Sunday Reading

by zunguzungu

Occupy Nigeria:

Is this the long-awaited Nigerian Spring? The conventional wisdom (which I shared but increasingly doubt) is that the country was too divided by religion and ethnicity and with too weak a sense of national identity for a popular opposition movement comparable to those that roiled Tunisia, Egypt or Syria. Yet, the protests are nationwide and peaceful; thus far, casualties have been caused by the security services, not the protestors. In some cases, protestors have organized themselves through the use of social media. Protestors in Kano are explicitly invoking the Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street movement. They refer to their encampment as ‘Occupy Kano’ and its venue as ‘Tahir Square.’

Kano Finds Religious Unity In Subsidy Protest:

In this picture, Christians are seen providing peripheral security to the Muslim protesters as they prayed in front of a police van.

Why Occupy disrupts speakers on campus:

For political speech to be meaningful, it requires attention, which is a finite resource — and, a resource that has been highly marketized. Attention goes to the highest bidder — the person with most economic, social, cultural, or symbolic capital to trade. The attention economy is an ever-shifting field where those already in power seek to consolidate their position by establishing exclusionary practices that distinguish them from others and continue to draw attention their way. Those who control institutions get to write the rules and the rules will always ensure that they are heard at the expense of others. Only those at the very top have the luxury of (naïvely) assuming their speech is interpreted on its own intrinsic merits. And, this elite benefits when others embrace this same power-blind ideology. As a result, C.W. Mills observed long ago in The Power Elite, “American men of power tend, by convention, to deny that they are powerful.” The world is not flat, and those at the top of the hill have an easier time projecting their voices. And, while universities certainly tolerate a few of what Patricia Hill Collins called “outsiders within” — who speak on behalf of the 99 percent — we should not fall into the trap of confusing the exception for the rule.

On Iowa, read these, together: Matt Taibbi and Jay Rosen. As true after the caucuses as before them.

So-Called Feminism in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

The problem fans of the book are having with the portrayal of Lisbeth Salander in the film is not that she’s too sexy, or too subordinate, or anything specific. The problem is that Lisbeth Salander in the book is completely unbelievable, and rendering her in a film with a flesh and blood actress is bringing that artifice in to sharp relief.

Dallas teen missing since 2010 was mistakenly deported

Lorene Turner said with the help of Dallas Police, she found her granddaughter in an unexpected place – Colombia. There are still many unanswered questions about how an African-American girl who speaks no Spanish is mistaken for a foreign national.

Police Preparing for Riots / Martial Law / Economic Collapse: