Comments
Robyn Lucienne April 28, 2012, 05:14
Don’t let either of these guys near a weapon or projectile of any kind, they are more volatile than napalm.
Julian Assange has the Spirit of a Leader and as the world’s Mont Pelerin economists know from their own original ’Fable of the Bees’, if they block him at being famous he will become infamous. The world is an energy exchange and in the materialistic plane whether someone is blocked in their leadership is dependent on whether the dominant paradigm is ready for them not whether he is ready to fulfil his role. I note that Wall street has set up a model based on Wiki Leaks.

Since the model for corporations first evolved from the Church, in 1279 with Statutes of Mortmain where a person’s land did not revert to the Crown, although members are deceased in law, their land was held in mortua manu , ‘in dead hands’ because while members die, a religious body that does not die. Corporate immortality in that sense, means we need the Separation of Powers to extend to Corporations because they are in law ’persons’ who can breach the laws of perpetuity and the last survivor clauses that protects the IP of family dynasties.
Interesting that Indigenous communities have so few rights and little recognition that they have always operated under much the same model of wider community benefit, as churches and corporations, their wealth (land) is held on behalf of a larger group who invest their social capital into maintaining the community identity, they comprise a hierarchy founded on communal benefit, they are beneficiaries of ancestral IP, and traditional rights are sui generis.

So how is it Mont Pelerin’s decide appropriate functions of the state, the role of property rights, the rule of law and the free market in Africa. While Indigenous communities are refused the same rights and recognition in law as corporations and churches? Governments ride roughshod over Indigenous communities in favour of corporations, these free floating international states that go about exerting their corporate muscle to make money from Indigenous traditional lands but vaporise into thin air when it comes to paying money for environmental damage they cause, which also continues well beyond the rules of perpetuity.

Yes the model for DemoNcracy desperately needs changing, it is like the gambling is to money laundering, as corporate donations to political parties and CEO fluidity into Government are the vehicle for legitimising corruption, the real dominant paradigm. Imagine if you could see them in the regalia of Archbishops, Rabbi’s or Caliph’s you would want rules around how much power they weild. Yet because the suit is uniform for business power brokers our guard is dropped. Corporations are a civic religion and we need a Separation of Powers from the Executive and the Judiciary to reign in their power to deceive the masses.
Thank you Julian Assange I voted for you as Australian of the Year because you are COOL, CALM, and have the SOCIAL FORTITUDE to tell the world what the fat rats don’t want anyone to know.


Alan April 28, 2012, 03:17
I was a fundamentalist Christian through my adult life and was, of course, pulled into right-wing thinking during the ’80s. In recent years, I evolved out of the whole thing into a more progressive political mindset while the GOP began heading for the cliff.

America is now a nation flirting with right-wing fascism at a time when its people have been systematically robbed by an increasingly plutocratic corporatist state that is dismantling the old managed democracy that was the intent of the Constitution. Citizens United was the nail in the coffin, or appears to be. This year will be the most expensive political auction we have ever witnessed.

If Americans don’t demand a more pure form of democracy (separating business from state), we are going to see the further occupation of government by the 1%. The colonists called it "taxation without representation." If we move to right-wing austerity similar to the obvious failure being orchestrated in Europe, America will plunge into the Second Great Depression. Out of that debacle, anything could happen. It’s a repeat of disastrous history.

So these two gentlemen seem like Modern Age dinosaurs to me, thinking in terms of dead ideologies. The next generation of Americans are post-modern. The "we-they" paradigm has to die out and a "both-and" mentality rise from the ashes. Julian strikes me a someone who has graduated from the dead Modern meme.
James in Germany April 28, 2012, 02:48
I’ve just decided that Horowitz is completely out of touch with today’s line of thought.
Ragnaröken April 28, 2012, 02:38
Mr. Assange

Sorry to say, but Sweden in not longer a socialist state. It’s a fascist state. I know, I live in Sweden, and I know the difference.
Joseph Anderson, Berkeley, CA April 28, 2012, 00:41
re Carmen: "Most politicians and intellectuals nowadays just repeat mainstream leftist or conservative slogans (as both point out very well)."

If you don’t think that Horowitz spouts conservative slogans -- typically quite *bombastically* (again, his *shtick*) and sometimes particularly *racist* conservative slogans (cookie cutter ones) at that (see my San Francisco Chronicle commentary "The Issue Is Racism" about Horowitz and the longer published version using search terms on my and his name) -- then you are just not *lllistening* to Horowitz. It certainly makes me wonder what your critical reading or listening comprehension skills are -- or just how, ’intellectually’, *eeeasily* impressed you are.

While I otherwise greatly admire Assange, this 2nd show was right out of mainstream media practices: have _a *real* character_ from the far right (typically someone bombastic), have _a *real* character_ from the left (especially someone with peculiar, by American norms, or pronounced mannerisms), especially someone easily excitable (and/or an intellectually weak, easily provoked, inarticulate, or hard to understand, disheveled, or otherwise "untelegenic" leftist out of ’Hollywood Cental Casting’ because mainstream American TV always wants the leftist to be weak and/or unappealing vs. all the attractive female _right-wing blondes_ on American TV), and have them really go at it!

Plus, as another comment poster said, why have Horowitz on?: it’s not like he doesn’t get more than enough exposure as one of "the usual right-wing characters" -- especially good for TV sensationalism -- on "exciting" and "*makes good*" American TV. Horowitz is *A STOCK CHARACTER* to invite on American TV for these purposes. A conservative African American version of this TV STOCK CHARACTER is Stanley Crouch: *guaranteed* he will be a bombastic verbal flame-thrower! "Oh, great TV!" A conservative Arab American version of this stock character is Fouad Ajami. Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter ("attractive", if you like twiggy, leggy, long-haired, right-wing blondes, and *guaranteed* to be a real bombastic verbal flamethrower) -- the more *outraaageous* the *better* -- have built entire careers on being bombastic and, of course, right-wing.

These bombasts come from and represent a *stable* of TV producers’ *stock characters* right off the mainstream (especially PBS and cable shouting shows) Rolodex. And, being conscious and much better verbal street fighters than leftists -- who naively think they are actually coming on the show (oh, they’re just so damn excited to even be invited *onto* *mainstream* and/or *national/international* TV for a change) to have an *"intellectual"* debate, whereas they’re just being set up for the slaughter and right-wing punchline -- the right-wing bombasts caculatedly purposely provoke or interrupt anytime someone from the left (clueless to verbal street fighting tactics) is just about to actually say something *meaningful* that you normally *never hear* on mainstream American/Western TV.

Especially in these instances, the right-wing guest and/or host (both much more practiced and skilled in TV verbal street fighting than leftists) makes sure that someone from the left never really gets a chance to get a decent sentence or completed verbal thought out if it’s about something meaningful and incisive. That’s when the right-winger calculated and instantaneously throws a verbal firebomb, or suddenly tramples over the leftist’s word, or cuts the leftist off, or really tries to provoke the leftist into losing emotional and verbal composure, or the right-wing bombast calculatedly interrupts with some non sequitur (usually something inane) to take any incisive leftist thought and comment off rail, or otherwise abruptly interrupts.

I’m an African American progressive, and once, when I was in a taped debate on the PBS Newshour about American university multiculturalism and diversity issues and studies, taped on location at UC Berkeley, four things happened:

(1) the PBS Newshour had a white male ’plant’ as the ’right-winger’ (I don’t even know if he really *was* so right-wing or not: before the interview started he seem quite normal, quite well-behaved, and even casually well-dressed in a sort of young urban liberal comfortable way);

(2) but sometimes he said things that I *knew* were purposely and caculatedly bombastic, provocative barbs against me -- trying to wind me up and set me off -- like, his saying, "What if I *don’t lllike* being around minorities!?; What if I *don’t want* to have any minority friends!?; What if I *just don’t want* this university to have any courses or departments on African American, Latino, Asian American or Native American studies!?";

(3) Since the white guy was a ’plant’ posing as the partisan right-wing ideologue -- maybe the PBS Newshour couldn’t find a *real* bombastic right-wing ideologue white guy at the university, at least one willing to go be bombastic, multiculturally clueless, and ignorant on nationwide TV, make a national *joke* of himself and the university, and then have to go back to work in his/her university academic department -- it meant that the right-wing ’plant’ -- having a designated partisan right-wing ideologue role to play -- was *never*, *ever* going to be persuaded by *any* perhaps very compelling or cornering intellectual argument or even point of mine that might get through to him or force him into an intellectual corner.

The right-wing ’plant’ would thus **never** ever end up saying, "Okay, I have to concede on that point"; or, "Okay, I don’t have an answer for that point"; or, to which he might say, "Okay, I never considered and thought about that point"; or perhaps *even*, "Okay, I see where you’re *right* on that point or intellectual argument." He’d just completely ignore and blow right past that point and instead come back with some inane, calculatedly, purposely and highly provocative non sequitur designed to (*try* to) derail my point, cause me to lose my composure (to make me look angry and unreasonable), immediately get me off-subject/off-issue, and evade the answer.

(4) When I remained intellectually and verbally composed, the host actually *stopped* the taping of the debate to ask me why I wasn’t getting more emotional, and that I didn’t need to hold back my emotions, and feel free to get more excitable! I thought two things to myself:

(a) What is this, *the PBS Newshour* or *The Jerry Springer Show*!?; and

(b) Uh huh..., they’re trying to turn me into a Black *stereotype* -- the ever-angry, never-satisfied, overly emotional, totally beyond reasonableness, always about to *riot*, Bblllacck ’mau-mau’ (all I ’needed’ was a *bone* in my nose, wild eyes, a big African medallion of some sort around my neck, and wild disheveled hair to complete their picture), ’Hollywood Central Casting’ Black militant, as if they were trying to show the nation: ’You *see*, you *see*, what type of angggry unconsolable Black militants even the most prestigious American universities and the good white professors and students have to put up with!?’

I told my university friends, "I showed up to the interview/debate as an intellectually prepared, articulate, incisive, intellectually thoughtful, calm and composed Black person, but instead the host and ’plant’ tried to provoke/turn me into some unsatisfiable, ever-angry, ’mau-mau’, Black militant -- and otherwise the "stereotypical" irascible Berkeley radical: I was just *supposed* to be the illustrative *prop* for the issue -- and yet the PBS Newshour could then claim that they actually showed and had a representative of the progressive or leftist side too!

THIS IS HOW MAINSTREAM BROADCAST, CABLE, COMMERCIAL OR EVEN PBS TV *WORKS* FOLKS!:

THEY DO EVERYTHING FOR A REASON, INCLUDING WHAT GUESTS ARE SELECTED, OR HOW OFTEN OR RARELY THEY ARE SELECTED, ALL TO REINFORCE THE MAINSTREAM WESTERN PARADIGM.

EVEN WITH SUCH PRO-MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL-COMPLEX, WESTERN POWERS’ IMPERIALIST PROPAGANDA BLATHER/SHILLS ABOUT, "THERE’LL *ALWAYS* BE WAR. HUMAN BEINGS ACTUALLY *NEED* IT THAT WAY!"

-- AND *WHAT’S* THE POLITICAL AND/OR MATERIAL INTEREST OF SOMEONE WHO SAYS THIS -- OR *WHO* ARE THEY CARRYING PROPAGANDA WATER FOR?

INSTEAD OF, "HOW ARE WE, AS ORDINARY CITIZENS, "PATRIOTICALLY" *MANIPULATED* INTO WARS OF IMPERIALISM, COLONIALISM OR OTHERWISE CONQUEST, TO GO MAIM AND KILL *OTHER* ORDINARY PEOPLE WHO WANT THE SAME THING FOR THEIR FAMILIES AND KIDS THAT WE WANT FOR OURS?

-- AND WHY DID THE *PREVIOUS* WAR, OR ITS SUPPOSED "RESOLUTION", MERELY SET US UP FOR, OR CONTINUE INTO, THE *NEXT* WAR OR MILITARY CONFLICT?

-- AND **WHO** REGULARLY MANIPULATES WE ORDINARY CITIZENS *INTO* WARS (INCLUDING PEOPLE/COUNTRIES THAT CALL THEMSELVES OUR FRIENDS/ALLIES, OR THAT WE CALL THEIR FRIENDS/ALLIES)?"

---------------

Now, in his 2nd show, Assange is too busy playing the ’neutral’ host -- and sometimes uninformed, whether on American leftist political movements , or on Zionist/Israeli colonial history, the constant Zionist/Israeli attempt to ethnically cleanse Palestine of the *Palestinian* people (like the at least 750,000 Palestinians driven off their land by Israeli atrocities in the very year that Zionists declared Israel to be a state, describe in the Israeli Jewish professor and author, now living in London, Ilan Pappe’s, book "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine"), and other even more previous and ongoing historical Zionist/Israeli atrocities -- and Russia Today is the *only* national TV network in the U.S./West where such things can be, and sometimes are, revealed! You *never* see those *right*-wing TV/radio hosts play the *neutral* host between someone on the left and someone on the right. The right-wing hosts will even snap at, or otherwise immediately put in check, a *right-wing* guest they feel is slipping or lapsing on some right-wing point or issue -- while a progressive or leftist host is too busy trying to be "neutral" or even friendly, or at least amiable, and never really challenging when called for, to even his *right-wing* guest.

But, Assange himself, when he is being interviewed, is naturally and particularly good at remaining steadfastly calm, articulate, incisive, as well as being well-dressed, stylish (in a tasteful understated way), neatly groomed and generally telegenic -- I think that all these things are just his personality -- and *not* letting mainstream or right-wing hosts purposely provoke him into getting all excited and losing verbal composure. And that’s what mainstream media *hates* about Assange: he remains cool, calm and collected.

Okay, Julian, you’ve had numerous comments from people who heartily support you about how good and daring your first show was -- who actually welcomed something even daringly different (for a change we get intellectual *steak* instead of mainstream *hamburger*) -- vs. the failings and disappointments -- the ssammme-old ssammme-old of mainstream, especially cable, debate TV shows -- in your 2nd show. Lets get things back up to the novel standards and journalistic bravery of your first show. We’ll admire you even more for it. (Minus your automatic taking/standing up for Israel, which is certainly nothing new on American/Western TV.) Otherwise, all too soon you’ll just have the right-wingers and the milquetoast liberals coffee table news nerds or news junkies tuning in who’ll watch *anything* (even just to see if the right-wing *sloganeering* bombast will even *outdo* him-/herself *this* time even moreso than *last* time, as it’s like a *fix* many leftists seem to need) -- even shouting match ’trash’ debates -- on mainstream TV and think they’re informed (and never asking themselves, "Did I really see or learn anything *new* today?").
Deena Stryker April 27, 2012, 20:38
GREAT first show. Terrible second show. Why invite someone like Horowitz, whom others have amply described in these comments?

Why allow H to have his cell phone on???? (Or was this done on purpose as a way of cooling down the debate for a few moments?)

Zizek deserves a return invitation. He’s not always rational but he’s often entertaining and he’s definitely not mainstream!

How about inviting some of the exponents of de-growth?
Carmen April 27, 2012, 16:37
Excellent choice of guests. Both Zizek and Horowitz still know why they say what they say. They speak with their minds and their hearts. Most politicians and intellectuals nowadays just repeat mainstream leftist or conservative slogans (as both point out very well). It is a pleasure to listen to a passionate political discussion (very short, but still) where the source of the differences are started to be discussed.
And to Joseph Anderson: The important thing is not why American TV (who cares about them anyway, this is a program for the WORLD) invites Horowitz. The important thing is what he has to say and that he has the knowledge, talent and a personal background to defend a valid political position (which I by the way disagree with).
Doris April 27, 2012, 16:31
Are conservatives in the style of Horowitz embarrassing for other conservatives? ... or is this all there is? If one were serious in trying to understand where conservatives are coming from, I’m not so sure that Horowitz provides any real insight (or does he?). I listened in fascination - similar to watching a mime artist - and at the end of it I could only be somewhat amused, wonder about the point of it, angry, speechless, shrug my shoulders and finally curious about humanity. Afterall, it is easy for me to move on to the next busker. It’s easy for me (and for Horowitz). We are so far removed from the horrors of this world. Just the other morning, I saw a pigeon get hit by a car. My heart was pounding and I just wished it would have happened without me seeing it - why couldn’t the car just slow down a bit! I think it is a good place to be when you can cry for a pigeon. It is no wonder I would compare Horowitz to a harmless mime. The truth is far more sinister and bloody when ’convictions’ such as the ones that Horowitz expressed are realized. Unlike a mime, his words carry blood, pain and horror. Ignorance is a horror. What a world it would be if we could all cry for a pigeon.
Georg April 27, 2012, 10:55
again.

Talking about the Message for me is

that both of them show pretty much how screwed up the World is and that many people walk in a one way street and unfortunately it seams to be a dead-end.
At “least” own of them neadet 9 years to become cool after confronting with murder via a Letter out of Julian’s “Collections”.

So there must be a another way to go to keep Mankind alive. And that is some think we badly need to find out soon and discus.

And not if there is a better, more intelligent way to “Entertain”.

USA + Israel + ... + ... = Snowball Pyramid that certainty will collapse.

There are only tow ways out!

Finding a Solution before Collapse or After.

Joerg.

From Scotland April 27, 2012, 03:41
Zizek has interesting things to say, but Horowitz didn’t contribute much to this program. If anything he turned the debate into PMQs with Assange filling in as John Bercow! I like the format and look forward to next week’s episode.