Professors are Terrorists

Michael Berube gave a talk recently that really captures the complexity of the controversies surrounding the Horowitz-inspired attack on academic freedom. If this debate has touched you at all, read it. Aside from being an astute guy, Berube is at Penn State, which resides in the first state to pass legislation regarding classroom activities. In the end, Berube notes, the problem isn't with an attack on ideology but rather the attack on ideological pluralism.

By the way, Berube appears with Sam Richards (Go Sam!) as Penn Staters who appear in Horowitz's list of America's 101 most dangerous professors, the subject of his new book. As we know, fascists of all stripes love making lists. And of course, for some, making the list has become somewhat of a badge of honor. Horowitz receives loads of solicitations from professors begging to be added. I would like to personally congratulate Dana Cloud, who, as far as I can tell, is the only rhetorician on the list. I may not agree with everything she says, but she must be doing something right.

The Authorship Society

I don't usually link to the Weekly Standard, but here's a confoundingly wierd little Ayn Randy piece by Andrew Keen on the so-called Web 2.0 revolution, what many are calling the "authorship society." Keen first takes issue with the 60's Marxian utopianism of everyone-with-their-own-multimedia-blog thinking. While this is part of a the dream of "intellectual property communists" like Laurence Lessig, it's going to "flatten" the field of art into white noise. I applaud Keen for such a wonderful image. Strangely, Keen invokes the flattening metaphor that fellow neo-con Thomas Friedman uses to describe the equalizing tendencies of so-called free trade. Now there's a change-up. So, whither this authorship society? The horrors of anarchy or the wonders of unfettered free enterprise? Perhaps Keen shows his cards: the neo-cons have never been about free enterprise. Monopoly suits them much better. Art, Keen tells us, is supposed to be made by elites like...ahem...Hitchcock and Bono, who are the best the big monopoly studios have to offer. I wish it worked like that. Unfortunately, Keen fails to recognize that Hitchcock and Bono are the exception to his exalted Culture Industry. Britney is a much more honest illustration. I think I'm beginning to figure out the strange relationship neo-cons have to art and its production. Perhaps this relationship can be summed up this way: the art must be good; it came from the big art machine!

Permanent Super Bases in Iraq

There is mounting public information that the U.S. is
establishing several massive permanent bases in Iraq -
complete with neighborhoods, swimming pools and Pizza Huts.
Now we know what happened to the "reconstruction" money.
Though this is not exactly surprising, the issue of permanent bases
is going to be a rhetorical challenge for the powers that be.  It does
not fit cleanly into the story that the U.S. has plans to leave Iraq
when the government becomes stable.  Tom Engelhardt does a
 superb job gathering the issue into one place.

CS Monitor
Tom Engelhardt

Protestors are Terrorists

The Pentagon has listed a group of demonstrators at the University of Southern California - Santa Cruz as a "credible threat" to national security. This is part of a much larger domestic surveillance program begun in 2005 called CIFA, what appears to be a resurrection of COINTELPRO type activities.

Next in the Long War: Iran

The U.S. executive is now openly preparing to bomb Iran. 
The targets have been mapped out by special forces on
the ground, and the U.S. is readying B2 bombers for air raids. 
Seymour Hersh, you are an oracle.

Interestingly, according to world opinion, the U.S. ranks a 
close second behind Iran as "countries whose influence
in the world is mainly negative."

In other news, we are officially no longer fighting the
War on Terror (TM).  The administration has rebranded the
venture as "The Long War."  Kind of glum, don't you think?

Spies and lies (with a side of freedom fries)

Remember TIA (Total Information Awareness), the zen-sounding governmental agency that was finally going to be the biggest of all the Big Brothers? Remember how they proposed to make us all safer by attempting to construct the biggest data mining and electro-surveillance program in history? Remember the comforting logo that put them out of business, at least for the moment? "Scientia est Potentia": Knowledge is Power, it says. Indeed. Whether you are Francis Bacon or Michel Foucault, we can all agree on that. On the Daily Show the other night, John Stewart put it most simply: "It seems as though the government knows increasingly more about the people, and the people know increasingly less about the government." Hmm... always reminds me of the symbolic economy of the police officer's mirrored sunglasses. To me that is what the police state looks like: a one way mirror.



Now TIA has been resurrected in the form of ADVISE. The Christian Science Monitor did a nice article about it.* This time the acronym is so awkward, no one can get scared (Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement). And there are no logos that might rouse the humors of the Left Behind crowd. The program has achieved its ideal state: not an invisibility, but rather an absent presence: present in its very deniability. We might be concerned for the moment about phone tapping, and Alberto Gonzales might not ever answer any questions in front of subcommittees. Electronic surveillance is a much bigger question, though, than the telephone. ADVISE concerns every aspect of life in the information economy. ADVISE is the "will to truth" of the cyberstate: the citizen soul must be accounted for, disciplined, and controlled on every possible microscopic facet, polished like a silicon jewel to be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

Wanna do ... something?


*"Christian Science Monitor" would have been a good replacement name for TIA, don't you think? I must say I'm so impressed with the CSM these past few years; they are truly one of the last good investigative outlets in mainstream news.