Right. The problem with conspiracies is that it takes two people to conspire. Two people can keep a secret, if one of them is dead. I mean, for crying out loud. If the Mafia leaks like a sieve, how can you imagine the bland, plain federal government can keep secrets? I mean, have you seen government buildings? I'd be broadcasting secrets on a CB radio, just in hopes of getting the perks of being interviewed on Dateline.

Culture and Imperialism by Edward Said

Not in a long time. Or actually, I think I read several of his essays, or selected chapters, rather than the whole book. I tend to think that Said is pulling a certain amount of his thesis out of his butt, or rather, that he's taking a very limited point of view on the conceptsof empire and ethnicity and political-cultural identity. But then, I tend to feel that way about 90% of recent post-colonial analysis: it's too narrowly modern in scope, and doesn't have any anthropological distance.

Remember that all of this shit I've been spouting started as an attempt to seriously discuss some of the issues that are behind the rise in anti-murrican sentiment that is being displayed in increasingly graphic detail on all our TVs night after night. Well the period and events are most closely associated with the end of Cold War bipolarity and the moves toward a system of so-called ‘global governance’, and the involvement of concepts central to Western political theory since the Enlightenment necessitate consideration of the normative and historical implications involved. Indeed, it is the threat to liberty, equality and fraternity, solidarity, citizenship, political identity and obligation posed by the current challenges to the existing world order that fuels and publicly legitimates the continuously expanding forces of resistance.

Exacerbating these tensions are global crises such as worsening environmental degradation and resource scarcity, rising levels of poverty, HIV-AIDS, drugs, terrorism, war, and a plethora of other problems that threaten to explode our already divided world into a world of conflict. That many of these crises are worldwide, or at the very least, unconstrained by national borders, rendering nation-state sovereignty increasingly vulnerable to external attack or internal fragmentation, and dominating the vast network of international relations, is not disputed. Nor is the fact that they have permeated the entire ecological system whose rapidly disintegrating equilibrium seriously threatens the relative stability of centuries of national and international economic and political development.

What is highly contested (and heavily politicised) is the phenomenon which has been labelled ‘globalisation’, and all that it entails. The controversy surrounding the nature, meaning, age, origins, history, and significance of, as well as resistance to, the phenomenon has seen it put forward not only as the solution to the world’s problems, but also as responsible for causing and perpetuating them.

This confusing and contradictory state of affairs has been largely brought about by two separate, but interrelated, sets of circumstances. Firstly, there is a dearth of clear, relevant and substantive globalisation theory, even amongst the recent surfeit of globalisation literature. International relations (realpolitik) for example, has little to say that accounts for the social reality of the contemporary world, failing to acknowledge the connection between social practice and the constitution of social knowledge (the moral dimension of politics), and between the international and the domestic. In fact, international theory in general has long viewed ethics as applicable to the kind of community that international society cannot be and the world system as one that is incompatible with moral philosophy.

I say, however, that an understanding of globalisation, anti-globalisation, and their significance to world order is not possible without considering the normative implications of world system models. This necessitates looking beyond the hegemonic institutions and social and power relations, to their origins and how and whether they might be transforming, and also involves paying careful attention to the opening up of public space to moral and ethical concerns that is a prevalent feature of this interregnum.

And this is what is happening in many and varied places around the world. The Internet is a huge part of the opening up of public space to allow discourse on subjects that up until now were largely relegated to the non-real world types working in the ivory towers.

Someone else found this and posted it over at PF and I'm just throwin' it in to be ornery.

War of the worlds

It has become synonymous with the terrorist attacks of September 11 - but what is the origin of the name al-Qaida? Giles Foden on how Bin Laden may have been inspired by Isaac Asimov's Foundation

[link]

Isn't a nunnery an obscure term for place with women the opposite of nuns? :)

Isn't a nunnery an obscure term for place with women the opposite of nuns? :)

Yes, which is why Hamlet saying "Get thee to a nunnery" to Ophelia was actually a shocking statement, intended to hurt. Oddly, Hamlet is not always taught that way.

Oh well, it would still be a solution to NGA, just the other solution.

moonlit ... did I mention I work part-time at my mate's adult book shop? t Salesman mode We have a great selection of ... y'know ... stuff and an online shop as well t /Salesman mode ;)

You surely made me laugh Jimi.

One of the best memories I have of a very good friend who died a couple of years ago from lung cancer (7 weeks from diagnosis to death and bugger all lead up to the diagnosis) was when she had decided to move to another friend's house for companionship and care purposes for the few last weeks of her life. She had lived above her restaurant in an old bakery building that had an extremely steep and narrow staircase and so obviously had to call the furniture removalists to get her bed and a few other things down the stairs to be relocated.

While the big, burly, blokey removalists were lowering her bed very carefully down these steep stairs a big black vibrator fell out from between the mattress and the base. Well ... she, they, and everyone else who was around to help didn't know where to look for a split second and then she burst out into almost uncontrollable laughter. As she said afterwards, knowing that you've only got a few weeks to live certainly goes a long way to lessening the embarrassment factor of a situation like that.

what's a vibrator? t /Oh So Sweet & Innocent :)

Seriously, that's a nice memory of your friend. It's interesting how the sex industry has become more mainstream and acceptable nowadays. Porn shops are no longer the province of "dirty old men in plastic macs". In the few months I've been working at the shop I've served some women I'm sure would never have stepped into a shop (let alone bought a dildo or vibrator) 10 years ago.

I'm not sure if being sweet 'n innocent makes you a 'good' salesman or a 'bad' salesman?

I'm a good bad salesman :)

One night I had a woman in her early 50s call up asking for advice on what would be best for a first-timer. She was really embarrassed and nervous about coming in, so I said I'd stay open and let her make a choice after-hours. I think initially, she'd only wanted one "standard" vibrator but b/c I was able to make her feel comfortable and explain various things, she ended up spending close to 200 bucks and leaving with 3 items in her brown paper bag :)