"...American history has taught us to welcome the contributions of men and women of all faiths, for we share the fundamental values of religious freedom, love of family, and gratitude to God."
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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15.10.04
14.10.04
Nixon's feverish lip, Bush's rectangular box
"While it's refreshing to see a story like the "box" go mainstream ("Technical Expert: Bush Was Wired"), there is so much more that hasn't, and won't. For instance, what the hell was wrong with his face?
Draw a line down the middle, and you could see two different Bushes. The left corner of his mouth was drooping egregiously, and his right eye was screwed up in a perpetual squint."
Rigorous Intuition 14.Oct.04
That "Hardball" guy was in Tempe just before the debates, talking to a bunch of college kids, preening, his adult male power building in contrast to the exuberant sports-team enthusiasm of the kids and their simple opinions. He went into this kind of non-hortatory non-exhortation, an evangelical urge toward nothing much, about the candidates' completely symmetrical opposition, saying repeatedly they had and have nothing in common.
Nothing in common, so how can there be "undecided" voters? That was Mr. Hardball's rhetorical question.
Then about twenty minutes later the computer gave me this quote from Kerry, addressing the Floridian electorate, or a subset of it.
So there is agreement, fundamental agreement, a unity of purpose and policy, when it comes to Israel.
And since Israel is a kind of positive taboo now, not because it's profane but because it is so sacred to the cause of both candidates and the media, Mr. Hardball is able to make his absurd claim.
If there is a disagreement between them about Israel generally - about shipping bombs and billions of dollars to Israel, about "pre-emptive" strikes in the Middle East, about the daily sacrifice of Palestinian lives, about Gaza, about Syria, about Iran, about Israeli involvement in planning and carrying out the invasion and occupation of Iraq, including the atrocities of Abu Ghraib and the worse crimes still hidden in the shadows of that burning land - there is no mention of it.
They're like two sons competing for a father's praise, each trying to outdo the other in obedience to their father's wishes.
13.10.04
bigness is not necessary
It is impossible to understand, let alone justify, a government's willingness to allow the human sources of necessary goods to be destroyed by the "freedom" of this corporate anarchy. It is equally impossible to understand how a government can permit, and even subsidize, the destruction of the land and the land's productivity. Somehow we have lost or discarded any controlling sense of the interdependence of the Earth and the human capacity to use it well. The governmental obligation to protect these economic resources, inseparably human and natural, is the same as the obligation to protect us from hunger or from foreign invaders. In result, there is no difference between a domestic threat to the sources of our life and a foreign one.
It appears that we have fallen into the habit of compromising on issues that should not, and in fact cannot, be compromised. I have an idea that a large number of us, including even a large number of politicians, believe that it is wrong to destroy the Earth. But we have powerful political opponents who insist that an Earth-destroying economy is justified by freedom and profit. And so we compromise by agreeing to permit the destruction only of parts of the Earth, or to permit the Earth to be destroyed a little at a time -- like the famous three-legged pig that was too well loved to be slaughtered all at once.
The logic of this sort of compromising is clear, and it is clearly fatal. If we continue to be economically dependent on destroying parts of the Earth, then eventually we will destroy it all.
Wendell Berry/Orion November 2004
12.10.04
Paley's Rolex
In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for any thing I knew to the contrary, it had lain there for ever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer which I had before given, that, for any thing I knew, the watch might have always been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch as well as for the stone? why is it not as admissible in the second case, as in the first? For this reason, and for no other, viz. that, when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive (what we could not discover in the stone) that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose, e. g. that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day; that, if the different parts had been differently shaped from what they are, of a different size from what they are, or placed after any other manner, or in any other order, than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it. To reckon up a few of the plainest of these parts, and of their offices, all tending to one result:
Chapter 1
State of the Argument
Natural Theology
William Paley
Collection of Modern English
Humanities Text Initiative
University of Michigan
By "we" Paley means tool-using, iron-smelting, artifact-gathering, social-history-keeping, man. He does not mean a creature from somewhere else with no knowledge of working metal, with no experience of machines and metal tools.
Without that prior knowledge, to the eyes of a nomadic being used to the novel and the unexpected, with the caution and curiosity that that demands, it could as well be some strange flower, or a growth, some kind of crystalline formation, or a creature from the sea dropped by a bird if the ocean's nearby, or from a lake or a river.
Touching and turning it, shaking it, sniffing, tasting it, none of those actions would lead to the identification of the watch as a man-made thing if there were no other man-made things to compare it to, that were similar. Paley's God is real, but it's a human construct. A man-made thing, as we all are - man-made, or human-made.
A specious argument that's used to validate the arrogant presumptions of the other side - Paley's a fool and his arguments aren't worth reading , therefore there's nothing sacred and we can do what we want with the world.
See how both sides come to the same conclusion?
Paley because God gave it to us, the rationalists because there's nothing in our way.
It's a mistake to think there's nothing else there, just as much as it's a mistake to think that the source of all this complexity would value any of us above a star, or a starfish in its time.
Toby Keith's what they used to call a poster boy, I don't what they call it now, an icon maybe, meaning not so much a religious figure as a symbolic button, something that represents. So there's Toby Keith in a truck commercial, growling like a Ridgeback; and there's this bounty hunter guy named "Dog"; and there's I don't know who from the WWF from back in the days "poster boy" was used to designate someone as being so typical they could stand in for the whole crowd; and there's no division between the three of them, it's the same guy. Kind of a trip seeing that.
The problem is the WWF guy's the only honest one in there. The bounty hunter guy's whole existence spins off the legal structure that produces the bail jumpers in the first place. And anyone who thinks that legal structure's designed along moral and ethical lines isn't worth talking to for longer than it takes to say "So long!"
And Toby Keith. Toby Keith's representing people who sing to the people. Which used to mean people who represented the people. The singer was the one who showed us our souls. The voice of the heart of the people.
"The" people. Not "people".
We've gone, in the space of a few hundred years, from regarding singers as being people who sing, to singers as being people who sell their singing. Someone who sings but doesn't market that singing is secondary, a hobbyist, an amateur in the derogatory sense of someone who isn't serious about their art. Just as an artist is someone who sells art they make, and in that you can see, if you look hard enough, an equivalence, between the maker of art and the seller of art. They have an equal stature in the marketplace. Artist and seller.
Being a tough guy under those conditions is more complex than Keith and his support system pretend. Like the bounty hunter, you represent.
In the way things have been set up, which is false, a lie essentially, who you mean to represent is all that counts. But in reality, the same reality that makes the seller of art an equal to the maker of art, you represent who you represent, whether you know it or mean it or not.
George Bush may believe he works for God, but that has nothing to do with it, except for him, personally; for the world, for the rest of us, the confusion in his soul is disastrous.
Toby Keith doesn't present himself as working for anyone, but that doesn't mean he isn't. He works for exactly the same invisible presence that the bounty hunter, "Dog", does. Just because we don't have a name for that that works doesn't mean there isn't something there. There is.
I think of it as the devil, but that's my personal reality, I'm not trying to put that on anyone else. It's the way I was raised, it's how I was trained to see things.
Still, inasmuch as there is a common meaning to the word "devil" it works, it fits. Something evil, selfish and more arrogant than it is holy, putting its own pride above the Most High. Not that Toby Keith is intentionally working for the devil, I don't mean that, just that he is, whether he knows it or not.
________
OK, that seems odd to a lot of regular folks, how about this:
The largest single killer of children, in the US, is the automobile - and the biggest industry in the US is the automobile.
T. Keith - truck commercial.
He does not intend to be making an evil thing, he makes an evil thing. What that means to me, to say he works for the devil, is probably not what it means to you, or would mean if you said it. But I'm the one saying it. And I'm speaking for myself, not for anyone else, and not as anything else.
The problem is the WWF guy's the only honest one in there. The bounty hunter guy's whole existence spins off the legal structure that produces the bail jumpers in the first place. And anyone who thinks that legal structure's designed along moral and ethical lines isn't worth talking to for longer than it takes to say "So long!"
And Toby Keith. Toby Keith's representing people who sing to the people. Which used to mean people who represented the people. The singer was the one who showed us our souls. The voice of the heart of the people.
"The" people. Not "people".
We've gone, in the space of a few hundred years, from regarding singers as being people who sing, to singers as being people who sell their singing. Someone who sings but doesn't market that singing is secondary, a hobbyist, an amateur in the derogatory sense of someone who isn't serious about their art. Just as an artist is someone who sells art they make, and in that you can see, if you look hard enough, an equivalence, between the maker of art and the seller of art. They have an equal stature in the marketplace. Artist and seller.
Being a tough guy under those conditions is more complex than Keith and his support system pretend. Like the bounty hunter, you represent.
In the way things have been set up, which is false, a lie essentially, who you mean to represent is all that counts. But in reality, the same reality that makes the seller of art an equal to the maker of art, you represent who you represent, whether you know it or mean it or not.
George Bush may believe he works for God, but that has nothing to do with it, except for him, personally; for the world, for the rest of us, the confusion in his soul is disastrous.
Toby Keith doesn't present himself as working for anyone, but that doesn't mean he isn't. He works for exactly the same invisible presence that the bounty hunter, "Dog", does. Just because we don't have a name for that that works doesn't mean there isn't something there. There is.
I think of it as the devil, but that's my personal reality, I'm not trying to put that on anyone else. It's the way I was raised, it's how I was trained to see things.
Still, inasmuch as there is a common meaning to the word "devil" it works, it fits. Something evil, selfish and more arrogant than it is holy, putting its own pride above the Most High. Not that Toby Keith is intentionally working for the devil, I don't mean that, just that he is, whether he knows it or not.
________
OK, that seems odd to a lot of regular folks, how about this:
The largest single killer of children, in the US, is the automobile - and the biggest industry in the US is the automobile.
T. Keith - truck commercial.
He does not intend to be making an evil thing, he makes an evil thing. What that means to me, to say he works for the devil, is probably not what it means to you, or would mean if you said it. But I'm the one saying it. And I'm speaking for myself, not for anyone else, and not as anything else.
11.10.04
... in order to save our lives...
For a refugee family, life in Peshwar is full of difficulties. Afghan refugees are strongly warned to leave Pakistan. The refugee families face discrimination on a daily basis.
After the Northern Alliance collapsed and Taliban came to power, we moved back to Kabul with hope of liberation. Life under the Taliban rule was horrifying. After the defeat of the Taliban by the Americans, and the return of Northern Alliance, we noticed that the situation was not much different. The Northern Alliance were the other face of the same coin. It seemed as though we were in a new nightmare. Once again, we decided to leave the country. On our way to Jalalabad we were targeted once again, but this time by our "American brothers." The peace keepers targeted us and as a result I lost my father, mother, sister and nephew and four of us were seriously injured. We buried the bodies of my parents, sister and my nephew in Laghman province. We were brought to Pakistan for our injuries. I wished I had died in that instance, for I couldn't take the hardship anymore.
As soon as my brother got better, Commander Agah Gull once again asked my hand for marriage. My brother and I rejected his proposal again, however, he was persistent and started threatening our lives again. To save my family from this misery I decided to commit suicide, but unfortunately I did not succeed.
We are now living a secret life in Rawalpindi. We had to leave Peshawar because we were constantly threatened by Agah Gull. I never go anywhere alone. My disabled brother is collecting trash so we can survive. My other brother Ahmad Shah has gone to Kabul to sell our households because we have nothing here. He has not contacted us for the last three months.
Patient Stories from Malalai Hospital
The Afghan Women's Mission
10.10.04
The White House has appointed Mr. John Dimitris Negroponte to be United States ambassador to Iraq. He will preside over the largest embassy in the world, housed in the Republic Palace (misleadingly named Saddam's Palace by the U.S. occupation). He will be protected by high concrete walls, barbed wire and more than 150,000 occupation force, including several thousands of foreign mercenaries armed to the teeth with the most violent tools. Mr. Negroponte is a Greek-American diplomat. He is currently leading the diplomatic war against the people of Iraq as the U.S. envoy at the United Nations (UN) in New York. Negroponte is Jewish. A friend in Spain expressed his deep concern to me recently: " to appoint a Jew as ambassador to the Arab country that has been devastated because of the will of a cabal of Jewish neocons headed by Wolfowitz - � Bush is just an accessory - is like trying to put out a fire using buckets of gasoline".
Mr. Negroponte has served as U.S. Ambassador to Honduras from 1981-1985; a period during which the U.S. military aid to Honduras grew from $5 million to nearly $100 million, and more than $200 million in economic aid, making Honduras the largest aid recipient in the region. Honduras was the launching pad from which the Reagan administration runs its violent "war on terror" in Central American. The U.S-backed atrocities and terror were condemned by the International World Court in the Hague. Like most of his colleagues in the Bush administration, Mr. Negroponte is a "recycled Reaganite".
___________________________
OK let's see, Negroponte's a Jew, Bremer's a Jew, Tommy Franks may or may not be but likely is a Jew...but, really, who's keeping track? What difference does it make?
Funny how Negroponte's dropped off the radar though, isn't it? Considering where he is I mean. Iraq. He's the Ambassador to Iraq. But you never hear anything from him.
It actually never occurred to me that he was a Jew. I just thought he was a Satanic emissary. Then tonight I saw a picture of Sergei Lavrov - the Foreign Minister of Russia, a very powerful man in that country- and I thought damn, that guy looks just like Negroponte. Then I thought whoa, you don't suppose Lavrov's a Jew?
And then I thought, Negroponte? Naw, couldn't be. But yes. Oh yes.
So that's that.
This is a particular kind of Jewish male impotence. This is not "Jews", any more than it's "humans" or "men" or "white people".
It is a particular kind of all those, and a particular kind of Jew as well. "Zionist" is a word that gets used a lot, as a means of distinguishing these villainous cowards from orthodox and other Jews who are not seeking to establish a Jewish empire by violence and destruction. "Neo-cons" gets used a lot for the more political version, such as the men who hide behind George Bush, and who I suspect are hiding in the wings of John Kerry's campaign as well, though that's more doubt and suspicion than accusation.
This is an accusation. These men are Satanists.
Anybody who's ignoring that is simply hiding from it.
photo-AhmadRubaye/AFP
John Negroponte the Goebbels of Central America, now in Iraq, cSadrista, Iraq
9.10.04
One of the primary taboos of this culture is recognition of the intent behind broadcast media - the television and the radio as delivery systems. The implied purpose, the reason why they exist, which is never explained to children, is the same as that behind a grandmother's lap and folktales, or the patient words and gestures, the time a father takes to show a child how to do something.
We're hardwired to listen and observe when we're young, and that's been hijacked by other creatures who care nothing for what happens, to us or to our children, only for themselves.
Television is not a neutral space, and more importantly, more damning, it is not a common space except at its most extreme margins. But we're supposed to think of it, to feel it, as ours.
Free information! Martha Stewart's in jail! Floods in Arizona! Mars colony rebels!
That's the frequency, the wavelength it comes in on, but it's a marketing ploy, a sales device, those programs exist only to deliver attention, or they did in their first two or three generations; now they exist to put ideas into the blank pools of the public mind.
Kerry's getting attacked for being indecisive, or waffling, or some new word that means the same thing. But if you consider it, the craft that's the main tool of his opponents is virtually unbeatable in that arena.
The illusion is the television provides neutral space - or a worse lie, home space - it's ours, it's a grandmother, it wears grandmother's clothes. But it's the wolf in disguise. It's a predator, it ate our grandmother. Really, I mean it.
So if Kerry takes a stand the full power of the television mind-control technology will be turned on whatever stand he takes, and it will be vaporized.
These creatures have proved to themselves and to the world they can deny reality and rewrite it at their will, vagueness is the only possible move against that. So he gets attacked for vagueness, as he would be attacked for the particulars of any position he took.
-
What concerns me far more is that in each segment of the debates I've seen, each candidate, with the exception of Cheney, has used the word "kill". Used it almost dispassionately, as though it had no more weight than the word "taxes".
We're hardwired to listen and observe when we're young, and that's been hijacked by other creatures who care nothing for what happens, to us or to our children, only for themselves.
Television is not a neutral space, and more importantly, more damning, it is not a common space except at its most extreme margins. But we're supposed to think of it, to feel it, as ours.
Free information! Martha Stewart's in jail! Floods in Arizona! Mars colony rebels!
That's the frequency, the wavelength it comes in on, but it's a marketing ploy, a sales device, those programs exist only to deliver attention, or they did in their first two or three generations; now they exist to put ideas into the blank pools of the public mind.
Kerry's getting attacked for being indecisive, or waffling, or some new word that means the same thing. But if you consider it, the craft that's the main tool of his opponents is virtually unbeatable in that arena.
The illusion is the television provides neutral space - or a worse lie, home space - it's ours, it's a grandmother, it wears grandmother's clothes. But it's the wolf in disguise. It's a predator, it ate our grandmother. Really, I mean it.
So if Kerry takes a stand the full power of the television mind-control technology will be turned on whatever stand he takes, and it will be vaporized.
These creatures have proved to themselves and to the world they can deny reality and rewrite it at their will, vagueness is the only possible move against that. So he gets attacked for vagueness, as he would be attacked for the particulars of any position he took.
-
What concerns me far more is that in each segment of the debates I've seen, each candidate, with the exception of Cheney, has used the word "kill". Used it almost dispassionately, as though it had no more weight than the word "taxes".
7.10.04
6.10.04
The hopes of Europe�s six million Jews are centered on emigration. I was asked: �Can you bring six million Jews to Palestine?� I replied, �No.� ... From the depths of the tragedy I want to save ... young people [for Palestine]. The old ones will pass. They will bear their fate or they will not. They are dust, economic and moral dust in a cruel world ... Only the branch of the young shall survive. They have to accept it.
Chaim Weizmann, 1937
President of the World Zionist Organization
first President of the State of Israel
The danger for the Jewish People is because those who are irreligious and who are heretics are the leaders of the Jewish People. Therefore because of them the nations of the world are misled into hating Jews, so one of the greatest things to do would be to selflessly proclaim to the nations that the Zionists are not the representatives of the Jewish People, and that religious Jews have no connection with them. We should have had self-sacrifice to do this, but because of our many sins, people are frightened of public opinion, and if anyone should say these things about the Zionists, there will be religious leaders who will fight against them with all sorts of excuses.
Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, 1961
We were given the Holy Land by G-d in order to be able to study and practice the Torah without disturbance and to attain levels of holiness difficult to attain outside of the Holy Land. We abused the privilege and we were expelled. That is exactly what all Jews say in their prayers on every Jewish festival, "Umipnay chatoenu golinu mayartsaynu" - "Because of our sins we were expelled from our land".
We have been forsworn by G-d "not to enter the Holy Land as a body before the predestined time", "not to rebel against the nations", to be loyal citizens, not to do anything against the will of any nation or its honour, not to seek vengeance, discord, restitution or compensation; "not to leave exile ahead of time." On the contrary; we have to be humble and accept the yoke of exile. To violate the oaths would result in "your flesh will be made prey as the deer and the antelope in the forest," and the redemption will be delayed.
THE ROLE OF ZIONISM IN THE HOLOCAUST
Rabbi Gedalya Liebermann
True Torah Jews
5.10.04
totophoto: Odd Andersen/AFP
The 'Bushmen' are the oldest inhabitants of southern Africa, where they have lived for at least 20,000 years. Their home is in the vast expanse of the Kalahari desert. There are many different Bushman peoples � they have no collective name for themselves, and the terms 'Bushman', 'San', 'Basarwa' (in Botswana) and so on are used variously. Most of those which are widely understood are imposed by outsiders and have some pejorative sense; many now use and accept the term 'Bushmen'. They speak a variety of languages, all of which incorporate 'click' sounds represented in writing by symbols such as ! or /.
In August 2000, officials from the wildlife department and local police department in Rakops, a town in eastern Botswana, entered the Bushman village of Molapo, in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. The officers said that Bushmen had been 'over-hunting' or hunting animals which are not included on the 'special game licences' which they now need to hunt at all. Around 20 men and four women were pushed around and hit; some of the men (including one too old to hunt) were then taken into the bush near Molapo and interrogated over a three to six day period until some said they had killed eland and/or giraffe. The links below are to some of the statements made to Survival by the Bushman men and women involved. (Please note that when names are not given, it is because the speakers feel safer remaining anonymous.)
Bushman A
Bushman B
Bushman C
Bushman D
Bushman E
Bushman woman
Survival News
Blackie Marole has officially taken over from Louis Nchindo as Debswana managing director. He took over on October 1, from Nchindo who retired on September 30, marking the end of his 30 year career in the industry. Born in 1955 at Semolale village, Marole has over 20 years experience in the diamond industry, 18 of which he served the government and four years as a De Beers executive.
Mmegi Business Week 04.Oct.04
Online sales of illegal ivory are booming in the United States despite a longtime global trade ban, conservationists charge.
In a practice that goes virtually unchecked, a new analysis suggests customers are buying, with a mouse-click, what appear to be illegal new ivory trinkets by thousands.
The sale of most new ivory was banned in 1989 to curb the slaughter of elephants in Africa. The ban has been instrumental in the species' recovery in several nations. Consumers in the United States still can legally buy items like chess sets and cutlery fashioned from antique ivory as long as the sales are accompanied by permits and certification documents.
Americans have the world's biggest appetite for ivory, along with the Japanese and Europeans. And a new, burgeoning clientele has conservationists especially worried: the rising middle class in China.
Investigators for Traffic, a wildlife trade monitoring network, say they found more than 1,000 ivory items advertised each week on eBay and other auction Web sites. More than one-third of the merchandise specifically was described as elephant ivory. Few pieces carry even a pretense of documentation, they said.
Officials for eBay said they pull listings for illegal and unethical items, but ivory is subject to complex regulations. The online marketer said it is working with law enforcement and conservationists to improve its procedures
[...]
Conservationists calculate that, based on the number of items seized and sold, as many as 4,000 elephants, hippos and other ivory-bearing animals are being killed each year for their tusks.
They said U.S. law enforcement was doing a "good job despite limited resources" of spotting illegal imports through conventional channels. However, they said the new online markets were operating with "little oversight."
Houston Chronicle 25.Sep.04
Bono and Geldof are both in their own way assisting Tony Blair in saving those parts of the world they agree should be saved, that are being neglected and abandoned, or that they agree the public would most approve of their attempting to save, or should approve of it, or something near to that.
It's priorities, but the priorities aren't mentioned, let alone discussed. People are people, and the poor are the poor and that's that. As though 200 Bushmen are the equivalent of 200 urban street hustlers, morally and ethically.
Not discriminating - not saying "these should be first, those should be second" which is called, as most anyone who watches television these days knows, "triage" - is government by sentiment. There is no triage involved in Bono's world view.
In a very general perspective, from a long ways away, the hierarchy should be, in Africa - primitives first, then animals, then villages, then urban centers. But it goes just the opposite way, with the primitives on the bottom, the animals, as the interview with anonymous "Bushman C" below implies, are more valuable than the Bushmen themselves, because the animals are near and dear to the tourists who are at the top of the food chain, with the villagers slightly below the animals, and the urban Africans slightly above. American house pets are of more sentimental value to Bono's audience than African lions, which are of more value than African urban poor; who are of more sentimental value than the vanishing primitives, to Bono and Geldof, evidently; but I'm saying those primitives are of more real human value than anyone else.
The race to tempt and corrupt them is intense because of that. So that they can be held up as being just as venal and profane as all the rest, only dumber and less sophisticated.
We must be quick now.
This must end.
Government by sentiment is like medicine by sentiment, in the long run it causes much more harm than it does good, except for the increasingly petulant and desperate sentimentalists who are gratified by seeing their childish values played out on the world stage.
It also dishonors those unsentimental warriors at the front lines. Talk to a doctor or a nurse who's done time in a crisis zone, where the bodies are piling up and more are coming in by the hour and there is no medicine, or even clean water. "Triage", baby. It's all about triage.
Bono is acting out the infantile values of his viewing public; catharsis is his job, but he's an entertainer, transferring that power into the realm of policy is a bad thing, tempting because it offers easy answers to the hardest questions we have to answer now.
Who should live, and who should die?
The easy way out of that is saying everyone should live. But that means eventually people will die randomly or by attrition and neglect, which is what Bono and Geldof, and their fellow stalwart Tony Blair, are standing against, and the choices will then be made by disembodied corporate wisdom like that that's given us the Iraqi body count; or natural death will rise out of the corners of civilization and sweep across us all indiscriminately.
Which is not the same as "everyone should live".
Precisely that eventuality is best met by people who can live lightly and close to the ground, not by technology-addicts with a critical mass of millions.
It's a sickness of emotional immaturity, and it doesn't work. Certain kinds of people are sustained by those policies - the compromised, the adaptable, the refugees from village-living entering the metastasizing slums - while the true humans, the ones who carry ways of being that are proven by thousands of years of experience and tradition, are exterminated by economic machines like Chevron and de Beers, that Bono facilitates with his tacit disregard of the central part they play.
It's priorities, but the priorities aren't mentioned, let alone discussed. People are people, and the poor are the poor and that's that. As though 200 Bushmen are the equivalent of 200 urban street hustlers, morally and ethically.
Not discriminating - not saying "these should be first, those should be second" which is called, as most anyone who watches television these days knows, "triage" - is government by sentiment. There is no triage involved in Bono's world view.
In a very general perspective, from a long ways away, the hierarchy should be, in Africa - primitives first, then animals, then villages, then urban centers. But it goes just the opposite way, with the primitives on the bottom, the animals, as the interview with anonymous "Bushman C" below implies, are more valuable than the Bushmen themselves, because the animals are near and dear to the tourists who are at the top of the food chain, with the villagers slightly below the animals, and the urban Africans slightly above. American house pets are of more sentimental value to Bono's audience than African lions, which are of more value than African urban poor; who are of more sentimental value than the vanishing primitives, to Bono and Geldof, evidently; but I'm saying those primitives are of more real human value than anyone else.
The race to tempt and corrupt them is intense because of that. So that they can be held up as being just as venal and profane as all the rest, only dumber and less sophisticated.
We must be quick now.
This must end.
Government by sentiment is like medicine by sentiment, in the long run it causes much more harm than it does good, except for the increasingly petulant and desperate sentimentalists who are gratified by seeing their childish values played out on the world stage.
It also dishonors those unsentimental warriors at the front lines. Talk to a doctor or a nurse who's done time in a crisis zone, where the bodies are piling up and more are coming in by the hour and there is no medicine, or even clean water. "Triage", baby. It's all about triage.
Bono is acting out the infantile values of his viewing public; catharsis is his job, but he's an entertainer, transferring that power into the realm of policy is a bad thing, tempting because it offers easy answers to the hardest questions we have to answer now.
Who should live, and who should die?
The easy way out of that is saying everyone should live. But that means eventually people will die randomly or by attrition and neglect, which is what Bono and Geldof, and their fellow stalwart Tony Blair, are standing against, and the choices will then be made by disembodied corporate wisdom like that that's given us the Iraqi body count; or natural death will rise out of the corners of civilization and sweep across us all indiscriminately.
Which is not the same as "everyone should live".
Precisely that eventuality is best met by people who can live lightly and close to the ground, not by technology-addicts with a critical mass of millions.
It's a sickness of emotional immaturity, and it doesn't work. Certain kinds of people are sustained by those policies - the compromised, the adaptable, the refugees from village-living entering the metastasizing slums - while the true humans, the ones who carry ways of being that are proven by thousands of years of experience and tradition, are exterminated by economic machines like Chevron and de Beers, that Bono facilitates with his tacit disregard of the central part they play.
War On Plastic Bags
Thousands of Rwandans have taken the day off work to pick up plastic bags as part of a government attempt to clean up the environment.
Shops have been banned from giving plastic bags to their customers and police are reportedly stopping plastic-bag users in the street.
Some supermarkets have been closed down for flouting the ban, said environment minister Drocella Mugorewera.
"We want people to use traditional baskets instead," she said.
BBCNews 04.Oct.04
ChevronTexaco today confirmed that the Angola Block 0 concession held by its wholly owned subsidiary Cabinda Gulf Oil Company Ltd. (CABGOC) has been extended beyond 2010 to 2030 by the government of Angola and national oil company, Sonangol. Comprising 36 major fields including Takula and Malongo, the 2,155-square-mile concession lies off the coast of Cabinda Province. CABGOC, with a 39.2 percent interest, is operator on behalf of its association partners, Sonangol (41 percent), Total (10 percent) and ENI (9.8 percent). Current average production from Block 0 is approximately 400,000 barrels of oil per day. Speaking today at a signing ceremony in Washington, D.C., ChevronTexaco's chairman and chief executive officer, Dave O'Reilly, said: "ChevronTexaco would like to express its thanks to the government of Angola, Sonangol and our Block 0 Association partners for the constructive approach they have taken in helping to reach this milestone.
[...]
Among the factors that could cause actual results to differ materially are future demand for crude oil and natural gas; actions of OPEC; potential delays in the development, construction or start-up of planned projects; inability or failure of the company's joint venture partners to fund their share of development activities and operations; potential failure to achieve expected production from existing and future oil and gas development projects; potential disruptions or interruptions of the company's development activities and operations due to accidents, political events, severe weather, civil unrest or war; local political events and general economic conditions.
[...]
Among the factors that could cause actual results to differ materially are future demand for crude oil and natural gas; actions of OPEC; potential delays in the development, construction or start-up of planned projects; inability or failure of the company's joint venture partners to fund their share of development activities and operations; potential failure to achieve expected production from existing and future oil and gas development projects; potential disruptions or interruptions of the company's development activities and operations due to accidents, political events, severe weather, civil unrest or war; local political events and general economic conditions.
You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of the press release. Unless legally required, ChevronTexaco undertakes no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
PRNewswire 13.May.04
4.10.04
3.10.04
It isn't the support of the American people, it's their money, and the political stability necessary to get that money into the Middle East.
So now when Americans see pictures of broken bleeding children and grieving women and men, they'll think of the massacre at the sewage treatment facility, it balances the rising death toll of women and children in Iraq and Gaza. Clever P.R.
The Spanish train bombing. Clever P.R.
The day after Kerry legitmately and in absolute dignity trounces George Bush, removes him from serious consideration as anything but a hired stooge, Al Qaeda releases a video urging young Muslims to attack America and its allies. I'm not sure who "allies" means in that context, besides Israel, at this late date, but it does erase the image of Bush whining and stammering in the minds of the confused and frightened public, in the US. Clever P.R.
I realize I'm speaking the unspeakable, and if I'm mistaken about the main point the rest won't matter, but it's just too consistent. And late.
Those children were enticed to that place. It was not a celebration - it was a staged event. They were drawn there intentionally.
This is all coming from the same sick heart. A cunning honed through millenia of persecution. A vengeful and inhuman intelligence.
They will expect us to wait until after the election, I think.
So now when Americans see pictures of broken bleeding children and grieving women and men, they'll think of the massacre at the sewage treatment facility, it balances the rising death toll of women and children in Iraq and Gaza. Clever P.R.
The Spanish train bombing. Clever P.R.
The day after Kerry legitmately and in absolute dignity trounces George Bush, removes him from serious consideration as anything but a hired stooge, Al Qaeda releases a video urging young Muslims to attack America and its allies. I'm not sure who "allies" means in that context, besides Israel, at this late date, but it does erase the image of Bush whining and stammering in the minds of the confused and frightened public, in the US. Clever P.R.
I realize I'm speaking the unspeakable, and if I'm mistaken about the main point the rest won't matter, but it's just too consistent. And late.
Those children were enticed to that place. It was not a celebration - it was a staged event. They were drawn there intentionally.
This is all coming from the same sick heart. A cunning honed through millenia of persecution. A vengeful and inhuman intelligence.
They will expect us to wait until after the election, I think.
1.10.04
Falluja
"They cannot all leave the city due to their huge number and miserable living situations. They cannot leave and be a burden on other families."Doctor Ahmad Tahir at Falluja's general hospital said seven dead, including children and women, and 13 wounded were received at the hospital.
Another doctor, Muhammad al-Dulaimi, at the same hospital earlier said the dead were civilians.
An AP photographer saw the bodies of women and children being removed from the rubble of the homes.
The US military said that it "conducted a precision strike on yet another confirmed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi terrorist site in northeast Falluja."
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