- Humor and it’s power to restore perspective, promote cultural understanding, and emotional balance: Did You Hear the One About the Suicide Bomber?
- Show Highlights ‘Outlaw Comic’ Bill Hicks
- The banality of the good:
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In the Cafe Orange on the Oranienburgerstrasse, in the now trendy heart of what used to be East Berlin, I talk to a guy dressed in T-shirt, sandals and designer sunglasses. An old ’68er, he is sharply critical of the current policies of the Bush administration. At one point he leans forward and says, teasingly: “Don’t you think we need a new Boston tea party?” Surely, he jokes, the Boston tea party was good for relations between Britain and America – in the long term. When he gets up to leave, I notice that he puts on a black baseball cap advertising “American Eagle”. “Ja,” he says, “das habe ich in Boston gekauft.” (“I bought it in Boston.”)
Yes, there is some serious power politics, too. It is dangerous for the world to have only one hyperpower. It is dangerous for America itself to be that only hyperpower. As the guy in the Cafe Orange in Berlin argued, one reason European-American relations are so bad is that Europe is weak. The US needs a stronger partner, and Europe badly needs Britain in order to become that stronger partner. Dead right. And that’s what the real Europe can help us do.
Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention the name of the guy in the Cafe Orange. It was Joschka Fischer. Yes, that Joschka Fischer: the one who’s Germany’s Green foreign minister, and may soon be Europe’s first foreign minister.
Society
15
Jun 03
Humor and it’s power
14
Jun 03
Some news
Here are some good news stories I came across today:
- Resistance to occupation is growing:
- “America’s generals, happy to boast about the rapid defeat of Saddam’s regime, now admit the war is far from over. In Baghdad yesterday Lieutenant General David McKiernan, commander of US ground forces in Iraq, said his troops would be needed for a long time to come, that Baghdad and a large swathe of northern and western Iraq is only a “semi-permissive” environment, and that “subversive forces” are still active. Should all this be so surprising?
The US and Britain said they came to liberate Iraq and protect its people. The failure to understand how Iraqis would respond may be rooted in arrogance. It is also a colossal failure in intelligence which may prove to be at least as important as the inability to find any of Iraq’s banned weapons. The commander of British forces in the war, Air Marshal Brian Burridge, admitted as much in remarkably frank evidence to MPs this week. Asked about the problems of “policing” Iraq, and the number of forces needed to do the job, he replied: “I’m not sure we understand yet.”
- Mounting opposition or wary citizens trying to protect themselves? Iraqis Buying and Hoarding Guns, Grenades
- US purge aims to eliminate resistance
- US loses helicopter, fighter jet in Iraq:
- The campaign came as the top American civilian administrator, L. Paul Bremer, issued a notice banning all gatherings, pronouncements or publications that incite to disorder, riot, violence against the US-led occupation forces, or espouse the return of the Baath Party. The decree said violators would be arrested and held.
- US turns to the Taliban
07
Jun 03
News-related
- Reshaping empire: US redeploys its troops to cover ‘arc of instability’
- Iraqi Shi’ites and Kurds challenge Americans in Iraq: Shiite, Kurdish Leaders Decide to ‘Play Hardball’
- More Than 13,000 May Face Deportation
- Constitutional protections rescinded to fight ‘terror’: For enemy combatant, speaking with lawyer is impossible
- Political Oppression, Not Poverty, Inspires Terrorism: Seeking the Roots of Terrorism
- Prohibiting vocal opposition to US occupation in Iraq: U.S. To Ban “Incitement” Against Occupation In Iraq
06
Jun 03
From Authority:
I’ve been reading this book, Authority by Richard Sennett. It has some pretty meaty ideas in it, even if a lot of them come from citing other sources. I liked this one:
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The young Hegel thought that the burden of establishing conditions of liberty in society lay with the oppressed; no benevolent Platonic guardian, no necessary angel, would come to the rescue. The Hegel of the Phenomenology has clarified this idea. Hegel does so by defining the birth of liberty — in the bondsman’s consciousness of his work. He then describes the stages of liberty through which the bondsman passes. There are four of these stages, and the movement from each to the next occurs when the oppressed negates what he or she had formerly believed.
These four stages are stoicism, scepticism, the unhappy consciousness, and rational consciousness. They begin with the stoic’s withdrawal from the world into his or her own thought, a primitive, inward freedom. The scepticism of the next stage turns toward the world: the bondsman, still an obedient servant, nonetheless disbelieves in the role he acts and in the lord’s moral superiority. The unhappy consciousness takes this sceptical knowledge about a social relationship inside; there is a lord and bondsman in every human being. Hegel calls unhappy consciousness “consciousness of self as a dual-natured, merely contradictory being.” In a rational consciousness this knowledge again becomes social; the unhappy schism each person feels in himself he also sees in others. Hegel calls this final stage of freedom “rational” because now the person can perceive and act with others according to common purposes; there is no longer the need to fight others for recognition, since one’s own consciousness is so developed that one knows the divisions within oneself are divisions that exist in all humanity. Hegel also calls this rational, purposive consciousness an “absolute” state of freedom, and the use of the word “absolute” is key to his overall intentions: “Of the absolute it must be said that it is essentially a result, that only in the end is it what it truly is.”
03
Jun 03
Anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews to Demonstrate at so-called Israel Day Parade
Via LibertyForum: Neturei Karta: Anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews to Demonstrate at so-called Israel Day Parade:
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On Sunday, June 1, 2003 beginning at 11:15 am at 5th Ave. and 59th St. in Manhattan there will be a group of anti-Zionist Jews demonstrating against Zionism and the Zionist State that will be celebrated by marchers in their so-called Israel Day Parade.
The Anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews will proclaim their loyalty to pure Judaism and their opposition to Zionist heresy, which violates every principle of the Jewish religion. These people shall proclaim that the idolatrous Zionist ideology has no role in the life of an Orthodox Jew, and that Jews are obligated by Judaism to live in peace and harmony with every other people throughout the world, including of course, the native Palestinian People.
Pure Judaism proclaims that we are to accept the decree of Exile of G-d and live among the nations in every corner of the Earth, and are not to establish a State and attempt to end the divinely ordained Exile.
Pure Judaism forbids the uprooting of the indigenous people of the Holy Land, it proclaims its principles of humanity and justice that demands the total restoration of all human, civil, economic and political rights of the Palestinians, including the right of return of all Palestinians to their homes in historic Palestine, thereby enabling Palestine to be governed by its original native inhabitants.
These principles are essential ingredients of Judaism, and no amount of Zionism brainwashing of many Jews throughout the world and Zionist media propaganda can ever do away with these eternal principles. We declare to all non-Jews who believe that support for Zionist idolatry and ethnic cleansing demonstrates sympathy for the Jewish People that this is a grave error!!
We beseech all well-meaning non-Jews to understand the truth of what Judaism teaches, and we encourage our fellow Jews to resist the incessant hysterical and paranoia-filled propaganda of the Zionists, their heresy and their xenophobia, and learn the truth of what Judaism is and what Zionism is.
Those of us who oppose Zionism express true compassion for the Jewish People because we address the ROOT CAUSE of the suffering in the Holy Land inasmuch as Zionism is the cause of bloodshed in the Middle East and hatred of Jews throughout the world.
03
Jun 03
New Issue of Parameters
There is a new issue of Parameters, the quarterly journal of the US army war college, out now. It’s full of good reading.
30
May 03
The Cream of the Crop
Most of these are from Antiwar.com:
- Suspect in Morocco Blast Dies
- Gulf Cooperation Council Considers Missile Defense System
- Lynches Say They Can’t Discuss POW Rescue:
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PALESTINE, W.Va. – American POW Pfc. Jessica Lynch’s parents said Thursday they are not permitted to discuss details of their daughter’s capture and rescue in Iraq.
Greg and Deadra Lynch also said they couldn’t comment on media reports that dispute military information released on Lynch’s April 1 rescue from an Iraqi hospital.
- NYPress: John Ashcroft fears acid on his face, defends forced labor
- This brings up an interesting issue: how much control does the military have over an enlistee’s body? NYC reservist guilty of refusing to take anthrax vaccine
30
May 03
US Space Dominance
U.S. ‘negation’ policy in space raises concerns abroad:
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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — While much of the talk around the Pentagon these days focuses on “transformation” of the military, some of the United States’ closest allies worry about another buzzword being used in subtler ways at the National Reconnaissance Office: “negation.”
The nation’s largest intelligence agency by budget and in control of all U.S. spy satellites, NRO is talking openly with the U.S. Air Force Space Command about actively denying the use of space for intelligence purposes to any other nation at any time—not just adversaries, but even longtime allies, according to NRO director Peter Teets.
At the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs in early April, Teets proposed that U.S. resources from military, civilian and commercial satellites be combined to provide “persistence in total situational awareness, for the benefit of this nation’s war fighters.” If allies don’t like the new paradigm of space dominance, said Air Force secretary James Roche, they’ll just have to learn to accept it. The allies, he told the symposium, will have “no veto power.”
28
May 03
Death Camps
The Courier Mail: US plans death camp:
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THE US has floated plans to turn Guantanamo Bay into a death camp, with its own death row and execution chamber. Prisoners would be tried, convicted and executed without leaving its boundaries, without a jury and without right of appeal, The Mail on Sunday newspaper reported yesterday. The plans were revealed by Major-General Geoffrey Miller, who is in charge of 680 suspects from 43 countries, including two Australians. The suspects have been held at Camp Delta on Cuba without charge for 18 months. General Miller said building a death row was one plan. Another was to have a permanent jail, with possibly an execution chamber.
27
May 03
Linkage
- U.S. Youths Rebel at Harsh School:
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Students said Mr. Lichfield set up a system typical of Wwasps programs. Children were divided into six levels, the lower ones forbidden to speak freely or raise their eyes, the higher ones free to discipline and punish inferiors. A muscular cadre of minimum-wage staff members enforced the system. Communication between parents and children was barred or closely edited. Parents were told that complaints from children were manipulative lies.
- Proposal: Webcams to keep homeland safe:
- But if onsite cameras beamed photos to the World Wide Web, Americans could monitor these sites from home. If they spied a potential attacker — a masked man trying to scale a power plant fence, or a van parked next to a reservoir — they could alert security agents with a click of the mouse. Agents would call local authorities and help avert disaster.
- HP’s Linux Laptops Prove Popular
- Putin and Hu Find Common Ground on Korea and Iraq:
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As permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, the two countries opposed the U.S.-led war on Iraq, but have now backed the U.S. plan for post-war development. Both leaders reaffirmed their common view on Iraq, saying the role of the United Nations had to be central to its future reconstruction. On energy, a fast-growing area of joint economic interest, Hu and Putin agreed to strengthen cooperation, including building a pipeline that will allow Russia to boost exports and help China diversify its imports.
- Texas education funding tied to tuition deregulation:
- Yet, if House Speaker Tom Craddick gets his way, more than $500 million in the total higher education budget could still vanish unless lawmakers agree to immediate and complete deregulation of college tuition.
When you hear the words deregulation check for your wallet.
- NY Times: Trust in the Military Heightens Among Baby Boomers’ Children:
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Researchers argue that the trend in part reflects simple experience. Young people coming of age during quick and successful military actions, like the Persian Gulf war in 1991 — “It looked and felt like a video game, and America won it decisively,” Professor King said — or the action in Iraq this year are quite likely to have very different attitudes from those who came of age during the Vietnam War.
- China bans eating wild animals