Kasztanka, Polish Marshal Józef Piłsudski's favorite combat mare, was stuffed upon her death in 1927 and after World War II was destroyed, allegedly on the orders of Piłsudski's enemy, Marshal Michał Rola-Żymierski.
James Galbraith, professor at the University of Texas at Austin, notes that many economics institutions (especially journals and academic departments) are hierarchical and tribal by nature, and that sociology can exclude dissident views. Interviewed by Peter Leyden at King's College, April 2010.
I note that at around 4:20-4:30 he mentions the University of Missouri-Kansas City economics department, which is where Counterpunch's Mike Hudson teaches. Speaking of UMKC Econ:
L. Randall Wray, professor at UMKC, talks about Hyman Minsky, an American economist who, even in the relative stability of the 1950s, predicted financial collapse because of "speculative euphoria." Interviewed by Peter Leyden at King's College, April 2010. Uploaded by INETeconomics on Jun 8, 2010
Even against an institutional backdrop that’s becoming more and more famous for meting out unnecessary violence to peaceful people, his behavior must be understood as somewhat exceptional. Look at his face as he sprays them (as best you can–he’s partially hidden behind a mask). Then fast-forward to the end of the clip (around 6:15), when the students announce to the officers that they are offering them “a moment of peace,” that is, the option of leaving without further escalating a truly horrible situation. They cry (in one of the most moving instances of the human mic I’ve ever seen) “You can go! You can go!”
It’s transcendently brilliant, this tactic–the students offer an alternative in a high-pressure situation, a situation that no one wants, but which seems inevitable in the heat of the moment. It’s an act of mercy which, like all acts of mercy, is entirely undeserved. Watch the other officers’ surprise at this turn in the students’ rhetoric, after they had (rightfully) been chanting “Shame on you!” Watch the officers seriously consider (and eventually accept) the students’ offer.
At around 6:15-6:30 they say "you may take your weapons and our friends, and go." What is "winning" in this instance? Letting them leave, but without the people they arrested? That was probably unrealistic. Getting Pike investigated, and possibly suspended or fired? I assume he was following orders issued, formally or not, from much more powerful people, although that is by no means a justification. If the Cal Davis chancellor(see below) is made to resign, big deal, she'll just go be a chancellor or university president somewhere else. People who hold such offices tend to be careerists who jump from one city and one gig to the next every 5 or 6 years anyway. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't be made to resign or be fired. Ian Welsh recently described the OWS movement as necessary but insufficient. Maybe disciplining cops who do things like this falls under the same category.
I also wonder how many regular people are even all that aware of these kinds of things, or buy the spin they are likely to hear from establishment news sources about how the cops had no choice, etc. (I'm reminded of the bumper sticker I still see from time to time that says "I don't believe the liberal media." Which of course could mean more than one thing these days, including the traditional reactionary stance, but also a mistrust of faux progressives, or an ironic or nihilist stance.)
But I still wonder, why did they do this? I tend to assume the cops, and by extension UCD, want the students to react violently, so they may look bad, and to do this the made themselves look bad, at least to people who are open to holding such a view, and don't automatically give authority figures a pass.
But of course many do give authorities a pass, and assume they mean well in practically all instances, apart from the usual few bad apples, etc. So I wonder to what degree the Occupy movement serves as a sort of Rorschach for people, whether they're "low-information voters" or troglodytes who want to know what their favorite talk radio blowhard thinks before they decide, people who want NPR to tell them what to think, people who'd rather watch Dancing With the Stars, and so forth.
More from Johnston:
UC Davis chancellor Linda Katehi released a statement last night in which she said she “deeply regretted” students’ actions yesterday, actions that “offer[ed] us no option but to ask the police to assist in their removal.” But of course you can’t regret something that someone else did, something you had no control over.
For the actions she did have control over, and will have control over in the future — the violence of her police — Katehi expressed no regret. She was, she said, “saddened.” She was “saddened to report that during this activity, 10 protestors were arrested and pepper spray was used,” and “saddened by the events that subsequently transpired to facilitate their removal.” No regret. Not even an active voice. [...] Lt. Pike has received a salary in excess of $100,000 from the people of California each of the last three years. More than 40% of his 2010 salary came from student fees.
Uploaded by RussiaToday on Nov 19, 2011 Every week Max Keiser looks at all the scandal behind the financial news headlines. This week Max Keiser and co-host Stacy Herbert discuss the tiny rule changes and the Zombies behind the collapse of MF Global. Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, a Keiser-Celente 2012 bumper sticker spotted! In the second half of the show, Max Keiser interviews Barry Ritholtz about the big lie that bankers did not cause the crisis and what MF Global means to the markets.
Cobban suggests that the difference between "war" and "air strikes" in polling re military action against Iran makes an enormous difference, which reminds me of my suspicion of establishment polling in general and also makes me wonder if large numbers of Americans are stupider than a can of paint.
The repeated refusal of Iranian offers of dialogue by successive United States administrations suggests that US foreign policy in the Middle East has been driven not by national interest but by the military-industrial complex's need for a constant, external threat to justify its huge share of the treasury. Whether it is the perceived pursuit of nuclear weapons or support for terrorism, there has always been a convenient reason to target a nation.
Freshman Tyler Clementi jumped off a bridge a few days after his sexual encounter with another man was broadcast online. Clementi's roommate, Dharun Ravi, and Ravi's friend Molly Wei were arrested on invasion of privacy charges. They haven't said why they allegedly broadcast the video, but by all accounts, they were good students who had no history of cruel behavior.
"I think it's a case where good kids can do terrible things," says John Palfrey of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society and author of Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives.
But what if they were from a trailer park, instead of the kind of kids whose parents fit nicely into public radio's demographics? I hardly ever visit NPR's website, but here in one of the first things I come across, is just the sort of thing for which their detractors take them to task. But I guess it also dovetails nicely with the case of a good government that can do terrible things, so it's all good.
It seems Israel is always in the news in some fashion, but these two items from earlier this week really got my attention:
1. Harvard divestiture: there are conflicting reports regarding whether or not Harvard has divested its endowment of all Israeli investment. They have sold all their directly held Israeli stocks, but their PR guy says they still hold Israeli stocks indirectly, via funds that hold Israeli stocks. Sounds like divestment to me, and if so it’s a real coup for the global boycott/divestment/sanctions movement. However I wonder if it’s a temporary gesture intended to test the waters for something more formal(Harvard did not actually announce they had divested, but journalists scoured their endowment’s quarterly statement and picked up on it.).
I also wonder if it’s just temporary because it may be meant as a signal from the Ivy community to Israel to not push so much on bombing Iran. I wondered the same thing about BHO saying he was supporting the Islamic center in Manhattan, if it was his way of indirectly telling Israel he’d rather just engage in bellicose rhetoric towards Iran but not actually attack, what with US personnel in Iraq and elsewhere in the region being rendered sitting ducks afterwards. It could also be that Obama would send such a signal because of being troubled by the needless deaths of Iranians, but I doubt this.
Abergil is an ex-IDF soldier who posed in photos with Palestinian prisoners in 2008, yucking it up for the camera with involuntary models who were blind folded and twist-tie handcuffed. She posted the photos on Facebook(!), without restricting their access just to FB friends, although she has since done so. I imagine if this story eventually becomes bigger news in the mainstrean US media that we'll hear pompous op-ed types wringing their hands about whether or not it was "appropriate" to out Abergil.* I note that the Guardian and the BBC both pixilate her face in the images they show, but the un-edited pics are freely available at lots of sites, such as Gawker.
"This shows the mentality of the occupier, to be proud of humiliating Palestinians," Palestinian Authority spokesman Ghassan Khatib told the Associated Press news agency. "The occupation is unjust, immoral and, as these pictures show, corrupting."
"These are disgraceful photos," said Capt. Barak Raz, an Israeli military spokesman. "Aside from matters of information security, we are talking about a serious violation of our morals and our ethical code and should this soldier be serving in active duty today, I would imagine that no doubt she would be court-martialed immediately," he told Associated Press Television News.
"Israeli blogger Lisa Goldman contacted the former soldier via Facebook, who replied: "I don't speak to leftists."
*Arguably, the more readily people here decide to interpret this story as simply an issue of whether or not it was right to out Eden, the more likely that the corrupting "mentality of the occupier" applies to the proponent of such a view.
OK, so the title is not a JV original. It comes from an old "Ironside" episode.
From discovery.com-- the University of North Dakota's Aviation Department has recently started offering a bachelor's degree in piloting unmanned aerial vehicles, often called UAV's. UAVS are also called "unmanned drones" and you hear about them in the news because they are often used to kill people in Afghanistan and other places. (via Gizmodo and Xymphora.)
Dana Nelson is a professor at Vanderbilt, and I believe Bad for democracy is her second book. Her publisher sent me a copy some time back, and unfortunately I've been busy with other matters, so I've just started on it. It does look promising, discussing the history of popular representations of the role of the president in US society, which she regards as generally anti-republican, in the classical sense, and far more often geared towards representing the president as the prime mover of government upon whose shoulders all power and responsibility lie, a phenomenon she terms presidentialism.
