Remember, during the 20's Al Capone was asked why he didn't invest in the market. ‘It's a racket,’ he exclaimed.
Leaving the Castle with the New Year Message
The course of power ultimately changes only if there are forces present to oppose it. The Bush Administration, for example, rarely feels the rub of resistance; it is able to justify gratuitous tax breaks, snuggle up to friendly corporations, and fling environmentalism on the slag heap not least because the Democrats—cowed, confused, incoherent—too often end up speaking, when they speak at all, in the helium voice of a Warner Bros. pipsqueak. They hide, hoping that power, in the shape of a self-revealing grotesque (e.g., Trent Lott), will do all the work for them. It's a tactic of vacuous exhaustion, not a strategy of intellectual energy and moral direction.
Havel is a liberal, and, unlike many liberals, he is proud to proclaim it. As he begins to make his exit, it is worth adding up what his liberalism has wrought. He helped bring freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and freedom of commerce to his country.
· Philosopher King [New Yorker]
The most important thing, however, is that new generations are maturing, generations of people who grew up free and are not deformed by life under communist rule. These are the first Czechs of our times who inherently consider freedom normal and natural. It would be great if the breaking through of these people into various parts of public life leads to our society more factually, thoroughly and impartially examining its past, without whose reflection we cannot be ourselves. I also hope it will lead to our successfully parting with many ill consequences of the work of destruction the communist regime wreaked upon our souls.
We must remind ourselves over and over that democracy is not just a certain institutional structure, but also a spirit, a human capacity, a purpose, and an ideal. The structure exists to serve these. In our case this means, among other things, that we must repeatedly build dams against ruthlessness claiming merely to be a search for profit and against attempts to inculcate fear of the freedoms of speech and assembly. Repeatedly, the authority and independence of the police and the judiciary, those practical guarantees of justice, must be strengthened. Unfortunately, there are still associations of people always ready to skillfully enrich themselves at other people's cost and to seek immunity or even political cover. We cannot just passively watch this!
· Philosopher King’s Last New Year’s Speech [VictoryOverWant.org]
· Reflections on the split of Czechoslovakia, ten years on [Radio Praha]
Remember, communism is evil, but do not exchange one brutalism with another
Never in history have human beings been so dragooned into uniformity and blind obedience as in North Korea. The regime is one of bread and circuses: but attendance at the circuses is compulsory and the bread has been replaced by rockets.
The North Korean ideal is an eternal marchpast of the Leader by millions of people, expressionless until they let out a howl of rehearsed joy when the leader raises his hand to them. I have seen it myself, and am glad to have done so: for it was absolute political evil, the ne plus ultra of inhumanity.
· Ultra Isms [Samizdata]
Happy new year to everyone in time zones everywhere & maybe even to the Conbloggers, Combloggers & racketeers!
An invigorating read even if, like me, you don't agree with all of it.
The plight of the Conservatives is basically punitive. People hated their nastiness and then their nastiness and their incompetence (a particularly lethal combination) and decided to make the bastards suffer. For as long as arrogant, careerist bastard idiots continued to regard the Conservatives as an appropriate focus of their pathetic careerist fantasies, the voters would go on
It would feature them as pathetic villains in girlie fiction who would in due course have to make way for PC wildlife photographers in the affections of the heroines. It would sneer at them relentlessly on the BBC. It would regard Conservatives as worse than motorbike freak drug addicts as potential boyfriends for their daughters in old-fashioned suburban TV sitcoms. It would trash them so mercilessly that even they, the Conservatives, would realise that something was seriously and probably permanently wrong, public affectionwise, with their social situation.
· Wildlife [Samizdata]
The year ahead
In science, no truth or racket is forever, not even perhaps Einstein's theory of relativity, the pillar of modernity that gave us E=mc2. Physicists ring in the new year with a surprise: Einstein’s iconic equation might have to be revised to E=mc2/(1 + mc2/Ep) where Ep is the Planck energy. Roll over, Ein Steyn.
Brendan O'Neill has already completed all his blogging for 2003.
American forces will not go all the way to Baghdad, causing Andrew Sullivan to tear what little hair he has left out of his head. He will write about the need to 'depose Saddam once and for all' and WarbloggerWatch will respond with a piece headlined 'Silly Sullivan'. Unlike Russia’s Pravda, The Truth, Brendan fails to report that women on both sides of a civil war in Sudan will declare a sexual strike to pressure their men to make peace, a tactic famously depicted in the Aristophanes play Lysistrata.
· Big Clever Serious Bloggers [Brendanoneill]
· Serious Carnival of Vanities [Solonor’s Grooooovy Russelling Grove]
· Why we drop a ball on New Year's eve [The Star of Toronto]
Public Speaking Beautiful speeches?
Attention ladies, gentlemen, drunks, boozers, lushes, conbloggers! Why can't anyone in government speak with any degree of profundity or even a basic grasp of what makes for stirring oratory? "What I find not only boring but dangerous is not the lack of imagination, nor art, nor insight, nor even intelligence, but the absence of specifics. When public figures speak, I literally do not know what the hell they are talking about.
· Talking Heads [The Globe & Mail (Toronto)]
Politics Songs Of Protest
The venerable tradition of American protest music still generates heat on the rally circuit, as Dylan's constant reinvocation proves. Still, political music is marked by the same tension that always feeds pop music: the desire to connect to a legacy versus the impulse to try something new.
· Political Song [The Nation]
The article below which ran on the front page of the December 30 Washington Post is important, being undoubtedly the most prominent piece of mainstream reportage in recent memory on Reagan and Bush administration support for Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the 1980s. It summarizes much of the salient information. (You would think that reporters might now ask our Secretary of Defense a couple of pointed questions at his next press conference, though I'm not about to hold my breath waiting.)
· Song of Sins [The Washington Post via Tomdispatch]
Protesting The Patriot Act
Two thirds of Vermont's independent bookstore owners have signed a letter protesting the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act gives the government the power to seize bookstore and library records to check customers' and patrons' reading lists. A gag order in the legislation prevents bookstore owners and librarians from telling anyone about the seizure.
· Riot Act [Publishers Weekly]
Literature An Interview with Bob Swartzel,
Author of Diverting the Buddha
in the January 2003 issue of the Dragon Tails
During the Vietnam War, I witnessed the meteoric rise and subsequent unprecedented fall of a democracy movement, a grassroots movement led by the Buddhist monks of Vietnam. Because my signal unit provided communication for CIA, AID, State Department and NSC folks, we signal troopers heard things discussed that did not track with the official news being reported in the press and through official communiqués.
This discordance caused misgivings among many of us. These concerns never disappeared in my case. Over the years, as I stumbled upon more and more oh-by-the-way corrections of misinformation, I began to consider the need for this novel. I hold an advanced degree in engineering and have worked in investment services. I now reside in South Carolina.
· To subscribe to Dragon Tails Dragon Tales]
· Diverting the Buddha [DDP]
· Annual look back at noteworthy Literary Lives that ended in the last year. [NY Times]
How Good Do We Have to Be?
Harold Kushner, a former congregational rabbi draws raves from Catholics to Muslims for his message of tolerance of imperfections, our own and others'.
We only feel guilt, hostility, and anger when we measure ourselves and others against impossibly high standards. The illusion that we can control events if we do everything right, that we can make people love us if we do things right, and that we can guarantee happy endings by deserving them, is an illusion, and a very destructive one.
Media Dragon: The Insider’s Insider’s Scoop Going A Lott Deeper on political irony
Conbloggers & Combloggers Note - Political Illusion & Irony Intended:
TV political commercial for NSW Elections 2003 will feature a same-sex kiss. Viewers will see the lifesaver munching on fundraising sandwiches when he spots a drowning man in the water. As he gives the kiss of life, the man pulls the lifeguard's head towards him and begins to kiss him back.
Speaking of water, this rang the bell with Angela on the holy Christian day, Sunday, who heard this on the ABC Radio cricket coverage: 'Gillespie bowls straighter than Fred Nile.'
