Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi says not a single civilian has died in the assault to retake Falluja from anti-US forces...
informant38
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...But of these sophisms and elenchs of merchandise I skill not...
Milton, Areopagitica
Except he had found the
standing sea-rock that even this last
Temptation breaks on; quieter than death but lovelier; peace
that quiets the desire even of praising it.
Jeffers, Meditation On Saviors
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17.11.04
Some lizards lose their tails when something grabs them (by the tail). It's a strategy of defense. Sacrifice the time and energy that went in to making the tail in order to avoid the total sacrifice of becoming prey.
In an organizational model what you have are individual members, or sub-groups, of a larger group, who do things, accomplish things, steal things, destroy things, lie, murder, cheat, etc. whatever. And it benefits the group. But anytime there's an accounting, anytime there's a legitimate complaint, anytime the immorality of what took place is lined out clearly, the tail is sacrificed. So that a man who shoots a doctor in his home because that doctor works in a clinic that provides abortions to some of its patients, or an expedition of missionaries accompanied by soldiers who kill natives who resist their advance and claim the land those natives were defending, are not Christians in the sense of acting for Christianity, even though they are, even though they say they are, even though right up until the moments when the actions that are undeniably immoral are committed everyone is agreed that these are Christians.
But once the doctor's shot the shooter's a lone actor, an exception, abnormal, and he's set apart as not being one of the faithful, even though behind the scenes there is sympathy and support, and compassionate understanding. It's just that the illegality of what's been done will never be shared by the group that caused it, that encouraged it, that benefits from it.
So the lizard can risk exposure to get to what it needs, can risk more exposure thanks to its disposable tail, and it benefits from that increased radius of possibility. And the "church" benefits from many things that it is not responsible for, or not held responsible for. This isn't unique to Christianity, many political bodies behave this way, championing a set of moral codes they don't adhere to except in the most abstract way, while on the ground, in the clinch, they have no morality at all, just the same headlong lunge toward survival and reproduction that every other creature has.
It gets clearer when you see how accountable the enemy must be, for all actions by all its affiliated members no matter how loosely connected, no matter even if they've been disavowed already. So that many Arabs who have publicly condemned the actions of terrorists will be treated as though they support everything, even the most violent acts of the most radical Islamic jihadists.
But the consequent symmetry is missing.
Christians in the center of America won't take the blame for the inhuman tortures and cruel and savage killing of non-combatants, not just now in Iraq, but for most of the last two centuries, won't take that blame as Americans, nor as Christians, even though the torture and the killing are done in the name of both those powerful groups.
Lies, and easily discarded truths, and sacrificial players. It isn't about morality, it never was, it's about survival, about living and reproducing.
So that the anti-evolutionist stance of many fundamentalist Christians is actually an evolutionary strategy, it culls the unwanted from the herd, it separates one kind from another and says one has more value than the other. It's a kind of sexual competition, though it takes place on a higher level of complexity than between two competing individuals.
The dispute means nothing except as a rallying point.
In an organizational model what you have are individual members, or sub-groups, of a larger group, who do things, accomplish things, steal things, destroy things, lie, murder, cheat, etc. whatever. And it benefits the group. But anytime there's an accounting, anytime there's a legitimate complaint, anytime the immorality of what took place is lined out clearly, the tail is sacrificed. So that a man who shoots a doctor in his home because that doctor works in a clinic that provides abortions to some of its patients, or an expedition of missionaries accompanied by soldiers who kill natives who resist their advance and claim the land those natives were defending, are not Christians in the sense of acting for Christianity, even though they are, even though they say they are, even though right up until the moments when the actions that are undeniably immoral are committed everyone is agreed that these are Christians.
But once the doctor's shot the shooter's a lone actor, an exception, abnormal, and he's set apart as not being one of the faithful, even though behind the scenes there is sympathy and support, and compassionate understanding. It's just that the illegality of what's been done will never be shared by the group that caused it, that encouraged it, that benefits from it.
So the lizard can risk exposure to get to what it needs, can risk more exposure thanks to its disposable tail, and it benefits from that increased radius of possibility. And the "church" benefits from many things that it is not responsible for, or not held responsible for. This isn't unique to Christianity, many political bodies behave this way, championing a set of moral codes they don't adhere to except in the most abstract way, while on the ground, in the clinch, they have no morality at all, just the same headlong lunge toward survival and reproduction that every other creature has.
It gets clearer when you see how accountable the enemy must be, for all actions by all its affiliated members no matter how loosely connected, no matter even if they've been disavowed already. So that many Arabs who have publicly condemned the actions of terrorists will be treated as though they support everything, even the most violent acts of the most radical Islamic jihadists.
But the consequent symmetry is missing.
Christians in the center of America won't take the blame for the inhuman tortures and cruel and savage killing of non-combatants, not just now in Iraq, but for most of the last two centuries, won't take that blame as Americans, nor as Christians, even though the torture and the killing are done in the name of both those powerful groups.
Lies, and easily discarded truths, and sacrificial players. It isn't about morality, it never was, it's about survival, about living and reproducing.
So that the anti-evolutionist stance of many fundamentalist Christians is actually an evolutionary strategy, it culls the unwanted from the herd, it separates one kind from another and says one has more value than the other. It's a kind of sexual competition, though it takes place on a higher level of complexity than between two competing individuals.
The dispute means nothing except as a rallying point.
15.11.04
WORDS
An Insurgent is a person who takes part in an armed rebellion against a constituted authority. This can include any irregular armed force that rises up against an enforced or established authority, government, or administration. Insurgents conduct sabotage and harassment. Insurgents usually are in opposition to a civil authority or government primarily in the hope of improving their condition.
The term is inherently political and is difficult to use without taking a political position. When used by an authority under threat, insurgent infers an illegitimacy of cause upon those rising up. Whereas those rising up will see the authority itself as being illegitimate. In cases of rebellions, it refers to those who are not part of the decision-making entity that has the ability to make laws. For example, "the congress has the authority to pass laws to stop the insurgency" vs "the police have the power to arrest insurgents". Insurgents do not respect the established authority.
In current use an insurgent is distinct from a terrorist as in "under threat from insurgents and terrorists". Insurgent has come into popular use during 2003 through its use by western politicians and mainstream media to describe those in resistance to the coalition in Iraq
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Terrorism refers to the use of violence against noncombatants for the purpose of achieving a political, religious or socio-economic goal. Terrorist acts can be carried out by individuals or groups, and are sometimes sponsored by governments as an alternative to an open declaration of war.
Title 22 of the United States Code, Section 2656f(d) defines terrorism as: "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.
The use of the terms terrorism and terrorist is politically weighted, as these terms (and historically, other terms like them) are often used in propaganda to drum up support in opposition to the designated "terrorists."
Governments that support the use of violence against civilians will tend to dissociate themselves from the term, and will instead use neutral or positive terms to describe combatants they approve of – such as freedom fighters, patriots, paramilitaries, militants, comrades or activists, all of which can be ambiguous.
INSURGENT
Pronunciation: in'surjunt
|
|
| 1. [n] a member of an irregular armed force that fights a stronger force by sabotage and harassment
TERRORISM
Pronunciation: 'teru`rizum
[n] the systematic use of violence as a means to intimidate or coerce societies or governments
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Ter"ror*ism\, n. [Cf. F. terrorisme.]
The act of terrorizing, or state of being terrorized; a mode
of government by terror or intimidation. --Jefferson.
14.11.04
As for the defenders, those Iraqis who resist in a city that heroically defied Saddam Hussein; they were merely "insurgents holed up in the city," as if they were an alien body, a lesser form of life to be "flushed out" (the Guardian): a suitable quarry for "rat-catchers," which is the term another BBC reporter told us the Black Watch use. According to a senior British officer, the Americans view Iraqis as Untermenschen, a term that Hitler used in Mein Kampf to describe Jews, Romanies and Slavs as sub-humans. This is how the Nazi army laid siege to Russian cities, slaughtering combatants and non-combatants alike.
Normalising colonial crimes like the attack on Fallujah requires such racism, linking our imagination to "the other." The thrust of the reporting is that the "insurgents" are led by sinister foreigners of the kind that behead people: for example, by Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian said to be al-Qaeda's "top operative" in Iraq. This is what the Americans say; it is also Blair's latest lie to parliament. Count the times it is parroted at a camera, at us. No irony is noted that the foreigners in Iraq are overwhelmingly American and, by all indications, loathed. These indications come from apparently credible polling organisations, one of which estimates that of 2,700 attacks every month by the resistance, six can be credited to the infamous al-Zarqawi.
In a letter sent on 14 October to Kofi Annan, the Fallujah Shura Council, which administers the city, said: "In Fallujah, [the Americans] have created a new vague target: al-Zarqawi. Almost a year has elapsed since they created this new pretext and whenever they destroy houses, mosques, restaurants, and kill children and women, they said: 'We have launched a successful operation against al-Zarqawi.' The people of Fallujah assure you that this person, if he exists, is not in Fallujah . . . and we have no links to any groups supporting such inhuman behaviour. We appeal to you to urge the UN [to prevent] the new massacre which the Americans and the puppet government are planning to start soon in Fallujah, as well as many parts of the country."
Not a word of this was reported in the mainstream media in Britain and America.
John Pilger/Lew Rockwell.com 12.Nov.04
No connection possible
Zapatero also warned that there can be no real peace in Southwest Asia [Middle East] until UN resolutions and the "Road Map" for peace are fully implemented. He strongly defended a "viable Palestinian state which is democratic and lives in peace and security with the State of Israel." As for Israel, it "can count on the international community, to the extent that it respects international law." But Ariel Sharon's building of the wall of separation between Israel and Palestine "does not do this," he said.
Relations between the US and Spain's Socialist government hit a new low this week when President George W. Bush invited Jose Maria Aznar, Spain's former prime minister, to the White House for a private 40-minute chat.
In a pointed snub to Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who succeeded Mr Aznar and who incurred the wrath of the US by withdrawing Spanish troops from Iraq, President Bush has not yet returned Mr Zapatero's courtesy call last week to congratulate him on his re-election victory.
The unspoken but commonly accepted truism that anything that can't be positively demonstrated to exist can't be said to exist except theoretically - which is a kind of partial existence, an almost-being, an inferior mode - means that anything beyond the reach of language and touch is denied the legitimacy given to things which can be explained and dissected.
This is a valuable tool for discrimination between the useful and the distracting for the exploring scientist, but it's a constricting handicap for the moral philosopher.
What this means is that something as central to human experience as the end result of all this cycling of birth and death and the labor involved in it is kept back from discussion, held in a secondary position, and is made to serve by its absence or adulteration the immediately pronounceable aims of those whose voices dominate the argument.
"Where are we going?" is more easily answered with "Heaven", or by its twin "With technology, to other worlds", than it is by a kind of un-sketched-in diagram of possibility. Yet that's a more accurate description of what this has been all along than either of those pat answers can ever be.
So that what most of us still feel, though we can't name it precisely - the cloudy goal at the unterminating end of all our lives together - is pushed to the side, and replaced by the firmly stated goals of a minority, because they're the only goals around that can be stated clearly.
This is mirrored in the domination of common lives and endeavors by corporations and their enforcers in politics, whose clamorous insistence on profit as the sacred, ultimate, and only value, and on business success as more central to human experience than the lives of the now secondary ordinary people, has filled the world with inhuman noise and subtle poisons.
Because those goals can be articulated clearly, and the nebulous but more valid and more human goal - of "keeping on keeping on", of continuing, of honoring the hopeful progress that led to our own moment of living by turning that hope toward the indescribable future - can't be stated clearly without limiting it into non-existence, or making it sound silly , the truly human impulse is denigrated - while the purest forms of selfishness, in the individual and in aggregate, are deified and worshiped.
It's that limitlessness that makes it inarticulable at the same time it makes it what it is. Human.
The rest is slavery.
This is a valuable tool for discrimination between the useful and the distracting for the exploring scientist, but it's a constricting handicap for the moral philosopher.
What this means is that something as central to human experience as the end result of all this cycling of birth and death and the labor involved in it is kept back from discussion, held in a secondary position, and is made to serve by its absence or adulteration the immediately pronounceable aims of those whose voices dominate the argument.
"Where are we going?" is more easily answered with "Heaven", or by its twin "With technology, to other worlds", than it is by a kind of un-sketched-in diagram of possibility. Yet that's a more accurate description of what this has been all along than either of those pat answers can ever be.
So that what most of us still feel, though we can't name it precisely - the cloudy goal at the unterminating end of all our lives together - is pushed to the side, and replaced by the firmly stated goals of a minority, because they're the only goals around that can be stated clearly.
This is mirrored in the domination of common lives and endeavors by corporations and their enforcers in politics, whose clamorous insistence on profit as the sacred, ultimate, and only value, and on business success as more central to human experience than the lives of the now secondary ordinary people, has filled the world with inhuman noise and subtle poisons.
Because those goals can be articulated clearly, and the nebulous but more valid and more human goal - of "keeping on keeping on", of continuing, of honoring the hopeful progress that led to our own moment of living by turning that hope toward the indescribable future - can't be stated clearly without limiting it into non-existence, or making it sound silly , the truly human impulse is denigrated - while the purest forms of selfishness, in the individual and in aggregate, are deified and worshiped.
It's that limitlessness that makes it inarticulable at the same time it makes it what it is. Human.
The rest is slavery.
13.11.04
On the Death Of Yaseer Arafat:
A Modest Proposal
for
A Solution To The Palestinian Problem
Including, As An Addendum, A Concomitant
Remedy For the Growing Problem of Global Anti-Semitism
With the obstinate and cunningly non-committal Arafat removed from the picture the stage is set for a final resolution, and indeed we find the curtain risen, the scrim ready, the extras waiting in the wings, and the plot well-rehearsed.
The "fence" around the remaining Palestinian lands being near complete all that's needed now are the implementation of a few signs and the construction of a few hundred miles of railroad track.
Soon enough there will be no Palestinian economy to speak of, and the only work available will be on the other side of the "fence" - so that a simple re-working of that familiar slogan "Work Will Make You Free" in Arabic script over each entrance to what will be finally the only freedom remaining to those Arafat leaves behind, will prove inspirational to all who view it; and given the obvious inevitability of Israeli expansion into so-called "Arabic" lands, the railroad tracks - providing opportunities in their building for therapeutic labor and constructive use of time for idle Palestinian youth - leading into the easily-managed camps of Bethlehem and Hebron etc. from the surrounding lands, will soon enough see substantial use as transport lines.
The terrain through which these necessary carriages must pass being unbearably hot during much of the day and for much of the year, a certain amount of air-conditioning would be most humane wherever it would be possible to employ it; the added expense - having no possibility of economic return for its investment - proving to all the world the humanity and great compassion, though sorely tested, of its benefactors.
The difficulty of identifying some Arabs, with their Semitic features so close to their racial and religious superiors', can be solved by genealogical research and local witnesses, and the application of - at least for a generation, after which the problem will be much less pressing - an alpha-numerical tattoo on, say, the right forearm of the identified.
Requiring all Palestinian, and later all Arab/Muslim, workers in the rapidly expanding Fatherland to show this indelible mark of identification whenever demanded to do so will simplify things greatly for the guards and security officials at the borders and entrances to the camps and factories.
Should resources become scarce, in the event of mass climate change or unforeseen biological disturbances, of course stricter measures will have to be taken, although that bridge may be crossed easily when it becomes necessary to erect it, once these preliminary steps have been taken.
For now this solution will provide quickly and efficiently a means to finally dispense, by its extension into all combatant states, with the cause and causative agencies of global terrorism, and will put an immediate stop to local political disruption in the Middle East.
The contingencies and necessary details, like those of any complex project involving millions of unwilling participants, will be manifold but not impossible to foresee.
The American criminal justice system/security apparatus is filled to bursting with just the experts necessary to begin the process, and the transfer of information and resources to the sites of application has an historical precedent of long standing. The pipeline of resources from the young wealthy satellite to its ancient spiritual center will need only augmentation, an increase in budget and staffing, to be brought to optimum efficiency.
-
As to the growth of Anti-Semitism - a global problem for all rational and moral people - a means of identifying Anti-Semites on sight, and a parallel means in the electronic media to which so many of us turn for information about our rapidly changing world, in order that they may be avoided by decent common folk - and in order in turn that these often rational-seeming bits of virulent madness can be stemmed, contained, and ultimately eradicated - I would like to suggest a yellow "Star of David", worn on the arm of the persons so identified, under penalty of law, and the punishments for deceit and disguise must be concomitantly harsh enough to discourage all but the most obstinate and deranged.
The electronic version could be what's known as an "icon" in the realm of the digitally sophisticated, and can be made a requirement where appropriate, for all "online" communication attempted by the soon-to-be-permanently recognized and ostracized Anti-Semites, who until now have been free to go among us anonymously, spreading their filth and lies behind the shield of so-called "free speech", and doing immeasurable harm to the cause of decency and the lives of decent people.
Thank You,
Your Editor
-
N.B.
for
A Solution To The Palestinian Problem
Including, As An Addendum, A Concomitant
Remedy For the Growing Problem of Global Anti-Semitism
Time won't permit me to develop this past more than the merest outline, consequently I make this request of you, gentle reader, that - should you find these ideas at all serviceable - you make them your own and "flesh them out" until some one of us at last can begin the necessary measures, harsh though they may be, toward solving this difficult and perplexing situation, once and for all.
With the obstinate and cunningly non-committal Arafat removed from the picture the stage is set for a final resolution, and indeed we find the curtain risen, the scrim ready, the extras waiting in the wings, and the plot well-rehearsed.
The "fence" around the remaining Palestinian lands being near complete all that's needed now are the implementation of a few signs and the construction of a few hundred miles of railroad track.
Soon enough there will be no Palestinian economy to speak of, and the only work available will be on the other side of the "fence" - so that a simple re-working of that familiar slogan "Work Will Make You Free" in Arabic script over each entrance to what will be finally the only freedom remaining to those Arafat leaves behind, will prove inspirational to all who view it; and given the obvious inevitability of Israeli expansion into so-called "Arabic" lands, the railroad tracks - providing opportunities in their building for therapeutic labor and constructive use of time for idle Palestinian youth - leading into the easily-managed camps of Bethlehem and Hebron etc. from the surrounding lands, will soon enough see substantial use as transport lines.
The terrain through which these necessary carriages must pass being unbearably hot during much of the day and for much of the year, a certain amount of air-conditioning would be most humane wherever it would be possible to employ it; the added expense - having no possibility of economic return for its investment - proving to all the world the humanity and great compassion, though sorely tested, of its benefactors.
The difficulty of identifying some Arabs, with their Semitic features so close to their racial and religious superiors', can be solved by genealogical research and local witnesses, and the application of - at least for a generation, after which the problem will be much less pressing - an alpha-numerical tattoo on, say, the right forearm of the identified.
Requiring all Palestinian, and later all Arab/Muslim, workers in the rapidly expanding Fatherland to show this indelible mark of identification whenever demanded to do so will simplify things greatly for the guards and security officials at the borders and entrances to the camps and factories.
Should resources become scarce, in the event of mass climate change or unforeseen biological disturbances, of course stricter measures will have to be taken, although that bridge may be crossed easily when it becomes necessary to erect it, once these preliminary steps have been taken.
For now this solution will provide quickly and efficiently a means to finally dispense, by its extension into all combatant states, with the cause and causative agencies of global terrorism, and will put an immediate stop to local political disruption in the Middle East.
The contingencies and necessary details, like those of any complex project involving millions of unwilling participants, will be manifold but not impossible to foresee.
The American criminal justice system/security apparatus is filled to bursting with just the experts necessary to begin the process, and the transfer of information and resources to the sites of application has an historical precedent of long standing. The pipeline of resources from the young wealthy satellite to its ancient spiritual center will need only augmentation, an increase in budget and staffing, to be brought to optimum efficiency.
-
As to the growth of Anti-Semitism - a global problem for all rational and moral people - a means of identifying Anti-Semites on sight, and a parallel means in the electronic media to which so many of us turn for information about our rapidly changing world, in order that they may be avoided by decent common folk - and in order in turn that these often rational-seeming bits of virulent madness can be stemmed, contained, and ultimately eradicated - I would like to suggest a yellow "Star of David", worn on the arm of the persons so identified, under penalty of law, and the punishments for deceit and disguise must be concomitantly harsh enough to discourage all but the most obstinate and deranged.
The electronic version could be what's known as an "icon" in the realm of the digitally sophisticated, and can be made a requirement where appropriate, for all "online" communication attempted by the soon-to-be-permanently recognized and ostracized Anti-Semites, who until now have been free to go among us anonymously, spreading their filth and lies behind the shield of so-called "free speech", and doing immeasurable harm to the cause of decency and the lives of decent people.
Thank You,
Your Editor
-
N.B.
Please, if you should find something useful here, an idea or a starting point for an idea of your own, take freely whatever you can use. The pressures of daily necessity and all too limited time - so much duty, so few hours in the day - mean that all I'm able to offer just now is this humble outline, some suggestions based on an attempt once made, though incompetently - the right idea but practiced on precisely the wrong people; my own thought being that now we, and especially the still-horrified victims of that prior attempt, have before us an opportunity to address the matter more accurately, more effectively, and indeed, more professionally, once and for all.
A solution, finally, to the problem of Palestine, and terrorism generally, which having been applied successfully at last, will never again be necessary.
A huge explosion erupted in Fallujah on Thursday, sending a large fireball into the sky, witnesses said.
The blast took place in the northwest part of the city, a stronghold for guerrillas, where U.S. and Iraqi forces have been battling to gain control. The cause of the blast was unclear.
The explosion came shortly after U.S. forces said they had brought the city's northwestern Jolan district under control.
Eye Witness Account From Falluja
Fadhil Badrani
12 November, 2004
BBC/Countercurrents
Fadhil Badrani
12 November, 2004
BBC/Countercurrents
A row of palm trees used to run along the street outside my house - now only the trunks are left.
The upper half of each tree has vanished, blown away by mortar fire.
From my window, I can also make out that the minarets of several mosques have been toppled.
There are more and more dead bodies on the streets and the stench is unbearable.
Smoke is everywhere.
12.11.04
Social control through sexual guilt is so effective because it can be solidly in place before there's anything there to control.
Pre-pubescent children don't rebel against the sexual taboos and prohibitions they receive, from the same people who warn them of the dangers of fire and sharp knives, because they don't have conscious sexual feelings when they receive those prohibitions. They take it on faith that masturbation is wrong if they're told it is, before they even know what masturbation is exactly, before they desire sexual release. And if they aren't told anything about it it becomes even more frighteningly prohibited when they do experience that desire - something so central to their being yet so horrible it can't even be talked about.
By the time they do have sexual feelings most children raised with repressive mainstream sexual values experience their sexuality through a filter of guilt. That guilt gets passed down like a recipe to their own children, unconsciously, automatically.
This is much less intense now than it was, but that isn't saying much - in mid-50's America sexual taboo was still so violently constrictive child molestation couldn't be dealt with openly, because people were traumatized merely by the idea of it, and they responded by trying to make the idea go away. Homosexuality was a punishable crime between consenting adults, not because it damaged anyone, but because the laws and the fears and taboos were already in place, and people were so riddled with guilt and shame at their own sexuality they couldn't approach the idea of changing anything without disintegrating.
It was an arduous and painful struggle to get the idea into the public discourse that there were people who are born naturally homosexual, not by choice but by birth, just as there are people who are naturally hermaphroditic - physically both female and male.
Running through that struggle was a river of sickness that comes, not from sexual perversion, but from the perversion of sexuality - as a means of social control.
There are distributions of masculinity and femininity just as there of height and weight and intelligence and beauty. Homosexuality too. So for some it really is a choice, just as the religious right would have it be for all, a minor urge that's easily repressed; for others it's much stronger and the repressive mechanism is energy-consuming and can be pathological; for others homosexuality is simply the core of their sexual being. It's the same with the distribution of hermaphroditic characteristics in the body.
My point isn't that this unfair and cruel repression is a mistake, but that it's intentional - a form of control, and a very effective one; that lives are damaged by being placed in impossible situations by it means nothing to those who benefit from that, just as the suffering of slaves meant nothing to most of those who benefited from slavery.
The heart of the current puritanical reaction to sexual permissiveness isn't directed at people who are naturally homosexual, it's directed at the asocial licentiousness that rose up in the absence of morality that was in turn made inevitable by the cruelty and violent repression that preceded it.
Just as beating a rebellious child will more often increase that rebellion unless it's so traumatic it's psychologically transformative, the bizarre sexual morality of the recent past was thrown off by people who recognized its wrongness and rebelled, even though they had nothing to put in its place but a vague idea of freedom.
People need morality for social cohesion. Just as people need sexual expression. Knowing that need exists and being in a position to create a morality that contains and controls the people who are born into it gives an advantage to competitors in the battle for dominance that all life is, even morally advanced human life like ours. Some people will benefit more than others in any given social condition. This is what's happening here.
Even the most enlightened moral system, to be true, has to recognize the hierarchy of fitness that is our biological reality. We aren't born equal, except in the eyes of the law, but that's what this argument is about, that the eyes of the law have been blinded by fear and superstition.
Harm is the issue, damage is what makes immorality wrong, and at this moment the harm and damage are coming from those who insist they're moral, and who say their morality comes from God, and that God, in that wonderfully terse phrase, hates fags.
It's tempting to say that that's nonsense, but it isn't, it's a cunning device, a trick to centralize power behind a mass of angry and confused people who are afraid, though they're not quite sure what they're afraid of now.
Images of black people as animals, as inferior sub-humans, were used to justify the inhuman cruelties of slavery and racism, but they were false images. Certainly there were black people who were inferior, just as there were whites who fit that image, but it was applied to all in order to justify the benefits of racism to those who received them.
Images of homosexuals as immoral hedonists, as though of all homosexuals, are being used for the same purpose, and they're just as false.
Selfishness is what's behind it, what's driving that condemnation, and it's also what's being condemned, rightly; but it's what makes that condemnation too broad and inexact. Innocent people are suffering because of the selfishness of others.
Selfishness is ultimately what evil really is - stripped of its symptoms the disease is selfishness, always.
Pre-pubescent children don't rebel against the sexual taboos and prohibitions they receive, from the same people who warn them of the dangers of fire and sharp knives, because they don't have conscious sexual feelings when they receive those prohibitions. They take it on faith that masturbation is wrong if they're told it is, before they even know what masturbation is exactly, before they desire sexual release. And if they aren't told anything about it it becomes even more frighteningly prohibited when they do experience that desire - something so central to their being yet so horrible it can't even be talked about.
By the time they do have sexual feelings most children raised with repressive mainstream sexual values experience their sexuality through a filter of guilt. That guilt gets passed down like a recipe to their own children, unconsciously, automatically.
This is much less intense now than it was, but that isn't saying much - in mid-50's America sexual taboo was still so violently constrictive child molestation couldn't be dealt with openly, because people were traumatized merely by the idea of it, and they responded by trying to make the idea go away. Homosexuality was a punishable crime between consenting adults, not because it damaged anyone, but because the laws and the fears and taboos were already in place, and people were so riddled with guilt and shame at their own sexuality they couldn't approach the idea of changing anything without disintegrating.
It was an arduous and painful struggle to get the idea into the public discourse that there were people who are born naturally homosexual, not by choice but by birth, just as there are people who are naturally hermaphroditic - physically both female and male.
Running through that struggle was a river of sickness that comes, not from sexual perversion, but from the perversion of sexuality - as a means of social control.
There are distributions of masculinity and femininity just as there of height and weight and intelligence and beauty. Homosexuality too. So for some it really is a choice, just as the religious right would have it be for all, a minor urge that's easily repressed; for others it's much stronger and the repressive mechanism is energy-consuming and can be pathological; for others homosexuality is simply the core of their sexual being. It's the same with the distribution of hermaphroditic characteristics in the body.
My point isn't that this unfair and cruel repression is a mistake, but that it's intentional - a form of control, and a very effective one; that lives are damaged by being placed in impossible situations by it means nothing to those who benefit from that, just as the suffering of slaves meant nothing to most of those who benefited from slavery.
The heart of the current puritanical reaction to sexual permissiveness isn't directed at people who are naturally homosexual, it's directed at the asocial licentiousness that rose up in the absence of morality that was in turn made inevitable by the cruelty and violent repression that preceded it.
Just as beating a rebellious child will more often increase that rebellion unless it's so traumatic it's psychologically transformative, the bizarre sexual morality of the recent past was thrown off by people who recognized its wrongness and rebelled, even though they had nothing to put in its place but a vague idea of freedom.
People need morality for social cohesion. Just as people need sexual expression. Knowing that need exists and being in a position to create a morality that contains and controls the people who are born into it gives an advantage to competitors in the battle for dominance that all life is, even morally advanced human life like ours. Some people will benefit more than others in any given social condition. This is what's happening here.
Even the most enlightened moral system, to be true, has to recognize the hierarchy of fitness that is our biological reality. We aren't born equal, except in the eyes of the law, but that's what this argument is about, that the eyes of the law have been blinded by fear and superstition.
Harm is the issue, damage is what makes immorality wrong, and at this moment the harm and damage are coming from those who insist they're moral, and who say their morality comes from God, and that God, in that wonderfully terse phrase, hates fags.
It's tempting to say that that's nonsense, but it isn't, it's a cunning device, a trick to centralize power behind a mass of angry and confused people who are afraid, though they're not quite sure what they're afraid of now.
Images of black people as animals, as inferior sub-humans, were used to justify the inhuman cruelties of slavery and racism, but they were false images. Certainly there were black people who were inferior, just as there were whites who fit that image, but it was applied to all in order to justify the benefits of racism to those who received them.
Images of homosexuals as immoral hedonists, as though of all homosexuals, are being used for the same purpose, and they're just as false.
Selfishness is what's behind it, what's driving that condemnation, and it's also what's being condemned, rightly; but it's what makes that condemnation too broad and inexact. Innocent people are suffering because of the selfishness of others.
Selfishness is ultimately what evil really is - stripped of its symptoms the disease is selfishness, always.
Tickets Available:
Rush Limbaugh to Receive Statesmanship Award
[http://www.claremont.org/events/040927churchill.html]
On Friday, November 19, the Claremont Institute will honor Rush Limbaugh with the Statesmanship Award at its annual Churchill Dinner in Los Angeles at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel.
Rush Limbaugh to Receive Statesmanship Award
[http://www.claremont.org/events/040927churchill.html]
On Friday, November 19, the Claremont Institute will honor Rush Limbaugh with the Statesmanship Award at its annual Churchill Dinner in Los Angeles at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel.
George Bush on the Columbia disaster:
Red white and blue, what does it mean? Us. That's all. Just us.
That there are other countries whose flags display those three colors as well means nothing, just as the word freedom means nothing by itself, and in the present context means only freedom from things - freedom from terrorism, from danger, from insecurity and fear.
It's possible that there's an intent behind it all - to put a foul taste in the mouth of anyone who speaks the word "democracy". Certainly the Iraqis are going to have trouble with that word.
And people who have received the vicious by-products of "grace" and "faith" American Christianity dispenses to the unelect and the "un-faithful" will not be eager to encounter the God from whom those dubious blessings flow.
So maybe that's the point. It isn't about God's love for everyone, it's about our love for us. We don't need you, and God doesn't need you either.
That specialness, that sense of being chosen, blessed. Like a fungus in a cleft of rock in a time of great flooding. Or a creature stumbling into a cave one step ahead of pursuit. A gift, a blessing.
It's the difference between holiness and salvation, between sacrifice and reward, between war and a business transaction.
Not just the difference between two unlike things, but two things in different categories altogether.
George Bush's God won't be there when there are no human beings any longer to call his name. Which is not the same as saying he's not there now.
It's faith that makes it ring. But how is God "faithful"? What does that mean? It has the same anthemic power as freedom, democracy, liberty, justice, the litany of words whose meaning has been drained away even as the sound of them becomes a kind of battle cry."We can also be confident of the ways of Providence, even when they are far from our understanding. Events aren't moved by blind change and chance. Behind all of life and all of history, there's a dedication and purpose, set by the hand of a just and faithful God. And that hope will never be shaken."
Red white and blue, what does it mean? Us. That's all. Just us.
That there are other countries whose flags display those three colors as well means nothing, just as the word freedom means nothing by itself, and in the present context means only freedom from things - freedom from terrorism, from danger, from insecurity and fear.
It's possible that there's an intent behind it all - to put a foul taste in the mouth of anyone who speaks the word "democracy". Certainly the Iraqis are going to have trouble with that word.
And people who have received the vicious by-products of "grace" and "faith" American Christianity dispenses to the unelect and the "un-faithful" will not be eager to encounter the God from whom those dubious blessings flow.
So maybe that's the point. It isn't about God's love for everyone, it's about our love for us. We don't need you, and God doesn't need you either.
That specialness, that sense of being chosen, blessed. Like a fungus in a cleft of rock in a time of great flooding. Or a creature stumbling into a cave one step ahead of pursuit. A gift, a blessing.
It's the difference between holiness and salvation, between sacrifice and reward, between war and a business transaction.
Not just the difference between two unlike things, but two things in different categories altogether.
George Bush's God won't be there when there are no human beings any longer to call his name. Which is not the same as saying he's not there now.
11.11.04
acoolsha reviews Chaplin's
The Great Dictator
"What always stands out for me when I see this film is how Chaplin, in Hollywood in the late 1930s, was so aware of the conditions in Germany under the Third Reich. Aware of the terrible persecution, intimidation and the presentiment of genocide (Herring, the Goring in the film, mentioned to Adenoid Hynkel that they had developed a gas which can kill lots and lots of people). Chaplin had access to enough information to make this powerful film, while many major U.S. companies were investing heavily in the Third Reich and the U.S. stood by and watched it all develop (no, it wasn't entirely because of the isolationist sentiments of the population - that would never stop the U.S. from carrying out wars in its own interest.).
Seeing this film has always felt like a ray of sunlight burning through the moral fog of U.S. involvement in World War II. I was raised on the myth of the U.S. holding the high moral ground in this era, when in fact it was other countries, mostly the Soviet Union, - not to mention the Resistance in Europe and the victims within the Third Reich: the socialists, communists, handicapped, Jews, homosexuals - who took the brunt of Nazi aggression and is where the heroes can be found. The U.S. could move into the void of a disintegrating British colonialism and set a boundary of contention for the coming cold war with a battered Soviet Union.
I just realized I finished this viewing of the film today, November 9th, the anniversary of Kristallnacht... while the U.S. continues terrorizing and killing the people of Iraq, mostly children, with a new fervor and bluster flowing from the intoxication of its new "mandate" which they would now shove down the throats of not only the Americans but of the rest of the world."
... round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away
________________________________
Vanunu rearrested
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Bush White House cold shoulders Spanish Prime Minister
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Mosques of Fallujah are silent
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Iran heads toward conflict
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Iris Chang dies
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Armored vehicles lose their way in LA
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Jupiter as objet d'art
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Represent
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the architect of the Oslo accords
The denigration has already started of course, his sickness, his life of terrorism, then the denial of a resting place. The cockiness is breath-taking: Jerusalem, so the official line goes, is the burial place of Jewish Kings and officials and not for terrorists like Arafat; never mind that that arch-conman and pension fund raider Robert Maxwell was also buried there with pomp and ceremony. And as for terrorists being laid down there, well, let Begin and Shamir be disinterred.
Such is the apartheid practise in this Zionist state that even in death you're still an outcast because it's an exclusive land for one people.
Someone has said it though, that Arafat will die on a Jewish holiday. Any day that Arafat dies is a Jewish holiday.
Jalan-Jalan 08.Nov.04.04
10.11.04
it will fail again
There should be no mystery about why this is happening. All countries object to being occupied. Foreign invasions provoke nationalist resistance. This has happened with extraordinary speed in Iraq because of the ineptitude of the U.S. civil and military commanders, but in the long term it would have happened anyway.
The United States in Iraq has always behaved as if foreign powers or adherents of Saddam Hussein fomented the resistance. A lesson of the ground war last year was that few Iraqis were prepared to get killed for their old leader. Earlier this year I asked U.S. helicopter pilots operating from a base near Fallujah whom they thought they were fighting. They said firmly that they were at war with "FFs" and "FRLs." These turned out to be foreign fighters and former regime loyalists. One of the pilots added nervously that there seemed to be a third somewhat shadowy group "who want us to go home."
Bush-installed interim Iraqi Prime Minster Iyad Allawi announced with a smile of victory that he personally ordered the capture of the hospital. So maybe it was not the Pentagon: it was an unelected politician asking a foreign occupation army to attack a hospital in his own country and preventing doctors and ambulances from entering a city under siege.
The assault, dubbed Operation Phantom Fury, perversely started on Laylat e-Qadr, the most important and holy night of the year for the Islamic world.
Pepe Escobar/Asia Times 10.Nov.04
The assault, dubbed Operation Phantom Fury, perversely started on Laylat e-Qadr, the most important and holy night of the year for the Islamic world.
Pepe Escobar/Asia Times 10.Nov.04
It's past time for you to wake up, realize what this is - a massive spasm of revenge and bloodlust - it's not about oil, it's about hatred.
It's the triumph of the inferior man, an Oedipal rage that's moved on from patricide to wholesale murder.
Babylon is such a common term in reggae music because it's in the Bible as the worst of nations, the enemy, the evil place. It's in the Bible in those terms because the Jews were conquered by the Babylonians and their Temple was destroyed into the bargain. This "invasion" has been one long consistent act of retaliation for those offenses against God's special Chosen People. From the looting of antiquities last year to the timing of this latest atrocity, this is the sadistic and cruel triumph of cowardice, and ultimately a spiritual war against the world itself.
Tangled and bound in a spun web of deceit, the terms we'd use to describe what was done are owned by the ones who did it. Divide the world into Satanic and divine forces and see that the real enemy owns both names, works both sides against the middle. We're being eaten by something that, when it finishes with our children, won't have to pretend to be human anymore.
9.11.04
Fallujah has four main clans: Zawbaa, al-Jamilat, Bu Eisa and al-Mahameda, plus many secondary clans like Tamim, Bani Kabis, al-Fayad, al-Aneen and al-Raween. Most of the clans are Sunni and originally came from the Arab peninsula.
The backbone of Fallujah is Islam and its tribal clans. Bravery is the common staple. Vendetta is a must. People prefer to die than to submit to a foreign invader: it's considered their Islamic duty. More than 20 prominent Saudi scholars recently qualified the resistance as a legitimate right and obligation.
The Fallujah mujahideen shura is a real unifying force. There are no "terrorists" in the midst of these resistance leaders, tribal chiefs and Sunni clerics - only Iraqis fighting a war of national liberation. To counteract Pentagon propaganda, the shura has promised to protect journalists and house them in a "special building". But considering what happened in Kabul in 2001 and Baghdad in 2003, there's every reason to believe the Marines could have an "accident".
Pepe Escobar/Asia Times 10.Nov.04
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