Über die Freiheit / de libertate

So I replied:

BNK, I would recommend going to Wikipedia and typing “racism” into the search box and click “Go”. You clearly have no idea what you are talking about.

Unless you’re implying that I hate white people, despite being white myself. Then your comment might make a tiny bit of sense.

And I got this reply: 

Robert, there are many types of “racism”. Your “Wikipedia” explains this if read far enough. “Racial discrimintaion”, a type of rasicm, “is treating people differently through a process of social division into catagories not necassarily related to race”.

In no way was I implying that you are white or any other, as my assumption based on merely a text or a name would reflect racism on my behalf. I am implying that your assumption that the RCMP as a whole is racist, catagorizes them based on your view, and is in itself a racist comment. 

…

Today the Leader-Post ran this story, talking about a television series which documents how freaking awesome the RCMP is.

So naturally being the asshole that I am I responded thusly:

So, do they also show the true side to police work, ie. the racism, murder of immigrants and violations of civil rights?

Which prompted this reply:

Talk about racism Robert, your comment reflects just exactly that! Your one sided view focused only on the negative side of things is as racist as it comes.

Wouldn’t it be a great world if we all were told the truth by one who knows how everything is, such as your self. Wouldn’t it be a great world if all could only see the flaws in humans, and never the good that they do in protecting our freedoms to enjoying a safe life? (in case your racism has clouded your thought process, I was being sarcastic on the last two sentences) 

Huh?

Start Point: Potsdamer Platz
End Point: Alexanderplatz
Approximate Length: 10.4km
District(s): Tiergarten, Kreuzberg, Friedrichshain, Mitte
Notable Sights: Potsdamer Platz, Mehringplatz, German Patent and Trade Mark Office, Holy Cross Church, Emmaus Church, Oberbaumbrücke, East Side Gallery, O₂ World, Strausberger Platz, Alexanderplatz

Start Point: Wullenwebersteg
End Point: Wullenwebersteg
Approximate Length: 13.6km
District(s): Moabit, Schöneberg, Tiergarten, Hansaviertel 
Notable Sights: Victory Column, Nordsternhaus, Rathaus Schöneberg, John F. Kennedy Platz, Rudolph-Wilde-Park, Village Church,  Königskolonnaden-Heinrich-von-Kleist-Park, Potsdamer Platz, Tiergarten

Start Point: S-Bahnhof Westend
End Point: Bahnhof Zoologischer Garten
Approximate Length: 6.4km
District(s): Charlottenburg
Notable Sights: Charlottenburg Palace, Saint Kamillus Church, Klausenerplatz, Schloßstraße, Lietzensee, Savignyplatz, Berlin Zoologischer Garten

Start Point: U-Bahnhof Spichernstraße
End Point: S-Bahnhof Hallensee
Approximate Length: 4.3km
District(s): Charlottenburg, Wilmersdorf, Hallensee
Notable Sights: The Kurfürstendamm, Olivaer Platz, Henriettenplatz

Since arriving in Berlin over 5 months ago I have been spending much of my time walking throughout Berlin’s various neighborhoods. After finishing my classes two weeks ago I have spent even more time attempting to walk Berlin’s city streets. I have decided that I should take a more systematic approach and thus I will post my walks here. My goal is to walk every street within Berlin’s S-Bahn ring. This is impossible, but it’s fun to have a goal. The photo above is my dry-erase map marking the streets I have walked as of February.

This is why I think the UK might be my least favorite country in the entire world.

The Obama administration is taking the absolutely ridiculous position that prosecutors should have absolute immunity from being sued even if it can be proven that they deliberately withheld or manufactured evidence, resulting in an innocent person being convicted. [Ed Brayton]

I meant to comment on this when it came out, but I forgot. Packer, who apparently is somehow a journalist, is living in Berlin and apparently doesn’t understand a damn bit of it.

Germany held an election yesterday, though you might not have noticed if you don’t live there. I barely noticed, and I’ve been in Berlin for the past three weeks. True, there are posters of candidates’ faces on streetlamps around the city—charmingly un-slick posters like those of a race for county commissioner in central Ohio.

1. Though voter turnout is low, it was clearly evident. Television news covered it extensively and there are more posters per capita than in the United States.
2. There is absolutely nothing unslick about the posters here. Indeed they are better than American posters which inevitably are merely red, white and blue.

I keep wondering what happened to German nationalism. For about a century it was one of the most powerful forces in the world, a spirit of risk and command and achievement, pride and aggression, and, in the belief that such things never disappear entirely, I find myself looking for traces of it in unlikely places—bike lanes, for example. Berlin’s streets are almost everywhere lined with narrow red paths—brick or painted asphalt—that tell you a tall slender dirty-blond man in glasses, sitting very high on the seat, is bearing down on two wheels, bell madly clinking, and you’d better get the hell out of his way. Nothing is quite so withering as the icy glare of the indignant Berlin cyclist, and after a couple of incidents I learned to stay off the red paths.

3. German nationalism is alive and well. It’s just cultural nationalism.
4. It took more than one time to realize that you should stay off clearly marked bike paths?

If German nationalism has indeed been so tightly squeezed and pressed and bottled that the full might of it comes down to the jolly little phrase with which Germans bid one another goodbye (“Tschüss!,” or, more phonetically, “Chuz!”), it’s an extraordinary feat of self-suppression, and something for other peoples—yes, I’m thinking of my own chest-pounding countrymen—to emulate, not take advantage of.

5. What the fuck are you talking about?
6. “Tschüss” is not a phrase, it’s a word. And it’s rarely pronounced like “Chuz”, it’s generally pronounced “Chooss” and this is even more evident by the use of “tschüssi.”

 But as for the Germans in the audience, they were too polite to fight back…

7. It has nothing to do with politeness.

Even Tyler Cowen thinks I chose correctly:

A loyal MR reader requests the following:

If you were exiled from the United States and had to go live semi-permanently in some other country, which country would you choose?

Another reader asks:

Let’s say you had enough cash (would 10 million do it?) and needed to disappear. Where would you go? Option one, you only spoke English. Option two, you could endow yourself with any language(s) you wished.

Secondary question: would 10 mil be enough?

[…]

I pick either Berlin or Cologne, the latter for its central location in Europe.  In either city there would be plenty of art and music, lots of smart people to talk to, access to other good locales, and the near-certainty of public order, yet with bearable winters and good health care.  The key question between the two would be whether I need my Germany to be on the Rhein and conquered by Romans. 

And I thought that pulling people over for good driving was stupid. The popo in London win the prize.

I think I must be the only person in the country who actually thinks that the New Democratic Party, (NDP) should go along with the suggested name change to Democratic Party. Personally I think that the DP sounds awesome.

“We just live right across the street, so we thought we’d come out here and sell this – we could just leave,” Richard said. “And they said, ‘no, you know, we’re gonna have to right you up.’” [CBS]

Radly Balko explains it exactly right:

6) Speaking of unions, a few others have said they’re boycotting Whole Foods because Mackey won’t let his employees organize. But as noted, his employees have high rates of job satisfaction, and they’re paid better and have better benefits than the unionized employees at other grocery chains. So what’s the problem? If Mackey’s opposition to unions is your reason for hating Whole Foods, sorry, but you don’t really care about workers. You care about unions.

Let the unions autofellate themselves.

Do read the entirety of Balko’s post. It’s righteous.

Gerald Dworkin, a professor philosophy at UC Davis, on the passing of G.A. Cohen:

A graduate student once asked me for what audience I wrote my philosophical papers. Was it for all philosophers, for just moral and political philosophers, for the general public? I replied that I wrote for three people. Jerry was one of them.

Nothing like confirming the suspicion that academics are just insulated boobs.

I know he’s probably exaggerating, somewhat, but still. Unbelievable.

From the Torontoist: 

After talking to a few of them, we learned that the company they were picketing was none other than Cadillac Fairview. Their union, CEP local 2003, which represents trade, maintenance, and loading dock workers at the complex, had been in talks with Cadillac Fairview until June 14, when the corporation had ended negotiations by banning them all from the complex. It wasn’t a strike; it was a lockout.

(Two weeks later, on July 14, we learned that Cadillac Fairview had fired all sixty-one union workers and replaced them with the contractors that had been performing their jobs even as they were picketing. See their Facebook group and blog for details. A hearing with the Ontario Labour Relations Board is pending.)

That’s what happens when you’re greedy.

Part One
Part Two

The Gays are taking over the hospitals!

If you can read this and not feel the need to punch one of your conservative family members in the face…you must not have any conservative family members.

Make sure you get plenty of sleep before going to court.

Clifton Williams didn’t and he’s been sentenced to six months in jail for yawning.

[…]

Circuit Judge Daniel Rozak thought the yawn was criminal and sentenced Williams to six months in jail, the maximum penalty for contempt of court without a jury trial.  Rozak’s order said that Williams “raised his hands while at the same time making a loud yawning sound,” causing a disrespectful interruption in court. [Link]

I say again: how on earth is contempt of court even allowed? 6 months without a trial? Judges shouldn’t be able to sentence people to 6 hours of jail without a trial, let alone 6 months.

And predictibly the conservative commentators go on to give Authority a big sloppy blowjob:

Good I am glad there is a Judge that holds people to a civilised and respect full standard. Guess what in third grade I voluntarily yawned and got in trouble I learned. Mr. Williams should take advantage of his opportunity to address his issues with respect and reality.

Yes, let’s potentially ruin someone’s life because someone interrupted or disrespected you. That’s sounds about as logical as shooting someone for cutting you off.

Will Wilkinson absolutely fucking owns Ezra Klein’s government fetishism:

It requires an amazing kind of selective amnesia to think that there is “no evidence’ that the U.S. government is “capable of madness.” The government of the United States invaded Iraq and its agents have killed many tens of thousands people on the basis of the fact that some Saudis trained in Afganistan flew planes into the World Trade Center, plus some lies. Torture, extraordinary rendition, indefinite detention, etc. I call that madness. Of course, Ezra means the other parts of government concerned with domestic affairs. But not the parts that break into peoples’ houses and destroy their lives for selling contraband herbs, or that subject us constantly to mendacious propaganda about drugs. Our government — and by extension our fellow citizens — is capable of terrible things and proves it every single day. Is it really possible to love government so much, to invest so much hope in its benevolent efficacy, that we grow blind to its evident capacity for evil? Anyway, there must be some parts of the government that are not capable of madness. Ezra invites us to think about those when considering health care reform. Will you accept?

Apropos of this, Robin Hanson remarks:

Has the recent [British] MP expenses scandal soured the idea of democracy for you? Good, because a vast space of possible forms of government remains unexplored, and it is high time we explored it. Yes, democracy beats a dictatorship, but there might be better systems.

How people believe that we explored all the possible options never ceases to amaze me.

Nate Silver thinks that US unemployment will not top 10%. But Nate Silver is an idiot so it’ll probably hit 100%.

Recently it has come out that Infomercial King Billy Mays reportedly had cocaine in his system when he died, though the family denies such a thing.

Most troubling, however, is what else I read:

Longtime friend and colleague AJ Khubani, founder and CEO of the “As Seen on TV” product company Telebrands, said Mays never exhibited any signs of drug use and was always prepared for his many commercial shoots.

“I’m just shocked,” Khubani said. “He was the model of a responsible citizen.”

Guess what people, drug users can be responsible citizens. Assuming the toxicology reports are accurate, Billy Mays demonstrates that cocaine can be used without making someone into a monster or menace to society. This isn’t necessarily a promotion of cocaine, merely refutation of drug war propaganda. I think I’m going to go read a book I just bought.

Granted, Gates should never have been arrested in the first place. But his four hours in lock-up did nothing but temporarily inconvenience and humble him—he was never in any danger of losing life or limb. And he had many and powerful friends in high places—including the president of the United States—watching his back. [Center for American Progress]

I really don’t understand why Fulwood would gloss over the legitimate humiliation and harm that could come from being arrested. I really think it’s mistaken to think that four hours in lock up is something the common citizen should shrug off as “inconvenient.”