Get the man an editorial column, congressional seat, something...

I've voted for Ralph Nader several times,

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Resigns in Dignity

Here's to the pursuit of a future beyond neoliberalism. Hear, hear.

To partisan or not to partisan?

Since nobody else appears to be posting...allow me to echo this somewhat nostalgic lament for passionate US electoral partisanship on the Democratic side:

Yep, I've been catching up on Digby. For more on Obama and the current political terrain kindly see this post (or any of the several hundred following).

Alan Greenspan: Not My Fault, Entire World Simply "Out of Control"

Making the rounds to defend himself this morning, yet again (against what exactly remains ambiguous - certainly any real discussion of his learned unwillingness to state hard truth to power, to admit any responsibility for ideological complicity, not to mention unforgiveable self-contradictions, is not on the table), Alan Greenspan appears on NPR and (again) refrains from the speculative, informed imagining that remains our only chance for survival as a species:  global recession is "much more likely" now, he admits, resorting to the tired and simplistic, not to mention falsely-naturalizing disease metaphor, "just like when the immune system is weak," etc.  (As always, this metaphor demands to be complicated:  our economic "immune system" being in fact at war with itself, as good Derridians everywhere note.)   Long-term interest rates around the world are out of control; nothing he can do, that is ever could do, about it.

As with all fantastical conservative evasions of responsibility (read: fundamentalism), he posits a single, as-if isolated, pure Historical Event - in this case, the end of the Cold War - significantly just so long enough ago, that invariably "changed everything" -  such that any assessment of his actions must of course be weighed on an equally if not more Epic, mythical and distant (hence forgiving) scale.  Needless to say, it's an old rhetorical trick employed by those in power - invoking "History" when there are only ever histories, a "recourse" (as they say) made palatable by the desire and fantasy for a genuine leader on the part of a genuinely unempowered, insecure public.  (Which may be the only desire more powerful than the desire to ritually condemn and profane some falsely inflated idea or image of an individual, as mimetically-charged sacrifice.)  It's all meant to be reassuring:  "You see," our Leader gently condescends, handing us his very own gold-rimmed goggles, "I have always had the Big Picture in mind."  "Therefore, and on my stage, things were simply more complicated and out of my control than you will ever realize; here is an Event in light of which my lobbying for tax cuts for the already criminally wealthy inevitably pales."

Which is not to say there isn't truth to his observation (the end of the Cold War being in many ways worse than the Cold War) , only to note that he is deliberately changing the subject, suggesting another lens for an analysis, and for an infinitely deferred self-placement, which he then neglects to pursue.  At all.  Which is wise, because in the end it would hardly excuse him any further.)

Two months ago, William Greider in The Nation was even less kind, treating these self-contradictions with the contempt for which, some might say, the circumstances practically scream:

Continue reading “Alan Greenspan: Not My Fault, Entire World Simply "Out of Control"”

The Venezuelan Referendum: an Exodus from Constituted Power

Commentary on the recent Venezuelan referendum, particularly among foreign observers, has turned into a rather tiresome to and fro between self-satisfied opponents of Chávez, who like to think that the Bolivarian revolution has been stopped in its tracks, and equally self-satisfied supporters, who think they have refuted the claims of Chávez's dictatorial tendencies.

The referendum has also been interpreted as a weathervane for the region's Left Turns as a whole.  With the Bolivian constitutional process also stymied, Lula quiescent, Bachelet unpopular, and the Kirchners apparently reinstating Peronist husband-and-wife politics as usual, have we reached the high water mark for Latin America's renascent left movements?

But in all this discussion, the central point has been lost: that the process of setting constitutions registers a balance of forces between constituent and constituted power.

Continue reading “The Venezuelan Referendum: an Exodus from Constituted Power”

A Coup for the Blogosphere

The biggest scoop ever in the blogosphere relative to the MSM: Perez Hilton is reporting that Castro died last week. Unfortunately, Perez Hilton is roughly the blogosphere equivalent of Howard Stern. But all the same.

knee-jerk

Hmm. That's an uncannily familiar scene, isn't it? Paris, Texas? Austin on the Seine?

What's that? You want more uncanniness? More strange in the familiar's dress, more already-known masquerading as the unfathomable and, well, fucked up? Got it:

From the NY Times today:

Senator Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat, told CNN on Sunday, “It would be nice to have someone who’s head of France who doesn’t have a knee-jerk reaction against the United States.”

Now wait a minute, Chuck. When we, as Americans, mention a French "knee-jerk reaction," we really mean only one thing, right? And that thing - we agree now that it was a colossal mistake, at this point. We're going to run in '08 on the fact that, well, it was a clusterfuck from the start, n'est-ce pas?

You have to give it to the US Dems - when it comes to courage of conviction, they possess the rigidity of a crack yoga teacher. In the face of the criminally obvious and the obviously criminal, their knees don't jerk, but rather gracefully swim and swoon and sway, only to buckle and drop elegantly but resolutely to the floor.

How is it with being in Iraq?

Pepe Escobar from Asia Times Online is back in Baghdad. He's in a car with two other Iraqi journalists.

There's a checkpoint ahead. Incoming traffic has to slow down in front of a Hummer of the Iraqi Defense Forces. A soldier is talking to the driver of a van. Suddenly there is a shot. The soldier falls to the ground, right before our eyes, screaming in pain. He is not dead instantly. His companion, by the Hummer, takes some time to react, then also starts shooting. People duck in their cars; general wisdom is that if these were US troops, they would be shooting at random and every car would be sprayed with bullets.

Continue reading “How is it with being in Iraq?”

he's an english major

Like everyone else I have been doing my best to avoid blogging about the horrific murders. I've been tempted any number of times. But when I saw the following comment, I knew I could resist no longer.

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comfort torture

Yesterday, Tuesday April 10, I saw an article by Mr. Joseph Kahn at the New York Times on China's mistreatment of one of its intellectuals. If you read the Times, you've read the same article about a hundred times before. They love writing articles about evil foreign regimes while luxuriating in the pink bubble bath background assumption that "we" aren't anything like that. And thus Kahn was more than willing, when referring to China's treatment of its reformist intellectuals, to use a word that has become, recently, "contested": torture. Earlier this year, in January, I contacted another Times reporter, Mr. Scott Shane, who was unwilling to use the 'T' word in an unqualified way concerning our treatment of detainees at Guantanomo. The contrast between these two uses of the word 'torture' is what prompted me to contact both authors.

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International Slugfest

Holy Shit.  Time to visit Nairn's most necessary corrective once again, I guess.

In the shadow of prosperity

As will soon be apparent, I have a new found interest in The Economist.  It started a few weeks back when I posted excerpts from an article on marketing and Post modernism.  Now we turn our attention to what might be called the "inefficient casualties" of globalization: 

NESTLED among the wooded Blue Ridge mountains in Virginia's far south-west, Galax is a town of bluegrass music, barbecue and hardscrabble living. It is home to an annual fiddlers' convention and, less happily, a huddle of textile and furniture factories. Over the past few years, globalization has hit hard.

Unable to compete with Mexican and then Chinese competition, the town's old industries have withered, taking thousands of jobs with them. Last year brought the biggest single blow. Three big factories closed their doors within months. More than 1,000 people, around one-sixth of the town's workforce, lost their jobs.

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A (Not So) Startling Accusation

President Carter's old National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, is not someone known for his dovish inclinations regarding foreign policy.  In fact, he has publicly admitted that he advocated for CIA support of the mujaheddin before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and that such a policy was designed to prompt an invasion.  It was hoped that this would lead the Soviets into a Vietnam style quagmire, overstretch their military and ultimately lead to a humiliating defeat. 

So when Brezinski recently testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee one might be curious as to what he thinks the Bush administration is preparing for Iran:

Continue reading “A (Not So) Startling Accusation”

Libby "liveblogging"

For those interested in such things, my friend and colleague, Mandos, has been "liveblogging" the Libby trial in D.C. today. Posts here, here, here, here, here and here. And one more (as mentioned in comments below.)

Of fire and ice; speaking of the end is good

Some distinct and recent possibilities deserving of dignity:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, grouping 2,500 scientists from 130 countries, is also set to say that oceans will keep rising for more than 1,000 years even if governments stabilize greenhouse gas emissions [my emphasis].

To refrain from the mere alarmist hyperbole, note also:

The Gulf Stream bringing warm waters to the North Atlantic could slow, although a shutdown is highly unlikely, it says.

This is encouraging, as it would be hard for 'Europe' to oppose US-welfared corporate monarchs from under several feet of ice.  The related Boston Review article by Kerry Emanuel, meanwhile (via woods lot), is quite informative. 

Although, I'm personally a little disappointed that it neglects to mention either John Muir (for whom walking months on end upon glaciers in Alaska with wool blanket and a hunk of cheese was terrific fun), nor the distinct possibility that the gulf stream (also one of my heroes) may shut down (we don't really know) as it previously did, were Greenland to continue with its exponential melting (as all signs indicate it will, and inevitably it will, for at least half a century).

Kerry's leaf analogy is striking.  It may be accurate to say, "Prediction beyond a certain time is impossible," but surely there is still ample room for informed speculative thinking about the future (without which, one should certainly argue, there is no future – by very definition – at all).  Again, the mere realization of the fact of a forty-year delay is profoundly world-shattering.  Recall what Chad Harbach wrote recently:

It takes forty years or more for the climate to react to the carbon dioxide and methane we emit.  This means that the disasters that have already happened during the warmest decade in civilized history (severe droughts in the Sahel region of Africa, Western Australia, and Iberia; deadly flooding in Mumbai; hurricane seasons of unprecedented length, strength, and damage; extinction of many species; runaway glacial melt; deadly heat waves; hundreds of thousands of deaths all told) are not due to our current rates of consumption, but rather the delayed consequences of fuels burned and forests clear-cut decades ago, long before the invention of the Hummer.  If we ceased all emissions immediately, global temperatures would continue to rise until around 2050.  &nbep;  This long lag is the feature that makes global warming so dangerous.  Yes, this is how we would destroy ourselves – not by punching red buttons in an apocalyptic fit, but by appropriating to ourselves just a little too much comfort, a little too much time.  Like Oedipus, we've been warned.  Like Oedipus, we flout the warning and we'll act surprised, even outraged, when we find out what we've done.

Well I'm no scientist, and if these facts are in any way inaccurate, then I'm all ears.  In any case though, one thing is crystal clear:

Continue reading “Of fire and ice; speaking of the end is good”

waterboarding

Here's what this poor guy Scott Shane in the New York Times writes today about waterboarding; original article here:

Some of those C.I.A. prisoners were interrogated using techniques far harsher than anything approved in earlier wars, including waterboarding, a simulated drowning that many human rights advocates believe crossed the line into torture.

But surely it's not just human rights advocates who can claim the honor of describing waterboarding as torture! Doesn't Scott Shane also think it is torture? If an American or Israeli soldier were subjected to waterboarding as a way to extract information about an upcoming military operation, wouldn't we say that soldier was being tortured? Can anyone imagine a New York Times reporter writing up a story about an American or Israeli soldier being waterboarded for information about an upcoming military offensive, and saying "some human rights advocates believe waterboarding is a form of torture"?

Conclusion: the harmful effects of this "war on terror" are only beginning to be felt. And: I feel sorry for Scott Shane, who has lost the ability to describe waterboarding as torture, and instead assigns that position to some interest group.

800,000 Privileged Youths Enlist To Fight In Iraq

'We've Been So Selfish'

January 10, 2007 | Issue 43•02

WASHINGTON, DC—Citing a desire to finally make a difference in Iraq, in the past two weeks, more than 800,000 young people from upper-middle- and upper-class families have put aside their education, careers, and physical well-being to enlist in the military, new data from the Department Of Defense shows.

"I don't know if it was the safety and comfort of the holidays or what, but I realized that my affluence and ease of living comes at a cost," said Private Jonathan Grace, 18, who was to commence studies at Dartmouth College next fall, but will instead attend 12 weeks of basic training before being deployed to Fallujah with the 1st Army Battalion. "I just looked at my parents in their cashmere sweaters and thought, 'Who am I to go to an elite liberal arts college and spend all my time reading while, in the real world, thousands of kids my age are sacrificing their lives for our country?' It's not right."

Continue reading “800,000 Privileged Youths Enlist To Fight In Iraq”

A New Year

I was surprised to encounter such a Long Sunday silence...a respite for the holidays? A too long Sunday? Or, a kind of reflective repose, contemplating the year that has passed and the year ahead?

Well, I'm ready to disrupt even the thought of contemplation and begin the noisy, pointless, bitching that displaces politics under communicative capitalism. For starters, the world is not better off with the death of Saddam Hussein...or Gerald Ford, for that matter, and the parallels and parallaxes between them are not trivial either. The Iraqi 'government' and 'people' have executed someone for crimes against humanity. In the US, such criminals are pardoned....and later can be lauded as elder statesmen. And, note, the pardon, while constitutional, is a kind of singular, personal act, marking less the exceptional position of the sovereign than the necessary position of the person, the vulnerable human or mark of ideological distance that proves successful interpellation. So, Ford was a man while Saddam was a monster...and a monster created in part through the machinations (machinic production?) of, if not Ford himself, then those around him--Rumsfeld, Cheney.

More important: those around Ford (Rumsfeld, Cheney) resisted the kind of presidency he inhabited and which was being transformed by the post-Watergate Congress, a limited presidency, one more checked (if still unbalanced), one subject to inquiry and investigation. Their rage at such limits inspired the disastrous transformations of the office under George W. Bush, transformations figured by the hanging of Hussein--the spectacle of a former image of evil, inert and lifeless, a meaningless death accompanied by ever more pointless violence and excess mediality.

lessons from the Iraq War

One of the primary lessons of the Iraq war is the correctness of political correctness. A cornerstone of Bush's whole effort was the assumption or belief that a key contention of the 'political correctness' movement -- that we need to understand and accomodate world views that clash, partly or wholly, with our own -- should be rejected. This is one reason the whole chorus of right-wing propagandists was so enthusiastic about the war: it provided room for the reassertion of American cultural, moral, and political superiority -- and not just in foreign affairs, where it's been much less successful anyway. The Bush administration worked itself up into the belief (they could not have reasoned their way to this idea) that American democratic ideals are the only ones that make any sense. The working out of those ideals into specific institutions should occur naturally once any artificial restraints are removed. Saddam Hussein's dictatorship was one such distorting influence on the people who happened to live in Iraq. Remove him, make it possible for a democratic culture to emerge -- which shouldn't be hard because it's so natural to humans -- and America will have lots of new friends in the region. (An article I read recently made an argument along these lines about Bush's adventure in Iraq. Unfortunately, I can't remember where I saw it so I can't link to it.)

The depth of this belief about human nature and the political institutions natural to it helps explain some of the most puzzling features of this invasion. For instance, the assumption that it really wasn't necessary for anyone involved in the invasion to know Arabic. You don't need to actually talk to people about how to think and act in a democratic way. All of that is already written on their hearts, so don't worry. Nor is it necessary to know much about the country itself. Sunnis, Shias, Kurds -- these are so many commas on the way to 'one nation under God with freedom and justice for all.'

But it turns out that they were wrong and those who promote the need to understand difference, in both its philosophic and cultural versions, were right. The willful and arrogant refusal to learn this lesson from (what is called) political correctness is the source of much of the disaster around us.

michael richards

Michael Richards is the latest to say something racist or anti-semetic and then says "I am not a racist." I think we come across this kind of reasoning a lot. I am a college teacher and students will say, "I'm not the kind of person who gets a C." I know the example I have just mentioned is light years different from the Richards example, but I think something important unites them. There's absolutely nothing 'wrong' with a student saying "I'm not the kind of person who gets a C," even when that student has just received a C (from me). A little more seriously: "I'm not a cheater," is something a student will say . . . after being caught cheating.

That is, lots of people want to distinguish between "the verb" and "the noun." The verb is the thing they did, the noun is the thing they *are.*

Jon Stewart, and perhaps not just him, had a joke about this same tendency when news came out about us torturing inmates at Abu Gahrib. He showed a clip on his Daily Show of Mr. Bush saying "America does not torture," and Stewart had a funny line (which I can't accurately reproduce) where he said something along the lines of: "It doesn't matter so much if we actually torture people, along as we're just not the kind of nation that tortures people." Again, people want to distinguish between what they *do* and what they *are*.

People want to distinguish between an ideal vision they have of themselves and protect that even from actions they commit. The ideal vision is not touched. 'Denial' is precisely 'denying' that one's actions or observable behavior can affect or degrade the ideal 'me.' And so it is actually this strange and quite 'philosophical' notion -- one that does not require having actually read much or any philosophy -- that our selves are somehow immune from our own empirical, real-world actions that prompts these kinds of ridiculous claims that go against all 'evidence.' But it doesn't work the other way! If Michael Richards had managed to handle the hecklers (though I have no proof he was heckled; the tape doesn't start with that), had turned their heckling into a classic Kramer moment and even supercharged his bit with it, two things would have resulted. First, we never would have heard a word about Mr. Richards' appearance at the laugh factory, and second, Richards would have said to himself, "I'm such a great comedian," that is, the action 'making people laugh' would have been judged to coincide with, and be an expression of, his ideal self-image as a comedian.

Turnstile

Aw shucks, make it the largest wine cellar in Europe, I say (just think how jealous the cinephiles of underground Paris would become).  Everybody knows there is an inverse relation between the number of nukes sitting under various egomaniacs' thumbs on any given day and such fancies as a "genuine fear of nuclear war."  Come to think of it, maybe there are other examples where this is the case?  The more people blog about (middle-brow) "literature," for example, or abuse their borrowed talking points as aggressive intellectual all-purpose currency with others, the less likely literature, or the flexing of the intellect becomes?

rev tim haggard: music saturday

A song I listened to recently put me in mind of Reverend Tim Haggard's situation.

The song is by the band 'Garbage.'

The title of the song is "Sex is not the enemy"

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This is what voting in America looks like

Allow me to echo some of the recent sentiments at Daily Kos:  that anyone should have to stand in  line for five to six hours in the dark to vote, after a full day of work and before dinner, is just a real pain in the ass of North American democracy.  Update:  apparently it was all part of the new war on immigrants that served the Republicans so well an ID verification bottleneck, and not a problem with the voting machines.  So Colorado, especially, has got some work to do.  Nevertheless, browsing the footage at Video the Vote this morning, what comes across most plainly to me, and despite all the lingering and shameful problems, is a sense of grassroots vigilance not about to go away.  (And then there are the adorable stories that just warm your heart, such as the man who expressed his general feelings about electronic voting machines with a cat paperweight's ears.) 

Anyway, I thought these two especially deserved a wider audience (as in:  kids, please don't peel away that plastic strip over the modem connection...please):   

How dryly amusing that in America on Veterans Day blue collars have to work, but cannot cash a paycheck as all the banks are closed.  On voting day, meanwhile, citizens of most states simply have to work, then go home for a late dinner and crash before another working day.

This really makes no sense.  Turnout is higher in every country where voting takes place over the weekend.  We should have a national holiday that respects this most basic right.  It could even fall on the Friday before voting weekend.  Polls could close late Sunday morning.  (If a few procrastinating vacationers had to skip church, it wouldn't be the end of the world.)

Americans are working more hours than ever before, for less; a trend for which we may safely thank Reagan, but one also exponentially heightened and solidified under Clinton.  In light of which, frankly, the minimum wage increase legislation is but a patronizing and cruel joke (who the hell can  ever live on $5.15 an hour, anyway? - it's less expensive not to work).  People need to know their worth.  Fortunately, the manufacture of wage slaves has the added benefit of barring them from ever traveling to Europe.  And if they decide it's more lucrative to sell drugs (or even in some cases if they don't), there's always a new prison or six waiting to be filled.  One wonders what Pelosi and Obama really think of this situation.

Continue reading “This is what voting in America looks like”

why are Republicans so weird?

There's some sort of psychic imbalance that is afflicting gay Republicans who want to persecute and denounce homosexuality, as with Rev. Ted Haggard. What is going on in the mind of an individual who plays a very prominent role demonizing a category of fellow human beings . . . that HE belongs to? I can't know, but I imagine he suffers horribly. For evangelicals like Haggard the category 'gay' is the example of spiritual fallenness. It's not just one sin among others. And so here is someone whose subjective, mental world contains at the same time items like the following: "Today I am speaking at a rally where I will say homosexuality is a grievous sin that threatens Western civilization," (and that is a fair paraphrase of something Haggard actually did say); "and then tomorrow I'm all set up to go and snort methamphetamine and, on the wings of that high, have sex with a male prostitute I've been seeing once a month or so for two years." Anyone who might read this note: Is your mental life this schizophrenic? Do you behave in this hypocritical a manner -- hypocritical not just about a small thing but concerning an essential principle of your whole belief system? If the answer's "no," then you are nowhere near as worse off as Rev. Haggard. Good for you, and for me, I might add. We're not that screwed up. Thank God. But then this brings us back to the question: why are the Republicans so weird?

appropriate background music

If current predictions hold, Republicans will need appropriate background music this coming Tuesday to help them emote in a way consonate with their new status. I would like to suggest the well-loved Albinoni Adagio in G Minor, for Organ and Strings. Turn on the TV, leave off the volume, and watch election returns with that in the background.

But what about other voters who are not Republicans? And even some Republicans who have decided the Bush Presidency has written checks its competence can't cash? Don't they need background music?

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November Surprise

It's November 1st. Republicans are down 12 points across the board nationally. President Bush is struggling to get to 40% approval ratings. Could there be a better time to "condition the environment"?

Kerry's mispronuncisplained joke was Rove's unintentional October surprise. But could there be a November surprise? Be sure to glance at the last graph of the article.

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Hear the Kossacks Call

What's funniest about all of this "Path to 9/11" humbug:  the 9/11 Commission Report was itself politically white-washed crock of shit.    Sorry to spoil the party (and sign the petition, please*) but still someone had to say it.

*particularly if–like most LS lurkers–you are a centrist with any cred.

Update 9/10:  Oh wouldn't you know it, "The Path to 9/11" is linked directly to David Horowitz (where does that man get all his money?):

Continue reading “Hear the Kossacks Call”

Schmitt's Influence on American Politics

A moderately strange article at Counterpunch by Arthur Versluis about Carl Schmitt's influence on "fascist America" below.  Moderately strange because Schmitt's name doesn't appear until the end of the fourth paragraph in a six paragraph article; strange because there is a description of some aspects of recent American politics and then a (rather poor) description of some aspects of Schmitt's thought (one fragment of a line from Political Theology - likely taken from Wikipedia than an actual reading of the book).  This stuff is even worse than the "Straussian Conspiracy" business of last year - while Strauss and Schmitt are no doubt influential on certain American policymakers, this "There is this and there is that, therefore they must be connected" is the worst sort of "scholarship" imaginable and it certainly doesn't reflect well on the book this guy is trying to promote!

Continue reading “Schmitt's Influence on American Politics”

Hardt in The Nation

Michael Hardt has a new piece in The Nation that checks the current situation to see how well Empire is holding up. Well, he doesn't put it quite that way, but he nonetheless finds "that imperialism is no longer an adequate concept for understanding global power and domination, and clinging to it can blind us to the new forms of power emerging today." A familar thesis.

Seems to me that the argument hinges here on a rather strange metaphoric construction, where Hardt compares the current sitaution to an older form:

The internal dynamic of Empire is analogous to a collaboration between a monarch and a group of aristocrats. The monarch in most cases today is the US government, but in some cases it's the IMF or other powers that act monarchically. The aristocratic powers in this analogy include the other nation-states of various levels, the corporations, the supranational institutions and various nongovernmental organizations. This analogy helps, first, to draw attention to the hierarchies among these powers in the ruling structure and, second, highlights the fact that the monarch cannot act unilaterally, depending constantly on the aristocrats, among other things, to finance its wars and pay its debts. The Bush Administration thought it could dictate the terms of global order unilaterally, but it was a monarch who failed to gain the support of the aristocrats and was thus doomed to failure.

What do you think? I have to say, I found the piece rather thin, and this central metaphor very creaky. It's not that I unequivocally disagree with Hardt, but I'm not sure that this adds all that much to our understanding of the what's afoot, espeically in comparison to something like this.

What do you think?

Neocon Clusterfuck in Middle East (open thread)

"...in times of war we revert, as a species, to the past, and are permitted to be brutal and cruel...it is sentimental to discuss the subject of war, or peace, without acknowledging that a great many people enjoy war–not only the idea of it, but the fighting itself."

"....somthing frightening, the unhealthy, feverish illicit excitement of wartime..."
-Doris Lessing

Post-oracular hypothesis:  that no thinking person would honestly dispute the distinction between a free-wheeling, cultural-political, descriptive or generic or even centuries-old genetic "desire" for (what will become of the concept of) "war," and someone ignorantly wishing it to happen, or for that matter, refusing the responsibility that comes with power, and for  having significantly, predictably, knowingly, and against the consensus wisdom merely prescient of the glaringly obvious, helped it to happen.  The very intensity and stakes of the current 'crisis' (what makes it new–though never purely original–this time) have everything to do with a certain pressure on 'democracy,' it seems to me.

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The Enemy Among Us

In our "Post 9/11" world, the enemy is diffuse, using our "freedoms" against us in order to threaten our safety and undermine our way of life.  This is why the New York Times must be stopped!

Continue reading “The Enemy Among Us”

news flash

I interrupt this Carl Schmitt symposium to bring you astonishing breaking news.

It appears women's underwear was found at the site where Al-Zarqawi was killed. Go here.

You know, this really explains a lot. I mean, for instance, the beheadings take on a new meaning. They say Al-Zarqawi lived for 45 minutes after the blast and kept mumbling something. He was probably saying, "Listen, you can't just throw around silk underwear like that. You have to fold it -- oh, never mind."

Haditha Friedman

Lest it need be said, Haditha is not an abberation.  Only let's remember too, the folks who helped–and were paid handsomely–to put us there.  If one only ever reads five things about Thomas Friedman, hack, let four of them be these.      

Update:  Crooked Timber has taken the "hackery" meme and run so, you could also go there  (after clicking the links below, of course!).

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A Sinister Development

Via the Cynic Librarian, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has said he believes journalists can be  prosecuted for publishing classified information, citing an obligation to national security:

"There are some statutes on the books which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a possibility," Gonzales said, referring to prosecutions. "We have an obligation to enforce those laws. We have an obligation to ensure that our national security is protected.

What is particularly chilling about this "jurisprudence of intimidation" is that it is being presented at the same moment the press has started doing its job - revealing government policies and procedures that are aimed at destroying opposition and dissent.

Geof Stone, a legal scholar over at the University of Chicago Law School has a post about the history of classified information and the Press. He indicates that a journalist has never been prosecuted for divulging "governement secrets" in the history of the United States.

Continue reading “A Sinister Development”

Double Fantasy

In anticipation of the upcoming symposium on Schmitt, I found a short piece by Simon Critchley discussing the "logic of the political" as it is used by the Bush administration.  Many oberservors have noted the Schmittian influence on the current hegemons, but Critchley wishes to draw out a "crypto-Schmittianism" he sees at work.  Initially his description is rather traditional: The political is the sphere that deals with external security and internal order.  "The political is about the construction of an enemy in order to maintain the unity of the citizenry."  This construct actually produces a "double fantasy:" the fantasy of the enemy and the fantasy of the homeland.  "It is through the fantasy of the enemy that the fantasy of the homeland is constituted."

So far nothing very controversial.  But Critchley believes that the Bush administration is "crypto- Schmittian" because of its hypocrisy regarding its "moralization of political judgement."

Continue reading “Double Fantasy”

A Free Press

Perhaps it was inevitable but the United States government has now acknowledged that it is monitoring  the phone records of several major news organizations.  On Monday, ABC News reported that the government is doing this in order to discover who are the confidential sources leaking sensitive material to the press. Among the news outlets targeted are the New York Times, the Washington Post, and ABC News itself. Government leaks have led to front-page stories detailing the NSA domestic spying program, the CIA’s network of secret prisons in Eastern Europe, and the mass compiling of private phone records.

Brian Ross, an investigative reporter with ABC News, has been warned by contacts within the CIA and FBI that he and other reporters are being targeted:

AMY GOODMAN: So, the F.B.I. is admitting this. And what are they saying further? Are they going to continue to do this?

BRIAN ROSS: That's part of a criminal investigation into who provided information to reporters, who leaked classified information, which would certainly include evidence of secret prisons or N.S.A. spying, and that's considered classified. The fact that that was leaked represents a criminal act in the view of the C.I.A., which has made referrals to the Department of Justice, and then they handed over to the F.B.I. So, essentially, they have squads of F.B.I. agents, and what they do is, according to the F.B.I. statement, they begin by getting the phone records that are easily available to them off of the government phones themselves, and then they say in this statement, which is a long sort of non-denial denial, that they take the next logical step, which is to get a reporter’s phone records.

And they do this, they say, legally. What that means is they use a provision in the PATRIOT Act -- which is designed to go after terrorists, but they're using it to go after reporters -- what they call a national security letter. Essentially, it’s a letter an F.B.I. agent writes, takes it to a phone company -- or anywhere, really -- but takes it to a phone company, and the phone company is then required under the provisions of the PATRIOT Act to turn over the information, and also a phone company is required not divulge to the customer, me or anybody else, that the records have been sought by the government.

AMY GOODMAN: And these national security letters, or NSLs, are not signed by a judge?

BRIAN ROSS: They are not signed by a judge.

Continue reading “A Free Press”

"Worthy of Stalin"

The keeping-secret of Cheney's warrantless wiretaps, that is, according to Bruce Ackerman right now on The Diane Rehm Show.  Ackerman is a constitutional scholar whose thought experiment engages what might happen after the next attack.  It's good to see such hypotheticals finally getting some attention.  Now if only NPR would introduce their paltry whitebeard audience to David Ray Griffin and the impressive fiction of the 9/11 Commission Report.  But speaking of myths and such, can anyone explain to me why it's warranted for Giuliani to testify in the Moussaoui trial?  I mean, as opposed to any other accidental witness to this event, of which there seem to have been a few.

More worthy of note, John Berger has penned a couple of fine things lately.

Update 4/9/06:  With regard to neocon step two, and the explicit self-license to drop nuclear bombs on Iran in order to make them peace-loving and nuclear-free, the Lunatic administration simply must be stopped.  I dunno, apparently this is news.  Please see Seymour Hersh, in print and in person.

The beginnings of some-thing

American students and immigrant workers also take to the streets today.  Let's call this an open thread on all things protest, borders, employment, class and immigration, world-wide.

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Apropos

An Update by the Sorbonne Occupation Committee in Exile - Communique # 4

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Fresh Light

...to supplement a post at The Weblog (and encourage readers toward David's, on Badiou's Hölderlin below it)

None of the parties involved in the struggle against terrorism can afford to refrain from talking about it, but the more they do so the more they help the terrorist cause, by giving it status, visibility, and a sense of purpose...victims of a traumatic experience need to endlessly play the trauma back for themselves in order to feel reassured that they have withstood it.  This self-destructive tendency becomes a destructive weapon in the hands of the media and the political leadership.  Imagine, said Derrida, if we told the American public and the world that what has happened is no doubt an unspeakable crime, but it's over.  Everyone would then begin their own period of mourning, the preliminary step to turning the page.  All responsible parties need to facilitate this turning of the page and stop hindering it.  This is an urgent responsibility, the evasion of which transforms the enemies of terrorism into its allies.  (Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror, 153-154; image via remue.net)

I may not share the proclivity (or mixed fascination) for sterilized images of the zeitgeist's self-appointed spokesmen, but I do appreciate the impetus of Alain's post.   And I suspect he would agree that discussions of Fukuyama and B-Henri, while revealing things by falling rather decisively short, don't really do the subject at hand much of any justice. Which is the way I prefer to read his concluding remarks, in any case.  That subject being, broadly, the social and political role of philosophers, and even more broadly their relation to the question of Europe.

As to the former, Alain cites those two repellents attempting to  distinguish strictly between "government" and "private life", and "realistic" and "idealistic" intellectual labor, respectively.  But as Alain himself, and one savvy commenter do not fail to note, neither of these sets of bins are very helpful, or even all that relevant.

Rather, and in a manner that overlaps a great deal with John Emerson's recent forays into questions of global citizenship and intellectual responsibility in "analytic" vs. "continental" frameworks, one might more usefully distinguish, following Giovanna Borradori, between models of social and political commitment aligned with either a "liberal" or "Hegelian" lineage.

Continue reading “Fresh Light”

One important lesson that November the 30th, 1999 taught us

Courtesy of Infinite Thought, from an article in Socialist Worker:

The movement in the universities crossed a symbolic threshold with the occupation of the Sorbonne university, at the very centre of Paris. This hadn’t happened since May 1968.

Even the mainstream media sees that the government is in a difficult position. Opinion polls show that the government’s popularity has fallen to abysmal depths and that the CPE is overwhelmingly rejected.

The brutal evacuation of the Sorbonne, the standard lies about the supposed actions of a “radical fringe” and the rising internal dissent in the ranks of the Tories show that it has started to lose control of the situation.

The evolution of the struggle will depend on two factors – the capacity of the student movement to react on the streets to the brutal attitude of the government, and the strength of the demonstrations called for Thursday and Saturday of this week by the youth organisations and trade unions.

The call of the national student coordination for a day of nationwide strikes and demonstrations has not yet been followed by the main unions.

It decided instead to prioritise the Saturday demonstration and only to support the student actions from the outside on Thursday.

But the key to victory lies in the level of unity and coordination between the youth and the workers’ mobilisation. This is what is at stake in the streets, universities and workplaces of France.

You don't say.  Consider this an open thread to post links on current happenings in France.

The Kettle Logic of Islam

Much discussion has already taken place (here and here among others) regarding Zizek's recent Op-Ed piece in the NY Times.  And of course, as everyone suspected, the op ed is actually a cut and paste from a longer piece entitled The Antinomies of Tolerant Reason. What I think is striking is that it is one of few times Zizek succinctly (and somewhat persuasively) analyzes a current situation - in this case the violent Muslim response to the Danish cartoons.  What I found particularly convincing is his re-appropriation of the Freudian kettle logic, this time for the purpose of deconstructing Islamists denials of the holocaust:

1) [The] Holocaust did not happen. (2) It did happen, but the Jews deserved it. (3) The Jews did not deserve it, but they themselves lost the right to complain by doing to Palestinians what the Nazis did to them.

Continue reading “The Kettle Logic of Islam”

Will the real war reporters please...

Chris Allbritton takes the New York Post's Ralph Peters to task for being sychophantic sack of shit:

Among the claims in his slanderous column: “The Iraqi Army has confounded its Western critics, performing extremely well last week. And the people trust their new army to an encouraging degree.” The Iraqi Army — and police, for that matter — stood by while Shi’ite militias ran rampant through Sunni neighborhoods. They only took up the security positions when the Shi’ite clerics, including Moqtada al-Sadr, had already calmed down the worst of the violence. That’s not “performing extremely well,” unless by “extremely well,” you mean not confronting the enemies and keeping your head down until it’s safe to come out. That’s usually called “hiding.” ...He also makes what may be an unintentionally ironic comment when he criticized Iraqi stringers: “The Iraqi stringers have cracked the code: The Americans don’t pay for good news. So they exaggerate the bad.”

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Italy!

And you may find yourself in another part of the world -- Talking Heads

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Screw Your Mother

Baudrillard has an interesting piece in the latest New Left Review.  What struck me is how it seems to share a theme that Jodi just pointed out regarding Bartleby's "I prefer not to."   Both point to a fundamental refusal:

But France, or Europe, no longer has the initiative. It no longer controls events, as it did for centuries, but is at the mercy of a succession of unforeseeable blow-backs. Those who deplore the ideological bankruptcy of the West should recall that ‘God smiles at those he sees denouncing evils of which they are the cause’. If the explosion of the banlieues is thus directly linked to the world situation, it is also—a fact which is strangely never discussed—connected to another recent episode, solicitously occluded and misrepresented in just the same way: the No in the eu Constitutional referendum. Those who voted No without really knowing why—perhaps simply because they did not wish to play the game into which they had so often been trapped; because they too refused to be integrated into the wondrous Yes of a ‘ready for occupancy’ Europe—their No was the voice of those jettisoned by the system of representation: exiles too, like the immigrants themselves, from the process of socialization. There was the same recklessness, the same irresponsibility in the act of scuppering the eu as in the young immigrants’ burning of their own neighbourhoods, their own schools; like the blacks in Watts and Detroit in the 1960s. Many now live, culturally and politically, as immigrants in a country which can no longer offer them a definition of national belonging. They are disaffiliated...

Continue reading “Screw Your Mother”

Ka-Blamo!

Dick "Geriatric" Cheney "mistakes" a 78 year old millionaire lawyer for a "quail" and shoots him in the head with a shot-gun.  Says a spokeswoman, “Fortunately, the vice-president has got a lot of medical people around him and so they were right there and probably more cautious than we would have been.  The vice-president has got an ambulance on call, so the ambulance came.”

Readers will certainly recall the chapter, "Q is for Quail", from George W. Bush's Amazing Alphabet Book of the Contemporary World, or Al-Qaedas All Around (illustrated by Paul Wolfowitz).  The chapter, like the chapter on democracy in Spinoza's Political Treatise, strangely trails off: "See Dick shoot the Quail, all 400 of them! Quail are tiny, chicken-y birds with lots and lots of little bones and no meat, but Dick loves to…"

In any case, firedoglake is all over this one.  And seriously, too.