Dangerous Minds now has a web site, including a group blog.

Dangerous Minds

Boing Boing Video: The Throbbing Gristle Interview

Somewhat related: I found this great YouTube playlist of JG Thirwell rewarding.

Turns out there’s already another Dangerous Minds episode. This one features Douglas Rushkoff and covers some familiar terroritory for readers of Rushkoff’s columns (which I link to frequently).

I agree with quite a lot of what Rushkoff has to say, and I respect him a lot. But there are a few important things he gets wrong or doesn’t account for.

There’s a contradiction in his assertion that the government/corporate complex will be too broke to enforce monopolies – but he also mentions, when questioned about US foreign debt, that we still have the strongest military. And that’s the thing. Entrenched powers aren’t going to roll over and die as long as they’ve got the bomb and the gun.

Alternative currencies are great. But governments tend squash them as soon as they start disrupting the status quo. See The New Currency War and George Monbiot’s history of alternative currency. There’s a really question of how much the “powers that be” will let “us” get away with – in terms of growing our own food, creating our own currency, and anything else that reduces their power over us.

Much of Rushkoff’s optimism stems from romanticizing a future where Americans break free from our cubicles and start actually “doing stuff.” I’ve noticed a tendency for a lot of people to think that jobs need to be more like what they think their ideal job should be like. Some people say “people need to be out doors” or “people need to work with their hands” or “people need more creative jobs.” They miss the fact that a lot of people genuinely like working with numbers, or programing computers, or doing detailing oriented office work.

Anyway, the millions of people who work in (or have recently worked in) the health care, education, restaurant, hotel, farming, gardening, manufacturing, trucking, rail road, utility, and construction industries may be surprised to hear that all the economy needs is for Americans just need to get off their fat cubicle dwelling asses and “do something.” What percentage of the population is actually employed in just pushing numbers around and managing outsourced labor?

I’m fairly confused on this point because Rushkoff also talks about how the financial industry is essentially extracting value from the rest of us. So are we producing value or not?

Rushkoff is correct in tracing the modern collusion of government and corporations back to the very beginnings of corporations, but he falls into a certain trap that libertarians tend to fall into: the idea that getting rid of the government influence would solve the problem of megacorporations (or other large institutions) would stop their meddling in the market and lead to a laissez faire utopia.

The problem is that the government is not the only way large institutions (be they for-profit corporations, religious institutions, unions, professional organizations, or non-profit organizations) manipulate the market. We could try splitting up megacorproations – but that requires government intervention and gets sticky quick (for all the reasons that libertarians warn against government intervention).

The typical libertarian assumption, as I understand it, is that without government intervention the market would quickly self-correct – all those decades of entrenched power and influence would cease to matter as real competition came to the fold. Needless to say, I don’t share this belief. And actually, I rather doubt Rushkoff does either.

I look forward to Rushkoff’s book. I suspect many of my points will at least be addressed.

Rest of the episode after the jump.

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Since I’ve been a little soft of socialism lately, here are some thoughts on this episode: they talk a lot about the problems with capitalism and the need for more welfare to support the large numbers of people who will be unemployed long term as the economy continues to change.

However, they do not propose any real solutions (granted, this is just a short interview). The Welfare State needs a tax base to fund its social programs. Metzger mentions that he doesn’t see the market proposing any solutions to our problems. “The market” (a dubious term in its own right – what we should actual say is “private industry”) is perhaps the only thing proposing solutions – alternative energy, biotechnology, and other initiatives to increase actual, non-fictitious capital. Even solutions like permaculture, co-ops, credit unions, and alternative currency are “market” solutions, in that they are they are the private undertakings.

The good news is that McCain was, probably inadvertently, right when he said that the “fundamentals of our economy are strong.” We remain amongst the largest manufacturing countries in the world and one of the biggest exporters in the world. (Here’s an interesting article about the modern US manufacturing industry)

The bad news of course, we’re all familiar with: heavy debt both as a nation and as individuals, lack of individual savings, a serious trade deficit, etc. Some of these problems may have some governmental solutions. But redistribution of wealth require wealth to redistribute, and tariffs and trade regulation require commerce to regulate (whatever the advantages and disadvantages may be). This is what “the market” is good for.

Rest of the episode after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Your guide to what’s in and what’s out in the occultural world today.

Out: Gnosticism
In: EsoTech

Out: Cyberspace
In:Meatspace

Out: Disinfo
In: Lulu

Out: 23
In: 64

Out: Richard Metzger, Grant Morrison, and other magical celebrities/heroes
In: You

Last night I was out for drinks with Danny Choaflux, Trevor Blake, and Crawford, and we got on the subject of Richard Metzger’s corporate cash grabs.

Metzger’s well known for having bamboozled TCI into funding the site’s creation. Once they saw the actual product, they dropped it and gave him the rights to the site. Then he and Gary Baddeley sold the site to RazorFish, who later gave it back to them after the dot-com bubble burst. Then he was able to get the sci-fi channel to pay for the Disinfo TV show, and keep the rights after they decided not to air it.

I drew the comparison to demonology… Metzger was essentially working with assorted demons and imps and other malevolent actors to manifest his will. I’m not talking so much about the more remote corporate magical tactics people like Chris Arkenberg and Wes Unruh have been working on. Instead, Metzger has worked directly with these forces through their flesh and blood representatives, sleazy businessmen with bad intentions. And so far gotten what he wanted out of them.

Or has he?

(I decided to go through and tag all my corporate magic related posts for easier reference… I found some stuff I’d nearly forgotten about).

Breaking occulterati gossip, from the Disinfo newsletter:

At the end of last week, Disinfo Books editor Jason Louv decided to leave us to focus on some new Ultraculture projects, which will include animation and a new collaborative book. Many of you know Louv as the editor of Generation Hex, the influential anthology on next generation magicians. It’s a book that TDC co-founder and ‘wicked warlock’ Richard Metzger raved about for months as one of the most alchemical we’ve released. I agree and want to thank Louv for bringing some inspiration and renewal to the TDC team at an important transition. I’ve posted some thoughts on Louv’s Disinfo stint here, also check out his Viking Youth Power Hour podcast, and visit the Ultraculture site. Given Louv’s emphasis on real-world projects and physical manifestations of magick, we’ll be no doubt hearing from him soon.

Update: I e-mailed Jason, and he’s mum on the details of what’s he’s working on now. But I consulted my tarot deck, and it says that whatever Jason’s working on, lots and lots of crunk juice is involved. That is all.

This site contains detailed scans of a few of Paul Laffoley’s paintings, less detailed scans of many other pieces, and some interviews. And a picture of Jason Louv and Richard Metzger in front of a couple of Laffoley pieces at Metzger’s apartment.

Paul Laffoley gallery and interviews.

A couple things I’d love to go to, but can’t:

Phoenix Festival is back again this year! This year they’ve got Jello Biafra, Blackalicious, and Saul Williams, among others. (Southern Washington)

Everything You Know is Wrong seems almost like Disinfo Con 2. It’s to feature workshops by Howard Bloom, Paul Laffoley, Richard Metzger, Grant Morrison, and Douglas Rushkoff. (New York State)

Another Technoccult pal and former guest editor Michael the Mad Ghoul interviews Disinfo figurehead Richard Metzger

He [Paul Laffoley] is becoming better known. There’s not really a short answer to that question. He should be hailed as one of our greatest geniuses, I think. It takes a long time for Paul to do a painting, and they’re really quite big. They’re six by six. They might take him about a year to finish, and by the time you’d have enough collected paintings for a one man gallery exhibit, you’re talking about ten years worth of work, so very often the paintings are sold as part of like a group show. He has had several solo shows and there have been books published on Paul, two of them. You know… because of things like my show, because of the [Disinformation] Interviews book, his own books, the big museum show he had in Texas, and most importantly, the Kent Gallery in NYC and its owner Douglas Walla being so completely behind Paul, his profile has been rising in recent years

Link.

The new NeoFiles is out already! It includes a new interview with Richard Metzger.

Aleister Crowley said once that the “magical” way to open a door was to walk across the room, turn the knob and pull and so – and I am being serious when I say this – the fact that you can basically go on the Internet and with a few simple “commands” make a book appear in the mail a few days later – that’s a magical act. You don’t even have to leave your home! And that also serves to illustrate how computer programming can be seen as directly analogous to following a spell from a medieval grimoire, if you take my point. It’s all about putting the effort into the right place isn’t it? I mean, you could try to constrain a demon to do your bidding and bring you that book, too, of course, but Amazon might be a little quicker!

Which is not to say that there isn?t a “hoodoo” component to magick, either, and when strange synchronicities and coincidences start to give you the “cosmic wink” well then you know you’re doing something right. But that’s another discussion entirely.

Link.

According to today’s Disinfo e-newsletter, Invisibles author Grant Morrison is working on a book with Disinfo founder Richard Metzger. This should be interesting, since Morrison has talked about Invisibles as a “hypersigil” and Metzger has described Disinfo as a sigil. I wonder if this is in place of the no-longer spoken of collaboration between Morrison, Douglas Rushkoff, and Genesis P. Orridge.

New York’s On the Media radio show has a short interview with new Disinfo editor Russ Kick.

RUSS KICK: Well that’s part of it, and– actually the mainstream media does report some important things, but very often it, it’s strange –they’re buried. A good example I just noticed was the shooting at LAX where that gunman killed two people at the El Al Airlines counter.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Right.

RUSS KICK: That got a lot of coverage, but there was a story in the L.A. Times where, you know, you’re just kind of reading this story about what happened, and then all of a sudden there’s one sentence that says: witnesses said the security guard shot the man once at close range after the attacker had been disarmed and was being held on the floor.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Hm!

RUSS KICK: So that would indicate that– basically he was summarily executed while he was being held down — disarmed. And it gets one sentence in the middle of the article – and that’s it. [LAUGHS] You know, and I think maybe that should have been the headline!

Link.

Also, Disinfo co-founder and creative director Richard Metzger was recently interviewed in the NY Press.
Link (via Robot Wisdom).