My published comment #102.
May 03, 2009 10:27 am
Link
May 3rd, 2009 0:10 am
Horror Terror Torture: The American Way
Q. Is torture by waterboarding to be set apart and conveniently isolated from the "banality of evil" of US foreign policy?
Q. Was "shock and awe" mass torture?
Q. Are today's drone raids that routinely kill civilians in Swat fly-by torture?
Q. Shall we continue to make convenient comforting distinctions between horror, terror, torture in US nation-state relations?
Maureen Dowd focuses on waterboarding torture as one example of Republican leaders' character corrosion. But really, is it just about torture or more broadly about the aforesaid 'banality of evil' in the US national political character? Is this corrosiveness a Condi-tion found just in Republicans of the Bush-Cheney era or widely distributed throughout the Beltway and beyond? That banality of evil is represented by the US nation-state, in which horror, terror, torture at the existential level, are inseparable. Ask the bleached bones at Hiroshima, the napalm burned skin in Vietnam all the way to today.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
-------------------------------------
New York Times copyright
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/05/03/opinion/03dowd.html
Op-Ed Columnist: How Character Corrodes
By MAUREEN DOWD
The Republicans new-found concerns about checks and balances is touching, given what the Bush administration did to undermine the process.
===================================================================================
Showing posts with label Ethical Democracy as Lived Practice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ethical Democracy as Lived Practice. Show all posts
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
Democracy and Torture
April 20th, 2009 8:40 am
Is torture compatible with Democracy? Apparently it is, in several democratic systems, US, India, South Africa for example, whenever perceived law and order issues and perceived national interest issues are at stake.
The operative word is "perceived."
Torture is incompatible with ETHICAL conceptions of DEMOCRACY. It violates the human body and spirit.
And it is approved and deployed by those in Power, whether they are state-sponsored as in the CIA or extra-state actors like the Taliban.
The expose of waterboarding as a torture technique teaches us that Democracy is always as much a destination as it is a journey.
Democracy's craft is a work in progress, democracy's work is never done. Only We the People can disarm govts. and overturn torture.
----------------
April 20th, 2009 8:55 am Comment #592
TORTURE & THE MEDIA
Why are these revelations about waterboarding coming so late in the deadly game that the US govt has played in Iraq?
Where was the US media? Embedded as well as bamboozled?
Wasn't "shock and awe" itself a form of mass terror and torture? So why this postmortem approach to waterboarding?
Q.Is the US MEDIA complicit (this is not conspiracy theory, it's about complicity) in this delayed reporting on torture? Where are the investigative journalists on the staff of the NYT or The Washington Post?
Besides, civil society publics, both in the US and elsewhere have always suspected that torture was being used in Iraq and Guantanamo.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
------------------------------------------------
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/us/politics/21intel.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
Obama Urges C.I.A. Not to Be Discouraged by Memos
President Obama spoke at C.I.A. headquarters as C.I.A. director Leon Panetta looked on.
By PETER BAKER and SCOTT SHANE
Published: April 20, 2009
------------------------------
-----------
Waterboarding Used 266 Times on 2 Suspects
By SCOTT SHANE
Published: April 19, 2009
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/04/20/world/20detain.html
Is torture compatible with Democracy? Apparently it is, in several democratic systems, US, India, South Africa for example, whenever perceived law and order issues and perceived national interest issues are at stake.
The operative word is "perceived."
Torture is incompatible with ETHICAL conceptions of DEMOCRACY. It violates the human body and spirit.
And it is approved and deployed by those in Power, whether they are state-sponsored as in the CIA or extra-state actors like the Taliban.
The expose of waterboarding as a torture technique teaches us that Democracy is always as much a destination as it is a journey.
Democracy's craft is a work in progress, democracy's work is never done. Only We the People can disarm govts. and overturn torture.
----------------
April 20th, 2009 8:55 am Comment #592
TORTURE & THE MEDIA
Why are these revelations about waterboarding coming so late in the deadly game that the US govt has played in Iraq?
Where was the US media? Embedded as well as bamboozled?
Wasn't "shock and awe" itself a form of mass terror and torture? So why this postmortem approach to waterboarding?
Q.Is the US MEDIA complicit (this is not conspiracy theory, it's about complicity) in this delayed reporting on torture? Where are the investigative journalists on the staff of the NYT or The Washington Post?
Besides, civil society publics, both in the US and elsewhere have always suspected that torture was being used in Iraq and Guantanamo.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
------------------------------------------------
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/us/politics/21intel.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
Obama Urges C.I.A. Not to Be Discouraged by Memos
President Obama spoke at C.I.A. headquarters as C.I.A. director Leon Panetta looked on.
By PETER BAKER and SCOTT SHANE
Published: April 20, 2009
------------------------------
-----------
Waterboarding Used 266 Times on 2 Suspects
By SCOTT SHANE
Published: April 19, 2009
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/04/20/world/20detain.html
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Social Justice, Ethical Democracy & the G-20
My Comment #61.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/world/europe/03summit.html
New York Times copyright
-------------
April 02, 2009 9:28 am
Obama, the first Black U.S. president is squandering an historic opportunity by failing to focus on socio-economic JUSTICE in the world at the G-20 summit.
I didn't expect him to, (even as I voted for him), because he performs Whiteness. He is rewarded for protecting and preserving the dominant status quo. He is the Black least threatening to the status quo. I voted for him because he was the lesser of two evils, not because I expected him to make Change I could Believe in.
The US economy and US foreign policy would both benefit if the US and other member nations of the G-20 focused on the havenots (their numbers are increasing) in the US and in the world. The member-nations representing the developing economies are still exhibiting a colonized dependent mindset.
The rich countries are already heavily "protectionist" and the so-called "free" market is loaded in favor of the rich looting economies.
Regulation, growth and development in the 21st century should be DRIVEN by the pragmatic idealism of social justice.
Sharing and being fair are important lessons learned in kindergarten.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
------------
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/04/03/world/europe/03summit.html?s=1&pg=3
Global Leaders Meeting to Resolve Rift on Economic Plan
By MARK LANDLER and DAVID E. SANGER
Published: April 2, 2009
New York Times copyright
Updated: March 30, 2009
-----------------------------
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/g/group_of_20/index.html
The Group of 20, or G-20, is an international body that meets to discuss economic issues. Its members -- 19 countries with some of the world's biggest industrial and emerging economies, plus the European Union -- represent about 90 percent of the world's gross national product, 80 percent of world trade (including trade within the European Union) and two-thirds of the global population. The G-20, which represents a far broader range of the world's industrialized economies than the more Atlantic-oriented G-8, has taken on a new prominence in the current economic crisis. On April 2, 2009, its members will meet in London for a session expected to center around President Obama's push for greater economic stimulus around the globe, Europe's desire for a stronger framework of financial regulation and the desire of emerging economies, led by China, for a bigger role in economic dipomacy.
The G-20 was established as a response to the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s and to a "growing recognition that key emerging-market countries were not adequately included in the core of global economic discussion and governance," according to the G-20's public materials.
A smaller group of industrialized nations has been meeting since the 1970s (the G-7 and G-8, which convene finance ministers and heads of government, respectively). In the 1990s, given the extent of the Asian financial crisis, government leaders decided to involve a broader group of countries, including emerging market countries, to deal with the turmoil. A group of 22 countries ("G-22") and then a group of 33 countries ("G-33") met on an ad hoc basis. The G-20 was created in 1999 as a more permanent international economic body that includes representation from emerging countries. The member countries are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey and the United States. The European Union is also a member, represented by the rotating council presidency and the European Central Bank.
The membership of the G-20 has not changed since it was established, and the organization says there are "no formal criteria for G-20 membership." With the exceptions of Argentina, Saudi Arabia and South Africa, all of the member countries fall within the list of the top 20 biggest state G.D.P.'s in the world (using the 2007 rankings from the C.I.A. World Factbook, International Monetary Fund and the World Bank).
"I don't think it's a club you can join except by having a lot of economic growth," said Simon Johnson, a professor at the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Usually, the attendees of the annual meetings are the finance ministers and central bank governors of the member countries, plus top leadership of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In November 2008, heads of government attended an emergency G-20 session held in Washington to deal with the crumbling of global credit.
The Washington meeting was referred to by many observers as a possible prelude to a sort of Bretton Woods II, meaning an event that marks the start of a new international financial framework. (The term Bretton Woods System refers to an international monetary system set up during a 1944 conference in Bretton Woods, N.H.; it established, among other things, the I.M.F.).
The I.M.F., which had nearly become irrelevant before the current crisis, is now expected to be a focus of the London gathering. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, who once worked at the fund, has called for its financial resources to be expanded by $500 billion, effectively tripling its lending capacity to distressed countries and cementing its status as the lender of last resort for much of the world.
Japan and the European Union have each pledged $100 billion; the United States has signaled it will contribute a similar sum, though its money will take longer to arrive because of the need for Congressional approval. China, with its mammoth foreign exchange reserves, is the next obvious donor.
Yet officials of China and other developing countries have served notice that they are reluctant to make comparable pledges without getting a greater say in the operations of the fund, which is run by a Frenchman, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and is heavily influenced by the United States and Western Europe.
New York Times copyright
=====================================================================================
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/world/europe/03summit.html
New York Times copyright
-------------
April 02, 2009 9:28 am
Obama, the first Black U.S. president is squandering an historic opportunity by failing to focus on socio-economic JUSTICE in the world at the G-20 summit.
I didn't expect him to, (even as I voted for him), because he performs Whiteness. He is rewarded for protecting and preserving the dominant status quo. He is the Black least threatening to the status quo. I voted for him because he was the lesser of two evils, not because I expected him to make Change I could Believe in.
The US economy and US foreign policy would both benefit if the US and other member nations of the G-20 focused on the havenots (their numbers are increasing) in the US and in the world. The member-nations representing the developing economies are still exhibiting a colonized dependent mindset.
The rich countries are already heavily "protectionist" and the so-called "free" market is loaded in favor of the rich looting economies.
Regulation, growth and development in the 21st century should be DRIVEN by the pragmatic idealism of social justice.
Sharing and being fair are important lessons learned in kindergarten.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
------------
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/04/03/world/europe/03summit.html?s=1&pg=3
Global Leaders Meeting to Resolve Rift on Economic Plan
By MARK LANDLER and DAVID E. SANGER
Published: April 2, 2009
New York Times copyright
Updated: March 30, 2009
-----------------------------
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/g/group_of_20/index.html
The Group of 20, or G-20, is an international body that meets to discuss economic issues. Its members -- 19 countries with some of the world's biggest industrial and emerging economies, plus the European Union -- represent about 90 percent of the world's gross national product, 80 percent of world trade (including trade within the European Union) and two-thirds of the global population. The G-20, which represents a far broader range of the world's industrialized economies than the more Atlantic-oriented G-8, has taken on a new prominence in the current economic crisis. On April 2, 2009, its members will meet in London for a session expected to center around President Obama's push for greater economic stimulus around the globe, Europe's desire for a stronger framework of financial regulation and the desire of emerging economies, led by China, for a bigger role in economic dipomacy.
The G-20 was established as a response to the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s and to a "growing recognition that key emerging-market countries were not adequately included in the core of global economic discussion and governance," according to the G-20's public materials.
A smaller group of industrialized nations has been meeting since the 1970s (the G-7 and G-8, which convene finance ministers and heads of government, respectively). In the 1990s, given the extent of the Asian financial crisis, government leaders decided to involve a broader group of countries, including emerging market countries, to deal with the turmoil. A group of 22 countries ("G-22") and then a group of 33 countries ("G-33") met on an ad hoc basis. The G-20 was created in 1999 as a more permanent international economic body that includes representation from emerging countries. The member countries are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey and the United States. The European Union is also a member, represented by the rotating council presidency and the European Central Bank.
The membership of the G-20 has not changed since it was established, and the organization says there are "no formal criteria for G-20 membership." With the exceptions of Argentina, Saudi Arabia and South Africa, all of the member countries fall within the list of the top 20 biggest state G.D.P.'s in the world (using the 2007 rankings from the C.I.A. World Factbook, International Monetary Fund and the World Bank).
"I don't think it's a club you can join except by having a lot of economic growth," said Simon Johnson, a professor at the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Usually, the attendees of the annual meetings are the finance ministers and central bank governors of the member countries, plus top leadership of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In November 2008, heads of government attended an emergency G-20 session held in Washington to deal with the crumbling of global credit.
The Washington meeting was referred to by many observers as a possible prelude to a sort of Bretton Woods II, meaning an event that marks the start of a new international financial framework. (The term Bretton Woods System refers to an international monetary system set up during a 1944 conference in Bretton Woods, N.H.; it established, among other things, the I.M.F.).
The I.M.F., which had nearly become irrelevant before the current crisis, is now expected to be a focus of the London gathering. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, who once worked at the fund, has called for its financial resources to be expanded by $500 billion, effectively tripling its lending capacity to distressed countries and cementing its status as the lender of last resort for much of the world.
Japan and the European Union have each pledged $100 billion; the United States has signaled it will contribute a similar sum, though its money will take longer to arrive because of the need for Congressional approval. China, with its mammoth foreign exchange reserves, is the next obvious donor.
Yet officials of China and other developing countries have served notice that they are reluctant to make comparable pledges without getting a greater say in the operations of the fund, which is run by a Frenchman, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and is heavily influenced by the United States and Western Europe.
New York Times copyright
=====================================================================================
Friday, February 27, 2009
An Ethical Lag: Obama on Troop Withdrawal
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/28/washington/28troops.html?hp
Obama Plans to End Combat Mission in Iraq by August 2010
By PETER BAKER
Published: February 27, 2009
New York Times copyright
--------------------
My comment #20.
February 27, 2009 8:57 am
Link NY Times
February 27th, 2009 8:49 am
Obama is promising on domestic policy and lousy on foreign policy. He is following the Bush-Cheney line with minor variations, in Afghanistan-Pakistan, Iraq and West Asia (aka 'the Middle East'). This is a Coke vs. Pepsi foreign policy.
Obama is intimidated by the Republicans, the generals and the State Dept.
Obama is way too wishy washy on the troop withdrawal.
50,000 US troops still in Iraq after 2010?
Guess this commander in chief wants his moment in the Iraqi sun, by visiting Baghdad's green zone under cover of night, with a zillion security personnel guarding him and not one Iraqi widow or orphan in sight.
Does he also want a couple shoes thrown at him?
The US should never have invaded and occupied Iraq and they have never been welcome there.
Obama claims he opposed the invasion and war. So why the delay?
Yes, yes I understand that is how politics, rather than statesmanship works.
In contrast, Ethical Democracy is a work in progress and it is demonstrated through an intentional accumulation of concrete ethical acts of policy and practice by the people and by their leaders. Is the US anyway near there yet?
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.
— EthicalDemocracy, New York, NY
Obama Plans to End Combat Mission in Iraq by August 2010
By PETER BAKER
Published: February 27, 2009
New York Times copyright
--------------------
My comment #20.
February 27, 2009 8:57 am
Link NY Times
February 27th, 2009 8:49 am
Obama is promising on domestic policy and lousy on foreign policy. He is following the Bush-Cheney line with minor variations, in Afghanistan-Pakistan, Iraq and West Asia (aka 'the Middle East'). This is a Coke vs. Pepsi foreign policy.
Obama is intimidated by the Republicans, the generals and the State Dept.
Obama is way too wishy washy on the troop withdrawal.
50,000 US troops still in Iraq after 2010?
Guess this commander in chief wants his moment in the Iraqi sun, by visiting Baghdad's green zone under cover of night, with a zillion security personnel guarding him and not one Iraqi widow or orphan in sight.
Does he also want a couple shoes thrown at him?
The US should never have invaded and occupied Iraq and they have never been welcome there.
Obama claims he opposed the invasion and war. So why the delay?
Yes, yes I understand that is how politics, rather than statesmanship works.
In contrast, Ethical Democracy is a work in progress and it is demonstrated through an intentional accumulation of concrete ethical acts of policy and practice by the people and by their leaders. Is the US anyway near there yet?
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.
— EthicalDemocracy, New York, NY
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Self and Nation:: The US in Iran
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/26/opinion/26cohen.html
Op-Ed Columnist
The Inner Life
By ROGER COHEN
Published: February 25, 2009
New York Times copyright
-----------------------------------
My Comment #40.
February 26, 2009 8:52 am
Link
February 26th, 2009 8:32 am
Can we just as easily substitute Bush-Cheney-Wolfowitz-Rice-Rumsfeld-Powell in the quote below?
“Too arrogant to think of [them] as a threat and deliberately ignorant of [their] designs, we supported [them]. We welcomed the vehemence of [Bush's] rants against [the Axis of Evil] and were willing to overlook the fact that they were not delivered by champion[s] of freedom.”
The problem with Nafisi and her 'narrative tension" just as with Cohen's, is that they don't see their own elite neoliberal complicity with the ruling US political establishment, except conveniently long, long after the fact. And even then, they keep their blinders on.
What "inner life" is Cohen talking about? One that does not accept personal responsibility for the stance we take, which we can and must admit may be full of error?
Nafisi was supported by that great advocate of democracy, the corrupt and disgraced Wolfowitz.
And Cohen still appears to be blind to the repercussions from US govt.'s role in getting rid of the popularly elected Mossadegh (who wanted to nationalize Iran's oil), and US militarization/ satellization of Israel in the so-called Middle East.
Change from Within will become Change We Can Believe In,
when the US takes its rightful place in the world community as an equal, NOT a dominant player.
I fear for my own region -- South Asia -- where Iran (as well as Israel) is our adjoining neighbor (the US is NOT), and the manipulative, violence-driven proclivity of the US Govt. whether Brand Bush or Brand Obama. There is only a difference in degree not in kind.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
======================================================================================
Op-Ed Columnist
The Inner Life
By ROGER COHEN
Published: February 25, 2009
New York Times copyright
-----------------------------------
My Comment #40.
February 26, 2009 8:52 am
Link
February 26th, 2009 8:32 am
Can we just as easily substitute Bush-Cheney-Wolfowitz-Rice-Rumsfeld-Powell in the quote below?
“Too arrogant to think of [them] as a threat and deliberately ignorant of [their] designs, we supported [them]. We welcomed the vehemence of [Bush's] rants against [the Axis of Evil] and were willing to overlook the fact that they were not delivered by champion[s] of freedom.”
The problem with Nafisi and her 'narrative tension" just as with Cohen's, is that they don't see their own elite neoliberal complicity with the ruling US political establishment, except conveniently long, long after the fact. And even then, they keep their blinders on.
What "inner life" is Cohen talking about? One that does not accept personal responsibility for the stance we take, which we can and must admit may be full of error?
Nafisi was supported by that great advocate of democracy, the corrupt and disgraced Wolfowitz.
And Cohen still appears to be blind to the repercussions from US govt.'s role in getting rid of the popularly elected Mossadegh (who wanted to nationalize Iran's oil), and US militarization/ satellization of Israel in the so-called Middle East.
Change from Within will become Change We Can Believe In,
when the US takes its rightful place in the world community as an equal, NOT a dominant player.
I fear for my own region -- South Asia -- where Iran (as well as Israel) is our adjoining neighbor (the US is NOT), and the manipulative, violence-driven proclivity of the US Govt. whether Brand Bush or Brand Obama. There is only a difference in degree not in kind.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
======================================================================================
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