Evil minds that plot destruction....

Think Progress » Kristol Suggests People of Iran Would Embrace U.S. Attack, Triggering Regime Change

Sorcerer of death's construction

Oh lord now!

Fight the power:

Made it back up. It was a good quick visit to SF... next time I hope to have a bit more lesure time to see friends and stuff. This was more or less all business. Sucessful business, so that's nice, but still.

The dive was good for my mind I think, both legs solo. I have all these memories of roads, of biking down Broadway late at night in that deserted stretch in the 20s, of the steep downhill to Denver on I-70 as you break free of the mountains, of various routes I've taken to various schools, and to see women before. There's something about the experience of moving down a given piece of path when you've done it a few times in a few different states of mind. It's a touchstone for a whole lot of different feelings.

I'm having this whole separation experience from New York lately. For the first time I'm living somewhere else, thinking of calling another place "home." The times I've been away from the city in my adult life have generally been transitory. The longest stretch was when I was working on Music For America, at which point "home" was my cubicle, and I had a nice place to sleep and occasionally to party in the Mission. But that was campaigning; it was never a life, which is probably why it didn't work out for me. And after that I came back to the city.

I miss it, but not as much or as immediately as I thought. I miss it a little like like I miss my first girlfriend, who I was most purely in love with (in New York!), who I can still conjure theoretical passions for, but who I've completely accepted won't really be part of my life ever again. Not that I won't ever go back to NYC (clearly I must, and often), but at this point the idea that I might not continue to have a permanent address there has penitrated my being, and it feels... ok.

Advertising Age:

It's a quasi-social-networking site for teens designed to allow them to "express their individuality," yet it screens all content, tells parents their kids have joined and forbids users to e-mail one another. Oh, and it calls users "hubsters" -- a twist on hipsters that proves just how painfully uncool it is to try to be cool.

That's pretty funny.

Shoppers Bite Back

This was out a little while ago, but it bears repeating for a couple of reasons.

1. Corporations can be just a beureaucratic as government, are fundimentally less accountable and lack even a notional mission of "public service." Remember that when you listen to Republicans talking about how this or that should be privatized.
2. An increasingly democratic distribution of media power (thanks to the internet, peace be unto It) is the 21st Century's freedom of the Press from a checks and balances perspective. Traditional "press" institutions are clearly failing their role as a Fourth Estate. Better to decentralize and distribute that responsibility now that it's technically feasible to do so on a national or global scale.

I know I said before was my final word, but I think it's worth noting that about a year ago Iran and Syria signed a mutual-defense pact, so with the Bush Administration and the Israeli leadership doing their best to push this to the both of them, it theoretically doesn't matter who gets dragged in first.

Once this gets going, and I tend to think the odds are that it will, we're looking at an "all in" scenario. The IAF has started hitting Lebaneese Army targets (a distinct group from Hezbollah) after word came that they would resist (rather than assist) a ground invasion by the IDF. Ground invasion is probable.

Maybe I should accelerate that biodiesel plan.

Also, watched at bit of FoxNews w/the Girth this morning. I don't really do cable news, so maybe it's always this bad, but it was kind of shocking. 74% of people still get their news from TV. With this kind of coverage, sufficient support for a bombing campaign can't be too hard to work up.

...Which does without saying would be disasterous. More analysis on that point via billmon.

I'm visiting now at the co-working (and housing) space that my man Neil (and other homies too) call "office". Teh Space.

Attention NYC hipsters: this works. You should do it too.

GovCamp:

GovCamp is an event in the spirit of BarCamp for governments and other public institutions to share social and technology solutions to turn them into Government 2.0.

This is likely to be doomed to obscurity because of the lamentable lack of social capital among hacker types, and the tendency for technocrats to spawn expanding circles of beureaucracy, but it's a nice idea. I'd go to one in the US if I could.

In fact, I'd like to see a campaign based around putting the State online; massive transparency, ability to conduct business via email, etc... unlikely too, but it would be nice.

I was sitting in the sun yesterday and feeling kind of low from a bout of reading the news. It feels like we're in the midst of a collective global slide, and the People In Charge are doing all they can to grease the path on the way down. It's a deeply powerless feeling, and I don't like it.

With regard to the Israel/Palestine/Lebanon war (which is what Israeli leaders are calling it and they're the ones who get to decide) the situation seems impervious to outside influence. These people are going to kill one another until there's a collective decision to stop, which doesn't seem to have come just yet. It's a shit-sandwitch all around, and it's still escalating.

My real concern though is that this bloodshed is going to be used as a means to snowball some momentum to attack Iran, which I think will have really bad consequences for us. It has some of the same feeling as the run up to the Iraq invasion, though the axis of Bush is clearly not flying as high. At the same time, all they wanna do is drop some bombs, so the bar to clear in the public mind is probably lower.

I feel like someone should be organizing something to counter this momentum. "Someone should be organizing something" usually means that I need to start to do it. Fuckers.

I'm off to SF for a few days, a little business to transact. Also meeting with the Zacker and Duke Lauter and maybe a pre-bar Girth. Will bring my camera.