Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment

2006/02/26

China told to mind its manners

Mrs Mischke is campaigning to ensure her fellow citizens don't disgrace 5000 years of history with ill-timed belching, farting and spitting.China told to mind its manners
By Mary-Ann Toy, Beijing, The Age Melbourne

FOR Lu-Chin Mischke, an elegant Chinese woman who lived abroad for many years, life back in China is sometimes one long assault on her sensibilities.

A stroll in one of Beijing's lovely parks or temple complexes is a respite from the city's smog and traffic—until the first ear-splitting hawking up of phlegm lands too close for comfort. Then there's the mindless littering, the mobile phones ringing—and being answered—in cinemas, the flagrant disregard for traffic rules and the failure to queue.

Beijingers have a deserved reputation for being friendly and straightforward, but with the world descending here in 2008 for the Olympics, city leaders and fed-up citizens such as Mrs Mischke are campaigning to ensure their fellow citizens don't disgrace 5000 years of history with ill-timed belching, farting and spitting.

Mrs Mischke, who lived in the US and Japan for more than a decade, set up the not-for-profit Pride Institute last year to improve manners because she was tired of being embarrassed by Chinese lack of etiquette. "I want my kids to grow up and be proud of being Chinese," she says.

Since then she has personally, tactfully, told off more than a hundred offenders and held more than a dozen free seminars for the city's less-well-off to explain why spitting, using mobile phones indiscriminately, bad breath, body odour and treating the motherland as a garbage bin are unacceptable.

Mrs Mischke's seminars are free, helped by a growing number of enthusiastic volunteers. Her motivation is patriotism and the message is self-respect and self-discipline for a better society. She teaches people to make eye contact, smile and be considerate and friendly.

"I do not want people to associate Chinese people as being uncivilised," she says. "We Chinese are very proud of our long history, but where does it say that spitting or bad breath is part of our culture?" Beijing's municipal government is also intensifying its efforts to improve behaviour through newspaper columns, cartoons and television commercials. The city has hired more than 3000 public transport attendants who will patrol bus stops and the subway to encourage queuing rather than the free-for-all that greets every overcrowded bus or train.

Almost 3 million etiquette handbooks are to be sent to households telling residents to stop belching, slurping or farting, especially while eating in public, or at least, to apologise if they do. And, to Mrs Mischke's horror, millions of "spit bags", left over after the severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic, are being distributed with instructions on "civilised spitting".


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Megachurches equal religion lite?

Here's one from the Sydney Morning Herald. I like the quote about a Christianity which is described as 'two miles long and one inch deep. Megachurches equal religion lite?
By Julia Baird, Sydney Morning Herald

THEY have been called religion-lite, Disney-Jesus, and self-help saviours. Big, booming, wealthy megachurches in the US—and, increasingly, churches like Hillsong here—are becoming the scourge not just of the naturally suspicious secular world but also the traditional church.

The more popular and powerful they become, the more they are derided as commercial, narcissistic and corporate.

Defined by their size—usually more than 2000 attendees a week—as well as spectacular music performances and charismatic preachers, these churches regularly provide fodder for critics, with marketing surveys, wealth-creation advice and priests who call themselves "pastorpreneurs".

This week, the head of the World Council of Churches, Samuel Kobia, warned the megachurch movement was dangerously shallow: "It has no depth, in most cases, theologically speaking, and has no appeal for any commitment.

"It's a church being organised on corporate logic. That can be quite dangerous if we are not very careful, because this may become a Christianity which I describe as 'two miles long and one inch deep'."

Kobia, a Methodist from Kenya, said the churches focused too much on simply making people feel good.

Last December, even the Economist decried how corporate they had become, pointing to the new industry of faith-based consultancies, the number of chief financial officers and chief operating officers, and leaders with MBAs. One church even provides mortgage brokers and real estate agents.

A 2005 report by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research found the number of Protestant mega-churches in the US had doubled in the past five years, to more than 1200. In that time, the average weekly attendance went up by 57 per cent. Their average annual income was $US6 million ($8 million), with an estimated total income of $US7.2 billion a year.

The megachurches were last under fire in the US for not holding any services on a Christmas Day—one church handing out a DVD on Christmas Eve instead. Ben Witherington, a professor at Asbury Theological Seminary, dismissed their approach as that of "cheap grace": "What we have is the Ten Commandments-lite, less filling, tastes great. You know, we have discipleship-lite. We're not really demanding anything of you. You don't need to pick up a cross."

They're the churches that the mainstream loves to hate, and that many Christians regard with—at best—suspicion. And it's true—organisations this large deserve serious scrutiny, and often, criticism—of their corporate structures, their tax arrangements, their teaching and growing political influence. Many aspects of prosperity theology are deeply worrying.

But often much more energy is spent in critiquing them than in understanding their appeal.

So why are they attracting so many followers?

First, Kobia was right—they make people feel good. Not unworthy, deserving a smack, or failing to measure up. When asked to describe their largest worship service, more than half of respondents to the 2005 study said: "Filled with a sense of God's presence", "inspirational" and "joyful".

Second, there is an energy and buzz to most of the services that are totally lacking from most traditional churches. They sing, dance, play electric guitar and drums, and throw their hands in the air—sure it's a bit Australian Idol, but people love it.

They have restaurants, child care (and that alone might be enough reason to go), gyms, coffee shops and basketball courts. Some churches also have football pitches, medical facilities, martial arts classes, music studios, and their own record labels.

Third, they are optimistic—you won't hear much talk of hellfire or such gloomy things. They preach empowerment and the good life Jesus wants you to have in the here and now: wealth, beauty and happiness. In a way—and this is both its appeal and its danger—it conflates neatly with a consumer culture where the individual is empowered to seek happiness through money and secular success, then return to share it with the church.

Fourth, they seem younger and fresher than their crusty Protestant counterparts. When you walk into Hillsong, you see dyed hair, piercings, bouncing teenage feet and fresh-faced volunteers.

The World Council of Churches is right to warn against mass-produced, shallow, corporatised theology. But the success of the megachurches is also a rebuke to the tired, flagging mainstream Christian groups who desperately need to modernise themselves.

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Joy in the Journey

Here's one for marriageJoy in the Journey
By John and Nancy Ortberg, Marriage Partnership magazine

Psychiatrist William Frey spent years studying the dramatic impact that laughter, humor, and joy have on our lives. He found that joy increases our pulse rate, blood circulation, and oxygenation. Joy causes remarkable relaxation. Frey discovered, "Humor banishes the tightness and the severity necessary for anger. If mirth is experienced, rage is impossible."

Joy is a kind of relational glue. It gives us intrinsic motivation to pursue intimacy and oneness in marriage. Bill Bright says it this way: "As long as you're going to be married the rest of your life, you might as well enjoy it." In other words, marriage is supposed to be a source of joy.

And it's God's plan for marriage. Throughout the Bible marriage is used as a picture of joy that God feels for his people. For instance, the prophet Isaiah tells us, "As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so God will rejoice over you" (Isaiah 62:5).

Joy does two things for our marriages. It causes us to remember the good. When something wonderful or fun or funny happens, as we go through the years together, we often look back on that experience and have almost as much joy reliving it. But joy also causes us to live in the present. That's a place far too few of us live often enough. For just a moment when we're experiencing joy, thoughts of what's to come and all the things we need to do vanish. That's a great gift to give our marriages.

In Philippians 4:4 the apostle Paul tells us, "Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!" It's a command.

Often we take that verse in an individualistic way and think, I'm supposed to rejoice through the day. Although that's certainly true, Paul also aimed it at the community—of which marriages are a part. As a married couple part of our job is to pursue joy, to rejoice together, and to bring joy to each other.

Often we run across articles that ask, Are you intentional about saving enough money for the end of your life? You know the kind of stories, where you're supposed to put so much money aside per month, and if you don't you're going to end up on the streets.

Rarely, though, will you see an article that asks the question for you as a couple, Are you invested enough in joy? Are you setting aside enough joy so that when you get to the end of your life you'll be able to look back and say about it what God said about his creation—it's very good? Recently a newspaper ran a letter a wife wrote to her husband reflecting on the fact that in one month was the date he'd always said, This is when I'm going to retire so I can enjoy my family. Only he passed away three years earlier. That date came and it brought great pain to her. Her husband had waited for the end of his life to make a commitment to pursue joy. And it was too late.

We want to challenge you as a couple to make your life-goal to become the primary joy-giver in your spouse's world.

We often get caught in a vicious circle, which goes like this: How can I get my spouse to make me happier? With that mindset, I keep track of what my spouse does for me and what I do for my spouse. It's a game where I'm motivated not to do more for her than she does for me.

The challenge is instead to make it a benevolent circle, where we say, How can I give more joy to my spouse? And then your spouse's response will probably be, How can I give more joy back?

Last week Nancy called me (John) during the day and said, "There's a surprise waiting for you on the kitchen counter." I couldn't wait to get home—the thought of my surprise brought me such joy! When I walked in the kitchen that evening, there was a newly published book by one of my favorite authors. Nancy knew that would bring me joy.

Joy flows out of a commitment to bring a gift to another person.

If there's going to be joy in your relationship, start with yourself.

We have funny things in our family that have become traditions now as a result of stupid things I (Nancy) have done. I'm notorious for whipping up a loaf of banana bread, which my family loves. But I've been known many times to put a loaf in the oven and leave the house, only to come home several hours later and wonder why all the firemen are there.

When my family looks to see how I will respond, I've learned the importance of laughter. So now if somebody is doing something that isn't well thought out we say, "I think you're leaving your banana bread in the oven too long." It's a way to laugh at myself and then make it something that can bring joy to the rest of my family.

When you poke fun at yourself, you're saying to your family, I'm not the center of the universe. I'm not even the center of this family. This situation I'm in is not going to change my life, so let's all laugh about it.

We can find such joy in simple pleasures. If we find joy only when we experience lavish, expensive outings, then the amount of joy in our life is going to be greatly reduced.

The first year John and I (Nancy) were married we lived in Scotland. He was going to graduate school. I got on the bus every day and worked as a maid. We had no money. We had no car. We were in a foreign country. And every weekend with the few pence I made scrubbing other people's homes we'd take the bus downtown and wander through stores we couldn't afford to buy anything from, then order take-out Chinese food, and go back to our dorm room. Those were times of great joy. We were experiencing a new adventure together.

Sometimes we'll take a picnic to a lake, go to a three-dollar matinee, and end the day with dogs and suds. Those simple pleasures allow us to experience joy in the moment. They have a profound impact on our relationship. They communicate, I love you. I love being with you. This is fun.

It's well and good that we do kingdom work for other people, but if we don't do it for our spouse, we need to question the good of what other things we do in God's kingdom. Are you in the kind of relationship where you love without thought of return? Where you rejoice in your mate? Ultimately, when we pursue joy, we move toward oneness and intimacy, and we more clearly see who God is. That was his idea in the first place.

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Another Darwin blast

Is Darwin holy? Is Darwin holy?
Joe Sobran, Griffin Internet Syndicate

"The great sociologist of religion Emile Durkheim called the contrast between the sacred and the profane the widest and deepest of all contrasts the human mind is capable of making," wrote the late Robert Nisbet.

A fascinating observation. I happened to run across it while I was marveling at the curious evangelical zeal of those who want Darwinism taught in the public schools but want to ban the teaching of intelligent design. Why do they care so much? Apparently nothing is holy, but Darwin is Holy Writ.

I used to believe in evolution myself, but I took no joy in it. Who could? If atheism is true, then nothing really matters—not even atheism. Even as a kid I could see that. In my atheistic days I thought nothing quite as silly as the militant atheist. I loved the story of Jesus, I regretted losing my faith, and I couldn't understand people who could be enthusiastic about living in a cold, godless universe. I tried to make art—especially Shakespeare and Beethoven—my consolation prizes for the religion I'd lost. At least they made me feel as if I had a soul, even if the cheerless dogma of Darwin said otherwise.

Then, as a young adult, I met two astounding people who might as well have come straight from heaven on wings of angels. They were my first two children. I could believe that the rest of the human race, myself included, were accidents of mere matter, but it was soon obvious to me that these two had immortal souls, and that I was responsible for them. Life undeniably had a purpose after all—not survival, but love.

It wasn't just that I loved these kids; far more important, God loved them and expected me to teach them about his love. Not to do so would have been the worst form of neglect. And in teaching them that God loved them, I realized that he loved me the same way, and always had, even when I hadn't thought about him and denied his existence.

Now why would anyone want to teach kids that they are ultimately worthless? I can see reluctantly believing that, maybe. But teaching it eagerly?

Modern atheism, waving the banner of Science, has the emotional character of a perverted religion, taking a morbid pleasure in preaching and converting and, in its intolerance, demanding a privileged place in education. This isn't just "separation of church and state"—two things that are separate by nature anyway. The glee with which Darwinists attack and insult Christianity tells you what they really want, and why the idea of evolution appeals to them.

Like its nineteenth-century twin, Marxism, Darwinism demonstrates the profound truth of the adage that misery loves company. Spoiled souls always want to spoil other souls. If I can't be innocent, neither can you! "Ye shall be as gods." The Lord and the serpent both promise that the truth shall make us free, but one of them is lying.

Survival isn't the purpose of life, just the necessary condition of finding its real purpose. The universal sense of the sacred that Durkheim noted is separate from the urge to survive, and often at war with it. Biology can't explain the idea of the holy, which we all share and, in varying degrees, understand, though nobody fully comprehends it.

For Darwinism, the sense of the sacred is just awkward excess baggage, possibly even a threat to survival. After all, atheism's only commandment is "Thou shalt survive," and from its perspective what could be more absurd than sacrifice and martyrdom, losing your life in order to save it?

But denying a mystery is no way to solve it, and we are stuck with the mystery of the human soul, which loves all sorts of useless things, as long as they are true, or good, or beautiful. Any philosophy that ignores our deepest loves is too crass to be interesting.

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In Defense of Free Thought

It makes you wonder who's calling the shots. Article here

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Evilution

500 doctoral scientists skeptical of Darwin 500 doctoral scientists skeptical of Darwin
WorldNetDaily

More than 500 scientists with doctoral degrees have signed a statement expressing skepticism about Darwin's theory of evolution.

The statement, which includes endorsement by members of the prestigious U.S. National Academy of Sciences and Russian Academy of Sciences, was first published by the Seattle-based Discovery Institute in 2001 to challenge statements about Darwinian evolution made in promoting PBS's "Evolution" series.

The PBS promotion claimed "virtually every scientist in the world believes the theory to be true."

"Darwinists continue to claim that no serious scientists doubt the theory and yet here are 500 scientists who are willing to make public their skepticism about the theory," said John G. West, associate director of Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture.

The institute is the leading promoter of the theory of Intelligent Design, which has been at the center of challenges in federal court over the teaching of evolution in public school classes. Advocates say it draws on recent discoveries in physics, biochemistry and related disciplines that indicate some features of the natural world are best explained as the product of an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection.

West said Darwinist "efforts to use the courts, the media and academic tenure committees to suppress dissent and stifle discussion are in fact fueling even more dissent and inspiring more scientists to ask to be added to the list."

The statement, signed by 514 scientists, reads: "We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged."

West said the Discovery Institute was encouraged to launch a website for the list because of the growing number of scientific dissenters.

"Darwin's theory of evolution is the great white elephant of contemporary thought," said David Berlinski, a signatory and mathematician and philosopher of science with Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. "It is large, almost completely useless, and the object of superstitious awe."

Other prominent signatories include U.S. National Academy of Sciences member Philip Skell, American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow Lyle Jensen, evolutionary biologist and textbook author Stanley Salthe; Smithsonian Institution evolutionary biologist and researcher at the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Biotechnology Information Richard von Sternberg, editor of Rivista di Biologia/Biology Forum—the oldest still published biology journal in the world—Giuseppe Sermonti and Russian Academy of Natural Sciences embryologist Lev Beloussov.

The list include 154 biologists, 76 chemists and 63 physicists. They hold doctorates in biological sciences, physics, chemistry, mathematics, medicine, computer science and related disciplines.

Many are professors or researchers at major universities and research institutions such as MIT, The Smithsonian, Cambridge University, UCLA, University of California at Berkeley, Princeton University, University of Pennsylvania, Ohio State University, University of Georgia and University of Washington.

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2006/02/17

The End of Dollar Hegemony

Here it is, a mini class in economics and dollar history. It’s a long one but it’s a hot one! Read it!The End of Dollar Hegemony
by Ron Paul
Before the US House of Representatives, February 15, 2006
(Excerpt of long article)

A hundred years ago it was called "dollar diplomacy." After World War II, and especially after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, that policy evolved into "dollar hegemony." But after all these many years of great success, our dollar dominance is coming to an end.

It has been said, rightly, that he who holds the gold makes the rules. In earlier times it was readily accepted that fair and honest trade required an exchange for something of real value.

First it was simply barter of goods. Then it was discovered that gold held a universal attraction, and was a convenient substitute for more cumbersome barter transactions. Not only did gold facilitate exchange of goods and services, it served as a store of value for those who wanted to save for a rainy day.

Though money developed naturally in the marketplace, as governments grew in power they assumed monopoly control over money. Sometimes governments succeeded in guaranteeing the quality and purity of gold, but in time governments learned to outspend their revenues.

New or higher taxes always incurred the disapproval of the people, so it wasn't long before Kings and Caesars learned how to inflate their currencies by reducing the amount of gold in each coin –always hoping their subjects wouldn't discover the fraud. But the people always did, and they strenuously objected.

This helped pressure leaders to seek more gold by conquering other nations. The people became accustomed to living beyond their means, and enjoyed the circuses and bread. Financing extravagances by conquering foreign lands seemed a logical alternative to working harder and producing more. Besides, conquering nations not only brought home gold, they brought home slaves as well. Taxing the people in conquered territories also provided an incentive to build empires. This system of government worked well for a while, but the moral decline of the people led to an unwillingness to produce for themselves. There was a limit to the number of countries that could be sacked for their wealth, and this always brought empires to an end. When gold no longer could be obtained, their military might crumbled. In those days those who held the gold truly wrote the rules and lived well.

That general rule has held fast throughout the ages. When gold was used, and the rules protected honest commerce, productive nations thrived. Whenever wealthy nations—those with powerful armies and gold—strived only for empire and easy fortunes to support welfare at home, those nations failed.

Today the principles are the same, but the process is quite different. Gold no longer is the currency of the realm; paper is.

The truth now is: "He who prints the money makes the rules"—at least for the time being. Although gold is not used, the goals are the same: compel foreign countries to produce and subsidize the country with military superiority and control over the monetary printing presses.

Since printing paper money is nothing short of counterfeiting, the issuer of the international currency must always be the country with the military might to guarantee control over the system. This magnificent scheme seems the perfect system for obtaining perpetual wealth for the country that issues the de facto world currency. The one problem, however, is that such a system destroys the character of the counterfeiting nation's people—just as was the case when gold was the currency and it was obtained by conquering other nations. And this destroys the incentive to save and produce, while encouraging debt and runaway welfare.

The pressure at home to inflate the currency comes from the corporate welfare recipients, as well as those who demand handouts as compensation for their needs and perceived injuries by others. In both cases personal responsibility for one's actions is rejected.

When paper money is rejected, or when gold runs out, wealth and political stability are lost. The country then must go from living beyond its means to living beneath its means, until the economic and political systems adjust to the new rules—rules no longer written by those who ran the now defunct printing press.

"Dollar Diplomacy," a policy instituted by William Howard Taft and his Secretary of State Philander C. Knox, was designed to enhance U.S. commercial investments in Latin America and the Far East.

McKinley concocted a war against Spain in 1898, and (Teddy) Roosevelt's corollary to the Monroe Doctrine preceded Taft's aggressive approach to using the U.S. dollar and diplomatic influence to secure U.S. investments abroad. This earned the popular title of "Dollar Diplomacy." The significance of Roosevelt's change was that our intervention now could be justified by the mere "appearance" that a country of interest to us was politically or fiscally vulnerable to European control. Not only did we claim a right, but even an official U.S. government "obligation" to protect our commercial interests from Europeans.

This new policy came on the heels of the "gunboat" diplomacy of the late 19th century, and it meant we could buy influence before resorting to the threat of force. By the time the "dollar diplomacy" of William Howard Taft was clearly articulated, the seeds of American empire were planted. And they were destined to grow in the fertile political soil of a country that lost its love and respect for the republic bequeathed to us by the authors of the Constitution. And indeed they did. It wasn't too long before dollar "diplomacy" became dollar "hegemony" in the second half of the 20th century.

This transition only could have occurred with a dramatic change in monetary policy and the nature of the dollar itself.

Congress created the Federal Reserve System in 1913. Between then and 1971 the principle of sound money was systematically undermined.

Between 1913 and 1971, the Federal Reserve found it much easier to expand the money supply at will for financing war or manipulating the economy with little resistance from Congress—while benefiting the special interests that influence government.

Dollar dominance got a huge boost after World War II. We were spared the destruction that so many other nations suffered, and our coffers were filled with the world's gold. But the world chose not to return to the discipline of the gold standard, and the politicians applauded. Printing money to pay the bills was a lot more popular than taxing or restraining unnecessary spending. In spite of the short-term benefits, imbalances were institutionalized for decades to come.

The 1944 Bretton Woods agreement solidified the dollar as the preeminent world reserve currency, replacing the British pound. Due to our political and military muscle, and because we had a huge amount of physical gold, the world readily accepted our dollar (defined as 1/35th of an ounce of gold) as the world's reserve currency. The dollar was said to be "as good as gold," and convertible to all foreign central banks at that rate. For American citizens, however, it remained illegal to own. This was a gold-exchange standard that from inception was doomed to fail.

The U.S. did exactly what many predicted she would do. She printed more dollars for which there was no gold backing. But the world was content to accept those dollars for more than 25 years with little question—until the French and others in the late 1960s demanded we fulfill our promise to pay one ounce of gold for each $35 they delivered to the U.S. Treasury. This resulted in a huge gold drain that brought an end to a very poorly devised pseudo-gold standard.

It all ended on August 15, 1971, when Nixon closed the gold window and refused to pay out any of our remaining 280 million ounces of gold. In essence, we declared our insolvency and everyone recognized some other monetary system had to be devised in order to bring stability to the markets.

Amazingly, a new system was devised which allowed the U.S. to operate the printing presses for the world reserve currency with no restraints placed on it—not even a pretense of gold convertibility, none whatsoever! Though the new policy was even more deeply flawed, it nevertheless opened the door for dollar hegemony to spread.

Realizing the world was embarking on something new and mind-boggling, elite money managers, with especially strong support from U.S. authorities, struck an agreement with OPEC to price oil in U.S. dollars exclusively for all worldwide transactions. This gave the dollar a special place among world currencies and in essence "backed" the dollar with oil. In return, the U.S. promised to protect the various oil-rich kingdoms in the Persian Gulf against threat of invasion or domestic coup. This arrangement helped ignite the radical Islamic movement among those who resented our influence in the region. The arrangement gave the dollar artificial strength, with tremendous financial benefits for the United States. It allowed us to export our monetary inflation by buying oil and other goods at a great discount as dollar influence flourished.

This post-Bretton Woods system was much more fragile than the system that existed between 1945 and 1971. Though the dollar/oil arrangement was helpful, it was not nearly as stable as the pseudo–gold standard under Bretton Woods. It certainly was less stable than the gold standard of the late 19th century.

During the 1970s the dollar nearly collapsed, as oil prices surged and gold skyrocketed to $800 an ounce. By 1979 interest rates of 21% were required to rescue the system. The pressure on the dollar in the 1970s, in spite of the benefits accrued to it, reflected reckless budget deficits and monetary inflation during the 1960s.

The markets were not fooled by LBJ's claim that we could afford both "guns and butter."

Once again the dollar was rescued, and this ushered in the age of true dollar hegemony lasting from the early 1980s to the present.

With tremendous cooperation coming from the central banks and international commercial banks, the dollar was accepted as if it were gold.

Fed Chair Alan Greenspan, on several occasions before the House Banking Committee, answered my challenges to him about his previously held favorable views on gold by claiming that he and other central bankers had gotten paper money—i.e. the dollar system—to respond as if it were gold. Each time I strongly disagreed, and pointed out that if they had achieved such a feat they would have defied centuries of economic history regarding the need for money to be something of real value. He smugly and confidently concurred with this.

In recent years central banks and various financial institutions, all with vested interests in maintaining a workable fiat dollar standard, were not secretive about selling and loaning large amounts of gold to the market even while decreasing gold prices raised serious questions about the wisdom of such a policy. They never admitted to gold price fixing, but the evidence is abundant that they believed if the gold price fell it would convey a sense of confidence to the market, confidence that they indeed had achieved amazing success in turning paper into gold.

Increasing gold prices historically are viewed as an indicator of distrust in paper currency. This recent effort was not a whole lot different than the U.S. Treasury selling gold at $35 an ounce in the 1960s, in an attempt to convince the world the dollar was sound and as good as gold. Even during the Depression, one of Roosevelt's first acts was to remove free market gold pricing as an indication of a flawed monetary system by making it illegal for American citizens to own gold. Economic law eventually limited that effort, as it did in the early 1970s when our Treasury and the IMF tried to fix the price of gold by dumping tons into the market to dampen the enthusiasm of those seeking a safe haven for a falling dollar after gold ownership was re-legalized.

Once again the effort between 1980 and 2000 to fool the market as to the true value of the dollar proved unsuccessful. In the past 5 years the dollar has been devalued in terms of gold by more than 50%. You just can't fool all the people all the time, even with the power of the mighty printing press and money creating system of the Federal Reserve.

The agreement with OPEC in the 1970s to price oil in dollars has provided tremendous artificial strength to the dollar as the preeminent reserve currency. This has created a universal demand for the dollar, and soaks up the huge number of new dollars generated each year. Last year alone M3 increased over $700 billion.

The artificial demand for our dollar, along with our military might, places us in the unique position to "rule" the world without productive work or savings, and without limits on consumer spending or deficits. The problem is, it can't last.

Price inflation is raising its ugly head, and the NASDAQ bubble –generated by easy money—has burst. The housing bubble likewise created is deflating. Gold prices have doubled, and federal spending is out of sight with zero political will to rein it in. The trade deficit last year was over $728 billion. A $2 trillion war is raging, and plans are being laid to expand the war into Iran and possibly Syria. The only restraining force will be the world's rejection of the dollar. It's bound to come and create conditions worse than 1979-1980, which required 21% interest rates to correct.

Greenspan, in his first speech after leaving the Fed, said that gold prices were up because of concern about terrorism, and not because of monetary concerns or because he created too many dollars during his tenure. Gold has to be discredited and the dollar propped up.

Even when the dollar comes under serious attack by market forces, the central banks and the IMF surely will do everything conceivable to soak up the dollars in hope of restoring stability. Eventually they will fail.

Most importantly, the dollar/oil relationship has to be maintained to keep the dollar as a preeminent currency. Any attack on this relationship will be forcefully challenged—as it already has been.

In November 2000 Saddam Hussein demanded Euros for his oil. His arrogance was a threat to the dollar; his lack of any military might was never a threat. At the first cabinet meeting with the new administration in 2001, as reported by Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, the major topic was how we would get rid of Saddam Hussein—though there was no evidence whatsoever he posed a threat to us. This deep concern for Saddam Hussein surprised and shocked O'Neill.

It now is common knowledge that the immediate reaction of the administration after 9/11 revolved around how they could connect Saddam Hussein to the attacks, to justify an invasion and overthrow of his government. Even with no evidence of any connection to 9/11, or evidence of weapons of mass destruction, public and congressional support was generated through distortions and flat out misrepresentation of the facts to justify overthrowing Saddam Hussein.

There was no public talk of removing Saddam Hussein because of his attack on the integrity of the dollar as a reserve currency by selling oil in Euros. Many believe this was the real reason for our obsession with Iraq. I doubt it was the only reason, but it may well have played a significant role in our motivation to wage war. Within a very short period after the military victory, all Iraqi oil sales were carried out in dollars. The Euro was abandoned.

In 2001, Venezuela's ambassador to Russia spoke of Venezuela switching to the Euro for all their oil sales. Within a year there was a coup attempt against Chavez, reportedly with assistance from our CIA.

After these attempts to nudge the Euro toward replacing the dollar as the world's reserve currency were met with resistance, the sharp fall of the dollar against the Euro was reversed. These events may well have played a significant role in maintaining dollar dominance.

It's become clear the U.S. administration was sympathetic to those who plotted the overthrow of Chavez, and was embarrassed by its failure. The fact that Chavez was democratically elected had little influence on which side we supported.

Now, a new attempt is being made against the petrodollar system. Iran, another member of the "axis of evil," has announced her plans to initiate an oil bourse in March of this year. Guess what, the oil sales will be priced Euros, not dollars.

Most Americans forget how our policies have systematically and needlessly antagonized the Iranians over the years. In 1953 the CIA helped overthrow a democratically elected president, Mohammed Mossadeqh, and install the authoritarian Shah, who was friendly to the U.S. The Iranians were still fuming over this when the hostages were seized in 1979. Our alliance with Saddam Hussein in his invasion of Iran in the early 1980s did not help matters, and obviously did not do much for our relationship with Saddam Hussein.

The administration announcement in 2001 that Iran was part of the axis of evil didn't do much to improve the diplomatic relationship between our two countries. Recent threats over nuclear power, while ignoring the fact that they are surrounded by countries with nuclear weapons, doesn't seem to register with those who continue to provoke Iran. With what most Muslims perceive as our war against Islam, and this recent history, there's little wonder why Iran might choose to harm America by undermining the dollar. Iran, like Iraq, has zero capability to attack us. But that didn't stop us from turning Saddam Hussein into a modern day Hitler ready to take over the world. Now Iran, especially since she's made plans for pricing oil in Euros, has been on the receiving end of a propaganda war not unlike that waged against Iraq before our invasion.

It's not likely that maintaining dollar supremacy was the only motivating factor for the war against Iraq, nor for agitating against Iran. Though the real reasons for going to war are complex, we now know the reasons given before the war started, like the presence of weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein's connection to 9/11, were false. The dollar's importance is obvious, but this does not diminish the influence of the distinct plans laid out years ago by the neo-conservatives to remake the Middle East.

Israel's influence, as well as that of the Christian Zionists, likewise played a role in prosecuting this war. Protecting "our" oil supplies has influenced our Middle East policy for decades.

But the truth is that paying the bills for this aggressive intervention is impossible the old-fashioned way, with more taxes, more savings, and more production by the American people. Much of the expense of the Persian Gulf War in 1991 was shouldered by many of our willing allies. That's not so today. Now, more than ever, the dollar hegemony—it's dominance as the world reserve currency—is required to finance our huge war expenditures. This $2 trillion never-ending war must be paid for, one way or another. Dollar hegemony provides the vehicle to do just that.

For the most part the true victims aren't aware of how they pay the bills. The license to create money out of thin air allows the bills to be paid through price inflation. American citizens, as well as average citizens of Japan, China, and other countries suffer from price inflation, which represents the "tax" that pays the bills for our military adventures. That is, until the fraud is discovered, and the foreign producers decide not to take dollars nor hold them very long in payment for their goods. Everything possible is done to prevent the fraud of the monetary system from being exposed to the masses who suffer from it. If oil markets replace dollars with Euros, it would in time curtail our ability to continue to print, without restraint, the world's reserve currency.

It is an unbelievable benefit to us to import valuable goods and export depreciating dollars. The exporting countries have become addicted to our purchases for their economic growth. This dependency makes them allies in continuing the fraud, and their participation keeps the dollar's value artificially high. If this system were workable long term, American citizens would never have to work again. We too could enjoy "bread and circuses" just as the Romans did, but their gold finally ran out and the inability of Rome to continue to plunder conquered nations brought an end to her empire.

The same thing will happen to us if we don't change our ways. Though we don't occupy foreign countries to directly plunder, we nevertheless have spread our troops across 130 nations of the world.

Our intense effort to spread our power in the oil-rich Middle East is not a coincidence. But unlike the old days, we don't declare direct ownership of the natural resources—we just insist that we can buy what we want and pay for it with our paper money. Any country that challenges our authority does so at great risk.

Once again Congress has bought into the war propaganda against Iran, just as it did against Iraq. Arguments are now made for attacking Iran economically, and militarily if necessary. These arguments are all based on the same false reasons given for the ill-fated and costly occupation of Iraq.

Our whole economic system depends on continuing the current monetary arrangement, which means recycling the dollar is crucial. Currently, we borrow over $700 billion every year from our gracious benefactors, who work hard and take our paper for their goods. Then we borrow all the money we need to secure the empire (DOD budget $450 billion) plus more. The military might we enjoy becomes the "backing" of our currency. There are no other countries that can challenge our military superiority, and therefore they have little choice but to accept the dollars we declare are today's "gold." This is why countries that challenge the system—like Iraq, Iran and Venezuela—become targets of our plans for regime change.

Ironically, dollar superiority depends on our strong military, and our strong military depends on the dollar. As long as foreign recipients take our dollars for real goods and are willing to finance our extravagant consumption and militarism, the status quo will continue regardless of how huge our foreign debt and current account deficit become.

But real threats come from our political adversaries who are incapable of confronting us militarily, yet are not bashful about confronting us economically. That's why we see the new challenge from Iran being taken so seriously. The urgent arguments about Iran posing a military threat to the security of the United States are no more plausible than the false charges levied against Iraq. Yet there is no effort to resist this march to confrontation by those who grandstand for political reasons against the Iraq war.

It seems that the people and Congress are easily persuaded by the jingoism of the preemptive war promoters. It's only after the cost in human life and dollars are tallied up that the people object to unwise militarism.

The strange thing is that the failure in Iraq is now apparent to a large majority of American people, yet they and Congress are acquiescing to the call for a needless and dangerous confrontation with Iran.

But then again, our failure to find Osama bin Laden and destroy his network did not dissuade us from taking on the Iraqis in a war totally unrelated to 9/11.

Using force to compel people to accept money without real value can only work in the short run. It ultimately leads to economic dislocation, both domestic and international, and always ends with a price to be paid.

The economic law that honest exchange demands only things of real value as currency cannot be repealed. The chaos that one day will ensue from our 35-year experiment with worldwide fiat money will require a return to money of real value. We will know that day is approaching when oil-producing countries demand gold, or its equivalent, for their oil rather than dollars or Euros. The sooner the better.

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What's Not in the water

Student finds toilet water cleaner than ice at fast food restaurants Dave Balut, Tampa Bay's 10 News
New Tampa, Florida—12-year-old Jasmine Roberts is a seventh-grade student at Benito Middle School in New Tampa.
When it came time for her to choose a science project, she wondered about the ice in fast food restaurants.
Jasmine Roberts, 7th-grade student: "My hypothesis was that the fast food restaurants' ice would contain more bacteria that the fast food restaurants' toilet water."
So Roberts set out to test her hypothesis, selecting five fast food restaurants, within a ten-mile radius of the University of South Florida.
Roberts says at each restaurant she flushed the toilet once, the used sterile gloves to gather samples. "Using the sterile beaker I scooped up some water and closed the lid."
Roberts also collected ice from soda fountains inside the five fast food restaurants. She also asked for cups of ice at the same restaurant's drive thru windows.
She tested the samples at a lab at the Moffitt Cancer Center where she volunteers with a USF professor. Roberts says the results did not surprise her.
"I found that 70-percent of the time, the ice from the fast food restaurant's contain more bacteria than the fast food restaurant's toilet water."
Roberts says she'll think twice before getting ice at fast food restaurants again.

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What's in the water?

What's in the Water?
The Washington Post(Excerpt of article)
Are all those chemicals in our food, our water and our air poisoning us?
The answer, according to a long and disturbing article in the winter issue of On Earth magazine, is: probably.
"There are now more than 100,000 synthetic chemicals on the market, and these chemicals are everywhere," writes Gay Daly. "They are in our food supply, so we eat them. They drift on the air, so we breathe them. . . . Ubiquitous in cosmetics, they are absorbed through our skin. Pregnant women pass them to their fetuses; mothers feed them to their newborns when they breastfeed."
What are all these chemicals doing to us?
Well, the final results of this unsupervised experiment on the human species are not in yet. But, as Daly demonstrates, thousands of studies done on animals indicate that many of these chemicals affect the body's endocrine system, possibly causing brain damage, thyroid malfunctions, genital deformities and reproductive failures.
The reproductive problems are potentially the most dangerous. "We need to ask ourselves if we are going to be reproducing as a species or not," says Pat Hunt, a geneticist at Washington State University.
On Earth is published by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a prominent environmental group, so you can say they're just a bunch of crazy tree-huggers and ignore the story if you're so inclined.
But Daly, a former editor at the science magazine Discover, has written an article that is painstaking researched, carefully written and not sensationalized. It's also scarier than hunting with Dick Cheney, particularly if you happen to be one of those sentimental fools who wants the human race to go on propagating itself.


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Finding Tommy

Finding Tommy
By John Powell
Years ago, I stood watching my university students file into the classroom for our first session in the Theology of Faith.
That was the day I first saw Tommy.
My eyes and my mind both blinked.
He was combing his long flaxen hair, which hung six inches below his shoulders. It was the first time I had ever seen a boy with hair that long. I guess it was just coming into fashion then. I know in my mind that it isn't what's on your head but what's in it that counts, but on that day I was unprepared and my emotions flipped. I immediately filed Tommy under "S" for strange—very strange.
Tommy turned out to be the "atheist in residence" in my Theology of Faith course. He constantly objected to, smirked at, or whined about the possibility of an unconditionally loving Father/God. We lived with each other in relative peace for one semester, although I admit he was for me at times a serious pain in the back pew.
When he came up at the end of the course to turn in his final exam, he asked in a cynical tone, "Do you think I'll ever find God?"
I decided instantly on a little shock therapy. "No!" I said emphatically.
"Why not," he responded, "I thought that was the product you were pushing."
I let him get five steps from the classroom door and then called out, "Tommy! I don't think you'll ever find Him, but I am absolutely certain that He will find you!" He shrugged a little and left my class and my life.
I felt slightly disappointed at the thought that he had missed my clever line—"He will find you!" At least I'd thought it was clever.
Later I heard that Tommy had graduated.
Then a sad report came. Tommy had terminal cancer. Before I could search him out, he came to see me. When he walked into my office, his body was badly wasted and the long hair had all fallen out as a result of chemotherapy. But his eyes were bright and his voice was firm for the first time. "Tommy, I've thought about you often. I hear you are sick," I blurted out.
"Oh, yes, very sick. I have cancer in both lungs. It's a matter of weeks."
"Can you talk about it, Tom?" I asked.
"Sure, what would you like to know?" he replied.
"What's it like to be only twenty-four and dying?"
"Well, it could be worse."
"Like what?"
"Well, like being fifty and having no values or ideals—like being fifty and thinking that booze, seducing women, and making money are the real biggies in life."
I began to look through my mental file cabinet under "S" where I had filed Tommy as strange. (It seems as though everybody I try to reject by classification, God sends back into my life to educate me.)
"But what I really came to see you about," Tom said, "is something you said to me on the last day of class."
So he'd remembered!
He continued, "I asked you if you thought I would ever find God and you said, 'No!' That surprised me. Then you said, 'But He will find you.' I thought about that a lot, even though my search for God was hardly intense at that time."
My clever line. He'd thought about that a lot!
"But when the doctors removed a lump from my groin and told me that it was malignant, that's when I got serious about locating God. And when the malignancy spread into my vital organs, I really began banging bloody fists against the bronze doors of Heaven. But God did not come out. In fact, nothing happened. Did you ever try anything for a long time with great effort but no success? You get psychologically glutted, fed up with trying. And then you quit. …
"Well, one day I woke up, and instead of throwing a few more futile appeals over that high brick wall to a God who may be or may not be there, I just quit. I decided that I didn't really care about God, about an afterlife, or anything like that. I decided to spend what time I had left doing something more profitable. I thought about you and your class, and I remembered something else you had said: 'The essential sadness is to go through life without loving. But it would be almost equally sad to go through life and leave this world without ever telling those you loved that you had loved them.'"
"So I began with the hardest one, my dad. He was reading the newspaper when I approached him. 'Dad?'"
"Yes, what?" he asked without lowering the newspaper.
"Dad, I would like to talk with you."
"Well, talk."
"I mean … it's really important."
The newspaper came down three slow inches. "What is it?"
"Dad, I love you, I just wanted you to know that." Tom smiled at me and said it with obvious satisfaction, as though he felt a warm and secret joy flowing inside of him. "The newspaper fluttered to the floor. Then my father did two things I could never remember him ever doing before. He cried and he hugged me. We talked all night, even though he had to go to work the next morning. It felt so good to be close to my father, to see his tears, to feel his hug, to hear him say that he loved me."
"It was easier with my mother and little brother. They cried with me, too, and we hugged each other, and started saying real nice things to each other. We shared the things we had been keeping secret for so many years.
"I was only sorry about one thing—that I had waited so long. Here I was, just beginning to open up to all the people I had actually been closest to.
"Then one day I turned around, and God was there. He didn't come to me when I pleaded with Him. I guess I was like an animal trainer holding out a hoop, 'C'mon, jump through. C'mon, I'll give you three days, three weeks.' Apparently God does things in His own way and at His own hour. But the important thing is that He was there. He found me. You were right. He found me even after I'd stopped looking for Him."
"Tommy," I practically gasped, "I think you are saying something very important and much more universal than you realize. To me, at least, you are saying that the surest way to find God is not to make Him a private possession, a problem solver, or an instant consolation in time of need, but rather by opening to love. You know, the apostle John said that. He said: 'God is love, and anyone who lives in love is living with God and God is living in him.' Tom, could I ask a favor of you? You know, when I had you in class you were a real pain. But you can make it all up to me now. Would you come into my present Theology of Faith course and tell them what you have just told me? If I told them the same thing, it wouldn't be half as effective as if you were to tell it."
"Oh, I was ready for you, but I don't know if I'm ready for your class."
"Tom, think about it. If and when you're ready, give me a call."
In a few days Tom called and said he was ready for the class, that he wanted to do that for God and for me. We scheduled a date, but he never made it. He had another

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What Rogue State?

How I spent my 15 minutes of fame
By William Blum
In case you don't know, on January 19 the latest audiotape from Osama bin Laden was released and in it he declared: "If you [Americans] are sincere in your desire for peace and security, we have answered you. And if Bush decides to carry on with his lies and oppression, then it would be useful for you to read the book 'Rogue State', which states in its introduction ..." He then goes on to quote the opening of a paragraph I wrote (which appears actually in the Foreword of the British edition only, that was later translated to Arabic), which in full reads:
"If I were the president, I could stop terrorist attacks against the United States in a few days. Permanently. I would first apologize—very publicly and very sincerely—to all the widows and the orphans, the impoverished and the tortured, and all the many millions of other victims of American imperialism. I would then announce that America's global interventions—including the awful bombings—have come to an end. And I would inform Israel that it is no longer the 51st state of the union but—oddly enough—a foreign country. I would then reduce the military budget by at least 90% and use the savings to pay reparations to the victims and repair the damage from the many American bombings and invasions. There would be more than enough money. Do you know what one year of the US military budget is equal to? One year. It's equal to more than $20,000 per hour for every hour since Jesus Christ was born.
"That's what I'd do on my first three days in the White House. On the fourth day, I'd be assassinated."
Within hours I was swamped by the media and soon appeared on many of the leading TV shows, dozens of radio programs, with long profiles in the Washington Post, Salon.com and elsewhere. In the previous ten years the Post had declined to print a single one of my letters, most of which had pointed out errors in their foreign news coverage. Now my photo was on page one.
Much of the media wanted me to say that I was repulsed by bin Laden's "endorsement". I did not say I was repulsed because I was not. After a couple of days of interviews I got my reply together and it usually went something like this:
"There are two elements involved here: On the one hand, I totally despise any kind of religious fundamentalism and the societies spawned by such, like the Taliban in Afghanistan. On the other hand, I'm a member of a movement which has the very ambitious goal of slowing down, if not stopping, the American Empire, to keep it from continuing to go round the world doing things like bombings, invasions, overthrowing governments, and torture. To have any success, we need to reach the American people with our message. And to reach the American people we need to have access to the mass media. What has just happened has given me the opportunity to reach millions of people I would otherwise never reach. Why should I not be glad about that? How could I let such an opportunity go to waste?"
Celebrity—modern civilization's highest cultural achievement—is a peculiar phenomenon. It really isn't worth anything unless you do something with it.
The callers into the programs I was on, and sometimes the host, in addition to numerous emails, repeated two main arguments against me.
(1) Where else but in the United States could I have the freedom to say what I was saying on national media?
Besides their profound ignorance in not knowing of scores of countries with at least equal freedom of speech (particularly since September 11), what they are saying in effect is that I should be so grateful for my freedom of speech that I should show my gratitude by not exercising that freedom. If they're not saying that, they're not saying anything.
(2) America has always done marvelous things for the world, from the Marshall Plan and defeating communism and the Taliban to rebuilding destroyed countries and freeing Iraq.
I have dealt with these myths and misconceptions previously; like sub-atomic particles, they behave differently when observed. For example, in last month's report I pointed out in detail that "destroyed countries" were usually destroyed by American bombs; and America did not rebuild them. As to the Taliban, the United States overthrew a secular, women's-rights government in Afghanistan, which led to the Taliban coming to power; so the US can hardly be honored for ousting the Taliban a decade later, replacing it with an American occupation, an American puppet president, assorted warlords, and women chained.
But try to explain all these fine points in the minute or so one has on radio or TV. However, I think I somehow managed to squeeze in a lot of information and thoughts new to the American psyche.
Some hosts and many callers were clearly pained to hear me say that anti-American terrorists are retaliating against the harm done to their countries by US foreign policy, and are not just evil, mindless, madmen from another planet.
Just recently we have been hearing and reading comments in the American media about how hopelessly backward and violent were those Muslims protesting the Danish cartoons, carrying signs calling for the beheading of those that insult Islam. But a caller to a radio program I was on said I "should be taken care of", and one of the hundreds of nasty emails I received began: "Death to you and your family."
One of my personal favorite moments: On an AM radio program in Pennsylvania, discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
The host (with anguish in her voice): "What has Israel ever done to the Palestinians?"
Me: "Have you been in a coma the past 20 years?" This is a question I could ask many of those who interrogated me the past few weeks. Actually, 60 years would be more appropriate.
Americans are all taught from childhood on of the significance and sanctity of free elections: You can't have the thing called "democracy" without the thing called "free elections". And when you have the thing called free elections it's virtually synonymous with having the thing called democracy. And who were we taught was the greatest champion of free elections anywhere in the world? Why, our very same teacher, God's country, the good ol' US of A.
But what was God's country actually doing all those years we were absorbing and swearing by this message? God's country was actually interfering in free elections in every corner of the known world; seriously so.
The latest example is the recent elections in Palestine, where the US Agency for International Development (AID) poured in some two million dollars (a huge amount in that impoverished area) to try to tilt the election to the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its political wing, Fatah, and prevent the radical Islamic group Hamas from taking power. The money was spent on various social programs and events to increase the popularity of the PA; the projects bore no evidence of US involvement and did not fall within the definitions of traditional development work. In addition, the United States funded many newspaper advertisements publicizing these projects in the name of the PA, with no mention of AID.
"Public outreach is integrated into the design of each project to highlight the role of the P.A. in meeting citizens needs," said a progress report on the projects. "The plan is to have events running every day of the coming week, beginning 13 January, such that there is a constant stream of announcements and public outreach about positive happenings all over Palestinian areas in the critical week before the elections."
Under the rules of the Palestinian election system, campaigns and candidates were prohibited from accepting money from foreign sources. American law explicitly forbids the same in US elections.
Since Hamas won the election, the United States has made it clear that it does not recognize the election as any kind of victory for democracy and that it has no intention of having normal diplomatic relations with the Hamas government. (Israel has adopted a similar attitude, but it should not be forgotten that Israel funded and supported the emergence of Hamas in Gaza during its early days, hoping that it would challenge the Palestine Liberation Organization as well as Palestinian leftist elements.)
By my count, there have been more than 30 instances of gross Washington interference in foreign elections since the end of World War II—from Italy in 1948 and the Philippines and Lebanon in the 1950s, to Nicaragua, Bolivia and Slovakia in the 2000s—most of them carried out in an even more flagrant manner than the Palestinian example. Some of the techniques employed have been used in the United States itself as our electoral system, once the object of much national and international pride, has slid inexorably from "one person, one vote", to "one dollar, one vote".
On January 13 the United States of America, in its shocking and awesome wisdom, saw fit to fly an unmanned Predator aircraft over a remote village in the sovereign nation of Pakistan and fire a Hellfire missile into a residential compound in an attempt to kill some "bad guys". Several houses were incinerated, 18 people were killed, including an unknown number of "bad guys"; reports since then give every indication that the unknown number is as low as zero, al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri, the principal target, not being amongst them. Outrage is still being expressed in Pakistan. In the United States the reaction in the Senate typified the American outrage:
"We apologize, but I can't tell you that we wouldn't do the same thing again" said Sen. John McCain of Arizona "It's a regrettable situation, but what else are we supposed to do?" said Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana. "My information is that this strike was clearly justified by the intelligence," said Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi.
Similar US attacks using such drones and missiles have angered citizens and political leaders in Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen. In has not been uncommon for the destruction to be so complete that it is impossible to establish who was killed, or even how many people. Amnesty International has lodged complaints with the Busheviks following each suspected Predator strike. A UN report in the wake of the 2002 strike in Yemen called it "an alarming precedent [and] a clear case of extrajudicial killing" in violation of international laws and treaties.
Can it be imagined that American officials would fire a missile into a house in Paris or London or Ottawa because they suspected that high-ranking al Qaeda members were present there? Even if the US knew of their presence for an absolute fact, and not just speculation as in the Predator cases mentioned above? Well, most likely not, but can we put anything past Swaggering-Superarrogant-Superpower-Cowboys-on-steroids? After all, they've already done it to their own, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. On May 13, 1985, a bomb dropped by a police helicopter burned down an entire block, some 60 homes destroyed, 11 dead, including several small children. The police, the mayor's office, and the FBI were all involved in this effort to evict an organization called MOVE from the house they lived in.
The victims were all black, of course. So let's rephrase the question. Can it be imagined that American officials would fire a missile into a residential area of Beverly Hills or the upper east side of Manhattan? Stay tuned.

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