INTUSSEN IN 'N ANDER FORUM

Die waarheid is outobiografies

Einde verlede jaar het ek ʼn bietjie navorsing gedoen oor iets wat dan nou sou bekend staan as postmoderne spiritualiteit. Toe het ek ʼn akademiese artikel vir ʼn internasionale vakjoernaal geskryf met die titel: Postmodern spirituality: experience rather than explain.

Daarin het ek geskryf hoe die groot Duitse teoloog van die vorige eeu Rudolph Bultmann gesê het dat feite rondom Jesus en die Christelike dogma eintlik niks sê en niks in sigself vir ʼn mens se geloof beteken nie. Jy moet die Christelike verhaal ontmitologiseer voordat dit vir jou sin maak. En waar dit eintlik die meeste sin maak, is wanneer jy tydens die prediking van die verhaal, geloof ervaar. Geloof gebeur dus nie wanneer jy die feite aanvaar nie, maar wanneer jy verkondiging hoor. Die prediking is dus op ʼn manier ʼn tipe “happening” waartydens jy ʼn ervaring het van wat die kruis en die opstanding dan nou sou beteken.

Weg van die teologie af was daar die sielkundige Carl Jung wat reken dat elke mens met bepaalde template in jou onderbewussyn gebore word. Alle mense op al die verskillende plekke op die aarde besit hierdie template in hulle onderbewuste. In elke kultuur funksioneer daar dan ook ʼn corpus mitologieë. Alle kulture se mites vertel dieselfde tipes verhale, elk net met ander karakters teen ʼn ander dekor wat binne daardie kultuur aanvaarbaar is. Wanneer jy dan tydens godsdienstige of kulturele byeenkomste hierdie verhale of mitologieë hoor, of dit in rituele beleef, maak dit op een of ander manier kontak met jou onderbewussyn en die templaat in jou onderbewussyn erken die grondpatroon van die verhaal en maak dan oop daarvoor, en so ervaar jy hierdie diep oomblik wat vir jou sin maak, sonder dat jy regtig kan verklaar wat met jou gebeur het.

Weg van die teologie en die sielkunde af, is daar die literêre filosoof, Ernst Cassirer wat verduidelik wat die verskil is tussen allegorie en tautegorie. Allegorie is om taal, simbole en metafore los te maak uit hulle oorspronklike konteks en om dit net so van toepassing te maak in ʼn ander tyd en konteks. Dis wat ons vandag by die fundamentaliste sien. Dit staan teenoor die tautegoriese lees van ʼn verhaal, waar jy dieselfde ervaring wil hê as die oorspronklike leser. Dit kan jy alleen hê as jy simbole en metafore vertaal in ʼn eietydse idioom wat dan dieselfde tipe ervaring by jou sal wakker maak as die ervaring wat die eerste aanhoorder van die verhaal sou gehad het.

Dit bring my toe by die konklusie dat spiritualiteit nie te doen het met ʼn stel feite of ʼn belydenis of iets wat jy aanvaar en wat jy kan verduidelik nie, maar dat dit eerder iets is wat jy ervaar of beleef en wat jy nie presies kan verduidelik nie.

Die artikel het so 2 weke gelede verskyn en ek lees dit toe weer. ʼn Dag of drie nadat ek dit gelees het, lees ek verder aan die boek van Andre Comte-Sponville met die titel: “ Atheist Spirituality” wat gaan oor spiritualiteit sonder ʼn teïstiese God. Daarin skryf hy toe ook ʼn gedeelte waarin hy vertel hoe spiritualiteit nie iets is wat met godsdiens te doen het nie, maar hoe dit ʼn ervaring is van jou teenwoordigheid, jou immanensie in hierdie werklikheid. Hy vertel hoe ʼn mens amper op ʼn mistieke en misterieuse wyse jou teenwoordigheid as deel van die groter geheel ervaar en hoe hierdie bewussyn ʼn spirituele ervaring word.

Dadelik ervaar ek toe hierdie konneksie tussen hoe ek dink en hoe hy dink. Die feit dat ons so dieselfde oor hierdie aspek dink, was op daardie oomblik toe vir my nogal ʼn eienaardige spirituele ervaring.

Dinsdag kry ek ʼn epos van die universiteit af met ʼn briefie by wat vra of ek die artikel in die aanhangsel sal keur. Dis ʼn artikel wat voorgelê is vir moontlike publikasie in ʼn vakwetenskaplike tydskrif van die fakulteit teologie.

Hulle stuur altyd die artikel anoniem, maar ʼn paar sinne in die eerste paragraaf in, toe weet ek dat Julian Muller die outeur is en dat dit gaan oor sy nuwe boek “Om te mag twyfel”, wat onlangs by Tafelberg verskyn het. Daarin maak hy toe die interessante opmerking wat by dieselfde punt uitkom, as Bultmann, Jung, Cassirer, Comte-Sponville en dit wat ek al baie kere vir u gesê het, naamlik dat ʼn mens se spiritualiteit outobiografies is.

Jou ervaringe van die lewe word ge-storie. Jy dink na oor dinge en jy reflekteer oor gebeurtenisse. So ontstaan daar nuwe verhale in jou. En so formuleer jy dan jou persoonlike teologie. Jou spiritualiteit word dus gevorm, nie op grond van argumente nie, maar op grond van verhale. Ja, verhale is vol argumente, maar dit is kontekstuele argumente! Argumente los van verhale word a-kontekstueel, a-histories en uiteindelik irrelevant. Nutteloos en magteloos!

Maar stories is nie net ʼn manier om jou ervaringe mee te beskryf nie, dit help jou ook om jou eie realiteit mee te konstrueer. Dit is iets wat jy gebruik om betekenis aan jou ervarings mee te gee. Die proses werk met ander woorde so:

Jy ervaar of beleef iets. Dan formuleer jy jou ervaring in taal. So vorm jy ʼn verhaal. Dan vorm daardie verhaal jou om die mens te word wat jy is. Dit word dan, of dit gee aanleiding tot ʼn nuwe ervaring. En so word die lewe ʼn nimmereindigende proses van storie en word… en word en storie.

En dis alles outobiografies want dit is jou ervaring en jou storie en jy word daardeur gevorm. Jou storie gegrond op jou ervaring word jou spirituele proses. En so wórd jy en erváár jy en vórm jy aan jou verhaal en op die ou einde aan jouself! Hierdie proses is jóú spirituele ervaring van die lewe. En so word jou lewe dus ʼn verhaal wat nooit klaar vertel is nie. Dit word voortdurend. En hierdie wordingsproses is spirituele groei!

Mentor for Life

Beste Hennie

Ere aan wie ere toekom.

Behalwe dat dit 'n bietjie baie nagraads is, erg kategories is, vir die "template" wat maar sjablone kon gewees het en die ""happening"", is hierdie 'n verdienstelike praatjie.


Trouens, soos vroeër praatjies neig dit sterk daarna om tereg te onderskei tussen begrippe soos geloof, religie, godsdiens, kerk en geestelikheid - 'n onderskeid wat 'n sine qua non is om dié dinge (behoorlik) te begryp.


'n Wetenskaplike of feitelike verklaring van dinge wat die onderwerp van geloof vorm, beëindig summier die geloof-waardigheid of "gelooflikheid" van sodanige geloofsartikels. Geloof is per definisie wetenskaplik onverklaarbaar, bonatuurlik en onbewysbaar - 'n mens sou byna kon sê ongelooflik - anders sou dit nie geloof gewees het nie.


Sodra ('n) geloof(sartikel) wetenskaplik (of "andersins") bewys of bewysbaar is, is dit nie meer geloof nie.Dis presies dít wat geloof só almagtig maak: dit is nie onderworpe of gebonde aan "wetenskaplike" of ander wette nie.


Dít is gevolglik waarom die Bloedriviergebeure en -Gelofte die vestigende Afrikanermitologie is - om by Carl Jung aan te sluit. 
Ons sal nooit kan bewys dat dit wat by Bloedrivier gebeur het 'n wonderwerk was nie - die Voortrekkers het immers vuurwapens gehad - maar ek wíl gló dat dit 'n bonatuurlike gebeurtenis was (en daarvoor hoef 'n mens nie "godsdiensgelowig" te wees nie), wat my bring by die Nietzschiaanse WÍL, wat niks anders is nie as DF Malan  se:   

                                 

                                                              Glo in God!

                                                         

                                                        Glo in U volk!

                                                               Glo in Uself!

TERUG BY DIE ANGLO-BOEREOORLOG?

PIETJE DE DOOD*

*Sien video onderaan

Why are we here?

To covet the beyond and neglect the here and now?

14th June 2011 

Ever since I read Ernest Becker's "The Denial of Death" (1974) in the middle 1990s, I have been convinced that humanity has spent the entire span of its known history literally barking up the wrong tree.
Even the archpessimist Nietzsche agreed that the number one priority of all humans is a life that does not end, though this greatest of German philosophers went to great lengths to point out the fallacies of our own belief systems that produce out of their own self-referential contortions a fabricated solution to this problem — eternal life guaranteed if you just follow a few simple rules. A century later, Becker had clarified the equation to: "Man is a frightened animal who must lie in order to live" (a statement which encompasses the entire history of every religion).

It has been my most sincere contention for some time that the corruption produced by this constant embellishment of establishment religious rituals not only diminishes human consciousness by its rote brainwashing and routine genocide of alternative ideas, it also has served to conceal the true purpose of human beings by leading them in a false direction — making the things required for eternal life overshadow and erase the realistic requirements for a healthy civil society on this planet.

All our activities in this life are calibrated to the idea that we live forever. It is my belief that the sorry condition of this world at present is entirely due to this very idea, because Planet Earth today is a society that is based on a lie — the lie that we do not die. It would therefore be an occult karmic inevitability that we would destroy the planet because of this. Just imagine! A planet killed by self-serving prayer. 

The great architectural monuments on this planet — from the obelisks and pyramids of the past to the skyscrapers and cathedrals of today — are all blustering manifestations of the notion that we have overcome death by our monuments. The poet Shelley had something to say about that and a king named Ozymandias. So while we worship our monuments, our planet is being suffocated by our own excrement. Yes, you already know most of the details.

Our entire lives are spent ignoring death and what it means. Therefore, the true lesson of life is never learned. So almost no one knows that without death, the possibility of love does not exist. 

What humanity is learning now is that the monotheistic model of religion has created nothing but two millennia of wars and hypocrisy, and the reason for this is that the structure was a lie to begin with. 
Whatever good in the way of civilizing barbarian tribes may have been accomplished, it was accomplished by fraud and force. The alternative was being burned at the stake.
The Roman creation of the Hebrew godman was made possible by the destruction of ancient records, notably the burning of the Library of Alexandria by maniac Christians, to conceal the evidence of its thefts. This process led, in short order, to the Dark Ages, which lasted about six centuries. This impulse to erase the past, notably evident in the sorry history of the Jewish Soviet Union, is always a sure sign of evil tyranny.

What too few people still realize is that the construction of the Old Testament covered up the egregious crimes of the Hebrews in Egypt by describing a Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem. Modern archeology later proved ancient Israel did not even exist on any map when the great heroes of the Bible were supposed to have ruled there.

Even worse in the creation of both Judaism and Christianity was the theft of rituals from the Old Kingdom of Egypt. The Babylonian Hebrews not only plundered Egypt with pestilence and usury, they stole their legends, changed the names, and that is the religion that powers today's fouled facsimiles of the worship of Osiris, Horus, and the Feather of Truth.
But even way back then, in the unfathomable mists of prehistory, the human course was set in the wrong direction. Because the goal was always to survive death. And that never was possible. Hence, the human-created delusion that some all-powerful being had the ability — and the interest — to grant your wish for eternal life. Every church ever built had for its foundation this specific pretext. And every society ever created depended on this mentally constructed mythology for its authenticity, its supernatural sanction, and its reason for being. 

And it is not authentic at all. Like the Jews' claim to the holiness of their religion, it is based on nothing at all, only the insistence by its promoters that it is true, when it clearly is not.

You can draw a straight line from this lie to the current condition of the world. Our own personal immortality is far more important than the survival of the world, wouldn't you say? Let me put that another way. Who among us wouldn't abandon the whole world just to live another day?

The corruption that has emanated from this millennia-long attempt to convince the world to believe in the impossible far outweighs any benefit these organizations claim to have had on the population at large. The crimes against humanity are authorized by these religions. And worse, this pathological course of action guaranteed that under the spell of a belief that is not true, that all subsequent decisions in the development of civilization would be skewed by this erroneous assumption — the primary example of wishful thinking in history.

This erroneous assumption is why we attempt to build empires rather than spread love. We blame it on our need for food and other resources, but really we are attempting to immunize ourselves from our own deaths by conquering others. You can see this axiom at work if you think seriously about the nature of sporting events, which offer victory over darkness and ignominy, however transitory, as a homeopathic sop to our primary wish to live forever.

Imagine how different society would be if we recognized death and the disappearance of ourselves as a natural inevitability rather than as a subject not to be talked about. Each one of us WILL come to that moment when there is nothing else on our minds, and it is then we will realize that our entire lives are really only a preparation for this moment.

I've always felt that religious types are hurling profound insults at the God they profess to worship by insisting they know exactly what He said, and when He said it. I myself believe that any conjecture about an afterlife is useless, since eligibility for such is wholly dependent on your actions on this plane of existence. That's why prayer bothers me. A real prayer is an action that helps someone else and is of no direct benefit to the person taking the action. Just do the work.

Organized religion talks light but brings darkness, threats, exploitation, blackmail. Organized religion has no allegiance to you; only you to it. Hence, it is slavery, and very effective, because it has convinced you it has given you a gift, when in actuality it has only addicted you to its ontological anesthesia, and actually prevented you from thinking about who you really are in a nonjudgmental way.
Organized religion is for idiots unable or unwilling to even attempt to plumb the depths of their own minds. And it's all based on a falsehood that God is some entity outside the body when in reality it is a quality, an aptitude, OF the body, inasmuch as it is of the mind and derived from the minds of other people.

And while I'm haranguing belief systems, let me point out the single most important debility of organized religion: it teaches humans to be followers, subservient to the curious pronouncements of strange men thousands of years ago. Religion does not activate leaders, it rubberstamps followers, and hence perpetuates bad habits of believing without knowing (the common attitude of most young soldiers) and killing without thinking, because it has been ordered from above by people who have the weight of organized and corrupt religion on their side.

Following these examples of religious rectitude has produced nothing but two thousand years of war.

Over these past fifty-some years of writing for various publications, I've always kept the possibility of one story in mind. After all, what is the purpose of life? To advance the cause and general health of all lifeforms, I'd say. Not just the beneficial ones, either. You have to study the effects of the bad ones to eliminate them, if necessary.

That one story, I still haven't decided on a title, would be something about the heritage of the human future. What will it be? What do we want to make it? And what are we being made into that could forever prevent us from exerting a controlling influence over our own future?

In other words, what are we aiming for?

I've honed it down to one sentence, first written about 25 years ago.

"To make laughter reign beyond the sun for as long as the future shall be."

But lest I get too metaphysical, sometimes I look at life like a car wreck. First, see if anybody's hurt or worse. Then, clean up the wreckage. Finally, find out what happened so you can attempt to prevent it from happening again. If the same thing keeps happening, then you must take action against the people who are perpetrating it.

The most valuable piece of information I have seen in the catacombs of the Internet was uttered by the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. He said this. You have something inside you that nobody can ever take from you. It is not dependent on anybody else's approval. You get to decide whether you are happy or not. Do not allow anyone else to make the decision for you.

And hey, what's the worst thing that can happen? The worst thing that can happen to you after you die is that you wind up at the party at the end of time — everybody winds up there sooner or later. Of course this means having to spend eternity with your relatives and the friends you have made during your life, with no way to communicate back to the living world whether this is actually hell or not. 


John Kaminski is a writer who lives on the Gulf Coast of Florida, urging people to understand that no problem in the world can be authentically addressed without first analyzing tangents caused by Jewish perfidy, which has subverted and diminished every aspect of human endeavor throughout history. Support for his work is wholly derived from people who can understand what he’s saying and know what it means. 

www.johnkaminski.info 

250 N. McCall Rd. #2,
Englewood,
FL 34223,
USA 


Ozymandias
by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822).

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

DIE KEISER SE NUWE KLERE

Conspiracy Theory
By Paul Craig Roberts
June 20 2011  -- While we were not watching, conspiracy theory has undergone Orwellian redefinition.

A “conspiracy theory” no longer means an event explained by a conspiracy. Instead, it now means any explanation, or even a fact, that is out of step with the government’s explanation and that of its media pimps. 

For example, online news broadcasts of RT have been equated with conspiracy theories by the New York Times simply because RT reports news and opinions that the New York Times does not report and the US government does not endorse.

In other words, as truth becomes uncomfortable for government and its Ministry of Propaganda, truth is redefined as conspiracy theory, by which is meant an absurd and laughable explanation that we should ignore.

When piles of carefully researched books, released government documents, and testimony of eye witnesses made it clear that Oswald was not President John F. Kennedy’s assassin, the voluminous research, government documents, and verified testimony was dismissed as “conspiracy theory.” 

In other words, the truth of the event was unacceptable to the authorities and to the Ministry of Propaganda that represents the interests of authorities.

The purest example of how Americans are shielded from truth is the media’s (including many Internet sites’) response to the large number of professionals who find the official explanation of September 11, 2001, inconsistent with everything they, as experts, know about physics, chemistry, structural engineering, architecture, fires, structural damage, the piloting of airplanes, the security procedures of the United States, NORAD’s capabilities, air traffic control, airport security, and other matters. These experts, numbering in the thousands, have been shouted down by know-nothings in the media who brand the experts as “conspiracy theorists.” 

This despite the fact that the official explanation endorsed by the official media is the most extravagant conspiracy theory in human history. 

Let’s take a minute to re-acquaint ourselves with the official explanation, which is not regarded as a conspiracy theory despite the fact that it comprises an amazing conspiracy. The official truth is that a handful of young Muslim Arabs who could not fly airplanes, mainly Saudi Arabians who came neither from Iraq nor from Afghanistan, outwitted not only the CIA and the FBI, but also all 16 US intelligence agencies and all intelligence agencies of US allies including Israel’s Mossad, which is believed to have penetrated every terrorist organization and which carries out assassinations of those whom Mossad marks as terrorists.

In addition to outwitting every intelligence agency of the United States and its allies, the handful of young Saudi Arabians outwitted the National Security Council, the State Department, NORAD, airport security four times in the same hour on the same morning, air traffic control, caused the US Air Force to be unable to launch interceptor aircraft, and caused three well-built steel-structured buildings, including one not hit by an airplane, to fail suddenly in a few seconds as a result of limited structural damage and small, short-lived, low-temperature fires that burned on a few floors. 

The Saudi terrorists were even able to confound the laws of physics and cause WTC building seven to collapse at free fall speed for several seconds, a physical impossibility in the absence of explosives used in controlled demolition.

The story that the government and the media have told us amounts to a gigantic conspiracy, really a script for a James Bond film. Yet, anyone who doubts this improbable conspiracy theory is defined into irrelevance by the obedient media.

Anyone who believes an architect, structural engineer, or demolition expert who says that the videos show that the buildings are blowing up, not falling down, anyone who believes a Ph.D. physicist who says that the official explanation is inconsistent with known laws of physics, anyone who believes expert pilots who testify that non-pilots or poorly-qualified pilots cannot fly airplanes in such maneuvers, anyone who believes the 100 or more first responders who testify that they not only heard explosions in the towers but personally experienced explosions, anyone who believes University of Copenhagen nano-chemist Niels Harrit who reports finding unreacted nano-thermite in dust samples from the WTC towers, anyone who is convinced by experts instead of by propaganda is dismissed as a kook. 

In America today, and increasingly throughout the Western world, actual facts and true explanations have been relegated to the realm of kookiness. Only people who believe lies are socially approved and accepted as patriotic citizens.

Indeed, a writer or newscaster is not even permitted to report the findings of 9/11 skeptics. In other words, simply to report Professor Harrit’s findings now means that you endorse them or agree with them. Everyone in the US print and TV media knows that he/she will be instantly fired if they report Harrit’s findings, even with a laugh. Thus, although Harrit has reported his findings on European television and has lectured widely on his findings in Canadian universities, the fact that he and the international scientific research team that he led found unreacted nano-thermite in the WTC dust and have offered samples to other scientists to examine has to my knowledge never been reported in the American media.

Even Internet sites on which I am among the readers’ favorites will not allow me to report on Harrit’s findings.

As I reported earlier, I myself had experience with a Huffington Post reporter who was keen to interview a Reagan presidential appointee who was in disagreement with the
Republican wars in the Middle East. After he published the interview that I provided at his request, he was terrified to learn that I had reported findings of 9/11 investigators. 
To protect his career, he quickly inserted on the online interview that my views on the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions could be dismissed as I had reported unacceptable findings about 9/11.

The unwillingness or inability to entertain any view of 9/11 different from the official view dooms to impotence many Internet sites that are opposed to the wars and to the rise of the domestic US police state. These sites, for whatever the reasons, accept the government’s explanation of 9/11; yet, they try to oppose the “war on terror” and the police state which are the consequences of accepting the government’s explanation. Trying to oppose the consequences of an event whose explanation you accept is an impossible task.

If you believe that America was attacked by Muslim terrorists and is susceptible to future attacks, then a “war on terror” and a domestic police state to root out terrorists become necessary to make Americans safe. The idea that a domestic police state and open-ended war might be more dangerous threats to Americans than terrorists is an impermissible thought. 

A country whose population has been trained to accept the government’s word and to shun those who question it is a country without liberty in its future.

WAT IS 'N WOORD? 'N KLANKWEERGAWE VAN 'N SENUPRIKKEL*

*Sien híér


 Attacking Libya -- and the Dictionary

 If Americans Don’t Get Hurt, War Is No Longer War


By Jonathan Schell


June 21, 2011 "TomDispatch" -- The Obama administration has come up with a remarkable justification for going to war against Libya without the congressional approval required by the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution of 1973. 


American planes are taking off, they are entering Libyan air space, they are locating targets, they are dropping bombs, and the bombs are killing and injuring people and destroying things. It is war. Some say it is a good war and some say it is a bad war, but surely it is a war.

Nonetheless, the Obama administration insists it is not a war. Why?  Because, according to “United States Activities in Libya,” a 32-page report that the administration released last week, “U.S. operations do not involve sustained fighting or active exchanges of fire with hostile forces, nor do they involve the presence of U.S. ground troops, U.S. casualties or a serious threat thereof, or any significant chance of escalation into a conflict characterized by those factors.” 


In other words, the balance of forces is so lopsided in favor of the United States that no Americans are dying or are threatened with dying. War is only war, it seems, when Americans are dying, when we die.  When only they, the Libyans, die, it is something else for which there is as yet apparently no name. When they attack, it is war. When we attack, it is not.


This cannot be classified as anything but strange thinking and it depends, in turn, on a strange fact: that, in our day, it is indeed possible for some countries (or maybe only our own), for the first time in history, to wage war without receiving a scratch in return. This was nearly accomplished in the bombing of Serbia in 1999, in which only one American plane was shot down (and the pilot rescued).


The epitome of this new warfare is the predator drone, which has become an emblem of the Obama administration. Its human operators can sit at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada or in Langley, Virginia, while the drone floats above Afghanistan or Pakistan or Yemen or Libya, pouring destruction down from the skies.  War waged in this way is without casualties for the wager because none of its soldiers are near the scene of battle -- if that is even the right word for what is going on.


Some strange conclusions follow from this strange thinking and these strange facts. In the old scheme of things, an attack on a country was an act of war, no matter who launched it or what happened next.  Now, the Obama administration claims that if the adversary cannot fight back, there is no war.


It follows that adversaries of the United States have a new motive for, if not equaling us, then at least doing us some damage.  Only then will they be accorded the legal protections (such as they are) of authorized war.  Without that, they are at the mercy of the whim of the president.

The War Powers Resolution permits the president to initiate military operations only when the nation is directly attacked, when there is “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.”  The Obama administration, however, justifies its actions in the Libyan intervention precisely on the grounds that there is no threat to the invading forces, much less the territories of the United States.


There is a parallel here with the administration of George W. Bush on the issue of torture (though not, needless to say, a parallel between the Libyan war itself, which I oppose but whose merits can be reasonably debated, and torture, which was wholly reprehensible).  President Bush wanted the torture he was ordering not to be considered torture, so he arranged to get lawyers in the Justice department to write legal-sounding opinions excluding certain forms of torture, such as waterboarding, from the definition of the word.  Those practices were thenceforward called “enhanced interrogation techniques.”


Now, Obama wants his Libyan war not to be a war and so has arranged to define a certain kind of war -- the American-casualty-free kind -- as notwar (though without even the full support of his own lawyers). Along with Libya, a good English word -- war -- is under attack.


In these semantic operations of power upon language, a word is separated from its commonly accepted meaning. The meanings of words are one of the few common grounds that communities naturally share. When agreed meanings are challenged, no one can use the words in question without stirring up spurious “debates,” as happened with the word torture. For instance, mainstream news organizations, submissive to George Bush’s decisions on the meanings of words, stopped calling waterboarding torture and started calling it other things, including “enhanced interrogation techniques,” but also “harsh treatment,” “abusive practices,” and so on. 


Will the news media now stop calling the war against Libya a war?  No euphemism for war has yet caught on, though soon after launching its Libyan attacks, an administration official proposed the phrase “kinetic military action” and more recently, in that 32-page report, the term of choice was “limited military operations.” No doubt someone will come up with something catchier soon. 


How did the administration twist itself into this pretzel? An interview that Charlie Savage and Mark Landler of the New York Times held with State Department legal advisor Harold Koh sheds at least some light on the matter.  Many administrations and legislators have taken issue with the War Powers Resolution, claiming it challenges powers inherent in the presidency. Others, such as Bush administration Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, have argued that the Constitution’s plain declaration that Congress “shall declare war” does not mean what most readers think it means, and so leaves the president free to initiate all kinds of wars.


Koh has long opposed these interpretations -- and in a way, even now, he remains consistent. Speaking for the administration, he still upholds Congress’s power to declare war and the constitutionality of the War Powers Resolution. “We are not saying the president can take the country into war on his own,” he told the Times. “We are not saying the War Powers Resolution is unconstitutional or should be scrapped or that we can refuse to consult Congress. We are saying the limited nature of this particular mission is not the kind of ‘hostilities’ envisioned by the War Powers Resolution.”


In a curious way, then, a desire to avoid challenge to existing law has forced assault on the dictionary. For the Obama administration to go ahead with a war lacking any form of Congressional authorization, it had to challenge either law or the common meaning of words. Either the law or language had to give. 


It chose language.


Jonathan Schell is the Doris M. Shaffer Fellow at The Nation Institute, and a Senior Lecturer at Yale University.  He is the author of several books, including The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People. To listen to Timothy MacBain’s latest TomCast audio interview in which Schell discusses war and the imperial presidency, click here, or download it to your iPod here.

Copyright 2011 Jonathan Schell

DIE WERKLIKHEID

June 17, 2011, 12:00 a.m. EDT

Stop the Greek hostage crisis!

Commentary: Will everyone please stop lying about crisis in Europe?

By Brett Arends, MarketWatch

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — This isn’t about “bailing out Greece.” Yes, the Greeks owe about $500 billion, but they already have spent the money.

This is about bailing out the banks that lent to them.

The biggest creditors are French banks. The second biggest are the Germans. The third biggest are the British. I’ll bet a lot of Greek bonds are now held by hedge funds.

These are the people asking for public funds.

What’s happening in Europe right now isn’t a financial crisis. It’s a hostage crisis.

Once again, we are all being held hostage by a bunch of bankers. “Give us a bailout,” they’re saying, “or else the economy gets it!”

Maybe it’s time to call their bluff.

Perhaps Europe should let Greece default. Let it go bust. Force the bond holders to take their losses.

If you invest in a stock that falls, you don’t get made whole.

If you buy bonds in a company or institution that collapses, you don’t get your money back. So why here?

They call it “risk capital” for a reason.

This is Bear Stearns all over again. It’s AIG all over again.

People are going to scare you. They’ll say it will be just like Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. LEHMQ -1.85%  “If Greece goes bust, the whole financial system will go down.”

Maybe they’re right. But the burden of proof is on them.

After the high-finance fiascoes and thievery of the past few years, I will take some convincing. We were told we had to step in to rescue AIG to protect Grandma’s annuity, and then it turned out we were really protecting Goldman Sachs Group Inc. GS -0.02%

Greece, as I say, owes about $500 billion. But even if it defaults, all that money won’t be lost anyway. Greece won’t vanish from the world. What will happen instead is that the bond holders will be forced to take a haircut.

Or a buzz cut.