comments

Make sure to go back and read the COMMENTS section of the previous posts, because I have posted replies to some of the comments in that section rather than full-frontal here on the blog.

J

Letter to the Lincoln Ware radio show

In response to the Lincoln Ware show CSPAN broadcast 10/27/04.

Saw you on CSPAN, great show. I wish there were more, um, NON-CONSERVATIVE shows, since I don't really like the idea that yours is LIBERAL per se, but you are obviously not a "dittohead" so, thanks for that. Wish we got you out here in Oregon.

What I'm writing to you about is the aspirin factory that Clinton bombed. A caller on your CSPAN segment said that this aspirin factory was in Iraq, and neither of the hosts disagreed with him. However, that aspirin factory was NOT in Iraq, it was in Sudan. And, the reason why Clinton called the strike is very similar to the apparent reason Bush called for the Iraq war: Clinton had received intelligence that some WMD compounds were being manufactured at that plant. The intelligence turned out to be false, or at least, no conclusive proof that WMDs were being made at that factory could ever be produced.

So the point is, the caller's point seemed to be, "Why are all the liberals griping at Bush for invading Iraq based on WMDs when Clinton obviously attacked an aspirin factory in Iraq for making WMDs?" This question is ridiculous however not only because the aspirin factory was in not in Iraq at all, but rather in Sudan, but also the question is ridiculous because of the difference in scale between Clinton's attack and Bush's.

Now, arguably, the strike against that factory and also Clinton's strikes into Afghanistan (the ones that missed Bin Laden) were not very wise moves since they angered Al-Qaeda and could even be seen as part of the motivating factors for Al Qaeda behind the 9/11 attacks.

I remember a Vietnam war veteran friend of mine watching the news report about Clinton's strikes, back in '99, and the first thing he said was, "Damn I wish Clinton hadn't done that. Doesn't he know they'll retaliate? I have to get on a plane next month, and I don't want to have to worry about another hijacking."

Unfortunately, he was right. Al Qaeda did what they did, whether you view it as retaliation or not, and unfortunately Bush did nothing to stop it. But lets just get the facts straight about the aspirin factory and Clinton. I think the destruction of that factory and many of Clinton's other foreign policies were unwise moves... Whether they were based on faulty intelligence or not.

However, recall Republicans' reactions to those strikes at the time? They called terrorism then a "phantom menace" and tried to explain Clinton's behavior as a violent scapegoat of his anger from the Lewinsky scandal. Then when Bush took office they removed focus from Bin Laden and put it on a missile defense shield.

Clinton was the first President to refer to a "war on terrorism". Remember that. I just don't think he got enough momentum behind it before he left office. And Bush has carried out that war on terrorism in a most despicable and irresponsible way, I feel, but that's another letter.

Thanks,
J. S. Gilbert
Portland, Oregon

pathetic insurgents

Let me say that I am utterly apalled at the actions of whomever kidnapped Margaret Hassan, one of the war in Iraq's biggest opponents and a foreign aid worker operating within Iraq for more than half a decade.

I also opposed the WAY in which the war was started, fought, and how the occupation was totally botched by the Bush admin. However it is clear that what has been done by these kidnappers is abhorrent.

It is easy to say from where I sit in my Oregon USA chair that I condemn the actions of whomever is lashing out against the new order of Iraq. However clearly the invasion has ALREADY happened and it's not going to UN-HAPPEN. What is the point, the purpose, of these stupid and mean acts against innocent people?

I fully condemn the US practice of using heavy artillery and large bombs in heavily populated areas, because it results in many civilian casualties and does much to turn against the USA their "hearts and minds" (although I don't really see how their cardiac health could be all that directly impacted, maybe I'm wrong and people do get heart attacks from learning we blew off their wife's legs and things like that).

I guess I just don't see the point in adding horrors to a war already horrific enough, especially when it is perpetrated against someone that was essentially on YOUR OWN SIDE...

JSG

Feith is a liar!

Now it has come out that Douglas Feith, Undersecretary of Defense, famous for his love of "extending freedom" to the corners of the globe, knowingly provided trumped-up intelligence from foreign sources about a link between Al Qaeda and Saddam. He did so AGAINST CIA requests to delete that information.

See the report by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Michigan, Armed Services Committee Ranking Member). "This is a highly disturbing representation of Undersecretary Feith. ... What we're left with then is a situation where the POLICY office which had a particular perspective, set out to find a close relationship between Saddam/Al Qaeda, distorted intelligence, provided that intelligence to a high-level meeting with government officials, against CIA recommendations, and unbeknownst to the CIA, he was highly critical of the CIA's take, and then we find the administration now having received this alternative source of intelligence supporting their predisposition to attack Iraq from the policy office which is not supposed to make intelligence analyses at all... and they used this information in the face of contradictory critical information about whether Al Qaeda and Saddam were linked." (slightly paraphrased from his CSPAN speech)

Basically, the US government got doctored intelligence from one of their own lackies in the Defense Department policy office, so that they could justify going to war.

I find this to be highly disturbing yet completely expected. OF COURSE some hawk in the defense department knowingly provided false information to a Bush who was already drooling to invade Iraq from the beginning of his term. Of course.

The question is now, how do we bring the CRIMINAL DOUGLAS FEITH TO JUSTICE?

Of course CNN's coverage of this story, buried DEEP in their site, frames it entirely as a political move on the part of democrats to tarnish Bush prior to the election. Clearly however, it is CNN who is complicit with the Bush agenda and is deliberately suppressing this new information about the false information, knowing that its dissemenation would undermine TimeWarner's conservative agenda.

The Defense Department's lame response to these allegations does not specifically address any of Levin's accusations and simply makes blanket statements in an attempt to dismiss the report as a pre-election, partisan attempt against Bush.

Yet the full text of Levin's report is hard to ignore.

asdf

asdf
Originally uploaded by jsgilbert.

here is what some dumbass said about me

Michael Slider, Independent Congressional candidate from Kentucky, has his head screwed on straight. His web site is worth some of your mental timeshare.

Liberal/Conservative Republican/Democrat STUPID TERMS

Way to go after voter fraud and ensure every citizen votes: use the Public Key / Private Key Digital Post Office Box that each citizen, using their Social Security Card, gets access to using a combination of their SSN with a 4048-bit encryption key generated by a memorized passphrase known only to YOU. When you go to the polls, you just loginto the voting site and just enter your SSN PIN (a new secondary number NOT your SSN that is self-created by YOU upon registration with the system). Login and set your voting preferences. Your vote instantly shows up live in the system, viewably by all with your name attached IF YOU SO CHOSE, or completely anonymously only by precinct. Voting window is 30 days.

Someone may call me a Liberal, for I support Kerry and I am totally against Bush for a NUMBER of reasons. But what does the term Liberal mean? Depends on how you say it. If you say Liberal like the Republicans love to, with a short "i", then it means the Latin "liber-" means "a book, writing, treatise: librum incohare, conficere, Cic. {books to pick up, to finish)" as in books like you find in libraries. However if you say it like "Lee-beral" then you must mean its other Latin meaning: "socially, free (as opposed to slavery)", of states, "free, independent". It means "unencombered with debt". "Unlimited by law, free in thought or expression." "Freely, without restraint, without hindrance; generously, spontaneously; frankly, openly, boldly." (Cassels Latin Dictionary)

So in that sense I call myself a Leeberal, because I believe in a country free from the horrible entanglement, the mire of horrible distress, that is America in the clutches of the worst presidential administration in US history. The most reckless, irresponsibe, abhorrently immoral, despicably dirty administration of all time, and the most SUCCESSFUL at gluing themselves into the psyches of religious conservative drones. A coincidence? I think not.

What does the dictionary say for "conserva-" ... it means "a fellow-slave". Conservatio is a preservation, keeping, laying up. A preserver. Someone into conservation. SURE I AM A CONSERVATIVE: I am for the Nature Conservancy. I am all about the conservation of nature, of natural resources, and leaving them completely alone, letting nature take its course, as it will. To be observed for scientific knowledge -- knowledge which is to be stored in a great National Conservatory of Knowledge. An online internet resource to be run by the Library of Congress.

Yes, I'm a conservative. I am for conserving as much of our natural resources by recycling every possible thing and making it tax deductible in the cases of hazardous materials like motor oil and old batteries. We need to keep toxic chemicals out of our ground water and the best way to do that is conserve all the harmful materials in a way that does not allow them to enter the ecosystem.

I'm a conservative in that I believe in conserving the good will that exists between all religions in this country. This conservation would be liberal in nature: it would distribute freely the imprimatur of the US Constitution upon even the most insignificant sect of a minor religion as being perfectly legal forms of worship. It should thus not attempt to treat any particular sect or cult, such as "the Religious Right," as being 'home' to the root of any kind of explicit OR IMPLICIT national, state religion.

The current "Religious Right" is an apocolypto-cult that believes the world will end in a huge world war, replete with flying horsemen and a Jerusalem world capitol. Remember Waco? This cult wants to make what happened in Waco look like a sparkler on 4th of July compared to the horrendous torrent of fireworks they have at the control of their fingertips under President Bush. This cult is perhaps the gravest threat to our national security in forever.

These people claim to be conservative, but they rushed us into a war based on false information which has now cost the nation over $120 billion in outright costs, combined with the expenditure of human lives and military resources that cost hundreds of millions of dollars already to train and build. As a conservative, I believe in conserving human lives and military resources, as well as our moral authority as a just and fair superpower who shows restraint out of loving, kind, friendly warmth. Christian Love. Who prays for you, instead of bombing you. A Christian America where we turn the other cheek when you crash planes into our buildings, and we look to see what we can do to correct whatever it is that made you upset, while bringing the criminals responsible to justice?

As a Liberal, I want freedom to be spread all over the world. However I also feel that you should go to the places where the people will most welcome you to help them, rather than waste resources going to the most difficult place first. Work your way down to that.

A sense of imperative has come up because of the supposed threat of WMD proliferation. However it is the irreligious nature of the United States - its heresy - that is responsible for what has come back to it. Our unchecked capitalism has handed the driver's keys of the USA to a handfull of extremely powerful multinational corporations. Quite simply, because we THE PEOPLE do not limit corporations in the proper ways - using FORCE - they now limit us using force through the tentacles of their power.

Case in point: Halliburton and Brown & Root. Big defense contractors. General Electric. TimeWarner. ClearChannel Communications. The entire Pharmaceutical Industry (including Alcohol and Tobacco companies). So much control it's not even funny: they even tried to revise FCC regulations earlier this year to tip the table more in favor of large companies owning more of everything in monopolistic fashion. They already own the hearts and minds of the US public through an over-saturation of their necessarily narrow viewpoints. How many "Conservative" radio talk show hosts / news talk show hosts are there? Tons: Dennis Miller, Rush Linbaugh, et. al. How many big-name Liberal talk show hosts, excluding comedians?

It's all backroom deals and highly scripted candidates that we face now. That is the new oppression of the people. In today's hypnotized and highly illterate televisionati era, the general public is opiated into a limp and drooling corpse lying on its livingroom couch. It is the political equivalent of slime mold. What do votes matter, if less than half of the people actually vote, and it is so difficult to vote -- espeically for the homeless, the jailed, the military soldiers, the felons, etc. Everyone should be able to vote. Every candidate should be on the ballot.

Why was Nader left off the ballot? He is perhaps the only candidate that shares a majority of my views, and BIG SURPRISE, he's been essentially banned and excised from all the ballots by that two-headed hound of hell known as the Party System.

Something needs to wake up the American population. Here is the way in which I am Libral: I believe in the creation of many more Libraries in this country. How about putting commercially rentable space that can only be given to a local company, in each library? A slot for a coffee shop. How about more new public mini-libraries / post offices equipped with free internet terminals, voting terminals, and coffee machines.

With the population awake, reading, and voting, something might be done to hedge away the disgusting vines of corporate-controlled Washington. The Democratic and Republican party today are just the two wings, the two branches held by the big nasty corporate party. The rest is window-dressing. But with an awakening population plugged into EACHOTHER via the enhanced library/postal-service-online system, less will slip past us. Less will be able to be left out of the media. We will be more in control of our own destiny as a people.

The will of the people is being ignored, not only here but abroad as well. Millions protested the war. Ignored. What if, however, people had been able to log-in and override their own representatives' votes, anytime, any vote? Then the government would not be able to keep so many classified secrets, including ones that later turn out to be sheer lies they used to lure us into war. If a certain percentage of a representative's constituency logs in and votes differently than him, he would be overriden. Unconditionally.

Some might call me a "progressive" like the followers of Nader, but I do not believe in progress. I believe in transformation. Something must transform itself, be transformed, and evolve. I'm an evolutionist, but I'm also a geneticist. That is I believe in genesis (the greek word for "Birth"). Things are born and reborn. America needs a rebirth, a transformation... not mere progress.

I'm a modarchist. I believe the "-ism" for my political affilation should be both Greek AND Latin in origin, rather than purely Latin, because ancient Greece was the birthplace, the place where the genesis of democracy occurred. Rome is the place where democracy died. The two-party system is Rome. But the Hellenistic Era for two hundred years before Christ's birth enjoyed the Roman Republic and a decreasingly democratic Greece. So "mod-archy" is a Latin and Greek root, it has both. Most people do not prefer to mix root origins, but they're babos (turkeys in Korean).

Mod- is from Latin for "measure, rhythm, limit, boundary; manner, mode, way, method". "-archy" is from the greek for "to rule". The government should rule in a measured, rhytmic, limited, boundaried way. The STYLE of their rule should depend on the way in which rule is necessitated, which necessity is to be determined by the scholarly and well-read representatives in office.

Being a Senator or Congressmen, under the Modarchical System, will be like joining the Marines. You will go through a rigorous basic training, both physical, emotional, and mental, in which your reading speed and idea comprehension are both increased through various means. Then when you are serving as a Representative you will remember that your fellow Rep.s are your brothers and sisters, who fought with you through the basic training -- make it a reality show, hell. Have a personal relationship with these people: you are the ones who are responsible for running this country. Better to have one team, than two teams constantly fighting. But it won't matter as much because all the people will be able to vote on their own; your job will be to persuade them how and educate them on how to vote for each issue. And they have to log in and change it away from what you set, if they want to oppose you.

It makes so much more sense, and goes along with the spirit of democracy that the founding fathers sought to infuse into our governmental system. I believe that our constitution, at least in how government and voting occurs, is utterly outmoded, obsolete. It has not yet been OPTIMIZED for the 2004-2008 period in order to function fluidly as an entity that channels the democratic WILL OF THE PEOPLE.

The changes I support could be implemented rather quickly, as they only have to do with voting. But they would completely change the political landscape of this country forever.

Do I call myself a Christian? No one ever got fed to a lion for saying "I am a Christian". They got fed to lions for refusing to worship the statue of the Emperor as a god. So I refuse to worship Bush as a holy man, as if he somehow knew what was the "right" thing to do according to some kind of guidance from above. I do not worship that. I worship the values and methods taught by Jesus Christ, for example "turn the other cheek", "love your neighbor as yourself", be faithful to whomever you love, and exhibit faith in those you love to them by your logos and your ergos -- your words and your deeds/works.

So feed me to your lions, I do not claim to be a Christian, but I think I am more Christian in my actual POLITICAL beliefs than Bush or probably anyone in the Republican party. Because they all believe that it was right to go to war, whereas I believe that war is a horrific sin that somebody's gonna go to hell for, somebody like Bush. Jesus said, "In that day they will come to me and say 'Lord Lord', but I will say to them 'depart from me, o ye who practice lawlessness, for I do not know you." Bush may say he's a Christian all day, but have you ever looked at how many people's deaths he has been personally responsible for by his various goernmental decisions? Judging from Bush's deeds, we would think him quite evil.

Executing men for crimes. Declaring war on defenseless small countries and launching gigantic bombs into heavily populated areas. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of bombs. Thousands. Are these the acts of a good Christian leader? No, they are the breath of Satan. His split toungue lies to us through both sides of Bush's mouth. He is the great deceiver. Be not mistaken: Bush is more than likely intermittently posessed by Satan himself. Temptation is a powerful thing to the simpleminded.

But how can any man govern this unruly bunch of rabble without being a little bit evil too? Did we not kill Jesus just so that we could get away with not being him? If we are going to drop anyting, lets drop laptops and wireless networking equipment to get on the internet, and build a real-time Arabic-to-English translation system to allow citizens of both nations chat in real-time. If there is a conflict then ALL of the people should be able to communicate, not just the couple of world leaders who maybe talk every now and then.

More to come.

Now it has become clear that Britain has committed the troops as per the US request. Frankly I'm disgusted. I had hoped that the British government would actually listen to their constituents and given "the finger" to old George. Now George has another "success" to taunt when Kerry could have been given a colossal failure to show.

My recent letter to the NY Times:
> > >
The article "Britain Nears Announcement on Iraq Troops" (NY Times International Section, AP, 10/21) evidences a huge problem with the NY Times' coverage of the Bush administration's handling of Iraq, especially in light of the upcoming Presidential election. Did you not think it relevant enough to assign your own writer to this story?

Don't ignore Britain, our prime ally, and what Britain tells us about Bush. The attitudes voiced by our closest allies, the British, are quite telling of the quality of Bush's leadership as commander-in-chief.

The Times has STILL not published any of the highly condemning Monday statements by members of the British Parliament regarding further troop commitments in a war they view as an American debacle.

At least publish the URL at which these statements are available. The American people should be aware of how poorly the British view the Bush administration's conduct of the Iraq war.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmhansrd/cm041018/debtext/41018-05.htm#41018-05_head0

J. S. Gilbert
< < <