongering is hard to understand for those of us who aren't afraid. But if it is seen by evangelicals (who, incedentally, are only as common in the red states as they aren't in the blue ones which is to say that they are just present in opposite proportions rather than monolithic--this consideration is more to show that I am at least trying not to make too many generalizations) as the main threat, a sort of metonym or synecdoche or good old fashioned scapegoat for the problem they might have otherwise. Thus if there is a double movement in this context, it is inspired not to change the economic policies but to protect itself from what is perceived as the gathering threat which cannot be overlooked. And, more importantly, the threat is ultimately something that is mostly unknown as opposed to mostly reified as a way of life.

This would be an important corrective to Polanyi and somewhat expose the way that, although he is certainly critical of Marxism, his outlook is still heavily influenced by that set of assumptions. The double movement thesis may certainly be true, but the character of the double movement is very much influenced by the available ideologies of the time. The nineteenth century was not only the water that marxism swam in, as foucault said, but its powerful presence in the water at the time affected the water itself. Or, in less moronoic, metaphoric terms, it was a powerful ideology in that context which meant that, when people were looking for some sort of answer to helping their social and cultural envoronment, it was readily avialable. To update that theory for today, the dominance of evangelical, fundamentalist religion in these social environments make it a logical answer to altering their reality--or halting what is perceived to be a cultural degradation. It should also be noted that this is almost the identical process that has taken place in contexts where radical islam has taken hold. this is not just about identity or its disintegration. it is about a fundamental understanding of the world and a process of gathering social legitimacy that enlightenment rationality has all but abandoned simply because it assumed it had won. Though the latter assumption was powerful for a while and postcolonial, postmodern, and poststructural critics find themselves in rare agreement with its oversights and atrocities, scrapping it altogether without something built up in its place could very well bring us back to a world where the arguments are more akin to the dark ages--only with the scientific advances of the enlightenment (i.e. nukes) to help move things along.

So there is some rambling thoughts on that...the last point I would like to remember is that this must be something that we understand in a very global sense because in the same way that Islam is helping to define the middle east, evangelical religion is a powerful force in latin america. the results of that coalition could be quite devastating.

Today sucks. A crushing defeat, not because Kerry lost but because George Bush won. He has lied and denied his way through an outstanding centralization of power and a fundamental reordering of international and domestic policy. I had faith that people would see through this guy even as they accepted Kerry as less than perfect. This is, in hindsight, a difficult position to ask others to take and it is much more palatable to simply expect that the stories of Bush's shortcomings are all politically motivated and vote for the guy who seems to be in charge. But I am not going to waste too much time psychoanalyzing such an inexplicable phenomenon. Bush will be president for four more years. This makes me feel completely defeated and alienated by this country. There may be two Americas, but when a president consistently ignores the one you're a part of, it makes it hard to accept his leadership. There was no way for this election to be anything but divisive. I just didn't expect it to make me feel divided from my formally confident self. The difference between the way I feel today and the way I felt a week ago (after having watched the response to Eminem's new vid--foolish fantasies multiplying) is something I wasn't prepared for. And the gloating of the "other side" is incomprehensible. I can barely be angry at it because I have a hard time understanding how they can truly believe the things that they claim. It was just dirty politics for a while, but now it seems everyone should just admit that most of it was based on lies.

MaxSpeak, You Listen!