Anthropolitics

"The millennials are the people who’ve inherited the hangover from the baby boomers’ party: a warming..."

Sat, 11 May 2013 02:26:00 -0400

“The millennials are the people who’ve inherited the hangover from the baby boomers’ party: a warming planet, a dysfunctional global financial system that rewards the rich and screws the poor, a polarized political class that’s moved so far to the right that a centrist like Barack Obama can be described with a straight face as “a socialist.” Millennials may be “narcissistic, materialistic and addicted to technology,” as Stein alleges early in his article; they’re also drowning in college debt, slaves to an internship “system” that demands ever-increasing work for no pay, and entrants into a job market that’s replaced employment rights with the “flexibility” of never being able to afford health insurance.”

- Why Time’s Millennials Cover Story Says More About Joel Stein Than It Does About Millennials

(via iaccidentallythepatriarchy)

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Fri, 19 Apr 2013 16:38:24 -0400

sofapizza: tastefullyoffensive: [via] ugh frustrating

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 06:26:27 -0400

sofapizza:

tastefullyoffensive:

[via]

ugh frustrating

azspot: David Horsey

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 16:49:47 -0400

azspot:

David Horsey

Boeing Helps Kill Proposed Law to Regulate Drones | Pratap Chatterjee

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 21:57:27 -0400

Boeing Helps Kill Proposed Law to Regulate Drones | Pratap Chatterjee:

Boeing, the aircraft manufacturing giant from Seattle, helped defeat a Republican proposal in Washington state that would have forced government agencies to get approval to buy unmanned aerial vehicles, popularly known as drones, and to obtain a warrant before using them to conduct surveillance on individuals.

Local authorities in Seattle and in King county experimented with conducting surveillance from Draganfly Innovations drones last year, only to cancel both programs in the fact of public protest. “I’m not really surprised that people are upset,” said Jennifer Shaw from the American Civil Liberties Union … . “It’s a frightening thing to think that there’s government surveillance cameras overhead.”

On February 7, 2013, David Taylor, a Republican member of the state legislature, introduced a bill to regulate drone use. The proposed law quickly won support from several Democratic party politicians on the state Public Safety Committee.

Alarmed by the growing bipartisan coalition, Boeing jumped into the fray. “We believe that as the technology matures, best practices and new understanding will emerge, and that it would be counterproductive to rush into regulating a burgeoning industry,” Boeing spokeswoman Sue Bradley wrote in a statement. (The company makes a variety of drones from the Unmanned Little Bird and the A160 Hummingbird helicopters to the ScanEagle which has been used in Iran and Iraq and the proposed new X-45C combat aircraft)

After the company approached several lawmakers, Frank Chopp, the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives in Washington state, canceled a scheduled March 13 vote on the bill. Instead Jeff Morris, another Democrat who chairs the House Technology and Economic Development Committee, was asked to lead a “more comprehensive study of surveillance issues.”

“This is all about profit,” said a disappointed Taylor. “This is about profit over people’s rights.”

While local and state use of drones has been limited to short pilot projects so far, concern about the federal use of drones has been on the rise in the last few months especially as the Obama administration has refused to divulge details on how drones are used by government authorities like the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection agency. Republicans in the U.S. Congress have even voted to ask the Pentagon to reveal whether it is using drones inside the U.S.

Privacy groups have raised questions about what might be legally possible. “We don’t believe that there are actually any federal statutes that would provide limits on drone surveillance in the United States,” says Amie Stepanovich, director of the Domestic Surveillance Project at the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “The privacy laws that do exist are very targeted [and] don’t encompass the type of surveillance that drones are able to conduct.”

To date lawmakers in some 32 states have introduced bills to restrict drone use. While none have been voted into law (North Dakota and Oklahoma both opposed such laws in order to attract more investment in their states), last month the city of Charlottesville, Virginia, pledged not to conduct drone surveillance and voted in favor of a resolution that calls on the federal and state governments to adopt laws banning “information obtained from the domestic use of drones from being introduced into a Federal or State court.” [++]

accras: Consoler-in-ChiefPresident Obama consoles Donovan...

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 19:14:02 -0400

accras:

Consoler-in-Chief
President Obama consoles Donovan Frazier, 5, whose egg ran off course during the the Easter Egg Race, April 1, 2013.

"It is simply by chance that the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) has..."

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 05:49:46 -0400

“It is simply by chance that the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) has its headquarters in Lisbon. Frank Zobel works here, analyzing various approaches to combating drugs, and he says he can observe ‘the greatest innovation in this field’ right outside his office door. No drug policy, Zobel says, can genuinely prevent people from taking drugs — at least, he is not familiar with any model that works this way. As for Portugal, Zobel says, ‘This is working. Drug consumption has not increased severely. There is no mass chaos. For me as an evaluator, that’s a very good outcome.’”

- ‘This Is Working’: Portugal, 12 Years after Decriminalizing Drugs | der spiegel (via theamericanbear)

bitch-suck-a-fat-one: brozor: What they did not want you to...

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 05:16:34 -0400

bitch-suck-a-fat-one:

brozor:

What they did not want you to ever find out is that your generation, the generation born between 1980-1995, actually outnumbers the Baby Boomers. They knew that if you ever turned your eye towards political reform, you could change the world. They tried to keep you sated on vapid television shows and vapid music. They cut off your education and fed you brain candy. They took away your music and gave you Top Ten pop stations. They cut off your art and replaced it with endless reality shows for you to plug into, hoping you would sit quietly by as they ran the world. We as a society are only as strong as our weakest link. Give ‘em hell, kids.

I’ve never loved a post so much in the history of tumblr

Ohmyglobbbbbbb.

whydoesntthishavemillionsofhits: Senator Elizabeth Warren...

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 05:36:58 -0400

whydoesntthishavemillionsofhits:

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) : Why Haven’t The Wall Street Banks Been Prosecuted? (from CSPAN, uploaded by Marie Marr)

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Sat, 30 Mar 2013 05:33:59 -0400

Advocating Progress: Poll: Stephen Colbert's sister has good chance at winning House seat

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 18:20:15 -0400

Advocating Progress: Poll: Stephen Colbert's sister has good chance at winning House seat:

maneatingbadger:

shortformblog:

53% of likely GOP voters are expected to vote for former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford in a runoff election against attorney Curtis Bostic to determine the Republican Party’s nominee for the House seat.

47% of the registered voters in…

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Tue, 26 Mar 2013 19:13:29 -0400

New Hampshire House votes to prohibit private prisons

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:11:12 -0400

New Hampshire House votes to prohibit private prisons:

sinidentidades:

Good.

vicemag: Russian Orthodox Priests Want to Take Back Alaska and...

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 15:47:39 -0400

vicemag:

Russian Orthodox Priests Want to Take Back Alaska and Save Its Non-Gays

Back in the day (by which I mean from 1733-1867), Alaska was a Russian colonial possession. In 1867, we bought it off the Russkies for two cents an acre. That may sound like a measly sum, but in those days two cents was considered riches—you could buy a pair of Air Force 1s with it and still have enough change left over to start your own slave colony.

Anyway, last weekend, a Russian Orthodox group known as the Pchyolki called bullshit on that deal and demanded that Alaska be returned to Russia. These guys previously gained notoriety for their reaction to Pussy Riot’s controversial performance in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior, when they produced a handy guide for any Russian Orthodox Christians unlucky enough to be accosted by blasphemers. Apparently you’re supposed to destroy their electronic equipment with holy water, spit in their faces, and keep in mind to “avoid shedding of blood in the church itself, but if the scorners are violent outside the church grounds, you shall fight back accordingly.”

Media reports suggested that the issue of gay marriage had prompted the demand to get Alaska back. Predictably, the group isn’t too happy about two guys exchanging vows and with Obama said to be considering that very act, the Pchyolki are taking preemptive action to protect the state’s Orthodox Christian community. I phoned up Nikolay Bondarenko, the Pchyolki leader, for a chat.

VICE: Hi Nikolay. Why are you questioning the legitimacy of the USA’s ownership of Alaska?
Nikolay Bondarenko: Because the original deal wasn’t done properly. Legally, the USA shouldn’t own Alaska. In the legal documents of the original deal that sold Alaska to the US government in the 1960s it specifies the terms of payment—it says that Russia will sell Alaska to America for $7.2 million and payment of the equivalent of this sum should be made by gold. But in fact the payment was made by check. Why was that? It is not known where that actual check is now, so we can’t even prove that Russians received that payment. At the time Russia and the USA were allies, so whoever was responsible for that deal must have done it on purpose.

Why do you want Alaska back?
As a human rights organization we have to think about the rights of the Russians and other Orthodox people of Alaska. Article three of the original agreement highlighted that all people living there will be treated by the government according to their traditions, beliefs, and religion, and the majority of residents were Orthodox. When Obama announced his plans to legalize same-sex marriage, we realized it will really affect the Orthodox population of Alaska and it will directly violate the agreement.

Have you wanted it back before now? What prompted you to file the lawsuit?
We could have claimed it back a few months ago; we could have claimed it back 100 years ago. The formal “trigger” was the Schneerson Library case, when, a few months ago, an American court ordered Russia to hand over the library to Hasidic jews of America with a $50,000 fine for every day it wasn’t returned. This was very outrageous and caused a lot of discussion.

How do you rate your chances of getting it back?
We have much better legal grounds to get Alaska back than they had then, so we are quite positive about our chances.

Continue

diadoumenos: Per Wikipedia: “Greedy Lying Bastards...

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 17:11:36 -0400

diadoumenos:

Per Wikipedia:

“Greedy Lying Bastards investigates the climate change misinformation campaign waged by the oil industry and its funded think tanks. The film exposes how a small number of well paid spokespeople have worked to confuse the public and lawmakers on the issue. Both ExxonMobil and Koch Industries are identified in the film as two of the worst culprits funding the denial campaign.”

Greedy Lying Bastards is playing now in select theaters.

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Mon, 18 Mar 2013 16:31:37 -0400

dbreunig: “Then she took a sip from a Big Gulp. At the close...

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 15:35:22 -0400

dbreunig:

“Then she took a sip from a Big Gulp. At the close of her speech, she carried it off stage like a trophy.”

Weird times.

(Via The Atlantic Wire)

recall-all-republicans: Republican Paul Ryan admits the...

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 18:01:34 -0400

recall-all-republicans:

Republican Paul Ryan admits the truth, saying that Republicans “are not going to give up on destroying the health care system for the American people.”

"I took Paul Ryan’s measure two and a half years ago. All the Very Serious People were very angry..."

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 06:12:07 -0400

“

I took Paul Ryan’s measure two and a half years ago. All the Very Serious People were very angry with me — Ryan was the Serious, Honest Conservative, the guy centrists demonstrated their centrism by praising. But he was an obvious phony. His “plan” was all smoke (I couldn’t even find any mirrors), with all the alleged deficit reduction coming from closing tax loopholes he refused to specify plus projected reductions in discretionary spending that he also refused to specify. Meanwhile, he was pursuing radical redistribution away from the needy to the wealthy.

Nothing has changed, except that the plan has gotten even crueler.

So while I may do some analysis later today, the only really interesting question is how the VSPs will react. Have they had enough of the Flimflam Man? Or does hype spring eternal?

”

- Paul Krugman, “Flimflam Forever.” (via diadoumenos)

oinonio: On Doonesbury, GOP Soul Searching: “Is voter...

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 22:55:58 -0400

oinonio:

On Doonesbury, GOP Soul Searching: “Is voter suppression alone enough for us to win future elections?”