how it is

. . . and who are we dancing for?

on elites

Noonan.

Popehat.

team krony

government is rape

Fascism and slavery are two sides of the same coin. Control implies the controlled; subjugation implies the subjugated.

When is this relationship legitimate? Only when the subjugation is agreed to by the subjugated starting from a position of equal power. Typically, this only occurs in the bedroom.

The relationship between the government and the citizen is one of unequal power. The government spies on, searches, taxes, controls the movements of, the employment of, the abilities to express oneself of the citizen. This power relation is one of slaver and slavee. But is it legitimate?

Never.

Because the citizen has never agreed to this subjugation beginning from a position of equal power—s/he was never in a position to spy on, tax, search, or control the movements of the government. The agreement was made from a position of power imbalance.

Just as one may "agree" to hand over ones valuables to a thief at gunpoint, we "agree" to hand over our autonomy to the government.

The situation here is not unlike statutory rape. Even "consensual" sex between an adult and a child is reprehensible because the child is in no position to give consent. This is because of the power imbalance between the two participants. The adult abuses the child no matter what the child thinks s/he may have consented to or not. Such "consent" cannot be legitimate.

It is incorrect to identify reason as the distinguishing factor. The child is in no position to rationally assess the consequences of hir actions, one might say, but the mature citizen is, and can legitimately decide to cede power to the government.

This is a red herring. It is completely incorrect.

The only analysis of rationality we have is means / ends rationality. But by this reasoning, it is rational for the slave not to run (because s/he will be whipped); it is rational for the unarmed at gunpoint to hand over hir wallet; and it is rational for the child to submit to the adult who controls hir future. Rationality does not coincide with legitimacy or morality. The means / ends reason for ceding power may nevertheless be morally illegitimate.

This also explains why the government systematically grants itself more power (greater powers to spy, to search, to tax, to control), and why this is so dangerous. Not just pragmatically dangerous (though it is), but morally dangerous. In doing so, the government distances itself further and further from the ideal of legitimacy. The more powerful the government, the less possible any legitimate moral mandate from the governed.

We are being systematically raped by a villain who uses the money from our pockets and tears licked from our cheeks to empower himself to rape us more easily and frequently.

We are slaves.

true words in egypt

snowden on us

From Edward Snowden's latest statement:

In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised—and it should be.

von der oberseite des reichstag

In ihrem gemeinsamen Mund
lebt ein "Kolibri"!

Mit jedem seiner Flügelschläge
dafür das Auge viel zu träge
Kulturen erblühen und vergehen
ganze Kontinente untergehen
Hier gibt es keine harmlosen Worte
alle viel zu gross . . . .

Wärend nur eines Augenaufschlags
haben sie geputscht!
die Regierung gestürzt
Parlament aufgelöst
haben Wahlen abgehalten
das Ergebnis annulliert

haben Wahlen wiederholt
sind letztendlich exiliert
von Geschichte ausradiert
Ich durch den Dreck bedeutender
Metaphern

Meta, Meta. Meta für Meter
mit Gesten viel zu breit
für die Imterimsliebenden

~ Blixa Bargeld, 1992

rand paul filibuster

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Rand Paul is an American hero.

[edit, April 25, 2013]

step backward for uncertainty

Reuters reports that six Italian earthquake scientists have been jailed for manslaughter for "failing to give adequate warning of the 2009 earthquake in the city of L'Aquila."

Prediction of events with some component of randomness is necessarily uncertain—to think otherwise is to misunderstand the whole endeavor. The fault here is not with the scientists, for predicting incorrectly, but with the public for believing this prediction came with certainty. To suppress predictors of random events for predicting incorrectly is to court ignorance and block progress, as it discourages the very research which will one day improve our ability to predict such events.

"mr. president"

"Don't vote for those who want to take us back in time" . . . i.e. everyone actually on the ballot?

protest as prayer

Today is May Day, a holiday which used to involve virgin sacrifices, wicker men, and maypoles; now it involves waving signs, interrupting traffic, and chanting slogans about "change" and "revolution" and how everything wrong with the world is someone else's fault.

This exercise is an instance of "prayer"—therapy through supplication to an imaginary entity. Protests as practiced in the contemporary United States do not affect government policy, they are not appeals to the president, they do not affect the opinions of individuals in any positive way, they do not generate any measurable, positive effect on the socio-economic status of the underprivileged or of those who engage in particularly onerous and under-remunerated brands of labor.

We can see they are not appeals to the president, since he himself is held up as an instigator and supporter of protests:

But who is the president exhorting the occupy movement to appeal to? Who are they protesting against?

It is the imaginary "other"—he who is responsible for all my travails, whoever it may be, that one.

Of course, protests in the US are directed against this imaginary other, while prayer in the Judeo-Christian sense is usually directed toward an imaginary other. In both cases, however, the primary function served is catharsis an inner relief from stress, depression, and pain by the foisting off onto an omnipotent other of one's problems, and, crucially, one's blame and responsibility for those problems.

And just as blameless is the retreat from the pain of this modern world into impotent prayer, so also is the retreat into impotent protest—protest free of conscience and clear of blame, but also closed of eyes and crippled of agency.

[This is not to say the practice of gathering in the streets has not, at any time, had political effect—many times it has; but in those times, there was purpose, focus, and unanimity, not ignorance, selfishness, and inconsistency.]

ode to torture porn

"Torture porn" is a derogatory term recently in vogue for describing the genre of cinema which is exploitative and centers upon the graphic depiction of torture.

What is the appeal of such a genre? Why would anyone, presumably with enjoyment, watch a movie valued (solely) for its depiction of torture?

The answer is the human condition.

Torture porn is rightly compared to porn, for both are instance of "exploitation" cinema, where exploitation here is characterized by a value measured solely in the depiction of some particular subject, not by more abstract measures of cinematic value (story, acting, dialog, etc.).

Shakespeare, for example, is the sheer antithesis of "exploitation" in this sense precisely because, even during his most ludicrous comedies, bloody tragedies, or ass-kissing historical plays, the value of the play (as we cherish it today) does not depend upon the depiction of farcical situations / violence / fawning political commentary, but upon the clever dialog and subtle characterization.

Porn is the most famous exploitation genre, exploiting the act of sex, but it depends no less single-mindedly upon the mere depiction of sex than, say, martial arts movies depend upon the depiction of a certain style of violence, westerns on a certain setting and aesthetic, horror upon creation of a certain type of suspense, etc.

So, "torture porn" is justly named, it is indeed the valuing of the mere depiction of violent acts of torture against other human beings over and above plot / dialog / characterization / production value / etc.

But why? What is the appeal, and, empirically, given its existence as a profitable genre for decades, there is appeal, of torture porn? What drives people to watch it? In what sense do they enjoy it?

Here, a compelling answer is found in the culture which is perhaps the greatest consumer (and producer) of torture porn: Japan. The 1976 film Shogun's Sadism, also called The Joy of Torture 2: Oxen Split Torturing begins with this quote:

'The weak become the victim of the strong,' is a rule of mankind. Cruelties have been inflicted everywhere since time began.

How true this observation is! But let us be careful. Let us not be swayed by utopian dreams of an equal society, where every individual is equivalent in power to another and there are no "weak" and "strong." Politically, such a situation has never been realized. Even attempts (one thinks: Soviet Union, North Korea, China, Cuba) to establish a communal society universally fail. No matter what, strong and weak separate, communities organize themselves into a hierarchy on the basis of power.

This is no less true at smaller or larger scales. Just as nations economically bully each other into engaging in particular international policies, so smaller groups (a class in elementary school, a university department, a band, a pair of lovers) inevitably establish structures of power, control, and thus hierarchy. Of course, at smaller scales, there is much more room for give and take, for the possibility of some kind of equivalence, even if it is only represented by a regular alteration in the relative positions of power.

As Baudelaire observed:

[L]ove is very like a torture or a surgical operation. But this idea can still be more bitterly expressed. Even though a pair of lovers may be deeply devoted, full of mutual desires, one of them will always be calmer, or less obsessed, than the other. He or she must be the surgeon or torturer; the other the patient or victim.

No accident that he characterized love as a "[d]readful game, in which one of the players must lose his or her self-government," for "government" in every sense is a position of power, of control. And the inherently hierarchical structure of human interactions necessitates the abandonment of (self-)government.

Torture is the purest realization of that aspect of love which mirrors the general structure of society as a whole; the necessary preconditions of the organized interaction amongst those who, without interaction, would otherwise be equals.

So, the existence of torture is the fundamental precondition for human society.

(Surely, this has already been remarked upon by Bataille?)

But this does not explain the appeal of "torture porn" the movie genre. For if it is indeed a precondition of social interaction, if it does indeed permeate every moment of our human existence, what pleasure then is to be derived from the single-minded fictional depiction of torture? What pleasure derived from the externalization, the graphical and physiological depiction, of an inherently internal and counterfactual social dynamic. "Torture porn" makes that which exists at the level of possibility, of control, of what can be achieved, visible, visceral, and ineluctable.

Here, the crucial answer is to be found in the attitude of the cinema goer to his or her positions within the many overlapping social hierarchies in which she / he participates.

Those who are resigned to their position or those who are satisfied with it, will not enjoy "torture porn."

"Torture porn" is a genre of the disenfranchised, the dissatisfied, those who desire a change (a radical, violent change) in social position. Furthermore, this desire for change must be intimately intertwined with some (subconscious? / conscious?) understanding of their social standing and a realization (even mere gut "grasping") of the relationship between their state of mind (happiness, or lack thereof, etc.) and their position within this social hierarchy.

And here, the ostensibly value-neutral flavor of this essay must end.

For, desiring a position of greater power precisely so that one might wield that power is surely morally reprehensible. To wish to dominate in principle, so one might also dominate in practice, is to succumb to sadism, evil, and the very corrupting influences of power which motivate the drive towards equality as a regulative ideal in the first place.

So, yes, the lover of torture porn may be evil.

(A Japanese example, one picked at random amongst many: Tsutomu Miyazaki.)

But this is not the only human drive which might motivate an "enjoyment" of "torture porn." And this precisely is the point, and why "torture porn" as a derogatory term is indeed unjustified, why the assumption that those who do "enjoy" it are necessarily monsters is, in fact, the true position of evil. The position assumed by the sadist, the torturer, the pervert.

For the desire to be a part of hierarchical change may be motivated not by inherent cruelty, but by pain, victimization, the realization that the lack of power one holds over one's life, that impotence, is an unfair and undesirable state. One might identify in torture porn not with the torturer, but the torturee. And not out of some misplaced (masochistic) sexual dynamic, but out of pure empathy.

For we all are tortured in this life, and to see a graphic analogical depiction of the that very whimsical "torture" to which we are every moment subject may have a profound power of catharsis.

Thus, so-called "torture porn" may be a positive force for healing, for self-realization, for release, understanding, acceptance, but also a constructive release of tension.

And this is why the critiques of Mel Gibson's Passion as mere "torture porn" are so ignorant and woefully misplaced. For this is indeed the role that the story of the passion of Christ as a mythology has always played—a role of catharsis for those subjugated by the (inevitable and universal) power structure of society. This is precisely why the story achieved the religious power it has, why it continues to be spread amongst oppressed peoples, why we see it as a positive and uplifting story. To focus on the pain of Christ is to focus on the plight of those who are not at the top of the hierarchy, of those who are subjugated, controlled, "tortured" by those with more power. That just is the religious significance of the story. That just is why it is a story about love and faith and healing and positive change for a better world.

Christ without the sacrifice would be Marx, Stalin, Castro—he would be the faux-torturee, a mere fascist, a dictator, a torturer.

What about those who identify with the torturer because they long for social change? Those who wish not to be subjugated, not merely so they can subjugate (as the serial killer or the sociopath), but so they can reap justice. Should we condone—must we condemn—those who revel in the possibility of retribution when they watch "torture porn"?

This is in many respects the predicament of Alex, who identifies with the Romans when hearing bible stories, yet whose apparently nihilistic rampages are clearly motivated to some large degree by his position of soci-economic impotence within society. His sadism amongst his droogs is precisely mirrored by the ease with which the larger political structure of society bends and controls him. Howsoevermuch we may revile him for his deeds, what are we to think of the casual manner in which his very personhood is violated against his will by grander, and indifferent social forces. Alex's cruelty is a faint reflection of that cruelty and control to which he is potentially subject by his very place within society and to which he becomes actually subject in the conceit of A Clockwork Orange.

Insofar as retribution may be just, the viewer of torture porn may identify with the torturer in clear conscience. And you, who are resigned, complicit, or who yourself inflict that social torture which he thereby escapes, have no moral standing for criticism.

But insofar as the justice of retribution depends upon a constructive drive towards the regulative ideal of equality, the identification with torturer should be tempered by an identification with torturee, for otherwise the pendulum will swing too far, the desire to supplant the inherent injustice of the hierarchical structure of social interactions will be replaced by a mere lust to occupy the domineering position in such interactions, and the altrustic communistic ideal will curdle into fascism, as it always has in political practice.

"Torture porn" then is indeed technically porn. But it is also religious text, a potential for catharsis and for the recognition of and rebellion against that very order of society which itself ensures, institutes, and institutionalizes torture.

oh, america

You bitch:

"The role of government is to secure for citizens the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In that order. It's like a filter. If the government wants to do something that makes us a little unhappy, or takes away some of our liberty, it's okay, providing they're doing it to save our lives. That's why the cops can lock you up if they think you're a danger to yourself or others. You lose your liberty and happiness to protect life. If you've got life, you might get liberty and happiness later."

~ more disturbingly realistic "irony" (= documentary) from Doctorow's Little Brother.

I bolded the naughty parts to help you out if you've drunk the koolaid. God help us all you fuckers if you don't see that this fiction has come true and we live in a fucking police state.

The most important point, though, is to notice where the flag waving happens: if you're pro Obama's shit-on-the-public-and-spend-their-money-in-Africa-beating-up-on-random-dictators-and-replacing-them-with-America-hating-Islamists stance OR you think beating up on foreigners is a higher priority than helping / feeding / employing American citizens in this hemorrhaging economy then you are equally anti-American in my books. Don't believe the Republican v. Democrat hype but look at actual differences (or lack thereof!) in policy.

The good Lord said, "first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye." We'd better get our own backyard in order before we get back to telling the rest of the world how to mow theirs.

Vote Ron Paul.

ghetto d ~ master p

After SOPA, gems like this will be lost forever, like tears in rain. Do what you can, however insignificant.

oops

Apparently the original videotape of the first moon landing was inadvertently erased by NASA.

thank you california

California Proposition 65 Warning:
WARNING: This Product May Contain A Chemical Known To The State Of California To Cause Cancer, Birth Defects Or Other Reproductive Harm.

This trivially true, completely uninformative, and anticonstructive, unorthodoxically capitalized scaremongering was found attached to a rather nice new piece of luggage.

dictatorship of security

so you think you're an anarchist?

Hmmm, Bilderberg in Switzerland . . . Alex Jones wants a protest, of course:



And, of course, Europeans don't know Alex Jones, but I find some of their responses puzzling. Two from this forum:

1. "I don't know who Alex Jones is, but he asks me to protest against a group that came up with the ideas for the EU and the carbon tax. I like the EU and the carbon tax ideas... but I like his line 'in the remote village of St. Moritz'."

Um, yes, remote to the rest of the world, though I know the Swiss hate to think globally. And, um, the point is not the policies, but their source. Agreeable policies laid down by an authoritarian force is the way all dictatorships arise (Hitler, Mussolini, Quaddaffi, . . . ). Maybe the Swiss are just so ready for slavery, they don't care if they have any say in their own domestic affairs (um, so why resist the Euro? Do you even know your own country's policies?).

2. "Someone has to be in charge, so why not our elected people taking advice from a group of unelected experts?

If you are British, do you remember Prime Minister Edward Heath twisting the Queen's arm and making her sign up for the EU? She wasn't elected either. Did you protest at that? No.

Haven't the IMF and World Bank been "lending" money to the elected governments of Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland ? Did you protest at that? No.

Has the world changed since President W. Bush went to Evian? A friend of mine is a Swiss union leader, her son is an anarchist. They both went to Geneva to protest, and were both beaten up by the Geneva police, both requiring hospital treatment. Did that change anything? No.

Sorry I won't be going. Save yourself the train fares and watch it on TV."

Um, so I don't protest either. And I also don't think it changes anything in general. But the attitude here seems to be, let it all slide. Other people are in control, deal with that. Seems unacceptable to me. I may not believe in protests, but I'm not a fatalist. And I may think those who protest are naive, but I'm not going to ridicule them for getting beat up.

And why the fuck are we fighting in Libya?



Um, cause if we don't oust Quaddaffi, then we "lose"? WTF?!?!?!?

cherokee nation

The Cherokee Nation will return.

farrakhan on libya