Constitutional crisis, coup d'état, and Nathan Hale

It seems that the regime has declared its intention to disregard court orders. Although the Department Of Homeland Security Response To Recent Litigation issued today pays lip service to court orders, the mention is bracketed inside several paragraphs suggesting the opposite. If they do so - I have no manner of knowing what is in the regime's mind - we have a constitutional crisis in the 2nd week of the administration. Sooner than expected, and I come from the background of knowing that democracies can collapse. I expect that the courts will hold for a while, less faith in the Congress.

I am lowering my estimate of how much time we have before an attempted coup d'état to 7 months. How it will play out I have no manner of guessing, but it all makes one think of Nathan Hale.

How to resist tyranny

One thing is how we educate against bigotry and hatred and ignorance. It is a long term fight. Best left to schools while we can count on them.

The other is how to prevent the country from sliding into an autocracy, which is very immediate - the Party will make all efforts to suppress votes and fraud elections. I am not sure we have even 2 years before the damage is irreversible. Not enough time to educate people.

The only path is to show the voters that they are being taken for idiots. That the plutocrats intend to poison their children's water with lead the way they did to "those people" - forget about global warming, the point of gagging the EPA is so that you don't know that you are drinking the same water they gave to the kids in Flint. That once the billionaires are done with putting for-profit charter schools in inner cities, they will come after your suburban and rural schools as well. That once they are done suppressing the votes of minorities they'll come after the next group. And that once you lost your right to vote your guns won't protect you anymore.

Which is all true, and could perhaps be put in a more intellectual fashion. But voters need to be convinced, and that's the language they'll understand. Is this living with bigotry? Yes but it's either that or tyranny. We don't have enough time to wait until people are kinder, gentler, and more rational.

The apparatus of revenge and repression will accelerate methodically

Quoting • David Frum ‏@davidfrum  9 Nov 2016
1) Unlike his analogues in Poland/Hungary/Turkey, I don’t imagine that Donald Trump will immediately set out to build an authoritarian state
2) I expect his first priority will be to use the presidency massively to enrich himself.
3) That program of massive self-enrichment however will trigger media investigations and criticism by congressional Democrats.
4) As we’ve seen, Trump cannot tolerate criticism. He prides himself on always retaliating against perceived enemies, by means fair or foul
5) We’ve seen too that Trump’s advisers and aides share this belief. Chris Christie; Corey Lewandowski - they live by gangster morality.
6) So the abuses will start as payback. With a compliant Gop majority in Congress, Trump admin can rewrite laws to enable payback
7) The courts may be an obstacle. But w a compliant Senate, a president can change the courts - as happened in Poland & Hungary.
8) Current IRS commissioner’s term runs to end 2018. But (I looked it up) few commissioners serve the full 5 years.
9) The FBI seems already to have been pre-politicized in Trump’s favor. If Comey resigns, Trump will have another opportunity.
10) Construction of the apparatus of revenge and repression will begin opportunistically & haphazardly. It will accelerate methodically. END

Posted here for future reference. You are warned.

Now we know how it feels

Those of us who love a democracy, a republic, liberty and freedom in a country under the rule of law, with legal equality and the same rights for everybody, fear we will lose our country - that it will become an authoritarian, lawless, corrupt state, run by thieves, racists, and foreign agents who violently enforce arbitrary decisions for their own personal benefit.

At least we know how the other side felt 8 years ago about losing what they thought their country was.

Vitriol and unrest

If the United States was divided in sectarian lines - say the middle and South of the country were populated by followers of fundamentalist sects, while the costal regions were mostly inhabited by adepts of mainstream Christianity, with significant Jewish, nonbeliever, and other minorities - then a Syrian-style civil war would be a distinct possibility.

All that would be needed is a tremendous amount of hatred such as that seen in right-wing blogs, and an unstable, corrupt, and authoritarian leader.

Alguns serviços problemáticos na USP

Alguns serviços de informática na #USP estão funcionando de forma pouco conveniente para o pesquisador, e poderiam ser melhorados.

1 - O acesso à VPN é feito através de um programa da Cisco, chamado AnyConnect. Todo computador tem acesso ao serviço de rede virtual integrado ao sistema operacional, de forma que a obrigatoriedade do uso do software proprietário introduz um custo e uma vulnerabilidade extra, sem benefício para o usuário. Uma desvantagem séria é que o AnyConnect exige que a senha seja digitada manualmente a cada conexão. Isso impede o uso de sistemas seguros de administração de senhas e induz o usuário a utilizar senhas curtas, fáceis de digitar e memorizar, de baixa segurança, tanto para acesso à VPN como aos sistemas administrativos da USP.

2 - Os sistemas de informação da USP funcionam muito mal com o Safari mais recente para MacOS mais recente. Uma consulta ao CCE, renomeado STI por obra e graça do Rodas, informa que os sistemas foram testados em alguma versão do MacOS 10.6 de 2009.

3 - Um dos usos mais importantes da VPN é o acesso aos periódicos usando o portal da Capes. Depois que a Capes forçou todos os acessos a passarem por seu portal, com o objetivo de controlar e centralizar a leitura de artigos científicos, as assinaturas de revistas se tornaram difíceis de encontrar. O sistema de buscas é ruim, porque não fica integrado com todas as demais ferramentas de buscas, e as informações a respeito de assinaturas são pouco claras, quando existem. Me parece que às vezes as assinaturas privilegiam revistas caras, pouco lidas, de editoras comerciais, em detrimento de periódicos baratos e de grande interesse, por exemplo o "Chronicle of Higher Education", que aparentemente não assinamos, embora não consiga afirmar com certeza.