The amateurs, running U.S. foreign policy in the second Bush administration have committed a huge blunder in Afghanistan according to a commentary written by Eric Margolis in the L.A. Times last November 28, 2001. While Vladimir Putin was back slapping with George Bush II in Crawford, Texas, Putin had already put into play a new alliance with India and Iran. Putin’s goal was to check India’s arch enemy Pakistan, prevent Pakistan and the U.S. from constructing its Termez-Karachi pipeline across Afghanistan, and force western oil companies seeking to exploit the vast oil reserves in the Caspian basin to deal with Russia and Iran.
Margolis writes’ “...Washington fully expected to implant a pro-American regime in Kabul and open the way for the Pakistani-American pipeline. But, while the Bush administration was busy tearing apart Afghanistan to find Bin Laden, it failed to notice that the Russians were taking over half the country.”
“The Russians achieved this victory through their proxy--the Northern Alliance. Moscow, which has sustained the alliance since 1990, rearmed it after Sept. 11 with new tanks, armored vehicles, artillery, helicopters and trucks.”
“To the fury of Washington and Islamabad, in a coup de main the Russians rushed the Northern Alliance into Kabul, in direct contravention of Bush's dictates.”
“The alliance is now Afghanistan's dominant force and styles itself as the new ‘lawful’ government, a claim fully backed by Moscow. The Russians have regained influence over Afghanistan, avenged their defeat by the U.S. in the 1980s war and neatly checkmated the Bush administration. The U.S. ouster of the Taliban regime also means Pakistan has lost its former influence over Afghanistan. Russia has regained control of the best potential pipeline routes. The new Silk Road is destined to become a Russian energy superhighway.”
Clues to future events in Afghanistan can be found by looking closely at some of the top leaders of the Northern Alliance. According to BBC leadership profiles, three men stand out. They are: “General Abdul Rashid Dostum leader of Afghanistan's minority Uzbek community, The leader of the second largest party in the Northern Alliance, General Dostum directed the campaign to recapture Mazar-e-Sharif. In the years of Soviet domination, he transformed himself from a communist union organizer working in northern Afghan gas fields to the leader of the 20,000 strong Uzbek militia fighting on the Soviet side. “
Karim Khalili is the leader of the Hezb-e-Wahdat (Unity Party) which represents the Shia ethnic Hazara minority. Wahdat, according to the BBC, is the main benefactor of Iranian support.
Ismail Khan was the former governor of Herat. His forces captured Chaghcharan, the capital of Afghanistan's Ghor province, and, suspiciously, Herat near the Iranian border the day after Mazar-e-Sharif fell. The nearest Northern Alliance forces were more than 500 miles away in Mazar-e-Sharif.
With Russia and (perhaps) Iran controlling a great deal of Afghanistan because of Bush’s ineptitude, it is no surprise Osama Bin Ladan can’t be found. The national electronic news media, parroting U.S. intelligence and the Pentagon party line, insists Bin Laden is in the Tora Bora mountains, in Pakistan, or dead. However, Could Bin Laden and the Taliban leader Mullah Omar really be in Herat or even Iran? Betcha British intelligence knows.
December 2001
Thursday, December 20, 2001
Friday, December 14, 2001
Ulterior Motives
Dr. Ron Paul is a Republican who represents the 14th Texas congressional district has recently written: “Ulterior motives have always played a part in the foreign policy of almost every nation throughout history. Economic gain and geographic expansion, or even just the desires for more political power, too often drive the militarism of all nations. Unfortunately, in recent years, we have not been exempt.”
The Vice President for International Relations for UNOCAL Oil Corporation, John J. Maresca, testified on February 12, 1998 the following before the House Committee on International Relations Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific: “I appreciate your invitation to speak here today. I believe these hearings are important and timely, and I congratulate you for focusing on Central Asia oil and gas reserves and the role they play in shaping U.S. policy.”
“The Caspian region contains tremendous untapped hydrocarbon reserves, much of them located in the Caspian Sea basin itself. Proven natural gas reserves equal more than 236 trillion cubic feet. The region's total oil reserves may reach more than 60 billion barrels of oil. Some estimates are as high as 200 billion barrels. In 1995, the region was producing only 870,000 barrels per day.”
“One major problem has yet to be resolved: how to get the region's vast energy resources to the markets. (A) project...sponsored by the Azerbaijan International Operating Company (AIOC), a consortium of 11 foreign oil companies including four American companies -- Unocal, Amoco, Exxon and Pennzoil...(want to follow a) ...potential route south...across Iran. However, this option is foreclosed for American companies because of U.S. sanctions legislation. The only other possible route option is across Afghanistan, which has its own unique challenges.”
“The country has been involved in bitter warfare for almost two decades. The territory across which the pipeline would extend is controlled by the Taliban, an Islamic movement that is not recognized as a government by most other nations. From the outset, we have made it clear that construction of our proposed pipeline cannot begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments, lenders (read big banks) and our company.”
“In spite of this, a route through Afghanistan appears to be the best option with the fewest technical obstacles. It is the shortest route to the sea and has relatively favorable terrain for a pipeline. The route through Afghanistan is the one that would bring Central Asian oil closest to Asian markets and thus would be the cheapest in terms of transporting the oil. The 1,040-mile-long oil pipeline would begin near the town of Chardzhou, in northern Turkmenistan, and extend southeasterly through Afghanistan to an export terminal that would be constructed on the Pakistan coast on the Arabian Sea. Only about 440 miles of the pipeline would be in Afghanistan.”
In George Bush’s war cabinet we find V.P. Cheney, from Halliburton Oil Industry Corporation; Condolezza Rice who sat on the board of Chevron Oil and has an oil tanker named after her; Donald Rumsfeld former CEO of G.D. Searle and General Instruments, Pentagon contractors; and General Colin Powell author of the cowardly “Powell Doctrine” saying the U.S. should only attack when victory is guaranteed. While the National Electronic News Media sells antiterrorism to the clueless “nobodies, ” the ulterior motive is oil for the “Big Boys.” Surprised? Why?
December 2001
The Vice President for International Relations for UNOCAL Oil Corporation, John J. Maresca, testified on February 12, 1998 the following before the House Committee on International Relations Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific: “I appreciate your invitation to speak here today. I believe these hearings are important and timely, and I congratulate you for focusing on Central Asia oil and gas reserves and the role they play in shaping U.S. policy.”
“The Caspian region contains tremendous untapped hydrocarbon reserves, much of them located in the Caspian Sea basin itself. Proven natural gas reserves equal more than 236 trillion cubic feet. The region's total oil reserves may reach more than 60 billion barrels of oil. Some estimates are as high as 200 billion barrels. In 1995, the region was producing only 870,000 barrels per day.”
“One major problem has yet to be resolved: how to get the region's vast energy resources to the markets. (A) project...sponsored by the Azerbaijan International Operating Company (AIOC), a consortium of 11 foreign oil companies including four American companies -- Unocal, Amoco, Exxon and Pennzoil...(want to follow a) ...potential route south...across Iran. However, this option is foreclosed for American companies because of U.S. sanctions legislation. The only other possible route option is across Afghanistan, which has its own unique challenges.”
“The country has been involved in bitter warfare for almost two decades. The territory across which the pipeline would extend is controlled by the Taliban, an Islamic movement that is not recognized as a government by most other nations. From the outset, we have made it clear that construction of our proposed pipeline cannot begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments, lenders (read big banks) and our company.”
“In spite of this, a route through Afghanistan appears to be the best option with the fewest technical obstacles. It is the shortest route to the sea and has relatively favorable terrain for a pipeline. The route through Afghanistan is the one that would bring Central Asian oil closest to Asian markets and thus would be the cheapest in terms of transporting the oil. The 1,040-mile-long oil pipeline would begin near the town of Chardzhou, in northern Turkmenistan, and extend southeasterly through Afghanistan to an export terminal that would be constructed on the Pakistan coast on the Arabian Sea. Only about 440 miles of the pipeline would be in Afghanistan.”
In George Bush’s war cabinet we find V.P. Cheney, from Halliburton Oil Industry Corporation; Condolezza Rice who sat on the board of Chevron Oil and has an oil tanker named after her; Donald Rumsfeld former CEO of G.D. Searle and General Instruments, Pentagon contractors; and General Colin Powell author of the cowardly “Powell Doctrine” saying the U.S. should only attack when victory is guaranteed. While the National Electronic News Media sells antiterrorism to the clueless “nobodies, ” the ulterior motive is oil for the “Big Boys.” Surprised? Why?
December 2001
Friday, November 30, 2001
**** You
I was wondering how long it would take the invertebrates on the political right dwelling in the deep, dank recesses of their caverns to evolve a spine. Finally, in the pages of the our local newspaper four troglodytes knuckle dragged their way out and began pounding their clubs on the ground screeching and grunting their groundless and empty headed opinions about my view of this so called war on terrorism. One would hope that these “right” thinking cavemen could do better than rehash cold war ideological nonsense. But, like a played out uranium mine where one hopes to find some high energy ideas laying about, these trogs, instead, give us densely packed lumps of lead.
Among the many lumps of lead Dan Huston serves up, Huston writes the following,” Name one country we have invaded and occupied with our military, just the US alone....” Go back and read the list again (A Hundred Years of American Interventionism 11/16/2001 ), Dan. Dan goes on to write: “The action in Russia after WW I was a League of Nations intervention to distribute food and aid.” The United States never belonged to the League of Nations. The isolationist Republicans in the Senate never ratified our participation in the League. Dan then writes, “He mentions Chili (sic). The UN stepped in and conducted free elections, put the ruthless dictator out and the World Court still has him on trial at the Hague.” The UN never supervised any Chilean elections and the ruthless general Pinochet lives in splendor in his villa in Chile. Under Chilean law Pinochet is immune from all legal prosecution. Finally Dan ends his illiteracy with the following: “I will and will (sic) be displaying My (sic) American Flag-a proud veteran.” For a hand of bananas I can teach a chimp to wave a flag. If you are willing to do it for for free, Dan, go for it.
Ed Perry, who I have no quarrel with, wants to know my background. Aside from the fact it is none of your business and the only thing that matters are the ideas written, I will tell you this: In the 1970’s, I did two stints at the NATO School (SHAPE) in Oberammergau, Germany where we taught NATO commanders the efficient use of battlefield nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons (NBC for short). I met and married my wife in Germany, resigned my job, and we honeymooned by back packing across southern Asia including 10 days in Afghanistan. There were only two things we did a lot of during those four months. They were reading history and you can guess the other. We are still happily married and hopelessly in love.
Sorry about your humbling experience in Kashmir, Marc DuQuette. Everywhere I traveled in Southern Asia I found sincere people asking the same question everywhere. Why does your government hate us so much?
Next time, David M. Evans, read my letter instead of the column heading. That way you can avoid making such a bone headed error.
Mathew Macul writes, I am...one of those conspiracy folks who believe everything they read.” Sorry, Matt, not true. For example, I don’t believe a thing you or Dan Huston, or David Evans, or Marc DuQuette write. In fact, I also don’t believe the vast majority of the American electronic press. That’s why I prefer reading the world press to get a less bias and jingoistic view of this “war.” Matt then writes, “Those (me again) without their own ideas are usurpers of reality and just the sort of individuals whom Bin Laden recruits to perform his evil acts.” Matt, not only is that sentence meaningless gibberish, but to equate me with a Bin laden stooge requires that I again express a not so original idea of my own:" **** you!"
Among the many lumps of lead Dan Huston serves up, Huston writes the following,” Name one country we have invaded and occupied with our military, just the US alone....” Go back and read the list again (A Hundred Years of American Interventionism 11/16/2001 ), Dan. Dan goes on to write: “The action in Russia after WW I was a League of Nations intervention to distribute food and aid.” The United States never belonged to the League of Nations. The isolationist Republicans in the Senate never ratified our participation in the League. Dan then writes, “He mentions Chili (sic). The UN stepped in and conducted free elections, put the ruthless dictator out and the World Court still has him on trial at the Hague.” The UN never supervised any Chilean elections and the ruthless general Pinochet lives in splendor in his villa in Chile. Under Chilean law Pinochet is immune from all legal prosecution. Finally Dan ends his illiteracy with the following: “I will and will (sic) be displaying My (sic) American Flag-a proud veteran.” For a hand of bananas I can teach a chimp to wave a flag. If you are willing to do it for for free, Dan, go for it.
Ed Perry, who I have no quarrel with, wants to know my background. Aside from the fact it is none of your business and the only thing that matters are the ideas written, I will tell you this: In the 1970’s, I did two stints at the NATO School (SHAPE) in Oberammergau, Germany where we taught NATO commanders the efficient use of battlefield nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons (NBC for short). I met and married my wife in Germany, resigned my job, and we honeymooned by back packing across southern Asia including 10 days in Afghanistan. There were only two things we did a lot of during those four months. They were reading history and you can guess the other. We are still happily married and hopelessly in love.
Sorry about your humbling experience in Kashmir, Marc DuQuette. Everywhere I traveled in Southern Asia I found sincere people asking the same question everywhere. Why does your government hate us so much?
Next time, David M. Evans, read my letter instead of the column heading. That way you can avoid making such a bone headed error.
Mathew Macul writes, I am...one of those conspiracy folks who believe everything they read.” Sorry, Matt, not true. For example, I don’t believe a thing you or Dan Huston, or David Evans, or Marc DuQuette write. In fact, I also don’t believe the vast majority of the American electronic press. That’s why I prefer reading the world press to get a less bias and jingoistic view of this “war.” Matt then writes, “Those (me again) without their own ideas are usurpers of reality and just the sort of individuals whom Bin Laden recruits to perform his evil acts.” Matt, not only is that sentence meaningless gibberish, but to equate me with a Bin laden stooge requires that I again express a not so original idea of my own:" **** you!"
Tuesday, November 27, 2001
The Taliban Visits Houston
The English foreign correspondent John Pilger in a front page editorial published on 10/29/2001 in the Daily Mirror (London) wrote the following (excerpted): “The war against terrorism is a fraud. After three weeks' bombing, not a single terrorist implicated in the attacks on America has been caught or killed in Afghanistan. Instead, one of the poorest, most stricken nations has been terrorised by the most powerful - to the point where American pilots have run out of dubious"military" targets and are now destroying mud houses, a hospital, Red Cross warehouses, lorries carrying refugees.” “None of those directly involved in the September 11 atrocity was Afghani. Most were Saudis, who apparently did their planning and training in Germany and the United States.”
“The camps which the Taliban allowed bin Laden to use were emptied weeks ago. Moreover, the Taliban itself is a creation of the Americans and the British. In the 1980s, the tribal army that produced them was funded by the CIA and trained by the SAS to fight the Russians.” “The hypocrisy does not stop there. When the Taliban took Kabul in 1996, Washington said nothing. Why? Because Taliban leaders were soon on their way to Houston, Texas, to be entertained by executives of the oil company, Unocal.” “With secret US government approval, the company offered them a generous cut of the profits of the oil and gas pumped through a pipeline that the Americans wanted to build from Soviet central Asia through Afghanistan.” “A US diplomat said: "The Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis did." He explained that Afghanistan would become an American oil colony, there would be huge profits for the West, no democracy and the legal persecution of women. "We can live with that," he said.” “Although the deal fell through, it remains an urgent priority of the administration of George W. Bush, which is steeped in the oil industry. Bush's concealed agenda is to exploit the oil and gas reserves in the Caspian basin, the greatest source of untapped fossil fuel on earth and enough, according to one estimate, to meet America's voracious energy needs for a generation. Only if the pipeline runs through Afghanistan can the Americans hope to control it.”
“There is no war on terrorism. If there was, the Royal Marines and the SAS would be storming the beaches of Florida, where more CIA-funded terrorists, ex-Latin American dictators and torturers, are given refuge than anywhere on earth. New excuses, new hidden agendas, new lies. Before another child dies violently, or quietly from starvation, before new fanatics are created in both the east and the west, it is time... to stop this fraudulent war and to demand the kind of bold, imaginative non- violent initiatives that require real political courage.”
“The other day, the parents of Greg Rodriguez, a young man who died in the World Trade Center, said this: "We read enough of the news to sense that our government is heading in the direction of violent revenge, with the prospect of sons, daughters, parents, friends in distant lands dying, suffering, and nursing further grievances against us.”
November 2001
“The camps which the Taliban allowed bin Laden to use were emptied weeks ago. Moreover, the Taliban itself is a creation of the Americans and the British. In the 1980s, the tribal army that produced them was funded by the CIA and trained by the SAS to fight the Russians.” “The hypocrisy does not stop there. When the Taliban took Kabul in 1996, Washington said nothing. Why? Because Taliban leaders were soon on their way to Houston, Texas, to be entertained by executives of the oil company, Unocal.” “With secret US government approval, the company offered them a generous cut of the profits of the oil and gas pumped through a pipeline that the Americans wanted to build from Soviet central Asia through Afghanistan.” “A US diplomat said: "The Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis did." He explained that Afghanistan would become an American oil colony, there would be huge profits for the West, no democracy and the legal persecution of women. "We can live with that," he said.” “Although the deal fell through, it remains an urgent priority of the administration of George W. Bush, which is steeped in the oil industry. Bush's concealed agenda is to exploit the oil and gas reserves in the Caspian basin, the greatest source of untapped fossil fuel on earth and enough, according to one estimate, to meet America's voracious energy needs for a generation. Only if the pipeline runs through Afghanistan can the Americans hope to control it.”
“There is no war on terrorism. If there was, the Royal Marines and the SAS would be storming the beaches of Florida, where more CIA-funded terrorists, ex-Latin American dictators and torturers, are given refuge than anywhere on earth. New excuses, new hidden agendas, new lies. Before another child dies violently, or quietly from starvation, before new fanatics are created in both the east and the west, it is time... to stop this fraudulent war and to demand the kind of bold, imaginative non- violent initiatives that require real political courage.”
“The other day, the parents of Greg Rodriguez, a young man who died in the World Trade Center, said this: "We read enough of the news to sense that our government is heading in the direction of violent revenge, with the prospect of sons, daughters, parents, friends in distant lands dying, suffering, and nursing further grievances against us.”
November 2001
Friday, November 16, 2001
A Hundred Years of American Interventionism
The following is a partial list of our government ‘s use of troops against dozens of independent nations all over the world. In the last 100 years, no other nation comes close to the interventionist record established by our government. The entire world is aware of our imperialism. The only people who are kept ignorant of our governments imperialism are the American people themselves. Do you still wonder why our government (not we, the people) are so dispised by so many?
PHILIPPINES/l898-1910(-?)/Naval, troops/Seized from Spain, killed 600,000 Filipinos.
CUBA/l898-1902(-?)/Naval, troops/Seized from Spain, still hold Navy base.
PUERTO RICO/1898(-?)/Naval, troops/Seized from Spain, occupation continues.
GUAM/l898(-?)/Naval, troops/Seized from Spain, still use as base.
NICARAGUA/l898/Troops/Marines land at port of San Juan del Sur.
SAMOA/1899(-?)/Troops/Battle over succession to throne.
NICARAGUA/l899/Troops/Marines land at port of Bluefields.
PANAMA/1901-14)/Naval, troops/ annexed Canal Zone from Columbia,1914.
HONDURAS/l903/Troops/Marines intervene in revolution.
DOMINICAN REP./1903-04/Troops/U.S. interests protected in Revolution.
CUBA/1906-09/Troops/Marines land in democratic election.
NICARAGUA/1907/Troops/"Dollar Diplomacy" protectorate set up.
PANAMA/l908/Troops/Marines intervene in election contest.
NICARAGUA/l9l0/Troops/Marines land in Bluefields and Corinto.
HONDURAS/1911/Troops/U.S. interests protected in civil war.
CUBA/1912/Troops/U.S. interests protected in Havana.
PANAMA/l9l2/Troops/Marines land during heated election.
HONDURAS/l9l2/Troops/Marines protect U.S. economic interests.
NICARAGUA/1912-33/Troops, bombing/20-year occupation, fought guerrillas.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC/1914/Naval/Fight with rebels over Santo Domingo.
MEXICO/1914-18/Naval, troops/Series of interventions against nationalists.
HAITI/1914-34/Troops, bombing/19-year occupation after revolts.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC/1916-24/Troops/8-year Marine occupation.
CUBA/1917-33/Troops/Military occupation, economic protectorate.
RUSSIA/1918-22/Naval, troops/Five landings to fight Bolsheviks.
PANAMA/1918-20/Troops/"Police duty" during unrest after elections.
HONDURAS/l9l9/Troops/Marines land during election campaign.
YUGOSLAVIA/1919/Troops/Marines intervene for Italy against Serbs in Dalmatia.
GUATEMALA/1920/Troops
TURKEY/1922/Troops/Fought nationalists in Smyrna (Izmir).
CHINA/1922-27/Naval, troops/Deployment during nationalist revolt.
HONDURAS/1924-25/Troops/Landed twice during election strife.
PANAMA/1925/Troops/Marines suppress general strike.
EL SALVADOR/l932/Naval/Warships sent during Faribundo Marti revolt.
URUGUAY/l947/Bombers deployed as show of strength.
GREECE/l947-49/U.S. backs facist in civil war.
PHILIPPINES/l948-54/CIA directs war against Huk Rebellion.
PUERTO RICO/1950/Independence rebellion crushed in Ponce.
IRAN/l953/CIA overthrows democracy, installs Shah.
GUATEMALA/l954/CIA directs exile invasion after new gov't nationalizes United Fruit company lands; bombers based in Nicaragua.
LEBANON/l958/Troops, naval/Marine occupation.
PANAMA/1958/Troops/Flag protests erupt into confrontation.
VIETNAM/l960-75/Troops, naval, bombing, Fought South Vietnam revolt & North Vietnam; more than a million Vietnamese killed in longest U.S. war;
CUBA/l961/CIA-directed exile invasion fails.
PANAMA/l964/Troops/Panamanians shot for urging canal's return.
INDONESIA/l965/Million killed in CIA-assisted army coup.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC/1965-66/Troops, bombing/Marines land
GUATEMALA/l966-67/Green Berets intervene against rebels.
CAMBODIA/l969-75/Bombing, troops, naval/
OMAN/l970/U.S. directs Iranian marine invasion.
LAOS/l971-73/ "carpet-bombs" countryside.
CHILE/1973/CIA-backed coup ousts elected marxist president. 30,000 killed
CAMBODIA/l975/Troops, bombing/Gas captured ship, 28 die in copter crash.
ANGOLA/l976-92/CIA assists South African-backed rebels.
LIBYA/l981/Naval jets/Two Libyan jets shot down in maneuvers.
EL SALVADOR/l981-92/CIA directed troops/Advisors,
NICARAGUA/l981-90/CIA directs Contra invasions, plants harbor mines
HONDURAS/l983-89/Troops build bases near borders.
LEBANON/l982-84/Troops/Marines back Phalangists, shells Muslim positions.
GRENADA/l983-84/Troops, bombing/Invasion four years after revolution.
LIBYA/l986/Bombing, naval/Air strikes to topple nationalist gov't.
IRAN/l987-88/Naval, bombing/US intervenes on side of Iraq in war.
LIBYA/1989/Naval jets/Two Libyan jets shot down.
PANAMA/1989-?/Troops, bombing/Nationalist government ousted by 27,000 soldiers, leaders arrested, 2000+ killed.
SAUDI ARABIA/1990-91/Troops, jets/Iraq countered after invading Kuwait
KUWAIT/540,000 troops also stationed in Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, Israel.
IRAQ/1990-?/Bombing, troops, naval/Blockade; 200,000+ Iraqi conscripts killed
KUWAIT/1991/Naval, bombing, troops/Kuwait royal family returned to throne.
SOMALIA/1992-94/Troops, naval, bombing/
ZAIRE (CONGO)/1996-97/Troops/Marines in Rwandan Hutu refuge camps,Congo revolution begins.
SUDAN/1998/Missiles/Attack on pharmaceutical plant
IRAQ/1998-?/Bombing, Missiles/Four days of intensive air strikes
YUGOSLAVIA/1999-?/Bombing, Missiles/Heavy air strikes against Serbia
PHILIPPINES/l898-1910(-?)/Naval, troops/Seized from Spain, killed 600,000 Filipinos.
CUBA/l898-1902(-?)/Naval, troops/Seized from Spain, still hold Navy base.
PUERTO RICO/1898(-?)/Naval, troops/Seized from Spain, occupation continues.
GUAM/l898(-?)/Naval, troops/Seized from Spain, still use as base.
NICARAGUA/l898/Troops/Marines land at port of San Juan del Sur.
SAMOA/1899(-?)/Troops/Battle over succession to throne.
NICARAGUA/l899/Troops/Marines land at port of Bluefields.
PANAMA/1901-14)/Naval, troops/ annexed Canal Zone from Columbia,1914.
HONDURAS/l903/Troops/Marines intervene in revolution.
DOMINICAN REP./1903-04/Troops/U.S. interests protected in Revolution.
CUBA/1906-09/Troops/Marines land in democratic election.
NICARAGUA/1907/Troops/"Dollar Diplomacy" protectorate set up.
PANAMA/l908/Troops/Marines intervene in election contest.
NICARAGUA/l9l0/Troops/Marines land in Bluefields and Corinto.
HONDURAS/1911/Troops/U.S. interests protected in civil war.
CUBA/1912/Troops/U.S. interests protected in Havana.
PANAMA/l9l2/Troops/Marines land during heated election.
HONDURAS/l9l2/Troops/Marines protect U.S. economic interests.
NICARAGUA/1912-33/Troops, bombing/20-year occupation, fought guerrillas.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC/1914/Naval/Fight with rebels over Santo Domingo.
MEXICO/1914-18/Naval, troops/Series of interventions against nationalists.
HAITI/1914-34/Troops, bombing/19-year occupation after revolts.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC/1916-24/Troops/8-year Marine occupation.
CUBA/1917-33/Troops/Military occupation, economic protectorate.
RUSSIA/1918-22/Naval, troops/Five landings to fight Bolsheviks.
PANAMA/1918-20/Troops/"Police duty" during unrest after elections.
HONDURAS/l9l9/Troops/Marines land during election campaign.
YUGOSLAVIA/1919/Troops/Marines intervene for Italy against Serbs in Dalmatia.
GUATEMALA/1920/Troops
TURKEY/1922/Troops/Fought nationalists in Smyrna (Izmir).
CHINA/1922-27/Naval, troops/Deployment during nationalist revolt.
HONDURAS/1924-25/Troops/Landed twice during election strife.
PANAMA/1925/Troops/Marines suppress general strike.
EL SALVADOR/l932/Naval/Warships sent during Faribundo Marti revolt.
URUGUAY/l947/Bombers deployed as show of strength.
GREECE/l947-49/U.S. backs facist in civil war.
PHILIPPINES/l948-54/CIA directs war against Huk Rebellion.
PUERTO RICO/1950/Independence rebellion crushed in Ponce.
IRAN/l953/CIA overthrows democracy, installs Shah.
GUATEMALA/l954/CIA directs exile invasion after new gov't nationalizes United Fruit company lands; bombers based in Nicaragua.
LEBANON/l958/Troops, naval/Marine occupation.
PANAMA/1958/Troops/Flag protests erupt into confrontation.
VIETNAM/l960-75/Troops, naval, bombing, Fought South Vietnam revolt & North Vietnam; more than a million Vietnamese killed in longest U.S. war;
CUBA/l961/CIA-directed exile invasion fails.
PANAMA/l964/Troops/Panamanians shot for urging canal's return.
INDONESIA/l965/Million killed in CIA-assisted army coup.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC/1965-66/Troops, bombing/Marines land
GUATEMALA/l966-67/Green Berets intervene against rebels.
CAMBODIA/l969-75/Bombing, troops, naval/
OMAN/l970/U.S. directs Iranian marine invasion.
LAOS/l971-73/ "carpet-bombs" countryside.
CHILE/1973/CIA-backed coup ousts elected marxist president. 30,000 killed
CAMBODIA/l975/Troops, bombing/Gas captured ship, 28 die in copter crash.
ANGOLA/l976-92/CIA assists South African-backed rebels.
LIBYA/l981/Naval jets/Two Libyan jets shot down in maneuvers.
EL SALVADOR/l981-92/CIA directed troops/Advisors,
NICARAGUA/l981-90/CIA directs Contra invasions, plants harbor mines
HONDURAS/l983-89/Troops build bases near borders.
LEBANON/l982-84/Troops/Marines back Phalangists, shells Muslim positions.
GRENADA/l983-84/Troops, bombing/Invasion four years after revolution.
LIBYA/l986/Bombing, naval/Air strikes to topple nationalist gov't.
IRAN/l987-88/Naval, bombing/US intervenes on side of Iraq in war.
LIBYA/1989/Naval jets/Two Libyan jets shot down.
PANAMA/1989-?/Troops, bombing/Nationalist government ousted by 27,000 soldiers, leaders arrested, 2000+ killed.
SAUDI ARABIA/1990-91/Troops, jets/Iraq countered after invading Kuwait
KUWAIT/540,000 troops also stationed in Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, Israel.
IRAQ/1990-?/Bombing, troops, naval/Blockade; 200,000+ Iraqi conscripts killed
KUWAIT/1991/Naval, bombing, troops/Kuwait royal family returned to throne.
SOMALIA/1992-94/Troops, naval, bombing/
ZAIRE (CONGO)/1996-97/Troops/Marines in Rwandan Hutu refuge camps,Congo revolution begins.
SUDAN/1998/Missiles/Attack on pharmaceutical plant
IRAQ/1998-?/Bombing, Missiles/Four days of intensive air strikes
YUGOSLAVIA/1999-?/Bombing, Missiles/Heavy air strikes against Serbia
Friday, November 9, 2001
“The War Against Terrorism Is A Fraud."
The English foreign correspondent John Pilger in a front page editorial published on 10/29/2001 in the Daily Mirror (London) wrote the following (excerpted):
“The war against terrorism is a fraud. After three weeks' bombing, not a single terrorist implicated in the attacks on America has been caught or killed in Afghanistan. Instead, one of the poorest, most stricken nations has been terrorised by the most powerful - to the point where American pilots have run out of dubious"military" targets and are now destroying mud houses, a hospital, Red Cross warehouses, lorries carrying refugees.”
“None of those directly involved in the September 11 atrocity was Afghani. Most were Saudis, who apparently did their planning and training in Germany and the United States.”
“The camps which the Taliban allowed bin Laden to use were emptied weeks ago. Moreover, the Taliban itself is a creation of the Americans and the British. In the 1980s, the tribal army that produced them was funded by the CIA and trained by the SAS to fight the Russians.”
“The hypocrisy does not stop there. When the Taliban took Kabul in 1996, Washington said nothing. Why? Because Taliban leaders were soon on their way to Houston, Texas, to be entertained by executives of the oil company, Unocal.”
“With secret US government approval, the company offered them a generous cut of the profits of the oil and gas pumped through a pipeline that the Americans wanted to build from Soviet central Asia through Afghanistan.”
“A US diplomat said: "The Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis did." He explained that Afghanistan would become an American oil colony, there would be huge profits for the West, no democracy and the legal persecution of women. "We can live with that," he said.”
“Although the deal fell through, it remains an urgent priority of the administration of George W. Bush, which is steeped in the oil industry. Bush's concealed agenda is to exploit the oil and gas reserves in the Caspian basin, the greatest source of untapped fossil fuel on earth and enough, according to one estimate, to meet America's voracious energy needs for a generation. Only if the pipeline runs through Afghanistan can the Americans hope to control it.”
“There is no war on terrorism. If there was, the Royal Marines and the SAS would be storming the beaches of Florida, where more CIA-funded terrorists, ex-Latin American dictators and torturers, are given refuge than anywhere on earth. New excuses, new hidden agendas, new lies. Before another child dies violently, or quietly from starvation, before new fanatics are created in both the east and the west, it is time... to stop this fraudulent war and to demand the kind of bold, imaginative non-violent initiatives that require real political courage.”
“The other day, the parents of Greg Rodriguez, a young man who died in the World Trade Center, said this: "We read enough of the news to sense that our government is heading in the direction of violent revenge, with the prospect of sons, daughters, parents, friends in distant lands dying, suffering, and nursing further grievances against us.”
“The war against terrorism is a fraud. After three weeks' bombing, not a single terrorist implicated in the attacks on America has been caught or killed in Afghanistan. Instead, one of the poorest, most stricken nations has been terrorised by the most powerful - to the point where American pilots have run out of dubious"military" targets and are now destroying mud houses, a hospital, Red Cross warehouses, lorries carrying refugees.”
“None of those directly involved in the September 11 atrocity was Afghani. Most were Saudis, who apparently did their planning and training in Germany and the United States.”
“The camps which the Taliban allowed bin Laden to use were emptied weeks ago. Moreover, the Taliban itself is a creation of the Americans and the British. In the 1980s, the tribal army that produced them was funded by the CIA and trained by the SAS to fight the Russians.”
“The hypocrisy does not stop there. When the Taliban took Kabul in 1996, Washington said nothing. Why? Because Taliban leaders were soon on their way to Houston, Texas, to be entertained by executives of the oil company, Unocal.”
“With secret US government approval, the company offered them a generous cut of the profits of the oil and gas pumped through a pipeline that the Americans wanted to build from Soviet central Asia through Afghanistan.”
“A US diplomat said: "The Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis did." He explained that Afghanistan would become an American oil colony, there would be huge profits for the West, no democracy and the legal persecution of women. "We can live with that," he said.”
“Although the deal fell through, it remains an urgent priority of the administration of George W. Bush, which is steeped in the oil industry. Bush's concealed agenda is to exploit the oil and gas reserves in the Caspian basin, the greatest source of untapped fossil fuel on earth and enough, according to one estimate, to meet America's voracious energy needs for a generation. Only if the pipeline runs through Afghanistan can the Americans hope to control it.”
“There is no war on terrorism. If there was, the Royal Marines and the SAS would be storming the beaches of Florida, where more CIA-funded terrorists, ex-Latin American dictators and torturers, are given refuge than anywhere on earth. New excuses, new hidden agendas, new lies. Before another child dies violently, or quietly from starvation, before new fanatics are created in both the east and the west, it is time... to stop this fraudulent war and to demand the kind of bold, imaginative non-violent initiatives that require real political courage.”
“The other day, the parents of Greg Rodriguez, a young man who died in the World Trade Center, said this: "We read enough of the news to sense that our government is heading in the direction of violent revenge, with the prospect of sons, daughters, parents, friends in distant lands dying, suffering, and nursing further grievances against us.”
Friday, November 2, 2001
Stirred-up Moslems
The following is from an interview of Zbigniew Brzezinski in Le Nouvel Observateur (France), Jan 15-21, 1998:
Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
Brzezinski: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?
Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalist having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
One last observation: The United States Government is giving safe haven to a known terorist. His name is Luis Posada Carriles and he has admitted blowing up a Cubana passenger plane after it took off from Barbados headed for Cuba, killing all 73 people aboard, including 57 Cubans. Carriles presently lives in Miami. Carriles is a personal friend of Jeb Bush.
Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
Brzezinski: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?
Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalist having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
One last observation: The United States Government is giving safe haven to a known terorist. His name is Luis Posada Carriles and he has admitted blowing up a Cubana passenger plane after it took off from Barbados headed for Cuba, killing all 73 people aboard, including 57 Cubans. Carriles presently lives in Miami. Carriles is a personal friend of Jeb Bush.
Saturday, October 27, 2001
Big Boys
After all is said and done, the Big Boys know how the world really works. The Big Boys know the world is divided into three groups and the Big Boys intend to keep it that way. The Money Men are practical men with their feet firmly planted on the ground fondling the change in their pockets. The Money Men fully understand the world revolves around money. Only money is important. Status, prestige, and power? All come at a high price. Without money everything else is background noise.
The Money Men buy the Practical Politician who in turn protects the interest of the Money Men. The Money Men and the Practical Politician are both motivated by money and together they slap each other on the back, light each others black cigars, blow acrid gray smoke skyward and refer to each other as the “Big Boys.”
If you are not a Big Boy then you are a Nobody. Nobodies can be mostly ignored unless the Big Boys need some help pursuing more money. Then the Big Boys pull out all the stoppers and manipulate the Nobodies with the promise of big money, grand patriotism, and any of a dozen off the shelf ever lasting life religions.
Stepping out of their long black limousines, the Big Boys swagger up to the array of microphones placed their by fawning “reporters” and with well rehearsed indignant bravado the Big Boys declare crusades, everlasting justice, and war. On cue, the Big Boys tell the Nobodies to begin waving their flags. The Nobodies respond enthusiastically. On cue, the Big Boys tell the Nobodies to hate for liberal reasons and some of the Nobodies enthusiastically wave their flags. On cue the Big Boys tell the Nobodies to hate for conservative reasons and the rest of the Nobodies wave their flags and give out rebel yells. On cue, the religious leader tells the Nobodies to pray for the Big Boys. The Nobodies simultaneously bow their heads and loudly murmur their prayers for the Big Boys. The Nobodies are now prepared.
Back at their high rise office penthouses or hide bound gentlemen’s clubs, the Big Boys wink and nod at each other while skillfully maneuvering their armies of capital. Poised on the brink of war the Big Boys are gambling with the lives of the Nobodies as they steal more wealth by building bigger and grander empires. For a brief moment, perhaps feeling the pangs of guilt or the fear of failure, the Big Boys hesitate. Just as quickly the feeling passes. Who really cares about Nobodies anyhow? When the war is over, so thinks the Big Boys, I’ll drive a bigger Mercedes, live with more prestige, and I will be idolized by the fawning press.
Behind the Marine Corps Memorial in Washington D.C. the names of the artist who built the Iwo Jima Statue and the photographer who inspired the artist are engraved in gold. Circling the statue the lie that became the truth will be found. Engraved in gold are the names of mostly foreign battles and wars fought over the many decades. The early wish of empire becoming the later reality of empire. What won’t be found, however, are the names of the brave and selfless soldiers who inspired the original photograph. Surprised? These grunts, as they were demeaningly called, did not come from the ranks of the Big Boys. These grunts had no status, had no prestige, had no power. And these grunts certainly had no money. There was no reason to fawn over them or immortalize them by name.
After all is said and done, and the proof is on every statue commemorating every war, the images are really the Big Boys stealing the courage and selflessness and finally the dignity of the Nobodies. After all is said and done, when money is all there is, there can never be dignity for Nobodies.
October 2001
The Money Men buy the Practical Politician who in turn protects the interest of the Money Men. The Money Men and the Practical Politician are both motivated by money and together they slap each other on the back, light each others black cigars, blow acrid gray smoke skyward and refer to each other as the “Big Boys.”
If you are not a Big Boy then you are a Nobody. Nobodies can be mostly ignored unless the Big Boys need some help pursuing more money. Then the Big Boys pull out all the stoppers and manipulate the Nobodies with the promise of big money, grand patriotism, and any of a dozen off the shelf ever lasting life religions.
Stepping out of their long black limousines, the Big Boys swagger up to the array of microphones placed their by fawning “reporters” and with well rehearsed indignant bravado the Big Boys declare crusades, everlasting justice, and war. On cue, the Big Boys tell the Nobodies to begin waving their flags. The Nobodies respond enthusiastically. On cue, the Big Boys tell the Nobodies to hate for liberal reasons and some of the Nobodies enthusiastically wave their flags. On cue the Big Boys tell the Nobodies to hate for conservative reasons and the rest of the Nobodies wave their flags and give out rebel yells. On cue, the religious leader tells the Nobodies to pray for the Big Boys. The Nobodies simultaneously bow their heads and loudly murmur their prayers for the Big Boys. The Nobodies are now prepared.
Back at their high rise office penthouses or hide bound gentlemen’s clubs, the Big Boys wink and nod at each other while skillfully maneuvering their armies of capital. Poised on the brink of war the Big Boys are gambling with the lives of the Nobodies as they steal more wealth by building bigger and grander empires. For a brief moment, perhaps feeling the pangs of guilt or the fear of failure, the Big Boys hesitate. Just as quickly the feeling passes. Who really cares about Nobodies anyhow? When the war is over, so thinks the Big Boys, I’ll drive a bigger Mercedes, live with more prestige, and I will be idolized by the fawning press.
Behind the Marine Corps Memorial in Washington D.C. the names of the artist who built the Iwo Jima Statue and the photographer who inspired the artist are engraved in gold. Circling the statue the lie that became the truth will be found. Engraved in gold are the names of mostly foreign battles and wars fought over the many decades. The early wish of empire becoming the later reality of empire. What won’t be found, however, are the names of the brave and selfless soldiers who inspired the original photograph. Surprised? These grunts, as they were demeaningly called, did not come from the ranks of the Big Boys. These grunts had no status, had no prestige, had no power. And these grunts certainly had no money. There was no reason to fawn over them or immortalize them by name.
After all is said and done, and the proof is on every statue commemorating every war, the images are really the Big Boys stealing the courage and selflessness and finally the dignity of the Nobodies. After all is said and done, when money is all there is, there can never be dignity for Nobodies.
October 2001
Friday, August 31, 2001
American Presidents Writing on Christianity
George Washington said, "Being no bigot, I am disposed to indulge (humor) Christian ministers and the church." Washington refused to take communion, looking upon it as superstition.
The Treaty of Tripoli, negotiated during George Washington's administration stated in Article 11: "As the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion...." The treaty was ratified unanimously by the Senate in 1797.
John Adams said, "The doctrine of the divinity of Jesus has made a convenient cover for absurdity." Adams signed the Treaty of Tripoli.
Thomas Jefferson, author of our Declaration of Independence said, "I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded on fables and mythology. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites. And to support roguery and error all over the Earth.... the Bible is a dunghill."
"In every country and in every age the priest has been hostile to liberty; he is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own." "The serious enemies are the priests of the different religious sects to whose spells on the human mind its improvement is ominous"
"It is not to be understood that I am with him [Jesus] in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist."
"His [Calvin's] religion was demonism. If ever man worshiped a false God, he did. The being described in his five points is ... a demon of malignant spirit. It would be more pardonable to believe in no God at all, than to blaspheme him by the atrocious attributes of Calvin"
Writing to Jefferson on the 5th of May, 1817 John Adams declares. "This would be the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion in it." Jefferson replied: "If by religion, we are to understand sectarian dogmas, in which no two of them agree, then your exclamation on that hypothesis is just, 'that this would be the best of worlds if there were no religion in it' "
James Madison, author of the Constitution and Bill of Rights said, "A just government, instituted to perpetuate liberty, does not need the church or the clergy. During almost 15 centuries, the legal establishment of Christianity has been on trial. What have been its fruits? These are the fruits, more or less, in all places: pride and indolence in the clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, and in both clergy and laity, superstition, bigotry and persecution."
Madison passionately objected to state-supported chaplains in Congress or in the military as well as the exemption of churches from taxation.
Abraham Lincoln said, "Christianity is not my religion. I have never united myself to any church because I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian doctrine and dogma which characterize their articles of belief." According to Mary Todd Lincoln, her husband,”... would never be baptized, never joined a church and never made any profession of faith.” Moreover she said: "My husband is not a Christian, but is a religious man, I think."
The Treaty of Tripoli, negotiated during George Washington's administration stated in Article 11: "As the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion...." The treaty was ratified unanimously by the Senate in 1797.
John Adams said, "The doctrine of the divinity of Jesus has made a convenient cover for absurdity." Adams signed the Treaty of Tripoli.
Thomas Jefferson, author of our Declaration of Independence said, "I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded on fables and mythology. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites. And to support roguery and error all over the Earth.... the Bible is a dunghill."
"In every country and in every age the priest has been hostile to liberty; he is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own." "The serious enemies are the priests of the different religious sects to whose spells on the human mind its improvement is ominous"
"It is not to be understood that I am with him [Jesus] in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist."
"His [Calvin's] religion was demonism. If ever man worshiped a false God, he did. The being described in his five points is ... a demon of malignant spirit. It would be more pardonable to believe in no God at all, than to blaspheme him by the atrocious attributes of Calvin"
Writing to Jefferson on the 5th of May, 1817 John Adams declares. "This would be the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion in it." Jefferson replied: "If by religion, we are to understand sectarian dogmas, in which no two of them agree, then your exclamation on that hypothesis is just, 'that this would be the best of worlds if there were no religion in it' "
James Madison, author of the Constitution and Bill of Rights said, "A just government, instituted to perpetuate liberty, does not need the church or the clergy. During almost 15 centuries, the legal establishment of Christianity has been on trial. What have been its fruits? These are the fruits, more or less, in all places: pride and indolence in the clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, and in both clergy and laity, superstition, bigotry and persecution."
Madison passionately objected to state-supported chaplains in Congress or in the military as well as the exemption of churches from taxation.
Abraham Lincoln said, "Christianity is not my religion. I have never united myself to any church because I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian doctrine and dogma which characterize their articles of belief." According to Mary Todd Lincoln, her husband,”... would never be baptized, never joined a church and never made any profession of faith.” Moreover she said: "My husband is not a Christian, but is a religious man, I think."
Friday, August 17, 2001
Dark Ages
The adoration of Jesus, the new god, by the Laguna gang of three, Jay Grant, Edward T. Graney, and Al Enderle and the exclusion of everything just and humane has blinded these philistines to the realities of history, their own holy book, and just plain common decency. Then in a twist of irrational zeal, in letter and column, this gang continues to press upon the people of our town a religious and political point of view which has its philosophical roots in the the Dark Ages.
Graney’s use of the bible to justify an atrocious philosophy of political morality is nothing more than blind hypocrisy. When Graney condemns that baptist preacher’s son and Blue Dog hypocrite Gary Condin and ex-president Clinton for their philandering, Graney exposed his ignorance of recent history. Graney conveniently forgets that christian-corporatist Newt Gingrich had two affairs while in Congress including one while Speaker of the House. He forgets christian-corporatist Henry Hyde, the leader of the impeach Clinton crowd, destroyed his friends marriage by sleeping with his friends wife. He forgets christian-corporatist Bob Livingston, the Louisiana Republican who was touted far and wide as Newt Gingrich’s replacement for House Speaker, had to withdraw when it was discovered he was sleeping with his wife and four of his secretaries. In past letters to the local newspaper Graney condemned Hillary Clinton and called Laura Bush a wonderful person and an example of morality restored to the White House. Tell me Mr. Graney, if Hillary had been speeding while drunk driving, ran a stop sign and broad sided another car killing its driver, would you be as kind to her as you are to Laura Bush? Clinton is a bad guy because he did not inhale that marijuana cigarette, but Scrub Bush is a wonderful man when it is known he snorted enough cocaine to blow up a dust storm in west Texas? Have you ever heard of the “shoe on the other foot test?” Your one-sided morality is based on bible thumping dramatics justifying the corporate capitalist destruction of our democracy and natural environment. Admit it Mr. Graney, what you and your fellow travelers really want is a christian-corporatist theocracy enforced by a new christian Inquisition.
Jay Grant and his fundamentalist/charismatic pals have deconstructed christianity to a set of mutually exclusive categories which are only asserted, never proven. In their philosophy of christianity there is no logic, no connection to natural history, and certainly no connection to humanity. Evidence for this warped and ossified thinking is provided by Grant in his weakly (sic) column where he writes Jews are a race rather than a religion, love of Jesus is greater than love of one’s spouse or family, evolution is nonsense, and women are nothing more than incubators. Grant’s religious philosophy is based on Calvinist greed and the primitive capitalist need to accumulate wealth as an indicator of a heavenly destination. Grant and his reactionary christian pals use their wooden ideas of love and life as a vehicle to promote hate, war, greed, and poverty. In Grant’s world view christian soldiers are sent out to defend a christian corporate state that will not provide a living wage or universal health care for its own people while invading and exploiting foreign lands peopled by poor non or “lesser” christians. It is Grant and his ilk’s brand of christianity which reveals the darkness of their, not our, collective hearts.
Turning to Al Enderle, I must ask the following: Mr. Enderle, do you really need to torture and mutilate the facts to gain christian converts? Does a christian end justify deceptive means?
Graney’s use of the bible to justify an atrocious philosophy of political morality is nothing more than blind hypocrisy. When Graney condemns that baptist preacher’s son and Blue Dog hypocrite Gary Condin and ex-president Clinton for their philandering, Graney exposed his ignorance of recent history. Graney conveniently forgets that christian-corporatist Newt Gingrich had two affairs while in Congress including one while Speaker of the House. He forgets christian-corporatist Henry Hyde, the leader of the impeach Clinton crowd, destroyed his friends marriage by sleeping with his friends wife. He forgets christian-corporatist Bob Livingston, the Louisiana Republican who was touted far and wide as Newt Gingrich’s replacement for House Speaker, had to withdraw when it was discovered he was sleeping with his wife and four of his secretaries. In past letters to the local newspaper Graney condemned Hillary Clinton and called Laura Bush a wonderful person and an example of morality restored to the White House. Tell me Mr. Graney, if Hillary had been speeding while drunk driving, ran a stop sign and broad sided another car killing its driver, would you be as kind to her as you are to Laura Bush? Clinton is a bad guy because he did not inhale that marijuana cigarette, but Scrub Bush is a wonderful man when it is known he snorted enough cocaine to blow up a dust storm in west Texas? Have you ever heard of the “shoe on the other foot test?” Your one-sided morality is based on bible thumping dramatics justifying the corporate capitalist destruction of our democracy and natural environment. Admit it Mr. Graney, what you and your fellow travelers really want is a christian-corporatist theocracy enforced by a new christian Inquisition.
Jay Grant and his fundamentalist/charismatic pals have deconstructed christianity to a set of mutually exclusive categories which are only asserted, never proven. In their philosophy of christianity there is no logic, no connection to natural history, and certainly no connection to humanity. Evidence for this warped and ossified thinking is provided by Grant in his weakly (sic) column where he writes Jews are a race rather than a religion, love of Jesus is greater than love of one’s spouse or family, evolution is nonsense, and women are nothing more than incubators. Grant’s religious philosophy is based on Calvinist greed and the primitive capitalist need to accumulate wealth as an indicator of a heavenly destination. Grant and his reactionary christian pals use their wooden ideas of love and life as a vehicle to promote hate, war, greed, and poverty. In Grant’s world view christian soldiers are sent out to defend a christian corporate state that will not provide a living wage or universal health care for its own people while invading and exploiting foreign lands peopled by poor non or “lesser” christians. It is Grant and his ilk’s brand of christianity which reveals the darkness of their, not our, collective hearts.
Turning to Al Enderle, I must ask the following: Mr. Enderle, do you really need to torture and mutilate the facts to gain christian converts? Does a christian end justify deceptive means?
Sunday, June 24, 2001
Demopublicans
Beginning with the election of Ronald Reagan a new more intense class war was launched against the American people. Along with the election of Reagan in 1980, a very conservative Democratic/Republican congress was also elected in reaction to the incompetent economic policies of the Carter administration regarding the growing inflation crisis. The strategy Demopublicans pursued was rather simple-minded but very effective. Reagan-Bush began printing and selling massive numbers of Federal Treasury bonds and other Federal Government revenue building instruments. To entice investors, these Demopublicans paid high interests rates (over 9%) to anyone who had the money to buy. Cash rich Gulf State Arab princes working through British banks, and Japanese, German, and American transnational corporations began buying up these high yielding bonds. Between 1776 and 1980 the United States government incurred a debt of 1 trillion dollars. By 1988 Reagan-Bush elevated the debt to 2.8 trillion dollars. By 1992 the debt reached 4.2 trillion dollars with annual interest reaching 300 billion dollars.
Absorbing this flood of foreign capital into the economy could create a variety of obvious problems such as inflation. Besides keeping Carter's interest rates high to avoid inflation, Reagan-Bush, with the cooperation of their newly elected reactionary legislative branch did two new things: First, they deregulated the banks and savings and loans allowing them to loan money on a variety of risky ventures. Second, they loosen up the availability of credit cards. As a result of the deregulation of all financial institutions, the West Coast and New England economies experienced a heady speculation fueled real estate market. Meanwhile the banks and S&L's were allowed to operate on reduced amounts of reserve capital and little regulation or oversight. To protect these banks and S&L's from their risk taking, deposit insurance was raised from $40, 000 to $100,000. Reagan-Bush and the Demopublicans told these "venture capitalists" that if they fail, the middle and working classes would bail them out through tax hikes.
When the S&Ls finally collapsed the bail-out initially cost middle and lower income taxpayers 500 billion dollars. Bank failures are now occurring and if established patterns continue, the bail-out will begin after the November 2002 elections! The locking up of huge amounts of capital in treasury bonds and the easy availability of credit cards absorbed much of the new borrowed capital flowing into the economy and deferred its payback to the future. These credit cards allowed folks to spend more money then they had and encouraged them to buy more things including foreign manufactured commodities.
To pay the principle and interest on this huge debt without burdening the upper-class power base of Reagan-Bush Demopublican coalition, the Demopublican congressional Ways and Means Committee rewrote the tax laws. The Ways and Means Committee reduced multiple tax brackets to three brackets and thereby lower taxes on the rich from a theoretical 72% (without using loopholes embedded into the tax laws) to 28% and raising taxes on most everyone else from 15% to 28%. Moreover, this committee closed a variety of middle income loopholes while preserving upper-class loopholes such as writing off the interest on two homes, lowering the capital gains tax, and accelerating capital goods depreciation from 5 years to 3 years. In a mean-spirited afterthought the Reagan/Bush team even forced waitress and waiters for the first time to pay income taxes on their tips. To add insult to injury, the tips wait people were expected to earn was set at 15% whether customers paid that much or not!
During the 1980's and after general bank deregulation, there was a proliferation of small banks and savings and loans. Every small town or village now had a new bank or S&L on main street. The "Banking Reform Act" sponsored by the politically dead and conveniently retiring Jake Garn, Republican Senator from Utah, and Fernand St. Germain, Democrat ex-congressman from Rhode Island (and now Washington's top banking industry lobbyist) was set into law to not only protect "venture capitalist" but to gathering up loose capital in the economy and transfer this money to the upper class. Banking across state lines, via electronic teller machines, was permitted for the first time since the heydays of the 1920's. Banks and now S&L's loaned money to anyone for any reason and charged high interest rates mandated by the Demopublican controlled Federal Reserve Bank. To facilitate the looting of the middle class, Demopublicans in state governments all over the United States did away with "New Deal" usury laws allowing banks and big corporations to charge whatever interest rate the "market" would bear. High interest bank credit cards thus found their way into the hands of everyone including young children and even dogs!. Quietly, the Demopublicans believed high interest credit cards would keep inflation down by absorbing excess capital and also help defer the cost of bad third world loans made in the 1970's. Meanwhile, the Garn/St. Germain banking reform act made no attempt to reform the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Anyone with any compelling reason could write off their debt and transfer it to the American taxpayer. Internal U.S. debt reached more than two trillion dollars by 1986!
The last twelve years can be characterized as the wealthy looting the American economy and, through their control of the American government via the Demopublican coalition, forcing the middle and working classes to pay for the damage. As Federal government monies dried up the Demopublicans shifted taxation to the states reviving ousted President Nixon's "New Federalism" policies from the 1970's. The states began to raise regressive taxes such as the sales tax, fees on services, auto registration, college tuition, and regressing the progressive state income tax. At the same time Demopublican controlled state governments began shifting taxation to local governments knowing that the local governments were for the most part controlled by local special interests such as chambers of commerce and other local business organizations. This strata of people would never raise progressive taxes on property, big or small, or on income. They will, however, raise regressive taxes such as sales taxes, park fees, water rates, garbage pick-up fees, increase building permit fees, increase hotel/motel bed-taxes, and put into place legal lotteries (also called voluntary tax or desperation tax ). Meanwhile Republicans gleefully torture the truth with such phrasing as “Voluntary Taxes,” and “Death Taxes,” and “Flat Taxes” when what they really mean is “stick it to the middle and working class tax” while at the same time they reduced all around services The pay back burden on the middle and working classes became so heavy and coupled with the widespread unraveling of Reagan's "social safety net," social conflict of the kind the economist John Maynard Keynes hoped to avoid loomed evermore largely on the horizon.
In a capitalist society money is power. Democracy is the empowerment of the people yet the budgetary behavior of the federal government flys in the face of democracy. Instead the Federal Government empowers the wealthy elite. This is not democracy in the sense of the traditional New England Town Halls, but a benign form of dictatorship, an elite Athenian form of democracy whose goal is to prevent the rabble from gaining any power by waging a stealthy protracted class war. Don't expect things to get any better in the future.
Absorbing this flood of foreign capital into the economy could create a variety of obvious problems such as inflation. Besides keeping Carter's interest rates high to avoid inflation, Reagan-Bush, with the cooperation of their newly elected reactionary legislative branch did two new things: First, they deregulated the banks and savings and loans allowing them to loan money on a variety of risky ventures. Second, they loosen up the availability of credit cards. As a result of the deregulation of all financial institutions, the West Coast and New England economies experienced a heady speculation fueled real estate market. Meanwhile the banks and S&L's were allowed to operate on reduced amounts of reserve capital and little regulation or oversight. To protect these banks and S&L's from their risk taking, deposit insurance was raised from $40, 000 to $100,000. Reagan-Bush and the Demopublicans told these "venture capitalists" that if they fail, the middle and working classes would bail them out through tax hikes.
When the S&Ls finally collapsed the bail-out initially cost middle and lower income taxpayers 500 billion dollars. Bank failures are now occurring and if established patterns continue, the bail-out will begin after the November 2002 elections! The locking up of huge amounts of capital in treasury bonds and the easy availability of credit cards absorbed much of the new borrowed capital flowing into the economy and deferred its payback to the future. These credit cards allowed folks to spend more money then they had and encouraged them to buy more things including foreign manufactured commodities.
To pay the principle and interest on this huge debt without burdening the upper-class power base of Reagan-Bush Demopublican coalition, the Demopublican congressional Ways and Means Committee rewrote the tax laws. The Ways and Means Committee reduced multiple tax brackets to three brackets and thereby lower taxes on the rich from a theoretical 72% (without using loopholes embedded into the tax laws) to 28% and raising taxes on most everyone else from 15% to 28%. Moreover, this committee closed a variety of middle income loopholes while preserving upper-class loopholes such as writing off the interest on two homes, lowering the capital gains tax, and accelerating capital goods depreciation from 5 years to 3 years. In a mean-spirited afterthought the Reagan/Bush team even forced waitress and waiters for the first time to pay income taxes on their tips. To add insult to injury, the tips wait people were expected to earn was set at 15% whether customers paid that much or not!
During the 1980's and after general bank deregulation, there was a proliferation of small banks and savings and loans. Every small town or village now had a new bank or S&L on main street. The "Banking Reform Act" sponsored by the politically dead and conveniently retiring Jake Garn, Republican Senator from Utah, and Fernand St. Germain, Democrat ex-congressman from Rhode Island (and now Washington's top banking industry lobbyist) was set into law to not only protect "venture capitalist" but to gathering up loose capital in the economy and transfer this money to the upper class. Banking across state lines, via electronic teller machines, was permitted for the first time since the heydays of the 1920's. Banks and now S&L's loaned money to anyone for any reason and charged high interest rates mandated by the Demopublican controlled Federal Reserve Bank. To facilitate the looting of the middle class, Demopublicans in state governments all over the United States did away with "New Deal" usury laws allowing banks and big corporations to charge whatever interest rate the "market" would bear. High interest bank credit cards thus found their way into the hands of everyone including young children and even dogs!. Quietly, the Demopublicans believed high interest credit cards would keep inflation down by absorbing excess capital and also help defer the cost of bad third world loans made in the 1970's. Meanwhile, the Garn/St. Germain banking reform act made no attempt to reform the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Anyone with any compelling reason could write off their debt and transfer it to the American taxpayer. Internal U.S. debt reached more than two trillion dollars by 1986!
The last twelve years can be characterized as the wealthy looting the American economy and, through their control of the American government via the Demopublican coalition, forcing the middle and working classes to pay for the damage. As Federal government monies dried up the Demopublicans shifted taxation to the states reviving ousted President Nixon's "New Federalism" policies from the 1970's. The states began to raise regressive taxes such as the sales tax, fees on services, auto registration, college tuition, and regressing the progressive state income tax. At the same time Demopublican controlled state governments began shifting taxation to local governments knowing that the local governments were for the most part controlled by local special interests such as chambers of commerce and other local business organizations. This strata of people would never raise progressive taxes on property, big or small, or on income. They will, however, raise regressive taxes such as sales taxes, park fees, water rates, garbage pick-up fees, increase building permit fees, increase hotel/motel bed-taxes, and put into place legal lotteries (also called voluntary tax or desperation tax ). Meanwhile Republicans gleefully torture the truth with such phrasing as “Voluntary Taxes,” and “Death Taxes,” and “Flat Taxes” when what they really mean is “stick it to the middle and working class tax” while at the same time they reduced all around services The pay back burden on the middle and working classes became so heavy and coupled with the widespread unraveling of Reagan's "social safety net," social conflict of the kind the economist John Maynard Keynes hoped to avoid loomed evermore largely on the horizon.
In a capitalist society money is power. Democracy is the empowerment of the people yet the budgetary behavior of the federal government flys in the face of democracy. Instead the Federal Government empowers the wealthy elite. This is not democracy in the sense of the traditional New England Town Halls, but a benign form of dictatorship, an elite Athenian form of democracy whose goal is to prevent the rabble from gaining any power by waging a stealthy protracted class war. Don't expect things to get any better in the future.
Wednesday, June 20, 2001
Upper Class Welfare
While watching CSPAN the other day, a women from Palmdale, California called in and cheerfully announced that the American people and particularly American workers are better off when the Republicans are in power in Washington D.C. According to Palmdale Patty, calling from her trailer park, Republicans cut welfare programs thereby freeing up huge sums of money. These monies are then returned to the American workers in the form reduced taxes. Three cheers for Republicans in power?
As an AM radio “Dittohead,” poor Palmdale Patty is parroting Republican Party propaganda perpetuating their perverse prevarications. Meanwhile behind the gated compounds of the rich and famous, Brentwood Buffy and her hubby, Skippy, toast each other with outstretched pinky fingers and laughingly exclaim, “Isn’t class warfare wonderful!”
Poor ignorant Palmdale Patty has to pay an extra $250 per year to feed her family because the Federal Government gives agribusiness $18 billion per year in profit subsidies.
Poor ignorant Palmdale Patty is clueless about Federal Government profit subsidies to the timber industry. Louisiana Pacific, Weyerhauser, and their buddies get checks from the tax payer to the tune of $427 million per year (guess who pays for those thousands of miles of timber roads in the National Forests and, to boot, gives away the trees?).
Poor Palmdale Patty thinks the rich pay their fair share of Social Security taxes. She doesn’t know the more money you make the less Social Security taxes you have to pay. If you make $50,000 per year, you pay 8% of your income in Social Security taxes. If you make $500,000 per year, you pay 1% of your income in Social Security taxes. The rich stiff middle and working class tax payer in the form of a regressive Social Security tax inequities a whopping $53 billion per year. The total cost to Social Security since the Reagan/Bush “reform” is about $800 billion. It was Reagan/Bush and the demopublicans who created the so-called Social Security crisis. Lets ask poor Palmdale Patty if she wants to add Ronnie to Mount Rushmore now.
Corporate and upper class welfare in 1996 amounted to more than $440 billion per year, and that number has grown substantially in the last 5 years. Meanwhile, before that demopublican known as Bill Clinton cut welfare “as we know it” in 1996, the Federal Government spent a miserly $130 billion on the poor/working class and middle class subsidies. If only Palmdale Patty really knew what was going on.
Speaking before the National Press Club in Washington DC, Bill Moyer recently said, “My world view was really shaped by Theodore Roosevelt, who got it right about power in America. Roosevelt thought the central fact of his era was that economic power had become so centralized and dominant it could chew up democracy and spit it out. The power of corporations, he said, had to be balanced in the interest of the general public. Otherwise, America would undergo a class war, the rich would win it, and we wouldn't recognize our country anymore. Big money and big business, corporations and commerce, are again the undisputed overlords of politics and government. The White House, the Congress and, increasingly, the judiciary reflect their interests. We appear to have a government run by remote control from the US Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute. To hell with everyone else.” Amen, Mr. Moyer!
June 2001
As an AM radio “Dittohead,” poor Palmdale Patty is parroting Republican Party propaganda perpetuating their perverse prevarications. Meanwhile behind the gated compounds of the rich and famous, Brentwood Buffy and her hubby, Skippy, toast each other with outstretched pinky fingers and laughingly exclaim, “Isn’t class warfare wonderful!”
Poor ignorant Palmdale Patty has to pay an extra $250 per year to feed her family because the Federal Government gives agribusiness $18 billion per year in profit subsidies.
Poor ignorant Palmdale Patty is clueless about Federal Government profit subsidies to the timber industry. Louisiana Pacific, Weyerhauser, and their buddies get checks from the tax payer to the tune of $427 million per year (guess who pays for those thousands of miles of timber roads in the National Forests and, to boot, gives away the trees?).
Poor Palmdale Patty thinks the rich pay their fair share of Social Security taxes. She doesn’t know the more money you make the less Social Security taxes you have to pay. If you make $50,000 per year, you pay 8% of your income in Social Security taxes. If you make $500,000 per year, you pay 1% of your income in Social Security taxes. The rich stiff middle and working class tax payer in the form of a regressive Social Security tax inequities a whopping $53 billion per year. The total cost to Social Security since the Reagan/Bush “reform” is about $800 billion. It was Reagan/Bush and the demopublicans who created the so-called Social Security crisis. Lets ask poor Palmdale Patty if she wants to add Ronnie to Mount Rushmore now.
Corporate and upper class welfare in 1996 amounted to more than $440 billion per year, and that number has grown substantially in the last 5 years. Meanwhile, before that demopublican known as Bill Clinton cut welfare “as we know it” in 1996, the Federal Government spent a miserly $130 billion on the poor/working class and middle class subsidies. If only Palmdale Patty really knew what was going on.
Speaking before the National Press Club in Washington DC, Bill Moyer recently said, “My world view was really shaped by Theodore Roosevelt, who got it right about power in America. Roosevelt thought the central fact of his era was that economic power had become so centralized and dominant it could chew up democracy and spit it out. The power of corporations, he said, had to be balanced in the interest of the general public. Otherwise, America would undergo a class war, the rich would win it, and we wouldn't recognize our country anymore. Big money and big business, corporations and commerce, are again the undisputed overlords of politics and government. The White House, the Congress and, increasingly, the judiciary reflect their interests. We appear to have a government run by remote control from the US Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute. To hell with everyone else.” Amen, Mr. Moyer!
June 2001
Sunday, May 20, 2001
Class Warfare
Most people assume the Republican Party is opposed to welfare and other forms of social spending. Various reasons are given including social programs being a form of class warfare redistributing wealth downward from the hardworking rich to the lazy poor. Are Republicans and their Dixiecrat/Blue Dog Democrat brethren really opposed to welfare? The facts are in the Federal Budget.
The Nuclear power industry cannot make a profit without the help of the American tax payer. The Nuclear Power Industry therefore gets $7.1 billion per year in profit subsidies. The federal government gives away nuclear research ($468 million per year), insurance subsidies in the event we have an American Chernobyl ($3 billion per year), uranium fuel enrichment ($2.3 billion per year), reprocessing spent fuel rods ($340 million per year), nuclear waste storage ($420 million per year), and nuclear plant decommissioning ($2.1 billion per year). Ask your Congressman if profit subsidies are his idea of capitalism?
The oil and gas industry is profit subsidized by tax payers to the tune of $2.4 billion per year. The Oil Depletion Allowance cost tax payer more than $1 billion per year by allowing oil companies to deduct an extra 15% from their gross income they derive from any oil or gas wells which remain in production no matter how long that well is active. If the price of oil drops below $20 per barrel, the deduction gets bigger. How would you like a 15% income tax break for staying employed? The Intangible Drilling Cost Deduction is another profit subsidy costing tax payers more than $500 million per year. Oil companies are allowed to deduct 70% of the cost of drilling a well in the first year. Over the next 5 years the remaining drilling cost can be deducted. If an oil company drills a dry hole, 70% of the cost of that dry hole can be written off. For the oil companies, failure is profitable. The Enhanced Oil Recovery Credit is another $500 million profit subsidy. This boondoggle allows oil companies to deduct from their bottom line the high cost of extracting oil from nearly depleted deposits. Write your Congressman and ask why we the tax payer should guarantee the super profits of the oil companies.
Mining Subsidies of $3.5 billion per year guarantee mining industry profits.The Mining Law of 1872 allowed the Canadian mining company, American Barrick, to extract $10 billion in gold from public lands in Nevada. American Barrick paid only $5,190 in lease fees and paid the American tax payer not one red cent in royalties. Chevron Oil company and Manville corporation paid $10,000 in lease fees to the American public and extracted $4 billion in platinum and palladium from their mining operations on public lands in Montana. They also paid no royalties to the American tax payer. Finally, the big corporate miners can deduct 85% of the projected mine exploration costs in the first year of the operation and they can treat the sale of coal, gold, iron ore, etc. as a capital gains and thereby pay less in income taxes. On the other hand, guess who gets to clean up the mining mess left behind? Ask your Congressman who is waging class warfare on whom?
And while you're at it, also ask your Congressman for a list of individuals, corporations, and foreign nations who own a million dollars or more of your national debt. Since it is you, the tax payer, who must pay back these trillions of dollars in national debt, don’t you want to know who has you on a leash? You will be surprised by his response!
May 2001
The Nuclear power industry cannot make a profit without the help of the American tax payer. The Nuclear Power Industry therefore gets $7.1 billion per year in profit subsidies. The federal government gives away nuclear research ($468 million per year), insurance subsidies in the event we have an American Chernobyl ($3 billion per year), uranium fuel enrichment ($2.3 billion per year), reprocessing spent fuel rods ($340 million per year), nuclear waste storage ($420 million per year), and nuclear plant decommissioning ($2.1 billion per year). Ask your Congressman if profit subsidies are his idea of capitalism?
The oil and gas industry is profit subsidized by tax payers to the tune of $2.4 billion per year. The Oil Depletion Allowance cost tax payer more than $1 billion per year by allowing oil companies to deduct an extra 15% from their gross income they derive from any oil or gas wells which remain in production no matter how long that well is active. If the price of oil drops below $20 per barrel, the deduction gets bigger. How would you like a 15% income tax break for staying employed? The Intangible Drilling Cost Deduction is another profit subsidy costing tax payers more than $500 million per year. Oil companies are allowed to deduct 70% of the cost of drilling a well in the first year. Over the next 5 years the remaining drilling cost can be deducted. If an oil company drills a dry hole, 70% of the cost of that dry hole can be written off. For the oil companies, failure is profitable. The Enhanced Oil Recovery Credit is another $500 million profit subsidy. This boondoggle allows oil companies to deduct from their bottom line the high cost of extracting oil from nearly depleted deposits. Write your Congressman and ask why we the tax payer should guarantee the super profits of the oil companies.
Mining Subsidies of $3.5 billion per year guarantee mining industry profits.The Mining Law of 1872 allowed the Canadian mining company, American Barrick, to extract $10 billion in gold from public lands in Nevada. American Barrick paid only $5,190 in lease fees and paid the American tax payer not one red cent in royalties. Chevron Oil company and Manville corporation paid $10,000 in lease fees to the American public and extracted $4 billion in platinum and palladium from their mining operations on public lands in Montana. They also paid no royalties to the American tax payer. Finally, the big corporate miners can deduct 85% of the projected mine exploration costs in the first year of the operation and they can treat the sale of coal, gold, iron ore, etc. as a capital gains and thereby pay less in income taxes. On the other hand, guess who gets to clean up the mining mess left behind? Ask your Congressman who is waging class warfare on whom?
And while you're at it, also ask your Congressman for a list of individuals, corporations, and foreign nations who own a million dollars or more of your national debt. Since it is you, the tax payer, who must pay back these trillions of dollars in national debt, don’t you want to know who has you on a leash? You will be surprised by his response!
May 2001
Thursday, May 10, 2001
Corporate Welfare
During the month of November 1940, four months after its completion, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, affectionately known by the locals as “Galloping Girdy,” spectacularly collapsed during a 40 mile per wind. Local officials were dumbfounded and after several unsuccessful attempts to explain the disaster, Theodore von Karman from the California Institute of Technology was called in to help. Von Karman was an expert in fluid dynamics (how liquids and gases move). Immediately Von Karman built a scale model of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge and placed the model in a wind tunnel. The scale model was accurate in every possible way including duplicating the tensile strength of the steel girders used to construct Galloping Girdy. After several months of testing, Von Karman concluded the cause of the bridge collapse was the 40 mile per wind. Like a window rattling when a helicopter flys over, or an opera singer breaking a wine glass with her voice, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge had a natural resonance frequency that matched a 40 mile per hour wind. The bridge simply rattled itself to pieces when the wind blew at precisely 40 miles per hour.
Before Von Karman, engineers never thought to use scale models to test their designs. Today civil engineers and especially aeronautical engineers use exact scale models in wind tunnels and a variety of other stressed environments to insure the air worthiness of their air planes and missiles.
Last week George W. Bush announced he was going to tear up the Anti- Ballistic Missile Treaty and build the antimissile defense shield known as “Star Wars.” The idea behind Star Wars is to build a “defensive” missile capable of shooting down an “offensive” missile. These offensive missiles typically move at about 25,000 miles per hour. Using the method of scaling pioneered by Theodore Von Karman, Star wars would be equivalent to shooting down a bullet with a bullet. Since the fastest bullets travel at no more than about 1,500 miles per hour, the task becomes even more difficult. To complicate matters, suppose the 25,000 mph bullet could release thousands of highly light reflecting BB’s designed to hide the bullet within the cloud of BB’s. Which target do you aim and shoot at?
Is it possible to shoot down a bullet traveling at 25,000 mph hiding in a cloud of BBs with another bullet ? The answer is no. No one knows how to do that nor will anyone in the next 20 years, if ever, figure out how to do it. Then what is President Bush up to? The answer is obvious: Corporate Welfare.
Corporate Welfare is just one example of the reactionaries in the Federal Government and on Wall Street waging class warfare against the American middle and working classes. Billions of hard earned tax dollars will be spent on the Star Wars program which has no hope of being built . On the other hand, the big corporations who will get the Federal contracts to build Star Wars will become wealthier and more powerful endangering our democracy.
May 2001
Before Von Karman, engineers never thought to use scale models to test their designs. Today civil engineers and especially aeronautical engineers use exact scale models in wind tunnels and a variety of other stressed environments to insure the air worthiness of their air planes and missiles.
Last week George W. Bush announced he was going to tear up the Anti- Ballistic Missile Treaty and build the antimissile defense shield known as “Star Wars.” The idea behind Star Wars is to build a “defensive” missile capable of shooting down an “offensive” missile. These offensive missiles typically move at about 25,000 miles per hour. Using the method of scaling pioneered by Theodore Von Karman, Star wars would be equivalent to shooting down a bullet with a bullet. Since the fastest bullets travel at no more than about 1,500 miles per hour, the task becomes even more difficult. To complicate matters, suppose the 25,000 mph bullet could release thousands of highly light reflecting BB’s designed to hide the bullet within the cloud of BB’s. Which target do you aim and shoot at?
Is it possible to shoot down a bullet traveling at 25,000 mph hiding in a cloud of BBs with another bullet ? The answer is no. No one knows how to do that nor will anyone in the next 20 years, if ever, figure out how to do it. Then what is President Bush up to? The answer is obvious: Corporate Welfare.
Corporate Welfare is just one example of the reactionaries in the Federal Government and on Wall Street waging class warfare against the American middle and working classes. Billions of hard earned tax dollars will be spent on the Star Wars program which has no hope of being built . On the other hand, the big corporations who will get the Federal contracts to build Star Wars will become wealthier and more powerful endangering our democracy.
May 2001
Friday, April 27, 2001
”...where most men have a heart
Many years ago before my brother left the teaching profession, my brother taught high school history. Among the many innovative techniques my brother introduced to his history classes was to do a content analysis of movies which captured the tenor of the times. When teaching the Cold War my brother would screen the Stanley Kubrick black humored, “Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Love the Bomb.” Several days after the screening, a vice principal who had a reputation for preaching the gospel at every turn approached my brother accusing him of showing his history class a pornographic movie. “Pornographic movie?” my brother asked. “Yes,” said the VP, “Didn’t you show a movie named Dr. Strangelove! “
A few months later that gospel preaching VP was quietly retired when he was caught preaching the gospel in his office to a pretty 16 year old while pantless . The more cynical teachers at the high school pointed out that if the VP was a pinko-atheist-meathead, the Board of Education would have made an example out of him. But, because of the VP’s widely known religious zeal, the more pious members of the Board allowed the problem to go away. Such is the hypocrisy of the pious and such is the moral point obviously missed by that ignorant self serving School Board.
Which leads me to the following: Edward T. Graney and his gang also missed the obvious point that there is no causal connection between juvenile crime and ice cream sales, prayer in school and the drop out rate, prayer in school and the beating of students, and finally the lack of prayer in school and student gun play. The connection between troubled white middle class kids living in pious white middle class communities and the need for these students to shoot their classmates and teachers is complex requiring in depth study. What Graney and his gang provide the people of our town in their incessant letter writing to the Coastline is a reactionary knee jerk self-serving analysis devoid of any reason or substance. To tell the people of our town that reintroducing prayer in school will stop kids from shooting each other is utterly ridiculous.
On the other hand I must thank you Mr. Edward T. Graney for your Good Friday letter to the editor last week. Your cold war rhetorical excesses coupled with your mangled use of the English language oozing like an infected sore with hate and contempt made clear to me and the people of our town that your religion is merely a facade behind which lies an Archie Bunker political and social philosophy. The difference between you and Archie, however, is the fact that we all know deep down inside Archie Bunker was nothing more than a confused big hearted working-class stiff . To quote the writer John Reed in another context,”...where most men have a heart, you have a sack of pus.”
A few months later that gospel preaching VP was quietly retired when he was caught preaching the gospel in his office to a pretty 16 year old while pantless . The more cynical teachers at the high school pointed out that if the VP was a pinko-atheist-meathead, the Board of Education would have made an example out of him. But, because of the VP’s widely known religious zeal, the more pious members of the Board allowed the problem to go away. Such is the hypocrisy of the pious and such is the moral point obviously missed by that ignorant self serving School Board.
Which leads me to the following: Edward T. Graney and his gang also missed the obvious point that there is no causal connection between juvenile crime and ice cream sales, prayer in school and the drop out rate, prayer in school and the beating of students, and finally the lack of prayer in school and student gun play. The connection between troubled white middle class kids living in pious white middle class communities and the need for these students to shoot their classmates and teachers is complex requiring in depth study. What Graney and his gang provide the people of our town in their incessant letter writing to the Coastline is a reactionary knee jerk self-serving analysis devoid of any reason or substance. To tell the people of our town that reintroducing prayer in school will stop kids from shooting each other is utterly ridiculous.
On the other hand I must thank you Mr. Edward T. Graney for your Good Friday letter to the editor last week. Your cold war rhetorical excesses coupled with your mangled use of the English language oozing like an infected sore with hate and contempt made clear to me and the people of our town that your religion is merely a facade behind which lies an Archie Bunker political and social philosophy. The difference between you and Archie, however, is the fact that we all know deep down inside Archie Bunker was nothing more than a confused big hearted working-class stiff . To quote the writer John Reed in another context,”...where most men have a heart, you have a sack of pus.”
Friday, March 30, 2001
Jesus-Jesus-Jesus
I had originally planned to retire from the letters column in the local newspaper. But the ear shattering quiet of all those community hypocrites who raised holy hell over the ongoing religious/political debates in the local newspaper, but said nothing as the gang of three reactionaries known as Al Enderle, Edward T. Graney, and Jay Grant continued to drone on and on has forced me out of my self imposed silence. Over and over again these reactionaries and their tiny band of community supporters have demonstrated how pervasive the disease of ophthalrectalosis is in our town. Their absurd and unsupported opinions only spreads the disease wider.
The straw that finally broke the camels back were the absolutely stupid remarks made by Graney and Grant on the subject of education. Again and again Graney and Grant propose simple solutions for terribly complex problems. Again and again Graney and Grant play a one note symphony; jesus-jesus-jesus-jesus-jesus-jesus. Does your back hurt? Jesus will fix it. Constipation? Pray to jesus. Erectile dysfunction? Forget the blue pills, jesus has the answer. Kids killing each other in school? Praying to jesus will stop the carnage.
Here are some statistics: Every year without let up, as the amount of ice cream consumed increases and decreases over the course of the year, the juvenile crime rate also increases and decreases. Plotted on a graph, as ice cream sales rise, so does the crime rate. What can you conclude from this fact? Grant, ed.al. would tell us to stop selling ice cream and pray to jesus.
Here are some more facts: When the United States did allow prayer in the public schools, teachers and administrators were also allowed to beat students with leather belts, beat their students with specially designed paddles which had holes drilled into them to reduce air resistance as the paddle was swung, beat students with broom handles, cat-o’-nine-tails, and rulers. Students could be tortured by forcing them to kneel on sharpened straight edges. In the days when we all prayed to jesus every morning, the drop out rate in high school was more than 60 percent among whites and almost 90 percent among none-white students. When we prayed to jesus, the public schools were segregated just like Calvary Chapel middle and high schools are today. Upon graduation from our holy high schools, girls could not enter medical school, law school, veterinary school, or any of the university sciences. Girls could become English teachers or they could go to secretary school or “finishing school.” Girls could also get married and stay at home popping “diet pills” to boost their mood as they suffered in isolation. So let’s follow the advice of Grant et.al. and turn the clock back to the early sixties and before, genuflect to jesus, and, as an added incentive, lets also begin practicing ice cream prohibition.
The straw that finally broke the camels back were the absolutely stupid remarks made by Graney and Grant on the subject of education. Again and again Graney and Grant propose simple solutions for terribly complex problems. Again and again Graney and Grant play a one note symphony; jesus-jesus-jesus-jesus-jesus-jesus. Does your back hurt? Jesus will fix it. Constipation? Pray to jesus. Erectile dysfunction? Forget the blue pills, jesus has the answer. Kids killing each other in school? Praying to jesus will stop the carnage.
Here are some statistics: Every year without let up, as the amount of ice cream consumed increases and decreases over the course of the year, the juvenile crime rate also increases and decreases. Plotted on a graph, as ice cream sales rise, so does the crime rate. What can you conclude from this fact? Grant, ed.al. would tell us to stop selling ice cream and pray to jesus.
Here are some more facts: When the United States did allow prayer in the public schools, teachers and administrators were also allowed to beat students with leather belts, beat their students with specially designed paddles which had holes drilled into them to reduce air resistance as the paddle was swung, beat students with broom handles, cat-o’-nine-tails, and rulers. Students could be tortured by forcing them to kneel on sharpened straight edges. In the days when we all prayed to jesus every morning, the drop out rate in high school was more than 60 percent among whites and almost 90 percent among none-white students. When we prayed to jesus, the public schools were segregated just like Calvary Chapel middle and high schools are today. Upon graduation from our holy high schools, girls could not enter medical school, law school, veterinary school, or any of the university sciences. Girls could become English teachers or they could go to secretary school or “finishing school.” Girls could also get married and stay at home popping “diet pills” to boost their mood as they suffered in isolation. So let’s follow the advice of Grant et.al. and turn the clock back to the early sixties and before, genuflect to jesus, and, as an added incentive, lets also begin practicing ice cream prohibition.
Tuesday, February 20, 2001
The Bush Family Hustle
The following was written by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis: "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
According to the Republican strategist Kevin Philips writing in the Washington Post, (7/4/1992), “What you’ve got with Bush (George senior) is absolutely the largest number of siblings and children involved in what looks like a never-ending hustle. Lets take a closer look at what Kevin Philips is talking about.
On June 20, 1990, George W. Bush, a director of Harken Energy, sold the bulk of his Harken stock for $848,000. A week later, the stock plummeted in value on news of a large quarterly loss. Time Magazine reported, it was widely assumed that insider knowledge prompted the sale. George Jr. took his Harken profits and on a $600,000 investment in the Texas Rangers arranged by President George Senior, George Jr. made 15 million dollars!
In 1985, Jeb Bush lobbied the federal government on behalf of International Medical Centers (an HMO) owned by Miguel Recarey to increase Recarey’s Medicare business ultimately to a total of $1 billion. The following year, Jeb received $75,000 from Recarey. Recarey later fled the U.S. under indictment, suspected of up to $100 million in Medicare fraud. In 1988 Jeb defaulted on a $4.5 million loan from Broward Federal Savings and Loan. The default helped trigger the S&L’s collapse, which cost taxpayers $222 million. Bush repaid only ten percent of the irregular loan and, contrary to Federal law, got to keep the building in the Miami financial district that collateralized the loan.
In 1991, George senior’s brother Jonathan Bush was fined $30,000 in Massachusetts and $4,000 in Connecticut for violating registration laws governing securities sales. Jonathan was barred from securities brokerage with the general public in Massachusetts for one year
In 1989, when Japanese organized crime elements were seeking to extend their financial interests into the U.S., Prescott Bush arranged investments by a Japanese Mob front company, West Tsusho, in two U.S. businesses, Assets Management and the software firm Quantum Access. The Japanese company was identified by Japanese police as a front company for one of Japan’s largest organized crime syndicates. Bush was paid $500,000 for help in arranging the company’s purchase. Shortly thereafter both U.S. companies filed for bankruptcy, looted dry.
In 1990, federal regulators filed a $200-million lawsuit against Neil Bush, an officer of Silverado Savings and Loan, accusing him of gross negligence contributing to its $1 billion collapse. Neil got off paying only $50,000 in a settlement of the $200 million federal suit against him. He didn't have to worry about his $250,000 legal bill, as Thomas Ashley, a friend of President George Bush senior and the head of a banking association that was lobbying the federal government for bank deregulation, formed a legal defense fund to pay Neil’s legal bills. On the other hand, the tax payers got stuck with the billion dollar bailout.
P.S. December 2009: I recently became aware of the following website: http://www.oldamericancentury.org/bushco/bush_crime_family.htm
February 2001
According to the Republican strategist Kevin Philips writing in the Washington Post, (7/4/1992), “What you’ve got with Bush (George senior) is absolutely the largest number of siblings and children involved in what looks like a never-ending hustle. Lets take a closer look at what Kevin Philips is talking about.
On June 20, 1990, George W. Bush, a director of Harken Energy, sold the bulk of his Harken stock for $848,000. A week later, the stock plummeted in value on news of a large quarterly loss. Time Magazine reported, it was widely assumed that insider knowledge prompted the sale. George Jr. took his Harken profits and on a $600,000 investment in the Texas Rangers arranged by President George Senior, George Jr. made 15 million dollars!
In 1985, Jeb Bush lobbied the federal government on behalf of International Medical Centers (an HMO) owned by Miguel Recarey to increase Recarey’s Medicare business ultimately to a total of $1 billion. The following year, Jeb received $75,000 from Recarey. Recarey later fled the U.S. under indictment, suspected of up to $100 million in Medicare fraud. In 1988 Jeb defaulted on a $4.5 million loan from Broward Federal Savings and Loan. The default helped trigger the S&L’s collapse, which cost taxpayers $222 million. Bush repaid only ten percent of the irregular loan and, contrary to Federal law, got to keep the building in the Miami financial district that collateralized the loan.
In 1991, George senior’s brother Jonathan Bush was fined $30,000 in Massachusetts and $4,000 in Connecticut for violating registration laws governing securities sales. Jonathan was barred from securities brokerage with the general public in Massachusetts for one year
In 1989, when Japanese organized crime elements were seeking to extend their financial interests into the U.S., Prescott Bush arranged investments by a Japanese Mob front company, West Tsusho, in two U.S. businesses, Assets Management and the software firm Quantum Access. The Japanese company was identified by Japanese police as a front company for one of Japan’s largest organized crime syndicates. Bush was paid $500,000 for help in arranging the company’s purchase. Shortly thereafter both U.S. companies filed for bankruptcy, looted dry.
In 1990, federal regulators filed a $200-million lawsuit against Neil Bush, an officer of Silverado Savings and Loan, accusing him of gross negligence contributing to its $1 billion collapse. Neil got off paying only $50,000 in a settlement of the $200 million federal suit against him. He didn't have to worry about his $250,000 legal bill, as Thomas Ashley, a friend of President George Bush senior and the head of a banking association that was lobbying the federal government for bank deregulation, formed a legal defense fund to pay Neil’s legal bills. On the other hand, the tax payers got stuck with the billion dollar bailout.
P.S. December 2009: I recently became aware of the following website: http://www.oldamericancentury.org/bushco/bush_crime_family.htm
February 2001
Friday, February 2, 2001
Culture Wars
The subject of this letter was supposed to be about how Chuck Smith, in the name of his Christian self appointed moral authority, fleeced his flock for millions of dollars. The story would have continued with Chuck Smith translating millions of dollars into hundreds of million of dollars using his connections among political reactionaries here in Orange County and in Washington DC. But, Jay Grant, another self appointed moral authority and friend and mentee of Chuck Smith, would rather use his withered little column in the local newspaper to pointedly ignore Smith’s fraud and instead write about himself. More specifically, Jay Grant whines in his weekly withered little column “Veiling the Truth” (1/26/2001) sobbing about how misunderstood he has become (talk about ego, eh, Jim Kerr!).
One way to decide if Jay Grant is the truly misunderstood, is to examine the public record. Quoting liberally from the Bible, Al Enderle, writing in the local newspaper (8/11/2000), declares homosexuality is not about love. Al Enderle asks, ”Why would a man want to have sex with another man?...Is it love or is it lust? I suggest that it is lust because, were he to really love the other man, he would choose not to do it even though be (sic) wants to.” Al Enderle concludes,” I just don’t agree...that God is tolerant of homosexuality, lying, stealing, adultery, etc.”
Edward T. Graney, wreiying in the local newspaper (8/25/2000), writes a garbled and almost illiterate letter weaving a weird theory of hatred for orthodox Jews and why the reader should “...be diligent and vote for the morality in the Republican platform.” Graney tells us orthodox Jews are a defiance of Christianity, orthodox Jews will never enter a Christian church, and orthodox Jews believe all Goyum are unclean. Where does Edward T. Graney get his ideas? From the Holy Bible, where else? (Dt.17:2-7, 1 Kg.18:40, Mt.23:31, Mt.27:25, Jn.5:16, 7:1, 7:13, 10:31, 11:8, Jn.8:44).
On September 8, 2000 the self-righteous and misunderstood Jay Grant decides to weigh in supporting Enderle and Graney. Grant writes, “I applaud Mr. Enderle and Mr. Graney for having the courage to put themselves on the firing line with their regular contributions to this paper. I’m sure they both fully understand there’s a culture war going on and to endorse the Lord, Scripture or absolute truth is going to usually bring a stinging rebuke from the numerous atheists, secularists and other assorted skeptics scattered throughout our town.”
Does Jay Grant rebuke Enderle’s and Graney’s scurrilous homophobic and anti-semitic remarks? Not at all! Jay Grant “applauds” Enderle and Graney lauding them as brave foot soldiers in the “culture war” against the enlightenment. Does Jay Grant distance himself from homophobia and anti-semitism of the Holy Bible? Are you kidding! Jay Grant embraces the Holy Bible as “absolute truth.” Five months later, Jay Grant is singing a different tune. Did you have an epiphany, Jay Grant, or are you again blowing smoke hoping to write an Orwellian history for yourself?
Unlike Jay Grant’s contradictory, self serving, and cloudy view of reality, Jim Kerr has both feet planted firmly on the ground. Jim Kerr knows what’s important and what is irrelevant. For Jim Kerr, view obstructing power lines are an absolute horror for our town. Everything else about our town is simply, simply, simply boring.
One way to decide if Jay Grant is the truly misunderstood, is to examine the public record. Quoting liberally from the Bible, Al Enderle, writing in the local newspaper (8/11/2000), declares homosexuality is not about love. Al Enderle asks, ”Why would a man want to have sex with another man?...Is it love or is it lust? I suggest that it is lust because, were he to really love the other man, he would choose not to do it even though be (sic) wants to.” Al Enderle concludes,” I just don’t agree...that God is tolerant of homosexuality, lying, stealing, adultery, etc.”
Edward T. Graney, wreiying in the local newspaper (8/25/2000), writes a garbled and almost illiterate letter weaving a weird theory of hatred for orthodox Jews and why the reader should “...be diligent and vote for the morality in the Republican platform.” Graney tells us orthodox Jews are a defiance of Christianity, orthodox Jews will never enter a Christian church, and orthodox Jews believe all Goyum are unclean. Where does Edward T. Graney get his ideas? From the Holy Bible, where else? (Dt.17:2-7, 1 Kg.18:40, Mt.23:31, Mt.27:25, Jn.5:16, 7:1, 7:13, 10:31, 11:8, Jn.8:44).
On September 8, 2000 the self-righteous and misunderstood Jay Grant decides to weigh in supporting Enderle and Graney. Grant writes, “I applaud Mr. Enderle and Mr. Graney for having the courage to put themselves on the firing line with their regular contributions to this paper. I’m sure they both fully understand there’s a culture war going on and to endorse the Lord, Scripture or absolute truth is going to usually bring a stinging rebuke from the numerous atheists, secularists and other assorted skeptics scattered throughout our town.”
Does Jay Grant rebuke Enderle’s and Graney’s scurrilous homophobic and anti-semitic remarks? Not at all! Jay Grant “applauds” Enderle and Graney lauding them as brave foot soldiers in the “culture war” against the enlightenment. Does Jay Grant distance himself from homophobia and anti-semitism of the Holy Bible? Are you kidding! Jay Grant embraces the Holy Bible as “absolute truth.” Five months later, Jay Grant is singing a different tune. Did you have an epiphany, Jay Grant, or are you again blowing smoke hoping to write an Orwellian history for yourself?
Unlike Jay Grant’s contradictory, self serving, and cloudy view of reality, Jim Kerr has both feet planted firmly on the ground. Jim Kerr knows what’s important and what is irrelevant. For Jim Kerr, view obstructing power lines are an absolute horror for our town. Everything else about our town is simply, simply, simply boring.
Friday, January 19, 2001
Calvary Chapel
Jim Kerr’s letter in our local newspaper is perplexing. Mr. Kerr seems to think the debate being played out in the letters column between myself and others and Jay Grant, Al Enderle, and others is somehow personal.
The personal religious beliefs of people are none of my business. If Al Enderle and Jay Grant and Edward T. Graney and that crowd at Calvary Chapel want to speak in tongues, handle snakes, roll about on the floor, perform the “placing on of hands” rituals, or do whatever they do in their churches, temples, synagogues, or mosques, I have absolutely no objections. There is, however, a caveat. Once these folks come out of their respective houses of worship and attempt to dominate the public debate over public policy by means of intimidation, false claims of moral authority, back room political deal making, and outright lies, then as citizen of a democracy one must engage this dishonesty by clearly and forcefully pointing out publicly their fraudulent claims.
Mr. Kerr, If you had been paying attention to the letters of Al Enderle, Edward T. Graney, and Jay Grant et.al. over the last year, you would have read how these men write Bible based justifications for anti-semitism, anti-feminism, anti-enligtenment, homophobia, and just plain foolishness.
For example, in 1978 Chuck Smith, the head priest of Calvary Chapel and assuredly a hero of the crowd mentioned above, produced a “documentary” film titled Future Survival. The script of this so-called documentary was also published as a book titled Future Survival: How you can survive the coming crises! (ISBN 0-936728-02-7). In his book Chuck Smith tells us that as an expert on Biblical prophecy and according to his reading of the Book of Revelations, “I am convinced that the Lord is coming for His Church before the end of 1981”(pg. 20). How does Chuck Smith know the world will end in 1981? Because Israel was founded in 1948 and since a biblical generation is 40 years long and since the Tribulation where Jesus returns to earth last for 7 years, all of this adds up to the end of the world in 1981! (pg. 17,19-21). What signs should Christians be looking for so they may survive the coming crisis? According to Chuck Smith, Christians should be supporting increases in the Pentagon budget. Smith tells us “Russia has a decided military advantage over the United States....” and ”... that the SALT II treaty is selling the United States down the river.” What will Russia do with this decided military advantage according to Smith. The Pentagon must be strong enough in order to help Israel repel a Russian invasion of Israel. “Russia feels that the conquest of Israel and the Mideast will be her first strategic move to world conquest. So, as God said, ‘I’m going to bring Russia into the slaughter by bringing her into the Mideast against Israel.’ (pg. 19). Nowhere did Smith’s “expert” reading of Revelations show him that Russia would ignominiously collapse into economic depression and military decay. Smith made millions of dollars off his absurd and BS laden documentary and book. What did Smith do with all the ill gotten booty?
Mr. Kerr, you inserted your opinion into the debate based on a misreading of the facts. It is certainly your right to express your opinion, but in the words of Abraham Lincoln, “It is sometimes better to sit quiet and be thought a fool then to speak up and remove all doubt.”
The personal religious beliefs of people are none of my business. If Al Enderle and Jay Grant and Edward T. Graney and that crowd at Calvary Chapel want to speak in tongues, handle snakes, roll about on the floor, perform the “placing on of hands” rituals, or do whatever they do in their churches, temples, synagogues, or mosques, I have absolutely no objections. There is, however, a caveat. Once these folks come out of their respective houses of worship and attempt to dominate the public debate over public policy by means of intimidation, false claims of moral authority, back room political deal making, and outright lies, then as citizen of a democracy one must engage this dishonesty by clearly and forcefully pointing out publicly their fraudulent claims.
Mr. Kerr, If you had been paying attention to the letters of Al Enderle, Edward T. Graney, and Jay Grant et.al. over the last year, you would have read how these men write Bible based justifications for anti-semitism, anti-feminism, anti-enligtenment, homophobia, and just plain foolishness.
For example, in 1978 Chuck Smith, the head priest of Calvary Chapel and assuredly a hero of the crowd mentioned above, produced a “documentary” film titled Future Survival. The script of this so-called documentary was also published as a book titled Future Survival: How you can survive the coming crises! (ISBN 0-936728-02-7). In his book Chuck Smith tells us that as an expert on Biblical prophecy and according to his reading of the Book of Revelations, “I am convinced that the Lord is coming for His Church before the end of 1981”(pg. 20). How does Chuck Smith know the world will end in 1981? Because Israel was founded in 1948 and since a biblical generation is 40 years long and since the Tribulation where Jesus returns to earth last for 7 years, all of this adds up to the end of the world in 1981! (pg. 17,19-21). What signs should Christians be looking for so they may survive the coming crisis? According to Chuck Smith, Christians should be supporting increases in the Pentagon budget. Smith tells us “Russia has a decided military advantage over the United States....” and ”... that the SALT II treaty is selling the United States down the river.” What will Russia do with this decided military advantage according to Smith. The Pentagon must be strong enough in order to help Israel repel a Russian invasion of Israel. “Russia feels that the conquest of Israel and the Mideast will be her first strategic move to world conquest. So, as God said, ‘I’m going to bring Russia into the slaughter by bringing her into the Mideast against Israel.’ (pg. 19). Nowhere did Smith’s “expert” reading of Revelations show him that Russia would ignominiously collapse into economic depression and military decay. Smith made millions of dollars off his absurd and BS laden documentary and book. What did Smith do with all the ill gotten booty?
Mr. Kerr, you inserted your opinion into the debate based on a misreading of the facts. It is certainly your right to express your opinion, but in the words of Abraham Lincoln, “It is sometimes better to sit quiet and be thought a fool then to speak up and remove all doubt.”
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