Image via Wikipedia There is no more conspiratorial mind than the mind that perceives conspiracy, genuine or not. There is no more vivid matrix than the matrix imagined, which is its realm. The matrix is the authoritarian apex, domination not only of physical relations, but also of mental relations: total control of reality. Conspiracy and […]
Wikileaks Jumps the Shark
Image via Wikipedia That was fast. But we live in an accelerated age. It is not entirely clear who the defenders are of Julian Assange, but they seem to be generally people of the hard Left and monomaniacal anti-authoritarians such as Glenn Greenwald, who, in his ill-defined ambi-political orientation, can embrace both extremes of incoherent […]
Julian Assange: Enemy of the States
From the start, there has been a general lack of coherence in the response to Julian Assange and the activities of Wikileaks. Many critics of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were pleased to frame Assange’s leaks of U.S. government documents as “whistle blower” activity, a currently common label for Assange, who, in fact, […]
The First Casualty of War…
…is truth. Attribute it to whomever you like. War, though, as we know from Clausewitz, is not just physical combat, and war and politics, we might say, are different, more or less heightened modalities of the same material and ideological contention. So maybe less neatly, and with the greater complexity of reality, we have Samuel […]
Wikileaks Unvarnished: the Power of Satire
Seek out someone who supports, however grudgingly, a continued U.S. effort in Afghanistan, who supports, too, the work of Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Find a person opposed to remaining in Afghanistan who is also critical of Assange. In either case, listen, because you won’t have either opportunity often. Attitudes in controversy tend to be self-confirming, […]