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November 18, 2004
Off Topic Open Thread
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Citibank and US embassy
Greek anti-war rally turns violent
Citibank 2x
Bombs Explode at Three Argentina Banks, Guard Dies
Posted by: b | Nov 18 2004 20:13 utc | 1
Well, in the meantime, we have a new European Commission, with some decent legitimacy (voted in 449 to 149, with 82 abstaining), after having given a boost to the European Parliament, which asked for, and obtained, the change of 3 of the commissioners. New democratic oversight, and new legitimacy for the institutions which best embody the future of Europe (and which, in the case of the Parliament, is located less than 500m from where i was born, which is of course a lot more important…). The really interesting thing is that the European parliament voted on party lines (the 6 main groups are the euroskeptics/nationalists, conservatives, liberals, socialists, greens and communists, with the conservatives and socialists the two largest by far, but neither having an outright majority), and NOT on national lines, and that the Parliament and the Commission imposed the changes to commissioners against the will of the member states.
Posted by: Anonymous | Nov 18 2004 20:50 utc | 3
Iraq war topping $5.8 billion a month
70 billion a year + undisclosed costs. Up 50% from a year ago, trend intact. Projected bancruptcy date for the US?
Posted by: b | Nov 18 2004 22:25 utc | 4
b
this a very special week in greece. it was the week where the students of the polytechnique which also included other young people said ‘oxi’ to the junta. & they paid dearly for their courage.
it was the inspirational moment for the nov 17 movement. anitimperialism is still very close to the greek soul. they have not forgotten british treachery & mass murder in the second world war aided in part by the policies of staline. they have not forgotten who constructed metaxas. they have not forgotten the torture, the assasinations that were part & parcel of the junta. they have not forgotten their heroes
the rest of us in europe have been humiliated by american administration after american administration but it is really greece & portugal who have felt the most repressive aspects of that humiliation. they have lost their sons & daughters.
the great young poet, alekos panagoulis, who was assasinated by cia operatives is a loss that greece remembers well
why anyone with any sense would want to say as the fool blair does in his press conference (which had me retching/or wretching, whatever) that the american want to export democracy is beyond me
it has been a succesful exporter of coups, of military dictatorships, of corrupting european political elites in france, germany & italy, of constantly interfering in the internal affairs of sovereign nations of blackmailing, of funding directly & indirectly the scum of europe – this the usa know how to do well. the logical extension, morally & politically of the marshall plan
exporting democracy? where?
fallujah – they now know how to export mass murder, terror, indiscriminate & disproportional force – this they know how to teach
& to bomb & bomb & bomb
speaking of which b do you know the book by jörg friederich ‘DER BRAND’ deutschland im bombenkrieg 1940 – 1945 – – am in the middle of it – & it has recently been translated into french – i’m finding it useful – practically to understand what the bombing of iraqui towns & cities would be like – though the imagination does not need the facts as much – knowing their terrible truth
still steel
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 18 2004 22:46 utc | 5
@r’giap – I’m living in Hamburg in a very pretty appartment house built 1896. The street to the left has many such house, the street to the right has quite ugly houses from the 1960s. Walking around Hamburg you can see were the bombs have hit. Just look at the architecture style – sometimes just one house in a row, sometimes whole quarters. The scars are everywhere. 50,000 civilians dead in two bombing nights in Hamburg, but the industry losses were sparce – they bombed the harbour and the factories only by mistake.
No, I didn´t read Friedrich, I don´t want to, I don´t need to. Like the people in Conventry, I see the results every day.
Posted by: b | Nov 18 2004 23:04 utc | 6
p://www.commondreams.org/views04/1118-33.htm
article from harpers from iraq
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 18 2004 23:20 utc | 8
b
well we have a a proper little militia amongst us what with tank commanders, intelligence officers, ex vietnam vets & ex nva irregulars
well – its going to get hotter – perhaps all our military skills will be of some use in this mad & maddened world
still steel
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 19 2004 1:00 utc | 9
speaking of Greece, i was very much surprised to learn that they are much more anti-American than the French. In the recent EU study ca. 80% of Greeks (highest rate in the EU) said that the US is the main threat to peace in the world. Only ca. 50% of Frenchmen did so.
But I never heard that Kerry looks Greek, and nothing about goat-cheese eating surrender stuff.
Posted by: MarcinGomulka | Nov 19 2004 1:08 utc | 10
marcin
the greek memory is still too strong – it has not forgotten the words, the deeds & the acts
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 19 2004 1:11 utc | 11
I´m in a good mood today. The winter´s first snow has arrived to me here in Sweden.
That´s all.
(This is an off topic thread, right?)
Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Nov 19 2004 2:10 utc | 12
si au bout de la nuit de l’histoire
tu venais cogner la porte,
auand déjà les bourreaux dorment
sur les cadavres de leurs victimes,
si après le déluge
et les derniers cris de guerre,
tu venais pour réaliser, enfin, par tes grâces
le rêve des damnés blessés,
et si Eve t’ouvrait la porte
encore endormie et frottant ses yeux,
alors il te faudrait l’écarter
lancer un coup
en pleine tête du serpent
pour qu’il retourne sans attendre
a la grotte biblique,
enfoncer un mgot
dans les lèvres d’Adam,
demander pourquoi à cette créature
et commencer l’ interrogatoire
sargon boulus 1942 (habbaniyah, irak) –
sourris à la chaise
sosi amical avec le lit
presse le bouton du coffre
surveille le rideau
pense à la porte car elle pense à toi
elle est triste aussi
elle a perdue son humour et sa vitalité
pense à elle
et aux pas, derrière
ne crains rien si le mur prononca des paroles sacrilèges
a chacun son point de vue
laisse seulement la fenêtre ouverte
car ton âme se prépare maintenat à monter
merci
nouri al-jarrah conseils à un quidam
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 19 2004 2:11 utc | 13
US Economic success for Afghanistan.
Afghanistan’s opium cultivation jumped 64 percent to a record 324,000 acres this year and drug exports now account for more than 60 percent of the economy, the United Nations drugs office said Thursday.
Wow! See the benefits of Democracy. Much better than these rag-heads could ever achieve under the Taliban.
Posted by: DM | Nov 19 2004 3:20 utc | 15
@ beq
Will do. Snow used to come earlier. Guess it´s the 370 ppmv (and rising) of CO2. Not even so worried about that right now. Snooow.
Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Nov 19 2004 3:24 utc | 16
Nietzsche, Turin, 1988, during convalescence:
Maintaining cheerfulness in the midst of a gloomy affair, fraught with immeasurable responsibility, is no small feat; and yet what is needed more than cheerfulness? Nothing succeeds if prankishness has no part in it. Excess of strength alone is the proof of strength.— A revaluation of all values, this question mark, so black, so tremendous that it casts shadows upon the man who puts it down—such a destiny of a task compels one to run into the sun every moment to shake off a heavy, all-too-heavy seriousness. Every means is proper
for this; every “case”—a case of luck. Especially, war. War has always been the great wisdom of all spirits who have become too inward, too profound; even in a wound there is the power to heal. A maxim, the origin of which I withhold from scholarly curiosity, has long been my motto:
Increscunt animi, virescit volnere virtus.
[“The spirits increase, vigor grows through a wound.” Quoted from the 2d
cent. Roman author, Aulus Gellius: Noctes Atticae, XVIII, XI, IV (“Attic
Nights”). In Latin.]
Posted by: slothrop | Nov 19 2004 4:38 utc | 17
Often, we wonder, “what to do?” Not: “Do I dare…” But, merely, what can I do?
“A revaluation of all values, this question mark, so black, so tremendous…”
So ‘tremendous.’
I could weep. Really.
Posted by: slothrop | Nov 19 2004 4:44 utc | 18
“Carefree, mocking and violent: thus wisdom wants us. She is a woman, and loves only a warrior, always.”
Posted by: alabama | Nov 19 2004 6:03 utc | 19
I am not to keen about Chirac in general, but for international politics I am glad he is there to speak out against the imperial Bush/Blair politics.
President cautions Blair on Middle East –
French leader is conciliatory but warns of Arab fears of western domination
Mr Chirac warned Mr Bush and Mr Blair that “although our memory is sometimes short, the peoples submitted to the west’s domination in the past have not forgotten and are quick to see a resurgence of imperialism and colonialism in our actions”.
In the speech, Mr Chirac reiterated his view that Europe should form a bloc as a counterbalance to the US. He called for the revival of multilateralism, mainly through the United Nations, rather than a world based on the “logic of power”, namely the US.
…
And after Mr Blair and Mr Bush espoused the spread of western democratic values as the best safeguard against terrorism, Mr Chirac warned: “We must avoid any confusion between democratisation and westernisation
I think he is right, this is often the problem. Not wanting to bring democracy to other countries, but American kind of democracy. I believe democracy has many faces and all are of value.
Posted by: Fran | Nov 19 2004 7:00 utc | 20
Swedish
have to love your interlude friend
around where I live here were doing the same thing, except it’s raaaaaiiiin.
Posted by: anna missed | Nov 19 2004 7:08 utc | 21
“Carefree, mocking and violent: thus wisdom wants us. She is a woman, and loves only a warrior, always.”
hmmm, sounds like the kind of swaggering you hear from guys who are just sure they’re God’s gift to womankind 🙂 what can one say? Oh, you wish? underneath it all one hears the insistent mantra of the unrepentant rapist like print-through on audio tape: She wanted it. They all do. imho ugh. grandiose, pretty words wrapped around ugly thoughts…
Fran,
the EU rules for technocrats in charge of it’s diplomatic relations with other countries (North Africa, M. East, etc.) demand them to behave with respect for the countries’ culture. When they talk about the need to democratize, they are trying to work on the basis of local democratic traditions (tribal councils, etc.) and never force solutions that work well at home but will be missplaced in the context of the country’s culture.
The EU has adopted such an approach precisely because it is itself a multi-cultural organisation, not a nation.
Posted by: MarcinGomulka | Nov 19 2004 15:49 utc | 23
Swedish,
surprisingly early snow in Warsaw, Poland. We used to joke in the eighties that snow does not come to Third World countries, it kind of changed now.
Posted by: MarcinGomulka | Nov 19 2004 16:05 utc | 24
Commons motion to impeach Blair gets go-ahead
David Hencke, Westminster correspondent
Friday November 19, 2004
The Guardian
The parliamentary motion to impeach Tony Blair for “gross misconduct” over the war against Iraq will be published next Wednesday, the day after the Queen’s speech.
It will be the first to be tabled in 198 years, since Lord Melville, a close friend of the then prime minister, William Pitt the younger, faced impeachment for misusing public money in running the Admiralty.
Senior parliamentary officials, including legal advisers to the Commons Speaker, Michael Martin, on Wednesday night approved the wording of the text as meeting parliamentary rules, allowing the motion to be tabled on the first day of the new session. The Tory chief whip, David Maclean, has paged every Tory frontbench MP telling them not to sign it.
The Liberal Democrats are divided, with Jenny Tonge, the MP for Richmond, among those supporting the idea and Sir Menzies Campbell, the party’s foreign affairs spokesman, strongly opposing it. No Labour MP is expected to sign the motion for fear of losing the party whip for bringing the leader into disrepute.
The motion, which was drawn up by Douglas Hogg, the MP for Sleaford and North Hykeham and son of the former Tory lord chancellor Lord Hailsham, is attracting support among backbench MPs who would not normally support the same cause.
The latest recruits among the 25 backing the call are George Galloway, the deselected Labour MP for Glasgow Kelvin, who is suing the Daily Telegraph for libel over allegations he took money from Saddam Hussein, and John Gummer, the former Tory environment secretary and MP for Suffolk Coastal.
Adam Price, the Plaid Cymru MP who launched the campaign for the motion, said yesterday: “This is the only way left to MPs to call the prime minister to account over his conduct in the war against Iraq.”
* * Remember to visit http://www.impeachBlair.org to sign the new online petition * *
Posted by: DM | Nov 19 2004 22:08 utc | 25
DM
The fact that the impeachment motion will fail…….. will be spun by the Blair bullshit machine as his “endorsement”
Headline news tonight is about the Prince who wants to serve in the forces, frontline, no namby pamby…… meanwhile no news of the rockets hitting Camp Dogwood……… no news from Iraq at all.
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Nov 19 2004 23:10 utc | 27
Nice to see that there are also hopefull things happening in this world. This is at least a good beginning, the rest needs to be seen.
Kyoto Protocol gets the green light
Russia formally ratified the Kyoto Protocol – aimed at curbing global greenhouse gas emissions – on Thursday. In doing so, it triggered a 90-day countdown to bring the international climate treaty into force.
The United Nations protocol will become legally binding on 16 February 2005, committing the 30 industrialised countries that have backed it to cutting their greenhouse gas emissions to nearly 5% below 1990 levels. They will have until 2012 to achieve this drop.
I can understand why Putin is glad that Bush was ‘elected’, because whatever he does, compared to Bush, his image can only improve.
Posted by: Fran | Nov 20 2004 8:11 utc | 28
Totaly OT and stupit and maybe down soon:
Target special offer
Anal massage with saving – via Boing Boing
Posted by: b | Nov 20 2004 16:43 utc | 29
I’m not feeling real hopeful — reading the latest Adbusters always seems to send me into a pit of despair, even when they’re trying to be inspiring — as with the current year end issue.
however I will wave a modest ly hopeful questioning essay by Greg Bates, on the issues of monoculture, diversity, and punctuated equilibrium.
Bates suggests that in the complete, incompetent meltdown of the Dem Party in the US, its inability to distinguish itself from its ‘competitor’ the Repubs, may be the moment of opportunity for the formation of diverse new political parties. he argues, as I read the text, that only the meltdown and utter failure of the Dems will create this window of opportunity.
I think this has a lot to do with what’s called “the investment trap” in games theory and investment jargon — where the individual or consortium cannot abandon a losing strategy because they are unwilling to let go of the investment they already have in it. they are throwing good money after bad, as the saying goes, because they cannot bear to admit that the bad money is already lost. they can’t cut their losses and get over it. they probably have to lose N times the original investment (I’m sure someone has written papers on this!) before, finally, painfully, they admit that it was a mistake in the first place.
I fear that progressives in the US have got to this point with the Dem Party. three terms’ worth of betrayal so far and counting. open question — and my mind is not firmly made up on this — is it really beyond repair? can it be salvaged? is there any hope of a massive reform of the party, or is it doomed as Bates suggests to drift further and further to the right, chasing the Nuovos Fascistas into the sunset?
one other question for gambling types. if the economic crash predicted by our pessimists (and I’m more or less one of ’em) comes to pass, then what will the reaction of the US populace be? an ugly ethnic/nationalist fascist reaction, blaming everyone in sight — Arabs, Jews, enviros, Blacks, Asians, women, China, the EU — for the disaster? or a Game Over, Reset moment, a re-evaluation, and a New New Deal? both?
Who believes seriously that Kerry would be ‘better’ than Bush? Better the rightwing jackals be left holding the shitbag of Iraq, economy, etc.
De is spot on: no matter how frightful the future looks for the bleeting sheep, the problem with the world will always be homosexuality.
As for the wish of progressive politics, these have not existed in the democratic party in the post-war era. I know that’s alot to say in one sentence without aderquate citation. But, really.
Posted by: slothrop | Nov 20 2004 20:24 utc | 31
@slothrop — new thread (the Vulture of the Moon has swooped down on my ill-considered trifle and dropped it on the front page).
One more thought and then I really must get something done in the real world.
Remember the paradigmatic anecdote — maybe it’s just an Urban Legend of history — about the Romans elites and lead plumbing? Well here is a gloomy riff for y’all…
In August, the EPA announced that 48 out of 50 states have issued advisories about eating fish caught in their rivers and lakes because of pollution from mercury and other toxins. Over 75 percent of those fish advisories are due to mercury. According to the EPA, most mercury in American adults comes from eating contaminated fish, whether it’s caught locally or bought in the supermarket.
We’re not talking anchovies and sardines here. It’s the big carnivorous fish, like tuna, high on the food chain, that “bioaccumulate” a substance known as methyl mercury in the course of eating loads of smaller fish.
Mercury pollution thus has a dual-pronged effect. Poor people who fish for their own food in mercury-laden waters are at risk, but so are the wealthy who aren’t price sensitive when it comes to what they perceive as a healthy diet rich in sushi, halibut, ahi tuna, swordfish and seabass. This leads to a paradox: The better off you are, the worse off you are.
“Higher economic status and education level appear to be risk factors,” Dr. Jane M. Hightower and biostatistician Dan Moore of California Pacific Medical Center wrote in a study of affluent people in the San Francisco Bay Area, some of whom complained of symptoms like fatigue, inability to concentrate and memory loss.
“the better off you are, the worse off you are” — it’s like a long-deferred theory of social justice coming true. finally, the CBA is situated where it should be, with those who receive the benefits also experiencing the costs. but will it teach us anything? if past performance is any indication of future behaviour, then the next move from the industrial pharmacomplex will be to start touting “progress” in the brave new field of engineering mercury-resistant humans, so that for a big fat price you can have a designer baby guaranteed (ho ho) immunity to mercury-poisoned fish.
my personal take on all this has for many years been as follows: any village that sh*ts in its own drinking water is not going to enjoy a high quality of life, and it’s going to be even worse for anyone living downstream of them. our industries are allowed to p*ss and sh*t in our drinking water, fart in our collective elevator, sow salt (literally, plus heavy metals) in our fields, poison our wells and our food — and they’ve been doing so with enthusiasm for decades. the consequences are difficult to assess accurately — with some 7000 artificial chemical compounds released into the environment, only a few hundred of them ever studied in any detail for toxicity, mutagenicity, etc — but it’s a good bet that (a) they are, generally, negative, (b) the slope of their negativity is probably greater than 1, and (c) the progression may not even be linear.
optimists believe that the human organism and the planetary biosystem are both immensely robust and resilient, and all this chemical soup is “mostly harmless”. I wish I agreed with them. but when I look at the declining academic performance of US children, from grade school through college, at rising cancer rates, at the collapse of biodiversity, etc, I am not so sure. unfortunately no one’s running a control group in this planet-wide experiment. Beluga whales washing up dead on Canadian shores, riddled with tumours, don’t seem like a good sign; as one researcher quipped bitterly, it’s kind of hard to blame the whales’ tumours on not getting enough exercise, watching too much TV or eating at McDonalds.
here’s the $64,000 (trillion) dollar question. if we’re in as much sh*t as we seem to be, then we have a very, very expensive and technologically challenging cleanup project ahead of us — to “re-terraform” the planet we’ve spent so much time and ingenuity poisoning and liquidating. and where are we going to get the energy to fuel the technology, if we’ve used it all up fuelling our SUVs and our grandiose military fiascos instead? where are we going to get the visionary leadership for such an effort when our institutions are wholly colonised by corporate Jobsworths? where are we going to get the scholarship, intelligence and focus for such an effort when our universities are devoted to cranking out servants of the status quo, and when their intake is barely literate (hey, I work on a US college campus, I know what I’m talking about — a lot of our intake is barely what we would have called high-school material, 30 years ago)? seems like we have the Augean Stables to clean up and not a Hercules in sight.
OK, just call me Cassandra… I’m not in a light hearted mood today. I’ll take my wailing bagpipes and leave the bar for a bit — maybe some fresh air and sunlight will improve my dismal outlook.
quoted article: I Am What I Ate, Katharine Mieszkowski
I was cooking a semi-thawed turkey this morning. You know: when its a little thawed but the giblet bag and the neck are crammed into an icy cavity and are still semi-stuck? Finally your pry the semi frozen neck from its icy hole and its so cold it makes you shiver right down to your shoes! I don’t know why but my experience made me think that this was what Condelezza Rice’s honeymoon was like.
Posted by: Diogenes | Nov 21 2004 5:16 utc | 34
Oh good heavens — are these guys historically illiterate? or do they think we are? or do they think it’s just hilarious? or…
Washington DC loves an acronym… but it looks like our federal drug war establishment has hit upon a little unintended truth here. Seems that the DOJ and ONDCP have put their collective brains together to come up with a new initiative against “synthetic drugs.” It’s called the National Synthetic Drug Action Plan or NSDAP. If you want to get a vague idea of how our government intends to deal with all of those dangerous rave kids, with their PLUR and their hugging and their electronic beats… just google NSDAP.
— I don’t have to google for it. I recognise it.
quote from Progressive Capitalist (I just happened to drop by, can’t recommend or disrecommend the blog)
And I’m still embarrassed to be living in this country at this moment. ‘Night all.
Iran has six months.
Ariel Sharon—through the IDF—just said so.
Posted by: DM | Nov 21 2004 13:02 utc | 37
Only 18 days after the election abortion rights are cut back: Refusing abortion made easier
Posted by: b | Nov 21 2004 14:14 utc | 38
someone sent this to me. Food for thought. This is a passage from E. Nesbit’s book, The Story of the Amulet :
The children have brought the Queen of Babylon from ancient times into modern London and are riding in a cab through the streets:
“But how badly you keep your slaves. How wretched and poor and neglected they seem,” [the Queen of Babylon] said, as the cab rattled along the Mile End Road.
“They aren’t slaves; they’re working-people,” said Jane.
“Of course they’re working. That’s what slaves are. Don’t you tell me. Do you suppose I don’t know a slave’s face when I see it? Why don’t their masters see that they’re better fed and better clothed? … You’ll have a revolt of your slaves if you’re not careful,” said the Queen.
“Oh, no,” said Cyril; “you see they have votes — that makes them safe not to revolt. It makes all the difference. Father told me so.”
“What is this vote?” asked the Queen. “Is it a charm? What do they do with it?”
“I don’t know,” said the harassed Cyril; “it’s just a vote, that’s all! They don’t do anything particular with it.”
“I see,” said the Queen; “a sort of plaything.”
Posted by: dan of steele | Nov 22 2004 13:42 utc | 39
Excellent Dan. Made me laugh.
One comment while I’m on:
How are the people’s minds so effectively controlled? Hard to believe it is just that gnarly stream of info fed thru the media, but mebbe it is. I’d really like to know how it is done.
The other night I happened upon a Q-A session on C-Span. All three CEOs of the major networks were on stage, fielding questions by a number of articulate and informed folks in the audience. Specific hard questions, well enunciated for all to hear. Like, ” Here we have specific evidence that the election was stolen (and here the evidence is cited) and yet we hear nothing of it on television. Why is that sir?”
The answer, from any and all of the three CEOs was always, “It just doesn’t exist. We looked; our big expensive investigative team looked hard, and they have good sources. It isn’t out there.”
In other words, “We say it ain’t so, and therefore it ain’t. Case closed.”
Are they really getting away with this? It seems so but it still stumps me as to why. I can’t write it off to universal audience stupidity.
Posted by: rapt | Nov 22 2004 15:29 utc | 40
DeAnander @ 3:06 AM on November 19: that citation (@1:06 AM) was meant as a droll response to slothrop’s two posts immediately preceding. The line comes from Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, and Nietzsche himself cites it as an epigram to the third treatise of his Genealogy of Morality (the one entitled “What are Ascetic Ideals?”}. The line’s pertinence, if any, to slothrop’s posts is its insistence on the role of polemic in the work of philosophy (news, then as now, to some philosophers). Polemic, for Nietzsche, is the highest expression of intellectual health (and his quote assumes that we already know that “sophia” is Greek for “wisdom”)…..Trying to explain a joke is like running a red-light in rush-hour traffic: it’s not funny , it’s wrong, it doesn’t get you anywhere, and it bothers the neighbors.
Posted by: alabama | Nov 22 2004 16:06 utc | 41
@Diogenes:
Damned, I was going to cook a turkey for Thanksgiving, but your post has put me off my feed.
Posted by: FlashHarry | Nov 22 2004 16:26 utc | 42
@bama — yes, I recognised the allusion, have read (with some distaste) TSZ. it just reminded me how very much I dislike Nietzsche… brings to mind his crack, you should pardon the expression, about remembering to take one’s whip along when visiting a woman.
Diogenes evidently subscribes to the Rapt Theory: they must be aliens…
DeAnander: It’s not that mankind is resilient. Just that maybe some mutants will survive and form a new species, and the current one will simply die off in a gruesome way in the next centuries.
Posted by: CluelessJoe | Nov 22 2004 17:26 utc | 44
deananader
will try tonight to commence petit seminar on more agreeable philosopher averrès (ibn rusd) 1126-1198 & the syrian poet adonis. i hope i am at the hauteur of your interrogation
still steel
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 22 2004 18:49 utc | 46
that would be averroès & that would be at le speakeasy
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 22 2004 18:50 utc | 47
Do you like fast-forwarding through commercials on a television program you’ve recorded? How much do you like it? Enough to go to jail if you’re caught doing it? If a new copyright and intellectual property omnibus bill sitting on Congress’s desk passes, that may be the choice you’ll face.
How can this be possible? Because language that makes fast-forwarding through commercials illegal—no doubt inserted at the behest of lobbyists for the advertising industry—was inserted into a bill that would allow people to fast forward past objectionable sections of a recorded movie (and I bet you already thought that was OK). And that’s but one, albeit scary, scenario that may come to pass if the Intellectual Property Protection Act is enacted into law. Deliberations on this legislation will be one of the tasks for the lame-duck Congress that commenced this week.
Posted by: Fran | Nov 22 2004 20:41 utc | 48
Well, DeAnander, we can always pass over slothrop’s citation of Nietzsche by attending directly to the motto from Aulus Gellius (“The spirits increase, vigor grows through a wound”). Aulus Gellius might be said to “transvalue” the value of mere “war” (and of the warrior) by taking philosophy as the zone of a larger war. Nietzsche, certainly, takes that proposition one step further by casting his own work as a polemical exercise through and through, affirming polemics as the great way to enlarge our spirits precisely when our spirits fail (an interestng idea, in my view)….I suspect, by the way, that Nietzsche’s misogyny is always marked by his quarrel with philosophy; in identifying philosophy as a woman, he at least shows himself a conscientious reader of the classics (Socrates’ Diotima comes to mind, as well as Boethius’ Dame Philosophy). Conflicted, certainly, but conscientious all the same.
Posted by: alabama | Nov 22 2004 21:43 utc | 49
STATE DEPARTMENT The State Department is calling on Ukraine to investigate allegations of fraud in its presidential elections — or risk souring relations with the U-S.
Posted by: DM | Nov 22 2004 22:25 utc | 50
Boethius? Instead of watching the Simpsons, I could read boethius.
The other polemic of nietzsche’s is the one against democracy. How relevant.
Posted by: slothrop | Nov 22 2004 23:10 utc | 51
slothrop: in this regard, Nietzsche is in the enlightening company of Socrates himself – there are some fine quotes one could get from Criton and from the Apologia. Well, same goes with Platon, but he went too close to absolutist ideology for my taste, with his Republic and some other writings.
Posted by: Clueless Joe | Nov 22 2004 23:44 utc | 52
Where politics is concerned, slothrop, wasn’t Nietzsche opposed to just about everything? No utopian, he! (but I’ll have to check on this one).
Posted by: alabama | Nov 23 2004 0:30 utc | 53
What politics in nietzsche? “stamp becoming with being.” I sort of think his politics would be right-libertarian. I don’t know.
Posted by: slothrop | Nov 23 2004 0:37 utc | 54
But, seems to me, there’s no politically normative dimension in FN’s ouevre; nor is there a social theory per se.
Posted by: slothrop | Nov 23 2004 0:41 utc | 55
Thank God the US, at Least, Has an Enlightened Electorate
Posted by: Aristophanes | Nov 23 2004 3:44 utc | 56
I really shouldn’t be butting in here, because I have not read any of this stuff in over thirty years.
But I have looked out my old dog-eared copy of Russell’s History of Western Philosophy, with my own little scribbles and underlines.
One comment by Russell that may be of interest to Alabama and DeAnander :- ” ‘Forget not thy whip’ – but nine women out of ten would get the whip away from him, and he knew it, so he kept away from women and soothed his wounded vanity with unkind remarks ”
Russell also says ..
“His ‘noble’ man – who is himself in day-dreams – is a being wholly devoid of sympathy, ruthless, cunning, cruel, concerned only with his own power. King Lear, on the verge of madness, says:
I will do such things –
What they are yet I know not – but they shall be
The terror of the earth.
This is Nietzsche’s philosophy in a nutshell ”
I wont quote Russell any more – I will have to put this book away or I wont get any work done.
My own comment and take though, is that the Philosophy of Logical Analysis (and Russell’s seminal work) – should really be enough to banish all these ghosts of the past.
They should be studied as a history, and as a way of understanding the demons of the past.
Leon Strauss and his Mad ‘Philosophy of Deception’ was, it seems, fabricated in part from snatches of Nietzsche’s drivel.
If this is true, it would appear that Nietzsche, the cunning, cruel, dickless little misogynist, is the original inspiration of this philosophical shite known as Straussianism.
Posted by: DM | Nov 23 2004 7:08 utc | 57
oops – that previous link was only to an index – and it has already been changed.
The reference was to 2 articles re the drum-beats of nuclear war. North Koreans are pretty aware of what’s in store for them if the StraussCons have their way.
Still, there are always interesting articles here for anyone who is interested. A quote from the current crop (last article on the list):-
“Western media recently spread misinformation that the DPRK secretly sold fluorine gas to Iran. According to it, the DPRK allegedly transported the gas, main ingredient of nuclear weapons, to Iran by a special plane on May 20 and the gas may be used not only as nuclear fuel but for the production of uranium hexafluoride gas.”
Posted by: DM | Nov 24 2004 2:24 utc | 59
Hawks push regime change in N Korea (By Jim Lobe)
That the hawks back in Washington are indeed mobilizing became clear on Monday when William Kristol, an influential neo-conservative who also chairs the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), faxed a statement titled “Toward Regime Change in North Korea” to reporters and various “opinion leaders” in the capital.
PNAC issues statements relatively infrequently, so its formal statements are carefully noted. PNAC boasts Vice President Dick Cheney, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Cheney’s powerful chief of staff, I Lewis Libby, among a dozen other senior Bush national security officials, as signers of its 1997 charter.
…
To achieve the desired “regime change”, Eberstadt called first for a purge of US State Department officials who had argued for engaging Pyongyang during Bush’s first term.
Posted by: DM | Nov 24 2004 6:50 utc | 60
How does anyone ever know what or who to believe? Must we always believe everything unless it is proven to be false? (define false)
I think, given recent experience, that the only intelligent position is to believe nothing – unless proven otherwise (define proof).
Through the rear-view mirror, I doubt that many of you will dispute that there was a web of lies and deceit used as the pretext for the current debacle in Iraq. But have we all just forgotten that we were lied to?
Can anyone remember the litany of lies? The constant deluge of propaganda and demonization. Did anyone ever find that tree mulcher? The one that Sadam’s son used to grind-up prisoners feet-first?
Anyway, I have no way of knowing what is true and what is not true. And it is obvious that circumstantial evidence of anything just does not cut it.
From the wonderful Washington Times (a story, incidently, that I have heard of some months ago.)
N. Koreans detail deadly experiments on prisoners
In 10 hours of interviews Monday, three North Koreans detailed chilling experiments in which prisoners were placed in glass chambers and exposed to chemicals that killed them within hours, said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights group based in Los Angeles.
What is the true of this? It could be true (who am I to say). But there is absolutely no basis to believe this (or anything) – just because we told it is so.
Just keep an eye open for more of the same. These people are, after all, quite disingenious, and I doubt that their tactics will change very much. If you start to hear a whole bunch of demonizing stories, you can take it that that pounding sound in your head is the sound of war drums. The fucking crazies may be marching over the hill.
Posted by: DM | Nov 24 2004 13:04 utc | 61
O would some power the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us
– Robert Burns
The U.S. hands are stained with the blood shed by too many people to talk about the “spread of democracy.”
The U.S. imperialists, indeed, are hideous aggressors, destroyers of world civilization and biggest abusers of human rights in the world as they have wantonly violated international law under the pretext of “war against terrorism” and resorted to acts quite contrary to the universally recognized human ethics and cultural common sense.
– Korean News (KCNA)
Posted by: DM | Nov 25 2004 4:10 utc | 62