Demise of the Nation State???

The British Indian novelist and essayist Rana Dasgupta recently wrote a very long earnest piece about the alleged demise of the nation-state. You should read it. Dasgupta makes a few good points. It is true that many rights which we don't normally allow governments to violate (at least in theory or without a really good reason established via due process) are "violated" every single day by corporations. Corporations have become powerful enough to begin to unfetter themselves from meaningful oversight or control by some of the nations where they do business. It's true that for some countries that globalization has caused greater diversity and in others raised average incomes. Dasgupta badly missteps when he argues that globalization in its current form is inevitable or that the increasing nationalism in some countries is merely a reactionary last gasp against needed permanent change to political, economic and cultural systems. Dasgupta tips his hand near the end of this piece. Dasgupta doesn't evince much interest in independently occurring nationalist, sectarian, ethnic or racial feelings outside the West, though their intensity can rival anything in today's West. 

No the main point that Dasgupta wants you to take away from this 6000 word essay is something that he initially obfuscates but ultimately just can't resist bluntly stating. He thinks that citizenship itself is manifestly unfair. To be precise, Dasgupta thinks that citizenship in the West and especially citizenship in the United States is unfair. And he wants to end it, primarily to make people in the Third World wealthier.

The history of the nation state is one of perennial tax innovation, and the next such innovation is transnational: we must build systems to track transnational money flows, and to transfer a portion of them into public channels. Without this, our political infrastructure will continue to become more and more superfluous to actual material life. In the process we must also think more seriously about global redistribution: not aid, which is exceptional, but the systematic transfer of wealth from rich to poor for the improved security of all, as happens in national societies.

President Trump Attacks Syria Again

In response to what he claimed were chemical weapon attacks against Syrian rebels, President Trump ordered missile attacks against targets in Syria. These bombings were done in concert with France and the UK on Friday night. The number of casualties and other damage is at this time unclear.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States, France and Britain launched military strikes in Syria to punish President Bashar Assad for an apparent chemical attack against civilians and to deter him from doing it again, President Donald Trump announced Friday. Pentagon officials said the attacks targeted the heart of Assad's programs to develop and produce chemical weapons.

Explosions lit up the skies over Damascus, the Syrian capital, as Trump spoke from the White House. Syrian television reported that Syria's air defenses, which are substantial, responded to the attack. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said there were no reports of U.S. losses in what he described as a heavy but carefully limited assault.

Trump said the U.S. is prepared to sustain economic, diplomatic and military pressure on Assad until he ends what the president called a criminal pattern of killing his own people with internationally banned chemical weapons. "The evil and the despicable attack left mothers and fathers, infants and children, thrashing in pain and gasping for air. These are not the actions of a man; they are crimes of a monster instead," Trump said. The Syrian government has repeatedly denied any use of banned weapons.

The decision to strike, after days of deliberations, marked Trump's second order to attack Syria. He authorized a barrage of Tomahawk cruise missiles to hit a single Syrian airfield in April 2017 in retaliation for Assad's use of sarin gas against civilians. The strikes that hit early Saturday in Syria came hours before inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons were set to arrive to inspect the site of the apparent attack. LINK

Rochester Hills White Homeowner shoots at Black Teen for asking directions

I've written previously about how racial stereotypes and assumptions can be hurtful or irritating and harmful to your career or health. However, when the people who make snap judgments are armed and fearful, such assumptions can be dangerous to your life. We see white cops do this with black people on a regular basis. But police are not separate from their community, but a part of it. The ultimate problem is not with the police but with people in all job categories who see black skin and immediately assume the worst.

Police just happen to be the most likely to get away with acting on racist assumptions. Fourteen year old Rochester Hills, Michigan high school student Brennan Walker missed the bus to school. He had to walk. He didn't know the route as well as he thought he did. So he knocked on a door in the neighborhood to ask directions. Well the woman of the house thought that he was trying to break in. She screamed. And the man of the house grabbed his shotgun and shot at young Master Walker. Rochester Hills is about 25 miles north of Detroit and like many southeastern Michigan communities is filled with the kinds of people who aren't too happy about black people breathing the same air they do. Walker is lucky to be alive. I am trying to imagine asking for help and being shot at. That will leave an emotional scar on the young man. People saw him and for no other reason than his race and gender assumed he was a deadly threat at the tender age of fourteen. How will his parents explain that to him? Being Black means you will never get the benefit of the doubt. Period.

The walk to school turned terrifying for a Rochester teen who says he was shot at after he stopped to ask for directions. Fourteen-year-old Brennan Walker missed the bus and tried to walk to school, but got lost after he couldn't remember the route.The freshman wasn't hit, as the shot missed him as he ran away.

Movie Reviews: The Spinning Man

The Spinning Man
directed by Simon Kaijser
Temptation, frustration/so bad it makes him cry/Wet bus stop/she's waiting/his car is warm and dry

This is a competent thriller film that makes more than a few nods to Memento and Gone Girl. There was nothing that was remarkably original in this movie but it will keep you guessing which is I suppose worth something. This film might be a good example of there only being a few stories that are retold over and over again. Humans are after motivated by many of the same things no matter if we are separated by time, space, age and sex. 
The two film leads did yeoman work but I couldn't help but feel that there were a few motivations cut out of this movie that might have been better left in the finished product. The film works as an intellectual exercise in whodunnint, which is perhaps purposely ironic considering that the primary protagonist is a philosophy professor. But I didn't really have any emotional investment in whether or not this fellow was guilty of a crime.

Evan Birch (Guy Pearce) is an up and coming college philosophy professor who is trying to turn over a new leaf. To use a line from the movie Clue, you know that thing that professors aren't supposed to do with their students? Well Evan did. Having either left or been forced out of his previous position, Evan and his wife Ellen (Minnie Driver) and their young children have settled in at a university with slightly less prestige. But a job is a job. And a man is a man. Evan very soon finds himself in a flirtatious (and perhaps more?) relationship with one of his students, the almost worshipful Anna (Alexandra Shipp). Evan probably should stop making goo-goo eyes at women who are not his wife but Evan has a very flexible definition of morality and truth. And judging by his internal fantasies, Evan has a surfeit of testosterone. 

Judge Vonda Evans And Short Workdays

I work in a professional white collar environment. Usually (90% of the time) the work is constant and frantic. People have little time to do anything but their paid work. On other occasions work slows down and you see/hear people doing things like checking Facebook, buying things on Amazon, playing Sudoku, discussing sports, gossiping, talking to loved ones on the phone, complaining about spouses, or (ahem) writing blog posts. Some of the higher-ups don't like this very much but most people are professional. Work comes first. Unless your boss really doesn't like you or you go out of your way to embarrass your boss by ostentatiously slacking off, he or she probably won't demand that you account for every last minute of your work day. Everything generally should come out even in the end. I remember that once a boss questioned a co-worker who was leaving a few hours early. Without missing a beat the co-worker asked our mutual boss if he had heard of casual overtime. The boss replied that of course he had. The co-worker responded that then the boss could consider the early departure time casual undertime. 

Every company or organization has a different culture.The trick is to know your organization's written and unwritten rules. However, wherever you work, regularly getting to work two or three hours after the normal start time and consistently leaving two or three hours before the normal leave time is going to attract negative attention from co-workers and more importantly bosses. Doing something like that makes it very obvious that you're not doing the work that agreed to do. Your boss can't ignore this because if she doesn't correct it other workers will start to do the same thing. Your boss might see your actions as a direct challenge to her authority. Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Vonda Evans, a judge with a certain reputation for a short fuse and sharp tongue, has apparently decided that she will keep her own hours thank you very much. 

Former Caretaker Visits Rescue Dogs

Dogs are the most wonderful pets in the world. Absent allergies or other medical issues, I don't understand how anyone can't be a dog person. But it takes all kinds I guess. The below video shows how happy dogs can be to see someone they remember who treated them kindly.

You’ve probably heard the old saying, ‘dogs have no concept of time’. Some people believe that a dog can’t discern a minute from an hour, but this just isn’t true. Dogs simply remember differently than humans. If you’ve been gone for more than a day, expect a much happier reunion, than if you’d just stepped out for a couple hours.

Dogs are gifted creatures, able to catalog a myriad of scents and recognize faces. Imagine a situation where a former employee stops over for a visit at the Dogs Deserve Better rehab center. Upon his return, his dogs greet him as though he was absent for ages. This affection is a testament to the dogs’ incredible ability to recognize their master. Thanks to these canines’ olfactory memory, they remember scents long after they have been exposed to them, so they are able to associate him with his smell.

Movie Reviews: The Snowman

The Snowman
directed by Tomas Alfredson

This is a detective crime thriller based in Norway. Unfortunately I found it way too derivative of many other films, primarily Insomnia and Seven. But if being derivative was a bad thing hardly any movies would be made or watched. Worse than being derivative I simply couldn't relate to or sympathize with any of the characters. I wonder if this movie would have been better if it was made with Norwegian actors speaking their native tongue and subtitled in English. The film definitely got across that it was set somewhere besides New York or London. But even though it was shot in Norway with beautiful sets and locations, I never believed that the primary actors were Norwegian.

And that's because by and large they weren't. Alfredson directed the hit Swedish horror thriller Let The Right One In. It felt like The Snowman was an attempt to capitalize on his previous success as well as that of other set in Scandinavia films such as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. There's something that can be spooky about settings in the far north with people who are either gloomily introverted or gloriously drunk but this movie didn't reach those heights. This was a movie that was made for background watching. And no movie should be made for just having on while you do something else.

The convoluted plot tried to say something about men, women and responsibility but it missed the mark. If the writers and actors give the strong impression of not caring about the story then why should the viewer. Don't get me wrong. A film can have insane, contradictory and downright confusing storyline and still be a masterpiece, witness The Big Sleep. That story was so up in the air and all over the place that when the director and screenwriters sent a message to the novelist asking him if a particular character had committed a crime, the novelist had to respond that he didn't know either. So complex stories can be good.