Originally trained in the Neo-Kantian tradition with Ernst Cassirer and immersed in the work of the phenomenologists Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, Strauss later focused his research on the Greek texts of Plato and Aristotle, retracing their interpretation through medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophy, and encouraged application of their ideas to contemporary political theory.

Another pillar which could buttress a portrait of these looter elites as wannabe totalitarians is the avidity with which many of the older families among them, such as the Bushes, the Fords, the Rockefellers, etc. embraced and did business with the Third Reich and the extent to which they admired Hitler for how effectively he dealt with labor protests. Totalitarianism is about operational methods and mores. It can espouse left or right ideology with equal fervor and vacuity. Hannah Arendt's work comes to mind.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

</physicist>

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

you are the media you consume.

In this light the tradition (at least up here) to get as drunk as you possibly could the day before a holy day and spend the sermon in a tired hungover state looks practically subversive.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

The Wizard of Oz is a wonderful pastiche of late 19th progressive political thoughts, notions, imagery, etc.  Not well integrated enough to be politically coherent.  I tend to think that Baum was mostly interested in writing a children's fantasy story with a moral than a political treatise.  He likely picked up some of the latter from his mother-in-law and it's my understanding that his illustrator added some heavy doses.  

My first reaction to this text was laughter about the commie under the bed stuff. I found the author's views on communism ridiculous. I really had to re-read the text before I got that he wasn't writing about communism at all, and I wouldn't have re-read it normally.

Fits with Curtis latest btw:

BBC - Adam Curtis Blog: HOW TO KILL A RATIONAL PEASANT

Galula was the star guest and he got up to speak first. To begin with he put forward his fundamental theory.

"Revolutionary warfare requires a revolutionary approach on both sides in the struggle. Whereas in ordinary war the objective is to destroy the enemy and occupy his territory, the guerrilla's aim is to control the population.

This, therefore, must be the aim of the counter-guerrilla as well"

But then Galula put the boot in to the aspiring counter-insurgents. Whether it was due to his disenchantment with what had happened in Algeria is not clear - but Galula laid out the central problem for the counterinsurgents when they tried to mirror the communist revolutionaries - they didn't have a cause:

"One basic difference between insurgency and counterinsurgency is that the insurgent starts out with nothing but a cause and grows to strength, while counterinsurgent often starts with everything but a cause and gradually declines in strength to the point of weakness"

So the RAND corporation decided to find something equivalent to a cause, powerful enough to bring the villagers in SE Asia over to the American side.

But somehow the ideas of the rulers had problems gaining traction, perhaps because they underpinned a system designed to control the very same persons they tried to sell the ideas to.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

For all their shortcomings and authoritarianism, I cannot help but not that the Party in the PRC has also overssen vast social change which has moved China from a country where women had their feet stunted on purpose in order to walk in a certain way (and certainly not ever be able to run) to a world where Chinese women are nearing equality with men on par with many if not most of the western oligarchies (and I have no doubt strides will continue to be made in this regard). I note a China whose attitudes towards homosexuality were as backwards as any in the world and see that equality in this regard is equally seeing great strides. I note a China which is far more open to tourism both of its own citizens and of peoples of other countries to the PRC, something we did not see in proper measure in other coutries with "actually-existing-socialism". And, I note that the Party is allocating resources (capital, if you will) to Green energies in a way the banks of the western oligarchies are incapable of doing, especially in Solar.

So, I'm with you on actions, I just interpret the actions a bit differently than you seem to.

The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet. Winston Churchill

What is apparently happening is that the elites are able to play with any ideology (libertarian, communist, "liberal", whatever) to secure their privileges and cash flows.

Yes, of course. This is the point of the article.

Both right and left are too easily manipulated with tokenism and dog whistles.

The only useful measure of progress is to look carefully at the relationships between all parties. If the relationships are authoritarian or oppressive and the social structure is rigid and layered, there is no progress.

The label on the tin is irrelevant.

As is the fact that 'communism' has often been associated with authoritarianism in practice. There have been too many psychotic despots in too many communist states to pretend otherwise. (This is irrespective of the West's own love of despotism in its vassal states.)

Socialism - especially Scandinavian Socialism - has a much better empirical record.

The default, or front, page of a community blog is what visitors will see first, thus the content there determines image.

I am not questioning open posting. I am questioning what's on the front page.

Con­tem­plate the fol­low­ing details very closely, because they are what is planned for you.

Envy: anywhere details are provided showing just what the rich are able to do (Kozlowski, the international elite sending their young to Switzerland).

Xenophobia: the details of the Chinese factory, the emergence of China as a power or this little bit from the end:

Any­way, not to worry, our prin­ci­pal cred­i­tors are nice, respectable peo­ple, much admired by Con­ser­v­a­tives: the Com­mu­nist Party of the Peo­ples Repub­lic of China, who mur­dered, in their younger, impul­sive days, roughly sev­enty mil­lion people.

For laughs, let's try replacing some of the terminology on key sections describing the new masters of the world, secret leaders of the coming yellow horde:

For us to under­stand how this ide­o­log­i­cal imper­a­tive has been fol­lowed, I will have to make clear who most ben­e­fits from the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion. It is not the peo­ple of the United States and Canada, nor is it the peo­ple of China. It is a small group of indi­vid­u­als and fam­i­lies who con­sti­tute the global aris­toc­racy. The present global aris­toc­racy, who pos­sess wealth unimag­in­able to any ordi­nary per­son, include a hand­ful of tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tors who built indus­tries, but the over­whelm­ing major­ity of them are mem­bers of ancient Euro­pean aris­to­cratic fam­i­lies, old Com­mu­nist Party gang­sters, scions of the third world mon­archs who were installed by the colo­nial pow­ers (such as the Saudis), drug lords, arms deal­ers, stock mar­ket and real estate manip­u­la­tors, or mil­i­tary thugs sit­ting on valu­able chunks of nat­ural resources Jews. The cor­ner­stone of the global econ­omy, the oil indus­try, which directly or indi­rectly deter­mines the nature of every trans­ac­tion on earth, is owned over­whelm­ingly by hered­i­tary nobil­ity, mil­i­tary dic­ta­tors, or ex-KGB goons Jews.

With their chil­dren attend­ing Swiss schools, their houses in France or the Caribbean, and their emo­tional loy­al­ties with an inter­na­tional sub­cul­ture of wealth and pres­tige, the (tech­ni­cally) Amer­i­can and Cana­dian rich Jews don't much worry about most domes­tic issues. But they do care about tax­a­tion. No mat­ter how lit­tle they pay after the appro­pri­ate off-shoring, kick­backs, exemp­tions and spe­cial priv­i­leges, it is a point of Aris­to­cratic Jewish Hon­our to resist even the impli­ca­tion that they should pay.

As I've alluded to in another comment, all that's missing from this diatribe is an easily recognizable bogeyman. The story would become so much simpler to understand. I think the exercise above illustrates this well.