Re: <nettime> Ocular facts

[podinski via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Hola Nettimers,

Good thread to push a little harder on what the more-than-ocular events
might be embodied to avoid the worst ...

i.e. making sure there are a diversity of alternatives being made
readily available to the psyche and physical bodies alike.

...

Three things come to mind:

1. Jonathan cook recently wrote a quite precise article on how the media
so miserably fails us ( indy journalists + whistleblowers, on radical
media, things like Gaza , etc. )  :

"It was the media, led by the Guardian, that kept Julian Assange behind
bars.
The media’s villainy will soon be erased because it writes the script
telling us what’s going on in the world"

https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/it-was-the-media-led-by-the-guardian

Not to trigger too much here on the JA + W-leaks themes, it's been
covered quite extensively already.

But rather to push beyond the frames set by the pathetic and paralyzing
CNN-style dead ends, sinkholes and mousetraps... in how it will keep us
inside the suicidal (S)ELECTIONs process !

2. Caitlin Johnstone's description of the US mess is sharp !

"Really Think About What It Means That The US President Has Dementia"

https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/really-think-about-what-it-means

"It’s very revealing how everybody’s focusing on what Biden’s
dementia-addled debate performance says about his ability to win
re-election instead of on the fact that the current, sitting president
of the United States has dementia."

This is what happens when...

" ... US presidential elections are fake and the results don’t matter.
It wouldn’t matter if Americans elected a labrador retriever or a bottle
of Tabasco sauce; the empire would roll forward without the slightest
interruption. The wars would continue. The economic injustice would
continue. The surging authoritarianism would continue. The oligarchy and
corruption would continue. The ecocidal capitalism would continue. The
imperialist extraction would continue."

"US elections are just a diversion to keep Americans from pushing for
real change in ways that pose a meaningful challenge to power, and
Americans already kind of know this. The sooner they stop
compartmentalizing away from this fact that they’re already dimly aware
of and face reality, the sooner they can start bringing health to both
their nation and the world."

...

3.  The nettime list, probably isn't able to provide us much of a road
map for whatever possible and impossibles come next ...

b/c no one would volunteer to write themselves into that publicly
"coming out" corner...  whatever that would be.

...

See you at the next sub-glocal organizing meeting !

:)

podinski






On 29/06/24 10:35, nettime-l-request@lists.nettime.org wrote:
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2024 10:35:19 +0200
> From: Allan Siegel <allansiegel@internet-mail.org>
> To: nettime-l@lists.nettime.org
> Subject: Re: <nettime> Ocular facts
> Message-ID: <cdb9136e-fe65-4780-bb4f-f1f46243883a@internet-mail.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
>
> Thanks Brian for your recent posts and for highlighting the latest 
> chapter in the demise of so-called 'American democracy'.
> As Sinead O'Connor put it very succinctly during the Thatcher storm: 
> "These are dangerous times."
>
> As Seymour Hersh described, post-debate: not only does the emperor have 
> no clothes but he hasn't been in charge for quite a while; this simply 
> calls further attention to the fact that the hands on the levers of 
> power of the U.S. government have hardly ever been transparent and when 
> people, like Ellsberg or Assange, shine light on who is REALLY calling 
> the shots we can see not only the consequences but the institutional 
> structures that buttress U.S. foreign policy, for example.
>
> What Trump and his financial backers reveal is the mordant layers of 
> 'AmericaniZed fascism' that has been rotting away the remaining vestiges 
> of democracy in the U.S.. The global implications of this once hidden 
> coup are dire and frightening. Many eloquent and courageous voices have 
> been calling our attention to this dangerous inward spiral on the 
> political horizon and the consolidation of a neo-fascist plutocracy at 
> the helm of the U.S. government. Voices labelled hysterical or extremist 
> by newspapers like the New York Times.
>
> Obama and Biden fed the American people (and global citizens) crumbs of 
> optimism while being unable to reign in the Military Industrial Complex 
> that has been central to U.S. since the end of World War Two. Sadly, 
> mainstream media (and its financial supply chain) in the U.S. has aided 
> and abetted this plutocracy. The CNN orchestrated debate (minus other 
> presidential contenders) illustrates the dried out? streams of discourse 
> that are central to any democracy.
>
> best
> allan

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