David Graeber’s fine book of essays provides theoretical tools essential to the understanding of the violence of the BIDs, the utter, abject stupidity of the BIDs and their minions, and the both correlative and causal links between themDavid Graeber is one of my eternal intellectual heroes, and I recommend most highly to anyone who can read his stunning, transformative work, Debt: The First 5000 Years. His most recent book, a collection of essays entitled The Utopia of Rules: On Technology Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy is, while less sweeping than Debt, essential reading. In particular, for the purpose of understanding the violence of the BIDs and the utter, abject stupidity of the BIDs and their minions, one essay, Dead Zones of the Imagination, stands out above the rest. David Graeber, looking as brilliantly ironic and as ironically brilliant as ever he has done.
I’ll run through the premises and argument after the break, but a crucial conclusion that Graeber reaches here, and one whose relevance will be immediately obvious to sane readers of this blog, is that
…violence is so often the preferred weapon of the stupid. One might even call it the trump card of the stupid, since (and this is surely one of the tragedies of human existence) it is the one form of stupidity to which it is most difficult to come up with an intelligent response.
Rage filled Media District bike bullies screaming in public and wearing super-creepy cop sunglasses on October 3, 2014 on Santa Monica Blvd. We have no evidence that either of these boys is the same as any of those discussed in this story. On the other hand, we have no evidence that they’re not, because Captain John Irigoyen refused to release the names of the officers pictured here.What are all those green-shirted thugs on bikes up to over in the Hollywood Media District? Well, if you ask their overlords, their “activities are designed to respond to needs that in some areas are based primarily on perception, and in other areas based on the reality of crime and intimidating street populations.”
You probably thought that Batman was the good guy, but it’s time to admit that you were wrong. Here he is, not just terrorizing poor innocent tourists who don’t know any better than to allow themselves to be victimized, but he’s also flagrantly violating trademark law. If he were as honest as we’d been led to believe he’d be hauling his own self off to jail instead of macking on helpless tourist girlies.Stories of the rich and powerful abusing intellectual property laws to stifle free expression, shut down criticism of their terroristic conspiracies against humanity, lock away little old ladies because their grandkids misuse bittorrent, wantonly slaughter cute lil bunnies, and so on, are as common in the tech press as dandelions on the expansive and suspiciously green lawns of Hancock Park before the gardeners show up on Thursday morning. Sesame Street Characters performing for US Navy personnel in a manner which, presumably, the BID finds acceptable because there are no tourists involved. Read more about guys in Elmo suits after the break.
This post-capitalo-apocalyptic legal technology, the use of which reached its supernova-esque apotheosis earlier this month with the City of Inglewood’s mind-blowingly shenaniganistic attempt to assert copyright in video of city council meetings,1 it turns out was being used by our friends at the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance to try to shut down the by-them-much-reviled street performers in a shameless criminal conspiracy with their aiders and abettors at the the City Attorney’s office and the LAPD as late as last August. Although our bosom BIDdies seem to have met with little success, except, evidently, in the case of Elmo of Sesame Street, their futile attempts are quite telling. Read the actual evidence here and our commentary on them after the break. Continue reading HPOA in Criminal Conspiracy with LA City Attorney to Abuse Intellectual Property Law in Never-Ending War on Constitutional Rights of Hollywood/Highland Street Characters→
Although the Sunset-Vine BID seems to feel they’ve apprehended1 the Vine Street Tree Vandal, our correspondent noted the pictured damage this morning. This is the first time, to our knowledge, that the vandalistic attacks have targeted not only trees but their paraphernalia as well.Our faithful correspondent, walking north on Vine Street early this morning, noticed that a jacaranda tree, individually one of the most favored targets of the BID bête noire locally known as the Vine Street tree vandal, was not only newly revandalized but that its wooden support apparatus2 was also, for the first time in our experience, destroyed as well. Is it a coincidence that the vandalized tree is right in front of jittery little psychopath Carol Massie’s McDonald’s at the corner of DeLongpre and Vine? Continue reading Supposedly Neutralized Vine Street Tree Vandal Rage, Overkill Increases; New Attack Destroys More than Trees!→
Another attorney from California that we’d have all been better off without, singing the blues in Beverly Hills in 1962The emails are available here. There’s a lot of chaff, as usual, but a lot of tasty morsels as well. My colleagues will certainly be giving this material the fine-toothed comb treatment in the future, but I thought it’d be nice to announce the availability of the documents to satisfy your hunger and thirst for the truth which, as is well-known, shall set you free.
Picture of famed future president and California attorney is, according to Wikimedia, in the public domain. Take that, Helen Gahagan Douglas!
