damocles

That's very good! That is a keeper!:D But it is actually when you can see © it shifting into reverse. As always, the best of wishes.

Here is a riddle, then, a "cut" below the rest; When can light travel faster than light? As always, the best of wishes.

Two chords shy of a full load. I would like to tentavely suggest a "cut" as a possible solution for Turtle's riddle. As always, the best odf wishes.

As propaganda and comedy it was fairly amusing. As always, the best of wishes.

Wilson was a racist, a bigot, and a naive fool. What he did to whip this nation into a war frenzy during WW I makes GWB's antics seem positively juvenile. Never before or since have we ever had such a heavy handed propaganda machine seeking to mold public opinion. You do know that Goebels used it as a model for his own attempts to mold public opinion? On top of that, if you look at the sorry performance Wilson turned in at Versailles when Lloyd George and Georges Clemanceau frankly rolled him, you have to shake your head. Buffy, the reason that the American people turned fiercely isolationist in the 20's and 30's and turned their back on the League, you can lay at the feet of that imbecile, Wilson. He took an idealistic people into a horrible war, and when the American people woke up and smelled the stinking truth; they turned away from the inane internationalism that Wilson tried to ram down their throats. The American people went into WW I thinking they were saving the world for democracy and saw their sons and husbands murdered so that the Entente winners could carve up the losers' colonial possessions, and get a little revenge in at the same time. If the stench of the hypocrisy still offends me 88 years after the fact, can you imagine what the people of the time must have thought of the debacle that was WW I? It took pragmatists and realists to smash that European colonialist house of cards and set up a workable international system. You guessed it, Buffy, Roosevelt. He had to clean up Wilson's mess. I do not apologize for calling Wilson a pygmy. He was a very short man among a generation of very short men. It was the sunset of a foolish age and as is the case in sunsets, those pygies cast long shadows. No sarcasm, just a 1=1, which is backstopped by a lot of real history. A conservative conserves. He works hard at it. No time to sit still. But you are right he, the conservative, does measure outcomes before he acts. Wilson should have taken a few lessons from H.C Lodge before going to France. :eek2: Somebody has to drive! As always, the best wishes.

There is an illusion of American history that we fostered on ourselves and on the world. Earlier I listed the great butchers of history. I forgot one; The American people: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Wars That estimate of 45,000 native Americans slaughtered in our wars is ridiculously low. 10x is a more realistic genocide, if you add up induced starvation, promulgated disease, bison depopulations, settler range infringements, and coercive population relocations. (Where did the British get their ideas for forced enemy population relocations in their Zulu and Boer Wars?) As for the line of administrations, paying attention to the privacy rights guaranteed citizens under our laws, much less their civil rights being observed, [Derisive laughter at the very idea that ever happened in true fact!] http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=425 that never happened when it became "politically inconvenient". http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj19n2/cj19n2-8.pdf Our sad Republic is replete with hypocrisy, when it comes to the ideals by which we live. In our defense we can say we don't allow our government to blow up our citizens without due process....(Waco)....or bomb them.....(MOVE House, Philadelphia; nice going, Rizzo)......or monitor their sex lives.......(MLK, and the FBI).......and so forth....... I just don't want anybody to think that George W. Bush is some new American political phenomenon, or that he is somehow unique in the magnitude of his incompetence and outright disregard for the Constitution. He is not unique. He is just the latest in a sorry line of malefactors. We have been lucky as a nation that for every political pygmy, who abuses our laws for his political convenience, like a Wilson, a Kennedy, a Clinton, or a Bush, we get genuine patriots like Lincoln, the Roosevelts, or an Eisenhower, or a Reagan who bends the laws to the specific national need of the moment, but never loses sight of the fact that those laws are IMPORTANT, and tries in the end not to BREAK the laws too badly. As always; the best of wishes.

Buffy, I recognize that fact. It's quite clear where GOOGLE and its clones originated. [You can recover anything that is recorded. Anything. You may not be able to decrypt it, but once the event is recorded, it is. D.] Yes. Right. Not in the US? Like there isn't a capacity to intercept and analyze the simple little over the air(cell phones) and intra-nation land cable traffic inside the Republic......Echelon has satellites and land stations that can do that as part of its network. (IVY BELLS, a wrap around undersea cable trunk message reader was as much a part of the USSSS effort as any earth satellite station. That device has its beginning from land-based cousins from which it originated. Dig a hole or find a maintenance node at a land cable repeater. Or simply park a pick-up truck-sized unit over the buried cable. Bell South will never know![sarcasm at the intent directed.] Electromagnetic transmission means electomagnetic interception. D.) Aside from Echelon, which is a part of the USSSS effort, there is our little friend known as the Internet. Many people who use it, either the public net or the so-called secured networks, are well aware that the architecture is deliberately compromised, so that the builders of the same, can read the traffic-despite encryption and vain attempts at secure message routing. The US has read its enemies'/allies' foreign mail and its citizen's correspondence since the Jefferson Administration read French diplomatic traffic and the private letters of Aaron Burr. The US Army's Signal Corps began its real history by reading Western Union telegraphy just for grins and giggles. The American people HAVE NEVER HAD secure private communication, despite all the laws passed to guarantee it. Capabilities are used. Obviously, no. But as you well outlined, that data is commercially available to any off the shelf data-miner. Take a look at your real credit history? Not the one the credit reporting services provide, but the one that includes virtually every financial transaction you have ever made? CARFAX applied to people with a vengeance. It's commercially available to banks, insurance companies, employers(if they pay for it), you(if you know where to look.), and of course, the government. I'm sure that my privacy is an "illusion". Eternal vigilance, etc. We can't stop the b******s, but we can make them sweat for it. Since 1802? Yes. I'm only paranoid, because I KNOW they're out to get me. http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/crs/98-485.pdf China acted out of its legitimate national security concerns. It had no guaranteed minimal deterrent against a US pre-emptive attack before the LORAL/Clinton political campaign contribution scandals. It's, China's, history has always shown a MINIMUM deterrent force posture. Subsequent theft of US lightweight warhead designs, theft of Russian solid fuel rocket technology and the selling of US solid state inertial guidance missile system technology gave the Chinese the pieces to finally field a guaranteed deterrent posture as of 2003-at least as far as Hawaii and Alaska is concerned. It is still doubtful that they can glass the west coast yet, but the DF 41 is supposed to be their answer to that problem. Some interesting reading. http://www.carnegieendowment.org/pdf/npp/coxfinal3.pdf This alleges that the Clinton/LORAL sellouts were not critical; http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~johnston/rostow.pdf The analysis refutes the above assertion and suggests that the Cox Report is accurate.(Which unfortunately it is.) This is the Cox Report; http://www.house.gov/coxreport/ This is the CRS followup to the Cox Committee Report; http://www.carnegieendowment.org/pdf/npp/chinanukesecrets.pdf The Chinese deployed their own first generation GPS, system. It is small and very limited. But it is notable that it has ONLY ONE PURPOSE. http://www.princeton.edu/~globsec/publications/pdf/12-3_Forden_219-250.pdf You can use FENDON to guide MIRV warheaded missiles to the US. This is a legitimate self-defense measure that the Chinese desperately seek, because they are a genuinely frightened nation that seeks its own self-defense against genuinely hostile and powerful enemies. Nevertheless Clinton's responsibility, as president, was to prevent Chinese access to the required technologies. He facilitated the transfers for his own short-term political advantage. In his demented calculus, the US deterent would be unaffected by a countervailing Chinese developed equivalence. He was/is wrong. There is a game model that suggests that the more nations that have a secure second strike capability, the greater the likelihood of nuclear war. There is also the stability of the Chinese totalitarian regime to consider. http://www.dodccrp.org/iamwg/archive/02_18_05_Hawkins_Thursdays_Child.ppt That is not the evolution of a defensive-minded thought. http://www.wsichina.org/attach/china_security.pdf There is a game model that suggests that the more nations that have a secure second strike capability, the greater the likelihood of nuclear war among them. Read On Nuclear War by Hermann Kahn. Multi-polar nuclear war is not only more likely than bi-polar deterence, it is a certainty. Clinton ignored that FACT when he made his calculations concerning his political dealings with China. Bush is making the same mistakes with his policy choices regarding India's nuclear program. Non-proliferation of key technology is there for a very good reason. There are blowjobs, Infinite, and there are blowjobs. As always, the best of wishes.

Infinite, let me give you a quick read on something called "traffic analysis'. When the military first used radio, messages were sent in the clear. That was obviously a bad idea so the military coded everything. That didn't stop smart peiople who needed to know what you were planning from doing pattern recognition, That meant they tracked which radio messages went where, what transmitters were moving or broadcasting. You would be shocked how much information you could get out just tracking when radfios went on the air and transmitted. Its how the United States won at the Coral Sea when they couldn't quite read Japanese radio messages. This was nothing new. The F B I has been tracking suspected gangsters and interesting citizens (Eugene Debs) phone number usage ever since MA BELL and Mister Hoover made their arrangements back in 1934. If you think this is new, then I'm sad to say that it is not so. The scale is something new only in that the computational capacity to filter for suspect patterns was not available until the early 1980s. At that, the Congress balked at domestic use of ECHELON until the Clinton administration finally obtained authorization from the balky Democrats in 1992. http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/6/6929/1.html explains as accurately in the open source what ECHELON is and how it is used. The current flap is about TRAFFIC ANALYSIS, and not MESSAGE READING. There are simply too many messages to read unless a filtering protocol is used. Now Mister Bush is being blamed as the latest user of a capacity and a practice that is DECADES old. Welcome to http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/ about a couple decades late I'm afraid. This I find more troubling; As always; the best of wishes.

Joe. As always; the best of wishes.

I disagree about Clinton in some small measure. He was a thoroughly mediocre to poor president in performance. We hired him 24/7 to do his job. He failed in a different way than Bush. He should have admitted his wrongdoing, taken his lumps and moved on and run the country in his befuddled way. Instead he paralyzed government for three years and bungled the following while he fought to stay out of jail; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton/China_timeline http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton From the mishandling of Waco to Echelon(which was a Clinton program) to the bungled handling of the USS Cole, the 1993 WTC attack, the Mogadishu bugout, the Haiti fiasco, the healthcare reform debacle, the Balkans fiasco, the Dotbomb fiasco, peddling our rocketry guidance to China for campaign contributions. hiring a total incompetent as a Veep, so we dare not fire him and move up Gore, Bill Clinton was in his way a HORRIBLE president. Just to remind folks, under International Law, Mister Clinton violated a nation's sovereignty; http://www.zmag.org/crisescurevts/nurletter.htm http://www.iacenter.org/warcrime/22_rambo.htm Nevertheless, Mister Clinton is a past issue. His many mistakes and gaffes(there were very many) is not the particular chicken we are plucking here. That particular poultry under discussion is George W. Bush. Let us review Mister Bush's track record to date. 1. He has done nothing with his No-Child Left Behind education initiative except add a layer of bureaucracy to the already over bureacratized public education system. What fundamental change has occurred in the teaching culture that changes the end product-the student? Nada. 2. What has Bush or his administration done to rationalize energy policy in this country? I admit that under his watch US refining capacity has dropped 12% through no fault of his, but has his administration even tried the bozo chimera of flex-fuels for automobiles, or tried incentive tax policies, or even raised the automobile CAFE milage standards? No. 3. Healthcare? (rolling on the floor derisive laughter) 4. What about foreign policy? What foreiogn policy? The UAE ports deal stank as much as Chinagate. 5. Civil rights? Patriot Act. 6. Warfighting? Wrong war, wrong methods, and wrong people.(Hint; keep it small, low key, and quiet. A war in the shadows is easier to justify to your friends, as your friends are more willing to help you get your people to where they can put a sack over Al Zawalhiri's head, and fly him out of Pakistan, and over the Indian Ocean; so they can push him quietly out of a plane at ten thousand feet. This is easier for your friends than it would be;if you have tanks firing shots into the Baghdad Radisson on CNN. 7. Political corruption? Well I don't know, but those oil companies sure have fought hard to keep their part in the nation's so called energy policy planning in 2001 secret. 8. How about simply running the government? Traditionally, the Democrats have won hearts and minds, but when it came to actual government operations and management, they hadn't a clue. Republicans claimed that as their forte. Has Mister Bush, as a Republican, kept up that tradition? http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/ops/hurricane-pam.htm The Bush administration wargamed KATRINA. They discovered that the Louisiania government was totally corrupt, and incompetent, and couldn't be relied to do what was required in the Hurricane plan. So the Bush administration tasked FEMA to take over in the event the Louisiania government collapsed(which it did). Operation Pam II was to test this fix. It seemed to work on paper. So everybody was happy. Before Pam II though, KATRINA roars in. Five day's warning NOAA gives them . Never had so much lead tiome before.....enough time to evacuate the Mississippi delta people to high ground NW of Baton Rouge. Did it happen? I saw Louisiania cops block the main evacuation artery west out of New Orleans. People who could have fled the city on foot were turned back...... Nagin and Blanco were playing North/South Louisiana politics, as predicted, and there wasn't a Federal agency or official to be seen, until the army under General Honore came in and took over the mess-five days after the army should have. That is why many people now know that Bush is bad for the country. Democrats would have screwed it up just as badly, but you expect that from them. They are, by temperament, totally disorganized. You expect more out of Republicans. Aren't they the ones who claim they are supposed to be the managers and experts in restoring order out of chaos? It is my pet theory that KATRINA opened people's eyes to just how incompetent the Bush Administration is/has been. As always; the best of wishes;

:hihi: :) :xx: Now those are practical and FUNNY! I love optimism! D.

Shall we revisit? The crime was lying under oath. It could have been busimness related but it was about; Clinton's legal trouble was about a lie submitted into evidence, that had it gone into public trial and been submitted before a judge or jury would have amounted to perjury. Clinton, in his deposition before the plaintiff's lawyers(Paula Jones' attorneys) had clearly put himself in that danger. Quoting; The actual citation for contempt; In the one case the lie that the South Carolina coach told was in reference with meeting her lover at a lesbian night club in Salt Lake City. Clinton's lie under oath; Quod est demonstratum. Why did Mister Clinton spend millions of dollars in legal fees and have his very expensive lawyers fight so hard over every word and comma in his written depositions? Answer. To do otherwise, he would have been inexactly the same legal trouble as Pam Parsons was. He dared not go to trial and be forced to submit perjured evidence before a jury, lest his lie be legally proved as false testimony. That was the DIFFERENCE. That was why he had to settle. That was why he accepted disbarment and the civil contempt. He was caught. He had to make it go away or he would go away. It was/is that simple. He lied about an affair in a deposition. It wasn't the affair he had to dodge, it was the lie. He could have lied about eating a ham sandwich. No difference. It was never the affair. It was the potential perjury he, Clinton, submitted as evidence in his deposition, should he ever go to trial.(Note that Monica Lewinsky was in similar jeopardy in the submittal of her supporting affadaviit?) And that would at the least would mean civil contempt. Which he received. He is legally a liar. That is not quite as bad as a convicted perjurer, but as far as any court is concerned, his testimony is worthless. All of this is a matter of public record. I do not care one way or the other about people's opinions of the man or his "alleged" crimes. But I do care about the provable facts of public record. EDIT: Agreed. I did go off topic in the above posting. My apologies. As always, the best of wishes.

Not five years, but; quoting; The precedent for felony perjury conviction in a civil action is well established in the US federal justice system. Clinton was in very real danger of a felony perjury charge, if he had not settled the Paula Jones lawsuit. As always, the very best of wishes.

1. I don't have to study the history, K. I lived much of it. Read my profile. 2. I read by yours that you are a young person. 3. That is a glorious opportunity for you to correct the many mistakes that people, like me, made in the world, in our pasts. 4. But lest you think that you have learned all the answers, let me ask you a few questions. 5. Have you been outside the United States to a relatively free nation, like Turkey? 6. Have you been to Egypt? 7. Have you been to say a prosperous country, like Germany? 8. Have you been to Korea? 9. Have you been across the United States to New York, or to Florida, or to Virginia, or to Kentucky, or to Kansas or to Texas or to Georgia?: 10. Have you been to France? 11. Have you been to Ireland? 12. Did you ever have to leave an aircraft over the ocean because the silly thing's engines decided to catch on fire? 13. Have you worked alongside your country's soldiers in time of peace, in time of disaster, in time of war? 14. Have you ever participated in a civil rights march for what you believed or had to fight to save what you personally hold near and dear, both non-violently when you could, and violently when some criminal or politician gave you no choice? 15. Have you ever come to the aid of another person at the risk of your own life? 16. Have you ever worked on a project so hard, a project so vital, that you saw one of your co-workers die, but you had to put that event aside because the project was so important, that you understood that people(including you) could die and would die, and there was nothing to be done for it-for it was that necessary? The mission/project success outcome was the only all consuming need to insure the community's future survival? That is what the people of my generation did and still do, K., mistakes and all. Peace be upon you, my friend;

1=1 my friend. I know the history far better than you think I do. And I am sad that you see the United States in the light that you do. This nation is not evil, nor has it ever been. I suppose you think we were evil when we stopped the tyrants of fascism? I suppose you think we were evil when we fought the tyrants of communism? I suppose you think we are evil when we fight the tyrants of Ba'athism? I suppose you think we are evil when we fight the tyrants of the Taliiban and their ilk? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baathist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban You don't need to try to tell me anything about the things the US did in the last fifty years. (The fact that I know of these events shows that our government is far more transparent than you write or believe.). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Mossadegh Despite that, the US has been a force for good in the world. Without the US in the breach holding back the tides of barbarism for the last 100 years, you wouldn't even have this tool by which to post your 1=1. Peace upon you my friend;

I tend to shy away from strategy as it gets me into trouble but; http://bookclub.tpmcafe.com/story/2006/1/16/16936/5083 quoting; The Iraq war was a HUGE mistake. Pakistan and Afghanistan were/are the centers of gravity of the current war as is Saudi Arabia. I won't bore you with the long details but if your are interested, GOOGLE islamic proslytization. See where the money is and where the madras school infrastructure began and HOW LONG AGO. Now then. If you want to know who is running the Al Qaeda war? It's al Zawalhiri. It is not bin Laden, the front man who couldn't even plan a successful campaign in Afghanistan, without CIA and ISI advisors showing him how. As always, the best of wishes.

Please don't make the mistake of writing that Bush and bin Laden are morally equivalent. They are not. George Bush is merely incompetent. Osama bin Laden is both incompetent and evil. There is a vast difference. As always, the best of wishes:

http://www.alumni.utas.edu.au/Alumni%20News29.pdf The Hybrid that Toyota is selling in the US(Prius) is a mixed gasoline engine/electric motor car that actually costs more in energy to manufacture than it will ever save in petroleum products. It is a negative energy investment as far as petroleum is concerned. Go figure. http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/29274/newsDate/31-Jan-2005/story.htm As for the Tasmanian Uni article? For the benefit of all who are curious.(Article begins page 27.) (Thanks for directing me to it to it, M., It is important to me, as it gives us a flex fuel car alternative to the bio-fuel nonsense that can tide us over to the HFC cars. D.) Now about Aussie humor...... What is no joke to me is that I am acutely aware that Australia is a world leader in hydrodynamics, acoustics, and magnetic remote sensing. The country's scientist and engineers never get the credit they truly deserve. That little joke about the US owning Australia is, sad to say, almost as true as the one about China owning the US, because they've bought up all our debt.(Another one of those problems for which a solution must be found.) ---------------------------- To go to an ethanol or mixed-fuel fleet you have a fifteen year fleet conversion cycle as people either converted their cars expensively or traded in their gasoline guzzlers for the mixed fuel or flex-fuel ICE or diesel cars. They would have to do it again when they go to HFC cars. Why do I want to do TWO infrastructure conversion steps? Why not skip step one and use the suggestion that Michaelangelica supplied which would allow us to retrofit the existing fleet(rather cheaply) and start the second step fuel supply and dispensing infrastructure conversion NOW? As always, the very best of wishes.

Brazil? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4715332.stm 1. Look at the comparative labor costs. 2. Look at the size of the auto fleets. http://www.ie.ufrj.br/publicacoes/discussao/automobile_demond_and_supply_in_brazil.pdf http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleid.18976/article_detail.asp Brazil's fleet at ten million vehicles is one tenth the size Of CHINA'S. http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleid.18976/article_detail.asp offers your argument for flex fuel cars but unfortunately Robert Zubrin works optimistic numbers based on corn and soy for an American fleet of some 200 MILLION vehicles. He doesn't know what a huge dent that puts into our shrinking agriculture base(That is FOOD for US.). He also forgets to cite the numbers for agro-conversion. 17% at the wheel to road. I'll take hydrogen's 25% via nuclear-powered electrolysis, thank you. Besides methanol or ethanol both emit pollutants at the tail pipe. Hydrogen fuel cell cars emit water vapor. I'll take that solution again, thank you. This is why I propose hydrogen as a car fuel, despite its dangerous handling characteristics.(Imagine Betty Rubble fueling up her Rubblemobile from a hydrogen dispenser[KABOOM]. Better make those hydrogen fuelups via explosion resistant bottle changeout by a trained service technician at a gas station a la the Barbecue grill propane tank!) Hydrogen is just an ocean away and a reactor away. As always, the best of wishes;

I've been very busy, South, and haven't had the opportunity to post that much until recently. I'm doing fairly well. Don't be too hard on B. His reading of monotheistic history is accurate, but those polytheistic believers that he didn't mention were just as intolerant. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhenaten for example. As always; the best of wishes;

http://www.eco-action.org/dt/oilfut.html http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publish/article_10002504.shtml http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=mj05cavallo There is one truism about technology. It takes about fifteen to fifty years to convert from one source of energy to another. Right now we have too many people chasing too few barrels of oil. You see what this means in the short term with the seasonal fluctuations of gasoline prices at the gasoline stations. Production has flatlined as of April of 2004. As Uncle Al would say, "That's all folks." The fundamental bedrock problem for generating wealth is turning energy into work. If energy turned into work is scarce, so will be the wealth. That pie will be SMALL as we divide it. If energy converted into wealth is large, is plentiful; then the portions we can divide out will be large. I used this example before, elsewhere, as to what motivates people in desperate times; http://touregypt.net/featurestories/hittites.htm The Hittites and Egyptians clashed over Syria for one good reason. Both Empires had bursting populations and inadequate internal resources to support the same. Too many people chased not enough resources. Each empire was looking for additional range and resources for their peoples. Syria, with its trade routes and arable land, was it. Does this sound familiar? It should. The United States and China 2004. Where? http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/08/03/BUGSFE1S111.DTL It will get worse. It just isn't a decaying America that we need to solve. It is a desperate oil-starved China, folks. We are out of oil and out of time. There is no room for contemplating our navels anymore. We've done it for fifty years. The cheap oil/petroleum-based energy is gone. Our TIME is UP. As always, the best of wishes.

What are the relevant topics? Consider economics as a subject. You have 100 days to crank out a solution and present it to the world. There are what; 400 plus spoken languages and 300 written ones? Time=100 days. The American society is 80% on its way to political/economic collapse within my lifetime. This is literally the last chance we have to go to hydrogen fuel cells, and to a fusion economy, deal with thermal and toxin pollution, try to stabilize the bio-deversity in the range that Americans control, and you want me to reflect my thoughts back to whom? Congress? I don't want war as a possible solution, and you just prescribed it. Again, we don't have TIME. We have to ACT. As always, my best wishes;

http://touregypt.net/featurestories/hittites.htm Wealth, the stealing of same. As always, best wishes;

.........to head up a task force to recommend a national program to rectify the current situation in which the United Staes finds itself. You have 100 days to prepare an answer. Using open sources to supply data to support your program, make your presentation. Remember that you only have two and a half trillion dollars with which to work. Remember that the petroleum upon which our civilization depends has topped off in deliverable quantiites as of 2004. Remember that India and China are exploding economies desperately searching for their own oil supplies. Remember that flash wars brought on by the incompetent dictators of this world mean you cannot cut too deeply into the conventional or strategic forces of the United States, for despite what many people believe, we are actually at the minimums necessary for US security. And the timer is ticking. Population increases and the oil runs out. There is that heat pollution, toxin pollution, and species die-off thing. Not to mention the decreasing arable land thing. The national capital/labor working tax base is shrinking, as is the industrial infrastructure. The population is becoming older and less well-educated as the public education system collapses. President Condileeza Rice has a Roosevelt-sized crisis facing her. She turned to you for answers. How about it? This is a PRACTICAL exercise. What will you recommend that will get past CONGRESS? It's Roosevelt's 1933 in replay-only much worse. Now I'll sit back and read what unfolds...... As always, best wishes;

If you mean by general resolution, a final resolution of justice for the oppressed as an outcome as eyes are opened to the ground truth in the middle east or in the misrule in this nation by our own governement, that is not in your power or mine to give. Nor would I give it if I had the power. No slave is given freedom. He earns it for himself or he remains a slave. There are many ways to earn that freedom. Some choose Osama's way. Some choose Bush's way. Others choose Ghandi's or King's. Which men accomplished their ends? Some simple words make nonsense of that statement Infinite; Mao Ze-Dong (China, 1958-61 and 1966-69) 49,000,000 ("great leap forward" and "cultural revolution") Jozef Stalin (USSR, 1934-39) 13,000,000 (the purges) Adolf Hitler (Germany, 1939-1945) 12,000,000 (concentration camps and civilians WWII) Hideki Tojo (Japan, 1941-44) 5,000,000 (civilians WWII) Pol Pot (Cambodia, 1975-79) 1,700,000 Kim Il Sung (North Korea, 1948-94) 1.6 million (purges and concentration camps) Menghistu (Ethiopia, 1975-78) 1,500,000 Ismail Enver (Turkey, 1915) 1,200,000 Armenians Yakubu Gowon (Biafra, 1967-1970) 1,000,000 Leonid Brezhnev (Afghanistan, 1979-1982) 900,000 Jean Kambanda (Rwanda, 1994) 800,000 Suharto (East Timor, 1976-98) 600,000 Saddam Hussein (Iran 1980-1990 and Kurdistan 1987-88) 600,000 Yahya Khan (Pakistan, 1971) vs Bangladesh 500,000 Savimbi (Angola, 1975-2002) 400,000 Mullah Omar - Taliban (Afghanistan, 1986-2001) 400,000 Idi Amin (Uganda, 1969-1979) 300,000 Benito Mussolini (Ethiopia, 1936; Yugoslavia, WWII) 300,000 Mobutu Sese Seko (Zaire, 1965-97) ? Charles Taylor (Liberia, 1989-1996) 220,000 Foday Sankoh (Sierra Leone, 1991-2000) 200,000 Slobodan Milosevic (Yugoslavia, 1992-96) 180,000 Michel Micombero (Burundi, 1972) 150,000 Hassan Turabi (Sudan, 1989-1999) 100,000 Jean-Bedel Bokassa (Centrafrica, 1966-79) ? Richard Nixon (Vietnam, 1969-1974) 70,000 (vietnamese civilians) Papa Doc Duvalier (Haiti, 1957-71) 60,000 Hissene Habre (Chad, 1982-1990) 40,000 Chiang Kai-shek (Taiwan, 1947) 30,000 (popular uprising) Vladimir Ilich Lenin (USSR, 1917-20) 30,000 (dissidents executed) Francisco Franco (Spain) 30,000 (dissidents executed after the civil war) Lyndon Johnson (Vietnam, 1963-1968) 30,000 Hafez Al-Assad (Syria, 1980-2000) 25,000 Khomeini (Iran, 1979-89) 20,000 Guy Mollet (France, 1956-1957) 10,000 (war in Algeria) Paul Koroma (Sierra Leone, 1997) 6,000 Osama bin Laden (worldwide, 1991-2001) 4,000 Augusto Pinochet (Chile, 1973) 3,000 Efrain Rios Montt (Guatemala) 2,000 The difference is, Infinite, I want specific living people specifically dead for specific crimes that they specifically committed. It is a recognized principle in rational societies, that the guilty must stand judgement and receive collective social punishment for the evil they do. When that crime is genocide or mass murder? Those people are better off dead. It puts them out of their pathological self-loathing misery. It is to that particular end that I work, and for that SPECIFIC reason, when I address that SPECIFIC individual, as a SPECIFIC case. There is no wish involved. There cannot be. Wishes accomplish nothing. If I am to give a man, like Ayatollah Sistani, a chance to preach the jihad of peace to his brothers, then he must be heard above the din of al Zarqawi and the other disciples of bin Laden. It is just like the case, if we are to repair the damage George W. Bush has done. We must find a fox to replace him in the next election cycle. Chicken. Plucked. I've been following this thread with great interest and I find it to be a great clarifyer of why I suggest that my position is not irrational or uncommon.. http://hypography.com/forums/philosophy-humanities/6306-moral-algebra.html I want to thank you for bringing to my attention my incorrect use of an analogy. I was guilty of shortcutting a metaphorical argument and making a faulty presentation. I apologize to you for that. One should never use analogy when one can write plainly as you just did. You cannot look at the whole argument, if you observe both sides and split the difference(see the coin edge on). You must analyze the argument in the form of first "what is the event measured and from which bias?'; 1. identify the biases. 2. formulate opposing theses. 3. test against observable effects-based consequences(results). 4. check biases again. 5. apply the antitheses to the consequences observed(events). 6. formulate a new set of theses. And then hopefully draw objective conclusions from those theses. If there is hate anywhere in that process? Well, Ghandi had a lot of anger, but he had a firm grasp of how he intended to fight for what he wanted. Its just that we don't recognize it as him fighting, because we associate fighting with the use of violence. Even the madman, Osama, admits that there are two paths to jihad. The one is the path of peaceful struggle. The other is the path of violence. Osama chose the path of violence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hassan-i-Sabah quoting; Definitions of Al Qaeda on the Web: That is evil. He used that path to not only kill innocent Americans, but to kill the innocent among islam. So if I want him dead, I admit there is hate involved. It is the hate against evil that I carry within me. What good has he done? Al Capone opened soup kitchens to help the starving of Chicago.. Hitler rehabilitated the Berlin Zoo because he didn't want its animals to suffer in deprivation. Stalin kept a dog. Those men were evil. I'm bizarre that way, I suppose. I believe that evil as a concept is as concrete as liberty or good. That it is NOT relative, but can be objectively defined by the generally agreed scale of harm done for negative outcome generated as most men and women see it.. Just my 1=1 on things. As always, the best of wishes;