Re: A SECRET blueprint for US global domination,

Not a secret anymore?  More likely just one of many open "secrets" that are
completely unknown and hence unbelievable to the TV-addicted public. 

--paul, webmaster http://globalcircle.net
peace and liberty, sustainability and justice

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On 5/5/2003 at 3:20 AM Charles J. Reid wrote:

>I don't think this is a "secret" anymore.
>
>//CJR
>
>Mark Douglas Whitaker wrote:
>> 
>> Thanks for the summary of the comments and attitudes--or lack of 
>> comments. ;-)
>> 
>> I found the lack of response--and what I have interpreted as the 
>> attempts to deflect response--curiously interesting as well.  I have 
>> thought about this for some time over the past few months, and discussed

>> it with various collegues. Here's a short summary of what I see are the 
>> difficulties in many world systems scholars being willing to approach
>this:
>> 
>> 
>> Personally, I believe it may stem from several issues:
>> 
>> 1. that people are unwilling to critically challenge their economic 
>> reductionistic view of the issues at hand or of world systems theory. 
>> Particularly I am referring to the analysis of the issue of religion, 
>> particularly in world systems. This is strange because the importance of

>> subjective beliefs on "economic rationality" have been dealt with by Max

>> Weber--certainly a "canonical" source to point to in brining 
>> religious/economic networks to light.  Most people in world systems 
>> theory are on the 'left,' and with this intellectual baggage is the 
>> typical modernist assertion that "religion is fading." However, if you 
>> begin with the assertion that it is a durable force in world and human 
>> events and still widely used to legitimate world events to a public 
>> (gullible) audience, then ignoring it is simply being unsystematic as to

>> how politics works in practice, or how the goals of political elites are

>> more than simply economic--that they are religious/economic expressions 
>> that are merged--material and ideological principles merged and 
>> inseperable in practice, though seperatable for analysis if you want.
>> 
>> 2. the Israel/Zionist question: unquestioning acceptance of "whatever 
>> Israel does" because of the anti-semite card being thrown. Academic fear

>> guiding speaking up more than anything, or out of concern of fanning the

>> flames of the world's very real anti-semetism or fear of being 
>> associated with it by accident.
>> 
>> 3. the lack of analysis in most modernist historiography on issues of 
>> "plotting" or "scheming"--for lack of a better word. To expand on this, 
>> a more accurate view of history for world systems analysis would be more

>> than simply a "public" or accidental accretive sense of activities and 
>> "abstract forces" where the particulars are unimportant: history is 
>> closer to the calculating of particular groups against other particular 
>> groups where particular secret and private interests aim to design 
>> certain (wished for) public outcomes as their goals, or they react to 
>> public outcomes and attempt to change others or themselves. Most of this

>> literature about secret networks is strictly kept out of academia, and 
>> most of the literature on private networks is missing except for the 
>> work on corporate and financial interlocks that does get into 
>> particulars. However, how to proceed? What if the private interlocks 
>> were more extensively and more thoroughly analyzed: interlocks in the 
>> state, in the applied sciences, in religion, in finance, and in 
>> corporations--instads of only analyzing corporations only? With such 
>> issues of private networks being the research topic in general instead 
>> of simply being packaged into what are interpreted as the "overriding 
>> large scale abstract economic forces" being expounded, one is forced to 
>> confront laterally the many public/private interrelations seen in many 
>> public events and economic events if one claims to be a social 
>> scientist, in my opinion. On the one hand, I believe that there is an 
>> academic fear that addressing any of these these private or secret 
>> issues may import some of the reductionisms that are (I feel 
>> justifiably) refused. However, certainly an analysis that only sticks to

>> public events is an even more obvious reductionism and equally false as 
>> a historiography since it results in another form of reductionism. What 
>> I find useful is to keep in mind that in all societies there are various

>> levels of publicity in social networks and the categories of public, 
>> private, and secret are (1) historical constants of sorts that can be 
>> used to begin a more holistic and more accurate analysis of the 
>> interpenetration of each; that these three areas are simultaneously (2) 
>> contentiously defined and result in changing issues about jurisdictional

>> affairs which ties them all to state politics and issues of hegemony (of

>> who is in and who is out (or kept out) of power). So, instead of simply 
>> buying a false dichotomy of saying that history is all one (public--"or"

>> secret or private power) or the other or simply assuming that in history

>> the categories of public, private, and secret remain constant, it is 
>> important to remember that the empirical issue of research should be 
>> what are the  relations between public or private or secret power 
>> networks. In other words, the nexus of interactions approach avoids all 
>> three of these "one type of network" analysis approachy for 
>> historiography of world systems.
>> 
>> 4. simple issues of unfamiliarity or people being "too busy" to look 
>> into it.
>> 
>> 
>> comments welcome,
>> 
>> 
>> Mark Whitaker
>> University of Wisconsin-Madison
>> 
>> 

SNIP