A Suicide Note From The Music Industry
Cory Doctorow writing for The Guardian:
This month’s announcement of a back-room deal between ISPs (internet service providers) and the big record companies to spy on suspected copyright infringers and reduce the quality of their internet connections is just the latest paragraph in the record industry’s long, self-pitying suicide note, and it’s left me wishing they’d just pull the trigger already and stop beating their chests and telling us all how unfair it all is.
Under the new scheme, the rule of law is replaced by a cosy inter-industry deal. Whereas before, anyone who wanted your ISP to spy on your internet connection would have had to show evidence to a judge and get a court order, now any joker who claims to be an aggrieved copyright holder can do so.
(Via 3 Quarks Daily.)
Who, We?
Jodi Dean:
Ultimately, what bugs me the most about critiques of ‘we’ is the way that they mobilize a suspicion toward collectivity and privilege individualism. To this extent, they are little machines or engines of neoliberalism, neoliberal-bots that drive writers and thinkers to dismantle any collective sense or feeling of solidarity in advance, to suspect such sentiments rather than be responsible to them. Most of us who write in contemporary left political and media theory have been reading and writing about difference for a long time now. It’s time that we redirect the suspicions leveled toward collectivity toward suppositions of individuality and autonomy.
Kate Bush’s Cloudbusting lyrics:
I still dream of Organon. I wake up cryin’. You’re making rain, And you’re just in reach, When you and sleep escape me.
Willem Reich on Wikipedia:
He said he had discovered a form of energy, which he called “orgone,” that permeated the atmosphere and all living matter, and he built “orgone accumulators,” which his patients sat inside to harness the energy for its reputed health benefits. It was this work, in particular, that cemented the rift between Reich and the psychoanalytic establishment.
Jack White and Alicia Keys
Jack White is working with Alicia Keys on the new James Bond theme. Thankfully the song is not called “Quantum of Solace,” as that would be impossible to sing.
The White/Keys combination beat out rumored candidates Amy Winehouse, Leona Lewis and Duffy for the right to try to join Duran Duran, Shirley Bassey and Carly Simon in the Bond theme hall of fame.
Glad they made the right decision. Also, Bob Dylan is one step closer to finding Alicia Keys.
What Would Allende Say?
Interesting profile of former Chilean socialist revolutionary, Salvador Allende, in n+1 Magazine. The excerpt from 3 Quarks Daily about his taste in suits is pretty great, too.
New Dylan “Bootleg Series”
Bob Dylan’s website has been updated for the release of the next bootleg series collection “Tell Tale Signs.” You can get a free preview track and look at the Bob Dylan Geo, which I think examines fungal growth in the western world.
This should cure you of your maladies.
Larry Summers is a Jackass
He does a terrific job of pointing out just how vapid his neoliberal ideology is: Keynesianism for the empire, free-markets for the colonies. And as the former head of the World Bank, Summers got the opportunity to unleash his venom on a good amount of the “Third World.” How is it possible that people like this can be taken seriously? At least other neoliberals are consistent enough to endorse unleashing their terrible ideas on themselves as well, rather than simply being outright imperialists.
The “Politicization” of the DoJ
Posted at 4:39 PM
Today the Justice Department released a report concluding that Bush loyalists at the DoJ broke the law by allowing “politics” to influence their hiring decisions. The way this ongoing scandal has been reported has often been in the context of “politicization,” of how the administration sought to bring in like-minded yes-men in order to promote executive sovereignty. I think there are two problems with this: (1) I don’t think you can call what the administration did in regards to the DoJ to be “politicization,” properly so-called; and (2) the tacit assumption on behalf of most pundits has been that “politicization” is something that should be condemned.
It’s obvious that the administration’s intent in carrying out this policy has been to allow for them to push through controversial legislation as quickly as possible and with as little debate as possible. Moreover, the administration has used the pretext of an amorphous, all-encompassing threat vis-a-vis the “War on Terror” to legitimize their extra-legal maneuvering. By exploiting shock and then establishing its subsequent lacunae within the juridical order as the norm, the Bush administration has successfully strengthened the power of the executive branch to an unprecedented degree.
What they haven’t done is “politicization” proper. In fact, you could even say they did the opposite: they depoliticized the Justice Department by extricating it from the political domain. By placing it under the subordination of the executive branch, the Bush administration was able to ignore public opinion on issues such as domestic wiretapping, torture, and internment. They’ve justified their actions on the basis of the omnipresent threat of terrorism, which confronted them with a “crisis” that had to be met with “objective” measures. All of this was done under the visage of “security,” “neutrality,” and “objectivity,” just as neoliberalism attempts to paint its fundamentalist market-oriented view as a “science.”
Admittedly, Bush’s tactics have been highly partisan, but that doesn’t mean the same thing as “political.” Perhaps one of the reasons why the word “politicization” continues to be misused is because both parties have allied against it. For conservatives, depoliticization involves the hollowing out of government by replacing all public services with outsourced private sector alternatives, as well as the continued efforts to promote sovereignty over democracy. For liberals, depoliticization involves the discourse of human rights, the reduction of structural violence to atomized incidents, “tolerance” over class struggle and “green capitalism” over deep ecology. Hence, not only is the Bush administration’s so-called “politicization” of the Justice Department in fact depoliticizing, but the very acceptance of the common usage of “politicization” in reference to the incident is a depoliticizing political decision.
Walnuts! McCain is Really Old
This website is pretty amazing. (Via Matthew Yglesias.)
Fight, fail, fight again, fail again, fight again … till there is victory; that is the logic of the people.
—Mao Zedong
(Via No Useless Leniency.)
How To Write With Style
I know nothing about how to do that, but Kurt Vonnegut did and so here is his advice. (Via 3 Quarks Daily.)
Crimes and Misdemeanors
Check out this great interactive venn diagram of Bush administration criminals over at Slate. The who’s-who of torturers, crooks and liars is about what you’d expect. (Via Matthew Yglesias.)
Back to the Futura
Given all of the idiocy the radical right has been spewing in recent days about how Obama’s trip to Germany is somehow a step closer to him burning the Reichstag, it’s worth noting, as John Holbo does, that the Obama campaign has chosen German “New Typography” for their posters and advertisements. Here’s an interesting excerpt from German Modern:
After the Nazi’s rise to power in 1933, however, when the Dessau Bauhaus was closed (the school had moved from its original home in Weimar in 1925), it was forbidden to use modern design or sans-serif typefaces such as Futura, which Goebbels called a “Jewish invention.” Rigid, central balanced composition returned and traditional (and often illegible) Fraktur type was touted as symbolic of the glories of the nation. (17)
For typophiliacs or those interested in the art of the Third Reich, I recommend reading the entire article over at Crooked Timber.
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