{"id":5787,"date":"2013-07-22T00:00:34","date_gmt":"2013-07-22T04:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/home\/?p=5787"},"modified":"2013-07-22T16:32:12","modified_gmt":"2013-07-22T20:32:12","slug":"1984-0-the-rise-of-the-big-other-as-big-brother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/1984-0-the-rise-of-the-big-other-as-big-brother\/","title":{"rendered":"1984.0: The Rise of the big Other as Big Brother"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"1984_585x585\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Remember some years back, when the lid was blown regarding the US\u2019 use of torture to gather information from \u201cterrorists\u201d? Many were, rightly so, shocked and dismayed; people from virtually all over the world chided the US for its disgraceful disregard for ethical standards. The ACLU condemned the behavior, journalists from all walks of political life expressed their criticism, and so on and so forth. For a while, America\u2019s use of torture, or rather, \u201cenhanced interrogation techniques,\u201d was met with heated vitriol, brought into the public arena for passionate debate. But something strange resulted from all of that: talking about it publicly, in a way, normalized it, and lowered our ethical standards. Today, the topic of torture for interrogation purposes is disapprovingly met with a subdued: \u201cWell\u2026that\u2019s what America does.\u201d And that\u2019s my concern with the recent surveillance scandal; that, in a sort of nefariously though \u201cunwittingly tactful\u201d way, by blowing this scandal wide open and bringing it into public discourse, sooner than later, spying on innocent civilians is just \u201cwhat America does.\u201d<\/p>\n

That said I wasn\u2019t surprised in the least when I read Glenn Greenwald\u2019s piece for The Guardian<\/i>, that Verizon is obediently handing over its customer phone records to the National Security Agency (NSA) in compliance with government orders. Nor was I surprised to hear that a myriad of other private companies\u2014Google, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo!, AT&T, Sprint, Facebook, etc.\u2014has given in to the same peer pressure. After all, today\u2019s overzealous trend of domestic communications dragnets is, in part, merely the logical though odious result of things like the USA PATRIOT ACT, the Protect America Act, the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act), and their obnoxious ilk, something that, if you\u2019re like me, was anticipated since the first phase of the War on Terror. But when I heard that Verizon\u2019s stock rose more than 3 percent on Thursday 6 June, my immediate reaction was: \u201cMy god, you gotta be kidding me\u2026this is absurd.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps, then, the normalization of domestic spying is already underway.<\/p>\n

Virtually the entire nation is under surveillance. Phone records, emails, documents, photographs, connection logs, audio and video chats and more, are being handed over, without reluctance, to the NSA, the data scraped and archived. Why? So that this information can be accessed at any time, for reasons not entirely clear. OK, ostensibly it\u2019s a safeguard against terrorism. But these days everybody and their political representative appear to have their own respective fetishes for what qualifies as an act of \u201cterrorism\u201d\u2026 and so the gamut of reasons behind this surveillance monstrosity, at least those that have been disclosed to the public, ends up serving to maintain its ambiguous, secretive impression.<\/p>\n

In any event, now that the cat\u2019s out of the bag, it seems most people aren\u2019t too<\/i> outraged over this domestic spying business\u2014to wit: Verizon\u2019s stock is going up<\/i> despite their complicit role in all this (people are continuing to buy their products and services). And many of those who do appear to be bothered nonetheless launch their invectives in the form of pithy cynical quips posted from their Facebook and\/or Twitter accounts\u2014their incessant lamentation is, by these lights, feeding the very source of their lamentation.<\/p>\n

The German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel coined a term for such individuals\u2014\u201cBeautiful Soul\u201d: that specific \u201cI-told-you-so!\u201d individual who, by incessantly complaining about this whole debacle is actually contributing, in a way, to the preservation of this despicable situation\u2014for, first of all, the Big Culprit against which the Beautiful Soul takes issue is none other than the external point of reference by which this dissenting character acquires his or her \u201cdissident\u201d personality; and second of all, if you\u2019re using Facebook to express your contempt for being spied on, at least try<\/i> to be a little more consistent. If you signed up for Facebook, you are, in some form or another, being watched. That\u2019s the point of the damn thing: to be seen<\/i>. Don\u2019t pretend like you don\u2019t enjoy it, even if your enjoyment appears in the form of angst.<\/p>\n

In other words, people may be angry over being spied on, but not so much with Verizon, not with Facebook, nor with Sprint. Not with any of the private companies involved. Everybody seems upset primarily with \u201cThe Government.\u201d Thus in the wake of being spied on, Americans show resolute loyalty to the very companies that are colluding with the federal programs doing the spying. It\u2019s as if the idea of boycotting these companies and their products and services, is, for the vast majority of the US, more deranging than the fact that hundreds of millions of lives, perhaps yours and mine even, are being tracked day in day out.<\/p>\n

The point I\u2019m alluding to here is this: a classic example of abuse of power is to present its victims with a series of false choices whereby no matter which choice the victim chooses, those in power win: do you want security or do you want privacy? Do you really want to trust the government, or do you want to trust the private sector that provides you with a false sense of security through things like smartphones, Internet access, social media, and so on? One has to wonder then, if pooled distrust is being directed toward Big Government, does this sentiment of suspicion merely act as a catalyst for consolidating more power in the sphere of Big Business? If so, we end up with the following logical absurdity: the more surveillance, the more \u201cprivacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

More correctly, that is to say: the more security we want, the less privacy we\u2019ll have, and the more empowered the private sector will become.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s why the more I think about this situation and its seemingly irrational, stupid-as-shit absurdity (that, by dint of purchasing things like smartphones and dicking around on Facebook\u2014in the face of being spied on through these very things<\/i>\u2014people are thereby giving their (unwitting) consent to being spied on by some sort of \u201cBig Brother\u201d agency), the more I realize that there is something rather\u2014how should I put it?\u2014philosophical in nature going on here. Perhaps this situation has less to do with some secretive \u201cBig Brother\u201d entity tracking peoples\u2019 everyday behavior. Rather, what if this situation is exactly<\/i> how it appears to be? What if this situation is essentially an ideological problem\u2014having everything to do with us<\/i>, the body politic, and, our immensely complex relation to the very \u201clocus of power\u201d that gives substance to the body politic? What if, and I don\u2019t intend to sound cynical inasmuch as skeptical here, this surveillance scandal is the logical, though odious, result of America\u2019s desire for security?<\/p>\n

In the old days, before the advent of post-Grecian democracy, when civil society was presided over by a monarch, the monarch was, as director of the Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Culture at SUNY Buffalo, Joan Copjec, puts it:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

someone everyone\u2014or everyone who counted\u2014was encouraged to \u2018emulate,\u2019 [the king was] merely the retroactive effect of the general will-of-the-people. The place of this leader [was] thus a point of convergence, a point where the full sense of this unified will [was] located.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Obviously, these days there is no king. But as French philosopher Claude Lefort explained, the locus of power that was once embodied by a legitimate pretender\u2014the monarch\u2014has, upon the advent of modern democracy, become an empty place<\/i>\u2026 Now that the \u201cthrone is empty,\u201d so to speak, and modern democracy (an \u201cindetermination that was born from the loss of the substance of the body politic\u201d)[2]<\/a> has usurped its place, modern power, to paraphrase Foucault, is wielded by no one in particular, though we are all subject to it.<\/p>\n

In order to grasp what I\u2019m getting at here, it\u2019s important to familiarize oneself for the time being with two theoretical terms: the \u201cbig Other\u201d and \u201cgaze.\u201d The latter often lends itself to a multitude of theoretical interpretations, each one replete with its own definition and conceptualization of functioning. To preempt against too much confusion, however, we\u2019ll focus on the gaze as discussed hereunder.<\/p>\n

To start, the twentieth century psychoanalyst Badass, Jacques Lacan, gave an account of the gaze with the following story he borrowed from Sartre:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The gaze that I encounter [\u2026] is not a seen gaze [not a set of eyes that I see looking at me] but a gaze imagined by me in the field of the Other [\u2026] the sound of rustling leaves heard while out hunting [\u2026] a footstep heard in a corridor [The gaze exists] not at the level of [a particular] other whose gaze surprises the subject looking through the keyhole. It is that the other surprises him, the subject, as an entirely hidden gaze.[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And then there is what Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic, Slavoj \u017di\u017eek, calls the \u201cimpossible gaze\u201d<\/i>: that uncanny perspective by means of which we are already present at the scene of our own absence. What this means is that, any good ol\u2019 fantasy functions properly only by \u201cremoving\u201d ourselves from the fantasy we are having. Take as an example Disney\u2019s Wall-E<\/i>, the story of a convivial little robot that looks like an anthropomorphized Mars rover, that \u201cfalls in love\u201d with Eva, a robot which basically looks like an egg. Essentially, this is a fantasy of a post-human earth\u2014though of course dreamed up by someone (human) and, definitely watched by a whole bunch of (human) people. Hence the perspective in which \u201cI am present at the very scene of my own absence\u201d\u2014the human viewer reduced to the \u201cimpossible\u201d gaze\u2014as if I\u2019m not a part of the very \u201creality\u201d I\u2019m observing. This is, in a nutshell, the definition of gaze. The big Other, on the other hand, is a bit more involved. Its definition is inherently nuanced. To start, what we\u2019ll call the Symbolic<\/i> big Other is something that is shared by everyone. It is none other than that which embodies the very ideological essence of the socio-symbolic order of our lives; rules and etiquette\u2014especially juridical Law itself\u2014customs and beliefs, everything you should or should not do, what you aspire toward, and who or what you aspire to be, all of this and more, individually or in combination, constitutes the Symbolic big Other.<\/p>\n

The subject\u2019s<\/i> big Other (hereafter, the Imaginary big Other), however, is a sort of private investment in the Symbolic big Other, a personal allegiance to the ruling ideology which sustains the narratives, beliefs, and lived fantasies of the very culture in which the subject is immersed. Each Imaginary big Other is distinct in its own unique way: my Imaginary big Other may be, say, a patriotic bricolage (not really, but you get the point)\u2014a composite of things like, e.g., Uncle Sam, the American soldier trope, \u201cGod\u201d, and Tim Tebow. And your Imaginary big Other may embody, say, just Emily Post, or maybe some vague ideological package of some other normative principles. In any case, the Imaginary big Other, the subject\u2019s big Other as such, designates a private virtualization of the socio-symbolic field in which he or she is inscribed. Whether it exists in one\u2019s private notion of God, or one\u2019s notion of government, or family, or \u201cwhat\u2019s cool,\u201d or a combination of these things or whatever, the Imaginary big Other refers directly to that distinctly personalized social standard by which each of us respectively measures ourselves\u201424\/7\/365 (yes, the big Other can make itself known even in our dreams).<\/p>\n

Virtually everybody shares in the Symbolic big Other, for it\u2019s that very point from which the general \u201cwill-of-the-people\u201d is reflected back to the people, so that we can see ourselves as we appear in this reflection\u2014as a consistent social \u201cwhole<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, the big Other is that which gives substance to the body politic. We are its subjects. And despite not really existing<\/i>\u2014that, at the imaginative level of the individual, it\u2019s really none other than one\u2019s own internalization of society\u2019s dos-and-don\u2019ts\u2014the big Other is nonetheless experienced as a sort of independent phantasm which situates itself smack dab in the middle of any social interaction like some kind of incorporeal incarnation of a necessary third-wheel that both instructs and scrutinizes our every thought, utterance, and move. As such, the big Other ensures that the rules of society are being followed, that we are conducting ourselves properly in society. Without the big Other the social fabric begins to fray, presenting the veritable threat of losing the constitutive substance of society itself, its governing laws, and its subjects.<\/p>\n

I suppose I should\u2019ve been a little clearer earlier on: when we combine the Symbolic big Other and gaze, the result is the Imaginary big Other, the subject\u2019s big Other\u2014that remote sense of being watched and evaluated by something that\u2019s not really there. It\u2019s sort of like a cross between a Jiminy Cricket figure of conscience and an iconic role-model of sorts, who, as such, seems to loom over your shoulder, telling you what and what not to do simply by \u201clooking\u201d at you, normatively shaping and informing your every thought and behavior. We all have a big Other. It is, to repeat an emphasis from earlier, that standard by which we measure ourselves: our own private piece of the larger, public social space we inhabit. To paraphrase \u017di\u017eek, the gaze of the Symbolic big Other is my own view of myself, which I see through eyes that are not authentically my own.<\/p>\n

Here, one should not fail to notice the Symbolic big Other\u2019s striking resemblance to Bentham\u2019s \u201cPanopticon,\u201d that omnipresent, omniscient \u201cGod\u2019s-eye-view\u201d intended to watch over us wherever we go. The likeness is unmistakable, simply because Bentham\u2019s little wet dream embodies the big Other as such.<\/p>\n

The essential point to take away from this is that one\u2019s sense of (political) \u201cself\u201d is inevitably bound up with the localization of the panoptic gaze, that centralized point of omnipresent, omniscient surveillance. Wherever we go, our image of self, as seen by the gaze of the big Other, always functions for another. And further, in these times, do we not receive constant arousal, enjoyment<\/i>, from the act of watching our own image of self, controlling our own image of self, tracking our own image of self? Though it\u2019s not: as if<\/i> we were the Panopticon itself, but rather: becausewe are <\/i>the Panopticon itself. We bring the Panopticon, the gaze of the Symbolic big Other as such<\/i>, with us wherever we go. Social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc., instantiate this.<\/p>\n

But what, precisely, does this even mean?<\/p>\n

Well, this is where things get both revelatory and a bit complicated. The trouble with all this is that, to return to Copjec\u2019s analysis, the Symbolic big Other is \u201ca point of convergence of the general will-of-the-people.\u201d What this means\u2014and bear with me here, because this may turn confusing\u2014is that the Symbolic big Other, as such, signifies the very mode of appearance in which we appear to ourselves, for ourselves, as we desire to appear as such<\/i>. So it would follow that, if we appear to ourselves, for ourselves, as images to be controlled, manipulated, tracked, watched, and so on, as we certainly do in today\u2019s digital medium of social networking\u2014which, by the way, we collectively, willfully and, pleasurably participate in\u2014then this zeitgeist of the modern majority will inevitably converge at a centralized point: which is to say, the big Other, both its Symbolic and Imaginary incarnations, will appear in the guise of \u201cBig Brother.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the individual level, each of us embodies \u201cBig Brother\u201d: we are intrigued with the act of watching, tracking, manipulating, images of ourselves. At the Symbolic level, the truth of this enjoyment expresses itself today in all of its unsettling perversity: PRISM<\/i>.<\/p>\n

But we shouldn\u2019t stop there. There are still a few more complications that need clarification. The essential problem we face today is this: The Symbolic big Other\u2014as an anchoring point, as something that serves to guarantee fixed meaning to our lived social experiences, offering a sense of wholeness and closure to the social order in which we dwell\u2014has dissolved into something ambiguous, formless, a \u201cpart of no part.\u201d The religious idea of God no longer works for most people at the social level; there is no longer one \u201cruler,\u201d no potentate around which our lives circulate and from which the body politic receives its substance. Even the idea of the nation state as a sovereign entity has become near obsolete in the wake of the \u201cglobal village.\u201d In today\u2019s historical epoch, the Symbolic big Other designates not a positivized entity around which society is structured, from which the body politic receives its substance; on the contrary, today\u2019s Symbolic big Other designates a radical indeterminateness, which is to say: With modern democracy, there is no substantial big Other<\/i>, no real agent with a legitimate claim to the \u201cthrone of power.\u201d<\/p>\n

The inevitable result of modern democracy is that nothing substantial assumes the seat of power that was once occupied by a substantial big Other. And there\u2019s the rub. Today\u2019s legitimate pretender to the throne of power is a \u201cno-One\u201d\u2014that\u2019s the whole point of democracy, that no single individual can claim this seat of power, which in effect renders this seat of power an empty place as such: a neutral frame that engenders political gridlock and which lacks any guarantee of real security. And so in a democratic state, the one sure thing that the body politic will desire the most is security. Let\u2019s hold that thought, and jump tracks again for a moment.<\/p>\n

What ends up ensuring the substance of the body politic in these times is<\/i> the body politic itself. And this is a problem. In \u017di\u017eek\u2019s remarkable read, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor<\/i>, he explains that<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

the fact that \u201cthe Throne is empty\u201d [\u2026] is now the only \u201cnormal\u201d state. In pre-democratic societies, there is always a legitimate pretender to the place of Power [\u2026] [W]ithin the democratic horizon, everyone<\/i> who occupies the locus of Power is by definition a usurper.[4]<\/a><\/p>\n

This means that, what is permitted in the democratic horizon is only a temporary exertion of power by the political subject, strictly by means of electoral activity: thus as \u017di\u017eek puts is, \u201cwe are constantly aware of the distance separating the locus of Power as such from those exerting Power at a given moment.\u201d To put it quite simply, democracy safeguards this empty place of power, keeping it from ever being occupied by an absolute ruler. Sounds great, right? But if we pervert this perspective, that is, turn this perspective around on itself\u2014is this not also the most Machiavellian way to ensure an unconditional occupation of the throne of power? And that <\/i>is the totalitarian distortion inherent to democracy itself, the very source from which a surveillance state arises in the midst of a democratic state.<\/p>\n

Now, let\u2019s return for a moment to the fact that, without a substantial Symbolic big Other to give substance to the body politic, the body politic is thus left to its own to confer on itself its own substance. For example, when the body politic was presided over by a monarch, the monarch reflected back to the body politic their political substance: individuals were subjects of a monarchy as such. Remove the monarch, however, and this ordered state dissolves into an amorphous multitude of particular subjects without any determined political substance. And so today, without any one<\/i> substantial entity residing in the place of power, there is only the democratic body politic itself, a constellational array of diverse desires, ideas, political motives, and so on. A confusion of governance that can find its consistent expression of wholeness only in an act of its own reification, so to speak: in the capitalist marketplace itself. Politics thus becomes commodified, enjoyment valorized. And capitalism usurps the throne of power.<\/p>\n

To put it rather bluntly, democracy protects the seat of power that is now occupied by capitalism. Democracy thus wards off any and all alternative possible usurpers; it is a \u201ccrisis of representation\u201d as such. As a result it buys capitalism the necessary time it needs to finish consecrating its marriage to authoritarianism. For instance, while today\u2019s crusaders of the every-vote-counts creed put their faith in electoral politics (i.e., the \u201cliberal\u201d (petit) bourgeois culture enamored of the myth of democracy)\u2014despite the apparent crookedness of today\u2019s electoral politics\u2014across the globe China is slowly emerging as the crucible of a new capitalism, one that operates much more efficiently under authoritarian rule.<\/p>\n

To be frank, I believe that the panoptical nature of today\u2019s surveillance state has more to do with this latest development, this \u201cvirus of authoritarian capitalism,\u201d than with anything else. It\u2019s not the case that China is learning from the West how to be a democratic capitalist state, but rather: the West is slowly learning from China (and elsewhere: e.g., the Revolutionary Guard is not a populist militia, but the most robust center of wealth in Iran) how to be an authoritarian capitalist state\u2014to wit: the amount the Chinese government has budgeted for domestic security this year: $125,000,000; the amount the US has budgeted: more than $50 billion.<\/p>\n

Today, while slowly divorcing itself from capitalism, the limits of democracy are in plain sight: While American democracy does its fruitless thing, America\u2019s governing body is slowly shedding its old democratic skin, emerging as a competitive player in today\u2019s newest development of authoritarian capitalism. One of the most telling signs can be found in the aftermath of the market crash of 2008; this \u201ccrisis\u201d was far from being a symptom indicating a moribund capitalism; on the contrary, capitalism emerged from that crisis stronger, more efficient, more authoritarian: the market rebounded, the Dow has risen to new heights, there is more wealth in the US than ever before, and, in an undemocratic way, this wealth has become consolidated in the hands of a few.<\/p>\n

The key problem is that we all continue to play the game\u2014we behave as if we\u2019re all free\u2014though thanks to individuals like Edward Snowden, we know that our \u201cfreedom\u201d is being watched and tracked in an authoritarian way. But is this really all that surprising, considering our freedom requires a grounding authority, a big Other, around which its order and balance can be secured? Capitalism has assumed this role of grounding authority. And since it is the case that capitalist society has become so dynamic, so fragile, and so uncertain\u2014if you are completely absorbed in the world of capital then the world takes on this form of chaotic dynamism\u2014what people end up desiring more than anything else is security; and sadly, appallingly, with the spread of authoritarian capitalism, the more surveillance the more \u201csecurity\u201d\u2014simply because it\u2019s profitable<\/i>; and in the context of capitalism, better profit\u2014i.e., the more money one makes\u2014ensures a more secured life.<\/p>\n

Therefore, the problem of warrantless domestic surveillance of innocent civilians is a crisis of modern democracy itself, for it is precisely the belief in the democratic struggle against capitalism that prevents us from ever removing capitalism from its position of power.<\/p>\n

The real secret here is that there is no secret. In a sense, Obama was right: \u201cWe can\u2019t have 100% security and 100% privacy.\u201d You really can\u2019t get a more honest assertion than that. But that doesn\u2019t mean we should remain loyal to Obama and his administration for being such a \u201cmessenger of truth,\u201d because truth is a funny thing. It may be true, for example, that Romney is an awesome dad; but just because something\u2019s true doesn\u2019t mean it tells the whole story. The whole story here is that big government, Obama himself even, is not the Big Culprit\u2014it\u2019s capitalism, and its inveterate champions who have usurped the seat of social governance, who sell the very things we desire, which just happens to be the very things that are keeping tabs on us all.<\/p>\n

But we can\u2019t pretend that those who run corporations are not people like you and me, with lives as important to them as yours is to you and mine is to me. It\u2019s just that, within capitalism, like everybody else, these individuals desire security too, security for their assets, security for their profits, and so on and so forth. That is why I believe that this \u201cBig Brother\u201d situation is none other than the form of appearance of our big Other. As Co-Director of the Centre for Ideology Critique and \u017di\u017eek Studies at Cardiff University, UK, Fabio Vighi, makes clear: \u201cthe enemy\/other is always-already in us, since we are always-already included in the big picture.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that is what I believe to be the fundamental mechanism driving today\u2019s surveillance state.<\/p>\n

Perhaps Foucault was right when he claimed that our desire to be taken care of is none other than the appearance of the fascism in us all, \u201cthe fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.\u201d Though I would like to think otherwise, that the truth of this proposition lies in its inverse: that our desire for the \u201cvery thing that dominates and exploits us\u201d is none other than the way in which our desire for security is expressed in capitalist society. If we remove this capitalist framework, if we can usurp the throne of power it currently occupies, we can replace it with a new framework\u2014one that should be defined by helping each other rather than exploiting each other, as a means to secure our security.<\/p>\n


<\/p>\n
\n
\n

[1]<\/a> Joan Copjec, \u201cThe Subject Defined by Suffrage,\u201d Lacanian Ink<\/i>: http:\/\/www.lacan.com\/frameVII4.htm<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[2]<\/a> This quote is borrowed from Claude Lefort\u2019s The Political Forms of Modern Society: Bureaucracy, Democracy, Totalitatianism<\/i>, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[3]<\/a> Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis<\/i>, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998, p. 84<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[4]<\/a> Slavoj Zizek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor<\/i>, New York: Verso, 2008, p. 267.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Frank Smecker is a veteran of the American underground hardcore and indie-rock music scene (Drowningman, The Hero Cycle). He studied philosophy, English, and psychology at the University of Vermont. His first book, “Night of the World: A Speculative Analysis of Objectivity as Ideology”, will be published by the UK-based radical theory and philosophy press, Zero Books, and is slated to hit the shelves sometime in the late 2013 calendar. His work has appeared in\/at: The Ecologist, Rain Taxi, Gadfly, Counter Punch, Truth Out, Z Magazine, OWS Journal, Fifth Estate, and other places of publication.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Remember some years back, when the lid was blown regarding the US\u2019 use of torture to gather information from \u201cterrorists\u201d? Many were, rightly so, shocked and dismayed; people from virtually all over the world chided the US for its disgraceful disregard for ethical standards. The ACLU condemned the behavior, journalists from all walks of political life expressed their criticism, and so on and so forth. For a while, America\u2019s use of torture, or rather, \u201cenhanced interrogation techniques,\u201d was met with heated vitriol, brought into the public arena for passionate debate. READ MORE.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":5846,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,218,201,219],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5787"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5787"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5850,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5787\/revisions\/5850"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}