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Wednesday February 14 2007
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book recommendation
The Origins of Totalitarianism
by Hannah Arendt
In a recent interview, Chris Hedges, author of American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America, made reference to Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism and recommended it highly for reading. I can see why. It not only provides insight into what Hitler and Stalin created, but it describes part of the future that we are living in. As I read the book I kept stopping because I would recognize our current political world in her words. This is essential reading. I'm also very interested where Chris Hedges went with this in his book. And I wonder what Hanah Arendt would think seeing some of the same things she wrote about happening in Israel?
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)
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A political theorist with a flair for grand historical generalization, Hannah Arendt exhibited the conceptual brio of a cultivated intellectual, the conscientious learning of a German-trained scholar, and the undaunted spirit of an exile who had confronted some of the worst horrors of European tyranny. Her life was enriched by innovative thought and ennobled by friendship and love. Although her books addressed a general audience from the standpoint of disinterested universalism, Jewishness was an irrepressible feature of her experience as well as a condition that she never sought to repudiate.
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Totalitarianism: The Inversion of Politics
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When Hannah Arendt published The Origins of Totalitarianism in 1951, World War II had ended and Hitler was dead, but Stalin lived and ruled. Arendt wanted to give her readers a sense of the phenomenal reality of totalitarianism, of its appearance in the world as a terrifying and completely new form of government. In the first two parts of the book she excavated hidden elements in modern anti-Semitism and European imperialism that coalesced in totalitarian movements; in the third part she explored the organization of those movements, dissected the structure of Nazism and Stalinist Bolshevism in power, and scrutinized the "double claim" of those regimes "to total domination and global rule." Her focus, to be sure, is mainly on Nazism, not only because more information concerning it was available at the time, but also because Arendt was more familiar with Germany and hence with the origins of totalitarianism there than in Russia. She knew, of course, that those origins differed substantially in the two countries and later, in different writings, would undertake to right the imbalance in her earlier discussion (see "Project: Totalitarian Elements in Marxism").
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excerpts from The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
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Totalitarianism is never content to rule by external means, namely, through the state and a machinery of violence; thanks to its peculiar ideology and the role assigned to it in this apparatus of coercion, totalitarianism has discovered a means of dominating and terrorizing human beings from within.
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t-shirts
GoodDickBadDick.com
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thanks to firedoglake
military-industrial-congressional complex
The Living Reality of Military-Economic Fascism
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"The business of buying weapons that takes place in the Pentagon is a corrupt business — ethically and morally corrupt from top to bottom. The process is dominated by advocacy, with few, if any, checks and balances. Most people in power like this system of doing business and do not want it changed." – Colonel James G. Burton (1993, 232)
In countries such as the United States, whose economies are commonly, though inaccurately, described as "capitalist" or "free-market," war and preparation for war systematically corrupt both parties to the state-private transactions by which the government obtains the bulk of its military goods and services.
On one side, business interests seek to bend the state's decisions in their favor by corrupting official decision-makers with outright and de facto bribes. The former include cash, gifts in kind, loans, entertainment, transportation, lodging, prostitutes' services, inside information about personal investment opportunities, overly generous speaking fees, and promises of future employment or "consulting" patronage for officials or their family members, whereas the latter include campaign contributions (sometimes legal, sometimes illegal), sponsorship of political fund-raising events, and donations to charities or other causes favored by the relevant government officials.
Reports of this sort of corruption appear from time to time in the press under the rubric of "military scandal" (see, for example, Biddle 1985, Wines 1989, Hinds 1992, "National Briefing" 2003, Pasztor and Karp 2004, Colarusso 2004, Calbreath and Kammer 2005, Wood 2005, Babcock 2006, Ross 2006, and "Defense Contractor Guilty in Bribe Case" 2006). On the other, much more important side, the state corrupts business people by effectively turning them into co-conspirators in and beneficiaries of its most fundamental activity — plundering the general public.
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capitalism
Index of /graphics/documents/posters
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thanks to The Peking Duck
This is from the Industrial Workers of the World.
photography
Sarah A. Martin
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end of empire
Chalmers Johnson: ”The Last Days of the American Republic.”
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BRIAN LAMB, HOST, Q&A: Chalmers Johnson, when you wrote the last line of ”The Sorrows of Empire,” you said this, ”feeling such a reform nemesis, the goddess of retribution and vengeance, the punisher of pride and hubris, waits impatiently for her meeting with us.” I get a sense you might even be writing your next book name, ”Nemesis.”
CHALMERS JOHNSON, AUTHOR: The third book is done and it’s called, ”Nemesis.” The subtitle is, ”The Last Days of the American Republic.” It’s to say I don’t see the wait out any longer. That the Congress – or that the separation of powers has clearly broken down; the President has achieved virtually anything he might’ve wanted to do in that area. I don’t think the political system will save us. The military could conceivably take over; they’ve threatened this but I don’t think so for reasons that I think are pretty obvious, above all, the fact that no enlisted – only enlisted men have been convicted in the prison torture scandals, none of the officers. The result is that within the armed forces today, enlisted men are extremely sensitive to illegal orders, saying, you’re going to take the rap for it, not us. There’s no more illegal order than to take over Congress, so the officers I just don’t think believe innocent men would follow their orders today, so my wife keeps saying to me, come up with something optimistic and I come up with bankruptcy. Its – that looks like it might be the thing that will bring the republic to an end.
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photography
Chema Madoz
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thanks to Neatorama
iraq
Tomgram: Schwartz on Surging into Catastrophe in Iraq
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So far, what exactly is surging in Iraq?
U.S. casualties, which are at a post-invasion high: According to an Associated Press analysis, more American troops were "killed in combat in Iraq over the past four months -- at least 334 through Jan. 31 -- than in any comparable stretch since the war began"; and February, with 34 American deaths in its first nine days, is exceeding this pace. These loses are largely due to roadside bombs (IEDs) and to the fact that U.S. troops are now engaged in almost continuous urban warfare. Before the invasion of Iraq, the possibility of fighting an urban war in the Iraqi capital's streets and alleys was the American high command's personal nightmare. Now, it's their reality -- and the President's surge plan can only make it more nightmarish.
Downings of U.S. helicopters, six in less than three weeks: With road travel, even in convoys, now so dangerous, thanks to IEDs, the helicopter has been a transport workhorse for the U.S. military in Iraq. The sudden surge in downed helicopters raises the specter of new tactics by the insurgents as well as the possibility that they have new, advanced missiles in their hands. It raises a warning flag of the first order. Let's not forget that the beginning of the end of the Russian occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s came when CIA-supplied Stinger missiles began to take down Russian helicopters in significant numbers.
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Possible Disaster in Baghdad
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The title of this diary may sound vastly understated, even sarcastic. It isn't meant that way. It is meant as an alarm.
The current escalation in Baghdad might not be just more of the same, might not just be worse, it might be a military disaster. From what I have learned, it seems the elements of a large-scale defeat for US forces could be drawing into place in the city. The result could be hundreds of casualties on top of a failed mission.
Below are my observations drawn from current news reports and study of previous operations in Iraq. If my fears are borne out, the current Baghdad security plan leaves our troops vulnerable to almost every weapon at the insurgents' disposal.
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thanks to Steve Gilliard's News Blog
IRAQ: Lina Massufi, Iraq “I cannot stand the constant military raids in my home”
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“My name is Lina Massufi. I’m a 32-year-old laboratory assistant who works 10 hours a day just to make enough money to raise my children.
“My life has been like hell over the past three months. US and Iraqi soldiers have raided my house more than 12 times.
“My husband, Khalil, was killed during the US invasion in 2003 when he drove through a closed road and soldiers shot him dead.
“I live in Haifa Street, one of the most dangerous places to live in Baghdad today. The area is infamous for its huge number of insurgents. This is why Iraqi and US soldiers have increased their activity in the area, constantly raiding homes and arresting men for interrogation.
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thanks to Steve Gilliard's News Blog
It Has Unraveled So Quickly
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A PAINFUL measure of just how much Iraq has changed in the four years since I started coming here is contained in my cellphone. Many numbers in the address book are for Iraqis who have either fled the country or been killed. One of the first Sunni politicians: gunned down. A Shiite baker: missing. A Sunni family: moved to Syria.
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The back door
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I have written many times about the erosion of the United States Army's capability to wage large scale war. Our equipment is in shambles (one major reason why it is taking so long to get a mere 21,000 soldiers deployed) and our end strength is a wreck. While everyone parses statements to support one side of this argument or the other, I tend to look at the actions. And the actions show a Country's military in desperate need of help.
One of these actions is the back door draft of the Individual Ready Reserve. The purpose of this post is to educate people to the wide expanse of this program; basically taking untrained civilians who after years of being out of the military, are being forced back in and being "retrained" for new jobs.
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It's time to buy clues.
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There's an odd thing about the coverage of the Iraq war.
If you want to see how dangerous it is, you need to watch shows like War Diaries, Shootout and National Geographic explorer. Bush and many people in the US like to depict the Iraqi guerrillas as barely competent. But on these shows, the soldiers are lucky to survive their encounters. They routinely trap US troops. Only the superior training of US troops prevents disaster.
We have mostly hidden the absolute Mad Max like danger from the American public and relegated it to buff TV on cable. Yet, if you watch these shows, the unremitting violence, the near anarchy of it becomes clear. The Iraqis can certainly take on Americans and walk away.
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book recommendation
Wanderlust: A History of Walking
by Rebecca Solnit
Walk, don't run, to your nearest library and check this book out.
wanderlust > > a history of walking
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Discussing an eccentric 18th century peripatetic named John Thelwall in her new "Wanderlust: A History of Walking," Rebecca Solnit writes that he suggests "something of a pattern: autodidacts who took the trinity of radical politics, love of nature, and pedestrianism to extremes." While I'm pretty sure Solnit herself has a formal education, her astonishing range of reference and her indefatigable curiosity suggest the passion of an autodidact, and in every other respect she fits the pattern, too. Whether she takes this trinity to extremes is a matter of interpretation, but you could argue that even the attempt to write a history of walking -- arguably the defining human activity -- is itself extreme. Why not the history of talking, or breathing?
Of course, as Solnit points out, she has written a history of walking, not the history, which is all but infinite. Her history is, as she puts it, "an idiosyncratic path traced ... by one walker, with much doubling back and looking around." That's accurate, if a little modest; "Wanderlust" is a delightful, mind-expanding journey that strays from Søren Kierkegaard's Copenhagen and William Wordsworth's Lake District to the top of Everest and the New Mexico desert, from the first hominids to walk upright (whoever and wherever they were) to contemporary women who face the hazards of solitary walking. It's a journey led by a guide of tremendous erudition and just as much common sense, capable of slipping almost imperceptibly from the personal mode -- she describes several entirely non-metaphorical walks -- to the analytical and back again without appearing self-indulgent. (Full disclosure: I've had several friendly conversations with Solnit but don't know her well.)
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iran
Why Can’t Americans See it?
“Within weeks from now, we will see the informational warfare machine start working. The public opinion is already under pressure. There will be a growing anti-Iranian militaristic hysteria, new information leaks, disinformation, etc. . . . The probability of a US aggression against Iran is extremely high"
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The American public and the US Congress are getting their backs up about the Bush Regime’s determination to escalate the war in Iraq. A Massive protest demonstration is occurring in Washington DC today, and Congress is expressing its disagreement with Bush’s decision to intensify the war in Iraq.
This is all to the good. However, it misses the real issue--the Bush Regime’s looming attack on Iran.
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The Coming War Against Iran
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Given the presence of four American submarines off the coast of Iran, Eduard Baltin, former commander of the Russian fleet, reasons that the U.S. is planning to attack Iran.
Bush and Cheney have less than two years to go in their current role and want to go down in the history books as the heroes of the Pax Americana, as the men who managed to conquer the Middle East and its oil, as the men who took full-spectrum dominance seriously, while in their own country booking successes through exorbitant profits for the military-industrial complex and the realization of radical legislation. The prelude was long and the path was full of obstacles, but the goal of a third great war - a war with Iran - is increasingly within sight. Dan Plesch in The Guardian sums it up in one sentence: 'All the signs are that Bush is planning for a neocon-inspired military assault on Iran'.
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The Unthinkable: The US- Israeli Nuclear War on Iran
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The World is at the crossroads of the most serious crisis in modern history. The US has embarked on a military adventure, "a long war", which threatens the future of humanity.
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Iran: A War Is Coming
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The United States is planning what will be a catastrophic attack on Iran. For the Bush cabal, the attack will be a way of "buying time" for its disaster in Iraq. In announcing what he called a "surge" of American troops in Iraq, George W. Bush identified Iran as his real target. "We will interrupt the flow of support [to the insurgency in Iraq] from Iran and Syria," he said. "And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq."
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Pentagon Caught Red Handed in an attempt to Frame Iran: Iran Does Not Manufacture 81MM Mortar Shells
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Pentagon carelessness fabricating bogus “evidence” against Iran is really quite stupendous. As I wrote here yesterday, the 81mm mortar shell offered up to the complaisant corporate media as “evidence” Iran is supplying weaponry to the Shi’a of Iraq is an obvious ruse, as the date on the proffered shell does not follow the Muslim calendar and other markings are in English when it only makes sense they would appear in Persian script.
But it gets worse.
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thanks to Yolanda Flanagan
CNN's Nuke Plant Photos Identical for Both Iran and N. Korea!
thanks to Yolanda Flanagan
retro
Plan59
THE MUSEUM (AND GIFT SHOP) OF MID-CENTURY ILLUSTRATION
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They are also available as high quality inkjet prints at a reasonable price. 11x12s are as little as $9. It's interesting to see low volume printing like this. I must have one.
israel/palestine
Should Israel be in Bush’s Back Seat?
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Ever since Israel’s invasion of Lebanon last summer, I’ve been wondering about the changing nature of the U.S.-Israel relationship — it was plain in that conflict that the Bush Administration actually wanted Israel to go a lot further than Israel was ready to go in terms of committing forces to a battle to eliminate Hizballah. We’d all watched over a couple of years how Ariel Sharon had cynically walked back a hopelessly naive Bush and Rice from most traditional U.S. positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — much to the chagrin of Colin Powell and Brent Scowcroft. But still, the expectation was that the U.S. ultimately needed to balance Israeli interests with those of those of its Arab allies (even if, under first Clinton and then Bush, that balance was increasingly, untenably tilted in favor of Israel). Israel’s neophyte leadership plunged into Lebanon, no doubt assuming that the U.S. would soon enough call a halt, allowing Israel to make a symbolic “deterrent” point without getting too mired (or bloodied) in a ground war in Lebanon. Instead, it found the U.S. essentially demanding that it finish the job. Where once the U.S. had acted as a restraint, now it had created a vacuum. And for an Israeli leadership weaned on the principle that the U.S. would always set the limits, this was a disaster.
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Israelis, Jimmy Carter and Apartheid
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Jimmy Carter has been branded as everything from an agent of Saudi Arabia to a cyrpto anti-Semite in a campaign of unprecedented hysteria by a Zionist establishment desperate to squelch any discussion in America of the moral implications of Israel’s apartheid policies in the West Bank and Gaza. So what, one imagines, would the same apparatus of Orwellian obfuscation, denial and diversion make of Tommy Lapid. Never mind apartheid, Lapid last week compared the actions of the Hebron settlers who regularly and viciously abuse the town’s Palestinian majority to the behavior of European anti-Semites in the early Nazi era. It’s entirely appropriate that someone draw attention to the vicious racism of the Hebron settlers, but you’d imagine the Alan Dershowitz-Marty Peretz crowd would turn its talk show artillery on anyone comparing Israelis to Nazis and their ilk. Except that Tommy Lapid was a member of Ariel Sharon’s cabinet, and is currently the chairman of the council of Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial museum.
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Let Our Children Live
"We Are All Victims of the Occupation"
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Bassam Aramin spent nine years in an Israeli prison. He belonged to Yasser Arafat's Al Fatah in the Hebron area and attempted to throw a grenade at an Israeli army Jeep in occupied Hebron. Last Wednesday morning, an Israeli soldier in a jeep in his village of Anata, on the West Bank, shot his nine year old daughter, Abir, in the head. The soldier will not spend an hour in jail. In Israel, soldiers are not imprisoned for killing Arabs. Never. It does not matter whether the Arabs are young or old, real or potential terrorists, peaceful demonstrators or stone throwers. The army has not conducted an inquiry in Abir Aramin's death. Neither the police nor the courts have questioned anyone. There will be no investigation. As far as the Israeli Defense Forces are concerned, the shooting did not happen. The army's official account of her death is that she was hit by a stone that one of her classmates was throwing "at our forces."
We who live in Israel know that stones thrown by 10 year olds do not blow brains out. Just as we see every day the Israeli jeeps circling Palestinian children on their way to and from school and greet them with stun-bombs, "rubber" bullets and riot control gas.
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PA: Decision to move W. Bank fence undermines peace efforts
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The Palestinian Authority on Wednesday condemned Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's decision to approve moving the separation barrier near Modi'in Ilit away from the Green Line in order to take in two settlements, as was first revealed by security sources and a brief submitted by the state to the High Court of Justice.
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator with Israel, said the Israeli move "undermines everything we're doing to revive the peace process."
"The wall is the continuation of unilateralism and dictation, and destroys the prospects of any real negotiations," he added.
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thanks to Antiwar.com
let there be light
There is another blog I've added to the blogroll:
Strobist
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Your flash photography will never be the same again.
At Strobist, our goal is to promote more effective use of small, shoe-mount flashes. To teach you to use your small strobe to get results like the professionals get. Photographers from around the world have been bitten by the bug, and it's about to happen to you.
Why small strobes? Because that's all you really need.
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This site is a fountain of information about using small strobes for big light. And doing it on a budget. An incredible site if you ever had wanted to know about using strobes but were afraid to ask. It's my answer to using lights on a micro budget. Very illuminating.
blogroll
Another house cleaning chore done. I've cleaned out the dead wood on the blogroll, put in a change of address, and added some new ones.
photography
Travis Ruse
Photo Business News & Forum
Zoe Strauss
books
Justin and my son Robby were great friends in high school. Zoe and I always enjoyed their metaphysical arguments: "Who's more real? Ronald Macdonald or Santa Claus?" This was a running argument. I swear that, over time, they would switch sides forgetting what their position was the last time they had the discussion. He is now in England drinking warm beer and fixing old books. He is getting his Masters Degree in book restoration. And these are some seriously old books. He has pictures and descriptions of his work. If you like old books, you'll love what Justin is doing with them. Oh yes, he has a blog.
Broken Books
Politics
Conflicts Forum
Foreign Policy Watch
Iraq Slogger
MuzzleWatch
Iran
View From Iran
Israel
View From Iran
one more from that past
This is another one of my grandfather's slides.
That's me on the left and my late brother Michael on the right. It was probably 1966. I was 21 or 22 and a young draftsman at Boeing. That would put it between picture 4 and 5 on my banner. It was about a year or two later that facial hair erupted. Mike was almost 2 years younger.
whew!!
I think I'm back. I still have a bunch of small things to do but I can do those in between posts. I woke up Sunday to an email from Zoe. She had arrived safely in Gainesville and the wifi was working. That gave me piece of mind. Sunday I had planned on visiting Zoe's mom. Gerry, who has Alzheimer's and is at Western State Hospital in Tacoma. It's a 2 1/2 drive, including the ferry, each way. I made a couple of side trips on the way down. The first was to my brother Roger who lives in Kirkland. He had some of my slides that I had taken when we lived in Japan in the late 50s and early 60s. I had a 35mm Petri rangefinder. I think I have all my Japan slides together now. Here are some quick scans.
These pictures were taken probably in the summer of 1959. A typical shopping street in Japan and a mama-san. The Japanese cars were smaller then. That big black car is a 1942 Cadillac limosine that my dad bought for $150. He had 6 kids and the limo had jump seats so we all had a place to sit. It also had a sliding window between the front seat and the back seat. My dad tried to get that window to work but never could. It must have been a beast driving that thing on crowded Japanese roads, particularly considering that Japanese drive on the left side of the road British style.
My dad and my next two younger brothers, Mike and Terry, would go on what we called bicycle hikes. We lived in Tachikawa and it was an easy ride to the countryside of Japan. I loved those rides.
We would ride and then come to a small village and stop for refreshments. We would have this extremely carbonated cider and my dad would have a beer.
I grabbed the slides, and my slide projector, and headed down to Graham, east of Tacoma, to see my Aunt Bobby and uncle Tommy. I hadn't seen them in a long time. They had slides that my grandfather had taken with the Leica IIIc that I have now. We had a great visit and they passed on the slides to me. I wasn't sure whether they were loaning them or giving them but it turned out that it was a gift. I had the Leica IIIc with me and showing it to them and their seeing that it was still in use made their day. There were only about 200 slides. I wish there more but I'm thrilled that I have these. I looked thru them quickly and pulled three out from when he was in northern Japan during the Occupation, probably around 1949.
This is a picture of my grandfather and grandmother when the were in Morioka, he with the Leica.
This one was labeled "Black market street, Morioka. Unfortunately, he tended to under expose. I will spend more time on scanning and will be able to get a bit more out of it. Fortunately, most are on Kodachrome so the colors are still great. There are a few on some other film and they have faded badly but I should be able to get something out of them.
From Bobby and Tommy's it was another 20 miles to Western State Hospital and visiting Gerry. I was a little aprehensive since this was the first time I had visited her alone at Western State. I arrived just after dinner. She was half dozing in a chair. She didn't recognize me at first. I explained who I was and after about 30 seconds there was a look of recognition, some tearing, and she gave me a big hug. We went into the little room we meet in and I had brought some food she really likes: squash souffle (from her recipe), spinach soufle, a bottle of Starbucks Mocha, Cheetos, and rice pudding. I brought plates and utensils for both of us and we ate together. She was in a very good mood and we spent the hour chatting and eating. I have no idea what she was talking about but I agreed with her at appropriate moments. We both had a good time. She spilled some of her Mocha on lap and it was about time for me to go so we went out into the main room. I gave the nurse the leftover food (they let us bring the food in for to eat in between our visits) and, while I was waiting for her to bring me the container from the last visit, Gerry wander off to speak to another patient. The nurse let me out and it was a long drive home.
Yesterday was getting packages out and recovering. Today I get some small stuff out of the way, including getting all my links up, and tomorrow it's back to finishing off another web project.
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