Николай Проценко - Цифровой концлагерь киборгов экобесия

О книге Рози Брайдотти «Постчеловек»

В первой переведенной на русский язык книге итальянско-австралийского философа Рози Брайдотти предпринимается попытка сконструировать новое действующее лицо современности: автор именует его постчеловеком и на новом этапе развивает критику гуманизма того типа, что ассоциируется у нас в первую очередь с именем Мишеля Фуко. О том, насколько эта работа, опубликованная в оригинале почти десять лет назад, убедительна с точки зрения нынешнего цифрового капитализма, рассказывает Николай Проценко

https://gorky.media/reviews/tsifrovoj-kontslager-kiborgov-ekobesiya/

Natalia Savelyeva - Something to believe in: signifiers, symbols and Russia’s national ideology

Terms like ‘Great Patriotic War’ and ‘Russian world’ carry a heavy symbolic load and are imbued with meanings that adapt to serve political goals

Since the start of the war in Donbas in 2014, two logically contradictory ideas have coexisted peacefully in the minds of Russian citizens: ‘If only there were no war,’ and ‘We can repeat it!’ Both refer to the Great Patriotic War, Russia’s term for the Second World War, and the second slogan refers to the Soviet military campaign against Nazi Germany.

How does this strange double mindset work and why does it exist at all? Is it part of some strange Russian ideology, and if so, can it mobilise people in the case of real conflict? Right now we can only guess about the potential impact of this twisted worldview. But back in 2014, Russians mobilised in order to defend the ‘Russian world’, travelling to southeastern Ukraine to build a ‘New Russia’ (Novorossiya) and fight ‘the West’, in an effort to repeat the heroism of their grandparents and parents during the Second World War.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/something-to-believe-in-signifiers-symbols-and-russias-national-ideology/

Vivek Chibber - The Class Matrix: Social Theory after the Cultural Turn  

An influential sociologist revives materialist explanations of class, while accommodating the best of rival cultural theory.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, analysis of class and other basic structures of capitalism was sidelined by theorists who argued that social and economic life is reducible to culture that our choices reflect interpretations of the world around us rather than the limitations imposed by basic material facts. Today, capitalism is back on the agenda, as gross inequalities in wealth and power have pushed scholars to reopen materialist lines of inquiry. But it would be a mistake to pretend that the cultural turn never happened. Vivek Chibber instead engages cultural theory seriously, proposing a fusion of materialism and the most useful insights of its rival.

Chibber shows that it is possible to accommodate the main arguments from the cultural turn within a robust materialist framework: one can agree that the making of meaning plays an important role in social agency, while still recognizing the fundamental power of class structure and class formation. Chibber vindicates classical materialism by demonstrating that it in fact accounts for phenomena cultural theorists thought it was powerless to explain. But he also shows that aspects of class are indeed centrally affected by cultural factors. The Class Matrix does not seek to displace culture from the analysis of modern capitalism. Rather, in prose of exemplary clarity, Chibber gives culture its due alongside what Marx called “the dull compulsion of economic relations.

Закон о «приземлении». Чем грозит взятие компаний в «заложники»?

С 1 января 2021 года Роскомнадзор обязал иностранные IT-гиганты с аудиторией более полумиллиона российских пользователей:

▪️создать в РФ филиал, представительство или уполномоченное юрлицо;
▪️зарегистрировать личный кабинет на сайте Роскомнадзора;
▪️разместить на своём ресурсе электронную форму для обратной связи от российских гражданам или организаций.

Исполнять новый закон компании не торопятся, и теперь Роскомнадзор угрожает им новыми санкциями.

Собрали в карточки всю информацию о новом законе, кто обязан его исполнять и чем это грозит пользователям:

➡️ https://roskomsvoboda.org/cards/card/it-zalojniki/

Игорь Ильяш - Транзит внутри Лукашенко. Для чего властям Беларуси понадобилось менять конституцию

В Беларуси 27 февраля должен состояться референдум по изменению конституции. Александр Лукашенко продвигает принятие поправок, которые дают ему в руки мощный механизм авторитарного транзита власти. Парадокс ситуации заключается в том, что вряд ли он воспользуется этим механизмом в обозримом будущем.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/ru/zachem-lukashenko-menyaet-konstitutsiu-na-referendume/

András Sajó - Ruling by Cheating: Governance in Illiberal Democracy  

There is widespread agreement that democracy today faces unprecedented challenges. Populism has pushed governments in new and surprising constitutional directions. Analysing the constitutional system of illiberal democracies (from Venezuela to Poland) and illiberal phenomena in 'mature democracies' that are justified in the name of 'the will of the people', this book explains that this drift to mild despotism is not authoritarianism, but an abuse of constitutionalism. Illiberal governments claim that they are as democratic and constitutional as any other. They also claim that they are more popular and therefore more genuine because their rule is based on conservative, plebeian and 'patriotic' constitutional and rule of law values rather than the values liberals espouse. However, this book shows that these claims are deeply deceptive - an abuse of constitutionalism and the rule of law, not a different conception of these ideas.

Джонатан Крэри - 24/7. Поздний капитализм и цели сна

В Издательском доме Высшей школы экономики вышла книга Джонатана Крэри, в которой автор исследует некоторые из разрушительных последствий непрерывных и расширяющихся процессов, характерных для капитализма XXI века, когда рынок непрестанно работает в режиме 24/7, подталкивая нас к постоянной активности и подтачивая многие формы общественного и политического самовыражения. Автор прослеживает, как неостановимое не-время размывает границы между вездесущим и безудержным потребительством и складывающимися сегодня стратегиями контроля и надзора. Мы публикуем небольшой фрагмент из второй главы книги.

https://syg.ma/@sygma/dzhonatan-kreri-24-sliesh-7-pozdnii-kapitalizm-i-tsieli-sna

Получится ли у Бердымухамедова создать династию, как у Кимов в КНДР?

Президент Туркменистана Гурбангулы Бердымухамедов объявил, что оставляет свой пост. Новым президентом, скорее всего, станет его сын Сердар Бердымухамедов. Куда движется туркменский режим? Говорим с журналистом Русланом Мятиевым.

00:38 О чем этот выпуск
06:06 Обстановка в Туркменистане
08:52 Как правил Гурбангулы Бердымухамедов
13:00 Как Бердымухамедов создает правящую династию
14:27 Почему транзит начался именно сейчас
18:30 Каким президентом будет Сердар Бердымухамедов
23:36 Как Туркменистан утаивает важные данные о своем населении
26:39 Внешняя политика Туркменистана

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MnhHXER84Aw

Sam Russell - I Saw Democracy Murdered: The Memoir of Sam Russell, Journalist  

I Saw Democracy Murdered is the memoir of Sam Russell (1915-2010), a communist journalist and a British volunteer with the anti-fascist Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War.

The book covers his experiences during the Spanish Civil War, his time as a journalist at The Daily Worker and The Morning Star newspapers, and his later disillusionment with Stalinism. In his capacity as a journalist, Russell travelled extensively and was frequently a front-row spectator at significant historical events, from the formerly occupied Channel Islands at the end of World War II to the show trials of communists in Eastern Europe in the 1950s. His report as Moscow correspondent on Nikita Khruschev's 'secret speech' condemning the crimes of Stalinism was lacerated by his newspaper's editor, as was his interview with the legendary revolutionary leader, Che Guevara. Sam, whose friends included Donald Maclean, the British diplomat who spied for the Soviet Union during the Cold War, also reported from Budapest in 1956 and Prague in 1968 during the Warsaw Pact invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and from North Vietnam during the Vietnam War, and in 1973 he witnessed the assault on Chilean President Salvador Allende's palace that signalled the start of the CIA-backed military coup. Sam's story was told to Colin Chambers and Chris Myant and has been edited by Colin Chambers.

Michael J. Boskin - Biden's Misery Index

Historically, the Misery Index the sum of the unemployment and inflation rates has offered a sound benchmark for assessing an incumbent party's electoral prospects. While it isn't perfect, recent polling also suggests that the US Democrats have little reason for optimism about November's midterm congressional elections.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/biden-misery-index-inflation-and-other-factors-by-michael-boskin-2022-02

Ian Moll - The Fourth Industrial Revolution: A New Ideology

The hegemonic construal of the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ portrays rapid technological developments as a bold, new industrial revolution. Since there is sparse evidence of any such revolution across the totality of social, political, cultural and economic institutions, locally and globally, the focus must turn to how this ideological frame functions to further the interests of social and economic elites worldwide. This article examines the way that Klaus Schwab, as the principal intellectual of the World Economic Forum and the interests it represents, has formulated and disseminated this ideology. The article argues that the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ frame bolsters the contingent neoliberalism of the post-Washington consensus period, and therefore serves to obscure the continuing decline of the globalised world order with a ‘brave new world’ narrative.

https://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/download/1297/1460

John Arquilla - Bitskrieg: The New Challenge of Cyberwarfare  

New technologies are changing how we protect our citizens and wage our wars. Among militaries, everything taken for granted about the ability to maneuver and fight is now undermined by vulnerability to “weapons of mass disruption”: cutting-edge computer worms, viruses, and invasive robot networks. At home, billions of household appliances and other “smart” items that form the Internet of Things risk being overtaken, then added to the ranks of massive, malicious “zombie” armies. The age of Bitskrieg is here, bringing vexing threats that range from the business sector to the battlefield. In this new book, world-renowned cyber security expert John Arquilla looks unflinchingly at the challenges posed by cyberwarfare which he argues have neither been met nor mastered. He offers fresh solutions for protecting against enemies that are often anonymous, unpredictable and capable of projecting force and influence vastly disproportionate to their size, strength or wealth. The changes called for require radical rethinking of military and security affairs, diplomacy, even the routines of our daily lives.