Heidegger

On 27 Oct 2006, at 14:25, GEVANS613 at aol.com wrote:

> In a message dated 27/10/2006 12:32:26 GMT Standard Time,
> bookwright at bogvaerker.dk writes:
>
>
> ABDASSAMAD CLARKE:
> Jud, you are almost entirely arguing with a phantom of your own
> creation. You rant about killing, and I have never even once
> suggested that anyone should be killed. Indeed I have written in
> this exchange that the madness that threatens us all is people who
> are very eager to start the killing on a grand scale both in the
> east and the west. You rant about western this and that, and I have
> not argued about western this and that; I am western as you well
> know and I am here because I am interested in and illuminated by
> what I have read of one Westerner against whom you rail. How
> someone who writes as you do can dare to accuse anyone else of ad
> hominem attacks is beyond me; your writing is sometimes almost
> entirely in attack mode.
>
> More pertinent to our age if not to philosophy or Heidegger is that
> in 1948 an Englishman of such a sort who was always diametrically
> opposed to right-wing movements, seeing the outcome of the defeat
> of the fascist tyrannies, sat down to write what he saw as the
> reality of his current situation by adopting the device of science
> fiction writers in talking about a then-remote future, naming his
> book 1984. Now we are seeing the emergence of the totalitarianism
> about which he wrote, which ironically is built on the defeat of
> the Nazis. Jud, it is all very well to thrash the living daylights
> out of a dead lion, but what about the dog that is right now at our
> throats? Abdassamad Clarke

I sense that you see something meaningful in the juxtaposition of
these two paragraphs but do not grasp what it is.

> JUD EVANS:
> You mean the moronic alcoholic born-again-idiot in the Shite House
> and the bloody-handed Christian smiler-with-the-knife in number 10?
> They and the human dross with which they have surrounded themselves
> are FINISHED - just a matter of time before they are out on their
> arses. History will call them failures - us moderns will call them
> filth.
>
> ABDASSAMAD CLARKE:
> you trivialise it into a matter of personalities as you do with
> Heidegger.
>
> JUD EVANS:
> Well, you began the trivialisation with your talk of: *the dog that
> is right now at our throats.* Who does the word *dog* refer to? If
> a human - which human? Bush? Blair? Or is your choice of the
> epithet *dog* in reference to *western capitalism and its culture?

I think I actually stated in the very first paragraph above at the
very beginning the nature of the dog: totalitarianism. So many signs
of its emergence: the rush to legislate everything, extraordinary
rendition, and many things not directly connected to the war on
terror. It is a kind of fever gripping the body politic, a panic.
Have you read Carlyle’s “French Revolution”?

> If so do you attribute this *property* of the genus canis to ALL
> westerners [or non-Muslims] who dwell in those areas where
> capitalism is this dreadful economic and social system - and if it
> IS so awful, why do all the Muslims from Pakistan and all points
> east flock here, and queue for weeks sometimes months to get an
> entry visa?

There was a very good news item on Newsnight quite recently which you
might have seen. It was about the Senegalese who wash up on the
shores of the Spanish islands. The cause: overfishing often by
Spanish fishermen of Senegalese waters. Is this the evil west getting
a taste of its own? No! It is deeper than that.

> In some of our towns nowadays you would swear you had arrived in
> Hydrabad or Islamabad other than for the familiar and reassuring
> street furniture and Fish and Chip shops. If you DO mean this
> *blanket condemnation* then you are in tune with a leading Afghani
> Muhajadeen, who said on British TV a few nights ago that ALL
> westerners are now targets for assassination, irrespective of WHO
> they are - soldiers - civilians - tourists or even innocent people
> going about their business in their HOME countries, for it was they
> including (1.54m the Muslim population of Britain] who voted the
> governments responsible for the foreign interventions into power.

I disown such language utterly. It is not permissible in Islam to
target civilians. Women and children and non-combatants may not be
killed.

> Are the British Muslims excused from this slaughter because they
> pray in a Mosque rather than a Church? Do you include them ALL in
> your sweeping description of our populations as *the dog that is
> right now at our throats?*

As I said, you have not even remotely grasped what I refer to. But
that must be my fault for being too oblique for which I apologise.
>
> Is this YOUR position too? Straight answer please.
>
> ABDASSAMAD CLARKE:
> No. That is not my position. I usually hesitate when asked to
> assent to or deny a set of propositions, but I have here to make it
> quite clear that this is not what I am talking about. I also
> thought that you might have known from our correspondence so far
> that this is not my position.
>
> JUD EVANS:
> You say that WHAT is not *your position?
>
> ABDASSAMAD CLARKE:
> You asked for a straight answer and then fly into a rage when I
> give you one. Since you imputed an extremely complex set of
> propositions to me, and expect me to refute or endorse it, why do
> you get apoplectic when I choose the former? The complex set of
> propositions and prejudices that you presented do not represent my
> position. If you want to know my position then come out of
> confrontation mode, and let us begin to communicate.
>
> JUD EVANS:
> Who are your DOGS? Let’s have a straight answer. If they are
> *certain people* who are they? The leaders? If so why did you say
> of me: *You trivialise it into a matter of personalities.
>
> ABDASSAMAD CLARKE:
> Actually, it was “dog” not “dogs”
>
> JUD EVANS:
> So AT LAST you admit you dog to be an individual - which is what
> you lambasted ME for when I identified Bush and Blair.
>
> ABDASSAMAD CLARKE
> : … and no it was not B & B, nor was it Western capitalism or
> Western anything. Perhaps the dog is our own systems.
>
> JUD EVANS:
> But capitalism IS our system isn’t it? In your Islamic
> paradiasical clerical systems usury is banned isn’t it?

And in Judaism and Christianity originally, and I believe even
Aristotle and Plato spoke out against it.

> Unless, which is more likely your contempt is directed against our
> religious system - Christianity?
>
> ABDASSAMAD CLARKE:
> Have you seen Terry Gilligham’s “Brasil”, a very dystopic film? In
> it the state functionary dreams repeatedly of heroically and even
> quixotically fighting to save the mystically feminine heroine of
> his dreams from a monstrous samurai figure, who in my understanding
> is the state. When he fells it, he pulls off the mask only to find
> himself gazing into his own face.
>
> JUD EVANS:
> I have no time for *let’s pretend* politics, any more than I have
> time for *let’s pretend* philosophy. Address the real world please
> - who is your dog of war - surely it is a person or persons who
> unleash war - not some *state* reified into a fantasy samurai
> figure? *States are abstract reifications of those who is statified
> - over a million Brits demonstrated against the war in the biggest
> demonstration in our history - including many Muslims - are they
> too part of your fantasy Japanese warrior?

I know that doctrinally you refuse poetry but your writing testifies
(sometimes) that you are capable of poetic insight. However, you
refuse to admit it into our conversation because now you are in
combat mode. You are using your intellect like a weapon. But it can
also be used in other ways.

> JUD EVANS:
> You have TRAPPED yourself now, because if you answer *individuals*
> your ad hom against me as * a trivialiser* fails. I if you say it
> is the people of the west and our
> *culture* then you paint yourself as just another fanatic.
>
> ABDASSAMAD CLARKE:
> You are far too clever for the likes of me, Jud, but then I think
> you are too clever for yourself, too clever by half.
>
> JUD EVANS:
> All very interesting - but this is not some contrived Socratic
> elenchtic dialogue - just ANSWER the question please. Who or what
> is this monstrous samurai that you now blame for war?

The butterfly is squashed by the sledge hammer, but it doesn’t
actually need such a large and blunt implement to kill it.

> ABDASSAMAD CLARKE:
> I am not saying individuals, at least certainly not B & B, and I
> am not levelling blanket accusations against the people of the west.
>
> JUD EVANS:
> Just ANSWER the question please.

You sound now like a public prosecutor in a Stalinist court of law.

> ABDASSAMAD CLARKE:
> You have certainly read Greek tragedy in which the tragic happens
> in spite of and often because of people’s good intentions. But let
> us be more specific: then the bankers, financiers, financial
> speculators and the military-industrial complex. But in that end,
> that encompasses almost everyone since even quite ordinary people,
> Muslims included, work in all these industries. Many Muslims worked
> in the financial companies in the twin towers, for example. So we
> are the dog and the throat perhaps.
>
> JUD EVANS:
> AT LAST! The dog then is religion - for the bankers, financiers,
> financial speculators and the military-industrial complex and
> almost all quite ordinary people, Muslims included, who work in all
> these industries in the WEST [certainly in religion-blighted USA
> anyway] are Christians, and the bankers, financiers, financial
> speculators and the military-industrial complex and almost all
> quite ordinary people who work in all these industries in the EAST
> are Muslims. So it is [and all wars] are wars of RELIGION aren’t they?

You might think that logical but it has nothing to do with what I
wrote. Your own prejudices are manifesting to you in what I write.

>
> ABDASSAMAD CLARKE:
> Indeed, I would relish your participation in some kind of
> investigation as to the nature of the dog and ways to prevent our
> all being consumed by it. Or perhaps you think that this
> increasingly polarised age is not dangerous for us all. When I said
> “our” throats, I meant yours and mine. But why is it that you
> cannot “read” that but launch into a diatribe?
>
> JUD EVANS:
> My eyesight and my judgement are in first class shape as I keep
> being told in university. Don’t try and play dialectical ring-a-
> roses with me The definition asked of you was the identity of your
> DOG not of US as the THROATS!!!!! You must think I was born
> yesterday to try crude word-swopping like that. Read what you wrote
> originally - think upon it - and remember that you are the master
> of the unspoken word, but the spoken word is the master of you -
> what you said is in the archives now, and so it will remain into
> the long distant future for all the eastern bankers, financiers,
> financial speculators and the military-industrial complex and and
> almost all quite ordinary people, Muslims included, who work in all
> these industries in the west to read.
>
> ABDASSAMAD CLARKE:
> I don’t think that I have said anything I would regret, except for
> getting into foolish squabbles with you and Anthony et al.
>
> JUD EVANS:
> What is that you say? You were not referring to the whole
> population - you were referring to the leaders? Well that is WHAT
> YOU accused me of isn’t it? You can’t have it both ways - who do
> you want killed? All of us? Some of us? Or just our leaders?
>
> ABDASSAMAD CLARKE:
> I don’t want anyone killed. Let that stay in the archives. It is
> you with your feverish imagination who has evoked all this violence.
>
> JUD EVANS:
> A feverish imagination is not required - just a TV set.

This is clearly your problem. You are fed this stuff on TV and you
can no longer distinguish when someone is saying something that
doesn’t follow the script. Perhaps if you can turn the TV off for a
month, and give up newspapers we might be able to hold a decent
conversation.

>
> SNIP
>
> JUD EVANS:
> Why did Saddam attack Iran - because of the evil west?
>
> ABDASSAMAD CLARKE:
> I don’t evoke the image of the evil west, but you would have to be
> utterly naive in a geopolitical sense and ignorant of the actual
> history to boot not to know of Saddam’s involvement with certain
> external powers and his functioning as a pawn in certain geo-
> political schemas.
>
> JUD EVANS:
> Utterly naive! You are breathtaking in your naivety. Do you
> HONESTLY believe that you as a Muslim can pontificate about *the
> dog of war* on a western discussion list without that *dog of war*
> being construed to identify the west?

Honestly yes. It was quite clear from the paragraph itself that it is
totalitarianism, which I amplified later to include banking, finance,
and other entities, a theme we could follow except that there is no
communication here but only bludgeoning.

> You made NO EFFORT to make it clear in your attack - that *dog of war*

“Dog of war” is your expression not mine.

> did not include the millions in the west who marched against war
> did you?

It never even occurred to me that someone could possibly understand
what I wrote the way you have. Again if this is because my writing is
too obtuse then I apologise.

> But now I understand why for now you accuse EVERYBODY who lives in
> the west and the east as being part of the *dog of war.*

Your understanding, not mine.

> Do you for one moment think you could publish a letter in the
> Tehran Times accusing the Iranian people, and particularly those
> working in their massive arms industry and supportive supply
> industries of being dogs of war or being part of the *dog of war?*
> You would end up in some filthy prison yard with a rope around your
> neck. I just hope for your sake that none of your fellow
> religionists read your messages on this list or access the archives.

I have never found my “fellow religionists” so obtuse.

> JUD EVANS:
> Why did the Pakistanis and the Indians slaughter each other on the
> borders of Kashmir - because of the evil west?
>
> ABDASSAMAD CLARKE:
> The evil west is your creation, not mine. But if you are so
> ignorant of the history of India and its partition and its
> grounding in colonial history, then I weep for you.
>
> JUD EVANS:
> Then the Pakistani and Indian bankers, financiers, financial
> speculators and their military-industrial complexes and almost all
> quite ordinary people who work in all these industries in the those
> countries are to blame and are the dog of war according to your own
> words for the colonials left these countries over fifty years ago.
> You could find yourself in serious trouble if they found out you
> were saying these thinks. I sincerely urge you to be careful what
> you say.
>
> JUD EVANS:
> Why did the North Koreans attack the South - because of the evil
> west? Why did the North Vietnamese attack the South -because of the
> evil west?
> Why did Russia attack Chechnya - because of the evil west?
>
> ABDASSAMAD CLARKE:
> The sorrow of the Chechens is immense. Expelled from their land by
> Tsarists and communists and trampled on by everyone, and then to
> suffer the misfortune of the need for a pipeline to cross their
> land, and the descent of more destruction upon them. Of course, the
> worst affliction is their own recent embracing nihilistic suicide
> tactics and terrorism.
>
> JUD EVANS:
> For *Tsarists* read *Christians, for *Communists* read *State
> Transcendentalists* believing in a communal reification of your
> cinematographic *let’s pretend* Japanese warrior.

But since Rome, Christianity has simply been the secular
“materialist” state given a new lease of life with the cloak of
religion. With honourable exceptions. Communists just removed the
trappings of religion and as you rightly observed worshipped the
state directly.

> Why is Sudan murdering millions - because of the evil west?
>
> ABDASSAMAD CLARKE:
> Sudan first of all is an entity carved out of the map by the
> British Foreign Office, which first divided peoples since Sudan
> means “blacks” and thus as Bilad as-Sudan “the land of the blacks”
> encompassed all the peoples of Nubia, present-day Sudan, Chad,
> Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria, etc., before these national entities
> were also created.
>
> JUD EVANS:
> It wasn’t the British Foreign Office who designated the name of
> the country by the colour of the inhabitants skin - it was YOUR OWN
> colour-conscious Muslims in Egypt, for the name Sudan is from
> Arabic Bilad-al-sudan, lit. “country of the blacks,” from sud, pl.
> of aswad (fem. sauda) “black.”

That was what I said. Aswad you might be interested to know is the
superlative of Sayyid “chief, master, lord”. So black does not have a
derogatory sense in Arabic.

>
> ABDASSAMAD CLARKE:
> So the creation of these nations divided these peoples.
>
> JUD EVANS:
> You mean giving them freedom from the cruel hegemony under which
> they had previously suffered was division for the sake of division?

Cruel hegemony does not refer to anything real in their histories,
which are a unique chapter in world history.

> ABDASSAMAD CLARKE:
> Then secondly the creation of Sudan also forced peoples together in
> a nation who did not feel themselves to belong together, i. e.
> large numbers of animists and small numbers of Christians. Then the
> Sudanese were afflicted internally by their students adopting the
> creed of the Muslim brotherhood, which is a kind of directionless
> modernist movement obsessed with becoming a modern state, obsessed
> with the state, technology and banking to the point of making them
> a religion. Then of course, there are those old geo-political
> considerations of oil and resources. Historians will probably
> decipher it all and disentangle what at present is simply a mess to
> us.
>
> JUD EVANS:
> Animists, Christians, Muslims - you are just reinforcing my claim
> the religion is the dog of war.

You torture the facts to fit your thesis.

> Why did the Tutsi get slaughtered in their millions by the Hutu
> majority - because of the evil west?
>
> ABDASSAMAD CLARKE:
> Cobalt. A resource war I believe. But am not greatly knowledgeable
> about this one. Interestingly, the New York Times and the
> International Herald Tribune report a huge spread of Islam
> subsequently because the Muslims did not take part in the slaughter
> and they protected anyone they could, irrespective of tribe or
> creed, whereas the priests and nuns turned people who came to them
> for protection over for slaughter, presumably with honourable
> exceptions.
>
> JUD EVANS:
> So *cobalt* is your dog of war in this case - won’t you Japanese
> warrior be annoyed at being elbowed out of the carnage
>
> Why did Indonesia attack the people of one of its own islands -
> because of the evil west?
>
> ABDASSAMAD CLARKE:
> Again you are flailing against phantoms.
>
> JUD EVANS:
> So the thousands of corpses of men, women and children rotting in
> the jungles are *phantoms* are they? better tell that to their
> grieving relatives.
>
> ABDASSAMAD CLARKE:
> I have not imputed anything to the evil west. But note that now
> the people of that island are themselves fighting and killing each
> other after having gained their independence from the centralised
> Indonesian government. But Indonesia is another example of a modern
> nation state imposed on and adopted by a people contrary to their
> original patterning of loosely federated sultanates of a much more
> local character.
>
> JUD EVANS:
> You seem to be obsessed with blaming the wicked witch of the west
> for all the modem ills of these ex-colonial nations. My own land,
> is an ex colonial nation. Welsh were colonised by the English
> Saxons [the knife people] our Scottish and Irish Celtic brethren
> were colonised by them - but all that was long ago - these ex-
> colonial lands just use their history as an excuse for their own
> inadequacy and the corruption which is rife in all these lands. Got
> economic problems? It’s easy - blame it on the west - you know
> those guys we kicked out fifty years ago. Its all THEIR fault.

But the colonial era was replaced by the banking era, the massive
loans era with massive interest repayments era, as anyone knows. What
end was that to colonialism.

> ABDASSAMAD CLARKE:
> Look at Iraq for which a very good source is “Winston’s Folly” by
> Christopher Catherwood (2004).
>
> JUD EVANS:
> AGAIN you are doing something for which your attacked me - by
> singling out Winston Churchill you trivialise it into a matter of
> personalities, for which you accused me. If you are not defining
> Churchill as the western devil in this story - why bother name-
> dropping him in the first place by referring to “Winston’s Folly?”

Because the book is a very good one.

> ABDASSAMAD CLARKE:
> The three governorates of Mosul (Kurds), Baghdad (so-called Sunnis)
> and Basra (Shi’ahs) were almost autonomous entities under the
> Ottomans. For various reasons, Churchill (who I am not defining as
> the western devil in this story) had to create an entity called
> Iraq out of the whole thing and impose on it a spare king that he
> had lying around. Nobody thought it would last for very long.
>
> JUD EVANS: I am no Churchillian by any means but I have a hunch
> that his intention was to bring some sort of order to the tribes
> which [still] exist and was advised that a hegemony with a single
> ruler and focus would be the best thing for the people as a whole?
>
> ABDASSAMAD CLARKE: While he was doing that he was arranging the
> payments for Abdalaziz ibn Saud and the wahhabis, the progenitors
> (along with the Muslim Brotherhood) of all modern Islamic
> terrorism. That austere movement of life-deniers is utterly alien
> to Islam, but proved useful in the geo-political struggle against
> the Ottomans, and later proved useful against the USSR with the al-
> Qa’idah (a base camp in Peshawar from which the CIA and the
> Pakistani secret service shipped fighters into Afghanistan), and
> then again in Bosnia when the State Department, unwittingly
> perhaps, internationalised the jihadist movement by forming
> brigades of them to fight the Serbs.
>
> JUD EVANS: If you feel so strongly against the Wahhabis and the
> Muslim Brotherhood and their the bankers, financiers, financial
> speculators and their military-industrial complex. and anyone else
> from amongst the ordinary people who either consciously or as a
> result of circumstances beyond their control [working in a certain
> job] support them? Why don’t you raise your voice against them by
> writing letters to the press? In the time you spent writing this
> letter you could have written lots of letters to Muslim newspapers,
> internet sites and the westerm press.

You are assuming that you know what I do and do not write. You also
assume that there might be any benefit at all in writing to the press.

> ABDASSAMAD CLARKE: Now none of the above is anything but history.
> You can take it as assigning blame to the evil west if you like but
> that is not my point. Indeed there is a further analysis of what it
> was in Muslim society that allowed it all to happen or caused it
> all to happen, but that requires a further quantum leap.
>
> JUD EVANS: Want some more wars that are the fault of your
> mysterious undefined and unidentified westerns dogs - the identity
> of whom perhaps you can grace us with in your next post? Well, some
> below are wars of independence from the west I agree - but do you
> honestly think that had it been the Middle East that grew to
> economic power and military dominance rather than the west - that
> that would have stopped the Muslim tide from sweeping across the
> west completely, instead of being stopped at the walls of Krakow?
>
> ABDASSAMAD CLARKE:
> Anyway, now you have exhausted me, and my limited knowledge of
> history and geo-politics, and I will have to leave these below to
> your research and imagination.
>
> It seems to me that you impute to me everything that you are
> getting from the television and the newspapers. But I would prefer
> that you take my position from me.
>
> JUD EVANS: Thank you for making your position clearer - though why
> you hesitated to do so before now and avoid all this time and
> typing beats me.
>
> As you know, for me religion of all and any kinds is the grossest
> evil that ever blighted mankind - our little foray through history
> has merely confirmed this.

But unfortunately Jud, this was not a successful experiment in
communication. My apologies for not making myself clear. But, if it
is not possible to communicate with a philosopher, then I despair. My
best wishes to you, and goodbye.

Regards

Abdassamad

>
> regards,
>
> Jud Evans. Personal Website: http://evans-
>experientialism.freewebspace.com
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Posted on Friday, October 27th, 2006 at 10:45 pm
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