byPatrick Cockburn, COUNTERPUNCH, February 6, 2019
How should Brexit be seen against the broad backdrop of British history? Analogies multiply, with the crudest coming from prominent Brexiteer MP Mark Francois who denounced the head of Airbus for writing a letter stressing the negative economic impact for Britain of leaving the EU.
Several months ago I had a conversation about art with an
American friend of mine. I consider him to be fairly left leaning, but I
was puzzled when he told me he was seriously having to reconsider his “appreciation and enjoyment of certain artists” now that he knows of their “sexual abuse and sexist misogyny.” When
I asked what he was referring to he mentioned Picasso and Gauguin as a
couple examples. At the moment I was left nonplussed. In that short
conversation I was taken aback by the swiftly moving and insidious
undercurrent of puritanism still strong in American life.
This year Facebook filed two very interesting patents in the US. One was
a patent for emotion recognition technology; which recognises human
emotions through facial expressions and so can therefore assess what
mood we are in at any given time-happy or anxious for example. This can
be done either by a webcam or through a phone cam. The technology is
relatively straight forward.
Two articles from the US magazine COUNTERPUNCH highlight a very serious problem which presently darken the politics of the Western states, notable in the US and Great Britain. It is worth to read them carefully and to activate ones own cognitive faculties!
"Every one will agree that nationalist passion in the modern citizen is far less founded on a comprehensive knowledge of the national interests (he has an imperfect perception of these interests, he lacks the information necessary and does not try to acquire it, for he is indifferent to questions of foreeign policy) than on the pride he feels in his nation, on his will to feel himself one with the nation, to react to the honors and insults he thinks are bestowed on it. No doubt he wants his nation to acquzire territories, to be prosperous and to have powerful allies; but he wants all this far less on account of the material results which will accrue top the nation (how much is he conscious of these results?) than on account of the glory, the prestige which the nation will aquire. By becoming popular, national feeling has become national pride, national susceptibility. (...) If, in accordance with current opinion, you think that pride is a weaker passion than self-interest, you may be convinced to the contrary by observing how commonly men let themselves be killed on account of a wound to their pride, and how infrequently for some infraction of their interests."
Julien Benda: The Treason of the Intellectuals. Translated by Richard Aldington. Morrow, New York 1928 [The book is still on the market in the translation by R. Aldington.]
This is an old observation. But if one reads closely and hears the meaning of the words, one wonders about the freshness, the actuality, especially in face of the present President, Donald Trump and his followers and supporters, who are deeply nationalistic and chauvinistic. The followers support even his attacks on the free press which they denounce in accordance with their leader as a machinery of fake-news. This strange phenomenon isn't restricted to the United States. The anti-human, chauvinistic policy of "America first" has spread and poisens in euqivalents Europe. Many journalists, experts, scientists have sided with the dark spirit of this reactionary movement; the group of followers and fellow travellers is growing.
In 1992 when the French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut's book "The Undoing of Thought" came out, conservative writer Rober Kimball published a long review in his "The New Criterion". Finkielkraut starts with Benda and develops his essay by an updated modernized version of the treason, which Kiomball praises: "What Finkielkraut has understood with admirable clarity is that modern attacks on elitism represent not the extension but the destruction of culture."
If one followed and still follows the journalistic output of Kimball via The New Citerion, one could or had to learn how severe his attacs on the press of the establishment, for him the "other side", have become, what kind of cold war organ The New Criterion represents in an almost permanent state of drivel and slobber against the many enemies.
Recently (July 18, 2018) I read a dispatch, titled "Irony deficiency" by James Bowman. He lashes out in defence of Mr. Trump:
"But then why would you expect it to occur to anybody at the Post to compare President Washington not with President Trump but with themselves? I mean, it’s not as if Jeff Bezos’s gang of increasingly vicious propagandists behave in accordance with Washington’s rules of civility themselves, is it? Yet it’s no news to say that American journalists have grown accustomed to thinking that there are no rules, of civility or anything else, which apply to them. It would no doubt astonish them to think that there were anyone on their side—if there were anyone on their side—who thought they really ought to practice what they preach and set an example of the civil behavior they pretend to desiderate."
The same tough guy attacks Paul Krugman on his article in the NYT June 4, 2018, titled "Intellectuals, Politics and Bad Faith" in which Krugman responds to the notorious Niall Ferguson, who sees the University campus as the "biggest threat" to free speech in the US. Krugman noted:
"Ferguson is, as it happens, one of those conservative intellectuals who
hyperventilate about the supposed threat campus activists pose to free
speech — indeed, calling the campus left the “biggest threat”
to free speech in Trump’s America. At Stanford, he was one of the
faculty leaders of a program called Cardinal Conversations, which was
supposed to invite speakers who would “air contested issues.”
Now Bowman makes his bow and answers on behalf of the conservatives:
"Obviously—it must be obvious even to The New York Times—Professor Krugman’s is not an argument;
not an exercise of reason or analysis, just his usual cheerleading for
the progressive side in the political wars. But it is also an attempt to
take the media’s long-term project of branding President Trump as a
liar and extend it to all conservatives, ex, as it were, officio. They’re all liars! Didn’t you just know it?"
And so it goes on and on.
In his column "Roger's Rules", Mr. Kimball writes again and again against the enemies: As Trump Builds, the Resistance Shouts 'Destroy!' (PJ Media, July 3, 2018)
"There is a lesson here for the loud and unseemly American Leftists and their unlikely brethren, the soi-disant “conservative” Never Trumpers, who are trampling on civility, rejecting the processes of democratic governance, and encouraging violence. “There’s a deal of ruin in a nation,” Adam Smith observed to a disconsolate Brit during the American Revolution, especially a nation as prosperous and stable as the United States."
Clear? Do you understand? Then praise the lord and Trump and the grande nation, "a nation as prosperous and stable as the United States."
(Mr. Kimball has, I guess so, forgotten what he thought and considerd on Julien Benda and Finkielkraut in 1992. But, let's be fair: what can one expect from a busy man after 26 years?)
The article about Howard Zinn and the attacks on him as historian previews the book by David Detmer: Zinnophobia. The Battle over History in Education, Politics, and Scholartship. Zero Books Sept. 28, 2018
byBrett Wilkins, Counterpunch, 2.8.2018 And again, in the so called "only democracy in the Near East", the Jewish State Israel, an Arab Israeli has bin convicted of incitement because she recited a poem (in social media) which calls for resistance against the occupying power. What will be the next step? Book burnings, like the Nazis did?
The head of the Arab Joint List Alliance at the Israeli Knesset
(Parliament), Ayman Odeh, described the passing of the racist Jewish
Nation-state Law as “the death of our democracy.”
Did Odeh truly believe that, prior to this law, he had lived in a
true democracy? 70 years of Israeli Jewish supremacy, genocide, ethnic
cleansing, wars, sieges, mass incarceration, numerous discriminatory
laws, all aimed at the very destruction of the Palestinian people should
have given enough clues that Israel was never a democracy, to begin
with.
Lessons That Should Have Been Learned From NATO’s Destruction of Libya
byBrian Cloughley, Counterpunch July 13, 2018
The summit meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the
military alliance that is expanding its deployments of troops, combat
and surveillance aircraft and missile ships around Russia’s borders,
took place on July 11-12 and was a farce, with Trump behaving in his
usual way, insulting individuals and nations with characteristic
vulgarity. More
Old men, experienced, mature and war oriented, orchestrate war, and the masses follow willingly. Quite different to the cultural concept of "Dead Poets Society" they do not indulge in art, but in destruction, annihilation. War is not only a big business. War is the fulfillment of their deep lying drives: to strike, to kill, to conquer, to reign by war.
After the attacks by France, the United Kingdom, and the US against Syria, which were based on the unproven assertions, that the Assad-Regime had employed once again chemical weapons against its own people. In rapid speed the vassals and satelite states of the US acknowledged this "fact" - without questioning the credibility of the power who notoriously used and uses desinformation and fabricated propaganda to cover their actions. The official program is: believe it. Believe it, as we believed the facts about weapons of mass destruction by Saddam Hussein, the most prominent falsity of the US.
If the credibility of the embedded mass media is questioned, the critics are denounced as Anti-semitic war mongers, as stupid American haters, as agents of Moscow. "Lügenpresse" ist wrong by the simple fact that many of the Right or extreme Right share this view. No, the embedded press is right and correct, the tasks of the US are necessary and human, Israel is a democracy and not to be criticized - unless one is an Anti-semite, a Neonazi or agent of Moscow.
This simple world view justifies any action. "Any" includes any form of war. The right is with the power and the power is with the US. Join in or be destroyed, put out of action, of life, of future because the future is with the US. The "friends" of the US are eager to play their part in this war game, especially Great Britain and France. The Germans, these re-educated non-people built by non-persons, leave it by words so far, but underwrite any action in the name of dignity and freedom. They have learned their lessons and have converted into dogs, who listen to their master's voice, and who lick their boots.
If one consults the quality press in Germany or Switzerland, one doesn't finde one critical question oder comment on the maneuver which coins the Western politics. The situation in the UK or US is almost the same; but at least some media show a kind of independence and display criticism.
Theresa May faces anger over Syria raids as Trump declares ‘mission accomplished’
UK opposition leaders insist that parliament should have been consulted before airstrikes
John Bolton’s Extremism Is Perfectly Aligned With the Most Bellicose Israeli Policies
Whether
he consciously puts Israel’s interests first or whether he believes
they are identical to US interests doesn’t really matter—the outcome is
the same.
To say that a figure of the past is “good” or “bad” is not just
oversimplification, it’s an intellectual cliche that lingers on
boredom. Undeniably, Hugh Hefner will go down in history as an
incredibly controversial figure. For many people, he deserves praise
for his role in the sexual revolution. For others, he was simply an abusive creep.
Much can be said about Hugh Hefner’s degradation of women that is
awfully true in more respects than most people would like to admit.
However, if the critical theorists of the Frankfurt School taught
us anything, it’s that society and culture have been so mutilated by
the routines and pressures of late capitalism, that the shortcomings of
imperfect individuals within the culture industry are more importantly
reflections of widespread social sicknesses, such as the ideology of
male supremacy.
Immerhin in einem radikalen Magazin wird Hugh Hefners nicht hagiografisch gedacht, sondern seine Rolle als Büttel des Kapitals, der Macho-Kultur, der Frauenverdinglichung, der Zu- und Abrichtung, reflektiert. Zeit scheint vergesslich zu machen. In einigen "Qualitätsmedien" wird Hefner als Held gepriesen, als Vorkämpfer der sexuellen Freiheit, entgegen aller Belege seines aktiven Verdummungsbeitrags in der Stärkung der Frau als Sexualabjektes, stets dienstbar, gebrauchsfertig für den geilen Mann, dessen Triebstruktur usw. usf.
One of the most hyped “events” of American television, The Vietnam War,
has started on the PBS network. The directors are Ken Burns and Lynn
Novick. Acclaimed for his documentaries on the Civil War, the Great
Depression and the history of jazz, Burns says of his Vietnam films,
“They will inspire our country to begin to talk and think about the
Vietnam war in an entirely new way”.
In a society often bereft of historical memory and in thrall to the
propaganda of its “exceptionalism”, Burns’ “entirely new” Vietnam war is
presented as “epic, historic work”. Its lavish advertising campaign
promotes its biggest backer, Bank of America, which in 1971 was burned
down by students in Santa Barbara, California, as a symbol of the hated
war in Vietnam.
Burns says he is grateful to “the entire Bank of America family”
which “has long supported our country’s veterans”. Bank of America was a
corporate prop to an invasion that killed perhaps as many as four
million Vietnamese and ravaged and poisoned a once bountiful land. More
than 58,000 American soldiers were killed, and around the same number
are estimated to have taken their own lives.
I watched the first episode in New York. It leaves you in no doubt of
its intentions right from the start. The narrator says the war “was
begun in good faith by decent people out of fateful misunderstandings,
American overconfidence and Cold War misunderstandings”.
The dishonesty of this statement is not surprising.
Die Dokumentation lief in neun Teilen auf arte.tv (Frankreich und Deutschland). Der Kommentar bzw. die Kritik von John Pilger ist lesens- und bedenkenswert.
When Spanish President Mariano Rajoy deployed thousands of police
forces to Catalonia to repress an illegal referendum for independence,
he probably thought it would bring some closure to an open issue.
Perhaps, enforcing the law violently on peaceful citizens who just
wanted to cast a vote, and doing it on the global stage would finally
convince those rebellious Catalonians that their cause was lost.
Far from closure, the events of 1 October 2017 will cause more
consternation in Catalonia than ever before. It is fair to question if
Catalonians live in a 21st Century democracy, whether their
most basic human rights are going to be respected and whether there is
any room for political dialogue. Many of those who were not
pro-independence before yesterday but supported a referendum, are
probably wondering today whether there is any point in even considering
staying in Spain, after all. In total, at least 60% of the electorate
supported a referendum as per the last State elections in Catalonia in
2015.
byJeffrey St. Clair, COUNTERPUNCH, August 18, 2017
We’ve have entered the time of mock outrage. The press was shocked
that armed neo-Nazis were marching through the streets of
Charlottesville shouting “Blood and Soil” and “Jews will not replace
us!” Republicans were aghast that many of these thugs were wearing
Trump’s red “Make America Great Again” caps. Democrats were indignant
that Republicans didn’t call for Trump’s head on a platter. Everyone
felt very good about how bad they felt.
In this national psychodrama, Trump plays the role of the Great Revealer.
A rather strange article from the radical magazine Counterpunch, Aug. 7, 2017
The Instability of Britain and the US: How Do We Come Back From This?
Current political battles are so intense that they mask crucial
long-term developments: Britain and America both look much more unstable
today than they have done at any time since the Second World War. Some
weakening of Anglo-Saxon dominance on the world stage had been expected
in the wake of the Iraq war in 2003 and the financial crisis in 2008,
but suddenly both powers feel as if they are starting to implode.
The pros and cons of Brexit are furiously debated in Britain, usually
with the point at issue being the ultimate political and economic
outcome of leaving the EU. But two important negative consequences are
already with us: Britain is far more divided than it used to be and the
Government is entirely preoccupied with Brexit to the exclusion of
anything else. Brexit is like the tremors of an earthquake that shake
apart weak and vulnerable points in British society, state and nation.
There’s something really wrong with “Public” Broadcasting System “NewsHour” host and Council on Foreign Relations member Judy Woodruff.
Nearly every weekday night she participates in the corporate state
media’s elevation of the dubious, politically motivated charge that the
ridiculous Insane Clown President Donald Trump is a Russian agent who
stole the 2016 presidential election in collusion with the Kremlin.
There’s no shortage of other and terrible things to cover, God knows.
The list of horrors that deserve lead-story status from one night to the
next is daunting. I could fill pages listing them, including things
like these: Read forward at COUNTERPUNCH
