Ridin' the Bus with Deborah—by Doris Colmes

Introduction by Sean/iNoodle.com:

Doris's sentiments, below, were shared by my great tutor and friend, Ms. Beate Ruhm von Oppen, at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland. In the autumn of 2003, during the final term of my first master's degree program, Beate, a handful of fellow graduate students and I, together, closely studied the first two volumes of Paul Scott's The Raj Quartet, a literary masterpiece —which concerns the final years of British imperial rule in India.

In the 1930s, Beate left Nazi Germany to attend boarding school in the Netherlands, and left that country before its occupation to attend university in Britain. She died on August 10, 2004, at 86, but not before she and I had shared many hours of conversation, at the College, at her home, at mine, in a local tea room, on the journey to and from the cinema, via transatlantic telephone calls, etc. We talked of literature and philosophy, but mostly of politics and history.

The American Historical Association published an obituary in memory of Beate in its January 2005 issue of Perspectives. Additional information concerning Beate's life well lived, and her impeccable credentials for identifying fascism, are available via this Google search.

*****
11/29/05 "ICH" -- -- When Deborah Davis hit the news, I got hit as well — right in the pit of my stomach where terror hides, and panic lurks ... "Oh God," I mumbled, "It's happening again."

And just exactly what had Deborah done to get this emotionally detached old lady into such a replay of emotions left over from 1938 Nazi Germany? It was the gut-wrenching realization that the Nazi Police State in which I was raised has come back to roost – in the United States. [...]

Click here for the full article via Information Clearing House.

Whistleblower! — US Interrogator Confirms Routine Iraq Torture — by Levity

by Levity
November 28, 2005
Daily Kos

Here's a story that will disappear until bloggers start talking about it. Only PBS Frontline and Democracy Now! have dared to interview U.S. interrogator Tony Lagouranis, who reports widespread torture and abuse throughout Iraq.

He admits:
- frustrated US soldiers torture Iraqi families at length in their homes - including flesh burning, bone breaking, and ax attacks - with impunity
- no matter how obvious their innocence, detainees are always treated as guilty and sent to Abu Ghraib
- officers filed unfounded reports to bolster the claim that Fallujah dead were foreigners
- actually the Fallujah corpses included numerous women and children
- Lagouranis's multiple official abuse reports, ignored by CID and commanders for over a year, were suddenly re-filed after he appeared on Frontline
- torture has produced no useful intelligence, and efforts to legalize it are "the worst thing we could do"

Click here for the original Daily Kos post.

Nowhere to Run — by Brian Whitaker

After what has been described as the most foolish war in over 2,000 years, is there a way out of Iraq for President Bush, asks Brian Whitaker.

Brian Whitaker
November 29, 2005
The Guardian (UK)

There is a remarkable article in the latest issue of the American Jewish weekly, Forward. It calls for President Bush to be impeached and put on trial "for misleading the American people, and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 BC sent his legions into Germany and lost them".

To describe Iraq as the most foolish war of the last 2,014 years is a sweeping statement, but the writer is well qualified to know.

He is Martin van Creveld, a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and one of the world's foremost military historians. Several of his books have influenced modern military theory and he is the only non-American author on the US Army's list of required reading for officers. [...]

Click here for the full article in the Guardian.

Clemency Call for "Tookie" Williams:Please Take a Moment to Help!

Friends of iNoodle.com,

I've joined ColorOfChange.org's call to ask Gov. Schwarzenegger to grant clemency for Stanley "Tookie" Williams, who is scheduled to die on December 13th by way of lethal injection at California's San Quentin prison.

Please take a moment to add your name, and ideally a brief personal message, to the clemency petition, which can be signed by anyone, whether citizen of the US or the world community. Simply add your country name in the City field (e.g., London, United Kingdom), and leave the State field blank.

In the early '70s, Tookie Williams co-founded the Crips--a street gang that went on to cause tremendous destruction in Black neighborhoods throughout the country. In prison, Tookie's life took a 180-degree turn. First he repented and publicly apologized for the chaos that he helped create. Then he made it his life's work to clean up the mess and change the lives of others. Tookie has helped countless youth turn away from gang life; he's written numerous children's books; and he's won the praise of teachers, parole officers, and youth who've benefitted from his experiences.

Killing Tookie will solve nothing. In fact, we'll lose a key person working to end the cycle of violence among our youth.

Please join me in urging Gov. Schwarzenegger to spare the life of Tookie Williams.

http://colorofchange.org/williams.html

Thank you,

Sean (iNoodle.com)

Fascism Then. Fascism Now? — by Paul Bigioni

When people think of fascism, they imagine rows of goose-stepping storm troopers and puffy-chested dictators. What they don't see is the economic and political process that leads to the nightmare.

Paul Bigioni
November 28, 2005
Toronto Star (Canada)

Observing political and economic discourse in North America since the 1970s leads to an inescapable conclusion: The vast bulk of legislative activity favors the interests of large commercial enterprises. Big business is very well off, and successive Canadian and U.S. governments, of whatever political stripe, have made this their primary objective for at least the past 25 years.

Digging deeper into 20th century history, one finds the exaltation of big business at the expense of the citizen was a central characteristic of government policy in Germany and Italy in the years before those countries were chewed to bits and spat out by fascism. Fascist dictatorships were borne to power in each of these countries by big business, and they served the interests of big business with remarkable ferocity. [...]

Click here for the full article via Common Dreams.

Testing Education:An Open Conversation, Part 3

The following continues the exchange between The Unknown Candidate and myself, begun yesterday. Parts 1 and 2 were posted then. As always, please feel free to join in the discussion.

The Unknown Candidate said...

I was about to doze off when a thought struck which grew out of this dialogue:

"WHAT IS TO BE DONE? How, as TC put it so well, can WE develop a form of people power to save us from the false choices we are offered?"

We outnumber them. We have power in numbers. We need a party that represents our point of view: The People's Party. We articulate a vision, simply and straightforwardly, one that answers the REAL NEEDS of the majority of people as opposed to the SUPPOSED WANTS of the people currently being articulated by Dems and Republicans. (First rule of successful marketing: identify a real need and find a product that meets that need).

Utilize the internet to start the ball rolling.

More after I get some sleep. Hope this makes even an iota of sense come morning.

TUC


Sean M. Madden said...

It does make sense, TUC, and I thank you for your continuing to think about what needs to be done. Let's keep the discussion alive.

About a year ago, I was thinking along similar lines as what you have put forth, above. However, with another year's worth of observations of, and considerations concerning, the situation at hand, I am now convinced that the system is beyond repair from within, that the structures of power have become so rotten with corruption as to require rebuilding afresh. To play by the rules of the criminally corrupt is to cede the game to bandits whose power lacks legitimacy.

Additionally, political parties have prolonged as they have exacerbated the deterioration of our democracy. They are yet one more in a cache of tools of appropriation which serve to divide and conquer us, one from another and within our own selves, in a battle which serves not the embattled pawns below—us—but the ruling powers gaming from on high. Political parties are a sham. I, therefore, cannot advocate participation in a group-thought politics played along party lines, no matter how old or new the party.

Indeed, we have the numbers. This the corporate-political elite know, and have done well to fortify themselves against.

Consider, with regard to the US (note, however, that my purview is democracies wherever they may lie—active, dormant or nonexistent—for I am by nature a citizen of the world of humanity before I am a citizen by convention of, or birth within, a particular nation-state), the willingness of the Democratic Party to close ranks with the Republicans despite two presidential elections having been stolen from under their noses.

Consider this same willingness to close bipartisan ranks with regard to the deceitful response to 9/11, the thoroughly (and typically) un-American censoring of public thought and speech, the widespread corporate-media collusion for purposes of propagating psychological warfare (or domestic psy-ops) on their fellow citizens, the PATRIOT Act, the perpetual War on Terror, the hiding of truth from the citizenry behind an ominous National Security blanket, and, indeed, the turning inside out of all that the United States is meant to embody.

Our government tortures, disappears and assassinates human beings at will, and imprisons even American citizens without due process of law. In short, our government operates outside of the rule of its own and international law, and does so, by and large, with bipartisan support.

These are undeniable indications that the Democrats, as a so-called opposition party, care far more for holding onto their puny share of power (no matter how relative little its worth outside of personal financial and ego considerations) than they do respecting their constituents or the law of the land, to say nothing of higher considerations for humanity or the world in which we all coexist.

Our forebears instilled within us a near religious regard for the "founding fathers" of our nation. Yet, more than two hundred years down the road of national maturation, it is high time we revisit the unspoken axioms and postulates which lie embedded within the Constitution of the United States. This document was created not by gods nor God but by men, enlightened only insofar as their mortal eyes could then see. See far they did, but not with the near-divine eyesight which we have for too long attributed to them.

With hindsight, we can see their vision, even then, was clouded by considerations concerning slavery, by a paternal attitude which trusted not the people, generally, nor the female half of the population. The Electoral College is a remnant, an historical relic, of their legacy, a legacy of distrust of the people and a documented propensity to rig the game in their own perpetual favor.

As with the days of monarchies past, the days of democracy as designed more than two hundred years ago -- during an age which has been called the Age of Enlightenment, the Age of Reason and the Age of Revolution -- are due to expire, to be replaced in our own time by a collective vision which, while still mortal, will empower individuals to take their rightful participating place in their own governance, as is the inalienable right of all citizens of a democracy, a government not of politicians and their corporate patrons, but one of, for and by the people of a nation.

Indeed, this inalienable right exists not as a bestowal or grant, whether within or without a democratic polity, but by its very inalienability, within us all, worldwide.

Sean (iNoodle.com)

Testing Education:An Open Conversation, Part 2

The following continues the exchange between The Unknown Candidate and myself, begun earlier today. Part 1 was posted earlier. Please feel free to join in the discussion.

The Unknown Candidate said...

Yes, yes, yes! Sean, you are, of course, exactly correct in your assessment. The irony is that since the power grab of the Bush administration we need a critically thinking populace more than ever. In my silly, idealistic way, I just wish more educators would start assessing things on their own. It doesn't take more money from government for educators to start thinking of ways to solve the problems themselves--or at least to start discussing the problems. I get the feeling that most secondary school teachers, especially once they are securely tenured, could care less. I'm convinced that the methods we use to educate teachers to teach are a huge part of the problem--College level education programs, for the most part I would guess, resort to the same "test taking" mentality.

So I ask you--as someone involved in the field, someone who has had a somewhat non-traditional education (my daughter went to St. Johns in Santa Fe, so I know their curriculum well), someone who is aware of all the problems, how do we begin to change the system? (I will not accept "we can't" as an answer!)

Maybe it will take no less than a visionary leader--in government or in the field of education--to set things in motion -- if so, we may have a very, very, long wait. There don't seem to be any visionaries jumping at the chance.


Sean M. Madden said...

You've no doubt noticed, TUC, that we've come full circle, that you're asking my What is to be done? question.

Paradoxically, as you've just pointed out, the very thing which is needed (a critically educated citizenry ... and, I'm far from certain, by the way, that SJC provides the proper model given the Straussian grip on the College) to get us out of this sociopolitical dilemma will not be ushered in by those who stand to lose.

The ruling corporate-political elite -- who in most cases lack a critical education themselves, but far more importantly democratic aspirations -- will never provide the prerequisite for their own undoing, just as the slave-owners of yesteryear forbade an education for their human holdings.

Therefore, this process of a critical education must be carried forward by those who have somehow managed to see beyond what we have passively imbibed since childhood, and which the citizenry of the United States has imbibed since before the country's inception.

Note the response to Thomas Paine's return to the US after his imprisonment in France. In short, Paine truly believed in the liberal principles which he propounded and which were critically important in the lead up to the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence, but which were not to be tolerated by the new ruling aristocracy, nor, indeed, by the American citizenry composed of Christian zealots.

Paine, who did so much to bring about American democracy, was too democratic for the new democratic nation. He would perhaps find himself even less popular today.

This phenomenon, I'm afraid, shall be the likely result of any revolution which is not based, at all levels, on a well-educated, participating citizenry.

As you know, I'm in search of a solution to this paradoxical situation in which we find ourselves. I'm not giving up either. Yet, the challenge is huge.

From my own personal experience, I have found, to my great dismay, that George Monbiot's motto atop his web site seems by and large the case:

"Tell people something they know already, and they will thank you for it. Tell them something new, and they will hate you for it."

Realizing this has been perhaps the greatest letdown of my life, and has cost me the closest of family and friends.

I recognize, too, that some welcome new information with open arms and a willingness to change their minds. I do not know whether such a propensity for inquiry is natural, learned, or otherwise acquired. However, judging from the curiosity of children, I would bet that such inquisitiveness is inherent within us all, but gets turned off in most by way of institutionalized living.

So, where do we go from here?

I think we must begin to rethink the entire political system, for a humble, and humbling, start.

The idea of representative democracy has lost a key historical justification for its existence in the Internet Age. Proximity to the State House is no longer a precluding factor for those whose living is made elsewhere. Modern communications technology enables us to share information with those near and far.

[An Aside: Since I placed a site meter on the iNoodle.com blog this past Wednesday, the 23rd of November, I have had visitors from all around the US and UK, as well as from Malta, Luxembourg, Belgium, Austria, Thailand, Slovakia and New Zealand who, for whatever reason, visited a 4-week-old personal blog.]

Our legislators are no longer responsive to the will of the people. On the contrary, they, like their executive-branch counterparts, deceive and manipulate their constituents (in name only). Since our representatives show no inclination of representing us, but rather serve only themselves and their corporate patrons, I suggest that we consider creative ways of doing without them.

This would solve a number of problems at once.

The citizenry would no longer be passive. They would be engaged in -- rather than locked out of -- the political system. Judging from my experience as an educator, where there is active engagement, education follows as a natural byproduct, as does happiness and self-esteem. Such an engaged citizenry is far more likely to appreciate a more engaged, more critical formal education as well. And, if we are to mature as a nation composed of mature individuals, then we must begin to legislate for ourselves and lose, once and for all, the shackles of paternalism.

These are my Sunday evening ideas.

Thank you for the discussion, TUC ...

Sean (iNoodle.com)

Testing Education:An Open Conversation, Part 1

I wrote the following, today, in response to The Unknown Candidate's Testing Education post of November 26th. I include this herein as a partial, ongoing response to my What Is To Be Done? post of November 23rd. Please feel free to join in the discussion.

Thank you for this post, TUC. This is a pet peeve of mine as well.

But let us ask, Why would the US ruling elite want an educated citizenry?

What the politicians and their corporate backers require to maintain their hold on power is an ignorant populace which is technically adept at performing commodifed tasks amongst the laborers and in-the-corporate-box thinking amongst its "knowledge" (uncritically minded) workers.

So, before discussing educational strategy we must, first, ask all concerned what their educational objective is. Those of the ruling "economy-first" mindset -- meaning corporate-profit-driven economy, not a sustainable one which recognizes a higher ethos than maximization of shareholder value -- see technical training as most critical, ideally situated within a context devoid of unorthodox historical considerations, say of the Howard Zinn sort, which may trigger a reassessment of all we've been told.

From your and my points-of-view, we see a critical education as a prerequisite to this experiment we call democracy; but, if the last thing the corporate-political elite want is a true democracy, then they'll pursue different means to very different ends than you and I.

Sean (iNoodle.com)

A Soldier's Declaration — Siegfried Sassoon

I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.

I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them, and that, had this been done, the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.

I have seen and endured the suffering of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust.

I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.

On behalf of those who are suffering now I make this protest against the deception which is being practised on them; also I believe that I may help to destroy the callous complacence with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share, and which they have not sufficient imagination to realise.

S. Sassoon
July 1917

Join the millions who have given up on the silences of the mainstream media — by John Pilger

John Pilger
28th November, 2005
New Statesman

If you want to know the truth about Iraq, join the millions who have given up on the silences of the mainstream media.

[...] In trying to make sense of a dangerous world, millions of people are turning away from the conventional sources of news and information and to the world wide web, convinced that mainstream journalism is the voice of rampant power. The great scandal of Iraq has accelerated this. In the United States, several senior broadcasters have confessed that had they challenged and exposed the lies told about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, instead of amplifying and justifying them, the invasion might not have happened.

Such honesty has yet to cross the Atlantic. Since it was founded in 1922, the BBC has served to protect every British establishment during war and civil unrest. "We" never traduce and never commit great crimes. So the omission of shocking events in Iraq - the destruction of cities, the slaughter of innocent people and the farce of a puppet government - is routinely applied. [...]

Click here for the full article via Information Clearing House.

A Worldwide Call for Input:WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

I have been remiss in a particular obligation: getting back, as promised, to Turbulent Cleric concerning his critically important question, as follows from an excerpt of his November 8th comment posted in response to my article of the same date:

I agree that our democracies fall far short of what democracy should be. There is a growth of alienation as the political class seems to be both removed and manipulative. […]

The big question is how we can develop a form of people power to save us from the false choices we are offered.

Turbulent Cleric—who by the way is a Methodist minister in Devon, England—is likely referring, specifically, to the democracies of the United States and the United Kingdom, as these are the primary topics of my article. However, his question is applicable, as perhaps he meant it to be, to endangered democracies wherever they may lie (yes, in both senses).

With this in mind, I would like to open the question wide—worldwide—to include any such struggling democracy, while recognizing that the democracies, world round, are being further endangered by the triumphant, trumpet-sounding pseudo-democracies of the US and the UK, and so these latter may very well provide good places to start the discussion, regardless.

I had previously told TC that I was writing a response to his question, but that, as it had quickly reached full-fledged post-length, I would, instead, publish it as a separate article. I still have the original draft saved, but I abandoned it, I thought temporarily, as it was turning into a monster—the post and the question itself. I shall continue to noodle on them both.

However, this is the question that is ever-present in my thoughts, and which is raised, again and again, by people with whom I talk: close friends, family members, new friends met in cafés, bookshops and on the streets, etc.

Roughly speaking, my answer is that we must get, and stay, at the roots of things—radical in the original sense of the word—and not chase the story-of-the-day fed to us via politicians, their official propagandists or the complicit corporate media.

For example, let us not get lost in the question of whether Iraq is becoming a democracy. This was never intended. Why would the US and UK governments seek to bring democracy to Iraq when they undermine it at home? Why would the US and UK bring democracy to Iraq while they quash it the world round? And, then, I talk about the fundamental need for education, that a democracy can only exist when the citizenry—composed of individual citizens—is educated rather than propagandized. That neither the steady-state US nor UK governments are ever going to provide such an education, nor, indeed, do the vast majority of private schools, at the primary, secondary or university level, which are more concerned with granting entry to the establishment than bucking it via truth and critical thought. Therefore, WE must educate, those of us who are more politically aware, who have been fortunate enough to have been in a position to gain insights, who have had the time to explore the nature of things—we must begin to educate, by sharing of ourselves.

This is my rough answer. However, I want to open the question out to the whole of the world, to ask each of you.

WHAT IS TO BE DONE? How, as TC put it so well, can WE develop a form of people power to save us from the false choices we are offered?

Let us not leave the essential work to corrupt politicians operating within corrupt political systems.

Please comment away via the COMMENTS link, below. Or, for those with blogs of your own, feel free to take the conversation to your own sites, and perhaps consider linking back to this originating question. Regardless, invite others to join the discussion so that we may get back to basics, to the fundamentals of true democracy.

*****
If there is dissatisfaction with the status quo, good. If there is ferment, so much the better. If there is restlessness, I am pleased. Then let there be ideas, and hard thought, and hard work. If man feels small, let man make himself bigger.

~Hubert H. Humphrey (1911-78), U.S. Democratic politician, vice president. Speech, 14 Jan. 1966, University of Chicago.

(The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations is licensed from Columbia University Press. Copyright © 1993 by Columbia University Press.)

The Fall of Bob Woodward — by James Carroll

November 21, 2005
Boston Globe

At what point does naiveté become something to be ashamed of? [...]

Your naiveté consisted in the belief that, after Vietnam, your nation would never again embark on a criminal and unnecessary war. After a popular movement, inspired by tribunes of the free press, stopped the Vietnam War, you believed that the government would be responsive to the will of the people, forgetting that the people can surrender that will.

The finger-pointing in Washington now -- who voted for what, when and why -- is truly pointless. The merest glance back at the prewar debates shows that the justifications for war were all made of tissue. If the press treated them as substantial, that is because the nation itself, which still includes you, needed the tissue to cover its shame. The tissue of lies is yours.

Click here for the full Boston Globe article via Common Dreams.

Children killed as US troops fire on van at roadblock — by Catherine Philp

FIVE members of the same Iraqi family, three of them children under the age of 4, were shot dead yesterday when US troops opened fire on their minivan outside a military base, fearing a suicide car bomb attack. [...]

American troops are often accused by Iraqis of shooting at civilian vehicles at roadblocks and from convoys travelling among ordinary traffic; but checkpoints and convoys are frequently attacked by car bombers driving civilian vehicles. No such bombing has yet been carried out by a vehicle with multiple occupants. [...]

Click here for the full Times article (22 Nov 05).

A War Crime Within a War Crime Within a War Crime — by George Monbiot

The revelations from Falluja are piling up

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 22nd November 2005

The media couldn’t have made a bigger pig’s ear of the white phosphorus story. So before moving on to the new revelations from Falluja, I would like to try to clear up the old ones. [...]

But we shouldn’t forget that the use of chemical weapons was a war crime within a war crime within a war crime. Both the invasion of Iraq and the assault on Falluja were illegal acts of aggression. [...]

Click here for the full article at www.Monbiot.com.

Hastings, November 19, 2005

"This book is not about heroes. English Poetry is not yet fit to speak of them.

Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War.

Above all I am not concerned with Poetry.

My subject is War, and the pity of War.

The Poetry is in the pity.

Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful.

If I thought the letter of this book would last, I might have used proper names; but if the spirit of it survives—survives Prussia—my ambition and those names will have achieved themselves fresher fields than Flanders . . ."

~Wilfred Owen's "Preface" to Poems by Wilfred Owen
(Siegfried Sassoon, ed., Chatto & Windus, 1920)

*****
This post is dedicated to Isabel, the thirteen-year-old tutee with whom I had the pleasure of exploring fiction, mythology, poetry and writing this past summer. Although she lives in Maryland, and I was, then, living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, we talked on the phone for an hour a couple of times each week and shared writings and comments via email. We continued working together after I returned to England at the end of August. It was during the weeks thereafter that we began to read poetry together, and as I had already been invited by Fay, a great and long-time friend who lives in our village, to a November 19th production of a play in Hastings concerning the friendship between Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, Isabel and I read some works of both of these poets, along with Emily Dickinson, John Keats, the Roberts Browning and Frost, and the Persian poet-mystic, Rumi.

Saturday, the 19th of November—the day of the play—finally arrived.

After a sun-drenched morning taking Lulu, the black New Forest mare we care for, on a hack on the village lanes and bridleways, Rebecca, Luka and I drove to Hastings to meet-up with Rachel, Rebecca's sister, and Colin, her boyfriend. Colin lives in a street-level flat in the Old Town section of Hastings, snug between two antique shops on a Diagon Alley sort of side street.

The five of us walked down to the beach where we skipped rocks across the water and watched (some of us in a rather alarmed fashion) two of the Hastings-fleet fishing boats approach the beach at full speed so as to ram their hulls onto the shingle before being hoisted beyond the tide line to their nighttime resting places, where they lay like a shoal of intact shipwrecks awaiting the early-morning waters of the morrow.

As we had a couple of hours to wander around Old Town before Fay and her housemate, Hannah, joined us for fish 'n chips and the play, we window-shopped our way up George Street and stumbled upon Boulevard Books. All of us bibliophiles, once through the door, without a word, we each made a beeline for that particular section of a bookstore which maintains its hold on us—Colin, an art student, was drawn to the art books; Rachel headed for the fiction section, conveniently adjacent to the art section as she is a museum curator; Luka, our fourteen-year-old daughter, found an old first-edition book with whimsical line drawings which parodied life in the British army, circa WWII; Rebecca, too, felt Fiction's pull; I searched for philosophy texts amongst the psychology section, which had apparently grown to encompass the philosophy section as well, the love of wisdom overcome by the study of man's soul.

Graham, the proprietor, appeared from around the corner with his hands covered in soot, caused, he told us, by his burning books in the back. Curious to witness this alleged book-burning, I moseyed back to where an open doorway led from the bookshop to his living quarters to find that Graham was wrestling with the contents of his fireplace. Freezing cold as it was, the idea of a raging fire tucked into a hidden recess of a secondhand bookshop stirred my romantic heart. I walked back to tell Rebecca of the fire and whispered into her ear, "Wouldn't it be wonderful if he were to invite us into the back for tea!"

This is an ever-present fantasy which I carry with me throughout my days in England, particularly while walking along the public footpaths of Sussex, which inevitably lead one past tempting estates, farm and oast houses, bungalows and cottages. Rebecca and all who know me well know of my tea invitation fantasy.

But Saturday, the dream came true.

About ten minutes after expressing my utmost desire, Rebecca announced to all in our party that we should probably be heading back to Colin's for tea if we were to have time for this before Fay and Hannah were to meet us at the Blue Dolphin for pre-play fish 'n chips. Having overheard Rebecca, Graham popped around the corner, returning again from his living room to the bookshop, to offer us all tea!

A few minutes later, he returned with a tea tray holding five cups, a pitcher of milk, sugar and a large pot of hot Camellia sinensis.

Ah, this was my sort of day ...

While enjoying our respective cuppa, Rebecca and I got better acquainted with Graham, this being our first time in his shop. He also runs The High Street Bookshop in Old Town. Turns out that Graham and his enterprising sons have also just, as of November, launched a new monthly magazine, called The Hastings Trawler, styled after The New Yorker. We bought a copy of this to bring home, as well as a couple of books, including a sixty-pence used paperback of Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, which I've been meaning to read for several years now.

Suffice to say that the Stephen MacDonald play, entitled Not About Heroes and held at The Stables Theatre in Hastings, was superb. No matter that we are friends with one of the two persons cast in the play. The acting was topnotch, as was the dialogue between Owen and Sassoon.

Let not their poignant war observations go unheeded.

UPDATE (25 Jan 06): The Hastings Trawler now has a website at www.thehastingstrawler.co.uk.

Considerations concerning a worthwhile debate

Well, there a number of things on my mind at present, and they are a disparate lot. But, there just may be some semblance of a thread which runs through them, if you'll forgive me for thinking "aloud" ...

I have not posted an original piece for over a week now; and, my existential anxieties about how to nurture a blog of the sort which I value as a reader have played a role in this, my, absence from the page (post). In the interim, as some of you have no doubt noticed, I have posted quite a number of third-party articles which I have appreciated and wish to help gain wider distribution.

The efficient, or most immediate, cause of my not publishing a piece earlier this week was Rebecca's, our daughter's and my traveling to Salcombe, Devon last Friday to celebrate Rebecca's father's 60th birthday with family. Although we returned home on Sunday night, the long-weekend jaunt to and fro seemed to take a toll on me. I was useless Monday, and have focused much of my time since on further familiarizing myself with the blogosphere, tools to access and contribute to it, copyright concerns, and reading what to me are stellar examples of a good blog.

Foremost amongst these blogs to which I aspire while finding my own way is Sharon Spiteri's Lost in Thought. I somehow stumbled upon LiT a few weeks back and noticed that, like me, Sharon blogs from East Sussex, England. I have since made her blog a frequent stopping place on my travels.

Sharon's writing is fresh, alive and hits on a masterful mix of substantive commentary and analysis while giving something of herself to her fellow travelers. As of last night, due to following her Sub|Bloglines link, her writings now drift to me as if in a bottle via an online news aggregator. Yet, still, I wander back to her site, to read her postings in full and to bask in the breeze of her spacious blog.

In doing so the past twenty-four hours, I have been watching the thread of conversation amongst her peers, but mostly between Sharon and Jacques, as they follow the White Phosphorous (WP) story. And earlier yesterday, I was touched by Sharon's Man versus man post, in which she captured so adeptly my own feelings of late, what with all the pent-up anger which rages in so many of us in the wake of the monstrous acts of the US and UK governments which are made all the more so by the apparent rationality which is called upon to strategize the perpetration of the acts and the subsequent attempts to justify the unjustifiable.

This is the anger which drives so many of us to share our thoughts publicly, in an attempt to dialogue as a means to find truth and justice in this world which is at once stunningly beautiful and horrendously pained. And, like Sharon, I often find it difficult to write or respond in some meaningful way to what seems a continual barrage of blackness. I used to cringe in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 at hearing Bush use a word, repeatedly, which I had thought was no longer taken seriously, at least by those of us who found relief in the Age of Enlightenment thinkers, a word which seemed until then medieval: evil.

Four years later, four years of observing that which seems to me to be evil if ever evil could be properly spoken of, and roughly four years, since, of formal studies in philosophy, which rightly or wrongly helped to instill in me a certain participation in the term's usage, I have at times and reluctantly been brought 'round to Bush's dark dichotomy in which there exists both an objective good and evil. But, I remain deeply sceptical of this simple formulation which, I believe, is used as a means to preclude meaningful thought and, thus, dissent.

And so with this anger which so often wells up within, and which as a result seems never far from my core being, I have tried to participate in the debate—long before entering the blogosphere fray—and to share thoughts and information which I hope will one day bring some measure of relief to those upon whom destruction has been, and is being, wrought in our names, as well as to those of us who watch on in disgust.

This brings me to the final point of this post, the sense of simultaneous sadness and understanding which I feel in watching Sharon and Jacques' debate unfold, a debate which to me seems to be largely one of semantics. As Sharon articulated well, scepticism is being torn in two in this exchange. Sharon's scepticism—if I may offer my own subjective analysis of another individual's thoughts—is one in search of truth.

She clearly doesn't doubt the abhorrent actions of the US's use of chemical weapons (a designation within which I will continue to include white phosphorous as it is being used by the US military no matter the legalistic distinctions which both the US and UK governments, and their complicit media, are knocking themselves out to forge as a techno-speak issue as a means to turn what is a no-brainer to most people into a jargon-laden debate decipherable only by so-called experts and media pundits). Sharon's scepticism is not a disbelief, nor doubt, that the US has used WP; rather, she is yet to be convinced that the burnt bodies within unburnt clothing were necessarily caused by the US's use of white phosphorous.

Jacques, on the other hand, needs no more convincing, and seems to think that we are in danger of demanding a level of proof which may, in the meantime, miss the larger, more immediate point that the US is killing and maiming people—military personnel, insurgent or civilian—in a most brutal fashion.

I am both saddened and heartened by this debate because I empathize with you both, and, indeed, think you're both right. I, like Jacques (and Sharon), require no more proof of the act and the perpetrator; indeed, these are now settled fact. Rather, we must focus our energies on collectively condemning such acts as reprehensible, in my view and in Jacques' words, regardless of whether the victim is "civilian or militant or soldier". But, in the meantime, Sharon's continued questioning remains valid given the present lack of demonstrable evidence (from the perspective of those of us who were not present at the scene) that the burnt bodies were, in fact, caused by the use of white phosphorous.

Let us try, as difficult as it sometimes is, not to get mired in the minutiae of communications; they are, by their very nature, inexact. Let us, instead, continue to respect one another, as I'm sure Sharon and Jacques do or they wouldn't invest the time to articulate their positions with such care, and to seek overlap rather than divisive distinctions. We're all in this together, and we need each other's support.

Thank you, Sharon, Jacques and the rest of you, for helping me to find my voice on, this, my 40th birthday.

In peace,

Sean

Make Them Pay — by Charles Sullivan

A regime built upon lies cannot long stand. We can hear the death rattle beginning to rise in the bloated throat of the Bush regime as it chokes upon its own offal. The question is how long will the people accept mendacity and moral decay and call it truth? Will the perpetrators of these crimes against nature and humanity be held accountable? Will they be forced to bear the fruits of their own labors? [...]

Click here for the full Information Clearing House article (16 Nov 05).

Veterans Against the War — ZNet

Patrick Resta, the New England organizer for Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW):

Once I got there, what I saw was a lot worse than what I could have ever imagined. All of the things we had been told that we were going there to do were shown unequivocally to be lies. We were told we weren't supposed to treat Iraqi civilians unless they were about to die and only if that injury was a result of an attack directed at us or inflicted by us. Our supervisor told my platoon that "the Geneva Conventions don't exist in Iraq and that's in writing if any of you want to see it."

The above is an excerpt from an interview published by ZNet. The article first appeared on www.mrzine.org and www.lefthook.org.

Evidence Mounts That Bush Wants New Wars — by Bill Christison, Former CIA Analyst

Do the People of the United States Care Enough to Stop Him?
Evidence Mounts That Bush Wants New Wars

By BILL CHRISTISON, Former CIA analyst
CounterPunch Online
November 16, 2005

In this his time of troubles, Bush seems to be moving deliberately and rapidly toward new wars of aggression in an unforgivable gamble to overcome his troubles. His speech on Veterans' Day, November 11, 2005 at the Tobyhanna Army Depot in Pennsylvania leads to this conclusion more clearly than any of his previous speeches and activities. The new wars would be the start of a world war initiated by Bush and radical Christianity against what he calls radical Islam, but in truth the wars would be waged against all Islam.

To repeat, despite Bush's arguments to the contrary, the "clash of civilizations" would consist of wars started by us. The killing of innocent people in these wars is likely to be massive, and the wars could at any time turn nuclear. If the people and the politicians of America allow these wars to take place, the stain on the morality of Americans will last for generations. [...]

Click here for the full CounterPunch article.

Spanish police expose more CIA links to secret flights of detainees — by Giles Tremlett

· 42 operatives traced going through Palma airport
· Names unearthed match Italian and German inquiries

Giles Tremlett in Madrid
Tuesday November 15, 2005
The Guardian

Spanish police have traced up to 42 suspected CIA operatives believed to have taken part in secret flights carrying detained or kidnapped Islamist terror suspects to interrogation centres and jails in Afghanistan, Egypt and elsewhere.

A Spanish police report seen by the New York Times provides the names of the mainly American crew and passengers of a dozen suspect flights that landed in Palma de Mallorca in 2003 and 2004. The flights were allegedly part of the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" programme, in which, say human rights groups, suspected extreme Islamists are taken to be interrogated in countries where US human rights rules on torture do not apply. [...]

Click here for the full Guardian article.

Pentagon Admits White Phosphorus Use in Iraq — Democracy Now!

After initial denials, the Pentagon is now admitting it used white phosphorus as an offensive weapon in the attack on Fallujah last November. The allegations were made in an Italian documentary produced by the Italian state television network RAI. Democracy Now played an excerpt of the film last Tuesday, the day of its premiere. On the same program, Pentagon spokesperson Lt. Steve Boylan denied the allegations, saying “I know of no cases where people were deliberately targeted by the use of white phosphorus.” The Pentagon now says it used the weapon against insurgents. White phosphorus produces a dense white smoke that can cause serious burns to human flesh. The RAI documentary, entitled “Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre”, showed graphic footage of civilians with severe wounds and burns allegedly caused by phosphorus bombing.

Source: Democracy Now!
Headlines for November 16, 2005

Report: Oil Reps Met With Cheney Task Force — Democracy Now!

A White House document obtained by the Washington Post [free registration required to access article] shows executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney’s energy task force in 2001. The documents appear to prove a suspicion long held by environmentalists and contradict testimony oil executives gave before Congress last week. The document shows representatives from Exxon Mobil, Conoco, Shell Oil and BP America met with Cheney aides responsible for developing a national energy policy. Some of their task force’s recommendations have become law while others have been held up in Congress. In testimony before the Senate Energy and Commerce committees last week, chief executives from Exxon, Chevron and ConocoPhillips denied their companies took part in the energy task force discussions. The White House has refused to release records of the meetings’ participants. A spokesperson for Vice President Cheney declined comment on the White House document. The executives were not sworn in for their testimony, and so cannot face perjury charges. Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey said he will ask the Justice Department to investigate. Lautenberg told the Post: "The White House went to great lengths to keep these meetings secret, and now oil executives may be lying to Congress about their role in the Cheney task force.”

Source: Democracy Now!
Headlines for November 16, 2005

Israeli Captain Acquitted for Killing of Palestinian Schoolgirl — Democracy Now!

In Israel, a military court has acquitted an army captain who fired 17 bullets into a Palestinian schoolgirl. Thirteen-year old Iman al-Hams was killed while walking by an Israeli army tower near Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip last year. An audio tape of the incident shows the girl was identified as a "a little girl" who looked "scared to death.” Soldiers fired anyway, hitting her several times, including as she tried to flee. On the tape, the captain -- identified to the media only as “Captain R” – said he was going to “confirm the kill.” Palestinian witnesses say they then saw him shoot Iman twice in the head and several times in her body. On the recording, the captain explained: "Anything that's mobile, that moves in the [security] zone, even if it's a three-year-old, needs to be killed." After the verdict, the girl’s father, Samir al-Hams, said : "They did not charge him with Iman's murder, only with small offences, and now they say he is innocent of those even though he shot my daughter so many times. This was the cold-blooded murder of a girl. The soldier murdered her once and the court has murdered her again. What is the message? They are telling their soldiers to kill Palestinian children."

Source: Democracy Now!
Headlines for November 16, 2005

The US Used Chemical Weapons in Iraq - And Then Lied About It — by George Monbiot

Did US troops use chemical weapons in Falluja? The answer is yes. The proof is not to be found in the documentary broadcast on Italian TV last week, which has generated gigabytes of hype on the internet. It's a turkey, whose evidence that white phosphorus was fired at Iraqi troops is flimsy and circumstantial. But the bloggers debating it found the smoking gun. [...]

Click here for the full Guardian article (15 Nov 05).

Iron Fisted America — by Charles Sullivan

11/14/05 ICH -- -- Understanding the collective American psyche is no easy task. To those living in other lands we Americans are an enigma. Indeed, we are an enigma unto ourselves. To others we appear foolish, dim-witted, cowardly and morally bankrupt. To allow the rise of a fascist regime to take power is compelling evidence for those views. Let me try to explain why. [...]

Click here for the full Information Clearing House article.

We have a duty

"Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience ... Therefore [individual citizens] have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring."

Justice Robert Jackson, chief prosecutor, Nuremberg war crimes tribunal (1946).

A restraint of liberty — by George Monbiot

Faced with a choice between market freedom and human life, governments have chosen to preserve the former

George Monbiot
Tuesday May 24, 2005
The Guardian

The British government recognises two kinds of freedom. There is the freedom of the citizen, which it appears to perceive as a threat to good order. It has permitted (through the Serious Organised Crime Act) the police or courts to ban any public protest. It is introducing identity cards, restricting immigration, seeking to curb the right of habeas corpus and extending antisocial behaviour orders.

Then there is the freedom of business. Though the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise are already incapable of dealing with tax evaders, Gordon Brown is cutting 10,000 of their staff. Tony Blair is trying to destroy the European working time directive, which prevents companies from working their employees to death. The draconian measures in the Queen's speech restraining the citizen were immediately followed by a promise to deregulate business. The government is prepared to micro-manage us, while leaving the more powerful agents - the corporations - free to manage themselves.

Like the patricians in Coriolanus, Tony Blair will "repeal daily any wholesome act established against the rich, and provide more piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain the poor". For business to be free, we must be kept in check.

This isn't, according to the high priest of this religion, how it was meant to be. Adam Smith held that market freedom was desirable for one reason: that it improved people's lives. Where he perceived that it had the opposite effect, he called for restraint. "Those exertions of the natural liberty of a few individuals, which might endanger the security of the whole society, are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all governments," he wrote. Governments have "the duty of protecting, as far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it". [...]

Click here for the full comment piece published by the Guardian.

Beyond Good and Evil: The Dichotomization of Politics and Our Own Minds

Last week, I asked whether the American and British people (and perhaps other concerned world citizens) would demand—not wish, hope or plead for, but demand—that our ransacked, just-barely ostensible, and corporatized democracies be exchanged for true democracies built upon solid foundations of truth, law and mutual respect, so that democracy itself may live.

I should have added liberty to this tripartite list as it is too important to be merely implied within mutual respect. By mutual respect I mean respect for one another, as individuals, first, and, secondly, as individuals which collectively compose groups of all sorts, for example, familial, political, religious, ethnic and cultural groups as well as nation-states. Of course, mutual respect for each other necessitates that we must respect ourselves as well.

I should also have taken greater care to prioritize these foundations of a true democracy. I shall do so now, in what I think is the proper order: truth, mutual respect, liberty and law, in that each of the latter, done well, requires the former.

I initially thought that mutual respect would provide for the liberty of individuals and groups. However, the concept of liberty or freedom is so integral to our whole being, at the level of the individual and the group, that it warrants its own corner of the democratic foundation. Truth is primary in the above prioritization; yet, inherent in truth is the mutual recognition that we individuals do not exist alone, that we must respect, if we are to live wholly and peacefully with, one another. Such respect for others is a necessary first step toward achieving our own liberty. In this way, we may see liberty as a right earned via respect for others. Law seems best applied as a means to legislate where mutual respect is endangered.

While truth, mutual respect, liberty and law are individually and collectively enormous topics for thought and discussion, I shall herein begin to explore the fundamental need for us to learn to respect ourselves and others, and that a crucial step toward our doing so is to begin to become more aware of—so that we may then move beyond—linguistic dichotomizations which serve only to separate us from ourselves and others.

A critical reader may all too easily point to my own dichotomizations, my own either-or polarizations. Inherent within our Indo-European family of languages is a logic centered on the principle, or law, of contradiction, which Aristotle summarizes within his Metaphysics (1006a) as follows: “ ... it is impossible [for something] to be and not be at the same time.” In terms of language, we are forced into a situation whereby we name and describe things by way of making distinctions. So long as we operate within the realm of language, describing things in relation to either the existence or non-existence of something, such either-or distinctions are unavoidable. Our job as critical readers is to challenge such distinctions, to test their validity, to consider alternative categorizations, to view proffered dichotomizations through a finer, less divisive lens.

Our present political landscape has been dichotomized by those who seek to divide us into opposing camps as a means to then conquer. They attempt to colonize our minds by placing either-or limits on our thoughts and our speech. We must, if we are not self-respecting, be either with or against them. They tell us we are liberal or conservative; apparently no other political possibility exists: we are either Democratic or Republican, Labour or Tory. We are radical, we are reactionary. We are on the right, we are on the left. We are right, they are wrong. They are terrorists, we are warriors for peace. They abhor, we are a beacon of, freedom and democracy. We are rational, they are fanatical. We are good, they are evil.

This is the language of division, of contention, of intolerance. A world in which only two possibilities exist does not allow sufficient room for thought. Thus its present application by anti-democratic forces presently lodged in our respective government's highest offices to attempt to usurp truth as a means to power and profits by precluding thought itself. If we do not stop to validate their dichotomies, to analyze their words as well as their intentions—and to check these against actions and outcomes—such dichotomies are apt to be blindly accepted as the outer boundaries of possible thought. Finer distinctions shall no longer come to mind.

We must regain our naturally occurring gradations of mind, thought and speech as a means to liberate ourselves from false dichotomies meant to divide not only ourselves from each other, but our very selves, by short-circuiting the means by which we think. Thinking in terms of dichotomies is like being handed a multiple-choice test which offers only two choices: a or b, with the assumption that the right answer must be one or the other. In other words, the examiner does not want an essay written in response which would facilitate mindful analysis, a consideration of unspecified possibilities.

Politically charged statements like, "You are either with us or against us"—which are disturbingly similar to the Newspeak maxims contained within George Orwell’s 1984, which having reread a couple of weeks ago I most heartily recommend to all inquiring minds—are designed to preclude thought. We mustn’t equivocate, we mustn’t allow for shades of grey, or hues, to disrupt the politicians’ and their propagandists’ black-and-white. No, a full-spectrum or an array of possibilities must fit into either a or b.

No!

We are none of us black nor white, in thought or skin color, nor should our range of options be allowed to be so defined—confined to opposite extremes—by those who wish to conquer our minds, our thoughts, our speech as a means to artificially divide us within ourselves and from one another.

In truth, we exist in hues.

Let us, therefore, begin to respect, wholly, ourselves and our fellow human beings. I believe if we were to begin to respect ourselves, each other, and the full-spectrum of possibilities of thought that such respect would, likewise, begin to extend to the world which we all share, to its unique and fragile conditions which sustain our own lives and the lives of myriad other species on this precious planet.

Let us reject the dangerous, false dichotomies with which our corrupt “leaders” are attempting to pollute—by limiting—our minds, our thoughts and our speech. Let us, then, reject en masse the polluting politicians themselves—at the ballot box or in the streets—and demand, and actively engage in, true democracies built upon solid foundations of truth, mutual respect, liberty and law.

Is it this that we so love in a novel?

Is it this that we so love in a novel: the completion of a whole within the mess of life?

We human beings have for so long cherished the circle, which paradoxically embraces infinity and the finite. It both marks a complete whole—places a ring ’round the finite within, whatever we care to fence in: degrees, minutes, seconds, points of space, objects—and remains in an active state of being, circling ’round and ’round again like an eternally restless dog which pursues the ultimate repose, yet for all his efforts cannot. Or, perhaps he does capture the perfect moment, each and every one of them, with perfected wisdom which so utterly evades us humans in our righteous ridicule and judgment. He doesn’t lie in wait for the perfect moment to come or consider that it may have existed in his past as some historical treasure; no, he seizes it now, lives it, and then moves on to seizing the next without undue conceptualization in which we so invest.

We love the circle, more than we love the cross. The former is uncorrupted, unending, the latter stabbing and grotesque; its lines are broken, they must turn back upon themselves with no certainty in their cause. The circle is universal; the cross, judgmental.

Would it do to cast the novel—that enduring literary convention whose end has long been foretold by its critics yet continues, still, to retain its hold—as the circle, the cross as life?

Mathematics, like its cousin, geometry, represents a complete whole which, again, traces the finite and infinite. All sings out in perfect pitch as the harmonies of the heavens do for those sufficiently sensitive to hear, feel or otherwise experience them. A great friend with whom I studied philosophy, theology and literature this past year stopped dead in his tracks as we were making the short walk together one evening between the College library and our seminar classroom and asked, "Did you hear that?" I had heard nothing, but something unmistakable, something whole seemed to enter Dan which would forever alter his course in life. A secret communiqué which was, apparently, for his ears only.

1 + 1 always = 2.

The sum of the internal angles of a triangle always equal 180 degrees.

Never mind that we mortal creatures developed the deductive systems which we call mathematics and geometry and are, now, shot through with amazement that the systems seem to anticipate in some unearthly way our expectations. We programmed the games, forgot that we did so, and now attribute their perfection to an objective universal. Yet, let not my philosophical scepticism detract us from the pure joy of the whole.

Why, if geometry and all its figures exist in a perfected state, can the cross so infect us with disgust and outrage, tension at the least? We seem to unconsciously recognize each of the four tips as thorns amongst skewed bracken. How is it that Descartes’ analytically geometric axes lie within two dimensions and bear the shape of the cross, yet are in their way perfected, too, like a circle? Perhaps it is not that two perpendicular and intersecting lines are inherently incongruent, but that they are only able to maintain their mathematical perfection by way of their removal from life, in a way that the cross, with all the messy connotations of its being in this world, cannot. Cartesian axes bisect one another, perfectly, they exist in symmetry, while the cross’s crosspiece lies like the burdened shoulders upon the vertical it bears, its neck and head foreshortened.

The novel can embrace life in its entirety. There remains room within for interpretation without, for differences of interpretive opinion. But it remains, nevertheless, a complete whole. Life, on the other hand, is untidy and escapes all our attempts to encircle it. Yet there remains something glorious in the whole story which helps us to experience the whole of the universe; like the circle, it both captures the finite within and can, if we are sensitive to its celestial overtones, lead us to the infinite beyond its limited confines.

The Neocon Agenda: Will We Undermine It? Or, Is Democracy Dead?

Publicly exposing—as a first step toward discrediting and undermining—the fundamentally anti-democratic neoconservative agenda must fast become a top sociopolitical priority not only of progressives, liberals and "Third Way" New Democrats and Labour supporters, but of all the world's citizens who demand that their so-called democratic governments honorably represent rather than mendaciously deceive their respective citizenries.

The neocon agenda endangers us all, directly through the violent upheaval it has spurred on in very short order, and indirectly by way of other corrupt regimes which may decide to model the hypocritical example of the US and UK governments.

But only the American and British people have the power to demand from within that their respective experiments in democracy survive the neocon agenda, which is playing out as much in Britain as it is in the United States.

All the world has witnessed the lies and the supreme arrogance of both the US and UK governments these past few years. We have all witnessed, in cerebral numbers provided in print if not in person or graphic detail, the tragic deaths of tens of thousands of individual human beings killed by way of our governments' illegal war of aggression in Iraq. We have all seen the plunge into the immoral, inhumane and, thus, criminal abyss of officially sanctioned torture, state-sponsored kidnappings and disappearances (officially known as "extraordinary renditions") and indefinite detentions of individuals imprisoned for years without charge or due process of law.

We now know beyond any doubt—as the majority of the world's politically aware knew before the start of the war, despite the onslaught of rhetoric spewed by politicians to quell dissent and the continual drumbeat of the corporate media-delivered propaganda craftily packaged as if to deliver us from the evil that is, apparently, commonsense—that this war could only have been sold to the American and British people were we to be bombarded by our own governments' criminal lies. And, sold it was, rolled out and marketed as would a psychologically researched, high-end advertising campaign of an immoral corporation which seeks to maximize shareholder value through the plying of harmful products, practices or byproducts. Yet, when democratic representation exists in name only, corrupt politicians, like their corrupt corporate executive counterparts, will continue to rule, as we the people rue, the day.

In an article entitled, "Indicting America," written by former chief UN weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, and published on the 29th of October by Information Clearing House, Mr. Ritter said the following:

Void of a major backlash on the part of the American people in response to the deliberate falsification and deceit that has transpired regarding Iraq and the now-debunked case for war, the Libby indictment may prove to be little more than an exercise in damage control.

Already senior Republican officials, such as Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, are calling the Libby indictment a mere "technicality." Right-wing pundits refer to the indictment as the "criminalization of politics," as if lying one's way into an illegal war of aggression is somehow akin to politics as usual.

In a speech before the US House of Representatives on the 26th of October, US Congressman Ron Paul, a Republican from Texas, had the following to say about the neoconservative agenda:

We have been warned. Prepare for a broader war in the Middle East, as plans are being laid for the next U.S.-led regime change—in Syria. A UN report on the death of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafig Hariri elicited this comment from a senior U.S. policy maker: "Out of tragedy comes an extraordinary strategic opportunity." This statement reflects the continued neo-conservative, Machiavellian influence on our foreign policy. The "opportunity" refers to the long-held neo-conservative plan for regime change in Syria, similar to what was carried out in Iraq.

This plan for remaking the Middle East has been around for a long time. Just as 9/11 served the interests of those who longed for changes in Iraq, the sensationalism surrounding Hariri’s death is being used to advance plans to remove Assad.

Please note, in case you missed it, that the above was delivered on the floor of the US House of Representatives by a Republican Congressman from Texas.

As these two quotes suggest, there exists an overabundance of information publicly available via both mainstream and independent media, as well as from primary, sources to demonstrate that the neocon movement is, indeed, anti-democratic, out-of-line with traditional Anglo-American political philosophy, and is inherently dishonest in that it relies on a foreign-policy elite which deliberately deceives the very citizenry which such elected representatives and other government officials have sworn oaths to serve. Such Machiavellian deception is justified in their minds because they quite rightly believe that their foreign-policy objectives will not be tolerated, let alone supported, by a well-meaning American (or British) public which, by and large, continues to believe that the history they learned in school is true, and that the United States (or Britain) only goes to war when it absolutely must do so to defend itself from harm, never in outright aggression.

There is no shortage of evidence that our respective democracies in the US and UK are in grave danger of a fate worse than being qualified as ostensible; they are very nearly dead. Nor is there a shortage of criminal evidence by which the American and British people can and must demand, not "an exercise in damage control" but, the "major backlash" of the sort Mr. Ritter spoke of, above.

Will the American and British people demand—not wish, hope or plead for, but demand—that their ransacked, just-barely ostensible, and corporatized democracies be exchanged for the real McCoy, true democracies built upon solid foundations of truth, law and mutual respect, so that democracy itself may live?

______________________

Additional Links:

"Cameron Is No Moderate" comment by Neil Clark in The Guardian (24 Oct 05);

"The Nice Mr Cameron" blog posting by Turbulent Cleric;

The Henry Jackson Society: Project for Democratic Geopolitics website: note the "London Launch" scheduled to be held at the Houses of Parliament on 22nd November 05;

The Henry Jackson Society "Statement of Principles", Cambridge, UK (11 Mar 05);

The Henry Jackson Society "Links" webpage;

"We've Been Neo-Conned" article by US Rep. Ron Paul (12 Jul 03): an old article, yes, but like the below document, as relevant as ever;

Project for the New American Century "Rebuilding America's Defenses" report, released September 2000.