“Jefferson County made a very different decision than Rhode Island did,” Mr. Klee said. “Rhode Island put bondholders ahead of its citizens, and Jefferson County is not going to do that.”

He called the notion that a full faith and credit pledge was inviolate, and that a debtor must honor it even in bankruptcy, “a myth and a scare tactic.”

Via the NYT (here)

Good for them I say. Seems as if Jefferson County administrators/staff have their priorities weighted correctly. However, it does make one wonder what would happen if other municipalities or government bond issuers, took this approach? Might have some very serious long term consequences both in terms of restricting local government(s) in future efforts to raise money by issuing bonds and also in terms of bond markets and the stability of the larger financial system as a whole.

It was on TMC tonight and I watched it again. This is something my wife doesn’t understand about me. Some films I could watch over and over. I can listen to some songs over and over as well, but not for the same reason. Most music for me is tied more directly to some life event. Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony, Little Feat’s Let It Roll or Neil Diamond’s Hot August Night are audio bookmarks for me, allowing me to re-read well-worn, dog-eared passages from The Unabridged Life of Jimmy K. without disturbing anyone.

Films are different. For some of them repeated viewing is easy for two reasons. First is the performances. Watching skilled actors plying their craft is never tiring. I’m not enough of a student of the craft to dwell on the direction. (I couldn’t tell you why or how the direction is good or bad – I guess I know it when I see it.) Second is the language. Accomplished writers paired with gifted actors are what make the screen – and stage – vital ingredients that flavor our society… and keep me up late at night.

Which brings me to class warfare.

You may be thinking, oh, jeez, this is gonna be a stretch. But bear with me. There’s a piece running around the Internet by a fellow named Bill Whittle called A Voter’s Guide to Republicans. Several people who I respect find merit in it. I think it’s hyperbolic twaddle. Differences of opinion make the world go ‘round. So let’s look at Bill’s opinion. And then we’ll take a gander at mine.

One of the themes from Bill is that people think that Republicans are bad because they believe in on holding on to their money; i.e. – they’re hated because they’re rich. Bill and many other conservatives rally around the talking point that it’s the rich people that are the economic engines – or job creators – that power the USA and hating them is tantamount to a self-loathing that should have psychiatrists bouncing with glee because at least they’ll be employed for the foreseeable future.

The standard comeback from the other side of the fence is that if these rich people are the job creators, why aren’t they creating jobs? The money is there. There are people who need jobs created. If rich people (many of them Republicans) are good people and not the fascists the Left makes the out to be then perhaps it’s time they did a li’l bit of their Creationism and revved that good ol’ American Engine. (A personal opinion – Bill, who is apparently working for the title of Beck II, is like so many of the pundits on the Left and the Right whose only skin in the game is keeping their careers alive by stirring the pot with divisive pseudo-knowledge that masquerades as policy.)

As always, some of both sides’ points have merit, mainly the ones that meet in the middle. The use of the term “fascist” is one of the things Bill takes the Left to task for using and probably in the broad lexicographic sense he’s correct. And it really is a good question as to why – when need, resources and ability are present – is job creation not happening.

All of this coalesced for me earlier in the evening, sitting in a fast food restaurant, watching one of the employees. This young woman, probably a college student, was mopping the floor. She was dutifully working, not showing any signs of distaste or indignation at mopping the floor. It was part of her job. And that’s when it occurred to me that Bill and those of his ilk and those on the extreme Left and their ilk have got it wrong. The Rich are not the Job Creators.The Consumer is the Job Creator. If nobody can buy the product, there’s no reason to make it. It would seem to be in everybody’s best interest to make it easier for the Consumer to consume.

Seems to me all Classes want to live decently. It’s more ideological warfare than class warfare. Perhaps there would be less warfare of any kind if both ideologies worked a little harder at an armistice. Maybe we could start by turning down the rhetoric a little. Or… maybe sitting down and watching The Philadelphia Story together. Rich people can be human.

In times of peace a journalist’s main aim in exposing the truth around major issues is widely accepted and supported, sometimes a little reluctantly, by governments in democratic countries. In times of war however such support can evaporate. If one can see that in peace time the objective of journalism, to expose the truth, is therefore synonymous with national interest one cannot take this for granted. However, the alignment of these objectives does not imply that both are one of the same. In war time the divergence presents real dangers and threats to the principles of the fourth estate and history illustrates that it is very rare if not impossible for the political view of national interest to align perfectly with the objectives of journalism.

Service to commemorate journalists killed covering war and to commemorate media workers who have died on the frontline during the past year is being held at St Bride’s church in the UK on the evening of 9 November. The event, entitled “The price of freedom”, will honour the memory of those journalists, photographers and media support workers who have been killed while covering conflicts. Even the church stepped in to endorse the values and principles of journalism. “It is essential that we speak up for liberty and free expression, and that we honour and remember those who have died across the world in bearing the torch of freedom,” says the St Bride’s rector, David Meara.

Today one can find the US secretary of state, Hilary Clinton, supporting Al Jazeera. This is not a reflection of an American liberal alignment with this Middle Eastern based global news network. Over the last 2 months American political ‘hawks’ such as Donald Rumsfeld and the ex secretary of state Colin Powel both afforded Al Jazeera extensive in depth interviews where no subject appeared to be off limits. Both individuals could not have been more cordial if they tried. This was post the Iraq war. Fast rewind 9 years and the American administration is said to have targeted Al Jazeera offices for bombing raids as they became increasingly uncomfortable with independent news reports emanating from the battle field without going through the filter of US government censors. Now that the war is over various US administrations appear to be going out of their way to be seen to support Al Jazeera especially in light of the fact that the media organization has been such a central point in the democratic movements of the Arab Spring. Go to Al Jazeera’s website today and one is faced with a long line of US political figures lining up to positively endorse the media network. This again clearly illustrates the fact that democratic governments desire to portray that their objectives are aligned with the forth estate. History however clearly illustrates that such desires are ultimately deceptive and opportunistic. These desires are allowed to come to the fore when peacetime conditions are present. In times of war few governments conclude that their national interest is for the uncensored publication of ‘the truth’. One has to therefore ask whether so called western democracies are as committed to freedom as they would purport.

Political views can dramatically change in times of war. With this change media outlets can fall under the pressure of governments willing to sacrifice their commitment to civil liberties in order to win their propaganda crusade. Is this a breech on the foundations of democracy? By shutting the nation out from the truth their understanding of conflict is prejudiced. At the turn of the last century ‘the war on terror’ illustrated the use of propaganda and the shunning on journalists ‘siding with their enemies’. In the Iraq war more use than ever was made of the tactic of embedding journalist’s who had already been vetted in to the American military. By controlling the movements and access to the battlefield of journalists the US government was able to influence the news coming from the front line. One can only be suspicious of the motives of governments when such limited and controlled access to a place of war is allowed, yet the public were never presented with this contradiction in the news stories that ran in western media during the conflict.

A major threat to journalists during times of war, and in some cases post-war, can come from their own government. In 2009 Sri Lanka ended a 26 year long civil battle between the government and the forces of the Tamil Tigers, a militant organization fighting for an independent Tamil homeland in the predominantly Northern state of Jaffna. Towards the end of the war, media access into the war zone was un-accessible with allegations of serious war crimes coming from both sides. To this day these claims have still to be properly investigated. Since the end of the conflict journalists have been restricted from entering the North by a government fueled by the rhetoric ‘you are either with us or against us’. Journalists are finding themselves in dangerous positions with sometimes-deadly consequences when investigating the final days of the war.

On the 13^th of January 2009 journalist Lasantha Wickrematunga, also editor-in-chief of The Sunday Leader, was shot and killed, having predicted his own death in an article titled ‘And Then They Came For Me’. In his introduction Wickrematunga puts the position of the fourth estate in context when he wrote ‘indeed, murder has become the primary tool whereby the state seeks to control the organs of liberty. Today it is the journalist’s, tomorrow it will be the judges. For neither group have the risks ever been higher or the stakes lower.’ His article goes on to condemn the government by stating ‘Sri Lanka is the only country in the world routinely to bomb its own citizens. For these views we have been labeled traitors, and if this be treachery, we wear that label proudly.’ In the principles of journalism he could be seen as being a true patriot. To the government however, he was seen as a traitor-a threat to their grip on power.

In his new book Censorship in Afghanistan: Death to journalists author and Kabul press founder, Kamran Mir Hazar shows that since the beginning of the Karzai regime in 2002, twenty Afghan journalists have been murdered, and more than 200 violent physical attacks against journalists have been logged. Meanwhile many have fled Afghanistan after receiving threats against them and their families. ‘Journalists have been sentenced to death, and several remain in jail after being arrested for their work.’ According to his book Mr. Mir Hazar claims that radio and television stations, print media, and Internet services have all been attacked, blocked, damaged, and even burned to the ground by government and other politico-religious agents and gangs at one time or another.

This conflict of ideology is all too pervasive in times of war putting journalists in incredibly difficult and often dangerous situations. A war journalist, just as a peacetime journalist, has the responsibility to produce a balanced view reporting on both sides of the arguments. By definition a war affects more then one nation therefore it is always a journalist’s responsibility to remain objective, balanced and independent. Journalists are encouraged to work against a biased view and ethnocentrism emanating from the government in power. Journalists who are true to their profession often find that their advocates in peacetime who hold political power become their antagonists in times of war. The responsibility of journalism carries enormous risk in war time.

For doctors the Hippocratic oath is sacrosanct. Doctors commit themselves to assisting those in need of medical aid no matter what their circumstance. This commitment does not change in light of the events of a particular time. Journalists commit themselves to objective reporting in order to present a true picture of the issues contained in any event or circumstance. In both professions these objectives are essential to protect and promote democratic values. The objectives of journalism one could well argue are synonymous with the objectives of democracy itself.  One cannot however then claim that the principles of journalism are to protect the national interest unless there is unequivocal support for the view that national interest is always aligned with democracy and the revelation of truth. Unfortunately governments perceive national interest all too often as the promotion of a view favorable to that government and in times of war these pressures are intensively magnified. Recent history is regrettably rich with examples where government views of national interest run against the journalist’s objective of presenting the truth. One is therefore not surprised when one hears of the enormous pressures placed on journalist’s in countries where democracies roots are only tenuously established. The government of Sri Lanka is now feeling increasing world condemnation on their all too apparent narrow ‘misguided’ views as to national interest when it comes to journalism. What is perhaps more alarming for journalists is that countries that purport to be beacons of democracy in the west have also shown their predisposition to define national interest in ways that conflict with the principles of the fourth estate. President George W Bush’s administration also made it clear after the 9/11 attacks to countries around the world ‘that you are either with us or against us’. It soon became evident that the comments were all encompassing and that it was as relevant to journalists as it was to foreign governments.

National interest is not a universal principle. It is by definition a term that can be applied to any political ambition. A journalist’s responsibility is to the truth. The truth with the requirements of unbiased reporting is a constant. The objectives of the fourth estate reflect this. Nowhere is it written that the objective of the fourth estate is to protect national interest. A journalist has the responsibility to report the truth an end result in this one can argue is to strengthen the pillars of democracy in that society. When a society is strengthened it is logical to conclude that the national interest has been strengthened also however that is a subjective byproduct of the noble objectives of journalism.

Many journalists have died defending the principles of the fourth estate often by the shadowy hands of incumbent political powers. History inevitably judges these people as some of the greatest patriots that were children of that nation. Perhaps it is that historical view that reminds us of the huge responsibility we bear by taking up the commitment inherent in the profession of the fourth estate.

Travel to the USA and visit The Journalists Memorial, located in the Newseum in Washington, D.C. The memorial pays tribute to reporters, photographers and broadcasters who have died reporting the news most of these during times of war. The names of 2,084 individuals from around the world are etched on the glass panels of the soaring, two-story structure. The memorial is rededicated each year to add the names of journalists who lost their lives on the job in the preceding year. Adjoining the memorial are photographs of hundreds of those journalists, and electronic kiosks containing data on every honoree. Regrettably the names of new additions continue at an alarming rate. Lest we forget.

99% / MIC CHECK! / LOOK AROUND / YOU ARE A PART / OF A GLOBAL UPRISING / WE ARE A CRY / FROM THE HEART / OF THE WORLD / WE ARE UNSTOPPABLE / ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE / HAPPY BIRTHDAY / #OCCUPY MOVEMENT / OCCUPY WALL STREET / list of cities, states and countries / OCCUPY EARTH / WE ARE WINNING / IT IS THE BEGINNING OF THE BEGINNING / DO NOT BE AFRAID / LOVE.

It was the text projected onto  the blank facade of the “Verizon Building” (375 Pearl St., so-named because of a large lighted Verizon ad) facing the recent OWS march across the Brooklyn Bridge…

Via a post by sevensixfive on some Spatial Intervention: Five Moments from #occupy.

To be truthful a number of other parts from the post moved and encouraged me. Fred ends with a hope “Other models of spatial production, and indeed, even of reality creation…have the potential to defuse the political control over the built environment. Inhabitation is speech, and it can create new realities.“

Writers choosing DonkeyHotey
Posted by Steve O’Keefe on The Health Care Compact
Tuesday, November 15, 2011

In the time of my life that I have been politically aware, TMI has ranged from the Viet Nam war, to the first of many energy crises, to Terrorism. This year “Jobs” and “Economy” will probably vie for TMI honors. How national, regional and local candidates perceive and plan to correct the problems of these two should be the deciding factor.

Please note I said, “should.”

We voters tend to get distracted. We dive into the bag of political potato chips because a mouthful of Salty Scandal is more immediately satisfying than a slowly chewed Issue Carrot. There is some wayward gene in each of us that makes us turn towards the flashy, shiny thingy. Snake-oil salesmen, carnival barkers and movie moguls have known this for years. In the past two decades the news media finally figured this out as well, but that’s a whole ‘nother soapbox.

Recently, though, some politicians have deduced that two things have taken on the mantle of Flashy Thingy: anger and ignorance. The first is pretty easy; everybody’s angry about something these days. All a candidate has to do is align his or her anger with that of the block they’re courting and it’s instant Kismet.

The second is something I’ve never quite understood. One would think that rational people would choose someone as smart or smarter than them to lead them. The choice of an “aw-shucks-just-one-of-the-guys” populist contender is understandable unless the underlying reason for the choice is “he’s not threatening because he’s just as stupid as we are.” The candidates who revel in their ignorance and proudly wear it like an anti-intellectual merit badge are as deeply troubling as the crowds who cheer them on for wearing it.

Some of this distrust of and anger for the Best and the Brightest is well deserved. Intelligence and deviousness are co-joined as often as anger and ignorance. History is replete with uprisings in response to these pairings, from our Revolution, to Tiananmen Square to Occupy Wall Street. But the difference is that corrupt intelligence was replaced (or at least attempted to be replaced) by non-corrupt intelligence, rather than the angry mob.

In Walter M. Miller’s sci-fi classic, “A Canticle for Leibowitz”, post-Apocalyptic Earth endures a time of “Simplification.” Leaders, scientists, teachers – anyone who is connected to the intelligence of humankind – is hunted down by “simpletons.”

Joyfully the mobs accepted the name, took up the cry: Simpletons! Yes, yes! I’m a simpleton! Are you a simpleton? We’ll build a town and we’ll name it Simple Town, because by then all the smart bastards that caused all this, they’ll be dead! Simpletons! Let’s go! This ought to show ‘em! Anybody here not a simpleton?  Get the bastard, is there is!

Thankfully, we have yet to reach the point in America where the idea of killing someone because they were smart is nothing more than a “Law and Order” script idea. We have reached the point, however, where politicians jump on the Simpleton bandwagon and sacrifice teachers, police and fire fighters to the angry mob.

One more pop culture reference and I’ll leave you alone… In Aaron Sorkin’s phenomenal series “The West Wing” Martin Sheen’s Jed Bartlett takes on James Brolin’s Robert Ritchie in Bartlett’s bid for re-election. Ritchie is a not-so-carefully disguised Dubya persona; a populist candidate who contends he likes what real Americans like: huntin’, fishin’, baseball rather than theater. One of the themes is that Bartlett is trying to co-opt this image by toning down his intellectual bent. In one scene Advisor Toby Zeigler (Richard Schiff) admonishes him for this and tells him to make the race about smart and not smart, about being engaged and not being engaged and Bartlett will win. Of course, that was in Season Four and if Bartlett hadn’t won, we never would have gotten Seasons 5, 6 and 7. The idea remains true.

Now is the time for us to choose informed, intelligent leaders that are not ashamed to admit that they are informed and intelligent.

Data Points: Bill Marsh for NYT

Arrows show the imbalances of debt exposure in Europe during this current and ongoing Euro monetary and PIIGS crisis in a great infographic from the NYT. Image found in this article It’s All Connected: An Overview of the Euro Crisis.

Steven Heller for the NYT reviews Nader Vossoughian’s Otto Neurath: The Language of the Global Polis “, wherein Vossoughian, argues Neurath believed that “the dissemination of images or pictures could foster Bildung, that is, education and self-actualization” and Angus Hyland and Steven Bateman’s, Symbol “which contains over 1,300 logos classified by visual type” divided into two section Abstract and Representational.

In No True Sense of History Without a Sense of Place, Jane Leavy explores baseball’s heavily nostalgic and rich sense of history and place, particularly with regards to the architecture/layout of baseballs stadium/fields (for instance see here and here). After noting how many historic diamonds have been lost over time, she proposes “Why not create a national baseball landmark society to protect the places that still exist and mark those that once mattered?“. The piece raises interesting questions about the role space plays in memorialization. As Leavy explains, as fields are moved or closed physicists, are even dragged into to assist with the detective work need to correctly identify and landmark (if only with a plaque), sites of various record holding significance…

All of these articles are from a Sunday NYT edition, which is now almost two weeks old, but I have been busy and they are interesting anyways…

The conversations have been partially funded for the past few years by a grant from The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, to encourage “better communication and cooperation between citizens and their local governments“.

In the September 2011 (Vol. 25 #10) issue of the Gainesville Iguana Joe Courter writes about the conversations. One question I asked to the county Manager Randall H. Reid was whether or not the data-points from these conversations were summarized and provided to the County Commissioners to be used in informing their decision making process. The data he said was provided. It is up to the commissioners, then I suppose to rely on it or not when making their decisions. Obviously there are times when you may not want your public officials to simply follow the popular vote. That being said, I was disappointed to read Joe Courter write “And, while the public input probably has a limited effect on the actual decisions of the County government“. Although, I suppose the idea of instapolling and table-top exercises directly effecting public policy is perhaps the ultimate fantasy of a technocratic or utopian, participatory form of urban governance.

I would like to think fundamentally though that the commissioners would take notice of larger themes or citizen concerns.

Additionally, I can certainly agree with the second half of Joe Courter’s sentence, wherein he writes “it’s important to understand just how the budget works and where it comes from.” As a civically, educational experience the conversation process was extraordinarily helpful. The combination of work-shoping, table-top budget exercises and insta-polling also made me think of the possibilities of gamification as a tool for civic engagement. Making the soft design of local governance, “fun” and responsive or interactive as it were.

I was also pleased to see the open-source nature of the data collection. A summary of the last two years’ Conversation topics and response breakdowns for all questions and exercises (which can be found here)  provides the ability to get a feel for the values and beliefs of your fellow citizenry.

To close: four comments-data points that I found of particular, personal interest.

1. Regarding the idea of open-source, transparent data collection, due to the wide-open nature of Florida Sunshine State law(s) there was in fact only a brief appearance by any county commissioner, one in fact, and just for a minute  or two before she (Susan Baird) departed for another such event. Presumably, because then it would have been less easy to have a free and open but still anonymous(ish) conversation.

2. The response to the question “How many children live in your household” for my session was 81% and 77% for all sessions. Which when you consider that the session occurred on an evening during the week may not be all that surprising. Still, the majority were of also of child-rearing age, 26-65. Which implies their children (if any) must live elsewhere. I wonder then what kind of county and lifestyle these citizens imagine/desire in comparison to ones younger and more directly engaged in day-to-day parenting.

3. I think it is also note-worthy, given the commission’s previous (more here) and ongoing conflicts with Alachua County Sheriff Sadie Darnell over the budget for the constitutional office of the county sheriff, that as part of the table-top budget exercise the largest portion of the requested 10% budget reduction, was found via a 3.57 % reduction to public safety funding. The general feeling I took away from the conversation participants at my location was a questioning as to why given “the agency’s reduced call load, a drop in the crime rate and a higher officer-to-resident ratio than other counties” Darnell has been so seemingly “combative”  about her budget. It isn’t as if one could argue that perhaps the few (including myself, that spoke up/asked questions about this issue) were just the vocal minority.

4. Finally, in-spite of  the current economic conditions and high levels of unemployment (both nationally and locally) the next highest percentage of reduction was 2.88 % applied towards efforts (by county staff) to encourage “economic development”.  Interesting especially in light of the answers to the question “What one is the best strategy for growing our local economy”, “Reduce or streamline business regulation” and “Business incubators and venture capital” being the two top selected choices. From my perspective the need to grow the tax base of this county is obvious and while encouraging business and thus job, creation is key, one of the key forms of innovation that this county and the city of Gainesville seem to be pursuing is the incubator and startup support model. Using private-public partner -ships yes, but either way this requires public money. Whether in the form of infrastructure investment, various loan-capital programs, or better plus more agile but not less, regulation.

Certainly has the same floral bouquet, doesn’t it?

Embroiled in unpopular wars, atrocities, no real idea of WHY we are in the situation in the first place, and soldiers coming home in body-bags. Now, I’m not trying to say that our modern day conflicts are the same as the horror of the Vietnam war, either in scope or in the human cost; merely that several general facts are true in both cases which I will list for sake of clarity.

• The origins of these conflicts are both cemented in rather shaky(understatement) ideological ground.
• We don’t have a clear imperative as far as a ‘win’ or a firm exit strategy.
•  These conflicts are almost universally unpopular, hugely expensive, and ultimately limited in terms of ‘gain.’

Now, as I stated earlier, Iraq and Afghanistan are thankfully not as viscous as Vietnam was. During Tet ’68, the deadliest week of the conflict, 543 American soldiers died, with 2547 wounded. So far as I’m aware, our most costly weeks in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost us between 40 and 60 lives.

And at the same time, political posturing hasn’t stopped since 9/11. The pretext for the Iraqi War is so flimsy that polls taken last year say that only 37 percent of Americans feel that the war was justified. Everyone now has heard the statements from the early days of the invasion of Iraq, culminating in the popular culture statement “Where are the WMD’s?” as well as the political fallout that brought down the Neo-conservative grip on American politics. Most talking heads will shy away from speaking about the causes of the war anymore, and instead hold the Bush Doctrine as the only motivation needed. Oh, and of course, freedom for the Iraqi people.

So, as a controversial man once said, “It’s a case of the chicken’s coming home to roost.” The idea that this what our course of action led us to, reaping the whirlwind.  That man was Malcolm X, and he was speaking about the recent assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

A disturbing thought, by the way, was pointed out to me recently by my fiancee. There are now soldiers operating in Iraq and Afghanistan right now, who were ten years old when the towers fell. To me, that’s a terrible milestone and one that I struggle with still today, when I think of the young children in my immediate and extended family in 2001.

So, while all this is going on in the Middle-East and Central Asia, our elected officials are engaging in another ideological war in regards to the Federal Budget. This war is frustrating, confusing, and frequently shows an apparent lack of common sense and perspective by both political parties, as well as an obvious lack of communication. This type of atmosphere is quickly becoming the prime export of America.

I know this post was a ramble, that we’ve gone all across the subjects of the day, but I feel it reflects my state of mind where this is all concerned, and I can’t help but think “That this is a Land of Confusion.”

Dillon, one of my dearest friends and a soldier in the United States Armed Forces recently returned home to the states from Afghanistan, alive and well. I love you brother, welcome home.

“Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here.“

and

“These laws would declare ideas to be another industrial product, no more noble than pig iron. In our world, whatever the human mind may create can be reproduced and distributed infinitely at no cost. The global conveyance of thought no longer requires your factories to accomplish.“

Discovered via this article which discusses John Perry Barlow’s recent participation on an eG8 panel on intellectual property.

Jennifer Parks talks about the book’s interdisciplinary nature;

“With contributions from experts on urban geography, planning, development, sociology, culture, and ecology” and the way in which the book while exploring the larger set of relationships between urban centers and the Olympics particularly focuses on “the ways in which preparations to host the Olympic Games have increasingly become situated within larger urban planning and regeneration projects.“

Parks further writes “ The IOC promotes the Olympics as a way to revive host cities while the games themselves are increasingly out of the reach to all but those cities that already have the resources, profile, and economic base to organize the games without risking bankruptcy.“

Way back in 2008 I wrote an Archinect Op-Ed: Urban Regeneration: the Promise of Past and Future Olympic Games, in which I hoped “the continued focus of media and watchdog groups on such problems will encourage the development of new design initiatives and processes which reduce cost, improve transparency and create a greater role for the local within the happenings of the global.“

H/T Javierest

George McKay in The Independent On Sunday in  Radical plots: The politics of gardening asks how a garden can be political? He answers simply; “Notions of utopia, of community, of activism for progressive social change, of peace, of environmentalism, of identity politics, are practically worked through in the garden, in floriculture and through what art historian Paul Gough has called “planting as a form of protest“.

Emphasizing the ideas of garden as expression of community, allocation and the idea of the gift relationship. I wonder if this gift relationship has to be thought of only in terms of human relationships? Or time/good given. What about giving back or sharing with your surrounding ecological neighbors. Creating habitat or just contributing to ecological diversity, natural processes. This too would it seems be a form of gardening. Wherein, it is not the garden but act of gardening which is the generative device…

“today state judges no longer resist the idea that they are required to enforce federal constitutional rights in state criminal cases. Now prisoners in every state can file both an appeal and a post-conviction petition in state court, where alleged violations of federal rights can be reviewed and, if necessary, corrected. Habeas has thus fulfilled its mission: it helped facilitate the move to a criminal justice system in which the supremacy of federal law is unchallenged.”

They then claim that excessive and frivolous continued deployment of un-restricted habeas corpus claims are an unnecessary burden (in time and cost) on the federal courts system. Therefore, Hoffmann and King suggest Congress should seek to restrict and re-define the ability or parameters of the circumstances (too only capital cases for instance) in which a habeas corpus petition could be made.

Marable was highly critical of the Alex Haley written “Autobiography of Malcolm X as a work of history and for his own book, relied on extensive new research which included obtaining “about 6,000 pages of F.B.I. files on Malcolm X through the Freedom of Information Act, as well as records from the Central Intelligence Agency, State Department and New York district attorney’s office”.

A young Malcolm Little

Read more in NYT (here)

Feb. 14 (Bloomberg) — Jeffrey Sachs, a professor at Columbia University, discusses President Barack Obama’s proposed $3.7 trillion budget for fiscal 2012 and the outlook for the global economy. Sachs, speaking with Carol Massar and Matt Miller on Bloomberg Television’s “Street Smart,” is the author of the book “The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time.” (Source: Bloomberg)

Via Javierest (here)

In the essay he explores the evolution of Tehran’s urban fabric from the time of the Shahs, through the Islamic Revolution, to the contemporary condition. Prior to the revolution:

“The distinction between affluent north and poor south Tehran—between bala-ye shahr, the ‘upper city’, and pain-e shahr, the ‘lower city’—was unequivocally registered in the language and the popular imaginary. The dividing line between the two was formed by Shahreza Street—today Revolution Street, Khiaban-e Enqilab—the epicentre of Tehran’s political geography. A sociological ‘green line’, the street housed Tehran University campus, dozens of bookstores, and large bus terminals linking Tehran to the provinces. The street thus connected diverse social groups with key institutions and with the flow of knowledge and news. It was here that the first sparks of the 1979 revolution were lit by student demonstrations, before spreading rapidly across the city and then the country in just two years.“

Bayat writes that following the revolution: “Tehran experienced dramatic physical expansion, mass migration and the deterioration of urban infrastructure and services. Even though little changed in terms of any enduring new ‘Islamic’ architecture, significant transformations took place in the social and political domains, giving rise to a paradoxical spatial order. The large public spaces and squares were virtually taken over by pro-regime vigilantes, who turned them into the enclosed or ‘interior’ spaces of their ‘ideological self’, at the expense of those whose modes of life and tastes did not conform.“

Finally, Bayat chronicles how in response to the 2009 Green Movement, the Islamists have taken a number of steps to strengthen their control of Tehran and more generally urban areas at large. These include, moves to de-secularize public space, encourage the de-urbanization of Tehran along with other methods of control. He notes: “Whatever the outcome, the authorities’ course of action indicates that they too see Tehran’s post-Islamist urban order as subverting their religious-military mode of rule. To govern, they need to undo the city.“

Yet, despite their efforts “The Islamic revolution has failed to reshape and re-structure Tehran in accordance with its ideology to the same depth or with the same intensity as the French Revolution did Paris and the Russian Revolution Moscow. Even today, Tehran looks more like Madrid or even Los Angeles than Qom, Riyadh or Cairo.“

In The Coming Contradiction, Gopal Balakrishnan, examines Frederic Jameson’s ‘Valences of the Dialectics’. Balakrishnan writes: it is no “surprise that new material from Fredric Jameson offers yet another occasion to think about what it means to historicize“.

It includes mouthfuls like this: “In a climate of growing suspicion towards ‘totalization’, Jameson can be seen to have pulled off an improbable intellectual coup, establishing a broadly Hegelian-Marxist understanding of a widely, if inchoately, experienced postmodernism, while conjoining this mutation in the superstructure to a new phase of capitalist expansion and intensification.“

He also defines Jameson’s use of dialectic, which Balakrishnan writes referred to an “orientation that continually translates this experience of finitude back into upsurges of transcendence, taking the form not of the solution of already existing problems, but rather of the generation of new problems out of the partial neutralization of old ones.“

This passage in particular seems especially relevant within the context of contemporary digital-networked society. Balakrishnan writes: “The corollary of this conception is that the experiential is no longer what lies within a circumscribed phenomenological horizon around us but has become ever more scrambled by distant and even absent spaces, within a capitalist world-system opening up virtual possibilities of experience which are not straightforwardly present in our quotidian surroundings.“

Balakrishnan concludes by offering some final thoughts on the lessons to be learned from this last work of Jameson. He contends: “But in the absence of any plausible scenario of system-wide economic renewal, it might soon no longer be true that the end of capitalism is less conceivable than the literal end of the world—the stark limit on thought and experience that Jameson once memorably identified as the transcendental statute of the postmodern condition. As more determinate forms of negation struggle to assert themselves—with whatever ultimate prospects of success—the need for a new term of totalization may soon become evident.“

Finally, in A Permanent Economic Emergency, Slavoj Žižek describes the misery of today’s left. He points out; “there is no positive programmatic content to its demands, just a generalized refusal to compromise the existing welfare state. The utopia here is not a radical change of the system, but the idea that one can maintain a welfare state within the system. Here, again, one should not miss the grain of truth in the countervailing argument: if we remain within the confines of the global capitalist system, then measures to wring further sums from workers, students and pensioners are, effectively, necessary.” Yet, ultimately Žižek contends “the reply to every crisis should be more internationalist and universalist than the universality of global capital.” Or in Lacan’s phrasing “‘the impossible happens“…

Freeman goes on to discuss how maps, industrial progress, capitalism and other advances of civilization led over the course of America’s 200 + year history to forget some of the basic lessons of ecosystem and environmental, knowledge. He writes: “The lines on the map have little meaning now except in real estate deals, but the process of forgetting our connectedness to our landscape has left us stranded—surplus people in hurt places—“

In the face of the new global corporatism he argues that what is needed is a focus on remembering. On re-learning the lessons of ‘local‘, economies, cultures and ecosystems. Maps can play a key role in this process of remembering. He concludes:

“When we use maps as a tool for remembering, we find ourselves in watersheds, on estuaries, in mountain ranges, rather than in townships and sections. We can use maps in the same way that aboriginal cultures used stories. Our own handmade maps of salmon habitat, land use history, and watershed configurations, when distributed to every resident and landowner, have had the effect of ritually reanimating a native landform that had become totally abstracted. Such mapping can also translate into a real element of local self-empowerment. By re-organizing available data in the context of natural areas and adding the element of vernacular observation, in a surprisingly short time you will know more about your home than either extractive industries or regulatory agencies do.“

To begin check out these two images of Tahrir Square before and during the current political upheavals.

vs

Next one can read Fin-de-siècle Vienna: politics and culture, by Carl E. Schorske (which I read during an old history course on the Hapsburg Empire and Central European 19th Century Revolutions and still own), in which Carl draws on Camillo Sitte‘s view of the public square. In such a formulation a square can be the ideal performance site and representation of community. A “theater of common life“. The square and coffee-shop, newsprint and broadsheets, or the Ringstrasse and early urban Modernism of Otto Wagner, for Carl all were indicative of a new public, anti-monarchical, Liberalism. A new Public discourse.

So, there is that. Meaning, the idea of the square, urbanism, politics and civic ideals. The historical and moderns ways of viewing the square. From, Greece (agora) through Rome, then the Venetian piazza to Nazi Germany’s the Reichsparteitagsgelände, Red Communist’s Red Square or even Capitalist Times Square. The square as site of public spectacle or commons.

Along similar lines via Javier I came across this article in which Rob Wipond challenges the notion of “What is a sidewalk for?”. The tension is between simple traffic (read pedestrian) flow and the notion of public space for humanity. Civil engineering vs social engineering. With a similar insurgent spirit, Mimi Zieger announced an at least occasionally reoccurring series at Places journal, entitled The Interventionist’s Toolkit. With which she promises to focus on the sort of DIY, citizen/artist based hacking, cheap and performative, urban praxis which has, in light of the continuing recession, taking on an even bigger role within design circles. Whether, paper architecture, unsolicited architecture, Design Fiction, or jam-hack, for instance. At least in my own interest and reading.

Then, over at the UrbanSpaceInitiative they say about the public square; “The true value of an urban public square is that it is free from large obstructions. The square allows people to make use of its openness for a range of activities. This openness is a valuable asset within a wider urban environment that can often be crammed and cramped with traffic. William H. Whyte notes how a city can devour space unthinkingly and rapidly“

Finally, back to the events in Egypt. The main site of events at least in Cairo has been Tahrir Square. The citizens have flowed there from all over the city. Some commentators have even noted the fact that rather than demonstrating in front of the palace of Hosni Mubarak, they have focused their energies in the square. This is partly due to the history of the site being tied to previous riots and revolts. A site of demonstration, ritualized political chanting and behavior. A revolution, the ultimate in public acts/displays of Liberalism. The power of people. A happening, liminal zone or apolitical place.space. I think it is instructive that in such a context a range of communal, public and urban interventions of a sort have been reported.

Tahrir Square has basically become occupied or domesticated. The citizens have grasped control from and extended (at least symbolically) their own control over the square. It has become a multi-day home for these volunteers. So, they are helping to clean up trash after recent protests. Hosing down the streets. Some are providing free medical service and food. They are even in some cases providing their own form of security for national institutions like the Alexandria library or Cairo’s Egyptian Museum. Protecting the patrimony and assuming the role of the state. Sleeping in groups, huddled around fires. As the protests move into their third week the protesters have even formed a tent city of sorts.

Or even this report of protesters building a trebuchet to use against security forces/thugs..

Some of these sound right out of the CCA catalog for the Actions: What You Can Do With the City exhibition, don’t they? Where does one draw the line between political act, human ingenuity or hyper-aware media ploy?

Are these sorts of acts an extension of the revolutionary events? A reflection of politics as representational culture? A way of emphasizing the protesters pro-Egyptian sensibilties? Are they discursive? What lessons can we learn about civic based urbanism? Is the answer a new regime? Pedagogical, economical or political. The need to create a public through the physical urban development of a public realm. Where do such thoughts tie in with concerns over the Right to the City?

The square was given its initial modern makeover in the 19th century. Commissioned as part of the new downtown district’s design by Khedive Ismail. How did those design decisions impact the current layout and usage of the park? Imagine if the square had been designed to accommodate only vehicular traffic or no vehicular traffic. How could recent events have been affected by the addition or removal of the adjoining public garden or the giant traffic circle?

More information on Cairo and Egyptian revolution (?) see this BIP by Orhan Ayyüce over at Archinect Or for more on history and urban development of Tahrir Square see this very informative post over at the blog Cairo: Multi-Schizophrenic. City

“Of course one cannot trust the façade, the official documents, but neither do we find truth in the gossip shared behind that façade. Appearance, the public face, is never a simple hypocrisy. E.L. Doctorow once remarked that appearances are all we have, so we should treat them with great care. We are often told that privacy is disappearing, that the most intimate secrets are open to public probing. But the reality is the opposite: what is effectively disappearing is public space, with its attendant dignity. Cases abound in our daily lives in which not telling all is the proper thing to do.“

Yet there may be an upside, “Through actions like the WikiLeaks disclosures, the shame – our shame for tolerating such power over us – is made more shameful by being publicised.“

“unilateral executive decision“, “cognitive dissonance“, “aerobic vs anaerobic digestion/processing“, “dirty MRF“

Go read the official minutes.

“Our totalitarianesque affinity for researching and monitoring forges a Panopticon culture obsessed with knowing and classifying the “everything” most beneficial to those who extract and often least so for those from whom it is extracted.“

Via subtopes (here)

Examiner and San Francisco Magazine.

“But assuming there is a possibility of changing the society’s “course in the darkness deathward set,” it can only be done by infection, infiltration, diffusion and imperceptibly, microscopically, throughout the social organism, like the invisible pellets of a disease called Health.“

Also, dig his description of ecology “Ecology is the science that automatically produces evaluation without ceasing to confine itself to purely scientific methods. This is nothing new.“

More (here)

“Without further rhetoric or utopian scheming, I have a simple suggestion that if followed would begin to bring wilderness, farmers, people, and the economies back. That is: don’t move. Stay still. Once you find a place that feels halfway right, and it seems time, settle down with a vow not to move any more. Then, take a look at one place on earth, one circle of people, on realm of beings over time, conviviality and maintenance will improve. School boards and planning commissions will have better people on them, and larger and more widely concerned audiences will be attending. Small environmental issues will be attended to. More voters will turn out, because local issues at least make a difference, can be won—and national scale politics too might improve, with enough folks getting out there. People begin to really notice the plants, birds, stars, when they see themselves as members of a place. Not only do they begin to work the soil, they go out hiking, explore the back country or the beach, get on the Freddies’ ass for mismanaging Peoples’ land, and doing that as locals counts! Early settlers, old folks, are valued and respected, we make an effort to learn their stories and pass it on to our children, who will live here too. We look deeply back in time to the original inhabitants, and far ahead to our own descendants, in the mind of knowing a context, with its own kind of tools, boots, songs. Mainstream thinkers have overlooked it: real people stay put. And when things are coasting along ok, they can also take off and travel, there’s no delight like swapping stories downstream. Dont Move! I’d say this really works because here on our side of the Sierra, Yuba river country, we can begin to see some fruits of a mere fifteen years’ inhabitation, it looks good.”

From Upriver/Downriver newsletter Number 10, circa 1991…

Via Arthur Magazine‘s Email Bulletin, November 12, 2010 – No. 000195

This is the first Ken Loach film I have ever seen. I liked it. The film about the Troubles and the Irish fight for independence immediately after WW I, was also a deeply moving portrait about the relationship between love, familial ties and love of country. As with all guerrilla wars the fighting depicted is violent and deeply personal pitting personal ties against political loyalties. This becomes even more true once the Irish Civil War breaks out between those supporting the Anglo-Irish Treaty and those opposed. The opposition appears more radical, desiring not just nominal freedom from England but a larger overturning of the existing social/class order. Although, not obviously Communist the Anti-Treaty IRA speak of wealth redistribution and a changing of the social guard.

The movie is beautifully shot and it of course helps that much of the film makes extensive use of the Irish countryside. Green rolling hills and pictaresque farm houses. It is shot (and edited) in a fairly slow and deliberate way. Finally, given the storyline and subject matter it should be no surprise that the film was deeply moving and made me choke up more than once.