Martin Radwin

"truly" speak? Are you familiar with taq'iyya? That is Arabic for deception which the q'ran permits to a believer to advance the cause of Islam. But give Adonis the benefit of the doubt. Will the wonderfulness he is proposing take place before or after a squad of Jihadi Martyrs plants a dirty radioactive bomb in either Washington or New York? Or before an 18 wheeler, driven by a Martyr, carries explosive load and sets it off in a tunnel or on a bridge during rush hour? What do you think? Are you sure? I am not. And if the worst happens what do you propose we should do? Ba'al Chatzaf Why, Ba'al, why do you seem to be so upset at this prospect? After all, as you have repeatedly said, we are at war with the Muslim world. So, by implication, they are also at war with us. Also, as you have repeatedly said, there are no innocent victims in a war zone, so all killing in war zones is entirely justified. And since we are at war with the Muslim world, we are, by definition, a war zone. So if a couple of million Americans are killed in a terrorist attack, they are not innocent victims at all but are actually aiding the war effort. So the terrorists (excuse me, warriors, not terrorists) are entirely within their rights to kill the American civilians/combatants. Remember, there are no innocent victims in war. Don't they have just as much of a right to enjoy hearing the lamentations of our women as we have to enjoy hearing the lamentations of theirs? Martin

http://pittsburgh.indymedia.org/news/2006/06/23913.php "First published on Sunday, November 7, 2004 in Agence France Press from Near Fallujah [13] “Holy War: Evangelical Marines Prepare to Battle Barbarians” this article illustrates the entrenchment this version of the Christian Faith has become in the U.S. Marine Corp. “Men with buzzcuts and clad in their camouflage waved their hands in the air, M-16 assault rifles beside them and chanted heavy metal-flavored lyrics in praise of Christ. ‘You are the sovereign. Your name is holy. You are the pure spotless lamb,’ a female voice cried out on the loudspeakers as the Marines clapped their hands and closed their eyes, reflecting what lay ahead for them. ‘Victory belongs to the Lord’ another young Marine read. They proceeded onto one of the bloodiest battles of the Iraqi war which leveled an entire city of 300,000 people to the ground, spraying people with deadly white phosphorus and genocidal radioactive uranium, with no signs of the intervention of humanitarian behavior whatsoever. The American soldiers were witnessed getting anointed with oil before battle in Iraq just as Christ was supposedly anointed with oil-- this kind of fanaticism--this kind of disjointedness, is how violent crusades are justified and perpetuated." Would you like me to post some more examples for you of the pernicious influence of Christianity on the US military, in case the above example of these sons of bitches destroying an entire city, poisoning the survivors with substances whose use constitutes a war crime, and convincing themselves all along that they are doing Christ's work, is not enough to convince you? If so, I'd be happy to oblige. Martin

Think of it as the terrorism of The Good against the The Evil. Extremism in the defense of Liberty is no vice. Ba'al Chatzaf Again, this is no defense of liberty you're offering, but merely terrorism -- and terrorism is bad because it targets innocents. You don't seem to mind that -- as long as you can imagine it serving some greater good. But isn't that the argument of all terrorists? I have yet to see any terrorist group argue they're commiting terrorist acts not to serve some ultimate greater good. (This is likewise always the argument of people who want to take away liberty: it's for some greater purpose. You here are no different in my eyes.) It's nice that Ba'al has finally admitted that what he advocates is terrorism. Only he justifies it by labeling it as "the terrorism of The Good against The Evil". Of course, to Ba'al, the US is always good, and anyone who opposes the US in any conflict is always evil. I have never once seen Ba'al acknowledge that the US was in the wrong in any military conflict in which it has ever been engaged. The US is his tribe, and he's going to defend it no matter what evidence exists that his tribe is in the wrong. So he always ends up justifying any attrocities committed by the US in war, no matter what the circumstances surrounding the war, no matter how unjustified the US engagement in the war. This is the ultimate insanity of American exceptionalism. Martin

The current hypothesis that Earth-1 collided with a Mars size planet Way Back When. The result was Earth-2 (the one we currently live on) plus enough debris to stick together and become our moon. If Earth-2 had not been made by an accident it is unlikely that intelligent life would have evolved on Earth-1 since it did not have enough mass to hold onto its atmosphere. Ba'al Chatzaf Mars has only about 1/10 the mass of earth. So even if an entire Mars size planet were to collide with earth and merge with it into a single planet, this would only increase the total mass of the new earth planet by about 10%. Would the earth with 10% less mass than it has presently be unable to hold onto its atmosphere? Venus it about 20% less massive than earth and has an atmosphere that is about 100 times thicker than earth's. Of course, Venus's atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide, which is a much heavier gas than oxygen and nitrogen, so Venus might be unable to hold onto an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere like is found on earth. Martin Martin

Are you really so certain of this? How closely have you studied the lives and belief systems of the Iranian ruling clique? Have their actions indicated that they are indifferent about their own lives and would welcome death? On the other hand, everything you say here may also be applied to at least some christian fundamentalist believers in the Book of Revelations who are eagerly awaiting the end times and the return of Jesus. A fundamental aspect of Christianity (though undoubtedly not emphasized equally by all Christians) is a belief in an eternal afterlife, spent either in heaven or in hell. Such a belief certainly devalues the importance of life on earth relative to the eternal life that is to follow. Anyone believing such a thing may very well not fear death at all but instead look forward to death as an opportunity to spend eternity in heaven side by side with Jesus. These considerations may also apply to fundamentalist muslims. But I'm not sure there's a good reason to fear such an outlook among muslims but not among christians. And American christians have access to a far more lethal arsenal of weapons that anything that Iran has. Does anyone doubt that the U.S. government is a bully? Considering the number of nations invaded and the number of foreigners killed by both the Iranian and U.S. governments, such a comparison does not make the U.S. government look very good. It's ironic the way so many Americans are creeped out by such ritual displays. It's like the way so many Americans were horrified by a handful of beheadings committing by Islamic wackos, or by suicide bombings by insurgents. These people must be barbarians to commit such attrocities! Yet the same Americans react with indifference or even support for "Shock and Awe", for American planes dropping bombs from thousands of feet above the ground, or the use of unmanned drones targeting the skies of Pakistan and firing missiles, killing masses of innocent civilians on the ground. They are barbarians for the savage manner in which they kill their enemies. But we're civilized. We kill thousands using the latest high tech weaponry. And how exactly do you know that Bush's defense policies kept us from another terrorist attack like 9/11? This is purely speculative. It's not like we can go back into history, follow a different policy, and see what happens. All we know is that another terrorist attack of this scale did not happen. We have no way of knowing the reason. But there are very good reasons to extrapolate into the future that a continuation of existing U.S. foreign policy is creating a whole new generation of potential terrorists that should increase the likelihood that the U.S. will be the victim of another 9/11 style terrorist attack. Martin

Dan, That's about right. How about antagonizing The Great Satan and The Little Satan enough to bring about the end-of-times chaos? Dirty bombs are a temptation for someone with that bent. As we see with suicide bombers, Islamist fundies are pretty good at controlling those poor brainwashed people. As in "total" controlling them. Michael The U.S. has more than its share of end-of-times Christian fundies. And I'm quite sure that no shortage of these are in the U.S. military, which has been shown to have strong ties to Christian fundamentalism. This kind of thing tends to be encouraged in all militaries, since there's no better way to turn your soldiers into an efficient killing machine than to convince them that God is on their side and that the enemy are tools of Satan. Does it ever occur to those who worry about Islamic fundies gaining control of nuclear weapons that Christian fundies may just gain control of and think about using our nuclear weapons? George W. Bush was, after all, a born again Christian. Martin

Bob Kolker is actually an extreme example of the above observation. In the areas of theoretical physics and mathematics, he's probably what would rightfully be classified as a genius. Yet in his views regarding war and the value of human life, his ravings are those of a blithering idiot, and his perspective is that of a sociopath with a depraved indifference to the value of human life. If ever there were living proof that a person can be exceptionally intelligent in one area and a complete fool in another, Bob is it. I think people have to be persuaded to believe that -- and Bob's other rhetoric seems to show he has to even persuade himself. In other words, it seems less a default position than an attempt at dehumanizing other people so they might be easier targets. It's interesting in a sad way the extent to which objectivism often seems to attract such sociopathic personalities. In such people, a feeling of empathy for their fellow human beings is mostly or entirely lacking. Thus may they justify the slaughter of thousands or millions of other people not belonging to their particular tribe, without feeling even a sliver of sadness. Martin

Strangely enough, the military is not overly concerned with disciplining soldiers committing attrocities in a war zone, insofar as imposing such discipline just might damage military morale. So they're just not too terribly interested in prosecuting criminal behavior. Likewise, police departments are not generally too interested in disciplining rogue cops who've beaten or killed innocent people either. That has got to be among the most evil and stupid comments I have ever read. So if some soldiers encounter a group of defenseless men, women, children, babies, or dogs, it's okay to burn them alive or machine gun them all, because those damned babies just plain provoked the soldiers by crying too damn much. That might just have something to do with the fact that the "jihadis" live there. Unlike the occupying soldiers, that's their home. And the idea that an insurgent trying to fight an invasion and occupation of his home by enemy soldiers is necessarily a jihadi is something that only a stupid American like you whose home has never been invaded and occupied by foreign soldiers would believe. That's interesting. If all killings are justified in a war zone, there wouldn't need to be any rules of engagement, would there? The very fact that such rules exist is an acknowledgement that not all killings are justified. What you suggest is nothing but a vicious rationalization to justify the commission of the most despicable war crimes. Of course, you figure it's safe to argue such a position, since you live in New Jersey, which is highly unlikely to become a war zone. So you don't have to worry that you, your wife, your children, your grandchildren, and your friends will all become justifiable targets of mass murder. You can live in safety and comfort while you prattle on about how it's okay to murder all those dirty brown foreigners. If you actually had to live in a war zone, you'd probably feel differently. Lots of Americans like you have come to like war a hell of a lot. That's because war is only terrible for those who are living through it, not those for whom war is just something that they see in 30 second segments on the 11:00 news. Martin

An excellent source of information about child abuse is Alice Miller, who is probably the leading authority in the world on this subject. She is the author of 13 books, and has spent many years meticulously documenting child abuse in all of its forms. Her home page is: http://www.alice-miller.com/index_en.php Martin

Good point, which I should have thought of but didn't! I guess one could say that all of the oceans outside of the territorial limits of each country exist in a state of anarchy, since no government claims or exercises ultimate authority over them. The only way to eliminate this anarchic condition would be to either extend the territorial limits of each country such that every section of the ocean was controlled by one government or another, or to institute a one world government which exercised control over the entire earth, including all of the oceans. I haven't seen any objectivists propose either of these scenarios as a solution to the problem of anarchy. Martin

I agree. That's why I inserted the qualification "given the context in which Rand was writing." The fact that we do "see competing governments all over the place" raises an old and interesting question, viz: Why don't the Randian advocates of limited government call for a one-world government? Surely we cannot have the chaos of "competing governments" with different legal systems but no ultimate arbiter, or sovereign, to render final decisions in cases of conflict. Instead, nation-states, which exist in a state of anarchy relative to other nation-states, often resort to war and other violent means. So, again, why doesn't the minarchist apply his Randian arguments against "competing governments" to the entire planet and call for a one-world government? I have posed this question to many minarchists over the years but have never received anything approaching a satisfactory answer. The best I have gotten is that a one-world government is "impractical." Fine, but if that is the position of Randian minarchists, they should at least be candid enough to admit that they do indeed favor a one-world government in theory, even if they think this system would be very difficult to implement in practice. Ghs As I recall, Rand's argument against what she called competing governments referred to multiple competing governments operating in the same geographical area. Whereas the world in which we live consists of multiple competing governments, but operating in different geographical areas. Only one government claims ultimate authority over any given geographical area, so for any given geographical area, there is one and only one ultimate authority. This addresses the problem that concerned Rand about multiple governments claiming ultimate authority over the same area. By the way, this is not intended as a defense of Rand's argument against competing governments. I just don't see how Rand's argument implies that the correct system is one world government, for the reasons stated above. Martin

George, Bob Mayhew uses brackets once in a while in Ayn Rand Answers. When he does this, he is usually inserting a formal reference to an article that Rand published. The vast majority of his editorial changes go unsignalled, with brackets or with any other device. Chris's points have now been considerably amplified by Jennifer Burns, in Goddess of the Market and in comments on her website. She says that the published Journals of Ayn Rand have been subjected to major tampering, as have the lectures on fiction and nonfiction writing, and the excerpts from her recorded interviews. Robert Campbell I wonder if, had Ayn Rand known that her work was going to be altered by these scumbags after her death, she would have left her estate to Peikoff, who has permitted this to go on. These people truly are scumbags. They claim to be defending the legacy of Ayn Rand, while altering her words without attribution and pretending that Rand spoke these altered words. They have also kept the originals under lock and key in the archives so that the altered words cannot be checked against her actual words. They ought to reread Rand's words about "faking reality". Martin

http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2009/11/11/10217#comments "Wikipedia has the short, sad story of how Armistice Day – a holiday “dedicated to the cause of world peace” – became, as of 1954, a day honoring the military as such. I regret the change. The US already had Memorial Day for military members killed in action, and Armed Forces Day began in 1950. A third military-focused holiday would already be overkill even if it wasn’t a perversion of the original meaning of November 11 remembrances. As John Quiggin reminds us today, November 11 marks the blessed if temporary end to one of the great calamities – crimes – visited on people by their leaders, and by people on each other. It is meant to be a day dedicated to hating the waste and sin of war. While the impulse behind Veteran’s Day seems “grass roots” enough, it depended on the assent of the powerful to enact it.You can see why the government would have embraced a chance to change that holiday’s focus. As for me, I’ll exercise my personal veto. Happy Armistice Day."

I am assuming neither of your statements are true or false. I have no evidence as to whether they were guilty, in which case they would have been summarily executed in the country they were captured in and if they were innocent, then they would be released in the country of their origin, if they bitch about it, I return them from about 5,000 feet with an umbrella. They are not American citizens. Being caught in a war zone because you are a combatant or just plain unlucky is not a path to citizenship under either Bush or O'biwan. However, I am sure that you actually wanted to ask a non question begging question my dear questioner. Adam Here is the full context of the Guantanamo detainees. During the early stages of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the U.S. government offered bounties for any alleged terrorists who were turned in to them. So, as expected, Afghan bounty hunters discovered "terrorists" hiding under every bed, who they turned in to the U.S. government with no evidence of actual guilt for a generous reward. Some of the "terrorists" turned in were children as young as 12. These detainees have been held as prisoners for many years, with no charges, no right to counsel, no right to see any evidence against them, and no right to appear before a judge to dispute their guilt. Some have been tortured. Some have committed suicide. The government has asserted its right to keep these people locked up forever without ever having a right to a trial. Of those who are finally scheduled to be released, some cannot be repatriated to their native countries, because they will be imprisoned, tortured, or executed by their own governments should they return. A good example of this are the ethnic Uyghurs, who have been fighting for independence against the Chinese government and would surely be executed if returned to China. There is not even a shred of evidence that the Uyghurs are guilty of any crimes against the U.S., yet they have been imprisoned for years without cause. So what your proposal amounts to is this. Huge numbers of innocent people have been incarcerated for years by a government that paid bounty hunters to turn them in for money and didn't give a damn about actually attempting to establish their guilt. Some have been tortured and driven to suicide. They have endured years of a living hell for the crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and being a convenient object for monetary gain. Yet those who have been cleared of any crime, who have unjustifiably endured this suffering for years, who are now finally ready to be released, should be returned to their native countries, even if this would mean that they would subsequently be tortured, imprisoned, or executed. If they resist, they should be dropped from an airplane to their deaths. I guess this is the objectivist conception of justice these days. Martin

Angie, Assuming that you are not able to continue home schooling your son indefinitely and must at some point have him return to school, one thing that you might consider is trying to find a really good private school and sending him there. My daughter is the same age as your son, 9 years old. She attends a small private Montessori school. We really love this school. Not only does it present an academically stimulating environment but it is very balanced as well, focusing on the total social/emotional/psychological development of the kids, as well as their academic development. One of the main focuses of this school is on developing non-violent communication and behavioral skills among the kids. Translated, the name of our school is "House of peace", and this really reflects the underlying school philosophy. At our school, there is no way in ten lifetimes that any teacher or other staff member would ever treat any child the way your son was treated by your school staff. Teachers treat the children with utmost respect. Nor is any kind of bullying by other children tolerated. This is simply not considered to be acceptable behavior by either teachers or children. As such, our school presents a very safe environment for the kids. When we send our daughter off to school, we never have to worry about something bad happening to her. And if your son were attending our school, I can absolutely assure you that none of the bad things that happened to him at your school would have happened to him here. Of course, not all private schools have a nurturing environment like this. There are some really bad private schools as well. So you really have to look around and check out many different schools to find a really good one that would meet the needs of your son. I really believe that efforts to reform public schools are futile. They are huge bureaucratic monstrosities controlled by top-down rules set down by stupid bureaucrats. They have absolutely no incentive to even attempt to please either parents or children, since they financed by taxes and maintained by compulsory attendance laws. Public schools are structured for the benefit of government, education bureaucrats, school administrators, and teachers. Parents and children do not even figure into any of this. Trying to change them in any significant way is quite impossible. By contrast, however, it is very much within your power to find a good private school that will work for you and your son. Focus your energy on what you have the power to change, rather than on that which by its very nature is fundamentally unchangeable. Good luck! Martin

Did you even bother to read a word I said? My argument was that, given the government's past behavior, including its behavior in the very recent past, it was absurdly unlikely that 99% of its requests for warrants to the FISA court were justified. The government's past behavior is an empirical fact which has been extensively documented. It is not an assumption. James Bovard wrote an entire book, Terrorism and Tyranny, documenting this behavior. There are multiple other sources as well. I was not in any way assuming what I was attempting to prove, which is the logical fallacy of "begging the question". I have so far presented extensive documentation of the government's behavior and legislation that it has passed giving it essentially unlimited power to spy on anyone. So far, you have not chosen to address any of the substantive points I have made but have instead resorted to rationalistic arguments without any reference to any of the historical data. Martin

It was pretty well documented that the FISA courts were rubber stamping requests for warrants. This is not particularly hard to figure out, given that about 99% of all warrant requests were granted. The idea that 99% of the federal government's requests for warrants were justified, given the government's tendency to want to collect all kinds of irrelevant information and to go on "fishing expeditions" not against actual terrorist threats but against all kinds of groups and people perceived as being in any way a threat to governmental authority (see the history of the FBI and its spying against anti-war groups, civil rights groups, Martin Luther King, etc.), is patently ridiculous. So, no, I haven't seriously considered the possibility that 99% of the warrant requests were legitimate, given the incredible improbability of such a thing. Have you considered the much more likely possibility that many of the requests were not at all legitimate, and that the government was just going along on its usual business of spying on innocent people and groups? I presume that you weren't in the room either. You are placing the complete burden of proof on me, in contradiction to the long history of prior government behavior. In any case, as I indicated above in post #43, the Bush administration violated the FISA laws. From post $43, "The Bush administration maintained that the authorized intercepts are not domestic but rather foreign intelligence integral to the conduct of war and that the warrant requirements of FISA were implicitly superseded by the subsequent passage of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF)." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwest_Communications "In May 2006, USA Today reported that millions of telephone calling records had been handed over to the United States National Security Agency by AT&T Corp., Verizon, and BellSouth since September 11, 2001. This data has been used to create a database of all international and domestic calls. Qwest was allegedly the lone holdout, despite threats from the NSA that their refusal to cooperate may jeopardize future government contracts,[6] a decision which has earned them praise from those who oppose the NSA program.[7] U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor on August 17, 2006 ruled that the government's domestic eavesdropping program is unconstitutional and ordered it ended immediately. The Bush Administration has filed an appeal in the case which has yet to be heard in court.[8] Former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio, who was convicted of insider trading in April 2007, alleged in appeal documents that the NSA requested that Qwest participate in its wiretapping program more than six months before September 11, 2001. Nacchio recalls the meeting as occurring on February 27, 2001. Nacchio further claims that the NSA cancelled a lucrative contract with Qwest as a result of Qwest's refusal to participate in the wiretapping program." I wonder if it was a mere coincidence that the one company that refused to go along with the government's illegal demand that it turn over data to the NSA, ended up having its CEO indicted and subsequently convicted of insider trading, a "crime" that any objectivist should know is a bogus crime to begin with. In 2007, the Bush administration got the "Protect America Act" passed. This act basically nullified FISA, giving the federal government basically the right to conduct unlimited wiretaps against anyone without bothering to get a warrant. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_America_Act_of_2007 "Domestic wiretapping The bill allowed the monitoring of all electronic communications of people in the United States without a court's order or oversight, so long as it is not targeted at one particular person "reasonably believed to be" inside the country. [1] [10] [11] Foreign wiretapping The Act removed the requirement for a FISA warrant for any communication which was foreign-related, even if the communication involved a U.S. location on the receiving or sending end of communication; all foreign-foreign communications were removed from warrant requirements, as well. [10] Experts claimed that this deceptively opened the door to domestic spying, given that many domestic U.S. communications passed via non-US locations, by virtue of old telephony network configurations. Data monitoring In the bill, the monitoring of data related to Americans communicating with persons (U.S citizens and non-citizens) outside the United States who are the targets of a U.S. government intelligence information gathering efforts was addressed. The Protect America Act differed from the FISA in that no discussion of actions or character judgment of the target was required for application of the statute (i.e. to receive a FISA surveillance warrant, a FISC foreign agent definition was required). This data could be monitored only if intelligence officials acted in the context of intelligence information gathering. Foreign Agent Declaration Not Required No mention of foreign agent status is made in the Protect America Act of 2007. Under prior FISA rules, persons targeted for surveillance must have been declared as foreign agents before a FISA warrant would be accorded by the FISC court." "4. Removal of FISA Strictures and FISA-court (FISC) from warrant authorization; warrants not required But the most striking aspect of the Protect America Act was the notation that any information gathering did not comprise comprise electronic surveillance. This wording had the effect of removing FISA-related strictures from Protect America Act 2007-related Directives, serving to remove a number of protections for persons targeted, and requirements for persons working for U.S. intelligence agencies. The acquisition does not constitute electronic surveillance The removal of the term electronic surveillance from any Protect America Act Directive implied that the FISC court approval was no longer required, as FISA warrants were no longer required. In the place of a warrant was a certification, made by U.S. intelligence officers, which was copied to the Court. In effect, the FISC became less of a court than a registry of pre-approved certifications. Certifications (in place of FISA warrants) were able to be levied ex post facto, in writing to the Court no more than 72 hours after it was made. The Attorney General was to transmit as soon as possible to the Court a sealed copy of the certification that would remain sealed unless the certification was needed to determine the legality of the acquisition.[9]" "Controversy The Protect America Act generated a great deal of controversy. Constitutional lawyers and civil liberties experts expressed concerns that the Act authorized massive, wide-ranging information gathering with no oversight. Whereas much focus was placed on communications, the Act allowed for information gathering of all shapes and forms. The ACLU called it the "Police America Act" - "authorized a massive surveillance dragnet", calling the blank-check oversight provisions "meaningless," calling them a "phony court review of secret procedures."[11]" Phil, I really don't know what to say beyond this. Objectivism is supposed to be a philosophy that advocates laissez-faire capitalism and correspodingly limited government. If you think that laws which grant the government the basically unlimited right to spy on any American for the flimsiest of justifications, in total contradiction to 4th amendment protections against search and seizure without cause and without warrant, are consistent with the individual rights and limited government beliefs of objectivism, then you must inhabit some alternate universe of which I am definitely not a resident. Martin

Chris, Thanks for the complement. I'm sure that there are more than a few posters here on Objectivist Living who would strongly disagree with you! By the way, I noticed in your profile that you live in Sausalito. I live rather close to you, in Cupertino. We were actually thinking of going to this year's recently held Sausalito Art Festival, but we unfortunately missed it. But I've been there twice in past years. Sausalito is a really charming little town. You're very fortunate to live there. Martin

Adam, Here is a detailed description of the Bush administration and its efforts at evasion of the FISA law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_controversy "The NSA warrantless surveillance controversy concerns surveillance of persons within the United States incident to the collection of foreign intelligence by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) as part of the war on terror. Under this program, referred to by the Bush administration as the "terrorist surveillance program",[1] part of the broader President's Surveillance Program, the NSA is authorized by executive order to monitor, without warrants, phone calls, e-mails, Internet activity, and text messaging, and other communication involving any party believed by the NSA to be outside the U.S., even if the other end of the communication lies within the U.S. The exact scope of the program is not known, but the NSA is or was provided total, unsupervised access to all fiber-optic communications going between some of the nation's major telecommunication companies' major interconnect locations, including phone conversations, email, web browsing, and corporate private network traffic. Shortly before Congress passed a new law in August 2007 that legalized warrantless surveillance, the Protect America Act of 2007, critics stated that such "domestic" intercepts required FISC authorization under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.[2] The Bush administration maintained that the authorized intercepts are not domestic but rather foreign intelligence integral to the conduct of war and that the warrant requirements of FISA were implicitly superseded by the subsequent passage of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF).[3] FISA makes it illegal to intentionally engage in electronic surveillance under appearance of an official act or to disclose or use information obtained by electronic surveillance under appearance of an official act knowing that it was not authorized by statute; this is punishable with a fine of up to $10,000 or up to five years in prison, or both.[4] In addition, the Wiretap Act prohibits any person from illegally intercepting, disclosing, using or divulging phone calls or electronic communications; this is punishable with a fine or up to five years in prison, or both. [5] Attorney General Alberto Gonzales confirmed the existence of the program, first reported in a December 16, 2005 article in The New York Times.[6][7] The Times had posted the exclusive story on their website the night before, after learning that the Bush administration was considering seeking a Pentagon-Papers-style court injunction to block its publication.[8] Critics of The Times have openly alleged that executive editor Bill Keller had knowingly withheld the story from publication since before the 2004 Presidential election, and that the story that was ultimately first published by The Times was essentially the same one that reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau had first submitted at that time.[9] In a December 2008 interview with Newsweek, former Justice Department employee Thomas Tamm revealed himself to be the initial whistle-blower to The Times.[10] Gonzales stated that the program authorizes warrantless intercepts where the government "has a reasonable basis to conclude that one party to the communication is a member of al Qaeda, affiliated with al Qaeda, or a member of an organization affiliated with al Qaeda, or working in support of al Qaeda." and that one party to the conversation is "outside of the United States".[11] The revelation raised immediate concern among elected officials, civil right activists, legal scholars and the public at large about the legality and constitutionality of the program and the potential for abuse. Since then, the controversy[12] has expanded to include the press's role in exposing a classified program, the role and responsibility of Congress in its executive oversight function and the scope and extent of Presidential powers under Article II of the Constitution." Martin

Funny that you should bring up FISA. First of all, the FISA courts would routinely rubber stamp requests for warrants. Out of hundreds of requests, they only turned down about five, as I recall. Even this much of a restriction was too much for the Bush administration, which flagrantly violated the FISA law, insisting that it should have unlimited power to wiretap anyone it wished without a warrant. As to the "enemy combatants", a bogus legal designation appropriate for a dictatorship, not for a free society, many of the Afghanis were turned over to the US by Afghan bounty hunters who were being paid a bounty for each person turned in, without any evidence of their participation in combat activities. They were locked up for years at Guantanamo, without any evidence of their being guilty of anything and without any habeus corpus rights. Most have since been released. No, we are not yet living in a police state. I never claimed that we were. I stated quite clearly that Bush had moved us strongly in that direction, by his utter contempt for the rule of law and his gross expansion of the power of the unitary executive. The legal framework is now in place to turn the US into a dictatorship; the fact that this hasn't happened yet doesn't mean that the framework hasn't been established. In the event of a major civil disturbance, the president is now empowered to declare a national emergency, declare martial law, and commandeer the state national guards. No, this hasn't happened yet. I pray that it never does. But it could. You're right, that would be a fundamental mistake. Of course, it has nothing whatever to do with me. I have not uncritically swallowed anything, especially from the "liberal" press. I am a libertarian. The arguments I am using are libertarian arguments, even though they have also been adopted by people concerned with civil liberties who are not libertarian. It's interesting that you think that demonstrating a passionate concern with civil liberties and strictly limited government are liberal or left positions. Some people actually believe that objectivism is a philosophy which advocates civil liberties and strictly limited government. Though most modern day objectivists tend to disprove this belief. That kind of depends of the nature and scope of the spying. The Bush administration, and now the Obama administration, believe that they have the right to spy on anyone at any time for any reason, without providing any evidence that the people being spied on are terrorists. Please refer to Benjamin Franklin for a pithy quotation about the tradeoffs between liberty and the illusion of safety. I wonder why you don't follow your own advice. The post that you made, to which I was responding, was specifically a "laundry list" of reasons why the Obama administration was much worse than the Bush administration. You gave less justification for your laundry list than I did for mine. I am making an internet forum posting, not writing a scholarly journal article. If I were to elaborate in detail about each one of my points, my post could end up being ten pages. I don't think that you or anyone else would want to read a ten page post. Any war initiated against another country not in self-defense is a war of aggression. Trying to pretend that this is somehow self-defense because Iraq threatened our oil supply is ridiculous. Here's a revelation for you. The oil is not ours. It does not belong to us. Our survival was never threatened by Iraqi control of its oil reserves. There are multiple suppliers of oil. And Iraq was happy to sell oil to the US. It was only the wars launched by the US against Iraq and the destruction of Iraqi infrastructure that shut down the very oil supply that we supposedly depend upon to survive. The argument that any relatively free society such as ours has the right to invade any dictatorship at any time, an argument made by Ayn Rand, was always a ridiculous argument, and it has not improved with age. Invading Iraq did not just involve deposing a dictator. It led to destruction and death on a massive scale. The fact that Iraqis were living under a dictatorship did not give the US the right to launch a war that killed several hundred thousand of them and turned millions of others into refugees by bombing their neighborhoods and creating massive ethnic cleaning. Iraq has been destroyed by this war. And it's still living under a dictatorship. That you attempt to justify this is truly pathetic. I've read enough of Bidinotto to know the kinds of arguments that he uses. I am not impressed. Have you ever read Ivan Eland? Or Arthur Silber? Or Chris Floyd? Or Robert Higgs? Or James Bovard? No, I have not actually read the Patriot Act. Neither did any of the members of the US congress who voted for it, without a clue as to what was actually inside it. Such pieces of legislation are generally hundreds of pages long and simply unbearable to read. I have read summaries of the salient points of all of these pieces of legislation, however, enough to know just how abusive they are to human rights. How about you? Have you studied the Patriot Act, or Patriot Act 2, or the Military Commissions Act? Do you know what's inside these pieces of legislation, or just what powers they give to the federal government? Here's a passage from James Bovard, from his book "Terrorism and Tyranny", page 164, describing some of the provisions of Patriot 2: "Section 201 would make it easier for the federal government to carry out secret mass arrests. The provision, entitled "Prohibition of Disclosure of Terrorism Investigation Detainee Information", notes: "Although existing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) exemptions ... permit the government to protect information relating to detainees, defending this interpretation through litigation requires extensive Department of Justice resources, which would be better spent detecting and incapacitate [sic] terrorists." In other words, to save the Justice Department the bother of having to defend secret roundups, the Bush administration seeks to amend the federal statute book to imitate repressive dictatorships around the globe. Section 312, entitled "Appropriate Remedies with Respect to Law Enforcement Surveillance Activities", would nullify almost all federal, state, and local court "consent decrees" restricting the power of local and state police to spy on Americans. The Bush administration complains that such consent decrees result in police lacking "the ability to use the full range of investigative techniques that are lawful under the Constitution, and that are available to the FBI." But, in almost every case, such consent decrees were imposed after stark abuses of citizens' rights by the police. The Bush administration draft bill declares: "All surviving decrees would have to be necessary to correct a current and ongoing violation of the Federal right, and be narrowly drawn and the least intrusive means to correct the violation." Historically, Supreme Court First Amendment jurisprudence has required the federal government to use the "least intrusive means" necessary to achieve some policy, in order to prevent any unnecessary restriction of freedom of speech. The Bush administration now demands the "least intrusive" restrictions on government intrusions. Section 402 would permit U.S. attorneys to prosecute Americans for aiding terrorist organizations -- even if they made donations to organizations that the U.S. government did not publicly designate as terrorist groups. With the proposed revision, "there would be no requirement to show that the defendants actually had such an intent" to advance terrorist causes before convicting them of being terrorist supporters, according to the Justice Department explanatory text. Robert Higgs of the Independent Institute warns that, with this provision, the feds "can categorize the most innocent action" -- such as "signing a petition" -- as an act of terrorism." Do you feel safer now? Martin

Phil, Here is a partial list of some of the abominations that occurred under the presidency of "middle of the roader" George W. Bush: 1) Patriot Act 2) Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003 (Patriot Act 2) 3) Military Commissions Act 4) Protect America Act 5) Illegal violation of FISA law, illegal domestic wiretapping with no warrant 6) Establishment of Guantanamo Bay prison camp, creation of "enemy combatants" legal category 7) Establishment as a matter of US government policy of widespread torture and renditioning of suspects to nations practicing torture 8) Iraq invasion and subsequent occupation, based on a series of lies told to Congress, the UN, and the American people. A naked war of aggression with not even a plausible justification of self-defense. This invasion and occupation has cost over 4000 American lives, tens of thousands of American medical casualties, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, and millions of Iraqis driven from their homes and turned into refugees, all to replace the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, formerly an American ally, with a possibly even more brutal dictatorship. This war has so far cost about 1 trillion dollars and is estimated to have an ultimate cost of at least 3 trillion dollars. 9) US government nationalization of airport security, via creation of the TSA, one of the most loathsome government agencies. 10) Creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Apparently, the Department of Defense, with a budget of over 500 billion dollars annually, was so busy starting foreign wars and occupations that it wasn't doing a very good job of defending the homeland, which is the ostensible purpose of the Department of Defense. So a whole new mammoth government agency, with a name reminiscent of the Gestapo, was created. The republicans who are now screaming about big government under Obama didn't seem to be at all bothered about the creation of the TSA and DHS. 11) In the economic realm, the extension of the bankrupt Medicare system to prescription drugs, an entitlement which is going to add hundreds of billions more dollars to the cost of the system. 12) Budget deficits of hundreds of billions of dollars were run each year of the Bush administration. 13) Government bailout on a massive scale of banks and other financial institutions. I could go on, but what's the point? George W. Bush, this piece of human excrement who should be tried and executed as the war criminal that he is, who has done more than any presidents since FDR and Woodrow Wilson to turn the US into a police state, is your idea of a "waffling or ineffective non-intellectual middle of the roader"? What more could Obama do that Bush has already done to establish a police state in this country, other than arresting and incarcerating millions of Americans in concentration camps? Martin

Oh certainly not! We wouldn't want to "denigrate" a bombing which destroyed two cities, killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, and left untold numbers of others with unspeakable suffering due to the effects of radiation sickness. That might make the bombing feel bad! Or, at least, it might make feel bad those who don't wish to face the possibility that maybe, just maybe, their government committed mass murder for no good reason and then used court historians afterward to deceive the American public about the actual nature of the event. Your use of the phrase "revisionist history" is itself quite revealing. The only thing that matters when evaluating a particular historical event are the actual facts concerning the historical event. Whether the history which describes these facts is "standard history" or "revisionist history" is entirely irrelevant to the truth or falsity of the history. As such, your use of "revisionist history" as a phrase to discredit this particular historical interpretation of the bombing is entirely irrelevant. Martin Martin: I am sorry did you somehow make the wrong turn inside your mind that you somehow imagine that stringing together emotionally laden words would somehow make your argument valid? This is a funny charge coming from you. My post was not at all a stringing together of emotionally laden words. I very specifically pointed out the devastation of the bombing, along with your very inappropriate use of the word "denigrate" to describe the bombing, as though the bombing were a living person who was being unfairly insulted. Prior to my post, I linked to a very long, detailed essay by Arthur Silber in which he described in great detail the circumstances surrounding the bombing, as well as the absolutely disgusting behavior of the U.S. government afterward. From Silber's essay, "While the actual casualty count remains unknowable, it was widely known at the time that Japan had been trying to surrender for months prior to the atomic bombing. A May 5, 1945 cable, intercepted and decoded by the U.S., "dispelled any possible doubt that the Japanese were eager to sue for peace." In fact, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey reported shortly after the war, that Japan "in all probability" would have surrendered before the much-discussed November 1, 1945 Allied invasion of the homeland. Truman himself eloquently noted in his diary that Stalin would "be in the Jap War on August 15th. Fini (sic) Japs when that comes about." Silber continued, "Have you got that? We murdered hundreds of thousands of citizens of a nation that would have surrendered very shortly in any case -- and we did it to "send a message" to another country. No wonder Truman never wanted to see Oppenheimer again. I'm surprised Truman was ever able to sleep another night in his life." Later in the essay, Silber documented how the US government banned all journalists from the site of the bombing and then used a journalist on the payroll of the War Department to write a series of articles lying to the American people about the effects of radiation on the Japanese survivors, in order to conceal from them the truth about the utter horror unleased by their own government at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You did not respond to any of the substantive points made by Silber in his essay. Instead, you dismissed it out of hand, simply by the expedient of labeling it as "revisionist history". I pointed out that this is nothing more than a smear label designed to justify ignoring it without any consideration. In fact, it doesn't matter whether Silber's historical account is "revisionist" or not. The only thing that matters is whether or not his account is true. This thesis is not at all original to Silber. There is a great deal of historical scholarship defending the thesis that Japan was willing to surrender conditionally, the main condition being that it be allowed to keep its emperor. The U.S. instead demanded unconditional surrender. After the war, Japan was permitted to keep its emperor anyway. It's not an official title. But you really don't believe that such people exist? There are court historians, court journalists, court economists, etc. Governments have always relied on lies, deception, and obfuscation in order to hide from their subjects their true nature, so that their subjects will obey them and not rebel. Historians, journalists, economists, and others involved in spreading ideas to the masses -- any of these who serve their masters in government, in order to deceive the masses into supporting their government, deserve the title of "court". There is no shortage of such people. Governments have the means to make their work extremely rewarding by giving them power, prestige, and money. Martin

Oh certainly not! We wouldn't want to "denigrate" a bombing which destroyed two cities, killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, and left untold numbers of others with unspeakable suffering due to the effects of radiation sickness. That might make the bombing feel bad! Or, at least, it might make feel bad those who don't wish to face the possibility that maybe, just maybe, their government committed mass murder for no good reason and then used court historians afterward to deceive the American public about the actual nature of the event. Your use of the phrase "revisionist history" is itself quite revealing. The only thing that matters when evaluating a particular historical event are the actual facts concerning the historical event. Whether the history which describes these facts is "standard history" or "revisionist history" is entirely irrelevant to the truth or falsity of the history. As such, your use of "revisionist history" as a phrase to discredit this particular historical interpretation of the bombing is entirely irrelevant. Martin

Thanks, Ba'al. I could not have said it better myself. "They" started the war. Every one of the hundreds of thousands of dead and mutilated, with skin melting off of their bodies. Every one of them, including every one of the children and even babies. They were all collectively responsible. For this is the ultimate nature of the ethics of individualism. War is peace! Freedom is slavery! Ignorance is strength! Besides, they were nothing but a bunch of Jap bastards anyway. Martin

"The Culture of the Lie, II: The Loathsome Lies in the Service of the Horrors of War", by Arthur Silber http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2006/06/culture-of-lie-ii-loathsome-lies-in.html While pursuing various links around the internet, I came across the following story once again. Since it unfortunately retains all of its relevance today and also parallels almost precisely similar lies being told now, I think it is worth taking a few minutes to note the infernal lies of war, including a few of the more notable ones from the United States' own lengthy history of such lies. I know it is a terrible thing to strip people of their apparently necessary delusions. Nonetheless, in the same spirit that children who have been misled into believing in Santa Claus must someday let go of that fantasy if they are to grow up, here we go. Start with this one: the lie that the atomic bombs unleashed on Japan were "necessary" to bring an earlier end to World War II and save many American lives. This fable, recited by schoolchildren everywhere and also by many adults who endlessly apologize for the horrors of war, is nothing but a series of lies, one on top of another: Although hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives were lost in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the bombings are often explained away as a "life-saving" measure-American lives. Exactly how many lives saved is, however, up for grabs. (We do know of a few U.S. soldiers who fell between the cracks. About a dozen or more American POWs were killed in Hiroshima, a truth that remained hidden for some 30 years.) In defense of the U.S. action, it is usually claimed that the bombs saved lives. The hypothetical body count ranges from 20,000 to "millions." In an August 9, 1945 statement to "the men and women of the Manhattan Project," President Truman declared the hope that "this new weapon will result in saving thousands of American lives." "The president's initial formulation of 'thousands,' however, was clearly not his final statement on the matter to say the least," remarks historian Gar Alperovitz. In his book, "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth," Alperovitz documents but a few of Truman's public estimates throughout the years: *December 15, 1945: "It occurred to me that a quarter of a million of the flower of our young manhood was worth a couple of Japanese cities . . ." *Late 1946: "A year less of war will mean life for three hundred thousand-maybe half a million-of America's finest youth." *October 1948: "In the long run we could save a quarter of a million young Americans from being killed, and would save an equal number of Japanese young men from being killed." *April 6, 1949: "I thought 200,000 of our young men would be saved." *November 1949: Truman quotes Army Chief of Staff George S. Marshall as estimating the cost of an Allied invasion of Japan to be "half a million casualties." *January 12, 1953: Still quoting Marshall, Truman raises the estimate to "a minimum one quarter of a million" and maybe "as much as a million, on the American side alone, with an equal number of the enemy." *Finally, on April 28, 1959, Truman concluded: "the dropping of the bombs . . . saved millions of lives." Fortunately, we are not operating without the benefit of official estimates. In June 1945, Truman ordered the U.S. military to calculate the cost in American lives for a planned assault on Japan. Consequently, the Joint War Plans Committee prepared a report for the Chiefs of Staff, dated June 15, 1945, thus providing the closest thing anyone has to "accurate": 40,000 U.S. soldiers killed, 150,000 wounded, and 3,500 missing. While the actual casualty count remains unknowable, it was widely known at the time that Japan had been trying to surrender for months prior to the atomic bombing. A May 5, 1945 cable, intercepted and decoded by the U.S., "dispelled any possible doubt that the Japanese were eager to sue for peace." In fact, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey reported shortly after the war, that Japan "in all probability" would have surrendered before the much-discussed November 1, 1945 Allied invasion of the homeland. Truman himself eloquently noted in his diary that Stalin would "be in the Jap War on August 15th. Fini (sic) Japs when that comes about." So we didn't need to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki to force Japan to surrender...so why did we? Here's the reason -- which must represent one of the most profoundly immoral and sickening acts in mankind's recent history: As far back as May 1945, a Venezuelan diplomat was reporting how Assistant Secretary of State Nelson Rockefeller "communicated to us the anxiety of the United States government about the Russian attitude." U.S. Secretary of State James F. Byrnes seemed to agree when he turned the anxiety up a notch by explaining how "our possessing and demonstrating the bomb would make Russia more manageable in the East . . . The demonstration of the bomb might impress Russia with America's military might." General Leslie Groves was less cryptic: "There was never, from about two weeks from the time I took charge of this Project, any illusion on my part but that Russia was our enemy, and the Project was conducted on that basis." During the same time period, President Truman noted that Secretary of War Henry Stimson was "at least as much concerned with the role of the atomic bomb in the shaping of history as in its capacity to shorten the war." What sort of shaping Stimson had in mind might be discerned from his Sept. 11, 1945 comment to the president: "I consider the problem of our satisfactory relations with Russia as not merely connected but as virtually dominated by the problem of the atomic bomb." Stimson called the bomb a "diplomatic weapon," and duly explained: "American statesmen were eager for their country to browbeat the Russians with the bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip." "The psychological effect [of Hiroshima and Nagasaki] on Stalin was twofold," proposes historian Charles L. Mee, Jr. "The Americans had not only used a doomsday machine; they had used it when, as Stalin knew, it was not militarily necessary. It was this last chilling fact that doubtless made the greatest impression on the Russians." It also made an impression on J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific director at Los Alamos. After learning of the carnage wrought upon Japan, he began to harbor second thoughts and he resigned in October 1945. In March of the following year, Oppenheimer told Truman: "Mr. President, I have blood on my hands." Truman's reply: "It'll come out in the wash." Later, the president told an aide, "Don't bring that fellow around again." Have you got that? We murdered hundreds of thousands of citizens of a nation that would have surrendered very shortly in any case -- and we did it to "send a message" to another country. No wonder Truman never wanted to see Oppenheimer again. I'm surprised Truman was ever able to sleep another night in his life. Unfortunately, this is hardly the end of this particular loathsome trail of lies. No: we still need to note the propaganda campaign launched by the press, most notably by that stellar exponent of the establishment and carrier of the lies told and retold for the benefit of the United States government, then and now -- The New York Times. Here's part of the tale: At the dawn of the nuclear age, an independent Australian journalist named Wilfred Burchett traveled to Japan to cover the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The only problem was that General Douglas MacArthur had declared southern Japan off-limits, barring the press. Over 200,000 people died in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but no Western journalist witnessed the aftermath and told the story. The world's media obediently crowded onto the USS Missouri off the coast of Japan to cover the surrender of the Japanese. Wilfred Burchett decided to strike out on his own. He was determined to see for himself what this nuclear bomb had done, to understand what this vaunted new weapon was all about. So he boarded a train and traveled for thirty hours to the city of Hiroshima in defiance of General MacArthur's orders. Burchett emerged from the train into a nightmare world. The devastation that confronted him was unlike any he had ever seen during the war. The city of Hiroshima, with a population of 350,000, had been razed. Multistory buildings were reduced to charred posts. He saw people's shadows seared into walls and sidewalks. He met people with their skin melting off. In the hospital, he saw patients with purple skin hemorrhages, gangrene, fever, and rapid hair loss. Burchett was among the first to witness and describe radiation sickness. Burchett sat down on a chunk of rubble with his Baby Hermes typewriter. His dispatch began: "In Hiroshima, thirty days after the first atomic bomb destroyed the city and shook the world, people are still dying, mysteriously and horribly-people who were uninjured in the cataclysm from an unknown something which I can only describe as the atomic plague." He continued, tapping out the words that still haunt to this day: "Hiroshima does not look like a bombed city. It looks as if a monster steamroller has passed over it and squashed it out of existence. I write these facts as dispassionately as I can in the hope that they will act as a warning to the world." Burchett's article, headlined THE ATOMIC PLAGUE, was published on September 5, 1945, in the London Daily Express. The story caused a worldwide sensation. Burchett's candid reaction to the horror shocked readers. ... Burchett's searing independent reportage was a public relations fiasco for the U.S. military. General MacArthur had gone to pains to restrict journalists' access to the bombed cities, and his military censors were sanitizing and even killing dispatches that described the horror. The official narrative of the atomic bombings downplayed civilian casualties and categorically dismissed reports of the deadly lingering effects of radiation. Reporters whose dispatches conflicted with this version of events found themselves silenced. ... U.S. authorities responded in time-honored fashion to Burchett's revelations: They attacked the messenger. ... Four days after Burchett's story splashed across front pages around the world, Major General Leslie R. Groves, director of the atomic bomb project, invited a select group of thirty reporters to New Mexico. Foremost among this group was William L. Laurence, the Pulitzer Prize-winning science reporter for The New York Times. Groves took the reporters to the site of the first atomic test. His intent was to demonstrate that no atomic radiation lingered at the site. Groves trusted Laurence to convey the military's line; the general was not disappointed. Laurence's front-page story, U.S. ATOM BOMB SITE BELIES TOKYO TALES: TESTS ON NEW MEXICO RANGE CONFIRM THAT BLAST, AND NOT RADIATION, TOOK TOLL, ran on September 12, 1945, following a three-day delay to clear military censors. "This historic ground in New Mexico, scene of the first atomic explosion on earth and cradle of a new era in civilization, gave the most effective answer today to Japanese propaganda that radiations [sic] were responsible for deaths even after the day of the explosion, Aug. 6, and that persons entering Hiroshima had contracted mysterious maladies due to persistent radioactivity," the article began.3 Laurence said unapologetically that the Army tour was intended "to give the lie to these claims." Laurence quoted General Groves: "The Japanese claim that people died from radiation. If this is true, the number was very small." William L. Laurence went on to write a series of ten articles for the Times that served as a glowing tribute to the ingenuity and technical achievements of the nuclear program. Throughout these and other reports, he downplayed and denied the human impact of the bombing. Laurence won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting. It turns out that William L. Laurence was not only receiving a salary from The New York Times. He was also on the payroll of the War Department. In March 1945, General Leslie Groves had held a secret meeting at The New York Times with Laurence to offer him a job writing press releases for the Manhattan Project, the U.S. program to develop atomic weapons. The intent, according to the Times, was "to explain the intricacies of the atomic bomb's operating principles in laymen's language." Laurence also helped write statements on the bomb for President Truman and Secretary of War Henry Stimson. ... "Mine has been the honor, unique in the history of journalism, of preparing the War Department's official press release for worldwide distribution," boasted Laurence in his memoirs, Dawn Over Zero. "No greater honor could have come to any newspaperman, or anyone else for that matter." So you see that there is truly nothing new under the sun. "Journalists" have always been used to peddle government propaganda, to sanitize the bloody horror of war, and to help people continue to nurse the delusions which allow them to believe that their nation fought nobly in a glorious cause. And there are always some "journalists" who will do it proudly-- and still tell themselves that what they are doing is "reporting." None of it is new -- and if the scale of destruction were not so horrifying, it would merely be pathetic.