rigorousintuition.ca

Posted: **Thu Mar 23, 2017 4:04 pm**

want to post this snippet here to draw attention to the comment made by andropov in '77. it adds of layer of complexity to typical cold war narratives, and plus i'm not so sure it's that widely known:

http://www.e-flux.com/journal/27/67999/ ... -violence/

e-flux Journal #27 - September 2011

Franco “Bifo” Berardi
Time, Acceleration, and Violence

"So what happened to the century that trusted in the future? If we look to the year 1977, we find it to be especially important in the history of mankind. It is the year Charlie Chaplin died, a moment that that, to my mind, marked the end of a possibility for a kind of a humane and gentle modernity. It is the end of a contradictory, controversial perception of time in modernity, the time of the horrible machine, invading and destroying my life. That same year, Uri Andropov, former head of the KGB, wrote a letter to Leonid Brezhnev, explaining that the USSR had five years left to close the gap with the United States in the field of information technology, or all would be lost. We all know how that story ended. But 1977 is also the year that, in a small Silicon Valley lab, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak created user-friendly interfaces bearing the Apple trademark . . . The future is over. Don’t think about your future, because you don’t have one. In a sense, this cry ('no future') was the final premonition of the end of the modern age, of the end of industrial capitalism and the beginning of a new age of total violence. If capitalism is to go on in the history of mankind, then the history of mankind must become the place of total violence, because only the violence of competition can decide the value of time."

the entire piece by berardi is so excellent, in a somewhat oblique or indirect way to the predicament of the state and its subjects at this particular moment

Posted: **Thu Mar 23, 2017 4:08 pm**

According to notes of Krutskikh’s speech, he told his Russian audience: “You think we are living in 2016. No, we are living in 1948. And do you know why? Because in 1949, the Soviet Union had its first atomic bomb test. And if until that moment, the Soviet Union was trying to reach agreement with [President Harry] Truman to ban nuclear weapons, and the Americans were not taking us seriously, in 1949 everything changed and they started talking to us on an equal footing.”

Krutskikh continued, “I’m warning you: We are at the verge of having ‘something’ in the information arena, which will allow us to talk to the Americans as equals.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/po ... cd3cc004c8

Posted: **Fri Mar 24, 2017 10:33 pm**

kelley » Thu Mar 23, 2017 4:04 pm wrote: http://www.e-flux.com/journal/27/67999/ ... -violence/

e-flux Journal #27 - September 2011

Franco “Bifo” Berardi
Time, Acceleration, and Violence

Enjoyed this, thanks.

I wonder if there are any answers hiding in there (in relation to the Russian Conspiracy as RI subject). I guess it depends on how 'meta' we want to get.

I'll leave behind the old Russia, the old US, the old transnational industrial capitalism and jump ahead, to a quote in the above piece, "the simple fact that in a semiocapitalist world, the main commodity becomes attention."

Let's take that as a simple fact of today's world. It's a competition for attention. Your attention, my attention. A conspiracy to monopolize attention would be the only conspiracy game left to play, Russian or otherwise.

Why conspire to monopolize your attention? Because it's the main commodity, the hot new trend. Just because.

Anyway, jumping ahead again. From the above piece

In the very first chapter of Capital, Marx explains that value is time, the accumulation of time—time objectified, time that has become things, goods. It is not the time of work, of working in time, that produces value, for it matters little whether one is lazy or efficient. The important determination of value concerns the average time needed to produce a certain good.

All of this is clear: value is time, capital is value, or accumulated time.

Stefano posted an image yesterday in the image thread:

acceleration.JPG

I appreciated that the time in the image was a few minutes later than the time stamp on the post (for me, at least).

I would like to suggest that it isn't accumulated capital, but accelerated capital that produces the image. Part of the conspiracy for your attention is to get you to believe that accumulation is necessary for image production.

When Marx speaks of relative surplus value, he’s speaking about acceleration: if you want a growth in productivity—which is also a growth in surplus value—you need to accelerate work time.

Sure.

But when the main tool for production ceases to be material labor and becomes cognitive labor, acceleration enters another phase, another dimension, because an increase in semiocapitalist productivity comes essentially from the acceleration of the info-sphere—the environment from which information arrives in your brain.

Not so sure about that. But I'll allow it, for the sake of argument.

Do not forget that your brain functions in time, and needs time in order to give attention and understanding. But attention cannot be infinitely accelerated.

Definitely not sure about that. Even if attention cannot be infinitely accelerated - which the jury is still out on - understanding can be.

I think the trap fallen into here is one of binary, and/or linear thinking. Classical "if this, and not that, then the other thing." We're not getting anywhere with that anymore. May have served us well, but we have moved into the semiocapitalist world, the attention economy. Charlie Chaplin died forty years ago now, you know.

It's the trap a lot of big thinkers, many quoted in the above article, perhaps even the author himself, have fallen into. "Time or Space," "language or the body," "the sign or the signified," "meaning or non-meaning," "violence or non-violence." It's alright to criticize big thinkers. Authorities can be wrong. "The future is over," "Truth is dead," these are mystic pronouncements, posing as logical conclusions. Might as well say "god is dead." The thinker has painted themselves into a corner.

The argument is that accumulation of capital(time, attention) becomes the image. It's like purchasing something. But what if acceleration of capital becomes image? It's an exchange between states. The image is capital, just faster.

The fear is that meaning is becoming lost in all this speed. Not so sure about that, either. Meaning is another state. Image exchanges with meaning, meaning with capital, capital with image. Who sets the exchange rate of meaning? Some know the secret of this triangular arbitrage. Keeping that knowledge from you is part of the conspiracy. I'm probably saying too much. The adept doesn't show his face. That's alright, the one who shows his face isn't an adept. So who cares what I say.

Acceleration doesn't have to be violent. That's just a romantic notion. I say more acceleration is the answer. Not amphetamine acceleration, like the author of the above piece warns against. Not futurist acceleration. Faster than all that. It's resistance that wears a system down, not acceleration. And the system is only a vehicle for getting us around, until we find a better vehicle. We don't want to break it, we want it to run smoothly. Then we sell it for more than we bought it for.

Posted: **Sat Mar 25, 2017 8:48 am**

Posted: **Sun Mar 26, 2017 7:31 am**

The above quote by Hamilton is missing a few sentences:

The truth unquestionably is, that the only path to a subversion of the republican system of the Country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion.

"Tired at length of anarchy, or want of government, they may take shelter in the arms of monarchy for repose and security.
Those then, who resist a confirmation of public order, are the true Artificers of monarchy—not that this is the intention of the generality of them. Yet it would not be difficult to lay the finger upon some of their party who may justly be suspected."

He's saying anarchists create monarchy. While in his opinion that isn't the intention of most anarchists, some anarchists look to him like monarchist agents.

Hamilton felt a need to address the monarchist conspiracy theory popular at the time. Mostly he dismisses it.

Of course, he doesn't mean anarchists like we mean anarchists. He's talking about rich white anarchists. Also the "considerable talents" he's referring to are "military habits."

For myself, when I read this quote, I wonder who dredged it up and edited it into a virus tailored for certain echo chambers.

Perhaps it was Russian anarchist agents of monarchy? Probably easy enough to trace back, for anyone in a sleuthy enough mood.

edited to add: (Like Hamilton dismissing the monarchist conspiracy, I doubt you'll find Russian anarchist/monarchists at the end of the trail. More likely just someone innocently reading through the words of America's founding fathers like the quatrains of Nostradamus, seeing whatever it is they really want to see. And how dare you accuse me of being a Russian anarchist agent of monarchy.)

Posted: **Mon Mar 27, 2017 6:57 pm**

.

We should keep this one up amid the general noise on the subject.

Interesting, since we continue to see this stuff. At the link, tweets from Wikileaks already denying it and dissing Stone as a nobody during the campaign last summer. I had missed that:

Wikileaks Denies Roger Stone Had 'Back-Channel' Contact With Assange

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/w ... an-assange

Wikileaks on Monday denied longtime Donald Trump ally Roger Stone's claim that he had "back-channel communication" with the organization's founder, Julian Assange, before the 2016 election.

"No communications, no channel," a Wikileaks representative told CNN's KFILE by email.

In August 2016, Stone claimed to be in touch with Assange in advance of a so-called "October surprise" comprised of documents the Wikileaks founder promised to release in order to derail Hillary Clinton's campaign.

"I actually have communicated with Assange," Stone said.

Stone denied in October 2016 that he had direct contact with Assange, but claimed to have "a back-channel communication" with him.

"We have a good mutual friend," he told local Miami TV station WFOR.

Throughout the 2016 campaign, Wikileaks denied on Twitter that it had any contact with Stone. It is unclear who was responsible for those posts.

[snip]

Posted: **Tue Mar 28, 2017 5:34 pm**

there ya go jack....all yours now

Posted: **Tue Mar 28, 2017 5:58 pm**

{edited to remove now superfluous comment}

Posted: **Tue Mar 28, 2017 8:58 pm**

This is interesting material but proof of Russian manipulation of media in former USSR states seems a very far cry from what is being alleged to have taken place around Trump in the US. Not entirely unlike China claiming tomorrow that the US had conducted major cyber-financial terrorism but pointing to US involvement in Pakistani media during the original Afghanistan campaign as proof/precedent. An awkward comparison, I guess but it seems an unconvincing precedent on which to blame such strong claims. No?

Posted: **Wed Mar 29, 2017 12:09 pm**

SLAD you have at least a dozen threads that you started in which you post these reams of material already. Can you please not do that here?

Posted: **Wed Mar 29, 2017 1:08 pm**

SLAD, I remain very interested in your own more meta take on all this, especially given the incredible volume of material you are reading. I could not possible keep up will all of it, myself.

Posted: **Wed Mar 29, 2017 1:15 pm**

I deleted my post since Jack asked nicely and will have nothing further to contribute to this thread..sorry about that

Posted: **Wed Mar 29, 2017 2:17 pm**

But you do have vibrant analysis to contribute to this thread.

Posted: **Sat Apr 01, 2017 1:44 pm**

Russian government posts April Fools' Day prank offering "election interference"

MOSCOW -- Need some election interference? The Russian Foreign Ministry is ready to help -- or so it says on April Fools’ Day.

On Saturday, the ministry posted on its Facebook page an audio file of the purported new automated telephone switchboard message for Russian embassies.

“To arrange a call from a Russian diplomat to your political opponent, press 1,” the recording begins, in Russian and English. Press 2 “to use the services of Russian hackers,” and 3 “to request election interference.”

The English portion of the recording begins 26 seconds into the video, with the title translated as “Answering machine for Russian diplomatic missions.”

A ministry duty officer, who did not give his name in line with official practice, confirmed to The Associated Press that the post was an official joke.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday emphatically denied allegations of Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential election.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/russian-gov ... erference/

Posted: **Thu Apr 27, 2017 5:58 pm**

"Breaking" story. Who knows, may go nowhere. Or else the power of projection on to "Russia" now aims for new heights:

Facebook acknowledges state actors posted misinformation

Source: MSNBC MTP Daily

Chuck Todd just reported. Security report just released.

Will find more information.

From https://www.democraticunderground.com/10141762281

(Who the hell is watching Chuck Todd all day?! Someone who flies their flag with pride, damn it!)

Plus those obedient, automatic guesses in the thread.

WE ARE NOT CONSPIRACY THEORISTS!!!

.

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