Sunday, February 29, 2004

No Hijackers For 911 by John Kaminski (via What Really Happened)

Back in May 2003, a journalist in Portugal reported on a sensational, marathon meeting of a group of U.S. pilots that issued a report concluding that the story told by the U.S. government about what happened on Sept. 11, 2001 was improbable and unlikely.

Except for several notices on the Internet, that story was basically never reported in the U.S., and largely debunked when the reporter flubbed the name of the organizer, creating disbelief in the minds of many readers.

The record was corrected in stunning fashion Feb. 25 on Alex Jones' Prison Planet radio program when former Pentagon arms salesman Donn de Grand-Pre, author of three books that allege 9/11 was an inside job, set the record straight, because he was the man who organized that conference. That 72-hour non-stop symposium by a group of military and civilian pilots concluded the flight crews of the four passenger airliners involved in the 9/11 tragedy had no control over their aircraft.

de Grand Pre, a retired Army colonel, is the author of "A Window on America," "Confessions of an Arms Peddler" and his latest, "Barbarians Inside the Gates." His thesis in the third book "is that the wars we have engaged in for whatever reasons since the end of World War II have not only been unconstitutionally waged, but have caused a net loss in political power. Each war was waged to divert our attention away from the true enemy within, and toward a contrived enemy outside our borders."

de Grand-Pre explained that his third book actually has three parts: "OK, I've got three books out under the title, "Barbarians Inside the Gates." Book 1 was "The Serpent's Sting," Book 2 is "The Viper's Venom," Book 3, which just came out is "The Rattler's Revenge."

"And I'd like to quote from Book 2, which came out October of 2002. There is a very important paragraph there. It says,

"The trigger for the 911 activity was the imminent and unstoppable worldwide financial collapse which can only be prevented temporarily by a major war, perhaps to become known as World War III. To bring it off one more time, martial law will probably be imposed in the United States."

de Grand-Pre was the top U.S. arms dealer to the Middle East under the Ford and Carter administrations. What he saw caused him to leave government service and begin investigating the forces he saw warping our nation's future.

In the interview with Jones, de Grand-Pre made several stunning assertions, among them:

- There were no hijackers on the 9/11 killer jets. And he said the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Richard Myers) agrees with him.

In response to a caller to Alex Jones' radio show, de Grand-Pre noted: "... the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs himself has agreed, there were no hijackers. There were no cell phone calls. Everybody aboard that aircraft, pilots and crew, were unconscious within 8 to 18 minutes after take-off. And you can take it from there. I've got it covered in books 2 and 3, what actually happened."

"These planes were being piloted by remote control, probably an AWACs aircraft taking over that airplane or airplanes or drones, unmanned drones. And flying them at 5 and 8 G-force that no pilot could withstand. So, in short, and if you read books 2 and 3, you will discover how and why this came about."

- The 9/11 planes that took off full of passengers are now at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. "And I'm telling you that we are knowledgeably speculating," said de Grand-Pre in response to another caller. "Those aircraft carrying crew and passengers went over the Atlantic and that was all she wrote."

- Talk of a military coup - to reverse what he calls the administrative coup d'etat that happened on 9/11 - are rife within the corridors of the Pentagon.

In his various interviews and publications, deGrand-Pre has called 9/11 "an administrative coup d'etat." He suggests the only way the neocons can be stopped is by a military coup d'etat, and estimates 70 percent of key military personnel are in favor of such a step. But the possibility is complicated, he says, by the large number of key military players who have gone over to the Council on Foreign Relations team. Some of these players, including three- and four-star generals, however, may side with the military while pretending to be on the side of the neocons. de Grand-Pre insists he is in personal contact with members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The truly patriotic members of the military have had to sit there and take all these wild schemes by corporate-controlled politicians. de Grand-Pre's prediction? "I think those days are coming to an end. The military ain't going to take it any longer."

In the interview with Jones, de Grand-Pre also asserted:

- It is common knowledge at the Pentagon that Israel fired nuclear weapons at Iraq during the first Gulf War.

- A commercial aircraft did not hit the Pentagon. Most likely it was a cruise missile or a Global Hawk.

- Flight 93, the jetliner that supposedly crashed in Pennsylvania after courageous passengers struggled with armed hijackers, was shot down by the North Dakota Air Guard. "I know the pilot who fired those two missiles to take down 93," de Grand-Pre insisted, adding that the order to shoot down the plane came from the Adjutant General of North Dakota.

- Most likely it was U.S. forces that tried to kill Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz when he visited Iraq recently.

- Military tribunals will try current U.S. public officials when the military decides to take over, de Grand-Pre predicts. "And Cheney, I reiterate, is toast." de Grand-Pre named Cheney as the one man who knows the most about 9/11.

In earlier interviews, de Grand-Pre has recounted that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Richard Myers, had 500 copies of the 24-page report made and sent out, including, to the White House.

Assessing Myers' reaction, de Grand Pre said, "I'm quite sure that he believed in it. I think that he still believes in it. You can understand the difficulties. The civilian administration, of course, won't recognize it as such.

"There's a definite cleavage between the military of the Pentagon and the civilian hierarchy - and never the twain shall meet."

Jones triggered a response from de Grand Pre when he mentioned a 2002 article in the Washington Times that said morale at the Pentagon had never been lower.

De Grand-Pre responded: "I can verify that from Col. Dick Schultz, who is a friend of mine in the Joint Chiefs. Morale was not only low but he said some of the troops are ready to mutiny. If it wasn't for the fact that the government, the civilian hierarchy, has control over retirements, they would probably be blood in the streets by now."

When other news outlets began checking on this story angle, Jones noted that Pentagon officials were apoplectic. "... they panicked and flew the officers on jets to luxury vacations and had these focus groups. It even talked about a possible mutiny. People were just totally distraught. What would make them become distraught overnight in the Pentagon?"

de Grand-Pre's answer was chilling, and revealed the possibility of a military coup d'etat has been simmering in the corridors of the Pentagon for some time.

"It wasn't an overnight thing. You see, as I outline in book 1, and I carry that on in book 2, as well as book 3, we were on the verge of a military coup d'etat. And this was long in the planning and even after the 78 days of bombing Kosovo, it became critical. And we were close to a coup d'etat at that time. In my survey of the reports and the pilots who worked with that, a coup was a possibility.

"In fact, a coup d'etat was pulled on the morning of September 11th. Only it was an administrative or what we call a cold coup d'etat."

Jones' translation of that was "a counter-revolutionary junta."

de Grand-Pre concurred, and added: "And as we delved into that, we found that the culprits, including Rumsfeld, were part of a neocon group that had been planning this thing for literally years prior to September 11th."

In a previous interview that appeared on Michael Rivero's What Really Happened website, de Grand-Pre had already outlined his conclusions about 9-11.

"The 9-11 activity and horrific destruction of US property and lives was intentionally meant to trigger a psychological and patriotic reaction on the part of the US citizens, which is paving the way for "combined UN activity" (using the fig leaf of NATO) for striking key targets in both the Middle East/ South Asia and the Balkans. The goal continues to be ultimate destruction of all national sovereignty
and establishment of a global government.

"The trigger for the 9-11 activity was the imminent and unstoppable world-wide financial collapse, which can only be prevented (temporarily) by a major war, perhaps to become known as WW 111. To bring it off (one more time), martial law will probably be imposed in the United States. de Grand-Pre had also sounded the same themes on Jackie Patru's Radio Sweet Liberty Webcast.

"The so-called terrorist attack was in fact a superbly executed military operation against the United States, requiring the utmost professional military skill in command, communications and control. It was flawless in timing, in the choice of selected aircraft to be used as guided missiles, and in the coordinated delivery of those missiles to their pre-selected targets.

As a tactical military exercise against two significant targets (world financial center and the citadel of world strategic military planning), the attack, from a psychological impact on the American public, equalled the Japanese "surprise" attack on Pearl Harbor 7 Dec 1941.

But the overriding question of that original group of pilots was: If we are at war, who is the enemy?

The group determined that the enemy is within the gates, that he has infiltrated into the highest policy-making positions at the federal level, and has absolute control, not only of the purse strings, but of the troop buildup and deployment of our military forces, including active, reserve and National Guard units.

Read the complete interview of Donn de Grand-Pre with Alex Jones at http://www.warfolly.com/blockbustergrandpre.htm as it has not yet been posted on Jones' website, although there is a transcript posted there of his recent interview with former German defense minister Andreas von Buelow, who sounded many of the themes de Grand-Pre discussed. See http://www.prisonplanet.com/021104vonbuelow.html

de Grand-Pre's books are not yet available on the web, but more information can be obtained from de Grand-Pre Publishing Ltd. at 540-547-2996.

John Kaminski is the author of "America's Autopsy Report," a collection of his Internet essays published by Dandelion Books and featured on hundreds of websites around the world. For more information on how to get this book or to financially support his work, go to http://www.johnkaminski.com/. Or, to read some more of his recent essays for free, go to http://www.rudemacedon.ca/kaminski/kam-index.html

posted by George Thomas Kysor 8:49 PM

The Philosophy of Kissing (via Cerebral or Stupid.)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 7:40 PM

Is Daniel Ellsberg Right ... Again? 

The Pentagon insider-turned-Bay Area activist says the parallels between Vietnam and Iraq are tragic and inescapable. Why, he asks, have our leaders failed to learn from the mistakes of 40 years ago?.

Daniel Ellsberg, 72, is hoarse after speaking for two hours last December about the similarities between the Vietnam and Iraq wars to an overflow Berkeley bookstore crowd. He knows he's drained the air out of the room with his somber monologue, so he concludes the evening by tugging scarves out of his pocket to perform some magic. A lifetime ago, his magic tricks brought smiles to the faces of Vietnamese orphans in bombed-out villages he passed through as a State Department observer from 1965 to 1967. His audiences these days are different, but they, too, appreciate the diversion.

When he wonders aloud which trick to perform, someone wisecracks, "Make Bush disappear." Laughter ripples through the store and Ellsberg grins. He wishes it were that easy. His release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 may have shortened the Nixon presidency and the Vietnam War, but making Bush and the Iraq War disappear would be a challenge even for Houdini. Ellsberg no longer has access to the sort of secret documents that made him a '60s icon and the pre-eminent government whistle-blower in U.S. history. Now the longtime Bay Area political activist can only educate the public, one bookstore talk at a time, on why he thinks the war in Iraq is Vietnam revisited.

Ellsberg's Berkeley appearance was his 55th nationwide since publication of his American Book Award-winning "Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers." The book tour is entering its 18th month as audience interest in Ellsberg's Vietnam-Iraq comparisons remains high, fueled by gloomy news from the occupation. For the middle-aged crowd, especially those who are Vietnam veterans, it's a reopening of old wounds, while for college students it's a history lesson tying their parents' war to their own. Says Ellsberg, "Sometimes I feel I'm waking up to the world I left 40 years ago."

In that world, public support for the Vietnam War was substantial until Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers to the Senate and 19 newspapers. The 47 volumes of mostly classified documents revealed a pattern of government errors and lies about the war considered to be so inflammatory that the Supreme Court temporarily ordered the New York Times to stop publishing excerpts. Henry Kissinger, who had previously sought out Ellsberg for his expertise on Vietnam, called him "the most dangerous man in America."

Ellsberg was charged with 12 felony counts under the Espionage Act, carrying a maximum sentence of 115 years. The charges against Ellsberg and Anthony Russo (who helped him photocopy the papers) were dismissed in the fifth month of the trial, however, on grounds of governmental misconduct due to illegal wiretapping and evidence tampering. He was free to resume criticizing the government, which he's done assiduously and passionately ever since.


Duped by Our Leaders?

"We were lied into both wars in every aspect - the reasons for going in, the prospects, the length, the scale and the probable costs in lives and dollars," he tells the crowd as rain puddles the sidewalk on Shattuck Avenue. "With Iraq, the big lie is that it represented the No. 1 security threat to the U.S. That's not just questionable, it's absurd. We live in a dangerous world with al Qaeda terrorism, more than 20,000 poorly guarded Russian nuclear weapons and the unstable, nuclear-armed state of Pakistan, where Osama and other al Qaeda leaders are probably hiding. Saddam was a tyrant, but he was never linked to 9/11, and the talk of weapons of mass destruction was at least exaggerated. He wasn't even a threat to his neighbors."

Ellsberg speaks in a gravelly baritone. A swirl of white hair frames a slender, kindly face. He is formal and professorial in dress and speech, remnants of his straight-arrow days as a Harvard man (doctorate in economics), U.S. Marine commander, Rand Corporation think-tank analyst and Pentagon insider. He has studied war for most of his life, but came to a visceral understanding of it while "walking point" (leading foot patrols to draw fire) with troops in Vietnam. That was when he realized the Vietnam War was unwinnable, largely because of what he calls "revolutionary judo" - a guerrilla tactic used against U.S. troops by the Viet Cong and now by Iraqis.

"In judo, you can turn the strength of a stronger opponent against himself, " he explains. "Revolutionary judo in Vietnam often took the form of a single Viet Cong firing a shot at a U.S. chopper from a village, which prompted us to bomb the village. We thought, 'That will teach them a lesson.' But the villagers who saw relatives killed and wounded joined the other side. So our superior firepower was used against us to create support for the enemy. It's how the Viet Cong, with their handmade weapons, prevailed against massive U.S. bombing, and it's also why the Iraqi resistance is not going away."

The Vietnam War killed 58,235 Americans and an estimated 1.5 million Vietnamese, and Ellsberg fears Iraq could be just as catastrophic. Besides "revolutionary judo," he says that U.S. war planners have forgotten other lessons of Vietnam, like the need for an exit strategy and the futility of "pacification." Pacification means that locals can gradually take over for occupying troops, but Ellsberg says hired locals are always seen by fellow citizens as traitorous collaborators. Pacification attempts have consistently failed - in Afghanistan by the Russians; in Vietnam by the French and the Americans; and so far by British and American forces in Iraq.

"We perceive ourselves as liberators opposing the forces of evil," he says, "but the resistance fighters are not seen as evil by most Iraqis, nor were they in Vietnam. Iraqis think we want to occupy the country indefinitely with U.S. troops and a pro-American government, and as long as that perception exists, pacification is impossible."

At the heart of his argument is this: "The fundamental similarity shared by the Vietnam and Iraq wars is that a U.S. occupying force is facing primarily nationalist resistance fighters - locals who feel they are defending their country. These fighters can hide without being found because they have the general support of the population. This happened in our own country when the British were occupiers, but now we're the redcoats."


All the President's Men

How did we get into this mess? Ellsberg blames the president's men - notably Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Perle - for channeling the outrage over Sept. 11 into an attack on a Muslim country.

Deception was the means, he says, and world oil dominance the end. "It's a lie that this war is part of the war on terror, because every day we occupy Iraq is a good recruiting day for Osama. The occupation of an Arab country increases al Qaeda's support and reduces the cooperation from Muslim countries to stop terrorism, so it actually increases the likelihood of another 9/11."

In most of the world, he adds, the Iraq invasion was seen as an act of naked aggression, comparable to Saddam's invasion of Kuwait or even Hitler's blitzkriegs of Poland and France. "Like Vietnam, this war was started as a result of distortions fed to Congress and the public by the executive branch," Ellsberg says. He witnessed the distortion game firsthand at the dawn of the Vietnam War. While working for Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton in 1964, he received an urgent cable from the captain of a naval destroyer in the Tonkin Gulf describing a torpedo attack. Hours later, however, another cable from Capt. John Herrick stated that "overeager sonarmen" had probably misinterpreted the ship's own propeller beat for torpedo hits.

"Herrick's new cable didn't slow for a moment the preparations in Washington and the Pacific for a retaliatory air strike," Ellsberg wrote in "Secrets." U.S. bombing commenced the next day, after President Johnson told the nation he had "unequivocal" evidence of an attack. Long after the war ended, Herrick and then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara acknowledged the ship was almost certainly never hit.

Congress also deserves some blame for both wars, says Ellsberg. The 1964 Tonkin Gulf Resolution passed overwhelmingly three days after the purported attack, handing war-making powers to Johnson. The 2002 Congress conceded war powers to Bush by passing the Iraq Military Authorization bill. "In both instances, it was unconstitutional and irresponsible for Congress to write an undated blank check to the president to start a war. Even worse, they did it on the basis of brief testimony in the case of Vietnam and no hearings at all in the case of Iraq. Although both resolutions were based on false information from the White House, that doesn't excuse Congress for abdicating its constitutional role."

Iraq War opponents do seem to have a head start on their Vietnam-era counterparts. First, he notes: "Government lying about Vietnam didn't become widely known for four years, while in Iraq the lack of weapons of mass destruction became apparent within weeks." Second, it took five years for anti- Vietnam War street protests to become as large as those that preceded the Iraq invasion. Third, the anti-war candidacy of Howard Dean that made him the early Democratic frontrunner is reminiscent of the Gene McCarthy and George McGovern presidential runs in 1968 and 1972. Richard Nixon won those two elections, however, and the troops didn't come home until Congress finally cut off funds in 1973.

"A major factor that kept us in Vietnam and that's keeping us in Iraq," says Ellsberg, "is the unwillingness by those in power to admit they made a mistake. This would be admitting that lives were wasted and it would look like they're accepting defeat. That thinking was enough to keep Vietnam going year after year. In Iraq, we would be giving up if we withdraw troops . . . but we should give up. It's not for President Bush or any other American to determine the internal policies of Iraq, and prolonging the occupation does nothing to solve Iraq's problems."


Patriot or Traitor?

Ellsberg's release of the Pentagon Papers was like kicking over a beehive. His trial made headlines for months, highlighted by the revelation that the so- called "plumbers" (assigned to plug government leaks) broke into his psychiatrist's office in an attempt to discredit him. They bungled that assignment as badly as their more famous caper, the Watergate burglary, and Ellsberg had the last laugh when they ended up behind bars instead of him. The trial's disclosures also figured in Nixon's resignation, and as an indirect result, hastened the end of the war.

Ellsberg now encourages those with access to similar documents concerning Iraq to turn them over to Congress and the press. "They can omit the portions that in any way involve national security," he says. "I have no doubt there are numerous people who have access to such documents," he says. "[Leaking them] may cost them their careers or even jail time, but it could save many lives."

His role as an unapologetic whistle-blower has caused some to call him a traitor and others a patriot, but he rejects both labels. Nor is he a strict pacifist, although he opposes military aggression. "As a boy during World War II, I believed we were on the right side because we were fighting aggression and I felt the same way about Korea when I joined the Marines. But now I am in the horrifying position of seeing my country being the aggressor."

He has been a political activist since Vietnam. He still feels guilt for not exposing government duplicity in 1964, when he first knew of it, instead of waiting several years. This guilt and haunting memories of Vietnam bloodshed drives his current anti-war work, which takes the form of writing, lecturing and nonviolent protest. He has been arrested for civil disobedience 70 times in protests against nuclear weapons, Central American interventions, the Gulf War and the Iraq War, including once last winter with his 26-year-old son, Michael, at an Iraq protest in front of U.N. Headquarters.

"I felt that Bush was leading America off a cliff with this war," says Michael of his first arrest. "The message my father is trying to get out is important, so I do what I can to help. I'm proud of what he's done in his life. " Michael edits his father's books and manages his Web site (Ellsberg.net). His father is devoting this year to finishing his most ambitious book yet, on nuclear war planning, an area of expertise going back to his Pentagon days. "I will address current dangers in light of the past, which was more dangerous than even people in the anti-nuclear movement realized," he says.

It will be grim, but not lonely, work. He shares a home with a sweeping view of the bay in Kensington, near Berkeley, with his wife of 33 years, Patricia. She insisted that their first date in 1965 was an anti-war demonstration at the Washington Monument, where he worried the whole time that his face would be spotted on the evening news by Pentagon colleagues. The ultimate odd couple, a war planner and an anti-war public radio host, argued through a five-year courtship until his opinions finally yielded to hers. The year they married in 1970, he spoke against the Vietnam War at a college teach- in, a complete turnaround from when he was sent to teach-ins by the Pentagon to defend war policy.


Puzzling Support

Three weeks after his recent bookstore appearance, he is at home, drinking tea from a heavy mug in the living room. Ceiling-high bookcases line the walls. Patricia has left for a hike with friends, while Michael, a Brown University graduate who has returned to the family home for the year, gives a salsa dancing lesson in the next room. On the table beside Ellsberg's mug is a copy of the New York Times, which reports three more U.S. deaths in Iraq.

"I suspect that troop morale is dropping quickly," he says, noticing the headline. "The military didn't want this war, it's the civilians in the White House, the Pentagon and the oil companies. Like the troops in Vietnam, these troops will begin to hate the occupation duty because they aren't safe anywhere and see no purpose in being there. I am guessing that we will soon see widespread drug abuse, with cheap heroin flooding into Iraq from Afghanistan, so we'll have drug-addicted soldiers coming home like we did during Vietnam. What's amazing to me about this war is the amount of public support that still remains."

This support puzzles him, he says, largely because government misbehavior regarding Iraq has been well established, and not only by journalists and liberals. Among the examples he raises:

-- CIA director George Tenet indicated before the war that there was no Saddam-al Qaeda link, which President Bush and Colin Powell have since admitted.

-- Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson revealed the alleged Niger-Iraq enriched uranium sale to be a hoax.

-- The CIA's former chief weapons inspector, David Kay, resigned last month and said there is almost no evidence in Iraq of WMD, which contradicts White House pre-invasion claims of WMD stockpiles.

-- British government translator Katherine Gun is on trial for releasing a classified document showing U.S. and British complicity in bugging the phones of U.N. Security Council members in an attempt to influence their votes on Iraq.

-- A U.S. Army War College report published last month called the Iraq War "unnecessary" and a "war-of-choice distraction" from the war on terrorism.

Meanwhile, the war drags on. March 20 is the one-year anniversary of the invasion, and major protests are planned in San Francisco and worldwide. The anniversary would have passed unnoticed if the war had ended within weeks or months, as expected. Instead, Coalition Forces commander Ricardo Sanchez now says U.S. troops may be in Iraq for two or more additional years.

"We stayed in Vietnam for nine years," notes Ellsberg, "even though it was clear to many people in the first year that it was unwinnable. This is also the case in Iraq, and as we're seeing, the capture of Saddam made no difference because he wasn't coordinating the resistance fighters. But we'll probably be there as long as Americans are willing to accept the casualties."

He sees a dark road ahead. "Unless our leaders learn from Vietnam, this will likely be a long, bloody, escalating stalemate, with casualties on both sides going steadily higher until we leave. Historians will regard this war as a disastrous error."


What Next?

Ellsberg urges Americans to support politicians who favor immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq; oppose Bush and members of Congress who don't; demand Congressional hearings to investigate improprieties during the White House push for war; and participate in all forms of protest against the war. He believes the huge Vietnam War protests saved hundreds of thousands of lives. "The war would have gone on even longer and nuclear weapons would have probably been used against China. Likewise, opposition to the Iraq invasion probably delayed it and slowed plans for other wars in the Middle East."

Protest while you can, he adds, because it may not be as easy in the future. "I will be happily surprised if there isn't a major terrorist attack in the U. S. in the next four years, and if Bush is in office, I think this country will shift to something very close to fascism. Ashcroft and Cheney will use an attack as an excuse to implement police controls far beyond any we've seen. That's why we need to demand a return to the Constitution and Bill of Rights now, before it's too late. Guantanamo is a concentration camp by every historic standard, but in the future there may be scores of them, and not only for Middle Easterners. Someone like myself, for simply exercising free speech like I am now, may be put in these camps without charges."

If all this sounds alarmist, it's not because Ellsberg is some wild-eyed anarchist. His analysis of foreign policy is more rational than radical, and mirrors the thinking of many respected political scientists. But he fears what kind of world he will leave to his three children and five grandchildren.

"Ours is a dangerous time with two relatively new threats, both of them exacerbated by the Iraq invasion and this administration's policies. One is the threat of future terrorism by Osama and al Qaeda. The other is the threat to our freedoms and our constitutional republic. These," he says, worry creasing his face, "are dangers that were never faced before in my lifetime." Bob Cooper (via email from J.V.W.)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 1:42 PM

Some great aerial photos

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:07 AM

Saturday, February 28, 2004

The FCC defines the constitutionality of speach:
Obscene speech is not protected by the First Amendment and cannot be broadcast at any time. To be obscene, material must meet a three-prong test:

- An average person, applying contemporary community standards, must find that the material, as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest;

- The material must depict or describe, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable law; and

- The material, taken as a whole, must lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:28 PM

ti-i-i-ime is on my side, yes it is 

About two weeks ago now I walk into Quizno's on the way to work (mmm, toasted). I enter the building and see at the table in front of me a girl, about 10 or 12, and two adults of opposite sex whom I assume are her parents. There are four chairs at the table, and I immediately begin walking over to the empty seat. The girl's been waiting for me, and now that I'm finally here we can sit down and discuss the matter at hand. I know this girl, her name is on the tip of my tongue, all I have to do is sit down in the seat she left for me and enter the conversation as I often do. I haven't seen her in a while, and I don't think I've ever met the adults before, so I'm beginning to look forward to this. I only make it about two steps towards the table. I then realize "no, wait, it's too early. we haven't met yet." Yet. I knew that we are going to know each other, but not yet. At some point in the future we will be acquaintances, but we are not in the present. I realized that if I sat down at that table and attempted to strike up a conversation I'd just be another crazy rambling about temporal displacement and whatnot. Probably get kicked out of Quiznos. So I kept walking and ordered my sub.

These occasional occurances are due, I hypothesize, in part to the inherent non-linearity of time itself, and in part to my personal experiences of said non-linearity of time. To put it briefly, time is a man-made and relative construct. Concepts such as "Right and Wrong" or "Left and Right" are social constructs, they only exist in the minds of men and not a priori in the world itself. Time is the same way; it is subjective to the individual, and outside the minds of men there is no time. I could go into McKenna's timewave theory, but I won't. I, through meditation, DXM, psilocin, dream control, and other such techniques (mostly the DXM though, for complex reasons I'm too tired to go into) have been able to go outside the manmade temporal world.

At any rate, I had a glimpse of the future, not in a precognitive/fortune teller sort of way, but in a personal experience/social interaction sort of way. That happens to me sometimes. - digital

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:03 PM

A question for all you war advocates: 

World War One was loudly proclaimed to be the war to end all wars; then World War Two was also loudly proclaimed to be the war to end all wars; then came the Korean War; then came the Vietnam War; then came the Middle East War (involving Afghanistan & Iraq so far). Why doesn't the proven futility of war dampen your belief in its efficacy to achieve peace?

posted by George Thomas Kysor 7:02 PM

Caught between genders  

All the furor about gay marriages (which SHOULD be 100% legal everywhere on Earth, and right now, in my not particularly humble opinion) has gotten me thinking about one of the "gray areas" that makes it impossible to draw a line as to what sort of sexual desire, relationships, and marriage are "good" or "bad."

Female. Male. Is that all there is? Nope. About one baby in 2000 is born with "ambiguous genitals," which are neither purely male or purely female, and often look nothing like either one; such a child (or adult) is called "intersexual" (the more familiar term "hermaphrodite" applies to a subset of intersexuals). Even more amazing; when you add in the chromosomal abnormalities that make a person GENETICALLY neither male nor female, or a different gender than the genitals show, intersexuals account for 1 birth out of every 100; that's right, a full 1% of the people you see in the average day are provably neither male nor female in the accepted sense, even though most of them have bodies that appear to be of a familiar gender.

This brings up lots of interesting questions. If someone is intersexual, what kind of sexual desire makes them straight or gay? If they desire other intersexuals only, does THAT make them gay? If so, does that mean that they can desire EITHER "normal" gender and be straight? Which gender(s) should they be allowed to marry, or should they be forbidden to marry because of the genitalia or chromosomes they were born with, when no other physical "abnormality" keeps a person from being allowed to marry?

Some forms of intersexuality, such as 5-Alpha Reductase Deficiency, create people who look like one gender based on their genitals (female, in this case), but their DNA is of the OTHER gender; is a person's gender based on their genitals or on their chromosomes? Doctors and scientists say it's the DNA that counts, which leads to another question; if someone appears female on the outside, but is chromosomally male, and she desires other women, is she gay or straight? Doctors would say that she is straight because she is in fact a MAN, but if you go by genitals, then she'd be gay.

It gets even more complicated; some intersexuals have XXY chromosomes. As you might remember from high school biology, women are XX, and men are XY... so, what gender are XXY people? Technically, they are neither male nor female, of course, but some of them look like "normal" men and women... and the majority of transsexuals (people who believe that their true gender is opposite to what their "genital gender" is) fall into this category. That's right; most transsexuals have chromosomes such that they are equally "valid" as men or women, and it's just a roll of the dice as to which body type they ended up with. The folks who think that transsexuals shouldn't have the right to decide which gender they are, and to change gender, with claims that everyone has an "assigned" gender (by God or nature) that shouldn't be altered are simply, provably, WRONG. Given that they're wrong, what objection can there be to someone wanting surgery to make their genitals match their DNA, or even to how their DNA "genderized" their brain?

If an XXY person is "lucky," they got the same gender of brain/feelings as they did gender of body, but very often they do NOT, and so naturally they want their true gender physically; sadly, even if they can afford the surgeries, and can handle the physical pain, they have to deal with the emotional pain of people thinking they're "sick" and/or "evil" for wanting their bodies to be RIGHT. In some countries they can NEVER legally change their gender, so they can't marry someone who is the opposite sex of their true gender even when their genitals match it; they are actually STRAIGHT (with the usual % of exceptions), and they aren't allowed to marry someone of the opposite sex!!

AND, a non-trivial % of gay people are in fact intersexuals whose "genetic gender" differs from their "genital gender," such that medically speaking they are STRAIGHT... but of course THEY can't marry anyone whose gender is the opposite of their true gender either.

Intersexuals are fighting a battle to NOT be assigned an arbitrary gender, and I hope they win it; after all, how DARE anyone think that they have the right to to decide what gender someone with non-standard genitals and/or chromosomes has?!! How DARE they force surgeries on babies and children based on vague ideas about what gender they "should" be, such that the kids grow up with an enforced gender that rarely matches what gender they FEEL themselves to be?!! Intersexuals want the option to be able to put something other than male or female down for their gender, and they should HAVE that right, as they are NOT male and NOT female. If they win this right, this opens up all sorts of issues, ranging from things like which restroom and changing room they should use to, as I said above, what gender(s) they would be allowed to marry. I'd also be interested to see what the major religions would rule about people without standard gender; as far as I know, no religion decrees intersexuals to be innately "sinful," so it should be ok for them to marry (because such a marriage wouldn't be a sin), but how would the religious leaders decide which gender(s) an intersexual would be allowed to marry?

If they're allowed to marry people from either standard gender, as they SHOULD be (by what logic could you pick just ONE gender for them to marry, after all?), you're going to have people marrying folks who LOOK like the same gender as they are... and, of course, once you allow people with the same genitals (but different chromosomes) to marry, what excuse will you have for not letting OTHER folks with identical genitals, aka gay people, marry?

We need to have legislation that recognizes that there is more in the world then men and women who are going to skip off into the sunset together. 10% of people desire the same gender, and another 1% have non-standard gender; while it's easy to dismiss them as minorities small enough to just be ignored, they are human beings with feelings, with rights, with the same desire to love and be loved as anyone else. If your current belief system rules against gays, I urge you to consider the situation of intersexuals, and to decide what, in all fairness, they should be permitted to do... and then to reevaluate how you view gays based on what you come up with. If your current belief system accepts gays, and their right to marry, think about the situation of intersexuals anyway; it'll likely be the subject of major legal battles in the years to come. - Every Topic in the Universe(s?)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 6:44 PM

U.N. staff see boy shot in back 

An Israeli army officer has been suspended after an unarmed Palestinian youth was shot in the back at close range as he waved goodbye to a delegation of visiting United Nations aid workers, the Star has learned.

Yousef Bashir, 15, remains in serious condition at a hospital in Tel Aviv, where he was taken after the Feb. 18 incident at his family's home near the Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom in the southern Gaza Strip.

He is partially paralyzed beneath his shoulder blades, with shrapnel lodged against his spine, the boy's father said.

An Israel Defence Forces spokesperson confirmed yesterday an unnamed officer has been suspended in connection with the shooting, pending the outcome of an investigation.

In a conflict marked by a surfeit of civilian casualties on both sides, Palestinian claims seldom result in convictions against IDF soldiers because of conflicting eyewitness accounts.

The Bashir shooting is rare because it happened in plain view of three U.N. personnel who were visiting the family home.

Rarer still, the victim's father, Khalil Bashir, said last night he doesn't want punishment for the shooter.

Instead, he's asking that Yousef's plight become "a turning point for an historic reconciliation with Israel.

"We make a mistake if we let our wounded memory guide our future. Punishment doesn't pay. What pays is a change of mentality," an emotional Bashir told the Star.

"It is time for tolerance and forgiveness. I want the Israelis to know that we, both sides, have no other option. Let us devote ourselves to melting the ice and find a solution to give our children a chance to live."

U.N. field workers are routinely forbidden to speak directly to reporters on security incidents, but the organization has made an exception in this case.

The witnesses were made available to the Star with the approval of their superiors on condition their names not be used.

"The boy was no more than five metres from us, waving goodbye after our visit, with his back to the Israeli observation post," said one of the U.N. field staff.

"It was absolutely quiet. But then a single shot was fired. The boy fell to his knees and then he collapsed on the ground. It was like slow-motion video.

"There is absolutely no doubt in my mind the bullet came from the Israeli army position. They were only about 20 metres away. There was nothing else going on. There is no other explanation."

The shooting comes as the most severe incident in the Bashir family's long struggle with the IDF.

Nearly three years ago, the army confiscated a large swath of the family property to increase the buffer zone for the Jewish settlers of nearby Kfar Darom.

In the process, the family said their greenhouses were demolished, nearly 120 date palms were uprooted and IDF actually moved into the home, establishing military positions on the second and third floors, replete with a closed-circuit television camera and camouflage netting.

Khalil Bashir, a school principal in the nearby town of Deir Al-Ballah, has refused to vacate the home and has moved the family — elderly mother, wife and five children — to a single room on the ground floor.

In recent weeks, the IDF intensified restrictions on the family, forbidding visitors without prior arrangement and giving them outdoor access only to their northern garden.

On Feb. 3 — just as the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon unveiled plans for a unilateral withdrawal of the Israeli settlements in Gaza, including Kfar Darom — the Bashir family and other property owners in the neighbourhood were served written orders by the IDF for additional land confiscations.

According to the orders, signed by IDF Maj.-Gen. Dan Harel, the Bashirs and 17 other Palestinian families were required to forfeit 43 dunams (one dunam equals one-quarter acre) for a new security fence to better protect the settlement.

The U.N. field team, based in Gaza City, was visiting the family in order to investigate the new orders when the shooting occurred.

"We arrived in a clearly marked United Nations armoured car, white with black markings," a second U.N. staffer told the Star in a separate interview.

After a brief visit, a soldier shouted for the U.N. visitors to leave.

"Khalil Bashir and his son Yousef walked us back to our car. We climbed in and began to reverse. They waved goodbye and that's when the shot rang out and the boy fell to the ground," the second U.N. staffer said.

"I was terrified we would also be shot. Mr. Bashir shouted at us to come help. We inched forward, opened the door of the armoured car and got the boy inside. His legs were like Jell-O. But he was conscious, speaking in a mix of Arabic and English. We hurried him to hospital in Deir al-Ballah."

Bashir was transferred that night to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Two days later he was moved to better facilities in Israel, where Tel Aviv doctors are weighing the possibility he will be able to walk one day.

The U.N. witnesses have each written reports. So far, they have not been interviewed by Israeli army investigators, but expect their accounts will be raised with Israeli authorities via U.N. diplomatic channels.

"Unfortunately, living in Gaza, we are exposed to some ugly things," said one of the workers.

Khalil Bashir said last night he has not been contacted by army investigators for his account of his son's shooting.

"They (IDF officers) went to my house and apologized to my wife two times, saying the shooting was a mistake. But whether they made a mistake or not, the reality is they shot my son," he said.

"In spite of my bitterness, in spite of my calamity and my tragedy, I thank God my son is still alive.

"In thanks to God, I am more determined than ever to find a way to peace. I ask our friends all over the world, help me exploit this chance to change the mentality. I can forgive. Let us all forgive." - MITCH POTTER, Toronto Star

posted by George Thomas Kysor 3:32 PM

Study: 10,667 Accuse Priests of Sex Abuse [excerpt] 

The reports concluded there were many more accused priests and abused minors than church officials had previously acknowledged, and that bishops bore much of the blame for leaving so many young people at risk. A tally released Friday said 4,392 priests had been accused in 10,667 cases of molesting minors from 1950 to 2002.
Only 2 percent of abusers were sent to prison for what they had done. - RACHEL ZOLL

posted by George Thomas Kysor 10:04 AM

Piercing the Fog With a Tiny Chip [excerpt] 

Now a team of electrical engineers at the California Institute of Technology has shrunk the functions of a radar system into one tiny, intricately designed silicon chip and eight minuscule antennas. - ANNE EISENBERG, NY TIMES (via Slashdot)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:11 AM

Friday, February 27, 2004

I Recently Realized That I Am An Alcoholic 

I am. I need booze. And I have trouble stopping. Big time.

I can't stop. It's affecting my life, and I can't stop.

Damn it.

How pathetic is it that I share this with you publicly?

I can't stop. What's wrong with me? - dean Feb 26

posted by George Thomas Kysor 1:12 PM

Former deputy says bosses lied after Columbine attack 

Top Jefferson County sheriff's officials lied to the public after the Columbine tragedy about their knowledge of the killers, a former deputy told state investigators.

The former officer, John Hicks, grew so concerned about the accuracy of statements being made by department brass that he approached a superior, and Hicks refused to speak to the press about the school shootings because he "would not be allowed to tell the truth."

Hicks' account is but one element in a report issued Thursday by Colorado Attorney General Ken Salazar that showed sheriff's deputies well aware of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold - with 15 contacts in six incidents - many months before their horrific April 20, 1999, attack on the school.

The department's leaders have always denied some of those incidents and contacts.

In addition to the charges by Hicks, another former deputy told state investigators that one official, then-Lt. John Kiekbusch, effectively ended a March 1998 investigation of the soon-

to-be killers when he decided detectives didn't have enough evidence to search the Harris home.

The aborted search was a year before the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history.

Salazar, however, said he found no malfeasance in the decisions made by sheriff's officials before the Columbine shootings.

"My own view is that there was information that the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office had, but there was no nefarious plot, or deliberate plot, on the part of any member of law enforcement to stop any kind of intercession that would have prevented Columbine," he said.

But in a sometimes tense news conference, Salazar could not answer repeated questions about whether sheriff's officials, after the shootings in 1999, tried to cover up their actions in 1997 and 1998.

"The reality of that is I do not know today," Salazar said. "What I do know is today under this sheriff, Ted Mink, there is no such thing going on."

Public sees evidence for first time

Salazar's report came on a day of unprecedented access to evidence in the case - everything from a bloodied ballcap found in the school library to Harris' black duster. The evidence was opened to the public for the first time, and 975 people showed up to wander among the bullets, the explosives, the guns and knives, the brown paper sacks filled with the clothes of those who were wounded and killed.

"Today is a somber day," Salazar said.

Salazar also acknowledged that his investigators were still searching for missing documents, including a file belonging to a former sheriff's deputy that deals with the 1998 report.

And he would not disclose the substance of interviews done Tuesday with Kiekbusch, former Sheriff John Stone and former Undersheriff John Dunaway.

"It wouldn't be appropriate for me to discuss information in the context of an ongoing investigation," said Deputy Attorney General Mike Goodbee, who headed the probe.

Hicks, now a deputy sheriff in South Carolina, accused the three of deceiving the public about the department's handling of the 1998 report from Randy and Judy Brown that Harris had threatened to kill their son, Brooks, on his violent Web site and that Harris and Klebold were building pipe bombs.

After the shootings, Stone publicly questioned whether Brooks Brown was involved in the plot to attack the school. Kiekbusch challenged the account of Randy and Judy Brown that they'd had a face-to-face meeting with Hicks and, in explaining the response to the 1998 report, contended that investigators could not link Harris to any other unsolved pipe bomb cases in the county.

But Hicks told Salazar's investigators that he went to Sgt. Randy West and questioned the truthfulness of statements being issued by Stone, Dunaway and Kiekbusch. The meeting was interrupted, and it was never rescheduled. West told Salazar's investigators that he remembered Hicks raising the issue.

Hicks also said that after Columbine he was told by Dunaway to "talk to the press."

"Hicks knew he would not be allowed to tell the truth, so he refused," Salazar's report said.

Among the unanswered questions still lingering Thursday: Could criminal charges be filed if strong evidence of an organized cover-up was developed?

Kathy Sasak, assistant district attorney for Jefferson County, acknowledged that as she listened to Salazar's report, she wondered to herself whether a crime - possibly "official public misconduct" - had occurred. If it had, she said, the statute of limitations already would have run out.

Report sparks anger, dismay

For the families of some who died, the allegations against Kiekbusch, Stone and Dunaway and the missing files fueled their long-held belief that the public had been deceived.

"If that's not proof of a cover-up, I don't know what is," said Rich Petrone, whose stepson, Danny Rohrbough, was killed.

Stone, who took office only three months before Columbine and later described it as a "tar baby" he couldn't shake, said Thursday he was caught off guard by the charges Hicks leveled at him, Kiekbusch and Dunaway.

"That totally blindsides me that he would say that," said Stone, who left office a year ago. "I don't know what he's talking about.

"I don't know if he just doesn't like Kiekbusch and is taking cheap shots at him."

Kiekbusch and Dunaway, who both work for the Wackenhut Corp. in Washington, D.C., could not be reached Thursday.

A woman who answered the phone at Hicks' home said he would not comment.

Salazar's investigation, the third outside probe aimed at answering the questions surrounding the Columbine attack, was launched in October.

The new investigation began after sheriff's investigator John Healy discovered an Aug. 7, 1997, report about the late-night high jinks of Harris and Klebold stuffed into the pocket of a three-ring binder in his home office. The binder had been given to Healy by Hicks before he left the sheriff's office in June 2000 to return to South Carolina.

Hicks was the same investigator who was given the March 1998 report from the Browns.

Six days after the discovery of the 1997 document, Sheriff Ted Mink made it public and asked Salazar to investigate.

Contacts with killers

On Thursday, both Salazar and Goodbee said the investigation wasn't completed. But they outlined a number of allegations that both shed new light on the handling of reports before the Columbine tragedy and raised new questions about the response of various officials:

• Kiekbusch, who headed the Columbine investigation and fielded questions about the handling of the Browns' 1998 report, looked at a draft affidavit for a search warrant for Harris' home in 1998 and concluded that there was not enough evidence to go ahead with it.

• Just after the Columbine shootings were reported - at a time when law officers were rushing to the school from all over the metro area - Kiekbusch ordered Hicks not to respond to the scene.

• An investigative file compiled by Detective Mike Guerra, who wrote the draft affidavit, apparently disappeared for several days after the Columbine attack. It and other documents could not be located by Salazar's investigators.

• Guerra "ran the affidavit by an unknown" prosecutor - contradicting earlier reports that no one in the district attorney's office was aware of it in 1998.

Kiekbusch, who left the sheriff's department in the fall of 2002, had contended after Columbine that investigators did all they could with the 1998 report. He said that detectives were unable to determine any evidence of a crime.

But he also never publicly disclosed the existence of the search warrant affidavit, written in early April 1998.

It came to light after CBS News and the families of several victims went to court, forcing its release in 2001.

Guerra wrote the report, and former sheriff's detective Glenn Grove told Salazar's investigators that Kiekbusch looked at it and concluded that "he didn't have enough for a search warrant and that he needed to keep working on it."

Specifically, according to Grove, Kiekbusch questioned the lack of an "eyewitness" to tie Harris to an unsolved pipe bomb case.

Hicks told investigators that when the Columbine shootings were reported just before 11:30 a.m. on April 20, 1999, he "was not allowed to respond, but ordered to stay at the office by Lt. Kiekbusch."

A day or two after Columbine, Hicks told investigators, he realized that Harris was the same person he and the other detectives had looked at a year earlier.

Hicks also told investigators that several days after the shootings, Guerra told him that his file on Harris had been removed from his desk, then returned.

Guerra, however, did not recall the episode when he was questioned by Salazar's investigators.

That file, and Guerra's daily reports for much of 1998, have not been located by Salazar's investigators.

"We're still in the process of searching for those documents," Salazar said.

At the same time, Guerra told investigators that he had "run the affidavit by an unknown DA, who told him he didn't have probable cause."

Guerra could not remember the name of that prosecutor.

Investigation into memory

District Attorney Dave Thomas had always maintained that nobody from his office had been aware of the draft affidavit until after the Columbine shootings.

On Thursday, he stood by his earlier statements, contending that Guerra apparently had called someone in his office for advice but hadn't shown that person the draft affidavit.

"There's nothing inconsistent at all about what I've said in the past," Thomas said.

The investigation also showed that sheriff's officers had 15 different "contacts" with Harris and Klebold between February 1997 and July 1998. They revolved around six separate incidents - five of them the result of police reports made by the Browns as well as a 1998 van break-in.

Salazar, Mink, Goodbee and Thomas faced openly hostile questions from reporters about how truthful sheriff's officials had been in the past.

Still, they skirted questions about whether sheriff's officials had covered up their handling of the reports made to them before Columbine.

"Forensic evidence of gunshots and bullets are easier, or certainly more clear, types of evidence in determining what occurred," Goodbee said. "The vast majority of evidence that we gathered in this investigation related to people's memory of what occurred - what occurred six and seven years ago."

But he also said he was still asking questions.

"We are still in the process of looking at some things with respect to the outstanding matters, including Lieutenant Kiekbusch, and there may be some additional information there," Salazar said. "But I don't think I'm going to comment beyond that."

He also said that in retrospect, the search warrant should have been pursued in 1998, but "those are answers that I can say, 'Yes,' today."

'The truth is out there'

It was all difficult to take for the parents of some of those who died.

Tom Mauser, whose son, Daniel, was killed in the school library, said he wants more answers about the Browns' 1998 report.

"The big question is, where did it stop? The 'it' is the report," Mauser said.

And Dawn Anna said she won't quit pushing for answers.

Long after the news conference ended, she stood to one side of the room, a button on her lapel featuring a smiling picture of her daughter, Lauren Townsend, and the words, "The truth is out there."

Lauren, a 4.0 student, was shot to death in the school library.

"They fumbled before April 20 of '99," Anna said. "They fumbled on April 20 of '99.

"And they've covered their tracks since then."

Early on, one official after another promised her they'd get her the answers she craves. That gave way to the sentiment that the families should let go and move on.

She's not ready to.

"I want people to remember the way they felt that day," Anna said. "I want people to live up to those promises." - Kevin Vaughan, Rocky Mountain News

posted by George Thomas Kysor 8:58 AM

Thursday, February 26, 2004

AP finds documents showing FBI destroyed proof possibly tying robbers to Oklahoma City bombing [excerpt]
FBI agents destroyed evidence and failed to share other information that raised the possibility that a gang of white supremacist bank robbers may have assisted Timothy McVeigh during the Oklahoma City bombing, according to documents never introduced at McVeigh's trial. - JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writer (via Rational Review)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 6:27 PM

Wednesday, February 25, 2004

GOVERNMENT: FRAUD AND EMPIRE 

[This is from the Libertarian Connection #2, Feb. 10, 1969, page 8.]
It never seems to have occured to those young "radicals" of the "New Left" that the solution to the problems they see lies in a consistent application of their own principles. Most of the New Left, after all, begin with an abhorence of the empire of this "great Republic," as conservatives so affectionately call it. They are anti-imperialist, and anti-empire, but too often they are pro-state. It is high time that these aspiring radicals see the truth of the matter: Government is empire, no more and no less. It has had its origin in territorial conquest, and its permanence in plunder and violence. So let us oppose empire, but let us oppose all of it, not just empires that we don't happen to like at the time being. To reject all political empires, without exception, is the necessary prerequisite to favoring and attaining individual soverignty and the voluntary society.

It is not enough to let loose a feeble cry for isolationism. One must yell for the sinking of the ship of state as such, with no appologies and no mourning after the deed is done. Criminals all - that is what our politicions and bureaucrats - uniformed or otherwise - are all about. Nothing noble, nothing sacred here, citizen. Conservatives may cry:"tradition, tradition!" but the cry is as feeble as it is false. Ancester worship has had its day. Now we make the future ourselves. Respect the past when it deserves it, no more and no less. Humble ourselves , to bow and scrape before ancient institutions, including the very foundation stones of the American state? And why should we? These institutions are perhaps sacred? Institutions like the Presidency, the Supreme Court, the Houes of Representatives, the Senate? But these are just men - and ignoble ones at that. Just one realistic peek at these scum who inhabit the houses of prostitution knownby the above names - especially the President and the Congress - will show you that they are worthy of no such respect or awe. They are prostitutes - political harlots who sell their empty minds for power over others. Yes, they are sacred! To a madman. like Russell Kirk and his fellow barbarian-inmates at National Review! To people who have spent all their years of adult living with their heads tucked neatly inside the New York Times and other things equally worthy of rapping garbage. Since time immemorial, mankind has been ruled over by a tiny band of criminal parasites. They have tried every intellectual trick conceivable to bolster and perpetuate their bloody regimes. It is high time that the ruses of their lies were seen through, high time that their myths were punctured, high time that they themslves were turned out to pasture - or something more permanent.

One of the favorite ideas of the New Left is their conception of a future where politicians all over the world call a war, and nobody shows up. Let's carry this a bit farther, and mark out every grave, now ever so silently awaiting the return of some young, conscripted victim of slaughter, with thename of a politician who helped send him to his death. - R. A. Childs, Jr. [1949-1992] [See also this]

posted by George Thomas Kysor 1:01 PM

Productivity 

As a cultured student of business, I cannot help but ponder the notion of productivity in my spare time.

Managers have long been keen on finding out what this vague and mysterious concept means. And, as genius economists know, the best way to define vague and mysterious concepts is by using more vague and mysterious concepts. Throw in a graph with some lines, a few bits of "Q sub L" and . . . Well, you get the idea. In fact, I found a quote from a textbook that describes it well: "assume that the production function is of the SIMPLE form: Q = alpha(bL + cK) where Q is the quantity of output, L is the quantity of labor, K is the quantity of capital, and 'b' and 'c' are constants."

Of course! It's all clear now. Let's crunch those numbers.

A wise man (G.B. Shaw) said, "If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion." Obviously, the next logical question is. . . If all astrologer were laid end to end would they reach a conclusion?

Maybe.

But, back to productivity: the ratio of output to input. Output divided by input. If the output is greater than the input, ta da! Magic. Or is it?

Let's take a hypothetical example of the college student. How many thousands of dollars, hundreds of hours of class, hundreds of hours of homework, hundreds of pounds of textbooks hauled before one is worthy of that piece of paper? Now that would make an interesting formula. Is the output greater than the input in this case?


Well, after 19+ years of education (and still going) I've decided that the more education I get the less I know. For example, that degree is going to have to weigh a LOT by the time I'm done with school. Maybe by then society will have discovered that productivity is merely a function of effort and astrology. - indiejade February 25, 2004

posted by George Thomas Kysor 7:53 AM

Tuesday, February 24, 2004

I forgot something.. 

My little gold-colored spider pin.. It's about an inch and a half wide and an inch and a half long. It's coverd in little fake jewels, gold-tinted, and they make up the texture of the spider's skin, it's eyes and it's midsection. I pin it right between my boobs (hey, don't let my picture fool you, that was a major push-up corset... and I need anything I can to help my A-cup). My mom bought it for me at Marshal Field's around Christmas time. Funny that it was there on the pile with all the reindeer, snowmen, eleves, kitty-cats, and holly leaves, but there it was. It really was a good example of 'goth is where you find it.' And I'm glad my mom paid for it. Sometimes my mom is really anti-goth but sometimes she's wonderful about it. It's so strange. She'll buy me Marilyn Manson's Antichrist Superstar, but then she doesn't speak to me for three days after I dye my hair wildfire red. It's a weird world. - Erin

posted by George Thomas Kysor 7:23 PM

Improve the CIA? Better to abolish it by Chalmers Johnson (via Lew Rockwell)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 3:50 PM

HOW LIMITED IS THE LIMITED STATE? 

[This is from the Libertarian Connection #2, Feb. 10, 1969, page 3.]
There are a large number of libertarians and near-libertarians who support the idea of a "limited" State, that is, a single governmental agency with monopoly power in the exercise of force to protect lives annd property (through courts, police, Army). They imagine that the State could be limited to these functions by a carefully written document called a Constitution. The State would be forbidden to practice coercion or initiated force, such as taxation, the draft, business laws, etc.

There is another group of libertarians, smaller than the above at present, which believes that any State must violate individual rights, that is, initiate force. This group advocates the abolution of the State and, in its place, to establish a pure free market economy, in which protection, as any other economic good, is provided by the marketplace. There would be competing agencies providing protection, not one monopoly organization, the State.

Let's examine this issue from two sides: first, the moral issue: Can the State be limited such that it does not violate individual rights? Then, as a practical question: Even if the State were intrinsically immoral, could a system of competing protection agencies actually work?

Morally, the State is in the same position as any coercive monopoly. That is, it is necessarilly immoral. If the State is to be the sole agency to which a person can look for protection services, then how will the State prevent a person from setting up a rival protection agency? The same way any other coercive monopoly will do so--with the use of force, or coercion. A State monopoly in any area, whether it is public utilities or protection, leads to the same result: coercion. A protection monopoly is no more sacred than a Post Office monopoly. To make the analogy correctly, however, it is like a Post Office which nobody has to support with tax money, but which nobody is allowed to compete with.

Look at this in a somewhat different way. The State, logically, can have no greater rights than the rights of the individuals composing it. No individual has the right to walk up to his neighbor, stick a gun in his face, and say "No, you can't start a Protection Business to compete with mine." That's what the State is doing in maintaining itself as a monopoly in the protection of lives and property.

But, we are not through with the immorality of the State. Let's look at the Constitution which is supposed to be our Protector from the ravages of the State. What is the Constitution but a contract between a group of people and an organization called the State? If a man doesn't sign a contract, he can't properly be held for the contract's contents. Thus, if I do not wish to sign a Costitution, or contract with any single agency to be the protector of my life and property, then I cannot rightfully be held to abide by the contents of the Constitution. Yet, the advocates of the limited State have never said that people who do not sign the Constitution do not have to purchase their protection from the State. For more on the basic nature of the Constitution, read Lysander Spooner's NO TREASON--THE CONSTITUTION OF NO AUTHORITY.

At this point, a limited State advocate may say "OK, so the State must practice a little coercion. It's necessary; your system of anarchy won't work." Such a statement actually means that laissez faire capitalism won't work because, you see, there is no more incentive for a business providing protection services to violate its custumers' rights than for a business providing television sets, postal services, etc. The question "Well, how do we prevent Police Force A from fighting it out with Police Force B, etc.?" is the same as the question "Well, how do we stop General Motors from fighting it out with Ford and then taking over and then..." You see, if laissez faire capitalism can work, it can profitably provide protection, too. There is a pile of money to be made in the protction business. To give an actual example of this: Since the State has been unable to stop the increase in crime, new businesses have sprung up in the burglar alrm and home alarm field. "The private security market could reach $2 billion in sales by next year, according to G. W. Cleland, general manager of Alarm Products of Walter Kidde & Co., Inc., a maker of industrial protection devices." (Los Angeles Times of Dec. 3, 1968).

The error which has caused many advocates of the limited State to cling to their State is in their failure to apply their political premise to its logical end: the principle widely accepted by libertarians is that it is immoral for any individual or group of individuals to initiate force against other individuals or groups of individuals. However, if applied consistently, this leads inexorably to the elimination of the State as a monopoly protection agency because in order to maintain its monopoly position, it MUST practice coercion. The greatest economists recognize that there are only two categories of goods: (1.) free goods, or those in superfluous abundance which man does not need to economize (Von Mises' Human Action--British Editionb--page93) and (2.) all other goods, economic goods. (The same definitions are to be found in University Economics, Alchian and Allen, page 12). While these great advocates of laissez faire treat economic goods as if they should always be provided by the free market for greatest productivity, they somehow treat State functions (Protection) differently; yet, it's obvious that Protection is itself an economic good.

Murray N. Rothbard, the leading fully libertarian economist, has realized for a long time that States are coercive institutions which must be eliminated, not "limited," because those who seek Power are not satisfied until they get more and more Power--remember, the American State was much less powerful in 1776 than it is today. It was not difficult to "reinterpret" a document such as the Constitution to give the State more Power. - Lee Hall [Lee is short for Natalee] [Natalee Hall & Skye D'Aureous were publishers of the Libertarian Connection and later wrote a nutrition book, presumably under their real names.]

posted by George Thomas Kysor 1:15 PM

SMALL STATE OR NO STATE? [Feb. 23, 2004]

posted by George Thomas Kysor 11:05 AM

C.I.A. Was Given Data on Hijacker Long Before 9/11 

American investigators were given the first name and telephone number of one of the Sept. 11 hijackers two and a half years before the attacks on New York and Washington, but the United States appears to have failed to pursue the lead aggressively, American and German officials say.

The information — the earliest known signal that the United States received about any of the hijackers — has now become an important element of an independent commission's investigation into the events of Sept. 11, 2001, officials said Monday. It is considered particularly significant because it may have represented a missed opportunity for American officials to penetrate the Qaeda terror cell in Germany that was at the heart of the plot. And it came roughly 16 months before the hijacker showed up at flight schools in the United States.

In March 1999, German intelligence officials gave the Central Intelligence Agency the first name and telephone number of Marwan al-Shehhi, and asked the Americans to track him.

The name and phone number in the United Arab Emirates had been obtained by the Germans by monitoring the telephone of Mohamed Heidar Zammar, an Islamic militant in Hamburg who was closely linked to the important Qaeda plotters who ultimately mastermined the Sept. 11 attacks, German officials said.

After the Germans passed the information on to the C.I.A., they did not hear from the Americans about the matter until after Sept. 11, a senior German intelligence official said.

"There was no response" at the time, the official said. After receiving the tip, the C.I.A. decided that "Marwan" was probably an associate of Osama bin Laden, but never tracked him down, American officials say.

The Germans considered the information on Mr. Shehhi particularly valuable, and the commission is keenly interested in why it apparently did not lead to greater scrutiny of him.

The information concerning Mr. Shehhi, the man who took over the controls of United Airlines Flight 175, which flew into the south tower of the World Trade Center, came months earlier than well-documented tips about other hijackers, including two who were discovered to have attended a meeting of militants in Malaysia in January 2000.

The independent commission investigating the attacks has received information on the 1999 Shehhi tip, and is actively investigating the issue, said Philip Zelikow, executive director of the commission.

American intelligence officials and others involved with the matter say they are uncertain whether Mr. Shehhi's phone was ever monitored.

An American official said: "The Germans did give us the name `Marwan' and a phone number, but we were unable to come up with anything. It was an unlisted phone number in the U.A.E., which he was known to use."

The incident is of particular importance because Mr. Shehhi was a crucial member of the Qaeda cell in Hamburg at the heart of the Sept. 11 plot. Close surveillance of Mr. Shehhi in 1999 might have led investigators to other plot leaders, including Mohammed Atta, who was Mr. Shehhi's roommate. A native of the United Arab Emirates, Mr. Shehhi moved to Germany in 1996 and was almost inseparable from Mr. Atta in their time there. Both men attended the wedding of a fellow Muslim at a radical mosque in Hamburg in October 1999 — an event considered an important gathering for the Sept. 11 hijacking teams just as the plotting was getting under way. American and European authorities say that Mr. Shehhi was actively involved in the planning and logistics of the Sept. 11 plot.

"The Hamburg cell is very important" to the investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Zelikow said. The intelligence on Mr. Shehhi "is an issue that's obviously of importance to us, and we're investigating it," he added.

Asked whether American intelligence officials gave sufficient attention to the information about Mr. Shehhi, Mr. Zelikow said, "We haven't reached any conclusions."

The joint Congressional inquiry that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks was told about the matter by the C.I.A., but only a small part of the information was declassified and made public in the panel's final report in December 2002, several officials said. The public report mentioned only that the C.I.A. had received Mr. Shehhi's first name, but made no mention that the agency had also obtained his telephone number.

Officials involved with the work of the joint Congressional investigation made it clear that the publication of a more complete version of the story was the subject of a declassification dispute with the C.I.A. A former official involved with the Congressional inquiry acknowledged that having a telephone number for one of the hijackers was far more significant than simply having a first name.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the C.I.A., F.B.I. and other government agencies have been heavily criticized for failing to put together fragmentary pieces of information they received from a wide array of sources in order to predict or prevent the terrorist plot. The joint Congressional panel that investigated the attacks concluded that American authorities "missed opportunities to disrupt the Sept. 11 plot by denying entry to or detaining would-be hijackers; to at least try to unravel the plot through surveillance and other investigative work within the United States; and finally, to generate a heightened state of alert and thus harden the homeland against attack."

Until now, the most highly scrutinized failure has related to the C.I.A.'s handling of information about a meeting of extremists in Malaysia in January 2000 that involved two of the men who would become hijackers, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhazmi. Although the C.I.A. identified the two men as suspected extremists, the agency did not request that they be placed on the government's watch lists to keep them out of the United States until late August 2001. By that time, they were both already in the country. In addition, while the two men lived in San Diego, their landlord was an F.B.I. informant, but the bureau did not learn of their terrorist links from the informant.

But unlike the leads to Mr. Midhar and Mr. Alhazmi in San Diego, the earlier information about Mr. Shehhi could have taken investigators to the core of the Qaeda cell at a time when the plot was probably in its formative stages. According to testimony in Germany in December in a criminal case related to the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Shehhi was one of only four members of the Hamburg cell who knew about the attacks beforehand.

Mr. Shehhi and Mr. Atta traveled to Afghanistan in 2000 to train at a Qaeda camp with several other Sept. 11 plotters. And after returning to Germany, Mr. Shehhi made an ominous reference to the World Trade Center to a Hamburg librarian, saying: "There will be thousands of dead. You will all think of me," German authorities said.

Soon after, Mr. Shehhi, Mr. Atta and another plotter, Ziad al-Jarrah, began e-mailing several dozen American flight schools from Germany to inquire about enrollment, and they arrived in the United States later in 2000 to begin flight training. - JAMES RISENand ERIC LICHTBLAU (via Drudge)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 8:30 AM

Monday, February 23, 2004

New territorial claims from Iraq
Kuwait, invaded and occupied by Saddam Hussein's army, expressed amazement and concern over new territorial claims from Iraq and demanded clarification from the interim Governing Council over statements attributed to its current president.

"The State of Kuwait followed up the statement with concern and amazement. We are awaiting clarification from the interim Governing Council of brotherly Iraq about the truth of the statement and its aim," the state-run Kuna news agency quoted an official source as saying.

It was Kuwait's first official reaction to the council's president, who said on Saturday that Baghdad could consider territorial claims over neighbouring Jordan and Kuwait in the future.

"We need our Arab brothers around us. Now, we cannot discuss this matter with them at all, but in the future, we'll see," said Mohsen Abdul Hamid, in response to a question from a Baghdad consultative council member.

Shaza Hadi Al Obeidi had asked Mr Abdul Hamid about the status of territory once linked to Iraq, such as Jordan and Kuwait, at an extraordinary meeting of the 37-member consultative council.

"This is an irresponsible statement ... It appears that the current chairman wants to become a copy of Saddam Hussein," outspoken Kuwaiti lawmaker Mussallam Al Barrak said.

"I believe that Iraq is the last country on earth that should be willing to reopen old files with its neighbours. It now urgently needs to focus on reconstruction," Kuwaiti political analyst and writer Sami Al Nesef said.

"Statements like these do not serve the interests of anyone ... They are harmful to the development efforts in Iraq ... The country needs to strengthen its ties with the neighbours,"Mr Nesef said.

Kuwait is preparing to mark its 13th anniversary of liberation from Iraqi occupation on February 26, and the 43th anniversary of independence from British rule on February 25. (via What Really Happened)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 5:15 PM

DRAGANFLY PREDATOR 

Draganfly Innovation's scaled-down Predator looks just like the Predator B you have seen on CNN. And, like its full-size cousin, the scale Predator is flown by a radio system from the ground while it transmits real-time color video and takes high quality still photos. The scale Predator can even be equipped with a GPS flight control unit for long distance, pre-programmed reconnaissance missions (20 miles effective range). Designed with a low-drag fuselage and V-tail, the Predator is configured to extract the maximum power available from the flight battery. - (via Slashdot)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 7:27 AM

Sunday, February 22, 2004

Why is Ernst Zundel in Jail? 

This point was never better made than during the criminal trial of Ernst Zundel, a publisher who was tried and convicted by the Ca-nadian government twice, in 1985 and 1988, for publishing revi-sionist books about the Holocaust. Both convictions were over-turned by the Canadian courts, and Zundel fled to the U.S. with his American wife to escape a third trial in Canada. After 9/11, the U.S. shipped Zundel back to Canada, where the Canadian govern-ment, using its new post-9/11 “security” laws, decided to skip the inconvenience of having another trial, and simply threw Zundel in prison without trial. Zundel has been held in solitary confinement, in a small, bare, concrete “isolation cell,” since February 2003, even though he’s been convicted of no crime, and even though the only “crime” the Canadian government has ever charged him with was publishing a book.
Note: James S. McCarten, “Judge Ponders Zundel Detention,” London Free Press News, November 20, 2003; “Judge Rules in Zundel Case,” Cana-dian Press (CP) wire service dispatch, November 26, 2003: “Zundel, who has no criminal record in Canada and is not facing any charges, has been in solitary confinement since February after being deported to Canada for overstaying a visitor's visa in the United States.” - Bradley

posted by George Thomas Kysor 8:44 PM

Welcome to NationStates 

NationStates is a nation simulation game. You create your own country, fashioned after your own political ideals, and care for its people. Either that or you deliberately torture them. It's really up to you. (via Felix)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 10:21 AM

The scientists say ... [excerpt] 

When the World Trade Center collapsed in a shower of dust and smoke on September 11, 2001, the asbestos level in the air in lower Manhattan was 1,000 times the legal limit. Scientists from the Environmental Protection Agency sampled the air and quickly drafted a warning, saying that asthmatics and the elderly were at special risk from airborne particulates and warning residents and businesses to have their homes and offices professionally cleaned.

That warning never saw the light of day. The EPA's inspector general, in a report two years later, related that the Bush White House's Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) instructed the EPA to lie, and say "Our tests show that it is safe for New Yorkers to go back to work in New York's financial district." - The Berkshire Eagle

posted by George Thomas Kysor 7:26 AM

Saturday, February 21, 2004

65 Free PDF eBooks

posted by George Thomas Kysor 7:53 PM

Live Video Coverage of World Court Hearings on the Internet 

The public hearings before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), principal judicial organ of the United Nations, to be held from 23 to 25 February 2004 in the case concerning the Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (request for advisory opinion), will be broadcast live and in full on the Court's official website ( http://www.icj-cij.org ). - U.N. Observer (via What Really Happened)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 6:02 PM

Eisenhower’s 1954 Meeting With Extraterrestrials [excerpt] 

On the night and early hours of February 20-21, 1954, while on a ‘vacation’ to Palm Springs, California, President Dwight Eisenhower went missing and allegedly was taken to Edwards Air force base for a secret meeting. When he showed up the next morning at a church service in Los Angeles, reporters were told that he had to have emergency dental treatment the previous evening and had visited a local dentist. The dentist later appeared at a function that evening and presented as the ‘dentist’ who had treated Eisenhower. The missing night and morning has subsequently fueled rumors that Eisenhower was using the alleged dentist visit as a cover story for an extraordinary event. The event is possibly the most significant that any American President could have conducted: an alleged ‘First Contact’ meeting with extraterrestrials at Edwards Air Force base (previously Muroc Airfield), and the beginning of a series of meetings with different extraterrestrial races that led to a ‘treaty’ that was eventually signed. This astonishing First Contact event, if it occurred, will experience its 50th anniversary on February 20-21, 2004.

This paper explores the evidence that the First Contact meeting had occurred with extraterrestrials with a distinctive ‘Nordic’ appearance, the likelihood of an agreement having been spurned with this ‘Nordic race’, the start of a series of meetings that led to a treaty eventually being signed with a different extraterrestrial race dubbed the ‘Greys’, and the motivations of the different extraterrestrial races involved in these treaty discussions. The paper will further examine why these events were kept secret for so long, the significance of the 50th anniversary of Eisenhower’s meeting with extraterrestrials, and whether an official disclosure announcement is likely in the near future. - © Michael E. Salla, PhD (via Michael Corbin)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 5:39 PM

Friday, February 20, 2004

Norma McCorvey 

This is the story of Norma McCorvey, internationally known as “Jane Roe” the central figure in the infamous case of “Roe versus Wade,” which was instrumental in changing the United States law and giving women virtually abortion on demand. - The Interim.com

posted by George Thomas Kysor 4:16 PM

The U.S. Air Force Transformation Flight Plan (via Slashdot)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 11:55 AM

Thursday, February 19, 2004

This week marked the end of the Prosecution's case against Slobodan Milosevic. [excerpt]
On October 6, 2000, Slobodan Milosevic was a political washout with a questionable legacy, accused of war crimes. Three years later, thanks to the Hague Inquisition, he can justifiably claim to be a champion of truth. (via Free-Market.net)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 6:39 PM

Escape from the Room game (via The Blank of the Day)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:53 AM

The Ultimate Secure Home (via The Blank of the Day)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:02 AM

The musical Samba game. (via The Blank of the Day)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 8:33 AM

Wednesday, February 18, 2004

Pathetic Geek Stories

posted by George Thomas Kysor 5:29 PM

Interview with Arthur C. Clarke (via Slashdot)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 5:19 PM

How to never lose Pepsi's iTunes giveaway (via Slashdot)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 5:13 PM

The Free Network Project (via Slashdot)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 5:04 PM

Tuesday, February 17, 2004

Thanks For The Memories (via Global Network Against Weapons And Nuclear Power In Space)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 8:58 PM

PA leader: Israel has no right to exist [excerpt] 

Although Yasser Arafat has acceded in peace talks to Israel's right to exist, Palestinian officials indicate otherwise.

In an interview broadcast on Palestinian Authority television, Ahmad Nasser, secretary of the Palestinian Legislative Council, said the Jewish state has no right to exist because it is "Satan's offspring."

Nasser asserted Israel cannot exist "among human beings" because it was "founded on the basis of robbery, terror, killing, torture, assassination, death, stealing land and killing people," reported Palestinian Media Watch. - © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

posted by George Thomas Kysor 5:43 PM

China's 'gendercide' crisis: One-child policy to create shortage of workers [excerpt]  

If you think the United States Social Security system is headed for disaster in the next 10 to 15 years, you should consider the plight of China.

Five years ago, each retiree in China was supported by 10 workers. By 2020 this ratio will have fallen to one to six, and by 2050 to one to three, reports Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin. - © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

posted by George Thomas Kysor 5:18 PM

Monday, February 16, 2004

In case you missed it: Video: A hard hitting special report into the "war on terror": John Pilger's "Breaking The Silence." (via Information Clearing house)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 8:27 PM

U.S._intelligence_received_warnings of_terrorist_attacks_from_Randy_Glass [excerpt] 

In this video [scroll down] Randy Glass, a private US citizen working as an undercover agent in a government sting operation, discusses how he learned about a threat to the World Trade Center and tried to warn various officials in government before 9/11. - Center For Cooperative Research (via What Really Happened)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 3:22 PM

Sunday, February 15, 2004

Our grandmother. Your questions. Her advice. 

Dear Bubby,

I worry that GW Bush is the worst president the U.S. has ever had and that this is the most critical historical period the U.S. has ever been in.

The combination of those two worries keeps me up at night. Now I have dark circles under my eyes and a permanent back ache, and I'm only 33.

Since you've seen a lot more of life than I have, can you reassure me that things have been this bad before, or maybe even worse, and they got better? Where does a person find hope in the dark moments of life?

Thanks,
Lily

Dear Lily,
Yes, Bush is the worst President we ever had. But we have had bad times and got through it. Do you listen to the programs on some of the political programs like CNN? Listen to as many as you can. I am a Democrat and that is the party of the people. I'm for Kerry and I would like to see Edwards as the No.2 man. I think they are both sincere and will try for the common people -- schools, health, jobs, etc.

Don't give up hope. This is your country and my country and is the best in the world. The trouble will dribble out and our men will come home. I lived through a few wars. Remember the storm is over and the sun shines again. Just like Noah and his ark. Trust in G-d. Keep your spirits high and do what's right.

Good Luck. BUBBY

posted by George Thomas Kysor 5:20 PM

Dedicated to the Memory of L.A.S. 

So Happy Valentine's Day… although it's the 15th. It still feels like the 14th here because I'm not asleep… it's the extension of yesterday.

Do you know what yesterday marked? It marked the 13th anniversary of the Amiriyah Shelter massacre- February 13, 1991. Can you really call it an 'anniversary'? Anniversary brings to mind such happy things and yet is there any other word? Please send it along if you know it.

February 12, 1991, marked one of the days of the small Eid or 'Eid Al-Fitr'. Of course it also marked one of the heaviest days of bombing during the Gulf War. No one was in the mood for celebration. Most families remained at home because there wasn't even gasoline to travel from one area to the next. The more fortunate areas had bomb shelters and people from all over the neighborhood would get together inside of the shelter during the bombing. That year, they also got together inside of the shelters to celebrate Eid Al-Fitr with their neighbors and friends.

Iraqis don't go to shelters for safety reasons so much as for social reasons. It's a great place to be during a bombing. There's water, electricity and a feeling of serenity and safety that is provided as much by the solid structure as by the congregation of smiling friends and family. Being with a large group of people helps make things easier during war- it's like courage and stamina travel from one person to the next and increase exponentially with the number of people collected.

So the families in the Amiriyah area decided they'd join up in the shelter to have a nice Eid dinner and then the men and boys over the age of 15 would leave to give the women and children some privacy. Little did they know, leaving them behind, that it would be the last time they would see the wife/daughter/son/fiancé/sister/infant…

I can imagine the scene after the men left at around midnight- women sat around, pouring out steaming istikans of tea, passing out Eid kilaycha and chocolate. Kids would run around the shelter shrieking and laughing like they owned the huge playground under the earth. Teenage girls would sit around gossiping about guys or clothes or music or the latest rumor about Sara or Lina or Fatima. The smells would mingle- tea, baked goods, rice… comfortable smells that made one imagine, for a few seconds, that they were actually at home.

The sirens would begin shrieking- the women and children would pause in the midst of eating or scolding, say a brief prayer in their heart and worry about their loved ones above the ground- the men who refused to remain inside of the shelter in order to make room for their wives and kids.

The bombs fell hard and fast at around 4 a.m. The first smart bomb went through the ventilation, through the first floor of the shelter- leaving a gaping hole- and to the bottom 'basement' of the shelter where there were water tanks and propane tanks for heating water and food. The second missile came immediately after and finished off what the first missile missed. The doors of the advanced shelter immediately shut automatically- locking over 400 women and children inside.

It turned from a shelter into an inferno; explosions and fire rose from the lower level up to the level that held the women and children and the water rose with it, boiling and simmering. Those who did not burn to death immediately or die of the impact of the explosions, boiled to death or were steamed in the 900+ º F heat.

We woke in the morning to see the horrors on the news. We watched as the Iraqi rescue workers walked inside of the shelter and came out crying and screaming- dragging out bodies so charred, they didn't look human. We saw the people in the area- men, women and children- clinging to the fence surrounding the shelter and screaming with terror; calling out name after name… searching for a familiar face in the middle of the horror.

The bodies were laid out one beside the other- all the same size- shrunk with heat and charred beyond recognition. Some were in the fetal position, curled up, as if trying to escape within themselves. Others were stretched out and rigid, like the victims were trying to reach out a hand to save a loved one or reach for safety. Most remained unrecognizable to their families- only the size and fragments of clothing or jewelry indicating the gender and the general age.

Amiriyah itself is an area full of school teachers, college professors, doctors and ordinary employees- a middle-class neighborhood with low houses, friendly people and a growing mercantile population. It was a mélange of Sunnis and Shi'a and Christians- all living together peacefully and happily. After the 13th of February, it became the area everyone avoided. For weeks and weeks the whole area stank of charred flesh and the air was thick and gray with ash. The beige stucco houses were suddenly all covered with black pieces of cloth scrolled with the names of dead loved ones. "Ali Jabbar mourns the loss of his wife, daughter, and two sons…"; "Muna Rahim mourns the loss of her mother, sisters, brothers and son…"

Within days, the streets were shut with black cloth tents set up by the grief-stricken families to receive mourners from all over Iraq who came to weep and ease some of the shock and horror. And it was horrible. Everyone lost someone- or knew someone who lost several people.

My first visit to the shelter came several years after it was bombed. We were in the neighborhood visiting a friend of my mother. She was a retired schoolteacher who quit after the Amiriyah bombing. She had no thoughts of quitting but after schools resumed in April of 1991, she went on the first day to greet her class of 2nd graders. She walked into the classroom and found only 11 of her 23 students. "I thought they had decided not to come…" I remember her saying to my mother in hushed tones, later that year,"… but when I took attendance, they told me the rest of the children had died in the shelter…" She quit soon after that because she claimed her heart had broken that day and she couldn't look at the children anymore without remembering the tragedy.

I decided to pay my respects to the shelter and the victims. It was October and I asked the retired teacher if the shelter was open (hoping in my heart of hearts she'd say 'no'). She nodded her head and said that it was indeed open- it was always open. I walked the two short blocks to the shelter and found it in the midst of houses- the only separation being a wide street. There were children playing in the street and we stopped one of them who was kicking around a ball. Is there anyone in the shelter? He nodded his head solemnly- yes the shelter was 'maskoon'.

Now the word 'maskoon' can mean two different things in Arabic. It can mean 'lived in' and it can also mean 'haunted'. My imagination immediately carried me away- could the child mean haunted? I'm not one who believes in ghosts and monsters- the worst monsters are people and if you survive war and bombs, ghosts are a piece of cake… yet something inside of me knew that a place where 400 people had lost their lives so terribly- almost simultaneously- had to be 'haunted' somehow by their souls…

We walked inside and the place was dark and cold, even for the warm October weather. The only light filtering in came from the gaping hole in the roof of the shelter where the American missiles had fallen. I wanted to hold my breath- expecting to smell something I didn't want to… but you can only do that for so long. The air didn't smell stale at all; it simply smelled sad- like the winds that passed through this place were sorrowful winds. The far corners of the shelter were so dark, it was almost easy to imagine real people crouching in them.

The walls were covered with pictures. Hundreds of pictures of smiling women and children- toothy grins, large, gazelle eyes and the gummy smiles of babies. Face after face after face stared back at us from the dull gray walls and it felt endless and hopeless. I wondered what had happened to their families, or rather their remaining families after the catastrophe. We knew one man who had lost his mind after losing his wife and children inside of the shelter. I wondered how many others had met the same fate… and I wondered how much life was worth after you lost the people most precious to you.

At the far end of the shelter we heard voices. I strained my ears to listen and we searched them out- there were 4 or 5 Japanese tourists and a small, slight woman who was speaking haltingly in English. She was trying to explain how the bomb had fallen and how the people had died. She used elaborate hand gestures and the Japanese tourists nodded their heads, clicked away with their cameras and clucked sympathetically.

"Who is she?" I whispered to my mother's friend.
"She takes care of the place…" she replied in a low voice.
"Why don't they bring in someone who can speak fluently- this is frustrating to see…" I whispered back, watching the Japanese men shake hands with the woman before turning to go.

My mother's friend shook her head sadly, "They tried, but she just refuses to leave. She has been taking care of the place since the rescue teams finished cleaning it out… she lost 8 of her children here." I was horrified with that fact as the woman approached us. Her face was stern, yet gentle- like that of a school principal or… like that of a mother of 8 children. She shook hands with us and took us around to see the shelter. This is where we were. This is where the missiles came in… this is where the water rose up to… this is where the people stuck to the walls.

Her voice was strong and solid in Arabic. We didn't know what to answer. She continued to tell us how she had been in the shelter with 8 of her 9 children and how she had left minutes before the missiles hit to get some food and a change of clothes for one of the toddlers. She was in the house when the missiles struck and her first thoughts were, "Thank God the kids are in the shelter…" When she ran back to the shelter from her house across the street, she found it had been struck and the horror had begun. She had watched the corpses dragged out for days and days and refused to believe they were all gone for months after. She hadn't left the shelter since- it had become her home.

She pointed to the vague ghosts of bodies stuck to the concrete on the walls and ground and the worst one to look at was that of a mother, holding a child to her breast, like she was trying to protect it or save it. "That should have been me…" the woman who lost her children said and we didn't know what to answer.

It was then that I knew that the place was indeed 'maskoon' or haunted… since February 13, 1991 it has been haunted by the living who were cursed with their own survival.

Important Side Note:For those of you with the audacity to write to me claiming it was a legitimate target because "American officials assumed it was for military purposes" just remember Protocol 1 of the 1977 Geneva Conventions, Part IV, Section 1, Chapter III, Article 52: ... 3. In case of doubt whether an object which is normally dedicated to civilian purposes, such as a place of worship, a house or other dwelling or a school, is being used to make an effective contribution to military action, it shall be presumed not to be so used. (Like that would matter to you anyway) - Riverbend

posted by George Thomas Kysor 4:05 PM

Gold, Graduate School, and Non-Buyer’s Remorse by Gary North

posted by George Thomas Kysor 1:31 PM

Saturday, February 14, 2004

Stewardess ID'd Hijackers Early, Transcripts Show
"To be technically correct, the stewerdess identified seats and the computers provided names for those seats. However, remember that the FBI has stated publicly that the hijackers were using "skillfully made" fake IDs. So, in truth, we do not know who was really in those seats, only who we are supposed to think they were. also, note that the stewerdess describes a bomb being on board, which destroys the official story of perpetrators able to walk past airport security with box-cutters. This report of a bomb, plus other reports of tear gas, and as World Net Daily reported, at least one gun, strongly suggests that the perps had inside access and were able to bypass security entirely." - What Really Happened Feb 13, 2004

posted by George Thomas Kysor 6:11 PM

Hemp 

Surely no member of the vegetable kingdom has ever been more misunderstood than hemp. For too many years, emotion-not reason-has guided our policy toward this crop. And nowhere have emotions run hotter than in the debate over the distinction between Industrial Hemp and marijuana. This paper is intended to inform that debate by offering scientific evidence, so that farmers, policy makers, manufacturers, and the general public can distinguish between myth and reality.


Botanically,the genus Cannabis is composed of several variants. Although there has been a long-standing debate among taxonomists about how to classify these variants into species, applied plant breeders generally embrace a biochemical method to classify variants along utilitarian lines. Cannabis is the only plant genus that contains the unique class of molecular compounds called cannabinoids. Many cannabinoids have been identified, but two preponderate: THC, which is the psychoactive ingredient of Cannabis, and CBD, which is an antipsychoactive ingredient.One type of Cannabis is high in the psychoactive cannabinoid, THC, and low in the antipsychoactive cannabinoid, CBD. This type is popularly known as marijuana. Another type is high in CBD and low in THC. Variants of this type are called Industrial Hemp.


In the United States, the debate about the relationship between hemp and marijuana has been diminished by the dissemination of many statements that have little scientific support. This report examines in detail ten of the most pervasive and pernicious of these myths.


Myth: United States law has always treated hemp and marijuana the same.

Reality: The history of federal drug laws clearly shows that at one time the U.S. government understood and accepted the distinction between hemp and marijuana.


Myth: Smoking Industrial Hemp gets a person high.

Reality: The THC levels in Industrial Hemp are so low that no one could get high from smoking it. Moreover, hemp contains a relatively high percentage of another cannabinoid, CBD, that actually blocks the marijuana high. Hemp, it turns out, is not only not marijuana; it could be called "antimarijuana."


Myth: Even though THC levels are low in hemp, the THC can be extracted and concentrated to produce a powerful drug.

Reality: Extracting THC from Industrial Hemp and further refining it to eliminate the preponderance of CBD would require such an expensive, hazardous, and time-consuming process that it is extremely unlikely anyone would ever attempt it, rather than simply obtaining high-THC marijuana instead.


Myth: Industrial Hemp fields would be used to hide marijuana plants.

Reality: Industrial Hemp is grown quite differently from marijuana. Moreover, it is harvested at a different time than marijuana. Finally, cross-pollination between hemp plants and marijuana plants would significantly reduce the potency of the marijuana plant.


Myth: Legalizing hemp while continuing the prohibition on marijuana would burden local police forces.

Reality: In countries where hemp is grown as an agricultural crop, the police have experienced no such burdens.


Myth: Feral hemp must be eradicated because it can be sold as marijuana.

Reality: Feral hemp, or ditchweed, is a remnant of the Industrial Hemp once grown on more than 400,000 acres by U.S. farmers. It contains extremely low levels of THC, as low as .05 percent. It has no drug value, but does offer important environmental benefits as a nesting habitat for birds. About 99 percent of the "marijuana" being eradicated by the federal government-at great public expense-is this harmless ditchweed. Might it be that the drug enforcement agencies want to convince us that ditchweed is hemp in order to protect their large eradication budgets?


Myth: Those who want to legalize Industrial Hemp are actually seeking a backdoor way to legalize marijuana.

Reality: It is true that many of the first hemp stores were started by Industrial Hemp advocates who were also in favor of legalizing marijuana. However, as the hemp industry has matured, it has come to be dominated by those who see hemp as the agricultural and industrial crop that it is, and see hemp legalization as a different issue than marijuana legalization. In any case, should we oppose a very good idea simply because some of those who support it also support other ideas with which we disagree?


Myth: Hemp oil is a source of THC.

Reality: Hemp oil is an increasingly popular product, used for an expanding variety of purposes. The washed Industrial Hemp seed contains no THC at all. The tiny amounts of THC contained in Industrial Hemp are in the glands of the plant itself. Sometimes, in the manufacturing process, some THC- and CBD-containing resin sticks to the seed, resulting in traces of THC in the oil that is produced. The concentration of these cannabinoids in the oil is infinitesimal. No one can get high from using Industrial Hemp oil.


Myth: Legalizing Industrial Hemp would send the wrong message to children.

Reality: It is the current refusal of the drug enforcement agencies to distinguish between an agricultural crop and a drug crop that is sending the wrong message to children.


Myth: Industrial Hemp is not economically viable, and should therefore be outlawed.

Reality: The market for Industrial Hemp products is growing rapidly. But even if it were not, when has a crop ever been outlawed simply because government agencies thought it would be unprofitable to grow? - Dr. David West

posted by George Thomas Kysor 8:18 AM

Friday, February 13, 2004

One Family's Crisis In Baghdad... 

I haven't been blogging for several reasons. The main reason is that since the fourth day of Eid of we've been coping with a family crisis.

Eid started out normal enough, under the circumstances. The first day consisted of explosions, and a few family members and neighbors, interspersed with bouts electricity. We spent the first two days at home, so thoroughly exhausted with Eid preparations, we didn't enjoy Eid itself very much.

On the fourth day of Eid, one of my uncles absolutely insisted on a family reunion of sorts at his house. His wife had been slaving over the stove all day and anyone who couldn't come had better have a good excuse.

And so we went. We packed ourselves off to his house, across Baghdad, at 4 p.m. and he promised dinner would be served promptly at 7 (which is an obscene hour to eat dinner for Iraqis, but everyone wanted to be home early). The house was crowded with uncles and aunts, grandparents, nieces, nephews, and shrieking children (two of whom I didn't recognize).

Dinner was served at seven. It consisted of 'timen ala quzi' or rice and lamb garnished with sultanas, almonds and all sorts of spices, a Lebanese salad, chicken soup and two different kinds of bread. For a brief 30 minutes, we forgot politics and occupation and sat concentrating on the steaming array of food piled before us. Even the children calmed down enough to enjoy the feast. The local generator was humming in the background and we sat enjoying the food and light and feeling that it really was Eid. After all, we were family and gathered together… what could be more Eid-like than that?

After sweet tea and fresh fruit, the family began to disperse. At nine, we sat around with my uncle, his wife, my cousin and her husband and her husband's parents. The children had fallen into a sort of lethargic stupor in front of the television, watching a children's song in Arabic with a bunch of crazy rabbits bouncing about on the screen.

The elders soon began the usual discussion- politics. Politics in Iraq isn't discussed like in any other place. You see, we don't sit around with lit cigars and cups of tea debating this politician or that one- that's much too tame and boring. That is left for Brits in wood-paneled studies, surrounded by leather-bound books. No. We have to do it the Iraqi way- mobile expressions, erratic hand signals, and an occasional table- pounding to emphasize a particularly salient point.

The younger generation (E., a couple of cousins, and I) instantly backed out of the conversation. Old/new names were suddenly being dragged into the limelight of the dispute and I, personally, was lost at the Iraqi monarchy. They left me behind during the '50s and I got up to help clear the tea cups which were beginning to rattle ominously as the conversation got more heated.

My uncle and his daughter's father-in-law were soon deep into an argument over some conspiracy dealing with the monarchy. I saw a smile hovering on the lips of my cousin as her father-in-law began to light the wrong end of the cigarette. She winked covertly at her husband and he gracefully rose with the words, "Well, dad- should we drop you and mom off at home? It's getting late and I don't want to have to drive back alone… L., the children and I are spending the night here tonight."

And they were off in a matter of minutes. The argument was soon forgotten, adults bundled in coats and cigarettes properly lit. My cousin's husband, A., hustled his parents outside and into his battered old Brazilian-made Volkswagen. We stayed behind to help clear up the mess- which was considerable. Rice was strewn everywhere, little fingers had made little marks up and down the walls, the tables and across the television screen. Ashtrays had to be emptied, cups washed and children undressed and put to bed.

By the time the initial mess was cleared, it was almost 10 pm. Where was A., my cousin's husband? He had left over an hour earlier and his parents' house was only 15 minutes away. My mother suggested that his parents had maybe insisted he step down for a cup of tea or something else to eat… my cousin, L., shook her head emphatically- he wouldn't do that because he knew she'd worry. His parents didn't have a working telephone and any delay simply meant additional worry. Her brow puckered and I suddenly felt queasy.

We went over the possibilities- perhaps the road to his parents' house was blocked and he had to take an alternate route? Maybe they needed to purchase something on the way home? There *must* be a logical, rational reason. A. was a logical, rational, and- above all- careful man. We were supposed to be on our way home by 10:30. In modern-day Iraq, you just don't stay out longer than that. We couldn't leave my uncle and his family in the mess they were in. We sat around longer.

My father and uncle couldn't take it anymore- they got into our car and went to A.'s parents' house to see what had happened- and drag A. home by his ear if necessary. L. was angry by then, convinced that A. was OK and that he was simply dallying around at his mother's house. I was dubious, but supported the theory because it seemed like the easiest one to accept.

We sat around quietly for 30 minutes while my father and uncle went to look for A. L. was furiously polishing the coffee table and I sat channel-surfing, trying to find something to take my mind off of the possibilities.

Half an hour later, the men came home- trying not to look grim and worried. A.'s parents were safe at home- had, in fact, been home for over an hour. A. dropped them off at the door, watched them walk inside, honked his horn twice and left. L. went paler than she normally is and sat down dully on the couch. She was suddenly sure he was dead. What could have happened? Where had he gone? Someone mentioned a flat tire but L.'s father said that they hadn't seen his car along the way…

And so we reviewed the possibilities. He had been detained by Americans. His car had been hijacked. He had been abducted. He had been killed. He had a car accident and his beat-up old vehicle was overturned in some ditch… the possibilities were endless and each one was worse than the one before.

Going home was no longer an option. We sat around in the living room with my uncle's family, watching the seconds creep by on the clock and willing A. to walk through the door. E. spent the night pacing the driveway and peering out into the dark, silent street. I joined him outdoors a couple of times and he confessed that he was very worried- any disappearance at this time of night couldn't be good.

We spent the night making conjectures and trying to find logical reasons for A.'s disappearance. In the end, we agreed that if he wasn't back by 10 a.m., we'd go to the police and the family would start a separate search.

At 8 a.m., I was putting the kettle on in preparation for morning tea. The house was silent but no one was asleep. No one had slept all night. E. was still pacing; my father and uncle were closed up in the living room, trying to decide on a course of action and L. was trying not to cry. Suddenly, just as I lit the stove, the phone rang. It never sounded so shrill. I ran to the living room and found that my uncle had already jumped to answer it and was barking, "Elloo?" L. ran into the room and stood wringing her hands nervously.

It was A.'s best friend and business partner, S. He had heard from A. just a few minutes before… he had been abducted and was being held for a ransom of $15,000. A. and S. are partners and share a small shop in a mercantile neighborhood in Baghdad. They sell everything from Korean electrical ovens to fluorescent light bulbs and make just enough money to support their respective families. We'd be given 3 days to get the money- a place would be agreed upon where we'd give them the money and they'd release A. later on.

We panicked. The whole house broke down. L. fell to the floor crying and shouting that they'll kill him- she just knew they'd kill him like they were killing others. We tried to calm her down and finally decided to give her a couple of valiums to ease the stress. We sat debating on what to do- go to the police? No way. In some areas, the police were actually working with abductors for a certain amount of money and there was nothing they were willing to do anyway.

We spent the rest of the day rushing to sell gold, collect money and my uncle took a broken L. to the bank to empty the account- they've been saving up to build or buy a house. A.'s parents were soon at my uncle's house and we had a difficult time breaking the news to them. His mother cried and wanted to rush home for her few pieces of gold and his father sat, stunned, chain-smoking and trying to make sense of the situation. S., A.'s friend, came over with money- looking harrowed and tired.

To make a long, terrible story short- we had the money by the middle of the next day. L. had almost lost her wits and the only way the rest of us stayed sane was with the hope that A. would soon be back at home, with us.

The money was handed over on the third day after his abduction. But no A. came back. They told my uncle and S., who had gone with him, that A. would be set free in the next couple of days. My uncle and S. came home almost in tears- like we had sent them on a mission and they had failed us.

I can't even begin to describe the next couple of days. If it was bad before- it suddenly became worse. We hear about abductions ALL THE TIME… but to actually experience it is something else. It's like having a part of you torn away. To think that A. might not come back was more horrible than anything we'd experienced so far. Watching his parents deteriorate from one minute to the next and knowing his wife was dying a little bit inside every hour that passed by was so nerve-wracking that I'd run outside every hour to breathe in some fresh air- not the stale stuff inside of the house contaminated with depression, frustration and fear.

On the fifth day after A.'s abduction, we were all sitting in the living room. There was no electricity and L. had fallen into a valium-induced sort of calm. We suddenly heard a feeble clang of the gate- like someone was knocking, but not very hard. E. jumped up, ran to the door and called out, "Who is it?!" A moment later he ran back- it was A… he had come home.

I won't describe the crying, screaming, shouting, jumping, hobbling (A. was limping) and general chaos that followed A.s entrance. Apparently, his abductors had been watching the house for the last couple of weeks. As soon as A. dropped off his parents, they had followed with two cars and forced him to the side of the road on a secluded street. Four armed men forced him out of the car, put a bag over his head after kicking him around and threw him into a minivan with some more men.

After several hours of abuse and interrogation about his assets (which they seemed to have thought much more than he actually had), they let him make a call to his business partner who was supposed to call his family for the money.

(And if you could have seen him the moment he described this- you'd know ALL about the tenacity of the Iraqi sense of humor- here was A., with a gash on his head, a bluish bruise on the side of his face, a back bruised with kicks and punches, feet bleeding after walking over one kilometer barefoot and he was cracking jokes: "They actually only wanted $5,000," he said at one point, "but I was outraged- told them I was worth ATLEAST $20,000 – five is just an insult to my personal worth… we agreed on $15,000 in the end…")

They had kept him in slum on the outskirts of Baghdad where police and troops don't dare set up camp. He was transferred from one hovel to the next and at each one he says there were abducted people. Some of the abductions were political- some religious and many were for the money. He says the worst part was not being able to see anything around him, but being able to hear the others being beaten… and anticipating another kick or punch from any random direction.

I saw him again yesterday and he still looks haggard and tired. L. says he can't sleep all night- he keeps waking in the middle of the night with a nightmare or some sort of hallucination- thinking he's still caught.

And so that's how we've been spending our last few days. It has been a nightmare and I've had to examine a lot. Everything has felt so trivial and ridiculous… the blog, the electrical situation, the insomnia, the 'reconstruction', the elections, the fictional WMD… politics and politicians… I've been wondering about all those families who can't pay the ransom or the ones whose sons and daughters come home on a stretcher instead of on foot or in a garbage bag, as we heard about one family… and I've also realized how grateful we should be just being able to make the transition from one day to the next in a situation like ours… - Riverbend

posted by George Thomas Kysor 6:52 PM

ANOTHER OUTRAGEOUS PARTISAN POTSHOT AT THE PRESIDENT 

"I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well-placed... managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units...Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country."

--Colin Powell, My American Journey, p. 148 - max

posted by George Thomas Kysor 5:40 PM

Breast Friends 

posted by George Thomas Kysor 2:36 PM

Wednesday, February 11, 2004

Warning of uranium contamination risks to NGO staff, Coalition forces, foreign contract personnel and civilians in Iraq 

February 6, 2004 – Recently completed laboratory analyses show two members of Uranium Medical Research Centre’s (UMRC) field investigation team are contaminated with Depleted Uranium (DU). The two field staff, one from Canada and the other, from Beirut, toured Iraq for thirteen days in October 2003; five months after the cessation of Operation Iraqi Freedom’s aerial bombing and ground force campaign. Using mass spectrometry, UMRC’s partner laboratory in Germany measured DU in both team members’ urine samples.

The UMRC team surveyed US and British controlled combat areas and bomb-sites in southern Iraq, including Baghdad, An Nasiriyah, As Suweiriah and Al Basra (details can be found at UMRC.net, Abu Khasib to Al Ah’qaf: Field Investigation Report). The conditions responsible for the team’s DU contamination are considered to be inhalation of resuspended ultra-fine soil and dust particles saturated with uranium and airborne uranium oxides and metallic particulate. Uranium was used in anti-tank penetrators, suppression ordnance and bunker-defeat warheads deployed during the 26 days of Operation Iraqi Freedom by both US and UK forces. The contamination of UMRC’s team members occurring over a two-week period, many months after the main conflict, represents a risk to civilians, non-governmental organisations’ staff, Coalition armed forces and foreign contractors and diplomatic staff.

In 1997, UMRC was the first study group to detect DU in the urine of Canadian, British and US troops who served in Gulf War I. The urinary excretion of battlefield uranium was identified six years following exposure. In January 2004, the US Department of Veterans Affairs admitted it had detected DU in the urine of US forces who are not retaining DU shrapnel, in 2000, eight years after Desert Storm. In 2001 and again in 2002, UMRC measured high concentrations of artificial uranium containing the synthetic isotope, 236U, in Afghan civilians exposed to the detonation plumes of bombs deployed during Operation Enduring Freedom.

In November 2003, the British Ministry of Defence (MOD) released a formal statement to the Guardian disclaiming UMRC’s Operation Telic findings of high levels of radioactivity in British-led battlefields. The MOD stated unequivocally that battlefield uranium residues remain stable inside defeated Iraqi tanks and cannot be made biologically available to humans. Since then, the MOD has found unusually high concentrations of uranium excreted in the urine of its 1st Armoured Division troops who served in Basra (September 2003, UK DU Oversight Board Meeting minutes, Gulf Veterans Illnesses Unit, UK Ministry of Defence). The MOD’s recent findings in its troops now deployed back to Germany, coupled with the contamination of UMRC’s staff demonstrate the need to initiate immediate solutions to protect exposed civilians and foreign personnel in Iraq.

Preliminary results of UMRC’s laboratory analysis of field samples of civilian urine, soils and water samples indicate uranium contamination in several Iraqi cities and battlefields. Details of UMRC’s findings from US and British controlled battlefields and bombsites will be released later this month (February 2004). UMRC has offered its assistance to the United Nation’s Environment Program (UNEP) to guide UNEP’s post-conflict study team to radiologically contaminated bombsites and battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan. UMRC urges UNEP to undertake immediate studies and lead the implementation of a radiation protection program for Iraqi and Afghan civilians as well as a supervised environmental clean-up program, as early as possible. - UMRC Information Bulletin - February 6, 2004

For information:

T Weyman

Iraq Field Team Lead
Info@UMRC.net

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:40 PM

Intel Says Chip Speed Breakthrough Will Alter Cyberworld 

Intel scientists say that they have made silicon chips that can switch light like electricity, blurring the line between computing and communications and presenting a vision of the digital future that will allow computers themselves to span cities or even the entire globe.

The invention demonstrates for the first time, Intel researchers said, that ultrahigh-speed fiberoptic equipment can be produced at personal computer industry prices. As the costs of communicating between computers and chips falls, the barrier to building fundamentally new kinds of computers not limited by physical distance should become a reality, experts said.

The advance, described in a paper to be published on Thursday in the scientific journal Nature, also suggests that Intel, as the world's largest chipmaker, may be able to develop the technology to move into new telecommunications markets.

It will free computer designers to think about the systems they create in new ways, making it possible to conceive of machines that are not located in a single physical place, according to scientists and industry executives. It will also make possible a new class of computing applications based on the possibility of transmitting high-definition video and images hundreds or even thousands of times faster than possible on today's Internet.

"Before, there were two worlds — computing and communications," said Alan Huang, a former Bell Labs physicist, who has founded the Terabit Corporation, an optical networking company in Menlo Park, Calif. "Now they will be the same and we will have powerful computers everywhere."

One potential application, he said, would be an interactive digital television system allowing viewers to watch a sporting event from multiple angles, moving the point of view at will while the game is being played. With only a limited number of digital cameras, it might be possible to synthesize a virtual moveable seat any place in the stadium. Such a feature exists currently in video games, but it is far beyond the capacity of today's digital television transmission systems.

Intel said the technical advance, in which the researchers use a component made from pure silicon to send data at speeds as much as 50 times faster than the previous switching record, is the first step toward building low-cost networks that will move data seamlessly between computers and within large computer systems.

"This opens up whole new areas for Intel," said Mario Paniccia, a an Intel physicist, who started the previously secret Intel research program to explore the possibility of using standard semiconductor parts to build optical networks. "We're trying to siliconize photonics."

The device Intel has built is the prototype of a high-speed silicon optical modulator that the company has now pushed above two billion bits per second at a lab near its headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif. The modulator makes it possible to switch off and on a tiny laser beam and direct it into an ultrathin glass fiber. Although the technical report in Nature focuses on the modulator, which is only one component of a networking system, Intel plans on demonstrating a working system transmitting a movie in high-definition television over a five-mile coil of fiberoptic cable next week at its annual Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco.

"If Intel and other semiconductor technology companies can develop silicon optically as successfully as they have electronically, then silicon is certainly set to grow in stature as an optical material," Graham Reed, a physicist at the University of Surrey, wrote in a commentary on the Intel paper in Nature. Dr. Reed is the holder of the previous 20-megabit silicon optical switching speed record that Intel shattered.

With this breakthrough, Intel researchers said, they have shown that it should be possible to build optical fiber communications systems using Intel's conventional chipmaking process without resorting to either the exotic materials or hand-assembly techniques that are now the standard in the fiberoptics networking industry. - JOHN MARKOFF (via Drudge)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 6:13 PM

The 25 Toughest Guys in America [See article for details.]
1 BRETT FAVRE
2 MICHAEL WEISSKOPF
3 MATT HUGHES
4 MIKE "GATOR" GAUTHIER
5 JOHN McCAIN
6 SCOTT STEVENS
7 MEL GIBSON
8 JUSTIN WADSWORTH
9 CAREY HART
10 JEREMY JONES
11 RULON GARDNER
12 TYLER HAMILTON
13 TERRENCE WHITCOMB
14 DEAN POTTER
15 STEPHEN "STEVE-O" GLOVER
16 J. MICHAEL FAY
17 SID STEINER
18 JOSH BENDER
19 STEVE HAKALA
20 JET LI
21 Donald Rumsfeld
22 Rupert Murdoch
23 50 Cent
24 Rusty Haight
25 Hillary Clinton

posted by George Thomas Kysor 5:21 PM

REVISITING BASTIAT'S BROKEN WINDOW 

At last, the remedy to what bedevils us is at hand. An excellent way to ensure prosperity is to give each member of a group of youngsters a cricket bat, lead the group to a randomly selected street in a randomly selected suburb, instruct each youth to walk in any direction he chooses and, as he walks, to smash car lamps, windscreens and panels, shopfront windows and displays – anything, in other words (including motorists, pedestrians, merchants and shoppers), that stands in his way.

A likely consequence of this orgy of destruction is clearly that demand and perhaps employment will increase in the auto manufacturing and repair, glass production and glazing, medical and other industries. If someone smashes a shop window, then its owner will probably move quickly to repair it. Ample demand for glass and the labour of glaziers puts people to work and keeps them at work. Surely, then, vandals are actually benefactors, and the more severe and widespread their carnage the better. Would we not all benefit – indeed, would an economic boom not eventuate – if enough hooligans sufficiently frequently rampaged and destroyed everything they encountered?

The vast majority of people – indeed, all except those who espouse mindless destruction – would reject this proposal summarily and contemptuously. And they would be right for the simple and obvious reason that the destruction of valuable property is, under any and all circumstances, an unambiguously bad thing. To destroy such property is always to reduce – and never to maintain or improve – standards of living.

Boosting the economy
The storms that tore through Brisbane, Australia, during the last week of January (like the bushfires that ravaged the nation’s capital, Canberra, a year ago) reminded Australians, if only momentarily, of this reality. Yet allegedly well-educated people in other countries seem to disagree. A prominent example is the article "Hurricane Floyd May Leave Robust Economy in Its Wake" (The Wall Street Journal, September 17, 1999). Its author, Tristan Mabry, reported that this hurricane, which caused severe damage across large swathes of the eastern U.S., "won't likely damp economic growth and may actually have churned up some extra economic activity." In the article, Marilyn Schaja, chief economist at Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette Securities Corp., said "the storm may actually give the economy a boost."

Thomas DiLorenzo, professor of economics at Loyola College, Baltimore, writing in the February 2000 edition of Ideas on Liberty, notes that statements such as these exhibit an utter ignorance of the most basic principles of economics. Yes, the cleanup after the storm will generate economic activity and employment, as will the repair of smashed windows; critically, however, the cleaning and repairs will also extinguish development and jobs. This is because the resources used to repair damaged and destroyed property are resources that cannot simultaneously be used to produce other goods and services. The money allocated to cleanups, repairs and reconstruction, in other words, must be diverted from other uses; and because money has been redirected from these other goods and services, demand for them (and thus the labour and materials required to produce them) falls.

Hence the "broken window" fallacy exposed by the French economist Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) in his essay "What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen" (see also Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson, Laissez Faire Books 50th Anniversary Edition, 1996). Bastiat demonstrated brilliantly that what economics can teach (but what, alas, relatively few economists actually do teach) is an understanding of the principles that underlie the often-mundane details of everyday life.

«The resources used to repair damaged and destroyed property are resources that cannot simultaneously be used to produce other goods and services. The money allocated to cleanups, repairs and reconstruction must be diverted from other uses; and because money has been redirected from these other goods and services, demand for them falls. »


What is seen is the window broken by vandals (or the house, street or suburb devastated by a storm) and the resultant employment of repairmen. What is not seen are the workers and resources in other fields that now cannot be employed because the resources required to do so have been diverted to the repair of the window and the reconstruction of the house. The glass manufacturer's and glazier's visible gain is thus the butcher's, tailor's or new entrepreneur's less visible loss; and to compensate the homeowner for damages incurred is to impose costs upon the insurer (or, more likely, taxpayer). In neither scenario is additional production undertaken – indeed, less is produced overall – and as a result people as a whole are poorer. The bread that the baker could have baked with the money used to repair the window is not baked; accordingly, as a result of the vandalism and its repair society has no more glazed windows but less bread than it would have had without the destruction. Clearly, then, what is even further obscured from view is that ends (i.e., goods and services) rather than means (i.e., jobs) ultimately benefit members of a society.

Most of the economists, politicians and businessmen of Bastiat's day, like their contemporary counterparts, focused only upon the immediate impact of "broken windows" (i.e., "problems" that allegedly require a policy "solution"). Bastiat showed that in virtually every instance there are unseen circumstances that must also be examined, and that these unseen circumstances usually impact significantly (and, in the instances he examined, negatively) upon long-term results. In Hazlitt's words, "we are already suffering the long-run consequences of the policies of the remote or recent past. Today is already the tomorrow which the bad economist yesterday urged us to ignore." Their admonition, then, is that we may commit major errors of judgement, and thereby incur considerable losses, when we focus exclusively upon short-term effects. In order to make sensible choices we must weigh the immediate and potentially positive for the few (seen) against the eventual and potentially negative for the many (unseen).

Politicians Breaking Windows

Bastiat's and Hazlitt's tale is in some ways simply a silly story – an elementary fallacy that most schoolchildren can quickly recognise. Yet it is also much more. According to Hazlitt, "the broken window fallacy, under a hundred disguises, is the most persistent in the history of economics. It is more rampant now than at any time in the past. It is solemnly reaffirmed every day by great captains of industry, by chambers of commerce, by labour union leaders, by editorial writers and newspaper columnists and radio and television commentators, by learned statisticians using the most refined techniques [and] by professors of economics in our best universities."

Indeed, prominent people occupying powerful positions are presently succumbing to a vastly larger and more disturbing variant of the broken window fallacy. Although they denounce small, localised and individual acts of vandalism with all of the rhetorical ferocity they can muster, they impute rather modest negative consequences – and potentially appreciable benefits – to massive, extensive and state-supported acts of vandalism. War, implied George W. Bush's former economic advisor (and as the American Secretary of State, Mr. Baker, stated explicitly during the expulsion of Iraq from Kuwait in 1991), "creates jobs"; further, it spurs the production of certain high-tech goods and services; and after the cessation of hostilities the world is rendered more prosperous by accumulated or "pent up" demand.

Immediately after September 11, 2001, pundits propounded their views about the impact of the government's response to the attacks (e.g., reconstruction and the "war on terror") upon economic activity in the U.S. Among these views: the destruction of the World Trade Centre and all the wealth embodied therein would ultimately augment rather than erode American standards of living. Will Terrorism Resuscitate the U.S. Economy? Timothy Noah answered stoutly in the affirmative: whilst "the destruction of the World Trade Centre, the multiple plane crashes, and the damage to the Pentagon are morally obscene because of the (probably thousands) of deaths and countless injuries they caused, economically the net result of the terrorists' actions is likely to be beneficial to the United States."

Noah continues: "OK, so the World Trade Centre disaster won't harm the economy. Why [do I] think it will benefit the economy? Simple: because we live in a very wealthy nation that responds to horrible disasters by spending large sums of money... In this case, the spending will come both from private insurers and from the federal government's Federal Emergency Management Agency, which over the past decade has established itself as a politically unstoppable source of federal largesse... In seeking to harm America, terrorists will probably end up making it more prosperous. They can make us die, and they can make us weep, but they can't make us poor."

Similarly, according to Larry Kudlow (quoted in The New York Post, 17 September 2001) "we may lose money and wealth in one way but we gain it back many times over when the rebuilding is done." If Noah and Kudlow are correct, then the widespread destruction of valuable property ultimately begets prosperity. From this statement it is but a small step to infer that the greatest destroyer of property, war, creates wealth and increase living standards.

War and Bastiat's Window

War and post-war reconstruction, the conventional wisdom therefore alleges, is unlikely to have significantly negative repercussions and may even have positive consequences. According to Nobel Leaureate Robert Solow, "war is good for the economy in the narrowest sense, but it can be bad for the economy when innovation emphasises military and not civilian needs." Taking due care that the consumption of four-wheel-drives, winter holidays and McMansions remains unrestricted, should one therefore celebrate the occurrence of natural disasters and promote vandalism, acts of terrorism and the outbreak of war? If so, should one plan now to invest in the Balkans, East Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq?

Armed with Bastiat's insight, we see that this conventional wisdom ignores not just the livelihoods and lives of the inhabitants of combat zones: it also discounts opportunity costs. It assumes, in other words, that the resources required to rebuild the WTC and Pentagon, fight the war against terrorism and topple Saddam Hussein would, if they were not used for these purposes, lie idle. In reality, these resources must be diverted to these ends from other uses. Consider the scores of billions that insurers will eventually devote to the payment of WTC-related claims. This money would otherwise have been invested in the insurers' portfolios of stocks, bonds and other securities. Through these investments, in turn, this money would have been put to myriad productive uses, ranging from the construction of houses to the invention of new and better medicines. These resulting improvements of living standards will be lost as a result of the diversion of capital that followed the attacks.

Most government expenditure has the same effect. Taxpayers, if allowed to keep their earnings, would either buy consumption goods or save and invest (i.e., buy production goods). It is false to posit that if a government does not commandeer this money then people would bury it in the back garden. The ultimate absurdity revealed by the broken window fallacy is that if it were true, then governments could easily create and fructify wealth: they need only (and repeatedly) erect pyramids and monuments, dynamite them and immediately rebuild them. Better yet, if "job creation" were desired, then labour-intensive shovels should replace capital-intensive earthmoving equipment; and if even more "job creation" were sought, substitute the shovels with spoons (Bastiat suggested that the spoon-wielders use only their left hand).

Succumbing to the broken window fallacy has wider and more insidious implications. What was lost in the 9/11 and other attacks was not just physical capital, like tall office buildings, but immeasurable talent and tacit information. Kudlow's and Noah's assessment of the situation utterly discounts the creativity and productivity of the lives lost that day and the lives that will be lost in any resultant wars. This "human capital," which would have produced for many years to come, is completely lost and can never be recovered or rebuilt. To say that humankind will be richer because of the September 11 attack is therefore to assert that we will be more affluent without these thousands of human minds and bodies. - Chris Leithner (via Free-Market.Net)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 12:19 PM

World of Ends: What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else. [excerpt]  

There are mistakes and there are mistakes.

Some mistakes we learn from. For example: Thinking that selling toys for pets on the Web is a great way to get rich. We're not going to do that again.

Other mistakes we insist on making over and over. For example, thinking that:

...the Web, like television, is a way to hold eyeballs still while advertisers spray them with messages.
...the Net is something that telcos and cable companies should filter, control and otherwise "improve."
... it's a bad thing for users to communicate between different kinds of instant messaging systems on the Net.
...the Net suffers from a lack of regulation to protect industries that feel threatened by it.
When it comes to the Net, a lot of us suffer from Repetitive Mistake Syndrome. This is especially true for magazine and newspaper publishing, broadcasting, cable television, the record industry, the movie industry, and the telephone industry, to name just six.

Thanks to the enormous influence of those industries in Washington, Repetitive Mistake Syndrome also afflicts lawmakers, regulators and even the courts. - Doc Searls and David Weinberger (via SlashDot)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 10:01 AM

CLG 9/11 Investigation 

posted by George Thomas Kysor 7:45 AM

Tuesday, February 10, 2004

You've Gotta Try  

It didn't take long before I was in Sunday afternoon traffic on my way up 85. I had been sitting on the idea since last Tuesday and doing my best to ignore the nudges and pushes toward meeting her. I’ve never wanted to be that guy that makes passes at bank tellers or waitresses, or beautiful girls with curly brown hair, and warm hazel eyes, who work at the bookstore next to Best Buy. Girls that make you say, "There's something about her."

I didn’t expect her to be standing there when I walked in, hanging t-shirts. I went straight for Blue Like Jazz. She didn’t know that I had already purchased and read the entire book. She also didn’t know that I had purchased ten copies to give out to friends. And I wasn’t telling. That purplish-blue paperback became the security blanket of my indecision. That security didn’t last long. I needed something else. The music section. Don’t ever forget the music section.

These headphones are messing up my hair. Great, I’m actually going to introduce myself to this girl and have lame hair. Girls care about these things, guys with lame hair–I know. I have sisters. This is good for you, I told myself, setting down the headphones to walk over to her. You have to do this sometime.

“Hi.” Maybe she’ll think the blushing is cute, I think, okay blush but not too much. We're going for endearing here.

“Hi.”

“I’m Cameron. I was in here the other day and wanted to meet you, but I totally wussed out and so I wanted to make sure I met you.” Red, face is definitely red, possibly contorted into weirdness.

“Oh, I’m Christi. Sorry, I’m seeing someone.” Just like that. There was no hesitation in her response.

I had planned to be ready to check out in case everything went terribly sour. That way I could make a fast, less painful getaway. But there was no one at the register. I stood there waiting until finally Christi came and asked me, "Do you need help?"

She scanned my book and CD. I said, "Sorry about that. I never do this, you know. It's just--I always want to but never do, and well, I figured I had to try."

"Oh yeah," she said, "You've gotta try." And the way she said it made me feel better. She didn't seem to think I had been foolish or stupid for approaching her. It seemed as though what I had done made sense to her, and that maybe if she didn’t have a boyfriend we’d be getting coffee at Caribou after her shift and talking about our favorite books, or her mission trip to Africa, or how cooking for one just isn’t the same.

I had to try. I have too many other books open that I can't seem to close. It wouldn't have been good to leave another one lingering in the haze. I still haven't forgotten my freshman year of college when Courtney transferred to Seattle Pacific. She told me that if I would have said something she might have stayed. I don't need more of these.

I will not be in a hurry to start a relationship. I will remain only slightly aware that single women exist. And perhaps, when the timing is right, I won’t be able to help but notice that she, whoever she is, didn’t come with anybody else tonight. That there is something about her. And that, when it comes down to it, I have nothing to lose--so why not try? - Cameron

posted by George Thomas Kysor 6:46 PM

Terror by another name Part I [excerpt] 

02/08/04: (ICH) BAGHDAD — If a “rogue nation” or swarthy men with foreign accents did it, we know what we’d call it. What the world’s most powerful military did to the village of Abou Siffa must be called the same thing: terrorism. - Mike Ferner © February 8, 2004 Mike Ferner

posted by George Thomas Kysor 10:05 AM

The White House: A New Fight Over Secret 9/11 Docs
Posted Feb 10, 2004 06:20 AM PST
Especially that document that says ,"Let's get our friends in Israeli Intelligence to help us knock over the World Trade Towers and frame the Arabs for it so we can go steal their oil." - WhatReallyHappened.com

posted by George Thomas Kysor 8:20 AM

Noose Tightens Around Bush 

1. Top Bush Aide Is Questioned in C.I.A. Leak Dictator Bush's press secretary and a former White House press aide testified on Friday to a federal grand jury investigating who improperly disclosed the identity of a C.I.A. officer, the press secretary and a lawyer for the aide said on Monday.

2. Democrats Suggest Inquiry Points to Wider Spying by G.O.P. Senate Democrats who were briefed Monday about an investigation into how Democratic strategy memorandums dealing with judicial nominations ended up in the hands of Republican staff members said they now believed the problem was far more extensive than previously thought. Democratic staff aides who were briefed on William Pickle's [the Senate's sergeant-at-arms] presentation, said senators were stunned to learn that more than 3,000 documents had been improperly read by Republicans. In addition, one aide said the breach in security was the result of a person "hacking," or working to gain entry into the Democrats' files. After that initial hacking, the documents were easily available on the network.

3. Democrats Say File Issue Could Bring Probe Senate Democrats said yesterday that Republican accessing of Democratic computer files on judicial nominations appears more extensive than they originally thought and could wind up triggering a criminal investigation.

4. 9/11 Panel Threatens to Issue Subpoena for Bush's Briefings Members of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks warned the White House on Monday that it could face a politically damaging subpoena this week if it refused to turn over information from the highly classified Oval Office intelligence reports given to Dictator Bush before 9/11.

5. Ex-judge on Iraq inquiry 'involved in cover-up' Laurence Silberman, a retired judge nominated by the Bush dictatorship as the co-chairman of the commission investigating pre-war intelligence on Iraq, was involved in a major cover-up during the Reagan era, his critics alleged yesterday. Mr Silberman sat on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, which approved the expanded surveillance powers for the justice department under the controversial Patriot Act. Dictator Bush named him as the senior Republican on a nine-member 'bipartisan' commission examining how and why US intelligence had been so wrong about Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction. It will report next spring - well after the November s-elections.

6. Blix says war leaders acted like salesmen The former UN chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, weighed into the controversy over weapons of mass destruction yesterday when he accused Tony Blair and George Bush of behaving like insincere salesmen who "exaggerated" intelligence in an attempt to win support for war. In a carefully worded attack, Dr Blix said intelligence communities were too ready to believe the "tales" of defectors, and the British poodle and US dictator, while not acting in bad faith, were too preoccupied with spin.

7. Bush Concedes Flaws in Iraq Weapons Data The dictator stands by his decision to go to war, calling Hussein a 'madman' who posed 'a grave and gathering threat' to the U.S. Dictator Bush on Sunday conceded for the first time that he relied on flawed assumptions and inaccurate information in launching the Iraq war, but he denied having intentionally misled the American people.

8. Defense Dept. Seeks Bush's Guard File The Defense Department has requested that Dictator Bush's payroll records from his service in the National Guard be sent to Washington from a DOD archive in Colorado, to ascertain whether they can be released to news organizations and public interest groups that have formally requested them in recent days, according to DOD officials.

9. Bush's Latest Trips Questioned With an appearance here [MO] today, Dictator Bush has now paid visits to three states within days after a Democratic presidential primary election. Now, Democrats are accusing Bush of sticking taxpayers with the costs of what is essentially a political activity: responding to the attacks from Democratic candidates that arose during those primaries. "Bush's visits, billed as 'official events' are, in reality, taxpayer-financed campaigning,'' the Democratic National Committee said in a statement.

10. Job Growth: Reality Or Fairy Tale? Different employment surveys paint contrasting pictures about the health of the economy, which has lost 2.2 million jobs since Bush took office [literally, *took* office]. Factories have lost 3 million jobs in the last 42 straight months since a peak in July 2000. - CLG

posted by George Thomas Kysor 7:31 AM

Monday, February 09, 2004

Dishonest Dubya

posted by George Thomas Kysor 4:12 PM

Congress AWOL 

There is plenty of blame to go around for the mistakes made by going to war in Iraq, especially now that it is common knowledge Saddam Hussein told the truth about having no weapons of mass destruction, and that Al Qaida and 9/11 were in no way related to the Iraqi government.

Our intelligence agencies failed for whatever reason this time, but their frequent failures should raise the question of whether or not secretly spending forty billion taxpayer dollars annually gathering bad information is a good investment. The administration certainly failed us by making the decision to sacrifice so much in life and limb, by plunging us into this Persian Gulf quagmire that surely will last for years to come.

But before Congress gets too carried away with condemning the administration or the intelligence gathering agencies, it ought to look to itself. A proper investigation and debate by this Congress – as we’re now scrambling to accomplish – clearly was warranted prior to any decision to go to war. An open and detailed debate on a proper declaration of war certainly would have revealed that U.S. national security was not threatened – and the whole war could have been avoided. Because Congress did not do that, it deserves the greatest criticism for its dereliction of duty.

There was a precise reason why the most serious decision made by a country – the decision to go to war – was assigned in our Constitution to the body closest to the people. If we followed this charge I’m certain fewer wars would be fought, wide support would be achieved for just defensive wars, there would be less political finger-pointing if events went badly, and blame could not be placed on one individual or agency. This process would more likely achieve victory, which has eluded us in recent decades.

The president reluctantly has agreed to support an independent commission to review our intelligence gathering failures, and that is good. Cynics said nothing much would be achieved by studying pre-9/11 intelligence failures, but it looks like some objective criticisms will emerge from that inquiry. We can hope for the best from this newly appointed commission.

But already we hear the inquiry will be deliberately delayed, limited to investigating only the failures of the intelligence agencies themselves, and may divert its focus to studying intelligence gathering related to North Korea and elsewhere. If the commission avoids the central controversy – whether or not there was selective use of information or undue pressure put on the CIA to support a foregone conclusion to go to war by the administration – the commission will appear a sham.

Regardless of the results, the process of the inquiry is missing the most important point – the failure of Congress to meet its responsibility on the decision to go, or not go, to war. The current mess was predictable from the beginning. Unfortunately, Congress voluntarily gave up its prerogative over war and illegally transferred this power to the president in October of 2002. The debate we are having now should have occurred here in the halls of Congress then. We should have debated a declaration of war resolution. Instead, Congress chose to transfer this decision-making power to the president to avoid the responsibility of making the hard choice of sending our young people into harms way, against a weak, third world country. This the president did on his own, with congressional acquiescence. The blame game has emerged only now that we are in the political season. Sadly, the call for and the appointment of the commission is all part of this political process.

It is truly disturbing to see many who abdicated their congressional responsibility to declare or reject war, who timidly voted to give the president the power he wanted, now posturing as his harshest critics. - Rep. Ron Paul, MD (Texas) before the US House of Representatives, February 4, 2004

posted by George Thomas Kysor 1:25 PM

THE SKULL AND BONES OF GEORGE BUSH AND JOHN KERRY 

If skull and bones were no more than the remains of a human body, or the scare heavy in a Halloween movie, there would be little reason to give it further thought. But it is much more than that.

The Order of the Skull and Bones is far from the fratty, fun-and-games milieu that uninformed people think it is. The fact is, Skull and Bones may be the world's most bizarre, and exclusive, secret society.

Therefore, if both the President of the United States and the top Democratic contender for the job are devoted members of this Order, and they are, the American public ought to know more about it before November rolls around. Not that we can do much more than dissect it at this time. Nevertheless, the dedicated mission of Skull and Bones, though not obvious, should be at least somewhat understood before we elect a member of this mysterious enclave to lead our nation any further.




Before we proceed, it should be stated that the history, background, member roster, and political "connections" of the Order of Skull and Bones is far too complicated and extensive to include in this article, but all the information herein is fully documented and readily available for interested readers.

Let us proceed with its most important tenets.

More than a century ago, Skull and Bones was a secret society in Germany, where it was also known, not always in jest, as the "Brotherhood of Death."

The American chapter of the Society was founded at Yale University in 1833, and its members are known as Bonesmen. Today, Bonesmen number less than 1,000, which is quite fantastic when one considers how effectively they manipulate and influence world affairs.

So, Skull and Bones is not just a bunch of "Yalies" getting their kicks with unique handshakes and secret code words. Bones is a unique group of young men from affluent, well-established, Northeastern families; literally a chosen elite of intellectually superior Yale students, who are educated and prepared for positions of influence and power, particularly in politics and government.

Each year at Yale, 15 juniors are chosen by seniors for Skull and Bones initiation, which is performed in occult surroundings with bizarre rituals, where the initiates are indoctrinated and sworn to absolute and binding secrecy. This illustrates the exclusivity and esoteric, cult-like qualities of this strange order.

As the country's leaders, many Bonesmen have held, and still hold, positions of prestige and influence. These include presidents, cabinet members, congressmen, senators, governors, and other positions of the highest political authority.

Why is it vital that Americans know that both George W. Bush and John Kerry are Yale alumni and Bonesmen? For many compelling reasons. Here are a few.

Since both Bush and Kerry, as sworn Bonesmen, are privy to its rituals, inner workings, and secret objective, it would seem to make little difference in both domestic and foreign policies of the United States which man wins the November 2004 election. This gives us little choice.

Bonesmen believe that the United States should be the first among the "equals" in the New World order. To achieve this, the Order believes in "constructive chaos." And what is constructive chaos? It is simply keeping true intentions secret by constantly sending out mixed signals on all critical policy issues, and keeping sacrosanct their self-created vision of New World warriors. Both Bush and Kerry appear to be victims of this self-aggrandized thinking.

Bonesmen have an affinity for the Heglian theory. This is a precept in which the State is absolute and individuals are granted their freedom based on their obedience to the State, i.e. the New World Order.

Does that have the smell of tyranny or not?

This pretentious elitism and dangerous arrogance is rare in most men. But it is all the more troubling when found in two men who are both vying for the most powerful leadership position in the world

Bonesmen are mostly born to privilege, bred on visions of intellectual superiority, educated in worldly matters, and trained to give orders, not take them. It follows, then, that these men should be the epitome of nationalistic pride. Unless, of course, they have other ideas. Such as keeping their actions secret, using power to achieve ulterior ends, and putting the Skull and Bones oath above allegiance to their country.

And most disturbing of all, the sole purpose of the Skull and Bones Order is to perpetuate power. To maintain and increase this power, politically ambitious Bonesmen strive to put fellow Bonesmen in key positions of influence, to help build the New World organization that is their primary goal.

Recent actions and decisions of President Bush, if carefully scrutinized, tend to bear this out. And there is little reason to believe that John Kerry, as president, would not follow the same detrimental path.

Like all of us, George W. Bush and John Kerry have skeletons in their closet. But unlike ours, their skeletons have the power to undermine the sovereignty of a nation.

Don't let it undermine ours. - Jim Moore

"Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact." Copyright © 1997 - 2004

posted by George Thomas Kysor 12:22 PM

Khan Job: Bush Spiked Probe of Pakistan’s Dr. Strangelove, BBC reported in 2001 

On November 7, 2001, BBC TV and the Guardian of London reported that the Bush administration thwarted investigations of Dr. A.Q. Khan who this week confessed selling atomic secrets to Libya, North Korea, and Iran.

The Bush Administration has expressed shock at the disclosures that Pakistan, our ally in the war on terror, has been running a nuclear secrets bazaar. In fact, according to the British News Team’s sources’, Bush did not know of these facts because, shortly after his inauguration, his National Security Agency (NSA) defectively stymied the probe of Khan Research Laboratories. CIA and other agents could not investigate the spread of “Islamic Bombs” through Pakistan because funding appeared to originate in Saudi Arabia.

Greg Palast and David Pallister received a California State University Project Censored Award for this expose based on the story broadcast by Palast on BBC Television Newsnight.

According to both sources and documents obtained by the BBC, the Bush Administration “Spike” of the investigation of Dr. Khan’s Lab followed from a wider policy of protecting key Saudi Arabians including the bin Laden Family.

Noam Chomsky, who read the story on page one of the Times of India, has wondered, “Why wasn’t this all over US papers?”

To learn why, read the following excerpt from the 2003 edition of Palast’s book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy:

The "Back-Off" Directive and the Islamic Bomb

Despite these tantalizing facts, Abdullah and his operations were A-OK with the FBI chiefs, if not their working agents. Just a dumb SNAFU? Not according to a top-level CIA operative who spoke with us on condition of strictest anonymity. After Bush took office, he said, "there was a major policy shift" at the National Security Agency. Investigators were ordered to "back off " from any inquiries into Saudi Arabian financing of terror networks, especially if they touched on Saudi royals and their retainers. That put the bin Ladens, a family worth a reported $12 billion and a virtual arm of the Saudi royal household, off limits for investigation. Osama was the exception; he remained a wanted man, but agents could not look too closely at how he filled his piggy bank. The key rule of any investigation, "follow the money," was now violated, and investigations-at least before September 11-began to die.

And there was a lot to investigate-or in the case of the CIA and FBI under Bush-a lot to ignore. Through well-known international arms dealers (I'm sorry, but in this business, sinners are better sources than saints) our team was tipped off to a meeting of Saudi billionaires at the Hotel Royale Monceau in Paris in May 1996 with the financial representative of Osama bin Laden's network. The Saudis, including a key Saudi prince joined by Muslim and non-Muslim gun traffickers, met to determine who would pay how much to Osama. This was not so much an act of support but of protection-a pay off to keep the mad bomber away from Saudi Arabia.

The crucial question here is that, if I could learn about this meeting, how did the CIA miss it? In fact, since the first edition of this book, other sources have disclosed that the meeting was monitored by French intelligence. Since U.S. intelligence was thus likely informed, the question becomes why didn't the government immediately move against the Saudis?

I probed our CIA contact for specifics of investigations that
were hampered by orders to back off of the Saudis. He told us that the Khan Laboratories investigation had been effectively put on hold.

You may never have heard of Khan Laboratories, but if this planet blows to pieces this year, it will likely be thanks to Kahn Labs' creating nuclear warheads for Pakistan's military. Because investigators had been tracking the funding for this so-called "Islamic Bomb" back to Saudi Arabia, under Bush security restrictions, the inquiry was stymied. (The restrictions were lifted, the agent told me without a hint of dark humor, on September 11.)

Dr. A. Q. Khan is the Dr. Strangelove of Pakistan, the "father" of their bomb and, says a former associate, a crusader for its testing . . . on humans. On April 25, 1998, Kahn met at the Kushab Research Center with General Jehangir Karamat, then army chief of staff, to plan a possible preemptive nuclear strike on New Delhi, India. The Saudis lit a fuse under this demented scheme by telling Pakistan intelligence that Israel had shipped India warplanes in preparation for a conventional attack on Pakistan. We only know these details because a young researcher who claims he was at the meeting wrote a horrified letter threatening to make the plan to bomb India public, a threat which appears to have halted the scheme. After writing down his objections, the whistle-blower, Iftikhar Khan-Chaudhry, ran for his life to London, then the USA, seeking asylum. Khan-Chaudhry, when questioned, seemed to know too little to be the top nuclear physicist he claimed, and far too much about A. Q. Khan's bomb factory to be the tile company accountant Pakistan claims. Pakistan police, failing to arrest him, jailed, beat and raped his wife, suggesting they wanted him to keep secret something more interesting than bookkeeping methods. Whether his story was real or bogus, I can't possibly tell. The point is that intelligence agencies under Clinton, based on many other leads as well, were following up on the Saudi connection until the Bush team interfered. - Greg Palast

posted by George Thomas Kysor 7:31 AM

Sunday, February 08, 2004

A Nation Damned 

We are a nation damned.

There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We are past being able to pretend otherwise, no matter what comfort might be found in the deception. The United States has invaded and conquered a foreign nation under false pretexts. President Bush and his cronies lied us all into a war.

But that is not why we are damned.

The culmination of decades of accumulated overspending by the government has created an aggregate debt for the United States federal and state governments of $14 trillion dollars. That’s fourteen million million dollars. Or, to put it in a more personal scale, more than $48,000 for every single living human being in the United States, plus the accumulating interest.

The interest on that government debt now exceeds all the personal income tax collected by that government. That means that the government isn’t keeping up with the interest on the debt, let alone able to pay down the principle. Even before the wars started with lies, the US Government was sinking deeper into debt by one third of a trillion dollars every year. With Bush’s war, the debt is increasing at another half trillion every year just at the Federal level. And because the federal Government, struggling with payments on past debts, is sending less money back to the states, the states are sinking deeper into debt as well.

But that is not why we are damned.

The national fiscal crisis is accelerating because of soaring unemployment, and the forced migration of workers from higher paying jobs to lower paying ones. This is occurring for two reasons. The first is that as tax revenues falter, the cash-strapped government raises tax rates. This increases the cost of products and services inside the United States without increasing their quality or desirability. Indeed American companies, struggling to keep prices competitive, are forced to sacrifice quality.

As an inevitable result, American companies have either been driven out of business by foreign competition able to sell superior products at lower prices, or been forced to outsource their own operations to regions with lower tax burdens.

The US Government attempted to conceal this loss of manufacturing with the so-called “Service Economy”, the ludicrous notion that one can prosper a nation by doing each other’s laundry for a fee. But while the moving of cash back and forth for services created more opportunities for taxation, fewer and fewer products were being made within the United States for sales to foreign countries. All the while, Americans were buying foreign-made products because they were of better quality and lower price than American products. Indeed many products needed for every day life are simply not made in the USA any more. When Ampex invented the VCR, they did not even bother approaching American manufacturers but licensed directly to the Japanese. When Seymour Cray was building his supercomputers, the chips he needed were only available from Japanese manufacturers.

Money is flowing out of the country at a billion and a half dollars per day. And as government debt drives taxes higher, the situation can only get worse.

But that is not why we are damned.

Despite the huge government debt, despite the loss of manufacturing over the last 30 years, despite soaring unemployment, despite American women and children sleeping in alleys and eating out of trash cans, the United States government hands out trillions of dollars as gifts to their friends (who used to be their enemies) and to make war on their enemies (who used to be their friends).

But that is not why we are damned.

Maybe the problem is the Congress. Congress is supposed to represent the people, but a body composed of millionaires and lawyers can hardly be expected to understand how to actually make things work. Maybe Congress would better serve the people if it were made up of teachers, doctors, road engineers, factory workers, bakers, people who actually know how to make a nation function, build an infrastructure, and know what it is like to have to live paycheck to paycheck in a nation where the government makes more money off of your work than you do and is always asking for more.

But that is not why we are damned.

We are damned because we know all the above and do nothing. Like the Germans of 1930s Germany we see Der Fuhrer trying to distract the populace from the self-serving choices the government makes by creating a war with lies and deceptions, yet stay silent, less we be accused of being traitors to the national security. We voice our outrage when a rock star bares her breast at a sporting event, because rock stars cannot after all hurt us, raise our taxes, or conscript our children to be crippled or killed in wars. But we remain silent, or at best speak in hushed tones with a trusted few of our concerns about the government, which does hurt us, which does raise our taxes, and which has and continues to conscript our children to be crippled or killed in wars.

We are damned by our silence. We are damned by our inaction. We are damned by our fear to speak out. We are damned by our weakness. We are damned by being sheep under a government of wolves.

We are damned unless and until you realize that your anger and outrage must be targeted where it is needed, not just where it is harmless. We are damned by our willingness to be angry with those who cannot affect our lives, while remaining too afraid to be angry with those who can. We are damned because individuals who refuse to obey the law morally offend us, but we remain enablers of a government that refuses to obey the Constitution. We are damned until WE THE PEOPLE remember that we ARE a people, and that this nation is US.

The President is not the nation. The media is not the nation. The selfish desires of a powerful few are not the nation. The Congress is not the nation.

This nation is 288 million teachers, doctors, bricklayers, road layers, bridging engineers, railroad workers, bakers, grocers, and thousands of others who actually make the nation work. But we seem to have forgotten that simple truth, that wisdom conveyed in those first three words to the Preamble to the Constitution, “We The People”.

The Constitution makes it clear that the nation is the people, and the government only a temporary custodian of our national sovereignty that rules by and only by the leave of the people.

We are damned because we have forgotten that the government is the employee of the people, and that like any employee the government is required to obey orders, not to give them.

We are damned because we have forgotten that as the employers of the government, we have the right to decide what our employees can do and more importantly, what they cannot.

We are damned because we have forgotten who is really supposed to be in charge. - What Really Happened

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:14 PM

silence 

My eyes come slowly into focus.
the room is dark,
white walls, black floor.
like a big hole
floating on the darkness are rows
of perfect, straight old desks.
I hate it.
everything here is all the same
my eyes become bored,
thoughts wander in,
thoughts of nothing more, than silence.
I close my eyes as nothing rings in my ears,
no chattering friend,
no peaceful laughter,
nothing.
just the stillness of the walls,
and the darkness of the floor.

i wrote this poem yesterday during cretive writing at school. i think it expresses how i feel about my life. well, mabye a little. okay, a lot. - Tori

posted by George Thomas Kysor 2:25 PM

A revolution is happening in Seattle 

Attended my first Democratic Caucus Meeting this morning in a local elementary school cafeteria. There were approximately 300 to 400 folks in attendance . Started asking around to other folks in attendance as to how the meeting is conducted but most everyone was a first timer ! Finally asked the guy with the microphone "How many folks attended this caucus in 2000? " And he said "Oh 25 or 30 . "
Should be interesting by the time we get to NOVEMBER! - Alan C (via email from J.V.W.)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 1:56 PM

Saturday, February 07, 2004

The Bush Files 

These documents are drawn from a collection of 19,000 files of Paul H. O'Neill, the U.S. Treasury Secretary for the first two years of the Presidency of George W. Bush. Like all Treasury Secretaries, O'Neill was the top domestic appointment of the President and also a principal of the National Security Council. The files, which range from memoranda to the President to handwritten notes to "sensitive" internal reports, cover a sweeping array of foreign and domestic issues. They also display the attending political and personal matters that often determine policy. They were collected as part of a Treasury Department archiving process in which every item that crossed O'Neill's desk, from every department in government, was copied into a TIF, or image, file. Documents cited in the "The Price of Loyalty" are presented with explanations of context and little comment. They speak, as does all irrefutable evidence, for themselves. (link via email from J.V.W.)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 6:41 PM

Radiolovers.com 

We offer hundreds of vintage radio shows for you to listen to online in mp3 format, all for free. Before the days of video games, shopping malls, MTV, and the Internet, families used to sit in their living room each night to listen to radio shows such as Abbott and Costello, Superman, Groucho Marx, The Avenger, Gunsmoke, Sherlock Homes, and many others. When TV become popular in the 1950's, most of these shows went off the air, but they now live on at websites such as this one and on weekly nostalgia radio broadcasts worldwide. (via Chuck Leake,
Gallo Pinto Group #13357)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 4:05 PM

Ralph, please don't run! 

posted by George Thomas Kysor 10:27 AM

The blogger's dilemma: 

"More importantly; how can I get that [I’m a blogger] stain out of my clothes? My cousins stop talking when I come into the room unless I swear I won’t put it online." - Salam Pax

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:26 AM

Friday, February 06, 2004

Coconut Oil: You Want a Food Loaded with Real Health Benefits? You Want Coconut Oil. 

This is a slightly modified version of Ray Peat's article which can be found at http://www.efn.org/~raypeat/

I have already discussed the many toxic effects of the unsaturated oils, and I have frequently mentioned that coconut oil doesn't have those toxic effects, though it does contain a small amount of the unsaturated oils.

Many people have asked me to write something on coconut oil. I thought I might write a small book on it, but I realize that there are no suitable channels for distributing such a book -- if the seed-oil industry can eliminate major corporate food products that have used coconut oil for a hundred years, they certainly have the power to prevent dealers from selling a book that would affect their market more seriously. For the present, I will just outline some of the virtues of coconut oil.

The unsaturated oils in some cooked foods become rancid in just a few hours, even at refrigerator temperatures, and are responsible for the stale taste of leftover foods. (Eating slightly stale food isn't particularly harmful, since the same oils, even when eaten absolutely fresh, will oxidize at a much higher rate once they are in the body, where they are heated and thoroughly mixed with an abundance of oxygen.)

Coconut oil that has been kept at room temperature for a year has been tested for rancidity, and showed no evidence of it.

Since we would expect the small percentage of unsaturated oils naturally contained in coconut oil to become rancid, it seems that the other (saturated) oils have an antioxidative effect:

I suspect that the dilution keeps the unstable unsaturated fat molecules spatially separated from each other, so they can't interact in the destructive chain reactions that occur in other oils.

To interrupt chain-reactions of oxidation is one of the functions of antioxidants, and it is possible that a sufficient quantity of coconut oil in the body has this function. It is well established that dietary coconut oil reduces our need for vitamin E, but I think its antioxidant role is more general than that, and that it has both direct and indirect antioxidant activities.

Coconut oil is unusually rich in short and medium chain fatty acids. Shorter chain length allows fatty acids to be metabolized without use of the carnitine transport system. Mildronate protects cells against stress partly by opposing the action of carnitine, and comparative studies showed that added carnitine had the opposite effect, promoting the oxidation of unsaturated fats during stress, and increasing oxidative damage to cells.

I suspect that a degree of saturation of the oxidative apparatus by short-chain fatty acids has a similar effect -- that is, that these very soluble and mobile short-chain saturated fats have priority for oxidation, because they don't require carnitine transport into the mitochondrion, and that this will tend to inhibit oxidation of the unstable, peroxidizable unsaturated fatty acids.

When Albert Schweitzer operated his clinic in tropical Africa, he said it was many years before he saw any cases of cancer, and he believed that the appearance of cancer was caused by the change to the European type of diet. In the l920s, German researchers showed that mice on a fat-free diet were practically free of cancer.

Since then, many studies have demonstrated a very close association between consumption of unsaturated oils and the incidence of cancer.

Heart damage is easily produced in animals by feeding them linoleic acid; this "essential" fatty acid turned out to be the heart toxin in rape-seed oil.

The addition of saturated fat to the experimental heart-toxic oil-rich diet protects against the damage to heart cells.

Immunosuppression was observed in patients who were being "nourished" by intravenous emulsions of "essential fatty acids," and as a result coconut oil is used as the basis for intravenous fat feeding, except in organ-transplant patients. For those patients, emulsions of unsaturated oils are used specifically for their immunosuppressive effects.

General aging, and especially aging of the brain, is increasingly seen as being closely associated with lipid peroxidation.

Several years ago I met an old couple, who were only a few years apart in age, but the wife looked many years younger than her doddering old husband. She was from the Philippines, and she remarked that she always had to cook two meals at the same time, because her husband couldn't adapt to her traditional food. Three times every day, she still prepared her food in coconut oil. Her apparent youth increased my interest in the effects of coconut oil.

In the l960s, Hartroft and Porta gave an elegant argument for decreasing the ratio of unsaturated oil to saturated oil in the diet (and thus in the tissues). They showed that the "age pigment" is produced in proportion to the ratio of oxidants to antioxidants, multiplied by the ratio of unsaturated oils to saturated oils.

More recently, a variety of studies have demonstrated that ultraviolet light induces peroxidation in unsaturated fats, but not saturated fats, and that this occurs in the skin as well as in the lab.

Rabbit experiments, and studies of humans, showed that the amount of unsaturated oil in the diet strongly affects the rate at which aged, wrinkled skin develops.

The unsaturated fat in the skin is a major target for the aging and carcinogenic effects of ultraviolet light, though not necessarily the only one.

In the l940s, farmers attempted to use cheap coconut oil for fattening their animals, but they found that it made them lean, active and hungry. For a few years, an antithyroid drug was found to make the livestock get fat while eating less food, but then it was found to be a strong carcinogen, and it also probably produced hypothyroidism in the people who ate the meat.

By the late l940s, it was found that the same antithyroid effect, causing animals to get fat without eating much food, could be achieved by using soy beans and corn as feed.

Later, an animal experiment fed diets that were low or high in total fat, and in different groups the fat was provided by pure coconut oil, or a pure unsaturated oil, or by various mixtures of the two oils. At the end of their lives, the animals' obesity increased directly in proportion to the ratio of unsaturated oil to coconut oil in their diet, and was not related to the total amount of fat they had consumed.

That is, animals which ate just a little pure unsaturated oil were fat, and animals which ate a lot of coconut oil were lean.

G. W. Crile and his wife found that the metabolic rate of people in Yucatan, where coconut is a staple food, averaged 25% higher than that of people in the United States.

In a hot climate, the adaptive tendency is to have a lower metabolic rate, so it is clear that some factor is more than offsetting this expected effect of high environmental temperatures. The people there are lean, and recently it has been observed that the women there have none of the symptoms we commonly associate with the menopause.

By l950, then, it was established that unsaturated fats suppress the metabolic rate, apparently creating hypothyroidism.

Over the next few decades, the exact mechanisms of that metabolic damage were studied. Unsaturated fats damage the mitochondria, partly by suppressing the reparatory enzyme, and partly by causing generalized oxidative damage. The more unsaturated the oils are, the more specifically they suppress tissue response to thyroid hormone, and transport of the hormone on the thyroid transport protein.

Plants evolved a variety of toxins designed to protect themselves from "predators," such as grazing animals. Seeds contain a variety of toxins, that seem to be specific for mammalian enzymes, and the seed oils themselves function to block protein digestive enzymes in the stomach.

The thyroid hormone is formed in the gland by the action of a protein digestive enzyme, and the unsaturated oils also inhibit that enzyme. Similar protein digestive enzymes involved in clot removal and immune function appear to be similarly inhibited by these oils.

Just as metabolism is "activated" by consumption of coconut oil, which prevents the inhibiting effect of unsaturated oils, other inhibited processes, such as clot removal and immune function, will probably tend to be restored by continuing use of coconut oil.

Brain tissue is very rich in complex forms of fats.

The experiment (around 1978) in which pregnant mice were given diets containing either coconut oil or unsaturated oil showed that brain development was superior in the young mice whose mothers ate coconut oil.

Because coconut oil supports thyroid function, and thyroid governs brain development, including myelination, the result might simply reflect the difference between normal and hypothyroid individuals.

However, in 1980, experimenters demonstrated that young rats fed milk containing soy oil incorporated the oil directly into their brain cells, and had structurally abnormal brain cells as a result.

Lipid oxidation occurs during seizures, and antioxidants such as vitamin E have some anti-seizure activity. Currently, lipid oxidation is being found to be involved in the nerve cell degeneration of Alzheimer's disease.

Various fractions of coconut oil are coming into use as "drugs," meaning that they are advertised as treatments for diseases. Butyric acid is used to treat cancer, lauric and myristic acids to treat virus infections, and mixtures of medium-chain fats are sold for weight loss.

Purification undoubtedly increases certain effects, and results in profitable products, but in the absence of more precise knowledge, I think the whole natural product, used as a regular food, is the best way to protect health.

The shorter-chain fatty acids have strong, unpleasant odors; for a couple of days after I ate a small amount of a medium-chain triglyceride mixture, my skin oil emitted a rank, goaty smell. Some people don't seem to have that reaction, and the benefits might outweigh the stink, but these things just haven't been in use long enough to know whether they are safe.

Treating any complex natural product as the drug industry does, as a raw material to be fractionated in the search for "drug" products, is risky, because the relevant knowledge isn't sought in the search for an association between a single chemical and a single disease.




While the toxic unsaturated paint-stock oils, especially safflower, soy, corn and linseed (flaxseed) oils, have been sold to the public precisely for their drug effects, all of their claimed benefits were false.

When people become interested in coconut oil as a "health food," the huge seed-oil industry -- operating through their shills -- are going to attack it as an "unproved drug."

While components of coconut oil have been found to have remarkable physiological effects (as antihistamines, antiinfectives/antiseptics, promoters of immunity, glucocorticoid antagonist, nontoxic anticancer agents, for example).

The cholesterol-lowering fiasco for a long time centered on the ability of unsaturated oils to slightly lower serum cholesterol. For years, the mechanism of that action wasn't known, which should have suggested caution. Now, it seems that the effect is just one more toxic action, in which the liver defensively retains its cholesterol, rather than releasing it into the blood.

Large scale human studies have provided overwhelming evidence that whenever drugs, including the unsaturated oils, were used to lower serum cholesterol, mortality increased, from a variety of causes including accidents, but mainly from cancer.

Since the l930s, it has been clearly established that suppression of the thyroid raises serum cholesterol (while increasing mortality from infections, cancer, and heart disease), while restoring the thyroid hormone brings cholesterol down to normal.

In this situation, however, thyroid isn't suppressing the synthesis of cholesterol, but rather is promoting its use to form hormones and bile salts. When the thyroid is functioning properly, the amount of cholesterol in the blood entering the ovary governs the amount of progesterone being produced by the ovary, and the same situation exists in all steroid-forming tissues, such as the adrenal glands and the brain.

Progesterone and its precursor, pregnenolone, have a generalized protective function: antioxidant, anti-seizure, antitoxin, anti-spasm, anti-clot, anticancer, pro-memory, pro-myelination, pro-attention, etc. Any interference with the formation of cholesterol will interfere with all of these exceedingly important protective functions.

As far as the evidence goes, it suggests that coconut oil, added regularly to a balanced diet, lowers cholesterol to normal by promoting its conversion into pregnenolone.

Coconut-eating cultures in the tropics have consistently lower cholesterol than people in the U.S. Everyone that I know who uses coconut oil regularly happens to have cholesterol levels of about 160, while eating mainly cholesterol rich foods (eggs, milk, cheese, meat, shellfish). I encourage people to eat sweet fruits, rather than starches, if they want to increase their production of cholesterol, since fructose has that effect.

Many people see coconut oil in its hard, white state, and -- as a result of their training watching television or going to medical school -- associate it with the cholesterol-rich plaques in blood vessels. Those lesions in blood vessels are caused mostly by lipid oxidation of unsaturated fats, and relate to stress, because adrenaline liberates fats from storage, and the lining of blood vessels is exposed to high concentrations of the blood-borne material.

In the body, incidentally, the oil can't exist as a solid, since it liquefies at 76 degrees. (Incidentally, the viscosity of complex materials isn't a simple matter of averaging the viscosity of its component materials; cholesterol and saturated fats sometimes lower the viscosity of cell components.)

Most of the images and metaphors relating to coconut oil and cholesterol that circulate in our culture are false and misleading. I offer a counter-image, which is metaphorical, but it is true in that it relates to lipid oxidation, which is profoundly important in our bodies. After a bottle of safflower oil has been opened a few times, a few drops that get smeared onto the outside of the bottle begin to get very sticky, and hard to wash off.

This property is why it is a valued base for paints and varnishes, but this varnish is chemically closely related to the age pigment that forms "liver spots" on the skin, and similar lesions in the brain, heart, blood vessels, lenses of the eyes, etc. The image of "hard, white saturated coconut oil" isn't relevant to the oil's biological action, but the image of "sticky varnish-like easily oxidized unsaturated seed oils" is highly relevant to their toxicity.

The ability of some of the medium chain saturated fatty acids in coconut oil to inhibit the liver's formation of fat very likely synergizes with the pro-thyroid effect, in allowing energy to be used, rather than stored.

When fat isn't formed from carbohydrate, the sugar is available for use, or for
storage as glycogen. Therefore, shifting from unsaturated fats in foods to coconut oil involves several anti-stress processes, reducing our need for the adrenal hormones. Decreased blood sugar is a basic signal for the release of adrenal hormones.

Unsaturated oil tends to lower the blood sugar in at least three basic ways.

It damages mitochondria, causing respiration to be uncoupled from energy production, meaning that fuel is burned without useful effect. It suppresses the activity of the respiratory enzyme (directly, and through its anti-thyroid actions), decreasing the respiratory production of energy.

And it tends to direct carbohydrate into fat production, making both stress and obesity more probable. For those of us who use coconut oil consistently, one of the most noticeable changes is the ability to go for several hours without eating, and to feel hungry without having symptoms of hypoglycemia.

One of the stylish ways to promote the use of unsaturated oils is to refer to their presence in "cell membranes," and to claim that they are essential for maintaining "membrane fluidity." As I have mentioned above, it is the ability of the unsaturated fats, and their breakdown products, to interfere with enzymes and transport proteins, which accounts for many of their toxic effects, so they definitely don't just harmlessly form "membranes."

They probably bind to all proteins, and disrupt some of them, but for some reason their affinity for proteolytic and respiration-related enzymes is particularly obvious. (I think the chemistry of this association is going to give us some important insights into the nature of organisms).

Unsaturated fats are slightly more water-soluble than fully saturated fats, and so they do have a greater tendency to concentrate at interfaces between water and fats or proteins, but there are relatively few places where these interfaces can be usefully and harmlessly occupied by unsaturated fats, and at a certain point, an excess becomes harmful.

We don't want "membranes" forming where there shouldn't be membranes. The fluidity or viscosity of cell surfaces is an extremely complex subject, and the degree of viscosity has to be appropriate for the function of the cell. Interestingly, in some cells, such as the cells that line the air sacs of the lungs, cholesterol and one of the saturated fatty acids found in coconut oil can increase the fluidity of the cell surface.

In red blood cells, which have sometimes been wrongly described as "hemoglobin enclosed in a cell membrane," it has been known for a long time that lipid oxidation of unsaturated fats weakens the cellular structure, causing the cells to be destroyed prematurely.

Lipid oxidation products lower the rigidity of regions of cells considered to be membranes. But the red blood cell is actually more like a sponge in structure, consisting of a "skeleton" of proteins, which (if not damaged by oxidation) can hold its shape, even when the hemoglobin has been removed. Oxidants damage the protein structure, and it is this structural damage which in turn increases the "fluidity" of the associated fats.

So, it is probably true that in many cases the liquid unsaturated oils do increase "membrane fluidity," but it is now clear that in at least some of those cases the "fluidity" corresponds to the chaos of a damaged cell protein structure. (N. V. Gorbunov, "Effect of structural modification of membrane proteins on lipid-protein interactions in the human erythrocyte membrane," Bull. Exp. Biol. & Med. 116(11), 1364-67. 1993.

Although I had stopped using the unsaturated seed oils years ago, and supposed that I wasn't heavily saturated with toxic unsaturated fat, when I first used coconut oil I saw an immediate response, that convinced me my metabolism was chronically inhibited by something that was easily alleviated by "dilution" or molecular competition.

I had put a tablespoonful of coconut oil on some rice I had for supper, and half an hour later while I was reading, I noticed I was breathing more deeply than normal. I saw that my skin was pink, and I found that my pulse was faster than normal -- about 98, I think. After an hour or two, my pulse and breathing returned to normal.

Every day for a couple of weeks I noticed the same response while I was digesting a small amount of coconut oil, but gradually it didn't happen any more, and I increased my daily consumption of the oil to about an ounce. I kept eating the same foods as before, except that I added about 200 or 250 calories per day as coconut oil.

Apparently the metabolic surges that happened at first were an indication that my body was compensating for an anti-thyroid substance by producing more thyroid hormone; when the coconut oil relieved the inhibition, I experienced a moment of slight hyperthyroidism, but after a time the inhibitor became less effective, and my body adjusted by producing slightly less thyroid hormone.

But over the next few months, I saw that my weight was slowly and consistently decreasing. It had been steady at 185 pounds for 25 years, but over a period of six months it dropped to about 175 pounds. I found that eating more coconut oil lowered my weight another few pounds, and eating less caused it to increase.

The anti-obesity effect of coconut oil is clear in all of the animal studies, and in my friends who eat it regularly.

It is now hard to get it in health food stores, since Hain stopped selling it. The Spectrum product looks and feels a little different to me, and I suppose the particular type of tree, region, and method of preparation can account for variations in the consistency and composition of the product.

The unmodified natural oil is called "76 degree melt," since that is its natural melting temperature. One bottle from a health food store was labeled "natural coconut oil, 92% unsaturated oil," and it had the greasy consistency of old lard. I suspect that someone had confused palm oil (or something worse) with coconut oil, because it should be about 96% saturated fatty acids. - Raymond Peat

DR. MERCOLA'S COMMENT:
I have great respect for Dr. Peat's work. He is the main scientist that influenced Dr. John Lee with his work on progesterone. Dr. Peat does a terrific job of describing some of the many reasons why you should strongly consider replacing other oils you use with coconut oil. He is a biochemist, however, so his writing can be a bit difficult to understand at times: check out "Experience the Incredible Health & Weight Loss Benefits of the Premier Coconut Oil" for the benefits in straightforward terms, and to find out which coconut oil I most highly recommend and why

Raw coconut is outstanding, and I also use shredded coconut in my vegetable juice pulp. These are another great way to obtain the health benefits of coconut.

You should definitely consider switching to coconut oil exclusively for all your saut?ing and cooking needs. Coconut oil contains the healthy (and weight reducing!) form of saturated fat, it does not form dangerous trans fatty acids that even olive oil does, and it is far healthier than the other vegetable oils out there.

Also read how coconut oil is exceptionally healthy for your skin, preventing wrinkles and more.

Finally, if you are using canola oil and are not yet aware of the problems with this oil, please click on the links below.

Related Articles:

Canola oil is an Industrial Oil Not Fit For Human Consumption

Canola Oil Update
[Bruce Fife, ND wrote a book about cocnut oil.]

posted by George Thomas Kysor 8:44 PM

A Modest Proposal [excerpt] 

Let me propose that if the Bush administration really wants to find out what went wrong with our pre-war intelligence on Iraq, it should appoint a commission consisting of first-class investigative reporters, including first and foremost the New Yorker magazine's Seymour Hersh and the Atlantic Monthly's James Fallows. - Chalmers Johnson
Published on Thursday, February 5, 2004 by TomDispatch.com
© 2004 Chalmers Johnson
© 2004 TomDispatch.com

posted by George Thomas Kysor 6:54 PM

Bush was grounded. 

Joyce Riley, spokesperson of The American Gulf War Veterans Association revealed on air in a two hour “white paper” report Feb. 4, 2004 on The Power Hour radio show, (www.thepowerhour.com) that George W. Bush’s military records indicate that he was not present for his entire six year required service to the military. Even more shocking and significant is that he did, in fact, deny a direct order, during time of war, and was suspended from flying. The debate may rage on the major networks about whether or not he was AWOL, however the documentation exists and is available at http://users.cis.net/coldfeet/document.htm

posted by George Thomas Kysor 5:26 PM

He was only following his underlings.  

Pardon me, but when you pretend to have a certainty you don’t have about so serious a matter as war, you are lying. Bush left no room for doubt. He didn’t say, “According to our best intelligence, Iraq has weapons of mass murder and is prepared to use them on us. Of course we can’t be absolutely sure, but we can’t afford to take chances.” He made the unqualified assertion that there was no alternative to war. - Joe Sobran, an excerpt from his column, An Honest Mistake.

posted by George Thomas Kysor 5:14 PM

The Virus Underground by CLIVE THOMPSON

posted by George Thomas Kysor 4:30 PM

NEW INFORMATION ON IRAQ'S POSSESSION OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION [excerpt]
I, along with nearly every Senator in this Chamber, in that secure
room of this Capitol complex, was not only told there were weapons of
mass destruction--specifically chemical and biological--but I was
looked at straight in the face and told that Saddam Hussein had the
means of delivering those biological and chemical weapons of mass
destruction by unmanned drones, called UAVs, unmanned aerial vehicles.
Further, I was looked at straight in the face and told that UAVs could
be launched from ships off the Atlantic coast to attack eastern
seaboard cities of the United States. - Senator Nelson (D) of Florida, Congressional Record: January 28, 2004 (Senate) Page S311-S312 (via Eric,
Gallo Pinto Group #13337)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 8:14 AM

Thursday, February 05, 2004

ANTIHEROS 

B: Did you just call her boobs "the villains?"
T: What? No! I said, "If you're willing."
Me: I'm totally calling my boobs the villains from now on. McNeil and Lehrer is getting tired. - Mighty Girl, famous among dozens.
THAT ONE GUY
There's something about the confidence of a straight guy wearing pink tennis shoes that suggests he'd be good in bed. - Mighty Girl

posted by George Thomas Kysor 4:54 PM

Book Report: Spinning on the Axis of Evil: America's War Against Iraq by Scott Taylor
Spinning on the Axis of Evil documents the trips Canada's top war reporter has made to Iraq since 2000. Each time, the author spent days traveling the cities and countryside, often winding up in considerable physical danger, just to find out what people were saying, doing, and thinking. Unlike the usual "embedded" Iraq war reportage-lite, Taylor's in-depth focus results in a unique and unforgettable narrative that adds considerably to our understanding of America's most destructive intervention since Vietnam.

Soldier-turned-writer Scott Taylor first won the enmity of the Canadian military brass for exposing corruption in the ranks, and then scrambled through various Balkan war zones, winding up in all the wrong places at just the right time. And, while continuing to publish a Canadian military magazine (Esprit de Corps), he made television appearances as an analyst for Situation Report and CNN. Far from being the typical retired quarterback-commentator, Taylor stepped up his travels – and especially, to Iraq.

Taylor's methodical practice of recording the situation on the ground before, during, and after a conflict makes him stand out in this age of parachute journalists blinded by "the fog of war," as Geraldo once put it. Having spent years researching, visiting and making contacts, Taylor knew in advance how to operate in Iraq. Most importantly, Taylor was not cowed into writing the kind of laudatory review that the US government and its neoconservative warmongers demanded.

An Apt Title

What kind of book is this? Well, its title speaks volumes. The phrase "Axis of Evil" has become an artifact in the history of the war ever since President Bush first used it in early 2002 as a manifesto against Saddam Hussein. Prefacing it with "spinning" simultaneously alludes to the vertiginous, chaotic state of Iraq that followed Bush's remark and subsequent war; as well as to the propaganda spin both the US government and the Hussein Administration dished out to journalists. As Taylor writes, "…the truth was that almost all of the media's reporting on this conflict was being closely monitored and controlled by whichever faction or organization they were in contact with" (p. 177). Rarely does a book's title sum up so well its major themes.

The Realities of an Unreal Media: a Kosovo Prelude

Taylor's narrative begins in Belgrade, in the penultimate moments of NATO's 1999 bombing of Kosovo. This provides overlap between the author's two projects – the Balkans and Iraq. First of all, Taylor notes the type of flawed media coverage predominating in Kosovo, which would be resurrected in Iraq 4 years later. The second connection is personal: a Yugoslav embassy official in Canada invited Taylor to lunch at a restaurant owned by an Iraqi immigrant, a man who would later prove instrumental in arranging Taylor's initial contacts in Iraq.

The first chapter summarizes some of the author's prior observations recorded in Inat: Images of Serbia and the Kosovo Conflict, an excoriating condemnation of the US government lies that were used to sell an unnecessary and destructive war – something that would happen once again in Iraq four years later. As in Iraq, the media's war efforts were expedited by a general ignorance of the Balkans. Taylor's best example here is a depressingly hilarious telephone exchange he had with a "young research assistant" from the Canadian Broadcasting Company. On 3 June 1999, the 72nd day of NATO's air campaign, Belgrade was under fire yet again from allied planes. Taylor, one of the few Western journalists there at the time, was asked by the research assistant about the "mood among the Albanians," now that a peace agreement had been signed. Patiently explaining that Belgrade was over 400 kilometers from the refugee camps in Macedonia, Taylor reminded her that the war was very much still on, peace agreement notwithstanding.

Not to be deterred, the CBC assistant asked whether the Serbs in Belgrade were "happy for" the refugees, now that they were going back to Kosovo. Taylor explained that, lacking power and water and, "…on the receiving end of yet another air attack," the Serbs probably had more important things to think about "than the mood of the Albanians."

To this quite sensible response, Taylor's interlocutor huffed, "…that is rather insensitive of them, don't you think?" Brushing off this absurdity, our narrator asked if the CBC would be interested in the fact that air raids were continuing, despite the announced peace deal. No thanks, said the assistant: "…tonight's lead story is about the peace celebrations, so the air attack would only be confusing to our viewers" (pp. 11-12).

Categorizing the Axis

This is the reality of what independent journalists like Taylor would soon be up against in Iraq. Colossal ignorance of geography, culture, history, and society, combined with the slickest Pentagon PR efforts ever, helped sell the US government line. When we add to this the omnipresent factor of cutthroat competition among journalists, it's not hard to see how the war was spun.

Helpfully, the book contains a short history of Iraq in the 20th century. Taylor shows how, far from being a recent phenomenon, American (and earlier, British) intervention has formed and deformed the entire Middle East. From his opening quote, attributed to Henry Kissinger ("oil is much too important a commodity to be left in the hands of the Arabs"), we are reminded that the history of Iraq is inextricably intertwined with the story of war for natural resources.

Background to a Tragedy

Following his denunciation of Kosovo "spin," and the Iraq history lesson, Taylor reminisces on his first visits to Iraq (during the 1991 Gulf War). The author laments the fact that his inexperience made him produce coverage that was admittedly "..naïve and heavy on the rah-rah" (p. 16). Learning more about Iraq, however, caused Taylor to change his views.

In what follows, Taylor provides damning evidence against the interventionism of the past three American administrations. He reminds us that the Gulf War never actually stopped; it merely took a different form between 1991-2003. After the US intervention, Saddam solidified his tyrannical rule, cracking down on Kurdish and Shiite uprisings. Meanwhile, a silent war was being waged against the Iraqi people: UN sanctions and the wasteland of decaying munitions (like depleted uranium) wreaked havoc with their health. The author quotes former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright who, when confronted on 60 Minutes with the reality of 500,000 Iraqi children dead because of sanctions said, "…we think it is worth it" (p. 44). The number of photographs detailing these devastating results of sanctions and war is a major (and gruesome) asset of Spinning on the Axis of Evil.

Taylor also reminds us that the Clinton Administration continued regular (if sometimes unreported) bombings. What would be considered a state of war in most countries was treated as everyday reality by Iraqis. Further, the author shows (pp. 39-40) how the vaunted "oil-for-food" program was just a UN shakedown: the scheme "…provided the perpetually cash-strapped international agency with a $600 million windfall." The Iraqi government, faced with crippling sanctions, could only qualify for contracts tightly controlled by the US, and sold its oil at a loss – and, with damage to its dilapidated oil wells.

In contrast to the optimistic predictions of Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Donald Rumsfeld in early 2003, Taylor details how the cumulative effect of sanctions created a festering anti-Americanism that would emerge to deadly effect later:

"…the only reason Iraqis were suffering and dying, they (the Americans) said, was because of Saddam's personal greed and power-mongering, not because the sanctions had created shortages. For the average Iraqi, however, the delays and sanctions became a focus for simmering anger and frustration. If the United States' intention was to undermine the people's support for Saddam Hussein, then the plan backfired.

"…instead, the object of the Iraqis' animosity was the United States, the country they blamed for the ongoing embargo" (p. 41).

It would not have taken a genius to predict that operation "Iraqi Freedom" would be considered a hostile invasion, and not a liberating one. However, the US government banked on its citizens' collective ignorance – and was proven right. Reading this book helps Americans to understand that the Iraqi reality has always been wildly different than the government claimed. Taylor's photographs and first-hand testimony provide compelling evidence that a massive human tragedy has taken place in Iraq – one for which the United States is largely accountable. After reading this book, even the most sclerotic red-blooded American patriot will have to agree with the author that even if Saddam represented "evil," he "did not have a monopoly on it." - Christopher Deliso (via Free-Market.Net)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 3:05 PM

Wednesday, February 04, 2004

The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (New York: Metropolitan Books; and London: Verso). [excerpts from Present Danger via CTRL Mail Archive]
From the moment the United States assumed the permanent military
domination of the world, it was on its own--feared, hated, corrupt and
corrupting, maintaining "order" through state terrorism and bribery, and
given to megalomaniacal rhetoric and sophistries while virtually inviting
the rest of the world to combine against it. The U.S. had mounted the
Napoleonic tiger and could not get off.

***
Four sorrows, it seems to me, are certain to be visited on the United
States. Their cumulative effect guarantees that the U.S. will cease to
resemble the country outlined in the Constitution of 1787. First, there
will be a state of perpetual war, leading to more terrorism against
Americans wherever they may be and a spreading reliance on nuclear weapons
among smaller nations as they try to ward off the imperial juggernaut.
Second is a loss of democracy and Constitutional rights as the presidency
eclipses Congress and is itself transformed from a co-equal "executive
branch" of government into a military junta. Third is the replacement of
truth by propaganda, disinformation, and the glorification of war, power,
and the military legions. Lastly, there is bankruptcy, as the United States
pours its economic resources into ever more grandiose military projects and
shortchanges the education, health, and safety of its citizens
***
The first Iraq War produced four classes of casualties--killed in action,
wounded in action, killed in accidents (including "friendly fire"), and
injuries and illnesses that appeared only after the end of hostilities.
During 1990 and 1991, some 696,778 individuals served in the Persian Gulf
as elements of Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm. Of these
148 were killed in battle, 467 were wounded in action, and 145 were killed
in accidents, producing a total of 760 casualties, quite a low number given
the scale of the operations.
However, as of May 2002, the Veterans Administration (VA) reported that an
additional 8,306 soldiers had died and 159,705 were injured or ill as a
result of service-connected "exposures" suffered during the war. Even more
alarmingly, the VA revealed that 206,861 veterans, almost a third of
General Schwarzkopf's entire army, had filed claims for medical care,
compensation, and pension benefits based on injuries and illnesses caused
by combat in 1991. After reviewing the cases, the agency has classified
168,011 applicants as "disabled veterans." In light of these deaths and
disabilities, the casualty rate for the first Gulf War is actually a
staggering 29.3%.
A significant probable factor in these deaths and disabilities is depleted
uranium (or DU)...

***

A year and a half after September 11, 2001, at least two articles of the
Bill of Rights were dead letters--the fourth prohibiting unwarranted
searches and seizures and the sixth guaranteeing a jury of peers, the
assistance of an attorney in offering a defense, the right to confront
one's accusers, protection against self-incrimination, and, most
critically, the requirement that the government spell out its charges and
make them public. The second half of Thomas Jefferson's old warning--"When
the government fears the people, there is liberty; when the people fear the
government, there is tyranny"--clearly applies.

***
There is only one development that could conceivably stop this cancerous
process, and that is for the people to retake control of Congress, reform
it and the election laws to make it a genuine assembly of democratic
representatives, and cut off the supply of money to the Pentagon and the
Central Intelligence Agency - Chalmers Johnson, president of the Japan Policy Research Institute in California and author of Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire.

posted by George Thomas Kysor 3:46 PM

Anybody Seen America? 

Mail arrives, telling me that by going to Mexico I have sold out, fled, abandoned the United States. I’m a coward, some of my correspondents say, and a traitor, just like Lord Haw Haw, Kim Philby, Jane Fonda. I’m probably a devotee of Quisling. (Actually I’ve never quizzled in my life.)

(OK, OK, I’m sorry.)

Anyway, they’re upset, which is irrational. They think that just because I went to Mexico, I left the US. They don’t understand. I didn’t leave the United States. It left me. It was a bait-and-switch operation. I signed on to one country, and they slipped another in under me. I want my money back.

In the country where I grew up, if you found a naked intruder in your daughter’s bedroom with a Bowie knife and a hard-on, you shot him and arranged to have the rugs cleaned. The sheriff wasn’t greatly interested and the country prosecutor didn’t see anything to prosecute. The scum floating on the gene pool wasn’t a protected species. It wasn’t the driving engine of the culture. It was just scum.

Today you would be charged with the use of excessive force. The cadaver’s family would sue. They would end up with your house unless they just ran you broke with legal bills. The outcome would depend on the racial make-up of you, the intruder, and the jury. Your daughter would be married with grandchildren before the courts reached any conclusion.

Think I’m exaggerating? When I used to have the police beat for the Washington Times in the Yankee capital, the cops told me, dead serious, that if I ever shot an intruder, I should shoot him again to make sure: You can’t afford to have two stories, they said, especially if he’s black which, in Washington, was a foregone conclusion. They’ll hang you, said the cops.

In the country I grew up in, you got on an airplane by walking up these funny little steps with wheels on them. Then you sat down. That’s all you did. I know, I know: You don’t believe this. It’s true. You just walked on. Further, the stewardesses were not merely civil but – so help me – friendly. Flying was actually enjoyable. The seats were big enough that you didn’t sit with your knees beside your ears and your feet in your pockets.

Now, getting aboard is like going into max security at some ghastly penitentiary. I once flew a bit around the old Soviet Union, as distinct from the new one, on a junket. Security was less oppressive, though the food was marginally worse unless you liked green chicken. The service was just as sullen.

Maybe that’s what I miss most about the Old Country. People were courteous. They could afford to be because everyone else was too. It’s hard to be pleasant when the odds are even that the next person you deal with will be an ill-mannered lout who knows he can get away with it.

I think people were courteous also because they lived in an agreeable country and were pretty happy with things. The new country seems angry – quietly so, not sure what to do about it, but looking for someone to hit.

Yet further still, in the old country they didn’t have these funny little Japanese cars with itsy-bitsy four-bangers. Nope. They had great virile monsters thirty feet long with eight huge cylinders like buckets. A dog could have slept in them. Sure, those rocket-barges were probably ridiculous and left a trail of parts that fell off because quality control wasn’t that great, but they were real cars. They embodied a spirit I liked. Today cars seem to be designed with transvestites in mind.

The Old Country music was vibrant, vigorous, much of it springing from the great black bluesmen of Mississippi and then Chicago, some of it from the mountains and the jazz dens of the big cities. In the music of the new country, the whites whine and the blacks grunt angrily. From Tampa Red to rap is a long way down.

In the country I signed on to, things worked on the principle of individual responsibility. If you robbed a bank, which people generally didn’t, everyone figured you did it because you decided to, and you went to jail and everyone was satisfied, except you, which was the idea. Most people knew how to behave, and did. It saved a lot on police departments and you could walk around at night.

In the new country of course everything is somebody else’s fault, unless you are a white male, in which case everything is your fault. Never mind that if it weren’t for white males everybody else would be living on low-hanging fruit and saying “ugga-wugga” because they couldn’t figure out how to make a hemi-head big-block to crash into things with. Or figure out how to make anything else.

In the old country, the government was pretty much benign or actually useful. It built roads and largely left you alone. The public schools were not great but neither were they terrible. People ran their own lives. The federal government tended to be somewhere else, which was a splendid place for it, and you mostly didn’t notice.

In the country that is now where America used to be, the government is the cause of most major problems instead of a solution, however inefficient, to a fair number of them. The government keeps you from educating your children, holds standards down, prevents you from hiring the best people you can find to work in your business. It won’t allow local jurisdictions to control crime, prevents localities from enforcing such moral standards as they see fit, virtually illegalizes the religion of most of the population, and generally won’t permit people to live as they like.

Now, I used to be fond of the United States. Granted, I wasn’t much of a patriot. The word nowadays seems to mean one who doesn’t so much love his country as to dislike other people’s. I figured live and let live. A lot of other countries struck me as fine places. But America was my favorite. It just suited me. I liked the people in their wild variety and the countryside and the music and the brash independence. It wasn’t perfect. Still, given the sorry baseline for comportment in human agglomerations, it was about as good as you could get.

I’m still fond of the United States. I just can’t find it. - Fred Reed

posted by George Thomas Kysor 1:57 PM

Unchaining Liberty 

My two most recent articles - "What Is Anarchy?" and "Save the Universe!" - struck nerves with a few readers of admittedly libertarian persuasions. While some critics offered valid, intelligent questions, a number reflected a common attitude best described as a fear of unsupervised life processes. It is this fear that leads far too many self-proclaimed champions of liberty to remain what I call "umbilical cord libertarians." They enjoy playing around with ideas of liberty, but are terrified by the existential implications of living without some external supervision. While desirous of expanding the range of their own decision-making, they insist on retaining the state "just in case."

Friedrich Hayek addressed what he called the "fear of trusting uncontrolled social forces." Many of those who criticized my views on anarchy and environmentalism, reflect this fear. Some suggest that, in the absence of state regulation, there would be a total breakdown of social order, with looting, killing, and violence running rampant. One reader went so far as to point to the "widespread looting" that took place in Iraq as evidence that "anarchy and property rights cannot peacefully coexist;" a statement made all the more remarkable by the fact that such behavior followed days of heavy bombing and shelling of Baghdad by forces of the American government! For the state to systematically create widespread destruction and disorder, and to have that offered as evidence of the failure of anarchy, represents the kind of twisted reasoning we have come to expect from the White House!

Others suggested that it is the fear of punishment that causes us to obey state rules; that coercion would continue to exist even if there were no political systems (a point I had made in the first article); that an anarchistic society could not "work" because most people would not be prepared for it; and that something called "human nature" would preclude such a system. Such thinking presumes that it would be catastrophic for individuals to exercise complete control over their own lives, but quite reasonable for the state to enjoy a monopoly of such powers over the lives of us all in order to define the purposes and limits of human action. Such a view is underlain by a contradiction rarely addressed in political philosophy. It assumes that the same men and women who are not to be trusted in the management of their own affairs, will suddenly be transformed into selfless servants of an alleged "public interest" when cloaked with the mantle of state authority! Such faith can be maintained only by minds unburdened both by a study of history as well as an awareness that the self-interest that invariably drives us all is a force only to be trusted in the hands of private individuals, and never in coercive collectives.

Critics of my more humorous swipe at politically-driven environmentalists were quick to suggest that I had a calloused view of nature (as though I had no interest in maintaining conditions conducive to life on earth). One very thoughtful reader told me that "nature is to be cherished" because it "is our most direct connection to the divine spirit." Others pointed to the need to control those (particularly corporate enterprises) who dump industrial wastes into rivers or pollutants into the air, activities that constitute trespasses to property boundaries.

Those who insist upon the existence of the state in order to protect people from murderers, thieves, and rapists - a function that even the most powerful state apparatus in history has failed to adequately perform - or to protect nature from private decision-making, reflect Hayek?s concern. We are conditioned through the schools, the media, the state, and other institutions to fear our own autonomy, and to transfer control over our behavior to external agencies. Schools instruct us in what we need to learn; churches define and guide our spiritual quests; the media informs us what we need to know and what actions we should take; the state prescribes, in the smallest detail, the propriety of our conduct, and punishes us for any deviations. We have been well trained in the proposition that others will take the responsibility for our behavior, and that our only role is to conform ourselves to these mandates.

This conditioning is reinforced by periodic episodes of fear generated by institutional authorities, who inform us of dangers we face from seemingly endless sources. We have learned to not only fear others (e.g., murderers, child-abductors, terrorists, racists, polluters) but our own capacities for self-direction. The ease with which the state, after 9/11, was able to mobilize the fears of millions of Americans into a mass-minded frenzy supportive of unprovoked war and unrestrained police powers, is testimony to the symbiotic relationship between state power and individual weakness.

Fear puts us in conflict with both others and ourselves. This is how political systems prosper: by promising to regulate and reconcile the conflicts generated by divisive, political thinking! We have been conditioned to define our sense of responsibility by our willingness to participate in this conflict-ridden enterprise; to employ our energies on behalf of political solutions to political conflict. By our so doing, we become the very problem we believe we are working to overcome.

We deplore the crime in society, and call upon the state to tax and police our neighbors in order to end such violence, unaware that the forcible policies of the state produce violence. We despise bigotry, and call upon the state to punish those who judge others by their race. To bring about such ends, we create "affirmative action" programs and, in the process, become racists ourselves. In the name of respecting the sanctity of human life, we insist upon capital punishment for murderers, a practice that further degrades human life. We have a new respect for nature, and call upon the state to take action against those whose behavior violates our sense of environmental propriety. We thus put ourselves in conflict with our neighbors and, in so doing, diminish the mutual respect upon which a peaceful and orderly social environment depends.

Is it possible for us to break this cycle of social conflict in any other way than for each one of us to withdraw our energies from the process? Can we discover the creative power of change that comes only from within each of us? So consistently has our thinking been embedded in notions of collective power, that most of us are unable to imagine anything so bold as a self-directed form of living. We forget a basic truth that should be evident to any libertarian versed in economics: life functions at the margin. We are born and we die individually. All learning and creativity take place at the margin between the known and the unknown, the established and the novel. We derive our understanding of the world through marginal changes and deviations from the norm (geneticists have a saying: "cherish your mutations"). The study of economics employs marginal utility analysis, and addresses the effects of marginal changes in prices. Even the protection of our lives and property from criminal acts - a function we delude ourselves that the state can perform for us - ultimately depends on our individual defenses against the criminal. Most importantly, perhaps, is the need for each of us to remember that only the individual is the carrier of life on earth.

One of the common themes that runs through readers' responses to my articles is the sense that, while our individual thinking must change if we are to live in peace and liberty, there is little point in focusing upon such methods as long as others remain attached to statist thinking. "I will not change if others do not," would be a succinct way of encapsulating such responses. Their inquiries usually go on to ask: "in the meantime, what can we do?"

What such readers fail to grasp is this essential point: the only way to bring about such changes is to return to the source of the violence and repression that afflicts us: our individual thinking. The query "what can we do?" usually comes down to the question "what can someone else, particularly someone in authority, do to change all of this?" The answer is very clear: there is nothing anyone else can do to end our self-destructive attachments to statism. Because such change originates, marginally, only within our minds, you and I are the only ones who can bring that about. But to do so requires us to confront and break out of the mindset to which we have been conditioned.

I am fond of quoting Carl Jung on this point, because his writing focuses upon the psychological transformations that must occur if we are to transcend the fears and the violence that are tearing apart our world. He states:

if the individual is not truly regenerated in spirit, society cannot be either, for society is the sum total of individuals in need of redemption. I can therefore see it only as a delusion when the Churches try - as apparently they do - to rope the individual into some social organization and reduce him to a condition of diminished responsibility, instead of raising him out of the torpid, mindless mass and making clear to him that he is the one important factor and that the salvation of the world consists in the salvation of the individual soul.

Jung's message underlies my previous two articles to which this one is addressed. Our freedom is inseparably tied to the responsibility we have for both our thinking and actions, a connection that goes to the question of control over our lives. It is only in a system of privately owned property that such qualities coalesce. Individual liberty is a social condition in which each of us enjoys unrestrained decision-making over what is ours, while peace arises from the practice of individuals limiting the scope of their decision-making to the boundaries of their property interests. The anarchistic system of which I write is premised upon the self-ordering nature of private property: I do as I please with what is mine to own and control; I control my actions so as to refrain from extending my decision-making over what is yours. This is where we must begin our inquiry into such offenses as victimizing crimes and environmental pollution: they are intrusions upon the property interests of others; they are trespasses, the failure to respect the inviolability of boundaries.


It should be evident that a system of private property fosters responsibility. If I, alone, control my actions, I, alone, am responsible for what I do. This is not a moral proposition, but a causal one, in much the same way that we can say a tornado was responsible for destroying Uncle Charlie's barn. But to be responsible is to be accountable, particularly to the harshest critic we face in life: ourselves.

Most of us fear this sense of responsibility, which is why individual liberty is such a troublesome proposition to so many people. Walter Kaufmann has written of "decidophobia," the fear of making decisions. If we delude ourselves that we have no control over our lives, then we cannot be held responsible. And if we are not responsible for what we do - even to ourselves - then we must be the victims of other people's decision-making. Is it any wonder that men and women who, having smoked cigarettes for fifty years and developed lung cancer, now want to sue the tobacco companies for the consequences of their own actions, or that alcoholics seek damages from distillers for their cirrhosis of the liver? A recent news story told of a man who brought suit against his local cable television company for turning himself and his family into television addicts! Do you not see the connection between the continuing diminution, by the state, of respect for privately-owned property, and the rise of the "victimization" industry?

If we are to live in peace and liberty, our efforts must be focused upon the only factor within our control to change without generating conflict with others, namely, ourselves? Those who profess such values, but then declare - at least implicitly - "I will not change if others do not," express a convenient way of avoiding responsibility for their lives. After all, what will cause others to change if those who verbalize their support for liberty are not prepared to do so in their own lives?

Such changes must include a willingness on our part to examine our fears, particularly the fears of living in a world of autonomous social forces; fears of ourselves and others. We might begin with a healthy skepticism of those who seek to extend their power over our lives by a daily introduction, via the media, of new hordes of bogeymen waiting at the city gates to invade our lives, and whose intrusions can be countered only by extended regulatory authority over our lives. We might then lose our innocence about all political systems and see them for what they have always been: mechanisms by which self-anointed elites control the lives of the rest of us.

To those readers who, despite my clear expressions, continue to ask: "what can we do?" to reduce statism in our lives, let me offer one minor contribution each one of us can make to this end: whenever you see a news story or hear a politician addressing some "social issue," insist that such issue be redefined for what it is, namely, an invasion of a private property interest. Clarify in your own thinking and that of your friends that "taxation" does not involve an "allocation of society's resources," but is an act of theft, by the state, of private property; that the "war on drugs" is a war against self-ownership; that all forms of government regulation of economic activity involve attacks upon the private property of some persons for the benefit of others.

As you begin to clarify your own thinking, you may find yourself increasingly attracted to methods of handling disputes with others in ways that (a) do not involve the use of state coercion to accomplish desired ends and, thus, foster the social peace that comes from respecting the inviolability of others' property interests; and, (b) extend the range of your capacities to manage your own life and its inherent problems.

To the aforementioned environmentalist who spoke of the need to cherish nature, bear in mind that mankind is also an expression of nature?s wonder, and needs nothing so much right now as the removal of those restraints that compel people to become what they do not choose to be. Try respecting the "divine spirit" as it manifests itself in your neighbor by respecting the inviolability of his property boundaries. If it is your desire to save the kangaroo rat, or a wetland belonging to a farmer, show such respect by negotiating with him, voluntarily, rather than calling upon the state to coerce his obedience to your vision. In so doing, you may end up not only preserving a species or a wetland, but humanity itself. - Butler Shaffer (via Free-Market.Net)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 1:29 PM

Hello? Hello? Is Anyone Willing To Help? 

Ok, so I guess they figured I'd out grow it by the time I was this age. Who is they? Well apparently most people, and what was I suppose to outgrow? My "equine obsession" as some of my friends put it. I've wanted to do this for the rest of my life for as long as I can remember. And now, that I'm old enough to do it, hardly anyone is taking me seriously. I hate having people tell me what I did wrong when I KNOW what I have done wrong. If on the off chance, that I don't know what I've done wrong, I'll ask, trust me. But that's just it, does anyone trusts me on this one? I guess they are just hoping that I will out grow this, and do something productive with my life, because "horses aren't a job, they are a hobby." Well I'm glad that some people believe that, but I don't. I believe your suppose to do something that you like? Well I want to do more than that I want to do what I love, what I eat sleep and dream about doing. I've always been told to follow my dreams, why can't I follow this one? So, I'm just going to keep being that strange girl that doesn't fit in because she wears her boots to school, and has hay in her hair. The person who is looking up horses on the internet all day that people pretend isn't there because she isn't shopping for clothes online. The child who went off to school to ride her horses. The kid who is all worried because she hasn't seen her horse all day, the girl who draws horses on her note pad instead of taking notes, in class. I'm going to be the one who is at the barn at seven in the morning just because I like the way the barn smells first thing in the morning when nobody else is awake yet and the smell of sweet feed, alfalfa and dirty stalls fills the air, while you can hear them waking up and eating their breakfast with sleep in their eyes. I'm going to be the one who crys when the Clydsdale commercial with the donkey comes on durning the superbowl because I tell my friends "its so cute" but really, I want to run with the big guys too. Because, at this rate, I hate to break it to you my "equine obsession" is terminal. - Jessie

posted by George Thomas Kysor 8:52 AM

Tuesday, February 03, 2004

Take Your Politics and Stick It Where The Sun Don't Shine [excerpt] 

I’m tired of wasting my time trying to educate the masses because the masses are too damn dumb and stupid to realize what is happening to them. Republicans follow Bush into the morass and ignore the freedoms they are losing every hour this madman remains in office. Democrats present their own slate of political hacks when anybody with an IQ above that of an average plant should know that not one of them is worth the price of a cup of coffee.

That’s why I’m leaving Capitol Hill Blue and leaving this game to others who still want to waste their time trying to enlighten those who have no wish to learn. Continue your blind partisanship and foolish allegiance to despots who care nothing about you or your needs. These goons exist only for their own satisfaction and lust for power. Feed it if you wish. - DOUG THOMPSON

posted by George Thomas Kysor 3:23 PM

How to Win the War on Terrorism [excerpt] 

(I)n his State of the Union speech, President Bush said that he did not view terrorism as a crime or "a problem to be solved ... with law enforcement." At the same time, however, he called for renewing the Patriot Act: "If these methods are good for hunting criminals, they are more important for hunting terrorists." He then seemed to contradict himself again when he told the U.S. military: "We will give you the resources you need to fight and win the war on terrorism."

These seemingly schizophrenic remarks underscore that the war on terrorism is not well understood. But if understanding is lost on us, what does this mean for the ways we wage the war on terrorism and our prospects for success? - Charles V. Peña

posted by George Thomas Kysor 2:01 PM

Sunday, February 01, 2004

9/11 Coverup Falling Apart [excerpt] 

To most Americans, the first inkling that something was wrong with the official story of the 9/11 catastrophe occurred about a year after the event, when President Bush resisted setting up a panel to investigate the events of that dark day.

Why would he not want to investigate the greatest crime in American history? many wondered. Then, he badly underfunded it. Then, he tried to name infamous power broker Henry Kissinger to head it. Since then, Bush has stonewalled a committee of his own choosing, one stacked with political functionaries that is ill-equipped to conduct either a police or forensic investigation - and, perhaps most revealing, one that accepted the government's version of who the guilty parties were before they examined any evidence!

To date, there has never been anything revealed to the public about how the U.S. government KNOWS that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda were the actual perpetrators of 9/11. - John Kaminski

posted by George Thomas Kysor 7:23 PM

Guest Who!  

I think I may actually have a good idea for a 'meme'. Tell me what you think.
1. If you visit my blog regularly (or think you may from now on) and would like to create a "Guest Entry", send an email with proposed topic to guest1.z.fracture(at)xoxy(dot)net
2. Once I receive the emails, I will select the Guest Author.
3. It will be the only post for the day it goes up, so it will stay at the top of the blog for at least 24 hours.
4. I will create a short introductory paragraph to your guest entry blatantly plugging your wonderful blog.
5. You then create a blog entry plugging my site by directing people to come on by and read your guest post.
6. You then continue the meme by inviting others to be a guest author for your site by posting these instructions.
Like all good memes, I think this will generate some cross traffic. I hope people also select guest authors from interesting sites they may not usually blogroll, but that's up to them.

The topic of your post will be completely up to you, but creativity counts. A really vague topic is fine if you want to get on the list, but can't think of anything specific right now. I'd rather get your email than have you miss this because of a temporary creativity brown-out.

Credit where credit is due, though. I saw Jon's guest post on Azure's blog. That gave me the overall idea. I just had to devise meme-like rules.

If you want a chance to become my Guest Author, go ahead and send that email... any takers? - Al

posted by George Thomas Kysor 2:50 PM

SHAGHDARD 

Who cares if the script is in arabic?

posted by George Thomas Kysor 12:34 PM

I will conquer America  

My name is HAN, SANG WOO. English name is andy.
I'm from suwon in Korea. I am living in mcdonel hall.
My family consists of father,mother,oldersister and me.
I have been studying for two years. I want to have a good gob.
So I came to America. I decide to study english very hard.
My major is public administration. My hobby is playing computer games
and video games. I likes soccer very much.
Also my favorite color is blue. I want to see blue sky.
But I can't see in winter of michigan. I like go shopping.
So I used to go shopping with my old sister.
I'm so funny guy. I like making a frends.
If you want to be my friend . I will. I confirm you will happy - Andy

posted by George Thomas Kysor 12:18 PM

UnversedLyric 

This is something i just thought i'd share with the world. Because I think there are so many things from the past that don't get noticed anymore. This is an old song called "Roses for mama". I really think it is a most beautiful song and I can't read or hear it or hardly think about it without crying. It's really that beautiful. And I think people should know so here it is. - Teresa

posted by George Thomas Kysor 12:04 PM

Mother pooper MAD COW MOOOOO 

I know the title may be a little unsettling, but it just so happens to be one of those inside jokes, where you're on the outside kind of thing, don’t get me wrong, its not that I don’t love you, its just that at this moment I love my daughter, Aimee (who is older than me) MORE, and you would appreciate it more if I were screaming mother pooper mad cow moo at you while you were eating a burger that you may die from. - * ~:Lisa:~ *

posted by George Thomas Kysor 10:24 AM

Vanessa's Blog 

In the past 24 hours, Ive stumbled upon quite a problem. Though I am just in the process of wrapping up my first year of University.....I can't help but long for the end of my stay at the Uni. It's not that I dont love it there, in fact, it's quite the opposite. I love the University - I love the people, the atmosphere, the abundance of knowledge for me to absorb. It's all very amazing. Im so glad I have the opportunity to experience it. However, the longer I am there....the more I realize that my place isn't in this city. I do not like the crowded, rushed, and over-commercialized life the city has to offer. I can't help but feel completely out of place here. Im not flashy, and Im certainly not rigid enough for this place. Im strongly considering throwing away my aspirations and moving to a small town. I would be thrilled to live in a small town, even if it meant I was stuck at a crappy job for my entire life. The country just has so much more to offer than the city does. The freedom, the stars (my god, you don't know beauty until you see the stars from the country-side), the open road. Everything. Yes, I know this sounds completely over the top! Why, why would someone who is as intelligent, friendly, and showing so much promise even consider an idea like this??? Well...I guess Ive just been told how to do everything in life from the day I was born, and Ive grown a tad weary of it. I was told to do well in school because good grades would translate into a University education, which thereby translates into a high-paying job. Only now, too late, do I realize that I dont care for a high-paying job. Money is completely useless to me. I dont need, or want, a big house, or a fancy car, or anything of that sort. I just dont care for the stereotypical "American Dream." I am Willy Lowman's polar opposite. Honestly, what good is a gorgeous house and all those material goods if it means Id have to be stuck in a huge city like this for the rest of my life?? This place eats people alive. Hmm...I would say that all I'll ever need in life is myself....but I know thats a lie. There are some peope I think I couldnt live without, but chances are none of them would be willing to leave the city life with me - and I would not blame them, after all, because most people wouldnt want to live in the country. Perhaps I will learn to deal without them. HA! Thats if I ever put this plan into action......oh geeze.
I dont know...perhaps these are just the useless ramblings of a tired moron. I don't know, and I certainly don't care to know at this point. I hope to decide my official stance on this sometime soon, though. Although, maybe it's best if I dont. Who knows...maybe if I ever get the balls up to do it...I'll just pack my bags and go. Suppose that'll have to wait until summer when I have a job and some money. Arrrgh. See that's the thing. There's always something going to be holding me back. Bah.....Im going back to thinking. This whole "writing down my thoughts" thing hasn't really helped at all. Have I actually formed a coherent thought yet?? :S And Im sure Ive just bored you all to death. So i guess for now I bid you adieu, and I hope less time-consuming thoughts are with you all. - Love Ness

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:09 AM