Man dances on Late President Reagans grave, literally. Of course, we will never hear the end of this once the right-wing blowhards get ahold of it.. This is their meat, and a perfect distraction from an act of real courage happening in Crawford, Texas this month that has lately actually been demanding attention.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 11 2005 7:49 utc | 3

I thought about writing on this for a while, but this author does it much better than I could do. Strict literal reading of old texts is stupid neglect of their intentions.
Unholy strictures

We tend now to read our scriptures for accurate information, so that the Bible, for example, becomes a holy encyclopaedia, in which the faithful look up facts about God. Many assume that if the scriptures are not historically and scientifically correct, they cannot be true at all. But this was not how scripture was originally conceived. All the verses of the Qur’an, for example, are called “parables” (ayat); its images of paradise, hell and the last judgment are also ayat, pointers to transcendent realities that we can only glimpse through signs and symbols.
We distort our scriptures if we read them in an exclusively literal sense.
…
Part of the problem is that we are now reading our scriptures instead of listening to them. When, for example, Christian fundamentalists argue about the Bible, they hurl texts back and forth competitively, citing chapter and verse in a kind of spiritual tennis match. But this detailed familiarity with the Bible was impossible before the modern invention of printing made it feasible for everybody to own a copy and before widespread literacy – an essentially modern phenomenon – enabled them to read it for themselves.
Hitherto the scriptures had always been transmitted orally, in a ritual context that, like a great theatrical production, put them in a special frame of mind. Christians heard extracts of the Bible chanted during the mass; they could not pick and choose their favourite texts. In India, young Hindu men studied the Veda for years with their guru, adopting a self-effacing and non-violent lifestyle that was meant to influence their understanding of the texts. In Judaism, the process of studying Torah and Talmud with a rabbi was itself a transformative experience that was just as important as the content.
The last thing anyone should attempt is to read the Qur’an straight through from cover to cover, because it was designed to be recited aloud. Indeed, the word qur’an means “recitation”.
…
Solitary reading also enables people to read their scriptures too selectively, focusing on isolated texts that they read out of context, and ignoring others that do not chime with their own predilections. Religious militants who read their scriptures in this way often distort the tradition they are trying to defend. Christian fundamentalists concentrate on the aggressive Book of Revelation and pay no attention to the Sermon on the Mount, while Muslim extremists rely on the more belligerent passages of the Qur’an and overlook its oft-repeated instructions to leave vengeance to God and make peace with the enemy.

Posted by: b | Aug 11 2005 11:32 utc | 5

bush vacation deathcount

Posted by: beq | Aug 11 2005 13:31 utc | 7

I agree b, and thanks for the Karen Armstrong link, I read some of her work in my Terrorism vs Crusades class. Shes a good scholar, but always seemed to be missing something in her expression. She is worth reading, but I always found my self feeling as if something was missing
from her prose.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 11 2005 17:31 utc | 9

Nearly 9,000 U.S. troops dead?

According to the article: “…DoD lists currently being very quietly circulated indicate almost
9,000 [U.S. military] dead”; this far exceeds the “official” death count of 1,831. How can this be?
It’s largely because “U.S. Military Personnel who died in German hospitals or en route to German
hospitals have not previously been counted.”
In other words, “death” has been redefined.
WHAT YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW:

Posted by: beq | Aug 11 2005 19:24 utc | 11

@ beqs link,
Why isnt bush ever asked about this at a press conference?

Posted by: anna missed | Aug 11 2005 19:52 utc | 13

In a few yrs. Americans will probably make regular pilgrimmages to Reagan’s grave to dump their worthless dollar bills thanks to the Pirate economy he ushered in. But that was a good start.

Posted by: jj | Aug 11 2005 20:10 utc | 15

Link Fixed
Worth a look, merely for the photos included, to say nothing of the grist it provides for conspiratorial mills.
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | August 11, 2005 04:04 AM | #
Hannah,
look here

Posted by: john | Aug 11 2005 22:32 utc | 17

Its happening and it was predicted. Iraq is breaking into factions and will soon be three seperate entities with likely a very weak central government.
A briefing I saw on C-Span about the future of Kirkuk showed five various regions of control. Baghdad is the wild card with it’s multi religous and ethnic population.
The other wildcard is oil. The c-span forum said the Iraqis have been pulling more gas from their fields than they should because the pressure from the gas pushes the oil out. Since more gas was taken tham oil produced, the oil production capacity of the wells has depleted dramatically. An investment of over $3 billion is needed to get the field into a symblance of production. Also, because Kirkuk sits right on top of the field there is no sysmic data or well logs to go back to to see what was there because it would involve sysmic charges or vibration. Further, because Iraq was cheating on production and shipment of oil in the oil for food program no data was kept on pumpage so there is no well pumping data for the last ten years.
The place is a mess. So much for neo-con Wolfies the oil will pay for the war bullshit. Iraqs field are in bad shape and official barrel reserve estimates were overly optomistic.

Posted by: jdp | Aug 12 2005 1:03 utc | 19

Despite the fact that Capitalism is a new invention, history can still repeat itself. I am not a scholar of Roman history. But the Senate giving away its constitutional powers to the executive, the imperialistic wars, the rampant corruption, the profit goals, the poverty draft, the bread-and-circus diversions, all seem so familiar…Capitalism is not a necessary prerequisite for imperialism, just a sufficient one.

Posted by: gylangirl | Aug 12 2005 1:44 utc | 21

This could get interesting, if the stuff hasn’t been edited. FDNY Releasing Sept. 11 Papers, Recordings

Posted by: jj | Aug 12 2005 5:16 utc | 23

Siberia’s permafrost is melting. New Scientist reports that 250 million acres of permafrost are thawing, exposing the world’s largest peat bog. This is likely to release billions of tons of methane gas. This would likely cause a positive feedback loop, massively accelerating global warming.
Can I just choose not to believe this, like everyone else?

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 12 2005 9:17 utc | 25

Oh, and what we said about the troposphere not warming up at all? That turned out to be a little misunderstanding. No hard feelings.
And God bless America.

Posted by: Jape | Aug 12 2005 10:20 utc | 27

Well, thank god things are warming up ‘cuz heat is going to be getting so expensive, I was a little worried there for awhile…;))!
Is anybody following the release the the 911 firemen’s tapes in NYC? There were calls coming down w/guys saying No Problem, we’ll have this fire out quickly. But, Judge said they could edit released material to skip embarrassing information, so we may just get Garbage, or not…

Posted by: jj | Aug 13 2005 0:36 utc | 29

Ah, the classical comparisons with Roman Empire 🙂
Well, the context was obviously way different, even if there were some obvious similarities.
To begin with, Rome had been imperialist and expansionist centuries before the Republic fell. In fact, the imperium was already big by any antique comparison when the Empire arrived. Actually, Caesar and Augustus added some of the largest conquests ever to Rome – Gaul and Egypt notably. And a large part of the Empire (including Augustus) conquests were assimilations of client-kingdoms that were nearly Romans – basically, the same as the US eating up Cuba in 1950.
Roman military expansionism can be traced back at least to 400BC, when the city began to control not only its usual hinterland but neighboring towns, including the closest Etruscan ones. Basically, Rome conquered Latium during 4th century BC. Then it expanded into the South, toward wealthy Campania and its rich agricultural lands – basically what Rome did during the 3th century. Then came the rest of the South, Central and Eastern Italy, until they began to take some interest to the next logical step, Sicily, and ran into these pesky Carthaginians.
Now, one may have this silly and wrong notion that the Republic was all good and neat and democratic and the Empire was the worst tyranny the world had ever known at this time – something anyone knowing Chinese history, for instance, would see is wrong. Well, it wasn’t really that. The late Republic, in the time of Cicero, was an utterly corrupt cesspool of an oligarchy where in votes the upper 2% wealthiest class had as much weight as the 98% below them. Yes, if you think the Electoral College is a fucked-up undemocratic way of voting, just look up the Roman way of voting.
Earlier, Rome was probably like many Greek city-states: the ruling aristocracy (oligarchy) was replaced by some tyrant, who had to be populist and to give more resources to the average people to keep power – which is doable only by taking from the elite to give some bits and leftovers to the people. Of course the tyrant is more popular and the people like him more, but the aristocracy hate his guts. Eventually the tyrants get deposed, either because the aristocracy takes back power or because he or his sons become too megalomaniac and act funny. In Rome this led to the “Republic”, which basically was a quite sizable aristocracy, but still a minor proportion of the whole people, taking power and being able to vote. The next 150 years were basically the wide masses of people trying to take more influence in the decisions. Since the aristocracy had to rely on these people to fight and to work, because they were the only ones available in a not insanely wealthy nation, they managed to gain some power. You could link that to the trade unions power in late 19th up to the mid-20th centuries, when they managed to reduce working time, get paid vacations, social security and other benefits. Then, the more balanced Rome went into trouble, because the ruling class was imperialist, as ever, and wanted more and more lands to control. So far, Italy wasn’t that impressive a prey, and most of the tribes weren’t more interesting and wealthy than the starting point, Rome. It changed when they went into Sicily, and there they ran into the Carthaginians. After the 2 wars, the result for Rome was that the Southern half of Italy had been looted, burned, destroyed to the point some areas *never* recovered – thanks to the combination of Hannibal and Roman actions, and that Rome was the biggest kid on the block was a far bigger empire than before, controlling wealthy Sicily and wide (and the wealthiest) parts of Spain – basically the mining areas where resources and money were. By then Rome was able to use limited troops to crush foreign powers, to hire mercenaries (including internal ones) if necessary – which usually wasn’t the case -, and the increasing number of populous provinces newly-conquered offered a large supply of slaves. The ruling elite since 200BC needed less Romans to fight, and even less Romans to actually work the fields. The average Roman citizen was basically in a far shittier situation in the late Republic than in the early and middle one, and the lower classes moved closer to a semi-slave status. As with Wal-Mart America, it soon became obvious that the poorest citizens should go into the military to get a decent living, and this led to the lust for loot that characterised the later Roman armies, those who ransacked Carthage and Corinth, and of course the far later ones of the Empire.
What should be definitely clear now is that the actual Republic, if it ever existed as such, was clinically dead at least one century before Augustus pulled the plug. There were no way the system could change, or that the citizens could wrestle for better conditions, short of revolution and complete overthrow of the patrician class. Sometimes, it came close to that. But most of the time, parts of the people ended up supporting some populist leader that tried to act as a tyrant of old and to seize power for himself (Sulla, Caesar, Augustus).
And history partly repeated itself there. The late Republic was an undemocratic oligarchy where the upper 5% controlled pretty much everything and took for themselves all the spoils. Then came the Empire, and the real ruling elite was even smaller. It wasn’t immediately obvious under Augustus, and the real shock came under Tiberius and of course Caligula, because by then it was obvious that if the Empire was to survive, it had to give a bit more to the people, citizens and conquered people, and since the Emperor had to get a decent living, it meant cutting up on the patricians’ fortune both to give bread and circus and to increase the imperial treasury. If you’ve ever looked at the bare facts, compared emperors, and wondered why Caligula, Nero, Domitian, Commodus, Caracalla and others had a bad reputation, when actually they weren’t worse than most other emperors, you have here the answer. The remnants of the patrician class was still in the useless Senate and still kept a bit of its old wealth and glory, and most of all, they wrote history – not the emperor, not the illiterate Thracian slave -, so it was easy to portray as good rulers those who favored the patricians and as scumbags those who saw them as mere citizens that didn’t deserve any consideration – or even saw them as living piggy-banks.
All in all, what is clear is that the Roman citizens was usually as well under the Empire than under the late Republic, and the conquered people were usually better under the empire since there wasn’t need anymore to differentiate between Romans and foreigners – all were subjects of the Emperor.
Doesn’t mean that the Empire was a good thing. The worst downfall of such a system is that when you have a complete idiot, it can severely damage the system for decades, and possibly forever; it’s ok early on when the empire is still strong and has few strong opponents, but if it is already weakened, a fool can ruin it and ultimately lead it to its doom. To a lesser extent, the same can be said of a presidential system – pick the stupidest US president of the pre-1850 era and compare to W Bush.

Posted by: CluelessJoe | Aug 13 2005 19:08 utc | 31