I have long since given up on Bush and his refashioning of American foreign policy founded upon a glaringly obvious Electra complex*, so much so that his rants - his Bushisms - elicit only disinterest. But his latest Bushism, a juxtaposition of ignorance and blinkeredness, beggars belief.

Members of Congress need to stop making political statements, and start providing vital funds for our troops. White House Press release

Should Congress cease from “making political statements”, and forgo its role as legislative arm of government, what in the world are they there for? For the United States to be governed by the rule of Whim?

Perhaps Bush should read the Constitution, specifically Article I, Section 8. I wonder if His Whimsyness is aware of Ben’s Guide to US Government for kids? Click here for their topic of Congress, meant for kids 9 til 12.

* Note: ’cause Bush is a girl.

I stood next to the President of Iran this morning, as the Heads of State of the Eight Developing Countries that make up the D-8 toured briskly around the business forum. He’s kinda short.

Next month marks the 10th anniversary of the passing of Gillian Rose, philosopher, scholar and teacher. She is much missed by all whom she graced.

London Consortium is holding a special conference on the 9th of December 2005 to discuss the legacy and impact of her life’s thought.

As a tribute to the philosopher Gillian Rose on the 10th anniversary of her death, the London Consortium and the ICA present an evening exploring the idea of philosophy as radical thought. At a time when the project for radical political transformation has been shaken to its core, what should be the role of the radical philosopher? Should it be the ethical work of mourning, or keeping the radical political project alive through critique?

Speakers include: The Rt Revd Rowan Williams, Jacqueline Rose, and Howard Caygill. David Held will chair the conference.

If you are attending this, come and introduce yourself. I’ll be the one who will be looking jet-lagged from his over-night flight from LA.

It’s just as well that it is a French word. I remember writing about “race” riots and the disenfranchised in 1980s Britain - the impact of Thatcherite economics, institutionalised racism, antagonistic policing methods, disproportionate unemployment rates etc. Listening to news reports, it seems that explanations are simply regurgitated, albeit with an easily ridiculed French accent. Perhaps someone should request original (and analytical) reporting.

Perhaps one necessary step is to recognise the fundamental devaluation of the rule of law within the very tradition which revolutionized the thinking of beginnings, from Rousseau to the 1789 decade; where the nation-state now comes to question the very notion of citizenship and instead resorts to a cultural - read racial - definition of what it means to be French. Yes, it is simple, though not incorrect, to highlight these tensions built within the liberal democratic model; yes, it is simple, though not incorrect, to speak against the sickening, barely concealed gleeful disdain that unwelcomes an outsider to Charles de Gaulle airport. That odour is unmistakable.

In the context of such a confessional - that France no longer rules; that it no longer even holds prime position in the Old Europe; that French ranks below Mandarin, English, Spanish, Arabic in the hierarchy of tongues; that the march of crass consumerist culture spreads and tramples the finest trappings of bourgeois taste; that foreign policy runs its own course unfettered and unabated by strategic French stagnancy - such a reactionary stance merely exacerbates, not quells, division and unrest.

Alas now on a less topical note, I was all ready to unleash a sniggering line or two upon hearing news that the Bush adminsitration “announced a $7.1 billion strategy yesterday to cope with a possible influenza pandemic” (NYT, 2nd November 2005). Perhaps my tickling of the world’s funny bone would take the form of

How do you spell HALLIBURTON?

A-v-i-a-n-b-i-r-d-f-l-u.

But reality is so much more unfunny than we gave it credit for. Dick’s done, don’t you see? It’s Donald’s turn. Rumsfeld’s growing stake in Tamiflu

further reading:

Bush! Crony jobs

Halliburton Watch

CDC

The Atlantic Monthly site is accessible, but The Believer is not. Yes, granted it could be that the latter’s moniker is taken to heart and makes it deserving of being blocked on religious grounds, but the NYRB is open for all, yet The London Review of Books is blocked. I sense a conspiracy, a conspiracy instigated by the macro-manager filtering sites and sheltering us web-crawlers here in Tehran against a certain outlook, that kind of self-deprecating disposition. As if humour ever hurt anyone.

Well, at least laughter takes away gravitas, and gravitas is the province of dictatorship - that much we glimpse in Kundera’s novels. And dictatorships lack taste, as demonstrated by Idi Amin, Marcos, Ceausescu et al (see October’s edition of Wallpaper*). Now I see the correlation. As if:

In exchange for the repression of your freedoms, I renounce my true aesthetic sensibility!

Gravitas sans taste. That is the tag-line of dictatorship in the 2oth century.

By the way, Google searches for “Hannah Arendt” fail to filter pass God’s sieve, however, which tends to undermine my hypothesis, such as it was.

truly an idiocy on an altogether different scale.

“flight plan”
+
movie
+
“Association of Professional Flight Attendants”
+
strike

Google ‘em.

Bless Dan Brown.

Homosexuals, even those who are celibate, will be barred from becoming Roman Catholic priests, a church official said Wednesday, under stricter rules soon to be released on one of the most sensitive issues facing the church

This statement - in today’s New York Times - has put me in a spin. While there is a case for the differentiation of a “celibate homosexual”, qua celibate heterosexual, as a segment apart from the sexually active, one had understood the Church’s stance on this rests on the distinction between sexuality (practiced or otherwise) and asexuality.

There is an important distinction between the celibate heterosexual and the asexual. Christian asceticism has rid itself of the very trace of sexuality from its core. Celibacy here means only the denial of a particular aspect of an already contaminated being.

The International Herald Tribune reports on the death sentence passed on Iwan Darmawan for his part in the bombing of the Australian embassy in Jakarta in 2004. So pleased was he that Darmawan told reporters:

I am thankful for being sentenced to death. I am happy because I will die a martyr

Now let’s get this straight. Here is an individual who, as part of a terrorist network, is hell bent on barging his way into Janaah (Paradise) by sacrificing his life and he is getting a first class ticket to his destination?

Wait a second. Why not punish the poor fellow? Send him to live in New York, buy him a penthouse over-looking Central Park out-fitted with a blonde in bed, a yellow Porsche parked in the basement carpark, and a starring role in the next non-misogynist hip-hop music video. Let him suffer for a bit.

further reading

A view from Paradise and on the Road to Heaven.

Our fears are not unfounded.

I have long come to terms with the evil axis that exists between yoga and surfing: the postures and style, the serenity within both, plus the contributions they make toward increasing my Cool potency - at least in my mind.

Now the Circle is encircled, the triumvirate Trinitised. The terrain of the Divine is fought for in skirmishes as minute as this. Steve, over at No More Mister Nice Blog, has unearthed the shadowy world of yoga!

Uncle Joe - Cardinal Ratzinger to his then fiendish-Papal friends, Your Popeness to us all now - declared in 1989 that yoga “can degenerate into a cult of the body”, with its “pleasing sensations” liable to be mistaken for “spiritual well-being”.

“Let no speck of His Creation be tainted by the heathen teachings of non-believers!”

screams the Christian logic of Imperialist-Monotheistism.

The Japanese have a word - “Sumimasen”. It literally means “I wish I were dead” and comes in useful for those peculiarly Japanese moments in life.