Hi Christopher,

----- Original Message -----
From: "Christopher Walker" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 29 September 2002 08:42
Subject: Re: the emperor's portfolio

Thanks for that post

| Agreed. It's not intrinsically illogical: the relationship, surely, is one
| of *material implication*. Though it isn't, I think, 'direct'.

I don't think I'll concede "direct" just now; but I won't defend it (tho I
am a little concerned to find myself slipping into that kind of metaphor)
There are so many criticisms of the case for war and only in some of them is
that correlation direct. It's direct in mine, but not in all connections -
I'll swap that for an abandoment of non-sequitur

| Some young London Iraqis attending yesterday's demonstration used a slogan
| with a different structure: 'Kill Saddam, not the Iraqi people'. But was
| that any better?

Well it makes a point, I suppose; but I dont like it because it concedes the
war; andall the leaders of the onanocracy'll come in saying their prayers
about trying not to kill or the greater good nonsense with which they sought
to justify the terrorism of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Everything I have heard about it, but everything, suggests he's horrific...
but... but... notice the emphasis upon "his own people" in "he killed his
own people". To me it's the killing itself; and I'd like to know the outcome
of the Bloody Sunday inquiry and other shoot to kill policies - And then
there's Chechnia and China, not to mention exposure of USUK people as guinea
pigs for nuclear radiation effects - before we get to sanctimonious about
"his own people"

Why Saddam Hussein? Why not Ariel Sharon? [Answer: one's our son of a bitch
and one isnt - not good enough for me]

Heh ho. War or no war it's time to wash some clothes


L




|
| <snip>
| [it's] the sign of a dissociation, which is another way of saying a
| stupidity (note the indefinite article). A false totality, in which a
single
| underlying cause (pro-Zionism in this case, or alternatively anti-Muslim /
| anti-Arab racism) is held responsible for diverse effects, is substituted
| for the real manifold of relationships [DF]
| <snip>
|
| No. See above. This, undressed, is merely the vacuous truth that if the
| connections do not work for you the slogan splinters, becomes 'a false
| totality'. 'The real manifold of relationships' sounds impressive but is
| (again) the _rhetoric_ of something better, albeit with less excuse and
with
| less specific meaning.
|
| Slogans are problematic not (necessarily) because their users do not know
| the rules of syllogistic but because they are the inchoate or covert
| expression of a point of view which may be (a) vapid ('What do we want?
| Freedom and Justice. When do we want it? Now') or (b) suspect ('Victory to
| the intifada' in the mouths of Hizb ut Tahrir, the islamist Party of
| Liberation, who were also represented in Hyde Park). There are, no doubt,
| quite other reasons why some slogans may not work; but these are the main
| ones and reductionism probably the least of them - certainly in the
context
| of a demonstration. And always there will come a point when Wood Green
| Mennonites, North London Chassidim, trade unionists from Glasgow and so
| forth may find they cannot agree - with various Muslim groups and/or with
| each other. Umbrellas, patently, are things under which it is difficult to
| shelter more than one person at once.
|
| You can, of course, reject ideology altogether and go for Big Tent, Third
| Way inclusivity as does the Reverend Blair. But that is to do two things.
|
| Firstly, it is to ignore any part/whole structure in how one thinks and
| talks about things in favour of a discourse which is undimensioned,
| feature-driven; to diminish a quite powerful, useful distinction (between
| mereology and taxonomy, to put it in another, pompous way) into pick 'n'
mix
| incoherence. Which is one of the reasons why Blair is essentially
parasitic
| upon others' intellectual, emotional or rhetorical energy, including that
of
| President Twig.
|