http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2149736.ece
The Independent - Jan 13, 2007 This jargon disease is choking language In the military sex-speak of the Pentagon, Iraq would endure a 'spike' of violence by Robert Fisk I once received an invitation to lecture at "The University of Excellence". I forget where this particular academy was located - Jordan, I think - but I recall very clearly that the suggested subject of my talk was as incomprehensible to me as it would, no doubt, have been to any audience. Invitation rejected. Only this week I received another request, this time to join "ethics practitioners" to "share evidence-based practices on dealing with current ethical practices" around the world. What on earth does this mean? Why do people write like this? The word "excellence", of course, has long ago been devalued by the corporate world - its favourite expression has long been "Quality and Excellence", invariably accompanied by a "mission statement", that claim to self-importance dreamed up by Robin Cook when foreign secretary - swiftly ditched when he decided to go on selling jets to Indonesia - and thereafter by every export company and amateur newspaper in the world. There is something repulsive about this vocabulary, an aggressive language of superiority in which "key players" can "interact" with each other, can "impact" society, "outsource" their business - or "downsize" the number of their employees. They need "feedback" and "input". They think "outside the box" or "push the envelope". They have a "work space", not a desk. They need "personal space" - they need to be left alone - and sometimes they need "time and space", a commodity much in demand when marriages are failing. These lies and obfuscations are infuriating. "Downsizing" employees means firing them; "outsourcing" means hiring someone else to do your dirty work. "Feedback" means "reaction", "input" means "advice". Thinking "outside the box" means, does it not, to be "imaginative"? Being a "key player" is a form of self-aggrandisement - which is why I never agree to be a "key speaker", especially if this means participation in a "workshop". To me a workshop means what it says. When I was at school, the workshop was a carpentry shop wherein generations of teachers vainly tried to teach Fisk how to make a wooden chair or table that did not collapse the moment it was completed. But today, a "workshop" - though we mustn't say so - is a group of tiresome academics yakking in the secret language of anthropology or talking about "cultural sensitivity" or "core issues" or "tropes". Presumably these are same folk who invented the UN's own humanitarian-speak. Of the latter, my favourite is the label awarded to any desperate refugee who is prepared (for a pittance) to persuade their fellow victims to abide by the UN's wishes - to abandon their tents and return to their dangerous, war-ravaged homes. These luckless advisers are referred to by the UN as "social animators". It is a disease, this language, caught by one of our own New Labour ministers on the BBC last week when he talked about "environmental externalities". Presumably, this meant "the weather". Similarly, an architect I know warned his client of the effect of the "aggressive saline environment" on a house built near the sea. If this advice seems obscure, we might be "conflicted" about it - who, I ask myself, invented the false reflexive verb? - or, worse still, "stressed". In northern Iraq in 1991, I was once ordered by a humanitarian worker from the "International Rescue Committee" to leave the only room I could find in the wrecked town of Zakho because it had been booked for her fellow workers - who were very "stressed". Pour souls, I thought. They were stressed, "stressed out", trying - no doubt - to "come to terms" with their predicament, attempting to "cope". This is the language of therapy, in which frauds, liars and cheats are always trying to escape. Thus President Clinton's spokesman claimed after his admission of his affair with Monica Lewinsky that he was "seeking closure". Like so many mendacious politicians, Clinton felt - as Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara will no doubt feel about his bloodbath in Iraq once he leaves No 10 - the need to "move on". In the same way, our psycho-babble masters and mistresses - yes, there is a semantic problem there , too, isn't there? - announce after wars that it is a time for "healing", the same prescription doled out to families which are "dysfunctional", who live in a "dystopian" world. Yes, dystopian is a perfectly good word - it is the opposite of utopian - but like "perceive" and "perception" (words once much loved by Jonathan Dimbleby) - they have become fashionable because they appear enigmatic. Some newly popular phrases, such as "tipping point" - used about Middle East conflicts when the bad guys are about to lose - or "big picture" - when moralists have to be reminded of the greater good - are merely fashionable. Others are simply odd. I always mixed up "bonding" with "bondage" and "quality time" with a popular assortment of toffees. I used to think that "increase" was a perfectly acceptable word until I discovered that in the military sex-speak of the Pentagon, Iraq would endure a "spike" of violence until a "surge" of extra troops arrived in Baghdad. All this is different, of course, from the non-sexual "no-brainers" with which we now have to "cope" - "author" for "authoress", for example, "actor" for "actress" - or the fearful linguistic lengths we must go to in order to avoid offence to Londoners who speak Cockney: as well all know - though only those of us, of course, who come from the Home Counties - these people speak "Estuary" English. It's like those poor Americans in Detroit who, in fear and trepidation, avoided wishing me a happy Christmas. "Happy Holiday!" they chorused until I roared "Happy Christmas" back. In Beirut, by the way, we all wish each other "Happy Christmas" and "Happy Eid", whether our friends are Muslim or Christian. Is this really of "majorly importance", as an Irish television producer once asked a colleague of a news event? I fear it is. For we are not using words any more. We are utilising them, speaking for effect rather than meaning, for escape. We are becoming - as The New Yorker now describes children who don't care if they watch films on the cinema screen or on their mobile phones - "platform agnostic". What, Polonius asked his lord, was he reading? "Words, words, words," Hamlet replied. If only... *** http://select.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/opinion/15krugman.html?th&emc=th The Texas Strategy By PAUL KRUGMAN NY Times Op-Ed: January 15, 2007 Hundreds of news articles and opinion pieces have described President Bush's decision to escalate the Iraq war as a "Hail Mary pass." But that's the wrong metaphor. Mr. Bush isn't Roger Staubach, trying to pull out a win for the Dallas Cowboys. He's Charles Keating, using other people's money to keep Lincoln Savings going long after it should have been shut down - and squandering the life savings of thousands of investors, not to mention billions in taxpayer dollars, along the way. The parallel is actually quite exact. During the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s, people like Mr. Keating kept failed banks going by faking financial success. Mr. Bush has kept a failed war going by faking military success. The "surge" is just another stalling tactic, designed to buy more time. Oh, and one of the favorite techniques used by the owners of savings and loan associations to generate phony profits - it involved making high-interest loans to crooked or flaky real estate developers - came to be known as the "Texas strategy." What was the point of the Texas strategy? Bank owners were certainly gambling - with other people's money, of course - in the hope of a miraculous recovery that would bail out their negative balance sheets. But the real point of the racket was a form of looting: as long as they could keep reporting high paper profits, S.&L. owners could keep rewarding themselves with salaries, dividends and sweetheart business deals. Mr. Keating paid himself a million dollars just weeks before his holding company collapsed. Which brings us to Iraq. The administration has spent the last three years pretending that its splendid little war isn't a big disaster. There have been the bromides (we're making "good progress"); the promises (we have a "strategy for victory"); and, as always, attacks on the media for not reporting the good news from Iraq. Who you gonna believe, the president or your lying eyes? Now Mr. Bush has grudgingly sort- of admitted that things aren't going well - but he says his "new way forward" will fix everything. So it's still the Texas strategy: the war's architects are trying to keep their failed venture going as long as possible. The Hail Mary aspect - the off chance that somehow, things really will turn out all right - is the least of their motivations. The real intent is a form of looting. I'm not talking mainly about old-fashioned war profiteering, although there is no question that profiteering is taking place on an epic scale. No, I'm saying that the hawks want to keep this war going because it's to their personal and political benefit. True, Mr. Bush can't win another election with phony claims of success in Iraq, the way he did in 2004. But escalation buys him another year or two to claim that we're making progress - and it gives him another chance to prove that he's the Decider, beyond accountability. And as for pundits who promoted the war and are now trying to sell the surge: for a little while longer they can be Very Important People who have the president's ear. Meanwhile, the nation pays the price. The heaviest burden - in death, shattered bodies, broken families and ruined careers - falls on those who serve. To find the personnel for the Bush escalation, the Pentagon must lengthen deployments in Iraq and shorten training time at home. And the back-door draft has become a life sentence: there is no limit on the cumulative amount of time citizen-soldiers can be required to serve on active duty. Mama, don't let your children grow up to be reservists. The rest of us will pay a financial price for the hundreds of billions squandered in Iraq and, more important, a price in reduced security. Escalation won't bring victory in Iraq, but it might bring defeat in Afghanistan, which the administration will continue to neglect. And it has pushed the military to the breaking point. Mr. Bush calls his critics "irresponsible," saying that they don't have an alternative to his strategy. But they do: setting a timetable for withdrawal, so that we can cut our losses, and trying to save what can be saved. It isn't a strategy for victory because that's no longer an option. It's a strategy for acknowledging reality. The lesson of the savings and loan scandal was that when a bank has failed, you shouldn't let the owner string you along with promises - you should shut the thing down. We should do the same with Mr. Bush's failed war. *** From: "Bernie Pearl" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: January gigs Date: Tue, 02 Jan 2007 17:39:42 -0800 Dear Blues Friend: A reminder what's coming up soon Something special in January: I'll be opening for and playing with blues icon David "Honeyboy" Edwards at Cozy's in Sherman Oaks, Friday, January 19. He's the last direct link with Robert Johnson and the pre-war Delta Blues still performing. Not to be missed. I go on at 9:00, Mike Barry on bass. Dinner reservations are recommended for best seating. Hope to see you soon. This Thursday 1/18, I'll be playing solo at Iva Lee's in San Clemente, and I'll return there this Saturday 1/20 with Dwayne Smith on piano. M'Dear's Blues Jam in LA resumes next Monday 1/8, and continues 8-11 pm Mondays through the end of the month. Classes start at Boulevard Music in Culver City on Wednesday 1/17. I'll be offering a new class, "Blues Repertoire" at 7:00, with the ever-popular "How to Jam - Acoustic" at 8:00. Hope to see you soon. Happy 2007, Bernie Pearl --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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