NYC Junta

It’s been nearly a month, but here, finally, is a wrap-up of the last discussion, with my own recent thoughts on the subject intertwined…

How will musicians and writers, and other artists and tradesmen whose work is now primarily digital, make a living now that their product can be so easily and freely acquired?

Jeremy poses that the barriers to entry have been removed. Any musician with GaragePro can become world-famous: “The limits are only on ability, marketing savvy and drive.” He argues that the business model of the big labels is defunct, and I’ll grant that Big Music has lost its former sway, but can the model really be outdated if there are still commercial pop superstars making big money with the help of mega-amplified media attention?

But ok, bands don’t make much money from their albums anyway, it’s the record companies who take that home. The artist makes money on the tour, right?. That was true for a band like the Grateful Dead, who made all their money from touring and whose records sold poorly – but new, anonymous artists cannot conjure up legions of fans to follow them cross-country. According to EJ, who should know these things, the labels put the young artists out on tour and take most of the returns for themselves, leaving the artists with the merchandise take. “If you’re out on tour and you’re not selling merch, you’re not making money.”

It seems there’s no money to be made for anyone anymore selling CDs. Around the table, no man could remember the last time he’d bought one. Digital music purchases were also rare. All admitted to downloading free music, often illegally, though some said they had dialled back from the days when they could fill an entire hard drive in an afternoon. “I’ve got way more music than I could ever conceivably listen to.”

One participant brought up software downloads as a comparison. “I had a project for which I needed to have Adobe Dreamweaver. Well I looked it up and it’s four hundred bucks! But within minutes through a simple Google search, I was able to find the torrent, follow the crack instructions to load the software onto my machine and use it. Now, would I walk into a computer store and see this program for $400 on the shelf, put it under my coat and try to walk out? No fucking way! But I’m happy to do essentially the same thing over the internet, because it just doesn’t feel like stealing.” This sentiment was echoed around the table.

Despite the lack of legal, paid downloads happening, we were not hostile to the idea. But for most, it was the price. “Ten dollars for an album is still too much.” I asked what a good price would be, since I felt that $10 for an album is not so excessive. Five-dollar albums? Jeremy said yes, he’d buy albums at that price. But Don was obstinate, and said albums should be a dollar, because then he would just buy them on a whim. What didn’t occur to me at the time was that there could be a service that adjusted the price per album according to how much money each subscriber vowed to spend on a monthly or yearly basis. So I could sign up and guarantee that I’d spend $500 this year on music: at that level I could get albums for $2. Kind of like the BMG mail order service of my high school days, when I started my first collection (CDs) by becoming a member. (Join Now and Get 6 CDs FREE!)

Another noted the proliferation of auctioning sites like eBay and asked why there was not a platform for auctioning mp3 songs and albums, or tickets to movies. “Why is every movie the same price? Some movies are clearly worth more than others.”

What about cash donations? I related a recent story in which I had “otherwise acquired” an artist’s album and was so moved by it, and listened to it so often, that I decided it was absolutely criminal that I hadn’t paid this guy – I went online and bought the album I already owned, just on principle (and as a result, probably transferring about $0.89 to the artist in question). And it’s true that people support art they love with their dollars even when they don’t have to. But the argument that won the evening was, “altruism is not a business model.”

If not charity, what about “Artistic Freedom Vouchers” from the government? Each of us gets $100 from Uncle Sam to spend on art and art alone… I leave it to you, gentle reader, to pursue that thread or not.

***

As for the news, we discussed James Fallows’s recent piece on Google “saving the news”, and it seems that the best news for the journalism industry is that everyone inside Google assumes that “users” (“readers”) will once again pay for their newspapers and magazines – and pay willingly – it’s just a matter of how. The argument is sound, because it also depends on the news changing somewhat. No longer will newspapers and media be able to provide the same stories as everyone else. They will have to provide something unique.

“Usually, you see essentially the same approach taken by a thousand publications at the same time,” [Krishna Bharat, the engineer who designed Google News] told me. “Once something has been observed, nearly everyone says approximately the same thing.” He didn’t mean that the publications were linking to one another or syndicating their stories. Rather, their conventions and instincts made them all emphasize the same things. This could be reassuring, in indicating some consensus on what the “important” stories were. But Bharat said it also indicated a faddishness of coverage—when Michael Jackson dies, other things cease to matter—and a redundancy that journalism could no longer afford. “It makes you wonder, is there a better way?” he asked. “Why is it that a thousand people come up with approximately the same reading of matters? Why couldn’t there be five readings? And meanwhile use that energy to observe something else, equally important, that is currently being neglected.” He said this was not a purely theoretical question. “I believe the news industry is finding that it will not be able to sustain producing highly similar articles.”

I think that maxim could be applied equally to producers of art and media everywhere.

Wrap-Ups art, copyright, journalism, media, music

We began Wednesday night with Alex reading from the introduction to his book, which centered on a speech Glenn Beck made in Tampa, in November 2009. There Beck announced “The Plan”, an as-yet-undefined blueprint for taking America back from the progressives and advocates of “social justice”. Beck believes that this phrase is a euphemism for socialism.

Though Beck does not intend to announce details of the plan until August, he has said that it will encompass 100 years. We can safely assume that it will hit the major Tea Party points.

Alex touched upon the emotional nature of Beck’s speaking style in this passage:

Finally, inevitable as gravity, there was the florid signature that appears somewhere at least once, often twice, in every Beck performance. This is the moment when the voice catches, the eyes mist, and it seems, for one or two excruciating moments, that the reluctant patriot might not be able to hold back the tears, so verklempt has he become at his rote invocation of love of country, or the brave troops, or George Washington…

You don’t have to read past the title to understand this is an anti-Glenn Beck book. But right from the beginning, Alex is unrelenting in his criticism, which is sometimes laced with sarcasm. Though he says the book was not commissioned as a hit job on Beck, the target audience is clearly the young, urban, liberal elitists who mostly know Glenn Beck from watching The Daily Show.

Alex talks about Beck as a dangerous force to be stopped, but also as a charlatan whom he compares to P.T. Barnum. The question was raised whether it was fair for us, in our conversation, to ridicule Beck as insincere. Perhaps we are mistaken and he does, in fact, have genuinely strong feelings about “loss of liberty” in this country. Or what if, yes, it is a performance, but it is intended to convey his message, which still has value?

The Junta being what it is, there was not a lot of sympathy for Beck in the group. But Jeff valiantly tried to counter our native arguments with the viewpoints of his father, who watches Beck’s show (as does my own). For those who genuinely feel that the government is encroaching too much on our private lives and businesses, for those who feel that the country has moved too far away from religion, Beck’s message can ring true. Just because some of us feel that these fears are unfounded or misplaced (I, for one, worry far more about the government’s assassinating US citizens or wiretapping our phones without warrant than I do about the federal takeover of GM), this doesn’t mean we should reject out of hand the concerns of our fellow citizens outside the major cities. “If you think about conservatives as stupid, then you’re making a mistake,” Jeff said.

Alex’s rebuttal to that is that Beck is indeed dangerous. When he talks about Obama and progressives representing a “virus that feeds upon the host of the Republic”, when he says “I’m going to be a progressive hunter like the old Nazi hunters” (as he did on his program, June 10, 2009), Alex argues that Beck is playing the fear card to such a degree as to be inciting violence. He is appropriating the language common to genocidal regimes.

Cedric said that, to him, commentators like Beck and Rush Limbaugh seemed to be moving closer to entertainment (and away from serious political debate) every year, with less and less of a grip on historical fact. Alex agreed, and talked about how Beck has, in his opinion, grossly distorted history. “The American Revolution was about destroying centers of power to create an egalitarian society,” he argued. “But over time, private corporate power grew to such a degree that it became necessary for government to introduce a ‘flattening’ effect, with the antitrust laws, income tax, etc. Without government exerting that power, we end up with a segregated society – gated communities and the poor – is that what the Founders wanted?” Adam Serwer, at the American Prospect, talks about Rand Paul employing a similar distortion in his recently panned comments about discrimination.

As is typical for a Junta meeting, we wandered off on various tangents here and there, like the nostalgic idea of 1950s America and whether it really existed (and if it did, why), the merits of the French ban on the burqa, the origins of American progressivism, etc, etc. It was a great night with a lot of food for thought. Be sure to catch our next meeting, likely near the end of June.

Wrap-Ups elitism, glenn beck

Friday’s Junta on contemporary art was one of the best yet and a lot of fun for everyone involved. We had a lot of good feedback: thanks to everyone for coming out.

JohnJ started us off with a quick overview of artistic movements in the last 140 years, with an emphasis toward trying to explain how we got to the present moment, not just in terms of movements and periods, but in terms of the modern way art works: galleries, openings, agents, etc. It wasn’t always this way, but there is a pattern. Certain “tastemakers” – those with money or influence – determine what is relevant and what gets promoted, and these people are not all artists. They are curators and patrons and customers, from Lorenzo d’Medici to modern hedge fund collectors.

But that is the “art world,” separate from art itself, where an artist must make a living using his work – and often himself – as a commodity. When did art become a path to celebrity? Some argued that it was with Picasso and other painters around the turn of the 20th century – essentially that celebrity came with the rise of the mass media. But wasn’t Shakespeare’s name known throughout England in his day? Well, yes, but he had a technological boost as well; he wrote in the wake of the invention of the printing press.

There were some interesting sidenotes about writing, with the question being raised whether it should be included in a discussion about “art.” Of course! said I, and some others, although a painter disagreed and it was painting that dominated the conversation. What about poetry, does anyone still write it? Yes, said a poet who was with us, and brought up Mary Oliver, who is indeed prolific, but who is also part of an earlier generation (b. 1935). I pointed out that Twain grew massively wealthy and famous by his writing (although he died a pauper), and until recently it was still possible to become a celebrity by writing (although if it’s fame you’re after, you’d better stick with crime or romance novels and skip the poetry.)

Damien Hirst is “the first billionaire artist.” Which is absurd on its face, but it brings up good questions about authenticity. If Hirst puts a shark in a glass case full of formaldehyde, what makes it different from you or I doing the same? DC wanted to know why a urinal, when placed behind a “velvet rope” by DuChamp, suddenly became art. The question becomes one of context: the place where one views the art, the background of the artist and how much of it is written next to the piece, and of course the title of the piece can change interpretations easily. DuChamp called the urinal Fountain.

DuChamp said that anyone could be an artist; that anything could be art. This was the precursor to Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame, and today it is really happening. Art is life, art is expression, art is commodity. The thing and the representation of the thing now overlap so heavily as to be nearly the same thing. In The Society of the Spectacle, Guy DeBord wrote “All that was once directly lived has become mere representation.” That was 37 years before Facebook. Today it presents a paradox: if everything is art, then nothing is art. So how do we know what’s good or bad?

We have to learn for ourselves what feels authentic and original. And those tastemakers are important. They perform a real function, by paying constant close attention. They watch the ticker of the art world go by, and from the great flow deduce the zeitgeist. Only over time do patterns emerge. But like Jeff*, a painter in attendance, said, “You come to New York as a young person painting still-lifes, with a traditional background, and you see what’s happening here, and you stop doing that, because what you’re doing could have been done 300 years ago.” When John Cage wrote “4:33″ it was revolutionary. But writing a silent song today is not relevant, because it’s not moving the needle.

Towards the end, we spoke of art which lives but is not commoditized – the work of the undiscovered or unappreciated. Henry Darger lived alone in a small apartment, having little social interaction, yet was busy producing lengthy novels and paintings. Van Gogh was never famous in his lifetime and died penniless. And for some, dressing up like superman is a path for “fame and fortune.”

Like JohnJ said, “We could talk about this all night, and no one is going to leave here saying, ‘Yes, we’ve got it figured out now.’” With that in mind, I’ll end here and say thanks again to everyone who came out. It was a great night. Look for the next Junta to gather near the end of May…

* I originally attributed this to Sam. Apologies.

Wrap-Ups academia, art, avant-garde, democracy, writing

I started the discussion on Tuesday night with a sort of mini-argument: four points that I had arrived at over a couple of weeks reading on the subject of Iran, which I figured would get the ball rolling on the evening. Because of the sharp minds in attendance, it was all that was necessary to spark a great conversation. I said:

• Iran is the dominant power in the Middle East. This was a historical fact for a long time before Saddam Hussein’s Iraq became a check on Iran’s power—and now the US has removed that check. While Israel and Saudi Arabia are America’s allies in the region, Iran could take both of them, as it had indeed already defeated Israel in Lebanon. Even the US could not really take over Iran. We could bomb them into submission and take Tehran, but we would not be able to hold the country against the guerrilla threat they represent.
• Iran has the power to make the US presence in Iraq and Afghanistan untenable, and indeed they have already done this to some degree. They have become experts at proxy warfare, and at this point they are able to determine the level of violence that US forces have to deal with in certain parts of both countries.
• All of this, it is important to note, does not require that Iran possess nuclear weapons. Indeed we (America) are quite powerless to stop them acquiring nukes if they are determined to have them. Sanctions won’t work; military attacks won’t work. Iran has the power to drive oil prices through the roof, by mining the Strait of Hormuz or launching missiles at tankers, which would make life in America very painful.
• Given all this, the best option is for America to reach some kind of settlement with Iran. This would involve giving Iran a formal role in maintaining the security of Iraq, which would likely end up partitioned. We would share responsibility for security of the Strait of Hormuz, because both countries have an interest in keeping the oil flowing. Trade and talk would increase as sanctions were lifted and diplomatic ties restored, and Iran would agree to stop arming Hezbollah and Hamas. America would stop talk of regime change and guarantee Iran’s security, in order to foster closer ties and stop the Iranians inching closer to Russia and China. In short, the US would balance its strategic alliances in the region.

There was some controversy in my words, because Jarrod came in right off the bat to challenge my first point, saying that Iran, in the wake of last year’s elections and subsequent protests, had never been weaker. And while it seems the mullahs aren’t going anywhere yet, I would concede that they might feel a bit restricted right now. Jarrod came back later in the evening, twice, on the point on nuclear weapons: the concern is not that Iran will use them, but that they will give them to others who will. “If a white light flashes over Israel, then that’s it, and Iran can say they had nothing to do with it.” Alex contended this forcefully, saying the uranium traces (or something) after an explosion would definitively prove where the bomb was made. So it seems Iran wouldn’t be able to get away with it, although that provides little comfort to Israel, since they are too small to absorb a nuclear explosion and still viably exist.

A lot was made of Ahmedinejad’s words towards Israel; although I argued that he didn’t have the final say in Iran, Noah said convincingly that he obviously spoke for the leadership. But Alex reminded us all that the fact is that there is no evidence Iran is pursuing nukes—citing the most recent intelligence reports. Noah claimed otherwise, mentioning the articles we have been seeing on our front pages for so long. But we also read a lot about Iraq’s weapons programs in the newspapers, I said, which turned out to be bluster.

We debated whether we could know the character of the Iranian people. Is there a “red/blue” divide, similar to America’s, with rural people more supportive of Ahmedinejad’s populism and jingoism, and urban “elites” more inclined towards cosmopolitanism and internationalism? Some argued in general support of this idea, although my conclusion was that we generally know very little of the Iranian people, despite the seeming ease of false labels.

The conversation broke into pieces several times during the evening, which was great. There were 10 people there, so it was inevitable that mini-convos would break out here and there. Of course I couldn’t follow everything that happened at once.

My most contentious point may have been the partitioning of Iraq. Some participants, Noah most vocally, said this would be crazy, that after spending so much blood and treasure we should “lose” Iraq. My point was that it was inevitable without American troops on the ground: should we stay forever? “Well, we’re still in Germany, we’re still in Korea,” Noah said. This is true of course, but it worries me. I don’t foresee a day when American soldiers are not being attacked in Iraq, or Afghanistan. I don’t think Korea and Germany are good models (in fact, I don’t think we should have troops in those countries, anyway). I argued that Iran already had some de facto control over southern Iraq, and that they would take it over when we left, anyway. But Noah seemed to think that we could leave a strong Iraqi government behind. This I doubt, and so it seemed we would not reach any agreement here.

Mark said something which put everything in perspective. Over the last 15-20 years (and I would argue, even longer), when the US has seen a geopolitical problem in the world, it has resolved to do something about it. We have gone into countries, or engaged with countries, in a way which we determined would solve the problem. We’ve taken decisive action. But most of the time, there have been unforeseen consequences that have either made the original problem worse, or created wholly new problems to deal with. Perhaps, in the future, we should endeavor to do less, to be more passive, and to let things play out before we act.

***

What are your thoughts? If you were there, fill in my account with points I missed. If you weren’t, what would you have added?

Wrap-Ups iran, israel, nukes, oil, politics, usa

Jeremy started his discussion of maritime piracy by talking about his days covering the issue in Asia, specifically the activity in the Straits of Malacca, between Singapore and Indonesia. At one particularly narrow stretch, the channel is less than 2 miles wide – an ideal target zone for pirates.

The Malacca Straits

The Free Aceh rebels, a separatist guerrilla group fighting against the Indonesian government, funded their insurgency, in part, through piracy. These pirates were much like those in the news today operating off the coast of Somalia. They used small but fast boats, lying in wait for large commercial vessels that had to pass through the narrow straits. Using the advantage of surprise, they would board these larger, slower ships with grappling hooks and rope ladders, then subdue the crew, using only a few men with AK-47s. We took up some time asking how this was even possible – how does one board an oil tanker from a small fishing boat? And the answer seemed to lie in the fact that many of the boats attacked are heavily laden, slow moving and often not adequately prepared for pirate attack.

The Aceh pirates were driving the governments of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore mad, as they seemingly could not be stopped. Piracy resurged as a major international issue — amplified by the thought of Al Qaeda seizing a large vessel and setting off a spectacular attack, with a major impact on global shipping — but poor governance in Indonesia allowed piracy to flourish.

The Christmas 2004 tsunami put an end to it, wiping out the province of Aceh. It has been speculated that many of the rebels and a majority of their ships were destroyed. The remaining rebels called a ceasefire to allow aid to reach the area, and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (aka: SBY) wisely used the disaster as a starting point for peace talks, which culminated in a 2005 treaty. The need to focus on rebuilding after the disaster, along with the better governance that effort demanded, caused a significant drop-off in pirate activity in the Malacca Straits. This is the key point: piracy flourishes in lawless environments.

What of the pirates themselves? Who are they? Typically the poor and afflicted, as you might expect. They usually have a grievance against their government. In Indonesia, the Aceh rebels fought for independence and control of the oil resources in their home province. Aceh is the most conservatively Muslim province in a country that mostly practices a much more mainstream, tolerant version of Islam. In Somalia, local fishermen have taken to piracy because there has been no functioning government for many years, no one to protect Somalia’s territorial waters from the massive illegal commercial fishing that has taken their livelihoods. In this way, it is easy to compare pirates to terrorists; some will argue that pirates are just a subset of terrorists, small independent groups using violence to attain their political goals. But for their own people, pirates might be seen as heroes in the Robin Hood vein, sharing their loot with the village. Or perhaps they are opportunistic criminals, what the  Malaysians call lanun, men who loot, plunder and pillage because that is what they do. When society has broken down, it is natural, after a certain amount of pressure, to take matters into your own hands.

Since steering around pirate-infested waters is often impossible, shipping companies have started defending themselves. The most obvious method is arming your ship, but this can have ill effects. Adding more weapons and warriors to the mix can inflame the situation. Companies sometimes insure their crews against kidnapping, but they tend to keep this information hidden, since anyone known to be insured instantly becomes a target: insurers are guaranteed to pay ransoms, right? Non-lethal methods like fire-fighting hoses to repel attackers, barbed-wire around the hull, or long-range acoustic devices to blast the ear-drums of marauders are some of the methods that shipping companies have adopted. There’s also the “strong room” (ever see Panic Room with Jody Foster?), in which crew can hide in the event of a pirate attack. Jeremy mentioned some of the advice his firm gives to clients, and related a few off-the-record incidents which can’t be repeated here. Sorry, folks, gotta show up to Junta for the good stuff!

The Somalia pirates might be concluding that their strategy is working. The fish stocks which some of them were originally defending from poachers are replenishing themselves as those poachers move to other waters. Kenyan sportfishing is on the rise. Which means that, despite the dramatic sniper-rescue by the Navy Seals earlier this year, we’ll continue to see attacks. Piracy will only be reduced with the establishment of functioning government, and that is sadly not looking likely in the near term with Somalia. As Jeremy detailed, the Islamist movement is increasingly balkanized and remains heavily armed; the centrist, transitional government in Mogadishu controls only a few city blocks, along with the port. It could fall at any moment. Considering all of this, together with the strong lack of appetite to intervene in any meaningful way (see “Blackhawk Down”), the forecast for Somalia and the Gulf of Aden remains grim.

Wrap-Ups indonesia, kidnapping, malaysia, pirates, singapore, terror, the sea, trade

Our session on the morality of legislating behavior rambled at times, but produced a lively conversation, and I think we all took something from it. The Junta would like to thank Dave for sharing his personal episode of confrontation with the war on drugs. It was powerful to hear a man speak openly about a situation in which he is most certainly going to jail.

The gravity of Dave’s position naturally occupied our attention for the majority of the session. He was arrested with over 30 pounds of marijuana hidden in a rental car he was driving across the country. The D.A. offered him 12 years but he thinks it’s more likely he’ll do 2 or 3. He has a surprisingly upbeat attitude about it, and mentioned twice his interest in training to be a mechanic while in the joint.

Dave’s defense, such as it is, relies on a series of steps in which he contends his rights were violated. He was first pulled over for speeding, though he was certain he wasn’t speeding at all. The officer asked him to sit in the squad car while he wrote out the ticket. Dave’s first mistake was acceding to this bizarre request.

As he wrote out the ticket, the officer said he thought Dave was nervous, and he wanted permission to search the car. Dave refused, and so the cop called in the canine unit. The dog did four laps around the car, sniffing it out, and somehow did not alert, and so Dave was allowed to go.

Two states later he was pulled over again, this time accused of passing another vehicle without signaling – again, something Dave denies doing. They called in another dog, for some reason, and found the weed. Busted.

What was the reason Dave was pulled over twice and both times a dog was called to sniff his car for drugs? According to Dave: profiling.

Not the Driving While Black that Obama has spoken of – Dave is white – but the fact that he was a single guy with way-out-of-state plates driving on a major highway through the flatlands, at night.

In the course of researching his defense, Dave came across a commercial website operated by a police officer, aimed at other police officers. It sold a video how-to guide for making major drug busts.

“Are you envious of the officers in your precinct taking down the big criminals and getting big promotions?’ the sales-cop asked.

He mentioned the federal budget, and the competition among state and local police and other emergency forces for money from Washington. “All of that funding escalated immensely after 9/11, and now it has to be justified.”

Civil Liberties

The loss of individual rights was a strong thread throughout the discussion, with Dave citing several court decisions that affect his case, including:

• Illinois v Caballes – Here the court ruled that a drug dog alerting on a car constitutes probable cause to search the car, even if there was no probable cause to use the dog in the first place. Or, as this blog puts it, “the total decision as to whether there was sufficient reason for a search was to be determined by a dog anxious to please his or her law enforcement master.”
• Arizona v Gant – This essentially said that if you get arrested while driving, or while near your car, police may search the car without a warrant.

Here the discussion prompted an animated argument from Tim, who contended that a certain population of law enforcement personal have been so effectively “programmed” to bust people for weed, that they cannot comprehend the case for legalization or decriminalization. In his view, this kind of cop is little more than a tool of society’s master planners, a “brain dead” individual who does not think for himself but merely relies on his institutional training for all decision-making. Or, as Ice-T Ice Cube once put it, “Fuck the po-lice!”

The burgeoning prison population in this country is largely a result of increased incarceration of drug offenders. An interesting facet of this is that prisoners cannot vote, yet they count as population in the area where they are incarcerated, skewing the congressional numbers and providing a perverse incentive for states to build prisons.

However, the rising costs of housing prisoners has led to several changes. One is the increasing privatization of the industry, where states outsource the building, running and maintaining of prisons to powerful corporate donors. Another is plans to release prisoners due to the overwhelming costs of housing them.

The media play into the scenario by sensationalizing crime and police work. MSNBC’s “To Catch a Predator” lures paedophiles to hotel rooms by posing on the internet as children. When the targets show up expecting a minor, they are faced with TV personality Dan Hansen and a host of lights and cameras. The show’s webpage invites you to “meet the men of ‘To Catch a Predator’”, and reminds us today not to miss the 2-hour premiere…

The obvious contradiction between legal and illegal drugs was mentioned, and needs no further comment here except to say that while booze and tobacco kill way more people than weed, this line of logic gets dicier when you get to heroin and methamphetamine. Those looking to expand their repertoire of legal highs are advised to study salvia divinorum.

We gravitated back to Dave and his predicament, concentrating on jail. Those who do time in Texas have “Felon” permanently stamped on their ID cards, which makes it tough to get a job later. The cruelty of this scarlett letter is made worse by the knowledge that even those who exonerate themselves, who have been proved innocent by DNA evidence while serving long sentences, still have “Felon” on their driver’s license. Meanwhile, they are even worse off than released felons who were actually guilty because, having had their records cleared (except for their IDs), they are no longer eligible for post-prison services offered by the state.

One participant boiled down the war on drugs to the following: domestically, it means aggresively incarcerating the population (and mostly the underclass); overseas, it means funding the slaughter of peasants. See Colombia.

At some point, human beings ought to be responsible for taking care of themselves, even if we need to collectively protect those who can’t protect themselves.

Announcements, Wrap-Ups drugs, law, legalization, marijuana

Monday night’s Junta was well-attended despite coming off a holiday weekend, and produced great conversation.

Our out-of-town guest was Jarrett Wrisley, an American living in Bangkok and a longtime friend of mine. He spent the opening part of the discussion bringing us all up to speed on the situation in Thailand, including the story of how he arrived in the country with his wife and dog the day protesters shut down the airport. His was probably the last plane to land before the weeks-long standoff.

The basic outline of the arguments in Thailand is the serious divide between educated urban elites and simple rural folk. The country dwellers feel they are looked down upon and marginalized by city know-it-alls, and those living in the concrete jungle see their farmer cousins as being manipulated by crooked politicians.

The politician in question is Thaksin Shinawatra, the deposed Prime Minister accused of all sorts of corrupt practices, but beloved by the poor and dispossessed for delivering them basic health care and cracking down on Thailand’s drug problem to some degree. Wealthy Bangkokers see him as threatening the status quo – not only because he “spreads the wealth around” but because he is a blatant nepotist who has enriched himself and others by milking the state. They see his largess in the countryside as vote-buying. Some claim he would put an end to the monarchy in Thailand – though I personally question whether that would be popular, since Thais famously love their king – but certainly the throne quietly assented to his removal from power or it would never have happened. The army doesn’t move without the king’s approval.

That last point became an important one for us. According to Jarrett (and most agreed), this one thing is central for democracy to work: the military must be controlled in a nonpolitical manner, otherwise it can be used as a fig leaf for authoritarianism. The American system, which places a civilian as the ultimate Commander-in-Chief and (at one time, anyway) places war-making authority within the representative body, is a prime example of this working well. (Except for all the times the president has gone to war without bothering to get approval, of course…)

Mark, who was an officer in the Army and attended West Point, discussed his experience there with regard to the military’s respect for the executive branch. Most of the officers he knew at the time were not enamored of President Bill Clinton, but they did have a very healthy respect for his office, and understood that their duty was to carry out its orders. Without that discipline, the institution would quickly break down. But that begged the question: would democracy be protected by a military which blindly followed an executive’s order to act against the people? Is the essence of democracy actually marshal law?

The situation in Honduras was broached, but there were no real experts present, and that thread quickly dissolved into speculation. No one had an informed opinion as to whether the president or the military was on the side of democracy; however, that segued into a point much agreed upon when it came to the official US stance on such matters: America supports democracy when it furthers our interests (such as in Iraq), but not when it doesn’t (such as in Gaza).

Soon we got back into the question of the vote itself. The urbanites in Thailand are starting to think the rural people shouldn’t have a vote at all, on account of their lack of education and perceived susceptibility to simple bribes. The question was raised: should there be minimum standards for voting? How would it go over in America if, say, you had to have a high school degree or equivalent to vote? We concluded that that would be arbitrary: there are plenty of MBAs and PhDs out there who don’t bother voting, as there are likely many people who never finished high school and yet are politically astute and involved. There is no simple way to separate those who “should” be able to vote from those who “shouldn’t,” and it would be a form of discrimination anyway. The ignorant have just as much a right to their opinion as the wise.

In fact, the Founding Fathers saw this as a problem to be overcome. The first thing they did was limit the vote to white, land-owning men – so already the right to vote was very restricted and included only those they considered worthy of deciding matters of state. But even with those severe restrictions, they still thought that unfettered democracy could be a very bad thing – James Madison had some choice words about the need to temper the emotions of the people:

An increase in population will necessarily increase the proportion of those who will labor under all the hardships of life, and secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of its blessings. These may outnumber those who are placed above … indigence. According to the equal laws of suffrage, power will slide into the hands of the former.

(Sounds like my dad complaining about the welfare state today, minus the F-bombs).

It was sentiments like this which led to the bicameral legislature, in which it was hoped that the hot-tempered representatives, closer to the emotions of the people as a result of their having to be elected every 2 years, would be cooled by the more rational (and establishmentarian) senators, who were not directly elected in the original Constitution. In fact, a review of almost any recently passed law will find this pattern again and again: the House passes some wildly radical motion, only to see it watered down by the Senate if not outright rejected.

The situation in Xinjiang, China, was touched upon briefly, but as we have another thread going about that, I’ll exclude it here. Jeremy also tried to bring up the “benevolent authoritarian” models of Singapore and Malaysia, but seemed to be the only one who wanted to discuss those countries.

At a certain point, we got sidetracked talking about interesting ideas for future meetings. These included:

• The nature and history of the judicial branch, and specifically the US Supreme Court
• The history and future of the American health care system
• The case for legalizing drugs and prostitution

Finally, we tried to sum up our thoughts. We considered how even in advanced democracies like the US and Western Europe, the will of the people is not often carried out. Many studies, for instance, have shown popular support for national health care in the US, something that has yet to come about. The European and American protests against the Iraq war failed to prevent that conflict. And I think we can lament the fact that our leaders can go to war without our consent. But perhaps in most cases, pure democracy doesn’t actually work. Government by referendum is probably not the greatest method – look at California, for example. As Jarrod Y put it, people tend to react with their emotions – we elect our leaders to put more thought into their actions on our behalf.

Wrap-Ups democracy, politics, thailand, usa

It’s been ten days since the Junta met to discuss the crisis in the American system and the possibility of collapse, but I’m just getting around to writing it up for a number of reasons, chief of which being that I’m a top procrastinator.

Given the topic of discussion, Arrow Bar proved an appropriate locale – we were well-protected in what could pass as an underground bunker in the East Village, with at least a week’s worth of booze to keep us in good spirits while we rode out the rending apart of civilization, the social and political equivalent of what the analyst John Mauldin has called “The Great Unwind.”

Mauldin was referring to the massive deleveraging that has to take place for the economy to right itself – the great amounts of debt that must be paid back, refinanced, written off, or inflated away. J.P. started off ten days ago by stating that things were likely to get worse in this economy before they got better – don’t be fooled by the recent rally that’s been taking place in the markets.

We spent a good amount of time going over the events that brought us to this point, and a lot of it was stuff I had been reading for months. But one aspect I found novel was when Mark said that the truth about the “toxic assets” is that there is a market for this paper, apparently, but the going rates are so low that the banks are unwilling to sell them and realize massive losses. By keeping the paper, they are like the guy who bought tech stocks in March 2000 and then refused to sell those stocks in the hope that they would rebound.

Mark also went into a tangent about government action and the discombobulating effects it can have on how people choose to act. He had shorted some stocks on the apparently sound advice of a friend – but despite the companies looking miserable, their share prices rallied when Uncle Sam announced an imminent bailout. In the future, he said, he would be more likely to keep his money on the sidelines – where many thousands of other investors, large and small, are doubtless keeping theirs right now.

And what about gold, that all-time favorite of paranoid doomers everywhere? We had invited Tom, a longtime goldbug, to discuss the case for being long on the metal. He wasn’t able to attend, but recently sent this note:

That funky ol’ Ben Bernanke has been one wild and crazy dude, hasn’t he? He may look like your basic college professor dweeb but he certainly hasn’t been shy about doing unprecedented financial engineering. Any way you cut it, this smacks of desperation:

(click to enlarge)

One Federal Reserve item not receiving enough press is that the Fed starting buying recently issued Treasury debt, something like $300 billion to start with.  This is without question about as inflationary a policy as there is.  Now Bernanke got his nickname “helicopter Ben” by virtue of his statement to the effect that you could stop deflation by dropping $100 bills from a helicopter.” This guy doesn’t fool around.

President Obama’s budget projections call for trillion dollar deficits for at least the next few years. Clearly he is attempting to do what it takes to prevent the economy from sliding into a 1930′s style depression.  Can’t argue the motive but what he is doing is without question highly inflationary.

Right now the United States is trying to borrow its way out of economic malaise.  Kind of like that person you know running up the credit cards while they are looking for a new job or starting a new venture.  Things can work out but it is shear financial madness to bet on it – especially when the foreign creditors are probably worse than your friendly neighborhood financial services companies.

All of this is negative for the U.S. dollar and the United States overall.  The rhetoric has been along the lines of “it couldn’t happen here…..”  Don’t be so sure. Read this article on Argentina. It could happen here – we have all of the preconditions and arrogance that are required for real trouble.

That is why we believe in gold and gold stocks.  We see nothing that can match its safety and upside potential.  If only we weren’t waiting for the end of time.

Personal Views

We went around the table giving our own personal views of the recession, and found that mainly things weren’t so bad. Most were still employed, even if they’d seen others lose their jobs. Apparently down times are good for artists. Jeff – whose paintings have been selling well this year – recalled a cartoon showing a man falling into a hole marked “Recession.” He sees another man, already in the hole, painting a picture. He asks the painter, “What are you doing here?” The painter replies, “I live here!”

There was optimism all around, even from one attendee who had been laid off. A sense of adventure, an opening of the eyes. The realization that a person needn’t spend all his precious hours slaving away in a cubicle. A feeling that there will always be opportunities for the smart, the quick and the brave; there will always be something to be busy doing.

It’s not the end of the world, after all.

Wrap-Ups doom, financial crisis, usa

Thursday night’s Junta was a great one. We continue to set the bar high for intellectual engagement and for attracting top-notch minds. And the Algonquin is becoming a favorite venue, at least in my opinion. The whiskeys are a bit tough on the wallet, but the atmosphere is par excellence.

Professor Andrzej Rapaczynski set out by stating the skewed numbers in political contributions of those working at universities. The liberal slant of academia is well set into the popular psyche but the lopsidedness is quite stark when viewed in pure dollar terms. We’re talking 80-90% of academics contributing to the Democratic Party. Rapaczynski said we, as a society, are “trained to be sensitive” to discrimination, to minorities; that after so many decades (centuries?) of innate racism and sexism, we have lately (relatively speaking) realized our error and so become very attuned to the fact that certain segmants of society have been trampled upon. We are constantly asking how many blacks are on the teaching staff, whether there are enough women, and so forth. But when it comes to Republicans, well, “this is not something we are interested in addressing.”

Now, these laws – Title VII, Title VIII, and others – are oriented towards eliminating discrimination using a fact-based method. If we look at the ratio of Asians teaching at Harvard, we can come up with a number, a percentage. We can easily determine the percentage of women faculty at Princeton. And we can say that if such numbers are found to be statistically out of whack – if women make up a mere 3% of the staff at Stanford – then we have evidence that something is not right: namely, that there is discrimination in hiring. These levels can be used as the basis for lawsuits, because such disparity, so the argument goes, cannot be an accident. Yet, not only can we not sue a university for having a faculty that is 94% Democratic, but this is not even a matter of serious discussion.

Andrzej said that often, among New York City society, at dinner functions and such, he feels “like a left-wing intellectual Jew at an Alabama fundamentalist dinner”. That when he puts forth his ideas, he can see his wife cringe. And that it is precisely that feeling which should not be occurring among the students of an institution of higher learning; that no student should be made to feel that his ideas are balderdash, that he is among the wrong.

Rise of the Right

Over the last 20-30 years, the American political right has been in the ascendence. The “Reagan Revolution” of promoting free markets, deregulation, privatization, etc, has been the strongest force in Washington. One may need to forget about the backlash of the last two years, or even (if one is an ardent Bush-hater) the last eight years, but as Professor Rapaczynski argued, since about the time of Reagan, the Republican party has been “the party of ideas.”

Now, one may claim that Bill Clinton brought the Democrats to power and reversed this trend. Yet Clinton’s primary achievements were welfare reform and balancing the budget, which are fairly conservative ideas. Clinton was a centrist, a member of the pro-business Democratic Leadership Council, and helped in his first election by Ross Perot splitting the Republican vote. So I would agree with Andrzej that the Clinton administration fit into the general trend of the rise of the right.

Yet this shift has not been reflected in the universities. And that void in the teaching staffs of our greatest institutions works to turn a good portion of the youth against the universities. Academia becomes a favorite flogging horse of the right, and this is not good for the health of the nation. It is not good for the state of education.

At this point in the discussion, Alex pointed out that if what Professor Rapaczynski said were true, that Republican academics were being denied jobs based on political leanings, then wouldn’t there be more class action suits against them? Wouldn’t those shut out be suing, in the great litigious tradition of this country? Andrzej’s answer was that Republicans (or Democrats, or Greens) are not covered under civil rights statutes. The laws cover “immutable” characteristics, which political beliefs are not.

So what can be done? As the Students for a Democratic Society used to say, “consciousness-raising.” When finding himself in a discussion over an open post at Columbia, and hearing arguments about how more blacks or women are needed, Professor Rapaczynski will say, “Yes, I agree, but the demographic we are most underrepresenting are Republicans.” This inevitably draws a laugh, but as he says, “I hope, on some level, that it sinks in.”

Anti-Semitism

We segued into part two of our discussion. Professor Rapaczynski led with his thesis that the anti-Zionist movement represents “a turn against Jews, disguised as a turn against Israel.” This provoked some rebuke, which was lessened when he defined anti-Zionism as the belief that Israel was “born in sin” and that the only solution was its elimination. While admitting that one can criticize Israel without being anti-Semitic, he claimed that if one scratched the surface of some of these views, claims that those holding them have nothing against Jews “seem inauthentic.”

He identified five pillars that “formed the basis of 19th-century anti-Semitism.” They are a rejection of:

• Cosmopolitanism
• Capitalism
• Jews
• America
• Exploitation

If one today added to this list “Israel,” Andrzej claims, he would have the 20th/21st-century definition of “anti-Zionism.”

Essentially, he says, anti-Zionists believe that Jews don’t have a right to a state in Palestine. In Professor Rapaczynski’s experience, this view is widely accepted in Europe, but not in America. He therefore limited his discussion to Europe, where he feels that this view is posing a danger to the world. So, for example, “when the French minister says that ‘I don’t think we should be dying for this shitty country,’ the only controversy is that a newspaper reported what a minister said in private.” (I looked unsuccessfully for a citation of this.) Or the boycott of Israeli scientists by some in European academia. (For more examples, see some of the professor’s citations in his introduction of the topic.)

One response to the professor was that many critics of Israeli foreign policy, for example, often find themselves unjustly labeled as anti-Semitic. Isn’t this an attempt to silence dissent by falsely accusing dissenters of discrimination? Andrzej conceded the point, but also posed a question. Which is the greater danger: oversensitive Jews who accuse others falsely of anti-Semitism, or the problem of real anti-Semites? Clearly he believed the latter was worse.

The conversation wandered a bit. There was mention of the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, and Daniel mentioned the irony of being able to see the occupied territories while exiting the memorial. We spoke of the similarities between Israel’s war against Hamas, and America’s war against al-Qaeda; that both, while trying to stamp out “terror,” inevitably exacerbate the conditions in which terrorists multiply. But things were falling apart, the whiskey was taking its toll. We decided to wrap it. One last memorable idea rose above the others, and it was Daniel who laid it out:

“Anti-discrimination laws are meant to protect the weak, not Republicans and Israelis.” I think that merited further discussion, but a meeting of the Junta can last only so long. I’d be interested in hearing elaboration on all these topics in the comments, if any are so inclined.

Wrap-Ups academia, anti-semitism, discrimination, israel, religion

Last week was the most successful Junta to date. Ten or so people showed up and turned the back of the bar from a damp and sticky foosball room into an underground outpost of intellectual enlightenment.  Josh’s presentation on the development of the New York downtown avant-garde art scene was well researched and provoked a lively debate and discussion. It touched on the art, of course, but also on the factors necessary to create it – social themes, urban planning, cultural mores, etc.

The beginning of the discussion centered on musician John Zorn, his life and work. There was the mention of a specific piece he did with one of his groups which covers some numbers of musical genres all in about a minute – I’ve lost my notes from the evening but some basic research suggests that it may be Speedfreaks, performed here with Naked City. Someone please correct me in the comments if I’m wrong.

Speaking of genres, we spoke of how names like jazz, rock, reggae, techno, emo, etc are basically the marketing creations of record companies, designed to move units. The rise of music journalism helped accelerate the trend, but before any of that, music existed for thousands of years without such labels. Josh cited an internal memo at Sony Records from a few years ago which directed the marketing division to concentrate less on genres, as they were becoming too divisive (and therefore not broad enough for the mass audiences needed to support their business model). The new directive was to focus on the artist as brand – to create superstars out of everyone. When genre was mentioned at all, the memo instructed marketers to define any individual artist with “at least four genres.”

Tim spoke up at one point about the longer history of music. We look at avant-garde music of the twentieth century, he said, some of which is atonal, and see it as a rejection of what we consider traditional music: melody, harmony, etc. But he said that tradition only goes back 500 years or less – the music that dominated the medieval era was more similar to today’s avant-garde music than to popular music.

Later we ventured into government support of the arts. The genesis was one of the articles Josh cited as reading, in which a musician points to European public financing of his craft. Tim, who is a touring musician, agreed that he could live an easier life in Europe, where he would have more help from the government. Josh argued that the government should play a role in making sure that art, even so-called avant-garde art, isn’t overwhelmed by market forces. Others weren’t convinced that America should give up its current philosophy, which is to support the arts to a limited extent, but certainly not to interrupt the gentrification of neighborhoods just because art is being lost. Noah, a banker, was particularly adamant about letting artists survive on their own – either by living poor, making some concessions to mass culture by, say, writing commercial jingles, or a combination of the two. As he put it, avant-garde means anti-establishment; to directly support it with public funds (at least on a mass scale) would be contradictory.

Towards the end of the evening, we did an informal survey and found that – no surprise – most were perfectly comfortable downloading copyrighted music off the internet for free. An argument was put forward that record sales were never a viable business model for artists, but only for record companies. The labels would give an artist an advance, provide the resources to cut the album, and then pay the artist a minimal cut of the profits; meanwhile, the artist could use the marketing machine to generate revenue for himself through touring. According to this argument, aside from maybe the 100 top-selling bands in the world (Metallica), no artist is being financially impaired by this activity. Well, perhaps. What’s definitely true is that the record companies will not survive without coming up with a new business model.

Look for the next Junta to convene around late January/early February. Josh’s piece should appear in Harper’s this spring – we’ll be sure to note it here when it’s published.

Wrap-Ups art, avant-garde, music, new york city