Yesterday, I saw some xeroxed posters on telephone poles in Berkeley (on Bancroft, a five minute walk from Boalt) with a picture of Yoo and a caption like "War Criminal" or something like that.
The scorn in the linked article seems much more implicit than overt. Hooray for reasonable liberalism.
What can I say? I am an ineffectual academic procedural liberal.
I am nerving myself up to write a strongly-worded letter to The Times...
Interesting that DeLong doesn't deny responsibility for putting up the John Yoo "war criminal" posters. Interesting.
Speaking of telephone poles in the PRB, I'm not 50 feet away from an index card-sized prediction of a megaquake in September 2010, complete with link to their website. "YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED."
So awesome, from the link in 5:
Geologists have proven, in video below and science articles link above, that this type of "mega thrust" Quake/Tsunami hits every 300 years. The last one was in January, 1700. Do the math!
"War Criminal" is equivocating. Cross-hairs are the graphic of choice.
Some wealthy Boalt Hall alumnus should give a big chunk of money to Stanford Law School, explaining that the money would have gone to Boalt if Chris Edley hadn't been so cowardly.
Even better, Boalt alumni should organize and withhold donations to the school until Yoo is gone.
Neither seems very likely.
You know for about 49 minutes yesterday I actually wished life resembled Law & Order.
The "War Criminal" posters should at a minimum be posted in all of the coffee-shops near campus. Yoo should be refused service by every establishment in the People's Republic.
Yoo should be refused service by every establishment in the People's Republic.
I read this three times as "You" for some reason.
In some countries, that would mean you and John Yoo were legally married.
Being refused service by every establishment in the People's Republic?
John Yoo in Berkeley should be treated like Laurence Olivier on 47th St. at the end of Marathon Man.
There were those guys who crashed his class, but he just left.
Marathon Man, like that Soylent Green story, is one of those movies that the internet was just determined to spoil for me.
The only real problem I can foresee with a public campaign to treat John Yoo as a pariah is that innocent well-fed middle-aged Korean-American men might have unpleasant experiences as a result. That would be bad.
19: See, what you do is take the suspect's credit card, and then if you see that it is indeed John Yoo's, you futz about with the machine for a minute and then say, loudly, so the whole coffeeshop can hear you, "I'm sorry, Mr. Yoo, but your credit card has been refused." Otherwise it's just "thank you, Mr. Kim, have a nice day!"
Or, you could get confrontational: "Yoo!"
There's no way that could be misinterpreted if you had the wrong guy.
Or, you could get confrontational: "Yoo!"
Said à la Donald Sutherland at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers!
That was pretty much what I was thinking of, although the Abbot and Costello possibilities are also out there. "Yoo!" "Who?" "He's on first."
Maybe all the businesses in Berkeley could start printing relevant excerpts from Youngstown on their receipts in that space where many business currently print little humorous aphorisms.
19: Be sure also to stay away from descriptions of "To Serve Man."
C: And you are?
A: Yoo!
C: Huh? No, I'm Hymm. But you?
A: Yes, Yoo!
C: I'm Hymm. But you . . .
A: Yes!
C: What?
A: Yoo!
C: Me?
A: Not Mie, Yoo!
etc. ad infinitum ad hilarium
20.---No, see, I want him refused the $2 cappuccino as well at the $40 dinner. I want the coffee-cart guy in the quad downstairs not to sell him a $.50 doughnut.
Just yesterday I spoilered myself for *Enders Game*.
I realized that (1) it would never be worth my time to read it, because why spend time reading sci-fi justifications for war crimes and (2) I really wanted to know what the hell everyone else was talking about.
totes:totally::win:winsome?
No, : winston.
28: But reducing his range of choices to only $0.50 donuts is not nothing.
24 thinks itself a joke, but that's exactly the kind of thing that Berkeley businesses do. That they haven't done anything so far is evidence of their institutional inability to distinguish among koreans.
33: Especially when they have dried fecal matter sprinkled on top.
34: I didn't mean put the Youngstown excerpts only on Yoo's receipts. I meant on every receipt. Do they really personalize receipts in Berkeley?
Do they really personalize receipts in Berkeley?
They don't have all that dried fecal matter just sitting there for show, M/tch.
39: So how do they personalize the distribution of fecal matter to customers? Are grains of shit all as unique as snowflakes?
25: 19: Be sure also to stay away from descriptions of "To Serve Man."
"To Serve Yoo"?
max
['Saying 'yoo' makes me want to sing.']
Yoo and I must make a pact
We must bring due process back
Where there is law
I'll be there
That is great.
Hawaiian Punch went to bed at 7. She has woken up so far at 8:30, 10, and just now at 11. This is going to be an awesome night.
On an unrelated note, this too is awesome.
47: Thank you for freedomizing that link.
Let me be the frist to say that 44 is awesome.
And 47? It's just like a mini-mall.
7
"War Criminal" is equivocating. Cross-hairs are the graphic of choice.
So if somebody shoots Yoo what is Biohazard's moral responsibility?
It would only redound to Biohazard's honor.
I'd like to see Yoo fired, socially ostracized, and publicly tried in a court of law. I'd hope he'd be convicted, and would serve a long sentence.
I have no wish to see him dead, either by the machinery of the state or by an individual. I think assassination jokes undermine the argument that -- contra Yoo -- the rule of law is important.
That said, I've seen posters that managed to use a cross-hairs graphic without implying assassination.
I'm in love with 24.
Yeah, I was actually musing about it to myself last night. I only know one retail business here that explicitly takes those kinds of stances with their customers. Would be really cool if more did (even if I didn't agree with all of them).
Just yesterday I spoilered myself for *Enders Game*.
I realized that (1) it would never be worth my time to read it,
You could read the short story (which is better anyway, I've heard) in an evening. And iirc the short story has almost none of the offensive bits - or perhaps they're alluded to, not expounded upon.
Or you could have, anyway. Should've asked, Rob.
29: Reading the admittedly overly-lauded Ender's Game as a defense of war crimes is a real stretch. The opposite interpretation is much more defensible, though I think it's really just a rumination on humanity's xenophobia without any clear moral judgment. With heroic kids and mean teachers and rayguns and shit.
I only know one retail business here that explicitly takes those kinds of stances with their customers.
You mean Geno's refusing to serve furriners?
56 - Yeah. I don't want to defend the book, because I think it's boo-hoo, smart kids are special flowers special pleading designed to make generations of science fiction dorks misty-eyed as they think about how their intellectual inferiors are mean to them. But while SPOILERS Ender commits an act of genocide on the aliens, it's clear even at the time that that's not what he thinks he's doing, and Card wrote sequels (I've read only one of them) in which an adult Ender is trying to come to terms with his actions.
As I keep saying, the student body needs to pelt him with shit. Can't you get a rowdy demo together at Berkeley these days?
56: I'll defend it so far as to say it appeals to the same demographic over which Rand exerts her baleful malevolence, and is ten times as philosophically challenging. Thus, it could be considered a gateway book out of glibertarianism, maybe even a direct challenge to it.
What would the libertarian response to a threatened alien invasion be, anyway?
What would the libertarian response to a threatened alien invasion be, anyway?
WOLVERINES!
What would the libertarian response to a threatened alien invasion be, anyway?
Is there any reason to expect the aliens to have more overbearing nanny-state tendencies than the current government? If not, why worry?
Ender's Game is definitely not a book supportive of genocide. It's an acting out of a nerd fantasy of getting medieval on your bullies while preserving moral superiority and being the hero due to your brains. All that with a pro forma background of a critique of xenophobia and militaristic disregard for committing horrible crimes. One shouldn't read Card's current politics back onto the book.
Is it overrated? Depends. It's a well done and fun adventure story for kids in their early teens. Nothing more, but nothing less. It is also much better as that sort of thing than Harry Potter which has gotten more praise. Overrated is relative.
make it clear what reasonable people think of his conduct, and not let it be forgotten.
The Argentine way (as mentioned before).
64: Hmm. Presumably other tenured academics at Berkeley would be able to kick Yoo in the groin with impunity. At least, they would be immune from the fear of a loss of tenure, and, if they were arrested, they could simply argue that they were kicking him in the groin as part of an earnest scholarly discussion. It's not common assault, it's "enhanced peer review".
Harry Potter convinced a generation to read. Ender's Game convinced a generation to whine online about how their childhood genius was unappreciated by a cruel world.
Don't seem right
I've been strung out here all night
I've been waiting for the taste
Yoo said you'd bring to me [excellent drum bit here]
Gitmo Bay
Where the Cuban gentlemen sleep all day
I went searching for the song
Yoo used to sing to me
Katy lies
Yoo could see it in her eyes
[etc.]
