Taylor Swift

Welp, this exists. From 1555.

I’m not sure, but I’m guessing this is a Protestant attack upon nuns. Time period certainly fits. As much as I hesitate to ever link to Reddit, there are people here who do seem to know what they are talking about that at least suggest it’s a commentary on how much nuns want sex.

Koyucha is a 20-year-old shop staff – with a cute pink-yellow twin tails and bangs hairstyle and pastel fashion – who we met at the famous Shibuya Scramble in Tokyo.

Koyucha’s look features a One Spo bomber jacket over a matching Joyrich Playboy bunny top and skirt, and Bubbles Harajuku pastel heart creepers (with pompoms). Accessories include Chanel hair ribbons, a Chanel necklace, pink and purple tattoo necklaces, a silver Chanel bag, and a Bubbles backpack.

Koyucha’s favorite fashion brand is Joyrich and her favorite band is Big Bang. For more info and more cute pictures, check her personal Instagram!

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That makes Colossal Order's city-builder the fastest-selling game Paradox Interactive has published to date. ...

For the record, the smoke is not from a Ryan PT-22.

Not sure if you heard the news or not, so I’ll just pass it along: there’s a new Star Wars movie coming out this December. They’ve been pretty hush-hush about it, so I’m not surprised that it’s not more common knowledge. In fact, if it wasn’t for our giant set of rabbit ears (complete with a coat hanger and tin foil) here at Mt. Hexmap we might have missed it, too. So, yeah, you guys are lucky to have us.

It’s not just the new movie, either. New Star Wars stuff seems to be cropping up all over, like the new Star Wars: Card Trader app that just released this week. This isn’t a game, per se, but a way to collect Star Wars trading cards. You remember those, right? As kids in the 80’s we would buy packs and packs of these for some reason that I can’t remember. Now, kids can do the same thing, all without killing any trees.

At first, I thought this seemed rather pointless but then I started looking at pictures and, whoa, Topps created the app and has access to every card they ever produced, all the way back to 1977. I remember getting those! Hey, I’m really old! If you’re a young person you might be interested in rare cards you could find from The Force Awakens. Me? I’m holding out for a copy of Dengar.

You start with 25,000 credits which is enough to buy quite a few packs (no Dengar, yet) and you can earn more by watching ads. Seriously. If watching ads isn’t your thing, Topps thoughtfully included a way for you to spend cold hard cash on imaginary money, too.

At the end of the day, it’s probably not something I could recommend. First of all, cards from all eras are in the packs, so you’re just as likely to nab a Dexter Jettster as you are a Wampa. Also, I’m more of a Star Trek guy, anyway. If you want to check it out, you can grab it for iOS Universal here.

No videos for this one, but some more screens after the break.

Tatooine racism

You know you’re old when you don’t recognize characters from Star Wars.

Hey, cool! A young Obi-Wan. Wait? When did Yoda get a lightsaber? What have I missed?

I wonder what’s printed on Mace Windu’s wallet.

More cards. Yes, I’ve stopped trying.

It wasn’t just the Star Wars cards, everything was blurry in 1977.

I’m going to keep posting animated gifs to see how mad I can make Owen. My guess is that this one pushed him to ‘8’ on a scale of 1-10.

Renowned British novelist Sir Terry Pratchett passed away today in his home at the age of 66. He was best known for his Discworld comedic fantasy novels, which inspired multiple adventure games. ...

As part of the Make It Digital initiative the BBC is giving away a million BBC Micro Bit coding devices -- much like it did with the BBC Micro in the '80s, inspiring a generation of British game devs. ...

As you may know, Rahm Emanuel closed a whole bunch of schools and mental health clinics in Chicago, leading to the classic “YOU’RE GONNA RESPECT ME!” exchange. What does Rahm’s Chicago envision replacing these horrible institutions? Gourmet mac and cheese shops.

Grant kept the concept for his new mac and cheese restaurant simple Tuesday: “Carryout only,” he said. “Gourmet mac and cheese. Good food. Good price. Good time.”

Located in the same building as his most recent Logan Square business, East Room, the yet-unnamed restaurant will feature gourmet mac and cheese by chef Laura Piper, owner and executive chef at Downtown’s One North Kitchen and Bar, 1 N. Wacker Drive.

The new restaurant will be on the first floor of the Logan Square building, which will be built in a 383-square-foot area, according to city records. The same building formerly served as a mental health clinic that shut down in 2012, followed by a series of citywide protests and a more recent hearing before the City Council.

The mac and cheese spot, led by Piper, joins a slew of new and upcoming bars and restaurants on the booming block, including East Room, Owen + Alchemy, Q-tine, Slippery Slope, The Radler, Emporium Logan Square and Chicago Distilling Company, along with some established local outlets like Revolution Brewing, Café Mustache and Gaslight Coffee Roasters.

Makes sense. Get rid of public institutions where rich white people might have to see people who make them feel uncomfortable, replace them with private institutions where rich white people will only see other rich white people and maybe just enough people of color (i.e. 1) to make themselves feel diverse and hip. That’s Rahm’s New Gilded Age Chicago in a nutshell.

Too much of the talk around women at work these days revolves around wealthy women like Sheryl Sandberg. As Janey Stephenson argues, if we want International Women’s Day to mean something, that requires the closing of sweatshops worldwide. That will only happen if we create legal regimes that force companies to acquiesce to international labor law in their factories and that grants the rights of these usually female workers to sue in corporate nations of origin for real financial damages against their employers or the companies that contract with their employers. Without closing the sweatshops, the international exploitation of women by American corporations will continue and without empowering women and ending the race to the bottom, that international exploitation will never end.

I find that people in the world of underground will show some interest in hearing my music until they find out it is objectivist-themed. I hate to say it but I feel the world of underground hip hop is prejudiced against objectivists music. Why is this?

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

(12XU recording artistes Sweet Talk performing in the WFMU studios, June, 2013.  Afterwards, Harpal’s No Trend shirt was auctioned off to purchase a steak for the station manager).

No, this is not a solicitation for Dino Costa’s donation page aka “Will Hate Fuck 4 Food (Or Craft Beer)”. Instead, I’m calling your attention to Jersey City’s venerable WFMU, and their annual fund raising marathon. Keep in mind, this is the station that ended my own radio career in the most inglorious (if not brutally unfair) way, so I must really love the fuckers to death to continue shilling for them.

I don’t listen to enough other radio — online or otherwise — to say with authority that WFMU is the nation’s (or the world’s) best broadcaster. But as someone who’s been listening for more than 30 years, I will say this much : in an era in which there’s myriad options that all but guarantee you’ll never encounter something you dislike, a genre you’re unfamiliar with or an artist that lacks the backing of a colossal infrastructure, WFMU has never been more crucial or fun. Even with the disappearance of a certain Tuesday night program (the less said about the show that replaced it, the better) WFMU’s cavalcade of hosts have the ability to entertain, educate and enrage, sometimes within the confines of the same show/hour/set.

I live in a house surrounded by more interesting records than I’ll ever have time to listen to, yet I still find myself listening to WFMU when I get up, in the middle of the afternoon, driving around town or at the end of the night. At any given moment I might hear an amazing song I’ve not even thought of in years. Or I might hear something (old or new) that I’ve never come across that’s nothing short of mind-blowing.

Is every show the greatest listening experience of all time? Absolutely not. But the vast majority are programmed by the sort of insane music obsessives that have the sort of wit, zeal, perspective that no algorithm can ever hope to replace. To say this type of broadcasting is not exactly in vogue would be a huge understatement — even so-called public radio is tightly playlisted, genre-specific and fixated on marketing/branding in ways you’d have previously associated with commercial radio. So give what you can ; they only do the shakedown thing once (ok, sometimes twice) a year and given the amounts people are dropping on cable, netflix, hulu, various music subscription services, etc., throwing a few bucks at WFMU isn’t the least you could do (that would be giving them no money at all), but please consider it just the same.

Kyosuke is an 18-year-old fashion student who we often see around Harajuku. He’s hard not to notice, as you might remember from our previous street snaps!

Kyosuke is wearing a retro belted black jacket over a black top, Saint Laurent distressed jeans, and Hiro x George Cox patent buckle boots. Accessories include his House of Malakai chain mail veil, and a Prada backpack.

For more info on – and pictures of – Kyosuke, follow him on Instagram or Twitter!

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I have been studying the French language, with some consistency, for three years. This field of study has been, all at once, the hardest and most rewarding of my life. I would put it above the study of writing simply because I started writing as a 6-year-old boy under my mother's tutelage. I always "felt" I could write. I did not always "feel" I could effectively study a foreign language.

But here I am, right now, in a Montreal hotel. I spoke French at the border. I spoke French when I checked in. I spoke French when I went to get lunch. I don't really believe in fluency. If there is a such thing, I don't have it. I mishear words. I confuse tenses. I can't really use the subjunctive. Yet.

Something has happened to me and the something is this—I have gotten better. I don't know when I first felt it. I didn't feel it this summer at Middlebury, despite the difference in my entrance and exit scores. I didn't feel it when I first arrived in Paris in January. I felt, as I always feel, like I was stumbling around in the dark. I still feel like that. But I also feel like I am getting better at stumbling.

I am emphasizing how I "feel" because, when studying, it is as important as any objective reality. Hopelessness feeds the fatigue that leads the student to quit. It is not the study of language that is hard, so much as the "feeling" that your present level is who you are and who you will always be. I remember returning from France at the end of the summer of 2013, and being convinced that I had some kind of brain injury which prevented me from hearing French vowel sounds. But the real enemy was not any injury so much as the "feeling" of despair. That is why I ignore all the research about children and their language advantage. I don't want to hear it. I just don't care. As Carolyn Forché would say—"I'm going to have it."

To "have it," I must manage my emotional health. Part of that long-term management—beyond French—is giving myself an opportunity to get better at difficult things. There is absolutely nothing in this world like the feeling of sucking at something and then improving at it. Everyone should do it every ten years or so.

I don't know what comes after this. I have said this before, and will say it again: Studying French is like setting in a canoe from California to China. You arrive on the coast of Hawaii and think, "Wow that was really far." And then you realize that China is still so very far away. "Feelings" come and go. Likely, someone will say something—in the next hour or so—which I do not understand and I will feel a little hopeless again. But right now, I feel high. And one must savor those moments of feeling high, because they are not the norm. The lows are the norm. The Struggle is the norm. May it ever be thus.

This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/03/a-quick-note-on-getting-better-at-difficult-things/387133/

Rolling Stone‘s minute by minute account of the recording of “We Are the World,” released thirty (!) years ago this week. The juicy bits:

2:09 Jazz singer Al Jarreau gets 10 syllables (nine more than Jimmy Thudpucker got in Doonesbury’s cartoons about the sessions, where there was a bottleneck at the front of the studio from rock stars checking their egos but demanding a receipt). Jarreau also sang the theme song for Moonlighting in 1985 — the show debuted two days before “We Are the World” was released. Jarreau took the opportunity during the sessions to introduce himself to Bob Dylan: “Bobby, in my own stupid way I just want to tell you I love you.” Dylan walked away from Jarreau without even making eye contact. According to David Breskin of Life magazine, Jarreau then said “My idol!” and started sobbing.

My favorite bit involves a bit of doggerel (“sha-lum sha-lingay”) which Lionel Richie insists is Swahili. Stevie Wonder calls a friend in Africa, presumably waiting by the phone, to confirm. Bob Geldof sobs that they might be condescending to the Ethiopians. Then: :

Jones had the cameras turned off while the stars discussed the issue; Stevie Wonder left to call a friend in Nigeria to get an appropriate Swahili phrase. When Wonder came back and reported that the correct lyrics would be “willi moing-gu,” Jones said, “the shit hit the fan.”

Ray Charles shouted out, “Say what! Willi what! Willi moing-gu, my ass! It’s three o’clock in the goddamn mornin’. Swahili, shit — I can’t even sing in English no more.” At this point, Waylon Jennings took off, completely unwilling to sing in Swahili. Geldof observed that Ethiopians don’t actually speak Swahili, a point underscored by Lauper, who said that it was like “singing to the English in German.”

Lauper, Simon, and Jarreau started lobbying for a meaningful phrase, and Jarreau came up with “One world, our world,” which got modified to “one world, our children.” Tina Turner, so tired she had her eyes closed, said to herself, “I like sha-lum better. Who cares what it means?”

No one reminded Q that the song he co-wrote for Donna Summer (not at USA For Africa) called “State of Independence” with the refrain “Shablamidi, shablamida” offended no liberal sensibilities.

I should admit that I love many of the performances, silver space suits and jangly jewelry and all, even if the song is a load of codswallop. I hate rhetorical questions, but I’ll ask one: would you rather hear Dionne Warwick or Tony Hadley?

Al Shipley’s list reminds me of what a deep, solid, weird catalog Erykah Badu has, especially when four albums, an EP stretched to album length, and a handful of odds ‘n’ sods constitutes the catalog of this wonderful artist, to me one of the most rewarding of the last twenty years. As usual I thank my sister, in the nineties several steps ahead as a hip-hop and R&B listener. A fall ’97 mixtape I made boasted “On & On” and “Next Lifetime” but I didn’t give Badu much thought until the “Bag Lady” remix became a hit a few years later. The tendency to exoticize her — “look at the turbans!” encapsulated much of the popular magazine coverage then — vanished as her collaborations with The Roots, Karriem Riggins, and Roy Ayres created some of the best grooves and quietest celebrations of the power of hip-hop, the love of her life. New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) remains my favorite album of 2008, with filigrees to discover and treasure with each listen; its sequel is only a shade less fantastic and phantasmic.

1. The Cell
2. Bag Lady (Single Remix)
3. Clevah
4. Me
5. Next Lifetime
6. Didn’t Cha Know
7. Danger
8. Tyrone (Live)
9. Gone Baby, Don’t Be Long
10. Window Seat
11. Booty
12. 4 Leaf Clover
13. Bump It
14. Appletree
15. Penitentiary Philosophy
16. Certainly
17. Hi
18. Back in the Day (Puff)
19. Hello (ft. Andre 3000)
20. Soldier

Many fans of Japanese street fashion already know Lisa 13, the 20-year-old pink-haired guitarist of the j-rock band Moth In Lilac. If you don’t know Lisa, please check out our short Lisa 13 Documentary on YouTube.

When we met Lisa this time in Harajuku, she was wearing a pink dress from Sourpuss with a blue jacket from GRL. Her purse is also from Sourpuss and she bought her bow platform sandals at Laforet. Her flamingo socks are from Pameo Pose, and she’s accessorized with white sunglasses, a beads necklace, pins and rings.

Lisa likes to dress from LEMONed and Sourpuss, and she likes listening to Motionless in White, Wednesday13, Murderdolls and Korn. She posts daily updates and pictures on Twitter and Instagram. Also check out the official website for her band Moth in Lilac.

Click on any photo to enlarge it.

Yesterday the Justice Department released the results of a long and thorough investigation into the killing of Michael Brown by Officer Darren Wilson. The investigation concluded that there was not enough evidence to prove a violation of federal law by Officer Wilson. The investigation concluded much more. The investigation concluded that physical evidence and witness statements corroborated Wilson's claim that Michael Brown reached into the car and struck the officer. It concluded that claims that Wilson reached out and grabbed Brown first "were inconsistent with physical and forensic evidence."  

The investigation concluded that there was no evidence to contradict Wilson's claim that Brown reached for his gun. The investigation concluded that Wilson did not shoot Brown in the back. That he did not shoot Brown as he was running away. That Brown did stop and turn toward Wilson. That in those next moments "several witnesses stated that Brown appeared to pose a physical threat to Wilson." That claims that Brown had his hands up "in an unambiguous sign of surrender" are not supported by the "physical and forensic evidence," and are sometimes, "materially inconsistent with that witness’s own prior statements with no explanation, credible for otherwise, as to why those accounts changed over time."

Unlike the local investigators, the Justice Department did not merely toss all evidence before a grand jury and say, "you figure it out." The federal investigators did the work themselves and came to the conclusion that Officer Wilson had not committed "prosecutable violations under the applicable federal criminal civil rights statute, 18 U.S.C. § 242."

Our system, ideally, neither catches every single offender, nor lightly imposes the prosecution, jailing, and fining of its citizens. A high burden of proof should attend any attempt to strip away one's liberties. The Justice Department investigation reflects a department attempting to live up to those ideals and giving Officer Wilson the due process that he, and anyone else falling under our legal system, deserves.

One cannot say the same for Officer Wilson's employers.

The Justice Department conducted two investigations—one looking into the shooting of Michael Brown, and another into the Ferguson Police Department. The first report made clear that there was no prosecutable case against one individual officer. The second report made clear that there was a damning case to be made against the system in which that officer operated:

Ferguson’s law enforcement practices are shaped by the City’s focus on revenue rather than by public safety needs. This emphasis on revenue has compromised the institutional character of Ferguson’s police department, contributing to a pattern of unconstitutional policing, and has also shaped its municipal court, leading to procedures that raise due process concerns and inflict unnecessary harm on members of the Ferguson community. Further, Ferguson’s police and municipal court practices both reflect and exacerbate existing racial bias, including racial stereotypes. Ferguson’s own data establish clear racial disparities that adversely impact African Americans. The evidence shows that discriminatory intent is part of the reason for these disparities...

Partly as a consequence of City and FPD priorities, many officers appear to see some residents, especially those who live in Ferguson’s predominantly African-American neighborhoods, less as constituents to be protected than as potential offenders and sources of revenue...

The "focus on revenue" was almost wholly a focus on black people as revenue. Black people in Ferguson were twice as likely to be searched during a stop, twice as likely to receive a citation when stopped, and twice as likely to be arrested during the stop, and yet were 26 percent less likely to be found with contraband. Black people were more likely to see a single incident turn into multiple citations. The disparity in outcomes remained "even after regression analysis is used to control for non-race-based variables."

One should understand that the Justice Department did not simply find indirect evidence of unintentionally racist practices which harm black people, but "discriminatory intent”—that is to say willful racism aimed to generate cash. Justice in Ferguson is not a matter of "racism without racists," but racism with racists so secure, so proud, so brazen that they used their government emails to flaunt it.

The emails including "jokes" depicting President Obama as a chimp, mocking how black people talk ("I be so glad that dis be my last child support payment!"), depicting blacks as criminals, welfare recipients, unemployed, lazy, and having "no frigging clue who their Daddies are.” This humor—given the imprimatur of government email—resulted in neither reprimand, nor protest, nor even a polite request to refrain from reoffending. "Instead," according to the report, "the emails were usually forwarded along to others."

One should resist the urge to clutch pearls and carp about the "mean people" of Ferguson. Bigoted jokes are never really jokes at all, so much as a tool by which one sanctifies plunder. If black people in Ferguson are the 47 percent—a class of takers, of immoral reprobates, driving up crime while driving down quality of life—then why should they not be "the sources of revenue?" In this way a racist "joke" transfigures raw pillage into legal taxation. The "joke" is in fact an entire worldview that reveals that the agents of plunder, the police, are in fact not plundering anyone at all. They are just making sure the reprobates pay their fair share.

That is precisely what Ferguson's officials told federal investigators:

Several Ferguson officials told us during our investigation that it is a lack of “personal responsibility” among African-American members of the Ferguson community that causes African Americans to experience disproportionate harm under Ferguson’s approach to law enforcement. Our investigation suggests that this explanation is at odd with the facts.

On the contrary the investigation "revealed African Americans making extraordinary efforts to pay off expensive tickets for minor, often unfairly charged, violations, despite systemic obstacles to resolving those tickets." And while the investigation found no lack of "personal responsibility" among black residents of Ferguson, it did find that the very same people making the charge were often busy expunging fines for their friends:

• In August 2013, an FPD patrol supervisor wrote an email entitled “Oops” to the Prosecuting Attorney regarding a ticket his relative received in another municipality for traveling 59 miles per hour in a 40 miles-per-hour zone, noting “[h]aving it dismissed would be a blessing.” The Prosecuting Attorney responded that the prosecutor of that other municipality promised to nolle pros the ticket. The supervisor responded with appreciation, noting that the dismissal “[c]ouldn’t have come at a better time.”
• Also in August 2013, Ferguson’s Mayor emailed the Prosecuting Attorney about a parking ticket received by an employee of a non-profit day camp for which the Mayor sometimes volunteers. The Mayor wrote that the person “shouldn’t have left his car unattended there, but it was an honest mistake” and stated, “I would hate for him to have to pay for this, can you help?” The Prosecuting Attorney forwarded the email to the Court Clerk, instructing her to “NP [nolle prosequi, or not prosecute] this parking ticket.”
• In November 2011, a court clerk received a request from a friend to “fix a parking ticket” received by the friend’s coworker’s wife. After the ticket was faxed to the clerk, she replied: “It’s gone baby!”
• In March 2014, a friend of the Court Clerk’s relative emailed the Court Clerk with a scanned copy of a ticket asking if there was anything she could do to help. She responded: “Your ticket of $200 has magically disappeared!” Later, in June 2014, the same person emailed the Court Clerk regarding two tickets and asked: “Can you work your magic again? It would be deeply appreciated.” The Clerk later informed him one ticket had been dismissed and she was waiting to hear back about the second ticket.

It must noted that the rhetoric "personal responsibility" enjoys not just currency among the white officials of Ferguson, but among many black people ("black-on-black crime!") who believe that white supremacy is a force with which one can negotiate. But white supremacy—as evidenced in Ferguson—is not ultimately interested in how responsible you are, nor how respectable you look. White supremacy is neither a misunderstanding nor a failure of manners. White supremacy is the machinery of Galactus which allows for the potential devouring of everything you own. White supremacy is the technology, patented in this enlightened era, to ensure that what is yours inevitably becomes mine.

This technology has proven highly effective throughout American history. In 1860 it meant the transformation of black bodies into more wealth than all the productive capacity of this country combined. In the 1930s it meant the erection of our modern middle class. In Ferguson, it meant funding nearly a quarter of the municipal budget:

The City has not yet made public the actual revenue collected that year, although budget documents forecasted lower revenue than 10 was budgeted. Nonetheless, for fiscal year 2015, the City’s budget anticipates fine and fee revenues to account for $3.09 million of a projected $13.26 million in general fund revenues...

In a February 2011 report requested by the City Council at a Financial Planning Session and drafted by Ferguson’s Finance Director with contributions from Chief Jackson, the Finance Director reported on “efforts to increase efficiencies and maximize collection” by the municipal court. The report included an extensive comparison of Ferguson’s fines to those of surrounding municipalities and noted with approval that Ferguson’s fines are “at or near the top of the list....” While the report stated that this recommendation was because of a “large volume of non-compliance,” the recommendation was in fact emphasized as one of several ways that the code enforcement system had been honed to produce more revenue.

The men and women behind this policy did not approach their effort to "produce more revenue" somberly, but lustily. As the fruits of plunder increased, Ferguson officials congratulated and backslapped each other:

In one March 2012 email, the Captain of the Patrol Division reported directly to the City Manager that court collections in February 2012 reached $235,000, and that this was the first month collections ever exceeded $200,000. The Captain noted that “[t]he [court clerk] girls have been swamped all day with a line of people paying off fines today. Since 9:30 this morning there hasn’t been less than 5 people waiting in line and for the last three hours 10 to 15 people at all times.” The City Manager enthusiastically reported the Captain’s email to the City Council and congratulated both police department and court staff on their “great work.”

It is a wonder they did not hand out bonuses. Perhaps they did. The bonus of being white in Ferguson meant nigh-immunity from plunder. The bane of being black in Ferguson meant nigh-inevitable subjugation under plunder. Plunder is neither abstract nor theoretical. Plunder injures, maims, and destroys. Indeed the very same people who were calling on protestors to remain nonviolent were, every hour, partner to brutality committed under the color of law:

We spoke with one African-American man who, in August 2014, had an argument in his apartment to which FPD officers responded, and was immediately pulled out of the apartment by force. After telling the officer, “you don’t have a reason to lock me up,” he claims the officer responded: “N*****, I can find something to lock you up on.” When the man responded, “good luck with that,” the officer slammed his face into the wall, and after the man fell to the floor, the officer said, “don’t pass out motherf****r because I’m not carrying you to my car.”

The residents of Ferguson do not have a police problem. They have a gang problem. That the gang operates under legal sanction makes no difference. It is a gang nonetheless, and there is no other word to describe an armed band of collection agents.

John Locke knew:

The injury and the crime is equal, whether committed by the wearer of a crown, or some petty villain. The title of the offender, and the number of his followers, make no difference in the offence, unless it be to aggravate it. The only difference is, great robbers punish little ones, to keep them in their obedience; but the great ones are rewarded with laurels and triumphs, because they are too big for the weak hands of justice in this world, and have the power in their own possession, which should punish offenders. What is my remedy against a robber, that so broke into my house?

What are the tools in Ferguson to address the robber that so regularly breaks into my house? One necessary tool is suspicion and skepticism—the denial of the sort of the credit one generally grants officers of the state. When Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown there was little reason to credit his account, and several reasons to disbelieve it. The reason is not related to whether Michael Brown was "an angel" or not. The reasons are contained in a report rendered by the highest offices of the American government. Crediting the accounts of Ferguson's officers is a good way to enroll yourself in your own plunder and destruction.

Government, if its name means anything, must rise above those suspicions and that skepticism and seek out justice. And if it seeks to improve its name it must do much more—it must seek out the roots of the skepticism. The lack of faith among black people in Ferguson's governance, or in America's governance, is not something that should be bragged about. One cannot feel good about living under gangsters, and that is the reality of Ferguson right now.

The innocence of Darren Wilson does not change this fundamental fact. Indeed the focus on the deeds of alleged individual perpetrators, on perceived bad actors, obscures the broad systemic corruption which is really at the root. Darren Wilson is not the first gang member to be publicly accused of a crime he did not commit. But Darren Wilson was given the kind of due process that those of us who are often presumed to be gang members rarely enjoy. I do not favor lowering the standard of justice offered Officer Wilson. I favor raising the standard of justice offered to the rest of us.

This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/03/The-Gangsters-Of-Ferguson/386893/

The venerable studio, originally founded as Maxis Software in 1987, has been shut down as EA consolidates ongoing development of The Sims and SimCity to its other Maxis satellite studios. ...

A nightmare that never ends. David Cole has finished the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s torture report, which dominated headlines in the second week of December before vanishing into the abyss because the Obama administration wants to look forward. Among the discoveries:

The overall picture that the documents paint is not of a rogue agency, but of a rogue administration. Yes, the CIA affirmatively proposed to use patently illegal tactics — waterboarding, sleep deprivation, physical assault, and painful stress positions. But at every turn, senior officials and lawyers in the White House and the Department of Justice reassured the agency that it could — and should — go forward. The documents reveal an agency that is extremely sensitive to whether the program is legally authorized and approved by higher-ups — no doubt because it understood that what it was doing was at a minimum controversial, and very possibly illegal. The documents show that the CIA repeatedly raised questions along these lines, and even suspended the program when the OLC was temporarily unwilling to say, without further review, whether the techniques would “shock the conscience” in violation of the Fifth Amendment. But at every point where the White House and the DOJ could have and should have said no to tactics that were patently illegal, they said yes.

Every senior member of the White House circle knew: Condoleeza Rice, John Ashcroft (so much for the courage he showed resisting White House pressure to authorize domestic spying aka the infamous hospital incident in 2004), George Tenet, Dick Cheney, not to mention their respective counsels. With gingerly tread the CIA sought assurances from what newspapers call senior administration officials. Where all are guilty, none are, Hannah Arendt wrote.