You see Detroit is not so bad after all. Well, actually, due to the Super Bowl and other maniacal powers that be, the stellar window paintings were erased, giving view instead to the drabbness that is unoriginal urban management. But Detroit is still cool for other reasons, especially the massive
urban green
renewal efforts.

This one-day conference on Radical Politics and the Ethics of Life is being held at Columbia University this Friday. Here is some more information about it:

Urban guerrilla groups have brought into focus key political and ethical questions about the relationships between violence and humanism, violence and politics, and violence and the ethics of life that have been raised and remain unanswered since the October Revolution.

This one day event will stage a series of encounters between activists, theorists, and students in order to bring to light and to explore the political aporias erected by the praxis of urban guerrilla groups in Europe and the United States from the 1960s to the1980s. Up for discussion will be the relationships between pedagogy and activism; law and resistance; race and the struggles of black and white worker’s movements; and the relationship of the individual to law, aesthetics, ecology…and an ethical commitment to peace. What recourse to resistance do we, as citizens of liberal democratic states, have when we observe those states disregard and break the law and engage in actions and tactics for which they have no mandate?

Join Bill Ayers (University if Illinois), Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Columbia University), Bernadine Dohrn (Northwestern University), Georgy Katsiaficas (Wentworth Institute of Technology), Panama Alba (Revson Fellow, Columbia University), Sally Bermanzohn (Brooklyn College), Felicity Scott (University of California, Irvine), Robin Kelley (Columbia University), Ritty Lukose (University of Pennsylvania), Elizabeth Povinelli (Columbia University), Maria Koundoura (Emerson College), Stathis Gourgouris (UCLA), Eleni Varikas (Paris VIII), Jeremy Varon (Drew University) and students for a day of dialogic interventions on this important question.

This documentary on Walmart is showing tonight. You can also download the movie on the site.

Denied citizens

Mental health and human rights

World Health Organization (WHO) Exposes
a Global Emergency of Human Rights
Violations in the Mental Health System.

MindFreedom Welcomes WHO’s Announcement,
Calls for “International Mobilization.”

The World Health Organization announced they
are dedicating International Human Rights Day,
10 December, to all people diagnosed with
mental disorders “and the all-too-prevalent
violations of their basic human rights.”

To draw attention to this crisis the World
Health Organization (WHO) has created a new
online photo essay called ‘Forgotten People:
Mental Health and Human Rights,” along with
other new materials and a press conference.

MindFreedom International, as a
Non Governmental Organization (NGO)
accredited by the UN, has worked
with WHO for two years encouraging
a focus on the topic of human
rights and mental health.

MindFreedom director David Oaks
said, “While we have so very much
that we seek to change about the
mental health system, including
at WHO, we are gratified to see
that WHO is exposing the emergency
of human rights in the mental health
system to people internationally.”

MindFreedom issued a call for an
“International mobilization of
resources for a nonviolent
revolution throughout the mental
health system.”

Lawyers Evaluate Censure of Merck
# As jurors deliberate in one Vioxx trial, experts say Merck will be hurt in the many other cases.

By Lisa Girion, Times Staff Writer

Jurors continued deliberating Friday in the latest Vioxx trial as some legal experts said Merck & Co.’s defense against thousands of similar lawsuits would be hurt by an accusation that company scientists had downplayed the pain reliever’s heart attack risk.

A rare “expression of concern” posted online Thursday by New England Journal of Medicine editors chastised Merck scientists for failing to report three nonfatal heart attacks among Vioxx users who were at low risk of cardiac problems.

The editors said two scientists employed by Merck knew about the three heart attacks more than four months before the journal published an article by the scientists about a Vioxx study conducted in 2000. The editors said they determined that information about the heart attacks had been deleted two days before the article was submitted.

The editors also said the three heart attacks would have led to different conclusions about the risk of Vioxx, particularly among users who were not predisposed to heart problems.

Merck representatives did not return calls Friday. The company issued a statement Thursday saying the heart attacks had been reported after a cutoff date for data for the study. Merck also said it promptly disclosed the three heart attacks to the Food and Drug Administration, as well as in a news release.

….

Whether it is the Incompatible Timesharing System from the early days at the MIT lab, Unix, or the Internet, it is clear that hackers encode and realize values through the making of various technologies. But this encoding is not always straightforward and it tends to embody a multiplicity of potentialities that get realized in sometimes conflicting modes.

As interesting is that geeks theorize this, and do so in a dialogically, enganged manner. The following 2 blog entries are by Debian developers and they are about Debian, Unix permissions, and the ways in which openness/opaquness foster different forms of access and possiblities. I don’t have time now to give any analysis but here they are:

From From Joey Hess’ Blog:

I could give many more examples of subsystems in Debian that exist at different point in the spectrum between locked down unix permissions and a wiki. There seems to be a definite pull toward moving away from unix permissions, once ways can be found to do so that are secure or that allow bad changes to be reverted (and blame properly assigned). Cases of moving in the other direction are rare (one case of this is the further locking down of the Debian archive server and BTS server after the server compromise last year).

Anyway, the point of this is that, if you survey the parts of dealing with the project where Debian developers feel most helpless and unempowered, the parts that are over and over again the subject of heated discussions and complaints, you will find that those are the parts of the project where unix permissions still hold sway. This can range from simple cases such as a cron job that only one person can look at and modify[1], to various data files that could perhaps be kept in svn, but aren’t, all the way through to stuff like the Debian keyring. I would love to see a full list developed, although many of the things that remain are obscure little corners like certian blacklists in the BTS, bits of the buildd infrastructure that only a half dozen people know about, etc.

And then a reply from former Debian release manager, Anthony Towns:

One interesting approach, to my mind, is worrying less about permissions and more about space – so that different people with different ideas on how to do things can do them independently. That’s part of the idea behind usertags and usercategories: rather than having people try to find an imperfect compromise, let them work on the same stuff in the way they actually prefer. That reduces the risk of carelessness, in that you stop having any reason to bother other people, and also reduces the problem of restrictions, in that if you don’t have permission to work in someone else’s area, you can just setup your own area and work there.

Perhaps the worst problem is if the drawbacks feed on each other: a restrictive system turns away contributions, which causes prospective contributors to get frustrated and hence careless, which then reinforces the reasons that the restrictions were put their in the first place and diminishes the chance they’ll be reconsidered. That’s a hard cycle to break, but it’s not one where anyone really wins.

Yesterday Peter Jaszi who was at the forefront of the critique of authorship project in the early 1990s, came to visit at the Center for Cultural Analysis. During his seminar presentation as well as public talk on his project he brought up some very interesting points about the limits of the Creative Commons project when discussing copyright activism aimed at building a strong fair use foundation for documentary film makers.

His critique of the Creative Commons was the following: In affirming the creation of a commons through individual choice and voluntary gifting, it trivializing the importance of public rights and access that are built in to the copyright system. The danger is that we will end up with two different systems in which the commons material will only arise from those creators willing to relinquish some of the exlusive rights of copyrights. This is quite valid and perceptive. But in many ways, given the seemingly unstoppable movement of copyright law toward greater protections, I think the only way to put a stop to it was through the creation of an alternative model. In this case, legislation and policy was not going to do the trick.

That said, now that there is a robust alternative, now that the hegemony of IP assumptions have been punctured, it does seem more imperative than ever to foment a copyright culture that respects, much more than it does now, the idea of public access and goods.

This is where in fact Jaszi is channeling his energy. He is one of the folks behind the Best Practices in Fair Use at the Center for Social Media. It is a project aimed at cultivating an ethic for greater access and set of best practices among documentary filmmakers who are being strangled financially because of licensing fees for music and other materials.

According to his talk last night, in the last decade there has been a “fair use renaissance” honoring the principle. This project fosters this awakening in the realm of documentary film by creating a set of best practices that are presented to courts who apparently are quite interested in what communities of practices do in regard to their craft. On top of it, they are using this material in film schools which seems so essential. So much of our professional ethics derive from educational socialization so this is vital component to this project.

Infants need mental health checks .

tenth of two to five-year-olds have a serious psychiatric illness, yet most cases are being missed, warn experts.

The problems go beyond tantrums and bad behaviour and impact negatively on all aspects of an infant’s life, the Institute of Psychiatry will hear.

And failure to spot and treat these conditions early is causing unnecessary distress and suffering.

Mental health services need to be geared towards very young children as a matter of urgency, they said.

The news comes as a survey of 1,000 young people aged 12-19 by The Priory Group finds as many as one in five teenagers has considered or actually harmed themselves purposefully because of feelings of failure and social inadequacy.

A few days ago I posted on various articles critical of a new class of pharmacological drugs. Just found out there were even more:

Wallstreet Journal:
Some Drugs Work To Treat Depression, But It Isn’t Clear How

United Press Internationl:
Study: Public misled by depression ads

WebMD:
Essay questions the role of anti-depressants

When I was young, one of my fondest experiences were impending hurricanes. Schools would close, we would stock up the house with supplies, my best friend’s family would throw a hurricane party dinner, my family would experience a rare sense of togetherness, and the rains and winds would come howling to leave you homebound till the furious winds made their way to some other Caribbean island.

From what I remember, 2-3 were about to strike Puerto Rico when I was a kid, but never did. Until Hurricane Hugo which hit September 1989. A category five storm, it was a merciless and was the costliest in US history until Andrew in 1992 (and I wonder if Katrina has taken over that distinction). I remember the hurricane well because these events leave an unforgettable imprint on your memory for they disrupt the everyday quality of life. Nothing is normal. I was a little annoyed actually because I was about to get my drivers license and this hurricane ruined my impending independence from bumming rides off of parents and friends.

Once the hurricane hit, I could care less about anything as petty as a license. When the hurricane got close enough to the island so that it felt “real,” I freaked out a little and I left where I lived with my father close to the ocean, to my mom’s house which was more inland. Once there, I spent most of the time watching large object fly by at speeds that seemed too fast for those objects. I was awestruck.

After the storm passed, the atmosphere was dense, heavy and especially hot. Any tree cover was gone, and if there wind had been with us for days, it all but vanished with the departure of the storm. The streets were filled with new objects that clearly did not belong there. Chunks of concrete. Tree roots. Telephone poles. And especially glass. Crunchy glass was the new floor, inches deep, it was omnipresent, causing you to look up at the buidlings now left with gaping holes.

We had no electricity and water for weeks but despite the discomfort, I remember the time fondly. It brought folks together, especially neighbors, in ways that were just impossible before. Time had slowed down because we could not use anything electrical. I fell in love for the first time during that period, via a book, Love in the Time of Cholera which took up most of my sweaty nights when I would read, under the glow of a flashlight starting at 8 pm till I got sleepy and passed out.

Life eventually normalized though many of course were left more poor, more insecure after the storm, as happens with such natural events.

I tell this short story because this weekend I read a short essay by the writer and activist, Rebecca Solnit in Harpers The Uses of Disasters which sparked many of these fond memories. I like many of Harper’s essays but I took special delight in this one because she confronted beautifully the odd question as to why we can take pleasure in natural disasters, especially when they are accompanied by misery, destruction, and death.

The answer lies in part because of the disruption of the normal, the commonsense, the opportunity for “a sense of fellowship to arise” in which humans labor and connect to help each other independent of centralized authorities and the state. It is a moment of reflection, where the outcome is uncertain; where and when political change can often follow:

“The aftermath of disaster is often peculiarly hopeful, and in the rupture of the ordinary, real changes often emerge. But this means that disaster threatens not only bodies, building, and property, but also the status quo. Disaster recovery is not just a resecute of the needy but also a scramble for power and legitimacy, one that the status quo usually—but not always—wins.”

She likens disasters to carnivals for it “is a peak moment” which is profound because “what you see from the peak stays with you while you traverse the plateau of everyday life.”

She theorizes that perhaps disaster take on special importance because in our society we lack these collective moments of carnival. I think however, as much as natural disasters do share a similar status to carnival and her essay argues this well, natural disasters do stand on their own as a type of event, one which is profound, for it brings into stark awareness how we can ethically respond to the world around us.

We are limited and constrained by many things in life; social norms, structures of governments, natural events, etc. There are elements of life our of our control. But there are clearly moments and times and instances that are in our control when we can shift the balance, so that we take some control to alter the path we traverse. Natural disasters unambigously provide such a moment (and while Carnival can, not so starkly). An event has befallen us that is uncontrollable. What we can control is the response to others, and in this way, natural disaster’s do and can take on a strong hue of liberation.

For those who have not read this piece, well, it is probably clear by now that I wholeheartedly recommend it.