byzantine

Yesterday marked the beginning of the internet's hour of desperate need, and I hope that the exposure and message sent reaches its intended audience. The vote, and perhaps subsequent hearings and challenges, however, is just a formal codification of the shady dealings that are happening in regimes the world over to silence the voice of dissent. The same champions of this current legislation shut-down Wikileaks as revelations were unfolding furiously and with the same attitude (but not with the same gravity, yet) as the dictators that tried to stop the uprisings of the Arab Spring. Though it is not the only insidious facet of the bills revealed, one major complaint of websites is the expected burden of policing every link, every tangent of what they post and of what they host, with criminal consequences for non-compliance. Most websites, fearful of litigation, will just give up or become expatriates, though there is probably not much of a margin for escaping.  

There is additionally the potential for oligopoly on the internet by a few media sources and, by extension, the chance to regulate the flow of misinformation.  The internet is just a series of tubes, but it is also a medium that is free and open and patched together by architects that do not suffer being bound by red-tape.  It seems to me that for whatever reason, possibly thrashing out against loss of power or prestige, the US government or its minders have taken to a new strategy when it comes to getting their way: a convoluted, byzantine legal support structure that places a Sisyphean labour on the public at large, like this obligation to make sure all ones commentary is copacetic or the reporting requirements of the US Internal Revenue Service imposed on foreign banks that would make them shun American clients (and investments) over the paperwork and administrative costs involved.  Just as if the government were serious about generating tax revenue, they would make businesses pay their fair share, SOPA and PIPA will not be effective in curbing piracy and copyright violations by "foreign rogue sites."  Maybe the Super Powers are expecting the rabble to do their patrolling, under threat of torture, or maybe these policies, which no one even bothers reading in full, are hopelessly complex by design, wearying one into submission. 

degrees of separation

I bet people were missing Wikipedia and the thousands of other sites that went dark in protest, in order to avoid going black permanently if the US passes laws to unmake the internet and cede its potential to handful of media outlets and copyright holders. Since when did a trade mark become a royal signet seal, a talisman that less about authorship (or royalties) and more akin to a deed or title, that's passed around like so many underwater mortgages, either held in jealous trust or readapted and repackaged with diminishing creativity? Nothing quite matches Wikipedia, not just as a reference source because it happens to be within easy reach, but also as a copilot, a navigator--whose future comes into question because of passing acquaintance with proprietary materials, no matter how far removed. A lot of time spent on the computer can be an aimless pursuit, but there are some, saving moments in between the predictable and necessary gears and cogs of unfiltered, immediate reporting and illimitless comparison.
That some websites are taking a stance on a politically pregnant issue, does raise questions of maintaining neutrality and insulating influence, but when pressed into free-determination over expurgation, there is the matter of self-defense, survival and keeping the entire substrate of the internet fertile and useful. Courts in the UK recently ruled that links do not constitute libel, and I wonder how citation, just as modern arts are sometimes dismissed as footnotes to the Classics, can mean guilt by association. Hobby and opinion should not be empowered at the expense of another's entitlement and no one is proposing otherwise, and one's voice and access should not be sacrificed to ownership, and unfortuneately is what some propose.  I personally felt at a lost and a little ungrounded without a dose of science and the humanities, enough to excite the curiosity and endure like an after-image beyond the competition for attention. Hopefully the message is resounding and we take the time to appreciate those tools and movements that are an integral part of learning and teaching.

kauderwelsch

Since 1994 linguists from the Association for the German Language along with journalists and authors have gathered to nominate an Unwort (Un-word) of the Year, picking a neologism that's made its way into common-parlance but butchers the language. The nature and construction of the German language, compounding modifier and substantive in long and novel chains not just for the nonce but also for public-consumption, celebrates invention as well, but Unwörte general fill a need that’s not there, sort of like the English equivalent of "irregardless" or "misunderestimate" or "refudiate," and many past candidates do originate with American buzzwords.

The jury announced that the winner for 2011 was "Döner-Morde," which is a little dark but importantly draws attention to the type of soft, dismissive and maybe apathetic racism and prejudice that has disturbingly become much too prevalent and tolerated. It is shorthand that marks the spree of coordinated extremists murders that targeted minorities all over Germany that went nearly unnoticed for a decade. The term is meant to be demeaning and reflects the ignorance of authorities and politicians who might be as prone to reduce someone to a stereotype based on assumption. People with Turkish ancestry living in Germany are often associated with running Döner Imbißen (stands, lunch-counters) and such labeling may have prevented police from seeing the scope of the murder series and terrible ideas that have taken root. Grammarians are not usually social activists and perhaps it would have been more in keeping with the light mood of the contest to use some fashionable term from finance or Merkozy or the whole trend, out of some weird hurricane-envy, of naming all the storm fronts (Orkan) that pass through, but they are right in that the timbre of communication does reflect the times.

barnard’s star or space oddity

The BBC has an item on a newly expanded public science project, called Planet Hunters, which invites volunteers to scour time-lapse images of some 150,000 stellar groups captured during the Kepler mapping mission. It is incredible and inspiring to think in the span of less than a decade, astronomy has gone virtually from uncertainty whether any planet was outside of our own Solar System to over seven-hundred confirmed extra-solar planets. Scientists posit that all stars host a planetary system of some kind, so there's a lot to be discovered yet. Computers have identified many potential candidates but computers are very good at spotting patterns in the universes that they create, and I am sure human recruits with wonder and imagination will be able to point out many more.  The Zodiac and its underlying mythology is a very human invention, a means to cope with mysteries and the the unknown, but the calendars and charts that were shook out of that approach have not been surplanted or bested. Being a part of such a project, I think, would be a much more constructive use of my well-honed skills for match games and mah jongg and I am very excited to contribute.

blackout warden

Although the White House and the US congressional contingency sponsoring SOPA has flinched, abandoning language that provides for a government firewall that blocks out whole swathes of the internet, nodding to some expert testimony and perhaps in hope of appeasing protestors who demonstrated how DNS blacklisting could invite more security problems and damage the architecture of the internet, the remaining provisions of SOPA are still devious and misguided and give Hollywood too many choke-points (any link), to stifle creativity and reporting. On Wednesday (18. January), many diverse websites are going dark in protest to this bill’s impending passage, to illustrate how broke down the internet could become if America enacts this law. People world-wide ought to join in, because the internet knows no borders, and no one suffered the privations or propaganda that tried to quell past and more recent uprisings. America fortunately does not control the internet, though maybe pressure is mounting for the US to act as if it does, and ought to receive a strong signal that such meddling in media and in politics and in the economy is unwelcome, especially through such cowardly, backdoor channels.

streitkräfte

Following the America's Secretary of Defense's (Verteigdingungsministers) announcement—rather, confirmation, that part of US redesign of a leaner and cost-effective military would involve reduction of the army's presence in Europe, the German press made some pointed observations, probably pin-pointing areas for closure, which has been the subject of desperate and heated speculation to a select niche of German communities. Planned reductions in the size of the Bundeswehr, following the end of universal conscription, has already delivered bad news to some towns and villages that came to rely on money that soldiers and Soldaten spent locally.

I am sure that the guess-work will continue, and the US army as a familiar of the US government certainly cannot be relied on to commit to the most logical course of action. I believe Germany will see some transformation but will continue to host its American partners. Regional threats have changed as has the purpose of America's far-flung garrisons, but I think the United States would imperil itself further by wholly quitting its European presence, hollowing out its military, for the sake of savings that surely won't materialise. Despite strains and disagreements, America's NATO partners have assisted in their belligerent adventures because of this presence. Working-exchanges between guest- and host-armies are especially strong in Germany, and there are a lot of joint-training exercises. Without this partnership and immediate closeness, what waning support and cooperation, especially after decommissioning their ability to sustain battles on multiple fronts, will go away altogether.

kurzfrist

The news of a rash of downgrades in credit-worthiness, both for the short-term and the long-haul, was generally taken with a healthy wince and a shrug by the governments of Europe.  After all, people who live in glass houses ought not throw stones: despite what prognosis rating agencies in the United States threaten, which only speak to a skittish cabal, a massive underclass of underwriters enabling a more elite class of cooler heads to continue exercising grander manipulations, that does not discount the fact that a group of seventeen and twenty-seven nations, with different cultures, languages and priorities are still willing to engage one another peacefully and fairly in order to work things out.

Meanwhile, the US (which also does not enjoy a rating par excellence) has a legislative body that has not been able to agree on a budget for a more monolithic and formerly agile union for over three years now and has been operating on temporary measures while its sovereign debt has continued to swell. The EU is keenly aware of this sort of stalemate, political and economic, and the irony of the speed of its own deliberations. Reaction to opinions--especially considering the source, those same fashion-mavens that so enthusiastically commended the sub-prime mortgage market and encouraged exposure and contagion to a whole series of booms and busts, may drive markets but not real economies.

tabloid and broadsheet

The US Heimatschutz (Department of Homeland Security) disclosed that since at least June 2010 it has been operating a Social Networking and Media Capability charged with monitoring popular websites for trends and intelligence. I would be very surprised if such surveillance was not happening all along--after all, in those infernal anti-terrorism/operational security (OPSEC) that we’ve through annually for years now, we’re battered with examples of evil-doers gleaning valuable data from the same sources, seemingly innocuous until pieced together. The admission, I am sure, is not complete and does not reveal the entire scope of the operation, but it strikes me as a little pathetic that the approach of America's security and intelligence apparatus is merely a reflection of our own gossipy idleness and that the triangulation and predictive abilities are no more sophisticated than what any of us can access and do on a regular basis.

Most of these sites are sounding boards and aggregators that drive what people may read and research further but contain little original reporting nor opinion. I guess I am a little disappointed that there is nothing as clandestine and imaginative as the agency that Robert Redford worked for at the beginning of Sidney Pollock’s adaptation of "Six Days of the Condor," where bookworms scoured all sorts of publications, including pulp-fiction, for new ideas, plots and plans. Ruminating what's there for public consumption is the modus operandi of spammers and censors and trolls, and not the work of discreet professionals. It is probably the least invasive tact taken in the name of protecting the US people (ostensibly from themselves) but still very disconcerting for the US DHS to own up to reading over one's shoulder.