September 23, 1941, headline: “Red ‘Zombies’ Take Toll of Nazis, Russia Claims” in The Pittsburgh Press:

Three Russian armies, which the Germans recently claimed to have wiped out, were reported today to have inflicted 50,000 casualties on the Nazis in the Lake Ilmen area and to be pounding into the rear of the German besiegers in Leningrad.

The article by Henry Shapiro, United Press Staff Writer in Moscow continues with further report from the front. By 1941, The headline word “zombies” requires no explanation. The Russian armies were reported dead but instead reappeared to cause destruction of the 56th German Army Corp and Eighth Tank Division.



Meanwhile on the same newspaper page “Czechs Continue to Resist Nazis” reporting that

16 staff members of two illegal publications have been condemned by the Volksgericht (people’s court) in Berlin to sentences ranging from death to a minimum of five years imprisonment … the accused were guilty of planning ‘high treason’ through preparations to publish a magazine and a newspaper.

Also on the same page, Russia faces threat from Japan on the Asian front, Nazis prepare to invade the Crimean peninsula, and Communist terrorists arrested in France. Also, an ad for a grapefruit juice based weight loss product.

And unrelated but, ya know, sort of related -zombie vodka:

The Milwaukee Journal, Tuesday, October 17th, 1944: “Mrs. Luce Sees an Attempt to Make ‘Zombies‘ of Labor”:

Thomas E. Dewey as the next president would put an end, Representative Clare Booth Luce (Rep., Conn.) said Monday night to what she described as “efforts of the administration and Sidney Hillman to make political zombies” of American labor.

Speaking at a Republican rally before a capacity crowd of 4,000 at Syria mosque, Mrs. Luce declared:

“It is Mr. Hillman’s idea that the basic political unite is not an individual citizen. It is a collective group to be voted like heads of cattle according to orders from above without any reference to the individual preferences of the members.”

“They are no longer Americans,” she asserted, “They are simply Sidney Hillman’s political zombies.“

Describing the Political Action committee as “Hitlerian in concept” and “stemming from the philosophy of Karl Marx,” she drew a thunderous round of applause with this metaphor: “It is Nazi German sauerkraut with Soviet Russian dressing.”

The article goes on to describe a “plot” for:

“capture” of the American labor union movement by “a small group of Communists” [who] … see a way of exchanging their support at the polls for the right to take over the whole CIO union today and tomorrow the whole union movement and the Democratic party.”

This looks like early McCarthyism and is another good example of early adoption of “zombie” as a form of political consciousness. Also it is notable for blending Hitler, the Nazi’s, Karl Marx, the Soviets, Sidney Hillman, the unions and FDR all in to the zombie meme.

The speaker was US Representative Clare Booth Luce. Her affinity for “individual preferences” over the “collective group” reminds me of Ayn Rand. Also note, Republican woman in 1944 speaking to 4,000 people at a Mosque!!!

As a final note, be sure to read the response from RJ Thomas, president of the CIO United Auto Worker, printed along with the first article, which says Claire Boothe Luce is just aggrieved because she asked for their support and they didn’t give it to her.

Russia as a threat to democracy’s free will is back with Putin’s Zombie Gun.

From Newsworms.com -Russia’s New Invention Can Make Enemies Zombies

Russian president-elect Vladimir Putin has given the go-ahead to a gun that uses electromagnetic radiation to attack a victims’ central nervous system.
The “psychotronic” can effectively turn people into zombies – a dead person that can be given the semblance of life and controlled at will.

The futuristic weapons developed by Russian scientists could be used against enemies and Russian dissidents.

like mind-control:

Low-frequency waves can affect brain cells, alter psychological states and make it possible to transmit commands directly into someone’s thought processes.

or just burn them from inside:

High doses of microwaves can damage the functioning of internal organs, control behaviour or even drive victims to suicide.

The same story in the Daily Mail – “Putin targets foes with ‘zombie’ gun which attack victims’ central nervous system

Mind-bending ‘psychotronic’ guns that can effectively turn people into zombies have been given the go-ahead by Russian president Vladimir Putin.

The futuristic weapons – which will attack the central nervous system of their victims – are being developed by the country’s scientists

of course it has something to do with microwave ovens:

Sources in Moscow say Mr Putin has described the guns, which use electromagnetic radiation like that found in microwave ovens, as ‘entirely new instruments for achieving political and strategic goals’.

See also Pinky and the Brain episode about the physics of microwave ovens:

The microwave represents a technological future that we don’t really understand and plays into the alien space sci-fi mythos of zombies and Communist Russia Cold War era Red scares. And also the Matrix movies!?

Sergei Serykh, 43, claimed he was a victim of weapons which he said were ‘many times more powerful than in the Matrix films’.

And this same absurd Putin Zombie Gun story with nearly identical buzz words and quotes is also found in the Economictimes.indiatimes.com – “Putin allows high-tech gun that hits nervous system” And the Weekly World News – “Zombie Gun”

I note that today is April 1, so this is possibly all a sort of April Fools fake news, but it also seems reasonable because of the similar recent stories about microwave “heat ray” weapons in development at the US military.

Wikipedia calls these weapons “Active Denial Systems” or ADS:

a non-lethal, directed-energy weapon developed by the U.S. military, designed for area denial, perimeter security and crowd control. Informally, the weapon is also called the heat ray since it works by heating the surface of targets, such as the skin of targeted human subjects.

And just recently, a Fox News reporter was zapped in a demonstration of the US military version of a microwave crowd-control weapon. Be sure to click that last link and watch the Fox reporter get zapped it’s a good one.

Meanwhile, maybe Putin’s Russia has a “psychotronic” weapon. Or maybe “Psychotronic is a film genre made up of horror films, spaghetti westerns, low-budget independent features…” Like zombie movies.

Meg Fowler of ABC News has published, April 4, 2012: “Vampire, Zombie Economics Enliven Political Discourse” and her analysis is directly on point with this ZombieLaw blog. Fowler’s analysis supports my developing arguments that Zombies have become a type of political identity and form of political consciousness.

Fowler begins by discussing recent “scaremongering” political advertisements from the 2012 US President election that depict a “post-apocalyptic” milieu (See Santorum’s “Obamaville“) but Fowler quickly moves on to discussing Marxist theory, reminding readers:

In his 19th century work “Capital: Critique of Political Economy (1867),” Karl Marx compared capital to a vampire who sucks the life out of workers.

“Capital is dead labor that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks,” the manuscript reads.

This will be familiar for ZombieLaw readers who recall my post: “zombie was bested by its vampire controller, GM/GMAC” … “but capitalism is not offensive” – About a Federal Court case involving the financing of auto purchases and the bankruptcy of a dealership.

Marx wrote at a time of industrial revolution and Fowler reminds that Marx was writing the fears of technology replacing workers. The “mechanical capital”, “a mechanical monster” of “demon power”. The same types of metaphors are at work at our time of digital revolution. See similar metaphors in the previous ZombieLaw post Anonymous Zombie: “Cybernetic Zombie that lives on in Cyberspace” about how the legion of minds on the internet are like a zombie force. Recall also that the first zombie movie, “White Zombie”, starring Bela Lugosi, refers to zombies working night-shifts turning the sugar mill wheel like robot drones, in Haiti around the time of US colonialism and forced labor laws, see ZombieLaw post: “The White Zombie is American Law and Corporate Control (FDR revisited)”

Fowler goes on to explain that the zombie idea has been recently applied to “more specific areas of finance and the economy: zombie capitalism, zombie banks, even a zombie Federal Reserve chairman.”

The zombie Alan Greenspan is a “Weekend at Bernies” reference attributed by Fowler to Senator McCain, and the phrase “zombie capitalism” to a 2009 book about Marx that likens the market itself to zombies. (Recall another previous ZombieLaw post: “unprotectable idea of zombies in a mall”) Zombies are about technology changes but also consumerism and about the controls on production of goods for daily life.

Fowler also addresses John Quiggin’s 2010 book, “Zombie Economics”, about old undead economic theories that just won’t go away. More of Quiggin’s theories can be found in his article: “Five Zombie Economic Ideas That Refuse to Die”

The phrase “voodoo economics” is attributed to George H.W. Bush who used it as a disparaging remark about trickle-down, supply-side, Reaganomics (during the 1980 Republican primary before he joined the ticket as VP). Fowler explains:

“voodoo economics” entails tax cuts, especially for the rich, intended to stimulate investment and spending to spur growth. The less flattering term seems to imply that supply-side economics is really all policy hocus-pocus with questionable effects on the economy.

The word “voodoo”, like “zombi”, is an word of Haitian origin and the two words a highly related. ZombieLaw readers will also recall the post: Eschaton coins “zombietipandronnie” making a similar connection between zombies and Reaganomics.

Fowler concludes with “crony capitalism” and “vulture capitalism”, both phrases recently lobbed at Mitt Romney by Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry, respectively. And finally, mentions Austrian economic theories of taxation as highway robbery. An underlying unresolved economic question of Fowler’s article is whether Romney’s policy proposals are merely zombie economic ideas or if Obama’s support for the auto industry has created a sort of zombie-Detroit that would have been better under Romney’s idea of “managed bankruptcy”.

Fowler’s article is directly on point for what I have been working on here at ZombieLaw. Zombies have arisen as a political identity because it is a time of industrial technology changes (what Marx would call changes in the means of production). These changes further alienate workers from the products of their labor making them feel and act like zombies, a sort of dissociated identity of post-modern industrial working lives. Fowler is correct that vampires and zombie “enliven political discourse”. This is not new, Thomas Jefferson spoke of the “dead hand of the past”. Zombies, and monsters generally, are a vibrant metaphor set for political consciousness and legal definition.

Politico.com asks “Is Mitt Romney Count Dracula?” and reports that:

Phil Musser, a senior adviser in Romney’s presidential campaign in 2007, recently told Dan Hirschhorn of The Daily: “As long as you’re not Count Dracula, in an economy that’s still mired in a weak recovery from an awful recession, people are looking for someone who can cut through the fog, not someone who’s going to make them warm and fuzzy.

Meanwhile, Obama campaign ad “Steel” released last week about steel workers out of work because of a Bain Capital related deal. A former steel worker in the ad refers to Mitt Romney as “like a vampire, came in and sucked the life out of us”.

Now I know these are “vampire” references not zombie references. But my VampireLaw blog isn’t started yet (Professor Sutherland does both vampires and zombies) and also the Politico article has a great picture of Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula (1931), and it should remind zombie fans of the movie “White Zombie” the first zombie-titled American movie, also starring Bela Lugosi (1932), as the zombie master. And recall from ZombieLaw in March: “Romney is the Chief Zombie” – or is he Romney a “Zombie Nixon”

Lugosi’s appearance in the “White Zombie” movie helped to immediately situate zombies as monster characters in the same category as other Lugosi movies (the stereotype was so strong that Lugosi was type cast as a monster villain his whole life). Note the strong connection of his Eastern European accent and the sounds of persecution and of international money. Recall that “White Zombie” starts at a sugar factory in Haiti. Also the character of Renfield in Lugosi’s Dracula is a sort of zombie-like vampire’s henchman.

Query: Is Renfield a zombie? Surely, I have just stepped into a trap by suggesting that the mind-controlled are similar to the mindless. But zombies-controlled-by-masters are the progenitors of the leaderless-horde-zombies in more recent tales. So, did zombies liberate from their masters or are they totally different and if so, are they better off liberated? Surely some zombie long for a return to their master?

But, what would a world without (Bain) Capital be like? Could there be civilization with no such thing as private equity? How’s that for zombie economic ideas.

Newark’s Mayor Cory Booker, interviewed on Meet the Press, referred to this “Steel” campaign rhetoric as “nauseating” and that he was “uncomfortable” considering the positive work Bain has also done to create jobs. Today the Mayor is backtracking and apologizing for his word choices, but the questions are still important. The Mayor’s nausea is similar to Sartre’s and regards those dark murky areas between existentialism and Marxism.

Bath salts were not found in the blood of the Miami zombie. Nevertheless bath salts remain connected to zombies. And now, the US NAVY has created a public service announcement to warn against the dangers of synthetic drugs by associating it to demons and zombies.

This campaign was released by the Navy the day before the Mayan End of Long Calendar (See “Navy Medicine Rolls Out New Campaign to Deter ‘Bath Salts’ Designer Drug Use” by Valerie Kremer.) But the media seems to have grabbed it hard in the last few days. This story is now covered in dozens of articles, here are three:

Time: “Watch: U.S. Navy PSA Shows Demonic Dangers of Bath Salts” by Melissa Locker

ABCnews: “Navy Launches Disturbing Anti-Bath Salts PSA” by Lee Ferran

HuffPo: “U.S. Navy’s Horrifying, Trippy Anti-Bath Salts PSA” by Keith Thomson

Why did the NAVY make this video? Well, let’s answer that with two other questions: What is the value of reminding military personnel that zombies and demons exist? And what is the value of making illegal some chemicals? It reminds me of the old video “Reefer Madness” or training videos to prevent sexually transmitted diseases. But still I worry there is something more pernicious in the connection of these chemicals to zombies.

Recall prior ZombieLaw: “Bath Salts became bipartisan” and also Zombie Homeland Military Spending

Also speaking of viral video of naval zombies – have you seen the Zombie Fish? HuffPo: ” ‘Zombie Fish’ YouTube Video Is Flippin’ Scary! “:

Or similarly - Frog Legs Dancing with a Little Salt:

Perhaps ironically, recall that one of the few known cures for some zombie conditions is a pinch of salt (also laughter and puppies).

Finally, let’s compare this fear of bath salts to the fear of another chemical: fluoride, in the water. This fear also has a strong connection to military memes because of the classic movie “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb“:

Have you ever heard of a thing called fluoridation? Fluoridation of water? … Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face? — Gen. Jack D. Ripper in the 1964 Cold War era satire “Dr. Strangelove.”

As quoted by Mike Hendricks in The Kansas City Star: “Fluoride in the water supply is a debate that still has teeth” continuing:

It’s easy today to scoff at the paranoid fringe that once feared that adding fluoride to American water supplies would turn us into commie zombies. But 70 years after fluoridation began, fervent opposition continues. In Kansas, Wichita voters rejected water fluoridation last fall for at least the third time since the 1960s and it wasn’t even close…

Oh Kansas - Oh Communism…

From Cracked funny valentine cards:

This joke relates also to spouses who have to decide to pull the plug on a brain dead partner (see also inverse zombie problem and the Terry Schiavo case and the George Clooney movie “The Descendants“). If you don’t have an updated and valid health care proxy and living will, maybe you should consider executing one. What could be more romantic for Valentines Day then to give your lover a conditional power of attorney.

And from filmmaker, Jarret Berenstein: “Attack of the She-Zombie!”, a cute short film that reminds of Zombies involved in sexual assaults.

More zombie valentines: — from Associated Press via Washington Post: “From Valentine’s Day to zombies, Vegas embraces in-your-face gun promotion as others pull back” and of course there’s still plenty of “Warm Bodies” Zombie Boyfriend promotions (BurkePatch: “‘Warm Bodies’ an Awesome Zombie Valentine” by Leslie Combemale of Art Insights or Auburn Plainsman: “Zombies on Valentine’s?” by Rachel Suhsand) and also Zombie Teddy Bears:

Inquisitr: Zombie Teddy Bears: A Good Valentine’s Day Gift? [Graphic Content Warning] and Daily Mail: “Dawn of the Ted: Artist turns cute cuddly toys into gruesome zombies that would be sure to to keep you awake at night” by Harriet Arkell – about a series of bears by artist Phillip Blackman:

According to Wikipedia, Teddy Bears are an early 20th century invention, named for President Theodore Roosevelt:

noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his “cowboy” persona and robust masculinity.

He also referred to himself as “bull moose” and was eulogized as an “old lion”. This use of animal metaphors to describe his personality is relevant to zombies metaphors. Again reference George Mazzei’s 1979 article in “The Advocate” entitled “Who’s Who in the Zoo?” and see more recently Sommer and Sommer (2011) “Zoomorphy: Animal Metaphors for Human Personality” Anthrozoös 24(3) 237-248, showing animal “Zoomorphs tend to be male and refer to healthy adult individuals”. I might expect monster-creature metaphors would be less healthy (Cf. anemic witches).

Note also that as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Roosevelt was instrumental in preparing the US for the Spanish-American War: “I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one” – “Remember the Maine“. And then after his presidency, Teddy spent time in Africa killing large game – then back to feud with Taft, run for president again, survive an assassination attempt, give the speech anyway and have the bullet lodged in his chest for the remaining seven years of his life:

While Roosevelt was campaigning in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on October 14, 1912, a saloonkeeper named John Schrank shot him, but the bullet lodged in his chest only after penetrating his steel eyeglass case and passing through a thick (50 pages) single-folded copy of the speech he was carrying in his jacket. Roosevelt, as an experienced hunter and anatomist, correctly concluded that since he was not coughing blood, the bullet had not completely penetrated the chest wall to his lung, and so declined suggestions he go to the hospital immediately. Instead, he delivered his scheduled speech with blood seeping into his shirt. He spoke for 90 minutes. His opening comments to the gathered crowd were, “Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.”

The Republicans lost to Wilson in part because of the the rift between Roosevelt and Taft. Wilson would lead the country into WW1.

Because of the bullet wound, Roosevelt was taken off the campaign trail in the final weeks of the race (which ended election day, November 5). Though the other two campaigners stopped their own campaigns in the week Roosevelt was in the hospital, they resumed it once he was released. The bullet lodged in his chest caused his chronic rheumatoid arthritis – which he had suffered from for years – to get worse and it soon prevented him from doing his daily stint of exercises; Roosevelt would soon become obese as well. Roosevelt, for many reasons, failed to move enough Republicans in his direction. He did win 4.1 million votes (27%), compared to Taft’s 3.5 million (23%). However, Wilson’s 6.3 million votes (42%) were enough to garner 435 electoral votes. Roosevelt had 88 electoral votes to Taft’s 8 electoral votes. This meant that Taft became the only incumbent president to place third in a re-election bid.

Incidentally, Teddy Roosevelt’s fifth cousin, FDR, would also become president after serving as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Teddy was related “more closely related to Franklin’s wife Eleanor, who was his niece. (She was the daughter of Teddy’s brother Elliot.)” ZombieLaw has previously explored the connection of FDR’s time as Assistant Secretary of the Navy to Haitian zombies and the co-incidental timing of FDR’s presidency to rising zombie rhetoric using WW2 enemies as prototypical foreign enemies associated with zombie minds (communist automatons and nazi fascists).

“Chinese Yale Zombies” is an Associated Press story floating around many news sites.

WashingtonPost: “Yale’s digital zombie mystery: Why has the Ivy drawn a battalion of dead accounts in China?“
USAToday: “‘Zombies’ infest Yale social network account“
MSNnow: “Legions of mysterious Chinese ‘zombies’ are big fans of Yale”

This story plays on a number of zombie themes. Chinese zombies, social media zombies and academic zombies. This particular crossover also makes a slightly racist comment about the influx of Chinese students in American schools of higher education, which therefore implicates immigration policy (we educate them and send them home because we can’t employ them) and on the student loan debt bubble (the whole education system as Ponzi scheme of zombies!).

The actual story is about Yale University’s Sina Weibo account – Sina Weibo is the major player in Chinese internet social networking. So this story serves to continue introduction of American audiences to Sina Weibo (as we still tend to think the internet is only in English — and since we only speak English it is scary, like a zombie, to think that half the world tags using characters we can’t read or even type). This also reminds that big academic institutions are marketing-hard to foreign students and we have no idea what they are saying or what kinds of marketing tactics they are using to lure these students here.

Apparently Yale has a lot of “zombie” followers on it’s Sina Weibo account – recall “Seth Stevenson bought 27,000 zombie twitter followers” – but Yale officials claim they didn’t buy these followers. They say it’s just internet spam. Still, somebody promoted the school this way.

Yale is well-known for New Criticism and comparative literature – are those critical skills, the zombie subjects? Aren’t they basically the same Critical Studies that the new junior Senator from Texas, Ted Cruz, has been calling the Communists at Harvard? – see New Yorker article by Jane Meyer:

It may be that Cruz was referring to a group of left-leaning law professors who supported what they called Critical Legal Studies, a method of critiquing the political impact of the American legal system. Professor Duncan Kennedy, for instance, a leader of the faction, who declined to comment on Cruz’s accusation, counts himself as influenced by the writings of Karl Marx.

Personally, I am proud to consider Duncan Kennedy’s “Legal Education and the Reproduction of Hierarchy” (a polemic about global hegemony created by educational systems) amongst my favorite readings. But of course, I freely admit to being a zombie.

There was also a “Yale Zombie Project” from Jeremi Szaniawski. See his short film: “Love of the Dead – the Yale Zombie Project” and see The Semiotics of Zombies with Francesco Casetti, Yale Film Professor, analyzing zombie as the “spectacle” of “between’:

Also this blog at Digital Histories at Yale by historian Joseph Yannielli, connects zombies to the history of consumerism and trade in human flesh, during African slave trade, and followed up at “The Rail Splittler Awakes” with reference to the Nytimes article by
by Amy Wilentz: “A Zombie Is a Slave Forever”.

On the same theme see this past Saturday’s SNL sketch about “Walking Dead” racism – at LATimes: “The plight of the black zombie: ‘SNL’ takes on ‘The Walking Dead’“

One of them? Oh my god, this is so racist right now.. when someone comes from a different cultural background them you, they’re automatically a zombie?

Consider also the movie, “Dark Matter” loosely based on a real 1991 shooting, about the physics student overworked into violent mental illness. Consider that Chinese immigrants who come to American schools may sometimes be equivalent of professor’s slave labor – but also that physics students may just be crazy – see the recent “Doctoral student charged with terrorist threats” – and of course, James Holmes was a neurosciences student. Maybe these science people need more comparative literature in their life – more critical theory and help to better express their inner zombie?

In the Financial Times today: “Creativity needed to unwind ‘zombie’ CDOs” by Aaron Johnson is about a totally different kind of “zombie” but the suggested zombie cure, creativity, is phonetically related to criticism and critical thinking theories. And also that “Cr”-sound relates creature and Christ (who was not a zombie because he was a Lich – pre-Easter marketing).

The question remains where is best to become “creative”? An overpriced academic institution built on archaic models of traditional education, like an Ivy-league school or like ya know, a church, or maybe something new, something built for an internet world of Chinese characters. Recall Peter Thiel’s appeal against college in favor of dreams. And consider that some banker “fighting the FED” is somewhere (maybe in China, but through American banks) is selling-short the student loan bubble – and it’s the same company, SecondMarket, that brought early Facebook shares to market! – which brings us full circle to social media zombies.

Here in America, many big schools use Google for their email and the students connect to each other through Facebook. What do we even need these old schools for anymore? They are dying brands (like the old media companies) struggling to keep hold in the new internet world. And they are all using just as many zombie tricks here as they are on Sina Weibo in China. We may never know who bought Yale all its zombie Chinese followers, but more reporting is essential to unmasking the zombie marketing tactics of elite brands.

Jiangshi!

WhatCulture!: “Black Smurfs: The Birth Of Modern Zombie Fiction” by drayfish

Noting Joss Whedon’s Zomney politics zombies and also theories of Communist Smurfs, possible racial overtones — and “a linguistic civil war between ‘Northern Smurfs’ and ‘Southern Smurfs’ that is believed to be an analogy for similar disputes between Dutch and French speaking peoples in Belgium”

And see Smurfs Wikia:

Today was May 1st and therefore it was May Day: some celebrate May Day as International Worker’s Day others celebrate as Law Day. Some might see these are opposites, but Zombies relish defying binomial categoryes so here at ZombieLaw we celebrate both. May the workers rise up and transgress the law with new and better law (?) Zombie love irony.

ZombieLaw has already related zombies to Nintendo‘s Super Mario and Mario is a wonderful image of a red laborer. With the influence of psychedelics, the plumber becomes a superhero. But Luigi may be the ultimate communist. He is doing it not for love, but only for his brother’s profit — and the coins, afterall, he’s green. And see also computers (to replace workers) who can solve Nintendo games with linear models

And ZombieLaw has explained that there are Competing views of Zombie Economics and neuroscience is involved.

Pacific Northwest Islander: “Look out for zombies” by Ted S. McGregor Jr., citing John Quiggin’s “zombie economics” “any discredited economic theory that keeps attacking humanity and just will not die.” and the Reinhart-Rogoff “Oops”, suggesting:

To kill a zombie, you have to know what’s reanimating it… America’s ready to jump into the fast lane again, but first we have to get that car full of zombies out of the way.

Which is kind of like saying the circus is back in town but if only the clown car could get out of the way – which is of course, how the circus begins, so relax, the Elephants are coming…

Bloomberg: “Detroit Three Zombie Slayers All Gained U.S. Market Share” by Craig Trudell:

George Magliano, senior principal economist for IHS Automotive, … who is based in New York, said by telephone. “The baby boomers used to walk in like zombies and buy the Toyota. They don’t do that anymore. They can buy a Korean car, they can buy a Volkswagen, and they certainly can buy a Detroit car.”

and also from a Bloomberg columnist via IOL: “Japan’s zombie economy shows danger of free cash” by William Pesek originally: “Japans’s Scary Lesson on Slashing Interest Rates“:

Even when Japan has churned out growth of, say, 3 percent, it has been more artificial than organic. All that liquidity was meant to support so-called zombie companies and industries that employ millions. It led to “zombification” of the broader economy…

And from A.J. at PopCap and via YouTube: “Zombie Temp Worker May Day Merriment:

It’s May Day, and what do Plants vs. Zombies zombies do on May Day? Well, dance around the May Pole of course! Watch now to see Disco Zombie, Zombie Yeti, Chinese New Year Zombie, and Conehead Zombie dance around — wait, is that Sunflower? It’s a May Day surprise, Plants vs. Zombies style.

“Students create course on zombie history” by Catherine Zaw:

Zombies may not have always been the brain-loving, dehumanized remnants of corpses that we now associate with “The Walking Dead” and other similar television shows. In fact, according to Elizabeth Rosen ’13 and Bri Evans ’13, leaders of the student-initiated course Zombies: Anthropology of the American Undead, the modern zombie is just the latest iteration of a complex and compelling subject.

[read more]

including:

According to Evans, zombies historically represented a figure akin to slaves, sharing a lack of control over their movements, insufficient nutrition, and even ragged clothing. She posited, however, that zombies now allude more frequently to different trends in American culture, such as capitalist greed.

“Capitalism is itself a zombie, a mindless desire to have,” she said. “And the reason why zombies are so popular is in part because of the gore and the heroism, but the idea survives because it’s so mutable for whatever we’re feeling at the time.”

Evans suggested that zombies might also represent one side of an ongoing policy debate.

“Early on, it provided a good way to talk about xenophobia, especially with all the Eastern European immigrants coming in during the ’60s and ’70s,” she said. “During the Cold War, zombies represented social conformism—the lather, rinse, repeat lifestyle. It was more a fear of the zombie rather than of the zombie. Now, zombies represent nature taking revenge because science is going too far—terrorism and biological warfare.”

Katie Nelson at Shanghaiist writes “Watch: Chinese trailer for ‘genuine American-style zombie shooting game’“. This headline epitomizes the irony of modern globalism (not the least because who knew there was a Shanghaiist?!) Ostensibly the article is about:

Chinese gaming company Tencent has released the trailer for War of Zombie, an ‘American-style’ shoot-’em-up horror game

but also,

The verdict is still out on what an ‘American-style zombie shooting game’ is,

Nelson links to an article in FrontPage Mag: “China Escapes the Zombie War” by Ben Shapiro writing about the Chinese censorship of “World War Z”:

The Securities and Exchange Commission is increasingly upset about Hollywood’s relationship with China.

Now all of this is Brad Pitt marketing but recall also the connection of China to zombies in the Ivy league (communism!) and consider the political implications of all the many products made in China to simulate American-style. What then is Chinese-style? And where is American-style manufactured? It is a big iterative dialectic of uncertain identity politics.

gamers can “play six different zombies and four zombie modes” and that the “exciting feeling of killing and simple operation will excite all fans of zombies!”

I wonder what the six types of zombies are. Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science (Güzeldere, 2006) only includes nine types of zombies. But of course, the more catatonic varieties wouldn’t be able to use guns.

Those following @LawZombie twitter today may have noticed some retweets this afternoon mostly from Heather Hurlburt, of the National Security Network. The series was started as response to tweets from Ezra Klein of the Washington Post. Since then Klein has tweeted his recent interview with Joseph Cirincione, of Ploughshares Fund, (who he also interviewed tonight on MSNBC as guest host of “All in”) at WaPo: “‘When Obama says Putin is trapped in Cold War logic, it’s true. But so is Obama.’”:

Before publishing the article, Klein tweeted:

- 94% of the world’s nuclear weapons are in Russia and the U.S.

- What are the chances that another 100 years goes by without anyone deciding to detonate a nuclear warhead?

- (Sorry, transcribing an interview about nuclear disarmament. It’s bleak!)

Heather Hurlburt then had four tweets of optimism and Klein retweeted her thoughts:

- reasons for optimism: no one thought in 1945 we cd go 68 yrs w/o anyone using a nuclear weapon again

- reason for optimism 2: every state that has gotten weapons has become more cautious, less belligerent.

- reason 3: US has much power over global legitimacy, role of n-weapons cuz we have +40% of em. Military sees relevance declining

- reason 4: US, Russian weapons declining; global safety rising. No panaceas&needs work, but despair neither correct nor useful.

In response, Will Wargo ‏asked:

Can Heather also give us 4 reasons not to fear a zombie apocalypse! She is good at being reassuring.

And she took it seriously:

1. Fake zombie blood is edible and delicious.

2. The nice people always survive, mostly.

3. Zombie apocalypse = no sequester, no first day of school, no grant reports, no #sharknado. Why fear it?

4. Zombies aren’t real! But nobody tell @dandrezner

OK I think I disagree with all of these. Number 4 provoked more exciting tweets quoted below, but first allow me to simply disagree with #1 and #2 and as to #3 note that the zombie apocalypse has been a metaphor for the sequester and also for high-stakes testing in public schools and the problem of grant reports implies you have a grant, so is this really a bad problem? and Sharknado> That’s just a more absurd zombie apocalypse.

But as to #4, that zombies aren’t real and this would somehow bother Dan Drezner — Maybe she meant Max Brooks (who tends to present his survivalist strategies as if these things are real). In contrast Drezner, who has written a great International Policy polemic using zombie hypothetical, has more recently suggested that apocalyptic metaphors might be dangerous for the realistic long-term needs of complex problem solving.

So Professor Drezner understandably responded:

Wut?!

But the really exciting tweet is Ezra Klein’s defense of zombies in response to Hurlburt’s “zombies aren’t real”:

YES THEY ARE

He cites March 26th article in The Telegraph: “There are zombies among us” by Jerome Burne which describes examples of insect “neuroparasitology” or:

“zombie reprogramming”

Burne also refers to the possibility of parasites that might take over humans as funghus or worms can do to other species. But the article misses the opportunity to connect these microbes to the idea of cultural language and viral memes as infecting humans and altering behavior all the time.

Of course zombies are real. If they weren’t what have I been blogging about all year? It’s a word, right? We all just used it. We might not know exactly what it means or where to find one but it’s still real. Like Santa Claus and not that different from so-called scientific things, like electrons or psychiatric diagnoses. Much of reality is a social construction, a language-game and we’ve all been infected with the zombie meme.

Also, around the same time as all these tweets, Klein retweeted an article from The Onion: “Truther Jihadist Wishes Al-Qaeda Had Committed 9/11 Attacks” — that’s funny. And as we’ve been saying for decades, when some crazy dude (and it’ll probably be a dude but maybe not) gets a nuke, that going to be an apocalypse that will make the term “ground zero” take on whole new social meaning. The 9/11 WTC disaster terminology of “ground zero” could quickly become a joke in some future post-apocalyptic history book.

Finally, Ezra Klein went on to tweet and then talk on MSNBC about the legalization of marijuana. Quoting Mayor Bloomberg that “medical” as applied to marijuana is one of the biggest hoaxes of all time but going on to report on Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s recent opinion flip and discussing the ambiguous boundaries of science and politics.

Zombies are all about ambiguous boundaries – dead, undead, both, neither, none of the above, all of the above!

Jesse Benton, smells this stench but he’ll just hold his nose while managing the campaign for Republican Leader Senator Mitch McConnell.

Yes, zombies are real. They stink of archaic stalemates but just don’t die.

Last night was a beautiful full moon with clear skies in NYC. It was a “blue moon” (by definition as 3rd full moon in a season with four – unlike the other definition as two full moons in one month, both occur only seven out of every 19 years – See WashingtonPost: “Tonight’s “alternative” Blue Moon” by Jason Samenow). Before I left, my previous post announced my new book versions of “Werewolf in the Federal Courts” and “Red Herring in the Supreme Court“, so it seems appropriate that I return to a blue moon.

Speaking of colors, zombies connect most to green (see also marijuana and environmentalism). Russians are the Reds and the big zombie story this weekend was “‘Zombie pigeon epidemic’ in Moscow sparks fears of transmission to humans” about dead birds sparking fears of Newcastle disease. This zombie story connects the cold war Russian zombies to transgenic viruses (and the issue of animal zombies). And note the specifics of slang usage of “pigeons” (as dim-witted-bird-brained, but also as patsy stool-pigeons). And recall the connection the word “zombies” to “scarecrow” in old patent law.

And speaking of patent law (see also “vicious zombis“), a big applause and sad farewell to Pamela Jones of GrokLaw – “Forced Exposure“. She has been a pioneer of blawg journalism and an inspiration for legal journalism. Unfortunately, she has decided to shut down Groklaw because she cannot protect the privacy of her email sources. Referring to Lavabit’s closure, she no longer believes that it is possible to do her work because there is no privacy on the internet. She tells the story of her apartment being broken into and never being able to live there again, throwing out all her underwear, and quotes from a book by Janna Malamud Smith on the need for privacy in democracy. She claims she is going to try to leave the internet completely (or as much as possible) in order to save what’s left of her “humanness”:

Humans are just human, and we don’t know what to do in our own lives half the time, let alone how to govern other humans successfully… What I do know is it’s not possible to be fully human if you are being surveilled 24/7…

And “excerpt from a book by Janna Malamud Smith,”Private Matters: In Defense of the Personal Life“”:

Summed up briefly, a statement of “how not to dehumanize people” might read: Don’t terrorize or humiliate. …Don’t destroy privacy. Terrorists of all sorts destroy privacy both by corrupting it into secrecy and by using hostile surveillance to undo its useful sanctuary.

Jones concluding her suicide note:

I can’t stay online personally without losing my humanness, now that I know that ensuring privacy online is impossible. I find myself unable to write. I’ve always been a private person. That’s why I never wanted to be a celebrity and why I fought hard to maintain both my privacy and yours. Oddly, if everyone did that, leap off the Internet, the world’s economy would collapse, I suppose. I can’t really hope for that. But for me, the Internet is over.

Strong words. And with that the world loses another site of quality journalism.

And speaking of the dearth of journalism, MSNBC’s Touré did a segment called “Zombieism 101“. Maybe this was all Touré’s own idea (a riff on Ezra Klein’s zombie argument during World War Z press) but: Hey MSNBC, why’s it got to be the black guy giving this report? MSNBC doesn’t have a lot of black male talking heads, so the racial undertones here are sort of undeniable. But maybe this is legitamately just Touré arguing with Klein’s argument to promote World War Z and say “if they are fast we have no chance“.

Is it me or did “The Cycle” only really work because of S.E.’s glasses and now with the new cast the show is itself a zombie. Touré’s zombie segment maybe would have been better if it referenced Ezra’s more recent zombie apocalypse nuclear war (or also if Crystal would stop giggling in the background).

Consider also my argument that fast zombies are incorrect facts that spread quickly and so they are hard to kill because they spread so fast that too many people are exposed and believe before the factchecking can even start. Contrast slow zombies as myths that bubble slowly in niche communities and are hard to kill because they are so well-embedded in those small groups.

The thing with fast zombies is we do have a chance. With a little healthy skepticism and research skills, we don’t have to be susceptible to the fast zombie memes flying about. When you hear a crazy new fact, try to check it before you spread it. In a world where birds fall from the sky and Harvard economists make data mistakes, it’s hard for the 24 hour news cycle not to overreact… Media literacy is hard and there will always be mistakes but we need more journalism like Groklaw and less of the MSNBC style buzzword marketing noise.

Well, for my part, ZombieLaw is back from short hiatus. I’m no Pamela Jones and this is no GrokLaw but I will continue to try to cover this ZombieLaw beat as best I can (and I gotta finish the book!!!). In the meantime, for some truly excellent writing, read Quinn Norton: “Bradley Manning and the Two Americas” regarding internet culture, Bradley Manning, data sets, Occupy Wall Street, issues of bodies and privacy. Perhaps there is still some hope for journalism…(?)

RawStory: “Noam Chomsky: Zombies are the new Indians and slaves in white America’s collective nightmare” by Scott Kaufman:

…with students on February 7, 2014, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Noam Chomsky was asked why there’s a cultural preoccupation with “the zombie apocalypse” in United States.

CHOMSKY!! Chom chom! nom nom!!! Chomp down? Chomsky!! See more MIT zombies, and more linguistics.

Father of deep structure in language development, natural grammar? Is grammar from neuroscience or from elitist power relations? Generative grammar? Universal grammar? Is natural language a uniquely human ability? What was clear for Chomsky is that humans have language acquisition devices that seems absent in animals. How many modules do our brains have? Can we update the firmware, software plugins?

Consider again, Bouba and Kiki and that most people think the rounder shape is the bouba. How robust is this effect? Consider the sound of Zom-bee! Recall other words that start with zom, end with bi- – continuing,

Chomsky said, “that it’s a reflection of fear and desperation. The United States is an unusually frightened country, …

He echoes theories of zombie as absolute Other, and recall particularly Paul Cantor about the Zombie Western Frontiers.

According to Chomsky, “there’s a sub-theme: it turns out this enemy, this horrible enemy that’s going to destroy us, is someone we’re oppressing.

and we like our guns..

“We just have to have guns to protect ourselves from the United Nations, the federal government, aliens, and zombies, I suppose.”

And concluding about the unusual paranoia of our invented fear culture. Watch the full video clip of Chomsky answering about zombie apocalypse at Raw Story

Interestingly he doesn’t relate it to social media. See another clip of Chomsky discussing internet and friendships. But ok, it’s too easy to say this is just fear. It’s a specific kind of fear. It’s not just the Other. It’s that I am myself the Other and the limits and impossibility of self in a Western culture that demand we know ourselves and be creative, create ourselves.

Chomsky notes Jefferson’s role reversal of English-Native violence. This is the master-slave dialectic in America. And as Slavoj Žižek claimed recently, we’ve tartled, in New Statesman: “what is an authentic political event? “:

Were we all not tartling in the last decades, forgetting the name “Communism” to designate the ultimate horizon of our emancipatory struggles?

The zombie apocalypse could be considered an endpoint for Hegelian teleology, the zombie as absolute ideal. This creature fills an essential language function for the new age as a inverse for creativity. If we demand that students be creative, that individuals create themselves, then therefore by implication, there must be some behaviors which are non-creative, some people who fail to create themselves.

We are all dying from the day we were born, but we prefer to think of life another way, that we are not merely the living-dead but that we are fully alive. And thus there must be some form of living which is not fully alive. If creativity is to be the expression of some essential secular soul, if the creative person can enact their free will to power choice, then therefore there must be a class of people who are not that. If there is such a thing as thinking, there must be those who do not think.

Can they be cured? Can they learn to be creative, learn to think? This remains an open question. In some worlds, zombies can be cured. In a new movie version, the cure requires regular medication to control the zombie from returning. NPR reviews it with a plug toward healthcare: “A Zombie Plague, But It’s Covered By Your Health Plan” by Tomas Hachard thinking it’s a sequel to World War Z.

Can we get a pill for language acquisition and use? Or for creativity? Even if not a simple pill that gives language, but you would take the pill, it would engage your language acquisition functions as if you were a newborn and then you put on an audio-video presentation and learn the language in a shorter time. A performance enhancing drug for learning or for creativity? Is this science fiction or science future or do these pills already exist? Something like the movie “Limitless“. Not necessarily miracle drug, but at least a partial cure for zombie? Isn’t that what every pharmaceutical commercial offers?

And then there’s the machines. TimesOnline: “Attack of the Monster Trucks“. These monster trucks advertise on “Jeopardy” too. Speaking of “Jeopardy”, the recent winner, Arthur Chu, is on a winning streak by using a less-human more strategic computer-like style to win the game. It’s causing controversy because somehow it feels wrong, but if it worked for IBM’s Watson, why shouldn’t adopt it (here again, think Healthcare, and all sort of public institutions). In machine-justice work, “RoboCop” is back for comparison to real military drones joining the domestic police industrial complex; “dead or alive you are coming with me”.

The machines present another limit for humanity, they are zombie to their algorithms, and make zombies of us all. We become merely the neural matter inside the system’s cultural idea matrix. The machine world pushing language through our grey matter substrates. This experience of humanity, of consciousness, merely a shell operating system, biological modules responding to stimulus, layering stories on top of stories, with zombies all the way down. An experience patterned by neurons encountering a world as if we were not ourselves part of this world. Can we plug those neurons into a machine and use them in the machine world? In a way, we already do, through the interface of keyboards and touchsceens, and steering wheels and epilepsy device implanted, and next thing we plug a dead person’s brain into a Monster Truck.

Identity has been lost to biological part and modules and pieces of transplanted tissue, and it feels like we are nearing something like a Singularity. And so this talk of zombies. It’s not just Other, it’s the simulation of Other. It’s the shattering of the preconceived otherness. A reminder that living is more than being alive and that after all these years of Chomsky cog-sci, we still don’t know what those words mean or what consciousness is, where it comes from.

UPDATE: DailyKos has full transcript of Chomsky’s answer, and also embedded YouTube:

“Clashes over self-proclaimed governor in Donetsk” by Daryna Shevchenko and Kostyantyn Chernichkin:

“Now even more people will come to the rally, because if he (Gubarev) is taken to Kyiv then the Right Sector will make a zombie of him,” says Oleksiy Matviychuk, a construction worker and protest participant from Donetsk.

Was that in English or translated?

According to Wikipedia: The Right Sector is

a Ukrainian nationalist paramilitary and political opposition collective of several organizations, described by some major newspapers as having far right to neofascist views.

So Gubarev is against them?? Is the protest participant saying that they will make him a matyr? or use him to justify further fascism? or that they are going to kill him? or?

More information is available at an earlier article “Donetsk’s self-proclaimed separatist governor talks to journalists, gets arrested” by Daryna Shevchenko, but still I can’t say that I understand Ukrainian politics. I think it has something to with this rich guy Serhiy Taruta?

TheTimes: “The rational Putin has to rein in the mad one” by Roger Boyes:

Russia has become a prime exporter of chaos. Its subversive use of the rent-a-mob in the townships of eastern Ukraine shows the Kremlin is now ready to manipulate national identity, contest international frontiers and upset the post-Cold War order — in the name of what? A new Greater Russia? Reviving the zombie Soviet Union?

Mr. Boyes is British and has been The Times foreign correspondent for 35 years in Berlin giving him a close perspective on the Soviet Union. Maybe it also makes him a zombie?

See also other ZombieLaw on Russia, or Putin, or the Cold War.

Meanwhile, Tilda Swinton who plays a vampire hipster in Jim Jarmusch’s new movie, has recently called Putin a vampire, see Moviefone: “Tilda Swinton’s Dig at Russian President Vladimir Putin Is Worthy of Your Attention” by Jenni Miller. Putin’s wife also called him that – see MoscowTimes:”Lyudmila Putina Once Called Her Husband a Vampire“.

National Journal: “Can a Zombie-Powered Presidential Candidate Go Legit?” by Alex Seitz-Wald:

Providing the apocalyptic soundtrack for Boston’s annual Zombie March—atonal feedback broadcast through his megaphone—is a bearded man wearing a boot on his head, a man who resembles some kind of demented Santa Claus. This is Vermin Supreme, and this is how he campaigns for president. Of the United States. Of America.

AND

For 2016, he wants to do something even crazier and more brazen than anything he’s attempted before: Go legit—at least sort of.

Supreme is running for president again in 2016, but this time he hopes to earn enough support to secure potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in matching funds from the Federal Election Commission, courtesy of taxpayers who choose to chip in $3 on their annual tax return.

To meet the federal requirements for the money, Supreme will need to raise at least $5,000 in small donations from at least 20 states, for a minimum total of $100,000. If he succeeds, the government will match every contribution under $250 dollar-for-dollar, meaning the man whose platform includes a zombie-based energy plan would suddenly have more than $200,000 to spend on psychedelic ads

How could this guy not get $5000 from at least 20 states??

Some are concerned about the implications for the Federal Election system if this kind of candidate gets matching funds. But that’s exactly what should be ideal. Fringe politics should not be shunned!!!

See also the most recent Idaho GOP Primary. This stuff is real politics. It’s time to get more of the unnormals in the race. Get the suits out of politics! Here’s an edited version with the only two candidates who really mattered, the other two were so boring:

See also, the revolution in Ukraine?

In Slate: “Ukraine’s Zombie Revolution” by Lucian Kim:

the referendum wasn’t about independence at all, but simply the Donetsk people’s assertion of their right to self-determination.
…
I realized that my colleagues and I weren’t simply doing our jobs as journalists—we were also unwitting participants in a media circus that would help to legitimize a breakaway republic
…
When I first visited Donetsk at the end of March, I was surprised by the hostility demonstrators expressed toward me when I tried to interview them. Reporting from Serbia after the 1999 NATO bombing campaign was easier, because people—no matter how angry—wanted to express an opinion. At the Donetsk protests, I felt like I was facing an army of zombies programmed by Russian state media to rail in unison against the “Kiev junta” and its Western masters.
…
Putin is making Ukraine pay the price by having to fight a Soviet zombie state within its borders.

Meanwhile in Arizona, the Daily Courier: “Zombie rights: Comedic film shot in Prescott reveals plight of undead Americans” by Tom Scanlon reports:

“Dead Votes Society,” a Prescott-produced zombie comedy. It continues its festival life with a screening at Phoenix Comicon on Saturday, June 7 at 10:45 a.m.

The movie’s Twitter tagline:

After the Zombie Apocalypse (which turned out not so apocalyptic) zombies want to fit in. And, the right to vote.

This past week in Newsweek cover: Conspiracy Theories makes the case for a correlation between believing in one conspiracy and another even if they are diametrically opposed. Other studies have connected belief in the paranormal with belief in conspiracy. Just a few weeks ago, the Newsweek cover told us there was nowhere left to hide. But who determined what is “Conventional Wisdom”? Newsweek? or perhaps Reddit or Imgur or even Facebook!

It’s about a competition for narrative reality and social media can continue to change everything. Politics has always been largely a “media circus”. It’s about the meme flow.

As Supreme says:

“Meme maintenance,” he explained. “If there aren’t more pictures of me on the Internet, I’ll cease to exist.”