Monday, May 6, 2013
Žižek – “The Event: Politics, Art, Ontology”
Event Date: 9 May 2013
Room B34
Birkbeck Main Building
Birkbeck, University of London
Malet Street
London WC1E 7HX
The Department of
Psychosocial Studies presents:
Professor Slavoj
Žižek – “The Event: Politics, Art, Ontology”
‘The Debris Field’ by Simon Barraclough, Isobel Dixon and Chris McCabe
Reviewed by David
Clarke
The Atlantic
liner Titanic, which sank on its maiden voyage in April 1912 with the loss
of more than 1,500 people, has achieved a remarkable status in western culture.
It has become a persistent moral metaphor, serving to illustrate everything
from the hubris of humanity (as in Thomas Hardy’s ‘The Convergence of the
Twain’), to the failings of the class system (as in Roy Baker’s still harrowing
1958 film A Night to Remember) and the dangers of a misplaced confidence
in progress (as in Hans Magnus Enzenberger’s poem sequence The Sinking of
the Titanic of 1978). In the Second World War, the story even served
Joseph Goebbels as a symbol of the evils of British capitalism, the theme of a
1943 film drama he commissioned on the disaster (see The Titanic in Myth
and Memory: Representations in Visual and Literary Culture for more on
this). Slavoj Žižek has aptly described the Titanic as a symptom of
modern culture in the psychoanalytic sense, a ‘knot of meanings’ occupying a
space in our collective imagination that somehow pre-existed the actual
disaster itself: as
Žižek points out, one popular novel from 1898 had already described the
sinking of a ship called Titan in uncannily similar circumstances.
It is this
‘knot of meanings’ that The Debris Field sets
out to explore. Here the Titanic is described as a ‘double ship’,
ghosted by its own myth. The pamphlet results from a multimedia project to mark
the centenary of the Titanic that poets Simon Barraclough, Isobel
Dixon and Chris McCabe developed in collaboration with filmmaker Jack Wake-Walker
and composer Oli Barrett. The complete film is scheduled for release on DVD,
but the publication of the pamphlet stakes a claim for the words to have an
independent existence beyond the original project.
[…]
Chris Hedges interviews Julian Assange
[…]
Britain has
rejected an Ecuadorean request that Assange be granted safe passage to an
airport. He is in limbo. It is, he said, like living in a “space station.”
“The status
quo, for them, is a loss,” Assange said of the U.S.-led campaign against him as
we sat in his small workroom, cluttered with cables and computer equipment. He
had a full head of gray hair and gray stubble on his face and was wearing a
traditional white embroidered Ecuadorean shirt. “The Pentagon threatened
WikiLeaks and me personally, threatened us before the whole world, demanded
that we destroy everything we had published, demanded we cease ‘soliciting’ new
information from U.S. government whistle-blowers, demanded, in other words, the
total annihilation of a publisher. It stated that if we did not self-destruct
in this way that we would be ‘compelled’ to do so.”
“But they
have failed,” he went on. “They set the rules about what a win was. They lost
in every battle they defined. Their loss is total. We’ve won the big stuff. The
loss of face is hard to overstate. The Pentagon reissued its threats on Sept.
28 last year. This time we laughed. Threats inflate quickly. Now the Pentagon,
the White House and the State Department intend to show the world what
vindictive losers they are through the persecution of Bradley Manning,
myself and the organization more generally.”
Assange,
Manning and WikiLeaks, by making public in 2010 half a million internal
documents from the Pentagon and the State Department, along with the 2007 video
of U.S. helicopter pilots nonchalantly gunning down Iraqi civilians, including
children, and two Reuters journalists, effectively exposed the empire’s
hypocrisy, indiscriminate violence and its use of torture, lies, bribery and
crude tactics of intimidation. WikiLeaks shone a spotlight into the inner
workings of empire—the most important role of a press—and for this it has
become empire’s prey. Those around the globe with the computer skills to search
out the secrets of empire are now those whom empire fears most. If we lose this
battle, if these rebels are defeated, it means the dark night of corporate
totalitarianism. If we win, if the corporate state is unmasked, it can be
destroyed.
U.S.
government officials quoted in Australian diplomatic cables obtained by The
Saturday Age described the campaign against Assange and WikiLeaks as
“unprecedented both in its scale and nature.” The scope of the operation has
also been gleaned from statements made during Manning’s pretrial hearing. The
U.S. Department of Justice will apparently pay the contractor ManTech of
Fairfax, Va., more than $2 million this year alone for a computer system that,
from the tender, appears designed to handle the prosecution documents. The
government line item refers only to “WikiLeaks Software and Hardware
Maintenance.”
The lead
government prosecutor in the Manning case, Maj. Ashden Fein, has told the court
that the FBI file that deals with the leak of government documents through
WikiLeaks has “42,135 pages or 3,475 documents.” This does not include a huge
volume of material accumulated by a grand jury investigation. Manning, Fein has
said, represents only 8,741 pages or 636 different documents in that classified
FBI file.
There are no
divisions among government departments or the two major political parties over
what should be Assange’s fate. “I think we should be clear here. WikiLeaks and
people that disseminate information to people like this are criminals, first
and foremost. And I think that needs to be clear,” then-press secretary Robert
Gibbs, speaking for the Obama administration, said during a
2010 press briefing.
Sen. Dianne
Feinstein, a Democrat, and then-Sen. Christopher S. Bond, a Republican, said in a
joint letter to the U.S. attorney general calling for Assange’s
prosecution: “If Mr. Assange and his possible accomplices cannot be charged
under the Espionage Act (or any other applicable statute), please know that we
stand ready and willing to support your efforts to ‘close those gaps’ in the
law, as you also mentioned. …”
Republican
Candice S. Miller, a U.S. representative from Michigan, said
in the House: “It is time that the Obama administration treats WikiLeaks
for what it is—a terrorist organization, whose continued operation threatens
our security. Shut it down. Shut it down. It is time to shut down this
terrorist, this terrorist Web site, WikiLeaks. Shut it down, Attorney General
[Eric] Holder.”
At least a
dozen American governmental agencies, including the Pentagon, the FBI, the
Army’s Criminal Investigative Department, the Department of Justice, the Office
of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Diplomatic Security Service,
are assigned to the WikiLeaks case, while the CIA and the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence are assigned to track down WikiLeaks’
supposed breaches of security. The global assault—which saw Australia threaten to
revoke Assange’s passport—is part of the terrifying metamorphosis of the “war
on terror” into a wider war on civil liberties. It has become a hunt not for
actual terrorists but a hunt for all those with the ability to expose the
mounting crimes of the power elite.
[…]
Sunday, May 5, 2013
Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government?
A former FBI
counterterrorism agent claims on CNN that this is the case
Glenn
Greenwald, guardian.uk
4 May, 2013
The real
capabilities and behavior of the US surveillance state
are almost entirely unknown to the American public because, like most things of
significance done by the US government, it operates behind an impenetrable wall
of secrecy. But a seemingly spontaneous admission this week by a former FBI
counterterrorism agent provides a rather startling acknowledgment of just how
vast and invasive these surveillance activities are.
Over the past
couple days, cable news tabloid shows such as CNN's Out Front with Erin Burnett
have been excitingly focused on the possible involvement in the Boston Marathon
attack of Katherine Russell, the 24-year-old American widow of the deceased
suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. As part of their relentless stream of leaks uncritically
disseminated by our Adversarial Press Corps, anonymous government officials are
claiming that they are now focused on telephone calls between Russell and
Tsarnaev that took place both before and after the attack to determine if she
had prior knowledge of the plot or participated in any way.
On Wednesday
night, Burnett
interviewed Tim Clemente, a former FBI counterterrorism agent, about
whether the FBI would be able to discover the contents of past telephone
conversations between the two. He quite clearly insisted that they could:
BURNETT: Tim,
is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the
phone companies to give that up at this point. It's not a voice mail. It's just
a conversation. There's no way they actually can find out what happened, right,
unless she tells them?
CLEMENTE:
"No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security
investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It's
not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court,
but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We
certainly can find that out.
BURNETT:
"So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is
incredible.
CLEMENTE: "No, welcome
to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it
or like it or not."
"All of
that stuff" - meaning every telephone conversation Americans have with one
another on US soil, with or without a search warrant - "is being captured
as we speak".
On Thursday
night, Clemente again appeared on CNN, this time with host Carol Costello, and
she asked him about those remarks. He reiterated what he said the night before
but added expressly that "all digital communications in the past" are
recorded and stored:
Let's repeat
that last part: "no digital communication is secure", by which he
means not that any communication is susceptible to government
interception as it happens (although that is true), but far beyond that: all
digital communications - meaning telephone calls, emails, online chats and the
like - are automatically recorded and stored and accessible to the government
after the fact. To describe that is to define what a ubiquitous, limitless
Surveillance State is.
There have
been some previous indications that this is true. Former AT&T
engineer Mark Klein revealed that AT&T and other telecoms had
built a special network that allowed the National Security Agency full and
unfettered access to data about the telephone calls and the content of email
communications for all of their customers. Specifically, Klein explained
"that the NSA set up a system that vacuumed up Internet and phone-call
data from ordinary Americans with the cooperation of AT&T" and that
"contrary to the government's depiction of its surveillance program as
aimed at overseas terrorists . . . much of the data sent through AT&T to
the NSA was purely domestic." But his amazing revelations were mostly
ignored and, when Congress retroactively immunized the nation's telecom giants
for their participation in the illegal Bush spying programs, Klein's claims (by
design) were prevented from being adjudicated in court.
That every
single telephone call is recorded and stored would also explain this extraordinary
revelation by the Washington Post in 2010:
Every day,
collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7
billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications.
It would also
help explain the
revelations of former NSA official William Binney, who resigned from the
agency in protest over its systemic spying on the domestic communications of US
citizens, that the US government has "assembled on the order of 20
trillion transactions about US citizens with other US citizens" (which
counts only communications transactions and not financial and other
transactions), and that "the data that's being assembled is about everybody.
And from that data, then they can target anyone they want."
Despite the
extreme secrecy behind which these surveillance programs operate, there have
been periodic
reports of serious
abuse. Two Democratic Senators, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, have been warning
for years that Americans would be "stunned" to learn what
the US government is doing in terms of secret surveillance.
Strangely,
back in 2002 - when hysteria over the 9/11 attacks (and thus acquiescence to
government power) was at its peak - the Pentagon's attempt to implement what it
called the "Total Information Awareness" program (TIA) sparked
so much public controversy that it had to be official scrapped. But it
has been incrementally re-instituted - without the creepy (though honest) name
and all-seeing-eye logo - with little controversy or even notice.
Back in 2010,
worldwide controversy erupted when the governments of Saudi Arabia and the
United Arab Emirates banned the use of
Blackberries because some communications were inaccessible to
government intelligence agencies, and that could not be tolerated. The Obama
administration condemned
this move on the ground that it threatened core freedoms, only to turn
around six weeks later and demand that
all forms of digital communications allow the US government backdoor
access to intercept them. Put another way, the US government embraced exactly
the same rationale invoked by the UAE and Saudi agencies: that no
communications can be off limits. Indeed, the UAE, when responding to
condemnations from the Obama administration, noted that it was simply doing
exactly that which the US government does:
"'In
fact, the UAE is exercising its sovereign right and is asking for exactly the
same regulatory compliance - and with the same principles of judicial and
regulatory oversight - that Blackberry grants the US and other governments and
nothing more,' [UAE Ambassador to the US Yousef Al] Otaiba said. 'Importantly,
the UAE requires the same compliance as the US for the very same reasons: to
protect national security and to assist in law enforcement.'"
That no human
communications can be allowed to take place without the scrutinizing eye of the
US government is indeed the animating principle of the US Surveillance State.
Still, this revelation, made in passing on CNN, that every single telephone call
made by and among Americans is recorded and stored is something which most
people undoubtedly do not know, even if the small group of people who focus on
surveillance issues believed it to be true (clearly, both Burnett and Costello
were shocked to hear this).
Some
new polling suggests that Americans, even after the Boston attack, are
growing increasingly concerned about erosions of civil liberties in the name of
Terrorism. Even those people who claim it does not matter instinctively
understand the value of personal privacy: they put locks on their bedroom doors
and vigilantly safeguard their email passwords. That's why the US government so
desperately maintains a wall of secrecy around their surveillance capabilities:
because they fear that people will find their behavior unacceptably intrusive
and threatening, as they did even back in 2002 when John Poindexter's TIA was
unveiled.
Mass surveillance
is the hallmark of a tyrannical political culture. But whatever one's views on
that, the more that is known about what the US government and its surveillance
agencies are doing, the better. This admission by this former FBI agent on CNN
gives a very good sense for just how limitless these activities are.
Saturday, May 4, 2013
Slavoj Žižek And Capitalism’s Ideology
[…]
When you walk
into multi-national coffee chains you notice the popularity of ‘fair-trade’
labels and concern for the environment. No longer are you simply buying a
cup of coffee, you are buying an ethical experience.
Žižek states
“cultural capitalism at its purest – in the very consumerist act you buy
redemption from being a consumerist”. At first we believe in good causes,
equality and environment, then are sold the idea that through a consumerist
purchase factoring in the ‘cost’ of the poverty and ecology we can find
absolution. An ideology that encourages more spending,
giving further profit to the very companies responsible for the
inequality and environmental damage.
[…]
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