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Thanks And Fare Well!
OK – that’s about it.
It’s my birthday and a good day to reflect on the things I have done and/or not done the last years.
Some 21 month of MoA, doing about one piece a day, dropping a uncounted number of newslinks, did become a large part of my life.
I learned a lot through all the incredible good comments you have written and through the bloggers need of staying informed.
But, just like you, this German IT manager is getting tired of pointing out why the borderline fascist U.S. empire is a losing concept or why today’s scandal is the worst we have ever seen.
The readers numbers have not dropped significantly, but the comment numbers have. I guess we have argued about anything we could reasonable argue about. We also managed to chase anybody away who didn´t fit 95%.
Now, as we have digested each others opinion several times, there is not that much left to say. Calls for guest posts have, therefore(?), not been answered.
This blog was started for the sole purpose of continuing the Whiskey Bar community. It did serve that purpose for some time.
By now, everybody will have found other waterholes to drink from.
I may continue to post here once a while, but in different style, on different themes, like maybe telescope cranes and Lego, and not on a daily schedule. It will not be the MoA you know anymore.
Open threads and Billmon references may be launched but will depend much more on my mood and "real" life than on schedule.
Thanks and fare well!
Bernhard
Bernhard-
It seems everyone has returned, either to praise Ceasar, or to bury him.
Well let me praise you too, for all the work that you have put in; for the intelligence and high level of your topics and posts; for your energy and commitment.
But now let me curse you. I am angry and pissed off by this precipitous statement. You are pulling a “Billmon” here, by sulking and slinking off.
You have recently stated that you were tired and running out of topics. But nowhere did you state (at least that I caught) that you were prepared to close down the blog.
You requested ideas on a thread. You recieved many good ones. Nowhere did you address them on their merits.
Nowhere did you state that you absolutely needed other posts or you would close down the blog.
It is far easier to keep complete control and throw the baby out with the bathwater, which is what you are doing.
It takes a more mature person, willing to cede some control, and exert a little effort, to keep a sick baby alive, so that it might one day thrive again.
But it can be done. And you can do it. It does take a little time, though; and care and support during the transition.
“Today in Iraq” is an example of a blog that successfully underwent this transition, that grew from an individual blog hosted by Y.D., to a mature group effort that fulfills the same purpose. It went through some growing pains and some lean days, but it has emerged, and community has grown and blossomed.
I am angry because of my work organizing. And I see this problem so often on the left, where people won’t give up control until they burn out. All their hard work bears no fruit, but exhaustion and a sense of defeat. If you don’t organize you have nothing. And there must be a purpose to our collective effort.
The fact that there is a “95% consensus” on matters here is hardly reason to fret. Anyone is free to come here, have a drink, and argue the case on its merits. The fact that most cannot argue with the best of us without resorting to distortion of facts, or ad hominem attacks, is hardly reason to declare this a community of no value.
Rather, that is the value of the community – its distinctive worldview.
Just yesterday I was describing this little site as “the only place one could go where one encountered the same willingness to follow conclusions wherever they led as conspiracy theorists, combined with the rigorous structural analysis of evidence of a Chomsky.”
That is no small feat! And it is a group effort. This is where I go for my daily dose of important links to follow, as well as my RDA (recommended daily allowance) of nutritious ideas.
And I felt that as a group we were all learning from each other, and slowly, collectively; building a coherent theory of everything (TOE).
Collective burnout is not an excuse either for throwing away the whole community. All groups go through natural periods of ups and downs. There is no reason to get agitata about this. This is not a capitalist KOS-shark of a blog which needs grow exponentially, forever, to justify its existence.
We are dealing with very heavy, very challenging, very depressing matters here. It is OK to feel stuck, to feel discouraged.
But I felt that the community was also evolving, and growing, from dealing with matters beyond “What do we think?”, to the more challenging, “How do we communicate this to others?” How do we effect change?
And how do we support ourselves as a community in effecting that change?
This is important work, not just group mental masturbation (though I have nothing against that either).
I know it sounds like a cop-out for me to say that I can’t help much more these days because my life is approaching a crisis point, an inflection point, a time of change. But it is true.
Still, I am prepared to carry my share of the burden and submit one thought-provoking post a week if that will help.
If not, if you really want to end what takes so much time and labor to construct, well all I can say is thanks a lot to you, Bernhard, for starting “Moon”, and to everyone for partaking and supporting.
And send me your e-mails, all of you, because if this little ship really does go bottom up, then I will create another one to replace it as soon as I am able. And I will build it as a sustainable collective enterprise from the get-go – with just those purposes in mind: “How do we understand this world that we find ourselves in?,” and “How do we make it better?”
Well, a round for the whole house, and bottoms up, everyone!
Posted by: Malooga | Mar 17 2006 16:21 utc | 54
Furthermore, you don’t need an original post every day. And, as I mentioned before, you can always take posts from elsewhere on the web that don’t allow comments. For instance, this piece on today’s “Counterpunch:”
Dachau’s 73rd “Grand Anniversary” Celebrated
Feds Schedule $385 Million Concentration Camp To Be Built By Halliburton Subsidiary
By CLANCY SIGAL
I am not one of the “Hitler is here!” crowd. From personal experience of federal-and-local harassment, threats of jail, being run off the road by J. Edgar’s hotrodders, blacklisting from jobs and a long look at my FBI file, where I’m listed as a lefthanded, lisping incendiary leader of a mysterious Red ‘Cell With No Name’ alias the ‘Omega cell’ (I’m not kidding), I have felt the heavy hand of the ignoramus on my shoulder. Even unto emigration to Britain where, at one time, I enjoyed the attention of Scotland Yard, Special Branch, MI5, U.S. army counter-intelligence, CIA, and U.S. naval intelligence–all at the same time, stumbling over each other as in an Inspector Clouseau movie.
So you get hardened. Shrug it off. Resist paranoia. Fill your wallet with the telephone numbers of lawyers. And wait for something to happen when nothing actually does, at least to you.
Then your eye falls on a barely-noticed article in a local Southern California newspaper. You call the reporter, and he guides you to his reputable source. And the stomach-tickling fears start all over again, especially when–coincidentally–a Germanophile friend researching in the archives digs up the following from a Munich newspaper dated 1933.
First, the American news item:
The federal government has awarded a $385 million contract for the construction of ‘temporary detention facilities’ inside the United States as part of the Immigration Service’s Detention and Removal Program. The contract was given to Kellogg, Root & Brown, a subsidiary of Halliburton. The camps would be used in the event of an “emergency”, said Jamie Zuieback, an Immigration service official.
The following article appeared in a Munich newspaper in 1933 to mark the “grand opening” of Dachau, Germany’s first concentration camp. This month marks the 73d anniversary:
Münchner Neueste Nachrichten,
Tuesday, March 21, 1933
A Concentration Camp for Political Prisoners in the Dachau Area
In a statement to the press, Himmler, Munich’s Chief of Police announced:
On Wednesday the first concentration camp will be opened near Dachau. It has a capacity of 5000 people. Here, all communist and-so far as is necessary- Reichsbanner and Marxist officials, who endanger the security of the state, will be assembled. In the long run, if government administration is not to be very burdened, it is not possible to allow individual communist officials to remain in court custody. On the other hand, it is also not possible to allow these officials their freedom again. Each time we have attempted this, the result was that they again tried to agitate and organize. We have taken these measures without concern for each pedantic objection encountered, in the conviction that we act to calm the concerns of the nation’s people, and in accordance with their aims.
Himmler gave assurance that in each individual case, preventive custody will not be maintained longer than necessary. It is obvious, however, that the astonishingly large quantity of material evidence seized will take a long time to be examined. This police will only be delayed, if they are continually asked when this or that person in preventive custody will be released. The incorrectness of rumors frequently spread regarding the treatment of prisoners is shown by the fact that for those prisoners who requested it, for example, Dr. Gerlich and Frhr. v. Aretin, counseling by priests is supported and approved without hesitation.
Note: Himmler’s reference to the ‘Reichsbanner’ is to a Social Democratic group, formed to oppose Hitler’s 1923 attempted putsch, that evolved into a fairly ordinary get-together society. The ‘Dr Gerlich’ mentioned at the end (who was permitted to see a priest) was a devout Christian anti-Nazi shot by the Gestapo at Dachau in 1934, his body burned. His widow refused his ashes.
Clancy Sigal’s memoir of his mother, A Woman of Uncertain Character (The Amorous and Radical Adventures of My Mother Jennie (Who Always Wanted to be a Respectable Jewish Mom) by Her Bastard Son will be published by Carroll & Graf, $25, this coming Mother’s’ Day, May 14. His Zone Of The Interior is finally being published in the UK, by Pomona at £9.99. Sigal can be reached at clancy@jsasoc.com.
It seems particularly important to me that American and German activists keep in close contact these days. Especially as it seems that the lesson learned by America’s Jews from the Holocaust is not how easy it is to destroy civil society and manipulate an educated populace into quivering jello with propaganda, but, rather, which end of the jackboot it is preferable to be on.
Posted by: Malooga | Mar 17 2006 16:52 utc | 55
Bernhard —
First off, thanks, for all you did. I learnt so much from you and many posters here, I will remember it forever. It is strange, isn’t it, to think of text, speech (boards being between the two), opinions, from wisps in the wind, shadowy forms, one is in Kansas, another is a college student, another is whatever, it is no matter, and all these people, who have no real existence, who will never meet in real life, who will never be really recognized for the efforts they made, were there, did it, tried. To me, it is not trivial. So thanks to all the posters.
The bar – yes, a bar. With old wood, gutted candles, a dirty floor, or! light colored tiles, ferns here and there, a grinning waiter in a grey T gesturing to the black board – company, edgy, nervous, concentrated, gathering round. Too much too fast. Though in real life, of course, its all-hail-felow-well met, hold my hand, you are right about that, have a drink on me. Can I smoke?
It is my birthday today.
The problem is, private ppl on the www may exchange opinions, argue, fight, one hopes gracefully, but then what? then what? Where, how, can some kind of concensus be forged, some kind of group set set up, some kind of agenda agreed on, some kind of structure in which it could deploy itself be found?
It appear to be impossible – it is a metaphorical bar – ppl go home, fix their cars, listen to their families and representatives and vote left or right or in France for loony personal preference (not that there is anything wrong with that…) ..People return to their real lives, where they must clock in so many hours, drive so many miles, study so many books, make money of the market, smile at the boss, sit for the exams, the evaluation, the review, and feed the kiddies and take them out for for an airing, and so on. They must joke and smile with the neighbors who voted for Bush, or Haider, or Blocher, or greet anti abortionists nicely. And that is *right* as we are all ppl together, and all opinions are allowed in a PC atmosphere. (Not meaning to knock it here.)
But then what? Do ‘sterile’ quarrels about Bush’s motives for the Eye-Rak invasion serve any purpose on the ground? I believe, eventually, Yes. but it is very hard to see the end of the tunnel, it takes a huge dose of hope and belief.
It’s new, a completely new scene. The Cathars (say) held hands, met in the dark night, in damp cellars, had secret signs, co-opted wives and children, sneered at authority, met and met again, walking over mountains to meet their fellow believer. They cheated and lied – and planned those lies. They went through torture and more and kept their mouths shut. They sacrificed whatever was good in their personal / business lives for an ideal. (They lost, nobody is a Cathar today…)
So some new thing has to be invented. Scary.
Like discovering infinity at the age of 7.
Hum. I’m rambling.
anyway I’ll check in again. This all is bound to continue…
Posted by: Noisette | Mar 17 2006 19:28 utc | 59
You’ve done a superb job, Bernhard, and I join everyone else in saying “thank you!”, and “good luck!”
I haven’t written hereabouts–or anywhere else, for that matter (one or two rantings excepted)–since last June or July. I’m having, shall we say, a spell of sustained confusion. I’m confident that I know right from wrong–torture, for example, is wrong, it’s not right, and fighting against torture is right, it’s not wrong… But is this also interesting? Would it merit a post on a blog, or would it be just another smile of approval in the mirror of my own self-regard? I’d say that it’s only interesting if we make it so, and we only make it so by thinking hard, fresh thoughts on the subject, thoughts that really deserve to be shared. Simple courtesy calls for nothing less, and in fact I’ve been trying to practice it….The problem of course, is that fresh thoughts simply haven’t happened here…. And where, for that matter, is “here”?… Parties don’t work, nations don’t work, and alliances don’t work. When I came to Europe last July, I felt a great surge of glee at being “here,” where the left still had some energy and wisdom to offer….but this was a little naive on my part. France, for example, has terrible problems at hand… I also have this lurking suspicion that the the Northern Hemisphere owes its prosperity to a century of catastrophic warfare. The Northern Hemisphere is a scene of endless warfare, and it also owns the Southern Hemisphere…..And much as we’d like to break this circle, we can’t find its center or its circumference. We’re baffled. Or I’m baffled…. So I spend a lot of time reading the masters. Machiavelli, for example– a writer of extraordinary courage, intelligence, humility and health. One of his excellent lines–“Si guarda al fine”–can be translated as “we must await the outcome” (by which he means the “outcome” of whatever political development we happen to be following). I take it to mean that we must “await the outcome of a process before affirming or condemning what we see”…. This line, strange to say, has been translated, very often, as “the ends justify the means”. Not only a terrible translation–not even a translation!–but an ugly slander against a great mind, a great moral mind, that would never dream of saying anything like “the end justifies the means”. But we can only know this when we actually take the trouble to read him…. He, of course, was a man of action, a man of affairs: and when his team lost, and his country lost its bearings, and he himself very nearly lost his life, he proceeded to do the exemplary thing of thinking–just thinking, and reading, and seeking some way to bring a little clarity to the scene. He had a wonderful sense of humor, and would have smiled–warmly and coldly at one and the same time–to see and hear some of the things that have been said about him over the past five hundred years.
Posted by: alabama | Mar 17 2006 21:31 utc | 61
& to offer the sane & sage words of eduardo galeone that seems to me to have a place here :
Uruguay’s Desaparecidos Begin to Appear
Abracadabra
By EDUARDO GALEANO
(On March 14, novelist Eduardo Galeano spoke to the gathering of thousands in Montevideo to bury the remains of the first recovered “desaparecidos” (disappeared) victims of the Bordaberry dictatorship. The “progressive” (neoliberal) government of Tabaré Vázquez still hasn’t summoned the courage to repeal the “Leye de Caducidad” known as the “law of impunity” which the dictatorship legislated before leaving power, ensuring that none of its members would be tried for crimes committed during its reign from 1973-1985. The speech was published in the weekly newspaper, Brecha, March 17, 2006. Translated for CounterPunch by Clifton Ross.)
Every 14 of March Uruguayans who were prisoners of the dictatorship celebrate the Day of the Liberated.
It’s something more than a coincidence.
The disappeared, who are beginning to appear, Ubagesner Chaves, Fernando Miranda, call us to struggle for the liberation of memory, which continues to be imprisoned.
Our country wants to stop being a sanctuary of impunity, the impunity of murderers, the impunity of thieves, the impunity of liars, and we’re turning this direction, at last, after so many years, taking the first steps.
This is not the end of the road. It is the beginning. It was costly but we are beginning the hard and necessary transit to the liberation of memory in a country that seemed to be condemned to a state of perpetual amnesia.
All of us who are here share the hope that sooner, rather than later, there will be memory and there will be justice because history teaches us that memory can stubbornly survive all its prisons and that justice can be more powerful than fear when people give it aid.
The dignity of memory, the memory of dignity.
In the unequal combat against fear, in that combat that each one of us fights every day, what would become of us without the memory of dignity?
The world is suffering an alarming disparagement of dignity. The undignified, those who rule in this world, say that the undignified are the prehistoric, nostalgic, romantic, those who deny reality.
Every day, everywhere, we hear the eulogy to opportunism and the identification of realism with cynicism; the realism that requires elbowing and forbids the embrace; the realism of screw everything and fix it as you can and if not screw you.
The realism, too, of fatalism. This is the worst of the many ghosts seen today in our progressive government, here in Uruguay, and in other progressive governments of Latin America. The fatalism, perverse colonial inheritance, which forces us to believe that reality can be repeated, but it can’t be changed, that what was is, and will be, that tomorrow is nothing more than another name for today.
But could it be that they weren’t real, these men and women who have struggled and who struggle to change reality, those who have believed and believe that reality doesn,t demand obedience? Aren’t they real, Ubagesner Chaves and Fernando Miranda and all the others who are arriving from the bottom of the earth and time to testify to another possible reality? And all those who hoped and wished with them, weren’t they, and don’t they continue to be, real? Were the hangmen not real, were the victims not real, were the sacrifices of so many people in this country that the dictatorship turned into the greatest torture chamber of the world not real?
Reality is a challenge.
We are not condemned to choose between the same and the same.
Reality is real because it invites us to change it and not because it forces us to accept it. Reality opens spaces of freedom and doesn’t necessarily enclose us in the cages of fatalism.
The poet has well said that a single rooster doesn’t weave the morning.
This Creole with a strange name, Ubagesner, wasn’t alone in life nor is he alone in death; today he is a symbol of our land and our people.
This militant worker embodies the sacrifice of many compatriots who believed in our country and our people and risked their lives for this faith.
We have come to tell them it was worth the effort.
We have come to tell them that, dead, they will never die.
We are gathered today to tell them that the tangos we hear tell us that life is short but there are lives that are startlingly long because they continue in others, in those who will come.
Sooner or later we, walkers, will be walked on by the steps of others, just as our steps are taken in the footprints other steps left behind.
Now when the owners of the world have forced us to repent of all passion, now when style makes life so cold and barren, now is a good time to recall that little word that we all remember from childhood tales, “abracadabra,” the magic word that opened all the doors, that word, abracadabra which meant in ancient Hebrew, “Send your fire to the end.”
Today, more than a funeral, this is a celebration. We are celebrating the living memory of Ubagesner and all those generous men and women who, in this country, sent their fire to the end; those who continue to help us to not lose our way and not to accept the unacceptable and not to ever resign ourselves and never to step down from the beautiful little horse of dignity.
Because in the most difficult hours, in those days of enmity, in the years of the grime and fear of the military dictatorship, these people knew how to live and give themselves entirely and they did so without asking for anything in exchange, as if their lives sang that old Andalucian copla that said, and still says and will always say, “My hands are empty, but they are mine.
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 18 2006 2:18 utc | 66
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