Posted on by Shane

CHAZ-CHOP-CH

Infinite demands meet perennial responses.

Protesters have repeatedly stressed that the shootings and violence was not directly connected with Chop, and may have happened anyway . But it resulted in a dramatic decline in occupiers, it concerned local businesses and residents, and amplified officials calling on occupants to disperse.

By the time police cleared Chop on Wednesday, following Mayor Durkan’s emergency executive order, the area had largely been reduced to a small number of activists and many homeless people, explained Powell.

The truth is they “went in and did a violent sweep on homeless people, throwing away their tents and belongings”, she said.

“Those homeless people had come into Chop to be safe from the sweeps. That is the vast majority of people that were in that space since the shooting started.”

Officers reported on Twitter that they arrested 31 people during the sweep.

Some activists have argued that the police precinct was needed as a bargaining chip in order to get their three main demands met, which involve defunding the police, using that money to invest in community health and services, and dropping criminal charges against protesters. Others say another occupation in the city could be a future possibility.

The bolder the activism, the more quickly it is shut down. Compare the half life of this recent adventure with the half-life of Occupy.

Power benefits from making examples.

Posted on by Shane

Chomskying

A commenter on Michael Brook’s YouTube channel reminded me of this.

Remember this old exchange between Noam Chomsky and Sam Harris?

I’m not a Chomsky fan, so I’m not saying this out of bias toward him: it is bizarre to me how incapable Harris seemed to be of grasping where he was a) going wrong in this exchange and b) unable to grasp how absurd his assumptions about ethics are.

Far more cringe inducing and puzzling than Chomsky’s debate with Foucault, which is actually interesting and rewarding in the same areas of concern.

Posted on by Shane

Inevitable Barbarism

Re-reading Hegel’s Phenomonology of Spirit and can’t help but think: ‘ Now the millions of deaths in the 20th century make sense.’

Simultaneously and somewhat paradoxically, I’m not so quick to judge ideas based on their correlative death counts.

It is a bizarre tragedy that a few people get a few social advances correct in theory while in practice, the violence of an old form found within civilization still works out the last of its momentum.

–

Happy 4th.

– No fire

– No faces.

What will they say about us in the 22nd century?

Posted on by Shane

Emergent Hermit Vol III – No. 15

Read online here.

I didn’t post it all as I went because it all came out so fast.

I’m playing around with form a little bit. This issue is written like one continuous piece with chapters. This I did because it was a nice way to free me from being so polemical or discursive.

A lot of it is to do with real time responses to COVID19. My opinions on the matter have been intentionally nuanced and what you see in issue No. 15 reflects immediacy more than a fixed position.

But other things are covered too, such as thoughts on America’s fetishization of Sweden and unfolding political realities.