from
the journal of salt history (salt.org.il)
===<><<>><>=== 149700
Pejorative Journalism - A Verbal Terror Riot
by E. Hosenslorcher fangedrabbit@hotmail.com ===<><<>><>===
austria.indy8209
Zionism and Anti-Semitism: A Strange Alliance
Through History by Allan C. Brownfeld ===<><<>><>===
147788 and 147790 Israel
Shamir ===<><<>><>===
147820 +25 IS CHOMSKY WORKING
FOR THE MAN ???===<><<>><>===
Reprint from:
"JOURNAL OF SALT-HISTORY " ANNALES D'HISTOIRE DU SEL JAHRBUCH FUR SALZGESCHLICHTE
Review of the International Commission for the History of Salt vol 7 1999
[CIHS] - ISBN 3-85093-023-8 P9 - SALT and the EVOLUTION of MONEY David
Bloch [M.R.Bloch* Salt Archive] Abstract To define money, the most helpful
formulation is the one defined by Knapp, and accepted by Keynes. Knapp
made it clear that most transferable goods could be used for barter and
consequently used as a 'means of payment': however such 'means of payment'
only became 'money' when chartered by a state authority and accepted by
its administration for, and in lieu of tax. This differs from Aristotle's
concept. He thought that authoritative marks and stamps confirming correct
weight and composition, converts a 'means of payment' into money, thus
associating the intrinsic material usefulness with its purchasing power
as money. The 'State Theory' suggested by Knapp on the contrary, implies
that the essential monetary qualities are independent of its intrinsic
values, as long as it is suitable to physically carry the marks of the
charter. These two concepts have in common the standardisation of form,
weight, chemical composition and colour. This fact has obscured the understanding
of money, and still hinders the appreciation of the genesis of money and
its historical development. FAIR EXCHANGE The worth of Sodium Chloride,
or "common salt", as it became known, as an exchanged value for other essential
commodities, such as food, fuel, luxuries or slaves, has a yet to be determined,
important role in state finances and in the origin of money. Salt [NaCl]
is not just an essential commodity. It is essential for life. The primary
necessity [absolute requirement] is Physiological. Its importance as a
meat preservative in the great temples, manufacture of glass, processing
leather, soap, textiles and not least, gunpowder, was diminutive in comparison.
It is as basic for animal life as the air we breath, the water we drink,
and the proteins we eat. A salt deficiency is as critical as a water deficiency.
Water and salt are essential to maintaining extracellular and intracellular
concentrations of salt to activate cells in all plant and animal life.
The body may endure periods of lack of food, but without salt and water
, living cells would quickly perish from dehydration. 'Slavery' is only
an extreme illustration of the social consequence of salt hunger. Aristotle
believed that primitive barter trading of standardised commodities, 'hall-marked'
by some authority for correct weight and quality, represented the first
use of money. "As the necessaries of nature were not all easily portable'
he says. 'people agreed for the purposes of barter, mutually to give and
receive some article which, while it was itself a commodity, was practical
and easy to handle in the business of life; some such article as iron or
silver, which at first was defined simply by its size and weight". Metal
was not the only material used as a barter money. Salt was also frequently
mentioned as an important, such commodity, particularly as a topic of fundamental
personal consequence when related to individual income or 'salary' Roman
soldiers were at certain times, partly paid in salt [salarium] and from
which the word is derived. Seal impressions designating "value/contents"
on Ceramic handles from excavations in Jerusalem, are 1.Middle Israel period
1020-842 bc 2.Late Israel period 842-587 bc 3.Persian period 587-332 bc
4.[5.6.7] Hellinistic period 332-37 bc [ Museum of Taxes - Jerusalem ]
The Greeks had no coin money prior to Penopolesian war. Herodotus tells
us that the Lydians were reputed to be the first to coin gold and silver
money, and the Talent which the Greeks called the Euboic certainly came
from Asia. Once introduced and accepted, the weight of a coin , was confirmed
by setting a stamp or a 'hallmark' [a salt mark ; 'hal' Greek: salt] upon
every coin to relieve one from the trouble of check weighing it. The stamp
impressed upon the coin, was an indication of quality and finally a guarantee
of the value it represented. It was a similar concept, to the stamps impressed
on salt cakes, and still used in this century, in central Africa as a means
of payment . It initially related specifically to the coin's weight and
probably to an equivalent weight of salt, rather than to its intrinsic
value. Roman accounting began with copper coins, and gold was introduced
only 100 years after the death of Alexander. Thus the choice of the material
used only became a matter of availability and longetivity. There is good
evidence to support Aristotle's view. For instance bread-like moles [amoles]
of salt each weighing approximately 5 kgs are still circulating in Ethiopia
as a means of payment. ' In the Treasury of the Lling of Limmu, salt pieces
originally given to him as yearly tribute are stored, though, like many
another investment, it was not an ideal treasure as some travelers found
out when they tried to sell a hundred salt pieces given to them by the
King , but worth only forty new ones at the time.' Or again, 'the villagers
in the Cameroons consider their salt store common property, kept in a special
house, its contents being the main indicator of the wealth of the tribe.'
The trading of standardised pieces of salt had all the aspects of dealing
in money. Close association of salt with money was noted by Marco Polo
journeying through China in the 11th century AD. He wrote about it as if
it were a treasure as precious as gold. 'Kai-nu is a (Chinese) province
.,. the money or currency they make use of there. is thus preferred: their
gold is turned into small rods and being cut into certain lengths passes
according to its weight without any stamp. This is their greater money.
The smaller is of the following description: in this country there are
still springs from which they manufacture salt by boiling it in small pans.
After the water has boiled for an hour it becomes a kind of paste which
is formed into cakes of the value of twopence each. These, flat on the
lower and convex on the upper side are placed upon hot tiles near a fire
in order to dry and harden. On this latter species of money the stamp of
the Grand Kihan is impressed, and it cannot be impressed by any other than
his own officers. When these are carried by the traders .. to little frequented
parts, they obtain a saggio [sack] of gold for sixty, fifty or even
forty
salt cakes ... the further they are removed from the towns ', 'The same
merchants travel through other parts of Tibet where the salt money has
equal currency. Their profits are considerable, because these country people
regard it as an 'indispensable necessary' whereas the inhabitants of the
cities use only the broken fragments of the cakes, putting the whole cakes
into circulation as money..' MIINTING and MICROECONOMIES In addition to
the quasi-currency role of standardised metal and salt pieces, there developed
a definite association between making salt and the actual operation of
minting money. In very early times many ancient towns in Greece and Medieval
Europe did both. So, in Charlemagne's reign ' ..it was convenient to authorize
the collector of a particular tax - the farmer of a salt pan, as the steward
of royal domain .... to receive payment, at need ... presentations in kind,
foreign or ancient coins of metal by weight, and to render the amount or
the revenues of his [salt] farming, in coins minted on the spot, and bearing
a signature which served as a guarantee of their standard and value, and
a place-name which recorded their place of origin.' Schwabisch Hall in
Germany is a good example of such inter related currency and trade arrangements.
The Hall Senate owned salt springs and factories here, and in the Middle
Ages they also minted coins which were issued for services done or goods
delivered to the town afor the purchase and sale of their salt. The coins
were also chartered as legal currency for duty payments and tolls on the
local roads, bridges and gates. They became known as the 'coins' of Halle
or 'Heller' money , derived from an old German word for salt - 'Halle'
. Because of its local purchasing power, this currency was highly rated
in most German markets, although its value frequently changed according
to supply and demand. Although the historical links with the metal trade
are clearly evident, salt has not been used as money in the sense that
is generally accepted or understood today. Perhaps anlaysing the historical
connection and its evolution would help us to appreciate the role of money
in modern economies. In the view of J.M.Keynes, the state determines what
should be considered as money as well as the right to vary it's function
at will. The claim that money is created or chartered by the state forms
the basis of the 'state theory' of money, which in modern times, has come
to be associated with the name of G.F.Knapp. He accepts as money ...'anything
which the state undertakes to accept at the state offices in lieu of payment
or in exchange for monopoly goods'. ......"There are means of payment which
are not yet money; then there those which are money; later still, those
which have ceased to be money". G.F. Knapp. 1924. This definition implies
that the substance of which the money is made, has no part in its currency
value. Of course, it is important that money should conform to recognised
standards such as portability and weight. It should also be durable. However
if it was valuable in its own right, as gold soon came to be valuable,
or, even on rarer occasions, salt: or, if the pieces were beautiful in
design and of artistic merit, so as to become collectors' objects: but
such qualities became to be considered irrelevant as regards their monetary
significance. In the words of ·Helffrich, the man who revived the
German currency after World War 1, ...'the weight of noble metal in the
coins, became only the substrate of the money about which the state authority,
finally, could use at its discretion, as to what it should contain and
any change required ...' This differs from Aristotle's concept. He thought
that markings for correct weight and measure as well as associating the
intrinsic value of the article would convert a 'means of payment' into
money. TALLIES The introduction of the so~called: - 'tally',- 'tessera'
in Latin, 'kerbholz' 'notched wood' in German, 'twins' [teomim] in Hebrew,
'chi-chi', in Chinese and 'symbolon' in Greek, - all meaning 'corresponding'
pairs, to make a complete identifiable unit when assembled together, may
have helped to bring the evolution of modern currency a step nearer The
use of the tally is a very old and ingenious way of determining the authenticity
of an identity, a document, a mesa'go. a receipt, an I.O.U, or an account.
Originally, the tally technique depended on the randomness of the edges
formed when an object such as a piece of wood, metal, ceramic or paper
is split or torn. Each separation being unique, only the correct half would
fit, when the pieces were brought together. There are many other ways of
checking a tally , the most modern being electronic devices, the "smart
card". But essentially, they all resemble a 'tally'. Although a primitive
and rather laborious procedure, one can envisage this technology as an
integral part of the development of money. Even wooden tallies were treated
as if they were 'money' during the Middle Ages in England. They changed
hands without losing value, and could be presented to the treasury and
honored irrespective of the claimant's identity. According to M.Siegrist
in her book 'Ricardus of Ely', ...every often the royal Treasury transferred
some of their claims with the help of tallies, to credit people to whom
it was in debt. In this way the tally became a means of payment. One of
the most practical applications of the tally system seems to have been
for the proprietary marking of stored goods. A storekeeper needs to be
able to identify the rightful claimant for deposits made. So he attaches
one part of the tally, the 'stock'. to the stored article, giving the other,
the 'foil', to the depositor who must later be able to produce this part
and have it checked by testing the fit, when claiming the goods. Both parties
could delegate the 'foil' pieces to other people, for example, their heirs.
Not only could tangible goods be registered, but so also could a record
of valued services rendered, or the number of 'acreti' ploughed, sacks
of salt transported, and so on. Work of this kind would be "notched" up
and the record stored and some work-equivalent object retrieved when the
foil was presented. In a curious aside: In ".. 1834 reforming zeal celebrated
its triumph by destroying (In the furnaces which heated the House of Lords)
the whole accumulation of ancient tallies, with disastrous results; the
old Houses of Parliament were burned , together with practically all 'stocks'
of the tallies -"[Encyclop.Brit. 1921]. Before going into the problem of
how to inter-relate the value of goods, services and corresponding tallies,
the technique of dealing with trivial deposits should be considered, since
it led to the introduction of coinage and other printed money. Willow 'tallies'
- sticks up to eight feet long and one inch broad and notched to indicate
sums loaned to the government The stick was split down the middle and one
half was handed to the lender and the other half retained by the Exchequer
of the Bank of England When goods of small value were deposited, individually
hand-made tallies of different kinds were too expensive to make in the
demanded quantity. An efficient method of mass production had to be found
although this obviously involved a greater danger of forgery. A random
pattern could be produced by impressing a 'broken' edge into softer material
such as clay, wax or malleable metal, or by striking it (with) the end
of a broken-off nail, a mark which could not easily be imitated, so that
many negative imprints could be turned out and checked against the matrix
or master stamp - the original broken edge: later; it would be a picture
or written word. In this way, one matrix for coins, or one copper plate
for notes, reproduced valid token pieces. Forgery was minimised by employing
the best artists to uniquely design them. Making seals designed to indicate
ownership, authenticity or to legitimise authority was a very ancient,
skilful craft in Eastern countries. The 'cylinder' seal, with its rolling
action and pattern repetition of the characters carried on it, may have
helped in developing a mechanical reproduction of receipts for goods on
deposit. In China, metal coins made their appearance between 1000 - 700
BC and were standardised for weight and measure by about 630 BC. Herodotus
reckoned the value of gold to silver in the proportion of 13 to 1, : Plato
who wrote about 50 years after him says it was 12 times the value of silver.
The learned Budaeus and others after him, called the sum of 100 Denarii,
" Libra centenaria" and "Libra nummaria" while confessing that he had never
found either the word libra or pondo used to signify a sum of money: but
always to the weight of the plate or bullion. There were three categories:
gold with the highest value; silver of medium and copper/bronze - copper
cash' the lowest. The cash coins came in various shapes and sizes, round,
oblong, square, some with a hole in the centre; shaped like a spade, a
knife or two pronged known as 'trouser money'. Other 'currencies' circulating
at this time as well as salt, were tin, ore, feathers, tortoise and cowrie
shells and even silk fabric of standard width and length. The invention
of the first coins may have been made possible by the relatively new steel
industry. Instead of a 'vouchery' imprinted on clay or wax, a much more
resistant metallic material, capable of withstanding the rigors of cbetween
the trading public and the control administration pay offices could now
be used. Mass produced durable vouchers were fashioned on a hard iron matrix
which printed a seal on malleable metals like electrum, gold, silver and
later, copper. Coins of non-ferrous metals had arrived to supersede the
fragile clay pieces. Shortage of metal for coinage seems to have been endemic
in China -a predicament aggravated and compounded by wars, instability
of regimes and social unrest. During the Han period for example, the old
coins were called in and exchanged for new bronze (copper). This was believed
to have enriched the treasury by about #5,000,000 calculated to have been
more than the total supply in Medieval Europe At the same time it drained
the country's resources. Similarly, in a later period inflation caused
terrible problems in transporting so much coin and was one of the reasons
for introducing the first deposit or 'exchange certificates' for tea, salt
and other commodities and later, registering paper money itself. One early
initiative to counteract the coin shortage was made in 120 BC. Squares
cut from the skin of white deer only found in the Emperor's hunting reserves
were issued to a limited circle of nobles at the Court, as a medium of
exchange. Paper making was invented in China before the Christian era.
The earliest known piece dates from the Wu Ti period between 140-81 BC.
At first it was made of matted fibers from rags on a backing or frame soaked
in water - perhaps discovered accidentally since washing fabrics is a common
household chore. Mass production was made possible when it could be done
by using the Mulberry tree bark [morus alba]. Marco Polo writes; 'the bark
is stripped from these (Mulberry) trees, the leaves of which are used for
feeding the silk worms, and taken from it that inner rind which lies between
the coarser bark and the wood of the tree...' The new material seems to
have had very practical every day uses for clothing, bed sheets, curtains
and other household furnishings such as screens, tiles and~ in enormous
quantities, as burnt offerings to the dead, but curiously, not for writing.
Not until the first century AD were the traditional writing materials,
bamboo, wood and silk, slowly replaced by paper . The ancient custom of
making seals provided the link between the invention of paper manufacture
and the ability to print on it. Chinese seals were usually square or rectangular
with the characters carved in reverse order. They were used to stamp inscriptions
on clay pottery, bricks or even, as Marco Polo witnessed, on salt. This
stamping action was akin to print on wooden blocks, an achievement realized
around 700 AD in China and followed 300 years later by moveable type printing
and multi colour work in, or before the 12th Century The Chinese then,
were well aware, that the intrinsic service rendered by money, was not
bound up with the value of the money material, though it was desirable
that the substrate be rare, like mulberry paper or the white deerskin to
reduce the possibility of forgery. It was the charter, the authoritative
declaration [or hall-marked] by the Emperor which made it valuable because
it guaranteed the token piece acceptable by his administrators as a means
of payment and for monopoly goods such as salt. This monopoly was, so far
as we can see, the most important source of income for the state. In 1329
AD, of all the tax paid with paper money, 82 percent came from the salt
monopoly...' An important factor was the 'durability in use' of these token
pieces. Copper coins were reasonably durable but not sufficiently so as
to represent high values: gold and silver were too rare, although resistant.
Fragile materials like paper could only replace metal if the charter covered
the replacement of damaged or dirty notes, to be governed by strict procedure
and legislation and punishments ·to be enforced when old notes were
being burnt in the presence of judges and other important officials. The
Chinese could afford this substitution routine which gave the money an
inbuilt longevity because paper was cheap, though not cheap enough, to
replace copper coins of low denominations. For these, base metal was more
economical. Paradoxically, gold, used for high value coinage could be replaced
by paper, whereas single base metal coins could not. The cost of minting
money in Southern China, where the technical skills had been developed,
and then transferring it to the capital in the north in AD 1050 was reckoned
to be 75% of its metal material value. The time lag between the invention
of iron tools and non~ferrous coins, is somewhat similar to the delay between
the invention of paper - about 200 AD - and the technological achievement
about 500 years later, which made printing paper money cheap enough to
allow a virtually free replacement process. One of the cheapest objects
to be chartered for use as money, were sea shells which were made available
by controlled import, to the monopolised state zone. In China and some
other regions, they actually survived the introduction of paper money and
both circulated together. Because the state 'minted' and circulated them
on a monopolistic basis, shells which were imported as currency could therefore
serve as a means for tax payments. In Lopburi, for instance, 24 liang money
was worth as much as 10.000 cowrie shells' In Birma, 10 liang (paper money)
equaled 11,520 cowrie shells and again, 'in Yunnan, shells were introduced
as money in 1276 AD. A few years later, in 1282 AD, tax was established
by payment in gold, but it could also be paid with shells and in 1305 the
Governer of Yunnan ordered them to be used as an alternative to paper money.
The Prohibition of shell imports was Codified in the Codex of the Dynasty,
Yuan-schi (YS) quote104, 5a.~, . . and private imports [of shells] were
made punishable as though they were a~case of counterfeiting money Even
as late as 1637 special cylindrical shells were recognised as currency
and a means for tax payment by the Dutch authorities in New England.' In
time and with prevailing conditions, both food and salt production improved,
and early in the l0th century, the problem of how to increase the purchasing
power of the money in circulation became acute. It could have been solved
by the state, ensuring a constant number of money units in circulation
in return for income from increasing private sector goods and services.
This would have meant that goods and services would become cheaper in terms
of the money units available, and prices would drop. Alternatively more
money could be issued eg. paper notes, for proportionately more goods,
increasing the number of money units in circulation, Thus, prices would
remain stable, but still allow the exchange of more goods and services:
in short 'expansion' The modern concept of 'too much money..chasing too
few goods' was not relevant, if money units available were increased in
proportion to the increase in goods and services. It is often thought that
when the gold and silver coinage was increased by the addition of a base
metal industry, agricultural production and trade suffered. RECEDING SHORELINES
AND PROSPERITY In fact, the opposite is probably the case. During one of
these periods, in the 10th century AD the ocean receded, exposing the vast
flat evaporation areas enabling the production of more salt, and making
it available in significantly increased quantities. In Europe and particularly
in "Merry England" , as the Domsday records show, sea coast saltmaking
was thriving. The resulting economic expansion, caused such a severe shortage
of metal coins that state business and private traders' needs could not
be met. In China these conditions coerced the Chinese to prepare paper
money and put it into circulation. Balazs describes the financial difficulties
as: "enormous because of the demands made on the government by the army
and administration on one hand, and great economic and trade development
on the other...". Later the new Sung Emperor reorganised theadministration
but the same massive expenditure for the army forced the government to
coin new money. In 1050 AD there was 13 times more silver, eight times
more copper and 14 times more iron than in 800 AD. Between 1000 AD and
1021 AD the State budget increased from 22,200,000 to 150,800,000. There
is no doubt that the invention of paper money was the product of a growing
private economy. The pre-conditions for this, papermaking and printing
had been created earlier. In 12th century China the economic picture was
relatively simple and the function or paper money could be readily understood
by the population. Apart from land taxes in south China, salt contributed
50%. alcohol 36% tea 7% and customs tax 7% Grain was the largest part of
the commodities produced by the private sector for the State income Both
salt and grain production were affected by weather changes and flooding.
If the seashore salterns failed to make enough salt, there would be a salt
shortage and then its price and the tax on it would rise: in the same way,
the grain price would float in the case of a crop failure. The authorities
everywhere, whether Chinese Emperors supported by bureaucrats, or corporations
like senates and parliaments, in Hellenistic areas, introduced legislation
governing the creation and use of money. Under these laws, money tokens
were chartered as an alternative to tax and tythe payment in kind; the
amount of tax to be paid was decided and adjusted from time to time and
finally, the resulting income budgeted to cover the authorities' obligation
and expenses. Chartered money paid out by these public bodies was used
to buy the goods and services offered by private individuals or groups.
Since society in general, was sufficiently well organised and protected
from illegal acquisitions, bargaining was the only means by which ordinary
people or groups were able to find out what and how much, they could ask
in exchange for their efforts. For example, chartered money could be used
to buy one of the essential monopoly goods, specifically salt, as well
as another essential commodity, privately produced bread. So the Roman
soldier who got his salary in the form of salt 'anona'- or chartered money,
could use either or both to buy the bread from the farmer. For his part,
the farmer could store or use both as he wished. Alternatively, he could
spend the money to pay for oil or meat from the neighboring farmer who,
in turn could buy salt and pay his taxes with it. The storage/spending
chain suggested here, would normally be longer, a more complicated procedure,
and include 'usury and banking'. Each time such business was transacted,
the partners had to consider how urgent their requirements were: and if
hazards like theft, the vagaries of climate or the perishable qualities
of some goods out-weighed the risks of storing money. However, money storage
presented its own problems from simple destruction of notes or corrosion
of coins to the wider implications of unstable regimes which had chartered
the money in the first place and might, in part or wholly, fail to honor
the promise to accept it for tax. RECESSION AND FLOODING The later reversal
of this situation, in China - that is when the sea rose, flooding the evaporation
pans, and salt became scarce again, occurred at the beginning of the 14th
century AD when there was a twenty five fold increase in general prices
without a corresponding growth in the money units circulating. It seems
that the amount printed between 1260 and 1325 was about 60 million units,
of which 47 were burnt by order of the administration after being exchanged
for new paper notes. So the money put into circulation could not have exceeded
23 million - not an inflationary amount for a population of 50 to 60 million
... the purchasing power however, had decreased ... to one twenty-fifth
between 1276 and 1308 AD . .' The cause of this disaster was delicately
referred to as a 'shrinkage' in production. The sudden shortfall of raw
materials was in part due to natural catastrophies such as floods - the
Yellow River burst its dykes in 1351 the high sea levels at this time with
the likely loss of some coastal salt works, climatic changes and the Plague
epidemic, rather than a fraudulent increase of the amount of money units
in circulation. During the same period, northern Europe was finding it
more difficult to match up to the increasing demand for salt. The old salt
making locations were not producing enough when coastal sources became
flooded. The Baltic was no longer self-supporting,' Prussia was becoming
susceptible to salt famine, and peat digging in the Low countries had been
prohibited because it endangered the sea defenses. And then, in 1349, the
Black Death struck. Estimated ocean level changes in pre-historic and historic
times Fluctuation of Sealevels at all the points designated : =levels [A]
- to- [K] Conditions were no better in England. With a shrunken work force,
fields remained untilled, production slowed down and coastal salt works
along with other manufacturing industries suffered a reduction of output
or closure: The cost of living rose dramatically. Faced with revolutionary
demands for better pay from the peasantry, the nobility and gentry insisted
upon parliamentary legislation to regulate employment and freeze wages.
The country became an importer of 'Bay' salt at this time even though,
in the seventeenth century it was considered inferior to the English salt
and "improper for salting herrings". By the nineteenth century England
had again become a major world exporter of salt ECONOMICS Salt was never
money in the true sense of the word. It was one of the very few essentials
to life and a commodity whose quantity and quality could be standardised
and therefore used as a convenient means of exchange or barter. However,
it also may have been used as one of the most important methods of making
state chartered money more attractive, and desirable. For in many important
economies, salt was a monopoly commodity, controlled by government and
which could be purchased with the state chartered money. The value of the
money would have been effectively related to the prices at which the government
monopoly was prepared, or able, to sell its own services and goods. In
ancient times these exclusive services consisted initially of protecting
and guaranteeing the supply of salt for the growing communities. It is
perhaps no coincidence that the words, 'peace' and 'war' in ancient Hebrew
are rooted in the word for 'salt'. As a direct result of the hardships,
and necessary organisation involved in 'winning' salt from very limited
inland sources, these services also sometimes included the monopolising
of its uses. These were mainly the salting and preservation of meat and
fish, and leather tanning. The ritual procedures and customs inherited
by most of todays religions may be grounded in the original use of the
'altar' in ancient temples for sacrifice, slaughter and dehydration of
protein meat. The Panthenons and the temple in Jerusalem were veritable
abattoirs Up to the time of the industrial revolution, salt was universally
recognised as one of the chief state monopoly commodities - if not the
chief one - since it provided some fifty percent of many state incomes.
Its availability was dependent on weather, sea level changes, efficient
transport and distribution, and not least, a highly sophisticated, protection
organisation. Changes in sea level causing flooding of salt evaporation
pans occured over periods of years and were only felt slowly, perhaps in
a period of a generation or more. Such a creeping occurrence was hardly
observed and recorded, though today we can see many examples, such as the
successive building of the Portus harbours of Claudius, Trajan and Augustus,
or, the alternating salt processing centers of Classis, Ravenna and Aquilea,
or, any of the hundreds of sub sealevel sites around the Mediterranean.
A failure in any one of these supply systems , in turn caused catastrophic
market changes, population migra, money fluctuations, and decline. As coal
and oil began to replace peat and solar energy for much of the evaporation
process of manufacturing, salt supplies around the world, quickly stabalised,
and the critical aspect of 'common salt' passed into history, and was soon
forgotten SUMMARY Money evolved from a system of 'Tallies' which represented
receipts for work done or services rendered. The tallies such as coins
and paper money, could also be mass produced , but were also easier to
counterfeit, and so they tended to represent lower value denominations.
All types of tallies, could be 'hall' marked in order to convert them in
to money and then put into circulation. State authorities were bound to
accept 'hall' marked money as dues and taxes. Tallies were not dependent
on the innate qualities of the substrate for their market value. The successful
introduction of paper money in China in the 11th century demonstrates that
the function of money as defined by Knapp, was well understood. When metals
became too rare for their expanding economy, paper became the substrate
for 'minting'. Their paper competed easily with gold and silver because
it was relatively so cheap that the state could guarantee to replace it
free of charge, when wear and tear, made this necessary. Paper money became
completely corrosion resistant Only until very recently, with the coming
of the industrial age and the use of oil, and coal to produce in unlimited
quantity , was salt, the most important state monopoly commodity. It played
a decisive role in the fluctuations of money purchasing power all over
the world. Its production was, like grain, subject to the vagaries of nature,
and directly effected the commodity and money markets unpredictably. Modern
economies have tended to treat money as a commodity, although its original
use was only to represent and measure value. For all intents and purposes,
this would mean that initially, money has no value until it is exchanged
for something of value. The value of goods and services must therefore
be determined by the discrimination of the consumer. The convenience of
salt was its uniformity and even the most primitive consumer could discern
its value. In turn this must lead us to understand that money availability
does not decide price fluctuations, but only the availability and quality
of the services and essential commodities it represents. Thus at the community
level, money spent well, and which increases the community well-being,
may also be termed as deflationary . On the other hand money spent badly,
on poor services or limited availability of essential goods must therefore
be inflationary. BIBLIOGRAPHY Mathew Raper FRS - An enquiry into the value
of the ancient Greek and Roman money - 1771 Aristotle Polit . i .6 . 14
18; trans Weldon, qute `by Head Historian Numorum : p. XXXIII ` Clarendon
Press Oxford 191- Bury, J.B. History of the Later Roman Empire; pp Dower
Publications New York: 1958. Mandizabel; Relaciones de Meztitlan quoted
by Hans.Helfritz in his article Vorkolumbische Salzgewinnung in Guatamalas
Kosmos LIXs 7 20 p 305- Baudin Revue des Etudes Historique J. 93- p 107-114
Springer, A Die Salzversorgung den Isingborenen Africas von den neuzeitlichen
europaischen Kolonisation 1918, pp 57-f8. Marco Polo: Travels of Marco
Polo trans. Marsden: Newnes London, 1904 Pirenne, H Mohamed and Charlemagneg
Meridian Books, New York l957.pp.109-110 Kruger E. Schwabisch Hall: Eppinger,
Schwabisch Hall,1967. Keynes J.M. A Treatise on Money: Macmillan &
Co. 1965 , p. 6-7- Knapp G.F. The State Theory of Money- Trans. ed. Luces
& Bonar-: London, 1925. Einzig, P. Primitive Money Oxford Clarendon
Press, 1953 'Means of payment' or 'primitive money is not yet money in
the sense of Knapp's state theory'. Helfferich K. Das Geld; Leipzig 1910.
(M.RBloch trans.) Friedmann A. Uber Papiergeld und Kerbholze den Chinesen:
vol 6 Numismatische Zeitschrifts Wien 1928. pp 69-76 Galbraith, V. Studies
in the Public Records reprint London, 1949, p 52- Korosy, de F. Private
communication: value pound sterling notes used to be bound into booklets
before issuing afterwards each note was torn out seperately. Siegrist,
M. Richardus de Ely Diologues de Scaccario; Artemis Verlags Zurich, 1953.
Zeno: Zen: 1.3. 3rd cent BC. 'using it as a receipt for a pledged article...'
Lidell, H.C. Greek English Lexicon - Oxford, 1953.& Scott R. Seltmang
Greek Coins Nethuen -London, 1960, p 17. Needham, J. Science and ivilization
in China, Cambridge Univ. Press, vol 1, .1961 p_p. 53, 198, 231. Swam,
N.L. Food and Money in Ancient China: Han Shu 24 up to AD. 25 ed. Bloch,
M.R. Private communication. 1977. Eberhard, W History of China: Routledge
Kegan Paul: London, 195o- Franke, H. Geld ubd Wirtschaft in China unter
den Mongolen- Herrschaft: Herrscowitz` Leipzig 1940. Eberhardl q.v. 'Paper
money redeemed at 3%. p. 210. Battute Ibn. quoted by Franker q.v. ed. V.
Kail p.41>. Hall H. History of the Customs and Revenue in England . 1885,
p.1O. Balzs, S Beitrage zur Wirtschaftsgeschicht den T'ang- zeit` mitt.d.
Zentl'Orient.Sprachen, 1931. Bloch, M.R. Zur Entwicklung der vom Salz abhangigen
8 Technologien, Mitt: List Ges. Basel p.289. Lamb, H.H Climate , etc .
Phil . trans . Royal Society London, A 276, 195-230, 1970 * Bridbury A.R.
- England and the Salt Trade in the Later Middle Ages Oxford Clarendon
Press, 1955, pp 38,39* Dendermonde, M. The Dutch and their Dykes, De Bezige
Amsterdam. 1956 - p 47* Perroy, The Doomsday ref. 1,200 salines on the
East coast of Book England Collins, J. Salt and Fishery 1682, London; Bloch
M.R. notes in the MRBLOCH Salt Archive -------------------------------------
yahoo group on salt: I noticed on this website that somebody has made the
claim that hunter gatherers in the past drank the blood of animals? Where
is the evidence for this? I know that some modern pasturalists living in
MARGINAL areas such as the Masai of Africa drink the blood of their cattle
but this is not nessecarily for salt intake, their is also protien in blood,
and it is a renewable resource. Even if there are modern hunter gatherer
tribes that can be used as ethnographic examples it still tells us nothing
about mesolithic hunter gatherers (middle range theory is fraught with
problems). My area of archaeological interest is in Britain and perhaps
this site is more devoted to Levant etc. but I would be very interested
in seeing the evidence in favour of mesolithic hunter gatherer's drinking
the blood of animals. ========= Perhaps- less controversially- the implication
is that prehistoric man derived salt from thr blood in the semi-raw meat
he ate Obviously this is something that is incapable of proof one way or
other but, to my mind, a reasonable assumption Whether it was done deliberately
(the point at issue?) is another matter ---------------- Given the choice
I guess most humans have preferred their food to be salty, if not of course
sweet. Blood tastes salty --- I am quite good at cutting myself ! --- and
being a nominal 0.9% salt a drink of blood would be both tasty and a significant
contribution to the daily salt requirement. Doe cows consume salt licks
because they think they need it or because it is tasty. Do cows and humans
have an instinct that salt is good for them? George ============= Clearly
and less contreversially people in prehistory (most likely lower palaeolithic)took
in salt from the blood of animals in their food. Mesolithic hunter gatherers
were well aware of fire and were likely using it for a variety of uses
including cooking. I don't see how one can assume meso hunter gatherers
were eating semi raw meat. Which begs the question of why did early humans
begin to cook their food, it would certainly reduce their salt (blood)
intake. Perhaps they were eating meat for a different reason in very early
prehistory... such as transferral of energy from gut to brain... =bigger
brain? Perhaps a high salt intake resulted as a side effect rather than
a reason to eat raw meat. Sometimes what people and animals crave may not
always be good for them. eg heroine/people, cream/cats Black Sausage is
made with blood but is cooked is it not? As far as every part of the animal
was needed... not true at all, humans are not purely functional animals,
in many modern day hunter gatherer societies parts of animals may be taboo
and not eaten, or used. Not to mention that in the past when a kill was
made or an animal to scavange was found, the early humans involved may
have only been able to carry so much and have to move quite quickly (they
were in competition with other scavangers) and would likley choose portions
which Lewis Binford called 'high yield' ie. Shoulders etc. big meaty parts.
skulls, knuckles, teeth etc. probably not tasty besides too little nutrition.
someone else wrote Since all of that type of evidence is long gone-------where
is your evidence that it did not happen?? If you don't have any why do
you challenge the obvious? What is the obvious that I am challenging? You
don't need evidence of something not happening to suggest it didn't happen...
obviousley in the right context a lack of evidence can be construed as
evidence in itself. Along with a body of theory, we can usefully discuss
the validity of certain statements made about the past. Evidence is not
long gone... there are bone assemblages, cave art, tools. although the
record is imperfect there are still data sets from which to base theory
and conclusions. As for trying to prove that it did not happen, that is
not my intention. My problem is that some statements are made as if they
are truths and thus already proven. For example, this comment was associated
with 'hunter gatherers' of pre-agricultural communinities... No wonder,
that the salt element of real blood and that of salt brine, became a mysterious
powerful magic. Did it? Was it portrayed in cave art as such? Is there
any evidence or body of theory that can further explain this bold statement?
How about writing... the similarities between the salt element in blood
and that of the salt element in brine may have given it a powerfull ritual/magical
element in ...insert relevant context, and further evidence or explanation/theory...
Cheers, Andy (the devil's advocate) Failes :-) Hmmm... I just remembered
that I once read about an experiment they did with babies to see if they
would crave and feed themselves what they needed nutritionaly. I remember
because there was alot of fuss about cruelty (this would never be permissable
these days). Has anyone else ever come across this?? It must have involved
salt. ================== hello I am interested in listening and maybe contributing
to this discussion board. I am reading up the website to get an idea of
the conditions under which salt and its impurities can survive archaeologically.
interested in the impurities as they may be some of the trace elements
needed in the diet that are less soluble and so might be more stable in
the soil/grave enviroment. also interested in the alternative derivation
for "-wich" (salt or white) in English placenames: how can this be distinguished
from its other meaning, town? and how recent is this derivation? also interested
in the, dare I say it, religious nature of brine spas/ springs throughout
Europe, where a perceived benefit was gained from bathing or otherwise
intaking the waters. am aware that quite a lot of this was clever marketing
in recent times, and wonder how much of a placebo effect operated in more
remote periods? I rather hope that there were genuine effects taking place,
and that there is a sound underlying reason for the veneration of water
sources beyond all that mystic leyline claptrap. if so then are the old
droveways sometimes connected to places where animals would go to find
salt? and has anyone written about this in more detail? ===================
149700 Pejorative Journalism - A Verbal Terror Riot (english) by E. Hosenslorcher
2:44am Wed Mar 13 '02 fangedrabbit@hotmail.com Traditional approaches have
failed as delivery agents for very pressing contents. Use a rantalogue
format; create a groundswell; refresh yourself; pejoration is unnerving
for the swine! (Pay attention to footnotes and supplements.) Pejorative
Journalism Poetry Theatre Presents the Essaying poem Generously Entitled:
FUCK OFF BUSH!!! Prefatory remarks: While reading Bruce Rich’s book, ‘Mortgaging
the Earth’, I experienced a recurring realization of just how finally true
it is that everything has already been said well. Far out into the tides
of this discovery—which are themselves recurring—I was made to also apprehend
(remember) that if few people have been exposed to ‘everything’, it is
because they are either generally incapable of it intellectually, or because
they easily choose the compartmentalized indulgences of their lifestyles
over close scrutiny of everything’s implications beyond their immediate
sight. They simply don’t ask where and how the petrol they are squeezing
into their Sports Utility Vehicles is gotten—the long curve of the nozzle
produces the substance and that is enough; or, if they consider themselves
aware, they may run quickly through a cursory, sneakily guilty reminder,
but the brunt of the getting never causes them to flinch. And then the
tired issue of what actions people take when they do fully know the radius
of ‘everything’ feebly arises. I feel very old as I trudge through these
remarks... Our supreme good guy, that cartoon caricature, Lil’Georgie Bushytail,
has stated of his ‘war’ against whatever bars access to oil, “ Either you
are with us or you are against us,” and I think I have begun to appreciate
the purity of such a mandate that disallows extenuating circumstances,
choice and dissension and produces undeniable results at the nozzle’s end.
The vast majority of the world is just as squalid as whatever takes place
in King Georgie’s pasty little mind. In the past five months the United
States has revealed itself in its entirety as a violently repressive police
state, and the civic bodies whose purpose it is to protect that sacred
virgin, Liberty, from the omnipresent bayonets have proven themselves to
be cravenly complicit in the unmasking. Elsewhere the squalor continues
unabated. Nine out of ten people live below the poverty level (a dollar
a day, friends); human rights violations are as pandemic as the many curable
diseases that go untreated in developing nations for economic reasons;
the planet is being raped and sodomized continuously—no wine, no flowers,
no sweet nothings—gruesome facts, harrowing statistics, staggering figures,
mind numbing projections; etcetera. The content of this ongoing menace—this
endless ‘everything’—continues to suppurate, and, as has also already been
said, little is done beyond more molestation. It may be I’m boring you
now—tired old man that I am—by saying that the world’s events are interconnected
and that there is a direct relationship between your consumption, your
apathy, your desire to increase the water mark levels in your bank vault
and the critical dearth of salubriousness elsewhere. Perhaps you’d be right—it
is crucial I say something new—nothing is learned without the consent of
a moment’s entertainment. And since everything has already been said well,
I propose instead to present a new format of delivery for a message that
must now be made as uncivil as the people and topics it addresses. This
seems to me a necessary innovation since the content of ‘everything’ itself
has proven not to be enough to jar a single worker ant’s beleaguered consciousness.
Comrade Paolo de la Blithechic recently made resonant one of my oldest
laments when he said that all of the new iconoclasts, whether stationary
and well ensconced within the system’s frames or nomadic and free ranging
on tracks too thin and dirty to be charted, who cannot tolerate the embarrassing
masquerade of governments and presses, have no real outstanding continuous
public forum where they can demonstrate an intense resistance. I gaspingly
hope I will be able to participate in the creation of such a device. In
the meantime, towards that purpose, I present to you a document from the
new school of Pejorative Journalism. And, in consideration of how deeply
the struggle has already been polarized by the limitlessly funded, infinitely
rapacious majority stakeholders, I can think of no better way to launch
this pirate’s corsair into battle against the royal fleet than by borrowing
Bushytails’ brilliant ultimatum and shouting it out on behalf of the rag
dolls who demand equity: ‘Either you’re with us or you’re against us’.
*** …!N•Caution/Caveat Emptor/Warning/Danger•N!…: It will immediately become
clear to even the most remotely sentient, purblind reader that I did not
drain this composition of its emotional contents; nor did I assiduously
arrange these according to the protocols of staid editorial etiquette.
Whenever I read a toothsome polemical essay of merit nowadays, I cannot
help but notice that the running style of its presentation is found through
meting out all of the writer’s contempt, rage and frustration into a wittiness
that is generally more palatable than what inspires it. I admire and even
envy in this form its ornate sophistication. Someday, perhaps when I have
been sufficiently calmed by a state-ordered lobotomy, I will seek, as fervently
as would be possible for someone in my condition, to emulate writers who
dissemble their outrage into a subtle and enduring architecture of ironic
arabesques, caryatids of parody, fluted columns of allegory, etc. I am
not being entirely facetious in saying this. There is no political writer
I admire more than George Orwell, for instance, and he was mainly polite,
though supremely punishing at the crown of his most blasting fury. I can
say the same of Lewis Lapham. Still, while I may concede every bleak conceptual
point made by Richard Dowden in his BBC Africa article, ‘America’s Ground
Zero’, it is only when he uses the impolitic phrase, “America has learnt
that nasty things can spawn in failed states and crawl out of them to attack
the rest of the world,” that the energies of my very viscera are awoken
to possibility. From my lobes to my groin there is a fulguration of hope
that Dowden will next address America’s own nastiness in this slimy equation
he draws of failure and spawning—which he doesn’t do, alas—but his undiplomatic
language, for a moment, holds the far off scent of promise. A similar example
can be taken from the opening sentence of an editorial in the independent
entitled ‘Gangsterism at Work’ issued by the press alliance TBWT. It flares
out, ‘Unbridled legal hypocrisy is a recurring theme of the ideologically
impoverished Bush imperium,’ which is painfully obvious and well said,
but the fearfully dim Bushytail himself would have to hire translators
in order to understand the pronouncement. The remainder of the article
is quite terse and reveals much about America’s sickening departure from
those founding laws that guarantee civil liberties to manacled, gagged,
blindfolded Arabs as well as its own citizenry, but the writer’s anger
is definitely not fully expressed because of a hesitation to use anything
other than ‘professional’ terminologies throughout. For that reason I prefer
when Laura Mitti, a Zambian editorialist, says of a similar problem here,
‘Zambia is a comatose nation. Only God in heaven and the resilient or stupidly
passive, depending on how you want to look at it, spirit of the Zambian
people ensures that there is still a Zambia to talk about. Everything else
is dead or dying.’ Hearing the word ‘stupid’ applied in any form to populations
that are repeatedly shat upon is quite salutary. I myself am completely
overwhelmed and not as talented as any of the penmen above mentioned—my
patience for formal writing strictures is extinct. The following pejorative
text is intended as more than scantily clothed venom made possibly outrageous
by its nearly denuded posture and sexy flirtations with proscribed thoughts
and voices—mere voyeurism. This must be an unexpurgated experiment in hacking
open then over-glazing my barest rage in a supertonic of less than urbane
logical thrusts, commonplace offensive language, repetitious scatology
and unapologetic references. I want these strings of words to be like long
gobbets of polluted spit flung in the grotesque face of the system and
its watchmen£ whom I find monstrous. If in passes there are phrases
that are inflammatory in a tawdry, histrionic, gaudy way, all is well:
I believe these molting peacock and vomitus terms, formed in the intellectual
colons and other coarse filters of every culture and lacking any interpretational
possibility, are the only universal currency the idiot gargoyles can understand
and be affected by in real measure. A politician’s intelligence can never
ever be insulted, and the elaborate, self-deprecating, linguistically baroque
writing that would seek to do so is now beyond my endurance and skill.
I want my insults to slash out in the infected disemboweling tones of the
most caustic vernacular when necessary; I want there to be no room whatever
for misinterpretation. If I can fashion an underlying rationale for this
approach from loftier material, then I will have appeased every writing
instinct I cherish. But when the global selectmen and their factory lackeys
must have their heads dunked in the offal they have left in every corner,
and so be stylistically reminded of the sewage they’ve created and not
accounted for, let their own very un-metaphorical stench reach their pursed
aristocratic and coarse nostrils directly. *** Incendiary Text: Filigree
seams faintly stress the furthest reaches in the big blood bladder that
is the vast, corporately owned§, western media machinery. Occasionally
an editorial that is critical of the Coalition’s motives in strafing Afghanistan
with the providential fire of operation Infinite Justice and reducing the
Brown Horde to ashes and abjection, comes trickling out the inflamed urethra
of various presses that are traditionally labeled reactionary, ultra-liberal,
or subversive by mega-syndicates (governments and networks) and afterwards
by their all-important subsidiaries: the fabled average people. The penicillin
for this rash, flaming dribble of seditious thought, as usual, is a ban
on access to wider distribution through major media infrastucture. In largest
part, and certainly in its 100% unadulterated entirety where the target
audience, the average undiscerning citizen, is concerned, the information
blanket is endless, flawless, immaculate, a commercial holding territory
that is perfectly smooth, dark, monolithic and mute. I just came back in
heavy African rains to my new central city flat after a sad, misguided
attempt to watch CNN, and see whether any genuinely impartial news were
offered. I’m at fault for my disappointment: I knew the results well in
advance having seen in my youth that epic saga so essentially formulaic
to contemporary American political psychology: the Star Wars trilogy¨.
I also remembered, alas, too late, that Ted Turner long ago abolished the
requirements of professional reportage, along with a simple understanding
of good taste, when he married off his agglomerate child to that filthy
but obviously enchanting rake, the profit motive. But I’m begging, please,
even though we’ve seen shameless, compromised, mangled, sadistic journalistic
practices become normalized by the inexorable forces of economic interest,
let us all pause a moment anyway and take full stock of what was shown
me with a leg lifted by the syphilitic bride and an enterprising hand gesture
of welcome made by her procuring groom. By the mercy of all the old pagan
gods I was not exposed to the witheringly smarmy dialogue this special
CNN segment must have offered—the bar where I perched was raucous with
the commonplace mourning howls of dissipating people—but there on the screen,
friends, flashed an image of none other than Tiger Woods, the golfer. Was
this CNN: THE WORLD NEWS REPORT or had I bumbled onto that other definitive
program they produce, CNN: THE WORLD SPORTS REPORT? (It appears the executives
at CNN have centralized their programming into a solitary WORLD feature
that is interchangeably given several WORLD titles, heralded with various
strident symphonic refrains and anchored by a catalogue of plasticine presenters.
This is a sequential and understandably efficient progression considering
how CNN’s broadcasts have oligarchic authority in their WORLD media dominion.)
I should have withdrawn immediately and saved myself the humiliation and
gnashing of teeth that followed, but I’m trying hard to be a warrior and
condition myself to the absolute loss of self-respect, dignity and principle
since the absence of all such virtuous trinkets makes for the modern ethical
fashion standard. There was Tiger in a comfortable, secure, backlit setting,
the majority of which was blurred so that we could, ostensibly, concentrate
on the odd contours of his head and his profound message. It was all vintage
network copy up to this point, friends; I felt myself truly warming, though
I could only hear by imagination. And then came the momentary, flashing
bold legend: “…ON THE SEPTEMBER 11th TRAGEDY”. I could almost make out
the regal blare of trumpets announcing the scroll. And there again was
Tiger with a well-rehearsed philosopher’s demeanor—I guess—fielding what
must have been prepared questions, speaking in what must have been earnest,
twanging, factory made homemade tones about his feelings and insights into
“THE TRAGEDY”. (For some reason the word ‘tragedy’ gazetted again in the
next flashing heading piqued me, though I know well enough that the use
of weighted subjective language is the vanguard policy of contemporary
journalism at the CNN World Ministry of Broadcasting and elsewhere.)
I’m
sure Tiger must have bravely been talking on about how all of the members
of the professional golfing community sympathized with the victims’ families
and a mourning but unified nation; surely he said that he was shocked and
that he just really couldn’t believe it… I don’t think there was a teleprompter
on the set; Tiger looked to be dredging his very bowels and memory for
the storyline words he spoke... And then, whores that they are, the producers
of this sensitive, prime-ream-time snippet ran the now inevitable, trademarked
and licensed, irreproducible without the express written consent of the
AOL Time Warner Corporation series of images of smoking WTC rubble and
courageous firefighters and mascara streaked mourners and flowery memorial
shrines, etc… Though there was no volume because of the drowning bar crowd’s
lament, I knew violins provided warm, sad, ambient threnodies…. And back
again to the opining Tiger, still giving what must have been a mature and
comprehensive analysis of events since he seems now to have joined the
army of punditry CNN has mobilized in order to keep the news of months
ago an ulcerated, 84,600 continuous seconds, tickertape and byte-confetti,
ever-revolving, ratings-bonanza current affair parade. The piece ended
with a flashing heroic image of Tiger hunched and howling in what must
have been a splendid golfing victory, (though he looked somewhat like an
affronted baboon troop leader with his arms outstretched, his mouth opened
to its widest whooping capacity and his canines aggressively displayed).
He was vigorously, almost maniacally shaking a champagne bottle and spurting
the bubbly froth everywhere so that anyone, even without being a neo-feminist
film professor with a background in Freudian theory, could see that he
appeared to be ejaculating a triumphant fountain of V-spunk from the long
turgid bottleneck into the air. As Tiger was, from the prominence of some
millionaires-only country club balcony, raising his frothy laurels for
all below to see and be ritualistically drenched in, we were given the
last cunningly calculated shot in this admirable interview: A sea of hands
held high and waving in slow motion in honor of the great Tigerius who
golfed while Rome was burning. In the hand dead center of the frame was
an American flag, an old Betsy Ross, a stern Stars and Stripes, a bright
Old Glory in touching miniature. Every golf enthusiast around the planet
was given a moment by CNN to show their solidarity with the bereaved; thank
God the media care…. We are all definitely bereaved by world events; few
can disagree on that point, though the reasons for our respective distress
vary. Nevertheless, in spite of such behemoth efforts to own the entirety
of information and distil it into a dumb, completely diluted, pre-packaged
commodity that cashiers our bereavement into solid coin, there are responsible
voices that are able to shrill their way through the acrid smoke in significant
ways for those few listening. The resistant voice to populist media hysteria
consistently raises several largely unheard concurrent objections. An introduction
to dissent is usually made through mention of the fact that the word ‘terrorist’
has been appropriated and used selectively to bafflingly absurd and unchallenged
degrees by politicians and their quislings throughout the Coalition and
the entire world of Big Boy Government. Most free-penning columnists, for
example, will cite to varying degrees of specificity, the United States’
heavy handed acts of what have obviously qualified as ‘terrorism’Q, committed
in almost every country across the world from Vietnam to Nicaragua over
the course of the past fifty years. Another Zambian editorialist for The
Post, the independent reactionary rag, a Mr. Owen Sichone, had the insight
to include the deaths of some twenty million Africans over three centuries
of state sanctioned slavery on that long running list of noticeable American/Old
Coalition terrorist campaigns. I should like to round it out by reminding
the mourning nation that during the innocent founding of our hallowed dove-swept
land, an estimated nine million Native Americans were decimated in a four
century long pogrom that surely old service-people of color like Colon
Power must be able to see resembled—and still resembles if you’ve passed
by a reservation—‘terrorism’ by any definition. We may recall, as we traverse
the festering but well bandaged sepsis of this particular historical gash—that
some of the first instances of biological warfare were registered during
our march to conquest over the bloodthirsty, dirty Red Heathen when government
agents made tribes gifts of smallpox and cholera infected blankets—a poignant
and ironical reflection in light of the appearance of postal anthrax and
the U.S. government’s intransigence in recent summits to negotiate any
charter limiting the conventional use of biological weapons.Y But then
irony aside, perhaps the top brass at what remains of the Pentagon seek
to reserve their bacterial prerogatives so they can melt down the Brown
Be-Turbaned Hordes with a state-of-the-art viral concoction should they
prove to be unruly even after their protracted lessons in being bombed
from above. After the numerous possibilities of American hypocrisy and
authentic state manufactured ‘terrorism’ have been explored—and to do so
sufficiently requires an enormous effort, a lifetime really—a subversive
columnist will modernize the account by mentioning the million plus people
who have died of starvation as a result of sanctions imposed against Iraq
by the United States during Big Daddy Bush’s tenure. The writer will be
hoping all the while that some stray reader who is by outlandish chance
on the strange brink of thinking for himself, will realize that the definition
of the word ‘innocent’« applied to the American people who died on
September 11th, may apply to those once emaciated, now sand-mummified Iraqi
civilians as well. (The writer hopes the grand epiphany will arrive by
the same mysterious means that allowed the reader his realization of the
cross applications of the word “terrorism”—the writer’s is, in a sense,
a semantic faith. The writer hopes that the reader has begun to consider
the fact that America, as a nation, has been directly responsible for the
violent deaths of well over thirty million ‘innocent’ people over the past
three centuries. The writer is hoping for a sum pattern of realization,
as you can see. The writer will persevere in the hope that this reader
somehow paddling blindly away from the tsunami party line roaring out of
the CNN propaganda maelstrom, will realize that the hecatomb of Afghani
civilians—possibly ‘innocent’ people by some radical definitions—that has
been offered up at the snarling, drooling alter of vengeance, should be
enough to satiate popular bloodlust upon reflection. The writer will hope
that this stray lamb of a reader will apprehend that it is distasteful
to drop bombs on unarmed people who confuse them with food relief packages
and afterwards speak of the action as being part of a campaign for infinitely
enduring justice. What more can I say in praise of this infinitely patient
writer? Do you know him/her?) Here now lies the nourishing pith and hope
I’ve had for an iota of nuance in this latest diatribe: The underwritten
complaint of anyone impelled to oppose these recent grim rounds of retributive
madness is quite novel after all: Intelligent people are hurt more than
anything by recent aesthetic inconsistencies. Most thinking people of advanced
years have already understood that actually caring and moaning about a
cretin as foppish as G. Dubya Busch being made president by maneuvering
and default is a wasteful, painful futile engagement. The knowledge that
the vast majority of people have been cursed with wretched undiscerning
minds, and that the curse is compounded by smugness, complacency and inbred
cultural insulation in America, is old, customary and no longer quite so
galling. (Nevertheless, tireless Romantic that I am, I have tried to dream
up a new matrix of confrontational language to remind myself at least of
the wide and dirty underbelly of the grand grotesquerie: I thought of using
terms from the literarily under-tried sense of smell to limn all blunt
and gangling western hypocrisy: something about the bitter ammonia-like
reek of piety and self righteousness exuded from collective pores at the
deaths of three thousand native sons mingling incestuously with the half-mastered,
fecal, flyblown, shit- stink of ignorance and denial of the deaths of many
millions at the hands of native sons and their economic/war policies everywhere
else. But no matter how malodorous and offensive the terms, it was clear
that none of the classical arguments against injustice, raw stupidity and
complacency rendered conveniently into hunger for a profitable vengeance
would ever gain popular edges—even in the widely accessible olfactory realm.
So I disregarded my foolishly unbecoming moment of insanity at seeing the
culturally fascist headline: “How Can The Arab World Be Reformed?” emboldening
the cover of Newspeak magazine and sanitized my besmirched brain with the
hygienic thought that good will soon triumph over evil. And though it may
have been the single greatest display of trumpery ever, I strained to ignore
the Newspeak magazine photo of Georgie Junior standing tall and proudly
atop a hummock of WTC debris, raising high in hand yet another miniature
American flag, a mongoloidÆ smile ornamenting his daft face.) Old
outrage is a careworn tractable demon. No, what offends intelligent people
now is not entirely the unending horror of the situation—which is archaic,
but the new and shocking fact that there is no longer even a minimal attempt
to approach them aesthetically. If in the recent past a vocal citizen in
possession of a few synapses that were not state owned had said that the
electoral process was a ludicrous offensive joke, a rubber-made departmental
spokesman from some nether department would have been deputized to stand
in front of the cameras and make some manner of dim-witted emphatic statement
like, “Rule of law!”. I don’t think anyone capable of it minds that the
press has become a distiller of the cheapest, most loathsome, insinuating
bathos conceivable; capable people have long since resigned themselves
to patience with every corrupt, patently stupid manifestation of the political/information
monarchy and its vast constituency. What is injurious is that the managers
of consolidated power, who used to at least attempt to answer intelligent
objections in kind, have completely ceased in their efforts. Undoubtedly
their understanding of the language needed was only ever poor at best,
and they were just cunning enough to know that they would slightly undermine
themselves if they used it completely, but at least they gave out small
offerings—a crumb-sized aesthetic alternative to the rotten maggoty slop
they feed their undiscerning flock. Now there is no effort whatsoever to
disguise the cheap theatrical aspects of what is prime grade venality in
American politics. Along with its very democratically constituted military
tribunals and x-ray jail pits—civil rights bastions, we should call them—Junior’s
regime, guided by that footnoted, soft-spoken legal genius, John Asscroft,
could found a new chapter of the House Un-American Activities Committee
and simply look icily away while the usual minority protested. The middle-American
population, that greatest horde of mindless chattel history has ever molded
from the blank stuff of pawns, would very likely nicker with approval,
then race to violently extirpate villains like me through municipal hangings,
lethal injections, firing squads, and whatever other means Bushytail can
dream up when he is playing with his toy guillotine. I don’t believe for
an instant that the violence committed against the United States on September
11th can account for what may seem an abandonment by the public of the
too few people interested in small details such as civil liberties and
inalienable human rights: The public—with a single manipulated mind made
costive by endless wonderment about fuel prices, what Oprah suggests for
better living and the perennially whispering presence of a mortgage—was
never really capable of any meaningful sympathy anyway. Now The People’s
immediately available hunger for the wettest, reddest, most cartilage filled
‘revenge’ possible has overrun all misplaced hopes for a loose humanitarian
alliance with thinkers—but of course crusading against the forces of evil
has always been a much more powerful and accessible directive than reasoning
and the mature consideration of actions and consequences, especially to
people who watch The Bold And The Beautiful, a quality TV production where
definitions of good and evil are made so crystalline. Nay, the watery-minded
public was never more than a milling, porous, inadvertent shield to those
who savored the continued evolvement of a Constitutional America. What
I fear now is that the monsters have finally disabused themselves of all
doubts to the contrary and know they no longer even have to pretend at
responding to any contradictions to their agenda. Perhaps the surest sign
of finality to the monsters’ victory is the teratoid tenure of the royal
Bush family. Just consider how Junior, that noisome, pathetic mound of
sheep-dip, on the strength of his family checkbook and absolutely nothing
else, mail-ordered the American throne without even being able to properly
speak English. No further proof is needed of the country’s lapse into the
final deteriorative phases of complacency; when partial mastery of the
official language is not a prerequisite for premier regency, any bozo with
a platinum card can buy a majority share and at last even the intellectually
luckless monsters must know they have won. As an immediately observable
result, the media and our dully-elected representatives are no longer compelled
to offer up anything other than the informational programming content that
yields ratings. And now, after only a few months of the complete (but for
the filigree seams) establishment of a hegemonic information sac, the big
pigs need only mention the word “terrorism” to set their sheep a-bleating,
just as they once used the word “communist” or the name “Jones” towards
the same overwhelming end: Mindlessness. There is clearly no longer any
call for attempting to engage thinking people at the fringes of their own
dialectic aesthetic. Arguments, however weak but once inevitable at the
margins, have been replaced by supremely confident edicts, decrees and
executive fiats. Debate is now a function of where, how much and when.
If CNN has finished its interview about THE TRAGEDY with Elton John, we
might see a square jawed, steely eyed general in his field camouflage,
(an elderly man, mind you, who apparently feels no embarrassment wearing
a uniform); he’ll repeat a few generic military phrases about collateral
damage or strategic air strikes or not being able to answer for reasons
of security—it’s clear he’s much more comfortable smoking Cuban stogies
and strategizing with the boys in the war room than speaking publicly,
but that’s fine because he is stoic and heroic and a fierce old fighter
in the battle of good against evil—and that’s the end of the broadcast.
If CNN is especially hard pressed for any interesting footage of Operation
Bacchanalia in Afghanistan, they set their trademarked film of the big
money towers being destroyed in slow motion on an endless loop accompanied
by weepy tribute music—composed by Elton John, possibly. Joint Operations
Field Commander, General Killum Dade never comes near to answering the
many questions I’ve noted for him mentally during his staged interview,
and tried desperately to send out telepathically, knowing that the CNN
shills won’t pose them. In the ‘opposition’ newspaper we might occasionally
receive a quote through CNN from some public relations maven like Pentagon
Spokesman, Rear Admiral John Stufflebeem saying of our cozy, righteous
little ‘war’, “We’re finding stuff, and we’re attacking that stuff.”ã
The monsters have purified themselves of WHY and its progeny, those old
troublesome questions that once made them grant small concessionary arguments
to our ilk. The all encompassing media table is cleansed of aesthetic crumbs;
state woven propaganda has evolved into its purest, redoubtable form; the
party quotation is unassailable from any angle unless you wish the scalding
Terrorist label be branded onto your worthless hide—and thankfully a very
few speakers don’t mind; there is no longer even any classical political
cant, temporizing or outright lying in a useless attempt to appear savvy—there
is nothing. All of the chips have been collected for the house by the grand
croupier… Earlier I mentioned that there is significance in the un-signaled,
heavily jammed oppositional voice, and I maintain that point despite my
unavoidably desperate and contrary seeming conclusions. When the present,
lusty cannibalistic call for blood abates, as it eventually must, the state,
the Coalition—call it what you will—and its media tentacles may once again
feel compelled to hand thinking people their microscopic portion and return
to infrequent lame attempts at answering their eentsy screams. It would
be seemly if a strong reminding voice were sustained during the ongoing
death opera in Afghanistan and everywhere else abroad. When the public
nods back into its heavily sedated form of consciousness after the executions,
illegal internments, bombings and other mesmerizing entertainments have
ended, a fragment of it may hasten to mumble explanations, however desultorily.
Constancy is an application that simulates the apparently attractive aesthetic
value of permanence; if a protesting voice is consistent throughout these
acts of violent hypocrisy, then the culture of thought that supports it
may theoretically be leveraged into the mildewed brains of those who vaguely
possess the substance that would goad them towards explanations. Imagine
the touching time and Hollywood honored story of transformation—though
in reverse—from the blindly willing murderous patriot into a self-guided
thinker. This theme makes for a simultaneously delicate and blundering
operation; one that history has shown to be almost entirely unsuccessful.
I suppose we are compelled to try… Anyway, we protest because there is
no aesthetic alternative in the realms of morality, intellect, art, what
have you... For the sake of my own liberty, let me end this particular
rant with mention of the last shared point of dissentient thought and rhetoric.
No one who is interested in…aesthetics, life, anything creative…myself
included, supports the method of protest used by the group responsible
for the violence of September 11th, 2001. Indeed, as I’ve mentioned, the
bulk of little wails sounded around the Coalition’s responses to the event
are aimed at the Coalition’s blatantly stilted use of terms and arbitrary
force (hypocrisy), as well as its farcical disregard for the fact that
there were causes to the event that were more involved than “a battle between
good and evil.Ӡ (I could go on and on, as several have before me, and
speculate about the United States’ oilochracy using the occasion to install
a puppet government in a destabilized central Asia in order to consolidate
political and, of course, crude commercial interests in the region. But
American citizens clearly care little about petty issues of political puppetry
abroad if Junior and Uncle Dickie, old petrolcrats both, are to be considered
their ‘highest’ elected officials. And no one is listening anyway.Ã)
Again, the burgeoning outrage is that there is no longer any response to
protest over these issues that are ancient and merely regurgitated into
this contemporary form; it is the ominous silence that is most disturbing.
But remember: having a staunch disregard for a violent hypocritical government
and its unthinking human foundation does not mean a speaker condones the
harm of that September day. I hope whatever readership I may have among
mustachioed, secret security force agents in their standard issue sunglasses
and blue jackets and average Americans just living out their innocent lives
on Cookie Cutter Row, Heartland U.S.A. will fully grasp the seemingly paradoxical
nature of that point. The Taliban, Osama Bin Ladin, and the al’ Qaeda are
only a less muscular, exotically robed, extraordinarily hirsute version
of the Coalition itself. Both organizations are frighteningly brittle intellectually,
extremely hypocritical, dogmatic, bullying, ugly and inflexible, and the
violence done by both sides for whatever poor reasons their press agents
concoct, is contemptible. (For the sake of avoiding pinpoint satellite
surveillance exercises, prolonged detention, interrogation, flaming bamboo
shoots beneath my finger nails and general persecution, let me be explicit
in summary: I am definitely scornful of undiscerning duped populations,
but I do not advocate violence against them. Even if it is repulsive for
me to see the jingoistic, unthinking reactions of my countrymen to the
attacks made upon our sacred precincts, I do not wish anyone dead—and so
I write. When the word ‘tragedy’ is prostituted to my overwrought countrymen
by the pandering press, I do not wish anyone, least of all the executives
and drones of AOL Time Warner, any harm. For a moment I may consider mounting
an educational counter-campaign that would inform my compatriots newly
awakened to the possibility of ‘tragedy’, that millions of people in Africa
and Asia, living on a dollar a day, for lack of resourcesW, yearly die
of preventable and curable diseases like cholera, dysentery and malaria.
This has been a common pattern for decades while the word ‘tragedy’ remained
as unknown to America as the fact. But I never dream of anyone’s destruction.
My misanthropy consists solely of an immaculate, glowing white, molten
hatred of ignorance and its bastard brother, hypocrisy, and is far less
curable than those unattended diseases that ravage the developing world.
But I bear it without wishing ‘evil’ upon anyone. This document is nothing
more than a petition to the brute powers, cartels, syndicates and their
toy presses, asking that a morsel of well-seasoned, aesthetically sound
response to minority intellectual appetites be thrown into the briar patch
from time to time. Then the fanged rabbit will be silent. I promise.) Dedicated
to beautiful saint Mingus with all I haveLJ £ If you have the stomach
for it, try and imagine the teratogenic events that led to Bushytail’s
conception. Big Daddy Bush turns balefully to the ancient canyons of wife
Barabarous; he fantasizes about a newly struck oil gusher so that he can
rise to the occasion; a few seconds much like the love scene in Rosemary’s
baby pass; and now Lil’ Georgie is on course to appear and one day become
the leader of the free world. Shudder… § Endless reference to the
corporate status of major media installations has become songlike, and
only those people who think incessantly realize the implications of it.
Everyone else is completely desensitized to the meaning of such a condition.
I place a marker here for the purpose of conscientiously reminding hyperreaders
that an information distribution agency driven by the mandates of generating
profit may not always produce disinterested results. The executive board
at AOL Time Warner, the media conglomerate that uses CNN as one of its
many prosthetic propaganda limbs, is not comprised of benevolent white
bearded patricians who once entered the field of journalism with the intention
of providing ethical objective coverage of world events. They are hardcore
money pornographers and commercenaries, and assuredly their objectives
affect their objectivity adversely—which would be more tolerable, I suppose,
if Lazy Boy pilots in their doubly mortgaged homes were able to fathom
the fact. ¨ Bush II calling the destruction of the WTC and Pentagon
a “battle between good and evil”—a statement that must have made even the
weakest mind strain for the merest moment—finally confirms a long held
theory of mine: George Lucas is writing speeches for presidents from the
Republican party. He made direct reference to Star Wars through Ronnie
Reagan in the 1980’s, (which was a clever bit of free advertising), reminded
his adoring public of the starry outer space odyssey with Bush I’s classic
phrase, “A thousand points of light,” and is now working his public relations
miracles through Junior. Imagine, an extremely convoluted global, religious,
anthropological, socio-economic, psychological and political history of
events has actually all along just been a simple battle between good and
evil. Junior reassures us that good is thankfully going to triumph—(a news
item which, had it been announced centuries before, I’m sure could have
saved a tragic character like Fyodor Doestoyevsky who, along with other
philosophers throughout the ages, was troubled by the conflict). This promise
may mean Lil’ Bush read ahead into Lucas’s script for the umpteenth final
Star Wars episode, but if box office revenues are reduced because people
guess the nature of the grand finale and skip the show, the profits can
be recouped as long as Hand Solo and George Dubya action figures are still
sold separately at Burger King. (And definitely do not be surprised if
that defense cowboy Big Dumb Donnie Rumsfeld says, “Well hell, we’ll just
use the force!” when a CNN mouthpiece asks how he intends to destroy whatever
stuff he’s been commissioned to destroy. We may also see the marines carrying
light sabers on their death squad, storm trooper missions. Now that we
know the scriptwriter and the outcome, don’t place your money on Darth
Osama.) Q The Houghton Mifflin College Dictionary defines ‘terrorism’ thusly:
‘Systematic use of violence, terror and intimidation to achieve an end.”
Hmm, ‘systematic’? Y Or something like that. Where the hell is a good research
assistant when you need one? « The Houghton Mifflin College Dictionary
defines ‘innocent’ thusly: ‘Uncorrupted by wickedness, malice or wrongdoing:
SINLESS; Not guilty of a given crime: legally blameless: Inexperienced:
naïve; Not exposed to or familiar with something specified: IGNORANT;
Betraying or suggesting no guile: ARTLESS.’ Hmm, to whom do any of these
definitions apply? Æ Written with absolutely no disrespect intended
to Mongoloids. Pejorative journalism requires a slurry of insulting references
for its purposes, but I admit to being squeamish in providing them—only
because they imply an unintended animosity towards the original referee.
I might, for example, have to describe a particularly unsavory character
such as that blighted judiciary twat, John Asscroft, as being ‘weasley’
and go on to describe his pinched little mind and fool’s coxcomb of a forehead
in uncomplimentary ways. This would be purely for effect—I love wise fools
and weasels alike, though I obviously have no affection for the disHon.
John Asscroft with whom I would compare them. Hell, my best friend, J.
Wiesfeld, was often called The Weasel during our high school days. ã
This is an honest to God press clipping. CNN truly has reported this speech
by a real live Admiral Stufflebeem. Do you think I could make something
like this up? † I still can’t completely believe Bushytail’s constant reference
to a political theodicy in his puerile analysis of events. The Public still
seems to be lapping the shit-syrup up like the faithful domestics they
are, as is evidenced by White House Press Secretary Ari Fliescher’s recent
incisive comment, ‘Everybody knows how evil Osama Bin Laden is.’ (Run along
Junior, and get a dictionary. I don’t believe the toddler’s edition daddy
bought you for Christmas is going to suffice for the word ‘theodicy’. You
had better go and consult with Uncle Dickie. He might be able to help you
using the big legal dictionary Kenny Boy gave him as a campaign contribution.)
à Oh ho! There is the dim chance they will! The Enron fable has
been told; the veil has been lifted and for a moment even the dullest American
must have seen how much the reign of Lil’ Bush resembles the inner workings
of an abattoir. We have now fully witnessed the reality of the new economy
and its patriotic trickle down effects. I’ll say there was some trickling
down: first of the brain matter of the former Enron executive, Millionaire
Baxter, who likely was haunted by the ghost of some strange dread he mistook
for conscience and who was perhaps tempted to start squealing because of
it. And then there is the present trickling down of pure shit upon the
heads of those poor innocent patriots who were just working their days
away for a safer, more wholesome Judeo-Christian America, investing their
all-important savings in 401K pension schemes and never doubting the paternal
love and capability of the big boss, Mr. Kenneth Lay. Ho! Ho! Sorry you
busy bees—the executive maggots have stripped the carcass of all its carrion
and there is nothing left to take home and make into superannuation honey.
If you see me on the corner and I have a quarter, you won’t find me unsympathetic…
Meanwhile, for the rest of you who can still rub a few brain cells together
and are looking for ways to avoid this unfortunate situation occurring
at your own factory, concentrate on how it is becoming abundantly clear
that the man Lil’ Bushytail calls ‘Kenny Boy’, was instrumental in helping
Uncle Dickie write up his far from ecologically sound energy policy. Do
you see the kind of people with whom Lil’ Bushytail and Uncle Dickie are
keeping company? Even you can surely realize that such people and their
practices are not ethical and are certainly very unhealthy for good, solid
average patriots such as you are. I advise you to rise up to the degree
you can (elect Ralph Nader for president) and throw these clowns out onto
the shitheap they are making in your front yard. W Why are these poor dark
people living on such limited resources? Have you ever made such a query
with anything other than a moment’s worth of patronizing pity in mind?
The peace loving U.S.A. consumes three quarters of everything single thing
available. If you fail to see how that statistic is directly related to
massive deficiencies elsewhere, everywhere else, I should say, then read
no further. LJ My mother called me yesterday and said that Mingus, my dog
of ten years had been shot dead—gunned down in 2002 in a peaceful nation.
Pardon my drift into the sugary hinterlands of sentimentia but I must eulogize
Mingus in a brief hagiography out of respect for what he taught me and
for concern of what the randomness of his death may mean universally. I
was very shakily learning to take care of myself at university when he
was handed to me, a puppy so round and epicanthic of eye, his donors said
they had given him the interim name Sumo. I was all wrapped up in jazz
and old black American expressions—a vestige of my reggae-sustained adolescence
and an affirmation of my fixation upon the face of the timeless disenfranchised—and
so I named him Mingus as I was reading ‘Beneath the Underdog’, (one of
the best books ever), and because Mingus had a huge broad brown face and
enormous soulful African eyes, just like C. Mingus’s. Also, C. Mingus’s
music is all there and what a good reminder it was to give my companion
his name. In the afterwards, with Mingus to feed and keep well, I became
more responsible—it was a function of caring for something beyond myself.
Many thanks for that teaching, Mingus; I was foundering in that respect
until you helped me. Working in an orifice recently has caused me no end
of random thoughts, and believe it or not, I had the strange flash that
Baby Bush may have shot Mingus as a way of telling me where pejorative
journalism was leading me—he does like going on safari and blasting drugged
lions and elephants that are pushed out of their cages into the jacklights
of his Sports Utility Vehicle. Anyway, Mingus was shot, probably by a neighbor,
and had only enough strength to drag himself to the front stoop and die
there. My father, who has been Mingus’s father during my five years in
Africa, cried and was lost. In the past two days I have since gone through
the usual, implacable imaginative circles of the aggrieved: I tried to
envisage the dispirited fiend who, purporting to clear his land of a dangerous
terrorist trespasser but actually only ever finding delight in spreading
his viral misery to others, pulled the trigger. I didn’t try, as I think
is often best, to forgive him his dark condition and the imposition of
his wrecked life into mine—I called down all of the oldest curses onto
his benighted scurfy head and wished him Godspeed on his way to the grand
reconstitution. I could not help but hear clearly in my imagination the
surprised and outrageously pained death howl Mingus must have made when
the bullet crashed through him. Childless as I am, I have only had my affection—my
love of the kind that would make me more responsible—for Mingus to compare
with what I assume is the feeling of parenthood. I believe that one of
the common reflexes for people who carry around the arbitrary assassination
of someone or something they care about, is to try and assuage themselves
with commendations of how much worse it could have been. This is a strange
reaction to distress because it is not immediately useful and in fact counters
immediate relief. I thought very poignantly, very agitatedly, about the
people by their thousands in Afghanistan who, because of the U.S.’s war
to wage terror, were picking through rubble pulling the glassy broken limbs
of their family members from it while I sat in my sad chair. What did they
have to compare their anguish to, and how would they assign blame, another
reflex of grief? I wondered if those people who had done similarly in New
York in September knew of these doppelgangers of theirs who were unfortunate
enough to live along the rout of a proposed pipeline for the vast central
Asian oil fields. Did the people in New York accept Georgie Porgy’s declaration
that these people were evil? Were they made satisfied by the prospect that
a ‘proportionate’ number of Afghani ‘innocents’ was being murdered? Would
I, by the same token, like to see the abomination that shot Mingus for
a moment’s pleasure, picking through the charred rubble of his incinerated
home in search of his family’s vaporized smoldering remains. I had no good
answers; happily I had salvaged an open ecumenical moment from the murder
of my beautiful dog. I love you Mingus. The Aspiring Pejorative Journalist’s
Exercise Sheet and Primer Supplement: (Directions: This section has been
added so that those of you who have read this essaying poem and enjoyed
its new approach to methods of revitalizing very important content, can
have a chance to practice writing pejorative journalism in a safe and guided
setting. Remember as you proceed that the fundamental intention of this
writing form is to expose events and characters that are less than polite.
There is no room for niceties in world politics and so there can be none
in pejorative journalism. Remember too that the very word pejorative implies
language that degenerates until in fact it denigrates meaning and context.
It is disparaging language for disparaging events and should, if practiced
with courage and commitment, end in obscenities and slander. When you have
finished with the exercises set out below, be sure to send your answer
sheet back to the Pejorative Journalism Poetry Theatre’s stage manager,
Mr. Erwin Hosenslorcher, by using the mailing address at the top of this
document. He will vet your work and provide you with the quality feedback
you’ll need as you launch your career in the exciting burgeoning field
of pejorative journalism.) 1. ex. conventional journalism excerpt: “Last
Tuesday, during his first State of the Union address, Bush labeled North
Korea, along with Iran, Iraq and their ‘terrorist allies,’ part of an ‘axis
of evil’ which he says ‘threatens the peace of the world’”. -CNN 2. ex.
pejorative journalism (mild): Last Tuesday, during his Hoodwink The Dolts
address, Bush outdid himself in the realm of speaking stupidly. 3. ex.
pejorative journalism (one star): Last Tuesday, while spouting propaganda
during his Shit on the World address, that insane fool, Lil’ Georgie Bushytail
exposed himself once more as being unbelievably stupid. 4. ex. pejorative
journalism (spicy): That fucking delirious, pitiful moron, Lil’ Georgie
Bushytail, while spewing pure shit from his yellow sphincter of a mouth,
uncontestedly won for himself the coveted prize of Stupidest Asshole in
the Universe ----------------------------- Brownfeld: Zionism and Anti-Semitism
by . 4:55pm Tue Mar 12 '02 (Modified on 6:54pm Tue Mar 12 '02) . (Anm.
Allan C. Brownfeld ist Mitherausgeber der Lincoln Review, und Herausgeber
von Issues, dem vierteljährlichen Journal des American Council for
Judaism) Zionism and Anti-Semitism: A Strange Alliance Through History
by Allan C. Brownfeld [The Washington Report On Middle East Affairs, July/August
1998, pp. 48 50] IT HAS, for many years, been a tactic of those who seek
to silence open debate and discussion of U.S. Middle East policy to accuse
critics of Israel of "anti-Semitism." In a widely discussed article entitled
"J'Accuse" (Commentary, September 1983), Norman Podhoretz charged America's
leading journalists, newspapers and television networks with "anti Semitism"
because of their reporting of the war in Lebanon and their criticism of
Israel's conduct. Among those so accused were Anthony Lewis of The New
York Times, Nicholas von Hoffman, Joseph Harsch of The Christian Science
Monitor, Rowland Evans, Robert Novak, Mary McGrory, Richard Cohen and Alfred
Friendly of The Washington Post, and a host of others. These individuals
and their news organizations were not criticized for bad reporting or poor
journalistic standards; instead, they were the subject of the charge of
anti-Semitism. Podhoretz declared: "...the beginning of wisdom in thinking
about this issue is to recognize that the vilification of Israel is the
phenomenon to be addressed, not the Israeli behavior that provoked it...We
are dealing here with an eruption of anti Semitism." To understand Norman
Podhoretz and others who have engaged in such charges, we must recognize
that the term "anti Semitism" has undergone major transformation. Until
recently, those guilty of this offense were widely understood to be those
who irrationally disliked Jews and Judaism. Today, however, the term is
used in a far different way--one which threatens not only free speech but
also threatens to trivialize anti-Semitism itself. Anti-Semitism has been
redefined to mean anything that opposes the policies and interests of Israel.
The beginning of this redefinition may be said to date, in part, from the
1974 publication of the book The New Anti-Semitism by Arnold Forster and
Benjamin R. Epstein, leaders of the Anti-Defamation League of B'Nai B'rith.
The nature of the "new" anti-Semitism, according to Forster and Epstein,
is not necessarily hostility toward Jews as Jews, or toward Judaism, but,
instead a critical attitude toward Israel and its policies. Later, Nathan
Perlmutter, when he was director of the Anti-Defamation League, stated
that, "There has been a transformation of American anti-Semitism in recent
times. The crude anti-Jewish bigotry once so commonplace in this country
is today gauche...Poll after poll indicates that Jews are one of America's
most highly regarded groups." SEMITICALLY NEUTRAL POSTURES Perlmutter,
however, refused to declare victory over such bigotry. Instead, he redefined
it. He declared: "The search for peace in the Middle East is littered with
mine fields for Jewish interests...Jewish concerns that are confronted
by the Semitically neutral postures of those who believe that if only Israel
would yield this or that, the Middle East would become tranquil and the
West's highway to its strategic interests and profits in the Persian Gulf
would be secure. But at what cost to Israel's security? Israel's security,
plainly said, means more to Jews today than their standing in the opinion
polls..." What Perlmutter did was to substitute the term"Jewish interests"
for what are, in reality, "Israeli interests." By changing the terms of
the debate, he created a situation in which anyone who is critical of Israel
becomes, ipso facto, "anti-Semitic." The tactic of using the term "anti-Semitism"
as a weapon against dissenters is not new. Dorothy Thompson, the distinguished
journalist who was one of the earliest enemies of Nazism, found herself
criticizing the policies of Israel shortly after its creation. Despite
her valiant crusade against Hitler, she, too, was subject to the charge
of "anti-Semitism." In a letter to The Jewish Newsletter (April 6, 1951)
she wrote: "Really, I think continued emphasis should be put upon the extreme
damage to the Jewish community of branding people like myself as anti-Semitic...The
State of Israel has got to learn to live in the same atmosphere of free
criticism which every other state in the world must endure...There are
many subjects on which writers in this country are, because of these pressures,
becoming craven and mealy-mouthed. But people don't like to be craven and
mealy-mouthed; every time one yields to such pressure one is filled with
self-contempt and this self-contempt works itself out in a resentment of
those who caused it." A quarter-century later, columnist Carl Rowan (Washington
Star, Feb. 5, 1975) reported: "When I wrote my recent column about what
I perceive to be a subtle erosion of support for Israel in this town, I
was under no illusion as to what the reaction would be. I was prepared
for a barrage of letters to me and newspapers carrying my column accusing
me of being 'anti-Semitic'...The mail rolling in has met my worst expectations...This
whining baseless name-calling is a certain way to turn friends into enemies."
What few Americans understand is that there has been a long historical
alliance--from the end of the 19th century until today- between Zionism
and real anti-Semites--from those who planned pogroms in Czarist Russia
to Nazi Germany itself. The reason for the affinity many Zionist leaders
felt for anti-Semites becomes clear as this history emerges. When Theodor
Herzl, the founder of modern political Zionism, served in Paris as a correspondent
for a Vienna newspaper, he was in close contact with the leading anti-Semites
of the day. In his biography of Herzl, The Labyrinth of Exile, Ernst Pawel
reports that those who financed and edited La Libre Parole, a weekly dedicated
"to the defense of Catholic France against atheists, republicans, Free
Masons and Jews," invited Herzl to their homes on a regular basis. Alluding
to such conservatives and their publications, Pawel writes that Herzl "found
himself captivated" by these men and their ideas: "La France Juive struck
him as a brilliant performance and--much like Duhring's notorious Jewish
Question 10 years later--it aroused powerful and contradictory emotions...On
June 12, 1895, while in the midst of working on Der Judenstaat, [Herzl]
noted in his diary , 'much of my current conceptual freedom I owe to [Edouard]
Drumont, because he is an artist.' The compliment seems extravagant, but
Drumont repaid it the following year with a glowing review of Herzl's book
La Parole Libre." In the end, Pawel argues, "Paris changed Herzl, and French
anti-Semites undermined the ironic complacency of the Jewish would-be non-Jew."
Yet Herzl was not entirely displeased with anti Semitism. In a private
letter to Moritz Benedikt, written in the final days of 1892, he writes:
"I do not consider the anti-Semitic movement altogether harmful. It will
inhibit the ostentatious flaunting of conspicuous wealth, curb the unscrupulous
behavior of Jewish financiers, and contribute in many ways to the education
of the Jews...In that respect we seem to be in agreement." Herzl's book
Der Judenstaat, was widely disparaged by the leading Jews of the day, who
viewed themselves as French, German, English or Austrian citizens and Jews
by religion--with no interest in a separate Jewish state. Anti-Semites,
on the other hand, eagerly greeted Herzl's work. Herzl's arguments, Pawel
points out, were "all but indistinguishable from those used by the anti-Semites."
One of the first reviews appeared in the Westungarischer Grenzbote, an
anti-Semitic journal published in Bratislava by Ivan von Simonyi, a member
of the Hungarian Diet. He praised both the book and Herzl and was so carried
away with his enthusiasm that he paid Herzl a personal visit. Herzl wrote
in his diary: "My weird follower, the Bratislava anti-Semite Ivan von Simonyi
came to see me. A hypermercurial, hyperloquacious sexagenarian with an
uncanny sympathy for the Jews. Swings back and forth between perfectly
rational talk and utter nonsense, believes in the blood libel and at the
same time comes up with the most sensible modern ideas. Loves me." After
the barbaric Kishinev pogrom of April 1901, when hundreds of Jews were
killed or wounded, Herzl came to Russia to barter with V.K. Plehve, the
Russian interior minister who had incited the pogrom. Herzl told Jewish
cultural leader Chaim Zhitlovsky: "I have an absolutely binding promise
from Plehve that he will procure a charter for Palestine for us in 15 years
at the outside. There is one condition, however, the revolutionaries must
stop their struggle against the Russian government." Zhitlovsky, incensed
at Herzl for dealing with a killer of Jews, and aware that Herzl had been
outsmarted, persuaded him to abandon the idea. Still, the Zionist leaders
in Russia agreed with the government that the real responsibility for the
pogroms rested with the Jewish Bund, a socialist group urging democratic
reforms in the Czarist regime. Zionists wanted Jews to remain aloof from
Russian politics until it was time to leave for Palestine. The head of
the secret police in Moscow, S.V. Zubatov, was sympathetic to Zionism as
a way to silence Jewish opponents of the repressive Czarist regime. In
her book The Fate of the Jews, Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht reports that,
"Zionism appealed greatly to police chief Zubatov, as it does to all anti-Semites,
because it takes the Jewish problem elsewhere. Both Zubatov and the Zionists
wanted to destroy the Bund, Zubatov to protect his country, and the Zionists
to protect theirs. Zionism's success is based on a Jewish misery index;
the greater the misery, the greater the wish to emigrate. The last thing
the Zionists wanted was to improve conditions in Russia. Zionists served
Zubatov as police spies and subverters of the Bund..." In his book Jewish
History, Jewish Religion, Israel Shahak points out that, "Close relations
have always existed between Zionists and anti-Semites; exactly like some
of the European conservatives, the Zionists thought they could ignore the
'demonic' character of anti-Semitism and use the anti-Semites for their
own purposes...Herzl allied himself with the notorious Count von Plehve,
the anti-Semitic minister of Tsar Nicholas II; Jabotinsky made a pact with
Petlyura, the reactionary Ukrainian leader whose forces massacred some
100,000 Jews in 1918-1921...Perhaps the most shocking example of this type
is the delight with which Zionist leaders in Germany welcomed Hitler's
rise to power, because they shared his belief in the primacy of 'race'
and his hostility to the assimilation of Jews among 'Aryans.' They congratulated
Hitler on his triumph over the common enemy--the forces of liberalism."
Dr. Joachim Prinz, a German Zionist rabbi who subsequently emigrated to
the U.S., where he became vice-chairman of the World Jewish Congress and
a leader in the World Zionist Organization, published in 1934 a book Wir
Juden (We Jews) to celebrate Hitler's so called German Revolution and the
defeat of liberalism. He wrote: "The meaning of the German Revolution for
the German nation will eventually be clear to those who have created it
and formed its image. Its meaning for us must be set forth there: the fortunes
of liberalism are lost. The only form of political life which has helped
Jewish assimilation is sunk." The victory of Nazism ruled out assimilation
and inter-religious marriage as an option for Jews. "We are not unhappy
about this," said Dr. Prinz. In the fact that Jews were being forced to
identify themselves as Jews, he saw "the fulfillment of our desires." Further,
he states, "We want assimilation to be replaced by a new law: the declaration
of belonging to the Jewish nation and the Jewish race. A state built upon
the principle of the purity of nation and race can only be honored and
respected by a Jew who declares his belonging to his own kind. Having so
declared himself, he will never be capable of faulty loyalty towards a
state. The state cannot want other Jews but such as declare themselves
as belonging to their nation..." Dr. Shahak compares Prinz's early sympathy
for Nazis with that of many who have embraced the Zionist vision, not fully
understanding the possible implications: "Of course, Dr. Prinz, like many
other early sympathizers and allies of Nazism, did not realize where that
movement was leading..." Still, as late as January 1941, the Zionist group
LEHI, one of whose leaders, Yitzhak Shamir, was later to become a prime
minister of Israel, approached the Nazis, using the name of its parent
organization, the Irgun (NMO). The naval attache in the German embassy
in Turkey transmitted the LEHI proposal to his superiors in Germany. It
read in part: "It is often stated in the speeches and utterances of the
leading statesmen of National Socialist Germany that a New Order in Europe
requires as a prerequisite the radical solution of the Jewish question
through evacuation. The evacuation of the Jewish masses from Europe is
a precondition for solving the Jewish question. This can only be made possible
and complete through the settlement of these masses in the home of the
Jewish people, Palestine, and through the establishment of a Jewish state
in its historic boundaries." It continues to state that, "The NMO...is
well acquainted with the good will of the German Reich Government and its
authorities towards Zionist activity inside Germany and towards Zionist
emigration plans" and states that, "The establishment of the historical
Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis and bound by a treaty
with the German Reich would be in the interests of strengthening the future
German position of power in the Near East...The NMO in Palestine offers
to take an active part in the war on Germany's side...The cooperation of
the Israeli freedom movement would also be in line with one of the recent
speeches of the German Reichs Chancellor, in which Herr Hitler stressed
that any combination and any alliance would be entered into in order to
isolate England and defeat it." The Nazis rejected this proposal for an
alliance because, it is reported, they considered Lehi's military power
"negligible." Rabbi David J. Goldberg, in his book To the Promised Land:
A History of Zionist Thought, discusses the life and thought of the leader
of Zionist revisionism, Vladimir Jabotinsky, who was the great influence
upon the life of Menachem Begin. "The basic tenets of Jabotinsky's political
philosophy," writes Goldberg, "are subservience to the overriding concept
of the homeland: loyalty to a charismatic leader, and the subordination
of the class conflict to national goals. It irked Jabotinsky when, over
20 years later, he was accused of imitating Mussolini and Hitler. His irritation
was justified: he had anticipated them...Given that for Jabotinsky echoing
Garibaldi 'there is no value in the world higher than the nation and the
fatherland,' it is not altogether surprising that he should have recommended
an alliance with an anti-Semitic Ukrainian nationalist. In 1911, in an
essay entitled 'Schevenko's Jubilee,' he had praised the xenophobic Ukrainian
poet for his nationalist spirit, despite 'explosions of wild fury against
the Poles, the Jews and other neighbors,' and for proving that the Ukrainian
soul has a 'talent for independent cultural creativity, reaching into the
highest and most sublime sphere." In a review of the book In Memory's Kitchen:
A Legacy From The Women of Terezen, Lore Dickstein, writing in The New
York Times Book Review, notes that, "Anny Stern was one of the lucky ones.
In 1939, after months of hassle with the Nazi bureaucracy, the occupying
German army at her heels, she fled Czechoslovakia with her young son and
emigrated to Palestine. At the time of Anny's departure, Nazi policy encouraged
emigration. 'Are you a Zionist?' Adolph Eichmann, Hitler's specialist on
Jewish affairs, asked her. 'Ja wohl,' she replied. 'Good,' he said, 'I
am a Zionist too. I want every Jew to leave for Palestine.'" The point
has been made by many commentators that Zionism has a close relationship
with Nazism. Both ideologies think of Jews in an ethnic and nationalistic
manner. In fact, Nazi theoretician Alfred Rosenberg frequently quoted from
Zionist writers to prove his thesis that Jews could not be Germans. In
his study, The Meaning of Jewish History, Rabbi Jacob Agus provides this
assessment: "In its extreme formulation, political Zionists agreed with
resurgent anti-Semitism in the following propositions: That the emancipation
of the Jews in Europe was a mistake. That the Jews can function in the
lands of Europe only as a disruptive influence. That all Jews of the world
were one 'folk' in spite of their diverse political allegiances. That all
Jews, unlike other peoples of Europe, were unique and unintegratible. That
anti-Semitism was the natural expression of the folk-feeling of European
nations, hence, ineradicable." Nazi theoretician Rosenberg, who was executed
as a result of his conviction for war crimes at the Nuremberg trials, declared
under direct examination: "I studied Jewish literature and historians themselves.
It seemed to me after an epoch of generous emancipation in the course of
national movements of the 19th century, an important part of the Jewish
nation found its way back to its own tradition and nature, and more and
more consciously segregated itself from other nations. It was a problem
which was discussed at many international congresses, and Buber, in particular,
one of the spiritual leaders of European Jewry, declared that the Jews
should return to the soil of Asia, for only there could the roots of Jewish
blood and Jewish national character be found." Feyenwald, the Nazi, in
1941 reprinted the following statement by Simon Dubnow, a Zionist historian
and author: "Assimilation is common treason against the banner and ideals
of the Jewish people...One can never 'become' a member of a national group,
such as a family, tribe or a nation. One may attain rights and privileges
of citizenship with a foreign nation, but one cannot appropriate for himself
its nationality too. To be sure the emancipated Jew in France calls himself
a Frenchman of the Jewish faith. Would that, however, mean that he became
part of the French nation, confessing to the Jewish faith? Not at all...A
Jew...even if he happened to be born in France and still lives there, in
spite of these, he remains a member of the Jewish nation." Zionists have
repeatedly stressed--and continue to do so--that, from their viewpoint,
Jews are in "exile" outside of the "Jewish state." Jacob Klatzkin, a leading
Zionist writer, declared: "We are simply aliens, we are foreign people
in your midst, and we emphasize, we wish to stay that way." This Zionist
perspective has been a minority view among Jews from the time of its formulation
until today. When the term "anti-Semitism" is casually used to silence
those who are critical of the government of Israel and its policies, it
should be noted that Zionism's history of alliance with real anti-Semitism
has been long-standing and this has been so precisely because Zionism and
anti-Semitism share a view of Jews which the vast majority of Jews in the
United States and elsewhere in the world have always rejected. This rarely
discussed chapter of history deserves study, for it illuminates many truths
relevant to the continuing debate, both with regard to Middle East policy
and the real nature of Jews and Judaism. [ Allan C. Brownfeld is a syndicated
columnist and associate editor of the Lincoln Review, a journal published
by the Lincoln Institute for Research and Education, and editor of Issues,
the quarterly journal of the American Council for Judaism.] -------------
Interessanter Text--Nicht zensurieren by xxx 5:03pm Tue Mar 12 '02 Wenn
hier zensuriert wird, dann möchte ich das am Text argumentiert haben!
------------------ God bless Allan C. Brownfeld by Latuff 5:34pm Tue Mar
12 '02 latuff@uninet.com.br Straight to the point article...excellent!
www.sinkers.org/latuff ------------- Nix Neues by saul 6:54pm Tue Mar 12
'02 Eine pseudorenommierte Adresse ist noch kein Argument. Die alte Leier,
es ist doch kein Antisemitismus die Politik Israels zu kritisieren. Und
überhaupt, die Zionisten waren doch nur ne Minderheit. Was soll das
beweisen? War mal gängige Argumentation in der Linken, mittlerweile
denken etliche anders darüber, zumal die Verbreitung der original
antisemitischen Ideologie (mitsamt Zubehör wie der Protokolle) im
arabischen Raum nicht mehr zu übersehen ist. Die Zustimmung unseres
kleinen Arschlochs Latuff wundert mich nicht. Mahlzeit!
BATTLE FOR PALESTINE
- March 9, 2002 By Israel Shamir I The main road of Palestinian Highlands
from Nablus to Jerusalem runs through Wadi Haramiyeh, a narrow defile in
the Samaria Mountains. From time to time, its olive-grown walls recede
and leave space for a village, tiny En Sinya, a neat and charming cluster
of spacious homes, or splendid Sinjil, preserving the name of Raymond de
Saint-Gilles, the Count of Toulouse, its liege lord and Crusader. This
is the heartland of Palestine, where every stone keeps memories of old
battles and skirmishes. I love this area: in Sinjil, I was taken for a
foreign-born son of local folks who immigrated to America in the 1940s.
In En Sinya, an old peasant told me of his friend Moshe Sharet, a Palestinian
Jew and an Israeli minister of state, who was brought up in the village,
years before the Zionist segregation. I drank water from the small spring
of En al-Haramiyeh, guarded by a ruined Ottoman Khan, while another ruin,
King Baldwin’s Tower, watches the southern entrance of the defile. Its
relief makes it a likely place for brigands’ ambush, and indeed ‘Wadi Haramiyeh’
means just that, the Valley of Brigands. On March 3, a Palestinian Rob
Roy armed with an old, WWII – vintage carbine, succeeded to lay low the
whole troop of heavily armed Jews. One after another, he shot the soldiers,
and their officers, and escaped unharmed. In one stroke, he erased the
overblown myth of Israeli military valiance. Never again the supporters
of Israel will sneer at Arab courage, never again they will tell stories
of shoes dropped in Sinai and Six Day War. He repeated the feat of Karameh
and returned the honour to Palestinians. He also provided a healthy alternative
to the morbid attraction of suicide bombers, and not too early. For a long
time I wanted to persuade my Palestinian brothers and sisters to desist
from this madness, but I loathed to be seen as an ideological tool of Zionism.
I understand the motives of the shaheeds, I salute their courage, but I
deeply regret their deeds. They are counterproductive, inefficient, and
blind. I am certain[i] that some suicide cells are thoroughly infiltrated
by Israeli counter-intelligence: too often they explode in wrong places,
in wrong time, against wrong aims. Their deeds are used by Israeli propaganda
to its full value. Their death is a terrible loss for the mankind. They
sacrifice themselves as the son of Abraham brought himself to be sacrificed,
but God replaced his sacrifice with a ram. The marksman offered a different
route to glory, one that does not lead through the Valley of Death. The
full story of the Battle at Haramiyeh Pass should be sung by bards, and
taught by guerrilla fighters over the world. One against ten, the Lone
Ranger hit the most hated symbol of Jewish rule in Palestine, a checkpost,
where bored, overfed, sadistic Israeli soldiers daily humiliated, beat
and often murdered local people. Just a day before the battle, the soldiers
committed probably the most revolting and cowardly act of cruelty. A Palestinian
woman on her way to give birth came to the checkpost, accompanied by her
husband. The soldiers let her through and then opened fire. Her husband
was killed; the pregnant woman was wounded and gave birth in the hospital.
The soldiers were not reprimanded, but the Army ‘expressed regrets’ to
the survivors. Israeli Army’s main concern is to keep the local population
vulnerable and unable to defend itself. Soldiers got used to kill unarmed
civilians. Their preferred victims are children; the weapon of choice is
a long range high velocity sharp-shooter rifle. Their idea of entertainment
was witnessed by an expert on ‘the dark side of the [Israel Defence] Force’,
the chief of New York Times Middle East bureau, Chris Hedges: they pour
abuse at children of the refugee camp and shot and maim them as they approach
the deadly trap[ii]. Still, the shooting of the pregnant woman was a deed
as fateful as the Biblical slaughter of the Levite’s concubine. The Lord
God of Palestine noticed the plight of His sons. The evil deeds of Zionist
soldiers had to be punished. The curse promised by Lord to the misbehaving
children of Israel (Deut. 28) fell on their heads. Whatever will be discovered
by the military commission of enquiry, this is the most likely explanation
of the event. He Who gave victory to young shepherd David against Goliath,
granted victory to the lone warrior in Wadi Haramiyeh. The surprise attack
on the checkpost dealt a deadly blow to the psychotic Israeli superiority
complex. Cowards and sadists are unable to cope with a defeat, they respond
by homicidal rage. That is why the Army began an all-out assault on Palestinian
towns and villages. As I write, soldiers shoot at ambulances that try to
remove wounded. The US jets with Israeli pilots bomb the school for blind
in Gaza. Crack troops of Golani division accompanied by tanks storm the
Tul Karem refugee camps. They plan to repeat the massacre of Sabra and
Shatila, the previous feat of General Sharon. As a manual, they use the
Waffen-SS commander’s memoir of reducing the Warsaw ghetto. They are excited
by extremely low casualties of Wermacht in 1943, and hope to repeat their
feat while crushing the Palestinians[iii]. Sharon surpassed Hitler: the
German dictator carefully avoided giving the orders to kill Jews, the Jewish
ruler unabashedly called to kill the Goyiim on the TV in prime time. While
many Germans were disgusted by the Nazis and crossed the lines, and served
in the Allied armies against the Third Reich, the Jews still hesitate to
break the bond of false loyalty to their Third Malkuth. Israelis of conscience
refuse to participate directly in the ethnic cleansing. It is very good
but it is not enough. We should follow the example of Ernst Thaelmann and
Joe Slovo, cross the lines, and join the Palestinian fighters on the barricades
of Gaza and Tul Karem. In the British newspaper, the Guardian[iv], Jonathan
Freedland called the Israeli protesters, ‘heroes’. I reserve this title
for the marksman from the Brigands’ Defile. II Sometime ago I described
the war in Palestine as a ‘creeping genocide’. Now this process speeds
up. I doubt it could be different, as the Jewish paradigm of necessity
causes genocide and transfer of population. Whenever this paradigm raises,
genocide and transfer follows. The predominantly Jewish governments of
post-war Poland and Czechoslovakia carried out genocidal transfers of ethnic
German groups in 1945. Heavily Jewish government of revolutionary Hungary
in 1919 massacred its opponents on a huge scale. Jews were prominent in
Ataturk’s government when the Greeks were massacred in Smyrna. This paradigm
does not need ethnic Jews: Nazi Germany applied its racist ideas against
Jews by using the Judaic paradigm of racial purity and superiority. There
is a difference: since 1945, Germans atone for committed atrocities. Their
remorse broke their will. But there is little remorse among the Jews for
the transfers and massacres. John Sack, an American Jewish writer, described
Jewish participation in the post-1945 atrocities in his book An Eye for
an Eye. This publication could become a beginning of a catharsis, of a
deep regret and remorse. Instead, the book was banned and Sack became a
non-person. Strange behaviour of Benny Morris, the Israeli ‘New Historian’,
bewildered many friends: how come the man who described the Palestinian
Holocaust of 1948, al- Naqbah, became a spokesman against the Palestinian
cause? There was no reason to wonder: killing and transferring the Gentiles
is not a cause to regret according to the Jewish paradigm of superiority.
It is not strange that this archaic paradigm became so prominent in the
Jewish state. A few days ago, Israeli TV carried out a lively discussion
on advantages of transfer. Not everybody supported the notion, but the
transfer supporters were not ostracised. They sat and called for mass murder
and expulsion with smug smiles, citing the previous transfers as a proof
of their legitimacy. The most frightening piece of today’s news was the
news as broadcasted by Israel and slavishly repeated by CNN and Jewish-owned
media elsewhere. The leading item referred to death of an Israeli sergeant,
followed by a casual mentioning of fifty killed Palestinians. How can it
be? Israelis are not too bad, nor are other Jews. Even Sharon looks like
a huggable teddy bear, said General Zinni. How our basically nice folk
are able to commit horrible crimes and still remain rather nice? This paradox
is rooted in an artificial chasm between a Jew and a non-Jew in the Jewish
mind. In the chain of ‘Jew – Gentile – animal’ the difference between the
first two items is much bigger than the difference between the second and
third, postulated Taniya, a compendium of traditional Jewish teaching.
This notion sits in the subconscious levels of many Jews, good and bad
alike. While evil Jews of Sharon’s kin slaughter Gentiles without slightest
remorse, many good Jews object to Sharon’s actions as they would object
to cruel treatment of animals. Actually, on the walls of Tel Aviv houses
there are more posters protesting inhuman feeding of geese than deploring
mass murder of Goyiim. Talmud preaches compassion to animals, as we can
learn from the following fable. A sheep on the way to the butcher tried
to find a refuge with the Rabbi Judah the Prince, but he said that it is
normal for a sheep to be slaughtered. As he had no mercy for the sheep,
God withdrew his mercy from him, and the holy Rabbi suffered for many years
of kidney disease. Years later he prevented killing of wasps, and this
sign of compassion made God to reverse His judgment. But there is a profound
lack of compassion towards non- Jews. They are frequently compared to animals,
but while there is a duty to save an endangered animal, there is no obligation
to save a Gentile. This paradox of compassion to animals and lack of feeling
towards Gentiles causes many abnormalities of Jewish outlook. Despite good
feeling towards animals, people do not hesitate to sell them, slaughter
them, separate them and move them whenever it is deemed necessary. We do
not consider it a sin or an objectionable behaviour. Lady Macbeth lost
her sleep because of the shed blood, but a person with a traditional Jewish
outlook would not feel bad at all. He would remain his cheerful self, after
killing Palestinian peasants in Kafr Kassem in 1956, or Egyptian POWs in
1967, or indeed, Russian and Hungarian gentry in 1920, Germans and Poles
in 1945, Iraqis and Afghanis in 2002. Such a person would not leave an
impression of homicidal mania, because he would consider himself a perfectly
sound man. I have met many professional killers and torturers in Israel,
and none of them have experienced pangs of conscience. An old judge of
the High Court, Moshe Landoi, permitted ‘moderate’ torture of detained
Goyiim, but their cries did not disturb his sleep. He is still honoured
by his colleagues and the media. In an interview, a Shabak official Ehud
Yatom boasted he smashed a Palestinian prisoner’s head with a stone[v].
He could not comprehend why somebody would find it objectionable, and as
a matter of fact, when his carrier suffered a minor setback, he was supported
by many MPs and by Israeli public. This deep conviction in one’s own righteousness
makes us Jews so unusual. It also makes the job of good Jews more difficult.
We do not cause enough annoyance. Jewish Nazis are quite tolerant towards
Jewish liberals: the parties have a strained but comfortable relationship
of a hunter and vegetarian, not a hunter and a hunted one. Rare Jewish
radicals found on the al-Awdah and suchlike groups break the complacent
mould when they reject the very idea of a Jewish state and of the eternal
People of Israel. The peculiar feeling towards a non-Jew is manifested
in the Jewish endogamy, tradition of marriage within the creed. In Talmud,
marriage to a Gentile equals bestiality. Even in 20th century, the Jewish
writer Sholom Aleichem describes his good Jew, Tevie the Milkman (the Fiddler
on the Roof), doing full mourning rites for his daughter who have been
married to a Gentile. Just last year, Mortimer Zuckerman, the owner of
many American newspapers, divorced his Gentile wife in order to be elevated
to the top of the US Jewish community. Jews, who married outside the creed
usually break with the organised Jewry, part with racism and join the human
race. Children of mixed marriages are often misled as to their status vis-à-vis
the Jewish community. Whatever they are being told by their well-meaning
parents, they are often considered as impure bastards and unfit for important
positions in the community. The community will use them, abuse them and
discard them. This pattern is seen in Israel, where the children of mixed
marriages serve in the army but are buried outside the fence if they die
for the Jewish state. It would be better for them, while having a moderate
interest in their origin, to throw their lot with the folks that will accept
them fully. The present rise of the Jewish paradigm is not the first one.
It is similar to Freddy of the Elm Street Horror movie: whenever this concept
materializes, it causes genocide. Biblical total genocide of Joshua served
as a model for genocidal Hasmoneans, mass murders of Bar Kochba led to
slaughter of gentiles in Yemen and Palestine, Cyprus and Alexandria. They
were exceeded by large scale genocide practiced by the Jewish rulers of
Khazaria. The genocide of Palestinians will not be forgotten and it will
cause the genocide of Jews. That is why I believe the bloodthirsty spectre
of a Jewish state should be laid to rest. We can offer a differing paradigm,
that of equality. After all, the real chasm is not between the Arab and
the Jew; it is between ZioNazis and the rest of us. Present Israeli leaders
committed horrible war crimes and lost the last vestige of their legitimacy.
There is an urgent need to establish a new legitimate leadership for the
whole of Palestine, following the example of South African ANC, a leadership
comprising all religious and ethnic communities of Palestine, a leadership
that will call the citizens to take arms against the bloody dictator Sharon.
---------------- -------- [i] See my article Doubt and Certainty [ii] It
was published in Harpers Magazine, October 2001, http://www.harpers.org/online/gaza_diary/?pg=1
[iii] Haaretz 27.1.02 [iv] Guardian 6.3.02 [v] Shin Bet Murders JOHN DANISZEWSKI,
Confession of a Killing in Cold Blood Chills Israel; Mideast: The embattled
Shin Bet security service faces new criticism as agent describes 1984 deaths
of prisoners.; Home Edition., Los Angeles Times, 07-27-1996, pp A-1. top
of page www.israelshamir.net Free palistine (english) by People in pain
12:14pm Sun Mar 10 '02 The world I once knew is coming apart at the seams,and
through the tear I see pain and suffering,what will happen will happen,
balance will one day return... though we will not be here to see it. -------------------
THE
BARON AND THE GOAT - February 12, 2002 By Israel Shamir Beautiful as ever
spring came to Palestine. It is lovely time, when pale fire of almond blossom
lit the mountain valleys, grass is unusually green (soon it will be scorched
by sun), sky is blue and soft, without its summer glare, and plump white
sheep crawl uphill. Creator of Spring is apparently unconcerned with the
human doings, or He knows better. On the 16th month of Intifada, ease of
Israeli intrusions into the autonomy areas makes transparent the legal
fiction of the Palestinian quasi-state. Friends of Palestine were worried
the Autonomy will become an Arab Bantustan in the Greater Israel. We can
rest assured: the Autonomy is not up to a Bantustan. It is a big game reserve.
Probably Sharon and his Minister of Tourism, the settler Beni Elon, consider
it will attract adventurous tourists to Israel, instead of South Africa
or Kenya. Edward Herman of Znet wrote of approaching ‘final solution’ for
the Palestinians, along the lines of German ‘final solution’ for the Jews.
The same thought occurred to the IDF. Our generals learn from the German
suppression of Warsaw Ghetto rebellion, Haaretz reported . They are excited
by extremely low casualties of Wermacht in 1943, and hope to repeat their
feat if and when they will crush the remainder of the Autonomy. On the
other hand, there are more signs of civil disobedience and Israeli officers’
refusal to implement ‘the final solution’. I went to the demonstration
at the Tel Aviv Museum, and found there many wonderful young men and girls,
standing next to old peace fighters. It was real peace camp, without quotes.
They applauded a message of Arafat, supported the refusing officers. Peace
Now, a Labour-affiliated movement, didn’t join: they feel uncomfortable
with any refusal to obey army orders. It is never easy to refuse orders,
though IDF is quite tolerant to dissent. The rebels will be discharged
from the commanding posts, at worst, not court-marshalled. Their refusal
to serve on the Palestinian territories is a blow for the Israeli war machine,
though hundreds of other soldiers and officers expressed their desire to
fill the vacated place at checkpoints and snipers’ nests. They made an
important first step by deciding to stay away from evil. Local weekly,
Ha-Ir, published brief (less than 100 words each) explanations of the soldiers
why they decided to refuse orders. It is a grim reading, replete with checkpoint
mistreatment, torture and starvation of the Palestinians. Murder of children,
an integral feature of the Jewish state, occupies a prominent place in
this table of horrors. The anti-Semites of old claimed Jews murder Christian
children. This revolting bloody myth was shattered and destroyed in Israel.
We murder Muslim children as easy as Christian ones, without prejudice.
Even Ami Ayalon, tough, lean, bald, mean ex-Head of the dreaded State Security
Service, wondered aloud why so few Israeli soldiers refuse to kill children.
I am a notch less jubilant than I should be, as Israelis have a wonderful
facility to use protest in their own interests. For instance, after the
Sabra and Shatila massacre there was a giant demonstration, of a few hundred
thousand persons. But it was utilised to make Israelis feel good. Another
seventeen years passed until the torture centre al Hiyam was closed and
occupation of the South was over. Sharon, the butcher of Sabra and Shatila,
was elected as a Prime Minister. There is danger that the brave act of
the officers will be used to promote good feeling among Israel supporters,
instead of changing things. An Israeli friend of Palestine, Henry Lowe
wrote, “In America, right-wing apologists for colonialist Israel are already
using the reservists' statement to say: "See, only in Israel can this happen.
This is a clear indication that Israel is a democracy, while the Arabs
are…” Moreover, their insistence on the sacred character of the Green Line
is somewhat naïve, at least. How now, Israel and Palestine? What will
happen next? II Sharon could try to push on with the Final Solution, creation
of Palestinian-free Palestine. Until now he hoped the Palestinians will
run away from the unbearable living conditions. Relatively wealthy and
well-connected people do emigrate until better days. But the Jews leave
much faster. Young Israelis move abroad, to study, and do not come back.
A gifted musician, Adi Schmidt, my friend’s son, announced his intention
to leave for good and performed on his farewell concert in Tel Aviv. Shekel
entered the free fall zone, investments zeroed. That is why the government
has to make bold steps. They would love to provoke a civil war among Palestinians.
More pressure in connection with this or other action of militias, meetings
with some PA ministers, demands to arrest and surrender activists were
supposed to cause it. But unexpectedly the Palestinians do not rush into
self-destruction. Failing that, Sharon has means to provoke the Palestinians
and Israel’s neighbours, and to cleanse the land from its Goy inhabitants
in the aftermath of the provocation. He can break into Al Aqsa Mosque,
the beautiful complex built by Umayyad Caliphs in 7th century, the naked
nerve of Palestine. In 1996, Bibi Netanyahu opened a tunnel near the Mosque,
and caused 96 deaths. Sharon’s own violation of the Mosque 16 months ago
launched the Intifada. Recently Sharon obtained a useful recommendation
of the Shabak to open the Mosque for the Jewish prayer. In normal circumstances,
non-Muslims are allowed to visit al-Aqsa. Its broad and shady courts, the
supreme harmony of Qubbet as-Sahra, the Dome of the Rock, spacious naves
of the main building of the mosque make it a perfect place for a pleasant
stroll, rest and contemplation. Millions of tourists, and tens of millions
of believers used to come here. But for a long time, Israeli government
stops Muslims from coming to the place where the Prophet, peace upon him,
prayed with other prophets. A Jerusalem Muslim has to be over forty years
of age to pass the Israeli police blocks on his way to prayer. A Muslim
from Gaza or Ramallah can not come to pray hither at all. The mosque leaders
do not want to see the strangers in their home, while their sons are not
permitted to enter. Parts of the Mosque grounds were already confiscated
by the Jews. The broad square at front of the Western Wall was the site
of a picturesque Mughrabi neighbourhood. It also belonged to the mosque,
but after Israeli conquest of Jerusalem in 1967, it was razed. Some of
its dwellers remained buried under the ruins; such was the haste of the
conquerors to eliminate the Palestinian presence. The Western Wall is a
part of the Mosque grounds, too. According to the age-old tradition, confirmed
by the British authorities, the Wall belongs to the Mosque, while the Jews
are entitled to pray at it. After 1967, it was confiscated, as well as
the Southern Wall. The Jewish nationalist right wing would like to build
a Jewish temple on the ruins of the mosque. They believe the mountain has
magic qualities, and while in Jewish possession, it would forever enshrine
Jewish supremacy over the Christian and Muslim world . The Jewish temple
will overshadow the Holy Sepulchre, as well. For them, takeover of the
mosque is not just a means to provoke more violence, but the end itself.
This opinion is shared by the ‘Christian Zionists’, an American religious
group which effectively denies the New Testament, rejects Eucharist and
the Virgin and believes in chosenness of Jews. The Christian Zionists consider
their duty to serve Jews by hastening the big war. As the rise of such
a sect at the end of the days was prophesied by the Church fathers, their
opponents call them ‘The Church of Antichrist’. The US President George
W. Bush and some of his advisers are extremely close to this church of
‘Armageddon wishers’. They will oblige the Jews and threaten Israel’s neighbours,
Iran and Iraq with nuclear destruction, while Israel takes over the mosques.
If the takeover will pass peacefully, Sharon will confirm his name next
to that of King Herod, the builder of the previous Jewish temple. If it
will cause big disturbances, Sharon will be able to kill and expel the
Palestinians. If it will cause a big war, Armageddon-wishers will be well
pleased. III There is a contingency plan for less starry-eyed. Sober if
devious Zionists considered the election of Sharon as a certain stage in
the realization of Oslo strategy. The Palestinians rejected Barak’s proposal
of an ‘independent Palestinian state’ i.e. a chain of Bantustans without
refugees’ return, without Jerusalem, without own borders and without hope.
But they suffered so much since then, and lost many best men and women.
A Jewish folk tale tells of a man who felt miserable in his small and crowded
house. His Rabbi advised him to take in his goat. The man came a week later
in tears, as now it was truly impossible to move in the house. The Rabbi
allowed him to remove the goat, and he became a contented and happy citizen.
Sharon is the goat of this fable. When he will be removed, the Jewish media
of the US will praise our great humanism. Europeans will bless us for our
benevolence. The nice guys that refused to serve in the territories will
become heroes. The place of bloody Sharon will be taken by his not less
bloody Minister of Defence Fuad Ben Eliezer, or by Avrum Burg, the second
man in the Labour party. The army will withdraw from Nablus and Ramallah.
Happy Palestinians will agree to Oslo plan in Barak’s interpretation minus
end-of-conflict declaration. They will return into their enclaves, into
slow strangulation of Barak’s days. They will have to forget about their
confiscated lands and houses, about al Aqsa mosque, about Jerusalem. Israeli
right-wing and its allies in AIPAC will present it as an American betrayal,
to be quoted next to General Eisenhower’s orders of 1956. Independence
of the US administration from the Jewish lobby will be confirmed. The painful
events of intifada and its end will be presented as victory of Good over
Evil. They will not mention that the Zionist Good and the Zionist Evil
sat around the same table and planned it together. But for an objective
observer it would mean something different. Again, for the nth time, the
‘bad cop’ passed his softened Palestinian victim into tender paws of the
‘good cop’. Yes, the soldiers and the officers who refused to participate
in the oppression are very good guys and they did a good deed. But I am
worried it will be used to promote good feeling of Israel’s supporters,
to legitimize the very structure of apartheid. Their brave words are used
to support the ‘unilateral separation’, a code word for fencing the Palestinians
into one big well guarded zone. One can’t change the paradigm of the Jewish
state, the paradigm of oppression and apartheid, from within. A character
of Raspe’s book, Baron Munchausen (probably familiar by Terry Gilliam’s
movie) extracted himself and his horse out of deep bog by pulling up his
plait (see the picture below). If you believe this “tall story”, you may
believe that the good guys can change Israeli Jewish society from within,
without joining forces with Palestinians. A much better solution was offered
by the Jewish religious Orthodox congregation of Neturei Karta, the sons
of pre-Zionist Jewish community of the Holy Land. They were mistreated
almost as much as other native sons of Palestine, mainly for their steadfast
refusal to participate in Zionist atrocities. These wise men in big black
hats, like my Tiberias uncle, a peaceful and pious Rabbi, remind me that
the Jews once lived like good neighbours with the Palestinians. In impassioned
call, they say: “the crux of the problem is the very existence of the ‘Jewish’
state. The only realistic hope for a lasting peace is, with the assistance
of the United Nations, the total dismantling of the Israeli state and return
of sovereignty over it, to Gentile auspices”. Once, Stalin jokingly asked,
how many battalions the Pope can field? Still a Pope saw the Soviet Union
dismantled. Neturei Karta Jews have no battalions, but I think they will
see the state of Israel dismantled and a new Palestine, a country of all
its sons and daughters will take its place. ---------------------------------
147820 IS CHOMSKY WORKING FOR THE MAN ???
(english) by ADAP2K 10:21am Sun Mar 10 '02 (Modified on 11:03pm Sun Mar
10 '02) heres an argument, what do yout think? alex jones, www.infowars.com
radio guy,says he is. he claims that while he may discuss the military's
true conduct, he neglects capturing the bigger picture ie. the "new world
order". jones claims this force is is truly demonic and occultist. not
just global capitalist,but true evil whom wishes spirtual destruction as
well as enslaving if not killing the majority of the world. basicly i believe
he feels that its a (psyop)distraction . Please provideyour input. add
your own comments ---------------- listen to chomsky and alex jones @ this
link (english) by adap2k 10:31am Sun Mar 10 '02 sacredcowproductions.com/videos/media_al...
-------------- Maybe, Maybe not (english) by Reciprocity Failure 10:37am
Sun Mar 10 '02 Who know's what is disinformation anymore? In the end we
all have to make a cocious decision on what to believe or what not to believe.
I don't much care for peole trying to change my mind for me. ----------------
one more thing (english) by adap2k 10:39am Sun Mar 10 '02 chomsky also
said at a fair.org meeting that the war was not over oil and that the gov
did not have involvement in the 911 attack and that the conspiracy theory
was a internet hoax. ----------------- FACT : Chomsky NEVER speaks to poor
people (english) by Poor Person 10:45am Sun Mar 10 '02 He speaks to the
elites only. This is because he unbelievably, is not capable of speaking
to poor people. He is at a : LOSS FOR WORDS !!!! ---------------- Chomsky
a stooge for the 'Man'?? (english) by Alienlovebeast 11:09am Sun Mar 10
'02 A friend of mine recieved a letter from Chomsky after writing to him,
and my mate is very poor, a nursing student no less.. Say it aint so, Chomsky
aint a stooge! PLEASE....... ----------------- Bull$hit (english) by Rotton
Commie Rat 11:30am Sun Mar 10 '02 If Chomsky were a corporate stooge, he
would be allowed into mainstream media. He is a free thinker who at times
appears to be anti-communist, anti-capitalist, thus making enemies on both
the far edges of politics. I think he can be trusted to tell what he sees
as the truth. I don't always agree with him, but respect very much 90%
of what he says. Rarely am I in complete disagreement. He is an oddball
in that he is a leftist libertarian. This confuses a lot of people because
most libertarians are right wingers who kiss corporate butt for funding.
Nobody powerful funds Chomsky. --------------- This Is Impossibly Stupid.
(english) by Hieronymous D 11:31am Sun Mar 10 '02 The question is moot.
Here's why: 1. You will never ever know, nor is there any way of knowing
definitively, whether someone is an "Agent of the Man" or not. It is ontologically
impossible. 2. If Chomsky is working for the government, then he is on
a very long leash indeed. At least he is criticizing the government and
trying to stir people into resisting its fascistic policies. 3. You've
given absolutely no reason for anyone to think he is an agent of the government,
except your own stupid paranoia. This is the endless problem of the Left,
and what makes me cynical about its prospects against so nasty a cadre
of global thieves as now we face: the Left constantly eats its own. Why
the fuck waste our time criticizing Chomsky, however elitist he may be,
when we have REAL common enemies? From multinational corporations to the
Bush Administration to governments complicit in this fake war to banks
in Switzerland, the foes of the common good are many. Save your energy
for fighting them. ------------------ clarification? (english) by grosso
11:42am Sun Mar 10 '02 was the comment about this not being about oil made
before all this oil pipeline information came out? ------------------ Nobody
powerful funds Chomsky (YES THEY DO) ! (english) by MIT TRUTH 11:48am Sun
Mar 10 '02 Nobody powerful funds Chomsky ... YES THEY DO !! MIT was just
in the news for its lies about a test that failed. The gov funded test
failed but they lied and said it did not! The prez of MIT was part of this
cover up. Chomsky does not say a word. Chomsky AND Jessy Jackass lead people
down DEAD END streets. That is their role. ---------------- Listen to your
own heart. (english) by anarchist 11:55am Sun Mar 10 '02 Any body who listens
attentively to another spout off on politricks,religion or whatever has
seriously got some screws loose up there...Ever heard of THINKING FOR YOURSELF?
Fuck chumpsky,leary,kropotkin etc etc etc... these fucks would have us
listening and waiting for the next installment of thier own brand of'up
thier own arse'bullshit forever...meanwhile the world sinks down the toilet.
Anarchy/Peace/Freedom(from mental domination by wankers) -----------------
soory for asking but thanksf or answering (english) by ADAP2K 11:57am Sun
Mar 10 '02 I ask this question because I believe its important to us all.
disinformation campaigns are a a big part for us being where we are today.
i believe we need to know the enemy, to understand how to defeat them.
the oil thing was in most alt publications from day one, greg palast from
bbc has connected the bush-bin laden-taliban halliburton-enron dealings
. --------------- Noam Chomsky is Da Bomb ! ! ! ! ! (english) by by Watcher**
11:57am Sun Mar 10 '02 Shame on anyone who suspects a real MAN like Noam
Chomsky for, working as agent for the corrupt so called elite groups .H
es a true human for speaking out against the corrupt powers of the world.Actually
the people who whine ,and complain about him are realy scared that the
people are finally realizing the truths about their so called freedoms
and true democracy. Hooray for professer Chomsky!!! truth will never die
if we have more honest people like him!!!!!!! ---------------- WHY DO SOME
PEOPLE TAKE THIS SO PERSONALY ? (english) by ADAP2K.FREESERVERS.COM 12:09pm
Sun Mar 10 '02 first, yes he did say this wasn't about oil after the stories
hit the mainstream. i believe many people have allways thought that our
dealings in this region as well as others have had oil at the center of
policy. i asked this question because i believe to win this war aginst
humanity that we need to know who freind and whos foe. also, why take a
THIS question so personaly, and why must i be called paranoid for asking
for others point of view. FU! adap2k.freeservers.com -----------------
chomsky is great, but not omnipotent (english) by Che's spiritual advisor
12:11pm Sun Mar 10 '02 Michael Parenti is like a more blue-class chomsky,
although parenti tends to neglect the religious/spirtual dimensions of
world conflicts. When the good guys like Chomsky and Parenti neglect these
realms (because they are scientific-materialists) then they leave the field
wide open for various wingnut kooks to explain the spiritual aspect of
things on their own primitive & provincial terms. This is one of the
unfortunate reasons why the left is losing influence among the lower classes,
and one of the reasons BushCorp is exploiting this weakness by the left
via the creation of pseudo-religious bullshit like Moon, Falwell, Robertson,
et al. This is the marxist achilles’ heel, and The Man has been hitting
it for all its worth! ---------------- He definatly is... (english) by
Conspiracy theorist 1:00pm Sun Mar 10 '02 Although I can hardly provide
evidence of this directly it is quite ovious that it is on the internet
so it must be true. Otherwise why wouldn't he think like me? ---------------
Of this I am sure, you have only to endure... (english) by Austin 1:30pm
Sun Mar 10 '02 Noam Chomsky does excellently what he has done all his professional
life, analyse language and thereby reveal propaganda and its attendant
machinations. He has stated emphatically that Fred Hampton was assassinated.
What lends his mystique to various interpretations is his endurance as
a polemicist, his unassissnatableness. Someone once told me that I was
smart enough to be dangerous but not smart enough to do myself any good.
Chomsky is both. ------------------- Trollbait (english) by Agent Hello
Kitty 1:31pm Sun Mar 10 '02 Do people have to fall for every bit of uninteeligent
trollbait that is posted to this forum? There is no need to defend Chomsky,
since his work on behalf of the oppressed around the world has not been
matched. There are many pathetic people out there who hate him. Effective,
articualte people always generate a knee jerk opposition. --------------
have any of you actually READ chomsky? (english) by anyothername 1:32pm
Sun Mar 10 '02 if any of you had actually read some chomsky, then you would
know that this is what he would say... "don't believe me. take what i have
to say and then check it out for yourself. repeat: DON'T BELIEVE ME. THINK
FOR YOURSELF." ------------- There is no "The Man" (english) by Darklon
Bayne 1:38pm Sun Mar 10 '02 Creating a world of villains without faces
is ludicrous. There isn't any "The Man". There are only people, like you
and me. I will now paraphrase the musings a famous author. Say I'm a CEO.
My corporation is polluting the environment. I might sound out of touch
when they interview me on cable television about this. But maybe this CEO
has a wife who's an alcoholic, and has a daughter who's getting a divorce.
I have stockholders on my back, shortages of every kind, stupid board meetings,
etc. In other words, I've got a lot on my mind distracting me. Environmental
pollution is just one problem of many for my company. Like, the government
keeps changing the pollution laws so that nobody is sure if they're breaking
the law or not, etc. My underlings don't keep me fully informed, they're
not as smart as they should be, maybe they even lie to my face. I don't
want to appear like an ass on t.v., but even when you do your best, it
still happens sometimes. Are you saying that most people aren't the same?
I don't know about y'all, but I don't always do the right thing all the
time. Sometimes, I screw up. I'm only human. I do and say things I know
later that I shouldn't. Some people like me have jobs that just defy logic.
The only cetainty wit ha job like mine is the degree of badness that my
job is done in. There's no super conspiracy of "The Man." We're all in
this together, and we're all trying to do the best that we can. -------------
more (english) by ADAP2K 2:57pm Sun Mar 10 '02 i have read and listened
to plenty of his views and i do agree with nearly all. yet there is still
a lot of things i believe missing, information that would provoke further
outrage and support for change. and as far as the "man" , i mean the disinformation
propaganda machine. perhaps this is a post SUCH a propaganda, distraction
too. "don't believe me. take what i have to say and then check it out for
yourself. repeat: DON'T BELIEVE ME. THINK FOR YOURSELF." -----------------
Of Course He works for the Man I can Prove it (english) by jeans 3:42pm
Sun Mar 10 '02 Where does he get his paycheck? The same place Ward Churchill
gets his and has since hell froze over.Shit he is a liguistic prof. at
MIT? DUHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What is MIT? The CIA has no presence
in that wonderful institution? JEZZUZ BUDDHA AND MARY What role do they
play? Mischaracterizing the radical movement. Example: After 911 the agent
Churchill put out an essay called " Some People Push Back" wherein he states
"if there is a punishment more deserving of the little Eichmanns inhabiting
the twin towers on Sept 11,Iwish someone would tell me what it is"? The
government purpose behind this? To have Churchill mischaracterize the left
and people Native American movement as being totally insensitive to the
janitors,watresses,secretaries, and all the other innocents killed. To
give Rush Limbaugh something to beat the Anti-globalization movement over
the head with. Chomsky made similar comments. The expert linguist is I
am sure a valued commodity down at the agency. -------------- Can you say
"Spanish Inquisition?" (english) by COINTELPRO Tool 4:10pm Sun Mar 10 '02
Wow, is there no length you people will go to to alienate potential allies?
First, you turned on Hitchens, because he refused to adhere to your orthodoxy
on 9/11. Understandable, considering he supports the war. Then, you turned
on David Corn - not because he supports ANY actions taken by our government
in response to the attacks (he clearly does not), but because he dared
ridicule the nonsense purveyed by Mike Ruppert. As someone who has read
Chomsky extensively, I presumed he would be sensible enough to reject all
variations of the 9/11 conspiracy theories popular among the IMC Luddites.
Sooner or later, he would have been presented with the ideas and his position
would have been made public. I guess I should have known it was only a
matter of time before you would turn on your own idol, too. You're making
this so easy! -------------- No Idols! (english) by Jennens 5:20pm Sun
Mar 10 '02 Ever heard of the Hegelian dialect? The more conflict, controversy,
doubt, mistrust, hostility the better! It's referred to as, "constructive
chaos". If we are all in doubt or in conflict, we are the more willing
to let someone else solve our problems. Learn who you are and begin to
truly value your worth and abilities. Learn who your neighbors are. Learn
to value their worth and abilities. Work together to create community economies
independent of the "system". Understand the Constitution of the United
States. Ap-ply its principles. The whole of humankind watches to see how
well the ordinary U.S. citizen fulfills the democratic hope implicit in
the Constitution. Stop looking for someone else to lead! We don't need
an aristocracy. We need responsible, informed, hardworking people who create
their own independent local economies and aren't looking for government
or anyone in particular to supply "the answers". -------------- Dumb Brains,
Dumb Theories (english) by egghead 7:31pm Sun Mar 10 '02 so chomsky said
some things you disagree with. so what, get over it. this man is far from
working for the CIA. Just because he works as a professor does not mean
he is a sell-out or only interested in elites. He was doing a lot for the
struggle in East Timor when most of the "anarchists" were in grade school.
To say nothing of his encouragement to working-class and poor people to
stay in school. I grew up in a poor neighborhood--on welfare--and this
man read my thesis. Yeah, that's right, an Ivy League professor reading
and critiquing a paper from someone at a state university. Chomsky has
been very supportive of independent anarchist zines and pirate radio. He
speaks at conferences and writes books with a very radical orientation
all while teaching full-time. What more can you expect from a guy his age.
He's done more in the past ten years than you'll do in your life. Chomsky
has never peddled in conspiracy theories. He knows they are the domain
of weak intellects. He is a true comrade to anyone who has made the attempt
to contact him and share their ideas. ------------- My Homie Noam (english)
by Proudhontron 3030 11:03pm Sun Mar 10 '02 Someone always seems to be
dissing Chomsky. "The people he speaks to aren't poor enough," whine some,
though he spends most of every year doing speaking tours throughout the
world, including "developing" or "third world" (read: poor) nations, where
he draws crowds of thousands. "He's not spiritual enough," since he writes
and speaks about what he knows, not blind faith. "He's not revolutionary
enough," because he doesn't shout "communist revolution, proletariat!"
every other sentence, saving his words to describe things as he sees them
as precisely as possible. "He's a commie," because his thoroughly detailed,
footnoted descriptions of U.S. policies, corporate mass media, and history
is as unflattering to the powerful as it is truthful. "He's a kook because
he's an anarchist, libertarian socialist, anarcho-syndicalist type, and
we NEED government and leaders," say some about his honest criticism of
every regime. "He's not a REAL anarchist," say others, because he sympathetically
quotes Brazilian peasants who advocate "expanding the floor of the cage"
(the State) before attempting to tackle the monsters outside it (Corporate/Business
power). "He hates America," say some critics, though when asked why he
doesn't leave, he has said, "Because it's my country. Besides, what better
place in the world is there to try to change things?" He clearly loves
our country and people, and feels solidarity for them, but not an exclusive,
nationalistic sentiment that reduces "outsiders" to a lower status to glorify
ourselves. His solidarity is unconstrained by borders. As he says, you
can be proud of your country, but you should never be proud of any government,
since every government is essentially an institution of coercion and violence.
I don't agree with everything he says or writes, but I agree with more
of what he says and writes than anyone else I can think of. He is a more
consistent and intelligent critic of abuse and tyranny than you're likely
to find anywhere, especially in America. Noam Chomsky is a hero. Damn,
people, the CIA and US armed forces are responsible for millions of murders,
mostly civilian, and most not even in declared wars. Every American "works
for the Man/the System" in some way - at work, in taxes, in beliefs, in
spending habits, in cultural matters, and in other ways. Yet Noam Chomsky
consistently draws more flak than just about anyone. Most Americans have
jobs (for now). Chomsky is a renowned linguist at MIT. That's his "day
job." He does what he can to undermine illegitimate power and priviliedge,
in fact, he does more than any other individual I know of. What pure thing
do you do 24 hours a day? Meditate? infoshop.org
Past content:
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Breaking the Tyranny of Silence ===<><<>><>===
373 Osho on meaning
(just the comments )