wz1000
Joined 12 years ago
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Member since
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Recent submissions
Comment · 5 years ago
Comment · 6 years ago
> I don't disagree with the concept of a "bug bounty for information" but I'm struggling to come up with an idea of what that would look like in a way that is either more effective or different than patents.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_grants_in_the_United_S...
Comment · 6 years ago
Zathura supports epubs using zathura-pdf-mupdf
Comment · 6 years ago
Interesting you pick on any mention of Foucault as giving away ideological leanings, since, incidentally, Graeber was not a big fan.
From "Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology":
> Academics love Michel Foucault’s argument that identifies knowledge and power, and insists that brute force is no longer a major factor in social control. They love it because it flatters them: the perfect formula for people who like to think of themselves as political radicals even though all they do is write essays likely to be read by a few dozen other people in an institutional environment. Of course, if any of these academics were to walk into their university library to consult some volume of Foucault without having remembered to bring a valid ID, and decided to enter the stacks anyway,they would soon discover that brute force is really not so far away as they like to imagine—a man with a big stick, trained in exactly how hard to hit people with it, would rapidly appear to eject them.
http://abahlali.org/files/Graeber.pdf
And "Dead Zones of the Imagination":
> Consider the hegemonic role, in US social theory, of Max Weber in the 1950s and 1960s, and of Michel Foucault since the 1970s. Their popularity, no doubt, had much to do with the ease with which each could be adopted as a kind of anti-Marx, their theories put forth (usually in crudely simplified form) to argue that power is not simply or primarily a matter of the control of production but rather a pervasive, multifaceted, and unavoidable feature of any social life ... Foucault was more subversive, but in a way that made bureaucratic power more effective, not less. In his work on asylums, clinics, prisons, and the rest, bodies, subjects—even truth itself—all become the products of administrative discourses. Through concepts like governmentality and biopower, state bureaucracies end up shaping the parameters of human existence in ways far more intimate than anything Weber might have imagined.
> Foucault’s ascendancy, in turn, was precisely within those fields of academic endeavor that both became the haven for former radicals, and were almost completely divorced from any access to political power—or, increasingly, from any influence on social movements as well. This gave Foucault’s emphasis on the “power/knowledge” nexus—the assertion that forms of knowledge are always also forms of social power, indeed, the most important forms of social power—a particular appeal.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.14318/hau2....
Comment · 6 years ago
Very ironic mentioning semiconductors, when it was the protectionist US-Japan Semiconductor Trade Agreement pushed by Reagan that propped up the American semiconductor industry, while leading to the decline of the Japanese industry
Comment · 6 years ago
Fortunately, the specific violations have been compiled by the world bank, as pointed out in a sibling comment.
I just have one part I found incredibly funny
> The idea that the British were somehow exploitative by resisting renegotiation is ignorant of this fact
If overthrowing a democratically elected government is not exploitative, I don't know what is. "Resisting renegotiation" is a very Orwellian way of phrasing such. I'm guessing something along the lines of "we will topple your government and hand over absolute power to a brutal dictator if the terms are violated" was also part of the the agreement?
What about all the other Iranians, the ones that had nothing to do with APOC or oil or the government. Did they also "deserve" their fate?
Comment · 6 years ago
You are conflating not investing in a country with overthrowing a democratically elected government. Are you really arguing that it was OK for the US and UK to overthrow Iran's government because otherwise foreigners might not have invested in Iran, or otherwise threatened their investments? Truly, this is what they call "capitalism with a human face".
Comment · 6 years ago
> Are we talking about the D'Arcy Concession? I ask because none of what you are describing is found in the text of that agreement.
The agreement was re-negotiated in 1933, according to terms that the grandparent pointed out. At this point I have to wonder if you are being disingenuous on purpose. The rest of your comment is a moral appeal making a case for why D'Arcy "deserved" the profits. You have to pick a lane, are you arguing on the basis of who "deserves" a countries natural resources, or from the point of view of adherence to contracts and agreements?
Comment · 6 years ago
> If you disagree with the substance then please do so without accusing me of being inhumane.
I'm not accusing you of being inhumane. I'm wondering if you would apply similar moral standards when the shoe is on the other foot, or if you are a hypocrite.
Comment · 6 years ago
Here is what Iranians see from major American presidential candidates considered to be "highly respected on both sides of the aisle": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-zoPgv_nYg
Comment · 6 years ago
Assassinating Soleimani was definitely not explicitly listed on any treaty.
Comment · 6 years ago
Why should a concession made by a monarch pre-constitutional revolution be expected to be upheld by a democratically elected leader operating after significant changes in the form and nature of government?
I have noticed all such principled defenses of "property rights" and "capitalism" are built upon a very specific and convenient view of what exactly counts as "legitimate property". Was the oil even the Shah's to give away in the first place?
Comment · 6 years ago
> But what do you expect to happen when you forcibly take all of the British resources?
Very strange how oil underneath the Iranian soil can be considered a "British resource".
Comment · 6 years ago
Buying Facebook ads and making fake accounts is not "hacking".
The UN is simply a forum for countries to meet and discuss international affairs. It is not a global governing body, and wields no power not authorized by its constituent member nations.