Susan Sontag

[Zlatko Waterman]

Perezoso:


I just finished my olive branch ( above) let it tickle your git-fiddled chin while you read this.

As a matter of fact, it's a jazz guitar version of "Body and Soul" I'm working on at the moment.

Yes, I agree-- she's not "fit to soar" with Orwell.

But Ole Eric was one of a kind, and Susan was just the best of her stratum.

Peace in the New Year,


Zlatko

[perezoso]

Alright, Sir, Happy New Year and I bear ye no grudges, but I think we should be wary of just according respect to 60s leftist figures simply because they survived. I will have to check out Weisenburger's Companion to GR. I recently re-read COL 49 and am starting with GR again: I am putting together-- slowly-- an essay regarding the Pointsman and Roger Mexico--a fundamental crux of the text I believe, which illustrates behaviorist/determinism vs. a more cognitive and probablistic model of mind. .

[Zlatko Waterman]

Sorry about the double post.

Just feeling doubly peaceful today, I suppose.

--Z

[Dave The Dov]

Endless coffee-table collections of the type of soft-porn art photography popularized by Sontag's galpal Leibovitz........perezoso

Looks like there are those who's eyes behold a difference of opinon as to what is beauty and supossed soft core porn.

I happen to like Annie Leibovitz's work very much. To say say that it's soft porn is wrong. She brings out the truth and humor in her subject matter.
_________________
Neuromuscular Diseases Forum

[perezoso]

Well Davey there's no accounting for taste, is there. Leibovitz's photos glorify fashion and celebrity; its flashy fluffy imagery with little to no substance. But hey , hepcat, if nude pics of a pregnant demi moore or Vogue advertisements float yr boat, kewl

[Dave The Dov]

Somehow you just don't see do you!!!! But someday you will!!!! Peace onto you my friend!!!!
_________________
marijuana

[jimboloco]

It might be interesting to post the names and reference a few selected essays or books, plays, etc that seem meritorious, as well as examples of specifics that don't merit what would qualify as competent, my god,

I believe in my life.

Here's a post from my vets for peace comrade:

Message: 1
Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2004 11:36:03 EST
From: Tarotlaydee@aol.com
Subject: The Wise Words of Susan Sontag...

It is hard to defy the wisdom of the tribe, but resistance to injustice has never been more necessary. Susan Sontag pays tribute to the heroes of past struggles and to the moral courage of Rachel Corrie and the Israeli soldiers who refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories. Bless this wonderful woman and may she rest in peace...and go straight to the waiting arms of the
Goddess...

Saturday April 26, 2003
The Guardian

http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments ... /story/0,6
000,943597,00.html

We are all conscripts in one sense or another. For all of us, it is
hard to break ranks; to incur the disapproval, the censure, the violence of an offended majority with a different idea of loyalty. We shelter under banner-words like justice, peace, reconciliation that enroll us in new, if much smaller and relatively powerless communities of the like-minded; that mobilise us for the demonstration, the protest, the public performance of
acts of civil disobedience not for the parade ground and the
battlefield. To fall out of step with one's tribe; to step beyond it into a world that is larger mentally but smaller numerically - if alienation or dissidence is not your habitual or gratifying posture - is a complex, difficult process. It is hard to defy the wisdom of the tribe, the wisdom that values the lives of its members above all others. It will always be unpopular - it will always be deemed unpatriotic - to say that the lives of the members of the other tribe are as valuable as one's own.

It is easier to give one's allegiance to those we know, to those we
see, to those with whom we are embedded, to those with whom we share - as we may - a community of fear.

Let's not underestimate the force of what we oppose, or the
retaliation that may be visited on those who dare to dissent from the brutalities and repressions thought justified by the fears of the majority. We are flesh. We can be punctured by a bayonet, torn apart by a suicide bomber. We can
be crushed by a bulldozer, gunned down in a cathedral.

Allow me to invoke not one but two, only two, who were heroes - among millions of heroes; who were victims - among tens of millions of victims.

The first: Oscar Arnulfo Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador, murdered in his vestments, while saying mass in the cathedral on March 24, 1980 - 23 years ago - because he had become, according to the citation for the Oscar Romero Award presented annually in his memory, "a vocal advocate of a just peace, and had openly opposed the forces of violence and oppression".

The second: Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old college student from Olympia, Washington, murdered in the bright neon orange jacket with Day-Glo striping that "human shields" wear to make themselves quite visible, and possibly safer, while trying to stop one of the almost daily house demolitions by Israeli forces in Rafah, a town in the southern Gaza Strip (where Gaza abuts the Egyptian border), on March 16, 2003. Standing in front of a Palestinian physician's house that had been targeted for
demolition, Corrie, one of eight young American and British
human-shield volunteers in Rafah, had been waving and shouting at the driver of an oncoming armoured D-9 bulldozer through her megaphone, then dropped to her knees in the path of the super-sized bulldozer . . . which did not slow down. (Three weeks later, on April 11, Tom Hurndall, a British peace activist, was shot in the head as he tried to help a Palestinian woman and her children flee Israeli gunfire in Rafah.) Emblematic figures of sacrifice, killed by the forces of violence and oppression to which they were offering non-violent, principled, dangerous opposition.

Fear binds people together. And fear disperses them. Courage inspires communities: the courage of an example - for courage is as contagious as fear. But certain kinds of courage can also isolate the brave. The perennial destiny of principles: while everyone professes to have them, they are likely to be sacrificed when they become inconveniencing. Generally a moral principle is something that puts one at variance with accepted practice. And that variance has consequences, sometimes unpleasant consequences, as the community takes its revenge on those
who challenge its contradictions - who want a society actually to uphold the principles it professes to defend.

That a society should actually embody its own professed principles is a utopian standard, in the sense that moral principles contradict the way things really are - and always will be. How things really are - and always will be - is neither all-evil nor all-good but deficient, inconsistent, inferior. Principles invite us to do something about the morass of contradictions in which we function morally. Principles invite us to clean up our act; to become intolerant of moral laxity and compromise and
cowardice and the turning away from what is upsetting: that secret gnawing of the heart that tells us that what we are doing is not right, and so counsels us that we'd be better off just not thinking about it.

The cry of the anti-principled is "I'm doing the best I can." The best
given the circumstances, of course.

Let's say the principle is: it's wrong to oppress and humiliate a
whole people; to deprive them systematically of lodging and proper nutrition; to destroy their habitations, means of livelihood, access to education and medical care, and ability to consort with one another. That these practices are wrong, whatever the provo cation - and there is provocation - that, too, should not be denied.

At the centre of our moral life and our moral imagination are the
great models of resistance: the great stories of those who have said "No. No, I will not serve."

What models, what stories? A Mormon may resist the outlawing of
polygamy. An anti-abortion militant may resist the law that has made abortion legal. They, too, will invoke the claims of religion (or faith) and morality against the edicts of civil society. An appeal to the existence of a higher law that authorises us to defy the laws of the state can be used to justify criminal transgression as well as the noblest struggle for justice.

Courage has no moral value in itself, for courage is not, in itself, a moral virtue. Vicious scoundrels, murderers, terrorists may be brave. To describe courage as a virtue, we need an adjective: we speak of "moral courage" because there is such a thing as amoral courage, too.

And resistance has no value in itself. It is the content of the
resistance that determines its merit, its moral necessity. Let's say: resistance to a criminal war. Let's say: resistance to the occupation and annexation of another people's land.

Again, there is nothing inherently superior about resistance. All our
claims for the righteousness of resistance rest on the rightness of
the claim that the resistors are acting in the name of justice. And the justice of the cause does not depend on, and is not enhanced by, the virtue of those who make the assertion. It depends first and last on the truth of a description of a state of affairs which is, truly, unjust and unnecessary.

Here is what I believe to be a truthful description of a state of
affairs that has taken me many years of uncertainty, ignorance and anguish, to acknowledge.

A wounded and fearful country, Israel is going through the greatest crisis of its turbulent history, brought about by the policy of steadily increasing and reinforcing settlements on the territories won after its victory in the Arab war on Israel in 1967. The decision of successive Israeli governments to retain control over the West Bank and Gaza, thereby denying their Palestinian neighbours a state of their own, is a catastrophe - moral, human, and political - for both peoples. The Palestinians need a sovereign state. Israel needs a sovereign Palestinian state. Those of us abroad who wish for Israel to survive cannot, should not, wish it to survive no matter what, no matter how.

We owe a particular debt of gratitude to courageous Israeli Jewish
witnesses, journalists, architects, poets, novelists, professors -
among others - who have described and documented and protested and militated against the sufferings of the Palestinians living under the increasingly cruel terms of Israeli military subjugation and settler annexation.

Our greatest admiration must go to the brave Israeli soldiers,
represented by Ishai Menuchin, chairman of Yesh Gvul, who refuse to serve beyond the 1967 borders. These soldiers know that all settlements are bound to be evacuated in the end.

These soldiers, who are Jews, take seriously the principle put forward at the Nuremberg trials in 1945-46: namely, that a soldier is not obliged to obey unjust orders, orders that contravene the laws of war - indeed, one has an obligation to disobey them.

The Israeli soldiers who are resisting service in the Occupied
Territories are not refusing a particular order. They are refusing to enter the space where illegitimate orders are bound to be given - that is, where it is more than probable that they will be ordered to perform actions that continue the oppression and humiliation of Palestinian civilians. Houses are demolished, groves are uprooted, the stalls of a village market are bulldozed, a cultural centre is looted; and now, nearly every day, civilians of all ages are fired on and killed. There can be no disputing the mounting cruelty of the Israeli occupation of the 22% of the former territory of British Palestine on which a Palestinian state will be erected. These soldiers believe, as I do, that there should be an
unconditional withdrawal from the Occupied Territories. They have
declared collectively that they will not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders "in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people".

What these soldiers have done - there are now about 1,100 of them, more than 250 of whom have gone to prison - does not tell us how the Israelis and Palestinians can make peace beyond the irrevocable demand that the settlements be disbanded. The actions of this heroic minority cannot contribute to the much-needed reform and democratisation of the Palestinian Authority. Their stand will not lessen the grip of religious bigotry and racism on Israeli society or reduce the dissemination of virulent anti-semitic propaganda in the aggrieved Arab world.

It will not stop the suicide bombers.

It simply declares: enough. Or: there is a limit. Yesh gvul [(There is a Limit), the Israeli soldiers' movement for selective refusal].

It provides a model of resistance. Of disobedience. For which there will always be penalties.

None of us has yet to endure anything like what these brave conscripts are enduring, many of whom have gone to jail.

To speak for peace at this moment in America is merely to be jeered (as in the recent Academy Awards ceremony), harassed, blacklisted (the banning by the most powerful chain of radio stations of the Dixie Chicks); in short, to be reviled as unpatriotic.

With our "United We Stand" or "Winner Takes All" ethos the United States is a country that has made patriotism equivalent to consensus. Tocqueville, still the greatest observer of the United States, remarked on an unprecedented degree of conformity in the then new country, and 175 more years have only confirmed his observation.

Sometimes, given the new, radical turn in American foreign policy, it seems as if it was inevitable that the national consensus on the
greatness of America, which may be activated to an extraordinary pitch of triumphalist national self-regard, was bound eventually to find expression in wars such as the war in Iraq, which are assented to by a majority of the population, who have been persuaded that America has the right - even the duty - to dominate the world.

The usual way of heralding people who act on principle is to say that they are the vanguard of an eventually triumphant revolt against injustice. But what if they're not? What if the evil is really unstoppable? At least in the short run. And that short run may be - is going to be - very long indeed.

My admiration for the soldiers who are resisting service in the
Occupied Territories is as fierce as my belief that it will be a long time before their view prevails. But what haunts me at this moment - for the obvious reason - is acting on principle when it isn't going to alter the obvious distribution of force, the rank injustice and murderousness of a government's policy that claims to be acting in the name not of peace but of security.

The force of arms has its own logic. If you commit an aggression and others resist, it is easy to convince the home front that the fighting must continue. Once the troops are there, they must be supported. It becomes irrelevant to question why the troops are there in the first place.

The soldiers are there because "we" are being attacked; or menaced. Never mind that we may have attacked them first. They are now attacking back, causing casualties. Behaving in ways that defy the "proper" conduct of war. Behaving like "savages", as people in our part of the world like to call people in that part of the world. And their "savage" or "unlawful" actions give new justification to new aggressions. And new impetus to
repress or censor or persecute citizens who oppose the aggression the government has undertaken.

Let's not underestimate the force of what we are opposing.

The world is, for almost everyone, that over which we have virtually no control. Common sense and the sense of self-protectiveness tell us to adapt to what we cannot change.

It's not hard to see how some of us might be persuaded of the justice, the necessity of a war. Especially of a war that is formulated as a small, limited military action that will actually contribute to peace or improved security; of an aggression that announces itself as a campaign of disarmament - admittedly, disarmament of the enemy; and, regrettably, requiring the application of overpowering force. An invasion that calls itself, officially, a liberation.

Every violence in war has been justified as a retaliation. We are
threatened. We are defending ourselves. The others, they want to kill us. We must stop them. And from there: we must stop them before they have a chance to carry out their plans. And since those who would attack us are sheltering behind non-combatants, no aspect of civil life can be immune to our depredations.

Never mind the disparity of forces, of wealth, of firepower - or
simply of population. How many Americans know that the population of Iraq is 25 million, half of whom are children? (The population of the United States is 290 million.) Not to support those who are coming under fire from the enemy seems like treason.

It may be that, in some cases, the threat is real. In such
circumstances, the bearer of the moral principle seems like someone running alongside a moving train, yelling "Stop! Stop!" Can the train be stopped? No, it can't. At least, not now.

Will other people on the train be moved to jump off and join those on the ground? Maybe some will, but most won't. (At least, not until they have a whole new panoply of fears.) The dramaturgy of "acting on principle" tells us that we don't have to think about whether acting on principle is expedient, or whether we can count on the eventual success of the actions we have undertaken.

Acting on principle is, we're told, a good in itself. But it is still
a political act, in the sense that you're not doing it for yourself. You
don't do it just to be in the right, or to appease your own
conscience; much less because you are confident your action will achieve its aim. You resist as an act of solidarity - with communities of the principled and the disobedient: here, elsewhere; in the present, in the future.

Thoreau's going to prison in 1846 for refusing to pay the poll tax in
protest against the American war on Mexico hardly stopped the war. But the resonance of that most unpunishing and briefest spell of imprisonment (famously, a single night in jail) has not ceased to inspire principled resistance to injustice through the second half of the 20th century and into our new era.

The movement in the late 1980s to shut down the Nevada test site, a key location for the nuclear arms race, failed in its goal; the operations of the site were unaffected by the protests. But it led directly to the formation of a movement of protesters in far-away Alma Ata, who eventually succeeded in shutting down the main Soviet test site in Kazakhstan, citing the Nevada anti-nuclear activists as their inspiration and expressing solidarity with the Native Americans on whose land the Nevada test site had been located.

The likelihood that your acts of resistance cannot stop the injustice does not exempt you from acting in what you sincerely and reflectively hold to be the best interests of your community.

Thus: it is not in the best interests of Israel to be an oppressor.

Thus: it is not in the best interests of the United States to be a
hyperpower, capable of imposing its will on any country in the world, as it chooses.

What is in the true interests of a modern community is justice.

It cannot be right to systematically oppress and confine a
neighbouring people. It is surely false to think that murder, expulsion, annexations, the building of walls - all that has contributed to reducing a whole people to dependence, penury and despair - will bring security and peace to the oppressors.

It cannot be right that a president of the United States seems to
believe that he has a mandate to be president of the planet - and announces that those who are not with America are with "the terrorists".

Those brave Israeli Jews who, in fervent and active opposition to the policies of the present government of their country, have spoken up on behalf of the plight and the rights of Palestinians, are defending the true interests of Israel. Those of us who oppose the plans of the present government of the United States for global hegemony are patriots speaking for the best interests of the United States.

Beyond these struggles, which are worthy of our passionate adherence, it is important to remember that in programmes of political resistance the relation of cause and effect is convoluted, and often indirect. All struggle, all resistance is - must be - concrete. And all struggle has a global resonance. If not here, then there. If not now, then soon: elsewhere as well as here.
To Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero.
To Rachel Corrie.
To Tom Hurndall.
And to Ishai Menuchin and his comrades.

Susan Sontag. Adapted from Susan Sontag's speech on March 30 at the presentation of the Rothko Chapel Oscar Romero Award to Ishai Menuchin, chairman of Yesh Gvul .

[perezoso]

Courage has no moral value in itself, for courage is not, in itself, a moral virtue. Vicious scoundrels, murderers, terrorists may be brave. To describe courage as a virtue, we need an adjective: we speak of "moral courage" because there is such a thing as amoral courage, too.

Miss Sontag raises an interesting point here. Bravery, courage, patriotism are not in themselves "good" or ethical. Nazi soldiers were some of the bravest and most patriotic of any people in Der Vaterland. The "conscript"or soldier-to-be is in a difficult place: does he just trust the US military leaders to make just and ethical decisions? I think not. So while everyone, including liberals, says "support the troops", and somehow absolves the enlisted guys of any wrongdoing, Sontag implies that soldiers themselves may be guilty ( as say some were in Nam) if they follow injust or brutal or murderous policies. Sontag is, of course, assuming that humans are obligated to make or even capable of ethical decisions--which is quite debatable.

I do not share Sontag's perspective on this completely, but she also raises a decent point regarding the disparity of US and British military forces compared to the Iraqis (and it was similiar in Nam) . In fact one of the reasons Bertrand Russell protested the 'Nam war was because of the horrific firepower of the US military being inflicted on the villages of NV.

Anyways if you support the war (or even if you don't) , then perhaps you should spend some time gazing at pictures of the dead civilians and children, courtesy of the red white and blue. Perhaps some of the chapels of Dixie could be decorated with them.

[knip]

soldiers are legally bound to follow the law, meaning in their terms, the laws of armed conflict as embodied in the hague conventions and its protocols blah blah blah

but they receive very little training to that end...for instance, i doubt if any of the soldiers on the ground in baghdad knew they had a legal duty to protect the museum artifacts from looting? i doubt it

yet we expect them to act in accordance with law...it's criminal, by definition, and not good leaderahip

i agree neither courage nor its component, morale courage, are moral virtues...they are parts of character...integrity is considered an ethical trait, but try defining it...i've got definitions for these things lying around somewhere, but they are doctrine, meaning they are created for other purposes than being accurate...they're part of a system

[Zlatko Waterman]

A "system" it is, Knip.

And "Everybody has a share" as Milo Minderbinder says in "Catch-22."


--Z

[jimboloco]

Unfortunately, bending minds takes time....a process of change.......assessing guilt is a difficult thing.....my friend Claude AnShin Thomas was a door gunner on choppers in Vietnam. Now he is a zen priest with the peacemaker order......my friend Scott Camil, a Marine in Vietnam with many "kills" bears terrible burden of course. NOW they are anti-war and beyond merely liberal positioning. I understand the moderate's dilemma, a reasoned cautiousness that says, "Oh well, we owe it to them to stay in Iraq now." St Pete Times posed that in an editorial a couple of weeks ago, and did not print my letter to the editor, posted in "culture".... The new leader of Iraq vets agin the war went thru the same process......the ones who wake up, who own their fates.....like my friend Horace Coleman writes in his "Ode to Civilians" "NOW I write my own orders, make my own meanings."

Horace was an airfarce captain who coordinated airstrikes in Vietnam.

Soldiers are legally bound to follow the law but get little training in this......assumes that the commanders use soldiers in honorable ways. It is next to impossible for a conservative mindset to toss off the entire fabric of brainwashing......

so leadership not good? well at what level? I see it as a social dilemma....culture on the skids and a counterculture with a more bracing ethical standard.

I see courage in the terrified small people who are struggling right now, numb with grief, while we contribute enormous sums for our war, our liberal-conservative war.

Subterfuge is the name of the game we need to play, counter-recruiting, also educating somehow. Planting seeds of dissent.

Thanks for the photo zozo
I wondered how you express your greif.

To knip, when you are retired and collecting your pension, I will be working, even after collecting social security....i will work until I can nolonger work, then will be poor once again. Of course, I thinks that zlatcat iz already retired.....my dilemma is of my own making to be sure. I should have dissented, then gone on and passed my MBA program instead of getting enraged whilst inside it. instead of getting beat down and flophouse out. Alienation and anger is a ripper. And the healing that follows is a lifetime effort. There is no going back and no sliding down. Walking tall whilst creeping is more like it foptr me, with moments of placid centering the deepbreathed prayer of giving all the way through.

Going against the system costs. I saw a coast guard c-130 today flying at about 3000 feet, white with red stripe. i would like to be the pilot. i worked with a fellow last week, a pilot with his own plane, down at a south Tampa airport, it is being repainted and also with new equipment and enterior.....he has leukemia and had a bonemarrow transplant with his brother last year, unfortunately with "host vs graft disease," working with him dealing with the essential drive for healing and sustaining he prays for with every breath.....that is courage manifest.

How can we evoke that essential integrity How can we communicate this to others? Are they capable of waking up?
Valuesystems and belief systems are deeply embedded. It's what Robert J Lifton talks about in his Home from the War

He uses the example of MyLai and the ones who refused to fire.

He talks over and again about the socialised warrior and the new phenomenon of the anti-war veteran.

Sontag places her emotional sensitivity to the task of communicating how we need to have the courage to dissent knowing that dissent is part of the stream that endures.

I wish I could say something soothing. I hope that enough people wake up and that translates into political power with changed policies. Anybody care to pray with me?

[knip]

you should check out the anti-war, or at least, anti-inflammation dissent poking its head out in various corners...israeli commanders have recently started refusing to carry out certain orders...can't remember the name offhand...googling would uncover the stories easily

the point being folks question more today than even 22 years ago, when i took my commission...as we need smarter and smarter grunts and seamen to adapt to the digital battlefield and quickly process information through tactical data systems, more questions are being asked more often...many try to hammer them into something the commander is comfortable with...but many others acknowledge it as a new type of soldier/sailor...one who questions and influences superiors through same questions..the superiors start to question

a small movement, to be sure...but clear (to me, anyway)

[Zlatko Waterman]

I took early retirement at 55 and at 28 percent of my salary after 33 years in the education vineyards, Jim, because I couldn't stand the crapola any more:

The community telling you not to dissent or express any political point of view in the classroom . . .

"My kids are there to LEARN" was a common shibboleth dribbled from the drooling lips of the DUBCO legion.

To "learn", of course, and ignore what Howard Zinn's book contains:

http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/ ... hap16.html

Since I was gassed at Sproul Hall in 1964

http://www.dailycal.org/particle.php?id=6549


from the helicopters buzzing my university, until this day, I agree with all the antiwar, anti- military/industrial sentiment you have espoused. And I continue to appreciate the point of view of an ex-soldier and pilot.

I was drafted for Vietnam three times. I was prepared to go to Canada when they finally read the papers I had handed them (and sent them) over and over pointing out I was totally blind in one eye.

Finally, after a year of harassment, I was re-classified 1Y.

I lost several friends to the Vietnam War, and saw several return maimed.

I have sympathy for those who were and are duped by the rhetoric of recruiters and promises of college money, vocational training and other perks. This is a war largely fought by "colored" peoples for the whims of rich white guys like Rumsfeld.

Only sometimes it's not simple for an economically stressed populace to see the lies behind the rationale for empty military adventures like the current war in Iraq.

Peace in the new year,


Zlatko

[stilltrucking]

Dear Teacher

I remember something you said about "just don't take my understanding. I think we all were talking about death or something like it.

Herr Professor has nothing to fear.

[Zlatko Waterman]

Stilltrucking:

Yes. Samuel Johnson, one of the 18th century's greatest English writers,


http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Johnson/



had a prayer about how it was ok for his body to be snatched by God, but not his "understanding."

The 18thC. guys were touchingly naive-- as if the "Understanding" were somehow immune to the body.

But Old Sam still had his strokes, and one of them carried him away.


Zlatko