==> Morning, class, I'm back at last from an extended pilgrimage to
the humble desert motel where McVeigh spent his last night as
a free revolutionary (Yes, yes, I know, but control yourselves!).
You'll be surprised, and probably subtlely displeased, to hear
that many of the other pilgrims there had vocabularies every bit
as good as yours, and nobody's knuckles were dragging on the ground.
Well, here, unedited except for a name-masking, is a recent set-to
with a long-time e-pal, a professional geek on the West Coast.
Toward the end I bring up a semantic matter which has escaped all you
society doctors till now, though you didn't mind wasting a week
parsing the dubious double-jointed locutions of Judith Butler,
which will never get to stay the general public's hand to begin with.
Oh, but don't think I'm angry; it's so good to see your shining
faces again.
valis
> The cause is that animal part of our DNA that tells us "protect our tribe
> and hate/distrust/fear all outsiders".
Terrific, M______, end to end. I'll tell the networks to use you if they
should have a power outage; you obviously have the whole spiel down.
(And don't forget _NATO's_ DNA if you're gonna cruise with EO Wilson.)
I carry no brief for what's happening in Kosovo, but I'm always fascinated
with how the dirty doings of an obscure place that not one American in
a hundred could locate within five minutes is suddenly lit up like the
Rose Bowl in popular consciousness, and how for a short while this mongrel
non-nation grooves on the blessings of a consensual outrage and will.
But wait: not _all_ dirty doings and not _every_ obscure place, because
I, and you, and the rest of us only learn about the outrages that the
media puts on the blackboard. Seven years ago no cameras were focusing
on tears and suffering faces when starving Albanians were swarming into
Italy aboard anything that could float; then they were vermin. Now they
have the starring role in a geopolitical passion play, written, produced
and directed by whoever controls Washington (which is what controls NATO).
> What the Serbs are doing in Kosovo is EVIL. This is the same evil that we've
> seen time and time again this century in places like Armenia, Stalinist Russia,
> Nazi Germany, Rwanda, Cambodia, Nanking, and probably others that I'm
> forgetting.
Yes, and yet others you never heard about.
> Third party meddling in civil wars rarely leads to any lasting solution. The
> primary combatants will only make peace when they're good and ready. Is NATO
> bombing going to stop Serbian "police" with stolen cars and automatic weapons
> from slaughtering Kosovar civilians? Not likely.
Right, but the important thing is, NATO is not merely meddling - that word
covers a well-meaning neighbor wading into a marital argument, etc - but
rather _orchestrating_. The US, a country whose corporations are getting
ever fewer and larger through mergers and engulfments, is being used as
a mere instrument to conquer the world. At present it needs to acquire
a lever by which the EU and its euro may be chronically destabilized
(because Europe is too rich, populous and powerful to directly attack).
The Balkans is that lever; always has been. In the last century it was
the British who were behind all the geopolitical monkey business in the
Balkans, and today, though reduced to playing Tonto to our Lone Ranger,
they are still marginally in the game. They are America's tutor.
Britain, whose participation in the EU is so unsettled and schizophrenic,
and whose politics for centuries sought to keep the Continent weak and
divided, will continue riding with America long after the other states
come to their senses and pull out. The problem is that their uncritical
response to the American summons has destroyed the UN as the seat and
principal executive instrument of international law, and every bomb
release and missile firing by their planes is another illegal act chalked
up against NATO. If Serbia and Kosovo were off the European map they
would never make it onto yours, either, trust me on that.
> But the bombing is going to send a strong message to Milosevic and Saddam and
> other tyrants that slaughtering civilians is no longer acceptable behavior at
> the end of the 20th century, and that if you really want to persist in this
> type of behavior, be prepared to pay a steep price.
Another aspect of the brainwash going on: Take a look at the definition
of "humanitarian" in a good dictionary. Now try to fit it together with
words like catastrophe or disaster or any of its other mates of late,
and you'll realize that they're all oxymoronic constructions that don't
mean a goddamn thing. They're intellectual white noises that handily
short-circuit critical thought with each use, which is important because
the new form of American aggression, tailored to the new media-soaked
century, is just this: intervening to quell human rights violations with
military means as massively disproportionate as the schemers please, since
their original response to a humanitarian <whatever> is just a pretext for
a longer and wider campaign whose intent you will only know in retrospect.
Don't watch the news, friend, read the Dow. Big pigs are at the trough.
> I support current and future NATO action in Kosovo 100%.
Uhh, right!
> Genocide and ethnic cleansing are no longer acceptable behavior.
But neither are finance capitalism and imperialism in sheep's clothing.
v.
"We are lost when these bayonets begin to think."
-- Frederick the Great
