Going to School
What life is like when there is no rule of law, no security, no strong-enough central government, no one able to keep the strong and cruel and violent and selfish from preying on everyone else. Thrasymachus world. Thug world, warlord world, Mafia world, feudal world, give me that world, extortion world. Do what I say or I’ll hit you with a stick or cut you with a knife or shoot you world. Nightmare world.
Escalating attacks by the Taliban and other armed groups on teachers, students and schools in Afghanistan are shutting down schools and depriving another generation of an education, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. Schools for girls have been hit particularly hard, threatening to undo advances in education since the Taliban’s ouster in 2001…Human Rights Watch found entire districts in Afghanistan where attacks had closed all schools and driven out the teachers and non-governmental organizations providing education…Afghanistan’s rapidly growing criminal networks, many involved in the production and trade of narcotics, also target schools because in many areas they are the only symbol of government authority.
How we take education for granted. I certainly did when I was a child; I would have preferred to stay home to read fairy tales and wander the fields and woods all day. But then I’d never had men with knives and sticks and guns telling me I couldn’t go, or beating me up or throwing acid in my face if I did go, or murdering my teacher. I think of my teachers…and I just imagine that experience.
Well, at least the contrast is stark; at least we know what side we’re on; even the most infatuated, the hand-wringers about consumerism or alienation or other crimes of modernity, know what side they’re on. On the one hand thugs, bullies, crime, violence, preventing people from teaching and learning. On the other hand education. Learning, growing, expanding, thinking, discovering the world. But the thugs are winning.
Where’s the rest of the Left? So obsessed with Bush and Blair that they excuse and side with the real enemy.
And where is the Right? Worried about a NYT story the weekend home of the Secretary of Defense, who had already said OK to the story. etc etc
I don’t think either side has a clear notion of what to do.
No, its worse, David. The Right spent its time advocating a useless trillion dollar war and now agitating for another one (Iran). Making Afghanistan a forgotten orphan. Don’t blame “the left” for the debacle in Afghanistan.
Posing some – any kind – of equivalence between the Taleban and Christian fundamentalists is nuts. It diminishes the horror of what the Taleban are doing. You are in essence saying that our society and theirs are equivalent. Where are the NT passages frequently used by fundies in the present to deny women property-rights, education, the vote…?The enemy is not the internal foe, it is the enemy which blows up commuter trains, beheads teachers, throws acid in the face of children, torches schools, hangs people in public for being gay, commits genocide (against Kurds, Marsh Arabs), wants a new Caliphate incorporating all lands where Islam ruled, now or in the past.
Best wishes.
The thugs are not winning everywhere. Hilary Benn gave an excellent interview on the Today programme this morning, arguing the case for continued aid to developing countries. It came as a surprise to hear a member of the New Labour government speak with conviction and without equivocation; yet another reminder to yours truly not to generalise unnecessarily.
Hmmmm….it really looks to me as if the neo-con strategy of “exporting democracy” throughout the entire planet by using military might to “make those Muslim ragheads” respect us is working to a fault. Would it not be appropriate to offically admit that the Bush admintration’s “foreign policy” has been an absolute catastrophe now?? 1) Radicalization of Iran, 2) interminable civil war and chaos in Iraq, 3) Hezbollah ince again using Lebanon (what happened to the Cedar revoluation? Awwwww shucks!!) as a launching pad to terrorize Israel, 4) Isreal at war with Lebanon, 5) Isreal back in control of Gaza, 6) Afganstian back in control of Taliban, 7) Somalia in the hands of fundamentalists, 8) Hamas governing the Palestinians, 9) Pakistan housing terrorists…………………etc………….
MikeS – yes I heard that too, and echo your surprise at hearing such straightforward talk for once about aid issues.
Anyone Stateside: friends of mine returned recently to the UK from a trip to Chicago and then Nevada and were surprised at how many previous ardent supporters of Bush (recently as ’03) they met who were now desperate to get rid of the guy and his administration… body bag count & pointless cost to the US being big determiners. Does this represent a common feeling ? (They were talking to some ex-US servicement in particular, but also a couple of off duty senior Chicago police, so not obvious Nader or Gore voters…)
Oh yeah, it represents a common feeling. It’s just a tad late, that’s all. Bush’s faults and empty spaces have been so obvious all along that I really don’t understand what took six years to sink in.
I also still have hope for you because I read Doonesbury…
Doonesbury is all very well, but why do we keep voting Howdy Doodies into that disproportionately powerful office? I do not find that habit a source of optimism.
It’s a tad bit late, and since Republican apparatchniks control the companies that make electornic voting machines, I’m not sure what the answer is.
Mr. Mullens: Have you ever read anything about Mr. Rushdoony and the Christian Reconstructionist movement? Have you looked at the links between the Doninionists and the Republican Party ideologs? Have you listened to people like Rick “Bring your dead fetus home to the children” Santorum? Are you aware that there is legislation in Congress that forbids the courts to rule on anything dealing with establishment of religion?
I’m sure that the victims of Gay Bar and Abortion Clinic bombings are happy to know that Christian Fundamentalists are nothing like the Taliban.
It’s a matter of opportunity, not ideology.
(Note, I am not saying ALL Christians are like this, not even all “fundamentalists.” But to make a claim that there is a vast difference between the thinking patterns is wrong).
I appreciate your optimism, Mr. Tingey. Pleasant thought that. We’ll all be long dead before the crunch-point comes.
Francesco,
Sure all that shite is going on (e.g. Hezbollah rocketed Haifa today.), but look at the upside. Oil is approaching $77 a barrel. Things are working out for some people.
Mr. Tingley’s rage against the religious will keep him alive for at least that long, Doug. :)
Mr. Tingey,
Surely you meant the 2006 elections, and not those of 2106. I was hoping for a correction.
Thanks for the link to Pharyngula, Mr.Tingey. That’s a beautiful little essay.
GT, what’s going to happen in 2037?
I’m hugely impressed by your omniscience; I wish I could do that.
GT, if you don’t want sarcasm, don’t make flat factual declarations about what is going to happen in the future. That’s a mug’s game.
You believe I don’t take the nutters seriously enough (you said the opposite, but I take that to have been inadvertent). Well I tell you what: would you like to take over B&W and do the job properly, since I seem to be getting it wrong?
I can’t believe in Mr. Tingey’s scenario, either. My scenario is a lot closer to Mad Max Or, at best, Europe post-Roman Empire.
Some of the posts are bonkers. All they are missing is some green ink and they’d be perfect.
There are enough silly or dangerous things going on in the world – think North Korea, Hezbollah, Ahmedinajad, death worshipping Islamic nihilists- without being paranoid about hypotheticals. I am pretty confident about the basic resilience of the West and I think you should be too. US presidents come and go. So do British Prime Ministers. When GWB’s term finishes in 2009, nobody expects him to do anything but leave office, and return to private life. The Syrians and Egyptians. and Iranians and Saudis and N Koreans and Burmese, etc should be so lucky.
Best wishes
Let’s see Mr. Mushens:
We have a wing of the Republican Party funded by people who literally think we need t6o smash the state so that multinational corporations can be uuterly free from any constraints.
We have a U. S. General bragging that “Our God is bigger than Your God” and calling for a new “Crusade.”
We have a government which is beginning to funnel more and more taxpayers’ money to “faith-based organizations, with little oversight.
We have a President who purportedly says that “God works directly through him.” He also said that nonbeleivers cannot be true citizens, if I’m recalling correctly????
We have a U.S, Senator who is so wackily “pro-life” that he carries his wife’s dead fetus home for the kids to cuddle with.
Several of the biggest foundations and trusts in the United States actively fund dominionist think tanks.
Yep. YOU may be sanguine because you are a Christian. Some of us are not so sujre.