DEEP THOUGHTS

Hannah Hilton Revealing Her Sexy Body

2006-11-08T06:08:00.000-08:00

GROW A VICTORY GARDEN

2006-05-15T05:03:00.000-07:00

As much as I would like to take credit for the following newsletter, I didn’t write it. It’s from Cancer Decisions, the website of Ralph Moss, a long time science writer and consultant about alternative cancer treatments. You can subscribe to his weekly newsletters at www.CancerDecisions.com
I often find Ralph’s newsletters interesting and thought many of you would enjoy reading this one.

“There are over 70 million gardeners in the United States, and countless more worldwide. For many of us, this is the time of year to finally stop vacillating and decide which seeds and plants are going to go into the ground. I spend my summers in a cool climate and the growing season is rather short. I try to make planting choices with one eye on my plants' anticancer potential. So let's see how a few common garden varieties stack up, especially in the light of recent scientific studies.
Last year, I thinned 50 feet of red raspberries and transplanted the remaining canes into 30 additional feet in a sunny area behind the house. Soon I'll find out how well this no-cost maneuver has worked. If these canes are not productive, I will buy some new plants from the local nursery and may even put in a row of black raspberries, just for a change of pace. I need to have a superabundance of berries because the resident gremlins - my grandchildren, who do most of the picking - extract a tax in fresh berries whenever they go to work. In addition, a young lady of the household appropriates the lioness's share for jams and jellies. (I know, I know – sugar is bad for you, but a little raspberry jam evokes a Proustian remembrance of summer past on a chilly winter morning.)
What else can berries do for you? They are among the most potent and readily available sources of antioxidants on the planet. A few years back, wild blueberries were found to have a super high score on the antioxidant (ORAC) scale. Mainers crowed – you would have thought the Black Bears had won the A-10 football conference.
But no one has a monopoly in the berry sweepstakes. Scientists at Ohio State University have now weighed in with favorable reports of their own on black raspberries, the kind that I generally gather in the sunny edges of woodland clearings. In 2006, these Buckeye State scientists studied the cancer preventing effects of black raspberry extracts on a model of esophageal cancer in mice. Esophageal cancer is difficult to treat, and so any positive news on this front is most welcome. Tumor-bearing animals were fed a diet containing 5 percent black raspberries (more than humans are likely to consume, but good at bringing out effects in a study). After 25 weeks on this regimen, mice that ate black raspberries had approximately half as many tumors as control animals (3.78 vs. 2.23).
No one is quite sure exactly how this tumor-suppressing effect works. Black raspberries are a natural COX-2 inhibitor, and we saw in previous newsletters how Celebrex, a synthetic COX-2 inhibitor, reduced the formation of colon polyps. So perhaps the same mechanism is at work – although I would be dumbfounded if black raspberries also caused cardiovascular disease, the way Celebrex did in the latest studies. Raspberries also reduced certain other markers of cancer formation. The scientists said it had a "novel tumor suppressive role...." (Chen 2006). So how's that for a pleasurable way of helping to prevent a deadly disease?
Another plant that I have in my garden is horseradish (Armoracia rusticana). Its leaves grow absolutely huge. Usually once per summer, my garden helpers, mistaking them for the pesky comfrey that is always ready, willing and able to invade the planting beds, mow the horseradishes down to the ground. The redoubtable plant doesn't seem to mind - the leaves pop right up by the next mowing. Anyway, it is the roots that you want for making horseradish sauce, not the leaves.
Last year, scientists at Michigan State University found that both common horseradish and the extra-pungent Japanese wasabi (Wasabia japonica) contained certain ingredients called monogalactosyl diacylglycerides. These too were found to restrict the growth of cancer cells. Three active ingredients in horseradish and two from wasabi were tested. Compound no. 3 from horseradish inhibited the proliferation of colon cancer cells by as much as 68.4 percent and inhibited lung cancer cells by as much as 71 percent. Compound no. 4 from wasabi inhibited the growth of colon, lung and stomach cancer cells by as much as 44 percent (Weil 2005). These are encouraging results.
You can buy reasonably fresh horseradish from the supermarket's dairy case. (Look for the kind that has nothing but ground root and a little vinegar.) Alternatively you can make a much better horseradish sauce yourself if you have a spade to excavate your two-year roots. You will also need a sturdy vegetable peeler and a blender or food processor. You can then mix the macerated homegrown horseradish with vinegar or with sour cream.

A Surprising Herb

In the herb department, I wouldn't be without feverfew. Many readers know the feverfew plant (Tanacetum parthenium), a member of the Chrysanthemum family, sometimes called bachelor's buttons. This is a cheerful-looking perennial, with a profusion of white pompon-like blooms - like a shower of tiny daisies.
As the name implies, this is a traditional remedy for fevers. It also has a long association with the relief of migraines. (I keep some feverfew pills in the medicine chest in case any of my summer visitors are plagued with that mysterious form of torture.) But feverfew is particularly interesting for its anticancer potential.
You may remember from my earlier newsletters that scientists are now reevaluating all cancer drugs for their effect on malignant stem cells. These are the primitive cells that appear to be fundamentally responsible for the malignant dimensions of cancer. Many conventional cancer drugs are turning out to have a limited ability to kill these cells. That is why feverfew is so interesting.
Scientists at the University of Rochester Medical Center have found that an extract of feverfew is effective against a type of human leukemia. Monica L. Guzman, PhD, and Craig T. Jordan, PhD, reported that feverfew extracts kill malignant stem cells like no other single therapy they have tested. The active ingredient is derived from parthenolide, one of a class of sesquiterpene lactones found in the plant. The US National Cancer Institute (NCI) has been sufficiently excited by this work to accept it into the rapid access program, which aims to move experimental drugs from the laboratory to human clinical trials as quickly as possible.
"This research is a very important step in setting the stage for future development of a new therapy for leukemia," said Dr. Jordan. "We have proof that we can kill leukemia stem cells with this type of agent, and that is good news."
What is particularly exciting is that this feverfew extract is the first agent known to destroy myeloid leukemia at the level of the stem cells. Increasingly, cancer research is homing in on these primordial cells as the source of cancer. An increasing number of scientists believe that unless cancer is attacked at this level it can rarely be controlled, much less cured.
A 2006 study from Clemson University in North Carolina showed that parthenolide, considered the primary bioactive compound in golden feverfew, has anti-tumor activity. The scientists studied it against two human breast cancer and one human cervical cancer cell line. "Feverfew...extract inhibited the growth of all three types of cancer cells," they wrote. Of four feverfew components, parthenolide showed the highest inhibitory effect, although the other compounds work in concert with it in inhibiting cancer.
A 2004 phase I clinical trial from Purdue University in Indiana gave patients oral doses of feverfew, with up to 4 milligrams (mg) of parthenolide. The daily oral tablet was "well tolerated without dose-limiting toxicity." However, curiously, it did not provide detectable concentrations in the blood. So its exact mode of action remains a mystery (Currey 2004).
You can buy feverfew capsules in the health food store or over the Internet. For instance, one popular preparation of feverfew leaf sells for around 5¢ per 380 mg capsule. The manufacturer recommends one capsule three times per day, which brings the cost to around 15¢ to 20¢ per day. (This is considerably less expensive than many poorly documented anticancer drugs, such as Avastin, now selling for $100,000 per year.) The extract, Tanacet, used in the above-mentioned phase I clinical trial, is sometimes available over the Internet, as well.
You can also grow feverfew yourself. Johnny's Selected Seeds of Winslow, Maine, one of my favorite providers, offers 500 organically grown feverfew seeds for just $3.20. This cheerful plant is a perennial in temperate climates and will self-seed in colder climates. So a $3.20 investment can provide you with all the feverfew you are ever likely to need. No one can guarantee this herb will have any clinical anticancer effects. But, at the very least, these little charmers will adorn your kitchen table with a bouquet that is, to me, the very essence of summer.”

--Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D.

References:
Chen T, Hwang H, Rose ME, Nines RG, Stoner GD. Chemopreventive properties of black raspberries in N-nitrosomethylbenzylamine-induced rat esophageal tumorigenesis: down-regulation of cyclooxygenase-2, inducible nitric oxide synthase, and c-Jun. Cancer Res. 2006;66:2853-2859.
Curry EA 3rd, Murry DJ, Yoder C, et al. Phase I dose escalation trial of feverfew with standardized doses of parthenolide in patients with cancer. Invest New Drugs. 2004;22:299-305.
Weil MJ, Zhang Y, Nair MG. Tumor cell proliferation and cyclooxygenase inhibitory constituents in horseradish (Armoracia rusticana) and Wasabi (Wasabia japonica). J Agric Food Chem. 2005;53:1440-1444.

................................................................
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goffkoq

2006-05-05T06:52:00.000-07:00

KurzweilAI.net

RICH THOUGHT

2006-05-05T05:18:00.000-07:00

latimes.com Click to learn more...
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-klein5may05,0,4799095.story?track=tothtml
From the Los Angeles Times
A rising tide that lifts only yachts
By Ezra Klein
EZRA KLEIN is a writing fellow for the American Prospect. He also writes a blog at www.ezraklein.com.

May 5, 2006

LAST WEEK WAS a good one for economists, as the normally dour practitioners of the dismal science got to use decidedly non-dismal, even exhilarating, words such as "surging" and "momentum" to describe the new quarterly growth numbers.

And they had cause for such enthusiasm. From January through March, the economy shot forward, growing by 4.8% — the largest increase in nearly three years and a stunningly rapid recovery after the previous quarter's Katrina-dampened 1.7%.

Economists, though, aren't the only ones excited. Floundering amid chaos in Iraq and corruption in Congress, Republicans are grasping at the good economic news of the last few years, seeing in it hints of electoral salvation.

Incoming White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten has promised "more happy talk about the economy" as part of his five-point plan for righting the president's poll numbers. And President Bush himself has been bragging that "thanks to tax relief, and spending restraint, and pro-growth economic policies, this economy is strong, businesses are booming and the people in this country are working."

Strangely, though, the public doesn't seem to be listening. Americans are more than twice as likely to give pollsters a negative assessment of the economy as a positive one — 64% disapprove of Bush's handling of the economy. It's strange. The macroeconomic numbers are decidedly robust, but the public remains determinedly glum.

If you dig a bit deeper than the base growth statistics, though, the picture clarifies considerably. Our economy has grown so starkly unequal that the statistician's view now says surprisingly little about the average American's experience. Last quarter may have seen 4.8% growth, but hidden in those numbers was a depressing factoid: Wages had only grown 0.7% — slower than housing, health or gasoline costs.

That's been the story of the last few years, a rising tide that lifts only yachts. It used to be that economic growth ensured wide benefits across society. But the last four years of economic expansion have been historic for the steadily increasing poverty rate — a depressing sign that inequality has so split the poor from the rich that the two hardly inhabit the same economy.

And it's not just the poor who've suffered. Research released last week by Tom Hertz of American University raised the troubling notion that inequality and economic insecurity have advanced so rapidly that the economic expansion of 2003 and 2004 was, in a variety of important ways, no better for the median American than the recession of 1990-91.

Take mobility. You often hear how our society is losing its permeability, how gumption and hard work no longer reliably propel you up the social ladder. What's not been mentioned is that, for everyone but the wealthy, it's become a whole lot easier to slide down.

From 1990 to 1991, 13% of households saw their income decline by $20,000 or more in real terms. In 2003-04, it was 16.6%. And the difference didn't come in steep falls for the rich; rather, the top income quintile saw a reduction in negative income mobility.

As for good ol' upward mobility, the median household was no more likely to move up the economic ladder during the 2003-04 expansion than it was during the 1990-91 recession. Think about that for a second — the average household's income was just as likely to increase during the last severe recession as the latest expansion. For most, the good times now are little better than the bad.

Meanwhile, health costs have increased almost 75% since 2000. And, according to a just-released study by the Commonwealth Fund, lack of insurance has become a decidedly working-class problem, with nearly 70% of the 49 million uninsured hailing from a family with at least one full-time worker.

Add in gasoline that's merrily creeping right past the $3.50-a-gallon mark, and a scorchingly hot housing market, and it's no wonder Gallup's "worry index" — a poll tracking public fears on seven economic issues — has recorded its highest-ever reading, marking us as the most economically anxious public since its inception six years ago.

The economy, despite what some economists and politicians think, isn't an abstraction, it's an experience. And the average American isn't experiencing 4.8% growth; he's experiencing increased income insecurity, wages lagging behind prices and deteriorating health benefits. Strong as the growth might be, a strong economy isn't much good if it's using those biceps to pummel the working class.

If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at latimes.com/archives.
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2006-05-04T05:52:00.000-07:00

Addicted to war

2006-05-04T05:50:00.000-07:00

Beer Spas: Yeast of Eden

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

2006-05-01T06:48:00.000-07:00

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------------

HOMO SUPERIORUS
By Stephan A. Schwartz
Explore / Schwartzreport
April 30, 2006

http://www.schwartzreport.net/

What could be more natural than wanting a healthy beautiful baby? Has there
ever been a time in history when parents, even in the midst of disasters and
despair, did not wish to be delivered of a healthy child? And who wouldn't
want to have a son or daughter who was as smart as Einstein, as athletic as
Michael Jordan, and as attractive as, well, name the person whose looks you
find most appealing? What could be more natural?

But this deep-seated drive when linked to the onrushing train of genetic
medicine is creating a trend that will shape -- both literally and
figuratively -- the future of our species. You haven't heard of this? It is
not surprising. The linkage and its implications have almost no place at the
table of the public conversation. Here are just a few examples of what I
mean:

Quietly in a laboratory in Vancouver, Robert Holt, head of sequencing for
the University of British Columbia's Genome Science Centre, is working to
create the first made to order life form -- what is being called 'synthetic
life' -- a microbe. Dr. Holt is part of a project led by Craig Venter,
former head of Celera Genomics, the private firm that mapped the human
genome in 2000. Dr. Venter makes it clear that he and his team have no
intention of stopping with microbes. Putting aside for the moment the
profound implications of creating a life-form from scratch, I mention this
principally because as Dr. Venter says, 'We're going from reading to writing
the genetic code.'

While Holt and Venter are finding out how to write our genetic code, Drs.
Elizabeth Fisher at the Institute of Neurology and Victor Tybulewicz at the
National Institute for Medical Research in London have perfected a technique
for successfully transplanting human chromosomes into mice. It is a
breakthrough holding the promise of transforming medical research into the
genetic causes of disease. The mice were genetically engineered to carry a
copy of human chromosome 21, a string of about 250 genes. About one in a
thousand people are born with an extra copy of this chromosome, which causes
Down's syndrome. These genetic studies will help scientists also discern
which genes are responsible for a wide range of medical conditions prevalent
among people with Down's syndrome, including impaired brain development,
Alzheimer's disease, heart defects, leukemia, and behavioural abnormalities.

Many have hailed the work but critics question whether such research does
not push the envelope of genetic manipulation too far, blurring the
boundaries that define what it means to be biologically human. And this is
but one in a wide range of research efforts.

During just the past two years, researchers have created pigs with human
blood, fused rabbit eggs with human DNA, and injected human stem cells to
make paralyzed mice walk.

Quite apart from the implications this research holds for the human species,
this intermingling contains another nightmare scenario that some geneticists
and medical ethicists have begun to take seriously. What if, by adding human
brain cells, a human mind somehow got trapped inside an animal brain? That
the Legend of NIMH came to life.

The 'idea that human neuronal cells might participate in 'higher order'
brain functions in a nonhuman animal, however unlikely that may be, raises
concerns that need to be considered,' a recent National Academies of Science
report warned.

While it is generally considered 'unlikely that grafting human stem cells
into the brains of non-human primates would alter the animals' abilities in
morally relevant ways,' the report committee 'also felt strongly that the
risk of doing so is real and too ethically important to ignore.'

The researchers admit they don't actually know what truly separates humans
from close relatives like the apes, nor how to measure the cognitive changes
that might occur in a non-human primate subjected to genetic alteration, let
alone any other animal species.

Moving directly into the domain of humans, Dr. Keith Chang of the Penn State
University College of Medicine in Hersey, part of a team searching for
cancer genes in zebrafish, discovered that the pigment cells of the fish
resembled those of light-skinned humans. It led the team to search for and
identify the specific zebrafish gene involved. They then identified the
human variant, a gene known as SLC24A5, and this line of research holds the
promise of letting us select a child's skin color. Imagine the unconsidered
consequences of that single genetic control.

More directly addressing disease, the U.S. government has begun a project
that will rival the original Human Genome effort in complexity -- a project
to unlock the genetic abnormalities that contribute to one of humanity's
scourges. The project will spend $100 million over three years on a pilot
phase, which will be called The Cancer Genome Atlas. The goal is new
diagnostic tests, as well as genetic treatment for that complex of diseases
we call cancer.

'This is a revolutionary project,' Anna D. Barker, deputy director of the
National Cancer Institute, said at a news briefing in Washington. 'It's
going to empower all cancer researchers with an entire new set of data to
work with.'

Meanwhile, at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, in the United Kingdom,
scientists led by Professor Doug Turnbull and Mary Herbert, have been given
permission to create human embryos that will have three genetic parents. The
researchers are undertaking the research, they say, because they want to
prevent inherited diseases caused by mutations in the mitochondrial DNA.
Mitochondria are inherited from the mother, and the team plans to replace
defective mitochondria in eggs with working ones from donor eggs. By merging
single-cell embryos with donated eggs they will produce humans with three
parents -- two mothers and a father. About one in 5,000 people carry such
defects. Most produce only mild effects, but some defects can result in
babies born or spontaneously aborted because of fatal brain, liver or kidney
flaws.

What makes the technique particularly significant is that it takes genetic
engineering in the U.K. to a new level. At present gene therapy which alters
defective DNA can only be done when the changes produced do not pass on to
succeeding generations -- what is known as 'germ-line' genetic engineering.
The Newcastle research could result in children being born who would carry
added genes that would be passed on to all subsequent generations, thus,
breaking that barrier. In the future we may look back on this as the moment
when homo superiorus formally began.

What will be the effect on society when the most privileged segments of the
culture are functionally free of cancer? When they have none of the
hereditary diseases like heart disease, cystic fibrosis, or diabetes, which
have haunted humanity, going back into the undiscovered past? What is the
overall effect of one or more races being disease free, while other cultures
and racial groups are unable to afford such advantages? We not only don't
know the answer to these questions, we're not quite sure which are the
really important questions.

It is worth thinking for a moment about how all this might happen, because I
do not think governments will drive this process.

On an individual level, taken one-by-one, an single family's choice would
seem to be too insignificant to be a factor in the shaping the grander
concerns of history. But it is exactly a single family choice multiplied a
thousand fold that reshapes who, and what we are as humans. And because this
is not understood policies are developed without considering the role of
individual choice. As a result it is the unintended consequences that so
often predominate.

Just a little over 20 years ago, an eyeblink in historical time, the
Communist Chinese sought to address overpopulation through the now
well-known policy of one child per family. At the time the population of
China was closing in on a billion (today it is a little over 1.3 billion
souls). No one in government apparently thought through the unintended
consequences that a cultural predisposition to favor boys who could carry on
a family name, and provide support for aging parents, might create, given a
technology that could specify gender prenatally. The technology, of course,
became widespread almost as soon as the social policy decision was made,
driven by the cultural bias for boys, and individual families acted upon it
as soon as it was available. Now, two decades later, government census
figures show that there are 119 boys born for every 100 girls.

It may seem a small differential yet demographers now calculate that by 2020
about 40 million men will live out their lives as frustrated bachelors,
unable to find a wife.

The other unforeseen consequence is that the cultural predisposition to
treat boys, particularly when they are the family's only child-like little
princes has produced a range of unforeseen psychological effects, many
problematic.

As the unintended consequences of the one child social policy have become
more and more apparent, the government has scrambled to find a way to
correct what it earlier set in motion. China has made a commitment to
reverse its gender skew by 2010 by launching a scheme of social programs,
including pensions to rural families with no sons, and education efforts
designed to teach peasants that 'girls are as good as boys'. Whether any of
this will work is far from clear, and many think China will be living with
the unintended consequences of its overly simplistic population control
measures for generations. This is not of just abstract interest. The rest of
us also have a horse in this race, because China is coming on to the world
stage as the next great superpower, just as spoiled only-child boys prepare
to become its leaders, not just at the top but throughout the infrastructure
of government and business.

This experience of China's is worthy of the closest examination, because it
gives us some clues about what is likely to happen as genetic medicine
techniques, and treatments come online.

Imagine a world in which parents not only have had all inherited chronic
disease edited out of their child's future, and all forms of genetic
malfunction corrected, but have ordered up the baby's features, skin color,
ultimate height, weight, intelligence, and emotional stability. Every
capability tweaked for the optimal. It sounds like science fiction; indeed,
it has been the stuff of science fiction for more than 50 years, but it is
increasingly science fact.

Now imagine how much greater than China's single child policy will be the
impact of such social engineering at the individual genetic level.

It amounts to marketplace driven eugenics. The term, eugenics, (from the
Greek eugenes or well-born) was coined in 1883 by Charles Darwin's cousin,
Francis Galton, who applied the emerging Darwinian science in the
development of theories concerning heredity and good birth. The idea of
improving the human species became a subject of real debate, and had a
robust scholarly literature until World War II, and the topic's embrace by
the Nazis. Those policies, combined with research scandals involving
institutionalized Blacks in America, made eugenics a taboo word and subject.
Perhaps that explains why the subject walks so lightly across our national
consciousness. Also eugenics is usually conceived as something a government
does, like the Hitlerian fantasy of creating the new Aryan man. The central
idea being that government directed programs are the driving force. But what
actually happens, as events on the ground in China (and a number of other
nations) show, is quite different. The driving force, actually, is
individual choice in the market place.

And can there be any doubt that a mother and father capable of obtaining any
of the advantages genetic medicine will offer will fight to get them for
their child? Would your parents? Would you?

Perhaps you questioned my inclusion earlier of 'emotional stability' on my
list wondering if genetics can really address one's emotional life? Consider
this, then:

At the Free University in Amsterdam and the University of Chicago research
teams have looked at data from 8,000 identical and non-identical twins. One
of their conclusions: genetics has a significant influence on loneliness,
which has been linked to physically defined illnesses like heart disease, as
well as emotional problems, such as anxiety, self-esteem, and sociability.
'The genetic contribution to individual differences in loneliness is
approximately 50%.'

Of course, all this that I am describing will only be taking place in the
high technology cultures in the West and East and, then, only amongst
families that can afford it. So what happens? Over time a growing number of
these children, scions of affluence, will be born and, in the due course of
things, will themselves become parents, passing on all the benefits they
have received. Their numbers, beginning in the thousands, will quickly grow
to hundreds of thousands and, eventually, millions as every family that can
afford to do so avails themselves of what is on offer. It will become an
issue of governmental policy. These individuals will effectively constitute
a subspecies of humans. The usual demographic breakdowns of location and
race will not obtain here. As one of the unintended consequences of U.S.
science being shaped by the Religious Right, The U.S. seems unlikely to
dominate the age of biology as it did the age of electronics. Asians,
Israelis, and Europeans are all represented in the intellectual arena
driving the genetic science. America will not control breakthroughs as it
did, and in many ways still does, in electronic information technologies.
And as Asian millionaires, particularly, come into their own power, just as
the genetic technology to achieve such aims becomes a reality, who can not
believe they will make use of it? Perhaps the novels of William Gibson are
clairvoyant in this respect. What is convincing is that what authoritarian
governments could not quite pull off, market forces seem poised to carry
through.

Slowly, but with gathering speed, and without much public discussion, we are
seeing the creation of a new sub-species of human: homo superiorus. What
that means we should start thinking about.

See original article for references:
http://www.schwartzreport.net/

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RULES TO LIVE BY OR NOT

2006-04-10T09:03:00.000-07:00

ETHICS MANUAL FOR MEMBERS, OFFICERS, AND EMPLOYEES OF THE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Please note: This document is to be used for reference purposes only. The printed manual is the official version.

The Committee is in the process of revising and updating this Manual, which was published in 1992. On any subject, both the Manual and the Committee's advisory memoranda should be consulted. The advisory memoranda are organized by subject in the Highlights of the Ethics Rules.
----------
102d Congress, 2d Session
* * *

1. A Member, officer, or employee of the House of Representatives shall conduct himself at all times in a manner which shall reflect creditably on the House of Representatives.

2. A Member, officer, or employee of the House of Representatives shall adhere to the spirit and the letter of the Rules of the House of Representatives and to the rules of duly constituted committees thereof.

3. A Member, officer, or employee of the House of Representatives shall receive no compensation nor shall he permit any compensation to accrue to his beneficial interest from any source, the receipt of which would occur by virtue of influence improperly exerted from his position in the Congress.

4. A Member, officer, or employee of the House of Representatives shall not accept gifts (other than personal hospitality of an individual or with a fair market value of $100 or less) * * * in any calendar year aggregating more than * * * $250, * * * directly or indirectly, from any person (other than from a relative) except to the extent permitted by written waiver granted in exceptional circumstances by the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct pursuant to clause 4(e)(1)(E) of rule X.

5. A Member, officer, or employee of the House of Representatives, shall accept no honorarium for a speech, writing for publication, or other similar activity.

6. A Member of the House of Representatives shall keep his campaign funds separate from his personal funds. A Member shall convert no campaign funds to personal use in excess of reimbursement for legitimate and verifiable campaign expenditures and shall expend no funds from his campaign account not attributable to bona fide campaign or political purposes.

7. A Member of the House of Representatives shall treat as campaign contributions all proceeds from testimonial dinners or other fund raising events.

8. A Member or officer of the House of Representatives shall retain no one under his payroll authority who does not perform official duties commensurate with the compensation received in the offices of the employing authority. In the case of committee employees who work under the direct supervision of a Member other than a chairman, the chairman may require that such Member affirm in writing that the employees have complied with the preceding sentence (subject to clause 6 of rule XI) as evidence of the chairman's compliance with this clause and with clause 6 of rule XI.

9. A Member, officer, or employee of the House of Representatives shall not discharge or refuse to hire any individual, or otherwise discriminate against any individual with respect to compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex (including marital or parental status), age, or national origin, but may take into consideration the domicile or political affiliation of such individual.

10. A Member of the House of Representatives who has been convicted by a court of record for the commission of a crime for which a sentence of two or more years' imprisonment may be imposed should refrain from participation in the business of each committee of which he is a member and should refrain from voting on any question at a meeting of the House, or of the Committee of the Whole House, unless or until judicial or executive proceedings result in reinstatement of the presumption of his innocence or until he is reelected to the House after the date of such conviction.

11. A Member of the House of Representatives shall not authorize or otherwise allow a non-House individual, group, or organization to use the words ``Congress of the United States'', ``House of Representatives'', or ``Official Business'', or any combination of words thereof, on any letterhead or envelope.

12. (a) Except as provided by paragraph (b), any employee of the House of Representatives who is required to file a report pursuant to rule XLIV shall refrain from participating personally and substantially as an employee of the House of Representatives in any contact with any agency of the executive or judicial branch of Government with respect to nonlegislative matters affecting any nongovernmental person in which the employee has a significant financial interest.

(b) Paragraph (a) shall not apply if an employee first advises his employing authority of his significant financial interest and obtains from his employing authority a written waiver stating that the participation of the employee is necessary. A copy of each such waiver shall be filed with the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct.
* * *
ETHICS MANUAL CODE OF ETHICS FOR GOVERNMENT SERVICE
Resolved by the House of Representatives {the Senate concurring}, That it is the sense of the Congress that the following Code of Ethics should be adhered to by all Government employees, including officeholders:
CODE OF ETHICS FOR GOVERNMENT SERVICE
Any person in Government service should:

1. Put loyalty to the highest moral principals and to country above loyalty to Government persons, party, or department.

2. Uphold the Constitution, laws, and legal regulations of the United States and of all governments therein and never be a party to their evasion.

3. Give a full day's labor for a full day's pay; giving to the performance of his duties his earnest effort and best thought.

4. Seek to find and employ more efficient and economical ways of getting tasks accomplished.

5. Never discriminate unfairly by the dispensing of special favors or privileges to anyone, whether for remuneration or not; and never accept for himself or his family, favors or benefits under circumstances which might be construed by reasonable persons as influencing the performance of his governmental duties.

6. Make no private promises of any kind binding upon the duties of office, since a Government employee has no private word which can be binding on public duty.

7. Engage in no business with the Government, either directly or indirectly which is inconsistent with the conscientious performance of his governmental duties.

8. Never use any information coming to him confidentially in the performance of governmental duties as a means for making private profit.

9. Expose corruption wherever discovered.

10. Uphold these principles, ever conscious that public office is a public trust.

(Passed July 11, 1958.)
Table of Contents of the Ethics Manual

* Chapter 1 .General Ethical Standards:
* Chapter 2 .(This Chapter has been replaced with the publication of the Gifts and Travel Booklet in April 2000)
* Chapter 3 .Outside Employment and Income of Members, Officers, Employees, and Spouses:
* Chapter 4 .Financial Disclosure:
* Chapter 5 .Staff Rights and Duties:
* Chapter 6 .Official Allowances and Franking:
* Chapter 7 .Casework Considerations:
* Chapter 8. (This Chapter has been replaced with the publication of Campaign Activity in December of 2001)
* Chapter 9 .Involvement with Official and Unofficial Organizations:
* Appendices

RETURN TO THE STANDARDS COMMITTEE'S HOME PAGE

MY HERO'S MAIN MAN TELLS IT LIKE IT IS

2006-04-07T06:26:00.000-07:00

Sides are being chosen, and the future of man hangs in the balance!" The enemies of virtue may be on the march, but they have not won, and if we put our trust in Christ they never will. ... It is for us then to do as our heroes have always done and put our faith in the perfect redeeming love of Jesus Christ."
--Tom DeLay

old thought

2006-03-24T13:39:00.000-08:00

One night, probably in 1880, John Swinton, then the preeminent New York journalist, was the guest of honour at a banquet given him by the leaders of his craft. Someone who knew neither the press nor Swinton offered a toast to the independent press. Swinton outraged his colleagues by replying:
"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it.
There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone.
"The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread.
You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press?
We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."
(Source: Labor's Untold Story, by Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais, published by United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America, NY, 1955/1979.)

A THOUGHT

2006-03-23T09:54:00.000-08:00

"A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government." (Edward Abbey)

The politics of pacifism meets FBI monitoring - The Boston Globe

2006-03-20T05:07:00.000-08:00

The politics of pacifism meets FBI monitoring - The Boston Globe

No Room for Contraception -- contraception, homosexuality, stephanie coontz, human sexuality

2006-03-16T05:58:00.000-08:00

No Room for Contraception -- contraception, homosexuality, stephanie coontz, human sexuality

No Room for Contraception -- contraception, birth control, negative effects, family planning

2006-03-16T05:55:00.000-08:00

No Room for Contraception -- contraception, birth control, negative effects, family planning

MISS. DOWD THINKS MY HERO IS A DUMB BOY

2006-03-11T06:16:00.000-08:00

Baghdad Burning

2006-03-08T06:23:00.000-08:00

Baghdad Burning

Larry Kilgore for Texas Governor 2006

2006-03-08T06:16:00.000-08:00

Larry Kilgore for Texas Governor 2006

MY HERO'S DREAM HOUSE

2006-03-07T07:05:00.000-08:00

THIS WOMEN MAKES MY HERO PROUD

2006-03-07T05:40:00.000-08:00

Commenting on illegal immigration, Schaefer said 50 million abortions have been performed in this country, causing a shortage of cheap American labor. “We could have used those people,” she said.

THIS WOMAN MAKES MY HERO PROUD

2006-03-06T07:03:00.000-08:00

TIME.com: The Right Kind of Nuclear Leak -- Page 1

2006-02-27T13:39:00.000-08:00

TIME.com: The Right Kind of Nuclear Leak -- Page 1

The Case for Impeachment (Harpers.org)

2006-02-27T12:05:00.000-08:00

The Case for Impeachment (Harpers.org)

Monsters, Inc. by Samuel Bostaph

2006-02-27T09:12:00.000-08:00

Monsters, Inc. by Samuel Bostaph

From Superpower to Tinhorn Dictatorship by Paul Craig Roberts

2006-02-27T08:43:00.000-08:00

From Superpower to Tinhorn Dictatorship by Paul Craig Roberts

National Review Online (http://www.nationalreview.com)

2006-02-26T05:47:00.000-08:00

National Review Online (http://www.nationalreview.com)

Consortiumnews.com

2006-02-26T05:42:00.000-08:00

Consortiumnews.com

BROTHER JOHN SENDS ALONG MORE REASONS WHY WE SHOULD TRUST MY HERO'S FAMILY WITH THE BUSINESS OF AMERIKA CORP.

2006-02-24T12:28:00.000-08:00

Phillips, K. (2004). American dynasty: Aristocracy, fortune, and
the politics of deceit in the house of Bush. NY: Viking Penguin.

p. ix Four generations of building toward dynasty, however, have infused the Bush family’s hunger for power and practices of crony capitalism with a moral arrogance and backstage disregard of the democratic and republican traditions of the U.S. government.

xi … deceit and disinformation have become Bush political hallmarks.

xii … there is a Republican Party dangerously dominated by southern fundamentalist and evangelical constituencies, willing to blend biblical theology into U.S. Middle Eastern policy and attach faith healers to the advisory structure of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

1. … favoritism toward the energy sector, defense industries, the Pentagon, and the CIA, as well as insistence on tax breaks for the investor class and upper-income groups. … Enron had a relationship with the Bush clan going back a decade and a half.

2. … the exposure in 1942 of Prescott Bush’s corporate directorship links to wartime Germany …

3. … the family ties to oil date back to Ohio steelmaker Samuel Bush’s relationship to Standard Oil a century ago …

4. No other presidential family has made such prolonged efforts on behalf of a single corporation. [Enron]

5. … in 2001, the Washington Post suggested that the new president had virtually replaced evangelist Pat Robertson as the leader of the U.S. Religious Right.

6. … Janet Rehnquist, daughter of the chief justice, became inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, while Eugene Scalia, son of Justice Antonin Scalia, became solicitor of the Department of Labor.

7. … Barbara (Pierce) Bush is descended from the fourteenth president, Franklin Pierce …

28. The career benefits of … Skull and Bones were enormous
… tended to instill a state of permanent adolescence in their alumni …

30. Cousin Ray Walker, a psychiatrist, described George W. Bush this way: “He always placated his father. Then, later on, he placated his bosses. That is how he relates—by never defining himself against authority.”

49. … his self-certainty, religious conviction touched with messianic hints, and a tendency to both doctrinal extremes and black-versus-white simplicities suggest a striking new pairing on the Hofstadter chart: the aristocrat as a fundamentalist.

66. … the top 1 percent of Americans, who held some 40 percent of the nation’s individually owned stock, to pull up and away …
Their share of U.S. household income, including capital gains, doubled, from 10 percent in 1980 to 20 percent in 1999.

67. … the highest one-hundredth of the top 1 percent … share of
U.S. household income increased almost fivefold between 1970 and 1998 … a stunning ratio.

101. … tens of thousands more citizens trying to vote for Gore seem to have been confused, turned away from the polls, or told they had been delisted.

102. Trials and investigations later established [Florida Secretary of State Kathleen Harris] Harris’s complicity in a systematic purge of voter roles tantamount to civil right violations.

105. … the GOP had spent $13.2 million on lawyers, salaries, travel and hotels, compared with $3.2 million spent by the Gore organization … frequent use was made … of Enron and Halliburton corporate aircraft.

113. … Texas … Louisiana and New York as the three states with the greatest polarization—the widest gaps between the average family incomes of the top fifth and the bottom fifth. … Texas ranked worst among the fifty states in inequality among children. … forty-ninth in state taxes and fiftieth, dead last, in per capita
state spending.

115. … Houston, is home to nearly half the petrochemical capacity in the United States.

117. Houston overtook Los Angeles as the smoggiest U.S. city in 1999 … “Bush let industry write an anti-pollution measure, and believes voluntary plans, not regulation, can clean up air and water. No wonder Texas has a world-class pollution problem.”
(Eric Pooley, “Bush in Texas,” Time, Feb. 21, 2000)

119. From a trade deficit of $1.2 billion in 1993, Mexico rocketed
to a trade surplus of… $31 billion in 2002.

128. …tax bracket reductions … gave 36 percent of their full-term benefit to the top one percent.
… crony capitalism… during both Bush administrations … mocked their ostensible commitment to free markets.

130. … Harken Energy … “direct links to … drug smuggling, foreign currency manipulation, and the CIA …”
… [Jeb Bush’s] principle business contacts were well-heeled Nicaraguan contras or CIA-connected Cubans.

131. … Silverado made over $200 million in loans, later largely defaulted to Neil’s two partners in JNB Exploration … [which]
paid the then vice president’s son $550,000 …

134. … George W. Bush himself had violated federal securities law at least four times in the late 1980s and early 1990s in selling Harken Energy Company stock while serving as as director…
… As for Jeb Bush … two of his principal Miami business associates were indicted. Carmen Padreda pleaded guilty to defrauding [HUD] of millions … Miguel Recarey had been defrauding Medicare through overcharging, false invoicing and embezzlement … fled to Venezuela.

146. … only one out of six “compassionate conservative” priorities had achieved meaningful success …

147. … Karl Rove was a great reader of Machiavelli, who was quoted as follows: “The great majority of mankind is satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities.”

157. … the Energy Act of 1992 … mandated the deregulation of
electricity at the wholesale level, also obliged utilities to carry privately marketed electricity (like Enron’s) on their wires …
As could be expected, Enron and its executives labored mightily for George H. W. Bush’s reelection in 1992. Lay, this time around a major donor, was named cochairman of the Bush reelection committee, as well as chairman of that summer’s Republican National Convention (to which Enron contributed $250,000).

158. CTFC Chairwoman Wendy Graham—wife of Enron-friendly Texas Republican senator Phil Graham—… granted Enron’s request … and roughly a month afterward she was named to Enron’s board of directors. … allowed Enron to set up its own,
unfettered derivatives exchange without being regulated like a Wall Street firm …
In February, 1993, Lay announced that outgoing secretary of state James Baker and outgoing secretary of commerce Robert Mosbacher had “agreed to join us …”

161. “Lay had better access to Bush than just about anybody.”

164. Between 1998 and 2000, Enron’s annual sales jumped from $31 billion to $101 billion, and then reached $139 billion during just the first nine months of 2001. That put it fifth on the Fortune 500 list …

165. …chief economic advisor … Lawrence Lindsay had been on the Enron advisory board for a year … Karl Rove, the [chief] political advisor, had a sizable block of company stock … and … had been able to tell Enron who in Republican politics … should get Enron money …

170. … the Bush administration did manage a late 2001 Enron bailout of sorts by failing to seize control of all the documents in the case, in effect allowing extensive shredding by Enron and accountants Arthur Anderson alike …

172. Federal government contracts with Halliburton … jumping from roughly $300 million in 1995 to $800 million in 1999…

181. … both Samuel Bush and George H. Walker were present at the creation of the U.S. military-industrial complex and its intelligence-gathering adjunct …

194. The CIA had been agreed upon in 1946 with help of a secret blueprint prepared by Robert A. Lovett, Prescott Bush’s partner at
Brown Brothers Harriman.

202. George H. Walker … had long-standing ties to Cuba and had served as director of seven related companies … was centrally involved in … sugar, rum distilling, and a major railroad

203. … Florida governor Jeb Bush would nominate Batista’s grandson, Raul Cantero, to the state supreme court.

204. …in 1981, shortly after Bush had been elected vice president,
the SEC “inadvertently destroyed” the Zapata Offshore SEC filings for 1960 to 1966. … Zapata provided commercial supplies for one of Dulles’ most notorious operations: the Bay of Pigs invasion.

205. a [1963] FBI memo that “Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency” was briefed by the Bureau about the reaction of the Cuban exile community in Miami to the Kennedy assassination.

205. … between 1957 and 1960, the asset of West Indies Sugar
shrank from a value of $53 million to almost nothing …

234. … Sun Myung Moon—a self-proclaimed messiah--… who dismissed Jesus as a failure and styled himself as “the Lord of the Second Advent,” was said to be paying the former president $100,000 per speech.

251. Since Baku is not far from the northern border of modern-day
Iraq, pursuit by the Bush family of this region’s petroleum can be said to go back four generations.

255. Cheney … had already participated in drafting a 200 report … that called for the taking over of Iraq—this well before 9/11 …

269. 17.6 percent of Harken’s stock was owned by Abdullah Bakhsh, another Saudi magnate …

270. … Jeb Bush .. socialized with Adbur Sakhia, BCCI’s Miami branch manager and later its top official.

272. The Carlyle Group … high-powered former officeholders, George H. W. Bush, former secretary of state James Baker, former secretary of defense Frank Carlucci… down to dozens of lesser cabinet … officials.

273. “What hat is former president Bush wearing when he tells Crown Prince Abdullah not to worry about U.S. policy in the Middle East?”

275. “The CIA’s own 4,000 intelligence analysts are dwarfed by the more than 40,000 analysts who work for private companies that have government intelligence contracts.”

277. By the end of the 1980s,the first U.S. mobilization against Saddam Hussein and Iraq was only months away. George H. W. Bush was busy ensuring $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees for Iraq…, declining to cut off the Iraqis from shared U.S. intelligence data, and disregarding Commerce Department advice to stop the flow of advanced equipment to Iraq.

285. Casey, by this point presumed by Tehran to represent the next U.S. government, supposedly wound up with the basis of an agreement: Iran would no release any hostages before Reagan became president in January 1981. As a quid pro quo, the Reagan administration would release a large portion of the $12 billion in blocked Iranian assets …

291. … the Saudi ambassador in Washington, Prince Bandar, and his wife considered the Bushes “almost family.”
… George Bush, who was known throughout the Middle East as “the Saudi Vice President.”

303. … Bush aggravated public discontent on Christmas Eve, a few weeks before leaving office, when he pardoned Weinberger and a half dozen others involved in Iran-Contra … “for illegal activities in which he himself may have been implicated.”

… a grave Ted Koppel had opened ABC News Nightline on June 9, 1992: “It is becoming increasingly clear that George Bush, operating mostly behind the scenes through the 1980s, initiated and supported much of the financing, intelligence and military help that built Saddam Hussein’s Iraq into the aggressive power that the United States ultimately had to destroy.”

307. On July 24… State Department spokesperson Margaret Tutwiler said: “We do not have any defense treaties with Kuwait, and there are no special defense or security commitment to Kuwait.” U.S. ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie .. told [Saddam]: “We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreements with Kuwait.” On July 31 Assistant Secretary of State… John Kelly, [a]sked whether the U.S. had a treaty commitment that would require it to protect Kuwait from Iraqis crossing the border, .. said no. Two days later, the Iraqis invaded.

PLEASE TRUST MY HERO

2006-02-24T10:21:00.000-08:00

MY HERO ASK THAT WE TRUST HIM ABOUT THE PORT DEAL. I THINK WE ALL SHOULD. WHO ELSE DO YOU KNOW WITH SUCH A RICH FAMILY HISTORY OF DOING BUSINESS WITH FOREGIN GOVERNMENTS. THIS HISTOTY RUNS ALL THE WAY BACK TO HIS GRANDFATHER. I THINK IT WOULD A GOOD HISTORY LESSON FOR US TO STUDY THIS GREAT FAMILY'S BUSINESS.

Consultations With Padre Kino by Fred Reed

2006-02-24T05:37:00.000-08:00

Consultations With Padre Kino by Fred Reed

Howard Kaloogian for Congress

2006-02-23T12:24:00.000-08:00

Howard Kaloogian for Congress

How the feds make bad-for-you food cheaper than healthful fare | By Tom Philpott | Grist Magazine | Main Dish | 22 Feb 2006

2006-02-23T10:11:00.000-08:00

How the feds make bad-for-you food cheaper than healthful fare | By Tom Philpott | Grist Magazine | Main Dish | 22 Feb 2006

So Many Eyes, So Few to Spy by Becky Akers

2006-02-23T05:45:00.000-08:00

So Many Eyes, So Few to Spy by Becky Akers WHEN WILL MY HERO'S GOD SAVE US FROM THIS SILLYSHIT?

GOOD THOUGHT

2006-02-22T12:09:00.000-08:00

Silence the War Drums

2006-02-21T09:55:00.000-08:00

Silence the War Drums

KRT Wire | 02/21/2006 | Dubai company set to run U.S. ports has ties to administration

2006-02-21T09:41:00.000-08:00

KRT Wire | 02/21/2006 | Dubai company set to run U.S. ports has ties to administration

MY HERO HAS A MIGHTY FINE RECORD

2006-02-21T06:10:00.000-08:00

AlterNet
Who's Counting Bush's Mistakes?
By Stephen Pizzo, News for Real
Posted on February 19, 2006, Printed on February 21, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/32382/

Ralph Waldo Emerson said it best, "The louder he spoke of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons." And no administration in U.S. history has spoken louder, or as often, of its honor.

So let us count our spoons.

Emergency Management: They completely failed to manage the first large-scale emergency since 9/11. Despite all their big talk and hundreds of billions of dollars spent on homeland security over the past four years, this administration proved itself stunningly incompetent when faced with an actual emergency. (Katrina Relief Funds Squandered)

Fiscal Management: America is broke. No wait, we're worse than broke. In less than five years these borrow and spend-thrifts have nearly doubled our national debt, to a stunning $8.2 trillion. These are not your father's Republicans who treated public dollars as though they were an endangered species. These Republicans waste money in ways and in quantities that make those old tax and spend liberals of yore look like tight-fisted Scots.

This administration is so incompetent that you can just throw a dart at the front page of your morning paper and whatever story of importance it hits will prove my point.

Katrina relief: Eleven thousand spanking new mobile homes sinking into the Arkansas mud. Seems no one in the administration knew there were federal and state laws prohibiting trailers in flood zones. Oops. That little mistake cost you $850 million -- and counting.

Medicare Drug Program: This $50 billion white elephant debuted by trampling many of those it was supposed to save. The mess forced states to step in and try to save its own citizens from being killed by the administration's poorly planned and executed attempt to privatize huge hunks of the federal health safety net.

Afghanistan: Good managers know that in order to pocket the gains of a project, you have to finish it. This administration started out fine in Afghanistan. They had the Taliban and al Queda on the run and Osama bin Laden trapped in a box canyon. Then they were distracted by a nearby shiney object -- Iraq. We are now $75 billion out of pocket in Afghanistan and its sitting president still rules only within the confines of the nation's capital. Tribal warlords, the growing remnants of the Taliban and al Qaeda call the shots in the rest of the county.

Iraq: This ill-begotten war was supposed to only cost us $65 billion. It has now cost us over $300 billion and continues to suck $6 billion a month out of our children's futures. Meanwhile the three warring tribes Bush "liberated" are using our money and soldiers' lives to partition the country. The Shiites and Kurds are carving out the prime cuts while treating the once-dominant Sunnis the same way the Israelis treat the Palestinians, forcing them onto Iraq's version of Death Valley. Meanwhile Iran is increasingly calling the shots in the Shiite region as mullahs loyal to Iran take charge. (More)

Iran: The administration not only jinxed its Afghanistan operations by attacking Iraq, but also provided Iran both the rationale for and time to move toward nuclear weapons. The Bush administration's neocons' threats to attack Syria next only provided more support for religious conservatives within Iran who argued U.S. intentions in the Middle East were clear, and that only the deterrent that comes with nuclear weapons could protect them.

North Korea: Ditto. Also add to all the above the example North Korea set for Iran. Clearly once a country possesses nukes, the U.S. drops the veiled threats and wants to talk.

Social Programs: It's easier to get affordable -- even free -- American-style medical care, paid for with American dollars, if you are injured in Iraq, Afghanistan or are victims of a Pakistani earthquake, than if you live and pay taxes in the good old U.S.A. Nearly 50 million Americans can't afford medical insurance. Nevertheless the administration has proposed a budget that will cut $40 billion from domestic social programs, including health care for the working poor. The administration is quick to say that those services will be replaced by its "faith-based" programs. Not so fast...

"Despite the Bush administration's rhetorical support for religious charities, the amount of direct federal grants to faith-based organizations declined from 2002 to 2004, according to a major new study released yesterday....The study released yesterday "is confirmation of the suspicion I've had all along, that what the faith-based initiative is really all about is de-funding social programs and dumping responsibility for the poor on the charitable sector," said Kay Guinane, director of the nonprofit advocacy program at OMB Watch.." (More)

The Military: Overused and over-deployed.

Former Defense Secretary William Perry and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright warned in a 15-page report that the Army and Marine Corps cannot sustain the current operational tempo without "doing real damage to their forces." ... Speaking at a news conference to release the study, Albright said she is "very troubled" the military will not be able to meet demands abroad. Perry warned that the strain, "if not relieved, can have highly corrosive and long-term effects on the military. (More)

With military budgets gutted by the spiraling costs of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the administration has requested funding for fewer National Guard troops in fiscal 2007 -- 17,000 fewer. Which boggles the sane mind since, if it weren't for reserve/National Guard, the administration would not have had enough troops to rotate forces in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Nearly 40 percent of the troops sent to those two countries were from the reserve and National Guard.

The Environment: Here's a little pop quiz: What happens if all the coral in the world's oceans dies? Answer: Coral is the first rung on the food-chain ladder; so when it goes, everything else in the ocean dies. And if the oceans die, we die.

The coral in the world's oceans are dying (called "bleaching") at an alarming and accelerating rate. Global warming is the culprit. Nevertheless, this administration continues as the world's leading global warming denier. Why? Because they seem to feel it's more cost effective to be dead than to force reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. How stupid is that? And time is running out.

Trade: We are approaching a $1 trillion annual trade deficit, most of it with Asia, $220 billion with just China -- just last year.

Energy: Record high energy prices. Record energy company profits. Dick Cheney's energy task force meetings remain secret. Need I say more?

Consumers: Americans finally did it last year -- they achieved a negative savings rate. (Folks in China save 10 percent, for contrast.) If the government can spend more than it makes and just say "charge it" when it runs out, so can we. The average American now owes $9,000 to credit card companies. Imagine that.

Human Rights: America now runs secret prisons and a secret judicial system that would give Kafka fits. And the U.S. has joined the list of nations that tortures prisioners of war. (Shut up George! We have pictures!)

I could go on for another 1,000 words listing the stunning incompetence of the Bush administration and its GOP sycophants in Congress. But what's the use? No seems to give a fig. The sun continues to shine in this fool's paradise. House starts were up in January. The stock market is finally back over 11,000.

But don't bother George W. Bush with any of this. While seldom right, he is never in doubt. Doubt is Bush's enemy. Worry? How can he worry when he has no doubts?

Me? Well, I worry about all the above, all the time. But in particular, I worry about coral.

Stephen Pizzo is the author of numerous books, including "Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans," which was nominated for a Pulitzer.
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/32382/

U.S. Money Aids World’s Worst Dictators: Newsroom: The Independent Institute

2006-02-21T05:22:00.000-08:00

U.S. Money Aids World’s Worst Dictators: Newsroom: The Independent Institute

Werther: a Half-Dozen Questions About 9/11 They Don't Want You to Ask

2006-02-20T05:51:00.000-08:00

Werther: a Half-Dozen Questions About 9/11 They Don't Want You to Ask

GEORGE W. NOT A DEEP THINKER LIKE MY HERO

2006-02-19T06:22:00.000-08:00

It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositaries, and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern; some of them in our country and under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them. If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit, which the use can at any time yield.

streetcow | Cartoon Jihad-a-rama

2006-02-19T06:11:00.000-08:00

streetcow | Cartoon Jihad-a-rama

After Neoconservatism - New York Times

2006-02-19T05:50:00.000-08:00

After Neoconservatism - New York Times

Industries Get Quiet Protection From Lawsuits - Los Angeles Times

2006-02-19T05:20:00.000-08:00

Industries Get Quiet Protection From Lawsuits - Los Angeles Times

Conservatives Endorse the Fuhrer Principle - by Paul Craig Roberts

2006-02-17T10:49:00.000-08:00

Conservatives Endorse the Fuhrer Principle - by Paul Craig Roberts

Boise Weekly - Not Your Everyday Newspaper: Features: Feature: Red State, Meet Police State

2006-02-17T06:15:00.000-08:00

Boise Weekly - Not Your Everyday Newspaper: Features: Feature: Red State, Meet Police State

BROTHER BILL SAYS WRONG DUMB ASSHOLES THEN. ALMOST THE SAME WRONG DUMB ASSHOLES NOW. OR THEIR SONS

2006-02-16T12:43:00.000-08:00

Team B
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The 1970's Team B experiment to study Soviet military capablities was created by American conservative cold warriors determined to stop détente and the SALT process. Panel members were all hard-liners. The experiment was leaked to the press in an unsuccessful attempt at an October surprise to derail Jimmy Carter's 1976 presidential bid.[1] The Team B reports became the intellectual foundation for the idea of "the window of vulnerability" and of the massive arms buildup that began toward the end of the Carter administration and accelerated under President Reagan.[2]

Team B was approved by the Director of Central Intelligence George H. W. Bush. A team of 16 "outside experts" were to take independent looks at the highly classified data used by the intelligence community to assess Soviet strategic forces in the yearly National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) (the U.S. intelligence community's most authoritative, top-of-the-line written judgment on a specific national security issue).[3][4]

There were three "B" teams:

* One studied Soviet low-altitude air defense capabilities,
* One examined Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) accuracy, and
* One investigated Soviet strategic policy and objectives.

It is the third team, chaired by Harvard professor Richard Pipes, that ultimately received considerable publicity and is commonly referred to as Team B.[5]
Contents
[hide]

* 1 How Team B was created
* 2 Team B assessments
* 3 See also
* 4 Further Reading
* 5 Footnotes

[edit]

How Team B was created

In 1974, Albert Wohlstetter, a professor at the University of Chicago, accused the CIA of systematically underestimating Soviet missile deployment, in his 1974 Foreign Policy article entitled "Is There a Strategic Arms Race?" Wohlstetter concluded that the United States was allowing the Soviet Union to achieve military superiority by not closing the “missile gap.” Conservatives then began a concerted attack on the CIA's annual assessment of the Soviet threat. [6][7]

The organization chosen in the administration to challenge the CIA was the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB).

PFIAB's Team B, was headed by:

* Richard Pipes, a Harvard historian and father of Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum, a controversial pro-Israeli speaker.
* Paul Nitze, a co-founder of Team B, also helped at about the same time to create the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), the objectives of which were to raise awareness about the Soviets' alleged nuclear dominance and to pressure the American leadership to close the gap. [8]

PFIAB members included:

* Paul Wolfowitz, Wohlstetter's former student at the University of Chicago, and current U.S. deputy defense secretary, Pipes...brought in a brilliant young weapons analyst, Paul Wolfowitz. "Richard Perle recommended him," Pipes says of Wolfowitz today. "I'd never heard of him."[9]
* I. Lewis Libby, formerly Dick Cheney's chief of staff.[10]
* William Casey,
* John Connally,
* John Foster,
* Clare Booth Luce,
* Edward Teller,
* Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor, liberal hawk.

In 1975, PFIAB members asked director of the CIA William Colby to approve the initiative of producing comparative assessments of the Soviet threat. Colby refused, stating it was hard "to envisage how an ad hoc independent group of analysts could prepare a more thorough, comprehensive assessment of Soviet strategic capabilities than could the intelligence community."[11]

In 1976, when George H. W. Bush became the new director of central intelligence, the PFIAB renewed its request for competitive threat assessments. Although his top analysts argued against such an undertaking, Bush checked with the White House, obtained a go-ahead, and by May 26 signed off on the experiment. [12]

[edit]

Team B assessments

Team B, came to the conclusion that the Soviets had developed several terrifying new weapons of mass destruction, featuring a nuclear-armed submarine fleet that used a sonar system that didn't depend on sound and was, thus, undetectable by contemporary Western technology. When the CIA argued that the economic chaos in the Soviet Union was hindering their ability to produce an air defense system, Team B countered by claiming that the Soviet Union was trying to deceive the American public when in fact their air defense system worked perfectly.Some members were even considering promoting a "first strike policy" against the U.S.S.R.[13][14][15]

The CIA strongly disagreed with Team B's assessments, calling Rumsfeld's position a "complete fiction" and pointing out that the Soviet Union was disintegrating from within, could barely afford to feed their own people, and would collapse within a decade or two if simply left alone.[16] A top CIA analyst called it "a kangaroo court of outside critics all picked from one point of view." [17]

This information was later proven to be false. According to Dr. Anne Cahn (Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, 1977-1980) "I would say that all of it was fantasy... if you go through most of Team B's specific allegations about weapons systems, and you just examine them one by one, they were all wrong."[18] The CIA director at the time, George H. W. Bush, concluded that the Team B approach set "in motion a process that lends itself to manipulation for purposes other than estimative accuracy."[19][20]

Paul Warnke, an official at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency at the time of the Team B wrote:

"Whatever might be said for evaluation of strategic capabilities by a group of outside experts, the impracticality of achieving useful results by ‘independent' analysis of strategic objectives should have been self-evident. Moreover, the futility of the Team B enterprise was assured by the selection of the panel's members. Rather than including a diversity of views ... the Strategic Objectives Panel was composed entirely of individuals who made careers of viewing the Soviet menace with alarm."[21]

Time Editor Strobe Talbott stated in 1990 that Team B's assesmnet was:

"Bush allowed a panel of outsiders, deliberately stacked with hard-liners, to second-guess the agency's findings. Not surprisingly, the result was a depiction of Soviet intentions and capabilities that seemed extreme at the time and looks ludicrous in retrospect."[22]

Bill Irvin
Johnsonite
Office Phone 1-800-899-8916 x 251
Email BIrvin @ Johnsonite.com

Guardian | The gullibility that led us into the last war could yet bring us a new conflict

2006-02-15T05:44:00.000-08:00

Guardian | The gullibility that led us into the last war could yet bring us a new conflict

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

2006-02-15T05:34:00.000-08:00

What this administration actually does, proclaiming its devotion to human rights, is to exemplify George Orwell's truth, "Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."

MEN OF GOD MAKE GOOD FATHERS

2006-02-14T05:30:00.000-08:00

Preacher Arrested, Bradley County
WDEF-TV News 12
Wednesday, June 15, 2005

An Ooltewah Minister faces domestic assault charges..

Police say he beat up his own daughter.

A family argument over whom the girl was dating led to the charge.

According to Bradley County Sheriff's reports, Community Baptist church Pastor Bryan Mowery spanked the girl with a belt first -- then threw her into a closet, kicked her and hit her in the face with his fist.

Mowery reportedly also got a nine millimeter handgun from his bedroom and fired it outside his Trewitt Road home.

For now, Mowery is out of jail on his own recognizance.

A court hearing is pending.

This story can be found at: http://www.wdef.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WDEF/MGArticle/DEF_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031783310643&path=

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Arvin Hill's Carnival of Horror

2006-02-14T05:09:00.000-08:00

Arvin Hill's Carnival of Horror

THIS IS WHAT YOUR TAX DOLLARS SUPPORT

2006-02-14T04:58:00.000-08:00

-----Original Message-----
From: Robin Bowman [mailto:robin@goodfoodfarm.com]
Sent: Monday, February 13, 2006 5:44 PM
To: Kerrie S
Subject: Please help stop the National Animal Identification Program, which
will put family farms out of business

The USDA and the State of Texas plan to make every owner of even one horse,
cow, pig,
goat, sheep, chicken or pigeon, or virtually any livestock animal, register
in a government
database and subject their property and animals to state and federal
government
surveillance.1

Premises Identification in Texas Becomes Compulsory July 1, 2006
The state plan will "evolve" along with the national plan, which mandates:

. EVERY HOMEOWNER with any animals must obtain a 7-digit USDA premises ID
number
keyed to global positioning system satellite surveillance coordinates, with
all the property
and owner's information permanently stored in a database.

. EVERY ANIMAL must be tagged with a radio frequency tag or microchip,
readable at a
distance, bearing a 15-digit USDA ID number. The plan may include DNA
sampling and/or
retinal scans of animals.

. The owner must report, within 24 hours, every animal birth, sale, death or
slaughter;
every missing animal; every placement or loss of an ID tag; and every time
an animal
enters or leaves the property (whether for a trail ride or participation in
the county fair).

THIS PLAN WILL DRIVE SMALL FARMERS AND PRODUCERS OUT OF BUSINESS AND
DISCOURAGE CITIZENS FROM RAISING ANIMALS FOR FOOD OR PLEASURE!

PLEASE HELP STOP THE TEXAS AND USDA PLAN

. Thursday, February 16th, 2006 at 10:00 a.m. attend the Texas Animal Health

commission (TAHC) public meting in Austin at the Red Lion Hotel, Salon D (at
the
Northeast corner of I-35 and Hwy. 290), www.tahc.state.tx.us

. Write your state and national representatives urging them to make the
program
voluntary at the very least.

. Tell your friends and neighbors of this pending threat to civil liberties.

. Sign the online petition. www.PetitionOnline.com/TAHCAIS2/petition.html

For Further Information, Go To www.stopanimalid.org
1Read the USDA's Draft Program Standards and Draft Strategic Plan at
www.usda.gov/nais

AlterNet: War on Iraq: Still Cherry-Picking the Facts on Iraq

2006-02-14T04:48:00.000-08:00

AlterNet: War on Iraq: Still Cherry-Picking the Facts on Iraq

Popular Ohio Democrat Drops Out of Race, and Perhaps Politics - New York Times

2006-02-14T04:26:00.000-08:00

MY HERO IS GONNA GET TO PLAY BOSS FOR A LONG LONG TIME

2006-02-13T09:31:00.000-08:00

*
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Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the 22nd amendment to the Constitution. (Introduced in House)

HJ 24 IH

109th CONGRESS

1st Session

H. J. RES. 24

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the 22nd amendment to the Constitution.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

February 17, 2005

Mr. HOYER (for himself, Mr. BERMAN, Mr. SENSENBRENNER, Mr. SABO, and Mr. PALLONE) introduced the following joint resolution; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

JOINT RESOLUTION

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the 22nd amendment to the Constitution.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years after the date of its submission for ratification:

`Article --

`The twenty-second article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is repealed.'.

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AlterNet: Blogs: PEEK: Next Stop: Iran

2006-02-13T08:50:00.000-08:00

AlterNet: Blogs: PEEK: Next Stop: Iran

Iran: The Next War by John Pilger

2006-02-13T06:10:00.000-08:00

Iran: The Next War by John Pilger

AlterNet: Blogs: Echo Chamber: Bush's Fish Stories

2006-02-13T05:46:00.000-08:00

AlterNet: Blogs: Echo Chamber: Bush's Fish Stories

The Trust Gap - New York Times

2006-02-12T06:48:00.000-08:00

The Trust Gap - New York Times

Pay for Your Sins!!

2006-02-11T05:49:00.000-08:00

Pay for Your Sins!!

Aljazeera.Net - Qatar to revolutionise diesel market

2006-02-10T13:50:00.000-08:00

Aljazeera.Net - Qatar to revolutionise diesel market

Aljazeera.Net - Malaysia advances switch to bio-diesel

2006-02-10T13:49:00.000-08:00

Aljazeera.Net - Malaysia advances switch to bio-diesel

Aljazeera.Net - Fuel giant mulls soya power

2006-02-10T13:47:00.000-08:00

Aljazeera.Net - Fuel giant mulls soya power

Joe Bageant: Welcome to Middle-Class Lockdown

2006-02-10T09:53:00.000-08:00

Joe Bageant: Welcome to Middle-Class Lockdown

US plans massive data sweep | csmonitor.com

2006-02-10T06:17:00.000-08:00

US plans massive data sweep | csmonitor.com

Jesus' General

2006-02-10T05:57:00.000-08:00

Jesus' General

AlterNet: The President, the Stripper and the Attorney General

2006-02-10T05:14:00.000-08:00

AlterNet: The President, the Stripper and the Attorney General ouché
Posted by: IanA on Feb 10, 2006 4:08 AM [Report this comment]
Those Americans who still think that they are carry the shining torches of freedom and democracy to the rest of the world better wake up and realise that they really are living in a presidential dictatorship, with the backing of the military and a rubber stamp legislature. Your elections are rigged and your papers are bought and your fellow citizens are either scared or stupid or will be taken care of in due course....

The U.S. of A is a slightly bigger and more imposing version of the type of dictatorships it used to promote for its own interests and easy manipulation and management in Central and South America.

The next phase I suspect will be a ramping up of the fear factor, another terrorist event for good measure, is the likely direction given the timely Ben Laden tape. I still cant«t figure what stretch of the imagination they will somehow use it to justify aggression on Iran this time. But they didn't need real facts the last time either.

The consequent security clampdown should also show the need for hire vigilance and detainment of suspected collaborator U.S. citizens who are in opposition to freedom and fair "government" and are aiding and abating the activities of enemy "terrorists" planning ever more threats to American security and jeopardizing American values.

Having some knowledge of Chile, it's kind of ironic that the USA has put itself into the same mould as the Pinochet type junta. It sort of proves that what goes around, comes around.

Viva el Presidente! Adios liberdad.

BROTHER PAUL THE COMMIE,THINKS MY HERO IS A CHEATER

2006-02-10T05:01:00.000-08:00

The New York Times
Printer Friendly Format Sponsored By

February 10, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
The Vanishing Future
By PAUL KRUGMAN

At this point we've had six years to grow accustomed to Bush budget chicanery. (Yes, six years: George W. Bush's special mix of blatant dishonesty and gross irresponsibility was fully visible during the 2000 presidential campaign.) What still amazes me, however, is the sheer childishness of the administration's denials and deceptions.

Consider the case of the vanishing future.

The story begins in 2001, when President Bush was pushing his first tax cut through Congress. At the time, the administration insisted that its tax-cut plans wouldn't endanger the budget surplus bequeathed to Mr. Bush by Bill Clinton. But even some Republican senators were skeptical. So the Senate demanded a cap on the tax cut: it should not reduce revenue over the period from 2001 to 2011 by more than $1.35 trillion.

The administration met this requirement, but not by scaling back its tax-cutting ambitions. Instead, it created fictitious savings by "sunsetting" the tax cut, making the whole thing expire at the end of 2010.

This was obviously silly. For example, under the law as written there will be no federal tax on the estates of wealthy people who die in 2010. But the estate tax will return in 2011 with a maximum rate of 55 percent, creating some interesting incentives.

I suggested, back in 2001, that the legislation be renamed the Throw Momma From the Train Act.

It was also obvious that the administration had no intention of abiding by its concession to fiscal prudence, that it would try to eliminate the sunset clause and make the tax cuts permanent.

But it quickly became clear that the budget forecasts the administration used to justify the 2001 tax cut were wildly overoptimistic. The federal government faced a future of deficits, not surpluses, as far as the eye could see. Making the tax cut permanent would greatly worsen those future deficits. What were budget officials to do?

You almost have to admire their brazenness: they made the future disappear.

Clinton-era budgets offered 10-year projections of spending and revenues. But the Bush administration slashed the budget horizon to five years. This artificial shortsightedness greatly aided the campaign to make the 2001 tax cut permanent because it hid the costs: since budget analyses no longer covered the years after 2010, the revenue losses from extending the tax cut became invisible.

But now it's 2006, and even a five-year projection covers the period from 2007 to 2011, which means including a year in which making the Bush tax cuts permanent will cost a lot of revenue — $119.7 billion, but who's counting? Has the administration finally run out of ways to avoid budget reality?

Not quite. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out, until this year budget documents contained a standard table titled "Impact of Budget Policy," which summarized the effects of the administration's tax and spending proposals on future outlays and revenues. But this year, that table is missing. So you have to do some detective work to figure out what's really going on.

Now, the administration has proposed spending cuts that are both cruel and implausible. For example, administration computer printouts obtained by the center show that the budget calls for a 13 percent cut in spending on veterans' health care, adjusted for inflation, over the next five years.

Yet even these cuts would fall far short of making up for the revenue losses from making the tax cuts permanent. The administration's own estimate, which can be deduced from its budget tables, is that extending the tax cuts would cost an average of $235 billion in each year from 2012 through 2016.

In other words, the administration has no idea how to make its tax cuts feasible in the long run. Yet it has never, as far as I can tell, allowed unfavorable facts to affect its determination to make the tax cuts permanent. Instead, it has devoted all its efforts to hiding those awkward facts from public view. (Any resemblance to, say, its Iraq strategy is no coincidence.)

At this point the administration's budget strategy seems to be simply to ignore reality. The 2007 budget makes it clear, once and for all, that the tax cuts can't be offset with spending cuts. But Bush officials have decided to ignore that unpleasant fact, and let some future administration deal with the mess they have created.

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Hijacking the Internet | MediaChannel.org

2006-02-09T13:58:00.000-08:00

Hijacking the Internet | MediaChannel.org

A terrorist on every corner?

2006-02-09T10:43:00.000-08:00

A terrorist on every corner?

MR FISH POKES FUN AT MY HERO

2006-02-08T06:25:00.000-08:00

The Preznit's Alfabit

Just released, the new Alphabet (Alfabit) according to Preznit Incredibly Ignorant.

A is for Absolute Fiscal Insanity
B is for Business's I ran into the ground
C is for Cheney the self-selected evil dwarf
D is for Destroying the Social Contract
E is for Egregiously ignoring congress
F is for Felonies I have committed
G is for Grand Juries that will ensure I'm acquitted
H is for Hack Political Cronies
I is for Ignorant Political Cronies
J is for Justice Denied
K is for K is for Karl, or K-street with loot
L is for Larceny, our strongest suit
M is for McClellan who lies without conscience
N is for the Noise Machine, he's always playing
O is for Obstruction of Justice
P is for Politics over Policy
Q is for Queers. Outlaw them! Marginalize them!!
R is for Religious Right, so vital yet so stupid (see Q above)
S is for Science. Hate it.
T is for Tax Cuts. Love them.
U is for Unemployment. Who Cares, got mine.
V is for Veterans. A good place to cut benefits.
W is for Me!!!!
X is for Xenophobia, let's stir that up this year!!!
Y is for Yet another Breathtaking Lie (and they bought it!)
Z is for getting to the end of this list, without fal..a..zzzzzzzz

Feel free to make corrections. Laura is so proud, he finally got to 'Z' before he fell asleep.

Buildup to World War III by Bill Sardi

2006-02-07T05:50:00.000-08:00

Buildup to World War III by Bill Sardi

Political Science 101 by Butler Shaffer

2006-02-07T05:33:00.000-08:00

Political Science 101 by Butler Shaffer

Alexander Cockburn: "Lights Out in Tehran"

2006-02-06T05:46:00.000-08:00

Alexander Cockburn: "Lights Out in Tehran"

‘‘The blues was a gift so great that it is now almost the only reason many foreigners still like the USA. Foreigners love us for our jazz. They don’t

2006-02-06T05:44:00.000-08:00

‘‘The blues was a gift so great that it is now almost the only reason many foreigners still like the USA. Foreigners love us for our jazz. They don’t hate us for our purported liberty and justice for all. They hate us for our arrogance.’’ - [Sunday Herald]

The Blog | Bob Cesca: The Pig Man Threat Across America | The Huffington Post

2006-02-06T05:26:00.000-08:00

The Blog | Bob Cesca: The Pig Man Threat Across America | The Huffington Post

A Straussian Interpretation of the 2006 SOTU by Karen Kwiatkowski

2006-02-06T05:21:00.000-08:00

A Straussian Interpretation of the 2006 SOTU by Karen Kwiatkowski

What’s a Christian Soldier To Do? by Laurence M. Vance

2006-02-06T05:14:00.000-08:00

What’s a Christian Soldier To Do? by Laurence M. Vance

We are all Danes now - The Boston Globe

2006-02-05T06:07:00.000-08:00

We are all Danes now - The Boston Globe

Pentagon Database Leaves No Child Alone by Mike Ferner

2006-02-04T06:13:00.000-08:00

Pentagon Database Leaves No Child Alone by Mike Ferner

Living Without Television by Christopher Westley

2006-02-04T06:02:00.000-08:00

Living Without Television by Christopher Westley

Stop Wal-Mart's Right-Wing War on Women!

2006-02-03T10:22:00.000-08:00

Stop Wal-Mart's Right-Wing War on Women!

Bush’s 'Probably Not a Terrorist Surveillance Program' by Thomas Eddlem

2006-02-03T09:50:00.000-08:00

Bush’s 'Probably Not a Terrorist Surveillance Program' by Thomas Eddlem

The Forkball Isn’t Moving by John Liechty

2006-02-03T09:45:00.000-08:00

The Forkball Isn’t Moving by John Liechty

War, What War? by H. Arthur Scott Trask

2006-02-03T09:31:00.000-08:00

War, What War? by H. Arthur Scott Trask

John Boehner on the Issues

2006-02-03T05:01:00.000-08:00

John Boehner on the Issues THIS MAN MAKES ME PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN

Corporate Jesus

2006-02-02T06:00:00.000-08:00

Corporate Jesus

Times Leader | 01/31/2006 | Scandal no cash killer to Sherwood

2006-02-02T05:45:00.000-08:00

Times Leader | 01/31/2006 | Scandal no cash killer to SherwoodWHAT DOES IT TAKE FOR THE BORN AGAIN FOOLS NOT TO VOTE FOR THIS EVIL IDIOT? BABY RAPE?

Translating the Emperor's Speech by Anthony Gregory

2006-02-02T05:09:00.000-08:00

Translating the Emperor's Speech by Anthony Gregory

A TRUE THOUGHT THEN,A TRUE THOUGHT NOW

2006-02-02T05:02:00.000-08:00

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In Search of Peace

by F.A. Harper

Save a link to this article and return to it at www.savethis.comSave a link to this article and return to it at www.savethis.com Email a link to this articleEmail a link to this article Printer-friendly version of this articlePrinter-friendly version of this article View a list of the most popular articles on our siteView a list of the most popular articles on our site

This article was published in 1951, at the height of the Cold War and the hot war on North Korea, by the libertarian economist who went on to found the Institute for Humane Studies.

Charges of pacifism are likely to be hurled at anyone who in these troubled times raises any question about the race into war. If pacifism means embracing the objective of peace, I am willing to accept the charge. If it means opposing all aggression against others, I am willing to accept that charge also. It is now urgent in the interest of liberty that many persons become “peacemongers.”

Patrick Henry, that great advocate of liberty, in a speech before the Virginia Convention in 1775, said: “I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past.” Were he with us today, he might well repeat that advice to a nation confused and woefully mired in the problems of war and peace – a nation acting in a blind panic.

Probably more wealth and effort have been squandered in a fruitless search for peace by the present generation than by any other in the history of man. For nearly half a century the increasing tempo of war and preparation for war has found the world further and further from peace. Time after time it has been asserted that if only we could crush some particular dictator by the use of military might, the safety of man’s freedom would be assured. “One more supreme sacrifice,” again and again. And each time dictators “more ruthless than anything the world has seen since Genghis Khan” arose out of the refuse of war, leaving liberty and peace the loser after each bloody conflict.

Not only that, but in nations like the United States and Britain most of the trappings of dictatorship, under different names, have been accepted until the plight of citizens in a “free” country is much the same as that of citizens in a “dictatorship” country. To test this, merely make a detailed comparison, ignoring reasons given in one’s own country for this or that abridgment of liberty.

We speak of the impending threat of World War III, even while we are still officially engaged in World War II. The guns have hardly cooled from a war in which we joined Russia to help defeat Germany, Japan, and Italy. Now the veterans of that war are again commanded to pick up arms to defeat Russia, which is operating under the same management and with the same policies and methods as when we were her ally – if, in fact, we are not still officially her ally.

All the while our diplomats have been hastening to arrange something that will pass for a peace agreement with Germany, Japan, and Italy. Unless that is done, it is especially awkward for our legislators to appropriate our money to replenish a military might that we have just finished destroying in these former enemy nations.

A Tito or a Franco or a Peron is one day an “enemy” of liberty and the next day its “friend.” Ships frantically rush here and there, first giving and then threatening not to give our wealth as bribes to “friends” and “enemies” alike. And there is no telling which will be which tomorrow.

While all these banners and alignments of nations have been shifting back and forth as with the changing winds, the liberty of the people in “our haven of liberty” has been constantly eroding, until it has now reached the lowest point in the history of this nation. It makes one feel as if he were being whirled through space until he has lost all sense of direction.

Against this confusing picture, it would be well to heed the words of Patrick Henry and pause long enough on a road strewn with the wreckage of liberty and peace to see if we may not have been treading it in the wrong direction. Perhaps the problem of peace should be approached from a new and unconventional direction. On the record, at least, the solution would seem to lie elsewhere than in the methods that have been tried again and again without even a semblance of success.[i]

We must not let pleas for unity paralyze our minds and prevent any review of our past acts. There is no virtue in a unity attained by blinding people and inducing them to join in a mass stampede. Uncommon courage, not cowardice, is demanded of anyone who will remove himself from the stampede long enough to see where he is going.

The Problem of Conflict

Let us start on the problem this way. Many persons consider war to be an evil, but they support it on occasion as necessary “for the long time good.” But how can good be attained by means of an evil? That defies simple logic.

A review of the historical consequences of war, so far as its effect on liberty is concerned, supports the belief that war is an evil and that no long time good results from it. Why, then, do we keep getting into war? One study reports that war has engaged the major countries of Europe for about half the time since the year 1500.[ii] What mistakes are made in preserving the peace and the liberty of man?

War is conflict on its largest scale. Conflict in all its forms – murder, rebellion, riot, insurrection, mutiny, banditry, war – has caused the death of 59 million persons in the world during the last century and a quarter. Of this number, four-fifths died as a direct result of the larger wars, which are by all odds the major cause of death from conflict. Murders and all the other lesser forms of conflict, though highly numerous, have accounted for only one-sixth of all deaths from conflict in the world during this period.[iii] Conflict probably never can be wholly eliminated, because man is imperfect. But these figures suggest the importance of preventing it from growing into wars.

Only if we identify the cause of conflict can we keep it at a minimum and prevent its growth into war. The cause of conflict is the moral delinquency that allows infringement on liberty and on the rights of men; it is that alone. If liberty were complete, and if each person were to restrict himself to what is his proper scope and concern, there could be no conflict. What would there be to fight about if liberty were thus universal?

Conflict arises when freedom of choice is restricted. If one is free to choose his work and his leisure, to use what he produces and to spend what he earns, to select his own associates, and to choose in all other aspects of his life, he does not have to fight his way out of anything or to maneuver around restrictions and repressions beyond those of his own conscience. This concept may be tested on the everyday conflicts we know best – with one’s child, with one’s neighbors, in community affairs, between employer and employee. In every instance it is some prohibition, or control, or monopoly that gives rise to conflict. These are the things which prohibit free choice and which therefore generate conflict.

It is true that to whatever extent we violate the rules necessary to a peaceful society, there cannot be unrestricted freedom. That is why the general acceptance of certain rules, governing the use of things that are in limited supply, is necessary to a peaceful society. The concept of private property is one of these, and freedom of exchange is another such rule.[iv]

Stated bluntly, conflict results from slavery in some form or degree or from the violation of rules of a peaceful society. Problems of war – all conflict – are exclusively problems of abolished liberty. Thus the prevention of war, or of the threat of war, must take the form of cutting the bonds on liberty wherever they exist.

Peace will exist only as liberty is increased in all its forms among individuals throughout the world. There is no other road to peace. This means that any building up of power anywhere in the world in any of its forms, and under any excuse, leads toward conflict in its worst form – war.

Conflict between humans may be compared with the physical fact of friction. We know that friction exists, but it is one of the most difficult phenomena of the physical world to explain thoroughly. It occurs as the result of contact. Since complete separation of objects is difficult if not impossible, lubrication is necessary to reduce friction to a minimum.

All human relationships are also potential friction. Voluntary arrangement in these relationships acts like a lubricant: It will not eliminate all friction but reduces friction to a minimum. The use of force removes this lubricant and generates heated conflict, because persons then cannot withdraw from contacts not of their liking.

Every conflict, at its origin, is a matter between only two persons. One person may be using force against the other or trespassing on his property. If this conflict cannot be resolved in any other manner, a murder may occur. The outcome could be no more serious that the loss of one life, unless somebody intercedes who is not directly concerned.

Conflict grows, then, as a result of anything which causes opposing sides of any controversy to amass into growing numbers. The larger the number, the greater and bloodier the conflict becomes.

We can see how this works by observing a football game. Someone violates the rules, and two players start to battle it out. If all 22 players joined in, the conflict would become serious. What if 100,000 spectators joined in?

I was deeply impressed by a scene in a recent movie. Two contenders for the kingship of a tribe of uncivilized “savages” in the deepest recesses of Africa were in conflict for possession of the throne. Finally, the two contenders battled it out to the death. The other members of the tribe laid their preferences and their weapons aside, and all stood on the sideline as observers. They had learned that if persons other than the two concerned were to join in the battle, there would be unnecessary bloodshed. Uncivilized? Perhaps we would be more humane and civilized if we were to resolve the present world conflict in some such manner – at least a “victor” by combat could be selected without so much bloodshed and destruction of property.

There would always be some conflict even among free people, but it would be small and localized. There would be a murder now and then, but death would not be nearly so prevalent as from the mass conflict of major wars.

A neighborhood squabble between two persons in China, for instance, might lead to one of them murdering the other. But if we are left to use our individual judgment, not many of us would volunteer in behalf of one or the other and cause it to grow into a war. Numbers do not become amassed that way into a major conflict unless persons are forced to join in.

True, there are always some volunteers in foreign wars. In fact, fighting in foreign wars used to be an accepted hired occupation. But this sort of thing never became prevalent enough to be featured in the history books.

It is a fact that small conflict develops into major war only as a result of involuntary servitude. We can see this much better if we look afar at the “dictatorship” nations.

There is no escaping the fact that some men have a lust for power. And war or the presumed threat of war seems to surpass all other devices by which a ruler can induce the people to thoroughly enslave themselves under his “leadership,” to lose their liberty and all rights of choice, to answer to his beck and call. Power becomes concentrated at one end of a long line of authority, which at the other end terminates in complete subservience on the field of battle.

Edmund Burke said that loss of liberty always occurs “under some delusion.” By some strange twist of reasoning, fear of losing liberty drives persons to enslave themselves and surrender their liberty in the hope of keeping it. It is argued that this is necessary “to protect the people.” How can slavery make them any more brave? This presumes the people to be too ignorant or cowardly to act voluntarily in their own behalf, that they must be forced to protect themselves.

It is indeed a strange notion that I should be compelled by others to protect myself. This “self protection” then becomes labeled “sacrifice,” and tribute is paid me, my dependents, and my descendants by those who forced me to “defend myself.” Something is wrong there, somewhere.

Power is grasped by the dictator because of the urge to be “great.” Lord Acton, the British historian, said: “All power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”[v] He was speaking here of “great” in the sense of a Caesar or of a Napoleon – whose moral degradation was reflected in one of his remarks. After hurrying back to France from a campaign in Russia that cost the lives of over 500,000 of his countrymen, he rubbed his hands before the fire and said: “Decidedly it is more comfortable here than in Moscow.”

Perhaps dictators are evil because power corrupts them, as Lord Acton said. Or perhaps evil men gravitate to the administrations of power, as Hayek said in one notable chapter in his book, The Road to Serfdom.[vi] I do not know which, but it seems certain that a part of the strategy of maintaining “leadership” in this sense is to keep up a series of crises and emergencies and a confusion that seems to demand the action of a strong and ruthless autocrat. “Greatness” may even be acquired by chasing a series of one’s own mistakes, as “leader,” into eventual war – backing into “greatness,” so to speak.

It is no coincidence that large-scale wars are the product of dictatorships or of the acts of aspiring dictators. Power is first grasped in internal confusion and conflict; then later it bursts into an external conflict, and the dictator calls for national unity.

The Balance of Power

At this point we should take a look at the “balance of power” theory. It calls for bolstering up a lesser power as a protection against a greater power, until it equals or exceeds the power that is “threatening.” This theory has been widely followed in international affairs, in labor-management affairs, in politics – everywhere.

It is strictly a power concept. Rulers are given more and more power to guide and control the actions of others, to sound the bugle call of battle at whatever time and place they choose. The persons over whom they rule are first presumed to be incapable of acting voluntarily in their own defense and are then bound in controls and servitude until they actually are unable to defend themselves, even against their own “leader.”

Let me illustrate how the balance-of-power theory works, by a hypothetical case. A threat to peace arises between two persons at a church social. Deacon Jones suspects Deacon Smith of planning to do him some harm – “…so it is said, by sources usually considered to be reliable but which cannot be revealed for reasons of religious security.” Smith is powerful enough to do so, if he chooses. So Jones propositions Deacon Brown to come to his defense. Brown, who sincerely wants peace to prevail, agrees to a treaty whereby he is to be subject to Jones’ call to arms in case of aggression by Smith. Notice of the treaty is released to the “public” through Jones’ Department of Public Defense – or perhaps privately to Smith through the “proper” process of a “diplomatic note.” Smith, finding himself threatened with a superior force, then proposes the same balance of power theory, in turn, to Deacons Solcefoskiski and Chin, and they sign a treaty with Smith. A counter “diplomatic note” is sent back to Jones. This goes on and on, with personal liberties declining more and more as power accumulates on both sides under the rule of Smith and Jones. Tensions increase more and more on both sides, until a wholesale brawl can be started by someone sneezing or shouting “Boo!” Or perhaps the brawl is intentionally started by one side or the other, as it becomes clear that the burden of “defense” under conditions of an armed truce is too costly and threatens them with starvation, if continued. Going to war then becomes “a matter of self-defense against encirclement and starvation.”

War or the threat of war becomes self-generating under the balance of power theory and builds up and up, until abandoned out of sheer exhaustion from battle or from the costs of “defense.” But this brings no settlement of the underlying causes of the conflict. The certain outcome is total loss of liberty by individuals on both sides of the conflict. Losers become serfs of the winning side; and on the winning side, all other individuals remain subjects of the ruler, who finds no reason to abdicate at the victorious height of his ruling glory. This “route to liberty” thus becomes a route to servitude.

In carrying out the balance of power idea, it is of course necessary to shift alignments of “allies” and “enemies” on frequent occasion. Treaties and money are both used as the medium of exchange. We should have learned by now that an “ally” bought with dollars will demand a steady stream of dollars in a one-way deal and even then does not stay bought. One who can be bribed by us can also be bribed away from us. He is not a friend.

Defense and Self-Defense

What is to be the guide of proper defense, then, that is consistent with the ideals of liberty? Has the libertarian no rights of self-defense? Must he stand idly by while murderers, thieves, and vandals ravage his person and property, his family, or his friends?

My reply is: No. So far as my rights are concerned, the right to life carries with it the right to defend my life. And since my property is the economic extension of my person, it is likewise within my rights to protect my property from theft or destruction. I may, within my rights, protect these in whatever manner seems to me to be the soundest from the standpoint of strategy. I may or may not use force to resist an aggressor or evict a trespasser. When one is forced to decide between preserving his life and protecting his property, he may without cowardice decide that protecting his life is his initial duty. He would, if forced to make that choice, let his property go and keep his life rather than say: “Take my life, but leave me my property.”

Now we come to a more perplexing question. Is it my duty to throw my weight against the oppressors of liberty in any instance where it is others rather than myself whose personal rights are being violated? Should I protect my infant child in this respect? My wife? My neighbor? Your neighbor? An Englishman? A Chinese? A Russian peasant who feels oppressed by the iron hand? An officer of the Russian army who is happy in his status? A conscripted soldier of our own army? Where, if at all, is one justified in employing the tools of force to remove trespass on the rights of others?

Since I am responsible for the care and protection of my family, I am also within my rights to defend each of them against an aggressor, a thief, or a vandal by whatever means seems best – assuming, of course, that they agree and want me to help protect them. As for neighbors and others, it is proper to help defend them against acts of crime against their person and property, if I desire and they want me to do so. There should, however, be mutual agreement on the need as well as the means. So far as I can see, this applies to one’s next-door neighbor or to a person anywhere else in the world.

One is not necessarily obligated to assist everyone whose liberty is being transgressed. I am certainly not obligated to give my life to protect the property of someone who differs with me as to the nature of liberty. Nor am I morally obligated to assist those who agree with me about the design of liberty and the nature of its violation, if they themselves have not first exposed their lives in its defense. Indeed, I have no right to intervene by the use of force to defend something they have chosen not to defend.

It is also proper for me to induce another to resist trespassers on his own or my liberty. But in doing so I must use only voluntary educational means. His rebellion must be sincere and stem from a personal conviction on his part. It is illiberal for me to use authority over him “to force him to protect his own liberty” or mine.

It is frequently said in defense of wartime controls and centralization of power that liberty is a luxury to be enjoyed in peacetime when things are normal, that we cannot afford the luxuries of liberty during emergencies like the present. One who makes such a statement, if he makes it seriously, does not really understand and believe in liberty. He is one who cannot be depended upon to act in its behalf. He is one who will willingly enslave his fellowmen “in order to defend their liberties.” His devotion to liberty is a sham, and he can be expected to conclude later that, if controls and centralized power are desirable in wartime, they are also desirable in peacetime.

One who believes in liberty and who understands it enough to act in its defense does so because he considers liberty to be superior to its alternative – slavery in its various forms. Why does he believe it to be superior? Because it is more just, more in harmony with the design of a good society, more productive. This makes it stronger because it embodies justice and those incentives which bring out the best in man. If, on the other hand, he believes liberty to be less just, less strong, and less productive than slavery, he is on the other side of this great issue even though he salutes the same flag and is one’s friendly neighbor.

Relinquish liberty for purposes of defense in an emergency? Why? It would seem that in an emergency, of all times, one needs his greatest strength. So if liberty is strength and slavery is weakness, liberty is a necessity rather than a luxury, and we can ill afford to be without it – least of all during an emergency.

Suppose that a clergyman were to admonish the members of his flock to abandon the practice of Christianity during every emergency because it is a luxury, good only for normal times. If he were to say that, we would certainly believe him to be a religious quack and of negative worth. We would conclude that he did not really believe justice, goodness, and strength to be embodied in religious faith. It is the same with all self-styled lovers of liberty who call for its abandonment during every emergency. They must be counted out of the forces for liberty. Indeed, should they not be counted among the enemies of liberty?

The only person who can effectively defend liberty is one who believes in it and considers it to be the embodiment of strength rather than of weakness. All others will do the wrong thing and support the wrong cause when the chips are down. If by this test the defenders of liberty turn out to be few, then the cause of liberty is that much more desperate than we had assumed.

Finding the Enemy

The first necessity in any defense is to identify the enemy with precision and accuracy. Lacking that, defense measures make no sense. It is like shooting at an unknown target. Could it be that our past efforts for the defense of liberty have failed for the reason that we have failed to identify the real enemy?

What is the basic issue in this conflict? What do we wish to fight against? It is slavery, the enemy of liberty. It is simply that and nothing else.

Slavery takes on many forms and goes by many names. But no matter what its form and name, the enemy is anything that prevents man from being free.

The enemy of liberty is, at its base, an idea – the idea that the enslavement of man is a superior and stronger form of social arrangement than is an arrangement of free men acting together voluntarily. It is the idea that men of a community or a nation can better themselves and strengthen themselves if some of them will enslave others. That idea is the real enemy.

In attacking the enemy of liberty by the use of force, as is commonly assumed to be necessary, how might one proceed? The enemy is basically an idea, which is an abstraction. It has no nose to be punched and no heart to be pierced. The nearest you can get to an idea by the use of force is to attack its host – the person who believes it. This explains the great temptation to personify the enemy of liberty, to recast it in the form of certain persons who can be attacked by the use of force.

Which persons shall be attacked? Every person violates at least some of the tenets of liberty and to that degree is an enemy of liberty in practice. Every person is, then, partly the friend and partly the enemy of liberty. Realizing this, one should abandon the attempt to personify the enemy of liberty and to attack it by force. If he persists in the attempt, he will at this point have already gone astray in its defense. The project will be doomed to failure in the enactments of “necessary wartime controls,” no matter what words are emblazoned on the banners of the marching columns.

In the attempt to personify the enemy, who will be tagged? Will they be selected after a careful examination of the beliefs of each of the world’s 3 billion inhabitants? To attempt to do so would preclude war, because the political leaders are incapable of doing the testing and because the job is so large that it would never be completed by any central examining committee of this type.

What, then, is to be done? The leaders ignore the fact that they are incapable of examining even one person and hide their incapacity behind a grandiose façade of decoys. They label entire nations, or continents or races, as the enemies of liberty when, in fact, they are unable to judge even one person in this respect and do not even know the questions to be asked.

So the nation goes to war and, while war is going on, the real enemy – long ago forgotten and camouflaged by the processes of war – rides on to victory in both camps. The real enemy is, in fact, immune to the weapons of physical combat used in war.

Further evidence that in war the attack is not leveled at the real enemy is the fact that we seem never to know what to do with “victory.” When guns are silenced by the white flag of surrender, what is to be done with the victory? Are the “liberated” peoples to be shot, or all put in prison camps, or what? Is the national boundary to be moved? Is there to be further destruction of the property of the defeated? Or what? The fact that those responsible for the settlements of “liberation” have themselves acquired the disease while administering the processes of war, makes any logical solution even less likely.

False ideas can be attacked only with counter-ideas, facts, and logic. There is no other way. It is necessary to realize that an idea cannot be forced into submission by kicking it in the shins or by beating it over the head. Nor can you shoot an idea.

It is worth remembering that the Roman legions were never able to defeat the Christian idea by this method two thousand years ago. The British military might never was able to defeat Gandhi, the little man without weapons. Christ and Gandhi were both killed, but their murder seemed to give impetus to the spread of their ideas rather than the destruction of them.

Karl Marx perhaps more than any other person developed the body of thought that is today the leading enemy of liberty. It would have made no difference if Marx had died a year earlier or a year later, because the ideas had been put into circulation and were not mortally a part of him. Nor can these ideas of his be destroyed today by murder or suicide of their leading exponent or of any thousands or millions of the devotees. On the contrary, persecution seems to unite those of one faith and spreads their ideas as nothing else will do. Least of all can the ideas of Karl Marx be destroyed by murdering innocent victims of the form of slavery he advocated, whether they be conscripts in armies or victims caught in the path of battle.

Ideas must be met by ideas, on the battlefield of belief.

The Fruits of Aggression

Government in this country was designed as an agent to protect persons and property, to maintain peace and order by resolving conflict through a judicial system. And it was supposed to administer resistance to threats from outside the country, but without ever becoming an aggressor in the outside world.

Our government during the last half century, however, has become the captain of military excursions all over the world. In these wars, the citizens are compelled to give up essentially all their liberty and to respond to the call to arms at the command of one person – one who is presumed to be their servant and not their master. Our war excursions are coming more and more to be without the consent of the people or of their elected representatives. So long as this procedure is tolerated, liberty is at an end in this nation.

The government was originally supposed to serve as policeman and to punish those within the borders who use force or violence against the person or the property of their neighbors. When a government, however, uses force or violence against the person or the property of national neighbors, the process is honored by terms such as “national defense,” “victory,” and the like.

For performing acts that are the same in the eyes of God, a person may be either executed or decorated, imprisoned or promoted – depending on whether the act is in peacetime against a near neighbor or in wartime against a more distant neighbor. How can either of these properly go by the name of justice and the maintenance of peace?

As previously stated, self-defense is the right of any person. But it seems that many of us are unable to distinguish between a defense properly within this limit of rights and the use of the same tools to generate a “war of self-defense.” Perhaps a reason is to be found in the failure to understand how proper defensive measures may become diseased and develop into a cancerous growth of illiberal power. This can best be seen by reviewing the usual nature of war from the standpoint of liberalism.

When at war or in preparation for war, the pattern of affairs in any nation includes all the devices of the socialist-communist state. A centralized power gains control of the economic affairs of the nation and of the acts of the citizens. The armed forces, and perhaps others, are conscripted. Priorities and subsidies, and all such authoritarian devices, become “tools of defense.” Capital and its uses “must be controlled, else the selfish interests of the capitalists will sap the defense of the nation.” Intellectuals and high executives are drawn into the program of administering socialism in the form of these powers and controls, as a “patriotic duty” and amid great fanfare of flag waving. Power, which first was granted reluctantly in the belief of its necessity during an emergency, soon becomes thought of as a virtue in itself and at any time. All this is financed either by taxes drawn from the smaller and smaller remainder of private enterprise of the nation or by money counterfeited by means of inflation by those in control. The entire process of war is always the direct antithesis of liberalism.

The Honorable R. Hopkin Morris, Member of the House of Commons from Wales, who has great understanding of the subject of liberty, has aptly expressed the present world situation thusly: “War is pre-eminently the breeding ground of the Planned State… Liberalism, silenced as it always is in war, has now in peace time been paralyzed by the prevailing atmosphere of the time.”[vii]

Yet “liberals” are found embracing, approving, and supporting the process of war. Why? I suspect that it is because, in an atmosphere of panic, they are drawn to an objective which they can comprehend – the defeat of a personalized “enemy” on the field of battle. In the heat of a generated hatred, that objective seems to them to be commendable.

There must be considerable satisfaction to the promoters of the collectivized state in the fact that, heads or tails, they win: that while still being officially at war and preparing at terrific cost to defeat our recent partner in the continuing conflict, we have more and more contributed to the strength of the enemy – compulsory collectivism. Suicide it is, however unwitting. If one were to attempt to design a scheme whereby an easy victory would be handed to the foreign managers of the collectivized state, the pattern of events now being followed could hardly be improved upon. Why should one lend his support to the process or even tolerate it?

If power be an evil, how can the employment of this evil possibly beget a good? Power can, to be sure, be used to displace one power with another that is greater. Displacing one power with another in this manner does not destroy power; it increases the scope of illiberal power. And if power be evil, this process merely increases the magnitude of the evil.

The records of history show how great dictatorships have been built on pleas for defense against some vague, external threat or “enemy.” I see no reason to assume that the eventual outcome of now pursuing similar ends can be expected to be any different here. Democratic processes as such are no protection, as Ballinger so well proves in his book.[viii] That we possess no miracle of protection against the evil conduct or misuse of power should by now be clear to any person capable of observation. The fact is revealed in a growing and entrenched bureaucracy. It is also revealed by our increasing participation in distant wars – wars sanctioned under the cloak of national defense, but nonetheless the handmaiden of dictatorial power and a factory for the collectivized state.

It is frequently argued these days that force must be used to stop aggression before it starts. That is an untenable position. It is impossible for anyone to tell a future aggressor from one who is not going to be one. Such use of force is never justified, and in engaging in it there will have been opened a floodgate of mayhem which, in its release, can be followed logically to the ultimate obliteration of the human race.

The reason for this rule of restraint can be seen by reducing it to the simple form of its elements. If aggression were to be allowed against an anticipated aggressor, you would not only fight off the murder-in-progress, and perhaps kill him, you would kill him as he comes over the hill for that presumed purpose; you would not only kill him as he comes over the hill for that purpose, you would kill the one assumed by you to be planning to do so; you would not only kill the one presumably planning to do so, you would kill all who might plan to do so – and that includes everybody.

There must be something wrong in that theory of defense, at its start. Once a person practices aggression, he finds no logical stopping point. It must end in his own defeat. The time to stop it is before starting, no matter what seeming justification may be at hand for initiating aggression.

We are told that to get at an “enemy” and “prevent his attack on us,” we must set up “defense” at some distant point. So a foreign battleground is selected. Suppose A and B are neighbors, each of whom violently disapproves of the way the other operates his household. The difference is great; the enmity is bitter. Each considers the other to be a serious threat to another neighbor, C, who is not concerned beyond letting A and B each run his own household as each desires. Both A and B know that if there should be battle in one of their own houses, windows would be broken and furniture wrecked and blood would be splattered on the wallpaper and the rugs. Yet each is watching for an opportunity and excuse to attack the other so as to rid the neighborhood of a “dangerous enemy.” Finally an occasion arises when both happen to be on C’s property. So they go at it, wrecking his house and killing his wife and baby in the process – on the basis that in so doing they are liberating C from the threat of aggression and trespass. It may be seriously questioned, I believe, whether this is the way to generate good will among one’s neighbors, even though the action was started for the avowed purpose of neighborhood defense. It is a violation, I believe, of the proper and right conduct.

Perhaps it is for a similar reason, in connection with present world tensions, that most foreign countries seem reluctant to have us mess up their living room by using it as the battlefield for another war. They may not see why, if we want to fight someone, we should not be willing to wait until we have been attacked and then defend ourselves as we see fit in our own house. After all, the people of Europe have had considerable experience in this sort of thing in recent decades, seemingly to no avail.

And what is more, most of these peoples now live under governments that allow very little liberty anyway – governments which we appear to favor, as evidenced by our giving them continuous support to protect them against the effects of their suicidal economic policies. So, obviously, we do not seem to be interested in liberating these people from their own governments. The people themselves probably do not see enough difference between their present governments and the communism that “threatens from without” to warrant fighting a war. So why should they either join the fight or again allow their homelands to be used as battlegrounds in what probably seems to them to be a contest for world power?

That must be the way our neighbors look at it. Deeds, not words, will be necessary to convince these people otherwise. We ourselves must first consistently and for a considerable time live by the principles we espouse and which we claim to be trying to preserve by such wars. What, for instance, must the average Korean citizen think has been the issue of the war in his homeland? Lofty principles and the freedom of man? The one thing that he can see clearly is that his cities and towns have been destroyed and his innocent countrymen killed. The view of these people is likely to be: “Isn’t the United States merely fighting for its own power in the world and, in doing so, preferring to have the bloodshed and destruction take place in my dooryard rather than on its own soil?”

One popular proposal these days is to send a “limited” number of warriors to various other countries. Supposedly this is to protect these countries from aggression, perhaps by frightening away the would-be aggressor. If there were to be no aggression, this would be trespass without a purpose. And if there were to be aggression, a token resistance would be futile.

The sending of a token force probably induces the aggression it is intended to prevent. The “enemy,” if he is not so weak as to be no threat anyhow, is thereby invited to become an aggressor on the basis of exactly the same argument used for sending the force there in the first place, except that this aggression then becomes more clearly justified as a counter measure. And others may join him in a consolidation of enmity against us.

Sending “only a few” rather than many is a compromise proposal having as a doubtful virtue the fact that it is certain to be wrong because of being either too much or too little. The crucial question is resolved when the first soldier is sent officially. I am not speaking of soldiers who wish to volunteer for service with the army of their choice; they are on their own, and I would allow them their full rights of participation as private individuals on that basis. What I am speaking of is the matter of our government forcing some of our citizens to participate in armed trespass. Once the first one has been sent, the second becomes all the more “necessary” to defend the first, the third to defend the second – on without end and without any place to call a halt with any logic whatsoever.

The difference between sending a few and sending many is a distinction without a difference. The lack of difference becomes clear later when the sending of just a few has become ridiculous and when it has become too late to reconsider the basic issues. We would by then have become involved in a foreign war to an advanced degree.

Many persons can be induced to fight some distant “enemy” they do not know, over some issue they do not understand, while in the abundant company of kinsmen who likewise do not know what the grandiose affair is all about. People are much less inclined to engage in conflict with an “enemy” who is their next-door neighbor, where the issue is clear to both parties; this form of dispute is much more likely to be settled out of conflict, because they can see the issue and resolve it peacefully.

A strange thing happens when people are in a panic of fear over something they neither see nor understand. For instance, they can be induced to give up their liberty by delegation of power over their affairs to others – who also cannot see or understand. They fall for a plan of “collectivized liberty,” which is a contradiction in terms. They trade their liberty for the false claim of saving it. This is the same as a person who hands his wealth over to someone who convinces him that it is unsafe in his own hands and promises to take care of it for the victim, but who is a robber using this device for thievery. We know how liberty has thus been lost in Germany and in many other countries. It can happen under any form of government, if the people allow power to grow and rob them of their liberty. It can happen here. In fact, it is happening here.

The Proper Defense of Liberty

Russia is supposed to be the enemy. Why? We are told that it is because Russia is communistic, and our enemy is communism. But if it is necessary for us to embrace all these socialist-communist measures in order to fight a nation that has adopted them – “because they have adopted these measures” – why fight them? Why not join them in the first place and save all the bloodshed?

Is it any wonder that a person who is charged with a governmental responsibility for defense, and who does not know the real nature of the enemy, is surprised to discover that many of his close ideological friends are card-carrying members of the Communist party? Why not? They have merely formalized the basic beliefs which both of them share, in the form of allegiance to and membership in the Communist party – which is in no sense an illogical act for anyone who holds those basic beliefs. The only question at issue between them would seem to be that of who is to be the captain of the totalitarian ship – a distinction of no great importance.

If it were possible for more curbs on liberty to become the tools of liberation, why not conclude that slavery is the best route to emancipation, that positives can be created by the accumulation of negatives?

But I insist that ideas rather than persons are the real enemy. If one is not already familiar with this enemy, it can be seen in brief outline in the “ten points” of the Communist Manifesto, together with a few paragraphs of comments immediately preceding the listing of the ten points.[ix]

These ideas are to be found in operative forms everywhere in our midst, as well as in proposals for further extension. They are to be found in the form of numerous laws and regulations in the United States. A person who does not know the forms in which this enemy is already in our midst is in no position to urge our support in a further surrendering of our liberty at home to protect us against this same enemy in some “communist” nation afar. There is no sense in conjuring up in our minds a violent hatred against people who are the victims of communism in some foreign nation, when the same governmental shackles are making us servile to illiberal forces at home.

One who would serve the freedom of man is bound by his honor to do everything within his power to re-establish liberty and justice at home before concerning himself with its demise elsewhere. On a purely military basis, I believe, it is supposed to be good strategy always to attack the enemy at the closest and most vulnerable point of contact.

For any person who would use force at all, within the limits of his rights of defense, it would seem that the logical place to start defending his liberty is in any area where he, personally, has been reduced to the status of slavery. He need not look afar for an enemy that is still merely a threat to his liberty on his own soil. There are, here and now, specific things to be attacked, things within the proper scope of his action in self-defense. In doing so, he will not be violating the principle that he should never aggressively use force or the threat of force against what is merely a possible future trespasser on his liberty.

And as to preparation for defense against future trespass on his liberty, the best form of preparation is to cut those shackles on his liberty that now exist. If he is to defend remaining liberties, hadn’t he better throw off those shackles which now enslave him, rather than to further enslave himself? As more and more individuals do so and engage in opposing the shackles that bind us here and now, there will most certainly emerge a high degree of cooperative defense of liberty without any compulsory planning and without the need of binding us in obedience to any domestic master.

If I am to be servile, one way or another, I find little reward in battling for a better master – if, in fact, there can be such a thing as a better master. I care not about the color of his hair, or his name, or his ancestry, or the language he speaks, or where he may happen to reside. I would not shed blood over such differences, and I would not ask others to do so. Why quibble over who is to administer an evil? There may be something harmonious and proper in having an evil administered by an evil person, if in fact it could be otherwise.

Those who want action because they are in a panic, and who point to “the lateness of the hour,” are free to start throwing off the yoke they now endure at any moment they wish. They may use all the fearlessness and boldness they demand of others. Let them throw caution to the winds, if they wish, and wade in! Why don’t they? Why do they hesitate to take action against the elements of illiberalism here at home, while demanding haste in squandering money and blood for “defense” against its foreign forms? The reason is, I fear, that they do not know the nature of the enemy.

In view of all the misunderstanding and confusion about liberty and its defense, the thing most to be feared at this time is enslavement from within the nation rather than from without. Slavery from within is no vague threat; it is rapidly approaching a full victory. But the “enemy” from without is still only a threat, and I doubt if a nation of free people could be conquered by him, even if it were to be attacked.

The theme of this analysis has been that liberty and peace are to each other as cause and effect; that war is an evil; that good cannot be attained by evil means; that war is the cancerous growth of minor conflicts, which would remain small if dealt with as issues between the individual persons concerned but which grow into the larger conflict of war as a consequence of amassing forces by means of involuntary servitude; that a person has the right to protect his person and his property from aggression and trespass and to help others if asked and he wishes to do so; that liberty is lost under guise of its defense in “emergencies”; that in emergencies, of all times, the strength and vitality of liberty is needed; that concentrating power in wartime is as dangerous as at any other time; and that power corrupts those who acquire it.

Perhaps these are the reasons why war always seems to demoralize those who adopt its use; why human reason seems to go on furlough for the duration of serious conflict, and in many instances thereafter; why liberty seems always to come out the loser on both sides of war. Bentham’s definition of war as “mischief on the largest scale” then comes to have a deeper meaning.

While being fully sympathetic with the unwilling victims of conflict, we must not lose sight of the greatest heroes – the heroes of wars unfought because of what they did to prevent them. Largely unsung and unrecorded are the truly great persons whose wise and timely acts have stopped the makings of aggression at its source and who in this way have prevented major wars. Their greatness, we may trust, is safely recorded in more important places and in a manner more substantial than mere popularity and common renown, more permanent than statue and shrine, in forms where human errors of judgment cannot tarnish or pollute their greatness. Those most deserving of glory are the persons who prevented the battles from being fought. It is such as these whose council we should follow.

Human frailties being what they are, there are always those among us who will use force and trespass against others. The problem of peace is that of how to deal with them and those who blindly serve them. The solution does not lie in doing the same thing under guise of “self-defense,” which is usually the use of force and violence offensively against others.

Whether one should use force and violence even in self-defense, where it seems to be within one’s right to do so, may be open to question. The decision of whether or not to use it is a matter of strategy and moral right. When Christ’s method met the force of great military and political power two thousand years ago, its defensive strength was impressive. It would seem that the Prince of Peace has demonstrated the secret of both peace and defense, for which we search, even though the reason why it works so well may defy some of our instincts and surpass our full understanding.

Notes

[i] Chang Hsin-hai, "The Moral Basis of World Peace,” The Annals, Vol. 258 (July, 1948), 79–89.

[ii] Quincy Wright, A Study of War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942).

[iii] Lewis F. Richardson, “Variation of the Frequency of Fatal Quarrels with Magnitude,” Journal of the American Statistical Association, December, 1948.

[iv] F. A. Harper, Liberty: A Path To Its Recovery (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1949), Chap. 3; reprinted in volume one of The Writings of F. A. Harper.

[v] John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, Historical Essays and Studies (London: Macmillan and Co., 1907), p. 504.

[vi] Friedrick A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944), chap. 10.

[vii] R. Hopkin Morris, Dare or Despair (London: Liberal League of Youth Trust, n.d.), pp. 3–5.

[viii] Willis J. Ballinger, By Vote of the People (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1946).

[ix] Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto (Chicago: Regnery, 1954), pp. 36–7.

Copyright © 1951 F.A. Harper

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OLD CHINK THINK

2006-02-01T07:42:00.000-08:00

Chinese saying: "Inequality, rather than want, is the cause of trouble."

Secular, Scientific, Socialism, and every other dirty liberal word: State of the Union: Let's all ride magical hydrogen ponies in the land of Gumdrop

2006-01-31T13:51:00.000-08:00

Secular, Scientific, Socialism, and every other dirty liberal word: State of the Union: Let's all ride magical hydrogen ponies in the land of Gumdrop Rainbows

THIS IS NOT WHAT MY HERO THINKS

2006-01-31T09:35:00.000-08:00

GORE VIDAL: Today, the 31st of January, in the hallowed year, election year, of ’06, could be a memorable day if we all do our part, which is simply to concentrate, among other things, and do perhaps what a couple of groups have decided would be useful for the President, I guess his State of the Union. We might give him some idea of our state, which is one of great dissatisfaction with him and his regime. And there's talk of perhaps demonstrating in front of the Capitol or here or there around the country to show that the union is occupied by people who happen to be patriots. And patriots do not like this government.

This is an unpatriotic government. This is a government that deals openly in illegalities, whether it is attacking a country which has done us no harm, two countries -- Iraq and Afghanistan -- because we now believe, not in declaring war through Congress as the Constitution requires, but through the President. ‘Well, I think there are some terrorists over there, and I think we got to bomb them, huh? We'll bomb them.’ Now, we’ve had idiots as presidents before. He's not unique. But he's certainly the most active idiot that we have ever had.

And now here we are planning new wars, ongoing wars in the Middle East. And so as he comes with his State of the Union, which he is going to justify eavesdropping without judicial warrants on anybody in the United States that he wants to listen in on. This is what we call dictatorship. Dictatorship. Dictatorship. And it is time that we objected. Don't say wait ‘til the next election and do it through that. We can't trust the elections, thanks to Diebold and S&S and all the electronic devices which are being flogged across the country to make sure that elections can be so rigged that the villains will stay in power.

I think demonstrations across the country could be very useful on this famous Tuesday. Just say no. We've had enough of you. Go home to Crawford. We'll help you raise the money for a library, and you won't even ever have to read a book. We're not cruel. We just want to get rid of you and let you be an ex-president with his own library, which you can fill up with friends of yours who can neither read nor write, but they'll be well served and well paid, we hope, by corporate America, which will love you forever.

So I think it is really up to us to give some resonance to the State of the Union, which will be largely babble. He's not going really try to do anything about Social Security, we read in the papers. He has no major moves, other than going on and on about the legality of his illegal warrantless eavesdroppings and other breakings of the law.

I had a piece on the internet some of you may have seen a few days ago, and there's a story about Tiberius, who’s one of my favorite Roman emperors. He's had a very bad press, because the wrong people perhaps have written history. But when he became emperor, the Senate of Rome sent him congratulations with the comment, “Any law that you want us to pass, we shall do so automatically.” And he sent a message back. He said, “This is outrageous! Suppose I go mad. Suppose I don't know what I'm doing. Suppose I'm dead and somebody is pretending to be me. Never do that! Never accept something like preemptive war,” which luckily the Senate did not propose preemptive wars against places they didn't like. But Mr. Bush has done that.

So this is a sort of Tiberius time without, basically, a good emperor, and he was a good emperor in the sense that he sent back this legislation, which was to confirm anything he wanted to have done automatically. And they sent it back to him again. And then he said, “How eager you are to be slaves,” and washed his hands of the Senate and went to live in Capri, a much wiser choice, just as we can send this kid back to Crawford, Texas, where he'll be very, very happy cutting bushes of the leafy variety.

You know, it’s at a time when people say, ‘Well, it makes no difference what we do, you know, if we march and we make speeches, and this and that.’ It makes a lot of difference if millions of Americans just say, “We are fed up! We don't like you. We don't like what you're doing to the country and what you have done to the country. We don't like to live in a lawless land, where the rule of law has just been bypassed and hacks are appointed to the federal bench, who will carry on and carry on and carry on all of the illegalities which are so desperately needed by our military-industrial corporate masters.”

I think a day dedicated to that and to just showing up here and there around the country will be a good thing to do. And so, let the powers that be know that back of them, there's something called "We the people of the United States,” and all sovereignty rests in us, not in the board rooms of the Republicans.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Author Gore Vidal delivering his traditional State of the Union address in advance of President Bush's State of the Union later tonight.

JAMES FREY'S NEW JOB

2006-01-31T09:31:00.000-08:00

I AM GLAD TO SEE JAMES FREY GOT A NEW JOB. HE IS WRITING MY HERO'S STATE OF THE UNION SPEECH.

Edge: THE OPIATES OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES by Nassim Taleb

2006-01-30T13:10:00.000-08:00

Edge: THE OPIATES OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES by Nassim Taleb

GOOD BOOK

2006-01-30T12:19:00.000-08:00

ditorial Reviews
Book Description

It began as a simple investigation into environmental policy in the Sierra Nevadas. But what journalist Stephenie Hendricks uncovered turned out to be a far bigger story, the ramifications of which affect the entire globe. Hendricks discovered that the development of American environmental policy in the Bush administration is being driven by Dominion Theologists-far-right Christian ideologues who believe that by exhausting our natural resources they will hasten the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

Known in policy circles as the "wise-use" doctrine, the theory is startling enough in implication, but even more chilling in practice-some officials say the Bush administration did not sign the Kyoto Accord on fighting global warming because it was "against God's prophecies."

And as Hendricks investigates the Dominion Theologists' power within the government and profiles some of its leading proponents, she reveals where their funding comes from and charts their regular intersection with the mining and logging industries, real estate developers, off-road vehicle manufacturers, and even The Walt Disney Company. She also tells the often frightening story of those people who dare to resist their policies-for example, the retiree who challenged the destruction of a national forest near her home only to have her life threatened.

Divine Destruction is, in short, an in-depth look at the radical remaking of American environmental policy already underway-in terrifying secret.

Stephenie Hendricks is an Emmy Award-winning broadcast journalist with a 35-year career working for mainstream and progressive media. She has worked for ABC Radio, CBS TV San Francisco, and is currently a Pacifica Radio producer.

About the Author
Stephenie Hendricks is an executive news producer for Pacifica Radio. She is also a producer for Free Speech TV and World Link Television. She has been a broadcast journalist for 35 years.

FUTURE WAR HEROS

2006-01-28T05:26:00.000-08:00

ENLIST NOW

Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi: What's Hurting the Middle Class

2006-01-27T04:41:00.000-08:00

Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi: What's Hurting the Middle Class

Create an e-annoyance, go to jail | Perspectives | CNET News.com

2006-01-26T14:04:00.000-08:00

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GOP Freezes Jobs List, a Vestige of the K Street Project

2006-01-26T06:03:00.000-08:00

GOP Freezes Jobs List, a Vestige of the K Street Project

A President Who Can Do No Right - New York Times

2006-01-26T05:40:00.000-08:00

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adn.com | alaska : State rebuffs raw vote demand

2006-01-25T14:16:00.000-08:00

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