Realizing that they needed to rely on others, these businessmen took a new tack: using generous financing to enlist sympathetic clergymen as their champions. After all, according to one tycoon, polls showed that, “of all the groups in America, ministers had more to do with molding public opinion” than any other.
Phi Beta Iota: The 1% actually believe in “survival of the fittest” and earnestly consider most humans to be less than human, mere animals to be exploited as is their God-given right. Religions that regard others as heathen–this includes the Catholic, Islamic, Jewish, and Mormon religions–that “do not count,” are as corrupt as the governments they join in serving the 1%. Sluts lack integrity. It's time we stop following sluts, be they securlar or sanctimonious.
The former director of U.S. programs for production of nuclear materials and components for nuclear weapons, Clinton Bastin, sent an open letter to President Obama the morning of January 13, explaining that there is no weapons threat from Iran's fully safeguarded nuclear power and research programs. A copy of the letter, which the nuclear scientist also sent to the Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations, was made available to 21st Century Science & Technology magazine yesterday. It is reproduced below in full.
Bastin, who has served in leading positions in government since the 1950s, laid out the case on Iran in greater detail in an interview with 21st Century Science Nov. 18, 2011. The interview, which devastates the arguments for an Iranian nuclear weapons threat, is available at the 21st Century Science and Technology website.
Phi Beta Iota: The Iranians certainly have nuclear weapons ambitions. Bearing in mind that Zbigniew Brzezinski personally approved the Pakistani (Sunni) nuclear weapons program, it hardly seems fair to deprive the Iranian (Shi'ite) community of their own nuclear weapons program–from where we sit, they fear the Saudis and Pakistanis vastly more than they fear the USA. The bottom line is that the White House is not making decisions based on intelligence with integrity.
UPDATE 22 March 2012. The Iran situation appears to be theater:
1. To meet oil futures bets made by Israel, Iran, and Wall Street [the high end — some sources say that oil futures were also bought at the low end such that the oil producing countries are not receiving any kick from the higher prices]
2. To distract everyone from Israel pressing forward with more settlements and more atrocities against the Palestinians.
The only serious opposition to this arrogant Ruling Party is coming not from feckless Republicans but from what might be called the Country Party — and its vision is revolutionary. Our special Summer Issue cover story.
When Codevilla’s article appeared I stated that it was the most important essay I had ever read. I still believe this because it is a superb synthesis of class analysis with keen insights on contemporary power elite relationships regarding today’s rulers and the ruled.
This class division of present-day America into two factions, Court and Country, has absolutely nothing to do with any Marxian view or analysis. It is a reaffirmation of the seminal insights of Bernard Bailyn’s Pulitzer Prize winning volume, The Ideological Origins of the AmericanRevolution, and Murray N. Rothbard’s Conceived in Liberty.
These books demonstrate that the Founders’ world-view saw the crucial struggle of the Revolution as a battle of liberty versus power. Codevilla posits today’s battle in the same dramatic terms.
Every political movement needs a manifesto. The Tea Party surely needs one. So do other grassroots political resistance organizations. They don’t have it yet, but they now have its preliminary foundation, Angelo Codevilla’s essay, “America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution.”
. . . . . . .
I regard this essay as the finest statement on the two-fold division in American political life written in my lifetime — more than this, in the last hundred years. He has laid it out clearly, accurately, and eloquently.
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Codevilla correctly identifies the source of legitimacy for the ruling class: Darwinism. Darwinism removed God from the vocabulary of self-accredited academia. Once liberated from the doctrine of original sin, the Progressives regarded as illegitimate the Constitutional limits placed on the Federal government.
Sign the Pledge! Volunteer to “Die Off” for the Good of Humanity
Eagle: Ron Paul an Intellectual Revolution? Who Cares? said: “The way we live, work and play–all soon to be extinct, buried in the ground never to be seen again unless humans die off and just a few of us are left to start over.”
That's about the most idiotic argument I've ever heard. Humanity can only survive if most of us die? That's literal nihilism. Anyone who could make that kind of statement has completely run out of ideas and has no business telling anyone how to make the world a better place—–because they've already given up. It makes the kind of “doublethink” in the novel 1984 seem like profound wisdom by comparison. If humanity wants to survive we all need to die? Even the brainwashed citizens of Oceania wouldn't fall for that one; which makes me wonder why Eagle seems to have accepted it as a self-evident truth.
That argument not only accepts a dismal prophecy as an absolute certainty—–based on nothing more than an assertion—–it implies that we shouldn't even try to avoid our own extinction. We should embrace it! I wonder if the poster realizes what that statement reveals about his/her psychology? First, since most people want to keep living, Eagle is either suicidal or a blatant misanthrope who sees his fellow human beings as obstacles to a brighter future.
This is an irrational notion that many people subscribe to, at least subconsciously, in one way or another, but usually not to such an absurd degree. Democrats dream of that “great day” when Republicans magically disappear. Republicans dream of that “great day” when Democrats magically disappear. The Nazis dreamed of that “great day” when Jews would magically disappear. But just in case it didn't happen naturally, they though they would help it along a little.
I would like to know if Eagle is planning to sacrifice his/her life so that the remaining “few” can live? Of course it doesn't really matter. If humankind has gotten to the point where we would be happier if most of us died, then humanity is already doomed. If that's the extent to which we care about out fellow human beings, then perhaps we don't deserve to survive as a species.
Wishing that the majority of humanity would just die off, to me, is genocide by default. It's like saying to our fellow human inhabitants of the earth: “We don't care where you go, but you can't stay here.” If we all had that mindset, saving humanity would be impossible. It's what is known as a self-fulfilling prophecy. And since the prophecy is human extinction, forgive me if I don't bow down and worship the prophet.
I have a sneaky suspicion that this absurd mindset is somehow related to anarchy. If so, anarchists are not only bereft of workable solutions, they've mentally excluded them as even remote possibilities! If the best they can offer humanity is extinction, who needs them? I would be the first to stand aside and allow them to sign the pledge to commit suicide for the sake of the rest of humanity.
A: Community, and the social capital that weaves it together.
In my husband’s Latvian community, they have a concept similar to barnraising called “talka,” which describes collective volunteer work for the good of society and environment.
Several times a year we come together at our camp in the Catskill Mountains, and everybody chips in to maintain the property – clearing branches, building bridges, fixing roofs, painting, and whatever else needs to get done. No one gets paid for it (unless you count food, beer, and bonfires as payment), yet everyone helps.
Why?
Because we’re invested in ourselves and each other and are stakeholders in our community and believe that preserving and cultivating our culture matters.
So. How does that ethic translate to online community, and can we show that we have one?
**Let’s intentcast to bootstrap Creative Economy 3.0**
This web site honors Dr. Martin Luther King by pointing to specific links beginning with the first in isolation: he was assassinated by his own government. Truth & Reconciliation are the order of the day, but the reconciliation cannot begin until the truth is known to the full public.
“2013 and 2014 are what I am most worried about because this year everybody is trying to just get through the next election…Everybody is going to do their best to get us through the election. Watch out for 2013, Rogers told ET Now.
