The real menace of our Republic is the invisible government, which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states and nation.
John Hylan, "On the Shadow Government,” 1922
Before Assange’s continued confinement in the UK, or more precisely, in the one piece of UK territory that’s Ecuadorian, WikiLeaks surfed the grid of nation-states in a manner similar to OMA/Rem Koolhaas surfing the waves of globalization. In Koolhaas’ case, this was about public-private capital offering endless inroads into scripting cities, fashions, buildings, regions, polities, perceptions and behaviors. In WikiLeaks’ case, this was about using the infrastructure of a globalized internet to disrupt state control, an idea that wasn’t itself new at all, but was never before put to such directly political use.
Daniel Van der Velden and Vinca Kruk of Metahaven, “On Transparency and Propaganda,” 2017
#daniel van der velden#quote#vinca kruk#metahaven#julian assange#exile#equador#united kingdom#wikileaks#rem koolhaas#theory#globalization#oma#architecture#city#urbanism#infrastructure#internet#information#nation#nation-state#state#government#politics#political#behavior#perception#region#control#idea
No country has every profited from protracted warfare. Those who do not thoroughly comprehend the dangers inherent in employing the army are incapable of truly knowing the potential advantages of military actions.
Sun Tzu, The Art of War, c. 450 BCE
Since war has become a kind of stalemate in which no army can gain the upper hand, the armies stymied, constantly threatening each other, but unable to strike a decisive blow. There is no future: no combat but starvation. Not wholesale killing but the bankruptcy of nations and the ruin of the social fabric.
M.I.S. Bloch in Paul Virilio, Bunker Archaeology, 1975
With the new possibilities of not only horizontal but vertical destruction and invasion, a metamorphosis in the game of war took place once again. The ramparts that, in preceding centuries, moved from the limits of the city to the limits of the nation-state moved once again to the limits of emergent land.
Paul Virilio, Bunker Archaeology, 1975
The Fuhrer's conception of frontiers was purely historical, without geographic references to continental limits or relief. For him, people's borders were always incomplete; the division of the Earth was the momentary result of combat, of a becoming that was never definitive but that, on the contrary, could and must develop heedless of the elementary realities of the world.
Paul Virilio, Bunker Archaeology, 1975
The story of the Great Southwest Industrial Park is merely the first step in what we can now describe as the comprehensive assimilation of the cultural sphere into private concerns. Particularly disappointing about the trajectory of the Atlanta Gateway is that it was built in a city that continues to seek wider recognition and support for forward-thinking visual arts on a national scale; rather than celebrating commissions from Donald Judd or Sol Lewitt, however, postcards from Atlanta showcase the commercial structures of the CNN Building or the World of Coca-Cola.
Chris Fite-Wassilak, “Dead Ends: The Atlanta Gateway Park,” 2015
Hiking is something people usually do in the woods. I enjoy hiking the wilderness of our great nation as much as anyone, I suppose, but there's an appeal to urban hiking I think is systematically overlooked. It's been said that the Civil War was transformative for the United States not least because it was an opportunity for millions of people — soldiers, mainly — to traipse across it and to get a first-hand idea of what it was they collectively possessed. It’s for the same reason I believe everyone should take long walks through American cities.
Gaul united,
Forming a single nation
Animated by a common spirit,
Can defy the Universe.
Julius Caesar, "Inscription on the Monument to Vercingetorix," Alesia, France, c. 50 BCE
Not without cause do the Indians worship Shiva, the God of destruction. Filled with the joy of destruction, wars clear the air like thunderstorms, they steel the nerves and restore the heroic virtues, upon which states were originally founded, in place of indolence, double dealing and cowardice.
Jacob Burckhardt, "On Creative Destruction in Hinduism," c. 1880 (via reinart)
State-sponsored memory of a national past aims to affirm the righteousness of a nation's birth, even its divine election. The matrix of a nation's monuments traditionally emplots the story of ennobling events, of triumphs over barbarism, and recalls the martyrdom of those who gave their lives in the struggle for national existence - who, in the martyrological refrain, died so that a country might live.
While the victors of history have long erected monuments to remember their triumphs, and victims have built memorials to recall their martyrdom, only rarely does a nation call on itself to remember the victims of the crimes it perpetrated. Where are all the national monuments to the genocide of American Indians, to the millions of Africans enslaved and murdered, to the kulaks and the peasants starved to death by the millions?
Map of the Trails of Tears, 1831-8
Just as in the building of the Tower of Babel, when their speech was confounded and mutual understanding made impossible, the nations severed from each other, each one to go its separate way: so, when all national solidarity had split into a thousand egoistic particularities, did the separate arts depart from the proud and heaven-soaring building of Drama, which had lost the inspiring soul of mutual understanding.
If I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of taking a kind of general and panoramic view of the whole of human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, “Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?” I would take my mental flight by Egypt and I would watch God’s children in their magnificent trek from the dark dungeons of Egypt through, or rather across the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward the promised land. And in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn’t stop there.
I would move on by Greece and take my mind to Mount Olympus. And I would see Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Euripides and Aristophanes assembled around the Parthenon. And I would watch them around the Parthenon as they discussed the great and eternal issues of reality. But I wouldn’t stop there.
I would go on, even to the great heyday of the Roman Empire. And I would see developments around there, through various emperors and leaders. But I wouldn’t stop there.
I would even come up to the day of the Renaissance, and get a quick picture of all that the Renaissance did for the cultural and aesthetic life of man. But I wouldn’t stop there.
I would even go by the way that the man for whom I am named had his habitat. And I would watch Martin Luther as he tacked his ninety-five theses on the door at the church of Wittenberg. But I wouldn’t stop there.
I would come on up even to 1863, and watch a vacillating President by the name of Abraham Lincoln finally come to the conclusion that he had to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. But I wouldn’t stop there.
I would even come up to the early thirties, and see a man grappling with the problems of the bankruptcy of his nation. And come with an eloquent cry that we have nothing to fear but “fear itself.” But I wouldn’t stop there.
Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty, and say, “If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the 20th century, I will be happy.”
Now that’s a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around. That’s a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding.
Martin Luther King, Jr., I've Been to the Mountaintop Speech at Mason Temple, Memphis, TN, 1968 (via rhetoric)
Lo! where the Giant on the mountain stands,
His blood-red tresses deep'ning in the sun,
With death-shot glowing in his fiery hands,
And eye that scorcheth all it glares upon;
Restless it rolls, now fixed, and now anon
Flashing a far,—and at his iron feet
Destruction cowers to mark what deeds are done.
For on this morn three potent nations meet,
To shed before his shrine the blood he deems most sweet.
Lord Byron, Childe Harold, 1812-8