General

Military and defense — Comments Off on U.S. troops under fire again
27
May 03

U.S. troops under fire again

U.S. troops under fire again in Iraq, two killed:

    The casualties from the attack with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms in Falluja were the heaviest suffered by U.S. forces in a single incident since President George W. Bush declared major combat over on May 1.

    It brought to four the number of fatalities in 24 hours from ”hostile actions.” …

    It was the second attack on U.S. troops reported from Falluja in recent days. Last Wednesday, U.S. soldiers killed two people in retaliatory fire.

    Some Falluja residents interviewed by Reuters in recent weeks have expressed nostalgia for the days of Saddam. In two incidents late last month, U.S. forces opened fire on angry crowds, killing at least 15 people, according to witnesses.

    Two American soldiers were killed and four wounded in two ambushes on Monday, one in Baghdad and one north of the capital.

General — Comments Off on US adds power to India’s
26
May 03

US adds power to India’s

US adds power to India’s Israeli links:

    Both moves highlight the burgeoning alliance between the two most potent non-Islamic militaries in the Middle East and South Asia, a trend that has the enthusiastic support of Bush administration hawks, particularly in the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney’s office. That alliance will again be spotlighted with next month’s scheduled visit to India by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

    While Israel sees India as a comrade in the fight against Islamic militants, the US has a somewhat broader agenda to pursue with New Delhi, particularly its possible role as a counter-balance to China, which US hawks see as Washington’s strategic competitor in Asia. “India is the most overlooked of our potential allies in a strategy to contain China,” according to Lloyd Richardson of the Hudson Institute, a think tank very close to the administration.

    With India determined to build a naval force capable of projecting power into the South China Sea, says Conn Hallinan, an analyst at the University of California at Santa Cruz, Washington has especially courted India’s navy, most recently with the Malabar IV joint exercises involving thousands of sailors and pilots from both countries.

    Not coincidentally, some of the biggest boosters of US-Indian military ties both in and outside the Bush administration are also prominent neo-conservatives with close ties to Israel’s ruling Likud Party.

General — Comments Off on India rediscovers kama
26
May 03

India rediscovers kama

Asia Times: India rediscovers kama:

    It was the land of Mahabharat, the greatest epic known to mankind, where Lord Krishna, whose divine exhortations are contained in the Bhagwad Gita, could be worshipped with his beloved Radha, who was someone else’s spouse, perhaps that of his maternal uncle. It was the land of Khajuraho temples depicting copulating couples and multiples on its inner walls that prudes consider pornographic. It was the land of Kalidasa, one of the greatest Sanskrit poets who celebrated sex with an openness unparalleled in world literature.

    With its decline, for some obscure reason ascribed to a natural cycle of the rise and fall of civilizations, India turned prudish and guilt-ridden about free sex. The introduction of Islamic and Judeo-Christian morality did not help. India ceased to be proud of Khajuraho and Kalidas. Krishna and Radha were still worshipped together, but children would not be told about their open illicit love affair. Both kama (sensual pleasure) and artha (wealth creation), the two essential aspects of the Indian way of life (dharma) suffered. India ceased being itself.

    But as artha was revitalized with the introduction of new economic policies of liberalization and globalization and new technologies such as computers and the Internet in the early 1990s, it seems now that kama too has made a comeback. Perhaps the two go together.

    Several sex surveys carried out recently point to a definite resurgence of guilt-free extramarital sex, as much on the initiative of women now as it was on the bidding of men before. Commenting on the findings of the KamaSutra Cross Tab Sex Survey 2003, conducted in association with Indiatimes, published on Thursday, sex expert Prakash Kothari said, “One can easily kiss that crummy era goodbye. A nation of 1 billion is getting sexy and kicking the guilt.” Psychiatrist Sanjay Chugh, MD, is jubilant: Finally, “it” is happening in India.

General — 3 Comments
20
May 03

Calling all homeless bloggers

If you need a blog and you’re not going to go crazy uploading crap to my server I’m willing to take any comers for free and clear. All you have to do is be my friend. It also helps if I don’t REALLY hate your blog. Anyway, you design the page or I do (provided it takes me less than 30 min.) and then we’ll put it up.

Religion/philosophy — Comments Off on The ongoing evolution of Christianity
18
May 03

The ongoing evolution of Christianity

Via Robotwisdom: The ongoing evolution of Christianity:

    In her new book, “Beyond Belief,” Pagels draws on further study of the more than 50 discovered texts – but particularly the Gospel of Thomas – to reveal a diversity of early teachings about Jesus that will resonate with many people today.

    “Although later denounced by certain leaders as ‘heretics,’ ” she writes, “many of these Christians saw themselves as not so much believers as seekers, people who ‘seek for God.’ ”


    Pagels, who teaches religion at Princeton University, points out that the Gospel of John is the only one in the New Testament that actually promotes the idea of Jesus as God in human form, and she argues, based on research, that it was written explicitly to counter the Gospel of Thomas, which said otherwise. Thomas’s gospel, she writes, teaches “that God’s light shines not only in Jesus but, potentially at least, in everyone … and encourages the hearer … to seek to know God through one’s own divinely given capacity, since all are created in the image of God.”

    Thomas teaches that one’s affinity with God is the key to the kingdom. A quote from the gospel reads: “Jesus said, ‘Let the one who seeks not stop seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled; when he becomes troubled, he will be astonished and will rule over all things.'”


    The gospels of John and Thomas share striking similarities, however. Both encourage people to look toward “the beginning” not the end of time, and both emphasize, unlike Mark, that the kingdom of God is not to be expected in the future, “but is already here – an immediate and continuing spiritual reality,” Pagels says.

    In her graceful, illuminating exploration of various works – including the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, which shows that women were also early teachers, and the Gospel of Truth, which speaks of God as Father and Mother – Pagels explicitly raises the question of how different Christianity might have been had these works not been banned.

Religion/philosophy — Comments Off on Richard Sennett
17
May 03

Richard Sennett

I’ve been reading this book, Authority, by Richard Sennett, and consequently have found myself looking up information and articles by or about him in the hopes of coming across some juicy ideas.

Guardian UK: Inner-city scholar:

    But if he is rarely critical of individuals, he holds nothing back in his criticism of the new economy in which “to make it you really have to plunge into much more superficial social relations. It is dysfunctional to feel loyalty to an organisation. The notion of accumulating a life history with an institution or a person doesn’t work in this economy. The boom gave people the impression that the class divide was going to end – that there would be no losers. In fact, it has made it worse.”

    He is currently overseeing a research project in New York which involves interviewing young people in their 20s, who have gone into financial services, IT and the new media. They are confused, he says: “Everyone thinks they are going to be the next Martha Lane Fox but they are learning very quickly that all these fantasy worlds just aren’t going to happen. Don’t commit, don’t be dependent, stay loose. Loyalty is very low on this list. But if you think dependence is bad, what you produce is a damaged human being.”

    Ruth Levitas of the University of Bristol describes The Corrosion Of Character as a “wonderful description of the way in which insecure work has taken away the basics for a certain kind of character”. But she also thinks there’s something about the thesis “that doesn’t work in relation to women, something that’s not quite right. Ultimately, I felt the book doesn’t address gender”.

Guardian Book Reviews: Integrity rules: Richard Sennett’s unusual memoir, Respect, is also a meditation on self-worth and self-respect:

    Sennett knows this better than anyone. The Fall of Public Man was scathing about the way self-absorption kills off one’s ability to pay attention to others and function in the public realm. Sennett’s memoirs are not at all narcissistic in this way, but neither do they lend themselves to exploring the experiences of people on the receiving end of welfare. The argument, as a result, seems to become more abstract and abstracted the further it gets from Cabrini Green.

    “Treating people with respect,” Sennett writes in his conclusion, “cannot occur simply by commanding it should happen. Mutual recognition has to be negotiated; this negotiation engages the complexities of personal character as much as social structure.” What exactly does this mean? The only moral Sennett is prepared to offer has to do with what he calls “the psychology of autonomy”, which involves “accepting in others what one does not understand”. By allowing of someone that you do not understand them, you grant them their dignity; by granting them their dignity, you thereby strengthen your own. It’s an ethical win-win.

General — Comments Off on Sayyid Qutb
17
May 03

Sayyid Qutb

The New York Times Magazine had this long, interesting piece, The Philosopher of Islamic Terror (non NYT source as they now charge for the same story), on a philosopher named Sayyid Qutb who wrote a very influential radical islamic book called ‘Milestones’. Here is a long passage from the article that provides the most meat:

    Qutb wrote that, all over the world, humans had reached a moment of unbearable crisis. The human race had lost touch with human nature. Man’s inspiration, intelligence and morality were degenerating. Sexual relations were deteriorating ”to a level lower than the beasts.” Man was miserable, anxious and skeptical, sinking into idiocy, insanity and crime. People were turning, in their unhappiness, to drugs, alcohol and existentialism. Qutb admired economic productivity and scientific knowledge. But he did not think that wealth and science were rescuing the human race. He figured that, on the contrary, the richest countries were the unhappiest of all. And what was the cause of this unhappiness — this wretched split between man’s truest nature and modern life?

    A great many cultural critics in Europe and America asked this question in the middle years of the 20th century, and a great many of them, following Nietzsche and other philosophers, pointed to the origins of Western civilization in ancient Greece, where man was said to have made his fatal error. This error was philosophical. It consisted of placing an arrogant and deluded faith in the power of human reason — an arrogant faith that, after many centuries, had created in modern times a tyranny of technology over life.

Continue reading →

Science — Comments Off on Like fine wine
17
May 03

Like fine wine

I have a little folder on my computer at work where I file away little links and things I meant to write about or mention on the site. I was very glad to see this recent article, Like Fine Wine, Personality Improves with Age. I’d like to think we can actually change and improve as we get older:

    The team found that conscientiousness increased with age, with the biggest jumps occurring among those individuals in their 20s. Agreeableness also climbed with age, largely among thirty-somethings. Men and women differed in their relative neuroticism: as women aged, their neurotic tendencies declined, but this was not the case for men. Openness waned slightly for both sexes, as did extraversion in women.

General — Comments Off on Survey: Israel yet to grasp
16
May 03

Survey: Israel yet to grasp

  1. Survey: Israel yet to grasp concept of democracy: More than half the Jewish population of Israel – 53 percent – is opposed to full equal rights for Israeli Arabs, according to a survey conducted last month by the Israel Democracy Institute. Inside the Jewish Fascist Theocracy.
  2. Japan moves to boost military: There goes the Pacifist constitution. Took about fifty years to move back to militarism. The bills, which have now been sent to the upper house and are expected to become law next month, will give the government more powers to respond to an attack on the country.
  3. US trying to give the appearance of control: U.S. Intensifies Security Crackdown in Iraq: Soldiers in Baghdad carried out 300 patrols overnight and arrested 92 people, U.S. officials said, an effort designed to show that troops will be more visible throughout the troubled Iraqi capital, where carjackings, thievery and drive-by attacks on government facilities are impeding reconstruction plans.
  4. Russia trying to give the appearance of control: Putin Offers an Amnesty Plan Covering Most Chechen Rebels
  5. Disarming the resistance: U-S military tells Iraqis to turn in all guns or face arrest
  6. Dirty bomb victims ‘may be shot’: Basically, if you get infected with biological weapons the police may shoot you.
  7. Keepers of Bush Image Lift Stagecraft to New Heights: On Tuesday, at a speech promoting his economic plan in Indianapolis, White House aides went so far as to ask people in the crowd behind Mr. Bush to take off their ties, WISH-TV in Indianapolis reported, so they would look more like the ordinary folk the president said would benefit from his tax cut.
  8. Pole chosen to be deputy NATO secretary general: Poland receives part of its bribe for supporting the US-led war.
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