16.8.04
Otto Gross was the first analyst to emphasise the dialectical interdependence between individual inner change on the one hand and collective political change on the other.
Gross perceived the individual within the dynamics of the nuclear family and was the first to empathize deeply with the child in this conflict. And he recognized the way in which family structures that violate the individual reflect those of patriarchal society. For him the concept of the orgy described the space in which individual and collective liberation could become possible within the framework of a matriarchal ritual. Thus the idea of the orgy became his term for a sacralization of radical politics.
Gross did influence the course of analytic theory and clinical practice to the present day. He was a 'pioneer of life experiment' (Green, 1998, Introduction) and tried to live his radical ideas in both his private and his professional life - which he refused to separate. Thus he became unacceptable to those trying to establish the credibility of analysis as a science in the eyes of society and academe in the early years of this century. Already in 1921, less than a year after his death, the writer Anton Kuh wrote of Gross as 'a man known only to very few by name - apart from a handful of psychiatrists and secret policemen - and among those few only to those who plucked his feathers to adorn their own posteriors' (Kuh, 1921, pp. 161f.).
oder auch:
»Das Ziel wird die Befreiung der Liebe von der Sabotage durch die latenten Autoritätsmotive sein, das passive wie das aktive, die Unterwerfungsbereitschaft wie den Willen zur Macht.«
desweiteren-
Otto Gross - Leben, Werk und Wirkung
Islam is not alone in producing fanatical sects - Roman Catholicism has its own,
Opus Dei has sided with the powerful against the weak, both theologically and politically, Johann Hari, 13 August 2004.
This summer, the beaches of the world are awash with The Da Vinci Code. It's a daft, mediocre thriller - but it contains two words that matter: Opus Dei. The novel depicts this strange sub-strata of the Catholic Church as the Pope's secret police. According to the author, Ron Brown, they are a mad, murderous mob who pick off the enemies of their own brand of ultra-conservative Catholicism.
From the Independent
Pope John Paul II has been a strong supporter of Opus Dei. John Paul II's press spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, is perhaps the most famous member of the organization.
In 1960s Spain, Francisco Franco appointed several members of Opus Dei as ministers. These ministers are generally acknowledged to have introduced to Franco's rule a capitalist, technocratic ideology which contrasted with previous Falangist, Carlist and military influences. Simultaneously, some other members of Opus Dei were exiled on account of their political ideas, like the founder of Diario Madrid who lived in Paris and would later have a leading role in the Spanish transition to democracy.
In present-day Spain, members of Opus Dei have been appointed as ministers by Partido Popular leader José María Aznar. Now that Aznar and the PP / Opus Dei party has been voted out, Opus Dei are less powerful, but still very powerful. They have a reputation as rich, powerful, arch-conservative, vengeful and dangerous.
In Ireland, members of Opus Dei (along with other religious or political organisations) have for decades been required to declare their membership if asked to serve in the government. In recent times, no known Opus Dei members have held cabinet posts.
In the United States, the Boston Globe reported connections between the Opus Dei priest Father C. John McCloskey and some conservative Catholic politicians.
Opus Dei states that its members are completely free in their personal, professional and political lives, and that the organization plays no role in the professional decisions made by members, including those who work in politics, and therefore cannot be held responsible for them.
(some of the above from Wikipedia)
The Opus Dei Awareness Network is a catholic organisation trying to set the record strait and raise awareness about this Kinky Katholic Kult. Below are some 'corporal mortification' tools used by the groups members to remind themselves of Christ's suffering. One is worn arount the top of the thigh and is spiky, the other is a more traditional type of whip used in the usual S and M way on the buttocks of the believer...
Good Article on Right Web "group watch"
Here The group's website refutes all the acusations against them.
other sources about Opus Dei
Opus Dei has sided with the powerful against the weak, both theologically and politically, Johann Hari, 13 August 2004.
This summer, the beaches of the world are awash with The Da Vinci Code. It's a daft, mediocre thriller - but it contains two words that matter: Opus Dei. The novel depicts this strange sub-strata of the Catholic Church as the Pope's secret police. According to the author, Ron Brown, they are a mad, murderous mob who pick off the enemies of their own brand of ultra-conservative Catholicism.
From the Independent
Pope John Paul II has been a strong supporter of Opus Dei. John Paul II's press spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, is perhaps the most famous member of the organization.
In 1960s Spain, Francisco Franco appointed several members of Opus Dei as ministers. These ministers are generally acknowledged to have introduced to Franco's rule a capitalist, technocratic ideology which contrasted with previous Falangist, Carlist and military influences. Simultaneously, some other members of Opus Dei were exiled on account of their political ideas, like the founder of Diario Madrid who lived in Paris and would later have a leading role in the Spanish transition to democracy.
In present-day Spain, members of Opus Dei have been appointed as ministers by Partido Popular leader José María Aznar. Now that Aznar and the PP / Opus Dei party has been voted out, Opus Dei are less powerful, but still very powerful. They have a reputation as rich, powerful, arch-conservative, vengeful and dangerous.
In Ireland, members of Opus Dei (along with other religious or political organisations) have for decades been required to declare their membership if asked to serve in the government. In recent times, no known Opus Dei members have held cabinet posts.
In the United States, the Boston Globe reported connections between the Opus Dei priest Father C. John McCloskey and some conservative Catholic politicians.
Opus Dei states that its members are completely free in their personal, professional and political lives, and that the organization plays no role in the professional decisions made by members, including those who work in politics, and therefore cannot be held responsible for them.
(some of the above from Wikipedia)
The Opus Dei Awareness Network is a catholic organisation trying to set the record strait and raise awareness about this Kinky Katholic Kult. Below are some 'corporal mortification' tools used by the groups members to remind themselves of Christ's suffering. One is worn arount the top of the thigh and is spiky, the other is a more traditional type of whip used in the usual S and M way on the buttocks of the believer...
Good Article on Right Web "group watch"
Here The group's website refutes all the acusations against them.
other sources about Opus Dei
15.8.04
14.8.04
In the first place, Google's claim that "PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web" must be seen for what it is, which is pure hype. In a democracy, every person has one vote. In PageRank, rich people get more votes than poor people, or, in web terms, pages with higher PageRank have their votes weighted more than the votes from lower pages. As Google explains, "Votes cast by pages that are themselves 'important' weigh more heavily and help to make other pages 'important.'" In other words, the rich get richer, and the poor hardly count at all. This is not "uniquely democratic," but rather it's uniquely tyrannical. It's corporate America's dream machine, a search engine where big business can crush the little guy.
Because it allows for very fast creation of hyperlinked ideas, many people install Wikis on their own machines to act as notebooks. You can throw things into them very quickly, and create vast swaths of interlinked research and material without really thinking about it. Writing WikiWords - missing out the spaces - becomes second nature.
12.8.04
Leon Khun from Rob the Rub's website, which is worth a visit.
right thats the last image I'll post today, I got a bit overexcited... finally working this really simple thing out...
Sniffing has been taken to a new level by Todd, a police sniffer dog with five years experience. After searching an abandoned car in a field for drugs he became ill and later died of a suspected amphetamine overdose. Perhaps because of the dog’s insatiable habit, police were unable to find any drugs on the scene, but the dogs handler, Roger Moore (truth really is stranger than fiction), is understandably upset. Without a hint of irony, Lancashire Police told reporters that Spaniel sniffer dogs tend to be “quite daft, but very very very keen”.
The BBC reported it, it must be true!
Shell misleads investors again as it lines up for Iraq spoils
In a move certain to feed the belief that the Iraq war was oil-motivated, oil giant Shell has now appointed a Country Chairman for Iraq. The Country Chairman role is the most senior coordinating job in a country where Shell operates, and indicates a significant amount of activity by the company there. But the beleaguered company, already under fire for misleading investors about the extent of its reserves, will face further criticism for telling its shareholders it had no activity or plans in Iraq.
At the annual general meeting of shareholders in June, Managing Director Malcolm Brinded unequivocally said, "We have no activities in Iraq yet; we don't have people in Iraq at the moment". The latest move was uncovered by researchers from PLATFORM [1] and Voices UK [2], who found it in a recruitment advertisement for a public relations (PR) officer for Shell Iraq [3]. That advertisement seeks "A person of Iraqi extraction with strong family connections and an insight into the network of families of significance within Iraq". The role of the PR officer will be firstly to build relationships with key decision-makers in awarding Iraqi oil contracts, and secondly to prepare a "reputation management plan", to prevent Shell being criticised internationally for its thirst for Iraq's oil.
Greg Muttitt, of PLATFORM, commented, "Shell is an extremely secretive company, to the extent that it wouldn't even tell its shareholders its plans in Iraq. Shell wants to avoid public accountability for its actions - and it's hiring a PR officer to help it do this. This is the clearest sign yet of how developed oil companies’ plans are in Iraq. It is telling that Shell made no announcement about this; that we had to find it in a recruitment advert".
Gabriel Carlyle, of Voices UK, added, "A Baghdad poll conducted last September found that only 5% of those polled believed the US invaded Iraq to assist the Iraqi people; whilst 43% of respondents believed that the US/UK had invaded primarily to rob Iraq's oil. Shell's ongoing efforts to"establish a material and enduring presence in Iraq" - efforts founded on massive (and ongoing) military violence on the part of the US and Britain - clearly illustrates that Baghdad's residents have a clearer picture of reality that most British newspaper pundits."
1: PLATFORM is a research group specialising in the environmental and social impacts of the oil industry.
2: Voices in the Wilderness UK has been campaigning on British policy towards Iraq since 1998.
3: the advertisement can be seen here
Guardian article
In a move certain to feed the belief that the Iraq war was oil-motivated, oil giant Shell has now appointed a Country Chairman for Iraq. The Country Chairman role is the most senior coordinating job in a country where Shell operates, and indicates a significant amount of activity by the company there. But the beleaguered company, already under fire for misleading investors about the extent of its reserves, will face further criticism for telling its shareholders it had no activity or plans in Iraq.
At the annual general meeting of shareholders in June, Managing Director Malcolm Brinded unequivocally said, "We have no activities in Iraq yet; we don't have people in Iraq at the moment". The latest move was uncovered by researchers from PLATFORM [1] and Voices UK [2], who found it in a recruitment advertisement for a public relations (PR) officer for Shell Iraq [3]. That advertisement seeks "A person of Iraqi extraction with strong family connections and an insight into the network of families of significance within Iraq". The role of the PR officer will be firstly to build relationships with key decision-makers in awarding Iraqi oil contracts, and secondly to prepare a "reputation management plan", to prevent Shell being criticised internationally for its thirst for Iraq's oil.
Greg Muttitt, of PLATFORM, commented, "Shell is an extremely secretive company, to the extent that it wouldn't even tell its shareholders its plans in Iraq. Shell wants to avoid public accountability for its actions - and it's hiring a PR officer to help it do this. This is the clearest sign yet of how developed oil companies’ plans are in Iraq. It is telling that Shell made no announcement about this; that we had to find it in a recruitment advert".
Gabriel Carlyle, of Voices UK, added, "A Baghdad poll conducted last September found that only 5% of those polled believed the US invaded Iraq to assist the Iraqi people; whilst 43% of respondents believed that the US/UK had invaded primarily to rob Iraq's oil. Shell's ongoing efforts to"establish a material and enduring presence in Iraq" - efforts founded on massive (and ongoing) military violence on the part of the US and Britain - clearly illustrates that Baghdad's residents have a clearer picture of reality that most British newspaper pundits."
1: PLATFORM is a research group specialising in the environmental and social impacts of the oil industry.
2: Voices in the Wilderness UK has been campaigning on British policy towards Iraq since 1998.
3: the advertisement can be seen here
Guardian article
10.8.04
Guerrilla artist Banksy has covertly cemented a 20-foot (6-metre) satirical statue protesting at the British legal system into a central London square. Banksy, best-known for sneaking his work into the Tate, has depicted the figure of justice as a prostitute with leather boots and a thong.
"It is a monument dedicated to thugs, to thieves, to bullies, to liars, to the corrupt, the arrogant and the stupid."
BBC report
"It is a monument dedicated to thugs, to thieves, to bullies, to liars, to the corrupt, the arrogant and the stupid."
BBC report
8.8.04
It should make us happy, but environmentalists are deeply alarmed: Prozac, the anti-depression drug, is being taken in such large quantities that it can now be found in Britain's drinking water.
Environmentalists are calling for an urgent investigation into the revelations, describing the build-up of the antidepressant as 'hidden mass medication'. The Environment Agency has revealed that Prozac is building up both in river systems and groundwater used for drinking supplies.
7.8.04
"It is a sad fact that from early childhood we are tyrannised by the moral myth that it is right, proper and good to leap out of bed the moment we wake in order to set about some useful work as quickly and cheerfully as possible. Parents begin the brainwashing process and then school works yet harder to indoctrinate its charges with the necessity of early rising. My own personal guilt about feeling physically incapable of rising early in the morning continued well into my 20s.
...
The propaganda against oversleeping goes back a very long way, more than 2,000 years, to the Bible. Here is Proverbs, chapter 6, on the subject:
Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise:
Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler,
Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.
(I would question the sanity of a religion that holds up the ant as an example of how to live. The ant system is an exploitative aristocracy based on the unthinking toil of millions of workers and the complete inactivity of a single queen and a handful of drones.)
Christianity has promoted bed-guilt ever since. This passage from the Bible is used as a bludgeon by moralists, capitalists and bureaucrats in order to impose upon the people the notion that God hates it when you get up late. It suits the lust for order that characterises the non-idler.
...
Greatness and late rising are natural bedfellows. Late rising is for the independent of mind, the individual who refuses to become a slave to work, money, ambition. In his youth, the great poet of loafing, Walt Whitman, would arrive at the offices of the newspaper where he worked at around 11.30am, and leave at 12.30 for a two-hour lunch break. Another hour's work after lunch and then it was time to hit the town.
The English historian EP Thompson, in his classic book The Making Of The English Working Class (1963), argues that the creation of the job is a relatively recent phenomenon, born out of the Industrial Revolution. Before the advent of steam-powered machines and factories in the mid-18th century, work was a much more haphazard affair. People worked, yes, they did "jobs", but the idea of being yoked to one particular employer to the exclusion of all other money-making activity was unknown.
...
"Convalescing" is a word one doesn't hear much these days. It's as if we have banished the notion that time is a healer. What happened, I wonder, to the doctors of the turn of the century, who used to recommend long periods of inactivity on the South Coast for minor ailments? When the sickly velvet-coated dandy Robert Louis Stevenson fell ill in 1873, aged 23, the diagnosis was "nervous exhaustion with a threatening of phthisis" and the prescription was a winter on the Riviera, "in complete freedom from anxiety or worry". Once upon a time, we knew how to be ill. Now we have lost the art. Everyone, everywhere, disapproves of being ill.
To demonstrate how our attitudes to illness have grown dramatically less idler-friendly in recent years, we need only look at the recent history of Lemsip's marketing. When I was a child, a mug of Lemsip mixed with honey was one of the pleasures of lying in bed with a heavy cold. It went with being wrapped in a dressing gown and watching Crown Court. It was all part of the fun. Your mother might bring you a steaming cup of the soothing nectar in bed. You would sip it, cough weakly and luxuriate in its fumes. It had some positive effect on the physical symptoms of the illness, to be sure, but it was also a pleasure in itself. Lemsip was part of the delicious and much-needed slow-down that illness can bring into our life.
Not any more. Lemsip has reinvented itself as a "hard-working medicine". It has changed from a friend of the idler to his worst enemy. The implication now is that rather than enjoying your illness and waiting a few days till it has gone away, you should manfully repress the symptoms and carry on as normal, competing, working, consuming. Most appalling of all was their recent ad line, "Stop Snivelling and Get Back to Work"."
4.8.04
Romantic love in the west received energies from neoplatonism, just as the islamic world; and romance provided an acceptable (still orthodox)means of compromise between Christian morality and the rediscovered erotocosm of Antiquity. Even so the balncing-act was precarious: -- Pico della Mirandola and the pagan Botticelli ended up in the arms of Savonarola. A secretive minority of Renaissance nobles, churchmen and artists opted out altogether in favor of clandestin paganism; the Hypnerotomachia of Poliphilo, or the garden Monsters at Bomarzo, bear witness to the existence of this "tantrik" sect. But for most platonizers, the idea of alove based on longing alone served orthodox and allegorical ends, in which the material beloved can only be a distant shadow of the real (as exemplified by such as St. Theresa and St.John of the Cross) and can only be loved according to a "chivalrous", chaste and penetential code. The whole ppoint of Malory´s Morte dArthur is that Lancelot fails to achieve the chevalric ideal by loving Guenivere in the flesh rather than omly in the spirit.
The emergence of Capitalism exercizes a strange effect on romance. I acn only express it with an absurd fantasy: -- it´s as if the Beloved becomes the perfect commodity, always desired, always paid for, but never really enjoyed. The self-denial of Romance harmonizes neatly with the self-denial of Capitalism. Capital demands scarcity, both of production and of erotic pleasure, rather than limit its requirements simply to morality or chastity. Religion forbids sexuality, thus investing denial with glamor; capital withdraws sexuality, infusing it with despair. "Romance" now leads to the Wertherian suicide, Byron´s disgust, the chastity of the dandies. In this sense, romance will become the perfect two-dimensional obsession of the popular song and the advertizement, serving the utopian trace within the infinite reproduction of the commodity.
In response to this situation, modern times have offered two judgements of romance, apperently opposed, which relateto our present hermeneutic. One, the surrealist amour fou, clearly belongs to the romantic tradition, but proposes a radical solution to the paradox of desire by combining the idea of sublimation with the tantrik perspective.In opposing the scarcity (or "emotional plague"as Reich called it) of Capitalism, Surrealism proposes a transgressive excess of the most obssessive desire and the most sensual realization. What the romance of Nezami or Malory had separated ("longing" and "union"), the Surrealists proposed to recombine. The effect was meant to be explosive, literally revolutionary.
The second point of view relevant here was also revolutionary, but "classical" rather than "romantic". The anarchist-individualist John Henry Mackay despaired of romantic love, which he could only see as tainted with the social forms of ownership and alienation. The romantic lover longs to "possess" or to be possessed by the beloved. If marriage is simply legal prostitution (the usual anarchist analysis), Mackay found that "love" itself had become a commodity-form. Romantic love is a sickness of the ego and its relation to "property"; in opposition Mackay proposed erotic friendship, free of property relations, based on generosity rather than longing and withdrawal (i.e.,scarcity): - a love between equal self-rulers.
good job this guy. mackay is officially stirner-reader by the way.
The emergence of Capitalism exercizes a strange effect on romance. I acn only express it with an absurd fantasy: -- it´s as if the Beloved becomes the perfect commodity, always desired, always paid for, but never really enjoyed. The self-denial of Romance harmonizes neatly with the self-denial of Capitalism. Capital demands scarcity, both of production and of erotic pleasure, rather than limit its requirements simply to morality or chastity. Religion forbids sexuality, thus investing denial with glamor; capital withdraws sexuality, infusing it with despair. "Romance" now leads to the Wertherian suicide, Byron´s disgust, the chastity of the dandies. In this sense, romance will become the perfect two-dimensional obsession of the popular song and the advertizement, serving the utopian trace within the infinite reproduction of the commodity.
In response to this situation, modern times have offered two judgements of romance, apperently opposed, which relateto our present hermeneutic. One, the surrealist amour fou, clearly belongs to the romantic tradition, but proposes a radical solution to the paradox of desire by combining the idea of sublimation with the tantrik perspective.In opposing the scarcity (or "emotional plague"as Reich called it) of Capitalism, Surrealism proposes a transgressive excess of the most obssessive desire and the most sensual realization. What the romance of Nezami or Malory had separated ("longing" and "union"), the Surrealists proposed to recombine. The effect was meant to be explosive, literally revolutionary.
The second point of view relevant here was also revolutionary, but "classical" rather than "romantic". The anarchist-individualist John Henry Mackay despaired of romantic love, which he could only see as tainted with the social forms of ownership and alienation. The romantic lover longs to "possess" or to be possessed by the beloved. If marriage is simply legal prostitution (the usual anarchist analysis), Mackay found that "love" itself had become a commodity-form. Romantic love is a sickness of the ego and its relation to "property"; in opposition Mackay proposed erotic friendship, free of property relations, based on generosity rather than longing and withdrawal (i.e.,scarcity): - a love between equal self-rulers.
good job this guy. mackay is officially stirner-reader by the way.
hakim bey - The Ontological Status of Conspiracy Theory
"If conspiracy theory is essentially right wing, it can only be so because it posits a view of History as the work of individuals rather than groups. According to this argument, a Mae Brussel-type theory (she believed that Nazis had penetrated American Intelligence and Government at policy level) may appear Leftist but in fact provides no sustenance for genuine dialectical analysis, since it ignores economics and class struggle as causal forces, and instead traces all events to the machinations of "hidden" individuals. Even the anti-authoritarian Left may sometimes adopt this low opinion of conspiracy theory, despite the fact that it is not bound by any dogmatic belief in economic determinism. Such anarchists would agree that to believe in conspiracy theory is to believe that elites can influence History. Anarchism posits that elites are simply carried by the flow of History and that their belief in their own power or agency is pure illusion. If one were to believe otherwise, such anarchists argue, then Marx and Lenin would be correct, and conspiratorial vanguardism would be the best strategy for the "movement of the social". (The existence of vanguardism proves that the Left-or at least the authoritarian Left -- has not merely been tainted accidentally with conspiracy theory: vanguardism IS conspiracy!) The Leninists say the state is a conspiracy, either of Right or Left-take your choice. The anarchists argue that the state does not "have" power in any absolute or essential sense, but that it merely usurps the power which, in essence, "belongs" to each individual, or to society en masse. The state's apparently conspiratorial aspect is therefore illusory-mere ideological wanking on the part of politicians, spies, bankers and other scum, blindly serving the interests of their class. Conspiracy Theory is therefore of interest only as a kind of sociology of culture, a tracking of the delusory fantasies of certain in-groups and out-groups-but conspiracy theory itself has no ontological status."
Hakim Bey and Ontological Anarchy: The Writings of Hakim Bey
via wood s lot
"If conspiracy theory is essentially right wing, it can only be so because it posits a view of History as the work of individuals rather than groups. According to this argument, a Mae Brussel-type theory (she believed that Nazis had penetrated American Intelligence and Government at policy level) may appear Leftist but in fact provides no sustenance for genuine dialectical analysis, since it ignores economics and class struggle as causal forces, and instead traces all events to the machinations of "hidden" individuals. Even the anti-authoritarian Left may sometimes adopt this low opinion of conspiracy theory, despite the fact that it is not bound by any dogmatic belief in economic determinism. Such anarchists would agree that to believe in conspiracy theory is to believe that elites can influence History. Anarchism posits that elites are simply carried by the flow of History and that their belief in their own power or agency is pure illusion. If one were to believe otherwise, such anarchists argue, then Marx and Lenin would be correct, and conspiratorial vanguardism would be the best strategy for the "movement of the social". (The existence of vanguardism proves that the Left-or at least the authoritarian Left -- has not merely been tainted accidentally with conspiracy theory: vanguardism IS conspiracy!) The Leninists say the state is a conspiracy, either of Right or Left-take your choice. The anarchists argue that the state does not "have" power in any absolute or essential sense, but that it merely usurps the power which, in essence, "belongs" to each individual, or to society en masse. The state's apparently conspiratorial aspect is therefore illusory-mere ideological wanking on the part of politicians, spies, bankers and other scum, blindly serving the interests of their class. Conspiracy Theory is therefore of interest only as a kind of sociology of culture, a tracking of the delusory fantasies of certain in-groups and out-groups-but conspiracy theory itself has no ontological status."
Hakim Bey and Ontological Anarchy: The Writings of Hakim Bey
via wood s lot
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