Well, OK, he didn’t say that explicitly. But he did say it implicitly.
A basic logic lesson and please forgive me if you think I’m talking down to you. I’m really not. It’s just that I’m shocked at how many people, including McCain, don’t seem to get logic. If I say, “All crows are black” and I also say, “That bird is a crow,” then I’m saying that that bird is black even if I don’t say so explicitly.
On ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” on Sunday, April 20, John McCain called William Ayers “an unrepentant terrorist.” What was McCain’s evidence? McCain said that Ayers “was engaged in bombings which could have or did kill innocent people…” So McCain is saying that someone who engages in bombings which could have killed or did kill innocent people is a terrorist.
Now consider what McCain did. McCain flew a bomber, an A-4E Skyhawk, over North Vietnam. I don’t know whether he actually dropped his bombs before being shot down. But certainly he was engaged in actions that, if he had succeeded, could have killed innocent people. Which makes McCain, in his own words, a terrorist.
Now McCain could argue that that’s different because, as he said elsewhere in the interview, “I had a reconciliation with the Vietnamese, when we normalized relations.” Did he apologize to them? He didn’t say. If he did, that would make him a “repentant terrorist.” Too bad Stephanopoulos didn’t challenge him.
After a missile was accidently launched on board McCain’s carrier in 1967, leaving 134 sailors dead, McCain told a New York Times reporter: “It’s a difficult thing to say. But now that I’ve seen what the bombs and the napalm did to the people on our ship, I’m not so sure that I want to drop any more of that stuff on North Vietnam.”
He was shot down three months later.
Dear Lord, I wish someone would challenge McCain on his premises. Everytime he mentions Iraq, it always starts with “I know a lot of people are frustrated that it has not gone well, and I understand their frustration, etc., etc.” No, Senator, you don’t “understand my frustration.” I am frustarted that it happend at all, and not merely that it has been a unmitigated disaster. Even if things had somehow gone better (which would have run counter to practically every similar occupation in military history), there was no justification for the invasion to begin with. All McCain wants to do is reduce violence so no Americans are being killed; but NOT so that we can pack up and leave. That will mean we can hang out for 100 years in ‘enduring bases’ just like we do in S. Korea or Japan.
Foreign policy expertise? What a joke.
Peace be with you.
I think the teaching of logic in school was thrown out the window along with other worthwhile subjects long ago. Maybe it required too much thought??
In order to understand the similarities of American anti-intellectualism and deconstruction, one could do no better than to begin with Richard Hofstadter’s classic study of the plight of intellectualism in America, Anti-intellectualism in American Life (New York: Knopf, 1962). Hofstadter demonstrates how, from early colonial times, American culture was mistrustful of education and learning that went beyond practical use of the abilities of the common man. The life of the mind was associated with aristocracy and a decadent European culture.
At an early date, literature and learning were stigmatized as the purgative of useless aristocracies…. It seemed to be the goal of the common man in America to build a society that would show how much could be done without literature and learning–or rather, a society whose literature and learning would be largely limited to such elementary things as the common man could grasp and use.
By the late nineteenth century, this attitude was so prevalent in society at large that school textbooks had assimilated such a position. As a result, while children were learning to read they also were being introduced to the American distaste for, and mistrust of, the intellect: “There seems to have been a prevailing concern that children should not form too high an estimate of the uses of mind” (quoted in Hofstadter from Ruth Miller Elson, “American Schoolbooks,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 46 [December 1959]: 308). In such an atmosphere, of course, higher education was not considered a place to pursue high intellectual achievement, rather, “the American college was complacently portrayed as a place designed to form character and inculcate sound principle rather than to lead to the pursuit of truth” [Elson 308]
Hofstadter sums up the national traits that fostered such a position toward education and the university:
[Anti-intellectualism] first got its strong grip on our ways of thinking because it was fostered by an evangelical religion that also purveyed many humane and democratic sentiments. It made its way into our politics because it became associated with our passion for equality. It has become formidable in our education partly because our educational beliefs are evangelically egalitarian. (Hofstadter 22-23)
Evangelical religion, a radical Protestantism which is hostile to rationalism and the disinterested pursuit of knowledge; egalitarianism which insists upon the priority of equality in all matters; and a stubborn insistence on the necessity of the practical use of knowledge are the ideas which came to dominate thinking about education in the United States.
[Michael C. Milam]
They replaced it with New/Fuzzy Math, aka Relativism, which is why so many Americans excel at it today.
Is that like 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish = food for 5,000, not counting women and children?
Or the “New Math” in the Old Testament–you know, Pi=(er)3?
Oh, I forgot, Evangelical Protestants are very careful and absolute about counting money, as in thirty pieces of silver.
Somewhere or another Willima Burroughs calls heroin the ultimate capitalist product.
I beg to differ–Corporate capitalists like the Reverend Hagee have gone that one better.
corr: William Burroughs
Given the state of the American economy and the USD this may provide a whole new twist on the Federal Reserve and “In God We Trust”, hehe.
Yassuh, Neo-Conservative Evangelical Zionist Corporate Fascist Economics.
Right up there with Ayn Rand and Alan Greenspan–boy, weren’t they a hot item?
The old joke, “In God we trust, all others pay cash” is becoming a double-entendre!
No, it’s because our ruling class wanted to purposely dumb-down the population. If you never develop a citizen’s ability to reason, you suffocate his ability to question authority. It’s the Great American Lobotomy, and they’ve won.
According to Dr Bob Bowman, former chief of US Air Force Missile Defense, missile defense is the missing link to a First Strike. Dr Bob Bowman thinks that missiles in Poland will be very useful to shoot down any surviving Russian missiles AFTER a First Strike. Therefore the Russians will implement Launch On Warning. The terrible consequences of a mistake will be caused by the stupid Pentagon. Dr Bob Bowman agrees that the Pentagon (McCain?) will get disarming first-strike capability by 2011/12. Acc. to former Trident missile engineer Bob Aldridge-www.plrc.org-the US Navy can track and destroy all enemy subs simultaneously. The main danger is Russian Launch On Warning because of US First-Strike Capability. Please read Keir Lieber and Daryl Press, “The Rise of US Nuclear Primacy”, 2006 March/April issue of Foreign Affairs. By 2011/12 the Pentagon will have achieved that the Russians have no choice but Launch On Warning. “Bloody fools in the Pentagon”, as Brigadier Harbottle stated.
Bah, logic. What does logic have to do in electing our future president. We can only and should only vote based on 5 random words taken completely out of context and put into a sound clip that repeats itself 1 million times. We also have to ignore facts. Facts can be used to prove something even remotely true. We can’t have truth and logic in making our decision. What do you think this is? A democracy?
This is made clear in Strauss’s exchange with Kojève (reprinted in Strauss’s On Tyranny), and in his commentary on Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political (reprinted in Heinrich Meier, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue). Kojève lamented the animalisation of man and Schmitt worried about the trivialisation of life. All three of them were convinced that liberal economics would turn life into entertainment and destroy politics; all three understood politics as a conflict between mutually hostile groups willing to fight each other to the death. In short, they all thought that man’s humanity depended on his willingness to rush naked into battle and headlong to his death. Only perpetual war can overturn the modern project, with its emphasis on self-preservation and “creature comforts.” Life can be politicised once more, and man’s humanity can be restored.
This terrifying vision fits perfectly well with the desire for honour and glory that the neo-conservative gentlemen covet. It also fits very well with the religious sensibilities of gentlemen. The combination of religion and nationalism is the elixir that Strauss advocates as the way to turn natural, relaxed, hedonistic men into devout nationalists willing to fight and die for their God and country.
I never imagined when I wrote my first book on Strauss that the unscrupulous elite that he elevates would ever come so close to political power, nor that the ominous tyranny of the wise would ever come so close to being realised in the political life of a great nation like the United States. But fear is the greatest ally of tyranny….
Strauss is a nihilist in the sense that he believes that there is no rational foundation for morality. He is an atheist, and he believes that in the absence of God, morality has no grounding. It’s all about benefiting others and oneself; there is no objective reason for doing so, only rewards and punishments in this life.
But Strauss is not a nihilist if we mean by the term a denial that there is any truth, a belief that everything is interpretation. He does not deny that there is an independent reality. On the contrary, he thinks that independent reality consists in nature and its “order of rank” – the high and the low, the superior and the inferior. Like Nietzsche, he believes that the history of western civilisation has led to the triumph of the inferior, the rabble – something they both lamented profoundly….
Strauss’s criticism of the existentialists, especially Heidegger, is that they tried to elicit an ethic out of the abyss. This was the ethic of resoluteness – choose whatever you like and be loyal to it to the death; its content does not matter. But Strauss’s reaction to moral nihilism was different. Nihilistic philosophers, he believes, should reinvent the Judæo-Christian God, but live like pagan gods themselves – taking pleasure in the games they play with each other as well as the games they play on ordinary mortals.
[Shadia Drury (from an interview)]
A classic “red herring.” William Ayers was engaged in actions meant to undermine and subvert his own country. In a word, treason. Not only terrorism but treason. And now Ayers, we later find out, is friendly with Barack Obabma. Interesting to say the least.
You mean treason like outing an undercover CIA agent or selling/giving national secrets to Israeli agents?
Actually the agent you refer to, Plame, was not covert. She never was covert. It was wrong to out her nontheless but she was never put in harm’s way because of it.
American arrested as nuclear spy for Israel :
…Ben-Ami Kadish acknowledged his spying in FBI interviews and said he acted out of a belief he was helping Israel, according to court documents.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080422/ts_nm/usa_israel_spy_secret_dc;_ylt=AiPKFBOaQgJv_3wh4rXiUAis0NUE
“Plame served the CIA as a non-official cover (or NOC), operating undercover in (at least) two positions in Athens and Brussels.[20] While using her own name, “Valerie Plame,” her assignments required posing in various professional roles in order to gather intelligence more effectively.[21][22][23] Two of her covers include serving as a junior consular officer in the early 1990s in Athens and then later an energy analyst for the private company (founded in 1994) “Brewster Jennings & Associates”, which the CIA later acknowledged was a front company for certain investigations.” (Wikipedia)
Tim, you’re either mincing words or dead wrong.
Where does “country” enter into this? The implied syllogism still remains. Unless you maintain that states and their rulers have special rights to violence denied by the ordinary mortal, Ayers’ and McCain’s acts are not merely morally equivalent: they are logically identical.
Corr: “Denied to the ordinary mortal”
I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses: gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terrorand yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected….”
Winston Churchill (1919)
It is a pity in retrospect, Churchill so charmingly used the word, “terror”, isn?t it?
The reference included Mesopotamia, which the British had just invaded.
Otherwise, one supposes one might be able to confined terrorism by the military forces of an organized state, say, “moral effect”, and hinge considerable distinguishing in the way of how this is different from that upon it.
corr: “confine terrorism by the military forces of an organized state, to, say, moral effect”
State Terrorism? Terrorists State? So many ambiguities and cryptotypes! There was an old woman who lived in a shoe….
And from James Board:
There were few common-places that offended Reagan more than the old saying that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” — a delusion that he said “thwarted … effective anti-terror action.” As he explained,
Freedom fighters do not need to terrorize a population into submission. Freedom fighters target the military forces and the organized instruments of repression keeping dictatorial regimes in power. Freedom fighters struggle to liberate their citizens from oppression and to establish a form of government that reflects the will of the people.
In contrast, “Terrorists intentionally kill or maim unarmed civilians, often women and children, often third parties who are not in any way part of a dictatorial regime,” he declared. He especially admired the “Nicaraguan freedom fighters … fighting to establish respect for human rights, for democracy, and for the rule of law within their own country.” Similarly, Secretary of State George Schultz declared in a June 24, 1984, speech, “It is not hard to tell, as we look around the world, who are the terrorists and who are the freedom fighters.”
A few weeks before the 1984 presidential election, news broke that the CIA had financed, produced, and distributed an assassination manual for the Nicaraguan Contras fighting the Marxist Sandinista government. The manual, entitled “Psychological Operations in Guerrilla War,” recommended “selective use of violence for propagandistic effects” and to “neutralize” (i.e., kill) government officials. Nicaraguan Contras were advised to lead
demonstrators into clashes with the authorities, to provoke riots or shootings, which lead to the killing of one or more persons, who will be seen as the martyrs; this situation should be taken advantage of immediately against the Government to create even bigger conflicts.
The manual also recommended
selective use of armed force for PSYOP [psychological operations] effect…. Carefully selected, planned targets — judges, police officials, tax collectors, etc. — may be removed for PSYOP effect in a UWOA [unconventional warfare operations area], but extensive precautions must insure that the people “concur” in such an act by thorough explanatory canvassing among the affected populace before and after conduct of the mission.
This was not the CIA’s first Nicaraguan literary project. In 1983, it had paid to produce and distribute a comic book entitled “Freedom Fighter’s Manual,” a self-described “practical guide to liberate Nicaragua from oppression and misery by paralyzing the military-industrial complex of the traitorous Marxist state without having to use special tools and with minimal risk for the combatant.”
The comic book urged readers to sabotage the Nicaraguan economy by calling in sick, goofing off on their jobs, throwing tools into sewers, leaving lights and water taps on, telephoning false hotel reservations, dropping typewriters, and stealing and hiding key documents (sage advice later followed by numerous high-ranking Reagan administration officials). The comic book also included detailed instructions on making Molotov cocktails, which, it suggested, could be thrown at fuel depots and police offices….
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0406c.asp
corr: Bovard obviously.
State Terrorism like israel. Yet, you’re still here… LOL
On Purim, the Jewish holiday that celebrates the day Queen Esther saved the Jews from annihilation, Trinity Broadcasting Network’s flagship talk show, Praise the Lord, featured an appearance by Rabbi Daniel Lapin. A politically conservative Orthodox rabbi, Lapin is best known for crusading with the Christian right against anti-religion bigotry and, more recently, for his close association with the convicted super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff. But he was not invited to a nationwide telecast to discuss such topics as the trumped-up war against religion or the better nature of his fallen friend. He had been asked to explain the significance of Purim to Christians, and particularly how the Old Testament’s Book of Esther “serves as a roadmap to reality,” which pinpoints where the next world “hot spot” will be.
That soon-to-be-flaming location is where the Book of Esther was set: namely Persia, or in modern parlance, Iran.
Seated beside Lapin in the ornately gilded Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) studio was Pastor John Hagee, the author of an incendiary new book purporting to show that the Bible predicts a military confrontation with Iran. By then, Hagee’s book, Jerusalem Countdown, had sold nearly 500,000 copies. It had occupied the No. 1 position on the Wal-Mart inspirational best-seller list, showed up on Wal-Mart’s list of top 10 best sellers for seven weeks, and made the USA Today top 50 best-seller list for six weeks.
Hagee, who serves as head pastor of the 18,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, hosts his own television program that is seen twice a day on TBN. He argues that the United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God’s plan for both Israel and the West. Shortly after the release of his book last January, he launched Christians United for Israel (CUFI), a lobbying organization intended, he says, to be a Christian version of the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee. With CUFI, which Hagee has said will cause a “political earthquake,” the televangelist aims to put the political organizing muscle of the conservative evangelical movement behind his grand plan for a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation, and Second Coming of Christ.
While Washington insiders wonder and worry whether President Bush really is bent on a military strike against Iran, Hagee already has spent months mobilizing the shock troops in support of another war. As diplomats, experts, and pundits debate how many years Iran will need to develop a viable nuclear weapon, Hagee says the mullahs already possess the means to destroy Israel and America. And although Bush insists that diplomatic options are still on the table, Hagee has dismissed pussyfooting diplomacy and primed his followers for a conflagration.
Indeed, Hagee wields “a very large megaphone” that reaches “a very large group of people,” said Rabbi James Rudin of the American Jewish Committee, who has studied the Christian right for 30 years. With CUFI, the Texas pastor has exponentially expanded the reach of his megaphone beyond his television audience. Thanks to the viral marketing made possible by the hundreds of evangelical leaders who have signed on to his new organization, his warmongering has rippled through mega-churches across America for months.
Hagee calls pastors “the spiritual generals of America,” an appropriate phrase given his reliance on them to rally their troops behind his message. The CUFI board of directors includes the Reverend Jerry Falwell, former Republican presidential candidate and religious right activist Gary Bauer, and George Morrison, pastor to the 8,000-member Faith Bible Chapel in Arvada, Colorado, and chairman of the board of Promise Keepers. Rod Parsley, the Ohio televangelist who is rapidly becoming a major political figure in the Christian right, signed on as a regional director. Among CUFI’s other supporters are nationally syndicated Christian right talk show host Janet Parshall, who serves on its board of advisers, and Ron Wexler, an Orthodox Jew and president of the theocratic Ten Commandments Commission, which has the backing of nearly every prominent conservative evangelical in the country. Many popular TBN televangelists, among them the controversial faith healer Benny Hinn and the best-selling author of self-improvement books, Joyce Meyer, have also offered their support. Meyer was named one of the country’s 25 most influential evangelicals in an oft-cited 2005 Time magazine article — as was Stephen Strang, CEO of Strang Communications, which published Jerusalem Countdown. Long before his launch of CUFI, Hagee had sought to influence American policy toward the Middle East. For 25 years, he has hosted a “Night to Honor Israel” at his church, an event that showcased Tom DeLay as the keynote speaker in 2002, and that has attracted leaders of the Israeli government as well as American politicians.
[Sarah Posner New Prospect May 21, 2006]
corr: The American Prospect
Look out kid
Don’t matter what you did
Walk on your tip toes
Don’t try “No Doz”
Better stay away from those
That carry around a fire hose
Keep a clean nose
Watch the plain clothes
You don’t need a weather man
To know which way the wind blows…
Bob Dylan
And another thing: Terrorists generally have the specific intent to kill as many innocent civilians as possible. If John McCain was a pilot and his job was to destroy the enemy, ie the North Vietnamese military, his goal was not to kill innocent civilians. Sometimes innocent civilians die in war but I don’t think you can call it terrorism unless the specific purpose is to kill innocent civilians with the intention of terrorizing the populace.
With all that being said, I have to admit that yes, America has in its past engaged in actions that have recklessly disregarded human life. And yes, even acts that could be defined as terrorism. Often the ends we sought were noble but the means we employed were not. But the bottom line is, how does that in any way shape or form excuse William Ayers? Two wrongs never make a right. Ayers hates this country and acted to undermine it. He is treasonous. And it is alarming that Barack Obama, running for the highest office in the nation is on friendly terms with him. And when you add it all up, it becomes even more alarming. It is not just William Ayers. It is Jeremiah Wright. It is his attending the Million Man March that was hosted by the biggest racist of them all, Minister Louis Farakhan. It is the fact that his wife says she was never proud to be an American. It is the fact that he won’t put his hand over his heart for the National Anthem. When you add all these clues up together I find it extremly disturbing. I still think Hillary can beat him and she needs to keep going negative and reminding people of these connections because they are very relevant.
Dumping a known toxin like Agent Orange in deadly quantities on Vietnam? That sounds a lot like wilfull disregard for civilian life to me.
Often the ends we sought were noble but the means we employed were not.
What, might we ask, is “noble” about forcing smaller states to do as you please?
No one here is apologizing for Ayers. Quite possibly he deserves the opprobrium he has received, though I don’t know the particulars of the case. We are simply applying McCainiac’s logic to himself.
As it happens, the song Obama didn’t put his hand on his chest for was the Star-Spangled Banner, the patina of radicalism is mere posturing on Obama’s part, and he’s the candidate most preferred by finance capital (though, of course, industry has its feet in both aisles). Obama’s simply the Democratic Party’s latest commodity, and supports the interests of the power elite on all the fundamentals. Don’t believe the hype.
Actually, all warfare is terrorism. In practice, these days, what our opponents do is labelled “terrorism.” We never admit that our own actions are terrorism.
Of course. “Treason doth never prosper; what be the reason? Because if it prosper, none dare call it treason!”
Tim does bring up a good point–no doubt McCain would defend his actions as those of war, in which civilians are unavoidably killed along with the intended targets, while the terrorist is only interested in killing civilians.
Of course, if one is fighting an entirely illegitimate war as we did in Vietnam, then it’s evil that civilians were killed even if accidentally. In fact, it’s evil that the enemy combatants were killed too. How many dead Iraqi insurgents would now be sipping coffee with their families had we not invaded their country?
Thus McCain wouldn’t be a terrorist as the term is typically used; he would be a vanguard of a murderous imperial power. I doubt the latter’s an improvement.
We don’t want to fight but by Jingo if we do,
We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money too,
We’ve fought the Bear before, and while we’re Britons true,
The Russians shall not have Constantinople.
[McDermott/Hunt]
Now I want everybody here who feels the spirit of the song
And that means all you people out there in record land
To sing along with your old friends Country Joe & The Fish.
We will say an old time prayer as we look up to the sky and we ask the Lord:
Please, don’t you drop that h-bomb on me, go and drop it on yourself, alright …
Well, I said please,
Please don’t drop,
Don’t drop that h-bomb,
H-bomb on me
Yeah, I said please,
Please don’t drop,
Don’t drop that h-bomb on me.
Yeah, I said please,
Please don’t drop,
Don’t drop that h-bomb on me, yes,
Well, you can drop it,
Oh, you can drop it on yourself.
[Country Joe And The Fish]
The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan writes second letter to President Bush, warning of Divine consequences of war
October 30, 2002
George W. Bush, President of the United States of America
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue N. W.
Washington, DC 20500
As-Salaam Alaikum.
(Peace Be Unto You)
Dear President Bush,
May this letter find you and your family well.
I am writing this letter to once again appeal to you in the strongest way that you might heed my humble counsel and sincere warning to you. I am not your enemy, nor am I an enemy to this country, but, I do believe that the course that you are guiding the nation on will increase many enemies for you and the nation at home and abroad.
In my last letter, I respectfully called your attention to U.S. Presidents and their dealings with Islamic nations and leaders over the last several years, and, I warned that should you pursue what I know is in your mind and heart concerning Saddam Hussein and Iraq that you would lose the great advantage that you gained after September 11, 2001, and, that the coalition would fall apart and you might be forced to go it alone. Also, I opined that if you did such, you might run into something that your advisors had not thought of or perceived. This is already happening. Nations are becoming afraid of you and the tremendous power of America. In this state of fear, they will not stop trying to attain weapons of mass destruction because they believe that is the only thing that you will respect.
There is a rising chorus of anti-war demonstrations in the nation and throughout the world and it will intensify as you move toward war with the thought of occupying Iraq. The anti-war demonstrators will blame every death of an American service person and every death of an Iraqi citizen on you and this will produce a crisis for your administration within the United States, as well as in countries throughout the world.
I am writing to plead with you that there is a better way. However, the more you talk and the stronger you talk about regime change, you paint yourself into a corner from which it becomes increasingly difficult to extricate yourself.
There are times in history when men of conviction go against the tide of world thought and opinion, bringing suffering upon themselves to establish a new truth or a new idea. However, this is not that time for you. In my judgment, this is a time when the President of the United States must not only listen to his advisors and study their agendas, but, he must listen to world opinion. If the President of the United States seems to show no respect for world opinion or for the thoughts of the members of the Security Council of the United Nations, then, your actions will turn the nations of the world against you and against America.
Your actions will also render the United Nations an ineffective institution for future peacekeeping.
Ancient Babylon was a city that caused all who traded with her to wax strong, but, at a certain point, the neighboring nations turned against Babylon and she was destroyed and left as a sign. The Book of Revelation speaks of a mystery Babylon that ancient Babylon was a sign of. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, my teacher and guide, said that America is the fulfillment of that mystery Babylon.
Mr. President, you must study prophecy in order to beat it.
Look at the nations to the north and south of you. Are they pleased with you, your administration and your polices? Look at your friends in the Middle East. Are they really pleased with you, your administration and policies? Look at your European friends and your African and Asian friends. The prophecy teaches that, they will take your money and whatever you offer, but they will hate you and ultimately make you desolate.
We are headed into a terrible time. I am writing this letter as a final witness of my deep concern for you and for the nation, believing, however, that you are bent on doing what is in your heart with respect to Iraq and Saddam Hussein.
Mr. President, if you do this, you will bring down upon America an increase in the Divine Judgment of rain, hail, snow, wind, earthquakes, pestilence and famine that is already witnessed in the country. As you go about destroying other nations and cities, you will bring this kind of Divine Wrath on the American people and on American cities.
Please reconsider your plans.
May Allah (God) guide you to make the right decision for this nation and for the future of the world.
I Am Your Servant in the war against evil,
The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan
Servant to the Lost-Found
Nation of Islam in the West
CHAMP ALI WILL RISK JAIL TERM
Houston, Texas [Pittsburgh Courier, May 6, 1967] – Heavyweight Champion Muhammad Ali, who once was known to millions by his Christian name, Cassius Clay, but who now prefers his Muslim name because he is now a convert and a minister of the religion of Islam, showed up for his induction into the U.S. Army last Friday but refused to be sworn in.
The heavyweight champion readily submitted to pre-induction tests for both physical and mental analyses. He promptly and courteously answered all inquiries made to him by the examiners.
But not before he insisted that those officials list him by his Muslim name of Muhammad Ali. There was little debate on the point and the officials noted it and passed it off as something to be settled later.
All went smoothly after that until the heavyweight champion came up in turn to take the oath of induction and refused.
The consequences of his action may take some time to settle. The penalty for not taking the oath is prescribed by law as 5 years in a federal prison and/or a $10,000 fine.
Champ Muhammad Ali and his attorneys argue that he is a Muslim minister and spends at least 180 hours per week in the service of his religion. They say that the ministry is his life work and that boxing is a mere temporary sideline.
Muhammad Ali is a member of the Black Muslim faith. He is a guard to the Islamic sect’s leader, Elijah Muhammad in the ranks of the Fruit of Islam, who are devoted to protecting their leader with their very life.
The sect does not believe in military service for a nation.
In Dr. Johnson’s famous dictionary, patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.
[Ambrose Bierce]
WASHINGTON [AP April 21, 2008] - Under pressure to meet combat needs, the Army and Marine Corps brought in significantly more recruits with felony convictions last year than in 2006, including some with manslaughter and sex crime convictions.
Data released by a congressional committee shows the number of soldiers admitted to the Army with felony records jumped from 249 in 2006 to 511 in 2007. And the number of Marines with felonies rose from 208 to 350….
[excerpt]
“The seeming effortlessness of magic always conceals an enormous amount of behind-the-scenes work. When prisons disappear human beings in order to convey the illusion of solving social problems, penal infrastructures must be created to accommodate a rapidly swelling population of caged people. Goods and services must be provided to keep imprisoned populations alive. Sometimes these populations must be kept busy and at other times — particularly in repressive super-maximum prisons and in INS detention centers — they must be deprived of virtually all meaningful activity. Vast numbers of handcuffed and shackled people are moved across state borders as they are transferred from one state or federal prison to another.
All this work, which used to be the primary province of government, is now also performed by private corporations, whose links to government in the field of what is euphemistically called “corrections” resonate dangerously with the military industrial complex. The dividends that accrue from investment in the punishment industry, like those that accrue from investment in weapons production, only amount to social destruction. Taking into account the structural similarities and profitability of business-government linkages in the realms of military production and publicpunishment, the expanding penal system can now be characterized as a “prison industrial complex.”
[Angela Davis]
“..Too bad Stephanopoulos didn’t challenge him.”
If the free press and media of the west had chllenged the outrhight lies and propoganda churned out by the US and UK this war wouldn’t had happened!
“Free press and media of the west”?
Oh yeah, I remember now:
The twisted, burnt wreckage of the Maine ’s stern and bridge was still above water in the morning. It remained there for years. Two hundred fifty-four seamen were dead, and fifty-nine sailors were wounded. Eight of the wounded later died. The navy conducted an investigation into the cause of the disaster, but it never discovered who was responsible for the explosion.
The American press, however, had no doubts about who was responsible for sinking the Maine. It was the cowardly Spanish, they cried. William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal even published pictures. They showed how Spanish saboteurs had fastened an underwater mine to the Maine and had detonated it from shore.
As one of the few sources of public information, newspapers had reached unprecedented influence and importance. Journalistic giants, such as Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer of the World, viciously competed for the reader’s attention. They were determined to reach a daily circulation of a million people, and they didn’t mind fabricating stories in order to reach their goal….
A minor revolt in Cuba against the Spanish colonial government provided a colorful topic. For months now the papers had been painting in lurid detail the horrors of Cuban life under oppressive Spanish rule. The Spanish had confined many Cubans to concentration camps. The press called them “death camps.” Wild stories with screaming headlines — Spanish Cannibalism, Inhuman Torture, Amazon Warriors Fight For Rebels — flooded the newsstands. Newspapers sent hundreds of reporters, artists, and photographers south to recount Spanish atrocities. The correspondents, including such notables as author Stephen Crane and artist Frederick Remington, found little to report on when they arrived.
“There is no war,” Remington wrote to his boss. “Request to be recalled.”
Remington’s boss, William Randolph Hearst, sent a cable in reply: “Please remain. You furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war.” Hearst was true to his word. For weeks after the Maine disaster, the Journal devoted more than eight pages a day to the story. Not to be outdone, other papers followed Hearst’s lead. Hundreds of editorials demanded that the Maine and American honor be avenged. Many Americans agreed. Soon a rallying cry could be heard everywhere — in the papers, on the streets, and in the halls of Congress: “Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain.”
[http://www.smplanet.com/imperialism/remember.html]
it should have been” the so often called free press and media of the so often called free world ,the west!!??”
Hear, hear–and I agree. If there were such a press.
I think that such press have been the worest offender of all.It has been the one that fooled the public more than any one else.As they say Garbbage in Garbbage out.
What I remember observing 5 years ago was not a public being “fooled”, but a public hearing what it wanted to hear.
The public does not care about being informed.
The public cares only for their own preconceptions.
The MSM is not about the pursuit of truth. It is about the pursuit of market share.
“We’ll tell you anything you want to hear, we lie like hell.”
-Howard Beale
Propaganda cannot deceive us; it can only help us deceive ourselves.
Okay, let’s get down to the X’s and the O’s:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uViQ0hVV57Q&feature=related
Now THAT’s demonstrative evidence!
As are Clinton and Obama for taking money from AIPAC. AIPAC supports terrorism in central Asia. Obama takes money from Soros. Soros supports terrorism in eastern Europe and Central Asia. Pick any of the three. They all would be tools of terrorists and terrorism. Revolution would be ripe in the U.S. ripe all three sadly.
USS Liberty Naval ship Israel killings.Accident my @ss! Admiral Senior McCain covered up the whole affair and so did LBJ. Son McGoo being a politician and knowing his father was a liar—has done dick all(hack for Israel). America has killed millions and invaded over 225 countries–some dirty cop of the world!
I agree and said so when i first heard this. mccain did indeed call himself a terrorist.
Senator McCain–oil was $18 per barrel in January 2002. Today, April 22, 2008 it hit $117 per barrel. In light of that do you consider the Bush and Cheney administration, whose incompetence and warmongering is the direct cause of that rise in oil prices, the collapse of the dollar, and approaching US bankruptcy and depression–do you consider that administration, the Republican Party that supports it, and yourself ECONOMIC TERRORISTS whose primary target is the American economy?
Just asking.
The 21st Amendment to the U.S Constitution was ratified on December 5, 1933, repealing Prohibition.
Part of the significance of that date is that it was years AFTER 1929.
Curiously too, none of the Prohibition Terrorists, who were a small percentage of the population and who used law and government to terrorize their own nation for more than a decade, were lined up before firing squads.
Eliot Ness, for example, went out and had a beer, instead of being shot.
Later he somehow became a good guy and a model of LAWN ORDER in film and television.
The idea that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a Communist or a Socialist is a bad joke, and part of the same mythology.
So where has all the money gone–the $7,000,000,000,000 to $20,000,000,000,000 that the US is supposed to repay over the next fifteen or twenty years?
Mr. Paul–is this the status quo in which everyone is invited be be “self-owned”? Does your vision of “law” involve tracking down the thieves and confiscating their ill-got property and treasure?
In fact, what have Americans got for their tax money for the last thirty years? And why in the world should they pay taxes to repay these debts?
As far as programs and solutions are concerned, as opposed to ideology and charged mindless epithets, there may be some progress, when some of the clearer-headed Libertarians and even some conservative Republicans of the paleo stripe can mouth “nationalization” without choking and turning blue, and some Marxists and Socialists can likewise say “liberty” and “private property” without fainting.
The average voter doesn’t know what day 9/11 happened. They certainly are not going to understand logic.
Hmmmm, I wonder if Eugene Costa has something to say?
I begin with the premise that it is the secret purpose of all government to destroy happiness and get away with it. As a result, I am never surprised at what they do, nor at how they do it, nor at what they have to say about it.