Re: alex van der bellen wins austrian presidentials!!!
I am glad that the Austrians did not swing to the far right. Before the next cliffhanger happens, let's think together about what to do in the future. It seems to me that the European left has to face at least two things. The first is the ongoing collapse of the classical Marxist analysis based on the agency of proletarians. Forget it, those are not the right terms, and what they ignore and cover up are the integration of much of the former industrial working classes and peasantry into a persistent system of state guarantees and subsidies, along with the preponderance of highly precarious service jobs among very diverse populations, for whom race matters because it is inextricably part of class (even for poor whites, btw). The second, equally important thing to be faced is the de facto support of much of the middle-class left for neoliberalism and its free-trade imperatives incarnated by the really existing European Union, with its vast supply of technocratic jobs in the service of globalizing capital. Can the left be pro-European without supporting the neoliberal EU? If so, how? It's an existential question. In the US we had a corporate hard right political bloc that used nationalism and covert racism to assemble majority votes for elite ends (the Reagan-Bush formula). They were so powerful and so convincing to the technocratic middle classes that the center-left followed their economic and social policies (Clintonian globalization). The result was war, authoritarianism, the unleashing of the oil-extraction gang all over the national territory, and such an improverishment and disempowerment of working and lower- (or former) middle-class strata that we got not one but two populisms: on the right (Trump) and the left (Bernie). Trump is horrible and depressing but Bernie's really interesting. The left populism that Chantal Mouffe calls for has at least begun to articulate itself in the US. Comparable things are going on in Greece, Spain, Portugal and the UK, so all is not lost. But the Clinton-Blair-Hollande style faux-left is still in the ascendancy. To go deeper into this, check out the following (from the New School "Public Seminar" blog in NYC), which calls upon but also interrogates Mouffe and Laclau's positions: "The role of populism is precisely, in Laclau's view, to unify a myriad of unsatisfied popular demands in an 'equivalential chain' constructed around one of them, which becomes hegemonic without deleting the particularity of the other demands. In so doing, populism can overcome the main difficulty of standard theories about democratic representation: their tendency to consider "the will of the 'people' as something that was constituted before representation." "This is precisely what Bernie Sanders is trying to do these days: his constant appeal to economic equality contains a lot more than a single request to raise taxes on top income percentiles. Functioning as a synecdoche, as a part referring to the whole, it also encompasses serious concerns for racial and gender justice, questions relating to environmental and intergeneration fairness, proposals for increasing the political participation and influence of ordinary Americans, the refusal of a neoimperialistic geopolitics, and much more. [btw, check it out: https://berniesanders.com/issues] "Sanders is clearly a populist, but in a way that challenges both Mueller's and Laclau's understandings of the notion. Indeed, as the former maintains, Sanders has a moral understanding of politics, partly based on an opposition between the pure and the corrupt. At the same time, similar to several other populist figures on the left (e.g., Pablo Iglesias), he encourages extended confrontation and deliberation as well as "the actual input and continuous influence by citizens divided amongst themselves." Just to make an example, and even if he has still a lot of things to learn about minority rights, he let activists of Black Lives Matter interrupt some of his political meetings and listened to their opinions and demands. His entire campaign in based on a sort of grassroots movement raising notable amounts of funds by collecting a number of small donations. "... To use the jargon of political theorists, Sanders is creating a political dichotomy without defining the other side as enemy by nature: his communicative style implicitly questions the assumption Chantal Mouffe presented in The Return of the Political (1993) that "to construct a 'we' it must be distinguished from the 'them', and that means establishing a frontier, defining an 'enemy'" (p. 69) — an idea that has clearly affected Laclau's own position. The senator from Vermont is a populist who talks about issues and constantly avoids getting personal even in television debates. His strenuous opposition to privilege and oligarchy is inspired not by a generic hatred, but by a realistic understanding of the actual political
Re: alex van der bellen wins austrian presidentials!!!
Armin is right, and of course it's much more complicated than a simple dichotomy. But - the portion of the electorate that fits the 'unrepresented people' (or is it 'white trash'?) definition is still substantial, 20-30% I'd say. And it's what tilts the balance in the direction of the far-right. In the Netherlands we have at least the blessing of a Socialist Party (left of the Labour party, populist) that eats a nice chunk of Mr Wilders' electorate (there is an overlap, like in France the PCF vote going to the FN). Chantal Mouffe recently called for a 'Left populism' I think it would be a good idea. http://en.theeuropean.eu/chantal-mouffe--3/7859-fighting-right-wing-populism-in-europe And more Merijns are indeed urgently needed! # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: alex van der bellen wins austrian presidentials!!!
Hi Patrice and all, I happen to live in Austria and I would warn against false dichotomies. It is simply not true that those who voted for the rightwing populist Hofer are all, what is called in German "looseres of globalisation;" maybe there are some but a quite large number of people who vote for them are fairly well of. They tend to live in rural areas and small towns (where they have never seen any refugees), they have houses and garages, well paid jobs or small businesses. The going might be a bit tougher than in the past, but that's complaining on a high level. So there might be other patterns at work, a bit like the Dutch middle class's retreat from society, a disengagement on a larger scale (50%). I think we need more work like Merijn Oudenampsen's study of how populism works. Also, in Austria, historically, the biggest support for the Nazis was from the petty bourgeoisie, not from workers. Those beer swelling, sausage muncheing prolls do exist, but there are not that many of them left anymore and there is that other class which I deem more dangerous, the volkswagen audi driving who combine their lederhosen with techno, are ambitious and extremely egocentric who are now "making it" and don't want any obstacles and less tax in a country where remnants of the welfare state actually do exist all best Armin # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: alex van der bellen wins austrian presidentials!!!
On 2016-05-23 16:35, Alex Foti wrote: >european xenophobia defeated again after fn was beaten in france >plus the winner's a green;) It was an amazing moment, yesterday afternoon. Public life screeched to halt, everyone was glued to their TV sets, computers, mobile phones. All major newspaper websites were down due to traffic overload while the public broadcaster was showing a Bavarian soap opera from the 1980s as the announcement of the final results was delayed, and delayed again, for close to an hour. The situation veered between comically grotesque and conspiratorial, until the tension was released into many spontaneous festivities. It was once again a collective effort lead by civil society to defeat the far-right. Political parties, other than the directly-involved Greens and the FPÖ, were notably absent, and the main effort of mobilization and carried out by lots of local initiatives, social media campaigns and so on. So, the post-war, anti-fascist consensus still holds, but barely, and seen as a historical tendency, the picture is not pretty. The far-fight in Austria is openly far-right, very close to Orban with everything you can imagine, including questioning borders established after World War One (South Tyrolia) or not supporting the celebration of May 8, as the end of World War Two (for the far-right, the "tragic events" ended only in 1955, when allied forces withdrew from Austria). The demographics of the elections where also very interesting. Cities voted center-left, country-side voted far-right, even though all the problems that the far-right is feeding on, are city-centered. Men without a high-school degree (Matura) voted overwhelmingly far-right, while women the same educational level were about evenly split. Men and women with higher education voted overwhelmingly center-left. I think there are multiple developments coming together. First, there are entire groups that see themselves as losers of an ongoing, historic transformation. Mainly male, white lower middle class, who see both their economic and their social status slip, vis-a-vis, in particular, women. Then, there is a second, more amorphous group which is probably not far-right, per se, but so disaffected by the current state of politics that they becoming increasingly willing to take the sledge-hammer to the political institutions. And only one willing to swing this hammer is the far-right. It was really sad to see how the far-right came out against TTIP, while the center-left, not only had to abandon its previous tactic agreement, but was dragging its feet to do so, even though it was clear that this would be a popular position. This, it seems, is a very similar mixture of what is fueling Donald Trump in the US. So, the vote, in my view, was one last vote of confidence for the political institutions's ability to reform themselves. This was helped by the fact that the previous chancellor, widely seen as the personification of stasis, had resigned the previous week. The Green candidate was very adamant that the refugee crises (and many others) needed an "European solutions" and the majority still agrees, even though none is forthcoming and nobody can even sketch a credible plan for one. If the European level cannot get their act together, then the rise of the far-right will continue. And in Austria, they stand at 49,7%. Felix -- | http://felix.openflows.com |OPEN PGP: 056C E7D3 9B25 CAE1 336D 6D2F 0BBB 5B95 0C9F F2AC # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
US: Software to predict future criminals is biased against blacks.
https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessments-in-criminal-sentencing by Julia Angwin, Jeff Larson, Surya Mattu and Lauren Kirchner, ProPublica. May 23, 2016 <> In 2014, then U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder warned that the risk scores might be injecting bias into the courts. He called for the U.S. Sentencing Commission to study their use. “Although these measures were crafted with the best of intentions, I am concerned that they inadvertently undermine our efforts to ensure individualized and equal justice,” he said, adding, “they may exacerbate unwarranted and unjust disparities that are already far too common in our criminal justice system and in our society.” The sentencing commission did not, however, launch a study of risk scores. So ProPublica did, as part of a larger examination of the powerful, largely hidden effect of algorithms in American life. We obtained the risk scores assigned to more than 7,000 people arrested in Broward County, Florida, in 2013 and 2014 and checked to see how many were charged with new crimes over the next two years, the same benchmark used by the creators of the algorithm. The score proved remarkably unreliable in forecasting violent crime: Only 20 percent of the people predicted to commit violent crimes actually went on to do so. When a full range of crimes were taken into account — including misdemeanors such as driving with an expired license — the algorithm was somewhat more accurate than a coin flip. Of those deemed likely to re-offend, 61 percent were arrested for any subsequent crimes within two years. We also turned up significant racial disparities, just as Holder feared. In forecasting who would re-offend, the algorithm made mistakes with black and white defendants at roughly the same rate but in very different ways. -- The formula was particularly likely to falsely flag black defendants as future criminals, wrongly labeling them this way at almost twice the rate as white defendants. -- White defendants were mislabeled as low risk more often than black defendants. Could this disparity be explained by defendants’ prior crimes or the type of crimes they were arrested for? No. We ran a statistical test that isolated the effect of race from criminal history and recidivism, as well as from defendants’ age and gender. Black defendants were still 77 percent more likely to be pegged as at higher risk of committing a future violent crime and 45 percent more likely to be predicted to commit a future crime of any kind. (Read our analysis.) The algorithm used to create the Florida risk scores is a product of a for-profit company, Northpointe. The company disputes our analysis. In a letter, it criticized ProPublica’s methodology and defended the accuracy of its test: “Northpointe does not agree that the results of your analysis, or the claims being made based upon that analysis, are correct or that they accurately reflect the outcomes from the application of the model.” Northpointe’s software is among the most widely used assessment tools in the country. The company does not publicly disclose the calculations used to arrive at defendants’ risk scores, so it is not possible for either defendants or the public to see what might be driving the disparity. (On Sunday, Northpointe gave ProPublica the basics of its future-crime formula — which includes factors such as education levels, and whether a defendant has a job. It did not share the specific calculations, which it said are proprietary.) Northpointe’s core product is a set of scores derived from 137 questions that are either answered by defendants or pulled from criminal records. Race is not one of the questions. The survey asks defendants such things as: “Was one of your parents ever sent to jail or prison?” “How many of your friends/acquaintances are taking drugs illegally?” and “How often did you get in fights while at school?” The questionnaire also asks people to agree or disagree with statements such as “A hungry person has a right to steal” and “If people make me angry or lose my temper, I can be dangerous.” <> Northpointe was founded in 1989 by Tim Brennan, then a professor of statistics at the University of Colorado, and Dave Wells, who was running a corrections program in Traverse City, Michigan. Wells had built a prisoner classification system for his jail. “It was a beautiful piece of work,” Brennan said in an interview conducted before ProPublica had completed its analysis. Brennan and Wells shared a love for what Brennan called “quantitative taxonomy” — the measurement of personality traits such as intelligence, extroversion and introversion. The two decided to build a risk assessment score for the corrections industry. Brennan wanted to improve on a leading risk assessment score, the LSI, or Level of Service Inventory, which had been developed in Canada. “I found a fair amount of weakness in the LSI,” Brennan said. He wanted a tool that addressed the major
