intellectual properties

#ows brain/link dump v2

i am hesitant to post too much (though i’ve shared a lot on gReader) about this because, as i said, i am self-conscious about not knowing much about fiscal policy and economics.  i only know what i read and what my friends out there in it tell me. and true: i read from the left and my friends are left.  so it is most definitely biased. so while a huge amount of my personal bandwidth has been taken up by this, i haven’t said much or gotten too involved, even though #occupyoakland is getting big. like all bandwagons, i am hesitant to jump on this one and tie myself to it.

but a few days ago a friend of mine posted one of the photo-memes criticizing the assembly as idiotic hypocrites (or hypocritical idiots?) to facebook, and i responded that hey: if nothing else, people are talking. why stop them?

 ”People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.”
– George Bernard Shaw

a few days later, he sent an email to say he had “come around” and that my saying something had influenced him.  and that felt good.

i am not hugely into protests myself.  i never go to them, even if i’m firmly 100% behind the message, as i just don’t like the yahoos and disorganized crowds.

but in contrary to the accusation of it being a bunch of trust-fund hippies and social-welfare parasites and continual-protesters just “hanging out”, my friends in NYC and BOS report that a large percentage of people there are retirees who are in the immediately-getting-screwed NOW, not in the future, demographic.  it’s people with jobs and home and families and educations who still can’t make it work.

the most productive thing that is happening here is that people are learning. the camps include mini-lectures and discussions about everything from tax reform to constitutionality to national health care to the defense budget to educational reform.  the people who are really there (not just hanging out) are teaching eachother a lot of things.  so if nothing else happens, a lot of people are going to walk away smarter. and that i’m all for.

“This is important because I think this is what Occupy Wall Street is right now: less of a movement and more of a space. It is a space in which people who feel a similar frustration with the world as it is and as it has been, are coming together and thinking about ways to recreate this world. For some people this is the first time they have thought about how the world needs to be recreated. But some of us have been thinking about this for a while now. Does this mean that those of us who have been thinking about it for a while now should discredit this movement? No. It just means that there is a lot of learning going on down there and that there is a lot of teaching to be done. –http://www.racialicious.com/2011/10/03/so-real-it-hurts-notes-on-occupy-wall-street/

.::.

“What OWES doesn’t have—and is under some pressure, internal and external, to formulate—is a traditional agenda: a list of “demands,” a set of legislative recommendations, a five-point program. For many of its participants, this lack is an essential part of the attraction. They’re making it up on the fly. They don’t really know where it will take them, and they like it that way. Occupy Wall Street is a political project, but it is equally a cri de coeur, an exercise in constructive group dynamics, a release from isolation, resignation, and futility. –http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2011/10/17/111017taco_talk_hertzberg

the mere existence/fact of so many unemployed and/or disenchanted or whatever they are doing this COMBINED with the ability to do it is something to consider. even if you say oh, this is a bunch of people who “don’t get it” or “lazy entitled people”, if that is true then that it is only further proof that there is something wrong, and this is democracy in action.

more links and info:

http://false-profit.com/2011/10/12/occupywallst/

the red ink (#ows)

http://occupywallst.org/article/today-liberty-plaza-had-visit-slavoj-zizek/#

“They tell you we are dreamers. The true dreamers are those who think things can go on indefinitely the way they are. We are not dreamers. We are awakening from a dream which is tuning into a nightmare. We are not destroying anything. We are only witnessing how the system is destroying itself. We all know the classic scenes from cartoons. The cart reaches a precipice. But it goes on walking. Ignoring the fact that there is nothing beneath. Only when it looks down and notices it, it falls down. This is what we are doing here. We are telling the guys there on Wall Street – Hey, look down! (cheering).

In April 2011, the Chinese government prohibited on TV and films and in novels all stories that contain alternate reality or time travel. This is a good sign for China. It means that people still dream about alternatives, so you have to prohibit this dream. Here we don’t think of prohibition. Because the ruling system has even suppressed our capacity to dream. Look at the movies that we see all the time. It’s easy to imagine the end of the world. An asteroid destroying all life and so on. But you cannot imagine the end of capitalism. So what are we doing here? Let me tell you a wonderful old joke from communist times.

A guy was sent from East Germany to work in Siberia. He knew his mail would be read by censors. So he told his friends: Let’s establish a code. If the letter you get from me is written in blue ink ,it is true what I said. If it is written in red ink, it is false. After a month his friends get a first letter. Everything is in blue. It says, this letter: everything is wonderful here. Stores are full of good food. Movie theaters show good films from the West. Apartments are large and luxurious. The only thing you cannot buy is red ink.

This is how we live. We have all the freedoms we want. But what we are missing is red ink. The language to articulate our non-freedom. The way we are taught to speak about freedom war and terrorism and so on falsifies freedom. And this is what you are doing here: You are giving all of us red ink.

There is a danger. Don’t fall in love with yourselves. We have a nice time here. But remember: carnivals come cheap. What matters is the day after. When we will have to return to normal life. Will there be any changes then. I don’t want you to remember these days, you know, like – oh, we were young, it was beautiful…

…We don’t want higher standards of living. We want better standards of living. The only sense in which we are communists is that we care for the commons. The commons of nature. The commons of what is privatized by intellectual property. The commons of biogenetics. For this and only for this we should fight.

Communism failed absolutely. But the problems of the commons are here. They are telling you we are not Americans here. But the conservative fundamentalists who claim they are really American have to be reminded of something. What is Christianity? It’s the Holy Spirit. What’s the Holy Spirit? It’s an egalitarian community of believers who are linked by love for each other. And who only have their own freedom and responsibility to do it. In this sense the Holy Spirit is here now. And down there on Wall Street there are pagans who are worshipping blasphemous idols. So all we need is patience.

The only thing I’m afraid of is that we will someday just go home and then we will meet once a year, drinking beer, and nostalgically remembering what a nice time we had here. Promise ourselves that this will not be the case.”

–Slavoj Žižek in Liberty Square, NYC 10/9/11

i haven’t written or shared a lot about #occupywallstreet because i don’t really truly understand what’s going on or where it’s going, but mostly because i don’t know what to say that isn’t already being said by people like Zizek. i am reposting this for prosperity, as even outside the current context i found this truly uplifting, and it neatly loops back and ties up my not-so-eloquent thoughts on intersecting politics and philosophical world views in my two recent posts re: “reality-based” quote and the Bullet with Butterfly Wings encore.

also, now that #occupyeverywhere has been going on a while, i’m tired of people like the “Americans for Prosperity” claiming that the “free market” capitalism is the way to go and that anyone against Wall Street is a dirty communist. i think we learned a long time ago that top-down Reaganomics DON’T WORK because the top are a bunch of greedy bastards who don’t share the money and none of it trickles down.

if you think that the protesters are a bunch of idealist hippies and the whole thing a waste of time, consider this is a quote from Congressman Peter King (Long Island, NY) last Friday:

“[W]e have to be careful not to allow this to get any legitimacy,” he warned. “I’m taking this seriously in that I’m old enough to remember what happened in the 1960s when the left-wing took to the streets and somehow the media glorified them and it ended up shaping policy,” he said. “We can’t allow that to happen.”

so thank you, Zizek, for your continued contributions to philosophical freedom and making this rainy monday morning feel more optimistic in the face of people like King.

want to participate/do something? find a place this Saturday, October 15, and rise up.

reality-based

“In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn’t like about Bush’s former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House’s displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn’t fully comprehend — but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

–via Corey Robin on the Deep Roots of Conservative Radicalism.

…that post, and Robin’s new book, is a quick reference study on the roots of conservatism, and what it means today vs. what it used to mean, which if you are inclined to debate or discuss politics seems fundamental.

“Reality-based community” soon became one of the most cited quotes of the Bush era — a Google search yields 456,000 results; it even has its own Wikipedia page. It is an affirmation of everything the left ever thought about the right: that it lives in a fact-free universe where ideological purity is more important than pragmatic solutions; that it’s revolutionary and radical rather than realistic and moderate; that it’s activist rather than accommodating; that it’s, well… not really conservative.”

it goes on but to be honest i basically stopped reading there because i was sort of reeling from the idea of the use of “reality-based” as a pejorative term by those running the Empire of America (forgive me that i missed this conversation when it happened in 2004).

on the one hand, i find it philosophically beautiful that those running the world believe that Reality Is What You Create, that nothing is static and everything can change on a dime, and basing long term decisions about humanity on anything seemingly factual is foolish, because what might happen tomorrow? Focus On The World You Want To Create. and who can define Reality anyway?  what it means for one person or community can be radically different from another.

on the other hand, personal existential philosophies about what determines Reality aside, the use of this term as a flip side to “faith-based” creates a dichotomy in which i would have to side with “reality-based” as being the only way i can imagine organizing a global population. collect data, determine current realities, react, adjust, repeat.  “consensus reality” is hard enough to swallow as a middle ground (and also entirely undependable, as it is subjective);  “faith-based” seems a foolish path.

but wait – aren’t those the Dreamers? i thought i supported Dreamers. crap. so i guess it’s fair to say that my personal and political philosophies are divergent in numerous ways. but that is not to say that the personal is not political. oh no no.

(aside: i love that Truthiness is listed in the See Also links on wikipedia.)

anyway, i digress. i just hadn’t heard this discussion when it happened and my brain got a little blown for a second just now when i read that and started extrapolating into current life and Realities, which i’ll spare you further uneducated ramblings on. but i assure you the idea of “reality-based community” is permanently in my brain now.

(thx to Lukas for the link.)

an ending

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/05/02/osama-bin-laden-dead

the newscaster pointed out that most of the people gathered in the streets this morning at 2:00am in front of the White House and near the WTC site in NYC were college students, who were approximately 8-11 years old when 9/11 happened. i can’t imagine having grown up with this much fear and terror in this world. lucky, we Americans, that this is only true sometimes and not every day as in some places.

i for one will not be waving a flag in any street, or jumping up and down with applause.  at first i felt very strange that i am of no mind to celebrate. i felt alienated, watching the news and seeing people cheer virtually on facebook and twitter. even Obama seemed to be smirking in his television address last night. but i do not feel joy or relief or accomplishment.  this has been a horrible 10 years of this story of death and war and terror and fear, and while this may be a step toward peace, no one who died comes back. i feel like a sad chapter has come to an end. like the feeling after watching the end to a terribly sad film.

‎”Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

and from my friend Alison:

The angels of God were reprimanded for singing hallelujah when the Red Sea closed on the Egyptians. “My children are drowning and you sing praises?” God cried.

(it is interesting that in the Christian versions of the Exodus, i find nothing of this idea of compassion for the Egyptians, only Moses’ song of victory, which is often quoted (Exodus 15), but it is clearly discussed in Hebrew scriptures.)

parallel histories/historic parallels: let them eat cake

since i read How the Rich Soaked The Rest of Us this morning i have had songs from Les Miserables in my head.

i should read the novel. somehow the french revolution seems important and relevant right now.

you ask the rich to pay more to help feed the poor, and the reply is akin to “let them eat cake“.

“Reduced taxes on the rich leave them with more money to influence politicians and politics. Their influence wins them further tax reductions, which gives them still more money to put to political use. When the loss of tax revenue from the rich worsens already strained government budgets, the rich press politicians to cut public services and government jobs and not even debate a return to the higher taxes the rich used to pay. So it goes – from Washington, to Wisconsin to New York City.

How do the rich justify and excuse this record? They claim that they can invest the money they save from taxes and thereby create jobs etc. But do they? In fact, cutting rich people’s taxes is often very bad for the rest of us (beyond the worsening inequality and hobbled government it produces).

Several examples show this. First, a good part of the money the rich save from taxes is then lent by them to the government (in the form of buying US Treasury securities for their personal investment portfolios). It would obviously be better for the government to tax the rich to maintain its expenditures, and thereby avoid deficits and debts. Then, the government would not need to tax the rest of us to pay interest on those debts to the rich.

Second, the richest Americans take the money they save from taxes and invest big parts of it in China, India, and elsewhere. That often produces more jobs over there, fewer jobs here, and more imports of goods produced abroad. US dollars flow out to pay for those imports and so accumulate in the hands of foreign banks and foreign governments. They, in turn, lend from that wealth to the US government because it does not tax our rich, and so we get taxed to pay for the interest Washington has to give those foreign banks and governments. The largest single recipient of such interest payments today is the People’s Republic of China.

Third, the richest Americans take the money they don’t pay in taxes and invest it in hedge funds and with stockbrokers to make profitable investments. These days, that often means speculating in oil and food, which drives up their prices, undermines economic recovery for the mass of Americans and produces acute suffering around the globe. Those hedge funds and brokers likewise use part of the money rich people save from taxes to speculate in the US stock markets. That has recently driven stock prices higher: hence, the stock market recovery. And that mostly helps – you guessed it – the richest Americans who own most of the stocks.”

the article has graphs and charts and numbers in things you should check out. but the crux of the problem is not in these summaries. where i start to lose this argument with my conservative friends comes from the controversial idea embedded in the paragraph preceding these:

In simplest terms, the richest Americans have done by far the best over the last 30 years; they are more able to pay taxes today than they have been in many decades, and they are more able to pay than other Americans by a far wider margin. At a time of national economic crisis, especially, they can and should contribute far more in taxes.

is this use of the word “should” – “At a time of national economic crisis, especially, they can and should contribute far more in taxes.” CAN. yes. SHOULD? that opens up a pandora’s box of capitalism vs. morality that i never have the energy to defend.

i would say that numbers don’t lie, but in economics that’s not always true and so it’s a terrible position to take as your defense.

a call to peace

Jon Stewart’s commentary on the Arizona shootings last night on the Daily Show was thoughtful, heartfelt, and encourages taking this painful incident as an opportunity for a positive move forward away from our current toxic political discourse instead of devolving into more vitriol and hateful rhetoric. watch:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-january-10-2011/arizona-shootings-reaction

And wouldn’t it be a shame if we didn’t take this opportunity and the loss of these incredible people and the pain that their loved ones are going through right now, wouldn’t it be a shame if we didn’t take that moment to make sure that the world that we are creating now that will ultimately be shattered again by a moment of lunacy, wouldn’t it be a shame if that world wasn’t better than the one we previously lost?

shifting sites

like most everyone else who was paying attention to the news on saturday morning, i was shocked, then devastated, then angry as the events rolled out in Arizona.  i am not going to get too political about this, outside of saying that, like heavy metal doesn’t cause suicide and rap music doesn’t cause gang violence, while i know there is not a direct cause—>effect correlation between use of imagry and language regarding guns/hunting to refer to “taking out” your political enemies, it still makes me angry that there is so much denial about any COLLECTIVE cultural responsibility and taking back/revisionist history going on with Palin et.al. but, i agree that pointing fingers in this case gets us nowhere and only inflames the political situation when there are larger, more definite problems that lead to this unfortunate tragedy.

in the end, i agree most that more than whatever part the inciteful language may have had, the real cause of the problem here was lack of mental health care for the assailant.  Giffords’ support for the right to bear arms (and buy weapons and ammo at wal-mart and sporting goods stores) is tragic irony enough, but the larger fact that that the reason Giffords was put “on the map” with crosshairs over her district to begin with was because she voted for the public health care option should be the real focus here. had Loughner had access to mental health care, had his family had better access to support, this might never have happened.

congress – are you still working to repeal “Obamacare” ASAP?  maybe you should rethink that. for the health and safety of us all.

obvious QOTD wrt wikileaks

“In a time of universal deceit, to tell the truth is a revolutionary act.”

— George Orwell

(aside: my first brush with this quote was on the Antibalas t-shirt i got in NYC in 2001.)

re: the current wikileaks situation : everyone i know seems to be amused by the situation and rooting for the hacker, possibly because the theoretical repercussions are so frightening you can only laugh, combined with heated debates about free speech and serious conversations about what this reveals about global government security, accountability and transparency.

my childhood friend who works for the State Dept. shared this:

Remarks to the Press on the Release of Confidential Documents –Hillary Rodham Clinton

“There have been examples in history in which official conduct has been made public in the name of exposing wrongdoings or misdeeds. This is not one of those cases. In contrast, what is being put on display in this cache of documents is the fact that American diplomats are doing the work we expect them to do. They are helping identify and prevent conflicts before they start. They are working hard every day to solve serious practical problems – to secure dangerous materials, to fight international crime, to assist human rights defenders, to restore our alliances, to ensure global economic stability. This is the role that America plays in the world. This is the role our diplomats play in serving America. And it should make every one of us proud.

The work of our diplomats doesn’t just benefit Americans, but also billions of others around the globe. In addition to endangering particular individuals, disclosures like these tear at the fabric of the proper function of responsible government.

People of good faith understand the need for sensitive diplomatic communications, both to protect the national interest and the global common interest. Every country, including the United States, must be able to have candid conversations about the people and nations with whom they deal. And every country, including the United States, must be able to have honest, private dialogue with other countries about issues of common concern. I know that diplomats around the world share this view – but this is not unique to diplomacy. In almost every profession – whether it’s law or journalism, finance or medicine or academia or running a small business – people rely on confidential communications to do their jobs. We count on the space of trust that confidentiality provides. When someone breaches that trust, we are all worse off for it. And so despite some of the rhetoric we’ve heard these past few days, confidential communications do not run counter to the public interest. They are fundamental to our ability to serve the public interest.”

that Orwell quote has been a favorite moral rudder of mine for years, and i also agree (gasp) with Ron Paul’s tweet today that “In a free society, we are supposed to know the truth. In a society where truth becomes treason, we are in big trouble.” but while i wholeheartedly support the maximum amount of government accountability and transparency as is possible without compromising security, i have to say i agree with HRC and White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, who said that an “open and transparent government is something that the President believes is truly important. But the stealing of classified information and its dissemination is a crime“.^[5]

despite the fact that Wikileaks has done admirable, award-winning work for human rights in the past, if i had to vote one way or another right now today i’d say the “free speech” argument doesn’t apply here, that Assange should be prosecuted, despite the fact that people say if the State Dept./Dept. of Defense had better security this wouldn’t have happened, therefore it’s their fault, not his (common hacker defense).

However, even though i believe he should be prosecuted, i still deeply respect him for what he has done.

hobbit homes: the future

The Tea Party Targets….Sustainable Development?

First, they took on the political establishment in Congress. Now, tea partiers have trained their sights on a new and insidious target: local planning and zoning commissions, which activists believe are carrying out a global conspiracy to trample American liberties and force citizens into Orwellian “human habitation zones.”

At the root of this plot is the admittedly sinister-sounding Agenda 21, an 18-year-old UN plan to encourage countries to consider the environmental impacts of human development. Tea partiers see Agenda 21 behind everything from a septic tank inspection law in Florida to a plan in Maine to reduce traffic on Route 1. The issue even flared up briefly during the midterms, when Colorado Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes accused his Democratic opponent of using a bike-sharing program to convert Denver into a “United Nations Community.”

…

In the tea partiers’ dystopian vision, the increased density favored by planners to allow for better mass transit become compulsory “human habitation zones.” They warn of Americans being forcibly moved from their suburban dream homes into urban “hobbit homes” and required to give up their cars and instead—gasp!—take the bus to work.

now, this is from Mother Jones, so yes, a huge helping of salt and hyperbole with that, so what’s interesting to me about this (particularly since i just watched The Book of Eli) is not so much the “tea partiers are total nutjobs” aspect but that as an extreme minority, this point of view provides a definitive shadow of overlap with extremely left wing conspiracy theorists who have been suspicious of all forms of government planned anything.  it’s possible the extreme right and left have each gone so far around they are now meeting face to face (is that part of the 2012 prophecy?), which is either hilarious or terrifying, depending on how you look at it.  in fact it reminds me of Marin County NIMBY planning conflicts, where the conservative ultra left fight over things like whether or not Habitat for Humanity should be allowed to build homes n their communities.

or maybe this is nothing new…politics as usual…yawn…trumped up for ratings/publicity, and in that case, isn’t Mother Jones just as guilty of misinformation and rabble rousing as the Tea Partiers are for spreading this around?

the law won

i think it was maybe a little insensitive/tasteless to have a musical interlude of “I Fought The Law and the Law Won” during the call-in discussion about Oscar Grant on KALX radio last night on the eve of the sentencing.

in today’s news, the judge will sentence Johannes Mehserle in the murder involuntary manslaughter of Oscar Grant on January 1, 2009. downtown oakland is once again braced for riots protests, as many are unhappy that Mehserle might well just walk out, time served.

update: Mehserle gets two years, one already served.

as of 2:47 pm, no activity reported, but the twitterverse is not happy.