The "Nexus" Of Evil

By SAMANTHA POWER

Published: May 2, 2004

But none of this was enough to bring about fascist rule. One of Paxton's main contributions is to focus less on the ''Duce myth'' and the ''Führer myth'' and more on the indispensable ''conservative complicities'' behind the fascist takeovers. Paxton debunks the consoling fiction that Mussolini and Hitler seized power. Rather, conservative elites desperate to subdue leftist populist movements ''normalized'' the fascists by inviting them to share power. It was the mob that flocked to fascism, but the elites who elevated it. ''At each fork in the road, they choose the antisocialist solution,'

Morality Mission: How Karen Hughes Sees Her Job

by John Brown

The recently named Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Bush confidante and long-time Presbyterian church Sunday school teacher Karen Hughes, has an significant new foreign affairs position: "to provide the moral basis for U.S. leadership in the world." This phrase, introduced not long ago on the State Department website in the section dealing with Ms. Hughes's job, may bring Ms. Hughes closer to the All-Mighty, with whom her boss, he often reminds us, is in frequent communication. But Ms. Hughes's "moral leadership" function hardly furthers American national interests. Indeed, it can make our public diplomacy all the more ineffective by muddying our dialogue with other countries, and it opens the U.S. to even more charges of hypocrisy. Members of the foreign affairs community have expressed reservations about the new language describing the Under Secretary's priorities. The most generous remark, by a commentator on public diplomacy, was: "Let's hope it's only a typo." "The [moral] definition," says a university professor who specializes in public diplomacy, "projects arrogance, patronage and selfishness. It seems that it has been designed to appeal to domestic rather than foreign audiences." Hugh Burleson, a retired Foreign Service officer (USIA), puts it this way: "PD existing to provide a moral basis for US leadership ... is absolutely wrong -- a narrow and distorted definition or mission statement. What would it do for us when our policy is widely seen, even by friends, to be wrong and even immoral? Public diplomacy should exist to make US policy and the thinking and society behind it understandable to foreign audiences." The strongest criticism of "moral leadership" comes from a current State Department employee I contacted privately: "This is yet another example of the spin-obsessed White House's infantile declarativism -- i.e., if I state that something is true (and better yet, keep repeating it), then it must be true ... our . Deputy Assistant Secretaries (DAS's) [may] start coming up with exciting, new "moral basis" initiatives -- they're usually quite adept at calculating which way the wind is (or should be) blowing." Clearly, as foreign policy professionals suggest, Ms. Hughes's moral approach is problematical if not counterproductive. First, with its preachy attitude, it can interfere with public diplomacy's core function, as defined by the State Department -- to engage, inform and influence key international audiences. Second, it is self-defeating: How can a torture-based administration that -- as is now widely acknowledged -- shamelessly misled the U.S. into war thanks to the WHIG (White House Iraq Group, to which Ms. Hughes belonged) have a credible right to claim "moral leadership"? John Brown, a former Foreign Service officer, compiles the "Public Diplomacy Press Review," available

Neurotypical Syndrome --- Eerily Similar To Conservative Personality Disorder.

Neurotypical Syndrome?

Neurotypical syndrome is a neurobiological disorder characterized by preoccupation with social concerns, delusions of superiority, and obsession with conformity. Neurotypical individuals often assume that their experience of the world is either the only one, or the only correct one. NTs find it difficult to be alone. NTs are often intolerant of seemingly minor differences in others. When in groups NTs are socially and behaviorally rigid, and frequently insist upon the performance of dysfunctional, destructive, and even impossible rituals as a way of maintaining group identity. NTs find it difficult to communicate directly, and have a much higher incidence of lying as compared to persons on the autistic spectrum. Sounds like a conservative to me!

another nut for easy crackin'

Another wingnut who can't see the cultural, anthropological or sociological similarities between Zionism and Nazism.....near twins when looked at objectively.

A Palestinian rocket – one of dozens fired randomly at Israelis most weeks – exploded in an Israeli army base early this morning (Tuesday), wounding at least 69 young Israeli soldiers, some severely.

69 injuries without a single death? Can we say...'beggars belief'? Who could tell such a lie without having to answer to press scrutiny? Of course...It happened on an IDF Army base. "State secrets" doncha know.... and wouldn't soldiers be a legitimates target for people whose land is bing illegally occupied by another states army? of course it would. so Gross immediately launches into "Siderot, a working-class town near the Israel-Gaza border, and surrounding towns and villages, have been battered by thousands of rockets launched nearly daily from Gaza. The rockets have killed over two dozen civilians.

1 rocket, 69 causalities, .....1000's almost daily, but only 20 something dead? something is very, very suspicious about these numbers.

Attacks last week on Sderot, including a rocket that landed near a crowded day care center, led anxious Israeli parents to pull thousands of children out of school and brought demands for the Israeli government to retaliate but Prime Minister Ehud Olmert refrained from doing so. Ohh, those noble Israeli's! People who refuses to retaliate despite all the Palestiniian wickedness. A claim he repeats ad nauseum anyhow, which means that we must somehow conclude that Pali suicide bombers and their rocket/mortar attacks are so badly aimed that the Pali's are actually killing themselves at a rate 8 x's that of their intended target! Of course anyone who would believe such nonsense is either a liar themselves, or mentally handicapped. Take your pick, but I long ago settled on fairly conclusive evidence that the 'right' is not simply a reflection of one's upbringing, an ideology resulting in their ideological "yin" to our "yang", but is in fact suffering a personality disorder, one with such widespread distribution as to suggest it has an ancient and/or genetic origin. The neolithic revolution provides us with both. I belive they are actually a 'bad' reaction to all the highly abnormal envorinmental stimuli we have lived with for the last 10,000 - 15,000 years or more. This is but a blink in time compared to the previous 3 million years of social evolution gained in an environment that went virtually unchanged in all that time. But I digress. He continues....'From speaking to recipients of this email list in a number of European countries, Australia, and South America, it has become apparent that very few people outside Israel and the U.S. have heard anything at all about the long history of Holocaust denial of Abu Mazen, the new Palestinian prime minister'. but when it coms to giving even one saccount of denial by AM, we get thois from gross. "Abu Mazen’s record does not amount to a single pernicious reference, like those of Jean Marie Le Pen, leader of the French (neo-Fascist) National Front (“the gas chambers were a footnote of history”), or Joerg Haider, leader of the misnamed Austrian Freedom party. Abu Mazen has spent years “researching” and writing on this subject, and produced an entire body of work, with horrifying claims that go well beyond anything Le Pen or Haider have said in public.' Note the citing of well known revisionists of whom AM exceeds as a denier., yet nothing from AM himself. in the article itslf we are down the page sevreral thousand words at this point, the above being mere excerpts. much further down aftermuch whining about how mysteriousit is that no world leaders arer willing to confront AM on the issue, we finally get to the heart of this guys hate of AM. "When negotiating with Abu Mazen, politicians should ask what kind of a man would choose to write his entire PhD thesis (at Moscow’s Oriental College) on the subject and follow it up with a book in 1983, “The Other Side: The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and the Zionist Movement,” which denies the Holocaust occurred." Ahuh... But still there's that claim of outright denial,which btw is not what is stated in the title of his work, whatever you may think about his idea that zionist leaders used Hitler to create an 'new exodus' back to the levant. Prior to the realization of the extent of killing at Auschwitz et al....why not? Americans were doing bussiness with Hitler througfhout the Spanish-Civil War, and even into WW2 itself. in any case, gross finally dances around so muchh that he becomes the instrument of his own undoing. "Abu Mazen claimed that Hitler did not decide to kill the Jews until David Ben-Gurion provoked him into doing so when he [Ben-Gurion] “declared war on the Nazis” in 1942.' Hitker decides to kill 'the jews" i.e genocide,. in 1942. The reason given is not important, merely the fact that am statd quite explicitly that Hitler set about killing "Jews". Not 'some' or even 'a lot', but "Jews". Period. As if this libel wasn't enough, Gross launches intosome tirade about a 'villa' owned by mazen xsomewher in gaza, alomng with other claims of immense wealth beinfg secreted away by a Palestinian arab living in Gaza, under illegal Israeli ocupution. Now we are to believe the completely assinine assertion that a man who was only just now allowed, by Israeli IDF forces, too import and possess enough weapons to equip his own personal bodyguards, yet is somehow ammassing a fortune behind everyone's back.. this man has ethical standards whatsoever, only a burning hatred of all things that threaten his beloved Zion. Osama Bin Laden, Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Zionism, fascism....all the same people saying 'I'm better than you!" This is the shit we've had to tip-toe through since the First Temple blowhards like Gross started their insane, elitist ranting.

My Response to More BS From Horowitz and his Hounds

As is so typical of the right wing, their fears over-ride their intellect, a situation that compels them to write articles like the following. In particular I am referring to the idea that "atonement" for the Naqba means that Israel must be dissolved. That is a false statement....a "straw-man" argument that is meant to appeal to the right's overstimulated amygdala, a region of the brain that appears to control responses such as fear and paranoia. Their constant warnings of creeping threats coming from the commies, homosexuals, the blacks, the Muslims, the Satanists, and yes, even the Jews. CNN's Lou Dobbs has Mexican immigrants as a group highly infectious and spreading leprosy. That he even keeps his job is evidence that a very large group within the population is out of touch with reality itself. So..... the BS

In answer....No. The majority of the Palestinians simply want to live as human beings should all be allowed to live.....a life without fear of IDF snipers, or of the results of their constant dehumanization at the hands of far-right Jews who will not admit to Jewish crimes back at Israel's inception. They will go on at length however about all the ( vastly exaggerated ) crimes perpetrated by Arabs who were about to lose the land they had farmed for centuries. An "Anti-Semite!" accusation hurled wildly and without cause is capable of destroying careers, silencing critics..... even hiding a crime. Although greatly overshadowed by the horror we know as the Holocaust, the Naqba still ranks as one of the 20th centuries greatest crimes.

David Limbaugh

"It's simply not true that opposition to abortion, the elevation of "sexual preference" to the status of race under our civil-rights laws, the societal sanctioning of homosexual marriage, or allowing homosexuals to serve as Boy Scout troop leaders constitutes bedroom policing." What can a person possibly say to a mind like that?

Malanie Morgan issues veiled murder targetting on anti-war vet.

Morgan called Soltz a "hypocritical cockroach", stating that "[h]e needs to be stomped on and "neutralized" before he and his ilk can silence military support for the mission in Iraq. http://mediamatters.org/rd?http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=57200

Unwritten Social Cohesion Pact?

The protocol and the tighter targets for developed countries being considered for the post 2012 period are rapidly losing favor as those few covered countries face the real costs - in terms of jobs and competitiveness - of meeting their 5 % (on average) reduction off 1990 levels of greenhouse gas emissions. That commitment typically equals a double digit reduction in energy use emissions in real 2005 terms. For example, the main organization representing European employers in Brussels, UNICE, recently released a report calling for a new approach: reducing emission intensity gradually rather than the targets and timetable approach long favored by the Greens and EU environmental regulators. (EU business has long been loathed to speak up on climate change policy for fear of being thought “against the environment” and not part of the unwritten social cohesion pact between government and industry.).

The Real Threat To America is Fascism From Websites Like the Following

Terrorism Awareness Project I have researched several of the videos here but quit after realizing that 90% of the "facts" I had chosen were themselves bold lies...one's that have been debunked numerous times in scholarly peer-reviewed papers. It was clear there was no point in continuing to beat a dead horse. The man is simply a pathological liar! It is for this very reason that I'm thinking that Horowitz felt he needed to launch this attack on higher education. As a liar, he must kill the messenger of inconvenient facts. However, he even goes so far as to try to assert that Nazism is really a left-wing ideology! That's above and beyond the call of duty regarding the smear campaign against academia. Apparently he's uncomfortable with the idea that people might wonder how he could share the same political wing as the man who provided him and his fellows with their best (and only) defense against tough questioning. Zionists have long realized that the Holocaust gives them the power to threaten someone as an "anti-semite". And since everyone hates Hitler, and he was such an an anti-semite, then to hate Zionism must also mean one hates Jews...a logical fallacy, but one that has worked beautifully ever since. So he and his fellows at AIPAC, PNAC, JDL, model their criminal organizations on the "Haganah", a terrorist group that gave rise to the political careers of many of Israels leading politicians and founding "hero's. They all use the epithet with great abandon, naming anyone who dares question their murder of Palestinian civilians. But the internet makes the lies that Israeli war-criminals have gotten away with telling previously now easy to check up on. The previous lack of access to scholarly data or other information made it easy to fool everyone. All that was needed was to control what came to people through the broadcast media. And since they were extremely wary of saying anything that might draw the "anti-semite" bomb from the Jewish right-wing, American's have been deceived about Israel since its inception in 1948. But the threat no longer carries the same weight. It has been reduced to mere "cry wolf" proportions and for the same reason --- overuse. I can only hope that my fellows who care about injustice in the world will now deliver the same retribution to this lot of right-wing zealots as that which became Mussolini and the Nazi's who systematically abused their power. I will personally congratulate anyone who has the sense to see through the Zionist thugs, proceed to go out and hang Horowitz up by his heels, beating him to death in the same manner as the Italians did their right-wing leader, Mussolini, upon realizing what an evil, selfish, cruel, lying hypocritical dog of a non-human being he was when he too somehow talked them all into starting a war based on a belief that their country, their history, and their people alone were the best in the world. Sound familiar? Of course it does. That's precisely how the right-wing fascist comes to power, and that's precisely what all the flag-waving and fear-mongering over foriegners now going on is all about. You are being groomed by the right for a war of world supremacy. If you don't believe it, look at the Project For The New America Century website, then look at who the people are who wrote the documents advocating a "Pax Americana". None other than your present administration! Most of whom are long-standing and unapologetic Zionists. These are the facts. Check them out for yourself. Please!

The Power of Israel in the United States

And unfortunately some of the most extreme nationalist/Zionist agitators are finding the current situation in Iraq, a war long planned for by rabid Zionists and Washington insiders Perle, Fieth, Wolfowitz, Abrams and Libby, whose loyalty to the US must now be questioned*. Petras is has come under harsh attack from Likud-niks in the US, and now their agenda has been picked up by increasingly internet savvy David Horowitz. He has somehow been able to find the funding necessary to pay the fees of a steadily growing list of high-profile right-wing pundits and authors. Now I see the production of extremely high-quality, albeit factually bankrupt, propaganda videos also appearing on a rapidly increasing number of websites, institutes and projects, all separately staffed and yet all apparently owned and paid for by him alone. Some of these disgusting video assaults on the world views of the American public can be found here - <http://terrorismawareness.org/what-really-happened/> That particular video has incorporated virtually every myth, lie and exaggeration the Zionist lobby has so painstakingly slipped into our national consciousness. When one sees what they are trying to get away with, it becomes no mystery why he is now attempting to equate America's universities with Marxist recruitment centers. And since most professors honor their mandate to teach the truth and so must also refuse to show his films or teach any of his other revisionist lies, he now openly and frequently equates American academia with Al Queda by naming them as "Islamo-fascist" sympathizers. This man, AIPAC, and a few other of "Gods Chosen" master-race are a very dangerous group indeed. The neocons (or PNAC) are another group whose loyalty seems very suspect indeed. In fact former Under-Secretary Of Defense Analysis Doug Feith is under investigation for his part in the AIPAC spy scandal....Libby was of course involved in the treasonous act of revealing the CIA agent whose husband challenged PNAC by revealing some of the lies used as justification for their long-planned intention to attack Iraq so a FOB could be placed in the ME, thereby securing Israel and the oil profits that would go to Israel's enemies otherwise. Wolfowitz and his fellows at PNAC are the architects of the war. These men, a collection of the most powerful Zionists in America saw an alliance with Cheney as their Pentagon gate-keeper as being the way into the WH where they could put an end to the growing expectations of a "Peace Dividend", money that would come as a result of a military draw-down which they all saw as a threat to their nationalist agendas, capital investments, and indeed to many, their very life's work.

Will Petras suffer the same outcome as Professors Mearshiemer and Walt?

Amazon.com: Customer Discussions: Review Comment Thread

The question remains, "Will Petras suffer the same outcome as Professors Mearshiemer and Walt?" At least Petras is an Emeritas professor but because I believe everything that he wrote in this extraordinarily brave, insiteful and prophetic book I fear for his safety. Yes--it is easily within the realm of possibility that bad things could mysteriously befall Petras in the next months, after the dust settles and the memory of all that he has written in this powerful book fades. I am not one iota surprised by all that Petras has written; the enormity of the threat posed by Israel and its Lobby in the United States has been maturing for the decades that I have been a student of world affairs. There can be no question about this statement regardless of the vociferous denials spalashed on every contradictory statement that ever appears in print or on the electronic media. How can there possibly be a resonably intelligent exchange of views and opinions about the world's most malignant cancer--contemporary Middle East affairs, when one of the major players uses any form of dissuation and disinformation to minimize that debate? The Power of Israel in the United States raises so many points germane to the current discussion about this most important area of the world. Obviously, of all that Petras writes, the expansion of Israel into what the Zionists call Greater Israel is the most important. When 9/11 happened I told Diane that America was protecting its parent state, Israel, because only the US was powerful enough to withstand the opinion firestorm that would follow an attack on Iraq. Nothing that I have read since then disaproves this original opinion. Petras agrees with the general idea in all of chapter one and speciffically on P. 25 and p. 28. I feel bad because I still have this childish notion that countries will not drop to the depths of evil but that what looks bad is just something I do not understand--how wrong Petras has proven that I was. On page 86, Petras solves one of the most puzzling events of this murderous assault on Iraq and that was the looting of Baghdad's national archaeological museum. This destruction of one of Western civilization's premier collections of our heritage ranks as a war crime of the highest order and I could not understand how even the incompetant American army could allow it to happen. Now however, after Petras explains what the invasion was about, all the pieces fall into place. I childishly thought that only the Nazi army in Warsaw and the Soviet Union called for the total destruction of the Slavic nation's intellectual and historical infastructure. After reading chapter six, I realize this evil is open to any players and I am ashamed. Poor stupid me; I guess I had better grow up. If you are not afraid, read this book: underline it, take notes about it but most importantly absorb it. It really is that important!

PNAC, PNAC, PNAC

I have been trying to tell a certain Alternet journalist that "Rearming America's Defenses", the PNAC Guide to American Foreign Policy Post 9/11, that was somehow written long before 9/11 and yet has been followed almost to the letter ever since, is not the work of "just another think-tank, no more important than the dozens of others that come and go in Washington".(his words!) Yes, despite other fascinating facts such as how the 9/11 event was eerily foretold, described as being the kind of event that was going to be required to change public opinion from that of one expecting a "peace dividend" in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, how that money was being earmarked as coming out of the military budget. Tell him how this was considered a disaster as far as the arms (aerospace) industry and the prominent Likud-niks you reference, and who saw the military-strategic position Israel had long enjoyed evaporating before their eyes. Tell him that there was little they could do about it in 92-93 when Cheney and Wolfowitz set their ideas to paper, and in a last ditch attempt to save themselves from obscurity aligned themselves with media insiders Kristol and Kagan, form PNAC, and Lo and Behold, hire the rest of the the PNAC wholesale immediately upon Bush's inauguration. Tell him how Cheney's election of himself as VP, the hiring of Rumsfeld, Libby, Wolfowitz, Podhoertz, Armitage, Perle, Feith, etc., etc, was not a mere coincidence....that in fact PNAC = Neocon, and that this is the group whose influence on American policy is possibly greater than that of Congress, the Senate, and The Supreme Court combined. I fear young Holland has offhandedly equated PNAC with a the dozens of other silly 9/11 conspiracy theories that cannot withstand a second of critical analysis. This is not one of them of course. Please help advance his career by dropping him a line...perhaps a note coming from a source with a higher profile (thus to his sort, more credibility) than myself.... a person who remains unknown, yet who does indeed possess the skill you speak of earlier in the article when discussing the ability to pick and choose those media stories that have substance. Thank you. You do the world a great favor with this

Conservative Personality Disorder

This is born out by many aspects of their chosen lifestyles, not the least of which is their tendency towards militant nationalism, fundamentalist religions, or a belief that science is an evil conspiracy, or even such bizarre thoughts as believing in "plots" by homosexuals with "an agenda" that means to turn them (or their kids) gay; primitive fixations on hostile tribes that are is coming to take their land and property. Mexicans are the latest to make that list of factual perversions even though a little reading would reveal that this list used to include their own ancestors at some point. But no, they're coming to get them and they're spreading leprosy too (see Lou Dobbs). Indeed, intellect seems so unnatural to these people that they even fail to see an association between the reason they themselves are now poorer and the yet somehow the wealthy simultaneously became wealthier. Such logic requires only a minumum of math skills, but intellect is intellect, and these people react to their gut instincts. Thus it is much easier for them to simply go with their instincts and the guy on TV who tells them they are in danger from people whose lives are so desperate that they risk death for pennies...people with even less power than their own pathetically primitive, reactionary minds have been able to accumulate, despite being born with advantages most of the worlds people never had. To put it more bluntly, the right-wing are throwbacks to a time before intellect and wisdom were considered the defining characteristic that elevated man above the rest of the animals. Yet they now "ape" them with a Darwinian approach to how man should behave, using other animals as "proof" that we are meant to act in a "dog-eat-dog" fashion, never stopping to wonder why even dogs share with other dogs. (Hint: Dogs most certainly DO NOT eat other dogs.)

Dean Becker Asks The Obvious

i-CAUGHT :: Question on drug control

The Israel Lobby? An Examination

The Israel Lobby? An Examination. By Akio Bandle The Israel Lobby is arguably the largest elephant in Washington. Yet, it happens to be a crucial piece to the American foreign policy puzzle. Academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt explore this paradox in their working paper, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy”. Based on their Realist school-of -thought, the professors argue that our partnership with Israel is strategically pointless, if not detrimental to our national interests. Despite this, we channel billions of dollars in aid to Israel, and unflinchingly support their policies as it continues to hurt our image in the Middle East. The professors conclude that our strong alliance with Israel is due to the Lobby’s immense influence over our foreign policy. Likewise, the Israel Lobby is able to suppress voices of opposition in the realm of government, mainstream media, and academia. Stifling the fora has enabled the Lobby to operate virtually unknown beyond the political landscape. Mearsheimer and Walt define the Israel Lobby as a “loose coalition of individuals and organizations who actively work to shape U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction.” They highlight the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in particular, as the most clear cut case of the Lobby’s power. The Israel Lobby’s tour de force presence on Capitol Hill and the White House has caused a power shift more favorable to Israel’s interests. In turn, our stringent pro-Israel disposition has enraged the Arab world, fueling terrorism and sabotaging hopes for peace in the Middle East.

ATF DOD WACO RUBY RIDGE OKC OKLAHOMA CITY MILITIA GUN HANDGUN MILGOV ASSAULT RIFLE TERRORISM BOMB DRUG KORESH PROMIS MOSSAD NASA MI5 ONI CID AK47 M16 C4 MALCOLM X REVOLUTION CHEROKEE HILLARY BILL CLINTON GORE GEORGE BUSH WACKENHUT TERRORIST.

Right-Wing Deception of Their Own Kind

I read the MySpace article and note the same lack of perspective used by the media outlets you are claiming to watch over.

For instance, the claim by AG Blumenthal that the number of offenders has risen "exponentially" is factually incorrect. Approximately 300% is far short of a tenfold rise nevertheless a 9000-fold rise, which is the actual meaning of "exponential". One need only look at the root "exponent" to realize how drastically overstated the number is. And what would one expect from an AG looking to advance his career? Yet the media keeps asking questions of people they know will respond with sensational headlines.

How sensational? Out of 180 million profiles, only 29,000 are sexual offenders. If that was a statistic that applied to the general population...the people living next door to you and me, America would have the lowest number of sexual predators in the world. Look it up. Or does MediaChannel Matters have an agenda that isn't concerned so much with truth, but with protecting right-wing darlings of the Scaife-Ailes-Regnery ilk, peaple whose lies are being posted on MediaMatters? I think the attempt to intercept it's traffic by using a similar name tells the whole story.

Scaife! Give it up Old Man. We are Legion. And We Are Coming For YOU!

Your dollars are now as useless as PNAC's lies.

Truth, Fiction and Lou

Truth, Fiction and Lou Dobbs - New York Times

Take Iraq. Please!: An Economist’s Case Against an Interventionist Foreign Policy

An Economist’s Case Against an Interventionist Foreign Policy David R. Henderson November 14, 2005 I’ve been an economist over half my life. The more I’ve learned, the more I’ve seen what a powerful insight economist Ludwig von Mises had over 60 years ago when he pointed out that virtually every government intervention leads to unintended consequences that then lead to further interventions. So, for example, Nixon’s 1973 price controls on gasoline caused us to waste hundreds of millions of dollars in time lining up for gas. That led the U.S. government to dictate the fuel economy of cars. The fuel economy laws caused auto companies to make lighter cars, causing a few extra thousand deaths a year. (For more on this, see Chapter 2 of my book The Joy of Freedom: An Economist’s Odyssey.) The gasoline lines also caused people to be more sympathetic to intervening in the Middle East. In foreign policy also, when government intervenes, it creates problems that it tries to solve by intervening further. Take Iraq… please, as the late Henny Youngman would have said. How did we get to the point where the Bush government invaded Iraq? Let’s take a trip down memory lane. In 1963, the CIA helped a young Iraqi ally who, along with other plotters, overthrew General Adbul Qassim. You may have heard of this young Iraqi ally; he’s been in the news lately. His name is Saddam Hussein. Five years later, the CIA backed another coup that made Hussein deputy to the new military ruler. Then, in 1979, Hussein took his turn as dictator. Hussein proceeded to wage a long and costly war on Iran. Although many people, correctly, point to this war as evidence of Hussein’s evil, they rarely mention one highly relevant fact: the Reagan administration supported this invasion with billions of dollars in export credits and with satellite intelligence. Saddam Hussein was evil for initiating and fighting that war. How, then, should we evaluate the U.S. government officials who actively supported him? But my main purpose here is not to question the morality of war. Rather, it is to point out how one intervention leads to another. The U.S. government supported a man who eventually took over Iraq’s government and who later became, in the eyes of the U.S. government, the enemy. The U.S. government’s interventions of the 1960s led, indirectly but inexorably, to its current intervention. Why did the U.S. government support Saddam Hussein in his war on Iran? Because Iran had become an enemy of the U.S. government after Khomeini took over and after the Iranians had taken Americans in the U.S. embassy hostage. One reason many Iranians hated the U.S. government was that the CIA, with Kermit Roosevelt and Norman Schwarzkopf Sr. leading the charge, had deposed the democratically elected premier, Mohammed Mossadegh, in 1953 and reinstalled the shah of Iran. The shah created a secret terrorist police force, SAVAK, that tortured its own citizens and imprisoned political opponents. The CIA helped train SAVAK. On domestic policy, the shah undertook a highly inflationary monetary policy that caused the value of the Iranian currency to plummet. Inflation, torture. Funny how that pisses people off. Interestingly, when James Woolsey, former director of intelligence for the Clinton administration’s CIA, spoke at the Naval Postgraduate School in August 2003, he addressed the 1953 uprising in response to a question from me. During his speech, Woolsey had stated that the war with militant Islam had begun in November 1979 when some Iranians took over the U.S. embassy. I asked him whether he didn’t think it might have begun in 1953, when the CIA helped depose Mossadegh. Laughing, Woolsey replied that, as Winston Churchill had said, when it came to the Middle East, the Americans, after doing many wrong things, would always end up doing the right thing. In other words, Woolsey seemed to admit CIA complicity, but dismissed the idea that this mattered because the U.S., at some point, (he didn’t specify when) had gotten it right. But Woolsey’s answer evades the issue: did the U.S. government’s 1953 actions have bad unintended consequences? Although Reagan did the right thing by ending the last vestiges of Nixon’s price controls on oil, we are stuck with many of the regulations that the price controls on oil led to. Similarly, the bad consequences of the U.S. government’s intervention in 1953 have been horrendous and cannot be laughingly dismissed. Or take the unintended consequences of U.S. government intervention in Afghanistan. Although the U.S. government now fiercely opposes the radical Muslims who, until 2001, ran the Afghan government, it helped put them in that position in the first place. Zbigniew Brzezinski was the national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter – you remember Jimmy Carter, that wonderful man who has done so much for world peace. Brzezinski bragged (in an interview in Nouvelle Observateur) about the fact that, in 1979, he persuaded Carter to destabilize Afghanistan’s pro-Soviet government so that the Soviets would invade. In December 1979, Brzezinski got his Christmas wish: the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. Then, the CIA proceeded to recruit radical Muslims to fight the Soviets. One other person who helped fund these Muslims was named Osama bin Laden. Incidentally, since Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration has been trying like mad to find a link between Osama and Saddam. The link is hidden in plain sight: in the 1980s, both were allies of the U.S. government. SlashMySearch Search N Earn

The American Coup Plot

LAST UPDATED: JUNE 2005 Empire builders: Neoconservatives and their blueprint for US power Key figures Key Figures To the left are some of neoconservatism's most influential leaders. Click on a person to learn about his background. Irving Kristol Irving Kristol Widely referred to as the "godfather" of neoconservatism, Mr. Kristol was part of the "New York Intellectuals," a group of critics mainly of Eastern European Jewish descent. In the late 1930s, he studied at City College of New York where he became a Trotskyist. From 1947 to 1952, he was the managing editor of Commentary magazine, later called the "neocon bible." By the late 1960s, Kristol had shifted from left to right on the political spectrum, due partly to what he considered excesses and anti-Americanism among liberals. Kristol built the intellectual framework of neoconservatism, founding and editing journals such as The Public Interest and The National Interest. Kristol is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of numerous books, including "Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea." He is the father of Weekly Standard editor and oft-quoted neoconservative William Kristol. Norman Podhoretz Norman Podhoretz Considered one of neoconservatism's founding fathers, Mr. Podhoretz studies, writes, and speaks on social, cultural, and international matters. From 1990 to 1995, he worked as editor-in-chief of Commentary magazine, a neoconservative journal published by the American Jewish Committee. Podhoretz advocated liberal political views earlier in life, but broke ranks in the early 1970s. He became part of the Coalition for a Democratic Majority founded in 1973 by Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson and other intervention-oriented Democrats. Podhoretz has written nine books, including "Breaking Ranks" (1979), in which he argues that Israel's survival is crucial to US military strategy. He is married to like-minded social critic Midge Decter. They helped establish the Committee on the Present Danger in the late 1970s and the Committee for the Free World in the early 1980s. Podhoretz' son, John, is a New York Post columnist. Paul Wolfowitz Paul Wolfowitz After serving as deputy secretary of defense for three years, Mr. Wolfowitz, a key architect of the Iraq war, was chosen in March 2005 by President Bush to be president of the World Bank. From 1989 to 1993, Wolfowitz served as under secretary of defense for policy in charge of a 700-person team that had major responsibilies for the reshaping of military strategy and policy at the end of the cold war. In this capacity Wolfowitz co-wrote with Lewis "Scooter" Libby the 1992 draft Defense Planning Guidance, which called for US military dominance over Eurasia and preemptive strikes against countries suspected of developing weapons of mass destruction. After being leaked to the media, the draft proved so shocking that it had to be substantially rewritten. After 9/11, many of the principles in that draft became key points in the 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States, an annual report. During the 1991 Gulf War, Wolfowitz advocated extending the war's aim to include toppling Saddam Hussein's regime. Richard Perle Richard Perle Famously nicknamed the "Prince of Darkness" for his hardline stance on national security issues, Mr. Perle is one of the most high-profile neoconservatives. He resigned in March 2003 as chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board after being criticized for conflicts of interest. From 1981 to 1987 he was assistant secretary of defense for international security policy. Perle is a chief architect of the "creative destruction" agenda to reshape the Middle East, starting with the invasion of Iraq. He outlined parts of this agenda in a key 1996 report for Israel's right-wing Likud Party called "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm." Perle helped establish two think tanks: The Center for Security Policy and The Jewish Institute for National Security. He is also a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, an adviser for the counter-terrorist think tank Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and a director of the Jerusalem Post. Douglas Feith Douglas Feith The defense department announced in January 2005 that Mr. Feith will resign this summer as undersecretary of defense for policy, the Pentagon's No. 3 civilian position, which he has held since being appointed by President Bush in July 2001. Feith also served in the Reagan administration as deputy assistant secretary of defense for negotiations policy. Prior to that, he served as special counsel to Richard Perle. Before his service at the Pentagon, Feith worked as a Middle East specialist for the National Security Council in 1981-82. Feith is well-known for his support of Israel's right-wing Likud Party. In 1997, Feith was honored along with his father Dalck Feith, who was active in a Zionist youth movement in his native Poland, for their "service to Israel and the Jewish people" by pro-Likud Zionist Organization of America at its 100th anniversary banquet. In 1992, he was vice president of the advisory board of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. Mr. Feith is a former chairman and currently a director of the Center for Security Policy. Lewis scooter libby Lewis "Scooter" Libby Mr. Libby is currently chief of staff and national security advisor for Vice President Dick Cheney. He's served in a wide variety of posts. In the first Bush administration, Mr. Libby served in the Department of Principal Deputy Under Secretary (Strategy and Resources), and, later, as Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. Libby was a founding member of the Project for the New American Century. He joined Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol, Robert Kagan, and others in writing its 2000 report entitled, "Rebuilding America's Defenses - Strategy, Forces, and Resources for a New Century." Libby co-authored the once-shocking draft of the 'Defense Planning Guidance' with Mr. Wolfowitz for then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney in 1992. Libby serves on the advisory board of the Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies of the RAND Corporation. John Bolton John Bolton In February 2005, Mr. Bolton was nominated US ambassador to the UN by President Bush. If confirmed, he would move to this position from the Department of State where he was Under Secretary for Arms Control, the top US non-proliferation official. Prior to this appointment, Bolton was senior vice president of the neoconservative think tank American Enterprise Institute. He also held a variety of positions in both the George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan administrations. Bolton has often made claims not fully supported by the intelligence community. In a controversial May 2002 speech entitled, "Beyond the Axis of Evil," Bolton fingered Libya, Syria, and Cuba as "other rogue states intent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction." In July 2003, the CIA and other agencies reportedly objected strongly to claims Bolton made in a draft assessment about the progress Syria has made in its weapons programs. Elliott Abrams Elliott Abrams In February of 2005 Elliott Abrams was appointed deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for global democracy strategy. From December 2002 to February 2005, Mr. Abrams served as special assistant to the president and senior director for Near East and North African affairs. Abrams began his political career by taking a job with the Democratic Senator Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson. He held a variety of State Department posts in the Reagan administration. He was a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute from 1990 to the 1996 before becoming president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, which "affirms the political relevance of the great Western ethical imperatives." Abrams also served as chairman of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. In 1991, Abrams pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress about the Iran-Contra affair. President George H. W. Bush pardoned him in 1992. In 1980, he married Rachel Decter, daughter of neocon veterans Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter. Robert Kagan Robert Kagan Mr. Kagan writes extensively on US strategy and diplomacy. Kagan and fellow neoconservative William Kristol co-founded the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) in 1997. Kagan signed the famous 1998 PNAC letter sent to President Clinton urging regime change in Iraq. After working as principal speechwriter to Secretary of State George P. Shultz from 1984-1985, he was hired by Elliott Abrams to work as deputy for policy in the State Department's Bureau of Inter-American Affairs. He is a senior associate at the Carnegie endowment for International Peace (CEIP). He is also an international affairs columnist for The Washington Post, and contributing editor at The New Republic and The Weekly Standard. He wrote the bestseller "Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order." Kagan's wife, Victoria Nuland, was chosen by Vice President Dick Cheney as his deputy national security adviser. Michael Ledeen Michael Ledeen Seen by many as one of the most radical neoconservatives, Mr. Ledeen is said to frequently advise George W. Bush's top adviser Karl Rove on foreign policy matters. He is one of the strongest voices calling for regime change in Iran. In 2001, Ledeen co-founded the Coalition for Democracy in Iran. He served as Secretary of State Alexander Haig's adviser during the Reagan administration. Ledeen is resident scholar in the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute, where he works closely with Richard Perle. he is also a member of the Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs' advisory board and one of its founding organizers. He was Rome correspondent for the New Republic magazine from 1975-1977, and founding editor of the Washington Quarterly. Ledeen also wrote "The War Against the Terror Masters," which advocates regime change in Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. William Kristol William Kristol Son of "godfather" of neoconservatism Irving Kristol, Bill Kristol is currently chairman of the Project for a New American Century, which he co-founded with leading neoconservative writer Robert Kagan. He is also editor of the influential Weekly Standard. Like other neoconservatives Frank Gaffney Jr. and Elliott Abrams, Kristol worked for hawkish Democratic Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson. But by 1976, he became a Republican. he served as chief of staff to Education Secretary William Bennett during the Reagan administration and chief of staff to former Vice President Dan Quayle during the George H. W. Bush presidency. Kristol continuously called for Saddam Hussein's ouster since the 1991 Gulf War. With the like-minded Lawrence Kaplan, Kristol co-wrote "The War Over Iraq: Saddam's Tyranny and America's Mission." He is on the board of advisers of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, established as a counterterrorist think tank after 9/11. Frank Gaffney Jr. Frank Gaffney Jr. Mr. Gaffney is the founder, president, and CEO of the influential Washington think tank Center for Security Policy, whose mission is "to promote world peace through American strength." In 1987, President Reagan nominated Gaffney to be assistant secretary of defense for international security policy. he earlier served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy under then-Assistant Secretary Richard Perle. In the late 1970s, Gaffney served as a defense and foreign policy adviser to Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson. He is columnist for the Washington Times and a contributor to Defense News and Investor's Business Daily. He is a contributing editor to National Review Online, WolrdNetDaily.com and JewishWorldReview.com. Gaffney is also one of 25 mostly neoconservative co-signers of the Project for a New American Century's Statement of Principles. Neocon 101 Don't know much about neoconservatism? Learn basic concepts. Key figures Who are these guys? Learn the path to power for leading neocon lights. Interactive quiz Are you a "neocon"? Expert Q&A Two leading US foreign policy thinkers discuss the neocon movement. Max BootMax Boot How much power do neoconservatives really have? Walter Russell MeadWalter Russell Mead Which leaders in US history would be neoconservatives today? Birth of a superpower Timeline of key events in the history of US foreign policy. In their own words Remarks from leading figures. Spheres of influence Neocon think tanks, documents, and periodicals.

DynCorp has big role, little oversight in war efforts

Contractor with Texas ties operates with secrecy, arouses suspicion By TOD ROBBERSON The Dallas Morning News First of two parts. DynCorp International runs its operational hub from a dark glass building bearing another firm's logo. The office complex, on the outskirts of Irving, gives no indication of the huge footprint the military services company is leaving around the world. Using billions of taxpayer dollars, DynCorp is quietly doing the U.S. government's work in Iraq, Afghanistan and other world hot spots. Its paramilitary forces can kill or be killed in combat, but there's little public accounting of what DynCorp does or whether tax dollars are being well spent. cont....

Neocons 101: Christian Science Monitor

Special: Empire Builders | Christian Science Monitor

Neocon 101 Some basic questions answered. What do neoconservatives believe? "Neocons" believe that the United States should not be ashamed to use its unrivaled power – forcefully if necessary – to promote its values around the world. Some even speak of the need to cultivate a US empire. Neoconservatives believe modern threats facing the US can no longer be reliably contained and therefore must be prevented, sometimes through preemptive military action. Most neocons believe that the US has allowed dangers to gather by not spending enough on defense and not confronting threats aggressively enough. One such threat, they contend, was Saddam Hussein and his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. Since the 1991 Gulf War, neocons relentlessly advocated Mr. Hussein's ouster. Most neocons share unwavering support for Israel, which they see as crucial to US military sufficiency in a volatile region. They also see Israel as a key outpost of democracy in a region ruled by despots. Believing that authoritarianism and theocracy have allowed anti-Americanism to flourish in the Middle East, neocons advocate the democratic transformation of the region, starting with Iraq. They also believe the US is unnecessarily hampered by multilateral institutions, which they do not trust to effectively neutralize threats to global security. What are the roots of neoconservative beliefs? The original neocons were a small group of mostly Jewish liberal intellectuals who, in the 1960s and 70s, grew disenchanted with what they saw as the American left's social excesses and reluctance to spend adequately on defense. Many of these neocons worked in the 1970s for Democratic Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a staunch anti-communist. By the 1980s, most neocons had become Republicans, finding in President Ronald Reagan an avenue for their aggressive approach of confronting the Soviet Union with bold rhetoric and steep hikes in military spending. After the Soviet Union's fall, the neocons decried what they saw as American complacency. In the 1990s, they warned of the dangers of reducing both America's defense spending and its role in the world. Unlike their predecessors, most younger neocons never experienced being left of center. They've always been "Reagan" Republicans. What is the difference between a neoconservative and a conservative? Liberals first applied the "neo" prefix to their comrades who broke ranks to become more conservative in the 1960s and 70s. The defectors remained more liberal on some domestic policy issues. But foreign policy stands have always defined neoconservatism. Where other conservatives favored détente and containment of the Soviet Union, neocons pushed direct confrontation, which became their raison d'etre during the 1970s and 80s. Today, both conservatives and neocons favor a robust US military. But most conservatives express greater reservations about military intervention and so-called nation building. Neocons share no such reluctance. The post 9/11-campaigns against regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrate that the neocons are not afraid to force regime change and reshape hostile states in the American image. Neocons believe the US must do to whatever it takes to end state-supported terrorism. For most, this means an aggressive push for democracy in the Middle East. Even after 9/11, many other conservatives, particularly in the isolationist wing, view this as an overzealous dream with nightmarish consequences. How have neoconservatives influenced US foreign policy? Finding a kindred spirit in President Reagan, neocons greatly influenced US foreign policy in the 1980s. But in the 1990s, neocon cries failed to spur much action. Outside of Reaganite think tanks and Israel's right-wing Likud Party, their calls for regime change in Iraq were deemed provocative and extremist by the political mainstream. With a few notable exceptions, such as President Bill Clinton's decision to launch isolated strikes at suspected terrorist targets in Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, their talk of preemptive military action was largely dismissed as overkill. Despite being muted by a president who called for restraint and humility in foreign affairs, neocons used the 1990s to hone their message and craft their blueprint for American power. Their forward thinking and long-time ties to Republican circles helped many neocons win key posts in the Bush administration. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 moved much of the Bush administration closer than ever to neoconservative foreign policy. Only days after 9/11, one of the top neoconservative think tanks in Washington, the Project for a New American Century, wrote an open letter to President Bush calling for regime change in Iraq. Before long, Bush, who campaigned in 2000 against nation building and excessive military intervention overseas, also began calling for regime change in Iraq. In a highly significant nod to neocon influence, Bush chose the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) as the venue for a key February 2003 speech in which he declared that a US victory in Iraq "could begin a new stage for Middle Eastern peace." AEI – the de facto headquarters for neconservative policy – had been calling for democratization of the Arab world for more than a decade. What does a neoconservative dream world look like? Neocons envision a world in which the United States is the unchallenged superpower, immune to threats. They believe that the US has a responsibility to act as a "benevolent global hegemon." In this capacity, the US would maintain an empire of sorts by helping to create democratic, economically liberal governments in place of "failed states" or oppressive regimes they deem threatening to the US or its interests. In the neocon dream world the entire Middle East would be democratized in the belief that this would eliminate a prime breeding ground for terrorists. This approach, they claim, is not only best for the US; it is best for the world. In their view, the world can only achieve peace through strong US leadership backed with credible force, not weak treaties to be disrespected by tyrants. Any regime that is outwardly hostile to the US and could pose a threat would be confronted aggressively, not "appeased" or merely contained. The US military would be reconfigured around the world to allow for greater flexibility and quicker deployment to hot spots in the Middle East, as well as Central and Southeast Asia. The US would spend more on defense, particularly for high-tech, precision weaponry that could be used in preemptive strikes. It would work through multilateral institutions such as the United Nations when possible, but must never be constrained from acting in its best interests whenever necessary.

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PNAC Makes US Foriegn Policy Decisions

Analysis

"Afghanistan: The War Without End" (within a war without end)

"Regime Change" Ambitions in Iran

"The Believer": In-depth look at Paul Wolfowitz "defending his war"

1958-1991, Iraq: A Classic Case of Divide and Conquer

A Debate Over U.S. 'Empire' Builds in Unexpected Circles

An Economist's Case Against an Interventionist Foreign Policy

An Iran Trap?

Analysis: Wolfowitz's 1992 vision as 2002 U.S. Foreign Policy Reality

Article: Conservatives and exiles [begin to consider that they may have to think about having to] desert war campaign

Briefing - The rise of the Washington "neo-cons"

Empire Builders: Neoconservatives and their blueprint for US power

Getting Out of Iraq: Our Strategic Interest

Iraq war to gain US foothold in South Eastern Asia (college paper)

Is Iraq the opening salvo in a war to remake the world?

Is the Neoconservative Moment Over?

Jim Lobe's Neo-Con Focus Area from IPS

Neoconservatism Made Kristol Clear

Op-Ed: From Republic to Empire

Pay no attention to the neocon behind the curtain

Pentagon Office Home to Neo-Con Network

PNAC College Paper

PNAC on NPR's "Fresh Air"

Puppet Show: Will Ahmed Chalabi Govern Post-War Iraq?

Reference Materials for "Debating Empire"

Rep. Ron Paul's Speech to Congress: "Neo-conned"

Richard Perle's connections

The American Conservative: The Weekly Standard’s War

The Bush Foreign Policy Team's Shared Vision

The Conservative Split I: An Introduction to Neoconservatism

The Conservative Split III: A Call to Action

The Hawks Loudly Express Their Second Thoughts

The Neo-Conservative Ascendancy in the Bush Administration

The New Al Qaeda: More Dangerous than the Old Version

This war is brought to you by...

William Arkin connects the "Syria's next" dots

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The Origins of the Bush Doctrine: February, 1992

The Washington Post

Key Sections of Pentagon Document on Post-Cold-War Strategy Initial Draft (Feb. 18, 1992) 1) Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to general global power.

 2) The U.S. must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests. In non-defense areas, we must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order. We must maintain the mechanism for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.

3) Like the coalition that opposed Iraqi aggression, we should expect future coalitions to be ad hoc assemblies, often not lasting beyond the crisis being confronted, and in many cases carrying only general agreement over the objectives to be accomplished. Nevertheless, the sense that the world order is ultimately backed by the U.S. will be an important stabilizing factor.

4) While the U.S. cannot become the world's policeman, by assuming responsibility for righting every wrong, we will retain the preeminent responsibility for addressing selectively those wrongs which threaten not only our interests, but those of our allies or friends, or which could seriously unsettle international relations.

5) We continue to recognize that collectively the conventional forces of the states formerly comprising the Soviet Union retain the most military potential in all of Eurasia; and we do not dismiss the risks to stability in Europe from a nationalist backlash in Russia or efforts to reincorporate into Russia the newly independent republics of Ukraine, Belarus, and possibly others....We must, however, be mindful that democratic change in Russia is not irreversible, and that despite its current travails, Russia will remain the strongest military power in Eurasia and the only power in the world with the capability of destroying the United States.

6) In the Middle East and Southwest Asia, our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the region and preserve U.S. and Western access to the region's oil.

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dcphonelist.com

And a special taste treat, one we hope you will use and enjoy. May your search for a GOP hypocrite be rewarded with a return to sanity for the US and the millions yet to die at the hands of a PNAC in power. dcphonelist.com

And Here I Thought This Was Obvious.....

Economists question dominance of free-market ideas - International Herald Tribune

Economists question dominance of free-market ideas

 By Patricia Cohen Published:
July 11, 2007

For many economists, questioning free-market orthodoxy is akin to expressing a belief in intelligent design at a Darwin convention: Those who doubt the naturally beneficial workings of the market are considered either deluded or crazy. But in recent months, economists have engaged in an impassioned debate over the way their specialty is taught in universities around the United States, and practiced in Washington.

They are questioning the profession's most cherished ideas about not interfering in the economy. "There is much too much ideology," said Alan Blinder, a professor at Princeton and a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Economics, he added, is "often a triumph of theory over fact."

 Blinder helped kindle the discussion by publicly warning in speeches and articles this year that as many as 30 million to 40 million Americans could lose their jobs to lower-paid workers abroad. Just by raising doubts about the unmitigated benefits of free trade, he made headlines and had colleagues rubbing their eyes in astonishment.

cont...

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Conservative O'Reilly Has Violent Femme Nightmare/Fantasy

SPLCenter.org: Fox News Hypes Flimsy Report on Lesbian Gangs

Fox News Hypes Flimsy Report on Lesbian Gangs Southern Poverty Law Center Published on July 3, 2007 A "national underground network" of pink pistol-packing lesbians is terrorizing America. "All across the country," they are raping young girls, attacking heterosexual males at random, and forcibly indoctrinating children as young as 10 into the homosexual lifestyle, according to a shocking June 21 segment on the popular Fox News Channel program, "The O'Reilly Factor." Titled "Violent Lesbian Gangs a Growing Problem," the segment began with host Bill O'Reilly briefly referencing for his roughly 3 million viewers the case of Wayne Buckle, a DVD bootlegger who was attacked by seven lesbians in New York City last August. Deploying swift, broad strokes, O'Reilly painted a graphic picture of lesbian gangs running amok. "In Tennessee, authorities say a lesbian gang called GTO, Gays Taking Over, are involved in raping young girls," he reported. "And in Philadelphia, a lesbian gang called DTO, Dykes Taking Over, are allegedly terrorizing people as well." […]

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PNAC Subverts US Government: Lets Bin Laden Escape

WAYNE MADSEN REPORT - Wayne Madsen Report

U.S. Aborted Raid on al-Qaida in 2005 By MARK MAZZETTI, The New York Times Posted: 2007-07-08 14:10:23 Filed Under: World WASHINGTON (July 8) - A secret military operation in early 2005 to capture senior members of Al Qaeda in Pakistan's tribal areas was aborted at the last minute after top Bush administration officials decided it was too risky and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan, according to intelligence and military officials. The target was a meeting of Qaeda leaders that intelligence officials thought included Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy and the man believed to run the terrorist group’s operations. But the mission was called off after Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, rejected an 11th-hour appeal by Porter J. Goss, then the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, officials said. Members of a Navy Seals unit in parachute gear had already boarded C-130 cargo planes in Afghanistan when the mission was canceled, said a former senior intelligence official involved in the planning. Mr. Rumsfeld decided that the operation, which had ballooned from a small number of military personnel and C.I.A. operatives to several hundred, was cumbersome and put too many American lives at risk, the current and former officials said. He was also concerned that it could cause a rift with Pakistan, an often reluctant ally that has barred the American military from operating in its tribal areas, the officials said. The decision to halt the planned "snatch and grab" operation frustrated some top intelligence officials and members of the military’s secret Special Operations units, who say the United States missed a significant opportunity to try to capture senior members of Al Qaeda. Their frustration has only grown over the past two years, they said, as Al Qaeda has improved its abilities to plan global attacks and build new training compounds in Pakistan’s tribal areas, which have become virtual havens for the terrorist network. In recent months, the White House has become increasingly irritated with Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, for his inaction on the growing threat of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. About a dozen current and former military and intelligence officials were interviewed for this article, all of whom requested anonymity because the planned 2005 mission remained classified. Spokesmen for the Pentagon, the C.I.A. and the White House declined to comment. It is unclear whether President Bush was informed about the planned operation. Feed The New York Times * Bush to Declare Gains in Iraq on Some Fronts * A Nuclear Ruse Uncovers Holes in U.S. Security * Patchwork City: Road to New Life After Katrina Is... More Stories The officials acknowledge that they are not certain that Mr. Zawahri attended the 2005 meeting in North Waziristan, a mountainous province just miles from the Afghan border. But they said that the United States had communications intercepts that tipped them off to the meeting, and that intelligence officials had unusually high confidence that Mr. Zawahri was there. Months later, in early May 2005, the C.I.A. launched a missile from a remotely piloted Predator drone, killing Haitham al-Yemeni, a senior Qaeda figure whom the C.I.A. had tracked since the meeting. It has long been known that C.I.A. operatives conduct counterterrorism missions in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Details of the aborted 2005 operation provide a glimpse into the Bush administration’s internal negotiations over whether to take unilateral military action in Pakistan, where General Musharraf’s fragile government is under pressure from dissidents who object to any cooperation with the United States. Pentagon officials familiar with covert operations said that planners had to consider the political and human risks of undertaking a military campaign in a sovereign country, even in an area like Pakistan’s tribal lands, where the government has only tenuous control. Even with its shortcomings, Pakistan has been a vital American ally since the Sept. 11 attacks, and the militaries of the two countries have close ties. The Pentagon officials said tension was inherent in any decision to approve such a mission: a smaller military footprint allows a better chance of a mission going undetected, but it also exposes the units to greater risk of being killed or captured. Officials said one reason Mr. Rumsfeld called off the 2005 operation was that the number of troops involved in the mission had grown to several hundred, including Army Rangers, members of the Navy Seals and C.I.A. operatives, and he determined that the United States could no longer carry out the mission without General Musharraf’s permission. It is unlikely that the Pakistani president would have approved an operation of that size, officials said. Some outside experts said American counterterrorism operations had been hamstrung because of concerns about General Musharraf’s shaky government. "The reluctance to take risk or jeopardize our political relationship with Musharraf may well account for the fact that five and half years after 9/11 we are still trying to run bin Laden and Zawahri to ground," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University. Those political considerations have created resentment among some members of the military’s Special Operations forces. "The Special Operations guys are tearing their hair out at the highest levels," said a former Bush administration official with close ties to those troops. While they have not received good intelligence on the whereabouts of top Qaeda members recently, he said, they say they believe they have sometimes had useful information on lower-level figures. "There is a degree of frustration that is off the charts, because they are looking at targets on a daily basis and can’t move against them," he said. In early 2005, after learning about the Qaeda meeting, the military developed a plan for a small Navy Seals unit to parachute into Pakistan to carry out a quick operation, former officials said. But as the operation moved up the military chain of command, officials said, various planners bulked up the force’s size to provide security for the Special Operations forces. "The whole thing turned into the invasion of Pakistan," said the former senior intelligence official involved in the planning. Still, he said he thought the mission was worth the risk. "We were frustrated because we wanted to take a shot," he said. Several former officials interviewed said the operation was not the only occasion since the Sept. 11 attacks that plans were developed to use a large American military force in Pakistan. It is unclear whether any of those missions have been executed. Some of the military and intelligence officials familiar with the 2005 events say it showed a rift between operators in the field and a military bureaucracy that has still not effectively adapted to hunt for global terrorists, moving too cautiously to use Special Operations troops against terrorist targets. That criticism has echoes of the risk aversion that the officials said pervaded efforts against Al Qaeda during the Clinton administration, when missions to use American troops to capture or kill Mr. bin Laden in Afghanistan were never executed because they were considered too perilous, risked killing civilians or were based on inadequate intelligence. Rather than sending in ground troops, the Clinton White House instead chose to fire cruise missiles in what became failed attempts to kill Mr. bin Laden and his deputies - a tactic Mr. Bush criticized shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. Since then, the C.I.A. has launched missiles from Predator aircraft in the tribal areas several times, with varying degrees of success. Intelligence officials say they believe that in January 2006, an airstrike narrowly missed killing Mr. Zawahri, who hours earlier had attended a dinner in Damadola, a Pakistani village. General Musharraf cast his lot with the Bush administration in the hunt for Al Qaeda after the 2001 attacks, and he has periodically ordered Pakistan's military to conduct counterterrorism missions in the tribal areas, provoking fierce resistance there. But in recent months he has pulled back, prompting Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to issue stern warnings in private that he risked losing American aid if he did not step up efforts against Al Qaeda, senior administration officials have said. Officials said that mid-2005 was a period when they were gathering good intelligence about Al Qaeda’s leaders in Pakistan’s tribal areas. By the next year, however, the White House had become frustrated by the lack of progress in the hunt for Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahri. In early 2006, President Bush ordered a "surge" of dozens of C.I.A. agents to Pakistan, hoping that an influx of intelligence operatives would lead to better information, officials said. But that has brought the United States no closer to locating Al Qaeda's top two leaders. The latest message from them came this week, in a new tape in which Mr. Zawahri urged Iraqis and Muslims around the world to show more support for Islamist insurgents in Iraq. In his recently published memoir, George J. Tenet, the former C.I.A. director, said the intelligence about Mr. bin Laden’s whereabouts during the Clinton years was similarly sparse. The information was usually only at the "50-60% confidence level," he wrote, not sufficient to justify American military action. "As much as we all wanted Bin Ladin dead, the use of force by a superpower requires information, discipline, and time," Mr. Tenet wrote. "We rarely had the information in sufficient quantities or the time to evaluate and act on it."

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Al Qaeda -- the Database

The Terrorists? PNAC

"The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaida. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the 'devil' only in order to drive the 'TV watcher' to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the US and the lobbyists for the US war on terrorism are only interested in making money."

In yet another example of what happens to those who challenge the system, in December 2001, Maj. Pierre-Henri Bunel was convicted by a secret French military court of passing classified documents that identified potential NATO bombing targets in Serbia to a Serbian agent during the Kosovo war in 1998. Bunel's case was transferred from a civilian court to keep the details of the case classified. Bunel's character witnesses and psychologists notwithstanding, the system "got him" for telling the truth about Al Qaeda and who has actually been behind the terrorist attacks commonly blamed on that group. It is noteworthy that that Yugoslav government, the government with whom Bunel was asserted by the French government to have shared information, claimed that Albanian and Bosnian guerrillas in the Balkans were being backed by elements of "Al Qaeda." We now know that these guerrillas were being backed by money provided by the Bosnian Defense Fund, an entity established as a special fund at Bush-influenced Riggs Bank and directed by Richard Perle and Douglas Feith.

French officer Maj. Pierre-Henri Bunel, who knew the truth about "Al Qaeda" -- Another target of the neo-cons

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Elders and Quixote: Brothers?

Townhall.com::Moore's "Sicko" Is Sickening ::By Larry Elder

Elders and Quixote: Brothers? I read with a combination of amusement and contempt how Elder creates a communist bogeyman from which he can misrepresent socialized medicine. But there's a reason why every other nation with an economy healthy enough to do it has long ago done what is the obvious and decent thing to do. As a Canadian with a strong interest in political and economic world affairs, it is quite apparent that the difference between policies adopted by the US and other developed nations is that none of the others were subjected to level of anti-socialist propaganda the US used on it's citizenry. Perhaps they felt it necessary to keep such extremely high tax revenues flowing to the Pentagon without a lot of questions. Whatever the reason, it went on for so long that they actually came to believe their own BS! Ironically, Elders is simply allowing a different monopoly - Big Pharm- rather than one you have at least some control over - your own government, to dictate prices to you. Why shouldn't the government be allowed to send lawyers to negotiate the price that it is willing to pay for the bulk orders they would all be tripping over themselves to fill. These bulk orders are a huge prize that the pharmaceuticals will fill at reduced prices.... as Sam Walton knows and used to great effect. Yet here's Elders telling you you're lucky to be offered Third World service at First World prices. Heh! I'm sure Stalin is laughing the last laugh somewhere, watching how the exaggerated claims about the nature of socialism now has you cutting off your own nose to spite his long-dead face. Elders is part of the media Don Quixote's being paid to create giants. Unfortunately their crusade is very damaging to those who can't afford the luxury of 'tilting at windmills'.

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Media Matters - Olbermann named Beck "Worst Person" for comparing Gore to Hitler

Media Matters - Olbermann named Beck "Worst Person" for comparing Gore to Hitler Hilarious! Why they would trash the reputatiuon they had as the sane alternative to FOX is beyond me. But they've surely done it with Nancy Grace and Glen Beck, back to back. Ewwwff! I just had the most terrible vision go through my mind! Nacy Grace and Glen Beck, doing it? Arghhh......

Gmail - Limbaugh said Virginia Tech shooter "had to be a liberal"

Gmail - Limbaugh said Virginia Tech shooter "had to be a liberal"

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Bush sets Possada Carriles free: A brutal reply from Castro

Bush sets Possada Carriles free: A brutal reply: "Bush sets Possada Carriles free: A brutal reply Bush ignored the criminal and terrorist nature of the defendant by President Fidel Castro Ruz George W. Bush is undoubtedly the most genuine representative of a system of terror forced on the world by the technological, economic and political superiority of the most powerful country known to this planet. For this reason, we share the tragedy of the American people and their ethical values. The instructions for the verdict issued by Judge Kathleen Cardone, of the El Paso Federal Court last Friday, granting Luis Posada Carriles freedom on bail, could only have come from the White House. It was President Bush himself who ignored at all times the criminal and terrorist nature of the defendant who was protected with a simple accusation of immigration violation leveled at him. The reply is brutal. The government of the United States and its most representative institutions had already decided to release the monster." cont.....

I Fucked Ann Coulter in the Ass, हार्ड

I Fucked Ann Coulter in the Ass, Hard: "I Fucked Ann Coulter in the Ass, Hard I thought this was too hilarious not to share with the other bloggers who have begun the road back from America's latest hysterical over-reaction. Terrorism, like child-molestation, is a terrible thing. But just as many of the accusations made by these preschoolers soon became apparent as having been coaxed and coerced from the children due to their obviously outlandish, often impossible nature (sharks being used in a Satanic ritual in in a small Prairie town?!!??)The wing-nuts and law & order types just kept believing it because it fit with the paranoia driven worldview of the conservative. "There's someone out to get us, and they must be found out and jailed, attacked, castigated and marginalized." Thus the rush to point fingers everywhere and keep throwing them in jail, despite the minimal or even made up evidence, despite the ruined lives caused by known liars, and until recently, a culture caught up in a wave of hysteria based on the poorest evidence ever used in a 20th century courthouse. OR that was at least until the kids started to accuse the officers (and in one case, the mayor) conducting the investigation itself before even the right had to admit that these very young kids had been manipulated by overzealous cops, self-described "therapists" who were in fact the same religious kooks who are now attempting to terrorize us all into believing Satan is everywhere. Only then did the majority of the population cause the government to change course and show who the true "mind"-rapists were. And since many of these kids still believe as adults that they were raped, then their rapists are the irresponsible reporters, cops, prosecutors and other adult citizens who perpetuated this national terror. Now here we are with a war on Muslims, one that to many will seem unrelated. But in fact there are so many similarities that it represents a pattern deserving of a deeper look by socialist, legislators, and government commissions into the phenomenon. If the WTC is replaced with the McMartin PreSchool accusations as a starter or catalyst, then add to that a President surrounded by men who needed (they thought) some way to avoid paying out a "Peace Dividend" once the Cold War had been won and the massive defense industry was now being seen as excessive, even superfluous, then you have a situation nearly identical in the actors and the way in which the hysteria was promoted. The majority of the harm done hasn't been by a molester or a terrorist. America's Constitution was shredded by Bush and the media that merely go along with it for the lurid headlines. Where the preschool hysteria was driven by fundamentalist Christians, so too the terror after the 9/11 even has all come from Southern Baptists and AIPAC. local DA's had a political interest then, as do the neocons now, with financial interests driving the Cheneys and Big Oil. But it's long overdue for the spell woven by terror-profiteers to end this time around. The people keeping it alive...people like Ann Coulter for instance, need to be broken and pushed into a corner and left to die the embarrassing death that became of the whole Satanic Preschool story. Just as hundreds of thousands of kids were thought to have been murdered during that "crisis", so too can a rational examination of the numbers involved with Al Queda show that the leading terrorists then, as now, are the conservatives whose paranoid fits keep resulting in various "wars" that are actually led against Americans themselves. And with that, I give you "I Fucked Ann Coulter In The Ass, Hard!" The Farmer’s Market on Fairfax and 3rd is a Los Angeles landmark, attracting tourists and everyday Angelinos alike, as well as many famous faces. Among the celebrities I have seen there are Muhammad Ali, Terri Garr, Tyra Banks, Laura Linney, Keenan Ivory Wayans, the guitarist for The Cult, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, and Weird Al Yankovic. But Ann Coulter is the only celebrity I’ve ever spotted at Farmer’s Market that I wound up fucking in the ass, hard. It would be fair to observe that my feeling obligated to present the list of celebrities above in roughly Black-White-Black-White order is indicative of my own carefully Liberal sensibilities. And that this sort of conscientiousness is more than a little ridiculous, on examination. But what I notice about myself only on reflection, Ann Coulter seemed to recognize and respond to in an instant, like a puma recognizes an injured giselle. For Ann Coulter is a predator. A predator with a hungry asshole. cont....

Black Self-Mutilation (and no, I don't mean Micheal Jackson)

As progressive Americans continue to wonder how it could be possible for a party that spawned the likes of Jesse Helms, Dick Armey, Eugene McCarthy and dozens of others who receive accolades from cultural lepers of the David Duke,Horowitz, Limbaugh and Coulter ilk, perhaps they would do well to not help them by applyiing PC to Imus, a move that has contributed to the domination of radio with only far-right voices. For progressives, minorities, free-speech advocates, and black civil rights workers have all lost something more important than an already wealthy Don Imus' job now by screaming feelings that may have been hurt. They made it possible for Limbaugh and Elders to finally rid themselves of one of the last voices standing in the way of the rights absolute dominance of radio, a significant tool in the arsenal of cultural opinion makers. Blacks have succeeded in not only handing the rope to the lynch mob, but by helping the far-right take aim on Imus, have slipped the conservative noose over their own necks. It’s this same small-minded culture of victimization that enables a race or ethnicity to deny participation in precisely the same activities that made them victims in the first place. Israel is the perfect example of this, with the Serbs also justifying their crimes on the basis of a military defeat suffered some 500 yrs ago. Now this same sense of victimization has caused the Rutgers team to succeed in removing Imus, a man who is, by comparison to the far more offensive Limbaugh, a progressive saint. Ironically, by removing disagreeable speech…including pole-ack jokes from the airwaves, they have joined the Uncle Toms who have already decided to bend over and take whatever the WASPs slip them, believing that by doing so they have gained admittance to the Rolidex of Corporate America. Meanwhile, Coulter laughs as she goes through her “Index of Insults”, trying to think of a the best way to mock you all, hoping her “useful nappy-headed idiots” theme will be funny enough that she can consider asking even more for her appearances at right-wing hate-festivals.

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Foreign Affairs - Is There Still a Terrorist Threat?: The Myth of the Omnipresent Enemy - John Mueller

Foreign Affairs - Is There Still a Terrorist Threat?: The Myth of the Omnipresent Enemy - John Mueller: "But while keeping such potential dangers in mind, it is worth remembering that the total number of people killed since 9/11 by al Qaeda or al Qaeda­like operatives outside of Afghanistan and Iraq is not much higher than the number who drown in bathtubs in the United States in a single year, and that the lifetime chance of an American being killed by international terrorism is about one in 80,000 -- about the same chance of being killed by a comet or a meteor. Even if there were a 9/11-scale attack every three months for the next five years, the likelihood that an individual American would number among the dead would be two hundredths of a percent (or one in 5,000). Although it remains heretical to say so, the evidence so far suggests that fears of the omnipotent terrorist -- reminiscent of those inspired by images of the 20-foot-tall Japanese after Pearl Harbor or the 20-foot-tall Communists at various points in the Cold War (particularly after Sputnik) -- may have been overblown, the threat presented within the United States by al Qaeda greatly exaggerated. The massive and expensive homeland security apparatus erected since 9/11 may be persecuting some, spying on many, inconveniencing most, and taxing all to"

Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior - New York Times

Here's a story that hit me like a gift from the intellectual gods! For some time now I have been making attacks on the right-wing as social deviants rather than the social Darwinists they so cynically claim as justification for wealth and class disparities, this despite the strong tendency of these same right-wingers to be anti-Darwinist. This is typical of what I have asserted is a species wide psychiatric disorder; one that was initiated by the vast change in environmental stimuli that has become mankind in only a few thousand short years, as compared to the millions over which morality developed among small groups of blood relatives, with the most distantly related faces being nonetheless so familiar as to be virtual relatives in any case. But the invention of agriculture unleashed massive wealth disparities for the first time ever. Agriculture led to writing and number systems needed to account for the excess in foodstuffs. This all coalesced into a division of the clan into labourers and craftsman, soldiers and smiths, all having special skills and crafts, some obviously being more useful than than others. But man, being thehighly adaptable species it is, naturally uses the proven strategy of variation in approaches to solving any particular dillemma faced by the tribe. In short, social tendencies, sexual attraction by certain members tocettain mebers was seized on by mankind as an adaptive advantage. This selection of varu\iation is so assertive in many animals that even sexual preference has come under the umbrella of social variation. It is obviously a very important tool in the adaption reportiore, as has been shown in "game theory" repeatedly. The more highly evolved primates would act on altruistic motivations rather than the old solitary predator "junk DNA"...genes that either stayed dormant for virtually all of his social evolution, or more likely were sent to the outer ring of the clan gathering place to act as warning to the others upon hearing their screams when attacked by wolves or other predators. But then came agriculture. Now man could express selfishness using hoarding abilities impossible before money and writing/accounting evolved out of neccesity to keep track of the excess. Now traits that brought banishment and death to a person so selfish as to actually let his fellow clan-member starve was suddenly being rewarded with wealth. This wealth triggered another cascade or runaway gene to express itself harmfully in mate-selection processes that were also unprepared for hoarding on such a scale. Here again, hoarding bought power, and power triggered genetic attraction traits previously meqnt to serve a related, but mre reasonable genetic trait looking to improve the likelihood of offspring survival. So where does that leave us? It may be that gene-therapy technology is the answer to the unequal pace between the evolution of social priorities and technology. Certainbly the antiquated "animal-like" predatory and selfish genotype we now call the right wing cannot be allowed to continue running amuk with their pre-socialized approach to the environment. Just the global warming issue alone should more than illustrate my assertion that the urge towards elitism and wealth disparity indicative of right-wing ideologues shows them to be incapable of a simple insight like war in a nuclear age is to be avoided at all costs....and yet their there are acting out animal drives by war-profiteering, territoriality as "nationalist zeal and patriotism" "my god can beat up your god" brinkmanship now being played out on a species-wide level. The resentment that history has repeatedly shown us to be greatly resented by modern socialized mankind. The thinking, non-militaristic, empathic man is obviously the way of species survivability. Just as ethics are not derived from religion, egalitarianism is not derived from Marx. Our natural inclination as a socialized species is the source of Marxism today, not the other way around. Sharing is a primary social attribute that is being abused by the right-wing, a group whose genetic impulse to gather and hunt has become unregulated by the natural environment that once governed it's excess; now the rational and empathic qualities that characterize left-wingers are going to have to assert themselves---perhaps, even probably violently if their is going to be a mankind to evolve back into a genetically synchronized internal/external whole. Finally, it stands as a simple testament to the advanced nature of the left-wing progressive tend to be intelligent, rational and wise, I submit having knowledge of the actual state of decay and now imminent doom resulting from the free-market capitalism the right advances as superior to whomever is gullible enough to listen to their self-serving rhetoric, which may ultimately serve as man's suicide note. Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior - New York Times: "Biologists are allowed an even smaller piece of the action by Jesse Prinz, a philosopher at the University of North Carolina. He believes morality developed after human evolution was finished and that moral sentiments are shaped by culture, not genetics. “It would be a fallacy to assume a single true morality could be identified by what we do instinctively, rather than by what we ought to do,” he said. “One of the principles that might guide a single true morality might be recognition of equal dignity for all human beings, and that seems to be unprecedented in the animal world.” Dr. de Waal does not accept the philosophers’ view that biologists cannot step from “is” to “ought.” “I’m not sure how realistic the distinction is,” he said. “Animals do have ‘oughts.’ If a juvenile is in a fight, the mother must get up and defend her. Or in food sharing, animals do put pressure on each other, which is the first kind of ‘ought’ situation.” Dr. de Waal’s definition of morality is more down to earth than Dr. Prinz’s. Morality, he writes, is “a sense of right and wrong that is born out of groupwide systems of conflict man"