Pirates and Emperors
This is simply marvelous:
movie at:
http://home.earthlink.net/~erichenry/pir_play.html
and the home site is:
http://piratesandemperors.com/
Saturday, February 18, 2006
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Dixie Chicks: Vindicated, Never Silenced, Leaving Conservative Nashville in the Dust
They're about to release a new album, produced by Rick Rubin, the cat who saved Johnny Cash from those same Nashville corporate a-holes.
Moreover, we now know that, contrary to what puke-helmets like Bill O'Reilly claim, they were never seriously hurt by the weak, disingenuous "boycots" organized after Natalie Maines's remark about President Bush. Doesn't make the attempt to silence them excusable, but it does prove what I've been saying all along: conservative culture is a mile wide and an inch deep.
In fact, they not only have the last laugh, but a loud one at that: the country music establishment doesn't want to lose them, but they will; and the politically conservative foundation of the Nashville establishment is itself beginning to crack.
I eagerly await the release of the new album.
They're about to release a new album, produced by Rick Rubin, the cat who saved Johnny Cash from those same Nashville corporate a-holes.
Moreover, we now know that, contrary to what puke-helmets like Bill O'Reilly claim, they were never seriously hurt by the weak, disingenuous "boycots" organized after Natalie Maines's remark about President Bush. Doesn't make the attempt to silence them excusable, but it does prove what I've been saying all along: conservative culture is a mile wide and an inch deep.
In fact, they not only have the last laugh, but a loud one at that: the country music establishment doesn't want to lose them, but they will; and the politically conservative foundation of the Nashville establishment is itself beginning to crack.
I eagerly await the release of the new album.
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Be Careful What You Wish For, WSJ...
David Graeber replied to that idiotic Wall Street Journal editorial:
To the editor:
I am writing in response to your editorial of January 3rd ("Bourgeois Anarchy"). Charmed though I am to receive advice on anti-capitalist ethics from the Wall Street
Journal, I must draw attention to an error of fact. The first paragraph ends "Last spring, Yale denied him tenure." This is false. What happened was that the senior anthropology faculty attempted, and ultimately succeeded, in denying me what is
ordinarily a routine promotion, refusing to give any reasons for their decision, and thus cut me off from any possibility of even coming up for tenure. This decision was
extremely unusual, and the refusal to give a reason even more so. It sparked immediate protests by undergraduate and graduate students (not, initially, by me) that the real reasons were political in nature -- above all, that they had to do with my defense of a graduate student who the senior faculty had attempted to expel from the program because of her work as a union organizer.
I did submit a formal grievance. Battered by an unprecedented outpouring of outraged letters from across the discipline, the Yale administration eventually offered
a compromise -- a sabbatical -- if I dropped my complaint. On learning that a grievance committee would only be allowed to judge whether there had been a violation of formal process, would not have the power to reverse the decision, and
even if it were to find in my favor, would still never reveal the reasons for my original dismissal, I accepted the compromise.
As for the substance of your editorial: I must confess myself confused as to why accepting a job teaching and conducting research for an annual income roughly
equivalent to that of a train operator (at roughly twice the hours) qualifies me as a member of the employing class. Or is your real point to assert a more general principle: 'capitalism, love it or leave it'? If so, where exactly am I supposed to
go? Outer space? Do you really think all employees who don't share their employer's economic and political philosophy should be terminated? Actually, that might be an excellent idea, since it would instantly destroy capitalism. Be careful what you wish for.
Sincerely,
David Graeber
David Graeber replied to that idiotic Wall Street Journal editorial:
To the editor:
I am writing in response to your editorial of January 3rd ("Bourgeois Anarchy"). Charmed though I am to receive advice on anti-capitalist ethics from the Wall Street
Journal, I must draw attention to an error of fact. The first paragraph ends "Last spring, Yale denied him tenure." This is false. What happened was that the senior anthropology faculty attempted, and ultimately succeeded, in denying me what is
ordinarily a routine promotion, refusing to give any reasons for their decision, and thus cut me off from any possibility of even coming up for tenure. This decision was
extremely unusual, and the refusal to give a reason even more so. It sparked immediate protests by undergraduate and graduate students (not, initially, by me) that the real reasons were political in nature -- above all, that they had to do with my defense of a graduate student who the senior faculty had attempted to expel from the program because of her work as a union organizer.
I did submit a formal grievance. Battered by an unprecedented outpouring of outraged letters from across the discipline, the Yale administration eventually offered
a compromise -- a sabbatical -- if I dropped my complaint. On learning that a grievance committee would only be allowed to judge whether there had been a violation of formal process, would not have the power to reverse the decision, and
even if it were to find in my favor, would still never reveal the reasons for my original dismissal, I accepted the compromise.
As for the substance of your editorial: I must confess myself confused as to why accepting a job teaching and conducting research for an annual income roughly
equivalent to that of a train operator (at roughly twice the hours) qualifies me as a member of the employing class. Or is your real point to assert a more general principle: 'capitalism, love it or leave it'? If so, where exactly am I supposed to
go? Outer space? Do you really think all employees who don't share their employer's economic and political philosophy should be terminated? Actually, that might be an excellent idea, since it would instantly destroy capitalism. Be careful what you wish for.
Sincerely,
David Graeber
Monday, January 09, 2006
Methinks They Doth Protest Too Much
On January 3, the Wall Street Journal devoted one of its all-important house editorials, the smaller one in the middle, to a single human being, a person hitherto known only to some on the left, denied tenure.
The editorial, entitled "Bourgeois Anarchy," purportedly seeks to rebut David Graeber's suspicion (nothing more) that he was fired from Yale because of his political activism (Graeber is an anarchist and a member of the IWW), but since it's only a suspicion, there isn't much work to do on that front. So the editors spent roughly one fourth of the space of the column quoting from the Preamble to the IWW Constitution, emphasizing the passages about the workers and bosses having nothing in common and the repudiation of the wage system.
With the self-perceived, smirking cleverness of a pansy prep school debate team, the editorial goes on to ask why Graeber would even "covet" a bourgeois post like Yale, then answers its own question by saying "even anarchists have their bourgeois ambitions," then speculates that Yale's decision was not political.
Besides the obvious way in which the WSJ misunderstands the category "bourgeois," the entire editorial seems out-of-place, Even if it were a slow news day, that wouldn't explain why the WSJ chose to compose this mocking and meanspirited little column. Surely, I think, the folks at the WSJ can't feel threatened by the Wobblies...? And surely there are more pressing things to attack (through mockery or otherwise) than the IWW and a radical professor...?
Unless, of course, there is a lesson to be learned from Graeber's situation that the WSJ thinks we all should learn...?
On January 3, the Wall Street Journal devoted one of its all-important house editorials, the smaller one in the middle, to a single human being, a person hitherto known only to some on the left, denied tenure.
The editorial, entitled "Bourgeois Anarchy," purportedly seeks to rebut David Graeber's suspicion (nothing more) that he was fired from Yale because of his political activism (Graeber is an anarchist and a member of the IWW), but since it's only a suspicion, there isn't much work to do on that front. So the editors spent roughly one fourth of the space of the column quoting from the Preamble to the IWW Constitution, emphasizing the passages about the workers and bosses having nothing in common and the repudiation of the wage system.
With the self-perceived, smirking cleverness of a pansy prep school debate team, the editorial goes on to ask why Graeber would even "covet" a bourgeois post like Yale, then answers its own question by saying "even anarchists have their bourgeois ambitions," then speculates that Yale's decision was not political.
Besides the obvious way in which the WSJ misunderstands the category "bourgeois," the entire editorial seems out-of-place, Even if it were a slow news day, that wouldn't explain why the WSJ chose to compose this mocking and meanspirited little column. Surely, I think, the folks at the WSJ can't feel threatened by the Wobblies...? And surely there are more pressing things to attack (through mockery or otherwise) than the IWW and a radical professor...?
Unless, of course, there is a lesson to be learned from Graeber's situation that the WSJ thinks we all should learn...?
Saturday, January 07, 2006
Rest in Peace, Hugh Thompson, Jr.
Hugh Thompson, Jr. died yesterday of cancer at age 62. I'll bet many of you don't know who he was and what he did.
Thompson was a war hero, but not the kind you'd normally think of. And he never wanted to be one. Originally volunteering for the most thankless and luckless of duties (drawing enemy fire), Thompson eventually chose an even more dangerous task: stopping his fellow soldiers from massacring civilians.
"Thompson joined the US Navy in 1961, then US Army in 1966 and trained as a helicopter pilot. He volunteered for the Aerial Scout Unit and assigned to Task Force Barker to fly over Vietnamese forests and try to draw enemy fire, to pinpoint the location of troops...
"After coming across the dead bodies of Vietnamese civilians outside My Lai on March 16, 1968, Thompson set down their OH-23 and the three men [Thompson, Crew Chief Glenn Andreotta and Spc Lawrence Colburn] began setting green gas markers by the prone bodies of the Vietnamese civilians who appeared to still be alive. Returning to the helicopter however, they saw Captain Ernest Medina run forward and begin shooting the wounded who had been marked - and the three men moved their ship back over the village where Thompson confronted Lt. Stephen Brooks who was preparing to blow up a hut full of cowering and wounded Vietnamese; he left Andreotta and Colburn to cover the company with their heavy machine guns and orders to fire on any American who refused the orders to halt the massacre. (Needless to say, none of the officers dared to disobey him, although as a mere warrant officer, Thompson was outranked by the commissioned lieutenants.)
Thompson: Let's get these people out of this bunker and get 'em out of here.
Brooks: We'll get 'em out with hand grenades.
Thompson: I can do better than that. Keep your people in place. My guns are on you.
"Thompson then ordered two other helicopters (one piloted by Dan Millians) flying nearby to serve as a medevac for the 11 wounded Vietnamese. While flying away from the village, Andreotta spotted movement in an irrigation ditch, and the helicopter was again landed and a child was extracted from the bodies, and brought with the rest of the Vietnamese to the hospital at Quang Ngai.
"Thompson subsequently reported the massacre, whilst it was still occuring, to his superiors. The cease-fire order was then given."
(The above is from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Thompson,_Jr.)
"With Colburn and Andreotta providing cover – he told them to shoot the Americans if they opened fire – he coaxed the Vietnamese out of the bunker so they could be flown to safety...
"After the My Lai story broke, some Americans accused Thompson of treachery and called Lieut. William Calley, who led the massacre, a hero.
"In 1998, however, Thompson and his crew were awarded the Soldier's Medal, Andreotta posthumously. The medal is the highest U.S. honour for bravery not involving conflict with the enemy.
"The medal citation credited Thompson with saving at least 10 civilian lives directly and with taking back reports that led to a ceasefire order and ended the killings. He died Friday at a veterans hospital outside Washington.
"The only American punished for the massacre was Calley, who spent three years under house arrest before getting parole."
(The above is from http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/natio...ilot.html?print)
People on the left often malign military service and have a hard time viewing those who serve as heroes. It's one thing to express the view that the U.S. should never have gone into Vietnam. Fair enough. But given that the U.S. did go into Vietnam, imagine what would have happened if Hugh Thompson had not.
Hugh Thompson, Jr. died yesterday of cancer at age 62. I'll bet many of you don't know who he was and what he did.
Thompson was a war hero, but not the kind you'd normally think of. And he never wanted to be one. Originally volunteering for the most thankless and luckless of duties (drawing enemy fire), Thompson eventually chose an even more dangerous task: stopping his fellow soldiers from massacring civilians.
"Thompson joined the US Navy in 1961, then US Army in 1966 and trained as a helicopter pilot. He volunteered for the Aerial Scout Unit and assigned to Task Force Barker to fly over Vietnamese forests and try to draw enemy fire, to pinpoint the location of troops...
"After coming across the dead bodies of Vietnamese civilians outside My Lai on March 16, 1968, Thompson set down their OH-23 and the three men [Thompson, Crew Chief Glenn Andreotta and Spc Lawrence Colburn] began setting green gas markers by the prone bodies of the Vietnamese civilians who appeared to still be alive. Returning to the helicopter however, they saw Captain Ernest Medina run forward and begin shooting the wounded who had been marked - and the three men moved their ship back over the village where Thompson confronted Lt. Stephen Brooks who was preparing to blow up a hut full of cowering and wounded Vietnamese; he left Andreotta and Colburn to cover the company with their heavy machine guns and orders to fire on any American who refused the orders to halt the massacre. (Needless to say, none of the officers dared to disobey him, although as a mere warrant officer, Thompson was outranked by the commissioned lieutenants.)
Thompson: Let's get these people out of this bunker and get 'em out of here.
Brooks: We'll get 'em out with hand grenades.
Thompson: I can do better than that. Keep your people in place. My guns are on you.
"Thompson then ordered two other helicopters (one piloted by Dan Millians) flying nearby to serve as a medevac for the 11 wounded Vietnamese. While flying away from the village, Andreotta spotted movement in an irrigation ditch, and the helicopter was again landed and a child was extracted from the bodies, and brought with the rest of the Vietnamese to the hospital at Quang Ngai.
"Thompson subsequently reported the massacre, whilst it was still occuring, to his superiors. The cease-fire order was then given."
(The above is from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Thompson,_Jr.)
"With Colburn and Andreotta providing cover – he told them to shoot the Americans if they opened fire – he coaxed the Vietnamese out of the bunker so they could be flown to safety...
"After the My Lai story broke, some Americans accused Thompson of treachery and called Lieut. William Calley, who led the massacre, a hero.
"In 1998, however, Thompson and his crew were awarded the Soldier's Medal, Andreotta posthumously. The medal is the highest U.S. honour for bravery not involving conflict with the enemy.
"The medal citation credited Thompson with saving at least 10 civilian lives directly and with taking back reports that led to a ceasefire order and ended the killings. He died Friday at a veterans hospital outside Washington.
"The only American punished for the massacre was Calley, who spent three years under house arrest before getting parole."
(The above is from http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/natio...ilot.html?print)
People on the left often malign military service and have a hard time viewing those who serve as heroes. It's one thing to express the view that the U.S. should never have gone into Vietnam. Fair enough. But given that the U.S. did go into Vietnam, imagine what would have happened if Hugh Thompson had not.
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Spintelligent Design
The spin by creationists and fundamentalists in response to the recent Kitzmiller v. Dover decision in Dover, PA is simply amazing. Aren't Christians instructed not to lie???
Initially, a couple of key things to read. Here is Judge Jones's court decision. The decision by itself should more than adequately reveal the misrepresentations occurring in the articles I cite below.
Next, in the interest of fairness, Stephen C. Meyer's much-cited definitive essay on Intelligent Design. The essay validly points out alleged flaws in the theory of evolution, but engages in speculative thinking (albeit lucidly written) about form and function in order to do little more than establish the feasibility, the possibility, of design as an alternative to random chance. There is a world of difference between this article and what the Dover school board tried to do. The Dover board explicitly and unapologetically mandated the introduction of Intelligent Design in biology classes for religious reasons. One board member said, after the meeting in which the decision was made: "This country wasn't founded on Muslim beliefs or evolution. This country was founded on Christianity, and our students should be taught as such." At another point, he said "Two thousand years ago, someone died on a cross. Can't someone take a stand for him?" And, of course, the book the board mandated science teachers suggest to their students, Of Pandas and People, is an openly religious book that, according to its critics, misrepresents everything from its own orientation to the fossil record and extinction evidence.
So now for the spin:
Lee J. Strang writes in the National Review Online that the ruling is an example of the broad, oppressive reach of the Establishment Clause, and that it's yet another case of attempting to "purge religion from the public square." Hogwash. The ruling purges religion from a science class. Strang admits (he has to in order to retain any intellectual integrity) that the Dover school board (most of whom were booted out of office over this fiasco) overreached, and made the mistake of wearing their religious purposes on their sleeves. But Strang insists that an Originalist perspective would allow religious explanations to be taught alongside scientific ones. Of course, what Strang doesn't say is that this needn't be done in science classes, and in fact creationism and all religious accounts of the universe can be, and are, taught in elective comparative religion and philosophy classes in public schools all over the country. Strang really has to stretch the arguments and implications of Kitzmiller to prove some kind of overall, categorical hostility toward religion. In this particular case, such hostility is only to religion in a science class. Strang also insists that Intelligent Design theorists have good arguments, but that's beside the point. Intelligent Design is indistinguishable from ancient and classical teleological arguments for the existence of God. Those arguments, once again, belong in philosophy and religion classes, not science classes. By its very nature, a Design thesis is an argument about the philosophy of science, the metaphysics of science; an argument ABOUT science, not an expression of the scientific method. Read Meyer's essay and judge for yourself.
Family News in Focus, the website of Focus on the Family, reveals an even greater degree of buffoonary in its editorial by Steve Jordahl. Jordahl simply lies in this piece, saying that Judge Jones ruled that it is unconstitutional to teach ANY alternatives to evolution. ANY. That's a flat-out untruth, of course (Jones only ruled that ID was unconstitutional, because it was religious in both intent and content), but it gets better. "Under the school board’s plan," Jordahl writes, "religion would not have been brought into the classroom." Not true. The school board's plan required teachers to alert students to the existence of a creationist book in the school's library, and encourage students to read that book. You really should read Jordahl's editorial for yourself. It's laughable, poorly edited and full of errors, reactionary, and looks to have been written by a 5 year-old child. Oh, and it quotes an ID advocate as saying there's plenty of empirical support for ID, but of course, no such support is specifically identified.
A house editorial in the Wheeling News-Register contends, without a shred of warrant, that ID possesses "at least as much validity as ... evolution." Wow. You'd think they'd mention some of that validity. Nope.
Ah, Chuck Colson chimes in as well. If you're too young to remember him, he helped to organize the illegal wiretapping of Democrats by the Nixon people. Subsequently he founded a Christian prison ministry outfit. Anyway, as we know from observing the careers of Ollie North and Mark Fuhrman, corrupt public officials can always schlep for conservative news organizations, and Colson is no exception. His Townhall.com editorial doesn't really make any arguments at all. He just says he "strongly disagrees" with the ruling. He reluctantly admits that the school board overplayed its hand. But the real purpose of the editorial is to push the reader towards "informative" links at the bottom of the page--from a book available through Amazon making the case for intelligent design (although the book in question does so from an evangelical perspective, doesn't present both sides of the issue, and doesn't use the scientific method at all), to links to a "research and information page" that is full of editorials against evolution rather than any actual research and information.
I am much more sympathetic to the viewpoint of William Grassie of the Metanexus Institute, which advocates meaningful, critical dialogue between religion, philosophy, and science. Grassie says the real problem here is that students don't sufficiently understand the underlying philosophy of science, and that such an understanding is a prerequisite to understanding how to discuss the shortcomings of evolutionary theory, the politics of the scientific and religious communities, and why evolution still has the preponderance of evidence on its side even if it's not "perfect."
But this is worlds away from what creationists want. Implicit in their arguments, further illustrated by the dishonest and warrant-free spin of the articles cited above, is a desire to eliminate critical thinking altogether, in favor of appeals to authority, tradition, and doctrine. A citizenry that is taught to believe that all things exist merely because of the will of a divine creator will easily take the next step: That a few authorities are appointed to speak for that creator. The next step: Those authorities have a monopoly not only on theological and scientific truth, but also on moral and, of course, political truth. There is a free, open and short road running from creationism to religious authoritarianism. Judge Jones has closed that road--for now. Thank God!!!
The spin by creationists and fundamentalists in response to the recent Kitzmiller v. Dover decision in Dover, PA is simply amazing. Aren't Christians instructed not to lie???
Initially, a couple of key things to read. Here is Judge Jones's court decision. The decision by itself should more than adequately reveal the misrepresentations occurring in the articles I cite below.
Next, in the interest of fairness, Stephen C. Meyer's much-cited definitive essay on Intelligent Design. The essay validly points out alleged flaws in the theory of evolution, but engages in speculative thinking (albeit lucidly written) about form and function in order to do little more than establish the feasibility, the possibility, of design as an alternative to random chance. There is a world of difference between this article and what the Dover school board tried to do. The Dover board explicitly and unapologetically mandated the introduction of Intelligent Design in biology classes for religious reasons. One board member said, after the meeting in which the decision was made: "This country wasn't founded on Muslim beliefs or evolution. This country was founded on Christianity, and our students should be taught as such." At another point, he said "Two thousand years ago, someone died on a cross. Can't someone take a stand for him?" And, of course, the book the board mandated science teachers suggest to their students, Of Pandas and People, is an openly religious book that, according to its critics, misrepresents everything from its own orientation to the fossil record and extinction evidence.
So now for the spin:
Lee J. Strang writes in the National Review Online that the ruling is an example of the broad, oppressive reach of the Establishment Clause, and that it's yet another case of attempting to "purge religion from the public square." Hogwash. The ruling purges religion from a science class. Strang admits (he has to in order to retain any intellectual integrity) that the Dover school board (most of whom were booted out of office over this fiasco) overreached, and made the mistake of wearing their religious purposes on their sleeves. But Strang insists that an Originalist perspective would allow religious explanations to be taught alongside scientific ones. Of course, what Strang doesn't say is that this needn't be done in science classes, and in fact creationism and all religious accounts of the universe can be, and are, taught in elective comparative religion and philosophy classes in public schools all over the country. Strang really has to stretch the arguments and implications of Kitzmiller to prove some kind of overall, categorical hostility toward religion. In this particular case, such hostility is only to religion in a science class. Strang also insists that Intelligent Design theorists have good arguments, but that's beside the point. Intelligent Design is indistinguishable from ancient and classical teleological arguments for the existence of God. Those arguments, once again, belong in philosophy and religion classes, not science classes. By its very nature, a Design thesis is an argument about the philosophy of science, the metaphysics of science; an argument ABOUT science, not an expression of the scientific method. Read Meyer's essay and judge for yourself.
Family News in Focus, the website of Focus on the Family, reveals an even greater degree of buffoonary in its editorial by Steve Jordahl. Jordahl simply lies in this piece, saying that Judge Jones ruled that it is unconstitutional to teach ANY alternatives to evolution. ANY. That's a flat-out untruth, of course (Jones only ruled that ID was unconstitutional, because it was religious in both intent and content), but it gets better. "Under the school board’s plan," Jordahl writes, "religion would not have been brought into the classroom." Not true. The school board's plan required teachers to alert students to the existence of a creationist book in the school's library, and encourage students to read that book. You really should read Jordahl's editorial for yourself. It's laughable, poorly edited and full of errors, reactionary, and looks to have been written by a 5 year-old child. Oh, and it quotes an ID advocate as saying there's plenty of empirical support for ID, but of course, no such support is specifically identified.
A house editorial in the Wheeling News-Register contends, without a shred of warrant, that ID possesses "at least as much validity as ... evolution." Wow. You'd think they'd mention some of that validity. Nope.
Ah, Chuck Colson chimes in as well. If you're too young to remember him, he helped to organize the illegal wiretapping of Democrats by the Nixon people. Subsequently he founded a Christian prison ministry outfit. Anyway, as we know from observing the careers of Ollie North and Mark Fuhrman, corrupt public officials can always schlep for conservative news organizations, and Colson is no exception. His Townhall.com editorial doesn't really make any arguments at all. He just says he "strongly disagrees" with the ruling. He reluctantly admits that the school board overplayed its hand. But the real purpose of the editorial is to push the reader towards "informative" links at the bottom of the page--from a book available through Amazon making the case for intelligent design (although the book in question does so from an evangelical perspective, doesn't present both sides of the issue, and doesn't use the scientific method at all), to links to a "research and information page" that is full of editorials against evolution rather than any actual research and information.
I am much more sympathetic to the viewpoint of William Grassie of the Metanexus Institute, which advocates meaningful, critical dialogue between religion, philosophy, and science. Grassie says the real problem here is that students don't sufficiently understand the underlying philosophy of science, and that such an understanding is a prerequisite to understanding how to discuss the shortcomings of evolutionary theory, the politics of the scientific and religious communities, and why evolution still has the preponderance of evidence on its side even if it's not "perfect."
But this is worlds away from what creationists want. Implicit in their arguments, further illustrated by the dishonest and warrant-free spin of the articles cited above, is a desire to eliminate critical thinking altogether, in favor of appeals to authority, tradition, and doctrine. A citizenry that is taught to believe that all things exist merely because of the will of a divine creator will easily take the next step: That a few authorities are appointed to speak for that creator. The next step: Those authorities have a monopoly not only on theological and scientific truth, but also on moral and, of course, political truth. There is a free, open and short road running from creationism to religious authoritarianism. Judge Jones has closed that road--for now. Thank God!!!
Friday, December 16, 2005
"Same Intelligence," My Arse
Thanks to Joshua Micah Marshall at Talkingpointsmemo.com for bringing this to our attention. Diane Feinstein (even hacks are right every once in a while) doubted Bush's claim that Congress received the same pre-war intelligence as Bush did. So she asked the Congressional Research Service. Their response? Bush's claim is not true. In fact, the scope and depth of the CRS's refutation of Bush's lie is overwhelming.
In the current right wing orgy over Bush's stellar jump in approval ratings (possibly up to 50% now), Bush's "shocking" admission that pre-war intelligence was flawed, and the tentative success of elections in Iraq, an evaluation of the legitimacy of the decisionmaking process itself has taken a back seat. Part of the reason it has been allowed to do so is that people are buying into the notion that everyone had the same flawed pre-war intelligence. Well, they didn't.
More important than the deficit in pre-war intelligence was the obviously deliberate spin the Administration placed on the most dubious portions of that intelligence. Regardless of the culpability of other sections of the ruling class, the Administration is responsible for the poor intelligence that fed into public myths about ties between Iraq and Al Qaida . And despite the best efforts of a particularly ridiculous Heritage Foundation argument that all the pre-war intelligence was legit (give us a break!), it's still indisputable that Bush, Blair, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and all their dogs continued to repeat claims to the media with utter confidence after it was revealed to them that those claims were at least doubtful and probably completely dubious--claims like "nuclear materials," "45 minutes," "mushroom cloud" and the like. Moreover, Bush and Cheney continued, and continue, to invoke 9/11 in defense of the invasion of Iraq.
The subsidiary claim that Clinton and others made the same arguments really proves nothing. Clinton was as much of a warmongering hack as his successor, and in fact bombed Iraq to distract the public from a sex scandal, which may even be more small-minded than the Bush Administration.
Now a couple of pre-empts for the stubborn:
1. Even if it could be proven that Congress had each and every piece of information that the Administration had (and the CRS letter confidently refutes that), this would only make Congress complicit in the non-deliberative process leading up to the invasion of Iraq. I am perfectly comfortable blaming the Democrats. I just want to know what to blame them for, and thanks to the CRS letter, I know I can blame them for spinelessness and impotency rather than unmitigated dishonesty--at least some of them, and at least on the issue of Iraq.
2. "But the invasion and occupation have been a great success! We got rid of Saddam and he was a bad guy! The elections are working out great! The world is a safer place." Yeah, well listen: I have long warned the anti-war movement not to base their criticism on disputable empirical facts. I will say the same for the pro-invasion/occupation folks. Your defense of the war, your eagerness to minimize the impact of torture, your brushing off of international law and global cooperation, your defense of planting and paying for lies in the media, and your deliberate historical ignorance of the way the U.S. and its allies empowered Saddam in the first place (to say nothing of your complete silence on the corporatization of the occupation and the unprecedented corruption sanctioned by the Administration), cannot be papered over with human interest stories about liberated Iraqis. Morality, even political morality, is capable of the complex, simultaneous acknowledgment of good and bad, despite the best efforts of Straussian neocons to eliminate complexity, to ban it, really, from the masses.
Both sides, I will acknowledge are spinning, both sides are converting innocent lives into political capital. I don't trust a Murtha any more than I trust a Rumsfeld. Why should I? But that "pox on both your houses" doesn't excuse the pro-war side from its defense of all sorts of anti-democratic actions, including lying to both Americans and Iraqis through engineered media reports. It doesn't excuse the right from using both 9/11 and Iraq to justify pushing through an agenda they wanted all along.
The ends do not justify the means. Not merely because of some kind of Kantian categorical imperative, but because there is always an intimate, ontological relationship between process and outcome. That is the truth behind the Habermasian test: Decisions made when information is deliberately withheld and distorted, and when those "little people" affected by such decisions are denied the ability to be agents in the decisionmaking process, are always bad decisions. Sometimes the "badness" of such decisions isn't apparent until much, much later. But bad decisions they are, because democratic deliberation cannot just be something we adhere to when it's convenient or politically expedient, and honesty is not something we can choose to deploy only when the outcome suits us. Even if the pro-war folks can spin their way out of each and every objection, even if they seize control of every history book and editorial page for the next hundred years, the lies, distortions, and omissions will show themselves in the end. The CRS report is a good first step in demonstrating that even Bush's clumsy apologetics are based on lies and spin. And if the best answer anyone can give is that all sides of the ruling class are equally culpable in the lies and spin, I will readily accept that indictment.
Thanks to Joshua Micah Marshall at Talkingpointsmemo.com for bringing this to our attention. Diane Feinstein (even hacks are right every once in a while) doubted Bush's claim that Congress received the same pre-war intelligence as Bush did. So she asked the Congressional Research Service. Their response? Bush's claim is not true. In fact, the scope and depth of the CRS's refutation of Bush's lie is overwhelming.
In the current right wing orgy over Bush's stellar jump in approval ratings (possibly up to 50% now), Bush's "shocking" admission that pre-war intelligence was flawed, and the tentative success of elections in Iraq, an evaluation of the legitimacy of the decisionmaking process itself has taken a back seat. Part of the reason it has been allowed to do so is that people are buying into the notion that everyone had the same flawed pre-war intelligence. Well, they didn't.
More important than the deficit in pre-war intelligence was the obviously deliberate spin the Administration placed on the most dubious portions of that intelligence. Regardless of the culpability of other sections of the ruling class, the Administration is responsible for the poor intelligence that fed into public myths about ties between Iraq and Al Qaida . And despite the best efforts of a particularly ridiculous Heritage Foundation argument that all the pre-war intelligence was legit (give us a break!), it's still indisputable that Bush, Blair, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and all their dogs continued to repeat claims to the media with utter confidence after it was revealed to them that those claims were at least doubtful and probably completely dubious--claims like "nuclear materials," "45 minutes," "mushroom cloud" and the like. Moreover, Bush and Cheney continued, and continue, to invoke 9/11 in defense of the invasion of Iraq.
The subsidiary claim that Clinton and others made the same arguments really proves nothing. Clinton was as much of a warmongering hack as his successor, and in fact bombed Iraq to distract the public from a sex scandal, which may even be more small-minded than the Bush Administration.
Now a couple of pre-empts for the stubborn:
1. Even if it could be proven that Congress had each and every piece of information that the Administration had (and the CRS letter confidently refutes that), this would only make Congress complicit in the non-deliberative process leading up to the invasion of Iraq. I am perfectly comfortable blaming the Democrats. I just want to know what to blame them for, and thanks to the CRS letter, I know I can blame them for spinelessness and impotency rather than unmitigated dishonesty--at least some of them, and at least on the issue of Iraq.
2. "But the invasion and occupation have been a great success! We got rid of Saddam and he was a bad guy! The elections are working out great! The world is a safer place." Yeah, well listen: I have long warned the anti-war movement not to base their criticism on disputable empirical facts. I will say the same for the pro-invasion/occupation folks. Your defense of the war, your eagerness to minimize the impact of torture, your brushing off of international law and global cooperation, your defense of planting and paying for lies in the media, and your deliberate historical ignorance of the way the U.S. and its allies empowered Saddam in the first place (to say nothing of your complete silence on the corporatization of the occupation and the unprecedented corruption sanctioned by the Administration), cannot be papered over with human interest stories about liberated Iraqis. Morality, even political morality, is capable of the complex, simultaneous acknowledgment of good and bad, despite the best efforts of Straussian neocons to eliminate complexity, to ban it, really, from the masses.
Both sides, I will acknowledge are spinning, both sides are converting innocent lives into political capital. I don't trust a Murtha any more than I trust a Rumsfeld. Why should I? But that "pox on both your houses" doesn't excuse the pro-war side from its defense of all sorts of anti-democratic actions, including lying to both Americans and Iraqis through engineered media reports. It doesn't excuse the right from using both 9/11 and Iraq to justify pushing through an agenda they wanted all along.
The ends do not justify the means. Not merely because of some kind of Kantian categorical imperative, but because there is always an intimate, ontological relationship between process and outcome. That is the truth behind the Habermasian test: Decisions made when information is deliberately withheld and distorted, and when those "little people" affected by such decisions are denied the ability to be agents in the decisionmaking process, are always bad decisions. Sometimes the "badness" of such decisions isn't apparent until much, much later. But bad decisions they are, because democratic deliberation cannot just be something we adhere to when it's convenient or politically expedient, and honesty is not something we can choose to deploy only when the outcome suits us. Even if the pro-war folks can spin their way out of each and every objection, even if they seize control of every history book and editorial page for the next hundred years, the lies, distortions, and omissions will show themselves in the end. The CRS report is a good first step in demonstrating that even Bush's clumsy apologetics are based on lies and spin. And if the best answer anyone can give is that all sides of the ruling class are equally culpable in the lies and spin, I will readily accept that indictment.
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Remembering John Lennon
Today is the 25th anniversary of the shooting death of John Lennon.
I'm not a fan of "classic" rock, but the Beatles were a band that transcended every genre, pushed boundaries, and above all, made beautiful, thoughtful, powerful music. I always have Abby Road, Revolver, or the White Album on rotation between sets of Bad Religion, Dead Prez, The Flatlanders, Built to Spill, Immortal Technique, etc.
I'm not a big fan of the "hippie-left," but Lennon pushed political boundaries as well. His words and ideas made him dangerous enough to be put on an FBI watch list. His anger and militancy, his insistence on asking thought-provoking and challenging questions concerning the relationship of the personal, political and artistic, separated him from his softer "peace and love" comrades.
There's always been a lot of shit-talk about the Beatles and John Lennon, but I'm really not interested. Some people get off on minimizing the impact of Shakespeare too. People make careers or just get their weekend jollies out of cutting down giants. They think it makes them sound intelligent to say meaningless things about how artists were (gasp) influenced by other artists, or how the Stones were better than the Beatles, blah blah blah. Those silly attempts at establishing objective artistic authority don't even speak the same language as the aesthetic and emotional experience of listening to the Beatles, or much of the later work of Lennon.
Recently files were released confirming what most everyone had long suspected: that the U.S. government manipulated intelligence about the Gulf of Tonkin incident in order to justify intervention in Vietnam. If John Lennon were alive today I have little doubt what he'd be saying and doing, what he'd be singing about, and whom he would be ridiculing with his acid wit and absurdist artistic form.
Tonight I'll be listening to some Beatles music.
Today is the 25th anniversary of the shooting death of John Lennon.
I'm not a fan of "classic" rock, but the Beatles were a band that transcended every genre, pushed boundaries, and above all, made beautiful, thoughtful, powerful music. I always have Abby Road, Revolver, or the White Album on rotation between sets of Bad Religion, Dead Prez, The Flatlanders, Built to Spill, Immortal Technique, etc.
I'm not a big fan of the "hippie-left," but Lennon pushed political boundaries as well. His words and ideas made him dangerous enough to be put on an FBI watch list. His anger and militancy, his insistence on asking thought-provoking and challenging questions concerning the relationship of the personal, political and artistic, separated him from his softer "peace and love" comrades.
There's always been a lot of shit-talk about the Beatles and John Lennon, but I'm really not interested. Some people get off on minimizing the impact of Shakespeare too. People make careers or just get their weekend jollies out of cutting down giants. They think it makes them sound intelligent to say meaningless things about how artists were (gasp) influenced by other artists, or how the Stones were better than the Beatles, blah blah blah. Those silly attempts at establishing objective artistic authority don't even speak the same language as the aesthetic and emotional experience of listening to the Beatles, or much of the later work of Lennon.
Recently files were released confirming what most everyone had long suspected: that the U.S. government manipulated intelligence about the Gulf of Tonkin incident in order to justify intervention in Vietnam. If John Lennon were alive today I have little doubt what he'd be saying and doing, what he'd be singing about, and whom he would be ridiculing with his acid wit and absurdist artistic form.
Tonight I'll be listening to some Beatles music.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
The Dems Blow it Again
Bush just gave a speech outlining the stunning successes of U.S. occupiers in Iraq. This is what the public wants to hear.
In recent days, Howard Dean and others have said outlandish things like "The U.S. can't win in Iraq." This is NOT what the public wants to hear.
[Most amusing: Some of the Republicans' leading pundits have been calling --in all seriousness-- for Dean to be tried for treason and executed. I'll write more about this later.]
The Democrats don't have a prayer in this fight, and here's why:
First, most of them were pansies when given the real chance to oppose the Bush war agenda a few years ago. They hemmed and hawed and danced around the issue.
Second, the Republicans will ALWAYS appear to be the stronger party in terms of military power. That's why Kerry blew it in '04 with his "I'm John Kerry and I'm reporting for duty" droolery.
Third, the Democrats' hands aren't clean on corporate and military-industrial complex influence, so they can't effectively criticize the Republicans on the way in which this war, and the entire "War on Terror" enterprise is being spun and manufactured by corporate interests. So the best the Dems can do is level this kind of half-assed panty-waste criticism that goes nowhere and doesn't really say anything.
Fourth, empirical appeals to the failure of the U.S. occupation will always be ineffective because the situation in Iraq, as complex and multi-layered as it is, can always be spun one way or the other, and there's more public support, more media money, and more grand narrative capital to be gained from the conclusion that things are going well there than from the conclusion that things are not. Moreover, by focusing on contingent failures (not enough troops, ooh look an explosion here, a few dead troops there), the Democrats merely give Bush the opportunity to fix those problems, to incrementally improve things. Of course it would be better if the Dems could criticize Bush on the PROCESS he used to make his decisions, but since the Dems are at least patsies and at most collaborators in that process, they lack the credibility to do so.
As much as all you Democrats hate Bush, he and his ilk will ultimately triumph on this issue--up to and including enduring next year's mid-term elections and probably placing another Republican in the White House in '08.
Don't blame this on the "stupidity" or complacency of the American public either. People are doing the best they can. They've been miseducated and thrown into economic and moral uncertainty. Both parties, beholden as they are to hierarchical economic interests, have a stake in an uninformed public.
The Republicans may be evil, but the Democrats are evil AND stupid. Which is worse?
Bush just gave a speech outlining the stunning successes of U.S. occupiers in Iraq. This is what the public wants to hear.
In recent days, Howard Dean and others have said outlandish things like "The U.S. can't win in Iraq." This is NOT what the public wants to hear.
[Most amusing: Some of the Republicans' leading pundits have been calling --in all seriousness-- for Dean to be tried for treason and executed. I'll write more about this later.]
The Democrats don't have a prayer in this fight, and here's why:
First, most of them were pansies when given the real chance to oppose the Bush war agenda a few years ago. They hemmed and hawed and danced around the issue.
Second, the Republicans will ALWAYS appear to be the stronger party in terms of military power. That's why Kerry blew it in '04 with his "I'm John Kerry and I'm reporting for duty" droolery.
Third, the Democrats' hands aren't clean on corporate and military-industrial complex influence, so they can't effectively criticize the Republicans on the way in which this war, and the entire "War on Terror" enterprise is being spun and manufactured by corporate interests. So the best the Dems can do is level this kind of half-assed panty-waste criticism that goes nowhere and doesn't really say anything.
Fourth, empirical appeals to the failure of the U.S. occupation will always be ineffective because the situation in Iraq, as complex and multi-layered as it is, can always be spun one way or the other, and there's more public support, more media money, and more grand narrative capital to be gained from the conclusion that things are going well there than from the conclusion that things are not. Moreover, by focusing on contingent failures (not enough troops, ooh look an explosion here, a few dead troops there), the Democrats merely give Bush the opportunity to fix those problems, to incrementally improve things. Of course it would be better if the Dems could criticize Bush on the PROCESS he used to make his decisions, but since the Dems are at least patsies and at most collaborators in that process, they lack the credibility to do so.
As much as all you Democrats hate Bush, he and his ilk will ultimately triumph on this issue--up to and including enduring next year's mid-term elections and probably placing another Republican in the White House in '08.
Don't blame this on the "stupidity" or complacency of the American public either. People are doing the best they can. They've been miseducated and thrown into economic and moral uncertainty. Both parties, beholden as they are to hierarchical economic interests, have a stake in an uninformed public.
The Republicans may be evil, but the Democrats are evil AND stupid. Which is worse?
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Nguyen Tuong Van Executed in Corporate Fiefdom Known as Singapore
As disturbing as another U.S. execution is (and it's bemusing that we live in such a sound-bite society that the "1000th" execution is all over the media like there's something unique about it besides its arbitrary numerical designation), it pales in comparison to Singapore's execution yesterday of Nguyen Tuong Van, a 25-year-old Australian, for drug running. Some particularly disgusting details about this case:
1. Nguyen was a small time runner. The big timers never get caught or killed because they are usually in collusion with cops, corporations, and local little tin-horn government officials.
2. It's death by hanging, the procedure of which is based on the “Official Table of Drops”, first published by the British Home Office in 1913. Like many former British colonies, Singapore retains many traditions introduced by British colonialism.
3. The Howard government, and the Labor opposition, have behaved spinelessly and hypocritically over it. They've turned it into an anti-drug message and have vilified Nguyen, which they can get away with because he's an Asian immigrant. Even though they could have applied actual pressure which probably would have worked (it's worked before) in this case they chose not to because of APEC and tourism and other business considerations.
The facts and the social context of this tragedy override any gut temptation any of us might have to say "well, he shouldn't have been running drugs." The government of Singapore is a barbaric, cynical, glorified den of gangsters and the elaborate system of torture and repression they practice proves how easily a "market economy" can become a corporate slave camp (there are plenty of other examples of course). Of course, the government of Australia behaved quite predictably themselves--using their failure to apply pressure which probably would have worked to instead spew sanctimonious anti-drug messages. Prime Minister Howard himself even said: "I hope the anti-drugs message is stronger, or as least as strong as the anti-capital punishment" message. What a tool.
Thanks to Rick Kelly's good article on this at the World Socialist Web Site.
As disturbing as another U.S. execution is (and it's bemusing that we live in such a sound-bite society that the "1000th" execution is all over the media like there's something unique about it besides its arbitrary numerical designation), it pales in comparison to Singapore's execution yesterday of Nguyen Tuong Van, a 25-year-old Australian, for drug running. Some particularly disgusting details about this case:
1. Nguyen was a small time runner. The big timers never get caught or killed because they are usually in collusion with cops, corporations, and local little tin-horn government officials.
2. It's death by hanging, the procedure of which is based on the “Official Table of Drops”, first published by the British Home Office in 1913. Like many former British colonies, Singapore retains many traditions introduced by British colonialism.
3. The Howard government, and the Labor opposition, have behaved spinelessly and hypocritically over it. They've turned it into an anti-drug message and have vilified Nguyen, which they can get away with because he's an Asian immigrant. Even though they could have applied actual pressure which probably would have worked (it's worked before) in this case they chose not to because of APEC and tourism and other business considerations.
The facts and the social context of this tragedy override any gut temptation any of us might have to say "well, he shouldn't have been running drugs." The government of Singapore is a barbaric, cynical, glorified den of gangsters and the elaborate system of torture and repression they practice proves how easily a "market economy" can become a corporate slave camp (there are plenty of other examples of course). Of course, the government of Australia behaved quite predictably themselves--using their failure to apply pressure which probably would have worked to instead spew sanctimonious anti-drug messages. Prime Minister Howard himself even said: "I hope the anti-drugs message is stronger, or as least as strong as the anti-capital punishment" message. What a tool.
Thanks to Rick Kelly's good article on this at the World Socialist Web Site.
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Mukhtar Mai
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/PersonOfWeek/story?id=1237950&page=1
ABC News
Pakistani Rape Victim Becomes Beacon for Women's Rights
Oct. 21, 2005 — - Three years ago, Mukhtar Mai was brutally raped in her remote village in Pakistan. After a long struggle, Pakistan's supreme court convicted her attackers, and she's only able to talk about it now.
"I feel very happy, and God will look after me in the future," she said. "I am very, very hopeful that I will get justice."
Tomorrow Mai will travel to New York, her first trip out of Pakistan, to receive Glamour magazine's "Woman of the Year" award. And she'll travel around the country to speak on the plight of rural women.
"We look for strength. We look for persistence -- a woman of the year is someone who believes that women can do whatever they set their mind to, and Mukhtar illustrates those qualities better than anybody," said Cindi Leive, Glamour's editor in chief. "This is a story that's going to shock everyone who hears it."
Mai, 33, has never been allowed to attend school in a village traditionally dominated by men. In the rural Pakistan area where she lived, it is common for women to be used as an example to settle disputes, and sometimes women are even traded to resolve problems.
Mai herself was at the center of such a dispute three years ago. Her younger brother was accused of insulting a more powerful neighboring clan. Mukhtar was told that if she begged for her brother's pardon she would be able to clear the family name.
"It was in my mind that this is the tradition of the head of the council -- that if a lady goes there, then he places his hand on the head of the woman and he says, 'OK, you are excused.'"
But that's not what happened. Members of the all-male council attacked and raped her.
"There, in the presence of 200 people, four men took me and they abused me. I told them, they're like my brothers, not to do this. But they did not listen to me," she said.
When it was over, Mai was forced to walk home half-naked and publicly disgraced.
"Not only have you been completely shamed, you have shamed your entire family," said New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. "And the way to wipe that out is to commit suicide. And that's the expectation across rural Pakistan."
Fighting Back, Building Schools
But Mai's reaction was quite the opposite. She pressed charges against the rapists, and 14 men were arrested. Then, at great personal risk, she testified against her attackers in court. Six of the men were found guilty, and one was sentenced to death.
The case made international headlines. The embarrassed Pakistani government awarded Mai a sum equivalent to nearly 20 times the average annual Pakistani salary.
She could have moved away and started a new life. But instead, Mai used the money to build two local schools.
"Education is power. People can be trampled on if they are not educated. But if they are educated they can fight back," she said.
After the trial, the accused men appealed their sentences, and the province let five of them go free. Mai feared for her safety, but she pressed on.
Pakistan's supreme court later took the case and ruled in her favor. All 14 of the rapists and their accomplices are now in prison.
"Sexual violence is an issue for women in every country, and if a woman like Mukhtar Mai can speak out against it with such incredible odds, then really she can be an example for women globally," said Nisha Varia of Human Rights Watch.
In fact, Mai is doing just that.
"I've gained a lot of strength from building the school," she said. "I would not be alive today if I had not gained this strength, and I have more faith in Pakistan because of this."
Copyright (c) 2005 ABC News Internet Ventures
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/PersonOfWeek/story?id=1237950&page=1
ABC News
Pakistani Rape Victim Becomes Beacon for Women's Rights
Oct. 21, 2005 — - Three years ago, Mukhtar Mai was brutally raped in her remote village in Pakistan. After a long struggle, Pakistan's supreme court convicted her attackers, and she's only able to talk about it now.
"I feel very happy, and God will look after me in the future," she said. "I am very, very hopeful that I will get justice."
Tomorrow Mai will travel to New York, her first trip out of Pakistan, to receive Glamour magazine's "Woman of the Year" award. And she'll travel around the country to speak on the plight of rural women.
"We look for strength. We look for persistence -- a woman of the year is someone who believes that women can do whatever they set their mind to, and Mukhtar illustrates those qualities better than anybody," said Cindi Leive, Glamour's editor in chief. "This is a story that's going to shock everyone who hears it."
Mai, 33, has never been allowed to attend school in a village traditionally dominated by men. In the rural Pakistan area where she lived, it is common for women to be used as an example to settle disputes, and sometimes women are even traded to resolve problems.
Mai herself was at the center of such a dispute three years ago. Her younger brother was accused of insulting a more powerful neighboring clan. Mukhtar was told that if she begged for her brother's pardon she would be able to clear the family name.
"It was in my mind that this is the tradition of the head of the council -- that if a lady goes there, then he places his hand on the head of the woman and he says, 'OK, you are excused.'"
But that's not what happened. Members of the all-male council attacked and raped her.
"There, in the presence of 200 people, four men took me and they abused me. I told them, they're like my brothers, not to do this. But they did not listen to me," she said.
When it was over, Mai was forced to walk home half-naked and publicly disgraced.
"Not only have you been completely shamed, you have shamed your entire family," said New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. "And the way to wipe that out is to commit suicide. And that's the expectation across rural Pakistan."
Fighting Back, Building Schools
But Mai's reaction was quite the opposite. She pressed charges against the rapists, and 14 men were arrested. Then, at great personal risk, she testified against her attackers in court. Six of the men were found guilty, and one was sentenced to death.
The case made international headlines. The embarrassed Pakistani government awarded Mai a sum equivalent to nearly 20 times the average annual Pakistani salary.
She could have moved away and started a new life. But instead, Mai used the money to build two local schools.
"Education is power. People can be trampled on if they are not educated. But if they are educated they can fight back," she said.
After the trial, the accused men appealed their sentences, and the province let five of them go free. Mai feared for her safety, but she pressed on.
Pakistan's supreme court later took the case and ruled in her favor. All 14 of the rapists and their accomplices are now in prison.
"Sexual violence is an issue for women in every country, and if a woman like Mukhtar Mai can speak out against it with such incredible odds, then really she can be an example for women globally," said Nisha Varia of Human Rights Watch.
In fact, Mai is doing just that.
"I've gained a lot of strength from building the school," she said. "I would not be alive today if I had not gained this strength, and I have more faith in Pakistan because of this."
Copyright (c) 2005 ABC News Internet Ventures
Sunday, October 23, 2005
Cleanup and mood elevation
After writing about discursive determinism, I thought I'd make some simpler announcements about the state of reality in my blogworld...
I have temporarily turned my comments function off because my Coulter post (which I deleted recently) was bombarded with blog-spam. I don't know much about it, but I assume it functions similar to other spam. The comments were things like "Great blog! Do you want to date Black women? Go to this site!" and "Hey, I couldn't agree with you more about what you just wrote. Want to invest in gold? Click here!" Sheesh.
I will take comments in the meantime, at stannard67 [at] aol.com and will publish them here.
In the mood elevation/taking delight in the Republican quagmire department:
"I certainly hope that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation were not a waste of time and dollars."(Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson forgetting Clinton on "Meet the Press," October 23)
Also, Delaware Dem has a Bush Disapproval Map Bush has net disapproval ratings in all states but Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Nebraska, Alaska, and Oklahoma, which net approve of Bush, and Montana and Mississippi, where his numbers are 50%. Bush even has net disapproval ratings in Texas.
After writing about discursive determinism, I thought I'd make some simpler announcements about the state of reality in my blogworld...
I have temporarily turned my comments function off because my Coulter post (which I deleted recently) was bombarded with blog-spam. I don't know much about it, but I assume it functions similar to other spam. The comments were things like "Great blog! Do you want to date Black women? Go to this site!" and "Hey, I couldn't agree with you more about what you just wrote. Want to invest in gold? Click here!" Sheesh.
I will take comments in the meantime, at stannard67 [at] aol.com and will publish them here.
In the mood elevation/taking delight in the Republican quagmire department:
"I certainly hope that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation were not a waste of time and dollars."(Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson forgetting Clinton on "Meet the Press," October 23)
Also, Delaware Dem has a Bush Disapproval Map Bush has net disapproval ratings in all states but Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Nebraska, Alaska, and Oklahoma, which net approve of Bush, and Montana and Mississippi, where his numbers are 50%. Bush even has net disapproval ratings in Texas.
Power, Externality and Consciousness
"Power concedes nothing without a demand" indeed. To attempt to be a conscientious opposition, not merely siding with the party not in power, but siding with the people against all misuse of power, requires an understanding of how power affects consciousness, how easily we are duped into docility and defensiveness, and how to find a way out of all that. And then, having isolated that precarious formula, one must absorb the realization that winning political struggles is only partially, and sometimes never at all, about having better ideas, or even the talent for communicating them to others. Most of us have, if we have at all, only localized and limited power to shape the contingencies that surround us and practically define us.
That last limiter is one that new age discursive determinists (translation: academic hippies who think we need a "consciousness shift, dude") find offensive. They think it gives the capitalists and their stormtroopers too much power. Of course, that begs the question; we don't "give" them power by acknowledging them; we didn't create them with our minds, we didn't otherizingly threat-construct them, whatever. If the argument is that we shouldn't "give them power" in our minds when trying to forge strategies and self-consciousness in order to fight for a better world, then point well-taken, but metaphor-based self-motivation is one thing (I'm actually a big fan of it in some contexts) while trying to understand the political world is quite another. If that makes me a dualist, then both of me is proud to call us that.
The explanation I offer does not strip us of our autonomy, while it does embrace the appeal to external facts, the representations of others, to understand the external limitations on our autonomy. It is not a discursive recognition of externality that limits us; it is the discursive failure to imagine remedies to limiting externalities, to imagine ways to transcend limits. What the new agers, the idealists, the lingo-fetishists fail to realize is that we need to give those externalities their due in the first place. It's solopsistic not to; it's stupid, and historically reflective of the naive elitism of thin-blooded aristocracy who, having never gone hungry, had no idea what hunger was really like.
Moreover, insofar as I concede that "truth" in the metaphysical sense is a rhetorical construct, and even find sympathy with Heidegger's awkward but effective attempt to explain the difficult distinction between constructed truth and "reality" in Being and Time, I would simply argue that such constructs, having the political weight they have, ought to be democratized and socialized along with all other public production facilities. If truth is a product, it should be manufactured to meet human needs, not the profits of a few. Undeniably, representation plays a determinative role in the political process, and even in economic exchange and production. Ideology shapes power and is power. To acknowledge that, and even to allow for a great degree of subjectivity in interpretation, does not require a radically subjective view of externalities, alterity, and actually existing structures. It merely requires giving others their due.
"Power concedes nothing without a demand" indeed. To attempt to be a conscientious opposition, not merely siding with the party not in power, but siding with the people against all misuse of power, requires an understanding of how power affects consciousness, how easily we are duped into docility and defensiveness, and how to find a way out of all that. And then, having isolated that precarious formula, one must absorb the realization that winning political struggles is only partially, and sometimes never at all, about having better ideas, or even the talent for communicating them to others. Most of us have, if we have at all, only localized and limited power to shape the contingencies that surround us and practically define us.
That last limiter is one that new age discursive determinists (translation: academic hippies who think we need a "consciousness shift, dude") find offensive. They think it gives the capitalists and their stormtroopers too much power. Of course, that begs the question; we don't "give" them power by acknowledging them; we didn't create them with our minds, we didn't otherizingly threat-construct them, whatever. If the argument is that we shouldn't "give them power" in our minds when trying to forge strategies and self-consciousness in order to fight for a better world, then point well-taken, but metaphor-based self-motivation is one thing (I'm actually a big fan of it in some contexts) while trying to understand the political world is quite another. If that makes me a dualist, then both of me is proud to call us that.
The explanation I offer does not strip us of our autonomy, while it does embrace the appeal to external facts, the representations of others, to understand the external limitations on our autonomy. It is not a discursive recognition of externality that limits us; it is the discursive failure to imagine remedies to limiting externalities, to imagine ways to transcend limits. What the new agers, the idealists, the lingo-fetishists fail to realize is that we need to give those externalities their due in the first place. It's solopsistic not to; it's stupid, and historically reflective of the naive elitism of thin-blooded aristocracy who, having never gone hungry, had no idea what hunger was really like.
Moreover, insofar as I concede that "truth" in the metaphysical sense is a rhetorical construct, and even find sympathy with Heidegger's awkward but effective attempt to explain the difficult distinction between constructed truth and "reality" in Being and Time, I would simply argue that such constructs, having the political weight they have, ought to be democratized and socialized along with all other public production facilities. If truth is a product, it should be manufactured to meet human needs, not the profits of a few. Undeniably, representation plays a determinative role in the political process, and even in economic exchange and production. Ideology shapes power and is power. To acknowledge that, and even to allow for a great degree of subjectivity in interpretation, does not require a radically subjective view of externalities, alterity, and actually existing structures. It merely requires giving others their due.
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
The Slow, Pleasant Fall of Bill O'Reilly
News Hounds documents here how Bill O'Reilly is stumbling down a long flight of stairs in an effort to discredit Cindy Sheehan. He can't even control his own guests, which must really piss off a control freak like him. Perhaps a few more obscene, sexually harassing phone calls will offer him some relief. You can tell by listening to the guy that he's a classic case of a man who will explode when denied his own way, his unquestioned right to control the agenda (political, sexual or otherwise) around him. I mean, he did express a desire to shoot Al Franken in the head when Franken exposed O'Reilly's lies about winning two Peabody awards...
News Hounds documents here how Bill O'Reilly is stumbling down a long flight of stairs in an effort to discredit Cindy Sheehan. He can't even control his own guests, which must really piss off a control freak like him. Perhaps a few more obscene, sexually harassing phone calls will offer him some relief. You can tell by listening to the guy that he's a classic case of a man who will explode when denied his own way, his unquestioned right to control the agenda (political, sexual or otherwise) around him. I mean, he did express a desire to shoot Al Franken in the head when Franken exposed O'Reilly's lies about winning two Peabody awards...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
