"Undermining my electoral viability since 2001."

Politics is Messy

Yeah, I know. A lot of "politics" posting lately. I'm ramping up back into the profession and I need a place to ruminate.

There's a bit of a shakeup going on in the world of new-school liberal politics. It's odd to watch people I've met, and in some cases sort of know, and in some cases consider to be allies, friends even, end up smacking one-another around rhetorically. As the new blood moves into positions of power, conflict is inevitable. Crises precipitate change, but change often precipitates a crisis. Entropy is a Real Thing.

To be honest, I'm happy to not be directly involved in any campaigns for the '06 cycle. The only thing I'd consider doing would be local, and I'd only do it on a volunteer basis. I think there's an enormous amount of fighting to be done in reforming the establishment, in working out our coalitions and in setting long-term goals. Those are were my political passions lie, and the truth is that the tactical maneuverings of an-off year campaign are going to be 80% business as usual. To put it another way, I'm interested in working on the Public, not a candidate.

Someone's got to keep the Gonzo juice flowing.

I'm consciously shooting for something different with my political blogging going forward. Trying to find my value. Kevin Murphy told me a while back -- after he told me that he respected my work, but that he might have voted for Bush anyway -- that what made it worthwhile for him was that I've "been there." Zack told me in explaining why he appreciated my opinion that what made it work for him was that I'm coming at it from a point of view that centers around "our generation" and that I'm not a hack. John told me the other day that he's got punk-rock friends who tacked print out's of this MFA blog post to their wall. That's sobering.

Anyone else actually give my opinions any merit? Feel like telling me why? I'm not just fishing for ego-strokes. I'm contemplating a somewhat more professional writing/publishing venture, and I'm curious what people are hungry for.

Read More

On The Factor

On the factor I just learned that Bill O'Reilly is "very hot with the Latinas."

The issue of immigration is mostly about whether or not newspaper columnists are "going after" Mr. Oreilly. Also, there is a major problem in America: rampant infanticide. The ACLU is predictably tratorous.

Finally, the most convroversial story of the day: Billionaire leftwing tyrants have created a media conspiracy -- exemplified by MediaMatters -- which has no anticedent on the Right. This information comes from a couple of conservative guys with websites, not to be confused with the conservative website guy, who's going to be on the broadcast tomorrow.

Good to know. There's sleep medication ads, and then Frist. They lead with border security, an issue O'Reilly touched on. The discussion of Frist's own impending legal problems is phrased as a personal question; "do you want to stick with your current story?" He does, is abosutely confident of the outcome. Later, why Joe Wilson isn't to be trusted.

Read More

Tags: 

On The Factor

On the factor I just learned that Bill O'Reilly is "very hot with the Latinas."

The issue of immigration is mostly about whether or not newspaper columnists are "going after" Mr. Oreilly. Also, there is a major problem in America: rampant infanticide. The ACLU is predictably tratorous.

Finally, the most convroversial story of the day: Billionaire leftwing tyrants have created a media conspiracy -- exemplified by MediaMatters -- which has no anticedent on the Right. This information comes from a couple of conservative guys with websites, not to be confused with the conservative website guy, who's going to be on the broadcast tomorrow.

Good to know. There's sleep medication ads, and then Frist. They lead with border security, an issue O'Reilly touched on. The discussion of Frist's own impending legal problems is phrased as a personal question; "do you want to stick with your current story?" He does, is abosutely confident of the outcome. Later, why Joe Wilson isn't to be trusted.

Read More

Tags: 

More Energy

A few more thoughts about energy. Sunday morning I had brunch with A-Stock, who told me an interesting anecdote about how a financial heavy had made a bet it the middle of the '70s energy crisis that fuel would be more expensive in the 1980s, and that losing this bet caused him to come to the realization that it's not wise to bet on increasing costs for energy.

This is connected in my head to the blurbs from a book Bill Gates "loves" called The Bottomless Well:

Humanity is destined to find and consume more energy, and still more, forever.
...
Fuels recede, demand grows... but logic ascends, and with the rise of logic we attain the impossible—infinite energy, perpetual motion and the triumph of power.

Emphasis is mine. This is magical thinking. It is the opposite of science, but it is reflective of a kind of thought that is pervasive among the establishment. I am talking about the particular kind of narrow-mindedness which is grounded in the refusal to acknowledge the possibility that our civilization (indeed our world order) may fail, recede or collapse. I'm an optimist, but I also hew to the laws of thermodynamics and treat as serious the lessons of history.

A people's ability to extract, transport and apply energy through systems is its ability to affect the universe. Buckminster Fuller explains all this quite well, though he was optimistic enough to frame this as an issue for the species rather than any particular nation or coalition.

The point is that increased energy costs, in the long run, mean a net decline in all aspects of civilization. This is inconceivable to people who are invested in the righteousness of the status quo. However, there's nothing indestructible about our current world system. There's very little that is sustainable about it either, and as they say, if you don't change the direction you're headed, you're liable to end up where you're going.

Now, I think there are a lot of options. In our conversation, A-Stock mentioned Oil Shale. Shale has been on the radar since the 1960s, but there are problems with its viability. Currently, there is an idea floating around that we can build lots of small (read: relatively safe) nuclear power plants in these semi remote areas where the shale is, use the plants' primary generation phase to power our electricity grid and then re-use the still high-temperature steam in a co-generation phase to process the oil shale and slake our thirst for petroleum.

It's so fucking crazy that it might work for about 100 years, but what we'll be left with is piles and piles of waste, both in terms of spent nuclear fuel and byproducts from the shale, which is much more dirty than refining crude oil. And in the end we're still working off a relatively small finite resource base. And it will cost a ton of money to set up.

I think we need to spend a ton of money on energy research and infrastructure. But I think we should invest in something that will last, that can be built on by future generations. This can happen through a national "new deal" type program, or it could happen in a more decentralized fashion by establishing a marketplace which responded to environmental and human costs and regulating that market tightly to prevent abuse.

Given the nature of the energy industry, both are uphill battles. There will be strong resistance to any government-driven change which jeopardizes the current bottom line of any major players, probably on the grounds that it is "socialist" or some-such. There would be even more vociferous resistance, ironically most likely expressed through lobbying the government for sweetheart deals and protective legislation, to any attempt to introduce real competition and real prices into the energy market.

The only way this is going to work out is if the Public Interest can somehow get out front on these issues. I strongly doubt the sincerity of a lot of recent "we know oil's going to run out, help us find a solution" PR that's coming out of a number of the big companies (e.g. Chevron's willyoujoinus dot-com). This includes even BP and their redesigned logo. The name of the corporation is still British Petrochemical, even if their slogan was changed to "Beyond Petroleum." Have some statistics:

BP’s total six-year investment in renewable technologies was US$200-million – the same amount it spent on its “Beyond Petroleum” ad campaign. Nearly US$45-million of this went to buy Solarex Corporation – meaning BP’s renewable energy investment was 0.05% of the US$91-billion it spent to buy oil giants Arco and Amoco back in the 1990s.

Now, the only reason they spent that $200M on the ad campaign, and the only reason Chevron spent whatever it spent to create and publicize willyoujoinus.com, is because they know that some opinion leaders are getting nervous. Depending on the effects and severity of ongoing economic shock we might see concerned citizens continue to drive the agenda. Some believe 50 to 100% increases in home heating prices this winter may lead to a decline in holiday shopping, which would badly harm many US retailers who are dependent our culture's annual year-ending orgy of consumption to balance their books. If it's bad, and if energy is identified and accepted as a root cause, we could see something where, like what's happening with GM and health care, very large corporations begin to join with progressive citizens in calling for the overhaul of our economic infrastructure.

But again, even if that happens, the outcome it really all depends on who seizes the initiative. The insurance industry currently retains the upper hand on issues of health care just as the petrochemical, coal and nuclear industries retain the upper hand on issues of energy. Maybe this will change, but in spite of what free marketistas would have you believe, it's not the pattern of history for consumers to direct the action of producers.

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

Read More

Tags: 

Hot Hot Hot

Longhair

I'm up early today. Just added some photos by Zya from Burning Man to flickr just for the hell of it. That hair is going to probably go away. We're on the move now.

On another note, I find from this bit in Fortune that this book is a favorite of Bill Gates. Quote:

Humanity is destined to find and consume more energy, and still more, forever.
...
Fuels recede, demand grows... but logic ascends, and with the rise of logic we attain the impossible—infinite energy, perpetual motion and the triumph of power.

Sounds like late-stage futurism (e.g. approaching facism) to me, except the authors are Regan appointees, not painters. Hmmm.... Also sounds like Bill Gates is still not very smart about the world in spite of making all that money. The rest of the Fortune bit is an interesting read, though. Lots of talk about big-league philanthropy.

Finally, a quick bummer: I caught a headline yesterday explaining that the FCC is using a 1994 law to compel universities, ISPs and other 'net access providers to make survalence of TCP/IP traffic easier, which they claim is needed to fight terrorism, though the DEA is also involved so I think they've got a number of applications in mind. Universities are objecting because they would be forced to shoulder the costs, estimated at over $7B, for the snooping system. They are not raising civil liberties concerns because regular court-orders would be required to use the surveillance system. This as a report of surveillance going on outside the legal channels comes from the FBI. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has background on the law.

Read More

Tags: 

Honor Bound to Defent Freedom, We Tortured People

Watching Frontline's bit on torture now. Yeah. The little details like how when General Miller came in to take over GTMO to replace the "softie" Baccus he implements a policy that all salutes would be coupled with the exchange "honor bound / to defend freedom," between saluting individuals...

And this was at the high-end, our response to international terrorism. This was before we invaded and occupied a non-threatening foreign nation and started processing thousands of detainees, mostly with reservists as staff. That got considerably more ugly, with a lot more deaths it would seem. The decision to use Abu Ghraib. The decision to use private contractors. It couldn't be more dramatically wrong.

There's a DOJ lawyer Yoo -- a political appointee and member of the Federalist society -- saying that there's evidence from Israel that aggressive interrigations helped to reduce suicide bombings. I'm curious about that, because from my understanding, the use of state brutality in many ways perpetuated the Intifada.

General Miller seems set to take the fall here. Sanchez, Gonzales, Rumsfeld and Bush are all responsible here, as well as John Ashcroft, but unfortunately I don't think they'll be held accountable in any meaninful way.

Tony Lagouranis, who actually tortured people -- e.g. keeping them locked in a storage container, hovering above hypothermia (rectal temperature taking), scaring detainees into pissing themselves with dogs -- has some of the most compelling stuff, but nothing tops the home videos. Not just the brutality. Watching kids tape themselves fucking up a folding chair with a knife, whooping it up... it's familiar, and deeply disturbing in context.

The truth is we're all accountable for this, whether we like it or not. This administration has got to be stopped. It's too bad we had to wait a year after the election for America to realize this. McCain and Graham are clearly positioning themselves for '08. That's going to be a pretty wild circus.

You can watch the whole thing online -- something PBS is doing correctly -- though they should really put DVD quality versions out on bittorrent so that people can watch it whenever they want. That would be serving the Public Interest.

Read More

Tags: 

Savage

Saturday night. Holy crap. As if staying out until 5am on Friday wasn't enough.

Kevin brought me out to a rather nice apartment party in Greenpoint. Third wave kind of scene; young professionals; tasty artichoke dip; the sort of thing that threatens to price me out of my old neighborhood. I don't know how it happened, but Franz and I worked our way through a bottle of Wild Turkey in about two hours, things get hazy from there. We were disputing over the issue of Federalism and the appropriate purview of the power of the State. We eventually went to Royal Oak, my attitude was reportedly "fuck those hipsters." The self-loathing is getting more pronounced, you see.

Scene missing.

Conclusion: I puked on Wes and Jeremy's futon. Testiment to my social network that I lived through the night and lost only my bike lock and a jacket (jacket might be at the bar, I'll drop by and check). Apologies to the girls I called at 3 in the morning; hope I was civil at least. Don't really remember. Mega apologies to Wes for the untimely return of the artichoke dip.

I've got to do a little adjusting here, let things settle down, learn to play again. My first day back I was skeptical. I'm still not convinced, but I'm remembering why I like living here. Everyone is beautiful. Everyone ambitious. Gentrification gets me down, but it's not something I can control. Yet.

Anyway, this week I get a haircut and a sublet. We'll see how it works out.

Read More

Tags: 

Heavy Lifting

Sam Rosenfeld and Matt Yglesias, two professional wonks at the American Prospect, have written something good.
The Incompetence Dodge
got some play in the tit-for-tat world of the blogosphere for the way it drops rhetorical bombs on the position du-jour of the so-called Liberal Hawks -- aka those Democrats who supported the war and their backers in the punditry. It's high quality flaming, and the LibHawk position (essentially that invading and occupying Iraq would have worked given better management) needs discrediting, but the thing that makes me want to write about what they wrote is that they go on to offer some substantive thinking about the nature of US military power and its appropriate uses.

This is much needed. The Left often shies away from really grappling with issues of power, and military power especially. Efforts to the contrary are productive.

The U.S. military is good at exactly what one would expect an exemplary military to be good at: destroying enemy forces while keeping collateral damage to historic lows. Consequently, we have the ability to eject hostile forces from areas where they lack a strong base of popular support. This power allowed us to create the conditions for negotiation between the parties to the Bosnian war, and to keep the local Serb, Croat, and Muslim communities from killing one another in large numbers once the peace was signed. They also allowed us to eject Serbian forces from Kosovo and bring autonomy to that province, plus provided a large measure of security and autonomy for Kurdistan for more than a decade. These are no mean achievements, and they were accomplished largely from the air, at little risk to American soldiers. But in none of those places have we yet been able to achieve what we are likewise failing to accomplish in Iraq: the sudden transformation of a society.

That's tight. I can unpack that seven different ways depending on who I'm talking to and make it all sound interesting. Well done there, boys. Keep it up.

On the opposite end of the salary spectrum, we have pro-am and still pseudonymous Billmon with his Imperial Candor:

Like Richard Clarke, [Colin Powell Right-Hand Man] Wilkerson strikes me as reasonably representative of the technicians who actually run the empire -- and his assumptions largely appear to reflect those of his class. American supremacy is a taken as a given, requiring no legal or moral justification. Not because America has any grand historical mission to spread the blessings of democracy to the heathen, but because American power maintains the world order and keeps the peace, or at least something approximating it. It also keeps the sea lanes open and the oil flowing and the wheels of industry turning, not just here but around the world.

It does appear to have dawned on Wilkerson that the U.S. hegemony isn't viewed as quite such an exercise in utilitarian benevolence by the rest of the world, but I'm not sure he understands exactly why this is. I think he puts far too much blame on the cabal's shenanigans -- although these admittedly have made things worse -- and not enough on the fact that empires, even the practical, no nonsense type favored by the realists, are anachronisms in the modern world.

We've got a couple of the pieces of the puzzle here. A national security policy based on returning the US to its republic-an (not Republican) roots would have wide popular appeal. At the same time, there's a recognition that force is real, and that it can do good if we're willing to attempt to shoulder the responsibility. This is essentially the ethos of Spiderman, and it's the only moral way for people in positions of power to behave.

Power of one over another tends (tends) to corrupt, and an institutionalized or persistent differential in power (Absolute Power) corrupts without fail, creating Oppression, which is Evil, and something to be actively confronted. Activists like to fight Oppression, and in doing so we often end up with a negative, rather than healthily skeptical, view of power. This leads to an almost instinctual, perhaps even irrational, fear of wielding it ourselves, which as we can see has led to a great and tragic backsliding.

We must realize that power is not going away, and like all things it will remain unequally distributed at any point in time. Total Equality is not something that can be attained. This is why pure pacifism just doesn't work out. It is also the fundamental failing of Anarchism as a political philosophy, and interestingly enough its source of triumph as a personal philosophy.

Personally the credo No Gods, No Masters is quite compelling, though my heart is really in the logical inverse: All Gods, All Masters. When you get down to brass tacks this leads to different techniques for implementation -- raising up rather than tearing down -- but philosophically they're kindred notions. Anyway, it's a very empowering way to look at the universe. That's good.

However, any analysis of the human condition on the global or historical scale reveals that many people strongly desire Gods and/or Masters. That's a choice people are allowed to make in my book. Heck, who doesn't get a craving for credible leadership from time to time? I mean, mouldn't that be nice?

It would, but we're not going to get it until we contemplate and concieve our own notions of power, and then implement them in a way that displaces the establishment. That's what I mean by "the revolution."

And it might just happen. I'm seeing a lot of really good heavy lifting starting to happen all over the place. It's become clear that the conservative movement has reached a high water mark. Having achieved Total Power, their coalition is breaking as its internal inconsistancies come to the fore. Yes, the wheel is in spin, another cycle starting. There's a lot of organizing that's ramping up now that needs help. There's also a lot of intellectual work to be done so that this shift -- which in many ways is inevitable -- can be translated into meaninful gains for the Public.

I know where my official place in the 2006 campaign is: providing tools. I build and maintain instruments for information warfare. But in the meantime I'm also working on the revolution, which is the Long Game. But it starts now. It always starts now.

Read More

Tags: 

New York, New Stuff, New EVERYTHING!

I made it. The last haul of 800 miles from Chicago to Brooklyn left me with a sore buttcheek from my wallet, but otherwise it went smoothly.

Also, over the past week 2000+ spam comments were accrued on the site. I've implemented a CAPTCHA challenge. Sorry for the additional hassle, folks, but it's the only way to keep this crazy train rolling.

Soon enough the website will be more completely overhauled and moved from wordpress to Drupal. This will let you do nice things like have an account that your computer will remember so you don't have to bother with this crap.

Anyway, I'm back at it in NYC. Will be working pretty furiously through the next couple of months. Looking for a sublet, hoping maybe I can find something that will work for me and just me, but we'll see...

Read More

Tags: 

Drive on...

Made the 747 mile day -- 10,000 vertical feet there too -- and another 550+ across much more level terrain to pull into the Farm. Good place to spend a night.

Read More

Tags: 

Pages