Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 08:22:32 +1000 From: Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan-AT-qut.edu.au> Subject: Re: BHA: Stop the rush to war Of course Critical Realism has much to say about what has happened in New York and what will happen this week. But in a sense the move to analysis - to spin the cool web of language- seems a betrayal of the suffering we have seen. However analyze is precisely what we must do if we are to have any hope of preventing more tragedies, for, as is all too obvious, reason and rationality are not in control now. When George Bush - Vietnam war dodger extraordinary - climbs upon a heap of rubble clinging onto a worker to promise his nation vengeance and when the working class cheer as if they were hailing a touch down or a medal at the Games then we know that the blood dimmed tide is about to be loosed. Moreover a range of organisations including Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club have just announced that they are calling off all participation in the protests planned for Washington this month. Just as before WW1 loyalty to the nation and the leader is again being placed before the interests of humanity. However I am inclined to think that it is indeed our fate to live through history being repeated as farce. For Bush, who has nothing to offer us, but the cunning of a rat that lurks in shit houses, is now being presented as the warrior for Good who will lead the assault against the citadel of Evil. In reality (sic) what we will see is the American Army deploy its massive fire power against a people (The Afghanis) who are the day to day victims of the monster that the Frankensteins of the military industrial complex in the USA largely created. There is much more to be said here. The process of detotalisation at 3L is almost absolute in the propaganda of the West. Similarly the elimination of the 'universal' of the concrete universal denies the common core humanity that all of us share. But above all it is the taboo that is being placed over explanatory critique that is perhaps the most damaging. To ask 'why?' now in the USA and to insist on outlining the totality within which the bombings of the WTC can actually be understood, is to be very brave indeed. But anything else is just another 'trahaison des clercs'. regards Gary --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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