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NYCartist on "Claude Lévi-Strauss at 100: echo of the future "

NYCartist — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:05:23 +0000

Yes, Letat's comment is satire and really good. I could stretch it to absurd by reminding folks of the advert "You don't have to be Jewish to love Levy's" (rye bread). (Lenny Bruce was my favorite "comedian".)

Tony Curzon Price on "Claude Lévi-Strauss at 100: echo of the future "

Tony Curzon Price — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:20:18 +0000

it has to be recognised that there is nothing like a pair of Levi's for a spot of bricolage

tony

tia66m on "Claude Lévi-Strauss at 100: echo of the future "

tia66m — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:30:36 +0000

hahaha. This is the funniest series of comments ever!!!

Canny: Nadejda Letat was clearly being facetious in response to willment1973's comment, who may or may not have been trying to be funny too.

Poor Claude L-S. Even in death, the infamous 501s continue to haunt him.

canny on "Claude Lévi-Strauss at 100: echo of the future "

canny — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:05:23 +0000

Nadejda Letat: I think that you are merging Claude Lévi-Strauss the
French anthropologist with Levi Strauss (1829 –1902), the American
German-Jewish immigrant who founded Levi Strauss & Co, the first
company to manufacture blue jeans.

JFox on "Claude Lévi-Strauss at 100: echo of the future "

JFox — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:41:16 +0000

I am not an anthroplogist and can't offer anything to the debate on Lévi-Strauss's contribution to the discipline. However, his wonderful "Tristes Tropiques" strikes me as a masterpiece - beautifully written, enlightening, and full of fascinating insights into common elements of our shared humanity. It is among the very few books to which I return repeatedly and with gratitude.

Diana Raluca on "A world split apart"

Diana Raluca — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:38:38 +0000

@Francesco I really enjoy your poems. I love reading poetry and I'm in love with books. I have a couple of poems myself but I am to shy to let anyone read them, and I'm afraid it will not sound as good when translated to English.
Bless,
Diana @ True Compass: A Memoir

deteodoru on "Neo-conservatism: Irving Kristol’s living legacy"

deteodoru — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 22:57:27 +0000

Perhaps I should have muted my rage, given that I had tears in my eyes over the passing of Irving Krystol as I typed my comment. The neocons raised war to level of cultural norm—BEFORE 9/11-- despite all the pleas and warnings of our generals. Elsewhere I had cited the evidence that this is not war as a means but as an end, used as a means often for personal ends. And, it was not enough for them to advocate war but, refusing to argue their case in dialogue, these ex-commies went by the old Lenin tactic of “polarize to mobilize.” Thus, if the issue were Israel's wars, for example, any questioning and you were not a debater to be engaged in meaningful dialogue but an "anti-Semite" or "self-hating Jew" to be denied freedom of speech. As for advocacy, the trail of their manipulative politics to that end and the characterization of their "World War IV" against "Islamo-fascist".... read that Crusade against Islam… they would push on their Yahoo Christian friends who want Israel to dominate the Mideast so that the End of Days comes sooner-- being atheistic themselves, they liked to poke fun at these "dumb goyim"-- one could well argue that there's something sick about their war mongering. The fact is that when we all faced the draft, the neocons were so not much for war but now that there is no draft and patriotic moms and dads leave behind orphans and widows back home because of the neocons’ lies which TO THIS DAY they perpetuate, one can wonder how it is that the war mongers-- ALWAYS war mongers as their universal passe par tout, but ironically limited to Mideast issues-- didn't ever consider service (THOUGH FASHIONING THEMSELVES AS MILITARY EXPERTS) or, as in one case, cursed the war when his own son went and then cheered its perpetuation again when he came back. I would have respected them far more if they had not become a war industry propaganda machine that slanders all who do not swallow the blood they spill while safe in their West Side Manhatten apartments or their lush villas payed from war industries at the sea shore of "anti-Semite Eurabia." And still, once upon a time in my youth I was an admirer of Krystol for his tireless struggle as a public intellectual and not a war monger. It was later-- AFTER the Cold War-- that he became part of an Upper West Side Pentagon of cynical World War IV advocates. With his passing I choose to remember the one time kind wise elderly gentleman I had met in my youth. I, in fact, would not associate him with the other Generation I neocons or the slimy Generation II of for hire politicos.

keremoktem on "Islands of Solitude: a conversation with Hala Al Faysal "

keremoktem — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:23:51 +0000

Thank you very much for this very humane article, many reflections on patriarchal family structures I share. I also understand that the family is the main sociological unit in the Arab and much of the Islamic and Mediterranean world.

I was wondering, however, whether the term 'Arab family' is not an essentialising category that might be used happily by traditionalists, to reinforce their conservative view of society (and the subordinate role of the individual).

Might there not be significant differences between different groups in the Arab world? Do the same family structures and culture of subjugation apply to all groups in all parts of the Arab world? In the example of Syria: Do the same patriarchal family structures exist in Alawi, Christian and Sunni families?

Would it, alternatively, make more sense to speak of 'Patriarchal family structures' in the Arab world?

deteodoru on "Neo-conservatism: Irving Kristol’s living legacy"

deteodoru — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:29:16 +0000

The neocons wrote up a scene for Israeli domination of the Middle East using US military power like a mad dog on Israel's leach. Then they declared WORLD WAR IV on Islam, thinking that this way both sides of their bread would be buttered: on one side the Zionist Likudniks, on the other the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about which was in panic about the "END OF COLD WAR PEACE DIVIDEND." Of course, they never got what they wanted until a Islamic group just as intense as them attacked the US on 9/11; except that, unlike the neocons who advocate someone else going to war while they pull strings for their own (even fighting Hitler they wouldn't do), the alQaeda guys became suicide shahids. Another aspect of the neocon call for Greater Israel, its damnation of Mideast and destruction of Muslims, they declared themselves THE voice of American Jewry and attacked their critics as "self-hating Jews." Your analogy is made in a vacuum. All I can say for Krystol-- in my faith we try not to speak ill of the dead-- is that through thick and thin he argued his side openly (though never much of a promoter of meaningful dialogue like the US Commies at UC Berkeley). But what condemns them all hardest is if you look at their family assets. They came a long way from poor commies to rich war mongers. Read about that and you'll see that they were no crime-fighters!

bigC on "Neo-conservatism: Irving Kristol’s living legacy"

bigC — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 18:47:29 +0000

This is a completely uncritical look at Kristol's life. Not a mention of it's disastrous outcome for both the US and the World as a whole. Like most leftists who drift rightwards( eg Mussolini, Mosely) , Kristol didn't stop drifting and ending up creating a monster totally contemptuous of morality and justice and which regards democracy as a prop to legitimate the rule of the herd by the privileged. The world was not enriched by his presence in it and is not poorer for his leaving it.

DMZ on "Neo-conservatism: Irving Kristol’s living legacy"

DMZ — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 05:29:06 +0000

deteodoru said:
"But, in his old age, when the issue became Israel, he, like a lot of neocons who would never allow themselves or their sons to be put in harm's way by enisting in military service as infantrymen or even move to Israel so as to support it, was ever ready to sent thousands of American moms and dads to Mideast combat at risk of leaving their families as widows and orphans."

---------------I say to deteodoru:
I think the chickenhawk argument is silly. Just as you can be against crime and not wish to be a police officer, you can support a war and not be in the military. That said, I have no idea how many neo-cons have family in the military and I doubt you do either. Your seem to say that Kristol and other neo-cons in general can't be trusted when it comes to Israel. Interesting sentiment...I ask you, why do you think that is the case?

Yitzhak Klein on "Neo-conservatism: Irving Kristol’s living legacy"

Yitzhak Klein — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:11:04 +0000

A fair and balanced assessment of neoconservatism and of Irving Kristol on OpenDemocracy!

deteodoru on "Neo-conservatism: Irving Kristol’s living legacy"

deteodoru — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:33:37 +0000

As much as I felt that in the end the neocons were a bunch of shysters, I must also recall the energy and devotion they invested in intellect years ago before drowning in vitriolic polemics for profit. During the Cold War they were all indeed the true "public intellectuals." As one averse to social issues and focused on the scientific revolution unfolding in my youth, I must declare that it was they who, more than any others, got me fully involved in dealing with the social science of political policies as a citizen's duty rather than pechant. Had they been more open to debate after 9/11things would not have ended so tragically. Irving Krystol was not an evil man. But he may have fallen victim to mere chutzpah which robs one of the capacities of introspection and critical judgement. In his later years he stopped sensing what feel those he opposes or feel righteous about and was driven by others into a "professional revolutionary" tactic (Lenin's term) of polarizing to mobilize. He thus found himself demanding obedience more that discussion, the latter something he very obviously enjoyed most deeply in the past. For all us this "I'm right and you're an idiot" attitude gets much worse as we get older and in his case has caused his downfall. But that should not take away from his earlier devotion as one of the "public intellectuals" to provoking an America repulsed by "egg heads" into discourse on issues requiring study and debate. Personally, his death struck me rather deeply for it brought to an end all prospects for a meeting of the minds-- a hope based on the notion: where there's life there's hope. I cannot forget that he and most of the other first generation neocons entered the arena of academic debate and there made their mark rather than concentrating on milking the focus of power, Wash DC, as did the second generation of neocons. Krystol was not a bought man and so, whatever his faults, it is more than fair to say that he lived for ideas and their testing by open minds. But, in his old age, when the issue became Israel, he, like a lot of neocons who would never allow themselves or their sons to be put in harm's way by enisting in military service as infantrymen or even move to Israel so as to support it, was ever ready to sent thousands of American moms and dads to Mideast combat at risk of leaving their families as widows and orphans. The gingoistic tone of the pear-shaped second generation of neocons is a striking contrast. As for the first generation, the more gingoistic their diatribes became after 9/11, the more distant they seemed from their better days of more moral intellect during the Cold War. Alas, for us all, death ends the hope of reconciliation to that magic point where we look forward to stimulating clash of ideas. Now public intellectuals have been replaced by interested activists, some for sale, other for reasons of their own. Academia seems silenced and all we get are the diatribes of think tanks on cable TV news. It thus seems that the Soviet-like anti-intellectual propaganda that Krystol devoted his life to fighting against has become the sole output of everything he was involved with to the last of his days. I shall greive his passing, for he had, nevertheless, contributed much to moving America's "anti-egghead" mentality of the 40s and 50s to the intellectual highs of the 60s, 70s and 80s.

Tony Simpson on "Leszek Kolakowski: thinker for our time"

Tony Simpson — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 14:03:50 +0000

It is unlikely that Kolakowski would have concurred with Scruton's defamation of the late Wlodzimierz Brus, who was an exceptional writer and teacher. Brus mastered the English idiom in a way which enabled him to offer real insights into socialist practice and theory, as exemplified in his book SOCIALIST OWNERSHIP AND POLITICAL SYSTEMS, which won the Isaac Deutscher Prize .

English Think-Tank on "The moon landing: an openDemocracy symposium"

English Think-Tank — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 19:50:11 +0000

After a lenghy investigation of all available evidence including the scientific research from NASA over the last 40 years It is the stance of the English Think-Tank that the moon landings where a compleat hoax, no one went to the moon in 1969 or since. No one has ever stood on the moon, and no animal ( dog or monkey ) has ever orbited the moon and returned a live.