Doubt is the single greatest defense we have against the rise of religious extremism. Doubters don’t kill people to further God’s work. They don’t crash planes into buildings in order to reach paradise. And they don’t declare themselves to be soldiers of God, exempt from all human laws. Think of how differently Sept. 11 might have turned out if those 19 fanatics had been taught that some questioning of religion is natural, instead of being drilled to blindly follow their faith.Steven C. Day...from "The Wisdom of Doubt"...12/26/01. The entire article may be found Here...on the website of PopPolitics
12/24/01
I want to wish everyone a big "bah humbug" for these holidays...have your fun, have your celebrations...who am I to deny that? But, remember, when its over for one more year, we'll still have Bush, Ashcroft, et al...and we'll still be engaging in criminal activities on an international scale. Hypocrisy will still reign in this country and our very freedoms will still be hanging in the balance. So much has happened since Bush assumed the presidency, one can't help but wonder what it will be like when we gear up again next year for this annual rite of commercialism...so bah humbug on Christmas and on Bush...truly a man without any principles I can personally identify with or support. David H. Kessel...from his own thoughts, December 24, 2001
12/17/01
Based on reactions in and out of class, I know that many students are angry about things I have said or written outside of class, and about some discussions we have had in class. I am well aware that I have made many students uncomfortable. I do not consider that to be a problem, for I can’t imagine a meaningful higher education experience that does not make students uncomfortable at some point. One shouldn’t attend university simply to have existing beliefs reinforced. Students should confront alternative explanations, including those that conflict with their own deeply held beliefs. Inevitably, if one is dealing with topics that are important, that will mean students will be uncomfortable.
Robert Jensen...from "September 11 and the politics of university teaching"...December 2001. To read Jensen's entire article go HERE
12/10/01
By "revolutionary character" I refer not to a behavioral concept, but to a dynamic concept. One is not a "revolutionary" in this characterological sense because he utters revolutionary phrases, nor because he participates in a revolution. The revolutionary, in this sense, is the man who has emancipated himself from the ties of blood and soil, from his mother and his father, from special loyalties to state, class, race, party, or religion. The revolutionary character is a humanist in the sense that he experiences in himself all of humanity, and that nothing human is alien to him. He loves and respects life. He is a skeptic AND a man of faith.
He is a skeptic because he suspects ideologies as covering up undesirable realities. He is a man of faith because he believes in that which potentially exists, although it has not yet been born. He can say "No" and be disobedient, precisely because he can say "Yes" and obey those principles which are genuinely his own. He is not half asleep, but fully awake to the personal and social realities around him. He is independent; what he is he owes to his own effort; he is free and not a servant to anyone.Erich Fromm...from "The Revolutionary Character"...1961
12/3/01
Since stealing the election, Duh-bya has wrecked the economy and the federal budget by slashing federal revenue from the wealthiest segments of the population while increasing spending on the wealthy. He's conducted an all-out war on the environment by such things as promoting oil drilling in delicate, pristine, natural areas of the country. He's conducted a war against working people by reducing workplace protections for things such as carpal tunnel syndrome. He went to war against poor people, again last week, by cutting off the federal heating assistance program, supposedly for lack of money, even though he had no problem finding tens of billions of dollars to give as a gift to the stockholders of airlines. You know about Duh-bya's war on state-church separation, with one proposal after another to give our tax dollars to churches across the country to be used for discriminatory programs that advance religion.
Yet, despite the most abysmal performance of any president, ever, Duh-bya has become extremely popular. The reason: Osama bin Laden. Osama has been Duh-bya's best friend in the world. Osama has done that by giving Duh-bya a way to distract the American people from Duh-bya's terrible record of accomplishment while President.
Rob Sherman...from Liberal News and Commentary on Sunday, November 4, 2001 Rob Sherman, radio and tv personality in Chicago, has a website called rob sherman.com
11/26/01
In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, Americans
across the country responded with anger, patriotism, and support
of military intervention. The polls have been nearly unanimous—
92% in favor of military force even if casualties occur—
and citizens have rallied behind the President wholeheartedly.
Not so in academe. Even as many institutions enhanced
security and many students exhibited American flags, college
and university faculty have been the weak link in America’s
response to the attack. Proving a shocking divide between academe
and the public at large, professors across the country sponsored
teach-ins that typically ranged from moral equivocation to
explicit condemnations of America.
While America’s elected officials from both parties and media
commentators from across the spectrum condemned the attacks
and followed the President in calling evil by its rightful name, many
faculty demurred. Some refused to make judgments. Many invoked
tolerance and diversity as antidotes to evil. Some even pointed
accusatory fingers, not at the terrorists, but at America itself.
American Council of Trustees and Alumni's "report" called "Defending Civilization: How Our Universities Are Failing America and What Can Be Done About It," a pdf file which can be found HERE. This "report" is an ideological witchhunt under the guise of "objective" educational concern...read it for yourself.
11/19/01
Please go HERE for the quote from Carl Sagan...and a picture...its worth the click, thanks.
Carl Sagan...from...From Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space , 1994
11/12/01
The earth-shaking events of September 11 should make it possible for popular movements in the industrial nations, and especially in the US, to put politics back on the public agenda. America still has its masses, its working class, its unions. It is upon them to put forth a new position, blocking reactionary trends that threaten to cast the world into anarchy.
As Marxists, we attempt to understand the contradictions of the capitalist regime and to work for its downfall. Acts of suicidal murder contribute nothing toward this difficult goal. Our way is long, requiring patience and persistent labor. Our purpose is to persuade the masses and to organize them within the framework of political parties, until they are able to realize their democratic right to determine their own fate. Politics must be put back on the public agenda, not as an end in itself, but as a means to return society's resources to society's hands. These resources ought to be distributed equally among all peoples, so that each may feel itself to be part of humanity. If this does not happen, what we saw on September 11 will turn out to be part of an ongoing series. Between socialism and barbarism there is no third alternative. The time has come to choose. Yacov Ben Efrat...from "Afhan Boomerang"...11/9/01...in Challenge
11/5/01
Then I read those words--those words that suggested to me for the first time that the notion of manhood is a cultural delusion, a baseless belief, a false front, a house of cards. It's not true. The category I was trying so desperately to belong to, to be a member of in good standing--it doesn't exist. Poof. Now you see it, now you don't. Now you're terrified you're not really part of it; now you're free, you don't have to worry anymore. However removed you feel inside from "authentic manhood," it doesn't matter. What matters is the center inside yourself--and how you live, and how you treat people, and what you can contribute as you pass through life on this earth, and how honestly you love, and how carefully you make choices. Those are the things that really matter. Not whether you're a real man. There's no such thing.
John Stoltenberg...from "How Men Have (A) Sex"...in The Social Construction of Difference and Inequality: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality, ED. by Tracy E. Ore
10/29/01
Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some
poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the
best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one
piece? Naturally the common people don't want war: neither
in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany.
That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the
country who determine the policy and it is always a simple
matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy,
or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist
dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be
brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you
have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and
denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing
the country to danger. It works the same in any country.
Hermann Goering...Hitler's right hand man...at the Nuremberg Trials after World War II shortly before being sentenced to death...1946
10/22/01
Dogs of war and men of hate
With no cause, we don't discriminate
Discovery is to be disowned
Our currency is flesh and bone
Hell opened up and put on sale
Gather 'round and haggle
For hard cash, we will lie and deceive
Even our masters don't know the web we weave
One world, it's a battleground
One world, and we will smash it down
One world ... One world
Invisible transfers, long distance calls,
Hollow laughter in marble halls
Steps have been taken, a silent uproar
Has unleashed the dogs of war
You can't stop what has begun
Signed, sealed, they deliver oblivion
We all have a dark side, to say the least
And dealing in death is the nature of the beast
One world, it's a battleground
One world, and we will smash it down
One world ... One world
The dogs of war don't negotiate
The dogs of war won't capitulate,
They will take and you will give,
And you must die so that they may live
You can knock at any door,
But wherever you go, you know they've been there before
Well winners can lose and things can get strained
But whatever you change, you know the dogs remain.
One world, it's a battleground
One world, and we will smash it down
One world ... One world
"The Dogs of War"....by Pink Floyd...from...A Momentary Lapse of Reason...1987
10/15/01
One need not be a pacifist, a communist, a Quaker, or
a humanist to
oppose this war. However, it certainly helps to be an
internationalist
-- realizing that our collective future is bound up
with the majority of
humanity, and not with those who are taking this
horrific opportunity
to threaten war. For those woman and men now in
uniform, you
have a choice to make. Silence is what your
"superiors" expect of
you, but the interests of humanity require more.
Think. Speak out.
And if you make the choice to resist, there are
hundreds of
thousands who will support you -- many of whom have
already taken
to the streets to oppose this war. Jeff Paterson...from "A Message to Troops, Would-be Troops and Other Youth"...from ZNet Update, 10/11/01
10/8/01
Sadly, the evenhanded use of the "terrorist" label would mean sometimes affixing it directly on the U.S. government. During the past decade, from Iraq to Sudan to Yugoslavia, the Pentagon's cruise missiles have destroyed the lives of civilians just as innocent as those who perished on Sept. 11. If journalists dare not call that "terrorism," then perhaps the word should be retired from the media lexicon
Norman Solomon...from Commentary...Sunday 10/7/01 in the Register-Guard, Eugene, OR
10/1/01
This may seem simplistic; it is not. Resolution of the oppressor-oppressed contradiction indeed implies the disappearance of the oppressors as a dominant class. However, the restraints imposed by the former oppressed on their oppressors, so that the latter cannot reassume their former position, do not constitute oppression. An act is oppressive only when it prevents men from being more fully human. Accordingly, these necessary restraints do not in themselves signify that yesterday¹s oppressed have become today¹s oppressors. Acts which prevent the restoration of the oppressive regime cannot be compared with those which create and maintain it, cannot be compared with those by which a few men deny the majority their right to be human.Paulo Freire from...The Pedagogy of the Oppressed...1972
