from "The Vindication of Nietzsche"

(by Aleister Crowley)


""""Is there any man who still shuts his eyes to the plain fact that homo sapiens is but a primate, cousin of the gorilla, with a brain over-developed to think abominations, and a larynx evolved to aid their execution, a creature whose prime pangs are hunger, lust, and hate, and his fundamental solaces rape, robbery, and murder? I laughed with open throat at the "atrocity" Press Campaigns in the Balkan War. "The half-civilized peoples of the Near East!" Is the present war any less prolific of such stories when the compatriots of Tolstoi, and Gorky, and Goethe, and Anatole France, and Shelley are at war? And are the stories true? True of false in detail, I knew them true in essence, and I knew also that the primmest old maid in Dorchester whose palsied hands dropped her knitting as she read of them was horrified because, although she did not know it, and could never be brought to know it, those atrocities were in her blood from everlasting. "There, but for the Grace of God, goes Charles Baxter" was the wisest remark that ever came from a fool's lips. And it is because we have persuaded ourselves bitterly and obstinately, against the deeper knowledge that is instinct in every organism, that these things cannot happen, that we have lost the manhood that could have prevented them. Some there are so priggishly purblind that fact itself, naked and bleeding at their thresholds, battering on the gates of their ears with the Ram of actuality, fails to force those waxed-up tympana. When the nations were already at each other's throats, when men had seen their brothers blown to atoms before their eyes, drilled through with nickel and lead, slashed and gashed with steel, ridden down beneath the hoofs of the horses1, we heard that President Wilson had offered to arbitrate! To arbitrate, when the diplomatic and economic pressure of a decade, and the consciousness of ineradicable race- hatred since time began, and clan tore clan with flint, had forced the Boar of Germany to turn at last upon the Borzoi and the Bulldog, to lash out with tusk and hoof at the invisible pack of hounds that closed upon him.

And we are still babbling of the Cause of Liberty, and the Banner of the Democracies, and the Truth, and the Righteousness, and the Justice, and the Equity, and the Humanity, and the Progress, when every man that is not stultified beyond the surgery of war by his own hypocracies, knows well that the battle is a battle of over-population, the haemorrage of a plethora, and that its terms are merely "My life or yours!" -- "The hammer or the anvil?"


The Chinese (till Europe infected them) murdered all but a few selected female infants, and consequently lived in peace and prosperity for two thousand years. Civilization and the arts flourished; famine has been rare, and floods and plague welcomed as a purge.2 Our squeamishness has forbidden us to take this elementary precaution, this restraint imposed on prosperity by wisdom; and where are our civilization, our prosperity, our liberty, our Progress? In fifty years will there remain so many monuments of what we were two months ago as Egypt has of its Pharaohs, Greece of its Republics, Rome of its Caesars? We have used bricks and iron for stone and brass, pulp for papyrus and palm-leaf, rhetoric for fact, pharisaism for publicansim, and our era will perish ere our own bones rot!3


We have pretended4 that there was no such thing as sex, no such thing as venereal disease, that our publicists were True Believers in Christianity, that our women were pure and our men brave; we have howled down every man who dared to hint the truth: we have sowed the wind of pious phrases, and we must reap the whirlwind of war.
It has been the same in every drawer of our cupboard -- and now the skeleton is out. Swinburne's prophecy has come true; we must amend him to read:

"They are past, and their places are taken,
The gods and the priests that are pure."

We have had a credit system which when analysed meant that we were all pretending to be rich, a social system in which we all pretended to be esquires at the least. We had Dukes who never led, Marquesses with no marches to ward, Knights who could barely sit on a donkey; we called our slattern slaveys lady helps, our prostitutes soiled doves, our grumbling mumbling fumbling politicians statesmen.
And it is gone like a ghost -- and an unclean spirit sure it was that haunted us.

And if I write for England, who will read?
As if, when moons of Ramazan recede,
Some fatuous angel-porter should deposit
His perfect wine within the privy closet!
"What do they know, who only England know?"
Only what England paints its face to show.
Love mummied and relabelled "chaste affection,"
And lust excused as "natural selection."
. . . . . . . .

........ ............. (CENSORED!)

"""I wish I could quote the whole poem;5 but it may need another six months before prudery has a final "seizure."6

It is this prudery which has fought Nietzsche. In its last ditch it is still pretending that Nietzsche, who hated the Germans, was a German. "The Anglo-Nietzschean War!" True it is, the Germans were the only people who had the common sense, the clear sight, the ability to face, grasp, and use the facts which Nietzsche thundered to the planet. Had England done so, she would have had two million men always under arms, and Germany must have surrendered without a blow, could never have dared even this desperate dash, this madness which comes of pushing sanity to the wall, and bidding it fight for its life. Nor could I write that the British army

has been
is being annihilated.
is about to be

Are we fighting to preserve peace, to hold the balance of power, to save civilization, to relieve the burden of armaments, to smash the tyranny of militarism, to sentinel liberty?
Then we should have had an army equal to Germany's, and our fleet should have destroyed hers while we were three to one. You must fight fire with fire. Shelley's "Laon and Cythna" and his "Masque of Anarchy," Tolstoi and the whole school of non-resistance, where are they now? The "big blonde beast" who visits women with a whip under his arm has not been impressed with the moral superiority of the conquered. He has robbed them and enslaved them and murdered them, he has ravished their women and tossed their children on his bayonets, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, Amen. Thus spake Zarathustra.

(Censored!)

Is not Earth purged? Is not the Pillar established in the Void? , ! Thou art arisen! Is there not an end of the anaemia of the Humanitarian, and the hysteria of the Suffragist, and the stark sunning lunacy of the Cubist-Futurist-Vorticist-Parallelipipedist-Feminist, and all the onanism of the Knut and the Flapper?
Will not man arise again, and hunt and fight and master his mate, and will not woman return to her cooking and her housewifery and the breeding of lusty children to her man? And if Nietzsche be the dawn-star, shall there be no son of man to be a Sun of men? Had we no prophet? Had we no poet, O all ye weary criticasters of the prostitute-prude Press? Was there not one to put into the mouth of his king-priest-magus, baffled by fate in the hour of the birth of Christianity, this prophecy of the Antichrist --7

Listen!

.....

Nietzsche/Crowley


Unlike his many demon-hick acolytes, Crowley (as in Crow-lee) could write a bit (no slouch as linguist, Al translated from French, Latin, some Greek, as far as I know--probably Hebrew and Germanic tongues as well). Crowley also played chess at grandmaster level, climbed in the Himalaya (and Hindu Kush--including a rather unpleasant attempt at K2), and dabbled in the sciences (his occultish shit remains interesting, if redolent with a few hints of charlatanry).

Crowley knew his literary and ideological masters well, and paid them their respects: Shelley, Nietzsche, Sir Richard Burton (not the thezpian), Swinburne, etc. Though Crowley's writing generally tends towards irony he appears rather anti-pacifist in this piece, penned apparently at the conclusion of WWI: a bit more Nietzschean than Shelleyan. Indeed Crowley granted Nietzsche saint status in his gnostic-freemason pantheon (then Crowley granted it to hisself as well).

RealPolitik, ala Matt and Trey.

"Matt Stone sums it up, "I hate conservatives, but I really fucking hate liberals.""

Right the F. on, man.

P.E.T.A., continued (Peoples Eating Tasty Animals).

"......the errors of the greatest philosophers usually have their point of departure in a false explanation of certain human actions and sensations; ...a false ethics is erected, religion and mythological monsters are then in turn called to buttress it, and the shadow of these dismal spirits in the end falls even across physics and the entire perception of the world."""""

(from Nietzsche's Human, All too Human)


Some phunn Veg-Bot abuse from "Meat Kicks Ass"

""""Vegan/Nazi: This type of vegetarian not only doesn't eat meat, but he or she will try to impose their beliefs onto you with propaganda on TV and radio stations. Vegetarians of this type are commonly afflicted with accute bitching syndrome, or ABS. This is a mental disease not unlike feminism. It causes the victim to bitch about people who choose to eat meat. All animal products are boycotted by this group of fascists.

Anti-Meat Vegetarian/Dumbass: This is the most common type of vegetarian. A vegetarian of this type will not eat any beef, poultry, or fish products (less cheese and milk because they're irrational). The ones that keep to themselves aren't a major problem, as they're usually stupid, close minded, and fragile because all of that "organic health food" bullshit has made them weak. On a side note, these types of vegetarians are very fun to tease. Occasionally, you'll find a vegetarian who has backed him or herself into mental corner, so afraid to hurt or kill something that they'll even try to avoid stepping on bugs-- because bugs are living things, and they have feelings too... right? Bwahaha. Worthless."""

Yes, MKA, the usual spineless granola and yogurt-sucking Veg-bot often confuses his dimwitted, new-age "ethics" with something like a political program. Of course ask one of these mystical idiots to actually provide a compelling argument for obligation or duty or "rights" and they start to melt (or are seized with ABS). That said, we here at Contingencies (vegetarians we are not: neither was RA Wilson, another meat-eating, gun-toting, drug-using Phreedom fighter, opposed to idiots of links oder rechts) do take issue with the corporate cattle and pork biz, yet that is more a far more complex matter regarding the efficient use of resources and energy, and even "consumerism" as a whole. But the usual McMoondoggie vegetarian twit isn't concerned with discussing the specific problems of the meat industry, or the cattle commodity-market, but in chanting her "Meat means murder, man" talent-nite anthem; she couldn't distinguish a commodity from her collection of Karma-dharma (yet McMoondoggie then allows his Romney-supporting, right-wing
xtian pals to post their drivel next to his mystic-liberal-lite spam. All part of the Neo-Irrationalist agenda).

Dante for Kix (Contingencies re-run).

Dante, Europe's sort of official Tour Guide of Hell (Nietzsche cared not for him: calling him a hyena or something), placed the greek philosophers--and scientists, such as Archimedes---in Elysium. Elysium is not Hell, but similar to Purgatory, where it's sort of gloomy, but the light of Reason was always observable. Yet the pagans never escape from Elysium--so that is a bit different than the case for sinners in the traditional Purgatory, who have a shot at redemption after a few eons. Purgatory is really not a bad idea--remember that Professor that gave you a B when you definitely earned an A? Perhaps after 5000 years or so, when her spiritual errors are purged, she crawls out of her hole of excrement and is allowed admittance into the bottom rings of Heaven. Thus, the Dantean afterworld "code" (and based not only on Aquinas and the Vulgate, but Platonism) seems to suggest that humans--even skeptic or pagan idolators-- who live a fairly ethical and rational life are eventually rewarded, sort of like being admitted to the cosmic fraternity, and join the "elect"--Alpha Beta Epsilon, or whatever.

Virtuous pagans and skeptics, say Thomas Jefferson, Einstein or Bertrand Russell, thus could be conceivably admitted into some spiritual land of the blessed, regardless of their doubts of Scripture; whereas moronic violent believers (say Falwell) are not. A Newton, whose constants and equations, for the most part, still accurately map the mechanics of planetary motion, would be presumably ranked much higher than irrationalists and equivocators such as Derrida and the post-modernists, who may be hard-pressed to gain entrance into Purgatory. Or perhaps there are heavens and hells for everyone, of all religious or non-religious creeds, a sort of pantheistic play of forces, where in one realm, a Derrida or a William Burroughs is near some linguistic paradise, and in another they are being looked over by jackal-faced demons characteristic of the egyptian underworld (maybe instead the Darwinist posse holds (however mundane) and we're jus' sophisticated primates and future worm food (when yr dead, yr dead, as some old fop-filosophe said to me once: tho' Dante places Epicurus, sort of an ancient Darwinian materialist, in a rather unpleasant section in Inferno), and the afterworld meme-metaphor functions in some biological or genetic manner, not quite understood.....).

As an aside, I must say I find Dante's Inferno quite entertaining. I especially enjoy contemplating the lower levels, the Malebolge (something like "piss pocket" according to my bad italiano), where the Hypocrites and Betrayers are located, quite a bit lower than those guilty of mere sins of the flesh (whores and sodomites, etc.). Signior Dante obviously felt that those who had betrayed their country, their countrymen, and/or children were near the bottom of Hell. There seem to be quite a few corrupt Catholic clergymen and noblemen, assassins and murderers as well. The Prophet Mohammed is down there, as are numerous other heretics (including a legendary Ho, Thais), Ulysses (think Capn' Kirk) and his sarge Diomedes (Diomedes not quite Spock--more like, say, Schwarzenegger, tho' the other great warrior Achilles quite a few rings above 'em), as well as corrupt judges such as Caiaphas. In the icy center of the hell-lake Cocytus, Brutus, the rather stoical and methodical assassin of Julius Caesar, and his cohort Cassius (alas, quite a witty wise guy in Shakespeare's play) are being gnawed on by Lucifer, their heads out; Judas Iscariot of course is being swallowed eternally head-first by the massive Lucifer, who, in a mockery of the Trinity, has 3 mouths.

Colonise Or Be Colonised

TheEndofWesternCiv.

"""""The simple truth that different cultures are irreconcilable, and one must dominate the others, means the now impotent cultures of Western Civilization will be overrun. How a particular culture dominates, or attempts to dominate, other cultures, naturally reflects the character of that culture. The fact that the Americans refrain from killing their enemies does not mean that their enemies will refrain from killing them, as America was recently reminded. On September 11, 2001, around 3,000 people were murdered in a barbarian raid upon the USA, when the fanatical followers of an Islamic sect deliberately crashed hi-jacked passenger planes into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.

The Barbarians Are Coming—With A New Dark Age
The World Trade Centre attack is confirmation of Arnold Toynbee's claim that the decline of a civilization means the appearance of Barbarian war-bands. And it is clear that, in one way or another, it is only a matter of time before the increasing senility of the countries that make up the Western world, will see them succumb to invaders. The result will be the final extinction of Western Civilization, along with its wealth and power, and a return to the Dark Ages: a time when there is no human community anywhere that is sane."""

A bit harsh, but not so far from the truth, in terms of "Realpolitik." DNC-o-crats who think illegal immigration, globalism, and multiculturalism are all inherently PC or "good" things should perhaps spend a few years in Mexico City, or Johannesburg, or for that matter, some Compton 'jects. Toynbee in fact offers quite a few interesting, anti-marxist bon mots worth remembering (tho' to most yokel "liberals" (the usual tasteless loud-mouthed bitch from KOS-hack, etc.), anything that speaks of tradition or European civilization (""ah "bon mot"--dat's from those nasty phroggies"") has now become suspect). The yokel DNC-o-crat, which is to say, yahoo, like his redneck GOPer cuz, generally views with suspicion any idea (whether Toynbee or Trotsky) that was not a part of American pop-kultur of the last 25 years or so. American politics: pretty much dominated by calvinist dolts, links oder rechts.

James Ellroy

Fiction is a lie; novelists, great pretenders and conjurers, and the Lit. Biz functions essentially as a deception, another manifestation of liberal-consumer culture. A character, say in a sci-fi novel might allude to a scientific theory or data, etc. but that is not the raison d'etre of fictional narratives. The fictioneer's rhetoric might be eloquent or feature interesting metaphors, etc. but nonetheless literary narratives are not genuine descriptions of reality, though they are often mistaken for such.

Literary businessmen and women would seemingly replace accounts of WWI--of the blood sport of Verdun or the Somme-- with Ulysses or the Wasteland; William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (a popular work, but it will suffice for illustrative purposes) with any number of works of fiction; objective analyses of the Depression with Dreiser, etc.; the science of Einstein with science-fiction. The lit. biz has, over the last 50 years, indeed mostly succeeded in replacing fact with fiction, however trite that sounds. Most American lit. consumers are more interested in the Wasteland and Bloomsbury melodrama than in WWI or WWII battles or russian history or the Bolsheviks, and most Americans generally know far more about Shakespeare than they do about Tudorian history, and may quote scenes verbatim from Moby Dick and not recall one civil war engagement or major figure. And the lightweight "historicism" of a few Lit. snobs barely begins to address the effects of literary deception.

The authentic progressive--or even old-school Trotskyite--retains a certain ideological opposition to the realm of belle-lettres and to bureaucratic prose of all types. The play Hamlet functions about like the Bible or Koran does; but then so does Marx's writing or that of most liberal Panglosses du jour. One hates to refer to it as dogma, but there are people lower in the Malebolge than Karl Popper.

I make exceptions for a few Greats: Joseph Conrad. Steven Crane. Dostoyevsky (Crime and Pun. a Noir epic, in a sense). A few old-school French realists and Voltaire. Hermie Melville, tho was I believe quite f-n mad. EA Poe's manga amuses, but he was perhaps also mad. (Hawthorne was not mad, but maybe too sane and "kultured"). The Victorian shrews, and most Americuns of the last 50 years or so were mad. Joyce es muy loco, regardless of his clerical and priestly acumen (better a decent history of WWI than a wheelbarrow full of "Ulysses"--). The "Noir" school of writers may be mad, but there is a definite method--related to a detective-like deduction, perhaps-- to their madness (not to be perceived in say the madman's tale of Moby Dick); and EA Poe's best stories also are characterized by that sort of deductive power. Noir in fact has an impact quite more forceful than most traditional literature or the dayglo space-operas of science fiction (though there are a few definite sci-fi greats--PK Dick, JG Ballard, cyberpunks).

Similar to his noir daddy Hammett, James Ellroy may be one of the few authentic pulp visionaries (Tarentino not included in the Club Hammett), and his visions reveal LA for the insane, corrupt dystopia it is. Black Dahlia and LA Con are certainly works of art, comparable, to, say, Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49 (which has a few pulpish hints as well). With White Jazz, still a decent read, he may have got a bit carried away with the chaos and corruption, similiarly with the sort of Truman Capote meets Kafka writing of American Tabloid. I haven't read his most recent, Cold Six Thousand. He's still a bit of a macho cop lover--tho' willing to acknowledge that there are plenty of Dudley Smiths around (and still are).




Ellroy is a name in the Wood, as well: Ho-wood. Chandler was processed through the Ho-wood machine decades ago and is, at least from the consumer's POV, not far from Mickey Spillane pulp. Chandler was, after all, an Englishman, and Marlow is still a bit of a British gent. So it's a bit contrived, but then so was Sherlock Holmes. Hammett's Sam Spade, more worldly, cynical, runs closer to the street, but at the same time he seems sort of confused, ineffectual (that may be intended--Hammett's more of a relativist than Chandler) and not nearly as fleshed out as Marlow in Farewell My Lovely or the Long Goodbye. Ellroy, like Hammett, aims for a true-crime, photojournalist-like realism and while I admire that (yet sometimes I find the obscenity a bit gratuitous), I think Chandler was attempting to produce an FS Fitzgerald-like prose as well as noir: he was not only about a sort of photographic realism.



We wouldn't exactly refer to Marlow as phony but perhaps a bit metaphorical in conception; he's not the iconic Holmes of course (tho' with Marlow's chess-playing and so forth, there is still bit of the English detective to him), but he's not an alcoholic, ho-mongering member of the LAPD, as so many of Ellroy's heroes (and anti-heroes are). Chandler's writing and his Marlow-knights are perhaps a bit outdated, but Ellroy-pulp sometimes reads like it was pasted in from sheriff's reports if not True Detective. That's not to say I don't enjoy the pulp aspect: I do--especially Black Dahlia and LA Con. The recent bust of the coke-whiffing Burbank mayor who was shacking up with her Vineland Boys mobster- boytoy right off the pages of Ellroy.


Early Dash--Falcon-, pre-Red, pre-whatever that broad's name was--moves along nicely, but Ray Chandler still outplays him: perhaps that posh and jazzy side of Chandler irritates Our Guy Ellroy, but I think there is more Chandler than Dash in Ellroy manga, and that is part of the maximalist appeal--as in White Jazz--Chandler meets, well, the beats sorta. Later Red-Hammett--the Thin Man stuff--reads rather obscene. It's amusing but a bit unsavory.



As far as Ellroy's cop-rogues go, Jack Vincennes ranks pretty high--tho I think White Jazz as a whole could have used editing--

Ellroy supposedly disavowed Chandler as a forefather, however. Pourquoi? I perceive a distinct Chandler-like sensibility to Ellroy's LA fiction--maybe Chandler too conservative? Hammett wrote with a nice crisp style, but he was quite simplistic in ways. I think Chandler was a better writer in terms of prose, scenes, plotting etc. Posh. Chandler like Ellington to Hammett's Count Basie. Dash's politics also quite leftist if not outright red; Ellroy too a bit of a leftist perhaps--the expose of LAPD corruption (not fleshed out enough in the LA Con flick), the hatred for mafiosos, but riding with Dash and the marxists? Hard to believe.


Ellroy/LA

And given Ellroy's proclaimed conservative inclinations, his fondness for Hammett is a bit odd, tho' hopefully had Hammett known the real history of Stalinism he would have renounced and denounced those jackals.

Jimmy E. got a bit lazy or something, however: pricey dames maybe, booze, who knows. And more macho too--the de rigeur noirish shift from idealist hater of corruption to a bit more cynical conservative: White Jazz could have been penned by some aging LAPD goon on a meth binge, ya know Studio City bungalow with a tasty Weekly gal (I wager "jade") making some gin and tonics, Stan Kenton cranked up in the back. Nonetheless we'll peruse C. 6000 in near future.

Snitch-Ron marches on.


"""A brief reminder on TCP""""

"""""A TCP connection between two hosts (which will be called respectively
"client" and "server" in the rest of the paper) can be identified by a tuple
[client-IP, server-IP, client-port, server-port]. While the server port is
well known, the client port is usually in the range 1024-5000, and
automatically assigned by the operating system. (Exemple: the connection
from some guy to freenode may be represented by [ppp289.someISP.com,
irc.freenode.net, 1207, 6667]).

When communication occurs on a TCP connexion, the exchanged TCP packet
headers are containing these informations (actually, the IP header contains
the source/destination IP, and the TCP header contains the
source/destination port). Each TCP packet header also contains fields for a
sequence number (SEQ), and an acknowledgement number (ACK).

Each of the two hosts involved in the connection computes a 32bits SEQ
number randomly at the establishment of the connection. This initial SEQ
number is called the ISN. Then, each time an host sends some packet with
N bytes of data, it adds N to the SEQ number.
The sender put his current SEQ in the SEQ field of each outgoing TCP packet.
The ACK field is filled with the next *expected* SEQ number from the other
host. Each host will maintain his own next sequence number (called
SND.NEXT), and next expected SEQ number from the other host (called
RCV.NEXT)."""""




STFU, Snitch-Ron. No one gives a shit about your pathetic wannabe-hacker snitch-Speak. It was dated 15 years ago. You don't know encryption from egyptian, or protocols from pot farming.

Christopher Hitchens: or the Iraqi War Effort for Dummies
".......For anyone with eyes to see, there was only one other state that combined the latent and the blatant definitions of both "rogue" and "failed." This state--Saddam's ruined and tortured and collapsing Iraq--had also met all the conditions under which a country may be deemed to have sacrificed its own legal sovereignty. To recapitulate: It had invaded its neighbors, committed genocide on its own soil, harbored and nurtured international thugs and killers, and flouted every provision of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The United Nations, in this crisis, faced with regular insult to its own resolutions and its own character, had managed to set up a system of sanctions-based mutual corruption. In May 2003, had things gone on as they had been going, Saddam Hussein would have been due to fill Iraq's slot as chair of the U.N. Conference on Disarmament. Meanwhile, every species of gangster from the hero of the Achille Lauro hijacking to Abu Musab al Zarqawi was finding hospitality under Saddam's crumbling roof.

One might have thought, therefore, that Bush and Blair's decision to put an end at last to this intolerable state of affairs would be hailed, not just as a belated vindication of long-ignored U.N. resolutions but as some corrective to the decade of shame and inaction that had just passed in Bosnia and Rwanda. But such is not the case. An apparent consensus exists, among millions of people in Europe and America, that the whole operation for the demilitarization of Iraq, and the salvage of its traumatized society, was at best a false pretense and at worst an unprovoked aggression....."

Hear, hear, Hitch. Most Dove-o-crats not only fail to acknowledge the brutalities of the Hussein/Baathist regime, they fail to acknowledge that their own bosses (ie. Hillarity, Di-Fi, Edwards, et al) in fact supported the war effort themselves. Agreeing in part with the Hitchens' sort of justification for the War Effort, however, does not imply one agrees to, say, the political and economic agenda of the Republican party, nor with BushCo's handling of the war (Hitchens might have addressed the tragic deaths of iraqi civilians a bit more in depth), or the "neo-cons." ("neo-con" now part of the DailyKOS-hack's neo-Doublespeak lexicon, sort of equivalent to what "petit-bourgeois jackal" was a few years ago. At least the marxists were a bit more honest than the new school of Byatch-o-crats).

Hitchens/WartoBeProudOf

From Russell's Mysticism and Logic

"""""The possibility of this universal love and joy in all
that exists is of supreme importance for the conduct and
happiness of life, and gives inestimable value to the
mystic emotion, apart from any creeds which may be
built upon it. But if we are not to be led into false
beliefs, it is necessary to realise exactly what the mystic
emotion reveals. It reveals a possibility of human nature--
a possibility of a nobler, happier, freer life than any
that can be otherwise achieved. But it does not reveal
anything about the non-human, or about the nature of
the universe in general. Good and bad, and even the
higher good that mysticism finds everywhere, are the
reflections of our own emotions on other things, not part
of the substance of things as they are in themselves.
And therefore an impartial contemplation, freed from all
pre-occupation with Self, will not judge things good or
bad, although it is very easily combined with that feeling
of universal love which leads the mystic to say that the
whole world is good. """""


As Russell notes the Mystic (or his unsavory cousin, the occultist) in effect imposes his own narcissistic, "pre-occupation with Self" onto reality, and thus mistakes his own perceptions of Reality for the ding-an-sich: he continually fails to realize that "the reflections of our own emotions on other things [are not] part
of the substance of things as they are in themselves". The individual mind (i.e. the "mind" as a product of biochemical, neural processes in the brain) does not interpenetrate nature; McMoondoggie has no special, hidden connection to the granite or pines or other natural phenomena that he gazes at in wonder--indeed, as anyone who ever bothered to read Melville's Moby Dick realizes, any such nature mysticism would be far more horrorific and terrifying than the pastoral dreams of any Wordsworth-like New Agers, even ones who memorized their "Quantum physics for Bad Poets" 101 texts (we here at Contingencies generally prefer Russellian like skepticism to literary visions, but make exceptions for Melville--Mel. was spinning Road Songs 100 years before the Beats. Ishmael hisself resembles a Kantian skeptic to some degree). Queequeg's shark-demon pantheism, or Ahab's rage against the Whale, puts most Lovecraft pulp to shame (and Lovecraft's occultic stories--eloquent at times--- generally function as a type of sublimated racism--).



Nature mysticism is a rather typical affliction of lapsed-protestant do-gooders, or of aging college party boys (nazis of course were rather fond of nature mysticism as well, and occultism--"mysticism" then being a sort of pretense for, most likely, some Goering-like decadence). What's more the specific supernatural claims associated with mysticism are hogwash: the Amazing Randi (however quaint and rustic he seems, Randi debunks countless frauds) still offers 1 million dollars to any occultist or mystic or "psychic" who can demonstrate some paranormal event to a crowd of witnesses in an objective setting.

ah yeahh : ol' Aurora borealis

Coward, n.

"One who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs."

Ambrose Bierce

Shuttle Tees, from Orbit-Ron



Dewd--I am so with those guys. That hole in the belly of their ship! Yikes. I wager they are saying a few Ave Marias. Speaking of wagers, Pascal's Wager is one of the most famous--an early example of a decision matrix. Here it is in brief:

You live as though God exists.
If God exists, you go to heaven: your gain is infinite.
If God does not exist, you gain nothing & lose nothing.

You live as though God does not exist.
If God exists, you go to hell: your loss is infinite.
If God does not exist, you gain nothing & lose nothing.

Many Xtians, of course, don't have a problem with being greedy, self-serving opportunists, supporting US Total War Incorporated (or NASA), lying, breaking any number of supposed Scriptural principles. Pascal suggests that the blasphemer (even ones who march to Sunday School each week) in effect has the most to lose, IF God exists (in other words, the wager does NOT offer a proof of "God"--merely what will be the case given a traditional theological account. Though the use of "infinite" is rather questionable, as is the assumption that "God" does reward the "pious." ).

Auf-veeder-zehn

"The only fascist science fiction writer in America": RA Heinlein

(The Politics of Sci-fi, Redux)


From Libertarian Forum, 1969 or so:

"""""According to a February issue of National Review magazine, Robert Heinlein is one of 270 signers of a jingoist petition circulated in the U. S. Author's Guild by the facile William Buckley and his spiritual cohort Frank S. Meyer. The petition, a belated retort to an earlier anti-Vietnam war roster of authors (which was eminently successful), calls for "the vigorous prosecution of the Vietnam war to an honorable conclusion." Deep contemplation is not necessary to comprehend the statist, authoritarian implications of such New Right weasel words and the concomitant beliefs of men who would endorse it.""""""

Apparently even a few Libertarians thought Heinlein a bit too whacked and rightist (to the real Precious-Bodily-Fluids sort of Hawk, Nixon was "soft"). Heinlein appears to be the favorite scribbler and ideological guru of New Worlds. Excepting JC, of course, and perhaps Hog HulkRon(one of the loudest of DU Blog-Martyrs: loudness being inversely proportional to like rationality.......). Perhaps HulkRon--homophobe, congenital liar, white trash protestant, misogynist, and lover of all things Heroic and Heinleinian---might leave his WWF Today alone for a few days and read up on his ideological guru's pal Bill Buckley (At least Buckley wielded some nice Ivy League prose: more than pulpmeister RAHeinlein, or poor Hulk-Ron, another Caliban who fancies hisself Shakespeare, could say).



Heinlein/Buckley

Dem's the Facts (and there's more to come for the Corpse Cocka-roacha).

Wit (warning: non-PC, and guaran-teeeeeeeed to irritate dyslexic scientologists from Texas)

"""Fascists do bad things just to be bad. “I’m the baddest dude in Baghdad,” Saddam Hussein was saying,“the baddest cat in the Middle East. I’m way bad.” This was way stupid. But fascists are stupid. Consider Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. He didn’t have any. How stupid does that make Saddam? All he had to do was say to UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, “Look where you want. Look beneath the couch cushions. Look under my bed. Look in the special spider hole I’m keeping for emergencies.” And Saddam Hussein could have gone on dictatoring away until Donald Rumsfeld is elected head of the World Council of Churches.

Instead, we blew the place to bits. And a mess was left behind. But it’s a mess without a military to fight aggres­sive wars; a mess without the facilities to develop dangerous weapons; a mess that cannot systematically kill, torture, and oppress millions of its citizens. It’s a mess with a message— don’t mess with us.""

(PJ O'Rourke). Anyone who partied with HS Thompson on occasion, and hates communists can't be all bad.

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?


When you start seeing strings of hypothetical questions ("Geez Wally, what would ol' Ben Franklin do about the dreadful poverty?"), that's a good sign some maudlin suburbanite liberal has been short on the tithing plate, or reading some Screepture, or perhaps trying to hustle his more successful pal at Tandy Corp, or is it his fellow LDS Elder-Bot.

""""""It was precisely Marx who had first discovered the great law of motion of history, the law according to which all historical struggles, whether they proceed in the political, religious, philosophical or some other ideological domain, are in fact only the more or less clear expression of struggles of social classes, and that the existence and thereby the collisions, too, between these classes are in turn conditioned by the degree of development of their economic position, by the mode of their production and of their exchange determined by it. This law, which has the same significance for history as the law of the transformation of energy has for natural science - this law gave him here, too, the key to an understanding of the history of the Second French Republic.[42] He put his law to the test on these historical events, and even after thirty-three years we must still say that it has stood the test brilliantly.""""" (Engels, Intro. to 18th Brumaire

KSRobinson:"the feel of the future."

(the politics of sci-fi, cont.)


(from interview with KSR):

LJ: "Do possibilities that are addressed in SF fiction subconsciously influence and shape the way in which our reality evolves? If we can imagine it, will it inadvertently strengthen the possibility of becoming real?"

KSRobinson: "Or on purpose. Shelley said, "Anything that can be conceived can be executed." I'm not sure that is true, but certainly SF serves as a kind of modeling or climate forecasting; its scenarios tend to have a group similarity, or a majority report, that invokes a certain kind of future which everyone then assumes will come true in some form or other. SF has been doing well enough with the general tenor of its predictions to make people confident that it is doing pretty well at capturing the feel of the future, in some senses. Ironically, this may account for the decrease of interest in SF lately (if there is one, as often reported)—people don't want to know. The future is scary, and people think it can only get worse, so they read something else. No one likes dystopias as a steady diet. This was one of the worst aspects of cyberpunk; to the extent it succeeded (particularly in its implication that this dire future would be fun and that canny people could get by surfing the badness) the vision of a better future tended to fail. Dystopias need to be warnings, not invitations to cope, and give up on change."


Well stated, Mr. Robinson. But quite a few questionable assertions are contained therein (as questionable as the eloquent futility of that early sci-fi scribe Shelley (of course Shelleyan verse like a blowtorch compared to the little candles of, like, about any American writer ever). Futurism is not in itself good, and the visions of much utopian sci-fi obviously often do not "pan out". Additionally, dystopias are not simply pessimism, but more like warnings. Brave New World and 1984 are warnings, and there are more than a few humans who do live sort of Winston Smith-like lives, whether in so-called democracies or some communist regime. KSR seems a bit over-optimistic; like many writers of speculative fiction, his visions of some efficient, orderly utopian future often come at the expense of overlooking the Kafka-like nightmares of the past. Wm. Gibson at least has no such delusions: Count Zero in a sense effectively illustrated a not-so-fun "dire future" where a few "canny people could get by surfing the badness." Funny those canny people that Gibson portrays (like Bobby Newmark in CZ) don't at all resemble the typically overly-sensitive, hysterical PC types (or Osiris forbid, mormons or biblethumpers) found on most "liberal" blogs....ave DysLit.

But really even the cool cyber-noir of Gibson doesn't deal with contemporary political and economic problems. Futurists, whether u. or dys., take potshots at grand targets, and generally miss. Authentic political discussions generally reduce to reiterations of the Keynes vs. Karl Marx bout (or is it just dealing with the implications of David Ricardo's economic ideas). To redistribute, or not to redistribute! To entitle or not to entitle! Visions aren't arguments, KSR.

Frege for Phun.

"(Frege) invented axiomatic predicate logic, in large part thanks to his invention of quantified variables, which eventually became ubiquitous in mathematics and logic, and solved the problem of multiple generality. Though previous logic had dealt with the logical constants and, or, if...then..., not, and some and all, iterations of these operations were little understood; even the distinction between a pair of sentences like "every boy loves some girl" and "some girl is loved by every boy" could not be represented. It is sometimes noted that Aristotle's logic would not be able to represent even the most elementary inferences in Euclid's geometry, but Frege's "conceptual notation" could represent inferences involving indefinitely complex mathematical statements. Hence the analysis of logical concepts and the machinery of formalization that is essential to Bertrand Russell's theory of descriptions and Principia Mathematica (with Alfred North Whitehead), and to Gödel's incompleteness theorems, and to Alfred Tarski's theory of truth, is ultimately due to Frege."

Hume Day, everyday!

"""In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark'd, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary ways of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when all of a sudden I am surpriz'd to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, 'tis necessary that it shou'd be observ'd and explain'd; and at the same time that a reason should be given; for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. "" (Hume, from the Treatise of Human Nature).

Hume holds that values and virtues, however beneficial to society, are not
"necessary"; they are conventions, based on an individual's subjective desires and "passions". Value statements are not statements about perceivable facts (tho' there might be a debate with that) , nor are they "axiomatic" as say the pythagorean theorem is, or for that matter propositional logic ala Modus Ponens (tho' value "warrants" could be established in a sense as a premise: "you ought not to rob banks if you want to avoid prison; if you can get with it, and want the cash, then rob them") . Is there a way around this view without recourse to theology or appeals to pathos?--- i.e. some argument for objective morality---that an "ought" statement ("you ought not to rob banks, or invade countries") is actually not just a matter of prudence, or taste, pleasure, but somehow rational or logically necessary? . Many secularists, Darwinists, and atheists routinely rely on some sense of shared values or objective morality, without being able to justify those values rationally. Of course anyone who has been through a few blogger ethics BS sessions (or who recalls them--not always fondly) knows that the Hume fact/value distinction is a biggy, and in fact damn near impossible to overcome (which is to say, Hume made a 2nd order insight about "ethics" (whatever that is, ultimately); not merely about ethical relativism or "why be moral", but about the language of "values" itself: modal auxillaries such as "ought" or "should" are sort of semantic singularities. Alas, moralists of left and right do not know that, or they forget it when they log onto ye olde crackerbarrel.org.

Zizek on Immigration (La Izquierda Auténtica)


""""One should be attentive here to how even those elements which appear as pure Rightist racism are effectively a displaced version of workers' protests: of course there is racism in demanding the end of immigration of foreign workers which pose a threat to our employment; however, one should bear in mind the simple fact that the influx of immigrant workers from the post-Communist countries is not the consequence of some multiculturalist tolerance - it effectively IS part of the strategy of the capital to held in check the workers' demands - this is why, in the US, Bush did more for the legalization of the status of Mexican illegal emigrants than the Democrats caught in the trade union pressures. So, ironically, the Rightist racist populism is today the best argument that the "class struggle," far from being "obsolete," goes on - the lesson the Left should learn from it is that one should not commit the error symmetrical to that of the populist racist mystification/displacement of the hatred onto foreigners, and to "throw the baby out with the dirty water," i.e., to merely oppose populist anti-immigrant racism on behalf of multiculturalist openness, obliterating its displaced class content - benevolent as it wants to be, the mere insistence on multiculturalist openness is the most perfidious form of anti-workers class struggle..."


from "Only Atheists can believe"


"they think they are holding God by His testicles....."


Muy bien. As even the Fabians realized, the Marxist critique should never be dismissed lightly (alas Zizek pone mucho Lacan en su Marxismo). Zizek also has the spine to denounce the American monarchists (including "liberal" ones), the financiers, the speculators (or wannabe-speculators), the IT barons and the perennial bourgeois swampflowers.

¿Dónde están Las Placas??

(The Cult of Mormonism, cont.)

“These records were engraven on plates which had the appearance of gold, each plate was six inches wide and eight inches long and not quite so thick as common tin. They were filled with engravings, in Egyptian characters and bound together in a volume, as the leaves of a book with three rings running through the whole. The volume was something near six inches in thickness, a part of which was sealed. The characters on the unsealed part were small, and beautifully engraved. The whole book exhibited many marks of antiquity in its construction and much skill in the art of engraving. With the records was found a curious instrument which the ancients called "Urim and Thummim," which consisted of two transparent stones set in the rim of a bow fastened to a breastplate.”
- Joseph Smith, March, 1842 letter to the editor of the Chicago Democrat"


The staff of Contingencies offers a hearty WHOA to the memory of Joe Smith, discover of Las Placas. Where are they now, tho' LDS-bots? Nadie sabe. Maybe Mitt-Man (someone that f-n lame must work for the DNC-o-crats) will share the secrets of Las Placas with the heathens.

Alas, HS Thompson no longer occupies this mortal plane of existence: were Doc Gonzo around he'd give Mitt-Man the public flogging he deserves.

Multo buono!

Literary pseudo-objects (oder, Onkel Bertie's Buch-Brennen)


"Similarly, to maintain that Hamlet, for example, exists in his own world, namely, in the world of Shakespeare's imagination, just as truly as (say) Napoleon existed in the ordinary world, is to say something deliberately confusing, or else confused to a degree which is scarcely credible. There is only one world, the 'real' world: Shakespeare's imagination is part of it, and the thoughts that he had in writing Hamlet are real. So are the thoughts that we have in reading the play. But it is of the very essence of fiction that only the thoughts, feelings, etc., in Shakespeare and his readers are real, and that there is not, in addition to them, an objective Hamlet. When you have taken account of all the feelings roused by Napoleon in writers and readers of history, you have not touched the actual man; but in the case of Hamlet you have come to the end of him. If no one thought about Hamlet, there would be nothing left of him; if no one had thought about Napoleon, he would have soon seen to it that some one did. The sense of reality is vital in logic, and whoever juggles with it by pretending that Hamlet has another kind of reality is doing a disservice to thought. A robust sense of reality is very necessary in framing a correct analysis of propositions about unicorns, golden mountains, round squares, and other pseudo-objects"

(from Russell, Bertrand. Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy. London: Allen and Unwin, 1919)

Lord Russell raises an important point here, however bo-ring that point may seem to most literary hepcats. Are there aesthetic truths (say the "truth" of Hamlet) in the way there are say truths of natural sciences or history, or truths arrived at in calculus or formal logic? The traditional "epistemological" divide splits analytical truth (pertaining to mathematics and formal logic–deductive) from synthetic truth (inductive knowledge based on inference and observation: biology, chemistry, physics, as well as social sciences). Leibniz, one of the founders of integral calc. along with Newton, made this distinction: and Russell was quite aware of Leibnizian thought. Where does literary/aesthetic "knowledge" (not to say theology/mysticism) fall on this divide then? Not easily placed, but most would say it is closer to induction or "qualitative" psychology, than to deduction, or quantitative/analytical reasoning.




Yorick Inc.

The play Hamlet offers no facts; it is not history, tho' it may contain a few historical allusions (rather difficult to confirm as well). The play Hamlet thus might be interpreted as sort of an eloquent Prevarication (we here at Contingencies are not complete Philistines and would allow the Bard's strange works to be kept in libraries the world over--not sure about other, lesser Lit-Liars, however). Similarly, a few pages of authentic WWI history--say, regarding the burger-stands of Verdun or the Somme-- in effect reduces Joyce's Dantean vision of Ulysses to near nothingness (stalinism, fascism, Hiroshima, 'Nam continue that reduction). A fortiori, the latest fictional potboiler, whether Updike, or the latest sales-pitch fromUrsula La Hen, should not be mistaken for some accurate represenation of, for lack of a better term, bio-economic Reality. IN some sense then Russell reaffirms a rather classical and skeptical view of aesthetic claims: in the Republic Plato (speaking through the Russell-like Socrates) bans the lyric poet from the ideal state.

GenuinePaganIdolatry!

Guaran-teeeed to scare the F. out of biblethumpin' protestant-salesmen and fraudulent whoresons,everywhere.....

FlagWaver-Ron!

How's this for a quote, Reagan-Ron:. Yr a lying sack of hick protestant shit. I wager even old Nixonian Heinlein would agree. You don't know what a valid argument is; phuck you don't know what a coherent paragraph is, ; i doubt you know what supply and demand is. Occult-Ron: you're finished, dreck. Call your attorney Drugonius. Finito.

(Politics of Sci-fi. cont.)

"""""""The new wavers outraged the flag wavers, the science fiction old guard, which favored a right-wing militaristic politic featuring empire-sized conflicts on the galactic scale, and assumed a conservative, country-club attitude in cultural andpyschological matters. The heroes of Robert Heinlein, for example, are bluff, whiskey-drinking, macho American grads. But the characters of Cyberpunk science fiction are low down. The concept was formally introduced in William Gibson's 1984 punk novel, NEUROMANCER. Although this first novel swept theTriple Crown of science fiction--the Hugo, the Nebula, and thePhilip K. Dick awards--it is not really science fiction. It could be called "science faction" in that it occurs not in another galaxy in the far future, but 20 years from now, in a BLADE RUNNER world just a notch beyond our silicon present.""""

Who dat? The Doctor--Dr. Leary that izz. Yes. Dr. Leary, there is a great difference between the noirish scenes of a "cyberpunk" writer such as Gibson , and the Battlestar Galactica scripts of Heinlein & Co. What's more, I doubt Billy G. ever worked for the CIA.

RIP Ingmar Bergmann



Authentic angst: Unlike, say, the potboilers of RA Schweinlein.

Spaeter, IB.

"The only fascist science fiction writer in America": RA Heinlein

(The Politics of Sci-fi, continued)

From Libertarian Forum, 1969 or so:

"""""According to a February issue of National Review magazine, Robert Heinlein is one of 270 signers of a jingoist petition circulated in the U. S. Author's Guild by the facile William Buckley and his spiritual cohort Frank S. Meyer. The petition, a belated retort to an earlier anti-Vietnam war roster of authors (which was eminently successful), calls for "the vigorous prosecution of the Vietnam war to an honorable conclusion." Deep contemplation is not necessary to comprehend the statist, authoritarian implications of such New Right weasel words and the concomitant beliefs of men who would endorse it.""""""

Apparently even a few Libertarians thought Heinlein a bit too whacked and rightist (to the real Precious-Bodily-Fluids sort of Hawk, Nixon was "soft"). Heinlein appears to be the favorite scribbler and ideological guru of New Worlds. Excepting JC, of course, and perhaps the Deep Thoughts of Hog HulkRon, the Galactic Rassler (one of the loudest of DU Blog-Martyrs: loudness being inversely proportional to like rationality.......). Perhaps HulkRon--homophobe, congenital liar, white trash protestant, misogynist, and lover of all things Heroic and Heinleinian---might leave his WWF Today alone for a few days and read up on his ideological guru's pal Bill Buckley (At least Buckley wielded some nice Ivy League prose: more than pulpmeister RAHeinlein, or poor Hulk-Ron, another Caliban who fancies hisself Shakespeare, could say).




Buh bye Hulk

In 1969, Abbie H. (yeah he had some issues), student of Marcuse--and Marx--- would most likely have put a bullet in Hulk-Ron's head for even buying one of Colonel Heinlein's potboilers: jus' saying. And of course Abbie would have called a girly-mann psychotic who idolizes Heinlein the great closet-case Himmler that he izz. Or just "stupid phuck."

Heinlein/Buckley

Maybe Preacher HulkRon recalls a bit of Screepture: Suffer Fools gladly.

Are there rational grounds for religious belief? (various skeptical musings)

There's no point in arguing with those who assume that a religious perspective is justifiable by dogma--the mere presence of Scripture. Those who believe the dogma may be justified rationally (as the jesuits used to assert) must, on the other hand, overcome various Theology 101 chestnuts: the problem of evil, claims of immateriality (i.e. a Soul), status of other faiths, Scriptural fallibility (i.e. Scripture vs. Team Darwin) and the basic epistemological issue of why anyone should accept any religion as a true account of reality, rather than say a commnon-sense physico-logico account.

That may be unsubtle, and not very appealing to those who work for Christendom Inc., but many theists continually assume that those issues have been settled in their favor, when of course they haven't been.

Kant himself rejected the classical arguments for a deity (tho' his comments on the Design argument are interesting, and rather relevant, given the Dawkins hype), and there are I think far more philosophers and scientists arranged on the skeptic side (e..g, that there are no convincing, rational grounds for religious truth, or for an omniscient and just God) then there are rational theists. There does not seem to be a shortage of irrational theists however.

* * *

Is the existence of miracles used to confirm the truth of Scripture? If it is, then obviously other religions and cults claim miraculous events so the mere presence of claims that a miracle occurred doesn't really prove anything: that water was instantly converted to wine is about like saying the Buddha levitated. The catholic church routinely confirms miracles, yet as Chris Hitchens (yeah he's a callous mother-f-er on occasion) pointed out in a great essay on Mother Theresa's death, the confirmation is in no way scientific or objective: it's usually based on flimsy, anecdotal evidence (and an incredibly sentimental process as well). It may be thought such claims of miracles are amusing or charming, but as Hitchens points out, the belief in miracles acutally does great damage to rationality as a whole.

I shall let Mr. Hitchens speak for himself (and for rationality), since he does it much better than I:

"Those of us who are against miraculous claims for the more obvious reasons--that the laws of nature do not respond to petitions and that what can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof--have a tendency to forget that this vulgarity and hysteria also increases the sum of misery on Earth, without at all diminishing it in the false promise of the afterlife."

Additionally, most supposed miracles are rather trivial, when you think about it: campesinos don't need to see The Virgin of Guadalupe , they need dinero, trabajo,----panocha.........

* * *

Quote (from Christian blogger):

"in order to do that without actually investigating each miracle- or religious experience-claim, you'd need to give arguments for why we shouldn't believe in miracles or see religious experience as evidentially weighty"

In other words, prove to you that pigs don't fly. I have never seen a flying pig in person or photos. I don't know anyone who has, and never read any history indicating that pigs do fly. I did see a drawing of one with wings on a website. But it was not flying.

You are right, though to some degree: all the laws and rules of physical science could be overturned tomorrow and pigs might fly, just as Hume said tomorrow his billiard table might obey different physical laws--I would agree there is no logically necessary reason why physical laws could not be overturned. But I'd wager the probability of the pig flying (or billard balls flying backwards after the break of the table) is about the same as Jesus out strolling on the waves or the Virgin of Guadalupe making her annual appearance in the reflection of some campesino's windshield or whatever. Bayes theorem shows this too: each day a miracle has not been confirmed increases the unlikeliness of the original anomaly having occurred.


Mystical experiences are another thing. We here at Contingencies don't doubt many people have those experiences, but they in no way demonstrate or confirm theological concepts. Recently some experiments have shown that the mental state produced by monks and nuns meditating or praying can be electrically stimulated in various brain lobes. So what was thought to be a calm "oneness with god" or satori was in fact some biochemical process in the corpus callosum.

* * *
Ivan in Dostoyevsky’s Brother Karamazov doesn’t believe in God, or rather, if He does exist, He must be opposed. Ivan (who I think we can imagine has read some Voltaire [as had Jefferson] and other French or English skeptics and scientists) claims, if such a “God” existed, He allows wars, Napoleons, plagues, all sorts of injustices anyways: so He kills the innocent, while commanding us not to do it. And by definition God would both have commanded the deaths of innocents and known about it, programmed it in a sense. Ivan thus rejects “God” (Nietzsche also enjoyed reading some FD). I don’t think he suggests that everything is permissable, merely that theological concepts of justice are absurd. (Of course some nut like Kierkegaard chooses to believe anyways, as do most fundies and catholics: tsunami wipes 300,000 people off the earth {a disaster at least 10 times that of the Lisbon quake of Arouet's era), and the fundies march to Church and say it was a sign of Gott).

Fallacies and sophomoric irony (courtesy of a DU Emo-Crat)

"I am typical of those who get all of their information from the mainstream media, and news networks like CNN and FOX-News."

Who obtains all their info. from those sources, Ms. Athena of DU? Some evidence might be useful, or at least specific targets. That's a sweeping generalization, as well as straw man fallacy (create this imaginary "conservative," and then shoot him down. There are such creatures--so why not instead use a real conservative as a target? Like Al Gore, supporter of NRA, capitalist, anti-union, and abortion opponent (at least for a few years).




Sehr schoen slidin'

(Vinnie M., Ace)

I know that we must stay in Iraq until we win. I have never heard an explanation of exactly what winning is, but I was probably just out of the room the times it’s been explained.

I know that things are going well in Iraq because the president says so, and he’s in a position to know better than anyone.

This does not quite reach the average high school junior's attempt at wit or satire. Perhaps she's describing someone she knows, her family or something. Not only another straw man fallacy (who is this person?), but inept. None of these wannabe-Voltaires have ever bothered even with the cliffsnotes to Candide. Not only that, begs the question of what the consequences of pulling out of Iraq will be. It's hardly a slam-dunk that pulling out will result in instant peace for those phunn-loving Iraqi shiietes and sunnis. So it's more unfounded ideology done via crude rhetorical manipulation, a sort of caricature of conservativism (it's debatable whether the "Redneck Conservative" from central casting who liberals love to attack really embodies true conservatism--. Giuliani ain't Fred Thompson, and vice versa. And however f-ed Giuliani may be, he's taken on organized crime to some extent. And he realizes the dangers of muslim hysteria. Maybe Rudy could RICO DU).



"I know that the oil companies have our best interests at heart, and will put their astoundingly high profits to good use for the betterment of all Americans. If that wasn’t the case, they wouldn’t waste all that money on commercials to tell us so."

This is a bit closer to something like political satire, but still broad and unspecified. Point at some real targets: Petroleum execs, Exxon, etc. Or STFU.

"""""I know that the president and vice president have often been accused of doing things they are not allowed to do. But in every case, they have assured the nation that they checked, and found that they are perfectly within their rights to do anything they want to.""""""

Get a badge. They may have done horrible things, or maybe not. They were voted into office (and 2004 vote fraud accusations from Dems were shown to be unfounded) Had the demos not stood in the way of some Naderian-like communication reforms for years, perhaps the BushCo boys would have been kept on a wire, and a lot of deceit would have been prevented. Come to think, keeping the Feinsteinian right on a wire may not be such a bad idea either.


""""I know that Alberto Gonzales is an honest, trustworthy man, because he wouldn’t have made it all the way to being the Attorney General if he wasn’t. I cannot explain why his testimony on any number of topics has been contradicted over and over – sometimes by others, sometimes by way of documents, and sometimes by his own words – but I am sure it is simply the result of his political enemies trying to make him look bad."""

See the above comment, and perhaps read up on the Wash. St. election of 2004, illegal immigration, and a bit on the Rothchilds........

""""I know that our elections are fair and honest, because if they weren’t, that big a news story would be all over the TV.""""

You got a point there. Like those suspicious elections in El Lay, when ex-communist Jefe Villagarosa mysteriously went to victory in many middle and upper-class caucasian neighborhoods. More obvious simplifications, guilt by insinuation. About like some 3rd rate Bolshevik hack of the 1920s ranting about the bourgeois.

"""""I know that all Muslims are potential terrorists and should be watched closely – even those who are American citizens. Just because they have lived here for generations does not place them above suspicion, unlike white Christians who are incapable of fanaticism in the name of religion.""""""

Whoa. Now you must be quoting your relatives out in the swamps of Louisiana or something. Straw man, continued. And of course more BS Emo-crat ideology (that muslims are not terrorists: hah. tell that to some New Yorkers living around the WTC---what used to be known as the WTC).

"""""I know that Barack Obama should never be elected president because his middle name is Hussein, which in and of itself indicates that he is not to be trusted."""""


Jefferson might agree with that, Daisy Mae.

...................



"""""I know that no matter how bad things seem to be in our great nation, things are actually going just great because if they weren’t, TV news personalities wouldn’t be as perky and chipper as they always are.

But mostly I know that when someone tries to tell me that there are facts on the internet that don’t get covered by the mainstream media, they are just trying to confuse me – and I am never going to allow myself to be confused by the facts.""""""


That's rather amusing, since "liberals" (in name only, really) own and control most mainstream media, such as CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, PBS, most cable. Fox IS a joke; but then so is ABC. CBS is more or less part of Rothschilds, Inc. Either way, more ideology by suggestion: the totalitarian's method (as Orwell, no fan of agit-prop of links oder rechts, himself realized). Now try say Candide 10 times, a bit of Swift, Bierce, Twain, and Orwell, and start over.........................

O Jay-Bird Galbraith

Some bon-mots from a real progressive (rather than phony ass, biblethumper closet-case "liberal", who mistakes effective plagiarism for writing)

"Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite."

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." (sounds like a description of the WebMcMeister of LSD Worlds)


"It is a well known and very important fact that America's founding fathers did not like taxation without representation. It is a lesser known and equally important fact that they did not much like taxation with representation."

Righteous Indignation 101



Debra Bowen, ChairGal of the CA Election biz, hires some UC Davis geeks to benchmark, er, bench-hack her voting gear. But she makes it easy: she provides them with the source codes and manuals. They do succeed in cracking some e-vote machines. Wow. Even the hacker-hobbyist could more than likely alter or destroy the box, given the source code. Nonetheless Bowen's predictable PC rage against the Diebold SS earns front page coverage in the SF Cthulicle (googlestein it)

"""""Letting the hackers have the source codes, operating manuals and unlimited access to the voting machines "is like giving a burglar the keys to your house,'' said Steve Weir, clerk-recorder of Contra Costa County and head of the state Association of Clerks and Election Officials. """""

AS Weir realizes, Bowen's lightweight righteous indignation means little or nothing. Normal citizens do not have access to the source code. Even would-be hackers (unlikely that they are hanging out at the GOP country club) don't have access to the source code. Only some UC Davis state-funded hacker-lites had access to the source code (and the guys who wrote the code for the voting machines). Solution? Keep the Diebold and Sequoia, etc. programmers and admins on a wire each election.


I'm sure right-wing ideologues and devotees of monarchism everywhere will scoff....but this logically concludes the controversy over election fraud in 2000 and 2004.

IT doesn't "conclude" scheisse, Quack-Ron: a possibility, even a probability that some network was somewhat "hackable" (by some state-sanctioned geeks with user manuals) does not imply it WAS hacked, or that some rightwing idiots hacked it. DreckRon couldn't distinguish a valid argument from his vanilla-chronic, or Modus Ponens from his mama, nor does he realize that logical conclusions follow necessarily from true premises (or at least premises assumed to be true), not from conjectures--not that that ever stops scum of left and right from lying. (Given this person's incessant Scientology-like rants and irrationalism, he's probably doing some safe moderate attacks on rightist extremists on one site, and then on another chiming in with Romney supporters, and will probably wear his tie-dye to the booths when he votes for Mitt the Mormon Family Guy).

While some GOPers may have hacked the vote (unlikely), Dems may have as well. In CA there were a few accusations of vote tampering with Feinstein's victory (Bowen is a pal of DiFi as well, Demonius). Not only that, GOP registration was at least 5% more than Dems in Ohio 2004; official exit polls (ie CNN) had Bush ahead as predicted. The 2004 presidential votes closely correlated with party registration--and that's a more reliable indicator than pre-vote or exit polls (had there been a large discrepancy, the vote-conspiracy nuts might have had a case). A few unofficial exit tests (ie, conducted by the Peoples' Front of Toledo, uh Toledoian Peoples' Front)--showed Kerry ahead. Funny the DNC itself did not press the issue. (Maybe Quack-Ron, Hercules of DU, might gather all of his favorite SF Gate articles written by his favorite shrieking marxist hag, find some Fed shyster, and try to take his accusations of vote fraud to Court-Stein, and see how quickly his PC belches and guessing games hit the Dreck can).

Moreover, a significantly higher number of GOPers than Dems voted as well--that's a fact whether one likes it or not (some vote fraud in Florida may have occurred--Contingencies never claimed that BushCo were not corrupt---but the existing law prevented more than one official recount, and Gore got a recount, and still lost. The Court rejected additional recounts. And it was nearly all ballot voting, not e-votes).


Zogby himself and other liberal pollsters predicted a Bush win in Ohio 2004 with like 2% margin of error, and that's what it was, regardless of some conspiro-nut's infantile disorder fantasies. (amusing how most of the vote-fraud nuts also believe the 911 attacks were a conspiracy, which has been disproven numerous times. The NIST itself--continually updated by professional physicists, even non-conservative ones--debunked the 911 conspiro-claims).

You might be a totalitarian if you mistake your own subjective, emotion-based ideology for objective reason, notwithstanding your collection of Norma Rae videos.

The Politics of Sci-Fi

Poli-SciFi


"""""The positions (Heinlein's characters) espouse are often justified by appeals to rationality (Heinlein is a rationalist supreme). Too often the radical freaks seem to lack rationality (perhaps they don’t understand it—too long a diet of non-sequiturs out of little red books maybe) and respond much more at the gut level, the level of feeling, a close attraction to the superficialities and surface gloss. I can find no other explanation for the vast popularity that Heinlein’s books enjoy among people who really should be burning and banning them. I’m not immune to it myself. I don’t know how many times I’ve read Starship Troopers. It swings. (It also sucks.) I hate and love the book at the same time (could that be the attraction of it?). I suspect that it may be the closest thing he has produced to a work of art. It seems to push so many buttons simultaneously in so many people that he must have stumbled on some universally applicable symbols to clothe his message in."""""



Yes, sir: "too long a diet of non-sequiturs"--that describes the usual American narcissist who takes the sci-fi of Heinlein as gospel, his Galaxiad. Some might question labelling RAH as "Rationalist," however. Starship Troopers was, at the very least, fascist-lite; and Dubois, assuming he is Heinlein speaking to some degree, offers endless Patton-like truisms--Nietzsche, RAH was not. But the writer overlooks the other problem with RAH-Speak: C'est tres sauvvage. It's not so much RAH's militaristic message (there are some interesting fascist writers, say Celine--), but his manner of presenting the message--. The diction rarely matches the sophistication of the prose of an average urban sportswriter. Mickey Spillane with a few derivatives: that's RAH. There may be a few interesting scientific allusions (not as many as some of the RAH-heads believe), but even then the science seems rather outdated and Newtonian. But yeah it's a free country, more or less. You're free to view Heinlein as the Lord Tennyson of space epics, or think J. P. Sousa to be the greatest musician who ever lived.


""""..... It was interestingly argued and a fun story, but opposition to the ideas was squashed by fiat—if Heinlein said it was true, then it was true. Full stop, no argument. That was unfair and infuriating, an underhand debating tactic. There were so many times that I wanted to take the hero’s History and Moral Philosophy teacher by the scruff of the neck and shake him that I often feared for my blood pressure when reading the book. Apoplexy rules. So I’d finish reading it and then immediately go and read Harry Harrison’s Bill, the Galactic Hero which is a wonderful satire on Starship Troopers and which never fails to make me laugh out loud. That always made me feel better.""""

We here at Contingencies agree: the clever comic strips of Harrison are themselves superior to Herr Heinlein's Nixonian schtick, his cyber-Caliban barks. AS are Vonnegut's day-glo montages (and Kurt, while not some visionary, never stumped for the hard-right), and many other "postmodernist" writers. But then a few decent histories of WWII--even Shirer's pulp masterpiece, the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich--reduce nearly all fiction, sci-fi or trad., to meaninglessness.

"Patriotism: the last refuge of a scoundrel" (Dr. Johnson)

You might be a closet-case, right-wing, American nationalist... ....if you consider RA Heinlein a great writer. Though a few confused Sergeant Stoners invoke Heinlein on occasion (when they need to whip up some cheap jingoistic emotion), they generally overlook the fact--or maybe they don't mind---that Heinlein was a pal of L-Ron Hubbard, a hawk on Vietnam, and pro-Reagan (review RAH's fairly rabid Annapolis speech from '72-'73, for some of the real-life RAH, rather than his fictional alter-egos). His writing, while occasionally entertaining (Job offered a few yuks), hardly ranks with the best sci-fi writing, such as PK Dick (Heinlein never could have written "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", or Osiris forbid, A Scanner Darkly, VALIS, etc.), or the subtle surreal sci-fi of JG Ballard, or the dizzying, entropic visions of a Pynchon, or the cyberpunks such as Gibson and Sterling. Kurt Vonnegut produced quite a bit more inventive writing--and more politically relevant writing-- than did the odd Mr. RAH. That said, fiction--traditional, sci-fi, or otherwise--however eloquently written (tho' Heinlein was hardly eloquent), is not true: Bertrand Russell was fond of reminding the literary set of that fact (imagine a Russellian who demands that any would-be fictioneer first define what a sentence is {or subject/predicate} before beginning into his Magnum Hopeless--and then offer his reasons for writing in modern Anglo-saxon instead of Deutsch or Latin, or mandarin.........).



RAH's claims to scientific knowledge are themselves debatable: RAH was a navy man for a while and attended a semester or two of mathematics at UCLA. Einstein or Hilbert or Oppenheimer he was not: really he's sort of a leaner, meaner L-Ron (and mostly a charlatan, like L-Ron)), if not Ayn Rand for dyslexic John Birchers-on-drugs. Precious Bodily fluids! (Herr RAH was also a pal of ex-nazi and NASA rocket man, Werner Von Braun). Not even so "libertarian" (whatever that term actually defines), but more Nixonian secularist (and rather crass social Darwinist, like L-Ron)--if not to the right of Nixon. His prose rarely rises above the level of 3rd rate screenwriters (Time Enough for Love sort of 3rd rate Nietzsche), and really Starship Troopers (itself nearly a fascist anthem) was only partially redeemed when adapted to a film.

Racially-motivated Gonzales bashing.

AG Gonzales may be a corrupt, underhanded lackey of the Bush Administration, or he may not be. Without any acquaintance with the real facts of the case, most Americans out in the Blog-stadium are not at all qualified to offer an assessment of his guilt or innocence (and the Krip-o-crat generally overlooks the fact that her sacred Due Process rights (you're gonna see Due Process, soon Crip-Ron) apply even to the dreaded GOP foes). At any rate, AG Gonzales had the power to terminate attorneys, as Janet Reno did. Gonzo claims the terminations were performance-based, and in at least one case---the Washington St. DOJ boy, McCay--he may have been correct. McCay was presented with evidence of vote tampering---on the part of Democrats! shocking (there was evidence of vote fraud on the part of Demos in El Lay as well when Jefe Villaigarosa went to victory)---in the 2004 Washington St. election, which went to recount. McCay let it go, over the protests of many, including some non-republicans, and Christine Gregoire, DNC-o-Crat Senator went to Washington town (with about 100 votes, after 3 recounts).

Many democrats seem to be obsessed with a shallow sort of marxist-lite (if not a sort of liberal Calvinism) view of politics, where Good is identified with the "proletariat" (modern leftist-proles now include a whole lot of academics (or corporate professionals); Marx, however phucked-up, on the other hand, considered academics and educators bourgeois), and Evil with ye olde bourgeois (Keynes thought Marxist "class struggle" to be one of the pernicious intellectual errors ever---): US vs. Them.



OF course the modern classes of "Us" and "Them" are provisional, and never really defined (and ripped off from a silly, old stoner anthem that some of the pre-psychotic Fraud-o-crats take for real music). Par-tay regs (read, Kossack rant regulars) toss anyone who objects slightly to a Demo guru into the Them can. Someone who reminds Kossack-lemmings that Hillary and Pelosi signed off on the War and Pat. Act, or that Dianne Feinstein is as fond of police-state politics as most dixie conservatives are, or who objects to some Demo pundit who routinely bends the truth to suit his purposes, like Sy the Liar Hersh, ends up in the Them can. Noam Chomsky, hardly some moderate (and confused on many issues), has even been termed Them, as has an old red like Alex Cockburn (he and his pals at Counterpunch offer a few libertarian-left thoughts once in a while), who simply points out the idiocies and poor research of Gore and the 911 conspiracy 'bots.


Similarly, anyone who questions the hysteria of the anti-Gonzales crowd earns a "Them" stamp. How do you know he did anything wrong asks some skeptic. He lied, shriek the DNC-o-crats. Of course all their info. comes from Democratic media pundits as well (notoriously anti-hispanic, and anti-catholic) like the hacks of WaPo. Most of the KossBots seem to think that their favorite Marat of the moment had a wire tap in the AG's office itself. Or they just follow Sy Hersh's lead and make shit up. Either way, had DNC-o-Crats listened to some intelligent 3rd party types years, if not decades ago (say Nader, however buffoonish), they might have implemented some political-communication reforms (ala the FOIAperhaps), and kept the Dem-publicans (and the Black Robe posse--funny how attention has shifted from Scalia's gang to Gonzo--Scalia's a far more sinister figure)) on a wire 24/7, and thus have prevented a great deal of guesswork and the endless Clue game.

Muslim support for Obama



Muslims are rallying for B.O. (Boy Obama):

"""As Salaam Alaikum, (The Peace of God Be Upon You) and welcome to Muslim Americans for Obama '08.

Also prominently featured on the site is an endorsement from Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison, who recently drew a comparison between Hitler and Bush (BushCo may be corrupt, but there's hardly been any Kristallnacht), and who took his oath of office on a Quran. (Hitchens penned an amusing essay on Ellison's bizarre, and possibly seditionist oath)

Keith Ellison endorsed the 2008 presidential campaign of Sen. Obama saying, "He speaks with a unifying spirit."

You have problems with fundamentalists and Mormons, consider the clowns, like Ellison, and at least by implication Obomba (who accepted the endorsement from Ellison) who view the Koran as some profound statement of political ideology---(and as even Carl Sagan realized, the muslim tradition is chock-full of irrationality). And any crack-smoking, white-trash do-gooders who support the likes of Obama will be _________________.

Trey/Peaches (nearly authentic, unlike you)

Mitt the MormBot

The mysteries associated with the Book of Mormon and the history of the Church of LDS itself should, it seems fairly safe to bark, irritate anyone who values the secular principles of Founding Crackers. (Which is to say, if they don't, then you don't value those said principles. Jefferson himself had penned articles criticizing the near-madness of religious "enthusiasts" such as Joe Smith). Not only are there the very odd circumstances of Smith's supposed revelation (including the plates, and supernatural "creatures" that delivered the plates), there is the text itself, which most objective humans will soon realize is the Old Testament plagiarized, with some name changes, and made even stranger and more irrational than the original, as Twain realized (the brutal and rather absurd history of Mormonism in the Western USA reads not like Twain's polite cynicism, but akin to the bad trip sections of a Pynchon novel). One LDS doctrine suggests that the pious Mormon Big Daddy (and even some Democratic xtian Big Daddies--readers of OS Card's pulp-- like Mormons too!) earns a planet or something apres-mort, and he then sort of populates it with his holy Mormal concubines, until his next incarnation. Brigham Young in Space. Yay.




Mitt Bucks



Mitt Romney, America's favorite MormMan, is not only a Mormon however: he's a Scientologist! He admires L-Ron, the hippest crypto-nazi guru since like Crowley. As a good Mormon-Scientologist Prez Mitt will hopefully reveal the Secrets of the Sacred Plates, and the Truth of the HOLY NEWTS OF Fiery FLAME, that er carried the plates from God and Jeee-suss to Joe Smith one afternoon in Ohio or whereever, AND maybe share some secrets of those whacky Appliantologists (could Mitt's pending election be.............related to the arrival of BOB?). Then, once we have eliminated the pagan hordes, each Man shall have his own tribe, and then his own planet populated by his own personal harem of obedient Mormon-Maids/Seed-receptacles. Praise Moroni!

Mitt's not your ordinary republican MormMan, however---he's rather fond of wearing some rouge and mascara, for one.

Mitt'sMakeUp



Isn't that verboten per the Book of Mormon, if not Screeepture? Thou shalt not at any time cross-dress, or something.

Gospel musick

Al Cockburn on Al Gore's flim-flam environmentalism



"""""".....There is still zero empirical evidence that anthropogenic production of CO2 is making any measurable contribution to the world's present warming trend. The greenhouse fearmongers rely entirely on unverified, crudely oversimplified computer models to finger mankind's sinful contribution. Devoid of any sustaining scientific basis, carbon trafficking is powered by guilt, credulity, cynicism and greed, just like the old indulgences, though at least the latter produced beautiful monuments. By the sixteenth century, long after the world had sailed safely through the end of the first millennium, Pope Leo X financed the reconstruction of St. Peter's Basilica by offering a "plenary" indulgence, guaranteed to release a soul from purgatory."""""


Hah. Even an old-school marxist journalist such as Cockburn (with a few scientist-stringers, of course) outdoes the Gorean faithful when he puts his noggin to it. Comrade Cockburn's rants are an acquired taste, and he IS rather misguided on many things, but better some fairly honest, data-driven leftism--- even if misguided on occasion--- than suburban, PC liberal- emotivists.

EL Pollo Gore-Do may not be the worst person in American politics (compared to say a MittBot Romney, or Bushco, or even Hillarity, Gore's pretty benign), but Chairman Al does seem rather fond of alarming people with all sorts of bogus research (however in fairness to the greenhousers, there are some who dispute Cockburn's dismissals). Moreover, as Cockburn realizes, the greenhousers' scare tactics are often a type of deception: politics is not only defined by the "climate crisis" (perhaps some greens might recall the record profits posted by Exxon and other petroleum giants over the last few years: that's a crisis as well, as is, well, theocracy, whether xtian, muslims, or jew). At the very least, claims regarding human-caused global warming should be not be accepted as fact (or, Osiris forbid, dogma of the Church of Gore) until all the facts are in (and the IPCC has itself not reached a consensus--a point which Cockburn addresses in a more recent essay). Either way, we here at Contingencies doubt that Gore-do, a half-assed journalist before joining the American political carnival, knows photosynthesis (which, btw, accounts for most CO2 emissions, hepcats) from his favorite tofu-fajitas recipe.

Orwell on the motivations of pacifists

"The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States …"

(from Orwell's Notes on Nationalism).

Das Stimmt, Mr. Orwell. The Pacifist may overtly claim to be opposing war in general, but he's all-too-often assisting the other side by his kvetching and resistance, or possibly (as Orwell suggests) he wishes to implement--re-implement, as it were--the great Marxist state (and of course obtain for himself a Par-tay membership). In regards to the current police action against the Islamofascists, most of the granola-muncher leftists realize that anything which lessens the power of the US military (like supporting Hillari or Obomba) increases the likelihood of the success of the pacifist's real statist agenda (and rest assured that there are few if no Islamic pacifists). That said, it's a fairly safe bet that Orwell, while objecting to the current variety of statist Emo-crats, would have felt little love for the theocratic and corporate-oriented US conservatives (which is to say, Orwell would not mince words with some bag of shit like Larry Ellison).

Mr. Orwell, similar to Nietzsche in some regards, was one of those UnAffiliated semi-geniuses whose ideas don't fit neatly into current political categories; those sentimental DNC-o-crats who enjoy trading on his name, or plagiarizing his ideas, generally don't know Winston Smith from Smith & Wesson, or Catalonia from Catatonia: “Ignorance is Strength!”(given his experience in the Spanish civil war, Orwell was well aware of rats, whether links oder recht). Thankfully, Orwell (or shall we say Eric Blair) recognized his literary betters as well, such as Jonathan Swift: " It is “your Natives” (i.e. Gulliver’s fellow-countrymen) whom the King of Brobdingnag considers to be “the most pernicious Race of little odious vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the Earth”, and the long passage at the end, denouncing colonization and foreign conquest, is plainly aimed at England, although the contrary is elaborately stated." Orwell--not to say Dean Swift-- would, most likely, sadly shake his head were he alive and watching the muslimification of England, or shall we say, the Yahoo-ification of political life. Of course most yankee yahoos have, unlike Mr. Blair, rarely bothered even with the savageries of SwiftSpeak, tho' some may have caught the tamed-down, "user-friendly" NBC version a few seasons ago. Orwell/Gulliver'sTravels

There are, to be sure, various Orwellian factions: Christopher Hitchens,who published a book on Orwell's writings, claims to be an ideological descendant of Orwell and Trotsky (and we here at Contingencies believe that he is, mostly--tho' HitchensSpeak generally a bit more posh than the somewhat wooden--but effective-- prose of G.O.)--on the other hand, mystery man Thomas Pynchon, who recently penned a pretty dread introduction to 1984, also reveals some Orwellian aspects on occasion (see Vineland for starters, an entertaining if mad, labyrinthine, and gloomy tale (TP hisself might have done well to attend Conrad 101); Contingencies grants that Pynchonology may situate itself nearer to Trotskyism than Hitchens' writings doth-- or Orwell's, for that matter--read the phreak and find out, fan-boy). Those who have perused a few of Hitchens' diatribes soon realize, however, that his real master is not Leonovitch T., or even Eric Blair (sort of the stoner's Conrad), but none other than David Hume.

Bach prelude 2, WTC