African Oil & Gas reserves- Bush's next target?

Glenye Cain writes; "AP has reported that Will Farish unexpectedly is resigning his post as Ambassador to the Court of St. James because, he said, he wants to concentrate on family businesses. I wondered when I read that if this meant something oil-related (I can't believe his horse business is THAT pressing!) that requires his greater involvement. Could this be part of it? Or am I being too quick to connect dots that might not actually be connectable?" RH: It sounds quite plausible, Reports from London described him as the invisible ambassador because he had disappeared from public view. I have heard nothing straight from the horse's mouth.

Mexican president campaigns in US

NewsMax (6/28/94) said: "Mexican President Vicente Fox can't run for re-election, but he is on the campaign trail ... in the United States. Fox has been traveling through Detroit, Chicago and Minneapolis asking Mexican migrants to vote. Calling them "heroes" because of the $13.3 billion in U.S. dollars they sent back home last year, that country's second-largest source of foreign revenue, Fox is asking his congress to let millions of Mexico's citizens abroad vote for president in 2006. Under Mexican law, those living in foreign countries must return home to vote. The law Fox proposes would allow them to vote outside the country. Nearly all 10 million of them live in the U.S. In view of the human tsunami spilling over the border as you read this, many would argue that Mexico's election s not a priority for America. The real question is how Mexican Americans will be integrated into our society if they are busy voting in a foreign election. "One citizen, one vote -- it's the basics of democracy," said Fox. But it's not the basis of the Democrat party in America. How many of these Mexicans in the U.S. will be double dipping? Democrats are already notorious for registering illegal aliens and other foreigners to vote illegally".

RH; As of now, the issue is stymied in the Mexican Congress. It seems that there is concern that Mexican Americans would vote for PAN, the party of Fox.

The Truth About 9/11

Sent: Thursday, July 15, 2004 11:04 PM Christopher Jones replies to Randy Black about "who runs the US and just how low the esteem of the US has fallen in the world thanks to people like Michael Eisner, who is the highest paid executive in human history and president of the Walt Disney Corporation that owns ABC TV. Eisner has been overtly challenged by the nephew of the founder (Roy E Disney) in a share holder's revolt for the shabby, bigoted, petty and unprofessional way that he has managed the company Disney's uncle and father founded. Now Eisner is in the process of destroying the company in cahoots with former Senator George Mitchell out of pure spite and because he hates everything Walt Disney stood for. Eisner is well known for leaning on any reporter who dares criticize him or the policies he pursues, including physical intimidation. A case in point is the suit regarding the ownership/copyright of the "Winnie the Pooh" characters as reported by the New York Post. It was confirmed that Eisner shouted and screamed at Rupert Murdoch on several occasions well overheard by others, demanding that he fire the reporter in question. He then threatened consequences if this was not done. This behavior makes Eisner not suited to run the Walt Disney Corp nor ABC News. Consequently, ABC is not a valid news source, and yes I prefer the valiant Glasgow Herald. (If Eigg Island had a local paper I would prefer that too.)

Mr Black does not understand the complicity of his hero, "Dubya" in the Zionist/Big Oil/Big Media hijacking of US foreign policy to serve the interests of Israel and not the US. Finally for the record, yes, Mr Black, "Big Media" is controlled by Big Jews. Finally, the posting by Steve Margulies notes that the offending broadcast had been yanked. It doesn't surprise me in the least that it has beeen replaced with such an innocuous statement. Frankly I would have been surprised if it hadn't".

Bremer Stymies UN Scandal Probe

NewsMax (6/20/04) reported: "We are disappointed to learn from Fox News Channel that L. Paul Bremer, administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, has not fully cooperated with efforts to unfold the U.N.'s oil-for-food program. Fox News' Jonathan Hunt has been at the forefront of this story and this week reported that Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., wrote Bremer a letter in May requesting answers to questions about Bremer's handling of the oil-for-food investigation. Bremer recently responded to that letter and, according to Shays, there are many questions left unanswered. Hunt says that one reason Bremer might not be helping in the inquiry is the major embarrassment Iraqi documents will offer U.N. officials. Appearing on "Fox & Friends" Thursday morning, Hunt said that one reason for the roadblocks by Bremer was that the U.S. needed U.N. support for the turnover of power to the Iraqis and had no interest in rocking the boat. Meanwhile, Hunt said that he recently interviewed Paul Volcker, the former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman who is heading the inquiry of the U.N.'s latest scandal. Volcker told Hunt off camera his investigation had already found evidence of massive Iraqi bribery of U.N. officials".

RH:The matter should be thoroughly investigated- If the case is proven, the givers of bribes, rather than UN officials, will be the most guilty. They may be nationals of countries with which the US has official relations. All the guilty should be punished, but it should not be an effort simply to discredit the UN.

Decline in reading?

Sent: Thursday, July 15, 2004 7:42 PM A new study by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) called "Reading at Risk" has found that fewer than half of Americans over 18 now read novels, short stories, plays or poetry, and that this increasing indifference to literature holds in virtually all demographic areas. Calling the survey results "deeply alarming," NEA chair Dana Gioia says, "What this study does is give us accurate numbers that support our worst fears about American reading. It quantifies what people have been observing anecdotally, but the news is that it has been happening more rapidly and more pervasively than anyone thought possible. Reading is in decline among all groups, in every region, at every educational level and within every ethnic group." Men (37.6%) are doing less literary reading than women (55.1%); Hispanics (26.5%) are doing less than African-Americans (37.1%) and whites (51.4%); and all categories are declining. But the steepest declines of any demographic group are among the youngest adults. (New York Times , 7/8/04). http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/08/books/08READ.html RH: Literary reading? Novels. short stories, plays or poetry? These are archaic literary forms. The modern form of literature is journalism, faction, not fiction. It the survey simply means that people are reading things appropriate to our age, that is fine. But if the survey means that people are reading less, which I think is the case, it is one more proof that our civilization is receding.

Reporting on the Vietnam war

Sent: Thursday, July 15, 2004 4:10 PM Ranndy Black writes: "Mr. Kreiger’s citation of the report “the costs of the Iraq War” from the Institute for Policy Studies brings up the obvious question. Why is he citing a report that is obviously slanted to one view only, and why is he citing a report that clearly has more factual errors than the Moore film? I also note that while the IPS’s own site claims to be non-partisan, from reading the ISP home page, it clearly is anti-Bush Administration regarding virtually every story posted, going so far as to offer “talking points” for those preparing to attack the current administration. I was happy to see that a woman whom I voted for in a Texas governor’s race in 1972 is on the ISP Board of Directors. (She lost). Texas just wasn’t ready for its second woman governor then, but we were a few years later when we got Ann Richards. A side note on Francis Ferenthold, known then as Sissy, was that the South Texas Democrat was against Mexicans being involved in the Democratic process in Texas. Without their support, even in the 1972, her run for Governor was doomed".

Beatrix Potter and Peter Rabbit.

ONCE upon a time there were four little Rabbits, and their names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail, and Peter. They lived with their Mother in a sand-bank, underneath the root of a very big fir-tree. Peter Rabbit disobeyed his mother's orders, sneaked into a farmer's yard and nearly ended up as rabbit pie. Flopsy, Mopsy and Cotton-tail were more prudent and stayed out of trouble. We are supposed to learn from this the virtue of prudence, but I am sure that later the adventurous Peter had a more distinguished career than his three siblings. Be that aas it may, John Gehl tells us about their inventor, Beatrix Potter: " In his book on symbiosis, biologist Tom Wakefield comments on the aborted scientific career of famous children's author Beatrix Potter:

Had Beatrix Potter been allowed to follow her vocation, Peter Rabbit and Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle might never have been born. Instead of writing and illustrating stories loved by children all over the globe, she would have been writing groundbreaking articles for scientific journals. Beatrix's ambitions were thwarted not only because she was a young woman attempting to contribute to a profession almost entirely dominated by Victorian men, but also because she was a symbiologist -- a proponent of the dissident theory that some organisms were composed of not one but two different beings. Her story has become a legend of youthful scientific inquiry stifled by pomposity and prejudice, and of a heresy that was later vindicated.

Middle-class Victorian society was in awe of the apparent power and moral superiority of the scientific world-view. Keen to make her own contribution, Beatrix kept careful notes of everything she saw, and compared them with what other naturalists had observed. During her teens, she also made detailed studies with her microscope of various botanical specimens. She quickly discovered that one of her favorite subjects of study, the lichen, was the battleground of an increasingly heated scientific controversy. Lichens are the crusty green and gray covering of rocks and tree trunks... On a walk along a rocky coastline you might see only a handful of different wildflowers, but you could have walked past 80 or 90 different lichen species. In 1869 the Swiss botanist Simon Schwendener startled the scientific world with a 'dual hypothesis' for the taxonomy of lichens. He proposed that all members of the group came into being via the liaison between a fungus and an alga. Most biologists treated Schwendener's ideas with contempt. They could not believe that even the most bizarre form of parasitic relationship could lead to a permanent merger between two organisms.

All the studies she made of the fine details of lichens, algae, and fungi drew Beatrix to share Schwendener's conclusion: lichens were made up of two completely different kinds of organism. Today it is clear that the only scenario more remarkable than the evolution of the lichen would be one in which this joint organism had not evolved; the metabolisms of algae and fungi complement each other perfectly. Neither Victorian prejudice nor the marginalizing of her favorite life-forms by twentieth-century evolutionists could prevent Beatrix's symbiotic manifesto from finally proving its scientific worth. Nature may, as Darwin seemed to imply, be red in tooth and claw, but it also, as Beatrix taught us, survives by being green-fingered.. [See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0471399728/newsscancom/ref=nosim for Tom Wakeford's Liaisons Of Life: From Hornworts to Hippos, How the Unassuming Microbe Has Driven Evolution.

RH: I find it hard to enthuse about lichens. But rabbits! When we first came to Stanford they had burrows in our garden. Their heads would pop out and they looked and listened warily. Now they have all gone. Probably they had read about Peter Rabbit and feared that I would make a pie of them. But all WAISers know that I am incapable of such a crime against rabbitry, and I fear being hauled before the Hague Court which deals with such crimes.

The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents (The New Press 2004), by John Dinges

Sent: Thursday, July 15, 2004 11:52 PM John Dinges comments on my review of his book The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents (The New Press 2004), "I saw your review of my recent book and wanted to send you a note. First, I'm honored that you did the review. You are one of the scholars who first got me interested in Latin America. The Hispanic American Report that you founded at Bolivar House was an inspiration, and showed me that there is a way to do serious scholarship as well as to follow and write about current events in Latin America.

In 1971, I entered the Masters program in Latin American studies at Stanford, and used it to prepare myself for a career as a journalist in Latin America. I began writing from Latin America in 1972, and as you point out in the review I spent most of the rest of the decade in Allende's and Pinochet's Chile--the period I now call the Condor years.

The program you created at Stanford had an enormous effect on me and on my career. I'm not sure you intended it as such, but it turned out to be a tremendous training ground for a would-be foreign correspondent. (I had had only two years experience in local news reporting before going to Latin America.)

It is interesting that you wrote, "In scholarship as in theology, there are sins of commission and omission." Interesting because I studied three years of graduate level theology before going into journalism.

I also wanted to comment on your observation that my sin of omission was to fail to point out that "Operation Condor was a response to a real Soviet threat in South America." It is true that I did not find evidence of a Soviet threat to Chile and the other Southern Cone countries after the Allende government was removed. And of course it can be argued that pre-1973 Chile was a channel for Soviet influence in Latin AMerica. But POST-1973, which is the period of my book, I document in great (and at times exclusive) detail the real threat from the extreme-left revolutionary groups (MIR-Chile, ERP-Argentina, MLN-Tupamaros; and ELN-Bolivia) who were pursuing a strategy of continent wide guerrilla war. Those groups united in a four-country alliance called the Junta Coordinadora Revolucionaria, which was cited at the Condor organizational meeting as the threat that called for the creation of the military Condor alliance. To be sure, the deadly purpose of Condor always included the elimination of military rivals like Prats and democrats like Letelier, Leighton, and Michelini, as well as the guerrillas, but I don't believe Chile could have talked its neighbors into such an unprecedented level of security collaboration if it had not been for the existence of the JCR and its military preparations.

I don't believe there is a single book on the 1970s until mine that reveals the true extent and purpose of the JCR. There has been a kind of willing agreement on the part of the leftist survivors not to talk about the JCR and on the part of historians not to write about the leftist victims as other than victims.

On the question of a specific threat from the Soviet Union itself, I examined hundreds of military intelligence documents from the Condor countries. There is almost nothing about intelligence reports indicating Soviet support for the guerrilla operations of the JCR. The Soviets are excoriated regularly in the intelligence analyses, but they are cast as a contextual, geopolitical threat and as an ideological enemy rather than as a military objective. Significantly, no Condor operation was directed at a Soviet target. The Cuban threat was another matter. The CIA and Condor both went after the Cuban connection to the JCR with great energy (which is another story exclusive to my book).

I think I tell the story of the leftist threat in a way that is factual and pulls no punches. I certainly don't carry any water for the left in this regard, although I avoid the demonization of the left that one encounters in much of the overtly anticommunist literature. Again, thank you for reading my book and giving it such a thoughtful review".

CATALONIA. . .

Christopher Jones lives near Perpignan, a nice little French town with a Catalan tradition He now retracts his statement that Madrid is a backwater: "I should clarify that I certainly do not think Madrid is a backwater. However, some Catalan nationalists clearly do and look not only to Perpignan but beyond -- to Brussels. However, Perpignan has an extremely important place in Catalan culture as the capital of the Kingdom of Mallorca. Curiously, the old "Rosselló" is a historical center for rightist Catalan nationalism and rightwingers in general, like Brasillach, Cardona and Dencàs". RH: It is a historical oddity that Perpignan should have been the capital of the island kingdom of Mallorca. Louis XIV acquired Roussillon under the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659). We hear a lot about Basque nationalism in France at the west end of the Pyrenees, but very little about the Catalan nationalism at the eastern end. At the end of the Spanish Civil War, many refugees from Catalonia were housed in what is now the department of Pyrénées Orientales. Did the families of many settle there?

Anti-Americanism around the world

Sent: Thursday, July 15, 2004 1:12 AM Daryl DeBell writes: "Randy Black has imagined, or detected, my "disgust with things American". My identification with American ideals is strong enough to be shocked by his conclusion that I am disgusted with "things American", but he would be right to say that I am disgusted with the current vogue for exhibitionistic materialism and the mindless idealization of capitalism, and the effort to impose them both on others. I am disgusted with the effort by Rumsfeld and others to weasel out of condemnation and swift remedying of the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners. Perhaps 'some things American' would be a better approximation of my attitude-if anyone cares. Randy should recognize the existence of selectivity of social criticism, not to do so risks considerable error. I should perhaps thank Randy for his implied compliment for addressing a Latin sentence to me. Unfortunately my American doctorate did not prepare me to understand it".

Assisted reproduction and horses

Hank Greely writes: "Amongst thoroughbred horses, at least, artificial insemination is taboo. The industry, controlled in North America by the Jockey Club , is the last, odd redoubt of the vitalism, arguing that some vital and essential spark is transmitted from sire to mare (dam?) in the act of breeding. It is generally believed that this is an anti-competitive measure intended to eliminate a market in frozen semen, presumably out of fear that a handful of studs would get all the stud fees (though none of the equine pleasure from it). A similar rule applies to in vitro fertilization and egg donation - otherwise, particularly highly thought of mares might be able to have hundreds of genetic colts a year. (See the excerpt below horseracing.about.com.) It's interesting that the industry does use DNA - it requires DNA tests to confirm the horse's parentage, which must mean that all the sires and dams are tested as well. It's also interesting that horses were among the most recent mammals, the feat having been first accomplished last August, after a mule was cloned. I suspect knowledge about the equine reproductive system has been limited because of the thoroughbred rules. I did find a website that had a lot of information about artificial insemination in horses, and a note that all embryo transfer restrictions have been dropped by the American Quarter Horse Society in settling a law suit from some breeders. Apparently the entire horse world does not follow the thoroughbred rules. I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who knows more about the limits of assisted reproduction in horses.

All Thoroughbreds, regardless of their actual date of birth, are given an official birthday of January 1st to keep the age groups easily defined for race conditions. They must be registered with the Jockey Club within a year of their actual date of birth and must be DNA typed to prove their parentage. To be eligible for registration, both parents must be registered and DNA/blood typed and the foal must be the product of a live cover and not artificial insemination or embryo transfer. There are a few other rules which you can review here".

SPAIN Univerity faculty inbreeding

Sent: Thursday, July 15, 2004 1:05 AM Hank Levin writes: " El Pais (6/27/04) has a discussion about university inbreeding of faculty, a very common practice in Spain, Portugal (and as far as I can tell from my limited knowledge of specific universities, in France, Italy, and Greece). For example, I spent some time at the University of Burgundy in Dijon a number of years ago and found that most of the faculty had degrees from that institution. China also has a very serious problem of faculty inbreeding. It is well known in Spain that the concursos for positions are often heavily biased through "gentlemen agreements" in favor of candidates who received their degrees from the same universities for which they are competing for positions, despite the use of tribunals with representatives from other universities and what appears to be an objective process (CV, presentation, interlocution, etc...). Professor Reig states that inbreeding is the norm in the Spanish university. He then goes on to say: "As is well-known, its persistent practice produces idiocy and mental degeneration." The Rectors of the Spanish universities met this week and decided to ask that the laws be changed to reduce the practice of inbreeding. This request has launched a storm of debate".

GREECE: Nikos Kazantzakis

Sent: Thursday, July 15, 2004 12:29 AM From Athens, Harry Papasotiriou writes: "I have not seen the film Zorba the Greek, but I have read the book. It is an exuberant celebration of the street-smart common folk, who through Zorba are portrayed as having a folksy wisdom and a care-free zest for life that eludes the educated strata. This can be placed in a tradition going back to Tolstoy: In War and Peace, for example, during his captivity by the French the aristocratic Pierre meets a wise Russian peasant and finds his remarks on various aspects of life very illuminating; the aristocratic Moscovite Natasha is particularly charming when she dances a traditional Russian folk dance in a house out in the country. Zorba the Greek must have been written at a time when Kazantzakis was disillusioned by his philosophical quests. Other works by Kazantzakis reflect different aspects of his thought, making him an author who has touched on many subjects troubling humanity, or at least Europe, in the grips of 20th century modernity".

Reporting on the Vietnam war

Bert Westbrook recalled from the Vietnam war "a very famous picture, which may have been the cover of Time magazine, of a girl fleeing a napalm attack. She survived, moved to the U.S., and went to college". David Krieger writes: "No one seems to be following up on my line of discussion about the photo. It is interesting about what happened to the young girl in the photo as she grew older, but I find it far more interesting to look at this photograph, similar to the photographs at Abu Ghraeb, for what they tell us about ourselves as a society. I am going to forward you a report about the costs of the Iraq War. I think this report from the Institute for Policy Studies and the new Michael Moore film are far more pertinent to a consideration of this illegal war than the happy face that Bill Frist would like to put on it. On balance, it seems clear that we have done far more damage in human, social and economic terms than we have righted with our “reconstruction” (translated: transfer of taxpayer dollars to Halliburton, et.al.) activities".

The globalization of cullture.

Sent: Thursday, July 15, 2004 12:22 AM David Crow writes:"The "globalization of culture" thesis is not without detractors. While Western culture may indeed be becoming more homogeneous (though even in this context, there are signs of local dissent), the developmentalist position that "all roads lead to the West" has been the subject of vigorous refutations. The example that comes to mind is Samuel Huntington's book The Clash of Civilizations, which posits that there are seven or eight civilizations whose fundamentally different values will translate into conflict--armed and other.

A variant on this theme posits that instead of English-language--especially U.S.--culture dominating the world, there are regionally hegemonic cultures divided along linguistic lines. Countries with the economic capacity for cultural projection become dominant within regions--e.g., a Hispanic culture in which Madrid and Mexico City vie for its seat, a French culture emanating from Paris outward to Quebec and former French colonies in Africa, an Arab culture promoted by pan-Arabist networks such as Al Jazeera, etc.

Here's a link to an archive of press articles on globalization and culture: http://www.globalpolicy.org/globaliz/cultural/

RH: David failed to list the hegemonic culture of the English-speaking world emanating from Stanford University.

A footnote from Daryl DeBell

Sent: Thursday, July 15, 2004 1:21 AM Daryl DeBell sends this footnote: "I feel that I should apologize for my somewhat splenetic reply to Randy Black's labeling me as being disgusted with "things American". My ire is aroused by the tendency to label those who differ or criticize American foreign policy or the Administration, "the war time President", as un-American, or as Anne Coulter states, "treasonous". I believe that such labeling is dangerous and fosters totalitarianism, and I fear it and am against it".

Hospital systems in different countries: Mexico

Sent: Thursday, July 15, 2004 12:08 AM I have been wondering about Linda Nyquist, who had a health problem, so I was delighted to receive this message from her. I need not repeat that she knows Mexico very well: "Regarding the man about whom Dick Hancock wrote who chose to end his days in Colima rather than exhaust his estate seeking medical care in the United States. I can't say that I blame him, and I agree that some very competent physicians practice in Mexico. I chose to have some elective surgery in Monterrey, Mexico 2 years ago, and the medical attention and hospital could not have been better. There was no comparison to my recent and most unhappy experience here in Seattle; however, I do have one comment regarding end-of-life care in Mexico when one is suffering from conditions such as cancer, and that concerns the issue of pain control. In general, narcotic medication is not available, at least not generally. While some physicians may have access to it, it is hard to come by. The concept of hospice is not used, and the really good pain control that we have come to expect here is not used. Mexico uses analgesics (such as dipyrone, which is not used in the first world and is banned for causing blood dyscrasias) and limited morphine for post-surgery patients. Demerol is very restricted, and a doctor told me recently that it is banned in Mexico now, although I have not confirmed this. In general, terminal cancer patients suffer greatly. I always hope that people do not have to suffer. On my next trip down I'll be looking into this issue again. Perhaps some other WAISer has current information on the issue of pain control.

Dick Hancock didn't comment on the SSA system in Colima, which would have covered the country people not insured by IMSS (private sector workers) or ISSTE (government workers). IMSS now has an open enrollment period each year where even foreigners can pay a fee and receive services. And it is fairly reasonable. The ex-pat community in Guadalajara allegedly uses this option. IMSS usually has the best-equipped hospitals, but access can be problematic. Salubridad, or SSA, on the other hand, is the worst. People always like the private hospitals because of the personalized attention, but they often aren't well-equipped, with the exception of the ABC and other prestige hospitals in Mexico City, such as the Hospital Espanol.

Hospital systems in different countries: Mexico

Sent: Wednesday, July 14, 2004 11:00 PM Dick Hancock writes: "I have a comment about the Mexican social health program (IMSS) derived mainly frrom 20 years (1967-85) operating a study abroad center, Hacienda El Cóbano, in Colima, Mexico. We had people injured during our years there, and the Mexican health service always gave them competent first aid without charge; in terms of fixing simple fractures, etc., they were the best. However, I did note that people who could afford it sought medical attention in the private sector. We had a contingent from the University of Oklahoma medical school visit the Colima medical services. They were particularly impressed with the rationality of the system. Colima had class B and C hospitals that could adequately attend to the normal run of medical problems; difficult cases were sent to one of the Class A Hospitals in Guadalajara. This is in contrast to the system in the United States, where it seems that every hospital is not content to refer difficult cases to a larger hospital but wants to be able to have all of the latest technology in its own plant regardless of the practicality of offering all these services locally. As one of the OU medics stated, "Their system seems very efficient, but we didn't poll the patients." Also, it should be remembered that being employed was a qualification for receiving treatment other than first aid. This left out most of the nation's rural population.

I think that the IMSS kept costs down in the private health sector; most public health doctors also had a private practice. I recall a wealthy American from Massachusets who retired and lived at our municipal seat was diagnosed with incurable cancer. He told me that, after talking with the best doctors in Massachusetts, he elected to die in Colima because to have received medical attention for his final months of life in Massachusetts would have exhausted his entire estate; he was too young to be under Medicare. He calculated that his care in Mexico would cost about $3,000 for his final six months of life. His doctors in Massachusetts referred him to a doctor in Guadalajara who they said was as able as the best of American doctors.

RH: I assume that, when Dick refers to the rural population, he means they must have regular employment and pay into the IMSS system.

GREECE: Nikos Kazantzakis

Sent: Wednesday, July 14, 2004 11:51 PM Jon Kofas writes: "I agree with John Gehl's description of Kazantzakis, and I am glad he brought this subject up. My older brother lives in Hania, Crete, and I love that island almost as much as I enjoy Rhodes, which has a unique history, just as fascinating. Years ago I have spent some time reading up on the literary, artistic, and political contributions of the island, from El Greco to Kazantzakis and Venizelos. Kazantzakis is indeed the best modern Greek philosopher/literary figure who was profoundly influenced by the existentialist philosophical and literary trends in the interwar era when T.S. Elliot, Hollow Men and Oswald Sprengler, The Decline of the West were making an impact. My fellow Greek students in Athens, as well as my fellow U.S. students in the late 1970s, were captivated with Kazantzakis and other existentialists and Eastern philosophers. Was there an urban college student in the 1970s who had not attended a session on ZEN Buddhism or a forum on Indian philosophy? Kazantzakis' works became popular amid the cultural revolution in the western world of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when young educated middle class people were questioning the political status quo, western bourgeois values, and even the very foundations of western civilization like Christianity. Sartre, Camus, Nietzsche, among other existentialist thinkers were of interest to a generation questioning everything from the war in Vietnam, to the white-minority regimes of southern Africa, and to Christianity, which appeared to be identified with the political status quo and with a decadent middle class society bent on materialism as a substitute for human happiness.

Kazantzakis had an interesting life, questioning marriage and sexuality, questioning the ability of human transcendence, questioning all facets of faith while clinging to it. Questioning the foundations of western civilization just as did many of his contemporaries who lost faith in the rationalism of the Enlightenment after the destruction of WWI followed by Communism, Fascism, and Nazism, Kazantzakis tried to find that which fills the void in the spirit/intellect through writing which gave meaning to an otherwise absurd existence. Like most Greeks at a time of a collectivist peasant society not very different than Catholic Spain in values, he was profoundly influenced by Christianity, but his view is closer to Fyodor Dostoyevski's. The enduring quality of his work is that he raised the issue of human alienation, and he tried to answer it by relying on a combination of Buddhism, Christianity, and Existentialist thought. In both Zorba the Greek and The Last Tempetation he raises questions about what matters in man's transcendent spiritual life and in every day life, where meaning is not a priori, but it has to be defined for the moment. His message remains as pertinent today as when he wrote these works".

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GREECE: Nikos Kazantzakis

Sent: Wednesday, July 14, 2004 7:39 PM John Gehl sends this bio of the Greek author and philosopher Nikos Kazantzakis (1885-1957), who is probably best known for the popular movie made from his novel, Zorba the Greek. Another of his earthy, realistic novels, The Greek Passion, was also made into a film. More controversial was his imaginative book-turned-into film, The Last Temptation of Christ, which prompted angry reactions from both the Roman Catholic Church, which banned it, and from the Greek Orthodox Church which excommunicated him. Perhaps his most ambitious work, however, was his 1938 verse tale, The Odyssey, a Modern Sequel, in which he explores the worldviews of Buddha, Jesus, Nietzsche, Lenin, and other notable historical figures. Among his many other contributions to modern Greek literature, Kazantzakis has produced lyric poetry, philosophic essays, travel books, tragedies, and modern Greek translations of such classics as Dante's Divine Comedy and Goethe's Faust.

Kazantzakis was born in Candia, Crete, at a time when the Greek island was in revolt against the Ottoman Turks. Some of his youth was spent on the Greek Island of Náxos, where his family had fled for safety. From 1902 until 1906, Kazantzakis studied law at the University of Athens, and for the two years following he studied philosophy under Henri Bergson in Paris. After that he traveled widely in Spain, England, Russia, Egypt, Palestine, and Japan. Before World War II he settled on the island of Aegina, and after the war he served as a minister in the Greek government. During the years 1947-48 he worked in Paris for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). He then moved to Antibes, France.

His early writing was more philosophical than literary, mostly attempts to synthesize his thoughts about the many disparate worldviews expounded by the philosophers he studied. He also sought to reconcile conflicts generated by modern thought and traditional Christian and Buddhist views. Later his powers as a poet and storyteller emerged to make him a best-selling author. Philosophic themes were still his potent inspiration, but now he presented them in literary dress so that his readers would relate to more comfortably. For example, the Bergsonian notion of the elan vital was embodied in the exuberant figure of Zorba, and the value of liberty was shown in the person of the Cretan resistance fighter against Turkish domination. He considered The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, his epic poem of 33,333 lines, to be his masterpiece, but recognized that he was better known for his novels. In 1956, he was awarded the International Peace Award, and in 1957 he lost the Nobel Prize by a single vote to the French writer Albert Camus. Kazantzakis died in 1957 in Germany and is buried on one of the bastions of the Venetian fort surrounding Iraklion, on the island of Crete.

See http://tinyurl.com/4eg8m for the novel and http://tinyurl.com/5eagj for the movie version of "Zorba the Greek"

RH: He is clearly a more serious writer than the film "Zorba the Greek" suggests. The history of Crete is special. It revolted against the Turks in 1898 and was united to Greece in 1913. It was occupied by the Germans in World War II. Naxos, where the Kazantzakis family sought refuge, is one of the largest islands of the Cyclades. Aegina is an island within easy reach of Athens. I am sure Harry Papasotiriou has been there. Would he, John Brademas or Jon Kofas care to comment on Kazantzakis?

PERU: The case of Lori Berenson

Sent: Tuesday, July 13, 2004 5:08 PM Lori Berenson is jailed in Peru on charges of complicity with terrorists. Tim Brown answers those who depict her as an innocent victim: "The leaders of the Communist revolutionary movement in El Salvador have publicly confirmed that Berenson was an official and duly recognized member of that organization. She is lying when she says she was not, and her own movement has said so publicly, and those who continue to believe her are simply ignoring the truth. Further, the FMLN's written membership records, complete with a full face contemporary photo and her signature were shown to me in San Salvador several years back and fully confirm this. I predict that, just as with other guerrilla movements I have been able to document, when the records of MRTA become available she will be found to have been an official member of that movement as well. But, and regardless of reality, documents or anything else, Berenson will continue to deny the truth and those on the pro-revolutionary and fellow-traveling left will continue to claim they believe her and not the evidence and will admit the truth only if they decide to leave their ideologically cozy nests. That is the way of the revolutionary left: When it is convenient, lie. And it is the way of its sympathizers is to believe lies regardless of the evidence.

I have little doubt that Berenson did not get what in the United States would have been considered a totally fair and objective trial according to the forms of English civil law and that the conditions in which she is imprisoned do not live up to the standards of an American prison. But then, the hundreds of Peruvians and Salvadorans she helped MRTA and the FMLN kill did not get trials at all and the conditions in their graves are worse than those of "Lorita's" prison. And if she has dared even to try to do in any country ruled by the kind of people she was trying to help come to power, such as Cuba or the Soviet Union, what she did in Peru while trying to hide behind her American passport, she would simply have been shot, buried and forgotten".

The classical tradition

Sent: Tuesday, July 13, 2004 11:54 PM John Gehl quotes from The Classical Tradition (1949) by Gilbert Highet, the Oxford classical scholar who moved to the US and taught at Columbia University: "While it is now academically fashionable in some quarters to downplay the importance of the Western tradition, there may be some value in recalling these words of the learned classicist Gilbert Highet about its origins: The Greeks and, learning from them, the Romans created a noble and complex civilization, which flourished for a thousand years and was overthrown only through a long series of invasions and civil wars, epidemics, economic disasters, and administrative, moral, and religious catastrophes. It did not entirely disappear. Nothing so great and so long established does. Something of it lived, transformed but undestroyed, throughout the agonizing centuries in which mankind slowly built up western civilization once more. But much of it was covered by wave after wave of barbarism; silted over; buried; and forgotten. Europe slipped backwards, Backwards, almost into savagery.

When the civilization of the west began to rise again and remake itself, it did so largely through rediscovering the buried culture of Greece and Rome. Great systems of thought, profound and skilful works of art, do not perish unless their material vehicle is utterly destroyed. They do not become fossils, because a fossil is lifeless and cannot reproduce itself. But they, whenever they find a mind to receive them, live again in it and make it live more fully." [See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0195002067/qid=1089661185/newsscan com/ref=nosim for Gilbert Highet's The Classical Tradition: Greek and Roman Influences on Western Literature "

RH: This brings up my own ambivalent academic training. As a boy. I read Caesar, Virgil, and Cicero in Latin. (How different from today, when one can get a Stanford Ph-D- in Spanish without knowing any Latin!)- At the same time, in a play, it being a boys' school, I was assigned to play the part of Queen Boadicea, who in AD 60 led a rebellion against the Romans. The hall rang with my eloquent denunciations of Roman tyranny. "Give me liberty or give me death!" I got the latter, and then stood up to take the applause. I once more became a brain-washed devotee of classical Rome, its literature and its monuments.

Things have changed, Scholars are looking at the society which produced classical literature and monuments. Athens appears more as a slave-owning society in which there was a cultured oligarchy. Robert Graves, whom I knew, was a great classical scholar, even though he owed his popularity to works like I, Claudius (1934), which was made into a TV series. Today I saw an excellent documentary on the Roman emperors, and they were a demented lot as Graves depicted them. My recent tirade against Versailles and its imitations reflects a reaction against the fawning admiration for classical monuments instilled into me; the Roman emperors' mania for building palaces was an expression of inflated and sick egos. My admiration for monuments with a larger social basis, such as churches and civic centers, remains. Like all societies, Greece and Rome were mixed bags, albeit far superior to the invading barbarians who contributed the word vandals to our vocabulary. "Yo, ho, ho! Western civilization musy go!" was the cry of the barbarians on our campuses. Nevertheless, we must view western civilization as part, albeit central, of a larger world culture. This is the age of globalization, of which St. Paul was the herald.

Hospital systems in different countries: England

Sent: Tuesday, July 13, 2004 10:08 PM Innocent victims of traffic accidents make me very sad. Yesterday in San Francisco an old woman was standing on the sidewalk waiting for a traffic light to change. A drunk driver smashed into her, severing one leg, and the other had to be amputated. I thought of my one-time Stanford student and assistant at the University ot the Air Pat Charlton who married Stanford colleague Dick Payne. He tells what happened to her in Winchester, England, which I honored with my presence for many years: "Thank your very much indeed for affording me ‹ and Pat the opportunity to add our praise to the National British Health Service. You are quite right in recalling that Pat was in an accident in Winchester (England) when a BMW stopped on a one-way street (Parchment Street) then accelerated rapidly to get into a lane of a main boulevard (St George's Street) during the morning rush-hour traffic just as she was walking directly in front of it. (It was not the unfortunately common mishap that has befalls Americans in the UK looking the wrong way ‹ to the left ‹ when they step off the curbing.) She took the brunt of the impact on her knee which was so badly damaged that, despite expert medical attention, she will remain disabled for life.

The accident took place about 10.00 in the morning. She was thrown into the intersection but was spared further injury when witnesses stopped the traffic. She lay on the pavement for a very few minutes before an ambulance arrived and transported her to the Royal Winchester County Hospital, where a highly-respected orthopedic consultant (Mr John Fowler) was waiting in the operating theater to treat her. He decided that she would have to remain hospitalized so that she spent three weeks there. Bartlett Ward was immaculate and the nurses were exceptionally considerate, able and caring. The food (she was presented with a daily menu for selection of dishes at meals) was excellent.

When it came time to check-out, I inquired how much we owed. The question caused slight a stir and provoked telephone calls. Finally the rather distraught face reappeared at the window and said,'Why, you don't owe anything.' It was a happy experience.

Less happy was our treatment at the law courts in an attempt to recover some of the considerable expenses connected with the accident. I had to make four trips from Tunisia to England, with stays at hotels during her hospitalization Early on it was decided that the driver was 75% blameworthy. Even so, after four years of correspondence, telephone calls, exchanges of documents and justifications, etc, she was awarded less than our costs".

The globalization of cullture.

Sent: Tuesday, July 13, 2004 7:25 PM Jon Kofas writes: "Hank Levin and Ronald Hilton correctly observe that western culture is indeed homogenized and becoming more so as time passes. John Heelan's observation regarding the European media conglomerates in the age of globalization confirms that under a western-style homogeneous media it is inevitable that nuances of national cultures are withering away in favor of an international commercial culture. How can Bavarian or Saxon culture survive when they are superceded by an international MTV-CNN-Hollywood culture which may have been influenced by a trend that started in the West-End of London, but was commercialized by advertising executives in New York or Chicago trying to convince consumers to buy hair color, pants, shoes, etc? Some scholars maintain that the globalization of culture is a positive development as it will diminish ethnic, racial, religious, and other prejudices that people have around the world. Others lament the loss of ethnicity and cultural autonomy in the age of globalization. Is there much cultural difference any more between London and New York, Copenhagen and Hamburg, Athens and Madrid, Lisbon and Rome, etc?. Large urban cities of the west are so homogenized that the restaurants, theaters, shops, clothes, etc. look the same. The people in these cities look the same, in this age of alienation and anxiety where commercial products try to fill the emptiness of the urban homogenized soul searching for identity and meaning in materialism. The absence of local culture accompanied by the increasing use of the English language around the world is the true face of cultural globalization. Commerce always dilutes and shapes culture today as much as it did during the age of Plato, Machiavelli, Voltaire, or Dickens. The age of the masses is the age of globalization after all! Viva Jose Ortega y Gasset: La Rebelion de las Masas, "Civilization is nothing more than the effort to reduce the use of force to the last resort."

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Sent: Wednesday, July 14, 2004 12:18 AM Christopher Jones writes: "Although Daryl DeBell is certainly entitled to his opinion, I do not agree that Roosevelt was a positive influence on the US and the world. I also do not agree that Americans have abandoned their healthy dislike of Roosevelt, as the success of The Roosevelt Myth proves. I do agree however that his possible Jewishness is rather anecdotal in importance compared to his policies, which I soundly reject. For me, his lies, cheating, and philandering remind me of Bill Clinton. And like Clinton, Roosevelt was able to construct an aura of statesmanship around him that was just a mirage. I certainly feel Daryl DeBell's sincerity when he writes about the social security program, but he forgets that, despite all Rossevelt's socialist efforts at kick starting the economy, the US had slipped again into recession in 1937. It took a world war against Japan and Germany to lift the US out of its doldrums. So we come back to Roosevelt's sycophantic pandering to Jews and his love of Josef Stalin. His hatred of Europe is proved by his initial approval of the Morgenthau plan, against Cordell Hull's advice (he later withdrew it.) His refusal to end the war honorably with Hitler's overthrow looks to me suspiciously like exacting revenge. With this overwhelming Ressentiment, he produced an even greater conflagration than his petty minded hatred of things European. In short, he was incompetent and unfit for the position he had, and even Winston Churchill had his frequent doubts about him ("Do you want me to beg like Fala?")". --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.672 / Virus Database: 434 - Release Date: 4/28/2004 -=x=- Skontrolované antivírovým programom NOD32

ITALY: Berlusconi's media empire

Sent: Tuesday, July 13, 2004 4:55 PM I asked: "Has there > been a study of the influence of Berlusconi's media empire on Italian public opinion and policy?" Roy Domenico replies: "Paul Ginsborg produced a critical work on him 2 or 3 years ago. It was just released in English and it's called Silvio Berlusconi: Television, Power and Patrimony.