Mind F_ck Politics: The Political Commentaries of Wildfeather

2009-05-02T05:20:00.000-07:00

Kamal Nazer Yasin of Eurasia.net writes on 5/01/09:

"At a UN anti-racism conference, dubbed Durban II and held in Geneva, Ahmadinejad made a spectacle of himself by making what some diplomats characterized as a "hate speech." In his conference comments, Ahmadinejad alleged that Zionism "personifies racism," going on to accuse Western states of encouraging the establishment of a "totally racist government in occupied Palestine."

One must remember that Zionism has its roots in the occupation of Israel during the time of Moses and was characterized then by a strict command from God to purify the land pf Canaan killing all the inhabitants of the existing towns and villages and to dwell there "forever". At the same time the Law of Moses called for a strict observance of purification rites and the strict ordering of twelve tribes and the administration of worship and justice by the Levitical priesthood and families, the Kohanim. But, they blew it! And God kicked them out.

Traditions of separatism and violence are a deep part of the texture of the middle east and represent systems of honor and nobility for many of the nations. Jerusalem, which means the city of peace, represents established traditions of peace in the Middle East. That city was founded by a forbear of Abraham, "The Priest of Salem" who is also the ancestor of Ishmael.
The basic teaching is simple: to protect the widow and the fatherless, love thy neighbor, treat foreigner fairly, and maintain a spirit of hospitality. This was the way in the beginning and will endure until the very end.

Confiscation Vs. Freedom

2008-12-17T17:25:00.000-08:00

When the average street dealer gets arrested for drugs
all his belongings immediately get confiscated;
his car, his boat and his Rolex watches.
They figure he bought this with the money gained
through the sale of drugs

Nobody questions Madoff 's belongings.
He is free on ten million dollars bail
paid with the money he gained by fucking his rich friends.

Gotta laugh at the politics involved here.

"A Goodbye Kiss": Threw His Shoes at The President of the United States of America!

2008-12-15T19:29:00.000-08:00

As he flung the shoes, Mr Zaidi shouted: "This is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog."

A hero through his shoes! "In terms of the agreement this is a major achievement," spoke an unruffled President Bush knowing how important freedom of expression is in a free society. Espousing the ideals of social freedom, President Bush supported the act as an indication that freedom was beginning in Iraq. Although he will be view in history with great perplexity on a number of fronts, especially economic, he will forever be associated with this heroic act on the part of many of the Iraqi people.

The Iraqi government called on his employers to apologize for the act, apparently planned for months. Then, the Al-Baghdadia news agency responded with a statement demanding al-Zaidi's release "in line with the democracy and freedom of expression that the American authorities promised the Iraqi people."

They still have to learn that freedom of expression means non-violent expression.

According to unconfirmed newspaper reports, the former coach of the Iraqi national football team, Adnan Hamad, has offered $100,000 (£65,000) for the shoes, while a Saudi citizen has apparently offered $10m (£6.5m).

Long live the widows and orphans of Iraq and the indignity that all righteous persons must show toward those who bring death and destruction into the lives of innocent people. So begins the historical demise of the Bush regime.

Daley Obama Blagojevich -"Politics = Who Owes What to Whom"

2008-12-12T04:53:00.000-08:00

"The most important thing to criticize about Obama's career is invisible, because the media doesn't talk about it. By that I mean the growing debt Obama owes to the very worst element in Illinois politics, Mayor Richard Daley's political machine." Read: Obama's corrupt Illinois alliance

Abusive Self Interest: Tyranny

2008-11-30T06:59:00.000-08:00

Secrecy has nothing to do with the national security and everything to do with private interests and those who lie, steal, cheat, murder, rape, pillage the public by using executive privilege.

Aristotle and every major political philosopher since has warned against secrecy in office. It indicates the presence of abusive self interest which is tyranny.

The president is required to turn over his records upon leaving office for the public record but Obama intends to assist Bush and Cheney in continuing their secrecy.

The president-elect’s Web site promises he will reverse Executive Order 13233, nullifying the timely, lawful release of presidential records.

For more on this go to: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081129_bushs_11th_hour_bid_for_secrecy/

Bush-Cheney-Rice ... Obama-Biden-Clinton

2008-11-23T06:40:00.000-08:00

I believe that strong leadership requests information, makes decisive decisions and bears the responsibility. The level of knowledge required to be decisive in the office of the President of the United States was much greater than the present administration possessed and its lack of wisdom crippled the financial system of this nation; something the people trusted it was well poised to strengthen. What system can Obama enhance with popular words, high ideals, charismatic speeches, and a plentiful lack of hard earned leadership and experience while Biden and Clinton are calling the shots? This looks like a repeat performance.

Socialist “Bailout” Could Spark Collapse By Cliff Kincaid

2008-10-04T06:03:00.000-07:00

AIM Column | September 29, 2008

Many commentators, Schiff said, are telling people that if the bailout doesn’t go forward, there will be an economic crisis.

While many of the talking heads and pundits on TV have been providing calming words of reassurance about proposed federal intervention in the financial system, analyst Peter Schiff of Euro Pacific Capital has been accurately warning for years about a financial meltdown and says that the worst, if Congress eventually passes the “bailout” bill, is yet to come.

Asked for comment on current media coverage of the financial meltdown, he told Accuracy in Media, “Absent when they have me on, it’s pretty bad.”

Many commentators, Schiff said, are telling people that if the bailout doesn’t go forward, there will be an economic crisis. However, “if we do it, there will be a bigger crisis,” he predicts.

“The politicians want to make believe we can avoid paying the piper if we pass these bailouts,” he said. “It’s just not true. It’s going to collapse the currency. It’s going to make a worse economic crisis because the money they’re printing is not going to buy anything.”

While he continues to make a number of media appearances, he says that the CNBC cable network won’t have him on the air. “I predicted all this stuff, and they laughed at me,” he said. “So maybe they’re embarrassed.”

Schiff, who labels the proposed government takeover of the financial sector as socialism and refers to the Federal Reserve Board chairman as “Comrade Bernanke,” told AIM, “The government doesn’t have the authority to do any of this stuff. This whole bailout bill is illegal. They don’t have the authority to buy up mortgages. Nothing in the Constitution says they can do this.”

“Who needs Bolsheviks when you have the Fed?” he has written.

The author of “Crash Proof: How to Profit from the Coming Economic Collapse,” Schiff said that “The government doesn’t solve problems. It makes them bigger. So if we’re broke, which is the reality―that’s why these mortgages are not worth much because Americans can’t afford to pay the money back that they borrowed―the bottom line is we’ve borrowed and spent ourselves into bankruptcy following the government’s advice. They’re the ones that encouraged all this reckless borrowing and spending.”

Interviewed by AIM before the House of Representatives on Monday afternoon voted down the “bailout” scheme, at a time when it looked like the plan would actually pass, Schiff had shocking advice for ordinary Americans.

“The first thing you do if you have a mortgage is you stop making the payments,” he said. “That’s the number one thing for people who have mortgages based on this plan. And use that money to buy gold or stock up on food. You’re going to need it. Meanwhile, no one is going to kick you out of your house. You’re going to be able to live in your house for probably a year or two before the government calls you up to give you a lower mortgage because nobody is going to foreclose on you right now. Why would you foreclose? You sell the loan to the government. This plan is a huge moral hazard and it’s going to lead to a surge in mortgage delinquencies.”

While media reports and opinion polls demonstrated that the overwhelming majority of Americans were opposed to a socialist takeover of a major sector of the U.S. economy, many voices in the media were urging passage of the takeover plan. (Read on)

Three robbers burnt alive in Karachi by Raza Hussain

2008-05-18T06:18:00.000-07:00

May 15, 2008

In a shocking incident of vigilante justice, a mob in Karachi on Wednesday burnt three bandits alive near the Timber Market, venting their anger and disgust over the rising crimes.

The gory incident took place when four robbers barged into Akbar Soomro’s apartment on the third floor in the Somiya Mukarram Palace, situated near the Timber Market. The robbers barged into his house at around 1:30 pm and held the children hostage at gunpoint. They cut the telephone line and electricity wires and locked the house from inside and started misbehaving with the women.

The bandits looted cash and jewellery. When they were about to flee, the door bell rang. When the bandits opened the door, they found Akbar, the head of the family. They shot and injured him and started fleeing.

Akbar, a seaman by profession, chased the bandits and made a hue and cry. The passers-by and residents of the area caught the three bandits and started beating them, while the fourth escaped. They immediately shifted Akbar to a hospital where he was declared out of danger.

In the meantime, 800 to 1,000 people gathered (more)

On Oil, Politics, and Hating Me Because I Tell the Truth by David Brant

2008-05-18T05:59:00.000-07:00

This is and awesome article by David Brant that may be found on Ground Report, I would highly recommend reading his material. Right on, David!

With oil prices flowing relentlessly upward--at least for the time being--and gasoline prices naturally, inevitably following suit, it should be clear to all educated adults, reglardless of whehter or not they are economists or day-traders, why these prices are going up.

We are all taught in school, well before our college-age years, of the law of supply and demand. Assuming that demand remains constant, when supply goes down, prices go up; when supply goes up, prices go down.

With two very, very heavily populated nations called China and India increasing their demand for energy and, hence, oil at a ruthlessly fast rate as they move their societies into the prosperous capitalistic model of doing business and become technologically savvy, oil supplies and the prospecting for places from which to get new supplies are having great amounts of stress placed on them. This stress on those resources is unprecedented on a global scale (as is the amount of wealth being created and enjoyed on a global scale).

This stress is predominantly what is driving up oil prices, and hence driving up gasoline prices. There are some other factors, too--the weakened U.S. Dollar (all oil the world over is priced in Dollars), the fact that most of the world's oil supply is owned and controlled by governments and cartels instead of private enterprise (which makes for less responsiveness to market forces), the hypersensitive oil futures traders on the floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange all play their role in driving up oil prices. Prices at the gas pump are further driven up in the United States by state and federal taxation--as a matter of fact, the governments make significantly more money per gallon of gasoline than ExxonMobil or Chevron or any of their ilk do.

But, mainly, it's suppy and demand. Indeed, the cartel factor and the futures-traders factor are affected by the same supply and demand, at least to an extent.

Meanwhile, the oil companies themselves are only enjoying the smallest profit margins on each ever-more-expensive barrel of oil sold. They are enjoying the MSM's beloved bete noire record-high profits only because volume of sales are up to record-highs, in the same way that a Target or a Wal-Mart rakes in the dough even while selling the same merchandise for less than others do.

But none of this is good enough for the ranters and ravers on the Left or their puppet messiahs in the MSM. Why not? Because people are angry at sharply rising gasoline prices (which could have been greatly mitigated if the U.S. Congress had permitted appropriate action to be taken years ago) and, in the great drama of day to day existence, people need something to react to emotionally. What this means for most of them is that they need to be able to point the finger of blame at someone.

And who else to point it at but the wicked, vile oil companies? After all--they're making money while we're losing money! (If these same ranters and ravers would shut up and learn how to invest their money more wisely, they, too, would be making money if they held any number of different oil and gas stocks.)

The reason why people either ignore the law of supply and demand or fail to point their cursing finger of blame at the one right entitity that deserves a goodly share of it--the federal government--is because the media messiahs that play on their fears are working for the aforementioned federal government and it is their j-o-b to aid and abet the federal government in pointing its authoritarian finger back at the wicked, vile Big Oil businesses.

Now, all of this is played out with intense drama in the media, and the resultant hero vs. fire-breathing dragon tale is so mesmerizing to the vast majority of people that they just find it much more entertaining than the very dry and unemotional tale of some law of supply and demand.

Can't they just repeal that tiresome law, anyway?

At any rate, just as exciting is when the wicked, vile Big Oil heads have to show up before Congress to be shaken down again, and the blame-passing fingers of Congressmen become the scolding, wagging fingers that vow to force those snakes to give the people what they deserve!

That is why a true slithering snake like Barry H. Obama gets people to swoon and cheer when he goes into his overly studied southern Baptist preacher's drawl and raises his hand high in righteousness and declares that yes, he will make the oil companies pay their fair share (as if they don't already pay more in taxes each year than most Americans dare to dream of earning in their lifetime)! It's not because he's righteous nor because he is appealing to facts or truth.

It's because he's a pop star.

Pop stars, even the ones who have talent, do not make great music. They just hit their fans and listeners in a soft place: their unexamined emotions.

This is what politicians do, and those who do it better are those that get the vote. Votes that keep the power in their hands are what matter most to them; not truth.

Barry H. Obama and all those in the Congress who keep doing the shake-down on Big Oil don't want to tell you that all increased costs to corporations just re-appear as higher prices for consumers. Every time politicians raise taxes on business, it is the private consumer who foots the bill. The politicians don't care, however, because their j-o-b is to fill their coffers. More money, more power.

Make people think they're thinking, and they will love you. Make people really think, and they will hate you.

If you, dear reader, talk the law of supply and demand in the same breath as oil and gasoline prices, be prepared to be laughed at, ridiculed, ignored, and yes, hated.

But at least you'll know you're telling the truth. And a few others will, too.

For shame those few others aren't our leaders.

Iranian Speedboats in Gulf of Hormuz

2008-01-08T21:27:00.000-08:00

Mr. Bush said:

"I don't know what their thinking was, but I'm telling you what I think it was, I think it was a provocative act."

The US president was speaking in the White House Rose Garden on the first anniversary of the Iraq troop surge, hours before leaving for a week-long Middle East trip.

i don't know
what their thinking was

this is a common loaded rhetorical statement which communicates disinterest in the other person or party ... it shows a closed mind and a hardened spirit

but I'm telling you what I think it was
I think it was a provocative act

with this our president has stated to the world
what he wishes to think and believe
and what he wishes us to think and believe

in other words
get ready for war
echoes of the bay of tonkin

also:

What is this Iran provocation BS?
Source: CounterPunch
Author: David Lindorff

Posted on 01.08.08 by Mary Lou Seymour

“Not one news story about this week’s latest chapter in the administration’s ongoing effort to gin up a crazy war with Iran–the so-called ‘provocation’ caused by Iranian naval speedboats approaching within 200 meters of a US destroyer–mentioned that the US, which sits some 7500 miles away from Iran, has sent a whole fully-armed armada into the Persian Gulf just off Iran’s coast. Or that the Vice President actually flew out to an aircraft carrier that was part of that US armada, and threatened, from the flight deck, to have the US massively attack Iran. Just who is provoking whom where?” (01/08/08)

In Memory of Benazir Bhutto Cut U.S. Ties to Musharraf By Medea Benjamin

2007-12-29T15:55:00.000-08:00

The following is an excerpt from Information Clearinghouse:

"Bhutto's assassination is a blow to people all over Pakistan, and the world, who hold life sacred and believe in the basics precepts of democracy. It is also a blow to women worldwide who took strength from seeing such a courageous, articulate and charismatic woman playing a leadership role in a powerful Muslim country. Inside Pakistan, even her most bitter critics wept at the news of her death, understanding that it is indeed a dark day when assassination becomes a tool for eliminating opposing viewpoint"
There is much speculation about who committed this odious act. It could certainly be religious militants opposed to a leader like Bhutto who repeatedly expressed her determination to combat violent extremists. Bhutto was perceived by many Pakistanis as too "pro-Western," especially after remarks that if elected Prime Minister, she might allow U.S. military strikes inside Pakistan to eliminate al-Qaeda. " ( ... Read on)

Why Does Iran Need Nuclear Power

2007-12-04T07:24:00.000-08:00

Figure it out!

Iran has that largest available army in the world according ... and virtually nothing else.

Iran

11,770,000

China

7,024,000

North Korea

5,995,000

South Korea

5,209,000

India

3,773,300

Russia

3,037,000

United States of America

2,369,239

Taiwan

1,965,000

Brazil

1,687,600

Pakistan

1,449,000

Egypt

1,109,000

Turkey

1,043,550

Indonesia

923,000

Germany

683,150

Israel

576,000

Visit: to Global Fire Power dot com.

THE EU: FIRST IN POSITION; FIRST IN PREEMINENCE

2007-07-02T09:55:00.000-07:00

By Debra Rae

February 5, 2006

NewsWithViews.com

By definition, globalism is an interdependent, one-world state that undermines Western traditionalism inclusive of the US Constitution, free enterprise, Judeo-Christian ethic, and the traditional family—all of which, over time, are exchanged for so-called enlightened collaborative consciousness in the name of “collective security.”

Curious, isn’t it, that the National Chairman of the Communist Party USA, Gus Hall once made this startling admission: “The battle [to save America] will be lost, not when freedom of speech is finally taken away.” Instead, Hall continued, America will be lost “when her citizens become so adjusted or conditioned to getting along with the group that, when they finally see the threat, they say, ‘I can’t afford to be controversial.’” That is to say, they concede to a common cosmic consciousness, pledging allegiance, not to the United States of America, but rather to the world community. This, my friend, is collectivism, and it is by no means America-friendly.

In The Secret Destiny of America, Freemason authority Manley P. Hall revealed that “secret societies have worked for centuries to create such an enlightened democracy,” a Novus Ordo Seclorum (Latin for “godless secular world order of the ages”). The UN Report on Human Development maintains that “mankind’s problems can no longer be solved by national governments.” According to this 1994 report, “what is needed is world government.” Toward realizing the goal of an enlightened global democracy, Winston Churchill (1947) singled out an united Europe as “the urgent and indispensable step.” Nurtured at Bilderberg Group meetings, today’s European Union serves as prime archetype of a rapidly maturing, allegedly illumined, would-be worldwide social democracy.

Rhodes Scholar Strobe Talbott (CFR) believes “a politically united Europe will advance our common goal to terminate nationhood as we know it and replace it with a single authority.” With this in view, international power-elitists have purposed first to regionalize Europe, then the world, in a forcible race to global governance. For good reason, I liken global governance to a giant undersea octopus with eight gangly arms twisted resolutely around the neck of nationhood. Once national sovereignty is effectively compromised, a bio-regionally-defined, representative trans-federal government can and will emerge

Globalization speaks to redistribution of the world’s wealth. Sounds magnanimous, but wait. The agenda is to concentrate that wealth (therefore, power) in the hands of a few who manage the masses by means of international law. Just who makes up this oligarchy? Ask Harvard-trained Professor Carol Quigley (Bill Clinton’s mentor). It was he who unveiled and affirmed existence of a permanent shadow government consisting of powerful bankers, businessmen, and government officials who together control our political life from behind the scenes. Purportedly paving the way for world peace, those recommended for special training in internationalism by being awarded Rhodes Scholarships are persuaded that exceptional talents and aptitude guarantee their right to rule over less gifted masses. After all, the latter are judged to be unaware of what is good for them.

In 1933, FDR wrote Colonel Edward M. House that “a financial element in the larger centers has owned the government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson.” More recently, on the other side of the pond, Margaret Thatcher pinpointed the long-term goal of international policy makers as these. It is to establish the United Nations as a kind of embryo world government. Convening at the highest levels, and poised at the center of the New World Order, the UN already represents a limited form of world government. Offering an exhaustive framework for global governance, more than 500 multinational treaties have been deposited with the UN.

In September 2000 internationalists worked over the Charter for Global Democracy to restructure the UN from a debating society into a sovereign entity. Not surprisingly, UN Secretary-general Kofi Annan dubs the UN “the ultimate power.” His career goal is to be promoted to global Prime Minister over an assembly of the people made up of moneyed non-governmental organizations.

In Bolshevism and World Peace (1918), Russian Communist Leon Trotsky described “the task of the proletariat”—that being, “ to create an UN of Europe as foundation for the US of the World.” Accordingly, attempts were made in Prague (March 2004) to enlarge the pan-European vision by creating, under a single banner, a true continental political unification.

The EU is first in position, as prelude to full-blown globalism; similarly, it is first in preeminence. The Lisbon Strategy (2000) looks to the ensuing decade to render it the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world. Creation of the European Monetary Union, the Euro serves as common currency for participating member-states and represents about 1/5 of the world’s economic output and trade. What is happening today in the European Community almost guarantees the economic dominance of Western Europe in the burgeoning New World Order.

Founded in 1968, the Club of Rome is responsible for today’s United Europe. Its 1972 report, the Limits of Growth, served as a blueprint for this gutsy new political, economic, and military union. Already the Club of Rome has divided the world into ten political-economic regions referred to as “kingdoms.” Adopted by twenty-five countries at the second session of the World Constituent Assembly, the 1977 Constitution for the Federation of Earth proposes an administrative structure of twenty world electoral and administrative regions with ten mega-regions.

In February 2004, small, informed discussions and networking at Witton Park Meetings in England looked to expanding the European security force and its relationship to the US, NATO, and the UN. Be assured the US/EU partnership for the 21st century is amply motivated and propelled by the world’s largest two-way trade and investment relationship, accounting for more than a trillion dollars.

The global octopus may well be deemed harmless, but beware. Henry Lamb (publisher, Eco-Logic) warns that an “interdependent, one-world state under global leadership will result in the US taking on the lowest common denominator that forced equity demands.” This being the case, the divinely inspired and unique political perspective of what Trinity Law Professor James Hirsen identifies as “the grand experiment we call America” is imperiled by its suffocating grip.

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Daughter of an Army Colonel, Debra graduated with distinction from the University of Iowa. She then completed a Master of Education degree from the University of Washington. These were followed by Bachelor of Theology and Master of Ministries degrees-both from Pacific School of Theology.

While a teacher in Kuwait, Debra undertook a three-month journey from the Persian Gulf to London by means of VW "bug"! One summer, she tutored the daughter of Kuwait's Head of Parliament while serving as superintendent of Kuwait's first Vacation Bible School.

Having authored the ABCs of Globalism and ABCs of Cultural -Isms, Debra speaks to Christian and secular groups alike. Her radio spots air globally. Presently, Debra co-hosts WOMANTalk radio with Sharon Hughes and Friends, and she contributes monthly commentaries to Changing Worldviews and NewsWithViews.com.

Together, Debra and her husband traveled throughout Africa, Asia, East- and West- Europe, North- and South- Americas--once on the British Concorde. Now widowed, Debra calls the Pacific Northwest home.

Web Site: www.debraraebooks.com

E-Mail: ABCs@debraraebooks.com

BILDERBERG 2007 REPORT

2007-07-02T09:26:00.001-07:00

ELITE MEET BEHIND STIFF SECURITY

Secret Cabal Roosts at Ritz-Carlton; Riot Police Keep All But Invited Out

BILDERBERG 2007 REPORT

AFP’s Jim Tucker is back in the United States after discovering Bilderberg right in the middle of Istanbul, and not at the Klassis Country Club, 40 miles outside Istanbul as he first believed. What follows is Jim’s first on-the-spot report, filed before leaving Istanbul.

By James P. Tucker Jr.

ISTANBUL, Turkey—Bilderberg celebrated President Bush’s “surrender” on two major issues while showing distress over continuing setbacks to its goal of establishing a world government under the United Nations.

Bush’s surrender came on two fronts: The environment and the sovereignty-surrendering Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). As recently as May 25, Bush administration officials reiterated his long-standing opposition to European demands on the environment, especially the Kyoto Treaty, which would impose heavy economic burdens on the United States while exempting Mexico and other smoke-belching nations. His reversal on LOST is now under the radar of the mainstream media but will eventually have to emerge.

Bilderberg was among the first to discover the environment as an issue years ago. But these sons of smokestack millionaires were motivated by the potential for immense profits in cleaning up the environment, not by foul air and dirty water. Thus Bilderberg’s pressure on the European Union to require heavy taxpayer investments for clean-up and former President Bill Clinton, himself a Bilderberger, to advocate ratification of the Kyoto Treaty.
But in Washington on May 31, even as Bilderberg luminaries were arriving at the posh Ritz-Carlton for their annual secret meeting, Bush called for 15 major nations to agree on a goal for global emissions limits by the end of next year.

“The United States takes this seriously,” Bush said.

But while gloating over this “surrender,” Bilderberg members denounced his efforts as “too little and too late” because the Kyoto Treaty expires in 2012. The Europeans agreed that more must be demanded at the Group of 8 summit now taking place, but Bush must not be “embarrassed.” The new environmental buzzword is to be “sustainable growth.”
(more)

Information of Author and Group from Wikipedia:

James P. (Jim or Big Jim) Tucker, Jr. is a journalist who, since the 1970s, has focused on exposing the controversial Bilderberg Group.

The Bilderberg Group or Bilderberg conference is an unofficial annual invitation-only conference of around 130 guests, most of whom are persons of influence in the fields of business, media, and politics.

The elite group meets annually at exclusive, four or five-star resorts throughout the world, normally in Europe, once every four years in the United States or Canada. It has an office in Leiden, South Holland, Netherlands. They met at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Istanbul, Turkey^{[citation needed]} for the June, 2007 meeting.

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Argument Without End —Robert S. McNamara - Review

2007-05-10T12:58:00.000-07:00

Spotlight Reviews

January 4, 2000
Reviewer: miketol@mtco.com (Eureka, IL United States)

When In Retrospect first came out, some of the people at the college where I teach came up to me and said: "Did you hear? McNamara's published a book and he says the Vietnam War was all a mistake!" Whoa - talk about your late-breaking news! Still, I suppose hearing those sentiments from the highest levels imparts a certain power to them that us lowly grunts could never hope to possess - but I think I recall saying "this is a big mistake" on my first patrol (I served in 'Nam in '68-'69).

The rub, of course, comes when we try to figure out WHY it was a mistake, and it is here that McNamara can give us something truly significant. Does he? I think that he does, but what he has to give us has been dished up many times before.

Apparently realizing that he hadn't provided those answers the war requires in In Retrospect, McNamara instituted a series of conferences between policy makers active during the "McNamara Years", from the U.S. and North Vietnam McNamara's stated goal is to search for "lost opportunities. Were there ways to avoid U.S. entanglement; or, having become entangled, were there ways for the U.S. to disengage before so many lives were lost? McNamara's idea here is to find those lost opportunities and lay them before the public.

So, it was with excitement that I read this book - maybe, finally, McNamara will come clean. And come clean he does, though not in the way he expects.

I knew I would have a different reaction to this book when I read how shocked McNamara was to learn the North Vietnamese side of the argument wanted to start in 1945 in the search for missed opportunities. McNamara's original intent was to limit discussion to the years 1961 - 1967; his years as Secretary of Defense. Here we have a sense of the man's over-arching ego; nothing important could have occurred before or after those dates. It is simply beyond my comprehension how the so-called "best and brightest" could be surprised at the date of 1945. For those of you who don't know, that's the date when the Vietnamese, under Ho Chi Minh, declared themselves independent of France, using words from the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration on the Rights of Man. That is the date that Baodai, the last emperor of Vietnam, formally abdicated his throne and anointed Ho Chi Minh as his successor. That is the date when Ho Chi Minh made direct appeals to Pres. Truman to ensure the rights of the Vietnamese were respected. It is a date that is no secret now, and wasn't then.

How, then, could the chief architect of American policy towards Vietnam be so awesomely ignorant of such an important starting point? The answer to that question is one of the lessons one might draw from the war: U.S. policy makers had no interest in Vietnam per se. It was merely a stage, upon which the righteous Americans would meet and defeat the forces of "the Evil Empire". The McNamaras and the Rusks and the Rostows felt no need to learn anything about their potential adversary - to our ultimate sorrow. Know Thy Enemy. That lesson is nothing new; applied to this specific war, one can find it in Fire in the Lake, Frances FitzGerald's excellent work about the war published in 1971. What is new is McNamara's bald admission that he really had no interest in learning about the Vietnamese, nor did anyone else in the American administrations.

Another interesting part of the book is McNamara's complete lack of understanding at the refusal of the North Vietnamese to negotiate while we were bombing them. Despite the numerous lessons about the failure of strategic bombing to shorten wars and "force" the enemy to the negotiating table, America pursued the continued bombing of North Vietnam in order to accomplish those self-same goals. All of this was known to McNamara and his cronies, and yet they allowed the strategic bombing of North Vietnam to be one of the major foci of American policy. And now, thirty years after McNamara's involvement in the war, he still doesn't get it.

I wish to touch on just one more facet of Argument Without End. It includes a chapter by Col. Herbert Schandler and McNamara, entitled "U.S. Military Victory in Vietnam: A Dangerous Illusion?" Most of the chapter was written by Schandler, who did his time in 'Nam in the infantry. The answer to the rhetorical question posed in the title is, Yes - a U.S. military victory in Vietnam is and was a dangerous illusion. I strongly agree with that answer, and I'm glad this chapter is in the book. But, dollars to doughnuts, this chapter won't shut up those deluded folks who think "we could've won if only the military had been allowed to win". This is because Schandler never really answers those critics who contend that the military had its hands tied in Vietnam. This is too bad, because the answer is not all that difficult to comprehend. If the military had done exactly as it pleased in Vietnam, we still would have lost. Without the support of the people we were supposed to help, there was no hope. Herein lies another lesson from the war: if we aren't true to our democratic principles in our foreign policy, our foreign policy will fail. We pontificate at great length about "self-determination", but we sure didn't allow it in Vietnam.

In the end, these two books show Robert Strange McNamara to be not very bright - certainly not the best. They show a man steeped in his own arrogance, and that arrogance in him and those around him cost thousands of American lives and millions of Vietnamese lives. But give the man credit, he doesn't flinch from laying it all before us - even if he doesn't complete understand exactly what it is he's telling us.

political wisdom

2007-05-06T14:22:00.001-07:00

take a good look at your own foundation
your feet
one is always on the right
and the other is always going to be on the left
but your ass
which you keep covered up
is always in the middle

Let History Judge By Scott Ritter

2007-05-06T13:38:00.000-07:00

25 January, 2006 Alternet

Scott Ritter served as a Chief UN Weapons Inspector in Iraq from 1991 until his resignation in 1998. He is the author of, most recently, Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein (Nation Books, 2005).

Stung by growing criticism of his Iraq policy which has manifested itself in all-time low public opinion ratings, President Bush last month embarked on a tour in which he delivered five speeches outlining his "Plan for Victory" in Iraq, as well as offering a defense of his decision to invade Iraq. "It is true that much of the intelligence [used to justify the invasion] turned out to be wrong", Mr. Bush said in the fourth of these speeches. "As President, I'm responsible for the decision to go into Iraq."

While taking responsibility for his actions, Mr. Bush has not taken well to any criticism of his role in over-selling the case for war, and in his speech was quick to attack those who dared hold him to account. "Some of the most irresponsible comments about manipulating intelligence", he said, "have come from politicians who saw the same intelligence we saw, and then voted to authorize the use of force against Saddam Hussein. These charges are pure politics."

But it is the President, through his speeches, who is engaged in politics of the most puerile sort. Mr. Bush failed to address his role in the Niger yellowcake forgery, the aluminum tube exaggeration, the rush to embrace "Curveball", or any of the myriad of politicized intelligence pushed by the White House in the lead up to war with Iraq. The President continued to exploit in the basest fashion the death of nearly 3,000 people on September 11, 2001. As has been his style since that horrible day, Mr. Bush hid behind the memory of so many fallen to mask his administration's shortcomings and disguise its true intent.

"Given Saddam's history", the President said (conveniently omitting that the CIA today states that Iraq had destroyed all of its WMD by the summer of 1991), "and the lessons of September the 11th, my decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision. Saddam was a threat -- and the American people and the world is better off because he is no longer in power." But even the CIA's National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, used by the Bush administration to sell its Iraq war to the US Congress, failed to identify Saddam Hussein as a threat.

The White House pushed hard to find intelligence information that backed the assertions made by President Bush in the fall of 2002 that Hussein's regime was an "ally of al-Qaeda" and posed a direct terrorist threat to America. "This is a man that we know has had connections with al-Qaeda," he said, referring to Saddam Hussein. "This is a man who would like to use al-Qaeda as a forward army. And this is a man that we must deal with for the sake of peace."

But neither the FBI nor the CIA were able to produce any intelligence to back up the President's rhetoric. Indeed, both agencies provided assessments that directly contradicted the claims of Mr. Bush, noting that any alliance between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden was highly unlikely. These findings were included in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, a classified document kept secret from the American public and most members of Congress. However, in a declassified version of the NIE made public, all mention of the de-linking of Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda were excised, freeing up the President and his administration to sell the Iraqi war on the basis of not only the existence of WMD in Iraq, but also the probability that Saddam Hussein would transfer these weapons to his ally, Osama Bin Laden, who "on any given day" could unleash hell on American soil.

"And when the history of these days is written", the President said, concluding the fourth and last of his Iraqi policy speeches, "it will tell how America once again defended its own freedom by using liberty to transform nations from bitter foes to strong allies. And history will say that this generation, like generations before, laid the foundation of peace for generations to come."

History will tell another tale. Far from the revisionist and heavily redacted version of events offered up by President Bush, historians will write of an America which squandered the good will of the world in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, to instead push aggressively for a policy of pre-emption and hegemony. In a speech made before the graduating class of the United States Military Academy at West Point in 2002, the President told the future officers of the US Army (many of whom have gone on to fight and, tragically for some, die in Iraq) that, "Our security will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives." He went on to say that "America has, and intends to keep, military strengths beyond challenge."

These twin policies of hegemony and pre-emption went on to be codified in the National Security Strategy of the United States, published by the White House in September 2002. The 33-page document outlined a new and muscular American posture in the world -- a posture that relied on preemption to deal with rogue states and terrorists harboring weapons of mass destruction. It stated that the United States would never allow its military supremacy to be challenged as it was during the Cold War, noting that when America's vital interests are at stake, it will act alone, if necessary.

President Bush has tried to justify his embrace of hegemony and pre-emption as a tragic necessity in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001. But the facts do not add up. The triple-threat outlined by the Bush administration as the justification for this new policy -- Saddam Hussein's WMD, the Hussein-Osama Bin Laden alliance, and the transfer of WMD technology from Iraq to Al Qaeda for the purpose of attacking America -- could not be backed up either in the form of intelligence data or intelligence analysis. The fact that the Bush administration pushed so aggressively for pre-emptive war in the face of no viable threat speaks volumes about the nature and intent of the President and those who advise him.

In 1946, the Nuremburg Tribunal rejected the German defense of pre-emption when it came to the invasion of Denmark and Norway in 1940. The Germans had cited the imminent occupation of these two nations by the armed forces of France and Great Britain, which would have threatened the German northern front, as just cause. This defense was rebuked by the tribunal, led by US Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, who instead identified the German action as constituting a "war of aggression." Judge Jackson went on to say that "To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

Judge Jackson's words, and my steadfast allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America, motivated me to give testimony this past Saturday at the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration, in particular in support of the first count put forward by the commission: that the Bush administration authorized a war of aggression against Iraq.

I'm not a big fan of un-mandated tribunals, but given the absolute lack of attention on the part of Congress regarding the decision to invade Iraq (a lethargy encouraged somewhat by Congress' own culpability in abrogating its responsibilities under the Constitution when it comes to war powers and holding the Executive Branch in check), I felt that my participation in the Commission's work would help create a record that might someday in the future motivate the representatives of the American people who occupy the Legislative Branch of government to carry work that not only serves the interests of their respective constituencies, but also defends both the letter and intent of the Constitution they are sworn to uphold and defend. America should not be looking to any international commission or tribunal to hold President Bush and his administration to account; that is the job of the American people.

When historians look back on the policies enacted by the Bush administration in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, starting off with the decision to invade Iraq in March 2003, they will be passing judgment on a United States that has violated international law as egregiously as any power in modern history. The final chapters have yet to be written on the Presidency of George W. Bush, but even if time stopped still at the present, the crimes of America and its leader are many, and terrible.

Iraq today is very much a nation under foreign occupation, which makes the very processes of democracy the United States seeks to impose on the Iraqi people questionable from a legal basis, as it is a violation of international law for occupying forces to impose their will on the processes of law and self-governance of an occupied people. It would be tragic comedy of the blackest sort for anyone to try and make a case that the Bush administration has not imposed itself in a significant and meaningful fashion regarding the drafting of the new Iraqi Constitution, the conduct of Iraqi elections, and the formulation and implementation of the Iraqi court system (especially as it concerns the ongoing trial of Saddam Hussein).

The end result of all of this illegitimate intervention on the part of the United States in Iraq is the creation of a failed nation state in Iraq today. Legal niceties aside, the end result of the American invasion and occupation of Iraq are a human and social disaster of enormous scale, where unified central governmental authority is not only non-existent, but unachievable under current conditions.

Civil war is ongoing, and threatens to explode to levels of violence several orders of magnitude greater than the horror already unfolding in Iraq on a daily basis. Those who postulate the "what ifs" of American policy ("What if democracy takes root, the Iraqi economy turns around, the insurgency fades away, and Iraq emerges as a symbol of freedom for the Middle East") have just had the nails hammered into the coffin of their false hopes. The Bush administration's refusal to continue funding of Iraqi reconstruction programs has thrown into the trash bin any hope of building an Iraq that could withstand the stresses of occupation and insurgency by winning over the hearts and minds of a deeply traumatized Iraqi populace.

This action by the United States not only seals the ultimate defeat of America in Iraq by guaranteeing the increase in chaos and anarchy upon which the insurgency thrives, but also certifies yet again the status of the Bush administration as a violator of international law, in this case Hague Regulations and Geneva Conventions to ensure the well-being of the occupied population by respecting their rights to life, health, food, education, and employment. Having invaded and destroyed Iraq, the United States now adds insult to injury by walking away from its responsibilities to rebuild Iraq at least to the standard that existed under Saddam Hussein's rule before March 2003.

While emotionally one can state that getting rid of Saddam Hussein bettered the lot of the average Iraqi citizen, intellectually this is a case that is unsustainable by fact. On every benchmark used to judge the effectiveness of a nation state, Iraq under American occupation fails to meet even the mediocre standards of Iraq as governed by Saddam Hussein, both before and during the time of sanctions. Iraq's education, health, transportation, security, infrastructure (especially water and electricity) and economy have all digressed since the US-led invasion.

Finally, I would be remiss not to comment here on the Bush administration's record of suppressing freedom of speech and expression, especially when it comes to the issue of Iraq. Within the United States we have the ongoing saga surrounding the President's decision to authorize unwarranted wiretaps, enabling the secretive National Security Agency to monitor and record the conversations and communications of American citizens without first going through special courts established for this purpose.

The President has justified his actions by noting that the courts in question imposed a dangerous time impediment, which impacts America's ability to rapidly respond to any emerging terrorist threat. He also emphasized that such intercepts only involved communications between US citizens and known Al Qaeda connections. The legality of the President's actions are questionable, and under current review by members of Congress.

However, given the Bush administration's proclivity to use the Al Qaeda label freely and often without cause (witness the repeated efforts to link Saddam Hussein's regime to Al Qaeda, and the ongoing description of Arab media outlets critical of US policy in the Middle East, such as Al Jazeera, as being propaganda organs of Al Qaeda), the scope of justification of these wiretaps could go far beyond any real threat that might exist from Al Qaeda, and include any anti-war movement in America that has communicated with citizens inside Iraq, or any journalist or columnist who communicates with or writes for Al Jazeera, or anyone who questions or opposes the policies of the Bush administration when it comes to the war in Iraq or the Global War on Terror.

Far from protecting America, the President Bush's frontal assault on the freedoms and protections afforded by the US Constitution have placed the United States, and indeed the world, in greater peril than any terrorist plot could ever aspire to.

If, by writing a book exposing the lies about Iraqi WMD or submitting an essay to Al Jazeera (or for that matter, to AlterNet or any other outlet that publishes a dissenting view), the Bush administration construes my actions as representing a threat to the United States and as such worthy of covert monitoring, so be it, for it is their actions that are seditious to the ideals and values set forth by the Constitution, not mine. When faced with the scale of the criminal activity undertaken by the Bush administration in the name of bringing freedom to the Iraqi people or defending America, the only real sedition I could commit would be to remain silent.

The Political Pyschology of What Really Kills People

2007-04-14T08:59:00.001-07:00

the united states bombed and invaded iraq
and is now continually killing people

in order to be considered friendly
the us demands that the iraqis approve of this hostile act

those who disapprove of the united states bombing, invasion and continual killing
are considered to be terrorists and are often arrested and/or killed

the united states is training the iraqis
who approve of this hostile act to remain friendly

to prove how friendly they are
they must continue to kill other iraqis
now and for years to come

now some iraqis are bit confused and disapprove
for some insane reason they think this is a bad idea

since their life supporting infrastructure has been destroyed
by the united states
and they have for many years
watched their children and loved ones suffering and dying
the natural inclination of the crazy ones
is to feel unfriendly toward the united states
its occupation
its military presence
and its continued activities in their land
and would do anything in their power
to discourage the united states and the friendly iraqis from remaining

sadly some feel prone to unfriendly acts of violence against both the us
and the friendly iraqis who are killing their countrymen

why do so many people find it so hard to be agreeable
i think in the words of president george dubbya bush
they ought to "quit this shit" and simply become friendly
to the united states and help us kill them terrorists

so iraq can become safe and sound for multi national corporations
and all the christian religions that will invade iraq next
making many friends and teaching them to make converts
in order to "love thy neighbor" as thyself

now
this is the political psychology of what really kills people

The Politically Corrupt

2007-04-14T07:58:00.000-07:00

a retired attaché to the united nations
once told me
"if you understand the politics and
know your way around the bureaucracy,
you will find that the US federal government
is the most corrupt system in the world
and you can make a lot of money here

to prove this all one needs to do
is to look at how many high government officials
are listed as "insiders" with the sec
and investigate their holdings in corporations
currently operating
or will operate
under government contract
contracts that are war dependent

so for instance
a pharmaceutical company is researching a new drug
which the us government promises to stockpile
in the event of a biological attack
by investigating the board of directors of that corporation
you may notice the name of a high government official
when you study the stock of that company
you can easily obtain the information
about any stock purchases made by "insiders"
it will intrigue you to notice who owns exactly how much of what

Nationalism

2007-02-27T20:58:00.000-08:00

there are those who believe
that anything outside of a nationalistic or elitist point of view
is sinful and evil and should be eradicated

It's Just Wrong What We're Doing - Robert S McNamara

2006-12-27T02:08:00.000-08:00

Published on Sunday, January 25, 2004 by the Globe & Mail (Canada)

In an exclusive interview, repentant Vietnam War architect Robert McNamara breaks his silence on Iraq: The United States, he says, is making the same mistakes all over again
by Doug Saunders

'Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why."

With those words, written nine years ago, Robert McNamara began an extraordinary final phase of his career -- devoted to chronicling the errors, delusions and false assumptions that turned him into the chief architect and most prominent promoter of the Vietnam war.

No historic figure has put so much effort into self-examination: At the age of 87, he has now written three very detailed and analytical books, and starred in one very good movie, devoted to the fundamental mistakes that led the United States into the most politically costly and least successful war in its history.

What, then, does he think about Iraq? Until now, the former secretary of defense has avoided comment on the actions of that job's current occupant, Donald Rumsfeld. The two are often compared to each other in their autocratic leadership styles and in their technocratic, numbers-driven approaches to war. And their wars, of course, are often likened. But Robert McNamara has insisted in staying out of the fray.

He decided to break his silence on Iraq when I called him up the other day at his Washington office. I told him that his carefully enumerated lists of historic lessons from Vietnam were in danger of being ignored. He agreed, and told me that he was deeply frustrated to see history repeating itself.

"We're misusing our influence," he said in a staccato voice that had lost none of its rapid-fire engagement. "It's just wrong what we're doing. It's morally wrong, it's politically wrong, it's economically wrong."

While he did not want to talk on the record about specific military decisions made Mr. Rumsfeld, he said the United States is fighting a war that he believes is totally unnecessary and has managed to destroy important relationships with potential allies. "There have been times in the last year when I was just utterly disgusted by our position, the United States' position vis-à-vis the other nations of the world."

On Monday night, we heard the United States at its very worst with George W. Bush's caustic State of the Union address, in which he declared, over and over, that America is serving God's will directly and does not need "a permission slip" from other nations since "the cause we serve is right, because it is the cause of all mankind."

That vision of manifest destiny, stripped of any larger view, has led down some unfortunate roads. The Iraq action, which would have been conducted in some form or another at some point under any imaginable government, would have been far better conceived if its executors had read Mr. McNamara's works instead of the Book of Revelation.

In 1995, in his memoir In Retrospect, Mr. McNamara published a list of the 11 specific mistakes he believed the United States had made in and around the Vietnam war that still had relevance in the very different political and military climate of the 21st century.

I have always been wary of comparisons between Vietnam and Iraq. The circumstances are profoundly different, and the scale of conflict and death is nowhere near the same. Vietnam was a small nation engaged in a civil war that Americans misread as a Chinese incursion on all of Asia, while Iraq has been strangled by one of history's worst totalitarian dictators. The American mistake was its belief that the dictator's removal would be sufficient.

But to read Mr. McNamara's 1995 list today is to read an uncanny analysis of the missteps of the Iraq campaign. He told me that this list has come to haunt him as he watches the Mesopotamian misadventure unfold.

Chief among the discoveries that led him to see Vietnam as a mistake, he said, was his realization that the United States could not, by itself, properly analyze the actions and ground-level conditions necessary to achieve the complex and ambiguous goals of a war -- reversing the influence of communism in Asia, in Vietnam's case, or bringing democracy to the Arab world, in Iraq's.

"And the reason I feel that is that we're not omniscient," he said. "And we've demonstrated that in Iraq, I think." He pointed to Washington's failure to appreciate the complexities of Iraqi culture, and therefore to anticipate the extended guerrilla war it is now engaged in -- a chief mistake of Vietnam. Without the full involvement of other major nations, he said, such mistakes will always be made.

"And if we can't persuade other nations with comparable values and comparable interests of the merit of our course, we should reconsider the course, and very likely change it. And if we'd followed that rule, we wouldn't have been in Vietnam, because there wasn't one single major ally, not France or Britain or Germany or Japan, that agreed with our course or stood beside us there. And we wouldn't be in Iraq."

In his recent book Wilson's Ghost, Mr. McNamara argued that military forces should sometimes be used to oust dictators guilty of grave crimes against humanity. However, he said, this can succeed politically and militarily only if it is done with broad international support under the aegis of a body such as the United Nations (which helped intervene in East Timor) or NATO (which led the charge in the Balkans).

"The United States is today the strongest power in the world, politically, economically and militarily, and I think it will continue to be so for decades ahead, if not for the whole century," he told me. "But I do not believe, with one qualification, that it should ever, ever use that power unilaterally -- the one qualification being the unlikely event we had to use it to defend the continental U.S., Alaska or Hawaii."

Mr. McNamara said it is particularly upsetting to see that the White House administration has ignored or failed to heed key recommendations coming from military officers on the ground in Iraq -- a crucial and oft-repeated mistake in Vietnam. American military officials in Iraq complained early that their forces were ill-equipped for the complex work of nation-building and policing, but the White House has until very recently refused to discuss using UN peacekeeping forces for such work.

Last week, the United States indicated that it is seeking the UN's assistance in the nation-building effort, a move that Mr. McNamara said is vital if the war is ever to be brought to an end, and civil life restored in Iraq.

"Many people, myself among them, thought the United Nations should have played a much greater role in connection with Iraq than it has, and I'm personally very pleased to see that the administration is thinking today of increasing the role of the UN. . . . I hope the UN will accept."

To appreciate the staggering scale of the lessons Mr. McNamara has learned, everyone ought to see the new feature documentary about him, The Fog of War. Its director, Errol Morris, is certainly the best non-fiction filmmaker alive (his Fast, Cheap and Out of Control is the most action-packed movie ever made about the philosophy of being). This film, focused tightly on the bombings of Japan in the Second World War and Vietnam in the 1960s, offers a profound fourth volume to Mr. McNamara's continuing mea culpa.

In it, he suggests repeatedly that his faith in superior military technology and the scientific potential of data processing (he was known to his 1960s critics as "an IBM machine with legs") led him to underestimate the difficulties and complexities of the cultures in which he was fighting.

The same fundamental fallacy, he said, is present today. Even though computerized and laser-guided weapons allow campaigns to be waged with only a few dozen American deaths and hundreds of foreign deaths (as opposed to the tens of thousands of American deaths and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese deaths in the 1960s and 1970s), it has become no easier to achieve society-transforming military goals, or to extricate yourself from an invaded nation.

"The new circumstances and new technology didn't help us in Iraq, and the issue there was allegedly the risk of proliferation of nuclear weapons. You can't get anything more fundamental than that. The case for this was certainly made forcefully -- I think erroneously, but it was very well made. . . . And now we've just got to repair these fissures, these breaks in our relationship with many, many important powers in the world, and many important institutions."

He said many lives have been unnecessarily lost around the world because the United States has refused to support the International Criminal Court, an institution he believes could have provided an alternative to war in Iraq.

"Let's think about that in human terms -- you have to reduce the risk of killing and catastrophe," he said. "We've got to do that, and we're not paying nearly enough attention to it. And one illustration is, we don't support things that would have that as their goal . . . for example, this international court. The U.S. is totally opposed to it. I think they're absolutely wrong. We've not only refused to support it, we try to buy off countries that are supporting it."

Mr. McNamara broadly declined to discuss specific decisions made by Mr. Bush -- "I don't want to get in an argument with Bush and the administration. I don't think that advances my interests at all," he said. But he didn't mind adding that he was dismayed that members of the Republican administration have likened their position after Sept. 11, 2001, to that of John F. Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which had been Mr. McNamara's moment of truth. Mr. Bush, he said, wouldn't have been up to it. And Mr. Kennedy would have handled Iraq differently.

Just over a year ago, Mr. McNamara traveled to Cuba and learned just how perilous that moment had been: Cuba, Fidel Castro admitted, had been home to a nuclear arsenal, and he had been willing to sacrifice his own island nation in order to launch a nuclear attack on the United States. The world really did come within moments of ending.

More than anything else, this revelation has led Mr. McNamara to argue that the Kennedy approach to the world ought to be emulated. Mr. McNamara was the first to argue, based on his own diary, that had he lived, JFK would have ended the Vietnam war in 1965.

I take that claim with a grain of salt, since I believe that Mr. Kennedy's record of endlessly reversing himself and caving in to the authority of his military commanders would have trumped his better convictions.

Nevertheless, recently declassified documents have lent the notion credence. And I do believe Mr. McNamara when he says that the Kennedy taste for international co-operation would have served the world better than the White House's current with-us-or-against-us approach.

"I don't believe that Kennedy would be reacting the way Bush is. For one thing, Kennedy reached out. A critic in those early days of the administration was John Kenneth Galbraith [the Canadian economist, who believed Vietnam was a bad idea]. And Kennedy reached out, and appointed him to a high-level position, and he talked to him about Vietnam. You don't see that today."

McNamara's 11 lessons

In 1995, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara published In Retrospect, the first of his three books dissecting the errors, myths and miscalculations that led to the Vietnam War, which he now believes was a serious mistake. Nine years later, most of these lessons seem uncannily relevant to the Iraq war in its current nation-building, guerrilla-warfare phase.

* We misjudged then -- and we have since -- the geopolitical intentions of our adversaries . . . and we exaggerated the dangers to the United States of their actions.
* We viewed the people and leaders of South Vietnam in terms of our own experience. . . . We totally misjudged the political forces within the country.
* We underestimated the power of nationalism to motivate a people to fight and die for their beliefs and values.
* Our judgments of friend and foe alike reflected our profound ignorance of the history, culture, and politics of the people in the area, and the personalities and habits of their leaders.
* We failed then -- and have since -- to recognize the limitations of modern, high-technology military equipment, forces and doctrine. . . . We failed as well to adapt our military tactics to the task of winning the hearts and minds of people from a totally different culture.
* We failed to draw Congress and the American people into a full and frank discussion and debate of the pros and cons of a large-scale military involvement . . . before we initiated the action.
* After the action got under way and unanticipated events forced us off our planned course . . . we did not fully explain what was happening and why we were doing what we did.
* We did not recognize that neither our people nor our leaders are omniscient. Our judgment of what is in another people's or country's best interest should be put to the test of open discussion in international forums. We do not have the God-given right to shape every nation in our image or as we choose.
* We did not hold to the principle that U.S. military action . . . should be carried out only in conjunction with multinational forces supported fully (and not merely cosmetically) by the international community.
* We failed to recognize that in international affairs, as in other aspects of life, there may be problems for which there are no immediate solutions. . . . At times, we may have to live with an imperfect, untidy world.
* Underlying many of these errors lay our failure to organize the top echelons of the executive branch to deal effectively with the extraordinarily complex range of political and military issues.

© 2004 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc

The Yin and the Yang of Politics

2006-12-09T12:25:00.000-08:00

the ruled

pain
shame
guilt
anger
hatred
violence
destruction
social fragmentation
chaos
collapse

the ruler

pleasure
esteem
righteousness
peace
love
gentleness
building
social unification
order
stability

Money Usury Debt and Freedom

2006-12-07T08:33:00.000-08:00

power and authority
that comes from money
the false creation of value
embodied in the act of usury
through the federal reserve system
is no power and no authority at all
but the denegration of a person's honest labor
as sure as the devil lives in hell
credit is a subtle form of bondage
which leads to the destruction of value
and the enslavement of a state
the feeling of being in debt
is the feeling of being shackled and imprisoned
so long as a person is incarcerated
within the high guarded walls of debt
he will never know feeling of freedom

true power and authority
comes from true philanthropy
the spirit of giving out of the resources
of one's abundance
or enjoying the act of stewarding
in trusted association
with the properties of another

[click here for more on usury]

Government of the Popular Sort

2006-11-15T09:18:00.000-08:00

George Washington spoke of
government of the popular sort
as compared to monarchial forms of government

utterly impossible
there is no such thing as
governments of the popular sort
since government requires stamina, discipline and good judgement

Billions Wasted in Iraq? —"It's How-dy Doody time!"

2006-11-10T19:51:00.000-08:00

This is a response to the article recently published in Truthdig.
"Billions Wasted in Iraq" .

"It's How-dy Doody time!" These articles serve as another cute diversion for the naive public sponsored by the white collar corporate strategists and the billions they have legitimately bilked the Treasury over the Iraq issue —the same old scheme. The same obsessed treasure hunters that calmly created Lenin, Hitler and Hussein on Wall Street later fomented horrible calamities through their hand which always necessitated an advanced costly "military industrial complex" to address them, albeit, patriotically. These peacelovers mastefully invented these terrible crises with full intent and forethought as criminals do for the lucrative rewards that war and destruction inevitably bring. The Harrimans, Walkers and the Bushes, true Americans, were among such sponsors of the thirties and forties whose priorities,first, last and always —were to make money. Adept at propaganda and smoke screens, they beguiled the public with diversions while over a hundred million people died believing they were dying for God, Country and Mom's cherry pie. Yes, everyone benefited from rebuilding whatever was pififully ruined and destroyed. Many nations were forced to be beholden to this nation's newer technologies and economic policies . The more Howdy Doody made children glad the more Colgate’s string pulling investors died laughing. Howdy is in the White House today, and we the unwitting public still laugh at his silly puppet comedy, while the massive evergreening wealth of a happy cunning few remains eternally secure. Unfortunately, the enemies and soldiers their policies muster, the empoverished families, and whatever is left of their posterity die sadly weeping with Starbucks and Coke to comfort them. This is the face of consumate greed shreiking wickedly all the way to the Treasury, boys and girls, and of the billions truly wasted. — Wildfeather

Veteran of 15 Wars Speech Utterly Rejected.

2006-09-09T23:38:00.000-07:00

Click on to view. 4 parts.

New York Times war correspondent and author on books which reveal the true nature of war was uterly rejected by the students of Rockford College in Illinois. Mr. Hedges gave his views about the U.S. involvement in Iraq and the new era which is upon us. Very few people listened. If Mr. Hedges were gifted politician, in my view, who could have pandered to the ego of his audience with flattery and lies he might have won a hearing. But, his delivery was only factual and of vital urgency for these times, and his audience seemed hard hearted toward his message. Without judging him or his audience I would say that what took place is wholely consistent with the effects that the uncomfortable truth tends to have upon ears of those who have been conditioned to believe lies.

This is a good example of The Naked Underground.

The Text is as follows:

Text of the Rockford College graduation speech by Chris Hedges

I want to speak to you today about war and empire.

Killing, or at least the worst of it, is over in Iraq. Although blood will continue to spill -- theirs and ours -- be prepared for this. For we are embarking on an occupation that, if history is any guide, will be as damaging to our souls as it will be to our prestige, power, and security. But this will come later as our empire expands and in all this we become pariahs, tyrants to others weaker than ourselves. Isolation always impairs judgment and we are very isolated now. We have forfeited the good will, the empathy the world felt for us after 9-11. We have folded in on ourselves, we have severely weakened the delicate international coalitions and alliances that are vital in maintaining and promoting peace and we are part now of a dubious troika in the war against terror with Vladimir Putin and Ariel Sharon, two leaders who do not shrink in Palestine or Chechnya from carrying out acts of gratuitous and senseless acts of violence. We have become the company we keep.

The censure and perhaps the rage of much of the world, certainly one-fifth of the world's population which is Muslim, most of whom I'll remind you are not Arab, is upon us. Look today at the 14 people killed last night in several explosions in Casablanca. And this rage in a world where almost 50 percent of the planet struggles on less than two dollars a day will see us targeted. Terrorism will become a way of life, and when we are attacked we will, like our allies Putin and Sharon, lash out with greater fury. The circle of violence is a death spiral; no one escapes. We are spinning at a speed that we may not be able to hold. As we revel in our military prowess -- the sophistication of our military hardware and technology, for this is what most of the press coverage consisted of in Iraq -- we lose sight of the fact that just because we have the capacity to wage war it does not give us the right to wage war. This capacity has doomed empires in the past.

"Modern western civilization may perish," the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr warned, "because it falsely worshiped technology as a final good."

The real injustices, the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, the brutal and corrupt dictatorships we fund in the Middle East, will mean that we will not rid the extremists who hate us with bombs. Indeed we will swell their ranks. Once you master people by force you depend on force for control. In your isolation you begin to make mistakes.

Fear engenders cruelty; cruelty, fear, insanity, and then paralysis. In the center of Dante's circle the damned remained motionless. We have blundered into a nation we know little about and are caught between bitter rivalries and competing ethnic groups and leaders we do not understand. We are trying to transplant a modern system of politics invented in Europe characterized, among other things, by the division of earth into independent secular states based on national citizenship in a land where the belief in a secular civil government is an alien creed. Iraq was a cesspool for the British when they occupied it in 1917; it will be a cesspool for us as well. The curfews, the armed clashes with angry crowds that leave scores of Iraqi dead, the military governor, the Christian Evangelical groups who are being allowed to follow on the heels of our occupying troops to try and teach Muslims about Jesus.

Hedges stops speaking because of a disturbance in the audience. Rockford College President Paul Pribbenow takes the microphone.

"My friends, one of the wonders of a liberal arts college is its ability and its deeply held commitment to academic freedom and the decision to listen to each other's opinions. (Crowd Cheers) If you wish to protest the speaker's remarks, I ask that you do it in silence, as some of you are doing in the back. That is perfectly appropriate but he has the right to offer his opinion here and we would like him to continue his remarks. (Fog Horn Blows, some cheer).

The occupation of the oil fields, the notion of the Kurds and the Shiites will listen to the demands of a centralized government in Baghdad, the same Kurds and Shiites who died by the tens of thousands in defiance of Sadaam Hussein, a man who happily butchered all of those who challenged him, and this ethnic rivalry has not gone away. The looting of Baghdad, or let me say the looting of Baghdad with the exception of the oil ministry and the interior ministry -- the only two ministries we bothered protecting -- is self immolation.

As someone who knows Iraq, speaks Arabic, and spent seven years in the Middle East, if the Iraqis believe rightly or wrongly that we come only for oil and occupation, that will begin a long bloody war of attrition; it is how they drove the British out and remember that, when the Israelis invaded southern Lebanon in 1982, they were greeted by the dispossessed Shiites as liberators. But within a few months, when the Shiites saw that the Israelis had come not as liberators but occupiers, they began to kill them. It was Israel who created Hezbollah and was Hezbollah that pushed Israel out of Southern Lebanon.

As William Butler Yeats wrote in "Meditations in Times Of Civil War," "We had fed the heart on fantasies / the hearts grown brutal from the fair."

This is a war of liberation in Iraq, but it is a war now of liberation by Iraqis from American occupation. And if you watch closely what is happening in Iraq, if you can see it through the abysmal coverage, you can see it in the lashing out of the terrorist death squads, the murder of Shiite leaders in mosques, and the assassination of our young soldiers in the streets. It is one that will soon be joined by Islamic radicals and we are far less secure today than we were before we bumbled into Iraq.

We will pay for this, but what saddens me most is that those who will by and large pay the highest price are poor kids from Mississippi or Alabama or Texas who could not get a decent job or health insurance and joined the army because it was all we offered them. For war in the end is always about betrayal, betrayal of the young by the old, of soldiers by politicians, and of idealists by cynics. Read Antigone, when the king imposes his will without listening to those he rules or Thucydides' history. Read how Athens' expanding empire saw it become a tyrant abroad and then a tyrant at home. How the tyranny the Athenian leadership imposed on others it finally imposed on itself.

This, Thucydides wrote, is what doomed Athenian democracy; Athens destroyed itself. For the instrument of empire is war and war is a poison, a poison which at times we must ingest just as a cancer patient must ingest a poison to survive. But if we do not understand the poison of war -- if we do not understand how deadly that poison is -- it can kill us just as surely as the disease.

We have lost touch with the essence of war. Following our defeat in Vietnam we became a better nation. We were humbled, even humiliated. We asked questions about ourselves we had not asked before.

We were forced to see ourselves as others saw us and the sight was not always a pretty one. We were forced to confront our own capacity for a atrocity -- for evil -- and in this we understood not only war but more about ourselves. But that humility is gone.

War, we have come to believe, is a spectator sport. The military and the press -- remember in wartime the press is always part of the problem -- have turned war into a vast video arcade came. Its very essence -- death -- is hidden from public view.

There was no more candor in the Persian Gulf War or the War in Afghanistan or the War in Iraq than there was in Vietnam. But in the age of live feeds and satellite television, the state and the military have perfected the appearance of candor.

Because we no longer understand war, we no longer understand that it can all go horribly wrong. We no longer understand that war begins by calling for the annihilation of others but ends if we do not know when to make or maintain peace with self-annihilation. We flirt, given the potency of modern weapons, with our own destruction.

The seduction of war is insidious because so much of what we are told about it is true -- it does create a feeling of comradeship which obliterates our alienation and makes us, for perhaps the only time of our life, feel we belong.

War allows us to rise above our small stations in life; we find nobility in a cause and feelings of selflessness and even bliss. And at a time of soaring deficits and financial scandals and the very deterioration of our domestic fabric, war is a fine diversion. War for those who enter into combat has a dark beauty, filled with the monstrous and the grotesque. The Bible calls it the lust of the eye and warns believers against it. War gives us a distorted sense of self; it gives us meaning.

(A man in the audience says: "Can I say a few words here?" Hedges: Yeah, when I finish.)

Once in war, the conflict obliterates the past and the future all is one heady intoxicating present. You feel every heartbeat in war, colors are brighter, your mind races ahead of itself. (Confusion, microphone problems, etc.) We feel in wartime comradeship. (Boos) We confuse this with friendship, with love. There are those who will insist that the comradeship of war is love -- the exotic glow that makes us in war feel as one people, one entity, is real, but this is part of war's intoxication.

Think back on the days after the attacks on 9-11. Suddenly we no longer felt alone; we connected with strangers, even with people we did not like. We felt we belonged, that we were somehow wrapped in the embrace of the nation, the community; in short, we no longer felt alienated.

As this feeling dissipated in the weeks after the attack, there was a kind of nostalgia for its warm glow and wartime always brings with it this comradeship, which is the opposite of friendship. Friends are predetermined; friendship takes place between men and women who possess an intellectual and emotional affinity for each other. But comradeship -- that ecstatic bliss that comes with belonging to the crowd in wartime -- is within our reach. We can all have comrades.

The danger of the external threat that comes when we have an enemy does not create friendship; it creates comradeship. And those in wartime are deceived about what they are undergoing. And this is why once the threat is over, once war ends, comrades again become strangers to us. This is why after war we fall into despair.

In friendship there is a deepening of our sense of self. We become, through the friend, more aware of who we are and what we are about; we find ourselves in the eyes of the friend. Friends probe and question and challenge each other to make each of us more complete; with comradeship, the kind that comes to us in patriotic fervor, there is a suppression of self-awareness, self-knowledge, and self-possession. Comrades lose their identities in wartime for the collective rush of a common cause -- a common purpose. In comradeship there are no demands on the self. This is part of its appeal and one of the reasons we miss it and seek to recreate it. Comradeship allows us to escape the demands on the self that is part of friendship.

In wartime when we feel threatened, we no longer face death alone but as a group, and this makes death easier to bear. We ennoble self-sacrifice for the other, for the comrade; in short we begin to worship death. And this is what the god of war demands of us.

Think finally of what it means to die for a friend. It is deliberate and painful; there is no ecstasy. For friends, dying is hard and bitter. The dialogue they have and cherish will perhaps never be recreated. Friends do not, the way comrades do, love death and sacrifice. To friends, the prospect of death is frightening. And this is why friendship or, let me say love, is the most potent enemy of war. Thank you.

For further study:

Amy Goodman's interview in Democracy Now a week after:

AMY GOODMAN: Just tell us what happened this weekend. Why did you go to Rockford College in Illinois?

CHRIS HEDGES: I was invited to give the commencement address. Given that the book is an explication of war and the poison that war is and what it does to individuals and societies and that since the book came out I have spoken extensively about that, that is, of course, what I was prepared to speak about when I got to Rockford. What I was not prepared for was the response. I have certainly spoken at events where people disagreed � that is to be expected. But to be silenced and to have people clamber onto the platform with the threat of physical violence was something new, and frightening.

AMY GOODMAN: Did the police actually have to take you off?

CHRIS HEDGES ... MORE

White Collar Conservative ...

2006-09-07T09:20:00.000-07:00

you can speak out against democracy
and still be free
because the government has laws
to protect freedom of speech

but if you speak out against the corporatocracy
you could be killed
because the corporatocracy
has no such laws

jimi hendrix once sang about the
... white collar conservative walking down the street pointing their finger at him ...
he said he was gonna wave his freak flag high

read John Perkins:
Confessions of and Economic Hit Man

Plato: Republic Book VIII [Jowett] - Study Well

2006-08-29T10:21:00.000-07:00

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click photo for full text



Excerpts from book VIII


The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse
into greatness.

Yes, that is their way.

This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first
appears above ground he is a protector.

Yes, that is quite clear...


... At first, in the early days of his power, he is full of smiles, and he
salutes every one whom he meets; -- he to be called a tyrant, who is
making promises in public and also in private! liberating debtors, and
distributing land to the people and his followers, and wanting to be so
kind and good to every one!

Of course, he said.

But when he has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and
there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some
war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.

To be sure.

Has he not also another object, which is that they may be impoverished
by payment of taxes, and thus compelled to devote themselves to their
daily wants and therefore less likely to conspire against him?

Clearly.

And if any of them are suspected by him of having notions of freedom,
and of resistance to his authority, he will have a good pretext for
destroying them by placing them at the mercy of the enemy; and for all
these reasons the tyrant must be always getting up a war.

He must.

Now he begins to grow unpopular.

A necessary result.

Then some of those who joined in setting him up, and who are in power,
speak their minds to him and to one another, and the more courageous of
them cast in his teeth what is being done.

Yes, that may be expected.

And the tyrant, if he means to rule, must get rid of them; he cannot
stop while he has a friend or an enemy who is good for anything.

He cannot.

And therefore he must look about him and see who is valiant, who is
high-minded, who is wise, who is wealthy; happy man, he is the enemy of
them all, and must seek occasion against them whether he will or no,
until he has made a purgation of the State.

Yes, he said, and a rare purgation.

Yes, I said, not the sort of purgation which the physicians make of the
body; for they take away the worse and leave the better part, but he
does the reverse.

If he is to rule, I suppose that he cannot help himself.

What a blessed alternative, I said: -- to be compelled to dwell only
with the many bad, and to be by them hated, or not to live at all!

Yes, that is the alternative.

And the more detestable his actions are to the citizens the more
satellites and the greater devotion in them will he require?

Certainly.

Terror Politics: The Deeper Financial Perspecive

2006-08-25T20:58:00.000-07:00

savethemales.ca is among the best journals i have found on the study of conspiracy - here are a few interesting viewpoints - what do you think?

Financial Oligarchy Is Behind This War

by Rachel Douglas of EIR

General Colonel Leonid G. Ivashov, the outspoken former head of the International Military Cooperation Department of the Russian Ministry of Defense, has published a strategic assessment of the current fighting in Southwest Asia. (www.iamik.ru).

According to Gen. Ivashov, the driving force behind the Israeli operation against Hezbollah and Lebanon is not provocations by Syria or Iran, not Hezbollah, and not Israel itself, nor the United States, or Great Britain. Rather, writes Ivashov, "In our view, the primary player is the politically shadowy world financial oligarchy, which is working steadily and persistently to change the political, economic, and social organization of the global community, in its own interest. The well-known American economist Lyndon LaRouche calls this force 'the world financial bankers' dictatorship.' "

The motives of this "financial oligarchy," Ivashov elaborated, would include the final destruction of the Westphalian nation-state system, in favor of global dictatorship; setting the stage for attacks on Iran, as part of a resource grab as a component of such a dictatorship; and redrawing the map of the Greater Middle East.

Ivashov drew attention particularly to the existence of schemes to ensnare Syria, and then Iran, in a spreading conflict. In an interview in Izvestia of July 31, Russia's senior Southwest Asia expert, former Prime Minister Yevgeni Primakov, made a similar point.

Primakov said that his greatest concern about the fighting in Lebanon, was that circles in the USA intended it as a cover for an Israeli strike on Iran. In a lengthy discussion, drawing on his personal involvement in diplomacy in the region since the 1960s, Primakov said that he saw the introduction of a large peace-keeping force, brought in with an "intelligent compromise peace plan," worked out by the quartet (Russia, U.S.A., E.U., UN), as a pathway out of the crisis, but that he feared some of the forces involved have a different agenda.

Primakov said he did not think that Iran or Syria were behind the attacks on Israeli soldiers, as is "fashionable" to say about the crisis-precipitating incidents. He developed how the escalation was not at all in Iran's interests, commenting that "Iran's leaders are not so brainless, as to think they could divert attention from their nuclear program by using Hezbollah."

As for Syria, he recalled that it is the ABC of Syrian interests, to avoid a direct confrontation with Israel. But, continued Primakov, "What I find especially disappointing now is the behavior of the Americans," said Primakov. "Why aren't they calling for an immediate ceasefire? Sure, there is the traditional U.S. posture of no toleration for terrorists, but there may be something else behind it. Perhaps their design is to drag Syria in? Perhaps they are calculating, that if Syria is dragged in, then Iran will intervene in the war? And then they want Israel to hit Iran? I am not briefed on the secret plans of the Americans, but I don't think their premise is that the destruction of Lebanon will make Hezbollah disappear."

Primakov and Ivashov are widely recognized as co-authors of the concept of a Eurasian strategic triangle of China-India-Russia, as the basis for global stability. That idea goes back to 1998-1999, when Primakov was premier for eight months, after the collapse of Russian state finances. Gen. Ivashov, who is now vice-president of the Academy of Geopolitical Studies, left his Defense Ministry job in 2001, after making a series of high-profile statements that the United States, under the Bush administration, was attempting to achieve world strategic superiority.

In another of his large number of interviews in the Russian media in the recent period, Ivashov characterized the world today as "standing on the brink of a big, world civil war.... There are simultaneously destabilizations in the Caucasus, and armed aggression in the Middle East. Overall, it may be said that a conflict-provocation scheme is in operation in the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Middle East, and Central Asia.... And that gives us the basis for saying that the world is on the brink of some very unpleasant events."

Ivashov told another interviewer, that Russia should respond to U.S. sanctions, imposed Aug. 4 against its arms-exporting companies, by terminating pending contracts with the Boeing Corporation. That State Department action, in which the companies Rosoboronexport and Sukhoy Aviation were accused of illegal arms sales to Iran, brought vigorous denials from the companies involved, as well as official complaints by the Russian Foreign Ministry and Kremlin spokesmen, and indications that retaliation against American aircraft and oil companies is very possible.

International Terrorism
Does Not Exist

By General Leonid Ivashov
1-22-6

General Leonid Ivashov was the Chief of Staff of the Russian armed forces when the September 11, 2001, attacks took place. This military man, who lived the events from the inside, offers an analysis which is very different to that of his American colleagues. As he did during the Axis for Peace 2005 conference, he now explains that international terrorism does not exist and that the September 11 attacks were the result of a set-up. What we are seeing is a manipulation by the big powers; this terrorism would not exist without them. He affirms that, instead of faking a "world war on terror", the best way to reduce that kind of attacks is through respect for international law and peaceful cooperation among countries and their citizens.

The use of the term "international terrorism" has the following goals:

Hiding the real objectives of the forces deployed all over the world in the struggle for dominance and control;

Turning the people's demands to a struggle of undefined goals against an invisible enemy;

Destroying basic international norms and changing concepts such as: aggression, state terror, dictatorship or movement of national liberation;

Depriving peoples of their legitimate right to fight against aggressions and to reject the work of foreign intelligence services;

Establishing the principle of renunciation to national interests, transforming objectives in the military field by giving priority to the war on terror, violating the logic of military alliances to the detriment of a joint defense and to favor the anti-terrorist coalition;

Solving economic problems through a tough military rule using the war on terror as a pretext. In order to fight in an efficient way against international terrorism it is necessary to take the following steps:

To confirm before the UN General Assembly the principles of the UN Charter and international law as principles that all states are obliged to respect;

To create a geo-strategic organization (perhaps inspired in the Cooperation Organization of Shanghai comprised of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) with a set of values different to that of the Atlantists; to design a strategy of development of states, a system of international security, another financial and economic model (which would mean that the world would again rest on two pillars);

To associate (under the United Nations) the scientific elites in the design and promotion of the philosophical concepts of the Human Being of the 21st Century.

To organize the interaction of all religious denominations in the world, on behalf of the stability of humanity's development, security and mutual support.

General Leonid Ivashov

General Leonid Ivashov is the vice-president of the Academy on geopolitical affairs. He was the chief of the department for General affairs in the Soviet Union's ministry of Defense, secretary of the Council of defense ministers of the Community of independant states (CIS), chief of the Military cooperation department at the Russian federation's Ministry of defense and Joint chief of staff of the Russian armies.

The National Security Strategy of the United States of America

2006-08-01T09:53:00.000-07:00

Table of Contents

Introduction

PDF Version of The National Security Strategy of the United States of America

Love America and And Anyone Who Believes in God

2006-06-30T19:52:00.000-07:00

believes in God
live morally
and love thine neighbor
chances are you'll live

blame the US
practice immorality
and chances are
you'll die of AIDS

Denmark is so rational
so well ordered in all things
the Danes hate it
Colombia has strong coffee
the medillins and machine guns on street corners
they hate it
Cuba is still marxist
they hate it

blog hard
but sin not
get it all out of your system

but love america
and anyone who still believes in God
believe me
it's still the best hope in the world today

Are you Conservative, Libertarian, Liberal, Statist, or Centrist ??

2006-06-30T11:32:00.000-07:00

Example of how your chart may look.

Take the Smallest Political Quiz!

STATISTS:

• want government to have a great deal of power over the economy and individual behavior.

• frequently doubt whether economic liberty and individual freedom are practical options in today's world.

• tend to distrust the free market, support high taxes and centralized planning of the economy, oppose diverse lifestyles,

• question the importance of civil liberties.

CENTRISTS:

• espouse a "middle ground" regarding government control of the economy and personal behavior.
• they sometimes favor government intervention and sometimes support individual freedom of choice.

• pride themselves on keeping an open mind, tend to oppose "political extremes,"
• emphasize what they describe as "practical" solutions to problems.

LIBERTARIANS:

• support maximum liberty in both personal and economic matters.
• advocate a much smaller government; one that is limited to protecting individuals from coercion and violence.

• tend to embrace individual responsibility, oppose government bureaucracy and taxes.
• promote private charity, tolerate diverse lifestyles, support the free market, and defend civil liberties.

LIBERALS

• usually embrace freedom of choice in personal matters, but tend to support significant government control of the economy.
• support a government-funded "safety net" to help the disadvantaged, and advocate strict regulation of business.
• tend to favor environmental regulations, defend civil liberties and free expression, support government action to promote equality, and tolerate diverse lifestyles.

CONSERVATIVES:
• tend to favor economic freedom, but frequently support laws to restrict personal behavior that violates "traditional values."
• oppose excessive government control of business, while endorsing government action to defend morality and the traditional family structure.
• usually support a strong military, oppose bureaucracy and high taxes, favor a free-market

economy, and endorse strong law enforcement.

THE BILL OF RIGHTS

2006-06-27T23:27:00.000-07:00

Maintainting these rights is the civic responsibility and duty of each Red Blooded American. Present day "Mind F_ck" politics which come via security issues and media will attempt to impinge upon them or abridge them in order to enslave the public.

THE BILL OF RIGHTS

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment II

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Amendment III

No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendment VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Amendment VII

In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Amendment VIII

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Amendment IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

CIA Definition of "Terrorism"

2006-06-27T10:34:00.000-07:00

The Intelligence Community
is guided by the definition of terrorism
contained in Title 22 of the US Code,
Section 2656f(d):

"—The term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience."

Think about this.

Natural Holistic Politics

2006-06-25T21:40:00.000-07:00

1. Higher organized organisms prey upon lower organized organisms.

2. Colonialism is natural and holistic massaging the needs of the mother country.

3. Disbanding colonial control over weaker nations was unnatural leaving unnatural results of chaos and disorder.

4. It has become the wise undertaking of the West to put order back into the nations which have fallen into chaos and disorder by killing communists and dissidents and installing organized selfsustaining [sustainable] social systems.

5. In order to achieve this effectively the West must ascertain that viable economic systems be a part of the program. [cf.: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins, Plume, 2004]

6. This type of reorganization is called Global Hegemony, [cf.: The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives by Zbigniew Brzezinski,
Basic Books, 1979.

7. Since the fall of the State of the Soviet Union in Russia, the remaining political leaderships may be most easily compared to the same Mafia, and organized crime that was initiated the Soviet regimes. These violent groups foster violent revolutions against colonial rule, and its priviledge class philosophies of the Old Regime held by the governing nobilities, aristocracies and high international finance. Their ensuing governments became organized under Lennist/ Marxist philosophies of social reorganization of the workers/proletariats to form a communist party and order. As nature demonstrates this lower form of political organization and system of government will inevitably seccumb to being controlled or exterminated by the higher more evolved form found in constitutional republics based upon democratic principles.

8. Politics based upon the above principles provide for equality of all people, freedom of speech, religion, rules of non discrimination, freedom to be of any race, creed or sex. These principles are best witnessed in the United States of America and in countries where US has been effective in implementing rules of order, peace and economic prosperity such as Fallujah, Iraq. The extreme violence witnessed in the previous link establishes the degree of force and obliteration that the West is capable of exerting against terrorists, insurgents and anyone who chooses violence. The argument here is that it might seem unfair that the higher organization uses extreme violence to deter violence. My personal response is this: If the West understood how to use love and kindness to get the same result, believe me, it would.

9. Since the current understanding and philosophies of the day are consumed with natural remedies and holistic thinking, then is the West applying natural thinking to resolving the questions of survival of the fittist on a political scale? For further study read more on Social Darwinism.

10. The author of this site maintains, and urges a more spiritual view of brotherly love and peace based upon the teachings of Christ, Gandhi and Martin Luther King. I understand that the higher order of love and kindness in the world is established through peace based upon inner strength and courage instead of using physical force or violence to achieve it's end.

Political playgrounds for Those Driven by Lust, Malice and Greed.

2006-06-20T18:10:00.000-07:00

Auschwitz

Driven by lust, malice and greed the highest levels of leadership build "highly classified" playgrounds for the rich, the famous, and the terrorists, tucked away in the hills, like Auschwitz.

Freedom insists that all inmates must be accounted for, and visiting rights must be permitted. Accepting anything less constitutes oppression, and those who go with that program are living in an oppressed society. Full accountability is how we the people know what is truly happening to us by whom. Legislation against this civic right presupposes cruel and unusual punishment, and must be considered an act against the public liberty. Those who initiate and support such laws are in effect commiting high crime and treason against the people, the state and the flag which represents countless thousands who have died to protect our freedom.

Highly classified camps, and other locations with detainees, especially those who are unaccounted for are victims of cruel and unusual acts against humanity by perverse individuals on the order of the Nazis, or worse ... plain and simple.

Free people avoid indulging in deeply alternative sexual activity, and or drugs, unless under professional supervision, which acts as a control, and checks and balances on mental health and emotional stability. Those in highest levels of office, who have the power and financial capabilities to embrace such behavior unchecked, escalate to greater and greater lusts inevitably establishing, well justified politically, hideous conditions for humanity as in the last century. These acts must never be revisited.

Classified

2006-06-16T00:29:00.000-07:00

in politics
the term classified means

class ... ified

it has something to do with the secrets
the lies
the coverups
the misbehavior
the agenda
the darkness
the intent
the crime
the stratagies
the craft and artiface
and the dishonor

of the governing class
of the ruling class

as far as the other classes
namely the lower classes are concerned
it has little to to with them

this is "mind f_ck"
and striving after the wind

International High Finance - 1917

2006-04-09T19:23:00.000-07:00

when one is stuck
somewhere in the surface
one never knows
what is truly in the core

what banker can tell me
who financed Lenin?

Ultra Conservatives Liberals

2006-04-03T13:36:00.000-07:00

the more ultra the conservative
the more illicit the sex and drugs

the more ultra the liberal
the more vain the laws and self importance

On US Hegemony

2006-04-01T11:15:00.000-08:00

I Believe ...
that the people of the U.S. govern in truth justice and love
on that basis i think that we have the authority
the capability and the noble responsibility
to govern in wisdom
but do we

how many people have come here
how many people have found their freedom
for this reason i believe that we are a great nation

arab jew gentile black white yellow red
all live together here in peace

it is natural for spoiled children
to condemn their parents

but as a people
we refuse to foster hatred

i urge all americans from tourists to business people
never to exploit any people in any land
directly or indirectly
for certainly there is little profit in that

but take stature grace and elegance to all places
and the lamp of truth and freedom
and feel free to share these gifts
with all people

build this foundation on peace and love
never violence
which breeds insanity
never by cunning for riches or profit
which is avarice
but from a heart of courage
defend the rights of the poor
the vulnerable and the simple

- Jeseppi Trade Wildfeather

Smiling$

2006-03-29T10:38:00.001-08:00

why are these men smiling $

it is estimated
that between 1917 and 1940
between 20 and 30 million $ christians in russia
had been killed

another 20 million $ were on the way
excluding 5 $ million jews

why are these men smiling $

perhaps somebody can tell me ...

$$

On Candidates and Voters by H. L. Menchen, written:1920!

2006-03-13T09:51:00.000-08:00

“When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack, or count himself lost. His one aim is to disarm suspicion, to arouse confidence in his orthodoxy, to avoid challenge. If he is a man of convictions, of enthusiasm, or self-respect, it is cruelly hard…

“The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even a mob with him by the force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second or third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.

“The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their hearts desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

—H.L. Mencken, The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920

Oil, Abraham & Paper Money

2006-03-01T18:21:00.000-08:00

1862: By April $449,338,902 worth of Lincoln’s debt free money had been printed and distributed. He went on to state,

“We gave the people of this republic the greatest blessing they ever had, their own paper money to pay their own debts.”

That same year The Times of London publishes a story containing the following statement,

“If that mischievous financial policy, which had its origin in the North American Republic, should become indurated down to a fixture, then that government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off debts and be without a debt. It will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce.

It will become prosperous beyond precedent in the history of civilized governments of the world. The brains and the wealth of all countries will go to North America. That government must be destroyed or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe.”

1863: The Rothschild banking house in Naples, Italy, C. M. de Rothschild e figli, closes following the unification of Italy. The Rothschilds use one of their agents in America, John D. Rockefeller to form an oil business called Standard Oil which eventually takes over all of its competition.

How Are You Using Our Flag?

2006-01-25T17:01:00.000-08:00

What are you doing and your to our flag?

i hold these truths to be self evident

pleasure is reward
pain is punishment

living souls naturally approach one
and flee the other

unless you are insane

a society of psychologically healthy people
is pleasant
a society of psychologically unhealthy people
is painful

if you are a human being
you have been endowed by your creator
with a unique person
a true identity
and an alive being

are these rights
or are these rather
the necessary condition of human existence
unless of course
you are an animals
and are being bred for slaughter

rewards and punishments are rights

some claim certain rights of rewards
to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness
others claim that they have certain rights
to death slavery and the pursuit of misery

i believe that these two types of people
are catagorically unequal

one is obviously a danger to the other

the ones who inspire life liberty and happiness
are classified as human beings
the ones who cause death slavery and misery
are called animals and must be restrained

it is imperative that these two types
be divided into two separate dintinguishable classes
a superior class
and an inferior class
the class who pursues life liberty and happines
is the superior class
and must govern the other
which causes death bondage and misery
is the inferior class
and must be restrained
and under certain circumstances deleted
as the superior class deems fit and necessary

this is the will of the one
from whom human beings derive their existence

certain laws to this effect
are already established
in all legitimate forms of government
further adjustment is needed
to correct for errors of judgement
and incorrect legislation in the past

therefore
we pray for all those
who are in positions of authority
may God grant them wisdom
strength and power to carry out their mission
faithfully and with all love generosity and graciousness

GEORGE WASHINGTON'S FAREWELL ADDRESS

2006-01-06T16:13:00.000-08:00

To the People of the United States.

FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS:

1 The period for a new election of a citizen, to administer the executive government of the United States, being not far distant, and the time actually arrived, when your thoughts must be employed designating the person, who is to be clothed with that important trust, it appears to me proper, especially as it may conduce to a more distinct expression of the public voice, that I should now apprize you of the resolution I have formed, to decline being considered among the number of those out of whom a choice is to be made.

2 I beg you at the same time to do me the justice to be assured that this resolution has not been taken without a strict regard to all the considerations appertaining to the relation which binds a dutiful citizen to his country; and that in withdrawing the tender of service, which silence in my situation might imply, I am influenced by no diminution of zeal for your future interest, no deficiency of grateful respect for your past kindness, but am supported by a full conviction that the step is compatible with both.

3 The acceptance of, and continuance hitherto in, the office to which your suffrages have twice called me, have been a uniform sacrifice of inclination to the opinion of duty, and to a deference for what appeared to be your desire. I constantly hoped, that it would have been much earlier in my power, consistently with motives, which I was not at liberty to disregard, to return to that retirement, from which I had been reluctantly drawn. The strength of my inclination to do this, previous to the last election, had even led to the preparation of an address to declare it to you; but mature reflection on the then perplexed and critical posture of our affairs with foreign nations, and the unanimous advice of persons entitled to my confidence impelled me to abandon the idea.

4 I rejoice, that the state of your concerns, external as well as internal, no longer renders the pursuit of inclination incompatible with the sentiment of duty, or propriety; and am persuaded, whatever partiality may be retained for my services, that, in the present circumstances of our country, you will not disapprove my determination to retire.

5 The impressions, with which I first undertook the arduous trust, were explained on the proper occasion. In the discharge of this trust, I will only say, that I have, with good intentions, contributed towards the organization and administration of the government the best exertions of which a very fallible judgment was capable. Not unconscious, in the outset, of the inferiority of my qualifications, experience in my own eyes, perhaps still more in the eyes of others, has strengthened the motives to diffidence of myself; and every day the increasing weight of years admonishes me more and more, that the shade of retirement is as necessary to me as it will be welcome. Satisfied, that, if any circumstances have given peculiar value to my services, they were temporary, I have the consolation to believe, that, while choice and prudence invite me to quit the political scene, patriotism does not forbid it.

6 In looking forward to the moment, which is intended to terminate the career of my public life, my feelings do not permit me to suspend the deep acknowledgment of that debt of gratitude, which I owe to my beloved country for the many honors it has conferred upon me; still more for the steadfast confidence with which it has supported me; and for the opportunities I have thence enjoyed of manifesting my inviolable attachment, by services faithful and persevering, though in usefulness unequal to my zeal. If benefits have resulted to our country from these services, let it always be remembered to your praise, and as an instructive example in our annals, that under circumstances in which the passions, agitated in every direction, were liable to mislead, amidst appearances sometimes dubious, vicissitudes of fortune often discouraging, in situations in which not unfrequently want of success has countenanced the spirit of criticism, the constancy of your support was the essential prop of the efforts, and a guarantee of the plans by which they were effected. Profoundly penetrated with this idea, I shall carry it with me to my grave, as a strong incitement to unceasing vows that Heaven may continue to you the choicest tokens of its beneficence; that your union and brotherly affection may be perpetual; that the free constitution, which is the work of your hands, may be sacredly maintained; that its administration in every department may be stamped with wisdom and virtue; than, in fine, the happiness of the people of these States, under the auspices of liberty, may be made complete, by so careful a preservation and so prudent a use of this blessing, as will acquire to them the glory of recommending it to the applause, the affection, and adoption of every nation, which is yet a stranger to it.

7 Here, perhaps I ought to stop. But a solicitude for your welfare which cannot end but with my life, and the apprehension of danger, natural to that solicitude, urge me, on an occasion like the present, to offer to your solemn contemplation, and to recommend to your frequent review, some sentiments which are the result of much reflection, of no inconsiderable observation, and which appear to me all-important to the permanency of your felicity as a people. These will be offered to you with the more freedom, as you can only see in them the disinterested warnings of a parting friend, who can possibly have no personal motive to bias his counsel. Nor can I forget, as an encouragement to it, your indulgent reception of my sentiments on a former and not dissimilar occasion.

8 Interwoven as is the love of liberty with every ligament of your hearts, no recommendation of mine is necessary to fortify or confirm the attachment.

9 The unity of Government, which constitutes you one people, is also now dear to you. It is justly so; for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquillity at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very Liberty, which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee, that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment, that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national Union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the Palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion, that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.

10 For this you have every inducement of sympathy and interest. Citizens, by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of american, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together; the Independence and Liberty you possess are the work of joint counsels, and joint efforts, of common dangers, sufferings, and successes.

11 But these considerations, however powerfully they address themselves to your sensibility, are greatly outweighed by those, which apply more immediately to your interest. Here every portion of our country finds the most commanding motives for carefully guarding and preserving the Union of the whole.

12 The North, in an unrestrained intercourse with the South, protected by the equal laws of a common government, finds, in the productions of the latter, great additional resources of maritime and commercial enterprise and precious materials of manufacturing industry. The South, in the same intercourse, benefiting by the agency of the North, sees its agriculture grow and its commerce expand. Turning partly into its own channels the seamen of the North, it finds its particular navigation invigorated; and, while it contributes, in different ways, to nourish and increase the general mass of the national navigation, it looks forward to the protection of a maritime strength, to which itself is unequally adapted. The East, in a like intercourse with the West, already finds, and in the progressive improvement of interior communications by land and water, will more and more find, a valuable vent for the commodities which it brings from abroad, or manufactures at home. The West derives from the East supplies requisite to its growth and comfort, and, what is perhaps of still greater consequence, it must of necessity owe the secure enjoyment of indispensable outlets for its own productions to the weight, influence, and the future maritime strength of the Atlantic side of the Union, directed by an indissoluble community of interest as one nation. Any other tenure by which the West can hold this essential advantage, whether derived from its own separate strength, or from an apostate and unnatural connexion with any foreign power, must be intrinsically precarious.

13 While, then, every part of our country thus feels an immediate and particular interest in Union, all the parts combined cannot fail to find in the united mass of means and efforts greater strength, greater resource, proportionably greater security from external danger, a less frequent interruption of their peace by foreign nations; and, what is of inestimable value, they must derive from Union an exemption from those broils and wars between themselves, which so frequently afflict neighbouring countries not tied together by the same governments, which their own rivalships alone would be sufficient to produce, but which opposite foreign alliances, attachments, and intrigues would stimulate and embitter. Hence, likewise, they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments, which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to Republican Liberty. In this sense it is, that your Union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other.

14 These considerations speak a persuasive language to every reflecting and virtuous mind, and exhibit the continuance of the union as a primary object of Patriotic desire. Is there a doubt, whether a common government can embrace so large a sphere? Let experience solve it. To listen to mere speculation in such a case were criminal. We are authorized to hope, that a proper organization of the whole, with the auxiliary agency of governments for the respective subdivisions, will afford a happy issue to the experiment. It is well worth a fair and full experiment. With such powerful and obvious motives to Union, affecting all parts of our country, while experience shall not have demonstrated its impracticability, there will always be reason to distrust the patriotism of those, who in any quarter may endeavour to weaken its bands.

15 In contemplating the causes, which may disturb our Union, it occurs as matter of serious concern, that any ground should have been furnished for characterizing parties by Geographical discriminations, Northern and Southern, Atlantic and Western; whence designing men may endeavour to excite a belief, that there is a real difference of local interests and views. One of the expedients of party to acquire influence, within particular districts, is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heart-burnings, which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien to each other those, who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection. The inhabitants of our western country have lately had a useful lesson on this head; they have seen, in the negotiation by the Executive, and in the unanimous ratification by the Senate, of the treaty with Spain, and in the universal satisfaction at that event, throughout the United States, a decisive proof how unfounded were the suspicions propagated among them of a policy in the General Government and in the Atlantic States unfriendly to their interests in regard to the mississippi; they have been witnesses to the formation of two treaties, that with Great Britain, and that with Spain, which secure to them every thing they could desire, in respect to our foreign relations, towards confirming their prosperity. Will it not be their wisdom to rely for the preservation of these advantages on the union by which they were procured? Will they not henceforth be deaf to those advisers, if such there are, who would sever them from their brethren, and connect them with aliens?

16 To the efficacy and permanency of your Union, a Government for the whole is indispensable. No alliances, however strict, between the parts can be an adequate substitute; they must inevitably experience the infractions and interruptions, which all alliances in all times have experienced. Sensible of this momentous truth, you have improved upon your first essay, by the adoption of a Constitution of Government better calculated than your former for an intimate Union, and for the efficacious management of your common concerns. This Government, the offspring of our own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true Liberty. The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their Constitutions of Government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish Government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established Government.

17 All obstructions to the execution of the Laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels, and modified by mutual interests.

18 However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government; destroying afterwards the very engines, which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

19 Towards the preservation of your government, and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite, not only that you steadily discountenance irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts. One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms of the constitution, alterations, which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown. In all the changes to which you may be invited, remember that time and habit are at least as necessary to fix the true character of governments, as of other human institutions; that experience is the surest standard, by which to test the real tendency of the existing constitution of a country; that facility in changes, upon the credit of mere hypothesis and opinion, exposes to perpetual change, from the endless variety of hypothesis and opinion; and remember, especially, that, for the efficient management of our common interests, in a country so extensive as ours, a government of as much vigor as is consistent with the perfect security of liberty is indispensable. Liberty itself will find in such a government, with powers properly distributed and adjusted, its surest guardian. It is, indeed, little else than a name, where the government is too feeble to withstand the enterprises of faction, to confine each member of the society within the limits prescribed by the laws, and to maintain all in the secure and tranquil enjoyment of the rights of person and property.

20 I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally.

21 This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

22 The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.

23 Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind, (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight,) the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

24 It serves always to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.

25 There is an opinion, that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the Government, and serve to keep alive the spirit of Liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in Governments of a Monarchical cast, Patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in Governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And, there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be, by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.

26 It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution, in those intrusted 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 depositories, 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.

27 Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and Citizens. The mere Politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connexions with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

28 It is substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who, that is a sincere friend to it, can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric ?

29 Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.

30 As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is, to use it as sparingly as possible; avoiding occasions of expense by cultivating peace, but remembering also that timely disbursements to prepare for danger frequently prevent much greater disbursements to repel it; avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertions in time of peace to discharge the debts, which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burthen, which we ourselves ought to bear. The execution of these maxims belongs to your representatives, but it is necessary that public opinion should cooperate. To facilitate to them the performance of their duty, it is essential that you should practically bear in mind, that towards the payment of debts there must be Revenue; that to have Revenue there must be taxes; that no taxes can be devised, which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant; that the intrinsic embarrassment, inseparable from the selection of the proper objects (which is always a choice of difficulties), ought to be a decisive motive for a candid construction of the conduct of the government in making it, and for a spirit of acquiescence in the measures for obtaining revenue, which the public exigencies may at any time dictate.

31 Observe good faith and justice towards all Nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and Morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and, at no distant period, a great Nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt, that, in the course of time and things, the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages, which might be lost by a steady adherence to it ? Can it be, that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a Nation with its Virtue? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices ?

32 In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential, than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular Nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The Nation, which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The Nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the Government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The Government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times, it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of Nations has been the victim.

33 So likewise, a passionate attachment of one Nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite Nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest, in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter, without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite Nation of privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the Nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained; and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens, (who devote themselves to the favorite nation,) facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.

34 As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent Patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practise the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the Public Councils! Such an attachment of a small or weak, towards a great and powerful nation, dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter.

35 Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens,) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake; since history and experience prove, that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of Republican Government. But that jealousy, to be useful, must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defence against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation, and excessive dislike of another, cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots, who may resist the intrigues of the favorite, are liable to become suspected and odious; while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.

36 The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connexion as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop.

37 Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.

38 Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people, under an efficient government, the period is not far off, when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality, we may at any time resolve upon, to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.

39 Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice?

40 It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.

41 Taking care always to keep ourselves, by suitable establishments, on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.

42 Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations, are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest. But even our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing, with powers so disposed, in order to give trade a stable course, to define the rights of our merchants, and to enable the government to support them, conventional rules of intercourse, the best that present circumstances and mutual opinion will permit, but temporary, and liable to be from time to time abandoned or varied, as experience and circumstances shall dictate; constantly keeping in view, that it is folly in one nation to look for disinterested favors from another; that it must pay with a portion of its independence for whatever it may accept under that character; that, by such acceptance, it may place itself in the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favors, and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more. There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion, which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.

43 In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I could wish; that they will control the usual current of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the course, which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations. But, if I may even flatter myself, that they may be productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good; that they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism; this hope will be a full recompense for the solicitude for your welfare, by which they have been dictated.

44 How far in the discharge of my official duties, I have been guided by the principles which have been delineated, the public records and other evidences of my conduct must witness to you and to the world. To myself, the assurance of my own conscience is, that I have at least believed myself to be guided by them.

45 In relation to the still subsisting war in Europe, my Proclamation of the 22d of April 1793, is the index to my Plan. Sanctioned by your approving voice, and by that of your Representatives in both Houses of Congress, the spirit of that measure has continually governed me, uninfluenced by any attempts to deter or divert me from it.

46 After deliberate examination, with the aid of the best lights I could obtain, I was well satisfied that our country, under all the circumstances of the case, had a right to take, and was bound in duty and interest to take, a neutral position. Having taken it, I determined, as far as should depend upon me, to maintain it, with moderation, perseverance, and firmness.

47 The considerations, which respect the right to hold this conduct, it is not necessary on this occasion to detail. I will only observe, that, according to my understanding of the matter, that right, so far from being denied by any of the Belligerent Powers, has been virtually admitted by all.

48 The duty of holding a neutral conduct may be inferred, without any thing more, from the obligation which justice and humanity impose on every nation, in cases in which it is free to act, to maintain inviolate the relations of peace and amity towards other nations.

49 The inducements of interest for observing that conduct will best be referred to your own reflections and experience. With me, a predominant motive has been to endeavour to gain time to our country to settle and mature its yet recent institutions, and to progress without interruption to that degree of strength and consistency, which is necessary to give it, humanly speaking, the command of its own fortunes.

50 Though, in reviewing the incidents of my administration, I am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors. Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they may tend. I shall also carry with me the hope, that my Country will never cease to view them with indulgence; and that, after forty-five years of my life dedicated to its service with an upright zeal, the faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon be to the mansions of rest.

51 Relying on its kindness in this as in other things, and actuated by that fervent love towards it, which is so natural to a man, who views it in the native soil of himself and his progenitors for several generations; I anticipate with pleasing expectation that retreat, in which I promise myself to realize, without alloy, the sweet enjoyment of partaking, in the midst of my fellow-citizens, the benign influence of good laws under a free government, the ever favorite object of my heart, and the happy reward, as I trust, of our mutual cares, labors, and dangers.

George Washington

United States - September 17, 1796

Source: The Independent Chronicle, September 26, 1796.

Understanding Government - Three Rules

2005-11-09T22:49:00.000-08:00

First Rule:

stature
grace
and elegance
represent the highest form of government
and begin with the individual

weakness
hostility
and vulgarity
represent the lowest form of government
likewise beginning with the individual

Second Rule:

all authority
derives from the idea:

"we are right and you left"

those who remain united
establish law and order

those who left
invariably return
to challenge the established law and order
they become anti-establishment

family dynamics [party, clan, regime, cabal, etc.]
are designed to maintain power and government

the group in the right
views the established government as high

and the group on the left
as low

the higher group
is fundamentally monarchial
and supports unequality
ennobling the lower group
with values of loyalty strength and honor

the group which is lower
and fundamentally democratic
supporting equality
and suspects the higher government

those of the lower group
whose lives represent
treachery weakness and disgrace
are conscripted to fight wars
as military
a subtle form of slavery
or imprisonment
designed to ennoble or destroy the lower classes

[Cf: Athens in the time of Pericles]

Third Rule:

Those who are wise and worthy to judge, govern and teach represent equlibrium.
Understand and honor them.

(In my view the Founding Fathers of the United States were all honorable men who believed that the best of both aspects of government could be achieved in a consitutional republic. They began an "experiment". I believe this experiment has failed. The following address by George Washington may serve to clarify the reasons why.)