search for wmd shifts - or rather, new approach to casus belli taken.

* the u.s. is broadening its language to provide a rationale for iraq invasion. this take reflects the increasing desparation with which the u.s. is acting to that end. the new word is: intention. the hunt for wmd will now also include whether saddam "intended" to construct wmd. charles duelfer, appointed to replace david kay, said before a senate committee:

"What we want is a comprehensive picture not just simply answering questions - were there weapons, were there not weapons [...] We're looking at it from soup to nuts - from the weapons end to the planning end and to the intentions end."

* meanwhile,

"A Democratic senator has accused CIA Director George Tenet of making false statements regarding Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction."

* and,

"US Secretary of State Colin Powell now says it is an "open question" as to whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction."

* whilst blix, as ever, maintains that they were all destroyed in 1991 anyway. which is probably the assumption that is most likely to be correct.

interesting situationist-inspired group called glowlab. this post illuminates certain aspects of the web from the public sphere angle. applying debord's notion of "drifting" to the internet, this provides for a critique of the click-through structure in order to control exposure (msn - "where do you want go today?"):

"Guy Debord, describing the situationist practice of the dérive (“drifting”), calls it "a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances."

He goes on to say "Dérives involve playful-constructive behavior and awareness of psychogeographical effects, and are thus quite different from the classic notions of journey or stroll. In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their relations, their work and leisure activities, and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there.""

glowlab also seems to organize a psychogeographical forum. maybe debord's description of late industrial society is becoming more applicable these days.

after a hard days raging against imperial and material evil chommers, liked nothing better than to relax with pop idol

From Empire Notes, a new zmag blog;

"The 15-nation Caribbean Community does not intend to recognize the U.S.-created government in Haiti. A few weeks earlier, the 53-nation African Union called the removal of Aristide "unconstitutional." So there's at least 68 countries that agree -- unfortunate that the great proponents of "democracy" have no time for global democracy."

yet again the US vetoes a SC resolution opposing to terror in the form of the imperial vote of john "smoke me a sadinista baby, i'll back for breakfast" negroponte (actual quote... so...);

"The Algerian draft condemned "the most recent extrajudicial execution committed by Israel" and "all attacks against any civilians as well as all acts of violence and destruction".

[....]

"Washington, alone among major powers in not condemning Monday's assassination as an extrajudicial killing, rejected the resolution because it did not also denounce Hamas for bombings in Israel. The vote was 11 in favour, three abstentions, and the US veto that killed the measure."

negroponte said, "This Security Council does nothing to contribute to a peaceful settlement when it condemns one party's actions and turns a blind eye to everything else occurring in the region."

here (from a campaign website pointing out the sort of person who was, at that time, being proposed to be US ambassador to the UN) is what he did "to contribute to a peaceful settlement" in honduras when he was viceroy...

"The New York Times credits John Negroponte with "carrying out the covert strategy of the Reagan administration to crush the Sandinista government in Nicaragua" during his tenure as U.S. Ambassador to Honduras from 1981 and 1985. He oversaw the growth of military aid to Honduras from $4 million to $77.4 million a year. In early 1984, two U.S. mercenaries, Thomas Posey and Dana Parker, contacted Negroponte, stating they wanted to supply arms to the Contra army after the U.S. Congress had banned governmental add. Documents show that Negroponte connected the two with a contact in the Honduran military. The operation was exposed nine months later, at which point the Reagan administration denied any U.S. government involvement, despite Negroponte’s contact earlier that year. Other documents uncovered a scheme of Negroponte and then-Vice President George Bush to funnel Contra aid money through the Honduran government.

In addition to his work with the Nicaraguan Contra army, Negroponte helped conceal from Congress the murder, kidnapping and torture abuses of a CIA-equipped and -trained Honduran military unit, Battalion 3-16. No mention of these human rights violations ever appeared in State Department Human Rights reports for Honduras. The Baltimore Sun reports that Efrain Diaz Arrivillaga, then a delegate in the Honduran Congress and a voice of dissent, told the Sun that he complained to Negroponte on numerous occasions about the Honduran military’s human rights abuses. Rick Chidester, a junior embassy official under Negroponte, reported to the Sun that he was forced to omit an exhaustive gathering of human rights violations from his 1982 State Department report. Sister Laetitia Bordes went on a fact-finding delegation to Honduras in May 1982 to investigate the whereabouts of 32 Salvadoran nuns and women of faith who fled to Honduras in 1981 after Archbishop Oscar Romero’s assassination. Negroponte claimed the embassy knew nothing, but in 1996, Negroponte’s predecessor Jack Binns reported that the women had been captured, tortured, and then crammed into helicopters from which they were tossed to their deaths.

According to the Los Angeles Times, shortly after Negroponte’s nomination was decided, the U.S. government revoked the visa of General Luis Alonso Discua Elvir, who was Honduras’ deputy ambassador to the UN. General Discua was the commander of the Battalion during Negroponte’s tenure as ambassador. He has publicly claimed to have information linking Negroponte with the battalion’s activities. His testimony would be invaluable in illuminating Negroponte’s collusion with Honduran opponents on Capitol Hill. In 1994, the Honduran Human Rights Commission charged Negroponte personally with several human rights abuses.

On August 27, 1997, CIA Inspector General Frederick P. Hitz released a 211-page classified report entitled "Selected Issues Relating to CIA Activities in Honduras in the 1980s." This report was partly declassified on October 22, 1998, in response to persistent demands by the Honduran human rights ombudsman. You can read parts of the document on the National Security Archives website. Only senators and their staff who have security clearance can read the report in its entirety. It is absolutely critical that every senator read and consider the entire report before approving Negroponte’s nomination. Negroponte is highly respected in diplomatic circles as "a man who speaks five languages but knows when to keep silent." Due to his urbane temperament and broad support in the professional diplomatic field, it will be very tempting for senators to whisk his nomination through."

an excellent counterpunch piece on negoponte

also while researching this came across this interesting section on the NSA website about the president's daily briefing

qadhafi - what an oddball, clicking around his persona can be quite amusing

* from "social philosophy of russian anarchism (kropotkin) and of muammar al qadhafi: an essay in comparison", by said gafourov, who appears to be acting head of department of state property in insurance, export and financial organizations, russian ministry of state property (crazy world...):

"In the last quarter of the twentieth century Libya has been in the focus of world attention. Unorthodox foreign and domestic policies, her challenge to the developed countries together with a strategic geographic position and great mineral (mainly oil) resources, attract special interest in comparison with other countries of the Third World."

the "special interests" take us to recent events:


* blair's visit - oil and weapons (shell and british aerospace). the guardian reports:

"The prime minister and the Libyan leader met in an elaborate Bedouin tent on farmland near the Libyan capital, Tripoli, for historic talks. There appeared to be a little tension, but Mr Blair smiled as he shook hands with a man the former US president Ronald Reagan once described as a "mad dog".

[...]

Col Gadafy first spoke in Arabic before switching to English to say: "You did a lot of fighting on this issue and seem exhausted."

Mr Blair replied: "There's been a lot to do."

Col Gadafy, again speaking in English, said: "You look good, you are still young."

paternal qadhafi, hehe...


* http://www.qadhafi.org: world thinker. this guy still plays the pan-arabic "socialist" story. guess now all this stuff will have to be amended ;-).

and then there's qadhafi on how to tell a woman:

"A woman is tender. A woman is pretty. A woman weeps easily. A woman is easily frightened.

According to a gynaecologist, woman menstruates or suffers feebleness every month, while man, being a male, does not menstruate and he is not subject to the monthly period which is a bleeding."

The Green Book, Muammar Gadafy's revolutionary thought, 1976

imperialistic?

"We don't seek empires. We're not imperialistic. We never have been. I can't imagine why you'd even ask the question."

rumsfeld to an al-jazeera reporter, when questioned about imperialist ambitions.

u.s. military presence world-wide:

Afghanistan Albania Algeria Antigua Argentina Azerbaijan Australia Austria
Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belgium Belize Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brazil Bulgaria Burma Burundi
Cambodia Cameroon Canada Chad Chile China Columbia Congo Costa Rica Cote D'lvoire Cuba Cyprus Czech Republic
Denmark Djibouti Dominican Republic
East Timor Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia
Fiji Finland France
Georgia Germany Ghana Greece Guatemala Guinea
Haiti Honduras Hungary
Iceland India Indonesia Iraq Israel Italy
Jamaica Jordan Jamaica Japan
Kazakhstan Kenya Kuwait Kyrgyzstan
Laos Latvia Lebanon Liberia Lithuania Luxembourg
Macedonia Madagascar Malawi Mali Malaysia Malta Mexico Mongolia Morocco Mozambique
Nepal Netherlands New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria North Korea Norway
Oman
Pakistan Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal
Qatar
Romania Russia
Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia and Montenegro Singapore Sierra Leone Slovenia Spain South Africa South Korea Sri Lanka Suriname Syria Sweden Switzerland
Tanzania Thailand Togo Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan
Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom Uruguay
Venezuela Vietnam
Yemen
Zambia Zimbabwe

roughly 75% of the globe. so...

and so does michael albert

multi-author blog on economic vision beyond capitalism - goodbye maggie. looks like this will center around participatory economics.

"Okay, opting for "Goodbye Maggie" as a title won’t appeal to everyone, but it does have its virtues.

First, it refers to Maggie’s Farm, a fictional creation in a Dylan song about the ills of current economic arrangements. In a new economy, none of us will work on Maggie’s Farm.

Second, it refers to Margaret Thatcher, the past British Prime Minister and most recent prominent proponent of the stance that there is no alternative to current economic relations summarized as TINA.

So the point is, this blog is about transcending corporations and markets and all the familiar economic mess that Dylan alludes to and that Maggie Thatcher celebrates as eternal."

noam chomsky blogs

"This blog will include brief comments on diverse topics of concern in our time. They will sometimes come from the ZNet sustainer forum system where Noam interacts through a forum of his own, sometimes from direct submissions, sometimes culled from mail and other outlets -- always from Noam Chomsky."

his comment box all-telling though.

primo levi

have just read 'survival in auschwitz' by primo levi. his account is so gripping - i read it in one sitting.

i would say that this is an essential study of the human mind and personal identity - the dehumanizing conditions of auschwitz acting as a kind of metaphysical probe for this. what does it mean to be human?, he asks. does it mean to kill, practice injustices or suffer from them? or is it hoping for your fellow inmates' death, in order to eat his crust of bread?

can only recommend the most engaging account of life in auschwitz i've ever come across.

phil, found some extracts in .de for you here.

"Man biete einigen Individuen, die ein Sklavendasein führen, eine privilegierte Stellung, gewisse Annehmlichkeiten und die Aussicht zu überleben, man fordere dafür den Verrat an der natürlichen Solidarität mit ihren Kameraden, und einer von ihnen wird sich gewiß dazu bereitfinden. Er wird dem allgemeinen Gesetz nicht mehr unterstehen und unantastbar werden; darum wird er um so gehässiger und gehaßter sein, je mehr Macht er erhält. Bekommt er die Befehlsgewalt über eine Handvoll Unglückseliger und das Verfügungsrecht über deren Leben und Tod, dann wird er grausam und tyrannisch, denn er weiß, daß sonst ein anderer an seine Stelle treten wird, den man für geeigneter ansieht. Ferner wird die ganze Gewalt seines Hasses, die sich den Unterdrückern gegenüber nicht Luft machen konnte, nun unsinnigerweise auf die Unterdrückten niedergehen: Und er wird erst dann genug haben, wenn er die von oben erlittene Unbill auf seine Untergebenen abgewälzt hat."

Why ideas no longer matter

Terry Eagleton in todays guardian

"Richard Nixon's chief of staff once asked a White House aide why he had chosen to highlight certain options rather than others in a presidential briefing paper he had written. "Because I thought it was more in line with the president's philosophy," answered the aide. "The president has no philosophy," replied the chief of staff. It was, of course, said approvingly rather than disparagingly. Having no philosophy was like having no contagious diseases, not like having no conscience..."

read on

the slaughter bench of capital

"In the first five years of New Labour rule there have been over 2,500 deaths at work, with the official figures for the number of deaths rising by 32 per cent in 2001. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has estimated that at least 40 per cent and possibly as many as 70 per cent of these deaths were due to corporate failings. Note that these figures do not include deaths that are widely suspected to be work-related: in the last five years of the 1990s, for example, over 6,000 people – most of whom had been workers in construction and insulation industries – died of mesothelioma, a disease resulting almost exclusively from inhaling asbestos. In addition to deaths at work, in the last fifteen years at least 1,000 members of the public in Britain have died in incidents suggesting corporate failing of some sort (including, for example, 193 at Zeebrugge, 31 in the King’s Cross fire, 35 in the Clapham train crash, 51 in the sinking of the Marchioness, 96 at Hillsborough stadium, 7 in the Southall rail crash, 31 in the Ladbroke Grove rail crash, and 4 in the Hatfield rail crash). Add these figures together and tally them with figures from across the world, including the thousands killed in single ‘accidents’ such as Bhopal in 1984 (in which approximately 6–7,000 people were killed immediately with an estimated 22,000 dying in directly related deaths up to 1999), and it soon becomes clear that history is indeed a slaughter bench, with capital its most active participant."

Mark Neocleous, via radical philosophy

Deleuze and Guattari argue that capitalism is a schizophrenic system

marx plus freud plus french -> post-something? confusion!

passagenwerk



the "passagenwerk" or "arcades project" - what was going to be benjamin's magnum opus, is a huge collection of writings on 19th century life in paris, in particular, the outdoor "arcades" which were so typical of parisian street life at the time. this project, with the potential to have become a major work in 20th century cultural criticism, was never finished (benjamin committed suicide in the pyrenees running from the ss). it has been edited in various forms since then.

it seems that the frankfurt school, having already emigrated to new york, funded benjamin for this work. nevertheless horkheimer wasn't overly pleased with the outcomes and ordered adorno to re-write most of the fragments benjamin had sent to the u.s. it should also be pointed out that benjamin's extended stay in paris is held to be a major factor in him not being able to get away from the nazi regime in time. thus, some dark characters have later held adorno and horkheimer responsible for his death.

via junk for code

Tillsammans (Together) (Swe 2000)

"Elisabeth tires of her husband, so she packs her bags, takes her children and goes off to her brother, Goran. The year is 1975. Elisabeth is a fairly ordinary housewife from the suburbs, but Goran is a little different. He lives in a commune and that's where Elisabeth arrives with her children to a chaotic house inhabited with long-haired people who discuss politics, have free sex, grow vegetables and drink lots of red wine. The collision of these two separate worlds sets off a drama that will change all their lives."

i'll get straight to the point:

moodyson taking a thoughroughly disappointing look at a commune in 1975 sweden, when dreaming was apparently just being rendered illicit again. if such melancholy rides are questionable territory per se, this movie is an interesting case of how the contemporary mood of hopelessness finds expression in bourgeois artistic fashion. "looking back at those over-the-top years- weren't we so wild, so naive back then!" of course, we know that this mood of necrophilia (no life before death) is induced by cultural managers. such as this guy. as our swedish sources correctly point out, moodyson is producing visuals for the conservative classes of sweden. his film is therefore a hymn of shallow harmony, in tune with the limited scale of lived emotion our current regressive post-pop-regime allows for.

why was i so displeased?

the characters, which are all quite impressively done, never manage to escape the frigid bourgeois behavioural frame. this reduces the most recent crack at the people making history (cf zinn) to a meaningless language game, with radical discourse being portrayed as a vacuous speech bubble that does not find any manifestation in the daily ongoings of communal life. apart from shaving armpits/not shaving armpits type lifestyle decisions, in terms of liberation, we get two characters discovering their homosexuality. "thanks god we're free honey". both "conversions" are portrayed as being due to seduction. this i find deeply questionable.

in terms of heterosexual liberation, we've got one female who is sleeping with two characters in turns- apparently there aren't enough females but plenty of gay males around. character a, soft-hearted, lovely goran, is deeply in love with this "slag from hell", and has to endure loud noises ("mama! uuuuh!") as she's repeatedly having intercourse with Eric, the commune's "angry communist" (official web page). she then feels compelled to inform goran just how special fucking with eric is. which is of course upsetting to romantic goran. the only possible reading on this seems to be a) it was after all Eve's fault, it must have been that damn apple! b) sea gulls have monogamic relationships, therefore humans should too, otherwise we all end up getting hurt. "poor sweet goran, being denied possessive 'love'!"

and that really is as far as it goes- it's freedom's lot, i'm afraid.

Eric launches a lonely project at liberating one of stockholm's palaces by debating the issue with the palace guard ("don't you think there should be apartments here?"), before leaving the commune to join baader-meinhof. ts ts ts- we all know what they got up to. goran kicks out "eve" in a one-off fit of rage. some other people leave. "get with it- back to reality" sobering disintegration feel. the kids protest the vegetarian regime and it is decided per show of hands that they should be allowed hot dogs. they also secretly play with the toy guns they aren't allowed, as this is apparently so deeply in tune with human nature. a tv is introduced "for the kids". the whole commune ends up in front of it with big pleased smiles on their faces, watching some idiocy-guaranteed tele-tubby type programme. the film's main character, a woman who's fled her alcoholic husband with her kids, returns to his (reformed) arms in the end, big group hug, no drama, no lives changed, film ends on abba's "S.O.S.":

Where are those happy days, they seem so hard to find
I tried to reach for you, but you have closed your mind
Whatever happened to our love
I wish I understood
It used to be so nice, it used to be so good
etc..

Moodyson re: abba: "they came from sweden and wanted to be an international brand. so do i."

phil's quick capsule review: piece of shit

rowson super talented it appears..

below:

us op in haiti



labour MP reaction to clare s revelations

dada wants:

The introduction of progressive unemployment through comprehensive mechanization of every field of activity. Only by unemployment does it become possible for the individual to achieve certainty as to the truth of life and finally become accustomed to experience:


Before going down among you
to pull out your decaying teeth,
your running ears,
your tongues full of sores,

Before breaking your putrid bones,
Before opening your cholera-infested belly
and taking out for use as fertilizer
your too fatted liver,
your ignoble spleen
and your diabetic kidneys,

Before tearing out your ugly sexual organ,
incontinent and slimy,
Before extinguishing
your appetite for beauty,
ecstasy, sugar, philosophy,
mathematical and poetic metaphysical
pepper and cucumbers,

Before disinfecting you with vitriol,
cleansing you and shellacking
you with passion,

Before all that,
We shall take a big antiseptic bath,
And we warn you
We are murderers.


Manifesto signed by Ribemont-Dessaignes and read by seven people at the demonstration at the Grand Palais des Champs Elysees, Paris, 5 February 1920.

"What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler

"The power of enclosing land and owning property was brought into the creation by your ancestors by the sword; which first did murder their fellow creatures, men, and after plunder or steal away their land, and left this land successively to you, their children. And therefore, though you did not kill or thieve, yet you hold that cursed thing in your hand by the power of the sword; and so you justify the wicked deeds of your fathers, and that sin of your fathers shall be visited upon the head of you and your children to the third and fourth generation, and longer too, till your bloody and thieving power be rooted out of the land."

from The Law of Freedom 1652

by Gerrard Winstanley of the diggers, also known as the true levellers

the waxman report (as linked under eclippings on the right) is required reading - at least the exec summary and the (somewhat curt and limp) conclusion. invaluable the research that has been done for us by the 'third party' demonstration of the range of misrepresentation or straight lying by the bushies.

article on zinn below is a fucking travesty. "this is history as straight cynicism" says the reviewer, challenging zinn's approach that rather than "add one or two bricks" to the edifice of history attempts to "dynamite the lot". there's nothing more offensive than the original of course. the conventional interpretation is of course beyond respectable criticism and anything else is, a priori, a polemic. zinn's book is certainly not a polemic, i can report having read it. it is a bold thesis, and recognises itself as an attempt to change the focus point of history from elites to peoples - not as the last word but as significant in this change of focus.

that the standard account of history is a legitimating fairy tale should be obvious to all but the most naive observers - and of course our friend does not systematically consider any particular event from the conventional and zinn's standpoint. take say the american revolution. some wealthy landowners seek to rid themselves of the constraints of british rule and so go about manufacturing support for a bourgeoise revolution to further their interests. compare to the standard account about washington's love of freedom (rather than his love for the territory west of the appalachian mountains that George II had claimed for the crown) suddenly spilling over into a desire for revolutionary emancipation and the spontaneous overthow of the tyrant with peace and liberty for all. no mention in this account of the fact that the land was not empty (how did those 25m native americans, circa 1700, become 4m by 2000? magic? weak genes perhaps... impotence cause by continous exposure to ultra virility of aryan invaders? select the muder concealing myth of your choice - by the way washington did introduce biological warfare to the world by giving natives blankets from the smallpox factory and thus became the first war criminal to lead the US, but not the last of course).

well, take a look and judge for yourself. look at the wealth distribution and see whether things were improved by the revolution and if so for whom. black slaves? women? rich businessmen? cynical account?

if you want the straight answer, if you need convincing, consider this - in a functioning democracy, why would the majority of the people support a distribution of income, goods and services, that disadvantaged the majority. these inequalities would, if they existed at all, need to be demonstrably in the interests of the least advantaged - or else why vote for them? how would it be possibly to have 45m americans without health insurance and yet have a top 1% of earners with the same wealth as the bottom 50%? the answer is it takes a lot of time, effort and resources to legitimate all this. mens minds need to be trained to accept the 'reality' of such arrangements, even, perhaps amongst the intellectual/social managers that such arrangements are 'fair'.

the role that history plays in providing a legitimating fable of benign leaders is not questioned or even discussed and so zinn's work in essence remains uncriticised.

* the guardian - more heat against bush

"Bush ignored terror threat, claims ex-aide

George Bush's re-election campaign suffered a stinging blow yesterday when the president's former chief counter-terrorism adviser accused him of doing "a terrible job" in protecting America against attack, largely because of a fixation on Iraq.

Richard Clarke, who retired as the White House counter-terrorism coordinator last year, accused the president of putting pressure on him to find evidence of Iraqi involvement in the September 11 attacks, despite being told repeatedly that there was no link."

* rorty's leftism - via crosscurrents.org

* howard zinn's history lessons - via dissentmagazine.com

* end of history in israel - netanyahu, peres, and fukuyama come together to discuss the end of history in israel

Noam Chomsky 'Voices on Iraq' in an interview with the Guardian, the section also has some other good 'voices'...

our australian neighbours-philosophers pick up on the same continental theme at spurious.

how does alan feel about this?

good article on the increase of terror due to the Bush doctrine

Bush's Iraqi Terrorism Laboratory; Was it Worth it? By Rob Kall, from Opednews

Ask the Spaniards, Fillipinos, Moroccans, Saudis, Turks and the rest of the nations that have been victims of explosion in terrorism since the Iraq Invasion if the world is a safer place thanks to George Bush.

click here to continue

Another article along similar lines from AlterNet