Browsing PBH By Articles

The Perks Of Being In White-Collar

The Article: Why Don’t White-Collar Criminals Get Equal Time? by William Grieder in The Nation.

The Text: The Obama administration collected some crowd-pleasing headlines with its announcement that the Justice Department is suing Standard & Poor’s, the rating agency that notoriously fueled the financial crisis and crash by duping investors into buying billions in rotten securities. The government is said to be seeking a cash penalty of more than $1 billion.

That sounds good, but President Obama and his administration are stalked by a question of scandal that will not go away: Why isn’t anyone going to jail? The lawsuit’s accusation against S&P sounds like a crime. The firm, it charges, “knowingly and with intent to defraud, devised, participated in, and executed a scheme to defraud investors.” Yet federal investigators seem unable to identify any Wall Street executives to prosecute as criminals.

Why not? The popular explanation, widely shared among citizens, is that leaders of the largest banks and financial firms are given a pass because they are “too big to jail.” The public’s cynicism sounds right. It has become a momentous black mark on the Obama presidency, like a blood stain that cannot be washed away. Does the government operate two systems of justice—one for mom-and-pop criminals and another for influential titans who run the “too big to fail” banks?

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Why Geeks Are Our New Civil Liberties Guardians

The Article: Geeks are the New Guardians of Our Civil Liberties by Gabriella Coleman in Technology Review.

The Text: A decade-plus of anthropological fieldwork among hackers and like-minded geeks has led me to the firm conviction that these people are building one of the most vibrant civil liberties movements we’ve ever seen. It is a culture committed to freeing information, insisting on privacy, and fighting censorship, which in turn propels wide-ranging political activity. In the last year alone, hackers have been behind some of the most powerful political currents out there.

Before I elaborate, a brief word on the term “hacker” is probably in order. Even among hackers, it provokes debate. For instance, on the technical front, a hacker might program, administer a network, or tinker with hardware. Ethically and politically, the variability is just as prominent. Some hackers are part of a transgressive, law-breaking tradition, their activities opaque and below the radar. Other hackers write open-source software and pride themselves on access and transparency. While many steer clear of political activity, an increasingly important subset rise up to defend their productive autonomy, or engage in broader social justice and human rights campaigns.

Despite their differences, there are certain websites and conferences that bring the various hacker clans together. Like any political movement, it is internally diverse but, under the right conditions, individuals with distinct abilities will work in unison toward a cause.

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Ten Fascinating Things You Didn’t Know About Black History

The Article: Michelle Obama Is Not Our First Black First Lady? 10 Fascinating Things You Didn’t Know About Black History by Bijan C. Bayne in AlterNet.

The Text: In 1926, historian Carter G. Woodson pioneered the celebration of Negro History Week in February as a recognition to coincide with the birthdays of President Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Today, that commemoration has evolved into Black History Month. Though February has long been replete with special curriculum in schools, public events and tailored TV programming, many elements of the past remain obscured. Here are 10 examples worthy of Mr. Woodson.

1. Black Americans were once viewed as poor athletes.

Blacks have not always been viewed as athletically dominant in the major U.S. team sports, and certain Olympic events. Their impoverished living conditions, vitamin deficient diets, predisposition to illness, and the weak moral fiber of their communities served as rationale for their exclusion from top athletic competition. Many white authorities and educators also believed Negroes lacked the capacity to think fast and the intestinal fortitude that sports demanded. A prevailing stereotype of the day, depicted in radio and film, was the Negro with the “yellow streak.” In vintage movies, black character actors such as Stepin Fetchit and Mantan Moreland bugged their eyes and fled at the mere mention of a mummy or a ghost.

“Games demanding team play are played by the Anglo-Saxon peoples, and by these peoples alone,” said Luther Gulick, the director of the Springfield, Massachusetts YMCA, who trained basketball’s inventor Dr. Naismith. In 1906, Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge told the Harvard class of 1906 “…the time given to athletic contests… (is) part of the price which the English-speaking race has paid for being world-conquerors.” The same year, a summer physical education doctoral candidate named Edwin B. Henderson learned to coach basketball and other sports at Harvard. Henderson resolved not only to debunk the notion that blacks were inferior athletes, he decided if enough black high school students proved their athletic mettle, they could also earn scholarships to integrated northern colleges such as Cornell and Amherst.

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Get Scared: The “Case” For Drone Strikes On Americans

The Article: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americans by Michael Isikoff in NBC News.

The Text: A confidential Justice Department memo concludes that the U.S. government can order the killing of American citizens if they are believed to be “senior operational leaders” of al-Qaida or “an associated force” — even if there is no intelligence indicating they are engaged in an active plot to attack the U.S.

The 16-page memo, a copy of which was obtained by NBC News, provides new details about the legal reasoning behind one of the Obama administration’s most secretive and controversial polices: its dramatically increased use of drone strikes against al-Qaida suspects abroad, including those aimed at American citizens, such as the September 2011 strike in Yemen that killed alleged al-Qaida operatives Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan. Both were U.S. citizens who had never been indicted by the U.S. government nor charged with any crimes.

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The Best Theories On Everything (Volume IV)

The “Us Vs. Ancient Romans” Theory: We are genetically identical to the Ancient Romans. We are simply separated by nicer things, monotheism, and two thousand years of Enlightenment and the Western legal system. Our National Football League is their gladiatorial games but with nicer Underarmor-imprinted padding.

The “10,000 Rule” Theory: Malcolm Gladwell estimates it takes 10,000 hours to truly master a skill. The Beatles became The Beatles after countless all-night jam sessions in mostly empty Munich night-clubs. Bill Gates logged well over 10,000 hours coding in the University of Washington’s computer labs.

What is the 10,000 hour skill you want to master? What is your hour tally? (Math Tip: An hour a day for three years is a little over 1,000 hours, or only a smidge above 10%.)

The “February Black History Month” Theory: As told by Chris Rock, “February is Black History Month. Isn’t that nice? The Man gives us February because it’s the shortest month of the year! Now, I’m not complaining, but I think we deserve at least a thirty-day month. It’s also the coldest month of the year, just in case we wanted to have a parade.”

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