by Henry Farrell on September 22, 2004
I don’t usually link to items that mention me (not that it happens that often anyway), but reckon that I do want to link to this “Star Tribune”:http://www.startribune.com/stories/587/4993456.html piece, which is nice enough to quote me, but in an inadvertently misleading way. The piece says of Rathergate:
bq. “This was a story tailor-made for bloggers,” said Henry Farrell, the co-author of the research paper. “They’re not investigative reporters and don’t have the resources of the media. But there are lots of talented people out there who can work on the story for 20 minutes. It was distributed intelligence in which a story can be unpacked into thousands of little bits.”
My recollection is that what I said had a rather different emphasis – I was riffing on a recent “post”:http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/movabletype/archives/000196.html by Steven Johnson, which argued that the role of bloggers in Rathergate was a flash in the pan, and that real journalism took dedicated resources. I’m sure that I didn’t refer to the Rathergate bloggers as talented people, because I was thinking about Johnson’s argument (which is that comparing the documents didn’t take much more talent than the ability to switch applications). So the way I’ve been quoted isn’t completely wrong (it’s close to my original words), but it does turn my actual argument (that this is a once-off because of the kind of issue involved) into what sounds like a fairly uncritical celebration of the blogosphere. Which was certainly not what I intended. I suppose it’s a lesson in how our words are received by others – what we believe we mean is very often not what people think that they’re hearing, even when they’re trying their best.
by Kieran Healy on September 22, 2004
Snippet of a conversation with a student from my “Sources of Social Theory”:http://www.kieranhealy.org/files/teaching/soc300-syllabus-f04.pdf class:
Student: I just wanted to be sure I understood the “Engels reading”:http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1844engels.html.
Me: OK.
Student: I mean, I think I got it — like, he went to Manchester and it was totally gross and everything, right?
Me: That’s about right, I suppose.
And speaking of class warfare, consider the headlines from these two stories, nestled next to each other in the _Times_ right now:
bq. “U.S. Seeking Cuts in Rent Subsidies for Poor Families”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/22/nyregion/22housing.html?hp. The Bush administration has proposed reducing the value of subsidized-housing vouchers given to poor residents in New York City next year, with even bigger cuts planned for some urban areas in New England. The proposal is based on a disputed new formula that averages higher rents in big cities with those of suburban areas, which tend to have lower costs…
bq. “Legal Loophole Inflates Profits in Student Loans”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/22/business/22college.html. The federal government is paying hundreds of millions of dollars in unnecessary subsidies to student loan companies even though the Bush administration has the authority to cut them off immediately, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office.
It’s probably worth some Think-Tanker’s time to express the money involved in the former story in terms of the money involved in the latter story, and package it into a 1-liner about the present Administration’s approach to social policy.
by Daniel on September 21, 2004
Two more hostages murdered by Ansar-al-Islam, and a third (the Briton) likely to die tomorrow … all one can do in these circumstances is to express the deepest sympathy for the families and repeat everything John said at the time of the Nick Berg murder. We had the chance to take out Zarqawi before the war; why the hell didn’t we take it?
(Update) By which I mean two things: 1) can it really be true that it wasn’t done in order to avoid undermining the case for war; has anyone denied or shot down this theory yet? and 2) are there any other good reasons why it might not have been done, or at least attempted?
by John Q on September 21, 2004
The idea that the forthcoming US election would be a good one to lose keeps on spreading. Here’s Andrew Sullivan
if Bush wins and heads into a real, live second Vietnam in Iraq, his party will split, the country will become even more bitterly polarized than now (especially if he’s re-elected because he’s not Kerry) and he’ll become another end-of-career Lyndon Johnson.
In my view, any rational supporter of the Republican party should hope for Bush’s defeat, since a victory will be disastrous for all concerned. A Kerry victory would be better for the United States and the world, but not necessarily for the long-term interests of the Democratic party.
Some updates over the fold
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by Henry Farrell on September 21, 2004
“Kevin”:http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_09/004738.php and “Matthew”:http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2004/09/gerrymandering.html have good posts on redistricting, although like Brian, I’m a little unsure whether intra-party competition is always such a good thing (in Ireland, where we have a PR-STV system, the result is intense localism – politicians perceive their main duty as “bothering civil servants” to get favours for their constituents). There’s another problem though, that’s less often raised by smart centrist Democrats – the enormous institutional barriers that stand in the way of third parties. Ballot access rules in many states are deliberately and systematically skewed to make it difficult for third parties to gain a place on the ballot sheets. In its own way, this is every bit as anti-democratic as gerrymandering – not only does it make it more difficult for third parties to gain elected office, but it also makes the main parties less sensitive to voter dissatisfaction (voters don’t have other political alternatives that they can credibly threaten to vote for). Unlike redistricting, this is the result of a tacit oligopoly between the two main parties, and is thus, I suspect, even less susceptible to reform. This is not to say by any means that these official barriers are the only impediments to third party influence in the US, but they’re surely a significant part of the story.
Not only would I like to see left third parties better able to influence the Democrats, but I suspect it would be a good thing for American politics if there were a viable Libertarian party. Certainly, some of the financial and political excesses of the Bush administration might have been curtailed if there had been a credible likelihood of libertarian-leaning voters going elsewhere. Given all the above, I have mixed feelings when I read about “Nader’s success”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35865-2004Sep20.html in getting on the ballot in various states. I’m hugely unimpressed with him as a candidate, I don’t want him to attract votes, and I’m perfectly aware that the Republicans have probably engaged in as many dodgy manoeuvres to get him on the ballot as the Democrats have to try to get him off. Nonetheless, a small piece of me can’t help feeling happy whenever the courts adopt (as I think they should adopt) a broad and flexible standard as to who should and should not be able to get on the ballot.
by Brian on September 20, 2004
“Kevin”:http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_09/004738.php and “Matt”:http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2004/09/gerrymandering.html are talking redistricting, with Matt favouring proportional representation on the grounds that it would introduce intraparty competition into American politics. This is rather odd – it’s only been a few months since the Presidential primaries, which are the most vigorously and open contested intraparty political fights in the world outside of the New South Wales Labor Party. And any experience with internal Labor (or Labour) Party fights does not immediately make one think it would make the world a better place to expand that kind of fighting.
But I didn’t want to make a substantive proposal, just ask a procedural question. To the best of my knowledge there are only two classes of country where the electoral system, from drawing boundaries to determining ballot order to deciding whether there will be recounts and so on, is run by partisan appointees.
bq. Class One: China, Cuba, etc., i.e. countries where it is known in advance how the results will turn out.
Class Two: The United States of America (with the honourable exception of Iowa).
Are there any other countries in Class Two, or is America unique in being a democracy where one of the prizes of victory is getting to be the umpire next time the game is played?
by Daniel on September 20, 2004
We’ve posted on this one before, but I’m a believer in the vital importance of audit. And it is troubling me somewhat that in carrying out my audit, I cannot find any news reports about atrocities committed by the Sadrists during their period of control of Najaf, which are dated later than 28 August, the day after the siege ended. Reports filed during the course of fast-moving events are often unreliable, and it strikes me as odd that there has been no follow-through at all on this story. Could anyone steer me in the direction of any more information, or is there some obvious reason I’m missing?
by Harry on September 20, 2004
The posts on positional goods give me a lame excuse to link to a paper Adam Swift and I have recently posted on the Equality Exchange. The paper tries to think through the significance of positional goods for distributive principles. Here’s the abstract, in case you want to look any further. Comments welcome (though I don’t promise to respond on the thread, and if comments are really substantive you might want just to email me or Adam).
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by Chris Bertram on September 20, 2004
bq. “If God had wanted us to play football in the clouds, he’d have put grass up there.”
The “BBC reports”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/3673568.stm that “Brian Clough”:http://www.brianclough.com/ has died. A sad loss after a sad decline. But his “achievements”:http://www.brianclough.com/new_page_4.htm — including back-to-back European Cups with an otherwise unexceptional team — speak for themselves. Bill Shankly said of him “He’s worse than the rain in Manchester. At least the rain in Manchester stops occasionally.” Now he’s stopped forever.
by John Q on September 20, 2004
For those trying to work out whether the Bush Administration’s stated commitment to democracy in the Middle East reflects Wilsonian idealism or just a tactical choice, reflecting the fact that the Administration’s enemies in the region are mostly not democrats, Venezuela provides a useful data point.
by John Q on September 20, 2004
The death of the book, like the paperless office, has been predicted so many times that people have given up paying attention. But, for me, at least, it came a big step closer today, at least in one sense, when I downloaded a PDF version of China Mieville’s Iron Council from Amazon.
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by Chris Bertram on September 20, 2004
I sometimes wonder about the utility of mentioning films on CT because by the time us Brits get to see them (UK release dates being later than those in the US) they’ve often finished playing in cinemas in the US and elsewhere. But Richard Eyre’s “Stage Beauty”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368658/ , which I caught on Saturday is an exception. Set at the time of the Restoration, it explores the fate of Ned Kynaston, a male actor who specializes in female roles (women being prohibited from performing). When the law is changed, first to allow women on the stage and then to prohibit men from playing them altogether, Kynaston is out of a job. I won’t post spoilers but just say that what we get includes a good deal of exploration of sexual identity and sexuality. And I also laughed out loud (a lot) at some parts and was moved by others. (Sarah from the excellent “Just Another False Alarm”:http://www.rubberring.blogspot.com/ has “more”:http://rubberring.blogspot.com/2004_09_12_rubberring_archive.html#109495045156434120 — but with spoilers).
by Daniel on September 19, 2004
By way of a break from everything about the US elections in the blogosphere, here’s a post about the US elections.
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by Daniel on September 19, 2004
With apologies to The Poor Man, an application of this strategy to an issue which appears to be confusing surprisingly many surprisingly intelligent minds in the British Isles:
Why are people so keen to ban fox-hunting when (fishing, battery farming, meat eating in general, mousetraps etc) are responsible for much more animal death and suffering?
Because hunting foxes with dogs is a sadistic pleasure.
Next week, I may tackle the question of why the Beslan siege appalled us more than the ongoing deaths of children through malnutrition and disease in Africa. Or I may not.
by Chris Bertram on September 19, 2004
“A & L Daily”:http://www.aldaily.com/ is giving prominence to “an article by one Thomas F. Powers”:http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/September-October-2004/argument_powers_sepoct04.html “an assistant professor of political science at the University of Minnesota Duluth” arguing that a policy of “preventive detention an idea whose time has come”. There’s much that’s worthy of comment in Powers’s piece, not least the fact that he writes that ” we should look to other countries, especially England and Israel, which have crafted preventive detention policies with meaningful safeguards for due process.” England? !! Is this assistant professor of political science’s political geography really that bad? Anyway, he has this to say about the British Government’s internment policy introduced in Northern Ireland in 1971:
bq. Great Britain’s indefinite internment policy, formalized in 1973 following the recommendations of a famous report authored by Lord Diplock on the situation in Northern Ireland, was allowed to lapse in 1980. Lord Diplock was reacting to a legally murky use of police power, one he termed “imprisonment at the arbitrary Diktat of the Executive Government.” Though his reform proposal, incorporated in the 1973 Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act, made preventive detention a matter of administrative, not judicial, oversight, the new policy reasserted civilian control and included due process safeguards. No less a figure than the secretary of state for Northern Ireland made initial detention determinations. Within a period of 28 days, an administrative official would then review each case with the option to extend the detention. Those detained also had a right to be informed of their status hearing in advance, and they were granted the right to an attorney paid for by the government.
“Mick Fealty”:http://www.sluggerotoole.com/ or “Marc Mulholland”:http://marcmulholland.tripod.com/histor/ (or maybe other Timberites) could comment more authoritatively than I can on the strict accuracy of Powers’s account (1980 seems an odd date to choose for internment to lapse… and those of us who actually remember the period will wince at the rhetorical phrase “no less a figure than”). But it does seem strange to cite the Northern Ireland experience _in support_ of a policy of preventive detention. Here’s “the CAIN summary”:http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/intern/chron.htm of the introduction of internment and the political and security effects of the policy:
bq. In a series of raids across Northern Ireland, 342 people were arrested and taken to makeshift camps. There was an immediate upsurge of violence and 17 people were killed during the next 48 hours. Of these 10 were Catholic civilians who were shot dead by the British Army. Hugh Mullan (38) was the first Catholic priest to be killed in the conflict when he was shot dead by the British Army as he was giving the last rites to a wounded man. Winston Donnell (22) became the first Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) solider to die in ‘the Troubles’ when he was shot by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) near Clady, County Tyrone. [There were more arrests in the following days and months. Internment was to continue until 5 December 1975. During that time 1,981 people were detained; 1,874 were Catholic / Republican, while 107 were Protestant / Loyalist. Internment had been proposed by Unionist politicians as the solution to the security situation in Northern Ireland but was to lead to a very high level of violence over the next few years and to increased support for the IRA. Even members of the security forces remarked on the drawbacks of internment.]