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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Rowan Berkeley
Published Letters: 176
I suspect that Glenn Greenwald is just the most exposed element in a long term seige on what is considered by these 'libertarian' right wingers to be a sort of hip culturally Left hangout. Is this exceptional for US, and in particular New York, interactive media? I don't have the time, energy or inclination to delve into all the talkback threads on comparable online magazines, nor the expertise to easily identify them. The only remotely comparable one that comes to mind is the New York Observer, which has certainly been through something of a gleichschaltung, but that is much more explicitly and parochially Jewish than Salon is, so it is insulated from direct attack by the 'libertarian' right wing as such. In many other cases, I suppose, the politicking is entirely behind the scenes, there is no talkback system to give it away.
I certainly have reached the conclusion that the stress should be placed on the fact that the 'libertarians' are essentially right wingers, playing good cops to the neocon bad cops, hence my decision from now on to always label them with these quote marks, stressing their right wing nature while questioning the 'libertarian' aspect. This sort of labelling tactic works better, and is certainly easier to use, than endless disputations with them would be. It pre-empts discussion, by imposing an interpretation at the outset.
I sort of assumed it was new-york-centric. I certainly am aware that there is a big difference. Maybe I fixate on New York too much myself - when I said the other day that I didn't think I would like the USA, I should have said that I have a sort of sneaky fascination with New York. I hope that my various fascinations (i.e. emotions) are visible. I don't want to seem to be hiding them.
San Francisco was a sort of mecca of the imagination for me back in the 1960s, for the usual reasons, but I think it lost its magical appeal over the decades since then. I remember when the Caliphate O.T.O. moved its headquarters to Austin, which must have been in the early 1990s, I was sort of sad, because it seemed like a little more of the magic (in this case, magick) was departing.
Crowleyanity is itself a sort of psychedelic, cosmic libertarianism, of course - "Do What Thou Wilt", etc. But if you read Crowley's attempts to explain the so-called Thelemic Ethic, they are just as incoherent as everyone else's attempts to explain a libertarian ethic. The Book of the Law itself gives the best account of libertarian ethics I have ever seen, but it does so by using a sort of super-Nietzschean technique of paradoxes. I still think of it as an inspired work - you can't produce those sort of paradoxes to order.
I'm still trying to translate the lyrics to Hadag Nachash's "California":
http://niqnaq.wordpress.com/2008/04/04/hadag-nachash-california/
I'm assuming the phrase "qtzat mazal" means something like "out of luck", but I'm stuck.
you know, economic theory goes through phases, and economic theory in the USA was always behind economic theory in Europe, because Europe had used up its land resources long before the USA had. This explains why Marx could accurately say that in the European context, theories like George's, that treated rent as the most problematic form of income, rather than interest on mobile investment capital, were already out of date by his day.
If anybody cares, I have a more successful translation of a Hadag Nachash song (along with an absolutely mind blowing video) here:
http://niqnaq.wordpress.com/2008/04/07/hadag-nachash-aize-kif/
http://letters.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/05/12/aljazeera/permalink/92db1f9e62fd0be4edd405795013ea88.html
is that a first?
"Did Orwell write a sequel? I don't remember the exact phrase 'MindWar' from 1984, but it certainly resonates of NewSpeak."
It isn't from Orwell. Did someone say it was? It's from Aquino and Vellely's monograph. I suppose people have apsychological reluctance to get this fact into their heads.
Debbie Schlussel's "exclusive sources" have found "members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard" fighting in "the hills surrounding Beirut."
Why do we even bother to analyse the mass media? The liars, the fabricators, own the mass media. This will be in the NYT tomorrow.
But, in philosophical terms at least, classical conservatism does mean something. The creed of Edmund Burke, its most eloquent proponent, might be crudely reduced to six principles : a deep suspicion of the power of the state ; a preference for liberty over equality ; patriotism ; a belief in established institutions and hierarchies ; skepticism about the idea of progress ; and elitism.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/greenwald/greenwald13.html
that serves as the counterpoint for the entire extract from the book and it certainly doesn't smack of 'libertarianism'.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
