New Billmon post, still on the "Salvador" topic.
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January 11, 2005
Billmon: Bumper Sticker
Comments
Well, Pot is somewhat right to remind Kettle of its blackness when Kettle starts pretending that the only blackness around is Pot’s.
Better Red than Dead. That did not set the bar too high, did it? and yet, that test was failed miserably by all “Red” regimes, who all killed, looted and destroyed with abandon.
I understand Gandhi or Mandela or Rol Tanguy, I cannot understand Lenin, Castro, Guevara, Nasser. They have brough nothing but misery to their people – the same misery for most, to be sure – and a twisted pride in that misery.
Somehow US crimes become totally detached from the overall context of the Cold War. It was a war by proxy, and neither side should be too proud of what they did, and neither should the proxies, and we should all mourn the “collateral damage”, peoples caught in that cold – and sometimes hot – battlefield, but blaming it all on the US is just silly and false. And both sides were fighting for “good” against “evil”, their very own version of each, of course.
Again, count how many people moved to Cuba, DDR, North Korea, those great paradises, as opposed to those that moved away from there. Doesn’t that count? Does it have no value? The nasty Americans oppressed and blockaded Cuba and offerred too much of a temptation?? What temptation? It would be hard to understand from reading all the above authors.
Better Dead than Red, it’s quicker and less painful.
Posted by: The dark shadow of Jérôme | Jan 12 2005 22:19 utc | 101
i am comforted by the fact that the singers are ours & we have always possessed the most beautiful & truthful of songs
Posted by: remembereringgiap | January 12, 2005 05:04 PM
Who’s ‘we’?
Posted by: Pat | Jan 12 2005 22:23 utc | 102
Pat
I couldn’t show what you want. On the other hand, I have no clue what kind of power you want to defend.
As far as I can tell, you only oppose the war not because u.s. interests are not worth defending, but because occupation of Iraq doesn’t defend our “interests” adequately enough.
I’m cool w/ your hip innefibility so long as you are not a prick about it.
Posted by: slothrop | Jan 12 2005 22:33 utc | 103
again jérôme you conflate & confuse issues. i will stan unreservedly by what i say. Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 12 2005 22:39 utc | 105
but let me do it again. slowly. the massacre of the people of indonesia with estimates of anything from 750,000 to 2 million people was a planned genocide. it was planned at the highest levels of the us administration. this is not contention it is fact
the illegal war against the vietnamese which involved in the end the deaths of over 2 million vietnamese , laotions & cambodians was instigated developed and produced by u s imperialism. then to add insult to injury the us & kissinger chief amongst them supported the criminal policies of pol pot
the military dictatorship in greece & the immediate post war history of greece is a litany of intervention by america. the deaths of too many greeks are the result, the direct result of u s intervention.
this is neither silly nor comparative
the mass murder of the latin american people over consecutive administrations ought to be a matter of national shame in america – you politely call them hot wars – but what we are talking about jérôme is some teacher in some village being taken out in the middle of the night by u s trained & employed goons who would tear this teacher apart limb by limb. they massacred, raped, destroyed as you say with abandon
u s policy did not allow any form of democratic impulse to live – they killed it again & again & again. that is why they want to incorporate its bloody politics in iraq
are you out of your cotton pickin’ mind – how you in the midst of your anti soviet hysteria can call nasser – mr nasser of egypt a thug is truly transcendental. in what ways? it is you who are not being serious – nasser was no more a despot than pompidou or jack lang for that matter
w
i’ll take this slowly pat but the principal enemy of mankind before my birth was without question german fascism & japanese imperialism
at my birth the principal enemies of mankind were both the us & the already perverted & faltering russia – it was no more soviet than you are. that remained so for most of my life
the threat was real but to try a show & tell a mix & match btween the crimes of the russians in this period & the americans is worthless. american foreign policy or intervention killed milllions & millions of people & thwarted the democratic desires on every continent, practically & with great ruthlessness
the buffoons in russia were in this time incapable of even invading the czechs & had a bad time of it in africa – to compare their chaotic & incoherent policies with the cold blooded murder of us foreign policy is without any human or scholastic sense
the last twenty years have seen u s foreign policy as the principal threat of humanity in every sense
those who oppose this tyranny whether they are victor jara of chile, maria farandouri of greece manu chao or any number of other beutiful interpreters sing the most beautiful of songs, the truth
still steel
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 12 2005 22:52 utc | 106
@Giap
Another name for your list.
Julius Neyere.
I was at his funeral BTW.
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jan 12 2005 23:01 utc | 107
I am not denying the crimes, I am putting them in another perspective. I do agree that they do not fit well with America’s self-image as a beacon of democracy. I’m only saying that the alternatives are still, sadly, but undeniably, worse.
that’s democracy and capitalism – the worst system, except for all others.
You call Yuschenko a thug, I presume because he is supported by the West. Isn’t that a slight exaggeration? He is the more pro-Russian of the two candidates! Just because he happens to be anti-corruption in his country, and anti-oligarch, and is thus supported by more-or-less recommendable Western organisations does not (necessarily / yet) make him a thug…
Nasser was a failure for his country. Castro was and is a failure for his country. Doctors prostituing themselves or teachers moonlighting as taxi drivers to make a living are not the sign of a healthy society. The blockade has been a gift to Castro by giving a perfect excuse for all the failures that are his and his alone. A decent health system is a nice thing but it is not an end to itself and it is not enough.
We’re probably fighting caricatures of one another… too bad.
I certainly do not speak for you, I just disagree strongly with what you write. I certainly don’t deny either the complexity of your thought, but at the end of the day, being publicly critical of US crimes seems more important to you than pubic criticism of what your self described heroes have done.
tell you what – I will write tomorrow a critique of US policy – better, of European capitalism (the US is too easy these days) or of any other topic of your choice – and you will do the same with Castro. What do you say?
Posted by: Jérôme | Jan 12 2005 23:02 utc | 108
@The dark shadow of Jérôme:
Billmon used to appreciate pristine thought and elegant prose on his site.
In respect to He Who Has Disappeared, perhaps we could take this discussion to another thread.
I have witnessed this silliness for the last two days-commenting a little–but ultimately giving up.
It’s become Support Your Own Bastard Tread, so let’s start one named that.
As an historian, I am sort of amused and amazed–and saddened.
So let’s get up the AX to Grind and the Bastard to Support Thread.
Posted by: FlashHarry | Jan 12 2005 23:17 utc | 109
ô flashharry
i will never be pristine nor elegant but the ‘hegels angels’ do a very fine tango & some flamenco
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 12 2005 23:28 utc | 110
re Toni Solo – he makes so many factual errors that it undermines the rest. Simultaneity or proximity does not causality make.
The US did not cause the Argentine crisis because Bridas was fighting unocal over an imaginary pipleine in Afghanistan… such ridiculous assertions make me not want to read the rest because I will always wonder how much of it is of the same dubious quality.
A memo to leftist activists – there are enough real scandals around not to try to create imaginary ones and lose your credibility in the process – and let the real scandals be forgotten (see the CBS memo scandal as the latest example).
Posted by: Jérôme | Jan 12 2005 23:28 utc | 111
And Dark Shadow;
If you would like to read something about Cuba, I would be happy to suggest a few books.
I was a Latin American history major–Cuba ain’t all black and white. Sorta shadowy, like the DS.
Posted by: FlashHarry | Jan 12 2005 23:28 utc | 112
jérôme
solo was just one of many hundred – i chose it from counterpunch but there are so many others both there & at commmon dreams. in what little time i have today i trawled throughout & there are many many solid articles
read them
i have books only in french – do you want those – all the other archival work is available at above sources & others here have offered – b real especially books of credible & sustained scholarship
@flasharry me too – i studied latin american history under barry carr/steve niblo – do you know of them
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 12 2005 23:35 utc | 113
@RGiap:
Haven’t read latin-american History since I graduated from college in 71. Reading mostly European history now.
Take DS head-on on Cuba, and I would be happy to help on the period 1929-1970.
Posted by: FlashHarry | Jan 13 2005 0:07 utc | 114
For actual info on the Cuban revolution, even better than a history book, I know two ex-Castro revolutionaries that fought with him in the Sierra Maestra from the day that they landed from Mexico on the boat the Granma. As one said to me about the revolution, “They all thought it was going to be the greatest thing to happen to Cuba, but didn’t realize the medicine was worse than the disease.”
Posted by: aw | Jan 13 2005 1:00 utc | 115
@AW:
I’m sure Jerome could use your help, in the upcoming presentation, if it occurs.
Posted by: Anonymous | Jan 13 2005 1:14 utc | 116
Gawd, all this fighting. We are all on the same side really. (Well, maybe Pat will stick it out on the other side if she is really and truly one of them…)
Hey I respect Castro for standing up to the assholes who thought/think that they can undermine true local hegemony. He is a hero whether his “system” is a long-term workable one or not. Because he had the balls to stand up to these (what shall we call them) you know, the ones who assume that poor latins are by nature slaves.
I will stand with Rgiap in support of his position that peoples have to be self-sufficient; they can be in EVERY instance as long as that dominating mofo of a foriegn force is kept at bay. Now somebody tell me – assure me – that this can happen in Iraq, that the foreign force can be evicted.
More later when I have sobered up…
Posted by: rapt | Jan 13 2005 2:02 utc | 117
@jerome (or his dark shadow!) you persist in this sweeping assertion that the communist regimes brought nothing but misery to their people, despite an historical record that shows how, at least initially and sometimes for several decades, large numbers of people bettered their lot as a result of revolutions — people who had never had schools before became literate, female infanticide and foot-binding were outlawed, landless indentured peasant labourers obtained land security, and so on. if “nothing but misery” had resulted, no one would have supported the revolution or had any stake in it. no one would have died for it, defied torture for it, gone hungry for it, given their lives to it. again I strongly suggest reading Han Suyin’s tetralogy. the prose is gorgeous, the information dense, the perspective fascinating.
I find these sweeping dismissals/erasures of the achievements of the revolutionary governments unhelpful, because they suppress relevant data. the decay, corruption, error and crime of these regimes is also relevant data — and so is the decay, corruption, error and crime of Western regimes and theories. it is like imagining that the Catholic paedophilia scandals are sufficient to dismiss, out of hand and with airy scorn, the entire human yearning on which religions are based, or the solace and comfort which organised religion genuinely offers to millions; or imagining that paedophilia, or other abuse of children, is “safely” restricted to religious persons and institutions and never happens in secular settings like state orphanages, correctional institutions etc.
I don’t think the verdict of history is yet heard on whose system or theory of government has caused more misery in the final accounting — feudalism, communism, fascism, capitalism… it was not communists who spread DU all over the Balkans and Iraq, carpet-bombed Laos, irradiated the S Pacific islanders — not communists who used the atomic bomb on civilians, not communists who firebombed Dresden, not communists who tried to exterminate the Jews of Europe, and so forth. we haven’t even seen the price tag for US capitalism yet. maybe in 10 years the waiter will have brought us the cheque. as the Chinese said, “it’s too soon to tell.”
imho any society can become dysfunctional, can collapse into anarchy or fascism or Mafia rule, corruption, tyranny, stifling Mandarin bureaucracy, hereditary nepotism (the Bush clan are having a good old try at it). any society can produce misery — even an affluent one. the C20 communist nations mostly kept their miseries domestic — the US exported misery all over the world. but “externalising” the misery required for the core to loot the periphery, that doesn’t make the misery any less real — I’ve never thought that “he gassed his own people” was really any more shocking or vile than “they bombed the s**t out of somebody else’s country” or for that matter “they sold him the gas and made a tidy profit on it” or (in the case of the British) “they ignored the famine and kept shipping the grain home to England.”
seems to me also that the philosophy that a decent health care system is nice, but not everything, is an easy one to espouse when you live in a country that has a secure, decent health care system 🙂 we undervalue what we take for granted. when you live without one — where people literally die from preventable diseases because no one and nothing will pay for the most basic treatment — it seems like quite a big thing. recent report suggests that nearly 900K Black citizens of America died in recent years due to inadequate health care, racist bias in health care allocations, lack of a basic national health plan. that’s 9 with 5 zeroes, almost a million people. that’s a lot of misery. if they had lived in Cuba — with universal health care and more of a commitment to eschewing racism — they might still be alive today. maybe they wouldn’t have had 52 inch TVs and $100K SUVs — but tell ya an open secret, most of ’em wouldn’t have had those things anyway.
I think perhaps, cher Jerome, you should travel to Cuba. as a citizen of Euroland you are free to do so w/o facing reprisals from your own government, unlike all those “free” Americans; and as an investment banker surely you are affluent enough to afford a bit of travel 🙂 the climate is lovely, the island is beautiful, and meeting and talking to real Cubans might be far more interesting than reciting stale old platitudes about their terrible lot in life, poor poor things, and assuming that you/we know better than they do what’s good for them. I have several friends who have been there for various reasons (mostly agricultural) at various times, and have long wanted to spend some time there myself — to see for myself, rather than through the lens of Castro’s brilliant but (obviously) partisan speeches, or through the lens of the ultra-rightist Miami Cuban Mafia and their sleazy pals in US politics. I believe neither that Cuba is Paradise nor that Cuba is an island gulag (the only concentration camp I know of in Cuba belongs to the US). but then I don’t believe that the US is Paradise, or that the US is the most evil place on earth.
I do know that record numbers of people are leaving the US, or choosing not to come to the US; and that the US imprisons a higher percentage of its population than any other nation on earth including China. some are voting with their feet and some are not permitted to leave… sound familiar?
De Anander, thank you for writing what I am thinking. I think the failures shown by these systems, communists, sozialists are not due to the ideology behind it, but to human factors or maybe better weakness – like greed, egoism etc, as I mentioned in an other post. I think it makes no difference if the greedy egoist is capitalist or communist, it is bad for the society as a whole.
Also, I remember that after the reunification of Germany – once the cheers stoped, the east Germans started complaining, especially women, because in the old DDR they had a state system that took care of the children and made going to work easier. I think this is a good example – on the one hand that system provided help to the women, on the other hand it misused it, as that same structure was used to indoctrinate the children with their ideology. However, while writing this, isn’t our system and school indoctrinating our children also?
The NYT had yesterday an interesting article by Krisof on child mortaliy, comparing the US to Cuba. Nothing new here, but I think it fits the discussion.
Health Care? Ask Cuba
Here’s a wrenching fact: If the U.S. had an infant mortality rate as good as Cuba’s, we would save an additional 2,212 American babies a year.
Yes, Cuba’s. Babies are less likely to survive in America, with a health care system that we think is the best in the world, than in impoverished and autocratic Cuba. According to the latest C.I.A. World Factbook, Cuba is one of 41 countries that have better infant mortality rates than the U.S.
Even more troubling, the rate in the U.S. has worsened recently.
…
If we had a rate as good as Singapore’s, we would save 18,900 babies each year. Or to put it another way, our policy failures in Iraq may be killing Americans at a rate of about 800 a year, but our health care failures at home are resulting in incomparably more deaths – of infants. And their mothers, because women are 70 percent more likely to die in childbirth in America than in Europe.
Posted by: Fran | Jan 13 2005 7:09 utc | 119
Also from CIA Factbook:
Cuba, population: 11,398,764
Haiti…………………….7,656,166
Dominican Rep…..8,833,000
Cuba, birth rate…..12.18 per1,000
Haiti…………………….33,765
Dominican Rep…..23,600
Cuba,death rate….7,1 per 1,000
Haiti……………………..13.2
Dominican Rep……7.1
Cuba, infant mortality………6.45 per 1,000
Haiti…………………………………74.38
Dominican Rep……………….33.28
Cuba, life expentancy………77.04 years
Haiti…………………………………..51.78
Dominican Rep…………………67.63
Cuba, people living with AIDS…3,300
Haiti………………………………………….280,000
Dominican Rep………………………..88,000
Cuba, literacy…………………………..97%
Haiti………………………………………….52.9%
Dominican Rep…………………………84.7%
In these ways Cuba is Libra
Posted by: anna missed | Jan 13 2005 9:16 utc | 120
Again, I think you are all missing my purpose.
I am fine with criticising the US, US or Western policies and acknowledging their impact (including many deaths) on others. I am also fine with acknowledging some of the things that “socialist” systems have done.
What I would like is the same perspective from those of you that say US – evil, Lenin (or Castro, or others) – good/great.
It sounds like USSR – evil, Reagan – great.
You will notice that I do say USSR – evil but have refrained (with reason) from saying Reagan – great and that makes me a lot more moderate in what I write than those of you that criticise me and accuse me of being simplistic.
Posted by: Jérôme | Jan 13 2005 9:31 utc | 121
If the US govt would allow us travel to Cuba, maybe we could get a better sense of the downsides. Obviously, general comparisons are difficult in that essential characteristics are so clouded by the particulars and circumstances. We dont know what a place like Cuba could be, if say, the US gave it fair and reciprocal treatment as a sovereign nation, and un-demonised reportage on both pro and con politcal/economic issues. Under present circumstances, Cuba, is amazing in it’s dedication to it’s own people, with what it’s got.
Posted by: anna missed | Jan 13 2005 10:27 utc | 122
@DeA:
Jerome’s busy probably.
If I could get some French papers, I would volunteer to go down and investigate for 3 months or so(all expenses paid of course).
For fair and balanced, I could take Morkie Thatcher with me.
Would be happy to make this sacrifice for the MOAland.
Posted by: FlashHarry | Jan 13 2005 12:25 utc | 123
My SO is Cuban (born in 59) and came to the US in 1970 after father (a bus mechanic) and several other family members were forced to work on farms away from the family, I guess to atone for the fact that they wanted to leave. His whole family was working-class in Cuba and they are pretty much the same thing here (definitely not in the right-wing Cuban mafia, all voting for Kerry in the last election). His sister with her husband went back to Cuba about five years ago because his whole family was still there. I’ve seen the videos and she told me all the stories about life there. I’ve also met several other family members that came to US in the last few years. If anyone is interested, can relate some of it.
One of the men I know that fought with Castro in the revolution also rose up against him in 1965 and spent many years in jail for it. They rose up because things were not what they fought for.
What the Cuban Revolution was supposed to be about disintegrated within a few years into something the people didn’t want. IMHO, the embargo should have been ended years ago and then we would have seen whether Castro survived or not.
Posted by: aw | Jan 13 2005 12:52 utc | 124
@Anna Missed:
Cuba in 1958, as you are probably aware, was tied very closely trade-wise to the US, and had been since it’s independence from Spain. Indeed, it was almost a 51st state.
One might wonder what the path of the “Cuban Revolution” might have been if the trade relationship had continued in 1960; or if relatively normal relations had resumed at the end of the Vietnam War(1975-12 years after missle crisis and Bay of Pigs; 8 years after Guevara’s death in Bolivia); or in 1990, after the collapse of USSR.
Posted by: FlashHarry | Jan 13 2005 13:01 utc | 125
I’ve never understood the hatred of the US establishment for Cuba. Is it as simple as the votes in Florida or is there something else going on?
@AW:
Sorry I missed you.I type slow. We agree on a lot of things. I hold no brief for Castro, but it pisses me off that our policy is so short sighted that <11,000,000 people have lived a fossilized existence since 1960--that's 44 years folks--because of it. The only person or entity that this policy benefits, is Castro, and IMHO,it is not clear to me that even he ever wanted this result--in 1960, or from 1970-present.
@Colman
1970-1990-kneejerk reactionary political stupidity.
1990-Present-Political pandering to what AW so quaintly calls "the right-wing Cuban mafia".
Posted by: FlashHarry | Jan 13 2005 13:44 utc | 127
flashharry- if you need a research asst. for that trip to the Caribbean, let me know… probably should do some comparative studies in places like Belize and Costra Rica, too. (all expenses paid, of course.)
I really didn’t know my question to alabama was going to result in a bar brawl. For me it was a continuation of a discussion about speculations raised…where do things stand now, that sort of idea.
Obviously I do not think that Negroponte is above the death squad fray. I also think the NYReview of Books has done solid and consistent reporting on American political involvements over the years, and they’re not the only ones. Salvadore and Nicaragua and Grenada and all the rest, as well, seem to be examples of micro-military targets for theatrical shows of power that give certain groups a justification for their continued existence in American foreign and domestic policy, to the detriment of the rest of us.
MoA-ers are certainly passionate, for whatever reasons those may be. Maybe it’s the circle game or jerk or whatever when one side of the spectrum gets the benefit of the doubt while the other can do no right. Yin and Yang need each other politically, it seems, as well.
Unlike someone’s snark a while back, btw, I have no desire to send anyone to Montessori-lag. In fact, I’m a really bad “professional mom,” and have never aspired to the role, sterotypical assumptions to the contrary.
It’s funny (sad, not ha-ha) that Billmon posts a few and one of the likely reasons he got out of the comments biz rises to the fore.
Anyone else planning to boycott the Bush machine on Jan. 20th? For me, it’s not about the terms by which he may have won the current election or not. It’s a vote of no confidence in his policies, his administrative appts, and his continued slide into totalitarianism. I cannot support an imperial presidency.
I cannot believe that the U.S. intends to hold people prisoner FOR LIFE with no trial, no due process, because George and the whole neo-con gang of yahoos fucked up and are now trying to cover themselves from the revelation of their crimes against humanity in a court of law. If we are going to suspend habeas corpus, that’s a decision for the legislative branch, not the executive. The executive may recommend, but may not unilaterally decide.
More and more U.S. policy is becoming a pastiche of USSR and fascist tactics. The inauguration is obscene, if for no other reason than that the American media has refused to hold anyone in the Bush administration accountable, and has thus made it possible for the American people to have a vetting of current practices in our name.
But if they are not held accountable, then we all will be. America currently resides in a state of disgrace.
I wouldn’t watch the coronation of corruption anyway because I have never been tempted by bulimia or other female ravages. Viewing such sickening pagentry would be the media equivalent of sticking my finger down my throat.
Posted by: fauxreal | Jan 13 2005 14:54 utc | 129
re morkie thatcher flasharry
to paraphrase robin williams
about someone in the royal family knowing
someone in the royal family intimately (gene pool)
it would seem the same is true of the tories
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 13 2005 15:26 utc | 130
New Robert Fisk article.
Fear stalks city where the police hide behind masks
I call on an old Iraqi friend who used to publish a literary magazine during Saddam’s reign. “They want me to vote, but they can’t protect me,” he says. “Maybe there will be no suicide bomber at the polling station. But I will be watched. And what if I get a hand-grenade in my home three days’ later? The Americans will say they did their best, Allawi’s people will say I am a ‘martyr for democracy’. So, do you think I’m going to vote?”
…
Round the corner, I discover the reason for the jam: Iraqi cops are fighting off hundreds of motorists desperate for petrol, the drivers refusing to queue any longer for the one thing which Iraq possesses in Croesus-like amounts – petrol.
…
So, “full ahead both” for the dreaded 30 January elections and democracy. The American generals – with a unique mixture of mendacity and hope amid the insurgency – are now saying that only four of Iraq’s 18 provinces may not be able to “fully” participate in the elections.
Good news. Until you sit down with the population statistics and realise – as the generals all know – that those four provinces contain more than half of the population of Iraq.
Posted by: Fran | Jan 13 2005 16:57 utc | 131
fauxreal: “Anyone else planning to boycott the Bush machine on Jan. 20th?”
I am close enough to witness the spectacle and my SO and I have planned since way back to be there. I burned a vacation day Nov. 2, what the hell, why not another? It will be the ONE time w won’t be able to avoid a protest. =) However, the press will count the horde and spin away about everyone being there *for* him. F**k, I’d love to show him my back. Anyway, don’t spend “a damn dime” and wear a white ribbon. I just got a DNC mailing looking for a million strong. I wish.
Posted by: beq | Jan 13 2005 17:49 utc | 132
In the last years before the Civil War, slavery was defended on the grounds that it is more humane and compassionate than a system in which a man is left to shift for himself in securing the basic necessities of remunerative labor, shelter, and sustenance. Slavery, it was argued, protected the vulnerable from economic exploitation and the harsh realities of the urban, industrialized north, where livelihood and material comfort were guaranteed no one, where employers needn’t see to the overall well-being of workers, and where the prosperous had but callous regard for the woe and want of the lowliest. If slavery denied a certain class of persons rights which others enjoyed and depended upon, it granted those persons in return security from the everyday demands, uncertainties, and perils of independence and self-responsibility.
The basic defense of communism is much the same.
Posted by: Pat | Jan 13 2005 19:07 utc | 133
Pat
Except for the last sentence you wrote, you sounded like Marx who saw in the lumpenproletariat “sphere of pauperism” and “industrial reserve army of labor” capital’s own version of the slave system. Indeed, capital’s immiseration of of persons excelled precisely because exploitation was universalized in abstract labor power.
Yet, notice how capital’s domination is still particularized: if you are Black you are massively more likely to be unemployed or imprisoned.
The burden for you, in order to prove your either capitalist and free, or, communist and unfree, is to defend the hackneyed rightwing ideology that Blacks, for example, choose such miseries.
Posted by: slothrop | Jan 13 2005 19:29 utc | 134
@Pat soooo boring. same old rightwing bromides, Communism=Slavery ho bloody hum. reductionist, underinformed rhetoric that hasn’t changed since 1948. Us Good, Them Evil, end of story, no curiosity, no historical perspective, thinking in cartoon analogies.
I can make the argument that children should be protected and guided by their parents and you could say “The same argument has been made for slavery!” I could make the argument that companion animals might be better off with human protection and care than they would if we let them all loose to fend for themselves and you could say “The same argument has been made for slavery!” I could make the argument that human beings are better off living in community, with laws and institutions that safeguard them from each other’s excesses (and necessarily limit their autonomy in so doing), than as theoretical monadic Wild Men (or Women) survivalists lurking in caves, and you could say “The same argument has been made for slavery!”
In other words, the fact that some argument (that absolute autonomy can and sometimes must be traded off against well-being both individual and social) was made, with great pomp, hypocrisy and bogosity, for a criminal institution of race-based slavery, doesn’t mean that the argument may not be made in a valid way in several other, different contexts — any more than the fact that (we are told) Hitler loved his dogs, makes every dog-lover a Hitler. Or that the fact that the printing press was first used for Bibles and then used for persecuting “witches” (the Malleus Maleficarum was the 2nd document to be printed in any quantity in Europe) makes all printed materials, or the act of printing, inherently conducive to superstition and religious hegemony. Because an argument (or a technology) has been used for one thing in a low, mean, harmful or dishonest way, doesn’t meant that it cannot be used in a more constructive way elsewhere.
For example, the fact that the US uses arguments (bogus, pompous, and wickedly hypocritical) about “democracy” and “freedom” to justify its criminal looting and sacking of Iraq, doesn’t mean that similar arguments about democracy and freedom may not be validly used in some other context.
Pat
Thanks for offering your view. It’s what makes this place interesting: the likelihood that eventually you will be a fellow traveler.
Posted by: slothrop | Jan 13 2005 19:38 utc | 136
And speaking of the unlamented (by me, anyway) Late Soviet Style: Cursor reports that Scripps Howard reports that parade performers at next week’s inauguration have been warned “not to look directly at Bush while passing the presidential reviewing stand, not to look to either side and not to make any sudden movements.”
Wow, that really sounds like an open democracy to me! Ain’t it wonderful how unrestrained capitalism and the untrammelled accumulation of personal wealth just naturally lead to freedom, openness, and autonomy? And a Dear Leader whose subjects are not even allowed to look at his face as they pass, lest they be suspected of Turrist designs?
Who was it (was it here?) recently told the old joke about Kruschev when he was asked why he never challenged Stalin? Sigh…
Damn! De
26 minutes to read, compose and reply. I would love to see you toe to toe with some better known rightwingers like Limbaugh or O’Reilly. I do believe they would either be crying or pounding their little feet furiously after a couple of exchanges.
My hat is off to you sir.
Posted by: dan of steele | Jan 13 2005 19:45 utc | 139
So if the Castro govt. were to be overthrown, should we expect Cuba’s vital statics to invert, in line with Haiti & and the Dominican Rep?
Posted by: anna missed | Jan 13 2005 19:49 utc | 140
@Dan thanks, but actually I think Pat won a few points recently — not on fact or logic, imho, but by succeeding in raising my prose temperature by her signature captious provocations (I wonder if that is a skill they learn in interrogator school eh? — provoking the subject into rash blurtings?)… I would prefer to keep the discourse civil, I should not post before cooling off, and I apologise to all present for more than one lapse of tone in my recent posts.
and thanks for your vote of confidence Dan but I would really rather not go “toe to toe” with any of those people. just listening to them for a few seconds makes me feel very, very old and tired 🙂
@annamissed we will find out soon. Fidel can’t live much longer. something will happen. my prediction — the US will pounce, and loot/wreck the place as they have one economy after another throughout S America. Cuba Libre will become Club Cuba for wealthy gringo turistas, and the demographics will quickly revert to third world norm as “liberating” capitalism frees the population to starve, sicken, and die with perfect autonomy. as it was before the revolution — rule by Mafia. and Jeb’s friends will be very, very happy.
My first reaction: “Nice point Pat.”
On the other hand, freeing people into a world where they belong nowhere, but must rent the ground they eat or sleep on is also a huge invitation to abuse. I don’t think that either capitalism or communism as systems will ever protect these people from exploitation and abuse. The only thing that can protect them in the long term is social change such that people grow up expecting and demanding more justice for the weak.
This makes a problem for me in the debate, because I am sure that “rugged individualist” “market fundamentalist” approaches so familiar here in the US are specifically oriented toward making as many individuals as possible vulnerable to abuse.
My problem is the rhetoric of market fundamentalism in the US. “The market” has become an idol that must be worshipped, and to speak otherwise marks one as an infidel, a betrayer of contemporary capitalism. To compare capitalism and communism without first conceding that capitalism is, of course, the only possible approach.. this also marks one as an infidel. And because the failures of “the market” grow larger all the time, increasingly one can speak of less and less. Ask people to actually think about why and how infant mortality grows worse all the time, and hostile silence arises because the answer does not worship at the altar. Ask about why we imprison our fellow citizens more and more – and people cannot answer because to do so in seriousness would make them apostates.
For me the problem is not so much that I will be ostracized, but that I will betray my own humanity to avoid being ostracized. I am angry at my own timidity, and so at those who try to intimidate me into cowardice.
I imagine you are intimidating readers here with rhetorical tricks, ones you know to be tricks. The trick works like this:
Evil people swear by god.
All evil people are diabolical.
All people who swear by god are diabolical.
I do not doubt that you felt your comments on slavery and communism were effective. But I also think you know this sort of fallacy. The way I hear the argument is – “Not only is objective consideration of communism anti-capitalist apostasy, but pro-slavery apostasy as well.”
And the following ideas are all smeared within one paragraph:
humane
compassionate
protected the vulnerable
livelihood and material comfort were guaranteed
overall well-being of workers
Posted by: Citizen | Jan 13 2005 20:10 utc | 142
dan of steele
i now have a picture of you in italy – walking thestreets like the great Gutman from ‘the maltese falcon’ – i like a man whoo likes a man who likes a man to talk
bravo
& yes deanander is our own jimi hendrix/cathie berberin
his riffs get any wilder & i’ll imagine you at the crossroads with Legba & your soul
tendresse
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 13 2005 20:42 utc | 143
remembereringgiap
You are a most remarkable man, I never would have guessed that my meager words would have betrayed my ample girth.
My wife has been wanting to go to Paris for at least 19 years, I think I will take her soon. If you are willing I would like to drink a glass of wine with you.
Posted by: dan of steele | Jan 13 2005 20:55 utc | 144
dan
it would be my pleasure. have just recently rewatched the maltese falcon – Guttman (?) is such a beautiful character he is a marvellous construction , really & the actor whose name i would never forget but have (the diabétes/insulin has been having this affect with my memory) – the team of him & peter lorre
truly magnificent, sir & you know i like a man who likes a man to speak openly with a good memory
remind me – a hint – dan
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 13 2005 21:07 utc | 145
sydney greenstreet & old charlie laughton with our own michel simon (who unfortunately was a closet fascist) – i’d fo a million miles to regard them in anything
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 13 2005 21:11 utc | 146
This’ll put a dent in the antiwar effort:
The Sword has many other advantages. It might get shot up but will never come home to grieving parents.
Posted by: slothrop | Jan 13 2005 21:18 utc | 147
This will go over great in the muslim world.
Group Says It Relocated 300 Orphans – Va. Missionaries Talk of Raising Muslim Tsunami Victims in Christian Home
A Virginia-based missionary group said this week that it has airlifted 300 “tsunami orphans” from the Muslim province of Banda Aceh to Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, where it plans to raise them in a Christian children’s home.
…
The appeal said WorldHelp was working with native-born Christians in Indonesia who want to “plant Christian principles as early as possible” in the 300 Muslim children, all younger than 12, who lost their parents in the tsunami.
“These children are homeless, destitute, traumatized, orphaned, with nowhere to go, nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat. If we can place them in a Christian children’s home, their faith in Christ could become the foothold to reach the Aceh people,” it said.
…
Brewer said the Indonesian government gave permission for the orphans to be flown to Jakarta last week and was aware that they would be raised as Christians.
[“We have no knowledge of this,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa said today in Jakarta. “If confirmed, this would constitute a serious violation of the standing ban by the Indonesian government on the adoption of Acehnese children affected by the tsunami disaster and appropriate steps would be taken accordingly.” He added that he did not believe any Indonesian official would have approved the transfer of the children.] “These are children who are unclaimed or unwanted. We are not trying to rip them apart from any existing family members and change their culture and change their customs,” Brewer said. “These children are going to be raised in a Christian environment. That’s no guarantee they will choose to be Christians.”
Posted by: Fran | Jan 13 2005 21:41 utc | 148
don’t forget the great character actor Elijah Wood in The Maltese Falcon. My favorite Peter Lorre movie is “M,” but he’s wonderful here, too. His smack addiction permeates the skin of all his roles.
Fran- if the christian orphanage that plans to raise those kids is fundamentalist, I know from experience that quite a few of them will emerge from the experience as atheists and as rebellious as PKs (that’s preacher’s kids for you heathens. 🙂
De- it’s my understanding that European investors have been building hotels in Cuba for years and are just waiting to sell them to Americans for lots of money once the travel ban is lifted.
…which might very well mean that Cuba would experience the joys of resource extraction and poverty.
my city has a “sister city” in Cuba, but no one has been allowed to travel there since the Bushistas took over (as you noted, De, they usually go for agriculture or music/dance exchange– Cuba has done lots with sustainable ag. b/c of the embargos, so I’ve been told, and of course son is a beautiful musical style.)
Posted by: fauxreal | Jan 13 2005 22:50 utc | 149
you know fauxreal – pat is quite wrong about me – i became a maoist simply because i though mao tste tung was a chinese sydney greenstreet & well you know how that story went
& indeed dan you are an ingenious fellow to live amongst the italians where silence & conversation approach a sanctified niveau
& about that bird – you know f the gallery dealer in zurich who just after thge war……
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 13 2005 22:56 utc | 150
re Cuba, this typical reaction from the right blogosphere:
A Journalistic Miscarriage
Even though he is a New York Times op-ed columnist, Nicholas Kristof is an honest and generally sensible guy. He does, however, have an annoying tendency, one fairly common among liberals: He seems to think it’s cute to cast America in a negative light. Yesterday this led him seriously astray. His lead was a grabber:
Here’s a wrenching fact: If the U.S. had an infant mortality rate as good as Cuba’s, we would save an additional 2,212 American babies a year.
Yes, Cuba’s. Babies are less likely to survive in America, with a health care system that we think is the best in the world, than in impoverished and autocratic Cuba. According to the latest C.I.A. World Factbook, Cuba is one of 41 countries that have better infant mortality rates than the U.S.
Kristof goes on to note that the U.S. infant-mortality rate, which declined in every year from 1958 to 2001, went up in 2002, to 7 babies per 1,000 live births from 6.8 the previous year. “America’s children are at greater risk than they’ve been in for at least a decade,” Irwin Redlener of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health tells Kristof. The column closes with another comparison:
As readers know, I complain regularly about the Chinese government’s brutality in imprisoning dissidents, Christians and, lately, Zhao Yan, a New York Times colleague in Beijing. Yet for all their ruthlessness, China’s dictators have managed to drive down the infant mortality rate in Beijing to 4.6 per thousand; in contrast, New York City’s rate is 6.5.
Blogger Edward Morrissey notes some problems with Kristof’s claims. For one, since there are no figures yet for 2003 or 2004, there’s no reason to assume that the increase from 2001 to 2002 is a trend rather than a blip. Indeed, CNN reported last February that the increase was “mainly because of complications associated with older women putting off motherhood and then having multiple babies via fertility drugs” and that based on preliminary data the Centers for Disease Control says “the U.S. rate for 2003 is expected to drop” (presumably final 2003 numbers will be out next month).
Kristof acknowledges this point, but spins it differently: “Sandy Smith of the Centers for Disease Control says that the statisticians are pretty sure there was not a further deterioration in 2003, but that it’s too soon to know whether there was an improvement or just a leveling off at the higher rate.” But in any case, a look at the CDC data suggests that Redlener’s statement about children being at “greater risk than . . . for at least a decade,” which Kristof reports uncritically, is bunk. The rate in 1995 was 7.6 per 100,000, and in 1990, 9.2 per 100,000.
Morrissey takes particular offense at Kristof’s “cherry-picking” of Chinese data. The CIA World Factbook reports that China’s nationwide rate is 25.28 deaths per thousand live births. “Perhaps the rate is better in Beijing, but it hardly matters if the rest of the country has that rate,” Morrissey writes. “Kristof also leaves out another issue with China and its infants: its forced-abortion policy aimed at population control.”
But if Brian Carnell is right, Kristof’s conclusion is utterly false. Carnell writes:
The United States . . . has the most intensive system of emergency intervention to keep low birth weight and premature infants alive in the world. The United States is, for example, one of only a handful countries that keeps detailed statistics on early fetal mortality–the survival rate of infants who are born as early as the 20th week of gestation.
How does this skew the statistics? Because in the United States if an infant is born weighing only 400 grams [14 ounces] and not breathing, a doctor will likely spend lot of time and money trying to revive that infant. If the infant does not survive–and the mortality rate for such infants is in excess of 50 percent–that sequence of events will be recorded as a live birth and then a death.
In many countries, however, (including many European countries) such severe medical intervention would not be attempted and, moreover, regardless of whether or not it was, this would be recorded as a fetal death rather than a live birth. That unfortunate infant would never show up in infant mortality statistics.
Medical statistics can be tricky: An excellent hospital may have a higher death rate than a mediocre one because of differences in the patient population, with the former treating much harder cases than the latter. That is what seems to have happened here: Kristof has alighted on a statistical artifact of American excellence and misconstrued it as a sign of America’s shortcomings.
I hane not bothered to reinsert the links (btw if someone can tell me how to copy and paste text with the links coming along, I would appreciate it) but you can go find them if you want over at http://www.opinionjournal.com, it’s the infamous Taranto.
Posted by: Jérôme | Jan 13 2005 22:59 utc | 151
@RG:
Here’s a link to reviews of Hastings book:
LINK
It’s hard to describe why it’s so good. Has a lot of first person accounts and documents(esp russian)referenced that I had never seen before. Well worth reading.
Posted by: FlashHarry | Jan 13 2005 23:19 utc | 152
Sorry:
Don’t know how that happened.
TP and my computer are doing wierd things tonight.
Posted by: FlashHarry | Jan 13 2005 23:25 utc | 153
DeAnander, perhaps you can explain to me the defensiveness that some Democrats, or Progressives, exhibit toward socialist totalitarianism. Perhaps you can explain to me how those concerned most recently with election fraud here in the US can also have warm feelings for foreign dictatorships. Perhaps you can explain why it is that some of those on the Left who seem deeply troubled by the reality or prospect of a loss of civil liberties under this presidential administration, are impressed by regimes that systematically deny the rights of speech, assembly, and association to their citizens; jail political dissidents and abolish opposing political parties; and exercise direct authority over intellectual and artistic endeavors.
It seems to me that this does not bode well for either a party or a person who seeks to defend himself or his country from the encroachments of tyranny and the attrition of hard-won freedoms.
Posted by: Pat | Jan 14 2005 1:52 utc | 154
You tell ’em Pat, some people seem to side with the most disgusting abusive regimes purely for some hypocritical and perverse self-gratification if you ask me.
Posted by: Prince Bandar | Jan 14 2005 1:58 utc | 155
Why Pat, it suggests that you are a foul-mouthed harridan who abuses other posters here. Is your directing me to that post a cry for help on your part? In my country we would take a very dim view of that kind of disrespectful talk from an inferior and as I am a great friend of the Bush family you had better not ever speak to me in such tones.
Perhaps the Scientologists could do something for you, or any other outfit that corrects the minds of those who don’t really mean what they say or say what they mean – or even know what they are talking about.
Posted by: Prince Bandar | Jan 14 2005 3:26 utc | 157
More on the kidnapped German – seems his allegations are holding. SCARY! this was not someone travelling in Afghanistan or Iraq or some far of place. This happend in Europe.
‘They beat me from all sides’ – A German car salesman says that a year ago he was kidnapped in Europe, beaten and flown to a US-controlled jail in Afghanistan. Now the German government is collecting evidence to back up his story. James Meek hears Khaled el-Masri’s account of life in America’s secret offshore prison network
The story that el-Masri tells them by way of explanation, on this evening in late May 2004, is extraordinary: a story of how an unemployed German car salesman from the town of Ulm went on a New Year’s holiday to Macedonia, was seized by Macedonian police at the border, held incommunicado for weeks without charge, then beaten, stripped, shackled and blindfolded and flown to a jail in Afghanistan, run by Afghans but controlled by Americans. Five months after first being seized, he says, still with no explanation or charge, he was flown back to Europe and dumped in an unknown country which turned out to be Albania.
…
If true, the abduction would add to our understanding of a pattern of US behaviour frightening in its implications both for America and for the rest of the world. The former director of the CIA, George Tenet, told the US 9/11 Commission last year that even before September 11 the US had abducted more than 70 foreigners it considered terrorists – a process Washington has declared legal under the label “extraordinary rendition”.
An investigation by the Washington Post last year suggested that the US held 9,000 people overseas in an archipelago of known prisons (such as Abu Ghraib in Iraq) and unknown ones run by the Pentagon, the CIA or other organisations. But this figure does not include others “rendered” to third-party governments who then act as subcontractors for Washington, enabling the US to effectively torture detainees while technically denying that it carries out torture.
Posted by: Fran | Jan 14 2005 6:58 utc | 159
From the Guardian, Jonathan Steele:
A global gulag to hide the war on terror’s dirty secrets – Bush is now thinking of building jails abroad to hold suspects for life
and more from the Guardian, Sidney Blumentahl:
Happy talk – Bush’s inaugural address next week will be full of his administration’s ideological fantasies that now substitute for reality
Posted by: Fran | Jan 14 2005 7:48 utc | 160
@Fran how long before some abused, wrongly imprisoned intellectual (an Arab-speaking Solzhenitsyn) writes a stunning autobiography about his multi-year detention at the hands of the lethally stupid American “security” forces?
@Jerome re the rightwing blogger trying to re-spin the infant mortality stats… one of the many signs of terminal decay in the old USSR was its desperate attempt to cover up the crumbling of its health care system. although life expectancy and general public health crashed horrifically after the Fall, during the period of IMF/WB looting and Mafia rule (which imho ain’t over yet), these indicators were already on the way down some years before that. I don’t know enough detail to put a date on the start of the decline, but between chronic alcoholism, the redirection of funding into massive military buildup and away from the public good, and the Chernobyl disaster, the Soviet medical system was (as was revealed officially after the Fall iirc) on its knees, with government agencies churning out false figures trying to paper over public perception of the (real) failure. my source for this info is somewhat anecdotal — an old ex-CPUSA member whose heart was broken in the 50’s (revelations from the Stalin regime) and (to a lesser extent because he was already alienated) again after the Fall.
imho those who cherish ideologies to the exclusion of realities need to have their hearts broken, to learn the lesson that physics trumps politics, gravity trumps fantasy, actuarial statistics trump rhetoric, and the laws of thermondynamics cannot be suspended by any parliament of chattering humanity. what troubles me about the Americans is that they have not yet reached that point in history where, with broken and contrite hearts, they try to learn moderation and engage with reality. they are still in the age of the Cover Up, the falsification and politicisation of data, the passionate belief that saying something is so will make it so (magical thinking). the BushCo administration is an appropriate figurehead at this time, at least in this regard — Humpties to a man. for a nation of fantasists we have a fantastical regime, magical-thinkers only need apply for posts with BushCo.
it remains to be seen how long the spinmeisters and snake-oil salesmen will be able to mesmerise the public and distract them from the real perception of decay…
Maha has an interesting take on the infant mortality discussion.
Planning Your Next Incarnation
Posted by: Fran | Jan 14 2005 20:47 utc | 163
@bama, sorry, I owed you an answer from waay upthread about “dirty pool”, why I said that.
basically same reason comrade slothrop said Ugh, i.e. that speculating on the deep psychology of other posters (other than in jest) in the course of debate, is imho a dirty-pool tactic. seems like a way of (a) playing a kind of NLP game by suddenly flipping the terms of discussion from the general to the extremely personal/intrusive (rather like the civil stranger on a bus bench who proceeds from casual chat about the weather to staring deeply into your eyes and asking if you have Found Jesus — a disorienting effect), and /or (b) “explaining away” the other person’s position or feelings or opinion by questioning its authenticity (“oh, you only say that because your Mama didn’t let you have ice cream at your birthday parties.”)
this latter tactic must be as old as humanity. parents do it to children, spouses do it to each other, governments do it to dissidents (cf Frist’s proposal to DSM-ise “political paranoia”). it’s one of the classic belittling tactics, right up there with “who’s been putting these crazy ideas in your pretty little head”… a classic historical case is the old sexist notion that gay men must have been “made gay” by some childhood trauma, lesbians “only hate men because someone raped them,” etc. it provides an explanation (badness, madness) other than that the Other is a fully human being with an evolved, considered position and genuine/innate/authentic feelings that one might actually have to acknowledge or understand, rather than dismiss as some kind of psychological flaw or damage.
aside from the dirty pool aspect, such speculation seems to me to involve unwarranted assumptions in the Internet world where, absent personal verification or vouching-for each other’s identities, no one really knows who anyone else is. we are merely voices whispering — through vocoders that disguise our gender and age — in a dark room. or participants in a highly verbal bal masque´
I once had a pleasant correspondence with a Japanese guy (resident of Canada) about bicycle and transit issues. from the fresh enthusiasm of his not-quite standard English [this plus his name suggested he was Japanese, plus his ability to compare public transit in Tokyo and Vancouver with encyclopaedic thoroughness] — and his brief mention of a recent 4000 mile bike tour he took down the W coast and back (!) — I formed a firm impression of him as a gung-ho 20-something foreign exchange student. whenever I got mail from him I had a vivid mental impression of this young, energetic Japanese student typing away in a college dorm room or rental apartment. a couple of years later, purely by chance, he happened to mention that he had just turned 60, was a professional engineer, and enjoyed flying small planes 🙂 so much for assumptions.
when we cannot even guess at the age, livelihood, class, gender or race of our correspondents except by their putative self-descriptions, imagining that we can somehow infer their personal histories, childhood traumas, and psychological state from a stream of text on a screen seems (to me) extraordinarily presumptive, not to mention futile…
to speculate about the psychology of Americans as a culture (or French or British or Iraqi or Israeli) based on the manifestations of pop culture and media, trends, fashions, “the voice of the street” etc. seems to me irresistible. to speculate about the psychology of men who as little boys torture animals for fun seems necessary, if those men rise to positions of real power. but to try to place a debating partner, up close and personal, on the analysand’s couch, is what struck me as dirty pool. this in itself — what I write here — is metacomment and hence dangerous, therefore I must say clearly that this was my perception and not necessarily your intent. I say only how it may seem to an onlooker (this one)…
Deanander
The mode of communication practiced here is a new form, unlike any other. I think we already take for granted the novelty of this new public forum, perhaps expecting too often the norms of interaction are well established, when they are just now evolving. I don’t need to offer examples of the anomalies of the blog; these are numerous and obvious.
I think the value of this new media contact (epistolary? what do we call it?) is very interesting because it explodes, in a kind of allegory of form, the fixity of the sign and the signified and the author and audience. What we witness now is a kind of Bakhtin-like carnival of signification (slothrop=vulgar marxism–but later, I’ll change my name to patrick and become baudrillarden smartrass. whatever) in which the dialectic of subject/object becomes confused.
Of course, this revolution in interaction is bad for power, not least because it can, at every turn, deconstruct the truths and tear away at the ediface of everything certain of being “popular.”
Posted by: slothrop | Jan 15 2005 1:39 utc | 165
@Slothrop:
Give them hell slothrop, although I understand only about half of what you say.
Posted by: FlashHarry | Jan 15 2005 2:00 utc | 166
Sorry, Bettie (Charley):
Think most here are into Fay Wray.
Know I am.
Posted by: KingKong | Jan 15 2005 2:59 utc | 168
i do not mean to be personal – that is not my intention & when it is i hope i say it clearly enough that there can be no mistake
remembereringgiap, when I read some of your more agitated posts, I get the distinct feeling that you were much abused in your early years; and while I could be dead wrong about this, I get that distinct feeling all the same–which makes it almost impossible to take your posts as “personal,” in the sense of being malicious, or of taking pleasure in hurting people..
DeAnander, where you see alabama speculating on the deep psychology of remembereringgiap, I see alabama as speculating on the shallow and blind responses of alabama, responses that preclude his seeing a distinction of great importance to remembereringgiap–as between comments that are personal from comments that are not. He says that “a feeling” makes it “impossible” for him to do what he most certainly ought to do. He–rather to his chagrin–may never be able to take remembereringgiap’s comments personally, even when, for good or ill, they are intended to be so taken. This is a bit strange, no? It wouldn’t pertain, for example, to personal comments coming from you.
Posted by: alabama | Jan 15 2005 6:01 utc | 170
not sure I quite followed that ‘bama 🙂 but have been thinking that one of the peculiarities of the “epistolary-in-near-real-time” medium is that it partakes of an immediacy nearer to conversation, while maintaining the many ambiguities of text unexplicated by facial expression, tone of voice, etc. — which I think in plain unvarnished terms means that misunderstandings happen a helluva lot faster than in the days of traditional epistolatory conversations 🙂 [the only compensation is that they can also be as quickly cleared up, ambiguities resolved, terms defined].
OTOH the epistolatory format with its semi anonymity has the astonishing virtue of presenting our ideas to each other without the baggage of age, race, gender, physical appearance, deformity, personal mannerisms — a complete violation of the new laws of media which dictate that only those with Perfect Hair and expensive suits, preferably White and speaking some version of the classless, dumbed-down and sanitised English of TV Nation, are allowed to impart information and be taken seriously. also a freeing of all of us from our more quirky personal prejudices of eye and ear which might otherwise prevent us from taking seriously something useful or thought-provoking said by “the wrong kind of person,” say someone who wears stripes with plaids.
new prejudices may evolve to bias us for and against the disembodied voices of the epistolatory world — poor spelling is despised by some, “bad english” can be mocked and scorned by xenophobes, some find flights of poetry and fancy graceful and charming while others find them annoying, time-wasting frippery — and so on. I have been rebuked more than once (not at Moon that I recall) for nonstandard capitalisation 🙂 but what is mysterious (always) to me is that elusive thing called “voice” and how we perceive it in the web of words (characters on a screen, merely), forming an impression, aphysical yet distinctive, of a mind behind the voice, a “personality” without any of the human/primate attributes of personality; and this signature “voice” with its shadow personality is a more convincing ID than any IP address or nickname, no?
I should add the affect of blogging/forum, while subverting the authority of the author and assisting in a decommodification of cultural production, can be negative to the mission of a leftist politics that, for example, believes history can teach us. Viewpoint relativism is cool when it works against reification, but also can obstruct consensus about the facts of a lived reality.
Hobsbawn has a good comment in today’s Guardian.
Posted by: slothrop | Jan 15 2005 16:58 utc | 172
DeAnander and slothrop, those are strong and thoughtful posts. Very helpful–for which my thanks! My first impression: a certain and ascertainable tone of voice is impossible to achieve in written language. But why is this so? I’ll get back to you on this one later today.
Posted by: alabama | Jan 15 2005 17:21 utc | 174
I have been thinking some on the difference between MoA and a forum. While the restarting of discussions as new thread starts can be a hinder in finishing a discussion on a topic, it also gives new starting points and thus a reason to restate your position (if you chose to restart a discussion, a decision that means that you think the discussion has more to give), maybe thereby reformulating your position a bit, perhaps clarifying it.
Also the restart can be a reason to stop a discussion that leads nowhere without anyone “losing” or maybe restart the discussion later when a more productive starting point has emerged.
The distinctive voices in cyberspace I think is a underlaying reality of the blog as a phenomenon. As I have learned to listen to specific voices I hear more details and misunderstandings are less frequent. I think it is a strenght of MoA that there isn´t to many voices here, although I think attempts to limit the voices could ruin the spirit of the site, and distinctly recommend against it.
It seems I am in a metamode.
Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Jan 15 2005 18:34 utc | 175
I post this because I believe that what IBM is doing here is directly related to what went on in Argentina (post January, 2005 this thread re:Tony Solo information on IBM, Cavello, Argentina).
I have sent the following emails to the Argentinian Newspaper ‘The Clarin. I have heard nothing back. Am am including the emails and some links. I believe this is ongoing and has to do with banking (world banking).
I also write these emails and post this in hopes of protecting myself.
Julie
U.S. DOJ Proffer of evidence against George Ryan – http://www.ipsn.org/ryan_george/ryan_proffer.htm
Superseding Indictment of Lawrence Warner and George Ryan http://www.ipsn.org/indictments/warner_ryan.htm
emails to The Clarin:
J L
Date: Fri, 27 May 2005 20:39:22 -0700 (PDT)
From: J L
To: lfmoores@clarin.com
To Lucio Fernandez Moores
Mr Moores,
I wrote last week to your editor regarding the IBM/Bank scandal in Argentina and a case in the United States that you can see follows the same model of bribery, fraud and extortion.
I have not received a confirmation that the Mr. Kirschbaum received the email and so I send you this information and I will try sending it from a different email id.
I pursue this because I feel that with IBM”s tremendous power, this may never be made public within the United States, and I will have no recourse. I think exposure must come from outside of the US first.
I pursue this because IBM has the power to take everything I have worked all my life for and destroy it and they have done this to others before. See also Korea, IBM, Corruption.
To: rkirschbaum@clarin.com
Cc: liveinchicago9855@yahoo.com
Sent: Sun, 22 May 2005 15:43:46 -0400
Subject: regarding the actions by IBM in your country the 1990’s and Federal Judge Adolph Bagnasco
*Please let me know if you receive this email by way of a reply of any sort. I have had a problem with my emails being delivered lately.
Dear Mr. Kirschbaum,
If I needed help regarding the actions by IBM in your country in the 1990’s who could I talk to? Could I contact the Federal Judge Adolph Bagnasco who presided over the trial?
There is currently a trial scheduled for September 2005 for very similar activities in the US. The US Department of Justice indictments regarding former Illinois Govenor George Ryan and IBM can be seen at the links below.
Although IBM is named as a participant they have a ‘not been accused of ‘wrong doing’ and are not going to be on trial. As in the trial in Argentina they seem to be beyond the law.
I care about this all because I made the mistake a year ago of assuming that IBM as a corporation was honest and that some unethical practices that I had observed were limited to the IBM group dealing with the State of Illinois and City of Chicago contracts. I submitted something called a ‘Speakup’ report, which is an internal process within IBM that allows employees to report suspected wrongdoing while remaining anonymous to the wrongdoers.
IBM and people that I believe are associated with this fraud by way of organized crime in Chicago have terrorized my family by following me, chasing me, showing up at my sons school, shooting at my house,and also professionally sabotaging me and targeted me in my job within IBM. All the harrassment has been in an artful enough way so that when I report it to Chicago Police and other authorities it cannot be proven or is explained away.
I believe that help may begin from outside of the US and IBM’s stronghold on the media and politicians. From all that I have read, Judge Bagnasco was very dedicated to bringing the offendors to justice.
I believe that the actvity I have seen incriminates IBM and politicians, and certain banks and investment houses in a scheme well beyond that outlined in Govenor Ryans indictments and continued through at least 2003.
The fact that one of the witnesses was found dead in the Argentina scandal has not been lost on me either.
I am facing an effort now to cause me to lose my profession, home and possibly my freedom, as IBM has taken an action to arrange a series of psychiatric tests to show that I am dilusional and paranoid and should not be working. This can cause me to lose my home and even my son.
These activities seem to have something to do with State and City pension funds, State issued Bond for a $10 billion dollars issued in 2003, and Bank One, JP Morgan, Bear Stearns, law firm Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw.
Republican National Committeeman Robert ‘Bob’ Kjellander was the force behind this deal and was the person that first put IBM in touch with Warner and Udstuen http://www.illinoisleader.com/news/newsview.asp?c=11555
http://www.bondbuyer.com/article.html?id=20040817UBBHP81W&from=home
…….8. It was further part of the scheme that, beginning in or about 1991 and continuing thereafter, defendant WARNER advised Udstuen that, with defendant RYAN’s knowledge and approval, WARNER would provide Udstuen with one-third of the proceeds that WARNER obtained from certain vendors doing business with the SOS Office, as a reward for Udstuen’s past service to defendant RYAN. Thereafter, defendant WARNER did provide Udstuen with one-third of the proceeds that WARNER obtained from American Decal Manufacturing (hereinafter “ADM”) and International Business Machines (hereinafter “IBM”), as described below, even though Udstuen performed minimal or no services to earn said proceeds.
It was further part of the scheme that, in or about 1991, defendant WARNER and Udstuen agreed that in order to conceal the flow of proceeds from WARNER to Udstuen related to the SOS Office vendors, defendant WARNER would use Alan Drazek’s company, American Management Resources, as a conduit for the purpose of passing payments from WARNER to Udstuen relating to ADM and IBM, as described below. WARNER agreed to issue checks to Drazek, who in turn would provide a substantial portion of the proceeds relating to ADM and IBM back to Udstuen in cash.
U.S. DOJ Proffer of evidence against George Ryan – http://www.ipsn.org/ryan_george/ryan_proffer.htm
Superseding Indictment of Lawrence Warner and George Ryan http://www.ipsn.org/indictments/warner_ryan.htm
Posted by: Julie | May 31 2005 15:42 utc | 178
I think this is nothing to do with my question. My question is do we alway see the same side of the moon from our position on earth and I just want to know yes or no and why only.
Posted by: Dung anh | Nov 14 2005 12:33 utc | 179