Laissez-faire Politics Thread - Praxis? I didn't play Deus Ex, sorry.

[shosta]

[Joe Molotov]

Fred Flintstone was a wage cuck

[team filler]

Fred Flintstone was a wage giant dad

[Tripon]

Fred Flintstone was a wage giant dad

The Flintstones were pro cucking. 

[Oblivion]

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1163112167421468673

maybe people should only listen to greenwald on brazil related issues and nothing else

[shosta]

https://twitter.com/sunraysunray/status/1161625637645406208

presented without comment

[shosta]

[benjipwns]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/how-k-pop-is-tempting-young-north-koreans-to-cross-the-line/2019/08/19/0f984654-839f-11e9-b585-e36b16a531aa_story.html

As a little girl, Ryu Hee-Jin was brought up to perform patriotic songs praising the iron will, courage and compassion of North Korea’s leader at the time, Kim Jong Il.

Then she heard American and South Korean pop music.

“When you listen to North Korean music, you have no emotions,” she said. “But when you listen to American or South Korean music, it literally gives you the chills. The lyrics are so fresh, so relatable. When kids listen to this music, their facial expressions just change.”

Now, there is evidence that South Korean K-pop is playing a similar role in subtly undermining the propaganda of the North Korean regime, with rising numbers of defectors citing music as one factor in their disillusionment with their government, according to Lee Kwang-Baek, president of South Korea’s Unification Media Group (UMG).

The trend, fueled by growing cellphone ownership in North Korea and the country’s still buoyant border trade with China, has provoked a new clampdown by Pyongyang in the past year, according to reports on Daily NK, a defector-led news service with extensive links in the North. That followed Kim Jong Un’s 2018 vow to “crush bourgeois reactionary culture.”

A survey of 200 recent defectors by UMG released in June found that more than 90 percent had watched foreign movies, TV and music in North Korea; three-quarters knew of someone who had been punished as a result; and more than 70 percent said it had become more dangerous to access foreign media since Kim Jong Un took power at the end of 2011.

Ryu is one of many defectors who say K-pop and Western popular music opened their eyes, convincing them that North Korea was not the paradise it was made out to be and that their best prospects lay abroad.

In her bedroom in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, Ryu would sometimes stay up all night watching a single music video on repeat — surreptitiously, for fear of the police.

“We were always taught that Americans were wolves and South Koreans were their puppets,” she said, “but when you listen to their art, you’ve just got to acknowledge them.”

She remembers Celine Dion, the British violinist “with the crazy hair,” Nigel Kennedy, and the Irish boy band Westlife, as well as K-pop bands TVXQ, Girls’ Generation and T-Ara.

Born into a musical family, Ryu played the gayageum, a traditional Korean string instrument similar to a zither, at an arts school in Pyongyang. A spell in the national synchronized swimming team was followed by a job as a waitress in southern Europe. There, she spent evenings in nightclubs, dancing “Gangnam Style” with co-workers and friends from South Korea. In 2015, at the age of 23, she defected to the South.

The risks for viewers are real, with a special unit of the police and security services known as Group 109 in charge of the renewed crackdown. Even minors who are caught can face six months to a year of ideological training in a reeducation camp — unless their parents can bribe their way out — while adults can face a lifetime of hard labor or, for sensitive material, even execution.

It’s not just the melodies and lyrics that prove catchy, it’s also the performers’ clothes and hairstyles.

“The kind of thing I wanted to do was dye my hair and wear miniskirts and jeans,” said Kang Na-ra, 22. “Once I wore jeans to the market and I was told I had to take them off. They were burned in front of my eyes.”

Kang, who had been a singer at an arts high school in Pyongyang, defected in 2014, so “I could express myself freely.” She tried to make it in K-pop but says the singing styles are too different. Now, she has a successful career as a TV personality and an actress, mainly portraying North Koreans in South Korean films and dramas.

Han Song-ee was just 10 years old when she first saw a video of Baby V.O.X performing in a “Unification Concert” in Pyongyang in 2003, to an audience of comically impassive North Korean bigwigs. “At first it was so shocking and weird to see these ‘capitalist vandals,’ but as I listened to their music, I realized it was pretty catchy,” she said.

Soon, she was hooked. Her father became angry with her mother for copying the band’s hairstyle. Later, Han and her friends began to wear the colorful hot pants popularized by South Korea’s Girls’ Generation — but only in their neighborhood, not the city center.

Han defected in 2013 and is now a well-known vlogger in Seoul, where she also appears on radio and television. She says she dreams of North Koreans being able to watch her broadcasts, and of her parents tuning in, “so they can see how free I am.”

Last year, Kim attended a South Korean musical performance in Pyongyang that featured older music divas, male rock musicians and young K-pop acts, including a trendy girl band called Red Velvet. The concert was broadcast in its entirety in the South but only in snippets on news programs in the North.

One woman in her late 20s, who escaped North Korea last year, said video of the concert was shared behind closed doors in her hometown near the Chinese border.

She spoke on the condition of anonymity because of safety concerns.

“Kim Jong Un apparently clapped and cheered at the performance, but we could only watch smuggled footage of it in hiding because consuming South Korean music was still a crime that could land us in prison,” she said.

After she defected, Ryu said, she learned from a TV documentary that Kim Jong Il, the father of the country’s current leader, was a fan of South Korean cinema and TV shows.

“I was so, so angry,” she said. “We would literally cry when we sang about the hardships of Kim Jong Il’s life. I never imagined he was watching South Korean TV.”

These days, Ryu is studying for a business degree but still dreams of breaking into K-pop or — better yet — Hollywood.

“It’s so incredible how far I have come,” she said. “South Korean music really played a central role in guiding me through this journey.”

The Conquerors of Juche at work:

[OnlyRegret]

geegee geegeee geegee geegeee geegee geegeee geegee geegeee geegee geegeee geegee geegeee
geegee geegeee geegee geegeee geegee Kim is a false god geegeee geegee geegeee geegee geegeee

[benjipwns]

https://twitter.com/nick_kapur/status/1164233656799506433

https://twitter.com/nick_kapur/status/1164234617861398534

spoiler (click to show/hide)

https://twitter.com/nick_kapur/status/1164244110301192192

https://twitter.com/nick_kapur/status/1164244793892966401

https://twitter.com/nick_kapur/status/1164247060281004033

https://twitter.com/nick_kapur/status/1164251782635249664

[close]

https://twitter.com/nick_kapur/status/1164259400384679936

edit: posted by Esch and critiqued by Vom in latestagecapitalism, thought to check there after I posted, I am truly sorry

[shosta]

https://opportunity.businessroundtable.org/ourcommitment/

[benjipwns]

no no no no go back to the old one it was fine

[shosta]

I think I actually started something by accident 

[VomKriege]

Damn you benji I was about to roast you with that link !

[team filler]

https://twitter.com/IChotiner/status/1164899264213835777

https://twitter.com/n_r_g/status/1164928619841544192

[shosta]

I used to think that international conglomerates involved in commodity production at least could justify their markup and overseas dominion because they oversaw the major innovations in supply chain logistics that occurred over the past ~50 years. But there is more to this story than I knew. It turns out that these companies offset the costs of this on-demand production onto their suppliers. What I learned in school as the miracle of just-in-time manufacturing is really a magic trick that takes the costs of overproduction and forces the supplier to deal with it instead, in the form of depressed wages, deteriorated working conditions, and outright bankruptcies. The shift from totally integrated vertical production to a master-servant subcontracting in the producing countries at first looks like it's a gain for the country (as a local company, it hypothetically keeps the profit of its production within the state that produced it) but actually is a poor bargain designed to extract more rent for the multinational. Truly nefarious arrangement.

[Crash Dummy]

there's a derrida team at google 

https://twitter.com/tiff_fitzhenry/status/1165443115207057408?s=11

[Rufus]

https://twitter.com/XluvnuX/status/1165499216426352640

https://twitter.com/iknowandcantslp/status/1165604422757625861

 

[Crash Dummy]

https://twitter.com/Tiff_FitzHenry/status/1165443144332263424

 

[shosta]

a whole episode on an infantile disorder, pass

spoiler (click to show/hide)

I looked into mr. pancake after you told Cindi to (too bad that one didn't work out  ). Looking forward to this 

[close]

[shosta]

"A lot of people didn't like Trotsky because he was so smug and aloof."
"A long Trotskyist tradition."

Sounds like the type of shit you'd be into, stost.

I thought this was about the episode, turns out you meant Mattick. This stuff is such a rabbit hole. Now I want to read the One Dimensional Man, too. You're right, the reading list truly never gets any smaller.

[Joe Molotov]

https://twitter.com/thucydiplease/status/1166517935877132288

[BisMarckie]

https://twitter.com/thucydiplease/status/1166517935877132288

I lived under socialism and there was never enough of anything, but:

Getting care packages from the capitalists west was a good way to make your friends jealous. I got a c 64 and was the most popular kid in town.

It was used and all the games were pirated. I just lied about it being brand new.

[team filler]

https://twitter.com/STaylorRayburn/status/1166347828152680449

[curly]

https://twitter.com/buckligerzwerg/status/1166726599171084288

Reminds me of a girl I knew in college who described her brand of feminism as doing whatever was best for her

[BisMarckie]

I read parts of the Parenti book btw.
It‘s basically him presenting the weakness of biased Senate accounts and spending too much time on the historiography. I get that the audience he writes for aren’t necessarily history scholars, but that part drags on for far too long. He is just stating the obvious most of the time and basically regurgitates stuff ‚‘modern’ research has known for over 50 years.A better writer could have presented his thesis in 10 pages instead of like 70.

Brevitas sapientiae anima est

[shosta]

https://twitter.com/Speediest_Sloth/status/1166914363669790726

[shosta]

https://twitter.com/buckligerzwerg/status/1166726599171084288

support socialism, buy Chinese!

[Crash Dummy]

Reading through this three part series on marxism and modernity by j moufawad paul. it's a fun read if you want some philosophical wall o' text.

Enlightenment, science, sovereign power in three parts.

http://www.abstraktdergi.net/radiating-disaster-triumphant-modernity-and-its-discontents/
http://www.abstraktdergi.net/this-ruthless-criticism-of-all-that-exists-marxism-as-science/
http://www.abstraktdergi.net/the-transplanting-of-heaven-to-earth-below/

thanks for sharing, gonna start reading these over lunch but shosta, lol @ thinking sam harris has seriously read and engaged with kant

[team filler]

https://twitter.com/broderick/status/1167864720826621952

[team filler]

https://twitter.com/RealScottRitter/status/1165231510808596480

[benjipwns]

[Joe Molotov]

How long did it take you decide whether to post that in the real politics thread, the joke politics thread, or the meme thread?

[benjipwns]

Even on a skylake i7 regression models basically take like half a second.

[VomKriege]

(Image removed from quote.)

The Turtle AchipelaGOP.

[benjipwns]

from a 2007 NYT Magazine article on Ron Paul's campaign:

Victor Carey, a 45-year-old, muscular, mustachioed self-described “patriot” who wears a black baseball cap with a skull and crossbones on it, drove up from Sykesville, Md., to show his support for Paul. He laid out some of his concerns. “The people who own the Federal Reserve own the oil companies, they own the mass media, they own the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, they’re part of the Bilderbergers, and unfortunately their spiritual practices are very wicked and diabolical as well,” Carey said. “They go to a place out in California known as the Bohemian Grove, and there’s been footage obtained by infiltration of what their practices are. And they do mock human sacrifices to an owl-god called Moloch. This is true. Go research it yourself.”

Two grandmothers from North Carolina who painted a Winnebago red, white and blue were traveling around the country, stumping for Ron Paul, defending the Constitution and warning about the new “North American Union.” Asked whether this is something that would arise out of Nafta, Betty Smith of Chapel Hill, N.C., replied: “It’s already arisen. They’re building the highway. Guess what! The Spanish company building the highway — they’re gonna get the tolls. Giuliani’s law firm represents that Spanish company. Giuliani’s been anointed a knight by the Queen. Guess what! Read the Constitution. That’s not allowed!”

[VomKriege]

"(U)nfortunately their spiritual practices are very wicked and diabolical as well,” Carey said. “They go to a place out in California known as the Bohemian Grove, and there’s been footage obtained by infiltration of what their practices are. And they do mock human sacrifices to an owl-god called Moloch. This is true. Go research it yourself.”

[shosta]

Happy Labor Day everyone!

[Crash Dummy]

never heard of quadratic voting before! https://ethresear.ch/t/quadratic-voting-with-sortition/6065

[curly]

http://ppesydney.net/neoliberalism-and-the-strange-non-death-of-planning/

Interesting blog post about neoliberalism and economic planning (with an appearance by the subject of the new old ideology thread).

Ends with a To Be Continued before it offers concrete examples of modern managerial planning

http://ppesydney.net/planning-in-the-name-of-the-market-neoliberalism-and-managerial-governance/

spoiler (click to show/hide)

still doesn't give what you were asking for tho

[close]

[Mandark]

Christopher Hitchens repeatedly cited Saddam's draining of the Iraqi marshlands as a point in favor of the Iraq war, both before and after the invasion.

I don't think it convinced anyone or was even really intended to. It was more a troll for conservative audiences: "these libs say they care about the environment, but..."

[benjipwns]

Christopher Hitchens repeatedly cited Saddam's draining of the Iraqi marshlands as a point in favor of the Iraq war, both before and after the invasion.

I don't think it convinced anyone or was even really intended to. It was more a troll for conservative audiences: "these libs say they care about the environment, but..."

I won't speak to Hitchens specifically but I presume that most mentions of that was related to the ethnic cleansing of the Marsh Arabs that went along with it

[Mandark]

Hitchens specifically cited it as an ecological issue a few times pre-war. I remember him on a show with a liberal audience prefacing it with "of course I'm not saying this just to pander to your listeners' concern for the environment, but..." or some such.

He's the only one I ever remember bringing it up. The Marsh Arabs weren't held up in the same was as the Kurds, even on a smaller scale.

[benjipwns]

The Marsh Arabs were the ones who Saddam slaughtered most extensively after the Gulf War for their uprising, so I remember them being brought up a few times as an example of why we had to finish it this time. Or go back for abandoning them after telling them to rise up, etc.

All the arguments around Iraq were quite strange I thought in terms of how it often seemed inverse to the importance/relevance of the issue, WMD being kinda the ur-example.

[Mandark]

Either Weekly Standard or National Review (maybe both) did a "Suddenly We Remember That We've Always Cared About The Marsh Arabs" piece in the run-up, but they never became a regular cause celebre. Like if you were pro war in 2003 you'd absolutely learn that part of it was supporting the Kurds but you probably wouldn't adopt the Marsh Arabs the same way. Though I guess in "Saddam massacred his own people!" they were the unspecified object of the sentence. Actually reminds me that most of the pro war rhetoric ignored the cultural schisms and was just about The People Of Iraq who all hated Saddam.

They'd probably have done better if they'd had any sort of political organization or ostensible leaders who could talk to the western press like Chalabi and the other exiles.

[Mandark]

Walking down memory lane is a good reminder of how truly deranged the Bush years were and how Trump being president is dumb in a somewhat different way but not in a much greater magnitude.

[benjipwns]

That's sorta what I meant with my Trump "is the greatest non-interventionist president of all time" statement that everyone recognized as pure genius analysis, he doesn't have the patience or the coalition building ability to somehow force the entire government, including winning over Democrats in Congress and people inside his administration like Colin Powell, into a two year march to a predetermined conclusion. Plus I personally think, despite his public persona, he has far more of a dominant CYA desire over what Bush called being "the decider" towards any risks.

[Mandark]

That's sorta what I meant with my Trump "is the greatest non-interventionist president of all time" statement

More specifically you said he "was right about Iraq" which is just straight up giving credence to one of his more obvious and well-documented lies.

[benjipwns]

He got Iraq "right" simply because he was posturing

[Mandark]

He did not oppose it at the time.

Surely I don't need to explain this to you.

[curly]

https://twitter.com/HenryKrinkIe/status/1170191030517489664

[team filler]

https://twitter.com/digitalboyfrnd/status/1170968034854359040

 

[Great Rumbler]

https://twitter.com/femceldreamgirl/status/1170831842402078721

what is going on with twitter

[team filler]

https://twitter.com/AllisonJRiggs/status/1171546487085395968

[nachobro]

https://twitter.com/GarbageApe/status/1171457462676803585

[team filler]

[benjipwns]

https://twitter.com/AllisonJRiggs/status/1171546487085395968

Without looking into it, on its face, this is actually superior to most "independent" redistricting methods. Most maps are corrupted by where the lines are begun to be drawn, it's the easiest way to draw favorable partisan maps.

In theory the best way to draw a map is to randomly select start points along a border and then draw districts in which no lines intersect another. It's usually shown that inputting both population data and state-level internal borders like counties, will automatically draw "ideal" districts following this. The problem of course is that by law, as noted in this tweet, states aren't allowed to draw districts like this. Districts are basically legally required to be gerrymandered.

A lot of states that run into these problems are because the mandate for minority-majority districts creates small single Democrat districts and larger multiple Republican districts inherently as long as partisan voting keeps patterns. If you split the population of a city to create say, two more evenly weighted partisan districts you can trigger the Voting Rights Act. If you don't split the population of a city leaving you with the above you're often good according to the courts.

[Mandark]

A lot of states that run into these problems are because the mandate for minority-majority districts creates small single Democrat districts and larger multiple Republican districts inherently as long as partisan voting keeps patterns. If you split the population of a city to create say, two more evenly weighted partisan districts you can trigger the Voting Rights Act. If you don't split the population of a city leaving you with the above you're often good according to the courts.

yeah probably that's what happened in north carolina they were just trying their best

[benjipwns]

I always assume that actors in the government are trying their best.

[Baiano19]

thread

https://twitter.com/ishaantharoor/status/1171859029225869313


https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1171859029225869313.html

Hard right Brazilian Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo, who believes climate change is a Marxist conspiracy, is speaking at @heritage right now. Currently complaining about left "infiltration" in the system.
mentions Araujo says @jairbolsonaro is creating "a liberal-conservative amalgam" on top of "nationhood, family, traditional ties" and opposed to "globalism."
mentions This is a fascinatingly ideological speech for a foreign minister abroad (and somewhat incoherent). "Our civilization is losing its symbols," he says. Now is talking about theories of "hegemony" and lecturing about Rosa Luxembourg and "symbolic confiscation."
mentions Straight up projection here: Re the left, "what they're criticizing is what they're preaching."
mentions I've never heard Araujo speak before and it's striking how rambling and incoherent his remarks are. Now says something about 21st century socialism being Gramsci meeting the drug cartels. Now is namedropping Marcuse and the whole Frankfurt school. Now is talking abt Foucault.
mentions This is amazing. Unclear if he's ever read critical/neo-Marxist theory beyond Wikipedia entries, but he's asking a lot of an audience at the Heritage Foundation to know what he's talking about. Okay, now to the meat of his views:
Globalism is three parts: Climate change ideology, hatred of one's own and another I missed, sorry.
"The whole point of climatism is to end normal, democratic debate," says Araujo, and now lumps his people alongside Americans, Brexiteers and says the "system" of climate change activists (I guess) want to end freedom of speech.
"Climate became a debate shutter," says Brazil's foreign minister, complaining about the uproar over the Amazon. Says Trump and Bolsonaro "are the main ones fighting the system," "outside of the globalist pact."
The speech by the Brazilian foreign minister at @heritage could have been delivered by a US campus conservative as a PragerU, complaining about the media, globalist system, etc. It's been an endless screed of victimhood from someone in power.
mentions Yep, Araujo now complaining about the evil left wanting to take red meat away from us.
mentions "Social justice" is only "a pretext for dictatorship," says Araujo. Now they want to do the same with climate change, he adds. "Brazil is being Otherized." He's firing shots across the bow ahead of a politically fraught week at the UN later this month.
mentions Concluding statement: "The Amazon is ground zero in the fight against globalism and the recovery of human dignity [or was it soul?]."
mentions There's a fascinating disconnect between US right and whatever it is Araujo represents: The latter truly sees his politics as a reaction to a left-wing orthodoxy (hence all the snarling at Lacan, Lukacs, and all the other leftist intellectuals he name-checked.)
mentions Beyond its moping about campus leftists, the American right would never care about these people or engage their ideas (however absurdly) in a foreign policy speech. Araujo offered a distinction between Leninism and Stalinism, as if anyone in @heritage gives a damn.
mentions When I interviewed Brazilian VP @GeneralMourao earlier this year, he seemed pretty exasperated with Araujo. washingtonpost.com/world/2019/04/…
mentions Bem-vindos, meus novos seguidores brasileiros. Assine aqui a minha newsletter

Apoio o Bolsonaro, mas o Ernesto Araújo é louco.