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that's the problem---this idiotic "war on terror" which is self-evidently still floating about (afghanistan anyone?) as the obama administration tries to work it's way through the clusterfuck left behind by the bush people---and this idiocy has been institutionalized in the "department of heimat security"...
the bizarre thing is not that this wiretap policy has continued (i which oppose--but i opposed and still oppose everything about this "war on terror" nonsense)...the interesting thing is that obama has started making moves to take the united states off the endless cold war model---you know, the military keynesianism that the right has used since reagan as it's preferred mode of massive state intervention in the economy--but because the right supported this, somehow it wasn't "statism" or anything else (pick your conservative meme)--it was "national security"---one result of this is that the extent of the patronage system that's been tied to the bloated unnecessary procurement policies that are of a piece with the imaginary eternal cold war are starting to make their way to washington for a huge fight over money and--here's the obvious kicker--jobs.
i do not think these two things are unrelated: starting the process of dismantling the national security state--which has been around since the late 1940s---is happening in the name of a different type of warfare, which is now taken as paradigmatic--which is the "war on terror"...assymetrical conflict, unconventional war---not the stuff of empires.
so i wonder about this relationship.
but again: i oppose the wiretaps and the war in afghanistan and the nonsense of the "war on terror" that gave rise to it.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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