Top 25 Censored Stories of 2008

Top 25 Censored Stories of 2008

The High and Mighty

John Barker reassesses C. Wright Mills' 1956 analysis 'The Power Elite', where Mills describes the "...historical development in which the economic and political power of the military, the militarisation of politics and the dominance of finance capital come together in a formation which may be distinguished from more general understandings of classical oligarchy or the ruling class." As Mills says: 'To use the acquisition of wealth as a sign of ability and then to use ability as an explanation of wealth is merely to play with two words for the same fact: the existence of the very rich'.



"C. Wright Mills was a tough-guy intellectual,
a sociologist with a heart condition who died
aged 46. He taught for many years and became
a professor at Columbia University. His book
The Power Elite was first published just over fifty
years ago in 1956. Its original working title had
been The High and Mighty and in the same year
the book was published Wright Mills gained a
factory diploma as a first class mechanic on BMW
motorbikes. His book describes the emergence
of an elite in the USA which began in World
War II and developed through ‘revolving doors’
between military, corporate and political elites
with the media functioning as an increasingly
important component in the institutionalisation
of the Cold War. The Power Elite is exemplary
of the methods Mills described in his essay On
Intellectual Craftsmanship1, an investigative how-to
kit based on use of the file. In that pre-computer
age cardboard folders or boxes were the places to
collect material such as news clippings, excerpts
from books, statistics, scraps of conversation, ideas
or fringe thoughts and, most importantly, notes
on follow-up ideas for the development of themes
and to shift perspectives between them. These last
functions were what Mills called the sociological
imagination. In keeping with dialectical method,
The Power Elite completed a trilogy of works
examining different class perspectives in the
United States. In his series, Mills grasped at
the social whole, a philosophical concept he
would defend against the charge of ‘extremist
exaggeration’. The same sense of investigative
scope looks especially relevant today, when a
variety of socio-political critiques appear to
operate in parallel universes of stand-alone theory."

"The High and Mighty" by John Barker
Variant 30 Winter 2007

Banned: MySpace deletes world's largest atheist group

Thursday, 31 January 2008

Social networking site MySpace, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, has sparked controversy by deleting the world's largest online atheist group following complaints from people who find atheism "offensive".

"Atheist and Agnostic Group" boasted 35,000 members until it was deleted on 1 January for the third time in as many years. It was founded in 2004 by Bryan Pesta, an assistant professor at Cleveland University who established it as a social network "specifically for godless people."

The group was closed down for the first time two years ago after an organised campaign by Christians persuaded MySpace to delete it. It was eventually restored and MySpace promised to protect it. This time, despite a petition from 500 users and repeated emails to customer services, MySpace seems reluctant to reverse its actions.

Pesta is understandably furious, particularly given the treatment Christian groups have received in the past: “When the largest Christian group was hacked, MySpace’s Founder, Tom Anderson, personally restored the group, and promised to protect it from future deletions.”

Last April the atheist group won the Harvard Humanist Chaplaincy's Excellence in Humanist Communication Award and the chaplain, Greg Epstein, has expressed his displeasure at MySpace's actions: “It is an outrage if Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and the world’s largest social networking site tolerate discrimination against atheists and agnostics – and if this situation goes unresolved I’ll have little choice but to believe they do.”

The decision has caused much debate on the Richard Dawkins website, where users have been discussing what action should be taken against MySpace. Suggestions include:

Is there someone we can contact to complain?

Should Professor Dawkins continue to support and promote these sites in the light of what has happened ??

I'll be deleting my account at the end of the day when I get home.

My account is now closed! My personal protest!

But isn't Myspace just for ridiculous wankers anyway?

Create multiple accounts and tag all of the as Atheist

Fuck 'em I've no use for these social network sites anyway

Also, check out Bill Thompson's web exclusive article "Facebook knows I'm an atheist", where he wonders what the consequences might be of letting social networking sites know about your unbelief.

from "New Humanist blog"
Posted by Paul Sims at Thursday, January 31, 2008

The problem with Wikipedia and bias

By Tim Anderson - posted Thursday, 7 February 2008

The popular online encyclopaedia Wikipedia has come to play an important role in informing and also shaping public debates. Yet as a Florida-based, US creation, it brings its own baggage to those debates.

US corporate media sources (Time, CNN, Fox, and so on) are privileged as reliable and “neutral” sources in Wiki entries, despite the fact that many of these bodies are intimately involved in many of the most contentious public debates, such as privatisation, intervention and war.

The online tool Wikipedia Scanner also demonstrates that Wiki is heavily edited by powerful organisations, such as the CIA, the Vatican, US government funded agencies, news corporations, banks and embassies.

Yet perhaps even more important is the role played by Wiki’s 1,000 administrators, who have “special powers” to edit and summarily remove content, determine what constitutes Wiki’s stated policy of a “neutral point of view”, excluding other points of view, disputed fact and “biased” sources.

Here is one example of the US worldview in Wikipedia when, as a voluntary “editor”, I tried to help explain Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s accusation that former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar was a “fascist”.

The Wiki page in question was on the sideshow generated by the King of Spain’s frustrated demand at the November 2007 Ibero-American summit in Chile, that Chavez “shutup”. The page is called: Por qué no te callas? (Why don't you shut up?).

The Wiki page begins by putting the incident in context of an implicit critique of Venezuelan economic policies, using mainly Time magazine sources:

Chávez repeatedly interrupted the speech of the Prime Minister of Spain José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to call [his] predecessor, José María Aznar, a “fascist“ … and accuse Aznar of having supported a failed coup d'état aimed at removing Chávez from power. Zapatero had earlier irritated Chávez by suggesting that Latin America needed to attract more foreign capital to combat its chronic deepening poverty; Chávez's leftist policies shun outside investment.

It goes on to repeat the Time magazine line (“Behind the King’s Rebuke to Chavez”, November 12, 2007) that a dispute over “free markets” and poverty policy may have been behind the “fascist” accusation against Aznar:

What may have motivated Chávez was that Zapatero - who is a socialist - "insisted that Latin America needs to attract more foreign capital if it's going to make a dent in its chronic, deepening poverty". Because Chávez blames capitalism and insists that only socialism can address inequality in Latin America, he went on the tirade against "Aznar and other free-market 'fascists'," resulting in Zapatero's reminding him that Aznar had been democratically elected.

The Time magazine view was a bizarre distortion of the debate at the summit, which had been televised live through channels such as Telesur and Venezolana de Television. The arguments of Chavez against Aznar were very clear and can still be seen in the many excerpts on YouTube and other online video sites. But this presumes you are interested enough, and can understand Spanish.

On the reputations involved, let’s remember that Jose Maria Aznar sits on the Board of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, probably the largest corporate media network on earth. Murdoch was a strong backer of George W.Bush and the Iraq war. News Corporation, like Time Warner, has directors cross linked to banks and industries unhappy with the reversal of privatisation policies under Chavez. Importantly, these groups quite deliberately shape what is regarded “normal” (or “biased”) debate in the US, and in the English speaking world.

I decided to try to clarify the “fascist” references by adding this section to Wiki’s “Por qué no te callas?” page:

While there was indeed vigorous debate over not simply investment but privatisation of basic services in Latin America, according to Chavez, in public statements at the summit and soon after (and as reported on Venezolana de Television and Venezuela Analysis) his reasons for calling Aznar a fascist were far more specific than those suggested by Time magazine:

Aznar in 1999 had urged President Clinton to bomb Serbian radio and television

Aznar's government, along with the Bush administration, openly backed the April 2002 military coup against Chavez

Aznar actively participated in the “illegal” and brutal invasion of Iraq, on the basis of false assertions about weapons of mass destruction.

Chavez also recounted, after the summit, that at an early meeting with Aznar he (Chavez) had asked how countries like Haiti would survive under the neoliberal (open market) regime? Aznar's response, according to Chavez was: "they've already screwed themselves".

However very soon after adding this, my entire section was deleted by a Wiki administrator who said to me, in the Wiki talk section:

I removed this section to the talk page, for further work; it has some clear POV [“point of view”] and sourcing issues, and appears to be original research/synthesis, but perhaps something can be salvaged.

When I said I thought that my section was better sourced than the rest of the article, the administrator replied:

The rest of the article is scrupulously sourced. First, Zmag is a highly biased source. Second, you have strung together conclusions from several different sources into a whole … That is, you are presenting your own conclusions rather than conclusions of a secondary, reliable journalistic source. And finally, the text is POV … [for example when] you introduce POV language like "brutal invasion of Iraq". … You also cited VenAnalysis [my note: actually Venezuelanalysis.com] in the text (another highly biased source) … you should discuss and come to consensus before re-inserting the text.

So here was Wiki’s problem with clarifying the Chavez explanation of Aznar as a “fascist”: the BBC was OK but ZNet and Venezuela Analysis were both unusable “biased” sources, unlike Time magazine. No “original research” was allowed but rather reportage based on administrator-determined “reliable” sources. I was urged to agree on a “consensus” with the Wiki administrators. I gave it up as a bad bet.

The result is that, according to Wiki, amplifying its “reliable” sources such as Time magazine, and despite what all the other online sources tell us, Aznar was apparently called a fascist simply because he supported “free markets”. Further, even if the war on Iraq was illegal it was not a “brutal invasion”. That is apparently a “point of view”.

Here is history rewritten, by North American “consensus”. The full story is still out there, but English speakers will have to look a bit harder, because you won’t find it on Wikipedia.

By Tim Anderson - posted Thursday, 7 February 2008
from Opinion - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate

Tim Anderson is a lecturer at the School of Political Economy, Sydney University and is a member of the Committee of Management of AID/WATCH

Battleship Earth: The Weaponisation of Geoengineering

I've almost finished reading Green Mars, so I was astonished to come across the following article, which matches Kim Stanley Robinson's insights into the strategic importance of terraforming. Unlike some of the more outlandish conspiracy theories regarding climate change, this piece is scrupulous in its attentiveness to scientific credentials, i.e how it could work, as well as the asymetrical distributions of power that would make such an abuse of the technology an attractive option for some (I took the liberty though of slightly modifying the title of the original piece so as to more explicitly reflect this blog's interest in biotechnological matters).

The stance adopted in this case differs as well from that of the fundamentalist environmentalist characters in Robinson's book. Its operating premise is not that geoengineering should be opposed in all forms, but rather that binding prescriptions for appropriate use need to be established. As per Robinson, space is also left for redressing the aforementioned socioeconomic dimensions of power that play a constitutive, and not merely an after the event role, in the questionable actions of both state and non-state actors. Such instances might amount to another manifestation of the [cynically opportunistic] "disaster capitalism" Naomi Klein has warned against. As such, it is feasible that they will also feature in future critical studies in the field of crisis management.

After pasting the reference below, along with a short excerpt, I've also linked to the author's blog, which is worthy of future monitoring.

In the early 1970s, the Pentagon’s Project Popeye attempted to use cloud seeding to increase the strength of monsoons and bog down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. In 1996, a group of Air Force and Army officers working with the Air Force 2025 program produced a document titled “Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025” (it never went anywhere). The Soviet Union reputedly had similar projects underway. But although the idea of a geoengineering arms race may superficially parallel this line of thinking, it’s actually a very different concept. Unlike “weather warfare,” geoengineering would be subtle and long term, more a strategic project than a tactical weapon; moreover, unlike weather control, we know it can work, since we’ve been unintentionally changing the climate for decades.

Jamais Cascio is an environmental futurist and a fellow at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. He blogs at Open the Future.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4146

Torture Fashion

The Quiet Men

2 days ago an anecdote was related to me about a personal encounter with a founding member of one of Australia's best known electronica acts, which Simon Reynolds has correctly identified in "Rip it Up and Start Again" as one of many inspired by Throbbing Gristle. As I am familiar with this individual, whose identity I protect through anonymity, I will simply comment that he has previously featured on this blog in the context of discussions of Weber's archetype of "sensualists without heart".

Unsurprisingly, evidence suggests that the song has remained the same since I last spoke to him. Left anarchism is professed as a more radical than thou doctrine, by an individual who has lived off state benefits for more than 20 years. I do not begrudge the ethos of being my "brother's" keeper, except where it is used to maintain a double standard; no action can ever be radical enough to meet utopian objectives, so nothing is ever done, no participation ever takes place. Any sense of reform or a "long march through the institutions", as Raymond Williams referred to "the long revolution", is simply regarded as a complicitous, hopeless bourgeois ideology (much in the manner committed socialists will oftentimes refer to sociology). The end result may be liberalism in another form, but the blinders put on make this something that can be lived with in a manner that does not overtly disturb the conscience.

That much should already be clear from the Weberian context. It explains a lot about the lifestyle; visiting a Thai prostitute once a fortnight, gambling on the horses at the TAB, with the rest of the time spent making tape loops and hunting down obscure electronic music in city record stores. The revolt by bohemians and social movements against bourgeois possessiveness, such as maintaining an exclusive intimate relationship, transmutes into an individualised survivalist creed, where autonomy is valorised above all else. Even the sex worker can be ridiculed by this client, because she doesn't meet the same gold standard of autonomy, namely of being in a position to choose who she has intercourse with. The client pays most of all for the privilege of an episodic encounter that makes no demands for reciprocity.

At such outermost limits, especially when the labor of the self is regarded not as the task of a cultural worker, but as somehow expressive of a unique "personality", or indeed the abandonment of such an implicitly disciplined structure, what is most revealed is how the quest for autonomy demands terrible sacrifices. This figure appears increasingly dissolute, seemingly unaware of its poor standards of personal hygiene, or the tendency to flap the arms around in a manner seemingly unconnected to patterns of thought or speech at the moment of utterance. This particular discussion ranged across footage of post-porn modernist Annie Sprinkle performing oral sex on 2 men simultaneously, in the context of the diverse range of dvds available in JB Hi-Fi stores, to the inverted snobbery of a questioning of the availability of such material in predominantly working class suburbs. Finally, there was a delirious sense of Hegelian recognition from past references in The Wire to this figure and his associate as "sound experimentalists", "I was in an allnight jam session last night, part of this side project I am developing". Meanwhile the witness is reduced merely to a host body to be colonised for the autonomous one to reproduce itself. What is hated most of all is the sense that any theoretical mediation of the activities can be presupposed, as this smacks of the dreaded formalism the anarchist tries to avoid. In other words, little critical awareness extends to the possibility of how there must be some agreement about the "rules" of the game, before play can begin. It might be suggested, once this notion is accepted, that the task of the critic involves the possible redemption of the work of art, and that this itself constitutes a form of creativity. This conception effectively undercuts the sense of the old adage, "those who can do, those who can't teach (or become critics)". A deconstructionist might comment that the adage is logocentric insofar as it presupposes a metaphysics of presence.

Invaluable as these counter-perspectives may be, what has attracted my attention most in light of the report of this encounter is a further dimension to the hyper-reflexive involution and abjection I have commented on before on this blog. I am thinking of the significance of the ressentiment and spite that frames the world view I have been describing. It seems to me that only Howard Devoto has addressed this in an acute fashion, in the classic Magazine song, "A Song From Under the Floor Boards". Anyone who reads Dostoyevsky's "Notes from Underground" or "The Devils" will quickly recognise the archetype, even while this means understanding an intensification and more general dissemination of this experience of tragic selfhood in the 21st century. What Devoto describes is but one step away from Enzensberger's archetype of "the radical loser". But there is more on a sociological level that needs to be accounted for. I was greatly impressed by an essay linking Houellecbeq's carnival of spite to Lyotard's "postmodern condition". The essay charts the transition to a knowledge economy, where contingency planning is used to control risk. The popularisation of this trend places individuals under enormous pressure to ensure that they have indemnified themselves against future losses, which leads to a productivist rationalisation of their time. Little time remains for reproduction, which helps to explain the appeal of sex tourism as a leisure activity. Those priced out of the marketplace of status, a social Darwinian universe of physical attractiveness, engaging personality traits and disposable income, have to risk manage by adjusting to diminishing expectations. Hence the turn of desire to those who are attractive, but have no other bargaining power, nothing to sell, other than their bodies. Such is the reactionary postmodernist condition as portrayed in Houellebecq's "Platform", (sex tourism in Thailand), which become subject to minor variations in his subsequent works.

I am aware that Slavoj Zizek has engaged with Houellebecq, but I avoid him like the plague as it is not clear to me that his thinking is amenable to comparative, deductive reasoning. His usual tactic is simply to argue that any criticism presupposes a blindspot that only Lacan can highlight. More generally, nothwithstanding Lyotard's applicability to Houellebecq, "the postmodern condition" may have become an exhausted term, and this might explain the more recent references to "liquid modernity". If I was discussing popular representations of this trope, even where it predates Bauman use of the term, such as for example in the work of John Foxx for example, there is no way that I would frame the discussion without reference to Anthony Elliott's careful methodological qualification of the former. The question I would want answered is this: is there anything in principle in Elliott's method that could not be used to examine Foxx's metaphors, and by extension, comparable characterisations such as "ballardian" (everyone knows by now thanks to Simon Sellars that Foxx has openly acknowledge J.G. Ballard as an influence)? If the answer is no, as I suspect it probably is, then theorists could benefit by applying the lesson to future variations of this theme.

But given the subject which this posting started out to address, I will return to that point by evoking Ultravox's! classic track "The Quiet Men" as a fitting epitaph for the character type who tries to move independently in a troubled time, where neoliberal ideology uncomfortably tries to cover over a growing globalisation, with all of the attendant interdependence and increased vulnerability this implies:

Waiting, we were waiting

As the traffic moved through all our hearts and our heads

But things were different then

For the quiet men

Shifting, things were shifting

Through the walls and hall, there were no walls at all

For the quiet friends

Of the quiet men

Oh, the quiet men Oh, the quiet men

Springtime, there was sunshine

Through the window panes, down all the English lanes

Where they walked again

The quiet men

Talking, they were talking

Of the times to come, and all the time that's gone

And they smiled again

The quiet men

Oh, the quiet men Oh, the quiet men

Listening, they were listening

As the season changed and all the reasons changed

And people came and went

By the quiet men

Walking, they were walking

Through the rainy days, looking at all the faces

But no-one ever noticed them

The quiet men

Oh Oh, the quiet men Oh, the quiet men Oh, the quiet men Oh, the quiet men

[PDF] Michel Houellebecq and the International Sexual Economy - all 2 versions »D Morrey - Portal, 2004 - epress.lib.uts.edu.au... Houellebecq, M. 2003, Platform, trans. by F. Wynne, Vintage, London. Klossowski,P. 1997 (1970), La Monnaie vivante, Rivages poche, Paris. Lyotard, JF 1974 ... View as HTML - Web Search

Hans Magnus Enzensberger: The radical loser - signandsight
The social sciences have failed in their analyses of amok killers, frenzied murderers and the terrorist mind. And yet one look is enough to identify the ...www.signandsight.com/features/493.html - 55k -

The Contemporary Bauman
Editor’s Introduction Anthony Elliott. Critique: Privatised and Disarmed Zygmunt Bauman Part 1: Liquid Modernit. On Being Light and Liquid Zygmunt Bauman. ...www.routledgesociology.com/books/The-Contemporary-Bauman-isbn9780415409681 - 22k -