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The Criminalization of Everyday Life

tomdispatch.com

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Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life

#151

Post by swalkergibson »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #37

One of the underpinnings of the U.S. Constitution is the Bill Of Rights, one of which states "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." People go bouncing off the wall around this issue as if it were one having solely to do with owning guns, but the real purpose is arranging the real power in the government. The p…

What good would weapons' system training do, exactly? Are you suggesting that if more people knew how to operate this equipment that local police departments would be less likely to say yes to a free MRAP? What point are you making here?

Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life

#152

Post by swalkergibson »

diydsp wrote: post #60
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #37

One of the underpinnings of the U.S. Constitution is the Bill Of Rights, one of which states "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." People go bouncing off the wall around this issue as if it were one having solely to do with owning guns, but the real purpose is arranging the real power in the government. The p…

Thank you for the patient post. People will probably despise me for this, but why don't we have compulsory military duty in the U.S. like other countries? It would give people some discipline. It would discourage us from acting arrogant, "lol! we should bomb them!" It would give people some skills. If it was equally applied, no one would have any disadvantage. It would make people feel much more secure, without deleg…

Because it went horribly in Vietnam? Because we have tens of millions of willing, ready, and able volunteers? If you ask me, compulsory duty is just a bad idea, period. Especially in a country the size of the United States. It all sounds fine and dandy if you are not at war, but what if your two years just so happened to be 2004-2006? What if I turned 18 during that period? I get to endure decades of PTSD and who knows what else just so I can master the fine art of driving a Humvee?

Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life

#153

Post by memracom »

jedmeyers wrote: post #130
coldcode wrote: post #14

What a depressing article(s). Our reality is only going to get worse since there is little we can (or have the will to) do. At least in the Ukraine people are really contemplating change. Here we watch our football and our shows and fawn over celebrities and nothing changes.

The is no "the" in Ukraine. And there is no point in comparing Ukraine to the US. If you think that people in Ukraine are contemplating change you have to read up more on it. Or maybe visit the country sometimes to see for yourself how wrong you are.

I have been to the Ukraine over a dozen times. Ukraine is doing more than just contemplating change. Everyone there is demanding change and is unhappy with all elected politicians no matter what party they are from.

The main problem is that Ukraine is not sure what kind of change it wants. And it doesn't understand the steps to take to get change. And too many Ukrainians want a magical solution that will sweep the problems away.

Point 1 - Signing that Euro agreement will not change anything. It only puts Ukraine on a path to make thousands of changes in their laws and their society that may or may not hurt the people. Then, after 10 or 15 years of this, they might be allowed to join the EU. Ask Turkey about how long you need to wait. And after joining the EU, Ukraine would be a substandard partner, for instance there would be visa restrictions for years to come that would prevent many Ukrainians from working in the EU. Quotas in fact.

Point 2 - Ukraine is already in an informal union with Russia. Given that Ukraine's largest trading partner is Russia and that Russia's largest trading partner is Ukraine, they can't help but be in a union. If Ukraine would only sign an agreement as a CIS member and formalize this relationship, the people of Ukraine would gain immediate benefits. For instance there would be a legal way for Ukrainians to go work in Russia, and since they are already fluent in Russian, they could get reasonable jobs and not dishwashing or hotel cleaning jobs like they get in the EU.

So what would be best for Ukraine?

Also, consider this. Russians are GREAT chess players. What if Russia is orchestrating this because it knows that if Ukraine joins the EU, then it will weaken the EU and open the door for Russia to also join, and then to dominate?

Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life

#154

Post by bananacurve »

memracom wrote: post #146
bananacurve wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In Russia people have more personal freedoms with respect to the state than they do in the USA. How it is possible for someone to reach such a stupendous level of confusion boggles the mind. Even if the Russian propaganda minister were to make such a declaration he surely isn't deluded enough to believe it to be true.

Well, I speak Russian fluently (and therefore can follow the Russian media/Internet) and I have visited the country 3 times. In addition I have visited another ex-Soviet country, Ukraine, over a dozen times. You really have to go to these places to understand them, and preferably have some level of competence in the language so that you can speak to a variety of people, not just some egotistic activist that gets his…

I have spoken to Ukrainians and Russians, students and programmers, and they would be offended at your assessment of the situation. The most telling part of my conversations with them was when I suggested that things are getting at least a little better. They were adamant that things were not getting better. Anyway they were glad to be in the states.

Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life

#155

Post by rglover »

Here's what I don't understand: what is the ultimate goal of this newfound desire to police everything? The obvious answer is control over people en mass, but say that happens...then what?

Articles like this (which I'm glad are being written) point out the flaws and injustice in the system, but don't discuss the presumed results "those in control" are looking to achieve by manipulating it.

From what I understand, the desired result is to minimize the autonomy of the general public and funnel the bulk of money, control, and power into the hands of a national elite. What happens next (an honest question, as I have some semi-paranoid theories but am curious to hear from someone who is a bit more educated on the topic)?

Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life

#156

Post by alan_cx »

JonnieCache wrote: post #48

The fact that this is being instigated by the federal government makes me suspect that this is deliberate planning for the long-term consequences of american societal breakdown, for when the war on drugs isn't enough to control the ever-growing underclass anymore. Does this kind of thinking still place me firmly with the tinfoil contingent?

Having a so called police force like this is societal breakdown.

To me, current US policing looks much like how the Brits patrolled Northern Ireland back in the day, with the army. Only thing the US is missing is check points and road blocks. Don't kid yourselves, the US does not have a police force, it has a domestic army.

Only hope Americans have is in the individuals who wear the uniform. Would American uniformed son and daughters, mothers and fathers turn on non uniformed Americans?

On the other hand.... If the main government got all evil and what not, couldn't this local police force defend the people with all this hardware? Aren't they all sort of independent, under local state or what ever control? I mean, it we are talking revolution and all that, its not a given who side the police would be on, is it?

Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life

#157

Post by misuba »

coldtea wrote: post #147
jseliger wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

quote more Foucault's Discipline & Punishment Foucault's style is (possibly deliberately) obtuse, and his knowledge of history dubious at best, per Keith Windschuttle's book The Killing of History : http://www.amazon.com/The-Killing-History-Theorists-Murderin... . It's the question of why we all let this happen without any resistance Because it's easy, because most of the time it doesn't affect us, and because it's h…

> Foucault's style is (possibly deliberately) obtuse, and his knowledge of history dubious at best, per Keith Windschuttle's book The Killing of History That critique is not even worthy of an answer -- it's basically a conservative "oh, all these new fangled lefty theorists have ruined our field" cry.

It's not a critique - it's an answer to the question "why don't more people quote Foucault's _Discipline and Punish._" They don't quote it because it's not quotable.

If someone were to write and (crucially) popularize a version that reads the way people explain Foucault, things would be different.

Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life

#158

Post by steveklabnik »

pistle wrote: post #145
rolux wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That critique of Foucault is much too cheap. To any halfway competent theory hacker, it will sound like "But Python uses significant whitespace, and Guido van Rossum's knowledge of language design is dubious at best." It's hard to base a serious discussion on that type of argument. To me, one of the major takeaways from Foucault is his renouncement of the "repression hypothesis". In a nutshell, he proposes to underst…

Foucault is SmallTalk. Tangentially inspirational, but mostly useless in modern practice. Deleuze's postscript... "metastable states coexisting in one and the same, like a universal system of deformation." That's your counter-argument?

If you're not familiar with the subject matter, it sounds just as odd as "Oh I love _why so I use hpricot instead of Nokogiri to parse my XML."

Every discipline has technical terminology. It always sounds weird to those who aren't involved.

Disclaimer: I'm moderately obsessed with Deleuze.

Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life

#159

Post by eseehausen »

pistle wrote: post #145
rolux wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That critique of Foucault is much too cheap. To any halfway competent theory hacker, it will sound like "But Python uses significant whitespace, and Guido van Rossum's knowledge of language design is dubious at best." It's hard to base a serious discussion on that type of argument. To me, one of the major takeaways from Foucault is his renouncement of the "repression hypothesis". In a nutshell, he proposes to underst…

Foucault is SmallTalk. Tangentially inspirational, but mostly useless in modern practice. Deleuze's postscript... "metastable states coexisting in one and the same, like a universal system of deformation." That's your counter-argument?

This sort cherry-picking of "obtuse" quotes to attack high-level theory is pretty absurd. It's equivalent to somebody from the humanities putting down this formula: Y = λf.(λx.f (x x)) (λx.f (x x)) and saying "I have difficulty understanding this, ergo computer science is absurd nonsense."

Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life

#160

Post by steveklabnik »

dmix wrote: post #61

I wish people would move beyond 1984 and quote more Foucault's Discipline & Punishment [1]. There is a much deeper-rooted problem in society than mass surveillance or militarization of police. It's the question of why we all let this happen without any resistance. We accept and welcome our controllers. Foucault wrote about the effects of prisoner mindset in society in the 1960-70s. Our subjugation and tolerance to au…

Yup, Foucault (with maybe some Deleuze) is the answer to the question "Why did we all hate Microsoft, yet we love Google?" Control and power is one of the reasons why open source just isn't enough to protect us from bad things happening with our technology.
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