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Wednesday, July 12, 2017

Democracy: Culture of The rise of the “private government”

Democracy is safe very safe ... trust moi! 'Being called a nerd and a leader are now a compliment' ...

 WHO WANTS TO PUT DEMOCRACY IN CHAINS? Everyone
 An idea has taken root “that you’re entitled to certain things, that you don’t necessarily have to earn them,” he says. “There’s a belief that something’s wrong if you don’t have what other people have—that it’s because you’re ‘disadvantaged.’ A teenage dropout mother is told she has a disadvantage. But if you’re going to call the negative consequences of chosen behavior ‘disadvantage,’ the word is corrupt beyond repair and useful only for propaganda purposes.” 

Donald Trump junior delivers smoking gun on Russia butt -sic- who will it shoot

In June, the Supreme Court agreed to hear its virgin, first, partisan gerrymandering case in more than a decade. This case, Gill v. Whitford, involves a challenge to the district plan that Wisconsin passed for its state house after the 2010 Census. The case also involves a quantitative measure of gerrymandering — the efficiency gap — that has created a bit of a buzz. One reporter compares it to a “silver-bullet democracy theorem” and a “gerrymandering miracle drug.” Another speculates that it may be the “holy grail of election law jurisprudence.”

ATO staffer leaks phone hacking how-to online, reveals fraud ... [Cellebrite]

A tax office staffer has been disciplined after publishing a step-by-step guide to hack mobile phones, potentially teaching criminals to steal sensitive information 

Hacker Dumps iOS Cracking Tools Allegedly Stolen From Cellebrite - Slashdot
Cyber wrap | The Strategist
Hemingway in his day exemplified American macho. Now scholars are giving him a gender-fluid remake: A little less Papa, a little more Mama  Tato a Mamka  

Dangerous flaws in the structure of our governments: KGB characters can manipulate any election ;-)


R-CISC Member Webinar: Information Sharing on the Deep and Dark Web - R-CISC

Donald Trump Jr releases email plans to meet Russian lawyer

 Vladimir Putin would qualify to be a senior public servant anywhere in the world ;-)  Machiavellians tend to rise to the top of most human organisations Making America Great Again and Again ... ------ ... Russian Dirt on Clinton? 'I Love It,' Donald Trump Jr. Said


POLAND ACQUIRES PATRIOTS: Poland will deploy Patriot PAC-3 anti-ballistic missiles. Poland’s defense ministry made the announcement yesterday

 The “Iron Stache” Curtain: Randy Bryce, Russophobia and the Gain-Nothing Left Paste

Diane Coyle’s life in books



Harvard calls Turnbull’s behavioural economics chief back to his post

 The Mandarin A changing of the guard at BETA. 

HMM: Ships Exporting Iranian Oil Go Dark, Raising Sanctions Red Flags

New Liberal Party president Nick Greiner has criticised Tony Abbott's alternative policy agenda as impossible to implement and said the former prime minister's interventions were damaging the Turnbull government's standing in the polls.
Mr Geiner, a former NSW Liberal premier, was speaking after Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told a London think tank the Liberal Party was not "a conservative party" and that the "sensible centre" is the place to be. 




AUSTRALIA CONSIDERING TRADE SANCTIONS ON CHINA OVER NORTH KOREA?: The Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull is clarifying an earlier statement by the deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce. Australia doesn’t support sanctions against China but against Chinese companies that violate UN sanctions on North Korea. But the subject has been raised. Beijing will read it as a diplomatic signal.


“The United States is not going to allow the capacity for a despotic dictator from North Korea to fulfill his rhetoric and develop a nuclear warhead that could hit the US or its allies — for which, we are one.”




Millennials are rapidly losing interest in democracy
WEF. In a paper published by Roberto Stefan Foa of the University of Melbourne and Yascha Mounk of Harvard shows that the proportion of people who support “having a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament or elections” has risen across the world over the past 25 years, in many cases considerably.  Millennials have become less attached to the importance of voting.



The rise of the “private government” Bill Mitchell



CHINA used to copy the world and now the world copies China. And far from being just a poor communist country, China is now a huge economic force. That’s according to author Barry Li who said China has transformed itself into a major political, economic and social leader. Mr Li, who has just released The New Chinese: How They Are Changing Australia said there was more to the Asian nation than most of us realized.



 Private Equity Sees No End to the Drug and Mental-Health Gold Rush Bloomberg

 Hackers Paradise: Cloud infrastructure, biometric ID could be used by NSW’s iVote system

'OMG I HAVE THE BEST IDEA': Work emails detail alleged ActewAGL fraud
Court documents reveal an email trail police say implicates two former employees of ActewAGL in a plot to steal thousands of dollars from customers' accounts.

Hated by the Right. Mocked by the Left. Who Wants to Be ‘Liberal’ Anymore? NYT. The idea that today, liberals and conservatives are two flavors of neoliberal seems to elude The Grey Lady

 Now involving Reddit and neo-Nazis, the spiraling Trump-CNN feud is 2017 in a nutshell LA Times
EU chief mocks Brexit by comparing Britain’s trade ambitions to a Monty Python sketch Telegraph The Black Knight, of course. “Just a flesh wound.”


Australia, your misplaced fear is giving terrorists exactly what they want



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What are Australians so afraid of? Why has fear started to paralyse your once-confident and uber-relaxed nation? A recent ANU poll revealed that almost half of you (45 per cent) are now concerned that you or one of your family members could become the ...
Slate:  Thank Your Taxes: They’re the Real Reason We Have a Democracy, by Adam Chodorow (Arizona State): 
Forget what you may have learned about the Enlightenment: Modern Western democracy is nothing more than a byproduct of a series of tax disputes.
While the Greeks and Romans had democratic institutions, most trace the beginnings of modern Western democracy to the 1215 signing of the Magna Carta at Runnymede. King John, the third of England’s Angevin monarchs, claimed lands in France to which the French also laid claim. John attempted to win them back to no avail. Wars are expensive, and John sought to pay for them by taxing England’s nobles, who did not take kindly to his attentions. They revolted and eventually forced him to sign the Magna Carta—which, among other things, required the king to obtain consent before imposing certain taxes. In other words, the nobles extracted a say in government in return for the king’s right to tax them, conditioning that right upon the consent of the governed. Over time the English built upon these agreements, eventually leading to the democratic parliamentary system that exists today.

There’s A Revolution Happening In The Arts Right Now (And It’s Changing Everything)


“This new radical democratization threatens critics, just as it does well-paid artistic directors, executive directors, curators and all kinds of other gatekeeper types in the cultural universe, which explains why some say we/they react defensively to any grass-roots rebellion.”
 What might we be learning from Google sex searches.  Is a marginal vs. infra-marginal distinction relevant here?  Maybe you search for what you are curious about because you don’t have it at the margin, rather than it being your core desire

Public service not corrupt, says public service



Private companies accessing student data fuels commercialisation ...








 Just a contemplative philosopher?Montaigne’s life was full of misadventure: He fled mobs, was kidnapped by bandits, was exiled from the city where he was mayor Another Bloody Imrich  

Kill Me Now:

Why Some Men Don’t Work: Video Games Have Gotten Really Good New York Times (UserFriendly). Another “underserving poor” framing courtesy the Grey Lady.
Bill Kristol: US reliving decline and fall of Rome under Trump The Hill (furzy). Ahem, we’ve been on this trajectory for a while now…for instance:

In advance of Trump and Putin’s first meeting, on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Hamburg, I decided to ask Russia’s sharpest and most experienced political journalists and investigative reporters what they thought of this coverage…
On the whole, said Mikhail Zygar, a political journalist and the author of “All the Kremlin’s Men,” a well-sourced insider look at the cloistered world of Russian politics, the way the U.S. media has covered the Russia scandal has made “Putin seem to look much smarter than he is, as if he operates from some master plan.” The truth, Zygar told me, “is that there is no plan—it’s chaos.”

And:

The most important thing that U.S. reporters should remember, Shleinov told me, is that “money is fleeing Russia in all directions, people are trying to invest anywhere they can, to get their assets out before the secret services or their competitors show up and try and take them all.” On the whole, Shleinov said, a wealthy Russian—even a politically connected one—is likely buying real estate abroad “as a place to run to,” not on Putin’s orders.

Speculative, but interesting throughout, there is also much on the possible Trump-Putin connections.
New York Times, Does God Want You to Spend $300,000 for College?










 Collapsing ceilings and no working toilets: Sears workers describe decay in failing stores Business Insider

 





EY, July 2017. The study shines a spotlight on Australians’ digital consumption and behaviours, as well as their attitudes and experiences in the digital age. *Full report

How SeaWorld Disregards Its Shareholders NYT. Gretchen Morgenson’s latest

 What can newsrooms learn from churches? More than a month in, the Membership Puzzle Project is asking big questions

Following up on my recent post, Wonder Woman And Female Law Professors:  Nick Allard (Dean, Brooklyn) reviews Wonder Woman: At this time of year I am frequently asked by our eager and bright eyed, newly admitted students, what to do over the summer to prepare for beginning the rigors of law school. This summer I am telling them to go see the hit movie Wonder Woman. After all, we already know they have what it takes to be fine lawyers and they are already well prepared.   So they might as well have a little fun and watch a terrific flick about the triumph of good over evil

What do Chris Christie and Rahm Emanuel have in common? The press ruined their holidays



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