This Is Supposed to be Funny...

Islamophobic humor is in vogue across Europe it seems. Read more!

HotShots! 10*11*06

Somewhat lighter in spirit these days, with the weight of the republic's health in somewhat better hands, I can begin to take on subjects that I'd rather spend time doing: poetry, drama, philosophy. Maybe I shouldn't, though; maybe that's the task set for me, this frenetic angst--up to my ears and beyond in the details of disentangling the terrible webs of deceit perpetrated on my fellow citizens by those thrones and principalities the necromancer power-mongers bow down to.

How many votes? So how does the vote--as a gross number--look in comparison to other elections?

A Mass Delusion? This is what I love about Pat Lang. Put it on the line, no-holds barred. You think Bush is going to give up his Oedipal traipse through history? Get it in writing before you take it to the bank, Lang reminds us.

BLACKFIVE: Bush is an idiot This is from a pro-Bush soldier, obviously expressing his frustration with the great decider after the devastating defeat in the midterm elections and the sacrifice of Rumsfeld. Take a look at the comments section too.

Larval Subjects: Post-Election Grogginess Yes, this guy's an egg-head, but he's very clear in this piece and presents some unique angles on the election results.

U.S. Election Post-Mortem Thoughts (Leiter) Decent observations about what's ahead on the political scene.

Where is Ike? I'm not one for tears in the eye, heart-jerk patriotism, and I think that Robert Lowell was unfair when he decried the moribund nature of Einsenhower's presidency, but remembering people who stand up for principle--as Eisenhower did in opposing the Israeli invasion of Egypt--is worth remembering.

What happened when Democrats in Congress cut off funding for the Vietnam War? They say it won't get to this point in Congress in the confrontation over Iraq; if it does, here's how they did it last time.

EM Woods: "Democracy as the Ideology of Empire" Yes, you knew I'd sneak something in here by the commies at Lenin's Tomb. It's not necessarily that I agree with everything he says--nor that I disagree--it's just that his selection of topics is so great and his ability to write heady stuff for a general public is so well done.

Number of Jewish parliamentarians worldwide reaches record high Yes, there are people keeping track of these things--and they're jewish. I was thinking about this the other day. Of course, many of the jews in Congress run the gamut in their religious identity--most perhaps are so-called secular jews.

Another Apostasy Hadith Revealed First part of an exegesis of a Hadith that many see as the heart of the extremism of Islam. Eteraz argues against that interpretation.

More On The Apostasy Hadith Continues the exegesis of the apostasy Hadith.

Austrolabe: Are We Victims of Our Own Abstinence? Interesting stories about what it means to be an observant Muslim in secular society.

Can it be that it was all so simple then? Exploring the nostalgia for better days, the land that childhood once knew, the times and spaces never to be again.

A Review of John's Yoo's WAR BY OTHER MEANS: AN INSIDER'S ACCOUNT OF THE WAR ON TERRORIt's hard not to spit at the same time as I say Yoo's name, but Geoffrey Stone is right: these men are only human though they preach inhumanity. Learn to unravel the evil they do. Read more!

Beit Hanoun 11/8/06

A Palestinian mother and her two babies lay together in the drawer of the morgue fridge as workers prepare the bodies for burial in the Beit Hanun hospital following an Israeli military operation in which Israeli tanks fired on homes in the northern Gaza Strip. The world reacted with horrified shock to an Israeli army attack on Palestinian homes in the Gaza Strip that killed 18 civilians, eight of them children. Foto: Mahmud Hams/AFP
Read more!

Rove's Alice Cooper Moment?

The rock band Alice Cooper used to be one of my adolescent favorites. I even saw them in concert twice--unfortunately the last time on their Million Dollar Babies tour. One of the legends--which I believe has been verified--about the band is that during their earliest concerts Alice would whip the crowd into frenzy and at the right moment throw a chikcen into the writhing masses. They then proceeded to tear the animal to pieces. ...

I bring up this little biographical tidbit because it seems to me that we've just witnessed a similar action by Karl Rove and George Bush. That is, with the frenzied democrats dancing in the aisles of the Capitol, Karl has thrown them and the press Donald Rumsfeld as a sacrifice. No doubt, Rove hopes to obviate anger and calls for investigations of the Bush admin by scapegoating Rumsfeld.

The scapegoat phenomenon is a powerful ritual by which some societies symbolically transfer communal guilt to an animal and either sacrifice it or banish it to the wilderness. In scapegoating Rumsfeld, Rove hopes that Bushco's sins will be expiated before the public. In this way, he and his boss hope to have their own sins forgiven and see the way forward to no accountability for all the lies and deception they have perpetrated upon the public.

As mikevotes puts it:

Now begins the ugly process of scapegoating wherein every bad decision will be tied to Rumsfeld in hopes they will sink with him.

Read more!

The "Thumpin"

People really should not be underestimating what the Emanuel and Schumer team did to "thump" the Bush regime. In a gerrymandered political void, they pulled out not just a one-or-two shot eke out but a full-bore ass-kicking.

They snuck some kind of Trojan horse inside that overblown corpse and watched it disintegrate from within. Amazing...

One big loser was the Rove myth--that is, that Rove's some kind of unbeatable genius. My nomination for geniuses are Rahm Emanuel and Chuck Schumer. Schumer especially seems to be the point man in this counter-attack.

I suggest that the opening volley in the beginning of the end of this Evil Regime (ER) 1.0 was Schumer's Dubai Ports embarrassment for the Bushco. That was a humiliating defeat and it showed that the ER 1.0 was vulnerable.

That vulnerability involved the inherent corruption that floats this regime's boat. That is, Dubai Ports showed that while the Bush talks about defense and terrorism, there are people behind the scenes making money and exploiting the situation for their own enrichment.

People don't like being lied to. Especially when it means killing other people. they also don't like being considered as killers. With the continuous tissue of lies and deception purveyed by the admin for its justification for the so-called war in Iraq and then for staying the course, the American public was left in a continual, uneasy state of confusion. While they are willing to accept a modicum of spin and hyperbole from their leaders, they are not willing to accept outright lies. The Bush admin's lies became so apparent that people finally had enough.

The Foley scandal brought simply reinforced the feeling the growing realization of the public that the Bush admin says one thing but does another. The idea that a man could seemingly champion sexually abused children while secretly engaging in sexually predatory behavior towards adolescent boys surely struck a chord in people. The fact that the Reps attempted to cover up this fact and did so for several years only exacerbated the growing sense that people had that this admin lies and cheats to hypocritically sustain a facade of uprightness but secretly behaves otherwise. Needless to say, the Ted Haggard story deepened these feelings of being deceived.

Exit polls of voters during the election showed that corruption was the #1 point of many voters. Imagine that--while the press was being cornholed in the corner by Rove, the voters were sensing--where else would they have heard about it?--that someone was getting rich.

The war profiteers stink wherever they go: the public caught the odor even though the Press was having connubial bliss with Rove and the Bush honey pot. The Press was surprised--surprised mind you!--that this was even an issue. Well duh--they sure as hell didn't cover it for six years.

The president's recent announcement and press conference on Rumsfeld are a charade. Much like a vampire's epigones sacrifice themselves for their creator, Rumsfeld has taken the poison pill. All of this is a diversion whose point is to give the impression that Bush is willing to compromise and work with the new legislature. Perhaps it's a stalling tactic to slow down investigations of the Cheney/Rumsfeld's cabal.

The Dems should not take the bait here but should aggressively and unstintingly unearth all of those lies and deceptions that represent the true corruption behind this admin. David Corn suggests how these investigations should proceed:

She will also have to make certain that the Democrats proceed with the appropriate inquiries. The goal is to hold the Bush administration accountable without appearing vindictive. (See Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay for a lesson in how not to do this.) My hunch is that many Americans--especially those outside the party faithful whom the Democrats will want to keep on their side for 2008--will prefer to see Democrats producing legislative accomplishments rather than acrimonious investigations. But there are plenty of probes that can proceed. Representative Henry Waxman, the new chairman of the government reform committee, should investigate thoroughly the failed reconstruction in Iraq. An estimated $45 billion of the $80 billion spent on Iraq reconstruction has gone down the drain of fraud and waste. What taxpayer would not like to see this fully investigated?

Pelosi and the Democrats--including those in the Senate, if they gain control there--ought to pick their investigations carefully and strategically. (Yes, this means staying away from any talk of impeachment.) But a prudent approach will hardly limit the opportunities. Take global warming. An investigation of how the Bush administration has suppressed scientific data showing the problem of global warming, coupled with hearings on the administrations refusal to do anything significant to redress this threat, could play well.

As hamlet_machine points out, the interim elections and their result have driven a stake through the Bushco vampyr's heart. Now the Dems need to cut the head off. Until that's accomplished, the vampyr still lives to suck kill and suck dry the life's blood of the republic.

PS Eric Rauchway has a cool historical chart that shows several ways to read the Dem victory:

Here is a chart (data here) showing Democratic representation in the Congress since the New Deal; the black bar indicates the threshold for a majority. It's way too soon to say anything really meaningful about this, but here are two of my thoughts:

1. You could spin this as a narrow, non-ideological, throw-the-bums out victory. On this read, the Congress would have a definite mandate to

a) pursue investigations of corruption in the administration and its predecessor Congresses,
b) restore limits on executive powers,
c) revive reality-based accounting and fiscal responsibility,

but not necessarily a mandate to legislate left-of-center solutions to, e.g., the ongoing imbroglio that is our national health insurance system.

2. Or you could spin this the other way, and say the Republican majorities from 1994 onward were themselves a throw-the-bums out, nonideological response, artificially prolonged by the politicization of 9/11 and the War on Terror. ...

Read more!

demos drives stake thru repub vampyr heart

so we see the vampyr who walked in the nightmares of the dead find their demise with a stake in the heart of their hate. vampyr reps find their terror and fear in the blood and suck it dry from the terror of their own addled fantasies. boytoys perdeast pages the vampyr sucks more than the vein but builds its empire on the pain and suffering of the innocent:the collateral it uses to buy an ersatz happiness a plastic jesus mind that seeks forgiveness for its filthy neuroses. ...

Iraq is one of the biggest reasons that the Republicans are losing tonight. With a unique combination of arrogance and incompetence Bush, Rumsfeld, and Cheney are proudly going full speed ahead in their deadly war in Iraq, despite the growing opposition from all sides of the political spectrum and even from the military. It must now be said that George Bush and his partners in the crime of Iraq are unnecessarily killing lots of people—both Americans and Iraqis—with no plan to stop the killing. So they must now be stopped, and that is a big part of tonight’s message.

Read more!

HotShots!

Disclaimer: I voted a straight Democratic line. It's like I told a young socialist coworker the other day who said she wasn't about to vote for a capitalist candidate: you have to understand that realizing longer term goals are built from short-term steps. This administration is a threat to every possible thing that any socialist might find repulsive. The Dems--while weasly, whining, and spineless--would not have passed the torture laws, Patriot Act, invasion of Iraq, consolidated immense power in the presidency, etc. For all those idealists out there--and believe me, I've been there--the country stands on the verge of tyranny and a form of soft fascism that could deteriorate into more forbidding forms of political oppression.

The Elections, National Security Policy, and Wars If the Dems win the midterm elections, will they work with Bush? Or will there be a constitutional meltdown that could equal a bloodless purge not seen since the heydays of the fascist demise in Germany?

'Allah is my Lord and yours': Talking with Ahmadinejad The President of Iran's challenge to George Bush to live by his faith was treated as a joke by much of the press, if they even mentioned it. But really George, what would Jesus do?

"Christian" politics Evangelicals love to quote CS Lewis. But would good old CS turn over in his grave thinking about the devil's pact the Religious Right has made with the Beast, Ubu-Bush?

A Brief History of Wedge Politics An excellent review of the way politics is machined in the US--all to guarantee that certain ruling class interests are not challenged.

"What is called politics is comparatively something so superficial and inhuman, that practically I have never fairly recognized that it concerns me at all.....I have not got to answer for having read a single President's Message. A strange age of the word this, when empires, kingdoms, and republics come a-beggin to a private man's door and utter their complaints at his elbow! I cannot take up a newspaper but I find that some wretched goverment or other, hard pushed, and on its last legs, is interceding with me, the reader, to vote for it, - more inportunate than an Italian beggar." -- Henry David Thoreau, "Life Without Principle."

The lessons of Iraq 'state-building' Another decent posting by the commie atheists at Lenin's Tomb.

THE COMING CONSTITUTIONAL SHOWDOWN Okay, let's assume that the Reps don't intimidate, steal, deceive their way out of a Democratic win today. What might the Dems do to bring some real accountability to the political landscape, especially in getting the White House to account for its unconstitutional actions during the last six years?

Religion and Politics Analyzes recent Newsweek and Time cover stories on religion and politics--notes the odd fetish many Xtians for things sexual rather than social justice. Thank God Jesus wasn't that uni-dimensional, huh?

Religion and the Profane Investigates the intersection between the notions and how they play into the political.

Science & faith work together, Pope says The guy's got nute. While I don't believe it for a minute, it's good to hear the old dude say it and put some of the more odious neo-creationists in their place.

Dawkins Interviews Haggard Seriously. Hear the two go at it...

The Top 50 Books That Have Shaped Evangelicals In case you had some spare reading time... These are what you might call "light"reading, written for popular consumption, which might explain their ability to "shape" evangelicals.

The New Testament and the 'State' Some will say that this piece by the good Bishop of Durham is dated, perhaps hearkening to days of a liberation theology that had already been brutally oppressed by secular and religious authorities. On the other hand, you could say that the hope it conveys in staid, pedantic terms cannot never be suppressed because it always lives in people's hearts. Read more!

Daily HotShots!

I'll be adding to the list throughout the day...

US lurches closer to recession before elections. The source in this report (an avowed Leftist), of course, will be the determining factor in who accepts the conclusions of the data presented. The data, though, is quite compelling.

The Haggard latest ... And I thought I'd get through this without linking to anything that has to do with this stupid story. But then I see Crunchy's got one of the best analyses I've seen on Haggard's boy-toy fetish. Yes, Ted's a creep, but his wife's frigid... The logic here is jaw dropping; even assuming that Mrs. Haggard is withholding her favors, Ted's preference tells me that it's not her frigidity that's the issue (if there IS an issue) but his proclivity. The guy likes men--maybe bi- or homo-sexually, whatever, you can't pin the problem for his issues onto Mrs. Haggard, whose will to stand beside and defend Ted earns my respect.

Israel's Large-Scale Killing of Palestinians Passes Unnoticed Those cynical Israeli politicians. Exploiting American indifference to anything having to do with Palestinians, they go on a killing rampage. This has been happening for 60 years, who cares? As I suggested in an earlier posting, after its defeat by Hizbullah Israel would take out its defeat by beating up (read "killing") Palestinians. Unfortunately, I think that has come true.

Minister Lieberman Calls for Separation from Arabs Disclaimer: This man is NOT related to Senator Joseph "Joe" Lieberman from Connecticut.

Misinformation Intern: My summer as a military propagandist in Iraq Ever wonder what a real-life Winston Smith (Orwell's double in 1984) might feel like? This story gives another small window into the world of information manufacturing and propaganda creation--the main way that US politicians create political reality.

Muslim Propaganda at the University of Chicago Okay, let's assume for the moment that this historian is right. Can you really see anti-Semitism (or is it anti-Israelism) in the arrangement of artifacts in a museum exhibit?


US DEFENDS itself on global warming at annual U.N. climate conference.

Islamism's failure, Islamists' future Roy has written intelligently about threats, trends, and scenarios of the Islamist project for over a decade. His remarks on the Islamists' dilemma shows that they do indeed adapt to historical circumstance, contrary to many of the Islamophobic paranoiac revelations.

Presidential IQ Adams, Jefferson, Kennedy, Clinton--all very smart guys. But you really want to know where GW is on the list, don't you?

Frantz Fanon - On Culture The African political philosopher lectures about what some have called the more important issue.

It's Getting Better All the Time -- Dawkins on Morality Richard says morality happens.

God's War: A New History of the Crusades A new history of the Crusades is welcome indeed, especially when you have Islamophobes out there passing along revisionist versions of the crusades that strangely resemble the so-called war on terror. Of course, the details of history always belie cliches and stereotypes. This is not your father's Crusades nor the liberal or Xtian version either.

The Misunderstood Jew That Jesus was a Jew is a no-brainer. The question in many historical-critical circles is whether he was talking for only Jews or for something else, whatever that might be. This book argues for the former; the reviewer frames it in terms of the latter.

I See Dead People: The Theory-Industry and Revolutionary Practice Okay, hold your nose with both fingers, remember to breathe through your mouth, and wade through this article that actually says some intelligent things, especially if you lean way left. Read more!

Daily HotShots!

In this season when the political stakes are so high, when the republic's fate hangs by a thread ... when clichés rule the day, it helps to know there’re people out there really dealing with these issues.

Two Texts: An Election Eve Meditation The intersection of morality and politics has never seemed so relevant. Kant comes in handy in dissecting the mess the US finds itself in. And you thought philosophers just did circle jerks.


FRAME GAME A knock-em-out, string-em-up academic debate that has caused many college freshmen heart palpitations of political revelation. I note the mention of Pocock and Skinner--serious philosopher-historians whose work is worth a 1,000 Lakoffs, Chomskys or Pinkers.

Between Hope and Terror: Derrida and Habermas Plead for the Im/Possible Those old Europeans have centuries of terror in the blood. Is it possible to imagine the impossible and hope?

The Language Game of Responsible Agency and the Problem of Free Will Okay, the Wittgensteinian jargon might sound cute, but everyone wants to know about free will, right?

Neocon/Theocon Ruminations Theocon Richard Neuhaus on some background of the neocon/theocon alliance and the bad blood with the liberal press.

Liberal Realpolitik Covers Islamism and the biases and propaganda of how nuclear politics is formulated.

BOOK REVIEW: Annihilation from Within You might not like the conclusions, but the subject--again--is important. Didn't they used to tell us in high school history class about causes of wars in the past being the proliferation of weaponry? Well, this is a variation on that theme, except here the weapons are biological, nuclear, etc. Anyway, when the history of this era is written, I really do believe that a major discussion will be the exponential growth in weapons available to huge numbers of people with any and every possible political grievance. That sounds almost reactionary doesn’t it, especially since there might be people with just grievances who will want to resort to violence. The disaster of these weapons came home to me once gain when I watched The Constant Gardener this morning. BTW Here's an article that shows I'm not just making this up.

moral-order.pdf -- morality and capitalism I know it almost makes you want to do that George Carlin imitation about oxymorons—you know, like military intelligence (oh, that’s what John Kerry was doing…).

It Depends on What the Definition of "Victory" Is One of the subjects that needs to get out of the brains of specialisis and into the public sphere in terms that non-specialists can understand is how communication experts manipulate the news for political purposes. This link gives a n inkling insight into how that’s done. Contrary to the view expressed by Mojo, I don’t think it’s a matter of those in power not thinking that we can’t handle the truth but rather a matter of just good old lying and deception.

James Petras' New Book - The Power Of Israel In The United States Any book on this subject will be attacked as anti-Semitic as a matter of course. There is the danger of this subject buying into that ugly and shameful bias. Yet, that fear should not forestall undertaking a common-sense, fact-based analysis of political exploitation of those fears.

Baptist Convention told: Muslims 'are here to take over our country' They are.

Richard Dawkins on South Park The guy’s made plenty of cash enlightening us dull bulbs about religion’s delusion, so South Park returns the favor.

Paradise Now - A Review I doubt you'll see this film at your local playhouse, but if you see it in the bargain bin, you might have a look-see.

Culture Corner: Disparate Posts on Pasolini's Porcile -- The writer's religious, affects some fin de siecle dandyism that's redolent of Huysmans but he writes really well 1, 2, 3, 4 Read more!

Daily Hotshots!

Disclaimer: Irony alert

I'm adding a new feature to the blog: Daily HotShots! Following in the footsteps of Born at the Crest of the Empire, Defense Tech, and Juan Cole, I find this synoptic quick-see at articles I'm reading somewhat more efficient and perhaps more effective than posting separate entries.

Reminder to Voters: Neocons Want to Bomb Iran Steve Clemons links to an article by a neocon brain whose assessment of failure in Iraq entails invading Iran. No shit...

Aljazeera.Net - Pandemic fear over new bird flu strain Reports that a new, vaccine-resistant Bird Flu has mutated and raised the anxiety levels of epidemiologists who've been prophesying a worldwide pandemic for some time now.

God and the Welfare State - The MIT Press Book purports to document the history of the Religious Right in various strategizing and ideas of religious and political leaders opposed to the Welfare State.

Long Sunday: The Liberal Manifesto An excellent counter-counter-argument by jodi dean against the liberal manifesto formulated by Ackerman et al. as a riposte to the Euston Manifesto.

BBC NEWS | UK | Security firms 'abusing Iraqis' More reporting on the running amok of private security forces--aka mercenaries--in Iraq.

Fears over huge growth in Iraq's unregulated private armies More on western mercenary armies in Iraq.

Clifford Geertz Obituary A giant in the field of ethnography has died. I cut my teeth on several of Geertz's writings and have an unpublished paper somewhere critical of Geertz's notion of religion as a cultural system. I also studied with one of Geertz's native American pupils, Alfonso Ortiz.

The Myth that Low Taxes and Liberty Go Hand in Hand Provides historical background of anti-tax movements, showing that the present political movement against taxes is a recent phenomenon and is contrary to historical trends in post-Revolutionary America.

INTERVIEW-US tactics swelling Al Qaeda in Iraq-Sunni moderate Interview with Iraqi moderate that suggests that al-Qaeda has gained immensely in regions of Iraq where previously they were effectively non-existent.

Common Article 3, Torture, and Specific Intent Argues that inconsistencies in recent torture legislation leave open the possibility that the international laws against war crimes will be broken. It's a more subtle analysis than mainstream news reports of the various international conventions that apply and how the recent torture legislation passed by the Congress is inadequate.

How Can A Democrat Talk To An Islamist Posted by one of my hate-filled, irrational Muslim, this article explains what strategy might actually work in stemming the tide of Islamism in the Mideast and (I hope) around the world.

The Washington Note - Dismantling Cheney's Control Argues that job #1 if the Dems win Tuesday is to cut the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal off at the knees--as they say in the corridors of power.

Movie Review: Syriana Another piece by Ali Eteraz; read it, you'll find something surprising.

How neoconservative moralism works Tries to get a proper perspective on the neconservative political philosophy and related issues. Read more!

Hardwired for Ethics?

Why not be hardwired for knowing what's right and wrong? Ethically, there's nothing to say that that's somehow contra religion (contra suggestions to the contrary by some). Indeed, it's the basic assumption by many Christian theologians that the Transcendent does indeed instill in each human a basic love of and desire for the good.

Following Aristotle, Aquinas makes exactly this point. Even those philosophers like Kierkegaard who are often called "irrationalists," assume this very basic drive. For Kierkegaard--following Kant and Socrates in some ways--there's a higher ethics that characterizes religious ethics. This higher ethics is distinctly opposed to natural inclinations, calling into play a higher sense of purpose than common desires for biological, social, or political ethics entail. ...

According to NYTimes:

The moral grammar now universal among people presumably evolved to its final shape during the hunter-gatherer phase of the human past, before the dispersal from the ancestral homeland in northeast Africa some 50,000 years ago. This may be why events before our eyes carry far greater moral weight than happenings far away, Dr. Hauser believes, since in those days one never had to care about people remote from one’s environment.

Dr. Hauser believes that the moral grammar may have evolved through the evolutionary mechanism known as group selection. A group bound by altruism toward its members and rigorous discouragement of cheaters would be more likely to prevail over a less cohesive society, so genes for moral grammar would become more common.

Many evolutionary biologists frown on the idea of group selection, noting that genes cannot become more frequent unless they benefit the individual who carries them, and a person who contributes altruistically to people not related to him will reduce his own fitness and leave fewer offspring.

But though group selection has not been proved to occur in animals, Dr. Hauser believes that it may have operated in people because of their greater social conformity and willingness to punish or ostracize those who disobey moral codes.

“That permits strong group cohesion you don’t see in other animals, which may make for group selection,” he said.

Read more!

All Hallow's Eve Reflections and Hauntological Remarks

For those unfamiliar with catholic feast days, all Hallow's Eve might appear to be one of those pagan rituals that--depending on your religious inclinations--might or might not be a good thing. In theory at least, the feast day is meant to be a time when the living and the dead are supposed to interact and commune. Of course, the schlock of Halloween has turned such ideas as remembering the dead into an exercise in putting on display the various anxieties and fears that people everyday wear inside but on this day wear on the outside. ...

There's more to contemporary practices of dressing up than displaying those fears that one usually hides. There's also the idea that you dress up and display things you'd like to be. This exercise in play which affirms what your dreams are and thereby seek social affirmation of certainly has something to say for itself. That it should occur in a context that once included paying some form of homage to the dead speaks perhaps to the closeness in that possibility and potential and dreams have in our psyches with the finality and nothingness of death.

Personally, Halloween is one of those holidays that evokes ambivalent feelings in me. Since I have strong agrarian roots, I've always had a strange affinity for thinking about the dead. This goes back to the days when, as a child, I believed I saw ghosts opening my bedroom door at night. This was later strengthened when my family moved next door to a funeral home. Many dreams I remember from those days included often paradisal visions of the after-life.

Unfortunately, Halloween was also a time of immense personal tragedy. My sister died Halloweening, hit by a car as she crossed the street. That event has defined my life more than I am conscious of, for it was so traumatic that I have little memory of several weeks that followed her death.

In some ways, then, Halloween is not just a time for possibility for me but also a time for remembering the dead and trying perhaps to recover some lost time that will never again see the light of day. This is perhaps why La Dia de Los Muertos has always attracted my admiration. While I lived in new Mexico, the closeness of death was a continual, quite palpable reality. Since much of the state is still rural and very poor, the closeness of death is not hidden behind the facade created by so much iconography of despair.
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So what will I do tonight? I'll be spending time watching the "reality shows" on SciFi channel's Ghost Hunters and the BBC's three-day extravaganza of ghost hunting from Scotland's most haunted sites. I've tried before to discuss my interest in these shows. In justifying my taste for these types of shows to those who deride the shows' absurdity, I'll often point to the Ghost Hunters' stated purpose of debunking ghosts and their diverse habits--whether living a shadowy tape loop that seems to play over and over and which the ghosts are not aware of being in and which the living can sometimes witness; the "holy grail" of full-bodied apparitions; or the diverse phenomena of strangely moving chairs, knocks, steps, etc.

My respect for the Most Haunted series is charitable. The use of mediums and the often hysterical (and I don't mean comic) reactions of the show's host often drives me to shout out imprecations of gullibility. The decision to use night-vision cameras wherein the pupils of the (living) protagonists glow eerily in black and white seems an obvious technical fact that works in the show's favor by turning normal human beings into strangely ghostly presences on the TV screen.

Most Haunted's three-day extravaganza is another matter, however. It's shown before a live audience in a hall that appears to seat several thousand people from floor to balcony. The show's aired to Britain and the US and several live cameras can be seen on the show's Internet site. Along the bottom of the screen, you can find comments from people in Britain and the US who "see things" and have premonitions about what the cast is expected to encounter in its hunt for the dead's spirits.

I make little apology for my interest in these shows. On a rather superficial level, there's the simple interest in the fact that people still believe in ghosts. Then there's the psychology of fear and how it works among the various cast members as they walk through the dark and deal with various noises and other phenomena. My dislike of the use of mediums revolves around the proven manipulation of human gullibility and various tricks involving casting one's voice, moving objects, faking possessions--all phenomena that have been noted among shaman-based societies. The diverse means by which these tricks can be played have been outed by such luminaries as Harry Houdini and others.

No matter Houdini and others' efforts at debunking the evocative methods used by shamans and mediums to create an environment in which our deepest fears surface, you should recall that these methods are effective. Western anthropologists and ethnographers report on their own responses as witnesses during sessions in religious ceremonies where these methods are employed. And surely Hollywood has elaborated in spectacular fashion in exploiting these methods and creating their effects.

It's interesting that in my discussions with people about Ghost Hunters in particular has shown that working class people respond positively to this show. This may reflect the fact that the protagonists in the show are working class stiffs who run a Roto-Rooter company by day. Beyond this rather obvious identification with members of their own class, however, there's still the question about why talk of an afterlife appeals in some way to working class people.

Perhaps Don Cupitt is right, and this is mere superstition that reflects the ignorance of those out of power projecting into unearthly realms events and happenings that occur beyond their control. Add to this Cupitt's notion that the supernatural itself is simply a reflection of the linguistic nature of human being, and perhaps this does provide an adequate explanation for the will to believe in ghosts and other paranormal phenomena among the working classes. if so, then Cupitt's suggestion that secularization's inevitable progress will ultimately rationalize away these traces of the agrarian and Bronze age belief systems.
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Belief in the afterlife is a gnarled matter within many religions. As I have noted in a previous posting, in the Abrahamic religions, at least, the question of the survival of something related to what has been a human being has been hotly contested. Often, the beliefs associated with the life-force of a previously alive human being reflect either stories and tales brought in from previous nature-based religious systems or reflect ideas imported into these religions by way of philosophy, notably Plato and Aristotle.

It is interesting to note that the contemporary understanding of the afterlife and the soul borrows heavily from Plato. The historical reasons for this may have to do with the fact that this understanding of the soul was adopted as doctrine by the Catholic Church as part of the Counter-Reformation. Based especially on the writings of the Renaissance Neo-Platonist Marsilio Ficino, the very description and formulation of the nature of the soul and its fate after death clearly follows Ficino's thought.

Another strain within philosophy and theology also comes from the Renaissance. The Aristotelian theologian Pomponazzi made a scholastic argument that the immortality of the soul could not be proven. Basing himself on Aristotelian psychology, he said that there is simply no way to prove the existence of anything like a separable soul from the body and therefore whether something like that exists beyond death is unprovable. He does, however, note that the belief in such a soul and its continued existence is a matter of faith.

Soren Kierkegaard took up the Pomponazzi side of the argument. While it's obvious that Kierkegaard believed in what he calls the spirit (distinct from the bodily life-force of the soul), he agreed with Pomponazzi that its existence cannot be proven either logically or empirically. If there is any proof for the spirit's existence it is based purely on one's experience of ethical and religious dimensions of living in time.

Kierkegaard does most religious thinkers and philosophers one better, however. For Kierkegaard, the respect and love for the dead can be considered one of the higher forms of love. Since one still loves the dead--beyond all sense and rational justification--the love for the dead exhibits the radical nature of love that transcends the merely sensual an empirical. For Kierkegaard, that is, love's higher expressions--which are part of its lower forms--is the belief in something or someone that goes beyond what is simply given by facticity. Visiting the loved one's grave, tending and taking care of it, planting flower, lighting candles--all these represent a work of love that shows your own awareness of dimensions of spiritual affirmation than those limited to the realms of the sense.

According to Kierkegaard:

The work of love in recollecting one who is dead is thus a work of the most unselfish, the freest, the most faithful love. Therefore go out and practice it; recollect the one who is dead and just in this way learn to love the living unselfishly, freely, faithfully. In the relationship to one who is dead, you have the criterion by which you can test yourself. -- Kierkegaard, Works of Love, p. 358

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Language Empire and Media Lies

Don Cupitt has made a career of espousing a religious message that often shocks the pious with its anti-christ vibrado. The heart of Cupitt's assault, following much of recent philosophy, is that what has been depicted as a supernatural world is actually the working of language--invisible machinations that determine and define the outlines of our lives. For Cupitt, the invisibility we often attach to otherwordly entities is actually the result of language and its ability to seemingly control events.

Unseen concepts and notions are anthropomorphized into gods, goddesses, and demons in various types of human, especially nomadic. With the rise of the centralized agrarian state, these powers were invested in one entitity whose attachment to the social, cultural, and political structure is always operative if bot always apparent. The divinity of the ruler reflects the absolute and all-powerful divinity in this other world. ...

Given the emphasis by contemporary philosophers and theologians on the power of language in shaping beliefs and actions in the world, it's always important to stay tuned to the ways that those in power manipulate language and use it to enforce unjust and oppressive political maneuverings.

Lenin's Tomb reviews a recent book by Lila Rajiva, THE LANGUAGE OF EMPIRE: Abu Ghraib and the American Media. According to the Tomb:

"Ideology", says Lila Rajiva, "prevents the citizens of the state from recognising its violence and allows the state to rewrite the general terrorising of a population through detentions and torture as the inevitable and just operation of law." That's in her excellent book The Language of Empire, an examination of American state violence and political culture in light of Abu Ghraib. The ideology, in Rajiva's account, derives from the myth of Prometheus, America as a rebel taking on the international political and legal establishment lodged atop Mount Olympus. America stealing fire from the world powers to give to the powerless, those states with weak capacity. This myth doesn't so much conceal as provide a semi-coherent story to account for a global system of bribery, coercion, dependency and corruption.

The empire prefers weak states, of course, dictatorships with few of the traditional capacities of modern bureaucratic nation-states, ones that are bought off by the IMF, World Bank, DEA and CIA, ones with weak legitimacy and little accountability to the domestic populace. Hence, you help a general to power in Indonesia, let him butcher a million people, carve up the economy in private sessions with leading multi-national CEOs, encourage the general's family to skim billions off the top of 'development' loans based on exorbitant estimates for construction plans that go nowhere.

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liar liar revelations of lies for liars whose lies are lies

and so the political charade creaks out its slimy pace from day to day dripping its sleaze into lives and deaths and scaring little dogs and children. gone the days when revolutions tried for justice: a tragic fate that only the deformed footed drones claim their own quoting one scripture or another or the nothingness of their own self-deceit and gurgling gonads seeking revelation. ...

read the lies and weep oh jerusalem washington seoul baghdad mecca -- thy children seek the mighty $$$$$$. rambo crashes the gates and guards the door only to lead them away in dog collar and leash: the lie that is the democratic bon mot of the day.

god lies and man lies and jacksnipe waits at the door with his wolf brigade. for the creativity of the divine comdey has become the blood-stained farce of neo-pseudo-quasi-deception that has internettized the apocalypse.

The lie plays a tremendous role in human life. The world is swallowed up in lies. And to the problem of the lie philosophers have paid too little attention. Not only do people that are by nature liars lie, but also uprightly truthful people. They lie not only consciously, but also without awareness. People live in fear, and the lie is a weapon of defense. The structure of consciousness is deformed by the function of lie, begotten by fear. There exist several types of lies, but the most interesting is that type of lie, which is conceived of not as a sin or a vice, but as a duty. ... The moral act of man is always creatively-individual and is worked for the concrete instances of life, singular and irrepeatable. But most significant is the social lie, affirmed of as a duty. The life of states and societies is full of it, it serves as a support for civilisation, this gives it pride, as being the vanguard against chaos and anarchy.

strange then that people who will make it to wield power and pay back their debts to the money-lenders it's those who voters believe lie less than other people who will get elected. Read more!

You Got Guns, We Got Guns

One of the stupider things I ever saw on the subway was in the Summer of 2000. Anyone who's ridden the NYC subway in summertime knows the smells, the sound, and most often the heat. The time I saw two guys almost shoot it out on the subway, though, added a more than surreal--albeit comic effect when I remember it now--to the humid stench of that day. ...

To make a long story short, I caught the eastside subway to Penn Station and it was hot. The car was packed, but not overly so. When I got on I noticed that many people were staring at a black man in a seat near the door. They were cowering away from him since he was spewing a lot of anger around, mostly an incoherent rant. All you could tell was that the guy was pissed off.

Hanging on to one of the upright railings was a white guy. He was listening to this rant in a somewhat bemused if increasingly antagonistic manner. He just kept glaring at the black guy who at first took little notice.

But then the guy standing finally caught his eye and he started going off on him. Again, the white guy just stands there smirking somewhat. Finally, the black man gets off and gets into the white guy's face.

Of course, everyone including me is getting ready to either duck or run out of the car, away from who knew what.

This went on for several stops. Finally the white guy says something that I forget but that really set the other man off. Again, they were closer to whatever was going to happen. Just then the doors open and the white guy steps out of the car and begins screaming, "You got guns? I got guns." He stood there with hands out--not exactly looking like he was going to draw but defiantly and comically.

The black guy just stood there. What or if he was thinking I don't know. I expected him to get out. He glared and didn't say a word. Then the doors closed. The white guy's left standing there with his arms out. There's a silent sigh of relief.

Then the doors open again. (Someone getting on or off in another car.) The mental screams are heard--if only to the dead.

Everyone's expecting the white guy to get back on the train. But he doesn't he just stands there... waiting. And the black guy stands there too. Silent. (Mulling it over? Stewing in his rage? Fermenting?)

The doors close again and the train finally gets going to the next stop.

As I stand there not knowing whether to get down on my knees and thank God for delivering me from death or breaking out in the laughter of the demented, the black guy retakes his seat and begins his stare-down job again. Daring anyone, everyone, to look at him. By this time, of course, augmenting his rage is the awareness that some on the car might be questioning his courage.

Fortunately, the little farce ends when he finally gets off a few stops later. Whether to backtrack and find the other guy and take him up on the showdown or to get away from the ignominy of having 20 people witness his impotent rage, I certainly don't know.

As I said, now it's one of the funniest if stupidest things I've ever seen on the subway. The stupidity, needless to say, is magnified by the realization that in one way I and the others on the train that day dodged a bullet.
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Don't ask me why, but this story came to mind today as I thought about the controversy over CNN's airing of an Iraqi insurgent video showing snipers killing US soldiers. That story of the subway encounter came to mind when I read over some blog postings and pictures at The Sniper Eye, the blog of a US sniper.

The outrage expressed over the decision to air that insurgent video led me to think about moral equivalences. Of course, it's horrifying to watch as the insurgent snipers talk about identifying the target. And when the shot finally rings out and the soldier falls, the pit of the stomach revulses. That's one of our guys. That's one of us. That could be my kid.

Yet--perversely perhaps--I think about the situation in which the sniper is a US soldier taking out an Iraqi. Would those who find the airing of this insurgent video be as horrified by the imagery were it shown on TV? Then again, why isn't video shown of events like that?

The rhetorical nature of these questions should not leave unsaid the fact that in most cases many people would not want either video to be aired. They'd rather have such events occur unseen and unmentioned. One of those silent affairs of war whose despair is covered by that despicable phrase "collateral damage." Read more!

sing to me oh columbia thine image in oily mirror read

to mon frere le cynic and le oily smirch he doth try to smack ye vice presidential arse with i say beware mon frere les assassins are afoot and the hashish it is good but only in moderation. ...

sing me that patriotic disco again me buckos. the swaggering Dick hath spoken but and the $$$$$ doth fill his coffers. no need to sail the marbly main to find that dead man's chest: look into his bank book and see the swirling zeroes as they flitter in the eyes of the masses going to hades on the wings of apache copters and f17s.

thy wars oh overlord of the netherly deep where the crude doth flow hath given up her dead and they cry like the wailing orcus that our own ahabs sent to their grave.

and so the ship of state doth reek of an oily pall and the wraiths do twitter on her stern. i'll see the darth vader in his chains i guess when the revelation bells ring and darling jack snipe pricketh the dick to vats of oil where he'll boil for all eterne.

Vice President Dick Cheney's presentation to the London Institute of Petroleum in the fall of 1999 sums up the exponential drivers of peak oil nicely:

By some estimates there will be an average of two per cent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead along with conservatively a three per cent natural decline in production from existing reserves [from fields already producing oil]. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day.

Essentially, the dynamic Dick describes means that we need to replace 70% of existing daily production with new sources of liquid fuels every decade. The problem is that with each passing year the problem gets worse as both demand continues to increase (particularly as we bring China online) and depletion is calculated against a larger basis. Further, as the peak oil analysts argue, the depletion rate of existing fields may soon increase by up to eight percent as the mammoth fields (none of which have been found in 40 years) that provide bulk of the world's base production begin steep declines en masse (like we saw with with Mexico's Cantarell and Kuwait's Burgan last year). Ultimately, as is the case with all closed systems that exhibit exponential demand for finite resources, the need for replacement will eventually overwhelm the ability to produce it. The only debate is over when it will occur. Those estimates range from now (it has already occurred) to 2020, with the bulk of evidence pointing to an early emergence.

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how much justice doth genocide buy?

barring the notion that justice is the twin of love and forgiveness as some our great prophet-leaders seedeth the fertile fields of vengeance with: chris hedges asks some interesting questions about genocide and the victimhood that the mausoleum of a museum taxidermifies. where're the rwanda armenia homosexual gypsy polish mummies interred methinks? ...

so much death would breed or instil a sense indeed for justice but as so much of the blood and soil cogitation fetsishizes justice can only revel like a teeming mass of living dead for cannibalistic fury.

mr hedges you ask questions that are obviously antisemite and hateful[/url] and obviously skewed in your parallaxical view. take a note from ye olde goode bookes and grasp the idea that love and forgiveness give way to the just sword and the rabidity of vengenace.

When I visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington I looked in vain for these other victims. I did not see explained in detail the awful reality that Jewish officials in the ghettos—Judenrat—worked closely with the Nazis to herd their own off to the death camps. And was the happy resolution of the Holocaust, as we saw in images at the end of the exhibits, the disembarking of European Jews on the shores of Palestine? What about the Palestinians who lived in Palestine and were soon to be pushed off their land? And, as importantly, what about African-Americans and Native Americans? Why is the Nazi genocide, which we did not perpetrate, displayed on the Mall in Washington and the brutal extermination of Native Americans ignored? Why should billions in reparations be paid to Jewish slave laborers and not a dime to those enslaved by our own country?

These questions circle back to the dangerous sanctification of any genocide, the belief that one ethnic group can represent goodness, solely because its members are the victims, and another evil because from its ranks come the thugs who carry out mass slaughter. Once these demented killing machines begin their work the only thing unique is the method of murder. The lesson of any genocide is not that one group of human beings is better than another, but that in the intoxication of the moment, gripped by the mass hypnosis of state propaganda and the lust for violence, we can all become killers. All the victims must be heard. None are unique. And all of us have to be on guard lest we be seduced. We carry within us—German, Jew, Armenian or Christian—dark and dangerous lusts that must be held in check. I applaud the French. I hope the French action pushes the Turks toward contrition and honesty. But I do not wish for the Armenians to covet the Holocaust, to begin the process of sanctifying their own suffering. When we sanctify ourselves we do so at the expense of others.

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of rape lesbians and vps dead having sex

lynne oh lynne:cheney thy imagination doth protest too much. in attacking webb and his truthful take on what he's seen in real life thou deniest thy own secret dark and deep insecurities. why not own up to the passionate that lurks beneath thy cold and harried exterior. the despair of sexual inertness plants a dead rose in the heart of america. ...

thou should at least give the webb-ster credit for having been there seen that in his realistic accounts of life lived in the dangerous zones where your own soul:or that of thine bedizened husband with the dead heart: would indeed fear to tread.

or is it that the dead pere who leads thy clan hath found a little chickadee on the side whose hot and writhing arms jerk the premature shots that wound even friends and lead all to believe that this is a man who indeed one does not fuck with?

Later, Cheney criticized Virginia Senate candidate Jim Webb for including sexually explicit material in his novels. Asked whether her own novel Sisters had “lesbian characters,” Cheney said, “no, not necessarily. This description is a lie. I’ll stand on that.” In fact, her novel did contain multiple scenes describing a lesbian love affair.

as a man who has lived in a glass house i dare say that ms cheney thou shouldest refrain from casting stones. Read more!

New Co-Blogger: hamlet_machine

I'd like to introduce a new member of the Cynic Librarian blog team: hamlet_machine. This is the nom de plume for a writer who's seen better times. Taking his persona from the words made by East German playwright Heiner Muller, Mr. hamlet_machine finds it easy to verbalize and put into play some thoughts that skim the surface of cybernetic and biological life forms.

The density of his newspeak is perhaps offset by a biting and acid humor which is not always apparent but most often fills each word with irony--something that I myself appreciate. More Borg than Borgia, I imagine his faltering heart has brought to life the despirs of individuality while longing for the collective. Read more!

Iran Again... Historian Sees War Inevitable

With part of the US naval fleet carrying out exercises with five nations in the Persian Gulf, talk of invading Iran by the Bush admin has once again begun to crest. For the past year, I have chronicled the rumblings and threats of war with Iran that have emanated from Washington.

Beginning late last year when I noted that Israel was planting articles in the media about an impending Israeli air strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, speculation about such a war has ebbed and flowed. ...

I recently linked to an article by Richard Sale reprinted by Pat Lang. In his piece, Sale says that any such threat of an imminent attack on Iran was very hot in the Bush admin during the Summer. He reports from insiders that Bush had already made up his mind to do the nasty deed. But Bush lost steam and the possibility of an attack subsided.

And yet Israel has never let up on the possibility of attacking Iran. As I noted in another posting, the potential scenarios for instigating such an attack included some "incident" which would provide the Bush admin plausible grounds to move forward with the attack.

Some have speculated that such an attack is what Bush's brain, Karl Rove, has referred to in private by threatening some sort of "October surprise" leading up to the November legislative elections. In the face of such speculation, I have remarked that such an attack might actually backfire for the Republicans, since the American public is likely to see such a war as the cynical wagging of the dog that it would be.

In two articles (here and here), historian William R. Polk has detailed his reasons for why he believes that an invasion of Iran is inevitable--if not before the election, then before Bush leaves office.

Polk writes:

So why do I predict an American attack on Iran?

The answer is composed of the same elements I have described: Mr. Bush’s belief that he has a God-given task which he must accomplish before he leaves office – and perhaps even before the forthcoming Congressional elections might cripple his means of action. His belief that what his own intelligence experts tell him is wrong, that Iran actually is about to acquire the bomb, is stirring the pot of Middle Eastern terrorism and is a threat to the existence of Israel. Finally, he believes he has the authority, given by the American people in his two elections and through Congressional approval of his war with Afghanistan, to act. In the next article, I will discuss what he is doing to effect his policy.

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