Sunday, October 10, 2004
Derrida: Apprendre � vivre enfin...
Jacques Derrida, the great French philosopher, died this weekend at age 74. He was the last of the great thinkers of his era, "penseurs de 68", who included Althusser, Lacan, Foucault, Barthes, and Deleuze. In an interview he gave just a few months ago in Le Monde, he discussed what it means to learn how to live:
"Apprendre
� vivre,
cela devrait signifier apprendre � mourir, � prendre en compte, pour l'accepter, la mortalit� absolue (sans salut, ni r�surrection ni r�demption) - ni pour soi ni
pour l'autre. Depuis
Platon, c'est la vieille injonction philosophique :
philosopher, c'est apprendre
� mourir."
Derrida's intellectual contributions continued up to his death. Notably, his book with J�rgen Habermas after the events of 11 September 2001, Le �concept� du 11 septembre, provided an intellectual response to the new problems of the 21st century. Read an interview with Derrida on the issue of terrorism published in Le Monde Diplomatique.
A More Secure World?
"The
Bush administration's 'war on terrorism' reflects a major failure
of leadership and makes Americans more vulnerable rather than
more secure. The administration has chosen a path to combat terrorism
that has weakened multilateral institutions and squandered international
goodwill. Not only has Bush failed to support effective reconstruction
in
I couldn't have said it better. Read more of this report, "A Secure America in a Secure World," put out by Foreign Policy in Focus.
Project Censored
"Today most economists, regardless of their political persuasion, agree that the data over the last 25 to 30 years is unequivocal. The top 5% is capturing an increasingly greater portion of the pie while the bottom 95% is clearly losing ground, and the highly touted American middle class is fast disappearing."
Project Censored, whose mission is to bring to light stories that didn't make it into the mainstream headlines, lists "Wealth Inequality in 21st Century" as their #1 story. Read more by checking out their site.
Presidential Debate Fact Check
"Need
some wood?"
Bush got a few laughs out of that line in the second presidential debate (8 Oct 2004,
Bush attacked Kerry with an assertion that "900,000 small businesses
will be taxed under his [Kerry's] plan because most small businesses
are Subchapter S corps or limited partnerships, and they pay tax
at the individual income tax level."
Kerry countered by exposing the loose definition of 'small business'
used by Bush to come up with that number. "And you know why
he gets that count? The president got $84 from a timber company
that he owns, and he's counted as a small business. Dick Cheney's
counted as a small business. That's how they do things. That's just
not right."
"Distortions Galore at Second Presidential Debate" is
the Anneberg Public Policy Center's report
on the way the two candidates fudged some of their facts. The report
and other fact check articles can be found at their website: Holding Politicians Accountable. Check it out and keep tabs
on the truth.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts."
~ Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Anneberg Political Fact Check
FactCheck.org