Ah, the joys of privatization...

(From AP story on Huffington Post):

Judges accused of taking payoffs to jail kids WILKES-BARRE, Pa. – For years, the juvenile court system in Wilkes-Barre operated like a conveyor belt: Youngsters were brought before judges without a lawyer, given hearings that lasted only a minute or two, and then sent off to juvenile prison for months for minor offenses.
The explanation, prosecutors say, was corruption on the bench.

In one of the most shocking cases of courtroom graft on record, two Pennsylvania judges have been charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers.

 
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So--the Sussex name makes the news

10-Year-Old Sussex Spaniel Wins Westminster Dog Show

And, yes, I watched the show with with relatively little shame.   But looking at that pore, ol' dog, I couldn't help but think the sympathy fix was in...

Oh, well.   

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A-Rod?

Who gives a sh*t?  It's only an effing game.  Madoff?  A lot more to get cheesed at, sure. 

But our whole society is a casino with a crooked wheel that lets the marks win just enough to keep them from tearing the place down.

Yes, it could be worse, say, like in the old days in Haiti, with the Ton Ton Macoute.  In fact, much of history was and is implemented by creatures similar to the Ton Ton Macoutes. 

Why can't we merely form Rockdale cooperatives and all get along? 

A purely rhetorical question.

R.
 
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Re: American bloodlust and Iraq

"If Iraq manages to hold together in some minimal way as a fairly secular state after the U.S. leaves, it will be treated as a vindication of Bush Administration's invasion."

Well, let's forget the vague "treated as". Will it actually be a vindication of the invasion? If not, why not?

Doug

2009/2/8 Roy Griffin <roygg9@yahoo.com>

As I said, the UN strike force idea is a fantasy, but were there in place a concerted plan by the more powerful and more enlightened (& I mean that in the sense of the Englightenment) members of the UN to engage in systematic and well prioritized efforts to redeem shitholes like Haiti and the Sudan, and yes, maybe local interventions in backwaters and the ghettoes of the U.S...or France...or anywhere...I think it might be worth supporting, even it meant the use of some force & violence applied along the lines of "just war" theory...the foregoing idea could only be feasible in the context of a world greatly reduced in concern about national sovereignty--or the appearance of it.  That's one of those things where appearance and reality are pretty much the same.

On a somewhat unrelated note, from the point of view of domestic U.S. politics, what's going to happen with Iraq is this:

If Iraq manages to hold together in some minimal way as a fairly secular state after the U.S. leaves, it will be treated as a vindication of Bush Administration's invasion.  If Iraq falls apart after the U.S. leaves, there will be a "stab in the back" theory blaming the Democrats for the failure.  The Democrats should be prepared to meet the argument head on.   I doubt if they will be.

I sometimes wonder if the Democrats capable of coherent & strategic political thinking.  The Republicans certainly are, even though the content of their actual policies suck. 

R.
 
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American bloodlust and Iraq

As I said, the UN strike force idea is a fantasy, but were there in place a concerted plan by the more powerful and more enlightened (& I mean that in the sense of the Englightenment) members of the UN to engage in systematic and well prioritized efforts to redeem shitholes like Haiti and the Sudan, and yes, maybe local interventions in backwaters and the ghettoes of the U.S...or France...or anywhere...I think it might be worth supporting, even it meant the use of some force & violence applied along the lines of "just war" theory...the foregoing idea could only be feasible in the context of a world greatly reduced in concern about national sovereignty--or the appearance of it.  That's one of those things where appearance and reality are pretty much the same.

On a somewhat unrelated note, from the point of view of domestic U.S. politics, what's going to happen with Iraq is this:

If Iraq manages to hold together in some minimal way as a fairly secular state after the U.S. leaves, it will be treated as a vindication of Bush Administration's invasion.  If Iraq falls apart after the U.S. leaves, there will be a "stab in the back" theory blaming the Democrats for the failure.  The Democrats should be prepared to meet the argument head on.   I doubt if they will be.

I sometimes wonder if the Democrats capable of coherent & strategic political thinking.  The Republicans certainly are, even though the content of their actual policies suck. 

R.
 
http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Slumdog Millionaire

I shall now proceed to tell you how much I liked the movie and then hem and haw about it.

In the early scenes about Jamal's childhood, I was nearly sobbing with rage.  It made me yearn for some kind of UN strike force that would go in mow down the slumlords, child slavers, indifferent capitalists, corrupt police & government officials, etc. (Yes, I'm well acquainted with the paradoxes, impossibilities & moral quandaries of such an idea--it's just a fantasy).  But I liked just about everything about the movie and loved much of it. 

I don't know what the screenwriter's intent was, but it seemed to me also a good expression of how the Islamic faith gets lived out, at least in that particular historical context.  I don't mean the Islam as preached by the local imams, but Islam as it is lived out culturally by people who most of the time are only nominally Muslims--just like the bulk of Christians &,  say, Buddhists, are only nominally Christians and Buddhists most of the time.  And that brings me to the hemming and hawing...

There's nothing in the Koran that unequivocally enjoins classic holy war, honor killings, female circumcision, intolerance & passages that may seem to, especially as regards holy war, are offset by other passages.  Jesus reportedly said "I come to bring not peace but a sword."  That has been invoked by Christians when they found it expedient to wage wars or engage in violence, but there's little doubt that the Semon on the Mount demands that that particular remark of Jesus requires that it be treated symbolically rather than literally.  And whenever Christians don't have their bloodlust up , that's how they do interpret it. 

 (Much of what we Westerners object to in Islam has to to do with the local and (often) tribal cultural matrix in which it is embedded that actually pre-existed the arrival of Islam.  In Saudi Arabia, there was no tradition of pictorial art when Islam arose.  Consequently, Arabian art is confined to mosiacs and "arabesques"  In Iran and Indonesia there was already a naturalistic pictorial tradition so the Koranic stricture against likenesses of God was taken to mean only as "don't try to draw God" and their pictorial traditions continued.)

But the hemming and hawing concerns this:   There is a fatalism in the movie that works well vis a vis the wonderful love story, but to me could be enervating as far as the pursuit of social justice, not only because of the implicit appeal to resignation, but also because of a certain mystical individualism. 

I dunno.  Michael Walzer has argued that the Calvinists, who were nothing if not fatalists with their doctrine of hard predestination, were also the spiritual ancestors of the vanguard party of professional revolutionaries a la Lenin--don't remember if he discusses Blanqui or not.  I wonder if Blanqui came out of a Huegenot background.

But the fatalism I saw in the movie is something I associate with Islam.  But maybe that's all wet.   There is a saying, "Trust in Allah, but tie up your camel"  I wonder if it's in the Koran. 

R.

 
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My two senators, Cornyn and Hutchinson

are worthless--& Cornyn is actually vile. 

I've just read Krugman's take on the inadequacies of the proposed stimulus plan & I think now would be the time for everybody who has a potentially responsive Senator & representative to urge them not only to pass this piss-poor stimulus plan (as a niggling start), but to urge their Democratic Senators, if they have any, to do away with the effing filibuster.  I know that in the past it has occasionally been used to good effect by the Democrats to block an especially obnoxious Supreme Court appointment, but by and large, the Democrats do not use the filibuster effectively, and the Republicans do.  If and when the Republicans regain the majority and get Caligua appointed to the Supreme Court, the Democrats can take it to the masses with at least as much effect as they have wielded the filibuster in years past...The Democrats have (and have long had) the bulk of public opinion on their side with respect to the issues.  If they would start
behaving like a mass party, maybe THEY could put together that Rovian semi-permanent majority...

Obama's supporters, if he can mobilize them, may be that mass party.  

I get his emails.  I'm going to do stuff.  I gave money for Howard Dean and Obama & actually did stuff for Howard Dean.  Now I'm going to do stuff for Obama. 

R.
 
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