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An Anarchist Buddhist Existentialist Whig Receives a Response |
Current rating: 0 |
by Paul Kotheimer
Email: herringb (nospam) prairienet.org (unverified!) |
26 Jan 2005
Modified: 07:39:00 PM |
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A continuation of my dialogue with the editors of the UIUC student conservative publication _The Orange and Blue Observer_ |
Regular readers of the ucimc website may remember back in November, when I published an article entitled "An Anarchist Buddhist Existentialist Whig Responds." The article responded to a statement by Leo Buchignani, then editor in chief of the _The Orange and Blue Observer_. Buchignani's statement welcomed submissions from a variety of worldviews, including "Anarchist, Buddhist, Christian, Existentialist, Fiscal Conservative, Libertarian, Hindu, Monarchist, Muslim, NeoConservative, Nihilist, PaleoConservative, Pessimist, Religious Conservative, Social Conservative, and Whig."
If you missed that posting, here's a link:
http://www.ucimc.org/newswire/display_any/22186
This week, I happened to notice that a much-shortened version of my original submission to the Observer was actually published on page 7 of the January, 2005 issue, along with the following rebuttal (in italics) from an unnamed editor:
Dear Sir;
We truncate the rest of your letter to point out certain historical idiocies you have committed. The US government has never, and will never fund the Taliban. During the Cold War, the US did support moderate Muslim tribal leaders against the Soviet occupation and puppet government. Those
fighters were later conquered by the Taliban, after the US had lost all interest in the region. In reality--not the world you live in, Pakistan funded and created the Taliban. Pakistan is one of the most extreme
Muslim nations on the face of the Earth, and continually attempts to provoke war with democratic India.
Furthermore, as an anarchist, how can you be against the dissolution of despotic, thought-controlling governments? You have a severe case of moral inversion. But perhaps criticizing real evil doesn't sufficiently
stroke your ego, since it has no interest in hearing anything you say.
----
I have sent the editors of the Observer some recommended readings on the subject of the CIA's cultivation of the Taliban, most notably a reference to Alexander Cockburn's _Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press._
Any other documentation of US government funding of the Taliban in the 1980's should be sent directly to the offices of the Observer, to the attention of the Department of Morally Inverted Egotistical Historical Idiocies.
_______________
Paul Kotheimer is a frequent contributor to the UCIMC newswire. He is an anarchist, a buddhist, and an existentialist. He is not really a Whig. |
This work is in the public domain |
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Re: An Anarchist Buddhist Existentialist Whig Receives a Response |
by Joe Futrelle
futrelle (nospam) shout.net (verified) |
Current rating: 0
27 Jan 2005
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> Furthermore, as an anarchist, how can you be against the dissolution of despotic, thought-controlling governments?
Anarchists don't support conquest, since it just replaces one government with another. |
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Re: An Anarchist Buddhist Existentialist Whig Receives a Response |
by David Green
davegreen48 (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
27 Jan 2005
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Leo Buchignani is an idiot who last evening accused me of being an anti-semite when I raised the issue of the equation between criticism of Israel and anti-semitism by Israel's supporters, including Lawrence Summers of Harvard. And of course we paid the Taliban to stop cultivating poppy seeds. A broad overview is in Tariq Ali's Clash of Fundamentlisms, and many other places. |
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Re: An Anarchist Buddhist Existentialist Whig Receives a Response |
by Leo Buchignani
spinfusion (nospam) gmail.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
30 Jan 2005
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hi leo, et al:
i'm not really interested in continuing our conversation in the pages of
your publication. your rebuttal contained 3 ad hominem attacks, and i'm
afraid i don't have time for that kind of bullshit.
feel free to add comments at the ucimc.org website:
http://www.ucimc.org/newswire/display/24817/index.php
...and i do hope you take the time to read _Whiteout_.
bye now.
paulkotheimer:) |
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Re: An Anarchist Buddhist Existentialist Whig Receives a Response |
by Leo Buchignani
spinfusion (nospam) gmail.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
30 Jan 2005
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Well, if you don't want your person attacked, don't make yourself the
subject of the letter. Obviously you weren't talking about whiggism
or anarchism, but your own personal views and why they are great.
If the debate had happened, I think you would have proved me wrong
about there being no US funding to the Taliban. But, I think I would
have proved the highly periferal nature of US involvement, and
established Pakistan as the real culprit.
Cheers,
Leo
P.S. David, you're still an anti-semite. |
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Re: An Anarchist Buddhist Existentialist Whig Receives a Response |
by Joe Futrelle
futrelle (nospam) shout.net (verified) |
Current rating: 0
31 Jan 2005
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> Well, if you don't want your person attacked, don't make yourself the subject of the letter.
What a sorry excuse for discourse.
And a very convenient way to steer the discussion away from Cockburn's book.
So: once we've decided who to blame for supporting the Taliban, what are we going to do? Bomb them? Try them in the international criminal court we refuse to recognize? If the US is at fault we can't really impose sanctions on ourselves. The non-anarchist position is untenable because governments are accountable to no one and the US has liquidated the moral high ground by conquering Iraq under false pretenses and committing war crimes. Even if we hadn't, we have so much more power than other nations that there is no real check on us. Rather than being delighted by this like the neo-cons are, we should view this as a very serious failure of global democracy. The solution is for power-hoarding leaders to relinquish power to the people, who will never support a solution that involves granting total military power to a small group of heavily-protected armchair generals to do with what they will and damn the human cost to others. That arrangement, common to all the governments being discussed here, is morally bankrupt.
Any objection that the US is a democracy is bullshit given that the Bush administration lies and the political establishment dutifully provides them with cover and spin; witness Condoleezza Rice's confirmation by the majority of our supposed opposition party. |
