Ravaging Downtowns, Subsidizing the Butchers of Beijing: Walton's Good Works. Robert B. Ward pretends to see nothing wrong with the devastation to multitudinous small businesses and the downtowns they lie in, produced by "superstores", like Walton's. He claims that the big chains keep inflation low, and that eases interest rates and makes home ownership possible. That's all well and good if you have a job. But if the business your job was in closes because of superstores, you'll be lucky to hold onto a home you already bought. And if major employers are paying low wages, that drags wage rates down for everyone not just in the same industry but also in every locality in which that low-paying employer operates.
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How do Walton's and the other big retailers keep prices low? They import masses of goods from Communist China. This, according to some conservative observers like the New York Post, is supposed to be good for us. In the year 2003, the United States had a trade deficit with China of $124  billion. Think about that for a moment, and ask yourself "How far does $124 billion go in China as regards developing nuclear weapons, missile systems, technology for disabling U.S. computer networks, and other preparations for war against us?" Oh, you didn't know that Communist China was planning war against us? Consider this passage from a front-page article in The Wall Street Journal of July 11, 2001:

NEWPORT, R.I.--The U.S. is at war with China, and U.S. Navy commanders are using a new breed of ship called Streetfighter to sail perilously close to the Chinese coast.
There, the small, fast, inexpensive warships — designed to go into harm's way and, if necessary, be lost — hunt down Chinese subs and missile launchers hidden among fishing boats and cargo ships. Some Streetfighters are sunk by enemy fire, and casualties are high, but they help the U.S. win earlier than the military pros had projected.
The "war" was a computer simulation set around 2015, carried out in windowless rooms at the Naval War College here about a year ago. The Streetfighters existed only on paper.
("Risk Assessment: Plans for a Small Ship Pose Big Questions For the U.S. Navy", 7/11/01, p. 1, rightmost column)

So why are we subsidizing the Butchers of Beijing to the tune of $124 billion a year? (I pass over, for purposes of this blog entry, the fact that the overall trade deficit in 2003, with all countries, was $489.4 billion, which doesn't seem to concern the Republican free traders. So, we're going into debt to foreigners, big-time. How could that possibly be important?)
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The bulk of this $124 billion goes to the government of Communist China, directly, when the trade is with state-owned enterprises ("Communist China", remember: Communist), indirectly, in the form of taxes on profits and the wages of workers, when the trade is with privately owned (but governmentally controlled) businesses. The pretense is that this economic "engagement" encourages the Butchers of Beijing to moderate their behavior; they can relax, for feeling all is well, and reform politically, to bring the benefits not just of capitalism but also of democracy to their people. And this losing trade gives us leverage to open their enormous market and ultimately make tons of money in fair trade! Fat chance. (Sounds like a Chinese name, doesn't it? Fat Qans!)
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The people of China are too poor to afford any American consumer goods at all. Per capita income in China is $960 - for a whole year! How are they going to be able to spend even $400 for a home computer? It's ridiculous. (Internally, that $960 equates, in "purchasing power parity", with $4,520 per person, but that's before all basic living expenses are deducted, which leaves very little disposable income. If they buy domestic products, the pittance they have in the way of disposable income allows them to live modestly. But they certainly can't afford imported goods.)
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Everything made here costs something like ten times as much in China as comparable goods made locally. It is absolutely impossible for us to compete in most segments of the economy. Impossible. It doesn't matter how low the dollar sinks, thanks to free trade. There will never, for the foreseeable future, be more than a tiny number of Chinese who can afford to buy anything Made in USA. Big American businesses can sell only to big Chinese businesses, and the bulk of them are government-owned. When we sell advanced technology to such enterprises, we are really turning over our technology to the Butchers of Beijing.
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Not all conservatives are as naive as the free-traders. Cal Thomas suggested that Communists still believe that military conflict with the West is inevitable. In 2001 he reported that "Last spring, China announced it was boosting defense spending by nearly 18 percent." Where are they getting the money? Oh, that's right. From us.
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Lenin said it: "The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them."
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Let us remember why the leaders of Communist China are called "The Butchers of Beijing". No one knows the exact figure, because China was so backward it had no reliable census nor efficient Department of Vital Statistics, but the website "Murder By Communism" suggests that over 36 million Chinese were killed by Communists up to 1987. In 1989, a democracy movement erupted in Tienanmen Square and, after diddling for a few weeks, the government crushed that movement, literally: they sent tanks into the Square, squashing some of China's "best and brightest" under tank treads. Followup arrests and executions may have totaled 5,000 or even 13,000. China isn't free with such information.
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I won't even try to calculate how many of the 34,000 Americans killed in the Korean War were killed by Chinese "volunteers" sent across the Yalu River in hordes. Nor will I attempt to figure how many Americans will be killed if China does indeed go to war against us in or about 2015.
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Each year, the Chinese government executes a great many people. Amnesty International cites a figure of 1,067, which it believes to be too low (I have heard 5,000), as compared to the United States' total of 68 a year. There have even been claims that China is eager to execute people not just to relieve population pressure but also to provide 'spare parts' to paying foreigners in the form of kidneys, livers, hearts, and other valuable organs to be 'harvested' from the executed. Chinese-style execution is a bullet to the back of the head. And the government makes the family of the convict pay for the bullet!
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I have no problem with execution of people for horrible crimes, but I don't count promoting democracy as a crime worthy of death.
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It is sometimes inescapable for Americans of limited means to buy Chinese, and some of that money does go to workers, even tho much does go to the Butchers of Beijing. But when the success of Walton's superstores is built on the bones of ruined small businesses and ravaged downtowns, and it subsidizes the People's Liberation Army in its preparation for war against the United States, I can't be enthusiastic about the boon to us that Walton's is supposed to be. Wherever you may shop, please check the national-origin label on everything you plan to purchase, and buy Chinese only if there is no practical alternative. (Responsive to "The (Class) War on Walton's", New York Post, May 31, 2004)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 2:48 PM

 
Global Warming/New Ice Age Nonsense. A Hollywood movie, The Day After Tomorrow, debuted this weekend. It posits catastrophic and sudden climate change, including a new Ice Age, produced by global warming. That's right: global warming might produce a new Ice Age. Climatologist Tom Prugh, interviewed by National Geographic News in a story hilited on AOL today, says there's "a kernel of truth" in the premise.
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I have followed the "global warming" craziness for years, and read some weeks ago the nonsense that seems to underlie the movie, that global warming might cause the Gulf Stream to stop flowing, which could plunge northern latitudes into a new Ice Age, with average temperatures dropping as much as 20 or more degrees Fahrenheit almost suddenly, and in only a few years from now. Yes, we really are supposed to believe that global warming can cause a new Ice Age, and soon! Let's be clear here: warming does not produce cooling, certainly not short-cycle.
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One theory about how warming could cause an Ice Age is that if the Arctic Ocean doesn't freeze solidly over, its exposed surface would produce much higher snowfalls all around it, much as open water on the Great Lakes produces high "lake-effect" snowfalls. Evaporation would tend to make the remaining Arctic water saltier, which would keep it open water longer. Meanwhile, snows all over the lands around it would accumulate higher and higher, reflect massive amounts of sunlite for most of the year, and gradually produce ice sheets such that even after the Arctic Ocean froze over because the temperature year-round was by then cold enuf, it would be too late to reverse the self-sustaining accumulation of ice, and a new Ice Age would creep down from the pole, burying everything under a mile of ice. But this could happen only if the astronomical conditions for an Ice Age were also in place.
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There is no such thing as global warming produced by human activity. We are between Ice Ages, so of course we're warmer now than 11,000 or 20,000 years ago. Scientists can't even agree on how much the Earth has warmed in the past 100 years or how much it might warm in the next 100. Some say it's warmer by one whole degree Fahrenheit and might rise another 2 degrees in the next fifty years! Passing over, for the sake or argument, the possibility that a tiny discrepancy between the accuracy of thermometers 100 years ago and now could explain away the entire phenomenon, let's consider if an increase of even 6 degrees Fahrenheit would make a damned bit of difference in climate change.
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Water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit. It also melts at 32 degrees - tricky business, that; it depends on whether heat is being taken away or added. The warmer the surrounding temperature, the faster ice melts, which also means the greater the quantity of ice that melts. But 1 degree or 6 degrees' change in temperature is not going to do much of anything to the rate of melting presently experienced. The high Arctic rarely gets much above 60 degrees, and freezing temperatures occur every single month. Yellowknife, Northwest Territories' 'hottest' month, July, averages 69 degrees, even tho the sun never sets from early May to the beginning of August. Yellowknife has only 50 days above 65 degrees, as against 224 below freezing.
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Extended periods below -20 F are common in much of the Arctic, and temperatures of -40 and -50 are commonplace. How is a difference of 6 degrees going to accomplish anything? Minus 14 is going to keep ice frozen just as well as -20! Moreover, 32 is not the coldest ice gets. If the atmosphere adjoining ice cools to -20, some portion of the ice itself will also cool to -20. That means it has to be warmed up to 32 before it even begins to melt. That might take a while. One warm day isn't going to do it.
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Here in New Jersey temperatures vary from about 0 to 102 degrees Fahrenheit. Who cares about a change of 1-3 or even 6 degrees? We often have temperature differences of more than 20 degrees in the same day.
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Scientists can't agree on how long it will be before the next Ice Age arrives, or even if there will ever be another Ice Age, given human activity flooding the atmosphere with "greenhouse gases". Is the period between Ice Ages about 10,000 years long, in which case we're due for another within a couple of thousand years? Or might more "greenhouse gases" stave it off for 10,000 or 60,000 or 100,000 years? No one knows.
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What we do know is that the Ice Ages were produced not by anything on Earth itself but were "caused by slow, periodic changes in the shape and position of the Earth's orbit around the Sun". They are also affected by whether the Northern Hemisphere is tilted toward or away from the sun at our closest approach to that ultimate heat source. Now, we are closest to the sun in January, which means that winter in the Northern Hemisphere is milder than it was 11,000 years ago (during the last Ice Age), when we were closest to the sun in July, which meant that northern summers were hotter but northern winters occurred when we were farthest from the sun, which made them colder.
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Although the largest ice sheet is over the South Pole, because there is land there, it cannot extend too far outward because of open ocean almost everywhere around it save the narrow tip of triangular South America. The Ice Ages affected the Northern Hemisphere more severely because altho the North Pole itself is in water, the Arctic Ocean is small, and almost the entire circumpolar region is solid land for thousands of miles outward. Land doesn't have currents to carry away cold and bring warmth, so ice doesn't thin or break up over land nearly so fast as it does over water (especially sea water, which contains salt). Moreover, the Northern Hemisphere, the Land Hemisphere (most of the planet's land surface is north of the equator), is where most people live, so the growth of ice caps is, to people, much more important in the Northern Hemisphere than the Southern.
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Nature magazine's website says, "Although ice ages are ultimately caused by orbital changes, they seem to rely on feedbacks within the Earth's climate system. The ice sheets provide such a feedback - the bigger they get, the more sunlight and heat they reflect, and so the more the Earth cools." But this is a very gradual process. It doesn't occur overnite or over a few short years.
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What else reflects sunlite? Clouds. What produces clouds? Evaporation. What produces evaporation? Heat. So the system is in part self-regulating, even without biological activity, much less human activity. 71% of Earth's surface is covered by water, which means that most of what is heated by the sun is water. More heat, more evaporation, more clouds, more reflection of sunlite out into space - which reduces the amount of heat reaching the surface.
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Moreover, Earth supports huge amounts of plant life, much of it in the oceans in the form of algae. Tho deforestation is occurring in parts of the Third World, the forests of the First World are actually thriving, and expanding. In North America, for instance, areas that a century or two ago were cleared for farming in New England and for timber in Upstate New York are now covered in forests again. Even urban sprawl has meant reforestation in the sense that farmland, which is mainly treeless and thus relatively underutilized in a biological sense, and over the winter is basically devoid of vegetation, is replaced by houses around which are planted trees, including evergreens, which perform photosynthesis whenever the temperature rises above about 45 degrees. Older suburbs become the equivalent of forests interspersed with meadows, which absorb a lot more carbon dioxide than do seasonal farms.
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So, the warmer the climate, the longer the growing season, the more trees and algae thrive, the more carbon dioxide they take out of the atmosphere, so again there is a brake on warming. Snails and sea creatures that form shells take carbon dioxide and make calcium carbonate from it, which takes carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere for very long periods. Some is pretty much permanently removed, as limestone.
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Conversely, when temperatures are lower, the growing season is shorter, and less carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere, leaving more of this "greenhouse" gas to limit cooling.
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This biological regulation of atmospheric gases and thus moderation of climate was first appreciated in 1965 by James Lovelock, a British scientist working with NASA. His neighbor in Wiltshire, the Nobel prize-winning British author William Golding, suggested for this concept the name of the first Greek goddess, 'Mother Earth', who emerged from Chaos and gave order to the Earth. In the late 1960s, Lovelock formulated "The Gaia Theory" and published his first article on it in 1972.
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This theory predicts that climatological changes produced by changes in the chemistry of the atmosphere (not those produced by changes in Earth's orbit) will be moderated by life: cooler temperatures result in more carbon dioxide, which limits cooling; warmer temperatures result in more carbon dioxide being taken out of the atmosphere by living beings, which limits heating.
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Thus, we could have catastrophic global warming, with its unpredictable consequences, only if we destroyed a very large portion of the world's algae AND forests at the same time. We're not doing that.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:53 PM

 
"Terrorism" Now Meaningless. The New York Post pretends (a) that the war against Iraq was for "self-defense" and (b) that Iraq was involved in terrorism.
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It does these despicably dishonest things indirectly, by implication. Self-defense: "Is Kerry suggesting is [sic] that America not take military action — even in self-defense — without the specific approval of France and/or Germany?" Get it? The Bush Administration's aggression against Iraq was "self-defense"! Bullshit.
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Terrorism: "Kerry's vow to 'bring the full force of our nation's power' against the terrorists rings so hollow. President Bush, after all, did just that when America ... removed Saddam Hussein in Iraq." Get it? Saddam was a terrorist. Double bullshit.
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The war was sold to Americans as necessary for our own defense, but that was a baldface lie that habitual (pathological?) liars such as the nameless editorialists at the New York Post continue to utter even tho it has been proved completely and absolutely false. Iraq was never a danger to the United States; never attacked the United States; and never so much as had plans to attack the United States.
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It is in the nature of paranoid psychopaths to justify their assaults on others as self-defense, because those others would attack them if they had the chance! But delusions of being oppressed by others do not fly when the "other" is tiny, inconsequential Iraq and the one 'endangered' is the greatest power in the history of the world.
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Let's review: Iraq is 6,000 miles from the nearest part of the United States, and the heartland of this country is a further thousand miles away. Iraq never had so much as ONE weapon that could do any significant harm even if it could reach us, and in any event had no way whatsoever to reach us. It had no intercontinental ballistic missiles. No satellites to rain death upon us from space. No missile-carrying submarines. No intercontinental-range bombers. No aircraft carrier, much less a carrier fleet to sail across the entire length of the Mediterranean Sea, then the entire width of the Atlantic Ocean - undetected! - to launch a sneak attack upon us!
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The suggestion that Iraq was a danger to us was a lie, pure and simple: a cynical, vicious lie by anti-Arab slanderers intent on slaughtering Arabs by persuading Americans that it's kill-or-be-killed and if we don't strike now, Iraq will land troops on the beaches of Delaware and march triumphantly into Washington, conquering us and subjecting us to Saddam's genocidal dictatorship! Oh, they wouldn't dare give all those details aloud, because even to say them aloud is to show how ridiculous the premise is: little bitty Iraq, with no navy, no nuclear weapons, no ICBMs or any other means of reaching us, 6,000 and more miles away, is somehow going to destroy the greatest power in the history of the world! Ridiculous.
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All that an attack upon the U.S. could have accomplished is to bring down upon a helpless Third World country the wrath of a superpower of unprecedented might, capable of taking on the entire planet Earth today and winning! To put things in context, the U.S. is so powerful militarily that in conventional warfare it could defeat every single empire in world history, from the Romans to the Parthians to the Caliphate to the Chinese Empire to the Mongol Empire to the Mogul Empire to the Japanese and Nazi empires in World War II. The only thing that can defeat us militarily is nuclear weapons (which none of the great empires before us, except the Soviet, ever had). And Iraq never had nor was even close to having nuclear weapons.
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"Terrorism" could be unpleasant for us, but it could never do any critical damage, much less bring down our civilization - except thru over-reaction, whereby we ourselves destroy our civilization by abandoning everything we stand for and becoming as much a monster as every other empire in history. There is only one power that can destroy the United States, and that IS the United States.
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Why, when the notion that Iraq was a danger to us is widely understood to be utterly false, does the Post continue to pretend that we had to act, in "self-defense"?
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"Blame the victim", that's why. That's the basic, kneejerk tendency of the Radical Right. The poor are poor because they deserve to be poor. Slums are slums because the people who live there make them slums and deserve to have to live there. Iraq deserved to be destroyed because it was making plans to attack us. All bullshit.
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There was not one iota of justification for the attack upon Iraq on the basis of "self-defense". Iraq was never a danger to us. It was, however, a serious danger to Israel. And that is why it had to be destroyed.
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But Israel is not the New York Post's country, tho you'd think, from its endless fascination with that little monster of a country, that Israel is the Post's country. There's a familiar word for Americans who set up the U.S. up for hatred and violence for the sake of another country: "treason".
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U.S. foreign policy should serve only U.S. interests, which at end means our fundamental values and base principles. Imperialist mass murder for fascist theocracy is not one of them.
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As for Iraq's being involved in "terrorism", it was no more involved in terrorism than is the government of Israel and, thus, the Government of the United States, which approves beforehand or afterward every crime of violence committed by the Israelis. If Iraq, which assisted unconventional warfare against its enemies in the Middle East - never against us - is guilty of "terrorism", then the United States is too, because the U.S. assisted the Cubans who launched the Bay of Pigs invasion, sent massive aid to the contras in Nicaragua, and has supported covert operations in scores of countries and carried out actual Marine invasions of a bunch of countries in the Carbibbean plus TWO wars against a helpless Third World country that never attacked us!
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How is it that when Hezbollah launches rocket attacks upon Israeli settlements in the Occupied West Bank, that is "terrorism", but when the Israeli government launches rocket attacks upon residential neighborhoods in the Gaza Strip, that is not "terrorism"? Hezbollah isn't a government, so its acts are termed "terrorism". Israel is a government, so its acts are not "terrorism". But Saddam controlled the government of Iraq, so how could his acts be "terrorism"?
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When identical acts are given different names, that is called "hypocrisy", a term that is always valid - unlike "terrorism", which has lost all meaning. (Responsive to editorial "Kerry Plays the Hawk", New York Post, May 29, 2004)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 2:29 PM

 
Right-Wing Inconsistencies. In two places today, an op-ed column and an editorial, the New York Post shows the self-confuting lack of principle of the Radical Right.
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Deborah Orin wants us to feel sympathy for "seven Iraqi men whose right hands got chopped off on Saddam Hussein's orders on charges of trading in U.S. dollars. Chopped off by doctors in an obscene travesty of medicine, but so sloppily that they were in constant pain." So, what she's saying is that severe punishment for criminals is evil. They knew the law; they defied it; they paid the price. Their right hands were removed surgically, not by ax or guillotine.
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Is Ms. Orin saying that it's alrite to defy the law? Or that laws shouldn't be severe? Or that punishments threatened shouldn't actually be imposed?
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Contrast the Post's own editorialists in the same issue, happy about the British government's arrest of an accused terrorist but indignant that that same government might not extradite him for trial in the U.S. because the U.S. has the DEATH PENALTY!
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The Post wants us to be indignant that Saddam's Iraq imposed amputation of the right hand for the crime of black-market currency trading but equally indignant that the British government won't let us kill a "terrorist". The Post regards amputation of a hand as impermissibly savage; the British government regards the death penalty as impermissibly savage.
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And what exactly does the Post want us to kill this Moslem cleric for? He "provided material aid to both al Qaeda and the Taliban" and "act[ed] as an intermediary" for terrorists who kidnapped and killed some tourists in Yemen. (Hmm. Don't a lot of journalists act as intermediaries in hostage situations? Should we kill them, and police negotiators while we're at it?) He "tr[ied] to establish a terrorist training camp in Oregon" - but didn't. The Post says, "New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said yesterday: 'Think of him as a freelance consultant to terrorist groups worldwide.'" Did he kill anyone? Apparently not. But he still deserves to die, says the Post (just as Saddam thought black-market currency traders subverting Iraq's own currency deserved to have their right hand amputated). The British government begs to differ.
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Let's talk about governments for a minute. The Post has cheered enthusiastically the U.S. Government's overthrow of Saddam's government in Iraq, 6,000 miles away, and the Taliban government of Afghanistan, 7,000 miles away, but we have laws against the overthrow of the U.S. Government right here at home. Why? If it's okay for us, a bunch of foreigners, violently to overthrow governments thousands of miles from home, (a) why would it wrong for foreigners to overthrow our government and (b) why does our government suggest it is wrong for us violently to overthrow the U.S. Government?
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Oh, we pretend that our government is different; it is 'chosen by the people'. But more of "the people" - the sacred, hallowed people - chose Al Gore to be President than chose George Bush, yet George Bush is President. How could that happen if the people choose our government? And if the people did NOT choose our President, why is it wrong to overthrow him and, if need be, kill him and everyone around him to do so? We overthrew Saddam's government and the Taliban government and killed everybody who tried to stop us. What's different?
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Moral inconsistency is called "hypocrisy", and the human mind rebels at hypocrisy. U.S. law forbids a number of things out of practical concerns over consistency. We are not supposed to assassinate foreign leaders, for instance, because that would naturally open us up to assassination of our own leaders as a legitimate act that springs instantly to mind in governments all over the world. We don't want death squads from 100 countries targeting our President, so we have a public stance that we won't assassinate foreign leaders, even Fidel Castro.
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Rather, we go to war and instead of neatly killing only Saddam, we kill tens of thousands of Iraqis, destroy their infrastructure, schools, and hospitals, and pretend that that's okay. But when Moslems indignant about U.S. arrogance and cruelty in the Mideast destroy some of our infrastructure and kill a few thousand of us, we act with horror and rage. And all the while we can't for an instant put ourselves in their place to see why they act from rage against us.
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There is an oft-quoted phrase from American Indians: "Do not judge a man until you have walked a mile in his moccasins." Americans seem intent on refusing even to think about what life is like for Palestinians under the brutal occupation of their country, stolen right out from under them by foreign Jews sent there by the British empire and subsidized in their occupation by Americans.
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When those helicopter gunships rain death and destruction from the sky upon leaders and children without distinction, and the U.S. built and paid for those helicopters, is it any mystery that people who do identify with Palestinians want us all dead?
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Exert yourself mentally to imagine what it must be like to live as Palestinians live, under the hobnailed boot of the Israeli government, backed 100% by the U.S. government, media, and electorate in every murder they commit. Imagine living in a crummy apartment in a refugee camp that is regularly attacked by the Israeli army, using U.S. weapons and U.S. ammunition. You have no job, because the economy is a shambles because Israel won't let you set up a business or establish trade with other countries. If you find a job, it is as a low-paid unskilled laborer in Israel - little more than a slave - and many times a year the Israeli Government closes the border (a border between one part of your country and another) and forbids you to go to work, so you lose pay when the miserable wages you make are not enuf to live well on to begin with.
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The Israelis have not only stolen most of your land but they have also built a wall to keep you from even seeing it, a "Berlin Wall" that the U.S. Government, so indignant about the German Berlin Wall, actually smiles upon!
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Your kids go to substandard schools, and the Israelis regularly shut down those schools and universities for days, weeks, even months at a time. The Israelis shut off water to your neighborhood for days at a time - in a desert. If your teenager demonstrates against Israeli abuses, he is shot with live ammunition or with rubber or plastic bullets that can maim or even kill. You watch TV, and see that Israelis who demonstrate are sprayed with water! not bullets of any type. You are white niggers in 1950 Mississippi, and the U.S. Government sends help not to the civil-rights workers but to the KKK.
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So when the New York Post claims, editorially, that "Saudi-based Wahhabi extremism, which seeks to hijack mainstream Islam and wreak worldwide vengeance against its enemies, is the true root cause of terrorism in the world today", don't you believe it. The real root cause of terrorism in the world today is Israel's criminal mistreatment of Arabs, because, you see, Arabs and other Moslems worldwide really can walk a mile in the moccasins of Palestine. If we did too, and ended our support for ZIONAZISM, we would cease to be "enemies" of the Moslem world, and extremist incitements of Wahhabi preachers would fall on deaf ears. (Responsive to "The Real Deal" and "Hands of Hope", New York Post, May 28, 2004)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 12:05 PM

 
Who's Ga-Ga?? I didn't see nor hear the speech by Al Gore that John Podhoretz claimed to see as a sign that Gore has lost his mind. But Podhoretz attacked me in an extremely similar way by email, so I am inclined to give old Al the benefit of the doubt.
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I have seen the clownish Mr. Podhoretz on Jon Stewart's "Daily Show" on Comedy Central, which is a good place for him. He tries to seem amiable, even as he makes daily apologias for the most monstrous behavior of Radical Zionists who have slaughtered hundreds of thousands and continue to inflict violent death upon Arabs in the name of the certifiably insane notion of recreating ancient Israel, gone 2,000 years, in a Moslem land. Alas, Slandy the Clown (for "slanderer") isn't at all funny.
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Al Gore is an American. I'm not at all sure about John Podhoretz, one of Israel's many Fifth Columnists in U.S. media. (Responsive to "Gore Goes Ga-Ga", New York Post, May 27, 2004)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:06 AM

 
Fireman, not Policeman. Dick Morris makes an interesting analogy between "firefighter" (the rad-fem substitute for "fireman") and what he thinks the U.S. role in the world should be. He suggests that we "can't be the world's policeman" (no rad-fem term this time) because that requires us to police (occupy) 24 hours a day, but we can be the planet's fireman: arrive in an emergency, put out the fire, then leave, allowing others to fill the void. Not workable.
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First, the comparison is flawed, because nowadays police usually do NOT police 24 hours a day, but only arrive in emergencies. The 911 switchboard has replaced the cop on the corner, walking a beat. Many neighborhoods don't even have regular police patrols anymore. This is, in fact, a major point of contention over the reasons we still have a crime rate that is much too high. Many critics of modern policing, with whom I agree, contend that we must have a 24-hour police presence, in our worst neighborhoods at least, in the form of "community policing".
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A Connorsville, Indiana webpage defines community policing thus:
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"Community policing is an organization[ ] wide philosophy and management approach that promotes community, government and police partnerships; proactive problem-solving; and community engagement to address the causes of crime, fear of crime and other community issues. [It embraces] proactive, rather than reactive styles of policing. In a reactive police department, the officers respond almost exclusively to incidents of crime and calls for service as the need arises. Usually, these incidents are of an emergency nature and action must be swift and not well planned in advance. [Sound familiar?] On the other hand, a proactive police department will recognize the areas of greatest concern and take steps that will lead to a reduction in the frequency, and seriousness, of incidents in those areas of concern."

Most police departments are primarily reactive, exactly as are fire departments. And they fail to do more than dampen crime. The causes remain, and bad neighborhoods are dangerous places to live. Good neighorhoods are (relatively) safe places not just because they get better police protection but also because the causes of crime are largely absent. In world terms, the U.S. is a very good neighborhood; Iraq, Israel, and much of Africa are very bad neighborhoods.
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However, just as most police departments are reactive, exactly like most fire-department work, fire departments at their best are also proactive. They promote fire codes that are up-to-date and reasonable, and perform inspections to eliminate needlessly dangerous conditions. They work with builders and government to see that building codes are fire-savvy and new buildings have exits that are both easily accessible and fireproof, and that building materials and methods do not incorporate fire hazards. They don't content themselves to see ramshackle slums arise as tinderboxes ready to charbroil children.
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So there's not as much difference between policemen and firemen as Morris suggests. Effective departments, long-term, must address the causes: police of crime, fire departments of fire.
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The defense and state departments must likewise address the causes of war, civil disorder, political extremism, and social intolerance. To leave that work to others would be folly.
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We are the most successful major country in history. We are the most diverse country in the history of the world, racially, ethnically, sexually, religiously, and just about any other way you want to measure. We know about defusing hatreds; we know about creating wealth; we know about substituting political struggle for military warfare. Nobody else can do that work even nearly as well as we can - but only if we are true to our Revolutionary principles and don't become a travesty of those principles in imperial war for the advancement of inequality.
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If we were really to use our occupation to democratize Iraq, we could do so. But we're not doing what we need to do, because that is not the reason for our going there. We went there to defend Israel, and as long as Radical Zionists control the foreign policy of the United States, we will never do anything that endangers the inequality that Israel has inflicted upon Arabs.
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The U.S. election this November should focus on our national purposes. Is the prime value of our civilization Zionism, to inflict violent colonialism on Arabs by Jews? If not, then why is our foreign policy dominated by Radical Zionists?
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The Bush Administration is, beyond question, completely and absolutely Radical Zionist. If Kerry is elected, Wolfowitz and his ilk will, presumably, lose all influence. But if Kerry does not forthrightly admit that the reason we are hated in so much of the world is that we impose violent inequality upon Palestine, then we will have no progress but will have to be policeman and fireman not for the world but simply to protect ourselves from the violence that decent people see as our proper punishment. Forget about world justice. Forget about world peace. As long as we are the only reason Israel continues to exist, we will be hated - properly. (Responsive to "The World's Firefighter", New York Post, May 26, 2004)

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 1:09 PM

 
Leashed 'Sovereignty'. The Post pretends to believe Dubya's claim that on June 30th the U.S. will give Iraq "full sovereignty", even tho 130,000 troops will remain in that country. If the new Iraqi government asserts "full sovereignty" and tells the U.S. to leave its country immediately, will the U.S. take those 130,000 troops out? U.S. administrator Paul Bremer recently said we would, but he doubts the new government will ask that. Still, if it does, will we get out?
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Would that be an "exit strategy" we could live with? It would literally give us an out, so we could say, "Well, if we had stayed, Iraq would have become a progressive, secular, multiethnic democracy" - but a sovereign nation has the right to create any government it may choose, even if that is a Shiite theocracy that uses majoritarianism to severely limit the rights of minorities.
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Is "We tried" good enuf? Or is the followup, "but failed" unacceptable?
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If Iraqis use their sovereignty to expel the foreign invader, and the country then erupts in civil war, will the U.S. stand aside and let the various factions battle it out, as we have done elsewhere, most grotesquely in the Sudan, the Congo, and Rwanda? Or is chaos so close to Israel unacceptable to the Zionists of Washington, especially if it looks as tho the ultimate winner will be stridently anti-Zionist?
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What if a sovereign, united, and democratic Iraq declares that it is the solemn duty of every Arab to work for the destruction of "the Zionist entity" by any means necessary? A sovereign nation has the right to its own foreign policy and military policy. The U.S. doesn't clear it with the U.N. or any other country which countries it makes war on or which military insurgencies we provide covert or overt assistance to. Why should Iraq have to answer to the U.S.? If a sovereign Iraq recognizes Yasir Arafat's Palestinian Authority as the sole legitimate government of all of Palestine, including those portions called by some "Israel", then sends massive economic aid to Palestine from Iraq's oil revenues and welcomes Palestinian soldiers into Iraq for military training for effective war against "the Zionist entity" - as a sovereign nation is entitled to do - will the U.S. stand aside and allow Iraq "full sovereignty"?
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I don't think so. Let's cut the crap. This war is not about making Iraq "free" or "sovereign". It is about making Israel secure, and if a sovereign Iraq becomes a danger to Israel, those 130,000 soldiers will overthrow the Iraqi people's choices for government, impose a pro-Zionist Quisling upon the people against their will, and use as much force as necessary to keep Iraq from pursuing an anti-Zionist foreign and military policy of its own choosing - no matter how many Americans must die to do that. (Responsive to editorial "A President's Resolve", New York Post, May 25, 2004)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 9:40 AM

 
Eminent Injustice. Julia Vitullo-Martin glosses over the grotesque misuse of "eminent domain" that developer Bruce RATner hopes to benefit from. The New York City government intends to steal property from one private owner -- hundreds, actually -- and turn it over to another private owner. That is NOT what eminent domain was intended for, but is an utterly improper, if not absolutely illegal, misuse of government power to benefit one private person over another private person (or, in this case, hundreds of other private persons).
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Eminent domain was intended to permit government to buy, at fair market value, property from a private owner for PUBLIC purposes, whether the private owner wished to sell or not. Perhaps a homeowner would prefer to retain his property than sell it to government, albeit at a fair price or even generous price. He doesn't care that government wants to construct a school, widen a street, or build a highway or light-rail line that needs his property for its right-of-way. He loves his house and wants to stay in it, where it is, no matter who says that his property might better be used for some other purpose.
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The greater good of the greater number authorizes government to take private property for public use. What it does NOT do is authorize government to seize private property from one private owner, buy it with public money, and then sell it to another private owner that government might prefer own it. That's called "stealing".
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Picture this. Someone accosts you on the street and demands your wedding ring. He offers you fair market value plus a bonus of 5% in consideration of its personalized engraving and sentimental value and insists "That's more than fair." You refuse, because you treasure your ring and would never willingly part with it. He then pulls a gun and says "Hand it over or I'll kill you". You grudgingly accede, and the gunman pays you fair market value plus 5%. He then immediately turns to his left and sells it to another person standing there, who reimburses the thief dollar-for-dollar (plus 5% 'for his trouble'). Would that be right? I don't think so.
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If Bruce RATner wants property now owned by other private persons, he can damned well buy it, at a price they are willing to sell for. If they are unwilling to sell, he will have to accept the fact that he is not one whit better than they are, and his wishes have no more validity than theirs. If he can't build around them, he will have to find another site, or abandon his plans because they are not feasible. He is not entitled to have government rob Peter to pay Bruce.
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Visitors to Rockefeller Center may notice, if they look carefully, that 30 Rock, centerpiece and tallest tower of the complex, is flanked by two little buildings on the Avenue of the Americas side. Why? Because the owners wouldn't sell, that's why. Did the plan for a Rockefeller Center come grinding to a halt? Did the City seize those two buildings and turn them over to Rockefeller Center to be demolished? No. The architects and contractors just built around them, and they stand there to this day. Nobody thinks a thing about it, and, if anything, those two little buildings add character to the Center.
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Let Bruce Ratner, and every other private developer in the Nation, buy what they can buy and accept that they are not entitled to what they cannot buy - just as you and I are not entitled to what we cannot buy. As we don't demand that government take by force a car that the driver would not sell us, and then sell it to us over the objection of the original owner, Bruce Ratner and every other private developer who cannot or will not pay the owner's asking price for property they would like to own should simply have to do without. As the song advises, "You can't always get what you want."
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Bruce RATner is aptly named. He bought the New Jersey Nets and intends to move them across the Hudson River despite what many New Jerseyans might regard as the greater good of the greater number. Maybe the State of New Jersey should simply seize the Nets from Ratner by eminent domain and sell the team to some New Jersey enterprise that pledges in writing to keep it here. But that would be a misuse of eminent domain, and of taxpayer dollars, wouldn't it? New Jersey wouldn't do that. New York, however, is another story. (Responsive to "A New Growth War", New York Post, May 23, 2004)
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P.S. I undergo surgery to my right knee tomorrow, Tuesday, May 25th, and will have to stay in the hospital (UMDNJ) at least one and possibly two nites thereafter. So do not be surprised if there is no entry in this blog for May 25th, 26th, or even 27th. In the immortal words of the present governor of California, "I'll be back." Or, in words of someone I am more favorably disposed to, Douglas MacArthur in reference to the Philippines, "I shall return." As to that, more than incidentally, I think we as a Nation should resolve, as to the Philippines, "We shall return", tho this time as fellow citizens, not colonial overlords.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 6:33 AM

 
Non Sequitur. The Post editorially denounces the criticism, by a highly placed Catholic Church official, of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, and irrelevantly attacks the Church for covering up supposed sexual abuse of "young boys and men" by Catholic priests. I guess all those girls and women supposedly abused don't count, to the Post. No, the mindlessly antihomosexual editorial writers of the New York Post level what is to their mind a double condemnation, that the Catholic hierarchy is both sexually abusive and homosexual!
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Let's put aside, for a moment, talk about boys, girls, and women, to talk about sexually abusing men. How do you do that? Men are capable of fending off unwanted advances. I've fended off thousands from men I didn't want. (I've also accepted thousands from men I did want.) It's pretty hard to rape or abuse a man who doesn't want sex with you. Difficult or impossible.
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Men are, for most of our lives, seething masses of sexual desire. All the world's major religions and ethical systems spend a lot of time trying to control that desire and help men channel sexual passions into socially acceptable behavior - with massive failure.
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Despite the best efforts of societies all across the planet to keep men from engaging in homosexual acts, homosexuality occurs everywhere, because it is built into the nature of men. It is impossible for a man to regard men, as such, as disgusting, because that would require him to regard himself as disgusting, and no sane person can function sexually at all if he feels himself disgusting. After all, who would want him? How could he even look for a willing partner? How could he face himself in the mirror? How could he touch himself, much less derive pleasure from that touch?
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So tolerance of the idea of touching men sexually is built into the nature of the male creature. Whether a given man acts upon that potentiality depends in part on upbringing, in part on opportunity, in part on attraction. Heterosexual actors on talk shows often joke that they may like girls, but if Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise or somebody else they find particularly handsome were to offer, they'd be hard-pressed to turn him down. And of course homosexual activity of some sort or other is commonplace in all-male settings like prisons.
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It is precisely because of this reality that the U.S. military is uncomfortable with gay men being in the military, because that would present an opportunity that many mainly heterosexual men would find irresistible, and sexual activities sometimes carry emotional involvements, including jealousies, in train, which can be disruptive to team cohesion. Were that not the case, there would be no grounds whatsoever for excluding gay men from the military, would there?
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So, getting back to the Church and supposed "abuse" of boys and young men by Catholic priests, let's stop being so naive and ridiculous. Boys from about age 13 on are curious about sex, bursting with sexual energy and internal hydraulic pressure, and willing - eager - to experiment. There are many reported cases of "abuse" that went on for YEARS. Years! That's not abuse; that's a relationship.
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Alas, this country is uncomfortable with sexuality, and allows people who give in to lust to disown their own, lust-driven, consensual acts as "rape" or "abuse". Girls who get drunk and yield to temptation later accuse their partner of "date rape" or "taking advantage" of them. No, they got screwed because they wanted to get screwed, and it doesn't matter if they were drunk or emotionally open/vulnerable at the time. They put themselves into that position and took advantage of the situation to get laid, which they very much wanted to do at the time. They must accept their sexual nature; take personal responsibility for their own consensual acts; and not blame anyone else.
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In like fashion, there are thousands of former boys, now grown men, who yielded to homosexual temptation and later decided that, even tho they had fun for YEARS, or did it over and over again rather than stay away from their "abuser", they are magically not responsible for their own consensual behavior driven by sexual lust, so accuse the partner they gladly and happily had sex with of being an "abuser".
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You'd think that sex was the most horrible thing on Earth, like eating slime mold, and we all run away from it, when the truth is that sex is for many the most wonderful thing on Earth, and we spend an awful lot of time, energy, and even money pursuing it.
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There would be no human race if sex were unbearable. In reality, there are 6.4 billion people on Earth, and the population grows by 90 million a year. That's a lot of sex, and doesn't even indicate how much homosexual sex is going on.
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It's time for the Post, and the American people, to accept that sex is pleasurable. Thru most of life, every healthy person wants sex and, when presented with the opportunity by an attractive person, everybody has it. So intrinsic to human nature is sexual desire, indeed, that the absence of sexual desire is, quite properly, regarded as a symptom of physical or mental illness.
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What is not a sign of physical or mental illness, however, is condemning: unprovoked aggression, invading countries that never attacked you, and torturing illegally seized captives to try to extort information they may not even have. The Church is right to condemn the Iraq invasion and abuse of prisoners. The Post is grievously wrong to make excuses for such evils and try to turn aside condemnation with utter irrelevancies.
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Moral condemnation stands on its own. It has nothing to do with the purity or impurity of the person issuing that condemnation. (Responsive to editorial "A Cardinal's Sin", New York Post, May 23, 2004)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:32 PM

 
Shock Treatment. In an aptly titled column, "Sympathy for the Devil", the Post's Andrea Peyser advocates coddling drug pushers. She recounts the tale of an 18-year-old girl who "attempt[ed] to turn her Greenwich Village dorm into a small-time drug supermarket" offering "cocaine, marijuana and hallucinogens". This poor, misguided thing was raised in "ritzy Rumson, N.J." and "dealt drugs to fit in and be popular .... To be down with the cool kids." Peyser says "This girl needs help, not further humiliation." No, she needs to be killed, for pushing death.
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I know Rumson. It is three towns from where I grew up, and is "ritzy" indeed, filled with huge houses that could properly be called "mansions". Bruce Sprinsteen had a mansion there for a while. This female drug-pusher was not some hopeless black kid from the projects who saw no way out but selling drugs. She had every advantage and CHOSE to sell extremely dangerous and destructive chemicals that can destroy lives, suddenly or over an extended time.
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Cocaine is no trivial "high". It has killed thousands of people and ruined tens of thousands of lives. Marijuana isn't really harmless either. Ask any of the one-time kids who dropped out of high school, high on "pot", then spent decades in dead-end jobs during the daytime and zonked out at nite.
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After all the deaths of prominent people from drugs - John Belushi, River Phoenix, Len Bias, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Chris Farley, and on, and on - the youth culture still thinks it's "cool" to use drugs! Let's shake them awake, out of their drug-induced lethargy and delusion, by making an example of this spoiled, rich "brat". Kill her. (Responsive to "Sympathy for the Devil", New York Post, May 22, 2004)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:28 AM

 
False Premise. Jim Hoagland and Amir Taheri both, in the same day's New York Post, seem surprised and disappointed that the U.S. administration in Iraq is high-handed and isolated from the Iraqi people. Should that really surprise anyone, given that the Bush Administration is high-handed and isolated from the people of its own country? We are dealing here with oligarchs, people whose world view is that the rich and powerful should deal with the rich and powerful and run everything. They don't talk to "the little people". They are not only not political Democrats, with a capital D. They aren't little-d democrats either, politically or socially.
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Our 130,000 potential ambassadors, American troops, ordinary people from many backgrounds, are warned not to fraternize with the people (The Enemy), lest they let down their guard and be slaughtered by treacherous Arabs who can't be trusted. Is that the real motive? Or is it to keep them from identifying with Iraqis and coming to see the validity of their concerns?
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Alas, Hoagland, Taheri, and others puzzled by the behavior of policymakers in the U.S. overlordship of Iraq proceed from the assumption that we went to Iraq to liberate the people. So it puzzles them that we are now acting as tyrants. The premise was wrong: the U.S. went not to save Iraq but to destroy it.
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Iraq is Israel's enemy. It had to be destroyed. If it rebuilds successfully and creates a truly representative government, that government will be anti-Zionist, because the people of Iraq, as of the entire Arab world, as of the entire Moslem world, as of almost ALL the world, are anti-Zionist - as we should be too. (Not anti-Jewish; anti-Zionist, an entirely different thing.)
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Wolfowitz and the other Radical Zionists who spearheaded this war do not want Iraq strong, united, and free, because that would mean it is free to be anti-Zionist. They want Iraq weak, divided, and ruled by fawning sycophants who will do the bidding of Israel as conveyed by the Zionists of Washington. They don't care if those sycophants are thieves, and so sent military police to hold guns to the head of Ahmed Chalabi, the former darling of Washington, because he wants the thieves who stole billions in the Oil-for-Food program tracked down and punished, and the money returned to the Iraqi people.
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Chalabi is too strong, too free, too nationalist - too Iraqi. He would not toe the Israeli line. And no one who will not "make peace with Israel" (surrender to Zionism) will be permitted to rise to power in Iraq.
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If that means that we must put some kleptocrat bootlicker into Iraq's presidential palace who is willing to kiss Zionist ass, and create a parliamentary form of government that will keep Iraqis at each other's throats in endless attempts to vote the ruling government out of office, that is what the Bush Administration will do. We are not there to help Iraqis. We are there to defend Israel. Once you understand that, everything falls into place. (Responsive to "Bungling in Iraq: The Chalabi Raid" by Jim Hoagland and "Losing the Common Man" by Amir Taheri, New York Post, May 21, 2004)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 1:04 PM

 
"Kill Faster!" If anyone doubts the corrosive effect that war has on warriors and warrior societies, s/he need only read the rantings of Ralph Peters, supermilitarist writer for the New York Post. That he is an open madman does not for an instant alter the fact that he is a bloodthirsty psychopath whose mind is fixated on violence and death to "enemies" who must be killed en masse, secretly, out of range of the cameras if need be so no one can stop their murders.
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Today's Post carried the refreshingly forthright rant "Kill Faster!", in which the monster Peters says there's nothing wrong with what the U.S. military has done anywhere in Iraq, and we should do more of it, but do it so fast that the media cannot see what's going on, report back to the people, and allow the people to decide if this is the way we want to act in the world and to be seen to act by the world's other peoples. "Kill faster!" shouts the madman. Forget about the innocent men, women and children. You've got "terrorists" to kill, and anyone who gets between you and the "terrorists" must be destroyed. If they're in the wrong place at the wrong time, that's their problem, not ours.
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Yesterday, according to news reports, the U.S. fired upon a wedding party, killing some 45 innocent partygoers. (The military claims it fired on a "safe house" for "terrorists" infiltrating from Syria. The 15 children and 10 women killed were just in the way, I guess.) Today, the U.S. invaded the home of Ahmed Chalabi, once Washington's darling, and, according to news reports of what Chalabi himself said, held guns to his head! They also raided the offices of his political organization, an organization the U.S. hand-delivered to Iraq from exile. Yes, that's right: the U.S. military actually flew long-exiled Chalabi into Iraq, and carried 600 of his followers to Nasiriyah! Now they hold guns to the head of the very man they flew in to lead a new government!
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Has the military concluded that all Iraqis are enemies, to be treated as such? Innocent partygoers, people regarded as friends only days ago are now treated as The Enemy. Shoot them. Hold guns to their head. Are we now to see no friends in Iraq, only enemies - just as Arab militants regard all Americans as their enemy?
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We are supposed to be indignant about innocent civilians being killed for political ends, and call that "terrorism". But if the "people" who kill innocent civilians wear uniforms, our uniforms, that automatically makes killing alrite? No, it most certainly does not. Who, then, are terrorists, and who not? Or have we all been barbarized by this conflict, so are now all terrorists?
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All militaries are bad. All militarism is bad. Our butchers are not one whit better than anybody else's butchers, be they in uniform or out. Acts stand bare, naked of uniforms. If you kill the innocent, you commit a crime. If you attack people who have never attacked you, you commit the internationally condemned crime of aggression. If you don't care about the guilt or innocence of people you call "enemy" and kill them without distinction, you commit a crime against humanity. And you lose the right to call yourself a "victim of terrorism"; lose the right to think of yourself as a decent person, or country, or society, or civilization.
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That is what militarism does, and it must be stopped. The United States is being destroyed by the New Militarism. The more savage we become, the 'faster we kill', the more we are hated and attacked, so the more we need to resort to military "solutions", which leads to another self-perpetuating turn in the cycle of violence: we kill again, more innocents die, and even larger numbers of people, everywhere, come to hate us and want us ALL dead, however they have to do that: bombs on trains, planes into office towers, sarin gas in subways - anything that does it, to anyone in a society of killers that much of the world comes to hate.
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Ralph Peters and his ilk have nothing but contempt for Americans' historical desire to be liked. He wants us to be feared. He doesn't care if we're hated, as long as we can kill the enemies we make. I suspect he actually likes making us hated, because that inspires violence against us, which gives him the chance to urge us to kill more and more in alleged "retaliation" for violence against us that he, and our own violent acts, inspire.
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'Our' bombs are not one iota more innocent than 'Theirs', just because 'Ours' are dropped from planes flying very high and 'Theirs' are set by the roadside or loaded into trucks. 'Our' uranium-laced artillery shells are not one whit more honorable than 'Their' "dirty bombs", conventional devices that scatter radioactivity - except that 'We' really do have uranium-coated artillery shells and 'They', the "terrorists" don't have dirty bombs. 'They' have managed to kill only a few thousand of 'Us'. 'We' have killed hundreds of thousands of 'Them'. And they didn't attack us first. We, thru our dear 'friend' Israel, started this whole horrible cycle of violence and counter-violence and counter-counter-violence and on, and on.
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We have no right to claim innocence.
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The Old Testament contains these words, the "handwriting on the wall": Mene mene tekel upharsin. Do they apply to us? (Responsive to "Kill Faster!", New York Post, May 20, 2004)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 1:03 PM

 
Did Castro Really Kill Kennedy? Last nite, on the PBS conversation program Charlie Rose, Joseph A. Califano, Jr., a long-time Washington insider, claimed that Lyndon Johnson said shortly after the assassination of President Kennedy that 'Kennedy tried to get Castro and instead Castro got Kennedy.' Is that the slightest credible?
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If Johnson believed that a Communist dictator murdered the President of the United States, why would he not express that view publicly, or at least to the Warren Commission? Fear of World War III, when the people flew into a rage and demanded war against Cuba, which was then defended by the Soviet Union? But Kennedy had already proved that the Soviet Union would not fight for Cuba with his successfully imposing a naval quarantine in the Cuban Missile Crisis.
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Wouldn't any President feel that to PERMIT a Communist dictator to kill one U.S. President would invite other Communist dictators to kill other U.S. Presidents - for instance, Johnson himself? I cannot for an instant believe that Lyndon Johnson (a) would consent to do nothing about Castro murdering Kennedy or (b) leave himself open to assassination by Castro, Ho Chi Minh (with whom we were then at war), or other Communists.
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Moreover, if Califano heard any such remark and didn't urge the President to tell the people of his suspicions or go publilc on his own to demand the matter be investigated, even if that required him to leave his job in the White House and 'betray a confidence', then he and Lyndon Johnson were both guilty of the most grievous treason.
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That was then. What of now? If Fidel Castro really did kill John Kennedy, then we must execute him. There is no statute of limitations on murder. So if Castro killed Kennedy, then it is a moral imperative that the United States destroy the Communist government of Fidel Castro by any means necessary, including one or more well-placed neutron or hydrogen bombs.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 9:45 PM

 
Item One: Torture is OK with Him. New York Post columnist Arnold Ahlert thinks it's okay to torture Iraqi prisoners, or at least subject them to "sleep and sensory deprivation, and body 'stress positions'." Fine. Let's apply the same standards to arrests of Americans. If Mr. Ahlert is someday (mistakenly?) arrested under suspicion of being a Mafia assassin about to commit another contract killing, let's give our police the authority to subject him to everything he thinks it's okay to subject Iraqis to. Forget Miranda rights, forget representation by an attorney. Presume him guilty, bring out the rubber hose, and beat the crap out of him until we get the "truth" - that is, whatever his "interrogators" demand he say. And when we are exactly like Saddam, what justification will his ilk put forward for why we overthrew Saddam?
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One reason torture is forbidden is that it elicits false confessions, false information that does not advance legitimate purposes. The person tormented just says anything the interrogator wants him or her to say, whether it's true or not, just to get the torment to stop. Sometimes people have no information to give. They know nothing because they were arrested wrongly. Some human-rights groups have suggested that 90% of Iraqis arrested in sweeps early on were arrested wrongly. Ahlert wants us to compound that wrong by tormenting the innocent. What a fine, upstanding American he is, as are all the Post's regular columnists!
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Item 2: Activist Courts. Speaking of Miranda rights (established by the Supreme Court), yesterday the Post bizarrely praised the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision exactly 50 years earlier. In that case, an "activist" court, which the Post would usually rail against, struck down racial segregation of schools in, among others, these ringing words: "'To separate [students] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race,' said the court, 'generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.'" Splendid rhetoric, bad logic.
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Turn it around: did white students feel inferior to black students from whom they were "separate[d] ... solely because of their race"? Of course not. This is the way you 'separate' sense from nonsense: just turn the premise around.
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The Post is all for destroying public schools and moving their resources to private schools, which separate students on multiple bases, not just race but also income, ethnicity, religion, "connections", and intelligence, since private schools can impose entrance requirements of any kind they wish. So the Post says that segregation by race is wrong but segregation by income, religion, family connections, etc., is okay. I don't think so. Either all are necessarily wrong or none is necessarily wrong.
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The Brown decision was based on the premise that "separate is inherently unequal", which is utter drivel. Men's and women's lavatories are separate in this country. Does that make them inherently unequal? Do men feel inferior because they aren't permitted to use ladies' rooms, and ladies' rooms are often much more nicely decorated and maintained? No, we do not. We have 50 separate states. Does New York feel inferior because it is separate from New Jersey? (Perhaps it should, but) No, it does not. There are 193 separate countries on Earth. Does the United States feel inferior to Canada, Mexico, or any of the remaining 190 countries because a border keeps us from free movement into them? No, we do not.
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Separate is NOT inherently unequal, and being separated from others by any criterion does not necessarily induce feelings of inferiority on either side to the boundary.
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The Brown decision was just plain wrong, and we can see now, fifty years later, that its suppositions have been proved wrong. Integrated schools are not necessarily better than de-facto segregated schools, and racial difference in performance on standardized tests continues, despite the best efforts of educators to provide equal education and of testers to create racially-neutral tests. Why that is, we are not yet able (or willing) to say.
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Is it because blacks are intellectually inferior? Or is it because too many black children are raised in a culture of poverty that holds education in contempt and encourages kids from a very early age to disrupt classes, make fun of kids who study, and drop out of "the man's" schools as soon as possible? Inasmuch as that culture is enormously powerful in the black community and parts of the Hispanic community - and is even reflected in the wider culture, which prefers bad grammar in song lyrics and speaks contemptuously of "nerds" and "geeks" - we can't be sure. What we do know for sure is that in subcultures (as among Asians and Jews) that value education and push their children to do their homework, pay attention in class, and recognize that education is the key to a golden future, kids do well even in less-than-exemplary schools.
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Item 3: Gay Marriage in Massachusetts. Yesterday, on the same date, May 17th, as the Brown v. Board of Education decision was handed down, the State of Massachusetts began performing same-sex marriages. A historic date indeed.
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Think about it: Massachusetts, the Puritan colony on the bay, that inflicted a fire-and-brimstone version of religion to keep people on the 'straight' and narrow, has legalized the marriage - and, by implication, the marriage bed - of gay men and lesbian women. Amazing, and wondrous.
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On April 1, 1969, I formed Homosexuals Intransigent! as a student organization at the City College of the City University of New York. The following spring, I proposed the term "Gay Pride" as it is now used. I have always advocated full legal equality for gay men, including state-sanctioned marriage. Now, a 'scant' 35 years later, we have it, in one of fifty states. One down - or perhaps I should say up - 49 to go!
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 12:17 PM

 
Destroying Public Education. David Salisbury pretends to see desegregation advanced by promoting private schools, but what he is really promoting is segregation by income more than by race - altho there's plenty of segregation by race in private schools too.
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When the U.S. Supreme Court said "in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal", it was talking about the political realities of a segregation-minded board of education. There's a difference between "inherently" and "necessarily" unequal. There is absolutely no reason why a preponderantly black school cannot be every bit as good as a preponderantly white school. That does not, however, guarantee equality of outcomes.
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The British newsmagazine The Economist some years ago did a report on a huge, court-mandated (and thus unconstitutional) spending program for the public schools of Kansas City, Missouri. Something like $2 billion was lavished on public schools in all neighborhoods, but test scores for blacks did not shoot up. Equality of opportunity does not mean equality of outcomes.
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Salisbury says, "Black and Hispanic students in urban centers suffer disproportionately from failing public school systems. Today, 45 percent of black and 47 percent of Hispanic students drop out of public high schools (vs. 24 percent of whites)."
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Think about that. If people don't attend schools but drop out, how can we blame their educational deficiencies on the schools? If they stayed in school and paid attention, wouldn't they be better educated? But the people who drop out in many cases have contempt for education, never paid attention, and at least pretend to hold smart people in contempt as out-of-it, uncool losers. The culture of poverty is a culture of stupidity, where stupidity is actually valued more highly than intelligence, and rejection of education is a perverted mark of manhood. It doesn't matter if you have the best schools in the world if kids refuse to attend, does it?
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Salisbury then reveals his true agenda: "If we are to ever see [a split infinitive! my goodness!] the day when children of all races have access to good schools, we need policies that let inner-city parents escape racially segregated and inferior public schools." Ah. He's out to destroy the public schools and shift public moneys to private schools, which benefit primarily the rich. Once again, the rich are caught with their hands in your pocket.
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"Vouchers" for the poor will never pay the full cost of attending a good private school, because such schools are very expensive, and we aren't going to pay premium prices so a few kids can attend private schools. If we were to adopt vouchers at full value of private education for ALL kids, our educational costs would skyrocket, and we all know that as a practical matter, overburdened poor and middle-class taxpayers just won't put up with that. So vouchers will always cover only part of the cost of private education for some kids, not all. Poor and many middle-class parents, especially those in the lower middle class or who have more than one school-age child, will not be able to afford the remainder of the bill, so will have to send their children to public schools, vouchers or no vouchers. But the public schools that the less prosperous will need to attend will have far less money to work with, because the rich will have stolen moneys from the public schools to send their own children to private school.
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You see, the rich don't want to pay for anybody's education but their own. Never mind that I, a single gay man who has no children, and scores of millions of other childless people pay taxes for public education without complaint because we understand that raising kids to be civilized is a necessary function of any civilization, the alternative being that each generation become a fresh barbarian invasion.
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The rich are going to send their kids to private schools whether they get vouchers or not. But if they have access to vouchers, do you think they will say, "Oh, no thanks. I don't need that. I can afford to pay for my own kids' education"? Of course not. They will take the money and run from social democracy, to enroll their kids in schools where they don't have to associate with 'the common people'.
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Plainly the rich intend to take money out of the public schools deliberately to make them even worse, as will help them rationalize their refusal to participate in social democracy by sending their children to the same schools as the rest of us.
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We are, in short, being asked to subsidize class stratification, that is, income segregation. The poor, we are really being told, should pay for the education of the rich, but the rich are not to be required to pay for the education of the poor. That would be very socially destructive policy that voters must reject. The utterly selfish, rich slime who propose such theft from the poor should be denounced as the enemies of democratic society they are.
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I would rather burn to the ground every last private school in the United States than see the rich become an aristocracy apart from the rest of us whose elite education is paid for by dollars stolen from the poor. (Responsive to "Brown at 50: Still Separate", New York Post, May 17, 2004)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 1:08 PM

 
Published, in Brief. The New York Post today published a much-abbreviated version of a letter I sent them three days ago. An amplified version of that letter appears as the May 13th entry to this blog.
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I didn't know the Post had published anything - because I don't buy the Post and when I go to the online version it is generally only to check out the columnists and/or editorials - until I got a phone call from a woman who agreed with my main point, which is that we should not pretend that the violence we commit is somehow qualitatively different from the violence our "enemies" commit.
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She asked if I felt the same about the violence in World War II against Germany and Italy, to which I of course answered yes. WWII was "total war", war against civilians in which cities were mercilessly destroyed while inhabited. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people were killed in such indiscriminate bombing of targets that had little or no military significance. The most notorious example is the British-American raids upon Dresden near the end of the war, in which a beautiful medieval city was destroyed by a firestorm that killed tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands a mere three months before Germany surrendered. A British apologist ("historian") recently wrote a book that claims that 'only' 25,000 to 40,000 people, many of them refugees from the Russian invasion heading their way, died in that firestorm. Other historians claim much larger numbers, even more than the combined death toll from both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The truth will never be known nor universally accepted, but killing even "only" 25,000 or 40,000 civilians is hardly a trivial matter no one should get upset about. Compare 9/11: fewer than 3,000 people were killed in the attack upon the World Trade Center, but we thought that was monstrous.
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In any case, the Post published one letter that I know of. They didn't call first to verify that I wrote that letter. So now I must wonder how many other letters of the many I send them they have published.
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Years ago, I used to have letters published by the Post fairly often. One led off the department, with a two-column headline. One was illustrated! One (the illustrated one?) prompted a Chinese-language newspaper in New York to ask permission to publish a Chinese version in their own paper (to which request I of course acceded).
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But then I stopped writing to the Post frequently, and no longer saw the print version of the paper, because I no longer worked somewhere that it was lying around. I'm certainly not going to buy the New York Post!
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The paper got much better in terms of seriousness and writing quality after 'Uncle Rupie' (Rupert Murdoch, as I call him) returned to control. But its editorial stance! Horrible and inhuman.
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So when I discovered that the Post accepts emailed letters, I signed up for its newsletter that hilites the opinion columns of the day, which arrives Monday thru Friday, even tho the Post publishes seven days a week. I don't know why. There's usually something in the Post to infuriate me every day. But the Post doesn't publish my letters every day. I don't know why. Thus this blog.
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If the Post's managing editor were really smart, he'd hire me as a columnist, to balance the unending drone of Radical Right drivel with enlightened commentary, and thus win more liberal readers and improve the paper's bottom line. The Post isn't that smart.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:08 PM

 
Stealing from Victims. California's slimy, rightwing, movie-star governor has floated the idea of passing a law that would seize 75% of the punitive damages awarded by courts instead of permitting that money to go to the victim of the wrongdoing that produced those awards. Astounding. How does the state - any state - have the right to take money away from plaintiffs in any trial whatsoever? Isn't that called "stealing"? I can see taxing verdicts as income, fine, but stealing them out from under the victims of gross misdeeds who may have gone thru years of litigation trying to get justice? That's just plain wrong.
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Schwarzenegger justifies his plan by pointing to similar laws in eight other states - laws that were apparently passed without public outcry, probably because people didn't know they were being passed - and by suggesting that the State of California could help to close a budget gap by stealing from the victims of civil misdeeds. The L.A. Times reports, "'Most states that have these [laws] don't say explicitly their goal is to raise revenue'," said Catherine Sharkey, a law professor at Columbia University. 'There have been problems with these funds in some states. In some cases, the courts didn't even know the state had them. Damages would come in, and no one would notify the state.'" The courts didn't even know such laws were on the books, or where to send the money? How is that for government secrecy, passing laws so sneakily that neither the people at large nor even some arms of government know these evil laws have been passed!?
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Schwarzenegger's Thief-in-Chief justifies this outrageous theft from victims: "'Punitive damages were never meant to be windfalls'" for those who file lawsuits, said Richard Costigan, the governor's legislative affairs secretary. 'They are meant to punish the defendants. Society as a whole is impacted by those actions. How does it benefit everybody when one plaintiff gets $100 million?'" That is easily answered, in the same article: "'The reason the award goes to the plaintiff is to incentivize the bringing of the lawsuit'," said Jim Sturdevant, president of the Consumer Attorneys of California. 'The plaintiff is the person who takes the risk involved.'" In short, absent enticing financial incentives, there wouldn't be any lawsuit at all and thus no civil punishment for the guilty. Many people would not, and could not afford to, pursue a lawsuit that not only could go on for YEARS (as long as seven years in many places, and even longer thru appeals) and cost enormous amounts of money. Suing someone can be very, very expensive. I work for attorneys and happen to have some idea of how expensive litigation can be.
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My firm recently won a case that someone brought against our client for $100,000 (no punitive damages in this particular case). Our client offered $20,000 in settlement to keep from going to trial. The other side refused that offer, so went to trial. We 'lost', and the court awarded the plaintiff $14,000 - LESS than we had offered as a settlement. Our fees amounted to about $105,000 - yes, our client was unwilling to pay what it saw as litigation blackmail to save money - and under a provision in New Jersey law I had never heard of, because the plaintiff refused to settle and its award was less than the settlement offered, our client had the right to demand that the plaintiff pay our legal fees, because if the plaintiff hadn't been so hell-bent on going to trial, our client could have saved the huge cost of that trial. So because the plaintiff wasn't willing to settle for $20,000 in a weak case but insisted on going to trial, it (a landlord corporation) found itself not only spending a fortune on its own lawyers but also paying our client's fees, which amounted to MORE than what the plaintiff asked for in the first place! Even without an "offer of settlement" law, litigation is risky and expensive, and it is not in the interest of society to dissuade the Little Guy from suing Big Guys when the Big Guys are wrong.
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Schwarzenegger wants to steal punitive damages from victims of wrongdoing, as to add another barrier between people who have been injured by corporate wrongdoing and justice. It gets worse.
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Schwarzenegger, the foreign invader who has dared suggest that the U.S. Constitution be amended to allow him to run for President - compare Adolf Hitler, a foreigner (Austrian, like Schwarzenegger) who won the chancellorship of Germany in elections and then demanded that the constitution of Germany be amended to make him dictator - has sneaked this proposal into a 96-page budget proposal at page 91! And his proposal would forbid courts from assessing punitive damages for the same offense more than once. That means that if a major auto manufacturer knew of a potentially deadly defect in its cars, and one Californian is merely injured as a result and brings a lawsuit in which s/he wins $150,000 in punitive damages, that automaker could not again be hit with punitive damages for the same defect, even if 146 - or 6,000, or a million - Californians are later KILLED in accidents caused by that defect! Yes, the figures are exaggerated to show, by carrying the logic to its extreme, how outrageous this right-wing scheme to immunize corporate wrongdoers from the foreseeable consequences of their wrongful acts, is.
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Indeed, I can easily imagine major corporate wrongdoers actually seeking out people who have suffered minor injuries and putting up token resistance to a minor award as to prevent a much greater award from later litigants who suffer much worse injuries - or multiple deaths.
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As the consumer attorney Jim Sturdevant observes, "auto companies [could well do] a cost benefit analysis in which they decide it is cheaper to just pay a one-time fine of [say] $23 million [or, in my example, $150,000] than to pay for a costly recall."
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The real intent of this proposed law is to keep people who have been injured by corporate wrongdoers from suing - not just from collecting 'excessive' awards, which are not up to them but to juries and courts, but from suing at all: "Academics say [these laws] were not intended to bring in money for the state but to discourage excessive lawsuits." An "excessive" lawsuit, in case you didn't know, is one for an accident in which you were not injured. This is distinct from "frivolous" lawsuits, such as one cited in that article, by a stupid, stupid old woman in New Mexico who demanded that McDonald's pay millions because that dumb b***h put a hot cup of coffee between her legs and splashed it on herself while driving!
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Frivolous lawsuits should be dismissed. But whether a lawsuit is "excessive" is for juries and judges to decide, not Arnold Schwarzenegger or other evil right-wingers who feel that the rich, be they individuals or corporations, have the right to trample the poor underfoot and not have to pay for the harm they do. Alas, there's nothing new in this. In medieval England, nobles could, as of right, hunt foxes or stags by running their horses thru the fields of 'peasants', trampling and destroying their crops, and not be held to account for the destruction they caused.
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Schwarzenegger's Thief-in-Chief claims that 11 other states already have laws against multiple punitive-damages awards, but those wicked states are not listed. The article does, however, list the Evil Eight that Schwarzenegger cites as having passed similar laws to rob victims of civil wrongs: Alaska, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Oregon, and Utah. It is hardly surprising that an Old South hellhole like Georgia would be on such a Dishonor Roll, but Illinois and, of all places, liberal Oregon?! I suggest that the people of these states should demand repeal of such measures, and find ways to punish the legislators and governors who passed them.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:49 PM

 
Beheading the Department of Defense. It appears that Donald Rumsfled may well be on his way out if even a militarist fanatic like Ralph Peters can't stand him but publicly calls for his ouster. Perhaps the right wing will chop off one of the heads of the many-headed beast that is the Bush presidency. Will that make a difference, or are there so many other heads nodding in agreement like bobble-head dolls that present, disastrous foreign and military policies roll along unaltered? There's one sure way to change course: cut off the one head that puts a face to all the faceless heads. Oust Bush from the White House in November and put a real military man in. (Responsive to "Why the Troops Don't Trust Rummy", New York Post, May 14, 2004)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:18 AM

 
Show Really All - or Nothing. Op-ed author Ryan Sager wants U.S. television to show the complete tape of the Nicholas Berg killing. He wants Americans to be brutalized by images of a man's beheading, and pretends that this would show Americans "the justness of their cause".
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I'll make a deal with him: yes, let's show the beheading, but only if we also show equally graphic footage of Iraqi men, women, children, and babies being killed by American bombs from planes too high to shoot down, and of Iraqi kids in the last minutes before they died from starvation because of our "sanctions".
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But we don't have up-close videotape of those crimes, do we? The only images we saw of this war were from a distance, just as the only images we saw of the last war were of video-game "violence", with Americans on tape whooping with delite as buildings were ripped apart when "smart bombs" exploded in them. We weren't ever to think that people were in those buildings and were also ripped apart - to whoops of delite from our heros.
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Even the most sinful of U.S. atrocities, the shooting in the back of some 5,000 Iraqis who were doing what we told them to do, leaving Kuwait, but were nonetheless butchered on the highway from the air by pilots who didn't see the faces of the men they slaughtered (well, you don't see the faces of people you shoot in the back, do you?), was never shown to us except in nonhuman terms: a long column of burned out jeeps and trucks, metal, not flesh. No blood, no agonized faces of the men murdered en masse by the good old USA. No, all the killing our side does is antiseptic, sanitized for your viewing pleasure.
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So, Mr. Sager, until and unless you find and display footage of the very-human beings murdered by the American military, no, I do not consent to unbalanced 'proofs' of the 'inhumanity' of one side in an inhuman conflict.
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Our butchers really are not one whit better than their butchers. Quite the contrary. They are fighting back against foreign invaders from a country they never attacked. We are not fighting back against invaders who attacked us for no reason and occupy our country against our will. We are the worse butchers for that, and for having killed hundreds of times as many of them as they have of us. Show it all, or show nothing. (Responsive to "Show It All", May 13, 2004 New York Post)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 12:04 PM

 
Im/Moralities. Where do I go to resign from the "human" race?
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Last nite I went onto Netscape.com and saw TWO stories about beheadings of Americans. One was the al-Qaeda beheading of a foolish young businessman who thought he could make a buck by setting up a business in a war zone. The other, alas, was about a Texas couple who killed and beheaded their own three children, ages 3 years, 1 year, and 2 months. I can't stand it.
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Yesterday's story about the Brownsville mother - "mother", who killed her own children; I will spare you the appalling details of exactly how she and her 'common-law husband' did that - did not say why, a year ago, she and her husband killed and beheaded the kids, but at the time they said they believed the children were possessed by demons, so they killed the children to kill the demons.
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While U.S. columnists railed against the detestable beheading of one person in Iraq, the U.S. Supreme Court may forbid the State of Texas to kill the 'mother' who beheaded THREE people in Texas, because she may be retarded, and it's not nice to kill the retarded. The Mexican Government has actually expressed concern lest that 'mother', a Mexican national, be executed by a U.S. state. Hmm. In Iraq, beheading is supremely evil. In Texas, it's just excusable misbehavior by morons who don't know any better.
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Retarded killers are in the FIRST rank of killers who should be executed, as are parents who kill their own children. But insane legislators and judges here won't let us kill these monsters, killers of three, all the while editorialists and other would-be opinion leaders call for death to the al-Qaeda killers of one.
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It's times like these that I despise the entire human race. I feel sympathy for the God of the Jews who so hated the sins of the human race that he supposedly drowned the whole world, including giraffes and cats and hamsters, for the crimes of one species, not their own. But I would never do that because I'm a rational and decent man, not some insane devil-god.
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The world is filled with evil. Of that, there can be no doubt. But what is thought evil seems to vary, in inexplicable ways, depending on whom you talk to. One person's morality is another's immorality, and this feeble-minded species can't seem to agree on even the most fundamental of principles.
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Some 3,400 years ago Moses gave the Jews Ten Commandments, which were intended to give them a handy, easy-to-remember guide to basic morality. Christians adopted those Jewish commandments as tho they were Christian, tho they're not. Alas, they don't even seem to have any relevance to Jews, today.
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Moses killed an Egyptian who was flogging a Hebrew. For that crime, he was barred from the Promised Land. He could look but not enter. Today, his heirs kill essentially every day for the privilege of staying in that same Promised Land. But if Moses was barred from the Promised Land for killing one Egyptian, shouldn't Zionists be expelled from the Promised Land for killing tens or hundreds of thousands of Egyptians, Palestinians, Jordanians, Iraqis, Tunisians, Lebanese, and everybody else that gets in their way? You'd think so. You would, however, never get Zionists to agree to that, would you? So much for the relevance of the Ten Commandments today, inasmuch as Zionism violates at least three of them, those against coveting your neighbor's property, stealing it, and killing him if he objects.
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Almost 2,000 years ago, Jesus of Nazareth rejected the Ten Commandments and offered three: (1) Love God with all your heart and soul; (2) Love your neighbor as yourself; and (3) As you would have others do unto you, so too do unto them. That third is the "Golden Rule", Christian version, which puts the mandate in positive terms: one must not merely abstain from doing evil but must actually do good for others.
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You'd think anybody could understand how to act from that simple, straightforward standard. But there's a problem. People who hate themselves and have a death wish may well want to be mistreated and even killed. Psychosis or other maladjustment can twist even the Golden Rule into pretzels.
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Still, it's the best guide we have ever had for personal behavior, a guide any self-affirming person can understand without serious problem. Oh, every now and then you may have trouble with issues like whether you should tell a friend his breath stinks or his boyfriend or girlfriend is cheating on him. But on the big things, the beheadings, it's pretty easy to understand what's right and what's wrong.
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What are Islam's Ten Commandments? or Three Commandments? or Golden Rule? Does Islam have any such things?
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Islam derives from Judaism, thru Christianity. Moses and Jesus are prophets in the Islamic tradition, hallowed as holy men - and Jesus maybe more than that. But where is the morality in Islam?
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Doesn't Islam codify anywhere the most basic tenets of morality? Well, a quick search on Google for "ten commandments islam" led to a listing at http://islam-usa.com/ of the equivalents in Islam of the Ten Commandments. They are scattered all over the Koran, from 2:224 to 62:9.
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Is there no central statement of the most fundamental ethics of Islam that people can see in one short passage and memorize? Apparently not, because Islam is everywhere connected with violence and death, horrible injustices as the rest of the world sees things, on the part of "Islamists" who claim to act in the name of God, doing what he commands. In Algeria, Islamists attacked villages, shot farmers dead for no apparent reason, slit people's throats so they drowned from their own blood, and slashed open the bellies of pregnant women to kill both the woman and the child ripped from her body, all in the name of God.
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Today, Islamists in Iraq are beheading noncombatant businessmen who only want to make some money by helping people reconstruct their devastated country.
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In the Middle East today, after thousands of years of "civilization", Jews are slaughtering Arabs pretty much daily, with missile launches from U.S.-bought helicopter gunships into residential neighborhoods, killing children playing in the street as well as the supposedly intended victims (altho one has to believe that Israel is utterly ecstatic to kill any Palestinian it can, and merely pretends to have killed little kids inadvertently as unavoidable 'collateral damage'). Moslems shoot civilian construction workers trying to rebuild ravaged infrastructure and behead helpless captives. "Christians" launch "pre-emptive" strikes and entire wars that kill tens of thousands of people, under false pretenses.
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In India, Hindu extremists kill Moslems and Christians to impose "Hindutva" upon the unwilling. "Godless" Communists wage guerrilla war against governments and ordinary farmers (usually called, unpleasantly and condescendingly, "peasants") , from Peru to the Philippines. In the U.S., parents slit their children's throats, children blast their parents to kingdom come with shotguns. And everywhere one person steals from another, beats another, kills another in personal aggression.
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What a miserable excuse for a human race the human race is.
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How do so many people justify so much evil? All too often, they say God made them do it. Occasionally they will confess in sobs that the Devil made them do it - and they don't mean to be funny, like Flip Wilson; they're deadly serious, as tho there really is a Devil and he really can compel people to do things they don't want to do. It is as tho people have created an insoluble plot problem in the story of their lives, so invent a malevolent deus ex machina to sweep down and wipe away their personal guilt by bestowing holy immunity upon acts that would otherwise be inexcusable.
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One must, then, wonder if it is even possible to teach this stupid, evil species morality of any kind, if they can always claim that their misbehavior isn't really misbehavior because God told them to do it. We try to frighten people away from evil by threatening them with hell. They turn it around and reward evil with delusional promises of heaven.
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Is there some other species, an intelligent and moral species, I can join?
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:30 AM