Does anyone who happens to be reading this have an understanding of "third force" as a political term, especially compared with "fifth column?"  I think I know what a fifth column is, but "third force" seems like it can mean several different things: a mediating force between two hostile camps and a paramilitary rightist force seem to be the two ( Read more... )

A few years ago, I became so frustrated with imprecise, contradictory, vague uses of the word political that I proposed retiring the word entirely, a moratorium on its use, or at least a cooling-off period of a few years.

For some odd reason, the Royal Academy of American English doesn't seem to have received my memo.

In fact, I have reluctantly ( Read more... )

Sorry to inundate everyone; I never post this much, and I'm kind of sure no one is keeping up at this point.  So I'll just put most of this post behind a cut for my own amusement.

I'm working with some folks in Solidarity, my socialist group, to write more or less about the role of the left today, a document for internal and "semi-public" ( Read more... )

I just got back from a walk on the wharf, one of my favorite ways to while away an evening lately.  I had a lot to do, but it was 9:30 and deliciously foggy, and I just couldn't resist.  It reeked more than usual, of rancid deepfatfrieroil, birdshit, and rotting trash.  I wanted to expel something in response, like laughter, or vomit.  The ( Read more... )

Once more, on the materiality of the body and the materiality of social relations.

I have been puzzling over this matter for some time, and as I was jogging today, huffing and puffing a bit more than I have been recently, perhaps because I haven't been quite so "religious" about my regimen lately, I thought of a helpful way to think through one part ( Read more... )

A line from Frank Herbert's Dune series.  In the novels, a rare and precious spice exists which is necessary for inter-galactic transportation, extension of human life, and communitarian/ritualistic mind-altering practices.  The spice is clearly meant to be something of an analogue for oil in the Middle East, in the sense that it is a precious ( Read more... )

.... but has anyone been following this controversy over this Danish newspaper that published a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad and the response it has created, in terms of boycotts of Danish goods, etc.? Things got a little more interesting today, with several European newspapers reprinting the caricatures "in solidarity" with the Danes ( Read more... )