Holy Map Mashup, Batman!

“The top map is voting patterns in this 2008 election– the bottom map is cotton production in 1860…”

via anthropophagus, from Soup

What has been accomplished?

I voted for the first time in eight years yesterday. I have no confidence that just because Obama won, the world will become a better place. I have every confidence that if McCain had managed to somehow swipe the election the world would have become a much much more dangerous place.

I am pleased beyond reason that the US managed to elect a black man as president. Hopefully we’ll stop imprisoning so many of them, but if I recall correctly, that issue never came up in the election campaign. More than half of my siblings are of African (and two with Asian) descent, and I would be less than honest if I didn’t admit that a large part of my decision to vote this year came out of the following self-assessment: I do not want to look my siblings (who are not anti-capitalists, anti-statists, or anarchists), my children, or my eventual (maybe) grandchildren in the eyes, and tell them that when given the opportunity to help vote a black man into the presidency, I abstained.

Friends and colleagues on the internets have written some important things on this win which I would like to recommend to my readers. These posts make the point to which I allude in the title of this post clear. As Obama himself said last night, “This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change.” Perhaps. If an Obama presidency has the opportunity to make positive change, it will happen only insofar as he is held responsible for making the bold changes we all need.

We don’t need a new American century – the last one was terrible. We don’t need new American leadership. We do need some basic decency. We do need all sorts of things that would be called ’socialism’ by McCain’s campaign: national health care, job-creation, the production and expansion of our manufacturing base, the re-regulation of the financial industries, and much, much more.

Some thoughts from these good folks after the jump…

RNC Fallout

Independent media has begun releasing longer, more in-depth accounts of what went down here in September, when they – along with tens of thousands of peaceful citizens – suddenly found themselves in a repressive police state that resembled fabled Minnesota Nice not at all. Independent media was specifically targeted, along with folks from the RNC Welcoming Committee.

Sometime today, the good folks from Twin Cities Indymedia and the Glass Bead Collective will release a hi-definition downloadable (and burnable to dvd) version of their documentary, “Terrorizing Dissent.” There will be public showings in various locations [check the web site]. In the meantime, here’s the trailer.

Tom Hayden, one of the Chicago 8 forty years ago, has been a good egg, making the parallels explicit. He was on Macalester’s campus last week, talking up this point, the fact that police adhere to a ’scare the sh*t out of the public’ script in these cases, and that

As long as the pubic is dumb and the politicians cowardly, they won’t have to send out agents. But I don’t see how this pulling the wool over the eyes of people can go on forever.

Link Dump for O27

Marc Bousquet gives the most level-headed endorsement of Obama I have seen yet. And he makes the point I’ve been making privately to friends and comrades for the last two months: Obama will likely be remembered, should he be elected, as Herbert Hoover part II. Why? Because he’s not (McCain buzz to the contrary) a socialist:

It’s nice to see the electorate finally rejecting the same old Raw Deal.

On the other hand, we’re pretty far away from a new New Deal, except for bankers. In fact, we could be in for a long tour of Hooverville.

I know, that’s not what you want to hear about The One.

He’s pretty. Like Kennedy, only moral, and he writes most of his own stuff, which is nice. Daddy didn’t fund his political career.

But his policies on education (charter schools: yum!) and health care (buy your own!) are miles away from the “socialism” that Dumb and Dumber have labelled them.

Sad to say, but if you’re inclined to view the moment through the lens of a potential Second Great Depression, then Obama’s positioned a heck of lot more like Hoover than FDR.

Vaughan over at Mind Hacks refers to a fantastic radio documentary on Milgram’s conformity experiments. Milgram and Zimbardo’s experiments were formative for my own understanding of human behavior, as they were for many. That along makes this documentary important, especially for educators looking for new ways to introduce this well-trod material to students.

Ursa at Class Struggle For Gunslingers refers, via Nate, to two excellent and contrasting views from the French on the current economic crisis: Tronti and Badiou. Go. Read.

This, from Vutha, makes me hungry. Ansam Ang.  Yum. Ansam Ang is a delicious roadside treat. I rarely ate the ’straight’ ansam ang, but the fancier variety, in which the grilled banana is wrapped around something else (some meat, or beans), and then wrapped in banana leaf for takeaway. Cheap and tremendously delicious.

Wellington Grey, who despite his name is a citizen of the United States, has a very nice graphic demonstrating clearly the ways in which the US is not number one. It deserves wider attention:

Via BoingBoing, these wonderful black and white drawings from a great-looking show of Dia de los muertos drawings!:

And finally, a reference to the always-impressive posts over at Will Buckingham’s thinkbuddha.org, which reviews the great book from Gregory Schopen, Bones, Stones, and Buddhist Monks. Schopen has subsequent volumes in this series which are equally impressive.

Schopen writes that those who attempt to reconstruct the early history of Buddhism have two bodies of data upon which to draw – in the first place, material records, and secondly literary materials. In our tendency to take texts as somehow being the place where “real” religion resides, and to consider the data from material records as secondary, we have, Schopen contends, arrived at a curiously skewed vision of Buddhist history. For example, epigraphic and archaeological evidence – records of generous donations by monks to the erecting of monuments – suggests that Buddhist monks did own property, whilst literary evidence suggests that Buddhist monks should not own property (other than the “requisites” necessary for supporting their existence); and thus the scholars have concluded that, although Buddhist monks in general didn’t own property (the texts tell us so), perhaps at certain times and in certain places there was a decline in the probity of the monkhood. The epigraphic evidence, then, is considered to be an exceptional case manifesting the behaviour of some backsliding monks, or else a case of monks acting as mediators in the donation, but in all cases it is considered to be unrepresentative of what Buddhism has been like historically.

When Game Show Audiences Appear More Informed Than the US Electorate

Word. Submedia and Rebellious Pixels at it again. This stunning piece of propaganda demonstrates why I hate representative politics, and why I’ll be voting, contrary to every kantian ounce of my being, in this year’s elections. (tip o’ the hat to Max Forte for his earlier posting on why he voted in this year’s Canadian election) The way this is remixed makes the audience of “So you think you can dance” appear much, much, much more intelligent and well-informed than the entire American electorate. Shameful really.

more about “When Game Show Audiences Appear More …“, posted with vodpod

Go Read About the Difference Between Americans, and Amerikkkans.

1DFTW has the straight dope. And video.

When John McCain misspoke recently, referring to his fellow Americans as “my fellow prisoners,” he said a mouthful: this really appears to be a culture incapable of escaping itself, as if waiting for reform by the most drastic means possible: environmental breakdown, an economic depression, humiliation abroad, and perhaps civil war at home. It’s as if the people we see in these videos have given up all hope on themselves, submerging themselves in old and worn anger systems, seeking refuge from memory and reason in an anger that erases all doubt, remorse, and impending anguish. These do not look or sound like courageous, enthusiastic, progressive people. Instead they come across as goons, and mothers of goons, looking for a fight, possessed by criminal ideas.

When viewing some of the mob members in the videos below, I confess my weakness: it is nearly impossible to sympathize with the self-made plight of these people, and I wish they would face the calamities they cause worldwide with greater immediacy at home. If their self-harm could be contained at home, one might become more generous. At this point, whatever “tragedies” serve to erode the U.S.’ “great power” status can only, regardless of the alternatives and short-term consequences, herald a vast improvement to the global human condition. The only chance many Americans have of escaping their worst selves is to start by inverting the meanings propounded by their leadership: the parasitic oligarchs as some would call them, the ultra-wealthy and coercive holders of state and financial power. When the likes of McCain complain about “radical leftists,” it is precisely then that Americans should seek these people out, that underground of American self-criticism that seeks serious social transformation, Americans not Amerikkkans, ones whose courage deserves our support so that they will persevere.

Up The Election! I Have a Candidate I can Support!

Courtesy of John over at the excellent Machina Memorialis, who has also highlighted this button, which can be purchased through cafepress.

The only candidate I’d elect president

from AlisoninCambodia:

And even so, he’d still give us the same e.s.

McCain ‘08: Cambodians Are Taller Than You Think!

Because Cambodian height just doesn’t get enough love in the news. Fast-forward to 0:50.

more about "Colbert on the first debate", posted with vodpod

“A Plague O’ Both Your Houses!”

A plague o’ both your houses. They have made worms’ meat out of me.

So said Mercutio, a soldier who knew what it was like to be used as an unwitting pawn in the war between two wealthy houses, and to realize the truth too late.

In somewhat better news, in my attepts to follow the news from Denver (you know, the news outside of the convention), I’ve discovered “submedia,” whose snarky short tv news pieces must rank as the best produced televised coverage of the actions out of Denver.” Try these four (part three in two parts) pieces on Denver on for size. I especially like the short interview with Ward Churchill on his earliest political campaign. {Warning: Salty Language Included, and not just from the po-po!]