RANDOM DYKUN

On Fear of a Muslim Scourge

2007-12-24T14:00:00.001-08:00

Below is the response I wrote to a recent email. The email contained a message, that you can read at the bottom of this post, that has been circulating around the internet. It (inaccurately) claims that schools in the UK have removed segments about the Holocaust from their curriculum because it offended Muslim students and/or their parents:

Dear So and So:

I am personally concerned about what I perceive as a constantly intensifying anti-Muslimism in the West, so I have given the email you forwarded some thought and have written this; hope you don't mind me sending a somewhat lengthy response! (But you did send the email!)

First of all, I discovered that this email has been making the rounds on the internet, and someone has published a rebuttal of it here: http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/holocaust.asp

Second, I found this article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=445979&in_page_id=1770 .

Third, I think at the chore of the circulating email is a virulent anti-Mulimism, and I think that the writer of the email is blind to his/her own prejudice.

It is not government policy in Britain to stop teaching about the Holocaust, nor is there a widespread refusal on the behalf of schools to stop teaching about the Holocaust, or the Crusades, or any other matter that upsets SOME, not ALL, Muslim students (or their parents). What there is is a British government study that shows that a tiny minority of teachers and ONLY ONE UNIVERSITY have stopped the teaching of these things. So what there is is a trend--a very minor trend on behalf of SOME teachers in Britain to drop the teaching of these things. There are SOME teachers who are afraid. And it is a MINOR trend, and definitely not a government policy.

I would agree that teachers and institutions that do drop teaching the Holocaust--where the teaching of the Holocaust is a mandatory part of the school curriculum, WHICH IT IS NOT throughout the whole of the UK (see above links)--should be reprimanded/penalized. However, I believe that whoever originally wrote that email flew off into hysterics and is reproducing the very kind of prejudicial thinking that was at the root of the Holocaust, for the following reasons:

Not ALL Muslims are against this kind of teaching, and by far not ALL teachers in Britain are refusing to teach the Holocaust--but the email suggests such is the case in he UK. Such uncareful suggestion/careless thinking betrays, to my mind, a fear of a Muslim menace on behalf of the writer, much like fear of a Jewish menace once influenced people's thinking about society and politics. Black and White, simplistic and essentializing, and hysterical thinking is the very root of the fundamentalist kind of thinking that is always the cause of social entropy, of the problem of social harmony in society breaking down: It takes much more careful thinking/feelings for there to be peace, and such thinking takes EFFORT. Common sense--effortless, lazy thinking--usually is the enemy.

The myth of a Muslim scourge menacing Europe and America--i.e., the West--is increasingly influencing how many in the West think of the problems of their world, and this myth echoes the racist mythology of a Jewish Scourge.

Also, the same study found the following to be the case:

A third school found itself 'strongly challenged by some Christian parents for their treatment of the Arab-Israeli conflict-and the history of the state of Israel that did not accord with the teachings of their denomination'.

The report concluded: "In particular settings, teachers of history are unwilling to challenge highly contentious or charged versions of history in which pupils are steeped at home, in their community or in a place of worship."

So why didn't the writer of the email also pick up on this? Certainly this issue--what I think of as the public bullying of education by religious fanatics--has been a very significant issue in the US--for example, the Kansas legislature mandating the teaching of Creationism in its state public schools! So why don't we need to guard ourselves against all Christians, and be weary of the (Christian and/or free-market) fundamentalism that drives the administration of GW Bush, just as much as we need to be weary of all Muslims and the fundamentalist-driven government of Iran?

The scourge that is menacing "us" today is that of unleashed fundamentalisms. Fundamentalists--Christian fundamentalists, Islamic fundamentalists, and also free-market fundamentalists--as always are the ones driving this world into social entropy and ongoing, constant warfare. Fundamentalists are too angry and too lazy to think in anything other than black and white. And the writer of the email is thinking in Black and White.

Again, it is neither a Muslim nor a Christian scourge in general, but a growing Scourge of Fundamentalisms--of Muslim, Christian, Western and free-market fundamentalisms--that is troubling the world today. It is not a Clash of Civilizations, but a Clash of Fundamentalisms (if you'd like, have a read of this book with this latter title: http://www.powells.com/biblio/17-9781859846797-0).

Though I do not care much in general for the author Christopher Hitchens, I could say along with him that "God is Not Great," when it is the God of a Muslim or Christian Fundamentalist (see his bestselling book here: http://www.powells.com/biblio/18-9780446579803-0). And I agree with him that we need to get back on track and rigorously defend a secular public culture and the seperation of religion--ALL religion--from public (especially educational) policy. One can teach about religion in an objective manner, but you don't need to be a Christian or Muslim, or to teach Christian or Muslim or any other religious value systems, to teach children to be good and respectful. Not a single religion has, in practice, a monopoly on or can claim singular goodness!

Feel free to forward this to your list, if you'd like!

Stefan

ORIGINAL EMAIL message:

IN MEMORIAL

This week, the UK removed the Holocaust from it's school curriculum because it 'offended' the Muslim population because they say it never occurred.

This is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easy each country is giving into it.

It is now more than 60 years since the 2nd. World War in Europe ended. This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the 6 million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians and 1,900 Catholic priests who were murdered, massacred, raped, starved, burned and humiliated while German and Russian people looked the other way!

Now more than ever, with Iran among others, claiming the Holocaust to be a myth, it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets.

This e-mail is intended to reach 40 million people worldwide! Be a link in the memorial chain and help distribute this around the world.

Reading it over again, I see a few other problems in this email:

It is prejudiced in a further way: "While German and Russian people looked the other way. . ."

It wasn't only Germans and Russians who looked the other way as the Holocaust and other acts of extreme violence and Genocide took place in the course of the war. Frenchmen, Dutchmen, Belgians, Italians, Hungarians, Romanians, etc.--EVERYONE ON THE CONTINENT, pretty much--also looked the other way. Some even argue that the Americans and British "looked the other way" as the Holocaust took place. Thus, the writer betrays a prejudice against Germans and Russians by mentioning only them in particular. There were people "looking the other way"--i.e., trying to survive and avoid conflict--wherever Nazi, Fascist, and Soviet regimes existed. Also, there is much-too-much one sided blame here, too much posturing in a holier-than-thou manner; that is, I wonder if the writer of this email would have behaved any differently in the same context. So, then, is the writer meaning to suggest that there is something in the nature of Germans and Russians that made them look the other way, something that the writer might not be susceptible to, had s/he had to survive under the extreme conditions as either a citizen of Nazi Germany or the USSR, or as the citizen of a country under Nazi, Fascist or Soviet occupaiton?

Another issue: It wasn't 20 million Russians who died, but 20 million SOVIET CITIZENS who died, of whom 10-11 million alone where citizens of Ukraine (and it is impossible to know how many among them were ethnic Ukrainians or Russians). That figure of 20 million dead includes Slavs, Balts, and Central Asians, as well as Siberians, Germans, Jews and others, all of whom lived in the USSR at the time. It is just more lazy thinking to use the labels "Soviet" and "Russian" interchangeably, even if it is customary and "common sense," and how everyone talked about the USSR during the Cold War. Many, if not most, members of non-Russian diasporas whose homelands were part of the USSR never spoke in such manner, and frequently protested such usage in the press and academia.

El Gringo Does the Copa

2007-03-10T02:55:00.000-08:00

as GW makes the rounds in mexico, brazil, guatemala, colombia and uruguay, the bush administration has been eager to make the trip appear as though it has nothing to do with hugo chavez, i.e., with the awakening from neoliberal torpor that is ongoing in latin america:

"I know you want to make this trip about Chavez," Snow [i.e., Tony Snow, the current whitehouse spokesperson] told reporters aboard Air Force One as it flew to Uruguay. "It's not."

--here for article; the article will come down from yahoo soon.

of course, this is a lie. a smoke screen. chavez himself summed up the purpose of bush's trip well, stating at an "anti-imperialist" rally in Buenos Aires, Agentina:

"I believe the chief objective of the Bush trip is to try to scrub clean the face of the empire in Latin America. But it's too late."

bush's trip has everything to do with chavez and the movement against the washington consensus that is gaining force in latin america, of which chavez is a leading figure.

in tandem to bush's latin american visit, the US press and bush administration spokepeople have also posed as though the adminsitration is holier-than-thou vis-a-vis chavez's penchant for calling bush names--i.e., devil, gringo, etc. though bush may not have engaged in any direct name-calling of chavez, his administration spokespeople have in the past called him names--dictator. their new tact of calling chavez "the bolivarian gentleman," as in the quote below, is a phony attempt to assume a holier-than-thou position in this labeling game:

Calling Chavez the "Bolivarian gentleman," Thomas Shannon, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemispheric Affairs, said he's made it clear that he doesn't see the value of any engagement with the United States. Returning from a trip last month to Brazil and Argentina, undersecretary of state Nicholas Burns said, "We don't obsess about Hugo Chavez."

one can criticize chavez for using such "colorful" language for how it plays into this game of who-seems-the-crazed-versus-gentlemanly stateman, but realities on the ground under chavez in venezuela--the real difference his government is making in the lives of the poor and lower middle classes--versus the true history of american intervention in latin america makes everything clear.

of course, this does not clear up the problem, since few people in mass society actually study any real history and thus for them, the media gets to paint the portrait. . .

not to mean, however, that i am personally opposed to chavez's rhetoric. . .

finally, if the US is not obsessing about chavez (i.e., about what he and his allies are successfully accomplishing today in latin america and against the Washington Consensus), why then did bush feel the need to state such things as the following:

"I don't think America gets enough credit for trying to help improve people's lives. And so my trip is to explain, as clearly as I can, that our nation is generous and compassionate."

On Horowitz's Attack on His Imagined Left Wing Academy

2007-03-08T12:00:00.000-08:00

Return of the Campus Witch Hunts
David Horowitz and the Thought Police

to begin with, the most crucial, to my mind, excerpt from the article:

DESPITE HIS alleged devotion to neutrality in the curriculum, Horowitz has yet to call on any business school to hire a labor leader or the economics department to hire enough Marxist economists to balance out the curriculum. I don't see him calling for critics of the petroleum industry to be welcomed in UT's big-oil geology department.

By DANA CLOUD

David Horowitz is a self-appointed general of the right-wing thought police. In 2006, he published The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America. In it, he named me and 100 other professors as threats to national security akin to terrorists.

This spring, he is coming out with the next salvo in the war over the academy--a book called Indoctrination U, in which he has taken special aim at University of Texas (UT), where I teach, among others.

On February 17, the Daily Texan student newspaper published his op-ed claiming that there are two Universities of Texas--one a world-class institution, and another where "faculty regard themselves as activists, not scholars, and their curriculum is designed not to teach students how to conduct a disinterested inquiry, but to convert them to a sectarian ideology and recruit them to its causes."

"Students are being given an indoctrination, not an education," he claims--and as examples, he points to the Center for Women's and Gender Studies, the Communication Studies Department, and the Division of Rhetoric and Writing. I am affiliated with all of these programs and a clear target in his "new" book, but the Texan would not print my rebuttal.

Many of my colleagues say that we ought not "take Horowitz's bait." Among scholars and activists, he is regarded as something of a kook and a windbag. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has argued the weak line that disciplining faculty for supposed transgressions against academic freedom should be left up to university administrators, not politicians.

Then there are the organizations and professors who have devoted themselves to refuting Horowitz's "facts" about their publications and activism. I believe this also is a wrong approach, because his "facts" about faculty syllabi and political affiliations are not in question. It is urgent that we challenge Horowitz politically.

Horowitz's theatrics and demagoguery mask a very serious agenda: to discredit, harass and censor critical intellectuals and activists on our campuses. He knows that universities have historically been spaces of critical thinking and dissent. Students and professors have been organizing against the war and against the greed and hypocrisy of the right, and he would like nothing more than to hound us from our jobs.

* * *

CONTRARY TO his image as disaffected crank, Horowitz has been increasingly successful.

In state legislatures across the U.S., for example, he has proposed the misnamed "Academic Bill of Rights," which purports to call for balance and openness in the college curriculum--but which, in fact, would give legislators and university administrations a warrant to police faculty on the basis of "ideological neutrality." Los Angeles Times columnist Rosa Brooks explains that the Academic Bill of Rights is "merely a smokescreen for the McCarthyite agenda beneath the lofty rhetoric."

He has national influence as well. For example, Rep. John Boehner, the leader of the Republicans in the House, wrote last year that as former head of the Education and the Workforce Committee, he told Horowitz "the committee shared his concern about bias in colleges."

Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, a protégé of Karl Rove and architect of George Bush's "No Child Left Behind Act," recently appointed a Commission on Higher Education to oversee U.S. universities.

Alan Jones, writing in Inside Higher Ed, reports, "Horowitz, with assistance from Karl Rove and the former House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, has briefed Republican members of Congress on his Academic Bill of Rights campaign, and DeLay has even distributed copies of Horowitz's political primer 'The Art of Political Warfare: How Republicans Can Fight to Win' to all Republican members of Congress. Rove refers to Horowitz's pamphlet as 'a perfect pocket guide to winning on the political battlefield.'"

In 2003, Horowitz started the right-wing campus watch group called Students for Academic Freedom, which encouraged students to sneak into classes to take notes and report on "suspicious" professors.

Even Horowitz's brief article in the Texan emboldened a group called the Young Conservatives of Texas to call for students to report any professor who is "biased"--translation: any professor who makes any political remark tangential to class material, criticizes the war, assigns readings by feminists and Marxists, and so on--to a Professor Watch List, which has its own Facebook page.

The YCT's letter to the editor published in the Texan stated, "Professor bias is a problem that must be confronted directly and vigorously if it is to be eliminated on the UT campus. For this reason, the Young Conservatives of Texas are reviving the Professor Watch List. Professors who use their authority to indoctrinate rather than to educate will be added. YCT is currently accepting submission forms from students who want a professor considered for addition to the Watch List."

This is a chilling McCarthyite tactic, and it is happening at universities across the country.

Horowitz's activities have prompted legislators and university administrators--including those at the University of Texas and others--to implement faculty codes of conduct, and his efforts have brought a number of scholars under scrutiny.

Horowitz claimed a victory in Pennsylvania after 2006 hearings on the Academic Bill of Rights proposal led the governing bodies of Temple University and Penn State to create new faculty guidelines, with language mirroring his proposal's prohibition of "irrelevant" political material and respect for divergent opinions, no matter how unsubstantiated they may be.

Under this requirement, professors should give equal weight and respect to creationism and evolution, or to racist views and antiracist views.

In this atmosphere, antiwar professors aren't safe, and a growing number of outspoken critical intellectuals are facing university firing squads. The University of Colorado has moved to dismiss American Indian scholar Ward Churchill in the wake of Horowitz's attacks.

Other targets include Douglas Giles, a religion professor at Roosevelt University in Chicago; professor of Islam Kevin Barrett at the University of Wisconsin; the widely respected University of Michigan Middle East studies professor Juan Cole, who was blackballed during a job search at Yale; Nancy Rabinowitz, who lost control of a center at Hamilton College after it invited Ward Churchill to speak; Nicholas De Genova of Columbia University; Timothy Shortell, who lost a chairmanship at Brooklyn College over his comments about religion; and Stanford University Middle East studies scholar Joel Beinin.

* * *

DESPITE HIS alleged devotion to neutrality in the curriculum, Horowitz has yet to call on any business school to hire a labor leader or the economics department to hire enough Marxist economists to balance out the curriculum. I don't see him calling for critics of the petroleum industry to be welcomed in UT's big-oil geology department.

It is obvious that his attempts to police freedom of thought are aimed at only one small part of the ideological spectrum. He would like nothing more than to see critical progressive faculty lose their jobs--not because we advocate orthodoxy, but because we question his orthodoxy.

Horowitz denounces teachers who tell the truth about racism and sexism, because he denies that racism and sexism exist.

He defended former Harvard University President Larry Summers, who stepped down amid an outcry at his remarks to the effect that women are biologically impaired in math and science. In a public lecture at the University of Texas, Horowitz claimed that the fact that Oprah Winfrey--whom he called "a fat Black woman"--has made it to the top of society proves that racism is no longer a barrier to success for most Black Americans. He has argued that Blacks benefited from slavery.

These arguments are ironic coming from a former left-wing activist who was once closely tied to the Black Panthers and sympathetic with a number of radical organizations. A child of Communist parents, Horowitz spent the 1950s and 1960s engaged in radical activism. He worked at the influential New Left publication Ramparts, becoming an editor.

But after a falling out with the Bay Area Panthers, Horowitz moved rapidly to the right. By 1984, he voted for Ronald Reagan and began building a new career as a denouncer of the left.

Working under the leadership of then-Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams, Horowitz trained right-wing organizations and politicians dedicated to overthrowing the elected left-wing government in Nicaragua. In 1988, he served as a speechwriter for Sen. Bob Dole and socialized with Reagan, William Bennett and Newt Gingrich. Nation correspondent Scott Sherman reports that Horowitz was "part of the brain trust that launched anti-affirmative action Proposition 209 in California."

He has written numerous books, including Hating Whitey, in which he denounces Black activists and scholars, who he claims have betrayed the color-blind vision of Martin Luther King Jr. In his crusades against what he calls the "PC gulag," Horowitz started the Center for the Study of Popular Culture (CSPC), and a legal arm, the Individual Rights Foundation.

He maintains a daily online presence at the FrontPage magazine Web site, as well as at discoverthenetwork.org, which charts alleged links among progressive scholars, activists, culture workers, politicians and terrorists. He has an online column at Salon.com, and his editorials appear in newspapers across the country.

The job of witch-hunter seems to pay well. In 2003, Horowitz took home more than $300,000 in compensation from the CSPC.

According to the AAUP, his various operations have taken in millions from an interconnected network of far-right foundations, including the Olin (a principle funder of the neocons' Project for a New American Century), Bradley (whose founder was an early supporter of the John Birch Society), Castle Rock (previously the Adolph Coors Foundation) and Scaife Foundations. In addition, he has tens of thousands of small donors solicited via e-mail.

David Horowitz is no penny-ante crackpot. He is a serious political operator with the resources, connections and staying power to do real damage.

He must be confronted wherever he appears, and whenever he launches his attacks--or down the road, we may be remembering the Horowitz years as we do the devastation wrought on the left by Joseph McCarthy.

DANA CLOUD is an associate professor at the University of Texas who found herself a target of right-wing witch-hunter David Horowitz.

This article originally appeared in the Socialist Worker.

got the article here.

how much freedom of speech in the US?

2007-02-27T12:58:00.000-08:00

the following article was originally posted here.

Freedom of press needs shield law

By AMY GOODMAN
GUEST COLUMNIST

Josh Wolf, videographer and blogger, is now the journalist imprisoned longest in U.S. history for refusing to comply with a subpoena. He has been locked up in federal prison for close to six months. In July 2005, Wolf was covering a San Francisco protest against the G-8 Summit in Scotland (G-8 stands for the Group of Eight industrialized nations: Britain, France, Russia, Germany, the U.S., Japan, Italy and Canada). He posted video to the Web and sold some video to a local broadcast-news outlet. The authorities wanted him to turn over the original tapes and to testify. He refused.

In a recent court filing, U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan says it's only in Wolf's "imagination that he is a journalist."

The Society of Professional Journalists must be equally imaginative. Their Northern California chapter named Josh Wolf Journalist of the Year for 2006, and in March will give him the James Madison Freedom of Information Award. "Josh's commitment to a free and unfettered press deserves profound respect," SPJ National President Christine Tatum said.

The SPJ is also honoring San Francisco Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, who had faced prison for refusing to reveal who leaked grand-jury testimony about steroid use in baseball. On Thursday a lawyer pleaded guilty to leaking them secret grand jury documents from the BALCO steroids investigation, sparing the two reporters from jail time.

The problem for Wolf? Independence. He lacks the backing of a large media organization that could agitate to protect his rights. Wolf says there is "a divergence between how the government's handled my situation as an independent journalist and how they've dealt with the corporate media, which have also been found in civil contempt."

The First Amendment states: "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom ... of the press." By forcing journalists to hand over tapes, notes and other material, and to testify, the government is making just such a law. Whistle-blowers and others in dangerous situations will no longer come forward to provide information to reporters if they think their names will be divulged. Journalists must be free to protect their sources and to report the truth if democracy is to function.

Wolf's lawyer, Martin Garbus, one of the nation's leading First Amendment attorneys, says the government has done an end run around California's shield law, which would have guaranteed Wolf protection. The authorities called on the Joint Terrorism Task Force, or JTTF, which moved the case to federal court, where no shield law exists (as reporters in the Valerie Plame case discovered).

The grand jury is investigating whether arson was attempted on a San Francisco police car, though the squad car was not damaged beyond a broken taillight. A police officer was injured after the squad car he was in was driven into the protest march (that case was investigated then dropped by the local district attorney); however, Wolf insists he was not videotaping either incident. What is clear is that by focusing on the alleged attempted arson of the car, the JTTF can assert jurisdiction, as federal anti-terrorism dollars, they say, paid for part of the car. With those legalistic jurisdictional acrobatics, Wolf is stripped of California shield-law protections, and remains locked up without charge until he turns over his tape and submits to the Bush administration inquisitors.

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a brief in his support, pointing out how JTTFs across the country, under the guise of investigating "terrorism," are targeting anti-war groups and compiling databases of law-abiding citizens critical of the administration.

Wolf, 24, is staying healthy in prison, reading a lot and learning from other inmates. He mails entries to be posted to his blog at joshwolf.net. Garbus expects him to remain in prison at least until the grand jury expires in July.

Freedom of the press means freeing journalists to do their work. Congress can ensure that by passing a federal shield law.

Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour.

US's Self-Proclaimed Decision-Maker Makes Wrong Decision, Again

2007-01-27T05:27:00.000-08:00

from this link to an AP piece on yahoo (the link will disappear in a couple of days):

"It's pretty clear that a resolution that in effect says that the general going out to take command of the arena shouldn't have the resources he thinks he needs to be successful certainly emboldens the enemy and our adversaries," Gates said Friday.

"I think it's hard to measure that with any precision, but it seems pretty straightforward that any indication of flagging will in the United States gives encouragement to those folks," Gates said, referring to the anti-government forces in Baghdad. He added that he was certain this was not the intent of those who support the congressional resolution, "but that's the effect."

then the executive branch shouldn't escalate a war that is opposed by the majority of those in the legislature and in society in general. the US president is not a fucking king and sole decision-maker, and though elected for a four year term, he should look at mid-term elections as a referendum on his performance.

Fight Hypocrisy, Prosecute their Duplicity and Complicity

2006-12-31T07:28:00.000-08:00

Got this from a friend today and thought it brilliant:

Please join me in taking the time today to write an email or make a phone call to your senator or congressman to request the extradition of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney to Iraq to be tried for war crimes by an Iraqi citizens's jury, and subsequently sentenced if found guilty.

Like Saddam Hussein, Cheney and Rumsfeld have the blood of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands on their hands as the result of their policies.

Let's allow the Bush administration to demonstrate their integrity and clear vision by administrating their brand of justice consistently.

Thank you.

Pass this on if you can.

For the State of Minnesota:

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D) Fax: 202-228-2186
Sen. Norm Coleman (R) Fax: 202-224-1152
Rep. Gil Gutknecht (R-1) Fax: 202-225-3246
Rep. John Kline (R-2) Fax: 202-225-2595
Rep. Jim Ramstad (R-3) Fax: 202-225-6351
Rep. Betty McCollum (D-4) Fax: 202-225-1968
Rep. Martin Sabo (D-5) Fax: 202-225-4886
Rep. Mark Kennedy (R-6) Fax: 202-225-6475
Rep. Collin Peterson (D-7) Fax: 202-225-1593
Rep. James Oberstar (D-8) Fax: 202-225-0699

NOTE: if you are from somewhere outside of minnesota, it is easy to find online the emails and phone #s of your congresspeople and senators for your area.

Mel Gibson--The Director as Torturer

2006-12-29T05:46:00.000-08:00

been gone from here for a really long time. but now i want to rant.

i went to see mel gibson's apocalypto last week. as an enthusiast of historical fictions (books and movies), i thoroughly enjoy seeing or reading how other minds try to reinvent the cities, the customs, the dress, the conversations, the uses of technology, etc., of socieites long ago, and here was the first major film to take up a recreation of a part mesoamerican history.

i should have known not to expect much from the box-office's leading snuff filmaker. in fact, i went to the film already skeptical and highly guarded, but that was not enough.

mel gibson is an extremely deranged man who has made yet another outrageously inaccurate, ideologically absurd and insulting film (see this excellent commentary here) that is full of blood and gore.

since the article linked to above covers all of the ideological bullshit and obfuscations of gibson's latest peice of shit--labelling the film with anything more than a cuss word is to give it too much praise--i will comment briefly on gibson's indulgence of his passion for blood and guts. gibson has no qualms about subjecting his audience to his private fascination with cruelty while telling them his (flawed, racist, and ignorant) story.

gibson relishes in splashing blood on camera lenses and in conjuring the most minute, second-long glimpses of gore that he can throw at an audience to disrupt an otherwise flowing moment. he is far more affective than any horror movie director, the latter of whose gore usually is fanciful and removed from reality. with gibson, there is an air reality to the gore, but crucially, there is no critical distance in the portrayal. gibson does not for a moment intend to critique human cruelty--it is rather clear that this director delights in the bloodletting he portrays and derives juissance from his affective representations of cruelty. gibson's two latest movies present the director as torturer--and not in metaphor but in real affect, pure and simple. the passion of the christ was more about the testosterone level and sadomasichism of the director than it was about spirituality and a real, historical and suffering figure of world history, while apocalypto is. . .fucking ridiculous (as was the passion, too).

BASTARD: A Good Word for Someone SOO Dishonest about the Difference between 650,000 v. 30,000 Deaths

2006-10-12T14:21:00.001-07:00

From another recent Democracy Now! interview, on the subject of estimated deaths in Iraq since the US invasion and occupation began in 2003:

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Why don't you lay out exactly what you found?

LES ROBERTS: Sure, we, as you said, went to about 50 neighborhoods spread around Iraq that were picked at random, and each time we went, we knocked on 40 doors and asked people, “Who lived here on the first of January, 2002?” and “Who lived here today?” And we asked, “Had anyone been born or died in between?” And on those occasions, when people said someone die, we said, “Well, how did they die?” And we sort of wrote down the details: when, how old they were, what was the cause of death. And when it was violence, we asked, “Well, who did the killing? How exactly did it happen? What kind of weapon was used?” And at the end of the interview, when no one knew this was coming, we asked most of the time for a death certificate. And 92% of the time, people walked back into their houses and could produce a death certificate. So we are quite sure people didn’t make this up.

And our conclusion was comparing the death rate for that 14 months before the invasion, with the 40 months after, that the death rate is now about four times higher. And, in fact, it’s twice as high as when we last spoke two years ago and when we did our first study. So, things have gotten bad, as you stated. We think about 650,000 extra people have died because of this invasion, and about 600,000, some 90%, are from violence.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, I’m sure you have heard by now the responses of President Bush and military leaders about this. What is your response to their saying that this is not credible?

LES ROBERTS: You know, I don't want to sort of stoop to that level and start saying general slurs, but I just want to say that what we did, this cluster survey approach, is the standard way of measuring mortality in very poor countries where the government isn’t very functional or in times of war. And when UNICEF goes out and measures mortality in any developing country, this is what they do. When the U.S. government went at the end of the war in Kosovo or went at the end of the war in Afghanistan and the U.S. government measured the death rate, this is how they did it. And most ironically, the U.S. government has been spending millions of dollars per year, through something called the Smart Initiative, to train NGOs and UN workers to do cluster surveys to measure mortality in times of wars and disasters.

So, I think we used a very standard method. I think our results are couched appropriately in the relative imprecision of [inaudible]. It could conceivably be as few as 400,000 deaths. So we’re upfront about that. We don’t know the exact number. We just know the range, and we’re very, very confident about both the method and the results.

AMY GOODMAN: Les Roberts, this was President Bush when he was asked about the study Tuesday, during his morning news conference. He dismissed the study, as you know, and said Iraqis are willing to tolerate the level of violence in Iraq. The question came from CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX: A group of American and Iraqi health officials today released a report saying that 655,000 Iraqis have died since the Iraq war. That figure is 20 times the figure that you cited in December, at 30,000. Do you care to amend or update your figure, and do you consider this a credible report?

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: No, I don't consider it a credible report. Neither does General Casey, and neither do Iraqi officials. I do know that a lot of innocent people have died, and that troubles me and it grieves me. And I applaud the Iraqis for their courage in the face of violence. I am amazed that this is a society which so wants to be free that they're willing to -- you know, that there's a level of violence that they tolerate. And it's now time for the Iraqi government to work hard to bring security in neighborhoods, so people can feel, you know, at peace.

No question, it's violent. But this report is one -- they put it out before. It was pretty well -- the methodology is pretty well discredited. But I -- you know, I talk to people like General Casey and, of course, the Iraqi government put out a statement talking about the report.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX: The 30,000, Mr. President? Do you stand by your figure -- 30,000?

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: You know, I stand by the figure. A lot of innocent people have lost their life -- 600,000, or whatever they guessed at, is just -- it's not credible. Thank you.

[. . .]

LES ROBERTS: And another thought is that -- quite unrelated -- if someone said in the 9/11 attacks, “I think only 200 or 300 people really died,” we would be really, really upset. And I think in the long view, the danger of discarding this study, if it’s correct, is that, at a moment when we as a society should be showing contrition, our leaders have essentially expressed indifference to an extraordinary level of suffering. And that’s just the wrong message in terms of either our long-term security or peace in the Middle East.

Read transcript or listen to the entire Democracy Now! segment here.

Update: I should have called this post "BASTARD #2" and provided a linked to my first post about another bastard here. By the word "bastard" I mean someone who makes light of the deaths his government causes. . .but you can use any word you like. And there is no need to be polite about it. "Devil," is a good one, too.

911 Conspiracy Theory and Loose Change

2006-10-11T10:45:00.000-07:00

I agree with this statement by Diana Johnstone on the matter of the 911 conspiracy theory that was the basis of the Loose Change documentary:

I feel that the extreme version of the 9/11 conspiracy, complete with demolition and Pentagon missile, gives a bad name to conspiracy theory in general.

Even in the case of 9/11, there is what I would call a "soft" version of the conspiracy theory that deserves investigation, and that is the possible role of secret agents who may have infiltrated the al Qaeda plot enough to know what was afoot, but let it happen. Such an hypothesis involves only a few passive "conspirators", who, especially if they were from Israeli Mossad, would have had a patriotic motive: to bring the United States fully to the side of Israel in the "war against terror". But this is only a hypothesis. Of course, if the attacks were not really perpetrated by Arab student pilots, then the Mossad agents reportedly spying on them in Florida could not have known anything.

Against dualistic simplicity.

The most profound motive for criticizing the 9/11 conspiracy theory is that it partakes of the very sort of moral dualism advocated by the Bushites and neo-cons, but just turns it around. Instead of evil Arabs gratuitously attacking innocent Americans, all evil acts are committed by the villains in Washington. The Arabs are innocent of everything. However, I believe it is more intelligent, and more realistic, to acknowledge that Arabs in general are, on the one hand, innocent victims of U.S. and Israeli aggression, and, on the other hand, that some of them (for that very reason) want to strike back at the United States by any means possible. Israelis abuse Palestinians with a clear conscience because they have convinced themselves that all Jews are under perpetual threat of a new Holocaust. This chronic fear leads them to commit crimes. We are nearing a state of war of all against all, in which it is absolutely necessary for the sake of survival to keep a cool head and try to understand why people do the terrible things they do, in order to find solutions. The interaction of causal factors is complex, and often may not easily be "comprehended by the general public". But the proper task of honest journalists is to try to guide the public through those complexities.

She also makes some other interesting points, like:

Political attractiveness of the conspiracy theory.

It seems to me, on balance, that the evidence is so weak for this particular conspiracy theory that its popularity calls for a psychological explanation. After attacking those whom he calls "coincidence nuts" (who reject the conspiracy hypothesis) for "moral cowardice", Andreas Kargar makes an interesting comment: "But aside from that moral cowardice, the traditional left has always preferred to deal in the abstract generalities of historical processes and concepts, rather than in tangible specifics like hard evidence that can be comprehended by the general public. Perhaps those are the two reasons for the state of disarray in which they find themselves today."
Now, this is interesting because in this particular case, there is no "hard evidence", but there is a simple story line that "can be comprehended by the general public". The left that deals in "abstract generalities of historical processes and concepts" has indeed lost the attention of the general public (if they ever had it, which is most doubtful). But what are the preferences of that "general public"? Polls indicate that a quite considerable proportion of the American public believe in visits to earth by extraterrestrials. The acceptability of a narrative to the general public should not be a criterion of belief by people who are serious, honest and morally courageous.

Read the whole piece here.

Dyki Tantsi Juliji--Julija's Wild Dances

2006-09-29T12:55:00.000-07:00

Watch the video

My daughter Julija is becoming evermore agile on her feet and is well into the start of her career as a folklorist! She is 15 months in this short clip that was recently filmed by her vecmama (Latvian for "grandmother;" Julka also has a baba) and assembled by her mama, Zinta, who is also in the clip, playing the accordion.

Enjoy!

But of course!

2006-08-17T11:28:00.001-07:00

The kidnappings/killing of Israeli soldiers were but pretexts for war in Lebanon, as everyone with a critical mind already knew. They were the pretext for unleashing a plan previously agreed upon by the US and Israel--something I suspect that those with a critical mind also already suspected.

Seymour Hersh fills in the details of how the US and Israel had agreed on the bombing of Lebanon well before the kidnappings/killings of Israeli soldiers here. Or see this interview with him by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!

Also see Hersh's piece on US preparations for a possible attack on Iran here.

Seymour Hersh, btw, is an American parallel to the British journalist Robert Fisk, about whom I have written on this blog here and here--but about whom I got something wrong. I wrote that Fisk broke the story of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam in 1969. Wrong. It was Hersh. Hersh also broke the story of Abu Ghraib, which you can read here.

And one other thing: a succinct letter of protest against this most recent bombing of Lebanon on Tariq Ali's website, with other signatures. (I wrote about Tariq Ali in the same two posts linked to above about Fisk).

And oh: Democracy Now! has been doing a great job of covering this most recent bombing of Lebanon, for anyone looking for one place to do a bit of reading on it.

The Supposedly Liberal Media

2006-08-17T11:17:00.000-07:00

The following is from a site called Third World Traveler:

Some of the points are a little dated (but they're relevant); read to the end for more general points. . .

15 Questions About the "Liberal Media"
from the book
Through the Media Looking Glass
Decoding Bias and Blather in the News
by Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon
Common Courage Press, 1995, paper

One of the most enduring myths about the mainstream news media is that they are "liberal." The myth flourishes to the extent that people don't ask pointed questions:
* If the news media are liberal, why have national dailies and newsweeklies regularly lauded those aspects of President Clinton's program that they view as "centrist" or "moderate," while questioning those viewed as liberal?
* If the news media are liberal, why is it that liberals are apt to be denigrated as ideologues, but status quo centrists or "moderates" are presented as free of ideological baggage?
* If the news media are liberal, why did most outlets praise Clinton's selection of David Gergen, who advocated Reagan policies, while pillorying civil rights lawyer Lani Guinier?
* If the news media are liberal, why did they applaud conservative White House appointees like Lloyd Bentsen and Les Aspin, while challenging liberals like Donna Shalala, Johnetta Cole and Roberta Achtenberg?
It also helps to look back at history and ask questions:
* If the news media are liberal, why have Clinton's meager tax hikes on the wealthy been referred to as "soaking the rich" or "class warfare," but President Reagan's giveaways to the wealthy were euphemized as "tax reform"?
* If the news media are liberal, why have national outlets been far tougher in scrutinizing Democratic presidents Carter and Clinton than Republicans Reagan and Bush?
* If the news media are liberal, why have they buried important facts, such as the shrinking of corporate income tax from 25 percent of federal expenditures in the 1960s to only about 8 percent today?
* If the news media are liberal, why have they given short shrift to reform proposals-tax-financed national health insurance, federally-supported child care, government jobs programs-that their own polls show are overwhelmingly popular with the public?
Pundits and commentators have gained increasing prominence in the media, often eclipsing the reporters:
* If the news media are liberal, why were the first two political pundits to appear on national TV every day of the week both conservatives: Patrick Buchanan and John McLaughlin? Was it their good looks?
* If the news media are liberal, why does the media spectrum typically extend from unabashed right-wingers to tepid centrists who go to great lengths-attacking progressive ideas and individuals-to prove they're not left-wing? Why do pundit debates on national TV have Wall Street Journal reporters representing "the left"?
* If the news media are liberal, why are TV pundit programs-even on "public television"-sponsored by conservative businesses like General Electric, Pepsico and Archer Daniels Midland?
* If the news media are liberal, why was Rush Limbaugh the first host in the history of American television to be allowed to use his national politics show to campaign day after day for a presidential candidate?
* If the news media are liberal, why do right-wing hosts usually dominate talk radio-even in liberal cities?
* If the news media are liberal, why are there dozens of widely syndicated columnists who champion corporate interests, but few who champion consumer or labor rights?
In analyzing the bias of any institution, it helps to look at who owns it. Which leads to a final question:
* If the news media are liberal, why are they owned and sponsored by big corporations that spend millions of dollars to lobby against liberal measures in Washington?

Bastard

2006-08-06T13:28:00.000-07:00

Israeli PM Ehud Olmert responding to European criticism of Israel's war in Lebanon:

"Please, don't preach to us about the treatment of civilians."

Update: Olmert made this statement while bitterly complaining that the European powers participated in the bombing of Kosovo (which took a heavy civilian toll) while, at the same time , never came under attack themselves.

As usual, no one can appreciate the plight of the Israelis.

The bombing of Yugoslavia was a horrendous act and the Europeans (and the Bush administration) are indeed hypocrites, but any attempt to justify your own participation in a slaughter is reprehensible. Olmert is a State Terrorist. War is Terror and Terror one way of fighting a War. Israel's bombs have already killed more CIVILIANS in Lebanon than all the suicide bombs of the recent Intifada. War is Terror and Terror is War. It's just that War is the usual label for what States do while Terror is what those resisting the actions of States are labelled by States. Those on the ground who are victim of State Terrorism often have a very different view of what States say and do. . .

Olmert's to my mind is a

We-are-under-permanent-attack, we've-done-nothing-to-provoke-these-attacks, we-must-defend-our-nation-at-any-and-all-cost-while-refusing-to-admit-our-complicity/duplicity in-the-making-of-our-own-screwed-up-situation kind of fundamentalism that is equally as dangerous and actually far more stupid than Islamic fundamentalism.

This is also the ridiculous and self-destructive kind of fundamentalism that, alongside market fundamentalism, has motivated everything the Bush administration has done since 911.

We can thank Bush and friends for letting this evil genie out of the bottle. See this here. And this for good measure.

2006-05-30T01:28:00.000-07:00

Video: The Mill and the Peasants

Watch the video

This is more footage from the town of Pidhajtsi in Western Ukraine, shot in August, 2005.

If a peasantry is a population bound to and dependent for survival upon the land through various means that grossly benefit local or not-so-local lords while keeping the individual farmer more or less locked in his/her place--such as via outright serfdom or through credit arrangements and dependency on local "lords" to pay out some cash—then the cash-crop and subsistence farmers of Western Ukraine qualify as a contemporary, postmodern peasantry of the latter sort.

In the previous two posts I have briefly discussed the plight of the people/farmers of the Western Ukrainian countryside. Here I continue: This is footage of men loading sacks of processed wheat flour into their wagons and tractors (see previous post for a comment about the persistence of wagons in the Ukrainian countryside).

There are three main cash-crops that people sell in Pidhajtsi and throughout the Western Ukrainian countryside; in order of economic relevance (i.e., in order of what is most lucrative for the peasant household), they are: sugar beet, wheat, and cow's milk. Each of these crops are harvested by the peasant household and brought elsewhere to be processed. Cow’s milk and wheat are brought to local processing plants where they are made, in the case of milk, into cheese, creams, pasteurized milk, etc., and into processed flour in case of the wheat. Sugar beets are brought to a burjakpunkt or drop-off point from whence they are hauled elsewhere to be processed into sugar. All of the sugar in Ukraine comes from sugar beets.

Each family has roughly 1 hectare of land in the fields. Nearly all of the work is done by hand using rudimentary, though time-honored, implements and little or no modern machinary. In addition to the aforementioned cash-crops (there are sometimes others, but those are the main ones) a typical household raises foodstuffs for home consumption: red beets, yellow beets (for feed), corn (for feed), potatoes and a variety of other vegetables and herbs. There is a common plumb-and-apple orchard and most homesteads have apple trees, while some have plumb and cherry trees and berry bushes. Plumbs, though certainly good for eating and commonly used in pastries, is also necessary for making the local samohonka or moonshine, which usually is not a vodka or horylka (the Ukrainian word for vodka), but a plumb-brandy called, in this part of Ukraine, slivjanka. (Note: plumb-brandy is called slivovitsa by other peoples of Eastern Europe, and sometimes rakija in the Balkans; to Hungarians, it is palinka). It is also important to note that just about every household has either one cow or a goat for milk from which creams and cheeses are made, and plenty of fowl (as shown in a previous post).

Just a few American families employing American agribusiness technology could farm the land around Pidhajtsi; instead, the land supports about 7-8,000 people, if you include the nearby villages as "suburbs” of Pidhajtsi (Ukrainians live clustered into towns and villages with the fields surrounding the settlements). Many analysts complain that Ukraine’s agricultural potential is massively underdeveloped.

When farmers take their foodstuffs to be processed, they are repaid by the factories not in cash but in barter: they receive a cut of the final processed goods made from their beets/wheat/milk. A portion of the processed goods go for home consumption; the rest is sold whenever the need for cash arises at a local, weekly market (every Thursday in Pidhajtsi). In this footage, the men are loading their share of the processed flour made from their wheat.

Sugar beets yield sacks of sugar, and milk yields pasteurized milk or other processed dairy products. With the wheat, people will bake their own bread at home and will use the sugar that was the fruit of their own labor. The processed, pasteurized dairy products often go to market, as most villagers use milk straight from the cow in their own diets.

I was universally told by people in Pidhajtsi that it is not worth it for anyone to bring milk to the dairy factory unless one has at least three or more cows. Thus, in the afternoon you can see Babas carrying bucket after bucket to and from home and factory a number of times.

Whether it is the dairy, beet, or wheat factory, everyone will tell you that the exchange rate is unfair and to the advantage of the processors.

Who owns and runs these factories?

I tried to get an answer to this question in the following ways:

1) I tried to get some interviews and to film inside some of the factories, but neither the mill nor the dairy plant was willing to oblige. At the dairy factory, I was told by the plant’s manager that the owner was not present, that he does not live in Pidhajtsi and that he is probably at another one of his plants. The manager also said that she already knew the owner would not be willing to be interviewed, and when I asked if I could interview her, she said she had no right to speak about the company and told the security guards present to escort me and my second-cousin off the factory grounds. And oh, one of the guards had already made sure that my videocamera was turned off.

It was more of the same at the mill; thus the footage here is shot not just across the street from the plant but from across the street and down the road a bit, as security had told me to move on.

At the burjakpunkt or beet pick-up site, I was allowed to film, though the people rather nervously allowed me to do so. I was hollered at anytime I turned my camera on any worker. The most violent response to my camera came from the man in the room where the local peasants came to collect their sacks of processed sugar. Some of that footage will appear later.

2) I tried to get some answers from local officials, but most of them were reticent, even after the Orange Revolution, to answer my questions about who owns what and how they came to own it.

However, I do know the following from the tales of locals: The mill and the dairy factory both were part of a Soviet-era conservatives factory that produced a range of foodstuffs (bread, pastries, jams, jarred salads, pickles, dairy products, etc.). It collapsed in the early 1990s, and most people say that the managers of the factory ran their business into the ground and sold off factory equipment for their own, short-term gain (others defend them saying that they could not adjust to market conditions so quickly after the end of the command economy). The mill and dairy factory were reopened years later as private businesses, but on much smaller scales.

Corruption and and lack of transparency in the agricultural sector and especially in the Ukrainian countryside are truly large-scale problems. Many in Pidhajtsi have come to feel that Yushchenko has neither the intention nor the will to truly take on rural problems, and sometimes complain that like all previous administrations, his is focused all-too-exclusively on industry (which also means on Eastern Ukraine). One major sign to many locals that Yushchenko is not concerned with their plight in the countryside was his memorandum with Yanukovych in which Yushchenko agreed to extend parlaimentary immunity from prosecution to local government officials. Another symptom of this lack of will for many is his close relationship with Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s so-called Chocolate King. Poroshenko owns a large chocolates-and-sweets factory in addition to other businesses, and is definitely a New Eastern European worth an estimated $350 million, according to Warsaw-based Gazeta Wyborcza. He is widely perceived by many as profiting from the unfair barter practices in the countryside—a cheap supply of sugar for his factory contributing to is considerable wealth.

However, Ukrainians at the local level do have this problem: they barely self-organize to take on the power of rural agricultural corporations and officials. Western Ukraine is not Latin America and certainly not Chiapas, where there are local movements developing at the most grassroots of levels to take on or refuse the power of middlemen (coyotes) and corrupt politicians in the agricultural sector. Though the Orange Revolution showed an unprecedented level of civic activism and self-organization in Ukraine, and though such activism remains higher than it was in pre-OR times, people in general seem to have once again put all of their hope in the state and in politicians to make a difference. This is too bad. One recent speaker ruminated on whether Ukrainians have truly broken from what he called the following, centuries-old and unhappy tradition in Ukraine: apathy and disillusionment with political and civil-society processes creating a cycle of inaction only occasionally interupted by periods of revolutionary upheaval. He was not sure that Ukrainians are now solidly discovering the middlepath in which everyday actions by an active citizenry truly makes a difference, though many have proclaimed such is the result of the Orange Revolution.

This is what makes the apparent disappearance of the NGOs of the election campaign and Orange Revolution period so sad, and why it was so lamentable that the main (largest and best organized) activist group Pora! was more or less hijacked by those who wanted to make of it a political party. What Ukraine badly needs today is not more political parties but ongoing grassroots organizing efforts; and what Ukrainians should take as a contemporary model are the collectivist, self-organizing efforts of people on the ground in various parts of Latin America--or examples from their own history. A Zapatista, or even better yet, a Makhnovist (but without the guns) or OUN inspired model for regional self-organization could work well in agricultural Western Ukraine. This time, the fight would not be with foreign invaders but with locals, and the goal to ensure a better rate of exchange. A Ukrainian Cesar Chavez?

2006-05-22T09:12:00.000-07:00

A Baba Feeds the Fowl in Western Ukraine

Watch the video

This is footage that was shot in the town of Pidhajtsi (pop approx. 4,000), state of Ternopil, in western Ukraine in September, 2005. The people of the small towns and villages in this region--the Pidhajetskyj rajon (county of Pidhajtsi), which is among the poorest regions in Ukraine--survive as subsistence farmers with some degree of waged labor. The official unemployment figure for the county, according to pre-Orange Revolution stats, is 10-15%; a number of county officials told me that the actual figure is between 35-45%. Average wages/pensions are about $60/month. Nearly every household in the town of Pidhajtsi (Ukrainian counties are named for their seat of government) has three generations present whose members usually survive $2/day or less ($2/day being the true poverty line for people of the northern hemisphere, due to heating cost). The people of this region in general can not survive without raising and growing their own food. The scene in this clip: Nearly every household keeps chickens, geese, and ducks, while some also have turkeys. Baba Feeds the Fowl.

Poststructuralist Child Rearing (also Buddhist)

2006-05-14T23:29:00.000-07:00

Anti-Oedipus: I'll Do My Best
(Video Still)

Evo Morales: Gutsy--Very Gutsy

2006-05-01T16:46:00.000-07:00

President Evo Morales ordered soldiers to occupy Bolivia's natural gas fields Monday and threatened to evict foreign companies unless they give Bolivia control over the entire chain of production.

Read full article here.

Let Freedom Ring

2006-04-15T06:40:00.000-07:00

The US has the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world:

See full report here; the report says that rates of imprisonment throughout the so-called developing Third World are much lower.

Someone in Duluth, MN Had Somethin' to Say

2006-04-14T21:21:00.000-07:00

Someone had somethin' to say in Duluth, a town of approx. 87,000 on the North Shore of Lake Superior in northern Minnesota.

This marquee is right on the main drag downtown.

Went up there on a little vacation with my little one, who's playing below in the snow.

Though I try not to use the term "fascism" so loosely, I like the feisty marquee quite a bit. I appreciate it as a real sign of the (finally!) growing degree of disgust with the Bush administration in the US.

Books on Complicity and Duplicity in the Rise of Islamic Fundamentalism and the Making of the Modern Middle East

2006-04-08T12:00:00.000-07:00

Anyone wanting to understand Western complicity and duplicity about its role in the making of the modern Middle East and the rise of Islamic Fundamentalism (in large part the effect of the West's free-market-for-multinational-coporations and access-to-energy-reserves fundamentalism), should read the following two books:

Tariq Ali's The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads, and Modernity and Robert Fisk's more recently published, The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East.

Ali's book is shorter, while Fisk's is a monumental tome written by a veteran foreign correspondent and anti-war activist. Both men are veteran authors and activists, while Fisk has been and continues to be present in many of the hot spots around the world in which the West and its Other confront each other.

If you have time for only one book, then read Ali's book. If you are really pressed for time, then skip the first section (all of its chapters) and jump straight into the second, though the first section--mostly a personal narrative of Ali's life that is meant to orient your reading of his perspective on the rise of Western and Islamic fundamentalisms as a writer who is an insider and outsider to both Western and Muslim society--is interesting.

Both books are written with vivid and evocative prose full of witty turns of phrases, and are full of anecdotes or story-telling moments that illustrate the reality behind the facts of Western complicity and duplicity about its role in the making of the contemporary Middle East and Muslim world. They often do so from the most grassroots of perspectives, illustrating everyday life and experience on the ground in world wide hot spots--both joys and despairs--along the way. Most importantly, both authors eloquently illustrate how the current War on Terror is the story of two evil genies who keep trying to force each other back into the bottle from which they sprang, while at the same time they continue to rub the bottle's side. Trapped in the middle are those who have tried to make a (secular) solution in opposition to both of each of the genie's faiths in (market and Islamic) fundamentalism.

The current War on Terror is nothing more than a dead end or a formula for endless war from which profits are made and ideoligical capital gained at the expense of the victims of collatoral damage who, now and then, rise from the rubble to make their voices heard. These two books are a register of what many of those collatorally-dieing-and/or-suffering voices are trying to say: No to Islamic fundamentalism and NO to Western, market-fundamentalism as well.

See the post just below this one for more on Fisk's and Ali's books.

Robert Fisk and Tariq Ali v. Thomas Friedman, Samuel Huntington, and Christopher Hitchens

2006-03-25T20:57:00.000-08:00

Robert Fisk, for those who do not know, is an eminent foreign correspondent from Britain ~~who broke the story of the My Lai massacre carried out by US soldiers in Vietnam during the late 1960s~~ [it was his American parallel, Seymour Hersh, another excellent anti-war correspondent, who broke that story; sorry for the error] who has been an impassioned anti-war voice for decades, covering conflicts from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to Saddam Hussein's (US backed and orchestrated) invasion of Iran, the Israeli war in Lebanon in 1982, the most recent Balkan Wars and the two Gulf Wars, among many others. His writing is always eloquent and factual (though many would contest this claim), and excrutiatingly vivid and passionate. He is always focused on the most immediate, real aspects of war from the grassroots perspective. Like a good oral historian's tale puts flesh on the skeleton of the traditional, academic historian's way of writing history via dry recitation of fact and date, Robert Fisk's writing puts the flesh on clinical terms like "collateral damage" by showing where and how the flesh has been shorn from the victims of war.

Though I have long sought his journalism, I just began reading something longer by him. He is now the author of at least 4 lengthy tomes, though the book I picked up today is, I think, the longest of his texts: it is a newly published (in 2006), 1,000 pp. tome on the modern history of the Middle East and of the largely negative impact that the West has had in the making of that history that is entitled, The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East.

In the preface, he is as crafty and quotable as he is in his journalism, so I hope the rest of the text will prove as excellent; here are some lines I liked just from the preface:

"I don't like the definition 'war correspondent.' It is history, not journalism, that has condemned the Middle East to war. I think 'war correspondent' smells a bit, reeks of false romanticism; it has too much the whiff of Victorian reporters who would view battles from hilltops in the company of ladies, immune to suffering. . ."

Yet consider all those excited Giraldoes embedded for a stimulating ride. . .

"If the soldiers I watched decided to leave the battlefield, they would--many of them--be shot for dissertion, or at least court-martialled. The civilians among whom I was to live and work were forced to stay on under bombarments, their families decimated by shellfire and air raids. As citizens of pariah nations, there would be no visas for them. But if I want to quite, if I grew sick of the horrors I saw, I could pack my bag and fly home. . .[there would be] no counselling for the poor and huddled masses that were left to Iraq's gas, Iran's rockets, the cruelty of Serbia's militias, the brutal Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, the computerised death suffered by Iraqis during America's 2003 invasion of their counntry."

"I went to war as a witness rather than a combatant, an ever more infuriated bystander to be true, but at least I was not one of the impassioned, angry, sometimes demented men who made war."

"Yet innocence, if we can keep it, protects a journalist's integrity. You have to fight to keep it."

Tariq Ali is another writer/activist whose shorter works--in this case, his essays and speeches--have been of great interest to me, but whose longer works I have never read. So I have cut my teeth on his highly readable Clash of Fundamentalisms which was partially concieved as response critical of the eminent Harvard poli sci prof, Samuel Huntington's ridiculously simplistic and reductionistic Clash of Civilizations thesis.

Here is one quote that I find relevant in the context of all the recent hoopla over the difference between contemporary Islamic society and the West that was triggered by cartoons:

"We have to understand the despair, but also the lethal exaltation, that drives people to sacrifice their own lives. If Western politicians remain ignorant of the causes and carry on as before, there will be repetitions. Moral outrage has some therapeutic value, but as a political strategy it is useless. Lightly disguised wars of revenge waged in the heat of the moment are not much better. To fight tyranny and oppression using tyrannical and oppressive means, to combat single-minded and ruthless fanaticism by becoming equally fanatical and ruthless, will not further the cause of justice or bring about a meaningul democracy. It can only prolong the cycle of violence."

Tariq Ali is originally from Pakistan, has childhood memories of the horrors of the partition, studied at Oxford, has been engaged in political activism for years, was a Trotskyite for a while and opponent of Mao and of the Soviet crackdown of '68 (though I'm not sure what he would call himself today, these things are very important to me. . .). I appreciate his passionate way of writing, though I am a bit critical of the almost total lack of any spiritual sensibility in his writings and for what seems to me a bit too dogmatic atheism (I don't believe in a creator-and-manipulator-and/or-clock-maker God, either, but I am a practicing Zen Buddhist). Nonetheless, he has a healthy outrage a la Fisk or a la any normal human being unwilling to count body bags for progress, and is an incredible public speaker who once made a statement that has become very much so a political mantra for me:

"If the Bush administration were actually serious about Iraqi freedoms, it would support the indigenous, Iraqi pro-democracy movement instead of invading."

He was speaking on a tour of the US before the start of Gulf War II (of Junior's 100th or So Misadventure), in effort to do his part to try and prevent more body bags being piled up in the name of progress and from being spoken about clinically as the "collatoral damage" that is the inevitable side-effect of "precision bombing."

And oh, to conclude by comparing the work of both Fisk and Ali to that of the NYTimes' little darling (and fellow Minneapolis-St. Paul area native) Thomas Friedman:

1) I am pretty sure that Fisk's history of the Middle East will be a major improvement to Friedman's (who is a globalization/New World Order apologist and neoliberal or Milton Friedmanite thinker) recently published one much in the same way that Ali's book is an improvement over Huntington's. Over the years, Friedman has been at times equivocal about war and at other times a total hawk. He fully supported the Bush war in Iraq, though he has now turned critical of its handling, though belatedly, since opponents of the war predicted how miserably it would go well before it began. Thus he has been most vehemently critical of Donald Rumsfeld's conduct of the war, rather than of the ideology and conduct of the whole Bush administration, whose belief in America's altruistic mission in the world is a foundation of Friedman's own remarkably simplistic view of the world. (His view is remarkably simplistic for a man of his education and experience with travel; however, given that he interviews CEOs of multinationals and not workers in the trenches of sweat-shop labor for source info, the overly simplistic nature of his views is not surprising).

In short he often suggests in so many words that war is part and parcel of the market's freehand and of growing prosperity; or, to put it the way that the greatest philosophical apologist for war in the history of Western letters did, it's all just part of History's cunning.

Thus a criticism of Friedman by the astute Thomas Frank rings quite true, to the effect that Friedman's thinking is basically 19th century pro-imperialist, White Man's Burden liberalism dressed up in langauge reflecting postmodernity and globalization.

In contrast, Fisk as a correspondent in the Middle East and elsewhere, has remained a fiercely unequivocal voice against war who has fought for and kept his innocence.

This purity of view derived of innocence is something that both Friedman and the Nation's Christopher Hitchens should contemplate. Hitchens is the leading contender in competition with Friedman for the award of best writer among self-proclaimed progressives apologetic of war and imperialism. However, Hitchen's stubbornness may make it so that his pact with the Devil will go too deep for redemption (he was once part of the anti-war Left), while Friedman may still one day decide to have the NYTimes pay for his business class plane ticket to India or Palestine-Israel, but this time with the purpose of going to live the life of a factory-floor worker of a sweatshop or that of a typical Palestinian in the Gaza strip for a year. Such an adventure for Mr. Friedman would provide him with the fertile grounds for a new, groundbreaking piece of investigative journalism during which he could test his theories about growing prosperity in the globalized world order and the necessary evil of war. . .

2) Friedman views the conflict between the Western world and Islam today as neither a clash of civilizations, nor a clash of fundamentalisms, but a clash within a civilization--within Muslim society. The wicked governments of the Muslim world are, according to Friedman, the ones solely responsible for the conflict within the Muslim world and for the conflict with the West; they have, often in collusion with Islamic fundamentalists, duped the multiude of the Muslim world to blame not them, the responsible ones, but the West and most especially America. Of course, underlying this position is acceptance of the notion that the West and the Muslim world are engaged in a conflict between civilizations; however, for Friedman it is a conflict that is driven solely by the civil war that indeed rages in the heart of Muslim society--just never mind the role the West has played throughout the adventures of modernity in the making of that war. And as is his parlance, Friedman completely absolves the processes of (neoliberal) globalization and its architects of any and all responsibility for continuing and intensifying that Civil War. Fisk's and Ali's books in this case once again provide an excellent antidote to such drivel that apologizes for war and imperialism and that absolves the elites (and consumptive habits) of the West for their role in the making of the current situation.

And one more thing: Friedman claims that he is a representative of Minnesota's best progressive but centrist traditions. That's an oxymoron. He is an example of the Clinton-inspired drift of much of this state's left-of-center toward center or even right-of-center politics; he has never been a progressive. However, his newest pet topic--that of the imperative facing capitalism to develop alternative and renewable energy sources--might lead him down a path to redemption, but only if his new crusade wakes him up to the social as well ecological injustices of global capitalism which he now excuses as the price paid for progress.

For it will most likely be liberals who push for and conservatives who will succeed in making capitalism green in the future, especially since greening capitalism does not have to necessarily lead to limiting the profit-motive to other non-market values as well. Friedman will probably remain an apologist, never crossing over to the realm of the progressive he fancies himself to be.

Bush's War Against the Genie

2006-03-25T10:35:00.000-08:00

The "War against Terror" is the same as:

Trying to put a diabolical Genie back while diabolically continuing to rub the bottle.

It's a war of two bad Genies in which, if one of the Genies succeeds, everyone looses.

Don't you know, you're just supposed to be happy?

2006-03-21T21:19:00.000-08:00

In general, I agree, but. . .

So I was at bar tonight and got into a discussion with some random person who had decided to come over to the table where I was hanging with my brother and his buddy. She worked for Verizon and had seen me talking on my cellphone, and used that as a talking point to strike up conversation. I asked her how well she thought Verizon treated its employees, and then I asked if she knew how much the CEO was paid.

She immediately replied by asking, "Why do you have a chip on your shoulder?"

OK, so we now were clear on one thing: That we stood on opposite sides of the aisle. At that moment, I was pretty sure that she supported the war in Iraq, thought that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 911 and Al Qaida, and that there are terrorists who want to kill Americans because they hate Americans because they want to be Americans but can not be.

It turned out that she did.

So I asked her if she would like to know why I, personally, was curious to know how well she felt she was treated as a Verizon employee and also why I wanted to know how much the CEO and other top-dogs at Verizon made; she said sure. So I explained to her that from my understanding, the gap between the rich and the poor in the US has been gradually widening since 1900, but that post-WWII, the gap has been growing exponentially. I explained that in 1969 the average middle class American family required one working parent that worked around 40-50 hours a week to maintain a middle class lifestyle, and that today, well. . .we all know that it requires two working parents who work between 40-50 hours a week each to afford an average middle class lifestyle. I asked her where the money for all those extra hours is going--could a lot of it not be going, in many cases, to the increasingly outrageous "compensation" paid to executives? I asked, why have wages fallen (adjusted for inflation) since the 1960s? Could it have something to do with the greed that has driven, and the deregulation that has allowed, companies to ship jobs abroad and to drive wages downward, EVEN THOUGH globalization has taken place at a time in which so many major companies were already making plenty of profit?

I finished by asking where deregulation of the economy has gotten Americans.

Her response was to turn to her friend and say, "Soapbox. He's on a soapbox."

I have never thought very highly of the following bumerpsticker, but at that moment its message popped into my head and so I though to say to her, "Well, if you are not outraged, you're not paying attention."

But that's not true. She has been paying attention, enough at least to have just recieved a promotion from Verizon, and was on a business trip to Minneapolis in her new position. As far she was concerned, she was getting what she deserved for all her hard work. Also, as far as she was concerned, there are no disadvantaged people, just lazy ones.

Perhaps this person does deserve what she got as a promotion; I don't know. What I do know is that America has lost ALL $EN$E OF PROPORTION and necessity. Not, however, that there has ever been a consensus in the US on how much those higher up the corporate and business ladder deserve in compensation for greater risk and responsibility that was as just as that in the Europe of the post-war Third Way orientation. Kenneth Lay is just one character among many in a society that has become held hostage by greed and that rampantly produces pundits who announce that the Kingdom of peace and happiness will be realized by unleashing one's inner consumer. Dream Big, Think MTV Cribs!

I very much like that the Green Party has had in the past a platform about wage caps: no CEO or business owner should be allowed to pocket more than such and such a percentage of his/her average worker's daily take-home.

We also discussed the matter of Bill Gates' wealth, as she brought up the issue of philanthropy. She used the argument that someone like Gates was doing more for the world than someone like me, who has a chip on his shoulder and likes to preach from a soapbox.

Though I am not well enough armed intellectually to argue about the injustices of the joint-stock company that places profits for shareholders first and foremost over all other, nonmarket values and therefore to the detriment of the environment and numerous, previously-cohesive communities worldwide, I could engage with her in the following way (which I mention here, since Gates' great wealth comes primarily from his stock options and his company's monopolistic behavior):

Bill Gates' philanthropy vis-a-vis Africa and the AIDS problem protects his business interests, and thus is not sincere philanthropy. For the best explanation, check out the book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy by Greg Palast. In short, there is a big fight going on over generic drugs for AIDS, all of which comes under the rubric of protecting intellectual property rights. Big pharmaceutical companies in the North and West want the WTO to punish countries (mostly in the South and the East) that allow companies to make cheaper generic versions. Bill Gates wants countries to crack down on knock-offs of Microsoft products. He wants property rights to drugs and Windows to be protected at all cost. Coming under fire for this stance, he has decided to spend whatever-amount-he-has-offered on name brand AIDS drugs for Africa. But how many more people could be treated on his dole with generic brands? If he was really sincere, he would declare, "I am FOR generics and will still spend this much money on GENERICS." Many more people would be treated and many more lives would be saved--I forget exactly how many more, but I think it was 2 to 3 times more (check out Palast's book for the details). This is not a negligible amount of difference.

It is negligent not to pay attention to the increasing gap between the rich and the poor in today's world in which globalization and free trade are supposed to be reversing the situation.

Furthermore, corporations must either be forced to or learn to place nonmarket values on equal par with profits for shareholders; or rather, capitalism must be regulated in order that the importance and integrity of extra-market values are appreciated and respected. In other words, companies should not be allowed to continuously externalize the risk and costs of their business to the human community and environment; it all should be internalized and profit and prices made to reflect the real social and ecological cost of doing business.

Beware of the Herd Instinct!

2006-03-09T22:47:00.000-08:00

"War? It's baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad!"

This is my favorite anti-anything poster I have seen at any demonstration, anywhere. This was taken at the Minneapolis site of the global, anti-war demonstrations that happened on Feb. 15, 2003 (the day that millions of people around the world demonstrated against the war that had yet to begin).