Jul 5, 2008

Disaster Capitalism: State of Extortion→

Naomi Klein writing for The Nation:

One week after the no-bid service deals were announced, the world caught its first glimpse of the real prize. After years of back-room arm-twisting, Iraq is officially flinging open six of its major oil fields, accounting for around half of its known reserves, to foreign investors. According to Iraq’s oil minister, the long-term contracts will be signed within a year. While ostensibly under control of the Iraq National Oil Company, foreign firms will keep 75 percent of the value of the contracts, leaving just 25 percent for their Iraqi partners.

This development seems hardly surprising given U.S. foreign policy towards the Middle East over the past several decades, but surely such an endeavor might make suspect the claim that we went to fight in Iraq in order to liberate them and to eliminate the threat of weapons of mass destruction, etc. But of course that would be ludicrous.

Moreover, it strikes me as impossible to call the relationship between the U.S. and Iraq as anything other than “imperial,” but that can’t be, we hate empires! After all, the U.S. was born out of anticolonial struggle. Perhaps something to remember over fourth of July weekend.

Bryan Klausmeyer

Jul 4, 2008

Known Unknowns→

Matthew Yglesias asks Kevin Drum how he knows that the Bush administration isn’t using their domestic wiretapping program in a manner any different from that of the Nixon administration. Not surprisingly, there’s evidence that this has happened. (Via Edge of the American West.)

I also thought this was a great comment on EotAW:

But can he claim it with certainty? Can he rule out that he’s a brain in a vat?

That kind of behavior does not give philosophers a good reputation.

Bryan Klausmeyer

Jul 4, 2008

Preparing the Battlefield→

Seymour Hersh has written a an extremely thorough and insightful article on the Bush administration’s ongoing effort to start a war with Iran in the New Yorker, detailing the covert actions undertaken by the White House against Iran over the past year or so, as well as Congress’ capitulation to the GOP war machine. Highly recommended reading. (Via 3 Quarks Daily.)

Bryan Klausmeyer

Jul 4, 2008

Bryan Klausmeyer

Jul 3, 2008

A Fourth of July Question

Posted at 5:54 PM

Why do “liberals” always feel compelled to define “patriotism” such that they can claim themselves to be “patriotic”? What good comes from this, aside from openly acknowledging wing-nuts and other idiots who accuse those on the Left of being secret Muslims and whatnot? I openly profess to not being patriotic and mostly ambivalent towards America. The only country that strikes me as remotely pleasing is Sweden, and that’s really just a Dr. Jacoby-esque fantasy.

Bryan Klausmeyer 6 Comments

Jul 3, 2008

Laruellian / Lacanian Clones→

An interesting take on Lacan’s borromean knot and the notion of “cloning,” taken from the non-philosophy of Francois Laruelle. I’m not totally sure how reading Lacan through speculative realism (or vice versa) illuminates anything in particular, but then again I don’t think I quite understand what the author is getting at. It’s definitely an article worth reading though.

Bryan Klausmeyer

Jul 3, 2008

YouTube Users, Meet Your Big Other→

Some stupid judge has recently ordered that all of your (yes, you! the one in TIME’s shiny magazine reflection!) YouTube histories are now the property of the giant asshole company known as Viacom, even though this ruling explicitly violates the Video Privacy Protection act. But when have laws ever mattered when it comes to multi-billion-dollar media conglomerates? GO RON PAUL!!!!!

To celebrate this stupendous achievement of individual rights, I’ve decided to publicly air my latest YouTube viewing habits to the public in an act of exhibitionism that will surely echo throughout the black hole that is the Internet:

Bryan Klausmeyer

Jul 3, 2008

The Trouble with Anti-Elitism→

I agree wholeheartedly with Yglesias’ points, but I would add that the first people to scream J’accuse! are often themselves the elitists.

Bryan Klausmeyer

Jul 3, 2008

Splendor in the Darkness: Von Trier as a Sadist

Posted at 4:03 AM

I just finished watching Lars von Trier’s third film, Dancer in the Dark, starring Björk, Catherine Deneuve and Peter Stormare. It’s about a Czech woman who comes to America in the hopes of raising enough money to have her son’s vision repaired before he, like her, eventually goes blind, but things don’t go quite as planned. After having seen only Dogville out of von Trier’s oeuvre, I have to say he might possibly be one of my favorite directors, if solely for the fact that he manages to provoke within the viewer a true sense of horror. His directing is similar to the Sadean boudoir, and his torturous probing goes to the very end, to the point where you almost can’t bear it. At the same time, von Trier’s heroines, like Sade’s victims, radiate with splendor, to borrow a phrase from Lacan in his analysis of Sophicles’ Antigone, under the most excruciating of circumstances.

In this way I think von Trier’s films are able to touch the core of tragedy, while abandoning any pretension or orthodoxies that he may or may not be accused of. Even if his visions don’t always succeed to their fullest potential, he cannot be accused of not being radical in the experimental sense. It’s through this that his films retain a thoroughly auteur quality that most contemporary cinema lacks (some exceptions off the top of my head would be Lynch, Kieslowski and Herzog).

The musical numbers in Dancer clearly contain a self-deprecating dimension that could be called Brechtian, but I think, more importantly, they serve as a reminder as to what the essence of film is by rendering palpable the fantasms that haunt reality, akin in many respects to the stifling libidinal space of the Lynchian mise-en-scène.

Needless to say, I really enjoyed this movie. But it was torture to watch.

Oh, and if you’re curious about von Trier, check out the dogme!

Bryan Klausmeyer

Jul 3, 2008

From Triumph to Torture→

It’s a tragedy that any government is allowed to do something like this and get away with it, and I wouldn’t consider myself a committed partisan in terms of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but if Israel is trying to make itself appear as a victim of Palestinian terrorist aggression, things like this are certainly brutal reminders of the truth. (Via Lenin’s Tomb.)

Bryan Klausmeyer

Jul 2, 2008

Dearest readers, apologies for the lack of in-depth articles that make the Howler such a remarkable contribution to the blogosphere as of late. I’ve been sidetracked by some fascinating reading material that should hopefully manifest itself in the form of several “serious” blog posts over the next several weeks, although it might simply be the case that opting to read is simply a defense against writing anything.

So as to reward you for your patience, check out this astonishing music video that my friend Charlene sent me (visit her website, it has lots of good music). I don’t think there is anyway that this cannot be called “advanced.”

Oh yeah, 366 Songs is now half way done. Which half remains a mystery.

Bryan Klausmeyer

Jun 30, 2008

Although I admit to never having seen any of the Saw movies, which isn’t something I’m frankly all that disappointed about, I thought this was a fantastic little piece of photoshoppery. (Original Flickr link here.)

Bryan Klausmeyer

Jun 29, 2008

The Possibility of Time Travel→

I just ran across this interesting article on time travel published by BBC News. The basic idea is that there are essentially two formulas: (a) time travel is not possible (ostensibly because we have never encountered its affects in the present) or (b) time travel is possible, but something is preventing it from changing the present. As the article points out, option (a) seems more intuitive, but option (b) is certainly plausible insofar as Einstein’s general theory of relativity points to a space-time curvature in which time loops back over itself (and, derivatively, that quantum physics does not distinguish between moving back and forward in time).

In attempting to articulate a more cohesive materialist formula for examining history, I thought this passage was particularly interesting, especially in regards to its Hegelian flavor:

It is as if, in some strange way, the present takes account of all the possible routes back into the past and, because your father is certainly alive, none of the routes back can possibly lead to his death.

I think it’s also worth pointing out, at least humorously, that the entire article is postulated around the murder of one’s father, which will no doubt elicit a smirk from psychoanalytically-informed readers.

Bryan Klausmeyer