friendly_iconoclast
friendly_iconoclast's JournalIOW, neoliberalism. Walter Benn Michaels explained it in "Let Them Eat Diversity":
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2011/01/let-them-eat-diversity/(emphasis added)
...Stalin famously won the argument but lost the war over whether there could be socialism in one country, but no one has ever been under the impression for more than a millisecond that there could be neoliberalism in only one country. An easy way to look at this would be to say that the conditions of mobility of labor and mobility of capital have since World War II required an extraordinary upsurge in immigration. The foreign born population in the U.S today is something like 38 million people, which is roughly equivalent to the entire population of Poland. This is a function of matching the mobility of capital with the mobility of labor, and when you begin to produce these massive multi-racial or multi-national or as we would call them today multi-cultural workforces, you obviously need technologies to manage these work forces.
In the U.S. this all began in a kind of powerful way with the Immigration Act of 1965, which in effect repudiated the explicit racism of the Immigration Act of the 1924 and replaced it with largely neoliberal criteria. Before, whether you could come to the U.S. was based almost entirely on racial or, to use the then-preferred term, national criteria. I believe that, for example, the quota on Indian immigration to the U.S. in 1925 was 100. I dont know the figure on Indian immigration to the U.S. since 1965 off-hand, but 100 is probably about an hour and a half of that in a given year. The anti-racism that involves is obviously a good thing, but it was enacted above all to admit people who benefited the economy of the U.S. They are often sort of high-end labor, doctors, lawyers, and businessmen of various kinds. The Asian immigration of the 70s and 80s involved a high proportion of people who had upper and upper-middle class status in their countries of origin and who quickly resumed that middle and upper middle class status in the U.S. While at the same time weve had this increased immigration from Mexico, people from the lower-end of the economy, filling jobs that otherwise cannot be filledor at least not filled at the price capital would prefer to pay. So there is a certain sense in which the internationalism intrinsic to the neoliberal process requires a form of anti-racism and indeed neoliberalism has made very good use of the particular form weve evolved, multiculturalism, in two ways.
First, there isnt a single US corporation that doesnt have an HR office committed to respecting the differences between cultures, to making sure that your culture is respected whether or not your standard of living is. And, second, multiculturalism and diversity more generally are even more effective as a legitimizing tool, because they suggest that the ultimate goal of social justice in a neoliberal economy is not that there should be less difference between the rich and the poorindeed the rule in neoliberal economies is that the difference between the rich and the poor gets wider rather than shrinksbut that no culture should be treated invidiously and that its basically OK if economic differences widen as long as the increasingly successful elites come to look like the increasingly unsuccessful non-elites. So the model of social justice is not that the rich dont make as much and the poor make more, the model of social justice is that the rich make whatever they make, but an appropriate percentage of them are minorities or women. Thats a long answer to your question, but it is a serious question and the essence of the answer is precisely that internationalization, the new mobility of both capital and labor, has produced a contemporary anti-racism that functions as a legitimization of capital rather than as resistance or even critique.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "Department of Justice launches probe into ATF storefront stings"
http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/watchdogreports/department-of-justice-launches-probe-into-atf-storefront-stings-b99209920z1-246360711.htmlBy John Diedrich and Raquel Rutledge of the Journal Sentinel
Feb. 20, 2014
The U.S. Department of Justice inspector general announced Thursday he has launched an investigation into storefront stings, in the wake of a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigation that exposed foul-ups and failures in undercover government operations across the country.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz already was investigating flaws in the ATF's Operation Fearless in Milwaukee as part of a review of reforms enacted following the agency's botched Operation Fast and Furious...
...In a statement Thursday, Horowitz said he has started a separate investigation that will focus just on storefront stings. The announcement comes after the Journal Sentinel investigation in December found problems that were uncovered in Milwaukee had occurred in stings across the country, from Pensacola, Fla., to Portland, Ore.
The news organization's investigation found the ATF used mentally disabled people to promote operations and then arrested them for their work; opened storefronts close to schools and churches, increasing arrest numbers and penalties; and attracted juveniles with free video games and alcohol.
Which were detailed here:
http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/watchdogreports/atf-uses-rogue-tactics-in-storefront-stings-across-the-nation-b99146765z1-234916641.html
Documents, interviews show agents employed tactics similar to those used in Milwaukee
Matt Groening illustrated the mindset perfectly:
"(S)cent of hypocrisy"? More like an overwhelming stench:
From their own words:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002610288
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014235953#post11
11. No, DL is not enough, my DL was granted without a birth certificate
as was that of many of my friends here in California.
there are still states that don't require birth certificates or proof of citizenship to get a DL.
the Arizona law doesn't count these states' DLs as adequate.
in other words, to avoid being detained, an American citizen needs to carry a Passport and/or Birth Certificate because of the stupidest law in the USA, which Arizona has now.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=611694
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014305858#post12
Gun Club for Liberals: The Un-NRA
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=22557321Feb. 18, 2014
By ALAN FARNHAM
Gun owner and Second Amendment advocate Marlene Hoeber isn't your typical member of the National Rifle Association. In fact, she isn't a member of the NRA at all.
The Oakland, Calif., laboratory equipment mechanic regularly visits firing ranges, where, along with other members of her gun club, she shoots a variety of weapons. "Guns are fun to play with," she says. She even makes her own ammunition.
She has no use, however, for the NRA's conservative political agenda. By her own description, Hoeber is a feisty, liberal, transgender, tattooed, queer, activist feminist.
She belongs instead to another gun advocacy group entirely--The Liberal Gun Club--whose membership ranges, she says, "from socialists, to anarchists who can quote Marx, to Reagan Democrats."
The LGC will even sell you an AR-15 lower receiver:
(now THAT will give the self-appointed zampolits a case of the fantods!)
Ninth Circuit strikes California’s restrictive rule against licensed carry of handguns
Source: Washington Post
The Ninth Circuits decision in Peruta v. San Diego, released minutes ago, affirms the right of law-abiding citizens to carry handguns for lawful protection in public.
California law has a process for applying for a permit to carry a handgun for protection in public, with requirements for safety training, a background check, and so on. These requirements were not challenged. The statute also requires that the applicant have good cause, which was interpreted by San Diego County to mean that the applicant is faced with current specific threats. (Not all California counties have this narrow interpretation.) The Ninth Circuit, in a 2-1 opinion written by Judge OScannlain, ruled that Peruta was entitled to Summary Judgement, because the good cause provision violates the Second Amendment.
The Court ruled that a government may specify what mode of carrying to allow (open or concealed), but a government may not make it impossible for the vast majority of Californians to exercise their Second Amendment right to bear arms...
...As Heller had observed, there are many 19th century cases which say that a state may ban concealed carry so long as open carry is still allowed. California might have been able to do the same. But it is unconstitutional to prohibit carrying in every mode: the Second Amendment does require that the states permit some form of carry for self-defense outside the home.
Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/02/13/ninth-circuit-strikes-californias-restrictive-rule-against-licensed-carry-of-handguns/
The author points out further on in the article that there is now a well-developed "circuit split"
amongst variois US circuit courts. My guess is that this will end up in the Supreme Court
Associates defend man who had gun in school (SAFE Act advocate)
http://www.buffalonews.com/city-region/buffalo-public-schools/associates-defend-man-who-had-gun-in-school-20140207Associates defend man who had gun in school
Say he made honest mistake in incident prompting school lockdown
By Jane Kwiatkowski | News Staff Reporter , Lou Michel | News Staff Reporter ,
Tiffany Lankes | News Staff Reporter | @TiffanyLankes
on February 7, 2014 - 8:40 PM
updated February 8, 2014 at 12:32 AM
Dwayne Ferguson spent more than a decade advocating for nonviolence and peace in the streets of Buffalo.
He was a well-known face in the movement for the SAFE Act, the state law that made carrying a gun on school property a felony. He was also a familiar presence in the hallways of the citys Harvey Austin Elementary School, where he worked in the after-school program and mentored students.
No one imagined that on Thursday he would show up at the school in possession of a gun, touching off an hours-long lockdown, search and ultimately his arrest on two felony charges.
Ferguson, 52, told WGRZ-TV that he frequently carries the gun, for which he has a permit, and did not realize he had it on him when he went to the school as part of the mentoring program...
Ferguson should practice what he preaches and plead guilty to the felony he committed.
The terrifying surveillance case of Brandon Mayfield
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/2/the-terrifying-surveillancecaseofbrandonmayfield.htmlBut theres another danger that Snowden didnt mention thats inherent in the governments having easy access to the voluminous data we produce every day: It can imply guilt where there is none. When investigators have mountains of data on a particular target, its easy to see only the data points that confirm their theories especially in counterterrorism investigations when the stakes are so high while ignoring or downplaying the rest. There doesnt have to be any particular malice on the part of investigators or analysts, although prejudice no doubt comes into play, just circumstantial evidence and the dangerous belief in their intuition. Social scientists refer to this phenomenon as confirmation bias, and when people are confronted with data overload, its much easier to weave the data into a narrative that substantiates what they already believe. Criminologist D. Kim Rossmo, a retired detective inspector of the Vancouver Police Department, was so concerned about confirmation bias and the investigative failures it causes that he warned police officers in Police Chief magazine to always be on guard against it. The components of confirmation bias, he wrote, include failure to seek evidence that would disprove the theory, not utilizing such evidence if found, refusing to consider alternative hypotheses and not evaluating evidence diagnosticity....
....On March 11, 2004, Al-Qaeda-inspired terrorists coordinated a massive bombing of the Madrid commuter train system during the morning rush hour, killing 193 people and wounding approximately 1,800. Two latent fingerprints recovered during the investigation on a bag of detonators by the Spanish National Police (SNP) were shared with the FBI through Interpol. When the prints were run through the bureaus database, it returned 20 possible matches for one of the fingerprints, one of whom was Brandon Mayfield. A former U.S. Army platoon leader, Mayfield was now an attorney specializing in child custody, divorce and immigration law in Portland, Ore. His prints were in the FBI system because of Mayfields military service as well as an arrest two decades earlier because of a misunderstanding. The charges were later dropped.
Despite finding that Mayfields print was not an identical match to the print left on the bag of detonators, FBI fingerprint examiners rationalized away the differences, according to a report by the Department of Justices Office of the Inspector General (OIG). Under the one discrepancy rule, the FBI lab should have concluded Mayfield did not leave the print found in Madrid a conclusion the SNP reached and repeatedly communicated to the FBI. The FBIs Portland field office, however, used that fingerprint match to begin digging into Mayfields background. Certain details of the attorneys life convinced the agents that they had their man. Mayfield had converted to Islam after meeting his wife, an Egyptian. He had represented one of the Portland Seven, a group of men who tried to travel to Afghanistan to fight for al Qaeda and the Taliban against U.S. and coalition forces in a child custody case. He also worshipped at the same mosque as the militants. In the aftermath of 9/11, these innocent associations and relationships, however tangential, were transformed by investigators into evidence that Mayfield wasnt a civic-minded American, but a bloodthirsty terrorist intent on destroying the West.
For the 'tl;dr' crowd: It wasn't his fingerprint, and he had nothing to do with the bombings
The declassified FBI report about this entire fiasco can be read here:
http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/s0601/exec.pdf
Note, please, that the OP elided this small detail from the linked article:
http://www.berkshireeagle.com/news/ci_25052378/report-mass-needs-tighten-up-its-gun-lawsThe report said that since Massachusetts is not a state where gun owners routinely carry their firearms in the open, the state should eliminate the Class B license.
Explained rather more succintly in the Boston Globe:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/02/03/panel-recommends-that-mass-tighten-gun-laws/YNPQ2JTQtAjoqR9rWHbK2M/story.html
For the most part, police chiefs invoke the unsuitable persons language to deny licenses for handguns. The panel recommended that police chiefs be allowed to apply that standard to buyers of rifles and shotguns, who are exempt.
Umm, not just no, but HELL NO. This approach was recently deemed unconstitutional in Illinois,
so if this is tried here in Mass it will certainly be challenged in Federal court- the Second Amendment
Foundation and/or the Gun Owners Action League will see to that.
They may very well win. I certainly hope so- 'may issue' laws violate both the Second and
Fourteenth Amendments.
A Class A license requires the approval of police. Eliminating Class B licenses would mean
that all gun purchases will be at the whim of a politician with a badge.
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