archive : s0metim3s

°Torture, individuation

April 4, 2007

Some excerpts from Rebecca Wittmann’s “Torture on Trial: Prosecuting Sadists and the Obfuscation of Systemic Crime”, South Central Review, 24:1, 2007, and some remarks below the blockquote.

The above is a tour of the migrant detention centre currently being built on Christmas Island, estimated at around 364 million AUD, and with the capacity to intern 800 people - with a soundtrack I can almost, but not quite, name.

°Universal war, in a quasi-industrial manner

March 31, 2007

Here’s what I just sent off for the edu-factory discussions.

– ή θα νικήσει ο τρόμος, ή θα νικήσει ο δρόμος

As is more or less well-known, Kant’s writings on the university, collected under the heading of The Conflict of the Faculties, are preoccupied with establishing limits, borders – above all, the limits to conflict.

Filed under: War + Borders + Universities
:: trackback url | permanent link | comments (0)

°Nandigram

March 16, 2007

Armed police attempts to break a blockade in Nandigram (in West Bengal’s East Midnapur district) have resulted in 14 dead and over 75 injured.

Filed under: War
:: trackback url | permanent link | comments (1)

°…

February 17, 2007

“Mr Howard also reinforced his determination not to leave Iraq before his US allies, saying it would be ‘very bad for Western prestige’.”

More pointed version here. More disturbing version, if that could be possible, here (via Jon). And, still disturbing, but in a very different way: Brendan Nelson’s interview on Lateline. The transcript is funny, the video hilarious - “it’s peace-keeping, it’s counter-insurgency, it’s rebuilding Iraq all of it within the same country at the same time, principally in Baghdad and al-Anbar province”, among other gems of ungrammatical masculine indignancy over the prospect of “premature withdrawal”.

Filed under: War + Sense
:: trackback url | permanent link | comments (0)

°web2.0

February 1, 2007

the rise of ‘Web 2.0’ (itself a corporate logo of sorts) has precipitated a new culture war between proponents of ‘democratising’ mass amateur media and defenders of professionalism and expert research. Outside of this self-mirroring dichotomy, however, things are more complicated. - Josephine Berry-Slater, editorial.

And it’s these complications that the new edition of Mute, “Web 2.0: Man’s Best Friendster?”, seeks to emphasise, beyond the memedome of much of web2.0 discussion. Dmytri Kleiner and Brian Wyrick on the centralisation that has accompanied the rise of the web2.0 logo. Olga Guriunova on platforms and creativity. Brian Ashton’s “Factory Without Walls.” My piece, “The Social SoftWar” on social net-working, technology, democracy and the rights of labour. And more. All are here as a complete pdf, 4.61mb.

Filed under: Labour + War + Memes + Reading + Democracy + Rights
:: trackback url | permanent link | comments (0)

°Overdetermination in Babel

January 16, 2007

The beloved and I saw Babel a while ago. I spent much of the film with tears running down my face, and I’m still not sure what to make of it. It felt like being caught up in a torrent, which I suppose was the point: the ways in which the ~~War on Terror~~ Reign of Terror (and border policing) so overdetermined each instance in the film that what might otherwise have amounted to an accident or argument spirals into catastrophe.