At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Author Archives: Lila
Why A Win For Rand Paul Matters (Comment Added)
I’ve expressed my skepticism about some of Rand Paul’s positions, but as I hear the rhetoric from the establishment demonizing the Tea Party at every chance, I’ve come to the conclusion that Rand Paul might still be worth supporting. In support of that, I found this at Humble Libertarian:
“Ron’s success in the 2012 Presidential race is DIRECTLY tied to Rand’s success in 31 days.
WHY?
Think it through.
Allow me to elaborate the possible scenarios:
Scenario 1- Rand loses. The media, liberals, Democrats, and even Republican establishment will declare that the liberty movement and tea parties are not viable and have no chance of electoral success. Rand is seen as the leader and if he fails then the symbolic victory of the statists will be crushing to any hope for 2012. If this happens then Ron might not even run in 2012 because it would be somewhat pointless for him to do so. Morale will be in the gutter, donors will turn cold, and enthusiasm will be largely nonexistent; not to mention the lack of momentum.
Scenario 2- Rand wins barely. Although victory is victory, a small margin of victory will then give the commentators and media an edge to fight against us in 2012. They will say that we just barely won, and that it was a fluke, or we just got lucky, or whatever. It’ll still be an uphill battle in the fight for legitimacy and credibility. This also will not bode well for Rand when he has to fight for his seat again next time around in perhaps a less friendly political atmosphere.
Scenario 3- Rand wins in a large victory (Randslide). A mandate by the People will be undeniable and cannot be countered. This paves the way that our ideas are now mainstream, acceptable, and that Ron stands a good chance of winning in 2012. Think of it as leap frog. Rand run’s on Ron’s shoulders and wins. Then Ron runs on Rand’s shoulders and wins. We will be unstoppable and perceived as unbeatable because momentum will be on our side.
There you have it — those are the possible outcomes as I see it. If you are cold on Rand, realize you are hurting Ron’s chance in 2012. A large victory for Rand paves the way and is even necessary for Ron’s electoral success in 2012. Anything less makes it highly unlikely. The campaign needs money, it needs volunteers, it needs people on the ground. It needs door knockers, phone bankers, sign placers, etc. Will you come to KY in the final weeks of the campaign and help out? The realization that when you are campaigning for Rand you are also simultaneously campaigning for Ron to be President is critical.”
My Comment
First. I don’t think libertarians should be pouring money into anything..Their first job is to look after themselves and their families. Ron and Rand Paul have received a lot of money already.
They need volunteers and support more than money. Besides, there are plenty of wealthy businessmen and gold dealers in the hard money community who can and should support them financially.
[I say this because some libertarian activists have expressed anxiety about what’s actually been done with the money they’ve given. That’s always a problem for all politicians, of course. I just mention it here, because I’ve heard concern expressed by a couple of activists.]
Two. I think the answer isn’t political – it’s education. And criticism/analysis of propaganda.
The best contribution libertarians can make is to refuse to demonize the Tea Party or ANY candidate being bashed by the establishment. That will allow the candidates’ voices to be heard on their own merit.
Participating in the media circus is a problem in itself. Ignore it. Refuse to listen. Refuse to change the terms of your argument.
Three. I don’t think any libertarian should support only one person. Support anyone who is antiwar, first and foremost. War is the heart of the police-state. I would sooner support someone who was antiwar and pro-government than someone who reduced domestic spending, but wouldn’t touch the military budget, which I think might be where Rand Paul ends up….
But if he’s willing to do both – cut the military and domestic spending – then of course, I would support him.
Still, just because I don’t know what he’s going to do, I would NEVER make common cause AGAINST Rand Paul with the establishment liberal/left. That would be simply opportunistic.
I would only make alliances with principled people on the issue of war and the police-state.
Once the military budget is cut, we will be on a sounder footing to tackle other problems.
And when people aren’t deathly afraid of surviving (“Muslims are going to get us!”), they’ll be a lot more open to libertarian thinking too.
I know Rothbard moved to the left. But that was then. Things are very different now. Libertarians must keep to the right and try to convince neo-conservatives and the Christian right to stop selling out their core values to socialist ones.
We don’t have to concede ANYTHING to the liberal establishment.
The only thing we want from them is a groveling apology for their Stalinist behavior.
Bring “The Fringe” To The Mainstream…
A moment of unusual creativity and rationality, from The Economist (or, from a more cynical point of view, a glimpse into the mechanics of co-option):
“What should democratic parties do when lots of voters back a far-right party? At a time of recession, populism cannot just be wished away. One answer is to address legitimate grievances about the scale and nature of immigration. (In France Nicolas Sarkozy has, controversially, pinched far-right rhetoric.) Another is to use the law to curb blatant examples of hate speech.
But the temptation for many is to isolate the extremists, perhaps with an alliance of mainstream left and right. That risks intensifying voters’ sense that politicians are not listening to them, further boosting the extremists, but it may be necessary against the most odious groups. Some, like Mr Reinfeldt in Sweden, may try to ignore the far right. More stable would be a Dutch-style deal to secure their backing for a minority government; some Christian Democrats hope this will tame the wilder side of Mr Wilders. The danger is that it just gives him power without responsibility—and without forcing him to recant outrageous positions.
A better, braver strategy, in some cases, might be to bring far-right leaders into the cabinet, exposing their ideas to reality and their personalities to the public gaze. It may make for tetchy government, but it could also moderate the extremes. So roll the dice and make Mr Wilders foreign minister: for how long could he keep telling the world to ban the Koran?”
Leonard Cohen On The Global Spy Game: Everybody Knows
“Everybody Knows,” by Canadian singer-poet-mystic, Leonard Cohen, is used on the Alex Jones show, a popular political site that devotes itself to the machinations (conspiracies?) of the power-elite.
The clip is from the ‘Man from U.N.C.L.E’ – a Cold War TV series from the sixties, featuring the intrepid spies, Ilya Kuryakin (David McCallum) and Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn). It perfectly suits the lyrics of “Everybody Knows.”
Everybody Knows – Leonard Cohen
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes/ Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died
Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose/Everybody knows……
Everybody knows the deal is rotten
Old Black Joe’s still pickin’ cotton
For your ribbons and bows/And everybody knows…”
The U.N.C.L.E. clip used in the video is interesting in both anticipating the globalist agenda and capturing the disenchantment of people awakening to the dialectic by which the power elites subjugate them.
Wiki has this description of the U.N.C.L.E. series:
“The series, though fictional, achieved such notability as to have artifacts (props, costumes and documents, and a video clip) from the show included in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library’s exhibit on spies and counterspies. Similar exhibits can be found in the museums of the Central Intelligence Agency and other agencies and organizations involved with intelligence gathering.”
Lila: This seems fitting, since the series accomplishes one of the ongoing tasks of the elites themselves, conditioning the popular mind to accept the need for a worldwide intelligence agency run by “good guys,” while distracting from the biggest “bad guy” of all – government.
“U.N.C.L.E.’s archenemy was a vast organization known as THRUSH (originally named WASP in the series pilot movie). The original series never explained what the acronym THRUSH stood for, but in several of the U.N.C.L.E. novels written by David McDaniel, it was expanded as the Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity, and described by him as having been founded by Col. Sebastian Moran after the death of Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls in the Sherlock Holmes story “The Final Problem“. Later, an alternate—and more plausible—explanation was offered, with THRUSH rising out of the fall of Nazism and founded by high-ranking Nazi officials—including Martin Bormann—who fled to Argentina when defeat was seen as inevitable, taking with them enormous financial wealth, including gold and precious works of art.”
“THRUSH’s aim was to conquer the world. Napoleon Solo said (in “The Green Opal Affair”), “THRUSH believes in the two-party system: the masters and the slaves”, adding in another episode (“The Vulcan Affair”) that THRUSH will “kill people the way people kill flies: a careless flick of the wrist — reflex action.” So dangerous was the threat from THRUSH that governments, even those most ideologically opposed such as the United States and the USSR, cooperated in the formation and operation of U.N.C.L.E. Similarly, if Solo and Kuryakin held opposing political views, the writers allowed little to show in their interactions.
The creators of the series decided that the involvement of an innocent character would be part of each episode, giving the audience someone with whom it could identify.”
Though executive producer Norman Felton and Ian Fleming had developed the character of Napoleon Solo, it was producer Sam Rolfe who created the organization of U.N.C.L.E. Unlike the nationalistic organizations of the CIA and James Bond‘s MI6, U.N.C.L.E. was a worldwide organization composed of agents from all corners of the globe…”
Bashing Bubba: A New Face Of Bigotry
Joe Stromberg takes up linguistic cudgels on behalf of the South:
“In the February 2003 Liberty Magazine, Mr. Timothy Sandefur, lately a Lincoln Fellow at Claremont Institute, complains that in the wake of the Trent Lott affair, too many American political leaders are “minimizing the offensiveness of a Mississippi good ol’ boy who tells his audience that things wouldabin bettah if thar hain’t bin nunna dat dee-seg-ruh-gay-shun.”1
For my part, I am more taken with the offensiveness of the words I just put in italics. The effect is hideous – sort of Joel Chandler Harris + 90-proof anti-Southern venom! Luckily for us, post-colonial analysis saves the day.
If this Fellow (a singular counterpart to General Lee’s “those people”) can dress up in Hickface, what happens to all the post-colonial literature about white folks, minstrel shows, and all that? Will new theories arise? If Br’er Strauss and Br’er Jaffa ask to be thrown in the hermetic briar patch, is it all a big trick?
Mind you, the Fellow’s sally is not very funny, but perhaps he did not mean to be funny. I expect he meant to be insulting. He knows that Southerners don’t enjoy being insulted. There is a whole literature on this, including a very tedious book by Professor Bertram Wyatt-Brown, who studied under the even more tedious C. Vann Woodward.
There is an implicit syllogism here: 1. People who don’t sign on for full-bore Lincolnianism, rightly understood (= mercantilism), are bad people; and (1. B.) bad people should be insulted, and as often as possible. 2. Southerners don’t sign on for full-bore Lincolnian mercantilism. 3. Therefore, Southerners should be insulted daily, partly because they dislike it so much. It’s good for them, builds character, you know.
As Nietzsche might have said, that which doesn’t torch Atlanta or Columbia, once a week, strengthens us.
And now I read the sentence: “Things wouldabin,” etc., again. “Well, shut my mouth,” I cry, slapping myself on the knee; indeed I slap my knee a mite hard, but am somehow able to keep time with the high lonesome fiddle music that runs through the soundtrack of my post-Hillbilly mind. “How do,” I say, in the general direction of the imagined “good ol’ boy” conjured up for our contemptuous contemplation by the Fellow. How do these Northern gentry (and scalawags) find so much time to worry about little old us, when, left to our own devices, we would seldom pay any heed to them whatsoever? It is a mystery.
Perhaps Southerners’ general lack of interest in what “those people” do and say is the greatest crime of all…….
…
THE ONE-ROOM SCHOOLHOUSE OF HISTORY
What sociological or ideological conclusions may we draw from the above?
The Fellow has no ear for “dialect” writing. If he really wanted to present a Mississippi accent, he could sample the oeuvre of the late Jerry Clower. There he would find one variety of Mississippi speech along with ample evidence for Celtic substratum sentence-structure traceable to Ulster. My guess is he will not find this project very fetching.
It is more likely that the Fellow is just following the set “national” media rule (in place since the 1960s) whereby white Southerners’ speech must be rendered pseudo-phonetically so as to display the speakers’ boundless depravity, while all other persons will be written up as conforming in every way with the strictures of Mr. Fowler, no matter what they sound like.
George Wallace always got the Yankee pseudo-phonetic write-up, but can you imagine Ed Koch, the Rev. Al Sharpton, or Larry King written up the way they sound? Ha!
For a couple of centuries, northern interest groups and their allies have badgered and defamed Southerners. Poor old critics, I worry about them: If they finally succeed in abolishing the South, whatever will they do with themselves? Abolish the World, I suppose.
For two centuries, Yankees of a certain type were in the habit of denouncing Southerners for talking like Blacks, for eating the same food, and more of the same. They didn’t much care how this reflected on the Blacks.
Things have changed. And here’s the rub, if white Southerners are stupid for clinging to certain colonial expressions, where does that leave African-Americans who also use just as many – perhaps more – of them? If you sneer at one set of linguistic Southerners, how do you immunize another set of them from this assault?
I’m glad enough it isn’t my problem. Anyway, if the Fellow wants to hear some funny dialect material, he should listen to tapes of the late Lewis Grizzard. Old Lewis could do a good imitation of a flat, washed-out Midwestern accent. He found that regional accent amusing, I guess, but there wasn’t much venom in his depiction of it.
For venom mixed with the wisdom of the serpent you must betake yourself to New England, where fanatics grow out of the rocky soil. Maybe the Fellow will go up there sometime. Maybe he will render their speech phonetically for our edification.
Notes:
1. Timothy Sandefur, “One Cheer for Al Sharpton,” Liberty, 17, 2 (February 2003), p. 14 (my italics).
2.
John Samuel Kenyon, American Pronunciation (Ann Arbor, MI: George Wair Publishing, 1966), p. 106 (my emphasis).
3. C. T. Onions, ed., The Oxford Universal Dictionary on Historical Principles (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1955 (1933): “ain’t” (p. 38), “an’t” (p. 72), and “hain’t, haint” (p. 854).
4. H. W. Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1965), p. 52.
5. Cf. Cleanth Brooks, The Relation of the Alabama-Georgia Dialect to the Provincial Dialects of Great Britain (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1935).
6. David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 256–264.
Jeff Blankfort Deconstructs Chomsky On America and Israel
Update
I should make it clear that, as a libertarian, I don’t support sanctions against any country. I wouldn’t have supported sanctions against South Africa, didn’t support them on Iraq, and don’t support them on Israel. However, targeted boycotts against specific, responsible parties (journalists, academics, government officials, businessmen or military officials directly involved in genocidal crimes or in their cover-up) would be defensible under international law. General sanctions only impoverish people and undermine resistance.
So my problem here is less with Chomsky’s position on divestment – whatever it is – so much as his apparent double-standards on the issue – one standard for South Africans…… and another for Israel.One for Israel…and another for Palestine. One for the US…and another for Israel.
If the Jews deserved a homeland, and they did, the Palestinians surely deserved land that was already their home and had been their home for centuries…
Original Post [all varieties of emphasis – underlines, capitals, and italics – are mine, not Blankfort’s]:
The indefatigably brave and honest Jeff Blankfort analyzes Noam Chomsky’s writings on Israel and Palestine. I’ve been very conflicted about Chomsky’s blind-eye on 9-11 for some time now. What to think about it? This analysis convinces me finally that Chomsky’s bias is not simply an emotional blind-spot, but a deliberate obfuscation that in such a prominent, sophisticated, and powerful voice, must be called out and questioned closely.
“His reluctance to label Israel’s control of the Palestinians as “apartheid” out of concern that it be seen as a “red flag,” like describing it as “inflammatory,” was a red flag itself and raised questions that should have been asked by the interviewer, such as who would be inflamed by the reference to ‘apartheid’ as a “red flag” in Israel’s case and what objections would Chomsky have to that?
A more disturbing exchange occurred later in the interview when Chomsky was asked if sanctions should be applied against Israel as they were against South Africa. He responded:
“In fact, I’ve been strongly against it in the case of Israel. For a number of reasons. For one thing, even in the case of South Africa, I think sanctions are a very questionable tactic. In the case of South Africa, I think they were [ultimately] legitimate because it was clear that the large majority of the population of South Africa was in favor of it.
Sanctions hurt the population. You don’t impose them unless the population is asking for them. That’s the moral issue. So, the first point in the case of Israel is that: Is the population asking for it? Well, obviously not.”
Obviously not. But is it acceptable to make such a decision on the basis of what the majority of Israelis want? Israel, after all, is not a dictatorship in which the people are held in check by fear and, therefore, cannot be held responsible for their government’s actions. Israel has a largely unregulated, lively press and a “people’s army” in which all Israeli Jews, other than the ultra-orthodox, are expected to serve and that is viewed by the Israeli public with almost religious reverence. Over the years, in their own democratic fashion, the overwhelming majority of Israelis have consistently supported and participated in actions of their government against the Palestinians and Lebanese that are not only racist, but in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
Chomsky made his position clear:
“So calling for sanctions here, when the majority of the population doesn’t understand what you are doing, is tactically absurd-even if it were morally correct, which I don’t think it is. The country against which the sanctions are being imposed is not calling for it.”
The interviewer, Lee, understandably puzzled by that answer, then asked him, “Palestinians aren’t calling for sanctions?
Chomsky: “Well, the sanctions wouldn’t be imposed against the Palestinians, they would be imposed against Israel.”
Lee: “Right… [And] Israelis aren’t calling for sanctions.”
That response also disturbed Palestinian political analyst, Omar Barghouti, who, while tactfully acknowledging Chomsky as “a distinguished supporter of the Palestinian cause,” addressed the issue squarely:
Of all the anti-boycott arguments, this one reflects either surprising naiveté or deliberate intellectual dishonesty. Are we to judge whether to apply sanctions on a colonial power based on the opinion of the majority in the oppressors community? Does the oppressed community count at all? [7]
For Chomsky, apparently not……
………In an exchange with Washington Post readers, Chomsky was asked by a caller:
Why did you sign an MIT petition calling for MIT to boycott Israeli investments, and then give an interview in which you state that you opposed such investment boycotts? What was or is your position on the proposal by some MIT faculty that MIT should boycott Israeli investments?
Chomsky replied:
As is well known in Cambridge, of anyone involved, I” was the most outspoken opponent of the petition calling for divestment, and in fact refused to sign until it was substantially changed, along lines that you can read if you are interested. The “divestment” part was reduced to three entirely meaningless words, which had nothing to do with the main thrust of the petition. I thought that the three meaningless words should also be deleted… On your last question, as noted, I was and remain strongly opposed, without exception — at least if I understand what the question means. How does one “boycott Israeli investments”? (Emphasis added). [10]
I will assume that Chomsky understood very well what the caller meant: investing in Israeli companies and in State of Israel Bonds of which US labor union pension funds, and many states and universities have purchased hundreds of millions of dollars worth. These purchases clearly obligate those institutions to lobby Congress to insure that the Israeli economy stays afloat. This isn’t something that Chomsky talks or writes about.
The caller was referring to a speech that Chomsky had made to the Harvard Anthropology Dept. shortly after the MIT and Harvard faculties issued a joint statement on divestment. It was gleefully reported in the Harvard Crimson by pro-Israel activist, David Weinfeld, under the headline “Chomsky’s Gift”:
MIT Institute Professor of Linguistics Noam Chomsky recently gave the greatest Hanukkah gift of all to opponents of the divestment campaign against Israel. By signing the Harvard-MIT divestment petition several months ago—and then denouncing divestment on Nov. 25 at Harvard—Chomsky has completely undercut the petition.
At his recent talk for the Harvard anthropology department, Chomsky stated: “I am opposed and have been opposed for many years, in fact, I’ve probably been the leading opponent for years of the campaign for divestment from Israel and of the campaign about academic boycotts.”
He argued that a call for divestment is “a very welcome gift to the most extreme supporters of US-Israeli violence… It removes from the agenda the primary issues and it allows them to turn the discussion to irrelevant issues, which are here irrelevant, anti-Semitism and academic freedom and so on and so forth.” [11] …….
….
Chomsky’s rationalization of Israel’s criminal misdeeds in The Fateful Triangle should have rung alarm bells when it appeared in 1983. Written a year after Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, in what would become a sacred text for Middle East activists, he actually began the book not by taking Israel to task so much as its critics:
In the war of words that has been waged since Israel invaded Lebanon on June 6, 1982, critics of Israeli actions have frequently been accused of hypocrisy. While the reasons advanced are spurious, the charge itself has some merit. It is surely hypocritical to condemn Israel for establishing settlements in the occupied territories while we pay for establishing and expanding them. Or to condemn Israel for attacking civilian targets with cluster and phosphorous bombs “to get the maximum kill per hit.” When we provide them gratis or at bargain rates, knowing that they will be used for just this purpose. Or to criticize Israel’s ‘indiscriminate’ bombardment of heavily-settled civilian areas or its other military adventures, while we not only provide the means in abundance but welcome Israel’s assistance in testing the latest weaponry under live battlefield conditions... .In general, it is pure hypocrisy to criticize the exercise of Israeli power while welcoming Israel’s contributions towards realizing the US aim of eliminating possible threats, largely indigenous, to American domination of the Middle East region.[ 21]
First, the PLO was seen as a threat by Israel, not by the United States in 1982, particularly since it had strictly abided by a US-brokered cease-fire with Israel for 11 months, giving it a dangerous degree of credibility in Israeli eyes. Second, whom did Chomsky mean by “we?” Perhaps, President Reagan and some members of Congress who gently expressed their concern when the number of Palestinians and Lebanese killed in the invasion and the wholesale destruction of the country could not be suppressed in the media. But he doesn’t say. It certainly wasn’t those who took to the streets across the country to protest Israel’s invasion. Both political parties had competed in their applause when Israel launched its attack, as did the AFL-CIO which took out a full page ad in the NY Times, declaring “We Are Not Neutral. We Support Israel!” paid for by an Israeli lobbyist with a Park Avenue address. The media, in the beginning, was also supportive, but it is rare to find an editorial supporting US aid to Israel. It is rarely ever mentioned and that’s the way the lobby likes it. So is Chomsky creating a straw figure? It appears so.
If we follow Chomsky’s “logic,” it would be an injustice to bring charges of war crimes against Indonesian, El Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Haitian, or Filipino officers, soldiers, or public officials for the atrocities committed against their own countrymen and women since they were funded, armed and politically supported by the US. Perhaps, General Pinochet will claim the Chomsky Defense if he goes to trial.
He pressed the point of US responsibility for Israel’s sins again in his introduction to The New Intifada, noting that as one of the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions, “It is therefore Washington’s responsibility to prevent settlement and expropriation, along with collective punishment and all other measures of violence… .It follows that the United States is in express and extreme violation of its obligations as a High Contracting Party.” [22]
I would agree with Chomsky, but is the US refusal to act a more “extreme violation” than the actual crimes being committed by another signatory to the Conventions, namely Israel? Chomsky would have us believe that it is.
It is a point he made clear at a talk in Oxford in May, 2004, when he brought up the killing a week earlier of the Hamas spiritual leader, Sheik Ahmed Yassin by the Israeli military as he left a Mosque in Gaza. “That was reported as an Israeli assassination, but inaccurately” said Chomsky. “Sheikh Yassin was killed by a US helicopter, flown by an Israeli pilot. Israel does not produce helicopters. The US sends them with the understanding that they will be used for such purposes, not defense, as they have been, regularly.”
Chomsky is correct to a point. What is missing from his analysis is any reference to the demands from Congress, orchestrated by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Israel’s officially registered lobby, to make sure that the US provides those helicopters to Israel to use as its generals see fit. (In fact, there is not a single mention of AIPAC in any one of Chomsky’s many books on the Israel-Palestine conflict). What Chomsky’s British audience was left with was the conclusion that the assassination of Sheik Yassin was done with Washington’s approval.
While its repeated use of helicopters against the Palestinian resistance and civilian population has been one of the more criminal aspects of Israel’s response to the Intifada, absolving the Israelis of blame for their use has become something of a fetish for Chomsky as his introduction to The New Intifada [23] and again, in more detail in Middle East Illusions, illustrates:
On October 1, [at the beginning of the Al-Aksa Intifada] Israeli military helicopters, or, to be more precise, US military helicopters with Israeli pilots, sharply escalated the violence, killing two Palestinians in Gaza… . The continuing provision of attack helicopters by the United States to Israel, with the knowledge that these weapons are being used against the civilian Palestinian population, and the silence of the mainstream media is just one illustration of many of how we live up to the principle that we do not believe in violence. Again, it leaves honest citizens with two tasks: the important one, do something about it; and the second one, try to find out why the policies are being pursued. (Emphasis added) [24]
What to do Chomsky again doesn’t say, but he does try to tell us why:
“On that matter, the fundamental reasons are not really controversial… It has long been understood that the gulf region has the major energy sources in the world… ” [25]
Chomsky then goes on for two pages explaining the importance of Middle East oil and the efforts by the US to control it. It is the basic explanation that he has repeated and republished, almost verbatim, over the years. What it has to do with the Palestinians who have no oil or how a truncated Palestinian state would present a threat to US regional interests is not provided, but after two pages the reader has forgotten that the question was even posed. In his explanation there is no mention of the lobby or domestic influences.
Chomsky does acknowledge that “major sectors of American corporate capitalism, including powerful elements with interests in the Middle East [the major oil companies!]” have endorsed a “two-state solution” on the basis that
the radical nationalist tendencies that are enflamed by the unsettled Palestinian problem would be reduced by the establishment of a Palestinian mini-state that would be contained within a Jordanian-Israeli military alliance (perhaps tacit), surviving at the pleasure of its far more powerful neighbors and subsidized by the most conservative and pro-American forces in the Arab world… .This would, in fact, be the likely outcome of a two-state settlement.” [26]
Such an outcome would have little direct influence on regional Arab politics, except to demoralize supporters of the Palestinian struggle in the neighboring countries and around the world, a development that would clearly serve US interests. It would, however, curb Israel’s expansion, which is critical to Israel’s agenda, not Washington’s. Chomsky also fails to recognize a fundamental contradiction in his argument. If the support of Israel has been based on its role as protector of US strategic resources, namely oil, why does not that position enjoy the support of the major oil companies with interests in the region?…”
(Lila: My emphasis)
Jefferson On Self-Interest And Society
“Egoism, in a broader sense, has been… presented as the source of moral action. It has been said that we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, bind up the wounds of the man beaten by thieves, pour oil and wine into them, set him on our own beast and bring him to the inn, because we receive ourselves pleasure from these acts… These good acts give us pleasure, but how happens it that they give us pleasure? Because nature hath implanted in our breasts a love of others, a sense of duty to them, a moral instinct, in short, which prompts us irresistibly to feel and to succor their distresses... The Creator would indeed have been a bungling artist had he intended man for a social animal without planting in him social dispositions. It is true they are not planted in every man, because there is no rule without exceptions; but it is false reasoning which converts exceptions into the general rule.”
–Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Law, 1814. ME 14:141
‘Mobs”: Some IP Shenanigans…
{Note: I originally had a post here “The Rise of the Sofa Samurai” – an old piece written in 2006 and first published at Endervidualism (later used in “Mobs”) and the emails below were the last post, after I closed my blog. But I didn’t want them to be coming up at the top of a google search, which is what happened, so I republished them in place of the earlier post on sofa samurai, since I saw that some of the material in it was being attributed again to my coauthor (one of his websites).
(Correction: the piece in which this line occurs is actually “Satan and Sex Manias” (DV), not the sofa samurai piece).
Those are the perils of joint copyright when the authors’ contributions are partly separate and when one author has more marketing clout than the other.
In any case, I decided that in place of the original piece, I’d publish the correspondence from 2008 in which I’d asked for the third or fourth time to have the wrong attributions corrected…of course, now, 2 years later, they’ve gone back to their incorrect form, or been deleted altogether, along with everything else with my name on it. So I thought I’d place these emails on my blog, only a tiny part of the hundreds of emails that show clearly the nature of the collaboration and its unfortunate denouement].
Hi Lila,
Hope you are well.
Where on Bill’s website does it mention the articles you reference below?
Thanks,
J
—–Original Message—–
From: William Bonner
From: William Bonner
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2008 6:09 AM
To: J H
Subject: Fwd: foreign rights
To: J H
Subject: Fwd: foreign rights
I don’t know exactly what Lila is referring to…but her request sounds reasonable…could you try to figure it out and ask Addison to add a line such as she suggests?
Thanks
Bill
In a message dated 1/29/2008 12:38:50 PM Eastern Standard Time, lila rajiva writes:
Mr B –
Just a word about those articles (Transit of Venus, Consuming Passions etc) which you’ve published under your name.
I am OK with it because the original pieces were written under your name. But, I should point out that they were not written solely for the DR (as your web page says) but BOTH for the DR and the book. I checked my email record. In fact, we really wrote them for the book and used them in the DR, especially CP.
Writing that it was only for the DR looks like an effort to undermine the copyright. Copyright, I should point out, isn’t affected by our agreement on acknowledgment and promoting……the copyright on all the material is still held by both of us.
The acknowledgment agreement just means we are allowing each other to cite our own work freely as a courtesy but we still accept that the essays were written for the book.
In the case of Transit, it’s all your essay and no input from me, so there is no problem even if there is a confusion.
But Consuming Passions was an essay I worked on and gave you important ideas for (homo farber etc) and it was one we wrote with the intention that it was to be used in the book. And I didn’t mind it being under your name because I knew the copyright would still be under both our names.
So it’s not fine to say it was written for the DR only. It was actually written for Mobs and published on DR.
I’d like a piece like that to have a little thing underneath saying (with the help of Lila Rajiva)…I’m not asking to share the byline, but just a little acknowledgment. Since no one ever knew I helped you on the DR for the period we wrote the book..and your readers don’t know that a lot of the essays under your name have some input from me…
Which means, if I cite my own idea later on, it will just seem – unfairly – like I was poaching on your idea.
You can publish C Passions under your name under your collected works, for eg, but I would like you to acknowledge my help on it and on the essays central to the argument (Consuming Passions, All Men are Created Equal – where it was me who originally gave you the idea of scale from the Hutterite research and argued it was more important than the public-private distinction).
In turn, although my solo essays contain references to do-gooders and world-improvers, I would credit you as having coined those terms in any discussions…but that’s less important, because most people who read us would recognize them anyway as your terms since it’s obvious I am imitating you.
Doesn’t mean you can’t publish the essays under your name. But it means we need to draw up a consistent citation policy that will spare us trouble later. And Addison had better abide by it.
Hope you are OK with that. I will draw up a very detailed analysis of the whole book which will show how each part can be cited which will let you use your own work separately but also acknowledge whenever there was substantial contribution (more than editorial) from me. You will have a chance to vet it of course.
I will consult with a copyright attorney and then send it to you for future citation.
Meanwhile, just let Addison know that those essays were written for the book as much as for the DR..even more so, so he should take that line off..
So that’s something concrete you can give your assent to. Since you asked what you could do to help.
I tried to call you but you weren’t available.
Say hello to Claire. She was nice to me.Lila
From: William Bonner
Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 09:11:17 -0500
Subject: Re: foreign rightsI know she thinks she’s been treated shabbily. But when I ask how…and what can be done about it…I never get an answer that I can understand or act upon. I just get insults.
She seems to want explanations from me for things that I don’t know anything about. And when I tell her that I just don’t know anything about it…she believes I am lying.
(And then accuses me of lying to her for the last couple of years…about what, I’m not sure.)Not that this is your problem…but you seem to believe that she actually has been treated shabbily. So, I’ll assume you are a reasonable person…and just ask — How?
And if so…is there anything I can do about it?Bill
P.S. I’m at my phone..in London…but only for a few minutes more…I have to leave for Paris this afternoon.
From: Lila Rajiva
Sent: Sunday, January 13, 2008 9:15 PM
To: J H
Cc: Bill Bonner; T R
Subject: French contract/Dr Skousen book signing /PR issuesJ –
I think we can take care of the Chinese contract this week.
Not a problem except that the Chinese agent is now charging us, a second fee, probably another10% or so, like the Germans.
So, I’m asking DELETED to put a note in that the contract is acceptable assuming reasonable fees. It’s not a deal breaker, it just means I don’t want them asking for something exorbitant like 20% after we sign. Let me know if that might be an issue.
I’ve asked DELETED to go over to your office and sign off on it, including the royalties change and acknowledgment document, whenever you both can arrange it.
[J H] No problem.
French contract:If you are able, please tell Bill I am willing to do what is reasonably possible to help him on it.
Also, if you can, please ask him if he would consider another (more commercial) publisher?
Or even translating and publishing on our own or through something like Interlink..
It may actually be better that way. [J H] He said that if you or someone can find a publisher it’s okay with him. He is not interested in publishing ourselves…we have no way to distribute.PR peculiarities:
Also, a couple of odd things:
1. Wiley refused to let me do a book talk or signing in August/September in Baltimore where it would cost nothing (I had a lot of requests). But now they have Dr. Skousen talking about the book and signing it in Texas (listed on their website) in April… A reader wrote and asked…..Is that some kind of mistake…or did Bill OK it? Is it usual for third parties to sign and talk about books…isn’t that part of the promotion designated for authors? Just asking. [J H] He can’t imagine it…and it doesn’t make sense to him. He doesn’t know anything about it.
With respect, it wasn’t what we agreed….
2. The invites to Bermuda and to Freedom Fest to me to speak on the book seem to have been canceled around the week in December when I asked for more time to review the contracts.
Was that related? Not giving offense, just curious.[J H] He doesn’t know anything about the invitations and has never spoken to anyone about it.And a couple of corrections I hope can be made:
Corrections:
1. On Bill’s bio on the DR, there is still no reference/link to “Mobs” at all.. I’ve been asking for that for a few months. And it would be nice, if the page mentioned me as author too. Otherwise it really sounds like a deliberate snub. Not good PR.Attribution isn’t promotion. It’s an ownership issue, like the title to a house. [J H] I will ask them to include this.
http://www.dailyreckoning.com/Writers/BillBonner.html
2. On the same page, the page length review by Alex Greene doesn’t credit me at all and then quotes a couple of lines I wrote (and have published on the web) as Bill’s….it was probably a mistake but I’ve asked for it to be changed a number of times[J H] He doesn’t know anything about Alex Greene’s review and nver spoke to Alex. And Bill says that quote IS from you. I will ask whoever controls the website to make the changes you requested.
http://www.investmentu.com/IUEL/2007/20070827.html
“As Bill writes, “Thus does the neocortex sputter in fits and starts from dubious assumptions to preposterous conclusions with nary a whisper of doubt in between.”(actually, these are my lines in Ch 4)
(Also, in the review Greene still uses that quote from Faber’s from my private email..Bill told me it’s minor…maybe..).
Not sure if there are other implications for me arising from this…
Does Bill think this is fair and in keeping with our deal on the book?Not sure what I have done really except ask for some time and clarity on things and do my best to keep my end of the bargain.
Respectfully.
Lila______________________________________
Note on November 3, Wed.: I added this additional email exchange from the time, to show that I was already working on the Goldman Sachs connection in June 2006, that it originated in my larger research interests from my first book and my writing for Counterpunch, that Mr. Bonner was aware of this, and aware of my ongoing media activism and my professional stake in having my contributions being seen independently, not as simply ghost-writing or editorial work on behalf of Agora’s marketing of its own products. Again, no malice or harm is intended to anyone mentioned here. I post these simply to show I was telling the truth all along, didn’t exploit the company platform in anyway, didn’t insinuate myself into it in order to bust its modus operandi, didn’t manipulate or otherwise do anything self-aggrandizing, but simply negotiated a contract fairly and truthfully…and then found myself at the receiving end of a lot of abuse from several different people who are far more powerful and connected than I am...
Re: Christison CP article on Israeli lobby?Dear Lila,
We’re honored to have such good comments from a great writer and activist
like you. Thanks so much…… It would be nice to think that
someday we truthtellers will emerge into the light of the mainstream and be
heard, but on most days this seems a forlorn hopeKeep up the good struggle anyway–just in case, as Gandhi said, we win in
the end.Thanks so much,
Kathy & Bill Christison—– Original Message —–
From: “Lila Rajiva”
To: kathy and bill christison
Cc: Willam Bonner; editor at dissidentvoice.org
Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2006 11:31 AM
Subject: Christison CP article on Israeli lobbyEnjoyed your critique in CP of Chomsky/Finkelstein over the
Mearsheimer/Walt piece immensely. It’s right on.When I was researching “The Language of Empire” – on the US media – I
realized that I would have to make the Israeli lobby fairly
central….spent three chapters doing just that only to find them axed
with a lot of feeble excuses by my publisher. Nor have I heard any
alternative magazine mention the conservative Jewish organization EMET
which promoted the Iraq war, though the Wall Street Journal actually did a
piece on it.I am currently writing about the appointment of Hank Paulson of Goldman
Sachs and even a cursory glance at the literature shows how far back its
influence over government extends and to what it tended.It’s easy to succumb to the Marxist analysis that US foreign policy is
always only about corporate interests. But in my view, the ascendancy of
Israel’s power in the West has more to do with esoteric religious
claims…from the truth of the Darby Bible to the Lost Tribes of
Israel….to the rebuilding of Solomon’s temple. One needs to connect US
to British history to see this.And a conspiratorial view of history is merely a view that says that
individuals act at the helm of history not as unconscious forces of a
material dialectic but also and at least equally as conscious forces in
the services of ideas.Lila Rajiva
__________________________________
Added: November 10, 2009
It was Mr. Bonner who approached me and asked me to work with him. It took 4 months of back and forth before, with some reluctance, I agreed to.
your writing?
8/25/05
From: William Bonner Sent: Thu 8/25/05 1:35 PM To: Lrajiva I read your piece on Baltimore real estate.
(Someone sent it to me. I live in Europe.)
I liked the style and content. It made me wonder if it wouldn’t be a good idea to meet. I have a publishing business in Baltimore, Agora, Inc. We have offices all over the world (we’re a mini-multi-national). We hope to open one in India next year, as a matter of fact.
If you are interested in freelance or salary work…it might be worth a visit.
Unfortunately, I’m based in London. I’m in Baltimore today only (leaving at 6PM).
Of course, we can always follow up by email.
With admiration,
Bill Bonner
Added: November 11, 2005
“Playing Monopoly in Charm City” is the piece I wrote on the housing market, which Bonner refers to in his letter below above.
One of the reasons I ended up accepting his offer, even though I had doubts about it, was that I’d actually lost quite a bit of money selling out of some mutual funds (where I held my savings), all because of something I’d read in a Daily Reckoning editorial at a certain point in time that turned out later to have been the bottom of the market. After that debacle, I started following other newsletters.
Before my loss, I’d been subscribing to a couple of Agora newsletters – NAMES DELETED. I wasn’t unhappy with either. They were cheap (about $60 a year) and they gave me some good ideas. I never made any money from them, but, except for one stock, I didn’t really lose. And even that probably had more to do with the fact that I never followed their timing. Since I subscribed mainly to get ideas, I didn’t think it was a bad deal at all. I enjoyed reading the DR commentary, nonetheless, and considered them to be on the cutting edge of alternative insights into the economy. I still think they are.
As for the money I lost that fall, I guess I learned a hard lesson. And I learned it well. Although it made me too terrified to trade for several years (until 2008 really), I did learn to control my emotions, an invaluable skill in recent years. So, like Ryals, I too lost money, because of Agora. The difference is that I didn’t blame them alone. Instead, I tried to get better at investing.
In any case, at the time I was hired in late 2005, I mentioned my loss to Mr. Bonner and told him that he ought to write in a less alarmist fashion. I recall he told me then to consider his offer a partial payback. Of course, he was also opening an Indian office, and my ethnic background, as well as my interests in international politics, propaganda, and globalization, all recommended themselves to him.
Now, before my interview, I’d googled the company and had run into the posts by Ryals. I’d written to him and asked him what his criticism was about. He wrote back so elaborately and in such detail that I decided he might be a bit unhinged and imagining things.
Still, I did ask Mr. Bonner about Davidson and Stansberry. I was told that the former no longer worked there. Bonner also insisted that the Stansberry case was not a “pump and dump,” as the press had dubbed it. That was certainly true, although my opinion was that Stansberry was nonetheless guilty of hyping, beyond what might be normal even in the newsletter business. I recall telling Mr. Bonner at the time that the first amendment would not protect blatant exaggeration when there was a large sum involved. He shrugged and remarked that the people who bought these sorts of investments were not innocents. Many of them were speculators and touts themselves, and the rest ought to know better than to gamble. He admitted he had developed a somewhat callous attitude about such things.
Throughout, our conservation was courteous. As anyone who knows him would vouch, Mr. Bonner, widely known in the direct-mail/online marketing business, is a very polished and persuasive individual, and when he assured me that I could work on my own, without any contact with either of the two people mentioned, I figured it would be worth giving the project a shot.
So that’s what happened. I’ve described it here at length so as to counter the false, malicious, and positively ridiculous allegations Ryals has plastered about me all over Indymedia and other sites.
There was nothing in the slightest bit nefarious about how I went to work for Agora. I did not know Stansberry or Davidson at the time, or at any point after. I believe I’ve been in the same room as Stansberry just once. And I subscribed to a newsletter published by him. That’s it. Davidson I know nothing about, beyond what I’ve read.
As for Stansberry writing to Ryals at the same time as I did, that’s simply a coincidence. And not such a remarkable one, considering that Ryals was calling Stansberry names all over the net. It would be only natural that Stansberry, or someone like me who was about to work with the company, would find the reams of allegations interesting and write to Ryals.
Ryals also claims some kind of conspiracy because both Stansberry and I said the same thing about Davidson in our letters to him (i.e. that Davidson didn’t work at Agora any more). Well, maybe we both said so because that was precisely the case at the time. Or, at least, that was what the company was saying at the time.
Then Ryals makes a big issue about Davidson now being back at Agora. That too has an obvious explanation. Davidson seems to be an old friend of Bonner’s and has a long history with the company. A friend might well choose to honor that history over whatever happened between Davidson and the SEC. Most people tend to stick up for old friends, regardless of what they do.
So, from these perfectly innocuous events that have quite harmless explanations, Ryals – apparently out of random malice and anger over his own losses – concocted a grand conspiracy in which a “strange woman” (“he,” “she”, or “it,” as he puts it), of “supposedly Indian” origin goes to bat for a far-right Anglo-American conspiracy outfit of epic proportions, all for the mind-boggling sum of $25 bucks an hour… and an advance of roughly $25,000.
Now, I’m a fairly well-off woman, with several degrees and professional skills that would pay me twice that. I’m told I’m a talented writer. I’m in no want of any kind, especially as I live quite frugally. Is it reasonable to believe that I “sold out” for a monetary sum so piddling? Especially, when those who allegedly bought me are described as “fabulously wealthy”?
Note: This statement should not be seen as any kind of endorsement of the company, its business practices, its past record, or its networks. I have no contact with them, beyond what arises in relation to the book. I believe anyone with common sense can draw their own accurate conclusions.
Steve Horwitz On Paul Krugman’s Double Speak
Steve Horwitz, via Daily Reckoning:
“So yes, Professor Krugman, it does matter how we try to get ourselves out of depressions. The world is not upside down and vices aren’t virtues. War isn’t peace and destruction isn’t wealth-creation. The real solution to digging out of a recession is to remove the barriers to the free exchange and production that actually comprises wealth-creation. Borrowing trillions more from our grandchildren to spend on building the equivalent of pyramids or on blowing up innocents abroad only digs the hole deeper. And when one is reduced, as Krugman is, to saying we “needed Hitler and Hirohito” to get us out of that hole in the 1930s, one has abandoned morality to worship at the altar of economic aggregates.
No critic of free-market economics can ever again accuse us of being irrational and immoral when it is Paul Krugman who says destruction creates wealth, and war is an acceptable second-best path to economic growth. Don’t let Krugman’s Newspeak fool you: War and destruction are exactly what they appear to be. To argue as Krugman does is to abandon both economics and morality. Big Brother would be proud.”