Deadly Nexus: Australia in the mix. Add ISIS for dissonance

The Sydney chocolate shop siege of December 15, 2014, garnered non-stop media coverage in many parts of the world. Indeed, the media (Internet) gave a hyper-local event global intensity, connecting local action to dispersed audiences who watched events unfold wherever they were.

The live action could be watched on television, confirming what Australians have long desired - to be part of the first world. In this case, the media provided real time updates on all media sources (I cannot comment on European or South American or African Middle East or Asian ones), heralding that first world aspiration that Australians most desire.

In that context, it shares and bares its soul in synchronicity with the imperial powers. This is the cost of partnering with global power. It could be said. "It was ever thus."

One conclusion that follows from this kind of critical analysis, is the perverse fact that once a nation partners with great powers, its people suffer accordingly. The cost of freedom in a liberal democracy is a seamless association with the aggrandizement of the great powers and their self-inflicted woes. Sadly, when a nation lacks independence, marrying itself to the biggest-greatest power of the moment - the US and before 1945 the UK - the relations falls into place, as do the miseries.

There's hardly a skerrick of independent action to be seen in this sorry history of compliance.

Two exceptions stand out in recent memory:  Kevin Rudd was outspoken as opposition Foreign Affairs minister against the US invasion of Iraq, suggesting that it was "illegal and unlawful," thereby siding with the United Nations position. UN position  (Disclosure - Rudd is an old friend of mine). In recent history, after he became Prime Minister in 2007, (in and out, he completed the role in 2013) he almost looked like a giant when viewed against the tawdry history of Australian compliance with the great powers. It will be fascinating to see how he balances his affection for the US in his new role as President of the Asia Council.announcement

The other exception to this minimalist Australian independence, appears with another Australian Labor Party Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, who won an election in 1972, promising to bring the troops home from Vietnam. He also was prepared to reveal what was happening at Pine Gap, the CIA listening post in Central Australia. His dismissal in 1975, is considered to have been orchestrated by "the agency."

Against these brief exceptions in recent Australian history, the compliance, the cupidity and the willful absence of independent orientation by Australia can be seen as a lazy mirror of great power interests. Conservative governments in Australia, like the current one led by Tony Abbott, are deeply committed to the US "Pivot to Asia," even while the real story - China - is in their regional backyard. Apparently it is better to side with a diminishing great power like the USA than an emerging peaceful power like China. It is better to be associated with the trouble maker than the rising star...

The absence of independence in the Australian polity is palpable. It should be resisted. The loss of a national culture to a dominant and dominating set of values is a loss for civilization. As the options for independent thought and practice are narrowed to align with the great powers, the possibility for ideas that sustain human diversity and national and regional problem solving are reduced. We argue about losing ancient tribes in the Amazon or outback Australia, because we value diversity. Surely we should say the same thing about national cultures generally?

Culture is a major part of this synchronous similarity. From 2007-2011, I managed groups of American undergraduates for month long study tours to Australia. Astute students would comment on the surfeit of American television and media. Why so much American TV? And, "Australians know a lot about American politics." So far from home, yet so familiar.

There were some students who loved not missing an episode of their favorite television show, just like back home.

My strategy was to take the students on a five day desert safari to Central Australia, where the media system was minimal, and phones did not work. In Alice Springs we visited Imparja and the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA) and learned about slow media - Aboriginal communication that connects to a 40,000+ years old culture. We watched Australian Rules football on local television together, enjoying indigeneity in the national sport and often in the faces of many Aboriginal players.

Against the local is the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement that gave the US power to send volumes of media down the digital pipeline with the Intellectual Property guarantees in place. digital determinism  Australia accepted most of the conditions and the creative industries in the US loved them for it.

Poor fellow my former country!

Readers may well ask how these comments relate to ISIS fundamentalism in this Uprising blog. Rightly so.

The chocolate shop siege is the manifestation of the Australian fixation on cultural synchronicity. By that I mean, the persistent Australian commitment to imperial power generates a direct connection to the world through two means: the media and material events. Geographically so far removed, yet feeling and experiencing the action.

There is new form of dissonance: cognitive dissonance combined with emotional dissonance. Australians know less but experience more.

Where the US commitment to the pursuit of happiness is played out in the media Australians enjoy that pleasure too. After all, consumer capitalism is an easy sell. The pleasure is there to be had by turning on the television / Internet. No one needs to know anything except the convenience of the advertising-media-consumption nexus. The US media's packaged emotion avoids critical and rational evaluations of pleasure. It is pleasure for its own sake. Both knowledge and pleasure are out of alignment with the national project of life made in an independent state. Thus the dissonance.

Meanwhile, knowledge is generated far away from Australia and delivered pre-packaged through the media network. The cultural nuances of American life are becoming unknown, while the consciousness of national uniqueness is fading. Emotion in lived experience (culture) is imagined on the streets of Los Angeles or New York, not the streets of Melbourne or Sydney, or an outback Australian town. Anything of value is increasingly evaluated through the lens of how American would appreciate it.

Unfortunately, Australians lack the knowingness that results from living in the US. When the musician and performance artist Laurie Anderson referred to the US as the "land of the brave," Australians, for the most part, had no idea what she was singing about. (Frankly back in the 1980s when the song was released, neither did I).

Australians try desperately to "get" the world. Their diminished independent national political life means that increasingly they live in a liminal state - in between. They imagine themselves and their daydreams in the USA. The chocolate shop event confirms this positioning. They are in Sydney, yet connected to ISIS, to terror, to the provocations of the imperial power.






   

ISIS expands its negative social movement - global internet rolls on

News that ISIS has a new base in Derna, Libya, extends the thesis that this movement is dynamic and dedicated to making material and geographical gains. It will continue to swarm, and the so-called "franchisees" - groups outside the Caliphate in Iraq and Syria - will flourish. They have an unsteady connection to the core ideological apparatus through the Internet.
ISIS in Derna

According to The Guardian, the US military is making public its concerns abut the expansion:

This week, the Pentagon went public with its concerns, when the commander of the US army’sAfrica Command told reporters that Isis – also known as Isil – is now running training camps in Libya, where as many as 200 fighters are receiving instruction.

This comment indicates an appreciation that ISIS is capable of expanding and making substantial claims on lands it believes should be either connected to the Caliphate, or centers of Sharia law. How to respond to the fundamentalism that informs this negative social movement is the question.

As the Caliphate movement expands the scenarios do not improve for peace and cohabitation. Rather, they degenerate. They get to be worst case scenarios as they connect and reinforce each other. Very little of the intellectual and conceptual superstructure and language from contemporary secular Internet Studies, Political Science and Sociology is helpful in the face of the virtual organization of fundamentalism.  

Take for example, commentary by Professor Peter Newman a security studies academic at King's College London. It indicates how far removed from reality western experts are in their analysis.

"It will be a challenge for Isis to show they can rule. That’s the downside of running a state: with power comes responsibility,” said Newman. Newman comment

This comment indicates how far off beam, western liberal commentary is about Caliphate claims to form government in towns and regions in the Middle East. The western liberal analyst looks for power and responsibility, as if Voltaire's Enlightenment principles can be applied in the Caliphate, like so much western secularism.

In contrast, the resistance fighter, the history maker, the religious fundamentalist, in seeking to make a new moral order, is happy to overthrow such banalities.    (As indeed was Voltaire.)

Digital warfare, Hagel, and ISIS. Against mercurial malignancy.

At the risk of making an ill-conceived claim, the resignation of the US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel on 24 November is one in what will be a long line of fails for the US in its war against ISIS. No defense administrator, or any "real world" bureaucrat for that matter, can manage a traditional military and its institutions against the swarming intensity of ISIS. 

More distressingly, the massive militarization of the first world liberal west cannot contain the virtual beast that feeds ISIS. (More of the militarization boondoggle later).      

The clue to the mercurial malignancy of ISIS and the inability of the world's hegemon to know how to react, was buried in comments from the Press Conference about Hagel's departure. Here is the comment that caught my eye from the White House press secretary, Josh Earnest.

“The priorities of the department, or at least of the new secretary, have changed given
changes in the international community”...  “It doesn’t mean that Secretary Hagel hasn’t done an excellent job of managing these crises as they have cropped up but it does mean that as we consider the remaining two years of the president’s time in office that another secretary might be better suited to meet those challenges.” (Italics added) report - source

"Cropping up" happens because the ISIS organization practices an as-yet-unknown-disorder to which the hegemon can only respond with certain force. This is the true swarm. Its emergence should be a lesson in stark reality, a head-on fail of the often vacuous outputs of researchers who have championed the Internet as an uncontrolled communication device. Unregulated is where this got us.

To all the libertarians, where are you now?

In the ISIS context, the net has failed because it has facilitated a system of anti-liberal, unprogressive, regressive political action.

At a talk to colleagues at Boston College's Media Research and Action Project, I referred to this as a negative social movement. 

Another negative social movement could include the hyper-mobilized US military-industrial complex, which is sucking much needed capital and expertise out of society and democratic social programs, in favor of more traditional military hardware and management. (More work needs to be done on the negative social movement concept).

The wonderful, bold and truthful Andrew Bacevich wrote this week that KBR, the Halliburton offshoot had won contracts for its action in Iraq between 2003-2011 worth $39.5 billion. Bacevich blog Private warfare marks the realization of President Eisenhower's warning about the military-industrial complex. Eisenhower final speech (From 7'45" to hear the critique of the emerging complex and its threat to the US way of democracy. The entire speech is worth a listen.) 

Nothing in the "traditional" configuration of the military-industrial complex is capable of addressing the Internet+ISIS.

What we don't need is a new Secretary for Defense. What we need is a new way of thinking. Without it the fails will become a mountain of despair.
 

Public criticism of Rupert Murdoch in Australia by Clive Palmer

Outside Australia, few people know of the Palmer United Party (PUP and its leader Clive Palmer. He is a new politician who formed his party after deciding that the conservative parties in Australia - of which he had been a life-long member - were either corrupt, inept, misguided, or all three.

This week, Clive Palmer unwound some of his feelings about Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation in a news conference. The video, released by The Guardian shines a powerful light on News. Clive Palmer on Rupert Murdoch

The video also offers some instruction on how Australian journalism works - against the etiquette of journalists elsewhere - with one (maybe two) journalists asking question after question, interrupting Palmer and making accusations in the form of questions. Palmer accuses them of being News Corporation stooges. Call it the robust Australian journalistic style, barely controlled and just like Australian Rules football.

Palmer pushes back and in doing so makes deep criticism of News - especially in Australia. For these views to be public are unique. For those of us in media studies in the critical community, Palmer's criticism is welcome.

Background:  Palmer is a House of Representatives member from Queensland. Sometimes referred to as "The Deep North," for the way its politics mirror some US politics from "The Deep South." Palmer seems a curious mixture of populist appeal with hyper-democratic instincts. For example, after 14,000 public servants were made redundant by the conservative Queensland State Government a couple of years ago, Palmer set up a fund to help support those who could not find work.

The "workforce reduction" in Queensland by his former colleagues in the conservative movement, was the point at which Palmer left the party and formed his own... a course of action open only to people like Palmer, who are self-made mining magnates with money to spend on pet projects.

It is easy to forget that the Australian Labor Party started in Longreach, Queensland. It began as the result of a strike by sheep shearers in 19890 who formed the Trade Union Movement. It seems that Palmer is tapping into the traditions of organized blue collar worker sentiment. Unlike other conservatives who use social issues to attract blue collar voters, Palmer has a broad approach to working people, including concern about their economic welfare. He seems very Australian, as the video indicates, with his comments about Rupert Murdoch being American yet running his Australian newspapers.

   

Pakistan takes a stand on drones

Recent articles in Foreign Policy Magazine's South Asia Daily have included a stream of reports on the regular use of drones in Pakistan and nearby areas of Afghanistan. 

There are many people like me who oppose the current preferred method of US justice through the summary execution of extremists made possible by drones. My article "Killing the Thing You Love: Predator Drones, Wilful Neglect and the End of the Internet," attempted to present the opposition case. Predator Drones  

The US Government has got itself into a difficult corner with its "defense of the homeland" argument: kill the extremists without a warning or a trial in their own nations before they do harm in the US. 

The number of drone attacks is chilling, suggesting the continued wilful neglect of international law on the part of the US, as it secretly kills in our name (not mine!). The New America Foundation has an excellent resource on the Pakistan situation. New America Foundation Nothing good can result from these actions where militants are executed, while members of their families, children and the innocent ("collateral damage") and killed by the US military. 

On its face these actions do not make sense. In terms of an argument about justice, the use of drones is unsustainable. It is certainly not ethical. 

It is not the first time that the following question has been asked - what happens to the "rules of war" when new technology arrives? (The splitting of the atom and the quick mobilization of the Bomb, is the clearest case of technology leading, leaving behind the morality, law and ethics that needed to be incorporated into any discussion of the use of the new technology.)

The comments from Pakistani officials make clear that the rules applying to the new technology of drones are far from established. 

For readers interested in regulation, the reference to PERMA (a Pakistan electronic media institution) offers a gateway into how non-US nations are seeking to address and manage Internet and technology applications in the current war. 

Pakistan calls for international drone norms South Asia Daily

Amb. Zamir Akram, Pakistan's delegate to the United Nations General Assembly First Committee, called for greater adherence to and development of international norms regarding the use of armed drones, according to reports on Friday (ET, Dawn). Akram stated: "Technology must follow the law and not the other way around." Speaking about the risk from the development of autonomous weapons, Akram said: "[they] pose a fundamental challenge to the protection of civilians and the notion of affixation of responsibility and transparency." Akram also emphasized the threat to sovereignty, arguing: "The ambition for world domination and hegemony has undermined accommodation and engagement as the basis of a rules-based cooperative multi-polar world; absolute security for one state or a group of states cannot come at the cost of diminished security for others."
Domestically, the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra) called the use of drone cameras illegal and a threat to privacy and security (ET). A senior Pemra official stated: "The drone-cameras used by TV channels are illegal and against the rules set by Pemra. Channel owners have to get advance permission from the interior and defence ministries for using such technology." According to Pakistani law, Pemra has the authority to regulate the use of drone technologies.

"The Internet or Fundamentalism – Inverted Communication"

The challenge of the Islamic fundamentalist movement in Syria, Iraq and nations nearby requires careful reflection. War is not the answer... I am not the first one to say so.

Here is a link to my article on the Knowledge, Technology and Society site.

The Caliphate and Digital Technology

How newspapers wither - News Corp in Australia, in two parts

On August 20  Crikey an independent on-line news source based in Melbourne, Australia released a confidential set of financial figures about News Corporation newspapers in Australia. News financial report The performance indicates a consistently steady reduction in the sales of the group, prompting layoffs. Surely in the future, some of these publications will have little value at all to Murdoch, except to keep up the political pressure in states and regions where he has an ongoing interest that he wants to protect and support.

In several regions and cities of Australia - Brisbane, Gold Coast, Darwin, Adelaide - News is the only paper publication, where Fox News has a presence on cable. The News argument has been that this is not a problem to have a monopoly on news because there is always the Internet as an alternative. That's like saying, "We have run out of water, but it's OK because you can drink your urine." (OK, so that's not the finest analogy).

Given a couple of years, loss leaders like many of the News organs may not be sustained.  

On a closer examination, the performance of the suburban newspapers is strong,  as is Melbourne's Herald Sun newspaper. I once worked in both these organizations for News.

The confidential financial report is valuable for researchers and their students, as well as critics of News. It can throw light on the internal operations of the organization as the print media (non Fox) side of the business moves into sunset territory.

The second part of this story is also remarkable. Crikey reported the following:

Crikey owner Private Media and News Corp have reached a legal agreement that prevents Crikey from hosting or further distributing the News Corporation Australia Weekly Operating Statement for the week ended June 30, 2013.

As part of the agreement, Private Media has promised to destroy by 5pm today any hard and electronic copies in its possession.

I beg you pardon!? Crikey caves

Good journalism relies on public interest aspects of everyday life being exposed. Exciting secrets being revealed make journalism the fifth estate. Is Crikey a case study of great journalism turning to jelly?