Psyberspace

Bush’s real goal in Iraq

This war, should it come, is intended to mark the official emergence of the United States as a full-fledged global empire, seizing sole responsibility and authority as planetary policeman. It would be the culmination of a plan 10 years or more in the making, carried out by those who believe the United States must seize the opportunity for global domination, even if it means becoming the “American imperialists” that our enemies always claimed we were.

There is plenty of opposition to this war, but not all that much which reveals the imperialist motivation. The official line, the safety of the world, if true, might be a good reason for the war but it is not what it is about, the world will be safer without an American empire. The real task IS to make the world safe and opposing the US empire is part of that. To oppose it will have a price, it will not be an easy battle. It is a war that requires the unity, organisation and courage of the forces opposed to it.

All of these posts about the EMPIRE are related to the psychological explorations on my website that the empire is also at work exploiting the psyche. Psyche herself has been captured and occupied. To speak of opposing the US as an imperialist force has been psychologically damned, it no longer sounds a sane thing to say.

Independent Argument

In all of Bush’s 30 minutes of anti-Iraq war talk yesterday – pleasantly leavened with just two minutes of how “I hope this will not require military action” – there wasn’t a single reference to the fact that Iraq may hold oil reserves larger than those of Saudi Arabia, that American oil companies stand to gain billions of dollars in the event of a US invasion, that, once out of power, Bush and his friends could become multi-billionaires on the spoils of this war. We must ignore all this before we go to war. We must forget.

High on Daypop today… and most of the bloggers citing it are on the side of Robert Fisk.

http://www.finnern.com/
http://indc.weblogger.com/

Home

http://www.electricedge.com/greymatter/
http://www.theplasticcat.com/

These sites are anti war, and some have links exposing the imperialism driving the war.

What Price the American Empire?

Is the empire worth it? French, Brits, even Soviets said no. They went home. And nothing over there – not oil, not bases in Saudi Arabia, not global hegemony – is worth risking nuclear terror over here. I may be the only right-winger in America who loves D.C., but then I grew up here. Washington is my hometown. It comes first, and empire isn’t even a close second.

Strange to be quoting the RIGHT here, but he can see clearly that all this about imperialism. We are in for an new Empire that will take a lot to defeat.

Guardian
Indian writer Arundhati Roy argues that it is the demands of global capitalism that are driving the West to war with Iraq

Interview

On the publication of his new book, Politics on the Couch: Citizenship and the Internal Life, Andrew Samuels is interviewed by psychotherapist Ruth Williams.

Hollywood and Baudrillard

The Matrix and Baudrillard’s Concept of Simulation

Evil Demons, Saviors, and Simulacra in The Matrix

by Doug Mann & Heidi Hochenedel. This essay is well done. Looks at the themes as three distinct entities: Christian, Descartian, and Baudrillardian. Convincing, apart from its conclusion, which may be because of the bankruptsy of The Matrix themes themselves, after all the movie is itself part of the hyperreal Hollywood machine. Or it may be that they have some strange pomo ideology?

I went to the hyper website and used copy, paste-into-editor, print, to get an accademic looking paper from the unreadable mess (including irritating sound!) on the screen. This process was like returning to a welcome desert of the real – I like it better in black and white.

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dive into mark/October 4, 2002
I love this sort of stuff. This Mark does thorough items and is ALWAYS in the Daypop Top 40 Links.

J. G. Ballard – www.contemporarywriters.com Critical Perspective
‘We live inside an enormous novel’, observes Ballard in the introduction to his most controversial novel Crash (1973), ‘The fiction is already there. The writer’s task is to invent the reality’.

The Matrix – Simulacra and Dystopia – Planet Papers

Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where our bodies live. (Barlow, 1996)

You’ve been living in a dream world Neo. This, is the world, as it exists today: Welcome to the desert – of the real. (Morpheus to Neo in The Matrix)