Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires

Posted on July 23, 2011

“In a high capacity regime, relatively little political contention occurs without involvement of governmental agents, but by that very token vigorous mobilization against the government produces changes in regime structure — either closing of ranks that reduces political opportunities for challengers or realignments that enhance those opportunities. In low-capacity, nondemocratic regimes, a great deal of contention occurs outside the reach of governmental agents, and consequently has less direct impact on the regime.”

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Amnesty International has strongly condemned an anti-terrorism law drawn up by Saudi Arabian authorities, which it says will criminalise political dissent.

The draft law, which is classified as secret, makes it an offence to question the integrity of the King or Crown Prince. Amnesty says it would “strangle peaceful protest”.

The BBC has been shown a classified copy of the draft law showing a number of measures Amnesty said would severely restrict human rights.

These include lengthy detention without trial, restricted legal access and increased use of the death penalty.
A Saudi official told the BBC it was directed at terrorists, not dissidents.

The Saudi government has so far declined to comment, but the senior official, who did not want to be named, confirmed the existence of the draft law and did not dispute the clauses contained in it.

Amnesty International’s Middle East press officer James Lynch told the BBC the draft law – a copy of which was leaked to the human rights group – “seeks to entrench some of the most repressive practices that Amnesty has been documenting for years”.

Among the measures proposed is a broadening of the definition of a terrorist crime to include any action deemed to be “harming the reputation of the state” or “endangering national unity”, the BBC reports.

Issues

Posted on July 21, 2011

A few.

David Cameron

Posted on July 17, 2011

I predicted two days ago that Cameron will be gone from office within a month.
Maybe I was being unduly pessimistic.

Now that’s how to build a career!

Posted on July 12, 2011

In 1976, Montesinos forged a presidential signature, sent himself on a mission to the United States, passed himself off as an official representative of the Peruvian government, then advised the Rand Corporation and the CIA on Peruvian military capabilities. The army riposted sternly: it court-martialed Montesinos, gave him a dishonorable discharge, and sent him to jail for a year. He studied law in prison, bought himself a law degree and admission to the bar, then began legal practice in defense of accused tax evaders and drug dealers. But he also started working closely with the Servicio de Inteligencia Nacional (SIN), the government’s domestic security agency.

I feel so sick

Posted on July 11, 2011

God, that’s just so awful.

“In October 2006, the then editor of the Sun, Rebekah Brooks, contacted the Browns to tell them that they had obtained details from the medical file of their four-month-old son, Fraser, which revealed that the boy was suffering from cystic fibrosis. This appears to have been a clear breach of the Data Protection Act, which would allow such a disclosure only if it was in the public interest. Friends of the Browns say the call caused them immense distress, since they were only coming to terms with the diagnosis, which had not been confirmed. The Sun published the story.”

Gellner and Greece

Posted on June 22, 2011

Industrial society is the only society ever to live by and rely on sustained and perpetual growth, on an expected and continuous improvement. Not surprisingly, it was the first society to invent the concept and ideal of progress, of continuous improvement. Its favoured mode of social control is universal Danegeld, buying off social aggression with material enhancement; its greatest weakness is its inability to survive any temporary reduction of the social bribery fund, and to weather the loss of legitimacy which befalls it if the cornucopia becomes temporarily jammed and the flow falters.

Am I really doing what I am doing…

Posted on June 22, 2011

… hmm. How did I end up speaking/reading Spanish and now speaking Chinese?

No idea. But I am sat here in a sweltering Taipei City, reading Auerbach’s Mimesis: La representacion de la realidad en la literatura occidental. So something happened.

Nations and nationalism

Posted on June 22, 2011

From Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism:

What underlies the two elements of the rational spirit of which Weber was clearly aware (orderliness and efficiency) is something deeper, well explored by Hume and Kant under the blithe impression that they were investigating the human mind in general: namely, a common measure of fact, a universal conceptual currency, so to speak, for the general characterization of ‘things; and the esprit d’analyse, forcefuliy preached and characterized already by Descartes. Each of these elements is presupposed by rationality, in the sense in which it concerns us, as the secret of the modem spirit. By the common or single conceptual currency I mean that all facts are located within a single continuous logical space, that statements reporting them can be conjoined and generally related to each other, and so that in principle one single language describes the world and is internally unitary; or on the negative side, that there are no special, privileged, insulated facts or realms, protected from contamination or contradiction by others, and living in insulated independent logical spaces of their own. Just this was, of course, the most striking trait of premodern, pre-rational visions: the co-existence within them of multiple, not properly united, but hierarchically related sub-worlds, and the existence of special privileged facts, sacralized and exempt from ordinary treatment.

Down and down and down

Posted on June 21, 2011

I let myself down. The heat, the pressure, the teeth. Down and down and down.

Grayling’s university

Posted on June 13, 2011

The Grayling plan is a natural outgrowth of this reality.

There is something weirdly essentialist about the proposition, as if a university with no history and without certain basic features, remains, somehow, a university.

Although, considering that professors have remained professors while narrowing down their duties to relegate teaching to a negligible concern, perhaps it’s not so surprising.

For the students, the progression is to basically stop acquiring knowledge, but to enjoy themselves, and to obtain excellent marks, regardless, as they have paid for the service rendered.

That the three terms ‘university’, ‘professor’ and ’student’ can continue to designate a place and two roles performed within it, is wonderful, a testament to the power of words to function ‘as pockets’, as Nietzsche and Wittgenstein observed, and to mean one thing at one time and another at some other point.

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