![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lapsedmodernistSo, the good news is, the US is going to turn Fallujah into a forced labor camp and the population gonna be ID-ed with retinal scanning. Because who needs pesky numbers on your forearm in the age of what Giorgio Agamben calls bio-political tattooing.
Under the plans, troops would funnel Fallujans to so-called citizen processing centers on the outskirts of the city to compile a database of their identities through DNA testing and retina scans. Residents would receive badges displaying their home addresses that they must wear at all times. Buses would ferry them into the city, where cars, the deadliest tool of suicide bombers, would be banned.
"You have to say, 'Here are the rules,' and you are firm and fair. That radiates stability," said Lieutenant Colonel Dave Bellon, intelligence officer for the First Regimental Combat Team, the Marine regiment that took the western half of Fallujah during the US assault and expects to be based downtown for some time.
Bellon asserted that previous attempts to win trust from Iraqis suspicious of US intentions had telegraphed weakness by asking, " 'What are your needs? What are your emotional needs?' All this Oprah [stuff]," he said. "They want to figure out who the dominant tribe is and say, 'I'm with you.' We need to be the benevolent, dominant tribe.
For a moment I was delighted by this latest Cartmanism from our War Effort svengalis (and when I say Cartmanism I mean that the neocons are prone to pathological lying, except for occasional gleeful sociopathic return-of-the-repressed moments of complete lucid Nietzschean "whatevah! I do what I want!" truth, and those moments make me feel as respected as I imagine a conversation with Mephistophelis would, sipping brandy and pouring over small print. Like, the devil doesn't just want me for my firm bouncy soul, but also likes me for my mind.)
I especially like the use of the term "tribe." I see that The Administration has adopted my theory that all global problems should be approached anthropologically. I just didn't mean that the ethnographic primer would be constituted from the trifecta of Mein Kampf, The Leviathan and Napoleon Chagnon's The Fierce People, but no one can ever agree on methodology anyways. Anyway, Our Leader* is obviously synchronizing the new "no Oprah" policy internationally AND domestically as the successor to Tom Ridge "brings 9/11 symbolism into the Cabinet." We can be sure that the former NYPD-er who cleaned up New York but good under Giuliani's awesome policies won't be caught engaging in passive-aggressive actions like sending Homeland Security forces after Texas lawmakers forced to resort to fleeing the state in order to prevent illegal gerrymandering, I mean redistricting. Hopefully he will also decide that the Terrormeter is too Sesame Street.
Then I got on Instant Messanger with pnts
me: I mean...how are we even supposed to TALK about it? It's like the only possible analogies for this are reserved for something SO monstrous that they are, like, reified to never be invoked
pnts: i have no idea.
me: except this IS not LIKE camps, this IS camps and what do you do when you INVOKE, and it just does not register with people because that particular analogy is so endlessly deferred, when activated it will produce a negative hallucination? I mean, I read that article correctly, right? they are going to bio-ID people and put them in a forced labor camp within Fallujah?
pnts: seems to be the case.
But peeps, I wanna leave you with even more good news! From the spiritual heirs of the people who brought you the Terror -Futures market, there is a new videogame for everyone who was REALLY SCARED on 9/11 in Cincinatti and Des Moines. From the Press Release: "SURVIVOR is a 3-rd person Disaster Survival Game designed for all platforms. anyone who likes to know how it feels being aboard the Titanic after she hit the iceberg, could go for a try." Apparently this game is for you if you also would like to know what it felt like to be in the WTC after the planes hit, in Hiroshima with your skin on fire in 1945 and more recently in that shopping mall in Paraguay where 300+ people burned alive. Neat, huh?
*
And when I say Our Leader, I mean...
[On Edit: I crossposted this entry to the freespeech blog. Over there I receive a lot of spam comments from "online poker" and "online casino"--these comments, far from being the usual illucid string-of-letters gibberish are entertaining in that they are inexplicably kind of like esoteric theological fortune cookies. This is what online casino had to say in response:
Theism is so confused and the sentences in which ‘God’ appears so incoherent and so incapable of verifiability or falsifiability that to speak of belief or unbelief, faith or unfaith, is logically impossible. by casino online
Seriously, you wanna see some really weird shit? Check out the responses to my Neo vs. the Neocons essay posted over therel. Here is a sample wisdom from casinogames: The fundamentalists, by ‘knowing’ the answers before they start, and then forcing nature into the straitjacket of their discredited preconceptions, lie outside the domain of science - or of any honest intellectual inquiry. by casino games]
[And also: if you are in the mood to feel like killing yourself, go read the discussions on the "Survivor" forums:
here is a sample:
Post Subject: How about a pogrom scenario?
Hiroshima sounds interesting, but how much fun can running from an atomic firestorm be? I’d like to know how it feels being in a ghetto during its liquidation, like say Krakow, 1943. Imagine the screams of woman and children rising above the shouts of soldiers, broken only by the cracks of gun shots and dog barks as you try to evade the Schutzstaffel and escape the city.
I’m talking highly interactive game levels here; “Do I hide in the attic or take to the sewers?” For a subquest you could smuggle out a family heirloom in your ass. A hero experience could involve helping family members escape: "Should I save bubby or the baby?” Grandma may slow you down but the kid might cry at the wrong time. Special abilities include ‘playing dead’, bribery, and the occasional salute.
There are a lot of possibilities for a Disaster Survival Game here.]
Under the plans, troops would funnel Fallujans to so-called citizen processing centers on the outskirts of the city to compile a database of their identities through DNA testing and retina scans. Residents would receive badges displaying their home addresses that they must wear at all times. Buses would ferry them into the city, where cars, the deadliest tool of suicide bombers, would be banned.
"You have to say, 'Here are the rules,' and you are firm and fair. That radiates stability," said Lieutenant Colonel Dave Bellon, intelligence officer for the First Regimental Combat Team, the Marine regiment that took the western half of Fallujah during the US assault and expects to be based downtown for some time.
Bellon asserted that previous attempts to win trust from Iraqis suspicious of US intentions had telegraphed weakness by asking, " 'What are your needs? What are your emotional needs?' All this Oprah [stuff]," he said. "They want to figure out who the dominant tribe is and say, 'I'm with you.' We need to be the benevolent, dominant tribe.
For a moment I was delighted by this latest Cartmanism from our War Effort svengalis (and when I say Cartmanism I mean that the neocons are prone to pathological lying, except for occasional gleeful sociopathic return-of-the-repressed moments of complete lucid Nietzschean "whatevah! I do what I want!" truth, and those moments make me feel as respected as I imagine a conversation with Mephistophelis would, sipping brandy and pouring over small print. Like, the devil doesn't just want me for my firm bouncy soul, but also likes me for my mind.)
I especially like the use of the term "tribe." I see that The Administration has adopted my theory that all global problems should be approached anthropologically. I just didn't mean that the ethnographic primer would be constituted from the trifecta of Mein Kampf, The Leviathan and Napoleon Chagnon's The Fierce People, but no one can ever agree on methodology anyways. Anyway, Our Leader* is obviously synchronizing the new "no Oprah" policy internationally AND domestically as the successor to Tom Ridge "brings 9/11 symbolism into the Cabinet." We can be sure that the former NYPD-er who cleaned up New York but good under Giuliani's awesome policies won't be caught engaging in passive-aggressive actions like sending Homeland Security forces after Texas lawmakers forced to resort to fleeing the state in order to prevent illegal gerrymandering, I mean redistricting. Hopefully he will also decide that the Terrormeter is too Sesame Street.
Then I got on Instant Messanger with pnts
me: I mean...how are we even supposed to TALK about it? It's like the only possible analogies for this are reserved for something SO monstrous that they are, like, reified to never be invoked
pnts: i have no idea.
me: except this IS not LIKE camps, this IS camps and what do you do when you INVOKE, and it just does not register with people because that particular analogy is so endlessly deferred, when activated it will produce a negative hallucination? I mean, I read that article correctly, right? they are going to bio-ID people and put them in a forced labor camp within Fallujah?
pnts: seems to be the case.
But peeps, I wanna leave you with even more good news! From the spiritual heirs of the people who brought you the Terror -Futures market, there is a new videogame for everyone who was REALLY SCARED on 9/11 in Cincinatti and Des Moines. From the Press Release: "SURVIVOR is a 3-rd person Disaster Survival Game designed for all platforms. anyone who likes to know how it feels being aboard the Titanic after she hit the iceberg, could go for a try." Apparently this game is for you if you also would like to know what it felt like to be in the WTC after the planes hit, in Hiroshima with your skin on fire in 1945 and more recently in that shopping mall in Paraguay where 300+ people burned alive. Neat, huh?
*
And when I say Our Leader, I mean...
[On Edit: I crossposted this entry to the freespeech blog. Over there I receive a lot of spam comments from "online poker" and "online casino"--these comments, far from being the usual illucid string-of-letters gibberish are entertaining in that they are inexplicably kind of like esoteric theological fortune cookies. This is what online casino had to say in response:
Theism is so confused and the sentences in which ‘God’ appears so incoherent and so incapable of verifiability or falsifiability that to speak of belief or unbelief, faith or unfaith, is logically impossible. by casino online
Seriously, you wanna see some really weird shit? Check out the responses to my Neo vs. the Neocons essay posted over therel. Here is a sample wisdom from casinogames: The fundamentalists, by ‘knowing’ the answers before they start, and then forcing nature into the straitjacket of their discredited preconceptions, lie outside the domain of science - or of any honest intellectual inquiry. by casino games]
[And also: if you are in the mood to feel like killing yourself, go read the discussions on the "Survivor" forums:
here is a sample:
Post Subject: How about a pogrom scenario?
Hiroshima sounds interesting, but how much fun can running from an atomic firestorm be? I’d like to know how it feels being in a ghetto during its liquidation, like say Krakow, 1943. Imagine the screams of woman and children rising above the shouts of soldiers, broken only by the cracks of gun shots and dog barks as you try to evade the Schutzstaffel and escape the city.
I’m talking highly interactive game levels here; “Do I hide in the attic or take to the sewers?” For a subquest you could smuggle out a family heirloom in your ass. A hero experience could involve helping family members escape: "Should I save bubby or the baby?” Grandma may slow you down but the kid might cry at the wrong time. Special abilities include ‘playing dead’, bribery, and the occasional salute.
There are a lot of possibilities for a Disaster Survival Game here.]
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-12-06 02:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-06 03:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-06 03:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-06 03:06 pm (UTC)This reminds me of a conversation I had with my friend Scott about an ex of his who had gotten so nuts she tried to hide her divorce from her parents by pretending her husband had died. The most interesting part of the story was not the insane plan, but how she did it so badly she was assured of getting caught. Every time I interrupted to ask, "But why did she-?" Scott would reply, "Let me remind you of the central point - CRAZY." or "Well, yes that is the logical thing to do, but again - CRAZY." The joke then infused our general conversation. And it seems very relevant here...
me: I mean...how are we even supposed to TALK about it? It's like the only possible analogies for this are reserved for something SO monstrous that they are, like, reified to never be invoked
my friend scott: well, you could assert America's sociohistorical, but really - CRAZY.
Don't mind my country - it had a constitution but now, well - CRAZY. At this point the Administration is the lunatic ex you broke up with a long time ago, but you co-signed the lease and your finance are so fucke you've got no choice to ride it out. So you have to listen to people say "Hey your roommate was busting up shit at the falafel joint..." "Yes, yes, but may I rimind you - CRAZY."
no subject
Date: 2004-12-06 09:39 pm (UTC)2. The crazy thing--I always think about Evans-Pritchard and his ethnography of magic and witchcraft among the Azande and how within this totally "crazy" system the actual discourse was totally logical and internally consistent. Not with "objective reality" as we would think about it, but in a sense it created reality. Kind of like PNAC. They are "actors of history," remember? And we are just the reality-based community. We study history, they make it. Isn't that the new division of labor according to Suskind?
show your work
Date: 2004-12-06 03:37 pm (UTC)From Diplomacy for the Next Century by Abba Eban, from the chapter "the Perils of Analogy"; which I happened to be reading:
"The basic truth is that circumstances in which situations differ from each other may precisely be those that define their essential nature. I come back to the statement of French philosopher Paul Valery: 'History is the science of things which do not repeat themselves.' A Harvard biologist, Stephen Jay Gould, has gone even further. He wrote that 'our empirical world is a temporal sequence of complex events, so unrepeatable by the laws of probability and so irreversible by the laws of thermodynamics, that everything interesting happens only once in its meaningful details.' George Kennan asks: 'If this is true of the natural sciences, how could it be otherwise in the social and political ones?'
There are cyclical processes in nature, but not in diplomacy. Therefore, history, including diplomatic history, should be based on the meticulous and separate discussion of particular events."
...
"I see no reason for analogy except its exclusion from serious diplomatic historiography. Some American historians have got it right: 'History smilies at all attempts to force its flow into theoretical patterns or logical grooves: it plays havoc with our generalizations, breaks all our rules, History is baroque."
....
"Many celebrated historians went to their honored graves believing that most phenomena, including the rise and fall of empires, are much like other, similar events."
no subject
Date: 2004-12-06 07:45 pm (UTC)and some time in the future, kids will be playing a version of the "survivor" game where they get to see what it was like to be in america when it got the fuck nuked out of it.
may be worth sticking around in this country just to be a part of...
no subject
Date: 2004-12-06 08:31 pm (UTC)In a way I'm just relieved that nobody's pulling Marvin Harris out of their asses yet.
Didja like the part in the same piece where "one senior Marine said he fantasized last month that Allawi would ride a bulldozer into Fallujah." Disaster games, work camps, puppets riding bulldozers... what a rich fantasy life!
those online poker players are so platonic
Date: 2004-12-07 01:16 pm (UTC)ciao, -aud
www.roundonline.com/manchester
Re: those online poker players are so platonic
Date: 2004-12-07 04:42 pm (UTC)Re: those online poker players are so platonic
Date: 2004-12-11 03:35 pm (UTC)and by the way, i went to an all-day anthro film symposium at harvard today which was so didactic as to inspire real live vomiting. nearly. ever heard of anna grimshaw, author of "the ethnographer's eye"? she's an awful filmmaker. it never ceases to amaze me how anthropologists justify their crappy filmmaking by analyzing the hell out of it, when no one but academics like themselves will ever even watch it. bugs me! the only cool person there was Sharon Lockhart from USC. check out her stuff. i'll write an overview of the conference, in all its wretchedness, on my blog. meanwhile i'd be interested to know what films you make..
fyi, backup lj on any os.
Date: 2004-12-07 02:08 pm (UTC)http://www.livejournal.com/users/vaunce_ardor/7109.html
Re: fyi, backup lj on any os.
Date: 2004-12-07 04:45 pm (UTC)Re: fyi, backup lj on any os.
Date: 2004-12-07 05:53 pm (UTC)Re: fyi, backup lj on any os.
Date: 2004-12-07 11:27 pm (UTC)Re: fyi, backup lj on any os.
Date: 2004-12-08 07:07 am (UTC)and one that probably doesnt make much sense to anyone else. No one knows who I am now, excepta rare few. I went from like 130 friends to 5, which feels both good and bad somehow.
Someone told me about the LJ book thing when I was doing this, but I think lj archive seems to be nearly the same thing- it can out put the pages in pdf as well as html and some others.
The script is a bit trickier but can put everything to html and then provides a nice index with hyper links. You can also make one large html file with everything, then turn that into a pdf relatively easily.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-08 11:47 am (UTC)PS: It should happen! There's a sentimnt of sadness, at least where I am, over the inaction shown in the face of the obvious and known 'flaws' that were in this past November, and it would be sad day in history indeed if this went down and no one did anything about it.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-08 11:39 pm (UTC)http://www.counter-inaugural.org/
Having said that, the election is NOT over. A lot of things are happening and lawsuits are being filed, the mainstream media is just not covering it with the notable exception of MSNBC's Keith Olbremann who has been really good about staying on top of it.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-08 11:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-09 07:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-09 08:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-14 12:49 am (UTC):)