Geoff > Status Update

Wastrel wrote: "Well, there were three things there.

- death squads. It's believed, and has not been denied, that the government has created assassination teams for targets other than Bin Laden. But more generall..."

Well your long section about the kill lists contains an awful lot of stuff that I don't recall ever seeing in a news source ... some of it I have.

The surveillance state is something that Obama did not create, this has been reigned in to some extent after the revelations of Snowden.

The last point (illegal information given to police) again I have no inkling of. What are your sources for some of this stuff?

Look, if you could point me to a source where Noam Chomsky is saying similar things, case over, I would believe. Perhaps he has written about this, he's very good on the lies and non-reporting of things in US media.

Perhaps the bottom line is that I don't spend an awful lot of time worrying about stuff that seems unlikely to me. Not much I could do about it anyway. If I was much younger perhaps I would. Life is short, and getting shorter all the time.

Not half, 41% or fewer.

Did anyone read that Trump is firing the Cheif of DC national guard effective Inauguration day at 12:01 pm in the middle of a deployment in the DC area for his inauguration. The Chief appointed by Bush has a good record of working with the community on events when the national guard in DC is needed. Does anyone think Trump has something planned. I will remind people that under the US constitution the Senate or President have the power to declare martial law. I think something is in the works for inauguration day. I will add that I have heard people on the left have been propositioned to commit agent provacateur acts like shutting down traffic and bridges in DC for a fee.

Ted wrote: "Wastrel wrote: "Well, there were three things there.

- death squads. It's believed, and has not been denied, that the government has created assassination teams for targets other than Bin Laden. B..."

Well, I'm afraid I've no idea what Noam Chomsky things about things. Mainstream media, however, is full of reports, as are sources like the ACLU.

Take stingrays, for instance - the ACLU even has a nice map showing who can use them. Local police in 18 states, state police in five more, and 13 federal agencies are now known to use them. The problem is, stingrays, which search all the houses in a given area to identify which cellphone is located where and to strip information from those phones blindly, in an untargeted fashion, are clearly unconstitutional (and also violate laws on radio transmissions, as they are used without FCC licenses). At the very least, they constitute searches that require warrents. As a result, police are instructed to conceal their use and lie about their sources of information. Florida admitted having concealed their use from judges in 200 cases between 2010 and 2014, when they were much less common than now. here, for example is the ACLU reporting on emails that show the US Marshals colluding with local police in Florida to conceal the use of stingrays. In 2015, The Guardian reported that stingrays had been secretly used in 2,000 cases in Baltimore in a policy of collusion between police and state prosecutors - which, as USA Today discovered, involved specifically lying to defence counsel. At least 200 people in Baltimore alone, reported USA Today last year have been imprisoned on the basis of stingrays - which the Maryland Court of Special Appeals have ruled to be unconstitutional. The Florida Supreme Court ruled them unconstitutional two years before that.

But Stingrays are only the tip of the iceberg of surveillance, alarming though they are. It's easy to get bogged down in the details. On a bigger picture point, how about the progression of application of NSA warrantless searches:
- they were introduced to track terrorist targets abroad
- they were then used in the US, but only against non-citizens
- then only in terrorism cases
- then in domestic cases but only by the NSA
- then the NSA started turning over 'minimized' data to the FBI
- then the FBI started sharing it with other agencies
- then the NSA started sharing it directly
- now they've stopped minimising it.

What does that mean? Minimized data means that the NSA only passes along data directly relevant to a particular alleged crime. 'Bystanders' who happen to be tangentially related get their identifying features scrubbed. But now the NSA shares unminimized "raw signals intelligence" (i.e. your emails and phone calls) with 16 different federal agencies (New York Times). The agencies - officials at the Department of the Treasury, say - can now comb through the personal data of anybody they like, without needing a warrant, without needing any probable cause, on the offchance that they might find evidence of a crime.

And it's not like they're only using this on al Qaeda suspects. The FBI alone, for instance, between 2009 and 2011, back when there were much tighter restrictions, investigated 80,000 individuals or groups. That's a lot of terrorists? Well, no, only 3,500 of them were even suspicious enough to warrant a 'full' investigation, the rest was just out of curiosity.

Of course, as these searches are unconstitutional (they're effectively allowed because, being secret, nobody specifically has standing to sue anybody about them) they can't legally be used as evidence in court. They are, though, because, again, everyone involved is encouraged to lie about their sources of evidence - as, for example, Reuters reported regarding DEA agents in 2013. Even disregarding the constitutionality issue (the DEA say it's routine practice to lie to courts and there's nothing wrong with it; but prominent lawyers quoted in that article describe it as "indefensible" and "blatently unconstitutional"), the broader significance is that the former line between the extraordinary "war powers" of the NSA and the constitutionally-bound, limited powers of domestic law enforcement have essentially now been erased.

But this is just stuff I've been able to scrape together with a minimal search right this moment, there's plenty more. Reuters, USA Today, the ACLU, the Guardian - it's not like these stories are hidden away on tinfoil-hat sites, or Noam Chomsky's blog...

Peter wrote: "Did anyone read that Trump is firing the Cheif of DC national guard effective Inauguration day at 12:01 pm in the middle of a deployment in the DC area for his inauguration. The Chief appointed by ..."

No, I think this is a conspiracy theory. Why would Trump even bother with an autogolpe? And given his friction with intelligence agencies and the Pentagon, there's no reason to think that an autogolpe would even succeed.
All sorts of people can declare martial law, but it's only constitutional where civilian courts are demonstrably unable to function.

Not a conspiracy theory

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wash...

Geoff wrote: "Not a conspiracy theory

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wash......"

OK, first, that hardly means there's going to be a coup d'etat.

Second, there's still an element of conspiracy theory here! Peter said that Trump was firing the man, and suggested it was part of a plan. The reality is that the man resigned, as is convention for people in his post. All presidential appointees submit their resignation for noon on the day of inauguration, and it's up to the new president to ask them to stay on if they want.

In this case, Trump did ask the man to stay on, albeit only for a few days to ensure an orderly transition, and precisely because it makes little sense to have the national guard commander step down halfway through a deployment. Schwartz refused to stay on past noon. So the fact that he's leaving at noon has absolutely nothing to do with Trump whatsoever - it's a combination of a sensible standing policy (resignation of appointees) and the general's own personal decision not to help out for another couple of days until the inauguration fuss is over. Trump (or his team) actually tried to avoid this situation.

This isn't exactly "fake" news in the National Enquirer sense, but it's a deeply misleading meme being spread as part of a conspiracy theory in much the same that the right have been hyperventilating about Obama, Clinton et al for years. It's a small unremarkable fact blown out of all proportion and misleadingly stripped of context (like: Trump tried to prevent it!) in order to encourage over-exuberant speculation.

Of course, Schwartz is partly to fault himself. He claimed to have "discovered" that he was being asked to leave halfway through the ceremony - either Schwartz is particularly unobservant and ignorant of his job (the requirement for presidential appointees to resign when their president leaves is very long-standing and widely known even by laymen, let alone by the appointees themselves - what next, is Loretta Lynch going to be shocked, shocked I say, to "discover" out of the blue that Trump is "firing" her right on inauguration day? No, because she's smarter than that...) or else he's intentionally stirring shit. [Not sure why, it's not like he's even a Democratic appointee - it was Bush who appointed him. Which also means he's gone through this process before and knows exactly how it works.]

Yes it's a situation where a real situation is being interpreted hyperbolically. The fact is true, the interpretation is exaggerated into untruth.

Tomorrow morning we go into mourning...I hope to see you all back here then. This thread is like a tiny pinprick of light in an otherwise pitch dark outhouse.

ATJG wrote: "Tomorrow morning we go into mourning...I hope to see you all back here then. This thread is like a tiny pinprick of light in an otherwise pitch dark outhouse."

I'm staying far as fuck away from the city tomorrow. Red hats everywhere. And then Saturday, we're marching on the White House.

red hats = brown shirts

I am not going out tomorrow except on errands. I know some people protesting in places like Boston and NYC and I admire the courage of putting themselves on the line but I never protested before and I won't start at fifty. I have the feeling it will be a shitshow. Still I don't know what kind of action will be necessary to make the situation better.

I'm planning to spend the day marching with whatever crowds I can find, reading Althusser and Marx in the down time

Seriously, good luck and safety to you all this weekend. And if Nick is still out there tuning in, remember, when they put me up against the wall, I loved Ulysses too.

Yes to Althusser. Good call.

Word is that Trump wanted a missiles and tanks North Korea style inauguration parade, but Dept. of Defense denied him.

https://www.google.com/amp/thehill.co...

also just heard a Trump supporter interviewed who said only media outlets supportive of Trump should be allowed to exist

And another who said that we should model our society on Russia's because "I heard there are more Christmas decorations there than there are here"

Guys, seriously, we might not survive four years of this. This might be the beginning of the end, without exaggeration.

The sky won't fall Chicken Little. You probably said the same crap about Bush too. Hey I'd agree, but Bush was a nutty Christian.

Adam wrote: "The sky won't fall Chicken Little. You probably said the same crap about Bush too. Hey I'd agree, but Bush was a nutty Christian."

Cool. That's good news.

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Adam wrote: "The sky won't fall Chicken Little. You probably said the same crap about Bush too. Hey I'd agree, but Bush was a nutty Christian."

Go fuck yourself you piece of shit

Geoff wrote: "Adam wrote: "The sky won't fall Chicken Little. You probably said the same crap about Bush too. Hey I'd agree, but Bush was a nutty Christian."

Go fuck yourself you piece of shit"

You have a much better way with words than I.

Coup tomorrow, 12:01 EST. See you there!! [oder lieber maybe in Bargfeld?]

Yeah, I'm not really feeling eloquence or respect right now. Adam, if we were face to face I'd stomp your ass in the street. Instead, I'll block you.

And Bargfeld it is!

Trump is planning to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts, and Humanities, and privatize PBS and NPR. This is real.

By the way, the National Endowments for Arts and Humanities budget is around 150 million. A pittance (let's remember the Pentagon "wasted" 125 billion without consequence) - so this is really utterly pointless. Just spite I guess.

Geoff wrote: "By the way, the National Endowments for Arts and Humanities budget is around 150 million. A pittance (let's remember the Pentagon "wasted" 125 billion without consequence) - so this is really utter..."

Hey the man doesn't read, and the arts are something he can't comprehend. If he can't make a nickel out of it, what good is it. What's good for General Bullmoose ...

Besides that can pay for $150 million in tax cuts for the uber-wealthy, which they won't even notice but still ...

Ted wrote: "Besides that can pay for $150 million in tax cuts for the uber-wealthy, which they won't even notice but still ..."

Most of his cabinet appointees make more than that a month. Hell, some of them a week.

It is simple logic that any right-winger would try to destroy arts and literature: dumbing down the populace is the only way for them to consolidate their power.

If Trump is intelligent like Hitler (which I seriously doubt), he would replace it with "intelligentsia" pampering to the fascist vision. This is happening all across India now, for the past two-and-a-half years.

But the good thing is, liberals keep on protesting loudly - so far, they have not been able to kill India's democratic spirit. I see the same thing happening more forcefully in the US in future.

Nandakishore wrote: "It is simple logic that any right-winger would try to destroy arts and literature: dumbing down the populace is the only way for them to consolidate their power.

If Trump is intelligent like Hitle..."

I hope you're right.

Nandakishore wrote: "It is simple logic that any right-winger would try to destroy arts and literature: dumbing down the populace is the only way for them to consolidate their power.

If Trump is intelligent like Hitle..."

They don't want to destroy art and literature. [Just look at Trump's sense of style! His palaces are basically art galleries. Sure, the art is mostly the art of gilding, and sure, he'd probably prefer the art of the ancien regime to that of the 20th century, but that's still art]

They want to democratise art - they say, if people like it they can pay for it, and if they don't like it why are we paying for it? Why is the government's opinion of art more important than the people's? Why does the government even have an opinion of art?

And prima facie it's a very good argument. Effectively what is happening is that a relatively small number of relatively rich "elites" are taking money from poor people and using it to buy art and entertainment that only the "elites" consume, and that the elites could easily pay for themselves but prefer to have paid for them by (amongst others) the poor. It's not immediately apparent why the rich should be able to force the poor to pay for the rich to go to the opera.

Now, that argument is wrong. The actual cost to the poor is negligible even by their payscales, and there are real benefits to art subsidy, if spent wisely, in terms of giving people cultural choices that otherwise wouldn't be viable.

But we have to make that case. If we just go "they want to destroy art! Because only that stuff that I like and you help pay for is art, and everything that you people like is artistically worthless!" then that's when we end up with Trump. Saying that the art we like is inherently more important, inherently more art than the stuff that they like (but not so important that we're willing to actually pay for it all ourselves, so general taxation is needed) makes them feel that we're setting ourselves up as superior and speaking down to them. That's bad enough on issues like the environment, where we can claim an actual objective correctness and a clear and present danger that impels us to override their wishes... but when we do it on issues like art where it's purely a matter of our taste and fashion against their taste and fashion, that's basically a "let them eat cake" sort of provocation.

Of course the amounts are minimal. But the principle of the thing infuriates people, and understandably. If you're struggling to keep your house and your kids are out of work, you don't like having money taken out of your pocket to make opera tickets cheaper for bourgeois elites. [or performance art or poetry recitals or boring PBS documentaries, or whatever]. Now I think that this is actually a good idea, but we have to make that case - we can't just sit back and say "well you'd just spend the money on something tacky and horrible, whereas the stuff we like is Real Art so it doesn't matter what you think about it we're taking the cash and if you object then clearly you want to destroy all civilisation" - that's not fair, and it's not good tactics.

[I mean sure, they would just spend it on something tacky and horrible, and Mozart is inherently more valuable than Duck Dynasty... but the "you just want to destroy Art" argument is sort of begging the question there. Not to mention profoundly illiberal.]

Wastrel wrote: "(but not so important that we're willing to actually pay for it all ourselves, so general taxation is needed)"

If the presuppositions of the argument were democratic, as opposed to assuming beforehand the logic of the market, then "taxation" would already be synonymous with "pay for it all ourselves" because those public moneys are our moneys. Our money should be spent on art. It's the (nasty) elites who assume market logic as fundamental ; the basic anti-democratic turn.

and Mozart is inherently more valuable than Duck Dynasty...

That that thought is even entertainable depressed the hell out of me. Talk about false=facts!

Ladbrokes and Paddypower are already taking bets on Trump not completing his first term or being impeached. But the list of associated specials is disappointingly thin. Does anyone know a site offering some of the following?

- Imposition of martial law before end of Trump's first term.
- No election in 2020.
- Terrorist attack on US Congress.
- Nuclear strike on Mecca.

Right now, I'm guessing I might get as much as 500-1 on most of these.
I'm hoping to buy in while the odds are still good.

Wastrel wrote: "Nandakishore wrote: "It is simple logic that any right-winger would try to destroy arts and literature: dumbing down the populace is the only way for them to consolidate their power.

If Trump is i..."

You're saying Trump would employ Leonardo if he were around? Maybe, if DJT were Mona Donna, or were he shown giving the finger like St John Baptist. But it's arguable the Trumpians don't even know what the Humanities is/are. Doesn't have the time to read, remember. If he valued the Humanities, he could support the whole NEH without even further borrowing from Russian oligarchs.
And of course the Humanities question the values of all his Cabinet picks. The new Sect'y of Ed would consider the Humanities un-religious.

Yeah Wastrel, I'm with Nathan here, market forces are essentially un-democratic. You've seen the latest numbers from Oxfam, right? And anyway, aesthetic judgements require a level of interpretive, critical ability; they need to be exercised and trained and learned; to know what art is doing you have to know the process, terms, language and history of art - therefore, to some degree art requires experts, like the sciences, to teach it. Duck Dynasty and Mozart are different because Duck Dynasty isn't art (though sure, it's artifice) - it's entertainment. Capitalism wants entertainment, but humanism requires art outside of capitalist forces. I know you are essentially agreeing with me, but devaluing all art to the level of entertainment is certainly a very wrong path to take. As in math, or biology, art needs teachers to have it understood, valued, progressed. That means experts, that means someone is going to be labeled "elite". Personally, I don't give a good goddamn about differential calculus, but I know it needs to be taught, and I know it's teaching isn't entertaining, and shouldn't be subject to the same forces as what makes the Duck Dynasty phenomenon.

I just read this last night in Black Reconstruction (written in 1935) and it just seems too relevant not to quote:

"Democracy, that inevitable end of all government, faces eternal paradox. In all ages, the vast majority of men have been ignorant and poor, and any attempt to arm such classes with political power brings the question: Can Ignorance and Poverty rule? If they try to rule, their success in the nature of things must be halting and spasmodic, if not absolutely nil; and it must incur the criticism and raillery of the wise and the well-to-do. On the other hand, if the poor, unlettered toilers are given no political power, and are kept by exploitation in poverty, they will remain submerged unless rescued by revolution; and a philosophy will prevail, teaching that the submergence of the mass is inevitable and is on the whole best, not only for them, but for the ruling classes.

In all this argument there is seldom a consideration of the possibility that the great mass of people may become intelligent, with incomes that insure a decent standard of living. In such case, no one could deny the right and inevitableness of democracy. And in the meantime, in bridging the road from ignorance and poverty to intelligence and an income sufficient for civilization, the real power must be in someone's hands. Shall this power be a dictatorship for the benefit of the rich, the cultured and the fortunate? This is the basic problem of democracy and it was discussed before the people of the United States in unusual form directly after the Civil War. It was a test of the nation's real belief in democratic institutions. And the fact that the ideal of abolition-democracy carried the nation as far as it did in the matter of Negro suffrage must always be a source of intense gratification for those who believe in humanity and justice.

Wastrel, I never thought such a simple post from me would create such an impassioned outburst from you! Don't worry, I am not talking of elitism - popular art is also art, if done sincerely.

But as essentially all serious art and literature tends to stimulate the mind and force people to think, it is unlikely that the right will allow it - it is seriously subversive. They will prefer either the mindless frivolities of consumerism or propaganda art, like that encouraged by Hitler.

Your talk about the Duck Dynasty put How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic into my mind. It seems that the ducks are not so innocent.

Geoff wrote: "Yeah Wastrel, I'm with Nathan here, market forces are essentially un-democratic. You've seen the latest numbers from Oxfam, right? And anyway, aesthetic judgements require a level of interpretive, ..."

I'm afraid I can't possibly agree. There simply is no philosophical justification that I can see for this sort of categorical distinction.

Art consists of pretty things that people like looking at (or listening to). Entertainment in the sense we are discussing consists of pretty things that people like looking at (or listening to). The only difference is that art is the entertainment of the rich and the powerful.

Or, rather, 'entertainment' is the art of poor and powerless people. Because, after all, exactly the same 'entertainment' suddenly becomes art if it is produced in any other culture, or comes from any other time period. Mozart and Beethoven were popular mass entertainment in their day; so was Shakespeare. They certainly were not outside the ambit of capitalist forces - they operated under immense commercial pressures. [and likewise other artists have operated under other 'unartistic' influences - Shostakovich's negotiations with state oppression, for instance. Indeed, I think most experts (in art, rather than ideological theorising) would say that the tension between internal impulse and external market forces (viewing the threat of execution as a market pressure) tends to create greater art that pure artistic freedom does). But because they have become unpopular, they have magically transmuted into "art". Soon people will probably be saying that the Beatles are art.

Art does not require education to appreciate, although of course it might require education to understand the construction of it. That's just a marketing gimmick. Art does require training of a sort, an embeddedness within the tradition - I am in no position to evaluation pelog, for instance, as I do not understand its language. But this is not something that requires conscious education - fortunately, because almost all the great artists had none, and certainly not any training in Continental Philosophy. And it's important to remember that it's not just the traditions of rich people that develop their languages in this way. Fully appreciating an English soap opera requires a lifetime of training in both the genre and the fine nuances of social interaction within a certain class to which it is alluding.

I'm fine with quantitive assessments of the value of art. But this sort of qualitative categorisation on the basis of what seem suspiciously similar to the caprices of mere fashion, seems unjustifiable to me.

It's all just stuff to look at.

[Of course, there is a difference between art and real entertainment, in the sense of activies undertake to entertain oneself. But when you're looking at objects or practices that have been created to arouse the passions of the viewer with no objective function and shaped only by the aesthetic tastes of the creator and the observer, then you're dealing with art, regardless of what class the intended observer belongs to.]

Alan: I don't think Trump would have hired Leonardo. But I bet he'd have jumped at the chance to hire Rastrelli, or Latz, or indeed Garnier! Unless he felt Rastrelli was tasteless, of course - Trump's tastes are clearly more rococco than current fashions dictate, but even he is tasteful and restrained compared to the 'great art' of some previous eras (most of which has at some time or another been derided as crass entertainment)

It's a particularly good day in the US of A to recall this little ditty:
“Government is the Entertainment division of the military-industrial complex" (Frank Zappa).

This heart-warming tale from comedian/satirist George Carlin on the "real owners of America" from '08 is lovely today, too (I was looking for just the last tasty bit on the 1% taking Social Security, but the whole thing is just too right not to share.)

"The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They've got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They've got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying ­ lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else."

"But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.

"You know what they want? Obedient workers ­ people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they're coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club."

"This country is finished."

Wastrel did you really just claim that most great artists in history had no education in their art? That is an odd conception, my friend. I nowhere claimed that popular art hasn't been or couldn't be art. You cited Duck Dynasty. I responded to that. By the way, both Bach and Beethoven had lots of training. To keep interest in Bach, Beethoven, or Shakespeare alive today means they need to be taught, often against the inclination of monetary forces. I have no clue where you're getting ideas about "fashion". I didn't even mention class in my post! And I vehemently disagree that art is exclusively for the rich and powerful. I am decidedly lower middle class, have no power to speak of, and read books, visit galleries, and listen to music with all the time I can spare.

As Joyce would remind us, Art in the service of desire is improper, is pornography. What better way to pervert Art than to let the market work its dark magic?

And the galleries I visit the most, because I live in DC, are fucking publically funded! And they put on amazing exhibitions of art that makes no money on its own all the time! And those artists they exhibit were, and are, in almost all cases I guarantee you, somehow trained in the techniques and history of their art!

Great quote from George Carlin.

ATJG wrote: "As Joyce would remind us, Art in the service of desire is improper, is pornography. What better way to pervert Art than to let the market work its dark magic?"

This.

I feel like it is absurd I need to even point this out to Wastrel, who once spent about 50,000 words recommending classical music to me. All those musicians playing that music had deep training and knowledge of their art!

I'm pretty certain a young Yo-Yo Ma didn't just pick up a cello one day and out of some divine fucking inspiration just peel into Cello Suite No. 1. Somebody probably taught him how to do that. And somebody taught the person who taught him.

And why did you even bring up Continental Philosophy again?

Geoff wrote: "I feel like it is absurd I need to even point this out to Wastrel, who once spent about 50,000 words recommending classical music to me.."

now this made me laugh.

I have my popcorn out for this entertaining back and forth.