b
that’s what i thought & combined with the us govt attempt to stop the process of sibil edmonds
ô what a wonderful world!

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 26 2005 23:05 utc | 4

I recall someone opining that oil contracts could be already be priced in euro on a defacto basis — priced first in euros then converted to dollars. Well, it is interesting to superimpose a chart of oil (in US$) futures and the value of euros in US$. The two move together, with oil prices shadowing the moves of the euro, albeit in a more exagerated manner. This alignment seems to have begun sometime early this year. Perhaps Russia and/or OPEC have made good on their threats in a backhanded way?
Comparison of Euros in US$ and April 2005 Oil Future Price

Posted by: Charlie | Feb 26 2005 23:47 utc | 6

b:
Yes, it is only this month, really, that the two move together so obviously. It could just be coincidence, of course. But it is very odd looking to me, since the two are not nearly so syncronized before this month. I recall Russia made its announcement of move away from a dollar-peg around Feb. 4.
I first noticed this on Monday morning before I went to work. The Bank of Korea had startled the currency markets with an announcement similar to Russia and the US$ tanked. Then, the same day oil futures shot up in a shadow move. News media reported it was because of weather forecasts for colder weather. But if you watch the two together in closer detail (the hourly or 30-minute scales), it is pretty remarkable to me. Anyway, something to watch.

Posted by: Charlie | Feb 27 2005 0:12 utc | 8

Professor faces jail in bio-terror scare

The ordeal of Kurtz, who is to appear in court on Tuesday on charges of mail and wire fraud, began after he called medical emergency services. Paramedics arrived to try, unsuccessfully, to revive his wife and noticed the biological equipment in his flat. Kurtz is a member of the Critical Art Ensemble, a group that aims, according to its website, to explore the connections between art, technology and radical politics. He uses the biological equipment to work on presentations such as Flesh Machine and GenTerra, in which audiences participate in DNA experiments.
‘I had a laboratory centrifuge for isolating DNA from cells, and other equipment. The police were called and decided I could be using it for terrorism.’
Kurtz was taken away, his wife’s body still in their flat, and for the next two days was interrogated by FBI agents convinced that he had been creating biological weapons. ‘They even decided I could be planning to use my cat to disperse bacteria or viruses – so they locked it up as well.’
…

Posted by: Fran | Feb 27 2005 5:04 utc | 10

Rafael Renteria on WardC:
Look in the mirror
It’s not the sacred memory of the people who died in the Twin Towers that’s got them so upset. What’s got them so upset is that someone called them what they are, what they cannot face. Eichmann. A man who was perfectly normal.

Posted by: Citizen | Feb 27 2005 18:07 utc | 12

Ward Churchill is being attacked because the position he articulates (that the plane attacks were logically motivated) is exactly the same logic my country’s government is asking Iraqis to accept and support.
Universal Victim: “Your attack on us is motivated and one we arguably brought upon ourselves.”
Because Churchill is honest and sane, he does not bother with the special American flourish, “Please allow me to throw flowers.”
The bastards are afraid because honesty and sanity spread by contact, because if citizens hang in with the thought for long enough, we will realize that US foreign policy sounds like a murderer trying to justify himself to his accomplices and the survivors. Once we see what they/we have done, it is too late to be impressed by words anymore…

Posted by: Citizen | Feb 27 2005 22:16 utc | 14

slothrop,
I’m not sure I follow what you mean by “more value.”
Do you mean that my ‘bastards’ are more overjoyed by rather than afraid of his activities? That they would like to prolong his activities as a kind of boogeyman?
That seems more like the ‘tolerance of opposition’ approach than Goldstein. Goldstein is psyops under a Politburo. Churchill is a flesh person who actually makes friends and admirers – and community is the enemy of betrayal. I’m guessing the worst case scenario for these guys is to let some Prophet get out of hand and say loudly and clearly, “Benedict Arnold.” (Okay, “Judas” if you’re not into US history)
In short, even if one sees history as overdetermined, the actual concrete path we take is full of different solutions for how to stay on the abstract Dao. Pressing reason to worry if you’re a capital-meatpuppet, no?

Posted by: Citizen | Feb 27 2005 23:22 utc | 16

Feb 2005 – dead 59 US + 2 UK
Ranks 10th from 24 months of occupation. Seems like this doesn’t matter any more. It’s below the radar. Not only in the mainstream media. Has the lie been repeated often enough? Have they in truth won? Has democracy been brought to Iraq? Will the lies of WMD just be a footnote in the history of the democratization of the ME ?

Posted by: DM | Feb 28 2005 0:01 utc | 18

for me it is quite simple – i feel the slap across ward churchill’s cheek as if it was my own

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 28 2005 0:24 utc | 20

it is so clear to me – ward churchill must be defended – he is not our enemy – he has made clear all his life who his friends are & he has given wholly to them – if i am to understand russel means correctly & i believe that to be true – having read him & witnessed him in documentaries
his rhetorical flashes are nothing compared to the criminal rumsfield & his total & actual – living & concrete contempt for people whether they are american or iraquis

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 28 2005 0:38 utc | 22

& let’s be absolutely clear – ward churchill & lynne stewart are the beginning – not even the beginning because what is happening to them became – systematic in 2002 – & there will be many of us to follow – of that, there can be no doubt

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 28 2005 0:42 utc | 24

did’nt really mean”trivial” but rather, an” isolated incident”

Posted by: anna missed | Feb 28 2005 3:55 utc | 26

one motive of the attack on churchill’s “authenticity” is the conscious effort to build a wedge in the american indian community and create strife w/i that community so that other native americans are disuaded from endorsing & joining what could easily become a much broader movement. the bellencourt aim no doubt could be provoked to take action upon the colorado chapter & churchill, ala the blackstone rangers back in the day, all the more eerily connected in that the other death that early december 1969 morning when two bullets were unloaded pointblank into fred hampton’s head was that of churchill’s roommate, mark clark.
another reason for the attack is that the rabid right cannot risk opening a real dialogue on what ward actually said & what it really means. destroy the messenger to distract others from the message. or, as ward says, they can’t dispute the point he makes, so they have to use other tactics to discredit him. hate is a powerful mobilizer, and renteria is correct to point out where the hate originates. it always comes back to the same thing.
ward says he’ll go down standing & not on his knees. he won’t be alone either.

Posted by: b real | Feb 28 2005 4:47 utc | 28

@jj I don’t think there is any contradiction between Gannon/Guckert and the gay marriage wedge-driving.
the elite don’t mind gays as long as they “keep their place,” i.e. as long as they are e.g. hookers, entertainers, etc. — cast your mind back to Jim Crow days! it was fine for Black people to be servants, pimps, prostitutes, low-rent entertainers of every description. as long as they shucked and jived on cue and never, but never, “aped their betters.” the maximum rage of the whites was reserved for the Black man or woman who tried to dress, act, speak, behave like a normal, respectable middle class (or even decent working class) person. that was an uppity n*gg*r and had to be put down.
and heaven help the Black man or woman who was better dressed, better educated, or had a better job or a more decent family life than the whites around them. note how the Red states are in a marriage crisis — high divorce rates, high rates of domestic violence, high teen pregnancy rates etc? (all predictable side effects of attempts to enforce old time Biblical patriarchy on a semi-modernised population). imagine how it must burn them to see gays who have been together for 35 loving years finally exchanging vows, laughing and weeping and hugging, right on the front page of the newspapers. why, them goddamn n*gg*rs are not only aping Our Kind — some of ’em are doing it better’n us!
what arouses homophobic frenzy on the right is that gays getting married are gays “pretending they are just as good as the rest of us,” and of course we can’t have that — gotta have us some n*gg*rs to look down upon, can’t have them acting like they were as good as us superior people. it’s fine for them to service our sexual whims, be our public clowns, run our errands (Stepin Fetchit anyone?), entertain us on a smoky stage on the wrong side of the tracks, play out our fantasies of naughtiness and the Forbidden. but they cannot, must not be allowed to claim respectability — that’s For Whites/Straights Only.
imho Gannon/Guckert was/is an errand boy, a prostitute, a public clown, and an expendable fall guy. a demimondaine, a disorderly boy from the wrong side of the tracks, shuckin’ and jivin’ his best to earn a buck. just another house n*gg*r. they don’t mind his kind in the least. his kind reassure them that all’s right with the world: the freaks are reassuringly freakish and pitiable, and the Normal are safe in their exclusive club of Normality.

Posted by: DeAnander | Feb 28 2005 6:05 utc | 30

Sword of honour (The ancient code of insult and revenge in America’s South)
The Spectator (U.K.) ^ | 07/26/03 | Paul Robinson
Paul Robinson on the ancient code of insult and revenge that is still prevalent in the American South
If you are looking for some fun, and have a research grant to spend, try this. Visit an American university, bump into random students in the corridor and loudly call each one ‘a**hole’. Then measure their reactions. This is what a team of psychologists did in a controlled experiment at the University of Michigan. The results were most interesting. Students from the southern part of the United States reacted far more violently and aggressively than those from the North, were shown to have much higher levels of cortisone and testosterone, and in tests regularly suggested more belligerent solutions to problems. America, it seems, remains culturally divided along the Mason–Dixon line, and the crucial difference now, as at the time of the American Civil War, is honour.
In the modern era, honour is generally considered obsolete. As Guy Crouchback notes in Evelyn Waugh’s novel Officers and Gentlemen, it is a ‘thing that changes. I mean, 150 years ago we would have had to fight if challenged. Now we’d laugh.’ However, it is only the language of honour that has vanished, not the idea. Carrying out research for a book on the subject of war and honour, I have repeatedly found that, although the details of what constitutes honourable behaviour have changed over the centuries, its essence has not. The core of honour remains what it always has been — a desire to be a person of worth in one’s own eyes and those of others — and that desire is as powerful now as it was when Achilles rampaged through the ranks of the Trojans.
That is not to say that everything is as it was. In the case of the American South, for instance, honour was once based on race. What chiefly conferred worth on a white man, be he rich or poor, was the fact that he was neither black nor female. Things now are rather different. There is a ‘New South’, the rich, modern, urban, forward-looking society one discovers in contemporary Atlanta. Time has moved on. But as the Michigan experiments demonstrated, southerners retain two vital aspects of the old honour system: a high degree of sensitivity to insults and a tendency to respond with violence and aggression. This has important consequences today, as it did in America’s past. Indeed, the parallels between the present and the Civil War era are very striking, and may lead one to believe that despite the growth of the New South not so very much has changed.
…………………….
Some 50 years later, the South seceded from the Union. Opponents of the Confederacy generally argue that it did so to preserve slavery. Its supporters counter that slavery was a secondary issue, that states’ rights were more important. Increasingly, though, scholars are citing another factor altogether: southern honour. As the historian Bertram Wyatt-Brown has pointed out, slavery provoked the secessional crisis, but ‘southern honour pulled the trigger’.
The kind of honour I am referring to here is not the gentility of men such as Robert E. Lee. It is the rougher sort embodied in the code duello, which encouraged men to engage in vainglorious bouts of one-upmanship and to respond to insults with violence. Among the poor, the violence took the form of no-holds-barred gouging and scratching contests, the aim of which was to tear out an opponent’s eye or otherwise permanently disfigure him. Among the rich, it took the more formal shape of the duel. But the essential point was the same — an honourable man never accepted insults; he responded to them with force.
In 1861 this led to war. An interesting point is that the South had no need to leave the Union. Lincoln was not proposing the abolition of slavery, and even if he had been, he could not have enacted it. Pro-slavery elements continued to control both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court. The ‘peculiar institution’ was not under threat. But to southerners, Lincoln’s election was a provocation too far. It followed years of anti-slavery agitation which had labelled the southern way of life inferior and degenerate. One Republican actually announced that ‘the South is the poorest, meanest, least productive and most miserable part of creation, and therefore ought to be continually teased and taunted and reproached and reviled’. For southerners brought up to believe that insults must be met with force, the ultimate insult — the election of Abraham Lincoln — had to be met not just with secession but with a deliberate pursuit of war. Some southerners still like to call what resulted the ‘War of Northern Aggression’, but the truth is that the South started it knowingly and with open eyes.
……………………………….
If all this seems remote from the current era, consider that the American Civil War was, according to James McPherson, one of its foremost historians, America’s first pre-emptive war. As he describes it, the South’s way of life was not immediately under threat, but southerners chose to pre-empt what they saw as a potential future threat by seceding. The honour code dictates that one loses face if one does not respond to an insult, but one does not always know whether something is an insult. So it is always best to treat it as if it were. Similarly, it is better to get one’s strike in before an opponent has a chance to hit first, even if perhaps he never intended to attack anyway. Thus, one secessionist commented in 1860 that if one sees a sleeping, curled-up rattlesnake, one doesn’t wait until it wakes and unwraps itself before killing it: precisely the logic of the 2002 US national security strategy.
Other parallels between the old South and the present are not hard to find. The years before the Civil War saw a rapid expansion in the number of military institutes and academies in the South. After years of decline, these schools and colleges are now once again enjoying a revival. Confederate armies were famous for their religiosity. The modern United States army is remarkably similar. It is not uncommon to find American generals beginning meetings with prayers, just as they might have under Stonewall Jackson. The ante-bellum South was famous for its militarism. Contemporary southerners continue to be disproportionately represented in the US military, and opinion polls consistently show far greater support for all forms of military action among the states of the South than in those of the North.
…………………………
Jacksonian rhetoric has spearheaded America’s recent wars. The word ‘honour’ is rarely used, but substitutes such as ‘credibility’ abound in official speeches. Nato had to bomb Yugoslavia because the ‘credibility of the alliance was at stake’. Coalition forces had to invade Iraq because Saddam Hussein was ‘undermining the credibility of the UN’. Saddam was not a threat to the USA, but he was a living insult to its honour. Despite all the efforts of the most powerful state on earth, he had for ten years continued to survive and defy America’s wishes. For an administration driven by sentiments of honour, such an insult could not be permitted. Just as the South could not allow Lincoln to become their President, so George W. Bush could not allow Saddam to continue humiliating his country. Only war could satisfy honour.
As the ancient Greeks knew, the pursuit of honour often leads people to attack others, to drive them down, in order to inflate themselves. The Greeks called such behaviour hubris, and believed that hubris inevitably resulted in disaster. It certainly did for the Confederacy.
whole piece athttp//209.157.64.200focus/f-news951950/posts

Posted by: anna missed | Feb 28 2005 8:09 utc | 32

Completely OT (again) as I am finding the discussion about tenure at crap universities a bit turgid ..
I love google. Especially when I have had perhaps one glass too many – when I can pretend that this linked-list is something other than what it is. Like HAL.
So – in my morose moment – I asked HAL “when will george bush be assassinated ?”
Well, that was no good. I got 260,000 results in 0.38 seconds. I was looking for something a bit more definitive.
Anyway – in my inebriated state – another silly hypothetical has come to my slightly soused brain. Who is the man who is a heartbeat away from the presidency ? What sort of weird and wonderful world could we expect from President Cheney ? Anyone else drunk enough to entertain this thought ? (as a hypothetical of course … no prescience, plot, or prediction … but what if these damned Iranians/Syrians perpetrated such a dastardly act …)
Ach – I’ll sleep it off !

Posted by: DM | Feb 28 2005 11:09 utc | 34

Over one hundred dead in bombing at al-Hillah

Posted by: Anonymous | Feb 28 2005 11:27 utc | 36

a nice little set of responses/rebuttals to Luntz’ 160 page playbook, Come Lie With Me
not just rhetoric

Posted by: Citizen | Feb 28 2005 16:16 utc | 38

Bill Moyers interviewed by Naomi Nye:

But all that was out there in plain view. How do you account for this?
There are always a lot of people who prefer the comfortable lie to the uncomfortable truth. In this case, a majority of voters knew exactly what you’re saying, yet voted for him none the less. They did so for one of two reasons. First, Bush had America scared to death. And fear was the dominant issue in that campaign, not moral values. Second, many of Bush’s supporters buy into the belief system that he and his allies have propounded. And in that belief system — which is supported by Fox News and talk radio — no evidence to the contrary can be permitted. Ideologues embrace a worldview that cannot be changed because they admit no evidence to the contrary. The Washington Post had a story about a study recently about how even if what people first hear turns out to be wrong, they still tend to believe it’s true. That’s because, if it fits their value system, they don’t change it after they learn it’s not true. It’s a weird phenomenon. I’d also say conservatives have never been more politically dominant and more intellectually and morally bankrupt. Because of that they can keep their troops believing the Big Lie. The Big Lie is that the threat of Al Qaeda is greater to us than the threat of low wages, environmental pollution, the growing inequality in America, or the terrible failure of the Bush policies on schools. People just didn’t want the uncomfortable truth to disturb the comfortable lie.

the uncomfortable truth and the comfortable lie. also a useful dyad for self examination…

Posted by: Citizen | Feb 28 2005 19:53 utc | 40

hope that is not too metathreadish or old testament & by the way thank you theodor for the articles from new left review. they are not only useful but illuminating in this dark night

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 28 2005 19:57 utc | 42

I have never seen this before. The cynical American in me says “Aha! that is why Germany and France are standing in the way of an American invasion of Iran”
Iran to assemble Mercedes cars

Posted by: dan of steele | Feb 28 2005 20:04 utc | 44

our (always preview)

Posted by: beq | Feb 28 2005 20:33 utc | 46

I can only speak from my own experiences of those times in the very early Seventies. Cool people had long hair, geeks and rednecks had short hair. Being in the military (not because of the draft which is of course much worse) because you were looking for a job or a way out of a dead end life meant you had to have short hair. This was quite frustrating to say the least.
I knew a guy who went through the trouble of getting a short hair wig. He had to cut his hair high around the ears and the back of his neck but he got away with wearing his wig at work and then let it all hang out afterwards. Dippidy Doo was a big seller, some guys had so much in their hair trying to keep way too long (for military standards) locks from falling over their ears.
It is not like that anymore, now you can be a bald rebel. What I see now for rebellion is piercing and tattoos.

Posted by: dan of steele | Feb 28 2005 21:00 utc | 48

@dan
$4 billion of export from Germany to Iran per year. Increasing by 20-30% per year.
Biggest importer to Iran, biggest export partner ex. oil.
Its part of the story …

Posted by: b | Feb 28 2005 21:04 utc | 50

What I see now for rebellion is piercing and tattoos.
No way, that stuff is so conventional. If you want to be different, find a surgeon to remove your lungs and put them outside of your body. Would regular courses of antibiotics, no doubt. People would notice you, though.

Posted by: slothrop | Feb 28 2005 21:27 utc | 52

Since we are on this, does anyone know whatever happened to the story of how someone had shorted airline stock in a big way prior to Sept 11, 2001?
I do believe the story got buried somehow with all the other conspiracy theories.

Posted by: dan of steele | Feb 28 2005 21:41 utc | 54

one last one before I hit the hay.
I was listening to an interview on Armed Forces Radio this morning of a senior enlisted member of the Air Force in Afghanistan. He said that the greatest thrill he gets is sending out A-10 aircraft fully loaded with munitions and seeing them come back clean.
yessirree! killin’ is fun.

Posted by: dan of steele | Feb 28 2005 22:02 utc | 56

Did anyone else read Tom Engelhardt today? TomDispatch has at the very bottom a well-written, frank letter from an Iraqi engineer to George Bush. (Search for Dear Mr. Bush)
I’ll quote just a bit, he covers a lot of ground:

To The Honorable Mr. George W. Bush, The President of the United States of America:
Dear Mr. Bush,
It was regrettable that you were not allowed to see and talk to ordinary Iraqi citizens, during your sneak visit to Baghdad on Thanksgiving Day of 2003. … As an ordinary Iraqi citizen, I would like to share my thoughts on the Iraqi dilemma that America has found itself in.
More than a year ago you promised the Iraqi people that “the torture chambers and the secret police are gone forever.” Mr. President, I honestly wanted to believe you then. …
Allow me respectfully to remind you, Mr. President, that now more than 60% of the Iraqi work force in your “liberated” Iraq is unemployed as compared to 30% before your liberation. …
We Iraqis need to know why our money is being spent, unwisely, to import gasoline now, when we were an exporting nation. I might understand that Halliburton and KBR needed to import gasoline for a few months, but not after 22 months of “liberation.”
In 1991, our refineries were severely damaged by the bombing. We the Iraqi people were able, despite the sanctions and without help from the Halliburtons, to fix the refineries in only a few months. …
The government of Iraq used to spend about $150 million a month to import and distribute the food rations. According to your CPA Inspector General, $8.8 billion dollars were unaccounted for in one year. Mr. President, these $8.8 billion are enough to feed all the people of Iraq for nearly 60 months. This fiscal irresponsibility and the lack of transparency in spending our money make me wonder about the aim of the “liberation” of Iraq. I’m sorry to say that the Iraqi people are being robbed blind. We are also being “liberated” from our wealth.
I am sure, Mr. President, that our traumatized kids will never forget what was done to their future by your “liberation.” I am sure that your kids will have to deal in the future with our traumatized kids. I am also sure that your kids will have to repay for all the damages and the stolen money. I can see that the price will be very high.
I do not want to be like the rest of your advisors giving you the rosy picture. They have told you about the WMD, the Al-Qaeda link, the 9/11 link, the Iraqis welcoming your troops as “liberators”… and it is proved that they were not telling you the truth. It is about time that you listen to other people.
We do not hate America for its “freedom or democracy.” We don’t hate America. We hate the crimes, the destruction, and the devastation committed by America against the innocent people in our country.
Respectfully,
Ghazwan Al-Mukhtar Baghdad, Occupied Iraq

“I am also sure that your kids will have to repay for all the damages and the stolen money.”
Engelhardt has more information about the writer as well. I encourage you to read the whole thing.

Posted by: jonku | Feb 28 2005 23:02 utc | 58

U.S. Must Charge Padilla With Crime or Release Him

A federal judge in South Carolina ruled yesterday that the Bush administration lacks statutory and constitutional authority to indefinitely imprison without criminal charges a U.S. citizen who was designated an “enemy combatant.”
…
In a strongly worded 23-page ruling, Floyd said “to do otherwise would not only offend the rule of law and violate this country’s constitutional tradition, but it would also be a betrayal of this Nation’s commitment to the separation of powers that safeguards our democratic values and our individual liberties.”
…
Using a phrase often levied by conservatives to denigrate liberal judges, Floyd — who was appointed by President Bush to the federal bench in 2003 — accused the administration of engaging in “judicial activism” when it asserted in court pleadings that Bush has blanket authority under the Constitution to detain Americans on U.S. soil who are suspected of taking or planning actions against the country.

SLAP!

Posted by: b | Mar 1 2005 7:52 utc | 60

I thought that they liked the World Bank. Why would they inflict that arrogant fool on it?

Posted by: Colman | Mar 1 2005 12:54 utc | 62