The Frankfurt School

What I'm reading
Visions of Social Control by Stanley Cohen
chapters 14 and 16
Modern Social Theory by Ian Craib
Conflict Theory and The Frankfurt School
Crowds and Power by Elias Canetti
dry but it has its moments

What I'm listening to: NEWS -CBC then BBC- anything but American propaganda uh sorry I meant news

Just getting back from a guest speaker who was witness to the horrors of Rawanda. I really enjoyed the night ...some of the phrases he used were hauntingly captivating. Speaking on the problems of child soliders he described the trauma inflicted upon the young killers who "feel the trigger...(and witness) through crosshairs, with slowed digital clarity the exploding of a life." Phenomenal . The phrasing that is.

He described how in the post cold war reality "nations stumbled into a new era" ...makes me think of the point in Apocolypse Now when Kurtz asks "Are my methods unsound?" and Willard responds "I don't see any method at all, sir." How close can man get to madness before the whole show goes up in flames?
To assume it will end with a bang is so HOLLYWOOD....we'll all go out in a whimper...a long sustained iron gate moaning squeak...

and this from the chapter Visions of Order in the above mentioned Cohen text

"decayed zones of the inner city inhabited by the old, confused and ill dumped from their institutions and left to rot in broken down welfare hotels or exploited in private nursing homes; psychotics wandering the streets 'locked in or locked out' of dilapitated boarding houses, barely able to cash their welfare checks, the prey of street criminals and a source of nuisance and alarm to local residents too poor to leave; an increasing ecological seperation into 'deviant ghettos' , 'sewers of human misery', garbage dumps for the 'social junk' lost in the interstices of the city." I thought this sooooo sounds like Burroughs and sure enough ...who closes out the chapter. Damned poem .....I'm gonna post it again


A Thanksgiving Prayer
by William S. Burroughs

Thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts.

Thanks for a continent to despoil and poison.

Thanks for Indians to provide a modicum of challenge and danger.

Thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin leaving the carcasses to rot.

Thanks for bounties on wolves and coyotes.

Thanks for the American dream, To vulgarize and to falsify until the bare lies shine through.

Thanks for the KKK.

For nigger-killin' lawmen, feelin' their notches.

For decent church-goin' women, with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces.

Thanks for "Kill a Queer for Christ" stickers.

Thanks for laboratory AIDS.

Thanks for Prohibition and the war against drugs.

Thanks for a country where nobody's allowed to mind the own business.

Thanks for a nation of finks.

Yes, thanks for all the memories-- all right let's see your arms!

You always were a headache and you always were a bore.

Thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams.