Radical media, politics and culture.
November 13, 2002 - 5:10am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

SCP-New York writes:

"Why We Refuse to 'Play Detective' "

Surveillance Camera Players -- NY

In the early days of the process of identification [...], the identity of a person was established through his signature. The invention of photography was a turning point in the history of this process. It is no less significant for criminology than the invention of the printing press is for literature. Photography made it possible for the first time to preserve permanent and unmistakable traces of a human being. The detective story came into being when this most decisive conquest of a person's incognito had been accomplished. Since then, the end of efforts to capture a man in his speech and actions has not been in sight. -- Walter Benjamin, The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire, 1938

Detective stories are very, very popular these days, not only in bookstores, but also at the movies and on television, where they are sometimes called "police dramas." What accounts for the enduring popularity of the detective story? A big factor is obviously the salacious subject matter, the crimes, the most common of which is murder. To guard against the accusation that the writers and readers of such gruesome fictions are puerile or perverted, the center of attention of these "guilty pleasures" is shifted from the crime and the criminal who committed it to the detective who investigates the case. No doubt this is shift is made with great reluctance, because it is commonly believed that criminals are "more interesting people" than police officers. In any event, the need to compromise suggests that it isn't so much the gruesome crimes, but the narrative's displaced relationship to them, that makes the detective story so popular as a genre. People may love to read about criminals, but, deep down, they identify with detectives.

November 13, 2002 - 4:06am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

"Approximations:

Towards an Ontological Definition of the Multitude"

by Antonio Negri

(Translated by Arianna Bove)

1) The multitude is the name of an immanence. The multitude is a whole of singularities. On these premises we can immediately begin to trace an ontological definition of what is left of reality once the concept of the people is freed from transcendence.

November 11, 2002 - 5:21pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Work

Daybreak! writes:

"The Death of Independent Family Farms"

by Peligro


The family farm has been a sustaining myth in America. It's been seen as proof that if someone was willing to work then they’d be able to have a little land to live on, at least enough to take care of themselves and their family. As if we needed more proof that the American Dream has become little more than a twisted corpse, a story politicians tell us to put our dreams to sleep, we need look no further then the situation of the family farm in the Midwest today.

November 9, 2002 - 5:53pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Health

Katherine Van Wormer writes:

"Addiction, Brain Damage and the President:

'Dry Drunk' Syndrome and George W. Bush"

by Katherine van Wormer October 11, 2002

[Katherine van Wormer is a Friend (Quaker), Professor of Social Work at the
University of Northern Iowa, and co-author of the recent Addiction
Treatment: A Strengths Perspective (2002).]

Ordinarily I would not use this term. But when I came across the article
'"Dry Drunk" -- Is Bush Making a Cry for Help?' in 'American Politics
Journal' by Alan Bisbort, I was ready to concede ... in the case of George
W. Bush, the phrase may be quite apt.

November 8, 2002 - 9:10am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Technology

The Death Of The Internet

How Industry Intends To Kill The 'Net As We Know It

By Jeff Chester

(Chester is executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy)

The Internet's promise as a new medium -- where text,
audio, video and data can be freely exchanged -- is under
attack by the corporations that control the public's access
to the 'Net, as they see opportunities to monitor and
charge for the content people seek and send. The
industry's vision is the online equivalent of seizing the
taxpayer-owned airways, as radio and television
conglomerates did over the course of the 20th century.

November 7, 2002 - 1:58pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
The State

(This is a longer post, posted in multiple parts.)


Banking Bunkum

Part 1: Monetary theology

By Henry C K Liu, Asia Times: November 6 2002

Central bankers are like librarians who consider a well-run library to be
one in which all the books are safely stacked on the shelves and properly
catalogued. To reduce incidents of late returns or loss, they would proposed
more strict lending rules, ignoring that the measure of a good library lies
in full circulation. Librarians take pride in the size of their collections
rather than the velocity of their circulation.

Central bankers take the same attitude toward money. Central bankers view
their job as preserving the value of money through the restriction of its
circulation, rather than maximizing the beneficial effect of money on the
economy through its circulation. Many central bankers boast about the size
of their foreign reserves the way librarians boast about the size of their
collections, while their governments pile up budget deficits. Paul Volcker,
the US central banker widely credited with ending inflation in the early
1980s by administering wholesale financial blood letting on the US economy,
quipped lightheartedly at a Washington party that "central bankers are
brought up pulling legs off of ants".

November 5, 2002 - 4:38pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
The State

nolympics writes:


"The Real Axis of Evil*

by George Katsiaficas

Long before North Korea announced in October 2002 that it possesses nuclear weapons, Bush’s infamous “axis of evil” speech was a clear sign that his administration had made North Korea a target. In early 2002, the US not only labeled North Korea part of an “axis of evil,” it also threatened to use nuclear weapons against it. In the first year and a half of the Bush presidency, there were not any serious talks between the US and North Korea. Moreover, under pressure from right-wing congressmen, the Bush administration reevaluated the 1994 U.S. agreement with North Korea, known as “The Agreed Framework.” Although most Americans remain completely unaware of it, in 1994 the US came very close to bombing North Korea unilaterally. “The Agreed Framework” narrowly averted a new Korean War that in the estimation of the US military commander in Korea would have killed more than the 3 million people who lost their lives from 1950-1953.

November 5, 2002 - 9:10am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

This is the "Introduction" to Konrad Becker's new cultural intelligence manual Tactical Reality
Dictionary

.- .... .- - . ... - .... .. ... ..--..

("What is this?" — Samuel Morse)

"Culture and Technologies of Control"

Culture is not just the expression of individual interests and
orientations, manifested in groups according to rules and habits but it
offers identification with a system of values. The construction of
cultural memory and establishing a symbolic order through setting up
mental and ideological spaces is a traditional practice of cultural
engineering; symbolic scenarios generate reality by mediating an implicit
political narrative and logic. Maps of the world radiating an aura of
objectivity and marking out the ways of life are exploited as cognitive
tools. An image of the world as simulation or map of reality can be highly
inductive and that explains the investment in cultural representation.

November 2, 2002 - 2:58pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

"A Virtual World is Possible:

From Tactical Media to Digital Multitudes"

By Geert Lovink and Florian Schneider, nettime

I.


We start with the current strategy debates of the so-called
"anti-globalisation movement", the biggest emerging political force for
decades. In Part II we will look into strategies of critical new media
culture in the post-speculative phase after dotcommania. Four phases of
the global movement are becoming visible, all of which have distinct
political, artistic and aesthetic qualities.

November 2, 2002 - 1:00pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

"The Anarchist Revolution"

By Nestor Makhno

1.


ANARCHISM — a life of freedom and creative independence for humanity.

Anarchism does not depend on theory or programs, which try to grasp man's life in its entirety. It is a teaching, which is based on real life, which outgrows all artificial limitations, which cannot be constricted by any system.

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