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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>As much as this interaction almost
intrigues me . . . . <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'><DELETE> *<b><span
style='font-weight:bold'>click</span></b>*<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>Tom Hansen<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on"><font size=2
color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;
color:navy'>Moscow</span></font></st1:City><font size=2 color=navy
face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>, <st1:State
w:st="on">Idaho</st1:State></span></font></st1:place><font size=2 color=navy
face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>We could learn a lot from crayons: some are sharp,
some are pretty, some are dull, some have weird names, and all are different
colors....but they all exist very nicely in the same box. </span><o:p></o:p></font></p>
</div>
<div>
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color=black face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:windowtext'>
<hr size=3 width="100%" align=center tabindex=-1>
</span></font></div>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=2 color=black face=Tahoma><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Tahoma;color:windowtext;font-weight:bold'>From:</span></font></b><font
size=2 color=black face=Tahoma><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Tahoma;
color:windowtext'> vision2020-bounces@moscow.com
[mailto:vision2020-bounces@moscow.com] <b><span style='font-weight:bold'>On
Behalf Of </span></b>David M. Budge<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>Sent:</span></b> Sunday, February 13, 2005
2:02 AM<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>To:</span></b> <st1:PersonName w:st="on">Joan
Opyr</st1:PersonName><br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>Cc:</span></b> Vision2020 Moscow<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>Subject:</span></b> Re: [Vision2020] Re: Noam
Chomsky and other concerns</span></font><font color=black><span
style='color:windowtext'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>Joan, it's unfair of you to stuff words in my mouth
(as in Horowitz) as I've hardly room for my feet as it is. Secondly. I
agree with Horowitz about as much as I agree with Hitchens (not so much),
but as I've said, even a broken clock is right twice a day. Hitchens,
however, can turn a rhetorical phrase almost as well as Churchill (that's
Winston, not Ward) and I read him for his style more than his substance.
Do you think it's possible I could agree with his positions on economics after
listening to several days of my hun-like narratives on libertarianism? He does
drink too much though (scotch, not bourbon), and I'm with you on <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Yugoslavia</st1:place></st1:country-region>.
<br>
<br>
I'm a bit skeptical on the Lancet's "100,000 dead" statistic you
quote as even Human Rights Watch thinks that number is quite exaggerated, and
the leading source of tracking such numbers, iragbodycount.net, puts the high
side at just under 20,000. Not that that's insignificant, but one must needs to
be careful when spouting statistics that may be incendiary. Keep in mind
that Human Rights Watch estimated that Saddam murdered an average of about
30,000 a year for ten years. Personally, I was extremely conflicted over the
Iraq initiative and never endorsed military action, but there are very smart
people on both sides of the argument and I've not just yet made up my mind as
the rationale of the arguments are most often based on a yet inconclusive
outcome. (how's that for a chicken-sh_t answer.) I will, however, stand
on my position that pulling out now would be immoral, but I'm sure you have
much to say about that.<br>
<br>
Last but not least, my suffering from a chronic case of over-zealous optimism,
makes me stick to my guns in hope for you having some sort of political
epiphany. And, as apparently went unnoticed, I'm much more interested in
you leaving the Democratic party than I am recruiting you into any other.
I'm just hoping for greater pluralism in our politics, especially among
the learned. I'm sure that now that Howard (my barbaric yaup) Dean has become
Chair of the DNC, you've great hope for the revival of the New Deal. But
perhaps I'm discounting your last (incredibly insightful) paragraph as
glibness.<br>
<br>
Dave Budge<br>
<br>
<br>
<st1:PersonName w:st="on">Joan Opyr</st1:PersonName> wrote:<br>
<br>
<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>Dave writes:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>"It is difficult to find rhetorical balance as a
student of political philosophy. In that effort I read regularly:
The Nation, The New Republic, Reason Magazine, and The National Review (don't
choke Joan.) I also make sure I catch every Hitchens' piece in either Slate or
Vanity Fair. Given the progression of my leanings it's probably not
difficult to figure out which I find to be more credible."<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>I <strong><b><u><font face="Times New Roman">am</font></u></b></strong>
choking, David, not because you read <strong><b><font face="Times New Roman">The
National Review</font></b></strong> but because you cite David Horowitz
with apparent approval. He, more than any of the other right-wing
ideologues you mention, is frequently guilty of selective quotation and
grotesque distortion. I find his work shoddy in terms of research and his
political analyses cheap and shallow. I'm afraid Horowitz is the
Right's answer to Camille Paglia -- another shallow thinker who disguises her
lack of genuine depth with deft allusions to her "reading for
tonnage" and a clever sleight of vocabulary: <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>"Presto, change-o; I'm Susan Sontag! No,
really! What do you mean what I just said makes no sense?
I used the word chthonic, didn't I? Go on, define that! Hah!
You can't. Asshole."<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>(I hate Camille Paglia. Can you tell?)<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>Though my affinity for the Democrats is, as I say,
largely vestigial, you're wrong to think there's any hope for me. I will
stay in the party and fight for its salvation until the last dog (meaning that
frothing old fool, Zell Miller) is hung. I might have been a
Rockefeller Republican -- I like Rockefeller Republicans -- but the words turn
to ashes in my mouth. I . . . can't . . . do . . . it.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>Ted -- I've read a good deal of Chomsky. Not the
complete works, of course, because that wouldn't leave me any time for Miss
Marple, but of what I have read, I find myself more in sympathy with his
politics than with his linguistic theory. I began my academic career in
linguistics (before I got tired of transcribing my accent
into International Phonetic Alphabet form) and, even then, 1988-1993,
Chomsky's linguistic work was widely considered outdated. He was not/is
not interested in language acquisition. He simply declares that the brain
is "hardwired" for language and leaves it at that. And so,
except for a few die-hard students, linguistics professors tend to leave
Chomsky alone. His importance as an American intellectual, a free
thinker, and a radical cannot be denied. Agree or disagree, what he has
to say on political subjects is fascinating. He certainly can't be
ignored or sidelined.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>About Chomsky's statements in the 1970s re: Pol Pot
and the Khmer Rouge -- Chomsky's positions, like the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> government's, have obviously
changed with new information and new political realities. Who would have
guessed that Pol Pot would murder a million of his own countrymen? Who
could have known that Khmer Rouge massacres would kill as many or more
Cambodians than the illegal US bombing campaign? What's important, I
think, is to recognize that Pol Pot's crimes don't absolve us of our own.
Saddam Hussein's brutality doesn't make our disregard for Iraqi civilians
(100,000 dead and counting) in the current war okay. Dead is dead, and
when you're standing at the graveside of a lost friend or relative, I doubt
very much if you care about the political how and why. It
doesn't matter if that death was the consequence of the
machinations of your own homegrown dictator or a faraway government. You
are enraged; you are bereaved; you're filled with grief and despair. The
question, then, is what do you do about it? Take the philosophical
approach? Go home and keep your head down? Join a resistance group
or build a car-bomb or flee to <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iran</st1:country-region>
or <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Syria</st1:place></st1:country-region>?<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>Right now, the only pot I'm interested in is the pot
we're stirring -- and I don't make this pun for laughs. There's nothing
funny about the situation in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region>,
just as there was nothing funny about the destruction of <st1:country-region
w:st="on">Vietnam</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Cambodia</st1:country-region>,
and <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Laos</st1:place></st1:country-region>.
Would there have been a Pol Pot without our mass destruction of <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Cambodia</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s rice
paddies, forests, and (however crude by our standards) government and
infrastructure? Would we be fighting a second Iraq War if George Bush Sr.
and Ronald Reagan hadn't propped up and armed Saddam Hussein in the
1980s? American actions have international consequences, but the vast
majority of the population fails to recognize that. <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>
has big, big feet, but most of us vote and talk and behave as if we were a
nation of toe-dancers. This is where the (corporate) media lets us
down. This is where our two-party system lets us down. This is
where Republicans and Democrats are in perfect agreement: politics is
about mouthing empty rhetoric and rallying just enough of the Rah-Rah
crowd to push through an agenda that benefits the existing hegemony, i.e., the
ruling class.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>Oh, hell -- I'm not a Democrat, am I? I'm an
anarcho-syndicalist. It was bound to happen someday . . .<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><st1:PersonName w:st="on"><font size=3 color=black
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Joan Opyr</span></font></st1:PersonName>/Auntie
Establishment<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>PS: Christopher Hitchens drinks too much. He's a
once-fine writer who has boiled too many brain cells in bourbon. He lost
me around about the time he advocated bombing seven kinds of hell out of <st1:City
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Belgrade</st1:place></st1:City>. And what
did we get for that? The eternal enmity of the Serbs and a radical
Islamist government in Kosovo. Dumb, dumb, dumb.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'><br>
<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'><br clear=all>
<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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color=black face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>
<hr size=3 width="100%" align=center>
</span></font></div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : <a
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<br>
<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<pre><font size=2 color=black face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></pre><pre
style='text-align:center'><font size=2 color=black face="Courier New"><span
style='font-size:10.0pt'>
<hr size=4 width="90%" align=center>
</span></font></pre><pre><font size=2 color=black face="Courier New"><span
style='font-size:10.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></pre><pre><font
size=2 color=black face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt'>_____________________________________________________<o:p></o:p></span></font></pre><pre><font
size=2 color=black face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt'> List services made available by First Step Internet, <o:p></o:p></span></font></pre><pre><font
size=2 color=black face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt'> serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994. <o:p></o:p></span></font></pre><pre><font
size=2 color=black face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt'> <a
href="http://www.fsr.net">http://www.fsr.net</a> <o:p></o:p></span></font></pre><pre><font
size=2 color=black face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt'> <a
href="mailto:Vision2020@moscow.com">mailto:Vision2020@moscow.com</a><o:p></o:p></span></font></pre><pre><font
size=2 color=black face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt'>ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ<o:p></o:p></span></font></pre><pre><font
size=2 color=black face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></pre></div>
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