Turkey & the "patriot" Act

So these two entities, as they are manifesting themselves in current event, have kick-started this blog. The courage of secular free-thinkers in Turkey heartens me. And the blatant audacious hypocrisy of the U.S. as it tries to justify its policy of integral surveillance sickens me. These two thing combined spur me to vent. So vent I will. Quote of the day (note to self: "Make a rubric for this as soon as you can figure out how to use this damned thing): Robert Mueller, FBI chief, in congressional testimony: "There are no American names in that lockbox. There are only numbers in that lockbox."

Snowden Fallout

So first we are reassured by Obama that they're not trawling content and now, today, we're told by NSA chief, Gen. Keith Alexander, that the outed program has foiled just dozens of terrorist plots.

Right, by analyzing metadata only?

Yeah, we're stupid and naive.

Tunisia, Egypt, beyond ...

What has happened over the past two months, first in Tunisia, then in Egypt, is nothing short of miraculous, wondrous, yet natural. I commend the Tunisian and Egyptian people — most of all the youth of those great nations.

a rare OFA intervention

Since Hélène got blasted on OFA for criticizing the Obama obsession with bipartisanship, which is largely responsible for getting us where we're at, I made a rare incursion into OFA-world, where the true believers mill and mull. Here it is:

This "segment" happens to have been one of Obama's staunchest, most ardent support groups. He and the all-too-many wishy-washy democrats have let negationist republicans and "blue-dog" democrats run the show. Now they have reaped the harvest of their obsession with compromise at all cost. (Yes, of course compromise is part of the formula: you don't have to give progressives lessons in democracy.) But a great president like F.D. Roosevelt knew the limitations of compromise in dire circumstances and had not only the wisdom (which Obama shares with him) and the guts to stand up for what is right when negationism was getting the better of the country. Party discipline, people. But now, the democrats will be "adjusting". That means the people will have choices in a spectrum ranging from Tea Baggers to the center-right, where the democrats who are left are situated.

If I were to give one example of what these two years have produced, it's the muddle over DADT. No one in the executive or the legislature has the guts to do what a handful in the judiciary have done - with inconclusive results.

Onwards, democrats! Squander on!

DADT insanity

So now, eight days after a courageous judge declared "don't ask don't tell" unconstitutional, another court has reinstated the Pentagon's ability to prevent people from serving in the military based on who they want to have sex with. Meanwhile, neither the Democrat majority in the Congress nor the President of the U.S. has the courage (note the ironic metaphors for that quality) to legislate this obscurantist law out of existence. "Que le monde aille à sa perte," Duras once anarchistically said.

Waste

I just discussed Bataille's The Accursed Share a couple of days ago with one of my doctoral students and the metaphor of expendable waste of which the powers that be are almost ashamed – so little does the mass in question contribute to lavishing material profit on the altar of Capital – now comes to mind when thinking of the way language and literature programs at SUNY Albany are being treated. But my colleagues might take heed.

New Orleans

I'll entitle it this way, instead of "Katrina," though it's the hurricane, the slow response, the racism, etc. that are on my mind. I haven't yet heard Obama's speech on this, the 5th anniversary of landfall in southern Louisiana, but although a good bit of rebuilding has indeed taken place there, there's hardly enough been done for the poor. And we all know or should know why that is: racism and neglect for the working poor of all races is still pretty much the order of the day. We still could have an event occur in the wake of which people would say "I don't recognize my country! Is this really the U.S.? Why are people being forsaken?" Instead, we hear "tea baggers" who want their country back, by which they of course mean that they do not and will not accept a mixed race president.