NP? worth reading

[Doug Millison]

"Unfortunately, young people," recalls the Revd, "the word *Liberty*, so
unreflectively  sacred to us today, was taken in those Times to encompass
even the darkest of Men's rights [...] This being, indeed and alas, one of
the Liberties our late War was fought to secure." (M&D, 307)





"[...] It is apparent that these two words have a temporal meaning in the
nouvelle-vague, Orwellian world ofthe Bush League.

"Liberty" means, of course, privileges for the elect -- a kind of
neo-Calvinist school of thought where you are damned in advance if you have
not somehow wrested a sizeable income from either: a/ your parents; b/
investments; or c/ crony capitalist machinations and etcetera. This is,
after all, the "End of History", and winner takes all.

"Democracy" means, on the other hand, U.S.-approved puppet regimes as far
as the blind eye can see, plus free market cowboy-capitalism with its
attendent woes -- i.e., currency speculation, capital flight, and
round-robin indentured servitude (for "emerging markets"!) to international
financial institutions that are merely the stalking horses for the
neo-imperial aspirations of the economic elite.

Attending more to rhetoric than the Real Thing, Bush has made almost anyone
with a conscience (again an abstract thing) uncomfortable. Clearly more at
home with syntactical operations (even though these are, hopelessly, a
serious challenge for the president), Bush seems to either not care about
semantics or is oblivious that words usually have meanings. Are we to
assume that the president is a brilliant post-structuralist? A savvy
devotee of circular, nihilist language games? [...]
http://www.counterpunch.org/keeney0706.html



also worth a few minues:

American Journal
The Crooks in the White House

by Alexander Cockburn

This is exciting. Will Dick Cheney keel over from his fifth heart attack
before he becomes the first veep since Spiro Agnew to resign in the face of
charges of financial crookery? Or will Bush fire him to divert attention
from his own seamy business past? [...]

...continues at http://www.counterpunch.org/