Re: <nettime> Guardian Live on Assange's arrest

[podinski <podinski@mailbox.org>]

Hi all,

and Thx Molly for your post!

I was hoping more women might weigh in here... ( with all the possible
anger flying from the personal life scandal loops ... and there is one
potent feminist angle that seems more unavoidable than others ... That
if the US extradition now takes priority over the 7 year brouhaha of
Sweden's supposed case, then it displays a extra patriarchal
discrimination, from all those who believed in it, or at least pretended
to. )

And your post hit on some key points + good focus ... for me...

Namely that analogy to Mai Lai... and the fact that any new media
tactics will have to consider that Truth Exposed does not quite have the
same value/ bang ( in the over-mediated predicaments of cyber-spaced
orbits ) and is NOT effectively disrupting the warmongers and those
upper tiers of power so much.  Which also makes me wonder about the
value of high tech imagery vs. up-close analogue-made pictures dripping
in technicolor blood... nor the stench of burning bodies ( not that Life
Mag outlet could or would do much with that, there were at least
reporters then on-the -ground who were probably permanently changed by
the experiences )... Thus, something to say here about the cold distance
of the hyper-technical reach + medium !  That grainy b/w camera shot
from over a kilometer away.... And one might even take time to analyze
the fact that Assange himself had now been reduced to trading bits on
screens, like a stock trader sitting in front of multiple screens. ...
which might say something here about his later "cubicle-politics" and
his decision to deal in only DNC dirt. (?)

...

But before i digress into all the possible complaints + nitpickings of
how the later-JA maneuvered in a very cornered and compromised state...

We DO want to focus on solidarity for journalists and/or straight-up
(h)activists + protest !

And so the XLterrestrials have been compiling a little XLT guide of
resources V.1 ... ( work-in-progress ) ...

in order to stay focused on the most urgent issues !

The XLt Guide to JA’s Arrest + WikiLeaks + War Crimes

http://xlterrestrials.org/plog/?p=19054

...

It's sad to see even in my own circles a heavy + depressing
polarization... around Assange + WL ...

And so i am grateful for Nettime discussions to stay above the lower
frays...  that mass+social media loves to pour gasoline on ... (
afterall those corporate channels are still richly pumped by the
Oiligarchies ) ...

Much more to say, but for now... will leave it at that...

Respex !

Podinski



On 4/13/19 12:20 AM, nettime-l-request@mail.kein.org wrote:
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2019 15:20:05 -0700
> From: Molly Hankwitz <mollyhankwitz@gmail.com>
> To: tbyfield <tbyfield@panix.com>
> Cc: Morlock Elloi <morlockelloi@gmail.com>, a moderated mailing list
> 	for net criticism <nettime-l@mail.kein.org>
> Subject: Re: <nettime> Guardian Live on Assange's arrest
> Message-ID:
> 	<CAH5TXpyzS0KwG6zUbsBf_2mtrpGb8EUc0iMO0UMT3tvcD-qt+Q@mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> Dear ted, Morlock, nettimers  on Julian Assange,
>
> I'm weighing in - after yesterday - a very cold/chilling day on our
> Internet.
>
> What power wants is the Internet itself. Duh! And western industrialized
> UK/USA
> are working together to secure the First World...a world of make-believe
> "dreams" that ought to come true as long as there is no critical outside
> which is what Wikileaks and Julian Assange have provided as  journalists,
> other journalists with! Neo-liberal paradigms have longed taught that all
> we need to keep the peace are some candy-coated reform jobs and slicked up
> "events' where everything is cool and politely handled.
>
> What the arrest of Julian Assange is,  is yet another event in a long line
> of arrests of journalists and dissenters in the last decade as this new era
> of billionaire power and social control (of the Internet?) sets in. One of
> the biggest effects has been the effort to censor the Internet!  What was
> it *before*...baby of the DOD? Well, it is still baby of the DOD and don't
> anyone forget it. PRISM. If only the power to communicate from our laptops
> could be stopped, or at least threatened or controlled or commodified or
> market driven or interrupted or overpriced. If only the FCC and Congress
> and the EU could secure all that mental labor out there and all the dissent
> and all the potential data; could read and secure it all.  What Julian
> Assange represents, and what power and control would go so far as to
> concoct and "conjure" about this mysterious hair-dying feral otherness
> brain-child of computing he is, is that Assange is someone who has had the
> guts to live in the space of a person who is not under "social" control.
> Yes, in an embassy with a little balcony. Juliet Assange, effeminate, and
> soft spoken. (Ecuadorian pres, art of deal, Julian token of exchange in
> right-wing deal)
>
> WTF has Assange done, anyway? I asked myself this question about 50 million
> times yesterday. Just what is it that Julian Assange has actually done? Had
> the dross as a foreign subject to reject US war crimes? To publish the
> truth.
>
> LIFE magazine,  amidst of the Vietnam War published color photos of the
> repulsive MyLai incident, slaughter of women and children civilians by US
> marines for those of you too young to remember. As history would have it,
> those full color photographs sparked disgust and dissent among the American
> people about their own army and government involvement in Vietnam and CO
> Lieutenant Calley became  a court-marshalled household name. I draw this
> parallel to remind myself of how times have changed because either I'm
> imagining things or release of the video of the creepy first-person shooter
> type marines talking shop from their helicopter as they draw bede on and
> blow away the van and kill civilians, children, and Reuters personnel isn't
> a whole lot different from that war crime and yet. No military tribunal. No
> Congressional investigation. Nothing.
>
> Who is Assange anyway, some journalist/hacker from Melbourne, Australia?
> Who would think he and his merry pranksters could have anything to do or
> say about US involvement in Iraq?
>
> Who is Assange anyway, when Hillary Clinton, ex-Secretary of State, first
> female Dem presidential candidate, wants him dead?
> Who is he daring to be? The guy whose outfit leaked the emails that helped
> get Trump elected? OMG. One can get myopic living inside the prism of
> mainstream media with the "one-guy" theory of power and control as an only
> source of information. It would be more convenient if we could just jail
> "one-guy".
>
> But it must have been Julian Assange.
> This made only that much worse by the primitivist theory of SHRUNKEN
> talking heads on tiny little screens and the little pictures being
> innocently exchanged on Facebook. Users are, after all, once the analytics
> are out, are simply looking for someone to blame as well as someone to
> answer their often desperate lemming prayers for salvation from social
> ills. The are looking for someone to impeach Trump, they are looking for
> someone to free Julian. They are looking to fix everything that's been
> broken and disturbed.
>
>
>


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