2005.3.18=5[#77]:4703.2.9[#38/60] Jyun back from LA.1)openDemocracy. 2)US' Oil Empire.

Cloudy gradually rain then taperin off cool, Backyard Flowers Blooming: screens fully open, early emails to topic: 2) US' Global Oil Empire: (1-3) > [C] "Coming Multilateral Militaries #1001+ > Naked Force for Oil [Three carriers may converge in the Mediterranean]", then getting to 1) openPolitics, adding "" (3) "On Morality" #1001: Family "" to [G]. Finished emails 6:20pm. Mei home 6:30pm and tel Jyun on way home from LA at Dixon. Soon he was back with his girl friend, but off while my full bath still without shampoo. Lung back. Almost 8:30pm, soon to o.h., 9:15pm, late for "Da Chang-jin", then also the movie "The Ninth Gate", bed 12:45: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0142688/ 1) openDemocracy: (1) "Open Politics": "Open politics, the story so far", by David Hayes; 17 - 3 - 2005, openDemocracy: http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-3-122-2378.jsp "" New readers start here! Citizens’ hunger for a new relationship with power needs a new process to satisfy it. What could that be? David Hayes maps an evolving openDemocracy debate. "" "" from the “orange revolution” in Ukraine to near-insurrection in Bolivia, from constitutional battles in Kenya to convulsion in Lebanon, from election earthquakes in Spain and India to mass demonstration in Hong Kong, there is tangible evidence of a collective, even universal yearning. How to name this yearning? What is it about? openDemocracy calls it “open politics”. Open politics is not a movement or an outcome but a commitment to a process of change – democratic, humane, and essentially peaceful – that we believe is contained in and embodied by these worldwide struggles. Open politics lives inside the “democratic paradox”. Open politics seeks ways of resolving it by understanding and clarifying the connections between the diverse experiences of citizens in relation to power across the globe. The debate, which we call “What is open politics?”, is just beginning. It starts with an interview with Mary Robinson of the Ethical Globalisation Initiative, who draws on her experience as United Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights to argue that the very definition of “human rights” has to be extended to include social and economic rights. The implication is not just that poverty is a human rights issue, but that there is a direct connection between the private intimacies of deprivation and universal principles of justice. But only if institutions of power, international as well as national, are made accountable will such a connection be made. "" (2) "Civil Society": "What the hell is “civil society”?", by Neera Chandhoke; 17 - 3 - 2005, openDemocracy: http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-3-122-2375.jsp " As popular movements sweep much of the world, the term “civil society” can be heard on many lips. Michael Edwards of the Ford Foundation has written a short book on the three meanings of the concept. Neera Chandhoke, from New Delhi, casts a sceptical eye over his argument. " "" confusing. Michael Edwards, in his readable and finely nuanced Civil Society, intends to secure both the idea and the set of practices that constitute civil society. As a scholar and as what can be called a practitioner of civil society politics at the Ford Foundation (where his section has, among other things, helped to support openDemocracy) he sets out to clarify and reconstruct the concept. He describes three different uses of the term: as a description of varieties of association as a value advocating the advantages of cooperation as democratic ecosystem – a public sphere in which engagement with the whole future and shape of society takes place (or could take place). “Civil society”, Edwards argues, “is the story of ordinary people living extraordinary lives through their relationships with each other, driven forward by a vision of the world that is ruled by love and compassion, non-violence and solidarity.” I share his hopes. But I hesitate to share his more than positive assessment of “civil society”, which by the end of a short but important book, overshadows his initial understanding of the problems it poses. I happen to be a political theorist, but I speak also as a citizen of India, where the politics of intolerance, fundamentalism, and rabid hate for minorities overtook India’s civil society far too easily in the late 1980s and the 1990s. "" (3) "On Morality #1001: Family": From my answer to [G]: "" [Tsai 05.3.18=5 #3] Thank you, Janet. It's about civilization, so it's basically about morality. William Grimes of the New York Times commented on "Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare", by Philip Short, stated that Short "contrasts the tempering influence of Confucianism on Vietnamese and Chinese political thinking" and also " Mao was the product of an intensely rational, literate society, with highly developed traditions of philosophical debate". I think this is very well said about the whole idea of Confucius, who stated as he coundn't know about the living human beings, how could he know about "god"? Instead, he concentrated on the social structure and ways of family-nation-world, founded on education and the continuity of family. The latter seems to me to give individuals going beyond the limitation of individual time and getting historical significance out of purely selfish and isolated persons. So we can take care of both personal and social context for our lives. So family is NOT JUST a matter of love betwen a particular man and a woman, but also a basic foundation of any society, or a fundamental social structure, not to be tampered with lightly. "" (4) "THE VANISHING", by MALCOLM GLADWELL; The New Yorker, issue of 2005-1-3, posted 2004-12-27: http://newyorker.com/critics/books/?050103crbo_books "" In “Collapse,” Jared Diamond shows how societies destroy themselves. "" "" Jared Diamond’s “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed” (Viking; $29.95). Diamond teaches geography at U.C.L.A. and is well known for his best-seller “Guns, Germs, and Steel,” which won a Pulitzer Prize. In “Guns, Germs, and Steel,” Diamond looked at environmental and structural factors to explain why Western societies came to dominate the world. In “Collapse,” he continues that approach, only this time he looks at history’s losers—like the Easter Islanders, the Anasazi of the American Southwest, the Mayans, and the modern-day Rwandans. We live in an era preoccupied with the way that ideology and culture and politics and economics help shape the course of history. But Diamond isn’t particularly interested in any of those things—or, at least, he’s interested in them only insofar as they bear on what to him is the far more important question, which is a society’s relationship to its climate and geography and resources and neighbors. “Collapse” is a book about the most prosaic elements of the earth’s ecosystem—soil, trees, and water—because societies fail, in Diamond’s view, when they mismanage those environmental factors. "" 2) US' Global Oil Empire: (0) MAI: "Everything You Wanted to Know about the MAI - But Didn't Know to Ask...", Public Citizen [" national, nonprofit consumer advocacy organization founded in 1971 to represent consumer interests in Congress, the executive branch and the courts "] http://www.citizen.org/trade/issues/mai/articles.cfm?ID=5626 "" Imagine an international commercial treaty empowering corporations and investors to sue governments directly for cash compensation in retaliation for almost any government policy or action that undermines profits. This is not the plot of a science fiction novel of future corporate totalitarian rule. Rather, it is just one provision of a profound but largely unknown international commercial treaty called the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI.) The director general of the World Trade Organization, Renato Ruggerio, has described the MAI rather honestly: "We are writing the constitution for a single global economy." Others have described the powerful treaty as a slow motion coup d' etat against democratic governance. "" (1) "Why Wolfowitz?", by Jim Vallette; TomPaine.com, March 17, 2005: http://www.tompaine.com/articles/why_wolfowitz.php Occupied Iraq represents Paul Wolfowitz's main “development” experience—where he ensured billions of dollars of oil export revenues flowed into the Bush administration’s favored corporations. Jim Vallette of the Institute For Policy Studies reviews Wolfowitz's resumé and sees that all his paths have led to oil. Jim Vallette is the research director for the Sustainable Energy & Economy Network at the Institute for Policy Studies. He is the co-author of numerous reports on the World Bank, including most recently Wrong Turn from Rio: The World’s Bank Road to Climate Catastrophe. President George W. Bush has shocked the international development world by announcing that he wants Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz to be the next president of the World Bank. Choosing Wolfowitz for this job makes perfect sense if the Bush administration intends to completely alienate the world community. "" "" As with the Europeans, the Bush administration had a difficult time in getting the World Bank to walk in lock-step on Iraq. Outgoing World Bank President James Wolfensohn did not back Wolfowitz’s call for total debt cancellation, nor did he rush his eClassified Pentagon Document mployees into the country after the invasion. With many European powers locked out of reconstruction contracts, he had little chance of reaching a consensus on the Bank’s executive board. The Bank’s reticence to finance projects in Iraq may have pushed Cheney and gang over the edge, ushering the embodiment of U.S. unilateralism into his anointed role. With Wolfowitz in charge, the World Bank may be able to complete what the Iraq invasion started two years ago: U.S. corporate control over the world’s second-largest oil reserves. "" (2) "New Undeclared Arms Race: America's Agenda for Global Military Domination", by Michel Chossudovsky, www.globalresearch.ca; 17 March 2005: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO503A.html "" The Pentagon has released the summary of a top secret Pentagon document, which sketches America's agenda for global military domination. This redirection of America's military strategy seems to have passed virtually unnoticed. With the exception of The Wall Street Journal (see below in annex), not a word has been mentioned in the US media. "" (3) "Europe versus the Anglo-American Alliance. New Political Alignments and the "Big Game": What lies behind the diplomatic rift at the UN Security Council? The Anglo-American Military Axis", by Michel Chossudovsky, www.globalresearch.ca; 10 March 2003: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO303B.html "" The second text is an excerpt from War and Globalisation, the Truth behind September 11 by Michel Chossudovsky The first text is a brief update which examines the broader significance of the rift in the UN Security Council. "" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "" The Rift in the UN Security Council: The "disagreements" within the US Security Council pertaining to Iraq are casually presented by the media as a mere diplomatic rift. In fact we are dealing with something far more complex. The Bush Administration's war plans have nothing to do with "Saddam's weapons of mass destruction" or his alleged links to Osama bin Laden. The proposed invasion of Iraq is intended to exclude rival European, Russian and Chinese interests from the Middle-East and Central Asian oil fields. While in the Balkans, the US "shared the spoils" with Germany and France, in the context of military operations under NATO and UN auspices, the invasion of Iraq is intended to establish US hegemony, while weakening Franco-German and Russian influence in the region. The clash between Great Powers ("Old Europe" versus and the Anglo-American military axis) broadly pertains to: 1 Defense and the military-industrial complex, 2. Control over Oil and Gas Reserves, 3. Money and currency systems: clash between the Euro and the Dollar. "" (4) "Mapping The Oil Motive", by Michael T. Klare; March 18, 2005, TomPaine.com: http://www.tompaine.com/articles/mapping_the_oil_motive.php " The Bush administration has publicly advanced a number of reasons for going to war in Iraq, from WMDs to the Iraqi people's need for liberation. Michael Klare reviews the evidence that securing America's source of oil was a decisive factor in the White House's decision to invade—and looks at whether the administration succeeded. Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Petroleum Dependency (Metropolitan Books) " (5) "The Democracy Lie", by Juan Cole; March 18, 2005, TomPaine.com: http://www.tompaine.com/articles/the_democracy_lie.php " President Bush and his supporters are taking credit for spreading freedom across the Middle East. Middle East expert Cole disputes the domino theory in the region and labels Iraq—at best—a failed state. Where changes are genuinely occurring they have nothing to do with the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Juan Cole is a professor of modern Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan. He runs a blog on Middle Eastern affairs called Informed Comment. This article first appeared on Salon.com. "