Study Guide Google Doc

All are welcome to use this resource, please add notes, ideas, and summaries!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yUPhn9cSrMhqzsefPl9lkus9pkBrtClupgvhzUDNccM/edit?hl=en&authkey=COOUw5YD#

Final Exam: 11:30am 141 McCone

Legitimacy and Crisis

I had to take a break from writing a paper on the Tea-Party for Gill Hart's class to share a few things.

These past two years have been pretty extraordinary in terms of the global reaction to the onset of austerity measures. Kris said something in class about the reverberating affects of various movements. Many things have happened, just in the span of this class. Last year in Greece there were massive riots and protests against the greek austerity-bail out ... And recently in Spain 3/4 of workers went on strike, the Air-traffic controllers refused to work and were forced, literally by gun-point, by the military (which occupied the airports) to continue working. Before these protests in France earlier this autumn, 3 million french students and workers took to the street to protest cuts to education, the raising of the age at which people are allowed to stop working without getting a penalty. (btw, lot's of people strangely reported that they were raising it from 61 to 62, that was just a small percentage of the population, most french-people are just like any other nation, they were raising it from 65 to 67 See this article. And now, in Britain the protests against education cuts were huge -- they were supported by a large percentage of students and workers and has changed both the student's and larger public's understanding of the present situation -- consciousness remains "hot". In the past few weeks in Italy there have also been riots and protests over austerity measures and education cuts. Now, in the past few hours with Berlusconi being narrowly allowed to continue his reign (by 2 votes), workers, students, concerned citizens, etc. have broken into various protests/riots across Italy...

Around the world Austerity is demanded. Around the world people have seemed to say: "Austerity for us? Austerity for the bankers, the very rich, not for us" ... well... there's lots to say, but I guess I'd like to point out that the world we know hasn't been around as long as living in it makes it seem. These are strange and changing times -- there's a lot to think about, especially when we are in school and learning all this stuff. I suggest though that dreaming from the space of your own life is very important. I don't think dreaming is idealistic, I think it's actually very necessary to understand what you want out of life and your problems with the current state of things: it lets your critique of the world flesh out into something relevant at all times of the day. The question of course is then that old nagging one: what is to be done. I might be naive, but I think humans are capable of so much good -- we shouldn't blind ourselves about the tenability of alternatives.

Bomb Burning in California Home

Hi Everyone,

I realize that everyone is in the depths of papers and finals, but I was following the developments of this story and found it relevant to our discussions on issues surrounding the bomb and nuclear facilities. The amount of effort, funding, evacuations and so forth surrounding a house full of home made bombs and materials highlights the massive needs of funding and effort that are needed to address the much larger issue of nuclear test sites and toxic dump sites. The burning of this house is expected to release toxic chemicals into the air surrounding air in a mile radius, and stories note the wind watch advisory for the day of the burn reminds me of the miscalculated wind measurements in the nuclear testing in the Bikini atolls.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/12/03/131755637/-bomb-factory-in-california-home-leads-to-state-of-emergency

"art is a permanent accusation"

Abu Ghraib
Fernando Botero

Botero's paintings depict the torture, abuse and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers.


Link to Botero's Abu Ghraib series

Botero Sees the World's True Heavies at Abu Ghraib

Washington Post Article, November, 2007

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"A painting is not thought out and settled in advance. While it is being done, it changes as one's thoughts change. And when it's finished, it goes on changing, according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it." - Pablo Picasso

Guernica, 1937

My interpretation of this quote by Picasso is that art has the capability to transform and challenge to the point that we become different people. Theory is very much like this.

WIPP Nuclear Waste Markers

Just thought I would share a document that gives more pictures and ideas of how to possibly mark nuclear waste sites for thousands of years in the future.

I think it is interesting to think about how it is possible to mark a site for future generations, possibly after our languages have all disappeared...how can we communicate these dangers in pictures ? Also, by marking a site, you are also drawing attention to it merely by act of marking. Thus, marking it could have the reverse effect that we intend. How can we mark a spot to universally express danger for thousands and perhaps hundreds of years in the future when communication and civilization as we know it will have so drastically changed?

I think this is really interesting to think about because it conveys the massive extent and unbounded nature of this problem both spatially and temporally.

http://www.wipp.energy.gov/library/PermanentMarkersImplementationPlan.pdf

Understanding basics of Nuclear Weapons

Hi Everyone!

I realize that we are nearing the end of the semester, and that extra reading may not be on your ‘to-do’ list… However this website might prove interesting/helpful to understanding some of the basics of WMDs, and in our case nuclear weapons. It is recommended by Professor Muller who teaches “Physics for Future Presidents” which is a really interesting class. It is a lot of information, but I think it could be quite helpful…

http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/index.html

solidarity

Photograph: Matt Dunham/AP / November 24, 2010

NEWS
BLOG
"Second day of student protests - how the demonstrations happened"
Link to news blog at guardian.co.uk

Hi All,
The above is a very interesting blog with live updates on the student tuition hike protests as they unfolded throughout the day in the UK. I am fascinated by the scale of their organization -- much to learn from.

Students march in protest in Glasgow, Scotland

south korea and north korea

Hi All:

I wonder how we can use the themes in class in analyzing or in attempting to understand the current occurrences between South Korean and North Korea. (this is sad and terrifying to begin with)

Here are the links of the news I have found in the past hour:

1.http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/world/asia/24korea.html?_r=1&hp

2.http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11818005

If there is anyone who knows or has a link to local news agencies in both, please feel free to share them. (though i would doubt that N.K. has one that is not under strict restrictions or control)

Quick question about USA-Russia nuke treaty?

I'm just confused as to what this agreement is hoping to achieve? As I understand, both countries have enough nuclear weapons to obliterate the world many times over, so about from a sheer political move, what is the purpose of this?

Timely Debate Over Surveillance

An interesting very public debate over how far security can justify the public sphere (in this case the TSA) intruding on the private sphere (individual airline passengers) is raging in the media, which has an obvious parallel to Lyon's reading on surveillance.

For those who haven't heard about it the summary is that 70 airports throughout the nation are beginning to use "backscatter" x-ray machines which enable TSA employees to look through the clothing of individual passengers. The TSA has allowed passengers to opt-out of the machines but these passengers will have to undergo an extremely "intimate" pat-down as a result. Concerns range from radiation exposure, to usage of the images beyond purely security. For more information here are a couple articles:

http://www.npr.org/2010/11/15/131328327/new-airport-security-rules-cause-traveler-discomfort

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/11/12/travel.screening/?hpt=Sbin

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/nov/16/local/la-me-oceanside-scan-20101116

Lyon discusses how increasingly our personal information and images are compiled, categorized and used commercially and politically. If Lyon had written his piece a little later he would take into account the recreational piece of this especially with the advent of Facebook. In recent years this information is increasingly volunteered which signals more implicit acceptance of varieties of surveillance (I don't think that is going too far out on a limb) but implementation of this "backscatter" technology has seemed to cross a line. I'm curious if this line is simply the more tangible visual/physical element of being given the option of being viewed naked remotely or being aggressively patted down? What does it say about increasing intrusion into the private sphere that our security apparatus didn't anticipate any public reaction to this? How much privacy do we need to give up collectively in order to travel safely? What are your guys thoughts about this?

Lyon's Surveillance Society: Maybe a little over the top?

So I was reading Lyon, and he was mostly making sense, arguing good points, but the first time I started to question the extent to which he gives surveillance credit was in the first section when he argues that modern surveillance actually looks INSIDE the body. At first I balked, but then the argument that medical records are available online to people with access or the right hacking knowledge made sense.

On page 12, another argument caught my attention, when he links gender, the public and private spheres, and 'private property'. I wasn't sure exactly what he's trying to argue with this, and what its relevance to the rest of the essay was, exactly. Is he saying that women are generally associated with the home, and therefore private property? Or is he mistakenly harking back to times when women were actually considered private property? Either way, I felt that this argument was, if not highly generalized, then actually reinforcing of historical gender roles.

The essay as a whole makes some interesting points, and Lyon is right to point out and criticize the massive way in which information is obtained, distributed, and used in modern times. However, he makes some pretty massive blanket statements and assumptions, that I think generally don't hold up and severely weaken his overall argument.

Also, and more specifically, Lyon seems to both point out, and fall into the trap of technological determinism. throughout the piece, he argues that technology is making our interactions more and more abstract, causing 'disappearing bodies'. I wonder if maybe this argument doesn't fall into the same technologically deterministic trap that he warns about earlier, attributing too much agency to technology in our social interactions. Of course, we would all admit that technology has drastically changed the way we interact with each other and the world, but I'm not convinced it goes quite to the point that Lyon argues. What do you all think?

UC regents fee hike protest

(San Francisco Chronicle, Noah Berger / AP Photo / November 17, 2010)

I think most of us have seen this image and the YouTube videos from Wednesday's protest in San Francisco. Below are links to several news articles as well as photographs of the event that give us some context upon which to reflect. Clearly, it is an outrage and an abuse of power that is frightening, more so because it sets a precedent for how police may respond to moments of tension during future student protests.

Several of our classmates took part in the protest yesterday - it would really be valuable for us all to hear your thoughts on what took place.

ARTICLES
Los Angeles Times:
Huffington Post:
Washington Post:
L.A. Times photography:

"The Bomb" in the Everyday

Joseph Masco's article spoke about how the U.S. used images of a possible nuclear Armageddon to construct a new form of national culture, built upon the paradigm that arose out of the creation, detonation, and devastation of the nuclear bomb. This was because the U.S. government was panic as the true threat to national security. "Like the A-bomb, panic is fashionable. It can produce a chain reaction more deeply destructive than any explosive known. If there is an ultimate weapon, it may well be mass panic--not the A-bomb" (pg 366-367). So, in order to prevent this even more destructive weapon from taking hold of the American people and more or less leading to the end of American life, the government set about to transform the paralyzing effect of the threat of nuclear bombing from what Masco terms "nuclear terror" into "nuclear fear." A person can live with fear and still function in the everyday. Thus the goal of the government's "civil defense programs" were to train the public psychologically and make them impervious to the panic that would be likely to take hold after an atomic attack. This way, society could continue to function, even though its population and physical surroundings were damaged, and rebuild itself again, possibly stronger. Operation Cue was a prime example of the way in which this aim was achieved. Having the country witness the destruction of a "typical American suburban town" did more than show everyone the actual physical results of such an event, but also imprinted a vision in people's minds of they themselves as the victims of a nuclear attack. The result of this and other forms of propaganda over the ensuing decades made nuclear devastation an aspect of everyday life. It normalized mass destruction, and made it something that could be thought about, not in its true and terrible form, but in a manageable, after school special kind of way. At the same time, it became something sensational, that would be later replicated in movies and television shows. True, it was/is something to fear, but it's the kind of fear that one feels when watching a scary movie.

This is what I really want to focus on, the normalization of mass destruction and how that influences the way that people deal with it today. A scene that has constantly come back to me over the years is a scene in Hotel Rwanda when the protagonist turns to the American photographer and says that his pictures will bring help to those being massacred because the American people will see them and respond. But the photographer says that no, people will look at them and go back to their TV dinners, never thinking twice. I think that this scene is so poignant to me because it seems so true. But why? Why are we so desensitized to such images? I'm sure many of us in class today looked at those horrendous images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki only to leave the classroom and go have lunch with a friend, take a nap, catch up on your shows on Hulu. I'm not judging you. I do it myself a lot of the time. But again, why is it so easy for us to?

I think these programs have had a lasting effect, not only in how we perceive ourselves in relation to the bomb, but how we perceive its after effects, and moreover, on how we understand and relate to events that result in mass death and destruction. It has become normalized, something that happens all the time, everyday, and naturalized, in that it is a part of the everyday because it is meant to be a part of it, a force of nature, no more preventable than the wind that rustles the trees. (Of course if there was a nuclear apocalypse then there probably wouldn't be any trees to rustle. But I digress.)

Our desensitization, our acceptance of these images and occurrences have had several far reaching and possibly unforeseen effects. But this has no doubt been useful to those pressing the big red button, because if we see the aftermath as something normal and natural that we cannot prevent then opposition to their use has been effectively obliterated, less than the shadows left behind on the bridges of Hiroshima.

Operation Doorstep 1953 and Operation Cue 1955 Test Films

Here is a supplement for Masco's work on visual culture and the normalization process of nuclear warfare during the Cold War as the state is capitalizing on the Americans' "nuclear fear" and acceptability of a nuclear war. It permeates their quotidian lives (in this case middle-class Americans) and induces them to accept and believe that there is this imminent threat of an "atomic warfare," thereby, producing a form of consent on their part for the state to act on their behalf. Masco's "be afraid but do not panic!" section talks about this more.

today's article in guardian.co.uk

OBAMA'S SPEECH TO THE MUSLIM WORLD CALLS FOR A NEW BEGINNING

In a speech to university students in Jakarta, the US president speaks fondly of his boyhood home and acknowledges that relations are still frayed with the Islamic world. Link to video clip.

Wednesday 10 November 2010 13.15 GMT
White House planners initially considered Indonesia as the location for Barack Obama's much-anticipated speech to the Muslim world, which he eventually gave in Cairo in June last year. Expectations then were probably impossibly high, and his address in Jakarta today did not get the same dramatic billing. Seventeen months on, the mood has soured and polls show that his popularity is in decline across the globe as well as at home...click here to continue to article.

Link to 31:00 minute speech, University of Indonesia, Jakarta

Classification of land

When reading the Kuletz article, I noticed once how important classifying something within a certain category is to its perceived use or value. Kuletz talks a great deal in how the value of the land of the nuclear test sites changed without changing the perception of the land itself. The land that the US government chose to "allocate" for the Native American population was chosen on the basis of its nonproductive nature, since it was not valuable, it was desired to shove natives onto this land. Ironically, only a century later, the land was still not valuable and nonproductive, but it is exactly these characteristics that make it valuable now.Through nuclear testing, the non-valuable became valuable through its non-value. Interesting transformation.