Category: politics

brilliant, brilliant interview – margaret atwood talks to bill moyers. the antinomian heresy: if u’re predestined to be the elect from birth, if u’re going to be saved no matter what, u can do the most atrocious things while still believing that u’re justified.

that kind of event (salem witch trials) replays itself in history when societies/cultures are under stress. people start looking around for human sacrifices. societies can give up their ideals, their freedoms, their values in almost frighteningly normal and rapid ways. fear sets in and people will trade their freedoms for someone who says: i’m a strong leader, i’ll take care of it – the trains will run on time. in order to preserve freedom, we have to demolish freedom. it’s amazing how quickly people rolled over for the patriot act.

The Indian Constitution ratified colonial policy and made the State custodian of tribal homelands. Overnight, it turned the entire tribal population into squatters on their own land. It denied them their traditional rights to forest produce, it criminalised a whole way of life. In exchange for the right to vote, it snatched away their right to livelihood and dignity. Having dispossessed them and pushed them into a downward spiral of indigence, in a cruel sleight of hand, the government began to use their own penury against them. Each time it needed to displace a large population—for dams, irrigation projects, mines—it talked of “bringing tribals into the mainstream” or of giving them “the fruits of modern development”. Full article.

From Weeping Palms: Stolen Childhoods, a series of paintings by Iraqi artist Maysaloun Faraj, in response to the war on Iraq, where dreams are continually shattered and destroyed.

Maysaloun writes: “Trauma and tragedy permeate life back home at its core. Nothing has been spared, even our precious date palms suffer. Despite being worn and withered, they remain resilient, tall, proud and ever so graceful. I have given each painting the name of an Iraqi woman, in tribute to her ongoing struggle and enormous sacrifice. Meet Firyal”. ~ 2004

Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom have morphed into a single Operation Enduring Occupation, set to bankrupt this country financially as well as morally, to destroy our own security as it has that of the over 31 million people who populate Iraq and 32 million people of Afghanistan. Operations sold to the American people as protecting our freedoms have been used as part of a corrupt apparatus to restrict, reduce and infringe on those freedoms – civil liberties enshrined in the early English common law (habeas corpus, trial by jury) and the Constitution’s Bill of Rights (free speech, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, freedom from cruel and unusual punishment). Our language has been deformed (“Homeland,” “preventative war,” “enemy combatant,” “enhanced interrogation”)our society, militarized and privatized – with the legitimate government monopoly on violence outsourced to military contractors. Full article.

The report reviewed the human rights record of the United States in 2009 from six perspectives: life, property and personal security; civil and political rights; economic, social and cultural rights; racial discrimination; rights of women and children; and the US’ violation of human rights against other countries. It criticized the United States for taking human rights as “a political instrument to interfere in other countries’ internal affairs, defame other nations’ image and seek its own strategic interests.” Full article.

In soaring emotional rhetoric not heard since his last soaringly emotional speech, the president expressed soaring emotional support for all wealthy Americans and for the overwhelming 90% majority who are not yet wealthy but will be someday if our free markets and credit purchases can fully flower and bloom and blossom and, uh, whatever.

“This nation will thrive and survive as long as people are free to get wealthy and I intend to fight to the last breath to keep the freedoms we enjoy that allow wonderful hard working billionaires to get even more rich and then help the rest of us with tax deductible donations to charity.”

When asked about health care for all Americans the president said he supported it, but it would only be possible when more rich people were given tax breaks that enabled them to buy more private health insurance companies and then make tax deductible donations to charity.

Cindy Sheehan: “We’ve set up camp because we believe that the invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan for the multinational corporations using our US military were wrong under the Bush administration, they’re still wrong under the Obama administration. For the last, you know, thirteen, fourteen months, the antiwar movement has been giving President Obama a free pass. And while that’s been happening, people are still dying, people are still being displaced, people are still being tortured and detained.” Watch more.

Religion historian Philip Jenkins decided to compare the brutality quotient of the Quran and the Bible. “Much to my surprise, the Islamic scriptures in the Quran were actually far less bloody and less violent than those in the Bible,” Jenkins says. Violence in the Quran, he and others say, is largely a defense against attack. “There is a specific kind of warfare laid down in the Bible which we can only call genocide.” It is called herem, and it means total annihilation. In the end, the scholars can agree on one thing: “The DNA of early Judaism, Christianity and Islam code for a lot of violence. Whether they can evolve out of it is another thing altogether.” Complete story.

All infrastructures we build, like the monasteries in the Middle Ages, should seek to keep alive the intellectual and artistic traditions that make a civil society, humanism and the common good possible. Access to parcels of agricultural land will be paramount. We will have to grasp, as the medieval monks did, that we cannot alter the larger culture around us, at least in the short term, but we may be able to retain the moral codes and culture for generations beyond ours. Resistance will be reduced to small, often imperceptible acts of defiance, as those who retained their integrity discovered in the long night of 20th-century fascism and communism. Full article.

obama never supported the public option – in fact, it was squashed by the white house.

Even while Obama was saying that he thought a public option was a good idea, he had promised for-profit hospital lobbyists that there would be no public option in the final bill. Full article.

v interesting analysis.

the situation in pakistan is complicated but if u want some basic understanding of the underlying issues, here’s an interview with robert fisk.

a clear-cut, well-articulated statement on the war in afghanistan and pakistan by action for a progressive pakistan. read full statement here.

a bunch of texans decide ur kids’ school curriculum. they’re not educators, they’re dentists and lawyers, and they want to correct the “liberal bias in academia.” how come no one even talks about this?

The board, whose members are elected, has influence beyond Texas because the state is one of the largest buyers of textbooks. Since January, Republicans on the board have passed more than 100 amendments to the 120-page curriculum standards affecting history, sociology and economics courses from elementary to high school. “We are adding balance,” said the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote. “Academia is skewed too far to the left.” Full article.

Israel’s announcement of plans to build 1,600 settler homes in east Jerusalem was not only an “insult” to the United States but “destructive” of the Middle East peace process, a top White House official said Sunday. “We have just started proximity talks, that is shuttle diplomacy, between the Palestinians and the Israelis, and for this announcement to come at that time was very destructive.” Full article.