Quote:even if we assume that it was a planned regicide (i.e. conspiracy, which it was), the question then becomes: why not, say, inoculate him with deadly poison at night in the utpost secrecy in the White House, and declare the following morning that he had suffered a heart attack? Why orchestrate that massive, pandemonium in Dallas? So in a sense that booklet was arguing something altogether different, and a bit crazy, which was what caught my attention (the total shift on perspective which occasionally allows one to solve the riddle): and that was that the murder was committed for its own sake as some kind of psychical preparation for an escalation of violence on the TV screen [think of the amount of violence perpeterated these days on TV], the collective habituation to which is capable of opening deeper portals in the art of (collective) mind control (I am also thinking of Cronenberg's Videodrome, of course). I don't know, just a thought.

Quote:I wrote to you way back inviting you and family to Leavenworth, WA for a vacation (offer still stands). Phil Dragoo invited you to join us a Deep Politics Forum.

Follow up: have you published or commented on the Arab Spring revolutions and especially the convoluted mess in Egypt as well as in Syria? Or would you care to via email. I will publish any response at Deep Politics Forum where you are highly regarded.

More specifically, how do the Arab Spring revolutions the present day version of Conjuring Hitler if at all. Who or what is being conjured now?

All the best, Lauren Johnson

Quote:Dear Lauren and Phil,
Sorry for the Hiatus.
So, the "Arab Spring" and all that...
I am reading conflicting analyses of this. And I am still unclear about it all. I have yet to understand the fundamental dynamics at work.
So I will summarize the little I have managed to put together. And forgive me if it falls very short of what you yourselves have gathered from these events. First, my impression of the coup in Egypt was this: evidently the US have decided to ditch Mubarak. The Muslim Brotherhood is possibly one of the most corrupt entities that exist (I met and spoke to quite a few of them during my stay in the Near East in 2005) and, as a very implausible counteraltar to the Catholic model of non-geophysically constrained community having its spiritual center in Sunni Mecca, it plays beautifully in the hands of NATO. It is a perfect foil in that it 1) functions to fragment any kind of nationalistic, and strongly territorial, political formation in the Middle East [[--The Anglo-American imperial commonwealth, as a insular (they are, at bottom, two islands) and imperial consortium wielding military force through maritime and aerial dominance, fears by definition the strengthening of any kind of nationalist movement on the landmass (from Europe to East Asia). It works to smother these pangs wherever and whenever they appear. The British, in fact, are masters at this type of game. E.g., the Turkish card (membership) in the EU, to which The Economist returns periodically is also designed for this--always to keep in check any kind of potential reawakening of European independence. And the catastrophic straight-jacket of the Euro is a recent case in point (I will write on this, next year)]]. 2) The Brotherhood is also good for NATO because it is overly belligerent and intolerant in a way that creates perennial friction in the Middle East itself (versus non militant Muslims, and esp. vs. non-Muslims, viz. the Christians in Egypt), and keeps the temperature high with Isreal, which is all according to ancient plan. Israel, we know it, was a British creation --something that has absolutely nothing to do with "religion" or devoutness, if not in a strictly instrumental sense, and that is, with a view to constant warfare in a region that --it too-- must always be on red alert for the same geopolitical reason. NATO cannot afford peace in the lower Mediterranean basin, peace by way of nationalist coalitions that could isolate the Isreali platform, and, also lend themselves to the competitive patronage of say, France (very, very tentative and unlikey, anyway, these days), or Russia. The Economist, of course, was de facto very favorable to the fall of Mubarak: two years ago he was "our stable ally" but in 2011 he had progerssively morphed into a tyrant (yes, they wrote, the Brothers are a bit pesky, but they've got some democratic verve in them, so we can work things out --to paraphrase\ utterly delirious to read this stuff in sequence over the years). So the tyrannous Mubarak went. It's old: we have seen it a million times. The question is why now and what for? Anti-US websites in France say it is because after a decade of unsuccessful War on Terror (Iraq a bloodiest and most disastrous disgrace, Afganistan a failure of the first degree, and the Middle Eastern potentates as entrenched and anti-US as ever) it was time to shift gears and try something new. So, like in a Hollywood TV show, Bin Laden finally dies (whether he ever existed is perfectly irrelevant --remember, in 1984 Goldstein does not exist and the forbidden book was written by O'Brien himself, i.e. by the Secret Police) So, here Fox News, Al-JAzeera, etc. are all monitors of the same studio production. So, Bin Laden (theretofore played by John Turturro) dies in the 77th episode, and "the System" thereby begins to topple the easy pieces: Mubarak was basically a client so he was easy to dismiss. In Tunisia, where it all started, I don't quite know what happened, The French say it was a spontaneous and anti-British uprising, so was Bahrein's, they say. I don' t know. Egypt certainly was not. As for Gheddafi, incredible story. Various theories: his North-African alliance cemented by a gold dinar...Plus he was a custodian of 40 years of top secrets and very-high level international politics (terrorism, etc). Like Saddam, in fact. And I still have serious problems to swallow the story that this historical pawn for the CIA since 1959, Saddam (as the would be assassin of Kassim, who was a very intriguing character), could have let himself be taken with his sons and killed like that in 2003 (I suspect another stagecraft virtuosity)...Be that as it mysteriously may, Saddam falls and, almost a decade later, the no less "evil" Kaddhafi too. Lybia has oil aplenty, and position-wide it is key in the North-African theater --an area that is very dear to British interests. Like Iraq, in fact, which they took from the Turks in 1917, and which they consider, like all all these regions, *theirs*: that is obvious. Force is the sole language of the game. Lybia is very important and I would like to know more of the background of the operation. And then, Syria, of course. I was there in 2005; it is a gorgeous country, and it still felt as though it were underr Soviet tutelage (grim and time-frozen\it was odd). Yet in this sense there was also something more genuinely Arab to it than, say, Jordan, which is a, rather thin, Western satrapy. Beautiful place, Syria. Evidently portected by other forces. They say, Russia above all, and to a minor extent China. Who knows, really, about China, though- China is, now, very much an ally of the US; but there are grey areas where the stances are more ambiguous, such as this one.
The French (anti-US) network claims that all these maneuvers, which are a logical sequitur to 9-11, are part of an old1982 plan to Balkanize the Middle East by way of Israeli military belligerence. The reason why the place is so turbulent and hard to read appears to be the result of this constant tension between the desire to destabilize it and the natural reaction of the region to keep the balance by means of regional expressions, which are precisely what the destabilizers wish to annihilate. The fall of the Shah is the most classic case in point. This puppet who all of a sudden decides to sign a separate peace\entente for teh Gulf in 1975 with Iraq (indeed, Saddam was the signatory from the ruling Baath), and thereby signs his own death warrant. Thereupon Khomeini comes to power and the region sinks into 8 eight years of horrible war (to the joy and delight of Kissinger & friends--Ted Kennedy too, if I remember correctly). But now, complexity of all complexities, the legacy of Khomeini --notorious Bristih asset at the time-- is an Islamic Republic that appears to have escaped from its creators and fashioned itself as something independent, hsotile, and pro-Russian, in fact. But what is the truth? Could it be that the the Brits are so reckless in their conspiratoprial tactics? I mean, isn't risky to hand Egypt over to the Islamists who *might* turn against them, the way Iran, now under Ahmedinejad, supposedly did? Yet, is the latter really an enemy? Isn't his grandiloquent nonsense about the Holocaust and gays just the sort of rhetorical rubbish that the West, in the name of the politically correct crap of human rights and diversity, *loves* to leverage among us to sell us enmity and more wars...? I am confused. At any rate. There is little doubt that the Anglo-American imperialists are pushing as far as they always can and that Russia is the gravitational center --de facto the only "enemy" left these days-- of forces that try to push the Neocons back. Syria seems in a stale-mate now. So, to put an end to this very rambling message (and I apologize), all these recent movements, which go undder the rubric of "Arab Spring," appear to be pieces of a general script --act II of the grand 9-11 saga (the War on Terror being Act I), to redesign the geopolitical map in a way congruent with globalist interests --that seems obvious. All the while Europe's capacity to intervene is constantly hampered by means of various stratagems, the Euro being the latest one--but, then again, Europe is a basket case: sclerotic, impotent, emptied, a crusty shell. It is all conspiratorial enough, but more than anything this late imeprial agenda of NATO comes across as botched, messy and poorly done; they go deep enough but never seem able to finish the job.
Squalid times. What nasty despondency about it all. And what to do?
Anyway, Merry Xmas to all.
g

Quote:Ten times out of ten the pupils are trained to take aim and fire at the privileged
pet-peeves of postmodernism. These are: patriarchy, phallocracy, paternalism,
racism, sexism, machismo, racist industrial pollution (that is, only that
pollution that is putatively caused by the white elites and discharged on "minorities"),
Europe, Eurocentrism, the white European male, the male in general,
Columbus and the Catholics, religion, God, transcendence, metaphysics, the
spirit, colonization and early imperialism, and sometimes, ever more infrequently,
"capitalism," preferably singled out as a vague synonym for economic oppression.
Never, though, are the students made to visit the polemic upon the concrete
working of the hierarchies of real power: say, to investigate the effective composition,
functioning, and history of the political and financial establishments of
the West.

Quote:The social sciences . . . suffer when fashionable nonsense and word games displace
the critical and rigorous analysis of social realities. Postmodernism has three
principal negative effects: a waste of time in the human sciences, a cultural confusion
that favors obscurantism, and a weakening of the political left . . . No research
[ . . . ] can progress on a basis that is both conceptually confused and radically
detached from empirical evidence [ . . . ]. What is worse [ . . . ] is the adverse effect
that abandoning clear thinking and clear writing has on teaching and culture.
Students learn to repeat and to embellish discourses that they only barely understand.
They can even, if they are lucky, make an academic career out of it by
becoming expert in the manipulation of an erudite jargon.2

Magda Hassan Wrote:Hell has a special place for those who promote post modernism. Next to the Social Democrats. It has been the biggest bunch of wankery in academia and has distracted generations from the real issues.