18.2.03
Number of U.S. presidents since 1860 whose party controlled both houses of Congress by the third year of their first term : 12
Number of these presidents whose party already controlled both houses : 10
Number whose bid for reelection failed : 1
Chances that a U.S. House or Senate race last year was won by the candidate whose campaign spent the most : 9 in 10
Number of "third" parties whose candidates won state legislative seats last year : 5
Portion of the eight seats they won accounted for by Progressive Party candidates in Vermont : 1/2
Number of states that use nonpartisan commissions to draw new congressional districts : 6
Number of Louisiana's last three elected insurance commissioners convicted of corruption : 3
Percentage change since 1998 in the number of federal convictions for health-care fraud : +43
Chance that a drug dose prescribed to a U.S. hospital patient is either administered improperly or forgotten : 1 in 5
Chances that a Rwandan woman raped during the 1994 genocide is now HIV-positive : 2 in 3
Estimated number of women killed as witches in Tanzania each year : 500
Ratio of Americans killed by Timothy McVeigh and the D.C. snipers to those killed in Gulf War combat : 5:4
Ratio of kilotonnage of U.S. bombs dropped during the Gulf War to that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima : 7:1
Number of countries that supplied both sides during the Iran-Iraq war : 10
Number of these that are among the world's five largest arms-manufacturing countries : 4
Percentage of federal discretionary spending in 2001 devoted to "homeland security" or the Department of Defense : 51
Percentage of the $1.1 trillion in Iraqi oil contracts that are held by French or Russian companies : 69
Price charged by a Ukrainian company for a half-day tour of the Chernobyl nuclear-plant site : $460
Number of years that a former Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, India, has been leaking toxic chemicals : 18
Estimated number of people who have died there since then as a result : 20,000
Years since criminal charges were filed against him in 1991 that Union Carbide's former CEO has been in hiding : 11
Ratio of net profit earned by U.S. airlines since 1970 to federal subsidies given the industry since September 2001 : 1:1
Minimum number of box cutters taken from U.S. airline passengers since last February : 34,777
Minutes that a Massachusetts surgeon left a patient with an open incision in July while he went to deposit a check : 35
Chance that a doctor laughs along with a patient's laughter : 1 in 10
Chances that a doctor shows no response : 7 in 10
Percentage of Gulf War veterans reporting chronic postwar symptoms who share a single bacterial infection : 40
Minimum number of locals hired to act as Arabs heckling U.S. troops during an army war game in California last year : 15
Number of Arabic linguists fired by the U.S. Army since August for being gay : 7
Retail price Mattel suggests that toy stores assign its Lingerie Barbie, dressed in "merry widow" or "peek-a-boo" style : $45
Percentage change since 1990 in the number of U.S. schoolchildren labeled "disabled" : +37
Percentage of U.S. high schools receiving federal aid whose students' contact information the army sought last fall : 100
Average amount of aid each school district stands to lose if its schools do not supply the information : $762,083
Page of the No Child Left Behind education law passed last year on which this new requirement is noted : 559
Rank of Michael Moore's Stupid White Men among the New York Times's top "business" bestsellers in September : 1
Years after rapper Chuck D called Elvis Presley "straight-out racist" that he claimed "a great deal of respect" for him : 14
Factor by which the number of Americans who have "tried to impersonate Elvis" exceeds the population of Tennessee : 3
Rank of Mom, Dad, and Rudolph Giuliani among those whom recent college graduates say they most wish to emulate : 1, 2, 3
Chances that a U.S. adult does not want to live to be 120 under any circumstances : 2 in 3
17.2.03
excerpts from Marcuse – From Philosophy to Social Theory (1941)
re: Hegelian heritage
"In a totally different form, the Hegelian dialectic also became an integral part of Marxian theory and its Leninist interpretation. Apart from these main lines, certain of Hegel’s concepts found employment in sociology (in Lorenz von Stein’s work, for example), in jurisprudence (the historical school; Lasalle) and in the field of history (Droysen, Ranke).
Such an account as this, though formally accurate, is a little too schematic, and obliterates certain important distinctions. The historical heritage of Hegel’s philosophy, for instance, did not pass to the ‘Hegelians’ (neither of the right nor of the left)-they were not the ones who kept alive the true content of this philosophy. The critical tendencies of the Hegelian philosophy, rather, were taken over by, and continued in, the Marxian social theory, while, in all other aspects, the history of Hegelianism became the history of a struggle against Hegel in which he was used as a symbol for all that the new intellectual (and to a considerable extent even the practical political) efforts opposed.
Hegel’s system brings to a close the entire epoch in modern philosophy that had begun with Descartes and had embodied the basic ideas of modern society. Hegel was the last to interpret the world as reason, subjecting nature and history alike to the standards of thought and freedom. At the same time, he recognised the social and political order men had achieved as the basis on which reason had to be realised. His system brought philosophy to the threshold of its negation and thus constituted the sole link between the old and the new form of critical theory, between philosophy and social theory.
Before we attempt to show how the inner workings of Western philosophy necessitated the transition to the critical theory of society, we must indicate the way in which the historical efforts that distinguish the modern era entered into and shaped the philosophic interest. The social forces at work in this historical surge used philosophy in its predominantly rationalistic form, and the idea of reason might well serve again as the starting point for our discussion."
[...]
re: erkenntnis -> method
"Fifthly, this freedom to act according to reason was regarded as exercised in the practice of natural science. A mastery of nature and of its recently unearthed resources and dimensions was a requisite of the new process of production that strove to transform the world into a huge commodity market. The idea of reason came under the sway of technical progress, and the experimental method was seen as the model of rational activity, that is, as a procedure that alters the world so that its inherent potencies become free and actual. Modern rationalism, as a result, had a tendency to pattern individual as well as social life on the model of nature. We point, for instance, to Descartes’s mechanistic philosophy, Hobbes’s materialist political thought, Spinoza’s mathematical ethics, and Leibniz’s monadology. The human world was presented as governed by objective laws, analogous or even identical with the laws of nature, and society was set forth as an objective entity more or less unyielding to subjective desires and goals. Men believed their relations to each other to result from objective laws that operate with the necessity of physical laws, and their freedom to consist in adapting their private existence to this necessity. A strikingly conformist scepticism thus accompanied the development of modern rationalism. The more reason triumphed in technology and natural science, the more reluctantly did it call for freedom in man’s social life. Under the pressure of this process, the critical and ideal elements slowly vanished and took refuge in heretical and oppositional doctrines (for example, in atheistic materialism during the French Enlightenment). The representative philosophers of the middle class (particularly Leibniz, Kant, and Fichte) reconciled their philosophical rationalism with the flagrant irrationality of the prevailing social relations, and inverted human reason and freedom so that they became ramparts of the isolated soul or mind, internal phenomena quite compatible with external realities, even if these contradicted reason and freedom."
[...]
re: dialectic vs. positivism
"IN the decade following Hegel’s death, European thought entered an era of ‘positivism.’ This positivism announced itself as the system of positive philosophy, taking a form quite different from that which later positivism assumed. Comte’s Cours de philosophie positive was published between 1830 and 1842, Stahl’s positive philosophy of the state between 1830 and 1837, and Schelling began in 1841 his Berlin lectures on the positive Philosophie that he had been elaborating ever since 1827."
[...]
"Positive philosophy was a conscious reaction against the critical and destructive tendencies of French and German rationalism, a reaction that was particularly bitter in Germany. Because of its critical tendencies, the Hegelian system was designated as ’negative philosophy.’ Its contemporaries recognised that the principles Hegel enunciated in his philosophy led him ‘to a critique of everything that was hitherto held to be the objective truth.’ His philosophy ‘negated’-namely, it repudiated any irrational and unreasonable reality. The reaction saw a challenge to the existing order in Hegel’s attempt to measure reality according to the standards of autonomous reason. Negative philosophy, it was claimed, tries for the potentialities of things, but is incapable of knowing their reality. It stops short at their ‘logical forms’ and never reaches their actual content, which is not deducible from these forms. As a result, so the critique of Hegel ran, the negative philosophy can neither explain nor justify things as they are. This led to the most fundamental objection of all, that negative philosophy, because of its conceptual make-up, ‘negates’ things as they are. The matters of fact that make up the given state of affairs, when viewed in the light of reason, become negative, limited, transitory - they become perishing forms within a comprehensive process that leads beyond them. The Hegelian dialectic was seen as the prototype of all destructive negations of the given, for in it every immediately given form passes into its opposite and attains its true content only by so doing. This kind of philosophy, the critics said, denies to the given the dignity of the real; it contains ‘the principle of revolution’ (Stahl said). Hegel’s statement that the real is rational was understood to mean that only the rational is real.
Positive philosophy made its counter-attack against critical rationalism on two fronts. Comte fought against the French form of negative philosophy, against the heritage of Descartes and the Enlightenment. In Germany, the struggle was directed against Hegel’s system. Schelling received an express commission from Frederick William IV to destroy the dragon seed’ of Hegelianism, while Stahl, another anti-Hegelian, became the philosophic spokesman of the Prussian monarchy in 1840. German political leaders clearly recognised that Hegel’s philosophy, far from justifying the state in the concrete shape it had taken, rather contained an instrument for its destruction. Within this situation, positive philosophy offered itself as the appropriate ideological saviour."
[...]
"Comte summarises the contrast between the positivist and the philosophic theory as follows: positive sociology is to concern itself with the investigation of facts instead of with transcendental illusions, with useful knowledge instead of leisured contemplation, certainty instead of doubt and indecision, organisation instead of negation and destruction., In all these cases, the new sociology is to tie itself to the facts of the existing social order and, though it will not reject the need for correction and improvement, it will exclude any move to overthrow or negate that order. As a result, the conceptual interest of the positive sociology is to be apologetic and justificatory.
This has not been true of all positivist movements. At the beginning of modern philosophy, and again in the eighteenth century, positivism was militant and revolutionary. Its appeal to the facts then amounted to a direct attack on the religious and metaphysical conceptions that were the ideological support of the ancien régime. The positivist approach to history was developed then as proof positive that the right of man to alter the social and political forms of life accorded with the nature and progress of reason."
re: Hegelian heritage
"In a totally different form, the Hegelian dialectic also became an integral part of Marxian theory and its Leninist interpretation. Apart from these main lines, certain of Hegel’s concepts found employment in sociology (in Lorenz von Stein’s work, for example), in jurisprudence (the historical school; Lasalle) and in the field of history (Droysen, Ranke).
Such an account as this, though formally accurate, is a little too schematic, and obliterates certain important distinctions. The historical heritage of Hegel’s philosophy, for instance, did not pass to the ‘Hegelians’ (neither of the right nor of the left)-they were not the ones who kept alive the true content of this philosophy. The critical tendencies of the Hegelian philosophy, rather, were taken over by, and continued in, the Marxian social theory, while, in all other aspects, the history of Hegelianism became the history of a struggle against Hegel in which he was used as a symbol for all that the new intellectual (and to a considerable extent even the practical political) efforts opposed.
Hegel’s system brings to a close the entire epoch in modern philosophy that had begun with Descartes and had embodied the basic ideas of modern society. Hegel was the last to interpret the world as reason, subjecting nature and history alike to the standards of thought and freedom. At the same time, he recognised the social and political order men had achieved as the basis on which reason had to be realised. His system brought philosophy to the threshold of its negation and thus constituted the sole link between the old and the new form of critical theory, between philosophy and social theory.
Before we attempt to show how the inner workings of Western philosophy necessitated the transition to the critical theory of society, we must indicate the way in which the historical efforts that distinguish the modern era entered into and shaped the philosophic interest. The social forces at work in this historical surge used philosophy in its predominantly rationalistic form, and the idea of reason might well serve again as the starting point for our discussion."
[...]
re: erkenntnis -> method
"Fifthly, this freedom to act according to reason was regarded as exercised in the practice of natural science. A mastery of nature and of its recently unearthed resources and dimensions was a requisite of the new process of production that strove to transform the world into a huge commodity market. The idea of reason came under the sway of technical progress, and the experimental method was seen as the model of rational activity, that is, as a procedure that alters the world so that its inherent potencies become free and actual. Modern rationalism, as a result, had a tendency to pattern individual as well as social life on the model of nature. We point, for instance, to Descartes’s mechanistic philosophy, Hobbes’s materialist political thought, Spinoza’s mathematical ethics, and Leibniz’s monadology. The human world was presented as governed by objective laws, analogous or even identical with the laws of nature, and society was set forth as an objective entity more or less unyielding to subjective desires and goals. Men believed their relations to each other to result from objective laws that operate with the necessity of physical laws, and their freedom to consist in adapting their private existence to this necessity. A strikingly conformist scepticism thus accompanied the development of modern rationalism. The more reason triumphed in technology and natural science, the more reluctantly did it call for freedom in man’s social life. Under the pressure of this process, the critical and ideal elements slowly vanished and took refuge in heretical and oppositional doctrines (for example, in atheistic materialism during the French Enlightenment). The representative philosophers of the middle class (particularly Leibniz, Kant, and Fichte) reconciled their philosophical rationalism with the flagrant irrationality of the prevailing social relations, and inverted human reason and freedom so that they became ramparts of the isolated soul or mind, internal phenomena quite compatible with external realities, even if these contradicted reason and freedom."
[...]
re: dialectic vs. positivism
"IN the decade following Hegel’s death, European thought entered an era of ‘positivism.’ This positivism announced itself as the system of positive philosophy, taking a form quite different from that which later positivism assumed. Comte’s Cours de philosophie positive was published between 1830 and 1842, Stahl’s positive philosophy of the state between 1830 and 1837, and Schelling began in 1841 his Berlin lectures on the positive Philosophie that he had been elaborating ever since 1827."
[...]
"Positive philosophy was a conscious reaction against the critical and destructive tendencies of French and German rationalism, a reaction that was particularly bitter in Germany. Because of its critical tendencies, the Hegelian system was designated as ’negative philosophy.’ Its contemporaries recognised that the principles Hegel enunciated in his philosophy led him ‘to a critique of everything that was hitherto held to be the objective truth.’ His philosophy ‘negated’-namely, it repudiated any irrational and unreasonable reality. The reaction saw a challenge to the existing order in Hegel’s attempt to measure reality according to the standards of autonomous reason. Negative philosophy, it was claimed, tries for the potentialities of things, but is incapable of knowing their reality. It stops short at their ‘logical forms’ and never reaches their actual content, which is not deducible from these forms. As a result, so the critique of Hegel ran, the negative philosophy can neither explain nor justify things as they are. This led to the most fundamental objection of all, that negative philosophy, because of its conceptual make-up, ‘negates’ things as they are. The matters of fact that make up the given state of affairs, when viewed in the light of reason, become negative, limited, transitory - they become perishing forms within a comprehensive process that leads beyond them. The Hegelian dialectic was seen as the prototype of all destructive negations of the given, for in it every immediately given form passes into its opposite and attains its true content only by so doing. This kind of philosophy, the critics said, denies to the given the dignity of the real; it contains ‘the principle of revolution’ (Stahl said). Hegel’s statement that the real is rational was understood to mean that only the rational is real.
Positive philosophy made its counter-attack against critical rationalism on two fronts. Comte fought against the French form of negative philosophy, against the heritage of Descartes and the Enlightenment. In Germany, the struggle was directed against Hegel’s system. Schelling received an express commission from Frederick William IV to destroy the dragon seed’ of Hegelianism, while Stahl, another anti-Hegelian, became the philosophic spokesman of the Prussian monarchy in 1840. German political leaders clearly recognised that Hegel’s philosophy, far from justifying the state in the concrete shape it had taken, rather contained an instrument for its destruction. Within this situation, positive philosophy offered itself as the appropriate ideological saviour."
[...]
"Comte summarises the contrast between the positivist and the philosophic theory as follows: positive sociology is to concern itself with the investigation of facts instead of with transcendental illusions, with useful knowledge instead of leisured contemplation, certainty instead of doubt and indecision, organisation instead of negation and destruction., In all these cases, the new sociology is to tie itself to the facts of the existing social order and, though it will not reject the need for correction and improvement, it will exclude any move to overthrow or negate that order. As a result, the conceptual interest of the positive sociology is to be apologetic and justificatory.
This has not been true of all positivist movements. At the beginning of modern philosophy, and again in the eighteenth century, positivism was militant and revolutionary. Its appeal to the facts then amounted to a direct attack on the religious and metaphysical conceptions that were the ideological support of the ancien régime. The positivist approach to history was developed then as proof positive that the right of man to alter the social and political forms of life accorded with the nature and progress of reason."
16.2.03
axis of soft-spined evil
scandalous, solicited wall street journal letter- a 'fair' issue, no doubt
United We Stand
Eight European leaders are as one with President Bush.
Thursday, January 30, 2003
Messrs. Aznar, Durão Barroso, Berlusconi, Blair, Medgyessy, Miller and Fogh Rasmussen are, respectively, the prime ministers of Spain, Portugal, Italy, the U.K., Hungary, Poland and Denmark. Mr. Havel is the Czech president.
The real bond between the U.S. and Europe is the values we share: democracy, individual freedom, human rights and the rule of law. These values crossed the Atlantic with those who sailed from Europe to help create the United States of America. Today they are under greater threat than ever.
scandalous, solicited wall street journal letter- a 'fair' issue, no doubt
United We Stand
Eight European leaders are as one with President Bush.
Thursday, January 30, 2003
Messrs. Aznar, Durão Barroso, Berlusconi, Blair, Medgyessy, Miller and Fogh Rasmussen are, respectively, the prime ministers of Spain, Portugal, Italy, the U.K., Hungary, Poland and Denmark. Mr. Havel is the Czech president.
The real bond between the U.S. and Europe is the values we share: democracy, individual freedom, human rights and the rule of law. These values crossed the Atlantic with those who sailed from Europe to help create the United States of America. Today they are under greater threat than ever.
Blair quoted extracts from an email received from a 19-year-old Cambridge University student, Rania Kashi, whose parents fled from Iraq 23 years ago, which was handed later to the delegates. Describing the anti-war movement as 'misjudged and misplaced', she argued that distrust of the West should not blind people to 'the bigger truths about Iraq'.
hahaha! desperate! this guy has never even been to iraq!
hahaha! desperate! this guy has never even been to iraq!
'I ask the marchers to understand this: I do not seek unpopularity as a badge of honour. But sometimes it is the price of leadership. And it is the cost of conviction.'
what the fuck is he thinking?
States developing weapons of mass destruction, proliferating them, importing or exporting the scientific expertise, the ballistic missile technology, the companies and individuals helping them don't operate within any international treaties. They don't conform to any rules.
but wise words
what the fuck is he thinking?
States developing weapons of mass destruction, proliferating them, importing or exporting the scientific expertise, the ballistic missile technology, the companies and individuals helping them don't operate within any international treaties. They don't conform to any rules.
but wise words
common sense:
'I'm not political, not at all. I don't even watch the news,' said Alvina Desir, queuing on the Embankment for the start of the march at noon. 'I've never been on a march in my life and never had any intention. But something's happened recently, to me and so many friends - we just know there's something going wrong in this country. No one's being consulted, and it's starting to feel worrying - more worrying than the scaremongering we've been getting about the terrorist threat. I simply don't see how war can be the answer and I don't know anyone who does. And, apart from anything else, as a black woman in London, it feels dangerous to spread racial tension after all that's been done.'
'I'm not political, not at all. I don't even watch the news,' said Alvina Desir, queuing on the Embankment for the start of the march at noon. 'I've never been on a march in my life and never had any intention. But something's happened recently, to me and so many friends - we just know there's something going wrong in this country. No one's being consulted, and it's starting to feel worrying - more worrying than the scaremongering we've been getting about the terrorist threat. I simply don't see how war can be the answer and I don't know anyone who does. And, apart from anything else, as a black woman in London, it feels dangerous to spread racial tension after all that's been done.'
Robert Fisk: The case against war: A conflict driven by the self-interest of America
15 February 2003
In the end, I think we are just tired of being lied to. Tired of being talked down to, of being bombarded with Second World War jingoism and scare stories and false information and student essays dressed up as "intelligence". We are sick of being insulted by little men, by Tony Blair and Jack Straw and the likes of George Bush and his cabal of neo-conservative henchmen who have plotted for years to change the map of the Middle East to their advantage.
No wonder, then, that Hans Blix's blunt refutation of America's "intelligence" at the UN yesterday warmed so many hearts. Suddenly, the Hans Blixes of this world could show up the Americans for the untrustworthy "allies" they have become.
The British don't like Hussein any more than they liked Nasser. But millions of Britons remember, as Blair does not, the Second World War; they are not conned by childish parables of Hitler, Churchill, Chamberlain and appeasement. They do not like being lectured and whined at by men whose experience of war is Hollywood and television.
Still less do they wish to embark on endless wars with a Texas governor-executioner who dodged the Vietnam draft and who, with his oil buddies, is now sending America's poor to destroy a Muslim nation that has nothing at all to do with the crimes against humanity of 11 September. Jack Straw, the public school Trot-turned-warrior, ignores all this, with Blair. He brays at us about the dangers of nuclear weapons that Iraq does not have, of the torture and aggression of a dictatorship that America and Britain sustained when Saddam was "one of ours". But he and Blair cannot discuss the dark political agenda behind George Bush's government, nor the "sinister men" (the words of a very senior UN official) around the President.
Those who oppose war are not cowards. Brits rather like fighting; they've biffed Arabs, Afghans, Muslims, Nazis, Italian Fascists and Japanese imperialists for generations, Iraqis included – though we play down the RAF's use of gas on Kurdish rebels in the 1930s. But when the British are asked to go to war, patriotism is not enough. Faced with the horror stories, Britons – and many Americans – are a lot braver than Blair and Bush. They do not like, as Thomas More told Cromwell in A Man for All Seasons, tales to frighten children.
Perhaps Henry VIII's exasperation in that play better expresses the British view of Blair and Bush: "Do they take me for a simpleton?" The British, like other Europeans, are an educated people. Ironically, their opposition to this obscene war may make them feel more, not less, European.
Palestine has much to do with it. Brits have no love for Arabs but they smell injustice fast enough and are outraged at the colonial war being used to crush the Palestinians by a nation that is now in effect running US policy in the Middle East. We are told that our invasion of Iraq has nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – a burning, fearsome wound to which Bush devoted just 18 words in his meretricious State of the Union speech – but even Blair can't get away with that one; hence his "conference" for Palestinian reform at which the Palestinians had to take part via video-link because Israel's Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, refused to let them travel to London.
So much for Blair's influence over Washington – the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, "regretted" that he couldn't persuade Sharon to change his mind. But at least one has to acknowledge that Sharon – war criminal though he may be for the 1982 Sabra and Chatila massacres – treated Blair with the contempt he deserves. Nor can the Americans hide the link between Iraq and Israel and Palestine. In his devious address to the UN Security Council last week, Powell linked the three when he complained that Hamas, whose suicide bombings so cruelly afflict Israelis, keeps an office in Baghdad.
Just as he told us about the mysterious al-Qa'ida men who support violence in Chechnya and in the "Pankisi gorge". This was America's way of giving Vladimir Putin a free hand again in his campaign of rape and murder against the Chechens, just as Bush's odd remark to the UN General Assembly last 12 September about the need to protect Iraq's Turkomans only becomes clear when one realises that Turkomans make up two thirds of the population of Kirkuk, one of Iraq's largest oil fields.
The men driving Bush to war are mostly former or still active pro-Israeli lobbyists. For years, they have advocated destroying the most powerful Arab nation. Richard Perle, one of Bush's most influential advisers, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton and Donald Rumsfeld were all campaigning for the overthrow of Iraq long before George W Bush was elected – if he was elected – US President. And they weren't doing so for the benefit of Americans or Britons. A 1996 report, A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (http://www.israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm) called for war on Iraq. It was written not for the US but for the incoming Israeli Likud prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and produced by a group headed by – yes, Richard Perle. The destruction of Iraq will, of course, protect Israel's monopoly of nuclear weapons and allow it to defeat the Palestinians and impose whatever colonial settlement Sharon has in store.
Although Bush and Blair dare not discuss this with us – a war for Israel is not going to have our boys lining up at the recruiting offices – Jewish American leaders talk about the advantages of an Iraqi war with enthusiasm. Indeed, those very courageous Jewish American groups who so bravely oppose this madness have been the first to point out how pro-Israeli organisations foresee Iraq not only as a new source of oil but of water, too; why should canals not link the Tigris river to the parched Levant? No wonder, then, that any discussion of this topic must be censored, as Professor Eliot Cohen, of Johns Hopkins University, tried to do in the Wall Street Journal the day after Powell's UN speech. Cohen suggested that European nations' objections to the war might – yet again – be ascribed to "anti-Semitism of a type long thought dead in the West, a loathing that ascribes to Jews a malignant intent." This nonsense, it must be said, is opposed by many Israeli intellectuals who, like Uri Avnery, argue that an Iraq war will leave Israel with even more Arab enemies, especially if Iraq attacks Israel and Sharon then joins the US battle against the Arabs.
The slur of "anti-Semitism" also lies behind Rumsfeld's snotty remarks about "old Europe". He was talking about the "old" Germany of Nazism and the "old" France of collaboration. But the France and Germany that oppose this war are the "new" Europe, the continent which refuses, ever again, to slaughter the innocent. It is Rumsfeld and Bush who represent the "old" America; not the "new" America of freedom, the America of F D Roosevelt. Rumsfeld and Bush symbolise the old America that killed its native Indians and embarked on imperial adventures. It is "old" America we are being asked to fight for – linked to a new form of colonialism – an America that first threatens the United Nations with irrelevancy and then does the same to Nato. This is not the last chance for the UN, nor for Nato. But it may well be the last chance for America to be taken seriously by her friends as well as her enemies.
In these last days of peace the British should not be tripped by the oh-so-sought-after second UN resolution. UN permission for America's war will not make the war legitimate; it merely proves that the Council can be controlled with bribes, threats or abstentions. It was the Soviet Union's abstention, after all, which allowed America to fight the savage Korean war under the UN flag. And we should not doubt that – after a quick US military conquest of Iraq and providing 'they" die more than we die – there will be plenty of anti-war protesters who will claim they were pro-war all along. The first pictures of "liberated" Baghdad will show Iraqi children making victory signs to American tank crews. But the real cruelty and cynicism of this conflict will become evident as soon as the "war" ends, when our colonial occupation of a Muslim nation for the US and Israel begins.
There lies the rub. Bush calls Sharon a "man of peace". But Sharon fears he may yet face trial over Sabra and Chatila, which is why Israel has just withdrawn its ambassador to Belgium. I'd like to see Saddam in the same court. And Rifaat Assad for his 1982 massacre in the Syrian city of Hama. And all the torturers of Israel and the Arab dictatorships.
Israeli and US ambitions in the region are now entwined, almost synonymous. This war is about oil and regional control. It is being cheer-led by a draft-dodger who is treacherously telling us that this is part of an eternal war against "terror". And the British and most Europeans don't believe him. It's not that Britons wouldn't fight for America. They just don't want to fight for Bush or his friends. And if that includes the Prime Minister, they don't want to fight for Blair either.
15 February 2003
In the end, I think we are just tired of being lied to. Tired of being talked down to, of being bombarded with Second World War jingoism and scare stories and false information and student essays dressed up as "intelligence". We are sick of being insulted by little men, by Tony Blair and Jack Straw and the likes of George Bush and his cabal of neo-conservative henchmen who have plotted for years to change the map of the Middle East to their advantage.
No wonder, then, that Hans Blix's blunt refutation of America's "intelligence" at the UN yesterday warmed so many hearts. Suddenly, the Hans Blixes of this world could show up the Americans for the untrustworthy "allies" they have become.
The British don't like Hussein any more than they liked Nasser. But millions of Britons remember, as Blair does not, the Second World War; they are not conned by childish parables of Hitler, Churchill, Chamberlain and appeasement. They do not like being lectured and whined at by men whose experience of war is Hollywood and television.
Still less do they wish to embark on endless wars with a Texas governor-executioner who dodged the Vietnam draft and who, with his oil buddies, is now sending America's poor to destroy a Muslim nation that has nothing at all to do with the crimes against humanity of 11 September. Jack Straw, the public school Trot-turned-warrior, ignores all this, with Blair. He brays at us about the dangers of nuclear weapons that Iraq does not have, of the torture and aggression of a dictatorship that America and Britain sustained when Saddam was "one of ours". But he and Blair cannot discuss the dark political agenda behind George Bush's government, nor the "sinister men" (the words of a very senior UN official) around the President.
Those who oppose war are not cowards. Brits rather like fighting; they've biffed Arabs, Afghans, Muslims, Nazis, Italian Fascists and Japanese imperialists for generations, Iraqis included – though we play down the RAF's use of gas on Kurdish rebels in the 1930s. But when the British are asked to go to war, patriotism is not enough. Faced with the horror stories, Britons – and many Americans – are a lot braver than Blair and Bush. They do not like, as Thomas More told Cromwell in A Man for All Seasons, tales to frighten children.
Perhaps Henry VIII's exasperation in that play better expresses the British view of Blair and Bush: "Do they take me for a simpleton?" The British, like other Europeans, are an educated people. Ironically, their opposition to this obscene war may make them feel more, not less, European.
Palestine has much to do with it. Brits have no love for Arabs but they smell injustice fast enough and are outraged at the colonial war being used to crush the Palestinians by a nation that is now in effect running US policy in the Middle East. We are told that our invasion of Iraq has nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – a burning, fearsome wound to which Bush devoted just 18 words in his meretricious State of the Union speech – but even Blair can't get away with that one; hence his "conference" for Palestinian reform at which the Palestinians had to take part via video-link because Israel's Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, refused to let them travel to London.
So much for Blair's influence over Washington – the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, "regretted" that he couldn't persuade Sharon to change his mind. But at least one has to acknowledge that Sharon – war criminal though he may be for the 1982 Sabra and Chatila massacres – treated Blair with the contempt he deserves. Nor can the Americans hide the link between Iraq and Israel and Palestine. In his devious address to the UN Security Council last week, Powell linked the three when he complained that Hamas, whose suicide bombings so cruelly afflict Israelis, keeps an office in Baghdad.
Just as he told us about the mysterious al-Qa'ida men who support violence in Chechnya and in the "Pankisi gorge". This was America's way of giving Vladimir Putin a free hand again in his campaign of rape and murder against the Chechens, just as Bush's odd remark to the UN General Assembly last 12 September about the need to protect Iraq's Turkomans only becomes clear when one realises that Turkomans make up two thirds of the population of Kirkuk, one of Iraq's largest oil fields.
The men driving Bush to war are mostly former or still active pro-Israeli lobbyists. For years, they have advocated destroying the most powerful Arab nation. Richard Perle, one of Bush's most influential advisers, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton and Donald Rumsfeld were all campaigning for the overthrow of Iraq long before George W Bush was elected – if he was elected – US President. And they weren't doing so for the benefit of Americans or Britons. A 1996 report, A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (http://www.israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm) called for war on Iraq. It was written not for the US but for the incoming Israeli Likud prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and produced by a group headed by – yes, Richard Perle. The destruction of Iraq will, of course, protect Israel's monopoly of nuclear weapons and allow it to defeat the Palestinians and impose whatever colonial settlement Sharon has in store.
Although Bush and Blair dare not discuss this with us – a war for Israel is not going to have our boys lining up at the recruiting offices – Jewish American leaders talk about the advantages of an Iraqi war with enthusiasm. Indeed, those very courageous Jewish American groups who so bravely oppose this madness have been the first to point out how pro-Israeli organisations foresee Iraq not only as a new source of oil but of water, too; why should canals not link the Tigris river to the parched Levant? No wonder, then, that any discussion of this topic must be censored, as Professor Eliot Cohen, of Johns Hopkins University, tried to do in the Wall Street Journal the day after Powell's UN speech. Cohen suggested that European nations' objections to the war might – yet again – be ascribed to "anti-Semitism of a type long thought dead in the West, a loathing that ascribes to Jews a malignant intent." This nonsense, it must be said, is opposed by many Israeli intellectuals who, like Uri Avnery, argue that an Iraq war will leave Israel with even more Arab enemies, especially if Iraq attacks Israel and Sharon then joins the US battle against the Arabs.
The slur of "anti-Semitism" also lies behind Rumsfeld's snotty remarks about "old Europe". He was talking about the "old" Germany of Nazism and the "old" France of collaboration. But the France and Germany that oppose this war are the "new" Europe, the continent which refuses, ever again, to slaughter the innocent. It is Rumsfeld and Bush who represent the "old" America; not the "new" America of freedom, the America of F D Roosevelt. Rumsfeld and Bush symbolise the old America that killed its native Indians and embarked on imperial adventures. It is "old" America we are being asked to fight for – linked to a new form of colonialism – an America that first threatens the United Nations with irrelevancy and then does the same to Nato. This is not the last chance for the UN, nor for Nato. But it may well be the last chance for America to be taken seriously by her friends as well as her enemies.
In these last days of peace the British should not be tripped by the oh-so-sought-after second UN resolution. UN permission for America's war will not make the war legitimate; it merely proves that the Council can be controlled with bribes, threats or abstentions. It was the Soviet Union's abstention, after all, which allowed America to fight the savage Korean war under the UN flag. And we should not doubt that – after a quick US military conquest of Iraq and providing 'they" die more than we die – there will be plenty of anti-war protesters who will claim they were pro-war all along. The first pictures of "liberated" Baghdad will show Iraqi children making victory signs to American tank crews. But the real cruelty and cynicism of this conflict will become evident as soon as the "war" ends, when our colonial occupation of a Muslim nation for the US and Israel begins.
There lies the rub. Bush calls Sharon a "man of peace". But Sharon fears he may yet face trial over Sabra and Chatila, which is why Israel has just withdrawn its ambassador to Belgium. I'd like to see Saddam in the same court. And Rifaat Assad for his 1982 massacre in the Syrian city of Hama. And all the torturers of Israel and the Arab dictatorships.
Israeli and US ambitions in the region are now entwined, almost synonymous. This war is about oil and regional control. It is being cheer-led by a draft-dodger who is treacherously telling us that this is part of an eternal war against "terror". And the British and most Europeans don't believe him. It's not that Britons wouldn't fight for America. They just don't want to fight for Bush or his friends. And if that includes the Prime Minister, they don't want to fight for Blair either.
15.2.03
the cult of Presidential infallibility, the march of militarism, the executive's routine lying to the other two branches and to the people, and the cancerous growth of official secrecy
The director of Central Intelligence, John McCone, told the President that the North Vietnamese were 'reacting defensively'. Nonetheless, Johnson personally lied to Senator William Fulbright, the highly respected chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in order to get him to sponsor the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in Congress.
The director of Central Intelligence, John McCone, told the President that the North Vietnamese were 'reacting defensively'. Nonetheless, Johnson personally lied to Senator William Fulbright, the highly respected chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in order to get him to sponsor the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in Congress.
14.2.03
following lrb article... 'pretty good, pretty neat...'
Who's in charge?
Chalmers Johnson
The subject of Daniel Ellsberg's memoir is the decadence of American democracy. The conditions he began fighting in 1969 are much worse today and far more dangerous to many more people. Yet central casting could not have produced a more perfect foil for the American imperial Presidency than Ellsberg. An infantry lieutenant in the Marine Corps with genuine battle experience in Vietnam, a PhD in economics from Harvard, and a defence intellectual employed by the Rand Corporation of Santa Monica, with the highest security clearances, Ellsberg is as good as the American system can produce in the way of a male citizen working in the foreign policy apparatus. His odyssey from Pentagon staff officer to the man who spirited 47 volumes of top secret documents out of the Rand Corporation, copied them, and delivered them to the New York Times and a dozen other newspapers is breathtaking.
[...]
Ellsberg returned to Harvard to write his doctoral dissertation - on a typically American subject, game theory - and then accepted a position with the Economics Department of the Rand Corporation. He was put to work on command and control problems in fighting a nuclear war. Disillusionment set in at once. In the autumn of 1961, shortly after Kennedy had effectively exploited the so-called missile gap for his own electoral purposes, Ellsberg read a highly classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the subject and discovered that it had all been a lie: there was a gap but it was ten to one in favour of the US. This, he said, had 'a shocking effect on my professional worldview'. There were many more to come.
[...]
Nixon was never enthusiastic about using legal means to try to stop the New York Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers, or about getting Ellsberg convicted in a Federal court. He was, however, scared to death that Ellsberg had or was receiving more secret documents not just about previous Administrations but about his own. 'Daniel Ellsberg is the most dangerous man in America. He must be stopped at all costs,' Kissinger had said in the presence of the President. In fact, Ellsberg did not have any materials touching on the Nixon Administration, but the President and Kissinger didn't know that. Nixon therefore ordered Charles Colson, an official on his staff, to come up with a plan to 'neutralise' Ellsberg. Colson in turn enlisted the services of a former CIA officer called Howard Hunt, who had been the mastermind behind the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba.
[...]
After the charges against him were dropped, Ellsberg expressed himself satisfied that the United States had reaffirmed its identity as 'a democratic republic - not an elected monarchy - a government under law, with Congress, the courts and the press functioning to curtail executive abuses, as our Constitution envisioned'. I wish that were true. My own conclusion is that it was more like the final surge of a consumptive, the false sense that good health has returned actually signalling that death is near. I believe that the advance of militarism in the United States is irreversible. If I am wrong, I will be forgiven because people will be so glad I was wrong.
Who's in charge?
Chalmers Johnson
The subject of Daniel Ellsberg's memoir is the decadence of American democracy. The conditions he began fighting in 1969 are much worse today and far more dangerous to many more people. Yet central casting could not have produced a more perfect foil for the American imperial Presidency than Ellsberg. An infantry lieutenant in the Marine Corps with genuine battle experience in Vietnam, a PhD in economics from Harvard, and a defence intellectual employed by the Rand Corporation of Santa Monica, with the highest security clearances, Ellsberg is as good as the American system can produce in the way of a male citizen working in the foreign policy apparatus. His odyssey from Pentagon staff officer to the man who spirited 47 volumes of top secret documents out of the Rand Corporation, copied them, and delivered them to the New York Times and a dozen other newspapers is breathtaking.
[...]
Ellsberg returned to Harvard to write his doctoral dissertation - on a typically American subject, game theory - and then accepted a position with the Economics Department of the Rand Corporation. He was put to work on command and control problems in fighting a nuclear war. Disillusionment set in at once. In the autumn of 1961, shortly after Kennedy had effectively exploited the so-called missile gap for his own electoral purposes, Ellsberg read a highly classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the subject and discovered that it had all been a lie: there was a gap but it was ten to one in favour of the US. This, he said, had 'a shocking effect on my professional worldview'. There were many more to come.
[...]
Nixon was never enthusiastic about using legal means to try to stop the New York Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers, or about getting Ellsberg convicted in a Federal court. He was, however, scared to death that Ellsberg had or was receiving more secret documents not just about previous Administrations but about his own. 'Daniel Ellsberg is the most dangerous man in America. He must be stopped at all costs,' Kissinger had said in the presence of the President. In fact, Ellsberg did not have any materials touching on the Nixon Administration, but the President and Kissinger didn't know that. Nixon therefore ordered Charles Colson, an official on his staff, to come up with a plan to 'neutralise' Ellsberg. Colson in turn enlisted the services of a former CIA officer called Howard Hunt, who had been the mastermind behind the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba.
[...]
After the charges against him were dropped, Ellsberg expressed himself satisfied that the United States had reaffirmed its identity as 'a democratic republic - not an elected monarchy - a government under law, with Congress, the courts and the press functioning to curtail executive abuses, as our Constitution envisioned'. I wish that were true. My own conclusion is that it was more like the final surge of a consumptive, the false sense that good health has returned actually signalling that death is near. I believe that the advance of militarism in the United States is irreversible. If I am wrong, I will be forgiven because people will be so glad I was wrong.
fair.org:
Playing the "Terrorism" Card
By Norman Solomon
These days, it's a crucial ace up Uncle Sam's sleeve. "Terrorism" is George W. Bush's magic card.
For 17 months now, the word has worked like a political charm for the Bush administration. Ever since the terrible crime against humanity known as 9/11, the White House has exploited the specter of terrorism to move the GOP's doctrinaire agenda. Boosting the military budget, cutting social programs and shredding civil liberties are well underway.
Like the overwhelming majority of politicians on Capitol Hill, most journalists in Washington are too timid to do anything other than quibble about fine-tuning and get out of the way of rampaging elephants.
The word "terror" has become a linguistic staple in news media. For keeping the fearful pot stirred, it's better than the longer word "terrorism," which refers to an occasional event. The shortened word has an ongoing ring to it. At the end of February's first week, when Attorney General John Ashcroft announced an official hike in the warning code, the cable networks lost no time plastering "Terror Alert: High" signs on TV screens. [no way... jhesos...]
Days later, the administration literally couldn't wait to tell the world about a new audiotape from Osama bin Laden. The eagerness of Colin Powell knew no bounds. He was spinning about the tape at a congressional appearance even before a single moment of the audio had premiered on the Arabic-language Al Jazeera network.
The next day, a White House spokesman did what he could to bolster the thin wisps of supposed links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. "If that is not an unholy partnership, I have not heard of one," said Ari Fleischer, who trumpeted "the linking up of Iraq with Al Qaeda." It was, he said, "the nightmare that people have warned about."
Actually, it was a dream that the Bush team has been yearning for -- some semblance of a public embrace involving Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.
You wouldn't know it from the dominant media coverage, but the embrace was not only distinctly one-sided -- it was also riddled with caveats and barbs. In his statement, Bin Laden made clear that he has never stopped viewing Hussein as an infidel. And the Iraqi dictator has continued to keep his distance from longtime foe Bin Laden.
In the propaganda end game prior to an all-out attack on Iraq, the Bush crew is playing a favorite card; as a word, terrorism can easily frighten the public and keep competing politicians at bay. And now, Washington's policymakers are on the verge of implementing a military attack that will, in effect, terrorize large numbers of Iraqi people.
Pentagon war plans, dubbed "Shock and Awe," call for sending many hundreds of missiles into Baghdad during the first day. Numerous articles in the daily British press have been decrying these plans. In contrast, with few exceptions, mainstream U.S. journalists have been shamefully restrained.
The people in control of U.S. foreign policy are now determined to treat 9/11 as a license -- their license -- to kill. Although even the most fanciful statements from the Bush administration have not claimed that the Iraqi regime had anything to do with the events of Sept. 11, the murderous actions on that day are being cited to justify a military attack on Iraq sure to take thousands of civilian lives.
When the sludge of propaganda is afflicting the body politic of our country, news outlets have a crucial role to perform. Media can function as a circulatory system for the nation; the free flow of information and debate is the lifeblood of a democracy. But right now, the USA's media arteries are clogged.
If seeing a "Terror Alert: High" sign on your TV screen makes you feel edgy, imagine what it's like to be living in Baghdad or Basra. For people in the United States, the odds that terrorism will strike close to home are very small compared to the chances that any particular Iraqi family will be decimated before summer.
We desperately need a full national debate on whether we as a society ought to condemn terrorism -- across the board -- no matter who is doing the terrorizing. Clearly, politicians will be the last to initiate such a nationwide discussion. And, sad to say, few journalists show much inclination to ruffle the feathers of the hawkish gang that rules the roost in Washington. So, let's stop waiting for others to rise to the occasion. If we want to get an authentic debate going, we'll need to do it ourselves.
Playing the "Terrorism" Card
By Norman Solomon
These days, it's a crucial ace up Uncle Sam's sleeve. "Terrorism" is George W. Bush's magic card.
For 17 months now, the word has worked like a political charm for the Bush administration. Ever since the terrible crime against humanity known as 9/11, the White House has exploited the specter of terrorism to move the GOP's doctrinaire agenda. Boosting the military budget, cutting social programs and shredding civil liberties are well underway.
Like the overwhelming majority of politicians on Capitol Hill, most journalists in Washington are too timid to do anything other than quibble about fine-tuning and get out of the way of rampaging elephants.
The word "terror" has become a linguistic staple in news media. For keeping the fearful pot stirred, it's better than the longer word "terrorism," which refers to an occasional event. The shortened word has an ongoing ring to it. At the end of February's first week, when Attorney General John Ashcroft announced an official hike in the warning code, the cable networks lost no time plastering "Terror Alert: High" signs on TV screens. [no way... jhesos...]
Days later, the administration literally couldn't wait to tell the world about a new audiotape from Osama bin Laden. The eagerness of Colin Powell knew no bounds. He was spinning about the tape at a congressional appearance even before a single moment of the audio had premiered on the Arabic-language Al Jazeera network.
The next day, a White House spokesman did what he could to bolster the thin wisps of supposed links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. "If that is not an unholy partnership, I have not heard of one," said Ari Fleischer, who trumpeted "the linking up of Iraq with Al Qaeda." It was, he said, "the nightmare that people have warned about."
Actually, it was a dream that the Bush team has been yearning for -- some semblance of a public embrace involving Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.
You wouldn't know it from the dominant media coverage, but the embrace was not only distinctly one-sided -- it was also riddled with caveats and barbs. In his statement, Bin Laden made clear that he has never stopped viewing Hussein as an infidel. And the Iraqi dictator has continued to keep his distance from longtime foe Bin Laden.
In the propaganda end game prior to an all-out attack on Iraq, the Bush crew is playing a favorite card; as a word, terrorism can easily frighten the public and keep competing politicians at bay. And now, Washington's policymakers are on the verge of implementing a military attack that will, in effect, terrorize large numbers of Iraqi people.
Pentagon war plans, dubbed "Shock and Awe," call for sending many hundreds of missiles into Baghdad during the first day. Numerous articles in the daily British press have been decrying these plans. In contrast, with few exceptions, mainstream U.S. journalists have been shamefully restrained.
The people in control of U.S. foreign policy are now determined to treat 9/11 as a license -- their license -- to kill. Although even the most fanciful statements from the Bush administration have not claimed that the Iraqi regime had anything to do with the events of Sept. 11, the murderous actions on that day are being cited to justify a military attack on Iraq sure to take thousands of civilian lives.
When the sludge of propaganda is afflicting the body politic of our country, news outlets have a crucial role to perform. Media can function as a circulatory system for the nation; the free flow of information and debate is the lifeblood of a democracy. But right now, the USA's media arteries are clogged.
If seeing a "Terror Alert: High" sign on your TV screen makes you feel edgy, imagine what it's like to be living in Baghdad or Basra. For people in the United States, the odds that terrorism will strike close to home are very small compared to the chances that any particular Iraqi family will be decimated before summer.
We desperately need a full national debate on whether we as a society ought to condemn terrorism -- across the board -- no matter who is doing the terrorizing. Clearly, politicians will be the last to initiate such a nationwide discussion. And, sad to say, few journalists show much inclination to ruffle the feathers of the hawkish gang that rules the roost in Washington. So, let's stop waiting for others to rise to the occasion. If we want to get an authentic debate going, we'll need to do it ourselves.
Dual power has come to Bolivia most suddenly: not, as expected, in the form of a coordinated uprising of coca growers, highland Aymara peasants, and Quechua speaking peasants under the direction of Evo Morales, Felipe Quispe, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the People; instead, high school students and the working class of La Paz and its satellite city, El Alto, rose up spontaneously in the largest urban insurrection since the National Revolution of 1952.
[...]
As in the National Revolution of 1952, the police are part of the popular revolt, though it is anyone's guess as to how long the unity will last. What detonated the uprising-which has since spread to Cochabamba, Santa Cruz, and could easily reach Sucre-was the violence that the Military Police unleashed against the police's Special Group, which had marched peacefully on the Presidential Palace to protest proposed tax measures that threaten to further reduce their meager $105/month salaries. By the end of the Wednesday, February 12, there were more than 100 injured, and the death toll was 18, with 13 in La Paz and 5 in El Alto, including a young girl. To put this figure in regional perspective, since Bolivia has just over 8 million inhabitants, a proportionate number of dead in Colombia would be roughly 95 and in Venezuela, 60. To situate it in national historical context, the most violent contemporary administration was that of former IBM executive Jorge Quiroga (2000-2001), which killed roughly forty people in less than a year. In six months the Sánchez de Lozada administration is already responsible for 44 civilian deaths.
[...]
As in the National Revolution of 1952, the police are part of the popular revolt, though it is anyone's guess as to how long the unity will last. What detonated the uprising-which has since spread to Cochabamba, Santa Cruz, and could easily reach Sucre-was the violence that the Military Police unleashed against the police's Special Group, which had marched peacefully on the Presidential Palace to protest proposed tax measures that threaten to further reduce their meager $105/month salaries. By the end of the Wednesday, February 12, there were more than 100 injured, and the death toll was 18, with 13 in La Paz and 5 in El Alto, including a young girl. To put this figure in regional perspective, since Bolivia has just over 8 million inhabitants, a proportionate number of dead in Colombia would be roughly 95 and in Venezuela, 60. To situate it in national historical context, the most violent contemporary administration was that of former IBM executive Jorge Quiroga (2000-2001), which killed roughly forty people in less than a year. In six months the Sánchez de Lozada administration is already responsible for 44 civilian deaths.
12.2.03
Amusing little piece, Noraid, btw, is the fundraising wing of the IRA in North America, solicits donations from idiot americans who think they're irish (much like me when i think i might get a free drink out of it... worth pointing out that 120m people worldwide claim irish ancestry although the population of ireland has never exceeded 8m). as liddle says, "There is terrorism directed against the US and terrorism directed elsewhere, you see. " or indeed commited by the US he might have added...
We're their allies - so why aren't they ours?
Rod Liddle
Wednesday February 12, 2003
The Guardian
What a divine pleasure it was to hear the Republican senator Pete King eviscerating the hapless French on our radios yesterday morning. It was a perfect way to begin the day: basking in the happiness of not being French, of not being, as Bart Simpson has it, a "cheese-eating surrender monkey".
The French are, according to Pete, an irrelevance - and useless, to boot. "They don't even have a working aircraft carrier," he kept repeating, between diatribes about France's heroic and longstanding commitment to the principle of capitulation. Garlic-swathed beignet-stuffed sexually dysfunctional trash-pop Petainist belching Gauloise-smoking hypocritical papist bastard haw-hee-haw Johnny bloody Halliday up-yours-Delors coward monkeys, the lot of them. From Biarritz to Lille. Via the town of Vichy. And apart from Emmanuelle Béart, of course.
For people like me, who enjoy a bit of spite and vituperation first thing, just to get the juices flowing, it was magnificent stuff. And there - curiously unspoken - in the background was the knowledge that Pete and other similarly enraged US politicians couldn't say the same thing about us, could they? We're right behind them, the Yanks, and this will ensure us a sliver of love from our transatlantic cousins, if only by the process of disassociation. And this matters, being loved by the US.
And then, rather disconcertingly, it suddenly occurred to me that this was the same Pete King who has spent the past 15 years similarly eviscerating the British, or the "Bruddush", for "centuries of oppression" inflicted upon the Irish people. Pete could always be relied upon to say a few words in support of Martin Galvin's evil Noraid organisation, or to wade into some delicate and confusing conundrum of Northern Ireland politics with his size 12 cowboy boots, ready to give succour to the IRA for the sake of securing a few more votes from his Irish and faux-Irish constituents. He always did so with a mixture of brio and crass ignorance. It is the same Pete King, isn't it?
Of course it is. And many of you may well agree with him about Northern Ireland. But my point is more straightforward. We should not delude ourselves that we get anything from standing four-square beside George W Bush, or any other American president, for that matter. They think we're an irrelevance too, and useless, and antiquated and decadent. And what's more, no matter how loyal we strive to be, they would not so much as bother to cross the road to piss on us were we suddenly to catch fire. This has been the signal lesson of the past 20 years of international politics.
Beginning, of course, with the Falklands "dispute". As the then defence secretary, John Nott, made clear in his strange autobiography, the Americans were a big problem. At least half of the US administration - a section led by the perfidious Jean Kirkpatrick - was vocally supportive of the Argentinian cause and attempted to thwart our attempts to regain the islands by force. Why? Because siding with us disturbed their various, disgusting, machinations in Latin America (please don't believe the US opposition was motivated by moral disgust at the prospect of bloodshed).
Incidentally, who were our real allies then, according to Nott? The cowardly French, who provided us, sotto voce, with invaluable intelligence on the Super Etendard fighter aircraft.
A year later the US invaded (ineptly, of course) the British sovereign territory of Grenada without so much as a by-your-leave or bud, do you mind if we sort this problem out? On this occasion, according to Denis Healey, what irked our prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, most "was not so much the overthrow of the (Grenadian) dictatorship ... as the fact that he (President Reagan) deliberately and successfully deceived her on his intentions, though he had often told her she was his personal friend and closest ally. Moreover, he did so as part of a conspiracy with certain commonwealth governments in the Caribbean, which also kept Mrs Thatcher in the dark." Plus ça change, huh.
More recently, within weeks of September 11 2001, the US failed, astonishingly, to outlaw Noraid, despite having proscribed and seized the assets of every other terrorist fundraising organisation in the known universe. There is terrorism directed against the US and terrorism directed elsewhere, you see.
And a little later, as Britain incurred a good deal of wrath for sticking its head above the parapet to support, unequivocally, financially and with our own servicemen, America's War Against Terror and immediate adventure in Afghanistan, the US whacked illegal tariffs on our steel exports, desperately injuring a beleaguered British industry.
Of course, the two issues are not remotely related, as US trade representatives, blank-faced and unrepentant, frequently pointed out. And it may well be that the US was "right" in all of the above little contretemps with Britain. But my point is more simple - and I suppose, fairly crass: that in every case where Britain may have expected, or even just desired, a degree of loyalty from our "closest allies", that loyalty has not been remotely forthcoming. It was last forthcoming, in fact, in about 1942.
None of this should deflect Tony Blair from supporting the US in a war against Iraq if he believes it is morally the right course of action and, further, that it is in our best interests. He may well think both of these things. But increasingly the debate is being seen as a question of where we stand; are we part of Europe or do we append our allegiance to the US? And, further, what do we gain as a result?
The French are perpetually accused of pursuing a selfish foreign policy and it is a charge which is hard to deny. But it is rather less selfish and small-minded than that pursued by the US, a country for which the concept "ally" works only, it would appear, in one direction.
We're their allies - so why aren't they ours?
Rod Liddle
Wednesday February 12, 2003
The Guardian
What a divine pleasure it was to hear the Republican senator Pete King eviscerating the hapless French on our radios yesterday morning. It was a perfect way to begin the day: basking in the happiness of not being French, of not being, as Bart Simpson has it, a "cheese-eating surrender monkey".
The French are, according to Pete, an irrelevance - and useless, to boot. "They don't even have a working aircraft carrier," he kept repeating, between diatribes about France's heroic and longstanding commitment to the principle of capitulation. Garlic-swathed beignet-stuffed sexually dysfunctional trash-pop Petainist belching Gauloise-smoking hypocritical papist bastard haw-hee-haw Johnny bloody Halliday up-yours-Delors coward monkeys, the lot of them. From Biarritz to Lille. Via the town of Vichy. And apart from Emmanuelle Béart, of course.
For people like me, who enjoy a bit of spite and vituperation first thing, just to get the juices flowing, it was magnificent stuff. And there - curiously unspoken - in the background was the knowledge that Pete and other similarly enraged US politicians couldn't say the same thing about us, could they? We're right behind them, the Yanks, and this will ensure us a sliver of love from our transatlantic cousins, if only by the process of disassociation. And this matters, being loved by the US.
And then, rather disconcertingly, it suddenly occurred to me that this was the same Pete King who has spent the past 15 years similarly eviscerating the British, or the "Bruddush", for "centuries of oppression" inflicted upon the Irish people. Pete could always be relied upon to say a few words in support of Martin Galvin's evil Noraid organisation, or to wade into some delicate and confusing conundrum of Northern Ireland politics with his size 12 cowboy boots, ready to give succour to the IRA for the sake of securing a few more votes from his Irish and faux-Irish constituents. He always did so with a mixture of brio and crass ignorance. It is the same Pete King, isn't it?
Of course it is. And many of you may well agree with him about Northern Ireland. But my point is more straightforward. We should not delude ourselves that we get anything from standing four-square beside George W Bush, or any other American president, for that matter. They think we're an irrelevance too, and useless, and antiquated and decadent. And what's more, no matter how loyal we strive to be, they would not so much as bother to cross the road to piss on us were we suddenly to catch fire. This has been the signal lesson of the past 20 years of international politics.
Beginning, of course, with the Falklands "dispute". As the then defence secretary, John Nott, made clear in his strange autobiography, the Americans were a big problem. At least half of the US administration - a section led by the perfidious Jean Kirkpatrick - was vocally supportive of the Argentinian cause and attempted to thwart our attempts to regain the islands by force. Why? Because siding with us disturbed their various, disgusting, machinations in Latin America (please don't believe the US opposition was motivated by moral disgust at the prospect of bloodshed).
Incidentally, who were our real allies then, according to Nott? The cowardly French, who provided us, sotto voce, with invaluable intelligence on the Super Etendard fighter aircraft.
A year later the US invaded (ineptly, of course) the British sovereign territory of Grenada without so much as a by-your-leave or bud, do you mind if we sort this problem out? On this occasion, according to Denis Healey, what irked our prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, most "was not so much the overthrow of the (Grenadian) dictatorship ... as the fact that he (President Reagan) deliberately and successfully deceived her on his intentions, though he had often told her she was his personal friend and closest ally. Moreover, he did so as part of a conspiracy with certain commonwealth governments in the Caribbean, which also kept Mrs Thatcher in the dark." Plus ça change, huh.
More recently, within weeks of September 11 2001, the US failed, astonishingly, to outlaw Noraid, despite having proscribed and seized the assets of every other terrorist fundraising organisation in the known universe. There is terrorism directed against the US and terrorism directed elsewhere, you see.
And a little later, as Britain incurred a good deal of wrath for sticking its head above the parapet to support, unequivocally, financially and with our own servicemen, America's War Against Terror and immediate adventure in Afghanistan, the US whacked illegal tariffs on our steel exports, desperately injuring a beleaguered British industry.
Of course, the two issues are not remotely related, as US trade representatives, blank-faced and unrepentant, frequently pointed out. And it may well be that the US was "right" in all of the above little contretemps with Britain. But my point is more simple - and I suppose, fairly crass: that in every case where Britain may have expected, or even just desired, a degree of loyalty from our "closest allies", that loyalty has not been remotely forthcoming. It was last forthcoming, in fact, in about 1942.
None of this should deflect Tony Blair from supporting the US in a war against Iraq if he believes it is morally the right course of action and, further, that it is in our best interests. He may well think both of these things. But increasingly the debate is being seen as a question of where we stand; are we part of Europe or do we append our allegiance to the US? And, further, what do we gain as a result?
The French are perpetually accused of pursuing a selfish foreign policy and it is a charge which is hard to deny. But it is rather less selfish and small-minded than that pursued by the US, a country for which the concept "ally" works only, it would appear, in one direction.
8.2.03
In Continental Philosophy Since 1750: The Rise and Fall of the Self, Robert Solomon argues that German idealism represents a premature, presumptuous and ultimately inhumane attempt to identify necessary and universal -- i.e. transcendental -- conditions of human existence. The tradition of 19th-century idealism is characterized by what Solomon calls "the transcendental pretense," which, he suggests, "is a political weapon of enormous power" (p. 6).
Evolutionary psychology: "fashionable ideology" or "new foundation"?
human nature- was reading Fromm essay re: Marx vs Freud- human behaviour conditioned by social environment or social environment reflection of inherent cognitive structures-
Steven Rose seems to accept the basic premise of evolutionary psychology. He writes: "The declared aim of evolutionary psychology is to provide explanations for the patterns of human activity and the forms of organisation of human society which take into account the fact that humans are animals and, like all other currently living organisms, are the present-day products of some four billion years of evolution. So far so good."13 Rose continues: "Because humans are as subject as any other organism to evolutionary processes, we should therefore expect to find such adaptations among our own kind just as much as amongst the others that we study. Individual aspects of being human -- from our body shape to our eyes and capacity for binocular vision -- are clearly evolved features and fit us to the environment in which we live."14
However, the Roses object to using this adaptationist approach to illuminate the psychological mechanisms that underpin human social behaviour. This is because, the Roses claim, not enough is known about the conditions under which our ancestors evolved to make claims about the problems that they faced, or to test whether or not particular features of human psychology are adaptations. The Roses also claim that the period of pre-history that evolutionary psychologists focus upon -- the Pleistocene or 'Stone Age' -- is the wrong one because there has been sufficient time since the end of the Pleistocene for significant evolutionary change in the design of the human mind. In addition, the Roses argue that evolutionary psychology's claims about universal features of human social psychology are contradicted by cultural and historical variability, and neglect the role of emotion in human mental life. Finally, the Roses use Daly and Wilson's research on step-parents to exemplify what they see as the empirical short-comings of evolutionary psychology. This review will look at each of these 'arguments against evolutionary psychology' in turn.
[...]
The Roses' third argument against evolutionary psychology is that cultural and historical variability in cultural forms refutes the claim that humans share a universal, species-typical psychology. Referring to historically-recent changes in female mate-preferences, levels of violence, and fecundity in various hunter-gatherer populations, Steven Rose remarks "Each of these societies has undergone rapid economic, technological and social change in the last decade. What has happened to the evolutionary psychology predictions? Why have these assumed human universals suddenly failed to operate?"26
but what's this?
Nevertheless, mud sticks, and so in the short term the Roses will no doubt succeed in misleading the public and the media about evolutionary psychology. But, fortunately, the Roses have had little effect on the current research programme of evolutionary psychology, and in the long term seem destined to have no effect whatsoever.56 Darwin's theory of evolution has revolutionised our understanding of the natural world. And by placing psychology on "a new foundation", Darwin's theory is set to revolutionise our understanding of ourselves, and of our place in that world. Despite their best efforts, the Roses will not be able to delay this revolution.
cock.
human nature- was reading Fromm essay re: Marx vs Freud- human behaviour conditioned by social environment or social environment reflection of inherent cognitive structures-
Steven Rose seems to accept the basic premise of evolutionary psychology. He writes: "The declared aim of evolutionary psychology is to provide explanations for the patterns of human activity and the forms of organisation of human society which take into account the fact that humans are animals and, like all other currently living organisms, are the present-day products of some four billion years of evolution. So far so good."13 Rose continues: "Because humans are as subject as any other organism to evolutionary processes, we should therefore expect to find such adaptations among our own kind just as much as amongst the others that we study. Individual aspects of being human -- from our body shape to our eyes and capacity for binocular vision -- are clearly evolved features and fit us to the environment in which we live."14
However, the Roses object to using this adaptationist approach to illuminate the psychological mechanisms that underpin human social behaviour. This is because, the Roses claim, not enough is known about the conditions under which our ancestors evolved to make claims about the problems that they faced, or to test whether or not particular features of human psychology are adaptations. The Roses also claim that the period of pre-history that evolutionary psychologists focus upon -- the Pleistocene or 'Stone Age' -- is the wrong one because there has been sufficient time since the end of the Pleistocene for significant evolutionary change in the design of the human mind. In addition, the Roses argue that evolutionary psychology's claims about universal features of human social psychology are contradicted by cultural and historical variability, and neglect the role of emotion in human mental life. Finally, the Roses use Daly and Wilson's research on step-parents to exemplify what they see as the empirical short-comings of evolutionary psychology. This review will look at each of these 'arguments against evolutionary psychology' in turn.
[...]
The Roses' third argument against evolutionary psychology is that cultural and historical variability in cultural forms refutes the claim that humans share a universal, species-typical psychology. Referring to historically-recent changes in female mate-preferences, levels of violence, and fecundity in various hunter-gatherer populations, Steven Rose remarks "Each of these societies has undergone rapid economic, technological and social change in the last decade. What has happened to the evolutionary psychology predictions? Why have these assumed human universals suddenly failed to operate?"26
but what's this?
Nevertheless, mud sticks, and so in the short term the Roses will no doubt succeed in misleading the public and the media about evolutionary psychology. But, fortunately, the Roses have had little effect on the current research programme of evolutionary psychology, and in the long term seem destined to have no effect whatsoever.56 Darwin's theory of evolution has revolutionised our understanding of the natural world. And by placing psychology on "a new foundation", Darwin's theory is set to revolutionise our understanding of ourselves, and of our place in that world. Despite their best efforts, the Roses will not be able to delay this revolution.
cock.
7.2.03
Action Plan
... for something that isn't supposed to be for USE at all. Listening to Hoon though, the UK might hafta pay for a warhead reload.
This is why the schools are crap, the hospitals dirty, the tube fare 20% of a zone 4 resident's income and cigarettes more expensive than caviar. Either that, or someone is getting too much... (ie. both really... - the people labour in order to secure capital they don't own => slavery)
Dirty, dirty...
On this day, 7th Feb. 1987: S Korea clashes over student death
South Korean police have made hundreds of arrests in the country's biggest demonstrations for six years.
Rallies went ahead across the country to commemorate the recent death in custody of student Park Chong-choi, in spite of yesterday's warnings by President Chun Doo Hwan.
Mr Park, 21, a linguistics student at Seoul National University suffocated during police interrogation for alleged pro-communist activities on 14 January.
The ruling Democratic Justice Party claimed dissidents were using the memorial services as an excuse for violent and illegal political rallies.
Organisers of the demonstrations - including church, labour and student groups as well as the political opposition - claimed they just wanted to honour Mr Park.
The government had ordered the country's 120,000 police to tighten security in readiness for the memorials.
Police arrested 2,400 suspects and placed a dozen leading dissidents under house arrest last night.
In response to the police mobilisation a spokesman from the main opposition party, the New Korea Democratic Party, said: "Our anger at the present regime has reached a point no longer bearable."
Up to 30,000 riot police lined up to face as many as 20,000 demonstrators in the streets of the capital, Seoul, in three hours of confrontations.
Police were trying to prevent the crowds from reaching the main memorial mass at the Catholic Myongdong Cathedral.
Smaller demonstrations took place in 17 provincial cities including Pusan, Kwangju and Taegu.
No major incidents were reported but there were sporadic outbreaks of violence as protestors threw petrol bombs and stones at the police, who responded with tear gas.
Official sources said 34 police were injured and they made 799 arrests nationwide - 740 people were detained for further questioning.
There were no figures available about how many civilians were injured.
On this day, 7th Feb. 1987: S Korea clashes over student death
South Korean police have made hundreds of arrests in the country's biggest demonstrations for six years.
Rallies went ahead across the country to commemorate the recent death in custody of student Park Chong-choi, in spite of yesterday's warnings by President Chun Doo Hwan.
Mr Park, 21, a linguistics student at Seoul National University suffocated during police interrogation for alleged pro-communist activities on 14 January.
The ruling Democratic Justice Party claimed dissidents were using the memorial services as an excuse for violent and illegal political rallies.
Organisers of the demonstrations - including church, labour and student groups as well as the political opposition - claimed they just wanted to honour Mr Park.
The government had ordered the country's 120,000 police to tighten security in readiness for the memorials.
Police arrested 2,400 suspects and placed a dozen leading dissidents under house arrest last night.
In response to the police mobilisation a spokesman from the main opposition party, the New Korea Democratic Party, said: "Our anger at the present regime has reached a point no longer bearable."
Up to 30,000 riot police lined up to face as many as 20,000 demonstrators in the streets of the capital, Seoul, in three hours of confrontations.
Police were trying to prevent the crowds from reaching the main memorial mass at the Catholic Myongdong Cathedral.
Smaller demonstrations took place in 17 provincial cities including Pusan, Kwangju and Taegu.
No major incidents were reported but there were sporadic outbreaks of violence as protestors threw petrol bombs and stones at the police, who responded with tear gas.
Official sources said 34 police were injured and they made 799 arrests nationwide - 740 people were detained for further questioning.
There were no figures available about how many civilians were injured.
A New Orleans lawyer sought an FHA loan for a client. He was told the loan would be granted if he could prove satisfactory title to a parcel of property being offered as collateral. The title to the property dated back to 1803, which took the lawyer three months to track down.
After sending the information to the FHA, he received the following reply (actual letter):
"Upon review of your letter adjoining your client's loan application, we note that the request is supported by an Abstract of Title. While we compliment the able manner in which you have prepared and presented the application, we must point out that you have only cleared title to the proposed collateral proper back to 1803. Before final approval can be accorded, it will be necessary to clear the title back to its origin."
Annoyed, the lawyer responded as follows (actual letter):
"Your letter regarding title in Case No. 189156 has been received. I note that you wish to have title extended further than the 194 years covered by the present application. I was unaware that any educated person in this country, particularly those working in the property area, would not know that Louisiana was purchased by the U.S. from France in 1803, the year of origin identified in our application. For the edification of uninformed FHA bureaucrats, the title to the land prior to U.S. ownership was obtained from France, which had acquired it by Right of Conquest from Spain. The land came into possession of Spain by Right of Discovery made in the year 1492 by a sea captain named Christopher Columbus, who had been granted the privilege of seeking a new route to India by the then reigning monarch, Isabella. The good queen, being a pious woman and careful about titles, almost as much as the FHA, took the precaution of securing the blessing of the Pope before she sold her jewels to fund Columbus' expedition.
Now the Pope, as I'm sure you know, is the emissary of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And God, it is commonly accepted, created this world. Therefore, I believe it is safe to presume that He also made that part of the world called Louisiana. He, therefore, would be the owner of origin. I hope to hell you find His original claim to be satisfactory. Now, may we have our damn loan?"
They got it.
After sending the information to the FHA, he received the following reply (actual letter):
"Upon review of your letter adjoining your client's loan application, we note that the request is supported by an Abstract of Title. While we compliment the able manner in which you have prepared and presented the application, we must point out that you have only cleared title to the proposed collateral proper back to 1803. Before final approval can be accorded, it will be necessary to clear the title back to its origin."
Annoyed, the lawyer responded as follows (actual letter):
"Your letter regarding title in Case No. 189156 has been received. I note that you wish to have title extended further than the 194 years covered by the present application. I was unaware that any educated person in this country, particularly those working in the property area, would not know that Louisiana was purchased by the U.S. from France in 1803, the year of origin identified in our application. For the edification of uninformed FHA bureaucrats, the title to the land prior to U.S. ownership was obtained from France, which had acquired it by Right of Conquest from Spain. The land came into possession of Spain by Right of Discovery made in the year 1492 by a sea captain named Christopher Columbus, who had been granted the privilege of seeking a new route to India by the then reigning monarch, Isabella. The good queen, being a pious woman and careful about titles, almost as much as the FHA, took the precaution of securing the blessing of the Pope before she sold her jewels to fund Columbus' expedition.
Now the Pope, as I'm sure you know, is the emissary of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And God, it is commonly accepted, created this world. Therefore, I believe it is safe to presume that He also made that part of the world called Louisiana. He, therefore, would be the owner of origin. I hope to hell you find His original claim to be satisfactory. Now, may we have our damn loan?"
They got it.
Everywhere you look, money isn't enough... probably a fraction of the defense budget would suffice to resolve this issue...
Limited pay offer to teachers 'demoralising'
Rebecca Smithers, education correspondent
Friday February 7, 2003
The Guardian
Hundreds of thousands of teachers in England and Wales will learn today that they will receive an inflation-only pay rise of 2.9%, in a move criticised by one union leader yesterday as likely to further demoralise the profession. More
Limited pay offer to teachers 'demoralising'
Rebecca Smithers, education correspondent
Friday February 7, 2003
The Guardian
Hundreds of thousands of teachers in England and Wales will learn today that they will receive an inflation-only pay rise of 2.9%, in a move criticised by one union leader yesterday as likely to further demoralise the profession. More
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)