Posts by Neil Morrison
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Hard News: You know what ..., in reply to Paul Campbell,
after all he was Reagan's golden boy fighting the russians in Afghanistan, funded by the US
That bin Laden was supported by the US during the 80s is a myth.
He came to prominence by creating a system of non-Afghani fighters that was resourced independently of the USA and other non-Muslim countries which were funding the Afghani Muslim fighters in Afghanistan. Bin Laden was even then completely against what he considered as unwarranted non-Muslim interference in Muslim affairs.
His long-standing blood feud with the Saudi royals mostly stemmed from his objection to their acceptance of US support against Saddam.
Also it's wrong to say that the US was unaware of bin Laden during the 90s. The Clinton administration took active measures against him but were constrained by the politics of the time in a way which Bush after 9/11 was not. Clinton missed some opportunities but that’s easy to say in hindsight.
It's also not accurate to say the US paid no attention to the political motivations of bin Laden. Bin Laden’s biggest grudge against the US was US troops in Saudi Arabia which was why he started to target the US from the early 90s. Two weeks after Saddam fell the US pulled their troops from Saudi Arabia. Not a co-incidence.
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While I am actually inclined to believe that educating students on Breillat's use of bondage in Romance does serve a public good I think there should be greater restrictions on entry to concentrate resources on those that can best make use of them.
Unversities function pretty much like the rest of society - squabbling over power and resources, the clash of egos etc. No amount of critical thinking changes certain fundamentals. I'm not sure academics have a lot to offer there.
It's slightly bleak but whenever I hear talk of intellectuals I think of
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I think Danyl has a point about some of the dynamics in this forum. I've been called a troll several times and had the good faith of my arguments questioned and it seemed to me only because I was putting forward an unpopular view.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Simply because you need plurality of points of view and the capacity to articulate dissent in your public intellectual class.
but when has this not been the case? There's always disagreement bacause there's always a range of views. Even the most repressive of societies had dissidents.
I'm not sure that such plurality rests on cultivation at universities.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to giovanni tiso,
... there wasn't a public intellectual class capable of strongly articulating the values of society that were worth preserving against the crude economism and short term thinking of the reformers
why would public intellectuals necessarily have opposed Rogernomics?
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I didn't find myself quoting the original text of the Iliad in my subsequent IT career.
There's where you went wrong career-wise, Zuckerberg used to recite ancient Greek.
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Re post-modermism, the version that has had a strangle-hold on so many humanities depts has been the I-get-power-over-students-and-other-academics-from-writing-incomprehensible-sentences version. Going back to the original sources is something quite different. Although I still think Foucault was mad.
It's still the case that many in the humanities think Lacan has something relevant to say about psychology while having a real dislike of anything with a whiff of MRI about it. That's not exactly critical thinking.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to giovanni tiso,
The irony there, is that you actually need philosophers to defend science.
such as Feyerabend?
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Sacha,
And others more plugged in than you or I have started unravelling some of the wheeling and dealing.
If you're refering to foreign investors in SFC then they were included so the govt would have complete control over the receivership process. It wasn't a secret.
But Cunliffe has been going on about the total bailout, a process he voted for twice.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Sacha,
However, I'm not convinced the opposition had any role in extending SCF's coverage after in-depth advice of the risk.
David Cunliffe in Audust 2009 on why Labour voted to support National's extension of the scheme:
The extension of the former Labour Government’s Retail Deposit Guarantee Scheme until the end of 2011 should provide renewed confidence for depositors and institutions, says Labour Finance spokesperson David Cunliffe.
Labour had no problem with the legisation.
We may never know all the back room dealing and special interest pleading involved.
You're refering to why Cunliffe changed his position so dramatically and won such support from the Hubbard Cult?