Just to let everyone know, I will not use Dave Post anymore. just initials. Its easier.
I find it interesting the thread on minimum wage has some people that don’t mind wealth concentration. I believe it’s a sickness and shows a pychologocal flaw called greed. Inherited wealth is curse on the land. It takes possible productive people and shelters them from the real world of work.
My grandfather was a sort of lumber baron. He had a deal he worked out during the depression to provide raw lumber and dealing with the Pinkertons who owned the local railroad he bought railroad cars and they gave him an exclusive on providing wood to chip board and paper plants. So, he got a cut of every cord of wood that went out of our area by railroad car and never had to touch it.
Anyway, this man had a second grade education and in 1970 when he died he was worth a Million dollars. Inflation adjusted it would be substantially more now. A dollar was still worth something in 1970. (That asshole Nixon taking us of Britton Woods srewed up the dollar) My father and his two brothers inherited it all. Three way split. What happened next is a story thats unbelievable.
My oldest Uncle, the oldest son, and the biggest tight wad of the bunch died of a brain tumor two years later.
My father was an alcoholic, blew all the money and died at 46 years of age, (I was fourteen) broke. Had absolutely nothing left. My mother had died when I was seven so I lived with my oldest brother through high school.
The middle son lived from 46 years of age until 77 off the money, selling land and cutting some wood for extra cash. But was not really a productive member of society. He was medically discharged in WW 2, aways drew a military pension and drew SS for 15 years. In the end, he took more from society than he put in.
The bottom line is inherited wealth can be a blessing and a curse. More times than not it’s a curse. Family members are greedy. A perfect example is the Dart family in Michigan. They made money by inventing styrofoam cups, banking and oil wells. But they are so greedy they moved all their wealth off shore to get out of paying US taxes.
It is my experience that the majority of wealth should be taxed away. The unintended consequences can be horrendous. Now some will say that people born into wealth know how to handle better. My answer is, being born into great wealth in a democratic society only tends to make you find ways to keep that wealth at the expense of the greater society. Like the Darts. Even Warren Buffet dislikes wealth concentration.
Class warfare needs to happen in this country. Wealth has been concentrated to much to the detriment of the greater society. get out the pitchforks and shovels. Thats my story for today boys and girls.

Posted by: jdp | Jul 24 2004 13:52 utc | 3

ayn rand was a thinker of little or no consequence
her inheritors lead ayran nation & the montana militia
why respect this imbecile when you have a john dos passos or a theodore dreiser who understood your system from the ground up
the wondrous james agee with his colleague walker evans produced a ‘book’ that is for me one of the most beautiful works ever produced in the english language
what is common to dresier, to dos passos, to agee is that they had hearts & they ‘lived’ in the world
rand had neither heart nor a capacity to live with ‘others’
her kind of people hating ideology is for me a putrefaction of the banalities uttered by nietzsche
the minor intellects of this administration still suck at the teat of ms rand & their vertical irresponsibility hopefully dooms them to a horizontal death
the ‘great men’ theory of history is such a nonsense i am surprised people can utter it in full cognisance
men make their own history but not under circumstances they themselves control sd old karl & it has a certain truth for me still
if you are liberal right then good old ludwig wittgznstein is your man except he demanded a little more of a person than ms rand than to stand over the mob
still steel

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 24 2004 16:45 utc | 5

kate
that greenspan is a devotee of ms rand surprises me not at all
& no i suspected you were not randian
i was just a little surprised to see her name here
it’s a little like using edward teller to argue about ethics
people like rand have always seemed to me to be like soft nazis like ernst junger, martin heideigger or the ‘sculptor’ arno brecker – because we do not take walter benjamins warning that behind every article of culture exist barbarism – we offer respect to these ‘master’ of culture — when i feel they & their works need to be denounced fully & with fury
that they speak in the cultivated tounhue of the bourgeoisie should never hide the fact that their intentions & their subtexts are as abhorent today as when they first enunciated their petty thuggeries
it’s strange, here in france, there is still respect for a junger & a heidegger that i find absolutely offensive – they were criminals who participated openly in the criminality of a regime that had at its core – a hatred of people
what is surprising but perhaps not so – was their outrageous cowardice when faced with the judgement of history – the two of them lied to high heaven where they did not go & in an infantile way refused to take responsibility for their words & deeds
i do not find in heidegger – the titanic intelligence that is credited him – he was a thief – he stole from husserl & jaspers – he stole from students & his work has not the erudition of a wittgenstein or a schopenhauer. that he seems to dominate philosophy is not so much a reflection of him than on the poverty of philosophy
junger was & remained a petit bourgeois with a significant absence of imagination – his refinement of the german language & its culture is directly mocked by the work of a real germanist like paul celan
german culture like most dominant cultures is really like a matchbox full of grasshoppers
still steel

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 24 2004 17:43 utc | 7

rememberinggiap,
You speak far more knowingly and eloquently than I can on the Cult of Rand. I know what I know by what we call “the seat of my pants” … or down to my marrow, and from sitting at the feet of my father who grew a manufacturing business from one person — him — in the garage to a worldwide distribution from about 1957 through 1975. My father, George, never screwed his employees for a dollar or ten. The company’s board of directors had to force him to take pay raises … my parents put all monies made back into the company and the people who worked. They were honest and not greedy, and were rewarded for this by the respect and love and loyalty of customers and employees alike. Of course, when the the infant greed of the corporations began to crawl in the 70s, the young lions in the company began to question my father’s business decisions, and eventually made his life such a hell that he sold the business.
I learned about integrity in business from my father. I learned that money was not top on the list of attributes for business people. Honesty and respect are at the top.
What’s come after of course, most of us know about. My early education in business and ethics makes me an anachronism in this world. It is a badge, a medal I wear with great humility.
My dad told me that “only people and how we treat them” matters. I don’t think it’s odd that Rand crops up now … the powers that be are Randians of the first water.

Posted by: Kate_Storm | Jul 24 2004 18:23 utc | 9

Screw Ayn Rand; her crap gives libertarians a bad name and her writing is subpar at best. Objectivism? My ass it is… the only ‘object’ in that cult was Ayn Rand. Murray Rothbard had some not-so-nice things to say about her, and he didn’t usually speak ill of people.
On a brighter note, though: here is what Democrats should be saying all the time:
“I don’t spend a lot of time focusing on Bush. I spend a lot of time focusing on where we fall short of our ideals.”
That’s soon-to-be-5th-black-senator (ever) Barack Obama. If his type are running the show at the DNC at some point in the future, there’s hope yet for that party!

Posted by: æ | Jul 24 2004 19:15 utc | 11

Reaching out to black voters, the Republican way.
Blackwashing

“Black Conservative to Rebut NAACP Leader’s Remarks in C-SPAN Interview,” read the press release from Project 21, an organization of conservative African-Americans.
I had read in Reuters that Kweisi Mfume, president of the NAACP, had called groups like Project 21 “make-believe black organizations,” and a “collection of black hustlers” who have adopted a conservative agenda in return for “a few bucks a head.”
So I tuned into C-SPAN with interest to hear what a leading voice in the black conservative movement had to say. But then a funny thing happened: the African-American spokesperson for Project 21 caught a flat on the way to the studio, and the group’s director had to fill in. And he was white.
….

Posted by: sukabi | Jul 24 2004 20:24 utc | 13

Hating America – is it fair?
Hating America
Bruce Bawer, an American based in Europe, takes issue with European perspectives of the USA. A passionate defence of the US it somehow seems to suggest that the perceptions of Europeans are founded on ignorance and mistaken beliefs – a delicious irony when one considers that many people throughout the world use such terms to describe American perspectives on ‘foreigners’. All in all worth a read both for the criticisms and the responses despite the liberties taken with issues such as the ‘support’ given by (some) European leaders (in defiance of the majority of their people’s wishes) for the American attack on Iraq. “Know thine enemy” requires a lot of learning and recognition of and suspension of one’s own prejudices I guess.

Posted by: Nemo | Jul 24 2004 22:17 utc | 15

Switching gears Pat et al.–
Have you seen RClarke’s PravdaOpEd piece yet?
Found his move towards multilateralism particularly interesting….
“Also, we can’t do this alone. In addition to “hearts and minds” television and radio programming by the American government, we would be greatly helped by a pan-Islamic council of respected spiritual and secular leaders to coordinate (without United States involvement) the Islamic world’s own ideological effort against the new Al Qaeda.”

Posted by: RossK | Jul 24 2004 22:46 utc | 17

unfortunately, i do not see capital accumulation in any form as a virtue
if people cannot find other reasons for development & invention – then i find that wholly sad
it is a truism that while libertarians attack big government & see poor people as the usurpers of their money – it is in fact the halliburtons, the enrons, the michael millikens whop make a mockery of that notion while they plunder from one & all
whether it is in america, in britain australia or in the so called ‘democracies’ – it is the elites who benefit & who benefit still
it is not because they posess the will or the imagination in the randian sense – what they posess is a lack of scruples & a complete absence of civic morality or morality, tout court
kate, your description of your father is a good one in that i feel that even though he was indivuidually responsible he acknowledged the community whether it was colleagues, workers or family. there was a sense of other
i used the example of teller for a reason – this dark mimic was a leech – he was not fermi, he was not bohr & he most certainly was not robert oppenheimer – he was a parasite – intellectually & actually – the book black un – makes that perfectly clear
it is not his industriousness or his imagination – it was his skill at playing politics with other sociopaths that won him his place in america
the nature of annexation is implicit in capital accumulation – the young turks are your libertarians – who see thier own self interest well explained as somthing holy by ms rand
it is they who live off the people directly or indirectly
they are soon consummated by their consumption. the old story of billgates ripping off the approach & intelligence of the people at apple & then devouring them is a perfect model for capital – he had neither the imagination, the invention or the power, fundamentally. he like all good american capitalists paid for it, stole it, annexed it
there is an old greek saying – i think it is from diogenes – perhaps alabama knows – he sd the first thing you should do in a rich mans house is to spit in his face & i agree with that
so i will not worship at the shrine of capital accumulation rather i would wish to send whatever love i possess to the fred hamptons of chicago who were assasinated trying to make a better life for his people – his tale is one of civic duty of the highest order
him, fred hampton – i still have tears of steel, for you
still steel

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 24 2004 23:33 utc | 19

kate
what i think i find more offensive is that often the capital accumulators who represent themselves from the john wayne view of history – that is rugged, individual brave gens have often lived off the public teat at the trough – this is especially true of those concerned with the military industrial complex
they have never earned their capital – they have taken it – stolen it – if you will – from the people
their research @ development comes from pûblic funds & many other aspects of their work are directly connected to the public purse
they make a mockery of individualism as they do of other questions
paranthetically it was effete cowboys like john wayne who escaped the duty of war to tell others to lose their blood & kin
as it always is – it is the corrupt, the venal & the terror bringers who try to teach the people – morality & it is the people who are often close to survival – who have to comprehend morality in an immediate & physical way it is not an abstraction for them
while for a ken lay – morality is completely absent
they lie, they steal & they have the indignity to offer lessons – whether they are a ken lay or a martha stewart – their mendacity is horrifying
what is worse is since the end of world war one – these are the people who have directed public policy – when their civic duty does not exist in any manner
they are lobbyist for their own self interest & we the people can go to hell – we do not enter the equation except as commodities or labour or consumers
they have made from their pigs trough a contribution to the loss of civic duty
still steel

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 25 2004 0:12 utc | 21

rememberinggiap, I found this. I like it, and must remind myself constantly about it, because I, being human, can get pretty charged up about things sometimes:
The poet Rumi said, “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”

Posted by: Kate_Storm | Jul 25 2004 0:22 utc | 23

To Rossk,
Actually, my grandfather was very good man, even though he had some advantages later in life. He started out by buying wool from sheep farmers and delivering to market in the 1920s. He would also pull sunken logs from the river, take them to his mill and saw them. He worked very hard. He would pay taxes on peoples property during the depression so they wouldn’t lose their farms. He helped start a local bank.
And he help many people start businesses by giving them low interest loans. he was very community minded. We don’t have those type of people in enough communities these days. The local wealthy just bitch about taxes and want alls the breaks.
Actually, my grandfather was altruistic in many actions. The point of my story was the distruction his money caused after he died.

Posted by: jdp | Jul 25 2004 0:53 utc | 25

I would like to comment on my post about USA solders being offered plastic surgeries for them and a family.
Apart from the fact that taxpayers are paying for this (instead for schools and hospitals and Medicare) there is one interesting aspect to look at here.
Money is not enough anymore. Advocating Barbie like culture while more then half Americans are overweight or obese (even in USA Army…I was surprised to see so many fat solders) they offer a quick fix to those who actually come from trailer-parks mostly and never had a chance to eat anything dissent in whole their lives but yes they have seen plenty action movies…In my eyes this is American way. We’ll fix it all – and you’ll be a beautiful corpse. Working to fulfill each other’s dreams…
I have never been in USA…I regret that I never found time to see it before cause now I lost my desire to see it…maybe that’s good. Maybe some shred of my dream about USA will this way manage to lay in my grave with me…but I will not bet on it…

Posted by: vbo | Jul 25 2004 1:37 utc | 27

Ross: Perhaps your grandfather and Kate’s dad should get together in that field, set up the lawnchairs, and have a pop in the setting sun.
Only if I can go too, and the pop is barley pop. 😉

Posted by: Kate_Storm | Jul 25 2004 2:12 utc | 29

Thank You Very Much JDP, for sharing your story.
Really hit the mark.
The story sings.
I don’t have time tonight to post my maternal grandparent’s story. But I will try to tomorrow night.

Posted by: FLASHHARRY | Jul 25 2004 2:15 utc | 31

Al-Qaeda actively working to influence outcome of US presidential election
The plot revealed

Posted by: Nemo | Jul 25 2004 2:40 utc | 33

The American media brings you the IMPORTANT stories
AP: Bush leads Kerry in electoral votes
Media upset with DNC restroom facilities

Posted by: Nemo | Jul 25 2004 3:39 utc | 35

Muqawama tales from Fallujah – inside the Iraqi resistance
The Islamic emirate of Fallujah
Losing it
The fighting poets
The Fallujah model
All power to the sheikh
The tongue of the mujahideen
Mean and clean streets
Radicals in the ashes of democracy

Posted by: Nemo | Jul 25 2004 4:11 utc | 37

Onzaga, at 2:14 p.m. –Where did you get the info about investigating Bin laden’s nephew?

Posted by: pol | Jul 25 2004 4:29 utc | 39

@Kate
“what makes the desire to ‘make money’ a healthy thing? And who says this is so besides you?”
I said that I consider it healthy. It’s an opinion. Do I need to cite some authority or other concurring view?
Money may be nothing to you, Kate, but it not only puts food on our table and a roof over our heads, but has made possible a very good education for my children, a lot of memorable travel, all the books we devour and movies we enjoy, the gifts we give one another, the antiques we have collected, the newspapers and magazines we read, the music we love and the concerts and plays we attend…I could go on and on.
If the desire to make money is unhealthy, then so, too, must be the desire to support oneself. I clearly remember how I felt when I received my first pay check. ‘Unhealthy’ is not how I would describe it.

Posted by: Pat | Jul 25 2004 4:32 utc | 41

@Nemo
I’d quibble over a few of the details, but Bruce Bower’s article was well done – and a refreshing read. Having lived in Europe a few times, most recently from ’99-’01, I made many of the same observations.

Posted by: Pat | Jul 25 2004 5:29 utc | 43

@Nemo – Pat
Bruce Bower´s article is an interesting read and he is right on many points. But he looses me here:

Then came September 11. Briefly, Western European hostility toward the U.S. yielded to sincere, if shallow, solidarity (“We are all Americans”). But the enmity soon re-established itself (a fact confirmed for me daily on the websites of the many Western European newspapers I had begun reading online). With the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, it intensified.

By putting Afghanistan and Iraq into one issue he misses the recent turning point of the European opinion on the US. The European countries offered and still offer support on Afghanistan, but the Iraq “show” was so full of easily to be detected fraud and lies that the European opinion made a U-turn. A lot of todays criticism in Europe on the US is on Iraq and the way the politics and media did lead to Iraq and on the easiness with which much of the US public did swallow the lies.
I wonder how Bower has missed this most important point.

Posted by: Bernhard | Jul 25 2004 6:34 utc | 45

Kirkuk
Five dead in latest Iraq violence

Posted by: Nemo | Jul 25 2004 8:40 utc | 47

It’s 14.20 hrs in Iraq and so far today only 18 people are known to have died
US forces kill 13 Insurgents at Buhriz, near Baghdad – July 25th
Of course the day is still relatively young

Posted by: Nemo | Jul 25 2004 10:19 utc | 49

Whodunnit?
Iraqi forces kill 13 insurgents – U.S. Military
U.S. forces kill 13 insurgents near Baghdad
Same incident, different killers. Maybe the Americans are ‘blooding’ the locals. With the Kirkuk casualties, a father and son killed by resistance fighters in Western Baghdad and these thirteen victims today’s toll – so far – is now running at twenty dead.

Posted by: Nemo | Jul 25 2004 10:36 utc | 51

Osama Bin Laden being treated by Pakistani Army
”The imprints of every major act of international Islamist terrorism invariably passes through Pakistan, right from 9/11 – where virtually all the participants had trained, resided or met in, coordinated with, or received funding from or through Pakistan,”
…Not a single US TV channel or newspaper collated, let alone reported or highlighted, the multiple indictment of Pakistan contained in the report. Even a cursory key word search would have shown more than 200 references to Pakistan, many of them damning. There are less than 100 references to Iran and Iraq combined.
While the commission report repeatedly implicates Pakistan and its intelligence agency ISI in terrorist activity, it too appears to have failed to record some well-chronicled events that might have pointed to the impending catastrophe.
For instance, the report does not contain any reference to Niaz Khan, a Pakistani waiter in Britain who walked into an FBI office in New Jersey nearly a year before 9/11 and alerted them about a plot to fly planes into buildings. Nor does it go into reports that terrorist mastermind Mohammed Atta received a wire transfer of funds from a source in Karachi connected to the ISI.
Despite this, Pakistan finds itself incriminated in the report far more than Iran or Iraq. The commission itself is frequently censorious of Pakistan’s role, but in the end it recommends more carrots as a means of bringing back what it suggests is a failed state from the brink…
Osama being treated in military hospital at Peshawar, hijackers trained in Karachi, money wired to Mohammed Atta from Pakistan on eve of 9/11 attacks
Of course the Indians have it in for the Pakistanis so the source is unlikely to be pulling any punches, but insofar as it accurately reflects the ‘Pakistan angle’ in the 9/11 Report the question has to be asked -American citizens, do you know exactly what your government’s doing right now?

Posted by: Nemo | Jul 25 2004 11:40 utc | 53

Everybody seems to be out, hopefully enjoying great summer weather. Anyway here some more interesting stuff, this time about Iran.
Iran new U.S. whipping boy – Those who deceived America into attacking Iraq may be at it again, cautions Eric Margolis

Posted by: Fran | Jul 25 2004 15:31 utc | 55

Nemo–
Way up thread @ 12:11am…found the linked atimes piece by escobar enlightening especially this….
” Instead of re-Ba’athization, what has happened in Fallujah is Talibanization”
Agreed that the proposed ‘Clarke Doctrine’ referenced above is doomed against something like this…
wrt to Pakistan and atimes bias, Guardian made pretty much the same points last week…
Finally, your chronicling is much appreciated.

Posted by: RossK | Jul 25 2004 16:00 utc | 57

Long post below, taken from a thread at kevin Drum’s. Lots of interesting ideas. Credit to “Tim Kane”. Here goes:
The 9/11 Report does, I think do more damage to Bush of a lasting nature.
As David Brooks column points out – the 911 commission states that, “Wrong Way Bush” and his neocon hacks has totally misdiagnosed the Terrorism war and implemented a coutner productive strategy.
It is an ideological war after all. A jujitzu battle of hearts and minds over a prolonged period of time where waging traditional warfare hurts you more than it helps you. (blinded as they were – they should have been hip to this from the outset – you don’t bomb the world trade center and not expect a reaction, the reaction is what they were after!!!!).
The first course of action in a ideological war is containment – stop the spreading of the disease and the hurt: which of course means international cooperation – a near global anti-terror Nato complete with an intellectual focus.
Apperently Brooks is just waking up to this. Only 3 months ago he was still spouting conservative trash talk that Iraq was front and center in the war on terror. Its like calling a steak a fruit salad. The Republicans, neocons are lacking imagination indeed: They were to blinded by there desire to invade Iraq, to protect Israel, to control oil, the idea of spawning democracy in the region was pure baloney – we know how to spawn democracy – it takes a long slow careful process because it is ideological in nature.
I am sorry, but the ideological nature of the current state of affairs was blatently obvious a long time ago to anyone who wasn’t a neocon. Even in Iraq (or perhaps it was Afghanistan -er) one of our own Generals was saying “this is a war of ideas and you have to make sure your idea is better than their idea.”
The problem with the present is that our idea as it is currently packaged by Bush, as it stands, is not intuitively better to the people’s who’s hearts and minds are in play, who’s hearts and minds are the battle field.
Bush constantly preaches liberty and freedom. In his last press conference he used those terms some 150 times – But not once did he mention fairness.
The dirty little secret of the neoconservative movement is they want the principle of liberty to govern without balancing it out against the principle of fairness because such a single threaded epistemology allows for what they are really after, a further concentration of wealth and power – history proves such policies are sheer folly of the most epic proportions.
The lesson of a terribly bloody 20th century is that societies that are based solely on the liberal principle of freedom, if they become too unfair, become top heavy and, like standing up in a dug out canoe, are highly unstable and prone to collamity.
To liberal democratic societies, the principle of fairness functions like an outrigger that when tethered to liberalism makes what was once immensely unstable, immensely stable, in a word, unsinkable.
Most of the first world, our allies, learned the lessons of the 20th century – the idea that the principle of freedom has to strike a balance with the principle of fairness: forming a sort of check and balance against the excesses of the other and creating more stable, less brittle societies. This is why social democracy prevails in countries that have tasted or confronted fascism.
Because of the mythology of America’s birth, that freedom and fairness are the same, and having avoided the worst of the 20th century’s calamities, a portion of American society, such as the neoconservatives, has yet to recognize this lesson.
People living in North Africa and SW Asia are unfamiliar with the idea of liberty- they’ve only observed it from the outside, it is not intuitive to them. Bush can preach it all he wants but they can’t fully comprehend it. Whats also lost on both Bush and people living outside liberal societies is the amount of enourmous discipline it takes on the part of an individual to live in a free society. This obviously is not altered with the way of a hand or the invasion of an army.
While unfamiliar with liberty – that leaves only the issue of fairness in which we can aproach and begin to have a dialogue with the muslim world.
And to Muslim’s fairness is an issue.
Islam is constructed around a set of communitarian and religious ethics that have much to do with fairness, much to do with duties an individual owes to God and Community, and little to do with liberty, at least in the way we understand it – desert communities could never afford the luxury of individualism. Bush’s promise of the virtue of liberty falls on deaf ears because they have no cognizance of it from their experience, let alone as a virtue, let alone a sacred virtue. While promising liberty he threatens to take away fairness, as they have come to experience it. To Muslims, it appears as if Bush is offering nothing while taking away something that can only result in unfairness, corruption and debauchery. And that’s not contemplating issues of nationalism or tribalism
Islam’s initial inspiration and rise was, in part, a reaction to an outsized disparity in wealth. In 610 Mecca was a prosperous trading city, but wealth became increasingly concentrated and poverty abounded. As we all know from the movie “It’s a wonderful life” when such conditions occur, people’s hope declines and increasingly they turn to self destructive, short term gratification, drunkenness and debauchery. Islam’s impermisiveness towards drinking and sex is one reaction to this condition. A ban on usury, that is income from interest (ie. one form of capital gains), is another.
While liberalism has defeated all prior challenges, it is hubris to assume success. While we believe we will prevail, we as yet don’t know for sure as to how. A good start is to recognize the ideological dimension and address the issue of fairness in our own society. As one General in Iraq is reported to have said, “this is a battle of ideas and you have to make sure that you’re idea is better than their idea.”
Islam represents a system that was originally designed to go up against and beat a system akin to our own. From a vastly inferior base, Islam defeated a mercantile society that had mal-apportioned distribution of wealth. The more unfair we become, the more brittle our society, the more inspired our adversaries, the more we look like Islam’s traditional enemy: Great Satan indeed. If we don’t have the political will to address unfairness – how will we prevail in the long battle of hearts and minds?
Another point: Bush’s bluring the line between church and state undermines the very foundation for this ideological war. In the final analysis this was is about the seperation of religion from politics. Bush’s bluring the line hear makes the case for Islamiscist. And one might argue that if this seperation were removed that Islam might be better than Christianity because Islam is built from the ground up to encompase politics, in Christianity it takes contortions in theological interpritations to deny Christ’s commandment to seperate things spiritual from things political. If we are going to embracing merging religion with politics we might all be better served in converting to Islam because its theology is more developed along these lines.
Our founding fathers were wise to seperate beliefs from politics, church from state. But then they were only catching up to what Christ himself implied 1700 years earlier.
Finally, getting back to fairness its worth considering Bush’s domestic policies and how they endager us.
In combination with his foreign policy, Bush’s actions hurt us immessearbly because we can’t get back the lives, the bullets and the hundreds of billions of dollars we’ve spent in Iraq.
Let me use a point in history to demonstrate this: In his book “Structure and Change in Economic History” Professor of Economic History and Nobel Laureate Douglas North suggest that the Roman Empire fell because the wealthy and powerful used their influence to avoid paying taxes. Rome’s tactical advantage with its barbarian foes had narrowed. Rome therefore needed to enlarge its army to hold back the barbarians, enlarging the tax burden. The growing tax burden was pushed down upon the classes that could least afford it. The Empire collapsed and a 500 year Dark Age descended upon Europe.
About the time Europe was recovering from the dark ages a similar event occurred in Japan. Japan balkanized into tiny state-lets ruled by thugs and itself, descended into a prolonged dark age. In a somewhat similar vein, the Byzantine aristocracy, held back adequate funding for their military out of fear military pretensions. The self weakened Byzantine army lost to the Turks at the battle of Manzikurt forcing Byzantines to vacate Anatolia for the first time since the Persian Empire and precipitated the call for the crusades. It was the beginning of the end for the Byzantine Empire.
These societies did not fall to superior foes, they collapsed. What is striking is the totality of their collapse and that the people who had the most to loose by the state’s collapse, the wealthy and powerful, were also the ones that refused to pay to ensure the states perpetuation.
These cases illustrate the folly that befalls a society that becomes unhinged from the principle of fairness, where wealth becomes too concentrated and tax burdens mal-apportioned. As Peter Peterson’s new book: “Running on Empty” points out we are fiscally approaching a cliff. Bush’s policies are pushing us into a chasm. What kind of ideological war can we fight when our financial systems collapse? What kind of hot war can we fight?
It is hard to believe but “c+ Augustus” the leader of the most powerful nation in the history of the earth, the leader of the most technically sophisticated society in history, the leader of the free world, is losing a war to a towel headed demagogue living in a cave on the Afghanistan Pakistan boarder.
If society can begin to grasp this then replacing Bush should be “slam dunk” but “Intellectual Elites” like Brooks is only just coming into cognition. We have a long way to go indeed, and we are going to have some massive set backs in the next fifty years: backlash from Iraq, financial calamity, social unrest, international dysfunction – all served up courtesy of “C+ Augustus”, the Shrub, Bush II.
The price of fascism has been high for all those nations that have been infected. Ours is looking like it will be steep as well. Either Islamisism or Social Democracy is the future of our world. Fasco/Falangism -be it christian inspired or Islam inspired is a bane to humanity.
David Brooks, there’s your X.
To everyone else, Sorry I carried on so much – much to get off my chest. My appologies.
Posted by: Tim Kane on July 24, 2004 at 2:33 PM

Posted by: Anonymous | Jul 25 2004 17:13 utc | 59

That was me at 5:33.

Posted by: Pat | Jul 25 2004 21:34 utc | 61

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy? M.K. Gandhi, “Non-Violence in Peace and War”

Posted by: Kate_Storm | Jul 25 2004 22:09 utc | 63

Number crunching
With regard to Israel’s ‘protective barrier’ designed to ‘keep out terrorists’:
Number of Israeli dead since commencement of Palestinian intifada in September 2000 – 926
Number of Palestinian dead since commencement of Palestinian intifada in September 2000 – 3,199
As @ July 25th 2004
Protest in Gaza as violence rages

Posted by: Nemo | Jul 25 2004 23:00 utc | 65

Is it wise to lump civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq together? If one military undertaking was necessary for our defense and one was not, then you fail to distinguish between deaths resulting from a just cause and deaths resulting from an unjust one. In the same way, it would be a mistake to say that US servicemember deaths in Afghanistan are as unfortunate as those in Iraq. In Iraq, the tragedy is compounded by the fact that the war was an arbitrary intervention and the deaths unrelated to our nation’s security.
Based on what we know and don’t know about 9/11 – and there is more that is not known, at least publicly, I would argue that neither the war on Afghanistan or Iraq was justified. Where was the investigation PRIOR to going into Afghanistan?
Within HOURS of the first plane hitting the 1st tower the alleged hijackers faces were plastered all over the TV, but nothing done to stop them from boarding the planes in the first place. (There are still unanswered questions about the who was really involved as the actual hijackers as some of the original accused hijackers have turned up ALIVE in other countries. In addition although some members of Congress have heard testimony from Sibel Edmonds her testimony has not been entered into the public record and may be extremely relevant to 9/11 and the aftermath.) The original excuse given, by Rumsfeld, for the national failure of the air defenses, was that hijackings were a law enforcement issue. By that definition there should have been a thorough CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION, and yet there still hasn’t been one.
I would also ask, when is it EVER justified to attack a country unless that COUNTRY attacks you first? The none of the alleged 9/11 hijackers were Afghani. You may say, but they were supported and harbored by the Taliban. You’re right. But, our government also trains terrorists. In fact we trained bin Laden. We, and by we I mean our government, also train countless other future terrorists and thugs right here on our own soil, at the School of the Americas.
So my question is, if it is ok to attack and invade Afghanistan because they were harboring terrorists that allegedly attacked us does it also give other governments to attack and invade the US because WE TRAIN terrorists?
My answer to your question Pat, neither Afghanistan or Iraq posed a threat to us. You go after the PEOPLE that actually commited the CRIME. You don’t bomb the shit out of the whole country, topple the government causing a power vaccuum and destroy the infrastructure causing extreme hardship on the entire population to get a few people or even a couple of hundred people.
The only thing the we’ve managed to do by going in like we’ve done in both Afghanistan and Iraq is create the environment that will breed more very angry people that won’t mind getting a little payback.

Posted by: sukabi | Jul 25 2004 23:17 utc | 67

Whoops!
Morocco lost track of 400 al-Qaeda suspects

Posted by: Nemo | Jul 25 2004 23:19 utc | 69

Lost track of… ? An interesting phrase. But, my brain asks, didn’t — didn’t — didn’t the US bomb the people of Afghanistan to smithereens to rid the world of the scourge of al-Qaeda?
You can’t buy this kind of entertainment for ANY price.

Posted by: Kate_Storm | Jul 25 2004 23:30 utc | 71

sukabi: they’re probably not lost track of, more than likely have been reclassified, like Sadr’s militia in Falluja.
Or something else entirely. My hesitance to accept anything reported about large terrorist groups grows faster than West Nile Virus mosquitos on stagnant water.

Posted by: Kate_Storm | Jul 25 2004 23:39 utc | 73

@Remembering
“the only way that it can be stopped & i think i am being too optimistic in this regard is for the electorate of the us to demand peace”
Demand peace from our government? How shall they deliver it to us? Osama bin Laden declared war against the US. Al Qaeda is at war against my country – and my government is not in a position to declare an end to that conflict. Peace will not come to us just because we want it, no matter how loudly we yell for it. The American policies which are at the heart of al Qaeda’s violent opposition movement have not been significantly altered. Because they have not been significantly altered, we are still at war against a global Islamic insurgency that is focused, in part, upon killing as many of us as it can, as many as are required, to force a change.
Even without attacking Iran, al Qaeda would strike us again. Even without the invasion and occupation of Iraq, al Qaeda would strike us again. Granted, the latter is a great boon to al Qaeda, and the former would be as well. But their war predates this presidency and the actions taken by this administration. It is a war against policies that are more than a generation old.

Posted by: Pat | Jul 25 2004 23:47 utc | 75

Harry — ROFL! 😉

Posted by: Kate_Storm | Jul 25 2004 23:57 utc | 77

@ Pat
You have it exactly right as to how things are hanging now – how we got to this place is another story also related to American foreign policies and practices of old. Some elements of Wahhabi extremism would actually relish the thought of the Iranians being hammered, they are classified as mushrikun after all. In addition, spin-offs would include an upsurge in global recruiting for various vengeance seeking Hizb’Allah groupings who, although Shiites, have an anti-Americanism that al-Qaeda cadres could happily (temporarily) work with as well as the escalation of anti-American attacks in Iraq as Iraqi Shiites (together with Shiites everywhere) bought into the ‘America is the enemy of Islam’ accusation. Al-Qaeda needs (and has calculated) these American responses that unify shades of Islam and guarantee the spread of extremism – not to mention the tremendous ongoing boost to recruiting that they provide. Violence feeds repression which feeds violence which feeds furhter repression and so it grows – America can be relied upon, if it follows its current strategies, to create more potential ‘terrorists’ than any al-Qaeda recruiting officer could ever hope to do.
Someone should tell Bush, Kerry, the American media and whoever else is interested – “It’s not the WMD, the car-bombs, the hijacked planes, the chemical or the biological weapons, the ferocity and technological superiority of your armed forces or the massive budgets and electronic wizardry of your intelligence services – it’s the policies, stupid!”

Posted by: Nemo | Jul 26 2004 0:31 utc | 79

@ rememberering giap
I write as if America is innocent? I think that you must be mixing my posts up with somebody else’s, comrade. I would be highly insulted but I think that you have made an error somewhere so will take no offense at your comment.
Please advise me where a single one of my posts implies that America is not the pariah state that it is.

Posted by: Nemo | Jul 26 2004 0:58 utc | 81

Perhaps there is a language issue here? I take ‘policies’ to encompass the whole range of coups, assassinations, destabilizations, invasions, cultivation of artificial domestic ‘protest groups’, bribery of heads-of-state, arming and training of repressive security regimes to keep tyrants and dictators in power, espionage and use of agents provocateurs, proxy conflicts, extraction of native resources at low cost while keeping the indigenous population beggared and other nefarious activities, as well as more anodyne, visible practices such as trade agreements, treaties and agreements lending a ‘civilized’ veneer to the armed expropriation that marks US behaviour in the world.
Such behaviours are policies – they certainly are not accidents or aberrations because, as has been pointed out on numerous occasions, they constitute America’s approach to and dealings with the world. They have been devised, developed and implemented by Republican and Democrat administrations alike and their ‘fruits’ give the American people their standard of living and are often hailed by them as indicative of what makes America ‘great’ in the world. I do not know what collective amnesia washes over the mass of the American public but the peoples of the world who have suffered as a result of such ‘policies’ know them and remember them only too well for what they are.

Posted by: Nemo | Jul 26 2004 1:17 utc | 83

nemo
sorry, i misread you 8:31 post
the error is all mine
still steel

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 26 2004 1:26 utc | 85

“the vietnamese were prepared to wait another 50 years for their liberation”
That’s exactly why this NeoClown bullshit is so insane. Even if imperialism, colonialism, and the economic looting that these terms imply, were “noble” ends–and they surely are not–they appear to me to be unachievable in the 21st century.
Bernard is doing a thread on Eric Margolis’ latest column. In another column, Margolis famously said:”Mr. President, why not just buy the oil”?
Why not, indeed!

Posted by: FLASHHARRY | Jul 26 2004 1:51 utc | 87

Are ‘green card’ seekers excluded from US military casualty lists?
…”Official statistics do not include casualties among non-U.S. nationals who sign up to serve in the American armed forces in order to get a U.S. `green card.’ According to reliable information the share of non-Americans in the U.S. force in Iraq may be as high as 60 per cent,” the source said. “The real number of U.S. losses may be as high as 2,000 casualties and up to 12,000 wounded,” the military diplomat said…
2,000 U.S. troops killed in Iraq: Russian expert
Is there any grain of truth in the allegation about omissions from US casualty lists?

Posted by: Nemo | Jul 26 2004 3:15 utc | 89

Economic warfare – it’s the American way
TIKRIT, Iraq — Cash has become the U.S. military’s first line of defense in some parts of Iraq, where U.S. soldiers are distributing money to encourage goodwill and to counter their enemies’ offers of money to unemployed Iraqis willing to attack Americans, according to officers here.
Even patrol leaders now carry envelopes of cash to spend in their areas. The money comes from brigade commanders, who get as much as $50,000 to $100,000 a month to distribute for local rehabilitation and emergency welfare projects through the Commanders Emergency Response Program…
….”I have met two guys now who say, ‘I don’t love you and I don’t hate you. But somebody’s offered me $200 to set up a mortar or a [roadside bomb], and there’s a bonus if we kill you,’ ” said Lt. Col. Randall Potterf, the civil affairs officer for the Army’s 1st Infantry Division….
US troops deploy cash as a defensive weapon
You can just imagine some of the conversations the locals are having among themselves:
“Wonder how much they’d pay not to attack them with a small tactical thermo-nuclear device?”
“La2, they know we don’t have any of those, they hate roadside bombs, just say you’re being asked to lay a couple of those.”
“How much?”
“Well, it’s $100 for one but tell him you won’t attack him twice for a bargain $150.”
“$150? Shouldn’t I say $175?”
“Yallah don’t be greedy – we’ve got to do this thing so that there’s enough to go around for all of us.”
”I guess you’re right – maybe we should slow down a bit and save up for the Hajj – tell them we’ve taken delivery of some new RPGs and some Chinese Stingers just before we go?”
”Great idea! I’ll suggest it to the emir – you know I’ll be kind of sorry when these foolish kuffars go.”
”Na’am, but we should take advantage while we can, eh? The money they’re paying us buys an awful lot of weaponry.”
”True, we can keep this game up for years. Wait, quick!, here they come – look troubled and conscience stricken….”

Posted by: Nemo | Jul 26 2004 4:38 utc | 91

‘We find that if we don’t go there, they won’t shoot us.'”
…
This simple mantra is for Americans must-must to learn what their new “foreign policy” should be!…DO NOT GO THERE!

Posted by: vbo | Jul 26 2004 5:11 utc | 93

That Monday morning feeling
Car bomb, mortars hit Baghdad
@ vbo
Some interesting reading there, many thanks.

Posted by: Nemo | Jul 26 2004 5:43 utc | 95

Another blood drenched day commences in Iraq
BAGHDAD, Iraq – Insurgents opened fire on a car carrying Iraqi women to work with British forces in southern Iraq on Monday, killing two women and wounding two others, police said.
Lt. Col. Ali Kadhem, of Basra police, said attackers drove alongside the women’s car as they were driving to work at Basra airport at about 8 a.m. local time and sprayed gun fire at them….
Insurgents kill two Iraqi women

Posted by: Nemo | Jul 26 2004 6:18 utc | 97

Homeland security – what to do when people discover security risks in America – muzzle them
Notice a problem? Shut your mouth – we can silence you just like that
It must be quicker to seal off sources of information that might give ‘terrorists’ ideas than actually address the problems, eh? You really are welcome to America!

Posted by: Nemo | Jul 26 2004 6:54 utc | 99