Re: MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award

[dan]

Praising disobedience on a page that doesn't work if you refuse Javascript...

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Re: On the Biggie Brexit Bandobust (re: Laurie Penny's

[Morlock Elloi]

While the class is the the primary divider, there are collateral 
divisions in the Left that are few (causal) generations removed from the 
class but extremely effective. These divisions are actively and 
successfully nurtured: educational and academic echo chambers, identity 
politics and related cults (genderism, global warmingism, 
anti-globalism, environmentalism, etc.)

[The obvious solution is that Left must become Right and get united 
around the simpler concepts of capitalism, which is exactly what 
happened, but that's a different topic.]


On 4/5/17, 4:53, Patrice Riemens wrote:

> I'll start with a proposition: the Right is subjectively divided, but
> objectively united, whereas it is the reverse with the Left: thinking
> it's one when it is so irremediably (for the moment) divided. And the
> simple reason for thar is: class.

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MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award

[Felix Stalder]

MIT Media Lab put out an Award for Civil Disobedience. In many ways,
this boggles the mind, but then again, it doesn't.

First reaction of quite some people has been to nominate Aaron Swartz.
While this is an obvious, and warranted, symbolic gesture, it might be
more interesting to take them up for real and nominate, as the
Custodians Online suggested, Alexandra Elbakyan, the founder of Sci-Hub.

If you're not familiar with Sci-Hub, here's a good list of articles
about it.

https://www.stephenmclaughlin.net/2016/03/19/sci-hublibgen-in-blogs-and-the-media-a-recent-bibliography/

But I presume most of us are not just familiar with it, but depend on it
to crack the walled gardens of knowledge.

Felix


> https://www.media.mit.edu/disobedience/
> 
> We are now accepting nominations for the first-ever MIT Media Lab
> Disobedience Award, which carries a $250,000 cash prize, no strings
> attached.
> 
> This award will go to a person or group engaged in what we believe is
> an extraordinary example of disobedience for the benefit of society.
> 
> What does this mean? Societies and institutions lean toward order and
> away from chaos. While necessary for functioning, structure can also
> stifle creativity, flexibility, and productive change–and ultimately,
> society's health and sustainability. This is true from academia, to
> corporations, governments, the sciences, and our local communities.
> 
> With this award, we honor work that impacts society in positive ways,
> and is consistent with a set of key principles. These principles
> include non-violence, creativity, courage, and taking responsibility
> for one’s actions. This disobedience is not limited to specific
> disciplines; examples include scientific research, civil rights,
> freedom of speech, human rights, and the freedom to innovate.



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Re: [spectre] Lex CEU

[Patrice Riemens]

Problem is that in the specific Hungarian case (and all cases are 
specific) is that it raises the spectre/ skeletton in the cupboard 
called 'Trianon', the evil treaty that dismembered the 
Austrian-Hungarian empire after WWI punishing it far more than it did 
punish imperial Germany. Etnicity in the Hungarian context is both an 
issue of (allegedly non-Hungarian) foreigners within Hungary and alleged 
(Hungarian) foreigners in almost all countries around it. Irresolluble 
within the current dispensation, while the only way out would be 'more 
Europe', not less.


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On the Biggie Brexit Bandobust (re: Laurie Penny's Despair)

[Patrice Riemens]

This is a core statement:

"I’ve spent the better part of my youth thinking up creative insults for 
these men, trying to form and reform the contempt and disgust that 
almost everyone who came of age in the UK after the financial crash 
feels for the way these people have pissed all over our futures and told 
us to enjoy the gentle British rain. But now, when it comes to it, I 
find I can’t summon the bile. I can’t access the heat of rage that kept 
me writing all those late nights in filthy flatshares in between jobs, 
as my friends descended into pits of depression and anxiety and gave up 
on their potential, as more and more young people came out to protest 
and met only the business ends of police batons. I haven’t the energy to 
be angry, not right now. I don’t even feel contempt for these bloated 
little hypocrities that fucked up my country and cauterized the futures 
of almost everyone I care about. I feel nothing at all about them, still 
less for the millions of people they conned and called it democracy. 
It’s all catastrophically sad, and it’s going to be sad for a very long 
time."

Brexit is truly the end-of-the-road for Europe. Theresa May, meaning 
what she represents, is far worse than Donald Trump and everything that 
is behind him. Trumps is not a show, but the show elements in him/it 
feeds its opposition big time, even if unintentionally. May's politics, 
are like a cold, almost robotic, steel instrument cutting through the 
social fabric - meeting no effective opposition, because effective 
political opposition is impossible within the current socio-economic 
dispensation prevailing in England specifically, but in large tracks of 
Europe generally.

So if we want to keep our heart working (Laurie Penny again), it might 
be good, before acting, to have a (yet another ;-) look at our current 
(meta-?)political predicament: the collapse of 'the Left'.

I'll start with a proposition: the Right is subjectively divided, but 
objectively united, whereas it is the reverse with the Left: thinking 
it's one when it is so irremediably (for the moment) divided. And the 
simple reason for thar is: class.

Undoubtedly, the elephant in the room is the '1%' - actually it's a 
herd. And the biggest problem is that the herd getting larger by the 
day. Such a momentum makes it irresistibly atractive to the still rather 
large demography just under it  (aka 'middle classes'). Happily 
forgetting that for every new millionaire born, nine, or nineteen, or 
twenty-nine, or whatever number of people from that very same demography 
gets demoted to the level they most fear: the wrong half of the '99%'. 
No, they all think they are going 'to make it' thanks to their hard work 
and talent, and if not, that they will have failed, like the rest, the 
nine, nineteen, twenty-nine, etcetera.

'Losers! Such Losers' the Donald would blurt ...

It is a replica of sorts, at the level of society as a whole, of what 
has been observed in agriculture over the past 50 years or more: a 
constant, remorseless consolidation where the 'winners' went to look at 
their former collegues and equals as legitimate roadkills - not victims 
of the hazard of circumstances, but people who simply 'didn't have it'.

This 'false consciousness' cements the unity of the Right, drawing to it 
an electoral majority of supporters for the perfectly wrong reasons. And 
their day of reckoning is nowhere in sight.

But on the Left, the split is even more profound. Mostly a question of 
class, the Left has its rich (in 'power, knowledge, and income') and its 
poor (idem) too, but also of way of thinking - or maybe of thinking tout 
court. Remember: the Right does not think - that is where all conspiracy 
theories flounder - it simply does, or maybe better: it simply _is_. The 
eternal mistake of the Left, especially its more 'moderate' parts, is to 
believe that coming up with perfectly reasonable proposals which are 
bound to benefit everybody will convince a majority to vote for it.

Well, it won't.

But even before that, the established ('rich') part of the Left has 
been, and remain eternally unable to phrase a coherent programme that 
would benefit the majority of common people (the 'poor') - let alone to 
implement it when it is in power - look at France, where the socialist 
party has the presidency, the majority in both houses, presides over the 
largest number of provinces, and 'mayors' most large towns. Outcome: 
near-total stagnation + foreign military adventures ...

Why? Because most 'reasonable' (or 'rich') Left people do not 
understand, and have nothing to say, to the still vast majority of 'the 
poor'. Not at the level of 'gut feelings', which the Right is so apt at 
raising in the first place (out of nowhere? well, mostly), and then at 
exploiting to the tilt, but at the level of ordinary, everyday life, 
with all it brings in terms of challenges, issues, despair (amidst the 
ruins left by austerity for instance), but also of 

Re: [spectre] Lex CEU

[heath bunting]

dear janos

from your perspective of hungary suffering from fragmenting ethinicism, 
could parallels be drawn with situations in north africa where nation 
states are purposely being divided along ethnic lines by outside powers to 
enable access to former nationally controlled resources eg: libya, syria, 
iraq ?

if so, is it in the interest of international powers for hungary to be 
ethnicised or is this a local madness ?

hope all is well with you

heath


pgp fingerprint

F6AC B54E E18A 97C1 D8F7 66F4 C18E 6B72 DCA7 4FD8

On Wed, 5 Apr 2017, János Sugár wrote:

> folks,
>
>   what in hungary is going on is not nationalism, but ethinicism,
> big difference.
 <...>

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Re: CEU

[János Sugár]

At 8:35 PM -0500 4/4/17, Keith Sanborn wrote:

> How can I add my name to a letter of support, or to whom shd I 
> address a letter of support for CEU? I did not find that information 
> on the links provided. Did I miss it?

hello keith,

you have to go through this long list:

https://www.ceu.edu/istandwithCEU/support-statements

cheers,

j

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Re: [spectre] Lex CEU

[János Sugár]

folks,

what in hungary is going on is not nationalism, but ethinicism,
big difference.

Gáspár Miklós Tamás:
/.../
To get as far as they possibly could from 
democratic nationalism-which is a variant of 
classical republicanism: political equality and 
self-determination-they engaged in what I called 
ethnicism: an apolitical, destructive practice, 
opposed to the idea of citizenship. Transylvanian 
Hungarians were in the first ranks of the 1989 
Romanian revolution, which they were 
repudiating-as it was 'foreign'-within a few 
months, after having been victims of Romanian 
pogroms. Common citizenship appears as a chimera. 
Small wonder though: citizenship and 
civic-democratic nationalism are dependent on the 
state, annihilated by neo-liberal politics. 
Nationalism has reunited small principalities in 
large states-Italy, Germany, Romania, 
Czecho-Slovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, maybe even 
Soviet Russia. Ethnicism has destroyed them and 
created miserable little statelets, provincial 
and barbarous, dependent on international finance 
and local mafia for their livelihood. In this 
respect, Eastern Europe is not variegated. It is 
an area of fear where a plastic replica of 
tribalism appears soothing and homey.
/.../
https://newleftreview.org/II/80/g-m-tamas-words-from-budapest

cheers,

j


ps

https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/g-m-tam-s/anti-immigration-referendum-sunday-in-hungary



At 9:43 AM -0500 4/4/17, Frederic Neyrat wrote:
>nationalism is a good thing? I certainly misunderstood your email, sorry,
>as nationalism leads to wars and global destruction, cf. WW1, WW2 - and WW3?


>2017-04-04 8:16 GMT-05:00 heath bunting :

> > it appears to me that like many other countries, hungary is disengaging
>> from imperial vassal statehood and returning to nationalism
>>
>> this is potentially a good thing, as the rule of international law is
>> incompatible with imperialism and nationalism at least has the option to
> > be compatible with international law

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Re: Laurie Penny on Brexit, March 29

[rebe]

Either public debt is too high or public spending is too low/"austerity"
too harsh, she can't have both.

I don't think that economic woes are a good rationale to justify
anti-continental sentiment and the resulting brexit.


On 04.04.2017 15:31, barbara strebel wrote:
>War of Nerves Laurie Penny,  March 29
>


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Re: CEU

[Keith Sanborn]

How can I add my name to a letter of support, or to whom shd I address a letter 
of support for CEU? I did not find that information on the links provided. Did 
I miss it?

Keith Sanborn

> On Apr 3, 2017, at 7:49 AM, János Sugár  wrote:
> 
> (btw in Hungary only government politicians and right wing-media calls CEU as 
> Soros university)
> 


<...>



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nationalism, outernationalism

[Frederic Neyrat]

Just read on CNN:
​"Trump says he's 'absolutely destroying' regulations
"

Is nationalism anti-global? No, nationalism is globally destructive, for
instance the fact to refuse environmental regulations is globally
destructive, unless for people who believe that nationalism produces
impermeable frontiers able to stop climate change.

How can people forget so deeply the lessons of History? Forget what
happened during WW1 and WW2? If we can't fight against this blindness, we
are fucked.

We really need to avoid this double trap: neoliberal globalism, and
nationalism. That's why I speak about an outernationalism. If it's a
fiction, it's the fiction we need, right now.
​
​In solidarity,

Frederic N.​
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Re: [spectre] Lex CEU

[Frederic Neyrat]

nationalism is a good thing? I certainly misunderstood your email, sorry,
as nationalism leads to wars and global destruction, cf. WW1, WW2 - and WW3?

what we need is, as north-american poet Gizzi says, an outernationalism

best,

frederic n.

2017-04-04 8:16 GMT-05:00 heath bunting :

> dear janos
>
> long time no see
>
> it appears to me that like many other countries, hungary is disengaging
> from imperial vassal statehood and returning to nationalism
>
> this is potentially a good thing, as the rule of international law is
> incompatible with imperialism and nationalism at least has the option to
> be compatible with international law


<>



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