[Periodicals Chat] THE NEW GOON

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GalacticAcid: Apr 8, 2013; NEW YORK VALUES

Aw man I didn�t know Davis was so ill.

# ? Jun 26, 2022 18:38

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# ? May 9, 2024 17:37

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

https://twitter.com/bentarnoff/status/1254138469883842561?t=DzgIlgzQncuccXlahLRU7w&s=19

# ? Jun 26, 2022 22:07

Man Musk: Jan 13, 2010

Could miniature forests help air-condition cities?

quote:

CITY AIR is in a sorry state. It is dirty and hot. Outdoor pollution kills 4.2m people a year, according to the World Health Organisation. Concrete and tarmac, meanwhile, absorb the sun�s rays rather than reflecting them back into space, and also displace plants which would otherwise cool things down by evaporative transpiration. The relentless spread of buildings and roads thus turns urban areas into heat islands, discomforting residents and exacerbating dangerous heatwaves, which are in any case likely to become more frequent as the planet warms.

A possible answer to the twin problems of pollution and heat is trees. Their leaves may destroy at least some chemical pollutants (the question is debated) and they certainly trap airborne particulate matter, which is then washed to the ground by rain. And trees cool things down. Besides transpiration, they provide shade. Their leaves have, after all, evolved to intercept sunlight, the motor of photosynthesis.

To cool an area effectively, though, trees must be planted in quantity. In 2019 researchers at the University of Wisconsin found that American cities need 40% tree coverage to cut urban heat back meaningfully. Unfortunately, not all cities�and especially not those now springing up in the world�s poor and middle-income countries�are blessed with parks, private gardens or even ornamental street trees in sufficient numbers. And the problem is likely to get worse. At the moment, 55% of people live in cities. By 2050 that share is expected to reach 68%.

One group of botanists believe they have at least a partial solution to this lack of urban vegetation. It is to plant miniature simulacra of natural forests, ecologically engineered for rapid growth. Over the course of a career that began in the 1950s their leader, Miyawaki Akira, a plant ecologist at Yokohama National University, in Japan, has developed a way to do this starting with even the most unpromising derelict areas. Dr Miyawaki (pictured above) retired from his university post in 1993, but is still going strong. And the Miyawaki method, as it has become known, is finding increasing favour around the world.

Dr Miyawaki�s insight was to deconstruct and rebuild the process of ecological succession, by which bare land develops naturally into mature forest. Usually, the first arrival is grass. Shrubs sprout later, followed by small trees and, finally, larger ones. Incipient and mature woodlands therefore contain different species. The Miyawaki method skips some of the early phases and jumps directly to planting the kinds of species found in a mature wood.

When starting a Miyawaki forest, those involved, who often refer to themselves as gardeners, first analyse the soil in which it will grow. If necessary, they improve it by mixing in suitable fertilisers. These need not be expensive. Chicken manure and press mud (the solid residue left behind when sugar-cane juice is filtered) are effective and essentially free. They then select 100 or so local plant species to deploy. These are chosen by surveying the nearby area on foot instead of relying on published guidebooks, which have a habit of being out of date or even simply wrong.

Using a wide mix of species, not all of them trees, is important. Most plantations, having been created for commercial purposes, are monocultures. But trees, shrubs and ground-covering herbs all coexist in natural forests, and the Miyawaki versions therefore have this variety from the start. Not only does that pack more greenery into a given space, it also encourages the plants to grow faster�for there are lots of positive ecological relations in a natural forest. Vines rely on trees for support. Trees give shade to shrubs. And, beneath the surface, plants� roots interact with each other, and with soil fungi, in ways that enable a nutrient exchange which is only now beginning to be understood.

After selecting their species, the gardeners gather seeds and plant them at random, rather than in rows. And they plant at high density. The seedlings therefore have to fight for sunlight, so only the fastest-growing survive. Trees planted in this way can shoot up as much as 14% more rapidly than normal. For three years, the gardeners water and nurture their handiwork. Then it is left to fend for itself. A couple of decades later the whole thing reaches maturity.

Dr Miyawaki has supervised the planting of more than 1,500 of these miniature forests, first in Japan, then in other parts of the world. Others are now following in his footsteps. India is particularly keen. In Mumbai, more than 200,000 trees are found in Miyawaki forests throughout the city and its suburbs. In Bangalore, more than 50,000 (see before-and-after picture below, for a forest planted near the city�s airport). A group in Chennai has set up 25 such forests. The authorities in Tirunelveli, in the country�s south, use the Miyawaki method to create green cover in the city�s schools. Hyderabad started growing the largest individual forest of the lot, across four hectares, in 2020.

Over India�s western border, in Pakistan, people are following suit. The Ministry of Climate Change claims the country has 126 Miyawaki forests, with 51 in Lahore, 20 in Islamabad and five in Karachi. And to India�s north, in Nepal, the city of Janakpur is likewise planning a Miyawaki blitz.

The method is becoming popular outside Asia, too. In Europe, Belgium, France and the Netherlands are all home to Miyawaki forests. There are also a handful in Latin America. Wherever they are planting, though, gardeners are not constrained to follow nature�s recipe book to the letter. Miyawaki forests can be customised to local requirements. A popular choice, for example, is to include more fruit trees than a natural forest might support, thus creating an orchard that requires no upkeep.

One such pomologist is Shubhendu Sharma. Mr Sharma has, through Afforestt, a firm he founded in 2011, become a leading proponent of the Miyawaki method. He was once an engineer at Toyota�s factory in Bangalore and has brought his experience building cars to bear on the question of tree planting. He is particularly hot on time and motion. He has measured how long, on average, it takes to plant each sort of seed or seedling and uses that information to schedule their sowing. Since its foundation, Afforestt has created 138 forests in ten countries in this way, and is currently setting up four more. It has also spawned at least 15 imitators, in places as disparate as Australia, Chile and Iran.
Here�s one I prepared earlier

Mr Sharma�s epiphany came one day in 2009, when Dr Miyawaki arrived at his workplace to plant a forest there. He was so impressed by this that he decided to transform his own backyard in like manner, with a planting that featured especially guava trees. When he began, only seven types of bird lived in the yard. Two years later he counted 17. Beforehand, rain used to gather in puddles, forming a breeding ground for mosquitoes. Once the trees were established, the soil opened up and the puddles disappeared. The forest also successfully cooled the air. Mr Sharma found that the temperature under his trees was 5�C below that of the surrounding area. As to guava, the forest grew so many of them that his mother had to give them away to neighbours.

What Mr Sharma and others like him offer looks like a modern version of the 19th-century movements that brought city parks and their associated health benefits to the industrialising West. In those days the prevailing attitude towards nature was to try to tame it, and the parks created reflect that in their controlled, formal design. Now, greenery and environmentalism are the fashion, and the quasi-wild Miyawaki approach reflects this to a T. The purpose is the same as before�to introduce rus in urbe. But the means are completely in tune with the times.

The Miyawaki method will never work for large-scale reafforestation. It is too labour intensive. Relying on nature and the passage of time is probably the best bet for replanting extensive areas of damaged woodlands, though technophiles dream of speeding things up by distributing seeds by drone. But if your goal is to better your immediate locale, rather than to save the planet from global warming�and maybe to grow a few guava on the side�then Dr Miyawaki might well be your man. ■

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2021/07/01/could-miniature-forests-help-air-condition-cities

I am going to afforest the heck out of this locale

# ? Jul 22, 2022 11:10

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

I am endorsing this piece from Jacobin if anyone would like background on the political situation in the Philippines

https://twitter.com/jacobin/status/1554708648001015808

# ? Aug 3, 2022 11:23

vyelkin: Jan 2, 2011

gradenko_2000 posted:

I am endorsing this piece from Jacobin if anyone would like background on the political situation in the Philippines

https://twitter.com/jacobin/status/1554708648001015808

Thanks for this gradenko, I enjoyed reading it. A sadly all too familiar but nonetheless enlightening piece.

# ? Aug 6, 2022 15:17

vyelkin: Jan 2, 2011

Catching up on the LRB and I'm really enjoying this lengthy reporting piece from Afghanistan: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n13/zain-samir/is-this-a-new-taliban

Some choice bits:

quote:

He was a proud Afghan soldier, proud of his army�s achievements, proud of the changes he had seen take place in Afghan society, proud that he had female colleagues at the military academy. His wife and sisters had government jobs � jobs they still held under the Taliban � and he was hopeful that his children would get a good education and a better future. If there was anyone to thank for Afghanistan�s normalisation, though, it wasn�t the Americans. He felt that the US had used men like him to fight its own larger war against Islam. The Americans �killed a lot of Muslims under the pretext that they were Taliban�, he said, before betraying the cause they had purported to defend by signing a deal with the Taliban. Trump�s Doha agreement of February 2020, which the Afghan government wasn�t even invited to discuss, promised a full withdrawal of US troops if the Taliban met certain conditions. This decision could have been overturned by his successor � but instead Biden merely extended the deadline for withdrawal by three months, clearing the way for the Taliban takeover to begin.

In early 2021, with the inevitable offensive looming, the major was put in command of a battalion that helped to defend four provinces to the north and east of Kabul. The Taliban attacked his positions several times over the summer, but his men were prepared. They had plenty of arms and ammunition, and his base on a ridge overlooking a major highway was well defended. Even as the Taliban captured one provincial capital after another in the first weeks of August he held firm, until a commander from a neighbouring battalion told him that the governor of Nangarhar, one of the provinces under his remit, was about to surrender to the Taliban. The rumour was confirmed at 5 a.m. the next day when pictures from inside the governor�s office in Jalalabad appeared on the Taliban�s social media channels. �I still couldn�t believe it. I called the corps headquarters and my senior commander was crying,� he said. �There was nothing I could do. Our superiors had surrendered, and these were orders.� He was asked to return to headquarters with his battalion and their weapons and ammunition. For the next few hours his men refused to move, until he persuaded them that to be the last force standing would be suicide. There was no more resistance, and on 15 August Kabul came under Taliban control.

I asked the major why the army hadn�t rebelled, why the senior officers hadn�t ignored civilian orders. He replied by citing the precedent of Mohammad Najibullah, the last communist leader of Afghanistan, who continued fighting the mujahideen after the Soviet troops left in 1989. Nearly sixty thousand people died in that period of the civil war and the country�s infrastructure was devastated. �Now times are different,� the major said. �People are more educated and they hate war. We didn�t want to destroy all the developments of the last twenty years, we didn�t want to kill more people.� The withdrawal of Soviet military support had spelled the end for Najibullah�s government. Now, just as surely, the withdrawal of the Americans could only lead to a second Taliban takeover. Under first Hamid Karzai and then Ashraf Ghani, the Afghan government was transparently a US client, just as Najibullah�s government had been a Soviet one. Once they were abandoned by their sponsors, there was no way either could survive. This time it would be better for the government to collapse quickly, without blood. �I�m disappointed every time I see a Talib in the streets,� the major said. �I know they gave us all amnesty, but we will never be as free and modern as we were. I had female classmates and some even became commanders. Now I feel like all this progress has turned to dust.� �Watan raft, watan raft,� he said: �The country is gone, the country is gone.�

quote:

However you look at the last twenty years, it�s hard to deny that the US bears much of the responsibility for its own failure. The transitional government it installed in June 2002 � headed by Karzai, who was viewed as reliable by Washington and the CIA � was a cobbling together of prominent Pashtuns and former warlords, the very people who in destroying so much of Afghanistan in the civil war of the early 1990s had brought about the Taliban�s rise. Those who had assisted the US invasion, whatever their backgrounds, were given senior government positions and immunity from prosecution. Karzai�s three vice presidents had all been commanders in the Northern Alliance. In Afghanistan as in Iraq, the US very quickly toppled the previous regime but failed to build any viable institutions. Instead they shared out rewards indiscriminately to establish a system of patron-client networks. The new elite � generals, ministers and provincial governors � proceeded to loot and embezzle the international aid that poured into the country. There were ghost schools, ghost roads, ghost hospitals: projects funded by the international community that existed only on paper.

Everyone blamed everyone else. The US accused the Afghan government of corruption and incompetence � never mind that this was a government of its own making. For their part, Afghan politicians, not quite as pliant as Washington might have wished, accused the Americans of arrogance and insensitivity to Afghan grievances. As the US repeatedly killed civilians in night raids and drone attacks, there was plenty to be aggrieved about. But twenty years later there is one thing Afghans and Americans agree on: they both think it is Pakistan that has enabled the Taliban to return to power. Ever since the invasion, they believe, Pakistan has been playing a double game, supporting the Nato and American war effort by day while quietly assisting the Taliban by night.

quote:

The former Pakistani army officer stressed that over the last twenty years the Taliban was quietly pursuing its own, very effective strategy: its continued small-scale military actions were a way of wearing the Americans down, ensuring eventual financial and moral fatigue. In the meantime it was expanding its ranks and solidifying its command. When the Taliban launched its operation to retake Afghanistan last year, even the Pakistani army was surprised at the speed of its gains. This success, the officer suggested, could be attributed to the Taliban�s carefully considered methods. �The Afghan army was still well equipped and could fight,� he said. �But it collapsed because its command structure was weak and all decisions were centralised. The Taliban, on the other hand, divided the frontline sectors between different commanders, and they launched multiple attacks all over the country, forcing the Afghan army and their special forces to fight on multiple fronts without giving them a chance to recuperate.� Once they had surrounded a unit, the Taliban would send a jirga, a council of elders, to negotiate with the army commanders. �The choices then for field commanders, who were logistically isolated, were about saving their lives.� The Taliban�s victory, the officer felt, could be attributed as much to their negotiating skills as to their fighting strength.

quote:

We drove on through the desert and up and down hills strewn with boulders before descending into a dry riverbed that ran between two high ridges. �This was the Taliban highway,� the khan said. �Their convoys travelled through this valley all the way to Helmand to avoid detection.� He knew this desert well from his days fighting with the mujahideen in the 1980s. The communists had incensed landowners like him when they confiscated large swathes of land to distribute among the peasantry. The mujahideen faction he joined, dominated by traditionalist religious families and monarchists, was too small and ineffective to make a difference, especially since the bulk of US/Saudi support funnelled through the ISI went to the more radical jihadi Islamists. So what happened to the land? I asked. �After the Russians left we took it all back from the peasants.�

quote:

For Shahnaz, the corrupt political elite that she and other activists had fought to expose had enabled the Taliban to come back to power. �Yes, we didn�t believe that the Taliban would come, but our people were tired and disappointed with the government. Poverty, corruption and criminality reached a peak under President Ghani. He appointed people to high office he knew were corrupt. People were hungry and poor, but they could see the wealth around them.� She explained that in Herat corruption among the police and judiciary had led to a rise in crime. The policemen were paid a pittance so they started releasing convicted felons in return for bribes. �People were tired of the corruption. Some felt that if the Taliban returned to power they would at least do something to sort out crime. They would execute rapists and amputate the hands of thieves.�

One day during my time in Herat I followed crowds of men heading through the streets to a roundabout in the centre of town where hundreds had already assembled. They had gathered around a truck mounted with a crane. High above them, a corpse hung from the extended arm of the crane. His shalwar trousers were dark with blood, his torso exposed to show two bullet holes in his back. His kameez tunic was wrapped, noose-like, around his head. A piece of paper taped to his chest denounced him as a kidnapper. Some of the men in the crowd were Taliban fighters with guns slung over their shoulders, and they chatted away, celebrating a job well done. But most of the people taking selfies with the hanging corpse were ordinary Heratis. They were here to see the new justice system being implemented in their crime-ridden city.

# ? Aug 17, 2022 13:30

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Another long read about the history of Philippine politics: https://apjjf.org/2022/16/Rafael.html

quote:

In short, elections by the first half of the twentieth century were part of an ensemble of governing practices designed to regulate political participation in ways that would ensure colonial order while preserving social inequality essential to that order. Once again, democratic institutions were calculated to produce undemocratic ends.

...

Expanding the franchise gave the vote to the majority, many of whom were poor people. Politically empowered, they remained socially marginalised and economically impoverished. Ruling elites, many of whom had collaborated with both the United States and, during the Pacific War, with Japan, had to find novel ways to persuade and coerce this new electorate to vote for them under changed conditions.

...

With the end of Martial Law, electoral practices in the post-Marcos era resumed much of their pre-Marcosian patterns. Such was not surprising since the end of Marcos marked not a revolution but a restoration of the old oligarchy side by side with the new rich presiding over a divided society where over a third of the population lived below the poverty line. Elections continued to be marked by fraud and violence.

...

Spanish and American colonialism followed by the postcolonial Republic thus established the historical conditions for Philippine elections. By intensifying the circulation of money, elections have called for, as much as they have enabled, the mass mobilisation of voters. But they also intensify the proliferation of armed vigilantes and death squads to coerce political rivals and run rackets for the accumulation of money.

...

To conclude, I want to return to the idea I began with�that of elections as Janus-faced especially visible in countries like the Philippines that bear the deep traces of a history of colonialism. Taking place amid conditions of socioeconomic inequality, a culture of impunity and deeply entrenched practices of political patronage and routine fraud, elections unsurprisingly produce conservative results. At the same time, elections are also moments of intense popular mobilisations that stimulate expectations. Such expectations vary. From the perspective of the ordinary people who are often regarded as passive objects to be exploited and set aside rather than active participants in the political process, elections arouse the possibility that things may be different.

Such expectations arguably swept Rodrigo Duterte into the presidency in 2016 by an impressive plurality of votes by an electorate who saw him as a strongman who could address their fears of criminality amid conditions of precarity. As he prepared to step down, his approval rating remained high�as much as 85 per cent in some of the last polls before the end of his presidency�despite his failure to deliver on many of his promises, especially ridding the country of drugs. In the recent elections, the opposition made up of Leni Robredo and Francisco Pangilinan put up a valiant fight propelled by enthusiastic bands of volunteers to restore liberal democracy. But they fared badly against the Marcos-Duterte tandem who were widely perceived as continuing Duterte�s authoritarian legacy. The cross-class popularity of Bongbong and Sara suggests that Filipino political culture, deeply entrenched in centuries of colonial history, skews towards reproducing social hierarchy, shoring up an ideology of inequality that allows for patronage and strongman rule, and a pronounced preference for security and policing over deliberative democracy and broad-based accountability. The electoral system as it is currently structured lends itself to replicating this deeply conservative and reactionary political culture even as it is capable of periodically mobilising mass resistance and radical hope. Offering possibilities for change by momentarily gathering new imagined communities of hospitality and generosity, elections nonetheless tend to return us to variations of the colonial-authoritarian nightmare from which at the moment there seems to be no escape.

# ? Sep 20, 2022 05:19

GalacticAcid: Apr 8, 2013; NEW YORK VALUES

gradenko_2000 posted:

Another long read about the history of Philippine politics: https://apjjf.org/2022/16/Rafael.html

That seems like a pretty cool journal, I read this article from there years ago (and think I linked it in the old Marxist / LF / what have you thread at one point) ->
Juche in the United States: The Black Panther Party�s Relations with North Korea, 1969-1971

quote:

Abstract

In 1969, the Black Panther Party (BPP) established a relationship with the North Korean leadership that was based upon the principle of self-reliance (under the rubric of the Juche ideology), the transnational goal of Third World revolution, and a mutual antagonism toward American intervention around the world. Although the U.S. government forbade its citizens from travelling to North Korea, BPP leader Eldridge Cleaver along with other Panthers bypassed travel restrictions and visited North Korea to join anti-imperialist journalist conferences in 1969 and 1970. In North Korea, officially known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), the Panthers found a new ideology and a government that was critical of the U.S. government. The Panthers established an alliance with North Korean leaders who they recognized as an independent force within the world communist movement. They believed that the "Black colony" inside the United States could learn from the DPRK's self-reliant stance in political, economic, and cultural matters. This study adds to recent scholarship on the global influence of the BPP and opens a new field of inquiry, as the BPP-North Korean relationship has not been analyzed in-depth.

# ? Sep 21, 2022 00:04

Trash Ops: Jun 19, 2012; im having fun, isnt everyone else?

https://www.peacelandbread.com/ is a new one, marxist leninist periodical

# ? Sep 24, 2022 02:20

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

https://www.gawker.com/culture/what-can-novels-do

quote:

... The world�s structural problems require structural solutions: the novel�s pretty good at revealing the former and not really a part of the latter. We could do a bit of what the journal Chuang calls Scooby-Doo Marxism � where we take the mask off of whatever problems we have with contemporary literature and find capitalism lurking behind � but you probably live under capitalism, so unless you�re engaging in near-Olympic levels of denial, you already know it�s bad � if not for you, then certainly for other people. Follow these thoughts to their logical conclusion, of course, and you�re probably wondering: what can the novel possibly do to help bring about the end of all exploitation? What can the novel do at all? These are good questions to think about, so let�s think about them, starting with some of the claims made about the novel in Timothy Bewes�s recent book Free Indirect; I�m a civilian, but I have some friends in academia, and they tell me this is the new thing in the theory of the novel.

It�s not hard to see why: Bewes goes big. He works from Catherine Gallagher�s idea that the �founding claim of the [novel] form was a nonreferentiality that could be seen as a greater referentiality.� In not referring to a specific, real person (nonreferentiality), the novel can refer to an abstract type of person (greater referentiality). For example, while there was no real Don Quixote, there have been many Quixotes, people for whom the divide between literature and life is porous, at best. Quixoteness is a property that is embodied, or instantiated, by its namesake character, just as the color red is a property that might be instantiated by an apple. Like social types, ideas in a novel can be instantiated without being explicitly stated, and this general idea � that a particular entity can instantiate a universal quality � is called the instantiation relation; it�s the �organizational principle of every novelistic work.�

...

When it comes to the novel, one of our expectations is that what the novelist thinks and what the novelist represents might be different. In this way, novels are always ironic, and because any idea represented in a work of fiction may be ironic, any idea represented in a work of fiction already contains its negation. The novel forces us to think both at the same time, and that�s why thoughts in a novel don�t work like they should. If I, a person writing an essay, tell you that �absent several world-historical socialist revolutions, the ongoing climate crisis will destroy the world,� then you can be sure that I believe it; if a character in my novel says it, you�re left wondering just how ironized that thought is. This is why people across the political spectrum say things like �show, don�t tell,� or, if they�re world-historical socialist revolutionary Friedrich Engels, �[t]he more the opinions of the author remain hidden, the better for the work of art.� A novel can show its ideas instead of telling them, but if you buy Bewes�s postfiction argument, you might start to question just how sincere those parts of the novel are, too. Given all this, you may wonder: is it even possible for a novel to have positive political commitments?

Rest assured: we�re back to smoking weed. Just as weed can only get you high, a novel can only think like a novel. This doesn�t preclude it from thinking politically; it just means it has to think about politics fictionally. This means, among other things, it can�t simply restate ideas that have been laid out in advance; it has to mobilize them in novel ways. Bewes�s idea that all thought seems to have been anticipated and laid out in advance is what Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer were worried about in their essay �The Concept of Enlightenment;� they call it �myth,� and they give us this banger: �[o]nly thought which does violence to itself is hard enough to shatter myths.� A great way to do violence to your thoughts is to put them in a work of fiction, where they, by virtue of being in a work of fiction, will shatter.

# ? Oct 6, 2022 14:55

vyelkin: Jan 2, 2011

Here's an interesting open access sociology article looking at differences in masculinity on the far right by analyzing posts on Stormfront to break down conflict between older white nationalist men (who define themselves in opposition to people of colour and are willing to ally with white women to achieve their goals) and younger alt-right men (who define themselves in opposition to women and are willing to ally with people of colour to achieve their goals): https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1097184X221120664

# ? Oct 8, 2022 14:51

Marzzle: Dec 1, 2004; Bursting with flavor

gradenko_2000 posted:

Another long read about the history of Philippine politics: https://apjjf.org/2022/16/Rafael.html

read this and it's good (and short). gives a context to the historic pattern duterte came from that I didn't know much about about before. read it if you're interested in SE asia folks!

edit: I thought this was the asia thread :ohdear:

Marzzle has issued a correction as of 17:08 on Oct 12, 2022

# ? Oct 12, 2022 17:05

GalacticAcid: Apr 8, 2013; NEW YORK VALUES

Marzzle posted:

edit: I thought this was the asia thread

No worries, all contributions are welcome here.

Haven�t been posting much but I subbed to the New Left Review this year and got a lot out of it. The long discussion- three essays thus far far - on "technofeudalism" kicked off by Evgemy Morozov has been really good. I�ll link a little later but mobile posting as I pretend to pay attention on a work call.

# ? Oct 14, 2022 15:04

V. Illych L.: Apr 11, 2008; ASK ME ABOUT LUMBER

GalacticAcid posted:

No worries, all contributions are welcome here.

Haven�t been posting much but I subbed to the New Left Review this year and got a lot out of it. The long discussion- three essays thus far far - on "technofeudalism" kicked off by Evgemy Morozov has been really good. I�ll link a little later but mobile posting as I pretend to pay attention on a work call.

please do, i like morozov

the recent Le Monde Diplomatique had a very interesting piece on chile and the recent constitutional referendum ( https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2022/10/LAMBERT/65154 i couldn't find it in english but google translate is pretty good with french and i can probably procure the norwegian if necessary ) and the national question, which i thought was interesting because the national question is incredibly important in an understated way in contemporary politics worldwide

# ? Oct 14, 2022 15:10

my dad: Oct 17, 2012; this shall be humorous

Seconding the interest.

# ? Oct 14, 2022 17:00

GalacticAcid: Apr 8, 2013; NEW YORK VALUES

Sorry for delay. See below - quotes from article blurbs at the beginning of the relevant issue.

Critique of Techno-Feudal Reason by Evgeny Morozov

quote:

Countering current claims that digital capitalism is issuing in a �neofeudal� age, as the rentier barons of Silicon Valley and Wall Street extract non-productive fortunes from their users and debtors, Evgeny Morozov returns to classic debates over the transition to capitalism to question the relation of the economic and the political.

Capital and Cybernetics by Timothy Erik Str�m

quote:

Current debates on techno-capitalism often underplay the relative autonomy of the digital realm. Responding to Evgeny Morozov�s �Critique of Techno-Feudal Reason� in NLR 133/4, Timothy Str�m outlines the abstractionist and expansionist logic of a novel cybernetic-capitalist form, originating at the apex of the US imperial system.

Scouting Capital�s Frontiers by C�dric Durand

quote:

Replying to Evgeny Morozov�s �Critique of Techno-Feudal Reason�, C�dric Durand stresses digital capitalism�s regressive social character, its logic of access over consumption and the impasse of production at a world-system level.

# ? Oct 17, 2022 23:01

GalacticAcid: Apr 8, 2013; NEW YORK VALUES

Mike Davis has passed.

Mike Davis: 1946-2022 in The Nation

I�m sure a number of his essays have been posted in this thread through the years.

# ? Oct 26, 2022 01:14

vyelkin: Jan 2, 2011

GalacticAcid posted:

Mike Davis has passed.

Mike Davis: 1946-2022 in The Nation

I�m sure a number of his essays have been posted in this thread through the years.

Not a surprise because we knew about his terminal cancer for a long time, but still deeply sad. Rip to a real one

# ? Oct 26, 2022 02:24

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Reading Victorian Holocausts helped me deal with the first part of 2020

RIP Mike

# ? Oct 26, 2022 03:10

hifi: Jul 25, 2012

quote:

�Hey, CCRU!� At least one other attendee is wearing my shirt. He just got back from Honduras, he tells me, where he was electively injected with an experimental life-extension compound unapproved by the US FDA. He gestures at his abdominal zone, somewhere between nodes 8 and 9 on the diagram, where the substance entered his body. The shirt attracts another compliment from a khaki-wearing clean-cut who�s big on Nick Land and a high-five from a lobstery Brit blasting cigs from an Urbit-branded carton. Such is the variety that inhabits this Assembly, this beacon of New World Energy bootstrapped into existence.

quote:

The recent uptick in name-recognition among nongeeks can equally be attributed to a marketing strategy that put it on the map for a certain subset of the �downtown scene� � which, as everyone knows, is a made-up and geography-agnostic invention astroturfed by the Dimes Square Industrial Complex � culminating in �Urbit NY Week� last May. Walt and Honor of Wet Brain were issued a �star,� christening them the Urbit equivalent of an internet service provider. No Agency had an Urbit party. Yarvin went on Red Scare. I heard that Soph Vanderbilt was handing out business cards, decreeing herself an �Urbit Girl-In-Residence.�

The e-girl in residence for a Dark Enlightenment operating system: could it be the Gen Z equivalent of the millennial artist-in-consultance? Carrie Bradshaw voice: and I couldn�t help but wonder, is that what I�m doing here, too? A certain former columnist for this magazine, recently the subject of a profile in the NYT Styles section, is said to be involved with Urbit�s PR. Red Scare�s Anna Khachiyan was scheduled to appear on a panel at this year�s Assembly, alongside the internet historian @defaultfriend and the filmmaker Alex Lee Moyer. In the end, Anna didn�t show, withdrawing from the panel at the very last minute. Rumors circulate that she declined to attend not because of any particular emergency, or even a sudden-onset ideological grievance, but simply because her flight was delayed and she took it as a bad omen.

quote:

I catch a talk by a lawyer who came up in the Reagan-era Justice Department. He describes his work as �removing regulatory burdens� in El Salvador, where Bitcoin is now legal tender. He recently worked with the Salvadoran government to write a law, modeled on the DAO law in Wyoming, to make the country a favorable base for �founders working in crypto.� He requests, at the end of his address, a show of hands, as if he had been pitching timeshares: who�s interested in joining forces once the legislation passes, which could be as soon as October, dev-ing it up in the �developing world?�

https://www.spikeartmagazine.com/?q=articles/user-error-more-beautiful-computer

# ? Oct 28, 2022 18:19

GalacticAcid: Apr 8, 2013; NEW YORK VALUES

Sorry for New York posting but it's very odd to me that 'the downtown scene' now supposedly means the little clique in Re(***)d Square�s orbit. It�s always referred to the smaller off- and off-off broadway theaters located in Lower Manhattan which are in no way associated with this bizarre cultural perversion.

Soho Rep is probably the most classically �downtown theater� venue, along with others like New York Theatre Workshop (where Hadestown made its first run before moving to Broadway, for instance - hardly some Peter Thiel fever dream production.)and tiny experimental spaces like The Flea.

Annoys me.

# ? Oct 28, 2022 20:08

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Protean Mag - Pruitt-Igoe: A Black Community Under the �Atomic Cloud�

quote:

The true story of the Pruitt-Igoe Housing Complex may never be fully declassified. But what we do know is this: it involves the unlucky architect of the World Trade Center, a lost stockpile of a hundred thousand baby teeth, and mountains of recently disclosed U.S. Army records that describe secret radiological experiments conducted on unsuspecting citizens in Minneapolis, Winnipeg, and St. Louis.

In 1952, construction began on a massive array of public housing high-rises in North St. Louis, Missouri. West of the Mississippi River and the city�s downtown, 33 tan apartment buildings were built to stand right next to one another like dominos, a �river of open space� between for playgrounds, parking, and parks.

Clearing 57 acres over three years of construction, Pruitt-Igoe was a herculean spending project in the name of urban renewal. Yet the towers wouldn�t last two decades. In 1972, three Pruitt-Igoe buildings were condemned and demolished, famously, on TV. The rest followed shortly after, televised on the nightly news, harkening the �end of modernism.�

The Pruitt-Igoe Housing Complex became a powerful clich� for Reaganite psychopaths who pointed at St. Louis�s failure to maintain the development as reason to nix welfare initiatives across the nation. As the story goes, �those people� didn�t know how to take care of things. They were dirty, and criminal, so why throw more money at them?

There�s much more to the story. Pruitt-Igoe was not proof of a Cold War logic; it did not display the �inevitable� failures of planned housing. It was an organized sabotage�and a clandestine site for radiological weapons experimentation. These studies were conducted on innocent and unconsenting civilians, who were mostly poor, mostly Black, and mostly women and children.

...

# ? Nov 29, 2022 09:55

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

The Critic: Who cares who wins

The mythology of the SAS

quote:

Eighty years after rampaging behind enemy lines in the deserts of North Africa, and forty-two years since exploding into the public�s consciousness by dramatically ending the Iranian Embassy siege, Britain�s elite Special Air Service (SAS) is once again the centre of the nation�s attention. This renewed notoriety owes nothing to any stunning military success or dramatic action on the part of the Regiment, as it is referred to, but rather to the new BBC television series, SAS: Rogue Heroes. Based on the best-selling book by Ben Macintyre, who was granted privileged access to the SAS�s own classified regimental archives, SAS: Rogue Heroes depicts the wartime birth and first unsteady steps of the world�s most famous Special Forces unit.

Described by the media�s usual suspects of military commentators and cheerleaders as an adrenaline-fuelled, �gung-ho�, �rock-star history� of the SAS�s infancy, Rogue Heroes is not only a piece of televisual entertainment. It serves another, more profound purpose � namely the supercharging of the Regiment�s reputation, fighting-record and mythology. It also adds a further stratum to existing layers of legend, which throughout its operational history have afforded the SAS a distinct psychological advantage over its opponents.

Book shelves buckle under the sheer volume and weight of a growing corpus of work on the Regiment. The high-levels of embellishment, hyperbole and dissembling inherent in these literary outpourings, compounded by operational security, plausible deniability and a refusal on the part of the MoD to comment on the activities and very existence of UK Special Forces units, has meant, unsurprisingly, that academics and journalists alike have found it a challenge to penetrate the shroud of secrecy enveloping the activities of the SAS. It is difficult to differentiate, therefore, between what is fact and what is myth.

The late Professor Sir Michael Howard, eminent military historian and one-time Chichele Professor of military history at Oxford, addressed the role of myth in a highly-influential essay entitled, �The Uses and Abuses of Military History�. Howard wrote that �the �myth�, this selective and heroic view of the past, has its uses�. �The regimental historian�, in Howard�s opinion, had �consciously or unconsciously, to sustain the view that his regiment has usually been flawlessly brave and efficient, especially during its recent past�. �Without any sense of ill-doing,� contended Howard, �he will emphasize the glorious episodes in its history and pass with a light hand over its murkier passages, knowing full well that his work is to serve a practical purpose in sustaining regimental morale in the future�.

Professor Howard believed, however, that �myth� was not an �abuse of military history� if it sustained a soldier on the battlefield �even when he knows, with half his mind, that it is untrue�. Howard, himself a wartime Captain in the Coldstream Guards and recipient of the Military Cross, felt that myth was a form of �nursery history� which could assist in immunising military personnel against the �realities of war�. The only problem with this proposition, however, is that if a military organisation such as the SAS mythologizes its fighting record until it possesses only a passing acquaintance with the truth, then the realities of future combat will rapidly disabuse its personnel of such delusions.

...

the article continues through the link

# ? Jan 9, 2023 13:47

oscarthewilde: May 16, 2012; I would often go there
To the tiny church there

Wolfgang Streeck, Germans to the Front
Pretty good deepdive into the complexities of the West's military support of Ukraine focusing on Germany's difficult position. probably very similar to what's going on in the ukraine thread, without the unnecessary and hypocritical manichean idealism.

quote:

In the end, then, the Scholz government was left holding the bag � as practically the sole supplier of battle tanks to Kiev. What made this even more uncomfortable was that precisely on the day the Germans agreed to the Leopards deal, the Ukrainian government declared that, now that this had been achieved, the next items on its wish list would be fighter planes, submarines and battleships, without which there was no hope for Ukraine to win the war. (Ukraine�s former ambassador to Germany, one Andrej Melnyk, having moved back to Kiev where he now serves as deputy foreign minister, tweeted on January 24, in English: �Hallelujah! Jesus Christ! And now, dear allies, let�s establish a powerful fighter jet coalition for Ukraine with F-16 & F-35, Eurofighter & Tornado, Rafale & Gripen jets & everything you can deliver to save Ukraine!�) Topping this, at the Munich security conference the Ukrainian delegation asked the US and the UK for cluster bombs and phosphorous bombs, outlawed under international law but, as the Ukrainians pointed out, held in large numbers by their Western allies. (The FAZ, always eager not to confuse its readers, in its report called cluster bombs umstritten � �controversial� � rather than illegal.)

# ? Mar 18, 2023 22:20

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# ? May 9, 2024 17:37

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Knowledge production in the age of neoliberal authoritarianism

quote:

Ben K.C. Laksana

Indonesia�s transition to democracy in 1998 ushered in a period of increased openness to new ideas and perspectives within academia. This period has enabled greater freedom for academics to engage with a wider range of material and ideas, information and knowledge. However, the Indonesian government continues to exert influence over how knowledge is consumed and produced within academic institutions.

Legacies of Indonesia�s authoritarian past have remained. In some cases, they have been renewed through various restrictions. This includes a novel interaction with religious conservatism. We see this in a variety of ways ranging from restrictions placed on certain discourses � particularly in areas of leftist politics (as seen in Indonesia�s new Criminal Code) such as sexuality � and the emergence of self-censorship amongst academics.

Additionally, the state�s education policies have actively enforced an ideology of neoliberalism. I refer to Bronwyn Davies and Peter Bansel�s definition of neoliberalism within education as the transformation of educational institutions and their workers to produce �highly individualised, responsibilised subjects who have become entrepreneurial actors across all dimensions of their lives�. This approach is shaping how academia is conducted at all levels. While the initial reforms of higher education in the mid-90s were hindered by strong popular forces, Indonesia�s academic institutions today face an expansion of neoliberalism. This can be seen in the government's new �Merdeka Belajar/Kampus Merdeka� or MBKM (Freedom to Learn/Independent Campus) policies. I argue that these are merely a renewed attempt by the government to orient what is taught within academic institutions towards market concerns. The result is a restructuring of Indonesia�s education system to benefit the needs and wants of the wealthy politico-business elites. For elites, the benefit of a market-oriented framework for education is a larger pool of an easily disposable labour force primarily concerned with their own survival.

One might assume that neoliberalism and its emphasis on individual freedom easily opposes any form of authoritarian tendencies. This might suggest that they are incompatible with one another. However, we see in Indonesia not just the disjointedness of neoliberalism and authoritarianism in tandem, but also the often concealed links between the two. This situation brings to mind descriptions such as that of the British Marxist geographer David Harvey in 2005: a �neoliberal concern for the individual trumps any social democratic concern for equality, democracy, and social solidarities�. Recent examples in Indonesia have shown how even the process of enacting neoliberal policies requires a �strong state�. One example is the Omnibus Law, which was passed using authoritarian tactics including repressive methods towards protestors. The implementation of these neoliberal policies and their justification centred on economic growth have inadvertently and/or deliberately directed the Indonesian state to lean further toward authoritarianism.

What is less understood here is how these policies have also helped channel the conduct of groups and individuals towards conforming to the authoritarian state. This includes Indonesia�s tertiary education institutions and its academics. Academics are shaping their ways of producing knowledge to conform with the expectations of a growing neoliberal authoritarian state. Knowledge that is produced within a neoliberal authoritarian environment deprives people of their economic and political rights, sustaining the state�s power. Controlling the people who produce knowledge is to control knowledge. Powerful elements of society sustain and legitimise themselves with the help of knowledge that supports that legitimacy. Without such influence over what constitutes legitimate knowledge, any hegemonic rule � including within Indonesia � may easily falter.
Neoliberalising academia

The global spread of neoliberal ideology over the past four decades has led to a frame of governance in which the market is seen as the primary mechanism for determining the production and distribution of knowledge. In the context of Indonesia, we can see this in how the government defines the purpose of their recent MBKM policies, which is �to meet the demands, the flow of change and the need for a link and a match with the business and industrial world, and to prepare students for the world of work�. Through MBKM, the government wishes to push two underpinning ideas: First, the government attempts to shape what counts as �legitimate knowledge�, which sociologist Michael Apple defines as knowledge that all of us are required to possess. The government does so by privileging certain types of knowledge over others and within that hierarchy lies implicit ideas of how our social, political and economic worlds operate and how they should operate. Second, it attempts to define legitimate knowledge from a neoliberal, market-oriented perspective, centring entrepreneurial actors.

The Indonesian government pushes forward through the marketisation of curriculum, letting the market shape and define the kinds of knowledge that are deemed important (as opposed to other possible criteria, such as public good). In return, this process shifts the balance of power in the production and dissemination of knowledge. The needs of the public are neglected in favour of the needs of those with political and economic power, be it corporations or wealthy Indonesian elites. Privilege is given to forms of knowledge based simply on how they can contribute to the monetary gains of the individual. Aside from the marketisation of the curriculum, a further manifestation of neoliberal policies within the education system is the growing precarity of labour relations within academia. This form of neoliberal precarity transforms the conditions of work for individual academics, which ultimately affects the research that they undertake and knowledge that they produce.
The precariat academic

Neoliberal policies have made academia more unstable, less secure, and increasingly precarious for academics. Incomes for Indonesian academics remain low, including within many private universities, and even more so for adjunct lecturers with no guaranteed pathways to tenure. This includes a system in which research funding has become more scarce in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. With limited income and research funds, opportunities to conduct sustained research remains rare. Coupled with a culture within Indonesian academia in which it is understood that the research imperative must comply with the needs of the state, it comes as no surprise that the research that is undertaken is often found to be of low quality. To offset their impoverishment, many Indonesian academics have taken on external research, often in the form of government commissioned projects. Some have even taken on secondary jobs within corporations, including state-owned corporations. This academic-industrial complex has tightened the growing relationship between academia and industry, influencing academic freedom and meaning that government-industry relations are exempt from criticism. The lucky few make collaborations with foreign universities or academics, or NGOs and international organisations. Although this brings the promise of a much better income, due to restrictive foreign research regulations in Indonesia, such academics also find themselves under the directions of the state.

Recognising their dependence on the state due to the increasing precarity, it is also not unexpected to see academics side with a growing authoritarian state. Although not specifically looking into academics, David Bourchier�s and Windu Jusuf�s investigation into middle-class liberals in Indonesia may provide some explanation as to how this could happen in academia. Bourchier and Jusuf identify that due to their relative weakness, be it political or economic, and dependence on the state, liberals have historically sided with �authoritarian statism when their interests have been threatened by populist movements from the left or the right�. In a similar fashion to Indonesian liberals, we have also seen how Indonesian academics are limited in their economic and perhaps political power, opening the door to them siding with whoever has power. While it may seem easy to label academics as mere pawns of the state, to see a precarious academia support illiberal ideals, including helping produce whatever research is needed by the state to justify the state's policies, is not simply a matter of submission. Rather, these practices reflect a survival mechanism in a constantly uncertain, demoralised and repressive academic environment. Academia here is simply one of the many avenues where neoliberalism and authoritarianism may engage with and expand on one another.
Opportunities for resistance

Seeing the bleak outlook of Indonesia�s academia today, we must also remind ourselves that hegemony is never complete. Perhaps the most attainable everyday antidote to Indonesia's currently expanding neoliberal authoritarianism is in the many examples of collective forms of education and knowledge production. Given the solitary alternative to it, collective struggles are something worth fighting for.

There are a number of examples of collective resistance that we can observe in Indonesia. One example would be KUNCI Study Forum and Collective based in Yogyakarta which �experiments with methods of producing and sharing knowledge through the acts of studying together at the intersections between affective, manual and intellectual labor�. In doing so they have initiated The School of Improper Education, which serves as a public laboratory for these experiments by serving as an educational meeting point between the general public and academics or experts. Providing everyone, both the public and academics, opportunities for learning and collaborative knowledge production and forming personal ties as a basis of collective resistance. Organisations such as KUNCI not only act as a bulwark against the neoliberalisation of legitimate knowledge, but also resist the individualisation encouraged by neoliberal education.

Additionally, while opportunities outside of formal education institutions are present, many Indonesian academics are restricted within their institutions. Their work is shaped by regulations or, as is more often the case, their limited economic means. This is the reason why we still need efforts to radically alter the inner workings of the neoliberal academic institution. One possible attempt would be to unionise academia. While understanding that academic unions in many countries have had very limited success, Indonesia at the moment has no viable union for academics. At the very least, such a union could help them voice their concerns about their precariat lives � the lack of a union has severely limited the discussions around the livelihoods and the problems faced by Indonesian academics today.

These possible forms of resistance are no easy task. Yet collective efforts may be the most viable option in the current environment: a mixture of neoliberal/corporate interests and state authoritarianism. The pervasiveness of neoliberalism and authoritarianism in the everyday lives of Indonesians has made it difficult to question and challenge this disastrous social-political imagination as individuals. Acting collectively may allow us to reflect on how such a system has entrenched itself within society and within our own lives.

Ben K. C. Laksana (ben.laksana@vuw.ac.nz) is a Ph.D. student at Victoria University of Wellington. His focus is in the intersection between sociology, education, youth and activism. He is also the co-host of the Benang Merah podcast.

# ? May 15, 2023 03:30

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > [Periodicals Chat] THE NEW GOON

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