Re: rage against the machine

[Brian Holmes]

On Tue, Mar 26, 2019 at 12:19 PM tbyfield  wrote:

> I have some vague idea that over the
> last several decades a few people spent some time thinking about the
> history and philosophy of punishment. In nettimish contexts (as opposed
> to ground-level activism in judicial and penal fields), most of that
> thought was applied to critiques of punishment — certainly more than
> to imagining new and maybe even constructive ways to address the scale
> and complexity of corporate criminality.
>

To me this is totally interesting. In Chicago I am surrounded with
abolitionists whose work I cannot but respect: they have closed down a
supermax prison, attained reparations for people imprisoned on the basis of
confessions extracted under torture, they're creating an official monument
on the torture issue and a module of public curriculum to be used in the
city schools, plus many other things. Real achievements with national
influence, far more important than anything I have ever been directly
involved in. Yet I am convinced that abolitionism can only achieve sectoral
victories, not structural ones, because a mass urbanized capitalist society
with deep alienation needs the rule of law and the corresponding
instruments of behavioral control. It does not need the prisons of poverty
and the enforcement of "the new Jim Crow" that we have now; but these
things cannot be gotten rid of without proposing new structural devices.
"Community" cannot simply replace "society," to quote a dead European
theorist (Tonnies). Redesigning the prisons for the people who actually
commit the significant crimes is an idea with a future.

It took me a while to understand what's at stake in this thread, because of
what I continue to think of as the exceptionally poor language involved
(I'm with Andreas on that one). When the point moves from an unfocused
critique of computation to a demand to change specific aspects of
government, then I am all ears. I do not have any interest in being the
philosopher of an abstractly righteous anger - it's a common enough
position, but there you are speaking to someone else. No problem. There is
plenty of real anger to go around. The point - your point, as I understand
it - is to learn, pragmatically not just theoretically, how that anger can
be focused into politics with consequences. That's begun by continuing the
dialogue and dialing down the insults, which is the trend I am detecting
and trying participate in.

onward, Brian
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Re: rage against the machine

[tbyfield]

On 26 Mar 2019, at 1:15, Brian Holmes wrote:

Despite Ted's excursions into aviation history, which at least he 
finds

brilliant,  plus the general manly readiness to cut the throat of, one
doesn't know exactly whom, we have gotten no further in terms of
understanding the situation than what you have transcribed. It's still
about a badly designed plane "fixed" by a cybernetic patch, in a quest 
for

profit that knows no bounds.


"excursions into __ history, which at least he finds brilliant" 
seems like a pretty fair description of your own often-lengthy 
contributions to the list, Brian. Many of them are interesting, and I 
admire your commitment to untangling and reweaving disparate postwar 
intellectual and institutional threads. We need much more of that, in 
the US especially. But like your work with Bureau d'études, the value 
of those broad sweeps breaks down where the rubber meets the road, or in 
the case of aviation where somewhere between aerodynamics and 
instrumentation. Which is why, I guess, after "looking for something 
analogous in discursive spaces like this one," you've abruptly 
rediscovered the importance of the specific problem. But, as I described 
in some detail, cybernetic thought has been baked into aviation for 
decades. If anything, it's the other way around: aviation-related 
research was baked into cybernetics even as that new 'science' was being 
invented: some of the key players were working on applied problems 
brought into focus by aviation, ranging from fire control, to various 
applications of radio, to mission planning. So it's not a patch, it's 
the entire premise of how that industry works on almost every level. 
Fixing this one problem in a more sane, humane way would do nothing to 
resolve the countless areas where dilemmas with similar origins or 
structures *will* arise. And much as aviation served as one of the main 
vectors for distributing that style of thought globally, reforming some 
of the field's dominant design philosophies could do so as well.


As for slitting the throats of "one doesn't know exactly whom," no. I 
wrote:


And that begs an important question that leftoids aren't prepared to 
answer because, in a nutshell, they're allergic to power: what *would* 
be appropriate punishments for people who, under color of corporate 
activity, engage in indiscriminate abuses of public trust.


Andreas argue that long prison terms are good enough. That answer is 
easy, because it has the patina of history. But it ignores the disparate 
real conditions in prisons, which — in many contexts leftists would 
agree — are far from good enough. I have some vague idea that over the 
last several decades a few people spent some time thinking about the 
history and philosophy of punishment. In nettimish contexts (as opposed 
to ground-level activism in judicial and penal fields), most of that 
thought was applied to critiques of punishment — certainly more than 
to imagining new and maybe even constructive ways to address the scale 
and complexity of corporate criminality. Caricaturing people who'd say 
we should think about that as "manly" throat-slitters is dishonest and 
dumb. But my larger point was that systematic reform will require 
dismantling corporate mechanisms for obfuscating and escaping individual 
culpability. So, when you say...



How to express a necessary anger in a way that increases both people's
willingness and actual capacity to act politically? It's the 
unanswered

question I take away from the thread.


...I'd suggest that you start with the anger that's in front of you 
rather than invoking some romantic notion of diffuse righteous anger so 
you can position yourself as its philosopher. I offered at least one 
concrete answer: the labor activism of flight attendant unions, which I 
think has forced the Trump administration to do an about-face twice. 
There are others avenues, but finding them may require some excursions 
into 'aviation history.' If you aren't willing to do that, or at least 
to respect it, you won't get anywhere beyond unanswered questions.


Cheers,
Ted

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Re: Some background to Christchurch

[Iain Boal]

Thank you, Luke.  Furthermore, your country - I learnt this from two ‘Kiwi’ 
plumbers currently living in Brixton and with whom I occasionally carouse - is 
impressively in the van with respect to counter-seismic building codes. As I 
understand it, new and retrofitted houses in eg Christchurch, lying along major 
faults, are designed to rest on, so to speak, skis, uncoupling easily from the 
foundations in a ‘big one'. This is precisely the opposite of what we do here 
in the San Francisco Bay Area, where bolting down the superstructure to the 
base using Simpson (brand-leader) Ties is standard practice and more or less 
mandated by architects, contractors and insurance jockeys. 

And speaking of casual racism, the vernacular tipis and reedhouses of the local 
tangata whenua  - in which one might even relish a Richter 7 or 8 event - are, 
under the current Euro-settler dispensation, laughably 'out of code’. 

Kī tōnu taku waka topaki i te tuna,

Iain   
 
On 25 Mar 2019, at 13:44, Luke Munn mailto:luke.m...@gmail.com>> wrote:

Sure, the Springbok protests were hugely formative, but I would say boiling 
anything down to one event is placing too much emphasis on it. 

With respect, dating the 'beginning' of inequalities and civil unrest back to 
1981 is also a pretty Western/white perspective. Aotearoa has a long history of 
civil unrest, not least in the New Zealand wars / Land Wars beginning around 
1845. 

Since the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 between Māori and the 
Crown, New Zealand was always meant to be something other than the "Britain of 
the South Seas".

While the Treaty certainly has been contested and willfully misinterpreted 
historically, it nevertheless establishes a key framework for cultural 
relations.

What it sets up is a multiracial but bicultural society made up of "tangata 
whenua" (people of the land, indigenous New Zealanders) and "tangata tiriti" 
(people of the treaty, non-indigenous New Zealanders).

So when you see Muslim boys perform a haka (ceremonial dance), or see, as I did 
on Sunday, a 'Love Aotearoa Hate Racism' rally led by tribal flags and 
concluded by karakia (Māori prayers), then you're seeing what the Treaty 
should, in its best moments, establish. 

Of course there are lots of other factors too. The fact that NZ has 
historically been relatively open to immigration produces an everyday 
cosmopolitanism, to the point where Auckland is one of the most culturally 
diverse cities in the world. Jacinda Ardern's strong leadership in response to 
the attacks was another. The reaction against some of the worst aspects of 
other countries, like mass shootings in the US, would be another. 

Still, as you noted, more needs to be done. Casual racism against 'asians' in 
the context of our housing crisis is just one recent example. I just wanted to 
push back a little on the Springbok tour as single catalyst, and suggest a 
longer, and less overt lineage of cultural relations in New Zealand. Our 
country is small and young, but it's still complicated! :-)

best, Luke


On Mon, 25 Mar 2019 at 23:08, David Garcia 
mailto:d.gar...@new-tactical-research.co.uk>> wrote:
Simon Perkins a colleague at Bournemouth University sent me these reflections 
on the background to the impressive national response to the Christchurch 
massacre:
If you see the recent attacks in Chch as part of a more long-standing and 
generalised effort to deal with the country's inequalities then for me the 
beginning of this was the civil unrest and the aftermath of the 1981 Springbok 
Rugby Tour of NZ. What happened was that in protesting the inequalities in 
South Africa there became a wide-scale recognition that NZ also had real 
issues, which needed to be dealt with. The result was that there was there was 
a groundswell to make the country work for all. As the NZ historian Jock 
Phillips explains it "the tour represent[ed] the emergence of an independent 
Pacific nation to challenge the previous image of New Zealand as the 'Britain 
of the South Seas'. Playing rugby against South Africa was consistent with New 
Zealand's traditional identity as a loyal servant of the British Empire. The 
anti-tour movement had a different vision. New Zealand could be seen as an 
example of an independent, racially tolerant society, a moral exemplar." 
https://springboktournewzealand.weebly.com/aftermath.html 


And so, the public outpouring that we've seen since the mosques shooting are in 
someways a direct beneficiary of the Tour, where I think the attacks have 
shocked the country into realising that again - more needs to be done. BTW. if 
you're interested, this is a documentary made by the anti-tour 
protester/director Merata Mita: https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/patu-1983