[-empyre-] Powerlessness

[PierMartonGmail]

Thank you Alan,
It looks like Ernst Friedrich inspired some work, just as he did many years ago when I produced Information Missing where, within a triptych, I placed this equal sign with the words "War is allowed to exist every time some vital information is withdrawn. The skills required to create such a vacuum are present in most advertisement and popular media."
http://piermarton.info/information-missing-a-triptych-by-pier-marton/
I am not enough of a math person to hang onto the formulas your present but I am sure others are.

BUT we are off the topic of powerlessness - which may not interest anyone?!!
There was an article today about Artificial Intelligence in Missiles - http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/12/science/weapons-directed-by-robots-not-humans-raise-ethical-questions.html - which reminds me of this graffiti picture I took this summer in Bolivia:
http://piermarton.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/HombreSiMismo.jpg El hombre a apprendido a dominar la naturaleza antes qu’a si mismo!! English translation: Man has learned to dominate nature before learning how to master himself.-  En Français: L’homme a appris à dominer la nature avant de savoir se maitriser.
Reminds me of what I said in a BOMB magazine (what a title for a magazine!): 
"We’re devising fancier and fancier ways of killing, but I don’t think we are devising fancier ways of not killing.”

We seem to make very stupid uses of the word “intelligence.”
A+ (as we say in French - meaning “to be continued” or à plus tard).
Pier

> On Nov 11, 2014, at 7:05 PM, Alan Sondheim <sondheim at panix.com> wrote:
> 
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> 
> 
> 
> Hi Pier, I've used the book you referred to, War Against War in English, on Facebook at one point, choosing for my self-portrait, one of the wounded; I wanted to slow down the fast-forward Facebook ethos, where one image, violent and kitten and otherwise, replaces another, to make one slow up, stop, and face the reality of war in this other context. I can't find the original screen grab, it was a long time ago, Krieg dem Krieg; when I look, I find a 'face.txt' I must have assembled, relevant but stumbling as a work of writing, http://www.alansondheim.org/face.txt , which seem now with so many references, now even Wikipedia. The images, always of course within a form or capsule of delivery, are necessary, reminders, and what happens if they are turned upon themselves, become catalysts towards further atrocities. What do people think, now, those for example who continue to join ISIS, is there an attraction to the fractured body or is it a case only of political action, religious action?
> 
> When I was thinking about the topic for this month, I wrote originally, in the form of equations -
> 
> [Fragments below]
> 
> ISIS: Logic of Universal Terror
> 
> [for all]X{not X --> 0}
> Therefore not X is taken to 0 (null set)
> Therefore not X is always already processed to 0
> Therefore not X is equivalent to 0
> Therefore not x is identical to 0
> Therefore X --> V (universal set)
> Therefore X is always already processed to V
> Therefore X is equivalent to V
> Therefore X is identical to V
> 
> I apologize for bringing my own work in this, in this fashion, but perhaps it resonates with some of the discussion here. I'd write more, but I'm in a hotel and the connection is again terrible, what I type seems almost taken from me by lag, I can't follow or contribute more to my own train of thought, much less to others.
> 
> - Alan
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

My e-mail signature this month of November (during my direct involvement with -empyre) will have a growing list of works that I found to be powerful - but I do question what “power” means.
"Chechen Lullaby" - Directed by Nino Kirtadze —> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEmqHZAn8lQ (also on my website)
“Is Anyone Taking Any Notice?” by Don McCullin —> http://piermarton.info/don-mccullin/
"War Against War/Krieg dem Kriege/Guerre à la Guerre! War against War! Oorlog aan den Oorlog" by Ernst Friedrich (recent intro by Doug Kellner) - Various editions. Last one published in Sept. 2014 (available online).
"At the Mind’s Limit" by Jean Améry
“Shoah” -  Directed by Claude Lanzmann
And this quote: “. . . only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation be safely built.” - Bertrand Russell, 1923
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PM_uoʇɹɐɯ_ɹǝıd —> http://piermarton.info
School Of No  Media —> http://schoolofnomedia.com/
About —> http://about.me/piermarton 
BrainBleed—> http://brainbleed.wordpress.com/
_____________________________
One of the signs of passing youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as we take our place among them. Virginia Woolf
The essence of normalcy is the refusal of reality. Ernst Becker
When something seems "the most obvious thing in the world," it means that any attempt to understand the world has been given up. Bertolt Brecht
An idea becomes false the moment one becomes satisfied by it. Alain
There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous. Hannah Arendt
When around you, you hear the word "Jew" pronounced, be on guard, they are speaking about you. Frantz Fanon
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet renounce controversy are people who want crops without ploughing the ground. Frederick Douglass
Silence is the authentic mode of speaking. Claude Lanzmann