July 2008
A Suicide Note From The Music Industry
Cory Doctorow writing for The Guardian:
This month’s announcement of a back-room deal between ISPs (internet service providers) and the big record companies to spy on suspected copyright infringers and reduce the quality of their internet connections is just the latest paragraph in the record industry’s long, self-pitying suicide note, and it’s left me wishing they’d just pull the trigger already and stop beating their chests and telling us all how unfair it all is.
Under the new scheme, the rule of law is replaced by a cosy inter-industry deal. Whereas before, anyone who wanted your ISP to spy on your internet connection would have had to show evidence to a judge and get a court order, now any joker who claims to be an aggrieved copyright holder can do so.
(Via 3 Quarks Daily.)
Who, We?
Jodi Dean:
Ultimately, what bugs me the most about critiques of ‘we’ is the way that they mobilize a suspicion toward collectivity and privilege individualism. To this extent, they are little machines or engines of neoliberalism, neoliberal-bots that drive writers and thinkers to dismantle any collective sense or feeling of solidarity in advance, to suspect such sentiments rather than be responsible to them. Most of us who write in contemporary left political and media theory have been reading and writing about difference for a long time now. It’s time that we redirect the suspicions leveled toward collectivity toward suppositions of individuality and autonomy.
Kate Bush: Cloudbusting
Kate Bush’s Cloudbusting lyrics:
I still dream of Organon. I wake up cryin’. You’re making rain, And you’re just in reach, When you and sleep escape me.
Willem Reich on Wikipedia:
He said he had discovered a form of energy, which he called “orgone,” that permeated the atmosphere and all living matter, and he built “orgone accumulators,” which his patients sat inside to harness the energy for its reputed health benefits. It was this work, in particular, that cemented the rift between Reich and the psychoanalytic establishment.
Jack White and Alicia Keys
Jack White is working with Alicia Keys on the new James Bond theme. Thankfully the song is not called “Quantum of Solace,” as that would be impossible to sing.
The White/Keys combination beat out rumored candidates Amy Winehouse, Leona Lewis and Duffy for the right to try to join Duran Duran, Shirley Bassey and Carly Simon in the Bond theme hall of fame.
Glad they made the right decision. Also, Bob Dylan is one step closer to finding Alicia Keys.
What Would Allende Say?
Interesting profile of former Chilean socialist revolutionary, Salvador Allende, in n+1 Magazine. The excerpt from 3 Quarks Daily about his taste in suits is pretty great, too.
New Dylan “Bootleg Series”
Bob Dylan’s website has been updated for the release of the next bootleg series collection “Tell Tale Signs.” You can get a free preview track and look at the Bob Dylan Geo, which I think examines fungal growth in the western world.
Bukowski on Poetry
This should cure you of your maladies.
Larry Summers is a Jackass
He does a terrific job of pointing out just how vapid his neoliberal ideology is: Keynesianism for the empire, free-markets for the colonies. And as the former head of the World Bank, Summers got the opportunity to unleash his venom on a good amount of the “Third World.” How is it possible that people like this can be taken seriously? At least other neoliberals are consistent enough to endorse unleashing their terrible ideas on themselves as well, rather than simply being outright imperialists.
The “Politicization” of the DoJ
Today the Justice Department released a report concluding that Bush loyalists at the DoJ broke the law by allowing “politics” to influence their hiring decisions. The way this ongoing scandal has been reported has often been in the context of “politicization,” of how the administration sought to bring in like-minded yes-men in order to promote executive sovereignty. I think there are two problems with this: (1) I don’t think you can call what the administration did in regards to the DoJ to be “politicization,” properly so-called; and (2) the tacit assumption on behalf of most pundits has been that “politicization” is something that should be condemned.
It’s obvious that the administration’s intent in carrying out this policy has been to allow for them to push through controversial legislation as quickly as possible and with as little debate as possible. Moreover, the administration has used the pretext of an amorphous, all-encompassing threat vis-a-vis the “War on Terror” to legitimize their extra-legal maneuvering. By exploiting shock and then establishing its subsequent lacunae within the juridical order as the norm, the Bush administration has successfully strengthened the power of the executive branch to an unprecedented degree.
What they haven’t done is “politicization” proper. In fact, you could even say they did the opposite: they depoliticized the Justice Department by extricating it from the political domain. By placing it under the subordination of the executive branch, the Bush administration was able to ignore public opinion on issues such as domestic…
Walnuts! McCain is Really Old
This website is pretty amazing. (Via Matthew Yglesias.)
The Logic of the People
Fight, fail, fight again, fail again, fight again … till there is victory; that is the logic of the people.
—Mao Zedong
(Via No Useless Leniency.)
How To Write With Style
I know nothing about how to do that, but Kurt Vonnegut did and so here is his advice. (Via 3 Quarks Daily.)
Crimes and Misdemeanors
Check out this great interactive venn diagram of Bush administration criminals over at Slate. The who’s-who of torturers, crooks and liars is about what you’d expect. (Via Matthew Yglesias.)
Back to the Futura
Given all of the idiocy the radical right has been spewing in recent days about how Obama’s trip to Germany is somehow a step closer to him burning the Reichstag, it’s worth noting, as John Holbo does, that the Obama campaign has chosen German “New Typography” for their posters and advertisements. Here’s an interesting excerpt from German Modern:
After the Nazi’s rise to power in 1933, however, when the Dessau Bauhaus was closed (the school had moved from its original home in Weimar in 1925), it was forbidden to use modern design or sans-serif typefaces such as Futura, which Goebbels called a “Jewish invention.” Rigid, central balanced composition returned and traditional (and often illegible) Fraktur type was touted as symbolic of the glories of the nation. (17)
For typophiliacs or those interested in the art of the Third Reich, I recommend reading the entire article over at Crooked Timber.
Cary Grant’s Suit
Granta:
North by Northwest isn’t a film about what happens to Cary Grant, it’s about what happens to his suit.
I guess I never thought about it like that before. (Via 3 Quarks Daily.)
Conditions of Receptivity
Dr. Sinthome:
At what point do certain statements, certain declarations, certain assertions, take on the capacity to resonate and produce effects in a receiver? What are the conditions for the possibility of being heard? … I became capable of receiving a message where before I was not. But how and under what conditions? Likewise, under what conditions do certain political positions and declarations begin to resonate within the social field? This question is at the very heart of social change and is not secondary or ancillary to questions of critique. For without adequately answering these questions, adequate strategies of producing change cannot be formulated. However, a glance at the history of political transformations also seems to indicate that while these shifts are cultural in character, they also seem to involve material transformations that problematize the cultural sphere, calling for new institutions, new group formations, new ways of feeling, new subjectivities, and new ways of living.
John Gruber is a Jerk
So the story goes that Dan Lyons, the guy who writes Fake Steve Jobs, has decided to stop. He made the mistake of talking about why he stopped in an interview:
The truth is simply this. I began hearing a few months ago that Steve Jobs was very sick. I wasn’t sure if these rumors were true or not. Then I saw how he looked at WWDC and it was like having the wind knocked out of me. I just couldn’t carry on. I hope and pray that he’s not sick. But for now I just can’t carry on with the Fake Steve character.
Rather than accept that it is possible and probable that Steve Jobs is sick, or at least that Lyons believes he is, Gruber over at Daring Fireball decides to attack Lyons as a two-faced Newsweek whore. Gruber accuses Lyons of a deceptive attempt to clear the way for new Apple freebies, implying that he’ll get less access to Apple products because of his bad behavior as Fake Steve Jobs.
I’m sure it had nothing to do with the fact that continuing the Fake Steve blog might have an adverse affect on the amount of access to new products Apple will grant to Lyons and Newsweek. Levy, at least while at Newsweek, was often seeded with new products a few weeks in advance of release, in the same rarified air as Walt Mossberg and David Pogue. Even with Fake Steve on ice, it’ll be interesting to see what kind of access Apple gives to Lyons at Newsweek.
Lyons used to be linked in Daring Fireball quite often, even without mention of lenses, typography or Stanley Kubrick. It’s a mystery to me why Gruber is attacking him now but something tells me it has to do with the possibility of a Steve Jobs illness. That possibility has initiated Gruber’s Apple apologist instincts and anyone who mentions it is getting the full brunt of his unfocused rage.
Of course, Lyon’s FSJ is a mini American masterpiece. A satire that mocks the self-obsessed aestheticism and infantile streaks of aggression from the faux bon vivants that seem to rule the day. My only critique would be that a focus on Steve Jobs becomes personal rather quickly and perhaps there are more deserving targets of satire. If Montesquieu has taught us anything, it may be best to reveal the target of your attack in implication only. Or in the title of your post.
Deflated Protest
A green protester super glued himself to Gordon Brown for some reason. Something about climate change not getting enough attention. Luckily protesters are seen as ritual now:
“He was just grinning about it. He didn’t seem to take me seriously.”… In an audio recording of the protest, the Prime Minister can be heard laughing as the stunt began… After the incident he was allowed to stay in Downing Street for 40 minutes, he said.
The problem could be his gimmicky pointless protest or it could be another sign that civil protest has lost its power.
New Liner Notes by David Bowie
The increasingly reclusive David Bowie has written some interesting liner notes for some of his favorite songs.
For this CD compilation I’ve selected 12 of my songs that I don’t seem to tire of. Few of them are well known, but many of them are still sung at my concerts. Usually by me. I’ll start off with the hit…
I had a whole wad of words that I had been writing all day. I had felt distanced and unsteady all evening, something settling in my mind. It’s possible that I may have smoked something in my Bewlay pipe. I distinctly remember a sense of emotional invasion.
Has the “Surge” in Iraq Worked?
Immanuel Wallerstein writing for the Monthly Review:
I could go on—about Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, the Gulf states. The fact is that the United States is decidedly weaker everywhere in the Middle East in the eighteen months since the surge began. Has it not been in part, maybe in large part, precisely because of the surge? The Middle East today is like a large geopolitical balloon. If you squeeze it at one point, the air will simply displace itself to another point. And the balloon is getting more fragile all the time. It is on the verge of bursting.
(Via 3 Quarks Daily.)
America’s Middle Class Can’t Take Much More Punishment
Matt Taibbi writing for Rolling Stone:
Our economic reality is as brutal as it is for a simple reason: whether we like it or not, we are in the midst of revolutionary economic changes. In the kind of breathtakingly ironic development that only real life can imagine, the collapse of the Soviet Union has allowed global capitalism to get into the political unfreedom business, turning China and the various impoverished dictatorships and semi-dictatorships of the third world into the sweatshop of the earth. This development has cut the balls out of American civil society by forcing the export abroad of our manufacturing economy, leaving us with a service/managerial economy that simply cannot support the vast, healthy middle class our government used to work very hard to both foster and protect. The Democratic party that was once the impetus behind much of these changes, that argued so eloquently in the New Deal era that our society would be richer and more powerful overall if the spoils were split up enough to create a strong base of middle class consumers — that party panicked in the years since Nixon and elected to pay for its continued relevance with corporate money. As a result the entire debate between the two major political parties in our country has devolved into an argument over just how quickly to dismantle the few remaining benefits of American middle-class existence — immediately, if you ask the Republicans, and only slightly less than immediately, if you ask the Democrats.
(Via I cite.)
Nobody’s A Critic
Morgan Meis in The Smart Set:
The word criticism has its root in the Greek word krinein, which means — in its most original sense — to divide or separate. It’s about sorting things out and making distinctions. Criticism is thus about doing something that is, in this era, almost impossible to do. It is difficult simply to keep up with the vast global cultural output, let alone to make determinations and judgments.
(Via 3 Quarks Daily.)
The “Far Left” is the Main Stream
Daily Kos has some interesting poll figures indicating that the majority of Americans are actually much further to the left than one would otherwise suspect. Obviously poll figures are hardly sacrosanct, but I think they lend some due credence to the suspicion that the notion of the “middle-class moderate” majority is essentially a fantasy discourse propagated by the media and political elite.
We reflect the majority opinion of this country on pretty much every issue, yet the media continues to pretend that we’re the far left, the lunatic fringe. They’re still unwilling to admit the obvious…we are the mainstream.
But it’s not just the media. The idea that the majority of Americans are moderate in the apolitical sense is a groundless ideological assertion that has successfully propagated itself at nearly every level of social consciousness, such that any evidence that contradicts it is read as being partisan.
Obviously, it would be very discomforting for the Right to find out how little support their ideas actually have amongst the majority of Americans, but it seems that they are aware of this, which is why (to borrow a concept from Adam Kotsko) there is and always has been a clear asymmetry in relation to the truth between the Left and the Right: to take an example from this election year, the notion that John McCain is a warmonger is not actually far from the truth, given the innumerable quips he has made about killing Iranians, whereas the notion that Barack Obama is a Communist secret Muslim is simply a paranoid racist fantasy.
Unless you take most people to be less intelligent than yourself, in which case you are most likely an asshole, it really shouldn’t be surprising at all that most Americans (and most people in general) are more concerned with truth than lurking in the cesspool of their most idiotic and self-indulgent fantasies.
Fed Raises Specter of Class Struggle
World Socialist Website:
The US ruling elite is determined to do everything in its power to transfer its own enormous losses onto the backs of the American working class. The unlimited bailout power being called for by the Treasury and the Fed constitutes one part of this attempt. The systematic drive to slash real wages in order to finance the return to profitability constitutes another.
Russians Vote Stalin as “Face of the Nation”
Eh-oh! History is on our side!
Hundreds of Super Rich Under Investigation
Thanks to the deeds of one disgruntled computer technician, who managed to steal banking information from his home country of Lichtenstein, which evidently has very secretive banking laws, hundreds of extremely wealthy U.S. citizens are now under investigation by federal prosecutors for tax evasion. Apparently, the giant Swiss Bank UBS may also have been complicit in helping to hide up to $20 billion. (Via The Consumerist.)
Judas!
Daniel Miller, writing for The Nation, has recently published a “scathing critique” of Slavoj Žižek in general and his latest book, In Defense of Lost Causes, in particular, pointing to his pyrrhic descent into madness as indicated by the undoubtedly Hegelian trifecta of Hitchens-esque contrarianism, left-wing militarism and, of course, the culminating integration with hyper-reflexive late-capitalist consumerism. Miller concludes his review with this bit of speculative reason:
Throughout In Defense of Lost Causes, Žižek speaks recurrently, and in a sometimes disturbingly extravagant tone, of the “messianic” imperative of performing “a Leap of Faith” over the ravine of common sense in pursuit of “lost Causes, Causes that, from the space of sceptical wisdom, cannot but appear as crazy.” During such moments, it’s hard not to suspect that Žižek has finally gone mad.
As a student of advanced theory, I don’t find any of this problematic. On the contrary, Miller’s reaction to Žižek’s “Kehre” typifies the kind of idolatry that surrounds innumerable public figures when the ego catches a glimpse of its own auratic reflection only to find itself spurned and alienated in the solipsistic idiocy of its own narcissistic jouissance.
Perhaps this gives some credibility to Rex Butler’s otherwise annoyingly stupid and culturally inept comparison of Žižek to Bob Dylan, only insofar as both succeeded in alienating large portions of their audience at a certain world-historical juncture. If this is the case, then I fully welcome Žižek’s theological turn and his advertisements for the BBC and Abercrombie & Fitch. If Miller represents the kind of audience Žižek had formerly captivated, then I eagerly await the sleeveless leather shirts and aviators to come.
Bastille Day
To celebrate the storming of the Bastille, here is a YouTube video!
Boney M’s Daddy Cool
Presenting your new favorite video. A big thank you to Rachael Brown, who has a proportional afro at times, unlike the backup singers in this video.
The Big Parallax
I recently watched Alan J. Pakula’s The Parallax View, starring Warren Beatty as the dogged reporter Joe Frady who begins to unravel a conspiracy surrounding the deaths of several people who, like himself, had witnessed the assassination of a popular RFK-esque politician three years prior. His inquiry takes him far down the rabbit’s hole, so to speak, where he finds the nebulous, but no doubt sinister, deeds of the Parallax Corporation, a corporation ostensibly designed to seek out and hire maladjusted individuals whose psychological profiles earn them the unique privilege of carrying out high-profile assassinations.
The film is undoubtedly steeped in the post-Watergate zeitgeist of conspiracy, scandal, and suspicion, comparable in many ways to Sydney Pollack’s Three Days of the Condor, although I prefer Parallax for a number of reasons. But it would be wrong to not give due weight to the tumultuous events of the 1960s as well, which indelibly leave their mark on the film in the form of retrospection, subtly cued by the time-jump employed by the director. Thus, rather than immersing the viewer in the chaos of assassination, the film creates a “temporal parallax” by re-reading, as it were, the milieu of the 1960s from the frame of the 1970s: the “parallax gap,” produced by the minimal difference between the event as it was experienced and as it appears in retrospect, creates the effect of a stain, that of an unsolved crime, left upon the lap of hapless Joe.
What drew me to the film…
The Tailor of Ulm
Lucio Magri in the New Left Review:
A first task for the new era, then, is to draw up a balance sheet—in a spirit of truth, whatever the convictions with which one begins and the conclusions at which one arrives; without fabricating facts, without offering excuses or separating lived experience from its context… In sum, to recompose the thread of a titanic undertaking and dramatic decline, not seeking to make allowances or to pursue an impossible neutrality, but aiming at an approximation to the truth.
(Via No Useless Leniency, where you can find a copy of Brecht’s poem.)
America: A Nation of Whiners
It is undoubtedly the case that America is a nation of whiners. It is and always has been, how else do you think it came into existence? I don’t think anyone will contend otherwise, which is probably why the media has focused almost solely and unrelentingly on the “America is a nation of whiners” sound-bite from Phil Gramm’s recent diatribe. Even the blogosphere is partly to blame for this. Of course, this focus is essentially a reaction-formation designed to obscure and repress the far more ideological claim on Gramm’s part that economic failure is “psychological,” i.e. subjective.
The subjectivist theory of economics has long been a staple of neoliberal ideology, which argues, for example, that the value of a commodity, rather than being the objective cost of the labor required to produce said commodity, is in fact reflective of its marginal utility. But on the specific issue of the business cycle and economic crises, marginalist theory fails to provide an adequate explanation: instead it has to rely on its late-capitalist ideological counterpart, New Age obscurantism, which promulgates that the problems we experience, and our reality in general, are purely of our own making. And clearly the liberal rejoinder that “it has real consequences!” is not enough. It is a prototypically pathetic response, as it accepts the neoliberal framing of the debate, simply adding that subjective reality can lead to actual, concrete harm to human-beings.
There is obviously a grain of truth to the liberal argument, but the more…
Believing is Seeing
Errol Morris in the New York Times’ photo-op:
I have asked myself how this controversy over a photograph became international news. Clearly, there are many reasons. But at the center of them all is this question: Are we on the brink of another war? I remind myself that the war in Iraq started with bellicose posturing and photographs. At the United Nations, Colin Powell displayed several photographs of Iraqi sites showing incontrovertible evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Of course, we now know that this incontrovertible visual evidence was false. We don’t need advanced digital tools to mislead, to misdirect or to confuse. All we need is a willingness to uncritically believe.
Bush Backs Israeli Attack On Iran
If it ever comes to that, I think a serious war crimes prosecution is in order.
A History of Hooch
Sam Anderson in New York magazine:
The popular history of a humdrum object—that faddish genre in which the most boring items on your dining-room table (salt, cod, potatoes, bananas, chocolate) are revealed to be secret juggernauts of profound social change—has recently become so popular that it’s probably time for someone to write a popular history of it. If I were forced, I’d diagnose the trend as yet another symptom (like $4 gas or home foreclosures) of our current flavor of late-phase capitalism—a commercialism so far advanced we’ve begun transferring historical glories from our leaders (Napoleon, Churchill, Gandhi) to our products, so that we find ourselves surrounded by greatness in every aisle of Whole Foods.
I’d also add, if forced, that the genre’s wild success seems to predict its own obsolescence: The conclusion that everything is integral to the history of everything is perilously close, in the end, to no conclusion at all.
(Via 3 Quarks Daily.)
The Party of Torture
Check out these amazing conservative t-shirts, particularly the waterboarding and Ann Coulter ones. Good to see that the GOP has made torture and imperialism its explicit slogans this year. Classy, as always. (Via Matthew Yglesias.)
The Second Gilded Age
Mike Soron has a great post comparing our current “era” to a repeat of the Gilded Age, which is something I’ve long been in the habit of joking about, so I’m glad that there are others out there who confirm my world-views (What else could blogging be for?). I would add that perhaps in this instance we should “stand Hegel on his head”: if the first Gilded Age occurred as farce, then the second occurred as a tragedy.
The Audacity of Listening
A strangely sensible op-ed piece by Gail Collins on Obama’s recent “triangulation.” I say “strangely” because it’s in the New York Times. Zing! (Via Wonkette.)
FISA Passed
To the surprise of no one, the FISA bill that grants retroactive immunity to telecoms and legalizes warrantless wiretapping has passed today. I think the vote was something like 69-28. Even though pretty much the entire Internet is aware of this, I figured I would post a link to mark the historic occasion.
Anyhow, here is a comprehensive article over at Salon by former constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald on why this bill is a great leap forward for democracy and why the Democratic-led congress may be even worse than the Republican-led one. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings at dusk!
Health Care for America NOW!
Since it’s clear that simply “supporting Obama” is not enough to indicate that such support is for his policies and not his persona, HCAN is looking for supporters in order to make universal healthcare a reality. I encourage everyone who hates freedom as much as I do to sign up! (Via A Tiny Revolution.)
Encounters at the End of the World
Herzog’s next documentary, which premieres in September at the Toronto Film Festival, takes him and his cameraman to the far reaches of the planet—Antarctica! Here’s an interesting write up on the film as well over at The Smart Set. (Via 3 Quarks Daily.)
Neobamacon
For those that still think Obama is an “ideal candidate,” check out this laundry list of cringe-inducing positions adopted by our democratic Patron Saint, carefully culled together by Bernard Chazelle over at A Tiny Revolution. To wit, he’s still way better than WALNUTS!, but he is no Pericles.
Moog Guitar is Bait for the Advanced
As a guitar hobbyist, I can’t help but post something about this. Check out this new Moog guitar, it sounds completely bizarre. Lou Reed says:
This is amazing…There’s nothing else you can do this on. This opens the door. Oh man, I’ve been trying guitars for years to get them to do this, none of them will do this.
Check out the video of Lou Reed testing it out:
… of course it’s $6,500. I will be purchasing a lottery ticket soon.
PS: I’m pretty positive the blog I linked is just a bunch of ads and press releases. If that bothers you, you might want to try the Moog youtube channel instead.
The Symptom 9: Universalism vs. Globalization
I haven’t really been following its publication recently, but there looks to be a bunch of interesting pieces in here, including J.-A. Miller’s essay, “Extimity,” Zizek’s essay on the Lacanian Real and television, and several of Heidegger’s political tracts from the early 1930s. (Via Larval Subjects.)
Horses & Hey Joe
I think the first part of this tape is Patti Smith’s audition for the Velvet Underground lookalike contest. Also, awesome prop guitar.
Do Communists Have Better Sex?
I just came across this amazing looking film by André Meier, which is a comparative analysis of the sex lives of people living in East and West Germany. I’m currently downloading a copy, so I haven’t watched it yet, but here’s a great line from the documentary’s website:
Is dictatorship plus a planned economy the sure-fire formula for a natural aphrodisiac? At least in bed, according to the statistics, the communists were victorious.
Disaster Capitalism: State of Extortion
Naomi Klein writing for The Nation:
One week after the no-bid service deals were announced, the world caught its first glimpse of the real prize. After years of back-room arm-twisting, Iraq is officially flinging open six of its major oil fields, accounting for around half of its known reserves, to foreign investors. According to Iraq’s oil minister, the long-term contracts will be signed within a year. While ostensibly under control of the Iraq National Oil Company, foreign firms will keep 75 percent of the value of the contracts, leaving just 25 percent for their Iraqi partners.
This development seems hardly surprising given U.S. foreign policy towards the Middle East over the past several decades, but surely such an endeavor might make suspect the claim that we went to fight in Iraq in order to liberate them and to eliminate the threat of weapons of mass destruction, etc. But of course that would be ludicrous.
Moreover, it strikes me as impossible to call the relationship between the U.S. and Iraq as anything other than “imperial,” but that can’t be, we hate empires! After all, the U.S. was born out of anticolonial struggle. Perhaps something to remember over fourth of July weekend.
Known Unknowns
Matthew Yglesias asks Kevin Drum how he knows that the Bush administration isn’t using their domestic wiretapping program in a manner any different from that of the Nixon administration. Not surprisingly, there’s evidence that this has happened. (Via Edge of the American West.)
I also thought this was a great comment on EotAW:
But can he claim it with certainty? Can he rule out that he’s a brain in a vat?
That kind of behavior does not give philosophers a good reputation.