>From another list: At 11:08 AM 6/7/99 -0700, you wrote: >Hello all, > > Following is the link to an article about Jurgen >Habermas's defense of the Balkan war. It is from the World Socialist >website. If you are unable to access the article online, please send me >your e-mail and I will forward it to you. > >http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/jun1999/habe-j05_prn.shtml > > Amandeep > > > >From Heidegger-turned-Nazi to Habermas-turned-NATO, this is yet another example of the total bankrupty of Western intellectualism. As Jim Craven aptly put in his comments on Mao and Hitler, this is a result of academic scribblers hiding their narrow-minded political agenda under the polite vocabulary of academic discourse and abstraction. The following passage from the source quoted above can be highly illustrative. quote: The more the reality of the war belies the propaganda, the more professor Habermas raises the debate to the level of complete abstraction—as if abstract terms had taken up arms. According to his Communication Theory, the warmongers and opponents are on the same level. In his eyes, both are pacifists. “conscientious pacifists”, on the one hand, and “legal pacifists” on the other. And both can marshal good arguments. The “legal pacifists” orient towards international law and condemn the war because it contravenes international law, just as it contravenes the constitutional proscription on wars of aggression. The “conscientious pacifists” make human rights their starting point and legitimise the war as a humanitarian intervention “preventing crimes against humanity”. end quote. The most reprehensible about that is when the uneducated classes start joining Brown Shirts, militias, and white supremacist groups, they are loudly accused of anything from false consciousness to stupidity to rabid reactionism. Howeverm when acadmic scribblers do the same, albeit under the polite guise of abstractions and reasoned discourse - they are told to have 'divergent view points.' Fuck all those academic schmucks -- they should have known better. They absolutely deserve to be turned into fertilizer and their scribblings to ashes. A larger point: why resist corporate takeover of the acdemia? It will make things more clear and explicit and will have the added value of sacking the learned parasites - forcim them to do real work. wojtek
