lo posted:while he is a british imperial officer, i have to say that at first glance this guy sounds pretty cool
A Protectorate of Dunces
Knut Hamsun - Hunger
Christopher Clark - Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947
Various math reference books/papers/articles, too.
e: itll take a min, use this link for now thanks to Fifinono
According to Ben-Menashe, longtime CIA officer and Booz-Allen Hamilton spook-in-residence Miles Copeland was present at a Georgetown meeting with Israeli intelligence officers. Attendees included David Kimche, chief of Mossad’s foreign relations department, Tevel. According to Kimche, Israel opposed Carter’s reelection because it was feared that in a second term, Carter would force Israel out of the occupied territories and establish a Palestinian state. As for Copeland, he told Robert Parry that any anti-Carter operation (i.e., the “October Countersurprise”) would have been undertaken by “the CIA within the CIA.” Parry took this to mean “the inner-most circle of powerful intelligence figures who felt they understood the strategic needs of the United States better than its elected leaders.”
In a discussion with Robert Parry, Copeland explained the opposition of the senior spooks to the president. Jimmy Carter “was not a stupid man,” said Copeland. Worse, added Copeland in disgust and amazement, “He was a principled man . . . a Utopian. He believed, honestly, that you must do the right thing and take your chance on the consequences. He told me that. He literally believed that.” Added Copeland, “There were many of us myself along with Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller, Archie Roosevelt in the CIA at the time we believed very strongly that we were showing a kind of weakness, which people in Iran and elsewhere in the world hold in great contempt.”
2021-2022 inaugural survey of behaviour in schools in england
The Civil War - Ceasar
i also read an article on "midwestern marxism" because some guy on twitter claimed that j sakai, of settlers fame, was just a white landlord all along. i assume the allegation was just brought up to undercut the analysis in settlers so that the authors wouldn't have to refute it on its merits. after reading the article, i still think that's the case: it's little but insinuations and guilt by association bullcrap.
anyway, if anyone wants to read it and provide me with the real facts about sakai so i can hit back at the online haters, let me know
edit to link aforementioned article:
https://www.midwesternmarx.com/articles/j-sakai-mim-and-anarchism-by-skept-omai
I've bit the bullet and started doing deep dives into Hegel. Essential in this for me has been reading Stephen Houlgate's "Introduction to Hegel" book and flipping between it and Terry Pinkard's translations to see what Houlgate is referencing. Not smart enough to read the bare text on my own I think. Some reddit commenters have said that Houlgate's interpretation of Hegel is "too materialist" which to me was an endorsement more than anything, though that's not to say that Houlgate doesn't take the time to firmly state what the differences between Kant, Nietzsche etc and most importantly Marx. Still not sure why I'm doing it. I've always thought philosophy was sort of useless, although reading this has given me a better understanding of what dialectics and materialism really is vis-a-vis other ideas about the limitations of science, what reality actually is, the scientific method that the 5 heads were working with, etc.
Namaste,
Serafiym
P.S. where the IRC link at
radical_dave posted:i'm reading, and almost finished with, Marxist-Leninist Perspectives on Black Liberation and Socialism by Frank Chapman. it is excellent as an introduction, and has provided me with several lines of inquiry to follow up + good bibliography so i can do so. two thumbs up from me, at least so far.
i also read an article on "midwestern marxism" because some guy on twitter claimed that j sakai, of settlers fame, was just a white landlord all along. i assume the allegation was just brought up to undercut the analysis in settlers so that the authors wouldn't have to refute it on its merits. after reading the article, i still think that's the case: it's little but insinuations and guilt by association bullcrap.
anyway, if anyone wants to read it and provide me with the real facts about sakai so i can hit back at the online haters, let me know
edit to link aforementioned article:
https://www.midwesternmarx.com/articles/j-sakai-mim-and-anarchism-by-skept-omai
this seems to be the same article as the one that was made fun of a while ago in the settlers thread: https://rhizzone.net/forum/topic/13438/?page=21#post-415017
mein kampf - adolf hitler
the knowledge deficit - e d hirsch
here is the original:
lo posted:
the other day i read this long paper called 'How Did the Cultural Revolution End? The Last Dispute between Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, 1975' by alessandro russo, and i really enjoyed it. there is a lot of detail on deng's calculated strategy that ultimately allowed him to come to power, which basically involved him refusing to even consider the possibility of an assessment of the GPCR(something that mao was pushing for on a countrywide scale before his death). there's also a lot of detail on how deng's remarks about restoring state order and preventing chaos weren't actually about the factional violence from the cultural revolution, since that had ended a while before 1975 and the economy was running pretty stably; what deng was actually referring to was the experimentation with new political forms in the factories, which was being encouraged by mao at that time and which he viewed as completely unacceptable and inimical to 'normal' economic functioning. russo had previously written some very interesting stuff on mao's repeated idea of 'the probable defeat', and after reading this article i looked him up and found that he published a book in 2020 that seems to synthesis all these topics he's previously discussed, i am going to try and read it soon: https://www.dukeupress.edu/cultural-revolution-and-revolutionary-culture
i have read 'cultural revolution and revolutionary culture'. extremely sick book. basically it argues for the cultural revolution as an attempt to experiment with new political forms to try and find a road forward from the deadlock of the 'classic' type of socialist state, and he examines several main events in the gpcr to make this argument: the controversy over 'hai rui dismissed from office' and how mao responded to it; the proliferation of the mass organisations, culminating in the shanghai commune and their subsequent degeneration into factionalism, and the study movements of the mid 70s, which mao encouraged as part of his final effort to have the entire country evaluate the gpcr and reconsider the theoretical concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat and which were ended prematurely once deng came to power. the book is extremely lucid and good at teasing out who was doing what and what their motivations were, and he also frequently refers to the inadequacy of much of the existing literature(both western academic and current chinese government stuff) on the gpcr, since most of the literature tends to not take the ideological debates at all seriously, and regards most of what mao did as an expression of despotism. it felt like nearly every page i was highlighting and making little notes about things so there is almost too much to put in a post, but here's mao reacting to a speech by lin biao insisting that mao's statements should have absolute authority(incidentally, the book only really mentions the lin biao coup or whatever it was in passing, because he says that it's a mystery; 'only partial and unconvincing reconstructions are available' of what happened, and 'it is extremely difficult to outline research prospects'):
Mao, however, could not find Lin’s view acceptable. He believed there was no absolute authority anywhere, let alone his own, capable of stabilizing the inconstancy of the human condition. A now famous letter to Jiang Qing of July 1966, which circulated after Lin’s death in 1971, is instructive. Mao wrote that in “that speech of our friend” there were ideas that “deeply disturbed” him. He did not subscribe to the idea that the main problem was to forestall an attempted coup; that was not what Mao meant by the “struggle against revisionism.” If anything, one novelty in Mao’s analysis was the possibility of a “peaceful restoration” of capitalism. Moreover, he found the extolling of the supreme authority of his genius ridiculous.
“I have never thought that the pamphlets I have written had such magic power. Now that he has taken to inflating them, the whole country will follow suit. It seems to be exactly like the scene of the marrow-monger wife Wang who boasts of the quality of her goods.” Such exaltation, Mao dialectically commented, would inexorably be transformed into its opposite. “They flatter me by praising me to the stars, but things turn into their contrary: the higher one is driven, the harder his fall. I am prepared to fall, shattering all my flesh and bones. It does not matter; matter is not destroyed, it only falls to pieces.”
Edited by tears ()
lo posted:“They flatter me by praising me to the stars, but things turn into their contrary: the higher one is driven, the harder his fall. I am prepared to fall, shattering all my flesh and bones. It does not matter; matter is not destroyed, it only falls to pieces.”
remembering when Mao wrote that even if the West somehow built enough bombs to destroy planet Earth, most of the cosmos wouldn't be affected so nbd
lo posted:I am prepared to fall, shattering all my flesh and bones. It does not matter; matter is not destroyed, it only falls to pieces.”
sick anime speech
lo posted:nice work tears-san. i'm reading a book on ancient egypt by this guy with a funny name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Assmann
hell yeah, i just stumbled on him some months back, while working on that stupid essay that's ended up lying fallow for the last 8 months or so
so, some years back, RedMaistre pointed me to this roberto calasso poem that's relevant to the piece, that I will most definitely be including somewhere in there:
Arcana Imperii
Originally power was scattered in one place, aura and miasma.
Then it was joined in Melchizedek, priest and king.
Then it was divided between a priest and king.
Then it was joined in a king.
Then it was divided between a king and a law.
Then it was joined in the law.
Then the law was divided into many rules.
Then the rules were scattered everywhere.
but i noticed a slight discrepancy between versions of it i've seen; in some renderings, "scattered" is instead translated as "spread." so i naturally wondered about the original italian. while hunting around, the first place I found it was referenced inside an italian essay
In origine il potere era diffuso in un luogo, aura e miasma.
"era diffuso" kind of paints its own picture -- diffused, widespread; feels smoother than "scattered" maybe?
said essay also describes the poem as "una sorta di cratogonia," or "a sort of cratogony." The hell's that word? not in this dictionary. hm!
after some digging, i found it was a coining of a certain famous egyptologist:
The Heliopolitan cosmogony is at the same time what may be called a “cratogony”: a mythical account of the emergence and development of political power.
that was from "Creation Through Hieroglyphs: The Cosmic Grammatology of Ancient Egypt." cool, cool.
then i noticed that name. and y'know, i was engaged in very Serious Scholarly Pursuits; it does not do at all to be reduced to tears while laughing at a name. but alas
Edited by Constantignoble ()
Constantignoble posted:Arcana Imperii
Originally power was scattered in one place, aura and miasma.
Then it was joined in Melchizedek, priest and king.
Then it was divided between a priest and king.
Then it was joined in a king.
Then it was divided between a king and a law.
Then it was joined in the law.
Then the law was divided into many rules.
Then the rules were scattered everywhere.
reduced to tears
oily tears
Barns were burned by us,
- we bled them,
the farmers; Svein
ravaged six at sunrise.
Savage, he sought
to serve them, carried
enough coal to kindle
their cottages.
///
Happy am I, keen
heroes have spear-hacked,
bloodied the king's boy:
brave the bold act
- but hard to hide
what a howling i've caused:
the corbie croaks
over carrion in Orkney
tears posted:muriel spark, roman history, pynchon, cyclonopedia, al-Masudi, the orknyinga saga, novella length dissections of individual symbolist paintings, a load of 2020s horror, a very dated book written less than 5 years ago about "the alt-right",
I started gravity's rainbow as my bedtime book. I get about 1-2 pages before I have to sleep.
Constantignoble posted:lo posted:
nice work tears-san. i'm reading a book on ancient egypt by this guy with a funny name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Assmann
hell yeah, i just stumbled on him some months back, while working on that stupid essay that's ended up lying fallow for the last 8 months or so
so, some years back, RedMaistre pointed me to this roberto calasso poem that's relevant to the piece, that I will most definitely be including somewhere in there:
Arcana Imperii
Originally power was scattered in one place, aura and miasma.
Then it was joined in Melchizedek, priest and king.
Then it was divided between a priest and king.
Then it was joined in a king.
Then it was divided between a king and a law.
Then it was joined in the law.
Then the law was divided into many rules.
Then the rules were scattered everywhere.
but i noticed a slight discrepancy between versions of it i've seen; in some renderings, "scattered" is instead translated as "spread." so i naturally wondered about the original italian. while hunting around, the first place I found it was referenced inside an italian essay
In origine il potere era diffuso in un luogo, aura e miasma.
"era diffuso" kind of paints its own picture -- diffused, widespread; feels smoother than "scattered" maybe?
said essay also describes the poem as "una sorta di cratogonia," or "a sort of cratogony." The hell's that word? not in this dictionary. hm!
after some digging, i found it was a coining of a certain famous egyptologist:
The Heliopolitan cosmogony is at the same time what may be called a “cratogony”: a mythical account of the emergence and development of political power.
that was from "Creation Through Hieroglyphs: The Cosmic Grammatology of Ancient Egypt." cool, cool.
then i noticed that name. and y'know, i was engaged in very Serious Scholarly Pursuits; it does not do at all to be reduced to tears while laughing at a name. but alas
Edited by Constantignoble (today 04:11:24)
this is cool. the one i've been reading is The Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharaohs and he uses cratogony there too. it's a very interesting book although he keeps referring to details of egyptian society in a way that is fascinating but also tantalising because that isn't really the main topic of the book and i don't feel like i have a complete picture of how their society was structured.
lo posted:i don't feel like i have a complete picture of how their society was structured.
was it... l-l-l-like a pyramid?
tears posted:novella length dissections of individual symbolist paintings
are any of them about the isle of the dead? asking for a friend
Intecepts - t j payne: a 0-tier pulp of interest only because of its mk-ultra adjacent gimmick .mid from the mi(n)d of a amerikan mid. authour cant break out of their abc method; as suspected, they married their highscoll sweetheart.
amygalotropolis -b r yeager: gore-vid soaked plunge into the heat of the nihilistic thanatophillic autophobia of the deeply-online child; autokatabolis mediated through the fearful photons of the computer. cover is a a medical picture of roundworm-infested bowels which i recognised from once reading the wiki page on helminthiasis. highly recommended philoso-fiction on nihilism and fascism
tears posted:lo, you're capable of reading iirc (soory if i misremembered this), any advice on what to start with, with william s burroughs?
i am literate, however burroughs is something of a blind spot because ive always been deeply suspicious of the beats. i have a copy of cities of the red night sitting around and have heard good things though..
tears posted:amygalotropolis -b r yeager: gore-vid soaked plunge into the heat of the nihilistic thanatophillic autophobia of the deeply-online child; autokatabolis mediated through the fearful photons of the computer. cover is a a medical picture of roundworm-infested bowels which i recognised from once reading the wiki page on helminthiasis. highly recommended philoso-fiction on nihilism and fascism
i've been meaning to read this guy, and your description is reminding me of this other guy i read a while ago called gary j shipley, who iirc was mentioned favourably by negarastani somewhere or other. dreams of amputation is a cool nightmare cyberpunk thing by him.
lo posted:i've been meaning to read this guy, and your description is reminding me of this other guy i read a while ago called gary j shipley, who iirc was mentioned favourably by negarastani somewhere or other. dreams of amputation is a cool nightmare cyberpunk thing by him.
i have shipley's terminal park sat rite here!; bought at the same time as yeager, based on random buying of goodreads recs 1-2 clicks from cyclonopedia. that and yeager's negative space are next up, after i finish Moynihan's Spinal Catastrophism since im whatever used to be the word before "pilled" to refer to "transiently meta-ironically interested in" ccru(-adjacent) stuff
i'd recommend amygdalotropolis since it does a lovely job of personifying... something gross, plus is so short it only takes a few hours to blast through
NE-ways, thanks about the burrough's stuff, I just liked the idea that he was majik-obsessed wEird-o. looking forward (chronognosis) to being future-smart about books
tears posted:yeager's negative space
books about drugs which make you see things that you cant normally see have a special place in my organs because i too have looked far too deep in the depths of drug-mediated psychosis. black magic a bonus. nihilistic lower-middle class children growing up in the the US hell, svengali orbit, yung_caligula,endless suicides, endless drugs, debase yourself and face to 0-future. embrace black magic. read it in one session, fin at 5am like a good trip. cover reps beyond the black rainbow. noshed down some tramadol for the comedown.
tears posted:shipley's terminal park sat rite here!;
hard rec. no lie. an apocalypse in the old-school sense, interspersed with yon psycho film-crit. canute standing before the worm. not to be understood, just to be absorbed. a literary drug; Xcited to read some more shipley.
tears posted:Moynihan's Spinal Catastrophism
2020 answer to cyclonopedia? i refute! too scattered, without the singular dedication like negrastani's vision; moyniha's pinneal gland is to calcified to really do the ccru idea justice; but fun all the same;;; best when its going off about directed pansperia, alien engineered viruses, unrecognizability of artificiality, cosmic webs, teleological spines and pantheism. accept that you're nothing but a neurotransmitter, synapsing across the face of a sphere; or return to the ur-orgasm of radial symmetry.
Edited by tears ()
up next: ccru writings 1997-2003 then:-
eugene thacker: in the dust of this planet; tommy ligotti;s The Conspiracy against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror; another shipley book; Moynihan's sophamore work on x-risk; got stanislaw lem, blood meridian and the mothman prophecies on slow-dial too.
reading: Motorman by David Ohle
to read: The Age of Sinatra by David Ohle
here's a thing I learned over the weekend: so, the book starts with the epigraph "Only an atheist can be a good Christian; only a Christian can be a good atheist," but Bloch had only used the first half of that statement in the original printing. it turns out that during a discourse with a theologian, the latter had proposed the second half's reversal in response, and Bloch liked it enough to add it to his book.
that theologian was Jürgen Moltmann, who is incidentally the other author I started skimming last week (The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology), without any prior notion that the two had any connection. funny how that goes
that penguin edition that collects Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe is great. don't like "Frolic" tho -- do not like "serial killer that's a genius" stories no matter how well done!