#67564 by Skruff on 5/01 at 2:35 pm - “Hungry, or homeless children, because their parents had bad luck, or made bad choices is a part of capitalism I shall not “forget”

Come to think of it, those dumpsters are fairly close to some very expensive-looking churches…”

********** Skruff, old boy, you’re sounding like old Dickens himself; just what’s needed to shake some sense into those hypnotized by the catechism of The Capitalist Paradise — where it’s always been: “go for the gold - everyone bought - everyone sold - got a philistine mamma - got a philistine dad - philistines everyone - blew the best chance we ever had!”

http://66.49.150.190/FWM/Philistine.Nation.Joe.Blow.m3u

#67442 by Skruff on 5/01 at 6:22 am: “...Maybe we are all of “lower nature” and the only difference is some of us are clean, dry, and rich, and some of are wet dirty and stuck in a slum...?”

Well, that’s true, too, Skruff. But, in that case, we all also have “higher natures” as well. 

Its not a matter of the haves and the have-nots. It really is true that “it is easier for a camel to pass through ‘the eye of a needle’ than for a rich man to go to heaven” (the camel had to be unloaded before it could walk through the small passage in the wall of a fortified place).

What does than mean? Until we can give up our personal attachments, we will never be truly free. Clinging to physical ‘property’ and endlessly pandering to our wants and desires only binds us and limits us. These are not things of the inner spirit.

Likewise, continuously remembering or recalling the past negative experiences we have endured and forever trawling over the injustices we and others have suffered will only restrict us as well. It is necessary to let such things go completely before we can attain the inner peace we deserve.

#67122 by Skruff on 4/29 at 6:03 am: “...Humans prey on other humans as male lions prey on their own young… nothi9ng evil about it… just nature....”

Actually, its our “lower natures” which we are following when we do those things, Skruff. Instead of applying our higher minds and our “golden rule” philosophies, we allow ourselves to be manipulated by the more negative and self-seeking amongst us. We are easy prey when we are willing to be ruled by our own petty likes and dislikes and our fears, however real they may be.

Check the article on the R-complex and why we think the way we do at http://www.buildfreedom.com/tl/tl12.shtml Also, an interesting search is “cognitive dissonance” regarding our inability to cope with uncomfortable truths (usually about ourselves).

#66980 by Lauren Rowan on 4/28 at 10:40 am
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As a Christian, I can’t help but wonder if evil of this degree can come from any but the obvious source..... and the fact that Bush launched his entire evil reign in the name of Jesus Christ, defaming that name in the process, frightens me as much if not more than his actions themselves.
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There are spiritual dynamics at work here.  Evil is the inevitable result of complacency and hypocrisy.  The magnitude of the evil today measures the extent to which “Christianity” has become hollow and meaningless. 

Note that the chief offense of the Pharisees, according to Christ, was hypocrisy and superficiality: They reduced spiritual substance to tribalism and ritualism.  They rejected Abraham’s attitude and idolized his genes.  Christ opened the door to salvation by resurrecting the possibility of spiritual life, spiritual substance, spiritual transformation and growth.  He tore down the walls of tribe and ritual, and thus set spirit free.

Given this dynamic, one might say that the purpose of evil is to goad us into rediscovering the good.  The need to resist evil brings people together.  It forces people to examine their assumptions and overcome their differences.  It makes people larger and induces people to find unimagined spiritual resources.  It builds character.  It gives people an opportunity to appreciate and understand what they have lost—things like freedom and justice.  The struggle against evil takes us beyond platitude and into the realm of reality. 

This understanding of evil is analogous to the Christian idea of “being tested”.  The Evil Empire is being tested, and because it is made of illusions, not substance, it will fall. 

None of this is a justification for evil.  However, knowing that good sometimes derives indirectly from evil may help us to avoid despair.

re comment #66993 by American Slave.  The latest Lancet/John’s Hopkins University study, released in October 2006 estimated the number of Iraqis killed at 650,000.  According to the UN, some 4 million Iraqis have been driven from their homes, one half of whom are in exile.

We are continually reminded of the words of the ancient Roman historian, Tacitus:  “They created desolation and call it peace.”

#66980 by Lauren Rowan on 4/28 at 10:40 am — “But what kind of agenda?”

********* the global elite (the one’s calling the shots and in no way loyal to any citizenry or national legacy) do have an agenda, clear to anyone who studies it seriously. This agenda is to fail all states that resemble in any way “democratic republics.”

Why? Too inefficient - Deflects too much potential profit - Too hard to maintain classical fascism (what Mussolini called corporatism) - Too hard to get genuine patriots to fight for their corporatist cause - indeed, but why bother now that they have Blackwater (read: Waffen SS, the regime’s private army) - a regime fully in service to the global elite - the finance oligarchs.

As for Bush’s doing it for Christ, or whatever — it’s perfect: fuels the myth of a religiously driven War of Civilizations - an important feature in the global war of terror and the myth of Islamofascism, rising to wage eternal Jihad, pushing toward Armageddon — sells in the heartland like snow cones on the 4th of July.

It’s all scripted: the hate, the terror, the fear, the war; and what little that’s by chance is provoked by all of the above. Incompetence is the ultimate cover up, and everything that points to it is a limited hangout.

I hate to say it, but I really question Vidal’s position. He knows all this, yet holds back. At his age it shouldn’t matter. Others (blatant Left Gatekeepers) like Amy Goodman, Noam Chomsky, the entire crew at The Nation, are obviously protecting their funding sources by continually supporting the “blow back” position. They know it ultimately supports the regime’s position: “they hate us for...whatever.”

Some go so far as to challenge them with the accusation of “rich assets.” I think they’re all just chicken-hearted and a far too comfortable.

#64824 by blog dog on 4/18 at 11:44 am
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911 Truth is the only option - nothing else touches them - they cite “the lessons of 911” as pretext for everything done in the name of the global war of terror - this is compelling - the peace movement must include 911 Truth and the treason at its heart - we must destroy the 911 myth and render it impotent - one question for fence-sitters: Do you really believe the regime has lied about everything except 911?
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Exactly!

http://www.freeforum101.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=4778& mforum=times#4778—Kaminski: Peace groups must address 9/11 fraud

Men in suits (neo-cons) who had everything to gain from 9/11 tell us to blame men in robes (first Arabs, then Iraqis—but not Saudis!).  But what, actually, is the magical difference between a suit and a robe?  I suppose we think the suited gangsters are “like us”. Appearance is everything; the inner moral void goes unseen. 

Here’s a thought experiment: What if Bush were to take off his suit and don a robe?  Would he then become capable of 9/11 in our eyes? 

http://emperors-clothes.com/images/bushladen.jpg

Ask the Iraqis.  The men in suits have given the Iraqis the equivalent of 9/11 a hundred times over, a new 9/11 each month in the words of Riverbend.  If these suited Talmudists, with their deranged ideology, could inflict such evil on Iraq, smiling all the while, then is it really such a stretch to imagine them doing the same here to us Americans? 

Whoever engineered 9/11—whoever told the U.S. Airforce to stand down on that morning—it is certain that the neo-cons have sacrificed more American lives in Iraq than were sacrificed on 9/11.  And the neo-cons are preparing a far larger human sacrifice, this one involving Iran.

Who ARE these ghouls?  What do we REALLY know about these neo-con killers?

- -

http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/age14.htm
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How many dead innocent Iraqis is too many?
09 Nov 2004

Surely we have not been reduced to arguing that we are not as bad as terrorists, writes Waleed Aly.

Too many innocent people are dying in Iraq. A recent report, in the medical journal The Lancet, estimates 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the beginning of the US-led invasion. Half of them are women and children. Almost all were killed by coalition air strikes.

Take a minute to think about the enormity of this human cost. Think of it as September 11, 30 times over.
....
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http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/
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....
We have 9/11’s on a monthly basis. Each and every Iraqi person who dies with a bullet, a missile, a grenade, under torture, accidentally- they all have families and friends and people who care. The number of Iraqis dead since March 2003 is by now at least eight times the number of people who died in the World Trade Center.
....
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Also - 1984 the movie http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087803/ - Big Brother: [voiceover] “This is our land. A land of peace and of plenty. A land of harmony and hope. This is our land. Oceania. These are our people. The workers, the strivers, the builders. These are our people. The builders of our world, struggling, fighting, bleeding, dying. On the streets of our cities and on the far-flung battlefields. Fighting against the mutilation of our hopes and dreams. Who are they?”

Winston Smith: [In Winston’s diary] Freedom is the freedom to say two plus two equals to five. If that is granted all else will follow.

Winston Smith: Does Big Brother exist?
O’Brien: Of course he exists.
Winston Smith: Does he exist like you or me?
O’Brien: You do not exist.

O’Brien: What are your feelings towards Big Brother?
Winston Smith: I hate him.
O’Brien: You must love him. It is not enough to obey him. You must love him.

O’Brien: If you want a vision of the future, Winston, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.

Hey, maybe it’s my ears, but the recording is too slow, and Vidal’s voice too low. Not sure if anyone else noticed, but how about a fix, Truthdig?

Thanks!

#66016 by plenum222 at yahoo dot com on 4/24 at 5:39 am: “...Vidal, as usual, is right on - but what we need is something far more hard-hitting than a literary comparison .....We need an essay NOW that reviews, if available, Thomas Jefferson’s RATIONALE for the “occasional revolution” to get people motivated...”

Perhaps we should first review “1984”, Plenum?

1984 has come and gone, but George Orwell’s prophetic nightmarish vision in 1949 of the world we were becoming is timelier than ever. “1984” - a Negative Utopia, creates an imaginary world that is completely convincing, from the first sentence to the last four words. No one can deny this novel’s power, its hold on the imaginations of whole generations, or the power of its admonitions—a power that seems to grow, not lessen, with the passage of time........

“The world is divided into three countries that include the entire globe: Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia. Oceania is a totalitarian society led by Big Brother, which censors everyone’s behavior, even their thoughts. Winston is disgusted with his oppressed life and secretly longs to join the fabled Brotherhood, a supposed group of underground rebels intent on overthrowing the government......

Winston meets Julia and they secretly fall in love..... something which is considered a crime.  Winston encounters O’Brien, an inner party member .......giving him the impression that O’Brien was a member of the Brotherhood .......O’Brien is actually a faithful member of the Inner-Party and this is actually a trap for Winston, a trap that O’Brien has been cleverly setting for seven years. Winston and Julia are sent to the Ministry of Love which is a sort of rehabilitation center for criminals accused of thoughtcrime.......”

Re comment #65104 by Maani.  Excellent quote.  Unfortunately, there is no room for historical accuracy in the Orwellian Bush World of Amnesia.

Gore Vidal is a national treasure. We are recently deprived of Vonnegut; I don’t look forward to Vidal’s exit. He is one of the last remaning sane people, it seems.

Excellent article, as per usual.

I strongly recommend Vidal’s _Narratives of Empire_ series of historical novels about America, as well as his collected essays.

As Lapham has recently reminded us, Cicero once said: “Not to know what happened before one was born is always to be a child.”

As is evidenced by a couple of the comments here.

i just listened to vidal,on TD’s live audio. i wish you had allowed him to read it all. he is a hoot.i could listen to him for hours. i just wish Brickley Paiste would stop his philandering.

It’s been a long time coming - the truth behind the “conspiracy”.  When we re-read history it has ALWAYS been there - a “certain element” of this world will ALWAYS “need” what others have, need others to get what they want and use the weaker to advance their power.  They followed the trail of money and strength over with the mayflower ...

XXX

The following was intended for leading financiers only, and appeared in the Civil Servants’ Year Book, “The Organizer”, Jan. 1934”

“Capital must protect itself in every way...Debts must be collected and loans and mortgages foreclosed as soon as possible.

When through a process of law the common people have lost their homes, they will be more tractable and more easily governed by the strong arm of the law applied by the central power of leading financiers. People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders. This is well known among our principal men now engaged in forming an imperialism of capitalism to govern the world.”

XXX

“Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are...a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”
-- President Dwight D. Eisenhower in a letter to his brother on Nov. 8, 1954

Re comment #64610 by Hugh Scott.  Dr. Minot’s Narcissistic Personality Disorder is but one of a multitude of diagnoses I have seen advanced to try to explain George W. Bush.  Whether a single diagnosis, such as Dr. Minot offers, or multiple disorders are advanced, the bottom line is that the entire cabal is made up of syncophantic sociopaths who seek to subjugate the vast majority of Americans--the working and middle classes--to the interests of those Bush describes as his “base"--"the haves and the have mores.” Of course they have no empathy towards the poor African-Americans wading in that toxic soup in New Orleans.  They have no qualms about how great the carnage in Iraq, how deep they dip into the U.S. treasury, how much damage they do to constitutional democracy, so long as the profits at Halliburton, Blackwater, Bechtel, Exxon-Mobil, et al, soar.  They’re fascists.  What else should we expect?

Perhaps Dr. Minot would like to profer a diagnosis that would perhaps explain why a so-called Democratic leadership that was elevated to power in order to extract us from this morass finds it necessary to fund the war to the end of the Bush presidency and beyond.  But wait, the same measure that provides the funds to enable Bush to leave our men and women in uniform in harm’s way, demands a new hydrocarbon law from the Maliki government that would deliver that black, sticky substance to the oil industry at bargain basement prices.  Perhaps there is a word that eliminates the need for a psychiatric diagnosis--Greed?

#64753 by Jean Tracy on 4/18 at 7:03 am
(Unregistered commenter)

Tell us, how can W. be stopped

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911 Truth is the only option - nothing else touches them - they cite “the lessons of 911” as pretext for everything done in the name of the global war of terror - this is compelling - the peace movement must include 911 Truth and the treason at its heart - we must destroy the 911 myth and render it impotent - one question for fence-sitters: Do you really believe the regime has lied about everything except 911?

Do great nations inexorably follow the trajectory of primative, republican, imperial, decadent?  History evidences that such is the case. Our “great” nation seems to be hovering between imperial and decadent. 

If we look back at great nations of the past we may find counterparts of Mr. Bush in power when those nations were hovering between imperial and decadent - men with delusions of omniscience and omnipotence which precluded any possibility that they could ever be appealed to by way of reason. If our planet survives, Mr. Bush will certainly join the roster of just such men.

#64579 by Lorien on 4/17 at 12:01 pm - “When the Lord bellowed down from on high that He’d had enough of sinful humanity”

***** all this quoting of scripture - just a reminder: the progeny of Abraham can always be counted on to find in their scripture reasons for anything — recommended reading: the teachings of Buddha, in whose name no wars have ever been fought, no pogroms ever invoked and no smiting of the wicked ever handed down — in fact, unlike his Western counterpart, Buddha doesn’t exist...he’s just a state of mind...far too sublime for the progeny of Abraham, the legacy of whom it appears the world is destined to suffer until it is no more.

Maani, “Revelation” and “Armageddon” are two different things although Armageddon was discussed in the Bible’s book of Revelations.

Armageddon is with us now more or less (Apocalypse Now!) but Revelations went on to a golden age of a spiritual kind which the human race has so far repudiated. That must mean that there might not be many left to inherit this new age when it finally does arrive.

Frankly, though, it also sounds a lot like Nostradamus as well. Nevertheless, there is nothing more fanciful than assuming that a deliberate series of negative evil acts can ever bring about a positive spiritual result - as much as that there are people who do believe that!

Action and reaction are opposite and equal. That is also the law of Karma, if you will. No good can come of doing wrong. If you want a good result, you must do the positive things necessary to ensure that result. The result of forcing negative scenarios is that a worse outcome will eventuate.

If there were prophesies, they are only indicators of the times, not “necessary factors” in themselves. What is more, if you imagine there can be some silver lining to that cloud, it can only be that the Earth will forever be free of the human race as a consequence of its own disastrous actions.

That is to say that if there is another global war, there still will eventually be a golden New Age on this Earth but it will happen WITHOUT the human race!

We are taxes. We are taxed.
To make war. To parry horror. 
Gore seems to be in the horror camp.

I didn’t want to come to that conclusion, he has so much reputation.  Regardless, he writes “…hurricanes, tempests, droughts OF HIS MAKING ravage our alabaster cities and amber waves of grain.” (My emphasis.) that really takes the cake or makes W God.

No, mellifluous though he be, he be not for me.

Douglas, if I study international finance, I study only what money has become or one way it is used today.  That does not tell me what money is.

Let me ask you this:  You use a computer.  Did you purchase it?  How would you obtain a computer without using a medium of exchange?

“Money is nothing more than something that facilitates exchange.  Money is in of itself neither good nor evil......”

Ha ha, no, that’s the illusion, thallos. You must study international finance to see that money is an artificial construct. It is then applied falsely to ‘value’ and then, through trade and banking, we are bound hand and foot.

Try searching “yen carry trade” and you will start to get the picture! I have no doubt that there is a “moral” value in fair trade, etc etc but that is not what is really going on - even within a country’s borders.

Douglas, you are correct.  Money today has no value and it certainly has evolved into something that enslaves us.  But that is not the fault of money, rather of what we have let money become. 

Consider this, Douglas.  If you make candles and I make bread and we trade, we are both richer—providing of course that one of us did not cheat and that neither of us was coerced.  Now, what if you and I value peanuts.  We want them; we like them.  We like to squirrel them away.  In fact we both have some stashed away.  Now, if I say I’ll give you 5 peanuts for a candle and you say I’ll give you 3 peanuts for your bread and we each say OK.  We are again winners, but this time we used “money”.  We knew the value of our peanuts.  We knew the effort their collection required.  We made informed decisions to better our life. 

Money is nothing more than something that facilitates exchange.  Money is in of itself neither good nor evil.

Money DOESN’T have value, thallos! How can mere pieces of paper have “value” to dictate peoples’ lives?

It is a device designed to enslave us! We are thus endlessly manipulated as surely as a little monkey which sticks its hand into a jar to grab the nuts inside but cannot let go - it is thus trapped!!!

Do you really see “value” in that???

I suppose I’m being simplistic, but I see no conspiracies, no planning.  I see only a logical unfolding.  My father often said, “Money does not grow on trees.” But, what happens when a community believes that money does grow on trees; that there is no correlation between effort and product; that everything is the result of mysterious or arcane processes that necromancers spirit?

My guess is that what comes are a stock market that cannot be predicted, a culture with skewed values, best meaning politicians called to the dark side, and businessmen who play the game.

If money has no value, we cannot know worth.

Gore Vidal is wrong about one thing, that the Republicans are in some way idealogically opposed to “Big Government”, or uniquely so. The last reductions in the rate of increase of Federal spending, for example occurred under Clinton, as did “Welfare Reform”, so it’s a bit off the mark to claim that somehow this sorry performance is the result of some kind of libertarian anti-government bias.

It is instead the frank, out-and-out looting of the people via the vast increase in military spending (justified of course by 9/11) that is actually hastening the demise of the empire.

Bush’s DOA Social Security “privatization” scheme is nothing of the sort, it would, if implemented simply be yet another example of what government usually does, which is to transfer large streams of money confiscated from ordinary people at the point of a gun, to well-connected interests. Real privatization would mean the people would own the money in the account, not Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan as envisioned by the Bushites.

We can argue whether the Democrats can save the “New Deal” (they can’t and they won’t), the real discussion should be about how to replace it, without the looting and destruction that the Republicans are indulging in now, and without strangling the remaining vestigial industry in the country.

Doing this will involve devolving both the money and the responsibility for the care of the old, the sick, and the infirm to the states, the communities, and the individual, and away from the mass thievery that is inevitable in Washington D.C. regardless of party.

With nearly all of their “commonwealth” already looted and moved offshore, and corporate corsairs like Haliburton getting safely away there too, theamericanpeople are being prepped by their homegrown predator classes for the final fleecing and flensing (and this is NOT just a figure-of-speech), before they’re left to the tender mercies of the repo-man from Peking.  Such other rag-and-bone pickers as might dare to challenge the new collossus for what will certainly be much less than pennies, on their billions of dollars in worthless IOUs, can fight over the scraps. 

Meanwhile, the Bush crime family, for example, is reported to’ve prepared a hidey-hole in Uraguay, a favorite of first-generation nazis, as well.  London is calling lots of other Tory loyalists home from their two-hundred-plus-year (and now all-but-accomplished) mission to smother the upstart republic in its crib.  And let it be an object lesson, also, to anybody else with any similarly disestablishmentarianist big-ideas.  Are you paying attention, you Venezuelans?

Gore Vidal sounds here, to this old Indian, like a man watching the-point-of-no-return recede rapidly in the rearview mirror.  His heroic and sustained effort to offer Americans a story out of which they might salvage enough of substance to at least make worth waging a real battle for independence (The “War” was only an opening skirmish, after all, and that of 1812 a very successful British diversion.) looks like it’s coming to naught. 

What doomed them almost from the beginning was “ordinary” Americans’ general failure to recognize that the real, ruthless, implacable enemies of their freedom were not only already well-established in their midst, but had captured the wheelhouse of their fledgling ship-of-state even as the yeoman-and-farmer army was evicting the mostly mercernary soldiers of an earlier King George from these shores.  Buying-into the suicidal fantasy of “rugged individualism” then sealed their fate, and rendered them easy pickings for the highly organized forces of the corporatist plutoligarchy today preparing to take the money and run....leaving your average Joe and plain Jane holding nothing but the “right” to spend their lives (and their great grandchildren’s for generations) slaving-away to pay the “vig” on “the national debt.”

“Almost heaven West Virginia,” with its ruined rivers, trashed landscape, institutionalized poverty, heritage of multi-generational exploitation and disease and despair, nearly statewide superfund status, and now mostly pre-recorded mountain music, looks like the prototype for what allamerica is intended to resemble (much of it does already) in a whole lot less than another two hundred years.  Try five-to-ten, before defacto involuntary servitude is the rule....for everybody “left behind.”

Most Americans reading this would no doubt scoff....dead sure it could never happen here.  Some of those who frequent this site might agree it already has, to all intents and purposes....that only the incidental details remain to be seen. 

All of you will be thanking your lucky stars one of these days on-accounta that other famous George, Armstrong Custer, losing the whole shebang there on the bluffs above the Greasy Grass River, that fine morning of the Red-calf moon, in “1876.” Because this is still all Indian Country, and we won’t be letting another bunch of over-the-water gangbangers occcupy Turtle Island....especially now we’re just about to get rid of our uninvited euroamerican “guests,” once and for all.

Now anybody who has figured out that our Mother Earth has no place here for human “individuals” will have no trouble staying at-home in these parts.  There’ll be a tiyoshpaye accepting members in a place near you.  Those who prefer to persist in their present domesticated condition will surely be a lot more comfortable someplace else....only god knows where, though.

HokaHey!