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CONNECTIVITY

                                             April 09, 2007


         Norman Finkelstein arrived
         on the intellectual scene
         in 1984, and immediately         [ref]
         dived into some hot issues:

         Young Finkelstein tried             "Young Finkelstein"
         to expose the Joan                   Heh. Heh. Heh.        (Right.
         Peters hoax in the                                          Sorry.)
         United States, but
         couldn't get anyone's      The "Joan Peters" book
         attention.                 presented a bogus
                                    historical argument to
         The establishment          sanitize the creation of
         had already given          Israel in 1948:
         the book a warm
         reception as an                  There weren't any Palestinians
         interesting and                  there really, there were already
         valuable book.                   a lot of Jews there... that sort
                                          of thing.
         They weren't willing
         to admit they had                        There doesn't appear to
         been taken, just on                      be any "Joan Peters":
         the strength of an                       the book was a fabrication
         unknown intellectual,  (And funny        by some propagandists that
         However strong his     things happen     remain in the shadows.
         research skills.       when you get
                                near the                  (Whoever they are,
         When the book          Israel issue              I bet they like to
         was about to be        in the US.)               complain about
         released in                                      "The Protocols of
         Britain, Noam          TIPPING_THE_BANDWAGON     the Elders of
         Chomsky got                                      Zion" a lot.)
         involved, and
         primed them to
         look at it
         critically: it
         was trashed in
         the British press.

         Then, and only then, did the American
         literary establishment pay attention.

              Consider what a more thoroughly
              "globalized" world would be like,
              where the entire English-language
              press was essentially a single
              entity.
                                                      BRIDGES
              A case of advanced "group think"
              such as this would then have no
              external check -- we might continue
              to nod until this day, we might
              even seriously believe the hoax.

              But on the other hand:
              if we were not connected tightly
              enough, then the American literary
              establishment might never hear
              anything of the British establishment,
              and once again, we would lose the
              correcting effect of independent
              view points.


                     It appears that there is
                     such a thing as an optimal
                     amount of "connectivity".

                     CONTROL

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