Re: <nettime> "Speak Out with Snowden, Assange and Manning"

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

Yes, there is humor and inherent ridicule in the monumentalization
as with all monuments enlarging individuals into totems and taboos,
with giant constructions in capitals of corruption, governments and
NGOs yin and yang working the rock concert.

Reports are the three rock stars are amused at their iconic personages
confected by idolizers and media producers. Hard to live up to grandiloquent
expectations of promoters pressing their Machiavellianisms by princely
adoration besotted with avarice and self-interest of high-profile
rockumentaries.

Heros and icons are bad fiction and worse non-fiction, hardly
distinguishable in exquisite omissions and admissions of the
incipients corpses rendered in stone, metal, concrete, text,
paint, music, anything that avoids the grim truth of the godly
and the worshipper-lifted upon chairs, pedestals, platforms,
screens, museums, universities, cathedrals -- yes indeed --
exiles, embassies, prisons, unions of humankind, amply
funded and lauded to exaggerate and embalm big time.

Funerals breathlessly awaited. Che lives.


At 01:46 PM 9/18/2015, you wrote:

>On 09/16/2015 12:41 PM, wcameronjackson@gmail.com wrote:
>
>>The sculpture seems to beg the question of "standing up" as an endeavor
>>in itself. As is rightly pointed out, these figures are now, by and
>>large, unable to "stick their heads out." Their chairs are inaccessible
>>(or, at best, they may kneel on them).
>
>Well, let's see, one of the three has qualified freedom of movement 
>in Russia, continues to make discrete and powerful interventions 
>through a variety of media, has changed millions of lives with his 
>revelations and his example, and seems to have done more to 
>politicize sys admins than anyone ever. Another of the three 
>publishes a constant stream of analysis from the Ecuadorian Embassy 
>in London and has just penned the preface to the long-awaited 
>scholarly book that assesses the immensely detailed complex of leaks 
>known (in the title of said book) as "The WikiLeaks Files: The World 
>According to US Empire." The third of the three, who leaked said 
>leaks, maintains a much more personal kind of resistance in the 
>worst kind of prison cell imaginable and that resistance matters a 
>lot to a lot of people, yours truly included. Doesn't seem to be a 
>lot of kneeling going on. I guess some people can't stand to have 
>heroes and I'm not one of them. These folks are courageous, they're 
>effective, they acted for all of us, and if it's not possible to 
>build such people a monument then you may as well forget politics. 
>Sometimes, the ability to look up is a virtue.
 <...>


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