Paul:

I expect the Hoover Institution to seek out people such as Donald Rumsfeld.    Also, I know that a lot of academics, students, and alumni of Stanford U. complained bitterly about the job offer ("Distinguished Visiting Fellow").  (See the "No To Rumsfeld" petition, Pamela Lee et al., September, 2007.) 

Among the initiators of the petition was Stanford's emeritus professor of psychology Philip Zimbardo -- he of the legendary Stanford Prison Experiment (1971).  Zimbardo is also the author of The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil (Random House, 2007).  I believe that analyses such as Zimbardo's -- not the early experiment, but the current stuff -- are fatally flawed in that they distinguish between good soldiers and bad soldiers: The bad soldiers are otherwise good soldiers who wind up in institutional vortices such as Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, where policy and circumstances facilitate the performance of bad deeds.  On the other hand, the good soldiers -- in case anyone is paying attention -- are free to participate in wars of aggression and imperial conquest (exactly as U.S. Army Specialist Casey Sheehan and U.S. Army First Lieutenant Andrew Bacevich did),  and do not become bad soldiers thereby.  Let alone bad human beings.   Really creepy stuff here, if you're willing to give it even an ounce of thought.   Anybody care for mass cognitive dissonance?  I don't have much faith in a species that flourishes in situations where the lies are this BIG.

Anyway.  To your point (as expressed in your third paragraph): I agree.   The outrage would have been were Donald Rumsfeld offered a comparable position with the American Friends Service Committee. 

Did you catch Chomsky's closing line in his prerecorded presentation at the October 12 "In Defense of Academic Freedom" event?  As long as societies have "institutions [that are] responsible for the indoctrination of the young" -- the old line he takes from 1975's Crisis of Democracy -- not only will they be incompatible with human freedom.  But those who understand nothing about human freedom except how best to extinguish it will be accorded places of power, $$$$$, honor, and great prestige.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Yes FC its okay for academics to say terrible things with horrible policy implications, but it's distateful to actually act on such ugly counsel with real life and death consequences. It's one thing to say/write and another thing to do/kill. So Niall Ferguson can puff and pontificate all he wants on behalf of the mass-murderous necolonial White Man's burden and that's fine but for Stanford to be faced with the regular on-campus presence of a real life racist-imperial killer like Rummy --- now that's just too unpleasant to have in and around the noble ivory tower. I would add further that there is also hostility to doing good things or indeed to doing much of anything at all outside the academy. In the academic job market, it is generally a great strike against you to have real life and job experience beyond the sheltered little incestuous group think captive-audience know-it-all/know nothing world of the professoriat; it's quite pathetic.

Ha there is a demo organized here too.. http://www.acp-cpa.ca/en/OCT27.htm (thank you anonymous ) Frederic, FF is rather oblivious to common sens, you are more patient than I am..

Well, I was once again too late to save FC from having to give however long it took to respond to his vicious right-wing troll. Again the decimation of the crazed and moronic "Freddie Fan" and again FF will register nothing and return to bait again. He "takes a licking and keeps on ticking." David you know certain academics at Stanford became upset at Donald ("I'm an admirer of Al Capone") Rumsfeld becoming a fellow at the Hoover Institution (which is linked to Stanford). My feeling was, like....what the Hell, Hoover has employed blatant warmongers like the acclaimed imperial academician Niall Ferguson (a former Hoover fellow, maybe still there, who knows) for as long as I can remember so gee whiz why shouldn't privileged intellectuals at the top institutions of the military-industrial-academic complex have to rub shoulders every day with real-deal hands- on blood-soaked mass-murderous war criminals like Rummy. It's not like most academics in the social and policy "sciences" don't regularly and routinely worship, flatter, obey and generally enable corporate and imperial power as it is. I really think they should welcome Rumsfeld with open arms. He's actually what they're about at the end of the day.

Friends:

"One strike, Iran could be out," Niall Ferguson, Los Angeles Times, October 22, 2007

Clearly, in listing his reasons for speculating about his "imaginary" war in the Middle East, the noted historian of -- and more decisively advocate for -- Western empires overlooks one critical factor that trumps all others: The predatory, globally violent, and militarized state-capitalist institutions headquartered in great metropolitan centers such as Washington, New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Tel Aviv, Tokyo, Rome, Madrid, Ottawa, and Canberra, and elsewhere -- and the chances that these institutions will proceed apace with their serial wars of aggression.

Otherwise, his point is well taken.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

So Chomsky says that refugees from the U.S. empowered Khmer Rouge can't be trusted to report atrocities and that is OK, but only a racist would question the accuracy of a self-reporting survey? Hmm, interesting.

And please, do inlighten us - why is this whole middle east quagmire the Jews' fault again?  And yes, when you do say Israel and Zionist you do mean Jew let's not play any games.  Don't believe me? Just ask Hamas, and Hezbollah, and the PLO, and the President of Iran, and Black September, and the PLF, and Islamic Jhihad, and Assad of Syria, and the Muslim Brotherhood, and Al Qaeda of Iraq and regular Al Qaeda, and the press of the PLO and the Press of Egypt, and the Press of Algeria, and the press of Syria, and the Press of Iran, and the press of Qutar, and press of Indonesia, and head of Indonesia, and CAIR, and the Holy Land Foundation, and the list goes on and on and on. 

 

Well, at some point earlier this year Obama made a mistake and let it slip out that the Palestinians face some difficulties too (this was a terrible sin and I'm sure he had to apologize quite a bit in private). Edwards has said the required nice things to AIPAC and says of course and terribly "that no options should be taken off the table" regarding Iran. He has strongly criticized the designation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as "international terrorists." Hillary voted for that designation. Obama managed to absent himself from that vote.

hello, I this demo world wide? I am trying to find if this event will happen in toronto too :(

Friends:

Note, with respect to the Democratic Party's annointed frontrunner, Hillary Clinton, Shmuel Rosner's use of the phrase "realistic centrist on issues related to Israel" to describe her campaign's platform.  (See "A new phase in the race: Clinton is now second," October 19, 2007, par. 4.)  

So: In the aggregate judgment of Haaretz's eight "Israel Factor" panelists, the Democratic Senator from the state of New York ranks just behind the former Republican Mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani, as the second "best" among the American presidential candidates for Israel.  (See the October, 2007 rankings. -- Haaretz still lists a total of 26 American political figures.  Though many of them were no-shows.)

Worse, as far as Haaretz's panelists are concerned, political figures such as Representative Dennis Kucinich (D - OH) and Representative Ron Paul (R - TX) aren't even on the radar screen.  While a shitload of other figures (Newt Ginrgich, George Pataki, Condoleezza Rice, Bill Frist) are despite their never having entered the 2008 race for real or their having already dropped out of it.

As an unnamed Haaretz panelist explained his reason for warming to Hillary Clinton (in Shmuel Rosner's words):

He was happy with [Clinton's] vote to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a terror organization (many Democratic activists weren't happy with it, as I mentioned earlier in the week in the What To Read section). He was also impressed with her Israel agenda that was released a couple of weeks ago. All in all, he said, she seems to be trying to be a realistic centrist on issues related to Israel. And he thought it was time for that to be reflected in his rankings. 

To quote a friend of mine from earlier today, "First things first!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Friends: 

This filthy, criminal, and dangerous regime knows no bounds --

"Ex-Prosecutor Alleges Pentagon Plays Politics; Pressure for 'Sexy' Guantanamo Hearings," Josh White, Washington Post, October 20, 2007 

-- except those we force it to observe.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Some good points about "war," I think, but I find it useful to raise the semantic issue because the word gets habitually mis-used and exploited in absurd and reactionary ways, as in "this is what we have to do" (ie, restrict civil liberties and muffle dissent) when "the nation" is going through "a time of war." Bush says he's a "war president," you know like Lincoln (1861-65) or FDR by (1942-1945). Well, the Empire's front line troops are embroiled in a very dangerous (for them too) form of outward/aggressive/racist/imperial and colonial warfare but the American nation/people is/are not in anything that really (or fully) deserves to be called a war with Iraq. I didn't have to dodge Iraqi IEDs on the way to buy Bob Dylan tickets today at the student union. I'd make the same point for Vietnam (1962-75): it was just flat U.S. imperialist assault...the only people fighting - and facing resistance from --- Vietnamese troops were forward force colonial troops. The Vietnamese might have attacked the U.S. Embassy in Saigon but I recall no lights out air raids with National Liberation Front bombers taking out sections of downtown Chicago. There's this imperial mindest whereby "we" get to annex "sovereign" nations and then accuse people of waging "war" against "us" when they resist our illegal occupation(s). How dare the French wage "war" against the Nazis around Paris in 1943? And then of course there's the related Orwellian rhetoric about alleged Iranian and other "foreign fighters'" (hello?) alleged "interference" (hello again?!) in Iraqi internal affairs. Imperial propaganda burns down to the glowing embers of individual words.

Yes, there was opening and strong emphasis on Iraqi pain and death.  They used an Iraqi death count --- I think 655,000 --- that is probably already too low because its dated but I don't know (my fault) if the research has been done to be fully confident with the higher number yet. 

I want to reiterate and expand on something. It is long past time to stop calling the U.S. attack on Iraq an American “war.”  The United States has been brazenly assaulting Iraq in a direct large-scale military sense since March of 2003, but it has not been attacked by anyone from Iraq.  So, like, where's the "war?" “Operation Iraqi Freedom” is flat out criminal and imperial aggression, pure and simple.

Hey Frederic, you're west coast right?: Here's the SF link for demo:

  http://www.oct27sf.org/DotNetNuke/