sk, Interesting comparisons on poverty, France have a lower poverty rate could be that less capital exited the country.. Yep David provides Zneteers a lot of links and information; what is cool is to see that his analysis ( and many other bloggers too) are being confirmed time and time again with repetitive trends inside foreign policies and confirmed again with the same old propaganda patterns in the media.. I just read a few articles on the Znet section from Herman and Peterson, between the two, their analysis is strong and reasonable.

Thanks for the interesting links. It's curious how the profligate French--whose economy, if stateside pundits are to be believed, has been spiralling downward since the early '80s--have managed to limit their rate of poverty to nearly a third of the similar figure for their prudent British neighbors (6% vs. 17%).

Damn french, can't live with them and can't live with them.. Sad thing Ségolène Royal didn't get elected.. In The US < Hillary Clinton > is courting GOD, and the democrats are getting closer than ever at being republican..

SK:

Here are two more for you (esp. the first), about the new regime in France:

"Sarko and the Ghosts of May 1968," Diana Johnstone, CounterPunch, June 4, 2007
"In Sarkoland," William Pfaff, New York Review of Books, June 14, 2007

David Peterson
Chicago, USA 

 

Many of these broadsides are variations on tu quoque artfully deployed to deflect attention from enormities that flow from the top of one's own society. It's much easier for humanitarians in this part of the world to get worked up about a conflict in the largest arid landmass of the world, especially when they are regularly
assailed by hysterical outbursts from the Tartuffes, perched on their mass media pulpit, so memorably described by Ross.

btw, I just read a neat account of how the young leadership of Conservatives in UK, as part of it's efforts at rebranding the party is holding panels on ‘International Women's Human Rights' and is involved in the seemingly non-partisan campaign for ‘raising awareness of sex trafficking'. Even some high minded feminists have been co-opted into the latter crusade which, incidentally, upon closer inspection turns out to be not so simple a matter after all.

At least, we won't have to suffer sermons from A.M. Rosenthal any more on female circumcision in parts of Africa, "his pet peeve" which he'd take out for "an annual saunter" while pooh-poohing massacres carried out by favored states.

Yes, why can't we answer your last question? The awful truth hovering around us, that we are afraid to confront, is that "people" are thoughtless, stupid, until they are physically threatened with direct violence or starvation or homelessness. I think this is what has so depressed Cindy Sheehan. I've always resisted the "rational choice" theory that infects so much of social science (it seems to me to equate "rational" and "selfish"); I've tended to believe it's an imposed framework, deliberately put there to undermine any natural fellow-feeling we might have, and easy to "prove" because abundant empirical evidence is never hard to find. I hope that's why so many people (Americans, anyway, and a surprising number of Europeans, Canadians, Australians, etc. too) are so stupid--they're "brainwashed." As a thoughtful (I hope) person myself, I fall back on this mode of conspiracy theory, that our need to sustain ourselves by community (so irresistibly present in all the art, philosophy, religion we value) has been deliberately annihilated, at the cognitive level, by a century of agenda education, agenda government, agenda church. . . I think it's important to believe that this system was deliberately imposed, because it helps us to start to understand exactly who our oppressors are, and to work against the "beauty of the system" you refer to. This might be a good start: "These elites, comprised of senior managers of industrial and financial firms, state actors at the highest levels, and a growing cadre of supporting professionals, increasingly act within and favor the further development of a 'transnational state' (TNS) that is developing from within the existing system of nation states. Robinson points to international organizations such as the WTO, IMF, World Bank, among other multilateral institutions and trade agreements as part of the infrastructure of this emergent TNS." (From a review of William I. Robinson, A Theory of Global Capitalism (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004). I know, you've heard it all before, but I do believe it's true. We just have to find an effective way of wrecking this system, fast. Obviously, we haven't found the way yet, but we must if there is to be a decent life for us, who are already human vermin in great numbers (two billion projected by 2050; Mike Davis, Planet of Slums, Verso 2006).

SK:

UN Security Council Resolution 1757, which, by a vote of 10 - 0 - 5 abstentions (including China and Russia), has just created a Special Tribunal for Lebanon, was adopted under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations!  My god.  Yet another Kangaroo Court organized under the auspices of the UN Security Council -- as proven by the fact that the only tribunals permitted to come into being via the Council are either those that are integral to American Power or those that are entirely irrelevant to it -- but never those that run at cross-purposes with it.

And what did the brightest stars in the firmament of the new French Government have to say about it?

French President Nicolas Sarkozy: "It is not the victory of one faction over another but rather that of justice over impunity."

French Foreign Minister Bernnie K.: "This shows the will of the international community to reinforce the stability of Lebanon….In line with the wishes of the Lebanese people, of all sides and all religious belief, there will be no impunity for Hariri's killers."

The so-called international community is an expert at placing impunity over justice.

How many suckers does it take to empower one of these tribunals?

More than anything, the Security Council -- and much of the UN's most public activities -- is an organ for the prosecution of American policy. -- And all its advocates can see is the triumph of justice over impunity!

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

with the police at Seattle reminded me of something that Ward Churchill wrote in his excellent post-9/11 essay, Some people push back: On the justice of roosting chickens. http://cryptome.org/ward-churchill.html

"Property before people, it seems -- or at least the equation of property to people -- is a value by no means restricted to America's boardrooms. And the sanctimony with which such putrid sentiments are enunciated turns out to be nauseatingly similar, whether mouthed by the CEO of Standard Oil or any of the swarm of comfort zone "pacifists" queuing up to condemn the black bloc after it ever so slightly disturbed the functioning of business-as-usual in Seattle."

I understand this pessimism, this fatalistic attitude, I feel it too. That's the beauty of the system. Not only does it annihalate the instinctive natural urge to resist, and creates apathy in its place, in some cases it transforms it into exactly the opposite, the willingness to support the system. Once in Montreal, I went to a peaceful political event with my brother organized by the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and the Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR). It was about child political prisoners in Palestine, but also about political prisoners everywhere, featuring spoken word, poetry, various speakers, music, recorded statements from political prisoners (one of which was Mumia Abu Jamal), etc. Anyways, the event was unceremoniously interrupted by police storming the venue and arresting the lead organizer. Of course, all hell broke loose as we all tried to prevent the police while they were beating us back with sticks, closing off the roads, ets, etc. As I was walking home with my brother, we were discussing what was happening, and he even felt this pessimism (and he is very active in things like this), and he said that, "the worst thing is you don't really know who to blame: you can't blame the white people because there were more white people (than any other ethnic group) at the event getting beaten up by the police, you can't blame the police because in a way they were just doing their jobs, you can't blame the rich people, because they don't even know that they're part of the system and most of the rich are unhappy anyways. That's the genius of the system. That's what all the statements that we heard from political prisoners kept pointing to: "It's the system, the system, the system..." But the enormity of trying to fight against this abstraction, this thing that you can't really point your gun at and say "this is it", is overwhelming. Perhaps that's why black people in America are not on the offensive...It doesn't excuse them of course...Because I always thought if there was ever going to be an uprising against the system, it would come from the African American community, given their long history of oppression. Where are the Martin Luther Kings and Malcolm X's. Instead we have abominations like Colin Powell and Condaleeza Rice!!!

My point is this: why is it that in the Third World, where we don't democratically elect our leaders, where we are living under constant economic exploitation from the West, and political oppression, and violent conflict, where we are deprived of most of the luxuries and privileges of the free world, like education, free speech, etc...people are still able to rise up and resist, but most importantly, to endure? Look at the palestinians, they have a word for it "Summoud". It means perseverance, steadfastness. Look at Iraq and Afgahnistan, where the world's greatest military is proving to be ineffectual against the massive armed resistance. I'm not just talking about the Arab and Muslim world. Take Latin America for example, which has seen more oppression and destruction than anything inflicted on the Middle East so far. And yet, the Chilean people were still able to overthrow almost 20 years of Pinochet's repressive regime. Cuba has suffered 50 years of a U.S-imposed embargo and sanctions, but still managed to create a healthcare and social system that is the best in the Carribean, and indeed the Third World, with infant mortality rates as low as that of the West. Venezuela is rapidly becoming the socialist model that Latin American nations are emulating...Those people were able to do it, and they were up against almost unbeatable odds, so why can't the people of the U.S do it, where democracy is written in the Constitution, where every American knows the dictum "One person, one vote" "No taxation without representation" etc...In fact, if anything, people living in the West are better situated to affect meaningful, grass-roots level change, from the bottom up. Instead I see the Canadians electing Harper into power, the French electing Sarkozy, etc, etc...I mean after all that has happened post-Iraq, shouldn't it be the other way round?

I'm all for destroying corporate property. The all-too-foreseeable problem is that it will be a media event; the "terrorists" will be hauled before brainwashed America and anyone who even looks like them will be attacked and beaten in various city neighborhoods. If they're black or Middle Eastern, the media will pump the unacknowledged always-at-ready racist button for all it's worth and the pogroms will start. True, most Americans don't give a damn, but rightwing talk radio is very popular and longs to get violent. I think you might be invoking Mike Davis's vision (and Planet of Slums makes you believe it ) of the future already with us and spreading like wildfire: "Night after night, hornetlike helicopter gunships stalk enigmatic enemies in the narrow streets of the slum districts, pouring hellfire into shanties or fleeing cars. Every morning the slums reply with suicide bombers and eloquent explosions." (p. 206, last page; "a sinister and unceasing duet" he calls it.)

The pessimism is definitely well-founded--and everywhere these days--but it doesn't make it feel any better. What I meant about the anti-Card thing as an anomaly is that even that amount of organization and solidarity didn't succeed in much. So the guy didn't get to make his idiot speech. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and another dozen lives get smashed to bits in Iraq. Or wherever. As for the shit Sheehan has taken from "the left", here's something related, I think: in Endgame Derrick Jensen describes how "non-violent" protesters at the WTO thing in Seattle in 1999 actually fought, physically, with other protesters who were willing to up the stakes and destroy corporate "property". Jensen even mentions how these "peaceful" types---who presumably had agreed in advance with the authorities on where and how many could march, how many would get arrested etc etc---how they actually assisted the police in hauling in those who sensed that engaging state/corporate violence with love and kindness wasn't going to get anyone anywhere. What I'm noticing is that our allies are really fewer and further between than many of us would like to admit. Upping the stakes and making sacrifices definitely means taking an honest look at tactics, physical tactics. Paul I really appreciate your proposal that creeps like Wolfowitz and the rest slit their own throats. There's no reason to be nice. People who for whatever reason won't get physical need to be supporting like crazy those who will. There's an apt quote from poet Kenneth Rexroth at Mickey Z's blog today: “Just where is this revolution everybody's talking about? It is in the hearts and minds of men and women, especially young, black, or colored who find the horrors of a civilization in its long, drawn-out death throes morally intolerable and who hope for a better world. Are they struggling for it? Is there a worldwide revolutionary movement? Of youth, blacks, and the Third World? There is not. There is a defensive struggle against extermination which isn't even a holding action. Anyone who believes the youth and the blacks of America are on the offensive is hallucinating.” (1969) Keir The Hague

In response to Keir, I don't know whether the UM-Amherst events were an anomaly or not. The school in question has had a fairly progressive tradition in the past (especially its Econ department) and perhaps it still does.But I think a pre-announced Andy Card commencenement event would have led to some significant protests at a large number of research and liberal-arts schools. Columbia, Yale, UCal-Berkely, UW-Mad, UMich....you name it. Students, activists (and even in some cases parents) with some lead time would be able to pull something off at all those and other places is my guess. Such organization and protest is unimaginable at the lesser "higher education" facilities with which I've been affiliated in recent years. I live in an especially beer- and football-focused "Big Ten" campus town where some wonderful antiwar students and university workers try to do what they can with (as far as I can tell) zero or close to zero faculty sponsorship/support and in the face of simply astonishing mass student narcissism and indifference. The culturally neoliberal de-mobilization here is quite remarkable. I saw Cindy Sheehan speak on campus last winter an I'll be damned if there were more than two professors in an audience of maybe 150. Three cheers for the leftist professoriat. The academics' conversation right now is about European vacations, fun novels and literary criticism (or some bastardized deconstructionist post-modernist version thereof) and delayed '07-08 hiring decisions, generally involving someone from an elite private (usually Ivy League) school (Ivy League idolatry is a leading form of internal power worship in the academic world). They've got a very nice little deal and they want to keep it all under the radar screen. A shocking number of academics and (sadly) "townie" "peace and justice" "progressives" seem to have bought into the depressing notions that Barack Obama is a, well, peace and justice progressive and that the only relevant or realistic thing to do is just quietly wait for for Democrats to get into the White House in late January of 2009...that will fix things as much as they can be fixed. "Did you hear that ten U.S. soldiers died in Iraq on Memorial Day? How ironic...and yet how appropriate... Oh well, we're off to Paris and Rome; see you next August. I've got a some graduate students watering the plants and mowing the lawn so don't be alarmed if you see some strangers sauntering about over at my classic historical home." It's a dead zone: the local high schools are more militant and more engaged. Maybe that's because the more mutli-class high schools include some young people who will be tapped for "service" in Iraq and other dirty, colonial and petro-imperialist battelfronts. One interesting thing about Cindy's "resignation letter" comes where she notes all the venomous crap she caught from Democrats and self-described "liberals." It speaks volumes about how dangerously reactionary and authoritarian this nation's political culture has become that Cindy Sheehan was a target of bloggers and others on what passes for "the left." Your pessimism is well-founded. Four years plus into the illegal invasion of Iraq, one can certainly see how once reasonable people might have become Weathermen and Red Brigades near the end of a different war. That's a good line about "unwillingness to make sacrifices."

SK:

FYI: "'Re-Arming' Europe," Pascal Bruckner, Wall Street Journal, May 30, 2007. -- Don't miss the accompanying photo, which shows the new French President Nicolas Sarkozy shaking hands with his new Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, a man who has done more damage to the integrity of humanitarianism in this world perhaps than any other. 

No telling how long this one will be accessible. 

Also, in case you're interested, take a look at "Morality's Avenging Angels: The New Humanitarian Crusaders."

Moral Tartuffery abounds.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA 

SK:

One other thing about "Ethics and the Rearmament of Imperialism: The French Case" (Kristin Ross, New York University, 2005):

I've long used the phrase 'Moral Tartuffe' (which actually derives from Nietzsche) to describe the kind of intellectual performers that Kristin Ross is writing about.  As when she mentions that "In certain cases, notably that of Bernard-Henry Levy, political errors of the past had to first be invented in order to be later confessed" (n. 6).  Or when she mentions that, "During the U.S. invasion of Iraq, they were uncharacteristically loud in proclaiming their fraternal alliance with the United States," and then described "Their stance [as] that of solitary, isolated, dissident men of justice, bone-weary from being forced to lead the battle for liberty and modernity…" (n. 9).

My goodness. -- Have you ever caught Michael Ignatieff's act on this side of the Atlantic?

Or how about Christopher Hitchens'? (--->)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Unwillingness to make sacrifices to do the killing is one thing, but the state violence will continue unless more people make sacrifices to prevent it. Such sacrifices are basically unthinkable for a population that---as you say Paul---doesn't really give a damn. That seems to be Cindy Sheehan's recent conclusion as well. I can't apologize for my own pessimism (hey, the Dutch production team that brought the world Big Brother will be airing a goddamn game show later this week in which the prize is a dying woman's kidneys...) but I do note that I'm not the only one who has it lately and anything that helps to muster strength is helpful. That video footage sk links to would be utterly empowering if it weren't a complete anomaly. Or am I wrong? Keir The Hague

Thank you sk for the you tube footage. That must be an advanced campus. In the AP write up on Andy Card's little ceremony, the anonymous reporter says "the protests were mainly contained to an area in the back of the campus arena."

Gee that's not really how it seems on the video.

Then the AP quotes "Daniel Ball, a political independent who received a doctoral degree in industrial engineering," who  "said he wouldn't judge whether Card should be given the degree. He thought the protesters were out of line. 'I'm definitely the minority here,' Ball said. 'But it turned into a circus, outside, inside, and it was a disappointment.'"

No, it wasn't a "a circus."  It was an honest collective expression of disgust at a vicious war criminal and what he represents 

No thoughtful reflections from any of the protesters.  

This is standard power-serving procedure in dominant "news" media.  

I've been at a few commencements that were poisoned by academic administrators' insistence on insulting graduates by giving honorary degrees and/or speaking time to vicious bastards from the power elite.  Last May I was at Grinnell College where some good friends were getting their bachelor's degrees and we had to sit through then Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack making a transparent presidential campaign speech about the need to "hunt down and if necessary kill" people who "threaten America."  This was not what  students and parents really wanted to listen to after four years of intense study and obscene tuition bills. Vilsack didn't get boos from students but he did get stony silence from most of them.  They sat on their hands and ignored him by and large, which was nice.

I've had enough lectures from the French  - and a few Canadians too --- over the years.

 

 

SK:

Thanks -- as always:

"Ethics and the Rearmament of Imperialism: The French Case," Kristin Ross, New York University, 2005

Honestly don't know whether the collapse of the Left is worse in France than in the States.  (Or among the U.S. - U.K. - Canada - Australia - Israel axis, taken as a whole.) 

Though the Levy-Kouchner-types make fine bedfellows for Nicolas Sarkozy, I for one find it hard to believe that the Left's collapse in the States can be topped.

But the bottom-line is, if you want to kill, it'll sell better if you kill for a moral cause, than simply to rob somebody's oil.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

 

Incidentally, I've just started reading this paper by Kristin Ross on the role of intellectuals and the "humanitarian emergency" as a "diversionary" tactic par excellence, very interesting...

SK:

To be sure. -- And at least the anti-Andrew Card protestors were 100 percent more on target that some "Save Darfur" business would have been.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

At least one neocon won't be forgetting any time soon this lesson about the undesirability
of a citizens' army--even if, like the rest of his personality type cohort, his head is congenitally encased in concrete.