Month: January 2017

When people demand evidence, that’s what you’re supposed to supply: Daily Bullshit, January 6, 2017

benfell

Horse race

When folks challenge you to produce real evidence, that’s probably pretty much what you should do. That still isn’t what’s happening with allegations that Russia intervened in the U.S. election.[1] So it doesn’t even begin to make sense that I would now suddenly be convinced. But I guess the powers that be think maybe if they repeat a claim often enough, it will be accepted as true—which the media are indeed increasingly doing.

Although the unclassified report, which is based on a longer, classified report, uses the strongest language and offers the most detailed assessment yet, it does not or cannot provide evidence for its assertions. That virtually guarantees that it will not change many minds in the debate, which has become heavily partisan. The intelligence community is in effect telling readers, “trust us”—something the president-elect, among others, has been unwilling to do.[2]

David A. Graham, “An Intelligence Report That Will Change No One’s Mind,” Atlantic, January 6, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/odni-report-on-russian-hacking/512465/

Star Trek: Axanar

“[N]on-monetary benefits for the creators such as future job opportunities?”[3] It seems to me this might be over-broad.

For [U.S. District Court Judge Gary] Klausner, the case is pretty cut and dry. The work is clearly not a parody, clearly uses the Star Trek brand and, according to the judge, does not qualify as nonprofit because — although it was going to be distributed for free — was intended to drive non-monetary benefits for the creators such as future job opportunities.[4]

Sean Buckley, “‘Star Trek’ fan film loses fair use case, moves to jury trial,” Engadget, January 5, 2017, https://www.engadget.com/2017/01/05/star-trek-fan-film-loses-fair-use-case-moves-to-jury-trial/

Alan Sokal

If there is a single incident that made the post-modernist tendency toward obscurantism untenable, this might be it. For that alone, I think Alan Sokal deserves a lot of credit.

Jennifer Ruark, “Bait and Switch,” Chronicle of Higher Education, January 1, 2017, http://www.chronicle.com/article/Anatomy-of-a-Hoax/238728

War

Micah Zenko, “Scary Fact: America Dropped 26,171 Bombs in 7 Countries in 2016,” National Interest, January 6, 2017, http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/scary-fact-america-dropped-26171-bombs-7-countries-2016-18961

Alleged climate change hiatus

Jason Daley, “New Study Confirms There Was No Global Warming Hiatus,” Smithsonian, January 6, 2017, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/study-backs-noaas-disputed-ocean-temperature-data-180961697/

  1. [1]David A. Graham, “An Intelligence Report That Will Change No One’s Mind,” Atlantic, January 6, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/odni-report-on-russian-hacking/512465/↩
  2. [2]David A. Graham, “An Intelligence Report That Will Change No One’s Mind,” Atlantic, January 6, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/odni-report-on-russian-hacking/512465/↩
  3. [3]Sean Buckley, “‘Star Trek’ fan film loses fair use case, moves to jury trial,” Engadget, January 5, 2017, https://www.engadget.com/2017/01/05/star-trek-fan-film-loses-fair-use-case-moves-to-jury-trial/↩
  4. [4]Sean Buckley, “‘Star Trek’ fan film loses fair use case, moves to jury trial,” Engadget, January 5, 2017, https://www.engadget.com/2017/01/05/star-trek-fan-film-loses-fair-use-case-moves-to-jury-trial/↩

The case against Russia is still not made: Daily Bullshit, January 4, 2016

benfell

Horse race

Jeffrey Carr offers a comprehensive analysis of U.S. intelligence claims that Russia was behind hacks on Democratic National Committee emails. Simply put, he concludes the case has not been made.[1] It’s bad enough that such claims rely on classified evidence.[2] But Matt Taibbi points to mass media culpability in accepting such claims as itself problematic.[3] I’m increasingly seeing these claims that Russia was behind the hacking uncritically accepted as true, when in fact “the White House was unable to produce the most critical part for the credibility of their action [the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats, the shutting down of two Russian-owned estates the US claims were used for intelligence activities, and the targeted financial sanctions on Russian individuals and organizations]: . . . solid evidence”[4] and “[w]e just don’t know. . . . We ought to have learned from the Judith Miller episode. Not only do governments lie, they won’t hesitate to burn news agencies.”[5]:

On one end of the spectrum, America could have just been the victim of a virtual coup d’etat engineered by a combination of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, which would be among the most serious things to ever happen to our democracy.

But this could also just be a cynical ass-covering campaign, by a Democratic Party that has seemed keen to deflect attention from its own electoral failures.[6]

“And it’s not necessarily because it doesn’t have the evidence. Instead, the U.S. government simply failed to present it.”[7]

Matt Taibbi, “Something About This Russia Story Stinks,” Rolling Stone, December 31, 2016, http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/something-about-this-russia-story-stinks-w458439

Jeffrey Carr, “The GRU-Ukraine Artillery Hack That May Never Have Happened,” Medium, January 3, 2017, https://medium.com/@jeffreycarr/the-gru-ukraine-artillery-hack-that-may-never-have-happened-820960bbb02d

Ronald Deibert, “The DHS/FBI Report on Russian Hacking was a Predictable Failure,” Just Security, January 4, 2017, https://www.justsecurity.org/35989/dhsfbi-report-russian-hacking-predictable-failure/

Aftermath

Al From believes that “redistribution doesn’t work if there is nothing to redistribute.”[8] Mark Karlin points out that “there are trillions and trillions of dollars to redistribute as the economic inequality canyon widens more each year in the United States”[9] (with a lot of it squirreled away in tax havens[10]) and we’ve been trying the path that assumes that “economic growth can only be generated by a robust private sector”[11] for decades now. It has not generated “high-skill, high-wage jobs and programs that equip every American with the opportunities and skills that he or she needs to get ahead”[12] but rather a ‘gig’ economy composed principally of tenuous work relationships, in which workers are perpetually vulnerable.[13]

Jonathan Easley, “DNC adds former Clinton staffers for Trump ‘war room,’” Hill, January 3, 2017, http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/312529-dnc-adds-former-clinton-staffers-for-trump-war-room

Al From, “Don’t be fooled. Populism won’t help Democrats win again,” Guardian, January 4, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/04/why-populism-wont-help-democrats-win-again

Mark Karlin, “For the Democrats, Moving Further to the Right Is Not the Solution,” Truthout, January 4, 2017, http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/the-political-third-way-democratic-movement-should-be-buried

  1. [1]Jeffrey Carr, “The GRU-Ukraine Artillery Hack That May Never Have Happened,” Medium, January 3, 2017, https://medium.com/@jeffreycarr/the-gru-ukraine-artillery-hack-that-may-never-have-happened-820960bbb02d↩
  2. [2]George Beebe, “Russia’s Role in the US Elections: The Case for Caution,” National Interest, December 16, 2016, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/russias-role-the-us-elections-the-case-caution-18756; David Benfell, “Blaming the Russians,” Not Housebroken, December 13, 2016, https://disunitedstates.org/?p=9151; Ronald Deibert, “The DHS/FBI Report on Russian Hacking was a Predictable Failure,” Just Security, January 4, 2017, https://www.justsecurity.org/35989/dhsfbi-report-russian-hacking-predictable-failure/↩
  3. [3]Matt Taibbi, “Something About This Russia Story Stinks,” Rolling Stone, December 31, 2016, http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/something-about-this-russia-story-stinks-w458439↩
  4. [4]Ronald Deibert, “The DHS/FBI Report on Russian Hacking was a Predictable Failure,” Just Security, January 4, 2017, https://www.justsecurity.org/35989/dhsfbi-report-russian-hacking-predictable-failure/↩
  5. [5]Matt Taibbi, “Something About This Russia Story Stinks,” Rolling Stone, December 31, 2016, http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/something-about-this-russia-story-stinks-w458439↩
  6. [6]Matt Taibbi, “Something About This Russia Story Stinks,” Rolling Stone, December 31, 2016, http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/something-about-this-russia-story-stinks-w458439↩
  7. [7]Ronald Deibert, “The DHS/FBI Report on Russian Hacking was a Predictable Failure,” Just Security, January 4, 2017, https://www.justsecurity.org/35989/dhsfbi-report-russian-hacking-predictable-failure/↩
  8. [8]Al From, “Don’t be fooled. Populism won’t help Democrats win again,” Guardian, January 4, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/04/why-populism-wont-help-democrats-win-again↩
  9. [9]Mark Karlin, “For the Democrats, Moving Further to the Right Is Not the Solution,” Truthout, January 4, 2017, http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/the-political-third-way-democratic-movement-should-be-buried↩
  10. [10]Gabriel Zucman, The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens, trans. Teresa Lavender Fagan (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2015).↩
  11. [11]Al From, “Don’t be fooled. Populism won’t help Democrats win again,” Guardian, January 4, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/04/why-populism-wont-help-democrats-win-again↩
  12. [12]Al From, “Don’t be fooled. Populism won’t help Democrats win again,” Guardian, January 4, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/04/why-populism-wont-help-democrats-win-again↩
  13. [13]Josh Bersin, “The End of a Job as We Know It,” Forbes, January 31, 2012, http://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbersin/2012/01/31/the-end-of-a-job-as-we-know-it/; Steven Greenhouse, “The Changing Face of Temporary Employment,” New York Times, August 31, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/01/upshot/the-changing-face-of-temporary-employment.html; Elizabeth Grossman, “More US Workers Have Highly Volatile, Unstable Incomes,” Truthout, January 2, 2017, http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/38937-more-us-workers-have-highly-volatile-unstable-incomes; Erin Hatton, “The Rise of the Permanent Temp Economy,” New York Times, January 26, 2013, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/the-rise-of-the-permanent-temp-economy/; Dan Kopf, “Almost all the US jobs created since 2005 are temporary,” Quartz, December 5, 2016, http://qz.com/851066/almost-all-the-10-million-jobs-created-since-2005-are-temporary/; Alana Semuels, “How the relationship between employers and workers changed,” Los Angeles Times, April 7, 2013, http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-harsh-work-history-20130405,0,716422.story; Lindsay Wise, “Report: Temp jobs at all-time high in U.S.,” McClatchy, December 2, 2014, http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/09/02/238327_report-temp-jobs-at-all-time-high.html?rh=1↩

Almost anywhere but in the United States: Daily Bullshit, January 2-3, 2017

benfell

Basic Income

Notable by its absence from a lengthening list of places trying a basic income scheme: The United States, which also is among a very few nations which refuses to ratify the International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which, among other things, guarantees “the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food, clothing and housing, and to the continuous improvement of living conditions” and “the right to work, which includes the right of everyone to the opportunity to gain his living by work which he freely chooses or accepts”[1]

Delphine d’Amora, “A Brief History of the Idea That Everyone Should Get Free Cash for Life,” Mother Jones, December 26, 2016, http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/12/brief-history-income-inequality-minimum-wage

Libby Brooks, “Universal basic income trials being considered in Scotland,” Guardian, January 1, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jan/01/universal-basic-income-trials-being-considered-in-scotland

Jon Henley, “Finland trials basic income for unemployed,” Guardian, January 3, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/03/finland-trials-basic-income-for-unemployed

  1. [1]International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, December 16, 1966, United Nations, General Assembly resolution 2200A (XXI), http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/cescr.htm↩