> I took the time to checkout the urls that Malcolm provides and it
> is now more clear than ever that there is nothing but dug-in
> political heels here.

Hi Bob,

care to elucidate on that? Which of the three links display dug in
political heels for you?

The Yesha Rabbinical Council’s ruling is interesting for me because
its brutal honesty highlights a common characteristic of nationalist
power, and that is the divide between ‘Christian’ care for the other,
or social care for humanity as a whole, socialism/humanitarianism,
over against the amoral practicalities of the struggle for power.
Social care in this instance is reduced to care for one’s identified
community over against the community of the opposition. The socialism
as social care generally remains however, except perhaps in Stalin’s
totalitarian order, and this is especially evident in the democratic
socialism of the diverse Jewish communities as a whole with their
wonderful traditions of Rabbinical disputation and respect for fellow
Jews, but social care extended beyond the national community or Volk
via ‘Christian’ universalism is obviously an ideological impediment
during a time of nationalist struggle such as war.

‘Christianity’ here is merely a metaphor for universalized social
care, what Nietzsche called our castrated slave morality, and this
lovely ideal has rarely had much sway when national survival is at
stake. The Nazis for instance while playing up to the German peoples
traditional Christian values for political reasons, were at the same
time weeding out these values in the wider populace via institutions
such as the Hitler Jugend. War propaganda in general, including
British, Australian and North American, was aimed at demonizing and
dehumanizing the Hun, the Red and Yellow peril and so on, to the
point where 100 000 Japanese were slaughtered in the Tokyo fire
bombing and Curtis LeMay admits if he had been on the losing side he
would have been tried as a war criminal, but such is war.

That there are ‘no innocents of the enemy’ in time of war seems to me
to simply state what is structurally the case when nations go to war,
especially when that war is waged by modern industrialized nations.
If the enemy’s military power is derived from the national entity as
a whole, from its industrial and labour capacity, the unity of its
Volk and leadership, and the entire communications, transport, energy
and civil infrastructure that allows the nation to continue
functioning, then logically the entire nation becomes a legitimate
target especially where one’s own losses are to be minimized. This
logic is used to explain the British and US terror bombing campaigns
against German cities like Hamburg and Dresden, also with the nuclear
attacks on Japan, but you can also read its terrible logic throughout
the Old Testament such as in Moses’ conquest and destruction of
Bashan in the biblical creation of Israel:

And we utterly destroyed them, as we did unto Sihon King of Heshbon,
utterly destroying the men, women, and children, of every city. But
all the cattle, and the spoil of the cities, we took for a prey to
ourselves.
(Deuteronomy 3:6-7)

The same amoral considerations are evident in the Palestinian suicide
bomber response to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine some 60 years
ago and the ongoing occupation and suppression of the Palestinians
today. The notion that there are ‘no innocents of the enemy’ does not
seem to be a culturally/ethnically specific belief but rather a
structural human concern in general when the existence, survival and
growth of one’s own identified community is at stake.

The German concept of Vernichtungskrieg is perhaps the purest modern
expression of this pragmatic amorality explicitly bereft of any
concern for the other and demonstrated in the Nazi aggression against
the Soviets. Much like Ben Gurion’s 1948 campaign against Palestinian
Arabs but on a far grander scale the end game was the cleansing of
large swathes of Ukraine, Byelorussia and much of the Russian
hinterland to be resettled by the German soldier-farmers in fortified
communities. In all of these conflicts it is Lebensraum that is at
stake, whether that is the dispossession of lands or the extension of
spheres of military and thus economic influence, and it all seems to
come down to resource management favouring one community over the
other with the power struggle rationalized by religious, ethnic or
cultural claims concerning justice. The rationalizations come after
the pragmatic facts of the necessity for Lebensraum and any
consideration of ‘Christian’ morality or social concern for the other
is a secondary concern at odds with that necessity.

What I find hopeful in the current global situation is that this
universal social concern for the other is still a powerful force on
the world stage, and ‘world public opinion’ seems to be the main
opponent of the hawks who have control of military/industrial power
in the US and our other western nations supporting the aggression in
the Middle East. My pessimism however is that the aggression is not
driven by mere imperial hubris on the part of Neconservative
ideologues and the notion of a Pax Americana but that it is
fundamentally driven by the gigantic historical changes being brought
about by the advent of peak oil. If Neoconservatism and western
militant extremism in general is driven by the necessity of
maintaining energy security through this long transition to a non-
hydrocarbon based civilization then I’m afraid that what awaits us
and the next couple of generations may indeed be a war that ‘will not
end in our lifetimes’. Your own heartfelt extremism would then be an
effect of this world historical change, and reflected in the polemics
that consumes this list. The structure of our own correspondence here
is itself a good demonstration of the problem at hand, which would be
very phenomenological of us if we could engender some sort of self-
reflexivity about our own polemics don’t you think?

Call it the will to power, or the struggle for survival, polemos as a
world historical struggle, human against human, community against
community, nation against nation, enabled by modern technology the
will to will the calculative securing and perdurance of everything is
now planetary and it threatens another cataclysm whose end logic is
the ultimate ethnic cleansing, the final solution to the human
problem in species extinction. What I find utterly unbelievable is
not the planetary madness we’re descending into but that you and the
others on this list still refuse to discuss any of these contentious
problems, and I genuinely don’t expect anyone to agree with me, but
instead of discussion you are driven to hide behind personal
invective and dismissal.

This whole problematic is a decidedly philosophical problem for me,
and I challenge anyone on this list who earnestly believes otherwise
to actually engage with any of the specific statements of mine, or
the wider problematic of amoral will to will and technological
thinking, and show me how it is non-philosophical. I’d also like to
point out that I’m entirely unconcerned by the sometimes vitriolic
reactions of some of you respondents, I understand that these are
increasingly nervous times for everyone and that the problematic
includes completely irreconcilable religious, ethnic, cultural and
political beliefs with deep historical roots. But as you so
reasonably state Bob, I also “simply ask if we are adults that can
know we have different political views and set them aside if not
totally then for the most part”, and not in order to agree with me
because I’m not sure myself what it is we’re arguing about, but
rather that we can perhaps begin to even ask the question of who and
where we are today from the perspective of Heidegger’s critique of
technological power.

Regards,

Malcolm

**********************************
Dr Malcolm Riddoch
An-archos community networks
Web: http://an-archos.com

> Present moral accusations undercover of neutral philosophical
> discussion by exclusively giving ideologically one-sided examples.

You are “disappearing up your own arse, mate” as we Aussies say. I
take it then that yes, you are incapable of dealing honestly and
openly with historical problems that threaten your sanitized view of
history and your belief in the exceptional sanctity of your nation
over and above all others.

In what sense though do you see FDR’s treasonous complicity in
setting up and allowing the Pearl Harbor attack as first and foremost
a moral problem? You might feel compelled to condemn him but I can
understand the imperial logic behind it. His presidential emergency
powers were expanded long before Pearl Harbor, in 1933 IIRC and led
to the New Deal as a way out of the lingering US depression not to
mention the gold confiscation. Many Republican writers from your
country consider he overreached his constitutional powers and brought
the US to the verge of a socialist dictatorship which was no doubt in
part the reasoning behind the Dupont, Morgan etal sponsored attempt
at a fascist coup in 1934. I have a copy of the congressional
“Investigation of NAZI Propaganda Activities and Certain Other
Propaganda Activities” from the Cal Uni national archives and if
you’d like to go through that I’ll upload it to the site.

But this notion of ‘national security’ and the ‘common good’ is an
interesting one, especially where the common good of all includes
economic security and the national entity itself as a whole. What
happens when the people abrogate their responsibility and allow the
executive to wield increasing emergency powers is naturally enough a
state of constant emergency, or 70 years of economic emergencies
followed by world war, cold wars interspersed by hot wars and finally
a never ending war on everything and everyone. All the while the
presidential powers have increased to the point the current president
is arguing he has the power to completely ignore the constitution,
the congress and the judiciary, oh yes, and the people. I agree it’s
pointless blaming Bush or his coterie for this state of affairs, but
that’s precisely my argument, it’s the structure of power relations
in the modern state that tends to centralize power, or federalize it
in your system, and that seems to be a common thread between
Stalinism, Nazism and Democracy.

But why should we morally condemn FDR for the decision to sacrifice
2,403 good and honest US citizens in order to mobilize for the war of
the century, a war that would hand the reigns of global power over to
the US? Similar arguments are made after all for Truman’s decision to
nuke Japan and kill all those defenceless women and children, as
apparently that nuclear terrorist bombing brought the Japanese to
surrender and also gave the Russians pause for thought. We can’t deny
it happened of course, and its human toll was dreadful and
generational, but you no doubt can morally justify what was also
essentially a presidential message to Stalin and a military experiment.

No doubt the same arguments are made by those in Bush’s circle, or I
should say Cheney’s circle, who executed the greatest mass murder of
US civilians on US soil. Historically we’ve never been confronted by
what we today face in the years to come as Cheney himself indicated
back in 1999. A terminal global energy crisis without precedent, and
with it an unprecedented transition from a hydrocarbon based
industrial civilization to something else entirely. The international
race is on, nations around the planet are gearing up and arming
themselves, and it’s not just the Iranians. As Richard Perle once
opined:

“This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are
lots of them out there…. If we just let our vision of the world go
forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don’t try to piece together
clever diplomacy but just wage a total war, our children will sing
great songs about us years from now”.

The future of the planet hangs on our democracies military success or
failure in the Middle East. Those of us who prefer peace over global
total war need a US government of the day willing to pursue
international cooperation to prepare for peak oil and an irreversible
global economic decline that will force a massive, radical and
sustained change in our way of life as we transition to alternative
energy sources and the economic/political order they support. If 911
was the trigger for a partial US mobilisation for this never ending
war then the growing public concern within the US over the government
cover up may well be the trigger for the Neoconservatives imperial
overreach, one way or another.

I’ll leave you with your favourite theme Anthony, some very recent
Zogby poll statistics available at:

 http://www.911truth.org/images/911TruthZ…

Apparently 44% of your fellow citizens believe Bush exploited the
Sept. 11th attacks for the purposes of waging the war on Iraq, 42%
think the US government and 9/11 Commission are covering something
up, 38% think the Commission should have also investigated the WTC7
collapse while 43% weren’t even aware it collapsed, and 45% of
Americans want the 911 attacks reinvestigated.

What about you guys? You think something smells fishy in DC yet? We
can smell the stench from the other side of the planet, it’s
apparently already global.

Regards,

Malcolm

***************************
Dr Malcolm Riddoch
Electronic Arts
School of Communications and Contemporary Arts
Faculty of Communications and Creative Industries
Edith Cowan University, 2 Bradford St, Mount Lawley
Perth Western Australia
+61 08 9370 6034

> This occurred to me last night. The affinity with the “WWII was a
> Roosevelt conspiracy” theme popular with some. The struck me was
> the parallel threads of: Arabs and Japanese aren’t clever enough to
> pull off such attacks.

I’m not one for popular conspiracy myths That Pete, or revisionist
histories from Popular Mechanics or any other form of mass media
entertainment for that matter. I prefer, just as in my philosophical
reading, to go for primary sources and I think you’ll find the
Minority Report of the 1946 US Congressional JOINT COMMITTEE ON THE
INVESTIGATION OF THE PEARL HARBOR ATTACK rather interesting reading.
And don’t worry, it was written by the minority Republicans who
fundamentally disagreed with the Democrat whitewash of Roosevelt’s
foreknowledge and Roberts Commission scapegoating of the two local
commanders Kimmel and Short:

20. In the final instance of crucial significance for alerting American
outpost commanders, on Saturday night, December 6, and Sunday morning,
December 7, the President of the United States failed to take that quick
and instant executive action which was required by the occasion and by
the responsibility for watchfulness and guardianship
rightly associated in law and practice with his high office from the
establishment of the Republic to our own times.
pp. 505-506 http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/pha/congress/…

They blame the president, claim he had clear foreknowledge and the
entire report can be read in full here:

 http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/pha/congress/…

You might also be interested in Admiral Robert A. Theobald’s version
of events in Final Secret of Pearl Harbor written in 1954:

 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0317659…

He was a commander at Pearl Harbor, founding author of the
alternative military history and anything but a mentally deranged tin
foil hat conspiracy theorist. Neither is retired FBI Special Agent
and former naval officer Thomas K. Kimmel, Kimmel’s grandson, who
convinced Congress in 2000 that neither commanders Kimmel nor Short
were privy to the intelligence available to the supreme commander and
his immediate subordinates in Washington. It should be obvious even
to the most hard core cheerleaders for the Democrat party that a very
plausible case can be made that FDR and his military staff knew in
advance and allowed the Japanese to fire the first shot that would
catapault the US into total mobilisation for the war in Europe.

I do find this ‘conspiracy theory’ meme interesting though, it’s very
X Files. What is it do you think that drives otherwise good honest
people to make such mindless denunciations of officially unauthorised
histories without the slightest knowledge of what they’re talking
about? I have found it’s almost an autonomic response to any
information that threatens to disturb the history free comfort zone
bubble of your average comfortably indebted middle class, by which I
mean lower to middle income earners drowning in the prosperity of
their hard earned mortgage and credit debt. Too much idiot box and
overtime perhaps and not enough time for serious reading and
research? I call it reactionary bourgeois angst, a religious faith in
the sanctity of our popular consensus reality, and a conditioned
Pavlovian response to the herd’s ridicule of anyone who departs from
popularly approved doctrine. Unfortunately I prefer actual history to
populist beliefs.

Maybe our next list should be on the Principles of Indoctrination to
Consensus Reality, what do you reckon That Pete? It could be a
companion list to the final draft of the principles for a universal
proscription I’ve published here:

 http://heidegger.an-archos.com/archive/p…

Any comments on the German translation that Google spat out would be
most welcome for those of us who are fluent German speakers.

Cheers,

Malcolm

**********************************
Dr Malcolm Riddoch
An-archos community networks
Web http://an-archos.com

1. Denigrate and dismiss
a. Denigrate opponent
b. Denigrate opponents claims

2. Dismiss the old guard

3. Politicization of science

4. Reject scientific authority

5. Anti-intellectualism

6. Claim intellectual superiority

7. Enemy succour

8. Radicalize opposition

9. War crimes are liberation from tyranny

10. Dismiss government criminality

11. Maintain any belief in freedom

12. Relativize and distract

13. Demand defence and distract

14. Deny censorship

15. Discount what cannot be denied

16. Assert contrary interpretation

17. Misinformation

18. Befriend and distract

19. Repeat cycle

Grobentwurf der Grundregeln einer Universalbeschränkung
Oder der allgemeinen Vorschrift für den Selbst-reflexivity der modernen polemos

1. Verunglimpfen und entlassen
a. Konkurrenten verunglimpfen
b. Konkurrenten Ansprüche verunglimpfen

2. Den alten Schutz entlassen

3. Politisierung der Wissenschaft

4. Ausschußwissenschaftliche Berechtigung

5. Anti-intellectualism

6. Anspruch Intellektuellüberlegenheit

7. Feindliches succour

8. Radicalize Opposition

9. Kriegsverbrechen sind Befreiung von der Tyrannei

10. Regierung Kriminalität entlassen

11. Jeden möglichen Glauben an Freiheit beibehalten

12. Relativize und lenken ab

13. Verteidigung verlangen und ablenken

14. Zensur verweigern

15. Diskontieren, was nicht verweigert werden kann

16. Konträre Deutung erklären

17. Fehlinformation

18. Befreunden und ablenken

19. Zyklus wiederholen

> — Dr Malcolm Riddoch wrote:
>> Are you asking for a proof from Steven E Jones essay that shows ‘Bush
>> did it’?
>
> You’re changing the rules. From merely having to show that
> Malcolm believes in a flat earth style hypothesis, you’re
> moving the goal posts to “not everything in the official
> explanation written by a committee makes perfect sense”.

13. Demand defence and distract

>> I’m not sure you understand what a proof is or what Jones’
>> article is actually about.
>
> I understand enough to pass various exams that required answering
> question like “Prove that foo derives from bar”.

Ok cool, me too, we should do well then.

>> Now if you’ve read the paper then you
>> should realise that it tests the hypothesis that controlled
>> demolition can be the only logical cause of the tower collapses
>> contrary to the official conspiracy theory that the hijacked planes
>> crashing and burning caused spontaneous collapse of not just the two
>> towers but also WTC7.
>
> No. I think the guys a crank. He just jumps from insinuating stuff
> but not proving anything.

1. Denigrate and dismiss
4. Reject scientific authority

>> Take WTC7 for instance and you can watch it collapse here:
>>
>> http://www.911research.com/wtc/evidence/…
>> http://www.911research.com/wtc/evidence/…
>> http://www.911research.com/wtc/evidence/…
>> wtc7_collapse2.mpg
>>
>> The main contention for the demolition theory is that this
>> symmetrical collapse at free fall speed can only be explained by the
>> simultaneous catastrophic failure of all the main steel support
>> columns at once across multiple floors. Lets ask bobG what he thinks
>> as he’s an engineer … Bob? Don’t steel frame towers tend to fail at
>> key stress points and topple over rather than crumbling like a house
>> of cards? How can we best explain the way WTC7 completely collapses
>> symmetrically with no resistance from its steel skeleton in near free
>> fall with a debris radius of just 70 feet according to FEMA who
>> actually called this collapse an ‘implosion’?
>
> These buildings were supported from the center. When the center fails
> and falls down, the floors then collapse on each other. I’ll call it
> an implosion too if it pleases you. You can see the center collapsing
> first in the videos. Look at the roof. Especially in 2. You just
> have to know what to look for.

16. Assert contrary interpretation (added to list)

Here’s my contrary interpretation:

By the way, that central dip you picked up certainly implies total
failure of the central core of main load bearing columns, with the
perimeter columns all failing symmetrically around the centre and
imploding the whole structure from the 47th story down to the ground.
It’s the very neat signature of a very professionally executed
controlled demolition and there’s no way to explain how the core
structures could have so catastrophically failed by themselves either
at WTC7 or in the towers, just ask FEMA and NIST.

> You can be in a boat and say the ocean
> looks flat, or observe that ships disapear below the horizon. It’s
> up to you.

1 b. Denigrate opponents claims (was flat earth)

>> Now this controlled demolition theory says absolutely nothing about
>> who planted the explosives, it’s merely an alternative hypothesis to
>> the unquestioned assumption that all 3 steel frame skyscrapers
>> somehow spontaneously failed, and they were the first and as yet the
>> last such buildings to collapse like that anywhere in the world.
>
> Rubbish.

1. Denigrate and dismiss

>> The
>> contention here is that controlled demolition best explains those
>> collapses.
>
> One of the wtc towers actually fell to laterally. What happened?
> Did they botch the demolition on that one?

17. Misinformation (added to list)

>> So, if someone demolished the New York offices of the CIA and NSA
>> along with the mayors bunker, into a neat pile of rubble who could it
>> have been? If Osama Bin Laden was capable of coordinating from a cave
>> in Afghanistan multiple simultaneous hijackings in US domestic
>> airspace, sneaking past the guard of the US intelligence services
>> despite international warnings and on the very day when NORAD was
>> apparently preoccupied running defence games simulating multiple
>> simultaneous hijackings in US domestic airspace, then why not finish
>> the job and bomb the towers and CIA? Makes sense to me.
>
> And to many others too.

So we’re agreed then that an unknown number of Al Qaeda operatives
resident in the US aided and abetted the 19 identified hijackers and
also managed to infiltrate SECURACOM, the company responsible for
World Trade Center security and overseen in part by the President’s
brother? Then over time these infiltrators co-ordinated and secured
the placement of cutting charges throughout both towers and WTC7 in
preparation for three huge controlled demolitions. That includes
getting past WTC7’s entire 23rd floor security surrounding the
mayor’s fortified bunker which suggests the SECURACOM infiltrators
probably had Al Qaeda collaborators on the inside. It also implies
they executed the demolitions then escaped detection and are still at
large with some even possibly still employed by the US federal
government. Unless the feds have identified and secretly detained
them all which is of course possible as secret detentions are now
legal by presidential decree.

Does that make sense to you That Pete?

>> One possible explanation for the 911 demolitions is that Al Qaeda not
>> only infiltrated the US military and intelligence but also WTC
>> security at a time when the president’s brother Marvin Bush was
>> apparently a director of Securacom the company responsible for WTC
>> security. I’m guessing the incredible potential embarrassment to the
>> US federal executive led to a massive clean up operation which
>> quickly destroyed most of the physical evidence of what was the
>> biggest mass murder in US history. At least that’s my best case
>> scenario, that US military and intelligence services have been
>> completely compromised by infiltrators working for the benefit of Al
>> Qaeda. The terrorists are already anyone, anywhere and everywhere.
>>
>> What do you reckon That Pete?
>
> It’s a very nice service you provide running this list Malcolm.
> Keep it up.

Cheers mate,

feel free to check out the post editor and publish an essay or review
etc. Unfortunately it’s end of semester here and I’ve got an
avalanche of assessments and a Masters thesis to churn through in
record time. See you all on the other side.

Malcolm

**********************************
Dr Malcolm Riddoch
An-archos community networks
Web http://an-archos.com

> — Malcolm Riddoch wrote:
>> and also the essays of BYU Physics Professor Steven E. Jones:
>>
>> http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/ener…
>
> I read this. He’s a physicist who has done research in cold fusion
> and also claims Jesus visited America. The structural engineers
> at his own university dispute his analysis.

Good start there, a nice #1. Denigrate and dismiss. The cold fusion
work is however the non-controversial work in spontaneous neutron
emission rather than the popularized cold fusion energy hoax. The
former was favourably peer reviewed and has possible industrial
applications. I also enjoyed his Mormon hypothesis and survey of
Mayan archaeological evidence. Are you suggesting this paper is
relevant to or calls into question his physics research?

The dispute at BYU you mentioned has apparently been retracted by the
Dean as none of the engineers in question came up with any detailed
critique of the essay. You can read a summary of the academic scandal
in the Wikipedia entry:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_E._J…

Professor Steven E. Jones does seem to be a respected research
physicist so you might need to dig a fair bit deeper for some good
sticky mud. I’d certainly be interested in any dirt you can find.

> What in his paper convinces you the twin towers were brought down
> by a controlled explosions?

We could start with the 47 story WTC7 near free fall symmetrical
collapse into its own footprint complete with explosive squibs, or
the pools of molten steel reported in all three basements that
apparently remained molten for weeks after the collapse, along with
the evidence of the sulfidation of steel suggesting a thermite
reaction, or the pyroclastic flows that start at the top of the
towers, or the early drop of the north tower antenna implying a
catastrophic failure of the core brought the tower down. I think FEMA
have brought out another report suggesting the antenna drop is merely
an apparent drop due to the camera angle and perspective so you might
want to pick on that one. Do you want to bring up the now discounted
pancake theory at some point?

More to the point, since you’ve actually read this paper, what claims
would you like to dispute? Be advised that this paper is a
preliminary report on the inadequacies of the NIST and FEMA reports
and calls for further research into the hypothesis that all three
collapses could only have been caused by controlled demolition. It
goes without saying that this hypothesis has never been seriously
considered in any government research and that the overriding
conclusion that the NIST and FEMA analyses work towards without
questioning is the assumption that the towers and WTC7 somehow
spontaneously collapsed. FEMA and NIST have as yet been unable to
provide a sufficient model for the spontaneous collapse theory but
maybe you can find something they missed in the Popular Mechanics
‘debunking’.

Cheers,

Malcolm

**********************************
Dr Malcolm Riddoch
An-archos community networks
Web http://an-archos.com

> Your silly little proscription speaks for someone trying to misportray
> anti-anti-Americanism as merely dismissive by ripping accusations
> from the
> specific contexts in which they were originally applied, which is
> your usual
> m.o., and therefore hardly surprising.

Okay so how about we universalize them then? This draft list is just an abstraction anyways, and an outline of a possible methodology for a polemics of propaganda, a phenomenology of polemical truth or a ‘how-to’ for a polemics of modernity if you like.

From the perspective of power it seems truth is merely something utilitarian, effective or ineffective in the maintenance and growth of power. It’s very Darwinian really, or Roman, truth belongs to the most profitable ideology as it brings the mass of believers along with it. Any truth that has been proscribed is a threat to that belief so is subjected to polemics to be either assimilated or banished into exile and silenced. It doesn’t seem to matter what the belief is about either, whether religious or secular, everything is subject to polemos. Here’s one of my favourite Heraclitus proclamations:

Polemos is lord of all things;
it has shown some to be gods and some mortals,
it has made some slaves and others free. . . .
Everything originates in its strife . . . . Strife is justice;
and all things both come to pass and perish through strife.

Anyways, I’d like to thank you both for your contribution so far and here’s the last working draft along with a very rough Google translation for our native German speakers, any comments/edits are welcome.

Preliminary Draft of the Principles of a Universal Proscription
Or a code of practice for the self-reflexivity of modern polemos

1. Denigrate and dismiss

• Opposing views are flat earth science
• Opponents suffer psychiatric disturbances

2. Dismiss the old guard

3. Politicization of science

4. Reject scientific authority

5. Anti-intellectualism

6. Claim intellectual superiority

7. Enemy succour

8. Radicalize opposition

9. War crimes are liberation from tyranny

10. Dismiss government criminality

11. Maintain any belief in freedom

12. Relativize and distract

13. Demand defence and distract

14. Deny censorship

15. Discount what cannot be denied

16. Befriend and distract

17. Repeat cycle

Grobentwurf der Grundregeln einer Universalbeschränkung
Oder der allgemeinen Vorschrift für den Selbst-reflexivity der modernen polemos

1. Verunglimpfen und entlassen

• Entgegensetzende Ansichten sind flache Geowissenschaft
• Konkurrenten erleiden psychiatrische Störungen

2. Den alten Schutz entlassen

3. Politisierung der Wissenschaft

4. Ausschußwissenschaftliche Berechtigung

5. Anti-intellectualism

6. Anspruch Intellektuellüberlegenheit

7. Feindliches succour

8. Radicalize Opposition

9. Kriegsverbrechen sind Befreiung von der Tyrannei

10. Regierung Kriminalität entlassen

11. Jeden möglichen Glauben an Freiheit beibehalten

12. Relativize und lenken ab

13. Verteidigung verlangen und ablenken

14. Zensur verweigern

15. Diskontieren, was nicht verweigert werden kann

16. Befreunden und ablenken

17. Zyklus wiederholen

Cheers,

Malcolm
**********************************
Dr Malcolm Riddoch
An-archos community networks
Web: http://an-archos.com

> Hey, thanks for all the sarcastic chuckles.
>
> My intial point, before the departure into silliness, was
> that if you have a substantive point to make in the
> Heidegger department, not drowning it in anti-americanism
> would help me to discern it.

I’ll add this as:

12. Befriend and distract

You know if you can coordinate this on list with a partner you’d have
a classic good cop bad cop play. Apparently it’s quite effective.

> I’m somewhat confused by the status of this draft.
> Isn’t a proscription something issued by the state?
> What state is behind the running of the list?
> How does that state sponsorship square with the recent
> association of the list with the an-archos nomenclature?

I’m a good cosmopolitan citizen of the global community like you That
Pete, although I’m also a dedicated Australian nationalist in an
internetionalist and social libertarian sense. If we can develop
these principles of proscription you could always pass them on to
interested parties of your acquaintance although I think you’ll find
they are already well researched debating techniques. But debating is
such an affective intuitive discipline don’t you think? As Heidegger
says in his Sein und Zeit phase, we fundamentally show ourselves in
our moods which I think is why I really do enjoy intense debates. So
anyways, here’s the draft list:

A Preliminary Draft of the Principles of American Proscription
An anti anti-American code of practice

1. Opposing views as paranoid idiocy

2. Opposing views as flat earth science

3. Politicization of science

4. Opponents suffer psychiatric disturbance

5. Radicalize opposition

7. Demand defence distract

8. Relativize and distract

9. Shock and Awe as liberation from tyranny

10. Denigrate and dismiss

11. Enemy succour

12. anti-Intellectualism

13. US intellectual superiority

14. Dismiss the old guard

15. Reject scientific authority

16. Dismiss 911 demolition

17. Maintain the belief in democratic elections

10. Deny censorship

11. Discount what cannot be denied

12. Befriend and distract

13. Repeat cycle

Cheers,

Malcolm

**********************************
Dr Malcolm Riddoch
an-archos community networks
Web: http://an-archos.com

>> In regards to this question then what about American anti-American
>> speech?
>
> I think it is fine for Americans to burn their own flag, as a symbol
> of some aspect of America they don’t like. I don’t think that’s
> anti-americanism.
>
> On the other hand I’ve never seen Americans in the streets seething
> with rage and burning the flags of other countries. So when I see
> peoples in other lands burning American flags, that is anti-
> americanism.

Ok, so as a Canadian resident of America you approve of Americans
“burning the US flag” (metaphorically or otherwise) in response to
their executive elite burning other countries to the ground but you
proscribe non-Americans as anti-Americans for “burning the US flag”
while the US is bombing their country to the ground, occupying it or
supporting other national powers in what they consider to be illegal
and murderous occupations of their country? Or are they also
justified in your foreign Canadian view and only non-American
citizens of nations not presently under attack or sanction by the US
who burn the US flag are anti-American?

What about your Canadian compatriot and 40 year resident of the US
Neil Young and his new album? It’s vintage Young and the single
“Impeach the President” is killer. I guess from your perspective he
is a foreign anti-American and should therefore be proscribed?

 http://www.myspace.com/neilyoung

But back to the 911 protagonists, Anthony claims that “The right to
free speech is not a prohibition on paranoid idiocy” which I take to
mean a possible yes to the notion that they are all anti-American
Americans consumed by paranoid delusions but protected by their
constitutional right to free speech. Does this American’s view mean
for you as a non-American that their views should also be proscribed
and should not appear in pro-American (or rather anti anti-American)
and therefore “neutral” discussions, at least according to Anthony’s
definition of neutrality?

For instance, take the “paranoid idiot” Paul Craig Roberts, a paragon
of the Republican old guard, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for
Economic Policy under Reagan in the early 80’s and one of the
founding fathers of Reaganomics, a French Legion of Honor, syndicated
columnist, academic fellow at Stanford U and so on … is this
distinguished American an anti-American when he states that the US
executive is “evil”?

“The U.S. government has spent the past half century interfering in
the internal affairs of other countries, overthrowing or
assassinating their chosen leaders and imposing its puppets on
foreign peoples. To what country has Iran done this, or Iraq, or
North Korea? Americans think that they are the salt of the earth. The
hubris that comes from this self-righteous belief makes Americans
blind to the evil of their leaders. How can American leaders be evil
when Americans are so good and so wonderful? … Gentle reader, do
you believe that the Bush Regime will not shoot you down in the
streets if you have a rebellion?”
Paul Craig Roberts: http://antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=90…

And is he also an anti-American American when he not only supports
the Scholars for 911 Truth in declaring the controlled demolition
theory but also feeds speculation that the “evil” US executive under
Bush could be preparing for a nuclear 9112B attack on its citizenry?

“One of the more extraordinary suggestions is that a low yield,
perhaps tactical, nuclear weapon will be exploded some distance out
from a US port. Death and destruction will be minimized, but fear and
hysteria will be maximized. Americans will be told that the ship
bearing the weapon was discovered and intercepted just in time,
thanks to Bush’s illegal spying program, and that Iran is to blame. A
more powerful wave of fear and outrage will again bind the American
people to Bush, and the US media will not report the rest of the
world’s doubts of the explanation”.
Paul Craig Roberts:  http://antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=87…

You can find his archives here to dig up further anti-Americanisms
for me if you like:

 http://www.vdare.com/roberts/
 http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/rober…

Biography:

 http://www.vdare.com/roberts/bio.htm

Then of course there’s the US psychiatrists debate about diagnosing
GW Bush. The main proponent here claims that such expert psychiatric
profiling is used by the US State Department amongst others so he
sees no reason why the US public shouldn’t have the benefit of
profiling their own leaders. So is Dr. Frank an anti-American
American when he states that in his clinical opinion Bush “fits the
profile of a former drinker whose alcoholism has been arrested but
not treated” and that he also fits the clinical description of a
“paranoid megalomaniac” as well as “a sadist”?

 http://willthomas.net/Convergence/Weekly…

Now as a non-American Australian if I say, for example, that:

1. The success and vitality of the US nation is perhaps the only
realistic hope we have for global leadership on issues such as the
illegality of war and terror in response to the global energy crisis
of peak oil and its coming transformation of our economic and social
relations and our declining ability to ameliorate the accelerating
destruction of the biosphere.

Then follow this pro-Americanism with the statement that:

2. The US executive appears to have gone precisely in the opposite
direction away from global leadership and has instead embraced the
concept of full spectrum dominance in executing a mass murder of its
own citizens in order to embark on a global terror war for Lebensraum
starting in the Middle East that threatens every nation on earth.

Is that then foreign anti-American speech or “flag burning” and to be
proscribed by all pro-Americans on this list?

After all, it’s what a hell of a lot of Americans are more or less
saying on the net, and going by Bush and Cheney’s poll ratings
there’s a ground swell of “anti-Americanism” in America that
threatens to overwhelm not only the presidency but also the
Republican majority in congress. Even Republicans are saying he needs
another 911 to get him out of this mess and I’m sure there are any
number of terrorists, both domestic and foreign, in this increasingly
terrorized world who would willingly commit the mass murder to help
him out.

> And then there’s the Heidegger angle on this.
> “Americanism is something European.” Age of the World Picture.
> I’m not sure where that leaves anti-americanism. Anti-forgetfulness-
> of-being?

My own take on this whole problematic is coming out of a
phenomenological reading of Heidegger’s critique of will to power,
whether others recognize that or not is irrelevant to me though as
I’m only interested in following through on my own logic and have so
little time spare to do so, seemingly much like everyone else here.
But even the proposition that “Americanism is something European”
elides the fundamental problem of power that threads its way through
Heidegger’s critique of Nietzsche/Nazism, of the will to will and
machination and on through to the question concerning technology and
our cybernetic reality today. That’s what I’m interested in following
through here with my apparently proscribed anti-Americanism. I could
care less about Bush himself as IMHO he’s not only a congenitally
deranged puppet of Cheney and the others but from the perspective of
Heidegger’s critique of will to will all the leaders themselves of
all the nations are puppets animated by the practical, pragmatic
relations of power that bind them altogether into one global community.

From the Zionist hawks of the Israeli executive elites to the Hamas
leadership, the leaders of the Iraqi resistance, both Shiite and
Sunni, the religious and secular leaders of Iran, both moderate and
fundamentalist, and our own elites who inhabit the institutions of
our industrially advanced democracies, we are all caught in a
polemical dance of terror, lies and death. My proposition, following
Heidegger, is that all leaders are bound by the historical, pragmatic
relations of power that constrain their choices and potential for
action in this world, and irrespective of the rationalizations or
self-justifications they or we might make after the fact. Power is
merely an amoral, practical fact of life and the world we live in,
its relations set up the historical situation we inhabit and our
future remains unclear so long as we remain oblivious, where the
willful oblivion of technologically constrained modernity seems to be
our present and future reality.

So if you want a world picture for today you might try painting the
technological relations of power that constrain us in an-archos,
where all is polemos essentially without leadership, either of our
selves or our national relations or our relation to nature. Polemos
an-archos is my theme and if this is to be proscibed by North
Americans on this list then so be it. I invite and encourage all
international list members on this globally distributed list to write
as they see fit even though all non-Americans apparently remain
outside the protections of the US constitution’s first amendment.

For those who might care I should however point out that the website
archive of this email list resides on a server in the heart of
Kentucky on the US backbone network and is of course subject to the
massive data mining sweep of their domestic internet being conducted
by the US Homeland Security and its intelligence forces. Apparently
the “no-fly” lists are compiled rather randomly and in the words of
one successful proponent of the willful use of power they do indeed
“go massive, sweep it all up. Things related and not”.

Regards,

Malcolm

**********************************
Dr Malcolm Riddoch
An-archos community networks
Web:  http://an-archos.com
Tag:  http://www.technorati.com/tag/heidegger
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