Thanks Winter Patriot.

I urge Patrick S. Poole

Morning Winter,

You're pretty good at starting heavy discussions, aren't you. It's quite a talent to be able to force people to think "deep".

Awesome interview with Dahr Jamail. Those are great names and actually there are quite a few I have never heard of. I will check them all out.

In the future I will be referring to insurgents as "patriots" and I hate to say it because I have found many friends here and I don't want to offend them, but for quite a while I have been secretly cheering when the Iraqi patriots score a hit. I'm very sorry. We are talking about people here (albeit misled people) but the damage, destruction and murder of this country just goes on and on with no indication that it will ever stop. None of these patriots asked for this disaster. None of them felt strongly enough about ousting Hussein to coordinate like this. So it must be really, really bad for them. I'm sorry, just trying to be honest and you do that with friends, right?

Of course, friend taco will say that every one of the writers are secretly Syrians and Iranians out to trick the world!!!!

I too read the interview with Dahr Jamail. Interesting that he lived in Alaska for some years as did I.

He and Senator Biden have the same conclusion about Iraq in one sense.

Senator Joe Biden was right to say, during the Condi Rice show in the Senate, that "Rumsfeld does not know what the hell he is doing" concerning Iraq.

Rice did not deny it. Its on the record.

Patriots defend their homeland. Our boys and girls thought that's what they were doing. Some still believe that. Patriots also question the wisdom of the government that makes decisions and acts in their name. When you claim to be a patriot by invading another country for any reason other than legitmate self-defense, you are no longer a patriot. You are a perpetrator of evil, no matter how strongly you wish to believe otherwise. Help people overthrow a tyrant if you must. Doing it for them is never a good idea. That's why they call it "self-determination." I don't hope one way or the other. I know this will be the third military defeat in our history. It always happens when we invade another country for no legitimate purpose. We turned the War of 1812 (we invaded Canada) into a victory, after the British sacked Washinton D.C. and burned the White House down. Maybe we should invade Canada again. Just a thouyght. It wasn't really a victory. We claim we one every major battle in Viet Nam, but the damn media and the peaceniks lost the war for us. More nonsense. And this will be no different and no one responsible will have to take the blame. They never do. I would love to be proved wrong. Let's work on it.

I forget who it was and it was on another thread, but she said that we should have stayed in Afghanistan and really done what we went there to do. I agree. I also think many of us were easily taken in before the shock of 9/11 wore off. We blew it. And we are all responsible, even those against the war in Afghanistan, because we allowed this to happen on our watch. It's up to us to put it right. As Colin Powell told Bush before he went into Iraq, "You break it, you own it."

in comment #4, LGM wrote:

"Maybe we should invade Canada again."

Please tell me you're joking!

"I forget who it was and it was on another thread, but she said that we should have stayed in Afghanistan and really done what we went there to do. I agree."

Sorry, LGM, but I don't agree with you here either! In my view, we never had any business going into Afghanistan in the first place. What we should have done was to find out who was responsible for 9/11. That still hasn't happened. Until and unless we do that, we have no business bombing or invading or even prosecuting anybody for it.

"I also think many of us were easily taken in [...]"

You got that right!

"And we are all responsible, even those against the war in Afghanistan, because we allowed this to happen on our watch."

I disagree with you here as well. How can the people who opposed the war be held responsible for the fact that it happened? It wasn't our watch. We were watching --- in horror --- but we were not in charge. Please!

Blame the war on the people who started it, not the people who opposed it. And please remember that the people who started the war were in Washington, not in Kabul.

Yes, yes,and again yes, Winter Patriot. We have been being taken for a ride whose point of departure was a satiated, dumbed-down, consumemaniacal, couch potato, movie-world, asleep-at-the-switch national electorate and whose terminus is Hades. It's our job to put on the brakes, NOW, because the dark depot is in sight.

Why is it that Hell is only imaginable to most people after they've seen it?

Jeez I hope you were just kidding about invading Canada again LGM. This here Canuck doesn't want to start fighting with her new friends!

I think LGM was kidding.

By "our" he refers not to personalities but states.

Rest easy Cheryl, Canada is too cool!

W.P. #5
What's with all this 'invasion' fever going around?
I agree with what you wrote with one change-that we not only 'should have done is find out about 911' but we SHOULD even now find out about 911.

Where are the remains of the 757 that hit the Pentagon? Why was building 7 at the WTC 'pulled'?
Why was informantion pre 911 ignored. Why did gWb broadcast so widely and loudly that he was going on 'vacation' for the month of August?
What are the odds of a pRes family being friends and business partners with a family whose 'black sheep' son would coordinate the 911 attack?

What are the odds that a Vice pRes family would be friends of a family who had a 'black sheep' son who would shoot with intent to kill a President (Reagan), which would elevate that V.P. to P.? And that would be the Bush family twice and the Bin Ladens-then the Hinkley's-in the order given.

Lightning strikes twice! And the lightning just like the vote count always worked to benefit the Bush's.

Follow the money trail, follow the 'who benefits' trail and the megabuck always stops at the bush front door.

I think he was kidding too, Dredd. I was just teasing him back.

>"Maybe we should invade Canada again."

Please tell me you're joking!

If it would get the British to burn down the White House again... yeah, I was half joking. I don't think a British invasion would do the trick. Maybe if Canada invaded us. Holland, maybe.

The issue of Afghanistan is not so simple. I am not sure we will ever know to everyone's satisfaction what really happened on 9/11. We still have folks who aren't satisfied with the final assessment of the JFK assassination. It could be that Oswald was trying to kill the Governor of Texas (bad timing and bad shooting on Oswald's part) and JFK just was an innocent bystander. That's what I was recently told, by someone in a position to have information not readily available to the rest of us yet. I am always skeptical. There are a few possibile scenarios that don't involve actual complicity by our Government in the event, just stupidity and negligence. We elected the people to office who allowed this to happen, all of it. We ARE the government here, so we all bear some responsibilty for it. And like it or not, in some cases you have to use force. If there was ever a case for it, that was it. And probably the only time it has been truly justified since WWII, if the facts we do have are accurate. The Bush family is a blight on this land. But we seem to live in a pond where the scum floats easily to the top. Having said that, I still think we need to be mindful of those who thought, and still do, that Bill and Hillary Clinton had something to do with the death of Vince Foster, Ron Brown and held Black Mass in the White House. We don't want to push it too far. They still think we are nuts because we know the election was stolen, again. From a purely objective standpoint, leaving morality out of the equation, the invasion of Afghanistan was ethically acceptable to the world. It passed that "global test" Kerry spoke of. And we managed to do what no one has done since Alexander the Great, pull it off. If Bush had quit while he was ahead... but he didn't. And he will pay for it. But so are the Iraqis paying for it. And so will we. Bush should have pushed himself away from the table. Iraq was one hand of poker too many. That's the way it is with gamblers and alcoholics.

One final note. There is a PBS Frontline called Rumsfeld's War. It's worth a look. Go to the PBS site and do a search. You can even watch it online with hispeed. You will learn, if you didn't already know, that Iraq was the initial target after 9/11. Afghanistan was an afterthought. Check out the program. Possible scenario: complete bunglers see an opportunity to cash in on their own incompetence. They may be evil and unscrupulous, they may be duplicitous and devious. I wouldn't go so far as to give them too much credit for being smart or clever. Neocons had been eyeing Iraq since 1992. With or without 9/11, it was inevitable.

LGM said, "if you didn't already know, that Iraq was the initial target after 9/11. Afghanistan was an afterthought." Iraq wasn't just simple country you could invade with just a few thousand troops. Afghanistan gave the Bushies the opportunity to get its war machine in place, Plus start the propaganda machine for going to war with Iraq. Something thats always bothered me about the World Trad Center investiagation. When The Oklahoma City bombing occured it weeks and months to put their conclusions together about who and why it happened. With the World Trade Center situation we knew who the perps were before they sun set that night. Along with the pictures of them. It will always smell fishy to me.

Sorry, LGM, but I have to disagree with much of what you have written here. I can't tell whether you're kidding, or trolling, or up to your eyebrows in disinformation, or just confused.

I've read your comment #11 four times now and the more I read it the more I think you're trolling. You've thrown way too many red herrings in there, and you've contradicted yourself too. If this isn't deliberate trolling then it's a damned good imitation.

Throw away all the red herrings. Forget Oswald, JFK and John Connally. This isn't about them. Forget Bill and Hillary Clinton too. This isn't about them either.

Get rid of the internal contradictions, too. Decide whether you think "we elected the people to office who allowed this to happen" or "we know the election was stolen, again". You can have one or the other, but not both.

On the topic of 9/11 and Afghanistan, you wrote:

[...] in some cases you have to use force. If there was ever a case for it, that was it. And probably the only time it has been truly justified since WWII, if the facts we do have are accurate.

I don't know what sort of "facts" you have but it seems to me that they are wildly inaccurate.

"From a purely objective standpoint, leaving morality out of the equation, the invasion of Afghanistan was ethically acceptable to the world."

Bullshit! Sorry to be so blunt about it, but why mince words? The American media pretended that the whole world supported the attack on Afghanistan, but that was not true at all.

It passed that "global test" Kerry spoke of.

It most certainly did not! We have never seen any evidence indicating that Afghanistan was complicit in the events of 9/11. All we had was hearsay. And on the other hand, we have all kinds of evidence indicating that the "official story" we were told was false, in many different respects!

I started this thread because I wanted you to read. I don't want to argue with you, and I don't want you to spend too much time reading ME.

So why don't you spend some time at this site, especially this page, and then tell me whether you still think the attack on Afghanistan was justified by any actual evidence.

WP: You are too kind!

Afghanistan was never intended to be a successful democracy...it was designed to be a fraudulent corporate democratic satellite state, just like Iraq, which is excatly what it has become! The Afghan election was a massive fraud to legitimize a corporate oil and gas stooge as President, Harmid Karzai. The War Lords are still in control of the country and it was the United States which allowed Karzai's chief rival to be ambushed by the Taliban and executed. The compliant Karzai immediately went to work, paving the way for an American and Saudi gas pipeline through Afghanistan, after negotiations broke off with the Taliban just three months before 9/11.

There is now substantial incriminating evidence to implicate the role of the United States Government in the attacks of 9/11. While it may not be direct evidence, it is circumstantial enough that the great weight of evidence should cause an independent prosecutor and Grand Jury to be appointed. It's all a matter of piecing the pieces of the puzzle together to create the broader picture. There should be a massive independent criminal investigation and prosecution of 9/11 crimes that includes the role of the Bush White House and family, the CIA, NSA, Pentagon, the bin Laden family, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and others. This would include the role of the Bush connected Riggs Bank, which members of the Saudi Royal Family used to funnel money to two of the hijackers. The blacking out by the Bush White House of the entire Saudi section on the Congressional 9/11 report. The permission for key Saudi's to flee the country hours after the Saudi Ambassador met with George Bush, including the Chief of Saudi Intelligence and other prominent Saudi's who were allowed to leave Las Vegas, where Mohammed Atta and several of the hijackers visited several times just before 9/11. A few little pre-suicide gambling jaunts? Ha! I don't think so!

The Saudi Intelligence Chief was also a principal in the Afghan Gas Pipeline joint effort with the United States. And other very critical pieces of this puzzle, including Pentagon flights and anti-terrorism preparedness tests scheduled for 9/11, delays in military response, and why the White House Emergency Response Director was conveniently travelling with George Bush to Florida that day and not in the White House, where she usually is? I've already addressed the failures and conflicts of the 9/11 Commission in another thread, but there is so much more!

I believe there is a reason that Cuba was chosen to detain alleged terrorists...possibly forever...and it has nothing to do with protecting us...but protecting the White House. They have control of the evidence and witnesses, the Congress, the CIA, FBI and the Justice Department, all of which we would need to discover the truth about 9/11. By detaining potential terror suspects in Cuba, the President himself acts as prosecutor, judge, and jury...even defense counsel...by the "war" authority granted to him and the Pentagon. Therefore, prisoners, under their logic, can be held without trial, without counsel, without communication, and without a public trial, where their civilian defense may uncover and expose the role of the United States in media covered US courts and where the White House and Pentagon do not have total information control! The Supreme Court said such actions cannot go on forever, but then didn't clarify what they meant! Gee! How convenient!

It's such an irony that such Soviet style justice is being meted out by the United States on the island of Cuba! I believe it was so critical for Bush to win re-election in order to keep a lid on the truth about 9/11, that election fraud was not an option, but a necessity. A public revelation that our government was involved in 9/11, and the wars that followed in Afghanistan and Iraq were part of a home-grown criminal conspiracy, would probably collapse the government entirely.

Without a complete independent investigation and prosecution of 9/11, that includes the subpoena power to reach beyond National Security and Executive Privilege claims, we are a nation without a soul. We are a nation which sits on the corpses of thousands screaming for justice and the thousands more we ourselves, through our government, have murdered since in Afghanistan and Iraq.

There is sufficient probable cause to justify such an investigation, but as long as our government fails to provide us with this vehicle for justice, and obstructs it instead, we are only left to assume they have something to hide, which is increasingly clear they do.

It should also be noted, a charge of murder is not restricted to the actual perpetrators of the crime, but those who aided and abetted that crime. And that aid can come from not only an "act", but an "omission". When someone has a legal duty to protect another, but for any reason intentionally and knowingly fails to provide that protection to permit a crime against those they are obliged to protect, then the person or persons with that duty are considered under the law just as guilty as those who planned and carried out the crime. It is called "transferred intent" and would be the charge brought against George W. Bush for standing down the security of the country in order to permit the attacks of 9/11.

It is not a far stretch, considering George Bush is already an unindicted war criminal who is now responsible for murdering and maiming tens of thousands, no matter how much they try to legalize or justify his crimes. It is now very clear that George Bush was planning to invade Iraq from the first day he took office, Pentagon maps were prepared in March 2001 on how to seize and distribute Iraqi oil and gas fields, Cheney's less than public energy meetings also included Iraqi oil and gas mapping, and then Taliban gas pipeline negotiations failed in June 2001.

In order to advance their policy agendas all they needed to do was wait for a triggering event that would provide the "political capital" they needed to launch their pre-planned invasions on behalf of the energy companies and military contractors who would benefit from the conspiracy. It only takes two or more people to engage in a criminal conspiracy. George Bush and Dick Cheney are two or more people.

The question is, do we wait for a government with a conscience to do what is right and thoroughly investigate and prosecute the crimes, simply accept the official lies and cover-ups, or take some form of corrective action ourselves to force the issue to a head for resolution? Again, no easy answers, but another demand on our growing list that already includes election reform, corporate reform, energy transition, foreign policy/military reform, media anti-trust reform, and so on...

It's probably safe to assume that it will be a very frozen day in hell before we see any of that from this corporate government. Maybe a new People's government, but not this one!

Viva la Revolucion!

Freebird

PS: See, you all got me confused...LOL! I forgot what I was going to say originally. Don't worry about Canada being invaded...there are already US military plans in place to do just that under the guise of mutual defense support. If you are worried about right-wing corporate and industrial joint Canadian/US military and intelligence coordination, you need to read this...now:

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO411C.html

(Sorry...I'm still a link dummy...WP and LGM...peace! lol

In arguments both for and against the war in Afghanistan. Consider this, a thousand mile pipline crossing Afghanistan from Turkmenistan to the Coast of Pakistan carring trillions of cubic feet of natural gas. Now consider the multibillion dollar contracts to build it and miltibilion dollar contracts to process said natural gas so it can be shipped worldwide in seagoing tanksrs. Consider what oil companies and large contractors who will benefit. Then I think you will see more than one reason the USA is in Afghanistan.

Freebird wrote:

"WP: You are too kind! "

Whaddaya mean by that? Is that some kind of a smear or something? Come on, Freebird! Tell us what you really mean!!

Sorry about the typos. Afghanistan is little more than a Franchise Government for US oil and gas interests. Soon Iraq will be.

I'd like to know what showdown is going to occur around the Caspian Sea with Russia and the other provinces involved with the pipelines.

How could it possibly come about that the 911 plot would be revealed? Wouldn't we have to depend on some major double-crossing?
We can't take corrective action ourselves as we would be dead in minus two seconds.

Who else are these people working with besides the Saudis?

And the Iraq oil fields are vast and I think it is unclear as to who is going to get control.

It is beyond belief to me that so many people parrot that phrase, "we were right to do into Afghanistan". I cringe everytime I hear it.
It was all part of the Osama Bin Laden terrorist hoax (remember the War on Terror?). Yeah, we were smoking out Osama with his dialysis machine clacking across the desert.
Everybody remember: PIPELINE, PIPELINE, PIPELINE. GAS, OIL, MURDER.

Excellent sites Winter Patriot. I am not in disagreement with, or in denial of much of it and shall read through it further. I am extremely skeptical of any information I don't get through direct experience, and may only accept half of that. I can also see other possible scenarios, finding it difficult to accept that people are that good at keeping secrets. Three men can keep a secret if three are dead. I'm very much a cynic. A country like ours will always have a military, it's even in the constitution, with specific guidelines for it's employment and the steps necessary to declare war. That has been rendered nonsense for the most part. I made some posts to another thread that you will come across, hopefully that will put you at some ease with respect to whether I am a troll. What I am concerned about is that you consider the population at large here. I want to see a groundswell of a movement progressing in the direction I know or feel, depending on my state of mind, is the best for the planet as a whole. Most of these folks still see imaginary boundaries where you and I realize that there really are none. If we had raised them from birth, we may have chosen not to fill their heads with notions of Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, (I use these images because I am in the west) and then an invasion of Afghanistan for the purpose that was offered, (instead of the pipeline that is now going ahead, fancy that) would have been acceptable to many people around the world. I didn't mean to imply all people. And neither did Kerry. Surely the Taliban objected, among others. But almost all people have beliefs. Some beliefs are terrible things, really and I consider belief to be a very low level of consciusness, way below theory, which is not perfect either. There comes a time when you can safely break it to a child that there is no Santa Claus. Or prove to an adult that his theory doesn't hold water. There must be a way to deal with beliefs and theories that doesn't require you to hit them with the truths or refutations in such a manner as to alienate them from your ideas. Right now I would like to see the country accept that the electoral process is not only flawed, but frought with fraud. From this realization will come other realizations, I hope. We can debate the possibilities on the other topics here, or not. I wasn't there, so I don't know, but am always interested in the debate. I was never very good on juries. People have a difficult time convincing me of anything I am not already convinced of. It gets worse the older I get. At my age it's difficult to start each day knowing that I don't know anything at all, but that's where I try to start. Someday soon, I may take the hemlock.

One final point. I like Castro. I like Hugo Chavez. The U.S. Government doesn't like either of those gentleman. Although the U.S. initially backed Castro, they soon found out he wasn't going to be their puppet. That's why I like the man. They never liked Chavez in Venezuela. And they were behind the coup there. I have spent some considerable time in libraries and on the net looking at much of the same information you folks do. When the U.S. Government backs Yuschenko in the Ukraine, I get suspicious, because I, like you, don't trust the U.S. Government. Yet some of you folks seem to support the U.S. pick in the Ukraine. Isn't that an "internal contradiction"? Why would they be right in the Ukraine, but wrong in Venezuela?

Here's a site for you. It has some interesting observations on the elections in the Ukraine, 9/11, etc.

http://www.tenc.net/

Freebird wrote:
"(Sorry...I'm still a link dummy...WP and LGM...peace! lol"

So am I, but I have seen that site and info. I wanted Canada to invade us. If we invaded you, you might invade us back. You would never do it pre-emptively. Try it, you might like it. George seems to think it's fun. I can only handle the weather in the PNW, but the last time I was in Vancouver it was still the cleanest big city I have seen since S.F in the '60s, and that was two weeks into a garbage strike. I used to have a "U.S. out of North America" bumper sticker. I don't think I've seen one of those in over 30 years. Maybe it's time to print some up.

Some good names on that list. Some weird stuff also.

But then we come to this:
"Controversial Australian journalist Joe Vialls" "overview of the future of the Western Hemisphere, "Fortress America" which reveals the Zionists’ real plan to move and expand Eretz Israel once the Middle East has been destroyed in a nuclear Armageddon."

Really. This is anti-semittic propaganda in it's most classical sense. Protocols of the elders of Zion and all that shit. Not anti-semittism in the sense of "anyone slightly critical of Israel's policies is an anti-semite" but anti-semittism of the neo-nazi kind. It's scary, and does the cause for peace and justice absolutely no good, to see that put in between Dahr Jamail and Mark Morford.

Winter Patriot! #18 LOL Calm down! I was just thanking you for the comment in your blog where you had mentioned enjoying my writing!

LGM...it's good to be suspicious, on guard, and always questioning. I trust the government zero percent of the time, which is a credibility not a publicity problem for Washington. The real problem is they think it's a publicity problem and that's why they have no credibility!

Re: Foreigner's comment: 1 out of 9 ain't too bad.

Re: Freebird's comment on trust in government: I wish I had an answer to this conundrum. Neither the right or the left trust the government or the MSM. This is not good when your country inhabits two sides of a parallel universe. Civil war or divorce? This has been suggested as part of the strategy of the Bush privateers. If both sides of the electorate distrust the government, it's easier to do away with it. We don't want that. We want to restore accountability and change the system so that scum no longer floats to the top of the pond, from either party. Government is people, a bureaucracy, but still made up of people. It's not inherently evil, just cumbersome, non-responsive and prone to corruption. Corruption in governmental agencies was something I studied in college when I majored in Criminal Justice. This comes from a Georgist economist.

>"Public choice is the branch of economics that studies the decisions of voters and government officials. Having concentrated benefits while spreading the cost thinly among consumers and taxpayers leads to seeking privileges, subsidies, special protections, and other transfers. Mass democracy and the need for expensive media campaigns leads to this transfer seeking. Switching to small-group voting with bottom-up multi-level governance, along with constitutional constraints, minimizes this corruption."

It makes sense.

This is what the kooks like Grover Norquist, and the Cato Institute, and other right Libertarian think tanks that Bush listens to would like to do:
Kill the government, or throw the baby out with the bath water, because the water is dirty.

Mike Huben does a wonderful job of exposing this hypocrisy in his funny parody piece of David Bergland's

(BTW, Horatio Alger was a pedophile and it galls me no end that people call Ayn Rand a "philosopher". She was a cheesey romance novelist at best.)

"Libertarianism in One Lesson"

http://world.std.com/~mhuben/onelesson.html

>No, this isn't David Bergland's evangelistic text. This is an outsider's view of the precepts of libertarianism. I hope you can laugh at how close this is to real libertarianism!

Introduction

One of the most attractive features of libertarianism is that it is basically a very simple ideology. Maybe even simpler than Marxism, since you don't have to learn foreign words like "proletariat".

This brief outline will give you most of the tools you need to hit the ground running as a freshly indoctrinated libertarian ideologue. Go forth and proselytize!

Philosophy

In the beginning, man dwelt in a state of Nature, until the serpent Government tempted man into Initial Coercion.

Government is the Great Satan. All Evil comes from Government, and all Good from the Market, according to the Ayatollah Rand.

We must worship the Horatio Alger fantasy that the meritorious few will just happen to have the lucky breaks that make them rich. Libertarians happen to be the meritorious few by ideological correctness. The rest can go hang.

Government cannot own things because only individuals can own things. Except for corporations, partnerships, joint ownership, marriage, and anything else we except but government.
Parrot these arguments, and you too will be a singular, creative, reasoning individualist.

Parents cannot choose a government for their children any more than they can choose language, residence, school, or religion.

Taxation is theft because we have a right to squat in the US and benefit from defense, infrastructure, police, courts, etc. without obligation.

Magic incantations can overturn society and bring about libertopia. Sovereign citizenry! The 16th Amendment is invalid! States rights!

Objectivist/Neo-Tech Advantage #69i : The true measure of fully integrated honesty is whether the sucker has opened his wallet. Thus sayeth the Profit Wallace. Zonpower Rules Nerdspace!
T
he great Zen riddle of libertarianism: minimal government is necessary and unnecessary. The answer is only to be found by individuals.

Government

Libertarians invented outrage over government waste, bureaucracy, injustice, etc. Nobody else thinks they are bad, knows they exist, or works to stop them.

Enlightenment comes only through repetition of the sacred mantra "Government does not work" according to Guru Browne.

Only government is force, no matter how many Indians were killed by settlers to acquire their property, no matter how many blacks were enslaved and sold by private companies, no matter how many heads of union members are broken by private police.

Money that government touches spontaneously combusts, destroying the economy. Money retained by individuals grows the economy, even if literally burnt.

Private education works, public education doesn't. The publicly educated masses that have grown the modern economies of the past 150 years are an illusion.

Market failures, trusts, and oligopolies are lies spread by the evil economists serving the government as described in the "Protocols of the Elders of Statism".

Central planning cannot work. Which is why all businesses internally are run like little markets, with no centralized leadership.

Paternalism is the worst thing that can be inflicted upon people, as everyone knows that fathers are the most hated and reviled figures in the world.

Government is like fire, a dangerous servant and a fearsome master. Therefore, we should avoid it entirely, as we do all forms of combustion.

Regulation

The FDA is solely responsible for any death or sickness where it might have prevented treatment by the latest unproven fad.

Children, criminals, death cultists, and you all have the same inalienable right to own any weaponry: conventional, chemical, biological, or nuclear.

All food, drugs, and medical treatments should be entirely unregulated: every industry should be able to kill 300,000 per year in the US like the tobacco industry.

If you don't have a gun, you are not a libertarian. If you do have a gun, why don't you have even more powerful armament?

Better to abolish all regulations, consider everything as property, and solve all controversy by civil lawsuit over damages. The US doesn't have enough lawyers, and people who can't afford to invest many thousands of dollars in lawsuits should shut up.

Libertarian Party

The Libertarian Party is well on its way to dominating the political landscape, judging from its power base of 100+ elected dogcatchers and other important officials after 25 years of effort.

The "Party of Oxymoron": "Individualists unite!"
Flip answers are more powerful than the best reasoned arguments, which is why so many libertarians are in important government positions.

It's time the new pro-freedom libertarian platform was implemented; child labor, orphanages, sweatshops, poorhouses, company towns, monopolies, trusts, cartels, blacklists, private goons, slumlords, etc.

Libertarianism "rules" Internet political debate the same way US Communism "ruled" pamphleteering.

No compromise from the "Party of Principle".
Justice, happiness, liberty, guns, and other good stuff come only from rigidly adhering to inflexible dogmas.

Minimal government is whatever we say it is, and we don't agree.

Government is "moving steadily in a libertarian direction" with every change libertarians approve of; no matter if it takes one step forward and two steps backwards.

Yes, the symbol of the Libertarian Party is a Big Government Statue. It's not supposed to be funny or ironic!

Political Debate Strategy

Count only the benefits of libertarianism, count only the costs of government.

Five of a factoid beats a full argument.

All historical examples are tainted by statism, except when they favor libertarian claims.

Spiritually baptize the deceased as libertarians because they cannot protest the anachronism: Locke, Smith, Paine, Jefferson, Spooner, etc.

The most heavily armed libertarian has the biggest dick and thus the best argument.

The best multi-party democratic republics should be equated to the worst dictatorships for the purposes of denouncing statism. It's only a matter of degree.

Inviolate private property is the only true measure of freedom. Those without property have the freedom to try to acquire it. If they can't, let them find somebody else's property to complain on.

Private ownership is the cure for all problems, despite the historical record of privately owned states such as Nazi Germany, Czarist and Stalinist Russia, and Maoist China.

Require perfection as the only applicable standard to judge government: libertarianism, being imaginary, cannot be fairly judged to have flaws.

Only libertarian economists' Nobel Prizes count: the other economists and Nobel Prize Committee are mistaken.

Any exceptional case of private production proves that government ought not to be involved.

re #22:

LGM wrote "I made some posts to another thread that you will come across, hopefully that will put you at some ease with respect to whether I am a troll."

Gotcha! Thanks...

And one more thing: Please do not take the hemlock!!!

I am an anarchist.

Until people learn to govern themselves we cannot have a successful system.
I don't know whether it's a problem of evolution or not, but the relinquishing of power and decision making leads to rage and destruction. Of course, re-creation follows, so maybe it is an endless cycle.
But the failure of people to claim autonomy maddens me since it ruins the system I live in.

It is believed that anarchy is disorder. It isn't. It is the absence of a leader.

It starts in the family and the tribe--this withholding of individual power. All groups establish a hierarchy and then comes the resentment and eventually the revolt.
All the while the individual never learns how to govern his own actions, and all governments are shit.

It seems to me there are better ways to exit than the hemlock, LGM...too slow and uncomfortable.
The classic gun to the head would probably be less painful. Takes a lot of nerve, though.

So am I

>I am an anarchist.

Until people learn to govern themselves we cannot have a successful system.
I don't know whether it's a problem of evolution or not, but the relinquishing of power and decision making leads to rage and destruction. Of course, re-creation follows, so maybe it is an endless cycle.
But the failure of people to claim autonomy maddens me since it ruins the system I live in.

It is believed that anarchy is disorder. It isn't. It is the absence of a leader.

It starts in the family and the tribe--this withholding of individual power. All groups establish a hierarchy and then comes the resentment and eventually the revolt.
All the while the individual never learns how to govern his own actions, and all governments are shit.

"The will to a system is a lack of integrity."

Neitzsche

Neitzsche was often misunderstood and even used by lesser minds to further their own agendas. He hated anti-semitism, but his notion of the "superman" which really referred to what you speak of, Teresa, some call it anarchy, was abused by the Nazis. I would say that it is a bit more complicated than this,

"It is believed that anarchy is disorder. It isn't. It is the absence of a leader."

because a true anarchist must define anarchy for her or himself first. Never accept another's definition, because that would hardly make you an anarchist. In it's simplest form we are talking about people who choose neither to lead, nor follow, yet acting in concert for the common good or individually, doing no harm. Anarchy is the absence of dominance hierarchies. It has nothing to with disorder, any more than order has anything to do with peace. Some anthropologists see evidence that during the last 40,000 years, the majority of societies were essentially acephalous, leaderless or tribal and communal. Something happened about 10,000 years ago. Sone call it civilization. A leader without followers isn't much of a leader at all. Sadly, the converse is true, followers without a leader, will usually pick one of the followers to lead them. Not good. Behavioralist B.F. Skinner attempted to deal with this dilemma in his hypothetical utopia Walden II by choosing the one who least wanted the job as the leader of the hypothetical community. People who don't want to lead aren't necessarily followers. Leading and following are two sides to the same coin. I guess some sociologists call it the power perspective. If you seek power, you will have to follow after it, usually through some corrupt or corruptable system. A lack of integrity.

"He who lives by fighting with an enemy has an interest in preserving the enemy's life."

Neitzsche also said that. He is not readily accessible to most.

WinterPatriot,

I found the other post that I referred to, not important now, let me say that I have glanced at Kaminsky's 9/11 site and I find Dave MacGowan's site Center for an Informed America much more credible, but I remain skeptical. As you yourself suggested, and Foreigner pointed out, Kaminsky can get a bit "out there." And the David Vialls stuff is definitely "out there." I like a good conspiracy theory as much as the next guy. I even wear my tin foil hat in public, sometimes. If the Right Reverend Dobson on the right can suggest that SpongeBob Squarepants is gay, and he has, we can suggest that there is more to 9/11 than we or the rest of the world know. We are much closer to the truth than the Right Reverend Dobson. I really recommend this site to you all. It is a place that is long on the facts and leaves theory and conclusions to the rest of us. It is the Center for Cooperative Research and has the most exhaustive and definitive 9/11 timeline to date, starting in the 1980's, all resourced with links to source material. To read this massive collection and say it makes you suspicious is an understatement, but actual complicity... I still think incompetence, poor policy and judgement, negligence and stupidity are all viable explanations, as well.

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/index.jsp

I think that the aim of this administration was to perfect election fraud and spend us into the poorhouse to strangle the federal government and kill it. They have said as much countless times. I remain skeptical of most else because I refuse to consider this bunch of bunglers and crooks could pull anything else off. They are still evil criminals in my book. There are plenty of things they need to answer for that can and should be proved in a court of law.

>It seems to me there are better ways to exit than the hemlock, LGM...too slow and uncomfortable.
The classic gun to the head would probably be less painful. Takes a lot of nerve, though.

That was just an homage to Socrates and support for the death with dignity movement. As some of you may have noticed, now that the election is over, the right could give a damn about Ms. Schiavo in Florida. As a true anarchist, I would consider the mess a gun would leave for others to clean up. I would employ a different method. Death by hypothermia, a method D.H. Lawrence employed in his novel, "Women in Love" and carbon monoxide poisoning are almost pleasureable. I barely escaped death by CO poisoning once. Considering the way I used to live, I have about two or three lives left. I think I will die peacefully in my own bed just the same. Dreaming.

And WP, as always, I believe anything is possible, even the highly improbable. Nothing should surprise us. I'm just remain skeptical, not about election fraud or the rest of the completely obvious. I wouldn't put anything past these idiots. Having said that, I have been wrong before, many times.

>Having said that, I have been wrong before, many times.

Not that many times LGM.

>As a true anarchist, I would consider the mess a gun would leave for others to clean up. I would employ a different method. Death by hypothermia, a method D.H. Lawrence employed in his novel, "Women in Love" and carbon monoxide poisoning are almost pleasureable. I barely escaped death by CO poisoning once. Considering the way I used to live, I have about two or three lives left. I think I will die peacefully in my own bed just the same. Dreaming.

You may be right, about the anarchist implicating others in the cleanup.
I remember that from Women in Love. They say that that is a peaceful way to die. But a nurse told me that carbon monoxide poisoning is not the pleasure it's cracked up to be, judging from the looks of the body.

Thanks for the Neitzsche qotes. Sensible guy.
The relationship with the enemy is a fascinating one. It is so psychologically complex. And that seems to be right about preserving the enemy's life since his existence is necessary to the contract. There is so much to say. One puts a mythological face on the enemy and he becomes the hook for all that ones hates and fears in ones self. So in order to strive for perfection, he must keep the enemy alive as his source of reflection.

The lack of integrity is right, I believe, in the urge to lead and follow, since integrity means oneness.
It's interesting to observe the group behavior on this site as an example. Maybe we are getting there as it seems that the leadership position is tossed around. And there does seem to be a respect for individual self expression, as we fearlessly post our long and brilliant discourses.

It is interesting to speculate as to whether or not a leader is attached to in times of danger when the presence of an enemy is sensed. In that case, maybe right now we are not in as much danger as is supposed. Would we have all this time to ramble through our imaginations?

I wish you wouldn't do this! I clicked on the "10 best writers..." link, and spent hours reading and being linked to other great sites...This link leads to many other great links. Great job, as usual. Brad, keep up the good work, please!

John's great. I love his work. You should check out Les Visible since you seem to be interested in the finest writers on the internet. He's remarkable.

He's got two blogs with different formats at

http://lesvisible.blogspot.com/

and

http://smokingmirrors.blogspot.com/

He's also the author/composer of "9/11 was an Inside Job" here-

http://www.soundclick.co...gemusic.cfm?bandID=97737

He also just wrote a song called "God Bless You Cindy Sheehan here-

http://www.soundclick.co...=33200&content=music

I've taken it upon myself to promote this guy. He's basically changed my life and that's a good thing.

Carry on,

Bruce Mendelsohn