A nation at war–an indefinite, borderless one, conducted against a faceless enemy, with little legal or moral restraint, with an endless wallet to be dipped into–will find, sooner or later, that the same inchoateness, the same vagueness, the same productive lack of definition of that conflict, which permitted its waging to be conducted secretly withoutContinue reading “Ferguson And The Tale Of Two Wars”
Category Archives: Politics
Machine Gun Men: Not Your Grandfather’s Police
It was a common sight in New York City: soldiers, paramilitary or regular in origin, wearing battle fatigues and carrying assault rifles and machine guns, standing guard in various bustling points of urban interaction–train stations and bus terminals most commonly. Typically, these were deployed after some mysterious, unspecified warning would be made public by theContinue reading “Machine Gun Men: Not Your Grandfather’s Police”
Policing Ferguson: Executions, Demonizing Protest, Militarization
The killing–execution style–of Michael Brown, the protests in Ferguson that followed, and their policing, both rhetorically and literally, demonstrate some chilling facts about modern American life. Most obviously, police continue to over-police, with overbearing aggressiveness and force, communities of color. They have poor relationships with their subjects–an apt description given the asymmetry of power thatContinue reading “Policing Ferguson: Executions, Demonizing Protest, Militarization”
The Only Apparent Easiness Of Meta-Protest
Finding fault with the form and content of political critique or protest comes easily to some: You chose a mode of protest that was inappropriate–it was too loud, it was violent, it was not inclusive enough; your protest is hypocritical–you do not protest injustices relevantly similar to the ones you protest currently; and lastly, andContinue reading “The Only Apparent Easiness Of Meta-Protest”
Causal Analysis, Moral Culpability, And Gaza
If X causes Y, and Y causes Z, then surely X is the cause of Z? So goes the intuition–very roughly–that the causal relation is transitive. It thus often underwrites arguments about moral culpability and responsibility–sometimes even in legal settings. If I am the cause for your actions, then I am culpable, by one reckoning,Continue reading “Causal Analysis, Moral Culpability, And Gaza”
Steven Salaita and Academic Freedom in Academic and ‘Non-Academic’ Spaces
Steven Salaita might have thought he was headed for a new faculty position: the University of Illinois had made him a job offer, he had accepted, and resigned his position at Virginia Tech. But not so fast: the Chancellor of the university rescinded the offer, apparently because of Salaita’s aggressively vocal presence on Twitter, whereContinue reading “Steven Salaita and Academic Freedom in Academic and ‘Non-Academic’ Spaces”
Israel And A Jewish Solution To The Palestinian Problem
When I was eight years old, my mother told me the story of the Jews. We were on a month-long vacation, the mother of all road-trips; our destinations included the mountains and the valleys of Kashmir and the Garhwal. One day, after a long and tiring drive through innumerable twisting roads, we had reached ourContinue reading “Israel And A Jewish Solution To The Palestinian Problem”
Political Schooling Via The Usenet Newsgroup
As my post yesterday should have indicated, we are educated by a variety of modalities. A powerfully formative one for me was my exposure to Usenet newsgroups. I discovered newsgroups in 1988, shortly after I began work as a research assistant with the Computerized Conferencing and Communications Center at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.Continue reading “Political Schooling Via The Usenet Newsgroup”
Costas Gavras’ Missing: Harbinger of Disillusionment
A little while ago, on this blog, while writing of my reading of Alex Haley’s Roots as a schoolboy I made note of it as “a member of that group of cultural productions that changed my view of the US forever.” Another distinguished member of that group would be Costas Gavras‘ Missing, a chilling movie that,Continue reading “Costas Gavras’ Missing: Harbinger of Disillusionment”
Sanctimony, Hypocrisy, Nuclear Weapons, and Drones
A couple of days ago, on this blog, I wrote a post attempting to refute the charge of ‘selective outrage’ that is often leveled against critics of Israeli policies in the current conflict in Gaza. In it, I pointed out how the accusation of hypocrisy made against the proponent of a claim does not affectContinue reading “Sanctimony, Hypocrisy, Nuclear Weapons, and Drones”
Samir Chopra 