mnermal

Julian Assange's writings on conspiracy, blueprints for his work with WikiLeaks, are manifestly easy to visualize.  Imagine a closed system of upright nails connected by lengths of twine: the former are actors, the latter "links."  Once this "connected graph" is plotted, its weaknesses become apparent and the system can be severed into islands with a few strategic cuts.  The leak here serves as a tool for opening these veins, forcing an emergency autoimmune response from the system which, more often than not, consists in informational lockdown among its constituent departments.  Rather than "cutting off the head," Assange's model first divides, then conquers by means of starving the conspiracy of internal communication to the point of atrophy.

From there, Assange makes short work of declaring his model of conspiracy as the model of governance more generally.

His fidelity to this paradigm has undoubtedly won him success, and so, despite the fact that it conceives of actors and networks in enormously "discrete" ways, it no doubt has heuristic and pragmatic value.  It is a tool, and without pretensions of celestial universality.  However, it does inevitably raise questions about WikiLeaks' own governance—this controversy came to a head with the executive abdication of Assange's close friend, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, in September of last year.  The latter went on to form OpenLeaks, a WikiLeaks alternative with an expressly more transparent and decentralized infrastructure.

Assange likes to split brains from his position as chief Subject of WikiLeaks, supreme interface with the spirit of the organization, channeling this spirit into its concrete operations.  But this requires an extensive neural network of its own, and so Assange will remain, as Subject, the subject of criticisms usually leveled against "enlightened despot" types: What separates you absolutely from the systems of governance you oppose?  What guarantee of your good faith, and what guarantee that you won't descend to the corruption you decry?

Despite its effectiveness, WikiLeaks may be unable to strike at the heart of the grand agencies of Sprawl if it restricts its vision by adhering to this larval philosophy.  Sprawl agency, as I understand it, directs the behaviour of organizations characterized by an extensive bureaucracy, composed of expendable local networks in each other's absolute elsewhere—that is, with few "links" to speak of, and only thin strands tethering them to the central organizational body.  This "centrifugal" arrangement pushes all the major functions of the system to the outside, so that a strike at one can do little to compromise the integrity of the system of a whole.  The central body need not even have full knowledge of these peripheral functions, Turing machine that it is.

To his credit, Domscheit-Berg has begun to internalize some of these principles, himself severing the corpus callosum that binds the submission and publication arms of OpenLeaks.  In so doing, he is able to effectively "quarantine" these processes, to curb absolute oversight without bureaucratic "overcompensation," all the while lateralizing the many functions that make up the leaking process.  Cryptome, responding to the WikiLeaks "insurance" file release, compiled an acute list of qualities with which such an organization could thrive as an agile and nomadic beast:

7. Release in multiple batches not a single bombshell, in timed releases not all at once.

8. Release through arrangements with multiple parties who may or may not know of each other.

9. Release in multiple outlets not associated with the media, which may or may not know of each other.

10. Release to other governments and openly, none knowing about the other.

11. Release to other governments covertly, none knowing about the other.

12. Release false and padded information along with, or instead of, legitimate material, as placebos; declare this openly and keep secret certain aspects.

13. Withhold information and declare this openly.

14. Withhold information and keep this secret, with perhaps a taste hinted.

15. Do not overly focus on military intel fatuity, continue to go too far covering political, economic, religious, educational, humanitarian, NGO, personal -- other leak and secrecy two coin sides, anti-leak and anti-secrecy shills, FOIA and whistleblower sanctimones, media, advertising and their comedians, TLAs and their pensions bloat, defense and anti-war warlovers, lobbying and political lawyers NGO manipulators, ex-spies flogging spy-contracts with national security threat-mongering, venerable public heros and award-granting leeches, organized anything industries.

16. Beware lawyers with backbone plumage and strut, they are officers of the state obliged to shop you for law and order.

17. Establish several means of "insurance," some open, some secret far better than always duplicitous insurance.

18. Continue to prepare future releases under the feint of dramatic releases.

19. Release by little noticed seepage through means not easily recognized.

20. Encourage a thousand Wikileaks openly, some fake, some seemingly opposed, some sacrificial bait, then more out of sight.

21. Use the brand to mislead. Pretend to be what is most easily attackable by experienced opponents.

22. Feint, stab, feint, stab. Ever more devious in getting forbidden information out about those who are desperate to control it. Beware corrupting heirarchy, feint it.

23. Avoid the money trap, it is all dirty.

24. Pretend to trust insiders and the core, expect betrayal, that is what insiders and core are for.

mnermal: The U.S. seems, at least in the traditional juridical sense, to not be at war with Cuba. However, their protracted efforts to intervene in domestic Cuban politics, and their pervasive means of doing so (including the intentional introduction of Swine flu to the region in 1971, which resulted in the culling of over 500,000 pigs and a Cuban food crisis) might seem to resemble what is conventionally called a war of attrition. What do you think is salient in distinguishing between war and terror: the perpetrators (in this case, anti-Castro organizations in southern Florida) or the human effect?

Keith Bolender: A terrorist act is more direct violence. The idea of someone planting a bomb in a hotel or on an airplane, as opposed to the biological terrorism the United States has been accused of against Cuba, is much more insidious. It's much more indirect in that the scientists that I interviewed for this book certainly had a tremendous amount of circumstantial evidence, but there was nothing 100% that could say this is exactly what happened. But for all intensive purposes, they were convinced that these diseases were intentionally introduced into Cuba. For example, the Dengue 2 fever. There is not only scientific evidence, but there is the confession of the Cuban-American Eduardo Arocena who testified that he did introduce a number of chemical agents into Cuba, one of which was Dengue 2. It's done by the introduction of the infected mosquitos that evidence suggests were dropped over Cuba by a small plane that originated in South Florida. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans were affected by it. A number died from it. But it was the response of the Cuban government—they're still trying to control the disease. It's different than if someone has planted bombs or flown planes into buildings. The latter, the more public concept of terrorism, is much more dramatic, much more immediate, and gains much more attention, whereas biological terrorism is much more covert and more difficult to identify. I think that's the main difference. Coming back to your original thesis, the United States does technically consider itself to be at war with Cuba in the traditional sense. The legislative framework for American hostility against Cuba is based on the Trading With the Enemy Act that was passed in 1917, and was specifically designed to prohibit American business men from doing business in Germany during World War One. The act is only applied during times of war. The United States has maintained that application against Cuba through various iterations of it. Just last year, President Obama resigned the order maintaining the Trading With the Enemy Act against Cuba. So there is an actual legislative background for the more traditional concept of America being at war with Cuba, and of course the direct military action at the Bay of Pigs was as traditional a warlike action as you can have between two countries.

mnermal: I thought it would be interesting to start by finding out your definition of terror, because it is typically defined in one of two ways: in terms of its effect of sustained, continual and corrosive fear (i.e. the Hobbesian sense); or else in terms of its agents, which operate internationally without necessarily representing a state or even a defined geographical district (i.e. the pundit's sense). Why do you think oral histories are the most effective means of discovering and articulating this fear?

Keith Bolender: In this particular case, because the subject is so unknown outside of Cuba, my intention was to bring the human element to the reader who may not be familiar with it or who may have preconceived ideas about Cuba's being a terrorist state, where in actuality they've been victimized by terror most likely more than any other country in the last fifty to sixty years. I felt, for impact's sake and readability, that the testimonials from the individual Cubans would be a much more effective way of introducing the reader to the subject and the concept that terrorism does work both ways, and that this small Caribbean country has been victimized by hundreds of acts. The Cuban people are very open, very articulate, very intelligent and educated, so it was great to talk to them and get them to relay their story on a very personal level. I deliberately refused to interview Cuban officials, government or military, who have also suffered from acts of terrorism—this would have blurred the line of what actual terrorism is. My definition is that it is violence against civilians, and that's how I maintained the interviews within the context of the book. So it's simply a way to bring these stories to light, and more importantly bring the subject itself into a form that would be easier, more palatable for a reader who most likely doesn't know anything about the subject. This is particularly difficult given that the American side has conducted all these acts of terrorism for years, right in the midst of a global war against terrorism.

mnermal: Couldn't debilitating fear cloud judgments about who is responsible?

Keith Bolender: Not really. It's fairly well documented, not only from the Cuban side, but also from the American side. The majority of these acts have been conducted by Cuban-American organizations based in Florida. The last act of terrorism happened in 1997, but the immediacy of fear, the emotion, really wasn't too prominent in the testimonials. There was still a strong sense of justice, and a really strong sense of wanting to tell their story. There is an underlying sense of anxiety that more acts of terrorism could take place at any time, which is the whole purpose of terrorism in the first place. But direct, personal fear really didn't enter into the testimonial, only the sense of wanting justice to be done and this tremendous desire to have their story told. Fear has always worked for the Cuban government as far as helping to define certain national policies in international relations as a result of these acts of terrorism. The fear has been useful for government policy, as opposed to the individual human reaction to it.

mnermal: Which of your interviews affected you the most?

Keith Bolender: The one that always stays with me is the story of Ana Elba Caminero. She is a Cuban mother who lives in Havana and was one of the first who was affected by Dengue 2. At the time, she had two daughters—one six year old, Janet, and a twelve year old, Isnavis. At the time, it was the first outbreak of Dengue fever that hit in Cuba, and the Cuban doctors had no idea what they were dealing with. The mother, Ana Elba, got sick, and very shortly after her two daughters got sick with the same disease she had. Two or three days later, the younger one, Janet, died. The same day that the mother had to bury Janet, she went over to the hospital to comfort her older daughter, Isnavis, who knew her sister had just died of the same disease she had. So you can imagine the emotional impact the mother went through in trying to convince her older daughter that she wasn't going to die of the same disease her younger sister had just died of. Fortunately, the older one did recover a few days later when the Cubans were able to identify the disease. That story always stays with me because I remember her coming into the interview with a number of photos of her six year old who died. The incident happened in 1981, but she talked like it had happened yesterday, with such emotion, such impact, and it was so easy to tell how it affected her and will continue to affect her until the day she dies... There have been so many others. Nancy Pavón, who was a fifteen year old girl at the time of an attack on the village where she lived, in Boca de Samá. During the attack she had her right foot shot off, and she told the story of how she and her family struggled through the jungle for hours trying to evade the terrorists that attacked the village, and how her life has been affected. She's had fifteen to twenty operations on her leg. It's with her every day, for obvious reasons, and it will stay with her until she's no longer with us. So it's the impact of the moment that these acts of terrorism have had, but it is also the impact that has remained and how these people live with it on a day-to-day basis... So many different emotions came through in the interviews. An ironic, humorous one: during the hotel bombing campaign of 1997, one of the bombs was planted in the Hotel Comodoro. There was a teenage Cuban boy, Chang Alvarez, who was at a chess tournament at this hotel, coincidentally. He was with hundreds of other Cubans including some very close friends of his. He was waiting for his turn to play outside the hotel, in the lobby, and he came across a package. This was during a time when the Cuban government knew that there were bombs going off, and it was common knowledge in Cuba that there had been a series of explosions in Havana hotels and tourist facilities, one of which had killed an Italian-Canadian, Fabio Di Celmo. In this case, this teenage Cuban, Chang Alvarez, found this package and picked it up. It was a round, tightly wrapped package, and he started playing soccer with it with his other buddies. They got bored after a few minutes, so he took it into the corner, opened it up, and found some batteries, a watch, and some plastic material. He took it all out and examined it, then he gave it to his mother for safe keeping before he went in to play his game of chess. So his mother had it with her. They went back from the hotel to their home on a bus full of people. They left it in their house and thought nothing of it, until a couple months later. On television, there was a news report on the explosions, and he realized that what he had, what he had opened, what he had given to his mother, was a bomb… After they found out, his mother gave him proper heck for giving her a bomb! There's always a human element in these stories, tragic or not, and it's that characteristic I hoped I would capture in the book.

mnermal: As a journalist, in what ways do you think the role of the war correspondent is changing?

Keith Bolender: It certainly has changed, with the whole social media explosion of the last ten years. If you look at Egypt, for example, it's not a war zone, but it's a historical event, and the media is focusing not only on the big picture of the Egyptian government and the protesters, but the small, the day-to-day, the person-to-person. The media has been able to talk to the individuals in Egypt at considerable risk to the journalists themselves, but because of the different types of media (and some of them are credited with starting the wave of protests in the first place) the media has been able to exploit this to great effect not only to get the stories, but to get the stories out. Governments who are trying to prevent reporting are finding it more difficult as the media becomes more sophisticated with the use of these social media and the tools that are available to any journalist now, compared to five or ten years ago. In war zones, the most recent being Afghanistan and Iraq, I think they've had a tremendous part to play in getting the story out from both sides, and you're seeing different types of media, traditional media like Al Jazeera, becoming bigger players because they're able to access the Internet and social media. Not many households have them on TV, but a lot of people have been able to access them through the Internet. So things are definitely changing, not just for journalists, but for governments, for the people, and for the influence they have in times of war and social upheaval.

mnermal: Do you believe war is effective as a means of conciliation, by uniting two quarrelling states against a common enemy, such as an external terrorist organization? If so, do you think this is even a remote prospect for the U.S. and Cuba?

Keith Bolender: You'd like to think that, but in the case of Cuba and the United States the Cuban side has always maintained America's hypocrisy towards terrorism because there are terrorists, they claim, living freely in south Florida. The two masterminds of the Cubana Airlines bombing, Luiz Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, are living freely in the United States. If the United States, from a Cuban perspective, is serious about a war of terror, they should move against those who are within their reach, those who are internationally recognized as terrorists. Not so much now, but thirty or forty years ago, one man's terrorist was another man's freedom fighter. I don't think those definitions are as blurred today, particularly when George Bush Jr. came out a few years ago and said "There's no such thing as a good terrorist." The international community recognizes that if an organization moves against civilian targets in a violent way, regardless of political justification, they are terrorists and they should be dealt with consistently. I don't think conflicts between Cuba and America would ever be resolved under the topic of terrorism because the Americans have never indicated a desire to move against it. They will have to be resolved on a different political level. I don't think they'd ever come to an agreement on what are terrorists. A lot of these acts occurred thirty, forty, fifty years ago, and the two people I mentioned, Luiz Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, are both in their eighties, so the American government is hoping they'll just pass away into the night eventually, from natural causes. That may remove the conflict at a personal level. But for the two countries to get together, to unite and hopefully resolve their differences, I don't see ever happening at that level.

mnermal: I agree—that would certainly require action at a more symbolic level. I'm seeing a lot of parallels with the kind of "revisionism" that has been occurring in Israel and Palestine. Moving on: what was it like to correspond with Noam Chomsky, one of the world's most distinguished intellectuals and a prominent pacifist?

Keith Bolender: It was fascinating. I sent him an email probably eight years ago just after reading one of his books, congratulating him on his writing and his insights. He responded, which I understand he does to pretty well anyone who takes the time to email him. It was a pleasant surprise to get a personal response from him. We started corresponding about our mutual connection with Cuba. His daughter, Aviva, is very interested in Cuba and has written on Cuban matters for a number of years, so we connected at that level. I go to Boston once or twice a year, and he was gracious enough to grant me a one-on-one personal interview. I've met him on a number of occasions, probably close to ten or twelve times—just coming down, seeing him in his office and talking to him about all sorts of things. For whatever reason, he connected with what I was doing, and I certainly supported any time and opportunities he was able to give me. We kept corresponding, and I presented him with the idea of the book. He was very supportive—in fact, he was so well-respected in Cuba that he helped open some doors in Cuba for me. Cautiously I asked him if he would write a short introduction for the book, which he accepted without question. I left it at that, didn't hear from him and didn't really tell anyone, for the fact that he is so busy it was hard to know what I'd receive from him. I told him whatever he would be able to do would be greatly appreciated. Christmas Day 2009 he sent me the introduction, which was substantial and far more than I thought it would be. So I was thrilled with that, and my publishers were thrilled with that. I hope I can keep connecting with him for many years in the future. I'm going to be down in Boston sometime in May or June [2011], and hopefully I'll be able to see him again there. He's been so helpful, he's been so kind with his time, and for someone who has so many demands, the time he can afford is always appreciated.

mnermal: What's next?

(03:03:38 PM) bradass87: iono, im not so paranoid… ive seen the way the system works, and the way the public reacts, and the way the PR people react… ive never felt threatened

(03:06:10 PM) bradass87: i dont know whats wrong with me…

(03:07:01 PM) bradass87: i just… couldnt let these things stay inside of the system… and inside of my head…

(03:07:26 PM) bradass87: i recognized the value of some things…

(03:07:33 PM) bradass87: knew what they meant… dug deeper

(03:07:53 PM) bradass87: i watched that video cold, for instance

(03:10:32 PM) bradass87: at first glance… it was just a bunch of guys getting shot up by a helicopter… no big deal… about two dozen more where that came from right… but something struck me as odd with the van thing… and also the fact it was being stored in a JAG officer’s directory… so i looked into it… eventually tracked down the date, and then the exact GPS co-ord… and i was like… ok, so thats what happened… cool… then i went to the regular internet… and it was still on my mind… so i typed into goog… the date, and the location… and then i see this http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/13/world/middleeast/13iraq.html

(03:11:07 PM) bradass87: i kept that in my mind for weeks… probably a month and a half… before i forwarded it to them

(03:11:54 PM) bradass87: then there was the Finkel book

(03:12:16 PM) bradass87: im almost certain he had a copy

(03:12:16 PM) [email protected] : I’m not here right now

(03:13:31 PM) bradass87: it was unreal… i mean, i’ve identified bodies before… its rare to do so, but usually its just some nobody

(03:13:48 PM) bradass87: it humanized the whole thing… re-sensitized me

(03:15:38 PM) bradass87: i dont know… im just, weird i guess

(03:15:49 PM) bradass87: i cant separate myself from others

(03:16:12 PM) bradass87: i feel connected to everybody… like they were distant family

(03:16:24 PM) bradass87: i… care?

(03:17:27 PM) bradass87: http://www.kxol.com.au/images/pale_blue_dot.jpg

(03:18:17 PM) bradass87: i probably shouldn’t have read sagan, feynman, and so many intellectual authors last summer…

(03:21:11 PM) bradass87: >sigh

(03:22:14 PM) [email protected]: i get that

(03:22:45 PM) bradass87: get what… that connection?

(03:23:38 PM) [email protected]: yeah.

(03:24:08 PM) [email protected]: which is why i’m sad for the people i sometimes have to hurt.

(03:24:10 PM) bradass87: we’re human… and we’re killing ourselves… and no-one seems to see that… and it bothers me

(03:24:26 PM) bradass87: apathy

(03:25:28 PM) bradass87: apathy is far worse than the active participation

(03:26:23 PM) bradass87: >hug

(03:29:31 PM) bradass87: http://vimeo.com/5081720 Elie Wiesel summed it up pretty well for me… though his story is much much more important that mine

(03:29:48 PM) bradass87: *than

(03:31:33 PM) bradass87: I prefer a painful truth over any blissful fantasy.

(03:31:48 PM) bradass87: s/a/the

(03:32:05 PM) [email protected]: *hugback*

(03:34:16 PM) bradass87: :*

(03:35:44 PM) bradass87: i think ive been traumatized too much by reality, to care about consequences of shattering the fantasy

(03:36:18 PM) bradass87: im not brave, im weak

Physical judgment [...] tends to ensure its primacy over mathematical judgment, while the origin of extensity is inseparable from the origin of the objects that populate it.

—Gilles Deleuze, DR 173

In my last post, I negotiated a profound fault line between the philosophies of multiplicity represented by Badiou and Deleuze: le point versus la plan, set theory versus differential calculus, extensive versus intensive difference.  Examination of this caesura strikes me as critical for an understanding of current developments in the continental scene—I can say, tentatively (acknowledging that I have not studied them yet in depth), that these themes seem central to, for instance, DeLanda's explorations into the expressivity of space and Harman's object-oriented approach.  Some comments on these later.

What initially "clued me into" critical examination of Badiou and extension was his lumping of Foucault in with constructivism in the Leibnizian tradition (BE 288)—ostensibly confining the trajectory of his work to the "discursive universes" explored in The Archaeology of Knowledge.  I have always read Foucault's philosophical development towards an elaboration of the non-discursive as motivated by a combination of his less-than-amicable relationship with Derrida (whose mantra, "there is nothing outside the text" he decried as a move that allowed the latter to "endlessly re-say" it), and his progressively stronger identification with Nietzsche.  Indeed, Deleuze witnessed the same or similar—remember: the panopticon is not simply discourse (What is a criminal?  x is a criminal.) but also non-discourse (The prison-format, the panoptic affect).  The "two" of Badiou's one-two against constructivism (and, he believes, Foucault) is his assertion that such a view cannot abide the new—but again, Foucault's "ekstatic" later period (cf. Han-Pile) and it's focus on the Greek aesthetics of existence suggests—as Deleuze would later discern—that Foucault recognized the novelty of the Greek Fold.  The deficiency I sensed in Badiou's treatment of Foucault alerted me to what could be a loose stone at the foundation of Badiou's philosophical edifice.

Badiou's recent pontificating response to Nancy on the question of Libya also put me in a mood to strike back at an ontology that might support it's maker's cries of "Shame!"

The outset of Badiou's twenty-seventh meditation in Being and Event reveals a Kantian tendency to conceive of space as a brute given.  As stated previously, Badiou marks his departure from Aristotle's refutation of the existence of the void where Aristotle rejects as "absurd" that the pure point be void, due to the fact that one "cannot think an empty place" (BE 77).  Therein, from the void and its constituent errancy, Badiou constructs the Evental complement to Being—for the primordial existential claim, he contends, is this: a void set exists.  And while the structures are manipulable by means of the Event, the effect of structure is complete:

It must certainly be assumed that the effect of structure is complete, that what subtracts itself from the latter is nothing, and that the law does not encounter singular islands in presentation which obstruct its passage.  In all indeterminate situation there is no rebel or subtractive presentation of the pure multiple […] of what the count-as-one would have 'forgotten', of the excluded which may be positively located as a sign or real of pure multiplicity (BE 54).

This, of course, flies in the face of the ultraviolet shades of the pure multiple that pervade the Deleuzian strata—stutterings, lines of flight to disturb carefully arranged nucleotidic sequences.

With reference to the problem of the Continuum Hypothesis, Badiou claims that the abyss that separates "numerical discretion" from the geometrical continuum "is none other than that which separates ω₀, infinite denumerable domain of finite numbers, from the set of its parts p(ω₀), the sole set able to fix the quantity of points in space" (BE 281).  Here he seems to come into direct contention with the epigraph of this post, wherein Deleuze summarizes the genius of Soloman Maïmon who, in his deployment and refinement of differential calculus (with a Leibnizian interpretation), sought to overcome the Kantian duality between concept and intuition, determinable and determination, "Kantian space as a pure given" and "the concept in so far as it is thought" (DR 173).

Why do I say Badiou treats space as a pure given?  Indeed, in trying to distance himself from Kant's efforts to establish the transcendental potentiality of time and space, Badiou remarks that his treatment of multiple-presentation is irrespective of space, which he defines as "a singular construction, relative to certain kinds of presentation" (BE 265).  As far as I can see, he does not elaborate on this definition.  Which "kinds?"  And why only "certain" kinds?  [If I am here ignorant, please somebody fill me in!]  Deleuze has an answer: point and place must mutually determine each other; "both terms of the difference must equally be thought—in other words, determinability must itself be conceived as pointing towards a principle of reciprocal determination" (DR 173).  Badiou, on the other hand, treats space as distinct from the points arranged in it.

Consequently, Deleuze is much easier to reconcile with relativity—while Bergson wrote "against" Einstein in Duration and Simulteneity, Deleuze qualifies it against the heat directed against it.  Badiou, on the other hand, has an obscure notion of time as founded and animated by intervention (BE 265).  This is just speculation, but it almost seems that time-as-intervention, for Badiou, is a precondition for the cardinal structures that "organize" space.