It's a Candidate Calling. Again.
Republicans Deny Subterfuge as Phone Barrages Anger Voters
By Charles Babington and Alec MacGillis
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, November 7, 2006; Page A08
This year's heavy volume of automated political phone calls has infuriated countless voters and triggered sharp complaints from Democrats, who say the Republican Party has crossed the line in bombarding households with recorded attacks on candidates in tight House races nationwide.
Some voters, sick of interrupted dinners and evenings, say they will punish the offending parties by opposing them in today's elections. But critics say Republicans crafted the messages to delude voters -- especially those who hang up quickly -- into thinking that Democrats placed the calls.
Republicans denied the allegation, noting that their party acknowledges its authorship at the recorded calls' end. After citizens' complaints in New Hampshire, however, the National Republican Congressional Committee agreed to end the calls to households on the federal do-not-call list, even though the law exempts political messages from such restrictions.
Whether "robo-calls" are positive or negative, mean-spirited or humorous, thousands of Americans are sick of them, according to campaign organizations that have been fielding complaints over the past two weeks.
An Ohio woman, who did not leave her name, called The Washington Post in tears yesterday, saying she could not keep her phone line open to hospice workers caring for her terminally ill mother because of nonstop political robo-calls.
Pamela Lorenz, a retired nurse in Roseville, Calif., called her own experience "harassment as far as I'm concerned" and said, "If I were voting right now, the opponent who's doing this, he'd be off my list for throwing that much trash."
Hour after hour and day after day for two weeks, Lorenz's home has received the same NRCC recorded message attacking Charlie Brown, the Democrat who is challenging Rep. John T. Doolittle (R) in a hard-fought battle in northeastern California. "It is a recorder calling," Lorenz said. "I can't call it back to get them to stop."
Voters in Northern Virginia have been exposed to fewer of the aggressive "push poll" type calls than elsewhere. But they said they have been getting so many of the conventional automated calls plugging candidates that they have started hanging up as soon as the recordings begin or screening them with caller ID.
"I hang up as soon I hear it start. I've already heard most of what people have to say. I don't have time to listen to them," said Angela Elliott, a Fairfax Circle resident who is registered as an independent and has been getting more Democratic calls than Republican ones.
Nicholas Beltrante, of the Alexandria section of Fairfax County, said he has been getting an average of three to five automated calls per day from both Democrats and Republicans. "I made up my mind weeks ago, and the moment I identify them as one of those calls I just hang up," he said.
As annoyed as they are, Northern Virginia voters said their irritation will not prompt them to vote against the campaigns placing the calls, because the calls are positive in nature.
Jane Edmondson, a McLean community activist, registered Democrat and Democratic donor, said she has stopped answering calls that appear as 800 or 877 numbers on her caller ID, for fear that they are robo-calls. At church Sunday, she said, she and others were jealous of one churchgoer who said his caller ID identifies campaign calls as "political calls." "We all said, 'Why don't we get that?' " she said.
Democrats cited federal records indicating that the NRCC recently spent about $600,000 in at least 45 contested House districts for robo-calls, which are among the least expensive campaign tools. The brief calls typically begin with a speaker offering "some information" about the Democratic nominee and then immediately accusing the nominee of seeking to raise taxes, among other perceived wrongs.
Many voters hang up as soon as a robo-call begins -- without waiting for the criticisms or the NRCC sign-off at the end -- so they think it was placed by the Democratic candidate named at the start, said Sarah Feinberg, spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "Our candidates are inundated with phone calls from furious Democrats and independents saying . . . 'I'm outraged and I'm not going to vote for you anymore,' " she said.
Feinberg said some voters have received robo-calls late at night, despite federal rules barring such calls after 9 p.m. NRCC spokesman Carl Forti said his organization ends all calls by 9 nightly.
Democrats also cited Federal Communications Commission guidelines saying the originators of automated calls must identify themselves at the beginning of each call. Republican Party lawyers, however, said the requirement does not apply to political nonprofit organizations. They rebuffed a "cease and desist" letter sent yesterday by the DCCC.
In a conference call with reporters yesterday, the DCCC chairman, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), compared the widespread robo-calling to a 2002 Republican effort in New Hampshire to jam Democratic phone lines to prevent the Democrats' get-out-the-vote effort. The Republican National Committee has spent more than $2 million to defend its officials in the case, he said. "Make no mistake, this is a dirty trick, one they've done before, one they've gotten caught on and one they continue to do," Emanuel said.
Karyn Hollis, a Villanova University English professor who supports Democrat Lois Murphy in her bid to oust Rep. Jim Gerlach (R-Pa.), said she has received numerous robo-calls attacking Murphy. "You just get sick of these calls," Hollis said. A quick hang-up can lead the recipient to conclude that Murphy supporters placed the call, she said. Listening to the full message, she said, subjects the voter to a litany of attacks against Murphy.
"It's a double thing," Hollis said. "Either way they win."
Many robo-calls involve celebrities and are positive and straightforward, such as recordings from former president Bill Clinton urging voters to support Democratic nominees. In New Jersey, comic actor Joe Piscopo has recorded messages on behalf of GOP Senate candidate Tom Kean Jr.
In Connecticut, NRCC robo-calls have targeted Dianne Farrell, the Democrat seeking to unseat Rep. Christopher Shays (R). Asked if Farrell has her own automated calls, campaign spokeswoman Jan Ellen Spiegel replied: "Only one, and it's rather distinctive because it's Paul Newman. We haven't gotten complaints about that one."
Staff writers Jonathan Weisman, Dale Russakoff and Michael Powell contributed to this report.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
On 'Trying' vs. 'Doing', to 'Verbally Pillaging and Raping' vs. 'Creatively Debating', to McCain vs. Obama
Most people who use the word 'try' -- fail to do what they are 'trying' to do. That is why they use it -- as an 'excuse', a 'rationalization', a 'justification' -- for failing. (And I freely admit, I can be one of the worst offenders here.)
Either you want to do something badly enough -- that you just do it -- and no excuses are needed and/or relevant. Or you use the word 'try' -- and you set yourself up for failure. Call the word 'try' a self-fulfilling prophecy for expected failure.
Either you 'do'.
Or you 'don't'.
Everything else is irrelevant -- or at least background 'noise, smoke and mirrors' for what really is going on, for what really is or isn't going to happen.
Of course for some things, you need a willing partner. Or at least one who is willing to 'negotiate' with you.
But that is a different story.
Indeed, DGB Philosophy starts and ends with the creative negotiation and integration of opposing differences.
Creative debate where the 'real issues are front and centre, and aimed towards a win-win conflict resolution and a balanced, democratic solution' -- this is what DGB Philosophy is ideally all about -- not negative campaigning and rhetoric that is primarily aimed at character assassinations, trash-talking, mud-wrestling, cheap shots, low blows, negative associations, negative stereotypes, slash and burn tactics... I borrowed that last phrase from Biden (and see, Senator Biden, how I properly and ethically attributed the phrase to you -- not plagerized a whole speech from you. Sorry, I couldn't resist that even though I like for the most part, Senator Biden, what you stand for, and I like most of your speeches -- particularly, the ones where you reach into your heart and share your most intense passion -- and compassion -- with the American people. Your best speeches are definitely worth listening to. Your worst speeches -- well, we won't say too much about them. Call them a 'momentary lapse of reason' -- or at least a momentary lapse of 'political savvy' which is pretty shocking considering all the years you have been in politics. I guess we can't get your 'best speeches' -- without also getting some of your 'worst speeches'.
Back to the point I was making.
The best creative, 'bi-partisan, win-win conflict resolutions' -- are like 'great sex'. Both parties go home with a 'smile on their face'.
In contrast, when the Repubicans go into a debate -- or to be more specific, an 'election campaign' -- it is like they are trying to 'verbally rape and pillage' the Democratic Party.
It worked four years ago for Bush.
I don't think it's going to work this time for McCain.
I think Obama has stood up to McCain blow for blow.
And come out the better fighter -- let us use this metaphor: a young Yvander Holyfield in his prime, as opposed to an aging Mike Tyson trying to 'bite Holyfield's ear off'.
That is the imagery I will be left with when this election campaign is over.
- dgb, October 28th, 2008.
Either you want to do something badly enough -- that you just do it -- and no excuses are needed and/or relevant. Or you use the word 'try' -- and you set yourself up for failure. Call the word 'try' a self-fulfilling prophecy for expected failure.
Either you 'do'.
Or you 'don't'.
Everything else is irrelevant -- or at least background 'noise, smoke and mirrors' for what really is going on, for what really is or isn't going to happen.
Of course for some things, you need a willing partner. Or at least one who is willing to 'negotiate' with you.
But that is a different story.
Indeed, DGB Philosophy starts and ends with the creative negotiation and integration of opposing differences.
Creative debate where the 'real issues are front and centre, and aimed towards a win-win conflict resolution and a balanced, democratic solution' -- this is what DGB Philosophy is ideally all about -- not negative campaigning and rhetoric that is primarily aimed at character assassinations, trash-talking, mud-wrestling, cheap shots, low blows, negative associations, negative stereotypes, slash and burn tactics... I borrowed that last phrase from Biden (and see, Senator Biden, how I properly and ethically attributed the phrase to you -- not plagerized a whole speech from you. Sorry, I couldn't resist that even though I like for the most part, Senator Biden, what you stand for, and I like most of your speeches -- particularly, the ones where you reach into your heart and share your most intense passion -- and compassion -- with the American people. Your best speeches are definitely worth listening to. Your worst speeches -- well, we won't say too much about them. Call them a 'momentary lapse of reason' -- or at least a momentary lapse of 'political savvy' which is pretty shocking considering all the years you have been in politics. I guess we can't get your 'best speeches' -- without also getting some of your 'worst speeches'.
Back to the point I was making.
The best creative, 'bi-partisan, win-win conflict resolutions' -- are like 'great sex'. Both parties go home with a 'smile on their face'.
In contrast, when the Repubicans go into a debate -- or to be more specific, an 'election campaign' -- it is like they are trying to 'verbally rape and pillage' the Democratic Party.
It worked four years ago for Bush.
I don't think it's going to work this time for McCain.
I think Obama has stood up to McCain blow for blow.
And come out the better fighter -- let us use this metaphor: a young Yvander Holyfield in his prime, as opposed to an aging Mike Tyson trying to 'bite Holyfield's ear off'.
That is the imagery I will be left with when this election campaign is over.
- dgb, October 28th, 2008.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
A Nietzsche Aphorism
He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze into the abyss, take care that the abyss does not gaze into you. -- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
(Laurence Gane and Kitty Chan, Introducing Nietzsche, p. 108, this edition published in the U.K., 1999)
(Laurence Gane and Kitty Chan, Introducing Nietzsche, p. 108, this edition published in the U.K., 1999)
Candidates spar with 9 days to go
Candidates spar with 9 days to go
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Digg Facebook Newsvine del.icio.us Reddit StumbleUpon Technorati Yahoo! Bookmarks Print By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Writer Liz Sidoti, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 38 mins ago AP –
Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., speaks at a rally at the University of Northern …
Play Video Video: Obama: McCain criticisms reach 'whole new level' AP Play Video Video: Obama, McCain fight to win Western swing states AP Play Video Video: McCain says don't count him out AP WASHINGTON – Republican John McCain declared "I'm going to win it," dismissing polls showing him behind with little more than a week to go in the presidential race. A confident Democrat Barack Obama drew a jaw-dropping 100,000 people to a single rally and rolled out a new TV ad asserting his rival is "running out of time."
Heading into the final nine days of the 2008 contest, the White House competitors campaigned in key battlegrounds that President Bush won four years ago as the state-by-state Electoral College map tilts strongly in Obama's favor. Democrats and Republicans alike say it will be extraordinarily difficult for McCain to change the trajectory of the campaign before the Nov. 4 election.
"Unfortunately, I think John McCain might be added to that long list of Arizonans who ran for president but were never elected," McCain's fellow senator from Arizona, Republican Jon Kyl, told the Arizona Daily Star editorial board in an interview published Sunday.
The candidates sparred from a distance, each criticizing the other anew in hopes of swaying the roughly one-fourth of voters who are undecided or could still change their minds. The campaign trail images and rhetoric said perhaps more about the state of the race than any poll could.
In Colorado, Obama reveled in his largest U.S. crowd to date, with local police estimating that "well over" 100,000 people packed Denver's Civic Center Park and stretched even to the distant steps of the state Capitol. The enthusiastic sea of people prompted a "goodness gracious" from Obama as he took the stage. Another enormous swarm — an estimated 45,000 — greeted him in Fort Collins later on the perhaps aptly named Colorado State University lawn; it's known as "The Oval."
At each rambunctious stop Obama portrayed McCain as more of the same, saying, "For eight years, we've seen the Bush-McCain philosophy put our country on the wrong track, and we cannot have another four years that look just like the last eight."
In Cedar Falls, Iowa, McCain campaigned before a much smaller audience, roughly 2,000 people, and chided his Democratic rival: "He's measuring the drapes. ... I prefer to let voters have their say. What America needs now is someone who will finish the race before starting the victory lap."
Later, amid 5,000 people in Zanesville, Ohio, McCain warned of the perils of one-party rule, targeting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as vigorously as Obama. "You can imagine Obama, Reid and Pelosi," McCain said. "Tax and spend, tax and spend."
As the day began, McCain cast Obama as too liberal for a right-of-center country, saying on NBC's "Meet the Press:" "He started out in the left-hand lane of American politics and has remained there."
With the race drawing to a close, Obama is working to solidify his lead in national and key state surveys, while McCain is looking for a comeback. The political environment has become increasingly favorable for Democrats and challenging for Republicans as the global economic crisis dominates the campaign.
In coming days, both candidates will focus primarily on Bush-won, vote-rich battlegrounds like Ohio and Florida, which decided the last two presidential elections and could do so again.
Pennsylvania is the only state that Democrat John Kerry won four years ago that both candidates are expected to visit before Election Day. With 21 electoral votes, it hasn't voted for a Republican president since 1988, but McCain is aggressively courting white, working-class voters who overwhelmingly chose Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton in the primary over Obama, who would become the country's first black president.
Obama's campaign was exuding optimism though leaving nothing to chance.
The Democrat hit McCain with the fresh ad, to air on national cable stations, that says he has "no plan to lift our economy up" and, thus, is tearing down Obama with "scare tactics and smears." It says McCain is "out of ideas, out of touch, and running out of time."
The Illinois senator was spending the next four days in GOP-held Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida, with a quick stop in Pennsylvania.
Aides say Obama will lay out his closing argument in a speech Monday in Canton, Ohio. Behind the scenes, advisers were preparing the 30-minute advertisement he planned to air Wednesday on national TV networks as part of that last pitch, and also were mapping the transition to the White House.
McCain was trying to stay focused on his uphill battle amid new distractions.
Over the past few days, there has been finger-pointing inside the GOP over who is to blame for McCain's struggles; reports of friction between his top advisers and aides for running mate Sarah Palin; and the continued fallout of the Republican National Committee's $150,000 purchase of high-end clothing for the Alaska governor and her family.
In the TV interview, McCain dismissed the Palin wardrobe flap and said many of the clothing items were immediately returned. Aides said that was for a variety of reasons, including the wrong sizes, and said the rest will be donated to charity.
"I don't defend her. I praise her. She is exactly what Washington needs," McCain said. He also said of the race: "We're going to win it, and it's going to be tight, and we're going to be up late" on election night. And, he worked anew to distance himself from the unpopular Bush.
"The fact is I am not George Bush," McCain said. Then, he added: "Do we share a common philosophy of the Republican Party? Of course."
Obama pounced on that comment, telling his Denver audience, "I guess that was John McCain finally giving us a little straight talk, and owning up to the fact that he and George Bush actually have a whole lot in common."
He noted that Bush already has cast his vote for McCain and said, "We're not going to let George Bush pass the torch to John McCain."
___
Associated Press Writers Ben Feller in Colorado and Mike Glover in Iowa and Ohio contributed to this report.
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Digg Facebook Newsvine del.icio.us Reddit StumbleUpon Technorati Yahoo! Bookmarks Print By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Writer Liz Sidoti, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 38 mins ago AP –
Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., speaks at a rally at the University of Northern …
Play Video Video: Obama: McCain criticisms reach 'whole new level' AP Play Video Video: Obama, McCain fight to win Western swing states AP Play Video Video: McCain says don't count him out AP WASHINGTON – Republican John McCain declared "I'm going to win it," dismissing polls showing him behind with little more than a week to go in the presidential race. A confident Democrat Barack Obama drew a jaw-dropping 100,000 people to a single rally and rolled out a new TV ad asserting his rival is "running out of time."
Heading into the final nine days of the 2008 contest, the White House competitors campaigned in key battlegrounds that President Bush won four years ago as the state-by-state Electoral College map tilts strongly in Obama's favor. Democrats and Republicans alike say it will be extraordinarily difficult for McCain to change the trajectory of the campaign before the Nov. 4 election.
"Unfortunately, I think John McCain might be added to that long list of Arizonans who ran for president but were never elected," McCain's fellow senator from Arizona, Republican Jon Kyl, told the Arizona Daily Star editorial board in an interview published Sunday.
The candidates sparred from a distance, each criticizing the other anew in hopes of swaying the roughly one-fourth of voters who are undecided or could still change their minds. The campaign trail images and rhetoric said perhaps more about the state of the race than any poll could.
In Colorado, Obama reveled in his largest U.S. crowd to date, with local police estimating that "well over" 100,000 people packed Denver's Civic Center Park and stretched even to the distant steps of the state Capitol. The enthusiastic sea of people prompted a "goodness gracious" from Obama as he took the stage. Another enormous swarm — an estimated 45,000 — greeted him in Fort Collins later on the perhaps aptly named Colorado State University lawn; it's known as "The Oval."
At each rambunctious stop Obama portrayed McCain as more of the same, saying, "For eight years, we've seen the Bush-McCain philosophy put our country on the wrong track, and we cannot have another four years that look just like the last eight."
In Cedar Falls, Iowa, McCain campaigned before a much smaller audience, roughly 2,000 people, and chided his Democratic rival: "He's measuring the drapes. ... I prefer to let voters have their say. What America needs now is someone who will finish the race before starting the victory lap."
Later, amid 5,000 people in Zanesville, Ohio, McCain warned of the perils of one-party rule, targeting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as vigorously as Obama. "You can imagine Obama, Reid and Pelosi," McCain said. "Tax and spend, tax and spend."
As the day began, McCain cast Obama as too liberal for a right-of-center country, saying on NBC's "Meet the Press:" "He started out in the left-hand lane of American politics and has remained there."
With the race drawing to a close, Obama is working to solidify his lead in national and key state surveys, while McCain is looking for a comeback. The political environment has become increasingly favorable for Democrats and challenging for Republicans as the global economic crisis dominates the campaign.
In coming days, both candidates will focus primarily on Bush-won, vote-rich battlegrounds like Ohio and Florida, which decided the last two presidential elections and could do so again.
Pennsylvania is the only state that Democrat John Kerry won four years ago that both candidates are expected to visit before Election Day. With 21 electoral votes, it hasn't voted for a Republican president since 1988, but McCain is aggressively courting white, working-class voters who overwhelmingly chose Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton in the primary over Obama, who would become the country's first black president.
Obama's campaign was exuding optimism though leaving nothing to chance.
The Democrat hit McCain with the fresh ad, to air on national cable stations, that says he has "no plan to lift our economy up" and, thus, is tearing down Obama with "scare tactics and smears." It says McCain is "out of ideas, out of touch, and running out of time."
The Illinois senator was spending the next four days in GOP-held Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida, with a quick stop in Pennsylvania.
Aides say Obama will lay out his closing argument in a speech Monday in Canton, Ohio. Behind the scenes, advisers were preparing the 30-minute advertisement he planned to air Wednesday on national TV networks as part of that last pitch, and also were mapping the transition to the White House.
McCain was trying to stay focused on his uphill battle amid new distractions.
Over the past few days, there has been finger-pointing inside the GOP over who is to blame for McCain's struggles; reports of friction between his top advisers and aides for running mate Sarah Palin; and the continued fallout of the Republican National Committee's $150,000 purchase of high-end clothing for the Alaska governor and her family.
In the TV interview, McCain dismissed the Palin wardrobe flap and said many of the clothing items were immediately returned. Aides said that was for a variety of reasons, including the wrong sizes, and said the rest will be donated to charity.
"I don't defend her. I praise her. She is exactly what Washington needs," McCain said. He also said of the race: "We're going to win it, and it's going to be tight, and we're going to be up late" on election night. And, he worked anew to distance himself from the unpopular Bush.
"The fact is I am not George Bush," McCain said. Then, he added: "Do we share a common philosophy of the Republican Party? Of course."
Obama pounced on that comment, telling his Denver audience, "I guess that was John McCain finally giving us a little straight talk, and owning up to the fact that he and George Bush actually have a whole lot in common."
He noted that Bush already has cast his vote for McCain and said, "We're not going to let George Bush pass the torch to John McCain."
___
Associated Press Writers Ben Feller in Colorado and Mike Glover in Iowa and Ohio contributed to this report.
Paraphrasing Aristotle: Aristotle (384-322 BCE.)
The healthy path is usually the middle path.
(My interpretation of one of Aristotle's key philosophical -- and ethical -- perspectives.)
-- dgb, October 26th, 2008.
.................................................
From the internet...The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Virtue, therefore, manifests itself in action. More explicitly, an action counts as virtuous, according to Aristotle, when one holds oneself in a stable equilibrium of the soul, in order to choose the action knowingly and for its own sake. This stable equilibrium of the soul is what constitutes character.
...........................................................................
2. The Mean
Could there be anything at all to the notion that we hone in on a virtue from two sides? There is a wonderful image of this sort of thing in the novel Nop's Trials by Donald McCaig. The protagonist is not a human being, but a border collie named Nop. The author describes the way the dog has to find the balance point, the exact distance behind a herd of sheep from which he can drive the whole herd forward in a coherent mass. When the dog is too close, the sheep panic and run off in all directions; when he is too far back, the sheep ignore him, and turn in all directions to graze. While in motion, a good working dog keeps adjusting his pace to maintain the exact mean position that keeps the sheep stepping lively in the direction he determines. Now working border collies are brave, tireless, and determined. They have been documented as running more than a hundred miles in a day, and they love their work. There is no question that they display virtue, but it is not human virtue and not even of the same form. Some human activities do require the long sustained tension a sheep dog is always holding on to, an active state stretched to the limit, constantly and anxiously kept in balance. Running on a tightrope might capture the same flavor. But constantly maintained anxiety is not the kind of stable equilibrium Aristotle attributes to the virtuous human soul.
I think we may have stumbled on the way that human virtue is a mean when we found that habits were necessary in order to counteract other habits. This does accord with the things Aristotle says about straightening warped boards, aiming away from the worse extreme, and being on guard against the seductions of pleasure. (1109a, 30- b9) The habit of abstinence from bodily pleasure is at the opposite extreme from the childish habit of yielding to every immediate desire. Alone, either of them is a vice, according to Aristotle. The glutton, the drunkard, the person enslaved to every sexual impulse obviously cannot ever be happy, but the opposite extremes, which Aristotle groups together as a kind of numbness or denial of the senses (1107b, 8), miss the proper relation to bodily pleasure on the other side. It may seem that temperance in relation to food, say, depends merely on determining how many ounces of chocolate mousse to eat. Aristotle's example of Milo the wrestler, who needs more food than the rest of us do to sustain him, seems to say this, but I think that misses the point. The example is given only to show that there is no single action that can be prescribed as right for every person and every circumstance, and it is not strictly analogous even to temperance with respect to food. What is at stake is not a correct quantity of food but a right relation to the pleasure that comes from eating.
Suppose you have carefully saved a bowl of chocolate mousse all day for your mid-evening snack, and just as you are ready to treat yourself, a friend arrives unexpectedly to visit. If you are a glutton, you might hide the mousse until the friend leaves, or gobble it down before you open the door. If you have the opposite vice, and have puritanically suppressed in yourself all indulgence in the pleasures of food, you probably won't have chocolate mousse or any other treat to offer your visitor. If the state of your soul is in the mean in these matters, you are neither enslaved to nor shut out from the pleasure of eating treats, and can enhance the visit of a friend by sharing them. What you are sharing is incidentally the 6 ounces of chocolate mousse; the point is that you are sharing the pleasure, which is not found on any scale of measurement. If the pleasures of the body master you, or if you have broken their power only by rooting them out, you have missed out on the natural role that such pleasures can play in life. In the mean between those two states, you are free to notice possibilities that serve good ends, and to act on them.
It is worth repeating that the mean is not the 3 ounces of mousse on which you settled, since if two friends had come to visit you would have been willing to eat 2 ounces. That would not have been a division of the food but a multiplication of the pleasure. What is enlightening about the example is how readily and how nearly universally we all see that sharing the treat is the right thing to do. This is a matter of immediate perception, but it is perception of a special kind, not that of any one of the five senses, Aristotle says, but the sort by which we perceive that a triangle is the last kind of figure into which a polygon can be divided. (1142a, 28-30) This is thoughtful and imaginative perceiving, but it has to be perceived. The childish sort of habit clouds our sight, but the liberating counter-habit clears that sight. This is why Aristotle says that the person of moral stature, the spoudaios, is the one to whom things appear as they truly are. (1113a, 30-1) Once the earliest habits are neutralized, our desires are disentangled from the pressure for immediate gratification, we are calm enough to think, and most important, we can see what is in front of us in all its possibility. The mean state here is not a point on a dial that we need to fiddle up and down; it is a clearing in the midst of pleasures and pains that lets us judge what seems most truly pleasant and painful.
Achieving temperance toward bodily pleasures is, by this account, finding a mean, but it is not a simple question of adjusting a single varying condition toward the more or the less. The person who is always fighting the same battle, always struggling like the sheep dog to maintain the balance point between too much and too little indulgence, does not, according to Aristotle, have the virtue of temperance, but is at best selfrestrained or continent. In that case, the reasoning part of the soul is keeping the impulses reined in. But those impulses can slip the reins and go their own way, as parts of the body do in people with certain disorders of the nerves. (1102b, 14-22) Control in self-restrained people is an anxious, unstable equilibrium that will lapse whenever vigilance is relaxed. It is the old story of the conflict between the head and the emotions, never resolved but subject to truces. A soul with separate, self-contained rational and irrational parts could never become one undivided human being, since the parties would always believe they had divergent interests, and could at best compromise. The virtuous soul, on the contrary, blends all its parts in the act of choice.
This, I think, is the best way to understand the active state of the soul that constitutes moral virtue and forms character. It is the condition in which all the powers of the soul are at work together, making it possible for action to engage the whole human being. The work of achieving character is a process of clearing away the obstacles that stand in the way of the full efficacy of the soul. Someone who is partial to food or drink, or to running away from trouble or to looking for trouble, is a partial human being. Let the whole power of the soul have its influence, and the choices that result will have the characteristic look that we call courage or temperance or simply virtue. Now this adjective "characteristic" comes from the Greek word charactÍr, which means the distinctive mark scratched or stamped on anything, and which to my knowledge is never used in the Nicomachean Ethics. In the sense of character of which we are speaking, the word for which is Íthos, we see an outline of the human form itself. A person of character is someone you can count on, because there is a human nature in a deeper sense than that which refers to our early state of weakness. Someone with character has taken a stand in that fully mature nature, and cannot be moved all the way out of it.
But there is also such a thing as bad character, and this is what Aristotle means by vice, as distinct from bad habits or weakness. It is possible for someone with full responsibility and the free use of intellect to choose always to yield to bodily pleasure or to greed. Virtue is a mean, first because it can only emerge out of the stand-off between opposite habits, but second because it chooses to take its stand not in either of those habits but between them. In this middle region, thinking does come into play, but it is not correct to say that virtue takes its stand in principle; Aristotle makes clear that vice is a principled choice that following some extreme path toward or away from pleasure is right. (1146b, 22-3) Principles are wonderful things, but there are too many of them, and exclusive adherence to any one of them is always a vice.
In our earlier example, the true glutton would be someone who does not just have a bad habit of always indulging the desire for food, but someone who has chosen on principle that one ought always to yield to it. In Plato's Gorgias, Callicles argues just that, about food, drink, and sex. He is serious, even though he is young and still open to argument. But the only principled alternative he can conceive is the denial of the body, and the choice of a life fit only for stones or corpses. (492E) This is the way most attempts to be serious about right action go astray. What, for example, is the virtue of a seminar leader? Is it to ask appropriate questions but never state an opinion? Or is it to offer everything one has learned on the subject of discussion? What principle should rule?--that all learning must come from the learners, or that without prior instruction no useful learning can take place? Is there a hybrid principle? Or should one try to find the mid-way point between the opposite principles? Or is the virtue some third kind of thing altogether?
Just as habits of indulgence always stand opposed to habits of abstinence, so too does every principle of action have its opposite principle. If good habituation ensures that we are not swept away by our strongest impulses, and the exercise of intelligence ensures that we will see two worthy sides to every question about action, what governs the choice of the mean? Aristotle gives this answer: "such things are among particulars, and the judgment is in the act of sense-perception." (1109b, 23-4) But this is the calmly energetic, thought-laden perception to which we referred earlier. The origin of virtuous action is neither intellect nor appetite, but is variously described as intellect through-and-through infused with appetite, or appetite wholly infused with thinking, or appetite and reason joined for the sake of something; this unitary source is called by Aristotle simply anthropos. (1139a, 34, b, S-7) But our thinking must contribute right reason (ho orthos logos) and our appetites must contribute right desire (hÍ orthÍ orexis) if the action is to have moral stature. (1114b, 29, 1139a, 24-6, 31-2) What makes them right can only be the something for the sake of which they unite, and this is what is said to be accessible only to sense perception. This brings us to the third word we need to think about.
(My interpretation of one of Aristotle's key philosophical -- and ethical -- perspectives.)
-- dgb, October 26th, 2008.
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From the internet...The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Virtue, therefore, manifests itself in action. More explicitly, an action counts as virtuous, according to Aristotle, when one holds oneself in a stable equilibrium of the soul, in order to choose the action knowingly and for its own sake. This stable equilibrium of the soul is what constitutes character.
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2. The Mean
Could there be anything at all to the notion that we hone in on a virtue from two sides? There is a wonderful image of this sort of thing in the novel Nop's Trials by Donald McCaig. The protagonist is not a human being, but a border collie named Nop. The author describes the way the dog has to find the balance point, the exact distance behind a herd of sheep from which he can drive the whole herd forward in a coherent mass. When the dog is too close, the sheep panic and run off in all directions; when he is too far back, the sheep ignore him, and turn in all directions to graze. While in motion, a good working dog keeps adjusting his pace to maintain the exact mean position that keeps the sheep stepping lively in the direction he determines. Now working border collies are brave, tireless, and determined. They have been documented as running more than a hundred miles in a day, and they love their work. There is no question that they display virtue, but it is not human virtue and not even of the same form. Some human activities do require the long sustained tension a sheep dog is always holding on to, an active state stretched to the limit, constantly and anxiously kept in balance. Running on a tightrope might capture the same flavor. But constantly maintained anxiety is not the kind of stable equilibrium Aristotle attributes to the virtuous human soul.
I think we may have stumbled on the way that human virtue is a mean when we found that habits were necessary in order to counteract other habits. This does accord with the things Aristotle says about straightening warped boards, aiming away from the worse extreme, and being on guard against the seductions of pleasure. (1109a, 30- b9) The habit of abstinence from bodily pleasure is at the opposite extreme from the childish habit of yielding to every immediate desire. Alone, either of them is a vice, according to Aristotle. The glutton, the drunkard, the person enslaved to every sexual impulse obviously cannot ever be happy, but the opposite extremes, which Aristotle groups together as a kind of numbness or denial of the senses (1107b, 8), miss the proper relation to bodily pleasure on the other side. It may seem that temperance in relation to food, say, depends merely on determining how many ounces of chocolate mousse to eat. Aristotle's example of Milo the wrestler, who needs more food than the rest of us do to sustain him, seems to say this, but I think that misses the point. The example is given only to show that there is no single action that can be prescribed as right for every person and every circumstance, and it is not strictly analogous even to temperance with respect to food. What is at stake is not a correct quantity of food but a right relation to the pleasure that comes from eating.
Suppose you have carefully saved a bowl of chocolate mousse all day for your mid-evening snack, and just as you are ready to treat yourself, a friend arrives unexpectedly to visit. If you are a glutton, you might hide the mousse until the friend leaves, or gobble it down before you open the door. If you have the opposite vice, and have puritanically suppressed in yourself all indulgence in the pleasures of food, you probably won't have chocolate mousse or any other treat to offer your visitor. If the state of your soul is in the mean in these matters, you are neither enslaved to nor shut out from the pleasure of eating treats, and can enhance the visit of a friend by sharing them. What you are sharing is incidentally the 6 ounces of chocolate mousse; the point is that you are sharing the pleasure, which is not found on any scale of measurement. If the pleasures of the body master you, or if you have broken their power only by rooting them out, you have missed out on the natural role that such pleasures can play in life. In the mean between those two states, you are free to notice possibilities that serve good ends, and to act on them.
It is worth repeating that the mean is not the 3 ounces of mousse on which you settled, since if two friends had come to visit you would have been willing to eat 2 ounces. That would not have been a division of the food but a multiplication of the pleasure. What is enlightening about the example is how readily and how nearly universally we all see that sharing the treat is the right thing to do. This is a matter of immediate perception, but it is perception of a special kind, not that of any one of the five senses, Aristotle says, but the sort by which we perceive that a triangle is the last kind of figure into which a polygon can be divided. (1142a, 28-30) This is thoughtful and imaginative perceiving, but it has to be perceived. The childish sort of habit clouds our sight, but the liberating counter-habit clears that sight. This is why Aristotle says that the person of moral stature, the spoudaios, is the one to whom things appear as they truly are. (1113a, 30-1) Once the earliest habits are neutralized, our desires are disentangled from the pressure for immediate gratification, we are calm enough to think, and most important, we can see what is in front of us in all its possibility. The mean state here is not a point on a dial that we need to fiddle up and down; it is a clearing in the midst of pleasures and pains that lets us judge what seems most truly pleasant and painful.
Achieving temperance toward bodily pleasures is, by this account, finding a mean, but it is not a simple question of adjusting a single varying condition toward the more or the less. The person who is always fighting the same battle, always struggling like the sheep dog to maintain the balance point between too much and too little indulgence, does not, according to Aristotle, have the virtue of temperance, but is at best selfrestrained or continent. In that case, the reasoning part of the soul is keeping the impulses reined in. But those impulses can slip the reins and go their own way, as parts of the body do in people with certain disorders of the nerves. (1102b, 14-22) Control in self-restrained people is an anxious, unstable equilibrium that will lapse whenever vigilance is relaxed. It is the old story of the conflict between the head and the emotions, never resolved but subject to truces. A soul with separate, self-contained rational and irrational parts could never become one undivided human being, since the parties would always believe they had divergent interests, and could at best compromise. The virtuous soul, on the contrary, blends all its parts in the act of choice.
This, I think, is the best way to understand the active state of the soul that constitutes moral virtue and forms character. It is the condition in which all the powers of the soul are at work together, making it possible for action to engage the whole human being. The work of achieving character is a process of clearing away the obstacles that stand in the way of the full efficacy of the soul. Someone who is partial to food or drink, or to running away from trouble or to looking for trouble, is a partial human being. Let the whole power of the soul have its influence, and the choices that result will have the characteristic look that we call courage or temperance or simply virtue. Now this adjective "characteristic" comes from the Greek word charactÍr, which means the distinctive mark scratched or stamped on anything, and which to my knowledge is never used in the Nicomachean Ethics. In the sense of character of which we are speaking, the word for which is Íthos, we see an outline of the human form itself. A person of character is someone you can count on, because there is a human nature in a deeper sense than that which refers to our early state of weakness. Someone with character has taken a stand in that fully mature nature, and cannot be moved all the way out of it.
But there is also such a thing as bad character, and this is what Aristotle means by vice, as distinct from bad habits or weakness. It is possible for someone with full responsibility and the free use of intellect to choose always to yield to bodily pleasure or to greed. Virtue is a mean, first because it can only emerge out of the stand-off between opposite habits, but second because it chooses to take its stand not in either of those habits but between them. In this middle region, thinking does come into play, but it is not correct to say that virtue takes its stand in principle; Aristotle makes clear that vice is a principled choice that following some extreme path toward or away from pleasure is right. (1146b, 22-3) Principles are wonderful things, but there are too many of them, and exclusive adherence to any one of them is always a vice.
In our earlier example, the true glutton would be someone who does not just have a bad habit of always indulging the desire for food, but someone who has chosen on principle that one ought always to yield to it. In Plato's Gorgias, Callicles argues just that, about food, drink, and sex. He is serious, even though he is young and still open to argument. But the only principled alternative he can conceive is the denial of the body, and the choice of a life fit only for stones or corpses. (492E) This is the way most attempts to be serious about right action go astray. What, for example, is the virtue of a seminar leader? Is it to ask appropriate questions but never state an opinion? Or is it to offer everything one has learned on the subject of discussion? What principle should rule?--that all learning must come from the learners, or that without prior instruction no useful learning can take place? Is there a hybrid principle? Or should one try to find the mid-way point between the opposite principles? Or is the virtue some third kind of thing altogether?
Just as habits of indulgence always stand opposed to habits of abstinence, so too does every principle of action have its opposite principle. If good habituation ensures that we are not swept away by our strongest impulses, and the exercise of intelligence ensures that we will see two worthy sides to every question about action, what governs the choice of the mean? Aristotle gives this answer: "such things are among particulars, and the judgment is in the act of sense-perception." (1109b, 23-4) But this is the calmly energetic, thought-laden perception to which we referred earlier. The origin of virtuous action is neither intellect nor appetite, but is variously described as intellect through-and-through infused with appetite, or appetite wholly infused with thinking, or appetite and reason joined for the sake of something; this unitary source is called by Aristotle simply anthropos. (1139a, 34, b, S-7) But our thinking must contribute right reason (ho orthos logos) and our appetites must contribute right desire (hÍ orthÍ orexis) if the action is to have moral stature. (1114b, 29, 1139a, 24-6, 31-2) What makes them right can only be the something for the sake of which they unite, and this is what is said to be accessible only to sense perception. This brings us to the third word we need to think about.
From The Archives: DGB ''Sun-Planet Theory' and 'Sixteen Archetype-Ego-States' of Healthy and Unhealthy Personality Functioning
September 11th, 2008.
1. Introduction
This is brand new DGB Philosophy-Psychology although the ideas have been perculating in my head for a while now...
Think of the sun with the planets revolving around it; the earth needs to be just situated rightly -- not too far from the sun and not close to the sun -- which comes back to the main principle of the creation and/or evolution of life in the univers and on earth: the principle of 'homeostatic balance'.
Once you get this image in your mind -- of the sun and planets model and the principle of homestatic balance -- you are starting to get a picture of my latest perculating model of the human psyche -- a model that borrows from philosophy, psychology, biology, chemistry, and physics, and mythology. There is some Freud in it (projecting and introjecting), some Jung in it (archetypes and Greek Gods), lots of philosophy in it (such as the different 'eras' or 'periods' of philosophy), and running right through the middle of this model are the priniciples of: 1. 'multi-dialectic exchange, interchange, negotiation, power and control maneuvers'; and 2. 'homeostatic (or multi-dialectic) balance.
I remember reading a book a long time ago -- perhaps when I was in university (1974-1979) called, 'Man The Manipulator'. I will research the book and come back to you with the author shortly. I believe the author(s) had some training in both Gestalt Therapy and Jungian Psychology.
Anyways, my present model here reminds me somewhat of what the author(s)in that book were also trying to get at which was basically that (and I will paraphrase in my own words here and now): any 'particualar style of interconnected thought, feeling, impulse, restraint and/or behavior' or what Jung would call a 'complex' or Alfred Adler would call a person's 'lifestyle' has a combination of both positive and negative attributes attached to it (strengths and weaknesses). It's like perhaps the most important statement that Hegel ever made (and again I am both paraphrasing and extending his thought): Every thought, impulse, characteristic, restraint, theory, perspective, lifestyle...carries with it the seeds of its own self-destruction...Or worded otherwise, anything taken too far, will eventually explode, implode, self-destruct, poison, and/or take you off the deep end with it...Any form of extremism will eventually lead to your self-desruction...
Which brings us back to the principle of 'homeostatic -- and/or dialectical -- balance'. Here is my post-Hegelian-extension of Hegel's famous formula: The life cycle follows the pattern of: 1. thesis; 2. anti-thesis; and 3 synthesis (which -- my DGB extension -- pulls man and all of evolutionary life back to the 'central position of homeostatic-dialectic-democratic balance'. 'Not too strong (eg. The Republicans), not too weak (eg. The Democrats) but just right...'The Republican-Democrats or the Democratic-Republicans'. This is the post-Hegelian, bi-polarity synthesizing goal of DGB Philosophy.
Here is my extension of the famous Hegelian formula:
Thesis plus anti-thesis or counter-thesis creatively negotiated together equals homeostatic and/or dialectical balance which in turn provides a compensatory form of psycho- and/or philosophical and/or bio-chemical therapy for all different forms of philosophical and psychological and bio-chemical extremism.
I don't have the technical capability within this blogsite to create the type of model I wish to create with a 'sun' or 'planet' in the centre with all of its revolving planets or moons. So you will have to imagine this.
I have already written a number of different papers that can be found below this essay on 'Gods, Myths, Archetypes, and Self-Energy Centres...' This essay only becomes the essay that starts to pull them all together into one model of the personality.
At centre stage is the 'main energy centre in the personality' -- The Central Mediating Ego' (psychological model) which can also be called the 'Hegelian Ego' (philosophical model: thesis plus counter-thesis equal synthesis and homeostatic-dialectic-democratic balance) or Zeus (mythological model) or 'The Sun' (planetary model).
Here are some of the 'revolving planets in similar and/or different human lifestyles, complexes, and/or personalities'...
2. The DGB Sixteen Idols of 'Lifestyle and Personality Extremism'
1. Idols of The Tribe or The Crowd: (Crowd Pleasers, victims of peer pressure...)Don't get caught up and lost in the ideas and behaviors of the crowd or the 'herd' as Nietcsche would put it -- like lemmings you can be taken over a cliff. Think and feel and act independently as well as co-dependently;
2. Idols of The Cave (Hermits, Loners, Thinkers, Philosophers, Introverts, Shy People, Self-Infatuated People...): Don't get caught up and lost within yourself. You will suffocate there. If or when you do, come back out of yourself, and reach out to a person and/or people. This is your therapy;
3. Idols of The Sky (The Greek God, Uranus) (Idealists, Visionaries, Entepreneurs, Architects, pilots, astronauts, skydivers...): Come back to earth young man or woman, come back to earth and re-ground yourself. Your therapy consists of 'touching earth again and feeling the soil beneath your feet, the ground and trees all around you);
4. Idols of The Earth (in Greek mythology, the godesses Gaea): (Empiricists, people who are afraid to take a risk, people who need security above all else in their lives). Take a risk young man or woman, take a risk! This is your therapy. Fly high into the sky and see how high you can soar;
5. Idols of The Theatre (The Magician, The Sophist, The Actor, The Fraud...: Don't be fooled by others using sophistry, illusion, smoke and mirrors; and similarily, don't fool others using sophistry, illusion, smoke and mirrors. Be congruent, be honest, be yourself. Your therapy consists of re-finding your self and who you really are;
6. Idols of Zeus (Authority, Power, Title): Don't be fooled by, or fool others, using a mantle of exploitive authority, power, and/or title. The best leaders can both talk with wisdom and charisma while listening to the wisdom of others. The worst leaders have a self-inflated opinion of themselves and can talk, even act with power and/or violence but they can't listen, and they don't care about others. They are strictly for themselves. Your therapy here consists of 100 hours of community work to try to help cure your self-inflated narcissism. Helping others -- altruism -- is what you are trying to learn here, and truly caring about others;
7. Idols of The Word: Don't be fooled or fool others using a web of words that don't mean what they claim to mean, or you claim them to mean. If your words don't fit your meaning, then perhaps its time to go back to Grade 1, go back to 'the pointing game', or 'the fitting game', show that your words reflect your actions, and your actions reflect your words. To the extent that they don't -- your words are fraudulent and the more you use them this way, the more of a fraud your whole person is. Your therapy consists of going back to square one and making your actions fit your words and visa versa;
8. Idols of Apollo: Don't spend your whole life following the God of Righteousness -- i.e., Apollo -- because it will create for you a one-sided life. You need to show tolerance and non-jugment at times also. This is your therapy -- to practise being 'non-righteous';
9. Idols of Dionysus: Don't get lost in the pursuit of hedonism, narcissism, pleasure, sex, alcohol, drugs, gambling, partying, the fast life (Your therapy -- maybe practise Budhism or abstinence for a while, see what it is like to live without your addiction, what you are scared of, and how you can overcome this;
10. Idols of Aphrodite: Don't get lost in -- or consumed by -- love. It will throw everything else in your life out of balance and leave you weak and vulnerable to loss, betrayal, abandonment, rejection -- if you fall in love too easily with the person who is going to create a self-fulling prophecy and your worst nightmare for you. You need to stay grounded, develop your own strengths and not 'project Gods' onto everyone you meet. Your therapy is to imagine that you yourself are the God for a while...;
11. Idols of War (The Greek God, Aries): Don't get caught up in -- and consumed by war. It will eat you up and destroy you. You think that you can destroy your enemies but for every new person who you kill, you are probably creating at least a handful of new enemies. Your therapy lies in developing 'creative ways of negotiating towards win-win solutions', not seeing everyone as your potential enemy -- and treating him or her like it, making your world a more dangerous place than it needs to be;
12. Idols of Hades (God of The Underworld): Don't get caught up and lost in illicit and/or illegal activities. It will bring on your self-destruction perhaps faster than anything else, particularly if you are nurturing hate, power, revenge, and violence. What goes around will eventually come around. You will get yours in the end...What was that Martin Luther King quote that Obama liked so much -- something like...'The cosmic arc is long but bends towards justice'.;
13. Idols of Speed (The Greek God, Hermes): Don't get caught up in, and consumed by speed. Live in the fast lane, die in the fast lane.
14. Idols of Athena (Goddess of Patriotism): Patriotism can be a dangerous thing if you get too caught up, and consumed by it. It breeds righteosness and intolerance -- 'It's my way or the highway'. You will eventually distance yourself, alienate, and/or be subsumed by more powerful groups than you that don't buy your 'patriotic lines';
15. Idols of Hera (Goddess and Protector of Marriage): Marriage can be a beautiful thing but it can also be a strifeful thing. Don't completely lose yourself -- and your identity -- in marriage. Be the person you always were. Develop your own talents and potential even as the two of you seek to evolve together in the relationship. Flexibility and tolerance is important -- and not 'couping each other up in tight boxes that you both suffocate in' (or one person suffocates in by submitting to the other's domination). Win-win negotiatins in marriage are essential;
16. Idols of Narcissus (God of Self-Idolation): Don't become so absorbed in yourself that you can't see the people around you and their own trials and tribulations. In the myth of Narcissus, Narcissus looked into a pool of water, saw his reflection, and fell in love with himself. Be sensitive to the needs, want, feelings, thoughts, and problems of others. This is your therapy.
These are the 'idols of extremism' and DGB Post-Hegelian Dialectic-Democratic Philosophy-Psychology seeks to pull every one away from their 'planet of extremism' and back intoto their 'self-mediating energy centre and life-balancing energy of the sun'. The planets always need to come back to the energy of the sun.
And so it is with 'personality' and 'lifestyle' extremes.
Come back young man or woman, come back, to the warmth and mediating energy of the sun. You need to be not too close to the sun but not too far away from the sun either.
'Health' is generally half-way between bi-polar forms of psycho, physio, and/or philosophical pathology on each opposite extreme side.
-- dgb, Sept. 11th, 2008.
1. Introduction
This is brand new DGB Philosophy-Psychology although the ideas have been perculating in my head for a while now...
Think of the sun with the planets revolving around it; the earth needs to be just situated rightly -- not too far from the sun and not close to the sun -- which comes back to the main principle of the creation and/or evolution of life in the univers and on earth: the principle of 'homeostatic balance'.
Once you get this image in your mind -- of the sun and planets model and the principle of homestatic balance -- you are starting to get a picture of my latest perculating model of the human psyche -- a model that borrows from philosophy, psychology, biology, chemistry, and physics, and mythology. There is some Freud in it (projecting and introjecting), some Jung in it (archetypes and Greek Gods), lots of philosophy in it (such as the different 'eras' or 'periods' of philosophy), and running right through the middle of this model are the priniciples of: 1. 'multi-dialectic exchange, interchange, negotiation, power and control maneuvers'; and 2. 'homeostatic (or multi-dialectic) balance.
I remember reading a book a long time ago -- perhaps when I was in university (1974-1979) called, 'Man The Manipulator'. I will research the book and come back to you with the author shortly. I believe the author(s) had some training in both Gestalt Therapy and Jungian Psychology.
Anyways, my present model here reminds me somewhat of what the author(s)in that book were also trying to get at which was basically that (and I will paraphrase in my own words here and now): any 'particualar style of interconnected thought, feeling, impulse, restraint and/or behavior' or what Jung would call a 'complex' or Alfred Adler would call a person's 'lifestyle' has a combination of both positive and negative attributes attached to it (strengths and weaknesses). It's like perhaps the most important statement that Hegel ever made (and again I am both paraphrasing and extending his thought): Every thought, impulse, characteristic, restraint, theory, perspective, lifestyle...carries with it the seeds of its own self-destruction...Or worded otherwise, anything taken too far, will eventually explode, implode, self-destruct, poison, and/or take you off the deep end with it...Any form of extremism will eventually lead to your self-desruction...
Which brings us back to the principle of 'homeostatic -- and/or dialectical -- balance'. Here is my post-Hegelian-extension of Hegel's famous formula: The life cycle follows the pattern of: 1. thesis; 2. anti-thesis; and 3 synthesis (which -- my DGB extension -- pulls man and all of evolutionary life back to the 'central position of homeostatic-dialectic-democratic balance'. 'Not too strong (eg. The Republicans), not too weak (eg. The Democrats) but just right...'The Republican-Democrats or the Democratic-Republicans'. This is the post-Hegelian, bi-polarity synthesizing goal of DGB Philosophy.
Here is my extension of the famous Hegelian formula:
Thesis plus anti-thesis or counter-thesis creatively negotiated together equals homeostatic and/or dialectical balance which in turn provides a compensatory form of psycho- and/or philosophical and/or bio-chemical therapy for all different forms of philosophical and psychological and bio-chemical extremism.
I don't have the technical capability within this blogsite to create the type of model I wish to create with a 'sun' or 'planet' in the centre with all of its revolving planets or moons. So you will have to imagine this.
I have already written a number of different papers that can be found below this essay on 'Gods, Myths, Archetypes, and Self-Energy Centres...' This essay only becomes the essay that starts to pull them all together into one model of the personality.
At centre stage is the 'main energy centre in the personality' -- The Central Mediating Ego' (psychological model) which can also be called the 'Hegelian Ego' (philosophical model: thesis plus counter-thesis equal synthesis and homeostatic-dialectic-democratic balance) or Zeus (mythological model) or 'The Sun' (planetary model).
Here are some of the 'revolving planets in similar and/or different human lifestyles, complexes, and/or personalities'...
2. The DGB Sixteen Idols of 'Lifestyle and Personality Extremism'
1. Idols of The Tribe or The Crowd: (Crowd Pleasers, victims of peer pressure...)Don't get caught up and lost in the ideas and behaviors of the crowd or the 'herd' as Nietcsche would put it -- like lemmings you can be taken over a cliff. Think and feel and act independently as well as co-dependently;
2. Idols of The Cave (Hermits, Loners, Thinkers, Philosophers, Introverts, Shy People, Self-Infatuated People...): Don't get caught up and lost within yourself. You will suffocate there. If or when you do, come back out of yourself, and reach out to a person and/or people. This is your therapy;
3. Idols of The Sky (The Greek God, Uranus) (Idealists, Visionaries, Entepreneurs, Architects, pilots, astronauts, skydivers...): Come back to earth young man or woman, come back to earth and re-ground yourself. Your therapy consists of 'touching earth again and feeling the soil beneath your feet, the ground and trees all around you);
4. Idols of The Earth (in Greek mythology, the godesses Gaea): (Empiricists, people who are afraid to take a risk, people who need security above all else in their lives). Take a risk young man or woman, take a risk! This is your therapy. Fly high into the sky and see how high you can soar;
5. Idols of The Theatre (The Magician, The Sophist, The Actor, The Fraud...: Don't be fooled by others using sophistry, illusion, smoke and mirrors; and similarily, don't fool others using sophistry, illusion, smoke and mirrors. Be congruent, be honest, be yourself. Your therapy consists of re-finding your self and who you really are;
6. Idols of Zeus (Authority, Power, Title): Don't be fooled by, or fool others, using a mantle of exploitive authority, power, and/or title. The best leaders can both talk with wisdom and charisma while listening to the wisdom of others. The worst leaders have a self-inflated opinion of themselves and can talk, even act with power and/or violence but they can't listen, and they don't care about others. They are strictly for themselves. Your therapy here consists of 100 hours of community work to try to help cure your self-inflated narcissism. Helping others -- altruism -- is what you are trying to learn here, and truly caring about others;
7. Idols of The Word: Don't be fooled or fool others using a web of words that don't mean what they claim to mean, or you claim them to mean. If your words don't fit your meaning, then perhaps its time to go back to Grade 1, go back to 'the pointing game', or 'the fitting game', show that your words reflect your actions, and your actions reflect your words. To the extent that they don't -- your words are fraudulent and the more you use them this way, the more of a fraud your whole person is. Your therapy consists of going back to square one and making your actions fit your words and visa versa;
8. Idols of Apollo: Don't spend your whole life following the God of Righteousness -- i.e., Apollo -- because it will create for you a one-sided life. You need to show tolerance and non-jugment at times also. This is your therapy -- to practise being 'non-righteous';
9. Idols of Dionysus: Don't get lost in the pursuit of hedonism, narcissism, pleasure, sex, alcohol, drugs, gambling, partying, the fast life (Your therapy -- maybe practise Budhism or abstinence for a while, see what it is like to live without your addiction, what you are scared of, and how you can overcome this;
10. Idols of Aphrodite: Don't get lost in -- or consumed by -- love. It will throw everything else in your life out of balance and leave you weak and vulnerable to loss, betrayal, abandonment, rejection -- if you fall in love too easily with the person who is going to create a self-fulling prophecy and your worst nightmare for you. You need to stay grounded, develop your own strengths and not 'project Gods' onto everyone you meet. Your therapy is to imagine that you yourself are the God for a while...;
11. Idols of War (The Greek God, Aries): Don't get caught up in -- and consumed by war. It will eat you up and destroy you. You think that you can destroy your enemies but for every new person who you kill, you are probably creating at least a handful of new enemies. Your therapy lies in developing 'creative ways of negotiating towards win-win solutions', not seeing everyone as your potential enemy -- and treating him or her like it, making your world a more dangerous place than it needs to be;
12. Idols of Hades (God of The Underworld): Don't get caught up and lost in illicit and/or illegal activities. It will bring on your self-destruction perhaps faster than anything else, particularly if you are nurturing hate, power, revenge, and violence. What goes around will eventually come around. You will get yours in the end...What was that Martin Luther King quote that Obama liked so much -- something like...'The cosmic arc is long but bends towards justice'.;
13. Idols of Speed (The Greek God, Hermes): Don't get caught up in, and consumed by speed. Live in the fast lane, die in the fast lane.
14. Idols of Athena (Goddess of Patriotism): Patriotism can be a dangerous thing if you get too caught up, and consumed by it. It breeds righteosness and intolerance -- 'It's my way or the highway'. You will eventually distance yourself, alienate, and/or be subsumed by more powerful groups than you that don't buy your 'patriotic lines';
15. Idols of Hera (Goddess and Protector of Marriage): Marriage can be a beautiful thing but it can also be a strifeful thing. Don't completely lose yourself -- and your identity -- in marriage. Be the person you always were. Develop your own talents and potential even as the two of you seek to evolve together in the relationship. Flexibility and tolerance is important -- and not 'couping each other up in tight boxes that you both suffocate in' (or one person suffocates in by submitting to the other's domination). Win-win negotiatins in marriage are essential;
16. Idols of Narcissus (God of Self-Idolation): Don't become so absorbed in yourself that you can't see the people around you and their own trials and tribulations. In the myth of Narcissus, Narcissus looked into a pool of water, saw his reflection, and fell in love with himself. Be sensitive to the needs, want, feelings, thoughts, and problems of others. This is your therapy.
These are the 'idols of extremism' and DGB Post-Hegelian Dialectic-Democratic Philosophy-Psychology seeks to pull every one away from their 'planet of extremism' and back intoto their 'self-mediating energy centre and life-balancing energy of the sun'. The planets always need to come back to the energy of the sun.
And so it is with 'personality' and 'lifestyle' extremes.
Come back young man or woman, come back, to the warmth and mediating energy of the sun. You need to be not too close to the sun but not too far away from the sun either.
'Health' is generally half-way between bi-polar forms of psycho, physio, and/or philosophical pathology on each opposite extreme side.
-- dgb, Sept. 11th, 2008.
Another Theoretical Paper From The DGB Philosophy Archives: From Hegel to Gap-DGB Philosophy
From Hegel to Gap-DGB Philosophy
Canada Day, July 1st, 2006.
This forum is designed to build philosophical bridges between separate philosophical ideas, opinions, perspectives, lifestyles, organizations, structures, and processes.
For example, the forum aims to build a bridge between academic/historical philosophy and contemporary, pragmatic ‘street’ (home/family/work) philosophy. It aims to bridge the gap between the abstract and the concrete. Between philosophy and psychology. Between Hegel and Nietzsche. Between Anaximander and Hegel. Between religion and science. Between Enlightenment Philosophy and Romantic Philosophy. Between humanism and existentialism. Between conservatism and liberalism. Between capitalism and socialism. Between Freud and the feminists. Between Freud and Adler. Between Freud and Jung. Between Freud and Perls.
Everywhere we go there is going to be a ‘dialectical face-off’ between philosophy A and philosophy B, and there is going to be an underlying assumption that there is a mixture of truth and distortion, value and disvalue, in both philosophy A and Philosophy B, and there is often -- if not always -- creative value in aiming to reach an integrative, ‘homeostatic balance’ between the two competing philosophies/philosophers/perspectives/ideologies/lifestyles...
Thus, you can call this a post-Hegelian school and forum of philosophy. It is built on the Hegelian dialectical evolutionary theory of ‘thesis’, ‘anti-thesis’, and ‘synthesis’ -- and start over again at a different, hopefully better, level. Thus, also, we are trying for the most part to discourage most forms of righteous, narcissistic, , extremist, destructive ‘either/or’ philosophies, religions, organizations, etc. These types of philosophies usually generate ‘wars’ of any and every kind -- intra-psychic, inter-personal, civil, political, international…
However, this is not only a post-Hegelian forum of philosophy but also a post-Anaxamanderian, post-Spinozian, post-Darwinian, post-Nietzschean, post-Kierkegaardian, post-Derridian, post-Freudian, post-Adlerian, post-Jungian, and post-Gestalt forum as well. Call it a ‘Leap-Frog and Link’ forum of philosophy, or Gap Philosophy, or Gap-Bridging Philosophy, or Dialectical-Gap-Bridging (DGB) Philosophy, or Gap Multi-Integrative-Dialectical Philosophy...these names all aim to describe the same basic idea -- linking opposing philosophies and lifestyles together into a more harmonious multi-integrative-dialectical homeostatic balance.
We are looking for creative, integrative conflict resolutions that bring people together in a spirit of ‘dialectical-democratic unity’, appreciating our unique individual differences and multiple different perspectives -- and in fact embracing these differences as a vital part of our human essence, heritage, and future. As the great psychologist, Carl Jung, has written:
‘The greater the contrast, the greater is the potential. Great energy only comes from great tensions between opposites.’
In every case, the possibilities are contained within the opposites. What is required is their (creative, assertive, compassionate, democratic) interaction, so that the dialectic may be permitted to operate” (towards a successful ‘gap-bridging’ creative-integrative solution/resolution to the particular conflict). Joel Latner, The Gestalt Therapy Book, The Julian Press, 1973. (bracketed extensions mine).
In a world that seems to be rushing back towards the brink of nuclear war again, and in a world where friends, family, and foes alike all tend to take righteous, narcissistic, extremist, ‘either/or’ stances against each other, it would seem that this type of philosophy of ‘tolerance and creative evolutionary harmony of differences’ cannot be expounded, promoted, and applied any time too soon -- or too loudly.
-- David Gordon Bain (DGB), July 1st, 2006.
Canada Day, July 1st, 2006.
This forum is designed to build philosophical bridges between separate philosophical ideas, opinions, perspectives, lifestyles, organizations, structures, and processes.
For example, the forum aims to build a bridge between academic/historical philosophy and contemporary, pragmatic ‘street’ (home/family/work) philosophy. It aims to bridge the gap between the abstract and the concrete. Between philosophy and psychology. Between Hegel and Nietzsche. Between Anaximander and Hegel. Between religion and science. Between Enlightenment Philosophy and Romantic Philosophy. Between humanism and existentialism. Between conservatism and liberalism. Between capitalism and socialism. Between Freud and the feminists. Between Freud and Adler. Between Freud and Jung. Between Freud and Perls.
Everywhere we go there is going to be a ‘dialectical face-off’ between philosophy A and philosophy B, and there is going to be an underlying assumption that there is a mixture of truth and distortion, value and disvalue, in both philosophy A and Philosophy B, and there is often -- if not always -- creative value in aiming to reach an integrative, ‘homeostatic balance’ between the two competing philosophies/philosophers/perspectives/ideologies/lifestyles...
Thus, you can call this a post-Hegelian school and forum of philosophy. It is built on the Hegelian dialectical evolutionary theory of ‘thesis’, ‘anti-thesis’, and ‘synthesis’ -- and start over again at a different, hopefully better, level. Thus, also, we are trying for the most part to discourage most forms of righteous, narcissistic, , extremist, destructive ‘either/or’ philosophies, religions, organizations, etc. These types of philosophies usually generate ‘wars’ of any and every kind -- intra-psychic, inter-personal, civil, political, international…
However, this is not only a post-Hegelian forum of philosophy but also a post-Anaxamanderian, post-Spinozian, post-Darwinian, post-Nietzschean, post-Kierkegaardian, post-Derridian, post-Freudian, post-Adlerian, post-Jungian, and post-Gestalt forum as well. Call it a ‘Leap-Frog and Link’ forum of philosophy, or Gap Philosophy, or Gap-Bridging Philosophy, or Dialectical-Gap-Bridging (DGB) Philosophy, or Gap Multi-Integrative-Dialectical Philosophy...these names all aim to describe the same basic idea -- linking opposing philosophies and lifestyles together into a more harmonious multi-integrative-dialectical homeostatic balance.
We are looking for creative, integrative conflict resolutions that bring people together in a spirit of ‘dialectical-democratic unity’, appreciating our unique individual differences and multiple different perspectives -- and in fact embracing these differences as a vital part of our human essence, heritage, and future. As the great psychologist, Carl Jung, has written:
‘The greater the contrast, the greater is the potential. Great energy only comes from great tensions between opposites.’
In every case, the possibilities are contained within the opposites. What is required is their (creative, assertive, compassionate, democratic) interaction, so that the dialectic may be permitted to operate” (towards a successful ‘gap-bridging’ creative-integrative solution/resolution to the particular conflict). Joel Latner, The Gestalt Therapy Book, The Julian Press, 1973. (bracketed extensions mine).
In a world that seems to be rushing back towards the brink of nuclear war again, and in a world where friends, family, and foes alike all tend to take righteous, narcissistic, extremist, ‘either/or’ stances against each other, it would seem that this type of philosophy of ‘tolerance and creative evolutionary harmony of differences’ cannot be expounded, promoted, and applied any time too soon -- or too loudly.
-- David Gordon Bain (DGB), July 1st, 2006.
DGB Dialectic-Democratic, Humanistic-Existential Political Philosophy -- and Capitalism
A) Preface
This is a more 'theoretical' -- as opposed to 'applied' -- DGB political philosophy essay. I believe that it is important for my reader to get at least a gist of the underlying, foundational principles upon which DGB Dialectic-Democratic, Multi-Bi-Polar, Humanistic-Existential, Political Philosophy and Capitalism -- is built.
B) Introduction
This is a brand new, DGB Political Philosophy Theory and the 'tip of the iceberg' of slowly evolving DGB Business-Economic Theory (to which I have a very lot to learn) as of today, October 11th, 2008 -- this essay deriving from my last essay on this subject matter exactly one month ago, Sept. 11th, 2008). See my September 11th essay, just re-named today (Oct. 26th, 2008):
DGB Multi-Bi-Polar 'Sun-Planet Theory' and 'Sixteen God-Archetype-Ego-States' of Human Personality Functioning and Dysfunctoning'
........................................................................
C) Gods, Myths, Philosophers, and Heroes; b) Archetypes; c) Self-Energy Centres or Ego-States; and d) The Inter-Relationship Between Projection and Introjection
The rationale and logic for this line of thought runs something like this:
1. Gods, idols, heroes, mythological figures, and parental figures are all external projections and symbolizations of 'human ideals' -- some relevant and meaningful to a whole culture or society, others relevant and meaningful to some 'subset' of culture or society, and still others that hold only a deeply personal meaning for us, and us alone.
2. 'Archetypes' are subconscious, internalized (or introjected) renditions of externally projected Gods, idols, mythological figures, and parental figures.
3. Thus, 'Gods', etc... and 'archetypes' work hand in hand with each other, dialectically, and ideally democratically, on both an externally projected and an internally introjected level to make up much of the psyhological dynamics of the human personality...When 'Gods' and 'archetypes' collide and conflict with each other -- as part of a 'mythological and/or philosophical battlefield (much like in the battles of Ancient Greek Gods, read, for example, Homer and the Iliad -- so too do the forces within our own personlity/personalities; and visa versa.
4. In other words, myths and Gods are external reflections of the human personality -- much like an artist's completed canvas is an external reflection of his or her own personality; and much too like Government is a reflection of the internal workings of the human personality. Different government dynamics reflect different leader personality dynamics and visa versa. Dictatorships reflect partly different dynamics than democracies -- but not really. Everything is connected. Democracies tend to gravitate towards dictatorships, and dictatorships tend to gravitate towards democracies. 'Democracy' and 'dictatorship' together reflect one dialectical polarity, an important one -- the 'democratic-dictatorial polarity' -- amongst countless similar 'multiple-bi-polarities' that make up: 1. the character (meaning the philosophy and psychology) of man; 2. the biology, chemistry, and physics of man; 3. all aspects of the culture and politics of man; and 4. the essence of life -- and the 'life-death'/'health-sickness' bi-polarities.
Based on the above developed logic, and other related DGB Post-Hegelian, Post-Nietzschean, Post-Spinozian, post-Freudian, post-Cannon principles, here are:
...........................................................................
D/ Eight Essential DGB Philosophy Principles Pertaining To The 'Multiple-Bi-Polar Nature of Man-In-Action:
1. Individual molecules come together and unite ('differential unity');
2. 'Differentially unified' molecules break apart and 'individuate';
3. Individual molecules 'compete' with each other and/or 'co-operate' with each other with the goal of 'individual and/or group survival' in mind -- both often happening to some degree or another at the same time, sometimes, the 'competition' part dominating, other times, the 'co-operation' part dominating, and in effect, engineering both the 'constructive' and/or the 'destructive' (or 'deconstructive') forces of life and/or death, individual separation and/or differential union.
4. 'Freedom' and 'determinism' is another human and life 'bi-polarity', and the two dialectically interact with each other, negotiate with each other, and unite with each other, in the ongoing human mental, psychological, physical, biological, chemical, political, legal, philosophical, and cultural integrative and interactive process of free-will and deteministic forces: in effect, 'free-will determinism' or 'deterministic-free-will'.
5. 'Republicanism' vs. 'Democratism' is an important American political bi-polarity as is its underlying philosophical bi-polarity of 'conservatism' vs. 'liberalism' and or its economic corollary of 'capitalism' vs. 'socialism.
6. 'Apollonianism' (ethics, equality, justice...)and 'Dionyisianism' (sensuality, sexuality, pleasure...See 'The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche, and also Freud and Psychoanalysis...) is another important human bi-polarity.
7. 'Security or safety' vs. 'risk, newness, and excitement' is another important human bi-polarity.
8. All human bi-polarities gravitate towards a position of homeostatic (dialectic-democratic) balance; and when this position gets too boring, too status-quo, too routine, too taken for granted, new bio-chemical, philosopical and psychological forces tend to propel a person and/or a society back out towards the edges of one form of 'bi-polar extremism' or another. This can be both good and or bed depending on where the bi-polar pendulum is swinging from, and where it is going to.
I will let you 'chew' on these principles for a while without further elaboration.
Have a great day!
-- dgb, October 11th, 2008, updated October 26th, 2008.
........................................................................
This is a more 'theoretical' -- as opposed to 'applied' -- DGB political philosophy essay. I believe that it is important for my reader to get at least a gist of the underlying, foundational principles upon which DGB Dialectic-Democratic, Multi-Bi-Polar, Humanistic-Existential, Political Philosophy and Capitalism -- is built.
B) Introduction
This is a brand new, DGB Political Philosophy Theory and the 'tip of the iceberg' of slowly evolving DGB Business-Economic Theory (to which I have a very lot to learn) as of today, October 11th, 2008 -- this essay deriving from my last essay on this subject matter exactly one month ago, Sept. 11th, 2008). See my September 11th essay, just re-named today (Oct. 26th, 2008):
DGB Multi-Bi-Polar 'Sun-Planet Theory' and 'Sixteen God-Archetype-Ego-States' of Human Personality Functioning and Dysfunctoning'
........................................................................
C) Gods, Myths, Philosophers, and Heroes; b) Archetypes; c) Self-Energy Centres or Ego-States; and d) The Inter-Relationship Between Projection and Introjection
The rationale and logic for this line of thought runs something like this:
1. Gods, idols, heroes, mythological figures, and parental figures are all external projections and symbolizations of 'human ideals' -- some relevant and meaningful to a whole culture or society, others relevant and meaningful to some 'subset' of culture or society, and still others that hold only a deeply personal meaning for us, and us alone.
2. 'Archetypes' are subconscious, internalized (or introjected) renditions of externally projected Gods, idols, mythological figures, and parental figures.
3. Thus, 'Gods', etc... and 'archetypes' work hand in hand with each other, dialectically, and ideally democratically, on both an externally projected and an internally introjected level to make up much of the psyhological dynamics of the human personality...When 'Gods' and 'archetypes' collide and conflict with each other -- as part of a 'mythological and/or philosophical battlefield (much like in the battles of Ancient Greek Gods, read, for example, Homer and the Iliad -- so too do the forces within our own personlity/personalities; and visa versa.
4. In other words, myths and Gods are external reflections of the human personality -- much like an artist's completed canvas is an external reflection of his or her own personality; and much too like Government is a reflection of the internal workings of the human personality. Different government dynamics reflect different leader personality dynamics and visa versa. Dictatorships reflect partly different dynamics than democracies -- but not really. Everything is connected. Democracies tend to gravitate towards dictatorships, and dictatorships tend to gravitate towards democracies. 'Democracy' and 'dictatorship' together reflect one dialectical polarity, an important one -- the 'democratic-dictatorial polarity' -- amongst countless similar 'multiple-bi-polarities' that make up: 1. the character (meaning the philosophy and psychology) of man; 2. the biology, chemistry, and physics of man; 3. all aspects of the culture and politics of man; and 4. the essence of life -- and the 'life-death'/'health-sickness' bi-polarities.
Based on the above developed logic, and other related DGB Post-Hegelian, Post-Nietzschean, Post-Spinozian, post-Freudian, post-Cannon principles, here are:
...........................................................................
D/ Eight Essential DGB Philosophy Principles Pertaining To The 'Multiple-Bi-Polar Nature of Man-In-Action:
1. Individual molecules come together and unite ('differential unity');
2. 'Differentially unified' molecules break apart and 'individuate';
3. Individual molecules 'compete' with each other and/or 'co-operate' with each other with the goal of 'individual and/or group survival' in mind -- both often happening to some degree or another at the same time, sometimes, the 'competition' part dominating, other times, the 'co-operation' part dominating, and in effect, engineering both the 'constructive' and/or the 'destructive' (or 'deconstructive') forces of life and/or death, individual separation and/or differential union.
4. 'Freedom' and 'determinism' is another human and life 'bi-polarity', and the two dialectically interact with each other, negotiate with each other, and unite with each other, in the ongoing human mental, psychological, physical, biological, chemical, political, legal, philosophical, and cultural integrative and interactive process of free-will and deteministic forces: in effect, 'free-will determinism' or 'deterministic-free-will'.
5. 'Republicanism' vs. 'Democratism' is an important American political bi-polarity as is its underlying philosophical bi-polarity of 'conservatism' vs. 'liberalism' and or its economic corollary of 'capitalism' vs. 'socialism.
6. 'Apollonianism' (ethics, equality, justice...)and 'Dionyisianism' (sensuality, sexuality, pleasure...See 'The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche, and also Freud and Psychoanalysis...) is another important human bi-polarity.
7. 'Security or safety' vs. 'risk, newness, and excitement' is another important human bi-polarity.
8. All human bi-polarities gravitate towards a position of homeostatic (dialectic-democratic) balance; and when this position gets too boring, too status-quo, too routine, too taken for granted, new bio-chemical, philosopical and psychological forces tend to propel a person and/or a society back out towards the edges of one form of 'bi-polar extremism' or another. This can be both good and or bed depending on where the bi-polar pendulum is swinging from, and where it is going to.
I will let you 'chew' on these principles for a while without further elaboration.
Have a great day!
-- dgb, October 11th, 2008, updated October 26th, 2008.
........................................................................
Alaska's largest newspaper endorses Barack Obama
Alaska's largest newspaper endorses Barack Obama
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Digg Facebook Newsvine del.icio.us Reddit StumbleUpon Technorati Yahoo! Bookmarks Print 59 mins ago AP – Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., smiles as he addresses supporters at a … ANCHORAGE, Alaska – The Anchorage Daily News, Alaska's largest newspaper, has endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for president.
The newspaper said Sunday the Democrat "brings far more promise to the office. In a time of grave economic crisis, he displays thoughtful analysis, enlists wise counsel and operates with a cool, steady hand."
The Daily News said since the economic crisis has emerged, Republican presidential candidate John McCain has "stumbled and fumbled badly" in dealing with it.
"Of the two candidates, Sen. Obama better understands the mortgage meltdown's root causes and has the judgment and intelligence to shape a solution, as well as the leadership to rally the country behind it," the paper said.
The Daily News said Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has shown the country why she is a success as governor. But the paper said few would argue that Palin is truly ready to step into the job of being president despite her passion, charisma and strong work ethic.
"Gov. Palin's nomination clearly alters the landscape for Alaskans as we survey this race for the presidency — but it does not overwhelm all other judgment. The election, after all is said and done, is not about Sarah Palin, and our sober view is that her running mate, Sen. John McCain, is the wrong choice for president at this critical time for our nation," the paper said.
"Like picking Sen. McCain for president, putting her one 72-year-old heartbeat from the leadership of the free world is just too risky at this time," the paper concluded.
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Digg Facebook Newsvine del.icio.us Reddit StumbleUpon Technorati Yahoo! Bookmarks Print 59 mins ago AP – Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., smiles as he addresses supporters at a … ANCHORAGE, Alaska – The Anchorage Daily News, Alaska's largest newspaper, has endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for president.
The newspaper said Sunday the Democrat "brings far more promise to the office. In a time of grave economic crisis, he displays thoughtful analysis, enlists wise counsel and operates with a cool, steady hand."
The Daily News said since the economic crisis has emerged, Republican presidential candidate John McCain has "stumbled and fumbled badly" in dealing with it.
"Of the two candidates, Sen. Obama better understands the mortgage meltdown's root causes and has the judgment and intelligence to shape a solution, as well as the leadership to rally the country behind it," the paper said.
The Daily News said Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has shown the country why she is a success as governor. But the paper said few would argue that Palin is truly ready to step into the job of being president despite her passion, charisma and strong work ethic.
"Gov. Palin's nomination clearly alters the landscape for Alaskans as we survey this race for the presidency — but it does not overwhelm all other judgment. The election, after all is said and done, is not about Sarah Palin, and our sober view is that her running mate, Sen. John McCain, is the wrong choice for president at this critical time for our nation," the paper said.
"Like picking Sen. McCain for president, putting her one 72-year-old heartbeat from the leadership of the free world is just too risky at this time," the paper concluded.
DGB Editorial Comments on: McCain and Palin vs. Obama and Biden
Last week I heard Joe Biden at his best -- and at his worst -- on the same day.
'Passionate, Down-to-Earth' Joe in one speech. 'Foot in His Mouth' Joe in the next speech. Today I heard 'Passionate, Down-to-Earth Joe' back at his best again. 'Two out of three ain't Bad'. (But -- please, Joe, no more 'foot in mouth' speeches, please, before the election...)
I heard Sarah Palin today also. Sarah Palin still can't seem to distinguish between:
1. 'Narcissistic, Unethical, Top-Heavy, Master-Slave' Capitalism;
2. 'Dialectic-Democratic, Ethical, Win-Win, Top and Bottom Solid' Capitalism;
3. Socialism.
Sarah Palin continues to effectively call Obama a 'socialist' -- instead of an 'Ethical Capitalist' who is trying to 'deconstruct' (dismantle) Top-Heavy, Unethical Capitalism in favor of a more Ethical, Win-Win, Bottom Solid, populist Capitalism where everybody shares a piece of The American Pie more fairly.
That is not 'socialism', Governor Palin. That is ethical, humanistic-existential Capitalism.
Either:
1. Governor Palin, does not have the intellect to make this important distinction -- but I think she does (you don't become Governor today without having an intellect and an ability to rhetorically carry yourself;
2. Or she is trying to utilize 'Republican Sophism' (meaning 'smoke and mirrors' -- Obama today used the words 'slash and burn' divisive tactics) to pull the wool over the eyes of the American people -- or to pit them against each other -- in true George Bush-John McCain-Sarah Palin Exploitive Republican fashion.
Neither possibility makes Sarah Palin look good.
She just keeps churning out the same old, same old, Republican Capitalist stereotypes.
The ones that keep making the richest in America richer,
While impoverishing, manipulating, and exploiting the rest of America.
Sarah Palin and John McCain support Narcissistic, Unethical, Top-Heavy Capitalism at its worst -- the type that leaves the rest of America behind.
(Even as in a speech today I heard Mcain trying to preach 'populitst Capitalism' -- quite frankly, I don't believe him. He has been too 'all over the map' to gain my trust and respect now.
Obama and Biden support Ethical, Bottom-Solid, Populist Capitalism at its best.
And that is not Socialism.
And even if Obama's (and Hillary Clinton's) trumpeted 'Subsidized, and/or eventual Universal Health Plan' does include some elements of 'humanistic-socialism' in it,
That is still a lot better than Republican Unilateral, Imperialist, Foreign Relations,
And the crash of Narcissistic, Unethical, Top-Heavy Capitalism...
On Wall Street...
With CEOs packing up their multi-million dollar suitcases,
And escaping out the back door.
Meanwhile, Obama sounds as if he is 'on top of his game again' -- and I don't mean that in any negative sense. What is it -- 100,000 people -- that he just drew to his last rally.
Obama is back to being confident again, expounding his vision, brushing off negative Republican stereotypes or counter-arguing them, that a month ago seemed to shake him off his game.
I think we are looking at the next President of The United States.
And I believe that is a good thing.
America == and the world == needs some new Democratic unity and integrationism.
Not 4 more years of Republican divisionism, traumacy -- and pain.
-- dgb, October 26th, 2008.
'Passionate, Down-to-Earth' Joe in one speech. 'Foot in His Mouth' Joe in the next speech. Today I heard 'Passionate, Down-to-Earth Joe' back at his best again. 'Two out of three ain't Bad'. (But -- please, Joe, no more 'foot in mouth' speeches, please, before the election...)
I heard Sarah Palin today also. Sarah Palin still can't seem to distinguish between:
1. 'Narcissistic, Unethical, Top-Heavy, Master-Slave' Capitalism;
2. 'Dialectic-Democratic, Ethical, Win-Win, Top and Bottom Solid' Capitalism;
3. Socialism.
Sarah Palin continues to effectively call Obama a 'socialist' -- instead of an 'Ethical Capitalist' who is trying to 'deconstruct' (dismantle) Top-Heavy, Unethical Capitalism in favor of a more Ethical, Win-Win, Bottom Solid, populist Capitalism where everybody shares a piece of The American Pie more fairly.
That is not 'socialism', Governor Palin. That is ethical, humanistic-existential Capitalism.
Either:
1. Governor Palin, does not have the intellect to make this important distinction -- but I think she does (you don't become Governor today without having an intellect and an ability to rhetorically carry yourself;
2. Or she is trying to utilize 'Republican Sophism' (meaning 'smoke and mirrors' -- Obama today used the words 'slash and burn' divisive tactics) to pull the wool over the eyes of the American people -- or to pit them against each other -- in true George Bush-John McCain-Sarah Palin Exploitive Republican fashion.
Neither possibility makes Sarah Palin look good.
She just keeps churning out the same old, same old, Republican Capitalist stereotypes.
The ones that keep making the richest in America richer,
While impoverishing, manipulating, and exploiting the rest of America.
Sarah Palin and John McCain support Narcissistic, Unethical, Top-Heavy Capitalism at its worst -- the type that leaves the rest of America behind.
(Even as in a speech today I heard Mcain trying to preach 'populitst Capitalism' -- quite frankly, I don't believe him. He has been too 'all over the map' to gain my trust and respect now.
Obama and Biden support Ethical, Bottom-Solid, Populist Capitalism at its best.
And that is not Socialism.
And even if Obama's (and Hillary Clinton's) trumpeted 'Subsidized, and/or eventual Universal Health Plan' does include some elements of 'humanistic-socialism' in it,
That is still a lot better than Republican Unilateral, Imperialist, Foreign Relations,
And the crash of Narcissistic, Unethical, Top-Heavy Capitalism...
On Wall Street...
With CEOs packing up their multi-million dollar suitcases,
And escaping out the back door.
Meanwhile, Obama sounds as if he is 'on top of his game again' -- and I don't mean that in any negative sense. What is it -- 100,000 people -- that he just drew to his last rally.
Obama is back to being confident again, expounding his vision, brushing off negative Republican stereotypes or counter-arguing them, that a month ago seemed to shake him off his game.
I think we are looking at the next President of The United States.
And I believe that is a good thing.
America == and the world == needs some new Democratic unity and integrationism.
Not 4 more years of Republican divisionism, traumacy -- and pain.
-- dgb, October 26th, 2008.
Syria: US choppers attack village near Iraq border
Syria: US choppers attack village near Iraq border
Digg Facebook Newsvine del.icio.us Reddit StumbleUpon Technorati Yahoo! Bookmarks Print By ALBERT AJI, Associated Press Writer Albert Aji, Associated Press Writer – 4 mins ago
DAMASCUS, Syria – Syria's government says U.S. military helicopters have attacked an area along Syria's border with Iraq, killing eight people.
A government statement carried by the official Syrian Arab News Agency said the attack was on the Sukkariyeh Farm near the town of Abu Kamal, five miles inside the Syrian border. Four helicopters attacked a civilian building under construction, firing on the workers inside, shortly before sundown, the statement said.
Digg Facebook Newsvine del.icio.us Reddit StumbleUpon Technorati Yahoo! Bookmarks Print By ALBERT AJI, Associated Press Writer Albert Aji, Associated Press Writer – 4 mins ago
DAMASCUS, Syria – Syria's government says U.S. military helicopters have attacked an area along Syria's border with Iraq, killing eight people.
A government statement carried by the official Syrian Arab News Agency said the attack was on the Sukkariyeh Farm near the town of Abu Kamal, five miles inside the Syrian border. Four helicopters attacked a civilian building under construction, firing on the workers inside, shortly before sundown, the statement said.
Bitter infighting over Palin in McCain campaign: report
Bitter infighting over Palin in McCain campaign: report
Sat Oct 25, 4:51 PM
MESILLA, New Mexico (AFP) - Bitter infighting has broken out between aides to John McCain and Sarah Palin over management of the Alaska governor's role in the campaign, it was reported Saturday.
The Politico.com website cited four Republicans close to Palin as saying she had grown frustrated by advice given to her by campaign handlers, whom supporters blame for a series of public relations gaffes.
The report said Palin was now increasingly willing to disregard orders from advisors, suggesting the Republican running mate was in the initial stages of forging her own identity for a future tilt at the White House.
"She's lost confidence in most of the people on the plane," said a senior Republican quoted by Politico, adding that Palin had already begun to "go rogue" in some of her public pronouncements on the campaign trail.
The Alaska Governor's supporters accused McCain campaign strategist Steve Schmidt and senior aide Nicole Wallace of already attempting to blame Palin for the failure of the campaign.
"These people are going to try and shred her after the campaign to divert blame from themselves," a McCain insider was quote by Politico as saying.
When asked to comment on the Politico story by AFP, Wallace said in an email: "I have no comment other than what's in the story, if people wish to throw me under the bus, my personal belief is that the graceful thing to do is to lie there."
News of tensions within the McCain camp comes after polls suggested Palin -- who electrified the party base when named as running mate in August -- is now dragging down the Republican ticket 10 days from the November 4 election.
A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released on Wednesday found that Americans are less and less convinced she is worthy to serve as the country's number-two leader.
"Her numbers have plummeted in our poll ... what's more 55 percent think she's unqualified to serve as president if the need arises, which is a troublesome number given McCain's age," said NBC political director Chuck Todd.
It confirmed the findings of an ABC/Washington Post poll released earlier this month which found that six in 10 voters saw Palin, 44, as lacking the experience to be an effective president. "A third are now less likely to vote for McCain because of her," the Post added.
After being found guilty of abusing her power as governor in the so-called "troopergate" scandal over the firing of her ex-brother-in-law, Palin now faces a second probe over whether she violated ethics rules in the affair.
Palin was also back in the headlines this week after it emerged 150,000 dollars had been spent on clothes for Palin since late August, potentially undermining her appeal as a down-to-earth working "hockey mom."
Sat Oct 25, 4:51 PM
MESILLA, New Mexico (AFP) - Bitter infighting has broken out between aides to John McCain and Sarah Palin over management of the Alaska governor's role in the campaign, it was reported Saturday.
The Politico.com website cited four Republicans close to Palin as saying she had grown frustrated by advice given to her by campaign handlers, whom supporters blame for a series of public relations gaffes.
The report said Palin was now increasingly willing to disregard orders from advisors, suggesting the Republican running mate was in the initial stages of forging her own identity for a future tilt at the White House.
"She's lost confidence in most of the people on the plane," said a senior Republican quoted by Politico, adding that Palin had already begun to "go rogue" in some of her public pronouncements on the campaign trail.
The Alaska Governor's supporters accused McCain campaign strategist Steve Schmidt and senior aide Nicole Wallace of already attempting to blame Palin for the failure of the campaign.
"These people are going to try and shred her after the campaign to divert blame from themselves," a McCain insider was quote by Politico as saying.
When asked to comment on the Politico story by AFP, Wallace said in an email: "I have no comment other than what's in the story, if people wish to throw me under the bus, my personal belief is that the graceful thing to do is to lie there."
News of tensions within the McCain camp comes after polls suggested Palin -- who electrified the party base when named as running mate in August -- is now dragging down the Republican ticket 10 days from the November 4 election.
A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released on Wednesday found that Americans are less and less convinced she is worthy to serve as the country's number-two leader.
"Her numbers have plummeted in our poll ... what's more 55 percent think she's unqualified to serve as president if the need arises, which is a troublesome number given McCain's age," said NBC political director Chuck Todd.
It confirmed the findings of an ABC/Washington Post poll released earlier this month which found that six in 10 voters saw Palin, 44, as lacking the experience to be an effective president. "A third are now less likely to vote for McCain because of her," the Post added.
After being found guilty of abusing her power as governor in the so-called "troopergate" scandal over the firing of her ex-brother-in-law, Palin now faces a second probe over whether she violated ethics rules in the affair.
Palin was also back in the headlines this week after it emerged 150,000 dollars had been spent on clothes for Palin since late August, potentially undermining her appeal as a down-to-earth working "hockey mom."
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Blowback
I have a number of essays perculating in my head tonight, most of which I hope will surface in the upcoming week. Some deal specifically with American politics. Others are aimed at providing a 'support structure' by which you might better understand my approach to American politics. Perhaps we might distinguish between 'manifest' and 'latent' political essays.
My manifest political essays will deal mainly with Republican, Washington, American, Wall Street, Iraq, and Captalist forensics. I have a certain fascination with the CIA concept of 'blowback' that I have to indulge in, obsess with, twist and turn it until it hurts, cut it out with a scalpal, because I know it is important, and pathological, an unseen cancer or toxic poison growing in the heart of the American Government and the heart of the American people -- it is actually tied up with the American Government 'cheating' on the American people, being dishonest with them, covert about their true intentions, their true activities, what they are doing on distant shores, who they are giving money to and who they are not, who they are giving military arms to, and who they are not -- these kinds of ideas I am pretty darn sure are all tied up to the concept of 'blowback'.
Let no stone be left unturned in your quest for knowledge,
Your demand for truth,
Beware of some people's narcissistic, ulterior motives,
The ones that are not talked about in public,
But that are discussed behind closed doors,
Secret rooms and meeting places,
And then acted upon in private,
You and me won't tell them,
It's very much like 'cheating' on your wife or girlfriend,
Your husband or boyfriend,
One can distinguish between two different 'phases' and/or 'degrees' of 'blowback':
1. 'Tell-tale, warning-sign blowback'; and
2. Collosal, devastating blowback'.
It is easy to call someone 'evil',
But 'evil victimizers' were usually 'victims of evil' first,
Psychoanalysis calls it 'Identification With The Aggressor (The Victimizer),
The logic goes something like this,
'It's better to victimize than to be victimized',
'It's better to be powerful than to be powerless',
The dark side of Nietzsche's 'Will to Power',
From self-empowerment to power over people,
From Democracy to Dictatorship or Unilateralism,
From 'Dialectic-Democracy' back to 'The Master-Slave Relationship',
Calling people 'evil' or 'terrorists' or 'insurgents', or 'extremists',
Eliminates the need to talk about 'blowback',
The American People need to understand blowback,
And what their government is hiding from them,
Democracy -- dialectic-democracy -- between the American Goverment,
And the Amercan People,
Requires Transparency,
Dialectic-Democracy Requires Dialectical Transparency,
Where undemocratic -- collosal -- decisions are not made behind closed doors,
Out of the sight and the ear of the American People,
Military Interventionism into other countries wars,
Where America is not The Peace-Maker,
But the one-sided Military Supplier,
That exasperates already existing wars,
Favoring one nation, while ganging up on the other,
Like a parent that always pampers one child,
While neglecting the other,
This foreign policy tactic needs to be fully and openly discussed,
Debated for its merits -- and potential for pitfalls,
Potential for blowback.
Tell-tale, warning side, blowback,
And then collosal blowback.
9/11.
It is easy to say Bin Laden is evil...
And he is evil,
Bush should never have taken his eye off of Bin Laden,
International law needs to be 'tight' -- and 'right';
Not something that is a 'loose cannon' -- a 'bull in a China Shop' -- and 'wrong'.
Sadaam Hussein didn't 'cause' 9/11.
Iraq didn't 'cause' 9/11.
International law is not something
To be treated by the standard of 'might is right',
International law is not something
For the most powerful to exploit -- on a whim or an impulse,
It's our way or the highway,
'Coalition of the Willing'...
And the rest of you be damned...
International law needs to be 'tight' -- and 'right',
Not invading Iraq
When Bin Laden and the Taliban...
Are in Afghanastan.
Make that 'were' in Afghanastan,
Now in Pakistan.
As U.S. helicopters just today invade Syria.
'Oops, looks like we missed again,
We thought we were still in Iraq,
Or does Bush simply not respect borders...
What is Bush doing now?
From invading Iraq, to invading Pakistan,
And now invading Syria,
When Bin Laden is in Pakistan,
American troops are not respecting borders.
Is there no end to this madness?
Bush is all across the board,
All across the Middle East,
With no focus or international sanity,
All across the board,
Much like McCain's campaign,
Except there are real guns,
And real bombs,
And real missiles,
Going off in different Middle East countries,
With absolutely no international sanction,
The United Nations,
Dismissed on the Unilateral Whim,
Of One Man's Misjudgment,
Or make that the Unilateral Whim,
Of a whole White House gone awry,
A whole Senate gone awry,
Some Covert Philosophical Think Tank's
Thinking Gone Awry,
Bush is now invading Syria,
To get the man,
He should have got in Afghanastan
And who is now in Pakistan,
Before he took his eye off the ball,
And exploited international law,
Exploited International justice.
Iraq was a war crime,
Iraq still is a war crime.
America shouldn't have gone there,
America shouldn't be there.
If Bin Laden didn't go there,
America should never have ever chased him,
Into a country where he wasn't -- there.
America should never have left Afghanastan.
Never left Bin Laden,
Three quarters of the American army,
Disappearing into the Afghanastan dust,
To fight what should be deemed,
An internationally illegal war,
On another distant shore,
Iraq!
And now Syria!
Dr. Strangelove reincarnated!
Take that one to The Supreme Court of America,
And see how far it flies,
Oh, President Bush...
Did you get a 'warrent' to invade Iraq?
How did your logic go again?
Bin Laden, Al Queda, and The Taliban,
All conspired to 'cause' 9/11.
They all live in Afghanastan.
Or at least they all lived in Afghanastan.
Until you chased them into the mountains of Pakistan.
Anybody hear of the word 'containment'?
The most powerful army in the world,
And you couldn't contain Bin Laden?
The mountains of Afghanastan were too intimdating,
To catch the man you were looking for,
You couldn't catch the man who masterminded 9/11,
So you left and chased another man who didn't cause 9/11?
I guess it's easier to catch a man in the deserts of Iraq,
Than it is to catch a man,
In the mountains of Afghanastan.
And now Pakistan.
How did one man ever get so much power?
To just invade new countries at the drop of a hat,
Isn't that how World War ll started?
Creating new wars,
And of course, once we've started a new war,
We will 'stimulate' all sorts of new 'enemies'...
And 'insurgents'...
And 'terrorists'...
To justify the 'new' war.
I call it blowback.
All those innocent American soldiers...
Dead...
All those innocent Iraq civilians...
Dead...
All those mothers and children...
Children who never even had time to lose their innocence...
Dead...
And we won't even talk about the effect of the Iraq war...
On the American economy...
America's enemies are learning how to defeat them?
Just drag them into a long, drawn out war...
Until their economy collapses.
The war that nobody wants to pay for...
The Republican Party wants to have their cake,
And eat it too...
Spend 10 to 20 billion dollars each month in Iraq...
And not raise American taxes...
Who's paying the bill?
Our grandchildren?
And our grandchildren's children?
Assuming the world still exists then...
Who's paying the bill?
Not the Republican Party...
Not the American People...
Just add it to the National Debt.
The Repubican Party says they are going to cut spending...
How about cutting spending in Iraq?
The American People could have had,
All their health care expenses,
Paid for by the American Government...
No, but that would be 'Socialist'...
The American Republican Party has no trouble,
Being Imperialist,
No trouble killing innocent citizens abroad,
No problem raising the death toll of American soldiers,
No trouble raising the national debt load,
No trouble feeding the American...
Military-Industrial Complex,
But they don't want to raise taxes,
Because that kills Republican votes,
They want to spend,
10-20 billion dollars a month in Iraq,
And pretend that nobody has to pay for it,
Just 'Charge it, Please!,
To The American Republican Credit Card,
Or make that The Credit Card of The American People,
Just call it our 'legacy' to the American people,
After we leave...
But don't talk about 'universalizing' subsidized health care,
Cause that would make us look 'Socialist',
That would save lives, and save American misery,
But it's not the 'Republican' thing to do,
We would sooner spend our money in Iraq...
The American Republican Party,
Would sooner spend 10-20 billion dollars,
A month in Iraq...
And call it 'National Security'.
Who created the 'National Insecurity'?
That's like a computer company...
Putting a Trojan Virus into your computer...
And holding a monopoly on the rights,
To the next computer you buy,
They call that sort of stuff,
'Planned Obsolecence'...
This is more like...
'Planned Military Justification'.
For what?
Destroying Sadaam Hussein,
For the man who didn't cause 9/11.
For the man who was supposed to have...
All these 'ready-to-use weapons of mass destruction'...
That never turned out to exist.
What do you call that?
A 'mistake'?
That's a pretty collosal mistake.
That's a lot of blowback.
That's more collosal blowback
Than I hope I will see in the rest of my life.
But somebody's gotta wake up.
Somebody's gotta say 'the king has no clothes on.'
Sadaam Hussein is dead,
But the American Military-Industrial Complex...
Is still rolling on.
Bin Laden is still alive,
One has to start thinking,
If one hasn't already concluded it,
Long before now,
That The American Republican Party,
Wants to keep Bin Laden alive,
Something or someone,
Has to justify...
The American-Military Complex...
Still rolling on...
The Republican Party wants to,
Keep calling it -- 'National Security'...
I call it 'Planned National Insecurity'...
And 'Blowback'.
(For those of you who haven't seen the movie, 'Why We Fight?', I strongly recommend watching it. And then tell me who is talking 'straight'.)
-- dgb, October 25th-26th, modified Sunday afternoon, October 26th, 2008.
My manifest political essays will deal mainly with Republican, Washington, American, Wall Street, Iraq, and Captalist forensics. I have a certain fascination with the CIA concept of 'blowback' that I have to indulge in, obsess with, twist and turn it until it hurts, cut it out with a scalpal, because I know it is important, and pathological, an unseen cancer or toxic poison growing in the heart of the American Government and the heart of the American people -- it is actually tied up with the American Government 'cheating' on the American people, being dishonest with them, covert about their true intentions, their true activities, what they are doing on distant shores, who they are giving money to and who they are not, who they are giving military arms to, and who they are not -- these kinds of ideas I am pretty darn sure are all tied up to the concept of 'blowback'.
Let no stone be left unturned in your quest for knowledge,
Your demand for truth,
Beware of some people's narcissistic, ulterior motives,
The ones that are not talked about in public,
But that are discussed behind closed doors,
Secret rooms and meeting places,
And then acted upon in private,
You and me won't tell them,
It's very much like 'cheating' on your wife or girlfriend,
Your husband or boyfriend,
One can distinguish between two different 'phases' and/or 'degrees' of 'blowback':
1. 'Tell-tale, warning-sign blowback'; and
2. Collosal, devastating blowback'.
It is easy to call someone 'evil',
But 'evil victimizers' were usually 'victims of evil' first,
Psychoanalysis calls it 'Identification With The Aggressor (The Victimizer),
The logic goes something like this,
'It's better to victimize than to be victimized',
'It's better to be powerful than to be powerless',
The dark side of Nietzsche's 'Will to Power',
From self-empowerment to power over people,
From Democracy to Dictatorship or Unilateralism,
From 'Dialectic-Democracy' back to 'The Master-Slave Relationship',
Calling people 'evil' or 'terrorists' or 'insurgents', or 'extremists',
Eliminates the need to talk about 'blowback',
The American People need to understand blowback,
And what their government is hiding from them,
Democracy -- dialectic-democracy -- between the American Goverment,
And the Amercan People,
Requires Transparency,
Dialectic-Democracy Requires Dialectical Transparency,
Where undemocratic -- collosal -- decisions are not made behind closed doors,
Out of the sight and the ear of the American People,
Military Interventionism into other countries wars,
Where America is not The Peace-Maker,
But the one-sided Military Supplier,
That exasperates already existing wars,
Favoring one nation, while ganging up on the other,
Like a parent that always pampers one child,
While neglecting the other,
This foreign policy tactic needs to be fully and openly discussed,
Debated for its merits -- and potential for pitfalls,
Potential for blowback.
Tell-tale, warning side, blowback,
And then collosal blowback.
9/11.
It is easy to say Bin Laden is evil...
And he is evil,
Bush should never have taken his eye off of Bin Laden,
International law needs to be 'tight' -- and 'right';
Not something that is a 'loose cannon' -- a 'bull in a China Shop' -- and 'wrong'.
Sadaam Hussein didn't 'cause' 9/11.
Iraq didn't 'cause' 9/11.
International law is not something
To be treated by the standard of 'might is right',
International law is not something
For the most powerful to exploit -- on a whim or an impulse,
It's our way or the highway,
'Coalition of the Willing'...
And the rest of you be damned...
International law needs to be 'tight' -- and 'right',
Not invading Iraq
When Bin Laden and the Taliban...
Are in Afghanastan.
Make that 'were' in Afghanastan,
Now in Pakistan.
As U.S. helicopters just today invade Syria.
'Oops, looks like we missed again,
We thought we were still in Iraq,
Or does Bush simply not respect borders...
What is Bush doing now?
From invading Iraq, to invading Pakistan,
And now invading Syria,
When Bin Laden is in Pakistan,
American troops are not respecting borders.
Is there no end to this madness?
Bush is all across the board,
All across the Middle East,
With no focus or international sanity,
All across the board,
Much like McCain's campaign,
Except there are real guns,
And real bombs,
And real missiles,
Going off in different Middle East countries,
With absolutely no international sanction,
The United Nations,
Dismissed on the Unilateral Whim,
Of One Man's Misjudgment,
Or make that the Unilateral Whim,
Of a whole White House gone awry,
A whole Senate gone awry,
Some Covert Philosophical Think Tank's
Thinking Gone Awry,
Bush is now invading Syria,
To get the man,
He should have got in Afghanastan
And who is now in Pakistan,
Before he took his eye off the ball,
And exploited international law,
Exploited International justice.
Iraq was a war crime,
Iraq still is a war crime.
America shouldn't have gone there,
America shouldn't be there.
If Bin Laden didn't go there,
America should never have ever chased him,
Into a country where he wasn't -- there.
America should never have left Afghanastan.
Never left Bin Laden,
Three quarters of the American army,
Disappearing into the Afghanastan dust,
To fight what should be deemed,
An internationally illegal war,
On another distant shore,
Iraq!
And now Syria!
Dr. Strangelove reincarnated!
Take that one to The Supreme Court of America,
And see how far it flies,
Oh, President Bush...
Did you get a 'warrent' to invade Iraq?
How did your logic go again?
Bin Laden, Al Queda, and The Taliban,
All conspired to 'cause' 9/11.
They all live in Afghanastan.
Or at least they all lived in Afghanastan.
Until you chased them into the mountains of Pakistan.
Anybody hear of the word 'containment'?
The most powerful army in the world,
And you couldn't contain Bin Laden?
The mountains of Afghanastan were too intimdating,
To catch the man you were looking for,
You couldn't catch the man who masterminded 9/11,
So you left and chased another man who didn't cause 9/11?
I guess it's easier to catch a man in the deserts of Iraq,
Than it is to catch a man,
In the mountains of Afghanastan.
And now Pakistan.
How did one man ever get so much power?
To just invade new countries at the drop of a hat,
Isn't that how World War ll started?
Creating new wars,
And of course, once we've started a new war,
We will 'stimulate' all sorts of new 'enemies'...
And 'insurgents'...
And 'terrorists'...
To justify the 'new' war.
I call it blowback.
All those innocent American soldiers...
Dead...
All those innocent Iraq civilians...
Dead...
All those mothers and children...
Children who never even had time to lose their innocence...
Dead...
And we won't even talk about the effect of the Iraq war...
On the American economy...
America's enemies are learning how to defeat them?
Just drag them into a long, drawn out war...
Until their economy collapses.
The war that nobody wants to pay for...
The Republican Party wants to have their cake,
And eat it too...
Spend 10 to 20 billion dollars each month in Iraq...
And not raise American taxes...
Who's paying the bill?
Our grandchildren?
And our grandchildren's children?
Assuming the world still exists then...
Who's paying the bill?
Not the Republican Party...
Not the American People...
Just add it to the National Debt.
The Repubican Party says they are going to cut spending...
How about cutting spending in Iraq?
The American People could have had,
All their health care expenses,
Paid for by the American Government...
No, but that would be 'Socialist'...
The American Republican Party has no trouble,
Being Imperialist,
No trouble killing innocent citizens abroad,
No problem raising the death toll of American soldiers,
No trouble raising the national debt load,
No trouble feeding the American...
Military-Industrial Complex,
But they don't want to raise taxes,
Because that kills Republican votes,
They want to spend,
10-20 billion dollars a month in Iraq,
And pretend that nobody has to pay for it,
Just 'Charge it, Please!,
To The American Republican Credit Card,
Or make that The Credit Card of The American People,
Just call it our 'legacy' to the American people,
After we leave...
But don't talk about 'universalizing' subsidized health care,
Cause that would make us look 'Socialist',
That would save lives, and save American misery,
But it's not the 'Republican' thing to do,
We would sooner spend our money in Iraq...
The American Republican Party,
Would sooner spend 10-20 billion dollars,
A month in Iraq...
And call it 'National Security'.
Who created the 'National Insecurity'?
That's like a computer company...
Putting a Trojan Virus into your computer...
And holding a monopoly on the rights,
To the next computer you buy,
They call that sort of stuff,
'Planned Obsolecence'...
This is more like...
'Planned Military Justification'.
For what?
Destroying Sadaam Hussein,
For the man who didn't cause 9/11.
For the man who was supposed to have...
All these 'ready-to-use weapons of mass destruction'...
That never turned out to exist.
What do you call that?
A 'mistake'?
That's a pretty collosal mistake.
That's a lot of blowback.
That's more collosal blowback
Than I hope I will see in the rest of my life.
But somebody's gotta wake up.
Somebody's gotta say 'the king has no clothes on.'
Sadaam Hussein is dead,
But the American Military-Industrial Complex...
Is still rolling on.
Bin Laden is still alive,
One has to start thinking,
If one hasn't already concluded it,
Long before now,
That The American Republican Party,
Wants to keep Bin Laden alive,
Something or someone,
Has to justify...
The American-Military Complex...
Still rolling on...
The Republican Party wants to,
Keep calling it -- 'National Security'...
I call it 'Planned National Insecurity'...
And 'Blowback'.
(For those of you who haven't seen the movie, 'Why We Fight?', I strongly recommend watching it. And then tell me who is talking 'straight'.)
-- dgb, October 25th-26th, modified Sunday afternoon, October 26th, 2008.
Companies start competing for bailout money
Companies start competing for bailout money
Martin Crutsinger, Ap Economics Writer – 2 hrs 27 mins agoRelated Quotes Symbol
WASHINGTON – The bailout is now the hottest lobbying game in town.
Insurers, automakers and American subsidiaries of foreign banks all want the Treasury Department to cut them a piece of the largest government rescue in U.S. history.
The betting is that many with their hands out will be successful, especially with financial markets in a stomach-churning dive and predictions the economy is about to tumble into a deep recession.
These groups argue that the credit squeeze is so severe and the risks to the economy so dire that their industries need financial support as well.
The Treasury is considering requests from a variety of industries, but has not decided whether to expand the program, officials said Saturday.
Lobbying efforts are intensifying.
The Financial Services Roundtable wrote Treasury officials on Friday requesting that the initiative to buy $250 billion in bank stock grow to cover insurers, auto companies, securities dealers and U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies, including banks. The Treasury's plan is intended to bolster banks' tattered balance sheets and get them to resume making loans.
As the Treasury now interprets it, these additional groups would not participate in the bank stock program. They could receive help from a separate part of the $700 billion rescue that will buy bad assets from financial institutions.
Steve Bartlett, the president of the Roundtable, urged the Treasury to broaden the definition of those eligible for the stock purchase program.
"The institutions that are excluded play a vital role in the U.S. economy by providing liquidity to the market," Bartlett wrote Neel Kashkari, the Treasury Department official running the bailout program.
Referring to U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies, Bartlett said, "This is a global crisis and to not recognize the U.S. firms controlled by foreign banks or companies would create further impediment to the market's recovery."
A financial industry official said Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson met over the past week with various groups, including hedge fund managers, that were petitioning for assistance. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the Treasury has not made a decision.
Some insurers technically would be eligible for stock purchases now if they own subsidiaries that are savings and loan institutions regulated by the Office of Thrift Supervision.
Last month, American International Group, the country's largest insurance company, received an $85 billion loan from the Federal Reserve. Since then, it has gotten further support in an effort to withstand the biggest upheavals on Wall Street since the Great Depression.
Complicating the government's decision-making is that the Bush administration will not be in charge after Jan. 20. Paulson, who has said he has no intention of staying on the job, has pledged to consult with both campaigns on his bailout actions.
Democrat Barack Obama's presidential campaign said Friday it supported the effort by the auto industry to get money from the $250 billion made available for stock purchases. That would be in addition to $25 billion recently approved by Congress for low-interest loans to help the struggling industry retool and build fuel efficient vehicles.
The debate over expanding the bailout comes as the Treasury is rushing to get money out the door to the primary recipients: banks that sharply curtailed lending after suffering billions of dollars of losses on mortgage-related assets as home foreclosures soared in the housing slump.
Lawmakers are pressuring the Treasury to do more in the foreclosure area, as well.
Sheila Bair, head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., told Congress about efforts to provide government-backed loan guarantees for mortgages that are reworked to help homeowners in danger of default. That would give banks an incentive to speed up refinancing efforts because the government would back part of the reworked loan.
The Treasury also is moving ahead to get bank stock purchases approved. It announced on Oct. 14 that it was spending $125 billion to buy stock in nine of the largest financial institutions. An announcement was expected Friday about a second round involving 20 to 22 other banks.
But it was decided each bank would announce its own agreements with the Treasury, out of concern that excluded banks could suffer a stock sell-off from disappointed investors.
PNC Financial Services Group Inc. announced Friday it was acquiring National City Corp. for $5.58 billion, in what was the first instance of a bank using fresh investments from the bailout program to make an acquisition. PNC said it had received $7.7 billion in cash through selling stock to the government under the program.
Martin Crutsinger, Ap Economics Writer – 2 hrs 27 mins agoRelated Quotes Symbol
WASHINGTON – The bailout is now the hottest lobbying game in town.
Insurers, automakers and American subsidiaries of foreign banks all want the Treasury Department to cut them a piece of the largest government rescue in U.S. history.
The betting is that many with their hands out will be successful, especially with financial markets in a stomach-churning dive and predictions the economy is about to tumble into a deep recession.
These groups argue that the credit squeeze is so severe and the risks to the economy so dire that their industries need financial support as well.
The Treasury is considering requests from a variety of industries, but has not decided whether to expand the program, officials said Saturday.
Lobbying efforts are intensifying.
The Financial Services Roundtable wrote Treasury officials on Friday requesting that the initiative to buy $250 billion in bank stock grow to cover insurers, auto companies, securities dealers and U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies, including banks. The Treasury's plan is intended to bolster banks' tattered balance sheets and get them to resume making loans.
As the Treasury now interprets it, these additional groups would not participate in the bank stock program. They could receive help from a separate part of the $700 billion rescue that will buy bad assets from financial institutions.
Steve Bartlett, the president of the Roundtable, urged the Treasury to broaden the definition of those eligible for the stock purchase program.
"The institutions that are excluded play a vital role in the U.S. economy by providing liquidity to the market," Bartlett wrote Neel Kashkari, the Treasury Department official running the bailout program.
Referring to U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies, Bartlett said, "This is a global crisis and to not recognize the U.S. firms controlled by foreign banks or companies would create further impediment to the market's recovery."
A financial industry official said Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson met over the past week with various groups, including hedge fund managers, that were petitioning for assistance. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the Treasury has not made a decision.
Some insurers technically would be eligible for stock purchases now if they own subsidiaries that are savings and loan institutions regulated by the Office of Thrift Supervision.
Last month, American International Group, the country's largest insurance company, received an $85 billion loan from the Federal Reserve. Since then, it has gotten further support in an effort to withstand the biggest upheavals on Wall Street since the Great Depression.
Complicating the government's decision-making is that the Bush administration will not be in charge after Jan. 20. Paulson, who has said he has no intention of staying on the job, has pledged to consult with both campaigns on his bailout actions.
Democrat Barack Obama's presidential campaign said Friday it supported the effort by the auto industry to get money from the $250 billion made available for stock purchases. That would be in addition to $25 billion recently approved by Congress for low-interest loans to help the struggling industry retool and build fuel efficient vehicles.
The debate over expanding the bailout comes as the Treasury is rushing to get money out the door to the primary recipients: banks that sharply curtailed lending after suffering billions of dollars of losses on mortgage-related assets as home foreclosures soared in the housing slump.
Lawmakers are pressuring the Treasury to do more in the foreclosure area, as well.
Sheila Bair, head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., told Congress about efforts to provide government-backed loan guarantees for mortgages that are reworked to help homeowners in danger of default. That would give banks an incentive to speed up refinancing efforts because the government would back part of the reworked loan.
The Treasury also is moving ahead to get bank stock purchases approved. It announced on Oct. 14 that it was spending $125 billion to buy stock in nine of the largest financial institutions. An announcement was expected Friday about a second round involving 20 to 22 other banks.
But it was decided each bank would announce its own agreements with the Treasury, out of concern that excluded banks could suffer a stock sell-off from disappointed investors.
PNC Financial Services Group Inc. announced Friday it was acquiring National City Corp. for $5.58 billion, in what was the first instance of a bank using fresh investments from the bailout program to make an acquisition. PNC said it had received $7.7 billion in cash through selling stock to the government under the program.
From The DGB Archives (January, 2008, modified first paragraph, October 25th, 2008): Towards a New (Or Old) Philosophical Renaissance
For DGB philosophy, life is basically about making three different types of decisions: 1. making 'either/or' decisions (i.e., making 'thesis' vs. 'anti-thesis' decisions such as Obama vs. McCain in the classic Hegelian dialectic theory; 'Constructionism' vs. 'Deconstructionism' decisions in a more post-Hegelian, post-Derridan DGB style of theorizing); 2. juggling different philosophical and life priorities' (a second type of 'either/or' Kierkgaardian decision-making process such as 're-vitalizing' and re-promoting this essay or going outside to clean my messy car -- or ideally, both in sequence...); and 3. integrating different things, ideas, processes, and people. (the 'synthesis' or 'integrationism' process in classic Hegelian dialectic theory as opposed to 'either/or divisionism' .)
Paradoxically, the most successful and psychologically healthy people tend to be both strong-willed and good listeners, able to put forth their own points of view with force and conviction while being open-minded enough to attend to other points of view as well. These are two important pie plates amongst numerous others that people need to juggle. Very few people know how to juggle these two pie plates equally well. Usually people are either too strong-willed and close-minded or they are too passive and inassertive. These polar extremes - without the balance - is what keeps therapists and counsellors, ministers and priests, police offices, human rights activists and lobbyists, legal councils, unions, and politicians busy.
Again, the most successful people - and particularly the most successful leaders - can juggle both these 'plates' equally well, knowing how and when to be assertive and forceful with their ideas, while staying attentive to the needs, interests, and perspectives of others who may think differently and/or have important opposing viewpoints to offer. Our parliaments and our courts are generally too adversarial - putting on a 'dog and pony, smoke and mirrors' show that may make our lawyers, judges, and politicians rich but defies a more objective and integrative search for truth, justice, and civil balance. (added Jan. 26th, 2008.)
DGB (Post-Hegelian, Multi-Dialectic) Philosophy-Psychology - my own unique, personal brand of integrative philosophy-psychology which aims to combine some 2700 years of philosophy and 100 plus years of psychology - builds upon these three basic principles over and over again but only as each is appropriate and relevant to the context: 1. making 'either/or' decisions'; 2. juggling philosophical and lifestyle 'pie plates'; and 3. integrating things, ideas, processes, and people.
Finally, sometimes when seemingly practically everyone else is being 'politically correct' and not talking or writing about particular overt and/or covert injustices -even politically and legally sanctioned injustices - it is necessary to take a strong, forceful polar perspective in the name of helping to move this corruption of justice, democracy, and equality, back towards the centre balancing point of the pendulum of justice so that all people can receive equally fair treatment in the name of the law, not just this or that privileged group of people who have gained an 'inside presence and power of influence' that is not democratic and fair to others who have not had their opinions, interests, and/or needs voices - and who may be paying a heavy civil cost for this unfair treatment.
'Collusion' is when two or more groups of people conspire together - in private places and/or on private phone calls - to make a deal amongst themselves that benefits each other but excludes outsiders in the process who are being marginalized and hurt in the deal and have had no say in its evolution.
Collusion is undemocratic and unhealthy when striving for a fair and equal democracy but at the same time very common-place in narcissistic capiitalist environments where greed and selfishness rules. The corruption, pathology, and toxicity of collusion needs to be made transparent in a healthy democracy. This is where 'Narcissistic - everyone for themselves - Capitalism' needs to evolve into a more humane and environmentally friendly form of 'Democratic-Multi-Dialectic-Humanistic-Existential Capitalism.' How do you have a democratic country when the economic and business philosophy and foundation of the country - both Canada and The USA - is not at least significantly democratic? (Usually it is totally authoritarian although the best companies make significant use of some sort of at least compromised attitude - call it an 'autocratic-democratic dialectic' of some lesser or greater degree.
DGB Philosophy intends to put more and more ideas forward over time relative to what kind of changes might be needed to turn Narcissisitic Capitalism into a more Multi-Dialectic, Humanistic-Existential form of Capitalism. Some innovative, enlightened companies have already moved in this direction. Perhaps we can do more. Correction: We need to do more. Narcissistic Government and Narcissistic Big Business are too interconnected in ways that are collusive and non-transparent to the general public. When two out of three groups of people have their hands in the 'money-pie' and the third group of people is being marginalized, left out of the equation, uninformed or misinformed, their money in effect being fraudulently used and/or stolen - it is time to start charging and/or keep turning over the politicians that keep practising 'collusion, corruption, and dirty politics' - and likewise in the world of business. Corporate greed and gouging - including unions - will never be brought under reasonable control until it is confronted by the people being gouge. (I sound like Marx here but have too much Adam Smith, John Locke, Ayn Rand, and my father in me to run away from my evolving integrative form of idealistic, multi-dialectic, humanistic-existential capitalism - with some moderate socialist ideas mixed in that may add to the 'humanistic-existential' element of what I am referring to. We want the workplace to be a place that people are happy to work in; not 'alienating prisons' that people are running to get away from.)
We are all guilty of this corruptive mess called politics because we keep letting our politicians get away with fraud - and don't do anything about it. These practises will continue until 'dirty politicians' finally start going to jail. These same politicians would send you or I to jail in a heart beat for conducting the same type of business so why do we continue to let our politicians get away with the same kind of stuff they would send us to jail for? Why do we allow political narcissism and hypocrisy bring down our democratic nation? We can sit on our hands and do nothing. Or we can do more to not let politicians get away with 'the dirty stuff' they get away with. Democracy starts with the people and ends with the people and how willing they are to be politically active.
When 'Big Government' and 'Big Business' become an end in themselves where huge amounts of money come from the people and don't go back to the people, when the middle and lower class get marginalized, abandoned, and gouged...it is time for the people to take back their government from the politicians who are running it corruptively - or to keep putting new politicians in their until the situation improves. If we continue to do nothing about this situation, then we at least partly deserve what we get - a corrupt government. ('Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.')
Accountability and transparency - these are 'buzz words' that we hear all the time from politcians themselves, especially those on the election circuit. But until politicians start meaning what they say and saying what they mean, until we actually start seeing the types of ethical changes that politicans continually preach about, words are worth less than the paper they are written on. Maybe we should have 'politicians on probation' for one or two years before they are elected in for longer terms. The more politicians have to answer to the people the more they behave themselves. They are like athletes - the longer the contracts they get, the less they perform and the more they misbehave. Shorter 'contracts' might breed better politicians. They can't be left alone to function in the dark. Because then the darker side of human nature will take over. Human narcissism - greed and selfishness - will prevail. Hobbes and Machiovelli, and Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and Freud and William Golding, the writer who wrote 'Lord of The Flies', will be shown to have been the best judges of human nature - i.e., those that wrote about the darkest side of human nature.
We need a new vision, a new spirit, a new idealism, a new code of ethics. We need some new Enlightenment Philosophers, some new Romantic Philosophers to compensate for the Enlightenment Philosophers, even some new 'Grand Narrative' Philosophers despite what the 'Post-Modernists' and 'Deconstructionists' might argue. (That is, we need 'Constructionists' as well as 'Deconstructionists.)
I know this is asking a lot but we need a fascimile of a new Jefferson, a new Franklin, a new John Locke, a new Diderot, a new Voltaire, Montesque and Tom Paine...We need a new Renaissance. We need a new culture not based strictly on personal narcissism...and we need more people worried about the state of the planet we live on.
We need more idealists who say what they mean and mean what they say - and don't use their 'professed ideology' as a way of winning votes from the public, then do what they want and bend their ideology to their hearts content once they get into power for however many years. The Canadian - and I assume the American - people are sick and tired of 'fraudulent ideology' whether it comes from a politician and/or a businessman.
The paradox of the situation is that Corporate America - while trumpeting the virtues of 'individualism' and the pursuit of 'The American Dream' - are far too often helping to squash this type of idealism and reality. That's what Marx called (fake, narcissistic capitalist) ideology'. (He just called it 'ideology'.)
The '30 hour work week' - a projected idealistic vision back in the 70s and early 80s - is looking more and more like a '50 and 60 hour week' for many today trying to balance their 'expense and stress-laden budget as they strive to just break even without collapsing from exhaustion. (I am presently working a 55 to 60 hour work week in a stress-laden dispatching job so (projectively) I know something of what I am talking about. And there are many, many others who have it much worse than me. At least I make enough money to partly justify my hours even if the rest of my life is paying for it. This past two months - December and January - a 40 hour week would not have come close to meeting my expenses.)
We need to keep encouraging the work of social-political activists like Lou Dobbs even if we don't fully agree with all his opinions. He is offering a new form of political idealism and economics - he calls himslf a 'middle class populist' which I like the sound of. I also like many of his ideas, his delivery, and his courage to not water down or sugar coat his delivery. More power to him!
- dgb, jan. 19th, 2008, updated jan. 26th, 2008.
I found this site on the internet full of quotes that I like. (See below for some of them.)
........................................................
Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty
-
Milton Friedman, PhD, Nobel Laureate, 1912-2006: Rest in Peace.
"Maybe I did well and maybe I led the battle but nobody ever said we were going to win this thing at any point in time. Eternal vigilance is required and there have to be people who step up to the plate, who believe in liberty, and who are willing to fight for it." - Milton Friedman
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it." - Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
"A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self- preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property, and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means." -Thomas Jefferson to John Colvin, 1810
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt." - John Philpot Curran: Speech upon the Right of Election, 1790. (Speeches. Dublin, 1808.) as quoted in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, NY, 1953, p167 and also in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, Boston, 1968, p479
"But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well as in the Federal Government." - Andrew Jackson, Farewell Address, March 4, 1837
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." - Wendell Phillips, (1811-1884), abolitionist, orator and columnist for The Liberator, in a speech before the Massachusetts Antislavery Society in 1852, according to The Dictionary of Quotations edited by Bergen Evans
"There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men." - Edmund Burke
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." - James Madison, Federalist no. 51.
"The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes." - Thomas Paine
"Voting is no substitute for the eternal vigilance that every friend of freedom must demonstrate towards government. If our freedom is to survive, Americans must become far better informed of the dangers from Washington - regardless of who wins the Presidency." - James Bovard in Voting is Overrated
(See the internet site for these and other similar quotes...just google the title: 'Eternal Vigilence is The Price of Liberty')
......................................................................
Feedback From One of My Readers On This Essay...
Hi David Gordon Bain,
That's a great great blog post. I especially like the quotes at the end. I especially like the unfortunately true one by Thomas Paine: "The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes."
I also like your point about the benefit of balancing being strong-willed with being a good listener. I am especially interested with the mix of philosophy with social and political activism.
Also, I want to invite you to join my Philosophy Forum.
Thanks,
Scott
Paradoxically, the most successful and psychologically healthy people tend to be both strong-willed and good listeners, able to put forth their own points of view with force and conviction while being open-minded enough to attend to other points of view as well. These are two important pie plates amongst numerous others that people need to juggle. Very few people know how to juggle these two pie plates equally well. Usually people are either too strong-willed and close-minded or they are too passive and inassertive. These polar extremes - without the balance - is what keeps therapists and counsellors, ministers and priests, police offices, human rights activists and lobbyists, legal councils, unions, and politicians busy.
Again, the most successful people - and particularly the most successful leaders - can juggle both these 'plates' equally well, knowing how and when to be assertive and forceful with their ideas, while staying attentive to the needs, interests, and perspectives of others who may think differently and/or have important opposing viewpoints to offer. Our parliaments and our courts are generally too adversarial - putting on a 'dog and pony, smoke and mirrors' show that may make our lawyers, judges, and politicians rich but defies a more objective and integrative search for truth, justice, and civil balance. (added Jan. 26th, 2008.)
DGB (Post-Hegelian, Multi-Dialectic) Philosophy-Psychology - my own unique, personal brand of integrative philosophy-psychology which aims to combine some 2700 years of philosophy and 100 plus years of psychology - builds upon these three basic principles over and over again but only as each is appropriate and relevant to the context: 1. making 'either/or' decisions'; 2. juggling philosophical and lifestyle 'pie plates'; and 3. integrating things, ideas, processes, and people.
Finally, sometimes when seemingly practically everyone else is being 'politically correct' and not talking or writing about particular overt and/or covert injustices -even politically and legally sanctioned injustices - it is necessary to take a strong, forceful polar perspective in the name of helping to move this corruption of justice, democracy, and equality, back towards the centre balancing point of the pendulum of justice so that all people can receive equally fair treatment in the name of the law, not just this or that privileged group of people who have gained an 'inside presence and power of influence' that is not democratic and fair to others who have not had their opinions, interests, and/or needs voices - and who may be paying a heavy civil cost for this unfair treatment.
'Collusion' is when two or more groups of people conspire together - in private places and/or on private phone calls - to make a deal amongst themselves that benefits each other but excludes outsiders in the process who are being marginalized and hurt in the deal and have had no say in its evolution.
Collusion is undemocratic and unhealthy when striving for a fair and equal democracy but at the same time very common-place in narcissistic capiitalist environments where greed and selfishness rules. The corruption, pathology, and toxicity of collusion needs to be made transparent in a healthy democracy. This is where 'Narcissistic - everyone for themselves - Capitalism' needs to evolve into a more humane and environmentally friendly form of 'Democratic-Multi-Dialectic-Humanistic-Existential Capitalism.' How do you have a democratic country when the economic and business philosophy and foundation of the country - both Canada and The USA - is not at least significantly democratic? (Usually it is totally authoritarian although the best companies make significant use of some sort of at least compromised attitude - call it an 'autocratic-democratic dialectic' of some lesser or greater degree.
DGB Philosophy intends to put more and more ideas forward over time relative to what kind of changes might be needed to turn Narcissisitic Capitalism into a more Multi-Dialectic, Humanistic-Existential form of Capitalism. Some innovative, enlightened companies have already moved in this direction. Perhaps we can do more. Correction: We need to do more. Narcissistic Government and Narcissistic Big Business are too interconnected in ways that are collusive and non-transparent to the general public. When two out of three groups of people have their hands in the 'money-pie' and the third group of people is being marginalized, left out of the equation, uninformed or misinformed, their money in effect being fraudulently used and/or stolen - it is time to start charging and/or keep turning over the politicians that keep practising 'collusion, corruption, and dirty politics' - and likewise in the world of business. Corporate greed and gouging - including unions - will never be brought under reasonable control until it is confronted by the people being gouge. (I sound like Marx here but have too much Adam Smith, John Locke, Ayn Rand, and my father in me to run away from my evolving integrative form of idealistic, multi-dialectic, humanistic-existential capitalism - with some moderate socialist ideas mixed in that may add to the 'humanistic-existential' element of what I am referring to. We want the workplace to be a place that people are happy to work in; not 'alienating prisons' that people are running to get away from.)
We are all guilty of this corruptive mess called politics because we keep letting our politicians get away with fraud - and don't do anything about it. These practises will continue until 'dirty politicians' finally start going to jail. These same politicians would send you or I to jail in a heart beat for conducting the same type of business so why do we continue to let our politicians get away with the same kind of stuff they would send us to jail for? Why do we allow political narcissism and hypocrisy bring down our democratic nation? We can sit on our hands and do nothing. Or we can do more to not let politicians get away with 'the dirty stuff' they get away with. Democracy starts with the people and ends with the people and how willing they are to be politically active.
When 'Big Government' and 'Big Business' become an end in themselves where huge amounts of money come from the people and don't go back to the people, when the middle and lower class get marginalized, abandoned, and gouged...it is time for the people to take back their government from the politicians who are running it corruptively - or to keep putting new politicians in their until the situation improves. If we continue to do nothing about this situation, then we at least partly deserve what we get - a corrupt government. ('Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.')
Accountability and transparency - these are 'buzz words' that we hear all the time from politcians themselves, especially those on the election circuit. But until politicians start meaning what they say and saying what they mean, until we actually start seeing the types of ethical changes that politicans continually preach about, words are worth less than the paper they are written on. Maybe we should have 'politicians on probation' for one or two years before they are elected in for longer terms. The more politicians have to answer to the people the more they behave themselves. They are like athletes - the longer the contracts they get, the less they perform and the more they misbehave. Shorter 'contracts' might breed better politicians. They can't be left alone to function in the dark. Because then the darker side of human nature will take over. Human narcissism - greed and selfishness - will prevail. Hobbes and Machiovelli, and Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and Freud and William Golding, the writer who wrote 'Lord of The Flies', will be shown to have been the best judges of human nature - i.e., those that wrote about the darkest side of human nature.
We need a new vision, a new spirit, a new idealism, a new code of ethics. We need some new Enlightenment Philosophers, some new Romantic Philosophers to compensate for the Enlightenment Philosophers, even some new 'Grand Narrative' Philosophers despite what the 'Post-Modernists' and 'Deconstructionists' might argue. (That is, we need 'Constructionists' as well as 'Deconstructionists.)
I know this is asking a lot but we need a fascimile of a new Jefferson, a new Franklin, a new John Locke, a new Diderot, a new Voltaire, Montesque and Tom Paine...We need a new Renaissance. We need a new culture not based strictly on personal narcissism...and we need more people worried about the state of the planet we live on.
We need more idealists who say what they mean and mean what they say - and don't use their 'professed ideology' as a way of winning votes from the public, then do what they want and bend their ideology to their hearts content once they get into power for however many years. The Canadian - and I assume the American - people are sick and tired of 'fraudulent ideology' whether it comes from a politician and/or a businessman.
The paradox of the situation is that Corporate America - while trumpeting the virtues of 'individualism' and the pursuit of 'The American Dream' - are far too often helping to squash this type of idealism and reality. That's what Marx called (fake, narcissistic capitalist) ideology'. (He just called it 'ideology'.)
The '30 hour work week' - a projected idealistic vision back in the 70s and early 80s - is looking more and more like a '50 and 60 hour week' for many today trying to balance their 'expense and stress-laden budget as they strive to just break even without collapsing from exhaustion. (I am presently working a 55 to 60 hour work week in a stress-laden dispatching job so (projectively) I know something of what I am talking about. And there are many, many others who have it much worse than me. At least I make enough money to partly justify my hours even if the rest of my life is paying for it. This past two months - December and January - a 40 hour week would not have come close to meeting my expenses.)
We need to keep encouraging the work of social-political activists like Lou Dobbs even if we don't fully agree with all his opinions. He is offering a new form of political idealism and economics - he calls himslf a 'middle class populist' which I like the sound of. I also like many of his ideas, his delivery, and his courage to not water down or sugar coat his delivery. More power to him!
- dgb, jan. 19th, 2008, updated jan. 26th, 2008.
I found this site on the internet full of quotes that I like. (See below for some of them.)
........................................................
Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty
-
Milton Friedman, PhD, Nobel Laureate, 1912-2006: Rest in Peace.
"Maybe I did well and maybe I led the battle but nobody ever said we were going to win this thing at any point in time. Eternal vigilance is required and there have to be people who step up to the plate, who believe in liberty, and who are willing to fight for it." - Milton Friedman
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it." - Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
"A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self- preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property, and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means." -Thomas Jefferson to John Colvin, 1810
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt." - John Philpot Curran: Speech upon the Right of Election, 1790. (Speeches. Dublin, 1808.) as quoted in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, NY, 1953, p167 and also in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, Boston, 1968, p479
"But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well as in the Federal Government." - Andrew Jackson, Farewell Address, March 4, 1837
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." - Wendell Phillips, (1811-1884), abolitionist, orator and columnist for The Liberator, in a speech before the Massachusetts Antislavery Society in 1852, according to The Dictionary of Quotations edited by Bergen Evans
"There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men." - Edmund Burke
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." - James Madison, Federalist no. 51.
"The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes." - Thomas Paine
"Voting is no substitute for the eternal vigilance that every friend of freedom must demonstrate towards government. If our freedom is to survive, Americans must become far better informed of the dangers from Washington - regardless of who wins the Presidency." - James Bovard in Voting is Overrated
(See the internet site for these and other similar quotes...just google the title: 'Eternal Vigilence is The Price of Liberty')
......................................................................
Feedback From One of My Readers On This Essay...
Hi David Gordon Bain,
That's a great great blog post. I especially like the quotes at the end. I especially like the unfortunately true one by Thomas Paine: "The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes."
I also like your point about the benefit of balancing being strong-willed with being a good listener. I am especially interested with the mix of philosophy with social and political activism.
Also, I want to invite you to join my Philosophy Forum.
Thanks,
Scott
Thursday, October 23, 2008
DGB Philosophy vs. The American Republican Party (Part 5): The Inherent 'Pathology' in McCain's Republican Campaign and 'Idealistic' Capitalist Vision
A) Preface: Email Feedback From One of My Most Dedicated, Appreciated, and Inspiring Readers Relative to Parts 4 and 5 of 'Faceoff: DGB Philosophy vs. The American Republican Party'
........................................................
Dave,
'Part 4 starts off great with the detailed descriptions of how you view
yourself as a political philosopher.
This is a great statement..."My biggest disappointment with this election
has been the lack of profound and compelling philosophical substance in the
Republican idealism, and rhetorical ideology." Then when you tell us about a
movie that is available, that offers the wisdom of the Eisenhower dedication
and experiences'. Wilton Seker's shifted realization from within the eyes of
grief is a powerful example of the Bush deceit and destruction. It's also
interesting to hear that McCain seems to have changed, this brings a person
to think about how easy it is for us, as humans, to get caught up in the
race and go so far as sacrificing our core values, beliefs and compassion in
an effort to achieve a particular status or climb higher up the present
ladder...
I smile at your opener for part 5... It's great to read your take on the
Republican campaign errors--- very detailed, clear and what would seem to be
very accurate. I also like how you've listed the four pillar foundations
more clearly. Your morning improvements are noted. It's great how you've
included Eisenhower's farewell speech and the list of credible political
names to support your investigation, although very long, it seems that
you've done your research in order to support your thoughts and opinions.
Feels like a couple more essays that are about to take flight on the web or
beyond.'
-- Noreen
-- Noreen, October 24th, 2008.
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B) Introduction
I thought that Part 4 of this series of political 'Faceoff' essays -- Faceoff: DGB Philosophy vs. The American Republican Party would be my last 'kick' at the Republican Party, the Republican 'Can' if you will, before the election.
However, obviously I was mistaken as, within 24 hours, I had 'gushed out' another sequence of thoughts and feelings relative to my overall current 'Anti-Republican sentiment'.
I partly apologize for the length of this essay. However, I wanted the essay to be well supported by other credible, reasonable, insightful, and provocative high-ranking sources. Thus, I have included about 6 outside references from the internet to back up my editorial thesis here.
So, here we go again. I am certainly not against Republican Ideology (Idealism) at its best. If my Republican leader is Dwight Eisenhower, his son John, or John's daughter Susan -- then I am right there in the middle of their particular brand of Republican Ideology and Idealism.
However, I certainly am against Republican Ideology ('Idealism') at its worst -- and this leads us both to Bush's pathological form of Republican Ideology and to McCain's newer 'brand of lipstick' on the 'old Bush Republican Brand'. (Notice, I had to refrain myself from over-using the infamous 'lipstick on a pig' metaphor and, obviously, I only partly succeeded.)
In my mind, it is too late for the McCain-Palin Republicans to recover in this election -- they blew their opportunities, plain and simple. Too much negative and negative-stereotyping pathological political philosophy vs. not enough 'responsible-accountable-ethical' Republican political philosophy. Healthy Republican Idealism can still be found but not on this 2008 corpse of the American Republican Party.
In this essay, we will explore the roots of current 'Pathological Republican Ideology'. This essay is not for the weak of mind, reason, truth, awareness, and 'philosophical digging' -- which might also be called 'philosophical-political forensics'.
Before we start, there is a relationship between 'philosophical-political forensics' and 'blowback' that needs to be fully clarified and understood here.
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Blowback (intelligence)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Manchurian blowback)
Jump to: navigation, search
Blowback is a term used in espionage to describe the unintended consequences of covert operations. Blowback typically appears random and without cause, because the public is unaware of the secret operations that provoked it.[1]
In its strictest terms, blowback was originally informative only and referred to consequences that resulted when an intelligence agency participated in foreign media manipulation, which was then reported by domestic news sources in other countries as accepted facts. In looser terms, it can encompass all operational aspects. In this context, it can thus mean retaliation as the result of actions undertaken by nations.
The phrase is believed to have been coined by the CIA, in reference to the harmful effects to friendly forces when some weapons are used under certain conditions (for example nuclear fallout, chemical weapons, etc. used upwind from friendly troops or assets, or a torpedo circling and hitting the firing vessel, etc.). The word is believed to have appeared for the very first time in the CIA document on the 1953 Iranian coup d'état titled "Clandestine Service History – Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran – November 1952-August 1953."[2][3]
In the 1980s, blowback became a central focus of the debate over the Reagan Doctrine, which advocated militarily supporting resistance movements opposing Soviet-supported, communist governments. In one case, covert funding of the Contras in Nicaragua would lead to the Iran-Contra Affair, while covert support led to a World Court ruling against the United States in Nicaragua v. United States.
Critics of the Reagan Doctrine argued that blowback was unavoidable, and that, through the doctrine, the United States was inflaming wars in the Third World. Doctrine advocates, principally at the conservative Heritage Foundation, responded that support for anti-communist resistance movements would lead to a "correlation of forces," which would topple communist regimes without significant retaliatory consequence to the United States, while simultaneously altering the global balance of power in the Cold War.
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Blowback
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Blowback may refer to one of the following.
Blowback (intelligence)
Blowback (arms)
Blowback (military) - Negative effects suffered from one's own weapons, such as nuclear fallout blown onto one's own troops or civilian population.
Blowback (book) - a 2000 book on American Empire by Chalmers Johnson ISBN 0805075593.
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I heard the term 'blowback' for the first time by Chalmers Johnson (the inspirational CIA analyst) as I tried to digest the full content, quality, substance, and implications of the movie, 'Why We Fight' which I just finished watching. A quick DGB editorial: I saw a 'better' John McCain in this movie than anything I have seen from him on his Repubican campaign -- except perhaps for his Al Smith Dinner Roast Party Comedy Speech where his comedy speech was actually significantly better than Obama's. But that was only one speech.
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I am like the 'old fashioned, underdog Lieutenant Columbo' on the old detective series 'Columbo'. In this context, there are many, many political, economic, and military things that I do not understand. However, once I hear or read something, and i deem it to be important, then I will grab it and twist it and tear it to pieces -- not unlike a bulldog or a pitbull or Columbo himself -- until I fully understand the implications, applications, ramifications, and consequences of what i have read or hear. Such is the case here, relative to the term 'blowback' and my current beginning understanding of the term.
Based mainly on what I heard and interpreted Chalmers Johnson as saying, and from their experience relative to the war in Vietnam -- 'too many body bags and imagery of people being blown up, especially women and children, being shown on television and fed back to the American people can be viewed as 'political blowback'. Political blowback is not going to usually be good for the politicians in office who want to continue an ongoing war. If you continue to feed 'war propaganda' to the American people, you are less likely to have the American people 'fall' for this manipulation and exploitation of their fear, because they can see some real, hard-line pictures of what is happening in the war in front of their very faces on tv. If some military-political person tells the American people that war technology has advanced to the stage that we now have 'precision bombing' that hits very precise military targets 100 percent of the time -- and then we see on tv with our own eyes that those supposed military targets were clearly missed, and innocent civilians were killed instead of 'pathological terrorists, insurgents, and/or dictators' -- then how does the American Government look in this kind of an instance?
It's similar to a politician having a sexual affair with a woman (or man) outside of his marriage, and then one day pictures of the affair land on the front page of the National Inquiry, or The New York Times -- this after the politician has been continually denying for days, weeks, or even months, that no such affair every happened....This might be called 'Political-Sexual Blowback'.
I think we all now have an idea of what the term 'Blowback' means...
Philosophical-political forensics investigations may dig up 'political blowback' that the American Government has been hiding from the American people for obvious political reasons. If the American people knew about this 'Blowback', they would not be very happy with their American politicians. This is very much what has happened with Bush and his claims of definitely observed 'weapons of mass destruction'.
On with the essay at hand...
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C) Ten Inherent Pathologies in McCain's Republican Campaign and 'Idealistic' Vision
1. The first thing that the McCain-led 'New Republicans' did wrong is that they did not separate themselves enough from George Bush, and Bush's Unilateral, Unethical Republican Capitalism and Political Ideology.
2. The second thing that they did wrong is that they focused too much on negative campaigning against Obama.
3. The third thing that they did wrong is that they nominated Governor Sarah Palin as vice-president on the McCain ticket.
4. The fourth thing that they did wrong was that did not create a compelling 21st Century Populist-Ethical Brand and Vision of American Capitalism.
5. The fifth thing that they did wrong is that they -- meaning McCain -- did not separate himself/themselves enough from the American downfalls of Global Capitalism, and a free trade vision that is killing the American manufacturing industry. There is a reason why tariffs are important -- otherwise, all the other countries in the world with very cheap labour forces -- China, India, Mexico...-- are going to conspire to seduce American manufacturing industries away from America and kill the American manufacturing industry -- and thousands and thousands of jobs -- in the process. Cheap foreign labour might be great for corporate profits and great for buyers -- until the 'quality' and even the 'toxicity' of the product comes into question. Not to mention that thousands of American workers are left at home twiddling their thumbs and wondering where there next paycheque is coming.
6. McCain may say that he is a 'maverick' and an 'anti-lobbyist' but that is downright plagerism from Obama's Democratic Capitalist Idealism. The shoe doesn't fit Senator McCain so don't wear it. Maybe you voted to try to stop these 'sub-prime' mortgages, maybe you didn't. The news I heard is that you did -- perhaps even when Obama didn't. Obama is not perfect. He is not quite the 'Messiah' of those first Martin Luther King-like speeches. Obama is a politician too and knows the full voting value of 'political expedience'. Politicians 'flip-flop' -- case closed. Both McCain and Obama have flip-flopped when the 'political weather changed'. Sometimes this is 'philosophical and political evolution'. Sometimes, it is 'moving closer to the votes' -- like in the 'off-shore drilling' example. Still, I give Obama higher marks than you Senator McCain for poltical ethics, integrity, vision, clarity of purpose, rhetorical eloguence, philosophical substance, peaceful foreign relations, and differential unity, harmony, and integrationism. Have I missed anything?
7. Senator McCain, your idealistic view of Capitalism is skewered. Adam Smith and Ayn Rand would both be disgusted by what just happened on Wall Street and to the American people. What you offer to the American people as a whole -- meaning primarily, middle class, working class, America -- is rice and porridge when your unethical -- corrupt -- friends in the Senate and on Wall Steet are dining on Steak and Lobster -- at expensive spa retreats. These CEOs who are completely detached and alienated from the American working class are still the same people (meaning CEOs and lobbyists for CEOs) that pour many thousands if not millions of dollars into your campaign fund. Enough perhaps to make you turn the other way when they 'transgress' on Wall Street while Main Street is financially defrauded, manipulated, exploited, gouged, trashed... Did I leave anything out? Yeah, for sure, Obama is not entirely clean of this debacle as well. But still, I will lay my money on Obama cleaning up this Wall Street debacle and thisSenate-White House-Wall Street Collusion faster and better than either you or your supposed 'anti-lobbyist, Good Old Boy in a Pant Suit maverick' Palin will. Palin has enough trouble keeping her own personal ethics clean let alone America's. Palin may have some rhetorical and charasmatic features to her character but she is in way over her head. Alaska is calling...
8. Let me try briefly to explain a new DGB term: 'Quadra-Dialectic-Democratic Capitalism'
There needs to be a strong working homeostatic and double-dialectic balance between four different sets of people:
1. the American Government;
2. Corporate Leaders and Investors (CEOs, Investors, Wall Street, Management);
3. Corporate Employees (often with the support of Unions);
4. Consuming Customers.
Call these the four pillar foundations of American Capitalism.
If any one of these four groups of American people are unhappy -- and worse, unstable -- then American Capitalism is likely to become destablized or unstablized as a whole. We need all four quadrants of American Capitalism to be strong in order to keep the Capitalist Infrastructure alive, functioning, and stable. If two of these quadrants are 'colluding' -- such as the American Senate, the White House, a particular political party in the goverment, and the lobbyists and/or CEOs for a very powerful mortgaging or banking company -- splitting 90 percent of the American Pie between themselves and leaving only 10 percent left over for the remainin two sectors -- then American Capitalism is going to crumble over a 'bankruptcy' where the CEOs of the company still get very rich, take their money home,and have much, much more than enough to start as many more companies as they want to -- again, at the expense of the middle class and lower class American people. McCain is not my man to fix this problem. Obama is.
9. Regarding alleged Republican 'tax cuts' and 'spending cuts' this is a joke. The McCain Republican Party claims that 'raising taxes' in a 'recession' is not the right thing to do. 'Cutting spending' is. So here is the joke. Money that needs to be poured into American infrastructure and services -- building roads and bridges, building new forms of viable energy supplies, building new schools, building new hospitals, helping to pay for massive medical expenses, helping to subsidize post-secondary education, helping to form 'social safety nets for the elderly, the war veterans, the special needs childen, day care, single mothers and/or dads, the unemployed, the physically and/or mentally and/or pschologically challenged -- all of these badly needed American services and resources, are going to more or less get 'pissed out of the window' because the Republican Party wants to continue to spend 10 to 20 billion dollars a month in Iraq -- a war that America should have never entered into in the first place because even President Bush has said that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 -- nor as it turned out -- did they have any 'weapons of mass destruction' that were 'imminanently effecting America's national security. So -- in effect -- the war in Iraq was, and still is, a national fraud played out by the American government on the American people.
In this context, Pastor Jeremy Wright's 'loose-lipped political sermon rampages -- going over the edge and over-associating to be sure, by saying, 'God Damn America' when what he was really trying to say (and please excuse the continuation of the profanity in this context) was 'God Damn The American Imperialist Government That Keeps Making All These Very Nasty Foreign Policy Decisions Abroad and Then Comes Back To The American People Preaching Its Own Brand of Political-Religious Dermons In Which It Makes Its Best Effort To Convince The American People That It's Philosophy Is Perfectly In Line With The Philosophy Of Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln or Adam Smith or Martin Luther King' -- then and only then, can we perhaps put Jeremy Wright's 'deconstructive' political-religious sermons into their proper context in a spirit that is not 'Anti-American' but rather 'Anti-American-Imperialism'...
The same goes with Madonna's concert imagery comparison of the Republican Party ith German Nazi Imperialism. As Bob Dylan wrote in one of his songs that you can hear in the movie, 'Why We Fight' -- 'It's Not Dark Yet, But Its Getting There...'
Let's see how many politically credible names I can add to support the logistics of the type of 'forensic political-philosophical investigation' we need to undergo -- meaning all of the American people who are brave enough and democratic enough to go here with me in order to unearth the full extent of American Goverment Psycho- and Socio-Pathology:
i. Dwight Eisenhower and his Prophetic Farewell Address that keeps coming back to haunt us like a 'Freddy Krueger Nightmare in Iraq and on Wall Street';
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Eisenhower's Farewell Address to the Nation
January 17, 1961
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Good evening, my fellow Americans: First, I should like to express my gratitude to the radio and television networks for the opportunity they have given me over the years to bring reports and messages to our nation. My special thanks go to them for the opportunity of addressing you this evening.
Three days from now, after a half century of service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.
This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.
Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.
Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on questions of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the nation.
My own relations with Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and finally to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years.
In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the nation well rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the nation should go forward. So my official relationship with Congress ends in a feeling on my part, of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.
We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.
Throughout America's adventure in free government, such basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among peoples and among nations.
To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people.
Any failure traceable to arrogance or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us a grievous hurt, both at home and abroad.
Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle – with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.
Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in the newer elements of our defenses; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research – these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel. A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.
But each proposal must be weighed in light of a broader consideration; the need to maintain balance in and among national programs – balance between the private and the public economy, balance between the cost and hoped for advantages – balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between the actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.
The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their Government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well in the face of threat and stress.
But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise.
Of these, I mention two only.
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.
Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system – ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.
Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we – you and I, and our government – must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without asking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.
Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.
Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war – as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years – I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.
Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.
So – in this my last good night to you as your President – I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and peace. I trust that in that service you find some things worthy; as for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.
You and I – my fellow citizens – need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nations' great goals.
To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's prayerful and continuing aspiration:
We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.
Now, on Friday noon, I am to become a private citizen. I am proud to do so. I look forward to it.
Thank you, and good night.
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So was Ike a 60s leftist like Oliver Stone? Note some key elements of Ike's thinking:
Eisenhower didn't believe the Military Industrial Complex was to blame for the Cold War. He laid the blame on communism: "a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method."
Eisenhower felt the Military Industrial Complex was necessary.
Eisenhower felt the influence of the Military Industrial Complex might be "sought or unsought." For 60s leftists, "unsought" power for the Military Industrial Complex was inconceivable.
A principled Republican, Ike was also skeptical of agricultural and research programs fostered by the federal government. He did not consider military industrial interests uniquely insidious, but rather he distrusted government expansion generally.
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ii. John Eisenhower (son of Dwight Eisenhower)
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Eisenhower's son endorses Kerry (2004)
A commentary by John Eisenhower, son of President Dwight D. Eisenhower -- and another good reminder that some Republicans still believe in age-old principles.
Why I will vote for John Kerry for President
By John Eisenhower
The Presidential election to be held this coming Nov. 2 will be one of extraordinary importance to the future of our nation. The outcome will determine whether this country will continue on the same path it has followed for the last 3 years or whether it will return to a set of core domestic and foreign policy values that have been at the heart of what has made this country great.
Now more than ever, we voters will have to make cool judgments, unencumbered by habits of the past. Experts tell us that we tend to vote as our parents did or as we always have. We remained loyal to party labels. We cannot afford that luxury in the election of 2004. There are times when we must break with the past, and I believe this is one of them.
As son of a Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, it is automatically expected by many that I am a Republican. For 50 years, through the election of 2000, I was. With the current administration�s decision to invade Iraq unilaterally, however, I changed my voter registration to independent, and barring some utterly unforeseen development, I intend to vote for the Democratic Presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry.
The fact is that today's Republican Party is one with which I am totally unfamiliar. To me, the word Republican has always been synonymous with the word responsibility, which has meant limiting our governmental obligations to those we can afford in human and financial terms. Today's whopping budget deficit of some $440 billion does not meet that criterion.
Responsibility used to be observed in foreign affairs. That has meant respect for others. America, though recognized as the leader of the community of nations, has always acted as a part of it, not as a maverick separate from that community and at times insulting towards it. Leadership involves setting a direction and building consensus, not viewing other countries as practically devoid of significance. Recent developments indicate that the current Republican Party leadership has confused confident leadership with hubris and arrogance. ...
October 3, 2004 at 10:06 PM in Politics | Permalink
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iii. Susan Eisenhower (Dwight Eisenhower's grandaughter) (dgb editorial comment: Sound, reasonable thinking seems to be at least partly in the genes...dgb, Oct. 24th, 2008)
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Susan Eisenhower
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Susan Elaine Eisenhower (born December 31, 1951 in Fort Knox, Kentucky) is a consultant, author, and expert on international security and the relationship between the United States and Russia. She is the daughter of John Eisenhower, and the granddaughter of President Dwight Eisenhower.[1][2] She was married to space scientist Roald Sagdeev,[3] formerly the director of the Russian Space Research Institute. Despite the end of the marriage several years ago, they remain friends and business partners.[4]
Contents
1 Career
2 Publications
3 Endorsement of Barack Obama
4 References
5 External links
6 See also
Career
Susan Eisenhower is President of the Eisenhower Group, Inc, which provides strategic counsel on political, business and public affairs projects. She has consulted for Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies doing business in the emerging markets of the former Soviet Union and for a number of major institutions engaged in the energy field.
She is the Chairman of Leadership and Public Policy Programs & Chairman Emeritus of the Eisenhower Institute, a think tank based in Washington, D.C. and in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania associated with Gettysburg College. Eisenhower served as the president of the Eisenhower Institute twice, and later as Chairman. During that time, she became known for her work in the former Soviet Union and in the energy field.
Eisenhower testified before the Senate Armed Services and Senate Budget Committees on policy toward the region. She was also appointed to the National Academy of Sciences' standing Committee on International Security and Arms Control, where she served for eight years.
In 2000, she was appointed by the United States Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson to the Baker-Cutler Commission, to evaluate U.S.-funded nonproliferation programs in Russia, and since that time she has also served as an advisor to another United States Department of Energy study. She currently sits on the Nuclear Threat Initiative board, co-chaired by Senator Sam Nunn and Ted Turner, the Energy Future Coalition and the US Chamber of Commerce's new Institute for 21st Century Energy. She also serves as an Academic Fellow of the International Peace and Security program of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. She has co-chaired Save America’s Treasures, first with Founding Chair Hillary Rodham Clinton and now with First Lady Laura Bush.
She has provided analysis for CNN International, MSNBC, The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, FOX News, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Hardball with Chris Matthews, One on One with John McLaughlin, the BBC, and all three network morning programs. Over the years she has appeared on many other programs including Nightline, World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, This Week with David Brinkley, and CBS Sunday Morning with Charles Kuralt.
Eisenhower has also been seen as a "talking head" on many TV programs and documentaries, including Oliver North's War Stories, Sony Pictures Why We Fight (2005 film) and, most recently, Sputnik Mania.
She has received four honorary doctorates, most recently from the Monterey Institute, where she was cited for her work on nuclear non-proliferation. Ms. Eisenhower received the 2008 Dolibois History Prize from Miami University.[5]
Publications
Eisenhower has written extensively on nuclear and space issues and in 2000, she co-edited a book, Islam and Central Asia, which carried the prescient subtitle, An Enduring Legacy or an Evolving Threat?[5] She is the author of three books: Breaking Free, Mrs. Ike, and Partners in Space: US-Russian Cooperation After the Cold War. She has also edited four collected volumes on regional security issues - the most recent - Partners in Space (2004), which was also published in Russia by Nayuk, the publishing house of the Russian Academy of Sciences. She has written chapters for a number of collected volumes and penned hundreds of op-eds and articles on foreign and domestic policy for publications such as the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, United States Naval Institute's Proceedings, The Spectator, and Gannett Newspapers, as well as the National Interest and Politique Americaine.[5]
Endorsement of Barack Obama
Although a lifelong member of the Republican Party, Eisenhower endorsed Barack Obama for president of the United States in 2008.[6][7][8] Eisenhower announced on August 21, 2008 that she was leaving the Republican Party and becoming an independent.[9]
She spoke on the final day of the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Her speech was delivered at INVESCO Field at Mile High in Denver, Colorado, and began with, "I stand before you tonight not as a Republican or a Democrat, but as an American." [10] The full transcript of her remarks as delivered [11] are on her official website www.SusanEisenhower.com,as well as video of her remarks at the Convention. [12]
[edit] References
^ Biography of Susan Eisenhower. - Save America's Treasures
^ Susan Eisenhower. - National Public Radio
^ "Leadership in Conflict". - Samford University
^ [1]--Susan Eisenhower's official website.
^ a b c Susan Eisenhower, Chairman Emeritus. - The Eisenhower Institute
^ Susan Eisenhower - Why I'm Backing Obama. - Washington Post
^ Julie Nixon and Susan Eisenhower back Barack Obama. - Daily Telegraph
^ Ike's Granddaughter Calls Obama 'Future of America'. - Washington Independent
^ Reflections on Leaving the Party. - The National Interest
^ Official transcript of remarks by Susan Eisenhower at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. - SusanEisenhower.com
^ Official transcript of remarks by Susan Eisenhower at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. - SusanEisenhower.com
^ Video of remarks by Susan Eisenhower at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. - SusanEisenhower.com
External links
The Official Website of Susan Eisenhower
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iv. Karen Kwiatkowski
Karen Kwiatkowski
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Karen Kwiatkowski
24 Sept 1960-
Kwiatkowski during an interview in Honor Betrayed
Allegiance United States of America
Service/branch United States Air Force
Years of service 1978–2003
Rank Lieutenant Colonel
Unit Near East/South Asia and Special Plans
Other work A Case Study of the Implementation of the Reagan Doctrine.
Karen U. Kwiatkowski (born 24 September 1960) is a retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel whose assignments included duties as a Pentagon desk officer and a variety of roles for the National Security Agency. Since retiring, she has become a noted critic of the U.S. government's involvement in Iraq. Kwiatkowski is primarily known for her insider essays which denounce a corrupting political influence on the course of military intelligence leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Colonel Kwiatkowski has an MA in Government from Harvard and an MS in Science Management from the University of Alaska. She has a PhD in World Politics from Catholic University; her thesis was on overt and covert war in Angola, A Case Study of the Implementation of the Reagan Doctrine. She has also published two books about U.S. policy towards Africa: African Crisis Response Initiative: Past Present and Future (US Army Peacekeeping Institute, 2000) and Expeditionary Air Operations in Africa: Challenges and Solutions (Air University Press, 2001).[1]
Contents [hide]
1 Career
2 Quotations
3 Articles
4 Books
5 Anonymous essays 2002-2003
6 References
7 See also
8 External links
Career
Raised in western North Carolina, Kwiatkowski began her military career in 1982 as a second lieutenant. She served at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska, providing logistical support to missions along the Chinese and Russian coasts. She also served in Spain and Italy. Kwiatkowski was then assigned to the National Security Agency (NSA), eventually becoming a speechwriter for the agency's director. After leaving the NSA in 1998 she became an analyst on sub-Saharan Africa policy for the Pentagon. Kwiatkowski was in her office in the Pentagon when it was attacked on September 11, 2001. From May 2002 to February 2003 she served in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia directorate (NESA).[2] While at NESA, she wrote a series of anonymous articles, Insider Notes from the Pentagon which appeared on the website of David Hackworth.[3]
Kwiatkowski left NESA in February 2003 and retired from the Air Force the following month. In April 2003 she began writing a series of articles for the libertarian website LewRockwell.com. In June of that year she published an article in the Ohio Beacon Journal, "Career Officer Does Eye-Opening Stint Inside Pentagon,"[4] which attracted additional notice. Since February 2004 she has written a biweekly column ("Without Reservations") for the website MilitaryWeek.
Her most comprehensive writings on the subject of a corrupting influence of the Pentagon on intelligence analysis leading up to the Iraq War appeared in a series of articles in The American Conservative magazine in December 2003 and in a March 2004 article on Salon.com. In the latter piece ("The New Pentagon Papers") she wrote:
I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of the president.
Kwiatkowski described how a clique of officers led by retired Navy Captain Bill Luti, assistant secretary of defense for NESA and former aide to Dick Cheney when the latter was Secretary of Defense, took control of military intelligence and how the "Office of Special Plans" (OSP) grew and eventually turned into a censorship and disinformation organism controlling the NESA.[5]
Following the American Conservative and Salon articles, Kwiatkowski began to receive criticism from several conservative sources that supported President Bush's policies. Michael Rubin of the National Review argued she had exaggerated her knowledge of the OSP's workings and claimed she had ties to Lyndon LaRouche.[6] Republican U.S. Senator John Kyl criticized her in a speech on the Senate floor.[7] On a Fox News program, host John Gibson and former Republican National Committee communications director Clifford May described her as an anarchist.[8] Kwiatkowski responded by saying, among other points, that she had never supported or dealt with LaRouche.[9] She requested and received a written apology from Senator John Kyl for his false statements about her.[citation needed]
In addition to her writings Kwiatkowski has appeared as a commentator in the documentaries Hijacking Catastrophe, Honor Betrayed and Why We Fight. She has been a registered member of the U.S. Libertarian Party since 1994 and spoke at the party's national convention in 2004.[10] She is also a member of the Liberty and Power group weblog at the History News Network. Kwiatkowski currently lives with her family in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and works part-time as a farmer.
Kwiatkowski has been widely seen as an attractive Libertarian presidential candidate,[11][12] especially given her military background and outspoken opposition to the Iraq War. In April 2006, Kwiatkowski received the New Hampshire Libertarian Party's 2008 vice-presidential nomination (the Libertarian Party chooses presidential and vice-presidential nominees on separate ballot, and campaigns for the two positions are often independent).[13][14] In 2007, she announced her support for Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul. [15]
[edit] Quotations
"I came to share with many NSA colleagues a kind of unease, a sense that something was awry. What seemed out of place was the strong and open pro-Israel and anti-Arab orientation in an ostensibly apolitical policy-generation staff within the Pentagon."[16]
"Why we fight? I think we fight 'cause too many people are not standing up, saying 'I'm not doing this any more.'"
"If you join the United States military now, you are not defending the United States of America; you are helping certain policy-makers pursue an imperial agenda."
"At the end of the summer of 2002, new space had been found upstairs on the fifth floor for an "expanded Iraq desk." It would be called the Office of Special Plans. We were instructed at a staff meeting that this office was not to be discussed or explained, and if people in the Joint Staff, among others, asked, we were to offer no comment. We were also told that one of the products of this office would be talking points that all desk officers would use verbatim in the preparation of their background documents."
"By August, only the Pollyannas at the Pentagon felt that the decision to invade Iraq, storm Baghdad, and take over the place (or give it to Ahmad Chalabi) was reversible."
"It wasn't intelligence — it was propaganda. They'd take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don't belong together."[17]
"Interestingly, the Downing Street memo is actually being reported by CNN and FOX News. It is being discussed in the major papers. Congress intends to examine it. Hearing it mentioned on the half hour by CNN Headline News has not dispossessed me of the belief that a state suicide is impossible. Thus, my gentle thoughts are increasingly turning to murder. Murder of the state. In self-defense, of course!"[18]
"We have a Congress that failed in every way to ask the right questions, to hold the President to account. Our Congress failed us miserably, and that's because many in Congress are beholden to the Military Industrial Complex."
"The reason we're in Iraq first off has not honestly been told to the American people; it certainly had nothing to do with the liberation of the Iraqi people. It was never part of the agenda and it's not part of the agenda now."
Articles
Kwiatkowski, Karen (2007-01-15). "Making Sense of the Bush Doctrine". LewRockwell.com. Retrieved on 2008-09-18.
Books
Kwiatkowski, Karen (2000). African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI) past, present, and future?. Peacekeeping Institute, Center for Strategic Leadership, U.S. Army War College.
Kwiatkowski, Karen (2001-10-01). Expeditionary Air Operations in Africa: Challenges and Solutions. ISBN 978-1585661008.
Griffin, David Ray; Peter Dale Scott (2006-08-23). 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out, Vol. 1. Karen Kwiatkowski: Assessing the Official 9/11 Conspiracy Theory: Olive Branch Press. ISBN 978-1566566599.
Anonymous essays 2002-2003
Deep Throat Returns: Insider Notes from The Pentagon, Lt. Col. Kwiatkowski's anonymous essays while still at the Pentagon. (Anonymous essays number 1 to 39)
Insider Notes from The Pentagon: Ready to go to war?, January 31, 2003. (Anonymous essay number 40)
Insider Notes from The Pentagon: Fear of God, February 3, 2003. (No.41)
Insider Notes from The Pentagon: Life is Tough All Over, February 8, 2003. (No.42)
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love CBW, March 10, 2003. (No.47)
The Souffle has Fallen, March 29, 2003. (No.49)
Insider Notes from The Pentagon: Those Awful Turks, May 28, 2003. (No.51)
References
^ militaryweek.com
^ mcsweeneys.net
^ lewrockwell.com
^ mindfully.org
^ commondreams.org
^ nationalreview.com
^ rpc.senate.gov
^ defenddemocracy.org
^ nathancallahan.com
^ lp.org
^ knappster.blogspot.com
^ politics1.com politics1.com
^ smallgov.org
^ phillies2008.org
^ Academics for Ron Paul
^ amconmag.com
^ motherjones.com
^ lewrockwell.com
See also
The Oil Factor
[edit] External links
Liberty and Power Group Blog
Karen Kwiatkowski, entry on SourceWatch
Center for Cooperative Research Profile of Karen Kwiatkowski
The New Pentagon Papers, an article by Kwiatkowski that appeared on Salon.Com
Archive of articles by Karen Kwiatkowski on LewRockwell.Com
List of articles on militaryweek.com
"Conscientious Objector", an article by Kwiatkowski, originally appearing in The American Conservative
Honor Betrayed page on veteransforpeace.org
The Pentagon Insider Who Spread Rumors that Sounded Anti-Semitic by Edwin Black appearing on History News Network
Web of Conspiracies by Michael Rubin appearing on National Review Online
Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear, and the Selling of American Empire
Democracy Now, September 10, 2004 Hijacking Catastrophe
Democracy Now, October 22, 2004 The Oil Factor: Behind the War on Terror
Karen Kwiatkowski's 2002-2003 archives Deep Throat Returns: Insider Notes from The Pentagon
Knight Ridder News, July 31, 2003 Career Officer Does Eye-Opening Stint Inside Pentagon
Inter Press Service, August 5, 2003 War Critics Zero In on Pentagon Office
Inter Press Service, August 7, 2003 Pentagon Office Home to Neo-Con Network
If Americans Knew, December 1, 2003 Israelis walked through the Pentagon to Feith's office like they owned the place
Interhemispheric Resource Center, February 12, 2004 Office of Special Plans
Inter Press Service, October 28, 2005 A Formidable Hawk Goes Down
Mother Jones, January 2004 The Lie Factory
Democracy Now, December 18, 2003 The Lie Factory - Neocons & the OSP Pushed Disinformation and Bogus Intelligence
In These Times, April 12, 2004 Outside the Inside
In These Times, October 24, 2004 The Bush team’s foreign policy disregarded reality and ignored actuality
Democracy Now, August 8, 2003 Ex-Pentagon Official Suggests Bush Administration Should Face War Crimes Tribunal
Interview with Karen Kwiatkowski, November 2, 2003 Pentagon Whistle Blower
Interview with Karen Kwiatkowski, May 22, 2004 An Insider's Look at the March to War
Interview with Karen Kwiatkowski, September 21, 2004 Timothy McSweeney
Interview with Karen Kwiatkowski, June 16, 2005 Daily Kos
Ten questions and answers, with Karen Kwiatkowski, October 25, 2005 Unknown News
Daily Kos Karen Kwiatkowski
After Downing Street, June 16, 2005 Written Testimony of Karen Kwiatkowski
Karen Kwiatkowski's video interview California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
Democracy Now, June 29, 2005 Former Pentagon Insider Blasts Bush's Iraq Speech and Repeated References to 9/11
Karen Kwiatkowski's audio interviews on The Charles Goyette Show
Karen Kwiatkowski's audio interviews The Weekend Interview Show with Scott Horton
Brian Lamb. Karen discusses her service in the Air Force, Pentagon & more C-SPAN, April 2, 2006.
Karen Kwiatkowski's radio show American Forum
Interview With Kwiatkowski: Pentagon Whistle-Blower on the Coming War With Iran
Interview with Karen Kwiatkowski on Liberty Cap Talk Live with Todd Andrew Barnett
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Kwiatkowski"
Categories: 1960 births | Living people | American columnists | American foreign policy writers | American libertarians | American anti-Iraq War activists | Harvard University alumni | People from North Carolina | United States Air Force officers | Women in the United States Air Force | Members of the Libertarian Party (United States) | Anarcho-capitalists | American anti-war activists | American whistleblowers
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v. Chalmers Johnson
...................................................
Chalmers Johnson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Chalmers Ashby Johnson (born 1931) is an American author and professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego. He is also president and co-founder of the Japan Policy Research Institute, an organization promoting public education about Japan and Asia. He has written numerous books including, most recently, three examinations of the consequences of American Empire: Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic.
Contents [hide]
1 Biography
2 The Blowback trilogy
3 Bibliography
4 Footnotes
5 External links
Biography
Johnson was born in 1931 in Phoenix, Arizona. He earned a B.A. degree in Economics in 1953 and a M.A. and a Ph.D. in political science in 1957 and 1961 respectively. All of his degrees were from the University of California, Berkeley. During the Korean War, Johnson served as a naval officer in Japan. He taught political science at the University of California from 1962 until he retired from teaching in 1992. He was best known early in his career for scholarship about China and Japan.
Johnson set the agenda for ten or fifteen years in social science scholarship on China with his book on peasant nationalism. His book MITI and the Japanese Miracle, on the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry was the preeminent study of the country's development and created the bustling subfield of what could be called the political economy of development. He coined the term "developmental state." As a public intellectual, he first led the "Japan revisionists" who critiqued American neoliberal economics with Japan as a model, but also attacked Japan for protectionism. During this period, Johnson acted as a consultant for the Office of National Estimates, part of the CIA, contributing to analysis of China and Maoism.[1]
Johnson was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1976. He served as Director of the Center for Chinese Studies and Chair of the Political Science Department at Berkeley, and held a number of important academic posts in area studies. He was a strong believer in the importance of language and historical training for doing serious research. Late in his career he became well known as a critic of "rational choice" approaches, particularly in the study of Japanese politics and political economy.
Johnson is today best known as a sharp critic of American imperialism. His book Blowback won a prize in 2001 from the Before Columbus Foundation, and was re-issued in an updated version in 2004. Sorrows of Empire, published in 2004, updated the evidence and argument from Blowback for the post-9/11 environment and Nemesis concludes the trilogy. Johnson was featured in the Eugene Jarecki-directed film Why We Fight, which won the 2005 Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. In the past, Johnson has also written for the Los Angeles Times, the London Review of Books, Harper’s Magazine, and The Nation
The Blowback trilogy
Johnson believes the enforcement of American hegemony over the world constitutes a new form of global empire. Whereas traditional empires maintained control over subject peoples via colonies, since World War II the US has developed a vast system of hundreds of military bases around the world where it has strategic interests. A long-time Cold Warrior, Johnson experienced a political awakening after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, noting that instead of demobilizing its armed forces, the US accelerated its reliance on military solutions to problems both economic and political. The result of this militarism (as distinct from actual domestic defense) is more terrorism against the US and its allies, the loss of core democratic values at home, and an eventual disaster for the American economy.
Bibliography
Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power (1962) (ISBN 0-8047-0074-5)
An Instance of Treason: Ozaki Hotsumi and the Sorge Spy Ring (1964; expanded in 1990)
Change in Communist Systems (1970), By Jeremy R. Azrael, Chalmers A. Johnson, ISBN 0-8047-0723-5
Conspiracy at Matsukawa (1972)
Ideology and Politics in Contemporary China (1973) By John Israel, Chalmers A. Johnson, ISBN 0-2959-5247-4
Japan's Public Policy Companies (1978) ISBN 0-8447-3272-9
Revolutionary Change (1982) ISBN 0-316-46730-8
MITI and the Japanese Miracle (1982)
The Industrial Policy Debate (1984) ISBN 0-9176-1665-0
Politics and productivity: the real story of why Japan works (1989) By Chalmers A. Johnson, Laura D'Andrea Tyson, ISBN 0-8873-0350-1
Japan: Who Governs? -- The Rise of the Developmental State (1995)
Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (2000, rev. 2004) ISBN 0-8050-6239-4
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (2004) ISBN 0-8050-7004-4
Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (2007) ISBN 0-8050-7911-4
Footnotes
^ Nic Paget-Clarke, 2004, "Interview with Chalmers Johnson Part 2. From CIA Analyst to Best-Selling Scholar" (In Motion Magazine). Access date: December 5, 2007.
External links
A National Intelligence Estimate on the United States by Chalmers Johnson (from Harper's Magazine)
Empire v. Democracy: Why Nemesis Is at Our Door by Chalmers Johnson
Blowback Chalmers Johnson essay from The Nation
Cold Warrior in a Strange Land Tom Engelhardt interviews Chalmers Johnson
Antiwar Radio: Charles Goyette Interviews Chalmers Johnson
Chalmers Johnson on Democracy Now! February 27 2007
Can We End the American Empire Before It Ends Us?
Audio: Our Own Worst Enemy
Audio: Is America on the brink of destruction through imperial over-reach?
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalmers_Johnson"
........................................................................
Chalmers Johnson: “Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic”
In his new book, CIA analyst, distinguished scholar, and best-selling author Chalmers Johnson argues that US military and economic overreach may actually lead to the nation’s collapse as a constitutional republic. It’s the last volume in his Blowback trilogy, following the best-selling “Blowback” and “The Sorrows of Empire.” In those two, Johnson argued American clandestine and military activity has led to un-intended, but direct disaster here in the United States.
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vi. Michael Moore
....................................................................
Michael Moore
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
For other persons named Michael Moore, see Michael Moore (disambiguation).
Michael Moore
Michael Moore in 2004
Born Michael Francis Moore
April 23, 1954 (1954-04-23) (age 54)
Davison, Michigan[1][2]
Occupation director, screenwriter, producer, actor
Years active 1989 - present
Spouse(s) Kathleen Glynn (1991-)
Official website
[show]Awards won
Academy Awards
Best Documentary Feature
2002 Bowling for Columbine
César Awards
Best Foreign Film
2002 Bowling for Columbine
Emmy Awards
Outstanding Informational Series
1995 TV Nation
Other awards
Golden Palm (Palme d'Or)
2004 Fahrenheit 9/11
Michael Francis Moore (born April 23, 1954) is an Academy Award-winning American filmmaker, author, and liberal political commentator. He is the director and producer of Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, and Sicko, three of the top five highest-grossing documentaries of all time.[3][4] In September 2008, he released his first free movie on the Internet, Slacker Uprising, documenting his personal crusade to encourage more Americans to vote in presidential elections. [5] He has also written and starred in the TV shows TV Nation and The Awful Truth, both of which continue his trademark style of presenting serious documentaries in humorous ways.
Moore is a self-described liberal[6] who has explored globalization, large corporations, gun ownership, the Iraq War, U.S. President George W. Bush and the American health care system in his written and cinematic works. In 2005 Time magazine named him one of the world's 100 most influential people.[7] In 2005, Moore started the annual Traverse City Film Festival in Traverse City, Michigan. In 2008, he closed his Manhattan office and moved it to Traverse City, where he is working on his new film.[8]
Contents [hide]
1 Biography
1.1 Early life
1.2 Post-school career
1.3 2004
1.4 Acting career
1.5 Marriage
1.6 Religion
2 Directing
2.1 Films and awards
2.2 Television shows
2.3 Music videos
2.4 Appearances in other documentaries
3 Writings and political views
4 Controversy
5 Published work
5.1 Bibliography
5.2 Filmography
5.3 Television
6 References
7 External links
Biography
Early life
Moore was born in Davison[1] a suburb of Flint, Michigan to parents Veronica, a secretary, and Frank Moore, an automotive assembly-line worker.[9] At that time, the city of Flint was home to many General Motors factories, where his parents and grandfather worked. His uncle was one of the founders of the United Automobile Workers labor union and participated in the Flint Sit-Down Strike. Moore has described his parents as "Irish Catholic Democrats, basic liberal good people."[10]
Moore was brought up Roman Catholic and attended St. John's Elementary School for primary school.[11][12] He then attended Davison High School, where he was active in both drama and debate,[13] graduating in 1972. At the age of 18, he was elected to the Davison school board.[14]
Post-school career
After dropping out of the University of Michigan-Flint (where he wrote for the student newspaper The Michigan Times) and working for a day at the General Motors plant,[15] at 22 he founded the alternative weekly magazine The Flint Voice, which soon changed its name to The Michigan Voice as it expanded to cover the entire state, which Moore later regretted[citation needed]. In 1986, when Moore became the editor of Mother Jones, a liberal political magazine, he moved to California and The Michigan Voice was shut down.
After four months at Mother Jones, Moore was fired. Matt Labash claims this was for refusing to print an article by Paul Berman that was critical of the Sandinista human rights record in Nicaragua. According to the story, Moore stated that he would not run the article because Ronald Reagan "could easily hold it up, saying, 'See, even Mother Jones agrees with me.'"[16] Berman described Moore as a "very ideological guy and not a very well-educated guy" when asked about the incident.[17] Moore claims that Mother Jones actually fired him because of the publisher's refusal to allow him to cover a story on the GM plant closings in his hometown of Flint, Michigan. He responded by putting laid-off GM worker Ben Hamper (who was also writing for the same magazine at the time) on the magazine's cover, leading to his termination. Moore sued for wrongful dismissal, and settled out of court for $58,000, providing him with seed money for his first film, Roger & Me.[18]
2004
Moore was a high-profile guest at both the 2004 Democratic National Convention and the 2004 Republican National Convention, chronicling his impressions in USA Today. He was criticized in a speech by Republican Senator John McCain as "a disingenuous film-maker." Moore laughed and waved as Republican attendees jeered, later chanting "Four more years." Moore gestured his thumb and finger at the crowd, which translates into "loser."[19]
During September and October 2004, Moore spoke at universities and colleges in swing states during his "Slacker Uprising Tour". The tour gave away ramen and underwear to young people who promised to vote. This provoked public denunciations from the Michigan Republican Party and attempts to convince the government that Moore should be arrested for buying votes, but since Moore did not tell the "slackers" involved for whom to vote, just to vote, district attorneys refused to get involved. The "Underwear" tour was a popular success. Quite possibly the most controversial stop during the tour was Utah Valley State College in Orem, Utah. A fight for his right to speak ensued and resulted in massive public debates and a media blitz. Death threats, bribes and lawsuits followed. The event was chronicled in the documentary film This Divided State.[20]
Acting career
He has also dabbled in acting, following a 2000 supporting role in Lucky Numbers as the cousin of Lisa Kudrow's character, who agrees to be part of the scheme concocted by John Travolta's character. He also had a cameo in his Canadian Bacon as an anti-Canada activist. In 2004, he did a cameo, as a news journalist, in The Fever, starring Vanessa Redgrave in the lead.
Marriage
Since 1990, Moore has been married to producer Kathleen Glynn,[21] with whom he has a stepdaughter named Natalie. They live in New York City and spend quite a bit of time in Traverse City, Michigan.
Religion
Moore describes himself as a Catholic.[22][23]
Directing
Films and awards
Moore's most recent film, Sicko, released in 2007.
At the Cannes Film Festival Roger & Me
Moore first became famous for his controversial 1989 film, Roger & Me, a documentary about what happened to Flint, Michigan after General Motors closed its factories and opened new ones in Mexico, where the workers were paid much less. Since then Moore has been known as a critic of the neoliberal view of globalization. "Roger" is Roger B. Smith, former CEO and president of General Motors.
Canadian Bacon
In 1995, Moore released a satirical film, Canadian Bacon, which features a fictional US president (played by Alan Alda) engineering a fake war with Canada in order to boost his popularity. It is noted for containing a number of Canadian and American stereotypes, and for being Moore's only non-documentary film. The film is also one of the last featuring Canadian-born actor John Candy, and also features a number of cameos by other Canadian actors. In the film, several potential enemies for America's next great campaign are discussed by the president and his cabinet. (The scene was strongly influenced by the Stanley Kubrick film Dr. Strangelove.) The President comments that declaring war on Canada was as ridiculous as declaring war on international terrorism. His military adviser, played by Rip Torn, quickly rebuffs this idea, saying that no one would care about "...a bunch of guys driving around blowing up rent-a-cars".
The Big One
In 1997, Moore directed The Big One, which documents the tour publicizing his book Downsize This! Random Threats from an Unarmed American, in which he criticizes mass layoffs despite record corporate profits. Among others, he targets Nike for outsourcing shoe production to Indonesia.
Bowling for Columbine
Moore's 2002 film, Bowling for Columbine, probes the culture of guns and violence in the United States, taking as a starting point the Columbine High School massacre of 1999. Bowling for Columbine won the Anniversary Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and France's Cesar Award as the Best Foreign Film. In the United States, it won the 2002 Academy Award for Documentary Feature. It also enjoyed great commercial and critical success for a film of its type and became, at the time, the highest-grossing mainstream-released documentary (a record later held by Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11). It was praised by some for illuminating a subject slighted by the mainstream media, but it was attacked by others who claim it is inaccurate and misleading in its presentations and suggested interpretations of events.
Fahrenheit 9/11
Fahrenheit 9/11 examines America in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, particularly the record of the Bush administration and alleged links between the families of George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden. Fahrenheit was awarded the Palme d'Or, the top honor at the Cannes Film Festival; it was the first documentary film to win the prize since 1956. Moore later announced that Fahrenheit 9/11 would not be in consideration for the 2005 Academy Award for Documentary Feature, but instead for the Academy Award for Best Picture. He stated he wanted the movie to be seen by a few million more people, preferably on television, by election day. Since November 2 was less than nine months after the film's release, it would be disqualified for the Documentary Oscar. Moore also said he wanted to be supportive of his "teammates in non-fiction film." However, Fahrenheit received no Oscar nomination for Best Picture. The title of the film alludes to the classic book Fahrenheit 451 about a future totalitarian state in which books are banned; according to the book, paper begins to burn at 451 degrees Fahrenheit. The pre-release subtitle of the film confirms the allusion: "The temperature at which freedom burns." At the box office, Fahrenheit 9/11 remains the highest-grossing documentary of all time, taking in close to US$200 million worldwide, including United States box office revenue of US$120 million.
Sicko
Moore directed this film about the American health care system, focusing particularly on the managed-care and pharmaceutical industries. At least four major pharmaceutical companies—Pfizer, Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, and GlaxoSmithKline—ordered their employees not to grant any interviews to Moore.[24][25][26] According to Moore on a letter at his website, "roads that often surprise us and lead us to new ideas – and challenge us to reconsider the ones we began with have caused some minor delays." The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on 19 May 2007, receiving a lengthy standing ovation, and was released in the U.S. and Canada on 29 June 2007.[27] The film was the subject of some controversy when it became known that Moore went to Cuba with chronically ill September 11th rescue workers to shoot parts of the film. The United States is looking into whether this violates the trade embargo. The film is currently ranked the third highest grossing documentary of all time[28] and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature.[29]
Captain Mike Across America [30]
Moore takes a look at the politics of college students in what he calls "Bush Administration America" with this film shot during Moore's 60-city college campus tour in the months leading up to the 2004 election.[31][32] The film was later re-edited by Moore into Slacker Uprising.
Television shows
This section does not cite any references or sources.
Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (August 2007)
Between 1994 and 1995, he directed and hosted the BBC television series TV Nation, which followed the format of news magazine shows but covered topics they avoid. The series aired on BBC2 in the UK. The series was also aired in the US on NBC in 1994 for 9 episodes and again for 8 episodes on FOX in 1995.
His other major series was The Awful Truth, which satirized actions by big corporations and politicians. It aired on Channel 4 in the UK, and the Bravo network in the US, in 1999 and 2000.
Another 1999 series, Michael Moore Live, was aired in the UK only on Channel 4, though it was broadcast from New York. This show had a similar format to The Awful Truth, but also incorporated phone-ins and a live stunt each week.
In 1999 Moore won the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award in Arts and Entertainment, for being the executive producer and host of The Awful Truth, where he was also described as "muckraker, author and documentary filmmaker".
Music videos
Moore has directed several music videos, including two for Rage Against the Machine for songs from "The Battle of Los Angeles": "Sleep Now in the Fire" and "Testify". He was threatened with arrest during the shooting of "Sleep Now in the Fire", which was filmed on Wall Street; the city of New York had denied the band permission to play there, although the band and Moore had secured a federal permit to perform.[33]
He also directed video for "R.E.M." single "All the Way to Reno (You're Gonna Be a Star)" in 2001. In 2003 Moore directed a video for "System of a Down" song "Boom!".
Appearances in other documentaries
Moore appeared in The Drugging of Our Children,[34] a 2005 documentary about over-prescription of psychiatric medication to children and teenagers, directed by Gary Null a proponent of Alternative Medicine. In the film Moore agrees with Gary Null that Ritalin and other similar drugs are over-prescribed, saying that they are seen as a "pacifier".
Moore appeared on fellow Flint natives Grand Funk Railroad's edition of Behind The Music.
Moore appeared as an off-camera interviewer in Blood in the Face, a 1991 documentary about white supremacy groups. The film centers around a neo-Nazi gathering in Michigan.[35]
Moore appeared in The Yes Men, a 2003 documentary about two men who pose as the World Trade Organization. He appears during a segment concerning working conditions in Mexico and Latin America.
Moore was interviewed for the 2004 documentary, The Corporation. One of his highlighted quotes was: "The problem is the profit motive: for corporations, there's no such thing as 'enough'".[36]
Moore appeared briefly in Alex Jones's 2005 film Martial Law 9/11: Rise of the Police State. Jones asks Moore why he did not mention some of the information regarding the September 11 attacks in his film Fahrenheit 9/11, in particular, why he did not explain why NORAD stood down on that day. Moore replied, "Because it would be Un-American."
Moore featured prominently in the 2005 documentary This Divided State, which followed the heated level of controversy surrounding his visit to a conservative city in the United States two weeks before the 2004 election.
Moore appeared in the 2006 documentary I'm Going to Tell You a Secret, which chronicles Madonna during her 2004 Re-Invention World Tour. Moore attended her show in New York City at Madison Square Garden.
Writings and political views
Though Moore rejects the label "political activist,"[37] he has been active in promoting his political views. According to John Flesher of the Associated Press, Moore is known for his "fiery left-wing populism."[38]
Moore has authored three best-selling books:
Downsize This! (1996), about politics and corporate crime in the United States,
Stupid White Men (2001), ostensibly a critique of American domestic and foreign policy but, by Moore's own admission, "a book of political humor,"[39] and
Dude, Where's My Country? (2003), an examination of the Bush family's relationships with Saudi royalty, the Bin Laden family, and the energy industry, and a call-to-action for liberals in the 2004 election.
Despite having supported Ralph Nader in 2000, Moore urged Nader not to run in the 2004 election so as not to split the left vote. (Moore joined Bill Maher on the latter's television show in kneeling before Nader to plead with him to stay out of the race.) In June 2004, Moore claimed he is not a member of the Democratic party. Although Moore endorsed General Wesley Clark for the Democratic nomination on January 14, Clark withdrew from the primary race on February 11. Moore drew attention when charging publicly that Bush was AWOL during his service in the National Guard (see George W. Bush military service controversy).
With the 2004 election over, Moore continues to collect information on the war in Iraq and the Bush administration in addition to his film projects. On several occasions during 2007, he called for Al Gore to run for President.
On April 21, 2008, Moore endorsed Barack Obama for President, claiming that Clinton's recent actions had been "disgusting."[40]
Controversy
Main article: Michael Moore controversies
Moore has been at the center of several controversies, mostly as a result of his political views and directing style.
Published work
Bibliography
Moore, Michael (1996). Downsize This! Random Threats from an Unarmed American. New York: HarperPerennial. ISBN 0060977337.
Moore, Michael; Glynn, Kathleen (1998). Adventures In A TV Nation. New York: HarperPerennial. ISBN 0060988096.
Moore, Michael (2002). Stupid White Men ...and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation!. New York: Regan Books. ISBN 0060392452.
Moore, Michael (2003). Dude, Where's My Country?. New York: Warner Books. ISBN 0446532231.
Moore, Michael (2004). Will They Ever Trust Us Again?. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0743271521.
Moore, Michael (2004). The Official Fahrenheit 9/11 Reader. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0743272927.
Moore, Michael (2008). Mike's Election Guide 2008. New York: Grand Central Publishing. ISBN 0446546275.
Filmography
Roger & Me (1989)
Pets or Meat: The Return to Flint (1992) (TV)
Canadian Bacon (1995)
The Big One (1997)
And Justice for All (1998) (TV)
Lucky Numbers (2000) (as actor)
Bowling for Columbine (2002)
Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) "Palme d'Or" in Cannes
Sicko (2007)
Captain Mike Across America (2007)
Slacker Uprising (2008)
Television
TV Nation (1994)
The Awful Truth (1999)
Michael Moore Live (1999)
References
^ a b New York Times profile
^ Michael Moore - MSN Encarta
^ Allmovie (2007). "Michael Moore filmography". Allmovie. Retrieved on 2007-07-19.
^ "Documentary Movies". Box Office Mojo (2007). Retrieved on 2007-11-12.
^ "Michael Moore releases Slacker Uprising for free on Net". www.meeja.com.au (2008-09-24). Retrieved on 2008-09-24.
^ Michael Moore (2006-11-14). "A Liberal's Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives". Michael Moore.com. Retrieved on 2007-07-21.
^ Joel Stein. "Michael Moore: The Angry Filmmaker", Time. Retrieved on 2007-07-19.
^ Rick Coates (2008). "Northern Michigan's film industry from Michael Moore's perspective". Northern Express. Retrieved on 2008-07-21.
^ "Michael Moore Biography (1954-)". Film Reference. Retrieved on 2007-07-19.
^ Ron Sheldon (23 September 1995). "Exclusive Interview with Michael Moore of TV Nation", People's Weekly World. Retrieved on 2007-07-19.
^ Richard Knight, Jr. (2007-06-27). "To Your Health: A Talk with Sicko's Michael Moore", Windy City Media Group. Retrieved on 2007-06-27.
^ Primeau, François. American Dissident, Lulu Press, 2007.
^ Gary Strauss (June 20, 2004). "The truth about Michael Moore". USA Today. Retrieved on 2006–07–09.
^ MichaelMoore.com: The Day I Was To be Tarred and Feathered
^ Ron Sheldon (September 23, 1995). "Exclusive Interview with Michael Moore of TV Nation". People's Weekly World.
^ Emily Schultz, Michael Moore: A Biography, Ecw Press, 2005. Pg 47-54.
^ Paul Mulshine. "A Stupid White Man and a Smart One". Newark Star Ledger, March 3, 2003
^ Matt Labash. "Michael Moore, One-Trick Phony". The Weekly Standard. June 8, 1998
^ Delegates relish McCain jab at filmmaker Moore CNN.com. 31 August 2006.
^ This Divided State official website. Accessed 9 July 2006.
^ IMDb, Kathleen Glynn
^ Rahner, Mark (2007-06-26). ""Sicko," new Michael Moore film, takes on the health-care system", The Seattle Times. Retrieved on 2007-06-30.
^ Elliott, David (2007-06-29). "Moral outrage, humor make up Michael Moore's one-two punch", SignOnSanDiego. Retrieved on 2007-06-30.
^ The Philadelphia Inquirer: Inqlings | Michael Moore takes on Glaxo. Michael Klein, 30 September 2005. Archive accessed 9 July 2006.
^ Common Dreams News Center: Drug Firms are on the Defense as Filmmaker Michael Moore Plans to Dissect Their Industry. Original Article - Elaine Dutka, L.A. Times, December 22, 2004. Archive accessed August 09, 2006
^ Chicago Tribune: Michael Moore turns camera onto health care industry. Bruce Japsen, 3 October 2004. Archive accessed 9 July 2006.
^ CBC Sicko to have unofficial premiere at Democratic fundraiser May 26, 2007. URL accessed October 14, 2007.
^ "Documentary Movies". Genres. Box Office Mojo (2007). Retrieved on 2008-01-31.
^ "Shortlist for docu Oscar unveiled". The Hollywood Reporter (2007-11-20). Retrieved on 2008-01-31.
^ Captain Mike at the Internet Movie Database
^ "Toronto International Film Festival". Retrieved on 2007–09–07.
^ Captain Mike Across America (2007)
^ Green Left Weekly: Rage against Wall Street. Michael Moore, via MichaelMoore.com, date unspecified. URL accessed 9 July 2006.
^ "The Drugging of Our Children". at the Internet Movie Database
^ Blood in the Face at the Internet Movie Database Moore details his involvement in the audio commentary on the Roger & Me DVD.
^ "Who's Who". The Corporation Film.
^ "'I am the balance', says Moore". Minneapolis Star Tribune. South Florida Sun-Sentinel (4 July 2007). Retrieved on 2007–07–06. "Moore rejects the label "political activist"; as a citizen of a democracy, Moore insists, such a description is redundant."
^ Flesher, John (16 June 2007). "Hollywood meets Bellaire as Moore gives sneak peek of "Sicko"". Associated Press. MichaelMoore.com. Retrieved on 2007–07–06. "But the filmmaker, known for his fiery left-wing populism and polemical films such as "Fahrenheit 9/11" and Oscar-winning "Bowling for Columbine," told the audience "Sicko" would appeal across the political spectrum."
^ Opinion Journal from the Wall Street Journal: Unmoored from Reality. John Fund's Political Diary, 21 March 2003. URL accessed 29 August 2006.
^ My Vote's for Obama (if I could vote) ...by Michael Moore April 21, 2008
External links
Michael Moore Official website
Michael Moore at the Internet Movie Database
Michael Moore on YouTube
Works by or about Michael Moore in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
A 2007 NOW on PBS interview with Michael Moore What makes him tick, and why our health care system ticks him off
[show]v • d • eFilms directed by Michael Moore
Roger & Me • Pets or Meat: The Return to Flint • Canadian Bacon • The Big One • Bowling for Columbine • Fahrenheit 9/11 • Sicko • Captain Mike Across America • Slacker Uprising
Persondata
NAME Moore, Michael Francis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Moore, Michael
SHORT DESCRIPTION American film director, author, and social commentator
DATE OF BIRTH April 23, 1954
PLACE OF BIRTH Davison, Michigan
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Moore"
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10. Who has been more of a righteous extremist in this election campaign: McCain or Obama. For the most part, Obama has been the voice of reason and integrationism, while McCain has been the voice of the past: righteous/religous/political intolerance, divisionism, and hate. McCain has for the most part used negative campaign tactics that have worked well for the Republican Party in the past in terms of negatively stereotyping and blackballing 'potential Democratic President Hopefuls'. This election things are going to be different: the American people and Obama have evolved; McCain, Palin, and the rest of the negative campaigners in this year's Republican Party -- have't. The Republican Party needs to be re-created, re-invented. It needs to rise like the Phoenix. Today it is dead. And I hope -- I truly hope -- the American people understand that. I think they do. Obama will be the next President of the United States of America -- and I think a potentially exciting one if he sticks to his dreams, his vision, his priorities, his mandate.
I am not particlarly religious but I do not mind religion, politics, economics, and ethics all working in the same direction for a better America - and a better world.
So I will say this for the first and only time to compensate for the negative force of the Jeremy Wright rant quoted earlier:
God Bless America -- and the harmonious integration and peaceful harmony of America with the rest of the world. (From here after, refer to the Dylan song 'With God on My Side' to underline my more regular feelings about the use of the name 'God' to add 'religious force' to any kind of political ideology, particularly when that ideology is 'pathologically destructive and/or self-destructive').
Hate, unbridled greed, selfishness, narcissism, righteous/religous/political intolerance and civil divisionism are all self-destructive to the human race. These are all characteristics that mark the humn race at its worst. They are all characteristics that are 'anti-evolutionary'. They will lead us the same way as the dinosaur -- to extinction.
How many more American soldiers and foreign soldiers, American civilians and foreign civilians have to come home in body bags or lay rotting in the fields or in blown up buildings that CNN cameramen have to relay to the American people and to the rest of the world before everyone on both sides of this brutally savage and ridiculous war will finally come to their senses and say, 'Enough is enough'. Winning the war isn't the answer here. Because we are all big-time losers -- on both sides of the political and relgious and economic fence that divides us -- and kills us and maims us and povertizes us -- as long as we continue to embrace this tragic farce we call 'war', and the radical, righteous, religious, and/or economic extremism that continues to propogandize and support it.
"Violence begets violence; hate begets hate; and toughness begets a greater toughness. ...I believe Martin Luther King Junior said that...but i think it has even older philosophical roots.
The point is: When will it ever stop?
Never?
I think we have evolved better than this. Or have we?
-- dgb, October 23rd-24th, 2008.
Introduction
I thought that Part 4 of this series of political 'Faceoff' essays -- Faceoff: DGB Philosophy vs. The American Republican Party would be my last 'kick' at the Republican Party, the Republican 'Can' if you will, before the election.
However, obviously I was mistaken as, within 24 hours, I had 'gushed out' another sequence of thoughts and feelings relative to my overall current 'Anti-Republican sentiment'.
So, here we go again. I am certainly not against Republican Ideology (Idealism) at its best. If my Republican leader is Dwight Eisenhower, his son John, or John's daughter Susan -- then I am right there in the middle of their particular brand of Republican Ideology and Idealism.
However, I certainly am against Republican Ideology ('Idealism') at its worst -- and this leads us both to Bush's pathological form of Republican Ideology and to McCain's newer 'brand of lipstick' on the 'old Bush Republican Brand'. (Notice, I had to refrain myself from over-using the infamous 'lipstick on a pig' metaphor and, obviously, I only partly succeeded.)
In my mind, it is too late for the McCain-Palin Republicans to recover in this election -- they blew their opportunities, plain and simple. Too much negative and negative-stereotyping pathological political philosophy vs. not enough 'responsible-accountable-ethical' Republican political philosophy. Healthy Republican Idealism can still be found but not on this 2008 corpse of the American Republican Party.
In this essay, we will explore the roots of current 'Pathological Republican Ideology'. This essay is not for the weak of mind, reason, truth, awareness, and 'philosophical digging' -- which might also be called 'philosophical-political forensics'.
Before we start, there is a relationship between 'philosophical-political forensics' and 'blowback' that needs to be fully clarified and understood here.
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Blowback (intelligence)
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(Redirected from Manchurian blowback)
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Blowback is a term used in espionage to describe the unintended consequences of covert operations. Blowback typically appears random and without cause, because the public is unaware of the secret operations that provoked it.[1]
In its strictest terms, blowback was originally informative only and referred to consequences that resulted when an intelligence agency participated in foreign media manipulation, which was then reported by domestic news sources in other countries as accepted facts. In looser terms, it can encompass all operational aspects. In this context, it can thus mean retaliation as the result of actions undertaken by nations.
The phrase is believed to have been coined by the CIA, in reference to the harmful effects to friendly forces when some weapons are used under certain conditions (for example nuclear fallout, chemical weapons, etc. used upwind from friendly troops or assets, or a torpedo circling and hitting the firing vessel, etc.). The word is believed to have appeared for the very first time in the CIA document on the 1953 Iranian coup d'état titled "Clandestine Service History – Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran – November 1952-August 1953."[2][3]
In the 1980s, blowback became a central focus of the debate over the Reagan Doctrine, which advocated militarily supporting resistance movements opposing Soviet-supported, communist governments. In one case, covert funding of the Contras in Nicaragua would lead to the Iran-Contra Affair, while covert support led to a World Court ruling against the United States in Nicaragua v. United States.
Critics of the Reagan Doctrine argued that blowback was unavoidable, and that, through the doctrine, the United States was inflaming wars in the Third World. Doctrine advocates, principally at the conservative Heritage Foundation, responded that support for anti-communist resistance movements would lead to a "correlation of forces," which would topple communist regimes without significant retaliatory consequence to the United States, while simultaneously altering the global balance of power in the Cold War.
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Blowback
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Blowback may refer to one of the following.
Blowback (intelligence)
Blowback (arms)
Blowback (military) - Negative effects suffered from one's own weapons, such as nuclear fallout blown onto one's own troops or civilian population.
Blowback (book) - a 2000 book on American Empire by Chalmers Johnson ISBN 0805075593.
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I heard the term 'blowback' for the first time by Chalmers Johnson (the inspirational CIA analyst) as I tried to digest the full content, quality, substance, and implications of the movie, 'Why We Fight' which I just finished watching. A quick DGB editorial: I saw a 'better' John McCain in this movie than anything I have seen from him on his Repubican campaign -- except perhaps for his Al Smith Dinner Roast Party Comedy Speech where his comedy speech was actually significantly better than Obama's. But that was only one speech.
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I am like the 'old fashioned, underdog Lieutenant Columbo' on the old detective series 'Columbo'. In this context, there are many, many political, economic, and military things that I do not understand. However, once I hear or read something, and i deem it to be important, then I will grab it and twist it and tear it to pieces -- not unlike a bulldog or a pitbull or Columbo himself -- until I fully understand the implications, applications, ramifications, and consequences of what i have read or hear. Such is the case here, relative to the term 'blowback' and my current beginning understanding of the term.
Based mainly on what I heard and interpreted Chalmers Johnson as saying, and from their experience relative to the war in Vietnam -- 'too many body bags and imagery of people being blown up, especially women and children, being shown on television and fed back to the American people can be viewed as 'political blowback'. Political blowback is not going to usually be good for the politicians in office who want to continue an ongoing war. If you continue to feed 'war propaganda' to the American people, you are less likely to have the American people 'fall' for this manipulation and exploitation of their fear, because they can see some real, hard-line pictures of what is happening in the war in front of their very faces on tv. If some military-political person tells the American people that war technology has advanced to the stage that we now have 'precision bombing' that hits very precise military targets 100 percent of the time -- and then we see on tv with our own eyes that those supposed military targets were clearly missed, and innocent civilians were killed instead of 'pathological terrorists, insurgents, and/or dictators' -- then how does the American Government look in this kind of an instance?
It's similar to a politician having a sexual affair with a woman (or man) outside of his marriage, and then one day pictures of the affair land on the front page of the National Inquiry, or The New York Times -- this after the politician has been continually denying for days, weeks, or even months, that no such affair every happened....This might be called 'Political-Sexual Blowback'.
I think we all now have an idea of what the term 'Blowback' means...
Philosophical-political forensics investigations may dig up 'political blowback' that the American Government has been hiding from the American people for obvious political reasons. If the American people knew about this 'Blowback', they would not be very happy with their American politicians. This is very much what has happened with Bush and his claims of definitely observed 'weapons of mass destruction'.
On with the essay at hand...
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B) Ten Inherent Pathologies in McCain's Republican Campaign and 'Idealistic' Vision
1. The first thing that the McCain-led 'New Republicans' did wrong is that they did not separate themselves enough from George Bush, and Bush's Unilateral, Unethical Republican Capitalism and Political Ideology.
2. The second thing that they did wrong is that they focused too much on negative campaigning against Obama.
3. The third thing that they did wrong is that they nominated Governor Sarah Palin as vice-president on the McCain ticket.
4. The fourth thing that they did wrong was that did not create a compelling 21st Century Populist-Ethical Brand and Vision of American Capitalism.
5. The fifth thing that they did wrong is that they -- meaning McCain -- did not separate himself/themselves enough from the American downfalls of Global Capitalism, and a free trade vision that is killing the American manufacturing industry. There is a reason why tariffs are important -- otherwise, all the other countries in the world with very cheap labour forces -- China, India, Mexico...-- are going to conspire to seduce American manufacturing industries away from America and kill the American manufacturing industry -- and thousands and thousands of jobs -- in the process. Cheap foreign labour might be great for corporate profits and great for buyers -- until the 'quality' and even the 'toxicity' of the product comes into question. Not to mention that thousands of American workers are left at home twiddling their thumbs and wondering where there next paycheque is coming.
6. McCain may say that he is a 'maverick' and an 'anti-lobbyist' but that is downright plagerism from Obama's Democratic Capitalist Idealism. The shoe doesn't fit Senator McCain so don't wear it. Maybe you voted to try to stop these 'sub-prime' mortgages, maybe you didn't. The news I heard is that you did -- perhaps even when Obama didn't. Obama is not perfect. He is not quite the 'Messiah' of those first Martin Luther King-like speeches. Obama is a politician too and knows the full voting value of 'political expedience'. Politicians 'flip-flop' -- case closed. Both McCain and Obama have flip-flopped when the 'political weather changed'. Sometimes this is 'philosophical and political evolution'. Sometimes, it is 'moving closer to the votes' -- like in the 'off-shore drilling' example. Still, I give Obama higher marks than you Senator McCain for poltical ethics, integrity, vision, clarity of purpose, rhetorical eloguence, philosophical substance, peaceful foreign relations, and differential unity, harmony, and integrationism. Have I missed anything?
7. Senator McCain, your idealistic view of Capitalism is skewered. Adam Smith and Ayn Rand would both be disgusted by what just happened on Wall Street and to the American people. What you offer to the American people as a whole -- meaning primarily, middle class, working class, America -- is rice and porridge when your unethical -- corrupt -- friends in the Senate and on Wall Steet are dining on Steak and Lobster -- at expensive spa retreats. These CEOs who are completely detached and alienated from the American working class are still the same people (meaning CEOs and lobbyists for CEOs) that pour many thousands if not millions of dollars into your campaign fund. Enough perhaps to make you turn the other way when they 'transgress' on Wall Street while Main Street is financially defrauded, manipulated, exploited, gouged, trashed... Did I leave anything out? Yeah, for sure, Obama is not entirely clean of this debacle as well. But still, I will lay my money on Obama cleaning up this Wall Street debacle and thisSenate-White House-Wall Street Collusion faster and better than either you or your supposed 'anti-lobbyist, Good Old Boy in a Pant Suit maverick' Palin will. Palin has enough trouble keeping her own personal ethics clean let alone America's. Palin may have some rhetorical and charasmatic features to her character but she is in way over her head. Alaska is calling...
8. Let me try briefly to explain a new DGB term: 'Quadra-Dialectic-Democratic Capitalism'
There needs to be a strong working homeostatic and double-dialectic balance between four different sets of people:
1. the American Government;
2. Corporate Leaders and Investors (CEOs, Investors, Wall Street, Management);
3. Corporate Employees (often with the support of Unions);
4. Consuming Customers.
Call these the four pillar foundations of American Capitalism.
If any one of these four groups of American people are unhappy -- and worse, unstable -- then American Capitalism is likely to become destablized or unstablized as a whole. We need all four quadrants of American Capitalism to be strong in order to keep the Capitalist Infrastructure alive, functioning, and stable. If two of these quadrants are 'colluding' -- such as the American Senate, the White House, a particular political party in the goverment, and the lobbyists and/or CEOs for a very powerful mortgaging or banking company -- splitting 90 percent of the American Pie between themselves and leaving only 10 percent left over for the remainin two sectors -- then American Capitalism is going to crumble over a 'bankruptcy' where the CEOs of the company still get very rich, take their money home,and have much, much more than enough to start as many more companies as they want to -- again, at the expense of the middle class and lower class American people. McCain is not my man to fix this problem. Obama is.
9. Regarding alleged Republican 'tax cuts' and 'spending cuts' this is a joke. The McCain Republican Party claims that 'raising taxes' in a 'recession' is not the right thing to do. 'Cutting spending' is. So here is the joke. Money that needs to be poured into American infrastructure and services -- building roads and bridges, building new forms of viable energy supplies, building new schools, building new hospitals, helping to pay for massive medical expenses, helping to subsidize post-secondary education, helping to form 'social safety nets for the elderly, the war veterans, the special needs childen, day care, single mothers and/or dads, the unemployed, the physically and/or mentally and/or pschologically challenged -- all of these badly needed American services and resources, are going to more or less get 'pissed out of the window' because the Republican Party wants to continue to spend 10 to 20 billion dollars a month in Iraq -- a war that America should have never entered into in the first place because even President Bush has said that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 -- nor as it turned out -- did they have any 'weapons of mass destruction' that were 'imminanently effecting America's national security. So -- in effect -- the war in Iraq was, and still is, a national fraud played out by the American government on the American people.
In this context, Pastor Jeremy Wright's 'loose-lipped political sermon rampages -- going over the edge and over-associating to be sure, by saying, 'God Damn America' when what he was really trying to say (and please excuse the continuation of the profanity in this context) was 'God Damn The American Imperialist Government That Keeps Making All These Very Nasty Foreign Policy Decisions Abroad and Then Comes Back To The American People Preaching Its Own Brand of Political-Religious Dermons In Which It Makes Its Best Effort To Convince The American People That It's Philosophy Is Perfectly In Line With The Philosophy Of Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln or Adam Smith or Martin Luther King' -- then and only then, can we perhaps put Jeremy Wright's 'deconstructive' political-religious sermons into their proper context in a spirit that is not 'Anti-American' but rather 'Anti-American-Imperialism'...
The same goes with Madonna's concert imagery comparison of the Republican Party ith German Nazi Imperialism. As Bob Dylan wrote in one of his songs that you can hear in the movie, 'Why We Fight' -- 'It's Not Dark Yet, But Its Getting There...'
Let's see how many politically credible names I can add to support the logistics of the type of 'forensic political-philosophical investigation' we need to undergo -- meaning all of the American people who are brave enough and democratic enough to go here with me in order to unearth the full extent of American Goverment Psycho- and Socio-Pathology:
i. Dwight Eisenhower and his Prophetic Farewell Address that keeps coming back to haunt us like a 'Freddy Krueger Nightmare in Iraq and on Wall Street';
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Eisenhower's Farewell Address to the Nation
January 17, 1961
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Good evening, my fellow Americans: First, I should like to express my gratitude to the radio and television networks for the opportunity they have given me over the years to bring reports and messages to our nation. My special thanks go to them for the opportunity of addressing you this evening.
Three days from now, after a half century of service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.
This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.
Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.
Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on questions of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the nation.
My own relations with Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and finally to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years.
In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the nation well rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the nation should go forward. So my official relationship with Congress ends in a feeling on my part, of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.
We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.
Throughout America's adventure in free government, such basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among peoples and among nations.
To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people.
Any failure traceable to arrogance or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us a grievous hurt, both at home and abroad.
Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle – with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.
Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in the newer elements of our defenses; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research – these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel. A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.
But each proposal must be weighed in light of a broader consideration; the need to maintain balance in and among national programs – balance between the private and the public economy, balance between the cost and hoped for advantages – balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between the actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.
The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their Government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well in the face of threat and stress.
But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise.
Of these, I mention two only.
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.
Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system – ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.
Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we – you and I, and our government – must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without asking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.
Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.
Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war – as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years – I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.
Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.
So – in this my last good night to you as your President – I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and peace. I trust that in that service you find some things worthy; as for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.
You and I – my fellow citizens – need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nations' great goals.
To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's prayerful and continuing aspiration:
We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.
Now, on Friday noon, I am to become a private citizen. I am proud to do so. I look forward to it.
Thank you, and good night.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So was Ike a 60s leftist like Oliver Stone? Note some key elements of Ike's thinking:
Eisenhower didn't believe the Military Industrial Complex was to blame for the Cold War. He laid the blame on communism: "a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method."
Eisenhower felt the Military Industrial Complex was necessary.
Eisenhower felt the influence of the Military Industrial Complex might be "sought or unsought." For 60s leftists, "unsought" power for the Military Industrial Complex was inconceivable.
A principled Republican, Ike was also skeptical of agricultural and research programs fostered by the federal government. He did not consider military industrial interests uniquely insidious, but rather he distrusted government expansion generally.
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ii. John Eisenhower (son of Dwight Eisenhower)
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Eisenhower's son endorses Kerry (2004)
A commentary by John Eisenhower, son of President Dwight D. Eisenhower -- and another good reminder that some Republicans still believe in age-old principles.
Why I will vote for John Kerry for President
By John Eisenhower
The Presidential election to be held this coming Nov. 2 will be one of extraordinary importance to the future of our nation. The outcome will determine whether this country will continue on the same path it has followed for the last 3 years or whether it will return to a set of core domestic and foreign policy values that have been at the heart of what has made this country great.
Now more than ever, we voters will have to make cool judgments, unencumbered by habits of the past. Experts tell us that we tend to vote as our parents did or as we always have. We remained loyal to party labels. We cannot afford that luxury in the election of 2004. There are times when we must break with the past, and I believe this is one of them.
As son of a Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, it is automatically expected by many that I am a Republican. For 50 years, through the election of 2000, I was. With the current administration�s decision to invade Iraq unilaterally, however, I changed my voter registration to independent, and barring some utterly unforeseen development, I intend to vote for the Democratic Presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry.
The fact is that today's Republican Party is one with which I am totally unfamiliar. To me, the word Republican has always been synonymous with the word responsibility, which has meant limiting our governmental obligations to those we can afford in human and financial terms. Today's whopping budget deficit of some $440 billion does not meet that criterion.
Responsibility used to be observed in foreign affairs. That has meant respect for others. America, though recognized as the leader of the community of nations, has always acted as a part of it, not as a maverick separate from that community and at times insulting towards it. Leadership involves setting a direction and building consensus, not viewing other countries as practically devoid of significance. Recent developments indicate that the current Republican Party leadership has confused confident leadership with hubris and arrogance. ...
October 3, 2004 at 10:06 PM in Politics | Permalink
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iii. Susan Eisenhower (Dwight Eisenhower's grandaughter) (dgb editorial comment: Sound, reasonable thinking seems to be at least partly in the genes...dgb, Oct. 24th, 2008)
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Susan Eisenhower
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Susan Elaine Eisenhower (born December 31, 1951 in Fort Knox, Kentucky) is a consultant, author, and expert on international security and the relationship between the United States and Russia. She is the daughter of John Eisenhower, and the granddaughter of President Dwight Eisenhower.[1][2] She was married to space scientist Roald Sagdeev,[3] formerly the director of the Russian Space Research Institute. Despite the end of the marriage several years ago, they remain friends and business partners.[4]
Contents
1 Career
2 Publications
3 Endorsement of Barack Obama
4 References
5 External links
6 See also
Career
Susan Eisenhower is President of the Eisenhower Group, Inc, which provides strategic counsel on political, business and public affairs projects. She has consulted for Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies doing business in the emerging markets of the former Soviet Union and for a number of major institutions engaged in the energy field.
She is the Chairman of Leadership and Public Policy Programs & Chairman Emeritus of the Eisenhower Institute, a think tank based in Washington, D.C. and in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania associated with Gettysburg College. Eisenhower served as the president of the Eisenhower Institute twice, and later as Chairman. During that time, she became known for her work in the former Soviet Union and in the energy field.
Eisenhower testified before the Senate Armed Services and Senate Budget Committees on policy toward the region. She was also appointed to the National Academy of Sciences' standing Committee on International Security and Arms Control, where she served for eight years.
In 2000, she was appointed by the United States Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson to the Baker-Cutler Commission, to evaluate U.S.-funded nonproliferation programs in Russia, and since that time she has also served as an advisor to another United States Department of Energy study. She currently sits on the Nuclear Threat Initiative board, co-chaired by Senator Sam Nunn and Ted Turner, the Energy Future Coalition and the US Chamber of Commerce's new Institute for 21st Century Energy. She also serves as an Academic Fellow of the International Peace and Security program of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. She has co-chaired Save America’s Treasures, first with Founding Chair Hillary Rodham Clinton and now with First Lady Laura Bush.
She has provided analysis for CNN International, MSNBC, The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, FOX News, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Hardball with Chris Matthews, One on One with John McLaughlin, the BBC, and all three network morning programs. Over the years she has appeared on many other programs including Nightline, World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, This Week with David Brinkley, and CBS Sunday Morning with Charles Kuralt.
Eisenhower has also been seen as a "talking head" on many TV programs and documentaries, including Oliver North's War Stories, Sony Pictures Why We Fight (2005 film) and, most recently, Sputnik Mania.
She has received four honorary doctorates, most recently from the Monterey Institute, where she was cited for her work on nuclear non-proliferation. Ms. Eisenhower received the 2008 Dolibois History Prize from Miami University.[5]
Publications
Eisenhower has written extensively on nuclear and space issues and in 2000, she co-edited a book, Islam and Central Asia, which carried the prescient subtitle, An Enduring Legacy or an Evolving Threat?[5] She is the author of three books: Breaking Free, Mrs. Ike, and Partners in Space: US-Russian Cooperation After the Cold War. She has also edited four collected volumes on regional security issues - the most recent - Partners in Space (2004), which was also published in Russia by Nayuk, the publishing house of the Russian Academy of Sciences. She has written chapters for a number of collected volumes and penned hundreds of op-eds and articles on foreign and domestic policy for publications such as the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, United States Naval Institute's Proceedings, The Spectator, and Gannett Newspapers, as well as the National Interest and Politique Americaine.[5]
Endorsement of Barack Obama
Although a lifelong member of the Republican Party, Eisenhower endorsed Barack Obama for president of the United States in 2008.[6][7][8] Eisenhower announced on August 21, 2008 that she was leaving the Republican Party and becoming an independent.[9]
She spoke on the final day of the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Her speech was delivered at INVESCO Field at Mile High in Denver, Colorado, and began with, "I stand before you tonight not as a Republican or a Democrat, but as an American." [10] The full transcript of her remarks as delivered [11] are on her official website www.SusanEisenhower.com,as well as video of her remarks at the Convention. [12]
[edit] References
^ Biography of Susan Eisenhower. - Save America's Treasures
^ Susan Eisenhower. - National Public Radio
^ "Leadership in Conflict". - Samford University
^ [1]--Susan Eisenhower's official website.
^ a b c Susan Eisenhower, Chairman Emeritus. - The Eisenhower Institute
^ Susan Eisenhower - Why I'm Backing Obama. - Washington Post
^ Julie Nixon and Susan Eisenhower back Barack Obama. - Daily Telegraph
^ Ike's Granddaughter Calls Obama 'Future of America'. - Washington Independent
^ Reflections on Leaving the Party. - The National Interest
^ Official transcript of remarks by Susan Eisenhower at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. - SusanEisenhower.com
^ Official transcript of remarks by Susan Eisenhower at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. - SusanEisenhower.com
^ Video of remarks by Susan Eisenhower at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. - SusanEisenhower.com
External links
The Official Website of Susan Eisenhower
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iv. Karen Kwiatkowski
Karen Kwiatkowski
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Karen Kwiatkowski
24 Sept 1960-
Kwiatkowski during an interview in Honor Betrayed
Allegiance United States of America
Service/branch United States Air Force
Years of service 1978–2003
Rank Lieutenant Colonel
Unit Near East/South Asia and Special Plans
Other work A Case Study of the Implementation of the Reagan Doctrine.
Karen U. Kwiatkowski (born 24 September 1960) is a retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel whose assignments included duties as a Pentagon desk officer and a variety of roles for the National Security Agency. Since retiring, she has become a noted critic of the U.S. government's involvement in Iraq. Kwiatkowski is primarily known for her insider essays which denounce a corrupting political influence on the course of military intelligence leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Colonel Kwiatkowski has an MA in Government from Harvard and an MS in Science Management from the University of Alaska. She has a PhD in World Politics from Catholic University; her thesis was on overt and covert war in Angola, A Case Study of the Implementation of the Reagan Doctrine. She has also published two books about U.S. policy towards Africa: African Crisis Response Initiative: Past Present and Future (US Army Peacekeeping Institute, 2000) and Expeditionary Air Operations in Africa: Challenges and Solutions (Air University Press, 2001).[1]
Contents [hide]
1 Career
2 Quotations
3 Articles
4 Books
5 Anonymous essays 2002-2003
6 References
7 See also
8 External links
Career
Raised in western North Carolina, Kwiatkowski began her military career in 1982 as a second lieutenant. She served at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska, providing logistical support to missions along the Chinese and Russian coasts. She also served in Spain and Italy. Kwiatkowski was then assigned to the National Security Agency (NSA), eventually becoming a speechwriter for the agency's director. After leaving the NSA in 1998 she became an analyst on sub-Saharan Africa policy for the Pentagon. Kwiatkowski was in her office in the Pentagon when it was attacked on September 11, 2001. From May 2002 to February 2003 she served in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia directorate (NESA).[2] While at NESA, she wrote a series of anonymous articles, Insider Notes from the Pentagon which appeared on the website of David Hackworth.[3]
Kwiatkowski left NESA in February 2003 and retired from the Air Force the following month. In April 2003 she began writing a series of articles for the libertarian website LewRockwell.com. In June of that year she published an article in the Ohio Beacon Journal, "Career Officer Does Eye-Opening Stint Inside Pentagon,"[4] which attracted additional notice. Since February 2004 she has written a biweekly column ("Without Reservations") for the website MilitaryWeek.
Her most comprehensive writings on the subject of a corrupting influence of the Pentagon on intelligence analysis leading up to the Iraq War appeared in a series of articles in The American Conservative magazine in December 2003 and in a March 2004 article on Salon.com. In the latter piece ("The New Pentagon Papers") she wrote:
I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of the president.
Kwiatkowski described how a clique of officers led by retired Navy Captain Bill Luti, assistant secretary of defense for NESA and former aide to Dick Cheney when the latter was Secretary of Defense, took control of military intelligence and how the "Office of Special Plans" (OSP) grew and eventually turned into a censorship and disinformation organism controlling the NESA.[5]
Following the American Conservative and Salon articles, Kwiatkowski began to receive criticism from several conservative sources that supported President Bush's policies. Michael Rubin of the National Review argued she had exaggerated her knowledge of the OSP's workings and claimed she had ties to Lyndon LaRouche.[6] Republican U.S. Senator John Kyl criticized her in a speech on the Senate floor.[7] On a Fox News program, host John Gibson and former Republican National Committee communications director Clifford May described her as an anarchist.[8] Kwiatkowski responded by saying, among other points, that she had never supported or dealt with LaRouche.[9] She requested and received a written apology from Senator John Kyl for his false statements about her.[citation needed]
In addition to her writings Kwiatkowski has appeared as a commentator in the documentaries Hijacking Catastrophe, Honor Betrayed and Why We Fight. She has been a registered member of the U.S. Libertarian Party since 1994 and spoke at the party's national convention in 2004.[10] She is also a member of the Liberty and Power group weblog at the History News Network. Kwiatkowski currently lives with her family in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and works part-time as a farmer.
Kwiatkowski has been widely seen as an attractive Libertarian presidential candidate,[11][12] especially given her military background and outspoken opposition to the Iraq War. In April 2006, Kwiatkowski received the New Hampshire Libertarian Party's 2008 vice-presidential nomination (the Libertarian Party chooses presidential and vice-presidential nominees on separate ballot, and campaigns for the two positions are often independent).[13][14] In 2007, she announced her support for Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul. [15]
[edit] Quotations
"I came to share with many NSA colleagues a kind of unease, a sense that something was awry. What seemed out of place was the strong and open pro-Israel and anti-Arab orientation in an ostensibly apolitical policy-generation staff within the Pentagon."[16]
"Why we fight? I think we fight 'cause too many people are not standing up, saying 'I'm not doing this any more.'"
"If you join the United States military now, you are not defending the United States of America; you are helping certain policy-makers pursue an imperial agenda."
"At the end of the summer of 2002, new space had been found upstairs on the fifth floor for an "expanded Iraq desk." It would be called the Office of Special Plans. We were instructed at a staff meeting that this office was not to be discussed or explained, and if people in the Joint Staff, among others, asked, we were to offer no comment. We were also told that one of the products of this office would be talking points that all desk officers would use verbatim in the preparation of their background documents."
"By August, only the Pollyannas at the Pentagon felt that the decision to invade Iraq, storm Baghdad, and take over the place (or give it to Ahmad Chalabi) was reversible."
"It wasn't intelligence — it was propaganda. They'd take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don't belong together."[17]
"Interestingly, the Downing Street memo is actually being reported by CNN and FOX News. It is being discussed in the major papers. Congress intends to examine it. Hearing it mentioned on the half hour by CNN Headline News has not dispossessed me of the belief that a state suicide is impossible. Thus, my gentle thoughts are increasingly turning to murder. Murder of the state. In self-defense, of course!"[18]
"We have a Congress that failed in every way to ask the right questions, to hold the President to account. Our Congress failed us miserably, and that's because many in Congress are beholden to the Military Industrial Complex."
"The reason we're in Iraq first off has not honestly been told to the American people; it certainly had nothing to do with the liberation of the Iraqi people. It was never part of the agenda and it's not part of the agenda now."
Articles
Kwiatkowski, Karen (2007-01-15). "Making Sense of the Bush Doctrine". LewRockwell.com. Retrieved on 2008-09-18.
Books
Kwiatkowski, Karen (2000). African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI) past, present, and future?. Peacekeeping Institute, Center for Strategic Leadership, U.S. Army War College.
Kwiatkowski, Karen (2001-10-01). Expeditionary Air Operations in Africa: Challenges and Solutions. ISBN 978-1585661008.
Griffin, David Ray; Peter Dale Scott (2006-08-23). 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out, Vol. 1. Karen Kwiatkowski: Assessing the Official 9/11 Conspiracy Theory: Olive Branch Press. ISBN 978-1566566599.
Anonymous essays 2002-2003
Deep Throat Returns: Insider Notes from The Pentagon, Lt. Col. Kwiatkowski's anonymous essays while still at the Pentagon. (Anonymous essays number 1 to 39)
Insider Notes from The Pentagon: Ready to go to war?, January 31, 2003. (Anonymous essay number 40)
Insider Notes from The Pentagon: Fear of God, February 3, 2003. (No.41)
Insider Notes from The Pentagon: Life is Tough All Over, February 8, 2003. (No.42)
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love CBW, March 10, 2003. (No.47)
The Souffle has Fallen, March 29, 2003. (No.49)
Insider Notes from The Pentagon: Those Awful Turks, May 28, 2003. (No.51)
References
^ militaryweek.com
^ mcsweeneys.net
^ lewrockwell.com
^ mindfully.org
^ commondreams.org
^ nationalreview.com
^ rpc.senate.gov
^ defenddemocracy.org
^ nathancallahan.com
^ lp.org
^ knappster.blogspot.com
^ politics1.com politics1.com
^ smallgov.org
^ phillies2008.org
^ Academics for Ron Paul
^ amconmag.com
^ motherjones.com
^ lewrockwell.com
See also
The Oil Factor
[edit] External links
Liberty and Power Group Blog
Karen Kwiatkowski, entry on SourceWatch
Center for Cooperative Research Profile of Karen Kwiatkowski
The New Pentagon Papers, an article by Kwiatkowski that appeared on Salon.Com
Archive of articles by Karen Kwiatkowski on LewRockwell.Com
List of articles on militaryweek.com
"Conscientious Objector", an article by Kwiatkowski, originally appearing in The American Conservative
Honor Betrayed page on veteransforpeace.org
The Pentagon Insider Who Spread Rumors that Sounded Anti-Semitic by Edwin Black appearing on History News Network
Web of Conspiracies by Michael Rubin appearing on National Review Online
Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear, and the Selling of American Empire
Democracy Now, September 10, 2004 Hijacking Catastrophe
Democracy Now, October 22, 2004 The Oil Factor: Behind the War on Terror
Karen Kwiatkowski's 2002-2003 archives Deep Throat Returns: Insider Notes from The Pentagon
Knight Ridder News, July 31, 2003 Career Officer Does Eye-Opening Stint Inside Pentagon
Inter Press Service, August 5, 2003 War Critics Zero In on Pentagon Office
Inter Press Service, August 7, 2003 Pentagon Office Home to Neo-Con Network
If Americans Knew, December 1, 2003 Israelis walked through the Pentagon to Feith's office like they owned the place
Interhemispheric Resource Center, February 12, 2004 Office of Special Plans
Inter Press Service, October 28, 2005 A Formidable Hawk Goes Down
Mother Jones, January 2004 The Lie Factory
Democracy Now, December 18, 2003 The Lie Factory - Neocons & the OSP Pushed Disinformation and Bogus Intelligence
In These Times, April 12, 2004 Outside the Inside
In These Times, October 24, 2004 The Bush team’s foreign policy disregarded reality and ignored actuality
Democracy Now, August 8, 2003 Ex-Pentagon Official Suggests Bush Administration Should Face War Crimes Tribunal
Interview with Karen Kwiatkowski, November 2, 2003 Pentagon Whistle Blower
Interview with Karen Kwiatkowski, May 22, 2004 An Insider's Look at the March to War
Interview with Karen Kwiatkowski, September 21, 2004 Timothy McSweeney
Interview with Karen Kwiatkowski, June 16, 2005 Daily Kos
Ten questions and answers, with Karen Kwiatkowski, October 25, 2005 Unknown News
Daily Kos Karen Kwiatkowski
After Downing Street, June 16, 2005 Written Testimony of Karen Kwiatkowski
Karen Kwiatkowski's video interview California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
Democracy Now, June 29, 2005 Former Pentagon Insider Blasts Bush's Iraq Speech and Repeated References to 9/11
Karen Kwiatkowski's audio interviews on The Charles Goyette Show
Karen Kwiatkowski's audio interviews The Weekend Interview Show with Scott Horton
Brian Lamb. Karen discusses her service in the Air Force, Pentagon & more C-SPAN, April 2, 2006.
Karen Kwiatkowski's radio show American Forum
Interview With Kwiatkowski: Pentagon Whistle-Blower on the Coming War With Iran
Interview with Karen Kwiatkowski on Liberty Cap Talk Live with Todd Andrew Barnett
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Kwiatkowski"
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v. Chalmers Johnson
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Chalmers Johnson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Chalmers Ashby Johnson (born 1931) is an American author and professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego. He is also president and co-founder of the Japan Policy Research Institute, an organization promoting public education about Japan and Asia. He has written numerous books including, most recently, three examinations of the consequences of American Empire: Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic.
Contents [hide]
1 Biography
2 The Blowback trilogy
3 Bibliography
4 Footnotes
5 External links
Biography
Johnson was born in 1931 in Phoenix, Arizona. He earned a B.A. degree in Economics in 1953 and a M.A. and a Ph.D. in political science in 1957 and 1961 respectively. All of his degrees were from the University of California, Berkeley. During the Korean War, Johnson served as a naval officer in Japan. He taught political science at the University of California from 1962 until he retired from teaching in 1992. He was best known early in his career for scholarship about China and Japan.
Johnson set the agenda for ten or fifteen years in social science scholarship on China with his book on peasant nationalism. His book MITI and the Japanese Miracle, on the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry was the preeminent study of the country's development and created the bustling subfield of what could be called the political economy of development. He coined the term "developmental state." As a public intellectual, he first led the "Japan revisionists" who critiqued American neoliberal economics with Japan as a model, but also attacked Japan for protectionism. During this period, Johnson acted as a consultant for the Office of National Estimates, part of the CIA, contributing to analysis of China and Maoism.[1]
Johnson was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1976. He served as Director of the Center for Chinese Studies and Chair of the Political Science Department at Berkeley, and held a number of important academic posts in area studies. He was a strong believer in the importance of language and historical training for doing serious research. Late in his career he became well known as a critic of "rational choice" approaches, particularly in the study of Japanese politics and political economy.
Johnson is today best known as a sharp critic of American imperialism. His book Blowback won a prize in 2001 from the Before Columbus Foundation, and was re-issued in an updated version in 2004. Sorrows of Empire, published in 2004, updated the evidence and argument from Blowback for the post-9/11 environment and Nemesis concludes the trilogy. Johnson was featured in the Eugene Jarecki-directed film Why We Fight, which won the 2005 Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. In the past, Johnson has also written for the Los Angeles Times, the London Review of Books, Harper’s Magazine, and The Nation
The Blowback trilogy
Johnson believes the enforcement of American hegemony over the world constitutes a new form of global empire. Whereas traditional empires maintained control over subject peoples via colonies, since World War II the US has developed a vast system of hundreds of military bases around the world where it has strategic interests. A long-time Cold Warrior, Johnson experienced a political awakening after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, noting that instead of demobilizing its armed forces, the US accelerated its reliance on military solutions to problems both economic and political. The result of this militarism (as distinct from actual domestic defense) is more terrorism against the US and its allies, the loss of core democratic values at home, and an eventual disaster for the American economy.
Bibliography
Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power (1962) (ISBN 0-8047-0074-5)
An Instance of Treason: Ozaki Hotsumi and the Sorge Spy Ring (1964; expanded in 1990)
Change in Communist Systems (1970), By Jeremy R. Azrael, Chalmers A. Johnson, ISBN 0-8047-0723-5
Conspiracy at Matsukawa (1972)
Ideology and Politics in Contemporary China (1973) By John Israel, Chalmers A. Johnson, ISBN 0-2959-5247-4
Japan's Public Policy Companies (1978) ISBN 0-8447-3272-9
Revolutionary Change (1982) ISBN 0-316-46730-8
MITI and the Japanese Miracle (1982)
The Industrial Policy Debate (1984) ISBN 0-9176-1665-0
Politics and productivity: the real story of why Japan works (1989) By Chalmers A. Johnson, Laura D'Andrea Tyson, ISBN 0-8873-0350-1
Japan: Who Governs? -- The Rise of the Developmental State (1995)
Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (2000, rev. 2004) ISBN 0-8050-6239-4
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (2004) ISBN 0-8050-7004-4
Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (2007) ISBN 0-8050-7911-4
Footnotes
^ Nic Paget-Clarke, 2004, "Interview with Chalmers Johnson Part 2. From CIA Analyst to Best-Selling Scholar" (In Motion Magazine). Access date: December 5, 2007.
External links
A National Intelligence Estimate on the United States by Chalmers Johnson (from Harper's Magazine)
Empire v. Democracy: Why Nemesis Is at Our Door by Chalmers Johnson
Blowback Chalmers Johnson essay from The Nation
Cold Warrior in a Strange Land Tom Engelhardt interviews Chalmers Johnson
Antiwar Radio: Charles Goyette Interviews Chalmers Johnson
Chalmers Johnson on Democracy Now! February 27 2007
Can We End the American Empire Before It Ends Us?
Audio: Our Own Worst Enemy
Audio: Is America on the brink of destruction through imperial over-reach?
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalmers_Johnson"
........................................................................
Chalmers Johnson: “Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic”
In his new book, CIA analyst, distinguished scholar, and best-selling author Chalmers Johnson argues that US military and economic overreach may actually lead to the nation’s collapse as a constitutional republic. It’s the last volume in his Blowback trilogy, following the best-selling “Blowback” and “The Sorrows of Empire.” In those two, Johnson argued American clandestine and military activity has led to un-intended, but direct disaster here in the United States.
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vi. Michael Moore
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Michael Moore
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
For other persons named Michael Moore, see Michael Moore (disambiguation).
Michael Moore
Michael Moore in 2004
Born Michael Francis Moore
April 23, 1954 (1954-04-23) (age 54)
Davison, Michigan[1][2]
Occupation director, screenwriter, producer, actor
Years active 1989 - present
Spouse(s) Kathleen Glynn (1991-)
Official website
[show]Awards won
Academy Awards
Best Documentary Feature
2002 Bowling for Columbine
César Awards
Best Foreign Film
2002 Bowling for Columbine
Emmy Awards
Outstanding Informational Series
1995 TV Nation
Other awards
Golden Palm (Palme d'Or)
2004 Fahrenheit 9/11
Michael Francis Moore (born April 23, 1954) is an Academy Award-winning American filmmaker, author, and liberal political commentator. He is the director and producer of Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, and Sicko, three of the top five highest-grossing documentaries of all time.[3][4] In September 2008, he released his first free movie on the Internet, Slacker Uprising, documenting his personal crusade to encourage more Americans to vote in presidential elections. [5] He has also written and starred in the TV shows TV Nation and The Awful Truth, both of which continue his trademark style of presenting serious documentaries in humorous ways.
Moore is a self-described liberal[6] who has explored globalization, large corporations, gun ownership, the Iraq War, U.S. President George W. Bush and the American health care system in his written and cinematic works. In 2005 Time magazine named him one of the world's 100 most influential people.[7] In 2005, Moore started the annual Traverse City Film Festival in Traverse City, Michigan. In 2008, he closed his Manhattan office and moved it to Traverse City, where he is working on his new film.[8]
Contents [hide]
1 Biography
1.1 Early life
1.2 Post-school career
1.3 2004
1.4 Acting career
1.5 Marriage
1.6 Religion
2 Directing
2.1 Films and awards
2.2 Television shows
2.3 Music videos
2.4 Appearances in other documentaries
3 Writings and political views
4 Controversy
5 Published work
5.1 Bibliography
5.2 Filmography
5.3 Television
6 References
7 External links
Biography
Early life
Moore was born in Davison[1] a suburb of Flint, Michigan to parents Veronica, a secretary, and Frank Moore, an automotive assembly-line worker.[9] At that time, the city of Flint was home to many General Motors factories, where his parents and grandfather worked. His uncle was one of the founders of the United Automobile Workers labor union and participated in the Flint Sit-Down Strike. Moore has described his parents as "Irish Catholic Democrats, basic liberal good people."[10]
Moore was brought up Roman Catholic and attended St. John's Elementary School for primary school.[11][12] He then attended Davison High School, where he was active in both drama and debate,[13] graduating in 1972. At the age of 18, he was elected to the Davison school board.[14]
Post-school career
After dropping out of the University of Michigan-Flint (where he wrote for the student newspaper The Michigan Times) and working for a day at the General Motors plant,[15] at 22 he founded the alternative weekly magazine The Flint Voice, which soon changed its name to The Michigan Voice as it expanded to cover the entire state, which Moore later regretted[citation needed]. In 1986, when Moore became the editor of Mother Jones, a liberal political magazine, he moved to California and The Michigan Voice was shut down.
After four months at Mother Jones, Moore was fired. Matt Labash claims this was for refusing to print an article by Paul Berman that was critical of the Sandinista human rights record in Nicaragua. According to the story, Moore stated that he would not run the article because Ronald Reagan "could easily hold it up, saying, 'See, even Mother Jones agrees with me.'"[16] Berman described Moore as a "very ideological guy and not a very well-educated guy" when asked about the incident.[17] Moore claims that Mother Jones actually fired him because of the publisher's refusal to allow him to cover a story on the GM plant closings in his hometown of Flint, Michigan. He responded by putting laid-off GM worker Ben Hamper (who was also writing for the same magazine at the time) on the magazine's cover, leading to his termination. Moore sued for wrongful dismissal, and settled out of court for $58,000, providing him with seed money for his first film, Roger & Me.[18]
2004
Moore was a high-profile guest at both the 2004 Democratic National Convention and the 2004 Republican National Convention, chronicling his impressions in USA Today. He was criticized in a speech by Republican Senator John McCain as "a disingenuous film-maker." Moore laughed and waved as Republican attendees jeered, later chanting "Four more years." Moore gestured his thumb and finger at the crowd, which translates into "loser."[19]
During September and October 2004, Moore spoke at universities and colleges in swing states during his "Slacker Uprising Tour". The tour gave away ramen and underwear to young people who promised to vote. This provoked public denunciations from the Michigan Republican Party and attempts to convince the government that Moore should be arrested for buying votes, but since Moore did not tell the "slackers" involved for whom to vote, just to vote, district attorneys refused to get involved. The "Underwear" tour was a popular success. Quite possibly the most controversial stop during the tour was Utah Valley State College in Orem, Utah. A fight for his right to speak ensued and resulted in massive public debates and a media blitz. Death threats, bribes and lawsuits followed. The event was chronicled in the documentary film This Divided State.[20]
Acting career
He has also dabbled in acting, following a 2000 supporting role in Lucky Numbers as the cousin of Lisa Kudrow's character, who agrees to be part of the scheme concocted by John Travolta's character. He also had a cameo in his Canadian Bacon as an anti-Canada activist. In 2004, he did a cameo, as a news journalist, in The Fever, starring Vanessa Redgrave in the lead.
Marriage
Since 1990, Moore has been married to producer Kathleen Glynn,[21] with whom he has a stepdaughter named Natalie. They live in New York City and spend quite a bit of time in Traverse City, Michigan.
Religion
Moore describes himself as a Catholic.[22][23]
Directing
Films and awards
Moore's most recent film, Sicko, released in 2007.
At the Cannes Film Festival Roger & Me
Moore first became famous for his controversial 1989 film, Roger & Me, a documentary about what happened to Flint, Michigan after General Motors closed its factories and opened new ones in Mexico, where the workers were paid much less. Since then Moore has been known as a critic of the neoliberal view of globalization. "Roger" is Roger B. Smith, former CEO and president of General Motors.
Canadian Bacon
In 1995, Moore released a satirical film, Canadian Bacon, which features a fictional US president (played by Alan Alda) engineering a fake war with Canada in order to boost his popularity. It is noted for containing a number of Canadian and American stereotypes, and for being Moore's only non-documentary film. The film is also one of the last featuring Canadian-born actor John Candy, and also features a number of cameos by other Canadian actors. In the film, several potential enemies for America's next great campaign are discussed by the president and his cabinet. (The scene was strongly influenced by the Stanley Kubrick film Dr. Strangelove.) The President comments that declaring war on Canada was as ridiculous as declaring war on international terrorism. His military adviser, played by Rip Torn, quickly rebuffs this idea, saying that no one would care about "...a bunch of guys driving around blowing up rent-a-cars".
The Big One
In 1997, Moore directed The Big One, which documents the tour publicizing his book Downsize This! Random Threats from an Unarmed American, in which he criticizes mass layoffs despite record corporate profits. Among others, he targets Nike for outsourcing shoe production to Indonesia.
Bowling for Columbine
Moore's 2002 film, Bowling for Columbine, probes the culture of guns and violence in the United States, taking as a starting point the Columbine High School massacre of 1999. Bowling for Columbine won the Anniversary Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and France's Cesar Award as the Best Foreign Film. In the United States, it won the 2002 Academy Award for Documentary Feature. It also enjoyed great commercial and critical success for a film of its type and became, at the time, the highest-grossing mainstream-released documentary (a record later held by Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11). It was praised by some for illuminating a subject slighted by the mainstream media, but it was attacked by others who claim it is inaccurate and misleading in its presentations and suggested interpretations of events.
Fahrenheit 9/11
Fahrenheit 9/11 examines America in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, particularly the record of the Bush administration and alleged links between the families of George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden. Fahrenheit was awarded the Palme d'Or, the top honor at the Cannes Film Festival; it was the first documentary film to win the prize since 1956. Moore later announced that Fahrenheit 9/11 would not be in consideration for the 2005 Academy Award for Documentary Feature, but instead for the Academy Award for Best Picture. He stated he wanted the movie to be seen by a few million more people, preferably on television, by election day. Since November 2 was less than nine months after the film's release, it would be disqualified for the Documentary Oscar. Moore also said he wanted to be supportive of his "teammates in non-fiction film." However, Fahrenheit received no Oscar nomination for Best Picture. The title of the film alludes to the classic book Fahrenheit 451 about a future totalitarian state in which books are banned; according to the book, paper begins to burn at 451 degrees Fahrenheit. The pre-release subtitle of the film confirms the allusion: "The temperature at which freedom burns." At the box office, Fahrenheit 9/11 remains the highest-grossing documentary of all time, taking in close to US$200 million worldwide, including United States box office revenue of US$120 million.
Sicko
Moore directed this film about the American health care system, focusing particularly on the managed-care and pharmaceutical industries. At least four major pharmaceutical companies—Pfizer, Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, and GlaxoSmithKline—ordered their employees not to grant any interviews to Moore.[24][25][26] According to Moore on a letter at his website, "roads that often surprise us and lead us to new ideas – and challenge us to reconsider the ones we began with have caused some minor delays." The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on 19 May 2007, receiving a lengthy standing ovation, and was released in the U.S. and Canada on 29 June 2007.[27] The film was the subject of some controversy when it became known that Moore went to Cuba with chronically ill September 11th rescue workers to shoot parts of the film. The United States is looking into whether this violates the trade embargo. The film is currently ranked the third highest grossing documentary of all time[28] and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature.[29]
Captain Mike Across America [30]
Moore takes a look at the politics of college students in what he calls "Bush Administration America" with this film shot during Moore's 60-city college campus tour in the months leading up to the 2004 election.[31][32] The film was later re-edited by Moore into Slacker Uprising.
Television shows
This section does not cite any references or sources.
Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (August 2007)
Between 1994 and 1995, he directed and hosted the BBC television series TV Nation, which followed the format of news magazine shows but covered topics they avoid. The series aired on BBC2 in the UK. The series was also aired in the US on NBC in 1994 for 9 episodes and again for 8 episodes on FOX in 1995.
His other major series was The Awful Truth, which satirized actions by big corporations and politicians. It aired on Channel 4 in the UK, and the Bravo network in the US, in 1999 and 2000.
Another 1999 series, Michael Moore Live, was aired in the UK only on Channel 4, though it was broadcast from New York. This show had a similar format to The Awful Truth, but also incorporated phone-ins and a live stunt each week.
In 1999 Moore won the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award in Arts and Entertainment, for being the executive producer and host of The Awful Truth, where he was also described as "muckraker, author and documentary filmmaker".
Music videos
Moore has directed several music videos, including two for Rage Against the Machine for songs from "The Battle of Los Angeles": "Sleep Now in the Fire" and "Testify". He was threatened with arrest during the shooting of "Sleep Now in the Fire", which was filmed on Wall Street; the city of New York had denied the band permission to play there, although the band and Moore had secured a federal permit to perform.[33]
He also directed video for "R.E.M." single "All the Way to Reno (You're Gonna Be a Star)" in 2001. In 2003 Moore directed a video for "System of a Down" song "Boom!".
Appearances in other documentaries
Moore appeared in The Drugging of Our Children,[34] a 2005 documentary about over-prescription of psychiatric medication to children and teenagers, directed by Gary Null a proponent of Alternative Medicine. In the film Moore agrees with Gary Null that Ritalin and other similar drugs are over-prescribed, saying that they are seen as a "pacifier".
Moore appeared on fellow Flint natives Grand Funk Railroad's edition of Behind The Music.
Moore appeared as an off-camera interviewer in Blood in the Face, a 1991 documentary about white supremacy groups. The film centers around a neo-Nazi gathering in Michigan.[35]
Moore appeared in The Yes Men, a 2003 documentary about two men who pose as the World Trade Organization. He appears during a segment concerning working conditions in Mexico and Latin America.
Moore was interviewed for the 2004 documentary, The Corporation. One of his highlighted quotes was: "The problem is the profit motive: for corporations, there's no such thing as 'enough'".[36]
Moore appeared briefly in Alex Jones's 2005 film Martial Law 9/11: Rise of the Police State. Jones asks Moore why he did not mention some of the information regarding the September 11 attacks in his film Fahrenheit 9/11, in particular, why he did not explain why NORAD stood down on that day. Moore replied, "Because it would be Un-American."
Moore featured prominently in the 2005 documentary This Divided State, which followed the heated level of controversy surrounding his visit to a conservative city in the United States two weeks before the 2004 election.
Moore appeared in the 2006 documentary I'm Going to Tell You a Secret, which chronicles Madonna during her 2004 Re-Invention World Tour. Moore attended her show in New York City at Madison Square Garden.
Writings and political views
Though Moore rejects the label "political activist,"[37] he has been active in promoting his political views. According to John Flesher of the Associated Press, Moore is known for his "fiery left-wing populism."[38]
Moore has authored three best-selling books:
Downsize This! (1996), about politics and corporate crime in the United States,
Stupid White Men (2001), ostensibly a critique of American domestic and foreign policy but, by Moore's own admission, "a book of political humor,"[39] and
Dude, Where's My Country? (2003), an examination of the Bush family's relationships with Saudi royalty, the Bin Laden family, and the energy industry, and a call-to-action for liberals in the 2004 election.
Despite having supported Ralph Nader in 2000, Moore urged Nader not to run in the 2004 election so as not to split the left vote. (Moore joined Bill Maher on the latter's television show in kneeling before Nader to plead with him to stay out of the race.) In June 2004, Moore claimed he is not a member of the Democratic party. Although Moore endorsed General Wesley Clark for the Democratic nomination on January 14, Clark withdrew from the primary race on February 11. Moore drew attention when charging publicly that Bush was AWOL during his service in the National Guard (see George W. Bush military service controversy).
With the 2004 election over, Moore continues to collect information on the war in Iraq and the Bush administration in addition to his film projects. On several occasions during 2007, he called for Al Gore to run for President.
On April 21, 2008, Moore endorsed Barack Obama for President, claiming that Clinton's recent actions had been "disgusting."[40]
Controversy
Main article: Michael Moore controversies
Moore has been at the center of several controversies, mostly as a result of his political views and directing style.
Published work
Bibliography
Moore, Michael (1996). Downsize This! Random Threats from an Unarmed American. New York: HarperPerennial. ISBN 0060977337.
Moore, Michael; Glynn, Kathleen (1998). Adventures In A TV Nation. New York: HarperPerennial. ISBN 0060988096.
Moore, Michael (2002). Stupid White Men ...and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation!. New York: Regan Books. ISBN 0060392452.
Moore, Michael (2003). Dude, Where's My Country?. New York: Warner Books. ISBN 0446532231.
Moore, Michael (2004). Will They Ever Trust Us Again?. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0743271521.
Moore, Michael (2004). The Official Fahrenheit 9/11 Reader. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0743272927.
Moore, Michael (2008). Mike's Election Guide 2008. New York: Grand Central Publishing. ISBN 0446546275.
Filmography
Roger & Me (1989)
Pets or Meat: The Return to Flint (1992) (TV)
Canadian Bacon (1995)
The Big One (1997)
And Justice for All (1998) (TV)
Lucky Numbers (2000) (as actor)
Bowling for Columbine (2002)
Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) "Palme d'Or" in Cannes
Sicko (2007)
Captain Mike Across America (2007)
Slacker Uprising (2008)
Television
TV Nation (1994)
The Awful Truth (1999)
Michael Moore Live (1999)
References
^ a b New York Times profile
^ Michael Moore - MSN Encarta
^ Allmovie (2007). "Michael Moore filmography". Allmovie. Retrieved on 2007-07-19.
^ "Documentary Movies". Box Office Mojo (2007). Retrieved on 2007-11-12.
^ "Michael Moore releases Slacker Uprising for free on Net". www.meeja.com.au (2008-09-24). Retrieved on 2008-09-24.
^ Michael Moore (2006-11-14). "A Liberal's Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives". Michael Moore.com. Retrieved on 2007-07-21.
^ Joel Stein. "Michael Moore: The Angry Filmmaker", Time. Retrieved on 2007-07-19.
^ Rick Coates (2008). "Northern Michigan's film industry from Michael Moore's perspective". Northern Express. Retrieved on 2008-07-21.
^ "Michael Moore Biography (1954-)". Film Reference. Retrieved on 2007-07-19.
^ Ron Sheldon (23 September 1995). "Exclusive Interview with Michael Moore of TV Nation", People's Weekly World. Retrieved on 2007-07-19.
^ Richard Knight, Jr. (2007-06-27). "To Your Health: A Talk with Sicko's Michael Moore", Windy City Media Group. Retrieved on 2007-06-27.
^ Primeau, François. American Dissident, Lulu Press, 2007.
^ Gary Strauss (June 20, 2004). "The truth about Michael Moore". USA Today. Retrieved on 2006–07–09.
^ MichaelMoore.com: The Day I Was To be Tarred and Feathered
^ Ron Sheldon (September 23, 1995). "Exclusive Interview with Michael Moore of TV Nation". People's Weekly World.
^ Emily Schultz, Michael Moore: A Biography, Ecw Press, 2005. Pg 47-54.
^ Paul Mulshine. "A Stupid White Man and a Smart One". Newark Star Ledger, March 3, 2003
^ Matt Labash. "Michael Moore, One-Trick Phony". The Weekly Standard. June 8, 1998
^ Delegates relish McCain jab at filmmaker Moore CNN.com. 31 August 2006.
^ This Divided State official website. Accessed 9 July 2006.
^ IMDb, Kathleen Glynn
^ Rahner, Mark (2007-06-26). ""Sicko," new Michael Moore film, takes on the health-care system", The Seattle Times. Retrieved on 2007-06-30.
^ Elliott, David (2007-06-29). "Moral outrage, humor make up Michael Moore's one-two punch", SignOnSanDiego. Retrieved on 2007-06-30.
^ The Philadelphia Inquirer: Inqlings | Michael Moore takes on Glaxo. Michael Klein, 30 September 2005. Archive accessed 9 July 2006.
^ Common Dreams News Center: Drug Firms are on the Defense as Filmmaker Michael Moore Plans to Dissect Their Industry. Original Article - Elaine Dutka, L.A. Times, December 22, 2004. Archive accessed August 09, 2006
^ Chicago Tribune: Michael Moore turns camera onto health care industry. Bruce Japsen, 3 October 2004. Archive accessed 9 July 2006.
^ CBC Sicko to have unofficial premiere at Democratic fundraiser May 26, 2007. URL accessed October 14, 2007.
^ "Documentary Movies". Genres. Box Office Mojo (2007). Retrieved on 2008-01-31.
^ "Shortlist for docu Oscar unveiled". The Hollywood Reporter (2007-11-20). Retrieved on 2008-01-31.
^ Captain Mike at the Internet Movie Database
^ "Toronto International Film Festival". Retrieved on 2007–09–07.
^ Captain Mike Across America (2007)
^ Green Left Weekly: Rage against Wall Street. Michael Moore, via MichaelMoore.com, date unspecified. URL accessed 9 July 2006.
^ "The Drugging of Our Children". at the Internet Movie Database
^ Blood in the Face at the Internet Movie Database Moore details his involvement in the audio commentary on the Roger & Me DVD.
^ "Who's Who". The Corporation Film.
^ "'I am the balance', says Moore". Minneapolis Star Tribune. South Florida Sun-Sentinel (4 July 2007). Retrieved on 2007–07–06. "Moore rejects the label "political activist"; as a citizen of a democracy, Moore insists, such a description is redundant."
^ Flesher, John (16 June 2007). "Hollywood meets Bellaire as Moore gives sneak peek of "Sicko"". Associated Press. MichaelMoore.com. Retrieved on 2007–07–06. "But the filmmaker, known for his fiery left-wing populism and polemical films such as "Fahrenheit 9/11" and Oscar-winning "Bowling for Columbine," told the audience "Sicko" would appeal across the political spectrum."
^ Opinion Journal from the Wall Street Journal: Unmoored from Reality. John Fund's Political Diary, 21 March 2003. URL accessed 29 August 2006.
^ My Vote's for Obama (if I could vote) ...by Michael Moore April 21, 2008
External links
Michael Moore Official website
Michael Moore at the Internet Movie Database
Michael Moore on YouTube
Works by or about Michael Moore in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
A 2007 NOW on PBS interview with Michael Moore What makes him tick, and why our health care system ticks him off
[show]v • d • eFilms directed by Michael Moore
Roger & Me • Pets or Meat: The Return to Flint • Canadian Bacon • The Big One • Bowling for Columbine • Fahrenheit 9/11 • Sicko • Captain Mike Across America • Slacker Uprising
Persondata
NAME Moore, Michael Francis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Moore, Michael
SHORT DESCRIPTION American film director, author, and social commentator
DATE OF BIRTH April 23, 1954
PLACE OF BIRTH Davison, Michigan
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Moore"
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vii) Five Former Secretaries of State Cite Key Issues for Next President
Posted Tuesday, September 16 2008 12:53:29 am
Amanpour and Sesno moderated the round table discussion, scheduled to air on CNN.
Photos by Shameek Patel
By Marissa Moran
Co-Editor-in-Chief
Five former U.S. secretaries of state agreed that the next president should work to better engage America in the global community at a televised panel in Lisner Auditorium on Monday afternoon.
CNN’s Chief International Correspondent Christiane Amanpour and GW Professor Frank Sesno, a CNN special correspondent and former Washington bureau chief moderated the round table discussion of Madeleine K. Albright, James A. Baker III, Warren Christopher, Henry A. Kissinger, and Colin L. Powell for a CNN broadcast entitled “The Next President: A World of Challenges.”
In an extremely competitive presidential election season, and one highly scrutinized by the press, Amanpour and Sesno looked for substantial, issue-based conversation among the secretaries instead of partisan debate. Amanpour opened by telling the secretaries that they should give “candid, robust, meat and potatoes advice for the next president, whoever that may be.”
Colin Powell responded first by saying that in his first duty as commander in chief, the president must “restore a sense of confidence in the U.S.”
“We must let friends and allies around the world know we are supporting their work in unison,” said Powell, who served as secretary of state from 2001 to 2005 under President George W. Bush. He said that, as Americans, we “should have confidence in ourselves and in the rest of the world” and that we must convey this strong image to the global community, a large part of which currently views America less than favorably because of interventionist policies abroad.
Madeleine Albright drew laughs from the audience at the beginning of the discussion, saying that if she greeted the newly elected president at his Inaugural Ball, she would say, “Remember that you wanted this job.”
Albright, secretary of state under President Bill Clinton, stressed that the international problems facing the world can only be solved by cooperation between the U.S. and other countries.
“To work with other countries is a sign of strength,” she said.
Though the secretaries agreed that restoration of America's image abroad is essential, some differed on what the next president's top priority will be. Christopher, who served immediately before Albright under President Clinton, said that the primary issue that the new president must work on is the economy, while Baker, President George H.W. Bush's secretary of state, argued that the president must "structure the national security apparatus," making clear the lines of its responsibility. Baker also encouraged "strengthening the elements of American soft power" for the new president's foreign policy.
However, for the U.S. to effectively interact with the rest of the world, Kissinger stressed that the next president should reach a consensus among his principle advisers so as to avoid the "jockeying of position among various advisers." According to Kissinger, who was secretary of state from 1973 to 1977 under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford and also assistant to the president for national security affairs from 1969 to 1975, once there is unity in the next administration then the U.S. could invite the rest of the world to partake in foreign policy.
The five former secretaries walked on stage to a standing ovation from a sold-out audience of 1,400, which included GW students, members of the press, and more than 80 foreign dignitaries. Tickets for the event sold out within an hour of their release nearly two weeks ago, according to GW Media Relations.
When Amanpour asked for three key points that the president must do to regain the American image abroad, Baker said that he must use American diplomatic, political, and economic elements to the country’s advantage. Albright said that there is “generally a sense that the U.S. is on the wrong side” in world politics, and that many think that the “growing gap between the rich and the poor” is in part due to the U.S.
“We have to have confidence and also humility,” said Albright, who is presently the principle of The Albright Group, LLC, a global strategy firm. “It’s not easy in that office, admitting to the American people that he needs help….He needs to realize that when he’s talking to the American people, he’s (also) talking to a foreign audience.”
Christopher said that his suggestions for the president to regain respect would be to outlaw torture and become a global leader in the climate change crisis. His colleagues agreed with him about outlawing torture and further suggested the shut down of Guantanamo Bay.
When Sesno asked if the current U.S. economic problems would lead to a global recession, Baker said that the situation “will affect the global economy negatively.” Albright said that on an international level, “it doesn’t matter if we’re popular but it does matter if we’re respected and whether other countries want to work with us.”
Powell, who contributed a great deal to the discussion, said in response to Sesno’s inquiry about American policy toward “this” Russia that the new administration must “deal with the Russians in a straightforward, candid way, not emotionally. We have to treat Russia as a proud country with popular political leadership.”
As for relations with Iran, Kissinger also said that the U.S. must be upfront and honest.
“I always believe the best way to begin a negotiation is to tell the other side exactly what you have in mind and the outcome you’re trying to achieve.”
The conversation covered issues of foreign aid, the war in Afghanistan, relations with Pakistan, and a Middle East peace agreement. On the question of U.S. engagement or isolation with the rest of the world, all the secretaries agreed that engagement is the best route. As for the war in Iraq, both Christopher and Powell agreed that the number one priority of the new president will be to encourage the Iraqi government to reach a political reconciliation.
At the end of the event, several GW students from the audience asked questions of the former secretaries of state. The first student, from Greenwich, Conn., asked what message they thought the potential election of the first African-American president would send to the rest of the world. Albright said that she thought it would send a great message abroad, and she was thus supporting Sen. Barack Obama as the presidential nominee.
Sesno then asked Colin Powell, the first African-American secretary of state, what he thought.
“I am an American first and foremost,” said Powell, eliciting a wild cheer from the audience. But he declared that he is “neutral” right now, knowing both the democratic candidate, Sen. Barack Obama and the republican candidate, Sen. John McCain very well.
“We have to get off this ‘lipstick on a pig’ stuff and get to the serious issues,” he said, criticizing the media’s “celebrity” hype surrounding the campaigns. Powell said he is waiting to watch the upcoming debates to make his final decision of whom to support.
“I’m not going to vote for McCain because he’s a friend. I’m not going to vote for Obama because he’s black,” he continued. “Who’s going to keep us safer? Who brings the best judgment and experience to the task?”
The broadcast of the roundtable discussion will air on CNN on Saturday, September 20 at 9 p.m. and on Sunday, September 21 at 2 p.m. EST.
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10. Who has been more of a righteous extremist in this election campaign: McCain or Obama. For the most part, Obama has been the voice of reason and integrationism, while McCain has been the voice of the past: righteous/religous/political intolerance, divisionism, and hate. McCain has for the most part used negative campaign tactics that have worked well for the Republican Party in the past in terms of negatively stereotyping and blackballing 'potential Democratic President Hopefuls'. This election things are going to be different: the American people and Obama have evolved; McCain, Palin, and the rest of the negative campaigners in this year's Republican Party -- have't. The Republican Party needs to be re-created, re-invented. It needs to rise like the Phoenix. Today it is dead. And I hope -- I truly hope -- the American people understand that. I think they do. Obama will be the next President of the United States of America -- and I think a potentially exciting one if he sticks to his dreams, his vision, his priorities, his mandate.
I am not particlarly religious but I do not mind religion, politics, economics, and ethics all working in the same direction for a better America - and a better world.
So I will say this for the first and only time to compensate for the negative force of the Jeremy Wright rant quoted earlier:
God Bless America -- and the harmonious integration and peaceful harmony of America with the rest of the world. (From here after, refer to the Dylan song 'With God on My Side' to underline my more regular feelings about the use of the name 'God' to add 'religious force' to any kind of political ideology, particularly when that ideology is 'pathologically destructive and/or self-destructive').
Hate, unbridled greed, selfishness, narcissism, righteous/religous/political intolerance and civil divisionism are all self-destructive to the human race. These are all characteristics that mark the humn race at its worst. They are all characteristics that are 'anti-evolutionary'. They will lead us the same way as the dinosaur -- to extinction.
How many more American soldiers and foreign soldiers, American civilians and foreign civilians have to come home in body bags or lay rotting in the fields or in blown up buildings that CNN cameramen have to relay to the American people and to the rest of the world before everyone on both sides of this brutally savage and ridiculous war will finally come to their senses and say, 'Enough is enough'. Winning the war isn't the answer here. Because we are all big-time losers -- on both sides of the political and relgious and economic fence that divides us -- and kills us and maims us and povertizes us -- as long as we continue to embrace this tragic farce we call 'war', and the radical, righteous, religious, and/or economic extremism that continues to propogandize and support it.
"Violence begets violence; hate begets hate; and toughness begets a greater toughness. ...I believe Martin Luther King Junior said that...but i think it has even older philosophical roots...
I finally found the older quote I was looking for...
'Victory breeds hatred for the conquered is unhappy.' -- Gautama Buddha
The point is: When will the madness of war and violence ever stop?
Never?
I think we have evolved better than this. Or have we?
-- dgb, October 23rd-24th, 2008.
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Dave,
'Part 4 starts off great with the detailed descriptions of how you view
yourself as a political philosopher.
This is a great statement..."My biggest disappointment with this election
has been the lack of profound and compelling philosophical substance in the
Republican idealism, and rhetorical ideology." Then when you tell us about a
movie that is available, that offers the wisdom of the Eisenhower dedication
and experiences'. Wilton Seker's shifted realization from within the eyes of
grief is a powerful example of the Bush deceit and destruction. It's also
interesting to hear that McCain seems to have changed, this brings a person
to think about how easy it is for us, as humans, to get caught up in the
race and go so far as sacrificing our core values, beliefs and compassion in
an effort to achieve a particular status or climb higher up the present
ladder...
I smile at your opener for part 5... It's great to read your take on the
Republican campaign errors--- very detailed, clear and what would seem to be
very accurate. I also like how you've listed the four pillar foundations
more clearly. Your morning improvements are noted. It's great how you've
included Eisenhower's farewell speech and the list of credible political
names to support your investigation, although very long, it seems that
you've done your research in order to support your thoughts and opinions.
Feels like a couple more essays that are about to take flight on the web or
beyond.'
-- Noreen
-- Noreen, October 24th, 2008.
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B) Introduction
I thought that Part 4 of this series of political 'Faceoff' essays -- Faceoff: DGB Philosophy vs. The American Republican Party would be my last 'kick' at the Republican Party, the Republican 'Can' if you will, before the election.
However, obviously I was mistaken as, within 24 hours, I had 'gushed out' another sequence of thoughts and feelings relative to my overall current 'Anti-Republican sentiment'.
I partly apologize for the length of this essay. However, I wanted the essay to be well supported by other credible, reasonable, insightful, and provocative high-ranking sources. Thus, I have included about 6 outside references from the internet to back up my editorial thesis here.
So, here we go again. I am certainly not against Republican Ideology (Idealism) at its best. If my Republican leader is Dwight Eisenhower, his son John, or John's daughter Susan -- then I am right there in the middle of their particular brand of Republican Ideology and Idealism.
However, I certainly am against Republican Ideology ('Idealism') at its worst -- and this leads us both to Bush's pathological form of Republican Ideology and to McCain's newer 'brand of lipstick' on the 'old Bush Republican Brand'. (Notice, I had to refrain myself from over-using the infamous 'lipstick on a pig' metaphor and, obviously, I only partly succeeded.)
In my mind, it is too late for the McCain-Palin Republicans to recover in this election -- they blew their opportunities, plain and simple. Too much negative and negative-stereotyping pathological political philosophy vs. not enough 'responsible-accountable-ethical' Republican political philosophy. Healthy Republican Idealism can still be found but not on this 2008 corpse of the American Republican Party.
In this essay, we will explore the roots of current 'Pathological Republican Ideology'. This essay is not for the weak of mind, reason, truth, awareness, and 'philosophical digging' -- which might also be called 'philosophical-political forensics'.
Before we start, there is a relationship between 'philosophical-political forensics' and 'blowback' that needs to be fully clarified and understood here.
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Blowback (intelligence)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Manchurian blowback)
Jump to: navigation, search
Blowback is a term used in espionage to describe the unintended consequences of covert operations. Blowback typically appears random and without cause, because the public is unaware of the secret operations that provoked it.[1]
In its strictest terms, blowback was originally informative only and referred to consequences that resulted when an intelligence agency participated in foreign media manipulation, which was then reported by domestic news sources in other countries as accepted facts. In looser terms, it can encompass all operational aspects. In this context, it can thus mean retaliation as the result of actions undertaken by nations.
The phrase is believed to have been coined by the CIA, in reference to the harmful effects to friendly forces when some weapons are used under certain conditions (for example nuclear fallout, chemical weapons, etc. used upwind from friendly troops or assets, or a torpedo circling and hitting the firing vessel, etc.). The word is believed to have appeared for the very first time in the CIA document on the 1953 Iranian coup d'état titled "Clandestine Service History – Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran – November 1952-August 1953."[2][3]
In the 1980s, blowback became a central focus of the debate over the Reagan Doctrine, which advocated militarily supporting resistance movements opposing Soviet-supported, communist governments. In one case, covert funding of the Contras in Nicaragua would lead to the Iran-Contra Affair, while covert support led to a World Court ruling against the United States in Nicaragua v. United States.
Critics of the Reagan Doctrine argued that blowback was unavoidable, and that, through the doctrine, the United States was inflaming wars in the Third World. Doctrine advocates, principally at the conservative Heritage Foundation, responded that support for anti-communist resistance movements would lead to a "correlation of forces," which would topple communist regimes without significant retaliatory consequence to the United States, while simultaneously altering the global balance of power in the Cold War.
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Blowback
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Blowback may refer to one of the following.
Blowback (intelligence)
Blowback (arms)
Blowback (military) - Negative effects suffered from one's own weapons, such as nuclear fallout blown onto one's own troops or civilian population.
Blowback (book) - a 2000 book on American Empire by Chalmers Johnson ISBN 0805075593.
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I heard the term 'blowback' for the first time by Chalmers Johnson (the inspirational CIA analyst) as I tried to digest the full content, quality, substance, and implications of the movie, 'Why We Fight' which I just finished watching. A quick DGB editorial: I saw a 'better' John McCain in this movie than anything I have seen from him on his Repubican campaign -- except perhaps for his Al Smith Dinner Roast Party Comedy Speech where his comedy speech was actually significantly better than Obama's. But that was only one speech.
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I am like the 'old fashioned, underdog Lieutenant Columbo' on the old detective series 'Columbo'. In this context, there are many, many political, economic, and military things that I do not understand. However, once I hear or read something, and i deem it to be important, then I will grab it and twist it and tear it to pieces -- not unlike a bulldog or a pitbull or Columbo himself -- until I fully understand the implications, applications, ramifications, and consequences of what i have read or hear. Such is the case here, relative to the term 'blowback' and my current beginning understanding of the term.
Based mainly on what I heard and interpreted Chalmers Johnson as saying, and from their experience relative to the war in Vietnam -- 'too many body bags and imagery of people being blown up, especially women and children, being shown on television and fed back to the American people can be viewed as 'political blowback'. Political blowback is not going to usually be good for the politicians in office who want to continue an ongoing war. If you continue to feed 'war propaganda' to the American people, you are less likely to have the American people 'fall' for this manipulation and exploitation of their fear, because they can see some real, hard-line pictures of what is happening in the war in front of their very faces on tv. If some military-political person tells the American people that war technology has advanced to the stage that we now have 'precision bombing' that hits very precise military targets 100 percent of the time -- and then we see on tv with our own eyes that those supposed military targets were clearly missed, and innocent civilians were killed instead of 'pathological terrorists, insurgents, and/or dictators' -- then how does the American Government look in this kind of an instance?
It's similar to a politician having a sexual affair with a woman (or man) outside of his marriage, and then one day pictures of the affair land on the front page of the National Inquiry, or The New York Times -- this after the politician has been continually denying for days, weeks, or even months, that no such affair every happened....This might be called 'Political-Sexual Blowback'.
I think we all now have an idea of what the term 'Blowback' means...
Philosophical-political forensics investigations may dig up 'political blowback' that the American Government has been hiding from the American people for obvious political reasons. If the American people knew about this 'Blowback', they would not be very happy with their American politicians. This is very much what has happened with Bush and his claims of definitely observed 'weapons of mass destruction'.
On with the essay at hand...
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C) Ten Inherent Pathologies in McCain's Republican Campaign and 'Idealistic' Vision
1. The first thing that the McCain-led 'New Republicans' did wrong is that they did not separate themselves enough from George Bush, and Bush's Unilateral, Unethical Republican Capitalism and Political Ideology.
2. The second thing that they did wrong is that they focused too much on negative campaigning against Obama.
3. The third thing that they did wrong is that they nominated Governor Sarah Palin as vice-president on the McCain ticket.
4. The fourth thing that they did wrong was that did not create a compelling 21st Century Populist-Ethical Brand and Vision of American Capitalism.
5. The fifth thing that they did wrong is that they -- meaning McCain -- did not separate himself/themselves enough from the American downfalls of Global Capitalism, and a free trade vision that is killing the American manufacturing industry. There is a reason why tariffs are important -- otherwise, all the other countries in the world with very cheap labour forces -- China, India, Mexico...-- are going to conspire to seduce American manufacturing industries away from America and kill the American manufacturing industry -- and thousands and thousands of jobs -- in the process. Cheap foreign labour might be great for corporate profits and great for buyers -- until the 'quality' and even the 'toxicity' of the product comes into question. Not to mention that thousands of American workers are left at home twiddling their thumbs and wondering where there next paycheque is coming.
6. McCain may say that he is a 'maverick' and an 'anti-lobbyist' but that is downright plagerism from Obama's Democratic Capitalist Idealism. The shoe doesn't fit Senator McCain so don't wear it. Maybe you voted to try to stop these 'sub-prime' mortgages, maybe you didn't. The news I heard is that you did -- perhaps even when Obama didn't. Obama is not perfect. He is not quite the 'Messiah' of those first Martin Luther King-like speeches. Obama is a politician too and knows the full voting value of 'political expedience'. Politicians 'flip-flop' -- case closed. Both McCain and Obama have flip-flopped when the 'political weather changed'. Sometimes this is 'philosophical and political evolution'. Sometimes, it is 'moving closer to the votes' -- like in the 'off-shore drilling' example. Still, I give Obama higher marks than you Senator McCain for poltical ethics, integrity, vision, clarity of purpose, rhetorical eloguence, philosophical substance, peaceful foreign relations, and differential unity, harmony, and integrationism. Have I missed anything?
7. Senator McCain, your idealistic view of Capitalism is skewered. Adam Smith and Ayn Rand would both be disgusted by what just happened on Wall Street and to the American people. What you offer to the American people as a whole -- meaning primarily, middle class, working class, America -- is rice and porridge when your unethical -- corrupt -- friends in the Senate and on Wall Steet are dining on Steak and Lobster -- at expensive spa retreats. These CEOs who are completely detached and alienated from the American working class are still the same people (meaning CEOs and lobbyists for CEOs) that pour many thousands if not millions of dollars into your campaign fund. Enough perhaps to make you turn the other way when they 'transgress' on Wall Street while Main Street is financially defrauded, manipulated, exploited, gouged, trashed... Did I leave anything out? Yeah, for sure, Obama is not entirely clean of this debacle as well. But still, I will lay my money on Obama cleaning up this Wall Street debacle and thisSenate-White House-Wall Street Collusion faster and better than either you or your supposed 'anti-lobbyist, Good Old Boy in a Pant Suit maverick' Palin will. Palin has enough trouble keeping her own personal ethics clean let alone America's. Palin may have some rhetorical and charasmatic features to her character but she is in way over her head. Alaska is calling...
8. Let me try briefly to explain a new DGB term: 'Quadra-Dialectic-Democratic Capitalism'
There needs to be a strong working homeostatic and double-dialectic balance between four different sets of people:
1. the American Government;
2. Corporate Leaders and Investors (CEOs, Investors, Wall Street, Management);
3. Corporate Employees (often with the support of Unions);
4. Consuming Customers.
Call these the four pillar foundations of American Capitalism.
If any one of these four groups of American people are unhappy -- and worse, unstable -- then American Capitalism is likely to become destablized or unstablized as a whole. We need all four quadrants of American Capitalism to be strong in order to keep the Capitalist Infrastructure alive, functioning, and stable. If two of these quadrants are 'colluding' -- such as the American Senate, the White House, a particular political party in the goverment, and the lobbyists and/or CEOs for a very powerful mortgaging or banking company -- splitting 90 percent of the American Pie between themselves and leaving only 10 percent left over for the remainin two sectors -- then American Capitalism is going to crumble over a 'bankruptcy' where the CEOs of the company still get very rich, take their money home,and have much, much more than enough to start as many more companies as they want to -- again, at the expense of the middle class and lower class American people. McCain is not my man to fix this problem. Obama is.
9. Regarding alleged Republican 'tax cuts' and 'spending cuts' this is a joke. The McCain Republican Party claims that 'raising taxes' in a 'recession' is not the right thing to do. 'Cutting spending' is. So here is the joke. Money that needs to be poured into American infrastructure and services -- building roads and bridges, building new forms of viable energy supplies, building new schools, building new hospitals, helping to pay for massive medical expenses, helping to subsidize post-secondary education, helping to form 'social safety nets for the elderly, the war veterans, the special needs childen, day care, single mothers and/or dads, the unemployed, the physically and/or mentally and/or pschologically challenged -- all of these badly needed American services and resources, are going to more or less get 'pissed out of the window' because the Republican Party wants to continue to spend 10 to 20 billion dollars a month in Iraq -- a war that America should have never entered into in the first place because even President Bush has said that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 -- nor as it turned out -- did they have any 'weapons of mass destruction' that were 'imminanently effecting America's national security. So -- in effect -- the war in Iraq was, and still is, a national fraud played out by the American government on the American people.
In this context, Pastor Jeremy Wright's 'loose-lipped political sermon rampages -- going over the edge and over-associating to be sure, by saying, 'God Damn America' when what he was really trying to say (and please excuse the continuation of the profanity in this context) was 'God Damn The American Imperialist Government That Keeps Making All These Very Nasty Foreign Policy Decisions Abroad and Then Comes Back To The American People Preaching Its Own Brand of Political-Religious Dermons In Which It Makes Its Best Effort To Convince The American People That It's Philosophy Is Perfectly In Line With The Philosophy Of Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln or Adam Smith or Martin Luther King' -- then and only then, can we perhaps put Jeremy Wright's 'deconstructive' political-religious sermons into their proper context in a spirit that is not 'Anti-American' but rather 'Anti-American-Imperialism'...
The same goes with Madonna's concert imagery comparison of the Republican Party ith German Nazi Imperialism. As Bob Dylan wrote in one of his songs that you can hear in the movie, 'Why We Fight' -- 'It's Not Dark Yet, But Its Getting There...'
Let's see how many politically credible names I can add to support the logistics of the type of 'forensic political-philosophical investigation' we need to undergo -- meaning all of the American people who are brave enough and democratic enough to go here with me in order to unearth the full extent of American Goverment Psycho- and Socio-Pathology:
i. Dwight Eisenhower and his Prophetic Farewell Address that keeps coming back to haunt us like a 'Freddy Krueger Nightmare in Iraq and on Wall Street';
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Eisenhower's Farewell Address to the Nation
January 17, 1961
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Good evening, my fellow Americans: First, I should like to express my gratitude to the radio and television networks for the opportunity they have given me over the years to bring reports and messages to our nation. My special thanks go to them for the opportunity of addressing you this evening.
Three days from now, after a half century of service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.
This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.
Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.
Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on questions of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the nation.
My own relations with Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and finally to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years.
In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the nation well rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the nation should go forward. So my official relationship with Congress ends in a feeling on my part, of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.
We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.
Throughout America's adventure in free government, such basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among peoples and among nations.
To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people.
Any failure traceable to arrogance or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us a grievous hurt, both at home and abroad.
Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle – with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.
Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in the newer elements of our defenses; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research – these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel. A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.
But each proposal must be weighed in light of a broader consideration; the need to maintain balance in and among national programs – balance between the private and the public economy, balance between the cost and hoped for advantages – balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between the actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.
The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their Government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well in the face of threat and stress.
But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise.
Of these, I mention two only.
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.
Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system – ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.
Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we – you and I, and our government – must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without asking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.
Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.
Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war – as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years – I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.
Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.
So – in this my last good night to you as your President – I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and peace. I trust that in that service you find some things worthy; as for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.
You and I – my fellow citizens – need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nations' great goals.
To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's prayerful and continuing aspiration:
We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.
Now, on Friday noon, I am to become a private citizen. I am proud to do so. I look forward to it.
Thank you, and good night.
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So was Ike a 60s leftist like Oliver Stone? Note some key elements of Ike's thinking:
Eisenhower didn't believe the Military Industrial Complex was to blame for the Cold War. He laid the blame on communism: "a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method."
Eisenhower felt the Military Industrial Complex was necessary.
Eisenhower felt the influence of the Military Industrial Complex might be "sought or unsought." For 60s leftists, "unsought" power for the Military Industrial Complex was inconceivable.
A principled Republican, Ike was also skeptical of agricultural and research programs fostered by the federal government. He did not consider military industrial interests uniquely insidious, but rather he distrusted government expansion generally.
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ii. John Eisenhower (son of Dwight Eisenhower)
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Eisenhower's son endorses Kerry (2004)
A commentary by John Eisenhower, son of President Dwight D. Eisenhower -- and another good reminder that some Republicans still believe in age-old principles.
Why I will vote for John Kerry for President
By John Eisenhower
The Presidential election to be held this coming Nov. 2 will be one of extraordinary importance to the future of our nation. The outcome will determine whether this country will continue on the same path it has followed for the last 3 years or whether it will return to a set of core domestic and foreign policy values that have been at the heart of what has made this country great.
Now more than ever, we voters will have to make cool judgments, unencumbered by habits of the past. Experts tell us that we tend to vote as our parents did or as we always have. We remained loyal to party labels. We cannot afford that luxury in the election of 2004. There are times when we must break with the past, and I believe this is one of them.
As son of a Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, it is automatically expected by many that I am a Republican. For 50 years, through the election of 2000, I was. With the current administration�s decision to invade Iraq unilaterally, however, I changed my voter registration to independent, and barring some utterly unforeseen development, I intend to vote for the Democratic Presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry.
The fact is that today's Republican Party is one with which I am totally unfamiliar. To me, the word Republican has always been synonymous with the word responsibility, which has meant limiting our governmental obligations to those we can afford in human and financial terms. Today's whopping budget deficit of some $440 billion does not meet that criterion.
Responsibility used to be observed in foreign affairs. That has meant respect for others. America, though recognized as the leader of the community of nations, has always acted as a part of it, not as a maverick separate from that community and at times insulting towards it. Leadership involves setting a direction and building consensus, not viewing other countries as practically devoid of significance. Recent developments indicate that the current Republican Party leadership has confused confident leadership with hubris and arrogance. ...
October 3, 2004 at 10:06 PM in Politics | Permalink
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iii. Susan Eisenhower (Dwight Eisenhower's grandaughter) (dgb editorial comment: Sound, reasonable thinking seems to be at least partly in the genes...dgb, Oct. 24th, 2008)
................................................................
Susan Eisenhower
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Susan Elaine Eisenhower (born December 31, 1951 in Fort Knox, Kentucky) is a consultant, author, and expert on international security and the relationship between the United States and Russia. She is the daughter of John Eisenhower, and the granddaughter of President Dwight Eisenhower.[1][2] She was married to space scientist Roald Sagdeev,[3] formerly the director of the Russian Space Research Institute. Despite the end of the marriage several years ago, they remain friends and business partners.[4]
Contents
1 Career
2 Publications
3 Endorsement of Barack Obama
4 References
5 External links
6 See also
Career
Susan Eisenhower is President of the Eisenhower Group, Inc, which provides strategic counsel on political, business and public affairs projects. She has consulted for Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies doing business in the emerging markets of the former Soviet Union and for a number of major institutions engaged in the energy field.
She is the Chairman of Leadership and Public Policy Programs & Chairman Emeritus of the Eisenhower Institute, a think tank based in Washington, D.C. and in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania associated with Gettysburg College. Eisenhower served as the president of the Eisenhower Institute twice, and later as Chairman. During that time, she became known for her work in the former Soviet Union and in the energy field.
Eisenhower testified before the Senate Armed Services and Senate Budget Committees on policy toward the region. She was also appointed to the National Academy of Sciences' standing Committee on International Security and Arms Control, where she served for eight years.
In 2000, she was appointed by the United States Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson to the Baker-Cutler Commission, to evaluate U.S.-funded nonproliferation programs in Russia, and since that time she has also served as an advisor to another United States Department of Energy study. She currently sits on the Nuclear Threat Initiative board, co-chaired by Senator Sam Nunn and Ted Turner, the Energy Future Coalition and the US Chamber of Commerce's new Institute for 21st Century Energy. She also serves as an Academic Fellow of the International Peace and Security program of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. She has co-chaired Save America’s Treasures, first with Founding Chair Hillary Rodham Clinton and now with First Lady Laura Bush.
She has provided analysis for CNN International, MSNBC, The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, FOX News, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Hardball with Chris Matthews, One on One with John McLaughlin, the BBC, and all three network morning programs. Over the years she has appeared on many other programs including Nightline, World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, This Week with David Brinkley, and CBS Sunday Morning with Charles Kuralt.
Eisenhower has also been seen as a "talking head" on many TV programs and documentaries, including Oliver North's War Stories, Sony Pictures Why We Fight (2005 film) and, most recently, Sputnik Mania.
She has received four honorary doctorates, most recently from the Monterey Institute, where she was cited for her work on nuclear non-proliferation. Ms. Eisenhower received the 2008 Dolibois History Prize from Miami University.[5]
Publications
Eisenhower has written extensively on nuclear and space issues and in 2000, she co-edited a book, Islam and Central Asia, which carried the prescient subtitle, An Enduring Legacy or an Evolving Threat?[5] She is the author of three books: Breaking Free, Mrs. Ike, and Partners in Space: US-Russian Cooperation After the Cold War. She has also edited four collected volumes on regional security issues - the most recent - Partners in Space (2004), which was also published in Russia by Nayuk, the publishing house of the Russian Academy of Sciences. She has written chapters for a number of collected volumes and penned hundreds of op-eds and articles on foreign and domestic policy for publications such as the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, United States Naval Institute's Proceedings, The Spectator, and Gannett Newspapers, as well as the National Interest and Politique Americaine.[5]
Endorsement of Barack Obama
Although a lifelong member of the Republican Party, Eisenhower endorsed Barack Obama for president of the United States in 2008.[6][7][8] Eisenhower announced on August 21, 2008 that she was leaving the Republican Party and becoming an independent.[9]
She spoke on the final day of the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Her speech was delivered at INVESCO Field at Mile High in Denver, Colorado, and began with, "I stand before you tonight not as a Republican or a Democrat, but as an American." [10] The full transcript of her remarks as delivered [11] are on her official website www.SusanEisenhower.com,as well as video of her remarks at the Convention. [12]
[edit] References
^ Biography of Susan Eisenhower. - Save America's Treasures
^ Susan Eisenhower. - National Public Radio
^ "Leadership in Conflict". - Samford University
^ [1]--Susan Eisenhower's official website.
^ a b c Susan Eisenhower, Chairman Emeritus. - The Eisenhower Institute
^ Susan Eisenhower - Why I'm Backing Obama. - Washington Post
^ Julie Nixon and Susan Eisenhower back Barack Obama. - Daily Telegraph
^ Ike's Granddaughter Calls Obama 'Future of America'. - Washington Independent
^ Reflections on Leaving the Party. - The National Interest
^ Official transcript of remarks by Susan Eisenhower at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. - SusanEisenhower.com
^ Official transcript of remarks by Susan Eisenhower at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. - SusanEisenhower.com
^ Video of remarks by Susan Eisenhower at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. - SusanEisenhower.com
External links
The Official Website of Susan Eisenhower
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iv. Karen Kwiatkowski
Karen Kwiatkowski
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Karen Kwiatkowski
24 Sept 1960-
Kwiatkowski during an interview in Honor Betrayed
Allegiance United States of America
Service/branch United States Air Force
Years of service 1978–2003
Rank Lieutenant Colonel
Unit Near East/South Asia and Special Plans
Other work A Case Study of the Implementation of the Reagan Doctrine.
Karen U. Kwiatkowski (born 24 September 1960) is a retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel whose assignments included duties as a Pentagon desk officer and a variety of roles for the National Security Agency. Since retiring, she has become a noted critic of the U.S. government's involvement in Iraq. Kwiatkowski is primarily known for her insider essays which denounce a corrupting political influence on the course of military intelligence leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Colonel Kwiatkowski has an MA in Government from Harvard and an MS in Science Management from the University of Alaska. She has a PhD in World Politics from Catholic University; her thesis was on overt and covert war in Angola, A Case Study of the Implementation of the Reagan Doctrine. She has also published two books about U.S. policy towards Africa: African Crisis Response Initiative: Past Present and Future (US Army Peacekeeping Institute, 2000) and Expeditionary Air Operations in Africa: Challenges and Solutions (Air University Press, 2001).[1]
Contents [hide]
1 Career
2 Quotations
3 Articles
4 Books
5 Anonymous essays 2002-2003
6 References
7 See also
8 External links
Career
Raised in western North Carolina, Kwiatkowski began her military career in 1982 as a second lieutenant. She served at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska, providing logistical support to missions along the Chinese and Russian coasts. She also served in Spain and Italy. Kwiatkowski was then assigned to the National Security Agency (NSA), eventually becoming a speechwriter for the agency's director. After leaving the NSA in 1998 she became an analyst on sub-Saharan Africa policy for the Pentagon. Kwiatkowski was in her office in the Pentagon when it was attacked on September 11, 2001. From May 2002 to February 2003 she served in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia directorate (NESA).[2] While at NESA, she wrote a series of anonymous articles, Insider Notes from the Pentagon which appeared on the website of David Hackworth.[3]
Kwiatkowski left NESA in February 2003 and retired from the Air Force the following month. In April 2003 she began writing a series of articles for the libertarian website LewRockwell.com. In June of that year she published an article in the Ohio Beacon Journal, "Career Officer Does Eye-Opening Stint Inside Pentagon,"[4] which attracted additional notice. Since February 2004 she has written a biweekly column ("Without Reservations") for the website MilitaryWeek.
Her most comprehensive writings on the subject of a corrupting influence of the Pentagon on intelligence analysis leading up to the Iraq War appeared in a series of articles in The American Conservative magazine in December 2003 and in a March 2004 article on Salon.com. In the latter piece ("The New Pentagon Papers") she wrote:
I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of the president.
Kwiatkowski described how a clique of officers led by retired Navy Captain Bill Luti, assistant secretary of defense for NESA and former aide to Dick Cheney when the latter was Secretary of Defense, took control of military intelligence and how the "Office of Special Plans" (OSP) grew and eventually turned into a censorship and disinformation organism controlling the NESA.[5]
Following the American Conservative and Salon articles, Kwiatkowski began to receive criticism from several conservative sources that supported President Bush's policies. Michael Rubin of the National Review argued she had exaggerated her knowledge of the OSP's workings and claimed she had ties to Lyndon LaRouche.[6] Republican U.S. Senator John Kyl criticized her in a speech on the Senate floor.[7] On a Fox News program, host John Gibson and former Republican National Committee communications director Clifford May described her as an anarchist.[8] Kwiatkowski responded by saying, among other points, that she had never supported or dealt with LaRouche.[9] She requested and received a written apology from Senator John Kyl for his false statements about her.[citation needed]
In addition to her writings Kwiatkowski has appeared as a commentator in the documentaries Hijacking Catastrophe, Honor Betrayed and Why We Fight. She has been a registered member of the U.S. Libertarian Party since 1994 and spoke at the party's national convention in 2004.[10] She is also a member of the Liberty and Power group weblog at the History News Network. Kwiatkowski currently lives with her family in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and works part-time as a farmer.
Kwiatkowski has been widely seen as an attractive Libertarian presidential candidate,[11][12] especially given her military background and outspoken opposition to the Iraq War. In April 2006, Kwiatkowski received the New Hampshire Libertarian Party's 2008 vice-presidential nomination (the Libertarian Party chooses presidential and vice-presidential nominees on separate ballot, and campaigns for the two positions are often independent).[13][14] In 2007, she announced her support for Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul. [15]
[edit] Quotations
"I came to share with many NSA colleagues a kind of unease, a sense that something was awry. What seemed out of place was the strong and open pro-Israel and anti-Arab orientation in an ostensibly apolitical policy-generation staff within the Pentagon."[16]
"Why we fight? I think we fight 'cause too many people are not standing up, saying 'I'm not doing this any more.'"
"If you join the United States military now, you are not defending the United States of America; you are helping certain policy-makers pursue an imperial agenda."
"At the end of the summer of 2002, new space had been found upstairs on the fifth floor for an "expanded Iraq desk." It would be called the Office of Special Plans. We were instructed at a staff meeting that this office was not to be discussed or explained, and if people in the Joint Staff, among others, asked, we were to offer no comment. We were also told that one of the products of this office would be talking points that all desk officers would use verbatim in the preparation of their background documents."
"By August, only the Pollyannas at the Pentagon felt that the decision to invade Iraq, storm Baghdad, and take over the place (or give it to Ahmad Chalabi) was reversible."
"It wasn't intelligence — it was propaganda. They'd take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don't belong together."[17]
"Interestingly, the Downing Street memo is actually being reported by CNN and FOX News. It is being discussed in the major papers. Congress intends to examine it. Hearing it mentioned on the half hour by CNN Headline News has not dispossessed me of the belief that a state suicide is impossible. Thus, my gentle thoughts are increasingly turning to murder. Murder of the state. In self-defense, of course!"[18]
"We have a Congress that failed in every way to ask the right questions, to hold the President to account. Our Congress failed us miserably, and that's because many in Congress are beholden to the Military Industrial Complex."
"The reason we're in Iraq first off has not honestly been told to the American people; it certainly had nothing to do with the liberation of the Iraqi people. It was never part of the agenda and it's not part of the agenda now."
Articles
Kwiatkowski, Karen (2007-01-15). "Making Sense of the Bush Doctrine". LewRockwell.com. Retrieved on 2008-09-18.
Books
Kwiatkowski, Karen (2000). African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI) past, present, and future?. Peacekeeping Institute, Center for Strategic Leadership, U.S. Army War College.
Kwiatkowski, Karen (2001-10-01). Expeditionary Air Operations in Africa: Challenges and Solutions. ISBN 978-1585661008.
Griffin, David Ray; Peter Dale Scott (2006-08-23). 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out, Vol. 1. Karen Kwiatkowski: Assessing the Official 9/11 Conspiracy Theory: Olive Branch Press. ISBN 978-1566566599.
Anonymous essays 2002-2003
Deep Throat Returns: Insider Notes from The Pentagon, Lt. Col. Kwiatkowski's anonymous essays while still at the Pentagon. (Anonymous essays number 1 to 39)
Insider Notes from The Pentagon: Ready to go to war?, January 31, 2003. (Anonymous essay number 40)
Insider Notes from The Pentagon: Fear of God, February 3, 2003. (No.41)
Insider Notes from The Pentagon: Life is Tough All Over, February 8, 2003. (No.42)
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love CBW, March 10, 2003. (No.47)
The Souffle has Fallen, March 29, 2003. (No.49)
Insider Notes from The Pentagon: Those Awful Turks, May 28, 2003. (No.51)
References
^ militaryweek.com
^ mcsweeneys.net
^ lewrockwell.com
^ mindfully.org
^ commondreams.org
^ nationalreview.com
^ rpc.senate.gov
^ defenddemocracy.org
^ nathancallahan.com
^ lp.org
^ knappster.blogspot.com
^ politics1.com politics1.com
^ smallgov.org
^ phillies2008.org
^ Academics for Ron Paul
^ amconmag.com
^ motherjones.com
^ lewrockwell.com
See also
The Oil Factor
[edit] External links
Liberty and Power Group Blog
Karen Kwiatkowski, entry on SourceWatch
Center for Cooperative Research Profile of Karen Kwiatkowski
The New Pentagon Papers, an article by Kwiatkowski that appeared on Salon.Com
Archive of articles by Karen Kwiatkowski on LewRockwell.Com
List of articles on militaryweek.com
"Conscientious Objector", an article by Kwiatkowski, originally appearing in The American Conservative
Honor Betrayed page on veteransforpeace.org
The Pentagon Insider Who Spread Rumors that Sounded Anti-Semitic by Edwin Black appearing on History News Network
Web of Conspiracies by Michael Rubin appearing on National Review Online
Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear, and the Selling of American Empire
Democracy Now, September 10, 2004 Hijacking Catastrophe
Democracy Now, October 22, 2004 The Oil Factor: Behind the War on Terror
Karen Kwiatkowski's 2002-2003 archives Deep Throat Returns: Insider Notes from The Pentagon
Knight Ridder News, July 31, 2003 Career Officer Does Eye-Opening Stint Inside Pentagon
Inter Press Service, August 5, 2003 War Critics Zero In on Pentagon Office
Inter Press Service, August 7, 2003 Pentagon Office Home to Neo-Con Network
If Americans Knew, December 1, 2003 Israelis walked through the Pentagon to Feith's office like they owned the place
Interhemispheric Resource Center, February 12, 2004 Office of Special Plans
Inter Press Service, October 28, 2005 A Formidable Hawk Goes Down
Mother Jones, January 2004 The Lie Factory
Democracy Now, December 18, 2003 The Lie Factory - Neocons & the OSP Pushed Disinformation and Bogus Intelligence
In These Times, April 12, 2004 Outside the Inside
In These Times, October 24, 2004 The Bush team’s foreign policy disregarded reality and ignored actuality
Democracy Now, August 8, 2003 Ex-Pentagon Official Suggests Bush Administration Should Face War Crimes Tribunal
Interview with Karen Kwiatkowski, November 2, 2003 Pentagon Whistle Blower
Interview with Karen Kwiatkowski, May 22, 2004 An Insider's Look at the March to War
Interview with Karen Kwiatkowski, September 21, 2004 Timothy McSweeney
Interview with Karen Kwiatkowski, June 16, 2005 Daily Kos
Ten questions and answers, with Karen Kwiatkowski, October 25, 2005 Unknown News
Daily Kos Karen Kwiatkowski
After Downing Street, June 16, 2005 Written Testimony of Karen Kwiatkowski
Karen Kwiatkowski's video interview California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
Democracy Now, June 29, 2005 Former Pentagon Insider Blasts Bush's Iraq Speech and Repeated References to 9/11
Karen Kwiatkowski's audio interviews on The Charles Goyette Show
Karen Kwiatkowski's audio interviews The Weekend Interview Show with Scott Horton
Brian Lamb. Karen discusses her service in the Air Force, Pentagon & more C-SPAN, April 2, 2006.
Karen Kwiatkowski's radio show American Forum
Interview With Kwiatkowski: Pentagon Whistle-Blower on the Coming War With Iran
Interview with Karen Kwiatkowski on Liberty Cap Talk Live with Todd Andrew Barnett
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Kwiatkowski"
Categories: 1960 births | Living people | American columnists | American foreign policy writers | American libertarians | American anti-Iraq War activists | Harvard University alumni | People from North Carolina | United States Air Force officers | Women in the United States Air Force | Members of the Libertarian Party (United States) | Anarcho-capitalists | American anti-war activists | American whistleblowers
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v. Chalmers Johnson
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Chalmers Johnson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Chalmers Ashby Johnson (born 1931) is an American author and professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego. He is also president and co-founder of the Japan Policy Research Institute, an organization promoting public education about Japan and Asia. He has written numerous books including, most recently, three examinations of the consequences of American Empire: Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic.
Contents [hide]
1 Biography
2 The Blowback trilogy
3 Bibliography
4 Footnotes
5 External links
Biography
Johnson was born in 1931 in Phoenix, Arizona. He earned a B.A. degree in Economics in 1953 and a M.A. and a Ph.D. in political science in 1957 and 1961 respectively. All of his degrees were from the University of California, Berkeley. During the Korean War, Johnson served as a naval officer in Japan. He taught political science at the University of California from 1962 until he retired from teaching in 1992. He was best known early in his career for scholarship about China and Japan.
Johnson set the agenda for ten or fifteen years in social science scholarship on China with his book on peasant nationalism. His book MITI and the Japanese Miracle, on the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry was the preeminent study of the country's development and created the bustling subfield of what could be called the political economy of development. He coined the term "developmental state." As a public intellectual, he first led the "Japan revisionists" who critiqued American neoliberal economics with Japan as a model, but also attacked Japan for protectionism. During this period, Johnson acted as a consultant for the Office of National Estimates, part of the CIA, contributing to analysis of China and Maoism.[1]
Johnson was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1976. He served as Director of the Center for Chinese Studies and Chair of the Political Science Department at Berkeley, and held a number of important academic posts in area studies. He was a strong believer in the importance of language and historical training for doing serious research. Late in his career he became well known as a critic of "rational choice" approaches, particularly in the study of Japanese politics and political economy.
Johnson is today best known as a sharp critic of American imperialism. His book Blowback won a prize in 2001 from the Before Columbus Foundation, and was re-issued in an updated version in 2004. Sorrows of Empire, published in 2004, updated the evidence and argument from Blowback for the post-9/11 environment and Nemesis concludes the trilogy. Johnson was featured in the Eugene Jarecki-directed film Why We Fight, which won the 2005 Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. In the past, Johnson has also written for the Los Angeles Times, the London Review of Books, Harper’s Magazine, and The Nation
The Blowback trilogy
Johnson believes the enforcement of American hegemony over the world constitutes a new form of global empire. Whereas traditional empires maintained control over subject peoples via colonies, since World War II the US has developed a vast system of hundreds of military bases around the world where it has strategic interests. A long-time Cold Warrior, Johnson experienced a political awakening after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, noting that instead of demobilizing its armed forces, the US accelerated its reliance on military solutions to problems both economic and political. The result of this militarism (as distinct from actual domestic defense) is more terrorism against the US and its allies, the loss of core democratic values at home, and an eventual disaster for the American economy.
Bibliography
Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power (1962) (ISBN 0-8047-0074-5)
An Instance of Treason: Ozaki Hotsumi and the Sorge Spy Ring (1964; expanded in 1990)
Change in Communist Systems (1970), By Jeremy R. Azrael, Chalmers A. Johnson, ISBN 0-8047-0723-5
Conspiracy at Matsukawa (1972)
Ideology and Politics in Contemporary China (1973) By John Israel, Chalmers A. Johnson, ISBN 0-2959-5247-4
Japan's Public Policy Companies (1978) ISBN 0-8447-3272-9
Revolutionary Change (1982) ISBN 0-316-46730-8
MITI and the Japanese Miracle (1982)
The Industrial Policy Debate (1984) ISBN 0-9176-1665-0
Politics and productivity: the real story of why Japan works (1989) By Chalmers A. Johnson, Laura D'Andrea Tyson, ISBN 0-8873-0350-1
Japan: Who Governs? -- The Rise of the Developmental State (1995)
Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (2000, rev. 2004) ISBN 0-8050-6239-4
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (2004) ISBN 0-8050-7004-4
Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (2007) ISBN 0-8050-7911-4
Footnotes
^ Nic Paget-Clarke, 2004, "Interview with Chalmers Johnson Part 2. From CIA Analyst to Best-Selling Scholar" (In Motion Magazine). Access date: December 5, 2007.
External links
A National Intelligence Estimate on the United States by Chalmers Johnson (from Harper's Magazine)
Empire v. Democracy: Why Nemesis Is at Our Door by Chalmers Johnson
Blowback Chalmers Johnson essay from The Nation
Cold Warrior in a Strange Land Tom Engelhardt interviews Chalmers Johnson
Antiwar Radio: Charles Goyette Interviews Chalmers Johnson
Chalmers Johnson on Democracy Now! February 27 2007
Can We End the American Empire Before It Ends Us?
Audio: Our Own Worst Enemy
Audio: Is America on the brink of destruction through imperial over-reach?
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalmers_Johnson"
........................................................................
Chalmers Johnson: “Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic”
In his new book, CIA analyst, distinguished scholar, and best-selling author Chalmers Johnson argues that US military and economic overreach may actually lead to the nation’s collapse as a constitutional republic. It’s the last volume in his Blowback trilogy, following the best-selling “Blowback” and “The Sorrows of Empire.” In those two, Johnson argued American clandestine and military activity has led to un-intended, but direct disaster here in the United States.
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vi. Michael Moore
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Michael Moore
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
For other persons named Michael Moore, see Michael Moore (disambiguation).
Michael Moore
Michael Moore in 2004
Born Michael Francis Moore
April 23, 1954 (1954-04-23) (age 54)
Davison, Michigan[1][2]
Occupation director, screenwriter, producer, actor
Years active 1989 - present
Spouse(s) Kathleen Glynn (1991-)
Official website
[show]Awards won
Academy Awards
Best Documentary Feature
2002 Bowling for Columbine
César Awards
Best Foreign Film
2002 Bowling for Columbine
Emmy Awards
Outstanding Informational Series
1995 TV Nation
Other awards
Golden Palm (Palme d'Or)
2004 Fahrenheit 9/11
Michael Francis Moore (born April 23, 1954) is an Academy Award-winning American filmmaker, author, and liberal political commentator. He is the director and producer of Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, and Sicko, three of the top five highest-grossing documentaries of all time.[3][4] In September 2008, he released his first free movie on the Internet, Slacker Uprising, documenting his personal crusade to encourage more Americans to vote in presidential elections. [5] He has also written and starred in the TV shows TV Nation and The Awful Truth, both of which continue his trademark style of presenting serious documentaries in humorous ways.
Moore is a self-described liberal[6] who has explored globalization, large corporations, gun ownership, the Iraq War, U.S. President George W. Bush and the American health care system in his written and cinematic works. In 2005 Time magazine named him one of the world's 100 most influential people.[7] In 2005, Moore started the annual Traverse City Film Festival in Traverse City, Michigan. In 2008, he closed his Manhattan office and moved it to Traverse City, where he is working on his new film.[8]
Contents [hide]
1 Biography
1.1 Early life
1.2 Post-school career
1.3 2004
1.4 Acting career
1.5 Marriage
1.6 Religion
2 Directing
2.1 Films and awards
2.2 Television shows
2.3 Music videos
2.4 Appearances in other documentaries
3 Writings and political views
4 Controversy
5 Published work
5.1 Bibliography
5.2 Filmography
5.3 Television
6 References
7 External links
Biography
Early life
Moore was born in Davison[1] a suburb of Flint, Michigan to parents Veronica, a secretary, and Frank Moore, an automotive assembly-line worker.[9] At that time, the city of Flint was home to many General Motors factories, where his parents and grandfather worked. His uncle was one of the founders of the United Automobile Workers labor union and participated in the Flint Sit-Down Strike. Moore has described his parents as "Irish Catholic Democrats, basic liberal good people."[10]
Moore was brought up Roman Catholic and attended St. John's Elementary School for primary school.[11][12] He then attended Davison High School, where he was active in both drama and debate,[13] graduating in 1972. At the age of 18, he was elected to the Davison school board.[14]
Post-school career
After dropping out of the University of Michigan-Flint (where he wrote for the student newspaper The Michigan Times) and working for a day at the General Motors plant,[15] at 22 he founded the alternative weekly magazine The Flint Voice, which soon changed its name to The Michigan Voice as it expanded to cover the entire state, which Moore later regretted[citation needed]. In 1986, when Moore became the editor of Mother Jones, a liberal political magazine, he moved to California and The Michigan Voice was shut down.
After four months at Mother Jones, Moore was fired. Matt Labash claims this was for refusing to print an article by Paul Berman that was critical of the Sandinista human rights record in Nicaragua. According to the story, Moore stated that he would not run the article because Ronald Reagan "could easily hold it up, saying, 'See, even Mother Jones agrees with me.'"[16] Berman described Moore as a "very ideological guy and not a very well-educated guy" when asked about the incident.[17] Moore claims that Mother Jones actually fired him because of the publisher's refusal to allow him to cover a story on the GM plant closings in his hometown of Flint, Michigan. He responded by putting laid-off GM worker Ben Hamper (who was also writing for the same magazine at the time) on the magazine's cover, leading to his termination. Moore sued for wrongful dismissal, and settled out of court for $58,000, providing him with seed money for his first film, Roger & Me.[18]
2004
Moore was a high-profile guest at both the 2004 Democratic National Convention and the 2004 Republican National Convention, chronicling his impressions in USA Today. He was criticized in a speech by Republican Senator John McCain as "a disingenuous film-maker." Moore laughed and waved as Republican attendees jeered, later chanting "Four more years." Moore gestured his thumb and finger at the crowd, which translates into "loser."[19]
During September and October 2004, Moore spoke at universities and colleges in swing states during his "Slacker Uprising Tour". The tour gave away ramen and underwear to young people who promised to vote. This provoked public denunciations from the Michigan Republican Party and attempts to convince the government that Moore should be arrested for buying votes, but since Moore did not tell the "slackers" involved for whom to vote, just to vote, district attorneys refused to get involved. The "Underwear" tour was a popular success. Quite possibly the most controversial stop during the tour was Utah Valley State College in Orem, Utah. A fight for his right to speak ensued and resulted in massive public debates and a media blitz. Death threats, bribes and lawsuits followed. The event was chronicled in the documentary film This Divided State.[20]
Acting career
He has also dabbled in acting, following a 2000 supporting role in Lucky Numbers as the cousin of Lisa Kudrow's character, who agrees to be part of the scheme concocted by John Travolta's character. He also had a cameo in his Canadian Bacon as an anti-Canada activist. In 2004, he did a cameo, as a news journalist, in The Fever, starring Vanessa Redgrave in the lead.
Marriage
Since 1990, Moore has been married to producer Kathleen Glynn,[21] with whom he has a stepdaughter named Natalie. They live in New York City and spend quite a bit of time in Traverse City, Michigan.
Religion
Moore describes himself as a Catholic.[22][23]
Directing
Films and awards
Moore's most recent film, Sicko, released in 2007.
At the Cannes Film Festival Roger & Me
Moore first became famous for his controversial 1989 film, Roger & Me, a documentary about what happened to Flint, Michigan after General Motors closed its factories and opened new ones in Mexico, where the workers were paid much less. Since then Moore has been known as a critic of the neoliberal view of globalization. "Roger" is Roger B. Smith, former CEO and president of General Motors.
Canadian Bacon
In 1995, Moore released a satirical film, Canadian Bacon, which features a fictional US president (played by Alan Alda) engineering a fake war with Canada in order to boost his popularity. It is noted for containing a number of Canadian and American stereotypes, and for being Moore's only non-documentary film. The film is also one of the last featuring Canadian-born actor John Candy, and also features a number of cameos by other Canadian actors. In the film, several potential enemies for America's next great campaign are discussed by the president and his cabinet. (The scene was strongly influenced by the Stanley Kubrick film Dr. Strangelove.) The President comments that declaring war on Canada was as ridiculous as declaring war on international terrorism. His military adviser, played by Rip Torn, quickly rebuffs this idea, saying that no one would care about "...a bunch of guys driving around blowing up rent-a-cars".
The Big One
In 1997, Moore directed The Big One, which documents the tour publicizing his book Downsize This! Random Threats from an Unarmed American, in which he criticizes mass layoffs despite record corporate profits. Among others, he targets Nike for outsourcing shoe production to Indonesia.
Bowling for Columbine
Moore's 2002 film, Bowling for Columbine, probes the culture of guns and violence in the United States, taking as a starting point the Columbine High School massacre of 1999. Bowling for Columbine won the Anniversary Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and France's Cesar Award as the Best Foreign Film. In the United States, it won the 2002 Academy Award for Documentary Feature. It also enjoyed great commercial and critical success for a film of its type and became, at the time, the highest-grossing mainstream-released documentary (a record later held by Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11). It was praised by some for illuminating a subject slighted by the mainstream media, but it was attacked by others who claim it is inaccurate and misleading in its presentations and suggested interpretations of events.
Fahrenheit 9/11
Fahrenheit 9/11 examines America in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, particularly the record of the Bush administration and alleged links between the families of George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden. Fahrenheit was awarded the Palme d'Or, the top honor at the Cannes Film Festival; it was the first documentary film to win the prize since 1956. Moore later announced that Fahrenheit 9/11 would not be in consideration for the 2005 Academy Award for Documentary Feature, but instead for the Academy Award for Best Picture. He stated he wanted the movie to be seen by a few million more people, preferably on television, by election day. Since November 2 was less than nine months after the film's release, it would be disqualified for the Documentary Oscar. Moore also said he wanted to be supportive of his "teammates in non-fiction film." However, Fahrenheit received no Oscar nomination for Best Picture. The title of the film alludes to the classic book Fahrenheit 451 about a future totalitarian state in which books are banned; according to the book, paper begins to burn at 451 degrees Fahrenheit. The pre-release subtitle of the film confirms the allusion: "The temperature at which freedom burns." At the box office, Fahrenheit 9/11 remains the highest-grossing documentary of all time, taking in close to US$200 million worldwide, including United States box office revenue of US$120 million.
Sicko
Moore directed this film about the American health care system, focusing particularly on the managed-care and pharmaceutical industries. At least four major pharmaceutical companies—Pfizer, Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, and GlaxoSmithKline—ordered their employees not to grant any interviews to Moore.[24][25][26] According to Moore on a letter at his website, "roads that often surprise us and lead us to new ideas – and challenge us to reconsider the ones we began with have caused some minor delays." The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on 19 May 2007, receiving a lengthy standing ovation, and was released in the U.S. and Canada on 29 June 2007.[27] The film was the subject of some controversy when it became known that Moore went to Cuba with chronically ill September 11th rescue workers to shoot parts of the film. The United States is looking into whether this violates the trade embargo. The film is currently ranked the third highest grossing documentary of all time[28] and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature.[29]
Captain Mike Across America [30]
Moore takes a look at the politics of college students in what he calls "Bush Administration America" with this film shot during Moore's 60-city college campus tour in the months leading up to the 2004 election.[31][32] The film was later re-edited by Moore into Slacker Uprising.
Television shows
This section does not cite any references or sources.
Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (August 2007)
Between 1994 and 1995, he directed and hosted the BBC television series TV Nation, which followed the format of news magazine shows but covered topics they avoid. The series aired on BBC2 in the UK. The series was also aired in the US on NBC in 1994 for 9 episodes and again for 8 episodes on FOX in 1995.
His other major series was The Awful Truth, which satirized actions by big corporations and politicians. It aired on Channel 4 in the UK, and the Bravo network in the US, in 1999 and 2000.
Another 1999 series, Michael Moore Live, was aired in the UK only on Channel 4, though it was broadcast from New York. This show had a similar format to The Awful Truth, but also incorporated phone-ins and a live stunt each week.
In 1999 Moore won the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award in Arts and Entertainment, for being the executive producer and host of The Awful Truth, where he was also described as "muckraker, author and documentary filmmaker".
Music videos
Moore has directed several music videos, including two for Rage Against the Machine for songs from "The Battle of Los Angeles": "Sleep Now in the Fire" and "Testify". He was threatened with arrest during the shooting of "Sleep Now in the Fire", which was filmed on Wall Street; the city of New York had denied the band permission to play there, although the band and Moore had secured a federal permit to perform.[33]
He also directed video for "R.E.M." single "All the Way to Reno (You're Gonna Be a Star)" in 2001. In 2003 Moore directed a video for "System of a Down" song "Boom!".
Appearances in other documentaries
Moore appeared in The Drugging of Our Children,[34] a 2005 documentary about over-prescription of psychiatric medication to children and teenagers, directed by Gary Null a proponent of Alternative Medicine. In the film Moore agrees with Gary Null that Ritalin and other similar drugs are over-prescribed, saying that they are seen as a "pacifier".
Moore appeared on fellow Flint natives Grand Funk Railroad's edition of Behind The Music.
Moore appeared as an off-camera interviewer in Blood in the Face, a 1991 documentary about white supremacy groups. The film centers around a neo-Nazi gathering in Michigan.[35]
Moore appeared in The Yes Men, a 2003 documentary about two men who pose as the World Trade Organization. He appears during a segment concerning working conditions in Mexico and Latin America.
Moore was interviewed for the 2004 documentary, The Corporation. One of his highlighted quotes was: "The problem is the profit motive: for corporations, there's no such thing as 'enough'".[36]
Moore appeared briefly in Alex Jones's 2005 film Martial Law 9/11: Rise of the Police State. Jones asks Moore why he did not mention some of the information regarding the September 11 attacks in his film Fahrenheit 9/11, in particular, why he did not explain why NORAD stood down on that day. Moore replied, "Because it would be Un-American."
Moore featured prominently in the 2005 documentary This Divided State, which followed the heated level of controversy surrounding his visit to a conservative city in the United States two weeks before the 2004 election.
Moore appeared in the 2006 documentary I'm Going to Tell You a Secret, which chronicles Madonna during her 2004 Re-Invention World Tour. Moore attended her show in New York City at Madison Square Garden.
Writings and political views
Though Moore rejects the label "political activist,"[37] he has been active in promoting his political views. According to John Flesher of the Associated Press, Moore is known for his "fiery left-wing populism."[38]
Moore has authored three best-selling books:
Downsize This! (1996), about politics and corporate crime in the United States,
Stupid White Men (2001), ostensibly a critique of American domestic and foreign policy but, by Moore's own admission, "a book of political humor,"[39] and
Dude, Where's My Country? (2003), an examination of the Bush family's relationships with Saudi royalty, the Bin Laden family, and the energy industry, and a call-to-action for liberals in the 2004 election.
Despite having supported Ralph Nader in 2000, Moore urged Nader not to run in the 2004 election so as not to split the left vote. (Moore joined Bill Maher on the latter's television show in kneeling before Nader to plead with him to stay out of the race.) In June 2004, Moore claimed he is not a member of the Democratic party. Although Moore endorsed General Wesley Clark for the Democratic nomination on January 14, Clark withdrew from the primary race on February 11. Moore drew attention when charging publicly that Bush was AWOL during his service in the National Guard (see George W. Bush military service controversy).
With the 2004 election over, Moore continues to collect information on the war in Iraq and the Bush administration in addition to his film projects. On several occasions during 2007, he called for Al Gore to run for President.
On April 21, 2008, Moore endorsed Barack Obama for President, claiming that Clinton's recent actions had been "disgusting."[40]
Controversy
Main article: Michael Moore controversies
Moore has been at the center of several controversies, mostly as a result of his political views and directing style.
Published work
Bibliography
Moore, Michael (1996). Downsize This! Random Threats from an Unarmed American. New York: HarperPerennial. ISBN 0060977337.
Moore, Michael; Glynn, Kathleen (1998). Adventures In A TV Nation. New York: HarperPerennial. ISBN 0060988096.
Moore, Michael (2002). Stupid White Men ...and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation!. New York: Regan Books. ISBN 0060392452.
Moore, Michael (2003). Dude, Where's My Country?. New York: Warner Books. ISBN 0446532231.
Moore, Michael (2004). Will They Ever Trust Us Again?. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0743271521.
Moore, Michael (2004). The Official Fahrenheit 9/11 Reader. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0743272927.
Moore, Michael (2008). Mike's Election Guide 2008. New York: Grand Central Publishing. ISBN 0446546275.
Filmography
Roger & Me (1989)
Pets or Meat: The Return to Flint (1992) (TV)
Canadian Bacon (1995)
The Big One (1997)
And Justice for All (1998) (TV)
Lucky Numbers (2000) (as actor)
Bowling for Columbine (2002)
Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) "Palme d'Or" in Cannes
Sicko (2007)
Captain Mike Across America (2007)
Slacker Uprising (2008)
Television
TV Nation (1994)
The Awful Truth (1999)
Michael Moore Live (1999)
References
^ a b New York Times profile
^ Michael Moore - MSN Encarta
^ Allmovie (2007). "Michael Moore filmography". Allmovie. Retrieved on 2007-07-19.
^ "Documentary Movies". Box Office Mojo (2007). Retrieved on 2007-11-12.
^ "Michael Moore releases Slacker Uprising for free on Net". www.meeja.com.au (2008-09-24). Retrieved on 2008-09-24.
^ Michael Moore (2006-11-14). "A Liberal's Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives". Michael Moore.com. Retrieved on 2007-07-21.
^ Joel Stein. "Michael Moore: The Angry Filmmaker", Time. Retrieved on 2007-07-19.
^ Rick Coates (2008). "Northern Michigan's film industry from Michael Moore's perspective". Northern Express. Retrieved on 2008-07-21.
^ "Michael Moore Biography (1954-)". Film Reference. Retrieved on 2007-07-19.
^ Ron Sheldon (23 September 1995). "Exclusive Interview with Michael Moore of TV Nation", People's Weekly World. Retrieved on 2007-07-19.
^ Richard Knight, Jr. (2007-06-27). "To Your Health: A Talk with Sicko's Michael Moore", Windy City Media Group. Retrieved on 2007-06-27.
^ Primeau, François. American Dissident, Lulu Press, 2007.
^ Gary Strauss (June 20, 2004). "The truth about Michael Moore". USA Today. Retrieved on 2006–07–09.
^ MichaelMoore.com: The Day I Was To be Tarred and Feathered
^ Ron Sheldon (September 23, 1995). "Exclusive Interview with Michael Moore of TV Nation". People's Weekly World.
^ Emily Schultz, Michael Moore: A Biography, Ecw Press, 2005. Pg 47-54.
^ Paul Mulshine. "A Stupid White Man and a Smart One". Newark Star Ledger, March 3, 2003
^ Matt Labash. "Michael Moore, One-Trick Phony". The Weekly Standard. June 8, 1998
^ Delegates relish McCain jab at filmmaker Moore CNN.com. 31 August 2006.
^ This Divided State official website. Accessed 9 July 2006.
^ IMDb, Kathleen Glynn
^ Rahner, Mark (2007-06-26). ""Sicko," new Michael Moore film, takes on the health-care system", The Seattle Times. Retrieved on 2007-06-30.
^ Elliott, David (2007-06-29). "Moral outrage, humor make up Michael Moore's one-two punch", SignOnSanDiego. Retrieved on 2007-06-30.
^ The Philadelphia Inquirer: Inqlings | Michael Moore takes on Glaxo. Michael Klein, 30 September 2005. Archive accessed 9 July 2006.
^ Common Dreams News Center: Drug Firms are on the Defense as Filmmaker Michael Moore Plans to Dissect Their Industry. Original Article - Elaine Dutka, L.A. Times, December 22, 2004. Archive accessed August 09, 2006
^ Chicago Tribune: Michael Moore turns camera onto health care industry. Bruce Japsen, 3 October 2004. Archive accessed 9 July 2006.
^ CBC Sicko to have unofficial premiere at Democratic fundraiser May 26, 2007. URL accessed October 14, 2007.
^ "Documentary Movies". Genres. Box Office Mojo (2007). Retrieved on 2008-01-31.
^ "Shortlist for docu Oscar unveiled". The Hollywood Reporter (2007-11-20). Retrieved on 2008-01-31.
^ Captain Mike at the Internet Movie Database
^ "Toronto International Film Festival". Retrieved on 2007–09–07.
^ Captain Mike Across America (2007)
^ Green Left Weekly: Rage against Wall Street. Michael Moore, via MichaelMoore.com, date unspecified. URL accessed 9 July 2006.
^ "The Drugging of Our Children". at the Internet Movie Database
^ Blood in the Face at the Internet Movie Database Moore details his involvement in the audio commentary on the Roger & Me DVD.
^ "Who's Who". The Corporation Film.
^ "'I am the balance', says Moore". Minneapolis Star Tribune. South Florida Sun-Sentinel (4 July 2007). Retrieved on 2007–07–06. "Moore rejects the label "political activist"; as a citizen of a democracy, Moore insists, such a description is redundant."
^ Flesher, John (16 June 2007). "Hollywood meets Bellaire as Moore gives sneak peek of "Sicko"". Associated Press. MichaelMoore.com. Retrieved on 2007–07–06. "But the filmmaker, known for his fiery left-wing populism and polemical films such as "Fahrenheit 9/11" and Oscar-winning "Bowling for Columbine," told the audience "Sicko" would appeal across the political spectrum."
^ Opinion Journal from the Wall Street Journal: Unmoored from Reality. John Fund's Political Diary, 21 March 2003. URL accessed 29 August 2006.
^ My Vote's for Obama (if I could vote) ...by Michael Moore April 21, 2008
External links
Michael Moore Official website
Michael Moore at the Internet Movie Database
Michael Moore on YouTube
Works by or about Michael Moore in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
A 2007 NOW on PBS interview with Michael Moore What makes him tick, and why our health care system ticks him off
[show]v • d • eFilms directed by Michael Moore
Roger & Me • Pets or Meat: The Return to Flint • Canadian Bacon • The Big One • Bowling for Columbine • Fahrenheit 9/11 • Sicko • Captain Mike Across America • Slacker Uprising
Persondata
NAME Moore, Michael Francis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Moore, Michael
SHORT DESCRIPTION American film director, author, and social commentator
DATE OF BIRTH April 23, 1954
PLACE OF BIRTH Davison, Michigan
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Moore"
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10. Who has been more of a righteous extremist in this election campaign: McCain or Obama. For the most part, Obama has been the voice of reason and integrationism, while McCain has been the voice of the past: righteous/religous/political intolerance, divisionism, and hate. McCain has for the most part used negative campaign tactics that have worked well for the Republican Party in the past in terms of negatively stereotyping and blackballing 'potential Democratic President Hopefuls'. This election things are going to be different: the American people and Obama have evolved; McCain, Palin, and the rest of the negative campaigners in this year's Republican Party -- have't. The Republican Party needs to be re-created, re-invented. It needs to rise like the Phoenix. Today it is dead. And I hope -- I truly hope -- the American people understand that. I think they do. Obama will be the next President of the United States of America -- and I think a potentially exciting one if he sticks to his dreams, his vision, his priorities, his mandate.
I am not particlarly religious but I do not mind religion, politics, economics, and ethics all working in the same direction for a better America - and a better world.
So I will say this for the first and only time to compensate for the negative force of the Jeremy Wright rant quoted earlier:
God Bless America -- and the harmonious integration and peaceful harmony of America with the rest of the world. (From here after, refer to the Dylan song 'With God on My Side' to underline my more regular feelings about the use of the name 'God' to add 'religious force' to any kind of political ideology, particularly when that ideology is 'pathologically destructive and/or self-destructive').
Hate, unbridled greed, selfishness, narcissism, righteous/religous/political intolerance and civil divisionism are all self-destructive to the human race. These are all characteristics that mark the humn race at its worst. They are all characteristics that are 'anti-evolutionary'. They will lead us the same way as the dinosaur -- to extinction.
How many more American soldiers and foreign soldiers, American civilians and foreign civilians have to come home in body bags or lay rotting in the fields or in blown up buildings that CNN cameramen have to relay to the American people and to the rest of the world before everyone on both sides of this brutally savage and ridiculous war will finally come to their senses and say, 'Enough is enough'. Winning the war isn't the answer here. Because we are all big-time losers -- on both sides of the political and relgious and economic fence that divides us -- and kills us and maims us and povertizes us -- as long as we continue to embrace this tragic farce we call 'war', and the radical, righteous, religious, and/or economic extremism that continues to propogandize and support it.
"Violence begets violence; hate begets hate; and toughness begets a greater toughness. ...I believe Martin Luther King Junior said that...but i think it has even older philosophical roots.
The point is: When will it ever stop?
Never?
I think we have evolved better than this. Or have we?
-- dgb, October 23rd-24th, 2008.
Introduction
I thought that Part 4 of this series of political 'Faceoff' essays -- Faceoff: DGB Philosophy vs. The American Republican Party would be my last 'kick' at the Republican Party, the Republican 'Can' if you will, before the election.
However, obviously I was mistaken as, within 24 hours, I had 'gushed out' another sequence of thoughts and feelings relative to my overall current 'Anti-Republican sentiment'.
So, here we go again. I am certainly not against Republican Ideology (Idealism) at its best. If my Republican leader is Dwight Eisenhower, his son John, or John's daughter Susan -- then I am right there in the middle of their particular brand of Republican Ideology and Idealism.
However, I certainly am against Republican Ideology ('Idealism') at its worst -- and this leads us both to Bush's pathological form of Republican Ideology and to McCain's newer 'brand of lipstick' on the 'old Bush Republican Brand'. (Notice, I had to refrain myself from over-using the infamous 'lipstick on a pig' metaphor and, obviously, I only partly succeeded.)
In my mind, it is too late for the McCain-Palin Republicans to recover in this election -- they blew their opportunities, plain and simple. Too much negative and negative-stereotyping pathological political philosophy vs. not enough 'responsible-accountable-ethical' Republican political philosophy. Healthy Republican Idealism can still be found but not on this 2008 corpse of the American Republican Party.
In this essay, we will explore the roots of current 'Pathological Republican Ideology'. This essay is not for the weak of mind, reason, truth, awareness, and 'philosophical digging' -- which might also be called 'philosophical-political forensics'.
Before we start, there is a relationship between 'philosophical-political forensics' and 'blowback' that needs to be fully clarified and understood here.
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Blowback (intelligence)
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(Redirected from Manchurian blowback)
Jump to: navigation, search
Blowback is a term used in espionage to describe the unintended consequences of covert operations. Blowback typically appears random and without cause, because the public is unaware of the secret operations that provoked it.[1]
In its strictest terms, blowback was originally informative only and referred to consequences that resulted when an intelligence agency participated in foreign media manipulation, which was then reported by domestic news sources in other countries as accepted facts. In looser terms, it can encompass all operational aspects. In this context, it can thus mean retaliation as the result of actions undertaken by nations.
The phrase is believed to have been coined by the CIA, in reference to the harmful effects to friendly forces when some weapons are used under certain conditions (for example nuclear fallout, chemical weapons, etc. used upwind from friendly troops or assets, or a torpedo circling and hitting the firing vessel, etc.). The word is believed to have appeared for the very first time in the CIA document on the 1953 Iranian coup d'état titled "Clandestine Service History – Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran – November 1952-August 1953."[2][3]
In the 1980s, blowback became a central focus of the debate over the Reagan Doctrine, which advocated militarily supporting resistance movements opposing Soviet-supported, communist governments. In one case, covert funding of the Contras in Nicaragua would lead to the Iran-Contra Affair, while covert support led to a World Court ruling against the United States in Nicaragua v. United States.
Critics of the Reagan Doctrine argued that blowback was unavoidable, and that, through the doctrine, the United States was inflaming wars in the Third World. Doctrine advocates, principally at the conservative Heritage Foundation, responded that support for anti-communist resistance movements would lead to a "correlation of forces," which would topple communist regimes without significant retaliatory consequence to the United States, while simultaneously altering the global balance of power in the Cold War.
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Blowback
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Blowback may refer to one of the following.
Blowback (intelligence)
Blowback (arms)
Blowback (military) - Negative effects suffered from one's own weapons, such as nuclear fallout blown onto one's own troops or civilian population.
Blowback (book) - a 2000 book on American Empire by Chalmers Johnson ISBN 0805075593.
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I heard the term 'blowback' for the first time by Chalmers Johnson (the inspirational CIA analyst) as I tried to digest the full content, quality, substance, and implications of the movie, 'Why We Fight' which I just finished watching. A quick DGB editorial: I saw a 'better' John McCain in this movie than anything I have seen from him on his Repubican campaign -- except perhaps for his Al Smith Dinner Roast Party Comedy Speech where his comedy speech was actually significantly better than Obama's. But that was only one speech.
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I am like the 'old fashioned, underdog Lieutenant Columbo' on the old detective series 'Columbo'. In this context, there are many, many political, economic, and military things that I do not understand. However, once I hear or read something, and i deem it to be important, then I will grab it and twist it and tear it to pieces -- not unlike a bulldog or a pitbull or Columbo himself -- until I fully understand the implications, applications, ramifications, and consequences of what i have read or hear. Such is the case here, relative to the term 'blowback' and my current beginning understanding of the term.
Based mainly on what I heard and interpreted Chalmers Johnson as saying, and from their experience relative to the war in Vietnam -- 'too many body bags and imagery of people being blown up, especially women and children, being shown on television and fed back to the American people can be viewed as 'political blowback'. Political blowback is not going to usually be good for the politicians in office who want to continue an ongoing war. If you continue to feed 'war propaganda' to the American people, you are less likely to have the American people 'fall' for this manipulation and exploitation of their fear, because they can see some real, hard-line pictures of what is happening in the war in front of their very faces on tv. If some military-political person tells the American people that war technology has advanced to the stage that we now have 'precision bombing' that hits very precise military targets 100 percent of the time -- and then we see on tv with our own eyes that those supposed military targets were clearly missed, and innocent civilians were killed instead of 'pathological terrorists, insurgents, and/or dictators' -- then how does the American Government look in this kind of an instance?
It's similar to a politician having a sexual affair with a woman (or man) outside of his marriage, and then one day pictures of the affair land on the front page of the National Inquiry, or The New York Times -- this after the politician has been continually denying for days, weeks, or even months, that no such affair every happened....This might be called 'Political-Sexual Blowback'.
I think we all now have an idea of what the term 'Blowback' means...
Philosophical-political forensics investigations may dig up 'political blowback' that the American Government has been hiding from the American people for obvious political reasons. If the American people knew about this 'Blowback', they would not be very happy with their American politicians. This is very much what has happened with Bush and his claims of definitely observed 'weapons of mass destruction'.
On with the essay at hand...
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B) Ten Inherent Pathologies in McCain's Republican Campaign and 'Idealistic' Vision
1. The first thing that the McCain-led 'New Republicans' did wrong is that they did not separate themselves enough from George Bush, and Bush's Unilateral, Unethical Republican Capitalism and Political Ideology.
2. The second thing that they did wrong is that they focused too much on negative campaigning against Obama.
3. The third thing that they did wrong is that they nominated Governor Sarah Palin as vice-president on the McCain ticket.
4. The fourth thing that they did wrong was that did not create a compelling 21st Century Populist-Ethical Brand and Vision of American Capitalism.
5. The fifth thing that they did wrong is that they -- meaning McCain -- did not separate himself/themselves enough from the American downfalls of Global Capitalism, and a free trade vision that is killing the American manufacturing industry. There is a reason why tariffs are important -- otherwise, all the other countries in the world with very cheap labour forces -- China, India, Mexico...-- are going to conspire to seduce American manufacturing industries away from America and kill the American manufacturing industry -- and thousands and thousands of jobs -- in the process. Cheap foreign labour might be great for corporate profits and great for buyers -- until the 'quality' and even the 'toxicity' of the product comes into question. Not to mention that thousands of American workers are left at home twiddling their thumbs and wondering where there next paycheque is coming.
6. McCain may say that he is a 'maverick' and an 'anti-lobbyist' but that is downright plagerism from Obama's Democratic Capitalist Idealism. The shoe doesn't fit Senator McCain so don't wear it. Maybe you voted to try to stop these 'sub-prime' mortgages, maybe you didn't. The news I heard is that you did -- perhaps even when Obama didn't. Obama is not perfect. He is not quite the 'Messiah' of those first Martin Luther King-like speeches. Obama is a politician too and knows the full voting value of 'political expedience'. Politicians 'flip-flop' -- case closed. Both McCain and Obama have flip-flopped when the 'political weather changed'. Sometimes this is 'philosophical and political evolution'. Sometimes, it is 'moving closer to the votes' -- like in the 'off-shore drilling' example. Still, I give Obama higher marks than you Senator McCain for poltical ethics, integrity, vision, clarity of purpose, rhetorical eloguence, philosophical substance, peaceful foreign relations, and differential unity, harmony, and integrationism. Have I missed anything?
7. Senator McCain, your idealistic view of Capitalism is skewered. Adam Smith and Ayn Rand would both be disgusted by what just happened on Wall Street and to the American people. What you offer to the American people as a whole -- meaning primarily, middle class, working class, America -- is rice and porridge when your unethical -- corrupt -- friends in the Senate and on Wall Steet are dining on Steak and Lobster -- at expensive spa retreats. These CEOs who are completely detached and alienated from the American working class are still the same people (meaning CEOs and lobbyists for CEOs) that pour many thousands if not millions of dollars into your campaign fund. Enough perhaps to make you turn the other way when they 'transgress' on Wall Street while Main Street is financially defrauded, manipulated, exploited, gouged, trashed... Did I leave anything out? Yeah, for sure, Obama is not entirely clean of this debacle as well. But still, I will lay my money on Obama cleaning up this Wall Street debacle and thisSenate-White House-Wall Street Collusion faster and better than either you or your supposed 'anti-lobbyist, Good Old Boy in a Pant Suit maverick' Palin will. Palin has enough trouble keeping her own personal ethics clean let alone America's. Palin may have some rhetorical and charasmatic features to her character but she is in way over her head. Alaska is calling...
8. Let me try briefly to explain a new DGB term: 'Quadra-Dialectic-Democratic Capitalism'
There needs to be a strong working homeostatic and double-dialectic balance between four different sets of people:
1. the American Government;
2. Corporate Leaders and Investors (CEOs, Investors, Wall Street, Management);
3. Corporate Employees (often with the support of Unions);
4. Consuming Customers.
Call these the four pillar foundations of American Capitalism.
If any one of these four groups of American people are unhappy -- and worse, unstable -- then American Capitalism is likely to become destablized or unstablized as a whole. We need all four quadrants of American Capitalism to be strong in order to keep the Capitalist Infrastructure alive, functioning, and stable. If two of these quadrants are 'colluding' -- such as the American Senate, the White House, a particular political party in the goverment, and the lobbyists and/or CEOs for a very powerful mortgaging or banking company -- splitting 90 percent of the American Pie between themselves and leaving only 10 percent left over for the remainin two sectors -- then American Capitalism is going to crumble over a 'bankruptcy' where the CEOs of the company still get very rich, take their money home,and have much, much more than enough to start as many more companies as they want to -- again, at the expense of the middle class and lower class American people. McCain is not my man to fix this problem. Obama is.
9. Regarding alleged Republican 'tax cuts' and 'spending cuts' this is a joke. The McCain Republican Party claims that 'raising taxes' in a 'recession' is not the right thing to do. 'Cutting spending' is. So here is the joke. Money that needs to be poured into American infrastructure and services -- building roads and bridges, building new forms of viable energy supplies, building new schools, building new hospitals, helping to pay for massive medical expenses, helping to subsidize post-secondary education, helping to form 'social safety nets for the elderly, the war veterans, the special needs childen, day care, single mothers and/or dads, the unemployed, the physically and/or mentally and/or pschologically challenged -- all of these badly needed American services and resources, are going to more or less get 'pissed out of the window' because the Republican Party wants to continue to spend 10 to 20 billion dollars a month in Iraq -- a war that America should have never entered into in the first place because even President Bush has said that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 -- nor as it turned out -- did they have any 'weapons of mass destruction' that were 'imminanently effecting America's national security. So -- in effect -- the war in Iraq was, and still is, a national fraud played out by the American government on the American people.
In this context, Pastor Jeremy Wright's 'loose-lipped political sermon rampages -- going over the edge and over-associating to be sure, by saying, 'God Damn America' when what he was really trying to say (and please excuse the continuation of the profanity in this context) was 'God Damn The American Imperialist Government That Keeps Making All These Very Nasty Foreign Policy Decisions Abroad and Then Comes Back To The American People Preaching Its Own Brand of Political-Religious Dermons In Which It Makes Its Best Effort To Convince The American People That It's Philosophy Is Perfectly In Line With The Philosophy Of Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln or Adam Smith or Martin Luther King' -- then and only then, can we perhaps put Jeremy Wright's 'deconstructive' political-religious sermons into their proper context in a spirit that is not 'Anti-American' but rather 'Anti-American-Imperialism'...
The same goes with Madonna's concert imagery comparison of the Republican Party ith German Nazi Imperialism. As Bob Dylan wrote in one of his songs that you can hear in the movie, 'Why We Fight' -- 'It's Not Dark Yet, But Its Getting There...'
Let's see how many politically credible names I can add to support the logistics of the type of 'forensic political-philosophical investigation' we need to undergo -- meaning all of the American people who are brave enough and democratic enough to go here with me in order to unearth the full extent of American Goverment Psycho- and Socio-Pathology:
i. Dwight Eisenhower and his Prophetic Farewell Address that keeps coming back to haunt us like a 'Freddy Krueger Nightmare in Iraq and on Wall Street';
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Eisenhower's Farewell Address to the Nation
January 17, 1961
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Good evening, my fellow Americans: First, I should like to express my gratitude to the radio and television networks for the opportunity they have given me over the years to bring reports and messages to our nation. My special thanks go to them for the opportunity of addressing you this evening.
Three days from now, after a half century of service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.
This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.
Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.
Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on questions of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the nation.
My own relations with Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and finally to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years.
In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the nation well rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the nation should go forward. So my official relationship with Congress ends in a feeling on my part, of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.
We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.
Throughout America's adventure in free government, such basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among peoples and among nations.
To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people.
Any failure traceable to arrogance or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us a grievous hurt, both at home and abroad.
Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle – with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.
Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in the newer elements of our defenses; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research – these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel. A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.
But each proposal must be weighed in light of a broader consideration; the need to maintain balance in and among national programs – balance between the private and the public economy, balance between the cost and hoped for advantages – balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between the actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.
The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their Government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well in the face of threat and stress.
But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise.
Of these, I mention two only.
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.
Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system – ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.
Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we – you and I, and our government – must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without asking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.
Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.
Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war – as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years – I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.
Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.
So – in this my last good night to you as your President – I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and peace. I trust that in that service you find some things worthy; as for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.
You and I – my fellow citizens – need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nations' great goals.
To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's prayerful and continuing aspiration:
We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.
Now, on Friday noon, I am to become a private citizen. I am proud to do so. I look forward to it.
Thank you, and good night.
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So was Ike a 60s leftist like Oliver Stone? Note some key elements of Ike's thinking:
Eisenhower didn't believe the Military Industrial Complex was to blame for the Cold War. He laid the blame on communism: "a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method."
Eisenhower felt the Military Industrial Complex was necessary.
Eisenhower felt the influence of the Military Industrial Complex might be "sought or unsought." For 60s leftists, "unsought" power for the Military Industrial Complex was inconceivable.
A principled Republican, Ike was also skeptical of agricultural and research programs fostered by the federal government. He did not consider military industrial interests uniquely insidious, but rather he distrusted government expansion generally.
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ii. John Eisenhower (son of Dwight Eisenhower)
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Eisenhower's son endorses Kerry (2004)
A commentary by John Eisenhower, son of President Dwight D. Eisenhower -- and another good reminder that some Republicans still believe in age-old principles.
Why I will vote for John Kerry for President
By John Eisenhower
The Presidential election to be held this coming Nov. 2 will be one of extraordinary importance to the future of our nation. The outcome will determine whether this country will continue on the same path it has followed for the last 3 years or whether it will return to a set of core domestic and foreign policy values that have been at the heart of what has made this country great.
Now more than ever, we voters will have to make cool judgments, unencumbered by habits of the past. Experts tell us that we tend to vote as our parents did or as we always have. We remained loyal to party labels. We cannot afford that luxury in the election of 2004. There are times when we must break with the past, and I believe this is one of them.
As son of a Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, it is automatically expected by many that I am a Republican. For 50 years, through the election of 2000, I was. With the current administration�s decision to invade Iraq unilaterally, however, I changed my voter registration to independent, and barring some utterly unforeseen development, I intend to vote for the Democratic Presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry.
The fact is that today's Republican Party is one with which I am totally unfamiliar. To me, the word Republican has always been synonymous with the word responsibility, which has meant limiting our governmental obligations to those we can afford in human and financial terms. Today's whopping budget deficit of some $440 billion does not meet that criterion.
Responsibility used to be observed in foreign affairs. That has meant respect for others. America, though recognized as the leader of the community of nations, has always acted as a part of it, not as a maverick separate from that community and at times insulting towards it. Leadership involves setting a direction and building consensus, not viewing other countries as practically devoid of significance. Recent developments indicate that the current Republican Party leadership has confused confident leadership with hubris and arrogance. ...
October 3, 2004 at 10:06 PM in Politics | Permalink
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iii. Susan Eisenhower (Dwight Eisenhower's grandaughter) (dgb editorial comment: Sound, reasonable thinking seems to be at least partly in the genes...dgb, Oct. 24th, 2008)
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Susan Eisenhower
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Susan Elaine Eisenhower (born December 31, 1951 in Fort Knox, Kentucky) is a consultant, author, and expert on international security and the relationship between the United States and Russia. She is the daughter of John Eisenhower, and the granddaughter of President Dwight Eisenhower.[1][2] She was married to space scientist Roald Sagdeev,[3] formerly the director of the Russian Space Research Institute. Despite the end of the marriage several years ago, they remain friends and business partners.[4]
Contents
1 Career
2 Publications
3 Endorsement of Barack Obama
4 References
5 External links
6 See also
Career
Susan Eisenhower is President of the Eisenhower Group, Inc, which provides strategic counsel on political, business and public affairs projects. She has consulted for Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies doing business in the emerging markets of the former Soviet Union and for a number of major institutions engaged in the energy field.
She is the Chairman of Leadership and Public Policy Programs & Chairman Emeritus of the Eisenhower Institute, a think tank based in Washington, D.C. and in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania associated with Gettysburg College. Eisenhower served as the president of the Eisenhower Institute twice, and later as Chairman. During that time, she became known for her work in the former Soviet Union and in the energy field.
Eisenhower testified before the Senate Armed Services and Senate Budget Committees on policy toward the region. She was also appointed to the National Academy of Sciences' standing Committee on International Security and Arms Control, where she served for eight years.
In 2000, she was appointed by the United States Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson to the Baker-Cutler Commission, to evaluate U.S.-funded nonproliferation programs in Russia, and since that time she has also served as an advisor to another United States Department of Energy study. She currently sits on the Nuclear Threat Initiative board, co-chaired by Senator Sam Nunn and Ted Turner, the Energy Future Coalition and the US Chamber of Commerce's new Institute for 21st Century Energy. She also serves as an Academic Fellow of the International Peace and Security program of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. She has co-chaired Save America’s Treasures, first with Founding Chair Hillary Rodham Clinton and now with First Lady Laura Bush.
She has provided analysis for CNN International, MSNBC, The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, FOX News, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Hardball with Chris Matthews, One on One with John McLaughlin, the BBC, and all three network morning programs. Over the years she has appeared on many other programs including Nightline, World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, This Week with David Brinkley, and CBS Sunday Morning with Charles Kuralt.
Eisenhower has also been seen as a "talking head" on many TV programs and documentaries, including Oliver North's War Stories, Sony Pictures Why We Fight (2005 film) and, most recently, Sputnik Mania.
She has received four honorary doctorates, most recently from the Monterey Institute, where she was cited for her work on nuclear non-proliferation. Ms. Eisenhower received the 2008 Dolibois History Prize from Miami University.[5]
Publications
Eisenhower has written extensively on nuclear and space issues and in 2000, she co-edited a book, Islam and Central Asia, which carried the prescient subtitle, An Enduring Legacy or an Evolving Threat?[5] She is the author of three books: Breaking Free, Mrs. Ike, and Partners in Space: US-Russian Cooperation After the Cold War. She has also edited four collected volumes on regional security issues - the most recent - Partners in Space (2004), which was also published in Russia by Nayuk, the publishing house of the Russian Academy of Sciences. She has written chapters for a number of collected volumes and penned hundreds of op-eds and articles on foreign and domestic policy for publications such as the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, United States Naval Institute's Proceedings, The Spectator, and Gannett Newspapers, as well as the National Interest and Politique Americaine.[5]
Endorsement of Barack Obama
Although a lifelong member of the Republican Party, Eisenhower endorsed Barack Obama for president of the United States in 2008.[6][7][8] Eisenhower announced on August 21, 2008 that she was leaving the Republican Party and becoming an independent.[9]
She spoke on the final day of the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Her speech was delivered at INVESCO Field at Mile High in Denver, Colorado, and began with, "I stand before you tonight not as a Republican or a Democrat, but as an American." [10] The full transcript of her remarks as delivered [11] are on her official website www.SusanEisenhower.com,as well as video of her remarks at the Convention. [12]
[edit] References
^ Biography of Susan Eisenhower. - Save America's Treasures
^ Susan Eisenhower. - National Public Radio
^ "Leadership in Conflict". - Samford University
^ [1]--Susan Eisenhower's official website.
^ a b c Susan Eisenhower, Chairman Emeritus. - The Eisenhower Institute
^ Susan Eisenhower - Why I'm Backing Obama. - Washington Post
^ Julie Nixon and Susan Eisenhower back Barack Obama. - Daily Telegraph
^ Ike's Granddaughter Calls Obama 'Future of America'. - Washington Independent
^ Reflections on Leaving the Party. - The National Interest
^ Official transcript of remarks by Susan Eisenhower at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. - SusanEisenhower.com
^ Official transcript of remarks by Susan Eisenhower at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. - SusanEisenhower.com
^ Video of remarks by Susan Eisenhower at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. - SusanEisenhower.com
External links
The Official Website of Susan Eisenhower
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iv. Karen Kwiatkowski
Karen Kwiatkowski
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Karen Kwiatkowski
24 Sept 1960-
Kwiatkowski during an interview in Honor Betrayed
Allegiance United States of America
Service/branch United States Air Force
Years of service 1978–2003
Rank Lieutenant Colonel
Unit Near East/South Asia and Special Plans
Other work A Case Study of the Implementation of the Reagan Doctrine.
Karen U. Kwiatkowski (born 24 September 1960) is a retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel whose assignments included duties as a Pentagon desk officer and a variety of roles for the National Security Agency. Since retiring, she has become a noted critic of the U.S. government's involvement in Iraq. Kwiatkowski is primarily known for her insider essays which denounce a corrupting political influence on the course of military intelligence leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Colonel Kwiatkowski has an MA in Government from Harvard and an MS in Science Management from the University of Alaska. She has a PhD in World Politics from Catholic University; her thesis was on overt and covert war in Angola, A Case Study of the Implementation of the Reagan Doctrine. She has also published two books about U.S. policy towards Africa: African Crisis Response Initiative: Past Present and Future (US Army Peacekeeping Institute, 2000) and Expeditionary Air Operations in Africa: Challenges and Solutions (Air University Press, 2001).[1]
Contents [hide]
1 Career
2 Quotations
3 Articles
4 Books
5 Anonymous essays 2002-2003
6 References
7 See also
8 External links
Career
Raised in western North Carolina, Kwiatkowski began her military career in 1982 as a second lieutenant. She served at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska, providing logistical support to missions along the Chinese and Russian coasts. She also served in Spain and Italy. Kwiatkowski was then assigned to the National Security Agency (NSA), eventually becoming a speechwriter for the agency's director. After leaving the NSA in 1998 she became an analyst on sub-Saharan Africa policy for the Pentagon. Kwiatkowski was in her office in the Pentagon when it was attacked on September 11, 2001. From May 2002 to February 2003 she served in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia directorate (NESA).[2] While at NESA, she wrote a series of anonymous articles, Insider Notes from the Pentagon which appeared on the website of David Hackworth.[3]
Kwiatkowski left NESA in February 2003 and retired from the Air Force the following month. In April 2003 she began writing a series of articles for the libertarian website LewRockwell.com. In June of that year she published an article in the Ohio Beacon Journal, "Career Officer Does Eye-Opening Stint Inside Pentagon,"[4] which attracted additional notice. Since February 2004 she has written a biweekly column ("Without Reservations") for the website MilitaryWeek.
Her most comprehensive writings on the subject of a corrupting influence of the Pentagon on intelligence analysis leading up to the Iraq War appeared in a series of articles in The American Conservative magazine in December 2003 and in a March 2004 article on Salon.com. In the latter piece ("The New Pentagon Papers") she wrote:
I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of the president.
Kwiatkowski described how a clique of officers led by retired Navy Captain Bill Luti, assistant secretary of defense for NESA and former aide to Dick Cheney when the latter was Secretary of Defense, took control of military intelligence and how the "Office of Special Plans" (OSP) grew and eventually turned into a censorship and disinformation organism controlling the NESA.[5]
Following the American Conservative and Salon articles, Kwiatkowski began to receive criticism from several conservative sources that supported President Bush's policies. Michael Rubin of the National Review argued she had exaggerated her knowledge of the OSP's workings and claimed she had ties to Lyndon LaRouche.[6] Republican U.S. Senator John Kyl criticized her in a speech on the Senate floor.[7] On a Fox News program, host John Gibson and former Republican National Committee communications director Clifford May described her as an anarchist.[8] Kwiatkowski responded by saying, among other points, that she had never supported or dealt with LaRouche.[9] She requested and received a written apology from Senator John Kyl for his false statements about her.[citation needed]
In addition to her writings Kwiatkowski has appeared as a commentator in the documentaries Hijacking Catastrophe, Honor Betrayed and Why We Fight. She has been a registered member of the U.S. Libertarian Party since 1994 and spoke at the party's national convention in 2004.[10] She is also a member of the Liberty and Power group weblog at the History News Network. Kwiatkowski currently lives with her family in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and works part-time as a farmer.
Kwiatkowski has been widely seen as an attractive Libertarian presidential candidate,[11][12] especially given her military background and outspoken opposition to the Iraq War. In April 2006, Kwiatkowski received the New Hampshire Libertarian Party's 2008 vice-presidential nomination (the Libertarian Party chooses presidential and vice-presidential nominees on separate ballot, and campaigns for the two positions are often independent).[13][14] In 2007, she announced her support for Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul. [15]
[edit] Quotations
"I came to share with many NSA colleagues a kind of unease, a sense that something was awry. What seemed out of place was the strong and open pro-Israel and anti-Arab orientation in an ostensibly apolitical policy-generation staff within the Pentagon."[16]
"Why we fight? I think we fight 'cause too many people are not standing up, saying 'I'm not doing this any more.'"
"If you join the United States military now, you are not defending the United States of America; you are helping certain policy-makers pursue an imperial agenda."
"At the end of the summer of 2002, new space had been found upstairs on the fifth floor for an "expanded Iraq desk." It would be called the Office of Special Plans. We were instructed at a staff meeting that this office was not to be discussed or explained, and if people in the Joint Staff, among others, asked, we were to offer no comment. We were also told that one of the products of this office would be talking points that all desk officers would use verbatim in the preparation of their background documents."
"By August, only the Pollyannas at the Pentagon felt that the decision to invade Iraq, storm Baghdad, and take over the place (or give it to Ahmad Chalabi) was reversible."
"It wasn't intelligence — it was propaganda. They'd take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don't belong together."[17]
"Interestingly, the Downing Street memo is actually being reported by CNN and FOX News. It is being discussed in the major papers. Congress intends to examine it. Hearing it mentioned on the half hour by CNN Headline News has not dispossessed me of the belief that a state suicide is impossible. Thus, my gentle thoughts are increasingly turning to murder. Murder of the state. In self-defense, of course!"[18]
"We have a Congress that failed in every way to ask the right questions, to hold the President to account. Our Congress failed us miserably, and that's because many in Congress are beholden to the Military Industrial Complex."
"The reason we're in Iraq first off has not honestly been told to the American people; it certainly had nothing to do with the liberation of the Iraqi people. It was never part of the agenda and it's not part of the agenda now."
Articles
Kwiatkowski, Karen (2007-01-15). "Making Sense of the Bush Doctrine". LewRockwell.com. Retrieved on 2008-09-18.
Books
Kwiatkowski, Karen (2000). African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI) past, present, and future?. Peacekeeping Institute, Center for Strategic Leadership, U.S. Army War College.
Kwiatkowski, Karen (2001-10-01). Expeditionary Air Operations in Africa: Challenges and Solutions. ISBN 978-1585661008.
Griffin, David Ray; Peter Dale Scott (2006-08-23). 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out, Vol. 1. Karen Kwiatkowski: Assessing the Official 9/11 Conspiracy Theory: Olive Branch Press. ISBN 978-1566566599.
Anonymous essays 2002-2003
Deep Throat Returns: Insider Notes from The Pentagon, Lt. Col. Kwiatkowski's anonymous essays while still at the Pentagon. (Anonymous essays number 1 to 39)
Insider Notes from The Pentagon: Ready to go to war?, January 31, 2003. (Anonymous essay number 40)
Insider Notes from The Pentagon: Fear of God, February 3, 2003. (No.41)
Insider Notes from The Pentagon: Life is Tough All Over, February 8, 2003. (No.42)
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love CBW, March 10, 2003. (No.47)
The Souffle has Fallen, March 29, 2003. (No.49)
Insider Notes from The Pentagon: Those Awful Turks, May 28, 2003. (No.51)
References
^ militaryweek.com
^ mcsweeneys.net
^ lewrockwell.com
^ mindfully.org
^ commondreams.org
^ nationalreview.com
^ rpc.senate.gov
^ defenddemocracy.org
^ nathancallahan.com
^ lp.org
^ knappster.blogspot.com
^ politics1.com politics1.com
^ smallgov.org
^ phillies2008.org
^ Academics for Ron Paul
^ amconmag.com
^ motherjones.com
^ lewrockwell.com
See also
The Oil Factor
[edit] External links
Liberty and Power Group Blog
Karen Kwiatkowski, entry on SourceWatch
Center for Cooperative Research Profile of Karen Kwiatkowski
The New Pentagon Papers, an article by Kwiatkowski that appeared on Salon.Com
Archive of articles by Karen Kwiatkowski on LewRockwell.Com
List of articles on militaryweek.com
"Conscientious Objector", an article by Kwiatkowski, originally appearing in The American Conservative
Honor Betrayed page on veteransforpeace.org
The Pentagon Insider Who Spread Rumors that Sounded Anti-Semitic by Edwin Black appearing on History News Network
Web of Conspiracies by Michael Rubin appearing on National Review Online
Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear, and the Selling of American Empire
Democracy Now, September 10, 2004 Hijacking Catastrophe
Democracy Now, October 22, 2004 The Oil Factor: Behind the War on Terror
Karen Kwiatkowski's 2002-2003 archives Deep Throat Returns: Insider Notes from The Pentagon
Knight Ridder News, July 31, 2003 Career Officer Does Eye-Opening Stint Inside Pentagon
Inter Press Service, August 5, 2003 War Critics Zero In on Pentagon Office
Inter Press Service, August 7, 2003 Pentagon Office Home to Neo-Con Network
If Americans Knew, December 1, 2003 Israelis walked through the Pentagon to Feith's office like they owned the place
Interhemispheric Resource Center, February 12, 2004 Office of Special Plans
Inter Press Service, October 28, 2005 A Formidable Hawk Goes Down
Mother Jones, January 2004 The Lie Factory
Democracy Now, December 18, 2003 The Lie Factory - Neocons & the OSP Pushed Disinformation and Bogus Intelligence
In These Times, April 12, 2004 Outside the Inside
In These Times, October 24, 2004 The Bush team’s foreign policy disregarded reality and ignored actuality
Democracy Now, August 8, 2003 Ex-Pentagon Official Suggests Bush Administration Should Face War Crimes Tribunal
Interview with Karen Kwiatkowski, November 2, 2003 Pentagon Whistle Blower
Interview with Karen Kwiatkowski, May 22, 2004 An Insider's Look at the March to War
Interview with Karen Kwiatkowski, September 21, 2004 Timothy McSweeney
Interview with Karen Kwiatkowski, June 16, 2005 Daily Kos
Ten questions and answers, with Karen Kwiatkowski, October 25, 2005 Unknown News
Daily Kos Karen Kwiatkowski
After Downing Street, June 16, 2005 Written Testimony of Karen Kwiatkowski
Karen Kwiatkowski's video interview California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
Democracy Now, June 29, 2005 Former Pentagon Insider Blasts Bush's Iraq Speech and Repeated References to 9/11
Karen Kwiatkowski's audio interviews on The Charles Goyette Show
Karen Kwiatkowski's audio interviews The Weekend Interview Show with Scott Horton
Brian Lamb. Karen discusses her service in the Air Force, Pentagon & more C-SPAN, April 2, 2006.
Karen Kwiatkowski's radio show American Forum
Interview With Kwiatkowski: Pentagon Whistle-Blower on the Coming War With Iran
Interview with Karen Kwiatkowski on Liberty Cap Talk Live with Todd Andrew Barnett
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Kwiatkowski"
Categories: 1960 births | Living people | American columnists | American foreign policy writers | American libertarians | American anti-Iraq War activists | Harvard University alumni | People from North Carolina | United States Air Force officers | Women in the United States Air Force | Members of the Libertarian Party (United States) | Anarcho-capitalists | American anti-war activists | American whistleblowers
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v. Chalmers Johnson
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Chalmers Johnson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Chalmers Ashby Johnson (born 1931) is an American author and professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego. He is also president and co-founder of the Japan Policy Research Institute, an organization promoting public education about Japan and Asia. He has written numerous books including, most recently, three examinations of the consequences of American Empire: Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic.
Contents [hide]
1 Biography
2 The Blowback trilogy
3 Bibliography
4 Footnotes
5 External links
Biography
Johnson was born in 1931 in Phoenix, Arizona. He earned a B.A. degree in Economics in 1953 and a M.A. and a Ph.D. in political science in 1957 and 1961 respectively. All of his degrees were from the University of California, Berkeley. During the Korean War, Johnson served as a naval officer in Japan. He taught political science at the University of California from 1962 until he retired from teaching in 1992. He was best known early in his career for scholarship about China and Japan.
Johnson set the agenda for ten or fifteen years in social science scholarship on China with his book on peasant nationalism. His book MITI and the Japanese Miracle, on the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry was the preeminent study of the country's development and created the bustling subfield of what could be called the political economy of development. He coined the term "developmental state." As a public intellectual, he first led the "Japan revisionists" who critiqued American neoliberal economics with Japan as a model, but also attacked Japan for protectionism. During this period, Johnson acted as a consultant for the Office of National Estimates, part of the CIA, contributing to analysis of China and Maoism.[1]
Johnson was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1976. He served as Director of the Center for Chinese Studies and Chair of the Political Science Department at Berkeley, and held a number of important academic posts in area studies. He was a strong believer in the importance of language and historical training for doing serious research. Late in his career he became well known as a critic of "rational choice" approaches, particularly in the study of Japanese politics and political economy.
Johnson is today best known as a sharp critic of American imperialism. His book Blowback won a prize in 2001 from the Before Columbus Foundation, and was re-issued in an updated version in 2004. Sorrows of Empire, published in 2004, updated the evidence and argument from Blowback for the post-9/11 environment and Nemesis concludes the trilogy. Johnson was featured in the Eugene Jarecki-directed film Why We Fight, which won the 2005 Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. In the past, Johnson has also written for the Los Angeles Times, the London Review of Books, Harper’s Magazine, and The Nation
The Blowback trilogy
Johnson believes the enforcement of American hegemony over the world constitutes a new form of global empire. Whereas traditional empires maintained control over subject peoples via colonies, since World War II the US has developed a vast system of hundreds of military bases around the world where it has strategic interests. A long-time Cold Warrior, Johnson experienced a political awakening after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, noting that instead of demobilizing its armed forces, the US accelerated its reliance on military solutions to problems both economic and political. The result of this militarism (as distinct from actual domestic defense) is more terrorism against the US and its allies, the loss of core democratic values at home, and an eventual disaster for the American economy.
Bibliography
Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power (1962) (ISBN 0-8047-0074-5)
An Instance of Treason: Ozaki Hotsumi and the Sorge Spy Ring (1964; expanded in 1990)
Change in Communist Systems (1970), By Jeremy R. Azrael, Chalmers A. Johnson, ISBN 0-8047-0723-5
Conspiracy at Matsukawa (1972)
Ideology and Politics in Contemporary China (1973) By John Israel, Chalmers A. Johnson, ISBN 0-2959-5247-4
Japan's Public Policy Companies (1978) ISBN 0-8447-3272-9
Revolutionary Change (1982) ISBN 0-316-46730-8
MITI and the Japanese Miracle (1982)
The Industrial Policy Debate (1984) ISBN 0-9176-1665-0
Politics and productivity: the real story of why Japan works (1989) By Chalmers A. Johnson, Laura D'Andrea Tyson, ISBN 0-8873-0350-1
Japan: Who Governs? -- The Rise of the Developmental State (1995)
Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (2000, rev. 2004) ISBN 0-8050-6239-4
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (2004) ISBN 0-8050-7004-4
Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (2007) ISBN 0-8050-7911-4
Footnotes
^ Nic Paget-Clarke, 2004, "Interview with Chalmers Johnson Part 2. From CIA Analyst to Best-Selling Scholar" (In Motion Magazine). Access date: December 5, 2007.
External links
A National Intelligence Estimate on the United States by Chalmers Johnson (from Harper's Magazine)
Empire v. Democracy: Why Nemesis Is at Our Door by Chalmers Johnson
Blowback Chalmers Johnson essay from The Nation
Cold Warrior in a Strange Land Tom Engelhardt interviews Chalmers Johnson
Antiwar Radio: Charles Goyette Interviews Chalmers Johnson
Chalmers Johnson on Democracy Now! February 27 2007
Can We End the American Empire Before It Ends Us?
Audio: Our Own Worst Enemy
Audio: Is America on the brink of destruction through imperial over-reach?
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalmers_Johnson"
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Chalmers Johnson: “Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic”
In his new book, CIA analyst, distinguished scholar, and best-selling author Chalmers Johnson argues that US military and economic overreach may actually lead to the nation’s collapse as a constitutional republic. It’s the last volume in his Blowback trilogy, following the best-selling “Blowback” and “The Sorrows of Empire.” In those two, Johnson argued American clandestine and military activity has led to un-intended, but direct disaster here in the United States.
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vi. Michael Moore
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Michael Moore
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
For other persons named Michael Moore, see Michael Moore (disambiguation).
Michael Moore
Michael Moore in 2004
Born Michael Francis Moore
April 23, 1954 (1954-04-23) (age 54)
Davison, Michigan[1][2]
Occupation director, screenwriter, producer, actor
Years active 1989 - present
Spouse(s) Kathleen Glynn (1991-)
Official website
[show]Awards won
Academy Awards
Best Documentary Feature
2002 Bowling for Columbine
César Awards
Best Foreign Film
2002 Bowling for Columbine
Emmy Awards
Outstanding Informational Series
1995 TV Nation
Other awards
Golden Palm (Palme d'Or)
2004 Fahrenheit 9/11
Michael Francis Moore (born April 23, 1954) is an Academy Award-winning American filmmaker, author, and liberal political commentator. He is the director and producer of Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, and Sicko, three of the top five highest-grossing documentaries of all time.[3][4] In September 2008, he released his first free movie on the Internet, Slacker Uprising, documenting his personal crusade to encourage more Americans to vote in presidential elections. [5] He has also written and starred in the TV shows TV Nation and The Awful Truth, both of which continue his trademark style of presenting serious documentaries in humorous ways.
Moore is a self-described liberal[6] who has explored globalization, large corporations, gun ownership, the Iraq War, U.S. President George W. Bush and the American health care system in his written and cinematic works. In 2005 Time magazine named him one of the world's 100 most influential people.[7] In 2005, Moore started the annual Traverse City Film Festival in Traverse City, Michigan. In 2008, he closed his Manhattan office and moved it to Traverse City, where he is working on his new film.[8]
Contents [hide]
1 Biography
1.1 Early life
1.2 Post-school career
1.3 2004
1.4 Acting career
1.5 Marriage
1.6 Religion
2 Directing
2.1 Films and awards
2.2 Television shows
2.3 Music videos
2.4 Appearances in other documentaries
3 Writings and political views
4 Controversy
5 Published work
5.1 Bibliography
5.2 Filmography
5.3 Television
6 References
7 External links
Biography
Early life
Moore was born in Davison[1] a suburb of Flint, Michigan to parents Veronica, a secretary, and Frank Moore, an automotive assembly-line worker.[9] At that time, the city of Flint was home to many General Motors factories, where his parents and grandfather worked. His uncle was one of the founders of the United Automobile Workers labor union and participated in the Flint Sit-Down Strike. Moore has described his parents as "Irish Catholic Democrats, basic liberal good people."[10]
Moore was brought up Roman Catholic and attended St. John's Elementary School for primary school.[11][12] He then attended Davison High School, where he was active in both drama and debate,[13] graduating in 1972. At the age of 18, he was elected to the Davison school board.[14]
Post-school career
After dropping out of the University of Michigan-Flint (where he wrote for the student newspaper The Michigan Times) and working for a day at the General Motors plant,[15] at 22 he founded the alternative weekly magazine The Flint Voice, which soon changed its name to The Michigan Voice as it expanded to cover the entire state, which Moore later regretted[citation needed]. In 1986, when Moore became the editor of Mother Jones, a liberal political magazine, he moved to California and The Michigan Voice was shut down.
After four months at Mother Jones, Moore was fired. Matt Labash claims this was for refusing to print an article by Paul Berman that was critical of the Sandinista human rights record in Nicaragua. According to the story, Moore stated that he would not run the article because Ronald Reagan "could easily hold it up, saying, 'See, even Mother Jones agrees with me.'"[16] Berman described Moore as a "very ideological guy and not a very well-educated guy" when asked about the incident.[17] Moore claims that Mother Jones actually fired him because of the publisher's refusal to allow him to cover a story on the GM plant closings in his hometown of Flint, Michigan. He responded by putting laid-off GM worker Ben Hamper (who was also writing for the same magazine at the time) on the magazine's cover, leading to his termination. Moore sued for wrongful dismissal, and settled out of court for $58,000, providing him with seed money for his first film, Roger & Me.[18]
2004
Moore was a high-profile guest at both the 2004 Democratic National Convention and the 2004 Republican National Convention, chronicling his impressions in USA Today. He was criticized in a speech by Republican Senator John McCain as "a disingenuous film-maker." Moore laughed and waved as Republican attendees jeered, later chanting "Four more years." Moore gestured his thumb and finger at the crowd, which translates into "loser."[19]
During September and October 2004, Moore spoke at universities and colleges in swing states during his "Slacker Uprising Tour". The tour gave away ramen and underwear to young people who promised to vote. This provoked public denunciations from the Michigan Republican Party and attempts to convince the government that Moore should be arrested for buying votes, but since Moore did not tell the "slackers" involved for whom to vote, just to vote, district attorneys refused to get involved. The "Underwear" tour was a popular success. Quite possibly the most controversial stop during the tour was Utah Valley State College in Orem, Utah. A fight for his right to speak ensued and resulted in massive public debates and a media blitz. Death threats, bribes and lawsuits followed. The event was chronicled in the documentary film This Divided State.[20]
Acting career
He has also dabbled in acting, following a 2000 supporting role in Lucky Numbers as the cousin of Lisa Kudrow's character, who agrees to be part of the scheme concocted by John Travolta's character. He also had a cameo in his Canadian Bacon as an anti-Canada activist. In 2004, he did a cameo, as a news journalist, in The Fever, starring Vanessa Redgrave in the lead.
Marriage
Since 1990, Moore has been married to producer Kathleen Glynn,[21] with whom he has a stepdaughter named Natalie. They live in New York City and spend quite a bit of time in Traverse City, Michigan.
Religion
Moore describes himself as a Catholic.[22][23]
Directing
Films and awards
Moore's most recent film, Sicko, released in 2007.
At the Cannes Film Festival Roger & Me
Moore first became famous for his controversial 1989 film, Roger & Me, a documentary about what happened to Flint, Michigan after General Motors closed its factories and opened new ones in Mexico, where the workers were paid much less. Since then Moore has been known as a critic of the neoliberal view of globalization. "Roger" is Roger B. Smith, former CEO and president of General Motors.
Canadian Bacon
In 1995, Moore released a satirical film, Canadian Bacon, which features a fictional US president (played by Alan Alda) engineering a fake war with Canada in order to boost his popularity. It is noted for containing a number of Canadian and American stereotypes, and for being Moore's only non-documentary film. The film is also one of the last featuring Canadian-born actor John Candy, and also features a number of cameos by other Canadian actors. In the film, several potential enemies for America's next great campaign are discussed by the president and his cabinet. (The scene was strongly influenced by the Stanley Kubrick film Dr. Strangelove.) The President comments that declaring war on Canada was as ridiculous as declaring war on international terrorism. His military adviser, played by Rip Torn, quickly rebuffs this idea, saying that no one would care about "...a bunch of guys driving around blowing up rent-a-cars".
The Big One
In 1997, Moore directed The Big One, which documents the tour publicizing his book Downsize This! Random Threats from an Unarmed American, in which he criticizes mass layoffs despite record corporate profits. Among others, he targets Nike for outsourcing shoe production to Indonesia.
Bowling for Columbine
Moore's 2002 film, Bowling for Columbine, probes the culture of guns and violence in the United States, taking as a starting point the Columbine High School massacre of 1999. Bowling for Columbine won the Anniversary Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and France's Cesar Award as the Best Foreign Film. In the United States, it won the 2002 Academy Award for Documentary Feature. It also enjoyed great commercial and critical success for a film of its type and became, at the time, the highest-grossing mainstream-released documentary (a record later held by Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11). It was praised by some for illuminating a subject slighted by the mainstream media, but it was attacked by others who claim it is inaccurate and misleading in its presentations and suggested interpretations of events.
Fahrenheit 9/11
Fahrenheit 9/11 examines America in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, particularly the record of the Bush administration and alleged links between the families of George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden. Fahrenheit was awarded the Palme d'Or, the top honor at the Cannes Film Festival; it was the first documentary film to win the prize since 1956. Moore later announced that Fahrenheit 9/11 would not be in consideration for the 2005 Academy Award for Documentary Feature, but instead for the Academy Award for Best Picture. He stated he wanted the movie to be seen by a few million more people, preferably on television, by election day. Since November 2 was less than nine months after the film's release, it would be disqualified for the Documentary Oscar. Moore also said he wanted to be supportive of his "teammates in non-fiction film." However, Fahrenheit received no Oscar nomination for Best Picture. The title of the film alludes to the classic book Fahrenheit 451 about a future totalitarian state in which books are banned; according to the book, paper begins to burn at 451 degrees Fahrenheit. The pre-release subtitle of the film confirms the allusion: "The temperature at which freedom burns." At the box office, Fahrenheit 9/11 remains the highest-grossing documentary of all time, taking in close to US$200 million worldwide, including United States box office revenue of US$120 million.
Sicko
Moore directed this film about the American health care system, focusing particularly on the managed-care and pharmaceutical industries. At least four major pharmaceutical companies—Pfizer, Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, and GlaxoSmithKline—ordered their employees not to grant any interviews to Moore.[24][25][26] According to Moore on a letter at his website, "roads that often surprise us and lead us to new ideas – and challenge us to reconsider the ones we began with have caused some minor delays." The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on 19 May 2007, receiving a lengthy standing ovation, and was released in the U.S. and Canada on 29 June 2007.[27] The film was the subject of some controversy when it became known that Moore went to Cuba with chronically ill September 11th rescue workers to shoot parts of the film. The United States is looking into whether this violates the trade embargo. The film is currently ranked the third highest grossing documentary of all time[28] and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature.[29]
Captain Mike Across America [30]
Moore takes a look at the politics of college students in what he calls "Bush Administration America" with this film shot during Moore's 60-city college campus tour in the months leading up to the 2004 election.[31][32] The film was later re-edited by Moore into Slacker Uprising.
Television shows
This section does not cite any references or sources.
Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (August 2007)
Between 1994 and 1995, he directed and hosted the BBC television series TV Nation, which followed the format of news magazine shows but covered topics they avoid. The series aired on BBC2 in the UK. The series was also aired in the US on NBC in 1994 for 9 episodes and again for 8 episodes on FOX in 1995.
His other major series was The Awful Truth, which satirized actions by big corporations and politicians. It aired on Channel 4 in the UK, and the Bravo network in the US, in 1999 and 2000.
Another 1999 series, Michael Moore Live, was aired in the UK only on Channel 4, though it was broadcast from New York. This show had a similar format to The Awful Truth, but also incorporated phone-ins and a live stunt each week.
In 1999 Moore won the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award in Arts and Entertainment, for being the executive producer and host of The Awful Truth, where he was also described as "muckraker, author and documentary filmmaker".
Music videos
Moore has directed several music videos, including two for Rage Against the Machine for songs from "The Battle of Los Angeles": "Sleep Now in the Fire" and "Testify". He was threatened with arrest during the shooting of "Sleep Now in the Fire", which was filmed on Wall Street; the city of New York had denied the band permission to play there, although the band and Moore had secured a federal permit to perform.[33]
He also directed video for "R.E.M." single "All the Way to Reno (You're Gonna Be a Star)" in 2001. In 2003 Moore directed a video for "System of a Down" song "Boom!".
Appearances in other documentaries
Moore appeared in The Drugging of Our Children,[34] a 2005 documentary about over-prescription of psychiatric medication to children and teenagers, directed by Gary Null a proponent of Alternative Medicine. In the film Moore agrees with Gary Null that Ritalin and other similar drugs are over-prescribed, saying that they are seen as a "pacifier".
Moore appeared on fellow Flint natives Grand Funk Railroad's edition of Behind The Music.
Moore appeared as an off-camera interviewer in Blood in the Face, a 1991 documentary about white supremacy groups. The film centers around a neo-Nazi gathering in Michigan.[35]
Moore appeared in The Yes Men, a 2003 documentary about two men who pose as the World Trade Organization. He appears during a segment concerning working conditions in Mexico and Latin America.
Moore was interviewed for the 2004 documentary, The Corporation. One of his highlighted quotes was: "The problem is the profit motive: for corporations, there's no such thing as 'enough'".[36]
Moore appeared briefly in Alex Jones's 2005 film Martial Law 9/11: Rise of the Police State. Jones asks Moore why he did not mention some of the information regarding the September 11 attacks in his film Fahrenheit 9/11, in particular, why he did not explain why NORAD stood down on that day. Moore replied, "Because it would be Un-American."
Moore featured prominently in the 2005 documentary This Divided State, which followed the heated level of controversy surrounding his visit to a conservative city in the United States two weeks before the 2004 election.
Moore appeared in the 2006 documentary I'm Going to Tell You a Secret, which chronicles Madonna during her 2004 Re-Invention World Tour. Moore attended her show in New York City at Madison Square Garden.
Writings and political views
Though Moore rejects the label "political activist,"[37] he has been active in promoting his political views. According to John Flesher of the Associated Press, Moore is known for his "fiery left-wing populism."[38]
Moore has authored three best-selling books:
Downsize This! (1996), about politics and corporate crime in the United States,
Stupid White Men (2001), ostensibly a critique of American domestic and foreign policy but, by Moore's own admission, "a book of political humor,"[39] and
Dude, Where's My Country? (2003), an examination of the Bush family's relationships with Saudi royalty, the Bin Laden family, and the energy industry, and a call-to-action for liberals in the 2004 election.
Despite having supported Ralph Nader in 2000, Moore urged Nader not to run in the 2004 election so as not to split the left vote. (Moore joined Bill Maher on the latter's television show in kneeling before Nader to plead with him to stay out of the race.) In June 2004, Moore claimed he is not a member of the Democratic party. Although Moore endorsed General Wesley Clark for the Democratic nomination on January 14, Clark withdrew from the primary race on February 11. Moore drew attention when charging publicly that Bush was AWOL during his service in the National Guard (see George W. Bush military service controversy).
With the 2004 election over, Moore continues to collect information on the war in Iraq and the Bush administration in addition to his film projects. On several occasions during 2007, he called for Al Gore to run for President.
On April 21, 2008, Moore endorsed Barack Obama for President, claiming that Clinton's recent actions had been "disgusting."[40]
Controversy
Main article: Michael Moore controversies
Moore has been at the center of several controversies, mostly as a result of his political views and directing style.
Published work
Bibliography
Moore, Michael (1996). Downsize This! Random Threats from an Unarmed American. New York: HarperPerennial. ISBN 0060977337.
Moore, Michael; Glynn, Kathleen (1998). Adventures In A TV Nation. New York: HarperPerennial. ISBN 0060988096.
Moore, Michael (2002). Stupid White Men ...and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation!. New York: Regan Books. ISBN 0060392452.
Moore, Michael (2003). Dude, Where's My Country?. New York: Warner Books. ISBN 0446532231.
Moore, Michael (2004). Will They Ever Trust Us Again?. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0743271521.
Moore, Michael (2004). The Official Fahrenheit 9/11 Reader. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0743272927.
Moore, Michael (2008). Mike's Election Guide 2008. New York: Grand Central Publishing. ISBN 0446546275.
Filmography
Roger & Me (1989)
Pets or Meat: The Return to Flint (1992) (TV)
Canadian Bacon (1995)
The Big One (1997)
And Justice for All (1998) (TV)
Lucky Numbers (2000) (as actor)
Bowling for Columbine (2002)
Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) "Palme d'Or" in Cannes
Sicko (2007)
Captain Mike Across America (2007)
Slacker Uprising (2008)
Television
TV Nation (1994)
The Awful Truth (1999)
Michael Moore Live (1999)
References
^ a b New York Times profile
^ Michael Moore - MSN Encarta
^ Allmovie (2007). "Michael Moore filmography". Allmovie. Retrieved on 2007-07-19.
^ "Documentary Movies". Box Office Mojo (2007). Retrieved on 2007-11-12.
^ "Michael Moore releases Slacker Uprising for free on Net". www.meeja.com.au (2008-09-24). Retrieved on 2008-09-24.
^ Michael Moore (2006-11-14). "A Liberal's Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives". Michael Moore.com. Retrieved on 2007-07-21.
^ Joel Stein. "Michael Moore: The Angry Filmmaker", Time. Retrieved on 2007-07-19.
^ Rick Coates (2008). "Northern Michigan's film industry from Michael Moore's perspective". Northern Express. Retrieved on 2008-07-21.
^ "Michael Moore Biography (1954-)". Film Reference. Retrieved on 2007-07-19.
^ Ron Sheldon (23 September 1995). "Exclusive Interview with Michael Moore of TV Nation", People's Weekly World. Retrieved on 2007-07-19.
^ Richard Knight, Jr. (2007-06-27). "To Your Health: A Talk with Sicko's Michael Moore", Windy City Media Group. Retrieved on 2007-06-27.
^ Primeau, François. American Dissident, Lulu Press, 2007.
^ Gary Strauss (June 20, 2004). "The truth about Michael Moore". USA Today. Retrieved on 2006–07–09.
^ MichaelMoore.com: The Day I Was To be Tarred and Feathered
^ Ron Sheldon (September 23, 1995). "Exclusive Interview with Michael Moore of TV Nation". People's Weekly World.
^ Emily Schultz, Michael Moore: A Biography, Ecw Press, 2005. Pg 47-54.
^ Paul Mulshine. "A Stupid White Man and a Smart One". Newark Star Ledger, March 3, 2003
^ Matt Labash. "Michael Moore, One-Trick Phony". The Weekly Standard. June 8, 1998
^ Delegates relish McCain jab at filmmaker Moore CNN.com. 31 August 2006.
^ This Divided State official website. Accessed 9 July 2006.
^ IMDb, Kathleen Glynn
^ Rahner, Mark (2007-06-26). ""Sicko," new Michael Moore film, takes on the health-care system", The Seattle Times. Retrieved on 2007-06-30.
^ Elliott, David (2007-06-29). "Moral outrage, humor make up Michael Moore's one-two punch", SignOnSanDiego. Retrieved on 2007-06-30.
^ The Philadelphia Inquirer: Inqlings | Michael Moore takes on Glaxo. Michael Klein, 30 September 2005. Archive accessed 9 July 2006.
^ Common Dreams News Center: Drug Firms are on the Defense as Filmmaker Michael Moore Plans to Dissect Their Industry. Original Article - Elaine Dutka, L.A. Times, December 22, 2004. Archive accessed August 09, 2006
^ Chicago Tribune: Michael Moore turns camera onto health care industry. Bruce Japsen, 3 October 2004. Archive accessed 9 July 2006.
^ CBC Sicko to have unofficial premiere at Democratic fundraiser May 26, 2007. URL accessed October 14, 2007.
^ "Documentary Movies". Genres. Box Office Mojo (2007). Retrieved on 2008-01-31.
^ "Shortlist for docu Oscar unveiled". The Hollywood Reporter (2007-11-20). Retrieved on 2008-01-31.
^ Captain Mike at the Internet Movie Database
^ "Toronto International Film Festival". Retrieved on 2007–09–07.
^ Captain Mike Across America (2007)
^ Green Left Weekly: Rage against Wall Street. Michael Moore, via MichaelMoore.com, date unspecified. URL accessed 9 July 2006.
^ "The Drugging of Our Children". at the Internet Movie Database
^ Blood in the Face at the Internet Movie Database Moore details his involvement in the audio commentary on the Roger & Me DVD.
^ "Who's Who". The Corporation Film.
^ "'I am the balance', says Moore". Minneapolis Star Tribune. South Florida Sun-Sentinel (4 July 2007). Retrieved on 2007–07–06. "Moore rejects the label "political activist"; as a citizen of a democracy, Moore insists, such a description is redundant."
^ Flesher, John (16 June 2007). "Hollywood meets Bellaire as Moore gives sneak peek of "Sicko"". Associated Press. MichaelMoore.com. Retrieved on 2007–07–06. "But the filmmaker, known for his fiery left-wing populism and polemical films such as "Fahrenheit 9/11" and Oscar-winning "Bowling for Columbine," told the audience "Sicko" would appeal across the political spectrum."
^ Opinion Journal from the Wall Street Journal: Unmoored from Reality. John Fund's Political Diary, 21 March 2003. URL accessed 29 August 2006.
^ My Vote's for Obama (if I could vote) ...by Michael Moore April 21, 2008
External links
Michael Moore Official website
Michael Moore at the Internet Movie Database
Michael Moore on YouTube
Works by or about Michael Moore in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
A 2007 NOW on PBS interview with Michael Moore What makes him tick, and why our health care system ticks him off
[show]v • d • eFilms directed by Michael Moore
Roger & Me • Pets or Meat: The Return to Flint • Canadian Bacon • The Big One • Bowling for Columbine • Fahrenheit 9/11 • Sicko • Captain Mike Across America • Slacker Uprising
Persondata
NAME Moore, Michael Francis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Moore, Michael
SHORT DESCRIPTION American film director, author, and social commentator
DATE OF BIRTH April 23, 1954
PLACE OF BIRTH Davison, Michigan
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Moore"
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vii) Five Former Secretaries of State Cite Key Issues for Next President
Posted Tuesday, September 16 2008 12:53:29 am
Amanpour and Sesno moderated the round table discussion, scheduled to air on CNN.
Photos by Shameek Patel
By Marissa Moran
Co-Editor-in-Chief
Five former U.S. secretaries of state agreed that the next president should work to better engage America in the global community at a televised panel in Lisner Auditorium on Monday afternoon.
CNN’s Chief International Correspondent Christiane Amanpour and GW Professor Frank Sesno, a CNN special correspondent and former Washington bureau chief moderated the round table discussion of Madeleine K. Albright, James A. Baker III, Warren Christopher, Henry A. Kissinger, and Colin L. Powell for a CNN broadcast entitled “The Next President: A World of Challenges.”
In an extremely competitive presidential election season, and one highly scrutinized by the press, Amanpour and Sesno looked for substantial, issue-based conversation among the secretaries instead of partisan debate. Amanpour opened by telling the secretaries that they should give “candid, robust, meat and potatoes advice for the next president, whoever that may be.”
Colin Powell responded first by saying that in his first duty as commander in chief, the president must “restore a sense of confidence in the U.S.”
“We must let friends and allies around the world know we are supporting their work in unison,” said Powell, who served as secretary of state from 2001 to 2005 under President George W. Bush. He said that, as Americans, we “should have confidence in ourselves and in the rest of the world” and that we must convey this strong image to the global community, a large part of which currently views America less than favorably because of interventionist policies abroad.
Madeleine Albright drew laughs from the audience at the beginning of the discussion, saying that if she greeted the newly elected president at his Inaugural Ball, she would say, “Remember that you wanted this job.”
Albright, secretary of state under President Bill Clinton, stressed that the international problems facing the world can only be solved by cooperation between the U.S. and other countries.
“To work with other countries is a sign of strength,” she said.
Though the secretaries agreed that restoration of America's image abroad is essential, some differed on what the next president's top priority will be. Christopher, who served immediately before Albright under President Clinton, said that the primary issue that the new president must work on is the economy, while Baker, President George H.W. Bush's secretary of state, argued that the president must "structure the national security apparatus," making clear the lines of its responsibility. Baker also encouraged "strengthening the elements of American soft power" for the new president's foreign policy.
However, for the U.S. to effectively interact with the rest of the world, Kissinger stressed that the next president should reach a consensus among his principle advisers so as to avoid the "jockeying of position among various advisers." According to Kissinger, who was secretary of state from 1973 to 1977 under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford and also assistant to the president for national security affairs from 1969 to 1975, once there is unity in the next administration then the U.S. could invite the rest of the world to partake in foreign policy.
The five former secretaries walked on stage to a standing ovation from a sold-out audience of 1,400, which included GW students, members of the press, and more than 80 foreign dignitaries. Tickets for the event sold out within an hour of their release nearly two weeks ago, according to GW Media Relations.
When Amanpour asked for three key points that the president must do to regain the American image abroad, Baker said that he must use American diplomatic, political, and economic elements to the country’s advantage. Albright said that there is “generally a sense that the U.S. is on the wrong side” in world politics, and that many think that the “growing gap between the rich and the poor” is in part due to the U.S.
“We have to have confidence and also humility,” said Albright, who is presently the principle of The Albright Group, LLC, a global strategy firm. “It’s not easy in that office, admitting to the American people that he needs help….He needs to realize that when he’s talking to the American people, he’s (also) talking to a foreign audience.”
Christopher said that his suggestions for the president to regain respect would be to outlaw torture and become a global leader in the climate change crisis. His colleagues agreed with him about outlawing torture and further suggested the shut down of Guantanamo Bay.
When Sesno asked if the current U.S. economic problems would lead to a global recession, Baker said that the situation “will affect the global economy negatively.” Albright said that on an international level, “it doesn’t matter if we’re popular but it does matter if we’re respected and whether other countries want to work with us.”
Powell, who contributed a great deal to the discussion, said in response to Sesno’s inquiry about American policy toward “this” Russia that the new administration must “deal with the Russians in a straightforward, candid way, not emotionally. We have to treat Russia as a proud country with popular political leadership.”
As for relations with Iran, Kissinger also said that the U.S. must be upfront and honest.
“I always believe the best way to begin a negotiation is to tell the other side exactly what you have in mind and the outcome you’re trying to achieve.”
The conversation covered issues of foreign aid, the war in Afghanistan, relations with Pakistan, and a Middle East peace agreement. On the question of U.S. engagement or isolation with the rest of the world, all the secretaries agreed that engagement is the best route. As for the war in Iraq, both Christopher and Powell agreed that the number one priority of the new president will be to encourage the Iraqi government to reach a political reconciliation.
At the end of the event, several GW students from the audience asked questions of the former secretaries of state. The first student, from Greenwich, Conn., asked what message they thought the potential election of the first African-American president would send to the rest of the world. Albright said that she thought it would send a great message abroad, and she was thus supporting Sen. Barack Obama as the presidential nominee.
Sesno then asked Colin Powell, the first African-American secretary of state, what he thought.
“I am an American first and foremost,” said Powell, eliciting a wild cheer from the audience. But he declared that he is “neutral” right now, knowing both the democratic candidate, Sen. Barack Obama and the republican candidate, Sen. John McCain very well.
“We have to get off this ‘lipstick on a pig’ stuff and get to the serious issues,” he said, criticizing the media’s “celebrity” hype surrounding the campaigns. Powell said he is waiting to watch the upcoming debates to make his final decision of whom to support.
“I’m not going to vote for McCain because he’s a friend. I’m not going to vote for Obama because he’s black,” he continued. “Who’s going to keep us safer? Who brings the best judgment and experience to the task?”
The broadcast of the roundtable discussion will air on CNN on Saturday, September 20 at 9 p.m. and on Sunday, September 21 at 2 p.m. EST.
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10. Who has been more of a righteous extremist in this election campaign: McCain or Obama. For the most part, Obama has been the voice of reason and integrationism, while McCain has been the voice of the past: righteous/religous/political intolerance, divisionism, and hate. McCain has for the most part used negative campaign tactics that have worked well for the Republican Party in the past in terms of negatively stereotyping and blackballing 'potential Democratic President Hopefuls'. This election things are going to be different: the American people and Obama have evolved; McCain, Palin, and the rest of the negative campaigners in this year's Republican Party -- have't. The Republican Party needs to be re-created, re-invented. It needs to rise like the Phoenix. Today it is dead. And I hope -- I truly hope -- the American people understand that. I think they do. Obama will be the next President of the United States of America -- and I think a potentially exciting one if he sticks to his dreams, his vision, his priorities, his mandate.
I am not particlarly religious but I do not mind religion, politics, economics, and ethics all working in the same direction for a better America - and a better world.
So I will say this for the first and only time to compensate for the negative force of the Jeremy Wright rant quoted earlier:
God Bless America -- and the harmonious integration and peaceful harmony of America with the rest of the world. (From here after, refer to the Dylan song 'With God on My Side' to underline my more regular feelings about the use of the name 'God' to add 'religious force' to any kind of political ideology, particularly when that ideology is 'pathologically destructive and/or self-destructive').
Hate, unbridled greed, selfishness, narcissism, righteous/religous/political intolerance and civil divisionism are all self-destructive to the human race. These are all characteristics that mark the humn race at its worst. They are all characteristics that are 'anti-evolutionary'. They will lead us the same way as the dinosaur -- to extinction.
How many more American soldiers and foreign soldiers, American civilians and foreign civilians have to come home in body bags or lay rotting in the fields or in blown up buildings that CNN cameramen have to relay to the American people and to the rest of the world before everyone on both sides of this brutally savage and ridiculous war will finally come to their senses and say, 'Enough is enough'. Winning the war isn't the answer here. Because we are all big-time losers -- on both sides of the political and relgious and economic fence that divides us -- and kills us and maims us and povertizes us -- as long as we continue to embrace this tragic farce we call 'war', and the radical, righteous, religious, and/or economic extremism that continues to propogandize and support it.
"Violence begets violence; hate begets hate; and toughness begets a greater toughness. ...I believe Martin Luther King Junior said that...but i think it has even older philosophical roots...
I finally found the older quote I was looking for...
'Victory breeds hatred for the conquered is unhappy.' -- Gautama Buddha
The point is: When will the madness of war and violence ever stop?
Never?
I think we have evolved better than this. Or have we?
-- dgb, October 23rd-24th, 2008.
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