Kindness of Strangers

The wind tears at my heart as the eyes begin to stare at the two foreigners I know us to be. Does this woman not understand? She must be working for the opposition or she has forgotten how many of us do not step on a welcome mat into all countries.

I smile at her kind words--for she seems a kind woman, well-intentioned and full of pity, maybe that better virtue compassion. But she's drawing too much attention to me: two women, one in a sundress talking to what appears to be a ragamuffin baglady of questionable swarthiness--at least here in this land of blond and blue eyes.

I need to get rid of her now. Oh my, she wants to take me out to lunch. Out to lunch?! Is she insane? The midnight sun must have drained the last drops of prudence from her joints.

Surely it'd be nice to eat in a lovely restaurant with such a beautiful woman. I might wind down the hours with soft memories and taste again the sweetness of the warm brown flesh of loves like her I once knew and lost.

Another time, another place: I'd go and spent the light hours discussing politics and the anguish of my people. I'd run the tongue of daydreams along the curves of her brown limbs. And perhaps I'd go with her and spend those ecstatic moments that two strangers share, that lonely anguish of desire that love between strangers destined for memory and perhaps forgotten bliss brings.

But that time is not now, not in this place, not in this hour of my hunger and despair.

I must find the comrades and begin the mission they have called me to accomplish.

She stands waiting--put off somewhat by the slowness of my response to what to her must seem an act of grace fallen to the streets of this busy street.

But paranoia tears at my bowels, making the leaden stumps I stand on begin to gear to move.

I reply to her pity, to her kind regard, whatever it is that has called attention to us on this street where so many eyes can see me.

"No, mi amiga. That is not necessary. I am not dressed for that, as you see. Perhaps you could show me the way to the nearest soup kitchen."

I begin walking to an alley close by, trying not to appear scared or hurried. Read more!

AN INDIAN SCALPED AND ROASTED

Submitted by ken @ Ghost Cowboy on February 28, 2007 - 7:33am.
Tags: Indians | Arizona | New Mexico | 1882

New-York Times / July 26, 1882

LORDSBURG, New Mexico, July 26. -- A courier from Clifton reports that a large party of Indians attacked a wagon train three miles this side of Clifton yesterday morning, killing two men. The teamsters, seven in number, stood off the Indians for two hours, mortally wounding one, whom they dragged into camp in the face of heavy firing. After the fight was over they scalped him and roasted him alive. Read more!

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Brzezinski Book Reviewed

An excellent review of Zbigniew Brzinski's new book by Lenin's Tomb's Richard Seymour. Brzezinski slams not only the idiot King's Iraq/War on Terror but lambastes the last 50 three regimes for ineptitude and gross imperial mistakes.

Finding Brzezinski refreshingly candid, Seymour faults the former Secretary of State:

Brzezinski’s amoral realism allows him to perceive and state bluntly what most of Bush’s apologists cannot, but his analysis is nevertheless flawed in several respects. First, little attention is paid to the role of capital. There is a bluff acknowledgment of ‘interests’, but the treatment is glancing and superficial. As with most foreign policy ‘realists’, the state’s primacy as a unit in international relations is tautologically assumed. The global projection of ad hoc military power is reduced to a matter of statecraft. Second, Bush’s decision to wage war on Iraq is reduced to hubris and arrogance. There is little attempt to understand the strategic reasons for the decision. For instance, while the administration’s gamble on Iraq was arguably reckless, the strategic advantages of creating a pro-American regime with its hands on the oil spigot in Iraq were sufficiently compelling that most of the US political class and business press vocally supported the war, not just the hardcore of neoconservatives and energy capitalists supportive of Bush. Even in the midst of failure, most Democrats and Republicans are unwilling to withdraw, fearing a Saigon moment. Third, while critical of the failure of any US president since 1990 to press meaningfully for a settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict along the lines of officially espoused support for UN Resolution 242, Brzezinski offers little in the way of analysis as to why this is so. He credits domestic ‘lobbies’ with a distorting influence that takes no account of how the policies advocated by, for instance, the ‘Israel lobby’ resonate with pre-existing strategies. Aside from this analytical vacuity, the book suffers from a surfeit of cliches. We are reminded that the British also had an empire, that there may be comparisons made with the Roman one, that democracy cannot be imposed on traditional societies overnight (here Brzezinski derides ‘shortsighted American efforts’ in Palestine, Egypt and Saudi Arabia) and that nemesis follows hubris.

What Seymour fails to do is to go into a longer term view of capital's role in the extension of the American empire. While granting that China is a formidable force, Seymour and Brzezinski do not undertake to understand what it is that makes American capitalism so appealing tot he rets of the world. At least one aspect, American culture has sometimes presented itself in Brzezinski's TV appearances, Seymour has little to say about it in his review. It is this aspect of capital, along with the false consciousness that it spawns, which makes American imperial power formidable--well beyond the economic or political dimensions.
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Crossing the Border

I must be looking lost. No doubt out of my element in this frigid town with so much arctic wind blowing the birds south. A nicely dressed woman in a sun dress. Is it that warm? In this weather, it's difficult to say; my coat and other assorted warmers must make me look even more bag lady like than I imagine myself looking.

She asks whether I need help. I reply: "Non, senorita, gracias. Esta latina, espana?"

I had learned that a free kitchen was nearby from those esoteric signs that only the homeless know for finding their way to the local shelters and giving hands.

Crossing the border had been difficult enough, what with no passport or papers. It is perhaps too much to ask to expect that the locals will let me be--especially given my heritage.

Perhaps if pick up a veil and blend into the local Muslim and Arabic population. Will the authorities harass a woman of the veil?

Right now, I must put such thoughts behind me and get to the soup kitchen or whatever it is that the locals call a shelter.

"I am looking for the local free kitchen. I was told it might be around here," I explain to the young woman, letting her know that I speak English as well. Read more!

Vision of the Future?

The UK's Ministry of Defense has issued a 30-year look into the future. While it tries to put a god face on it, the threats posed by climate change, globalization, and rising inequality add a jittery edge to their prognostications.

Lenin's Tomb highlights some of the more important findings, at least with regard to political developments:

Marxism

"The middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx," says the report. The thesis is based on a growing gap between the middle classes and the super-rich on one hand and an urban under-class threatening social order: "The world's middle classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest". Marxism could also be revived, it says, because of global inequality. An increased trend towards moral relativism and pragmatic values will encourage people to seek the "sanctuary provided by more rigid belief systems, including religious orthodoxy and doctrinaire political ideologies, such as popularism and Marxism".

Pressures leading to social unrest

By 2010 more than 50% of the world's population will be living in urban rather than rural environments, leading to social deprivation and "new instability risks", and the growth of shanty towns. By 2035, that figure will rise to 60%. Migration will increase. Globalisation may lead to levels of international integration that effectively bring inter-state warfare to an end. But it may lead to "inter-communal conflict" - communities with shared interests transcending national boundaries and resorting to the use of violence.

Population and Resources

The global population is likely to grow to 8.5bn in 2035, with less developed countries accounting for 98% of that. Some 87% of people under the age of 25 live in the developing world. Demographic trends, which will exacerbate economic and social tensions, have serious implications for the environment - including the provision of clean water and other resources - and for international relations. The population of sub-Saharan Africa will increase over the period by 81%, and that of Middle Eastern countries by 132%.

The Middle East

The massive population growth will mean the Middle East, and to a lesser extent north Africa, will remain highly unstable, says the report. It singles out Saudi Arabia, the most lucrative market for British arms, with unemployment levels of 20% and a "youth bulge" in a state whose population has risen from 7 million to 27 million since 1980. "The expectations of growing numbers of young people [in the whole region] many of whom will be confronted by the prospect of endemic unemployment ... are unlikely to be met," says the report.

Islamic militancy

Resentment among young people in the face of unrepresentative regimes "will find outlets in political militancy, including radical political Islam whose concept of Umma, the global Islamic community, and resistance to capitalism may lie uneasily in an international system based on nation-states and global market forces", the report warns. The effects of such resentment will be expressed through the migration of youth populations and global communications, encouraging contacts between diaspora communities and their countries of origin.

Tension between the Islamic world and the west will remain, and may increasingly be targeted at China "whose new-found materialism, economic vibrancy, and institutionalised atheism, will be an anathema to orthodox Islam".

While this isn't exactly end-of-the world apocalypticism, it does pose interesting questions about what a future-oriented theology might look like. Whose side you gonna be on when the State institutes martial law and the hordes bang at the iron gates of fortress America? Read more!

Another Reason to Attack Iraq

Let's not forget that one of the goals of the invasion of Iraq was to find a country that could be friends with Israel. George Bush himself has said so, and this assumption is either assumed by or stated outright in various documents emanating from the AEI.

After recently reading Adam Smith on "The Wealth of Nations," I formulated something of mini-theory on why the US needed to invade Iraq--at least from the oligarch's standpoint.

Looked at from a historical perspective, that is, Iraq had become what very few if any nations outside Europe had become--a modern nation. Its educational system was top-notch, the industrial sector was well-developed, it had a commercial base that, although based on a single resource, could quite plausibly diversify. On top of that, it had what Smith says is paramount to any commercial nation: the ability to feed itself.

If these points are true--not all have to be--then the reason to demolish Iraq and reduce it as close to a pre-modern state was to teach the world a lesson: no one modernizes w2ithout following the blueprint laid out by the US.

On top of that, of course, is the idea that no nation in the mid-East can be a modern state that shows up Israel or outpaces it in the eyes of the world in regards to being "modern." Read more!

MercenariesUSA Inc. II

At least some people are following up on this story. As I've mentioned before, if there's one sure sign that a republic or democracy is threatened it's when secret or for-profit paramilitary groups begin to operate legally or semi-legally.

The original article that Alexandrovna links to (by "Syriana" Bob Baer) mentions the trophy video I wrote about last year.

Baer writes:

Aegis subsequently conducted an investigation and concluded that the actions represented "legitimate operations" undertaken in compliance with the rules of engagement. Aegis argued further that the video was "taken out of context" and noted that there was no evidence that civilians had been killed. The Pentagon looked into the video and declined to take further steps.

So much for justice and all that sentimental crap they teach you during the socialization process called school. The state has priorities that do not engage your own or those of the ones you love. As of now, the state is merely an appendage to the larger interests of globalization and imperial capitalism. Read more!

Food

I walked in the streets like a bag lady--those streets where the snow melts like years of dirt from an old pipe. Why had I come to this neck of the woods. Was it to meet the shamans who've gathered in the forests to invoke their war gods and call forth the thunder that would clear the rumbling darkness?

I don't know. All I know is the message the pigeon brought to the roost weeks ago. Weeks spent traveling by train, auto, and walking.

I see the two young people on the street who seem familiar. There's something there that I have missed seeing in the eyes of the young ones where I live now. Often they are eyes filled with emptiness or terror--the empty terror that comes from seeing families die without food or sisters and mothers raped by bayonets and gangs of laughing hyenas.

These young people here--I wonder whether they know what the darkness brings, those gods that thirst for the blood of my young sisters and brothers in the deserts?

Do they see me, or only an old lady they think has lost her teeth and her mind; a dark crone come to haunt the forests of the midnight sun?

I must find food at least. There's supposed to be a soup kitchen nearby... Read more!

Ides of March

On the Ides of March, the Empire rose from the ashes of the tyrant to be, only to be replaced by his adopted son. The republican assassins tried to salvage what they could of the ancient virtu, that manly desire to take Fortuna from behind--yet only ashes and rapine appeared now to remain of the ancient traditions. The state's gods made for the exits with the blood of innocents and incipient civil war on their cynical lips.

So I thought, at least, when the message arrived. I put the pigeon away into its roost with its friends and unrolled the scrap of paper that I'd taken from the small capsule attached to the bird's leg.

"Ides of March," the message read.

I knew what it meant. I'd been expecting something like this for some time, yet even now the thoughts that its letters brought to mind evoked a sense of anticipation, perhaps some foreboding.

"Finally," I said to myself, "the brothers and sisters have decided."

... Read more!

The weather

... was fine when the first geese flew into town. the people ran into the streets yelling when the winter had finally broken down and crept away on broken, snow-stained legs. the winter... it started out like our friend and then hung around like an unwanted drinking poal way past closing time and bruising for a fist fall in the alley.

but the geese--did they scare away the old drunk, or was it just tired of pissing its cancerous white urine? now i know, now i have no doubt, now i am certain that it was winter, the mad dog, evil-eyed winter with delirium tremens who laid waste the landscape and laid the fodder for the disease that brought death and trembling to our town., Read more!

Totrture: The Ugly Face In the Mirror

My daughter is becoming more politicized by the day. After recently proclaiming that Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is globalization and neoliberal manifesto, she has expressed some surprise at the facts as I related them to her about the torture of so-called enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay.

While I have yet to express my concerns about her interpretation of Smith, I will set down some links to the torture machine set up by the Bush admin for her further research.

Most recently, Psyche, Science, and Society has provided some reading material on the famous Stanford Prison Experiment studies, which seemed to conclude that many people--from all walks of life--can turn from baby-faced boy/girl next door to concentration camp guard days.

From the Associated Press (via Psyche):

Past president of the American Psychology Association, Zimbardo is best known as the author of 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, in which 24 male college students assumed the roles of prison guards and prisoners for $15 per day.

Participants — who had no criminal records and seemed psychologically “normal” when selected — flipped coins to determine who would be a guard and who’d be a prisoner. By day two, guards were going far beyond keeping prisoners behind bars: They stripped prisoners naked, cloaked their heads with paper bags, shaved prisoners’ hair and dressed them in frilly smocks.

The two-week experiment had to be canceled after six days because the guards became dangerously sadistic. At least five prisoners had nervous breakdowns — crying, screaming, begging for release from the makeshift dungeon on campus.

Even more germane to our discussion, the following report shows how clinical psychiatrists tortured inmates at Guantanamo. Many of the men at this facility were turned in for a ransom far from the battlefield and they are suspected of having no links to organized terror groups.

For a taste of what this torture entails, consider the following from an article by Steven Mile published in The American Journal of Bioethics:

According to the Army investigation, the log covers a period in the middle of al-Qahtani’s interrogation that began in the summer of 2002 and continued into 2003. For eleven days, beginning November 23, al-Qahtani was interrogated for twenty hours each day by interrogators working in shifts. He was kept awake with music, yelling, loud white noise or brief opportunities to stand. He then was subjected to eighty hours of nearly continuous interrogation until what was intended to be a 24-hour “recuperation.” This recuperation was entirely occupied by a hospitalization for hypothermia that had resulted from deliberately abusive use of an air conditioner. Army investigators reported that al-Qahtani’s body temperature had been cooled to 95 to 97 degrees Fahrenheit (35 to 36.1 degrees Celsius) and that his heart rate had slowed to thirty-five beats per minute. While hospitalized, his electrolytes were corrected and an ultrasound did not find venous thrombosis as a cause for the swelling of his leg. The prisoner slept through most of the 42-hour hospitalization after which he was hooded, shackled, put on a litter and taken by ambulance to an interrogation roomfor twelve more days of interrogation, punctuated by a few brief naps. He was then allowed to sleep for four hours before being interrogated for ten more days, except for naps of up to an hour. He was allowed 12 hours of sleep on January 1, but for the next eleven days, the exhausted and increasingly non-communicative prisoner was only allowed naps of one to four hours as he was interrogated. The log ends with a discharge for another “sleep period.”

The effects of this form of psychological torture are devastating. Reports that I have linked to before show that many of those released after this torture suffer from permanent personality disorders. Click on the label for torture to see several of these articles.

Related Links

• Knight of the Living Dead
  
• Legal expert: President Bush may have ordered torture of terror suspects

Read more!

My Return? Sooner Rather Than Later

I hope to return to posting more regularly soon. But then--as a co-worker once explained--soon is a relative term. For a day-fly it's different than for a white dwarf star. Let me just say that it'll be sooner than a day fly might expect and less long than the white dwarf.

The explanation for my absence is another story--told later rather than sooner. My emotional infrastructure seems geologically geared to assimilating and processing information. Read more!

Is It Jesus in That Crypt?

I don't spend much time thinking about the possibilities of these things, though I was once fascinated by the TV movie with David Janssen--the original Fugitive--titled The Word. The movie was based on a novel that my aunt had read.

A few years back, I also saw a movie (THE BODY (2001))with Antonio Banderas as a priest called to Jerusalem archaeological site that is suspected of holding Jesus' body. Needless to say, it turns out not to hold the body, but we do get to see some good Israeli propaganda shots and story about the evil Vatican and terrorists.

What type of irony is it then that James "Titanic" Cameron has documented a story that Hollywood's been itching to tell for several years now?

Irony aside, this is the best analysis of the story that Jesus' bones have been found in Jersualemn, along with Mary his wife, his brothers, and a son (or two). Via Hypotyposeis:

If you want a probability estimate, here is mine. I would say that the odds are FAR LESS than 1 in a 1000 that Jesus of Nazareth had a son. That works out to .1%. So you should multiply that factor by the naive probability that Jesus is one of the 11 candidates, which we computed as 9%. The result is going to be less than .01%.

Based on that estimate, the odds are MORE THAN 10,000 to 1 against Jesus of Nazareth being the Jesus of the tomb.

Check out the full explanation, along with statistical reasoning and rationale that goes into this conclusion.

As to why it's important for people to want to find a body--well, that's obvious, isn't it? I think Kierkegaard somewhere says it wouldn't really matter, though my memory on that is somewhat fuzzy this early in the morning.

It is the Apostle Paul, after all, who stakes the entire edifice of Christianity on the fact (event) of Jesus' resurrection. And the way Paul thinks about resurrection, he doesn't include any such nonsense as immortal soul, which is a Platonic accretion first admitted into doctrine by the Catholic Church by the Fifth Lateran Council.

For a decent bibliography of related stories on news item and the documentary, see Codex.

Update: More number-crunching and links to other news related to this story at Crossings Read more!

America's Untold Story 1

You know about ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia; you saw it in Rwanda; you see it taking shape in Iraq. Now read about how some states cleansed entire areas of African Americans.

From the History News Network blog:

I punched the Enter key and in a matter of seconds the program had completed its work. I opened the new file I had created and began to scroll the list of counties where there had been a black population collapse. It was a moment of shock. Page after page of counties scrolled by. I had expected four or five counties but I now had dozens. This could not be. I had made a mistake. I went back and checked the numbers. They were accurate. I downloaded data for more states from the University of Virginia and reran the program. The list grew. I started adding states outside the South and the list grew even longer. What had happened?

I made a list of four or five counties that seemed to be the most suspicious and went to the Library of Congress. By cross checking my list with the New York Times Index for the decade when each collapse occurred, I found the dates when there had been stories written about some of the counties. I mounted a microfilm reel and turned the crank. As I fiddled with the focus in the dark of the library’s microfilm room, a headline appeared: “ALL NEGROES DRIVEN FROM INDIANA TOWN.”

The seven-paragraph story was to the point. “Negroes began leaving this mining town early this afternoon, following the warning issued by white residents to be out of town by 7 o’clock to night...”

Read more!

Bird Flu: The Rats Have It

I haven't kept up on this story, after running with it several weeks last year and even starting a blog. Scientists are looking for it to explode in the Spring, much as it did last year when it raced across Europe in a month or two. The US is expected to experience its first cases of the virus this Spring.

The following story comes out of Japan:

Scientists suspect rats spread the recent outbreaks of avian flu at four farms in Miyazaki and Okayama prefectures after the H5N1 virus strain was brought over by migratory birds from China.

The experts agree that the migratory birds triggered the infections at the four poultry farms over the past month. But they said at a meeting Wednesday that the way the disease spread indicates that other factors were involved.

Inspectors found that nets and coverings were in place to prevent large migratory birds from coming into contact with the poultry.

In addition, dead chickens at three of the farms were found in areas farthest from the entrance of the coops, so the wild birds were not likely the direct source of the infection.

"It's possible that small rodents, such as rats, carried the virus into the chicken coops," said Toshihiro Ito, a professor of veterinary microbiology at Tottori University who chairs the team of specialists.

He said the rats were likely infected by the wild birds from China. ...

As to whether the virus might mutate into one that affects humans, Nobuhiko Okabe, director of the Infectious Disease Surveillance Center of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, said, "While there is no need to become overly concerned, we also cannot let our guard down."

Read more!

Antichrist Reveals Himself

A man who says he is Jesus Christ in his second incarnation is now sporting the sign 666 on his arm. Does this mean he is the Antichrist or wants to be or, as he says, that is meaningless anyway since the devil doesn't exist? (h/t NT Today). Read more!

Barbarism and Fantasy

In assessing a present state of affairs, though, it is instructive to look at history and see whether it can teach us anything by way of analogies that might bring present circumstances into greater forms of focus.

There are innumerable historians trying their hand at formulating a framework within which to see the conflict between Islam and the West. Taking off from the well-tested adage that those who frame the history gain an ideological right to wield power, we find in the US many on the right--especially the Neocons--attempting to use concepts borrowed from Cold War and WWII confrontations to assess the supposed dangers posed by Islamic terrorists. ...

Once the historical dust devils settle in several years, though, I am inclined to think that the historians will find that JGA Pocock is correct when he states:

The American universalism of the moment arises from another component of Enlightenment—the belief that if a state can have a commercial civil society and a free market, all other good things, including democracy and the separation of church and state, will consequently be added unto it. My professional bias tells me that there are historical preconditions that must be met before this can be true. (Pocock, "America’s Foundations, Foundationalisms, and Fundamentalisms," p. 8)

Pocock's historical perspective is enlivened by his recent massive study of Gibbon's work on the decline of the Roman Empire. Paramount in that work is the recognition of religion and barbarism and their roles in bringing about decline and renewal.

As Pocock is subtly quick to note, though, the Enlightenment notions of barbarism have their source in a rising capitalism and commerce that they believed would bring about civilization--or "mannered" culture, as Hume and Voltaire (and Gibbon) called it.

Yet, many Enlightenment historians and philosophers were aware of a tension between culture and the ancient value of virtue. This value is that which impels civilizations and people to maintain a personal relationship to their political and natural world which reflects a sense of unity with the forces and powers of the cosmos.

With the spread of mannered culture, however, virtue itself suffered decline. Capitalism unleashes an immense array of alienating passions and desires that ultimately must be bridled to ensure order and stability--for further expansion and civilizing influence.

Daniel Pipes (a Neocon historian) has gone on record as stating that Islamic radicalism represents a new barbarism. Basing himself on an emotionally charged description of beheadings and attacks on civilians, Pipes builds his case that Islamic radicals (if not Islam itself) is inherently barbaric. While there's little argument that these acts are indeed barbaric, one could accuse Pipes of misidentifying tactics with strategy. That is, just as terrorism is itself a tactic in a much larger military effort, so beheadings and other despicable acts are not the entirety of the effort underway by Islamic radicals to confront and somehow delegitimate the West.

Indded, there's surely a sense in which the extremists could counter these accusations of barbarity by pointing to the dark history of capitalist expansionism in other parts of the world, not least of which includes the Mideast. Heart of Darkness has become the ultimate picture of where the Enlightenment project has lead.

While these remarks do not present an exhaustive analysis of the conflict that will probably define the 21st century, it might at least indicate that those who wish to counter ensuing debacles need to rethink essential categories and concepts that so far continue to inform not only our way of thinking about history but also in manifesting it.

At the same time, those who wish to counter future debacles must begin the work of historiography that undermines the attempts by the radical elements in our own midst of wielding ideological power through refashioning history in their own terms. Read more!

Sideshow revival

Bring me to the lip of the chemical fill,
let me hear the cries of those who burned
until their nerves could sense no pain;
give me terror’s embrace that finds
repose in silence and shame; it is there
I’d stake the pegs for the revival tent,
and pull the viper from its box
and coil its rattling tail along my arm.

Until you peer into Lucifer’s brilliant eye
and know its poison, you will not hope.
The hope-filled are broken, lunatic artifacts
left discarded beneath the cathedral stairs;
they come for no word or formula or chant;
the blood that fills their eyes knows
the kidney punch and face bruised to meat;
they know each shadow that betrays defeat.

Only those who know defeat will discover hope;
for loss learns us the wiles of certainty and doubt;
you thumb a lost book no eye can see, no ear
can hear, and the soul unwinds its page
and reads the simple heart, the gesture
and rite of light beyond recall and routine.
In the empty hour of an empty year without fruit,
hope is afoot in the cool of the garden.

In a dark and corrupt heart, hope inters
the ghosts that stalk the self-induced cage.
Cherish with inmost fiber this truth
that cannot deceive or betray its hiding place;
this wonder that awes the algorithmic mind
and the most naive alike to abandon hate;
the happiest trick of time is to make us fools
whose despite is bliss and sage belief.

copyright 2007 Read more!

By Way of Evading an Introduction

It is true that the human can’t function without placing the things of this world into pre-arranged cubbyholes. If each view from the mountain crest or desert floor is defined by its horizon, then I must admit that I’m indeed not free. For no matter what height I reach or what nadir I sink to–even from the farthest nook and cranny of the cosmos–I will still find limit and its impetuous opposite unlimit. And as I define myself by my limits, so I define myself against or with my non-limitations. ...

Still, humans cannot live too long without limit. For without limit and structure, the mind melts into a gelatinous mass of chromatically inspiring images whose psychedelic pomp fascinate but only deceive us into forgetting the abyss from which they come and into which they eventually crawl. Yet, just as much as I define myself by the hard scrabble of life to maintain a proper relationship to others and myself, so I must expand those boundaries that close in and reduce me to a particle of less than cosmic dust.

Whatever you want to call it, this thing or experience inside finds no consolation in the actions and reactions to physical rudiments. In many cultures there’s a myth that some use to ward off evil, defend against danger, and heal social and individual ills. In the depths of winter, the coldest and darkest time of the year, when food is low and everyone is getting on each other’s nerves, the myths are told over and over again. When someone is sick, the individual is returned to the primeval origins of the world so that they can regain the power that once ignited the natural world in its fecundity. When invaders threatened to overwhelm the defenses after killing, the myth is told to remind them where they came from and to reinvigorate the will to fight and stave off extinction. The myth served a variable purpose, calling on ages that were simultaneous gone and yet present, it spanned past present and future in one moment of immense simultaneity...

I don’t want to dwell on this argument. It appears to pit subjective versus objective experience and tangentially elicits the debate between humanist and Enlightenment sensibilities, eventuating in the later Romantic versus scientific squabble. For the moment, all that I assert is that experiences of limit and unlimit are common to humans. That humans experience something that they perceive as originating in an internal dimension that acts as a measure for how they see themselves and gauge their potential for action and response in the world. There seems to be an awareness of an internal world or reality that poses routes and possibilities outside the

Further examples must wait for later. May the ghosts of Shestov, Plato, Socrates, Berdyaev, Whitman and so many others (peace be unto their memories) rest soundly, secure in the knowledge that their words have inspired me but have passed over into the nothingness of my everyday life. Read more!

MercenariesUSA Inc.

I must admit that I missed the President's State of the Union Speech (SOUS), so I also missed the following little tidbit that's also seemingly left unnoted by Leiter and Pilger. ...

Brian Pilger (via Leiter) rightly remarks on the reference to a form of civilian conscription being proposed by Bush. Pilger quotes the following from the SOUS:

A second task we can take on together is to design and establish a volunteer Civilian Reserve Corps. Such a corps would function much like our military reserve. It would ease the burden on the Armed Forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them.

No doubt Pilger is right to highlight his reading of this segment. On the other hand, I wonder whether there's not something like a ticking bomb in those words that Pilger misses; specifically, changes to laws that cover the use of private soldiers abroad, also known as mercenaries.

I do not know what restrictions there are on using mercenaries in other countries by the US, but there is no doubt that private soldiers are being used extensively in Iraq. According to the Washington Post, there are about 100,000 mercenaries in Iraq (h/t Lenin's Tomb):

There are about 100,000 government contractors operating in Iraq, not counting subcontractors, a total that is approaching the size of the U.S. military force there, according to the military's first census of the growing population of civilians operating in the battlefield.

The survey finding, which includes Americans, Iraqis and third-party nationals hired by companies operating under U.S. government contracts, is significantly higher and wider in scope than the Pentagon's only previous estimate, which said there were 25,000 security contractors in the country.

It is also 10 times the estimated number of contractors that deployed during the Persian Gulf War in 1991, reflecting the Pentagon's growing post-Cold War reliance on contractors for such jobs as providing security, interrogating prisoners, cooking meals, fixing equipment and constructing bases that were once reserved for soldiers.

Certainly, not all of these "contractors" are engaged in lethal activities. Yet, there's also no doubt that many are--in either direct military action or in security and intelligence operations.

As Democracy Now points out, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld made privatizing the military a top priority. Jeremy Scahill says:

Now, what’s interesting, Amy, is that two years ago Erik Prince, the head of Blackwater USA, was speaking at a military conference. He only comes out of his headquarters to speak in front of military audiences. He does not speak in front of civilians. He's on panels with top brass and others. He’s very secretive. He gave a major address in which he called for the creation of what he called a "contractor brigade." And I actually -- I can read you what he said. He said -- this is two years ago, before Bush called for his civilian reserve corps. Erik Prince, head of Blackwater USA: "There’s consternation in the [Pentagon] about increasing the permanent size of the Army. We want to add 30,000 people." And they talked about costs of anywhere from $3.6 billion to $4 billion to do that. Well, by my math, that comes out to about $135,000 per soldier. And then, Prince added, "We could do it certainly cheaper."

You don't have to be a trained textualist to see how closely this guy's words--spoken two years ago--mirror those of the President's, as expressed several months later in the SOUS.

Blackwater is the largest of those private army outfits vying for work in Iraq and now--according to Democracy Now--the Sudan. They even showed up in New Orleans carrying weapons and with orders to use deadly force when needed. Read more!

My Views on the Apocalypse

The previous post may have left some of you scratching your heads. My thoughts about the Apocalypse--or an apocalypse--are might seem out of character. As I have written before, there are many ways to understand that wonderfully surreal book called Revelation. Without rehashing old statements, I want to add that my thoughts have turned to apocalyptic in response to articles that jodi dean is posting at her blog. In response ...

I have added the following in comments at her blog:

Without getting too bogged down in terminology, eschatology relates to anything dealing with ultimate things, such as life after death and so on. Apocalyptic is related to end times and history and the role that the divine or transcendent plays in bringing that about.

Your separation of political and religious seems unwarranted. Many of the intertestamental apocalypses have politico-religious ramifications. Seeing that the Xtian Zionists use a political message is nothing new, therefore. As I remarked to Jodi earlier, there have been politico-relious movements of apocalypsticists from those times and throughout Xtian, Jewish, and Islamic history.

Pocock, for example, notes the political ramifications of Savonarola's apocalypticism, as well as this dimension in English and American revolutionary periods. Pocock makes some interesting comments on how apcalyptic changes one's relationship to time and sees time.

For Pocock, what happened in Savonarolan Florence, for example, was that the apocalyptic message brought time down to earth--so to speak--giving the believers that they had a direct role in the outcome of history. This opposed the Augustinian conception of time and the two kingdoms, since in that framework the two worlds did not intersect except at the end of time, which God was in control of and which humans had no role to play.

I also noted there that: What is unique about the Bush Xtians is that they are using the mythology of apocalypse to support a conservative/reactionary ideology.

As many biblical scholars will tell you this has not been true in the past--apocalyptic movements and the genre itself have referred to and emanated from the socially marginalized and dispossessed.

In my recent reading projects, I have also come across this idea within British politics and American colonial politics. That is, as JGA Pocock has shown, millenarian groups were those who were at the forefront of secularization, as well as the egalitarian-oriented movement of republicanism.

The Busybody blog is doing some interesting things around questions of this sort. You might also wish to check out Mark Goodacre's blog and this posting on Paul and apocalyptic. There's also this interesting page with many good links at the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean blog. Read more!

My Life and Its Ensuing Chaos

Some of my long-time readers--all 10 or so of you--may wonder where I've got to the last few weeks. As you know, I'm somewhat reluctant to turn the blog into a dear diary for public consumption, although I have posted what some would call artistic renderings of my life.

Let's just say for now that my life has taken a turn toward the rootless, nomadic existence that I perhaps deserve since I have lived it for so long. Cut off from the land that I still dream about, that farm in the Cumberland Valley that probably graces the notes of some old timey tune I have not yet heard, I have wandered the US by foot, car, and thumb for years now.

At times, the journey has been apocalyptic. Like that time I hitchhiked east from Santa Fe. Unprepared for the days without sleep and food, I progressively entered an apocalyptic world of Arkansas boar-hunters, speed-crazed truckers, and ominous news of escaped convicts prowling the highway I was on.

That journey that became allegorical much in the way that Petrarch would've understood, but without the apocalyptic undertones ...

Perhaps it is true that apocalyptic is the song of the dispossessed and outcast. Those who have nothing left but the fear of the Lord that they hope and pray will save them from the final ignominy: living in evil and pain for all eternity.

I must admit that I am predisposed in some way to the eschatological and apocalyptic. This predisposition explains, perhaps, my early attraction to William Blake's writings and the poems I used out to the rural newspaper filled with a rudimentary symbology hacked together from Blake, Bible, and dada.

And I said I would not resort to autobiography...

With so much happening in the world, I find it easy to resort to the apocalyptic, especially in times when personal stress, despair, and uncertainty coincide with wars and rumors of wars. Yet, the personal must give way to some form of analysis that tries to make sense of such things that the simple-hearted can only find terrifying, though their heart of hearts clings to love and fear of the Lord.

I will perhaps attempt to undertake that analysis in the following days and weeks. If you're out there, drop a note ... Read more!

Bush Declares War on Iran and Syria

I've been trying to highlight the threat to Iran ever since I first wrote at this blog last year that the US was considering an attack. Then I was told that this threat was nonsensical. Then came Lebanon and the attempt by Israel to do away with those ketyusha rockets and neutralize Hizbullah. ...

I got tired of sounding like Cassandra. Then Bush assigned an admiral to head up Centcom. While dealing with other issues, I haven't had time to document the signs that Bush-Cheney indeed have their sights set on Iran.

Glenn Greenwald has done an excellent job of binding together the tell-tale signs of an impending escalation of threats towards Iran. What Greenwald leaves out is the strategy. These actions that he documents--I believe--are meant to create conditions in which Iran is meant to do something that will "justify" a US attack.

You should also read Steve Clemons' insider report and coverage of what went on in Congress between Sec. of State Rice and Sens. Biden and Hagel.

[Sen. Hagel:]When you were engaging Chairman Biden on this issue, on the specific question -- will our troops go into Iran or Syria in pursuit, based on what the president said last night -- you cannot sit here today -- not because you're dishonest or you don't understand, but no one in our government can sit here today and tell Americans that we won't engage the Iranians and the Syrians cross-border.

Some of us remember 1970, Madame Secretary, and that was Cambodia, and when our government lied to the American people and said we didn't cross the border going into Cambodia. In fact we did. I happen to know something about that, as do some on this committee.

So, Madame Secretary, when you set in motion the kind of policy that the president is talking about here, it's very, very dangerous. Matter of fact, I have to say, Madame Secretary, that I think this speech given last night by this president represents the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam, if it's carried out. I will resist it ...

Bet you heard that on your nightly newscast, huh?

Related Links

• Closer to War Against Iran?

Read more!

Welcome to the Roach Motel Iraq

I bury those cockroaches!
-- Tony Montana, "Scarface"

The President just gave his plan on Iraq in what came across as a sober, grim speech that is being touted for its realism and sincerity. The plan comprises several parts, the most prominent of which is the so-called "surge" of troops to Iraq, specifically Baghdad.

I must admit that Pres. Bush's performance last night was one of the few times I could actually listen to him and not find myself in wonderland. He connected sentences in a way that I think his college rhetoric professor would have found laudable. ...

Unfortunately, the disconnect between the old Bush whose almost aphasic news conferences and this new Bush caused my brain to overheat in paranoiac visions.

As I heard Bush unfold his "strategery" I almost (seriously) said out loud "Roach Motel." I swear the man was describing a vision so absurd and so bizarre that I saw US troops being lured into this large trap and dying slow deaths like roaches stuck in glue.

Those unfamiliar with student housing might not have seen a roach motel. These little devices for killing the pests involves luring them into a rectangular box that has an incredibly sticky glue on all sides. The roaches enter, get stuck, and die over several days. In places where the roaches are bad, these motels can literally fill up the entire space of the box.

Why isn't anyone discussing the dangers of this strategy? Are people seriously unconcerned about buddying up US troops with Iraqis whose loyalties appear to be less than certain--and probably more anti-Us than pro-US?

What are the chances that insurgent strategists are rubbing their hands together with glee at the thought of having US soldiers concentrated in one area, open to encirclement and a war of attrition by booby trap and bushwacking?

On top of this, there's that old nagging feeling that you'll have heavily armed potential traitors behind you as you barge in on their neighbors and relatives to find and kill the guy who was a friend last week.

Welcome to the Roach Motel Iraq--where many a soldier in the next few months will feel like they're going nowhere but into the bogs of hell. Read more!

War Porn: A New Genre of the Dead

The spectacle of the tyrant, the most despised man on earth--as Americans like to think of their country--is over. The tyrant is dead, long live the tyrant. America the tyrant killer, the castrater of dictators, the lyncher of Babylon, regains its renown for frontier justice in a shoddy, sometimes despicable, affair that the politicians call justice, though a few call it what it is: a piece of theater whose genre has increasingly become known as Iraqi snuff films. ...

Like many an egotist, I imagine, who blogs, I watch my sitemeter readings religiously. Perhaps the best interpretation of this is that I--with my background in marketing and business writing--want to perform a minute by minute audience analysis so I can gauge the reading habits, the likes and dislikes of those poor souls who happen upon these pitiful postings.

Early on in this blog's evolution, I picked up on articles that piqued my fancy and either provided a blurb about the piece or simply quoted it and provided a link. One of those pieces was on an article about Iraqi war porn, which was first brought to my attention by Helena Cobban. I wrote some chatter about it and provided a link to the pages where these XXXXXXXX porn pictures were (once) housed.

(Also see Occupation, Sex, Murder, and Prositution, and Trophy Video.)

If I were to rate the most entered page on my blog--according to my maniacal site meter reading habit--it would have to be this posting about Iraqi porn. I know this because sitemeter provides a listing on the search terms that the visitor used on the search engine that pointed them to my blog posting. I can only imagine their consternation when they see that the posting contains some tripe about how immoral this type of porn is.

I first became aware from a Law and Order: CI show that there's a subculture that's grown up around this type of porn. The issue is rather tangential to the storyline of the show, but it's interesting nonetheless that the phenomenon has reached a level where it can form part of the action of the characters in the plot.

The genre of War Porn itself became known in the wake of the Abu Ghraib torture revelations. The couple involved in that torture were filming their acts and hording them, along with their own personal BDSM porn.

The fascination of BDSM porn is best exemplified by the David Cronenberg's film, Videodrome. There the main character (played by James Woods) is a small-time cable owner trying to find content that will increase his audience share. The famous scenes of moderate masochism with Blondie singer Deborah Harry is only a prelude to more and more violent forms of sadomasochism.

In one scene, the James Woods character is watching the torture of naked women and says something along the lines of, "I can't take my eyes off of it. There are no production costs. It's genius."

The moral of the story is that the signal carrying the can't-take-your-eyes-off-it video causes cancerous tumors in the viewer. The whole thing turns out to be the effort by a zealous Christian-style group who wants to kill off anyone who doesn't have the moral sensibility to react in revulsion at the pictures and instead becomes hooked on it like heroin.

I doubt that our own theocrats are smart enough to carry off anything similar to the one shown in Videodrome, especially given their anti-scientific prejudices. Yet, the underlying premise--that a normal, god-loving individual will find such acts shameful and therefore will turn in revulsion--that our god-given shame shields us from such temptations, is one that many Xtian believers assume, though they rarely state it.

(See my postings on Martha Nussbaum's work [here, here, and here]. She has documented this type of argument that is marshaled by those on the right to defend a conservative legal agenda.)

Yet, the film's message makes a powerful statement about the attraction of violence to a sensory-hungry public whose jaded palates crave more and more stimulating images that go farther and farther into depicting the dehumanization of other human beings.

Having said this, let me make a confession. I wanted to see the execution of Hussein on television. I think that it should've been beamed into every household in America and the world. If the man was a monster, and American justice was triumphing in having this execution go forward, then there should have been no qualms about televising it.

Perhaps this is the lesson then: Americans are so dishonest that we can't or won't face the products of our own violence in Iraq. Instead, we want to cover it up, hide it away, make like it didn't happen. But this type of repression is how neuroses form, not to mention psychoses.

Or is the repression itself an indication of the mass psychosis that realizes itself in a delusory world where the horrible deaths of men, women, and children become fantasy attractions for a libidinous tyranny that refuses to acknowledge its own depravity?

And maybe Videodrome is more realistic and prophetic than I imagine.

PS Sorry to all you folks on bloglines who'll see this posting twice; but anyway: I just remembered something I heard on a show dealing with Richard Ramirez, the so-called Night Stalker, who terrorized LA during the mid-19080s. According to one source interviewed for the expose, as a young teen Ramirez used to visit a former ViteNam vet with whom he did drugs. The Vet also showed Ramirez pictures that the Vet had taken of his rape, torture and mutilation of Vietnamese women.

With the prevalence of war porn on the web, it makes you wonder how many young Ramirez's are being formed for future night stalkings and that unique brand of American terrorist, aka serial killer. Read more!

Kierkegaard Carnival II - December 31, 2006

Welcome to the December 31, 2006 edition of Kierkegaard Carnival.

This New Year's edition of the Kierkegaard Carnival includes a congeries of blog postings that cover ethical, philosophical, religious, and biographical aspects of Kierkegaard's work. The pieces provided here are interesting for their diversity of viewpoint on the themes and ideas generated by that amazing writing machine we have come to love and admire.

What strikes any first-time reader of Kierkegaard, of course, is the number of pseudonyms that he writes under. The number of pseudonyms, along with the diverging and often conflicting viewpoints they divulge accounts, perhaps, for the many interpretations of Kierkegaard's work that we find in academia, as well as in the humble pages of this little carnival.

For many people, the idea of a pseudonym means that someone is trying to hide their real name behind a fake one. The reasons for why someone might want to do this can be multifarious--ranging from the con man's alias to the lover afraid to show their true name lest they be hurt by rejection. ...

Kierkegaard acknowledged and embraced the ambivalence of the pseudonym. It allowed him to explore the wide-ranging emotional and spiritual spectrum that exhibits human being. He was wily enough to see that people will hold to their beliefs and precious prejudices no matter what data or facts appear. They must be tricked out of their mind-set to embrace the open-ended reality that is the transcendent.

Using pseudonyms also allowed Kierkegaard to experiment with different views and ways of looking at life that he did not necessarily embrace, feel equal to, or had surpassed. For example, he says that the pseudonym anti-Climacus is a writer whose version of Christianity is much far higher than Kierkegaard himself could live in his own life.

What these comments point to is a cautionary tale about seeking the real Kierkegaard. That may not be possible--and it is perhaps best so, since he the individual would have found it abhorrent to believe that any words of system could capture the uniqueness that is each and every human being.

This is not to say that the works published under his own name--especially the religious discourses--do not represent his personal beliefs and views. Yet, even here there's a progression and evolution in his ideas that often defies categorization and that is often pigeon-holed into preconceived patterns and notions.

With this said, it seems only fair to expect to find in the work of those who are inspired by Kierkegaard's work the same types of diversity that his writings display. This edition of the Kierkegaard Carnival bears out some of these remarks.

(h/t to Without Authority for the link to the Kierkegaard finger puppet that appears above)

Philosophy

Richard presents Philosophy and Literature posted at Castrovalva.

Richard explores the relationship between writing, reality, and self-transformation. Exploring the meaning of irony--a concept dear to Kierkegaard's heart--Richard links up Kierkegaard's views with those of American philosopher Richard Rorty. Especially important for Richard is the notion of self-transformation and how literature--rather than philosophy--enables that activity. In this regard, he sees Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling as lacking in that value.

William presents Soren Kierkegaard - Existentialism, Nominalism, and the Three Spheres of Existence posted at Fidei Defensor.

William provides a historical introduction to Kierkegaard's role as an existentialist in European philosophy. After providing this background, William discusses how Kierkegaard's notion of the Three Spheres of Existence provide a useful heuristic and conceptual framework in understanding the stages in the spiritual and religious life.

Ethics

Thomas at Without Authority presents

• Works of Love (Part 1): Do Not the Pagans do the Same?
  
• Works of Love (Part 1): Against a Natural Theology of Love
  
• Works of Love (Part 3): Proper Self-Love
  
• Works of Love (Part 4): The Paradox of Forgiveness

Thomas explores four aspects of one of Kierkegaard's greatest works. Works of Loveis the one writing that puts to rest the notion that Kierkegaard was an isolated, brooding man who cared naught for anything save his eternal soul. In this work he explores the meaning of human and divine love, opening up along the way the dimensions of sociality that put into practice that divine commandment to love the neighbor and the enemy as yourself.

Religion

Allan presents Soren Kierkegaard: Postmodern Prophet: #1, #2, #3, #4, and #5 at Allan R. Bevere.

Allan gives the background and context for what has been called Kierkegaard's attack on Christendom. Observing the corruption of Christianity as he saw it, at the end of his life Kierkegaard took to the streets to disseminate his biting satire on the ways that the Danish Lutheran Church--the official state church--and its leaders had betrayed original Christianity. After exploring some of this history, Allan explains how this attack by Kierkegaard has meaning for today's faithful in a postmodern world.

Anna presents Does God take leaps of faith? posted at Grace Freewill.

If there's a single set of words that most people who have heard of Kierkegaard associate with him, it is the phrase, "leap of faith," which itself is often extended to include a "blind" leap of faith. Strangely enough, none of these words appear in Kierkegaard's writings. In Concluding Unscientific Postscript, where he does talk about a leap, the meaning is that one leaps to faith, not from it. Also, the leap is quite self-conscious and not blind. Its understanding of the realities of the situation--that faith can't be proven objectively, for example--are quite apparent to the leaper. Anna provides an excellent personal review of faith, as seen from her reading of Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling. Who indeed can understand Abraham?

Hakim presents Reasonable Criticisms of the Unconditional posted at Wa Salaam.

Although not directly mentioning Kierkegaard, this short piece investigates in skeptical manner a subject that Kierkegaard wrestled with every day of his life: Is there an unconditional reality that provides the basis for discovering who and what we are?

Arts and Literature

Augustus Young presents A Gloss on Soren Kierkegaard posted at Augustus Young: Poetry and Prose a regular webzine.

Augustus devotes an entire issue of his online webzine to Kierkegaard. Inside we find scenes from a movie about Kierkegaard, as well as a small fantasia examining the correspondences (in the sense Baudelaire meant it) between Kierkegaard and PT Barnum. Did Kierkegaard really see his age as a freak show? It is difficult to say, but it is certainly true that many saw him as a freak and laughed him off the streets he so much loved to roam after nights and days of writing what he later came to say was an enterprise undertaken in the name of the common people.

Popular Culture

Charles presents Confessing America: The TV as Confessional posted at the cynic librarian.

Charles remarks on a side of detective shows like CSI, Law and Order, Monk, and The Closer that he thinks deserves mention: confession of guilt. Not of the characters in these shows but the guilt of the audience who watches the shows. He closes his remarks by citing Kierkegaard on sin and envy and speculates on how these intersect with the type of social confession he thinks this genre of TV show exploits.


That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to Kierkegaard Carnival III using our carnival submission form.

Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Technorati tags:

kierkegaard carnival, blog carnival.

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All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy

I love that movie. It's the one movie that actually makes you believe that ghosts really do exist. And I really do know (as opposed to what, believe?) what it means to work and have no play.

Especially the last two weeks, though this is nothing compared to what I've known. Do I sound grizzled and old yet? ...

Fooling aside, I have been very busy at work. I have only had time to dream of several postings that I might get the chance to write.

I've also been trying to catch up on some real reading. I've wanted to finish Tanabe Hajime's Philosophy as Metanoetics for some time. Finally, I had a chance to do this.

In recognition of this milestone, I've started something of a Tanabe memorial at Wikipedia. It's starting out with a simple bibliography, but I hope to expand it in the next few weeks or so.

Just a few words before I move on and finish up editing Kierkegaard Carnival II: I do think that Hajime is the closest thinker to the spirit and content of Kierkegaard that I have read. Along with Shestov, I believe that I can learn a lot from what he's got to say.

And on that note, that's all I've got to say for now. Read more!

A Christmas Story

Christmas is a difficult time for me. There are many memories and wonderful feelings associated with the season that flow from childhood. Many of these involve family and the plethora of the gifts that fulfill any child's dreams.

There are other stories that haunt my nostalgia. My family's bitterness after the divorce of my parents, the insanity of a wife trying to make up a life of resentment by cheating others, trying to make Christmas meaningful for my children without the greed and gorge.

What is Christmas? How has the story of this divine man's birth come to mean something so ungodly and hollow that it spans cultures and become embodied by a fat old man with a white beard and a penchant for consumeristic insanity? ...

I recently participated in a discussion on another forum about the virgin birth of Jesus. Someone who is probably an atheist had cited a poll in the US that shows the majority of Americans believe in Jesus' virgin birth. The poster of the information provocatively titled the post something along the lines of "Majority of Americans Believe Jesus a Bastard."

I picked up on this line of thought by endorsing the literal truth of the statement. Many of the atheists on the forum, of course, attacked the notion of a virgin giving birth. There was some (to my mind) silly talk by those who hold to the doctrine of the virgin birth about parthenogenesis, the biological phenomenon among animals of a female conceiving without having had sex.

I reject both of these arguments. From my perspective, the atheists are simply misinformed about Christian history and theology and try to score points about the credulous Christians. The apologists are equally at fault since they try too hard to disprove something that does not need disproving.

I believe that Jesus was the product of Mary's having been raped by either a Roman soldier or someone else. Stories in the Jewish Mishnah point to this possibilty. These stories probably reflect older ones that date from Jesus' time.

The word bastard can mean a person born out of wedlock. There's nothing wrong with saying that Jesus was a bastard, should that be a fact, unless you find illegitimate birth itself scanadalous.

The scandal of that fact in that socio-cultural milieu is perhaps incomprehensible to many Americans. Yet the time and place where Jesus was born did not look on illegitimacy in such an "enlightened" way. Even in the US it is only a recent view. Around the world it is still the dominant view.

Because this view is still the norm, the virgin birth stories try to ameliorate the effects of that fact as much as they can. How many people want to think they worship a bastard?

I find it odd that those Christians who believe in this man find it so scandalous that they worship someone born out of wedlock. Is it perhaps out of some sense of desire to appear in good taste that they then revert to such absurd theories that stress his divinity at the expense of his humanity?

All things being equal, it should make no difference whether Jesus was born a bastard than not. After all, he found company among whores, thieves, murderers, terrorists and the other dregs of society. Are you scandalized by those facts as well?

As to an awareness of Jesus' illegitimacy, Jesus himself seems to allude to it and make fun of it:

Mat 12:48 But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren?
Mar 3:33 And he answered them, saying, Who is my mother, or my brethren?

He could've been talking about his father but instead makes the more radical assertion that he doesn't even have a mother, not to mention a father--except God, of course.

My interpretation of these verses suggests that there was a subtextual recognition of Jesus' illegitimate birth in the early Christian community. That fact may have been somewhat scandalous to early followers, although there is some evidence that the recognition was always there, perhaps in passages such as the one quoted above.

Jesus was the outcast's outcast; his illegitimate birth only made him more so in the context of a society where legitimacy and bloodlines and tribal affiliation were so paramount.

My overall point in this discussion is that the scandal of who and what Jesus was should never be minimized but instead made even more scandalous. The early church found this fact difficult to maintain as it became integrated into normal social practices.

The churches downplayed these aspects of Jesus' humanity--at great cost to the truer message of Jesus' life in my estimation. As many bible historians note, the emphasis of Jesus' divinity at the expense of his humanity verges on the so-called heresy of Apollinarianism.

Jean Paul Sartre, himself no friend of religion, thought that this aspect of Jesus' life lent more credibility and meaning to the overall religious of that life. Others, of course, had said something similar well before Sartre.

The fact of Jesus' possible illegitmacy is something that the mainstream religions de-stress, at the risk of denuding the Gospel of its true meaning. This is not new--Kierkegaard said the same thing long ago. But that message always gets lost because people would rather stress how much Jesus is just like the bourgeois, well-meaning, God loves you, kumbaya singing savior. That's the comfortable, plastic Jesus who conforms to the self-image that people find less challenging, less scandalous. Read more!

Leopold & George: Kings of Atrocity [& Corruption]

Adam Hochschild, the author of "King Leopold's Ghost: a Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa", a novel that exposed the genocidal colonialist project of Belgium's King Leopold, has some words for GW.

(h/t Crooked Timber for linking to the article and for this post's title, which in my mind alludes to Leopold and Loeb)

NB Belgium's Congo was the inspiration for Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

PS Hochschild seems to be responding to reports that GW has read the book.

Hochschild writes in the LATimes:

First, as you [GW] now know, the long effort by King Leopold II of Belgium to bring Congo under his control was driven by his avid quest for a commodity central to industry and transportation: rubber. Does that remind you of anything?

What's more, the king justified his grab for Congo's natural resources with much talk about bringing philanthropy and Christianity to darkest Africa. Now what did that remind you of?

Leopold cleared at least $1.1 billion in today's dollars during the 23 years he controlled Congo, and his businessmen friends made additional huge sums. Much of the money flowed into companies with special royal concession rights to exploit the rain forest. Final question, for extra credit: Do those companies remind you of anything? If you mentioned Halliburton or DynCorp, you're right again.

As a reader of history, you must have been interested, I'm sure, in something else in the Congo story: the case of another world leader facing his own Abu Ghraib scandal.

As you noticed, Mr. President, King Leopold II was a master of public relations. He was really his own Karl Rove — which saved money on staff salaries at the royal palace in Brussels. For years the press at home and abroad dutifully praised his efforts to bring "civilization" to Africa; a whole shipload of Belgian journalists went to Congo in 1898 to enthuse about the opening of a new railroad.

But, like you, he got into big trouble through photographs. These were mainly taken by a British missionary named Alice Harris, and they showed Congolese being whipped, chained as hostages and with their hands cut off by Leopold's soldiers. Through the efforts of a British journalist named Edmund Dene Morel, whom the king liked about as much as you like Seymour Hersh, these photos were splashed on front pages all over the world.

Read more!

War in Iran!?

So my mind was beginning to regain some peace with regard at least to a potential attack on Iran. But the rattling of the teapots started becoming metallic from the neocon wing. Stories began appearing in the liberal press that the US navy was moving its large armada into the Persian Gulf.

Then last week, a military pundit's whose take on foreign affairs I regard highly appeared. Former US Defense Intelligence Agency operative Pat Lang posted at his blog that he believes that there's a better than 50 percent chance that Bush will attack Iran in the next few months.

Adding to the mounting tension is the press coverage of Iranian president Ahmadinejad’s controversial and inane Holocaust conference. The coverage itself was not surprising, but the way that the press painted the idiot as a Hitler avatar made clear that there’s more here than outrage. There’s an obvious attempt to demonize the man in the same way that Hussein was before the invasion of Iraq.

At this blog I have followed the systole and diastole of this story. Beginning with stories about plans by Israel to attack Iran late last year, I have tried to show that any attack would be disastrous for the US.

Most of my commentary has tried to undermine the assumptions made by those promoting this military gaffe. Paramount among these assumptions in my mind is the idea that Iran poses any danger to either the US or Israel. Of secondary importance is deflating the idea that Ahmadinejad has any real power in the Iranian hierarchy.

Today, Glenn Greenwald posts another peeling of the Bush admin/neocon disinformation onion. What makes Greenwald’s analysis superior to anything you’ll find on the web is the exhaustive documentation of sources and his destruction of the fallacious reasoning that accompanies the assertions made by this ideological camp.

With Bush in something of a corner politically, it looks like he’s about to commit another one of those fiascoes that will make his name go down in US history as the president whose actions began the decline of the American system. I have recently characterized Bush’s spiritual/psychological nihilism. It appears that he is bent on carrying out his suicidal foreign policy to its dismal and chaotic inferno. Read more!

Agenda for Liberty or Oppression?

In response to Pat Lang's excellent list of agenda items for broader policy and diplomatic efforts to bring peace to the Mideast, I wrote the following.

I express my own concerns with your agenda in terms of what Machiavelli would call liberty. As you will know, Machiavelli defined liberty as the balance of interdependencies within a social complex. This means that one party should not have more power than another and their interests should accord with the interests of all. One sign of an oppressive system is that where one party has creates one-way dependencies. Being inordinately dependent on one side is the recipe for corruption and loss of liberty. ...

With this definition in mind, I recall the Marxist Zizek's comments relating to the invasion of Iraq. For Zizek, American leftists were akin to those mealy-mouthed accommodaters of Stalin and totalitarian regimes in cold war eastern Europe.

That is, while the Iraqis suffered torture and terrible persecution, leftists sat comfortably and securely in their western liberal legal systems, looking blandly at the atrocities of the Hussein regime while they cast aspersions on perhaps one of the only chances that these people might have to finally escape that oppression.

Yet, Zizek notes that while the hypocrisy of western liberals and leftists is rank, the problem with the US invasion is that it serves US capitalist and political self-interests, most notably those of big oil.

With this in mind, the invasion by the US simply tried to consolidate the hegemonistic imperial designs of those stealth interests that really control the US political system.

With these comments in mind, I think that the US will have to go a long way in assuring all participants in this grand symphony you propose that it does indeed have more than its own interests at heart.

Unfortunately, the history of the US in the region does not harbinger any good in this direction. US foreign policy in the Mideast has always been geared to creating client states whose service to the US is implemented in terms of a one-way dependency. As Machiavelli was keen to show, creating such unequal dependencies is a sure sign of servility and corruption. Read more!

Religious Right Threat?

A fascinating discussion on whether there's a real threat from the religious right is taking place between a collective of left-wing scholars at Larval Subjects, The Weblog, and I Cite. I've added my own extensive comments there, for what they're worth. Read more!

Takfir and Sunni/Shia Alliances

This Sunni Shiite thing, aka takfir, has been abrogated in recent statements by some major Muslim clerics. According to one source, the only Islamic school of thought that wants to maintain this practice is Saudi Wahhabism. ...

The signers of this document include:

In accordance with the fatwas issued by the honourable and respectable Grand Imam Sheikh Al Azhar.

The Grand Ayatollah Al Sayyid Ali Al Sistani, the honourable and respectable grand mufti of Egypt, the honourable and respectable Shiite clerics (both Jaafari and Zaydi), the honourable and respectable grand mufti of the Sultanate of Oman.

The Islamic Fiqh Academy in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the grand council for Religious Affairs of Turkey.

The honourable and respectable grand mufti of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the respectable members of its National Fatwa Committee, and the honourable and respectable Sheikh Dr Yusuf Al Qaradawi;

And in accordance with what was mentioned in the speech of His Majesty King Abdullah during the opening session of our conference;

Note Sistani's name. He's the major religious authority in Shia Islam.

I wonder whether recent moves by Saudi Arabia to head off Iran and support hardline Sunnis in Iraq are not related to this statement in some way. IE the Saudis are scared that any consolidation of ties between Iran and Iraq will undermine their own interpretation of Islam.

These comments should also be juxtaposed with Cobban's reading of Moqtada al-Sadr's attempts to forge an alliance between Shiite, Sunni, and secular elements in Iraq. Read more!

The Woman with A Dead Eye

One of my coworkers is, by the best intention of the word, an odd looking woman. She has a right eye whose eyeball not only seems permanently skewed to the side but looks dead and is perhaps sightless. She has a set of bad teeth that jut crookedly in a bad overbite over her lips.

I often find myself irritated with her familiarity. She always acts as though she knows what I am thinking and feeling and appears to think that our friendship has been instantaneous from our first meeting. At times, she will say something in response to a statement I make and I feel anger welling in my gut at her presumptuousness tone and response. ...

In another time, another place, I can imagine this woman--with her blind, skewed eye and terrible teeth--being branded from birth as a witch or some other demonically possessed being. She would find life at the margins, perhaps persecuted and attacked when things did not go right in the community. People would cross themselves whenever she looks their way or say a prayer.

She seems to be one of those people where coincidence and happenstance intersect. The weird and odd, she tells me, are always occurring to her. Just yesterday she told me that she'd had to pay AOL double because someone else with the same number and the same street name, in a town thirty miles away, also had an AOL account.

Previously, she'd called me from the median of a highway and though she barely knew me began telling me that some kids had tried to carjack her vehicle as she sat in the median of the highway waiting for a tow.

The other day she was showing people photos of her son-in-law. I didn't think anything of it, though I was hoping she'd pass me by so that she'd understand how I disliked her overly familiar attitude. I was not able to get out of it, though.

The photos showed what appeared to be a wedding party. What she drew my eye to though was one person in particular, a black man in a tuxedo, her son-in-law. I said okay and expected her to move on. Yet, she continued to go through all the photos, always pointing out the young black man. Yes, he was he son-in-law but there were others there as well--like her daughter, whom I don't know either.

I recolied from what I interpreted as her fawning, strangely offensive dwelling on him. It seemed as though she was treating him like a trophy. African Americans are in very short supply in the part of the country I live in, so I could understand her behavior but it still irritated me.

At least once every time since when I talked with her, she managed to bring her son-in-law into the conversation. Each time she did, I tried to think of excuses for what I consider to be at best an ignorant parochialism, at worst some form of fetishistic tokenism.

But last night, I finally realized that all of my thoughts about her are baseless and sorely misjudged.

For some time I'd known that her son was causing her toruble. She'd had to repossess a car from him that he decided to give away to a stranger, though she was co-owner of the car. Things had gotten so bad with him that she called the police and put him in jail for a while. The office was informed that should he show up, we were to call the police.

This morning I got to hear the details of her troubles with her son. She described how after she had their car repossessed, he showed up at work and had cornered her while twisting her arm, threatening her all the time. Her son-in-law, luckily, had appeared and had pulled the son off his mother.

Now I know why she's so proud of her son-in-law. And I only pray that I will learn not jump to conclusions so cruelly again. Read more!

"The Politics of Atrocity"

In a recent posting, former defense intelligence Col. Pat Lang (ret'd) responds to an analysis by Alexander Cockburn of the social chaos that is tearing Iraq apart. Cockburn documents the lack of concern inside the US for the suffering and pain that has resulted from the Bush preemptive war on what the President calls "terror."

Lang suggests that whatever the US does, Iraq will never recover its cohesion again and will instead descend into a hell that will devastate and ruin even more than it has now. According to Lang, Iraq has become a nexus of criminality and bestiality where, he says, the normal operating procedure is "the politics of atrocity." …

Lang writes:

We are going to go all the way down, down down.... All the way down to whatever circle is reserved for the ignorant, proud and presumptuous.

And the Iraqis, whomever they are? They are going to go with us although perhaps to a different circle. Their's may be one reserved for the bloody minded who can't see their neighbors as other than mortar targets.

Bolstering Lang's claims is the Lancet report. Based on sophisticated statistical survey models, this report estimates that between 300-650,000 Iraqis died after the US invasion in rates higher than would have during less violent times.

In Congress’ December session, Representative Dennis Kucinich held a hearing on the Lancet report. That hearing and the report's conclusion did not find their way into the mainstream press. Much like Pres. Bush did when he responded to a question by a reporter on the report's findings, the MSM has turned a blind eye to the report and its necrotic statistics.

For Bush, only 30,000 or so Iraqis have died since the US invasion. Either the President is lying or he is woefully unable to grasp such large numbers. The latter possibility would enhance Bush's image as intellectually challenged. (Does he use that bumpkin image for political advantage, maybe as a way of impugning such "intellectual" studies.

That is, striking that bumpkin pose he can speak to the common man in a way that communicates to him that any results of eggheads are not serious enough for discussion, since it's obvious that they are politically motivated anyway.

Perhaps a better insight into the President's spiritual state vis a vis the war is his recent statement that he sleeps well at night. I am not sure that he should have said this, even if it's true. Maybe he doesn't lose sleep over the deaths of 30,000 dead Iraqis. But it does seem callous not to lose sleep over the deaths of American soldiers.

This indifference to human suffering seems endemic to those who know the reins of power. Rupert Murdoch recently said that only 3,000 US soldiers had given their lives so far in this war. From the view of this man who knows and understands more about the workings of human nature and its world, these are small potatoes. More people have died in other wars, so the expenditure here in this war is minuscule and bearable—no doubt from a profit/loss analysis.

These men with big visions—who see the world from that God-view I’ve discussed before—understand that little men think about such matters. Anything of great import requires sacrifice and suffering. Those who question this wisdom just don't have that vision or the will to dream those great plans and fight for them.

Such themes are immortalized by Dostoevsky's novels and short stories. More disturbing, though, to those in positions to worry about America's soul is that such comments might represent a situation of one so alienated from the ideas that inform these views that such thoughts are meaningless.

The aspirations to greatness seem typically American, informed as it by the Renaissance republican humanist ideals. But what makes the recent imperial plans of the Bush admin and the neoconservative policymakers different from Renaissance ideals is a limiting factor that Machiavelli accepted as paramount.

This limiting factor says that all actions must not just benefit a few but the whole community. The economic abuses of this war have yet to be comprehensively documented, but there are already signs that members of the ruling class have benefited financially from this war.

Of course, for Machiavelli financial gain is not the only factor that determines political corruption. Anything that unfairly benefits one part of society over another and makes the one dependent on another is inherently corrupt and corrupting.

Selfish actions—including those that involve political and social or cultural status—are included. In contemporary American politics, the economic benefits of this war are counter-balanced by the grasping for unlimited political power by the executive branch. Also, the social and cultural battles over who determines the communal ethos show that politicians hope to use war as a pretext for gaining a hegemony of ideals defining who and what this country means.

One thing that's becoming apparent from this war is that America might have to begin defining social interest to mean more than the boundaries of the nation-state. Instead, the US political ideology must start understanding itself in international terms that do not simply give lip service to human aspirations or an intellectually barren notion of democracy.

This expanded consciousness would not only see its own suffering as worthy of concern but also the suffering of others upon whom it visits immense social chaos and human misery.

Related Links

• Bush Is Loath to Budge
  
• Doubts About Iraqi Leader's Capabilities Persist
  
• Iraq's Al-Maliki Reaches Out to Sunnis
  
• A War Bush Wouldn't Pay For
  
• The Curtain Is Drawn On the Rumsfeld Era
  
• In Baker's Blunder, A Chance For Bush
  
• Truman's Trials Resonate for Bush
  
• Rice Rejects Overture To Iran And Syria
  
• Is America's Dominance Waning?
  
• Hirsh: More Troops for Iraq?

Read more!