Re: what exactly is breaking?
> On Jun 14, 2020, at 7:30 PM, Iain Boal wrote: > > > On 14 Jun 2020, at 02:40, sebast...@rolux.org wrote: > > > > "... i'm not a historian, but i'm certain > > that when columbus set foot in the americas, he came with the best > > intentions, and even the spanish probably didn't arrive with the > > primary motive to just kill everyone. but they did." > > If it is the task of the historian to rebut such ignorant certitudes, well > then, > the historical record clearly shows that the ‘christ-bearing dove’ was > intent on plundering the new world. He did confess an ulterior motive - > the funding of a crusade for the reconquest of Jerusalem. > > “But they did [kill everyone]”. That outcome has been a phantasy > of white Christian supremacists since the invasion and is a dangerous > falsehood, > given its implication of terra nullius, which however was in contradiction > with the > need for a labor force of millions to mine silver in Potosi and harvest > the most profitable commodities in history - tobacco, sugar and cotton. > > Iain you are probably right in that polemics is only one of many forms available to address the issues of 2020. i would like to hear more from historians. i'm sure religion played a role. it is regrettable. i sometimes imagine, maybe naïvely, that there must have been at least some folks who left spain or portugal with a different "moral mandate" than just to do god's work, driven by genuine curiousity about geography, and whose "exportable rallying cry" was to show off all the cool new technology they had at their disposal, maybe even share an idea or two. it didn't end so well, depending on who you ask, and i was just voicing my skepticism with regards to the US or the UK or the former West being the places that will spread the global virtues the species is going to thrive on in the 21st century. if you study their track record, say: the last 500 years, it looks kind of mixed at best. i'm also not such a big fan of china - compared to the US, the superpower it may supercede - other than maybe with regards to food, secularism, quality of everyday life for non-working-class inhabitants, and the clear willingness of the current government to improve the overall conditions of human life, be it by investing massively in new infrastructure, or, most notably, by refraining from killing millions of their own citizens as part of dubious political experiments. it's also not a binary, and we already know who is going to win: anyone who invents a form of capitalism that is no longer extractive, financializing and - in the deleuze/guattari or comité invisible sense - abstractionist. (dykes as presidents and CEOs would be a big plus, now that i think of it.) so yes: it's okay to imagine best case scenarios, which is what the text i was replying to did. the most important concept to me was "agency", and i find it crucial to insist on agency - as opposed to, say, deliberate on the mechanics of geopolitics from some remote feldherrenhügel. as long as we vaguely agree that what is breaking in 2020 was broken for a long time - 50 years for some, 500+ for others - there is a nonzero chance of a nonfascist future, and room for many voices and tonalities. (and in case i figure out that part about the bridge behind the mona lisa and gödel's incompleteness theorem - i haven't, so far - i'd be very much willing to help diagonalize, if needed.) # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: what exactly is breaking?
On 14 Jun 2020, at 02:40, sebast...@rolux.org wrote: "... i'm not a historian, but i'm certain that when columbus set foot in the americas, he came with the best intentions, and even the spanish probably didn't arrive with the primary motive to just kill everyone. but they did." If it is the task of the historian to rebut such ignorant certitudes, well then, the historical record clearly shows that the ‘christ-bearing dove’ was intent on plundering the new world. He did confess an ulterior motive - the funding of a crusade for the reconquest of Jerusalem. “But they did [kill everyone]”. That outcome has been a phantasy of white Christian supremacists since the invasion and is a dangerous falsehood, given its implication of terra nullius, which however was in contradiction with the need for a labor force of millions to mine silver in Potosi and harvest the most profitable commodities in history - tobacco, sugar and cotton. Iain # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: what exactly is breaking?
> On Jun 13, 2020, at 5:19 PM, Max Herman wrote: > Neither political party in the US is really denying climate change or racial > inequality much these days. There is bipartisan support for green > infrastructure initiatives to help reboot the economy, a green deal if not a > new one, and whoever wins in November will probably advance this in some > form. It is also interesting to notice how the rabid nationalist-populism of > five years ago seems less effective. We may have reached an at least local > turning point where the benefit of such rhetoric to anyone, even the most > rabid of the rabid, is decreasing. Certainly the libertarian zero-state > solution is in the dustbin for now given the giant scope of the Covid-19 > bailout. Who knows, we may even see the emergence of a new 21st c. "moral > mandate" for the former Western Bloc to advance the causes of equality and > environmental protection in much the same way that voting and free speech > acted as exportable rallying cries and unifying moral motives in the previous > century. last time i checked, at least one of the political parties in the US was not only denying, but deliberately escalating climate change and racial inequality. (this should not be misread as praise for the other party, of course!) my impression was that that for a majority in the US senate, "green new deal" was synonymous with "antifa" or "united nations". i also don't think that strategically, the focus should be on who wins in november, because in case someone wins something that month, he or she will have participated in the arrestation, not the advancement, of political debate: by reducing it to how and how often his or her pretty face appears on television. and while i agree that zero-state libertarianism should be totally discredited, mid-2020 (dear virus made that crystal clear: neoliberalism is a program for genocide, plain and simple), i'm still wondering why it is thriving in quite a few places, like the US or the UK. my most substantial disagreement, however, is about equality/ecology as "moral mandate" or "exportable rallying cry". i'm not a historian, but i'm certain that when columbus set foot in the americas, he came with the best intentions, and even the spanish probably didn't arrive with the primary motive to just kill everyone. but they did. so i think with regards to exportable virtues, the balance sheet of the "former western bloc" is deep in the red, so to say. maybe the US should just declare moral and political bankruptcy and start from zero. if i was a banker, i'd call it a haircut and move on with life. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: what exactly is breaking?
Hi Felix, This morning I was thinking about the idea of turning points so to speak, and whether the course of current events may be "breaking" one way or a different way. Perhaps the courses of events are a bit like flowing water, where there can be turbulence because of an obstacle that causes rotation or diversion in particular directions, but the general flow balances out eventually (as in the case of rivers). Yet sometimes I suppose even a river can jump its course and go quite a different way, perhaps long-term. One thought I had is that we may be seeing a turning (in fact but also perception) of the net impact of technology from solving problems to creating problems. I mean this in an uncontroversial sense mainly, i.e. that whereas the "improvement of life" curve for technology has been leveling out (food, housing, medicine), the "harm to life" curve has been increasing rapidly, mainly in the form of climate change but also other problems. Perhaps this year or decade a meaningful majority of people are taking a different approach to technology, sort of like the push for "human-centered" design but trying also to address other harms of technological systems to the environment, society, equality, justice, non-human species, and other kinds of value. Not to praise dialectics, and certainly not overly, but such a turning point could make sense even as a simple call-and-reply or stimulus-response dynamic. Or, a simple feedback mechanism, a point of diminishing returns, an over-saturation falling out of solution, pangs of conscience, waking up and smelling the coffee -- any such concepts may apply. Neither political party in the US is really denying climate change or racial inequality much these days. There is bipartisan support for green infrastructure initiatives to help reboot the economy, a green deal if not a new one, and whoever wins in November will probably advance this in some form. It is also interesting to notice how the rabid nationalist-populism of five years ago seems less effective. We may have reached an at least local turning point where the benefit of such rhetoric to anyone, even the most rabid of the rabid, is decreasing. Certainly the libertarian zero-state solution is in the dustbin for now given the giant scope of the Covid-19 bailout. Who knows, we may even see the emergence of a new 21st c. "moral mandate" for the former Western Bloc to advance the causes of equality and environmental protection in much the same way that voting and free speech acted as exportable rallying cries and unifying moral motives in the previous century. Of course in complex systems there is usually, and perhaps by definition, an equal and opposite reaction for every action, which can lead to a dizzying array of permutations. Moreover, it seems possible that strange yet highly influential occurrences can sometimes change the course of things disproportionately, seemingly at random but not really, by way of rapid transpositions. Another turning point which might be here now, but depends more on human agency and choice, is how we view our aesthetic existence relative to technology. For a long time humanity has viewed its ability to create aesthetic effects as a kind of divine power that rises above the earth of actual people, nature, and perhaps even time. Increases in technological capability have generally reinforced this belief, and have done so on multiple levels. In a sense we have let ourselves believe that by our technology we can create our experience, and ignored the limits to this. Sadly, Freudian theory is still very powerful in the humanities, despite its originator having lost scientific credibility, leaving in a sense its practitioners (which may include all of us) up the proverbial creek with no paddle. Can such errors of omission and confusion be learned from and set aside? It may depend on how we define agency. All people are wedded to their beliefs and it hurts sometimes to change them, whether by loss of status, self-esteem, income, or one's head. This doesn't mean it's not possible, but it does imply that choices which cannot be predicted in advance could play a major role. I've been writing some blogs at Leonardo.info about "the mindful Mona Lisa," arguing that the painting has been largely misread (in large part because of Freud's explanation that Leonardo was painting his mom) as not being, at all, about technological history much less the proper balance between the human and the technological. This balance is, to my view, the key "turning point" of any anthropocene era, any period of time in which the consequences of a planet's acquisition of technology begin to overpower the pre-technological systems of that planet in totalistic ways. I believe that Leonardo meant to tell us something about engineering and its long-term development into the "fabric" of our existence, and he did this by placing a b
Re: what exactly is breaking?
... waking up is a longer term process; and there is (always) the long tail of several systemic watch dogs: Police unions dig in as calls for reform grow https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/08/politics/police-union-reform-protests/index.html though strategically I (chose to) share your optimistic reading of the current potential(s) best to all! oliver > Am 08.06.2020 um 21:34 schrieb sebast...@rolux.org: > > a week+ after felix' orignial posting, i'm quite certain that > what is breaking is the consensus that the disintegration of > the united states of the middle of north america should fill > anyone with horror. distant observers, maybe. but the actors, > people in the streets? it all looks quite joyful to me, i have > to admit, and resolute and responsible and determined to win. > > maybe read this: http://piratecinema.org/screenings/20200429 > (april 29), and/or google: game of thrones walk of shame > minneapolis. things are moving rather quickly these days. <> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: what exactly is breaking?
a week+ after felix' orignial posting, i'm quite certain that what is breaking is the consensus that the disintegration of the united states of the middle of north america should fill anyone with horror. distant observers, maybe. but the actors, people in the streets? it all looks quite joyful to me, i have to admit, and resolute and responsible and determined to win. maybe read this: http://piratecinema.org/screenings/20200429 (april 29), and/or google: game of thrones walk of shame minneapolis. things are moving rather quickly these days. then i thought: don't post to nettime at 3 am, sleep over it. here is what i woke up to: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/07/minneapolis-city-council-defund-police-george-floyd ;) > On May 31, 2020, at 12:27 PM, Felix Stalder wrote: > > > I, like probably most nettimers, I have been observing the fracturing > of the US with increasing horror (knowing that Europe, over the last > 70 years, has usualled followed the US, for good and bad). With the > horrific response to Covid-19, things to have now taken an even > darker turn, compounding all the simmering structural violence into > something, well, into what? Approaching civil war? There are certainly > enough heavily-armed militias around who are clamoring for it. Is this > a breaking point, and if so, what exactly is breaking? > > > > -- > | || http://felix.openflows.com | > | Open PGP | http://felix.openflows.com/pgp.txt | > > > > > > # distributed via : no commercial use without permission > #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, > # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets > # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l > # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org > # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: what exactly is breaking?
There is a lot there on re. what exactly is breaking? but to be brief on this from Molly: Still even the poorest in socialist Europe don?t have to steal to go to a doctor... well, there is a large 'ghost' population here who work but who have no such rights per se (in some regions 90% of the labour force in particular the agricultural industry). In this corona pandemic, this labour force has been under great pressure to keep the supplies to the northern supermarkets going. However on filming, it seems that the US 2nd Amendment with the constitutional right to bear arms in civil space with all its homicidal consequences has then some correlation to the right to bear cameras in civil space - but this argument would require some work. Equally on the express right to form militias within the US constitution - given the "open" space we are in now when as Dan W says on Trump, He didn?t even get an hour?s worth of media dominance out of it before the backlash came at him from a range of prominent voices, making apparent his current political weakness. I think it's worth re-stating, re possible breaks with established patterns for new ones to emerge across the continental shelf, that the US Republican constitution prefigures the European or the French Republican constitution (not the other way round as in popular imagination) and remains dependent on colonial predation and expansion. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: what exactly is breaking?
Felix – I know Castells casts a long shadow in your thought, but not
so much in mine. It isn't an accident that systemic thinkers emerged in
some cultures, like Castells in Spain and the Annalistes in France, but
not so much in others. US intellectualism isn't known for its rigorously
systematic qualities, and in many ways that's an organic expression of
the US itself — its cultures, its sheer scale, its geography, and all
the rest. So we should think twice about analyses that tend to ignore
decisive patterns — and one that's becoming disorientingly obvious is
just how erratic is the illogic of US politics. *That* is one of our
'structures.'
{{ Douglas Bagnall put it well:
On Felix's original question, I don't have a lot to say that wouldn't
be improved by me not saying it. I am wary of predicting breaking
points in America -- more so than in normal countries where it is
already tricky -- because, you see, they *value* chaos over there. I
don't mean an anarchic freedom (though they have pockets of that of
course) but a seething mass of officious disorder. I realised this
after spending five minutes in LAX. Like, we can say the police are
terrible, they need to be fixed/replaced/exiled/whatever, but we are
not talking about one institution, rather thousands or tens of
thousands of autonomous outfits that have an association with the
brand "police". The depressing definition is they carry a badge and a
gun. How can something so splintered be reformed or broken?
}}
When we see nationwide eruptions — challenging how populations are
racialized, the carceral state, the maldistribution of public resources,
and so on — of course these structures have been in the making for
decades or even centuries. On that basis we can conclude that not much
is new, or that what is new is only ephemeral. So, yes, trust in liberal
democracy has been in decline for a long time, pressure has been
building, and it was sparked by a constellation of arbitrary events: one
among thousands of zoonotic viruses, the death of handful of African
Americans among countless others, a rootless conman-impresario
crystallizing the merger of media and politics. But I've lost interest
in that kind of approach, because it's plainly conservative — for
example, in the way it marginalizes the political potentials of younger
people. Not a century ago, they had little overt cultural or political
impact, in large part because they had little discretionary wealth; now
the patterns of how they allocate their money have immense, refractory
impact. Systemic analyses can roughly describe how that impact lurches
around, but only by becoming so abstract and removed as to be useless
— in the same way that, say, semiotic theories can only explain what
the hell is up with memes only by ignoring their specificity. But, in
the US at least, their ridiculous details are becoming increasingly
decisive.
That's particularly true on the far right, which has descended into an
orgy of signification, with networks like QAnon and the even stranger
(imo) pileup of references: Hawaiian shirts and palm trees, igloos,
camouflage, paramilitary imagery (Jokers, Punisher, 'thin blue line'
flags, AK47-like AR15 silhouettes, guillotines and wood-chippers — and
I'm not even getting into the wordplay. In the same way that
pearl-clutching about how cruel the Trump administration is misses the
point ("gleeful cruelty *is* the point"), waving away this epidemic of
signification misses it as well: *of course* these specific images,
motifs, and puns are arbitrary, senseless, ephemeral. But the *glee*
that attends this mayhem isn't.
So, like I said in my last mail, conventional negations only get us so
far. Saying, well, trust in liberal democracy has been on the decline
across the West for decades — yes, of course. But the *gleeful*
destruction of everything from postwar international system to
protestors' bodies, that's a different kettle of fish. In particular,
pleasures — sadistic, nihilistic, fatalistic — are being mobilized
'at scale' to create new world disorders.
I couldn't agree more with what you say about effects becoming causes;
and I think that kind of causal inversion, which is really a temporal
reversal, is the key to understanding why the narratives of so many
systemic analyses are collapsing. But, again, it's time to stop dwelling
so comfortably on the ruins and ask a more frightening question, which
is what is being built?
(Also: a few people pointed out that Google's corpus and/or ngram system
is broken. Thanks to all.)
Cheers,
Ted
On 3 Jun 2020, at 3:59, Felix Stalder wrote:
These kinds of language games aren't as silly as they might seem at
first glance, because pop phrases like that hint — as if through a
glass
or scanner darkly — diffuse assumptions about where we see
ourselves
historically. A world where people are drawn to seeing anything and
everything as *broken* is a world in the past tense; al
Re: what exactly is breaking?
concerning filming the police, I just read: "Why filming police violence has done nothing to stop it" https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/06/03/1002587/sousveillance-george-floyd-police-body-cams/ excerpts: A large study in 2017 by the Washington, DC, mayor’s office assigned more than a thousand police officers in the District to wear body cameras and more than a thousand to go camera-free. The researchers hoped to find evidence that wearing cameras correlated with better policing, less use of force, and fewer civilian complaints. They found none: the difference in behavior between the officers who knew they were being watched and the officers who knew they were not was statistically insignificant. Another study, which analyzed the results of 10 randomized controlled trials of body camera use in different nations, was helpfully titled “Wearing body cameras increases assaults against officers and does not reduce police use of force.”Reacting to the DC study, some scholars have hoped that if cameras don’t deter officers from violent behavior, at least the film can hold them accountable afterwards. There, too, body cameras rarely work the way we hope. While careful, frame-by-frame analysis of video often shows that victims of police shootings were unarmed and that officers mistook innocuous objects for weapons, attorneys for the defense screen the videos at normal speed to show how tense, fast, and scary confrontations between police and suspects can be. A 1989 Supreme Court decision means that if police officers have an “objectively reasonable” fear that their lives or safety are in danger, they are justified in using deadly force. Videos from body cameras and bystander cell phones have worked to bolster “reasonable fear” defense claims as much as they have demonstrated the culpability of police officers.end of the text The hope that pervasive cameras by themselves would counterbalance the systemic racism that leads to the overpolicing of communities of color and the disproportionate use of force against black men was simply a techno-utopian fantasy. It was a hope that police violence could be an information problem like Uber rides or Amazon recommendations, solvable by increasing the flows of data. But after years of increasingly widespread bodycam use and ever more pervasive social media, it’s clear that information can work only when it’s harnessed to power. If there’s one thing that Americans—particularly people of color in America—have learned from George Floyd, Philando Castile, and Eric Garner, it’s that individuals armed with images are largely powerless to make systemic change. That’s the reason people have taken to the streets in Minneapolis, DC, New York, and so many other cities. There’s one thing images of police brutality seem to have the power to do: shock, outrage, and mobilize people to demand systemic change. That alone is the reason to keep filming. __ On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 1:45 AM Siraj Izhar | publiclife wrote: > > I watched the Cornell West interview at DemocracyNow > https://www.democracynow.org/2020/6/1/cornel_west_us_moment_of_reckoning > where he says the failed social experiment that is America is breaking > apart. > But more troubled than ever by the Americanising of this or, using Trump > as a prop, when deaths in police custody over decades at least here in > the UK are regular. > The big difference is that everything here is off camera. So never ever > the question of charges against the police unlike the US. > The other thing is the conditions of production of the images we see now > which depend on the law. For example if you look at this video here: > https://www.instagram.com/tv/CAtVvp3nsFm/?igshid=1nvv3zg61rg8w <...> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: what exactly is breaking?
Dear Felix, With this refreshed invitation, I’ll take a stab at keeping the conversation going. As for breaks, ruptures, and discontinuities, I wonder about Nixon’s Silent Majority, about whether it exists anymore. When Trump finally emerged from his bunker, his retreat from White House protestors for which he was roundly ridiculed, to make his first statement to the nation after a week of historic unrest, predictably he went whole hog, so to speak, for the “law and order” message. His imagined audience was that of the fearful and disgusted “good” Americans, the “hard working” Americans, the Americans of “family values”—all quotation marks denoting code for white. It worked for Nixon in 1968 and created a lasting strategic pole around which both Republicans and Democrats had to navigate and repeatedly return to, from Reagan’s War on Drugs to the tough-on-crime bills of the Bill Clinton era. Will it work for Trump?? Based on the last ten days, I will say no, it won’t work. Back in ’68 white flight was a full force gale, a process underway and yet to be named, and expressed in extremes bad and worse around nearly every sizable US city in the then-most populated regions of the country. It was a process of re-spatializing racial groupings, one that hastened the de-emphasis of the various Euro-American ethnic identifications of the old city (identities in relation to each other) in favor of suburban whiteness (a single identity opposed to blackness). Nixon’s sense for the shift was accurate, and he capitalized on it. The militancies of the ghettos and the campuses, the rhetoric and imagery, were harnessed in the service of a reactionary response. And it worked so well that it provided the Republican road map for the next generation. Something’s different now. For starters, anyone can see that the hordes of protestors are a multiracial/multiethnic swarm. This is generation Q, queer in all ways, in all colors. These are the trans kids who were out blocking traffic the night that Trump “won” three years ago. These are the black skateboarders, the girl bud tenders, the trans cos players, the generation that survived school shootings, and the people entertaining each other on Twitch. These are the people who, when they assemble en masse as they have in well over a hundred US cities now for days on end, to torch police cars and dance in the streets, make me a lot less worried about chan subcultures. Add to this the multiple concurrent media narratives, no longer monopolized by corporate channels, equalizing everything from ABC to Unicorn Riot to TMZ, not to mention the ever-present wildcards of anybody with a smart phone and social media account (as in the original footage of the murder of George Floyd). The law & order response cannot reductively characterize this huge street opposition and accompanying flood of images for messaging purposes. The best Trump could do was to pull out the “Antifa” bogeyman, an enemy believed in only by the most provincial segments of his right wing base. The courage and creativity of the young Black organizers—and the pure rage of the disenfranchised and police-targeted Black masses—are undoubtedly the engine of this uprising. That said, another difference between now and the formations that emerged from Ferguson less than six years ago is the level and dedication of white allyship. I have been greatly heartened by the vocal support expressed by white people from various quarters, especially as conservatives and corporate media have—as usual—attempted to elevate the narrative of burning and looting. The Obama era campus subcultures of safe spaces, trigger warnings, and privilege politics seem to have matured into a rather sophisticated understanding of what white people can and should do when the streets erupt. But even deeper than that, I see a meaningful change in urban consciousness at work. By now we’ve had two generations of privileged people choosing to reside in cities. Though comparatively advantaged by their education, color, and wealth, these make up a class of urban dwellers who are familiar with the ills of urban poverty—not as personal experience, but as a condition under which their neighbors, employees, and many thousands of fellow city residents suffer. A great many of these people are white and unlike their parents and grandparents, they won’t be fleeing the city and instead see these problems of police brutality as their own responsibility. For once, the white liberals aren’t reflexively cutting the cord at the sight of a burning police car; their empathy goes in the direction of their black and brown neighbors. Of course I don’t want to overstate this, and one violent act targeting a white person can change everything, but I sense a meaningful difference, a genuine break from whiteness as a social formation with a necessarily reactionary politics. Further, the suburbs aren’t what they used to be, eit
Re: what exactly is breaking?
On 3/06/20 5:48 am, tbyfield wrote: > everything as *broken* is a world in the past tense; all you can do is > *rebuild* — another word that tracks "is broken" with almost hilarious > precision... > > > https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=rebuild%2Crebuilding%2C+is+broken&year_start=1980&year_end=2012&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Crebuild%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Crebuilding%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cis%20broken%3B%2Cc0#t1%3B%2Crebuild%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Crebuilding%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cis%20broken%3B%2Cc0 One thing that *is* broken is Google's 2012 corpus, which is revealed more clearly when smoothing is removed: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=is+broken%2Cpeanut&year_start=1980&year_end=2012&corpus=15&smoothing=0 (what they choose to show me is every term plummets to zero in 2009.) On Felix's original question, I don't have a lot to say that wouldn't be improved by me not saying it. I am wary of predicting breaking points in America -- more so than in normal countries where it is already tricky -- because, you see, they *value* chaos over there. I don't mean an anarchic freedom (though they have pockets of that of course) but a seething mass of officious disorder. I realised this after spending five minutes in LAX. Like, we can say the police are terrible, they need to be fixed/replaced/exiled/whatever, but we are not talking about one institution, rather thousands or tens of thousands of autonomous outfits that have an association with the brand "police". The depressing definition is they carry a badge and a gun. How can something so splintered be reformed or broken? Douglas # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: what exactly is breaking?
This is fascinating response. It’s getting harder here to be a journalist or to take pictures, but we still believe we can. Sometimes I think the sheer number of images, for instance, just yesterday on Twitter, of NYPD beating bicyclists and medical workers out after curfew - because the order was to arrest those out after curfew - desensitizes us enough to produce an ill effect of indifference. Trump as the Law and Order President continues a legacy of overfunding police departments and underfunding those oppressed by the system. ( If I didn’t have to steal for my kids I wouldn’t.) He and other presidents and Justice Departments have routinely militarized and supplied law enforcement with the tools, garb, tech to overwhelm and “dominate”. Remember we have a rapist for a President. After a while it becomes commonplace. There is an army of officers who just take orders. One giant algorithmic vector in place, coordinated to act on behalf of power. If they don’t want to be seen, they will shunt a group into an alley and bludgeon us there, badges and cameras off. (Melbourne S8, 2003, on horseback) The popular press here tells us how to prevent smartphone surveillance because until Trump decides to shut us up, we have free speech and free press. https://www.consumerreports.org/privacy/protect-phone-privacy-security-during-a-protest/?EXTKEY=YCRADVOCACY_FB But, journalists are not doing too well here. Those laws about who can film who are bizarre. Still even the poorest in socialist Europe don’t have to steal to go to a doctor... peace Molly On Wed, Jun 3, 2020 at 11:44 PM Siraj Izhar | publiclife wrote: > > I watched the Cornell West interview at DemocracyNow > https://www.democracynow.org/2020/6/1/cornel_west_us_moment_of_reckoning > where he says the failed social experiment that is America is breaking > apart. > But more troubled than ever by the Americanising of this or, using Trump > as a prop, when deaths in police custody over decades at least here in > the UK are regular. <.> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: what exactly is breaking?
> that > are broken (and hence in need of fixing) Thank you but about historical discontinuities, about possible breaks with > established patterns that open up space for new dynamics, for the better or > worse. We are feeling the answer to this with every protest, and all the looting and every new video of dissenters being beaten or hearing they have been shot. > > For example, the decline of trust in institutions of liberal democracy > -- parliaments, elected governments, the press, the judicial > system, science and so on -- has been long and steady. Last night 12,000 San Francisco students, my son included, marched from Dolores Park to the signifier of the Hall of Justice. This was a student-led peaceful protest. More than 60% of Americans trusted in US gov on the late 1960s, less than > 20% do it > today. Internationally, this is perhaps decline is perhaps even steeper. It may be the best feature of the current White House administration that it has successfully stripped away all the trappings of the neoliberalism that clogged our pores before. Within the psychosis, all fairness and leadership is laid bare as a sham, which in turn produces the need for refinement and mediation. > > > But for a long time, relatively little happened, Legitimacy eroded, > but the institutions staggered on. No reforms, no alternatives. But > this cannot go on for ever. At some point, something breaks. The thinness of a veneer of equity or democracy... Quite arguably, the breaking point was the election of Trump/Johonson etc. That was the beginning of the end of the stupor that decades of padding out the failures with NeoLiberal jargon and it’s complacent apathy had brought about. No one really did much to stop Trump’s election. Many were just caught up in the fairytale of Hillary Clinton being The First Woman Prez, after Obama had been The First Black President. Identity politics was just building the momentum for its own demise. > > Of course, one can argue that someone like Trump is the effect of the > post-Nixon turn of the republican party, Nixon looks like a self-effacing hippy by comparison. LOL. Trump is closer to Reagan? but at some point, the effect > becomes the cause for something quite different. But which effect and > cause for what, if anything? End of the militarized police state that all past Administrations of all colors and parties has helped to build based largely on the idea that blacks, especially black men, but not only, are to blame for most crime in this country and abroad and that this is a perfectly justifiable state of existence so...in order to be safe, we need to incarcerate black men at a rate so indecently skewed as to fill our jails 80percent with their faces and to vilify their existence in countless films and TV and to shoot them if they move. Have you seen the gear, the numbers, the technology? If that were my bling I’d be home free from poverty and corruption...you know? I wouldn’t have to be stealing. What has broken (imho) for the good of all is the idea that anyone is going to take this excessive use of force lying down or by paying for it...with our tax money. Do you know what it must be costing to deploy the numbers of cops? Hence, in the midst of boring self isolation we are rudely awaking the differences between a billionaire class defended by high-styled goons and the poverty class of angry black families who are struggling to survive and students with loans to pay.., Molly # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: what exactly is breaking?
As an observer of the last 45 years in U.S. and local politics (NYC) I'd propose that "what's breaking" is the denial by the average white privileged person that the status quo is fair, equitable, and just for all citizens not just them. McCorkle Terence Diamond www.terencediamond.com 646-876-1700 On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 2:40 AM Felix Stalder wrote: > > > On 02.06.20 19:48, tbyfield wrote: > > These kinds of language games aren't as silly as they might seem at > > first glance, because pop phrases like that hint — as if through a glass > > or scanner darkly — diffuse assumptions about where we see ourselves > > historically. A world where people are drawn to seeing anything and > > everything as *broken* is a world in the past tense; all you can do is > > *rebuild* — another word that tracks "is broken" with almost hilarious > > precision... > > Perhaps I was unclear, or insufficiently versed US conservative > rhetoric, but my intention was not inquire about things that > are broken (and hence in need of fixing) but about historical > discontinuities, about possible breaks with established patterns that > open up space for new dynamics, for the better or worse. <...> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: what exactly is breaking?
I watched the Cornell West interview at DemocracyNow https://www.democracynow.org/2020/6/1/cornel_west_us_moment_of_reckoning where he says the failed social experiment that is America is breaking apart. But more troubled than ever by the Americanising of this or, using Trump as a prop, when deaths in police custody over decades at least here in the UK are regular. The big difference is that everything here is off camera. So never ever the question of charges against the police unlike the US. The other thing is the conditions of production of the images we see now which depend on the law. For example if you look at this video here: https://www.instagram.com/tv/CAtVvp3nsFm/?igshid=1nvv3zg61rg8w The point is that it would be impossible to produce such a video in the UK or France or Spain (or anywhere in Europe?) without being assaulted by the law or arrested - on charges of obstructing the police. In Calais I witness on a regular basis, assaults by the CRS on refugees. It's very dangerous to even think of pointing a camera. Also by Article 80 of the French data protection act, only professional journalists can film the police. In Spain, there is a blanket law against citizens filming the police doing their work (Citizen Security Law 2015). And in certain parts of Greece hide the phone. So the drama of death at least as image production in Fortress Europe or Hostile environment is totally different but the underlying problem is there - which the BLM protests here acknowledge. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: what exactly is breaking?
On 02.06.20 19:48, tbyfield wrote: > These kinds of language games aren't as silly as they might seem at > first glance, because pop phrases like that hint — as if through a glass > or scanner darkly — diffuse assumptions about where we see ourselves > historically. A world where people are drawn to seeing anything and > everything as *broken* is a world in the past tense; all you can do is > *rebuild* — another word that tracks "is broken" with almost hilarious > precision... Perhaps I was unclear, or insufficiently versed US conservative rhetoric, but my intention was not inquire about things that are broken (and hence in need of fixing) but about historical discontinuities, about possible breaks with established patterns that open up space for new dynamics, for the better or worse. For example, the decline of trsut in institutions of liberal democracy -- parliaments, elected governments, the press, the judicial system, science and so on -- has been long and steady. More than 60% of Americans trusted in US gov on the late 1960s, less than 20% do it today. Internationally, this is perhaps decline is perhaps even steeper. But for a long time, relatively little happened, Legitimacy eroded, but the institutions staggered on. No reforms, no alternatives. But this cannot go on for ever. At some point, something breaks. Quite arguably, the breaking point was the election of Trump/Johonson etc. Of course, one can argue that someone like Trump is the effect of the post-Nixon turn of the republican party, but at some point, the effect becomes the cause for something quite different. But which effect and cause for what, if anything? Felix -- | || http://felix.openflows.com | | Open PGP | http://felix.openflows.com/pgp.txt | # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: what exactly is breaking?
On 31 May 2020, at 6:27, Felix Stalder wrote: I, like probably most nettimers, I have been observing the fracturing of the US with increasing horror (knowing that Europe, over the last 70 years, has usualled followed the US, for good and bad). With the horrific response to Covid-19, things to have now taken an even darker turn, compounding all the simmering structural violence into something, well, into what? Approaching civil war? There are certainly enough heavily-armed militias around who are clamoring for it. Is this a breaking point, and if so, what exactly is breaking? In asking a question like this it's worth remembering that the declaration "_ is broken" — education, regulation, Congress, misc industries, international systems — was a staple of rightist and self-appointed 'realist' rhetoric for several years. It's always hard to pin particular dates on pervasive turns of phrase like that, but the Google ngram for "is broken" is pretty interesting: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=is+broken&year_start=1980&year_end=2012&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cis%20broken%3B%2Cc0#t1%3B%2Cis%20broken%3B%2Cc0 Apparently, things stopped being broken very suddenly in 2005, and by 2012 (when the ngram corpus runs out) everything was working perfectly. Curiously, the 2008 meltdown didn't even register as a blip. Anyway, now it all seems to be breaking — in the present imperfect tense. These kinds of language games aren't as silly as they might seem at first glance, because pop phrases like that hint — as if through a glass or scanner darkly — diffuse assumptions about where we see ourselves historically. A world where people are drawn to seeing anything and everything as *broken* is a world in the past tense; all you can do is *rebuild* — another word that tracks "is broken" with almost hilarious precision... https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=rebuild%2Crebuilding%2C+is+broken&year_start=1980&year_end=2012&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Crebuild%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Crebuilding%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cis%20broken%3B%2Cc0#t1%3B%2Crebuild%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Crebuilding%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cis%20broken%3B%2Cc0 ...but a world where things *are breaking* all around us is a different kettle of fish, and it's very much in the present. Reading this thread is depressing. Steve says, "Is anything breaking? No, nothing is breaking. The structure is safe," a proposition that will always be true on some level. And Brian says, "Of course, nothing has changed in America in our lifetimes." I can think of quite a few people, ranging from LGBTQIers who enjoy freedoms to ~students who recognize their lot will be depths indentured servitude, both to degrees barely imaginable a few decades ago. But, yes, our analyses must at all costs privilege *the system*. These aren't just accidents of phrasing; the mistakes pervade the analyses, as when Brian noted that "Something like it did happen during the Great Depression. But at that time the electorate was not so deeply divided by racial issues." Well, yeah, it took another 30 years before whites finally allowed blacks to vote... But these are all details. The larger picture is that their commentaries feel more like old people going around in familiar well-trodden analytical circles than responses to the uncertainties opening before us. To say that there are none is plainly silly. Just a few months ago, say the end of January, today's headlines was yesterday's near-term sci-fi. What's breaking is any remaining faith in the last vestiges of trust in government. But the problem with formulations like that is their reliance on negation. Hence, for example, the inability of major media outlets to affirmatively describe Trump and his actions: he doesn't "lie," he "states, without evidence." He's said to be *in*competent, *un*hinged, *in*sane, *in*coherent, and all the rest. These negatives don't say what he *is*, they describe the limits of our vocabulary. So, yeah, he's breaking norm after norm, tradition after tradition, rule after rule, law after law — but, like "is broken" above, those all speak of the past. They don't say what affirmative structures he's building. The question isn't what old things are breaking, it's what new things are building: the absolute certainty — faithlessness — that government at every level is atomized, myopic, arbitrary, and violent. When it comes to details Trump bobs and weaves, makes crazy threats only to back away from the silently, but when it comes to the big picture he says what he'll do and does what says. The snobbishly inclined sneer because they insist on niceties like grammar, syntax, logic, p
Re: what exactly is breaking?
As an Austin resident, I'm sure your analysis is generally spot-on. However I'm not clear how it explains why there was looting and burning here in Austin. You didn't quite make the connection. On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 1:39 AM EduAustin Alliance wrote: > > Sorry to be overly Marxist about it, but here's my .02 > > -- > > The case in Minneapolis, the killing of George Floyd, was the result of a > bad apple - a story of one officer who took things too far, and the spoiled > bushel around him that enabled his crime. <> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: what exactly is breaking?
Sorry to be overly Marxist about it, but here's my .02 -- The case in Minneapolis, the killing of George Floyd, was the result of a bad apple - a story of one officer who took things too far, and the spoiled bushel around him that enabled his crime. That's not the case in Austin. As a liberal city in a conservative state, the activists in Austin are very active and integrated with the community. There's well over 50 protests every year in Austin. I've personally spoken one-on-one with the Chief of Police on several occasions, as well as the head of Austin's Police Oversight Committee and most of City Council. They have their problems. Just a few months ago, Michael Ramos was shot and killed for non-compliance, but for the most part, Austin doesn't have any more bad apples. They've already been weened from the Austin Police Department. https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2020-04-27/activists-call-for-firing-of-apd-leadership-in-wake-of-officer-involved-shooting/ All the officers I've known were reasonable people- no more racist than anyone else. The activists in Austin know this too. Most of us are on a first name basis with many cops because we always see each other at protests and City Council meetings. So then I ask you, why would the Austin activists, primarily organized by local churches, with a long history of peaceful protests, and a direct relationship with the local police department, burn cars and loot stores? I personally only saw 1 car burned and 1 store looted, but still, why? Was it those "outside agitators" we keep hearing about on main-stream media? No. Not at all. Allow me one quick story to explain why. A handful of years ago, a buddy of mine and I were hanging out in the kitchen of his house, which has a window that looks out onto the street, and this car gets pulled over right across the street. The weird thing was that the officers immediately pull the people out of the car, a 20-something black man and a 20-something black women. The cops separate the two kids and start questioning them. We turned off the indoor lights so they couldn't tell we were watching. We watched because the cops never would have treated us that way. Over 45 minutes later, the cops abruptly drove away, leaving the two kids standing by their car. We took some bottles of water out to them to make sure they were okay. They were dazed. They had no idea why they were pulled over or why they were questioned. They were simply on their way home, but the message was clear- don't take that way home. The Cherrywood neighborhood where this happened was a hispanic neighborhood long ago. That started to change about 35 years ago. These days it's almost all white families. The property taxes have made the schools better, and that in turn was raising the property values. Gentrification was taking hold. These two kids weren't pulled over because they're black- they were pulled over because they're poor. Class-based profiling overlaps with racial profiling and the profiles add up. This is how it happened. The Citizens said to City Council, "we want to be rich!" because that's what the television told them to say. City Council then hired a "Business Improvement Manager" with an MBA from the University of Texas. The Business Manager looked at the local real estate market and provided general guidelines to the Police Chief about how to treat those neighborhoods. The Police Chief then translated the guidelines into orders for the Police Officers. The Officers in the streets knew nothing of the economics. They weren't trying to be racist or classist. They were doing their job. In the case of Cherrywood, a neighborhood on verge of gentrification, the order was "make sure no one's there that isn't supposed to be there", which got translated into "poor kids in a junky car should be told to take a different way home." On the other hand, East Riverside, where Michael Ramos was killed, is predominately minority. The Police arrange their patrol routes to patrol that neighborhood less, crime goes up and response times go down. In a press interview, the Chief of Police said that the lower response times were due to the arrangement of the highways. No one asked any more questions, and East Riverside's real estate market continues to stay depressed. Again, the Officers are simply doing their job. These realities form a low-level aggression that all minorities in the USA experience. It's a form of psychological warfare that we, the USA, use the police force to enact, on our own citizen, in order to preserve our system of class. That's why you see Trump stirring the pot on racial issues. Race continues to be a class-based narrative. Trump is, and represents, big money. Sure, people are dying, the US government is going broke, and small business is hurting- none of that matters as long as the stock market stays even. Deleuze wrote that capitalism creates "decoded flows." The riots are those same old flows re-emer
Re: what exactly is breaking?
Steve, fabulous to hear back from you and your last one clarifies your viewpoints. Obviously I'm sort of a "professional optimist" to the extent that I try to engage with what's going on, learn from it, add to it if I can, and if it's positive, try to help it go somewhere. Here's a point which isn't getting talked about enough: > But here is what really gets me: The US is in the middle of a great > depression and yet the stock market is fine and healthy. The Dow is > up at 25,745 as I write this. Not record territory, but close. I > think there are two reasons for this. The first is all the tax payer > funded corporate bailout money coming their way which allows them to > keep all the stock buy backs in place, thus raising dividends and/or > share price. Or conversely, protecting them from having to reissue > buy back shares to stay afloat while waiting out the pandemic. This > kind of bail out makes corporate exchange a risk free affair. The > second is they see all the independent businesses failing. This is > going to open some new market share. > This is exactly true and it's the continuation of what happened after 2008. The bailout money injected into the stock market has not only reinforced oligopolies (markets locked up by 3 or 4 players) and swollen the ranks of the oligarchy, but it has also been fairly well distributed to all the professionals who service the financial sector and everything it drags along behind it (business services, urban real-estate, luxury consumption). At the same time, with some recent help from the coronavirus the bottom line has outright disappeared for millions of households and basic trust in society is breaking down. This kind of breakdown can elicit a right-wing reaction, or maybe it could lead to something new. The gigantic political question is whether the Democratic party will respond with a sweeping jobs-and-infrastructure agenda (Green New Deal). I totally agree it's something they would never do under normal circumstances, and they definitely were not anywhere near doing it until the coronavirus hit. Even under current circumstances, only a cross-race progressive push, accompanied by the threat of withholding our votes, can make such an agenda happen. And it still has to win at the polls. Now a new threat has arisen from below. Looting is par for the course in any big social disturbance, but the only time I have seen it on this scale was the banlieue uprising in France in 2005. What people are calling agents provocateurs (for instance, ambiguously dressed white guys breaking windows with hammers) seems mainly to be hardcore anarchists intent on knocking the system down with violence, but there are probably also cops (after all, that's what "agents" means) and above all, right-wing provocateurs out there breaking and burning shit because they look forward to a big sweeping military reaction with vigilantees and deputized civilians - not the Boogaloo, but a more tightly conceived game plan that extremist libertarians talk about (Hans Herman Hoppe and co). Even if there is nothing more in the streets before November, these days of rage will loom large in the elections. But I reckon there will be more, and that the extreme right will soon engage in shooting provocations. All of this is highly dangerous, but so is oligarchy, institutionalized racism and the further militarization of society, so we have to deal with what we've got right now. The Covid threat, the unemployment threat and the anarchy threat together indicate a turning point for this society, one that is far more tangible and therefore more actionable than the next one on the horizon (climate change). Frankly I think the hope that there will be some kind of revolution coming out of all this is baloney - no one has an organization, a plan or even a solid political philosophy, just a lot of simplistic fantasies (I would be glad to be wrong, if anyone can offer proof to the contrary!). We have to support the protests and understand brutal domestic racism as the existential origin of all the ills of empire, which is the strong progressive theory that you can see expressed everywhere these days. We have to interpret the looting as a symptom of hopelessness - and then bounce straight back to the core issues. The thing is, the bailout bonanza and its high-end beneficiaries aren't enough to carry the American economy. The neoliberal pattern of development has done more than simply hollow out the base it was built on, now it's actually destroying the low-end consumer markets that the producer corporations still need, and so the whole pattern of development is literally breaking down, coughing and choking, shattering and burning. Only such direct threats can convince the electorate of the wealthiest nation on earth to change course. Middle-class liberals have to see that their wealth is insecure, and that the abandonment of all aspirations to equality makes that insecurity worse. For all that, Bernie is sti
Re: what exactly is breaking?
From outside Chicago - think it may be time to skip town very soon Charlie Sent from my iPhone > On Jun 1, 2020, at 4:42 PM, Kurtz, Steven wrote: > > Brian, I have long admired your optimism and fighting spirit, but I just > find it difficult to think that structural change is coming soon. Regarding > the George Floyd case, we haven't even been able to get the accessories to > murder charged and the murderer is miles from conviction. Given the autopsy > discrepancies, I think we can assume the police shenanigans have already > begun. But putting the the institutional racism of the US legal system aside > (which won't change in our life time), and turning to the question of > electoral politics, I do agree with you that we need to build a voting bloc > that will put Trump out of office. And I believe this can happen. The > alliance is being formed, and we have a good shot at getting Trump out. I > share your optimism here. However, I have to point out that Biden is > literally and explicitly running on a no structural change platform. (Sanders > was the change candidate, and he's done.) The democratic congress supports > Biden's reform approach. Trump is wo > rse, but the Dems are not much better on climate change--they like to give it > lip service and put band-aids where they can, but that is about it. They have > already given massive corporate welfare to the extraction industries (they > are not trying to eliminate them, nor are they proposing funding for > sustainable energy). They agree with Biden that answer to the healthcare > crisis is to tweak Obamacare. I could go on, but for brevity's sake will not. > > > But here is what really gets me: The US is in the middle of a great > depression and yet the stock market is fine and healthy. The Dow is up at > 25,745 as I write this. Not record territory, but close. I think there are > two reasons for this. The first is all the tax payer funded corporate bailout > money coming their way which allows them to keep all the stock buy backs in > place, thus raising dividends and/or share price. Or conversely, protecting > them from having to reissue buy back shares to stay afloat while waiting out > the pandemic. This kind of bail out makes corporate exchange a risk free > affair. The second is they see all the independent businesses failing. This > is going to open some new market share. We know what that means for the Davos > crowd--Growth is still possible! You and I have discussed at length what will > happen if the one percent still sees the possibility for growth. I fear that > neoliberalism is going to be around for a while longer, and the Biden > administration and dem > ocratic congress will fully support it. It is possible that the glowing > future of corporate hegemony that the stock market currently reflects may be > a pipe dream, and I hope that is true. If so, maybe there is a chance > something new could emerge. > > > > > > # distributed via : no commercial use without permission > #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, > # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets > # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l > # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org > # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: what exactly is breaking?
Brian, I have long admired your optimism and fighting spirit, but I just find it difficult to think that structural change is coming soon. Regarding the George Floyd case, we haven't even been able to get the accessories to murder charged and the murderer is miles from conviction. Given the autopsy discrepancies, I think we can assume the police shenanigans have already begun. But putting the the institutional racism of the US legal system aside (which won't change in our life time), and turning to the question of electoral politics, I do agree with you that we need to build a voting bloc that will put Trump out of office. And I believe this can happen. The alliance is being formed, and we have a good shot at getting Trump out. I share your optimism here. However, I have to point out that Biden is literally and explicitly running on a no structural change platform. (Sanders was the change candidate, and he's done.) The democratic congress supports Biden's reform approach. Trump is wo rse, but the Dems are not much better on climate change--they like to give it lip service and put band-aids where they can, but that is about it. They have already given massive corporate welfare to the extraction industries (they are not trying to eliminate them, nor are they proposing funding for sustainable energy). They agree with Biden that answer to the healthcare crisis is to tweak Obamacare. I could go on, but for brevity's sake will not. But here is what really gets me: The US is in the middle of a great depression and yet the stock market is fine and healthy. The Dow is up at 25,745 as I write this. Not record territory, but close. I think there are two reasons for this. The first is all the tax payer funded corporate bailout money coming their way which allows them to keep all the stock buy backs in place, thus raising dividends and/or share price. Or conversely, protecting them from having to reissue buy back shares to stay afloat while waiting out the pandemic. This kind of bail out makes corporate exchange a risk free affair. The second is they see all the independent businesses failing. This is going to open some new market share. We know what that means for the Davos crowd--Growth is still possible! You and I have discussed at length what will happen if the one percent still sees the possibility for growth. I fear that neoliberalism is going to be around for a while longer, and the Biden administration and dem ocratic congress will fully support it. It is possible that the glowing future of corporate hegemony that the stock market currently reflects may be a pipe dream, and I hope that is true. If so, maybe there is a chance something new could emerge. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: what exactly is breaking?
And I know this is kind of lame, but... what if the breaking we're seeing is > the first rearticulation of what is going to evolve into a broad, radical, > international movement, one whose scope, diversity and determination will > surpass even the revolts of the 1960s, committed to end the ongoing racial > and sexual oppression, the death grip of religion, the grotesquely uneven > distribution of wealth, the exclusion of the poor from public life, the > collapse of democratic institutions under capitalism, and the unprecedented > rise of global temperatures. Even Erdogan, Putin, Modi and Duterte will be > forced to make some concessions. We're going to end the fossile era by 2025, > begin to dismantle and evacuate coastal cities calmly and orderly, make > AirBnB and Uber a criminal offense, Facebook the graveyard of fascism, and > stick it to the singularity. eyes on the prize! ;) # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: what exactly is breaking?
Hi all, Another day of vigorous, dignified protest but the looting and arson have abated greatly (knock on wood). There was a frightening incident with a semi-truck but there were only minor injuries and great heroism was shown by many. The son of someone I knew in grade school showed some +incredible leadership among the protesters. There have been no reports of additional police brutality and curfew enforcement appears to have been humane, professional, and +respectful on all sides. I've had a good cry and am very very grateful for many many things. Very best wishes to all, Max # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: what exactly is breaking?
> On May 31, 2020, at 12:27 PM, Felix Stalder wrote: > > what exactly is breaking? the short answer is, of course, the patience of people who keep getting murdered. but this is not new. see london 2011, athens 2008, paris 2005. WHITE SILENCE = CONSENT, but also WHITE AGITATION = UNNECESSARY. having said that, i'm still tempted to post the following... ;-) What Exactly Is Breaking? March 30, 2020 It is economics or life. The states of emergency decreed everywhere, the infinite extension of police and population control measures already at work, the removal of all limits to exploitation, the sovereign decision of who is allowed to live and who is allowed to die. The aim of this apology for Chinese governmentality, without any complexes, is not to provide for the "salvation of the people" now, but to prepare the ground for a bloody "return to normality", or rather for the establishment of a normality even more anomalous than that which prevailed in the world before. In this sense, the leaders are not lying for once: the time after is now. It is now that caregivers have to challenge any obedience to those who flatter them by sacrificing them. It is now that we must wrest the definition of our health, of our great health, from the disease industries and from "public health" specialists. Now is the time to build up the networks of self-help, self-supply and self-generation that will prevent us from succumbing to the blackmail of addiction which will seek to double our enslavement. It is now, since the prodigious suspension we are experiencing, that we have to figure out everything we need to prevent a return and everything we will need to live beyond the economy. It is now that we must nourish the complicity that can limit the impudent revenge of a police force that knows it is hated. It is now that we need to deconflict ourselves, not out of mere bravado, but gradually, with all the intelligence and attention that befits friendship. It is now that we must elucidate the life we want - what this life requires us to build and destroy, with whom we want to live and with whom we no longer want to live. No care with leaders who arm themselves for war against us. No "living together" with those who let us die. We will have had no protection for the price of our submission; the social contract is dead; it is up to us to invent something else. The current rulers know very well that, on the day of deconfinement, we will have no other desire than to see their heads fall off, and that is why they will do everything to prevent such a day from coming, to diffract, control, differentiate the exit from confinement. It is up to us to decide when and under what conditions. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: what exactly is breaking?
Folks, thank you for these insightful reflections on the situation in the US; I would like to come back to a point that Felix made in his initial question: I, like probably most nettimers, I have been observing the fracturing of the US with increasing horror (knowing that Europe, over the last 70 years, has usualled followed the US, for good and bad). Which trends of "usually following the US" do you have in mind here? I don't know how to agree, seeing a very diverse picture in the EU and beyond - governments run by a range of liberal, liberal-nationalist, social democratic, populist right, populist left, etc. etc. parties; a rather stable, if weak, set of foreign policies; a general support for international cooperation and institutions; a general turn towards more "green" politics. I'm not saying that all is good in Europe, but I see "trends" in Europe that are decoupled from, if not in opposition to, what has been happening in and around the US in the last 20 years. What you say may have been true for the 50 years before that. (From a German perspective, and in terms of foreign policy, a crucial shift was during the Schroeder-Fischer red-green coalition, when Germany went from supporting the 1999 NATO airstrikes against Serbia, to declining to join the US-led alliance in the war against Iraq in 2003.) (And parallel developments of decoupling could probably be described for other countries and global regions that in the 20th century were more dependent on the political influence from the US, than they are now - with other influences and dependencies coming in their place, of course.) Others have already argued that what we might be seeing during these years is the withdrawal of the US from global leadership, and a self-isolation from what is happening elsewhere. In the past, it would have been unthinkable to have a global consensus without the US - on military issues (but now: Syria, Libya), or on ecological/industrial development (but now: the Paris agreement that most countries hold on to, despite the US). But it is now becoming not only a possibility, but even a necessity, to develop international institutions like the WHO or UNESCO without the USA. Whether and how all of this is related to the internal situation in the US, and whether this isolationism is an effect of the white nationalism of which Trump-as-president is a symptom, I don't know. What I see are the self-destructive cynicism of the isolationism (like the US, in the hope for autarchy, using extensive fracking and thus destoying the environment in their own lands), and I can only hope that a more solidary imagination will guide political developments post-Corona - there and elsewhere. Felix, to conclude, I doubt that the situation in the US elicits a global leadership crisis. It must be taken seriously as something that can have major repercussions also on an international level, both regional and global. But it needn't be a blueprint for anyone. Maybe, here in Europe, and in Asia, and elsewhere, we have to start worrying about the US in a different, in a new way... Regards, -a # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: what exactly is breaking?
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Re: what exactly is breaking?
On Sun, May 31, 2020 at 5:26 PM Kurtz, Steven wrote: > Is anything breaking? No, nothing is breaking. The structure is > safe in spite of this uprising being more multi-racial and class > diverse than any I have ever seen. The two systems of law will stay > in place. The law will be biased in favor of the rich and biased > against the poor and minorities. At best, what these uprisings > produce is reforms and campaign rhetoric. Of course, nothing has changed in America in our lifetimes, so it's reasonable to doubt that it will now. But doesn't that foreclose any chance of something new arising? How can it arise if even people like us don't push for it? All liberals see Trump as an existential threat. He clearly aims to remake this country into a distinctly non-liberal, nationalist kind of society. If reelected, he will durably transform the United States into an unalloyed version of its worst image. That means climate change will accelerate to become a near-term cascade of disasters with not even a hope of stopping it. Liberals cannot stand that perspective. And yet they see it clearly in the near future. To beat Trump, the Democratic party needs black, brown and progressive white votes. These now form a single bloc. For sure, getting those votes also means changing liberal America. It's gonna require massive redistribution as well as deep changes in the law and the concrete behavior of the police. Otherwise black, brown and progressive people won't go out to vote. This combination - an existential threat to liberalism and the need to capture a racially defined voting bloc - is new. Something like it did happen during the Great Depression. But at that time the electorate was not so deeply divided by racial issues. Biden's first reaction to the protest was a remarkable appeal to Blacks. OK, that's campaign rhetoric. But the Washington Post underlined the novelty: no appeal to white liberals fearing for their property. Instead, he asked them to imagine something they can't imagine: being at the bottom of the racial hierarchy. That's a strategy. And it is the right one. The question is whether he and the Dems can stick to it. Or maybe more accurately, whether we can force them to stick to it. Like every other country, the US is now facing economic dislocation on an unprecedented scale. To overcome it will require massive state investment. Trump will do it through the military, the national extractive industries and the border police. Again this is unbearable for liberals, because they know that such policies, which they could and did accept in the past, are now the guarantee that nothing will be done about climate change. What the black-brown-progressive bloc is demanding from liberals is for the newly created federal money to be invested in a job-creating Green New Deal based on criteria of racial justice, in order to create what is called a "just transition" away from fossil fuels. Without such a program, we will go on living in hell. And it will get much hotter, fast. With all hearfelt respect, Steve, this is not the time to say that things will never change. From my perspective, this is the last chance to create substantial change. We have to build what Gramsci calls a historic bloc. That means a social formation that is able to turn itself into a hegemonic force and shift the very basis of power in society. All the materials are there for this. But that's no guarantee it will happen. all the best, Brian # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: what exactly is breaking?
Hi Felix, First, the big picture: Covid 19 has really messed things up. The US has 40 million unemployed people. Most folks are one degree away from someone who has died, and there is no coherent strategy to slow and eventually stop the pandemic. People are angry just as a base line. The US is past the precariat and onto sheer desperation for millions. On top of that the Senate is refusing to send the states aid. The eviction ban will be lifted in some states in June with more joining in each month. Supplemented unemployment relief runs out in July. And let’s not forget the expected record heat (bad in and of itself, but also leads to more and worse fires and hurricanes). I can’t imagine what this place will look like by August. The US has a long tradition race-based uprisings. There comes a point where “keep on keeping on” is no longer tenable, and as Langston Hughes says, urban areas explode. Riots, protest, and confrontation are the only possibilities open, since poor minorities are disenfranchised from any other options. Abstractly, in the current episode, the immediate concern that has set this uprising in motion is the multi-tiered justice system. Poor minorities tend to be incarcerated longer and disproportionately. (A lot of this skewing is because they can’t afford bail.) They tend to get harsher prison sentences, and laws are written that disproportionately impact these communities. And, the immediate concrete cause of this uprising is that innocent people in these communities can be murdered by police without consequences for the murderer. (An officer need only say that they felt threatened, and all is forgiven). The police are set against the communities they are supposed to protect. Contrast this with the presidential orders for federal investigative agencies to stop looking into white-collar crimes. Government criminals (like Paul Manafort) being released from prison early. And then there is Trump’s realm of justice where he and his allies are above the law. The murder of George Floyd lit the fuse on the cocktail, but the problems are deeply structural. Is anything breaking? No, nothing is breaking. The structure is safe in spite of this uprising being more multi-racial and class diverse than any I have ever seen. The two systems of law will stay in place. The law will be biased in favor of the rich and biased against the poor and minorities. At best, what these uprisings produce is reforms and campaign rhetoric. There is a chance that sentencing guidelines could get rewritten to not be so harsh. A lot of local movements are already working on this and making limited progress. There is a chance we could see some police department restructuring in a way that make the police less of a hostile force. (The LA riots in the 90s achieved this reform). There is a chance that the “I felt threatened” defense (law based on a subjective state and peculiar to law enforcement) will be weakened in some way. And finally there is a chance bail could be done away with. That’s as good as it’s going to get. Rioting becomes a necessary tactic, because it’s the only way the media will cover the problem. They have no interest what so ever in peaceful protests. If those who are most oppressed and exploited want a voice with a national platform to distribute it, violence and destruction is required. And in the US, plenty of desperate people are willing to carry this out. Just as a sidenote: The idea of a second civil war (the Boogaloo) is utter nonsense. This is an idea concocted by a tiny population of people that in no way could even come close to mustering the forces we are seeing in this uprising. Trump in the White House, Charlotesville, and the Bundy Uprising is about as good as it’s going to get for them. Steve # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: what exactly is breaking?
Felix Thank you for writing at this time...can’t speak for Europe, but here it’s revolution. Canada sometimes seems to feel protests there follow protest here...do these expectations of American influence preclude honest revolt against racism which is present in other countries? Protest is what it is. It’s protest. It’s rebellion against state-power, property, inequality... we have this racist president voted in by those who envision a more white nation - for whites, by whites. Riots are long in coming. before COVID - #BlackLivesMatter, Ferguson, Oakland Moms4Houses, Rodney King, Watts, perennial efforts to use civil justice system to press for change; the tide in deaths of African Americans at hand of police More frequently reported thanks to SOCIAL media. “excessive use of force” traveling among patriarchal bodies - like a fascist dance move. Intensity of self isolation, black communities hardest hit by virus - low wage workers, underlying health problems, stress from poverty, systemic displacement, (school closures affecting black children harder) and Minneapolis’ unforgiving history of racist brutality, urban segregation, civic disregard from white leaders. Apologies for back story, but it needs retelling. Current protests widely supported in person (by the young and old, black and white alike) in faith and justice — throughout mixed urban communities. Looting supported as general form of expressing rage where there is so little voice. Police guard property wearing military garb. High tech policing building for two decades. The assumption of dissenters —-government won’t take on an armed, military action against their own people THAT may be ...breaking... Trump tries to curtail social media for being unfair to conservative voices. What we witness is that famed, historicized civil rights movement of MLK...only more progressive than before because of education...and definitely not breaking... No justice No peace # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: what exactly is breaking?
Hi Felix, I live just a few blocks from the epicenter of the unrest in Minneapolis, and have for most of my life. The stores and businesses burnt this week are the ones I shop at every day. It is a very mixed, diverse, and progressive area. A medical clinic on my block that serves the local underserved community was targeted by an incendiary device late last night. Not the grocery store, not the bank, not the coffee shop or the liquor store or the gas station, but the medical clinic, in an isolated attack on a completely empty street. With no police or authority of any kind around, local residents spotted the device and removed it. It is obvious that the rhetoric of the far right, which is so fundamental to partisan politics these days, loves the destruction. There is ample footage of what you could call agents provocateurs, and a lot more evidence on social media. The evidence of my own eyes has affected me most. Maybe this is all wishful thinking, but Minnesota is a swing state, and has become a battlefield in more ways than one for dual visions of how the nation and the world should go forward. Some might say that the whole city should burn down -- not just what already has, but all of it, indeed all cities -- and not just in the US, but in all of Europe as well, even all the world. My question is what this has to do with George Floyd. Who does this destruction serve strategically? The far right likes hollowed-out inner cities, and ethnic fear with boiling hatred. The family and community of George Floyd are not calling for this. What is an even worse mind-bender is that the spread of Covid-19 among the protestors will undeniably cause severe suffering. I am not of the belief that all cities, all universities, and all museums, all hospitals, homes, and grocery stores over the entire planet must be burned to the ground before progress can be made, unity worked for, peace and justice served. Of course no one listens to me. 🙂 My hope is that what is breaking is the idea that the old ways, business as usual, was working great. We all have a responsibility to create a new business as usual. We will all make our choices about how to go about it, time will tell whether humanity does its best or its worst, or something in between. My personal choice is to help bandage up the wounds of my community and yes, to echo calls for peace with justice. Maybe this is indefensible and maybe it isn't. Part of my goal is to try using art to help this process, as in my recent blogs on Leonardo.info about "The Mindful Mona Lisa," and how that painting unifies Leonardo's important messages to humanity today about mindfulness, technology, geologic time, progress, human values, medicine, love, and healing. Of course I could be wrong about all of this. Very best regards, with hope for the future, Max From: nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org on behalf of Felix Stalder Sent: Sunday, May 31, 2020 5:27 AM To: nettime-l Subject: what exactly is breaking? I, like probably most nettimers, I have been observing the fracturing of the US with increasing horror (knowing that Europe, over the last 70 years, has usualled followed the US, for good and bad). With the horrific response to Covid-19, things to have now taken an even darker turn, compounding all the simmering structural violence into something, well, into what? Approaching civil war? There are certainly enough heavily-armed militias around who are clamoring for it. Is this a breaking point, and if so, what exactly is breaking? -- | || http://felix.openflows.com | | Open PGP | http://felix.openflows.com/pgp.txt | # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: what exactly is breaking?
Dear all, Well, if you ask me, these are the early skirmishes of a new Civil War. But actually I would say that the first Civil War never really ended and certainly was not won by the North (as we all have been led to believe). As to your question of what exactly is breaking: that is the dominant position of the US in geopolitics after 1945 and especially after 1989. The Roman Empire collapsed as a result of both internal and external pressure, and the same is happening now in the US. These developments are aptly symbolized by the image of Trump and Pence watching the take-off of the Space X-rocket from Cape Canaveral while 'Rome is burning.' All the best, Menno Op 31-05-20 om 12:27 schreef Felix Stalder: I, like probably most nettimers, I have been observing the fracturing of the US with increasing horror (knowing that Europe, over the last 70 years, has usualled followed the US, for good and bad). With the horrific response to Covid-19, things to have now taken an even darker turn, compounding all the simmering structural violence into something, well, into what? Approaching civil war? There are certainly enough heavily-armed militias around who are clamoring for it. Is this a breaking point, and if so, what exactly is breaking? # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
what exactly is breaking?
I, like probably most nettimers, I have been observing the fracturing of the US with increasing horror (knowing that Europe, over the last 70 years, has usualled followed the US, for good and bad). With the horrific response to Covid-19, things to have now taken an even darker turn, compounding all the simmering structural violence into something, well, into what? Approaching civil war? There are certainly enough heavily-armed militias around who are clamoring for it. Is this a breaking point, and if so, what exactly is breaking? -- | || http://felix.openflows.com | | Open PGP | http://felix.openflows.com/pgp.txt | # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
