Barbra Streisand made a big booboo by citing an erroneous quotation attributed to Julius Caesar. I made this same mistake back in July which a visitor to the site pointed out so I found this particularly funny.
General
28
Sep 02
Otto Rank
I’ve been reading some bits on the web about Otto Rank, one of Freud’s pupils who later went his own way.
Rank also tackles the difficult issue of artistic creativity. On the one hand, Rank says, the artist has a particularly strong tendency towards glorification of his own will. Unlike the rest of us, he feels compelled to remake reality in his own image. And yet a true artist also needs immortality, which he can only achieve by identifying himself with the collective will of his culture and religion. Good art could be understood as a joining of the material and the spiritual, the specific and the universal, or the individual and humanity.
This joining doesn’t come easily, though. It begins with the will, Rank’s word for the ego, but an ego imbued with power. We are all born with a will to be ourselves, to be free of domination. In early childhood, we exercise our will in our efforts to do things independently of our parents. Later, we fight the domination of other authorities, including the inner authority of our sexual drives. How our struggle for independence goes determines the type of person we become. Rank describes three basic types:
First, there is the adapted type. These people learn to “will” what they have been forced to do. They obey authority, their society’s moral code, and, as best as they can, their sexual impulses. This is a passive, duty-bound creature that Rank suggests is, in fact, the average person.
Second, there is the neurotic type. These people have a much stronger will than the average person, but it is totally engaged in the fight against external and internal domination. They even fight the expression of their own will, so there is no will left over to actually do anything with the freedom won. Instead, they worry and feel guilty about being so “willful.” They are, however, at a higher level of moral development than the adapted type.
Third, there is the productive type, which Rank also refers to as the artist, the genius, the creative type, the self-conscious type, and, simply, the human being. Instead of fighting themselves, these people accept and affirm themselves, and create an ideal, which functions as a positive focus for will. The artist creates himself or herself, and then goes on to create a new world as well.
26
Sep 02
Military seeks to control riots with calming drugs
From the Houston Chronicle:
WASHINGTON — The U.S. military is exploring ways to use drugs such as Valium to calm people without killing them during riots or other crowd control situations where lethal weapons are inappropriate.
Some critics say the effort violates international treaties and federal laws against chemical weapons, an allegation the military denies.
“It’s a rotten idea to drug rioters,” said Edward Hammond of the Sunshine Project, a chemical and biological weapons watchdog group that is the program’s chief critic. “Beyond being a horrible idea, it’s illegal.”
The Pentagon has long tried to develop nonlethal weapons that would incapacitate or repel people with little risk of killing them. The effort intensified in the 1990s after hostile mobs confronted U.S. troops during peacekeeping and humanitarian missions in places like Somalia, Bosnia and Haiti.
26
Sep 02
Big Brother and Big Business Brother
The Police State/Big Brother/New World Order/International Capital making further inroads against the liberties and freedoms of the individual.
26
Sep 02
Time for homeschooling? It’s not just for Christians anymore.
Some screwed up stuff on the state of our so-called ‘educational system’. Public education is run, by and large, by professional sadists and authoritarian types. Not so fast, vouchers aren’t the solution to this problem which is one present outside the world of politics. That will just relegate the poor further to these joyless bureaucrats while the well-to-do get a tax funded coupon to the elite academy of their choosing. And, in many cases, private schools are more sadistic and authoritarian, religious or militaristic academies for example. What needs to be rooted out is this authoritarian attitude that is common when dealing with children. It results either in creating obedient drones or nihilistic martyrs. Treat children with respect and consideration, and act with their interests in mind.
25
Sep 02
American ‘Peace’ under the American boot
Bush’s puppet masters have outlined their manifesto for the so-called ‘Pax Americana’ recalling the ‘Pax Romana’ of the Roman Empire. Despots with a global aim have often linked themselves to the Romans. Napolean had himself crowned emperor, the tsars of Russia and the kaisers of Germany took their titles from the Roman Caesars. Hitler and the Third Reich used Roman-style standards and banners as well as the traditional Roman imperial salute, the outstretched arm. Hail Caesar! Sig Heil! The Fourth Reich may well be the American Reich, the one world government, the New World Order. What you are seeing is the corruption of the principles which our government is supposed to represent. The parasites in the Bush administration talk about other governments engaging in the ‘appeasement’ of Iraq. They are trying to make the comparison between Hussein and Hitler, but the more apt comparison would be the appeasement of the United States by the governments of the world. While the US plots murder against the people of Iraq, the leaders of France, China, and Russia are making back room deals to get what they want out of this farce.
Manifesto for world dictatorship By Margo Kingston
Now we know. The Americans have spelt it out in black and white. There will be a world government, but not one even pretending to be comprised of representatives of its nation states through the United Nations. The United States will rule, and not according to painstakingly developed international law and norms, but by what is in its interests.
In declaring itself dictator of the world, The United States will have no accountability to non-United States citizens. It will bomb who it likes when it likes, and change regimes when and as it sees fit, it will not be subject to investigations for war crimes, for torture, or for breaches of fundamental human rights.
When it asks the United Nations to move against Iraq, it is not demanding agreement to a strong case for action. It now admits it has no evidence that Iraq is preapring to use weapons of mass destruction against any other country. The Americans have stopped pretending, and now demand outright capitulation to its hegemony. The world will be policed in American interests. Full stop.
24
Sep 02
Big Brother checking in
Some fascist cog at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) stopped by to check in on the site. No referral so I don’t know if they used a link to get here. The DIA is the military’s equivalent of the CIA. I need to read more about them.
24 Sep, Tue, 09:05:50 NS.DIA.MIL MSIE 5 Windows NT
I searched google for an occurrence of ns.dia.mil and only pulled up a small list of hits. I don’t think they check out websites very often.
