Catch-22 og «Imperial overstretch»
august 4, 2010
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Nately reagerte med hårreisende motvilje på synet av denne syndefulle, skamløse og upatriotiske gamle mannen som var gammel nok til å minne ham om hans far og likevel hele tiden var tankeløs og depravert nok til å komme med nedsettende vitser om Amerika.
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(Side 263-4, 266. Cappelen forlag)
This Time We Went Too Far
februar 18, 2010
Verdt å lese
februar 17, 2010
(Utdrag fra artikler. Klikkbare titler.)
Jews can report on Palestinians, but the other way ’round?
«Now let me be clear that I do NOT assume that being Jewish, or even having family ties to Israel, or being Israeli, automatically results in bias. Amira Hass of Haaretz is an excellent reporter. She’s an Israeli Jew whose parents were Holocaust survivors. Deborah Sontag of the New York Times was one of the best reporters on the conflict ever – she was there during the second Intifada. So was Suzanne Goldenberg of The Guardian. So anyone who says that being Jewish automatically leads to pro-Israel bias is wrong. So on this point those criticizing and defending Bronner and the NYT should find a lot of common ground.
But here’s the issue that sticks. Is the NYT really defending some sort of universal principle? Can anyone seriously imagine that if it had been revealed that Bronner’s son had joined the Izzedin al-Qassam Brigades (the military wing of Hamas), we would be hearing these sorts of defenses? Of course one reason is it’s so hard to imagine is because the New York Times has never had a Palestinian, Palestinian-American or Arab-American reporter of stature report on the conflict. »
Should the New York Times hire Jared Malsin?
«Currently, the New York Times has only one bureau to cover Israel-Palestine. This is in Israel and its chief editor, Ethan Bronner, consistently shows Israeli bias, as I’ve noted in a number of previous postings (even apart from the fact that his son has recently entered the Israeli military). The Times’ other major correspondent, Isabel Kershner, is an Israeli citizen.
New York Times Editor Bill Keller, in defending his decision to retain Bronner as their bureau chief despite Bronner’s conflict of interest and profoundly flawed track record, writes that he feels Bronner’s intimate family ties with Israel “supply a measure of sophistication about Israel and its adversaries.”
If the Times actually does want full, unbiased reporting on this region (there is little to indicate this, but let’s imagine it is so), it is essential that the Times also have bureaus in the Palestinian Territories; ideally, one in the West Bank and one in Gaza, headed by people with equal “sophistication” about Palestine and its adversaries.»
The New York Times’ coverage of Israel-Palestine was Biased Before Bureau Chief’s Son Joined the IDF
«Let’s get somethings straight. Ethan Bronner is not and never has been a “superb reporter” and there are plenty of reasons why he should not be allowed to run the Times’ biggest Middle Eastern bureau, let alone commit blatant anti-journalistic acts on behalf of the “paper of record”–the last of which is his son’s military service. No other reporter has turned the paper of record into a mouthpiece for the Israeli occupation more than Ethan Bronner and that is quite an accomplishment for a publication that so consistently represents one party’s agenda.»
«It’s easy to wonder how world leaders, journalists, religious figures and ordinary citizens looked the other way while six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. And it’s even easier to assume that we’d do better.
But so far the brutal war here in eastern Congo has not only lasted longer than the Holocaust but also appears to have claimed more lives. A peer- reviewed study put the Congo war’s death toll at 5.4 million as of April 2007 and rising at 45,000 a month. That would leave the total today, after a dozen years, at 6.9 million.»
Globalization Is Killing The Globe: Return to Local Economies
«From the days of Adam Smith, classical economics pointed out that manufacturing and extraction are the only two ways to “create wealth.”
“Wealth” is different from “income.” Wealth is value, which endures at least for some time. Income is simply compensation for work. If you wash my car for $10 and I mow your lawn for $10, we have a GDP of $20 and it looks like we both have income and economic activity. But no wealth has been created, just income.
On the other hand, if I build your car, I’m creating something of value. And if you turn my lawn into a small farm that produces food we can all eat, you’re creating something of value. Not only do we have an “economy” with a “GDP,” we also have created wealth.
A stick on the ground has no commercial value, but if you add labor to it by carving it into an axe handle — a thing of commercial value — you have “created wealth.” Similarly, metals in the ground have no commercial value, but when you add labor to them by extracting, refining, and forming them into products, you “create wealth.” Even turning seeds and dirt and cows into hamburgers is a form of manufacturing and creates wealth.
This is the “Wealth of Nations” that titled Adam Smith’s famous 1776 book.
On the other hand, when a trader at Goldman Sachs makes a “profit” trading stocks, bonds, or currencies, no wealth whatsoever is created. In fact, to the extent that that trader takes millions in commissions, pay, and bonuses, he’s actually depleting the wealth of the nation (particularly to the extent that he moves his money offshore to save or invest, as many do).»
Super-wealthy investors move billions out of Greece
«Under pressure from the European Union and international markets to rein in the nation’s €300bn debt, socialist prime minister, George Papandreou, announced last week that he would have to enforce tough deficit-cutting measures. But the coming austerity package is leading panicked wealthy Greeks to divert their savings out of the country.
“In the last four to six weeks a lot of money has been moved abroad; I’ve heard extraordinary figures,” analyst, Kostas Panagopoulos said.
“People are moving funds either because they don’t trust our banking system, want to avoid what they fear will be taxes on deposits or are simply anxious about the future of our economy.”
Traditionally, the country’s super-rich, not least ship owners and mercantile elite, have favoured the Swiss bank and off-shore account. But now huge sums are also being spirited away to banks in Cyprus. “Very big transactions are going through Cypriot banks,” added Panagopoulos. “Greeks feel that Cyprus is not only close, but safe.”»
TNR’s ugly and reckless anti-semitism games
«Even by that magazine’s lowly standards, The New Republic yesterday published an amazingly ugly, reckless, and at-times-deranged screed from its Literary Editor, Leon Wieseltier, devoting 4,300 words to accusing Andrew Sullivan of being an anti-semite, largely due to his critical (i.e., forbidden) comments about Israeli actions and American neoconservatives. Particularly since the horrific Israeli assault on Gaza, Sullivan has become more critical of Israeli actions and more dubious of uncritical U.S. support. The whole TNR column oozes dark and obvious innuendo but never has the courage to state the anti-semitism accusation explicitly (the last paragraph comes closest). TNR’s Jonathan Chait piped up yesterday to embrace most of Wieseltier’s premises ["Leon has written what I consider to be a trenchant and persuasive dissection of Andrew's (current) worldview on Israel and the Jewish lobby"], but then — as though he’s the Papal arbiter of anti-semitism generously granting absolution — cleared Sullivan of the charge of anti-semitism, instead decreeing him guilty of the lesser crime of “carelessness” for failing to renounce the supposedly bigoted, Jew-hating “provenance” of Sullivan’s ideas about Israel and Jews.»
«Iran is dying. The collapse of Iran’s birth rate during the past 20 years is the fastest recorded in any country, ever. Demographers have sought in vain to explain Iran’s population implosion through family planning policies, or through social factors such as the rise of female literacy.
But quantifiable factors do not explain the sudden collapse of fertility. It seems that a spiritual decay has overcome Iran, despite best efforts of a totalitarian theocracy. Popular morale has deteriorated much faster than in the “decadent” West against which the Khomeini revolution was directed. »
Presidential “Peacemaking” in Latin America
«President Barack Obama separated the United States from almost all of Latin America and Europe by accepting the military coup that overthrew Honduran democracy last June.
The coup reflected a “yawning political and socioeconomic divide,” The New York Times reported. For the “small upper class,” Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was becoming a threat to what they call “democracy,” namely, the rule of “the most powerful business and political forces in the country.”
Zelaya was initiating such dangerous measures as a rise in the minimum wage in a country where 60 percent live in poverty. He had to go.
Virtually alone, the United States recognized the November elections (with Pepe Lobo the victor) held under military rule — “a great celebration of democracy,” according to Hugo Llorens, Obama’s ambassador. »
Verdt å få med seg
februar 9, 2010
The “Noble Phase” and “Saintly Glow”of US Foreign Policy
«The basic contours of what led to the current tragedy are pretty clear. Just beginning with the 1990 election of Aristide (far too narrow a time frame), Washington was appalled by the election of a populist candidate with a grass-roots constituency just as it had been appalled by the prospect of the hemisphere’s first free country on its doorstep two centuries earlier. Washington’s traditional allies in Haiti naturally agreed. “The fear of democracy exists, by definitional necessity, in elite groups who monopolize economic and political power,” Bellegarde-Smith observes in his perceptive history of Haiti (Haiti: The Breached Citadel); whether in Haiti or the US or anywhere else.
The threat of democracy in Haiti in 1991 was even more ominous because of the favorable reaction of the international financial institutions (World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank) to Aristide’s programs, which awakened traditional concerns over the “virus” effect of successful independent development. These are familiar themes in international affairs: American independence aroused similar concerns among European leaders. The dangers are commonly perceived to be particularly grave in a country like Haiti, which had been ravaged by France and then reduced to utter misery by a century of US intervention. If even people in such dire circumstances can take their fate into their own hands, who knows what might happen elsewhere as the “contagion spreads.”»
The UN climate panel and the rainforest claim
«A STARTLING report by the United Nations climate watchdog that global warming might wipe out 40% of the Amazon rainforest was based on an unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners who had little scientific expertise.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in its 2007 benchmark report that even a slight change in rainfall could see swathes of the rainforest rapidly replaced by savanna grassland.
The source for its claim was a report from WWF, an environmental pressure group, which was authored by two green activists. They had based their “research” on a study published in Nature, the science journal, which did not assess rainfall but in fact looked at the impact on the forest of human activity such as logging and burning. This weekend WWF said it was launching an internal inquiry into the study.»
«As a pallid and nervous young journalist, I got to know about suicide. It was part of my regular tasks to sit in at the coroner’s court, where I learned the manifold ways the disturbed human brain can devise to die. Coroners never used the word “insanity”. They preferred the more compassionate verdict that the subject had “taken his life while the balance of his mind was disturbed”. There was ambivalence to the phrase, a suggestion of the winds of fate and overwhelming circumstance. In fact, by now, I have reached the conclusion that a person may make a decision to die because the balance of their mind is level, realistic, pragmatic, stoic and sharp.
And that is why I dislike the term “assisted suicide” applied to the carefully thought-out and weighed-up process of having one’s life ended by gentle medical means.»
«The rise of the PRC as a great economic, political and military power is a central fact of the age. But it gains no illumination from a vacant notion of modernity, which remains as nebulous at the end of When China Rules the World as it was at the beginning. It would not be too unfair to say that what the book at bottom represents is a belated meeting of Yesterday’s Marxism with Asian Values. For beyond a general insistence on the ethical continuities of Confucianism, of which Chinese Communism is viewed as a lineal heir, it says remarkably little about contemporary Chinese society itself. A few cursory lines noting that inequality has been growing, but the government is now acting to redress it; a bit more on the shortage of natural resources and environmental problems; a clipped paragraph on the Party; some prudent reflections on trouble in the border regions; and a firm assurance that the country is not ready for democracy, so it would be best if the CCP could rule undisturbed for another 30 years: this is more or less all the reader curious to learn about the actual social landscape of the PRC could gather from it. Certainly there is nothing to upset the authorities in Beijing, where reception should be excellent. In 1935, the Webbs entitled their book on the USSR Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation?, dropping the question mark in subsequent editions. Today’s ‘civilisation-state’ has been approached in something of the same spirit.»
Lebanon’s AK-47 index may be pointing to war
«Officially, the only legal weapons in Lebanon are shotguns meant for hunting birds. And although much of the population was heavily armed during the 1975 to 1990 civil war, the various factions agreed to disarm their heavy weapons stockpiles, with the notable exception of Hizbollah.
Some tanks, mortars and rocket launchers were passed on to the reformed Lebanese army, but most, according to an international arms dealer, were immediately sold to various factions in the then nascent conflict in the former Yugoslavia. But little was done about light weapons – assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and sniper rifles – which were often stuffed into storage in homes and villages around Lebanon. And ever since, the arms dealers have used an interesting metric for judging the stability of the country: the price of the ubiquitous AK-47 assault rifle.»
«Krig og kjærlighet. På norsk foreligger nå Mangfoldets filosofi, hvor forfatteren søker å finne mening i den kulturelle situasjonen som er hans foretrukne manesje. Boken dreier seg om krig og fred og sånt: tro og viten, frihet og toleranse, brorskap og likhet, kvinner og menn, tradisjoner og modernitet, tilgivelse og kjærlighet. Det er som om Kahlil Gibrans bok Profeten var gjenoppstått i fornyet skikkelse. Språket er blomstrende, retorisk og metaforisk, men helt uten den estetiske presisjonen som stedvis faktisk fantes i Gibrans bok. De som gjør knefall for Mangfoldets filosofi, er de som har bestemt seg for å gjøre det på forhånd. Det er en bok som genererer flere tanker hos kjøperen så lenge den er uåpnet, enn etter at den er åpnet. Å anmelde bøker er som regel gøy. Men det betyr også at man må lese bøker fra perm til perm som man verken liker eller lærer noe av.»
Verdt å lese
januar 28, 2010
Det går sjelden mange dager uten at jeg kommer på et eller annet jeg har lest i en artikkel, som jeg så prøver å finne igjen. I de aller fleste slike tilfeller ender jeg opp med å grinebite over at jeg ikke klarer å oppdrive artikkelen det gjelder.
Som et halvveisforsøk på å løse dette problemet kommer jeg derfor med jevne mellomrom til å poste artikler og andre skriverier jeg finner interessant, med korte utdrag fra hver av dem.
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Afghan president Hamid Karzai urges West to buy off the Taliban
After giving up on winning victory in Afghanistan by military means, the international community is resorting to the centuries-old method of buying its way out.
In London this week, Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, will launch a British and American-backed plan for “reintegration” of the Taliban and call for international funding to offer jobs and bribes to bring insurgents in from the cold.
The conference, which starts on Thursday, will be the first big international gathering on Afghanistan since President Barack Obama announced his military strategy last month, including a surge of 30,000 American troops.
The aim was to accompany the surge with a new political strategy and ways for the Afghans to provide their own security by setting up local militias, which could include former Taliban.
The man Obama needs to fix America is … Karl Marx
There is something almost tragi-comic in Hillary Clinton’s use of the Berlin Wall as an analogy for China’s internet censorship. The Chinese Communist Party hardly shares the American view of Cold War history; the implication that unrestrained Googling will bring down authoritarian regimes is unlikely to persuade Beijing that internet censorship is a bad thing.
But while Winston Churchill’s metaphorical “iron curtain” separated western capitalism from the sclerotic planned economies of the socialist world, what lies behind the US secretary of state’s “information curtain” is the world’s most dynamic capitalist economy, providing credit on which the US’s own economy now depends. While the West endures anaemic growth rates and massive unemployment, China’s double-digit stimulus-based recovery is the envy of all.
Betraying Confucius: Academic fraud in China
It is one of the great ironies of China’s rise on the international stage: a nation that reveres Confucius and the devotion to truth and learning symbolized by the great sage has become one of the world’s leading perpetrators of academic fraud. Cheating among Chinese scholars has reached such epidemic proportions that at least one leading academic journal will no longer consider their submissions.
This month, a prominent British medical journal, The Lancet, urged the Chinese government to take action against rampant cheating in scientific research. But that call is likely to go unheeded in a university system that has taken the maxim “publish or perish” to the extreme. For a Chinese lecturer aspiring to be a professor, it is quantity, not quality, that counts; indeed, quality is often irrelevant as evaluation teams of bureaucrats, many of whom have no knowledge of the disciplines they have been assigned, tick off who has published the most papers.
IDF to finally engage Goldstone, day late dollar short
Ethan Bronner writes a N.Y. Times report on a new propaganda offensive by the IDF against the Goldstone Report. It seems Israel has finally decided to engage with the document’s claims that Israel may have committed war crimes during last year’s Gaza war. Of course, it could’ve done so by testifying to the UN investigative body so that Israel’s perspective could’ve been incorporated into the finished document. At the time, Israel evidently judged it could filibuster and disparage this effort, as they have so many previous international attempts to hold Israel accountable for its actions concerning the Palestinians. But for some reason, Goldstone has developed much more staying power than other similar past efforts.
Bronner highlights several particular findings of the UN report with which the IDF takes issue. But in each of the two cases it appears to me that Israel is doing precisely what it did during the war–saying events did not happen as the victims claim but without providing any convincing evidence:
Does Israel Have an Immigrant Problem?
The figures are fuzzy and politically contested, but the most reliable estimates place the number of such workers around 300,000. There are an additional 20,000 Africans — primarily Eritreans and Sudanese — who claim to be refugees from persecution. The overwhelming majority of foreign workers are like James: economic migrants from China, India, Nepal, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and elsewhere who arrived in Israel on temporary visas to take jobs in the agriculture and construction industries or as caregivers for the elderly. According to the Israeli government, 30 percent of foreign workers are in the country illegally. Eighty percent of the foreign population lives in south Tel Aviv, crammed into slouching tenements near the central bus station.
The presence of a large, non-Jewish population in the Jewish state stirs great unease. In November, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz blamed foreign workers for a rise in unemployment and a “widening of social gaps”; the mayor of Eilat, Meir Yitzhak Halevi, recently called them a “burden on the welfare authorities.” He added: “They consume alcohol and have introduced cases of severe violence.” The situation is routinely described in the media as a ticking social time bomb. The military estimates that as many as 1 million Africans could try to cross into Israel (though the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees puts the number at 45,000).
Like Bill Kristol, some of those on hand had inherited their right-wing beliefs rather than adopted them (as Irving Kristol, a longtime Democrat, once had). Technically, there is nothing “neo” about conservatives like Robert Kagan, the historian and another Washington Post columnist, or John Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary; each is a son of one of neoconservatism’s founding fathers. Indeed, no strain in American politics is so dynastic. It is akin to the right-wing Likud Party in Israel, whose religion and politics, world view, and succession rituals the neocons often share. The definitions, and analogy, are inexact, but both groups have recent ties to Europe and are haunted by the Holocaust, which has left them feeling wounded, suspicious, and sometimes bellicose, determined never again to be naive or to trust the world’s good intentions. Both spent decades in the po-litical wilderness before miraculously acquiring power; both begat “princes” who defied the normal generational tensions and allied themselves with their kingly fathers. When Bill Kristol rose to praise Irving that morning, he was really picking up his scepter.
Antihelten
januar 12, 2010
I kronikken «Du er en antihelt, Kurt Westergaard» tar Ekstrabladets Karen Thisted et oppgjør med Kurt Westergaards «selvpromovering af den åndssvage tegning», og forteller at hennes sympati med tegneren har blitt enda mindre etter Westergaards oppvisning i ussel feighet.
De fleste har sikkert fått med seg det siste angrepet på tegneren, hvor en mann med øks tok seg inn i huset hans. Westergaard var alene med sitt barnebarn på fem år, og flyktet til sikkerhetsrommet og låser seg inne,uten henne. Det er forståelig at folk hever på brynene når de får høre at en mann lar sitt barnebarn i stikken. Langt mindre begripelig er det at noen velger å bruke det til å angripe en mann som ble forsøkt myrdet.
Westergaard har selv uttalt seg om situasjonens muligheter: «Jeg havde to muligheder: Jeg kunne gå i clinch med den her indtrængende terrorist, og der ville jeg nok ikke have haft store chancer. Så var jeg blevet slået ihjel lige for øjnene af mit barnebarn, og det var det allerværste, tror jeg, der kunne ske.» Thisted er uenig: «Var det værste, der kunne ske, ikke, at dit barnebarn blev slået ihjel, mens du sad i skjul?». Hun forteller oss også at «… jeg ved, at jeg aldrig kunne have gjort det. ALDRIG NOGENSINDE!».
Jeg synes vanligvis det er litt slitsomt å lese bastante beretninger om hva man selv ville gjort i en situasjon man aldri har vært i nærheten av å befinne seg i. La oss allikevel la tvilen komme Thisted til gode. La oss si at redelige mennesker umulig ville kunne handle på den samme, feige, måten i en situasjon hvor livet står på spill, la oss si Westregaards handling vitner om en ussel, liten mann. Hvor viktig er det å diskutere dette i en riksdekkende avis? Barnebarnet fikk ikke en eneste (fysisk) skramme.
At Thisted skriver et tankeeksperiment om hvordan hun selv ville reagert i en situasjon hvor livet står i direkte fare, for så å bruke det hun kommer frem til som Den Riktige Måten, for å erklære et offer for et drapsforsøk som en antihelt er lite annet enn usmakelig, uansett hva man måtte mene om karikaturtegningene. Det hele minner om en light-versjon av det fascistiske forholdet mellom styrke og rett.
Vi skal ikke bare bedømme kriminalitet relativt til offerets feighet, fra nå av?
American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein
januar 7, 2010
(Ridgen & Rossier, 2009)
«In particular he feels very passionately about the Holocaust. His parents are both survivors of extermination camps and he was deeply involved in their lives and tragedies and so on. And when he sees someone exploiting it – demeaning the memory of the victims for personal gain – he doesn’t like it. I can understand that.» – Noam Chomsky
Om det er ett ord som kan oppsummere Finkelsteins akademiske bidrag så er det kontrovers. Først ved å avsløre Joan Peters’ bedragerske bidrag til Israel/Palestina-debatten (og som resultat fryst ut av Princeton- miljøet), så ved å anklage flere Holocaust-forfattere for å bruke det grusomme folkemordet til emosjonell utpressing (i The Holocaust Industry), og jødiske organisasjoner for å bruke søksmålene mot sveitiske banker til egen vinning, heller enn til å støtte de holocaust-overlevende de påstod å representere. Senere, og dette har nok mer enn noe annet påvirket karrièren hans, ved å anklage Alan Dershowitz for bedrageri, først under en debatt hos Democracy Now, og senere i boka Beyond Chutzpah. Som resultat følger en lang, og svært personlig, fiendtlighet mellom Dershowitz og Finkelstein. Senere blander Dershowitz seg både i Finkelsteins ansettelsesforhold hos DePaul University og forsøker å hindre utgivelsen av boka Beyond Chutzpah.
Ikke overraskende har han blitt utsatt for en rekke hatkampanjer. Som oftest i form av beskyldninger om å være en selvhatende jøde eller til og med en holocaust-fornekter. Men også i mer ekstreme former, blant annet JDO’s «Operation Drive Out!» hvor sympatisører ble oppfordret til å ringe Finkelsteins husvert for å få han kastet ut av hjemmet sitt. Et av mange lavmål er når Dershowitz’ indirekte beskylder moren til Finkelstein for å ha samarbeidet med fangevoktere. Indirekte ved å påstå at Finkelstein (indirekte, igjen) har sagt dette selv.
På motsatt side har du støttespillere (i større eller mindre grad) som Noam Chomsky, Alexander Cockburn, Ilan Pappé, John Mearsheimer og Raul Hilberg.
The mode of attack is consistent. Chomsky selects the target and directs Finkelstein to probe the writings in minute detail and conclude that the writer didn’t actually write the work, that it is plagiarized, that it is a hoax and a fraud. Cockburn publicizes these “findings,” and then a cadre of fellow travelers bombard the Internet with so many attacks on the target that these attacks jump to the top of Google. Because no one has thus far exposed the pattern, each attack may seem plausible on first impression. But when the pattern is examined and exposed, the entire enterprise becomes clear for what it is: a clear attempt to chill pro-Israel advocacy on university campuses by a form of literary McCarthyism – Alan Dershowitz
I American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein er det imidlertid fokusert på mer enn bare kontroverser. En betydelig del av filmen er satt av til å utforske Finkelsteins forhold til familien sin, og til nære venner bosatt på okkupert territorium.
On a brief biographical note, my mother grew up in Warsaw, Poland and was a survivor of the Warsaw ghetto, Maidanek concentration camp and two slave-labor camps. Every member of her family in Poland was exterminated. After the war she was a key witness at a Nazi deportation hearing in the U.S. and at the trial of Maidanek concentration camp guards in Germany. My late father survived the Warsaw ghetto, Auschwitz concentration camp and the Auschwitz death march. His entire family in Poland was also exterminated – Norman Finkelstein
Åpenbart påvirket av morens erfaring og senere hysteriske (med Finkelsteins ord) krigsmotstand. Ifølge han selv ble imidlertid moren mot sin død stadig mer bekymret over Finkelsteins engasjement, og lurte på om han ikke hadde tatt hennes skjebne for hardt til seg. «… she was very guilty. She felt I had taken her to literally, taking it to much to heart, and she felt I was destroying myself».
Flere andre har sagt seg enige i at Finkelstein ødelegger for seg selv. Raul Hilberg: «I do slightly disagree with the tone of his voice when he discusses these matters». Noam Chomsky: «My own feeling was that he should have downplayed the issue of plagiarism. First of all, I didn’t think it was an important issue … what’s significant is the material about the historical facts». John Mearsheimer: «What one can say about Norman’s work is that although his insights are often brilliant, he expresses them sometimes in language that’s overly provocative. And I would argue that if you’re making controversial arguments, it’s in your best interest to tone down your language to get as much of the hot rhetoric out as possible.»
Sånn sett er det lett å ønske seg at Finkelstein hadde holdt seg mer rett på sak og mindre på personkarakteristikker. Særlig når han selv ofte (og med god grunn) reagerer på at mesteparten av kritikken av han går på personligheten hans, og ikke de påstandene han legger på bordet. Han avfeier blant annet anklagene mot han på følgende måte: «For argument’s sake, let’s assume it’s true. Let’s say I have deep identity conflicts, let’s assume it’s all true. What’s the relevance? The only relevant question is whether what I’m saying is true or false».
American Radical skjuler aldri sine sympatier med Finkelstein. Men den presenterer et langt mer nyansert bilde av mannen enn mange kanskje hadde fryktet. Snarere enn kun å fremstå som et offer vises mer smakløse sider, skarpe ukvemsord og en tendens til å stemple meningsmotstandere som monstre og det som verre er. I en nesten sjokkerende scene ser man Finkelstein skjelle ut en gråtende spørsmålsstiller.
Det er lett å si seg enig i mange av konklusjonene hans, også i nevnte scene, men det er samtidig forståelig at mange føler avsky for måten han fremfører dem på. I vitenskapelige miljøer burde man imidlertid kunne forvente et mer edruelig forhold til følelser, og prosessen mot Finkelstein gir grunn til å bekymre seg på vegne av akademias behandling av dissidenter.
Trailer under:
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
desember 14, 2009
(Chris Weitz, 2009)
Hele greia er skrevet i ett kjør, uten at jeg har orket å fikse skrivefeil og tull. Så tiårets film i dag.
Hele greia starter med at heltinna våkner av en vond drøm, med en kopi av Romeo og Juliet ved siden av seg. Filmen starter sånn sett ganske perfekt ved å fortelle oss at Bella Swan er ei opptatt tenåringsjente og derfor sovner med bøker inntil hodet sitt. Videre introduseres vampyren Edward i en heftig slow-motion-scene, og knapt et minutt senere møter vi den 16 år gamle indieanergutten på steroider. Ligger i kortene at «no kjærlighetings» er på gang.
HER KOMMER DET SPOILERE, GITT. HAR DU PLANER OM Å SE FILMEN SÅ DROPPER DU Å LESE RESTEN.
Edward og familien stikker av en eller annen grunn fra Bella, noe med aldringsprosessen til faren som har gjort innbyggerne i byen mistenksomme (men Edward selv, som er 109 år gammel, er det ingen som synes er merkelig at ser ut som en 17-åring). Bella depper i et halv år, før hun kommer på at Edward ba henne om å ikke gjøre noe dumdristig. Derfor gjør hun masse dumdristig i håp om at han skal kontakte henne. Edward har visst evnen til å kontakte folk via tankene, men det holder ikke at de han kontakter hører stemma hans. De er nødt til å se projeksjonen av ansiktet hans foran seg, så når Bella kjører en motorsykkel, i full fart, finner han ut at det kanskje er en god idé kontakte henne. Men lysbildet av ansiktet hans trekker oppmerksomheten bort fra veien, og det går som det må (les: hun faller av motorsykkelen og inn i en stein, som resultat får hun litt vondt i hodet). Greia fortsetter, indianergutten har sterke følelser for henne, og det blir ikke enklere når fullmånen kommer: Det viser seg at indianerstammen hans har noen iboende varulvgener, og gutten blir en vampyrjeger (men dreper bare slemme vampyrer, eller noe).
I mellomtiden har vi møtt filmens eneste afrikanske skuespiller, og han rekker såvidt å si at «You gonna get raped» før han blir istykkerrevet av ulver. Det er også en uforglemmelig scene hvor varulvgjengen hører på indierock og guffer i seg muffins.
Videre bestemmer Bella seg hoppe fra kanten av et stup, og ned i vannet, i et forsøk på å bli kontaktet av Edward. Det som skjer er imidlertid at en rødhåret vampyr får noen gigantiske bølger til å slå henne under vann, også prøver hun å drepe henne (av en eller annen grunn). Indianervarulvgutten redder henne, også følger en av de tjue tusen scenene hvor han prøver å kysse henne, men hun trekker seg unna. MEN så viser det seg at søstera til Edward, som kan se hva som skjer hos andre både i nåtid og i fremtid, fikk en visjon hvor hun ser Bella stupe. Og søstera til Edward forteller ei vampyrvenninne at hun skal tilbake til byen (for å sjekke om Bella lever eller noe, vet ikke helt), og venninna forteller dette til Edward, og Edward tror Bella er død. Så Edward kontakter italiensk vampyr-mafia, for nå vil han ta livet av seg (HUSKER DU DEN ROMIE OG JULIET BOKA FRA STARTEN AV FILMEN ELL?). Så Bella og søstera til Edward stikker til Italia for å fortelle Edward at «Hei, hun er ikke død». De kjører bil, noe som er merkelig med tanke på all tankekommunikasjonen fra tidligere i filmen, men jeg satser på at kreftene forsvant midlertidig, eller noe.
Hos vampyr-mafian får Edward beskjed om at han ikke kan ta livet av seg, noe med at kreftene hans er for awesome. Så Edward bestemmer seg for å røpe for verden at han er vampyr, dette er visstnok noe som fører til dødsdom i vampyrverden. Bella ankommer akkurat i tide (hun hopper på Edward mens kroppen hans skal til å gå i opplysning pga sollyset), men noen vampyrvakter henter dem inn til organisasjonssjefene. Der følger en heftig slossscene, og selv om vampyrene har masse kulte tanketriks på lager, så er det konvensjonell slagstyrke som gjelder (noe knusing av trapper er det også). Bra saker.
Filmen slutter med at Bella også må bli vampyr, og etter en demokratisk avstemning (seriøst) er det et flertall av vampyrer som stemmer for. Edward går med på å gjøre henne til vampyr. Han spør Bella om hun vil gifte seg med han (vampyrer har ikke sjel, men de gifter seg) og filmen slutter uten at hun gir noe svar.
Gleder meg til neste.
PS: Jeg har ikke sett første film, og heller ikke lest noen av bøkene. Regner med det er en del greier jeg ikke skjønte bæret av som ble oppklart i første film.
Honduras-valget, en suksesshistorie
desember 9, 2009
(Overse konspirasjonsteoretiker-stemma til fyren)
