White? Black? Other? (Who is "Other"?): Part 3 of 3

"Emmanuel Levinas and S.T. Coleridge: Judaic and Romantic Approaches to Ethics, Politics, and Otherness"

7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 12,, in Room 114 Belk Library

As sponsored by the Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies.

[Haney is the author of two books on Romanticism that draw on the work of Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. He will consider how Levinas’s post-Holocaust notion of a subjectivity based on a radical otherness can be interpreted alongside Coleridge’s struggle to formulate a new philosophical relationship between self and other in the early 19th century. Both authors, For additional information, call 2311, e-mail to holocaust@appstate.edu, or visit www.holocaust.appstate.edu]

On this thursday night I walked into an auditorium fit to seat 100, albeit only 7 or so chairs were filled. To Dr. Haney we were students, fellow colleagues, and a wife, and he held the look of a man who knew a lot spare a place to begin. When the bells rang in alarm, Dr. Haney began with an introduction to himself and his academics. The night was to progress through a brief powerpoint presentation, which served as a backdrop of definitions, a reading of his essay on "Otherness", and a casual conclusion with just enough time for questions and cookies.

In an attempt to have his words serve as he intends, the definitions Dr. Haney primes us with are very helpful. For example, because he is presenting Levinas through his own words, a critique, he begins his presentation with a quote from Richard Cohen, outlining his purpose and standard for criticizing:

“What criticism does is to interpret a text by explaining it in terms of more or less remote objective contexts. . . . "

Cultural Values are values that render the recognition of similitude when one culture is placed aside another. Applying values to one culture or another is a way of affirming, applying, and achieving alterity. By rationalizing with the force of man from the eye of an other, one is in turn forever locking that man into a category-- a violent measure of a man as hostage in a time, place, and act that he himself once realized and was observed in being. Dr. Haney goes on to explain that upholding justice in a situation between man and his other (a being separated from the actual person himself very much like framing a replica of an original piece of art) would only act as an extreme account of concern for ethics and security. For Levinas, in other words, the way in which modern man accounts for a just state of governing--as a formation by rule--is indeed a contradiction.

It is here that we begin to see the connection of a philosopher within his frame of Nazi Germany, WWII, The Cold War, and thereafter.

In a mild diversion from Levinas, Dr. Haney invests a hot minute within the head of Immanuel Kant. For Kant, persons act not as means to an end, but are indeed the end themselves. There is a paradox embedded within the call for equal rights for all humankind while maintaining human beings to be authentic with uniqueness and individuality.

"What we are beginning to see is a process of moral will--a distinction given to the race of history, not of science; a claim as The Historic Race."

Humankind strives through the multi-tiers of a cast system with hope of finally reaching the summit: Pure Equality. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is criticized for being an ideal, and unrealistically optimistic. Without voicing refute, The United Nations reasoned that the document articulates a concrete goal in a form readily accessible to every person of every race and every age the world over. Moreover, the declaration exudes an image of humans rising above the instincts to be inhumane; of man to be in himself apart from his instinct, his outlet of unique being (i.e. genocide). By expressing that humans possess equal rights, one is in turn using a kind of "dialectal productiveness between cultural differences". There is violence in the freedom to choice, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees that freedom while also authorizing freedom in one leveling sweep. In the end, The Declaration enables homogeny for a man whose will is inconsistent with the will of his neighbor and the "other" of his observations.

Bottom line: Humans are free agents governed by the rules and regulations of a sport which guarantees the success of the game.

By preserving the game one in turn preserves the employment of the referee. Levinas disagrees with the creation of the United Nations and their involved work because both apply, affirm, and achieve a system of tiers, and more importantly maintain our involvement with an endless system of ascent.

Some sidelining thoughts that came after his presentation as answers to an inquisitive congregation:

Ethical Reading:

When reading a text, you are speaking with it as it is maintained by its unique position--a position that you create for it by placing said text in conversation (even if only in cranial converse). By picking up another text--related or unrelated--you are having them read each other. The conclusion? Reading is always immoral because we are always applying our philosophy du jour to our conversation with a text. Moreover, reading is always political, comparable, and never ethical.

Fiscally, managerially responsible:

When applying a budget to a man in a position below your nose, you have to work carefully not to imply that "I have you figured out." A larger budget for one department (say of football) over another (say that of cheerleading) would imply a certain equation of worth, need, and capability.

Some modern -ology: Peace and War

"War resembles disease primarily because it has threatened or brought physical damage or death to large populations. Thus, the yearbook of world health statistics, published by the World Health Organization (1976), includes "injury resulting from operations of war" in its list of 150 cause of death. War's opposite--peace--is like the opposite of disease--health--in that it implies the preservation and extension of human life.

The traditional view of war, like that of disease, related the supernatural and natural orders.

Modern African warfare still incorporates traditional war charms, rites of passage, and sorcery. It involves the spirit of a mystical community. Thus, in a symbolic novel about the Biafran war of secession, the Court of the Here-After hears that millions of men have died "in the dignity of kinship." "Yes," says the prosecuting Counsel for Damnation, "death is indeed an exercise in pan-Africanism. We have been known to kill each other partly because we belong to each other. We kill each other because we are neighbors."

Peace science has not yet advanced to the point of professional practice. Although the military claim that "peace is our profession," the primary emphasis of the contemporary peace movement is still religious, its leaders, figures like Ghandi and Martin Luther King. A more comprehensive peace profession, supported by a firm knowledge base in peace science, is still a hope rather than a reality."

The Epidemiology of Peace and War
Francis A. Beer
International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Mar., 1979), pp. 45-86
Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The International Studies Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2600274

Public works!(?): Afghanistan...asking the hard questions

“…the best way to overcome widespread public opposition in Europe was to demonstrate progress in the war, which could be accomplished by turning over control to Afghan forces in areas where the security situation is good.” Rasmussen

“Obama said Tuesday that by setting a date for withdrawal, he was trying to create added momentum for building up the capacity of the Afghan government and its security forces.

“The absence of a time frame for transition would deny us any sense of urgency in working with the Afghan government,” Obama said during his speech. “It must be clear that Afghans will have to take responsibility for their security, and that America has no interest in fighting an endless war in Afghanistan.”"

The opposition: “It could take years and years more,” McGovern told NPR. “I think sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan will make it 30,000 times harder to get out of this mess.”

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), called the plan “an expensive gamble to undertake armed nation-building on behalf of a corrupt government of questionable legitimacy.”

The Taliban responded Wednesday by saying the White House plan would only make it fight harder. In a statement, the hard-line Islamist militia said it was “committed to increasing the number of mujahedeen [holy warriors] and strengthen[ing] their resistance.”

(US soldiers are fighting holy warriors. Who has the right to resist and for what reasons are we resisting one another? What is our quarrel with one another, and why are we as enemies only marked by qualms? What was characteristic of the enemies from our history?

Does the US stand to provide alms, whereas the Taliban stands to claim territory?)

“During the first eight months of 2009, there were nearly 13,000 enemy-initiated attacks in Afghanistan — more than 2 1/2 times the number reported in the same period in 2008, according to Pentagon data.” What else could reason for this increase in attacks?

NPR “Afghan Plan Faces Tough Questions on Capitol Hill”

"What, if any, conditions would need to be met to begin drawing down troops by the july 2011 target date?
Is the withdrawal condition based?"

By placing more marines in Afghanistan, will they outnumber their Afghan counterpart?
Most men fighting in Helmand, Afghanistan were 10, 11 years old when the trade centers fell--what kind of reaction can you expect from the boys and girls in Afghanistan and Iraq now? --In other words, does the Taliban today encompass a reactory group of previously impressionable 10, and 11 year olds sitting on the other side of 9/11's wake?

Al Qaeda changed after 9/11 attacks upon the CIA's classic "full-fury America!" reaction. The group began to act as a brand that only needed to sell terrorism. By marketing that Muslims suffer because America props up repressive regimes.
Does a claim of insanity ever warrant a victim his legitimate grounds for making others as victims? Is a claim of insanity reason for a large scale terror attack; or relinquish a man of his punishment due to his inability to "help himself"? How would you diagnose, characterize, identify, those who buy and wear Al Qaeda? --as victims, as criminally insane, as terrorists?

An affair to remember: part 2 of 3

2 days prior to Labor Day, and just a day shy of the Day of Rest, I shared a day with my mentor family as arranged by the International Rescue Committee over the summer. Although my experience with this family extends through my employment at the IRC, the event I wish to illustrate took place between 10AM and 3PM Saturday, September 5th in a room outfitted within the metro atlanta suburb.

The family includes the mother, Rajaa, the father, Abdel, a little girl, Marianne, and two young boys, Yousef and Ameen. While the family seeks refuge from the quarrels of Iraq, the children were born while Rajaa and Abdel were stationed as asylees in Jordan and most recently, in Syria.

Our morning progressed through puzzles, pretzels, and tea. The mother, Rajaa, has a limited understanding of English, and invited a Sudanese woman living in the same complex to come over. Our guest worked in several embassies as a translator for Arab-English conversations after attending college some years ago. Her disposition was kind and very intentional, and her presence was of great help for our conversations.

As the children plowed through the puzzle I brought in tow, Rajaa, her friend (whose name I cannot recall), and I "met as women". The Sudanese woman shared with me that it is common place for the women to talk over tea, and that our visit was to carry on in no exception. Mostly, we talked about our families. While I thought my family of six to be of impressive size, Rajaa's family took trump. To paint a picture, Rajaa is a very strong Arab woman and she currently stands to match her husband barrel belly for barrel belly--she's pregnant! The urgency of a woman to have children comes from Iraq she told me. Rajaa's mother and household matriarch stands with 85 grandchildren to her name. 85! I thought such number to be serious misunderstanding--a number mixed in translation, but our tea-time translator confirmed the remark.

Well, morning turned to noon and Abdel returned to a house laced with the smells of slow-roasting lamb, fried rice and potatoes--lunch! By this time our morning's guest had returned home to prepare lunch for her husband, the children had showered and dressed for lunch, and Rajaa had bowed in prayer. Since I was well aware of the income of an unemployed refugee I intended to leave before lunch. Also, I was a vegetarian and quite unsure about how to explain such reality without being disrespectful and within the margins of her limited vocabulary. Although I thought my pre-lunch departure was an act of kindness and respect, Rajaa felt just the opposite and insisted that I stay for a meal.

She adorned the table with plates, platters, onions, and olives ("veryyy old, from Syria" she explained) while Ameen, age 3, serenaded us with a song and dance routine. He was quite the charmer and ever so entertaining! When his song ended, we sat down for lunch with Rajaa and I seated at the table's ends. Even though the smell of meat still filled the air, Rajaa aborted the dish -- much to Abdel's dismay.

As we finished our plates the children ran upstairs for an afternoon nap, and Rajaa begin to clean the table. Abdel waved me into the living room and Rajaa later joined us equipped with three cups of orange soda. We talked about Iraq, about starting a new home in the United States, and about the soon-to-be new addition to the family. After some time, Abdel rose in excitement and retrieved a film depicting the crucifixion of Christ. He placed it in the old VHS player at the end of the room and pressed play. The video was confusing for several reasons:
1.) I'm not Christian, and neither are Abdel and Rajaa
2.) The language was Farsi--one in which was foreign to all 3 of us
3.) Why?

At the close of the film, I had the impression that I was imposing upon Abdel's nap time. I packed away the puzzles, books, and colored pencils, and Rajaa and Abdel saw me to the door. Sharing smiles of pearly whites, we said our goodbyes and good evenings.

The global scope hones in on and concludes with one thought. In the few visits I have shared with this family I have come to articulate a question:
How do I act among a family displaced in a country that invaded, now occupies, and promises reconstruction for their own country of origin?
While I never felt like the question was at the forefront of our relationship, it was indeed the parameters for our introduction. Thus far, I have not an answer.

An Informative International: a 3 part experience

Consider our class when each person raises his or her hand in offering of their unique world view. There is an odd network of information working towards an environment of absolute efficiency, and one built with every regard to the individual according to his and her every tongue and taste. The tongue is common to man, and the taste that dictates a mans choice in meal is unique to him and it matures, changing at the very least. In other words, there is a clear international presence in our every day classroom cited under the simple fact that a topic international in scope requires an international interaction, engagement, perspective.

To explain how I plan to complement our assignment to attend an international event and write on it in analysis, I ask only for you to consider the reaction to Germany and the Nazi officials. With World War 2 at a close and the loss waged in said war still under calculation, any kind of leader no matter his faction and governing ideology could grasp the importance of dignity for all parties involved. The race of German soldiers, of German citizens, and of German victims were topics for the court, for migration, and in books of interest. In other words, the syntax of race won precedence over the syntax of the nation and the same idea applies to our classroom. Each one of us has an experience as a part of the course, "Global Issues" but also as a part of different fields--at different ranges. One guy has an experience with politics as a political conference asked him into a new state and eventually to return and appear in court in said state. Another girl has passed a day in Japanese mall while Obama played on TV. Through a wide range of mediums (whether literature, film, judicial system...), each of us cultivates an intercultural experience, and for the most part, represents said experience when placed before a tunnel of conflict foreign in familiarity.

What should be done to solve set issue, for instance? How do both sides weigh in on the conflict? To an extent I could pick up several newspapers and attempt to understand world events through ulterior perspectives, but my presence as an international is not clear until placed within the context of debate among my peers.

The Illusion of The End [Baudrillard, Jean] (in edit)

Within the frame of his theory, how would I form a rebuttle and spare him the "excess" read? His claim renders a rebuttle as a sample of the situation on the ground, as a source, and again as a sense of excess speculation. An iPod advanced the earbug and allowed for the human race to rock and jive to any song at any time (granted your iPod spent the previous night on the charger). I would like to mention how different a situation becomes when under the influence of "that" song in a new context; what is more, the influence of a familiar voice or memory in an unfamiliar setting or state of mind. (Did you ever think on the oddity of being raped, attacked, or murdered to the sounds of your favorite tune?) To better illustrate the visual he sees in the current state of affairs, Baudrillard organized his theory and thought in a series of synonyms like a series of cartoons fit to fill the comic section of Sunday's news.

"'All mankind suddenly left reality' irresistibly evokes the idea of that escape velocity a body requires to free itself from the gravitational field of a star or planet.

This piece counters my experience by offering modernity as a series; an accumulation of things, sounds, or images that 'escapes velocity', with the result that we have flown free of the referential sphere of the real and of history. Such a diversion of the "real" and of the "history" implies that the two are separable, exist in a league of their own, but does ever a moment pass in reel that we do not refer to history for aid in the situation on the ground? Refer to military strategy and the wet knot that holds present conflict at length with yesterday's quarrels.

"So far as history is concerned, its telling has become impossible because that telling is, by definition, the possible recurrence of a sequence of meanings."

Cued in said recurrence is a line of careers or specifications. Take it lightly. Take it heavily. However, embedded within the telling of all history, no matter its weight, is the option to consider the event in pieces or in full.
Ever should an event apply to my life in full; in body, mind, soul, religious belief, cultural tradition, mathematical reasoning, engineering innovation (…)? Should every event be dissolved in specialty like a tumor of many different dimensions and in pertinence like measurements necessary for calculating volume? If such is the reality of our existence, a “recurrence of a sequence of meanings”, then Baudrillard’s claim is less volatile in validity. But you will never cross a person who does not yearn to show and tell a story.

"...through the impulse for total dissemination and circulation, every event is granted its own liberation ( an energy for rupture and change)...In order to be disseminated to infinity, it has to be fragmented like a particle...Every set of phenomena, whether cultural totality or sequence of events, has to be fragmented, disjointed, so that it can be sent down the circuits; every kind of language has to be resolved into a binary formulation so that it can circulate not, any longer, in our memories, but in the luminous, electronic memory of the computers."

I recall a fear from childhood that played through the items that I would carry out of my house if there were a fire inside. Within this same vein I credit my need to have a copy of my work, pictures, and music on hard drive as well as on paper or CD. "Codes of language, perception, and practice are criticized and rendered partially invalid." (Michel Foucault An Order of Things) The partiality of anything still retains something of the whole. Moreover, I am not certain that a day passes without the conquest for understanding the whole. The privy of knowing in full a part of the whole (like being a math major and having a concentration in Calculus) is common practice around most every corner of the Earth. I say corner in reference to the man made dimension of life. What mother-nature has made was done so without many corners.

I have read that light and gravity are products of higher dimensions and what is more, that light bends under gravitational force. What does the author mean by "gravitational effect" ("which keeps all bodies in orbit") within the context of his piece? Moreover the inquisition at present, what things are present in my daily dimension that are in fact products of higher historical dimensions?

"Every political, historical and cultural fact possesses a kinetic energy which wrenches it from its own space and propels it into a hyperspace where, since it will never return, it loses all meaning"

"The inert matter of the social is not produced by a lack of exchanges, information or communication, but by the multiplication and saturation of exchanges. It is the product of the hyperdensity of cities, commodities, messages and circuits. It is the cold star of the social and, around that mass, history is also cooling. Events follow one upon another, canceling each other out in a state of indifference.

This time we have the opposite situation: history, meaning and progress are no longer able to reach their escape velocity. They are no longer able to pull away from this overdense body which slows their trajectory, which slows time ot he point where, right now, perception and imagination of the future are beyond us. All social, historical and temporal transcendence is absorbed by that mass in its silent immanence....[History] is no longer able to transcend itself, to envisage its own finality, to dream of its own end; it is being buried beneath its own immediate effect, worn out in special effects, imploding into current events....It's effects are accelerating, but its meaning is slowing inexorably (meaning impossible to stop or prevent). It will eventually come to a stop and be extinguished like light and time in the vicinity of an infinitely dense mass..."

Whether the universe is expanding to infinity or retracting towards an infinitely dense, infinitely small nucleus depends on its critical mass. Speculation on this idea is in itself infinite by virtue of the possible invention of new particles. Cue Large Hadron Collider
, a modern experiment in the physical field of creation.

Like the introduction of salt to grass, or of a metal bike to wet skies there exist several engagements of man without a proposition for control in the future. However, I fail to see man’s story as one such engagement.

"Has the history, the movement, of the species reached the escape velocity required to triumph over the inertia of the mass?"

Man is only in mass when his neighbor stands to critique.

"Everywhere we find the same stereophonic effect, the same effect of absolute proximity to the real, the same effect of simulation."

“Sympathy has the dangerous power of assimilating, of rendering things identical to one another, of mingling them, or causing their individuality to disappear—and thus of rendering them foreign to what they were before.” (Foucault)

Would Baudrillard go so far as to claim that the news reels in sympathy to the event in frame?

"Where is the high fidelity threshold beyond which music disappears as such?

We have passed that limit where, by dint of the sophistication of events and information, history ceases to exist as such."

In recent history, you can find the stories of men who interrogate and torture their enemies by excess amplification of hard rock. In college my dad was subject to endless rotations of Ravel’s “Boléro” as a part of his induction into the fraternity of his choice.

"The original essence of music, the original concept of history have disappeared because we shall never again be able to isolate them from their model of perfection which is at the same time their model of simulation, the model of their enforced assumption into a hyper-reality which cancels them out."

“The transformation of music into noise was a planetary process by which mankind was entering the historical phase of ugliness.” (Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being)

There is an opinion that I am unable to articulate, but one that I can see by pulling on the strings of other disciplines, fields, and theories.

"...'action' in the cinematographic sense, and 'auction', the selling-off of the event on the overheated news market. The event captured not, as it used to be, in action, but in speculation and chain reactions spinning off towards the extremes of a facility with which interpretation can no longer keep pace."

Such sheath addresses why a news station might host an event (the source of sound in speculation--in mass reproduction across print, TV, and radio. News is a business as is education with a need to make for finance, a need for participation, and a need for innovation that places an anchor above the leading competitor.

"In contrast to this 'fulfilled' order of time, the liberation of the 'real' time of history, the production of a linear, deferred time may seem a purely artificial process."

"Where do we get the idea that what must be accomplished must come at the end of time and match up with some incalculable appointed term or other?"

"Admittedly, this kind of sly, surreptitious intervention on the side of the void against the grotesque. Ubuesque infatuation with news and the political scene was merely a dream and, by dint of being secret and enigmatic, no more came into being, in the end, than did the events themselves.

"We had to find, in this event strike, the thread running through, which is that of deterrence (DEFER, DIFFERANCE) [is what causes something not to take place], the baleful form which presides over the nullity of our age... events which do not in any way advance history, but rather run it backwards, back along the opposite slope, unintelligible to our historical sense (only things which move in the direction of history [le sens de l'histoire] have historical meaning [sens historique]), events which no longer have a negative (progressive, critical or revolutionary) potency since their only negativity is in the fact of their not taking place.

"Yet it seems we are tired of fuelling the end of history with simulacra of modernity and are entering, with recent events upon a phase of de-simulation.

"The criteria of truth have been supplanted by the principle of credibility (which is also the principle of statistics and opinion polls), and this is the true guiding principle of news...a reality which is now uncertain, paradoxical, random, hyper-real, filtered by the medium, cut adrift by its own image."

(Think of the romantic state of Cold War certainty.)

“In the case of the Romanian revolution, it was the faking of the dead in Timisoara which aroused a kind of moral indignation and raised the problem of the scandal of 'disinformation' or, rather, of information itself as scandal.

Is ever the information that takes the face of a scandal, or the face of delivery, the facet of the specific syntax and source that brought it into light?

"Being blackmailed by violence and death, especially in a noble and revolutionary cause, was felt to be worse than the violence itself, was felt to be a parody of history." THE SUCCULENT IMMINENCE OF DEATH (it's what's for breakfast!)

"Anticipation of effects, morbid simulation, emotional blackmale. Nothing is news if it does not pass through that horizon of the virtual, that hysteria of the virtual--not in the psychological sense, but in the sense of a compulsion for what is presented, in all bad faith, as real to be consumed as unreal."

(Think about the game played on camping grounds that simulates someone throwing up in a neighbor's hand. The neighbor then looks at his/her hands and thinks, "Yuck!" then thinks, "Yumm!" and in turn induces vomit from him or herself and looks to the hands of the next person and so on and so on. The oddity of the game is that it sounds awful, but you're not really throwing up; the simple gesture of cupped hands solicits an image so vivid that it actually induces nausea.)

"...images without a negative, and hence without negativity and without reference."

"When television becomes the strategic space of the event, it sets itself up as a deadly self-reference..."

"From the moment the studio becomes the strategic centre, and the screen the only site of appearance, everyone wants to be on it at all costs, or else gathers in the street in the glare of the cameras, and these, indeed actually film one another. The street becomes an extension of the studio, that is, of the non-site of the event, of the virtual site of the event. The street itself becomes a virtual space. Site of the definitive confusion of masses and medium, of the real-time confusion of act and sign."
"SCENIC ABDUCTION"

"...we are forced to see even though they are virtually dead, these dead prisoners shot a second time to meet the needs of news." I wonder if I could introduce morality and reason to the above statement (which is obviously laden in negative air).

"By manipulating themselves, they cause us spontaneously to swallow their fiction. We bear the same responsibility as they do. Or, rather, there is no responsibility anywhere."

"When information gets mixed in with its source, then, as with sound waves, you get a feedback effect--an effect of interference and uncertainty. When demand is maximal it short-circuits the initial situation and produces an uncontrollable response effect."
Take note of his earlier 3 hypothesis.

"...that that revolution had to be lent credibility by an extra dose of dead bodies." The author uses a series of synonyms and comic strips to better illustrate the visual he sees in the current state of affairs.
"Excess itself engenders the parody which invalidates the facts. And, just as the principle of economics is wrecked by financial speculation, so the principle of politics (le politique) and history is wrecked by media speculation."

"...that entire peoples are coming out of their darkness, even if it was violent and tyrannical, to fall prey to the Enlightenment, to go down like flies in the artificial light of our freedom, our unbounded solidarity, our unscrupulous news system. We who so respect the private life of individuals should also respect that of peoples and their right--against all international morality--to escape this modern tribunal of news and information-gathering which is assuming all the features of an inquisition." (Voila la solde finale!)

Globalized Disease

"Un vaccin réduisant les risques d'infection par le virus VIH, le virus a l'origine du Sida, a été testé sur 16.000 volontaires en Thailande. Financé par l'armée américaine, le vaccin permet de réduire les risques d'infection de plus de 30%. La nouvelle a été accueillie avec satisfaction par les militants de la lutte contre le Sida." BBC News September 24, 2009

The Experiment:
The assumption rests in the idea that the vaccine will ward off HIV in those who are positive with AIDS.

The Contenders:
American Army
16,000 HIV-infected Thai volunteers

The Result:
The militants administering the test welcome the vaccine with satisfaction. Critics of the vaccine voice that the vaccine is a step in the wrong direction; that such a "progressive" vaccine could encourage the behavior, or strip the consequences from the behavior that led to contracting AIDS in the first place. Still others say that such vaccine and subsequent results reveal our progression in understanding the disease and its outliers.

The oddity of it all is the context for the experiment. An american army, an american budget, 16,000 AIDS-positive Thai, and all of which are covered in French news. I could not find this story headlining any where else.

What he says/ What I read

"...the impersonal forces of world markets, integrated over the postwar period more by private enterprise in finance, industry and trade than by the cooperative decisions of governments, are now more powerful than the states to whom ultimate political authority over society and economy is supposed to belong."

WIth a nations men drawn to war, it is precisely war that draws up a subsequent reorganization of the labor force. Is it the division of labor or the deviance of war that permits Susan Strange to stake 'informal relations' as partial reasoning for the change in politics.

"the declining authority of states is reflected in a growing diffusion of authority to other institutions and associations, and to local and regional bodies, and in a growing asymmetry between the larger states with structural power and weaker ones without it."

Was such a system of work such as "The Government" created to eventually in some ways or most, work itself out of business? Might ever the people generate so much interest in the topic of control and government that every citizen crosses hands in politics? Would such interest take the (near future form) of lobby groups? Would we lobby our way out of present day politics?

"The need for a political authority of some kind, legitimated either by coercive force or by popular consent, or more often by a combination of the two, is the fundamental reason for the state's existence."

Public goods such as drains, water supplies, infrastructures for transport and communications" are anything but exciting fields now with modern distractions. Cover a society where a public demonstration of drainage testing was as riveting as sitting spectator to ballistic missile testing or of this, and I will show you a society working its way out of a collective, overriding government and into an entrepreneurial polity based not on a constitution, but on innovation and pleasure. Within the range of practicality, the aforementioned society might work on a standard of policing by economic penalties and stratification of sustainability.

"...technological change in products and processes, driven by profit, will not continue to accelerate in future...it goes a long way to explain both political and economic change."

[ But consider that the approach The United States takes with the war in Iraq has to be wired differently in strategy when staging foreign forces on Afghan grounds. In other words, the beginning may look awfully similar, but in reality, by stripping both starts (that of the enthusiastic society and that of the United Nations) of their differences may and in all likelihood with our past to serve as our judge and jury, strip the potential from both comparative forms above. ]

Capitalism and Ruling Elitists (stream'd)

Capitalism and rational elitist rulers act on ground marked by outside influences, and neither are plausible in their most romantic independent forms. I will quote three resources at great length to present the argument.
1.) Immanuel Wallerstein, "The Modern World-System as a Capitalist World-Economy", p. 57
2.) Ayn Rand, various works cited accordingly
3.) an excerpt from G. Hossein Razi "An alternate Paradigm to State Rationality in Foreign Policy: The Iran-Iraq War" p. 690

"Suppose there really existed a world market in which all the factors of production were totally free, as our textbooks in economics usually define this--that is, one in which the factors flowed without restriction, in which there were a very large number of buyers and a very large number of sellers, and in which there was perfect information (meaning that all sellers and all buyers knew the exact state of all costs of production). In such a perfect market, it would always be possible for the buyers and to bargain down the sellers to an absolutely minuscule level of profit (let us think of it as a penny). and this low level of profit would make the capitalist game entirely uninteresting to producers, removing the basic social underpinnings of such a system."

(My inevitable remark and question to such a passage is that I don't understand. If a free-market would dissuade the interest for producers in a Capitalist market, wherein lies our status with "down-grading" where every firm has an equal footing--until one makes it cheaper or more attractive and comes out on top--would not a free-marker promote the innovative infrastructure that the government sets forth and towards.
"When I say "capitalism," I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism--with a separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church." (Ayn Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” The Virtue of Selfishness, 33.
" Economically, leaving individuals free to pursue their own interests implies in turn that only a capitalist or free market economic system is moral: free individuals will use their time , money, and other property as they see fir, and will interact and trade voluntarily with others to mutual advantage." From: here)

"Furthermore, it (the assumption of rationality) allows one to consider all decision-makers to be alike. If they follow the rules, we need know nothing more about them. In essence, if the decision-makers behave rationally, the observer, knowing the rules of rationality, can rehearse the decision process in his own mind and, if he knows the decision-maker's goals, can both predict the decision and understand why the particular decision was made." (Verba 1961/1969: 225)

(in either case I think (therefore I am..) that both capitalists and "decision-makers" have every reason and vital fact at their finger tips and that it is precisely the use of such facts that will encourage innovative capitalists and just leaders--that both sustain a powerful position in the present, and encourage the desired outcome of the future.)

"One such virtue is rationality: having identified the use of reason as fundamentally good, being committed to acting in accordance with reason is the virtue of rationality.

Another virtue is productiveness: given that the values one needs to survive must be produced, being committed to awareness of the facts is the virtue of honesty." Again, here.

The Modern World-System as a Capitalist World-Economy

-Immanuel Wallerstein-

We begin with a few definitions. First, the world-economy is a geographic zone in which secures a division of labor. Essential goods, capital, and labor move through the geographic zone and between the people. It is important to note that the fractures of a governing body within a world economy are more loosely related than those within the governed populace.

Upon reading this observation, I recalled a subject I read about a year ago in my study of the Iraq War. If you are familiar with the American invasion of Iraq, you are familiar with the "Green Zone" that American armed forces created upon our arrival in Baghdad. It was a secure base which distinguished the Americans from the non-Americans, the Arab from the non-Arab, the United States military from the war zone. In addition to cement walls, chain-link fences, and security guards on sight, the base held an eclectic variety of Western comforts. The base secured both a theoretical and actual division of reality and wartime reality.

Next, Wallerstein offers a "geoculture" to his reader. The "geoculture" is a general body of people who are neither culturally nor politically homogeneous in sect, but who share "common cultural patterns". The shared umbrella over top Wallerstein's idea of a "geoculture" is the organization, or division of labor.

The world-economy both requires and secures the viability and longevity of capitalism (a system of people and firms who accumulate capital in order to accumulate ever the more capital). This idea led me to think of the rationale behind naming our era, "post-modern"--a pigeon-holed term that refers to having a foot in an era after today. Like the term "post-modern", Wallerstein claims that the world-economy and capitalist system are long-withstanding, and the two act as a duo that will always share a foot in the future, today.

What remains unclear to me is how a modern man used historically failed world economies and military empires to aid in his construction of a self-sustaining, intricate web of interelational existence.

A familiar face in this multi-faceted reality is the institution labeled "market" and defined as "a magnet for all producers and buyers, whose pull is a constant political factor in the decision-making of everyone--the states, the firms, the households, the classes, and the status-groups".

Wallerstein then goes on to illustrate how to beat the system when a firm hosts a monopoly. Namely, competing companies can fight through the local political system of a restricted capitalist society by asking political officials to level the playing ground and remove the advantages of their leading competitor. Or, the smaller company can look to the international market for support. Other states can draw on their political power to deny the monopolistic company in favor of competition, generally and the small competition, in particular. In the event that the smaller producer cannot beat the system, "one must remember that bankruptcy, or absorption by a more powerful firm, is the daily bread of capitalist enterprises."

Denying capitalists and outside (or indirect) critics their romantic view of a free-trade capitalist system, Wallerstein articulated a very important point:

"Suppose there really existed a world market in which all the factors of production were totally free, as our textbooks in economics usually define this--that is, one in which the factors flowed without restriction, in which there were a very large number of buyers and a very large number of sellers, and in which there was perfect information (meaning that all sellers and all buyers knew the exact state of all costs of production). In such a perfect market, it would always be possible for the buyers to bargain down the seller to an absolutely minuscule level of profit (let us think of as a penny), and this low level of profit would make the capitalist game entirely uninteresting to producers, removing the basic social underpinnings of such a system."

Following markets, the next institution that Wallerstein goes on to explain is the firm. He lists that strong firms are responsible for eating the smaller fish in the pond of capitalism. However, the time may come when a large firm eats too much and struggles with a new found margin for error and failure.

...Error and failure, high unemployment, and wage decrease are several characteristics used to describe the world's condition today. In such case, Wallerstein prescribes the condition as a "reversal of the cyclical curve of the world-economy". Competing producers bend and shape to stay in line with the world market by displacing unemployment from state to state and by drawing on smaller companies who are looking to sell off a harvest of over-produced goods. So far, however, capitalism has exceeded the occasional stress-marks put forth by a stagnation or recession.