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 19 Oct 2003 @ 20:05
The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority.
---Stanley Milgram (1933-1984)
In 1958, Aldous Huxley wrote what might be called a sequel to his novel Brave New World, published in 1932, but it was a sequel that did not revisit the story or the characters, or re-enter the world of the novel. Instead, he revisited that world in a set of 12 essays. Taking a second look at specific aspects of the future imagined in Brave New World, Huxley meditated on how his fantasy seemed to be turning into reality, frighteningly and much more quickly than he had ever dreamed. More >
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 12 Oct 2003 @ 13:42
Snapshot from Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo's film (1966), IT HAPPENED HERE, a brilliant and chilling re-write of history.
A man once told me that conquest, a full century or more of war, the spreading of “civilization” by force, and democratization of the world at the point of a gun are the ways in which you “transform a generation” for the better. All I could do at the time was stare in horror at the sickness expressed in that comment.
--- Invictus
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 1 Oct 2003 @ 10:49
It has become almost a sacred dogma in our age of apathy that politics, centered on power and conflict and the quest for legitimacy and consensus, is essentially a study in expediency, a tortuous discovery of practical expedients that could reconcile contrary claims and secure a common if minimal goal or, at least, create the conditions in which different ends could be freely or collectively pursued. More >
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 21 Aug 2003 @ 11:09
The world could be different next week. It doesn't really depend on anything we don't already have. It doesn't really depend on money or politics or laws or astrology or science, except for to the degree that we believe it does.
---Flemming Funch, The Grand Illusion
Ay, there's the rub.
"At the quantum level our universe can be seen as an indeterminate place, predictable in a statistical way only when you employ large numbers. Between that universe and a relatively predictable one where the passage of a single planet can be timed to a picosecond, other forces come into play: THAT WHICH YOU BELIEVE IS A DOMINANT FORCE."
---Frank Herbert, Heretics of Dune
That which people believe is a dominant force.
Many fundamentalists see dying coral reefs, melting ice caps and other environmental destruction not as an urgent call to action but as God's will. Within the religious right worldview, the wreck of the earth is Good News! Or something Humankind needs not concern itself about. More >
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 17 Aug 2003 @ 17:01
The human effort is not this beautiful young man smiling upright on his leg of stone or of plaster, and giving, thanks to the puerile artifices of the sculptor, the imbecile illusion of joy, dance and jubilation while evoking with his other leg up in the air the sweetness of the return home. More >
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 11 Aug 2003 @ 12:26
At bottom, America is a dream, an idea. You can take away all our roads, our crops, our people, our cities, our armies - you can take all of that away, and the idea will still be there as pure and great as anything conceived by the human mind... More >
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 1 Jul 2003 @ 23:27
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 16 Apr 2003 @ 18:36
The following is from the last Press Briefing by Ari Fleischer on Monday:
Q: Ari, Lawrence Eagleberger, the Secretary of State under George Bush, Sr., told the BBC yesterday, "If George Bush, Jr., decided he was going to turn the troops loose on Syria and Iran, after that he would last in office about 15 minutes. In fact, if President Bush were to try that even now, I would think he ought to be impeached. You can't get away with that sort of thing in this democracy." Can he get away with that sort of thing?
MR. FLEISCHER: I've answered that question previously up here.
Q: Thank you.
MR. FLEISCHER: Thank you.
=== END 1:15 P.M. EDT ===
Errr…come again?
What was that all about, now? More >
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 13 Apr 2003 @ 23:22
Who are we fooling here?
Nuclear weapons have been scratched off the list a long time ago already.
Chemical weapons? Biological weapons? None, so far, have been used.
Have we found any, yet? Rumors abound. Chances are that we might still find some traces of them---though probably not in any significant amount if we do, and certainly not anything that would amount to the evidence of the "grave and gathering" threat of which it was question before the war started.
But what does it matter now, whether we find some or not?
We now all know that it was all false pretense. The cat is out of the bag. We are there for REGIME CHANGE (and darn proud of it, too.) That's what this has always been about. And Iraq is just the tip of the iceberg.
We have apparently become the self-appointed "liberators" of the Middle East. And while some have found this a cause for celebration and others see there cause to re-evaluate their positions on Iraq, there are those who are expressing some concern over what kind of signal we are sending to the world: More >
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 26 Mar 2003 @ 23:58
Beware.
Beware those who will tell you we must all speak with one voice.
Beware the brush of the wings of the Locust.
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 19 Mar 2003 @ 21:30
THE FIRST TRIUMVIRAT
WHO WAS PONTIFEX MAXIMUS?
1914---WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE?
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 14 Mar 2003 @ 09:23
...a member of the peace movement?
Well, this might not be exactly word for word the question that McCarthy was asking, but the spirit is pretty much the same isn't it?
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 13 Mar 2003 @ 00:51
"Justice is about Truth, and truth has many sides. Justice and Truth have shapes that change among nations and throughout the seasons of history. Mercy is Love, and that has the same strength and beauty for all people, for all time. I serve Mercy, not Justice."
---A. A. Attanasio, The Wolf and the Crown
Operation Desert Storm was about the "good guys" liberating one Arab state, Kuwait, from occupation by another Arab state, Iraq. But the roles are not so clearly defined in the current conflict and while I'd love to have the same kind of self assurance as G. W. Bush has been displaying that we are doing the right thing and that God is on our side, this new situation with Iraq looks to me (and to others) uncomfortably too much like an effort to install a client regime in Baghdad.
Worse, while some have been denouncing oil as the motivating factors of our current administration for its military presence in the Gulf region, there have been some troubling and alarming signs from the administration that Iraq is only the tip of the iceberg: More >
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 7 Mar 2003 @ 12:15
Einstein answer was that the minority in power rules over the schools and the press, and also has influence over the religious organizations. The minority in power uses these institutions to manipulate and channel the feelings of the masses in order to use people for their own gain.
This however, he claims, cannot be the only reason that the majority lets itself be used in these ways, and will indeed let itself be driven to the extent of frenzy and self-sacrifice. Einstein concludes that there must be a force within humans, a wish to hate and destroy. A force which during normal times is dormant, only showing itself in the abnormal. It can however, easily be awakened, and increased to the extent of mass-psychosis. More >
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 7 Mar 2003 @ 00:26
Nationalism is an infantile sickness. It is the measles of the human race.
---Albert Einstein
Book description
(inside flap)
The story that emerges not only reveals a little-known aspect of Einstein's considerable social and humanitarian concerns, but underscores the dangers that can arise to the American republic and the rule of law in times of obsession with national security.
From the moment Albert Einstein arrived in the United States in 1933, the year of the Nazis' ascent to power in Germany, until his death in 1955, J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, assisted by several other federal agencies, began feverishly collecting "derogatory information" in an effort to undermine the renowned physicist's influence and destroy his reputation. For the first time, Fred Jerome tells the story in depth of that anti-Einstein campaign, explains why and how the campaign originated, and provides the first detailed picture of Einstein's little-know political activism. More >
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 2 Mar 2003 @ 16:40
"The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity."
---G. W. Bush (State of the Union Address, 2003)
Well, so much for G. W. Bush's electoral promise to conduct our foreign policy with humility.
As a dear friend of mine recently put it:
"Being filled with the spirit of Christ is something amazing, It is the best pair of glasses a man can have."
But then, again, if such glasses of which he speaks lead to such clarity, why is it that Christians argue with other Christians and sometimes slaughter each other and their fellow human beings over such arguments? Fanaticism (and sadly Christianity had its share of it) has lead throughout history to some of the most brutal, heartless, and senseless madness known to man. The historical examples are not difficult to recall: the Crusades; the Inquisitions; the Witch-burnings; the St. Barthelemy; and many more. More >
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 26 Feb 2003 @ 01:47
"Not Christian or Jew or Muslim,
not Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi, or Zen.
Not any religion
Or cultural system.
I am not from the east
Or the west. (……)
I belong to the beloved,
Have seen the two worlds as one
And that one call to and know,
First, last, outer, inner,
Only that breath breathing
HUMAN BEING."
----Rumi
Sadly, I've had to deal with more than my share of fanaticism on the Israeli-Palestinian question from extremists from both sides of the conflict already (more than I wanted to really---this is what you get for being a moderator.) It therefore comes as no surprise to me to see that such passional and irrational arguments eventually (and very unfortunately) seem to have found their way on NCN.
It doesn't surprise me but it does sadden me however, hatred is not a pleasant thing to behold and I can only regret to see it manifest here again in a place I would have thought would be immune from such excesses. I think about what peace-brokers must have to go through when arbitrating negotiations and I shudder. More >
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 7 Sep 2002 @ 11:58
William Rivers Pitt is a teacher from Boston, MA. His new book, THE GREATEST SEDITION IS SILENCE, will be published soon by Pluto Press. And, yes, William is a contributing writer for Liberal Slant...sorry about that - NOT! :-)
The thing is that until, we do enter the "fifth dimension", I am afraid that we still do live in that world of DUALITY that some have been decrying here at NCN. Well, in a way, duality IS one of the blueprints of the world we live in, you know. Some will tell you that IT IS and some will claim that IT ISN'T or that it is something that must be transcended, or has been transcended already and so it is. The fact of the matter and the matter of the facts is that things probably are, as we all know, a bit more complicated and, shall I say, somewhat less "dualistic" (?) than that. Some believe that facts can be whatever one wants them to be (the lesson of relativity) and as far as duality is concerned, I am told that IT IS and IT ISN'T ( the lesson of quantum physics.) I sincerely hope that the unfolding DREAM OF A NEW CIVILIZATION will be the STRONGER DREAM and that the US vs. THEM attitude is a thing that can be transcended. In the meantime, I am thankful to writers like William Rivers Pitt, be they liberals or otherwise, for the tough stance they take on our world and our society and for the courage to call things out as they see them, for, indeed, THE GREATEST SEDITION IS SILENCE!!! More >
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