Cloudy comfortably cool again: Comcast tel. twice, then 11:30-12:10 Rey? replace modem with Scientific-Atlanta, Inc.'s DPC2100 Series Cable Modem, P/N 4005531, S/N 103542933, MAC 000F217D4B02. Then tidy and clean up around it, and backyard. Now 1:39PM, Lung just off & back. Near evening,drove for paper then to house again, continued front yard work 6:30-8:00. Emails too many so stopped now 1:11am. Bed 2:00!
1) US "Intellectuals" & "Fake News":
(1) US Neo-cons:
"The Ruling Class And Its Intellectual Servants", by Norman Birnbaum, March 15, 2005; From DIRELAND:
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/the_ruling_class_and_its_intellectual_servants.php
"" The idea that the universities -- which have given us Brzezinski, Bundy, Huntington, Kissinger, McNamara, Rice, James Schlesinger, Shultz, and Wolfowitz -- are dominated by the left is one of those untruths systematically propagated to serve a political purpose. When, some decades ago, Irving Kristol informed businessmen that they should not support our Ivy universities since they were so anti-capitalist, the last vestiges of Keynesianism had already been rooted out of economics departments. (Kristol’s son, William, went to Harvard, and he did not leave Cambridge as a dogmatic leftist.) Take a broad look at American intellectual life: much of it is exceedingly remote from the American democratic and radical tradition which -- in the person of great figures like Beard and Dewey -- once actually induced foreigners to read American books. ""
"" They, and not President Bush, perfected pre-emptive strikes. They denounced those likely to criticize them as unmodern, weak and deficient in loyalty to our country. When all else failed (or their own divided allegiances were questioned) they resorted to the sordid charge of anti-Semitism.
In this sense, the most conspicuous of the neo-conservatives is President Lawrence Summers of Harvard. He is an economist with little apparent talent for historical or moral reflectiveness, more at home with numbers than human beings. His first serious quarrel at Harvard was with Cornell West, and the explanation for it is to be found in his response to questions raised by his professors and students about the university's investments in Israel. To question the moral probity of the state of Israel, he declared, was the objective equivalent of anti-Semitism. A Jewish president of Harvard opened his term by attacking a black scholar. The continuing quarrel over his casualness about data when dealing with the situation of women scientists is yet more evidence that we confront at the head of our nation’s most prestigious university not just a philistine but a parvenu. He will remain at his post, however, because the elite which owns Harvard thinks him a useful figure---and he will be discarded the moment that elite thinks him compromised by excessive zeal, to reassure conventional opinion that Harvard is no danger.
True, most neo-conservatives have now attached themselves to the Republican party, and Summers served the Democrats. Figures like Lieberman (with his oleaginous displays of piety) or Al From (with his astonishing capacity to repeat on our opinion pages as his own every cretinous cliché) are no less neo-conservative than their Republican contemporaries. Recent episodes, however, raise the possibility that some in the Republican Party, acting as a self confident ruling class, consider that the neo-conservatives are no longer of much use.
In the NY Times News of the Week on March 13, David Kirkpatrick reported on a dispute which has led to the liquidation of the entire editorial board of what was an interesting foreign policy journal, The National Interest. Founded as a flagship for the neo-conservatives, the journal has since been taken over by the Nixon Center. Robert Ellsworth and Dmitri Simes of the Center, in the first issue under their control, declared that "over-zealousness in the cause of democracy (along with a corresponding underestimation of the costs and dangers) has led to a dangerous overstretch in Iraq." They added that the US might at times have to cooperate with undemocratic regimes.
Nixon opened relations with the Chinese People’s Republic and actively pursued co-existence with the old USSR. Under Nixon and Ford, Kissinger as Secretary of State had no more bitter adversaries than an early Noe-conservative group, led by Norman Podhoretz and Richard Perle, then senior adviser to Senator Henry Jackson (Jackson sought the Democratic Presidential nomination, with the support of the Israel lobby—grateful for his work in sabotaging arms control agreements with the USSR to pressure it into allowing Jewish emigration to Israel.) Now ten members of the former editorial board of The National Interest have resigned to protest the Nixon Center’s assumption of the journal. The Center in turn has dismissed two who chose not to resign, Charles Kraut hammer and Daniel Pipes. Kraut hammer has long been particularly insistent on the early and frequent use of military force, and Pipes has made a career of attacking Israel’s critics in the universities in terms which remind us of McCarthyism.
The Nixon Center’s statement follows a very systematic criticism of the Bush foreign policy—and especially those moralizing and absolutist elements of it congenial to the neoconservatives---by Bush Senior’s National Security adviser, Brent Scow croft. Scowcroft flew in combat during the Korean War. The more strenuously a neo-conservative calls for military action, the greater the probability that he will not have experienced it. The over-extension of the armed forces is what many senior serving officers and military thinkers object to. They object equally to Rumsfeld’s plans to convert the military into a force for fighting a global civil war.
Now the Washington Center for Strategic and International Studies has issued a report,"From Conflict to Cooperation: Writing a New Chapter In US Arab Relations." It takes considerable distance from the the Israel lobby’s constant denigration of Islam and Arab capacity to enter the modern age. The National Interest controversy follows, too, a phrase in one of Bush’s recent statements on the Israel-Palestine conflict, in favor of a viable Palestinian state with contiguous territory. The Israel Wall as presently planned is intended to reduce that territory, as well as to cut off the Palestinian state from East Jerusalem. Whether the administration really intends to confront Israel on this issue is very unclear. Still, the apparent decision last week of the Administration to admit that Hezbollah could be a legitimate political interlocutor in Lebanon must dismay Jerusalem—and is sure, therefore, to evoke the ire of the neo-conservatives. They are clearly discountenanced by the gestures Bush has made to cooperation with the European Union in negotiations with Iran. These may be nothing but gestures—but the fact that they have been made at all suggests that Bush and Rice may be willing to risk a clash with the neo- conservatives, for whom the Europeans are cowardly, unreliable, and corrupt. [After this piece was written, Bush this afternoon declared that the U.S. considered Hezbollah "terrorist" and called on it to prove they're not--D.I.]
Now Brzezinski, Fukayama and Eliot Cohen (a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Affairs) are starting their own journal, The American Interest. Brzezinski has hitherto kept a certain distance from the neo-conservatives. As Carter’s national security adviser, he saw in the difficulties of the pro-Soviet regime in Afghanistan a great opportunity to harm the USSR. The regime was attempting land reform, and to secularize the position of women. By encouraging a Taliban revolt, Brzezinski did start in motion a chain of events which led to the defeat of the USSR---and a good deal else, beside.
This new journal will have as a foreign member of its board Dr. Josef Joffe, an editor of the German weekly Die Zeit. Joffe is a very prominent European ally of the neo-conservatives. In Commentary recently, he explained that criticism of the US in Europe was a cloak for anti-semitism. In the NY Times, in 2000, reviewing Frances Stone Saunders’ excellent book on the extensive bribery of European intellectuals during the Cold War by the CIA with funds channeled by the Congress for Cultural Freedom, he declared that the intellectuals were right to take the money in so good a cause. One assumes he thinks the war on terror as good a cause as The Cold War. Fukayama has said that the new journal will be open to foreign views of the US. One hopes that these will not all be fabricated in Langley, Virginia.
The National Interest story, then, may have far broader implications than that of a family quarrel amongst those who comment on foreign policy. All of these persons live not for, but from, our imperial system---but the neo-conservatives have in recent years furnished us with a convincing example of Chutzpah in claiming the exclusive right to define American policy and values. Perhaps recent events are the beginning of a process long overdue, in which they are reduced to their actual moral and political size---small. ""
(2) US Fake News:
"Stop Fake News!", TomPaine.com, March 16, 2005:
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/stop_fake_news.php
"" This week, The New York Times reported that 20 federal agencies have made and distributed pre-packaged television news segments to promote President Bush's policies and initiatives. These were sent to local stations without disclosure that the segments weren't actual news coverage. The General Accounting Office told the Bush administration to stop producing and distributing the segments, which it called "covert propaganda." The White House refused. It's time to take the matter into our own hands. Join Free Press and sign a petition calling on Congress, the FCC and local stations to make tougher laws about government propoganda—and to come clean to viewers when it's used. Then, help organize "citizen agreements" with your local broadcasters that they won't air fake news broadcasts . Because if it's not The Daily Show, we're not interested. ACT NOW ""
2) The United Nations High Commission for Refugees: From Iraq to Lebanon:
(1) "HUMAN-BUTTONS", OSAM ALTAEE:
http://un.all-global.com/
"" This campaign is about Human beings, Democracy, UNHCR, Refugees, The Iraqis, Islam, Kurds, Human rights, Respect, Money, Donations, Angelina Jolie, Pavarotti, Giorgio Armani, Donors, Peace, History, Campaigns and about you if you care about these words.
Hi there,
I am SAM, an Iraqi refugee living in Lebanon at the moment; I have spent the last 10 years of my life as a refugee registered with the UNHCR in Beirut. The last 4 years, I have spent as an activist for peace and human rights (especially refugees and asylum seekers) on the Internet; I'm also books author and ebooks publisher. I have launched many campaigns to improve our situation as refugees in Lebanon and hopefully bring more understanding to our problems worldwide. I helped make many changes and improvements at the UNHCR office in Beirut; I used the Internet as the field for my activities (you can read more about that in my free ebook 'MY CAMPAIGNS'). ""
"" Read small examples:
Protesters ask UNHCR to help Iraqi refugee
Blames UNHCR for his suffering, Iraqi in Yemen feels abandoned
More info in my ebook ‘Refugees farm’. ""
(2) "THE TRUTH WARRIOR", OSAM ALTAEE
http://www.anzwers.org/free/unhcr/
"" This book is:
Your window onto the truth. It's your bridge to other worlds. The worlds that have been hidden from your eyes. I hope my book will help you to open this window, to cross the bridge and to see the truth with your own eyes.
Story of my struggle to be a human being and the request for others to respect my humanity.
A true story, told on behalf of the poor, voiceless and the hopeless people, who are struggling to see the light in the darkness of their desperation. In their name as well as my own.
Message from my heart to your heart.
Download the first ebook written and published by a refugee about UNHCR, Iraq and Terrorism ""
"" ANIMAL FARM By GEORGE ORWELL
REFUGEES FARM By OSAM ALTAEE
MY CAMPAIGNS By OSAM ALTAEE ""
(3) "About Osam Altaee…", Osam Altaee:
"" I'm an Iraqi. I was born in the south of Iraq in a small town called ‘Al Khodor’ which is nearly 250 kilometers south of Baghdad in the Almothana province. When I was ten years old, I met an old Kurdish woman from Kurdistan, where people were fighting against the Iraqi regime for freedom and democracy. This old woman told me the stories of how our army murdered all the men gender of her family and destroyed her village. This fact built in my heart a blind haters for the army. And when I was thirteen years old, my father did not join the party al-ba'ath. ""
3) Medieval Europe:
http://www.providence.edu/dwc/medhist.htm
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