Getting a brain tumour is not a learning experience

Health, US politics
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Last year Sarah Pin had to deal with the little problem of a brain tumour which, quite obviously is scary and awful enough in the best of situations. But Sarah lives in the US and therefore had to deal with the third world medical system there. This did not make her happy:

If I have learned anything – and I have not – it is this: that people who talk about shitty things happening like they’re about gaining EXP or wisdom can go fuck themselves.

Unnecessary painful learning experiences suck. There is no fucking value to my having gotten a brain tumor, it is not something that god wanted to happen to me, I refuse to behave as if it has been some sort of goddamn privilege, and I decline ever do something like this again. I’m done with things sucking now. From now on I intend for everything that ever happens to awesome, and if it’s not I will bitch about it and, if someone else is at fault, I will make them feel it.

[…]

The doctor who finally sent me for the MRI wouldn’t have prescribed it to someone in my situation who didn’t have insurance. I know this because the first time I went in, I didn’t, and she didn’t. She told me to go home, get some rest and see if the dizziness got better. I did, it got better briefly and then came back, and I came back signed up for the Maryland pool two months later. She then suggested the MRI along with a battery of the other tests she thought more likely to turn something up. She was very restrainedly startled when it was the brain that turned out to be the problem.

It’s your right to decide that I should’ve had to either choose to pay full-price for the treatment or go without – I mean, I’m not you. But when people get angry with you for your politics, you need to understand that this is why. They’re not making something of nothing. My brain is not nothing to me. My stupid little pile of money is not nothing.

Political correctness gone mad

Unions, US politics
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The first three panels of the history of labour in Maine created by Judy Taylor

Maine state governor Paul LePage has ordered the removal of a mural depicting Maine’s laboru history from the lobby of the Department of Labor:

Acting labor chief Laura Boyett emailed staff Tuesday about the mural’s pending removal, as well as another administration directive to rename several department conference rooms that carry the names of pro-labor icons such as Cesar Chavez.

According to LePage spokesman Dan Demeritt, the administration felt the mural and the conference room monikers showed “one-sided decor” not in keeping with the department’s pro-business goals.

“The message from state agencies needs to be balanced,” said Demeritt, adding that the mural had sparked complaints from “some business owners” who complained it was hostile to business.

Sailliant detail: one of the conference rooms to be renamed was named after Frances Perkins, U.S. labor secretary under Franklin D. Roosevelt, who came involved in labour reform after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, whose 100th anniversary is this Friday….

Intervention in Libya: third time lucky?

Anti-war
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It’s amazing how fast things can happen. This time last week we were still arguing about the merits of a no-fly zone and the likelihood of it being established in the first place — late Saturday night the first bombs dropped. In less than a week time the proposal for a no-fly zone was not only voted on and passed, but the preperations for enforcing it were made and finished to such an extent that the French could actually start bombing within a day of it passing and what’s more, immediately exceeded their mandate by bombing tanks attacking Benghazi. After all, resolution 1973 was supposedly all about the no-fly zone wasn’t it, making sure Khadaffi couldn’t use his airforce to bomb civilians, so what are the Armée de l’Air and RAF doing bombing tanks?

Well, it turned out that while the idea of a no-fly zone emerged quickly in media debate once the civil war in Libya started, the assumption that this and nothing more was what the UN had been asked to authorise was wrong. Because while the resolution does establish a no-fly zone, does sharpen the arms embargo and asset freezes already put in place in an earlier resolution, it also does this this:

Authorizes Member States that have notified the Secretary-General, acting nationally or through regional organizations or arrangements, and acting in cooperation with the Secretary-General, to take all necessary measures, notwithstanding paragraph 9 of resolution 1970 (2011), to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory, and requests the Member States concerned to inform the Secretary-General immediately of the measures they take pursuant to the authorization conferred by this paragraph which shall be immediately reported to the Security Council;

(Paragraph 9 of resolution 1970 forbids the supply of arms to Libya — with certain exceptions — and seems to be negated here. Does this mean arms supplies for the Libyan rebels?)

In other words, there’s a legal justification to take every sort of action against Libyan forces short of wholescale invasion, a far wider mandate than we were told was asked for. I’m not sure whether this was by design or accident, but I think it’s sensible to assume the former, especially since France was so quick to start the actual bombing, without even pretending to stick to no-fly zone enforcement. What worries me most is the sense that this was the only thing that was planned and tha, like Afghanistan, like Iraq, nobody has any idea what comes between 1) Bomb the shit out of our enemies and 3) Freedom and Democracy for everybody, that we’re stuck with yet another underpants-gnomian war.

Questions I haven’t seen answered yet are 1) who are the rebels and why should we support them other than whisky democracy sexy, 2) what is the end result we’re fighting for, what is the minimal acceptable outcome of this intervention, 3) how are we going to reach that state other than by bombing the shit out of the country, 4) what if Khadaffi can’t be defeated through aerial power, what then?

I can see two scenarios in which this campaign can end, other than the glorious triumph of western democracy: Iraq 1991 and Iraq 2003. Either we end up with a Libya with Khadaffi in power in the central part of the country and the rebels in control in the east or we might end up with “having to invade” because the air campaign failed. Either way Libya’s screwed and the failure of the opposition to, unlike in Tunesia and Egypt, get rid of Khadaffi on their own does not make me optimistic. Mercenaries or no mercenaries, Khadaffi must still have some sizeable support amongst the population to have survived a wave of protest that did in Ben Ali and Mubarak. Which means that there will be at least part of the population unhappy with any outcome: either the Khadaffi loyalists if he is overthrown, or the rebels if he isn’t. The same was of course true in Egypt and Tunesia, but there the base of support for Mubarak and Ben Ali seemed to be much smaller…

So no, I don’t think third time’s the charm for western intervention in a Middle Eastern/Muslim country.

Flickr used bogus copyright to censor the Egyptian revolution

Internet, Life under Capitalism, Real Life Revolutions
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Egyptian blogger 3arabawy has done sterling service in documenting the Egyptian revolution over the past few months, putting up thousands of essential pictures both taken by him and other Egyptian photographers. There’s just one problem: Flickr’s guidelines says you cannot put up photograps you yourself haven’t taken and that’s why they’re disabling his account. Never mind that thousands of other Flickr users — including president Obama — do the same and are not interfered with, never mind that 3arabawy has permission from the original photographers, rules are rules and hence the account is disabled. As the Flickr p.r. flacks point out, they could’ve deleted the account outright but wanted to be reasonable about it. (Not that this wasn’t an implied threat if 3arabawy would continue to complain of course). Plenty of people in the thread are also very helpfully explaining why Flickr was right and why violating house rules is so much more important than chronicling the Egyptian revolution and beside, you’re just vain and egocentric.

What bugs me is that Flickr seems to enforce its terms of service much more strictly when it concerns political activists, punishing them for supposed bad behaviour not used against “normal” users. The rule that you cannot post pictures you haven’t made yourself normally has only been used to swat obvious spammers stealing pictures from e.g. the NYT or something, not people who upload their mum’s family album. I suspect that Yahoo/Flickr, like most Big Business, is allergic to everything political, its basic instinct to delete anything controversial. It’s a painful reminder for all political activists not to put their faith in the cloud; while it’s easy, cheap and the best way to quickly spread news, using a commercial service like Flickr always makes you vulnerable to censorship. And it’s not just Flickr, Yahoo, Google, Facebook and any other popular “web 2.0” service have proven to be vulnerable to political pressure, whether external or self imposed.

That’s the fundamental paradox for political activist using the cloud/web 2.0 services: you need to use them if you want people to pay attention, yet using a commercial service like Flickr rather than creating your own makes you vulnerable to its owners. You’re using it on sufferance.