Bob Morris @ May 12th 2003 17:07 - Category: Unfiled ;
Welcome Mr. Secretary
Bombs Shake Westerners’ Compounds in Riyadh
“Numerous people were wounded when up to four bombs exploded on Monday at Westerners’ compounds in Riyadh — hours before Secretary of State Colin Powell was due to arrive in the Saudi capital, witnesses said.”
Bob Morris @ May 12th 2003 11:13 - Category: Unfiled ;
Politics Texas-style: hardball
Democrats in GOP-dominated Texas House stage mass absence to break quorum.
“Almost all of the Democratic members of the state House failed to show up Monday morning, preventing the GOP-dominated body from convening because of a lack of a quorum.
GOP officials had earlier threatened to send police after the missing Democrats. The would-be quorum-busters planned to leave the state to avoid being located by the Department of Public Safety or Texas Rangers, who could detain them and forcibly return them to the House floor, a source said.”
Bob Morris @ May 12th 2003 00:43 - Category: Unfiled ;
Leo Strauss and the neocons
“Odd as this may sound, we live in a world increasingly shaped by Leo Strauss, a controversial philosopher who died in 1973. Although generally unknown to the wider population, Strauss has been one of the two or three most important intellectual influences on the conservative worldview now ascendant in George W. Bush’s Washington.
Steeped in ancient philosophy, he had dark forebodings about democracy, religion, technology, and nearly everything else that can claim the allegiance of the contemporary conservative (or liberal, for that matter)”
Strauss believed ancient philosophy was superior to modern philosophy, that modernism, egalitarianism were wrong-headed and dangerous, and he distrusted modern civilization. He posited that the society should be geared towards the elites not the populace, that the masses should be lied to and were too dumb to properly comprehend matters which only the elite truly understood. He also thought ancient philosophers hid secret meanings in their writings and that he had properly divined what they really meant. He followed their lead, hiding meaning in his writings so the rabble wouldn’t find it.
Well, this is a swell mixture. Reactionary elitism with a penchant for secrecy and contempt for the masses. Sounds like the neocons and the Bush administration, you say? Precisely.
Let the proudly reactionary FrontPage magazine explain
“Consider the following list of his <Strauss> students or students of his students: Justice Clarence Thomas; Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork; Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; former Assistant Secretary of State Alan Keyes; former Secretary of Education William Bennett; Weekly Standard editor and former Quayle Chief of Staff William Kristol; Allan Bloom, author of The Closing of the American Mind; former New York Post editorials editor John Podhoretz, <and> former National Endowment for the Humanities Deputy Chairman John T. Agresto”
So, as you see, Strauss has gained quite a following among the neocons. In fact his philosophy is one of the main supports of their intellectual framework. As well it should be. It’s so convenient. Need to lie to the media or make up phony stories about Iraq having WMD’s? Heck, that’s ok because we the elites have secret inner knowledge, the masses are too ignorant to comprehend what’s happening, so lie to them.
Actually it’s more than ok to lie to them - and herein lies the true joy of Strauss for the neocons - Strauss said lying to the masses PROTECTS them. Aww, how thoughtful of the neocons to lie to us. See they’re just protecting us from dangerous ideas we are too dumb to understand. How noble of them.
More info
Bob Morris @ May 12th 2003 00:38 - Category: Unfiled ;
Hmmm
Russia funding resurgent Taliban. Pakistan too, no doubt, as their intelligence operations, virually a government within a government and considered to be world class in what they do, was one of the original backers of the Taliban.
Bob Morris @ May 12th 2003 00:35 - Category: Unfiled ;
IRA mole outted
“The IRA was reeling in shock and panic last night after one of its top members was unmasked as the infamous army spy known as Stakeknife.
Alfredo Scappaticci, deputy head of the Provisionals’ internal security unit, the notorious Nutting Squad, is alleged to have supplied crucial information to the shadowy military intelligence wing, the Force Research Unit, for the past 25 years. He was secretly paid £80,000 a year for his role.
Scappaticci, who was outed on several websites and in a number of Irish Sunday newspapers, is also suspected of involvement in more than 40 murders. Dozens of people may have been allowed to die in order to protect his cover.”
Indeed, as the Guardian follows up in another story, “Torture, murder, mayhem - the dirty war just got dirtier”.
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