All posts by Indy

>The (Oval) Office

>Television – the drug of the nation. I’m with that, but occasionally I hear from people I trust (die hard TV series professionals who watch every fuckin’ show there is) about some new amazing TV series and I download them and then watch with intense intensity.
I’ve come to worship Twin Peaks, Six Feet Under, The Wire, Epitafios, Riget and Carnivàle thanks to these die hards. As for The Office (UK) I’m just speechless. It’s just perfect in every sense. Still haven’t had the time to watch the American version, but I hear it’s damn good as well.

If you’re a fan of The Office you’ll hopefully enjoy this brilliant satire, featuring George W Bush, Tony Blair and the rest of the elite. All hail Supernews!
“Has U.S. politics become so absurd that it deserves it’s own cartoon show? Evidently, it has.”

>The Israeli and US warmongers

>They’re at it again, backed up by the massmedia (“Iran launch new missile!”), provoking Iran trying to get them to attack first. Hopefully Iran will keep its cool, because this war, if executed, will probably be one of the worst ever for the present world to deal with.

On May 1, 2003, George W Bush made his famous speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln:
“Thank you all very much. Admiral Kelly, Captain Card, officers and sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln, my fellow Americans: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.”
As one YouTube fellow below writes: “This will no doubt go down in history the most elaborate and misleading presidential re-election publicity stunt in US history.”

I know this Bush-hating is tiresome, he’s a just a puppet on a string and so on, but do check out this interview. This is Bush three years later with arguments worthy of a ten year old…

Seymour M. Hersh writes about The Bush Administration’s moves against Iran.
Muhammad Sahimi’s article Deconstructing the Anti-Iran resolutions.

>Humanism without humans

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Peter Sotos – controversial writer, thinker and musician, probably most famous for being arrested for obscenity because of his fanzine Pure (1984), as well as being a member of the power electronics group Whitehouse – is a man I’ve taken great interest in, pretty much because of what he says in interviews and what you can read between the lines in his explicit works.
Total Abuse is a collection of nearly all of Sotos’ texts between 1984-1995 (including Pure, Tool. and Parasite), and what I find most interesting with this book is the interview and introduction made by Jim Goad. I wrote about this in the paper issue of Ny Moral #1.

Here’s an excerpt from the interview where he talks about humanism and humanity.

Jim Goad: I’d like you to comment on this [line] from PARASITE #5: “Like most humanism, it conveniently doesn’t include humans.” Where has humanism gone astray? What are they not understanding about humanity?

Peter Sotos: Well, I think we’ve been talking about it, really. These people have these dreams and fantasies, it’s like people who decide when they’re two, or when they’re going to their first prom, they decide, “You know, mom, I wanna have a really high-paying job, and I want to have two kids, and someone who loves me, and go out on Friday nights to balls and dances”, whatever they think, I don’t know. And just their whole life shows you that that’s not gonna happen… And they still cling to these things, not as sort of dreams or fantasies, by the end they’re just these sorts of religious beliefs… And humanists, people who are just so concerned with the human element, with others and everyone’s care and concern, so boggled by the actual information that exists. But once again, you say this sort of stuff, and you sound as if you’re – as if I’m – upset. When, you know, the opposite is true. I’ve come to this from – it just seems obvious to me… People aren’t going to have these rosy little lives.

It seems like it’s wishful thinking that gets misunderstood as some kind of ontological verity.

Yeah, right. They’re dedicated to, you know, “Well, this was promised to me.” And they drive themselves crazy. But the thing is, I do like what life has to offer. I don’t want to sound like, “Nah, this is terrible. Why don’t these people wake up?” I mean, it really isn’t like that. I just think it’s a much more realistic viewpoint.

Read more about what Peter Sotos has to say right here.
And then read some more on the Fanzine site.

>Religion and its influence on society

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You probably know this one already: Tom Cruise, famous Scientologist, is quite scary in this clip – and he’s not acting… It pretty much shows how indoctrination rules in religion. Nothing new, but it seems like a lot of us need to be reminded about this blemish on humanity every once in a while. I’m not saying all religions are crap, they might be of good use to a lot of people, but when religion and faith becomes business and tools for power we’ve failed once again.

A pretty good documentary on the subject of religion and faith is The Root of All Evil? where biologist Richard Dawkins, author of the very readable book The God Delusion, takes on religion and its influence on society.

>Four quotes about books

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Four quotes about books from four of my favourite writers: Voltaire, Ezra Pound, E.M. Cioran and Franz Kafka.
Book autopsy by Brian Dettmer, an artist who carves into books, dissecting them and revealing their art…

What we find in books is like the fire in our hearths. We fetch it from our neighbor’s, we kindle it at home, we communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.
Voltaire

Certain books form a treasure, a basis, once read they will serve you for the rest of your lives.
Ezra Pound

A book should open old wounds, even inflict new ones. A book should be a danger!
E.M. Cioran



We need the books that affects us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be an axe for the frozen sea inside us.
Franz Kafka

>Intelligent misanthropy – Part 2

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Jan Stenmark: Some people are too stupid to feel anxious. That’s smart.

First you might want to read Intelligent misanthropy – Part 1.
Then you might pose the question: Is being misanthropic really such an intelligent thing?

Well, misanthropy is a way of looking at humanity that probably will emerge over time. The more you learn about this world and its inhabitants, the more you would want to distance yourself from its craziness. At least that’s how I look at it, because I see no change to the better in the long run.

Alain de Botton writes in his book Status Anxiety:
“The disadvantage of this otherwise usefully clear-eyed view of humanity is that it may leave us with few friends.” I don’t necessarily agree with that few friends thing. I’m more in agreement with what Chamfort said:
“Once we have resolved only to see those who will treat us morally and virtuosly, reasonably and truthfully, without treating conventions, vanities and ceremonials as anything other than props of polite society … the result is that we will have to live more or less on our own.”

To spend time alone is essential to me. That’s what keeps me going. But:
“It is sometimes said of a man who lives alone that he does not like society. This is like saying of a man that he does not like going for walks because he is not fond of walking at night in the forêt de Bondy”, as Chamfort said. In other words: I have a desire for company, not just 24/7.

What disappoints me though is that I often have to wage wars alone as well. People may agree with what I say, but I’m the only one saying it. That’s awfully tiresome sometimes, the lack of support. And people say I am the one who’s lost all hope! At least I’m still fighting/writing. Seems to me like you – the passive masses – are the hopeless ones…