About Wells Branch, that's in Austin AFAIK, e.g.: http://www.wellsbranchmud.com/aquatics-main.html
I'm going to see Naomi Klein. In the Q&A maybe I'll ask her, a la Doug's LBO newsletter review, why she glosses over Dem administrations -- lets them off the hook -- so often in her analysis.
I read _Shock Doctrine_ and it's an interesting idea, but there are so many books now that take some idea or analogy, like Naomi Klein's use of the shock treatment metaphor, or (I think) Perelman's bed of Procrustes, and then use that illustrative device, and extrapolate it into a huge, overarching social schema into which all things capitalist/unjust/bad must fit. I don't know if that's a new trend or not, but I've noticed it in a lot of leftist lit. lately -- using some character or event from pop culture or mythology and blowing that up, extrapolating it, into a "grid of intelligibility" (to borrow a Foucauldian phrase) through which all phenomena can be viewed.
-B.
Eric wrote:
"About the only good thing in here is the meeting with you part. Last Sunday is a Robert Jensen joint, which might be good for entertainment, to see all the concerned liberals, but I ain't paying $22 for the pleasure, even if I could afford it. PDL does pretty good work, but I'd give money straight to them instead of letting it pass through Jensen's holy hands. Also, Naomi Klein has become really almost unbearable lately, with her need to attribute everything evil in the modern world to Milton Friedman and her great nostalgia for Keynesianism. Plus, Wells Branch. Isn't that like South Dallas or something?"