Mois : juin 2008

Linked with The RealNews.com, and its newest McClellan’s testimony matter.

Aijaz Ahmad is a well-known Marxist literary theorist and political commentator based in India. Born in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India just before it gained independence from British rule, Aijaz Ahmad along with his parents migrated to Pakistan following partition. After his education he worked in various universities in US and Canada. At present Aijaz Ahmed is Professorial Fellow at the Centre of Contemporary Studies, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi and is visiting Professor of Political Science at York University, Toronto. He also works as an editorial consultant with the Indian newsmagazine Frontline and as a senior news analist for The Real News Network, … (or theREALnews network) … (full text).

He says: … « The first option, I think, the time is gone for, actually, negotiations with the Taliban. The time to negotiate with the Taliban was when they were weak, that is to say, soon after the invasion, when they were in disarray. Today they control virtually as much territory as the Karzai government does. Secondly, I think the resistance from the Karzai government and many other of those tribal forces will be far too great for a real settlement with the Taliban, because the structure of power in Afghanistan has changed completely. Now drug lords are inside the government, outside the government, and so on, and a stable government in Afghanistan of that kind is actually not in their favor. I think that time is gone. So far as the other option, the pincer movement, is concerned, that is what actually a part of the Pakistani establishment is willing to do » … (full interview text).

Find this 4 Videos Reactions to Imperialism and Neoliberalism, November 16, 2007, Toronto:

• Part one: Introduction by Leo Panitch, 11.11 min;
• part two: Aijaz Ahmad, 18.30 min;
• part three: Sabah Alnasseri, 17.33 min;
• part four: Q+A with Sabah Alnasseri and Aijaz Ahmad, 10.06 min.

Read: ISLAM, ISLAMISMS AND THE WEST, 37 pages.

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Aijaz Ahmad – India

His book: In Theory, Nations, Classes, Literature, by Aijaz Ahmad, 368 pages, 1994.

… The Cuban revolution was one of the key events in the political formation of my generation, just as the overthrow of the Allende government in 1973 was in its negative impact a decisive moment in the history of the global Marxist left. The more recent Latin American developments have been seen in India as both a certain return to what one might call “the Cuban moment,” but also the rise of a very different kind of left. My own writings on Latin America have been designed strictly for an Indian readership and try to grapple with just what this new left, in all its variations, is … (full text).

Video: US troops in Pakistan, 8.47 min.

… THE hastily confected judicial assassination of Saddam Hussein, the last President of independent Iraq, was part of an extraordinary three-month-long offensive that United States President George W. Bush has mounted on all fronts, domestic and international, since mid-October 2006. That offensive has now culminated in the invasion of Somalia by the Ethiopian proxy of the U.S., massive U.S. bombings of Somali territory by huge U.S. cargo planes that have been turned into gunships, and the “invitation” by the puppet regime, which the Ethiopian proxy has imposed on Somalia, to the U.S. to send its troops to this newly occupied country. A “new” Eastern Africa is now as much a U.S. objective as is a “new” West Asia. An integrated offensive from the Caspian Sea to the Mombasa Bay, so to speak … (full text).

Lineages of the Present: Ideology and Politics in Contemporary South Asia, 366 pages, 2000.

… Culture is not reducible to those processes that Marxist political economy studies for its own purposes, but culture is embedded in those processes. The so-called « mass culture » today is quite inseparable from processes of mass production, marketing, profiteering, systems of mass communication, etc. Every social practice and all material production involves signification, but neither communication nor fashion nor any other of those things that Cultural Studies takes as its specific object of study is merely or even mainly a signifying practice. Nor can the relation between cultural production and its basis in economic and political processes be read off anecdotally or epiphenominally; it has to be studied rigorously and structurally. You can’t just throw in a bit of economics here, a bit of technology there; you have to be able to locate individual facts in a complex historical process, and for that you need very considerable theoretical preparedness. In its beginnings Cultural Studies was quite aware of all this, and some have sought to remain true to those very prosaic origins. In the main, though, Cultural Studies has itself become one of those many styles of consumer capitalism that it sets out to study … (full text).

Carter says Israel has 150 nukes – Aijaz Ahmad: Why is corporate media marginalizing a former president, May 30, 2008.

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Linked with Fear and strange arithmetics.

Saskia Sassen (born January 5, 1949 at The Hague, Netherlands) is an American sociologist and economist noted for her analyses of globalization and international human migration. She is currently a professor of sociology at Columbia University and at the London School of Economics. Sassen coined the term global city. She is married to the sociologist Richard Sennett. Sassen grew up in Buenos Aires where her parents Willem Sassen and Miep van der Voort moved in 1950. She also spent a part of her youth in Italy and says she was « brought up in five languages » … (full text).

She says: … « The notion of globalisation does not adequately capture this transformation, which leads on to the question, where, precisely, is this foundational transformation happening? My answer is, to a large extent, within, not outside, the architecture of the nation state. Yes, there are novel global formations, but they are thin compared with the nation state, the most complex structure we have produced historically. I think some parts of today’s transformation are partial, contradictory, incipient – they have uncertain trajectories and may well collapse, even as others thrive » … (full interview text).

Global Networks, inked critics, 19 pages.

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Saskia Sassen – USA and Netherlands

Public Interventions … .

… She has recently completed a five-year project on sustainable human settlement for UNESCO. The project established a network of researchers and activists in more than 30 countries and is published in the Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems EOLSS.net. She serves on several editorial boards and is an advisor to several international bodies. She is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the National Academy of Sciences Panel on Cities, and Chair of the Information Technology and International Cooperation Committee of the Social Science Research Council (USA). Her comments have appeared in The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde Diplomatique, The International Herald-Tribune, and The Financial Times, among others … (full text).

More around the themes she is writing about: international trade; and nation states; and rural depopulation; and transnational/transnationalism; and urbanization..

The goal of a negotiated global open migration policy would be to make universal what is already the reality for the affluent everywhere, making what is now a privilege for some a universal right for all (see Saskia Sassen, « Migration policy: from control to governance, » 13 July 2006). This is not a new proposition. It has been the subject of serious discussion in academic and policy circles for years. Indeed, an ambitious extended debate within openDemocracy, focusing on the reform of European migration policy, included contributions from many policy analysts such as Liza Schuster and Franck Düvell, Nigel Harris and Saskia Sassen, arguing for variations on the proposition of open borders. Still, the issue is a hard sell, and in spite of the manifest failure of present policies and practices, serious consideration of the alternative at the political level has not been achieved … (full text).

Work and the Global Economy: Listen to the Entire Program, September 2, 2002.

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Linked with The RealNews.com, and with Gore Vidal’s Article of Impeachment.

Gore Vidal (born October 3, 1925; pronounced /ˌgɔər vɪˈdɑːl/ or /vɪˈdæl/) is an American author of novels, stage plays, screenplays, and essays, and an erstwhile political candidate. He is an outspoken member of the American political Establishment, and a noted wit and social critic who wrote the ground-breaking The City and the Pillar (1948) that outraged mainstream critics as the first major American novel to feature unambiguous homosexuality … (full text).

He says:  » … « Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies » … and: « (Lying is) the one thing I hate most on this earth. Which is why I do not have a friendly time with journalists » … (find many more dialogues in this text).

His latest book: selected essays of Gore Vidal, June 18, 2008.

Author Gore Vidal will speak with Jay Parini, author and Vidal’s literary executor, on Tuesday, June 24, 2008, at the Writers Guild Theater as a part of TOWN HALL’s ongoing Writers Bloc series … (full text, June 12, 2008).

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Gore Vidal – USA

N.Y. Times Magazine Publishes Charge That McCain’s a Phony POW, June 16, 2008.

… “Gore Vidal is America’s premier man of letters,” proclaims Jay Parini, himself a poet, novelist, critic, and biographer. Parini is also an editor, and his pronouncement constitutes the opening sentence of his introduction to a volume of vintage Vidal. If “man of letters” sounds too much like postmaster general, the collection at least confirms Vidal’s preeminence as virtuoso of the essay. He is also a redoubtable novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and memoirist … (full text, June 18, 2008).

Gore Vidal and the Art of the Political Insult.

He was born Eugene Luther Gore Vidal in West Point, New York, the only child of Eugene Luther Vidal Sr. (1895†»1969) and the former Nina S. Gore (1903†»1978). His birth took place at the Cadet Hospital of the United States Military Academy, where his father was the school’s first aeronautics instructor, and he was christened by the headmaster of St. Albans, the preparatory school he would attend in his youth.[1] His second middle name honors his maternal grandfather, Thomas P. Gore, Democratic senator from Oklahoma … (full text, June 16, 2008).

Spacey adds Shrink to packed schedule, June 17, 2008.

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Erwin Wagenhofer is born 1961 in Amstetten, Lower Austria, graduated from the Vienna Institute of Technology TGM, Department of Communications Engineering and Electronics worked for three years as developer at Philips Austria, Video Department 1983–1987 freelance director and assistant camera operator for various productions, feature films and documentaries at the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) since 1987 freelance writer and filmmaker … (full bio).

He says:  » … the idea came from an earlier project. We were making a film called Operation Figurini about an art project which took place at the local markets. From the beginning we had planned to make a detailed documentary of Vienna’s markets. When it came time to write the script or do the treatment for this film, I wandered up and down the city’s markets and I thought: what is it about markets that’s so interesting in the first place? And the only thing that interested me was the products. Where does all that stuff come from? The original idea was to start at Vienna’s most famous market, the Naschmarkt, and to look behind the scenes. Where does that stuff come from, where do the tomatoes and all the other products come from? And we actually began with the tomatoes. We did our research and that’s how we ended up in Spain. We just did the tomato story first …  » (full interview text).

Picture Gallery of ‘we feed the world‘.

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Erwin Wagenhofer – Austria

Tout enfant qui meurt de faim est … assassiné – Étant donné l’état actuel de l’agriculture dans le monde, on sait qu’elle pourrait nourrir 12 milliards d’individus sans difficultés. Pour le dire autrement : tout enfant qui meurt actuellement de faim est, en réalité, assassiné. » Les mots de Jean Ziegler, rapporteur auprès de l’O.N.U. sur le Droit à l’alimentation tombent comme un couperet … (scenes et cinés.fr).

ERWIN WAGENHOFER’S BEST MOVIE.

He writes: Every day in Vienna the amount of unsold bread sent back to be disposed of is enough to supply Austria’s second-largest city, Graz. Around 350,000 hectares of agricultural land, above all in Latin America, are dedicated to the cultivation of soybeans to feed Austria’s livestock while one quarter of the local population starves. Every European eats ten kilograms a year of artificially irrigated greenhouse vegetables from southern Spain, with water shortages the result … (full text).

He says also (… about Jean Ziegler): It’s interesting how that came about, because I found Ziegler first. I’ve read his books and followed his TV appearances for years and have great respect for his work. But I chose Jean Ziegler for only one reason–or rather, he interested us for only one reason–and that’s because he works at the UN. Because Jean Ziegler as Jean Ziegler would immediately put everything into the left corner, but since he has this high UN function, that of Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food… that made him interesting for the film. I wrote Jean Ziegler a letter, and because he’s an admirer of the French Revolution, I sent the letter on the 14th of July. I worked a long time on that letter, and two days later he called me. We met in Geneva that October … (full interview text).

Filmography on the NY Times.

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Linked with The Charms of Wikipedia.

Nicholson Baker (born January 7, 1957) is a contemporary American writer of fiction and non-fiction. As a novelist, his writings focus on minute inspection of his characters’ and narrators’ stream of consciousness. His unconventional novels deal with topics such as voyeurism and planned assassination, and they generally de-emphasize narrative in favor of intense character work. Baker’s enthusiasts appreciate his ability candidly to explore the human psyche, while critics feel that his writing wastes time on trivia (Stephen King notoriously compared Baker’s novel Vox to a « meaningless little fingernail paring ») … (full text).

His author spotlight on random house.

… The lies, according to Kurlansky, were told by the leaders of the democracies, especially Roosevelt and Churchill. Baker had shown, “step by step, how an alliance dominated by leaders who were bigoted, far more opposed to communism than to fascism, obsessed with arms sales and itching for a fight coerced the world into war” … (full text, June 6, 2008).

The Video with Charlie Rose in May 9, 1994, about sex and the death: with Erica Jong, Robert Olen Butler and Nicholson Baker, 58 minutes, added March 7, 2007.

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Nicholson Baker – USA

A Debunker on the Road to World War II.

… The novelist Nicholson Baker’s customary style in books like “The Mezzanine” and “Room Temperature” is to observe the world in slow, painstaking detail, relishing the tiny moment, enjoying the aside for the sake of accuracy, insisting on charting the precise state of things. He has now applied this system to history, to the few years before the United States declared war on Japan and entered into World War II as a full participant. It is clear Baker has not done this as a literary exercise, nor as a new way of amusing himself and his readers, but because of a passionate view of how the war against Germany was conducted by Britain under Winston Churchill … (full text, March 23, 2008).

Even the staunchest opponents of the wars in Vietnam and Iraq are loath to take issue with World War II, the quintessential conflict between good and evil that became the model of a morally just war … (full text, June 12, 2008).

… To research his new book, “Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization,” which comes out next week from Simon & Schuster (March 2008), Mr. Baker read old newspapers online and on microfilm, and he lso borrowed hundreds of books from the library at the University of New Hampshire, about 20 minutes away in Durham, which had granted him professorial privileges. Until just recently, when he began to cart them back, they were all stacked in Mr. Baker’s barn: piles of Churchill; of Herbert Hoover’s postpresidential papers; war records, biographies, letters, diaries … (full text, March 4, 2008).

Was WWII A Good War? June 14, 2008.

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Linked with Cours à distance ‘la philosophie pour les enfants’, and with Toward a Philosophy of Thinking. Added 14th June: and linked with the International Council of Philosophical Inquiry with Children ICPIC.

Matthew Lipman (born on August 24, 1922) is recognized as the founder of Philosophy for Children. His decision to bring philosophy to young people came from his experience as a professor at Columbia University, where he witnessed underdeveloped reasoning skills in his students. His interest is particularly on developing reasoning skills by teaching logic. The belief that children possess the ability to think abstractly from an early age, led him to the conviction that bringing logic to children’s education earlier would help them to improve their reasoning skills. In 1972 he left Columbia for Montclair State College to establish the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children (IAPC) [1] where he began to take philosophy into K-12 classrooms in Montclair. That year he also published his first of many books specifically designed to help children practice philosophy, Harry Stottlemeier’s Discovery. A primary goal of Philosophy for children is to foster critical thinking, defined by Lipman as “thinking that (1) facilitates judgment because it (2) relies on criteria, (3) is self-correcting, and (4) is sensitive to context.” [2]He challenges educators to create a community of inquiry to this end. The IAPC continues to develop and publish curriculum, working internationally to advance and improve philosophy for children … (full text).

He says: « The students become accustomed to asking each other for reasons and opinions, to listening carefully to each other, to building on each others ideas » …

… and he writes: … Philosophy taps children?s natural curiosity and sense of wonder. It engages them in the search for meaning and enriches and extends their understanding. It strengthens thinking and reasoning skills and builds self-esteem. It helps to develop the qualities that make for good judgement in everyday life … (for both full text).

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Matthew Lipman – USA

Video: Philosophy for Kids, by Matthew Lipman (6/7), 9.30 min, added: May 25, 2008.

Lipman and Sharp: Philosophy for Children (P4C) as a method of enquiry, was developed by Matthew Lipman and Ann Margaret Sharp in the late 1960’s. They both still work at the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children at Montclair State University in America. Lipman and Sharp developed specially written texts to be used in the classroom. (children thinkin<em> – link disabeled since</em>).

… Philosophy for Children is an international movement started by the American philosopher and educator Matthew Lipman in 1969 and developed with caring spirit by Ann Margaret Sharp … (full text<em> – link disabeled since</em>).

Matthew Lipman and Philosophy for Children Another important pioneer in what in the United States is termed the Critical Thinking movement, and which we talk about in the UK as the thinking skills, is the American philosopher, Matthew Lipman. Originally a university philosophy professor, Lipman was unhappy at what he saw as poor thinking in his students. He became convinced that something was wrong with the way they had been taught in school when they were younger. They seemed to have been encouraged to learn facts and to accept authoritative opinions, but not to think for themselves. He therefore left his post and founded the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children (I.A.P.C.) at Montclair State College, New Jersey. For the last forty years decades, he and his colleagues have been developing material for use in schools, aimed at helping young people (from 6 year-olds to late adolescents) to think … (full text<em> – link disabeled since</em>).

Philosophy with Children Centers Around The World, Sept. 23, 2004<em> – link disabeled since</em>.

… He recognizes that there are different views as to the function of education and schools and that there any several opposing viewpoints that express what the function should be. Some take the stance that schools are designed to make better future citizens, some contend that they should foster a sense of self-worth in a child and engage with their creativity, while still others insist that the school has been rendered almost useless because of the many conflicts that exist within the institution. In this summary of « Thinking of Education » all of these ideas will be touched upon as in the book, Matthew Lipman offered some analysis of these many aspects that are having an effect on education and deciding what its modern function should be. (full text<em> – link disabeled since</em>).

Download the google book: Philosophy in the classroom<em> – link disabeled since</em>.

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(Formally known as Walter J. Williams, his friends call him John … )

Linked with Potential Future Hyperinflation, with Selling War – What WE Say Goes, with Shadow Government Statistics, and with Stephen Lendman, USA.

John Williams aka Walter J. « John » Williams was born in 1949. He received an A.B. in Economics, cum laude, from Dartmouth College in 1971, and was awarded a M.B.A. from Dartmouth’s Amos Tuck School of Business Administration in 1972, where he was named an Edward Tuck Scholar. During his career as a consulting economist, John has worked with individuals as well as Fortune 500 companies … (Financial Sense Editorials).

NEW RECORD MONEY GROWTH THREATENS MONETARY INFLATION, by John Williams, Executive Editor of SHADOW GOVERNMENT STATISTICS, January 14, 2008.

… But now a man has come out of the woodwork who’s done the real math and properly crunched all the numbers. His conclusion: « If the numbers don’t seem real to the man in the street … they probably aren’t » … (Shadow Statistics, by Doug Hornig).

Federal Deficit Reality, Sept, 7, 2004.

He says: … These overstatements have become such a serious problem that there is a little bit of a disconnect today between what a person on Main Street thinks is happening and the economic numbers you see coming out of the federal government. If you go back, I’m guessing it was five to ten years ago, the Kaiser Foundation conducted a survey of the public’s views on the levels of the CPI, unemployment, GDP growth and such, which was reported in the Washington Post. The gist of all the article was, “Ho, ho, ho, ho. Look how stupid the American people are. They don’t realize that inflation is so low and that unemployment is so low.”

His website Shadow Government Statistics.

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sorry, I found no photo of Walter J. »John » Williams, USA

Gross Domestic Product, Oct. 6, 2004.
 
… John Williams joins a growing list of guest contributors who have provided some terrific material in the short time the GRA website has been in existence. When you have a moment, go to the website’s « Guest Contributions » section on the home page, lower right-hand column) and peruse some of the other work available there. Incidentally, if you did not read the earlier installments of John’s series, you will find them posted in the « Guest Contributions » section … (full text).

Pollyanna creep.

Washington’s Great « No Inflation » Hoax, May 8, 2008. … According to Williams, government realized as long ago as the Kennedy administration that Americans would rather hear good news even if it’s false, and so the manipulation of data began. Unemployment was easy. First they created the « discouraged worker » category (those who’ve given up on finding a job) and counted them separately. Then, under Clinton, they quit counting them at all. Upwards of five million out-of-work people were suddenly no longer « unemployed » … (full text).

GOVERNMENT ECONOMIC REPORTS: THINGS YOU’VE SUSPECTED BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK.

He writes: … Inflation, as reported by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is understated by roughly 7% per year. This is due to recent redefinitions of the series as well as to flawed methodologies, particularly adjustments to price measures for quality changes. The concentration of this installment on the quality of government economic reports will be first on CPI series redefinition and the damages done to those dependent on accurate cost-of-living estimates, and on pending further redefinition and economic damage. The CPI was designed to help businesses, individuals and the government adjust their financial planning and considerations for the impact of inflation. The CPI worked reasonably well for those purposes into the early-1980s. In recent decades, however, the reporting system increasingly succumbed to pressures from miscreant politicians, who were and are intent upon stealing income from social security recipients, without ever taking the issue of reduced entitlement payments before the public or Congress for approval … (full text).
 
Continuer la lecture de « Walter J. "John" Williams – USA »