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Topic: RE: virus: Excluded middle (Read 661 times) |
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Blunderov
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"We think in generalities, we live in details"
  
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RE: virus: Excluded middle
« on: 2005-06-23 08:39:30 » |
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[Blunderov] Some more evidence for my contention that the logical
fallacy is the deliberate stock in trade of politicians. No wonder
schools (AFAIK) don't offer subversive logic courses. (Word of honour:
I'm not trying to smuggle a 'war talk'. It just turned up is all.)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9239.htm
<snip>
Gardiner: In the summer of 2003, we know from the Downing Street Memo
that the Administration was talking about justifying a war by arguing
that Iraq was the nexus of terrorism and WMD.
The terrorism argument was what propaganda literature would refer to as
the big lie. The Administration's objective was to make enough arguments
connecting Iraq to terrorism and Bin Laden that the American people
would believe Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks. They used a technique
called the excluded middle. Iraq supports terrorists. The attacks were
by terrorists. Iraq must been behind the 9/11 attacks. </snip>
Best Regards.
---
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rhinoceros
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My point is ...
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RE: virus: Excluded middle
« Reply #1 on: 2005-06-23 09:31:53 » |
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[Blunderov quoting informationclearinghouse]
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9239.htm
<snip>
Gardiner: In the summer of 2003, we know from the Downing Street Memo
that the Administration was talking about justifying a war by arguing
that Iraq was the nexus of terrorism and WMD.
The terrorism argument was what propaganda literature would refer to as
the big lie. The Administration's objective was to make enough arguments
connecting Iraq to terrorism and Bin Laden that the American people
would believe Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks. They used a technique
called the excluded middle. Iraq supports terrorists. The attacks were
by terrorists. Iraq must been behind the 9/11 attacks. </snip>
[rhinoceros] Perhaps in a few years someone will be able to gloat that they were right all along. Besides logical fallacies, one has to consider the case of self-fulfilling prophecies. I was reading a Newsweek article today. Among other things, the article deals with the effects of this "war on terrorism" on American security:
The Enemy Spies
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8272786/site/newsweek/
In the 3rd page, at the end of the article, I read:
<quote>
The CIA produced a study this May on a topic so sensitive that even the title is classified. The paper discussed the environment in which jihadists trained at Al Qaeda's camps in Taliban-run Afghanistan, contrasting that against the environment in which Iraq's insurgents are mastering the techniques of urban warfare. For starters, not all new recruits in Afghanistan necessarily hated America before undergoing Al Qaeda indoctrination.
In Iraq, on the other hand, hostility toward America is practically the only thing that all insurgents agree on—foreign infiltrators and native recruits alike. And jihadists in Iraq are getting direct, on-the-job training in a real-life insurgency, with hands-on experience in bombing, sniping and all the skills of urban warfare, unlike the essentially artificial training that was given at Al Qaeda's rural Afghan camps.
One of the paper's main points is that America's Iraqi troubles will not end with the insurgency. In effect, Iraq is producing a new corps of master terrorists with an incandescent hatred for the United States—the "class of '05 problem," as it's called in the shorthand of CIA analysts. This war is proving to be longer and nastier than almost anyone expected. One day, its results may be felt closer to home.
<end quote>
[rhinoceros] My best guess is that when the time comes for Bush to fall, he will fall hard. Even if those who will guide the next turn in American policy will be more or less bound to the same interests, Bush will be the perfect scapegoat.
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Blunderov
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RE: virus: Excluded middle
« Reply #2 on: 2005-06-23 15:05:25 » |
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rhinoceros
Sent: 23 June 2005 15:32
<snip>
[rhinoceros] My best guess is that when the time comes for Bush to fall,
he will fall hard. Even if those who will guide the next turn in
American policy will be more or less bound to the same interests, Bush
will be the perfect scapegoat. </snip>
[Blunderov] This seems entirely possible. Gratifying to me personally as
this would be, I am not too sure that this would actually be in
America's own best interest. The ghost of the civil war (the Soviets
used to refer to it as The War of the Brothers) has not been
sufficiently laid to rest (from what I can judge) for this to be a
prudent course of action at a time when America is at a hugely important
historical crossroads.
What is needed instead (IMV) is a nation building exercise. I think
Bishop Tutu's Truth and Reconciliation Commission served South Africa
(for the most part) very well. To be honest I was sceptical of it at the
time (I forget why now!) but now I must admit that it was a most
constructive exercise. America might well wish to consider something of
that sort. Whatever happens next, I hope that it contributes to the
repair of American democracy rather than its further destruction.
Howard Bloom discusses scapegoatism in his book 'The Lucifer Principle'
(ISBN 0-87113-664-3 (pbk.))
<snip>
SCAPEGOATS AND SEXUAL HYSTERIA
The social climb-or fall-of a superorganism radically redecorates the
psychic interior of the individuals who form its constituent parts.
Being bounced from one rung to another reshapes personal emotions, warps
the lenses of perception, and twists the course of behavior. In the next
few chapters, we'll dig into a few of the more peculiar consequences for
the world in which we live today.
When the pecking order status of a national superorganism slides, a
frustrated populace looks for someone to blame, preferably a character
located conveniently close to home. A declining Victorian England seized
on Oscar Wilde, perhaps the most dazzling literary genius of his day.
His plays, short stories, fairy tales, and essays scintillated. His wit
was exquisite, his cynicism startling. The frenzy that led to Wilde's
imprisonment all began with a book.
It was 1893 when Max Norlu published Degeneration. England's Great
Depression had been dragging on for twenty years. The island kingdom
that had led the world into brave new technologies at the turn of the
nineteenth century was becoming a technological and industrial
backwater. The English knew they were in trouble, but they didn't know
why. Then Max Nordau uncovered the real cause. The culprits behind
Britain's fall were modern philosophy, modern art, and modern novels. As
historian Barbara Tuchman puts it in The Proud Tower,
Through six hundred pages of mounting hysteria, he [Max Nordaul traced
the decay lurking impartially in the realism of Zola, the symbolism of
Mallarme, the mysticism. of Macterlinck, in Wagner's music, Ibsen's
dramas, Manet's pictures, Tolstoy's novels,Nietzsche's philosophy, Dr.
Jaeger's woolen clothing, in Anarchism, Socialism, women's dress,
madness, suicide, nervous diseases, drug addiction, dancing, sexual
license, all of which were
combining to produce a society without self-control, discipline or
shame which was "marching to its certain ruin because it is too
worn out and flaccid to perform great tasks. '
In the days before television and the compact disc, poetry, plays, and
novels were the equivalent of today's electronic mass-consumer fare.
Nordau was indicting all of pop culture.
One of the most visible popular artists of the day was Oscar Wilde. In
1895, his play The Importance of Being Earnest was a huge success. His
books were widely read and his humor was quoted everywhere. But Wilde's
sexual habits were exactly the kind that all good citizens knew were
destroying England. Oscar was a homosexual.
When the flamboyant author filed a libel case against the marquess of
Queensbury, Wilde, rather than the marquess, suddenly became the subject
of scrutiny. A series of trials luridly pictured affairs with male
prostitutes, a valet, a groom, and even a boat attendant. The newspapers
flew into a fit of moral outrage. Cabbies and newsboys derided Oscar's
sins. His books were removed from the stores. Two young noblemen
implicated in similar activities were quietly let off the book, but
Wilde was sent to prison for two years. The incarceration drained the
life from him. A mere thirty-six months after his release from Reading
Gaol, Oscar Wilde died. He was forty-six years old.
Oscar Wilde's imprisonment did not save England, nor did the publication
of Nordau's irascible book; but both gave the English the comfortable
illusion that they had some sort of control over their unpleasant fate,
and both distracted Britain from that fate's actual causes.
Since the early 1970s, America has experienced a decline similar to that
which afflicted Victorian England. For decades, our exports exceeded our
imports. That began to change in 1971. In 1973, we were victimized by an
oil embargo that left normally confident American motorists stranded for
hours in line waiting for a few gallons of gas. It was our first taste
of helplessness.
Presidential adviser Pat Caddell sent a memo to Jimmy Carter in 1979
saying that the United States was in a new, invisible kind of crisis, "a
crisis of confidence marked by a dwindling faith in the future.... [a
crisis that] threatens the political and social fabric of the nation.'
The year of Caddell's memo, 33 percent of Americans saw their lives
going straight downhill. By 1987, things had gotten worse. According to
pollster Louis Harris, a full 60 percent "felt a basic sense of
powerlessness" despite the apparent prosperity of the 19808.
Then an author came to the rescue. In 1987, America disgorged its own
Max Nordau. He was an obscure professor from the University of Chicago
named Allan Bloom. Like Nordau, Bloom knew exactly who to blame for
America's decline. He did not level a bony finger at the industrialists
who ignored the commercial possibilities of the flat-panel video and the
VCR, but eerily echoed Nordau. Bloom fulminated against a set of dead
German philosophers-Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger. And like Nordau, he
raged against popular culture, but instead of Oscar Wilde, Bloom
attacked rock and roll. "Sex, hate and a smarmy, hypocritical version of
brotherly love" are the themes of rock, he declared dogmatically. "Such
polluted sources issue in a muddy stream where only monsters can swim."
In MTV videos, Bloom pontificated, "Hitler's image recurs frequently ...
in exciting contexts.... Nothing noble, sublime, profound, delicate,
tasteful or even decent can find a place in such tableaux. "He claimed
that rock is a "gutter phenomenon,"' obsessed with sex, violence, and
drugs, ruining "the imagination of young people,' stealing their zest
for learning, impoverishing their emotions, turning them into callow
participants in a nation's decline.
One of rock's primary crimes, Bloom claimed, was an overt celebration of
sexuality. In Bloom's view, only when sex is driven underground can man
create. The pent-up libido, Bloom claimed, is the driving force behind
all ennobling accomplishments. (The professor, by the way was a
bachelor.)
Bloom never cited a single fact that would justify his bizarre coupling
of sexual gratification with creative sterility. What's more, his view
of rock was absurd. Drug lyrics had practically disappeared from rock
music over fifteen years before Bloom wrote his book. Hate had never
been a major rock theme (though it would later surface in a musical form
Bloom was unaware of: rap). And at the time Bloom penned his work,
Hitler's image simply had never appeared in an MTV video. (Two years
after Bloom's screed hit the stands, Hitler finally showed up in one MTV
clip: the fuehrer materialized in Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror,"
a work that urged social responsibility and held up Hitler as an icon of
evil.)
But Bloom's singling out of a scapegoat satisfied a deep hunger for
someone to blame. His book was wildly successful, and its influence was
everywhere. A December 8, 1987, editorial in The New Republic picked up
the professor's theme. It pointed a prophetic finger at "the prospect of
decline that lurks . . . in America," lamented that "our cities have . .
. become centers of barbarism," and deplored "the exacerbated cultural
degradation of man and environment." The cause of all this? Rock music,
with its "numbing norms ... of random drugs, random sex, and random
violence.'
The exaggerated-and often false-charges spurred a spate of legal
actions. The FCC revised its policies on "obscenity." The new doctrine
was worded so murkily that almost anything could be deemed obscene. In
response, the listener- supported Pacifica radio stations were forced to
suspend their plans to read Allen Ginsberg's classic poem "Howl' on the
air.
But that was just the tip of the iceberg. A nineteen-year-old store
clerk in Calloway, Florida, was arrested for selling a rap album that
contained the word pussy. She was taken to jail, and the store she'd
worked for was driven out of business. Police broke into the San
Francisco home of political rock singer Jello Biafra and arrested him
for "selling material harmful to minors." The material in question was a
poster by Academy Award-winning designer H. R. Geiger included in a
Biafra album. Displayed in numerous galleries, the poster was a
surrealistic landscape of penises and vaginas designed to "criticize the
standardization of mass consumer society." For nearly two years, Biafra
was forced to abandon music and mount a legal defense. By the time he
was acquitted, his rock group had disbanded.
In Illinois, a law was introduced before the legislature that would have
enabled officials to arbitrarily declare the goods of a bookstore,
record store, or video store obscene. Armed with this charge, the
government would have been empowered to seize the suspect's property-his
store, inventory, bank accounts, and even his home-without a trial."" A
similar piece of legislation-the so-called Child Protection and
Obscenity Enforcement Act was introduced in Congress. Though numerous
congressmen and senators admitted privately that the bill was thoroughly
unconstitutional, it passed both Houses without a dissenting vote."" The
hysterical search for scapegoats had mounted to such a height that
"innocent until proven guilty" was about to be suspended in the case of
pop culture.
The pattern was a common one in history. A slide down the ladder of
nations brings a search for scapegoats and a rise in sexual hysteria.
When Rome was under attack by Hannibal, its citizens looked for a solid,
conservative dictator. The man they found pointed out that the
traditional religious rituals had been either dropped or carried out
with appalling carelessness. The new leader hurriedly restored the
old-time worship of the gods." A year later, Hannibal was still ravaging
the countryside, so Rome's brave citizens looked for a few humans to
blame their troubles on. A diligent "inquiry" uncovered the fact that
two of the vestal virgins had been less than entirely virginal. To rid
the city of its sins, the Romans buried one of the oversexed young women
alive. (The other saved her neighbors the trouble. She committed
suicide.) Just to be safe, the guardians of respectability interred a
few visiting foreigners as well .The return to Rome's old moral
shibboleths did not make Hannibal go away.
In the history of our species, the interlocked phenomena of sexual
hysteria and the search for scapegoats allow the social beast moving
down the pecking order to ignore the forces shoving it toward the
bottom. England used Oscar Wilde to seize pop culture by the scruff of
the neck and give it a vicious shake. In doing so, Britain forgot the
industrialists who had allowed the new chemical and electrical
technologies to slip through their fingers. She overlooked the
complacency that had eroded the international standing of her schools.
She turned away from the siphoning of funds into damaging mergers and
takeovers. Max Nordau's denunciation of pop culture did not stop the
British economic slump. It did, however, divert England's energies from
the tasks that could have saved her.
---
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MoEnzyme
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RE: virus: Excluded middle
« Reply #3 on: 2005-06-24 13:46:55 » |
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> [Original Message]
> From: Blunderov <squooker@mweb.co.za>
> To: <virus@lucifer.com>
> Date: 06/23/2005 12:05:40 PM
> Subject: RE: virus: Excluded middle
>
> rhinoceros
> Sent: 23 June 2005 15:32
> <snip>
> [rhinoceros] My best guess is that when the time comes for Bush to fall,
> he will fall hard. Even if those who will guide the next turn in
> American policy will be more or less bound to the same interests, Bush
> will be the perfect scapegoat. </snip>
>
> [Blunderov] This seems entirely possible. Gratifying to me personally as
> this would be, I am not too sure that this would actually be in
> America's own best interest. The ghost of the civil war (the Soviets
> used to refer to it as The War of the Brothers) has not been
> sufficiently laid to rest (from what I can judge) for this to be a
> prudent course of action at a time when America is at a hugely important
> historical crossroads.
>
> What is needed instead (IMV) is a nation building exercise. I think
> Bishop Tutu's Truth and Reconciliation Commission served South Africa
> (for the most part) very well. To be honest I was sceptical of it at the
> time (I forget why now!) but now I must admit that it was a most
> constructive exercise. America might well wish to consider something of
> that sort. Whatever happens next, I hope that it contributes to the
> repair of American democracy rather than its further destruction.
>
There exists a fairly steady forty percent of US citizens for whom Bush can
do no wrong even after a mind numbing post-election revelation parade of
bald-faced lying about the most important things. In contrast to Clinton
(the most investigated president in US history) the Bush II presidency
remains a mostly uninvestigated opaque mass of corruption and likely
criminal activity. To actually get to the bottom of it all would probably
require some mass pardoning of the culprits. -Jake
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I will fight your gods for food,
Mo Enzyme
(consolidation of handles: Jake Sapiens; memelab; logicnazi; Loki; Every1Hz; and Shadow)
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