The Whole is Less than the Sum of the Parts

This press release is embargoed until 2230 hours on Thursday 6 October. Before that time it is only available through the link which you have been sent.

President George W. Bush told Palestinian ministers that God had told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq - and create a Palestinian State, a new BBC series reveals.

In Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs, a major three-part series on BBC TWO (at 9.00pm on Monday 10, Monday 17 and Monday 24 October), Abu Mazen, Palestinian Prime Minister, and Nabil Shaath, his Foreign Minister, describe their first meeting with President Bush in June 2003.

Nabil Shaath says: “President Bush said to all of us: ‘I’m driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, “George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan.” And I did, and then God would tell me, “George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq …” And I did. And now, again, I feel God’s words coming to me, “Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East.” And by God I’m gonna do it.’”

Abu Mazen was at the same meeting and recounts how President Bush told him: “I have a moral and religious obligation. So I will get you a Palestinian state.”

Israel and the Arabs: Elusive Peace - Mondays 10, 17 and 24 October, from 9.00 to 10.00pm on BBC TWO.

The BBC Press-Release; via BoingBoing

Found this rather amusing parody on some US Post Stamps at Stay Free! Daily (via boingboing.net). The originals are here.

Yesterday, boingboing.net had a link to an open letter to the Kansas authorities regarding teaching Intelligent Design in schools, which mocks the whole concept (and which many will find deeply offensive). Read the rest »

[T]he music of the flute and of the lyre in most of their forms, are all in their general conception modes of imitation. … There is another art which imitates by means of language alone … The poet being an imitator, like a painter or any other artist, must of necessity imitate one of three objects: things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be, or things as they ought to be. [Aristotle, Poetics, Ch. i & xxv] Read the rest »

“We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism.”
    Joseph Ratzinger, 18 April 2005

I might not be a great fan the conservative (some prefer to call it reactionary) politics characterising the present Vatican administration, but Ratzinger’s phrase ‘dictatorship of relativism’ strikes chord with me. Relativism is one of the features of post-modernity, or at least one of the things that most people who have some notion of what post-modernity means associate with it, and it is one of its most liberating and troublesome aspects at the same time. Read the rest »

CTHEORY.NET > 1000 Days of Theory: Born Again Ideology by Arthur Kroker

This looks like a fascinating paper; I do not have the time to read beyond the introduction at the moment, but will need to come back to it.

OK, I read through it now. The paper is couched in heavy, redundant, never-ceasing, tiresome rhetoric (yeah, something like that), and the bubble of intellectual sophistication bursts when within a few paragraphs the author starts speaking of special theory of relativity and quantum mechanics while making it clear he has no clue that the two are distinct (Einstein was not only not the father of the latter, but a vocal opponent of it!).

However, if you can put up with the style, it might well be worth your while ploughing through the rhetorical muck, as the author has some genuine insights to offer on the role and significance of evangelicalism, or perhaps more precisely, pre-millennial fundamentalism, in contemporary American politics.