Senate Hearings on Iraq

Today, Senator Joe Biden opened up hearings on Iraq to "start a wider national dialogue on a potentially critical decision to go to war." Conveniently, as Voices in the Wilderness observed, "Not one of the invited participants represents a vigorous call for negotiation and dialogue instead of war."

After taking a peek at the roster of witnesses scheduled to testify, Justin Raimondo offered this comment:

I am sick unto death of our Western triumphalists, who hail "the end of history" and the supposedly unassailable virtues of "democracy" and "free markets." What friggin' hypocrites they are! Here we are about to go to war, and the Senate holds hearings on the subject – with not a single opponent of our war policy scheduled to testify! Oh, isn't democracy wonderful! Aren't you oh-so-glad that you live in the freest country in the world? Doesn't it make you swell with pride?

As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Joe Biden gets to largely pick the line-up of witnesses, albeit with input from the other members. "The senator believes it's time to start a wider national dialogue on a potentially critical decision to go to war," says Norm Kurz, Biden's communications director. "We need to educate the American public on the risks of both action and inaction on Iraq."

Pardon me while I go vomit….

There. I feel a little better, but not much. Kurz, and Biden, are liars: This isn't a "dialogue," it's a monologue, with only one side allowed to have its say.

And, as predicted, the first day of testimony made Saddam out to be a monstrous threat, someone who aims a dagger (maybe a nuclear one, too!) at our collective American heart.

Conservatives and the Proletariat

Following the Pennsylvania mine "miracle," I had been expecting this: conservatives have discovered the working class!

In an amusing post on "Michael Novak and the Toiling Masses," Rittenhouse Review observes:

Whenever an event or crisis occurs that involves danger, fear, manual labor, faith, and family, it’s time to duck for cover, preferably before the punditocracy -- left, right, and center -- gets its hands on the incident, overanalyzes its significance, and ruins the (preferably) happy conclusion for everyone.

Such is the case already with the dangerous and nerve-wracking rescue of nine Pennsylvania coal miners trapped underground for nearly four days. As best we can tell, the accident at the mine and the ultimate recovery of the miners drew the interest, sympathies, and prayers of a wide range of Americans. The success of the rescue effort, which required overcoming several heartbreaking set backs, was applauded by millions of Americans across the political and ideological spectrum.

It is an event that we all shared, not unlike the attacks on New York and Washington last September. But, as expected, there are some who feel compelled to call the event their own, evidence of their special virtue, and worse, to use a tragedy (or potential tragedy) to support their own political agenda.

Read on; it's a funny piece.

Also, as expected, Rush Limbaugh weighs in (two years ago, that would have been a nice joke) with this poignant and thoughtful piece of analysis:

The left constantly assaults the traditions and institutions that make this country great, as they seek to convince you to look to the federal government for every solution, rather than look to yourself. Knowing this, it was with goose bumps that I watched Pennsylvania Governor Mark Schweiker (R-PA) talk about the families first, and say upon the rescue, "What we have here are nine rugged, individual, great Pennsylvania miners." There wasn't one liberal on the scene warping these people or telling them, "Don't destroy a blade of grass or cut down a tree just to save some petty humans."

Human life came first - and that just doesn't happen with liberals. I don't mean the rank and file liberals, not you mom and pop libs, FDR fans or family sedan guys. I'm talking about the liberal elite leaders in Washington. These people who are better than everybody else in their minds. For the John Corzines of the world, it's okay for them to score big on Wall Street doing curious things; they are entitled, special, superior. That's why they tax your income to keep you from becoming wealthy, but there's no tax on the wealth they already have.

Like their European counterparts, the Corzines of the world hate the people you saw on TV all weekend - both the rescuers and the rescued - who make this country work. They hate that this is a country where the coal miners rule. The blue-collar workers are vulgarians to the left. Why, they get their hands and faces dirty! Sure they're praised at election time, and they're said to be the backbone of America, but when it comes to policies that actually help these people, go ask most traditional Democratic voters how their lives have improved over the last couple years...

The sincerity here, coming from a man who reportedly makes $30 million a year, brings a tear to my eye.

(NB: Novak link via eschaton; Limbaugh link via Hamster.)

Italian police planted petrol bombs on G8 summit protesters

The Independent reports:

Italian police planted two Molotov cocktails in a school where anti-globalisation pro-testers were sleeping to justify a brutal crackdown during last year's G8 summit in Genoa.

A policeman has confessed that he planted the explosives following a year of acrimony over the handling of security at the summit where a protester was shot dead by the police.

"I brought the Molotov cocktail to the Diaz school. I obeyed the order of one of my superiors," the 25-year-old unnamed officer told prosecutors investigating the summit. The Molotov cocktails were planted in the school to justify the police raids on the school, he said.

The Guardian also ran a story alleging the same thing back in June.

Silly lil Quiz

6.25 %

My weblog owns 6.25 % of me.
Does your weblog own you?

Unchaining Public Expression

"The Internet and the Liberation of Public Expression" is an essay by Pierre Lévy which elaborates on some of the themes raised in my post on blogging's proliferation of opinion.

Adjuncts and Corporatizing Higher Education

The Washington Post ran a profile of an adjunct professor in their magazine last Sunday and used it to draw out larger themes about the dismal situation for part-time faculty on American college campuses. CNN did a similar story last year.

There's been a lot of discussion of this issue in the Chronicle of Higher Education and via organizations like the American Association of University Professors over the past few years. More recently, there's been some serious organizing amongst part-time faculty (especially in the Boston area) and grad students in response.

As I see it, this "corporatization of higher education" - the adoption of a business model for keeping labor costs low, and outsourcing when financially attractive – is bound up with what's been referred to as the “theme-parking” of colleges & universities. Increasingly, students are being sold on the merits of a school's social opportunities and more substantial portions of institutional budgets are being used to invest heavily in technology, state-of-the-art recreational facilities, plush housing, and other athletic/entertainment complexes, while spending on faculty hiring, library acquisitions, and academics in general (especially in the humanities) declines.

Of course, this trend should not be divorced from the general attack on K-12 public education over the past 20 years, either. The emerging dominance of public choice theory completely re-orientated the landscape upon which educators and consumers contextualized the purpose and utility of education; so education is now less a "public good" than something that furnishes individual students with skills for personal advancement in highly competitive job markets.

With this scenario, the locus of education shifts from providing students and educators with the power to define subject matter to a situation where the job market and the needs of employers are given primacy in determining where money and resources are allocated. In a worst case scenario, as David Noble has warned, institutions of higher education will gradually become "diploma mills" to serve commercial interests entirely - both in regards to input (how pedagogy is enacted) and output (the type of student produced).

Vouchers fit nicely into this equation, as well. Privatizing education will likely destroy one of the few remaining avenues for upwards mobility, and further polarize the nation into a binary of "haves" and "have nots". It will probably kill the middle class and dissolve communal bonds fostered by public institutions which have historically allowed marginal populations to feel part of a larger, "American" community. It goes without saying that the long-term effects of this will be disastrous.

"America's Army"

"Paid for by America's taxpayers and designed by the U.S. Army," the new America's Army videogame was unveiled at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles and released earlier this month, writes Bill Berkowitz in an article from last week. According to him, the game "has cost taxpayers $6.3 million thus far," and will serve as a recruiting tool for the greatest killing machine on earth. Some, however, say it is merely a "positive marketing tool," and not a gimmick to lure 18-24 year olds out onto the battle field.

More info about the game is available at its official site, where it can also be downloaded for free.

Florida Recount Expenditures

There was a story briefly mentioned in one of the newscasts I caught over the weekend stating that the Bush campaign spent four times more than the Gores on expenditures during the 2000 Florida recount. It is available on CNN.com and via the Washington Post.

This is a rather inconsequential piece of news now, obviously, but it further discredits the Republican line during the recount that, while they were making a noble "appeal to the law," Democrats were meddling behind the scenes to steal the election. In reality, as Republicans were painting Gore as a crybaby trying to assault the Constitution, the Bushies were spending freely and getting their pawns into place. The Republican rhetoric was basically a smokescreen to hide their own frantic maneuvering in trying to influence the recount and subsequent legal decisions.

Alterman: "War Is Hell"

Eric Alterman has written an addendum to his rather callous post from yesterday following the assassination of Salah Shehade. He offers:

I’ve received a lot of nasty hate mail because I said I didn’t have a problem with Israel’s missile attack from a moral standpoint as an act of war against a political entity that has declared war on Israel. I still don’t.

Everyone seems to forget that the history of warfare in the past century is the history of the slaughter of innocent civilians. Look at Dresden, Tokyo, the Russians in Afghanistan, the Syrians in Lebanon, Iraq vs. Iran, the Christmas bombing of North Vietnam.

If you ask for war, you are asking to have your civilians slaughtered, unless you can keep the war on the other side’s turf. Well, Hamas asked.

This is absurd. He sounds more like a rabid conservative clone - ya know, "war is hell," so quit whining - than a liberal who writes for The Nation. It's one thing to point out that "the history of warfare in the past century is the history of the slaughter of innocent civilians." It is quite a different thing to use the observation to excuse Israel's actions, which is exactly what Alterman is doing by saying that, while finding it imprudent on "pragmatic grounds," he has no "moral" problem with murdering civilians or assassinating political adversaries.

The fact that Hamas "asked for it" is completely irrelevant; the militaristic stance of a political party does not, in any way, justify a clear violation of international law. Nor does Hamas speak for those civilians killed, which is implied by Alterman to rationalize their deaths as unfortunate collateral damage.

Even more ridiculous, Alterman refers readers to an ABC News report stating that Hamas was willing to take a major step towards a cease-fire. Of course, assuming this is true, it completely undermines his contention that such bombings are necessary to defeat Hamas "militarily".

Usually, I'm pretty neutral on Alterman's work. Many of his columns, like this week's, are informative and well-written. Still, these recent comments remind me why I've become skeptical of liberals, especially since so many (including much of the staff at The Nation) buckled under the pressure following 9/11 and were swept along, to varying degrees, with the tide of militarism and blind nationalism.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was known to criticize liberalism for being "so bent on seeing all sides that it fails to become committed to any side" and "so objectively analytical that it is not subjectively committed." Alterman seems to be fitting this profile with these posts which bend over backwards to whitewash murder. Conservatives rail against liberals for "moral relativism" all the time. In the case here, I would have to agree.

Laundering the 'Truth'?

Forbidden Truth, the French bestseller on the cozy links between the Taliban, Bin Laden, and the west, is finally being published in the US via Nation Books. The Village Voice has a story this week on some of the discrepancies between the French and English versions of the book. The author of one of the introductions for the English version, Wayne Madison, also contributes some thoughts about the book's reception in this country over at Counterpunch.

An FYI: I mentioned the book back in May and posted some useful links summarizing its arguments.

Humans and the future's "era of solitude"

John Gray, the ex-Thatcherite turned globalization critic, has a very intriguing article in the New Statesman about the ecological devastation of the future. Rather than referring to the typical explanation of human mismanagement of the environment, he cites the coming threat of overpopulation:

According to Edward O Wilson, the greatest living Darwinian thinker, the earth is entering a new evolutionary era. We are on the brink of a great extinction the like of which has not been seen since the end of the Mesozoic Era, 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs disappeared. Species are vanishing at a rate of a hundred to a thousand times faster than they did before the arrival of humans. On current trends, our children will be practically alone in the world. As Wilson has put it, humanity is leaving the Cenozoic, the age of mammals, and entering the Eremozoic - the era of solitude.

...In truth, the root cause of mass extinction is too many people. As Wilson puts it in his book Consilience: "Population growth can justly be called the monster on the land." Yet according to all the mainstream parties and most environmental organisations, the despoliation of the environment is mainly the result of flaws in human institutions. If we are entering a desolate world, the reason is not that humans have become too numerous. It is because injustice prevents proper use of the earth's resources. There is no such thing as overpopulation.

A little later in the article, Gray cites an even more surprising problem - the belief in the righteousness of human dominance over nature - and notes,

The belief that the earth belongs to humans is a residue of theism. For Christians, humans are unique among animals because they alone are created in the image of God. For the same reason, they are uniquely valuable. It follows that humanity can behave as lord of creation, treating the earth's natural wealth and other animals as tools, mere instruments for the achievement of human purposes.

To my mind, such religious beliefs have caused an immense amount of harm, but at least they are coherent. It is perfectly reasonable to think humans are the only source of value in the scheme of things - so long as you retain the theological framework in which they are held to be categorically different from all other animals. But once you have given up theism, this sort of anthropocentrism makes no sense. Outside the Judaeo-Christian tradition, it is practically unknown. The view of things in which we are separate from the rest of nature and can live with minimal concern for the biosphere is not a conclusion of rational inquiry. It is an inheritance from a single, humanly aberrant religious tradition.

The fashionable belief that there is no such thing as overpopulation is part of an anthropocentric world-view that has nothing to do with science. At the same time, there is more than a hint of anthropocentrism in Wilson's suggestion that we are entering an age of solitude. The idea that, unlike any other animal, humans can take the planet into a new evolutionary era assumes that the earth will patiently submit to their inordinate demands. Yet there is already evidence that human activity is altering the balance of the global climate - and in ways that are unlikely to be comfortable for the human population. The long-term effects of global warming cannot be known with any certainty. But in a worst-case scenario that is being taken increasingly seriously, the greenhouse effect could wipe out densely populated coastal countries such as Bangladesh within the present century, while seriously dislocating food production elsewhere in the world.

The result could be a disaster for billions of people. The idea that we are entering an era of solitude makes sense only if it is assumed that such a world would be stable - and hospitable to humans. Yet we know that the closer an ecosystem comes to being a mono-culture, the more fragile it becomes, as Mark Buchanan demonstrated in the NS two weeks ago ("The extinction of species", 8 July). The world's rainforests are part of the earth's self-regulatory system. As James Lovelock has observed, they sweat to keep us cool. With their disappearance, we will be increasingly at risk. A humanly overcrowded world that has been denuded of much of its biodiversity will be extremely fragile - far more vulnerable to large, destabilising accidents than the complex biosphere we have inherited. Such a world is too delicate to last for long.

His conclusion is stark and, perhaps, unexpected:

The increase in human population that is currently under way is unprecedented and unsustainable. It cannot be projected into the future. More than likely, it will be cut short by the classical Malthusian forces of "old history". From a human point of view, this is an extremely discomforting prospect; but at least it dispels the nightmare of an age of solitude. The loss of biodiversity is real, and very often irreversible. But we need not fear a world made desolate by human proliferation. We can rely on homo rapiens to spare us that fate.

Israeli Attack on Civilian Residence

While consistent with its reliance on extrajudicial assassination to thwart whoever they declare to be terrorists, the Israeli attack upon Salah Shehade's apartment in Gaza City is one of the most transparent uses of force against civilians since the beginning of the intifada.

With Ari Fleischer's criticism of the attack - a Qaddafi-like assault which killed a total of 15, including 9 children - the "White House admitted for the first time a fact that has been apparent to any observer of the conflict since September 29, 2000: Israel uses brutal military force against civilian areas with the full knowledge that civilians will be killed," says Ali Abunimah. "Such wanton disregard for innocent life is the exact moral equivalent of the killing of Israeli innocents in bars, restaurants, buses and shopping malls, and it violates international law," he added.

The Palestinian envoy to the United Nations has asked the ICC to investigate the attack as a "war crime" and leaders from around the world have condemned the assault. Meanwhile, the attack and the backlash have caused a shake-up within Israel's own policy and defense circles.

It is unlikely, though, that this will have much of an effect on the way Israel handles the conflict. Killing large numbers of civilians in an amorphous concept of "self-defense" will continue; just not with such an egregious, easily criticized technique as dropping munitions from F-16s on apartment complexes.

Triumphant or Overextended?

Walden Bello has an interesting piece exploring whether Washington will triumph or overextend itself with a continuation of its current foreign policy orientation. He concludes with this sobering analysis of the current war on terror:

There are no clear winners so far in the so-called war against terror. But there are clear losers. The Taliban is one. The other big loser is liberal democracy in the United States. Not even the Cold War was presented in such totalistic terms as the "War against Terror." Laws and executive orders restricting the rights to privacy and free movement have been passed with a speed and in a manner that would have turned Joe McCarthy green with envy. The United States was scarcely three months into the war when legislation had already been passed and executive orders signed that established secret military tribunals to try non-US citizens; imposed guilt by association on immigrants; launched a massive effort to track down 8000 young Muslim men; authorized the Attorney General to indefinitely lock up aliens on mere suspicion; expanded the use of wiretaps and secret searches; allowed the use of secret evidence in immigration proceedings that aliens cannot confront or rebut; gave the Justice Department the authority to overrule immigration judges; destroyed the secrecy of the client-lawyer relationship by allowing the government to listen in; and institutionalized racial and ethnic profiling.

Americans have often prided themselves with having a political system whose role is to maximize and protect individual liberty along the lines propounded by John Locke and Thomas Jefferson. That Lockean-Jeffersonian tradition has been severely eroded in the last few months, as Americans have been stampeded to giving government vast new powers over the individual in the name of guaranteeing order and security. Instead of moving to the future, America's limited democracy is regressing in its inspiration from the seventeenth century Locke to the sixteenth century Hobbes, whose masterwork Leviathan held that citizens owe unconditional loyalty to a state that guarantees the security of their life and limb.

AI UK Media Awards

Amnesty International UK has announced the winners of its Media Awards for this year.

The Global Award for Human Rights Journalism was awarded to Chris Hedges for his Harper's article, "A Gaza Diary," which laid out this ghoulish scenario:

It is still. The camp waits, as if holding its breath. And then, out of the dry furnace air, a disembodied voice crackles over a loudspeaker.

"Come on, dogs," the voice booms in Arabic. "Where are all the dogs of Khan Younis? Come! Come!"

I stand up. I walk outside the hut. The invective continues to spew: "Son of a bitch!" "Son of a whore!" "Your mother's cunt!"

The boys dart in small packs up the sloping dunes to the electric fence that separates the camp from the Jewish settlement. They lob rocks toward two armored jeeps parked on top of the dune and mounted with loudspeakers. Three ambulances line the road below the dunes in anticipation of what is to come.

A percussion grenade explodes. The boys, most no more than ten or eleven years old, scatter, running clumsily across the heavy sand. They descend out of sight behind a sandbank in front of me. There are no sounds of gunfire. The soldiers shoot with silencers. The bullets from the M-16 rifles tumble end over end through the children's slight bodies. Later, in the hospital, I will see the destruction: the stomachs ripped out, the gaping holes in limbs and torsos.

Yesterday at this spot the Israelis shot eight young men, six of whom were under the age of eighteen. One was twelve. This afternoon they kill an eleven-year-old boy, Ali Murad, and seriously wound four more, three of whom are under eighteen. Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered—death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights and watched them crumple onto the pavement in Sarajevo—but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport.

For added emphasis, Hedges again relayed this incident in a follow up interview on NPR:

I walked out towards the dunes and they were--the--over the loudspeaker from an Israeli army Jeep on the other side of the electric fence they were taunting these kids. And these kids started to throw rocks. And most of these kids were 10, 11, 12 years old. And, first of all, the rocks were the size of a fist. They were being hurled towards a Jeep that was armor-plated. I doubt they could even hit the Jeep. And then I watched the soldiers open fire. And it was--I mean, I've seen kids shot in Sarajevo. I mean, snipers would shoot kids in Sarajevo. I've seen death squads kill families in Algeria or El Salvador. But I'd never seen soldiers bait or taunt kids like this and then shoot them for sport. It was--I just--even now, I find it almost inconceivable. And I went back every day, and every day it was the same.

The award for best periodical article in the UK went to Christine Toomey for her piece on the School of the Assassins/Americas (or whatever it's called nowadays). It is also worth the read.

Blogging's Proliferaton of Opinion

While his tips on how to be a good blogger seem rather patronizing to me, Brendan O'Neill had some interesting comments on the blogging phenomenon in this post:

Many in the Blogosphere claim they are doing something new and distinctive in modern journalism. In fact, blogging is the logical conclusion of some of the worst trends in modern journalism. Today, much of the media is taken up by opinion, subjective rants, voxpops and, lest we forget, 'the view from the man in the street'.

Just about every newspaper, radio show and TV programme courts 'the people's opinion' these days, to balance our 'ordinary views' against the views of experts, politicians and seasoned journalists. This indulgence of everyman's opinions usually ends up patronising the public, rather than really engaging us. As British journalist Ed Barrett recently argued:

'[People] are entitled to their "bog standard opinions". But most of us get more than enough of that sort of thing already in our day-to-day lives, without hearing it on radio and TV as well. Is it unreasonable to ask for a few talking heads that don't appear to have had frontal lobotomy? Experts may not be perfect - but faced with the alternative I'll take an expert every time.'

The Blogosphere takes the idea that every opinion is valid and worth hearing to new heights, turning it into an art form. Anyone who's no-one can set up a weblog and spout forth their mundane views. As a result, much of today's traditional media and new online media are full of often vulgar and inarticulate opinions, in the pretence that such unmediated views reveal some kind of truth that expert investigation overlooks. Nonsense. It is more like listening to a drunken conversation than taking part in a serious debate.

The Blogosphere is built on opinion. But what is so great about having an opinion? As Clint Eastwood once said, 'Opinions are like arseholes - everybody's got one'. And like arseholes, we don't need to see (or indeed hear) them every minute of the day.

Opinions are ten-a-penny, and are usually little more than prejudice anyway. Research, argument and hard graft, however, can sometimes turn petty opinion into considered judgement - but research, argument and hard graft are notable by their absence in the Blogosphere.

This is an important consideration. With everyone from Peggy Noonan to Andrew Sullivan lauding blogging with descriptions of a "revolution" or "technological reformation," perhaps some humility should be in order. According to O'Neill's logic (which I am sympathetic towards), the proliferation of opinion - especially militant, self righteous opinions which leave little room for dialogue - means the blogosphere runs the risk of being filled with propaganda and disinformation. The implication is that, in the end, discourse will suffer, no matter how much democratization is instilled by the destruction of publishing barriers.

For some context, recall that there was a similar concern when the printing press began to flourish in the 17th and 18th centuries. Back then, many were worried about the loss of "credibility" in the printed word, precisely because printing and textual dispersal could be accomplished outside the traditional, centralized beauracracies of that time. In Information Ages: Literacy, Numeracy, and the Computer Revolution, Michael Hobart and Zachary Schiffman suggest that the "avalanche of books and ideas [from the printing revolution] engendered not intellectual advancement but confusion, undercutting the traditional, classificatory means of information management" as "the newfound ease of accessing and using them engendered information overload." This fear of confusion lead Francis Bacon, of all people, to propose that “all practitioners [of print] must be licensed by court officers, resolution of arguments must be centralized and decisive, word of the debates must be restricted to the central legislators, and there must be no publication to the populace without central approval.”

Another response was to develop new approaches to information management, largely with the explosion of science and mathematics. "Doubts about the ability to know the order of the world catalyzed a crucial change, away from taxonomic forms of information storage based on natural language and towards new ones based on a symbolic language of analytical abstraction," claim Hobart and Schiffman.

Is another "crucial change" in the way humans organize and relate to information on the horizon? What about Bacon's recommendation? We've already begun to hear similar calls, especially in regards to internet access in public schools and libraries. Will the desire arise for a further centralization of knowledge, perhaps this time through the corporate model?

It's also important to note that proliferation of opinion and publishing power is still largely in the domain of the affluent nations, mostly in the English-speaking economic north. Songok Han Thornton argues that "The Web is controlled and populated by First World nations that 'push' information and values onto an all too receptive periphery...[and] this global imbalance is widening. Indeed, within the geocultural core there is another kind of 'push' taking place: that of blatant Americanization."

We all know and concede that information is power; so does this blogging and publishing priviledge promise to further institutionalize the comparative advantage of the current axis of power in regions mentioned above? And, should we be concerned about this?

Human rights Eroding

Toronto's Globe and Mail reports that "The U.S. war on terrorism is encouraging less democratic countries to reduce human rights in the name of security." Echoing much of what Amnesty International said in their 2002 annual report, this story quotes Mary Robinson, the UN Human Rights chair, lamenting the "erosion of civil liberties in the name of combating terrorism." Particularly, she cites problems in "countries without a strong democratic tradition," but notes that the example being set by the traditional leaders of
the human rights community is being exploited to justify wrongful behavior all over the world:

"...when the issue is raised with them [egregious human rights abusers], they say, 'Why are you pinning us to those standards when those standards are not being observed in the United States and a number of European countries?'

"Their response is, 'Well, look at what is happening in the United States, at the number of people that are being held under immigration laws without a lawyer...Look at what's happening in European countries, at the harsh treatment of asylum-seekers and immigrants.'"

She also acknowledges that her UN office is receving many "reports from human-rights defenders, trade unionists, journalists around the world that measures are being taken by countries saying that they're combating terrorism but in fact clamping down on political opposition, freedom of the press, branding activities as being terrorist which were not so described before the 11th of September."

Two good cartoons

Under God...

Jr. Homeland Security Kit...

Is Eurocentrism Unique?

There's a very interesting essay on Eurocentrism and racism over at Counterpunch by M. Shahid Alam. I'd excise a quote, but that wouldn't do it justice. It deserves a full reading.

Fishean Pomo

Stanley Fish is again getting criticized for some of his recent comments on the relationship between postmodern theory and 9-11.

In the NY Times, Edward Rothstein suggests that Fish's "crucial point is that he believes that there is no reliable standard for proving it to an opponent." Not quite. While I think this is just a slight of rhetoric on Rothstein’s part, Fish's point would be that there is no universal standard of proof. In the July Harper’s essay I previously mentioned, Fish put it this way:

Historians draw conclusions about the meaning of events, astronomers present models of planetary movements, psychologists offer accounts of the reading process, consumers make decisions about which product is best, parents choose schools for their children – all of these things and many more are done with varying degrees of confidence, and in no case is the confidence rooted in a conviction that the actor is in possession of some independent standard of objectivity. Rather, the actor, you or I or anyone, begins in some context of practice, with its received authorities, sacred texts, exemplary achievements, and generally accepted benchmarks, and from within the perspective of that context – thick, interpersonal, densely elaborated – judges something to be true or inaccurate, reasonable or irrational, and so on.

It seems, then, that the unavailability of absolutely objective standards…doesn’t take anything away from us. If, as postmodernists assert, objective standards of a publicly verifiable kind are unavailable, they are so only in the sense that they have always been unavailable…and we have always managed to get along without them, doing a great many things despite the fact that we might be unable to shore them up in accordance with the most rigorous philosophical demands

So, there are many reliable standards of proof; but such reliability is, by its very nature, contingent on one’s own ability or affinity for contextualization.

Rothstein also writes, disapprovingly, that "In Fishean pomo, all we have are competing claims, whether the issue is the numerical value of pi or the assertion that the Mossad destroyed the World Trade Center." This, of course, isn't a terribly relevant point, in terms of the argument Fish is trying to make. At a strict level, there are only competing claims, but pomo theory does not presuppose that humans will prescribe equal amounts of weight to each “claim”. People draw conclusions based on what is real, tangible, and convincing for them - where the evidence seems to lead. Nobody is disputing or hoping to deny that fact. The assertion pomo theorists would insist upon, however, is that people invariably do not draw the same conclusions, nor do they do so in precisely the same manner.

In another article critical of Fish from TNR, Peter Berkowitz invokes the Sokal affair and tries to pin Fish to the wall with these two paragraphs:

According to Fish, the new critics didn't grasp postmodernism's true meaning. They were under the mistaken impression that "since postmodernists deny the possibility of describing matters of fact objectively, they leave us with no firm basis for either condemning the terrorist attacks or fighting back." In fact, claimed Fish, "Postmodernism maintains only that there can be no independent standard for determining which of many rival interpretations of an event is the true one."

These two passages may have left some readers puzzled. Had not Fish, in the span of two sentences, just reaffirmed the notion he said he was knocking down? The lack of independent standards for determining the truth among competing accounts is what most people mean by the impossibility of describing the facts objectively.

Here it seems Berkowitz, like Rothstein, is reading Fish wrong or, perhaps, just arguing against a point that Fish does not bother to make. There's no contradiction in arguing that objectivity is unattainable and yet still maintain that conclusions, based on some defined criteria, can be drawn (see the Harper’s excerpt, above). Conclusions can always be drawn - some more tenable than others, of course - but the important point to acknowledge is that they may not be readily persuasive or attributable to multiple readings of text, especially when viewed from divergent perspectives. In plainer language: a circle of people can arrive at similar conclusions, but do so usually by approaching the evidence with similar methods and assumptions. That does not mean that they are abiding by a universally defined notion of "truth"; instead, "truth" is actually created by the referencing of textual and cultural markers congruent with others in the community.

Further down, Berkowitz writes:

...the guiding theme of postmodernism is that objectivity, especially in morals, is a sham--in other words, precisely the definition Fish was disavowing in the Times. Postmodernists take their lead from Nietzsche's famous aphorism in Beyond Good and Evil, "There are no moral phenomena at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena." They draw inspiration and sustenance from the many books of the French theorist Michel Foucault, who held that the quest for truth in the study of history is wrongheaded--that, instead, one should seek to grasp "how effects of truth are produced within discourses which in themselves are neither true nor false." And they (the postmodernists) consider as one of their outstanding contemporaries Judith Butler, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, who asserts that "power pervades the very conceptual apparatus that seeks to negotiate its terms, including the subject position of the critic"; that "there is no ontologically intact reflexivity to the subject which is then placed within a cultural context"; and that "agency is always and only a political prerogative."

I don't see what Berkowitz is criticizing here. He may not like the contention that objectivity is a sham, or the idea that knowledge is inherently politicized, but both points seem generally uncontroversial to me. Perhaps he would draw comfort from the fact that admitting either doesn't destroy the entire project of Western civilization. Paradigms and inquiry are still useful in arriving at practical solutions to debates; indeed, the one very good thing that pomo theory postulates is that the truth is not inert, but rather defined through continual activity and process.

To me, it seems that Fish is being unfairly criticized for pointing out rather obvious, but nevertheless crucial, points about living in a world where the denseness and breadth of textuality, coupled with the reality of nearly infinite situational viewpoints, make truth less an ideal that we all arrive at in the same way - i.e. something that is already defined and awaiting us "out there" - than an ideal we continually create and strive for, with the best evidence available, as members of differing (but often overlapping) communities.

As in this case, postmodern theorists are usually condemned for what their arguments may imply, not necessarily what they say. Contending that people will base their interpretation of reality on their own perceptions and contexts, and that there may be widely varying ways of interpreting that reality due to inevitable disparities in textual references, is not a terribly radical proposition. And that, ultimately, is the premise Fish and his postmodern friends are trying to unravel.

Donahue

I finally caught Donahue's new show on MSNBC tonight and was not terribly impressed (the show's transcript is here).

His first guest was Ann Coulter and, frankly, I thought Phil was way out of line for confronting her as aggressively as he did. Basically, he attacked her with prepared material that wasn't relevant to her reason for visiting the show (to plug Slander) and rarely allowed her to get a word in otherwise.

Now, I'm not going soft here and if anyone deserves to get attacked on television, it's probably Coulter. But Donahue seemed to use the same bullying techniques you normally see at work on Fox. If liberals want to get tough, surely they don't need to resort to the same deplorable tactics used over at that fair 'n' balanced network. I would hope Jeff Cohen and Co. could do better.

To be honest, I didn't pay much attention to the rest of the show, except to tune in every once in a while. What I did see, beyond Coulter, was better - more informative, probing, and "civil" - but nothing that shook my world.

To get an impression of the way others have reacted to the show, check out what Eric Boehlert, Ben Fritz and Mark Jurkowitz have to say. For more reviews, browse some of the links over at PEJ from the past 3 days or so.

Is the US playing into the enemy’s hands?

Paul Rogers takes a gander at what seems to be the emerging US policy in the Mideast. He identifies three guiding principles - "working with the elites of selected states, rigorous support for Israel and its hardline treatment of the Palestinians, and the use of US military force when required" - and contends that the policy may work, "at least for the time being."

More ominously, though, he also suggests that such a policy "is precisely what paramilitary groups such as al-Qaida actually want" and concludes:

From the point of view of al-Qaida, it is a near-perfect scenario, calculated impressively to give it far greater financial and personal support across much of the region. Anti-American and anti-elite sentiments will grow, leading to the strengthening of al-Qaida and the development of similar groups.

...What appears to be a potentially successful strategy for maintaining control of a strategically crucial part of the world is actually a strategy more likely to end in a loss of control and greater risks to US interests, both abroad and at home.

Interesting that Rogers takes up this point that we might be "playing into their hands," reiterating what Steve Shalom and Michael Albert suggested back in September:

There is a second possible explanation for why those who planned the September 11 attacks did so. Why commit a grotesquely provocative act against a power so large, so armed, and so dangerous as the United States? Perhaps provoking the United States was precisely the intent. By provoking a massive military assault on one or more Islamic nations, the perpetrators may hope to set off a cycle of terror and counter-terror, precipitating a holy war between the Islamic world and the West, a war that they can lead and that they may hope will result in the overthrow of all insufficiently Islamic regimes and the unraveling of the United States, just as the Afghan war contributed to the demise of the Soviet Union. Needless to say, this scenario is insane on every count one can assess.

Universal U.S. healthcare within grasp

Check out this story from UPI:

Health care could be provided to the 43 million uninsured people in the United States without spending an additional dollar, a University of Illinois professor said.

"The savings on administrative costs alone are enough to basically take care of every uninsured person in this country," Tom O'Rourke told United Press International.

O'Rourke, who teaches community health at the Urbana-Champaign campus, and Nicholas Iammarino, a professor of kinesiology at Rice University in Houston, set forth their arguments in the article "Future of Healthcare Reform in the USA: Lessons From Abroad," published in the June issue of the British journal Review of Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research...

Socialism for the Rich

Ralph Nader laments the rise of "'Corporate socialism' - the privatization of profit and the socialization of risks and misconduct" in today's Washington Post. While he's writing in response to the recent business calamities, this label is actually applicable to the entire conception of the "free market," according to Noam Chomsky.

What's Hot

Well, I’m back. Had a great time on my lil’ sojourn out west, but still lamented the fact that being a tourist reduced me almost completely to the role of passive consumer. Anyway, I guess it’s comforting to know that you can go away for a week and return to find a world even more screwed up than when you left…

I’m not going to bother rehashing much of what’s transpired over the past week, but here are a few of the stories that caught my eye:

*Those millionaires in the Bush Administration are starting to feel some heat with revelations of past uh-ohs in their own business practices. The crackpot press has opened up a few can of worms, even though most of the recent revelations about Bush and his pals are old news: ie, Bush's own sordid financial history (specifically with Harken), Cheney’s Halliburton shenanigans (don’t forget this spat of lying, either), and Tom White’s Enron dealings.

*Creeping fascism rolls on with the newly established TIPS program. The Sunday Morning Herald of Australia reports that with its establishment the “US will have a higher percentage of citizen informants than the former East Germany through the infamous Stasi secret police” – an estimated 1 in 24 Americans.

*Iraq still bubbles under the surface. The line changes so quickly (a massive attack? scaled down invasion? Perhaps it’s all just a smokescreen…) on our impending attack and Iraq’s “threat to civilization” that it almost makes this whole prelude to war comical. Unfortunately, that would only be the case if we weren’t more than likely to start a major regional war which will kill who-knows-how-many people, for no convincing reason. So, now we have Richard Pearle warning that there is “powerful” evidence “that Iraq is coordinating with Al Qaida on plans to attack the United States.” Geesh, haven’t we heard this before?

Other stuff’s going on, for sure, but this seems to be what’s hot...

A Brief Hiatus

It's likely that I won't be posting anything here, or responding to emails, for at least a week. In the meantime, keep yourself occupied with the links on the left...

12 Tips for Becoming a RWP

This is just one of the 12 tips for becoming a right wing pundit...

Attack the victims

Remember: it's the Palestinians' fault when Israel invades their land and builds settlements. If they weren't so backward, uncivilized, and Muslim, then they could work for peanuts in Israeli kibbutzes and shop at Wal-Mart like civilized people.

And American minorities, especially Blacks, are to blame for being enslaved, ghettoized, discriminated against, and sodomized with nightsticks. If they weren't so darned Black, after all, they'd be just like us White folks.

Ouch!

Israel, Zionism, and Racism

I referenced a Ha'aretz article last week which grappled with the dilemma of Israel's Jewish and democratic identity. It seems like this question will have to be addressed at some serious level of engagement now that laws barring the sale of property to Arabs are being contemplated by members of Likud, with Sharon's stamp of approval (so far). In actuality, though, this is not a terribly new development, as any Arab living in Israel would probably tell you. It's really a question of whether segregation and disrimination are further etched into stone.

Virtually every pro-Israeli commentator cites Israel as being the lone democracy in the Mid East, implicitly justifying support for "our special friend". Rarely does anyone question the extent of Israel's democratic character and when questions are raised about the exclusionary practices at work in Zionist theory, a la Durban, a whole heap of anti-Semitic charges descend immediately to preclude discussion. Of course, the seething rage and vitriole towards Jews from some sectors of the Arab community is an equally preemptive barrier to discussion. Probably even more so.

I suppose that brings us to the question of whether Zionism is racism. In short, my answer has been no; Zionism has been an exercise in colonialism predicated on a degree of chauvanism that can manifest itself as a form of racism, but not necessarily.

First Blow in the Battle over Justices?

Back in January, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia made some extraordinary statements at a Pew Forum on "Religion, Politics, and the Death Penalty." Seemingly in approval, the religious-conservative magazine First Things published an abridged version of his remarks in its May issue.

Still, in other media, these remarks went without criticism for months. Only after a WSWS editorial did any substantial comment come in the US press, this time in a NY Times op-ed from Princeton history professor Sean Wilentz. Suggesting that "Mr. Scalia's true priority is to get secular humanists off the federal bench," Wilentz writes,

In Chicago Mr. Scalia asserted, not for the first time, that he is a strict constructionist, taking the Constitution as it is, not as he might want it to be. Yet he wants to give it a religious sense that is directly counter to the abundantly expressed wishes of the men who wrote the Constitution. That is not properly called strict constructionism; it is opportunism, and it threatens democracy. His defense of his private prejudices, even if they may occasionally overlap the opinions of others, should not be mislabeled conservatism. Justice Scalia seeks to abandon the intent of the Constitution's framers and impose views about government and divinity that no previous justice, no matter how conservative, has ever embraced.

So what does this mean? Beyond the relevance of the recent ruling on the death penalty, Scalia's comments pave the way for more openly partisan and public remarks on the religious beliefs of judges and potential judges.

After all, following the vouchers ruling and the pledge of allegiance flap, conservatives have basically vowed to make belief in god a pre-requisite for appointment. Rhetoric like Scalia's might signal a shift in how justices are weeded out or groomed for top positions. Religion is likely to become the new litmus test for determining which judges - or, just as importantly, types of justices - will garner support before confirmation hearings are even contemplated.

What Sucks and What's Great about the US

Somewhat late, but still relevant: What the flag means to S. Brian Willson...

...I remember proudly carrying the U.S. American flag in one of the July 4th parades in my small, agricultural town in upstate New York. And for years I felt goosebumps looking at Old Glory waving in the breeze during the playing of the national anthem or as it passed by in a parade. How lucky I was to have been born in the greatest country in the history of the world, and blessed by God to boot. Such a blessing, such a deal!

It wasn't until many years later, while reading an issue of the armed forces newspaper Stars and Stripes in Vietnam, that I began thinking and feeling differently about the flag and what it represents. There was a story about an arrest for flag burning somewhere in the United States. I had recently experienced the horror of seeing numerous bodies of young women and children that were burned alive in a small Delta village devastated by napalm. I imagined that since the pilots had "successfully" hit their targets, they were feeling good and probably had received glowing reports that would bode well in their military record for promotions. I wondered why it was okay to burn innocent human beings 10,000 miles from my home town, but not okay to burn a piece of cloth that was symbolic of the country that had horribly napalmed those villagers. Something was terribly wrong with the Cold War rhetoric of fighting communism that made me question what our nation stood for. There was a grand lie, an American myth, that was being fraudulently preserved under the cloak of our flag.

Oh, and for some kind of balance, check out Peg Noonan's piece on what's right with our country.

Hadayat: Egyptian Terrorist?

DebkaFile is reporting that "Hesham Mohamed Hadayat Who Attacked El Al Ticket Line at Los Angeles Airport Was an Egyptian Jihadist Associated with Egyptian Suicide Pilot Batouty Who Crashed Egyptair 990 in 1999 Killing All 217 Aboard." This seems to be a rather bold assertion:

During his ten years in the United States, he was a secret operative of the Egyptian Jihad who maintained undercover links to the same Jihad cell in Brooklyn, New York, as the “blind sheikh” Abdul Rahim Rahman and Ramzi Yousef. Both are doing time for perpetrating the first attack on the New York World Trade Center in 1993...Since the attack, the possibility that he arrived in America as a sleeper terrorist must be seriously addressed. US investigators realize he was not a lone operative and are seeking his accomplices in such matters as setting up the hit...

Afghans begin questioning American role

Following our recent attack on that Afghan wedding (btw, what's up with us attacking sooo many weddings?!), come two AP articles basically warning the US to...umm...stop killing innocent civilians. In one report, Amir Shah quotes Jan Mohammed Khan, governor of the Afghan provine of Uruzgan: "If Americans don't stop killing civilians, there will be jihad (holy war) against them in my province." In a different story, Dusan Stojanovic hits the streets and finds these comments:

"We consider the Americans our liberators, but after this, they may soon become occupiers,'' a grocer named Jabbar said in his small store on the busy Qalai-e-Fatulluh Khan street. "They should be here for peace, not death.''...

"Americans made so many mistakes here, and we cannot accept that hitting a wedding party was just another one,'' said Raz Mohammed, 40, a customer in Jabbar's store...

"They should set their aiming devices right, or just pack up and go,'' Mohammed said. "We fought the Russians in 1980s, we'll fight Americans if need be.''...

"We support coalition measures against the Taliban regime and al-Qaida, but we cannot tolerate more innocent victims in our country and American bombardment of civilian targets,'' said Theyba, one of the protest organizers, reading to the crowd from a petition outside the United Nations headquarters in Kabul...

Throughout the war, the US government - with the media's complicity - has basically ignored the civilian casualties in Afghanistan. Obfuscating casualty figures or covering up "bad PR" is fine for propaganda purposes at home, but our inability to address this topic will only hurt us in the end.

There's nothing wrong with admitting mistakes; even though I find the Afghan campaign imprudent (and that's putting it mildly), I wouldn't be nearly as critical of the war if the Defense Department admitted errors, especially when they became entirely transparent. Waging a war on a country in violation of international law is one thing, but doing so with such blatant stealth, trickery, and deceit is something that suggests to me that the campaign is a) not going well and b) not on solid moral ground, as we're constantly told.

The fact that all the lefties may whine is irrelevant. If our leadership has as much confidence in this campaign as they say they do, and their confidence is warranted, then they shouldn't have to manage information and keep details as close to the vest as they have been doing. When spin becomes so paramount, that ultimately fosters distrust and undermines the credibility of our efforts.

Also: if Afghans are happy that we've invaded and purged them of the Taliban, that is great. While that doesn't affect the way I feel about the war, I'd much rather see and hear about approval for our mission in that country - especially when the prospect to halt the campaign or change its current course of action is slim at this point - rather than massive protest against it. Still, I worry that this portrayal of a "joyous" Afghan population is just a front; another part of our propaganda campaign. But from here that's difficult to discern with much confidence or accuracy.

Reagan's Magic

I mentioned some stuff worth checking out in Harper’s Magazine a few weeks ago and thought I’d add to the list. There’s a pretty substantial review of three recent books on Ronald Reagan in the May 2002 issue by Kevin Baker titled, “The Magic Reagan.” Thankfully, one of the books reviewed is Peggy Noonan’s When Character Was King.

Overall, the review provides a good discussion of the Reagan mystique, admittedly, though, from someone who doesn’t think much of the Gipper. Here’s a quote which stood out to me:

If anything, Reagan’s ascent marked the triumph of political postmodernism, detaching the present from the American past, detaching the language of our politics from any real meaning. As president, the man who told us that government was the problem ran up record budget deficits, presided over the worst financial scandals in our history, and even managed to raise most Americans’ taxes. Twenty years into the “Age of Reagan,” the state is bigger and more powerful than ever, particularly in its most coercive manifestations. We have more police, more prisons, than ever before, along with a military that is soon to be funded at levels beyond those of the Cold War, and a $30 billion national-security apparatus (albeit one incapable of monitoring a single dervish tied to a dialysis machine).

This comment seems to be in line with Michael Rogin’s excellent argument in Ronald Reagan, The Movie and just confirms the irony of our political dialogue: conservatives absolutely hate the assertions of postmodern theorists – even though most don’t have a clue as to what the postmodernists are actually saying – and yet the rise of the entertainer-president is one of the most obvious examples of how image has begun peeling away from substance, a la Baudrillard.

Perhaps just as interesting, Baker concludes: “Reagan and [the last twenty years of] Reaganism have destroyed both liberalism and conservatism, in favor of some new beast – a large, activist government that is to be deployed solely on behalf of the wealthiest and most powerful interests everywhere.”

Check out the article if you get the chance.

A War against what?

Echoing themes that he’s brought up before, Brendan O’Neill has the audacity to ask in an article on spiked, “So if bin Laden the man is no longer the enemy and bin Laden the symbol has been defeated, who or what is the target of the ongoing war on terror?”

“The more the war drags on,” O’Neill writes, “the more trouble US leaders seem to have pinpointing what America is fighting against.” He continues to argue that the war is “about finding a sense of purpose and mission for the US government,” more than to confront an amorphous, ever changing group of defined terrorists. This point should sound familiar: O’Neill has used it on several occasions to downplay the oil-for-war thesis.

I wholeheartedly agree that the war is doing little to address the threat of terrorism, and, actually, is likely making the situation worse. I even concur that the war is being conducted to gloss over the internal situation at home and at least provide the illusion that we are making headway against this “grave threat to humanity.” Still, this does not discount other motives for the war, especially the oil factor, which have been put into motion alongside our assault on the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. As I have noted, policy makers can hold more than one idea in their head at once, and like to use certain aims to mask others.

Beyond that, O’Neill’s conclusion is hard to dispute:

There seems to be a fantasy enemy, against whom Bush and co can make grand pronouncements and big bad threats - and a real enemy, which has continuously eluded American and British forces in Afghanistan. A fantasy war on terror, where America and its allies look strong and determined - and a real war in Afghanistan, where the war aims change on a weekly basis and where operation after operation ends in failure.

Rules for Left Wing Bloggers

I'm sort of new to this, yes, but Pejman has me worried. I'm not sure if I'm running this "typical, left-wing blog" as I'm supposed to. He just demands soooo much...

US Power and the ICC

Kenneth Roth, director of Human Rights Watch, wrote a piece for the Financial Times on the birth of the ICC without US support. He contends,

An increasingly influential faction in the Bush administration believes that US military and economic power is so dominant that the US is no longer served by international law.

Better to negotiate issues case-by-case from a position of strength, they contend, than to be bound by international law in ways that might prove inconvenient. This attitude can be seen in the US rejection of not only the ICC but also treaties ranging from climate control to small arms.

No effective global system can rest solely on coercion. Global order depends on most governments abiding voluntarily by shared norms. Exempting America from the rule of law undermines those norms, leaving a more violent and inhumane world. Europe must stand up to this superpower folly.

Sure, some continue go on and on about how the ICC is going to be a kangaroo court where American heroes and patriots will get lynched by our malevolent enemies without due cause. But let's not kid ourselves: since the Rome statues of 1998, the members of the international community which support the ICC have made extraordinary efforts to safeguard the court's process so that politically-motivated prosecutions without substance have virtually no chance of coming to fruition.

But, in all reality, that point is just a convenient excuse for our non-cooperation. The true motive for the US opposition, as Roth indicates above, is all about power: we have it, overwhelmingly, and we want to be able to use it when we deem it necessary, without any constraints. And, especially with the right in charge now, the US leadership is unlikely to relent.

Of course, when any other nation shows such a wanton disregard for "international law" and "international cooperation," we are quick to crucify. However, when we do it, we're just fulfilling our benevolent place in the world. How dare anyone question us - the great beacon of freedom - or show anything resembling disrespect on this, and related, issues...

Pure Evil: The Economics of the War Party

Justin Raimondo has picked up on Larry Kudlow's call for war and is horrified by what he sees:

For the Kudlow Doctrine – better living through mass murder – is, by far, the worst product of the conservative movement's degeneration into little more than a pack of bloodthirsty monsters. Kudlow wins the Bloodlust Award hands down. His scheme is far uglier, morally, than anything Max Boot has come up with. Beside Kudlow's "let's kill our way out of the recession" scenario, National Review editor Rich Lowry's proposal to "nuke Mecca" seems innocently schoolboyish.

...The moral meaning of the Kudlow Doctrine is all too plain: these guys will stoop to anything in order to drag us into a permanent war on a global scale. If Christian Zionism and fairy tales of the "end times" don't work, try anthrax conspiracy stories blaming Saddam. If that doesn't work, then tell them a Middle East war will usher in a new era of prosperity. Lie, cheat, smear your enemies, and spread the poisonous "memes" of the War Party far and wide...

We seem to interpret this one the same way. Yet, I must admit that his analysis adds a significant layer beyond my concerns with a lengthy discussion of the possible economic collapse following an attack against Iraq and expansion of the war.

On July 4th

Gearing up for July 4th, I think it's time to roll out Robert Jensen's essay once again on why we should say goodbye to patriotism. Jensen and Rahul Mahajan have also written a more recent piece in anticipation of the holiday, here.

And, for an added zing, check out this cartoon on the rockets' red glare.

If there are any further articles, cartoons, whatever on July 4th worth mentioning - as I'm sure there will be - I'll be posting most of them here. So bookmark this link after clicking on the "+" immediately below.

Feedback on the Victims of Terror Series

Speaking of some of my feedback, I also penned this note to Rick Davis, the CNN ombudsman, in response to CNN's Victims of Terror series and an Electronic Intifada "action item." While I normally don't do action alerts - I somewhat view them as having too much in common with the PR industry's "astroturf campaigns" - I felt vindicated this time because I noticed the series and connected the dots days before Ali Abunimah, Nigel Parry, and Michael Brown.

Here's what I wrote:

Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2002 23:59:48 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Victims of Terror Series
To: rick.davis@turner.com

Dear Mr. Davis,

I am writing to express concern regarding the recent addition of the "Victims of Terror” Special Report to CNN.com. The main problem I have with the report is that it promotes feelings of empathy towards the Israeli population without any substantial foil for the Palestinians.

I am sure you know that the ratio of Palestinian to Israeli deaths is approximately 3:1 since the beginning of the intifada. And the vast majority of the Palestinian casualties can only be classified as innocent victims, many of them children. Lamentably, though, none of CNN’s reporting emphasizes this point as personably, or effectively, as the Victims of Terror series.

Your audience rarely has the opportunity to peer into the lives of a Palestinian population that endures a different type of violence than the Israelis, but one that is actually more deadly in terms of numbers. The failure to counterbalance the Victims of Terror report with one that underscores the Palestinian plight implies that the Israelis are the only victims in the conflict. Even worse, one gets the impression that CNN places more value on an Israeli life than a Palestinian.

Suicide bombings are a grave threat to the population of Israel; that I do not dispute. But the Israeli occupation and IDF incursions are just as much of a threat to the Palestinian population, if not more so. Multiple reports by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and B’Tselem on the wrongful use force against Palestinian civilians, as well as a frank look at the death toll, make this an uncontroversial point.

So, I am not asking you to discontinue the Victims of Terror series. Instead, I am asking CNN to provide and promote an equally compelling series on the Palestinian plight. This is an entirely reasonable expectation and one, I hope, you would have no objection to.

Thank you for your time. I eagerly await your response and look forward to hearing about the status of upcoming special reports that will provide the type of balanced coverage mentioned above.

...

As expected, I haven't received a response yet. In the meantime, feel free to email Davis with your own thoughts.

Noam Alone

Pejman Yousefzadeh wrote a piece lambasting (who else?) Noam Chomsky for Tech Central Station last week and I felt the need to weigh in with a response. Not sure why, but my "feedback" was never posted and, actually, one of the pieces of feedback I reference isn't up anymore, either. Hmm...

Anyway, since I went to the trouble of writing, I thought I'd post it here...

-

It’s nice to see Mike Cosby in the above post, “Read the Book,” pointing readers to the text of an actual Chomsky speech on the “silent genocide” issue. Also, as an FYI, there is another readily-available Chomsky lecture from December which is thoroughly documented and provides more context for discussing his interpretation of the post 9/11 world. Tellingly, Yousefzadeh had linked to an article by David Horowitz and Ronald Radosh of Frontpage Magazine for details on what Chomsky was trying to say.

There have been enough character smears against Chomsky to fill a book since 9/11. And, like this one, the vast majority of them lack any semblance of originality. The only thing missing from this TCS article was a reference to Werner Cohn and a discussion of Chomsky’s alleged Holocaust denial.

As for the Cambodia issue, I urge readers to do some investigation on their own. Sophal Ear’s undergrad thesis is a good start for one side of the issue, but it’d be prudent to check out what Chomsky says in The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism and After The Cataclysm (parts 1 & 2 of The Political Economy of Human Rights, respectively).

I’d also recommend looking at this defense of Chomsky written by Christopher Hitchens in 1985, as well as this 8-part discussion on “Chomsky and Cambodia”.

Still, I’m surprised that Yousefzadeh felt the need to pen this tripe, as he obviously reads FrontPage Magazine and has to know that they post a frothing anti-Chomsky diatribe at the rate of what seems to be once a month. Truth be told, this article is tired and redundant. I mean, the author even links to two articles which basically say the exact same thing he is trying to spit out. This begs the question: is there nothing better in this world to write about?

Palestinian Kids: Terrorists or Victims?

While people are fixated on this kid:



...Amira Hass writes in Ha'aretz that "Some 26 percent of those killed by IDF fire in the Strip are children, compared to 15 percent in the West Bank."

On the Vouchers Decision

Two opinion pieces on Townhall.com today underscore the victory achieved for the pro-vouchers crowd with the Supreme Court's recent ruling in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris.

Bill Murchison writes:

The [education] bureaucracy is terrified that competition between public and private schools would undermine that reflexive, unthinking support to which the publics believe themselves entitled. Accordingly, that competition must be suppressed. There can't even be pilot programs. Such programs might get the customers to comparing value, as in a supermarket or department store.

He then addresses the two main critiques of vouchers: that they drain funding from public schools and breach the line of separation between church and state. On the first point, he argues that it is actually a good thing that public schools will have their resources drained, as that will force them to raise their standards. Likewise, he dismisses the concerns about “put[ting] innocent schoolchildren in the way of proselytization” because, simply, vouchers “offer them better educational alternatives.”

In the other commentary, famed economist (for some) Thomas Sowell explicitly adresses the concern about “creaming”:

The truly ugly aspect of the case against vouchers is the objection that vouchers will allow private schools to "skim off" the best students from the public schools. Students are not inert objects being skimmed off by others. These students and their parents choose what they want to do -- for the first time, as a result of vouchers setting them free from the public school monopoly.

When these voucher critics send their own children off to upscale private schools, do they say that Phillips Academy or Sidwell Friends School are "skimming" the best students out of the public schools? Affluent parents are simply doing what any responsible parents would do -- choosing the best education they can get for their children.

Only when low-income parents are now able to do the same thing is it suddenly a question of these students being "skimmed" by other institutions. But whenever any group rises from poverty to prosperity, whether by education or otherwise, some do so before others. Why should low-income families be told that either all of them rise at the same time or none of them can rise?

Over at NRO, Peter Ferrara warns his fellow conservatives that “despite the appalling weakness of the dissents, choice reformers need to recognize that the retro Left never concedes defeat. They will fight to undermine this decision until they win, or until it becomes clear even to them that there is no way they can. If school-choice reformers are going to maintain this win, they must understand this decision and the issues it involves, and stand ready to counterattack in its defense.”

To all that, Rethinking Schools responds: “While the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that school vouchers may be legal, they remain bad public policy. There are three key reasons: private schools lack accountability, private schools do not have to serve all students, and private school vouchers divert attention and resources from proven reforms that can improve our public schools.” They urge readers to check out their resource page on vouchers.

Tommy Ates in Online Journal writes:

The problems of the public system comes from the lack of adequate teacher salaries and plummeting tax-base of inner cities, as the ravages of white and black flight take their toll on funds for school infrastructure and special education. The solution of school vouchers, now approved by the Supreme Court, is the implicit notion that the American public school system is a failure and should be abandoned.

If this notion is true, what is the fate of those youth unable to leave? No one wishes to discuss that question. Not conservative activists, not parochial schools, not middle-class parents who can afford to leave.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson grapples with the support for vouchers amongst African Americans (a point much lauded by pro-vouchers folk), concluding that:

Civil rights leaders will continue to plead with black parents that tax dollars for vouchers subsidize religious schools, leave the poorest of poor students behind in even poorer and more racially isolated schools which further perpetuate the cycle of educational neglect, and are a scheme by conservatives to torpedo public education. Their plea will fall on deaf ears until public schools educate poor black kids the same way they educate kids in the suburbs.

And, finally, Paul Street and Dennis Kaas lay out a good summary for “The Case Against School Vouchers.”

More Nuttiness from NR

The Washington Times picked up the piece Larry Kudlow wrote for National Review Online last week, "Taking back the market...by force".

I formally submit that this is the third nuttiest contention to come out of the NR doors since 9/11 (respectfully behind Rich Lowry's suggestion of "Nuking Mecca," and Ann Coulter's "invade, kill, and convert" solution).

I mean, the guy is explicitly calling for what will amount to a bloody, catastrophic war to "revive the American spirit" and "elevate the stock market by a couple thousand points." Kudlow believes that this can be accomplished via a "small war" (even though the DOD says it will require at least 200,000 troops), and following such an event, "We will know our businesses will stay open, that our families will be safe and that our future will be unlimited. The world will be righted in this life-and-death struggle to preserve our values and our civilization."

Whew! Now that you put it that way...

Errr...this is madness! Who needs conspiracy theories when we have morons openly calling for a war in order to lift morale and boost the economy?! With rhetoric like this passing for respectable discourse, it's a wonder why there aren't more people out there who hate America.

Everyone's a Marxist

Observing that "we're all marxists now," James Bowman offers this comment on NRO,

...the economy is not a machine and wasn't designed by anybody. It is more like an organic being and therefore can't work or not work — since there is no specific task it is designed to perform — but only be healthy or unhealthy. It can continue to generate wealth, as it always has done, or it can be hobbled and interfered with and prevented from generating wealth and doing other things natural to it. But it cannot be replaced by a machine which has been designed so that everybody will be happy.

While I agree that an economy cannot be regulated like a machine and thus abhor centralized beauracracies, it seems that Bowman is writing to "naturalize" capitalism, as well as the current orientation of the market, and thus place it outside the realm of historical accountability. So, any critic or implied "socialist" is therefore lamenting something which emerged to meet human needs, even though billions of needs are not met by the current oligarchic market system dominated by absurdly hierarchical institutions also known as corporations.

Throughout the piece, it seems to me that Bowman is conflating notions of "capitalism" with "commerce." In my opinion, though, it would be a bit more accurate if he were to argue that commerce - the exchange of goods, services, ideas, whatever for something else - is a natural human process, and that capitalism emerged to regulate an increasingly complex world of commercial networks during the late modern period.

That distinction is an important one. The desire for contact, exchange, and self-preservation (maybe even self-aggrandizement) is likely to be an innate human characteristic; part of our seeming need to enter into relationships, reciprocal or otherwise, with other humans. But let's not confuse this desire with the institutional relations that make up what amounts to a beauracratic form of organization - with its own levels of hierarchy, and assymetric power relations - known as capitalism.

Capitalism, as we experience it, didn't just appear out of nowhere; its emergence had much to do with the rapid dissemination of knowledge, technology, and people which was bound up with the developing Renaissance, early mercantilist ideology, and information transferal techniques (ie. books, science, mathematics). In other words, it was a product of the Enlightenment: a time when vastly intertextual and intercultural experiences began to achieve some form of regulation through abstract commodity exchanges. Astute observers might now interject that this is where Marx spent most of his energy: trying to plot the tendency of capitalism towards contradiction and monopoly via an analysis of commodity fetishism and surplus value.

But, no, observing all of that would be inconvenient for Bowman, so he just implies that a dehistoricized "capitalism" is natural and any other model is a crude form of intervention. How nice.

Bowman concludes:

But for the rest of us there is no excuse for using such language which, like that of "capitalism," is designed to impose a bipolar structure on the world, requiring us all to be counted either among the far-left sheep or the far-right goats.

Coming from NR, this criticism of the imposed "bipolar structure on the world" is highly ironic. It seems to me that virtually everyone affiliated with that magazine lost the ability to talk beyond Manichaen binaries on 9/11...

Two-Tiered Morality

Barbara Ehrenreich had a good op-ed in the NY Times on Sunday. Writing in the wake of WorldCom collapse, as well as revelations that Wal-Mart's employees were forced to work off the clock, she observed,

What has been revealed in corporate America over the past six months is a two-tier system of morality: Low-paid employees are required to be hard-working, law-abiding, rule-respecting straight arrows. More than that, they are often expected to exhibit a selfless generosity toward the company, readily "donating" chunks of their time free of charge. Meanwhile, as we have learned from the cases of Enron, Adelphia, ImClone, WorldCom and others, many top executives have apparently felt free to do whatever they want — conceal debts, lie about profits, engage in insider trading — to the dismay and sometimes ruin of their shareholders.

But investors are not the only victims of the corporate crime wave. Workers also suffer from management greed and dishonesty. In Wal-Mart's case, the moral gravity of its infractions is compounded by the poverty of its "associates," many of whom are paid less than $10 an hour. As workers discover that their problem is not just a rogue store manager or "bad apple" but management as a whole, we can expect at the very least widespread cynicism, and perhaps an epidemic of rule-breaking from below.

She covers this issue, although not directly, in her book Nickel and Dimed. For a taste, check out the two essays which eventually wound up being the core of the book from the January 1999 and April 2000 issues of Harper's Magazine.