A real feminist flays hypocritical US blather

Germaine Greer has written a militant and hard-hitting feminist blog in the Guardian about some feather-weight fools who won the Pulitzer Prize and made the New York Times best-seller list.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jul/31/half-the-sky-germaine-greer


I wrote my comment in the form of a letter:


Dear Germaine, 
I love the punch of your articles - you get your point across. You own your own heart and mind. 
That said, feminism will never solve anything globally or permanently unless it's part of a class-based revolutionary movement fighting to turf out capitalism country by country. Urban and rural working class, urban and rural poor, fighting national battles in a coordinated worldwide war. 
Till then feminist agitation and mobilization will be as mutilated and powerless as the UN you flay. 
You wield your bull whip well. With the strength of the world's women in your arm. 
We wield ours beside you. With the strength of the world's working women AND men in ours. 
Makes a good team. 
Your dedicated but critical fan, 
Xjy

Sharing ideas - and strangling them...

Here's a short article from Scientific American on sharing scientific ideas and work:
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http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=when-should-a-scientists-data-be-li-2010-07-22&sc=DD_20100723&posted=1#comments

Jul 22, 2010 02:01 PM in Basic Science | 15 comments

When should a scientist's data be liberated for all to see?

By Katherine Harmon

 

When researchers make an exciting discovery, the data behind it are often closely guarded until they can be examined, developed and then revealed—at least in part—in a peer-reviewed journal with all of the proverbial fanfare. 

But that custom often leaves the public and most of the research world in the dark—sometimes for years, as some lamented in the case of the formal description of the hominid Ardipithecus ramidus, which came some 15 years after the original discovery. Publication usually involves sharing some data because the scientific method encourages others to review one's work so they can attempt to replicate it. But in a Web-driven era of rapidly moving and easily stored data, however, many researchers now argue forcefully for an open exchange of data and the wider use of so-called scientific commons. 

Climate change, molecular chemistry and microbiology are just a few of the fields currently entertaining the idea of a better-connected repository to which data can (or must) be uploaded soon after discovery. And in the medical world, many researchers are looking hopefully toward a digital future in which masses of patient data can be examined for patterns of disease soon after they are gathered. 

"It would be preferable, from a pure scientific advancement standpoint, to have every piece of data released immediately to the public," Jorge Contreras, deputy director of the Intellectual Property Program at Washington University's School of Law in St. Louis, Mo. and author of a new policy essay on the topic published online July 22 in Science, said in a prepared statement. 

That idealistic approach, however, "doesn't give data-generating scientists the opportunity to publish and advance their careers through publication," he noted. Thus new findings and data sets are still usually held close to the vest in the harsh publish-or-perish world. 

And the data dearth doesn't necessarily stop with publication. "Because of busy schedules, competitive pressures and other interpersonal vagaries, the sharing of scientific data can be inconsistent even after publication," Contreras observes in his essay. 

Not every field has been so tight-fisted with its data. As an encouraging example, he points to the Human Genome Project's stipulation that all new data be made public within 24 hours of being generated. But, he concedes, not every discipline is primed to fall in line with such immediate free access. The genome "represented the common heritage of the human species and should not be encumbered by patents," he writes. But patents are precisely the point of many scientific endeavors, and showing your cards to the competition early on is a patently dim decision. 

Thus Contreras proposes a balance of data access and data rights. "I think you must have a compromise," he said in a prepared statement. "Commons weighted too heavily in favor of data users are not likely to attract sufficient contributions from data generators, whereas commons weighted too heavily in favor of data generators" would be less helpful to other scientists and the public.  

But that doesn't mean data should be held back. Instead, he argues, widely accepted lead times—after data are publicly released but before others can publish results on them—would allow "data generators a 'head start' on preparing publications based on their data, yet data are still broadly available for the general advancement of science." 

Image courtesy of iStockphoto/AlexRaths

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I commented:

Humanity needs to own its own thoughts - we think, create,  work and develop together. Everything around us is created collectively - but it's not owned collectively. Once products have been created they're legally in the hands of the profit-motivated people owning the system of production. They act as proxies for humanity.
And as we are seeing (Bhopal, BP, active non-prevention of starvation and disease -Big Pharma and HIV in Africa - and war) they're doing a really lousy job for the rest of us. 
So all that crap about how capitalism (private ownership of ideas, culture and production) stands for progress and prosperity is just that - crap.
Ideas, sharing them and using them is for all of us, now. When this happens we'll be blown away by the force and rapidity of the development of human society. The prosperity created (and the safety and reason of the creative process) will soon make it possible to reward the most active creators well enough, while making life for the rest of us comfortable enough, to both encourage this approach and dispel envy and hatred towards those growing fat off the present system while others die because of it.
This is simple - but *not* easy!

Vae victis - woe to the vanquished

Or, Rule No 1 in War: Don't lose!
Mary B discusses the conduct of war, lies and leaks in relation to Afghanistan today, and puts it all in a historical - Roman and Greek - context.
http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2010/07/civilian-casualties-leaks-and-the-ancient-view.html

I added this comment:

I give you Clausewitz... I give you Macchiavelli. It's still a question of fighting as though you want to win at any cost, including deceit and "excessive" force (the adjective is superfluous ;-). The Mytilene example is a beautiful example of the transition from war mode to peace mode on the part of the combatants and especially the victors. You leave the vanquished some dignity and room for recuperation. Vae victis - but not too much.
Trotsky tells us about the peace negotiations at Brest-Litovsk between the new Bolshevik government and the Germans. The German generals, lolling around drinking schnapps with their boots on the table, were thunderstruck by the earnestness of the Bolsheviks, their unlaidback style and their refusal to envisage secret diplomacy. This wasn't the way it was done. And no one was supposed to know of the cynicism and intimacy of the victors and the vanquished during the horse-trading.
Must have been a bit like the Royalists negotiating with Cromwell and his New Model generals...
This, by the way, is a big reason why nuclear war is shunned... there's no one left to trade horses with, nothing to plunder now and for ever.
It's also a reason why the capitalists don't just exterminate the workers once and for all.
Hmm... it's also a reason why Mary's blog is both wicked and subversive... for some.

Literacy and junk literature

In response to a reasonable article on the subject in today's Guardian:


http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/23/enid-blyton-zoe-williams-comment?


I wrote:
Books like these are fantastic for getting kids to devour books. So is Harry Potter, and the quality of the ideas and the plot is light-years from Enid B, for which we should be much more grateful than we are. However...
1) Enid B has no intrinsic literary merit whatever, except for yarn-spinning more-ishness. So if weird old expressions become sleeping policemen on the highway of literacy - dump 'em. JKR and Mark Twain can take us over the bumps - they take us on a magic carpet ride - or at the very least have great suspension, Enid can't cos she doesn't, and hasn't.
2) Maybe readers aren't aware of just how fast and loose publishers play with an author's text. They wield the machete just as savagely as any drama producer, only like Mac the Knife their work is invisible. And they don't just do it after the event, they do it before publication too, and half the time they tell the hack what to write in the first place. If translators are traitors, then publishers are parricides or paedophiles (take your pick). So the whole industry is doing all this all the time, and they're about as good at self-regulation as the cops. So Enid is lucky she's still being read, and that the publishers go to the trouble of keeping her turkey twizzles devourable.
3) Junk food is a phenomenon of mass culture in a sick society. So is junk writing. Cure society and you get healthier mass culture.

"We've seen it all before" - Tory lies ("promises")

Mary B on political promises - "we've seen it all before..."

http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2010/07/big-society-cassandra-speaks.html

My comment (first a language appetizer, then the meat):

@Oliver N: There was certainly a distinctive Home Counties rendering of French (Ed Heath speaking to De Gaulle).
Anyway, as far as Latin pronunciation is concerned Michael B points to the man who says it all, "Vox Latina, Sidney Allen" (Cantab).
As for rational politics, reason only occurs in public affairs if it forms part of the ruling ideology. During the long Social Democratic interregnum (ie Welfare State "Golden Years") in Sweden, there were umpteen inquiries commissioned in which well-balanced groups of serious people looked at evidence and made sensible decisions about education, pensions, etc. Since this worked well, and was a "Good Thing", it was trumpeted by good people I've translated for into a fixed star of the Swedish political system.
Then things got back to normal (ie bourgeois "democratic" hell) and the inquiry system was brought back to normal too. Single-sod inquiries paying lip service to principles plucked out of the PM's arse, and churning out unreasonable conclusions serving the rulers and their ideology.
Oh, and about money... 
First, *of course* you can solve problems by throwing money at them, the only issue is which problems you choose to solve this way - ie nuclear development programmes, fat cat remuneration and banking crises, or health, education, welfare and classical studies. 
Second, we can always afford what we need to afford. The Britain that introduced the Welfare State was a beggar in rags compared to today's bespoke-tailored and gleaming-fanged vampire, and yet...

Education in today's society (3)

Same discussion continued:

Paulo said... 

xjy

I suggest that before you say any more about Samuel Johnson, you investigate his involvement in anti-slavery, and in some of the other matters you mention. In particular, the British use of slaves to fight the war in America. 

Much more, if you're interested. His remark about Patriotism - the firat refuge of the hypocrite - is a start. By "patriotism" he meant the English interests in the American Empire. Windy, Latinate, but strong.

I responded: 
@Paulo: The more Samuel Johnson contradicts himself, the better!
Meantime, here's a revelation for most of you - Edward Rushton, 1756-1814. A book telling his story was published in 2002. "Forgotten Hero. The Life and Times of Edward Rushton. Liverpool's Blind Poet, Revolutionary Republican, & Anti-Slavery Fighter" by Bill Hunter, Living History Library, Liverpool, 2002. (info: editor@livinghistory.org.uk) ISBN 0-9542077-0-X (all this detail cos - as you can imagine - it's not available at WH Smith's)
He went blind helping slaves (alone) on a slaver at the age of 18, during an epidemic of Malignant Opthalmia. And that was just the start. The book gives extracts from his poems, documented accounts of Liverpool as a city built on Slavery, of conditions in the Navy, the Press Gangs, the politics of abolition, the role of ex-slaves in the debates on Abolition, and Rushton's adventure's as an innkeeper. As well as his take on the American Revolution (a letter to Washington taking him to task for his pro-slavery), the French Revolution, and the Haitian Revolution (Spartacus!)
Our Scouser readers might be aware of Rushton. Few others will. Read 100 pages of Sam J and then the 100 pages of this little book. Think about the role of laws and kings in society, and the role of society in people's lives (including culture and education). 
Decide for yourselves whether or not Samuel Johnson is a pompous windbag. 

West Germany fails in East Germany

From a discussion list.

July 1 marks the 20th anniversary of the introduction of the deutsche mark in East Germany in the runup to full reunification. But the economic benefits that West German politicians promised failed to materialize. What went wrong?

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,703802,00.html 

 

Fascinating.

But "What went wrong?" is not the right approach.

"Why has the whole project been such a miserable failure from beginning to end?" is better. With the follow-up questions: "Why do East Germans still miss the old East Germany after two decades, in spite of everything (and there are a LOT of in-spite-ofs)?", and "Why was the whole fiasco foreseeable from the start?"

It failed because it was trying to turn back the wheel of history. It's just as impossible to force socialism back into its capitalist womb as it was to force capitalism back into its feudal womb. Of feudalism back into slave-states. This is very paradoxical - the new states are "weaker" than the old states, but a thousand times more viable. The GDR, the Soviet Union, etc were getting on quite well enough thank you, in spite of the in-spite-ofs. It was the Nomenklatura bureaucrats who were most dissatisfied, not the workers. They sold the workers down the river to keep their power and privileges in the shape of capitalists.

One little example I saw in the paper today can illustrate this. The usual propaganda about Cuba, and the usual crap about the country being on the brink of collapse (all non-capitalist countries are always on the brink of collapse according to official capitalist doctrine)... BUT one tiny tell-tale detail... Things are getting so bad now that SOME workplaces are no longer going to provide free lunches to the workers. FREE LUNCHES FOR THE WORKERS! In a country on the brink of collapse, that has no right to exist according to capitalist propaganda. Way-hay! Give me that kind of poverty any day.

East Germany couldn't be integrated into West Germany without being torn down completely and built up from scratch. And the people didn't want this. And you can't say you're making a people more prosperous if you raze their lives to the ground (unless, of course, if you're the US in Iraq or Afghanistan, you can and do). It could be brought into the Western sphere of power as a reservoir of cheap labour and cheap land, and that's about it. Referring to Russia in 1990, Kissinger wrote that the West had one year to push its reforms through - while the "euphoria lasted". Before people woke up to the fact that they'd been lied to and were being ripped off.

Question two: Why the nostalgia? 5 years after 1917 (at the most) Russians had forgotten all about the Tsar and Tsarism. It was just a bad dream. Poof, gone. It took less than 5 years for the new state to seem natural, and the old state to be deep in the cesspool of history never to be retrieved. In East Germany 20 years have now passed since the return of the capitalism everyone was said to be dying to get back. And the new state is still not natural, and the old state has not been forgotten. Twenty years!! And the richest capitalist state in Europe has fucked up completely in bringing hope and prosperity to a country with the same language culture and (more or less) history. It has poured money into a bottomless historical pit. It just can't afford the requirements. It has neither the money, nor the moral, cultural or social authority for the task.

And if West Germany can't manage to restore capitalism successfully in East Germany, where the hell CAN capitalism be successfully restored?? And by who?

Cuba (In Spite Of) is a model in Latin America. East Germany is not a model in Europe. Europe has no models since Sweden lost its halo.

Question 3: "Foreseeable?" I'll dig up some old discussion contributions I made back in the day. You'll notice that the Kissinger remark fits in with an obvious scepticism towards the whole restoration project. And it should be obvious that no single part of a country can buy up that country's whole economy. Reformist socialists had this illusion in the late forties. And failed. That's not the way economies work or history works. Post-capitalist society - proto-socialism if you like - takes over what it finds and makes something viable of it. Restored capitalist society destroys what it finds and makes a squalid mess of it. 

To force a vigorous baby back into the womb you have to chop it up first. 

Capitalism and the Western way of life bring security, prosperity and happiness to all - except they don't.

And humanity won't have security, prosperity or happiness until Capitalism and the Western way of life have been tossed into the cesspool of history along with Tsarism. And we'll dump the In-Spite-Ofs too, while we're at it.