The Phantom City

The legal fights continue, but the Washington state Democratic Party says their candidate, Christine Gregoire, has defeated Republican Dino Rossi by eight votes in the gubernatorial race.

Link courtesy of Talking Points Memo

This article has the overblown title of “The Intellectual Origins Of America-Bashing,” and it’s the Hoover Institution on Marxism, but it’s still interesting.

“The Baran-Wallerstein revision of Marxism does provide a new global reformulation of the immiserization thesis. But the locus of this misery, the Third World, does not and cannot provide an adequate objective foundation for a revolutionary struggle against the capitalist system.”

I would think an even larger problem is that there would be the need for an organized opposition representing and supported by the exploited, which is far more likely within a country than across the world. Is the identity of a global underclass really more powerful right now than so many religious, political, ethnic, and other identifications?

In order for it to become so, I think either the world would need to be seen as simplified with clear antagonists — a bipolar world did that somewhat — or the importance of non-class identity would have to be lessened and class identity placed in opposition to an immediate global environment. (In other words, you’d need to be at least as concerned with the multinational exploiting your town as you would be with the problems you had with your neighboring town.)

It’s interesting that no one is doing more to accomplish both of those conditions than we are.

In the first case of a simplified world with clear antagonists, our attempts at democracy-building — no matter what the outcome — place the U.S. in intimate contact with people’s lives. We become not only an overarching presence, but an immediate concern.

In the second case, the quest for global markets and spreading Western secular culture is also a quest to instill identities much like our own. And we are very familiar with class and the predominance of the economic in life.

Courtesy of Policy Review

I find this essay interesting because it states one of my most fundamental political beliefs: Not every right is a Constitutional right.

I doubt the author and I would agree on what issues and rights we thought important, but the ability to debate about that is an essential part of the democratic process.

Link via Obsidian Wings

Over at Fafblog, the always insightful Medium Lobster comments on Donald Rumsfeld’s quest for a lighter, cheaper, faster military.

“Few outside the White House have truly appreciated the hard work Secretary Rumsfeld has put into transforming America’s military, turning it from a large, cumbersome force slowly bogging itself down in one war after another, to a lighter, faster, smaller, more flammable army capable of losing numerous conflicts simultaneously.”

Ah, someone has taught rat brain cells to fly a simulated F-22 fighter jet. Rats with weapons…I can’t foresee anything that could go wrong with that, can you?

(They were originally going to use cat brain cells, but the planes would lose interest and stare off into the distance.)

Update: William Gibson recalls author Cordwainer Smith using laminated rat brains in his 1950s SF stories performing the functions for which we would later use computers.

Courtesy of The Register, via William Gibson’s Blog

Brilliant. The state of Pennsylvania has just passed a law pretty much requiring that local governments make sure they aren’t going to compete with private companies when they offer broadband as a public service.

Interesting precedent. I’d hate the be the municipality trying to put up the town’s first streetlight. Suppose one of the citizens decides to start his own system of flags and hand signals for the main intersection?

Courtesy of Techdirt.