Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Homer yea! Plato and progeny nay!
that way; but now, on the other side, hoist in Kant's and you
come back again; but in very poor plight. Thus, some minds for
ever keep trimming boat. Oh, ye foolish! throw all these
thunder-heads overboard, and then you will float light and
right."
-Herman Melville, Moby Dick.
Plato. Aristotle. Descartes. Locke. Kant. They produced
Rationalism which produced World War I which killed
Rationalism.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Cursed Plato
death of an Ohio honey-hunter, who seeking honey in the
crotch of a hollow tree, found such exceeding store of it, that
leaning too far over, it sucked him in, so that he died
embalmed. How many, think ye, have likewise fallen into
Plao's honey head, and sweetly perished there?"
-Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Monday, September 24, 2007
Melville,Kuhn, Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, Rorty.
...
"Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down and do believe."
...
"Science! Curse thee, thou vain toy..."
Sunday, September 02, 2007
This is Public Occurrences
Friday, August 31, 2007
This is Public Occurrences
Flavius Vegetius Renatus, Roman general.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
On the Islamic Enemy
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
Thursday, August 16, 2007
On France
America's first and longest-lasting friend is France. Voltaire wrote that the "golden age of which men speak so much and never before has existed" was created in the colony of Pennsylvania. The French ardently supported America's War of Independence and Lafayette remains an American hero. Tocqueville spent nine months travelling the new republic and produced the most astute commentary ever written on the country. The Statue of Liberty was a gift of the French people to America.
More than any other European country France has been protective of its national identity. With Italy and Germany it was once one of the giants of opera in Europe but then resisted the influence of those others in favor of its homegrown version which has long since been eclipsed but exists still in all its idiosyncrasy. Likewise the French have resisted the Americanization of its culture in television, movies, fast food and theme parks.
In world affairs too France has been keen on preserving its independence and this is what has most rankled. De Gaulle, visiting Quebec, impertinently concluded a speech with "Viva a free Quebec!" France was the only NATO member to refuse to be bound by the military decisions of the alliance as a whole. More recently France incensed Americans by opposing the war in Iraq and refusing to participate. It may have broken the European Union, of which it was a founding member, by refusing to ratify the E.U.'s constitution.
France never recovered from World War I. Exhausted and depressed it lost its ambition and will and with them its prominent place in the world. France has never wanted to fight for anything since, not even Paris when Hitler marched in. French, once the language of international diplomacy, has been supplanted there and everywhere by English. The French economy has muddled along burdened by the characteristics mentioned by the Silicon Valley executive and long eclipsed by the American, German, and Japanese. Last year's production problems at Air Bus have become a symbol of French inability to win in the economic big leagues.
The result of all of this however has been the preservation of most things French and for that the world should be thankful. France remains first in attracting world tourism a sure indication that if most people don't want to live there it's still the greatest country to visit. Its slower-paced work life makes for a more relaxed daily pace that is immediately apparent and welcome to visitors from go-go America. We are awed by the art, charmed by the preservation of the architecture, made voracious by its cuisine, calmed by the beauty of the countryside, and seduced by the sound of the language.
France is not in any immediate danger of becoming as irrelevant as once-great powers like Egypt, Greece, and Rome are. There you go only to see the fossils of what once was great. In France you see great history too but in a living, functioning society, not a great nation as it once was but still a major, relevant and vital one, one that has always been distinctive and which, it is hoped, always will remain distinctive. The world doesn't need France to make computer chips. It just needs it to remain France. This is Public Occurrences.
Friday, August 10, 2007
This is Public Occurrences
when it is connected with an occupied ship or boat, by any
medium at all controllable by the occupant or occupants."
...
"What to that redoubted harpooneer, John Bull, is poor
Ireland, but a Fast-Fish?"
...
"What was America in 1492 but a Loose-Fish..."
...
"What are the Rights of Man andthe Liberties of the World but
Loose-Fish?"
...
"And what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish,
too?
-Herman Melville, Moby Dick.
Sunday, August 05, 2007
China's Great Wall of Silence: The Murderers of Bian Zhongyun
The Murderers of Bian Zhongyun.
Yan Song, aka Song Waowu, nee Song Binbin, has "retired" and is living in Beijing.
Anyone with information on the identity of those involved in the actions that led to Bian Zongyun's murder please send to PUBLOCC@gmail.com
China's Great Wall of Silence, The Murder of Bian Zhongyun. Current Photos of Song Binbin

This is the complete photograph from which the head shot of Yan Song, nee Song Binbin, published below was cropped. Jiang Zemin, former President of the People's Republic of China (1991-2003) and former General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (1989-2002) pays his condolences to Song's mother at the funeral for Song's father. Song is in glasses standing between her mother and Jiang. Song's sister is behind the mother. Note the black mourning armbands on Jiang and Song. This is Public Occurrences.
(First published June 9, 2007)
China's Great Wall of Silence: American Complicity
Why doesn't Google shut this site down?
Why doesn't the U.S. government label this organization what it is, a terrorist group?
www.wengewang.org
China's Great Wall of Silence: The Murder of Bian Zhongyun
"Born with a dream, died of a
dream."
-Wang Jingyao, husband of Bian Zhongyun, on what he wants engraved on his cremation box.
China's Great Wall of Silence: Fruit of the Poisonous Tree


China's Great Wall of Silence: American Dereliction
I care because Liu Tingting is now a sophisticated, wealthy, jet-setting consultant with a residence on Central Park.
I care because of all the Red Guards who are packed into the faculties at elite institutions like Stanford.
I care because the Red Guards to this day continue to threaten and censor Chinese-Americans in the United States whenever they get too close to the truth.
I care because what good is having a Republican president if he doesn't pay attention to immigration as President Reagan self-evidently did not when so many of these wrongdoers immigrated here?
I care because my tax dollars helped fund Morning Sun, the Red Guards Triumph of the Will.
I care because my tax dollars help fund National Public Radio, which did a fawning interview of Carma Hinton and whose correspondent Margo Addled was narrator of Morning Sun.
My great-great-great-great grandfather did not fight in the Battle of Trenton in 1776 for this.
My great-great grandfather did not die at Fredericksburg in 1862 for this.
My grandfather did not fight in France in 1918 for this.
My uncle did not die in the Italian Apennines in 1945 for this.
My brother did not live through Tet in 1968 for this.
And I have not spent twenty-two years prosecuting murderers for this. I am Benjamin Harris and this is Public Occurrences.
China's Great Wall of Silence: The Murder of Bian Zhongyun. Current Photos of Song Binbin

China's Great Wall of Silence: Cracks
Who you gonna believe, me or your lyin' eyes?
We have been sent the above. It is a Red Guard flier addressed to Red Guards at the schools and universities around Beijing. The first signator at the bottom, the one encircled, is that of Song Yaowu, nee Song Binbin, now Yan Song. The date is September 6, 1966.
Carma Hinton allowed this reddest of guards to say unchallenged in Morning Sun that her name had been "hijacked" without her knowledge, that she had never assumed the name of Song Yaowu. Hinton allowed Song to cry that someone else had written the famous August 20 article in People's Daily about her pinning of Mao Zedong and then signed her name, again without her knowledge.
The claim is laughable and Hinton's abetment clumsy and puerile.
Anyone with information on the identity of those involved in the actions that resulted in Bian Zhongyun's murder please email PUBLOCC@gmail.com
China's Great Wall of Silence, The Murder of Bian Zhongyun: Liu Tingting

Liu was a student at the school where Bian Zhongyun was murdered. She was one of those who beat Bian.
Liu was the daughter of the then President of China, Liu Shaoqi. She uses the name Liu Ting now and is a wealthy and well-connected consultant in New York with an apartment near Central Park in Manhattan. This is Public Occurrences.
China's Great Wall of Silence: Hu Jie, a Courageous Voice for Truth

Monday, July 30, 2007
Ward Churchill=Clair Hull="Mistress Kenis," Dominatrix?



Sunday, July 29, 2007
Dr. Ward Churchill Transgendered? The Photographic Evidence

Saturday, July 28, 2007
Ward Churchill an American Indian? The Photographic Evidence





Friday, July 27, 2007
Ward Churchill With A.I.M. Body Guards

A picture of militarist Dr. Ward
Churchill from Google Images. The
caption to the photo identifies the
armed, black-clad men in back of
Churchill as security guards from
the American Indian Movement.
The rostrum indicates that the site of
this--I presume speech--as some university.
There is no way that a private security force
should have been allowed at a speech by a university-
employeed professor on a public university campus
site. This is like Hell's Angels providing security for
The Rolling Stones. If Dr. Churchill feared violence
then he should have requested and most importantly
the university, should have provided him with campus
police protection.
The focus of the posts here on the Churchill firing has
been on the conduct and lack of action taken by
the University of Colorado in the face of compelling
evidence that they negligently hired Dr. Churchill
and then compounding that error retained him and
did nothing in the face of compelling evidence that
Churchill was psychologically unbalanced and
potentially dangerous. In a previous post we
published a photo of Dr. Churchill carrying an
assault rifle and dressed in combat fatigues and
a beret. The photo above is more evidence that
Dr. Churchill's flagrant militarism was flagrantly
ignored by the University. This is Public Occurrences.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
The Ward Churchill Scandal Gets Worse
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Professor Fired by University of Colorado for Misrepresentation

tenured professor but he was the head of an
Of course Churchill, supposedly a transgen-
Whether the allegations against Professor
are and that is a damning condemnation of
Perhaps for other universities this scandal
More recently a successor head coach, Gary
C.U. is the face of the state's higher education
system. Yet time and again it has embarrassed
its state. This is Public Occurrences.
Friday, July 20, 2007
Michael Vick

Wednesday, July 04, 2007
which deserved more careful study from the rulers, political
and military, of the Allied Powers [than Mein Kampf]. All was
there--the programme of German resurrection, the technique
of party propaganda; the plan for combating Marxism; the
concept of a National-Socialist State; the rightful position of
Germany at the summit of the world. Here was the new
Koran of faith and war: turgid, verbose, shapeless, but
pregnant with its message."
-Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm.
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Derek Fisher

Monday, July 02, 2007
Religion Harms American Iraq Policy

This page strongly supported the attack on Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein. We supported it as a battle in the larger struggle with Islam. We strongly opposed the Bush Administration's policy of using American soldiers to nation build post-war Iraq and so we opposed continuation of the war after Saddam Hussein was captured. In our view that was the mission to be accomplished and American lives lost since then have been in vain.
We opposed the mission of creating a democratic state in Iraq to serve as a beacon for the rest of the Arab world not because we dislike democracies or beacons but because we felt that even a casual survey of the terrain revealed the Tigris and Euphrates Valley to be infertile soil for planting democratic seeds.
President Bush has continued with his policy. We hope that he succeeds but see less chance of that now than we did when Hussein was captured. The cover story on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the June issue of The Atlantic reveals the religious-like faith that the president and Secretary Rice have in democracy--for Iraq and everybody else. The president is a born-again Christian and Rice, whose nomination for Secretary of State we opposed, is strongly religious also. Their religious views have effected their foreign policy, to its detriment, in the view here.
Philip Zelikow a member of the administration's National Security Council, "often described as the secretary's 'intellectual soul mate' is quoted in The Atlantic as saying,
"Democracy, for Secretary Rice, I think, and for [the administration] is a universal safety valve for social conflict. And as they confront parts of the world in profound social and political crisis, they prescribe democracy."
That is the problem, or rather those are the problems. A humbler foreign policy team would not conclude that our way is necessarily the best way for all people, nor would a wiser team. As the article points out Secretary Rice need look no further for evidence against her universal prescription of democracy than the disastrous elections on the West Bank that brought Hamas to power, elections that Rice insisted on despite counsel that they were premature. Or she could ask her personal Arabic interpreter Gamel Helal. When asked by The Atlantic's writer what it's like to translate words like "freedom" and "democracy" which are so loaded with western meaning into Arabic, Mr. Helal said,
"In the Middle East, they look at things and ask, Is it halal or haram, Is it approved by the religion or not? If you go to a Bedouin society and you tell them that the state will determine how you're going to settle a conflict between you and your cousin, you must be out of your mind, because the most important and powerful tool to them will be tribal law, which is unwritten."
The problems with the Administration's Iraq policy are a lack of American humility, and religion--the religious zeal of the President and the Secretary of State, and the religious zeal of the Iraqis. Religious zeal demands faith in the face of conflicting evidence. It prescribes its way for other people who might be unreceptive. There is also a fundamental tension between religious faith and democracy, as evidenced in Mr. Helal's Bedouin example.
Winston Churchill wrote in his history of World War II that one of the causes of the war was American insistence on a democracy for post-Versailles Germany rather than a constitutional monarchy, which was preferred by Hindenburg. In Churchill's view the monarchy would have provided a stabilizing anchor for an angry people and would have lessened the chance that that anger would be translated into the election of angry leaders. The United States did not make that same mistake with post-World War II Japan. For just Churchill's reasons Japan was allowed to retain its emperor. Humility and wisdom would make today's facts and history's lessons the guides for our foreign policy but humility and wisdom are not guides for the fervently faithful. Only faith is. This is Public Occurrences.


