nettime The State, the Spectacle and September 11
[reformatted @ nettime] [Hi nettimers, I found this a very useful article, well worth a read ... John.] - http://www.newleftreview.net/NLR26101.shtml New Left Review 27, May-June 2004 The current global conjuncture as a collision between brute imperial interests and blunders in hegemonic control of the image-world. State power and spectacular warfare after September 11, in the view of the Bay Area's Situationist collective. RETORT AFFLICTED POWERS The State, the Spectacle and September 11 He too fought under television for our place in the sun. Robert Lowell on Lieutenant Calley, 1971 We begin from the moment in February 2003 when the tapestry copy of Picasso's Guernica hung in the anteroom to the UN Security Council Chamber was curtained over, at American insistence-not 'an appropriate backdrop', it was explained, for official statements to the world media on the forthcoming invasion of Iraq. [1] The episode became an emblem. Many a placard on Piccadilly or Market Street rang sardonic changes on Bush and the snorting bull. An emblem, yes-but, with the benefit of hindsight, emblematic of what? Of the state's relentless will to control the minutiae of appearance, as part of-essential to-its drive to war? Well, certainly. But in this case, did it get its way? Did not the boorishness of the effort at censorship prove counterproductive, eliciting the very haunting-by an imagery still capable of putting a face on the brutal abstraction of 'shock and awe'-that the velcro covering was meant to put a stop to? And did not the whole incident speak above all to the state's anxiety as it tried to micro-manage the means of symbolic production-as if it feared that every last detail of the derealized decor it had built for its citizens had the potential, at a time of crisis, to turn utterly against it? These are the ambiguities, generalized to the whole conduct of war and politics over the past three years, that this essay will explore. We start from the premise that certain concepts and descriptions put forward forty years ago by Guy Debord and the Situationist International, as part of their effort to comprehend the new forms of state control and social disintegration, still possess explanatory power-more so than ever, we suspect, in the poisonous epoch we are living through. In particular, the twinned notions of 'the colonization of everyday life' and 'the society of the spectacle'-we think each concept needs the other if it is to do its proper work-strike us as having purchase on key aspects of what has happened since September 11, 2001. Our purpose, in a word, is to turn two central Situationist hypotheses back to the task for which they were always primarily intended-to make them instruments of political analysis again, directed to an understanding of the powers and vulnerabilities of the capitalist state. (We take it we are not alone in shuddering at the way 'spectacle' has taken its place in approved postmodern discourse over the past 15 years, as a vaguely millenarian accompaniment to 'new media studies' or to wishful thinking about freedom in cyberspace, with never a whisper that its original objects were the Watts Riots and the Proletarian Cultural Revolution.) None of this means that we think we comprehend the whole shape and dynamic of the new state of affairs, or can offer a theory of its deepest determinations. We are not sectaries of the spectacle; no one concept, or cluster of concepts, seems to us to get the measure of the horror of the past three years. We even find it understandable, if in the end a mistake, that some on the Left have seen the recent wars in the desert and squabbles in the Security Council as open to analysis in classical Marxist terms, proudly unreconstructed-bringing on stage again the predictions and revulsions of Lenin's and Hobson's studies of imperialism-rather than in those of a new politics of 'internal', technologized social control. The present dark circumstances call for fresh political thought. No attempt at such thinking can avoid three obvious, interlinked questions: To what extent did the events of September 11, 2001-the precision bombing of New York and Washington by organized enemies of the US Empire-usher in a new era? Did those events change anything fundamental in the calculus and conduct of advanced capitalist states, or in the relation of such states to their civil societies? If so, how? Are we to understand the forms of assertion of American power since September 11-the naove demonstration of military supremacy (largely to reassure the demonstrators that 'something could still be done' with the monstrous armoury at the state's beck and call), the blundering attempts at recolonization under way in Afghanistan and Iraq, the threats and payoffs to client states in every corner of the globe, the glowering attack on civil liberties within the US itself-as a step backwards, a historical
Re: nettime Re: Images and Official Language: The Gap or How notto Know
I remain chary of the word evil, especially as it has been so easily bandied about by Bush and company, but it's quite obvious that the adminstration remains far less moved by death and injury to others, whether American or foreign, than by the political opportunities of any situation, whether 9/11 or the chance to look strong by invading Iraq. And the fact that weaklings opposed the war plans only added to the appeal in the eyes of an administration that was as you say so blind to even the possibility of real suffering. Like Saddam, lullled into unreality in his hundred palaces, Bush and cronies seem trapped in , and hopefully by, their fictive world view. Unless, as I still fear, what we consider fiction the average American (or anyway too manyswing voters in swing states) will end up still taking as real come Novemeber. And even if that fear is not borne out, we have to wonder what Kerry takes as real. Michael Alan Sondheim wrote: But was it really a matter of 'spin'? It didn't look good right from the beginning to many people - don't forget we were coming down out of the Clinton era which was fairly prosperous. And 'spin' again seems too much of a singularity. ... # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: nettime International Support Letter for Steven Kurtz / CAE
I saw some of the apparatus when Steve brought it to Amsterdam for Next 5 Minutes (IIRC), so the fact he could legally bring it in and out of the country could his defense. The PATRIOT cops don't have a case, but want to save face and/or win glory and scare potential bio-terrorists (this is how we treat innocent people; just imagine how we'll treat the guilty). The Joint Task Force etc. have no doubt been grilling Kurtz anyway, hoping to uncover accomplices, and they'll want him to cop a plea so it won't have been a complete waste of their time. That's almost what happened in Operation Sun Devil, the 1990 Secret Service anti-hacker operation that almost bankrupted the innocent Steve Jackson Games. Thanks to a lot of pro-bono work by sharp Texas lawyers, Steve Jackson won damages and saw the judge chew out the SS agent in charge. Bruce Sterling's The Hacker Crackdown has the details. At least boingboing.net and slashdot will remember it. Like Operation Sun Devil, this is a landmark in the young history of bio-hacking. Harmless but extremely useful work like what the CAE are doing has to be firmly established as legal and proper. Otherwise, the future of biotech belongs to Monsanto. Carl --- Eugene Thacker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi all, Great idea Eric. It seems that word has been slow to get around. Perhaps Carla Mendes, the CAE spokesperson, already has a letter of support, or is the person to draft one? ... __ Do you Yahoo!? Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger. http://messenger.yahoo.com/ - End forwarded message - # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
nettime flotilla2004.com
flotilla2004.com There are currently boats travelling 4,000 kilometres to Australias internment camp on Nauru. This is the most recent culmination of a series of protests against successive Australian governments policies of interning undocumented migrants. The boats are presently at the halfway mark and, weather permitting, expected to reach Nauru by June 20. The crews have been threatened with imprisonment for crossing borders without the proper papers. The importance of the internet to the communication and character of noborder protests is here amplified by distance, threats of violence and the risks of sea travel. __/__/__/__/__/__/__/__/__/ Some background It is well known that since 1989, successive Australian Governments have administered a notorious policy subsequently referred to the mandatory and non-reviewable detention of all those who arrive by boat and without papers. This was a response to the (by international comparison) extremely small rise in undocumented boat arrivals after 1989 - many from the Middle East, Vietnam and Cambodia - whose internment was often successfully challenged through legal action. The post-1989 regime of border policing effectively and over time legislated that the refugee determination process exist outside the rule of law in the form of ministerial and administrative dictate and be discharged through concentration camps and military intervention. It is also well known that in 2002, protesters on both sides of the barbed wire scaled the fences at the Woomera internment camp in South Australia and a number of escapes occurred. www.woomera2002.antimedia.net Woomera, which closed shortly after this, was emblematic of the Australian Governments strategy of interning undocumented migrants in remote, rural camps as a means of containment and control. Woomera was located 1,000 kilometres from the nearest capital city (Adelaide) and, for a time, held the largest number of detainees. 2002 was the culmination of four years of protests by detainees in Australias internment camps, including hunger strikes, the destruction of buildings, and mass escapes. Many of those protests were met with tear gas, riot police and the use of chemical restraints. www.antimedia.net/xborder Following this, the Australian Government shifted its strategy toward a combination of dislocation and electrification in an attempt to decompose the protests against the post-1989 regime of the camps. The so-called Pacific Solution was introduced which established camps on Nauru and Papua New Guinea (Manus Island) funded by the Australian Government and managed by the International Organisation for Migration. Australian military vessels would forcibly remove undocumented boat arrivals from territorial waters and Australian islands, and transport them to those camps in the Pacific. In Australia, a new technology of internment was constructed (such as at Baxter) which replaced the grim (but scalable) coils of barbed wire and steel fences with hi-tech, refined systems of electronic barriers, surveillance and a greater reliance on technological and chemical restraint. (The Government has also budgeted for another of these hi-tech camps in Broadmeadows, Melbourne to replace the current, smaller one in Maribyrnong.) The result of these changes to the architecture of the camps were immediate: the protesters outside Baxter in 2003 were unable to get close to or even within sight of any of those imprisoned there, many of whom had been relocated from Woomera. www.baxter2003.com Whereas Woomera2002 had managed to break with the symbolic character of protests by those outside the camps; Baxter2003 signalled the restoration of such, and subsequently ushered in a decline in the impetus of the movements against the camps. __/__/__/__/__/__/ Flotilla 2004 Having circulated as an audacious, but regarded as impractical, strategy after Woomera2002, the idea of shifting the protests against the camps to the northern waters of Australia became an imperative with the inauguration of the Pacific Solution. After Baxter, Hopecaravan www.hopecaravan.com distributed a call for boats to travel to the internment camp on Nauru. That voyage is currently underway, with boats presently located at the halfway mark, and expecting to reach Nauru by June 20. The Nauru Government which - given its current fiscal woes and recent economic bankruptcy - relies on the continuing funding of the camp as a source of revenue and employment, has threatened to suspend maritime convention (the Law of the Sea) and forcibly seize the boats. They have also threatened to imprison the Flotilla crews as undocumented boat arrivals. This has not deterred the crews, who nevertheless require ongoing support and communication. Regular updates are available at flotilla2004.com, as are crew b-logs, instructions on sending text messages to the crews, and detailed background reports. The Australian Government, for its part, has
