CONSERVATIVE TRICK #57B: How to defend against allegations of US prisoner abuse, rendition, and killings

1. Raise the image of 9/11 to rouse anger
2. Raise the image of Mr. Berg's decapitation to characterize all Iraqis as monsters.
3. Rapidly, before your audience has recovered from the images, tie the 2 together:

"They" attacked us! We are at war! "They" cut off a man's head! Who cares if we sodomoize terrorists? They are undeserving of human rights.

RATIONAL RESPONSE:
1. For the record: the President has confirmed there is no evidence Iraqis were involved in the 9-11 attack. Al-Qaeda-style terrorists did not exist in Iraq until after our military destabilzed and occupied the country.In other words, please define "they".

2. Many of the prisoners in Abu Ghraib were not terrorists, or even soldiers, but civilians- rounded up and detained in arbitrary sweeps. The invasion also killed over 8,000 civilians, but then they had it coming for...what? Being born Muslim?

But the facts are unimportant. Maybe we don't need to worry too much about world opinion- unless we want the help of the UN, in which case we'd best start caring, or to prevent further terrorism from the 1/5 of Muslim world population. But at least we need the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, and those aren't won by disregarding their rights. Our shared humanity with the Iraqi people, and building mutual resepct for that humanity, is what will make or break this dangerous adventure in geopolitics.

PROPERTY RIGHTS NUTS

Our freedom to own property is wisely granted, but irresponsible choices abuse that freedom. The Founding Fathers probably never imagined the extremes of consumption available to modern Americans, but many were of Puritan and Quaker backgrounds, and Benjamin Frankiln's famous 13 virtues included Frugality and Moderation.

Our freedom of speech does not include threats and hate speech; similarly, our freedom to purchase is subject to limits set by our government. I cannot buy an Abrams tank, for example, because of the potential for harm it poses. Technological power today means that individual choices aggregate to harm others; thus stricter mileage requirements for vehicle manufacturers would be a wise limit to our automotive freedom. Ultimately, if consumers realize that with the world oil recerves projected to run dry in 2037 (Congress Office of Technology Assessment), they will understand that gas guzzlers are an irresponsible use of a limited resource. Next time you see a Hummer, imagine life without plastics (a petroleum product). As for the burning Hummer image, metaphor is not an invitation to arson. The real fanatics are those who use an absolute notion of property rights to abuse public goods.

Ah, whatever happened to Governor Bush?

"I'm not so sure the role of the United States is to go around the world and say, 'this is the way it's gotta be'."

I think one way for us to end up being viewed as the Ugly American is for us to go around the world saying, 'We do it this way, so should you.'"

The Neocons, that's what.

Christian idiots with their newfound political aspirations are fond of reminding us that "our nation was founded by God-fearing men". They have also been known to quote physicist Stephen Hawkings out of context. Anyway, I know that someof the Founding Fathers sometimes prayed, but I am sure their beliefs were a far cry from Mr. Bush's.

Jefferson called Christianity "the most perverted system that ever shone on man"; James Madison cautioned that "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind'; and Thomas Paine called the Bible "the word of a demon". So the founders believed in God. They were also slave owners who believed in blood-letting as a medical treatment. Luckily, modern medicine and morality have elimated the latter aberrations; and God is not named in our Constitution. Jefferson was crystal clear in his separation of church and state. Let those who dream of theocracy move to Iran or Saudi Arabia.

As for me, I agree with Thomas Edison: "Religion is Bunk".

There is just one basic notion about G-d and religion which I have to get off my chest. That is, if there were a God, the inexpressable, overwhelming, incomprehensible, and indisputably non-anthropomorphic nature of the divine spirit. I like the notion of not saying or spelling G-d, of not giving It a name at all, inasmuchas such a gesture is one of resisting the human tendency of projecting human traits onto things- onto our pets, trees, the weather, etc. I do not support the gesture if it is simply inspired by old men who say it is forbidden- to them , I say God, God, God, Yahweh, Yahweh, Yahweh- I say it loud and clear to the hat and beard wearers, because the only truly forbidden things (killing, stealing, etc.) can be felt through the spirit of God in the bones of anyone raised in a functional human society. Because the emphasis of ritual over meaning kills religion by rendering it mechanical and obscuring its truth in fine trappings. But back to my point.

The divine by definition, to account for everything from metaphysics to the galaxies, must be so mystical- It is everything and nothing at once, It is one and many and none at once, It is without beginning and end, It was not born and does not give birth, It has no form, no language, no personality, It knows everything without knowing, It directs eveything without will, It so defies the human mind's need to delineate and categorize and relate things to known archetypes that conceiving of It as "the Divine Father" or as men made "In G-d's image" are just misleading tools used to indoctrinate, co-opt and control the ignorant masses who can only relate to an anthropomorphic G-d. More than that, the granting of human traits to G-d is a ridiculous insult leading ultimately to war as those with competing visions of their particular G-d's will, message and personality quibble over details which are irrelevant to the universal presence and indifference of G-d in human affairs- indifference because all is predestined, because free will is irrelevant, because no matter our role in the random and complex interactions on this planet, Earth will still end in a supernova of our sun.

It is my contention that te divine is so huge and anti-intuitive to human consciousness that the very moment the divine enters a human mind, it is corrupted by our imperfection, our inability to get the whole picture. It further follows that attempts to render our limited understanding of the divine, however important it may be to do so, in human language further pollutes and distorts the original message. Claims that holy books are inspired down to the letter, and that such books are perfect, are dismissable outright in that only G-d is perfect. Human language, as evidenced by the interminable exegesis and tiresome debates of interpretation such books inspire, cannot acomodate or express divine truth in more than an imperfect and fractional, fractured manner. Reading these books in search of truth is like trying to get a view of the galaxy by piecing together the shards of a telescope mirror- long after the mirror was even pointed at the stars.

I am among those who feel the divine must be sought in experience, in contemplation, in everyday life, in nature, in pain and love and mystery and wonder and challenge, in trance, in dream states, in drug states- I was particularly fond of that sort of seeking as a young American, and thank God there were plenty of good drugs for me to free my mind with. Organized religions and their books are but interesting wellsprings of ideas which may or may not be divinely inspired (certainly many such books are equally loaded with culturally and politically inspired ideas)- worthy of reading and consideration, but far from Divine Law. As for whose book is right, I say don't trust anything that talks about blood sacrifice, particularly if it came from vengeful desert people.

So, you hold that Western foreign policy is benign, and only seeks to liberate the oppressed? Did we liberate the Native Americans? I am tired of the Patriot's History, the inexorable march of all that is holy and good. What of these fine Christian gentlemen, then?

We insisted on reserving the right to bomb niggers.
Source: British Prime Minister Lloyd George, 1932

I cannot pretend to feel impartial about colours. I rejoice with the brilliant ones and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns.

I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. We have definitely adopted the position at the Peace Conference of arguing in favour of the retention of gas as a permanent method of warfare. It is sheer affectation to lacerate a man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle at making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory gas. 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 terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected.

-Sir Winston Churchill

Racism truly rises to new levels of absurdity when used by members of the same race against one another: Take Lloyd George on Winston Churchill
- "Winston undoubtedly had nigger blood in him. Look at his build and slouch ... Another characteristic of Winston is that when he gets excited he shrieks: again the nigger comes out."

Sometimes I like to lurk in FREEP sites, just to see what the enemy is thinking. Usually it is stunningly ignorant and frightening, which is no surprise- I am just looking for new directions, and to get a feel for how likely certain issues are to spark violence, which as we know is a preferred method of conflict resolution for neocons. Here are some recent quotes; some are quite witty, while the final thread is...very interesting. Who is spying on who anyway? Are you paranoid?
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"Thank God for our selfless military willing to offer the Supreme Sacrifice of their own lives to preserve our freedoms."

"LIBERTY has arrived in Iraq - Now we can concentrate on HOLLYWEED!"

"A night without oil is like, duh, dark." (thus it is our right to kill for it?)

"Capitalism Doesn't Like You Either"

"Don't Socialize, Super-Size."

"Stop Global Whining" (my favorite. lefties do indeed whine)

"Meanwhile back in the real world, only capitalist countries have the technical and financial resources to reduce pollution. But somehow the ecological disasters created by the Soviets and Chinese never seem to get mentioned by the econazis..." (not familiar with Greenpeace, eh?)
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"Many of us park in the underground parking garage and the wife of one of the Fife and Drum corps members saw one of their regulars in the parking area video taping the license plates of our vehicles while we were on the street. This may require some thoughtful retalitation."

"Suggestion as to how to counter the video taping of license plates in the future: Call the Police. Isn't that the kind of suspicious activity we are all supposed to be on the lookout for as American Citizens? After all, aren't the guys across the street sympathetic to Saddam?
Of course the Fort Collins Police also go around and video tape our licence plates (at least for the Million Mom March they did)."

"Your thoughts about the license plate videographer sound like what I was thinking. "Officer, there was a mideastern looking guy taking video of the under ground parking structure, I wonder why a person would be taking video in an underground parking structure?" .... Let they're imagination go wild." (typical FREEP racism and spelling)

"I have had my pic and plates taken by LEOs while wearing the TRT blue and gold. The difference is that these folks could have ties to terrorism for all we know."

Well, actually the freaks that firebomb your SUVs and tract housing, while satisfying a certain emotional itch, are counterproductive to the environmental movement, which needs not enemies but understanding, and universal buy-in to the scientific facts, instead of a kneejerk emotional denial based on a hatred of hippies. (I once pooped on a construction site in PA that was encroaching on the best field in my neighborhood for stargazing, and stole some fuse boxes- yes, I did it, desecrated with poop and stole like the bad little monkey I was)

SUPPORT CONYERS RESOLUTION

There has never been a stronger case for impeachment. This president has taken the powers the Constitution grants Congress- the power to go to war- through clear deception, resulting in the deaths of thousands of people for the sake of a political power grab. This is an abuse of our military, an abuse of Congress, and an abuse of the trust of the American people. Ever since Vietnam, the Congress has become passive in its role and rubber-stamped the Executive's desire for war. And now, with the Iraq war, it is clear that this trend has gone too far and been exploited in the most egregious way.

The letter Bush sent Congress on 3/18/2003, in combination with what we now know about the state of intelligence on Iraq's weapons at that time and the Downing Street memo, reveals a clear case of fraud. At least the Bush administration could show, behind closed doors, the President's Personal Daily Briefings to the Intelligence Committee to refute these allegations. But that will not happen without greater pressure.

COMPLAINING ABOUT MY COMRADES ON THE LEFT

Socialists, Greens, all fine folks. But too concerned with language, methinks. Did spelling it "womyn" change where Eve got her rib? NO!!! Only joking, ladies. Females. Oh, wait that has "male" in it... ok, only joking WIMMYNZ. There, is society more just now? NO! And painting a happy face of liberal linguistic veneer over our language will not make it so. PC will suck the life and legitimacy out of the left if it is not checked by a blunt shoulder of reality.

let me start by being honest about my biases. i think that's more expedient than letting people guess. i am politically on the left, which you can use to stereotype many of my ideas with some accuracy. there is a website called politicalcompass.com, and i'd be happy to share my results. having said that, my individuality entitles me to these opinions:

#1: politeness will be the death of the left.

the right have mastered a no-nonsense kind of delivery, even when they are delivering absolute balderdash. This style appeals to no-nonsense people.

What is interesting about the left is that typically, when it comes to religion, the left runs to embrace science. But when it comes to social issues like race and education, they suddenly wallow about in talk of soul and spirit. It is largely a matter of personality; you either find pleasure in hard numbers, or in poetry. But you can't have it both ways. Race is either real, as created by social constructs, or completely insignificant, as revealed by genetic analysis. Taking pride in your ancestry, as opposed to feeling shame about it, is fine. Hubris and fanciful fantasy about your heritage is however the danger of pride; and let's be real, none of us earned our birth, we just suddenly woke up in our bodies, our families, our cultures through no effort or choice of our own- so how one can even take pride in that is beyond me. Proud to be (born) an American? Congratulations, you suckled on the fattest teat on the planet, let's give you a cookie for that. Black and Proud? You should be. Just don't forget, as you study the libraries of Timbuktu and the ancient Egyptians, that Africans enslaved one another before Europeans arrived; and that there is also great wisdom to be derived from Western traditions rooted in places like ancient Greece. Wisdom knows no color.

But back to the left. Do they turn to reason, or religion, for their strength? When the church attempts to encroach on the state in issues like woman's reproductive freedom and so-called intelligent design, the left embraces science: the fetus may have fingers at 8 weeks, but it's nervous system is insufficiently developed to register pain, so flush without guilt, ladies. Just because science hasn't explained everything does not make God true; it is not the job of science to disprove fanciful fantasy, but rather to verify the observable. So keep God in the comparative religion class, in the philosophy class, but out of science class- at least until some more seas part, water turns into wine, sticks into snakes, etc. etc. etc., and please repeat those miracles- replication, you know the drill. Science is a discipline of little faith, and next time you are on an airplane or under a surgeon's blade, you'll be thankful for that- because everyone believes something different!

But then it is time to talk about money and power and race. Here, the left splits into 2 camps; those who aggressively and bluntly describe the reality- and back it up with numbers- and those who shy from offending anyone and retreat to a feel-good realm where any critical thinking at all is regarded as some kind of buzzkill. Don't pop that bubble, brother! Good vibes, good vibes! Don't offend anyone! All opinions are equal, and experience is as valid as evidence...that is the same kind of reasoning that allows evangelicals to claim the existence of angels: because I saw one, and you can't prove I didn't. And you can't prove Queen Latifah isn't descended from a Nubian Queen, or that Mr. Jones, who dyes his hair black, isn't 1/16th Cherokee (still makes him 15/16ths asshole, but who's counting?). This is why Cartman, the infamous fatboy of the South Park cartoons, hates hippies. His best rant concerns how they go on about the environment and then persist in driving crappy old VW vans...

There is a popular saying among conservatives who used to identify as liberals, that they were mugged by reality. Let's pull our heads out of our asses, have some straight talk, and not get jumped, comrades. On the bright side, many neo-cons are now being mugged by reality, too.

BEYOND IRAQ

Ok, should've posted this in January; but funk it, for me every day is MLK Jr Day, and Malcom X day, and Earth Day, and national-hug-an-atheist-and-have-an-abortion-please day. But if I did believe in God, it would be the god of love MLK talks about. Here are excerpts of his great speech Beyond Vietnam, my favorite. Just try this: substitute Iraq for Vietnam as you read.

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There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. And so we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. And so we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

...In 1957, a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years, we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has now justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru.

It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

...Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain."

...This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: "Let us love one another, for love is God. And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love." "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us." Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.

BUSHSPEAK- and the slaughter of Iraqi kids at US gunpoint

This War on Terror sure has been confusing. Not the least of the confusion comes from all the new language emanating from the Bush administration to describe this war like no other we have known. Sure, we all know that we pre-emptively imposed a regime change in Iraq by creating shock and awe in Baghdad, because we had the moral clarity to see that Saddam's intentions to possess weapons of mass destruction threatened a critical region of the world, and perhaps even our own nation. But a few years ago, no one had even heard of pre-emption or shock and awe, and moral clarity was something reserved for Clinton's sex life. So what does it all really mean? Here's a handy reference that will help you understand the post 9-11 world as it is envisioned by the Bush administration.

0. 'Terror'

Defined as acts of violence intended to intimidate civilians, carried out for political motives. Does executing an entire Iraqi family qualify?



Bin Laden understands that people kill to creat fear and kill for politics, but not only as it applies to terrorists attacking America- the same definition can be easily applied to American bombing of Iraq or Israeli destruction of Palestinian homes. Read on: unfortunately, his are not the words of a madman, any more than someone steering a plane into a building is a coward, and that is why ideas like his resonate with even intelligent and educated Arabs;

"The call to wage war against America was made because America has spear-headed the crusade against the Islamic nation, sending tens of thousands of its troops to the land of the two Holy Mosques over and above its meddling in its affairs and its politics, and its support of the oppressive, corrupt and tyrannical regime that is in control. These are the reasons behind the singling out of America as a target. And not exempt of responsibility are those Western regimes whose presence in the region offers support to the American troops there. We know at least one reason behind the symbolic participation of the Western forces and that is to support the Jewish and Zionist plans for expansion of what is called the Great Israel. Surely, their presence is not out of concern over their interests in the region. ... Their presence has no meaning save one and that is to offer support to the Jews in Palestine who are in need of their Christian brothers to achieve full control over the Arab Peninsula which they intend to make an important part of the so called Greater Israel..."

"America heads the list of aggressors against Muslims. The recurrence of aggression against Muslims everywhere is proof enough. For over half a century, Muslims in Palestine have been slaughtered and assaulted and robbed of their honor and of their property. Their houses have been blasted, their crops destroyed. And the strange thing is that any act on their part to avenge themselves or to lift the injustice befalling them causes great agitation in the United Nations which hastens to call for an emergency meeting only to convict the victim and to censure the wronged and the tyrannized whose children have been killed and whose crops have been destroyed and whose farms have been pulverized. ...
In today's wars, there are no morals, and it is clear that mankind has descended to the lowest degrees of decadence and oppression. They rip us of our wealth and of our resources and of our oil. Our religion is under attack. They kill and murder our brothers. They compromise our honor and our dignity and dare we utter a single word of protest against the injustice, we are called terrorists...

We however, differentiate between the western government and the people of the West. If the people have elected those governments in the latest elections, it is because they have fallen prey to the Western media which portray things contrary to what they really are. And while the slogans raised by those regimes call for humanity, justice, and peace, the behavior of their governments is completely the opposite. It is not enough for their people to show pain when they see our children being killed in Israeli raids launched by American planes, nor does this serve the purpose. What they ought to do is change their governments which attack our countries. The hostility that America continues to express against the Muslim people has given rise to feelings of animosity on the part of Muslims against America and against the West in general. Those feelings of animosity have produced a change in the behavior of some crushed and subdued groups who, instead of fighting the Americans inside the Muslim countries, went on to fight them inside the United States of America itself.

The Western regimes and the government of the United States of America bear the blame for what might happen. If their people do not wish to be harmed inside their very own countries, they should seek to elect governments that are truly representative of them and that can protect their interests...

After World War II, the Americans grew more unfair and more oppressive towards people in general and Muslims in particular. ... The Americans started it and retaliation and punishment should be carried out following the principle of reciprocity, especially when women and children are involved. Through history, American has not been known to differentiate between the military and the civilians or between men and women or adults and children. Those who threw atomic bombs and used the weapons of mass destruction against Nagasaki and Hiroshima were the Americans. Can the bombs differentiate between military and women and infants and children? America has no religion that can deter her from exterminating whole peoples. Your position against Muslims in Palestine is despicable and disgraceful. America has no shame. ... We believe that the worst thieves in the world today and the worst terrorists are the Americans. Nothing could stop you except perhaps retaliation in kind...

I am one of the servants of Allah and I obey his orders. Among those is the order to fight for the word of Allah ... and to fight until the Americans are driven out of all the Islamic countries...

[In] the Gulf War [America] destroyed the infrastructure and the milk and dairy industry that was vital for the infants and the children and the civilians and blew up dams which were necessary for the crops people grew to feed their families. Proud of this destruction, America assumed the titles of world leader and master of the new world order...

Our mothers and daughters and sons are slaughtered every day with the approval of America and its support. And, while America blocks the entry of weapons into Islamic countries, it provides the Israelis with a continuous supply of arms allowing them thus to kill and massacre more Muslims...

This is my message to the American people. I urge them to find a serious administration that acts in their interest and does not attack people and violate their honor and pilfer their wealth."

1. 'Moral Clarity' = the notion that acts of terror and their perpetrators can be declared "evil" based solely on the horror and suffering they have inflicted (or could possibly inflict, or even harbor the intention to inflict). Moral clarity allows judgements of good and evil to be made without any consideration of history, culture or the political motives behind attacks or plans; and most importantly, the same moral standards do not apply if the violence is carried out by a uniformed military, namely ours. Thus, the recent execution of 5 Iraqi children is exempt from any moral judgement, as was the massacre at My Lai and the nukes on Japan.

"We had to liberate the village by destroying it."


2. 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' = nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. The US has been a leader in developing these technoologies, from mustard gas to the hydrogen bomb, which could obliterate half of Western Europe in a single stroke. The most devastating of these, nuclear weapons, was developed and dropped on Japan by the US in the two most devastating attacks in human history. By conservative estimates, over 100,000 people were killed instantly by the uranium bomb over Hiroshima and the plutonium bomb over Nagasaki, with thousands more burned, blinded, injured by debris or poisoned from radiation. Thousands more still died years later from cancer, while many of the survivors' descendents remain unmarriagable due to fear of congenital birth defects. This act cleary established the U.S. as an evil country (see #1, moral clarity).

3. 'Regime Change' = military invasion to install obedient governments. Attempted and failed in Nicaragua...oddly, Negroponte was there and death squads followed...and now, he's involved in Iraq and we are seeing death squads again.

4. 'Pre-Emptive Defense' = attacking a country that has not attacked your own, due to fear of potential danger of attack from that country. A recipe for chaos severly discredited by the US invasion of Iraq and failure to find any weapons. Now North Korea claims the right to pre-emption. Bush sure has made America safer!!

5.'Critical Regions' / 'US interests' = regions with resources/strategic locations we want to control.

6. 'the 'Axis of Evil' = a collection of countries affiliated by their defiance of our government, which we'd like to attack (see#3, regime change, and #5, critical regions).

7. 'Shock and Awe' = massive obliteration of inhabited areas (see#2) designed to cause fear in a populace leading to submission to our political agenda; not to be confused with "terror".

8. 'the War on Terror' = an excuse for projecting American military force anywhere worldwide (an ability currently enhanced by #4, pre-emption) for an indefinite length of time (since some portion of Muslims will continue to be likely to want to attack us due to our continuing killing of Muslims, the War on Terror is not likely to end without a complete genocide of 1/5 of the world's population; until which all civil rights will be suspended in the name of national security: for example, peace protest groups will be infiltrated by the FBI)

Get it?

Fatticapped. When I see a car parked in those really convenient spots right next to the door, I admit, I always look. Is the person missing limbs? Old and frail? Loading up in a wheelchair? Or, are they grotesquely obese, unloading a motorized ass-hauler?

I have talked to obese office workers, and heard claims that it is genetic- my parents were fat too, so it's not my fault. No, it's not your fault that you partake in no outdoor activities, either. How many big people have you met who enjoy hiking? Or just a walk in the park, half and hour brisk non-stop motion, a couple times a week? Some do, some do...but most don't. What do they eat? I've seen it with my own eyes. Here's a little experiment- next time you are in a quaint old diner, on a padded vinyl bench with an endless cup of coffee, take a gander at your dining companions. They don't call 'em 'greasy spoon' for nothing, folks. Count how many pork products are on the menu. The ratio of meat and cheese items to green vegetables.

The fact is, obesity is as much nurture as nature. It is a cultural epidemic. I work with immigrants, and there are 2 things worth noting. One is, talking to people about their first impressions of the US, one thing that gets mention is "big people". That doesn't just refer to tall nordic bone structure. The other thing is that people from around the globe, who are traditionally slender in their home countries, tend to balloon after years of living here. What do you think Samoans looked like when they ate more fish and less canned corned beef? Like the Rock, that's what.

Don't tell me that taro alone produced so many fat people, or that extensive ocean exploration, much of it powered by rowing, was done by people who, if they could fit in a canoe, would cause it to capsize.

The Nation of Islam was keen to claim good nutrition as part of an indigenous African heritage, a sort of back-to-nature dietary angle. Basically, the reborn black Muslims saw the diet of Southern 'Soul' food as the result of slavery. Chitlins, fried pork intestines, ham hock, pig feet.. all the leftovers the master didn't want, all the unhealthy food became the black diet. Of course, that theory overlooks greens, which while less desirable due to their bitterness are some of the best things you can eat...Anyhoo you can hear the Jungle Brothers rap about eating a bowl of vegetables and chopped up fruit due to this desire to return to the healthy diet of their ancestors. In the case of the Nation, this diet was creatively reinvented- but for my Pacific Islander friends, whose roots are less convoluted, I can only say: consider losing the Spam. The white devil made Spam from the least desirable parts of the pig; and the sheer factory farm, corporate exploitation of selling Spam to suckers transcends race, and becomes an issue of class and education. White trash also pork up on canned meats. We should all be wiser.

Anyone reading my post about the N word, and the true existence of individuals who embody the N word with defiant pride, may have come away thinking I am racist. True, I do think my culture is more evolved in that spitting in public is generally frowned upon by middle class whiteys everywhere. To hawk and ptui with impunity is a lack of culture, or at best a culture with inferior ettiquette and standards of sanitation. I mean, I have allergies, I make exception for parking lots and alleyways when there are few people about. But cracka, puleez! Anyhoo. Any good liberal, progressive, whatever I am, has to demonstrate that stereotypes don't rule their thinking. So here's a true story that sticks in my memory banks.

It was 1990 and I was on a Greyhound from State College to Philly. A black guy about my age got on at one of the stops. I was in the back, naturally, and he obviously was a cool character as he went straight for the back as well. Old public school habits. We both had walkmen on. I happened to have 2 set of headphones, just in case the wires went bad on one I guess, and he saw this and told me his were busted. He bought a pair off me for a 5 spot, good trade. Anyhow the kicker of the conversation was, here I was the white kid, and in my walkman was Erik B and Rakim. And in his? Morrisey, a Scottish pop singer considered super-gay even by British standards (Europe in general being the kind of place where Ricky Martin is accepted as manly). The old book and cover thing; you never know what someone's experience is, what their ideas are, what is going on in their head, until you talk to them and listen. Never underestimate the potential of diverse individuals with open minds to think independently and make the right choices. If we all stay positive, be patient, keep the dialog open, we will overcome the haters with rational, compassionate action that values our common humanity above our differences and despite our problems. The gated communities may be miles from the ghettoes, but in the end we are all in this together, sink or swim.