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It’s true. These guys really rock. If you’re in Dubai, they’re at the Seaview Hotel in the Marine bar. (Sorry if the video resolution is crappy. It’s Youtube’s fault. I’m working on improving it.)
Muslim women buying Barbies
Dubai, unlike it’s neighbor Abu Dhabi, does not have oil riches. Though oil and gas were discovered in the 1960s, the Al Maktoum Emirs of Dubai knew early on they had to capitalize on oil money in the 80s, 90s, and 00s before the gravy train ran out of steam. Dubai creek was dredged several times over those decades so that today Dubai is the largest deep water port in the region.
Dubai’s rulers have also worked hard to make their town a financial center, giving sweetheart deals to major western financial houses to locate offices there. With finance comes real estate, which, according to Wikipedia, accounted for 22% of Dubai’s GDP before the housing bubble of started to inflate in 2004. It is difficult to find up-to-date figures on the financial situation in Dubai, probably for two reasons: first, if its economy was driven by a bubble, those interested in it do not want to spread the news it has popped and cause a panic; second, the government of Dubai and the UAE does not seem to be particularly transparent, at least if you are looking at the official website. (This article is indicative.) That said, my eyeball estimate of the economy in Dubai shows three salient categories of economic activity: commerce, service and tourism, and finance, under which I include real estate. (If you don’t like my categories, go talk to a professional economist.)
1) Kelly McEvers of Marketplace reported a couple of months ago that confidence in the Dubai’s real estate market has evaporated. 2) If players like Morgan Stanley are in trouble here, then you can be sure they’re in trouble at the Dubai satellite office. 3) And news that China is rethinking its investment in USD bonds should make any country with its currency pegged to the dollar (like the UAE) think twice about its future purchasing power. That leaves us with the service and tourism sector.
Kareoke machine in the Emirates Mall
It’s true, everyone loves kareoke. And in the Mall of the Emirates you can record yourself in sound and vision doing a cover of Bowie to send to your friends back home.
Indoor skiing at the Emirates Mall
I was particularly thrilled to know I could leave cold, rainy New York to go to the warm, sunny desert, and not have to miss a day of skiing. Not that it was so cold in New York. On the day we left for Dubai a friend who lives near Whiteface ski resort upstate lamented in a Facebook status update that it was unnatural to have 60 degree days at the end of December. But that makes indoor skiing in the desert all the more desirable.
Westerners working at the ski slopes in the Emirates Mall
When they close down mountain resorts in the US for lack of snow all the ski bums will be able to get jobs at the Mall in Dubai. The Dubai Mall also has ice skating and hockey…
Ice rink in the Dubai Mall
… and a massive indoor aquarium.
Dubai Mall Aquarium
Cool huh?! Notice all the folks in Western dress. That’s because most of the people in the malls were either Indian/Pakistani or European. I saw a few Emiratis, but not enough to keep these massive emporia open. Most of the shops are Western too, from Hardee’s and KFC (the writing is Arabic)…
YUM brands
… to lingerie.
This may be what Emirati women wear under their black robes, but I wouldn’t know.
Lingerie shoppers?
The malls all have a space for “local” stuff, either tourist kitch or jewelry that is dressed up in a faux souk.
Gold "souk" in the Dubai Mall
If you have any problems shopping, any disgruntled counter help or problems with your credit card, you can appeal either to the mall management or to God.
A higher power
In sum, as long as tourists can afford to spend money, as long as novelty and kitch can last, as long as a flower can grow in the desert, Dubai will have a future.
Burj Dubai
The Burj Dubai is the tallest building in the world and holds records for many “biggest” and “most” categories including tallest structure, tallest freestanding structure, building with the most floors, and highest vertical concrete pumping for any structure. The picture above was taken (by me) from the roof of Al Ghaya Residence on Sheik Zayed road, a pitiful 30+ story building. In the foreground you can see several other buildings in various stages of construction.
This is the building next door to Al Ghaya Residence, some 80+ stories tall. It has been under construction for more than a year, and it looks complete from the outside. It is empty, however, and the entrances are sealed. This building became emblematic, for me, of our unique historical moment.
The Baharain Tribune noted on October 2nd 2008 that Dubai’s growth is “founded to some extent on a burgeoning property market heavily dependent on borrowed money”, and Norton Rose, a corporate law firm specializing in investing, said on its “credit crisis blog” that “there are rumors that some large projects will be placed on hold.” The analyst at Norton Rose is optimistic, if not in the near term, at least in the medium term:
The “real” market, that is where construction has commenced (and therefore finance is in place to complete the project) or the property has been completed, is suffering a short term state of confusion although the medium term view is that the market will bounce back particularly in quality sectors in quality locations.
But this may be a species of optimism ridiculed by Paul Farrell (my new favorite Wall St. contrarian) in his Marketwatch.com editorial today. Norton Rose thinks the fundamentals of Dubai’s growth are strong, and that the financial problems of the last year will clear up soon, but one could also make the case that demand in Dubai has always been artificial, and that its incredible ten (really five) year growth spurt is an effect of the global bubble that has driven over-production in all sectors to astonishing, never-before-seen levels. As the New York Times reported recently, globalization led to global growth, and now it is leading to a global contraction. Is it implausible to postulate that globalization, growth, and blowing bubbles were interconnected, self-reinforcing phenomena?
But beyond a global contraction, Dubai has other worries. Norton Rose again spins the situation in positive terms:
Dubai has built itself as a trading hub, financial centre, tourist resort and is an attractive and exciting place to live. The number of expatriates moving to Dubai from throughout the world is staggering; all of these people will need a home. Office space still remains in very short supply with heavy demand. Rents in all sectors have continued to increase and demand remains strong, however owner occupiers are struggling to find lenders to accommodate them.
On one hand, many of the immigrants to Dubai are from India and Pakistan, and those people are definitely not the people Dubai wants filling up its empty towers. Certainly, Dubai’s planners have gone to great lengths to lure Western investment. Investment banks are able to run by Western laws — within the walls of their own buildings.
The lush courtyard of the Dubai Financial Center
But outside the walls Dubai is still a theocratic state run under Sharia law. The world chuckles at Vince Acors and Michelle Palmer who were caught having sex on the beach and sentenced to three months in prison. The situation is made human and poignant, however, by the case of Marnie Pearce who was accused of adultery by her estranged husband and consequently convicted and sentenced to six months in prison. As a result she may lose custody of her two children entirely. In the print version of the article from January 5th, Ms. Pearce tells the reporter for the Telegraph with obvious passion that Westerners need to remember that Dubai is not a liberal state. A woman — any woman — can be punished for being alone in the company of a man who is not her husband or kinsman. And that is a kink in Norton Rose’s projection of continued demand for Dubai properties.
UPDATE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE!
UPDATE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE!
Dear Readers,
I, the editor, am off to Dubai to learn something about life in a desert. The hotel pictured above, one of the most, if not the most expensive in the world is not where I will be staying. But it makes a nice header to this post.
Some of the other writers may post something here or there — but don’t count on it. We, the unpaid observateurs of Cultural Capitol, will be off until January 5th (at the earliest). But in 2009 we hope to roll out some new tricks to make your experience of CC even more enriching.
Best,
Me.
FEBRUARY UPDATE!!!
For some reason this post has gotten an inordiant number of hits in the last few days (February 12 – 16). I can only assume that is because of widespread rumors that foreigners are fleeing Dubai and the Emriati debtors’ prisons. The New York Times wrote an article about it on February 11. If you want to read my reflections on my trip to Dubai over New Years, you can find the essays here:
Dubai — the world of tomorrow (and yesterday)
Dubai — where West eats meat
The UAE: Turning sunlight into gold
2008 has been a big year. It saw the advent of this blog, for instance, the end of the Bush fiasco, the rise of Sarah Palin, the publication of my friend’s novel, the financial collapse, and, what is worse for me, the collapse of the MTA’s budget. This year also saw the rise of a bright new star on the burlesque scene, and I am not talking about Trixie Little’s hate monkey. I’m talking about J. D. Oxblood, the star reporter for this blog, who in his first six months as a cub reporter has earned the love — if not the respect — of a sizable percentage of women in New York City between the ages of 32 and 35. Seriously, read the comments appended to his post on Jo Boobs’ school of burlesque graduation show. He has more hot, female Facebook friends than you. No doubt.
Merry Christmas to any Christian readers. Happy Chanuka for the Jews. Happy Kwanza, happy holidays, and merry festivus for everyone else.
I read the news today, oh boy. It looks like folks in state governments in the middle states want to use Obama’s stimulus plan to build more highways — just in time for plummeting gas prices. They argue that road projects are already started or ready to go, and plans for beefing up the rail system are too far in the future to get people working now!
Sounds like drill baby drill! And it is. The hype is motivated by our dear old attachment to individual transit and the automobile. I am sure that even after eight years of strangulation and abuse, Amtrak has a capital plan they would loooove to put into effect. The car maniacs say our country is less productive because we waste so much time in traffic jams, but as this review of Traffic by Tom Vanderbuilt reminds us, building new roads doesn’t alleve congestion, it just makes it worse. More importantly, as the MTA report on ridership during the 00’s points out, New York state’s investment in mass transit paid huge dividends in increased ridership and decreased car traffic.
I hope to high heaven Obama and his cabinet have the testicular fortitude to stand up to state governments and tell them the money has to be put to good use — building up our national rail system.
I guess the Big 3 were too big to fail. That is, our venal leaders were torn between fearing we’d revolt if they bailed out their buddies and fearing we’d revolt if they let a million more jobs go down the tubes. In the end I think it’s a good thing that they gave these pompous losers three more months to get their house in order before the day of reckoning comes. Once again strange political bedfellows made for a weird ideological tension behind the resolution. Conservatives want to break the back of organized labor forever, and in their view they’re not so much saving jobs as making sure manual laborers get paid no more than service industry employees. True liberals want the market to do its magic — even if that means losing a million jobs. Bleeding heart liberals want us to think of the children — of the soon to be impoverished northern states. The best possible outcome here, is for entrepreneurs of small companies that make small, incredibly efficient cars to spring up like mushrooms on the rotting dung heap of the big 20th century American auto industry. Even better, companies from Detroit and Milwaukee that make high speed light rail trains, tracks, services, and all the rest. But I’m not holding my breath.
A study released on Monday showed that from 2003 to 2007 New Yorkers (such as myself) left their cars at home — or abandoned them entirely! — to take the train or bus. An article in the New York Times give the details. Bruce Schaller, New York’s deputy transportation commissioner for planning and sustainability, is quoted as saying, “What you see is that for the first time since at least World War II, all of the growth in travel in the city has been absorbed by non-auto modes, primarily by mass transit.” I can tell you from personal experience that leaving car culture and living in the dense urban core was a fundamental and life changing choice for me. And as I have argued elsewhere, it is a choice that many Americans are also ready, willing, and able to make. Let’s hope that President Obama is able to use this pivotal moment in history to write a new chapter for America, one that does away with SUVs and ushers in cheap, efficient public transit.
It ain’t easy for a pimp. It’s less easy for the rest of us. Check it out people!
by J. D. Oxblood
After that fateful day in September, 2001, I was shocked by how many long-term New Yorkers told me, “I never went to the top.” It’s a common behavior. When you live in a town, you tend to eschew the “touristy” destinations and activities, unless family comes to town and you’re suddenly dragged along to some god-awful destination that usually fades off into the background of your own piddling, self-interested life. It’s easy, as a New Yorker, to get caught up in the unending drama of your friends’ love life, your hatred of your landlord and your apartment’s idiosyncrasies, your unending search for a better gig. In short, it’s easy to forget that tourists from all over the world come here to see the sights, and just as easy to forget that there are sights to be seen. The Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, the Twin Towers (now no longer an option)—how many New Yorkers have never bothered?
The New York Times reported today that a bus driver was stabbed to death in Bed-Stuy on December 1st, 2008. It was the first fatal attack on a bus driver in 27 years.
We also found out today that the country has officially been in a recession since 2007. Coincidence? The times article notes that though murders are up this year compared to last year, they are a fraction of the murders committed in 1981. That’s cold comfort to the residents of Bed-Stuy. The killer who stabbed a man to death because he would not give him a free bus pass is still at large.
George Pataki is laughing at you.
The metropolitan transit system is the most developed mass transit system in the United States. It carries workers (including me) from their houses to their jobs inside and outside the five boroughs. It is an essential piece of infrastructure for New York City, New York State, and the Tri-State area. Its importance cannot be overstated. The economic activity made possible by the transit system produces the lion’s share of taxes that go to Albany, and a sizable income for Newark and Hartford. Without the MTA millions would be unemployed.
So why did Governor Pataki try to starve it in the 90s? This is from an article in the New York Times:
At first the programs were financed with a combination of money from the state and city and borrowing. After George E. Pataki became governor in 1995, he sharply cut state funds for the capital programs and told the authority to borrow more. As a result, the last two five-year plans have been, in the words of the authority’s current executive director, Elliot G. Sander, put on a credit card.
The massive irresponsibility of the governor’s policy is all the more glaring now that the MTA is gasping for air. So why wasn’t there more of an outcry when the electorate could do something about it?
The answer is The Great Conservative Tax Swindle, also known as the Laffer Curve. The Laffer Curve is some spurious (and typically conservative) economic snake oil sold to the masses by Reagan and his legion of followers. At first it seems reasonable: if taxes are too high people won’t work. But taken to the extreme It says that all taxes are bad, and that rests on the assumption that only private capital is able to finance the public weal.
Some things are too important to be left to private initiative. In order to form a more perfect Union (as our Founding Fathers believed) we must come together as a people, and that means we will elect a government. Conservatives, deeply suspicious of government, have for the last twenty-eight years elected sabateurs whose explicit vow was to dismantle government. Deeply suspicious of public capital, they actively and openly raided the public treasury to enrich private capital. The time has come to roundly condemn this insanity. In the words of Roger Toussaint, president of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union:
With a dramatic and historic increase in ridership, more service – not less – is needed on our subway and bus lines. Failure to maintain and reinvest in our transportation infrastructure now will result in huge costs to riders and all taxpayers down the road.
…according to some lads who wrote the following song:
Barack Obama is the president-elect of the United States. Yours truly and some friends watched the returns at the New World Theater in Midtown Manhattan — the name fit the mood.
Tessa Birch, English lass and Obama supporter
The place was packed and richly diverse. Americans of all races were there, as were foreigners, many of whom told me my vote had extra importance because it was also their vote.
Bakar Wilson, Will Kenton, and John Yi
When the first good news came it was from Pennsylvania.
To say the mood was ecstatic is almost an understatement. We all knew we were on the right side of an historical moment: one that will define the truly New American Century. When Barack Obama was officially declared the winner all of New York City erupted.
When the man spoke he left not a dry eye in the house.
Even now, sitting at my desk deep in the heart of Brooklyn I can hear cars driving by pumping triumphant hip-hop. We finally have a president who represents an American hope for the 21st century. Let us have a day of rejoicing before the weight of the world falls back on our shoulders.
I know this is coming a little late, but, yeah. We endorse Obama. It’s gonna be a big party in the old City tonight. I was in the Fulton/Broadway Nassau stop of the subway, travelling from Manhattan to vote in Brooklyn this afternoon. I was reading some political essay in the New York Review of Books, and kind of dancing around the platform, echoing off the tile walls, was the sound of a steel drum. I listened for a minute and realized the guy, probably Afro-Caribbean, was playing the Battle Hymn of the Republic. “His truth is marching on!”
Photo by Tina Fineberg for The New York Times
Though this article in the New York Times is feel-good real estate porn, it is also anecdotal evidence that urbanizaton might reverse the sixty year trend of suburbanization. The reasons Keyes and Woods give for moving back to the city sound like the mantra of the post baby boom, urbanist ethos.
In the summer of 2006, [Keyes and Wood] sold the Brooklyn house to friends for $2.075 million and moved to a five-bedroom colonial, circa 1920, in Maplewood, N.J. Their house there cost $930,000. Compared with other places, Maplewood, which reminded them of New England, felt more like a community and less like a bedroom suburb.
Their Brooklyn taxes were around $3,500 annually, but in Maplewood they were paying around $23,000. The good schools, they thought, would justify that amount for a family with several children, but “we could put Jillian in a really nice private school for that,” Mr. Wood said.
And Maplewood didn’t really feel like a community after all. “We had wonderful neighbors,” Mr. Wood said, “but it wasn’t the same as being in the city. Everyone got in cars and went somewhere. The only people you saw were running down to the train or jogging or walking their dog.”
Mr. Wood works from home but travels often. Ms. Keyes, alone with Jillian, now 4, felt isolated. “I underestimated how important the sense of community we developed in Brooklyn was,” she said. “I missed the restaurants and the green markets.”
Taxes are paradoxically lower in the city than in the ‘burbs; the city has more community, and this is largely due to pedestrian traffic, public transportation, and population density; prices of homes are falling in the suburbs as people become desperate to get out. This last point is of particular interest. Though gas prices may fall so far that driving is not a crushing expense and will not be as important a motivating factor moving people to the cities as it was last summer, the housing contraction may take its place as a motivator. The “broken windows” syndrome that drove whites from the urban core from World War II to the end of the Cold War may now drive them from the suburbs as unsellable houses become squats, derelict, or hideouts for crime. The process may be viral, first infecting the last, big, overdeveloped exurbs, then making its way into older suburbs until they too seem like ghost towns. If it is, the next fifty years will look considerably different than the last fifty years.
That will have an effect on politics too. The rural myth, enabled by the automobile and the suburb, that made Sarah Palin seem like a wise choice to Karl Rove will change dramatically. Will it disappear? Probably not. But it will change, and that will change what sort of candidates the rural right chose to represent them.
Sandy and Chris at PPS
Happy Halloween! This is Sandy and Chris, employees of Project for Public Spaces whose offices are in Manhattan.
This intervention almost speaks for itself. The Stepford Wives of Orange county are faceless, but their pudenda speak immodestly loud.
Whoever did the bruise makeup on this poster is a genius. Kudos to you my anonymous friend. (Poster Boy, is it you?!)
The Nobel commission announced that Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize in economics. Krugman won for his work on “the effects of free trade and globalisation and the driving force behind worldwide urbanization” as reported by the BBC.
On this side of the Pond we know and love Krugman for being one of the only public figures with the courage to stand up to Bush, Cheney, and Rove’s palpable lies when they were selling us the Iraq War and selling us (and our children and grandchildren) into debt.
Congratulations professor Krugman!
No, the picture above isn’t the Old West, or Kansas in the 1930s, or a movie set. This ruined house is in urban Buffalo, 2008.
Stephen Dubner of Freakonomics fame asks the question: why is it that major macroeconomics texts books gloss over the fact that periodical economic crises are endemic to capitalist accumulation? The discipline of macroeconomics came into being as a reaction to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Its purpose as an academic endeavor was to minimize or eliminate the business cycle. The promise of macroeconomics tells us, if we’re smart enough we can think our way out of what looks like a permanent feature of capitalism.
The financial crisis of the last month has given the ultimate lie to the thought that economies can grow without also shrinking. (With two small exceptions in 1990 and 2002 the US has had sustained growth for 25 years. The unwinding of the current asset bubble in housing is the final end of that growth period.) Conservatives fear the business cycle because in a crisis the people look to the government to keep them from starving, and that, they feel, is socialism. This essay by Murray Rothbard puts the free market fundamentalist case eloquently. Liberals are hoping Obama can turn disaffection over jobs into votes, though liberals also are wary of being too gleeful about the impending crisis.
Are you on Facebook? (If you’re not, you’re probably too old to be reading this.) Join our fan club!
Lou Dobbs makes me laugh! He’s so funny! He said tonight on CNN that the markets should be allowed to take care of themselves! Abso-smurfly Mr Dobbs! Just like Herbert Hoover said in 1929! We’re all just a bunch of old rugged individualists in here! Pullin’ ourselves up by our bootstraps!
I said in an earlier post that the Repubs might have scored some political points for — once again — being the only party that will stand up for what it believes in. Sadly what they believe in is wide spread unemployment, a run on banks, and if we’re really lucky a civil war.
Cultural Capitol wants to send a giant shout out and big up to Jen Gapay and the wonderful women (and men, and other) of the New York Burlesque Festival. We had a great time covering the events. Here is a list of the festival winners:
Biggest Media Whore: Tie: Angie Pontani / Murray Hill
Best Booty Shaker: Gigi La Femme
Best Gams: Delirium Tremens
Best Dressed: Amber Ray
Best Body: Dirty Martini
Most Charismatic: World Famous *BOB*
Hottest Freshman: Roxi Dlite
Most Likely to Win on Survivor: Nasty Canasta
Sexiest Eyes: Indigo Blue
Sweetest Smile: Anita Cookie
Classiest Dame: Michelle L’Amour
Biggest Diva: Dirty Martini
Biggest Tease: Roxi Dlite
Biggest Cougar: Jo Boobs
Most Likely to Go Gay in 2009: Tie: Broadway Brassy / Pinchbottom
Most Likely to Turn Name into an Unpronouncable Symbol: Tigger!
Congratulations to you all!
By J.D. Oxblood Hunter College, Friday night, September 12, a perfect way to recover from lingering Sept. 11 syndrome -- and the endless exploitation of a day hallowly remembered -- roller derby! Hot chicks on wheels! Well maybe, just maybe, some of you slackers out in cyberspace are actually reading these missives, as the Friday night bout was sold out. Folks lined up for hours (well, ok, an hour) just to get a glimpse of the Gotham Girls giving their all with guts and grit. The gym was packed, energy was high, and the all-around theme of the night was just like my last date: hot and sweaty. Read the rest of this entry »
G train, 8:30 a. m. 9/2/08
The state legislature and the MTA need to wake up and smell the overcrowding on all New York City transit. The crosstown G — the only line that doesn’t run into Manhattan — has been sorely neglected its whole life. And now the state is saying that the budget shortfall means cuts, higher fares, and worse service. Don’t they know that the biggest build out the the system was during the Great Depression?
Maybe they do. But the real problem is a lack of organization in transit advocacy groups to put real pressure on Albany to invest heavily in NYC transit. First, kick Sheldon Silver out of the legislature, and second make sure all the other reps know they’re next on the hit list if they drag their feet on funding a massive MTA overhaul.
The New York Times is running a story today about the difficulty of getting alternative energy (in this case wind energy) to market. Mr. Wald locates the problem here:
The power grid is balkanized, with about 200,000 miles of power lines divided among 500 owners. Big transmission upgrades often involve multiple companies, many state governments and numerous permits. Every addition to the grid provokes fights with property owners.
This sounds a lot like the classic modernist narrative Le Corbusier gives in The City of Tomorrow:
Man walks in a straight line because he has a goal and knows where he is going; he has made up his mind to reach some particular place and he goes straight to it. The pack-donkey meanders along, meditates a little in his scatter-brained and distracted fashion, he zigzags in order to avoid the larger stones, or to ease the climb, or to gain a little shade; he takes the line of least resistance.
It is also the capitalist, freemarketeer’s main argument against preservation — and, by the way, environmentalism. Speed and economies of scale are assumed by the capitalist to be fundamental to survival. In high school debate this is the “Growth Is Good” argument.
“I am a daredevil, in the great tradition of the greatest daredevil of all time, Evil Knevel. I’m a rebel, Dottie, a loner.”
Check it out! Check it out! Check it out! Big up mah main lady of the unemployment line — Eve’l Knevel and her rad new blog on living in NYC sans travail.
So far being free isn’t just another word for nothing left to lose:
“Hello all you burdens to society! It’s another gorgeous day of being unemployed in the city. Yesterday I covered the super-fun mandatory trip to the Dept. of Labor. Today I’d like to help you take on the overwhelming inertia that inevitably consumes the long-term unemployed. It is a matter of fact that, when given all the time in the world to pursue hobbies, better ourselves, and use this paid, totally free free time, most of us will slip into the giant vortex of inactivity that only boatloads of unstructured time can bring. At first, after the shock and anger of losing your job wears off, unemployment is fun. It’s a blast! Holy crap, I have all the time to do WHATEVER I FREAKIN’ WANT!”
We can’t wait to see how she’s doing at Christmas!
Even better, she’s literatti from the old school. Get a taste of her tastes:
“I got all teary-eyed getting to see John Doe and Exene Cervanka, idols from my youth from the band X, playing on stage. I was just a tiny little pre-punk rocker when I first heard their plaintive, discordant tones. I went batshit for their band, X. They didn’t sound like anything else I had ever heard. Punk, but folks-y. I later heard the term cowpunk, and that seemed about right. And I’d always followed John Doe’s acting career (He was Pat McGurn, sleazy bartender, in Roadhouse, for chrissakes. Roadhouse! Another classic. I told you my definition of “the classics” may not match your own).”
We here at CC hope you read her stuff and enjoy!
This is a drawing from a NY Times piece on the artistic genius of architects. I know many of you — my friends — are architects. But I have to say, when it comes to raw hubris, not even Richard Cheney can beat an architect (or their groupies).
Ayn Rand
As CC’s intrepid reporter J. D. Oxblood just pointed out, New York City cops ain’t too bright. But it turns out (and this is no surprise) that the problem doesn’t stop at the street.
The New York Times is reporting that the city decided to settle a law suit from 2003 for two million dollars. The suit claimed wrongful arrest: the cops swept the street to crush any sign of political dissent, made mass arrests that imprisoned innocent passersby, and in the end, after deciding to settle out of court rather than face a trial, the cops refused to apologize. (Sounds a little like how they recruited inmates for Gitmo.)
It would be easy (and correct) to blame this gross infringement of our rights and liberties on Guiliani, the Republicans (Mayor Mike, that means you too), and the nasty political culture of hate and fear that has been allowed to flower since Reagan announced it was morning in America. Ann Coulter should serve the same amount of time in jail for undermining respect for political dissent in this country that those 52 innocents had to spend for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. (Even a couple of days times 52 is a lot). As Ahmad Shirazi, 70, one of those arrested said:
… as he was being handcuffed for the first time in his life, he told the officer that the plastic cuffs were squeezing him. “He said, ‘You should have thought about that before you came out this morning.’ It was like a dagger in my heart, that a police officer of my city would come up with anything like that.”
But in New York City at least we have another Lady who we can look to as justification of our petition to have cops and politicians punished who try to strong arm us into giving up our freedom.
culturalcapitol.com 