Edward Luce on the new Cold War

[Brian Holmes]

China is right about US containment
But encircling Beijing is not a viable long-term strategy

Edward Luce
FT, March 8 2023

Here is a thought experiment. If Taiwan did not exist, would the US and
China still be at loggerheads? My hunch is yes. Antagonism between top dogs
and rising powers is part of the human story.

The follow-up is whether such tensions would persist if China were a
democracy rather than a one-party state. That is harder to say but it is
not obvious that an elected Chinese government would feel any less
resentful of the US-led global order. It is also hard to imagine the
circumstances in which America would willingly share the limelight.

All of which suggests that loose talk of a US-China conflict is no longer
far-fetched. Countries do not easily change their spots: China is the
middle kingdom wanting redress for the age of western humiliation; America
is the dangerous nation seeking monsters to destroy. Both are playing to
type.

The question is whether global stability can survive either of them
insisting that they must succeed. The likeliest alternative to today's
US-China stand-off is not a kumbaya meeting-of-minds, but war.

This week, Xi Jinping went further than before in naming America as the
force behind the "containment", "encirclement" and "suppression" of China.
Though his rhetoric was provocative, it was not technically wrong.
President Joe Biden is still officially committed to trying to co-operate
with China. But Biden was as easily blown off course last month as a
weather balloon. Washington's panic over what is after all 19th-century
technology prompted Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, to cancel a
Beijing trip that was to pave the way for a Biden-Xi summit.

Washington groupthink drove Biden's overreaction. The consensus is now so
hawkish that it is liable to see any outreach to China as weakness. As the
historian Max Boot points out, bipartisanship is not always a good thing.

Some of America's worst blunders — the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution that
led to the Vietnam war, or the 2002 Iraq war resolution — were bipartisan.
So is the new House committee on China, which its chair, Mike Gallagher,
says will "contrast the Chinese Communist party's techno-totalitarian state
with the Free World". It is probably safe to say he will not be on the hunt
for contradictory evidence.

A big difference between today's cold war and the original one is that
China is not exporting revolution. From Cuba to Angola and Korea to
Ethiopia, the Soviet Union underwrote leftwing insurgencies worldwide.

The original idea of containment, laid out in George Kennan's 1947 Foreign
Affairs essay, The Sources of Soviet Conduct, was more modest than the
undeclared containment that is now US policy. Kennan's advice was twofold:
to stop the expansion of the Soviet empire; and to shore up western
democracy. He counselled against the use of force. With patience and skill
the USSR would fold, which is what eventually happened.

Today's approach is containment-plus. When Xi talks of "suppression", he
means America's ban on advanced semiconductor exports to China. Since
high-end chips are used for both civil and military purposes, the US has
grounds for denying China the means to upgrade its military. But the
collateral effect is to limit China's economic development.

There is no easy way round this. One possible side-effect will be to
accelerate Xi's drive for "made in China" technology. The Chinese president
has also explicitly declared Beijing's goal of dominating artificial
intelligence by 2030, which is another way of saying that China wants to
set the rules.

The one positive feature of today's cold war compared with the last one —
China and America's economic interdependence — is thus something Biden
wants to undo. Decoupling is taking on an air of inevitability.

When Xi refers to "encirclement", he is thinking about America's deepening
ties to China's neighbours. Again, Xi mostly has himself to blame.

Japan's shift to a more normal military stance, which includes a doubling
of its defence spending, probably worries China the most. But America's
growing closeness to the Philippines and India, and the Aukus nuclear
submarine deal with Australia and the UK, are also part of the picture. Add
in increased US arms transfers to Taiwan and the ingredients for Chinese
paranoia are ripe. How does this end?

This is where a study of Kennan would pay dividends. There is no endgame to
today's cold war. Unlike the USSR, which was an empire in disguise, China
inhabits historic boundaries and is never likely to dissolve. The US needs
a strategy to cope with a China that will always be there.

If you took a snap poll in Washington and asked: one, are the US and China
in a cold war; and two, how does the US win it, the answer to the first
would be an easy "yes"; the second would elicit a long pause. Betting on
China's submission is not a strategy.

Here is another way to look at it. The US still holds 

Re: Germany's geopolitics

[Brian Holmes]

Ted, you insinuated I was a mentally debilitated paralytic and I suggested
you might look into what a thread is about before commenting on it. It's
not a very polite exchange but seems fair enough to me. We don't agree on
much and it's actually not so interesting to dialogue.

On Fri, Mar 3, 2023 at 7:47 PM Ted Byfield  wrote:

> Brian, the condescending signaling — finding this or that amusing, somehow
> recalling something else, God forbid this and sorry about that,  horror!
> about something else, and most of all *assigning readings* — is a bad look.
> You should cut it out.
>
> Nothing I said suggests that your interests or ideas are "illegitimate" or
> anything like that; on the contrary, I said "those considerations might be
> real, valid, or important." I believe that, and I learn a lot from you on
> this list. I also argued that we shouldn't accept at face value the
> quasi-transcendent pretensions of certain frames of reference or styles of
> thought. That's just skepticism 101.
>
> Andre can speak for himself, but the only mention I made of conspiracies
> related specifically to the right, which clearly doesn't include you. I'm
> not sure why you'd focus on that rather than engage with a single thing I
> actually did say.
>
> Here's an "assignment": go back and skim my mail for discussions that
> might *specifically* apply to you. Part of one paragraph, arguably a bit of
> another. The rest is about cops, courts, the feds, academia, the right, the
> UK. More than that, it's an effort to understand how (not *why*) so many
> leftists have gotten so tangled up in their theories that they end up
> actively endorsing Russian imperialist aggression. If that doesn't apply to
> you, great.
>
> Cheers,
> Ted
>
> On 3 Mar 2023, at 15:55, Brian Holmes wrote:
>
> > I find it very amusing that a thread devoted to Germany's relations to
> > China is conceived as a conspiracy theory that aims at covering up the
> > reality of Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine.
> >
> > It seems to me rather *legitimate* to explore what might be happening
> > between Germany, the US and China, at a time when the possibilities of a
> > war between the US and China are being discussed in major news and
> > international-relations publications across the world. God forbid, I even
> > find it legitimate to explore what these tensions have to do with the
> > Ukraine war, at a time the international relations experts are analyzing
> > China's growing support for Russia, and worrying whether China might
> > actually send arms to Russia, raising the spectre of - God forbid it
> again
> > - something like a "proxy war." (Sorry, the word and the thought are
> taboo,
> > I know.)
> >
> > Hmmm, I somehow recall saying very clearly in an earlier thread that I am
> > in favor of NATO arming Ukraine, but simultaneously, I am wary of what
> > comes next, the possibility of a larger conflict. Doesn't matter,
> > conspiracy theorists always do that, it's not worth reading what they
> > actually say.
> >
> > Speaking of reading, Andre and Ted, perhaps you guys have read the books
> by
> > Bruno Macaes, "Belt and Road" and "The Dawn of Eurasia", and surely you
> > have verified the conspirational nature of that kind of thinking? I guess
> > you would have to throw in reams of articles in publications like Foreign
> > Affairs and so on, the kind of stuff that I consult before writing, known
> > conspiracy theorists all.
> >
> > Ted, when you've finished The Dawn of Eurasia - go ahead, it won prizes
> > back in 2016, and rightly so, because it predicted the current era of
> > inter-civilizational conflict between Russia, China and the US - well,
> when
> > you've finished that, I am sure you will be convinced that Macaes, too,
> is
> > a conspiracy theorist, and surely a "leftoid" to boot (after all, I think
> > he mentions Aleksandr Dugin in there, and only leftoids do that). After a
> > little study you will be able to better analyze and trash whatever I
> might
> > come up with next.
> >
> > Just throw in Macaes' recent publications in The New Statesman, and it
> will
> > give you a very accurate picture of the paralyzing lack of agency that
> you
> > diagnose with such consummate precision. Go ahead, look at all that, take
> > some time to put it all in the balance, and reconcile the results with
> your
> > horror at anyone who attempts a 'why' explanation of complex world
> events.
> >
> > thoughtfully, Brian
> >
> > On Fri, Mar 3, 2023 at 9:10 AM Ted Byfield  wrote:
> >
>

Re: Germany's geopolitics

[Brian Holmes]

I find it very amusing that a thread devoted to Germany's relations to
China is conceived as a conspiracy theory that aims at covering up the
reality of Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine.

It seems to me rather *legitimate* to explore what might be happening
between Germany, the US and China, at a time when the possibilities of a
war between the US and China are being discussed in major news and
international-relations publications across the world. God forbid, I even
find it legitimate to explore what these tensions have to do with the
Ukraine war, at a time the international relations experts are analyzing
China's growing support for Russia, and worrying whether China might
actually send arms to Russia, raising the spectre of - God forbid it again
- something like a "proxy war." (Sorry, the word and the thought are taboo,
I know.)

Hmmm, I somehow recall saying very clearly in an earlier thread that I am
in favor of NATO arming Ukraine, but simultaneously, I am wary of what
comes next, the possibility of a larger conflict. Doesn't matter,
conspiracy theorists always do that, it's not worth reading what they
actually say.

Speaking of reading, Andre and Ted, perhaps you guys have read the books by
Bruno Macaes, "Belt and Road" and "The Dawn of Eurasia", and surely you
have verified the conspirational nature of that kind of thinking? I guess
you would have to throw in reams of articles in publications like Foreign
Affairs and so on, the kind of stuff that I consult before writing, known
conspiracy theorists all.

Ted, when you've finished The Dawn of Eurasia - go ahead, it won prizes
back in 2016, and rightly so, because it predicted the current era of
inter-civilizational conflict between Russia, China and the US - well, when
you've finished that, I am sure you will be convinced that Macaes, too, is
a conspiracy theorist, and surely a "leftoid" to boot (after all, I think
he mentions Aleksandr Dugin in there, and only leftoids do that). After a
little study you will be able to better analyze and trash whatever I might
come up with next.

Just throw in Macaes' recent publications in The New Statesman, and it will
give you a very accurate picture of the paralyzing lack of agency that you
diagnose with such consummate precision. Go ahead, look at all that, take
some time to put it all in the balance, and reconcile the results with your
horror at anyone who attempts a 'why' explanation of complex world events.

thoughtfully, Brian

On Fri, Mar 3, 2023 at 9:10 AM Ted Byfield  wrote:

> Andre, you really nailed it.
>
> As some may have noticed, the US in particular is suffering from, let's
> say, a *maldistribution of agency*. It's mostly imaginary, but like all
> imaginaries, it functions like a mass-magic spell: its very unreality
> makes it that much more real.
>
> The left — not a good name for it, but that's a discussion for another
> time — has been consumed with efforts to "give agency to" or "empower"
> its various grassroots constituencies for decades. I happen to support
> those liberationist struggles, *and* I can also see the myriad ways
> those cultural activities are inextricably intertwined with the left's
> plainly obvious inability to effectively occupy governmental entities
> and functions at *any* level. The right, which has been supremely
> effective at subsuming government functions — whether by simply taking
> them over or by rewriting the laws and media that construct them — is
> consumed with growing imaginary allegations of excessive agency:
> conspiracies, "the gubmint," "globalists," various insidious "agendas,"
> "cancellations," "false flags" (i.e., misattributed agency), and
> ridiculous "lizard people"–style nonsense (i.e., allegations of infinite
> agency to entities that look like they don't have agency *because they
> look like us*), etc, etc
>
> More: US police forces are increasingly consumed by their sense of
> helplessness and even fragility, even as their numbers skyrocket, their
> budgets and powers expand uncontrollably, and the quantity and "quality"
> of their weaponry — as well as their willingness to use it on the
> slightest pretext — has metastasized.
>
> US courts have become little more than a forum for rightists to
> adjudicate ways to destroy ideas and facts developed by the left. But
> the courts can't *do* anything directly — all they can do is direct
> other branches not do or not do this or that. So they too are acutely
> aware of their lack of agency and power, even as they grow by the day.
>
> And the US federal government, with almost undisputed military and
> financial power, is suffering from some sort of collective aphasia,
> unable to effectively *name* the abuses tearing people's lives to
> pieces: "insurrection" and "coup," the "mass murder" of gun violence,
> "criminal negligence" (like public beta tests of allegedly self-driving
> cars on the public at large), mass "disenfranchisement" through
> gerrymandering and worse, the "indentured 

Re: Germany's geopolitics

[Brian Holmes]

Three cheers for ditching Schmitt, it's a crude and populist "why"
explanation. I only mentioned the name because Pit offered a critical
article about German geopolitics. What Pit actually has to say is much
different and much more valuable:

"What is needed are new types of assemblies that will facilitate the green
transition in record time, which at first has to be a
technological project, and from there is engineered by social, cultural,
political, economic processes. the planetary organisation
that will facilitate this is most likely not simply following the USA as
the internal systemic contradictions are obviously too great."

This is exactly what I am concerned about. I think the entrenched
interlinks between US corporate, financial, diplomatic and military
strategies - revealed in undeniable detail by the Wikileaks cables - are
just too sedimented on the Cold War model, which aims at commercial
hegemony backed by military force. This is the model that produced the
"Great Acceleration" by the way, or what I call the Anthopocene mode of
production (1). In the past the US delivered many global public goods that
made this hegemony work: military security; Taylorist/Fordist organization;
public science and advanced education; global norms and standards;
multilateral diplomacy; pop culture and global English (2). In the course
of the neoliberal period especially, all of these except maybe the norms
and standards began turning to global public bads. But the point is not to
just dump the US, as Pit is careful to point out. If the EU and its
"Franco-German locomotive" do not play the bridging role, then the
rebooting of the NATO alliance system will prolong the agony of the Cold
War hegemony, and we will miss the narrow window of maybe-opportunity to do
something about climate change. The hopes that were invested during the
last decade in the Tian Xia/All Under Heaven philosophy will just collapse
into great power rivalries, proxy wars, and worse.

Who are the thinkers, statesmen, policy-makers in the EU that are advancing
a positive bridging role? How to make the Old Continent into something more
than a big consumer market? How to keep China from pursuing a great-power
type hegemony, and instead, encourage it to provide the global public goods
of the climate-change era? Such ideas are urgent right now.

It is clear that Germany, unfortunately, has pursued a geoeconomic
competition strategy with respect to China, which itself appears dead set
on that kind of competition. Recently Germany has aimed at a strategic
"decoupling" not so different from the US approach, in the face of China's
own attempt to position itself at the top of crucial value chains,
especially in the less-developed world. In his book on the Belt and Road
initiative, Bruno Macaes captures the precise turning point:

"In Germany the general view of China has been steadily changing, as many
in the German industry realize that the times when the two economies
benefited from perfect complementarity are almost certainly behind us. The
strategic industries where China wants to become the dominant global player
are just those that Germany chose for its own industrial plans: robotics,
automated vehicles, aerospace, artificial intelligence. Whereas one or two
decades ago Germany could export its machinery to China sure in the
knowledge that no Chinese firm could make the same sophisticated machines -
and these were the machines China needed for its industrial and
infrastructure boom - now Chinese competitors are present in the same
sectors, a shift that was accelerated by European suppliers selling
co-designed parts to the Chinese. In early August 2018 the German
government decided to ban for the first time the sale of a German company
to a Chinese suitor - a watershed moment. The decision to block the sale of
machine tool company Leifeld Metal Spinning AG to a Chinese company came
after an extensive review that led the government to conclude that such a
transaction would be a risk to “public order and safety”. Chancellor
Merkel's government wants to keep the company’s expertise in the field of
rocket and nuclear technology out of Chinese hands. It remained unclear
whether national security arguments were being used to address economic
concerns about the loss of key technologies to China."(3)

I do not have the antennas to go deep into German or EU industrial policy,
much less grand strategy. But the slightest appeal to the Reuters newswire
shows that these trends continue today (4). I would be glad to hear more
about it.

Pit's ideas on "new types of assemblies" are in pretty good sync with Bruno
Latour's reflections in his last, co-written publication, "On the emergence
of an ecological class." Except Latour would probably put the cultural
factors first. I'm not sure about that, but culture is the only thing I
could begin to work on. My friends at Casa Rio in Argentina are now
engaging a collaboration with researchers in China to better 

Germany's geopolitics

[Brian Holmes]

Reading over some of the Stormy Weather posts, I find Pit Schulz's ideas
pretty close to the more jaundiced or realistic side of my thinking, just
as Alex Foti's posts respond to my sense of what is to be done.

Pit wrote:

>
> The decisive factor in the outcome, to use the language of board game
> thinkers, is Europe and the bridging role of Germany, so the Ukrainian
> war (including the recent debates over tank exports) is mainly about
> disciplining Europe to submit to the fading glory of Western world
> domination, the result being high inflation, an increasing debt
> spiral, tech stock bubbles and derivatives markets at an all time
> high, business as usual for the 1% ready to sacrifice more surplus
> population for financialised profit.
>

I'm totally curious about Germany's bridging role - but between what and
what exactly? In recent years I saw Germany developing a China strategy
comparable in opportunism to the US Chimerica approach,  without the
wholesale abandonment of the domestic working class, for sure, but a
similar attempt to profit off comparative advantages in tech, high-end
manufacturing and capital for foreign direct investment. Germany definitely
went for the awful Schmittean 'Land and Sea' geopolitics approach, opting
for the land side obviously, banking on the so-called Eurasian land bridge
that is central to the Chinese attempt to deal with capital
overaccumulation - basically by industrialising all the way along the
railroad that goes to Germany, pouring steel and cement and other producer
goods along a vast geographic stretch, with the bottomless consumer markets
of Europe at the end of the New Silk Road.

Now Germany realigns with the US via NATO, to overcome the old Eastern
bear. Aren't the industrial and financial elites quaking in their boots as
the Spiegel reveals the (supposed) Chinese plan to sell "kamikaze" (sic)
drones to Russia? (See the newspapers if you haven't already) Is the bridge
gonna break? Does anyone have a better plan than this awful old
geopolitical nightmare?

Curiously, Brian

>
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Re: Stormy weather?

[Brian Holmes]

This thread has been fantastically interesting. By launching it, I've
somehow come off as an old Stal suffering from reflexive anti-Americanism.
Fair enough, I have many difficulties with my home country. But the old
Stal part, no.

It should be possible to support the Ukrainians and critique the strategy
that informs some of the support. The strategy of alliance-building to
maintain a global free trade area is now at least 80 years old - it's the
why part of the story, to use the categories David Garcia brought up. The
Biden administration has pursued it energetically with an aim to breaking a
possible Russia-China axis and maintaining a hegemony incarnated militarily
by NATO. Many posts in the thread recognize this clearly.

I read the text by Maurizio Lazzarato that Pit sent. It has another list,
of all the wars the US has fought since 1989. Those wars, and many others
going back to WWII, have not only emboldened the rapacious US corporations,
but also saddened and brutalized US society, leaving the country full of
angry ex-soldiers who often go to work for the increasingly militarized
police. You have all followed the January 6 coup attempt. Pressure from the
right now becomes a major factor in the how part of the story, pushing
leaders to bellicose actions that support economic agendas. Allan Siegel
sent an impressive article by Seymour Hersch on the sabotage of NordStream
II, that illustrates this. In the end, if Hersch is right, Republicans
representing US gas interests got what they wanted, courtesy of a Navy
diving team sent to the Baltic by Joe Biden.

Psychic distress is the phrase I used to describe what it's like to live in
a society whose intense grassroots egalitarian movements are constantly
contradicted by elite capitalist power plays, and by heavily manipulated
racist/nationalist passions. Europeans mostly have to think back to the
early 20th century to imagine this, see Klaus Theweleit. Since then, the
American military has taken over the effort of maintaining European
economic positions, while anti-Americanism has mostly exonerated European
public intellectuals from thinking about what their own countries do.

Like Sean on this list, Lazzarato thinks that unless it's possible to
articulate the realistic analysis of war with the agency of proletarian
revolution, disaster will ensue. That's true, except for the proletarian
part. Capitalist elites definitively overcame the 1917 formula of
revolution a long time ago, and appealing to the peasant revolutions of the
South, as Maurizio does, offers no redemption. Today, under the pressure of
climate change, broader fronts are emerging, which include not only peasant
and indigenous struggles, but also metropolitan minorities and, crucially I
think, elements of the middle classes who see the looming dead-end of
industrial modernism - something that has not been very perceptible to the
old working classes. These emergent alliances from below are threatened,
not only by the police, but even more, by the paralyzing power of psychic
distress that Hans Christian Voigt described so well in his first post.
Naivete, and the hope that it will all be fine once the war is over, just
don't cut it. Intellectuals need to furnish a realistic, updated analysis
of the forces that lead to war - and that profit from war - under the
present conditions of global competition and interdependence.

Best to all, Brian
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Re: Stormy weather?

[Brian Holmes]

Felix, I understand what you're reacting to, and to be clear, I support the
Ukrainians in their war against Russian aggression. I think it's a
necessary war for NATO to engage in, as I've said before. I also agree the
term "liberal fascism" is meaningless, btw.

But this is also a great power war, fought with NATO weapons in Ukrainian
hands. Up to now that's been called a proxy war, but if there's a better
term, I'll take it. The point is definitely not to wallow in outdated
concepts, but to grasp what's happening now.

I think this war is perceived by US and other Western strategists as the
means for the installation of a new global security system in the face of
increasing challenges to the post-WWII order. That order, originally
defined by the US and cemented by NATO, is now fundamentally threatened by
climate change and by the rise of East Asia. The intense bellicose
signalling between China and the US reveals the larger stakes. Putin
attempted to take advantage of this situation by establishing a partnership
with China, but he failed.

Victory in Ukraine would reestablish uncontested Western military
superiority at the global level, and allow the NATO countries to organize
the next phase of capitalist development, just as the Gulf War did at the
outset of neoliberalism in the 90s. But the world is now far more unstable
than in the 90s. The Ukrainians are pushing for total victory,  which is
hard to imagine without Putin's fall. I doubt it is possible to achieve
regime change in Russia without NATO troops on the ground.

My point is that this is a dangerous time with immense future consequences.
It would be important to analyze the new security system as it emerges.
Support for the Ukrainians does not mean turning a blind eye to what the
most powerful countries are doing. The international system that emerges
from this war will be the one that deals with the existential challenge of
climate change.

Thoughtfully, Brian

On Mon, Feb 13, 2023, 11:41 Felix Stalder  wrote:

>
> On 12.02.23 20:50, Brian Holmes wrote:
> > -- There's a war on in Europe, which is a proxy war that pits NATO
> > against Russia, via the fighting force of Ukraine. Definitely check
> > out the list of equipment which the US alone has sent:
> > https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/sleepwalking-elites
> > <https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/sleepwalking-elites> (list
> > begins in paragraph 3)
>
>
> I know this is not your point here, but to see this only as a proxy
> war really reductive and reeks of a "great powers" analysis in which
> some countries/people are just have to accept the fact that they are
> subordinate.
>
> The author of the NLR article comes right out with this world view:
>
> > Ten years ago, nobody could have imagined that Europe would risk
> > such a catastrophe for the sake of the Donbass – a region that few of
> > us would have been able to locate on a map.
>
> I'm sure most Ukrainians knew already 10 years ago where the Donbas was,
> but why bother with their view. Also, the war in the Donbas started
> 2008, so not to know where the Donbas was in 2012 is really an act
> of metropolitan ignorance. It happens, nothing to be proud of.
>
> So, this war is primarily one of Ukrainian survival. I'm sure that many
> in the US security apparatus see it also as a proxy-war, but I think
> also Biden's theme of democracy-vs-authoritarianism plays a role. I
> don't think it's a given that a republican administration under Trump
> would have done the same (even if some in the military would still have
> liked to fight a proxy war).
>
>
> On 13.02.23 08:45, Stefan Heidenreich wrote:
>
> > - the defeat of NATO could lead to a "decolonization" of Western
> > Europe (not that this by itself leads to positive results. Repressive
> > "liberal" fascism remains as likely an outcome as some sort of
> > independence.)
>
> Oh my, what this is supposed to mean, only chatGPT can explain.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
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Stormy weather?

[Brian Holmes]

I wonder how nettimers from different perspectives around the world see the
current, remarkably tense international situation? Where do you think all
the anxieties of war, economic competition, natural disaster and climate
change are going to lead in the near future? How do you think one should
intervene?

-- There's a war on in Europe, which is a proxy war that pits NATO against
Russia, via the fighting force of Ukraine. Definitely check out the list of
equipment which the US alone has sent:
https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/sleepwalking-elites (list begins in
paragraph 3)

-- There's likely to be a second refugee crisis in the EU due to the
earthquake in Turkey and Syria as well (I mean, added to the exodus from
Ukraine).

-- There are rapidly rising tensions between the US and China, with this
week's US airspace-defence operations visibly influenced by domestic
get-tough politics, and a lot of uncertainty as to whether China will try
to use a nationalist, rally-around-the-flag effect to quash the social
protest and state-delegitimation brought by the zero-covid fiasco. As part
of all this, an industrial re-orientation is being attempted from the US
side (CHIPS act, electric-car subsidies for nationally made products). I am
not clear if the EU, and especially Germany, participates in this
reorientation, or not.

-- Lower-income countries dependent on international finance have had to
absorb the interest-rate consequences of pandemic inflation in the rich
countries, leading to stalled development and left-right conflicts.

-- Fires, droughts and floods have made climate change into an openly
admitted crisis, an economic factor in its own right, and a crucial element
in strategic economic military planning.

-- And in parallel to all that, another technology shift is coming through
the application of AI to existing industrial and communications
technologies.

I think those are undeniable factors whose spillovers must affect most
people somehow, wherever you live, so I'm totally curious what you make of
this conjuncture.

>From my viewpoint, I think that the neoliberal model of society has now
irretrievably broken down, leaving vast psycho-social disarray and
increasing conflict as state and corporate actors begin trying new
strategies. Currently there is a lot of happy talk about "solving the
climate crisis" with solar panels and electric cars, and I'm glad about it
too, but I think this masks the enormity of the changes ahead. On the one
hand, the reason of state calls simultaneously for protective
reterritorialization (nationalism, militarized borders, renegotiated
alliances) and, in a diametrically opposite way, for intensified
international regulatory and planning regimes, as well as a certain
coordination of production to achieve energy transitions. On the other
hand, populations at all class levels seem to sense that these changes will
again be highly disruptive (I mean, as they were in the 80s-90s when
neoliberalism came in) - so you have an incredible repositioning going on
at the molecular level, not only politically but above all,
psychologically. It's noteworthy that in the US, almost none of the
sprawling social-welfare package that was originally intended to accompany
the Green Capitalism legislation made it through, and more broadly, I don't
think capitalist societies have overcome their basic social contradictions.
Instead they are being exacerbated, which makes it much, much harder to
steer the big ships of state...

It all adds up to stormy weather ahead, and I was just interrupted by a
friend telling me that NORAD had closed the airspace over Lake Michigan.
That's right out my window! They just opened it again, no explanation yet,
but it seems like a good place to end.

curious what you think, Brian
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Re: Modest prophet of doom

[Brian Holmes]

Felix wrote:

"On an analytic level, I lean towards the latter, on a level of political
strategy, towards the former. But that's a rather in-congruent position,
I'm afraid."

Ha ha, I suffer the same incongruence.

Yet maybe green growth/degrowth is a false binary. Degrowth is coming, via
breakdown. We will not have the same hyperproductive transnational system
in the future - including in agriculture, where I guess it will get heavy
very soon, due to drought. People can prepare for this inevitable degrowth
in all kinds of ways, including culturally. Municipalities and other
political units can make changes now.

By the same token, green growth is ultimately impossible. Even if you had
hydrogen fusion, that does not fix 500ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere. So why
not transform the energy system right away, while that can still be done?
Disaster socialism will be a lot better with solar power!

This is why I support both degrowth and green capitalism. While recognizing
the high degree of irrealism that pervades both camps.

thoughtfully, Brian

On Wed, Jan 25, 2023 at 4:23 AM Felix Stalder  wrote:

> Hi Brian,
>
> thanks for point out this talk (and connecting it back to the
> introductory book "Earth System Science", which I agree is great).
>
> Applying 'systems thinking' around 'tipping points' to social dynamics
> raises very interesting issues about how radical change comes about.
>
> The classic revolutionary/anti-capitalist perspective maintains that we
> need to change the fundamentals of the system in order to bring about
> radically different dynamic. Following the model of the great modern
> (American, French, Russian, Chinese, Cuban etc) revolutions, systemic
> change comes first, from which then new social dynamic emerge. This is
> an appealing model, because it sounds like you know what you do, but
> also a paralyzing one, because you need to the big things first, before
> the small things can be done.
>
> The tipping point view would maintain that we can move towards tipping
> points within the existing dynamics in order to bring about radically
> different ones once the threshold has been passed. This is, in a way, a
> scary model, because tipping points are, almost by definition,
> unpredictable, because of the many interacting cascades they can set of.
> Given that some of these cascades can provide negative feedback, meaning
> dampening change, it's also hard to predict where exactly the tipping
> points lies and what exactly will be tipped. On the other hand, it's an
> appealing vision, because it suggest that even smaller changes, if
> applied strategically, can result in large-scale transformations.
>
> Lenton makes a decent point about the tipping points towards renewable
> energies that might be passed soon. On the technical side, we might have
> passed it, all the necessary elements are here already [1]. I think the
> fossil fuel sector knows this hence it's lobbying hard to delay that
> point has long as possible. The question is, is that enough of a tipping
> point, or will it simply displace the resource hungry growth imperative
> of capitalism?
>
> The tension between these two points of view is visible in a fascinating
> recent discussion "How to Save the Planet: Degrowth vs Green Growth?"
> [2]. While they never mention the contrast between revolution and
> tipping points, it's clearly operative. Green Growth argues for using
> the existing system dynamics to affect its direction (de-carbonization),
> where as de-growth see as an approach that has not worked out in the
> last 30 years and connects it to the capitalism need for growth.
>
> On an analytic level, I lean towards the latter, on a level of political
> strategy, towards the former. But that's a rather in-congruent position,
> I'm afraid.
>
>
> [1]
>
> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/23/no-miracles-needed-prof-mark-jacobson-on-how-wind-sun-and-water-can-power-the-world
>
> [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxJrBR0lg6s
>
>
> On 20.01.23 21:37, Brian Holmes wrote:
> > Among the small but highly influential group of scientists building on
> > the Gaia theory of Lovelock and Margulis, Tim Lenton might have been the
> > most unobtrusive - until now. At 49 he's quite young for the impressive
> > quantity and quality of the work he has produced. For instance, he's the
> > author of a very short but fundamental book on biogeochemical cycles,
> > tracing the vast and intricate process whereby specific elements such as
> > carbon circulate through the atmosphere, the oceans and the earth's
> > crust - with important detours through living beings (1). He was also
> > the lead author, with Rockstrom, Schellnhuber and others, of the
> > inaugural 2008 paper o

Modest prophet of doom

[Brian Holmes]

Among the small but highly influential group of scientists building on the
Gaia theory of Lovelock and Margulis, Tim Lenton might have been the most
unobtrusive - until now. At 49 he's quite young for the impressive quantity
and quality of the work he has produced. For instance, he's the author of a
very short but fundamental book on biogeochemical cycles, tracing the vast
and intricate process whereby specific elements such as carbon circulate
through the atmosphere, the oceans and the earth's crust - with important
detours through living beings (1). He was also the lead author, with
Rockstrom, Schellnhuber and others, of the inaugural 2008 paper on tipping
elements capable of provoking phase changes in the earth system (2). You
could further check out a recent article in The Anthropocene Review,
co-authored with Bruno Latour, on the role of Life in the production and
maintenance of habitable conditions on our planet (3). Lenton appears for
Zoom talks in a spare, book-lined bedroom, as though he forgot he's no
longer a graduate student and didn't notice whatever cascade of honors has
ensued since then. He's concerned with other cascades.

Last summer Lenton was a co-author of a paper entitled "Climate Endgame:
Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios," which examines the
existential risk to humanity posed by runaway global warming (4). The key
concept is that of so-called "tipping cascades," which are likely to begin
in earnest at only 1.5 degrees centigrade of global warming (we're
currently around 1.2 degrees). In such cascades, one fundamental change in
earth system dynamics sets off another, leading to consequences far beyond
those outlined in the increasingly dire IPCC reports. The main difference
between the IPCC consensus and Lenton's view concerns the rates of possible
change, which are essentially linear for the former (more CO2, more
warming), while for the latter, they necessarily pass accelerative
thresholds affecting not only temperature, but also, the intricate dynamics
of biogeochemical cycles.

A couple weeks ago I started watching a talk that Lenton gave a year ago to
a group - or really, a movement - called Scientist Rebellion. It's got the
most ungainly title: "Positive tipping points to avoid climate tipping
points" (5). After recapping the various cascade scenarios of the current
climate emergency, he goes on to discuss reinforcing feedbacks that could
push global society out of the current business-as-usual trajectory.
Basically he's talking about cheap power from renewables and rising sales
of electric cars as the drivers for major transformations in the sectors of
battery storage, hydrogen fuel-cell production and "green fertiliser"
(nitrogen produced without the use of methane feedstocks). The video is
extraordinary because of the intense questions asked by the rebellious
young scientists, including how does he deal emotionally with his own
knowledge and whether it would be important to examine negative social
tipping cascades, like the effects of European colonization of the Americas.

I returned to the video last night, and finished watching it in parallel
with my partner Claire. At some point near the end Lenton begins talking
about coalitions between scientists, civil society, the financial sector
and the media - in short, a concerted intervention in global political
ecology, although he doesn't use the term. It was obvious that this was not
a traditional egghead paper but an activist blueprint for global system
change. According to Lenton it represents a possibly feasible pathway - a
"fifty-fifty chance" - for avoiding the above-mentioned existential risk to
the human species (and presumably, many many others).

As soon as she had finished the video, Claire began googling around and
found an article in the Guardian, only hours old, about a proposal that had
just been pitched to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. It's
an operationalized plan produced by the Systemiq consultancy in
collaboration with the Global Systems Institute directed by Lenton at the
University of Exeter, under the title "The Breakthrough Effect: How to
Trigger a Cascade of Tipping Effects to Accelerate the Net-Zero Transition"
(6). This is not about a revolution, and concerning the Scientist Rebellion
question about negative social tipping cascades, it's clear Lenton does not
want to go there. This is about a consensual transformation of the material
basis underpinning the current form of the corporate state, whose
representatives gather every year at this time, on top of a Swiss mountain.

Do you think it can be done? Will Davos Man finally answer the ecological
question? Will you sign on too? Can a nudge in time save nine degrees of
global warming?

Or maybe the initial prophecy holds...

cheers, Brian

***

1. Lenton, *Earth System Science: A Very Short Introduction*, Oxford
University Press, 2016.

2. Lenton et al., "Tipping elements in the Earth's climate system," PNAS
105(6), 

Re: Spamming the Data Space – CLIP, GPT and synthetic data

[Brian Holmes]

limits to AI can be recognised only by acknowledging the limits to
> intelligence itself. We must incorporate in our practices what
> consciousness, especially lantern consciousness, has to offer us. Without
> this check, intelligence can, and has, exponentially spin off into
> territories of violent distortion, even more so once the data space becomes
> contaminated with the products of AI to the degree where we can no longer
> differentiate the human.
>
> Lantern consciousness resists intelligence’s obsession with
> rationalisation and definition. Its reliance on embodied practice
> recognises that there is no stepping away from our primordial roots in a
> physical world in which we come together to share our stories, living by
> the spirit of Hannah Arendt’s statement, “Storytelling reveals meaning
> without committing the error of defining it.”
>
> Best,
> Prem
>
> On 25-Dec-2022, at 3:18 AM, Brian Holmes 
> wrote:
>
> 
> On Fri, Dec 23, 2022, Luke Munn wrote:
>
>> At the core of all this, I think, is the instinct that there's something
>> unique about 'human' cultural production. [snip...] Terms like 'meaning',
>> or 'intention', or 'autonomy' gesture to this desire, this hunch that
>> something will be lost, that some ground will be ceded with the move to AI
>> image models, large language models, and so on.
>>
>
> These are old (maybe antiquated?) problems that were central to
> Continental philosophy from Heiddeger to Gadamer, Levinas, Baudrillard and
> many others. Basically the questions are, Who am I and how do I guide my
> action amid a flood of normalizing or coercive cultural contents? How do I
> know and recognize the Other in his/her/their full otherness?
>
> As time goes by I have got more interested in Gadamer's focus on
> interpretation as the process whereby an individual or community sets their
> ethical/political course with respect to the expressions and actions of
> others. That will always be necessary in any society - exactly because
> there is no reliable benchmark, no fully original expression, no pre-given
> authentic self - so the process of interpretation becomes a creative and
> always provisional act. However, with statistically generated images you
> are in a sense alone in the room, there is no one to evaluate or answer to.
> Baudrillard has a great quote on this, which I used in my work on
> Guattari's Schizoanalytic Cartographies:
>
> "This is our destiny, subjected to opinion polls, information, publicity,
> statistics: constantly confronted with the anticipated statistical
> verification of our behavior, absorbed by this permanent refraction of our
> least movements, we are no longer confronted with our own will. We are no
> longer even alienated, because for that it is necessary for the subject to
> be divided in itself, confronted with the other, contradictory. Now, where
> there is no other, the scene of the other, like that of politics and of
> society, has disappeared. Each individual is forced despite himself into
> the undivided coherency of statistics. There is in this a positive
> absorption into the transparency of computers, which is something worse
> than alienation."
>
> Now, AI brings a new twist to all this: computers are no longer
> transparent, we don't exactly know how neural networks function. Like Harun
> Farocki in his explorations of machine vision, some people are now
> interpreting the expressions of the inscrutable AIs. There's a chance that
> humans will learn something fundamental about the potentials of their own
> intelligence through this process. However, it is equally or far more
> likely that entire populations will be massively confronted with
> statistical transforms of previous generations of statistically generated
> images, in the scenario that Francis outlines. What's more, it's
> exceedingly likely that the whole process of statistical image production
> will be carried on coercively by states and corporations, whose intentions
> will be masked by the statistical operations. The Baudrillardean worst-case
> is getting a lot closer to fulfillment.
>
> I would be glad to learn different perspectives on all this. It's why I
> joined this thread.
>
> All the best, Brian
>
>
>
>
>
>>>
>>> On Fri, Dec 23, 2022 at 8:54 AM Francis Hunger <
>>> francis.hun...@irmielin.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Dear Luke, dear All
>>>>
>>>> Interesting essay Francis, and always appreciate Brian's thoughtful
>>>> comments. I think the historical angle Brian is pointing towards is
>>>> important as a way to push against the claims of AI models as somehow
>>>> entirely new or revolutionary.
&g

Re: Spamming the Data Space – CLIP, GPT and synthetic data

[Brian Holmes]

On Fri, Dec 23, 2022, Luke Munn wrote:

> At the core of all this, I think, is the instinct that there's something
> unique about 'human' cultural production. [snip...] Terms like 'meaning',
> or 'intention', or 'autonomy' gesture to this desire, this hunch that
> something will be lost, that some ground will be ceded with the move to AI
> image models, large language models, and so on.
>

These are old (maybe antiquated?) problems that were central to Continental
philosophy from Heiddeger to Gadamer, Levinas, Baudrillard and many others.
Basically the questions are, Who am I and how do I guide my action amid a
flood of normalizing or coercive cultural contents? How do I know and
recognize the Other in his/her/their full otherness?

As time goes by I have got more interested in Gadamer's focus on
interpretation as the process whereby an individual or community sets their
ethical/political course with respect to the expressions and actions of
others. That will always be necessary in any society - exactly because
there is no reliable benchmark, no fully original expression, no pre-given
authentic self - so the process of interpretation becomes a creative and
always provisional act. However, with statistically generated images you
are in a sense alone in the room, there is no one to evaluate or answer to.
Baudrillard has a great quote on this, which I used in my work on
Guattari's Schizoanalytic Cartographies:

"This is our destiny, subjected to opinion polls, information, publicity,
statistics: constantly confronted with the anticipated statistical
verification of our behavior, absorbed by this permanent refraction of our
least movements, we are no longer confronted with our own will. We are no
longer even alienated, because for that it is necessary for the subject to
be divided in itself, confronted with the other, contradictory. Now, where
there is no other, the scene of the other, like that of politics and of
society, has disappeared. Each individual is forced despite himself into
the undivided coherency of statistics. There is in this a positive
absorption into the transparency of computers, which is something worse
than alienation."

Now, AI brings a new twist to all this: computers are no longer
transparent, we don't exactly know how neural networks function. Like Harun
Farocki in his explorations of machine vision, some people are now
interpreting the expressions of the inscrutable AIs. There's a chance that
humans will learn something fundamental about the potentials of their own
intelligence through this process. However, it is equally or far more
likely that entire populations will be massively confronted with
statistical transforms of previous generations of statistically generated
images, in the scenario that Francis outlines. What's more, it's
exceedingly likely that the whole process of statistical image production
will be carried on coercively by states and corporations, whose intentions
will be masked by the statistical operations. The Baudrillardean worst-case
is getting a lot closer to fulfillment.

I would be glad to learn different perspectives on all this. It's why I
joined this thread.

All the best, Brian





>>
>> On Fri, Dec 23, 2022 at 8:54 AM Francis Hunger <
>> francis.hun...@irmielin.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Luke, dear All
>>>
>>> Interesting essay Francis, and always appreciate Brian's thoughtful
>>> comments. I think the historical angle Brian is pointing towards is
>>> important as a way to push against the claims of AI models as somehow
>>> entirely new or revolutionary.
>>>
>>> In particular, I want to push back against this idea that this is the
>>> last 'pure' cultural snapshot available to AI models, that future
>>> harvesting will be 'tainted' by automated content.
>>>
>>> At no point did I allude to the 'pureness' of a cultural snapshot, as
>>> you suggest. Why should I? I was discussing this from a material
>>> perspective, where data for training diffusion models becomes the
>>> statistical material to inform these models. This data has never been
>>> 'pure'. I used the distinction of uncontaminated/contaminated to show the
>>> difference between a training process for machine learning which builds on
>>> an snapshot, that is still uncontaminated by the outputs of CLIP or GPT and
>>> one which includes generated text and images using this techique on a large
>>> scale.
>>>
>>> It is obvious, but maybe I should have made it more clear, that the
>>> training data in itself is already far from pure. Honestly I'm a bit
>>> shocked, you would suggest I'd come up with a nostalgic argument about
>>> purity.
>>>
>>> Francis' examples of hip hop and dnb culture, with sampling at their
>>> heart, already starts to point to the problems with this statement. Culture
>>> has always been a project of cutting and splicing, appropriating,
>>> transforming, and remaking existing material. It's funny that AI
>>> commentators like Gary Marcus talk about GPT-3 as the 'king of pastiche'.

Re: Spamming the Data Space – CLIP, GPT and synthetic data

[Brian Holmes]

[This was written yesterday, so it responds mostly to Luke and Felix.]

I agree that pastiche is a fundamental cultural process - but if it's so
fundamental, then to make any distinctions you have to look at its effects
in specific contexts. One such context, in the recent past, is
postmodernism. It's relevant in some ways, but I agree with Francis that
the present context is quite different.

Postmodern pastiche is the original twist that an individual gives to a
mass-distribution image. In the arts of the 1980s and 90s, the pastiche
aesthetic had the effect of disqualifying a whole range of avant-garde
practices, from neo-dadist transgression to modernist abstraction, all of
which consciously tried to mark off a space *outside* corporate-capitalist
aesthetic production. From one angle, the acceptance of a common commercial
culture was a good thing: it reduced the power of elite gatekeepers, since
the raw material of art was now ready-to-hand, without racial, financial
and educational barriers to access. But the quest for autonomy is another
fundamental cultural process, and in contemporary societies, autonomy from
highly manipulative aesthetic production is crucial. Otherwise, there's
nowhere to develop any divergent ethical/political orientation. As the
focus of commercial culture shifted online, these problems took on new
guises. Most of my own work as a cultural critic in the 2000s was devoted
to autonomy in the communication societies - and then came social media,
making the whole situation dramatically worse.

Today, Francis points to the floods of imagery that are already being
produced by AI/statistical computing, and he predicts second and third
generations of degraded images, synthesized from the initial ones. I was
struck by this word "degraded" in the initial text, and I think it
corresponds to something more than simple entropy on the level of data. The
absence of any individual or subcultural viewpoint at the origin of the
statistically generated images, and the coresponding lack of particular
affects, aspirations, insights or blindspots, renders yet another
fundamental cultural process obsolete - namely, interpretation. I question
whether the notion of pastiche makes any sense at all without
interpretation (preumably Luke has something to say about that). What's
certain is that the autonomy question is becoming urgent.

Autonomy is not about purity, nor self-sufficiency, nor withdrawal. It's
about the ability to establish the terms (particularly the overarching
value orientation) that will guide one's engagement with society. I agree
with Francis that being able to filter out statistically produced images
(and music, and discourse) is going to become a major issue under flood
conditions. And I'd go further. Whoever is not able to form or join an
interpretative community, very consciously dedicated to making meaning with
respect to art or other cultural practices, is going to experience a very
profound alienation during the next phase of the communication societies.



On Fri, Dec 23, 2022 at 8:54 AM Francis Hunger 
wrote:

> Dear Luke, dear All
>
> Interesting essay Francis, and always appreciate Brian's thoughtful
> comments. I think the historical angle Brian is pointing towards is
> important as a way to push against the claims of AI models as somehow
> entirely new or revolutionary.
>
> In particular, I want to push back against this idea that this is the last
> 'pure' cultural snapshot available to AI models, that future harvesting
> will be 'tainted' by automated content.
>
> At no point did I allude to the 'pureness' of a cultural snapshot, as you
> suggest. Why should I? I was discussing this from a material perspective,
> where data for training diffusion models becomes the statistical material
> to inform these models. This data has never been 'pure'. I used the
> distinction of uncontaminated/contaminated to show the difference between a
> training process for machine learning which builds on an snapshot, that is
> still uncontaminated by the outputs of CLIP or GPT and one which includes
> generated text and images using this techique on a large scale.
>
> It is obvious, but maybe I should have made it more clear, that the
> training data in itself is already far from pure. Honestly I'm a bit
> shocked, you would suggest I'd come up with a nostalgic argument about
> purity.
>
> Francis' examples of hip hop and dnb culture, with sampling at their
> heart, already starts to point to the problems with this statement. Culture
> has always been a project of cutting and splicing, appropriating,
> transforming, and remaking existing material. It's funny that AI
> commentators like Gary Marcus talk about GPT-3 as the 'king of pastiche'.
> Pastiche is what culture does. Indeed, we have whole genres (the romance
> novel, the murder mystery, etc) that are about reproducing certain elements
> in slightly different permutations, over and over again.
>
> Maybe it is no coincidence that I 

Re: Spamming the Data Space – CLIP, GPT and synthetic data

[Brian Holmes]

On Mon, Dec 19, 2022 at 3:55 AM Francis Hunger 
wrote:

> While some may argue that generated text and images will save time and
> money for businesses, a data ecological view immediately recognizes a major
> problem: AI feeds into AI. To rephrase it: statistical computing feeds into
> statistical computing. In using these models and publishing the results
> online we are beginning to create a loop of prompts and results, with the
> results being fed into the next iteration of the cultural snapshots. That’s
> why I call the early cultural snapshots still uncontaminated, and I expect
> the next iterations of cultural snapshots will be contaminated.
>

Francis, thanks for your work, it's always totally interesting.

Your argumentation is impeccable and one can easily see how positive
feedback loops will form around elements of AI-generated (or perhaps
"recombined") images. I agree, this will become untenable, though I'd be
interested in your ideas as to why. What kind of effects do you foresee,
both on the level of the images themselves and their reception?

It's worth considering that similar loops have been in place for decades,
in the area of market research, product design and advertising. Now, all of
neoclassical economics is based on the concept of "consumer preferences,"
and discovering what consumers prefer is the official justification for
market research; but it's clear that advertising has attempted, and in many
cases succeeded, in shaping those preferences over generations. The
preferences that people express today are, at least in part, artifacts of
past advertising campaigns. Product design in the present reflects the
influence of earlier products and associated advertising.

One of the primary fields of production in the overdeveloped societies is
the field or product range of culture itself, such as movies and TV shows.
In the case of TV, feedback loops have been employed systematically since
the early 1950s, with the introduction of Nielsen's audiometer, a device
that was directly attached to thousands of TVs. Today, TV shows and
especially movies are not only used to define the cultural context of
successive "generations'' (Gen X, etc). Marketers also use them as
surrogates for the memories and affects of those generations. Of course
these proxy memories cannot cover the full range of generational
experience, but they have the immense advantage, for advertisers, of being
fully knowable and therefore, calculable in their effects. The calculations
may be more or less bullshit, but they are still employed and acted upon.

Blade Runner vividly demonstrated this cultural condition in the early
1980s, through the figure of the replicants with their implanted memories.
The intensely targeted production of postmodern culture ensued, and has
been carried on since then with the increasingly granular market research
of surveillance capitalism, where the calculation of statistically probable
behavior becomes a good deal more precise. The effect across the neoliberal
period has been, not increasing standardization or authoritarian control,
but instead, the rationalized proliferation of customizable products, whose
patterns of use and modification, however divergent or "deviant" they may
be, are then fed back into the design process. Not only the "quality of the
image" seems to degrade in this process. Instead, culture in general seems
to degrade, even though it also becomes more inclusive and more diverse at
the same time.

AI is poised to do a lot of things - but one of them is to further
accelerate the continual remaking of generational preferences for the needs
of capitalist marketing. Do you think that's right, Francis? What other
consequences do you see? And above all, what to do in the face of a
seemingly inevitable trend?

best, Brian
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Re: Moving Nettime to the Fediverse

[Brian Holmes]

I must say I totally agree with the reflections of Paul and others on the
value of a mailing list. Paul, you'd be interested to know that nettime was
originally a "text-filtering list" [ie, long texts] devoted to the
"immanent critique of the networks." The latter has sometimes been carried
out extremely well (a standout in memory, years ago, was the collectively
generated critique of bitcoin for adopting the neoliberal / Hayekian theory
of money).

Maybe you can do that on Mastodon. It's always worth trying. So I like the
idea of maintaining the list while trying something new. I gather that the
mods have been tired of floating this thing for so long - I guess after
some 25 years at it for Ted and Felix, the thrill of maintaining an
extraordinary forum wears off. We should figure out a way to relieve them
of this task. Being mindful that the list has lasted so long because of
judicious, but increasingly light, moderation.

Best to all, Brian

On Tue, Dec 6, 2022, 02:03 paul  wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> This is my first time responding on nettime-l, after lurking for a
> while (not that long, comparatively - i only discovered this
> amazing list about a year or two ago).  I always look forward to
> reading the well-considered messages, and often humbling levels of
> knowledge of literature, history, etc. that are shared here.
>
> Others have already made all the points i can think of, more
> eloquently so, but i think there's value in adding one's voice, if
> nothing else.  I would be sad to see my favourite mailing list
> scuppered.  Decent, active mailing lists seem very few and far
> between indeed, while email is basically my favourite medium for
> online exchange (i admit my bias - i won't repeat the arguments
> others have made in favour of email).
>
> To try and address some of the many valid questions i've seen:
>
> Ted, you mention nettime stagnating.  I ask this in a naive way,
> as a newcomer to the list (so forgive me if i should know), but
> what is the aim of nettime, exactly?  It seems plausible to me
> that it might be achieving its aim (for argument's sake, "be a
> forum for critical media discussion") quite well even while
> stagnating as a medium.  I ask because i'm quite suspicious of
> arguments that boil down to change being needed for its own sake.
> This reminds me of the ethos of contemporary tech companies that
> seem to change (often for the worse) user interfaces, products,
> entire product lines, etc. while optimising for their bottom line,
> rather than the user's utility.
>
> I want to be explicit that i am definitely not accusing you or the
> other mods of somehow doing something for your own benefit, and i
> certainly don't feel entitled to this amazing service which is
> likely volunteer run at considerable personal cost - i, much like
> many others i'm sure, deeply appreciate this forum.  I just want
> to emphasise that as i see it, being a bastion of stability and
> backwards-compatibility (and consume-as-you-wish) can be quite a
> radical act in the contemporary online ecosphere.  (just random
> thoughts: can nettime be radical both initially, before such
> online communities were popular, and now, when they often take
> place on Web 2.0-type walled garden platforms, but for different
> reasons, while doing the same thing?)
>
> Also, to Jon Lebkowsky's point, i often hear arguments similar in
> shape to "my email inbox is a mess, i can't keep up, let's use
> ".  As someone who curates their email inflow quite
> carefully, i respectfully want to ask whether switching to some
> other platform would really help with that issue?  I have no
> difficulty imagining being in e.g. a number of Discord servers and
> not keeping up with the influx of messages and profusion of
> threads, either.
>
> I have rambled enough.  I, too, would be happy to volunteer
> financial support or perhaps my efforts if that's useful, for
> maintaining the Mailman infrastructure.  I think nettime-l is a
> rare treasure on the modern internet, and while of course others
> might find value in having their discussions on, say, Mastodon,
> would it make sense for those who want to, join some other
> instance, and not require the nettime moderators to divide their
> efforts running two sets of infrastructure?  There are many
> Mastodon instances, but very few nettime-l's.
>
> All the best, and my sincere and unreserved thanks to those who
> initiated, and now maintain nettime.  Even if you decided to turn
> nettime-l off tomorrow, i would still have learned and had my
> intellectual life enriched.
>
> p.
>
> On 2022-11-30 at 13:30 -05, quoth Ted Byfield
> :
> > Geoff —
> >
> > Thanks for this. I agree with the outlines of what you say, and
> > with most of the detail too. Felix and Doma have their own
> > perspectives, so this is just me.
> >
> > I'm not sure what you mean about a recurring argument, but
> > that's not to suggest you're mistaken. As a mod, I probably see
> > nettime through a more technical 

Re: Extinction Internet

[Brian Holmes]

"Let’s stop building Web3 solutions for problems that do not exist and
launch tools that decolonize, redistribute value, conspire and organize."

The emergent internet of the 80s and 90s with all its open potentials was
the radical machine that made transnational culture-sharing possible. Its
colonization by globalizing capital was launched with social media,
generalized by platform labor and completed by blockchain experiments gone
tragically wrong. We live today under the accumulated wreckage of this
project, and rather than wandering contemplatively from ruin to ruin
(that's called critique) it's time to make new things, and to grasp the
ancient where it is now emergent (that's called invention). Of course there
will not be the same rush to engage with tools promised to immense
corporate development, with all its accompanying perks and subsidies.
Instead there will be an entirely different rush to engage, driven by
uncanny combinations of hope, solidarity, outrage and fear of climate
change. I just love this phrase: "decolonize, redistribute value, conspire
and organize." Not virtualization, but actualization seems to be the
keyword of the future.

On Thu, Nov 24, 2022 at 10:41 AM Geert Lovink  wrote:

> *Extinction Internet i*s not merely an end-of-the-world phantasy of
> digital technology that one day will be wiped out by an electromagnetic
> pulse or the cutting of cables. Rather, Extinction Internet marks the end
> of an era of possibilities and speculations, when adaptation is no longer
> an option. During the internet’s Lost Decade, we’ve been rearranging the
> deck chairs on the Titanic under the inspirational guidance of the
> consultancy class. What’s to be done to uphold the inevitable? We need
> tools that decolonize, redistribute value, conspire and organize. Join the
> platform exodus. It’s time for a strike on optimization. There is beauty in
> the breakdown.
>
> *Extinction Internet* is Geert Lovink’s inaugural lecture, held on
> November 18, 2022 as Professor of Art and Network Cultures, within Modern
> and Contemporary Art History,  Faculty of Humanities, University of
> Amsterdam.
>
> —
>
> Preface by Geert Lovink
>
> My gratitude goes to prof. Mia Lerm Hayes to make it all possible, and to
> Frank Kresin, Dean of the Faculty Digital Media and Creative Industries, to
> facilitate the sponsorship of this chair by the Amsterdam University of
> Applied Sciences.
>
> A few words about the background of the lecture topic. The Russian
> invasion in Ukraine and the mounting climate crisis urged me to not merely
> look back at the thirty-plus years of media theory, new media art and
> activism. The internet criticism that I have tried to define and practice
> needs to constantly be challenged and questioned in order to remain
> relevant. Together with my dear friend Ned Rossiter, with whom I
> collaborate ever since we met in Melbourne, back in 2001, I decided to go
> beyond my work of the past five years on the mental states of internet
> users, as recorded in my books *Sad by Design* and *Stuck on the Platform*,
> now confronting myself with *Extinction Internet*.
>
> I am building here on the work of Bernard Stiegler and Franco Berardi on
> climate collapse and finitude in platform capitalism. I also benefitted
> from the dialogues with Athina Karatzogianni at Leicester University, who
> is doing research into the strategy debates of Extinction Rebellion, as
> well as Georgiana Cojocaru, a research fellow at the Institute of Network
> Cultures. This led to a short essay, entitled Extinction Bauhaus
> , on
> art and design education in the age of climate collapse. The following
> speech directly builds on these exchanges. Besides the readers of the text,
> mentioned in the pdf, I would like to thank INC team members Chloë
> Arkenbout, Laurence Scherz and Tommaso Campagna for their editorial and
> production to put out the text and in particular, as always, Mieke
> Gerritzen for the design.
>
> Published by the Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam 2022
>
> Download the .pdf here:
> https://networkcultures.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/ExtinctionInternetINC2022Miscellanea.pdf
>
> #  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
> #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
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Re: Technopolitics of the future

[Brian Holmes]

ble to
ask questions and demand reorientations - that is, actually engage in the
political process. Otherwise the primary motivating force for system change
will remain war, as it was for the emergence of Keynesian Fordism, and
again for Neoliberalism (which only consolidated internationally in the
wake of the Gulf War). Indeed, in the history of capitalist democracy so
far, major changes still seem to pivot on war.

It's clear to me that the only viable option is to turn climate threats
into a motivating force outside of war. Right now the major powers - US, EU
and China - are engaged in a kind of mixed condition, between war
capitalism and response to climate change. I'm not sure whether a Ukrainian
victory will damp down or ramp up the war component. But I do think, even
today, that war is far from the single determinant of what's going on, even
in the technocratic EU. It is, however, the best existing way to place
complex processes of change under the tight control of political authority:
a situation that could easily become disastrous.

The Technopolitics group in Vienna developed a timeline of change in the
information society that was able to spark a lot of discussions (
https://www.technopolitics.info/). I wasn't around for any of those and I
wonder whether anything like the Timeline project is continuing today. From
a distance what it seemed to leave out was exactly the role of major
crises, and the interventions that somehow temporarily resolve those crises
- but maybe that came out very strongly in the discussions, I don't know. A
visualization can produce a purely contemplative sense of understanding and
intellectual mastery, but it can also help an individual, a group or a
social movement to situate their own small actions at strategic places
within a wider tableau. I'm curious if anyone has encountered convincing
and actionable visualizations of the present crisis.

best, Brian



On Mon, Nov 7, 2022 at 1:02 PM Felix Stalder  wrote:

>
>
> On 27.10.22 20:50, Brian Holmes wrote:
> > Indeed. The point is now to think those politics, and make their
> > possibilities recognizable.
>
> I think it's pretty obvious that we are living in a period that is
> characterized by what one could call, with a nod to Durkheim, "total
> social crises". Meaning, they are not longer restricted to a single
> sphere -- so neatly separated in the modern liberal thinking -- but play
> out across the full-range of social domains. Thus any analysis needs to
> able to understand their interplay.
>
> But what are these domains?  David Harvey's recent talk on "Marx’s
> Historical Materialism"
>
>
> http://davidharvey.org/2022/01/new-podcast-david-harveys-anti-capitalist-chronicles
>
> summarizes that very clearly, differentiating among seven sets of
> relations (though there is more than one way to slice the pie):
>
> - technology
> - nature
> - relations of (re)production (waged and unwaged labor)
> - mental conceptions
> - relations of everyday life
> - political (class) relations
> - and systems of governance.
>
> All these sets have what Marx calls a "metabolic relation" to each
> other, meaning they are dependent on one another and their concrete form
> can only be understood to through their interdependence. One cannot
> understand the shape and dynamics of the state without its relation to
> capital and vice-versa, or, increasingly, without eco-system pressures.
>
> While these domains are related, they also follow their own dynamics,
> but in that movement, they transform the others as well, or are held
> back by them. Geo-egineering, for example, is a technological response
> to eco-system pressures in order to preserve relations of productions
> and class relations. Black Lives Matter aims to transform mental
> conceptions in order to dismantal racist/colonialist systems of governance.
>
> Take, for example, the pandemic. It's zoonotic origin indicates a deep
> problem with our relations to nature. In response, massive technological
> development (mRNA vaccines, deepening of digitization etc) was
> coordinated by the government. At the same time, changes in everyday
> life (lockdown, masking, 'distancing', etc) were introduced, and mental
> conceptions started to shift. Of course, a massive economic crisis could
> only be averted by government intervention and the boundaries between
> productive and reproductive labor shifted.
>
> While you could say the feedback loop built into the "metabolic
> relations to nature" triggered the pandemic, it's actual dynamics can
> only be understood by taking into account the dynamic relations between
> the different domains. The relation between the state and capital was
> evident both in the state's willingness to finance the vaccines, and in
> it's commitment 

Re: Technopolitics of the future

[Brian Holmes]

On Mon, Oct 24, 2022 at 4:03 AM Felix Stalder  wrote:

>
> there is now a collective awareness of the reality of the Anthropocene.
> And this is a massive shift on collective awareness over a very short
> period. It makes a wide-range of previously unthinkable  politics possible.
>
>
Indeed. The point is now to think those politics, and make their
possibilities recognizable.

Here's the key: Economic turmoil amidst global political and military
crisis sets the stage for a reorganization of technological society. The
political and military crisis results from structural inequalities
accumulated over the last forty years. The economic upheaval was brought on
by the pandemic, then intensified by the Ukraine war. The reorganization of
society has begun, and various bids for its fulfillment are on the table.
But recognizing the current state of affairs is crucial, because there's no
certainty which bid will triumph, or by which dramatic reversals a few of
the early, shot-in-the-dark ideas will unfold into daylight. In particular
there is no certainty that the world will avoid an all-out conflict, or
that individual national societies will avoid fascist regression.

Most people on this list saw something vaguely similar happen before, in
the 1990s when the Internet emerged onto the stock markets and a rapid
reorganization of global social relations began. However that period was
relatively benign, even utopian. This one is violent and definitive. It's
destroying the current order. Before its economic capacities have been
spent, the network paradigm of the Nineties is running into every one of
the contradictions that its market valuation suppressed for decades. So
forget your mantras of disruption. Politics has taken over from Silicon
Valley, to become the major driver of change in the twenty-first century.

The global economic context is one of strong but threatened growth under
new rules. French economist Cederic Durand is right to trace the new
rulesets back back to the massive central-bank recapitalization of private
financial institutions after 2008 (1). These unprecedented injections of
freshly created money gave the state a degree of control over the economy
that had not been available since the 1960s. To be sure, the newfound power
remained sterile until 2021, because all the capital created by the central
banks was delivered only to the financial sector. The pandemic bailouts
broke that pattern. They raised the possibility that state-funded
investment in particular industries could be used to reconfigure the
international balance of power, jump-start the energy transition, and
experiment with direct support for struggling families, classes, economic
sectors and regions. Having taken over neoliberal finance and placed it on
life-support in the post-2008 period, governments now made bold to direct
particular sectors of the economy. In this way the pandemic bailouts
betrayed the return of economic management, with even greater tasks
awaiting once the virus was under control.

The return of the state is difficult for people to see, so accustomed are
we to the reality and ideology of a neoliberal world largely directed by
corporate CEOs and even individual financiers. What's more, over the past
century the social classes traditionally represented by the left -
industrial workers, public servants and racial minorities - have been
deeply transformed by education and social mobility, constituting a new
urban cognitariat that has reaped the benefits of the net economy, as well
as a precariat that has gained broad cultural freedoms and even some wage
concessions. This has set up the conditions for a lot of confusion on the
left. For example, contemporary anarchy has always shared something
fundamental with neoliberalism: namely, the denial of large-scale
collective agency through formal organization. Collective agency is
massively denied at the exact moment when clearly identifiable actors are
in the process of deploying it. This is really a frogs-in-the-boiling-pot
scenario, and there is some doubt as to whether people will even realize
what's happening before they're already cooked. Intellectuals should get
their act together and analyze the present situation, before it's over and
a new order sets in.

Here I'll list the larger bids to reshape world order, basically in order
of appearance since 2008:

-- The Chinese Belt-and-Road infrastructure program, which is a bid to
escape capital overaccumulation, stagnation and popular revolt through a
material expansion of the productive network.
-- Russia's Crimea invasion and current Ukraine war: an attempt to create a
Eurasian political-economic sphere based on a Moscow-Beijing alliance, with
a corresponding reduction of Western monetary, military and commercial
power.
-- Orban's consolidation of power in Hungary since 2010: a classically
fascist attempt to use religion and nationalism as justifications for
interest-group profiteering, with a larger strategic aim of 

Re: Technopolitics of the future

[Brian Holmes]

Dear Frederic, I admire the wager on utopia, it's resonant for me. What's
more, the George Floyd uprising finally made me understand how many people
want to go through a social breakdown, to emerge on the other side,
somewhere else. For them, the bad accident is good.

It's not my desire because I actually feel part of what would thus be
destroyed. I see immense possibilities for change. What is, could be
different. Maybe it already is and we didn't notice. Maybe it could be
immensely worse and we'll notice that immediately. Pragmatics interests me
more for this reason, along with perception/expression. Find out what's
happening, as concretely as possible, and talk about it. I am touched by
your letter because my wager is also Pascalian, I am swept away by it.

I'm probably a bit schizophrenic though, because I'm acutely aware of the
line that you're taking, and increasingly, of Black history and colonial
critique. I have been carrying out a project in Louisiana that involves
Angola prison, the plantation system, Cancer Alley. Those things are strong
medicine, they sap your belief in anything called "justice." And you may
have noted that in my previous text I do not describe anything called
"justice." What I ultimately look for, in Louisiana and elsewhere, are the
facts of a disaster and the transcendence of a cosmology.

I'd say all pragmatics is guided by cosmology, in the Latin American sense
of 'cosmovision'. Each one renders something different. In my schizophrenic
case - which is probably not that unusual - the godhead is embodied by
biogeochemical cycles whose effects I can see everywhere, and the
concept/practice of solidarity is made more profound by the understanding
of symbiosis. All that is material, metabolic, and I'm afraid, linked to
lots of future suffering. The suffering is bound up with specific things,
machines, organizational routines, symbolic systems... The end result for
me is to wonder, pragmatically, how the entire world could be totally
different. And to act on that when I can.

best, Brian


On Thu, Oct 20, 2022 at 8:16 PM Frédéric Neyrat  wrote:

> Dear Brian,
>
> It's always a gift to read your analysis, your posts, they really feed my
> attempts to understand what's going on.
>
> Just a thought: what happens when we reverse the order of things in your
> analysis: instead of a) the technopolitical paradigmatic shift (what
> appears as a sort of historical necessity) b) "IF in fact it does emerge,
> IF we don't just sink into entropic conflict and collapse" (the bad
> accident), we have: a) entropic conflict and collapse (the necessity) and
> b) a possible (i.e. almost impossible really, contingent) technopolitical
> paradigmatic shift.
> My goal is not to be overly pessimistic, but if war and the ecological
> situation - as you argue, right? - drive where we are at, then the
> understanding of the global situation is that nations/classes don't care
> that much about technological shifts, nowadays they care about local
> survival (their survival), and it generates survivalist nationalism,
> eco-fascism (ecological measures driven by authoritarianism), the rise of
> the far right (Sweden, Italy, France, the USA, Russia, India, etc. etc.
> etc.), war of predation, and so on.
> If it’s true, it’s time - at last - to be, really, and without any
> restriction, utopian, i.e. it's time to insert in reality what could
> de-program it. Without the wind of utopia, the world will go down, without
> geo-engineering or because of it.
>
> Codicil: it does not mean that technology should be neglected, refused,
> but one thing for me is sure: without a radical re-orientation of
> technology (not only the production of a new tool, i.e., as Virilio
> explained pretty well, a new accident), there will be no shift, but the
> continuing of disaster with the same means, even in a new form.
>
> Addendum: and if we think it’s too late to be utopian and to invent a new
> praxis, then it means that everything is lost. However, “Il faut parier;
> cela n’est point volontaire; vous êtes embarqués"(Pascal)!
>
> Frédéric
> __
> 
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 20, 2022 at 4:19 PM Brian Holmes 
> wrote:
>
>> For years on nettime, the much-regretted Armin Medosch, myself, Felix
>> Stalder and a number of others developed a theory of technopolitical
>> paradigm shifts: a grand narrative to explain social change in industrial
>> societies. Well, even if you don't like grand narratives, you may have
>> noticed that a tremendous shift is indeed now taking place, real time,
>> global scale, involving every level of entrepreneurial and governmental
>> organization and every aspect of social reproduction. It's sudden, it's
>> violent and it obviously has consequences.

Technopolitics of the future

[Brian Holmes]

For years on nettime, the much-regretted Armin Medosch, myself, Felix
Stalder and a number of others developed a theory of technopolitical
paradigm shifts: a grand narrative to explain social change in industrial
societies. Well, even if you don't like grand narratives, you may have
noticed that a tremendous shift is indeed now taking place, real time,
global scale, involving every level of entrepreneurial and governmental
organization and every aspect of social reproduction. It's sudden, it's
violent and it obviously has consequences. Shall we talk about it?

I recall speculation on the list about whether a new technopolitical
paradigm would ever take form. Would there be economic growth again? Would
innovation return? Could global capitalism really develop new forms of
self-regulation? Or is it stalked by entropy and decline? I think the
discussion suffered from too much emphasis on computers and finance as the
drivers of change - leading to the conclusion that, if Silicon Valley has
already done its thing, if Meta is no more than The Matrix Reloaded, then
history must be over. But it turns out that the decisive factors in
technopolitical paradigm shifts are neither economic, nor even
technological. The decisive factors are instead political, in the broad
sense of politics that runs from individual agency, through collectivities
of all kinds, into national and international relations. Political conflict
is what brings societies into crisis. When the overarching
cultural/economic/military order - what the international relations
theorists call world order - is shaken by an integral crisis, then, and
only then, can a paradigmatic figure of capitalism begin to transform at
all levels, including institutions and ideologies as well as money,
machines and relations of production.

Does anyone else think a major crisis - what Gramsci would call an "organic
crisis" - has taken hold since the outset of the pandemic? Leftists have
often cried wolf over financial crises, but with climate change, plague,
ideological upheaval, industrial restructuring and war, what we are living
through today looks a lot like the turning-point crises of the 19th and
20th centuries. Turning points entail both institutional breakdown and
renewal. On the breakdown side, take for example the abandonment of two
former pillars of neoliberal international relations, namely the German
"Wandel durch Handel" policy of cheap resource extraction from Russia, and
the American just-in-time strategy of outsourced production from China.
Both these began as opportunistic statecraft during the major crisis of the
early Seventies, and both subsequently became foundational components of
the neoliberal world order. It took the attack on Ukraine to expose
Europe's gas hypocrisy, while in the US, it took Trumpian populism to state
the bitterly obvious: The outsourcing of labor is a social crime, just like
the endless oil wars. Of course US progressives think the same, and have
better policies to address it, but it's a real shame that mainstream
Democrats stifled progressive populism, so we got the anti-imperial message
from the right instead. Doesn't matter. The question now is what to do. How
to diagnose and respond to the crisis?

This is the renewal side: Social democrats in both the EU and the US are
attempting to use the upheaval for transformative ends. Europe is being
forced into an energy transition at top speed, and the "Repower EU" project
builds on the national Recovery and Resilience plans developed during the
pandemic. All those plans drew the consequences of the Anthropocene: they
aimed to use deficit funding to rebuild employment by investing in
alternative energies. It just took a war in Europe to make them real. Even
more surprisingly in the US, the same kind of stalled recovery program is
suddenly moving ahead fast, with carefully targeted research, industrial
stimulus and federal infrastructure investments. Even though its dollar
figures were reduced, the Inflation Reduction Act (aka Build Back Better)
is a genuine plan for technological system change. It's interesting that to
dramatize the need for this planning in the eyes of the population, the US
has had to elevate the threat of war with China (which itself is a bit of a
stand-in for the threat of civil war at home). So again, the drivers are
war and climate change. The fact is that the US has long experience with
this kind of system reset, from the age of the great corporate mergers in
the late 1890s, to the consolidation of the corporate state during WWII,
and then again, the development of microelectronics and the transition to
financially driven globalization in the Reagan era. A decade after that,
Clinton, Blair and Schroeder finished the regulation of the last big reset,
with terrible consequences for social democracy, because in reality, the
current problems are of their creation. Since the Ukraine war broke out, it
has finally become clear to the "extreme center" (Tariq 

Re: Dodomenta, A Kassel diary

[Brian Holmes]

Jo van der Spek wrote a great text about Documenta 15:

"This institute, Documenta along with its directors, boards, scientists,
and sponsors has demonstrated no more than their impotence of transcending
their own identity complex, missing the chance to decolonize itself.
Germany is still its history. Memory is still guilt. Kassel is still
Auschwitz."

I think a large sector of the German public is being taken for a ride back
to the worst of Cold War cultural repression, courtesy of its most
conservative elements who have always used their support for Israel as a
way to cover their own participation in the post-WWII imperial order. By
systematically conflating resistance to the state of Israel with
anti-Semitism, they turn politics into a hate crime - and then they send in
the police, in the thin disguise of a "scientific committee." I met people
who sincerely believed in this procedure, residents of Kassel who refused
to go to the exhibition. So doing, they blind themselves in a shroud of
legitimacy. In the name of redress for past wrongs they refuse to see that
their own society is founded on domination, that it's unbearable, that the
revolution against it has already happened and the world has already left
empire behind. The same repressive strategy has obviously been applied in
the United States and many other countries over the past seventy years, but
without the systematic conflation of the Israeli state and the Jewish
religion that is now becoming the hallmark of the German culture war
against the present: against immigration, against the breakdown of European
privilege, against the unfolding tragedy of global inequality and climate
change.

The amazing thing, in this context, is that the exhibition happened, in
Kassel and nowhere else. What could be seen at Documenta 15 was also the
best of German openness, experimentalism, self-critique and willingness to
change. Nobody should ever forget how much value that has, how much insight
and courage it took to create that unique art show. German citizens should
become aware of their strengths, resist this paralyzing politics and put
all the best parts of their society to use, in the attempt to decarbonize,
demilitarize and end the current war that the developed world is supporting
and paying for with fossil fuel consumption. It's worthless to build walls.
People will always scale them. The thing is to come together and cooperate
in the face of a very difficult future.

Jo goes on:

"To me, in essence, the lumbung way has resulted in an attempt to introduce
the mostly white western visitors  to other value systems, other forms of
social life  and other ways of expression.  It offered visitors a chance to
be seduced,  convinced and  embraced by  this gathering of communities and
collectives."

What I could see, everywhere in D15, were cultures of resistance. Acts of
art-making linked to ways of surviving together under extremely difficult
circumstances. This was evident throughout the show, in work like that of
the Kurdish video collective who filmed traditional songs, so beautiful
they pierce you like mountain wind. An exhibition with no big galleries and
no art stars allowed you to sense both the predicament and the joy of
people you never met or never even dreamed of. The Roma MoMA was the most
vibrant expression of identity I've ever seen. Mafolofolo, by the South
African group MADEYOULOOK, was a haunting history of a forgotten place told
in topography and music. The Ghetto Biennial staged by Atis Rezistans
opened a doorway into a Haitian experience that's otherwise unimaginable.
The Sada school's [regroup] video on the pathways taken by its fleeing
participants, from Baghdad in 2011-15 to points around the world today, was
a chance to count the everyday human costs of imperial warfare, and to
understand how people rise above and beyond such circumstances, which may
well be coming for all of us. Obviously, big exhibitions are always a kind
of kaleidoscope. But this one revealed planet earth, rather than little
bits of colored glass.

And there's one more thing. All the work felt familiar. Every piece felt
like it was part of the discussions and the struggles that I encounter
every day in the United States. From Standing Rock to the George Floyd
uprising, this kind of art is our contemporary experience. As the country
divides into a clear fascist attack and a confused liberal reaction, we
white western folks on the left take a stand with the most oppressed
people, because it's the human thing to do and it's the only way to save
society for all of its members. In Kassel I found myself wishing we could
have such a perfect art show for our own time in the United States. Well,
there's no chance of that, we do not have the culture and courage and
insight at the state level to do such a thing. But when I got home from my
last trip there was an alternative show in Chicago, the MDW art fair. What
did they do? One cultural center called Co-Prosperity invited six 

Re: Biocultural Corridors

[Brian Holmes]

Jean-Noel, as I have said I am not advocating for the upcoming changes that
I listed. I am well aware of the irrationality of the agenda. We could've
started redesigning the rural-urban relation twenty years ago and we would
have been living much better lives right now, with CO2 levels already under
control. We could also start doing this redesign today. I advocate for
immediately practicable changes in the way food is grown, transportation is
used, and industrial production is carried out, as well as changes in the
consumption norms and cultural orientations underlying all that. Such
changes are necessary and possible, as people come to realize the wrong
turn taken by our civilization. The degrowth path can be carried out in
parallel to the pseudo-green state capitalist one, and from the presently
marginal political-cultural space that the degrowth perspective occupies,
it can hopefully develop into a shared cosmovision.

However, society is a tough master. You do not just get what you want, and
you can waste time dreaming about it.

What I have listed in the previous post is about to happen, if we are lucky
- because otherwise, fossil-fuel consumption will simply grow in an
anarchic and increasingly bellicose world, as it has grown over the last
decade. It is better to be conscious of the major trends and try to guide
them, stopping the worst. Certain large infrastructures can definitely be
stopped by protests and legislation - like the big, German-funded hydrodams
for hydrogen fuel-cell production that a Chilean friend was describing to
me. Those are imperialist schemes that are extremely destructive of
biodiversity. And they are just one example.

Imperialism - exemplified by the oil industry but not limited to it -
enables all the worst aspects of capitalist civilization. In the US where I
live, the most important struggle is against the oil industry and the
corporate/military culture it supports. However, only a small part of this
struggle is carried on by people like myself who go out to protest the
installation of new pipelines (which is not to say that shouldn't be
done!). The decisive struggle is between the imperialist fossil-fuel bloc,
and the green-capitalist energy transition bloc (Texas vs California, in
the US). This is a battle over the future shape of state power, over the
degree of socialism which can be attained, and therefore, over the future
capacity of civil society to reshape itself politically and culturally. It
is urgent to engage with that battle, rather than being simply and
bootlessly anti-statist and anti-capitalist.

Nuclear power is a lot better as a baseline energy source than either coal
or natural gas, and baseload power is necessary for using renewables as
things stand today. Plus in many countries, the nuclear fleet is already
built and just needs to be maintained. Sure I am aware of the problems. I
protested against nuclear power all my life, especially in the Eighties.
But that was a mistake, because instead of developing thorium reactors
which was the next step, industrial societies continued to burn coal.
Meanwhile, environmentalists recycled their paper cups. By withdrawing from
the modernization process, the left became irrelevant and we ended up with
neoliberalism and the current crisis.

Geoengineering is terrifying. But as soon as there is a climate disaster at
urban scale, it will be attempted. Those who know nothing about it, won't
know how to monitor its development, criticize it, and press for better
outcomes. Now is the time to study geoengineering, before it is used, in
view of making its use better.

OK, that's enough political realism for this thread. I'm totally curious to
hear other outlooks. Thanks to JNM and everyone.

On Thu, Sep 1, 2022 at 7:49 AM Jean-Noël Montagné  wrote:

>
>
> Le 31/08/2022 à 20:22, Brian Holmes a écrit :
>
> Dear Brian,
>
> This is a very important debate. Geoengineering is polluting the
> political debate about the responsability of capitalism in the climate
> change.
>
>
> > CO2 levels are already so high (far higher than those of the End
> > Permian mass-extinction event, for example) that degrowth, while
> > ultimately necessary, can do nothing in the short run.
>
>
> The COvid-19 has proven that CO2 emission levels were falling during the
> first containments. It was a very short term ungrowth, only few month,
> but it was successful to stop over-cunsumption.
>
>
> >
> > The energy transition is underway and there is a big bet on nuclear
> > energy in addition to renewables.
>
>
> The bet on nuclear energy is irrational. I am aware of the market
> through https://www.world-nuclear.org/  but some facts totally escape to
> investors: climate, nuclear fuel ressources, metal ressources,
> geo-strategic-politic stability for such special industry, and finance:
>
> Climate
>
> -Uranium-way plants use a

Re: Biocultural Corridors

[Brian Holmes]

Ryan wrote:

"Again, not surrendering the state, just preparing for always/already
aspects of the state that are not about our collective survival."

I totally agree with this. Realism does entail abdication!

One thing that was pretty obvious on this journey through Cuenca del Plata,
if you want the local wetland to survive tomorrow, you better go out there
and defend it today...



On Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 19:23 Ryan Griffis  wrote:

> Hey Brian and all,
>
> > The urgent issue is therefore not degrowth but energy transition and
> > geoengineering. Despite that I would rather not live in an authoritarian
> > eco-state, I am convinced that both the forced transition away from coal
> > and petroleum, and the implementation of global-scale geoengineering,
> will
> > be tried within the next two decades.
> ...
> >
> > The project which launched this thread - biocultural corridors - may
> appear
> > to be a simple conservationist program, totally inadequate to what's
> > coming. Well, that's largely true. However, I am approaching it as a
> chance
> > to analyze an extremely complex and threatening situation (that's the
> > critical part), while building a collective ethical and spiritual posture
> > toward that situation (that's the biocultural part). I expect that
> project,
> > and everything else I am involved in, to change rapidly over the course
> of
> > this decade. It's daunting.
>
> Thanks for all of these exchanges, in all their various directions. I’ve
> been following, as I’m sure lots of other folks have.
>
> I’m not sure this is an either/or proposition, but a yes/and one. While I
> feel even weighing in here is an act of undue hubris on my part, maybe we
> can consider “degrowth” not as an alternative to the state-scaled projects
> Brian is describing, but a necessary *response* to them?
>
> As Brian very rightly points out, none of us here can make decisions that
> opt us out of the consequences of state-level actor actions. We’re not
> gonna vote our way out of catastrophic climate chaos (it’s obviously
> already here), where in the US our electoral choices seem to be between
> neoliberal-technocratic governance or white nationalist fascism. And, it’s
> a toss up which way we’ll go! But, we can have some determination of how we
> organize ourselves in ways that leave us more/less prepared for the
> combination of organized abandonment and violent, assertive control by the
> state.
>
> In this sense, “degrowth” can be approached as a form of “prepping” that
> is collectivist, rather than heroic/individualist. In NGO lingo, this seems
> to be called “resilience.”
> Anyone remember these discussions?:
> https://www.resilience.org/team/
>
> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jun/15/transition-towns-way-forward
>
> Maybe one reason I’m arguing (am I?) that “degrowth” is a worthwhile
> term/strategy, is it encourages us to think outside of the de-humanizing
> scales of the state. For example, here’s Mariame Kaba, a beloved prison
> abolitionist organizer:
>
> "We need to skill up on de-escalation, mediation, and resolving conflicts.
> We need to be able to do medic work. The folks that created CPR models were
> onto something. They realized that sometimes there are no doctors around,
> and we need to be able to know how to help somebody who is choking not
> choke, because we’re not going to have time to call 911. Capitalism has
> deskilled us from things that we should know how to do and that we should
> not be outsourcing. It’s going to take a lot to change that. This is why
> I’ve always struggled alongside and respected my anarchist friends. I
> wonder how we’re going to do things without a government, however that
> government gets reconstituted. How are we going to be able to distribute
> resources en masse or do things in common like build roads? I don’t know.
> We as individuals can do a lot, and we also need spaces where we do things
> collectively toward survival. We have to do both, and then some more. I’m
> open to alternate configurations.”
>
> I believe that prison abolitionists have a lot in common with those
> working to confront climate chaos. Not in terms of what state policies to
> support (Green New Deals, etc), but how we organize our communities
> regardless of what policies we do/don’t end up influencing at the state
> level. Again, not surrendering the state, just preparing for always/already
> aspects of the state that are not about our collective survival. At the end
> of the day, someone’s going to have to wash the proverbial dishes… as long
> as we plan on surviving, we’re going to have to eat.
>
> https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/mariame-kaba-interview-til-we-free-us/
>
> Wow, this is probably way longer than necessary… and apologies for the
> US-centric aspects of my comments here on such a global-scale concern.
> Take care everyone,
> Ryan
>
>
> #  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
> #is a moderated mailing list for net 

Re: Biocultural Corridors

[Brian Holmes]

ntial -
success. Differential means that some regions and some classes will be
affected differently than others. When I speak of "various open pathways"
in response to the climate emergency, the range of possibilities has mainly
to do with these kinds of questions: How will the global-scale mitigation
measures be managed, in view of what outcomes, for whom? Will there be
clear and shared awareness that climate inequalities can create social
turmoil and thereby curtail any positive effects of solar radiation
management, precipitation management, energy transition, etc? To what
degree will the attempts at management result only in war, authoritarianism
and a more rapid breakdown? I use the word "fascism" as shorthand to
indicate many serious political problems arising from "suffered degrowth."

At present, global populations appear to me to have their head in the sand.
We're going to have tremendous stress on our industrial societies and they
will respond with all readily available industrial means. I think everyone
should think about how they can influence these responses. This is not the
same as "choosing" some putative solution that one would simply prefer,
without any means of making it happen. Nor is it the same thing as saying
"we're all fucked," which just means, shirking all responsibility and
letting your local elites amd military do whatever they want.

The project which launched this thread - biocultural corridors - may appear
to be a simple conservationist program, totally inadequate to what's
coming. Well, that's largely true. However, I am approaching it as a chance
to analyze an extremely complex and threatening situation (that's the
critical part), while building a collective ethical and spiritual posture
toward that situation (that's the biocultural part). I expect that project,
and everything else I am involved in, to change rapidly over the course of
this decade. It's daunting.

"At night on the Parana, the stars still shine." But not for long. Very
soon we are all very likely to look up at the white sky of geoengineering.
How to maintain faith in humanity when you cannot even see what were ever
the signs of its destiny? This is what I mean by the spiritual question.

The period around 1940-1945 was an extremely challenging time. Everyone
involved went through dramatic changes. In my view we are rapidly moving
toward something on a larger scale of magnitude. I reckon we would all do
better to think about what that implies, get ready for it, and start
acting. Notice that the world did not end, neither as a result of WWII, nor
as a result of the atom bomb. Although a crisis is clearly approaching, I
think it is premature to think the world is going to end in the next
half-century. Rather, it will undergo currently unimaginable turmoil.
Individuals, and above all societies, will have to take currently
unimaginable actions. The point of any vanguard activity is to get ready.
We're going to make history, but not under the conditions of our choosing.
Save a wetland today - stave off a global civil war tomorrow.

None of this is a critique of Jean-Noel, because as I notice, he's one of
the few people who's even willing to talk about this kind of thing. I am
not dogmatic about the above conclusions either, they're just the most
realistic so far as I can tell today. If we are incredibly lucky and
environmental conditions don't change as fast as I think they will, maybe
chosen degrowth really can have an effect...

thoughtfully yours, Brian

On Tue, Aug 30, 2022 at 3:21 PM Jean-Noël Montagné 
wrote:

>
>
> Le 29/08/2022 à 03:11, Brian Holmes a écrit :
> > How to dissolve the deep orientation, or if you prefer, the cosmovision,
> > of capitalist empire? It becomes a realistic question when that
> > cosmovision starts threatening you, killing you.
>
>
>
> The cosmovision of the capitalist empire is growth, the ideology of
> growth, the religion of growth.
>
> We have just celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Meadows report,
> commissioned in 1970 at MIT by the Club of Rome, which predicted a
> collapse of resources by the year 2020. We are there.
> To dissolve the cosmovision of the empire, we must explain why infinite
> growth is impossible in a finite world.
>
> Here is what was written in the book "Limits to growth" in 1972:
>
> 
>
>
> "An objective analysis of the facts shows us that, of the three
> possibilities offered - unlimited growth, voluntary limitation of growth
> and limitation imposed by the natural environment - only the last two
> are plausible.
>
> [...]
>
> Every day that exponential growth continues brings our global ecosystem
> closer to the ultimate limits of its growth. To decide to do nothing is
> to decide to increase the risk of collapse. We do not know with
> certainty how much longe

Re: Biocultural Corridors

[Brian Holmes]

Jean-Noel, thank you for your words, thoughtful and intransigent as always.
I just found them in my spam box... where they don't belong!

You are right, the global logistics system is not reformable, and as a
USian (worst offenders) I feel the absolute need for self- and social
transformation, down-scaling, rewilding, artisanship, renewed
human-plant-animal relations. To work with rivers and the myriad creatures
who inhabit them involves a wholly different kind of immensity, intricacy
and flow than a just-in-time system... I gave up even criticizing such
things because we all already know the essentials, more detail is just more
delay.

In my view, a viable transformation does not exactly mean "going back to
nature", although let's not quibble over words and phrases. Nature always
changes, stability has always been dynamic, and consciousness always brings
change. That's the only reason for talking about neo ecosystems. Every
ecosystem is always new - all forests burn, painful as that is right now -
and the question is what kind of newness, with what effects on who. The
most profound thing I experience these days, and the reason for engaging
with very different kinds of people (classes and races and regions and
religions) is that what modernism saw as obsolete is now a series of
possibly viable futures. The archaic becomes emergent. One can sense this
in almost every revolt, and almost every retreat as well, except the
fascistic ones that refuse any emergence whatsoever (admittedly they are
legion). There is a growing understanding that our civilization went wrong
at some point, and an urge to reach back in order to go, not forward, but
elsewhere.

There is a definite value in looking into the future and creating things in
that perspective, but frankly I want to live now and respond to the
urgencies. It's potentially the same thing anyway. How to dissolve the deep
orientation, or if you prefer, the cosmovision, of capitalist empire? It
becomes a realistic question when that cosmovision starts threatening you,
killing you. And at the same time, how to find a different way of living
with and through machines, which cannot simply be extirpated from humanity,
and therefore, from the ecosystems of which we are a part? Which
neo-machines for which neo-ecosystems?

The questions go together, they're simultaneous, and I don't think one need
await a future apocalypse to find their resolution. The apocalypse is now
and the answers are emergent. But society is a very hard master, scale is a
large and tough knot by definition, and the only viable way to evaluate a
philosophy is by its effects. The jury is still out on these ideas, both
yours and mine, that's for sure. But at certain times and in certain
places, one can actually see empire crumbling. I gotta say I live for that
kind of now-time.

Jean-Noel, I appreciate people like yourself, who are creating
transformative effects. And I am always glad to find companions with whom
to talk these things over.

Heartfully, Brian

On Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 12:43 Jean-Noël Montagné  wrote:

>
>
> Le 19/08/2022 à 04:02, Brian Holmes a écrit :
>
> Thank you for the action, the story, the software.
>
>
> > The big question is this: Do the middle classes - including industrial
> > workers attached to states and large corporations - go fascist under the
> > pressure of rising threats to their old lifestyles and identities, or
> > can we find shareable biocultural pathways toward reparative
> > socio-ecological worlds, and through collaboration with other classes
> > and cultures and races, create neo-ecosystems that can ramp down the
> > causes and mitigate the effects of climate change?
>
> It's not a matter of social class, culture or race, but of scale.
>
> It is too late* to create sufficiently influential neo-ecosystems on a
> global scale.  The globalized capitalist system that extracts resources
> on one side of the world, refines and assembles them elsewhere, and then
> markets them everywhere is not reformable in its current structure.
>
> The various eco-fascisms that will be the last manifestations of current
> capitalism, as they have been predicted and discussed since the 1970s,
> are temporary. They cannot survive in a meta scale, because of the
> scarcity of "control" ressources, disorganisation of media,
> communication and armed power.
>
> But we can create neo-ecosystems at local scale, even during continental
> or national eco-fascisms. As you can see in South America, as I can see
> in Europe, this movement has started silently, worlwide, around
> low-tech, open-source structures, planifyied ressource harvesting et
> recycling, and small-scale real democracy. In rural areas, mostly.
>
> The attraction of the middle classes for an eco-fascist management of
> the collapse is temporary, as their depende

Re: Biocultural Corridors

[Brian Holmes]

This is some great information, totally worthy of nettime, thanks very
much. I am going to look into it.

When you say it makes the map "noisy" do you mean leaky, or that it
consumes bandwidth, or introduces some arbitrary signal, or?...
And can I just get rid of it without screwing up anything else? If you can
tell me how, would be great. I move around in the code all the time, but
I'm not a coder...

Anyway, thanks, Brian



On Tue, Aug 23, 2022 at 6:10 AM Geoffrey Goodell  wrote:

> Hi mp,
>
> This is a great idea.  I hypothesise that:
>
> (1) People have no idea how much data they are sending to online services;
>
> (2) People have no idea how often their various devices (not only PCs and
> smartphones but also 'internet of things' devices) send data, even when the
> user is not actively using them; and
>
> (3) People have no idea how often routine activities such as web browsing
> to
> ostensibly unrelated sites, email checking, and so on result in telemetry
> being
> sent.
>
> And of course, people might not realise that their physical movements and
> the
> cadence of their activities over time are part of the accumulated data set.
>
> I'm surprised that the Google prefixes are hard-coded.  Suggest using the
> updated prefixes from the global routing table instead.
>
> https://thyme.apnic.net/ipv4/ap/2022/08/23/
>
> (replace with whatever date is today)
>
> Download and unpack the five files in this directory.
>
> Inside you will find a file 'data-used-autnums'.  You can search this file
> for
> the names of autonomous systems (networks), or 'ASes', that together
> comprise
> the Internet.
>
> You can search this list, e.g.:
>
> $ grep " GOOGLE" data-used-autnums
>
> Let's not single-out Google.  Indeed you can look for other possible
> offenders
> too, e.g.:
>
> $ grep " MICROSOFT" data-used-autnums
>
> The first column of the results are the AS numbers.  There is another file,
> 'data-raw-table', which maps the numbers to prefixes.  You can use this
> file to
> identify all of the prefixes you want to examine.
>
> $ grep -w 15169 data-raw-table
>
> I hope this helps.
>
> Happy hacking,
>
> Geoff
>
> On Tue, 23 Aug 2022 at 10:18:12AM +0100, mp wrote:
> >
> > Great, thanks.
> >
> > Though, just for reference, this:
> >
> > sudo tcpdump -n -l dst net 192.0.2.1/32 $(for a in $(cat
> goog-prefixes.txt);
> > do echo or dst net $a; done)  |  ./teller
> >
> > from here:
> >
> > https://github.com/berthubert/googerteller
> >
> > .. makes the map noisy: https://map.casariolab.art
> >
> > Ear opening tool.
> >
> > On 19/08/2022 03:02, Brian Holmes wrote:
> > > At night on the Parana, the stars still shine. The boatman cuts the
> motor;
> > > we drift silently under the light of a full moon. This is the end of a
> four
> > > thousand kilometer-long river, it's the "Delta front." The low islands
> to
> > > the east extend fingers of land into the Rio del Plata estuary, and
> those
> > > forested fingers grow about 70 meters longer every year, catching the
> last
> > > of the sediments carried from the Andes and the Brazilian jungle. To
> the
> > > southwest, the lights of Buenos Aires glitter on the horizon. Someday
> in
> > > the future - quite soon, in geological time - the Delta front will
> reach
> > > the city. Every month it's six meters closer. The mutability of this
> > > territory makes my head spin. The stars, the moon, the lights, the
> islands
> > > and the uncanny mirror of the river all come together like a wheel
> spinning
> > > weightlessly in infinite space, or maybe it's a whirlpool, a cosmic
> gyre. A
> > > homegrown joint makes its way from hand to hand, through the calm of a
> > > winter night that is windless by good luck, and warm by devastating
> climate
> > > change. The journey is well underway.
> > >
> > > With Alejandro Meitin of Casa Rio we're making tactical media in the
> > > wetlands, along a meandering path that leads from Punta Lara, south of
> > > Buenos Aires, all the way north through the Pampa and the arid reaches
> of
> > > the Grand Chaco to Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay. I wrote the
> paragraph
> > > above a week ago; now we're at the halfway point. Our aim is to reach
> out
> > > to riverside communities and build ecological awareness, while also
> helping
> > > to accelerate the process of information-sharing among a network of
> > > ecological NGOs called "Humedales sin 

Biocultural Corridors

[Brian Holmes]

At night on the Parana, the stars still shine. The boatman cuts the motor;
we drift silently under the light of a full moon. This is the end of a four
thousand kilometer-long river, it's the "Delta front." The low islands to
the east extend fingers of land into the Rio del Plata estuary, and those
forested fingers grow about 70 meters longer every year, catching the last
of the sediments carried from the Andes and the Brazilian jungle. To the
southwest, the lights of Buenos Aires glitter on the horizon. Someday in
the future - quite soon, in geological time - the Delta front will reach
the city. Every month it's six meters closer. The mutability of this
territory makes my head spin. The stars, the moon, the lights, the islands
and the uncanny mirror of the river all come together like a wheel spinning
weightlessly in infinite space, or maybe it's a whirlpool, a cosmic gyre. A
homegrown joint makes its way from hand to hand, through the calm of a
winter night that is windless by good luck, and warm by devastating climate
change. The journey is well underway.

With Alejandro Meitin of Casa Rio we're making tactical media in the
wetlands, along a meandering path that leads from Punta Lara, south of
Buenos Aires, all the way north through the Pampa and the arid reaches of
the Grand Chaco to Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay. I wrote the paragraph
above a week ago; now we're at the halfway point. Our aim is to reach out
to riverside communities and build ecological awareness, while also helping
to accelerate the process of information-sharing among a network of
ecological NGOs called "Humedales sin fronteras" or Wetlands Without
Borders, whose member organizations are located in Argentina, Paraguay,
Bolivia and Brazil. My contribution as an artist-cartographer is an online
map and multimedia platform that can display text, scientific information,
photography, video, audio and social networks (it's FLOSS, built by Majk
Shkurti to my specs, see info below). The color scheme and iconography of
the map has been designed by Dani Lorenzo of Casa Rio, and most of the
videos you'll find inside were done by Andres Irigoyen. Lots of others are
involved, it would be long to list every one of them. As for Alejandro
Meitin, he's an artist, lawyer, environmental activist and
jack-of-all-trades who's been doing this kind of thing for thirty years,
first with the artists' group Ala Plastica, and now with the broader
community-based constellation of Casa Rio. We've taken similar journeys
before, stretching back to 2014 when Critical Art Ensemble generously
invited me to come along to Argentina for a roving seminar organized by Ala
Plastica under the name "Watersheds as Laboratories of Governance." In 2019
we brought an exhibition called "The Earth Will Not Abide" from Chicago to
the riverport city of Rosario, and Casa Rio published quite a beautiful
book with that material. Now we're in full-on activist mode, meeting
network members all along the river, pushing for a Wetlands Law in
Argentina, for a halt to dredging, sand extraction and dam-building, and
for the development, from below, of what we are calling "Biocultural
Corridors."

The notion of bioculturalism is grasped intuitively by all the people we
meet: It refers to the changes in orientation and behavior that arise when
human beings begin to see and feel themselves as participants in a web of
ecological relations, such that "an injury to one is an injury to all" -
whether it's insect, plant, animal or homo sapiens. The corridor part is
somewhat trickier. Many are aware of biological corridors, which are
designed by conservation specialists as safe passageways between small
islands of habitat which, on their own, are insufficient to sustain bird
and animal populations that range widely across the changing seasons.
Biocultural corridors, however, are not planned or instituted by experts.
They arise in areas where groups of people who might be engaged in
agroecological farming, traditional crafts such as willow weaving,
small-scale fishing, land defence and indigenous lifeways all come together
in mutual recognition and support, building the consciousness of what might
someday become truly sustainable productive practices. Like the
Bioregionalists of North America in the 1970s, we are inviting communities
to use our map in order to draw and describe the components of their own
biocultural corridors, which someday, we hope, will extend all the way up
and down the great uninterrupted fluvial corridor reaching from the
headwaters of the Brazilian and Bolivian Pantanal down to the Rio del Plata
estuary. For once, we're not necessarily kidding ourselves. Ideas based on
grassroots solidarity spread rapidly in Latin America. All along the vast
Parana Delta in Argentina you can see walls painted with the slogan "Pass
the Wetlands Law already!" (It's a bit more terse in Spanish: "Ley de
Humedales Ya!"). We are also promoting the idea of biocultural festivals,
where people can 

Re: Strom vs Morozov: knockdown punch

[Brian Holmes]

Jean-Noel wrote:

"How can we imagine that the cybernetic system will continue to grow or even
exist with more than a billion annual climate migrants within 30 years?"

I can't imagine it. I see multiple breakdowns ahead at an accelerating
pace. The 'natural' reaction of highly developed capitalist societies
blinkered by cybernetic mind-control is to create gated economic circuits
reserved exclusively for the rich (everything from FRONTEX to key-codes for
the water faucet) but that's not going to work because these imperial
societies are already too big and diverse and therefore porous, any
revolution outside the gates is immediately internalized (cf Syria crisis)
and we will see this play out again as the famines caused by the current
war begin in earnest. This does mean that some kinds of change are coming
fast. In addition to shrinking cybernetic utopias of mindfuck-as-usual, we
will get forms of pacifying socialism like those already introduced during
the pandemic (free food, free money), along with forms of racist
nationalism like those that already arose during the pandemic, along with
forms of international war like what already started in Ukraine. The
question for the next few years is how to break through the strategically
induced idiocy of MAANA (that's Meta, Apple, etc) and gather forces for
full-scale system change. It's urgent and it's barely happening. Fantasies
of total and immediate apocalypse prevail over preparations for devastating
but still gradual and incremental decline. The only part of your text where
I might disagree, Jean-Noel, is that the future lies in scaling down toward
simple agriculture. Scaling down, yes, that's a must, but it will still
take effective forms of social organization and new, non-polluting energy
sources to face all this without massive human die-offs. Plus some kind of
religious renewal might help people accept a hard fate without murdering
one another massively and right away.

pray for rain, Brian
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Re: Strom vs Morozov: knockdown punch

[Brian Holmes]

g else between 1980s and 2000s and 'feedback'
>> is something else now and changing with AI, etc.
>>
>> Brian i did not know that Morozov was a leading net-critic, so I'm glad
>> to know something I did not.
>>
>> wanting to initiate a nettime- global court of judgement on 'economic
>> crimes' - Bezos, Oil profits from Ukraine, burning of Amazon being my top
>> three...all will be "guillotined" by the geopolitical earth commons.
>>
>> we need new spatial models for economic warfare and how to "combat" it
>>
>> molly
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Jul 10, 2022 at 11:56 PM  wrote:
>>
>>> Just came across this -
>>>
>>>
>>> https://shows.acast.com/jacobin-radio/episodes/dig-its-still-capitalism-w-evgeny-morozov
>>>
>>> On Fri 8 Jul 2022, 03:08 Molly Hankwitz, 
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Hello, Boris, and Brian,
>>>> Thank you for all of your writings and reviews. Boris, those
>>>> descriptions of how corporations will fill the gap of the state by
>>>> providing travel money for women employees seeking abortions...are
>>>> chillingly correct, and scary and partly what I do really like about Safiya
>>>> Noble's position (her name has been misspelled by me, apologies - Noble,
>>>> not Nobel - forgive me for being obsessed, but imho she is moved to write
>>>> because she is deeply concerned with the loss of public assets to the
>>>> private sector...this all seems to be one ball of wax...
>>>>
>>>> womens' rights being subsumed under employee contracts of individual
>>>> corporations and the rights of corporations to acquire (say in higher ed)
>>>> public assets as their own...this further eroding the public sphere(s)...
>>>>
>>>> I got around to reading the Morozov not the Strom piece
>>>>
>>>> There are two conditions of the present which resonate with me in these
>>>> discussions of capital accumulation, yet which aren't about customary
>>>> conditions of factory labor, or other examples of capitalist economies
>>>> because they are unusual circumstances...they are such flagrant examples of
>>>> exploitation that they stand out.
>>>>
>>>> Situation 1: Bezos making 49 billion dollars of income during the 2
>>>> years of  massive humanitarian loss and pain due to COVID. Okay, so he
>>>> happens to own a global delivery business, which did well during this
>>>> time...but can't such individual, highly predatory capitalism be regulated,
>>>> unlawful or fined heavily as a blight? Should anyone be able - without some
>>>> kind of payback - to exploit humanity so flagrantly without some kind of
>>>> fine or sanction?
>>>>
>>>> Example 2. Ukraine war...oil and gas prices sky high at the expense of
>>>> 100s of 1,000s of refugees, loss of life, loss of environment, loss of
>>>> architecture, loss of cultural identity...should oil companies be able to
>>>> reap profit while a war persists? maybe we need a global court to judge
>>>> such huge profits at humanity's expense?
>>>>
>>>> These profits so frequently allowed to move forward without consequence
>>>> or questioning in the fiction of an objective stance -
>>>>
>>>> so when Mozorov and Noble both analyze how capable big tech (Google) is
>>>> of amplifying financial gain and the objectification of the vulnerable
>>>> ...maybe these giant shifts in scale can be a start to understanding what
>>>> capital is doing. (Thanks Brian and Boris and Felix for trying). I think
>>>> about screens, screen time, the small screen of our smartphones as pieces
>>>> of peasant turf in the fragmented feudal fiefdom, once part of a pastoral
>>>> commons, more public and less exploitable, and now mined and marred by
>>>> proximity to the minute by minute data-extraction of cyber-markets. I guess
>>>> that might go to digital labor, but much is so unconscious that maybe
>>>> better to stay on the giant global events and who is profiting?
>>>>
>>>> molly
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Jul 7, 2022 at 3:52 PM Brian Holmes <
>>>> bhcontinentaldr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> First, Strom 

Re: Strom vs Morozov: knockdown punch

[Brian Holmes]

stemd and
> aggressively posed against all critics) is perhaps afraid to tell: the
> master of systemd now works for Micro$oft.
> https://twitter.com/jaromil/status/1544618996833583104 I hope you don't
> mind me per-using your quote Brian.
>
> On Sun, 03 Jul 2022, Brian Holmes wrote:
>
> > This is totally on point, Jaromil. The tech industry has always been
> able to think cybernetically - it has to, in order to handle interactive
> networks with millions of users - but what you're pointing out, in a very
> specific situation, is how it's now able to carry out integrated strategies
> affecting entire fields or "modes of practice." In your example, it means
> reshaping all the factors that condition the software development process,
> including institutional ones such as the literature on standards and the
> processes for their validation.
> >
> > On the global level both Google and Microsoft are notorious for
> transforming governance through the introduction of particular types of
> software and information-processing services that reshape the activity of
> corporate officials and bureaucrats, and in that way, affect entire
> societies. However I had never considered that Red Hat would be doing the
> same within social-democratic spheres where FOSS development is supported
> by public money. It's somewhat depressing news, because FOSS development
> for public use is really one of the few places where the social-steering
> capacities of Silicon Valley are challenged... I don't have the expertise
> to fully evaluate what you're saying (although I have read about Devuan and
> the systemd controversies!) - but anyway, yes, I think we are talking about
> exactly the same thing here.
>
> I love how the research and works by Florian Gottke remind us about the
> importance of topping statues, an act operating through the language of
> liturgy, and firmly preluding radical changes in governance.
>
> And so there is a symbolic event last year worth mentioning: the topping
> of RMS from his role as prophet: we wrote about it here
> https://medium.com/think-do-tank/open-letter-to-the-free-software-movement-7ddc7429b474
> - an open letter written together with Christina Derazenski, a big loss as
> I believe she'd be able to describe much better than me what is happening
> and through the lenses of feminism.
>
> Today we have the not-so-symbolic event of Linux development being steered
> by Micro$oft, with all implications enounced in this thread.
>
> So now let me once again use nettime to mark an event in time - this list
> is the best literary blockchain around! :^D
>
> Today we witness the epilogue of what was the F/OSS movement with all its
> dreams of glory and democracy or do-ocracy or whatever fascinated our
> friend Biella so much when describing Debian. Today we observe what you
> mention as a "classic cybernetic takeover" vastly overlooked by academic
> literature about governance and free software.
>
> I am fascinated by all this, but somehow relieved there will be no more a
> global F/OSS movement, just pockets of resistance.
>
> Foucault, Deleuze, Caronia... they have seen all this already.
>
> And they were right: being and becoming marginal, feels good.
>
> Also some security experts were right from the beginning, about using
> OpenBSD.
>
> ciao
>
> --
>
>   Denis "Jaromil" Roio  https://Dyne.org think  tank
>   Ph.D, CTO & co-foundersoftware to empower communities
>   ✉ Haparandadam 7-A1, 1013AK Amsterdam, The Netherlands
>   턞 crypto κρυπτο крипто क्रिप्टो 加密 التشفير הצפנה
>   ⚷ 6113D89C A825C5CE DD02C872 73B35DA5 4ACB7D10
>
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Re: Strom vs Morozov: knockdown punch

[Brian Holmes]

This is totally on point, Jaromil. The tech industry has always been able
to think cybernetically - it has to, in order to handle interactive
networks with millions of users - but what you're pointing out, in a very
specific situation, is how it's now able to carry out integrated strategies
affecting entire fields or "modes of practice." In your example, it means
reshaping all the factors that condition the software development process,
including institutional ones such as the literature on standards and the
processes for their validation.

On the global level both Google and Microsoft are notorious for
transforming governance through the introduction of particular types of
software and information-processing services that reshape the activity of
corporate officials and bureaucrats, and in that way, affect entire
societies. However I had never considered that Red Hat would be doing the
same within social-democratic spheres where FOSS development is supported
by public money. It's somewhat depressing news, because FOSS development
for public use is really one of the few places where the social-steering
capacities of Silicon Valley are challenged... I don't have the expertise
to fully evaluate what you're saying (although I have read about Devuan and
the systemd controversies!) - but anyway, yes, I think we are talking about
exactly the same thing here.

>From my expertise, I am shocked that someone like Morozov does not think
cybernetically, or at least, not when he puts his Marxist glasses on. In a
way such thinking is completely banal: we've all been talking about "media
ecologies" for decades, and Morozov understands that kind of thing
perfectly. How can the leading mainstream net critic, who's a leftist to
boot, not even see *political ecologies* and the strategies that are used
to steer them? In Marxist terms that means one is reasoning only on the
basis of production, only on the logic that's covered in Book I of Capital.
With all the sophisticated work that's been done more recently, I thought
it had become clear that research and development, distribution, financing,
usership and legal/institutional structures constituted the enlarged field
of capital-as-power. Indeed, this has become obvious for corporate
strategists. But over and over again, I see the leftist critics adopting
simplified schemas worthy of the 1930s. To me this indicates a gaping hole
or blind spot in the critique of political economy.

I am curious if other people see the same problems, and if there are
theorists and practitioners resolving them...

best, BH

On Sun, Jul 3, 2022 at 3:53 AM Jaromil  wrote:

>
> dear Brian,
>
> many thanks for this review! I admit would never had the time to read
> through the articles and less than ever spot the tension you highlight,
> your dedication makes it possible for many of us to follow interesting
> debates as this one. I guess we are all familiar with Morozov's ideas by
> now, certainly more than Strom's...
>
> On Thu, 30 Jun 2022, Brian Holmes wrote:
>
> > This is much better than Morozov: it cuts straight to the chase, rather
> than beating around the theoretical bush. Strom is saying that the new
> standard model of contemporary capitalism emerges when technoscience is
> applied to produce and condition the environments in which business
> operations are carried out and consumer choices are made. This is a classic
> cybernetic strategy: to become the master of a feedback loop you do not
> attempt to directly control all the participating nodes. Instead, you
> create and continuously adjust the framework in which those nodes interact.
>
> reading what you write here really strikes a chord in me, to the point
> I'll shamelessly put forward a link to my much dumber and less theoretical
> witnessing here, from the shores of practice:
> https://medium.com/think-do-tank/lead-or-follow-the-dilemma-of-ict-industry-for-the-coming-decade-4f83ee1851bc
>
> what I propose is to look at this "small simulation" of what is happening
> already since some years in the free and open source (F/OSS) world, around
> the landmark acquisition of RedHat by IBM and following the politics of the
> Linux Foundation in imposing (by means of lobbying) new immature software
> components like systemd as a "standard".
>
> > So to wrap it up, the "standard model" of contemporary capitalism is
> definitely not a firm selling advertising widgets. Nor even less is it a
> mere parasite feeding on *your* boundless creativity. Instead, the standard
> model now entails an expansive "mode of practice" that actively builds,
> monitors and adjusts the productive/communicative frameworks in which the
> individual's tastes and productive potentials will be expressed, actualized
> and satisfied, ideally with no leftover energies of dissent.
>
&g

Strom vs Morozov: knockdown punch

[Brian Holmes]

I was gratified to find no less than Evgeny Morozov taking down the concept
of "technofeudalism" in a recent issue of the New Left Review (1). The
reason why is that in my view, most Marxists now totally underestimate - or
even seem shockingly ignorant of - the actual operations of corporate
capitalists. Instead of observing how the firms work, Marxists now come up
with hipster concepts, the more facile or idealizing the better. If it's
feudal it's personal, it's about the oligarchs, it smells bad, so you can
criticize Peter Thiel's abusive personality and his sadistic drives. Fine,
I'm down with that, but you learned nothing about his companies along the
way. Or instead, in a more sophisticated version that Morozov analyzes very
well, it's a rentier situation, it's feudal because the net capitalist
simply owns a data set and derives a parasitic rent from it, while all the
creativity resides in the working class. This type of technofeudalist
reasoning ranges from the Italian autonomists to Zuboff's notion of
surveillance capitalism, and it conveniently puts *you* at the center of
the picture: it's *your* data, *you* produced it, *you* are the source of
all value, but an entire feudal system is conspiring to keep *you* in
chains. Sure, and the revolution will begin when *you* find that out!

Morozov is entirely right to insist that neither of these proposals says
anything about the vast, interlocking circuits of industrial and
communicational firms, whose operations produce the concrete details of the
world we live in, the clickbait, the shopping malls, the intermodal ports,
the oil wells, the surveillance systems. It's obvious to me that these
things are built and maintained according to an overarching logic, a highly
modern one indeed, some sort of state/capitalist logic that conditions the
actions of all the participating individual capitals. Understanding this
logic would allow us to characterize the incredibly disparate technology
sets that govern us concretely. And Morozov has found the secret! According
to him, Google does not occupy a rentier position, it's actually a standard
capitalist firm, it sells ads, that's its business model. It's really as
simple as that, case closed, no need for concepts like technofeudalsm or
surveillance capitalism.

Of course there is more to Morozov's article. In fact it's quite a
brilliant recap of competing currents in Marxist analysis, between those
who focus on labor exploitation (carried out by competitive firms) and
those who focus on expropriation (carried out by monopoly firms closely
associated with states). In short it's Brenner versus Wallerstein, a
historical debate that Morozov resuscitates in a highly pertinent and
elucidating way. Nonetheless, his conclusion about the standard capitalist
model is pitifully weak and lamentable, as though the failure of
tendentious hipster theories argued against any theory at all. Really, it's
a weirdly off-point article, and in the end, a highly academic one, like
thesis research. So I was again highly gratified to read the takedown of
Morozov by Timothy Erik Strom, in an article called "Capital and
Cybernetics" that just came out (open access btw) in the latest New Left
Review (2).

Strom hails from an Australian journal I never heard of, called Arena. It
must be great, because his article sure is. He begins his analysis at the
right place, with the world-shaping political-economic power of the US
state in the WWII era. He then goes on to explore the new capitalist
business model that emerged within the reshaped "arena" of postwar
political economy. For Strom, both raw power and capitalist profit have a
basis in scientific abstraction, which itself must be deliberately produced
and applied by the state-capitalist classes. His concept of cybernetic
capitalism fits into one tightly argued paragraph:

"The idea of abstraction is crucial to the concept of cybernetic
capitalism. As a techno-science, cybernetics is concerned with
communication and control between people and technology. Here it can be
read as shorthand for a particular mode of inquiry - instrumentalized
techno-scientific research, which creates new abstractions - combined with
a mode of (disembodied) communication, via networked computing-machines,
and a mode of organization: a distributed network, managed by centralized
bureaucracies. These cybernetic features are combined with 'capitalism',
shorthand for a mode of production - the rationalized and privatized
bringing forth of goods so as to extract and concentrate the maximum amount
of surplus in the hands of the owners of capital - combined with a mode of
exchange — money, mediating relationships within financialized circuits —
and a mode of consumption; or rather, intense levels of commodity
overconsumption. The advantage of this more expansive 'mode of practice'
framing over the more usual 'mode of production' is that it acknowledges
the importance of other practices besides producing goods: 

The German "Open Letter" on Ukraine

[Brian Holmes]

 Below is a machine translation of the “Open Letter” to Scholz, signed by
over 200,000 German personalities including Alice Schwartzer, Alexander
Kluge and Siegfried Zielinski. The source is here:

https://www.emma.de/artikel/offener-brief-bundeskanzler-scholz-339463

I am curious as to the letter’s significance in German debates and also,
about the many reactions to it which have apparently emerged since its
publication on April 29. Some people on the list could inform us about this!

I can’t agree with this letter, because its core notion of universally
binding moral law appears out of touch with the present-day reality of
civilizational clashes, and perhaps more representative of the 1980s than
now. However, I think that the mere rebooting of Atlanticist proxy wars,
without any discussion of a global military, economic and political
strategy for the rapidly emergent Anthropocene crisis, is equally out of
touch.

It is true that the left has wrongly abdicated any consideration of
military strategy. But one does not correct such an error by abounding in
the Free World/Cold War logic of the 1950s. Russia’s geopolitical bid for
Eurasia and its very capacity to make war are dependent on its fossil fuel
production, distribution and consumption, which largely takes place under
free-market rules. The US, and by extension, NATO, are similarly
positioned, and the US is likely to come out of this war as both global cop
and global gas station attendant, supplying Europe with LNG produced by an
otherwise failing shale-gas industry. While I do not see an alternative to
the current proxy war, beyond more vigorous and serious attempts at
negotiation which are effectively lacking, I do see an immense failure to
think about where ‘victory’ can all-too easily lead.

Nettimers, I would be glad to hear your thoughts about the current state of
political debate in Germany, and I would also be glad to be proven wrong
about the lack of a thoughts on a strategy for the upcoming decades, when
the powers of Nature will likely show that they still do seriously rival
those of Humanity – and when the international order will be continually
disrupted by crisis, conflict, breakdown, and desperate bids to maintain
outdated forms of hegemony.

All the best, Brian (who’s headed to Berlin today)




Dear Chancellor,

We appreciate that until now you have considered the risks so carefully:
the risk of the war spreading within Ukraine; the risk of expansion across
Europe; yes, the risk of a 3rd world war. We therefore hope that you will
remember your original position and will not supply any more heavy weapons
to Ukraine, either directly or indirectly. On the contrary, we urge you to
do everything you can to ensure that a ceasefire can be reached as soon as
possible; a compromise that both sides can accept.

We share the verdict on Russian aggression as a breach of the basic norm of
international law. We also share the conviction that there is a fundamental
political and moral duty not to back down from aggressive violence without
resistance. But everything that can be derived from this has its limits in
other imperatives of political ethics.

We are convinced that two such dividing lines have now been reached: First,
the categorical prohibition on accepting a manifest risk of this war
escalating into a nuclear conflict. The delivery of large quantities of
heavy weapons, however, could make Germany itself a party to the war. And a
Russian counter-attack could then trigger the case for assistance under the
NATO treaty and with it the immediate danger of a world war. The second
line of demarcation is the level of destruction and human suffering among
Ukrainian civilians. Even the legitimate resistance against an aggressor is
at some point in an intolerable disproportion.

We warn against a double error: Firstly, that the responsibility for the
risk of an escalation to a nuclear conflict lies solely with the original
aggressor and not also with those who openly provide him with a motive for
possibly criminal action. And on the other hand, that the decision on the
moral responsibility of the further "costs" in human lives among the
Ukrainian civilian population falls exclusively within the competence of
their government. Morally binding norms are universal in nature.

The escalating armament taking place under pressure could be the beginning
of a global arms race with catastrophic consequences, not least for global
health and climate change. Despite all the differences, it is important to
strive for worldwide peace. The European approach of shared diversity is a
model for this.

Dear Chancellor, we are convinced that the head of government of Germany
can make a decisive contribution to a solution that will stand up to the
judgment of history. Not only in view of our current (economic) power, but
also in view of our historical responsibility - and in the hope of a
peaceful future together.

We hope and count on you!

Re: "graphic turn" exhibition

[Brian Holmes]

Andre, what great news!

An earlier exhibition by your network (which everyone just calls "the Red",
ha ha, how perfect in English) came under the title Perder la forma humana
(To Lose Human Form). It was an astonishing exhibition, which depended on
recreating many works from archival traces, and which revealed how the
formation of subcultures (sexual especially) took place in Latin America in
the Eighties, often during the gradual decline of dictatorships. That was a
great show, and anyone who's curious can find a catalog pdf out there
somewhere I reckon.

What is the undercurrent of this new exhibition? I mean, what did you
discover?

I managed to catch Perder la forma humana in Buenos Aires, what luck. Will
this one travel? BA again maybe? Somewhere in US?

All the best, Brian


On Sun, May 15, 2022, 15:48 Andre Mesquita  wrote:

> Dear Nettimers,
>
> I'm very happy to announce we are opening this week the exhibition
> "Graphic Turn: Like the Ivy on the Wall" at the Reina Sofia museum, a
> project by Red Conceptualismos del Sur.
>
> I am sending here the link with more information about the exhibition and
> English, and I am sure that many of you will be interested in the project.
> https://www.museoreinasofia.es/en/exhibitions/graphic-turn
>
> And here is the folder in Spanish (it will be published in English soon):
> https://www.museoreinasofia.es/sites/default/files/exposiciones/folletos/folleto_giro_grafico.pdf
>
> I hope you can visit If you are in Madrid!
>
> Best
> André
>
>
> --
> *André Mesquita*
> Red Conceptualismos del Sur: https://redcsur.net 
> Archivos en uso: http://www.archivosenuso.org
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Re: NEW BOOK! Surfing with Satoshi - Art, Blockchain and NFTs by Domenico Quaranta

[Brian Holmes]

Jaromil wrote:

"Those who may keep investing in activist initiatives and commons-based
infrastructure are in other camps than NFT/web3/ethereum, a context
which after initial (2013) investments by goldmans and other global
banks have moved forward to play the game we see televised today, this
is the crypto finance overly present in trade shows and now even art
debates, cashing on the crypto on-boarding of get-rich-quick idiots
worldwide."

This sounds exactly right to me. However there is apparently quite a zone
of ambiguity between the financialized side and the commons side, and it
seems to have dragged in a lot of artists. I mean, I haven't read the new
book being touted here, but you can see the ambiguity in the introduction
(Is it X? or Y? they keep asking). They are keeping the ambiguity open
when, as you report above, it's not ambiguous at all. This is obvious even
from the outside btw.

I suspect the pump and dump is also obvious to many artists involved, they
just want to get some cash out of it! Well, a lot of art does get supported
by dodgy money, but the artists don't have to become apologists for that
money. When someone again plays up NFTs on nettime, I just want to respond.
The cash pipeline is dependent on maintaining the ambiguity, and what gets
lost is a culture that can orient people in this crazy and dangerous world.

Besides, I'm gonna say it again. I really don't think we all invented
tactical media to end up supporting "verifiable digital scarcity." The
concept is bullshit, the art is bullshit, crypto finance is bullshit and
that all should be said frankly. As you've just done. So I'm glad for the
thread!

On Tue, May 10, 2022 at 1:37 AM Jaromil  wrote:

> dear Brian,
>
> On Mon, 09 May 2022, Brian Holmes wrote:
>
> > "Why do the visual arts seem to have acquired such a central role in the
> > crypto economy?"
> >
> > Could it be that impenetrable financial technology needs an artistic
> > fetish to conquer even more territory? Thus digital art, after playing
> > with direct democracy for a few decades, has now returned to the
> > time-honored role of decorator for the elites.
>
> Interesting take. I thought instead that the elites have shown some
> money to digital artists convincing them to dance, perhaps I have a too
> high consideration of "digital artists" whatever that means.  :^)
>
> > In case it's not obvious to everyone, "verifiable digital scarcity" is
> > the exact opposite of what tactical media set out to do. Hopefully all
> > the get-rich-quick NFT-minters are going to set up commons-based
> > infrastructure with their haul, I can respect that and will support it
> > when the pump and dump is over.
>
> AFAIK they are not the same people.
>
> Those who may keep investing in activist initiatives and commons-based
> infrastructure are in other camps than NFT/web3/ethereum, a context
> which after initial (2013) investments by goldmans and other global
> banks have moved forward to play the game we see televised today, this
> is the crypto finance overly present in trade shows and now even art
> debates, cashing on the crypto on-boarding of get-rich-quick idiots
> worldwide.
>
> I believe the "crypto commons" movement right now has a clear
> interpretation of how tactical is a pump-and-dump and will stay
> underground and far from gigs pumped by the eth/web3 camp.
> What I call the crypto-commons movement will be also attacked from all
> mainstream sides, while the leftover cold-war assets jumping back on
> their seats nowadays are tempted to say we are all sons of a Putain
>
> IMHO the dump of eth is approaching as its prophet has decreted that
> layer 2 (upcoming eth2 also called "The Merge") should bring down
> transaction prices to $0.05.
>
> https://www.forbesindia.com/article/crypto-made-easy/vitalik-buterin-says-transaction-fees-need-to-reduce-to-5-cents-to-remain-acceptable/75941/1
> the next target for this sexy tech may well low-income financial areas
>
> here my assessment five months ago
> https://twitter.com/jaromil/status/1473946713681543173
> as of 1st Jan 2022 the price for 1 year domain registration was at 640USD
> a bit of math:
> market value of eth: 4000
> low cost of "web2" new domains: 10
> cost of a "web3" .eth domain: 640
> euclides: 640:4000=10:x
> x=62.5 is the "use value" of eth against its market value.
>
> p.s. for the curious techies who like to play with web3 no need to pay
> money to these sociopaths we have a free-for-all testnet on
> https://fabchain.net still in the process of getting stable so you may
> see the faucet is down now then try later.
>
>
>
> ciao
>
>
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Re: NEW BOOK! Surfing with Satoshi - Art, Blockchain and NFTs by Domenico Quaranta

[Brian Holmes]

"Why do the visual arts seem to have acquired such a central role in the
crypto economy?"

Could it be that impenetrable financial technology needs an artistic fetish
to conquer even more territory? Thus digital art, after playing with direct
democracy for a few decades, has now returned to the time-honored role of
decorator for the elites.

In case it's not obvious to everyone, "verifiable digital scarcity" is the
exact opposite of what tactical media set out to do. Hopefully all the
get-rich-quick NFT-minters are going to set up commons-based infrastructure
with their haul, I can respect that and will support it when the pump and
dump is over.

best, BH

On Mon, May 9, 2022 at 8:08 AM Marcela Okretič  wrote:

> Dear friends,
>
>
>
> we are very happy to announce the launch of the English translation of 
> Domenico
> Quaranta's book:
>
>
>
> *Surfing with Satoshi*
>
> *Art, Blockchain and NFTs*
>
> aksioma.org/surfing.with.satoshi
> 
>
>
>
> Release date: 25 May 2022
>
>
>
> *PREVIEW *
>
>
>
> Limited edition of 300 copies
>
> *PREORDER **HERE ! *
>
> *Free shipping for pre-orders until 25 May 2022*
>
>
>
>
>
> The craze for Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) that erupted in early 2021 thrust
> the art world into the debate on the blockchain, the decentralised public
> ledger that holds these tokens, as well as cryptocurrencies, and promises
> to make “verifiable digital scarcity” a reality. Born out of the 2008
> financial crisis and seen by many as the cornerstone of a new, more
> private, more secure Web3, the blockchain has changed the global economy
> and is now reshaping the digital environment in which art is increasingly
> being created, distributed and exchanged.
>
>
>
> Written by art critic and curator *Domenico Quaranta* amidst an explosion
> of technological hype and a speculative frenzy, and originally published in
> Italian by Postmedia Books, *Surfing with Satoshi *sets the promise of
> the NFT market in a historical context, investigating the technologies it
> is based on, the role of certificates and contracts in contemporary art,
> and the evolution of the media art market over the last thirty years.
>
>
>
> Riding the wave of the ongoing debate, the book tackles a series of as yet
> open questions, including:
>
>
>- What does art have to do with the blockchain?
>- Does it make sense to talk about “Crypto Art”, and if so what can be
>said to define it, apart from the way it is traded?
>- Is speculation the be-all and end-all of this trend?
>- How on earth can an infinitely reproducible digital file be deemed
>“unique”?
>- Will the blockchain’s promise of disintermediation destroy the art
>world as we know it?
>- How is the art world reacting to the situation?
>- Are NFTs an opportunity for artists or a scam perpetrated against
>them?
>- Who are the collectors willing to pay millions for a certificate of
>authenticity? Why are they doing it?
>- Why do the visual arts seem to have acquired such a central role in
>the crypto economy?
>
>
>
>
>
> Author: Domenico Quaranta
>
> Editor: Janez Fakin Janša
>
> Translator: Anna Carruthers
>
> Design and layout: Federico Antonini, Alessio D'Ellena
>
> Format: 10.5 x 16.7 cm
>
> Pages: 376
>
> Colour and B/W images
>
> Language: EN
>
>
>
> ISBN: 978-961-7173-12-3
>
>
>
>
>
> *Published by:*
>
> Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana
>
> Represented by: Marcela Okretič
>
> www.aksioma.org
>
> aksi...@aksioma.org
>
>
>
>
>
> *Supported by:*
>
> The Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, the City of Ljubljana
> #  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
> #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
> #  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
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Re: Quick notes about the French context

[Brian Holmes]

This is, again, great to hear, especially the part that people are
realizing that there is a way out of the trap that you describe very well,
Frederic. I remember being in France when the "barrage republicain" or
"democracy wall" first lured everyone into basically giving up their
democracy in order to hold back one of the features of democratic
capitalism, namely the fascist lurch to authoritarianism, nationalism and
racism. I assumed this dead end was still the ruling paradigm - and it
objectively still is, from what I gather - but if there's now a possibility
of doing something different, it's urgent, whew.

I was interested in Melenchon when he first came on the scene, but when I
heard him speak in his communist incarnation it was, like, very, very
disappointing. It was the old populist-nationalist-industrialist rhetoric
coming from a very talented orator. Things appear to have changed with La
France Insoumise, so how does that work? I mean, how is the alliance
configured and what are its lines of flight, if you will? How does La
France Insoumise deal with ecology and racism, given that these were
communist blind spots for such a long time? It would be totally interesting
to know more, from anyone on the list btw.

thanks, Brian

On Wed, May 4, 2022 at 10:42 AM Frédéric Neyrat  wrote:

> 1) "A left majority": it's a possibility at least, because Macron's party
> is not that strong and going through difficult alliances; the Rassemblement
> National (Lepen/ far right) might be seen as unable to really challenge
> Macronism and for this reason the left alliance might be seen as a real
> political alternative: people in the US and elsewhere do not really know,
> maybe, how Macron is hated, and for legitimate reasons.
>
> The political scheme is the following:
> - Lepen = fascist State based on neoliberalism;
> - Macron = neoliberalism using fascist methods
>
> Mélanchon might be seen as the only option to avoid the
> Macron-Lepen tandem, a tandem that we get stuck with since Pinochet (either
> a  fascist State based on neoliberalism,
> or neoliberalism using fascist methods).
>
> 2) What is "interesting" in the current situation is that all the
> hypocrite people who voted for Macron for the second round of the
> French presidential election to "faire barrage à l'extrême-droite/to block
> the far-right," but who have not done what would have been the only
> efficient way to do so during the first round, i.e. having voted for
> Mélanchon, are now compelled to acknowledge that they are not leftists any
> longer, but rightist. I mean: the fact of the leftist alliance produces a
> clarification of the political landscape.
>
> 3) Does it mean that Mélanchon is my cup of tea? No: he comes from the
> Socialist Party, he is still someone who struggles with understanding that
> imperialism is not anylonger a US privilege, he said stupid things about
> Syria, etc. But I never saw anyone else able to evolve in the good
> direction as he did (about feminism for instance, and about ecology).
>
> 4) An anecdote: on May 19, 2021, a day of infamy, the cops demonstrated in
> front of the French National Assembly, against the judicial institution,
> accompanied by the Minister of the Interior and the leaders of the
> Socialist, Communist, and Europe Ecology-Les Verts parties. The only party
> that was not present was the one of Mélanchon. Only for that, glory be to
> him.
>
> FN
>
>
> On Wed, May 4, 2022 at 9:49 AM  wrote:
>
>> What are the odds of a left majority parliament in France?
>>
>>
>> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/04/french-socialist-party-agrees-alliance-with-far-left-for-june-elections
>>
>> On Wed, 4 May 2022 at 02:26, Brian Holmes 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> That's brilliant Frederic. I have not followed French politics for years
>>> and I am glad to hear what you say!
>>> Here, maybe I am missing it, but it seems there is no parallel.
>>> Tell more about it, what you think are the strong points.
>>>
>>> On Tue, May 3, 2022 at 3:19 PM Frédéric Neyrat 
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> dear Brian,
>>>>
>>>> "Archaic communism" is certainly a wrong way to speak about Mélanchon:
>>>> I mean, it's certainly what Macron thinks, what all the persons who used to
>>>> vote for the "Parti Socialiste" (sic) in order to set up a neolibreal
>>>> society think, what many former leftists in Multitudes think (some
>>>> renegades, to use Badiou's concept), but to call "archaic communist" an
>>>> anti-nuclear Party promoting one of t

Re: Anne Applebaum

[Brian Holmes]

That's brilliant Frederic. I have not followed French politics for years
and I am glad to hear what you say!
Here, maybe I am missing it, but it seems there is no parallel.
Tell more about it, what you think are the strong points.

On Tue, May 3, 2022 at 3:19 PM Frédéric Neyrat  wrote:

>
> dear Brian,
>
> "Archaic communism" is certainly a wrong way to speak about Mélanchon: I
> mean, it's certainly what Macron thinks, what all the persons who used to
> vote for the "Parti Socialiste" (sic) in order to set up a neolibreal
> society think, what many former leftists in Multitudes think (some
> renegades, to use Badiou's concept), but to call "archaic communist" an
> anti-nuclear Party promoting one of the most daring ecological programs
> that exists nowadays is weird, to say the least. That being said, there are
> many problems in La France Insoumise, but Mélanchon was able to evolve in
> so many good ways that, well, what do you want? And it seems that a leftist
> coalition is possible these days for the next elections. That's not bad I
> think. That's something al least.
>
> In solidarity,
>
> Frédéric
> ______
> 
>
>
> On Tue, May 3, 2022 at 3:08 PM Brian Holmes 
> wrote:
>
>> I think this debate is totally interesting, and I certainly would be
>> against screening articles for political correctness! The latter can only
>> be achieved by debate and real understanding.
>>
>> What's characteristic about this moment is that established political
>> positions have collapsed, including that of the socialist Left whose
>> blindspot has always been communist authoritarianism, whether historical in
>> the case of the USSR or extant in the Chinese case. This could be an
>> important chance for everyone to learn something new, and crucially, to
>> come up with new policies. But it isn't happening, not yet anyway. Instead
>> we have a "fog of partisanship" in which center left, center right and far
>> left all rehash their worldviews, even as the old authoritarian demons
>> reassert themselves and the new challenges of climate change start getting
>> serious. The victor of the ideological struggle, for the moment, is the
>> emergent national-populist right, whose core program of deglobalization and
>> re-shoring is buried under culture wars and the thrill of polarization. We
>> may soon get the chance to see what that buried agenda gets turned into in
>> the USA, where the culture-war rhetoric appears primed to score major
>> electoral victories.
>>
>> Under these conditions it becomes harder to categorize and label
>> individual positions. As in the case of Applebaum, valuable concepts and
>> assessments are mixed with confusion and self-justification. You have to
>> simultaneously identify the true parts AND remember the enormous mistakes
>> that these individuals have made, as well as the horrors perpetrated within
>> policy networks that they still support. It is so easy for an old Cold
>> Warrior to talk about the cities bombed during WWII, and still easier to
>> just forget Fallajuh in Iraq, where the Americans, acting in a rebooted
>> Cold War mode, committed one of the most murderous acts in human history.
>> To think there is no danger of another Fallujah is, imho, as naive as to
>> think that Russia should not be confronted today.
>>
>> The article that Michael Benson sent on Applebaum continually makes the
>> point that she is unable to ascribe any fault to her own side for
>> generating the fascistic national-populism that so many of her old friends
>> now embrace. Perhaps the author is keenly aware that the center left is, if
>> anything, worse on that score. Global neoliberalism and the ardent belief
>> that borderless commerce would soothe the slumbering authoritarian beast
>> were the creations of the center-left in the Clinton-Blair-Schroeder years.
>> Not only did that fail spectacularly with Russia and China, it also failed
>> with the US, British, French and perhaps other working classes, leaving
>> them desperate on both the economic and cultural levels, and therefore open
>> to all kinds of opportunistic rhetoric.
>>
>> I was certain that capitalist globalization would ruin national systems
>> of solidarity, spark a populist backlash and supercharge climate change, so
>> I opposed it. Now in the US, neither the center nor the far left can even
>> talk about political economy in any coherent way - the center because it
>> can't admit abysmal failure, and the socialist left, because it has
>> accepted its role in the culture war, which is to c

Re: Further on Greg Yugin and Russian facism

[Brian Holmes]

On Mon, Apr 4, 2022, 12:53 Michael Benson wrote:

>
> Anyone doubting the truth of Yugin's allegation that Putinism is directly
> comparable to the German Nazism or Spanish and Italian fascisms of the
> 1930's ...
>

Thank you Michael, I don't doubt it but the editorial from RIA Novosti is
particularly brutal and reveals yet another element that has been thrown in
the historical cement mixer, namely decolonization. Thus the great
struggles of the twentieth century are stripped of their meaning and
enrolled in the ideological message machine.

The use of the religious term lustration (ritual cleansing and
purification) apparently refers to what they have done in Bucha, etc. But
it also points to the centrality of the Orthodox Church, which may be a far
more effective pillar of population management than the mythical constructs
of the Nazis.

Currently all this horror is funded by global energy consumerism. And the
lack of action to stop such funding makes it appear that European
governments do not see or cannot act on the totalitarian nature of the
threat, which demands some sacrifice from citizens. This fear of economic
disruption is absurd. If the war continues unopposed, the global facts on
the ground will include an unprecedented refugee crisis, significant
starvation among people in poor countries and a gradual hollowing-out and
replacement of the current monetary order, or in other words, disruption of
a degree surpassing anything since WWII. Given the preview, do we really
want to see a world system centered on and governed by Russia and China?

The serious question is how far can an active totalitarianism go before
world war begins in earnest. I don't think much further. The Russians have
engaged a whole-of-society strategy. To avoid both defeat, and a nuclear
war that would be worse than defeat, democracies would need to mobilize
their citizens in a deliberate project including direct military moves
alongside effective economic ones, definitely involving sacrifice
from individuals and corporations. This is as yet unimaginable, but unless
the Russian offensive halts and a retreat to the Donbas is confirmed, I
think we will begin to see efforts toward such a mobilization very soon.
How it plays out among civil societies will then become a central issue.

Thoughtfully yours, Brian




might want to look at the bloodcurdling editorial "What Should Russia do
> with Ukraine" by Timofey Sergeytsev published today by RIA Novosti:
>
> https://cryptodrftng.substack.com/p/day-40-what-russia-should-do-with
>
> The above link is to a translation with commentary at the top; the
> original is here:
>
> https://ria.ru/20220403/ukraina-1781469605.html
>
> But fasten your seatbelts. (RIA Novosti of course being the Russian state
> media service that also inadvertently published that triumphant "mission
> accomplished" piece by Petr Akopov on February 28th, the one clearly
> written before the invasion of Ukraine and anticipating a swift victory.
> https://mil.in.ua/en/news/brave-new-world-of-putin-an-article-by-the-propaganda-publication-ria-novosti-which-was-to-be-published-after-the-occupation-of-ukraine/.
> )
>
> A couple things regarding the Sergeytsev piece, which I couldn't simply
> cut-and-paste into Nettime as it calls to mind certain ultranationalist
> texts published in the ex-Yugoslav space in the 1990's. But some key points:
>
> 1) "Most likely" the majority of Ukrainians have been "Nazified."
> "Technically" they can't be "directly punished as war criminals," but they
> require "reeducation" and their state must be destroyed. A "total
> lustration" must be carried out.
> 2) After the government and military are "liquidated," this
> "reeducation... achieved by ideological supression" will take no less than
> a generation to complete.
> 3) The name "Ukraine" cannot be retained to signify a successfully
> "denazified" state entity on the territory that we now call Ukraine.
> "Denazification" is synonymous with "de-Ukrainization." Ukraine as such is
> an "artificial, anti-Russian construction, which has no civilizational
> content of its own." Accordingly it must be erased.
> 4) The "Banderite element" [read Ukrainian right-wing nationalists] is a
> "disguise for the European project of a Nazi Ukraine, so the deNazification
> of Ukraine is also its inevitable deEuropeanization."
> 5) An astonishing conclusion is offered concerning this new deracinated
> entity now under the complete control of Moscow and with its name and
> identity erased: the "deNazification of Ukraine is at the same time its
> decolonization."
>
> As I said, bloodcurdling — but published not by some fringe publication,
> but one of Russia's largest and most prestigious news sites, and certainly
> underlining the truth of some of Yugin's assertions.
>
> Best,
> Michael
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, 4 Apr 2022 at 02:57,  wrote:
>
>> Send nettime-l mailing list submissions to
>> nettime-l@mail.kein.org
>>
>> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the 

Historian Jane Burbank on Eurasianism

[Brian Holmes]

The Grand Theory Driving Putin to War

March 22, 2022
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/22/opinion/russia-ukraine-putin-eurasianism.html


President Vladimir Putin’s bloody assault on Ukraine, nearly a month in,
still seems inexplicable. Rockets raining down on apartment buildings and
fleeing families are now Russia’s face to the world. What could induce
Russia to take such a fateful step, effectively electing to become a pariah
state?

Efforts to understand the invasion tend to fall into two broad schools of
thought. The first focuses on Mr. Putin himself — his state of mind, his
understanding of history or his K.G.B. past. The second invokes
developments external to Russia, chiefly NATO’s eastward expansion after
the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, as the underlying source of the
conflict.

But to understand the war in Ukraine, we must go beyond the political
projects of Western leaders and Mr. Putin’s psyche. The ardor and content
of Mr. Putin’s declarations are not new or unique to him. Since the 1990s,
plans to reunite Ukraine and other post-Soviet states into a
transcontinental superpower have been brewing in Russia. A revitalized
theory of Eurasian empire informs Mr. Putin’s every move.

The end of the Soviet Union disoriented Russia’s elites, stripping away
their special status in a huge Communist empire. What was to be done? For
some, the answer was just to make money, the capitalist way. In the wild
years after 1991, many were able to amass enormous fortunes in cahoots with
an indulgent regime. But for others who had set their goals in Soviet
conditions, wealth and a vibrant consumer economy were not enough.
Post-imperial egos felt the loss of Russia’s status and significance keenly.

As Communism lost its élan, intellectuals searched for a different
principle on which the Russian state could be organized. Their explorations
took shape briefly in the formation of political parties, including rabidly
nationalist, antisemitic movements, and with more lasting effect in the
revival of religion as a foundation for collective life. But as the state
ran roughshod over democratic politics in the 1990s, new interpretations of
Russia’s essence took hold, offering solace and hope to people who strove
to recover their country’s prestige in the world.

One of the most alluring concepts was Eurasianism. Emerging from the
collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917, this idea posited Russia as a
Eurasian polity formed by a deep history of cultural exchanges among people
of Turkic, Slavic, Mongol and other Asian origins. In 1920, the linguist
Nikolai Trubetzkoy — one of several Russian émigré intellectuals who
developed the concept — published “Europe and Humanity,” a trenchant
critique of Western colonialism and Eurocentrism. He called on Russian
intellectuals to free themselves from their fixation on Europe and to build
on the “legacy of Chinggis Khan” to create a great continent-spanning
Russian-Eurasian state.

Trubetzkoy’s Eurasianism was a recipe for imperial recovery, without
Communism — a harmful Western import, in his view. Instead, Trubetzkoy
emphasized the ability of a reinvigorated Russian Orthodoxy to provide
cohesion across Eurasia, with solicitous care for believers in the many
other faiths practiced in this enormous region.

Suppressed for decades in the Soviet Union, Eurasianism survived in the
underground and burst into public awareness during the perestroika period
of the late 1980s. Lev Gumilyov, an eccentric geographer who had spent 13
years in Soviet prisons and forced-labor camps, emerged as an acclaimed
guru of the Eurasian revival in the 1980s. Mr. Gumilyov emphasized ethnic
diversity as a driver of global history. According to his concept of
“ethnogenesis,” an ethnic group could, under the influence of a charismatic
leader, develop into a “super-ethnos” — a power spread over a huge
geographical area that would clash with other expanding ethnic units.

Mr. Gumilyov’s theories appealed to many people making their way through
the chaotic 1990s. But Eurasianism was injected directly into the
bloodstream of Russian power in a variant developed by the self-styled
philosopher Aleksandr Dugin. After unsuccessful interventions in
post-Soviet party politics, Mr. Dugin focused on developing his influence
where it counted — with the military and policymakers. With the publication
in 1997 of his 600-page textbook, loftily titled “The Foundations of
Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia,” Eurasianism moved to the
center of strategists’ political imagination.

In Mr. Dugin’s adjustment of Eurasianism to present conditions, Russia had
a new opponent — no longer just Europe, but the whole of the “Atlantic”
world led by the United States. And his Eurasianism was not anti-imperial
but the opposite: Russia had always been an empire, Russian people were
“imperial people,” and after the crippling 1990s sellout to the “eternal
enemy,” Russia could revive in the next phase of global combat and become a

Re: Beyond the tactical in media - new temporal scales for the war in Ukraine

[Brian Holmes]

Thanks Nancy! I will take your recommendation.

The Investigative Aesthetics book has a lot to do with the 'public truth'
issues that David Garcia and myself are concerned about.

I think the Ukraine invasion and the larger constellation of events around
it have added two crucial points, maybe they already figure in the book or
maybe not:

First, social media and the "firehose of information" mentioned by Prem
Chandavarkar are not going away, nor is social media a uniformly bad thing.
The point, though, is that democracy is failing under its pressures. The
failure has been obvious in the US since 2015-16, when Russian information
war techniques exacerbated existing divides to produce a situation of
extreme polarization. It's not all down to Russia, but their targeted
trolling along with the Cambridge Analytica campaigns showed how the
psycho-social analysis of a national population can reveal exploitable
vulnerabilities. Such interventions have already affected many countries.
In his book, The Road to Unfreedom, Timothy Snyder gives a very good
philosophical read of all this. War is now a "whole of society" effort and
the Western societies were almost decisively weakened by the Russian
information war over the last seven or eight years (just imagine if Trump
were president now...). But it's not only about the Ukraine war: civil
society is prey to manipulation by any powerful actor mobilizing the
requisite technical and psychological knowledge, as the climate change
denialists have shown. I think what's needed in the cultural and activist
worlds are communities of research that can "establish a social contract
that includes all the participants in this assemblage of truth production
and dissemination" - and those are the perfect words for it. The aim is to
help create a new ethos of civil society for the dangerous years ahead.

Second, the Ukrainians have brought an almost forgotten aspect of politics
back to the fore, namely values. Instead of the usual consumer routine of
critique, complain and collapse into depression, they've stood up to fight
for their freedoms, their society and their state. Truth is not just facts,
because facts alone can't distinguish between a "special military
operation" and a brutal, unjustified invasion. Truth results from a value
orientation applied to facts. Indeed, the "facts" themselves are forged by
the application of specific values - observability, objectivity and
universality are the chief ones in Western societies. But those values are
too limited in nature to serve as guides for action. Information war is
conducted on facts, but the real weapon is values. In cultural and activist
circles, we often avoid the discussion of values altogether, or we
foreground very limited sectoral values that can't stand up to pushback
from the mainstream media, or even less, from the corporate state. But
that's where the actual struggle is. The real shock for old dinosaur
"tactical media" geeks is one's own brand-new admiration for people who are
fighting for their democracy and their state. And it's worth noting that
this is not the first time they have fought for it: because the Maidan
protests back in 2013-14 already effected crucial changes in both Ukrainian
civil society and the Ukrainian state, whose positive results have been on
display throughout the conflict. Personally I never bought into the tactics
vs strategy division. In the anti-globalization movement, I wanted to help
change the transnational state - not "from the top down" but from my real
position in civil society. You can't get a new, more constructive and more
shareable ethos without an examination and renewal of values. Communities
of "truth production and dissemination" are the right places to start.

Anyway I look forward to reading the book, thanks again,

Brian



On Mon, Mar 21, 2022 at 1:50 PM Nancy Mauro-Flude  wrote:

> Hi
>
> Adding to the convergence of multiple perspectives in regard to Eric's
> point on "...how to engage these conditions and dynamics – right now...a
> conscious and critical articulation of this problem can do is help us
> formulate better possible engagements that transcend this temporal logic
> of immediacy."
>
> I suggest 'Investigative Aesthetics: Conflicts and Commons in the
> Politics of Truth' (2021) Matthew Fuller and Eyal Weizman build upon the
> tenets of tactical media to provide a current episteme for how a
> "process of investigation might itself establish a social contract that
> includes all the participants in this assemblage of truth production and
> dissemination...". Especially when "the communicative situation
> resembles a civil war as much as a public sphere, the production of
> facts can catalyse social production: the production of the most
> precious meta-political condition, that the reality around them in which
> they are formed. …Facts are indeed produced in conjunction with powers,
> those of capacities of sensing and sense-making, but also of politics."
>
> 

The American theory of hybrid war

[Brian Holmes]

The American theory was produced after the 2005 Isreal-Lebanon war which
resulted in the Israelis finally exiting the South of Lebanon. Origin of
the concept is a guy named Hoffmann, 2007 (bit.ly/3MPtEVc). This is
distinct from the Russian concept of hybrid war, it's not about
information. Instead the model is a situation where irregular forces on the
ground have a structural partner in conventional state forces using all
levers except direct military intervention. In the Israel-Lebanon war, the
irregular forces were Hezbollah and the conventional state was Iran. In the
current conflict, you get it.

It's amazing how the Americans/Nato have hewn to their doctrine. In Lebanon
they were afraid of it. Now they are wielding it. They have only the
Ukrainians to thank for its success so far. Which might be reaching its
limits.

I'm curious if people in Europe want to ratchet up? In the US, as far as I
can tell, the public wants intervention. The leaders, not so much.

The Russians after a period of dispute finally settled the theoretical
issue, placing net-centric or information warfare in the older category of
"active measures," aka political warfare. Americans came to the same
conclusion. After the infowar, you go all in.

Benson's question, When did this war begin? is profound. And the question,
When's it going to end? will likely haunt us for a long time.
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Re: What is Eurasianism?

[Brian Holmes]

On Sat, Mar 12, 2022 dr sm wrote:

> Dugin outlines Eurasianismin in quite a few places; see his Fourth
> Political Theory. Can't say I grok all of it (there's a learning curve),
> but this perspective is linked to what Dugin terms a special kind of
> "Russian truth" and his ideas on culture.
>

Whew, thanks for sending the video. Yeah, what a learning curve. Through
total intellectual laziness I ignored the Russia issue for the last 10
years, never understood EuroMaidan etc. Now it feels spooky indeed to watch
Dugin in black and white video, speaking in "white Sweden" about his old
friend Alain de Benoist and the European New Right of the 90's... The video
is really worth watching. It lays bare a very old argument about the
emptiness of modern liberal individualism, going back to Heidegger, but
also forward to the current war. I'd say this Fourth Political Theory is
only an early salvo in the new critique of liberalism, mainly because of
the entropic or chaotic trends that the US has brought upon itself. To be
clear: Washington can no longer keep the lid on its own can of worms, the
contradictions of its own mode of development. Upon awakening this morning
I was not surprised to see that the EU leaders had gathered in some pompous
war room in Versailles to proclaim their remilitarization. The question is
whether they can offer a way forward, or just defence of the fortress.

A friend sent me an article a couple of days ago, dismissing Dugin as, yes,
a household name in Russia, but not the mastermind of Putin's war (
bit.ly/3CAZZKI). Well, what do they think philosophers do, and what do they
think hegemony, in the cultural sense, is made of? It's like dismissing
Francis Fukuyama because he wasn't in Bush's situation room during the
first Gulf War (Fukuyama's initial article on the End of History was
published right on time in '89 btw, and of course the Gulf War didn't
happen anyway, as another of our Great Postmodern Thinkers pointed out). I
would appreciate more insight into Dugin (both the geopolitical philosopher
and the theorist of information war), and into Eurasianism generally. I am
at the bottom of the curve...

Modern liberal individualism and its geo-economics are in fact a dead end,
at least if the scientists are right about climate change. I think there is
another challenge to liberal edifice growing out of the meeting of the
latest ecological science and traditional ecological knowledge combined. I
am not aware of any philosophy that takes this to the geopolitical arena,
but I am probably just ignorant. I mean, there's lots of analysis of the
coming collapse - especially from the militaries - but a philosophy of the
future? A viable future? Mind you, I don't think it has to be anti-liberal,
it doesn't have to be "Destruktion" (the Heideggerean word that got
transmuted into deconstruction). Ecology and earth system science evolved
out of and beyond the previous determinism and instrumental rationality.
Philosophy needs to follow, and at some point, to lead. Again I would love
to hear peoples' ideas and references.

best, Brian
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What is Eurasianism?

[Brian Holmes]

g. It takes the form of an economic
juggernaut, a political Rubik's cube and an ecological nightmare all at
once. What you're trying not to think about are the wildly multiple, and so
far, uniformly ill-conceived versions of Eurasianism.

Brian Holmes
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Re: The War to come ...

[Brian Holmes]

semble, more and more, that found in cities of the south.
> To offer a personal and anecdotal example: I lived in Philadelphia in the
> 1980’s and travelled often to Manhattan. I was struck by how the island had
> so many large buildings, but the spatial division of commerce at the street
> level was contrastingly fine-grained, with small stores dominating. This
> bred a complex relationship between street and building, leading to a
> dynamic street life. Small stores tend to be anchored by personalities,
> often eccentric, and local residents often developed their own relationship
> with those personalities.  Jane Jacobs writes about how a local hardware
> store became a place where she could leave her key so that a visitor who
> arrived in New York when she was away at work could collect the key and
> enter the home.  This has changed. Now many small storefronts have been
> consolidated and taken over by global brands. Where there were four small
> store fronts, there is one large store, a global brand with one entrance
> and three large displays.  Entering, one interfaces with the brand rather
> than a personality one recognises. The vibrancy of street life is reduced.
> The dynamic shaping the street has changed beyond the changed relationship
> between inside and outside. Looking at the people one sees on the street,
> one senses that middle class residents are displaced, the middle and
> working classes are there only as a floating population that offers its
> labour during working hours, and residences are increasingly reserved for
> the affluent. Where lower income neighbourhoods survive, they are
> increasingly ghettoised. Real estate values are driving this shift of
> gentrification of the inner city, especially given that these values are
> driven by global speculation rather than local investment, and markets are
> shaped by a speculative logic based on repackaging debt that grows more and
> more distant from the real world micro-economy of people and
> neighbourhoods. This distance reaches a point where its logic becomes
> self-referential: I heard a lecture by Saskia Sassen of Columbia University
> where she showed that to earn profit from a real estate asset, it is no
> longer necessary that the asset be used. How all this will play out in the
> long run, I do not know, but I sense the history of hegemony cannot
> continue to be what it has been.
>
> A revival of grassroots mobilisation is needed, but the hope of social
> media fuelling this mobilisation has been dispelled by the short life of
> movements like Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring. Social media is
> distorted by the business logic of its creators, is dependent on short
> attention spans interspersed with impulsive and nuance-free action, and is
> vulnerable to what the Rand Corporation has termed as ’the firehose of
> falsehood’. And this complicates a longer history of media in which the
> relationship between media and truth has always been problematic (see
> Walter Lippmann, Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, Neil Postman, and many
> others).  The post-truth era is not something that has suddenly burst on
> the world in recent times.
>
> I suspect that we need a new theory of mobilisation. I have some thoughts
> on this, but I have rambled on long enough, so will save that for another
> day.
>
> Cheers,
> Prem
>
>
>
>
> On 10-Mar-2022, at 10:32 AM, Brian Holmes 
> wrote:
>
> Prem, it is good to hear from you. It's obvious you have a lot to say
> about all this. I would like to hear more on some points.
>
> First I totally get it that the Pax Americana is a cover for US hegemony
> and how it has become a glaring fact. You say that to overcome it "we
> would need a frank and realistic accounting for the history of hegemony
> since World War II." I'm totally curious about that and wonder if you
> perceive a particularly strong narrative like that in India, or beyond, in
> Asia or in other transnational circuits? As I imagine you know there are
> mountains of books about that here in USA (I'm an aficionado of such
> literature) and the antiwar left has a readymade read of that history; but
> I know from traveling and speaking other languages that people on the
> receiving end of empire often understand it better than those who willingly
> or unwillingly do the giving.
>
> Could US/Western hegemony become the theme of a social movement? Well, so
> far in the US there is a big move to understand how colonialism and
> slavery shaped social relations and even the landscape. That movement is
> led by Black, Indigenous and Latinx intellectuals, and no one knows how far
> it is going to go. Having the big newspapers report which of the "founding
> fathers" of the "land of the f

Re: The War to come ...

[Brian Holmes]

Prem, it is good to hear from you. It's obvious you have a lot to say about
all this. I would like to hear more on some points.

First I totally get it that the Pax Americana is a cover for US hegemony
and how it has become a glaring fact. You say that to overcome it "we would
need a frank and realistic accounting for the history of hegemony since
World War II." I'm totally curious about that and wonder if you perceive a
particularly strong narrative like that in India, or beyond, in Asia or in
other transnational circuits? As I imagine you know there are mountains of
books about that here in USA (I'm an aficionado of such literature) and the
antiwar left has a readymade read of that history; but I know from
traveling and speaking other languages that people on the receiving end of
empire often understand it better than those who willingly or unwillingly
do the giving.

Could US/Western hegemony become the theme of a social movement? Well, so
far in the US there is a big move to understand how colonialism and slavery
shaped social relations and even the landscape. That movement is led by
Black, Indigenous and Latinx intellectuals, and no one knows how far it is
going to go. Having the big newspapers report which of the "founding
fathers" of the "land of the free" owned slaves is no small thing, a war in
itself. But what could be on the table, and isn't yet, is the understanding
of US foreign policy and economic power over the last century, what they
do, how they shape the world. I think the misuse of power by the US, since
WWII and more specifically since the Nineties, is a direct reflection and
integral part of unjust and poisonous class/race relations in the domestic
sphere. So there is a potential to go very far with that critique. However
no viewpoint of that sort makes it out into the broad public sphere, which
is structured to exclude any outside reference. So I understand your lack
of optimism.

Going further into your argument, Prem, I have a for and an against. I am
for the recognition that Nato and "the West" cannot rule anymore by edict,
there is no legitimacy for that, no one will bear it. Reading between the
lines, I sense you may be saying that great Asian or Eurasian societies
such as China, India and Russia have to be recognized as such, on a par
with Europe and separately with America, I mean as civilizations that chart
a unique course and can't be compelled by force, but instead need to engage
with each other through some kind of diplomacy. I am for that too, it's the
idea that there is no one superpower -- or rather, to some extent there
still is, and it's unjust and dangerous. In the present instance, one would
have to account for things such as the very real financial devastation
unleashed by the so-called "Asian Crisis" of 1997-98, which people in
Russia experienced as the one-two punch of the capitalist system, coming
right after the "reforms" of the early Nineties. As I recall, that crisis
wiped out all sorts of fixed-capital formation in South Korea, Russia and
Brazil especially, but it had basically no impact on the US itself, nor
particularly in Europe. There is a kind of violence, emanating from the US
but also the EU, that is real and people in the old imperial centers need
to know it, so that they can change their politics.

Here's the thing though. Should Nato really have denied entry to all those
Eastern European states that requested it? Remember that most of those
states, they had been taken over but not absorbed by the Soviet Union. They
lived for decades under significant degrees of political repression. Did
they have a valid reason to want to join Nato after 1989? Looking at the
brutality of the current war, it seems suddenly obvious to me that they did
-- and by the same token, I have suddenly become less certain of what I
always used to say, that Nato is an imperialist war machine that should be
disbanded. Russia is also an imperialist war machine, for sure (and the two
owe each other a lot). But maybe China is also an imperial war machine? And
India, maybe not yet?

Well, at this point I have no idea and would all the more like to hear your
insights, Prem.

The big question for me is how to get a rules-based international order out
of a glut of imperial war machines. It's a serious one, and since the
glorious leaders of our glorious empires aren't talking about it, we should.

warmly, Brian


On Wed, Mar 9, 2022 at 12:40 AM Prem Chandavarkar 
wrote:

> The fearful scenarios you lay out are all highly plausible, and will
> dominate till Putin is given greater options by considering a wider history
> of hegemony in which the US is highly complicit:
>
>- In 1990, shortly after the Berlin Wall had fallen, and the Soviet
>Union was beginning to disintegrate, US Secretary of State James Baker had
>a conversation with Gorbachev in which he suggested the Soviet Union should
>support German unification in return for a guarantee that NATO would not
>expand 

Re: The War to come ...

[Brian Holmes]

Patrice, you have put into words the bitter assessment of many many people.

But you should be checking the twitter status of Andrei V Kozyrev (former
Russian foreign minister) more often!

March 6: "Russian military. The Kremlin spent the last 20 years trying to
modernize its military. Much of that budget was stolen and spent on
mega-yachts in Cyprus. But as a military advisor you cannot report that to
the President. So they reported lies to him instead. Potemkin military"

https://twitter.com/andreivkozyrev/status/1500611398245634050

The fearsome Russian fighting force is a cardboard bear in the mud. The
Ukrainians are well armed, they have been training for this since 2014, and
so far they have humiliated their opponent and inflicted an historic defeat
insofar as any future military prestige goes. The Russian capacity to
intimidate Eastern Europe is plunging. They've lost a staggering quantity
of tanks and vehicles of all kinds, along with the soldiers driving them,
and they still have not established air superiority with all the
combat-support capacity that entails, to the point where analysts have
begun to wonder if they are simply incapable of coordinating and flying
complex missions:

https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html
https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/rusi-defence-systems/russian-air-force-actually-incapable-complex-air-operations

It's uncertain if they have actually used their thermo-barbaric weapons
yet, and you would think that if their fearsome hypersonic missile is not a
dud, they would have already blown up Zelensky's presidential office where
he sits at a precisely known location (the missile is supposed to arrive in
seconds). Who knows? It may be that Nato support before and during the
conflict has included communications-jamming capacities of some
hitherto-unknown sort, or maybe the armed drones the Ukrainians got from
Turkey are the only real superweapons of the war (so far, they definitely
are). In any case, the performance of the Ukrainian David against the
Russian Goliath doesn't suggest any immediate attack on the Nato
mega-Goliath (including its little fingers, the Baltic states), or even on
Moldova. As for the probability that the Nato countries will seize the
occasion to jump the nuclear tripwire by rashly launching their own massive
attack, well, their 75-year adherence to deterrence doctrine makes that
hard to imagine. I don't think Nato will make the nuclear mistake.
Concerning the other side, however, apparently anything is possible.

Nato has a lot of experience with Just Watching (remember the drawn-out
atrocities of the former Yugoslavia, where there wasn't even a nuclear
threat). I think they're gonna just watch while Russia starts
indiscriminantly dropping bombs from high up in the sky, and the whole
thing will continue to be even more horrible than it already is, until some
point at which Putin can claim to have broken the Ukrainian state (maybe
through the use of tactical nuclear weapons to make their own strategic
deterrence credible). By that point the Russians will be so weakened that
they will fall back to some arbitrary cease-fire line in Eastern Ukraine,
which they will have a hard time defending. After that a remilitarized Nato,
a remilitarized Europe and a host of other allies will use the now standard
whole-of-society methods, including every embargo imaginable, to reduce
Russia from a third-rate economic power and false military giant to a
failed state on a mammoth scale. No problem, the Chinese will manage them
for their oil and gas.

These projections are absolutely no better than yours, Patrice, but I
thought I'd try devil's advocate!

Brian


On Tue, Mar 8, 2022 at 6:21 AM patrice riemens  wrote:

> ... has already arrived .
>
> Aloha,
>
> Even though the last two posts on the list are mine, I have no intention
> to become (again) nettime's #1 poster! So this will be my last one for now.
>
> This said I still wanted to share my thoughts  - was it only to be
> relieved of them -  about 'the situation' with fellow nettimers.
>
> ExecSum: I think that war in Western Europe is now inevitable, and it will
> descend on us sooner than we all would wish for.
>
>
>
> In my mind, there are three options about when NATO will actually go to,
> or be dragged into a war against Putin's Russia.
>
> Option Zero: There will be no war. Putin will enslave Ukraine after having
> laid it to waste, annex part of it, and transform the rest in a vassal
> state, or whatever 'solution' he has in mind after achieving 'victory'.
> And 'we' in the West, will accommodate with the new situation and try to
> make the best of it, even if it won't be fun at all on many front.  And yet
> I would feel insanely optimistic if I gave it half a chance of happening -
> or even less than that.
>
> Having put his war machinery in movement, there is no turning back for
> Vladimir Putin, save a number of scenarios for his demise that 

Re: Utopia is finally over

[Brian Holmes]

On Thu, Mar 3, 2022 Richard Barbrook wrote:

> If you listen to his declaration of war speech, Putin says that he's a
> White not a Red.
>

OMG if you read that book, "Russia's 'Hybrid War'", you find out their
military/propaganda theories are based on a disgustingly conservative White
Russian exiled in Argentina, Evgeny Messner. The counter-revolution is long
and deep.
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Re: Anatomy of information warfare in the social media age

[Brian Holmes]

On Wed, Mar 2, 2022, Balazs Bodo wrote:

"I believe that western audiences are increasingly locked into a media
environment that is rapidly re-structured under the conditions of a total
information warfare. Information that circulates in this environment is at
best incomplete, at worst is the result of an unknown selection process.
The news that is saturating this environment may be inaccurate or
incomplete, but nevertheless is extremely engaging. The – deliberate or
accidental – product of this engagement is the total emotional mobilization
of western audiences in support of Ukraine. Highly consequential political
decisions are apparently taken in response to the outrage of online
population. In my opinion, this is a new development in information
warfare. So far, consent was manufactured to support geopolitical
strategies. This time it seems to be the other way around: the next step in
the geopolitical grand game is decided by the popular vote of badly
informed outrage."

Now there's a question for the collective intelligence of nettime!

It gains its urgency from the sudden turnabout of Olaf Scholz, who - after
huge demos in Germany over the weekend - suddenly announced support for
blocking SWIFT transactions, direct military aid to Ukraine and a hundred
billion euro bump to Germany's defense budget, to be followed by a
permanent rise of that budget from 1.5 to 2 percent of GDP. Is this really
the influence of social media? I'm not certain - other people could
contribute their expertise on that one - but I'm with Balazs when he says:
"First, let’s not forget, for a single moment while this war lasts, and
beyond, that this is a war, and we are living in one of its theaters."

As I see it there are four linked questions: What is information warfare?
By whom is it promulgated? Do its targets (civil societies) have agency? Or
as Balazs suggests, are they/we the unwitting victims of a social-media
machinery that maximizes outrage?

I already tried to go there with some reflections on Vladislav Surkov, one
of Putin's closest advisors and head of Russia's Ukraine policy until 2020.
But it's impossible to separate Surkov from the calculated disinformation
of his own pronouncements. So after reading Balazs I looked around and
found a (mercifully short) 2018 book on theories of information warfare
from both the American and Russian perspectives, by a guy named Olaf
Fridman, entitled "Russian 'Hybrid Warfare': Resurgence and
Politicisation." Sure, it's a bit dry, no entertainment value there. But
it's a brilliant cross-cultural history of recent military doctrines beyond
the battlefield.

Fridman analyzes the US military doctrine of Hybrid Warfare, dating back to
a 2007 essay by Frank Hoffman. According to Hoffman, hybrid warfare
involves a combination of state and non-state actors, engaging in "a range
of different modes of warfare, including conventional capabilities,
irregular tactics and formations, terrorist acts including indiscriminate
violence and coercion, and criminal disorder." These ideas were forged to
describe the relation between regular and irregular forces in Middle
Eastern insurgency and US counter-insurgency. But could they really capture
the disconcerting mix of local revolt, disguised Russian aggression and
contradictory media and diplomatic messaging that characterized the 2014
war in Ukraine's Donbas region? And what about the Russian information war
in the 2016 US elections?

Fridman shows that specifically Russian concepts of net-centric warfare,
information warfare and hybrid warfare ("gibridnaya voyna") were developed
in the 2000s in order to analyze American strategy toward the Soviet Union
and its successor, the Russian Federation, as well as the package of
civil-society strategies developed by the Otpor movement in Serbia in the
1990s and spread with US state department help throughout the post-Soviet
space by the so-called "color revolutions." For the sharpest of the Russian
theorists, Aleksandr Dugin, the phrase "network-centric warfare" is not
about the technologies of the Gulf War era "Revolution in Military Affairs"
that some might remember. Instead it is about the imposition on Russia and
the former Soviet territories of a set of civilizational norms, including
finance, entrepreneurialism, liberal political philosophy, mass media,
educational standards, scientific institutions and youth fashions. All of
these norms are conceived by the Russian theorists to exert a subversive
influence. As Dugin wrote: "‘The U.S. could not beat the U.S.S.R., neither
in a direct confrontation, nor in a direct ideological battle, nor in any
direct way of a struggle between special services ... Then the major
principle of networking strategies was employed: informal infiltration
finding weak, indeterminate, entropic elements within Soviet hierarchy. The
U.S.S.R. was defeated neither by a counter-power, nor by an anti-Soviet
organisation, but by skilfully organised, manipulated and mobilised

Re: Almost zero

[Brian Holmes]

On Sat, Feb 26, 2022 at 10:00 AM May Jayyusi  wrote:

>
> You mean to say that the USA is not a managed democracy?
>

Well, those who have read me for longer may not agree about the lack of
critical distance from this quite terrifying society, the USA. But it's a
detail and doesn't matter. I share your outrage at all the things you
mention.

I used to refer to Sheldon Wolin with his notion of managed democracy or
inverted totalitarianism, to describe the US formula of social control.
However that has broken down over the last decade, both usefullly (who
wants to be managed?) and dangerously (who wants to fall into chaos and be
taken over by a bunch of right-wing thugs?). Societies have become a lot
harder to manage over the last decade, for better and worse. So far the
fascist / authoritarian resurgence has been the big beneficiary.

I forgot about the Adam Curtis film that refers to Surkov, because Curtis
lost me at that point. There is a point at which one can no longer just
wildly critique (although probably the location of that point varies,
depending on who you are). I borrowed the title Almost Zero for the post
because of the abysmal state, not only of US society but also the European
societies that offer us such a spectacle of deep corruption and complicity.
The whole situation is dangerous now.  I think we all need to contribute to
making it better because it's getting a lot worse. 'Nuff said.

Brian


On Sat, Feb 26, 2022 at 10:00 AM May Jayyusi  wrote:

>
> You mean to say that the USA is not a managed democracy?  What is the
> whole history of slavery and it’s current shameless voter suppression  laws
> but “managing democracy”…. What were the brazen deceptions of  the American
> performance pre  both Wars against Iraq but that?  The “Tonkin incident”?
> What is the role of the corporate media but that if “managing democracy”.
> What is amazing is your lack of critical distance from your own history Abd
> how that signifies if not for you but at least for the rest of us (non
> westerners).
>
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> > On 26 Feb 2022, at 10:15 AM, nettime-l-requ...@mail.kein.org wrote:
> >
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> >
> >   1. Almost zero (Brian Holmes)
> >   2. Re: Almost zero (Keith Sanborn)
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> > Message: 1
> > Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2022 00:24:04 -0600
> > From: Brian Holmes 
> > To: nettime 
> > Subject:  Almost zero
> > Message-ID:
> >
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
> >
> > Does anyone remember Vladislav Surkov, "managed democracy," "non-linear
> > war"?
> >
> > Sure, you must, he emerged into view in the West with the Ukraine war of
> > 2014, with the disinformation and the little green men. He was an
> aesthete
> > and "political technologist," a PR guy and a reality TV fan, able in his
> > position as Putin's chief counselor to conjure up an entire induced
> > political spectrum where multiple truths and decoy dissidence became
> tools
> > in a strategic calculus of  "democratic" (or demotic, or demonic) power.
> >
> > Anyway, I sure remember him, because his transgressive postmodern
> cynicism
> > frankly struck fear in my heart, and if memory serves it was a weirdly
> > energizing affect for a whole lot of other people at the time. As Peter
> > Pomerantsev wrote in Politico way back in 2014:
> >
> > "If in the 20th century the Kremlin could only lobby through Soviet
> > sympathizers on the left, it now uses a contradictory kaleidoscope of
> > messages to build alliances with quite different groups. European
> > right-nationalists such as Hungary?s Jobbik or France?s Front National
> are
> > seduced by the anti-EU message; the far-left are brought in by tales of
> > fighting U.S. hegemony; U.S. religious conservatives are convinced by the
> > Kremlin?s stance against homosexuality. The result is an array of voices,
> > all working away at Western audiences from different angles, producing a
> > cumulati

Re: Almost zero

[Brian Holmes]

In 2014 Pomerantsev already wrote this:

"As the Kremlin faces down the West, it is indeed gambling that old
alliances like the EU and NATO mean less in the 21st century than the new
commercial ties it has established with nominally “Western” companies, such
as BP, Exxon, Mercedes, and BASF. Meanwhile, many Western countries welcome
corrupt financial flows from the post-Soviet space; it is part of their
economic models, and not one many want disturbed. So far, the Kremlin’s
gamble seems to be paying off, with financial considerations helping to
curb sanctions. Part of the rationale for fast-tracking Russia’s inclusion
into the global economy was that interconnection would be a check on
aggression. But the Kremlin has figured out that this can be flipped:
Interconnection
also means that Russia can get away with aggression."

This is a lot like what you're saying, Keith. The question I'm asking is
not just how do we critique it, but what can we actually do to stop it?
Given that the weakness and incoherence of our so-called democracies is
visibly complicit in murder?

On Sat, Feb 26, 2022 at 2:37 AM Keith Sanborn  wrote:

> An interesting perspective but as a strategy against disinformation it
> failed and it will have failed: everyone already knows Putin uses this
> model of hybrid warfare. The obsession with “information “ is precisely
> what allowed this to happen. If you know the tanks are moving in and you
> tell everyone, that doesn’t stop the tanks. I told you don’t doesn’t count
> for much once a country has been invaded.  The element of surprise is
> over-rated, it’s the element of uncertainty that created the space for
> Western self-deception that economic saber rattling wd have an effect. The
> Swift weapon has not been used because Europe needs Russian gas and needs a
> way to pay for it and for Russian sovereign debt to be repaid.
>
> Hybrid warfare is not only epistemogical. As that cynical bastard Mao
> said, show me your tanks. He shd have added drones to the list.
>
> A more effective weapon wd be an aggressive seizure of all wealth owned by
> offshore entities in Europe and North America. Then, let God sort em out,
> as the Green Berets used to say. Let people come forward from behind their
> façades of shell companies to reclaim it. That wd take years in the courts
> and the onus wd be on the wealthy and powerful to prove their rightful
> ownership, which of course wd defeat the purpose of coming forward as
> anonymity wd be lost.  Well, it’s a thought experiment anyway, rather than
> a plan of action. It probably wdn’t ever happen because Russian wealth was
> only 1% of what the Panama paper uncovered. And the people in power
> everywhere wd find themselves “exposed.”
>
> They shd have stopped Putin’s yacht from leaving German waters. That wd
> have sent a very direct message. But they didn’t because European business
> entities have too much “exposure“ in Russia, BP among them.
>
> Biden’s sanctions against Putin are toothless unless they can uncover and
> seize his hidden wealth, or burn down his palace, the one Navalny referred
> to. That wd be more interesting in its effects.
>
> I hope you are right about Ukraine’s ability to resist militarily. But a
> circle jerk over their heroic struggle will mean nothing without material
> support.
>
>
>
> On Feb 26, 2022, at 2:28 AM, Brian Holmes 
> wrote:
>
> 
> Keith, I think the publication of the intel was not conceived to deter the
> attack. It was for us and for the whole non-Russian world. The idea was to
> stop the spiral of right-wing disinformation, and to discredit it
> retrospectively. That matters because the mental destabilization that has
> been unleashed over the last ten years is profound and debilitating. It's
> epistemological warfare.
>
> When you say "the Putin clique has so much well hidden wealth they can now
> only crave power and real estate," I hear you! And it sounds like you know
> from experience.
>
> It does not look to me like the Ukrainians are going to fold. In fact I
> still don't understand the strategy. Can a country of 40 millions, with a
> large number of combat veterans, reservists and militias, be subdued by
> 200,000 foreign troops? As the generals say, tell me where this ends.
>
>
>
> On Sat, Feb 26, 2022 at 1:13 AM Keith Sanborn  wrote:
>
>> Making their intelligence public did nothing except possibly tip Putin
>> off to its sources.
>>
>> It was, in the technical register, actionable. And yet there was no
>> action: don’t provoke him by bringing in troops. Bringing in troops might
>> have been the very thing to deter him from acting though he wd have
>> ratcheted up his rants. He likely planned on acting in any case. Forewarned
>> is not

Almost zero

[Brian Holmes]

Does anyone remember Vladislav Surkov, "managed democracy," "non-linear
war"?

Sure, you must, he emerged into view in the West with the Ukraine war of
2014, with the disinformation and the little green men. He was an aesthete
and "political technologist," a PR guy and a reality TV fan, able in his
position as Putin's chief counselor to conjure up an entire induced
political spectrum where multiple truths and decoy dissidence became tools
in a strategic calculus of  "democratic" (or demotic, or demonic) power.

Anyway, I sure remember him, because his transgressive postmodern cynicism
frankly struck fear in my heart, and if memory serves it was a weirdly
energizing affect for a whole lot of other people at the time. As Peter
Pomerantsev wrote in Politico way back in 2014:

"If in the 20th century the Kremlin could only lobby through Soviet
sympathizers on the left, it now uses a contradictory kaleidoscope of
messages to build alliances with quite different groups. European
right-nationalists such as Hungary’s Jobbik or France’s Front National are
seduced by the anti-EU message; the far-left are brought in by tales of
fighting U.S. hegemony; U.S. religious conservatives are convinced by the
Kremlin’s stance against homosexuality. The result is an array of voices,
all working away at Western audiences from different angles, producing a
cumulative echo chamber of Kremlin support" (1).

Does any of this sound familiar? Maybe to the tenth power?

Some people say non-linear or hybrid warfare was a Russian response to US
information-war tactics in the era of the "color revolutions" (2). But then
the Russian twist became crude American reality in Trump's 2016 campaign.
It was the Saint Petersburg troll factories, it was Facebook and the new
media system, it was because Trump himself was a real-estate mogul, a
conduit for Russian capital flight and a reality TV guy at heart. Surkov's
name was never mentioned in the (pathetically faked) Steele Dossier, but as
the Democrats tried to save the day with their trials and their
Congressional morality plays, the post-truth pathology globalized.

That was then, this is now.

The amazing power of Surkovian social management was just on display:
Despite the advance of hundreds of thousands of troops with all requisite
equipment, most Ukrainians and Zelensky himself could not believe that war
would be unleashed.

But the sudden obsolescence of the whole doctrine was also just on display:
Because here was Putin reverting to a pure imperial power discourse, blood,
soil and boots on the ground. Feint, contradiction and duplicity have
evaporated. Conventional interstate warfare is back. Is this why Surkov was
finally pulled from his post by Putin's order in 2020? Or???

In the run-up to this war both the US and Britain tried something entirely
new for them, surely influenced by their knowledge of Surkov and associated
military doctrines. What did they do? Instead of strategically managing the
truth, they basically made their intelligence public as it came in. And the
intelligence was spot on. What a weird feeling: trustable intelligence.
Compare what happened before the Iraq War. It's nowhere near the same
circumstances, but still, positive.

Through its entanglement with anti-vaxx groups, but also because of the
political management of medical information during the pandemic, post-truth
has become a full-on social pathology. Putin has abandoned it because he
won that battle, he spread the disease for which authoritarianism and naked
power are the supposed cure. Information might be the oil of the 21st
century, but the truth, how to produce it and how to share it, how not to
fall prey to its myriad spurious avatars, that's the personal and political
question of our time.

Truth is a culture, but an almost dead one. I think it could be the basis
of a new avant-garde.


Sources

(1) https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/05/05/how-putin-is-reinventing-warfare/

(2) https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/195099/rp_121.pdf
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Utopia is finally over

[Brian Holmes]

I vividly remember driving past the shuttered customs buildings on the
Franco-Belgian border in the mid-1990s. Paris-Amsterdam had become a
freeway trip. Seven years later, colorful pieces of paper appeared in
everyone's hands: the euro. Almost simultaneously, China entered the World
Trade Organization. Anyone with historical awareness and access to live
information from around the planet could have predicted what would happen
over the middle term: the rise of inequality, the formation of a
transnational oligarchy, extreme environmental degradation, the reemergence
of far-right forces, and ultimately, geopolitical clashes leading to war.
Yet even those who did predict such things experienced a utopian period of
free international cooperation, creativity, travel, the formation of new
kinds of communities and the chance to express a new spirit that had
emerged after the end of the Cold War in 1989-92. In fact the entire
neoliberal period, with market populism at its core, saw incredible
flowerings of culture across the earth, something worth remembering and
trying to interpret.

America's useless wars in Central Asia and the Middle East (supported by
Nato in the former case) cast an excruciating light over this period, as
did the inexorable rise of CO2 in the atmosphere and the corresponding
failure to do anything about it. You'd have thought that the global
financial crisis of 2007-12 would have put an end to all this, but instead
it reinforced the oligarchies. Meanwhile, privileged people all over the
world kept the party going. I was in Mongolia, on an amazing cross-cultural
art junket in 2014, when a Polish artist agitatedly explained to me what I
was not getting: Vladimir Putin's ability to run circles around Western
governments and populations with the destabilizing techniques of what was
then called "non-linear warfare" - while at the same time engaging in the
real thing.

No one knows where the current conflict will end, if war will extend beyond
Ukraine's borders, how the crucial issue of Russian-Chinese cooperation
will play out over the coming months, whether the unified world economy
will split into rival blocs (Nato vs Shanghai Cooperation Organization), or
whether a new, even more corrupt status quo will emerge that allows the EU
to remain Russia's number 1 trading partner.  As I write, the former SPD
chancellor of Germany during the go-go years of globalization, Gerhard
Schroeder, has not yet stepped down from his position as chairman of the
board of Rosneft.

Whatever the outcomes, everyone knows a divide has been crossed, and that
the short and middle-term responses will be crucial. There's half a chance
to purge the global financial / real-estate system of highly corruptive
Russian money, and to quell the voices of those who see Putin's militarist
nationalism as the model for a virile white authoritarian resurgence across
the so-called West (I'll leave others to speculate about contrary
possibilities). Maybe a live demonstration of what risk really means will
convince politicians and populations to prepare more deliberately for
obvious and pressing future challenges. Anyway, the giddy period that so
many of us lived through ended long ago. Now, at least a decade too late, I
think that period is both formally and functionally closed for the
international system. It turns out Covid was just a prelude, or maybe an
incubator. How to forge new ideas and pick up new tools in a radically
different world?

My heart goes out to all those hit by this war.

Brian
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Re: nettime-l Digest, Vol 173, Issue 13

[Brian Holmes]

rn to the earlier postings on this
> thread that spoke about the science wars.
>
>
>
> David Garcia
>
>
>
>
>
> From: patrice riemens 
> Date: Saturday, 12 February 2022 at 08:51
> To: , David Garcia <
> d.gar...@new-tactical-research.co.uk>
> Cc: "nettim...@kein.org" 
> Subject: Re:  The Meaning of Boris Johnson
>
>
>
> Aloha,
>
>
>
> Let me (allow me to) take Brian's rejoinder as an opportunity to address
> David's and his argument in face of the (dangerous) shenanigans in 10,
> Clowning Street (-Marina Hyde, TG) ... and beyond.
>
>
>
> There is absolutely no doubt that Boris Johnson is a very 'special'
> character and political animal (Rory Stewart too, btw - but then in a
> positive sense), but as David says, his clowneries are froth while 'his
> administration is less of an outlier than it appears' - and this with
> deadly consequences.
>
>
>
> I however do differ with David where he ascribe the current
> political-ideological imbroglio to the 'return of the state' as a
> consequence of the pandemic. According to me, to put it bluntly, nothing of
> the such has happened. The state has become more impotent than ever, and it
> are the corporate forces which have and are steering the decision-making
> process, with the state as mere conveyor belt. There is no confusion there,
> and even if it appears to happen more by default than by design, it is
> still entirely deliberate.We have truly and wholesomely entered the era of
> 'govcorp' where the administrative apparatus is merely, albeit
> indispensable, exo-squeleton of global corporate governance, with, in
> accordance with the spirit of the times, 'hyper' - and hyper rich -
> individuals at the helm. Welcome to neo-feudalism.
>
>
>
> I am afraid that is such a dispensation, clowns like Boris Johnson, and
> his exceptionally 'gifted' motley crew ('Jakey' Rees-Mogg, 'Mad Nad' -ine
> Dorries, & the many such) are mere props (the extent to which they are
> conscious of it is unclear) in the tragedy which are embroiled in for quite
> a while: that of post-politics, that is a system where the powers are not
> what they look and are not located where they seem to be, and the ongoings
> take, for the people at large, every appearance of a puzzle palace. I think
> this is one of the reason for populism: desperately trying to make sense
> where it has vanished from the political scene (which has vanished too in
> the process) .
>
>
>
> & With regard to Brian's derive of the unhappy pranksters towards a
> military expedient: he is completely right, while at the same time, to
> parakeet Jean Marie Le Pen's totally infame dismissal of the Shoah as a
> footnote, it is, 'ontologically speaking', a mere side-show. Even though,
> with a war in Europe at our doorstep, we might very well die in it for
> real.
>
>
>
> Yeah, it's a fine mess indeed.
>
>
>
> Cheers all the same , and happy week-end
>
>
>
>
>
> On 02/11/2022 9:17 PM Brian Holmes  wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> David, your second paragraph sums up a really complex situation in a few
> words, thank you.
>
>
>
> It's fairly easy to understand how right-wing populists raise the anger of
> the people. They do it with fear, born largely of their own mismanagement.
> Fear of the pandemic, of economic disruption, of war, of climate change -
> and maybe most of all, fear of the "return of the state" that's
> more-or-less required by all that. But you put your finger on something
> else, which is that these populist (and yet usually upper class)
> politicians have to go on *pretending* to believe in their old conservative
> lines about lowering taxes and shrinking government. Where will the
> pretence lead them? Right now BoJo is trying to save his political ass by
> exploiting the fear of war, and more, the nationalist pride of militarism -
> which would be the logical supplement to the old conservative lines. In
> fact he's pretty much openly claiming a military role for post-Brexit
> "Global Britain."
>
>
>
> How do you see this latest development? Is it going to work? Could
> warmongering nationalism be the new rhetorical resource of the right,
> beyond Johnson? Or is this just his last desperate gambit on the way out?
>
>
>
> From my viewpoint it is sickening to see this kind of political theater
> played in the face of genuinely dangerous situations.
>
>
>
>
> best, Brian
>
>
>
> Rory Stuart, one of the old-style Tories purged by Johnson and Cummings
> has created a fabulous taxonomy to illustrate Johnson?s gifts ?as the most
> accomplished liar in British public life ?perhaps the best liar ever t

Re: The Meaning of Boris Johnson

[Brian Holmes]

reignty over corporate hubris. This even
> extends to legislating time allowed to kids for gaming not to mention
> tinkering with the education policy as Xi has decided that the tech and
> finance sectors are sucking too many talented graduates away from more
> tangible forms of manufacturing.
>
>
>
> Some European/western political actors are looking with envy at the
> perceived effectiveness of the Chinese (and other proactive Sth East Asian
> states) in their forthright nation-wide actions in containing Covid. The
> likelihood is that this is just a foretaste of an increasingly loud debate
> over the limits and role state power will play as the climate crunch really
> starts to bite. This is when we will return to the earlier postings on this
> thread that spoke about the science wars.
>
>
>
> David Garcia
>
>
>
>
>
> *From: *patrice riemens 
> *Date: *Saturday, 12 February 2022 at 08:51
> *To: *, David Garcia <
> d.gar...@new-tactical-research.co.uk>
> *Cc: *"nettim...@kein.org" 
> *Subject: *Re:  The Meaning of Boris Johnson
>
>
>
> Aloha,
>
>
>
> Let me (allow me to) take Brian's rejoinder as an opportunity to address
> David's and his argument in face of the (dangerous) shenanigans in 10,
> Clowning Street (-Marina Hyde, TG) ... and beyond.
>
>
>
> There is absolutely no doubt that Boris Johnson is a very 'special'
> character and political animal (Rory Stewart too, btw - but then in a
> positive sense), but as David says, his clowneries are froth while 'his
> administration is less of an outlier than it appears' - and this with
> deadly consequences.
>
>
>
> I however do differ with David where he ascribe the current
> political-ideological imbroglio to the 'return of the state' as a
> consequence of the pandemic. According to me, to put it bluntly, nothing of
> the such has happened. The state has become more impotent than ever, and it
> are the corporate forces which have and are steering the decision-making
> process, with the state as mere conveyor belt. There is no confusion there,
> and even if it appears to happen more by default than by design, it is
> still entirely deliberate.We have truly and wholesomely entered the era of
> 'govcorp' where the administrative apparatus is merely, albeit
> indispensable, exo-squeleton of global corporate governance, with, in
> accordance with the spirit of the times, 'hyper' - and hyper rich -
> individuals at the helm. Welcome to neo-feudalism.
>
>
>
> I am afraid that is such a dispensation, clowns like Boris Johnson, and
> his exceptionally 'gifted' motley crew ('Jakey' Rees-Mogg, 'Mad Nad' -ine
> Dorries, & the many such) are mere props (the extent to which they are
> conscious of it is unclear) in the tragedy which are embroiled in for quite
> a while: that of post-politics, that is a system where the powers are not
> what they look and are not located where they seem to be, and the ongoings
> take, for the people at large, every appearance of a puzzle palace. I think
> this is one of the reason for populism: desperately trying to make sense
> where it has vanished from the political scene (which has vanished too in
> the process) .
>
>
>
> & With regard to Brian's derive of the unhappy pranksters towards a
> military expedient: he is completely right, while at the same time, to
> parakeet Jean Marie Le Pen's totally infame dismissal of the Shoah as a
> footnote, it is, 'ontologically speaking', a mere side-show. Even though,
> with a war in Europe at our doorstep, we might very well die in it for
> real.
>
>
>
> Yeah, it's a fine mess indeed.
>
>
>
> Cheers all the same , and happy week-end
>
>
>
>
>
> On 02/11/2022 9:17 PM Brian Holmes  wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> David, your second paragraph sums up a really complex situation in a few
> words, thank you.
>
>
>
> It's fairly easy to understand how right-wing populists raise the anger of
> the people. They do it with fear, born largely of their own mismanagement.
> Fear of the pandemic, of economic disruption, of war, of climate change -
> and maybe most of all, fear of the "return of the state" that's
> more-or-less required by all that. But you put your finger on something
> else, which is that these populist (and yet usually upper class)
> politicians have to go on *pretending* to believe in their old conservative
> lines about lowering taxes and shrinking government. Where will the
> pretence lead them? Right now BoJo is trying to save his political ass by
> exploiting the fear of war, and more, the nationalist pride of militarism -
> which would be the logical supplement to the old conservative lines. In
> fact he's pre

Re: The Meaning of Boris Johnson

[Brian Holmes]

David, your second paragraph sums up a really complex situation in a few
words, thank you.

It's fairly easy to understand how right-wing populists raise the anger of
the people. They do it with fear, born largely of their own mismanagement.
Fear of the pandemic, of economic disruption, of war, of climate change -
and maybe most of all, fear of the "return of the state" that's
more-or-less required by all that. But you put your finger on something
else, which is that these populist (and yet usually upper class)
politicians have to go on *pretending* to believe in their old conservative
lines about lowering taxes and shrinking government. Where will the
pretence lead them? Right now BoJo is trying to save his political ass by
exploiting the fear of war, and more, the nationalist pride of militarism -
which would be the logical supplement to the old conservative lines. In
fact he's pretty much openly claiming a military role for post-Brexit
"Global Britain."

How do you see this latest development? Is it going to work? Could
warmongering nationalism be the new rhetorical resource of the right,
beyond Johnson? Or is this just his last desperate gambit on the way out?

>From my viewpoint it is sickening to see this kind of political theater
played in the face of genuinely dangerous situations.

best, Brian
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#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
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Re: Pyramid schemes: from Albania to the US

[Brian Holmes]

This is sharp thinking, kudos to Felix for sending it on.

Housing prices in the US (plus numerous other countries) were already akin
to a Ponzi scheme in the runup to 2008. They were paper values sustained by
myth, lending home-buyers an illusion of stock-market wealth, directly
translatable into cash by home-equity loans. After the crash this
configuration ALREADY gave rise to a neofascist wave in the US. We know
this for a fact because the Tea Party originated in the media room of the
Board of Trade in Chicago. But interestingly - because it affected so many
people who never gave a thought to speculative profits - the housing crash
also gave rise to a powerful socialist movement in this country.

Bitcoin and the rest of the crypto-garbage has primarily attracted
speculators, especially of the small-wallet, middle-class type. The
much-discussed NFT phenomenon represents a bid by the temporarily wealthy
to lend themselves a cultural halo imbued with the aesthetic refinements of
people like Elon Musk. Apparently it also represents a "great white hope"
for many hackers and digital artists too -- but don't miss the ocean for
the ship of fools. The neofascist wave has not yet fallen. Even bigger
storms are brewing.

I wonder, will all those former friends and allies with their heads
currently in the ether snap back to something real when the lightning
strikes?



On Sun, Jan 9, 2022 at 12:11 PM Felix Stalder  wrote:

> The unraveling of large Ponzi schemes is a hugely destructive affair,
> all the more because such schemes thrive in societies were official
> institutions are either weak or captured by criminal interests and
> people are desperate. In the 1999 nettime reader, there is an account of
> the Albanian pyramid scheme which brought the country to the brink of
> collapse.
>
> SUBJECT: PYRAMID SCHEMES:
> ALBANIA 1996–98
> FROM: GENC GREVA 
> DATE: WED, 30 SEP 1998 11:22:29 -0400
>
> https://www.nettime.org/nettime/DOCS/zkp5/pdf/markets.pdf
>
> Of course, the situation today with crypto-currencies is much more
> extreme today, simply because of the size of the bubble that cannot but
> burst at some point. Below is an excerpt of a recent article that tries
> to think through the consequences for the US. And Europe is probably not
> that much behind.
>
>
> 
>
>
> The Ticking Bomb of Crypto Fascism
> The crypto market’s inevitable crash will pull America’s politics in an
> even scarier direction.
> HAMILTON NOLAN JANUARY 4, 2022
>
> https://inthesetimes.com/article/the-ticking-bomb-of-crypto-fascism
>
> <>
>
>
> The crash of crypto is bound to happen for the same reason that all
> Ponzi schemes eventually crumble: There is not an infinite supply of new
> people willing to pay ever-increasing prices for the stuff that you
> currently own. The more interesting question is not whether many
> small-time investors will lose a lot of money on their crypto
> investments, but what will happen when they do?
>
> Here is what will happen when hundreds of thousands of younger investors
> are smashed by the crypto crash: They will be radicalized. This will not
> be experienced as simply a decline in prices, because crypto represents
> much more than a simple investment to its most fervent adherents — it
> represents a way out of the American trap. It represents the existence
> of opportunity, the possibility of economic mobility, the validation of
> the idea that you, a regular, hard working person without connections,
> can go from the bottom to the top, thanks to nothing but your own savvy
> choices. When that myth is shattered, disillusionment with the American
> system will follow. Unfortunately, given the realities of the moment,
> these newly disillusioned and radicalized and angry and broke people are
> far more likely to turn to fascism than to socialism.
>
> Crypto, a portfolio of inherently worthless online tokens, is already
> sustained almost entirely by myth. Its value proposition is so
> inscrutable that when it melts down, almost any narrative could be
> crafted to plausibly explain it. It was the Fed! The government! The
> leftists who hate entrepreneurialism! It was the dark and devious forces
> of the shadowy deep state! Anything will do. It will enforce the priors
> of those who placed their faith in crypto as a good substitute for the
> American dream — a crowd of Barstool Sports readers and tech
> libertarians and the types of people who used to buy silver bars from
> Alex Jones before they turned to Bitcoin. The crypto-evangelist
> population skews heavily towards a sort of New Age libertarian,
> anti-government right wing-ism, and when they see their financial dreams
> evaporate, they will likely set their sights for revenge on the things
> they already despise. The broad effect will lead to a large number of
> newly angry, bitter, disillusioned, hopeless people who are too steeped
> in the culture wars to turn towards working class solidarity, and
> 

Re: Well, so long, "California Ideology"

[Brian Holmes]

On Thu, Jan 6, 2022 at 9:21 PM Prem Chandavarkar  wrote:

> The problem, as Edward O. Wilson said, is that we have a combination of
> “Palaeolithic emotions, medieval institutions and god-like technology.”
>

For the perfect expression of where the Californian Ideology landed, check
out the film "Don't Look Up" with its Silicon Valley figure Peter
Isherwell. A really weird combination of Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos and Elon
Musk, he's effete, self-assured, domineering, and dead wrong on a planetary
scale when he puts his god-like technology into action. As for the medieval
institutions and Palaeolithic emotions, he outsources that to the US
president and her followers

Maybe 2022 is the year when we finally put the nail in the coffin of
neoliberal populism? Go ahead and hold your breath!



>
>
> On 07-Jan-2022, at 1:02 AM, Jon Lebkowsky  wrote:
>
> I did a lot of web consulting and project management for years, and that
> definitely became boring work. But I suppose when things become truly
> useful they also become boring - Bruce once gave a talk where he said that
> we'd know solar tech had arrived when it became really boring to consider.
>
> On Thu, Jan 6, 2022 at 12:30 PM carl guderian 
> wrote:
>
>> And speaking of flashbacks, doesn’t Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, a catalog of
>> online activities imagined long ago by others but now to be mediated by
>> not-Facebook, sound awfully like Bill Gates’ vision of the Internet as a
>> collection of 1970s- and 1980s-era electronic services channeled through
>> Microsoft, in “The Road Ahead”?
>>
>> But I can live with boring. I’ve had a 25-year run (probably wrapping up)
>> in “the cyber” working as the equivalant of an industrial plumber. The pay
>> was very good, the hours agreeable, and the hype minimal. In good times and
>> bad, toilets gotta flush.
>>
>> Carl
>>
>>
>> On 6 jan. 2022, at 18:46, Jon Lebkowsky  wrote:
>>
>> What does it say about me that I find that boring?
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 6, 2022 at 10:45 AM Bruce Sterling  wrote:
>>
>>> *It's a recent screed from the current editor of WIRED magazine.
>>>
>>> *If you're enough of a greybeard nettime OG to remember nettime's vague
>>> feud with WIRED and its techno-libertarian principles, this is likely to be
>>> one of the funniest things you've read in quite a while.
>>>
>>> *If you've never heard of the "California Ideology," that prescient work
>>> of distant 1995, well, I happened to archive it, because, as the guy who
>>> was on the cover of the first issue of WIRED, why wouldn't I.
>>>
>>>
>>> https://bruces.medium.com/the-californian-ideology-by-richard-barbrook-and-andy-cameron-1995-c50014fcdbce
>>>
>>> Bruce S
>>>
>>>
>>> 
>>>
>>> In the next few decades, virtually every financial, social, and
>>> governmental institution in the world is going to be radically upended by
>>> one small but enormously powerful invention: the blockchain.
>>>
>>> Do you believe that? Or are you one of those people who think the
>>> blockchain and crypto boom is just a massive, decade-long fraud—the bastard
>>> child of the Dutch tulip bubble, Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, and the
>>> wackier reaches of the libertarian internet? More likely, you—like me—are
>>> at neither of these extremes. Rather, you’re longing for someone to just
>>> show you how to think about the issue intelligently and with nuance instead
>>> of always falling into the binary trap.
>>>
>>> Binaries have been on my mind a lot since I took over the editor’s chair
>>> at WIRED last March. That’s because we’re at what feels like an inflection
>>> point in the recent history of technology, when various binaries that have
>>> long been taken for granted are being called into question.
>>>
>>> When WIRED was founded in 1993, it was the bible of techno-utopianism.
>>> We chronicled and championed inventions that we thought would remake the
>>> world; all they needed was to be unleashed. Our covers featured the
>>> brilliant, renegade, visionary—and mostly wealthy, white, and male—geeks
>>> who were shaping the future, reshaping human nature, and making everyone’s
>>> life more efficient and fun. They were more daring, more creative, richer
>>> and cooler than you; in fact, they already lived in the future. By reading
>>> WIRED, we hinted, you could join them there!
>>>
>>> If that optimism was binary 0, since then the mood has switched to
>>> binary 1. Today, a great deal of media coverage focuses on the damage
>>> wrought by a tech industry run amok. It’s given us Tahrir Square, but also
>>> Xinjiang; the blogosphere, but also the manosphere; the boundless
>>> opportunities of the Long Tail, but also the unremitting precariousness of
>>> the gig economy; mRNA vaccines, but also Crispr babies. WIRED hasn’t shied
>>> away from covering these problems. But they’ve forced us—and me in
>>> particular, as an incoming editor—to ponder the question: What does it mean
>>> to be WIRED, a publication born to celebrate technology, in an age when
>>> tech is often 

Re: The Dawn of Everything (very short review)

[Brian Holmes]

I agree that now, any significant work has to deal with humanity's
relations to the environment. And as somebody who looks to art, cosmology
and science as the triple way to deal, Chris Godsen's book on the history
of magic sounds intriguing (see MP's post). But as far as I've gotten with
David and David, they are definitely addressing the climate collapse,
because they are focused on dissolving the relations of domination  that
cause it: ultimately, the coercive power of the military-industrial state.
I find it impressive how they mobilize the disciplinary apparatus of
anthropological scholarship to do this. Like Deleuze and Guattari, they use
the cutting edges of recent research to make a civilizational proposal.

I'm about two thirds through the book and not sure whether this goes
anywhere further, but for me, the most salient idea in there is borrowed
from Gregory Bateson, and it's called schismogenesis. They use this concept
quite brilliantly to describe the divergent cultural evolution of the Yurok
Indians (contemporary California) and the Kwakiutl and other tribes
practicing potlatch (Pacific Northwest). The question is, why did the Yurok
subsist on acorns (a very labor-intensive food) and not fish, like their
northern neighbors? The claim is that the Yurock deliberately developed
their culture in differentiation from the potlatch pattern, which depended
on slave labor for the processing of salmon and continually manifested what
appeared to European eyes as traits of artistocratic violence. Notice I
said, not that Yurok culture developed through some abstract universal
process of schismogenesis, but instead that the Yurok *deliberately*
developed it in this way. The central claim of D is that history is made
through such active processes of cultural change. That's the dawn of
everything.

For an American, the relevance to the present is obvious. We are moving
toward a situation of dual power in this country. Should the Democrats lose
as badly as it now looks that they might (let me add, it's not a certainty)
then we will be forced to experience something really new. This will not
exactly be a "fascist takeover" because the Republicans are largely absent
from major US cities. In fact they are resisted at all levels in the big
metropoli (streets to city halls) and their representatives are basically
unwelcome here. So yes, they will gain tremendous power - including the
power to strut around with guns, threaten, and kill, plus clear cut, strip
mine, make war, etc - but in our territories, they will only be able to
exercise that power around the edges. As for us (the not-right), if we
cannot hope to tame the worst half of our country and construct some new
centrist hegemony, if we cannot go on imagining that military-industrial
democracy can be reformed by our liberal city - a city of justice, a
shining city on the hill - then we, the urbanites, will finally have to
decide what to become. We'll have to collectively decide what it is, how to
practice it inclusively, and how to defend it against near neighbors. We
will have to create a new culture in differentiation from these goons.

I cannot wish for such an outcome. It's an incredibly violent and dangerous
path, including the major unconscious blindspots, frank stupidity and
massive incompetence of the contemporary right, with devastating ecological
damage hanging in the balance. Yet the really weird and threatening
situation of dual power that we are already experiencing does offer a new
possibility, with consequences that are already becoming visible. It's the
possibility of finally changing. The possibility of definitively cutting
ties with the colonial/extractivist pattern. The possibility of developing
a new art, a new science, a new cosmology - not as the apotheosis of some
universal and predetermined process, but instead, as the last wager of
smart and desperate people who have finally lost twentieth-century
"modernity" to its true inheritors, the fascists with the AR 15s.

I am certain we can't beat them on their terrain. The challenging thing is
not learning how to shoot, nor imagining a world without guns (as liberals
fondly do). The challenging thing is to face the schism at the heart of our
own unsustainable existence. This is a constructive call, for thinkers,
makers and doers, not only on the fringes but also at the heart of the old
liberal paradigm. It's time to call on new powers, and to try something
generative.

Brian

On Wed, Dec 8, 2021 at 11:33 AM mp  wrote:

>
> Thanks for this...
>
> On 06/12/2021 11:28, Felix Stalder wrote:
> > While the book is great, it has a glaring hole in it. What is almost
> > entirely missing is the discussion of how this "carnival parade" of
> > social forms structured the relation to the environment, or, more
> > generally, how they were embedded in, and impacted on, the metabolic
> > system. While for much of the historical period they cover, this might
> > not have been too much of a concern, it is 

Energy Dilemma

[Brian Holmes]

As COP 26 blunders on, everybody's talking about Facebook! Ha ha, it's a
much easier conversation.

I am posting below an article from the New Left Review newsletter, on the
(highly incoherent) dynamics of energy transition, in the midst of both
devastating weather events AND acute energy shortages. As everyone knows,
natural gas and other fossil fuel prices are going through the roof, in
advance of a winter which could prove unusually cold in Europe and North
America. Can you imagine the left-right tensions which this looming
scenario could - and almost surely will - unleash? And how 'bout the
geopolitics?

The next big thing on the global horizon is not the wet potato of the
Metaverse. It's the explosive disconnect between two simultaneous
movements. On the one hand, the mounting social, political, scientific and
soon military pressure to do something about climate change. And on the
other hand, a corresponding backlash against any transformation whatsoever,
amid a context of declining incomes, economic turbulence and breakdown.

Now just clap those two hands and see what happens.

This article on the grand dilemma of our time is best read, imo, along with
a piece by Viennese sociologist Daniel Hauskonst:

https://unosd.un.org/sites/unosd.un.org/files/hausknost_2019_the_environmental_state_and_the_glass_ceiling_of_transformation.pdf

It's hardly surprising that I found a free copy of the Hauskonst article on
a UN website

best, Brian



Energy Dilemma
Cédric Durand
05 November 2021 - Economics

https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/energy-dilemma?pc=1393


The ecological bifurcation is not a gala dinner. After a summer of extreme
climatic events and a new IPCC report confirming its most worrying
forecasts, large parts of the world are now roiled by an energy crisis that
prefigures further economic troubles down the road. This conjuncture has
buried the dream of a harmonious transition to a post-carbon world,
bringing the question of capitalism’s ecological crisis to the fore. At
COP26, the dominant tone is one of powerlessness, where impending miseries
have left humanity cornered between the immediate demands of systemic
reproduction and the acceleration of climate disorders.

Prima facie, one might think that steps are being taken to address this
cataclysm. More than 50 countries – plus the entire European Union – have
pledged to meet net zero emissions targets that would see global
energy-related CO2 emissions fall by 40% between now and 2050. Yet a sober
reading of the scientific data shows that the green transition is well off
track. Falling short of global net zero means that temperatures will
continue to rise, pushing the world well above 2°C by 2100. According to
the UNEP, nationally determined contributions, which countries were
requested to submit in advance of COP26, would reduce 2030 emissions by
7.5%. Yet a 30% drop is needed to limit warming to 2°C, while 55% would be
required for 1.5°C.

As a recent Nature editorial warned, many of these countries have made
net-zero pledges without a concrete plan to get there. Which gases will be
targeted? To what extent does net-zero rely on effective reduction rather
than offsetting schemes? The latter have become particularly attractive for
rich countries and polluting corporations, since they do not directly
diminish emissions and involve transferring the burden of carbon-cutting to
low- and medium-income nations (which will be most severely affected by
climate breakdown). On these crucial issues, reliable information and
transparent commitments are nowhere to be found, jeopardizing the
possibility of credible international scientific monitoring. The bottom
line: based on the current global climate policies – those implemented and
those proposed – the world is on track for a devastating increase in
emissions during the next decade.

In spite of this, capitalism has already experienced the first major
economic shock related to the transition beyond carbon. The surge in energy
prices is due to several factors, including a disorderly rebound from the
pandemic, poorly designed energy markets in the UK and EU which exacerbate
price volatility, and Russia’s willingness to secure its long-term energy
incomes. However, at a more structural level, the impact of first efforts
made to restrict the use of fossil fuels cannot be overlooked. Due to
government limits on coal burning, plus shareholders’ growing reluctance to
commit to projects that could be largely obsolete in thirty years,
investment in fossil fuel has been falling. Although this contraction of
the supply is not enough to save the climate, it is still proving too much
for capitalist growth.

Putting together several recent events gives a taste of things to come. In
the Punjab region of India, severe shortages of coal have caused
unscheduled power blackouts. In China, more than half the provincial
jurisdictions have imposed strict power-rationing measures. Several
companies, including key Apple 

Re: “Meta”

[Brian Holmes]

On Tue, Nov 2, 2021 at 5:56 AM mp  wrote:

> Could this be more of a necessary share-holder reference/pointer,
> opening new doors and preparing a pathway to shed FB if it becomes too
> much of a liability? From an organisational PoV is makes sense, right?
>

It does, that would be totally logical and it's exactly what seems so
desperate. Zuck would be getting ready to ditch one of the most successful
media products ever, for a VR helmet? Then the end is near! But that's just
what I want to believe (Jon Lebkowsky's point).

Plus there's this:

In many places and for what concerns many topics, struggles and
> mobilisations, what is called 'activism' and which used to be organised
> in groups meeting in dark cellars with the phone batteries removed, is
> now often exclusively done on Facefuck. Not on, you're out of the loop.
>

A few years ago when it was my liberal friends organizing their art stuff
on FB I just groaned. I figured someone would tell me what happened. Then I
realized that if I wanted to do *activist* media - particularly with
grassroots communities - I had to incorporate their Facebook feeds. Because
that is the primary way in which grassroots activism is organized around
much of the world. Now I am on FB, Twitter and soon probably Instagram,
without ever posting anything, just for the developer access...

To Felix's point, the reason Silicon Valley is obsessed with simulations
and Mirror Worlds is because they are constantly administering experiments
carried out on populations under glass. More broadly, scientific
management, the psychology of labor, mass propaganda and the
application-development-metastasis of these things during WWII and the Cold
War created an archetypal popular suspicion that everything is part of some
arbitrary experiment - maybe more than one at a time (Philip K Dick). The
multiple universe theory provides a perfect organizational template for
corporations seeking monopoly power over the perception/expression of
specifically segmented populations. Plus, as a parlor game, it is a perfect
excuse for cynicism and nihilistic blather, we're all motes in the
Supercalculator's eye, Kurzweil, etc.

I'd really love to see that shit go down, I gotta say.
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Re: “Meta”

[Brian Holmes]

Alphabet was realistic. Meta looks desperate. I have the same impression as
you, Michael. It will come to nothing.

On Mon, Nov 1, 2021 at 8:35 PM Michael H. Goldhaber 
wrote:

>
> I remember in the early ‘50’s being excited to go to a pioneering 3-D
> movie, but they soon fell out of fashion. There followed a whole series of
> similar attempts, all failing to last or become anything as widely accepted
> as color movies , TV, or videos. The same fate is likely, I strongly
> suspect, for various iterations of virtual reality, including Zuckerberg’s
> fantasies. You hold out your hand to shake with your distant friend, but
> nothing is there; or they “serve you some food” but you feel, taste, and
> digest nothing. And so on.
>
> Also, of course, there’s the little matter of the finite speed of light.
> Singing or dancing or playing music or tennis with distant partners just
> can’t work unless speeds are tortoise-like.
>
> Best,
>
> Michael via iPhone, so please ecuse misteaks.
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Re: meta(verse)

[Brian Holmes]

On Fri, Oct 29, 2021 at 6:44 AM Felix Stalder  wrote:

> There is nothing in there that you couldn't do in Second Life and it
> even looks pretty much the same.
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gElfIo6uw4g
>

Indeed, we're stuck at the Star Trek bar and the kids are bored. The
thrills of the 70s have gone stale. The simulacrum of a redwood-draped
hillside is a lot less inviting when you know the real thing burnt to a
crisp last summer.

The giveaway comes near the end of the video. What Zuck is planning to sell
here are not the thrills. Instead it's glorified virtual office space for
corporate managers. The point is to have *them* force everyone inside his
program (presumably the contracts are already signed). Corporate people are
high-value and they'll want to be with each other, especially the aspiring
ones. If they're afraid to go out of their compound in whatever declining
city where they live, then they'll go to the virtual bars and beaches in
hopes of finding a corporate soulmate to climb the ladder with.

Only the stench of fear could force people into an eternal (and odorless)
Menlo Park seen through goggles. Covid has been a godsend for Silicon
Valley. Fear management is the emergent paradigm of social control. Be
afraid. Put on the goggles. Clock in.

no thanks, Brian
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The Great Recoil

[Brian Holmes]

I am reading Paolo Gerbaudo's new book with a lot of interest, it's really
good. I'm not finished yet, but it might be the best thing I have read
about the present situation (since, say, March 2020).

First of all, the book is pragmatic. It recaps a lot of what has happened
recently, whether it's social (labor, health care, organizing etc),
political (evolution of parties, programs, media conditions, populism) or
international (corporate strategies, global finance, interstate strategy
and conflict). No one point of view is taken on all of this: instead the
book shows how different groups and classes are reacting to, and in some
cases fomenting, the above-mentioned trends. The result is that you are not
reading a book by an expert in some particular field, nor a partisan tract
from a particular tendency, but instead you are experiencing a
year-by-year, event-by-event account of how multiple collective identities
transform in very particular times, with their particular stresses and
possibilities. And that's very concrete. We've all lived through a lot
lately. We have seen entire social groups metamorphosing before our eyes.
It's the right time for a book like this.

Second, The Great Recoil is philosophical. Above all it relies on a
Hegelian notion of contradiction. It claims that through their very
success, leading tendencies in society create the conditions of their own
undoing - just as neoliberalism, with its exaltation of ownership
prerogatives and market freedoms, has created desperate bottom-end
conditions that call both for new social institutions of care and for a
certain degree of withdrawal from global commodity circulation. The
contradictions in question are narrated very specifically (offshoring,
reshoring - that kind of thing) and often a linkage is made with recent
philosophical ideas (Hayek, Foucault, many others). It becomes obvious that
certain key philosophical ideas (maybe ones you don't like) are in fact
essential to the articulations of society - something easy to forget amid
everyday news and chatter.

Most interesting, though, is the use the book makes of the Hegelian notion
of Erinnerung, or remembrance, a sort of inward-turning memory and
reflexivity that is exercised at both the individual and collective level,
during a pandemic no less. Here I just gotta quote Paolo quoting the
Phenomenology:

"Erinnerung is the moment when the Spirit withdraws into itself and becomes
self-absorbed, after recoiling at its outer existence. But, as Herbert
Marcuse suggested, it is also a moment of ‘recapitulation’ which signals
the end of a historical era and prefigures the opening of a new one."

This is held to be the central feature of the present: Entire societies are
striving to understand the point at which they have arrived, in order to go
forward. The claim is that because of all the damage that has been done
over the past forty years, the way forward necessarily involves a
whole-of-society effort, it requires the creation of a cultural and
intellectual hegemony that can sustain and outlast specific configurations
of the state (the state being, not just government, and not just direct
government employees, but the full institutional structure of governance
and relative social stability, including the military, civil engineers,
health and education apparatuses, bankers, science labs, etc etc). The
Great Recoil makes the audacious and yet weirdly plausible claim that all
of that, the entire hegemonic state-of-things with all its sustaining
publics, has taken pause, not just because of the pandemic, but above all,
because of the very recent collapse of yesterday's governing ideas. Call it
financial breakdown, call it social reproduction crisis, call it global
warming. Under these conditions, change is not going to be driven by one
person, or one tendency or one movement, it's too big for that. But to the
extent that it does happen, a new form of society will have to absorb some
part of what is invented during this crisis - and that's a strong
philosophical encouragement to actually work with the really existing forms
of collective questioning that are unfolding right now, on the edge of what
suddenly appears to many as a precipice.

In my own country and region and neighborhood I see all the things that
Paolo is talking about. I've not yet read how he deals with the concrete
political programs that are emerging, but here in the US, every day the
papers are full of a multifaceted attempt to really change the state of
things through legislation, and a lotta discussion on how to actually do
it. Not everything, but large chunks of the former raison d'etat seem to be
up for grabs.

For people on the left, this still means that your everyday political focus
is on protesting injustices and fighting the power. I do it whenever
possible! But at the same time, I'm very impressed by what's happening on
the level of formal representative democracy. On one hand, it's open
warfare, and certain fascistoid 

Re: Covid and the crisis of neo-liberalism - (...always) look on the bright (regenerative) side...?

[Brian Holmes]

This text on regenerative agriculture is beautiful! and powerful!

Whoah, the rising tide of the biologically inclined has even swept nettime,
the times are changing in so many ways.


On Mon, Sep 6, 2021 at 4:42 AM martin  wrote:

>
> Hello,
>
> Interesting conversation...
>
> On 05/09/2021 18:31, John Hopkins wrote:
>
> I am very sorry to hear about your ailments and wish you all the best.
>
> Then,
> -- though I admittedly can sometimes also be caught in a moment of
> weakness and despair where I forget myself and utter statements with a
> dim, negative view of humanity
>
>  -- this, to my mind:
>
> > Humans have always had an oversized impact on local energy flows around
> > them (i.e., Pleistocene megafauna destruction)
>
>
>  is a dangerous fallacy of thought.
>
> It expresses a sad, self-defeating view (see footnote 1 and 2; and with
> regards to the speculative hypothesis of megafauna extinction see
> footnote 3).
>
> Importantly there are historical examples as well as contemporary
> movements, praxis and data testifying to quite the opposite: Complex
> human societies have had / can have a positive impact on the
> environment, enrich their habitat and increase biodiversity (see
> footnote 4).
>
> Whether in the form of Amazonian Dark Earths, regenerative agriculture,
> permaculture or other expressions of the human imagination from 'the
> other side of the anthropocene', human beings have the capacity to leave
> the world in 'a nicer state' tomorrow than it was yesterday. Not through
> quick technofixes nor dirty hacks, but through building cultural
> alliances with all the other beings in the complex web of life that
> sustains us - from soil ecologies and their microbes, insects and other
> beasts, through plants, trees and rivers to other mammals and everything
> in between.
>
> Indeed, transformative agroecology (see footnote 5) combined with
> regenerative agriculture possibly constitute the only reasonable,
> significant set of carbon sequestration (carbon negative) techniques
> available (see footnote 6) and has the useful side-effect of feeding
> humanity, regenerating immune systems and, all in all, delivering a
> healthy planet.
>
> It has been done, it can be done. It will be done if we all work towards
> it. War is over if you want it, extractive/dominator culture can end.
>
> It is, imho, worse than a waste of time to go on about all the examples
> of destructive human behaviour, rather than focusing on the hope- and
> joy-providing opposite.
>
> Shifting the discourse to the endless possibilities of
> more-than-sustainable social organisation will feed grassroots power
> structures and undermine totalitarian attitudes.
>
> The future is ours, because this land is ours in common.
>
> sincerely/martin
>
> ---
>
> Footnote 1: Sad because it sounds like depression projected, and sad
> because it feeds the power and agency of those who are into population
> control and the concomitant necessity of global rule from above; and of
> course it also helps push the corporate, hi-tech progress myth-based
> geoengineering fantasies that perpetuate the causes of the effects they
> purport to solve (/as Kolbert notes in 'Under a White Sky' on that
> issue, this is “..a book about people trying to solve problems created
> by people trying to solve problems”-
>
> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/mar/06/it-is-the-question-of-the-century-will-tech-solve-the-climate-crisis-or-make-it-worse
> ).
>
> Extractor/dominator culture probably needs this "bad humans" assumption
> to remain in place as a baseline of reality to justify their elitist
> model of society.
>
> --
>
> Footnote 2: On the population number "argument": the total fertility
> rate has peaked and the next challenge is likely how to manage
> increasingly smaller and older populations suffering from auto-immune
> conditions and cancer, resulting from poor diet, lack of movement, and
> the ubiquity of toxic air and drinking water. Please don't feed the
> Malthusian trolls.
> --
>
> Footnote 3: Invoking the speculative megafauna human-driven extinction
> hypothesis rests on just that: speculation, and it also has potential
> overtones of human self-aggrandisement and belittling of the large
> beasts; see for instance Brook and Bowman (2002) and Hocknull et al.
> (2020):
>
> Brook and Bowman (2002): "...Understanding of the Pleistocene megafaunal
> extinctions has been advanced recently by the application of simulation
> models and new developments in geochronological dating. Together these
> have been used to posit a rapid demise of megafauna due to over-hunting
> by invading humans. However, we demonstrate that the results of these
> extinction models are highly sensitive to implicit assumptions
> concerning the degree of prey naivety to human hunters. In addition, we
> show that in Greater Australia, where the extinctions occurred well
> before the end of the last Ice Age (unlike the North American
> 

Re: On the return of the interventionist state

[Brian Holmes]

Paulo, this is really brilliant to read.

Obviously the "great recoil" from market society is happening and will only
intensify as the need for protective interventions against the consequences
of climate change gets stronger. We are experiencing, I would say, an
all-too-classic Polanyian "double movement," where an acceleration of
market forces is met and checked by a protectionist demand. And let us hope
that the second movement does not become worse than the first, as it did in
Polanyi's time (30s, 40s).

Of course I am curious whether your approach adopts a Polanyian framework,
and with which corrections and adaptations? Or maybe your theoretical
framework is distinct from that one? A very interesting question in this
context is which sectors respond to the popular demand for protection, and
why. There is room for a lot of "class fraction" analysis at the corporate
and state level, but also among the popular and (if you will)
petty-bourgeois classes too, because as you are saying, the new demands
take different forms and are politically instrumentalized in a variety of
ways. This is painfully obvious in the US: much of the industrial and
extractivist working class wants to be protected from Chinese exports,
whereas the progressive urban middle classes are afraid of climate change
and the multiracial precariat is basically afraid of white
supremacy/national-fascism! There is no simple formula for exiting this
kind of crisis... which remains illegible for most people. The new "common
sense" that you speak of must be created, I take that as your main
intention.

Seems to me that the most important thing is how the center left reacts,
especially to frankly leftist proposals. In the US, the protective movement
has found an admirable elder statesman in Bernie Sanders, who is succeeding
in getting the "economy of care" written into new federal budgets. The
entire issue of precarity has become part of official discourse - a far cry
from where we were just ten years ago! Nonetheless, the left is meeting the
usual resistance from the center, a resistance now redoubled by the refusal
of many actors to give up an inch of their positions in the extractive CO2
economy. The Bernie/AOC approach has made spectacular gains, but they/we
could easily lose it all in the midterms, and in the worst case, that would
all be an early blip in a protracted crisis.

The complicity of the state in both exploitation and ecological destruction
is immense. But neoliberalism is over and those who continue to rely on its
oppositional mirror, self-organizing anarchism, will see their influence
shrivel and disappear as the demand for protection grows stronger. I am
very glad to see a comrade from that former period publishing this
particular book! Capitalism changes fast, and the subjective question is
how to change with the times, yet not abandon older convictions and
solidarities.

all the best, Brian




On Tue, Sep 14, 2021 at 5:11 AM Paolo Gerbaudo 
wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> I would like to share some ideas contained in my new Verso book The Great
> Recoil, which I think some of you will be interested in.
>
> The key argument of the book is that we are moving away from neoliberalism
> and towards and neo-statism, a return of the interventionist state
> fundamentally concerned with issues of protection and security (in their
> manifold, regressive and progressive, manifestations). This neo-statism is
> visible at different levels: 1) in massive state mobilisation during the
> pandemic, 2) in the return of deficit spending and some elements of trade
> protectionism and industrial policy; 3) in the way in which climate change
> and the green transition seem to call for a return of state dirigisme.
>
> This neo-statism should be seen as the ideological (or better
> meta-ideological) master frame of a new ideological era, comparable to
> previous ideological eras (social-democratic and neoliberal as the most
> recent ones). It does not automatically mean a return of socialism or
> social-democracy. Rather it means that political common sense is changing
> and moving away from notion of self-regulating markets, forcing both the
> left and the right to find adaptive positions in this new landscape.
>
> The dividing question is who the new post-pandemic state should protect
> and from what. For the right it is obviously immigrants and foreign forces
> those that pose a threat, as well as the poor that demand redistribution
> away from the rich. But also the left is articulating its own discourse of
> state protection: from the mending of social safety nets, to the focus on
> health and care, to end with the discourse of safe-guarding democracy by
> the likes of AOC and Ilhan Omar.
>
> While until recently political debate was focused on the question of how
> should we manage the market, the key question now is how to use the state,
> with which means and to what ends. This has huge implications for strategy,
> discourse and practice. Now that 

Re: Covid and the crisis of neo-liberalism

[Brian Holmes]

I agree that the "absolute failure of the West" is rhetorical vagary. But
the idea that central societal tenets concerning "freedom" and "democracy"
must be subjected to theoretical and practical critique is not.

Currently one is free to extract fossil fuels, and also free to die in a
flood or a forest fire. Yet the one who extracts (maybe a deep-sea drilling
company registered in the Caymans) and the one who dies (maybe an immigrant
in a basement apartment in New York) are not the same. If our theory of
democracy worked, the extracting and the dying would both be legitimate
because we "all" (or at least a majority of us) elected the lawmakers who
set the conditions under which the fuels would be extracted (and the rains,
rained, and the forests, scorched). So it would be our own damn fault. But
in North America and Britain and Australia and the rest of the Anglosphere
(not to say "the West"), for decades there has been no chance to subject
this legitimacy to a theoretical and practical critique, because even if
people with such intentions are elevated to power by elections, others
immediately show up yelling about their freedom.

In the backwoods of Oregon, which is having a brief respite from the fires
in order to become the worst site of the coronavirus epidemic, I literally
saw a guy in a cafe with a tee-shirt that read "I can't hear you -- over
the sound of my freedom." That tee-shirt was the triumphant expression of
decades and billions of dollars worth of corporate manipulation, including
money direct from the Caymans. The same collective forces helped send a
bunch of wing nuts to the US Capitol to rant about their individual freedom
last January 6.

The theoretical critique of freedom and democracy has not been adequately
done, but the practical critique is moving ahead fast. When New York and
environs suffer more damage and death from a hurricane than Louisiana does,
you can expect an infrastructural response. But here's the rub: in the
absence of a theoretical/practical critique of capitalist democracy, the
response will be, not decarbonization, but enhanced protection for the most
well-off members of society.

The biological concept of symbiosis, and the integral evolutionary analysis
of earth system science that sprang from it, offer a viable theoretical
basis for practice (and a better one than the "accidental" theory of
mutation that Stiegler drew on). Rather than freedom, these ideas point to
interdependency as a necessary condition for continuing evolution. Stiegler
was well aware that in order for such a theoretical outlook to become
practical, a better idea of individuality had to be worked out, and space
had to be opened up for individual contributions to collective
transformation, in place of *absolutist* declarations of individual
freedom. There's the arena for cultural innovation today, imho.

Brian


On Fri, Sep 3, 2021 at 12:14 AM Andreas Broeckmann 
wrote:

> please (Daniel Ross), define "absolute failure (of the West)".
>
> -a
>
> ps: i suggest to leave room, in this definition, for failures of yet
> other proportions.
>
> pps: looks like adjectives are generally up for grabs these days and
> might become redundant rubble, if not signifiers of the opposites, like
> "precise(ly)" in many philosophical discourses.
>
>
> Am 02.09.21 um 23:44 schrieb Sean Cubitt:
> > thanks for circulating Patrice
> >
> > there's a great piece responding to similar issues byDaniel Ross (aka
> > Stiegler’s translator):
> >
> >
> https://mscp.org.au/plague-proportions/this-pandemic-should-not-have-happened
> > <
> https://mscp.org.au/plague-proportions/this-pandemic-should-not-have-happened
> >
> >
> >
> > a flavour:
> > "Anthropogenic climate change and the systemic limits with which it is
> > associated indeed define the fundamental emergency situation with which
> > we are confronted today. The possibility of facing up to this emergency
> > depends on recognizing that this accident must become our necessity, a
> > necessity whose impure technological, but also social, economic and
> > political conditions are alone what make possible the exercise of
> > collective intelligence, belief, wisdom and decision. The temptation is
> > always to say that freedom and democracy are the fundamental
> > requirements for making good collective decisions, and yet the
> > /absolute/ failure of the West over the past two years means that these
> > ideas must /absolutely/ be subjected to critique, where the latter is
> > /never/ a denunciation, but an interrogation of their ‘pharmacological’
> > limits"
> >
> > seán
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The Children of Line 3

[Brian Holmes]

In his most recent novel, The Ministry for the Future, cli-fi author Kim
Stanley Robinson imagines the moment - in 2025 - when a devastating heat
wave strikes the Earth, killing 20 million people in India. Among many
things that arise from this all-too imaginable disaster is a social
movement, The Children of Kali, dedicated to stopping greenhouse gas
emissions by any means necessary. Throughout the novel they appear via news
flashes of astonishing actions, which include downing airplanes and taking
an entire Davos meeting hostage. The Children of Kali are a fictional
version of the extreme climate protests now advocated by the academic and
climate activist Andreas Malm, in his book How to Blow Up a Pipeline
(2021). Who can doubt that young people growing up under the shadow of mass
extinction will take the law into their own hands?

Cut to the backwoods of northern Minnesota, among the marshes and rice
lakes of the Mississippi headwaters, where over the past several weeks
hundreds of water protectors have put their bodies on the line, jumping
fences, locking down on equipment and resisting increasingly violent
assaults by the authorities. On the other side of that dividing line, local
police departments have bounded together to form a "Northern Lights Task
Force" whose handcuffs, tear gas, rubber bullets and endless court
procedures are directly paid for by the pipeline constructor, the Canadian
multinational Enbridge. There's no terrorism happening right now in
northern Minnesota, no explosives, no sabotage - but non-violent resistance
to fossil fuel infrastructure has taken a giant step forward this summer.

An online map of the Line 3 pipeline route shows both the infrastructure
and the people opposing it, with embedded videos and live feeds from the
protest camps:

https://line3.timetochange.today

This movement is led by Indigenous women, whose voices emerge from an
astonishing intimacy with the natural world. Since the dead of winter,
these women and their many allies have stood in the path of the bulldozers
and the directional drills, facing the police and enduring arrest after
arrest. But now, over the last month in particular, what you see in the
videos are seemingly endless fresh faces - youth who've decided that the
only way to live in a desperate and terrible time is to overcome passivity
and face the corporate state, which "communicates" endlessly about reducing
emissions while pressing forward with pipelines to carry climate-wrecking
Tar Sands crude to the market and the atmosphere.

In his book, Malm recounts the street theater of climate protests past:
"Dressed up as trees, flowers and animals, we laid down on the tarmac to be
run over by a vehicle built of cardboard and wood to symbolise
business-as-usual. Striding through the flattened crowd, protesters in UN
delegate costumes carried signs saying 'Blah-Blah-Blah.'" Malm and his
friends secured a meeting with their climate minister and implored her to
ratchet up her climate ambitions. "The science, after all, had been clear
for a long time now."

That was at COP 1 in 1995. The only things that have changed since then are
a devastating surge in emissions and a sickening plunge into nihilistic
denial. The science is clear like the rare blue sky, but the politics are
murky like leaking oil. The events in Minnesota contribute to a dangerous
polarization, that's for sure. But what exactly are people supposed to do?
If we were waiting for the droughts and floods and forest fires, they're
already here. The heatwave that kills twenty million could easily happen on
KSR's timeline, tomorrow or in 2025. If you are not ready to take
non-violent direct action, then think about all the other things you can
do, personally and politically. But definitely leave the flower costumes
aside. This is going to be a whole-of-society effort - and for the moment,
half of society is not going along for the ride. Ask yourself, who do I
support? How can I bring that support into the public space? And above all,
who's really throwing oil on this fire?
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Re: Nouriel Roubini: Conditions are ripe for repeat of 1970s stagflation and 2008 debt crisis (Guardian)

[Brian Holmes]

If the new "global gamble" of low interest rates and debt-financed public
spending does not open up an alternative development pathway including mass
employment through decarbonization, then our goose is cooked. The
stagflation that Nouriel Roubini predicts will lead to fascism and civil/
international war under the pressure of climate change. The struggle is on
already. The US is explicitly and consciously polarized between those who
want to cling to industrial domination at any cost, and those who want to
collectively face the consequences of the twentieth century and the long
colonial history that underlies it. Governments, populations and
individuals who think the bill has not come due are either deluded, or just
spoiling for the coming fight. Wherever you live, it's time to push the
button on energy shift and just transition. Don't kid yourself about the
future. We're not going to "get over" the crisis that opened up in 2008,
because the changes in the biogeochemical cycles of the earth, coupled with
the decline of Western empire, have already destroyed the regularity of the
political-economic curves. There's a democratic pathway toward just
transition, which demands a break with the industrial power structure and a
willingness to spend time and resources - including your own time and
resources, right now - on equity and justice. Or there's a militarized
pathway toward sealed borders, sweltering fascism and war amid the ruins.
Far as I can see, the fork in the road lies at the place where we are all
currently standing.





On Fri, Jul 2, 2021 at 10:39 AM patrice riemens  wrote:

> Original to:
>
> https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jul/02/1970s-stagflation-2008-debt-crisis-global-economy
>
>
> Conditions are ripe for repeat of 1970s stagflation and 2008 debt crisis
>
> Warning signs are there for global economy, and central banks will be left
> in impossible position
>
>
>
> In April, I warned that today’s extremely loose monetary and fiscal
> policies, when combined with a number of negative supply shocks, could
> result in 1970s-style stagflation (high inflation alongside a recession).
> In fact, the risk today is even bigger than it was then.
>
> After all, debt ratios in advanced economies and most emerging markets
> were much lower in the 1970s, which is why stagflation has not been
> associated with debt crises historically. If anything, unexpected inflation
> in the 1970s wiped out the real value of nominal debts at fixed rates, thus
> reducing many advanced economies’ public-debt burdens.
>
> Conversely, during the 2007-08 financial crisis, high debt ratios (private
> and public) caused a severe debt crisis – as housing bubbles burst – but
> the ensuing recession led to low inflation, if not outright deflation.
> Owing to the credit crunch, there was a macro shock to aggregate demand,
> whereas the risks today are on the supply side.
>
> We are thus left with the worst of both the stagflationary 1970s and the
> 2007-10 period. Debt ratios are much higher than in the 1970s, and a mix of
> loose economic policies and negative supply shocks threatens to fuel
> inflation rather than deflation, setting the stage for the mother of
> stagflationary debt crises over the next few years.
>
> The same loose policies that are feeding asset bubbles will continue to
> drive consumer price inflation
>
> For now, loose monetary and fiscal policies will continue to fuel asset
> and credit bubbles, propelling a slow-motion train wreck. The warning signs
> are already apparent in today’s high price-to-earnings ratios, low equity
> risk premia, inflated housing and tech assets, and the irrational
> exuberance surrounding special purpose acquisition companies, the crypto
> sector, high-yield corporate debt, collateralised loan obligations, private
> equity, meme stocks, and runaway retail day trading. At some point, this
> boom will culminate in a Minsky moment (a sudden loss of confidence), and
> tighter monetary policies will trigger a bust and crash.
>
> But in the meantime, the same loose policies that are feeding asset
> bubbles will continue to drive consumer price inflation, creating the
> conditions for stagflation whenever the next negative supply shocks arrive.
> Such shocks could follow from renewed protectionism; demographic ageing in
> advanced and emerging economies; immigration restrictions in advanced
> economies; the reshoring of manufacturing to high-cost regions; or the
> Balkanisation of global supply chains.
>
> More broadly, the Sino-American decoupling threatens to fragment the
> global economy at a time when climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic are
> pushing national governments toward deeper self-reliance. Add to this the
> impact on production of increasingly frequent cyber-attacks on critical
> infrastructure, and the social and political backlash against inequality,
> and the recipe for macroeconomic disruption is complete.
>
> Making matters worse, central banks have 

TREATY PEOPLE

[Brian Holmes]

The Mississippi River springs from innumerable lakes and wetlands in
northern Minnesota, where the indigenous Ojibwe harvest wild rice. In an
insane and suicidal world, what could be more beautiful than a rolling
green protest camp full of activists chanting "Water is life"?

We got up early last Monday and made our way to the previously secret
location. It was a construction site: a pumping station along the route of
the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline, which, if ever completed, would send almost a
million barrels of Tar Sands crude every day to US refineries and Gulf
Coast exporters. We were there to blockade, lock down on the equipment and
ultimately get arrested by the police: civil disobedience by around two
hundred people, with hundreds more in active support. Meanwhile another,
even larger group was heading for peaceful and prayerful protest near
Coffeepot Landing, at an Enbridge construction easement where the pipeline
would cross beneath the nascent Mississippi, only a few yards wide at that
point. Those folks are still there, camping on the easement, after the
indigenous sheriff decided on conscience that he could not repress their
action.

I can tell you that it was blazing hot in the sun, that it was fabulous to
lock arms with your neighbors and find out why they had come to stare down
the cops, and that in a world condemned by speed and greed, there is no
better use of your precious time than a pipeline protest to protect the
rights of the people whom colonial capitalism has always tried to
eliminate, in order to create the disaster that is now facing all of us.

Jane Fonda spoke quite wonderfully while I sat in the shade of a bulldozer,
but incomparably more inspiring were the voices of Winona LaDuke, from
Honor the Earth, and Tara Houska, an indigenous lawyer and founder of the
Giniw protest camp.

When the fuzz finally came out in force, late in the afternoon, they were
fast to invade and seal the pump station perimeter, but slow to extract the
activists who had locked down on the machines. Those of us who were outside
the gate at that moment formed a line and advanced right up to the noses of
the cops, chanting for hours till the sun set with glorious colors and they
finally came for all of us. The local jails were full by then, so we would
only get citations. They zip tied our hands behind our backs and dragged us
over to some bare bulldozed ground. As I went down in the dust, a cry rose
up: "Who are we?" Everyone roared back with one voice: "Treaty People!"

A protest action takes bodies and plans, concepts and visions. This action
was exquisitely planned to reveal the water and wild rice at one site, the
destructive equipment at another. The vision was clear: a restoral of
indigenous life in the territory, coinciding with a drawdown of fossil-fuel
infrastructure. And the concept was far-reaching.

If we didn't know it already, we learned at the camp that the treaties made
between native tribes and the early US state were "the supreme law of the
land," enshrined in the Constitution, but honored only in the breach. Those
treaties gave the tribes who signed them rights to hunt, fish, gather and
carry out ceremonial activities on the treaty territory forever, even
though indigenous ownership of the land would be restricted to much smaller
reservations. Today those treaty rights must be extended to entire
ecosystems, because resource extraction, overuse of water and relentless
industrial pollution threaten every aspect of native lifeways.

It takes two to make a treaty, and it takes two to uphold it. At the camp,
indigenous leaders encouraged us to think, not only about them, their
sufferings and their dreams, but about ourselves, who we are, where we came
from and how we got to this place. As the descendants of European settlers,
and/or as citizens of the United States, we have not only rights, but also
unique and important treaty obligations. The colonial capitalist state is a
traitor to its own law. Protest, political engagement and active solidarity
have become ways that we, as individuals and groups, can begin fulfilling
our part of the bargain.

Who am I in the era of climate change? My ancestors came from the British
isles and the Dalmatian coast. I was born in San Francisco, surrounded by
an extraordinary natural environment. Yet today I live in a scorched world,
whose probable destiny became so bitterly clear last year, when the
California fires burned down the home that my family had built with our own
hands. How much more terrible is this scorching feeling for young people in
their twenties, who came in such large numbers to put their bodies on the
line in Anishanaabe treaty territory in northern Minnesota? We shall have
to spend the rest of our lives searching, not only for who we are, but for
a world that we can live in. Neither of these things will be easy, though
they may be intuitive for some. You cannot erase the past, but you can
chose to inherit what still promises a future. In 

Re: Democracy Net Zero

[Brian Holmes]

David, I wish the cognitive struggles you are talking about were actually
happening. Or rather, that they were making the specific difference of our
times. Then we could think in classic democratic terms with
well-established ideas about civil society and the like.

The problem is that the new era you portray, of cognitive struggle over the
risks of modernization, has indeed been going on since the days of Rachel
Carson, and it has unfolded in many of the ways described by Ulrich Beck in
The Risk Society, a major work which was published in the 1980s. A lot of
what you are saying is very close to that book, although it, like your
text, remains more on the level of rational democratic debate whereas
society operates equally if not more on the level of passion. Now some six
decades after Silent spring, untold numbers of toxins -- whether chemical,
social or psychic -- have been identified through quite tumultuous public
debates that begin as fringe and minority issues, before coming to occupy
the central stages of public discourse. In my view, we have finally reached
the point that Beck always wondered about -- the point where there is no
longer any doubt about the risks. At this point the cognitive issue fades
and the question of will becomes primary. Assembling the collective will
for a change in the centuries-old pattern of industrial modernization is
the big issue of our time.

In that regard, the article that Ryan sent is incredibly interesting. It
deals with one of the basic patterns of modernization, namely dam-building
and irrigation. All of California was built on this hydrological
foundation, but at a considerable price to the future. Long ago in the
1960s it was understood that ever-increasing water use leads to species
extinction, and as the article recounts, the Environmental Protection Act
has been used both to halt the flow of irrigation water during droughts and
to divert significant resources to endless rebuilds of the hydrological
system. Native American tribes like the Yurock became involved in these
issues all across the West Coast, as did a generation of urban
environmentalists. Now the state that built the hydrological system is
making tiny steps toward taking it apart, or at least, regulating it
differently, under the pressure of what is now a growing fear on the part
of urban populations that the ecological matrix of the West Coast will no
longer sustain them (droughts, fires, toxic air etc). Meanwhile the huge
agricultural economy of California pushes in the opposite direction, toward
continued growth. And in Northern California and Southern Oregon, as all
over the world, the constituencies of the growth economy are resorting to
neofascism to counter this incipient transformation toward an eco-state.

In my view the climate conflict is not just Indigenous people and/or
environmentalists against the state. It is also a struggle that plays out
within the state. It no longer has primarily to do with knowledge, because
science has spoken and people have heard and understood. It is now a
struggle over identities and their corresponding worlds. To advance the
struggle in a positive direction means transforming both identities and
worlds. The democratic public sphere does not disappear, but it is
underwritten by cultural foundations whose structuring influence is now
apparent and is passionately at issue.

Some other time I would like to go further with this, but damn, exactly
right now we gotta leave to go protest against the Enbridge pipeline that's
cutting through unceded indigenous land up in northern Minnesota!

all the best, Brian

On Thu, Jun 3, 2021 at 5:27 AM  wrote:

> On 2021-06-02 18:54, Ryan Griffis wrote:
> > Hi all.
> >
> > This is maybe jumping the tracks of this thread started by David's
> > essay, or maybe it’s actually bringing it back online… not sure. But,
> > Patrick’s anecdote about verbalizing the urgency of the climate
> > catastrophe is something many of us here, I’m sure, relate to.
> >
>
> Hi Ryan et al. Thanks for all the reflections and informative links..
>
> For clarification around the text
>
> Writing Net Zero Democracy was driven by a need to understand in broad
> terms, the big changes in the underlying political logic of today's
> liberal democracies. And most importantly how these changes affect our
> capacity to avert climate catastrophe. For what its worth, my own belief
> is that action and change can’t happen without experiments that break
> out of the rigidities of a limited view of what democracy can be.
>
> The reference to Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’ (apart from the intrinsic
> importance of her work) was to compare the way it was received and its
> impact in an era in which agreement between ideological opponents was
> sometimes possible to our own age. Today a relatively new political
> grammar that clusters around the structuring polarities of technocracy
> and populism appears to make agreement on anything between  opponents
> impossible.
>
> 

Re: A Non-Western Metanarrative (for the benefit of My Holmes)

[Brian Holmes]

Patrick, I am a taker for your perspective.I have been to China, Mongolia
and North India, to Lebanon and Armenia, that's the nearest I ever got to
the places you talk about. Let's hear more about what it was like to live
and work there.

On Thu, May 20, 2021 at 11:27 PM  wrote:

> (All beatles puns intended)
> In. late January, briefly after my return from 5 years in the UAE, during
> which time I engaged in tactical media in Central Asia and the Caucasus,
> started a VR center in Abu Dhabi, and married my life partner, Negin
> Ehtesabian, who was my collaborator in any number of US/Iran projects
> through Morehshin Allahyari, who is awaiting the USCIS's call in. Tehran,
> which is extended by the inequities of the Trump Administration, and
> separated by the COVID crisis. These are not easy times.
>
> Regardless, Brian wanted my snapshot from afar, which will likely be given
> in more detail in an in-process book which is similar to Baudrillard's
> "America" about my time in the UAE, as I feel that the UAE is almost the
> New America.
>
> The problem is that the situation morphed from 2015 to 2021. I went from
> someone spending my summers in Canada, to remaining in Asia, digging deep
> into West and Central Asia, which are (not widely visited by westerners
> [areas vary]) and paradigmatically radically different than the West, over
> what I call the EuroHegemonic postcolonial sphere.
>
> I think I will just make indexical comments then unpack them.
> When Trump got into office, I began habitually checking CNN, in case there
> was a sudden nuclear exchange with North Korea or Iran. I did eat at the
> North Korean restaurant in Dubai on occasion.
>
> Upon Trump's entry into office, it just seemed that much of the world
> prepared for American Exceprionalism to turn to hegemonic solipsism. Russia
> took the Crimea, launched cyberattacks, and lavrov began his flavor of what
> Vamos calls Confusionism. China took the South China ea and began
> colonizing Central, Asia, mining Bitcoins in Iran, took over the Port of
> Djbouti and colonizing Africa. What Geert and I foresaw came to pass - a
> global order breaking into spheres of control, balkanizing the world and
> vying for control. And my Ugandan taxi driver in Abu Dhabi loved Trump
> because he said he "spoke his heart", but then this guy liked Mugabe, he
> said,l for the same reasons.
>
> The standard of living was amazing, and I spent a great deal of time
> watching the Dubai Future Foundation and their projects. Of course,
> Westerners can criticise the labor practices (I contextually agree) But
> there is the outsourcing paradigm to abusive agencies that often give,
> believe it or not , futures that are better than Nepal or the Subcontinent.
> The Louvre Abu Dhabi was built while I was there, and it is truly a very
> real place.
>
> And, since my family is now half Iranian, I see inside the Axis of Evil
> for what it is; a construct.
>
> Let's talk. I'll give you my biased opinion which is definitely
> non-Western, but not radical.
>
> Maybe my ideas on why the Arab Spring was just a horr9ble idea.
>
> All my Best.
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Re: International anti slavery BLM

[Brian Holmes]

I agree, it is great to see restitution go from fringe idea 20 years ago to
unfolding story today.

There's great work in this direction by Ariella Azoulay, a historian of
photography who says the image belongs to the person in it, so give it
back. She is dead serious about that, in a way that directly threatens the
so-called "universal / aka imperial / museums."

On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 9:52 PM Molly Hankwitz 
wrote:

> hi
> I am frequently cranky about US and Europe and have Europe envy but that
> might be nostalgic, but today I find this article below on this big show
> opening in the Netherlands about artifacts stolen from colonial people and
> the whole thing about giving them back...and I’m following this story with
> great interest. I had read about the Dutch govt giving back stuff they’d
> pillaged. Just as assists are becoming so invisible, right?
>
>
> I teach in Art History and the post-colonial discourse has only just begun
> to heat up after last summer and the civil rights movement. Kathy High had
> sent me a document called Decentering Whiteness and  I’ve shared it to my
> colleagues. Its’s focused upon design. But, wondering what other strategies
> are being used in your worlds to counteract Western imperialist history?
>
> Maybe there are more bridges between our continents...all this scholarship
> about the slave trade links us undisputedly, and now to think that BLM
> would be influential Holland. I’m sorry if that is no longer the name. I
> have often been jealous that European countries are able to change their
> names.
>
> Molly
>
>
>
> https://apnews.com/article/europe-race-and-ethnicity-slavery-global-trade-health-bc419a8e4b3c5abed828378ced37fca8
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Re: deep humanities initiative

[Brian Holmes]

On Sun, Apr 25, 2021 at 10:53 AM Keith Sanborn  wrote:

> Interesting that at a time when planetary survival is in jeopardy,
> analysts shd return to a geological metaphor. Does history then equal
> stratigraphy?
>

That is exactly the claim. The geologists of the Anthropocene Working Group
identify the stratum marking the end of the Holocene in radioactive
isotopes left by nuclear fallout in the period of above-ground testing
(1952-63). These can be identified in fine layers deposited in undisturbed
lake beds around the world, and most precisely, in ice cores from
Antarctica. Of course, geological markers based on the activity of living
creatures are nothing new. What's new is that the creatures are humans, and
the rate of change, particularly in CO2 concentration, is faster than
anything previously recorded, by orders of magnitude.

The dating of the new geological epoch is hotly contested, and in my view,
the other proposed dates (Industrial revolution, colonization of the New
World) are full of significance. Colonialism inaugurates a form of
domination, the enslavement of people on plantations, that allowed early
cycles of capital accumulation to proceed through the plunder of the rest
of the planet. The formally "free" labor of the Industrial Revolution could
only compete with colonial domination because the life of previous
geological epochs was brought out of the ground and sent back into the
atmosphere by the burning of coal and oil.  However, the big changes in
atmospheric and oceanic chemistry only become clearly measurable in the
1950s, and they are correlated with the particular form of technological
development that begins in the US during WWII, then spreads around the
planet afterwards. The contemporary US state is brought to account with the
1950s date, along with all those that emulate it. The present US
administration shows some dawning awareness of these things. If you're
interested, I and a couple friends made a short video and a long text about
these issues:

https://vimeo.com/374696808

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2053019620975803

Basically it's a depth interpretation of the Superman festival held every
year in the tiny town of Metropolis, Illinois

best, Brian
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Re: deep humanities initiative

[Brian Holmes]

On Sun, Apr 25, 2021 at 3:27 AM 
wrote:

>
> This depth narrative has never been without its critics later
> structuralists and post-structuralists inverted the story by celebrating
> the surface at the expense of depth. [...] From a visual arts standpoint
> I have always seen this tussle as echoing the arrival of Warhol on the
> scene whose slippery serious anti-seriousness effectively disrupted
> Abstract Expressionism’s existentialist claims to psychological depth.
>

I think the notion of "depth" stands in for interpretation, aka
hermeneutics. There can be a liberating effect when a dominant hermeneutic
is swept aside, but then, disorientation ensues. I experienced that pretty
strongly in the 1980s, when both the post-structuralist "free play of the
signifier" and the recombinant commercial imagery of pop art (eg, Jeff
Koons) were at their height in the US. At the time a novel by Don DeLillo,
"Mao II" which directly references Warhol, allowed me to understand the
relationship between those two trends.

Today, most societies are affected by profound disorientation in the face
of inequality, climate change, and their knock-on effects (fascistic
populism, revolt of oppressed peoples). In the US right now there is a
pervasive concern with hermeneutics or so-called grand narratives. The
analysis of big data is supposed to reveal the hidden mechanisms of social
interaction - that's one version, a mathematized hermeneutics. The history
of colonialism is supposed to reveal how racialized injustice is rooted in
White subjectivity - that's another version, connected to highly active
minority struggles. Broader histories of the rise and fall of civilizations
(Hariri, Tainter, even David Graeber) are supposed to reveal what comes
after the fall of liberal empire. All of these are, for sure, secularized
versions of the interpretative practices of religion, particularly
Christianity which is hermeneutic to the core.

I don't think this hermeneutic turn can be brushed away. For people in
distress (and that's a lot of us) finding "meaning" is nothing other than
reconciling your perception of a damaged world with your aspiration to a
better one. Currently I belong to a group called Deep Time Chicago. Its aim
is to understand how the relative stability of the earth system is
disrupted by the "fossil institutions" that we can see at work in our city
- the steel mills, the refineries and petrochemical industries, the
airports and freeways, the water and sewage systems, the conversion of all
the arable hinterland to GMO agriculture for global trade, etc. Our
approach comes directly from geology (the model of scientific depth
interpretation, as David pointed out), but it's a geology that in its turn
has been transformed by a full-fledged master narrative: earth system
science, also known as Gaia Theory.

Struggles over interpretation are difficult and fractious. But if you want
to set a collective course toward a viable existence, I am not sure there
is another way.

thoughtfully, Brian
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Re: Another killer cop

[Brian Holmes]

Dear Allan,

You are right about the imprint which slavery has left on the United
States, that has been the single most important national discussion over
the last year and there is always more to understand about it - especially
the specific histories of particular places, histories that people who live
in those places would rather not know about. It is vitally important to
tell these true tales - for instance, the story of the KKK sheriff of
Hennepin county. The slave patrols of the old Southern planters are at the
origin of today's police, and that is a US history, the ugliest and most
damaging one. Whoever ignores it is complicit in the devastating
recrudescence of an ideology that has never died, but only bided its time,
awaiting fresh opportunities.

But I suggested that these histories are not so specific to the US, because
of life experience.

I lived in France for 20 years and like most French people, I believed the
myth of equality. Although I was well aware of racism in the US, I did not
notice that despite all the grand principles, the French police
consistently arrested, beat, imprisoned and killed people of African origin
at the slightest pretext. That state of willful ignorance held tight until
the so-called "revolte des banlieues" in 2005, which I read about in the
papers while visiting Chicago, then experienced first hand when I returned
home to France. I went out to demonstrate one afternoon in solidarity with
the banlieues - but almost no one came to that demo, especially not the
institutional left, whose keywords are equality and solidarity. In fact,
France is absolutely as racist as the US, and this is becoming increasingly
clear to younger people in that country over the course of the last year or
so. Despite that rising awareness, mainstream French society turns a blind
eye to its own violence, its own radical exclusion of racialized Others,
and refuses to ask why France has become the major target of terroism in
the Western world today. Meanwhile the doctrine of the "Great Replacement,"
forged by the French racist Renaud Camus, has become the central dogma of
American white supremacists.

Now, you are right that everywhere is unique. But the slave trade was begun
by Europeans. And colonialism was big business in Europe up to the 1950s.
Today, the EU is walling itself off against the migratory waves caused in
large part by the violently unequal economic and symbolic relations between
white Europe and its near neighbors. The murder that protects European
lifestyles today is the harbinger of a much more violent future, if nothing
changes. So I would like to hear other unique stories from other European
countries.

There is a strong temptation, where I am concerned, to attribute this
racist violence to the maintenance of class difference. How to make some
people work for almost nothing, so that others can enjoy the cheap and
sickening delights of consumer societies predicated on freely exploitable
labor? If I did not know how China treats its minorities, I would think
this kind of capitalist domination was a specifically European thing, due
specifically to that civilization which dominated and plundered the entire
world, before unleashing such destructive conflagrations in the twentieth
century that finally, the European countries had to choke back their
murderous rage and cloak it in the humanistic veils that prevail today.
You'd be nuts to think that Europe is immune to racism. And yet one can say
the same thing about China and India, and probably a whole lot more places.

Whether it's capitalism, or some deeper atavistic drive that makes people
act in these ways, I don't know. But I do think everyone, everywhere, ought
to inquire more deeply into the foundations on which their own privilege,
or lack of it, is based.

in solidarity, Brian




On Tue, Apr 13, 2021 at 11:27 AM Allanmini2  wrote:

> Hello
> Thank you Brian sharing your outrage; besides the points you mention, we
> should also be clear about the origins and purposes of policing; while
> globally there are obvious similarities there are also distinctions and
> these can be telling. Without going into all the details, in the U.S. the
> origins are connected to slavery and the posses that marauded and ran wild
> throughout the South and parts of the North; the Underground Railroad was
> not only a train that led to freedom but also the means to avoid
> slave-catchers - early incarnations of the modern police. Here lies the
> immorality and cultural bedrock that underpins most (if not all) police
> forces in the U.S.. The absolutely wanton hand-out of military equipment
> from the U.S. Pentagon just adds fuel to the fire - exponentially.
> best
> allan
>
> Sheriff Earle Brown, founder of the city where Daunte Wright was murdered,
> was a longtime member of the KKK
> 

Another killer cop video

[Brian Holmes]

After the five hundredth sadistic video, my outrage turns to a colder kind
of rage.

What exactly is going on so that cities spend half their budget on police,
in order to exert systematic racist violence that they used to successfully
cover up until just a few years ago?

It is not just about good cop and bad cop. The answer is much more obvious.
The way we are living 'normally' demands this 'extraordinary' expenditure.
Police constantly murdering black and brown and red people is the price of
the radical inequality that maintains the middle-class tech-happy
lifestyle. This is not different in France or Holland or the UK or in
Beijing or wherever, only the colorwheel spins a little.

It's insane, because life would be a lot better without that particular
lifestyle, I mean the style of extreme inequality, which we kill for many
times over.

Now it feels like a generational choice has been made against it. And
although this is definitely about young people, I also mean a political
generation, that can transform people whatever their age. It is damn
interesting to watch the testimony in the George Floyd trial, because what
you see is just like what happened during the last US elections: people of
this new political generation have decided to tell the professional truth
that they formerly kept to themselves, locked tight under pressure. All the
key experts of the police have testified unequivocally against the killer.
This is entirely new. This wants to be a system.

Only later will we know if such behavior just decorates a feverish moment
in an implacably continuous reality.
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Re: challenge accepted (re art & the info economy)

[Brian Holmes]

On Tue, Mar 30, 2021 at 11:57 AM Sandra Braman 
wrote:

> Since the "Art in the Information Economy" piece, two additional
> conceptualizations of the information economy have come into play.
>
> - a postmodern economic (or "referential economy") approach developed *de
> facto* in the early 21st century although its incipient phases had been
> noticed and theorized by postmodern theorists decades earlier, focusing on
> the nature of the information dominating the information economy itself as
> it becomes referential rather than empirical; Robert Shiller won a Nobel
> Prize for, among other things, writing about the "narrative economy" but
> that is not the same thing . . . he is actually just delivering that
> discipline's decades-late arrival to the narrative turn
>
> - an ecstatic economy approach in which the fact of information itself is
> all that matters (the fact of assertion, not assertion of fact), with no
> need for either referentiality or empiricism (the wilds of misinformation)
> or, one might argue, for inclusion of the human in the loop (thinking about
> proof of work blockchain, computation for the sake of computation at
> astoundingly large and growing energy cost)
>
> Sandra, these two things do start to cover what is going on now and if the
texts can't be distributed to everyone, maybe just quote us the relevant
bits? From an art viewpoint, no problem, we are familiar with these
strategies - but from an economics viewpoint, not so much. The NFT is still
referential, right? The jpg, and in fact, the artist, still exists to
verify the originality of the token? Anyway, I am curious how you define
these two, and whether others try to define them.

Now that Hirst has put his feet in the plate we can expect every cynical
artist to mint whatever they've got and laugh while the Ponzi scheme falls
to pieces. If the central banks keep pumping money into the accounts of the
oligarchs, these experiments will keep on coming until the perfect ecstatic
combination is found. To my lights the category that's missing is the
Lacanian real: that which can neither be symbolized away, nor embraced as a
narcissistic apotheosis. The struggle is on, whether the real of impending
civilizational breakdown will be admitted into consciousness and acted on,
or whether the current system morphs into a higher power.

BH
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Re: re art & monetary value -- "art in the information economy"

[Brian Holmes]

On Sun, Mar 28, 2021 at 9:37 AM Sandra Braman 
wrote:

> This piece from 1996 on art and various forms of capital in the digital
> world has some things to say that are pertinent to this interesting
> conversation. You'll see some theorists not as present in ongoing
> conversation these days as they were then, but I stand on the piece.
>
> "Art in the Information Economy"
> http://people.tamu.edu/~braman/bramanpdfs/011_art.pdf
>

 Sandra, my thanks also for this text which has totally to do with the
conversation. I can see why you stand by it, it's perfectly structural, it
will only go out of date when the information economy does.

I was intrigued by your quotes from The Other Heading/L'autre cap, a text
by Derrida. I remember when this one came out from Editions Minuit, just
after the fall of the Eastern Bloc, and during the Gulf War to make the
world safe for neoliberal capitalism. The text is totally about orientation
- where are we heading? - and valuation - what is it worth, how do we pay
for it? You pick up on his questions around cultural capital and the way it
concentrates in the head - apparently in danger of shrinking, due to the
information society. This neoliberal decapitalization could actually be a
decapitation, a beheading, some would welcome that violence with respect to
Old Europe. But not Derrida, the self-declared Old European (Jew) who
recalls that he was born in then-French Algeria, and dwells on a troubling
etymological connection between capital and colony. Apparently in this text
composed on the plane to Turin, he's coming around to his own return to
Marx, which is really pretty amazing: the Wall falls, and suddenly it's
necessary to resist a new totalitarianism. Yet Derrida finds himself in the
classic liberal position of wanting to do two contradictory things:
maintain the feasibility of (cultural) accumulation, and critique it all at
once, subject it to otherness, change its fundamental orientation. So it's
like steering a sailboat against the wind: you better know how to weave,
because a straight line will definitely not get you where you are going.

People in this thread kept bringing up actual artists, and not just
Beautiful Beeple, so I thought, something interesting is weaving here.

First of all I wonder how you see these things today, Sandra? How have the
issues and the registers changed, within the structure of the information
economy?

Derrida could have recalled an adoptive Algerian, Frantz Fanon, who said:
"To speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the
morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a
culture, to support the weight of a civilization." One of the things I have
always wondered about is the neoliberal language that is at the origin of
my own subjectivity. Do white people also undergo acculturation? How was
the information economy imposed in the 1990s? How did it affect all of us,
with its particular forms of money, its codes of communication and its
modes of transport, its hierarchies and its violence? I wrote a lot about
it, back in the day. But it looks quite different today.

Cultural politics is a very slippery business, because it is also part of
states and corporations. What I'm trying to say is that, just as in the
early Nineties, a new kind of world order is likely to come together in the
wake of a major crisis. The crisis today is the pandemic - a relation to
animals, zoonosis - and the first big blows from climate change - a
relation to destiny. But such crises are resolved, at least temporarily,
and this one surely will be too. Still the challenges to the old order are
immeasurably more powerful than they were in the 1990s. The declarations of
the curent administration contain many things that the US left has been
calling for over the last twenty years, yet in the face of everything that
could take form as Green Informational Capitalism I have the feeling that
the critical blinders better come off very soon, as Bronac was also saying.

The art-market event of NFTs allows us to talk about the conquest of space
that's about to happen, the new technological wave, but I'm not at all
convinced that cryptocurrency is the Next Big Thing in the halls of power
or industry. No one in 1972 knew that derivatives were going to be the Next
Big Thing, and for the most part they still don't know. What we all do know
is culture, cultural hegemony, cultural struggle, and these things matter
for sure. Intellectuals always want to tie culture to political economy, to
talk about a "crisis of the spirit" and I'm no different. Sure, I think one
should watch the space of technological development, whatever it is and
there is always more than one. But the question is what lenses you look
through, what valuations you make, what orientations you derive and
propagate.

Rene Char said it: "The history of humanity is one long sentence. The
poetic duty is to contradict it." Right now I am interested in a film like
The 

Re: what does monetary value indicate?

[Brian Holmes]

On Sat, Mar 27, 2021 at 8:51 PM Molly Hankwitz 
asked:

Artist as “administrative author” or initiator of a system, through which
> communities can act, somewhat recursively to establish value, and/or
> prosper via, for instance, a shared currency?
>

I am fascinated by the concept of the artist as "initiator of a system,"
it's the most profound and still-relevant notion of art to come out of the
late 20th century. To initiate a system is to open up the field in which
something like orientation or valuation can take place. Exactly what the
orientations and values must be is not initially prescribed, but still, the
coordinates and the terms of measure are made available and shared, as we
all know from software and activist movements and even love (let's think
co-initiators).

But the demon of contradiction wants me to take something so admirable into
a more troubling direction, which could have some bearing on Felix's
question of NFT motivations.

There were these two dudes, I happen to know their story, Leo Melamed, the
star trader of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and Milton Friedman - well,
you get the picture. Leo went to listen in on the classes given by ol' Milt
at the University of Chicago, notably because of the idea that in a world
of floating currency values, futures markets would easily emerge. Money
could be made from the possible future values of money - it fired Melamed's
imagination. When Nixon suspended the Bretton Woods treaties and opened up
the floating world, Leo commissioned Milt to write an authoritative paper,
and the two co-initiators went to Washington to institute a new world
order. Legal to boot. Friedman rang the bell at the opening of the
International Monetary Market on May 16, 1972. It opened up the entire
computational space of financial derivatives. You can read Melamed's prose
if you're curious, but you gotta see the look on Friedman's face:
https://bit.ly/3rvC1t8

NFTs are gesturing toward a new market, a hitherto unknown territory of
abstraction. For a financier this would be the equivalent of the voyages of
discovery - Christopher Columbus. The everyday lives will get colonized
later on. Right now these people have the sense of establishing, not just
an asset class, but something new under the sun. They feel like world
movers.

The weird thing is that I think many of us can imagine it, at least a
little bit. Do you remember what it was like, co-initiating
social-computational systems? Maybe you still do it?

Around that time back in the early 70s, the conceptual artist Marcel
Broodthaers was ironically exploring what he called "the conquest of
space." It was about Columbus and the art market and the Apollo Program.
Certainly with the symbolic space they opened up - now the Globex trading
platform -  Friedman and Melamed oriented the whole neoliberal period. They
discovered a new America. They created and administrated what you might
call an effective abstraction, which has not yet ceased to govern the vast
lifeworlds of just-in-time production and distribution. This is the
terrifying other side of initiating systems.

NFTs are not going to rule the world. This is an attempted conquest of
art-market space. But the desire it attempts to symbolize is significant.
What kind of currency would a computational oligarchy need for the era of
accelerated technological change and asymptotically granular population
control that is emerging as a possibility right now, through the ubiquitous
applications of AI? In the best of cases this would have to be a truly
common currency, enabling resilience, adaptation, transformation for the
future 9 billions of human earthlings - and infinite other species. In the
worst of cases, it would be the currency of a veritable state-financial
nexus, the kind David Harvey talks about, where privatized monetary
creation is the enabler of hyper flexible bureaucratic control.

Frankly, just reading the newspapers, I see a huge struggle going on over
the initiation of systems. Either you get eco-socialism, or you get the
nexus.

Meanwhile I see lots of artists trying to invent new blockchain currencies.
But who is the Marcel Broodthaers of the onrushing AI era? And how would
*they* express themselves?

curiously, Brian
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Re: what does monetary value indicate?

[Brian Holmes]

I agree with Rachel. Wow.

Gaming the system is a feature, not a bug, of the financial markets. After
you analyze it for a while (as I did for about a decade) you just get too
disgusted to go on. New technologies/same principles. I didn't know that
Hirst and Jopling were behind the diamond skull episode, but it's par for
the course.

What's so sad is not only that we are relentlessly told that this is the
best way of allocating capital to productive enterprise. Or for that
matter, that we are relentlessly told the blockchain will save us from
corrupt banks and governments. What's tragic is that the scams of the
oligarchy - or what Veblen called the "New Barbarians" - are consistently
able to fascinate global public opinion, while the lived environment decays.

I am not "just" talking about CO2, nor "just" about basic infrastructure,
but also about decaying social relations between the impoverished/abused
and all the rest. American cities got close to urban warfare this summer.
You gotta wonder what next time will be like.

In that regard, the hacker fascination with cryptocurrencies is a symptom
of the same disease. There's no use going further with it. In the end, no
one will be liberated. Everyone will be stuck with worse conditions on the
ground. This is a dead-end avenue for culture. Crptocurrencies are the
electronic mirror of the New Barbarians.



On Sun, Mar 14, 2021 at 1:56 PM Rachel O' Dwyer 
wrote:

> wow. that story reminds me of the auction of Damian Hirst's For the Love
> of God in 2007 (the diamond skull).
> it sold for something staggering like $100 million to a private collector,
> but the collector was later revealed to be an investment
> consortium consisting of Hirst, his dealer Jay Joplin and a third unnamed
> party.
>
>
>
> On Sun, Mar 14, 2021 at 6:23 PM Felix Stalder  wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 14.03.21 14:25, Rachel O' Dwyer wrote:
>> > The article includes a discussion of economic *'signalling' *that was
>> > prompted by conversations with Ruth Catlow which chimes with Felix's
>> > questions about what the digital art purchase 'says'.
>>
>>
>> Doma alerted me to this analysis, and if it's correct, then this is
>> basically a "pump-and-dump" scheme.
>>
>>
>> https://amycastor.com/2021/03/14/metakovan-the-mystery-beeple-art-buyer-and-his-nft-defi-scheme
>>
>> I suspect there is more to it, more layers of scamminess, but so far the
>> story goes like this:
>>
>> The buyer, MetaKovan, and the seller,  Metapurse, are entities
>> controlled by the same person, Vignesh Sundaresan.
>>
>> Metapurse is a fund which owns digital art works. It's mission is to
>> "democratize access and ownership to artwork." Quite a statement to make
>> in relation to digital art, but the entire story is full of scammy
>> rhetoric.
>>
>> You can buy into this fund, called B20, then you own a tiny portion of
>> its art works. You do this by buying special B.20 tokens. The value of
>> these tokens reflects some speculative position on the underlying value
>> of the art works held by the funds or profits to be made from selling
>> these works.
>>
>> There are 10 million tokens minted. 56% of these are owned by
>> Metapurse/MetaKovan who thus controls the entire process in terms of
>> writing to the blockchain. 2% are owned by Beeple himself (oh!). In
>> December, Metapurse bought Beeple's art work for 2.2 million. On January
>> 23, Metapurse sold 1.6 million tokens at $0.36 a pop.
>>
>> After the sale, which greatly inflated the value of the "assets" held by
>> the fund, the value of the tokens rose to 23.00 and then fell back to
>> 16.00. Given that buyer and seller are controlled by the same person,
>> the actual costs for the purchase are only the feeds to be paid to
>> Christie's, some 9 million.
>>
>> You can do he math yourself, but the profit margins are staggering, if
>> Sundaresan manages to to get cash out his own tokens while it lasts.
>>
>> What I find remarkable is the role of Christie's in generating the
>> narrative. Auction houses seem to have specialized in this lately,
>> perhaps they always have. But, remember Sotheby's sold a Banksy work
>> that shredded itself (Oct 2018). Well, almost shredded. The story went
>> around the world, greatly enhancing the value of the work. It's hard to
>> phantom that Sotheby's did not examine the art work before hence
>> realized that there was something hidden in the frame. Or, when
>> Christie's auctioned off the "Portrait of Edmond de Belamy" in December
>> 2018. The value is really generated by the story, told by a blue-chip
>> auction house.
>>
>> The fact that all of this is so scammy doesn't seem to matter, because
>> it's the money that makes it real, the sheer scale is self-validating,
>> even if the money itself is barely real to begin with.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> | || http://felix.openflows.com |
>> | Open PGP | http://felix.openflows.com/pgp.txt |
>>
>> #  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
>> #is a moderated 

Re: what does monetary value indicate?

[Brian Holmes]

I can't answer the second question, but as to the first I believe that
there are three distinct forms of money that currently operate in a
hierarchy:

-- Infinite money which is produced and deregulated in the financial
markets through the manipulation of information

-- Institutional money which is produced and regulated within national
frames by governments seeking to stabilize social reproduction

-- Sweat money which is produced on the ground through the exploitation of
labor paid at the bear minimum of survivability

The last form of money is the most extensive one, it's the most common
coin, the basis of most livelihoods on earth. Institutional money, however,
has been carefully decoupled from sweat money; and infinite money has been
decoupled from institutional money in its turn. Institutional money began
to be produced through Keynesian management of national economies from the
30s onward, it's inseparable from social democracy. Infinite money started
up after the postwar gold standard was abandoned in 1971, and became what
it is today with the introduction of computerized trading.

What does infinite money mean to its owners? Financial capital is power
when it is applied to institutions or labor processes. However it can also
be used for status displays, what Veblen called "conspicuous consumption."
So you have to bring art back in. For better and mostly worse, "high"
culture remains the noisy ghost at the top of the capitalist pyramid.

best, Brian

On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 10:47 AM Felix Stalder  wrote:

> I'm sure many have followed the NFT art saga over the last couple of
> months and seen today's headline that somebody just paid $ 69,346,250
> for a NFT on a blockchain, meta-data to claim ownership of the
> "originalcopy" of a digital art work.
>
> https://onlineonly.christies.com/s/first-open-beeple/beeple-b-1981-1/112924
>
> I don't want to start a discussion on the revolutionary vs reactionary
> character of this emerging art market. All of that has already been
> said. If you want a close approximation of my perspective, I refer you
> to this:
>
>
> https://everestpipkin.medium.com/but-the-environmental-issues-with-cryptoart-1128ef72e6a3
>
> What I'm more interested in here is to ask two things.
>
> What -- after a decade of quantitative easing and crypto-currencies
> rising into the stratosphere -- monetary value is indicating for the
> segment that profited the most from these developments and what does
> that mean for the rest of us?
>
> And, assuming that this is not a cartoon version of a potlatch where
> wasting resources serves to put rivals to shame, how many different
> scams -- money laundering would be an obvious contender -- are being
> layered on top of one other to create this?
>
> Quite puzzled. Felix
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> | || http://felix.openflows.com |
> | Open PGP | http://felix.openflows.com/pgp.txt |
>
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Re: GameStop Never Stops

[Brian Holmes]

Florian I totally enjoy debating with you and there is not an ounce of
aggression or one-upsmanship intended here (nor taken, as far as I can see).

So after this precaution let me point out that BLM is a Black -led
movement,  but not a minority one. Like the Civil Rights movement before
it, but to  much greater degree, it has brought people of all colors and
classes to the streets, and it has already led to sweeping institutional
change - not to mention the elevation of a Black woman to the
vice-presidency.

There are many definitions of populism, but most emphasize its
pre-political nature. Populism refuses the mediation of professional
political elites. It produces and shares utopian statements, such as
"defund the police," "all cops are bastards," or, as I read one day in the
newspapers, "there is no such thing as a bad protester." But it has done a
lot more than that. Despite the populism, BLM has provoked institutional
change at all levels, and if the Biden admin succeeds we will see much
more. I am no expert where BLM is concerned, but I think the cross-race,
cross-class nature of the movement is what has helped it go from
pre-political utopia to transformative force in the real world.

Now, BLM is also a platform movement with polarizing content, viral spread
and charismatic influencers. In the beginning and for years thereafter its
founders insisted you had to use the hashtag, #BLM, so it was a Twitter
revolution. Back in the Arab Spring days much ink was wasted over the
question whether Twitter revolutions were real, and if so, whether they
were good. It looks to me like platform populism has become a fact of
contemporary societies. The relevant questions are: What are the
sociological characteristics of a given platform populism? To what other
social routines or functions is it intimately connected? What are its
chances of having significant and lasting effects?

Finally, most relevant of all, the political question that goes beyond
observation or analysis: Do I think those effects are good? If so, how can
I join or support the movement? How can I  - precisely through my diference
and non belonging - help make this a political movement?

The above are just initial ideas about platform populism, anyone can
critique them, destroy them or make thrm better, as needed.

Onwards, Brian

On Thu, Feb 4, 2021, 3:12 PM Florian Cramer  wrote:

> Finally, why not call BLM populist?
>>
>
> BLM probably fits Laclau/Mouffe's definition and notion of populism as
> agonistic. But since the movement is reclaiming minority rights, I don't
> think it fits Müller's and Mudde's definition of populism as positioning a
> majority of "the good people" against a small corrupt elite. Occupy's
> slogan of the 99% would be populist according to that definition, the East
> German 1989 protest movement with its slogan "We are the people", too, and
> QAnon would fit the definition as well, but (in my opinion) not BLM and
> other minority activism.
>
> -F
>
>
>
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Re: GameStop Never Stops

[Brian Holmes]

On Thu, Feb 4, 2021 at 4:33 AM Florian Cramer  wrote:

>
> Turns out that one of the big winners is (drumroll): a hedge fund, Senvest
> Management,
> which made a profit of $700 million from selling Gamestop shares that it
> had cheaply
> acquired in September to Gamestop/Robinhood players:
>
> Absolutely any observer of the financial markets could predict that the
majority of small investors would eventually lose their money to larger,
faster, more experienced professionals. It was necessarily going to end
like that: the stock would necessarily go down, and anyone who bought it
while it was climbing and then hung on would necessarily be the loser.
There is no mystery to this. What's more, anyone who recalls that the Tea
Party movement was launched from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade is
likely to doubt the democratic merits of small investors seeking to make
money like the big ones. Any hopes placed in that system are misplaced,
period.

What's interesting on the contrary is the "platform populism" diagnosed by
Morozov. He distinguishes it from the familiar image of Trumpian populism,
but I don't know why. The latter was Twitter plus in-person rallies,
whereas here we have Reddit + Robinhood + the NYSE. The lesson is that
platform populism exerts social effects - and most often, becomes a social
pathology - when it is hooked into a major real-world machine, such as a
presidential campaign or a stock market. This is what distinguishes it from
the usual hapless narcissism of individuals caught in the targeted
advertising trap.

To further analyze platform populism, one would have to look at the
sociological categories of the people involved. What kind of agency do they
have in their daily life? Are they supported by charismatic figures from
other social classes? What aims are they seeking to fulfill, and why? These
questions cannot be reduced to the mere existence of social media
platforms, or to their specific characteristics (important as these may
be). Most sociological categories have implicit ideologies, which become
explicit and undergo transformation during social movements. A bunch of day
traders supported by Elon Musk looks like the exacerbation of middle-class
greed to me. It's just louder libertarianism.

Finally, why not call BLM populist? To me it looks like a classic platform
populist movement. However, it has a tremendous variety of social classes
involved, firstly among Black people themselves - where the social-class
differences can be huge - and also to the extent that it is a multiracial
movement. The difference between BLM and the above-mentioned dead-ends is
this wide range of adherents, which continually push the movement into
internal negotiations that increase its political sophistication and
ability to deal with the rest of society. It would take a lot more research
and conceptualization, but my hunch is that BLM could be defined as
progressive platform populism - a winning formula whose characteristics
might be emulated by others, at least to some degree.

best, Brian
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Re: GameStop Never Stops

[Brian Holmes]

On Wed, Feb 3, 2021 at 10:34 AM Balazs Bodo  wrote:


> Yes, I agree, on an abstract level, it is fascinating to see congress
> members and presidents recruiting flat-earthers, non-voters, q anon shamans
> to carry out a coup, as much it is fascinating to see Musk mobilizing
> anonymous reddit crowds to do meme investments with an app that makes money
> by selling the transaction log to wall street firms, but it is also not
> fascinating, or no more than seeing a sick homeless, drug addict man dying
> alone on the curbside.
>

 I share your perception from the inside, Balazs.

For a long time English has been the language that knits global
communication together. This has had great results in terms of, for
example, us having these chats on nettime, or people in Central Asia
collaborating with people in Eastern Europe or Latin America or wherever.
But it has also had the really unfortunate effect that everywhere, both the
news and contemporary culture more broadly is permeated when not dominated
by the morbid symptoms of US decadence. I realize that I, too, contribute
to this here on this list, although hopefully in a less cynical and more
analytical way than the default option.

Europe appears now to have officially marked the end of US hegemony. Not
only is there widespread agreement that the US can't be trusted (the orange
guy might not be the last one) but also, every EU government and the bloc
itself is setting its own terms for future relations with the emerging
global hegemon, China. In Africa and Latin America, China is already the
primary economic force. You can never underestimate the dynamism of US
society - it might roar back as the new economic cycle gets underway. More
likely, the decadence continues.

I think it is incumbent on intellectuals around the world to offer analyses
of phenomena within their own society,  and also, situated perspectives on
the global realignment that is now taking place. Of course it is more
difficult because you have to reconstruct a referential framework which,
for the US, is given by the plethora of (debased) media coverage. But a
truly multiperspectival conversation would be incredibly more valuable than
what is prevailing now.

all the best, Brian
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Re: Leaders of the Capitol insurrection

[Brian Holmes]

On Wed, Jan 27, 2021 at 10:52 AM mp  wrote:

>
> FBI had an agent provocateur embedded, leading the line. Sounds familiar.
>
> The state has long done exactly that (although Tarrio was not "leading the
line", he had been arrested the day before and limited himself to a few
encouraging tweets from afar on the day of the riot - NOT pushing people to
violence).

It's certain that the damage done by FBI provocateurs is considerable.
Above all it damages people's capacity to seek out the truth and recognize
it when they find it. People then become cynical, and they are unable to
contribute anything except their skepticism. The capitalist system provides
them plenty of leisure to express that skepticism, and they do. Listen to
the QAnon people, they are very expressive concerning their doubts. But not
the greatest company to keep.

I think sitting back and being cynical when a country is in danger of being
taken over by fascists is a mistake. This is going to happen to many
countries. At some point, when the leisure collapses, you actually have to
take a side - compromising as that may be.

Brian
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Re: In God We Tryst

[Brian Holmes]

Oh yeah, of course I agree that not all Christianity is synonymous with the
instrumentalization of Evangelical Christianity by the right! (Thank you,
Ryan.)

The eternal question is, how has the Right succeeded in getting people to
vote, not only against some of their own interests as the materialist
reading goes, but above all, in favor of a horrifyingly oppressive version
of their central interest: religious community.

Being an Evangelical Christian does not make you the same as the people who
stormed the Capitol. But in a large percentage of cases, it does make you
their passive enabler. Something specific is going on here, which involves
media but is not reducible to it - just as it involves religion but is not
reducible to it.

Brian



On Mon, Jan 25, 2021 at 1:40 PM Ryan Griffis  wrote:

> On Jan 25, 2021, at 12:38 PM, nettime-l-requ...@mail.kein.org wrote:
>
>
> Perhaps, in terms of fascism, fundamentalist religion is what is being
>
> substituted for the state.
>
>
> Contradiction doesn't bother these people. They are anti-state
> nationalists. Traditional fascism gets folded in as part of nationalism.
> For them, being against the state means getting rid of those aspects of
> government that don't fit their world picture. Ideally, a Christian state
> would solve all their problems, but in the meantime, the White nation is
> good enough. If you try to find coherency here, there is none.
>
>
> I’m not sure that it’s worth getting into this, but maybe it is, I don’t
> know. The idea that the Right has a monopoly on Christianity, much less,
> organized religion and spirituality, is not really grounded in history or
> reality.
>
> Of course it would be ridiculous to ignore the rhetorical use of Christian
> morality by dominant sectors of the US Right… I mean Pompeo’s press
> conferences alone reveal the extremes of such rhetoric being at the heart
> of their vision of foreign policy. But I think it’s spurious to claim that
> the US Right depends on religious fundamentalism to make its claims of
> white nationalism (as Brian notes), misogyny, and minoritarian rule. I
> don’t think the “White nation” is simply "good enough” for the US Right, it
> is the goal that (their use of religious fundamentalism) serves, IMO. Lots
> of rightwing conspiracies are as grounded in secular apocalyptic fantasies
> as they are Biblical gnosticism.
>
> But, maybe more important, giving the US Right sole claims to organized
> religion does extreme disservice to the ongoing history of liberatory
> spirituality, from Catholics protesting early colonial violence to
> abolitionists, to the spread of Liberation Theology across the Americas.
> Yes, there are all kinds of problems with the missionary tendencies in some
> of these examples, but there is also the rise of the AME Church to the SCLC
> to the contemporary Moral Monday movement and reimagined Poor People’s
> Campaign.
>
> I guess I’m just suggesting that to ignore the role of “the church” and
> organized religion in liberatory and leftist politics in the US Left would
> be a huge mistake. As is suggesting that the left-right divide in the US is
> synonymous with one that is rational vs religious. This recent radio
> segment (from the United States of Anxiety) features a couple of Black
> theological scholars/leaders who make this case better than I can.
>
>
> https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/anxiety/episodes/how-martin-luther-king-jr-changed-american-christianity
>
> Anyway, possibly also of interest, this recent podcast on the rise of
> post-1970s white supremacy in the US features some discussion of the early
> adoption of online message boards to form a broad, decentralized culture,
> and a lot of the talking points then mirror the underlying fantasies of
> QAnon adherents today.
>
> https://www.npr.org/transcripts/940825490
>
> I hope everyone is doing well,
> Ryan
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Re: In God We Tryst

[Brian Holmes]

On Sunday [fittingly - BH], Jan 24, 2021 at 1:32 PM Joseph Rabie <
j...@overmydeadbody.org> wrote:

Perhaps, in terms of fascism, fundamentalist religion is what is being
> substituted for the state.
>

 Contradiction doesn't bother these people. They are anti-state
nationalists. Traditional fascism gets folded in as part of nationalism.
For them, being against the state means getting rid of those aspects of
government that don't fit their world picture. Ideally, a Christian state
would solve all their problems, but in the meantime, the White nation is
good enough. If you try to find coherency here, there is none.

Fundamentalist religion already requires the rejection of reality in favor
of myths and miracles. The pathological narcissism of social media works
perfectly for them: it provides a frame of reference for their communalist
imaginary. They look for secret knowledge (gnosis) and find it in the palm
of their hand. They commune with God through their cell phone, while
fulfilling some politician's plan.

After the war, the Allies set about de-Nazifying Germany. To do this they
had to consider the Germans, not only as entirely deluded, but also as a
kind of social material that could be reworked, reshaped like putty in
their hands. To be sure - and this is crucially important - their goal was
not to produce robots or ideologized slaves. Their goal was to restore, or
perhaps create, the kind of individual autonomy and the kind of citizenship
that prevails in capitalist democracies.

No one will say it explicitly, but it is now urgent to "de-Nazify" the USA.
As in post-WWII Germany this must be done with new laws, new institutions,
and also with new cultural contents (words, images, figures). But there is
obviously a big difference. This time our own capitalist democracy has been
at the origin of the problem. What do the ideal citizens of the
twenty-first century look like? How can they be produced? By whom?

The question is serious, and answering it demands a new philosophical
account of what a human is and can be, along with new forms of
society-shaping agency. We should not be ashamed of trying these new
accounts out in public debate. After all, Twitter and Facebook have already
built out a new account of what a human is and can be, and they have done
so at global scale. Surely we can find a better way.

Brian
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Leaders of the Capitol insurrection

[Brian Holmes]

How did a chaotic, unprepared crowd get through police barriers to invade
the Capitol? It turns out they were led by determined ex-military "Oath
Keepers" (an ad hoc militia). By their own count they were "30-40"
(unconfirmed number). We all saw  them on the videos, dressed in tactical
gear, pushing at the front lines, communicating with walkie-talkies, and
inciting the crowd to enter and perform "citizens' arrests." Now it is
clear that they acted in concert on the basis of plans made in the days
preceding the event.

Endless wars since the mid-twentieth century have left North America full
of former soldiers, many of them angry and alienated: human explosions just
waiting for a spark. This is one of the pathologies in US society, closely
connected to the autonomous sherrifs movement which also holds that simple
individuals can embody and execute their own law by force of arms. In
addition it's a powerful reminder that at a moment of crisis and confusion,
an organized force with a plan can easily tip the balance.

Full article posted below because it's behind a paywall.



Self-styled militia members planned on storming the U.S. Capitol days in
advance of Jan. 6 attack, court documents say
Spencer Hsu, Tom Jackman, Devlin Barrett
9-11 minutes

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/conspiracy-oath-keeper-arrest-capitol-riot/2021/01/19/fb84877a-5a4f-11eb-8bcf-3877871c819d_story.html

While authorities have charged more than 100 individuals in the riot,
details in the new allegations against three U.S. military veterans offer a
disturbing look at what they allegedly said to one another before, during
and after the attack — statements that indicate a degree of preparation and
determination to rush deep into the halls and tunnels of Congress to make
"citizens' arrests" of elected officials.

U.S. authorities charged an apparent leader of the Oath Keepers extremist
group, Thomas Edward Caldwell, 66, of Berryville, Va., in the attack,
alleging that the Navy veteran helped organize a ring of dozens who
coordinated their movements as they "stormed the castle" to disrupt the
confirmation of President-elect Joe Biden's electoral college victory.

"We have about 30-40 of us. We are sticking together and sticking to the
plan," co-defendant Jessica Watkins, 38, an Army veteran, said while the
breach was underway, according to court documents.

"You are executing citizen's arrest. Arrest this assembly, we have probable
cause for acts of treason, election fraud," a man replied, according to
audio recordings of communications between Watkins and others during the
incursion.

"We are in the main dome right now. We are rocking it. They are throwing
grenades, they are fricking shooting people with paint balls. But we are in
here," a woman believed to be Watkins said, according to court documents.

A man then responds, "Get it, Jess," adding, "This is . . . everything we
f---ing trained for!"

The FBI said it recovered the exchange from Zello, a push-to-talk, two-way
radio phone app.

FBI charging papers against Caldwell, Watkins and a third person, former
U.S. Marine Donovan Crowl, 50, allege that Caldwell and others coordinated
in advance to disrupt Congress, scouted for lodging and recruited Oath
Keepers members from North Carolina and like-minded groups from the
Shenandoah Valley. The group claims thousands of members who assert the
right to defy government orders they deem improper. The plotters both
anticipated violence and continued to act in concert after the break-in,
investigators alleged in court documents. FBI papers also say that Caldwell
suggested a similar event at the local level after the attack, saying in a
message: "Lets storm the capitol in Ohio. Tell me when!"

The three are charged with five federal counts of conspiracy against the
United States; obstructing an official government proceeding; impeding or
injuring government officers; and destroying U.S. property, entering
restricted grounds and disorderly conduct at the Capitol.

Attempts to reach attorneys for Caldwell, Watkins and Crowl have been
unsuccessful. No one immediately responded to messages left at numbers
connected to Caldwell.

Jessica Watkins, a self-described militia member, faces federal charges in
connection to the assault on the U.S. Capitol earlier this month.

Former U.S. Marine Donovan Crowl, 50, is among three people charged with
five federal counts of conspiracy against the United States.

Watkins, of Woodstock, Ohio, told the Ohio Capital Journal last week that
she formed a group known as the Ohio State Regular Militia in 2019 and that
it had patrolled 12 protests to "protect people" on both sides. She said
she had served a tour in Afghanistan while in the Army. She also said she
was a member of the Oath Keepers.

"I didn't commit a crime. I didn't destroy anything. I didn't wreck
anything," Watkins said to the Journal, adding that the riot was a peaceful
protest that turned violent.

Crowl's mother, Teresa Rowe, 

Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy

[Brian Holmes]

On Tue, Jan 19, 2021 at 6:51 AM Jean-Noël Montagné 
wrote:

>
> I don't see the end of the neoliberal period in the maelstrom which
> gathers populists/Trump/Qanon activists. They still behave in a
> conservative way: guns, religion, free-market capitalism, climate change
> denial, covid harshness denial, cult of the leader, economical
> colonialism, etc.
>

Jean, if we simply define neoliberalism as capitalism, then nothing has
changed. And if we measure the Zeitgeist by the side that just lost, well,
they don't even think they lost...

It's different if you look at it in political-economy terms. From that
angle, neoliberalism as a specific doctrine - formerly called "the
Washington Consensus" - began its decline in 2008, and that decline
continues. Continuous reduction of trade tariffs, strong currencies bought
at the price of fiscal austerity, multilateral negotiation on all
international issues and international military collaboration brought to
its height by the first Gulf War and patched up in Afghanistan later on -
these are some of the key traits. All of those have ceased to function as
they did at their peak. Crucially, the central banks of all major powers
started to print money after 2008 (Europe finally accepted to do this
rather recently) and now, in the US, the new administration in the voice of
the country's most official ever economist, Larry Summers, has declared
that rising debt does not cause inflation and therefore that essentially
unlimited money can and will be spent. Goodbye, Washington Consensus! This
approach will inevitably be taken by all the other countries and blocs
(which have mostly already started down that road) and the result will be,
in my best projection, at least as great a sea change in the global economy
as was experienced in the early 1980s, when the policy package and business
model of neoliberalism was invented.

The groundswell that Trump rode to power was nationalist and
anti-neoliberal. As president, Trump stoked the nationalist demand while
continuing to carry out the neoliberal program through tax cuts,
deregulation and curtailment of social services. However this contradiction
at the heart of his presidency is now tearing the Republican party apart,
and the damage that neoliberalism has done makes further neoliberalization
impossible for the Democrats, even though they are the ones who brought
that policy package to its culmination under Clinton (remember the
Clinton/Shroeder/Blair era). This is not just about the US, but it might be
safe to say that the decline in US power and prestige is itself a facet of
the global retreat from neoliberalism. The rising prestige of China, with
its controlled currency and state-guided economy, is another one (which is
in the process of becoming a real nightmare under Xi). As yet, no new
consensus model has appeared, but that may begin happening this year, so be
alert!

How all this unfolds is not only something to observe, but something to
fight for. Particularly important is how the financial markets evolve. At
the outset of the pandemic, as after 2008, the US Treasury made large
amounts of US dollars available to around fifteen major countries, so they
could maintain their dollar reserves despite their citizens trying to buy
all the dollars they could. This was a deliberate effort to preserve
neoliberal globalization and surely those efforts are not over, so the
trend lines I am pointing to could still be reversed. So far, one of the
outstanding contradictions of the new regime is that socialized national
money props up a thoroughly privatized, stateless circulation system
accessible only to elites. In short, the battle over the future of the
money-form is underway.

>
> As a nettime reader, interested by net and digital culture, I have
> studied the power of social networks algorithms on the sudden emergence
> of Gilets Jaunes in France. Gilets Jaunes movement is almost identically
> composed by the same items we see in US, apart from some national
> cultural particularities: distrust of the political class, feeling of
> social downgrading, feeling of territorial abandonment, decline in
> purchasing power, specially for working class and low/middle class,
> ideas mixed with all fake news and comploting theories.
>
> This is totally interesting and I would like to know more. I share your
analysis, except for me it's just an opinion, a feeling. I also have the
impression that there is a lot more intermixing between the Gilets Jaunes
and the far left/anarchist sectors than here, but anyway, it's all a result
of the plunder that elites and the upper middle classes have carried out
over the last four decades, no wonder the people revolt. Europeans really
need to understand these similarities. Merkel is holding the lid on the pot
in Germany...


> The first struggle to build in my opinion, is the struggle against
> social networks, and at the same time, the promotion of the use and
> build of other alternatives ( existing or 

Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy

[Brian Holmes]

I am sure you heard last week's joke, Iain:

"Due to the pandemic, the United States decided to have its coup at home
this year."

Has anyone heard one about the Green Zone?

cheers, BH

On Mon, Jan 18, 2021 at 5:33 PM Iain Boal  wrote:

> OK, John, apologies. Mistakes were made. I was not feeling well. I now
> recognize my "name-calling destructiveness”. I retract "sinomane”. Would
> “sinophilic” meet your approval? As for “telecommunist”, you surely
> noticed, it's their self-description!
>
> Those nettimers, stakhanovite heroes and sheroes at the digital coalface,
> who have stuck with this thread — whether out of loyalty, ‘iterative
> forwardness’ [wozzat? ED], or in the case of serial ironists (such as Roman
> and myself) nostalgic for the 1950s and even hoping to come across the
> phrase “big tractors” somewhere in the niagara of Eastern Orthodoxy — may
> have noted some projection going on, John, at your end.
>
> Truly, I made no ‘demand', either for ‘regulation' or ‘suppression'. Just
> a query whether Ted, our quondam moderator, might - do what? - well,
> perhaps send  a back-channel "*verb. sap*.", as Rosa Luxemburg used to
> say.
>
> Maybe it was the word ‘intervention’ that set you off, John? Well, I
> fondly hoped that the polysemy might be apparent, that its more gentle,
> mediative and therapeutic sense might be set resonating, rather than the
> cant term favoured by belligerents of right and left.  Why did the dogs of
> the crimethink gendarmerie spring to your mind?
>
> As for ‘inciteful’, well, what can one say? If it’s incitement you’re
> looking for, this fortnight I have just the place for you. Where the Green
> Zone comes home from the imperial frontier. Time to pull your Gibbon off
> the shelf.  (Hmm, my bibliomania is showing).
>
> Greetings, meanwhile, to all exhausted antinomians on the list, especially
> those silenced or keeping their silence, and - per impossibile -  to
> those who have already turned away from the spite and the spleen.
>
> From Ohlone territory,
>
> Iain
>
> -
>
> On 18 Jan 2021, at 10:11, John Young  wrote:
>
> "iterate forward" is promisingly constructive action. Not so much
> name-callingly destructive "sinomane telecommunist."
>
> Demanding moderators to regulate is hardly insightful, more inciteful,
> downright spiteful.
>
> My cognita wistful at paralyzing ad homina.
>
> So say, this forum must not suppress the irrepressible.
>
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Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy

[Brian Holmes]

Geoffrey Goodell wrote:

"So, I must ask: Is it possible that our pseudonymous contributor is
deliberately seeking to exploit our respect for anonymous speech as a way to
undermine our forum?"

I've met Dmitry, he is an actual person, well known in Berlin, involved in
practices relevant to this list for many years. If I am not mistaken he
works on open-source projects aligned with his ideals and those of his
collaborators.

I appreciate very much what Iain said about my own interventions, but I
don't think it is worth using strong-arm tactics with one's peers. Dmitry
has run a lot of very open and generous venues over the years (Stammtisch,
etc), people appreciate that, I did when I went.

Why don't we all just cool out? I am glad to bury the hatchet. It's also
possible to simply not read what one has no patience for.

onwards, Brian




On Mon, Jan 18, 2021 at 12:23 PM Geoffrey Goodell 
wrote:

> Dear Iain,
>
> I'm not sure whether it adds anything to the discussion, but I've
> experienced
> this before.
>
> I am on a mailing list for alumni of a particular house at my undergraduate
> university.  One particular contributor to this list has unleashed (and
> continues to do so) an unending stream of email nonsense, mostly in
> support of
> right-wing propaganda.  The nonsense is not completely incoherent, and it
> is
> also not stateless, as one might expect to find if it were the output of a
> comment-generating algorithm like this one:
>
>
> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/ai-powered-text-from-this-program-could-fool-the-government/
>
> It carries arguments over long threads, days and even weeks at a time.  So
> it
> seems to have been created by a real human.  But nobody really knows
> anything
> about this person, or who he claims to be.  We cannot find any records of
> his
> name in our alumni register, nor do any of us recognise his email address.
> Yet, there he is still, subscribed as he must have managed somehow to do,
> with
> all traces of linkages to any university-run system having vanished years
> ago.
>
> The propaganda itself is toxic.  It is not entirely clear whether our
> mailing
> list subscriber is trying to convince us of its truth or simply trying to
> warn
> us of the existence of such arguments.  Either way, he continues to defend
> its
> messages with sophistry, and he seems to have more than a bit of extra
> time on
> his hands to argue with other subscribers to the list.  Every now and then,
> people talk of forcing his removal, but for various logistical reasons this
> seems not to be possible, and moreover the other people on the list want to
> profess openness to debate.  Frankly it reminds me of what had happened at
> the
> University of Cambridge last year:
>
> https://www.bbc.com/news/education-55246793
>
> What is striking about the pseudonymous contributor on that mailing list is
> that he keeps contributing, despite the discordance with the mood of the
> group,
> with voluminous messages that would surely take an ordinary human many
> hours
> per week to compose.
>
> So, I must ask: Is it possible that our pseudonymous contributor is
> deliberately seeking to exploit our respect for anonymous speech as a way
> to
> undermine our forum?
>
> From a technical perspective, it is a form of 'poisoning', not unlike this
> attack on keyservers:
>
> https://gist.github.com/rjhansen/67ab921ffb4084c865b3618d6955275f
>
> If we think this is what is going on, then I suggest that we ignore it.  I
> shall certainly do so going forward.  Some of the more adventurous
> contributors
> to my other mailing list have chosen to respond to our relentless agitator
> with
> funny images.  I'm not sure that is a good idea, mostly because higher list
> traffic will invariably discourage some list members to unsubscribe.  At
> some
> level, I suspect that this might be our relentless agitator's objective.
>
> A closing thought exercise: Who might pay to poison a forum like this, and
> how
> much would it cost?
>
> Best wishes --
>
> Geoff
>
> On Mon, 18 Jan 2021 at 09:13:12AM -0800, Iain Boal wrote:
> > Nettimers,
> >
> > I???ve no idea of the identity of the sinomane telecommunist
> (???Kleiner') defiling this conversation, or their whereabouts, or their
> condition (though the aggressive logorrhoea is suggestive). However, to
> call Brian???s profound - and profoundly open, generous, and dialogical -
> contributions to the discussion ???mccarthyist gatekeeping??? is either
> wild self-satire or grounds for a strategic ???intervention' from our
> moderators. Ted?
> >
> > IB
> >
> >
> > On 18 Jan 2021, at 08:28, Dmytri Kleiner  wrote:
> >
> >
> > On 2021-01-18 13:42, Felix Stalder wrote:
> >
> > > So, what exactly is the lesson that China holds for "us", that is,
> > > cultural/knowledge workers
> >
> > While these questions hold promise, it feels to me like the precondition
> is that cultural/knowledge workers in the west stop carrying water for US
> intelligence and work on 

Re: offlist Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy

[Brian Holmes]

Joseph Rabie wrote:

"For those (as myself) who consider Capitalism a dead end, trying to
understand why Communism could not perdure in a country such as China (or
the USSR, or the Eastern Bloc) is of interest."

Joe, I went to China several times and I could observe a few things about
Chinese Communism.

By far the worst aspect was walking down a street with Chinese people and
they pointed to a door leading inside to a large courtyard and said,
"that's where the cops organize a social club for half of the neighborhood
that spies on the other half."

This was and remains the major problem of really-existing Communism: the
inability to deal with difference politically, leading to an extremely
oppressive use of force instead. I am sad to say I observed the same thing
in Cuba: the artists I met there go in and out of jail, it's very
oppressive. A horrible place as far as I could see, the last place I would
ever like to live. Everywhere they brutalize you with the exact same
pictures of Che and Fidel that we thrilled to see on posters in France,
only there are thousands of them, printed for example on 20-meter long
canvases spilling off the balconies of little town halls on the periphery
of Havana. Plus there's basically no development, folks are dirt poor. The
people are wonderful but they're really crushed by the regime. Cuba has
done some great things in Latin America with its communist ideals and its
doctors, and the governing classes are incredibly smart and well educated,
but in its current form it is definitely not a viable model for the future.
China is similar in some respects, but with a billion-plus people and a
three-thousand year history of specialized bureaucratic governance it's a
little bit different.

While in China I also made the effort to study the spread of capitalism in
the Shenzhen area and I went to villages where the land had been privatized
in two ways: collectively the village leased the newly privatized land to
large factories, and individually people had built large rental dormitories
for the workers, plus there were bulk businesses all over. This was the
pattern that evolved under Deng Xiaoping, on the basis of land
privatization. "It is glorious to get rich" and "Someone has to get rich
first," as Deng famously proclaimed. In that way the dynamics of capitalist
wealth accumulation were unleashed around the country. Needless to say the
place is a lot more developed than Cuba because it's basically a managerial
capitalist society, whereas Cuba is just Communism on tropical ice. China,
on the other hand, has a really perfectly oppressed and controlled working
class whose managers been able to take over a huge percentage of global
manufacturing operations - with the help and investment of the rest of the
global corporate elites, for sure. Despite lots of strikes and organizing
(which is going to be seriously hurt by the crackdown on Hong Kong,
however), the working class remains loyal and obedient because it's very
nice to get some income, and not so nice to get thrown into a reeducation
camp, or just beat up or whatever. Some day when you have time, count the
number of coal-burning plants that the proletariat has installed in China
for the needs of global capitalism. Basically, it's humanity's death
sentence right there. Built to meet the demands of Euro-American consumers
of course.

What's in some sense admirable in the Chinese system, however, is the CP
itself. The party is huge (over 91 million members!), it functions to
gather information about society, develop policy ideas and subject all that
to critique. It's democratic centralism. This is a very broad process
including lots of experimentation. Party Congresses then hash it out and
what they judge to be the best will become official policy. The
experimentation ends, the policies are implemented, and as the years go by
they are evaluated in the same ways. If you're not a Uigher or a dissident,
and if they haven't built a railroad through your village or decided to
tear down your neighborhood so the local glorious rich guy can build a
shopping mall, this form of government can be very efficient. That
efficiency looks awful right now (the large cities all bear a devastating
resemblance to San Jose - the epitome of commercial sprawl in the US) but
as climate change intensifies China will be able to take steps that the
West will not, failing a change in our way of governing. I think that how
China develops in this respect is central to the future of the entire
planet, so it's worth keeping an eye on it for sure. It's an incredibly
dynamic society right now.

Max Herman is totally right to say that all complex industrial societies
include specialized bureaucracies, this was identified in the US case as
"the managerial state" (James Burnham) and later as "the technostructure"
(JK Galbraith). This is what we find across the developed world since WWII:
dense interlocks between administrators and corporate hierarchies,
supported by 

Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy

[Brian Holmes]

On Fri, Jan 15, 2021 at 7:00 PM Molly Hankwitz 
wrote:

"I only hope that our police and our National Guard don't turn their guns
onto a democratic system which has begun to change by virtue of the
voteas leadership like Ocasio-Cortez and Stacy Abrams have shown."

Change by the vote is the point right now. Big gains from our side have
provoked a reaction from the right. The gains are not just this law or that
politician: they spring from a growing social capacity to listen to others,
just as you pointed out with your totally dialogical reply to me, Molly.
That kind of listening, when it begins to occur between the classes and the
races, becomes a threatening force challenging hierarchical norms.

Memories are short, but just a few months ago we had the George Floyd
protests that drew half the country into a movement against police
violence, and before that, we had the democratic socialist movement around
Bernie Sanders that has brought precarious labor and healthcare issues to
the center of the Biden administration. Now the desperate drama from the
superpatriot crowd is forcing something even more impressive: an
anti-racist shift at the heart of the American state, with all that
entails, opening up avenues for every imaginable type of work towards
social and environmental justice over the next few years. In my view this
moment of US society is a new avatar of the Left, but one that drinks
straight from the source: because the central technique being employed -
transforming social relations for political ends - was first conceived by
Antonio Gramsci in the 20s and 30s, and then brought into the contemporary
world of cross-racial politics by Stuart Hall. That type of
barrier-crossing practice began in American educational institutions in the
1970s, with the ambition to give disenfranchised people the chance to
create their own cultural canons; but it has never ceased raising
questions, and making people rethink their privileges, to the point where
other categories of traditionally entitled citizens started to feel very
uneasy. Like industrial workers and military men threatened in their
masculinity, or middle-class Whites threatened in their property values, or
high-end entrepreneurs threatened in their capacity to profit. It came to
the point where laws and mores started putting the squeeze on the capacity
of these dudes to put on the squeeze, if you see what I mean. And so force
came into the picture.

Now we don't know exactly what to do, or how to understand what we are
collectively doing, which is why I started talking about strategy. We are
told that an armed revolution of gun-toting QAnon-hyped violent militiamen
and random nationalist evangelical crazies might break out this weekend;
and we find ourselves desiring and fearing the protection of the National
Guard. You know, during the George Floyd protests I was angry to see
National Guard troops in Chicago, and I bet you were too Molly, but now I'm
getting the point. The point is hold up something better against a bunch of
White supremacists who want to start a fascist regime. The fascinating
thing is that we, the Left, who always worked toward revolution,
increasingly find our power in the institutional system - precisely because
we have transformed it so deeply over the generations. This process of
social metamorphosis has nothing to do with the old battles between
capitalist or imperialist countries, nor really with battle at all, because
it's basically against violence, enslavement, rape and expropriation. But
control is still an issue, because to be autonomous, as a collectivity, you
have to control your own destiny at least to some degree. If you are trying
to bend the course of an entire modern country to the left - which is what
the Progressive bloc is trying to do right now - then you have to take on
that country's operations, you have to keep the peace, you have to put out
the forest fires and stop the pandemic. Right now I find that great to
aspire to. Like a lot of people I want to work with these new
possibilities: this moment is a great teacher.

On the one hand I'm seeing all this through the spectacles of Gramsci,
whose strategy was the war of position, paradoxically inside the enemy
where you have to make the terrain, rather than taking it in a raid from
outside. Making the terrain is that social creativity I was talking about:
it's all those molecular shifts of people becoming simultaneously more
respectful and more outraged, and building organizations to put their
politics into effect on the ground. That's a vast generational thing in the
US, youth have really changed. All of that is our way of queer warfare and
its doing pretty damn good among lots of other things. But on the other
hand if you think about the global history of the Left, it's an incredible
irony for sure, because the ragtag wannabe army of this weekend somehow
represents the old industrial working class: damaged in the heart by
extraction and religion and 

Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy

[Brian Holmes]

Perhaps this thing called the Left exists in a world where actions have
consequences. That would be a good reason to have a strategy.

Many situations today require it.

Consider a New York Times article datemarked Jan. 8, by a German woman
named Anna Sauerbrey, under the title "Far-Right Protesters Stormed
Germany’s Parliament. What Can America Learn?"

The Reichstag wasn't really stormed, it turns out, but Sauerbrey claims
that QAnon and similar practices are on a threatening rise in Germany.
According to her we should learn that you can't negotiate with a fringe
that has gone aggressively nuts. Instead you have to crack down with force.
Apparently the German secret services are now tracking AfD members
personally and they've got an eye on people organizing anti-mask movements
too. She puts it on the level of friend or enemy:

"Of course, attempts to win voters back, to wrestle them from the grip of
the cult, must never stop. But there are no policies and no recognition
politics we could offer people who adhere to a cult. Instead, to protect
our democracies, we must watch them, contain them, and take away their
guns."*

So, this is exactly like the police repression of the German 1960s --
except the target today would be the extreme right at the very moment when
it's threatening bloody murder.

I don't know anything about it, and I'd love to hear German people tell
more. Here in the US, a majority of liberals and leftists have suddenly
gotten the brilliant idea that it might be necessary to do something
collective about gangs of delusionary racist dudes with guns. In terms of
defense, Antifa has been fantastic so far, but, uh, what if some more
former marines go into serious action? Does the example of the 1930s offer
any guidance? What exactly should we do right now?

Answering questions like this is crazy, when they are suddenly asked point
blank, as they are today, constantly. You can't answer without a strategy.

I support impeachment, closure of media channels to hate groups,
imprisonment of seditionists and seizure of arms stockpiles. I've written
many times that far right uprisings are a clear and present danger. The
Left can help develop a collective will in society. It would be insane to
let fascists take over as a point of anti-state pride.

At the same time, friend-enemy relationships are intrinsically deadly. You
don't want to become either the State or its Enemy. Life is elsewhere. You
have to oppose fascism collectively - I mean nationally, in a broad
consensus - and deviate *at the same time*. You have to fight back with
institutional power and at the same time, turn away toward social
creativity. It would be so interesting to hear more from people about that.
I think that as an individual, you can only do such things if you know who
you are and what you're on board with. You have to have a sharable
strategy.

There is an obscene reaction in the US because of the massive unstoppable
revolution coming from people of color and the young, who've had it with
the system. The only way to get out of the death spiral we're in now is to
shift the rules of the game, invent a new economy, change the relationship
to nature and above all to each other. People are starting to see that even
if doing this takes a whole lotta time, there is no alternative. The world
is too damn precarious. I think the pandemic has brought a root-level
realization of these ideas. At the same time it has revealed the
extraordinary intersection of all sectors of society, and shown how much we
all depend on others. Something quite good could come out of this moment -

If we could ever develop a strategy, a shareable strategy.

BH
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Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy

[Brian Holmes]

On Sun, Jan 10, 2021 at 3:57 PM Dmytri Kleiner 
wrote:

> They are narcissistic propagandists.
>

Yes, pathological narcissism is a real problem. But since you never ask a
genuine question, never look closely at the actual forces in play, and
continually center yourself as the source of an absolute truth veiled to
everyone else - well, you're doing pretty well in the pathology department,
Dmitry. The point is not to find perfectly obedient subjects for your own
already perfect ideology. That's a form of identitarianism. The point is to
contribute to what's actually happening.

Double-baked rhetoric and "us and them" purism reveal one of the main
problems with the left's lack of strategy: the inability to challenge
liberalism's exceptionally strong capacity to recognize distinct
orientations to a changing context, and to more-or-less peacefully
integrate them into a political process of argumentation and negotiation.
"Liberal" here refers to the Enlightenment idea of individual autonomy
within a market society governed by parliamentary democracy. Liberalism has
had a lot of terrible results (I've analyzed a few of them), but there are
still good reasons why it emerged victorious from the ideological struggles
of the twentieth century.  The inability to come anywhere near the liberals
in terms of political pluralism is the main reason why the left,
unfortunately for ourselves and planet Earth, has so far largely lost the
historical struggle to shape society's evolution.

Today in the US, the term "left" is mostly used by the right, precisely in
order to tar both leftists and liberals with the legacy of Dimitry's grand
heroes: the Soviet, Chinese and Cuban communists. The right's strategy is
to polarize the situation, eliminate all complexity and reduce all
political discourse to massive accusations and outraged denial - in short,
reduce politics to the friend/enemy distinction of Carl Shmitt. That
technique creates the rhetorical smokescreen behind which they organize the
complex technical activities of corporate expropriation. When leftists
spout outdated ideology, use disruptive or insurrectional tactics, make
absolute moral demands and refuse to reckon with anyone's issues but their
own, they support this reductivist technique - playing exactly into the
hands of their opponents.

We need a better strategy. Because the world is politically complex, this
cannot simply be an orientation "against capitalism." Instead, we have to
deal with a spectrum of forces which includes neoliberal oligarchs,
entitled liberals who tacitly support parts of their agenda, entitled
conservatives who explicitly support the oligarchical agenda, national
populists who recoil from all the damage done by the previously mentioned
groups, and oppressed minorities who are definitely against the
conservatives, populists and liberals, but not always certain they are part
of the left. As Ryan points out, the main progress on the US left in recent
years has come from White people embracing Black, Brown and Indigenous
leadership. What has been reconfigured in this way is the so-called
"progressive" bloc, whose chief issues now are minority rights, workers'
rights, consumers' rights (against corporate expropriation) and ecological
regulation (especially under the auspices of environmental justice). The
progressive bloc, including the Democratic Socialists, now represents some
40% of the "left" electorate. They do have a strategy, whose most integral
expression is the Green New Deal. However, they have been decisively
weakened by their inability to communicate this strategy - and by the
widespread narcissistic refusal to think about anything in any particular
detail. White leftists, who made "no demands" during the Occupy sequence,
are at their best when they back up Black, Brown or Indigenous people, as
the Antifa movements have done to their great credit. It's often a little
more difficult to get them to state what they believe, even for themselves,
let alone for the entire collectivity. If they're not Bernie supporters or
part of the DSA, they're likely to be nihilistic street fighters, confused
clowns or paleo-Communist orgmen and women who didn't even notice the fall
of the Eastern Bloc and the conversion of China to organized neoliberalism.

A political strategy is not just a set of talking points focused on
political economy, however important that may be. It also includes an
aesthetic, by which I mean an expressive translation of attitudes into
forms, and forms back into attitudes (this is the canonical feedback
definition of contemporary art). Leftism as a social-scale phenomenon is
still dominated by the Sixties aesthetic of the disruptive partisan. This
is why so many leftists don't know what to say about the storming of the
Capitol - they may be disgusted, but they also think, "that could have
(should have) been us." The surprising eruption of weirdly costumed
individuals without demands in the middle of a political event has 

The Left Needs a New Strategy

[Brian Holmes]

The end of the neoliberal period has coincided with a symbolic reversal in
politics: the torch of the partisan has passed from the insurgent Left of
1968 to the Qanon nationalists of today. This is a gigantic historical
shift.

I'm thinking of the arch-conservative Carl Schmidt, who in 1962 published
his entirely unexpected Theory of the Partisan. The thing is, Schmidt was a
Nazi who saw the cultural inventiveness of war-making shift from the highly
organized state-driven forms of his time to the Che Guevaras of
postcolonial insurgency. Fast forward half a century. As the old neoliberal
order crumbles we've seen that movement in reverse: a new disruptive force
of social activism has arisen on the right, overtaking a territory of
activism that was held almost entirely by the left just a decade ago.

You could see it on the screens last Wednesday: the populist right has
seized the leftist toolkit of centerless organizing, extreme philosophical
critique, freely alterable myths, and tactical improvisation in real time.
But now these things have an entirely new meaning. A leaderless revolution
can be fostered and unleashed from the top in a bid to change the system.
The combination of organized hierarchy and molecular energy characterizes
the networked fascism.

What's more, these people have a program.

A concise and ompletely operational ideology has solidified on the populist
right, linking extractive industries and the military to gun ownership,
safe communities, refusal of abortion and religious values. Qanon
theatrical culture and armed assault are just the thrilling provocations.
Behind them is a giant steamroller. Sure, this populist program is wrapped
in a larger capitalist one, to intensify corporate expropriation. But the
damage that the larger program does serves to enrage the populist base, and
the whole thing lurches forward. In the absence of a powerful response,
those combined forces will reshape society in their image.

Be certain that our side will respond over the next couple years. Be part
of it.

Years ago, without giving up any of my fundamental choices, I decided to
drop the old leftist toolkit of surprise and disruption, and try some
exploratory research. The first really original thing that emerged was the
chance to collaborate with a newly radicalized sector: earth system
scientists. I thought by looking around in an area where actual change was
sure to happen, more tangible possibilities would open. Now that people
speak of the Pyrocene rather than "climate change," I want to go for much
more immediate issues: environmental justice. Society can be materially
transformed on that terrain. This is just one strategic place that anyone
can occupy, within a larger "Great Transformation" type strategy that is
increasingly coming together, in the face of incipient breakdowns both
social and ecological.

I think we need a constructive strategy, not a disruptive one. If we can't
put something together, the alternative is apocalyptic.

All of recent experience from 2008 to the pandemic has shown how fragile
living conditions are, despite all the prosperity. In fact we depend
entirely on social cooperation. In the US especially: Without thousands of
mutualist organizations (including faith groups obviously) this society
would already have exploded under the pressure of the pandemic. This is why
radical tactics in the present are always centered around care, as far from
the partisan as you can be.

The current state of warfare won't go away. But we can't fight with
disruptive techniques and a partisan stance against enemies who exalt the
use of loaded guns. The starting point of care leads to entirely different
tactics and strategies. These can be developed, with force, in thousands of
coordinated directions.

Qanon is for them. We have to invent something.
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Re: made for TV, made for social media

[Brian Holmes]

On Sat, Jan 9, 2021 at 1:20 PM Kurtz, Steven  wrote:

> While we saw a lot of Trumpists having the best day of their life bathing
> in the pleasure of transgression, there were others hiding in that mob who
> knew what they were doing They understand distributed leadership and
> have for years.
>

This is for sure. While another attack on the Capitol next week is unlikely
to succeed, it's being called for and could still be attempted. I'd say
statehouses across the country have even more to fear. As far as I can see,
far-right groups like the Three Percenters have a perfect understanding of
how to foment their extremism through broad communications networks with
weak ties, and also how to organize tactically on a squad level (there were
effectively five or six guys in similar military gear, at least two
carrying zip ties, and that's off the top of my head, there were likely
more tight groups). Whether they have or will now gain strategic
organizational capacities, like the ability to have multiple disciplined
squads converge according to a shared plan, is the question with the most
military significance.

The event that did happen was coordinated by Trump and his inner circle. It
was announced in advance, legitimated by almost one hundred fifty
representatives and senators, catalyzed by the rally in the morning, and
enabled in the afternoon by reducing the DC National Guard units to traffic
control function, ie no guns and no riot gear. I doubt there was any direct
manipulation of the Capitol police: probably shared anti-BLM sympathies
were enough. Even though Trump's coordination of the event was partial,
incoherent and ultimately a failure, still he alone made it possible, which
is exactly why the Dems now want to eliminate him permanently from the
formal political arena. One big question is whether a strategically capable
revolutionary force emerges from the energy and enthusiasm of this
presidentially coordinated insurrection. So far the American far right has
never gotten near that level, but look at what they just did. A new playing
field opened up for them: it was their Seattle '99, their "Levitate the
Pentagon" moment. Such explosions don't just stop after the boom. Instead
they proliferate and send down much deeper roots.

The other big question, I agree, is what happens to the Republican party.
The current conflicts give the Dems a respite from continuous right-wing
political attack -- that's why the failed insurrection was a good thing,
because it has temporarily halted the government-level strategy machine.
The ideal outcome for us would be a party broken into the kind of splinters
that you describe, Steve. Yet it's obvious to everyone: a broken party is
an ineffective one. I doubt the Republicans will permanently splinter.
Either they patch up and improve Trump's model - with its fantastically
enabling divide of us vs them, conservative community vs globalist
conspiracy, fake news vs true experience - or they retreat into a more
Reagan-era guise, and try to exploit the next economic expansion. I don't
see any way of predicting what they will ultimately do, we will know in two
years.

For now, the question is what happens in the next two weeks? This is also
the biggest chance in decades to move forward on progressive issues - you
have to reach back to the inauguration of Kennedy or Roosevelt to find such
promise. The insurrection at the Capitol could be the birth pangs of the
Green New Deal.

act now, Brian
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Re: made for TV, made for social media

[Brian Holmes]

On Thu, Jan 7, 2021 at 2:27 PM Vesna Manojlovic  wrote:

> As someone from an (ex) country who went through "this", let me tell you:
> it can be both/and.
>
> Vesna, I am glad you wrote. Throughout these years I have thought of other
peoples' experiences in the former Yugoslavia, in Hungary, in Poland, in
Russia and so many other places (NL, etc) beset by the global fascist surge.

You are right: new things are going to unfold while the bullshit continues
and worsens.

The question of how to deal with the "death flowers" is the essence of it.
They can't exploit any more. There's no man to kick, there's no woman to
rape. Ultraviolence is the immediate escape hatch when someone asks for
minimum accountability.

I would like to know what other people think. US society is experiencing
some kind of pathological tremor, and it's synchronous with all kinds of
other places around the world.

When I spoke of a "total social fact," it's exactly the kind of political
sequence that Vesna is talking about. That's the breakdown of a bad social
order in favor of a worse one. And then the question of how you move
forward when the breakdown has occurred.

It's hard for someone from the outside to believe that certain things
happened in the 90s, even when they know. Maybe I had so many friends in
the former Yugoslavia because I know so many things about the place where I
come from.

be well, Brian



> Here are some takes from twitter that say the same as Brian, thou:
>
> Solitaire Townsend:
> https://twitter.com/GreenSolitaire/status/1347115498924871680
> &  the
> whole thread:
> https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1347115498924871680.html
>
>
> " 'death flowering': it happens when an old tree is diseased
> and rotting from the inside.
>
> Trump, Cruz and the GOP in the US and other 'strongmen' attempts
> around the world - they are death flowers
> White supremacists - death flowers
> INCEL misogynists  - death flowers
>
> The chaotic growth, bursting energy with no direction, the urgency against
> losing entitlements, they are dying and know it, deep down. This isn't
> their world anymore.
> Epicormic growth isn't sustainable. It's desperation.
>
> But, here's the kicker. You can't wait for a death flowering tree to just
> fall. Foresters will get their axe when they spot them,
> because these trees can infect and damage the forest itself. They are
> dangerous and their rot might pass to other trees.
> You gotta chop them down.
> Those death flowers are destructive and need felling."
>
> & Bill McKibben
>
> "I can't quite figure out how to say this, but 24 hours later it feels
> like there's something potentially healthy about what happened yesterday.
> The festering wound is out in the open now. The pus reeks, but at least
> it's open to the air. It's harder to gaslight people in daytime."
>
> https://twitter.com/billmckibben/status/1347273450872832003
>
>
> Your tweeting correspondent,
> Vesna
>
>
> --
> community, cooperation, commons, squirrels // http://becha.home.xs4all.nl
> nature, anarchy, utopia, un-anthropocene // https://www.unciv.nl //
> @Ms_Multicolor
>
>
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Re: made for TV, made for social media

[Brian Holmes]

On Thu, Jan 7, 2021 at 2:32 AM Felix Stalder  wrote:

> I followed, like many others I presume, yesterday's events in Washington
> on TV (cnn) and on social media at the same time. And it seems pretty
> clear that this event was made on, through and for social media

 [...lots of other very cogent observations here...]

> I'm far away, maybe miss-reading this entire thing.
>

It's too early to tell. However there is an opposite interpretation.

In my view, far from being a harbinger of possibly worse threats to come,
yesterday's events were the most positive thing that could have happened. I
had hoped - dreamed - that we would see something exactly like this.

The reason why is that through these events, we as a country left the world
of "harbingers" and "possible threats" behind. Simultaneously, we left
behind the pretense that populist Republicans are "merely" engaged in
political theater. The day began with the usual push-the-limits posturing
from Senator Ted Cruz and his allies: yet another page from the rhetorical
playbook developed by Newt Gingrinch in the early 1990s. But then the
play-acting devolved into an ugly insurrection carried out by crude, stupid
and very obviously manipulated people. They were directly incited by the
highest powers, via social media for sure, and television, and radio, and
print journalism, and above all by the hottest channel of all: live
rallies. The theater had consequences. The possible became real. And so a
choice between conflicting realities could finally occur.

Amazingly, no bomb exploded, no automatic weapons came out at dusk, there
was no massacre. The pretense of "political theater" that fomented the
uprising also took the place of, and disallowed, any serious planning for
collective violence. Instead the entire country got a close look at an
inchoate, yet very dangerous mob whose worldview is paranoid and
delusional. Sure, we had seen these folks already, many times. Yet this
time there was no equivocation as to who was leading. When Pence and
McConnell took their last-minute stand in favor of the Constitution, Trump
sent his thugs to oppose them. And with their actions, Trump's people - the
real, unequivocal "deplorables" - finally lanced the boil of Trumpism.

When the Western forests burned and smoke hung for weeks over Seattle and
San Francisco, it became obvious to a majority of Americans that climate
change was real. Similarly, when the windows were shattered at the Capitol,
it became obvious that a politics based on staged and calculated
insurrectionary rhetoric leads to real violence and institutional breakdown.

Rather than subjecting it to a media-theoretic analysis, I think it would
be realistic to see yesterday's electoral count event as a "total social
fact." The phrase by Marcel Mauss refers to moments of collective ritual in
which the pragmatic administration of functions coincides with the
charismatic or magical expression of values. For Mauss this is a dynamic
ritual with all the density, complexity and precarity of lived experience.
It is a real force because it tests out the validity of social fictions. It
is a total fact because it upholds, but to some extent also transforms, a
society's core affective and cognitive assumptions about what the world is
and how it works.

The pragmatic function of yesterday's certification ritual was to confirm
the peaceful transferral of state power. Yet what it became, dynamically,
was a challenge to and subsequent re-affirmation of all the procedures,
values and aspirations attached to the society-wide practice of democracy.
This was not a monolithic, mythical, predetermined ceremony, even though
that was what everyone was fearfully hoping it would be. Instead it was
dynamic, open-ended, touch and go, extremely vulnerable. And look at what
it actually did.

It reconfirmed, in the evening, the about-face of political power that had
occured in the morning, when the results from Georgia came through. In this
way, it opened up the possibility for a Democratic administration to
actually legislate: to move transformative laws through both the House and
the Senate. Not just Trump, but three decades of Republican mendacity and
opportunism were pushed aside. And that event did not merely happen over
social media, or on talk radio, or on the Hannity show. It was not just
another piece of calculated political theater. It was a society-wide event:
a total social fact.

Not only that, but from the media-theoretic viewpoint, something extremely
interesting did occur: Twitter censored Trump and blocked his
communications for 12 hours. The anarcho-capitalist media took one giant
step towards accepting their integration in the overall political process.

So we dodged a bullet yesterday, for sure. And something a lot more
important may potentially have happened.

There comes a point where you have to be counter-factual, you have to
engage in what Mauss calls "magical thinking." You have to take a role in a
theater that