DISQUS

getting ready for the clampdown....,

You got the third one right...,

"bad choices"?

Participation in the drug trade is a bad choice?

Non-violent use of drugs is a bad choice?

Federal drug prohibition is a bad choice?

Lack of accountability by law enforcement involved in the war on drugs is a bad choice?

http://subrealism.blogspot.com/2009/02/business-as-usual-in-war-on-drugs.html

Don't let my use of the terminology "black market entrepreneurs" excite or confuse you Malik...,

I haven't qualified the activity as either operational or aspirational - the entertrainment industry on the other hand, has gone to great lengths to glamorize and romanticize it.

and low intensity warfare between competing black market entrepreneurs whose business rivalries and disputes can not be adjudicated in civil courts due to the prohibition.

I'm not seeing too many open-air drug markets outside the barrio and the hood, and in these, more in the latter than the former. Progressive politics on this specific law and order issue are about as stupid and confused as most social conservative politics.

Neighborhoods ruled by young men are incompatible with the normative social order. So either they are restored to management by older, more responsible, and communitarian men, or, they are subject to colonial occupation by paramilitary police.

As opposed to speaking with and for and working with and for enclaves organized around practical work?

I heartily agree.

I'd take that one step further to say the professional and managerial classes of Black folk are similarly afflicted and that that cherry picked compartmentalization of Black intellectual and sweat equity has served as a primary neutralizing force and has ensured insipid assimilation and comparative servitude on other folks terms.

I remain sanguine about the pinch of necessity as either the mother of invention or the harbinger of some painful alternatives.

I had dinner a few months back with a local blackademic who stated rather forthrightly that his research and publication is too valuable to share and disclose in the blogosphere. Mind you, this wasn't a scientist or engineer and he's non-existent in the ranks of public intellectuals in his liberal arts sphere.

It took me a full 5 minutes to recover my composure after falling out of my chair laughing. Being that he's one of my "elders", of course there's no way to recover from that sleight, but, I think there are lots more confused breath and britches practitioners out there along with the preacher/politician classes who're in for a VERY RUDE awakening in 2009.

Afrodemics could easily use new media to spark a revolution in observational learning. The trick consists in two parts.

1. Learning how to formulate good new wine

2. Acquiring the skills to put that new wine in appropriate and appealing new wineskins.

http://subrealism.blogspot.com/2008/12/observational-learning.html

I had a rollicking discussion with the good doctor about this yesterday morning. It's not rocket science after all....., but necessity has to pinch hard enough for folks to shake off their old methods and habits.

Les, let me see if I can boil what E.C. wrote and what I've experienced over the past 6 years down to an even more fundamental litmus.

1. Assuming that your product is information - what could you package for a consumer - with an approximate 4th grade reading and comprehension level - that would confer practical knowledge or technique to that consumer that he/she would at a minimum be willing to pay attention to? (potential ad revenue)

2. If 1., might that same consumer be induced to pay more than just attention for access to and use of your informational presentation?

There are a whole set of conversations about the future of publishing, the future of the academy, the future of the music business. Black intellectuals haven’t been significant voices here.

We should be…because our futures are on the line as well, even as our future IS online.

Soulja boy showed everybody the way and got called on the carpet by old-heads for having done so.

Perhaps the Black intelligencia would be better characterized as the Black establishment.

just not established well enough to endure underlying contraction, thus, not particularly well-established at all.

Necessity really IS the mother of invention. How could those working most strenuously to escape the exigencies of "necessity" ever be looked to as a source of invention?

It's contrary to the demonstrated nature of the persons and processes in question.

A new blog strategy. That I'm hoping will evolve into a new academic strategy.

Leaving aside the novelty of Lester Spence as the featured talking head, what exactly is "new" about it?

For a minute, you gave the appearance of endeavoring a new strategy Les...,

http://blacksmythe.com/blog/2008/11/16/obama-and-the-southern-strategy/

http://blacksmythe.com/blog/2008/11/11/the-obama-election-and-its-symbolic-consequences/

http://blacksmythe.com/blog/2008/10/31/what-next-crossposted-at-blackprof/

and then stepped back from it.

I hope Jimmy Izrael didn't back you away from it with this HILARIOUS bullseye comment at Cobbs;

Why niggas gotta posture with books in the background? We know you read, nigga. when I do my shit, I'm gonna have a few of my homegirls writhing in the background, 2 Live Crew-stylee...

Jimmy is closer to the truth here than any 8 dozen afrodemics/creatives swirling around the bowl and trying to figure out why the enterprise to which they're only feebly attached is in decline.

Is this a case of old wine in new wineskins?

For a minute, you gave the appearance of endeavoring a new blog strategy Les...,

http://blacksmythe.com/blog/2008/11/16/obama-and-the-southern-strategy/

http://blacksmythe.com/blog/2008/11/11/the-obama-election-and-its-symbolic-consequences/

http://blacksmythe.com/blog/2008/10/31/what-next-crossposted-at-blackprof/

and then stepped back from it.

I hope Jimmy Izrael didn't back you away from it with this HILARIOUS bullseye comment at Cobbs;

Why niggas gotta posture with books in the background? We know you read, nigga. when I do my shit, I'm gonna have a few of my homegirls writhing in the background, 2 Live Crew-stylee...

Jimmy is closer to the truth here than any 8 dozen afrodemics/creatives swirling around the bowl and trying to figure out why the enterprise to which they're only feebly attached is in decline.

Was this a new blog strategy Les, or, was it an inherently doomed experiment with old wine funneled into a new wineskin?

Do dominant - though not necessarily fully monetized - new media organs have greater value as training or education tools?

What barriers to educative entry do some of the tools potentially solve?

Aside from advertising, what are the most prolific monetization models online?

What does this factor have to do with what has proliferated online and what has failed to proliferate or peaked far earlier than its architects envisioned?

I choose these stories because they point to the growing reality that “cultural creatives” (writers, artists, musicians, intellectuals, journalists) like the institutions that sponsor them may need to rethink the way they work.

What do all the "dots in decline" that you arranged in the post anchoring this thread have in common?

Why might training be of greater value than educating for a minute, and then, if masterfully crafted, function as a gateway for educative processes currently in decline?

The essence of the thing is "rethinking the way you work". How might the new media subserve rethinking the way you work?

Global systemic crisis – New tipping-point in March 2009

LEAP/E2020 anticipates than the unfolding global systemic crisis will experience in March 2009 a new tipping point of similar magnitude to the September 2008 one. According to our team, at that period of the year, the general public will become aware of three major destabilizing processes at work in the global economy, i.e.:

• the length of the crisis

• the explosion of unemployment worldwide

• the risk of sudden collapse of all capital-based pension systems

A whole range of psychological factors will contribute to this tipping point: general awareness in Europe, America and Asia that the crisis has escaped from the control of every public authority, whether national or international; that it is severely affecting all regions of the world, even if some are more affected than others (see GEAB N°28); that it is directly hitting hundreds of millions of people in the “developed” world; and that it is only worsening as its consequences reveal throughout the real economy. National governments and international institutions only have three months left to prepare themselves to the next blow, one that could go along severe risks of social chaos. The countries which are not properly equipped to cope with a surge in unemployment and major risks on pensions will be seriously destabilized by this new public awareness.

That's why I invoked Grimms...., children have minimal value in those "fairy" tales - think of Hansel and Gretel where they're banished to die for eating too much and are then preyed upon by the ritual cannibal in the cookies and candy house.

The Freeway movies I linked to are Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel updates - both phenomenally entertaining and frankly slightly shocking retellings of the Grimms. What all the stories you linked yesterday had in common to me was the utter devaluation of children and the young, and, the abandonment and devaluation of institutional norms (schools) which allegedly exist to shelter and cultivate children and the young.

Oh, and lest you get hopeful about the organizing potential of the enabling technology in the hands of the young, bear in mind the extent to which its use has been studied VERY carefully for some years now, and, the way in which the parameters of what authority is empowered to do with and to the backend of the technology has progressed very rapidly under Bush/Blair and the total information awareness regime.

Anarcho-capitalism (my preferred variant) doesn't require either the auspices or the protection of the state...,

I suspect that for the longest time now, you'll be witness to the emergence and overt activity of non-state actors, so-called terrorists and members of the drug meta-economy being the first and most prominent exponents. There's a better than even chance of the outbreak of civil war in Mexico sometime late next year.

I see updated Grimm's Fairy Tales, for real...,

What does the spirit of the twentieth century come back as?

it doesn't....,

what was it like in the 19th century?

ruh roh....,

without a redo, that'll be the last time I try to paste some html source even if I take it from one of my own blogposts. The thought is twofold, however. First, there is the singular symbolic and functional place held within the American psyche by the automobile - so the demise of the hub of the automotive industry is singular.

Second, and more to the point, if 70% of large enterprise software implementations fail due to poor change management and user acceptance (and these are just to automate existing business processes, not revolutionize a way of life) then what is the likelihood that the level of comprehensive change management required to transition Detroit from its terminal current state to a resurrected future state could be mounted, regardless of the level of local, regional and national engagement?

I have to consult google maps and then think about this rather hard before endeavoring an answer. Meanwhile, I offer the following placeholder to your assertion "so goes Detroit, so goes urban America....,"

Amanda Kovattana goes straight to the heart of Orlov's treatment of our predicament, uncovering at least one of the fundamental assumptions inherent to being a fish in these American waters;</span>

<span style="font-size: 85%;">Along the way, he reveals pithy insights to explain how the American system works in contrast with the Russian one. For instance the story of the classless society is exemplified by the concept of a middle class — something Americans have proudly espoused — which he points out is </span><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold; font-size: 85%;">held together by the common denominator of everyone owning a car</span><span style="font-size: 85%;">. That's right, not education, not equal opportunity, or equal rights but the one-ton behemoth that we must have to get around the wasteful geography created by suburbia.

We know about this waste from the film The End of Suburbia and James Kunstler's Geography of Nowhere and all the other peak oil fellows, but Orlov points out that </span><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold; font-size: 85%;">because we are so identified with owning a car</span><span style="font-size: 85%;"> as part of this American middle class identity we will be hard put to let it go. And when we are forced to (due to diminishing and increasingly expensive gasoline supplies) so will go the myth of the middle class. In turn he explains how the Russians lost faith in the classless worker's paradise because they could clearly see that there was an elite strutting around in cool Armani threads. Meanwhile the lack of consumer goods and trendy fashions meant that a good life for all never became a reality.

And because our ideologically indoctrinated minds are so closed to such deep seated change and so invested in our "can do" innovation, we will, like Napoleon, be unable to retreat from the overextended, oil fueled, debt based economy which is poised to come crashing down, financed as it is by foreign investment that will eventually decide that we are not a good credit risk.</span>

<span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 85%;">And there it is in a nutshell. Few national politicians dare give voice to what's just beyond the signpost up ahead. Being unwilling and unable to discuss reality, how then could they ever go about proposing, much less implementing, any of the radical engineering redesigns required to genuinely rebuild along viable and sustainable lines? The patient is as yet utterly unwilling to hear an objective and accurate diagnosis. With no diagnosis, how can she participate in her own treatment, much less get on board with the radical measures required to effect an actual cure? </span>

MIB, doesn't community radio subserve that purpose in your locality?

http://www.kkfi.org/

This is an interesting take on the public and political response. Along the lines of what this article discusses. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/science/09obenvy.html

Elite governance depends upon the skilled manipulation of such insight and associated methods for controlling these impulses. While I'm inclined to agree that this may indeed by symptomatic at least in part of what is underway, I'm somewhat more strongly persuaded to believe that a "once bitten twice shy" reflex is at work here. i.e., given what folks have observed about the financial services system bailout, we've been made jaded about not only the fundamental fairness of socialism for the wealthy, but also its basic utility.

More fundamentally Les, I think folks are beginning to realize that they're in a "Titanic" economy. i.e., the rich will be saved but steerage is being locked down until all the life boats are gone...,