Weak Leak

The last few weeks have seen a plethora of “confidential” information hit the newspapers thanks to the now (in?)famous organisation “WikiLeaks”. With The Age firmly in hand, I’ve been cashing out the info cache on a couch...

[It’s all a bit stale now (I’ve been busy during the holiday season) but it’s still worth a re-hash... I think so anyway!]

Some Interesting Facts about Australia

The most time and attention has been given to Australian issues and I will quickly canvass them, though I honestly do not find them the most engaging.

Probably the biggest “leak” concerning Australian politics was that of Mark Arbib’s close relations with the US embassy. Even though the refrain “every politician does it” (and, c’mon, as if we had any doubts that our politicos were working for Washington... that’s been clear as day since Howard and Bush started sleeping together!) did suffice to curb most people’s enthusiasm, there was something particularly unsavoury about hearing that name (“Arbib sounds Arabic!”), which had been so recently invoked time and again in the unprecedented leadership coup of the Labor government. The man who decides who rules the country turns out to be (surprise surprise!) in cahoots with the US; indeed, apparently the US vets our leaders now. None of this should be particularly surprising to anyone who has one eye on the international stage; the only thing I’m wondering is why they bother disrupting the charade they had going in the first place! Must be serious change a-comin’...

Besides the (Bob) Brownnosing of Obama’s America, which would’ve been of little interest to many people (apparently the Greens are as relevant as they are conventional), the only other real “Australian” issue to come out of these “cables” was our “boys” in “Afghanistan.” They’re in trouble or something? No...? Well, whatever the case may be they’re certainly in trouble now since these leaks came to light (shame on you Julian Assange)!

For anyone who doesn’t understand the situation in Afghanistan, you don’t need WikiLeaks to bring you up to speed. Let me explain how it’s been going recently, since the US invasion, and (for any other force invading that part of the world) for the last 2,000 odd years. Here are some pictures to help...        

An Australian solider performs his weekly duty, oral sex, on a local warlord.

The warlord is well pleased. The solider survives another harrowing week.

As you can see, the conflict in Afghanistan is all about fucking as many of our own as possible before calling it a day and bringing them home. There are lots of nice little excuses as to why this occurs, but this is essentially what it boils down to. For those who say that we are there to fuck “them,” I will say that that is equally correct, in so far as they are us (but honestly, you can’t win a war through casualties alone. This is borne out in many conflicts, the most analogous probably being the “American War” in Vietnam... So really the only effect is the fucking that occurs, and everything that is born of it, since we’re not using adequate protection over there).

Some Interesting Facts about the Rest of the World

More interesting for me than anything to do with Australia are some of the less widely covered (though still reported! I got all of this from The Age, remember...) events uncovered in the wider world. Most of the cables simply contain schoolyard-level gossip on who calls who what names. While slightly entertaining (and most certainly distracting), this is in no way informative or important stuff. To get to the real deal, you gotta go a little deeper, underneath all the flying colours and pretty patterns...

For me, some lesser issues which resonated were the real considerations behind the freeing of “terminally ill” (he’s still alive and kicking a year on) Lockerbie bomber and that the Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim(ović! GOLLLLL!!!)’s sodomy charges were, well... “See, this whole thing was just a set-up.” (Is this the kind of set-up Assange himself is now trapped in?) What also caught my eye were Jeddah consulate-born stories of a Saudi Royal prince throwing a party with coke, booze, and hookers (at least he knows how to have a good time!). While this hedonism is an affront to traditional Islamic sensibilities, the satanic family heads must be proud of their son following in their footsteps (though he has a long way to go yet!).

   

The reports I found most disturbing (though hardly surprising), however, were those concerning big corporate actions in Africa and specifically the country Nigeria. Now, it’s no surprise that Nigeria is Shell’s bitch; it has been for many a decade thanks to its high concentration of accessible oil reserves. Shell’s complete infiltration of Nigeria’s government at every level is really just a formality in their control of that nation. Their boasts about it are a little more perplexing, however. Maybe they just want to assure WikiLeaks that they can’t tell them anything about Nigeria which they don’t already know. Significantly more troubling than Shell is Pfizer... Here we have a multinational corporation attempting to cover up the fact that it’s using Nigeria’s child population as a Petri dish. (This is pretty fucking evil... to understand more on how multinationals and governments use third world populations and target them with vaccines read http://www.vaclib.org/news/donstalk.htm) Having already settled both criminal and civil cases, at a cost of over $75 million, it then, according to released embassy leaks, proceeded to investigate various possibilities to pressure the government out of the settlement sum (all of this, one must remember, ensures that the full extent of the occurrences isn’t revealed in an open court).

Un-Jan: A Pot leaking Leek Soup

“All of this is well and good, Jan,” you might say, “but I always knew there was evil in the world and corrupt governments. I see it on the news every night. Is this wikileaking thing really that important?” Far from trotting out stale arguments about freedom of information, government secrecy (because, after all, isn’t that what we want from our governments?), and protection of the press, I’d have to say that I do agree with you on an initial level. These leaks don’t change anything. They don’t “shift the paradigm.” They don’t even reveal particularly pressing matters. All they serve to do (and this is probably not a conscious choice on the part of the leakers) is maintain the illusion that there are separate nation-states (and multinational corporations) which vie for power through realpolitik in some kind of savage wild which is international politics. Obviously, “everyone” thought this before and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, though they might give our leaders a bit more credit due to their Machiavellian machinations. This all serves to support and reinforce current conceptions of the international stage, the world, and reality; that nation-states have real and tangible disagreements and compete at a fundamental level and, to a lesser extent, that the U.S. is some kind of supreme country which holds all the power within its grasp, both of which are serious illusions.  

     

Much of this is like uncovering a hoax, only to discover that the uncovering (or the uncovered truth) itself was also a hoax. These kind of double-agents, backstabbing backstabbers, cross allegiances, and facade-under-facades (fake-outs?) are the play-dough of the most undeveloped Hollywood hack; yet when faced with their possibility in reality we shy away from the thought and, in fact vehemently deny any sort of possibility (is this because we see it in so many political action/thrillers that we are conditioned to think it all make-believe; the stuff of an overactive imagination, an underdeveloped ego, or undernourished emotions?) It’s like an onion; you tell yourself that the skin is the deepest layer, then when you break through you see that the skin was in fact simply the first layer, but you all-too-quickly accept that it was only the skin that was fake, that this second layer must be the real deal... alas, it is not. You can go deeper. A difference in the metaphor, however, develops as the peeling of the onion is not getting closer to the truth step by step (as you are to the centre of the onion), because each layer removed supports the one it reveals insofar as they are both layers and there are similarities to them. So WikiLeaks shows us that politicians are not honest when dealing with us and competing each other, but to give this attribute to politicians assumes that their dealings with us are important / make a difference, and that their competition with each other is authentic. The leak is comprehensible to the extent that it coincides with the current framework.

Another potent image is that of the puppet master, but one should consider that the person pulling the strings isn’t revealed all at once, through some sort of tour de force. It is more like a play of finger puppets where one discovers that each character is in fact just a finger, that underneath all the different costumes exist the same fundamental drives, energies, and substances. They are still, however, viewed as different entities though they might have the same cogs working within them (to go deeper on mutual interconnectedness read about Indra’s Net). When one follows a bit further they find that these fingers are each connected to a hand, yet there is still no sign of a unity between these hands (in fact, more often than not they oppose each other for the sake of the reality of the performance); we’ve simply got it down to two sides now (a kind of dualism?). Only later does one follow the hands to arms which are linked to the one body. So the puppet master displays himself in many variant forms; it is not simply the matter of lifting one veil to reveal the ultimate truth (is there even a final veil?).

Julian Assange – Wanted Man

Just as there is not much truth in general news reporting, so too is there not much to be gleaned from all these wikileaks. They may, however, be useful insofar as they may have allowed some people some flexibility or mobility from the suffocating atmosphere of mass media; they may have a positive influence. They may convince some people to look deeper. It is important, however, that (although it has already started happening) people do not simply flock to Julian Assange and consider WikiLeaks the new authority and arbiter of the truth and information. Assange is simply a tool being used by those who truly control (with or without his actual knowledge) the flow of information in today’s world. It is important to remember, when thinking that Assange’s every move brings us one step closer to the truth, that the most fundamental information, which would truly shift the way we think about the world, can’t be leaked in a conventional sense (that is, they do not exist in document format, or if they do, never survive for very long) and certainly would not be found in such an accessible place as diplomatic cables.

It is important to remember that the “U.S.” could kill Assange (or any of the other people who were probably more instrumental in this information coming to light) at any moment they want to. It is true that it would probably incite more people into active political speculation but, if the threat was big enough, they would do it (remember Kennedy?).  What this tells us, then, is that Assange mustn’t be all that problematic to the powers-that-be. In fact, it is possible that they are using him as a distraction (I balk to say method of disinformation). This is affected by America openly threatening Assange with extradition, or opposing him in any other numerous ways thus placing the limelight on him and making people rally around him (and therefore subtly influencing their views). There is also the way in which people react to the object of hatred of an object of hatred (“the enemy of my enemy is my friend”), so that Assange (or those who wish to “grow” him) may capitalise on anti-American sentiment. This aggrandisement of various individuals serves to help current power structures and is shown clearly in this song (especially the pigeon – falcon, whisper – thunder bit).  

Whether he goes on the lam or not is yet to be seen, though it would allow the myth of Assange to live on for much longer, if not forever...   

A Musical Interlude

Alice Herz-Sommer, the world’s oldest Holocaust survivor, while interned in the ghetto-town of Terezín, was forced to play piano as part of the Nazi-imposed cultural activities. Her abilities managed to save her and her son from the extermination camps but also had another consequence. Recounting those times, she mentions that “the Czechs and Poles were all fed by music – it was their bread and butter. We all felt if we had music, it couldn’t be so terrible.”

Once again, doof is food.    

(Un)Limited Ink?

Chapter 76 - Daodejing

Men are born soft and supple;
dead, they are stiff and hard.
Plants are born tender and pliant;
dead, they are brittle and dry.

Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible
is a disciple of death.
Whoever is soft and yielding
is a disciple of life.

The hard and stiff will be broken.
The soft and supple will prevail.

Let’s do things with words. Let’s begin a blog. The words themselves bring the blog into being – one needn’t have an inaugural post... or perhaps one must, by necessity, as something must be first; yet the content needn't deal with its own beginning (though it can, as it does here) – it just begins. Indeed, one cannot have an inaugural post as a naming or christening: the very thing which is brought forth into being (the blog) is the vehicle of its own realisation. Is this possible? To call this post inaugural would only serve to water “inaugural” down to a sense of being first, losing its hints of ritual, active creation, portent (but is this important?)... What is in a name, or, so we don’t shake the spear too much (lest it lead to sabre rattling), what does naming achieve? Is there something achieved? Surely so. But isn’t the inauguration, the creation, actually empty? Is it not only God who creates stuff merely by uttering the words themselves; but, then again, are we not made in His image (was this image a grapheme? Was it a visual image? A visual image of a sound? Wasn’t it uttered though? Isn’t it a phoneme? What image then? Shall I invoke Imagi:Nations? I already did...)?

What then creates the blog (let alone my blog)? Is it not the words, the words in this context (that is, encoded onto this website, into these boxes, under these headings)? This issue of genesis resounds very much with Derrida’s critique of Husserl and related questions which may be reapplied here... Is it my intention then which created this blog? My singular idea to “begin a blog”?

At the risk of becoming too dry I will move on hastily. I don’t wish the point to be laboured, only born (in a minimal sense). Having determined to begin, I must ask: what am I beginning? With what stuff shall I fill the act or action (upon what am I acting, in any case)? What to perform? I now stand wondering just as Prufrock intones “And how should I begin?” (and, importantly, this is a repeat). The beginning, as a kind of proof-rock (that indelible thing from which Arthur pulled the sword, inaugurating his kingship... an oracle too?), must have an immutable presence yet simultaneously move into the background as the journey progresses. Paradoxically, the beginning of the work risks overshadowing the work itself, thus leaving it in a pre-commenced state, if it is not prepared to exit the stage when the time is right. Simultaneously, however, the beginning defines the entire process to come after it (inauguration as naming has returned, and this can stretch to theoretical physics and the “knob” settings “prior” to the Big Bang). We also see here Prue’s frock, the vestment of prudence, a kind of armour against hubris in all its epic and heroic proportions (but don’t we need the hero and the myth? Do we need to live it?). Ponder: why would prudence need armour? To protect itself against hubris? Or is hubris there beneath the armour, clad so to avoid its own reflection? Or is the armour the very reflective surface in which hubris will find itself (hiding)? Is there hubris in beginning at all (or delaying it to the extent I now have)? It’s with these notions that I might colour my brush before I paint. “Let’s start again, let’s start again.”

Let me find my voice. Its resonance chamber is composed of Derrida’s Sec (Signature, Event, Context) and Limited Inc. I won’t venture a summation of them here but rather treat in a few minor peripheral outcroppings. They grow out of puns found in the titles of the two works: “Sec” is French for dry and “Limited Inc” is a play on the idea of limited ink, or limitations of con-text. As to arbitrary limitations, Derrida asks “what about the ink remaining on my typewriter ribbon?” (p. 45*; interestingly, this pun is lacking in the French title and is therefore largely a construct of the translation).

Let’s begin our wanderings in the desert. “Sec” means dry in French (I have said as much already) and Derrida himself picks up on this in the first footnote of the body of Limited Inc (though he probably doesn’t pick it up as such; he was the author and therefore had been holding it since its inception). The dryness is of concern if only because it belies a commitment “to a Cartesian or Logocentric or Foundationalist or Essentialist dream of perfect purity.” (p. 18**) Yes, the movement is a destabilising one, but mustn’t the exorcist believe in the ghosts he seeks to vanquish? There is a sense that the discourses “run to and fro (discurrere), in between the dead ends of the man-made theological ruts which they try to wipe out.” (p. 97***) Derrida then must remain mindful to not allow the limited ink of his fountain/pen to dry up (yes, I know; he’s dead). It is the bane of the arrogant parasite which assumes to feed off its host at no expense to itself without realising that its host is feeding it. Just as the parasite might enter the host (shall we say through the mouth, the voice, the dry throat?) so too does the host enter and influence the parasite’s form as foodstuff (or source of foodstuff). As if it were all give and no take (or is that all take and no give?) wherever parasitism is present! Is this behind the push to the dry; the attempt to make this place as inhospitable to the parasite as possible? Give it no fluid! The functions of sucking, leeching, absorbing, etc. all require liquid to be performed properly. Yet in this flight from water (to save ourselves from parasites of our own creation) we would do well to remember that we too are merely plankton in a boom phase and that if we stray too far from the Source, the bust may be fatal (in a penultimate sense, for there is no ultimate fatality). And is it not the parasite, in any event, which has placed us now in the dryness of the desert? Have “[t]he deconstructive intellectual games reach there a point of absolute stasis, a point of meaninglessness from which one can only return empty-handed”? (p. 94***) These “contemporary critical discourses which, by challenging the voice, seem to dry up the throat” (p. 97***) but do they endanger Life?   

There appear to be two different sides to the coin that is deconstruction: the dry (as canvassed above) and the hitherto overlooked wet. (p. 22**) A prime example of this wetter style is Derrida’s Glas, which is one of “the most authentic presentations of his critique of the dream of authenticity. Were it possible, they might be authentically inauthentic; they are, perhaps, beyond authenticity and inauthenticity.” (p. 23**) This text deals, in part, with the distinction between (masculine) Hegelian philosophy (http://mason.gmu.edu/~bhawk/bystory/hegel.html) and (feminine) Genet and Literature (http://mason.gmu.edu/~bhawk/bystory/genet.html). [It is perhaps opportune at this point to also highlight – this is, after all, the opening post and as such should reflect the character of the blog(ger) generally – http://mason.gmu.edu/~bhawk/bystory/horus.html, the (hyper)links this has to Hegel, many conspiracy theories, Plato, and the mason in the URL.] All of this is to say, in effect, that in finding my voice (or did I always have it and was my throat only too dry to sound?) I should hear Derrida’s glas (a Slavic word for “voice”) in all its authentic wetness. This would no doubt mitigate my insistence on his dryness; after all, is it not only my own dryness which has made my thirst for water a journey across the desert (that is where we started...)?

The final juncture here is the distinction between the masculine and the feminine. Carrera’s ‘The Fertile Mystical Maze’*** deals with Cixous and her resonance with certain Christian mystical traditions, focusing specifically (as if this were to be a surprise!) on gender and discourse. This work is commendable not only for its scope of content and capacity to aid understanding, but also in the further questions it raises and alludes to. Is this whole business of written language (and even language as such!) a primarily masculine affair? There is a sense in which Cixous (resonating with Teresa of Avila and other “feminine” mystics) does not see the analysis of (past) language – and by extension its patriarchs of literature (Genet) and philosophy (Hegel) – as yielding anything particularly useful. Rather, women should forge ahead and write their own stories and grammars. Here is another warning to not become overly dry, overly focused on the mark (though it is said one should always keep one’s eagle/Hegel/hawk eye on the mark). As Derrida does in his discussion of iteration (iteralinga carries both of these meanings) – a featureless mound (a gramme?). The resonance with semiotics is marked. Beyond this, Shiva, as the deity of change and destruction (in a very broad sense) is closely linked to the mind and intellect (the cranial buzzing hum of the final sound of AUM, ॐ, belongs to Shiva). While it is clearly distinct from the linga(m) as penis, and although probably not etymologically sound, there is an interesting linkage here between linga as mark/sign/primordial grapheme, penis/masculine, and lingua as language (and, to a less remarkable extent, tongue). Again one must wonder if this (masculine?) fixation on signs, signifiers and signifieds, and ultimately language itself is creative of and for life or destructive and/or parasitic (but hadn’t we decided it was a false distinction? And isn’t it called deconstruction? But is construction even an organic life-process? Mustn’t it be? Or do we deconstruct to allow life to again grow?). being Sanskrit for “other”), I too shall allow myself a reference to Sanskrit. The Linga of Shiva, generally manifested as a very smooth oval stone or pillar, is the primordial mark or sign (indeed, the word

We end then, finally, with life. The fixation upon grammatology may, even when wet, overlook life and living. “Like Teresa [of Avila], Cixous uses her writing to defend the ‘knowledge of how to live’, in contrast to a ‘scholarly knowledge’.” (p. 105***; tellingly, Derrida’s final interview is entitled “Learning to Live Finally” and, again, I should read this work, hear his glas...) Is grammatology simply another aspect of this problematic scholarly knowledge, albeit one which moves against it? Are these dichotomies of the wet and dry, the masculine and feminine, death and life useful to examine in and of themselves, that is, in any essential sense? Or are they simply tools which should be used and/or discarded as the projections of desire/fiction/love/life (or any other “telos”) dictate? To learn how to live, I must learn how to swim. I should take the plunge and cease focusing on the dry, walking on the dry land, the desert. Shall I submerge myself in the ocean? Life is not only wet but wetness, fluid. We are all already submerged in the ocean and must learn how to swim in it. It really isn’t a matter of choice, yet to undertake this work is also the definitive manifestation of Free Will. Ink is fluid, in a state of flux. It solidifies, becomes fixed, dries. Its nature is changed; it is no longer that which it was but rather the very shape and image which is has formed. Is this death, though? Doesn’t the grapheme, the word, the voice, sprout new life? Don’t meanings (at least) grow off it? Dryness is not then an essential property of a given object (as if an object could be contained or specified in the first place!) but rather a way of being in, relating to, and perceiving the surrounding world. The mark can still be as malleable and organic as the liquid from which it came. In this sense the transient fluid movement of possibilities – that is, life – is never exhausted completely and the ink is found to be, in fact, unlimited. All that is alive (and that, then, must surely be everything at all!) is fluid, moving, changing, and liquid. All that is liquid is liquid. All liquid is liquid!

*Limited Inc, Northwestern University Press; 1st edition.

** ‘Derrida Dry: Iterating Iterability Analytically’, Gordon C F Bearn in Diacritics, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Autumn, 1995), pp. 2-25.

*** Ch. 5 ‘The Fertile Mystical Maze: from Derrida’s Dry Theological Gorge to Cixous Dialogic Disgorging’, Elena Carrera in Trajectories of Mysticism in Theory and Literature, ed Philip Leonard. Accessed here: http://books.google.com.au/books?id=USwsZ9Q2VcMC&pg=PA94&lpg=PA94&dq=derrida+dry&source=bl&ots=OeNDBCipuK&sig=sgOqAuUQvjhzrAN4FDRl5wS6siM&hl=en&ei=wZP_TMrbEZC-vgPu9dyOBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&sqi=2&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

And just to do current news (concerning Arbib’s relationship with the U.S.) justice, a blast from the (recent) past:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xn9fgcSuvmA&NR=1

And to reiterate prophecy and the augur (note the reptilian features, eyes especially):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqdRQk54WVc