Who Is IOZ?: Quote of the Week

Friday, December 03, 2010

Quote of the Week

The west has fiscalised its basic power relationships through a web of contracts, loans, shareholdings, bank holdings and so on. In such an environment it is easy for speech to be "free" because a change in political will rarely leads to any change in these basic instruments. Western speech, as something that rarely has any effect on power, is, like badgers and birds, free. In states like China, there is pervasive censorship, because speech still has power and power is scared of it. We should always look at censorship as an economic signal that reveals the potential power of speech in that jurisdiction. The attacks against us by the US point to a great hope, speech powerful enough to break the fiscal blockade.

37 comments:

what the Tee Vee taught said...: This is bathetic. Break the fiscal blockade... is he talking about the oil going away? Adding a salary cap to Major League Baseball? Very confusing.

I thought they were just jamming up politicians, you know, for funsies.; 1:55 PM
FB said...: It would make a whole lot more sense if he substituted "financialised" for "fiscalised"

/nitpick; 2:12 PM
Anonymous said...: Thanks for posting that, dude.; 2:27 PM
Anonymous said...: WTTT --

Rest assured, it's all hopeless, Assange is a naive tool, and you're still realllly cool.; 2:29 PM
Anonymous said...: I don't know, doesn't the first sentence generally apply to all 'first-world' nations, including China? Also, it's a mistake to assume that certain actions are threatening to power just because power is reacting against them (or, conversely, ineffective when power doesn't react). Power sometimes makes mistakes by inadvertently acting against its own interests, right?; 2:32 PM
what the Tee Vee taught said...: Anon @ 229

1. I am well assured and rested
2. Hopeless? Hopeful? I'll pass on both
3. As far as serious people go, I like Assange. You know, attempting to pull a laugh out of what anyone says could be taken as less than a scathing insult to their character.
4. Thank you.; 2:41 PM
Cüneyt said...: What does that mean for you, IOZ?; 3:10 PM
Anonymous said...: wtf? no one's speech has power, except assange's speech? am i reading that thurr correctly?; 3:56 PM
Cüneyt said...: I think he's saying that speech without power is permitted and powerful speech is opposed. A basic variation on a theme. Compare "if voting changed anything, it'd be illegal," etc.; 4:09 PM
bonobo said...: I'm not sure what the nerdy preamble says exactly but the basic point seems to be that the overlords in Western societies permit a lot of dissident speech because it doesn't change anything. That the overlords have gone into a China-like mode of censorship is a hopeful sign that Wikileaks is genuinely disruptive to the way the overlords want things to be.

Seems mostly true to me, though I think he understates the extent of state-directed censorship to now.

I don't think he's saying that no other speech has power.; 4:29 PM
Anonymous said...: true enough. still sounds somewhat ludicrous. i guess i am just not THAT far down the trail of cynicism.; 4:30 PM
Anonymous said...: or intelligence. whatever; 4:40 PM
bonobo said...: He also seems to ignore the extent of state-influenced indoctrination with that business about changes in the 'public will', which is highly susceptible to propaganda.

Before the China-like clampdown on network access, the overlords were in overdrive convincing the public that an act of treason had been committed by a rapist, which is their usual approach to dissent. It looks to me like among people who are paying attention to Wikileaks at all, this effort has been successful.; 4:41 PM
bonobo said...: i guess i am just not THAT far down the trail of cynicism.

Really??? I actually don't think Assange is cynical enough and a good thing to because were he completely cynical he would not be doing this.; 4:43 PM
Hunter said...: It's probably worth checking this out to get where Assange is coming from here; he's got a whole theory as to what's wrong with (institutions like) the US Government, and how what he's doing is an especially effective way to wage war on these institutions.; 5:33 PM
TGGP said...: I can agree that speech doesn't really matter in the U.S, but I don't get how it has power in China (or, say, Singapore). Or we could look within nations at which forms of speech are restricted. Do these speech acts strike anyone as more powerful than average? Are the Heretical Two capable of changing anything? Ernst Zundel? Or depending on how far you're willing the stretch the analogy, you could consider filesharers.; 8:52 PM
ts said...: Quote of just the week?; 10:18 PM
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Soj said...: I think Assange has been reading his Crystallizing Public Opinion ;); 11:12 PM
Ed said...: I think I get what he is saying and its a provocative point.

Essentially he is saying that "the West" is no more of a democracy in China, but the rulers of the West operate through manipulating secret networks. They don't have to worry about free speech as long as the speech doesn't reveal the secret networks, since what happens in the public parts of the government doesn't have any effect on their power. In China, the mechanisms of control are public, so criticism of them could potentially have real effects.

Yes, its a conspiracy theory, but shouldn't be dismissed (actually conspiracy theories are too readily dismissed, usually because the people most visibly floating them are obviously unbalanced). Think of the government of a typical Western country as an iceberg, with the dangerous part below the surface.; 12:01 AM
Anonymous said...: The comments here are fascinating for what they reveal about IOZ on the one hand, and some of his coterie on the other.

Although IOZ plays at being brittle as hell, his heart and his head are in the right place.

While some members of his coterie don't have to play at being brittle - they are.; 12:59 AM
bonobo said...: While some members of his coterie don't have to play at being brittle - they are.

It doesn't seem to me that most folks here have been particularly brittle. They're just kicking the tires of Assange's statement.; 1:26 AM
John Stuart Mill said...: Persecution of the truth is justified, because it can do the truth no harm.; 9:34 AM
Anonymous said...: Can I be part of IOZ's coterie?; 9:48 AM
Mr.Fundamental said...: this sure beats voting for Democrats.

check out the zunguzungu site that Hunter shared. especially you, Ed. he speaks directly to the usage of "conspiracy" in that post as it relates to Assange's own definition.

goooooood stuff.; 10:09 AM
Anonymous said...: bonobo -

There are some truths that ARE self-evident, meaning that their tires don't have to be kicked.

The time of death of meaningful free-speech in the US can be roughly equated with Paul Krassner's publication of the edition of The Realist in which he claimed that on the plane back from Dallas, LBJ was fucking JFK in the neck to make an entry-wound look like an exit-wound.

What could "free speech" possibly mean after that, except the ramblings of jesters with carte blanche from the dais ...?

(If you think the point ill-taken, contrast Krassner's Teflon record with the persecution of Bruce a few years earlier, and the Kennedy's vendettas against Mort Sahl and Vaughan Meader ...; 12:08 PM
bonobo said...: Anon 12:08

I agree that some things ARE self-evident but I don't think the 'time of death of meaningful free speech' is one of them.

In any event, it's got nothing to do with any of my comments about Assange's statement.; 1:19 PM
TGGP said...: Alright Ed, what has Assange actually exposed. It's stuff that everybody knows even if the White House Press Secretary wasn't touting it as the official line.; 2:13 PM
Christopher M said...: It's stuff that everybody knows even if the White House Press Secretary wasn't touting it as the official line

Everybody knows this stuff already! None of this stuff is new to anybody! Nobody I knew voted for Nixon!; 5:17 PM
bonobo said...: what has Assange actually exposed. It's stuff that everybody knows even if the White House Press Secretary wasn't touting it as the official line.

Well, first of all, not all of the cables have been released yet, but even if as a whole they only confirm things that are already in the public domain, this differs from disclosing things that 'everyone' knows. Also, a comprehensive picture of the State Department painted by itself for itself seems to me a more powerful political weapon than isolated news accounts here and there alongside theory that most people don't read. It's my understanding, for instance, that there is a critical vote on net neutrality coming up in Spain that may be seriously impacted by the Wikileaks disclosures about the US bullying the government into not pursuing its murder of a Spanish cameraman.

Also, there is some grounds to believe that telling the people is only one part of what Wikileaks is up to. It's also about gunking up the works with repeated attacks. Think of the government conspiracy (as Assange conceive of it) as a web server and Wikileaks as a DoS attack.; 5:17 PM
bonobo said...: the Wikileaks disclosures about the US bullying the government into not pursuing its murder of a Spanish cameraman.

Though my meaning is fairly clear here I am ashamed of how poorly worded this is and new knowledge suggests it's a very incomplete assessment of the situation.

The vote on net neutrality is coming amidst the Wikileaks release of cables pertaining to three things in Spain. This is from Harper's:

"-- the investigation into the 2003 death of a Spanish cameraman, José Cuoso, as a result of the mistaken shelling of Baghdad’s Palestine Hotel by a U.S. tank;

-- an investigation into the torture of Spanish subjects held at Guantánamo;

--and a probe into the use of Spanish bases and airfields for extraordinary renditions flights, including the one which took Khaled El-Masri to Baghdad and then on to Afghanistan in 2003.

These cables reveal a large-scale, closely coordinated effort by the State Department to obstruct these criminal investigations."; 7:45 PM
NutellaonToast said...: Assange is change in which I can believe.; 12:15 PM
TGGP said...: Yes, I've heard of the Assange/bin Laden strategy of defeating the empire through increasing imperialism, but what does it have to do with the potency of public criticism?; 2:24 AM
whetstone said...: what has Assange actually exposed. It's stuff that everybody knows even if the White House Press Secretary wasn't touting it as the official line.

that's what's interesting about zunguzungu's analysis. his point is that assange isn't trying to release specific secrets in order to target specific policies he objects to (the wars in afghanistan and iraq, etc). he's going after "secrets"--including stuff "we" already know--in order to shut down or change the structure that creates them:

Which is why the point is not that particular leaks are specifically effective. Wikileaks does not leak something like the “Collateral Murder” video as a way of putting an end to that particular military tactic; that would be to target a specific leg of the hydra even as it grows two more. Instead, the idea is that increasing the porousness of the conspiracy’s information system will impede its functioning, that the conspiracy will turn against itself in self-defense, clamping down on its own information flows in ways that will then impede its own cognitive function.

whether or not you think it works, it's pretty interesting: he's sort of trying to gaslight powerful multinational organizations (the US and foreign governments, obviously, but also BP and BoA, theoretically, and perhaps in relationship to governments) in order to degrade their ability to function.; 12:34 PM
Cüneyt said...: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11929034

Once again, Swiss banks step in to thwart global troublemakers!; 8:01 PM
bonobo said...: Mastercard is about to pull the plug also. It looks like the 'fiscalized' hammer is coming down. Really fucking sucks.; 8:07 PM
Cüneyt said...: He hit them in their information networks; they'll hit them with finance.; 11:25 PM

Friday, December 03, 2010

Quote of the Week

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