|
Karen Hughes’ Sales Job By Joseph Nye, Huffington Post, Dec. 07, 2005 Joseph S. Nye, Jr.,
Distinguished Service Professor at Harvard University and Sultan of Oman
Professor of International Relations, was Dean of the John F. Kennedy School of
Government from 1995 - 2004. Nye was on the faculty at Harvard since 1964,
during which time he also served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for
International Security Affairs, Chair of the National Intelligence Council, and
Deputy Asst. Secretary of State for Security Assistance, Science and
Technology. His most recent publications are Soft Power: The Means to
Success in World Politics (2004), and an anthology, Power in
the Global Information Age (2004). Karen Hughes is
travelling the world trying to restore our soft power, but she should attend
better to matters at home. When vice president Cheney fights Senator McCain
over whether we should prohibit torture, he undoes whatever good her
international efforts have done. Fortunately, it looks like the McCain
amendment to the defense appropriation bill will pass and escape a presidential
veto. But there is still a long
way to go to undo the damage. Hughes has to
realize that public diplomacy is like advertising.
Even the best ads cannot sell a poor product for long. We have started new broadcast stations
like Radio Sawa and Al Hurra television for the Arab world, but they are
mistrusted as American propaganda. Public diplomacy must be accompanied by
better policies on detainees at home, and foreign policies such as a political
settlement in Iraq, progress on the Arab-Israeli peace process, and modernizing
Arab economies. Hughes will have to influence those policies if she wants to
sell them. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-nye/karen-hughes-sales-job_b_11890.html Excerpts from Art, truth and politics
Harold Pinter, The
Guardian UK, Dec. 08, 2005 In
1958 I wrote the following: 'There are no hard
distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true
and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be
both true and false.' I believe that these
assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality
through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a
citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false? Truth
in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it but the search for it is
compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the endeavour. The search is your
task. More often than not you stumble upon the truth in the dark, colliding
with it or just glimpsing an image or a shape which seems to correspond to the
truth, often without realising that you have done so. But the real truth is
that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art.
There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other,
reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each
other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it
slips through your fingers and is lost. …Political
language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory
since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are
interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that
people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the
truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we
feed. As every single person
here knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein
possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which
could be fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were
assured that was true. It
was not true.
We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Quaeda and shared
responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 11th 2001. We were
assured that this was true. It
was not true.
We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured it
was true. It
was not true. The truth is something entirely different.
The truth is to do with how the United States understands its role in the world
and how it chooses to embody it. … The United States no longer bothers about low intensity
conflict. It no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious. It
puts its cards on the table without fear or favour. It quite simply doesn't
give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent,
which it regards as impotent and irrelevant. It also has its own bleating
little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain. What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have any? What do these
words mean? Do they refer to a term very rarely employed these days -
conscience? A conscience to do not only with our own acts but to do with our
shared responsibility in the acts of others? Is all this dead? Look at
Guantanamo Bay. Hundreds of people detained without charge for over three
years, with no legal representation or due process, technically detained
forever. This totally illegitimate structure is maintained in defiance of the
Geneva Convention. It is not only tolerated but hardly thought about by what's
called the 'international community'. This criminal outrage is being committed
by a country, which declares itself to be 'the leader of the free world'. Do we
think about the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay? What does the media say about
them? They pop up occasionally - a small item on page six. They have been
consigned to a no man's land from which indeed they may never return. At
present many are on hunger strike, being force-fed, including British residents.
No niceties in these force-feeding procedures. No sedative or anaesthetic. Just
a tube stuck up your nose and into your throat. You vomit blood. This is
torture. What has the British Foreign Secretary said about this? Nothing. What
has the British Prime Minister said about this? Nothing. Why not? Because the
United States has said: to criticise our conduct in Guantanamo Bay constitutes
an unfriendly act. You're either with us or against us. So Blair shuts up. The invasion of Iraq
was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute
contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary
military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation
of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate
American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading - as a
last resort - all other justifications having failed to justify themselves - as
liberation. A formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death
and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people. We have brought
torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder,
misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it 'bringing freedom
and democracy to the Middle East'. How many people do you
have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war
criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought.
Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International
Criminal Court of Justice. But Bush has been clever. He has not ratified the
International Criminal Court of Justice. Therefore if any American soldier or
for that matter politician finds himself in the dock Bush has warned that he
will send in the marines. But Tony Blair has ratified the Court and is
therefore available for prosecution. We can let the Court have his address if
they're interested. It is Number 10, Downing Street, London. … I have said earlier that the United
States is now totally frank about putting its cards on the table. That is the case. Its official declared
policy is now defined as 'full spectrum dominance'. That is not my term, it is
theirs. 'Full spectrum dominance' means control of land, sea, air and space and
all attendant resources. The United States now
occupies 702 military installations throughout the world in 132 countries, with
the honourable exception of Sweden, of course. We don't quite know how they got
there but they are there all right. The United States
possesses 8,000
active and operational nuclear warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be
launched with 15 minutes warning. It is developing new systems of nuclear
force, known as bunker busters. The British, ever cooperative, are intending to
replace their own nuclear missile, Trident. Who, I wonder, are they aiming at?
Osama bin Laden? You? Me? Joe Dokes? China? Paris? Who knows? What we do know
is that this infantile insanity - the possession and threatened use of nuclear
weapons - is at the heart of present American political philosophy. We must
remind ourselves that the United States is on a permanent military footing and
shows no sign of relaxing it. Many thousands, if not
millions, of people in the United States itself are demonstrably sickened,
shamed and angered by their government's actions, but as things stand they are
not a coherent political force - yet. But the anxiety, uncertainty and fear
which we can see growing daily in the United States is unlikely to diminish. http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1661516,00.html |
_______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
