Martin Radwin

Perhaps an explanation would be in order as to why the internal affairs of Iran are of great significance to the American people. The US government has claimed this about every nation on earth where it has militarily intervened, including such places as Somalia, where the US government has been intervening for years. Are the internal affairs of Somalia also of great significance to the American people? When you're an empire, everyone's business is your business. That's interesting. Since this hypothetical president is so concerned with human rights violations in Iran, why has the US government continued to maintain military alliances with some of the most brutal dictatorships in the world? The US government gives billions of dollars every year in aid to Egypt, a country with a far worse human rights record than Iran. Perhaps because the government of Egypt is on friendly terms with the US government, and the government of Iran is not. Who cares about human rights, anyway? The murdering clerics who first seized power did so after the Shah was overthrown. The Shah was a brutal but non-clerical dictator installed with assistance from the US government. His secret police force, SAVAK, was trained in methods of torture by the CIA. The US government helped to maintain this dictator in power for many years, after participating in the coup and assisination of the democratically elected leader of Iran in 1953. It's very interesting that the writer of this screed neglected to mention any of this history. Iran took the US embassy staff hostage. Prior to this, the US government supported the dictatorship of the Shah in Iran for 26 years. Which of these two is a greater crime against humanity? The seizing of the embassy is always mentioned by ARI without any reference to any of the history that preceded it. As to the Americans killed by Iran, would it be impolite to mention that the US government supported Iraq in its war against Iran, a war in which an estimated one millions Iranians were killed? Since there was not even any plausible excuse that such an intervention was necessary to the defense of the United States, the US government bears moral responsibility for every one of these million Iranians killed. So it appears that the US government is responsible for killing about one thousand times as many Iranians as the Iranian government is responsible for killing Americans. Another inconvenient fact that ARI forgets to mention. Lets do a hypothetical role reversal here. Suppose that, about fifty years ago, the government of Iran helped to impose a brutal dictatorship in the United States. The Iranian intelligence service provided logistical support to the American secret police, including instruction in the fine art of torture. The American people had to live under the yoke of this Iranian imposed dictatorship for 26 years. The United States was finally able to overthrow this Iranian imposed dictatorship. Shortly after this overthrow, the Iranian government decided that the United States was a security threat to Iran and starting providing money, weapons, and intelligence to Mexico, which went to war with the US. During this war, one million Americans were killed (or, if we're going to make the casualties proportional to population, perhaps we should say that five million Americans were killed). Years later, during the Iranian presidential campaign, one of the Iranian presidential candidates started singing a mutated version of a Beach Boys song, "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb America". Another Iranian presidential candidate, who later went on to become Iranian secretary of state, declared that it might be necessary to annihilate the United States. It was agreed by all leading Iranian politicians that, if the US doesn't bend to the will of Iran, "all options are on the table", including the use of Iran's nuclear arsenal. If Americans had to endure this hypothetical alternative reality, perhaps we would be out in the streets, yelling "Death to Iran". Iran had nothing to do with the September 11th attacks on our soil. These attacks were planned and carried out by Wahhabite Sunni Muslims, mostly from Saudi Arabia, an "ally" of the United States. Iran is a Shiite Muslim country and a long time enemy of the Wahhabite Sunni Muslims. But, what the hell, Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks either, and yet phony intelligence was gathered to justify attacking Iraq in a war that has killed at least 100,000 Iraqis, probably many more, and that has created over 4,000,000 Iraqi refugees. The Iraq occupation is getting boring already, so perhaps it's time to unleash some of this "creative destruction" on Iran. What's the point of spending a trillion dollars a year to maintain the world's greatest military without actually using it? Perhaps, after the way that the US government has treated Iran over the last fifty years, Iranians ought not to be particularly interested in either its encouragement or its sanction. Who could pass up an offer like that? If a large number of Iranians believed the president and decided to launch a rebellion against the regime, the US could end up forgetting to support them, leaving them to be slaughtered, just as happened after Operation Desert Storm, when the US government told Iraqi rebels to rebel against Saddam Hussein's regime and then forgot to support them, leaving them to be slaughtered. Ditto for the ill-fated Bay of Pigs. Perhaps it is understandable that Iranians should also be rather skeptical about the US government's concern for their welfare, given that the US government has repeatedly threatened to nuke them. What an offer! Iranians most certainly have the moral fortitude to fight and die to replace their dictatorship with another dictatorship that is friendly to the US government, just as at least 100,000 Iraqis have died in order to replace the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein with an American friendly dictatorship. Well, as the old joke about Iraq went, perhaps we should give them our Constitution, since we haven't used it in years. Perhaps Iran should not look too closely at the United States as a role model for a nation whose government recognizes individual rights. Perhaps they should not try to emulate our worldwide empire of military bases, the Patriot Act, the Patriot Act II, the Military Commissions Act, the endlessly evil and stupid "War on Drugs", the Department of Homeland Security, the TSA, the IRS, etc., etc., etc. Perhaps, if this hypothetical president of the United States really cares about individual rights, he will dedicate himself to doing everything possible to liberate the American people from the yoke of their own government, rather than worrying about Iran. And if you believe that, I have some prime real estate in Washington D.C. that I'd like to sell you. Too bad that it's been well over a hundred years since the United States had a president or a government that gave a damn about the rights of its own citizens. Martin

Adam, thanks for your reply. Hey, it wasn't my post! The post I linked to was written by Arthur Silber, who has maintained a blog for a number of years. Silber is an ex objectivist who actually, as I recall, worked many years ago for "The Objectivist". I consider Arthur Silber to be one of the most brilliant thinkers around today and to have what I consider to be the best blog I have ever read. I'm quite frankly surprised that you would give Mr. Silber credit for raising any quality issues at all. These days, almost all objectivists have an unremitting hostility toward anyone who even suggests that it is unlibertarian and unobjectivist for the US government to maintain a worldwide array of military bases, and to start unprovoked, non-defensive wars of aggression against other nations which have killed hundreds of thousands of people and destroyed the homes and lives of millions more. Well, as a general rule, joining the military does mean that you will be expected to unconditionally follow orders. Refusing to obey a lawful order will likely get you a court martial. The only exception to this is that unlawful orders are not to be obeyed. But in practice, unlawful orders are issued and obeyed all the time, or unlawful actions are taken by soldiers in contravention to actual orders. Just look at the frequency of attrocities committed during wars, the targeting of noncombatants, the torture of prisoners taken on the battlefield, etc. Regarding your point #6, that joining the military means that you will be pressured to make a god out of the military, this seems a bit of an overgeneralization. But this certainly happens not infrequently, especially in a war zone where soldiers are surrounded by a hostile, alien, culturally very different population. Military training does tend to dehumanize the enemy, in order to make it easier for soldiers to kill them unquestionably, overcoming the natural human aversion to killing their fellow humans. Given such incredibly stressful conditions, there is a strong tendency for the military to become a sort of god, as a matter of physical and emotional survival. Obviously, most people manage to survive their years in the military physically and emotionally intact, despite being subjected to the horrors of war. There are plenty of libertarians who are ex military. I'm 55. I turned 18 during the Vietnam War, the very year when the college deferment was abolished and replaced with a lottery system. I got a low draft number and was in danger of being drafted, toward the tail end of the war. I consider myself to be incredibly fortunate to have avoided being drafted into the horrible and unredeemably stupid meat grinder of Vietnam, thanks to a medical deferment. Who says there are no benefits to having asthma? Martin

No, I Do Not Support "The Troops" http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2009/...ort-troops.html

"War don't enoble men. Turns em into dogs. Poisons the soul." --- From "The Thin Red Line" "War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses. I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag. I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket. There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism. It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service. I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents." Major General Smedley Butler, USMC

We are targets of Muslim extremists because we are Kafirs, not because we attack them. Bin Laden did not plan 9/11 because the U.S. attacked Muslims, but because U.S. troops dirtied their Holy Ground with their Unbeliever Boots. He saw us as Crusaders and if you listen to his rants that is what he calls us. Ba'al Chatzaf Do you realize that you just agreed with David? By conceding that Bin Laden planned the 9/11 attack in response to the stationing of US troops in Saudi Arabia ("because U.S. troops dirtied their Holy Ground with their Unbeliever Boots"), you have affirmed his argument. For if the US had a non-interventionist foreign policy, there never would have been US troops in Saudi Arabia, and the 9/11 attack almost certainly would never have happened. Yet the believers in a foreign policy of endless intervention in the affairs of other nations are constantly given credit for helping to defend the United States homeland. While those of us who believe in a foreign policy of non-interventionism are constantly accused of being indifferent to the defense of the United States. Martin

Of course you do, because it means you don't actually do anything except prance about looking good and patting yourself on the back for being a 'beacon of hope' I'm sure that if your next door neighbor was being beaten and raped, reminding her that you are a 'beacon of hope' will make her feel much better. So what exactly are you doing about all of the innocent citizens of countries around the world ruled by dictators? Are you now fighting in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or anywhere else? Or do you leave the fighting and the dieing to others, because you have "other priorities", just like chickenhawk war criminal Dick Cheney? Do you feel proud of yourself for being an internet warrior, while making snide remarks about another poster prancing about looking good? First of all, a country which does not have free speech and a constitutional grantee of civil liberties and of emigration has no business being called a 'country' and is nothing more than a giant hostage camp ruled by thugs. Who gains is the free people of the world who enjoy the fruits of the labor of millions of more free people and the peace and prosperity which comes from the end of murderous dictatorial rule. Who pays is the murderous dictators. What you leave out is much more significant than what you include in this calculation. So I'll include the part that you didn't see fit to mention. Here's a list of some other people who have paid for the wars that you glorify: 1) Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died or were wounded by the US invasion. 2) Millions of Iraqis who were ethnically cleansed from their homes and forced to flee and become refugees. 3) Over four thousand US soldiers who have been killed, along with tens of thousands of medical and psychological casualties. 4) Over a million Vietnamese killed during the Vietnam war. 5) Over a million Cambodians killed by the Khmer Rouge, as a direct result of the bombing of Cambodia that accompanied the Vietnam war. 6) Over 50,000 US soliders killed, along with several hundred thousand medical and psychological casualties. 7) Hundreds of thousands of young men drafted into servitude to fight the Vietnam war. 8) Trillions of dollars paid by US citizens, either directly through taxes or indirectly through inflation and debt used to pay for the wars. Martin 1) Maybe true IF you include the first Gulf War. 2) I don't know about "millions" but a lot moved. 5) 2-3 million, Vietnam for sure. Bombing? I dunno. The shitty French/Marxist intellectual milieu had a lot to do with this. 6) I think about 45,000 killed by combat with another 10,000 from all other causes. 7) Probably higher, for many enlisted to avoid the draft. I did. 8) Billions, not trillions, is my estimation. Trillions just seems much too high for Vietnam. --Brant 1) Noone knows the exact number of Iraqis killed either directly or indirectly from Gulf War 2. The lowest estimate is from Iraq Body Count, which estimates between 90000 and 98000 deaths. But these are only deaths confirmed from multiple sources. Also, this figure only includes noncombatant deaths. Undoubtedly, the actual number of deaths, including people who have died from diseases caused by destruction of Iraqi infrastructure, is much higher; most of these deaths could not be confirmed as caused by the war and would not be included in the IBC estimate. "Just Foreign Policy", http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html estimates Iraqi deaths due to the US invasion at 1.3 million, based on extrapolations from the Lancet study. The Opinion Research Business used similar survey methods to the Lancet study to arrive at an estimate of about 1.2 million Iraqi deaths. Even if the above figures from JFP and ORB are too high, an estimate of at least several hundred thousand deaths from the US invasion seems very reasonable to me. 2) According to the International Rescue Committee, http://ga3.org/campaign/Iraqi_refugees?gcl...CFQRkswod7WFBSQ "More than two million refugees from Iraq have fled to neighboring countries, mostly in Jordan and Syria. Another two million Iraqis are displaced within Iraq due to violence and persecution." This is a total of 4 million refugees, about 1/6 of the entire population of Iraq. If an equivalent percentage of the US population were turned into refugees, this would amount to about 50,000,000 American refugees. 7) I was being conservative in my estimate of the number of men drafted. I'm sure you're right that many people enlisted in order to avoid the draft. In my case, I was ready to start college the year that the college deferment was eliminated and replaced with a lottery system based on date of birth. I ended up with a low draft number and might have ended up being drafted, except that I was able to get a medical deferment. 8) The estimate of trillions that I gave was for both the Vietnam and Iraq wars. For the Vietnam war, the costs must be adjusted for inflation to the present value of dollars. The total costs of the wars include not only the direct cost of fighting the wars but also the interest paid on the billions of dollars borrowed to pay for the war, as well as the costs of medical care for war veterans over their entire lifetime. I've heard estimates that, based on all of these included costs, the Iraq war alone may end up costing up to 3 trillion dollars. Anyway, the point of my list was to document the many victims of war, none of whom Michael saw fit to mention. His flippant remark that "Who pays is the murderous dictators" is reflective of just how invisible the true victims of war are to so many people. Martin

Of course you do, because it means you don't actually do anything except prance about looking good and patting yourself on the back for being a 'beacon of hope' I'm sure that if your next door neighbor was being beaten and raped, reminding her that you are a 'beacon of hope' will make her feel much better. So what exactly are you doing about all of the innocent citizens of countries around the world ruled by dictators? Are you now fighting in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or anywhere else? Or do you leave the fighting and the dieing to others, because you have "other priorities", just like chickenhawk war criminal Dick Cheney? Do you feel proud of yourself for being an internet warrior, while making snide remarks about another poster prancing about looking good? First of all, a country which does not have free speech and a constitutional grantee of civil liberties and of emigration has no business being called a 'country' and is nothing more than a giant hostage camp ruled by thugs. Who gains is the free people of the world who enjoy the fruits of the labor of millions of more free people and the peace and prosperity which comes from the end of murderous dictatorial rule. Who pays is the murderous dictators. What you leave out is much more significant than what you include in this calculation. So I'll include the part that you didn't see fit to mention. Here's a list of some other people who have paid for the wars that you glorify: 1) Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died or were wounded by the US invasion. 2) Millions of Iraqis who were ethnically cleansed from their homes and forced to flee and become refugees. 3) Over four thousand US soldiers who have been killed, along with tens of thousands of medical and psychological casualties. 4) Over a million Vietnamese killed during the Vietnam war. 5) Over a million Cambodians killed by the Khmer Rouge, as a direct result of the bombing of Cambodia that accompanied the Vietnam war. 6) Over 50,000 US soliders killed, along with several hundred thousand medical and psychological casualties. 7) Hundreds of thousands of young men drafted into servitude to fight the Vietnam war. 8) Trillions of dollars paid by US citizens, either directly through taxes or indirectly through inflation and debt used to pay for the wars. Martin

The US has over 700 military bases around the world, has engaged in over one hundred military actions since the end of WW2, and spends over $500 billion annually on the defense budget, more than the combined total spent on defense by the entire rest of the world. It is presently engaged in fighting at least three different wars, in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia. It is also launching across border military attacks into Syria and Pakistan. It has a declared foreign policy of "preemptive war", claiming the right to attack any country that it considers to be even the slightest threat. But I guess you think that this is all just fine. I obviously just don't know the meaning of the word "empire". Martin http://www.alternet.org/story/47998 The following is excerpted from Chalmers Johnson's new book, "Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic" (Metropolitan Books). Once upon a time, you could trace the spread of imperialism by counting up colonies. America's version of the colony is the military base; and by following the changing politics of global basing, one can learn much about our ever more all-encompassing imperial "footprint" and the militarism that grows with it. It is not easy, however, to assess the size or exact value of our empire of bases. Official records available to the public on these subjects are misleading, although instructive. According to the Defense Department's annual inventories from 2002 to 2005 of real property it owns around the world, the Base Structure Report, there has been an immense churning in the numbers of installations. The total of America's military bases in other people's countries in 2005, according to official sources, was 737. Reflecting massive deployments to Iraq and the pursuit of President Bush's strategy of preemptive war, the trend line for numbers of overseas bases continues to go up. Interestingly enough, the thirty-eight large and medium-sized American facilities spread around the globe in 2005 -- mostly air and naval bases for our bombers and fleets -- almost exactly equals Britain's thirty-six naval bases and army garrisons at its imperial zenith in 1898. The Roman Empire at its height in 117 AD required thirty-seven major bases to police its realm from Britannia to Egypt, from Hispania to Armenia. Perhaps the optimum number of major citadels and fortresses for an imperialist aspiring to dominate the world is somewhere between thirty-five and forty. Using data from fiscal year 2005, the Pentagon bureaucrats calculated that its overseas bases were worth at least $127 billion -- surely far too low a figure but still larger than the gross domestic products of most countries -- and an estimated $658.1 billion for all of them, foreign and domestic (a base's "worth" is based on a Department of Defense estimate of what it would cost to replace it). During fiscal 2005, the military high command deployed to our overseas bases some 196,975 uniformed personnel as well as an equal number of dependents and Department of Defense civilian officials, and employed an additional 81,425 locally hired foreigners. The worldwide total of U.S. military personnel in 2005, including those based domestically, was 1,840,062 supported by an additional 473,306 Defense Department civil service employees and 203,328 local hires. Its overseas bases, according to the Pentagon, contained 32,327 barracks, hangars, hospitals, and other buildings, which it owns, and 16,527 more that it leased. The size of these holdings was recorded in the inventory as covering 687,347 acres overseas and 29,819,492 acres worldwide, making the Pentagon easily one of the world's largest landlords. These numbers, although staggeringly big, do not begin to cover all the actual bases we occupy globally. The 2005 Base Structure Report fails, for instance, to mention any garrisons in Kosovo (or Serbia, of which Kosovo is still officially a province) -- even though it is the site of the huge Camp Bondsteel built in 1999 and maintained ever since by the KBR corporation (formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root), a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation of Houston. The report similarly omits bases in Afghanistan, Iraq (106 garrisons as of May 2005), Israel, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan, even though the U.S. military has established colossal base structures in the Persian Gulf and Central Asian areas since 9/11. By way of excuse, a note in the preface says that "facilities provided by other nations at foreign locations" are not included, although this is not strictly true. The report does include twenty sites in Turkey, all owned by the Turkish government and used jointly with the Americans. The Pentagon continues to omit from its accounts most of the $5 billion worth of military and espionage installations in Britain, which have long been conveniently disguised as Royal Air Force bases. If there were an honest count, the actual size of our military empire would probably top 1,000 different bases overseas, but no one -- possibly not even the Pentagon -- knows the exact number for sure. The below link contains a list of all military events that have occurred throughout the history of the United States. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unite..._history_events

Oh Jesus, another "empire" hater. Well, where the hell are my dividend checks from this empire? Where is my coolie slave? Where is my tribute of gold and spice? Where are my free barrels of oil? A funny empire when you let the subjects keep their own belongings, make there own laws, and you leave when they ask you to do so. Words have meaninings. Empire is a word, and so is fool. So you thought that the US empire was going to make you rich? Sorry, but it won't, not unless you happen to be Halliburton, Blackwater, Lockheed, Raytheon, or another esteemed member of the military industrial complex. Your name accidently got left off the list of beneficiaries, as did mine and pretty much everyone else around here. But for a consolation prize, you get to pay in taxes and in inflation, for the rest of your life, to support the hundreds of US military bases around the world that you don't see fit to call an empire, along with the multiple wars and military occupations that are planned for our glorious future of national greatness. After all, there's no such thing as a free lunch, you can't consume more than you have produced, and someone's got to pay for all of that national greatness. Thank you for playing "If we're an empire, how come I'm not getting rich?"! Martin

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Thomas Jefferson "America is at that awkward stage; it's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." Claire Wolfe It's rather amusing that Mr. Perigo would come out supporting Americans taking up arms against the US government in a violent revolution. The chances of such a revolution succeeding at the present time are infinitesimal, and the mayhem, death, and destruction that would result are inestimable. Besides, since Mr. Perigo is such a vehement advocate of American empire and imperial projects such as the Iraq war, how does he imagine that the American empire of which he is such a huge supporter could be sustained after the US government had been overthrown in a second American revolution? Martin

Bob, The way you posted in post #49 makes it appear as though the blocked section is a quotation from me. It is not. I was quoting from the Natural Philosophy web site, as is clear from looking at my original post for this thread. The fact that I included this quotation from the web site in no way means that I agree with it. I brought up the whole subject to see what kind of a response I would get from the people on Objectivist Living with a strong background in physics, such as you and Stephen Boydstun. Martin

A brilliant observation on your part! The folks on antiwar.com would be absolutely thrilled about a US city being nuked. Why, they're just giddy with anticipation at the prospect! While, on the surface, it appears that some of the writers whose work has appeared on antiwar.com, such as Doug Bandow, Alan Bock, Ivan Eland, Jacob Hornberger, James Bovard, Sheldon Richman, Robert Higgs, and Arthur Silber are among the most brilliant libertarian thinkers alive today, it's all really just a ruse. Deep down, they're really islamofascist agents working with Al Qaeda to bring down America. Thanks to your brilliant detective work in exposing them, perhaps America can be saved after all. Perhaps the US government will want to offer you a job as head of the CIA, where you can discover WMDs hidden in Somalia. Martin

What you hope and wish is not relevant in science, that can only result in Peikovian physics and crackpot theories. In general people don't like the idea that they'll die one day, but that doesn't make life-after-death theories true. You'll just have to live with some uncomfortable truths. Martin was hardly propounding "hope and wish" as a substitue for knowledge and thus heading toward such a reult as "Peikovian physics [etc.]." He's very far removed from being a scientific ignoramus -- or wishful thinker. (I've known Martin for years on e-lists; I'm not judging only on the basis of his sporadic posts on this list.) Ellen ___ Ellen, Thanks for pointing this out to Dragonfly. I thought that his post was rather insulting and not at all responsive to what I said. For the record, what I said was simply that I find the BBT as it stands today to be a very depressing theory, because it predicts that our universe will ultimately die and stay dead forever. Even though we will obviously not be around to see this, I still find this to be a depressing scenario for how our universe will ultimately end. Nowhere did I state or even imply that this was some kind of argument against the validity of the BBT. I know perfectly well that the universe doesn't give a damn what I or anyone else thinks! I really didn't need Dragonfly to explain this to me. Martin

Martin, Are you subscribed to Dennis May's "Physics_Frontier" list? (He also has several other Yahoo lists along similar lines.) http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Physics_Frontier/ I for sure haven't the physics knowledge properly to assess what Dennis and others argue, but the "smell" of it, to me, is that the BigBang theory is only being held together by ad-hoc patch and paste. The situation might be similar to Kelvin's miscalculation. (I would so like to have a crystal ball which could foresee the shape of scientific theory a hundred years from now -- if, of course, science is still a going enterprise a hundred years from now. The possibility of an eclipse of science is the threat which most worries me short term.) Ellen ___ Ellen, Thanks for the link to Dennis May's list. I'll check it out. I remember Dennis from his old postings on Atlantis II. His "pro war" views did not go over very well with George Smith, Jeff Riggenbach, and Dan Ust. They didn't go over very well with me either, for that matter. Do you happen to know Dennis May's technical background in physics or astronomy/cosmology? Do you really think that he has presented credible arguments against the BBT, or that he possesses the technical knowledge to do so? I know that various astronomers/cosmologists have been claiming for years that the BBT is a dying theory. For example, Eric Lerner in his book "The Big Bang Never Happened" and Anthony Peratt, a plasma physicist who I believe was a collaborator with Lerner in his incomplete "plasma cosmology" theory. However, I don't think that, for the most part, the majority of astronomers/cosmologists have been convinced by these or other arguments to abandon the BBT or even to seriously reconsider it. The BBT is still the dominant mainstream cosmological theory defended by the majority of astronomers/cosmologists. An example of a very good mainstream astronomical web site is the "Bad Astronomy and Universe Today Forum", at http://www.bautforum.com/ There are some really excellent physicists and astronomers/cosmologists who post there. They generally strongly defend the BBT against all attacks. There is an "Against the Mainstream" section there for people wishing to post against the mainstream theories, such as attacks on the BBT or proposals of alternative cosmological theories. During the years I have read some of these threads, I have seen a number of attempts by various posters to attack the BBT or to propose alternatives. None of these has succeeded in even beginning to convince any of the mainstream scientists who administer the BAUT forum. They seem to believe pretty strongly that evidence in favor of the BBT is very strong and that the BBT is still the best cosmological theory to explain all of the existing data. Martin

This idea that "in the long run, all life was doomed to decline into the darkness and the cold" by the mechanism of thermodynamic heat death lives on in the modern day big bang theory, which projects that clusters of galaxies will continue to expand outward from each other forever, eventually dying as their stars burn out and no new hydrogen is left to fuel new generations of stars. Even though this is not projected to happen for tens of billions of years, it is still projected by the BBT as the ultimate end of our universe. In this sense, the BBT is a very bleak, depressing theory. It is for this reason that I hold out hope that the BBT is wrong, and that our universe is not ultimately doomed to this kind of death. In order for the universe to not reach this kind of death, some kind of recycling mechanism would be required, so that new generations of stars could keep being born from recycled hydrogen. I find it a pleasant thought that the universe should live forever rather than eventually die the cold, bleak death of the BBT. Martin

And the frog continues to be slowly boiled. First it was DUI checkpoints, then checkpoints for illegal drugs. Who knows what's next? Checkpoints to check for legal immigration status? Checkpoints to check for unpaid child support? Or unpaid back taxes? Or child pornography stored on people's laptop computers? The possibilities are endless! Meanwhile, we have self-identified objectivists telling us how wonderful the police are, how they are ready to risk their lives to protect us, how they are our benefactors, just like the heroes of Atlas Shrugged, how anger and resentment at this cadre of brownshirts must be motivated by envy for our betters. And, of course, we are nasty, evil people if we use any unkind language to describe our friends in blue who, after all, are only protecting us by pulling us over without cause and searching our cars. Oh well, not to worry. According to the fine folks in our government, the terrorists hate us for our freedom. So it's only logical that, by having the police systematically destroy our freedom, the terrorists will no longer have any reason to hate us. We'll be safe forever from the threat of terrorism, at the mere cost of living in a police state. I guess we should be greatful for a deal like that. Martin

No. Parasites who call cops pigs do so because they resent their benefactors. Rand exemplified this type of mentality well enough in AS. This is not even close to being true. In Rand's great novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, Rand's benefactors were architects, artists, writers, composers, philosophers, scientists, engineers, and industrialists. Not one of the heroes or even decent characters she portrayed was a police officer or any other type of government employee. In AS, all of her heroes not only didn't work for the government but wanted nothing to do with the government and ran their lives and businesses accordingly. As for Rand's attitude toward the police in a statist society such as that found in AS, the following passage is quite illustrative: "He carried a gun in his pocket, as advised by the policemen of the radio car that patrolled the roads; they had warned him that no road was safe after dark, these days. He felt, with a touch of mirthless amusement, the the gun had been needed at the mills, not in the peaceful safety of loneliness and night; what could some starving vagrant take from him, compared to what had been taken by men who claimed to be his protectors?" Considering that the average American spends almost half of his or her income paying taxes and complying, directly, or indirectly, with the cost of government regulations, the same question posed by Rearden seems rather applicable to life in modern day America -- what could criminals take from us, compared to what is taken from us every day by our own government, with police as the government's enforcement arm? The scene above concluded when two police officers suddenly approached Rearden while he was talking with Danneskjold, taking them both by surprise. After the police officers departed, "Rearden realized that he had stood facing the policemen with his hand clutching the gun in his pocket and that he had been prepared to use it". Rearden was prepared to kill two police officers in order to protect Danneskjold, a man who would certainly be labeled as a "terrorist" these days. So much for the idea that Rand considered the police to be any kind of societal benefactors. Martin

Did you bother to click on the link that Rich provided? It documented a specific instance in which the rough equivalent of martial law was imposed on a small town. There has been much discussion of resorting to such repression in Chicago and Washington, DC. The US is now one terrorist attack away from the possible imposition of martial law on the entire country. Such enabling legislation has been passed by the criminals in Congress and signed into law by the criminal Bush administration. The president now has the power to commandeer the state national guards. to declare US citizens enemy combatants, and to have them imprisoned without trial. Such provisions are found in the Military Commissions Act and various other totalitarian style legislation that has been passed in the last several years, all to protect us against the "terrorists", of course. If you want to believe that this is all a paranoid fantasy equivalent to a belief in an invasion of little green men, help yourself. But you might want to consider at least researching the issue before reaching this conclusion. Martin

Police spend very little time actually protecting anyone other than themselves. The courts have ruled that the police are under absolutely no obligation to protect the citizens whose job it allegedly is to protect. If you are being brutally assaulted, and a policeman just stands there watching, you have absolutely no legal recourse against either the officer or the police department. They don't work for the citizens and they don't for the most part give a damn what the public thinks. Their salaries are paid from our involuntary extracted taxation, and like all government employees, they are in no danger of getting fired for poor job performance. Radley Balko, a writer for Reason magazine, has spent years meticulously documenting the ever-increasing, systematic abuses of police departments across the country. SWAT teams have become ubiquitous as police are becoming more and more militarized. They are receiving military training and military style weapons. No-knock raids against innocent people, carried out without warrants, are becoming commonplace. This militarization of the police first started largely in response to the insane "War on Drugs", which has filled our prisons with non-violent "criminals" whose only crime is using a drug that the government goons don't approve of. The militarization of the police has continued to accelerate in response to the "War on Terror". Here in California, there is going to be placed on the ballot a proposition limiting the power of the govenrment to incarcerate people in state prisons for non-violent drug use, proposing instead the non-libertarian but still much preferable alternative of drug treatment. Our esteemed boys in blue have done everything in their power to prevent this ballot proposition from ever reaching the ballot, and will vigorously campaign against it. The war on drugs has been the full employment act for overpaid police officers and prison guards. They have profited handsomely from screwing over the American public. So in response to your question, raised to Chris Baker, "Is your life so insignificant that you call them pigs?", I will provide an answer. My life is so significant to me that I would never dream of depending upon the police to protect me, if I had any other plausible alternative. The police have become armed, dangeous, and trained to view the rest of us the way soldiers view civilians in an enemy nation. The police are not your friend. Martin

Exactly how bad does a country have to be before it is okay for the government of another country that has not been attacked by it to go to war against it? What are your criteria for labeling the country as sufficiently bad that it is fair game for any other country that feels so inclined to attack it and to be justified in doing so? How many innocent people is it okay for the attacking government to kill, wound, displace, or enslave as a result of the attack? How much suffering may justifiably be inflicted upon innocent people by the attacking government? Can the infliction of such suffering and death on the innocent in a non-defensive attack ever constitute "the moral high ground", rather than an unforgivable war crime? Martin

Thanks, Greybird. I've been reading Arthur Silber for quite some time now, and the man is simply brilliant, not to mention a great writer. All the horrors of the Iraq war which he predicted long before the US invasion began, horrors which have pretty much been ignored not only by the MSM but also by the entire objectivist community, have come to pass. Hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded, four million refugees, two million who have had to flee Iraq and are living in squalid refugee camps, genocide, ethnic cleansing on a massive scale, US use of chemical weapons such as white phosphorus and depleted uranium, all of these unspeakable horrors have happened right in front of our eyes, and all that most people, including most objectivists, can say is that this has perhaps been an unfortunate mistake. I wonder if they would think it all nothing more than an unfortunate mistake if millions of Americans were killed and driven from their homes in an attack launched by a foreign government against us. I post here with little hope that it will change anyone's mind. I do it only because it is the truth and needs to be said. Martin I was against the Iraq war from the getgo, but when the mess got going stopped wasting my time with it. But the crap quoted abve is 95% unmitigated. As for Silber, his idea of who is a war criminal is pretty catholic. You have a lot of nerve coming here and shoveling this shit on us without so much as a single reference. --Brant A single reference to what, exactly? The death toll in Iraq? Or the number of Iraqi refugees created by the war? Or the US use of chemical weapons in Fallujah? All of these things are well documented, although the exact death toll is not known and estimates vary widely. Silber provides multiple links in the referenced article. According to Iraq Body Count, the confirmed death toll is between about 86,000 and 94,000. But these figures are almost certainly too low, given the methodology employed. The Lancet study estimated a death toll of over 600,000, and this was a couple of years ago. The ORB study estimated a death toll of over 1,000,000. But let's assume, for the sake of argument, the absolute lowest figure, the 86,000 lower estimate of Iraq Body Count. These are confirmed deaths, and their numbers are beyond dispute. Given that Iraq is a nation of about 25,000,000 people, 1/12 the population of the US, if we scale this number to the US population, this would be proportionally equivalent to about 1,000,000 American deaths, or the equivalent of more than one 9/11 for Iraq every week since the invasion of Iraq began. Based on the one 9/11 attack that the US suffered, everything is now supposed to be forever different for us, and our society is being transformed into a police state, supposedly for our own protection. Well, Iraq has suffered the equivalent of a 9/11 attack every week for the last five years. The millions of refugees created by this war is also well documented and has even been extensively reported in the mainstream media, unlike the Iraqi death toll, which I have never heard mentioned in the MSM. Rather than accusing me of "shoveling this shit on us without so much as a single reference", if you think that any of the information I have provided here is wrong, why don't you post your own references containing contrary information? Martin Your characterization of the war in Iraq needs to be argued for, not just stated. You presume to tell us, and, I guess, the whole world, what we "need to realize." You are presuming to think for us. You are trying, not to convince people of certain things, but to insert your beliefs into their minds, uncritically. Among other things, you picked the wrong place to do that! Merely in reading your post, I saw error after error in what you were saying. The "ranting" character of your post tells me it would be pointless to try to engage you in discussion of those errors. What you need to realize is you have to prove your points, and your fears and misconstruals, and general hysteria don't mean a thing. --Mindy It is customary, when putting words in quotation marks in response to another poster, for these to be an actual quotation from the poster. Since I never used the phrase "need to realize" anywhere in my posts, your putting these words in quotation marks as though I actually said them is entirely inappropriate. So is your subsequent extrapolation from these non-existent words that I never used that, "You are presuming to think for us. You are trying, not to convince people of certain things, but to insert your beliefs into their minds, uncritically." So nice of you to tell me what I am presuming and what I am trying to do. No doubt, your extrapolation of my mental state and intentions is at least as accurate as your use of quotation marks for words that I never said. Thank you for pointing you that you saw error after error in what I was saying. You sure do have an excellent justification for not pointing out what any of these supposed errors actually are, based on your analysis of my mental state, which you have done such an excellent job of determining. Martin

You came in here cold with your wagonfull of horseshit distorted and selected information without even the courtesy of making the semblance of a reasonable post and YOU ask ME for real references contra your totally non-existent? I'm no apologist for the Iraq War, but I remember Vietnam and Congress pulling the plug and all the shit that followed that. Of course, that war was a big mistake to begin with. At least 5 million Vietnamese and Cambodians died because of our disastrous involvement there. That's at least 10-20 times worse than Iraq, so far. --Brant It was not my intention to post specifically about the Iraq war at all. That is not the subject of this thread. This all started by me referencing an article by Silber in response to Michael's assertion that either McCain or Obama would make great presidents. In a subsequent post to Greybird, I added some comments about the Iraq war, but this was never intended as a stand-alone post on the subject. It's true that I have not posted direct links, other than the Silber article, although the Silber article itself is full of many links. It is not particularly difficult to google "Iraq Body Count", "Iraq Lancet Study", "Fallujah", etc. I saw no reason to do this, as this is not a thread about Iraq. So far, you have repeatedly accused me of spreading distorted horseshit, without actually bothering to refute a single thing I have said. Regarding your comment about Vietnam and Cambodian deaths, is this supposed to be an argument against anything I have said? Have I ever argued that the Iraq war has been worse than the Vietnam war? Your argument in fact supports the general thesis of what I have been saying, namely, that the US govenment has committed crimes against foreigners that have cost huge numbers of lives. Iraq is only the latest war in this continuing pattern. Martin

Thanks, Greybird. I've been reading Arthur Silber for quite some time now, and the man is simply brilliant, not to mention a great writer. All the horrors of the Iraq war which he predicted long before the US invasion began, horrors which have pretty much been ignored not only by the MSM but also by the entire objectivist community, have come to pass. Hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded, four million refugees, two million who have had to flee Iraq and are living in squalid refugee camps, genocide, ethnic cleansing on a massive scale, US use of chemical weapons such as white phosphorus and depleted uranium, all of these unspeakable horrors have happened right in front of our eyes, and all that most people, including most objectivists, can say is that this has perhaps been an unfortunate mistake. I wonder if they would think it all nothing more than an unfortunate mistake if millions of Americans were killed and driven from their homes in an attack launched by a foreign government against us. I post here with little hope that it will change anyone's mind. I do it only because it is the truth and needs to be said. Martin I was against the Iraq war from the getgo, but when the mess got going stopped wasting my time with it. But the crap quoted abve is 95% unmitigated. As for Silber, his idea of who is a war criminal is pretty catholic. You have a lot of nerve coming here and shoveling this shit on us without so much as a single reference. --Brant A single reference to what, exactly? The death toll in Iraq? Or the number of Iraqi refugees created by the war? Or the US use of chemical weapons in Fallujah? All of these things are well documented, although the exact death toll is not known and estimates vary widely. Silber provides multiple links in the referenced article. According to Iraq Body Count, the confirmed death toll is between about 86,000 and 94,000. But these figures are almost certainly too low, given the methodology employed. The Lancet study estimated a death toll of over 600,000, and this was a couple of years ago. The ORB study estimated a death toll of over 1,000,000. But let's assume, for the sake of argument, the absolute lowest figure, the 86,000 lower estimate of Iraq Body Count. These are confirmed deaths, and their numbers are beyond dispute. Given that Iraq is a nation of about 25,000,000 people, 1/12 the population of the US, if we scale this number to the US population, this would be proportionally equivalent to about 1,000,000 American deaths, or the equivalent of more than one 9/11 for Iraq every week since the invasion of Iraq began. Based on the one 9/11 attack that the US suffered, everything is now supposed to be forever different for us, and our society is being transformed into a police state, supposedly for our own protection. Well, Iraq has suffered the equivalent of a 9/11 attack every week for the last five years. The millions of refugees created by this war is also well documented and has even been extensively reported in the mainstream media, unlike the Iraqi death toll, which I have never heard mentioned in the MSM. Rather than accusing me of "shoveling this shit on us without so much as a single reference", if you think that any of the information I have provided here is wrong, why don't you post your own references containing contrary information? Martin

Thanks, Greybird. I've been reading Arthur Silber for quite some time now, and the man is simply brilliant, not to mention a great writer. All the horrors of the Iraq war which he predicted long before the US invasion began, horrors which have pretty much been ignored not only by the MSM but also by the entire objectivist community, have come to pass. Hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded, four million refugees, two million who have had to flee Iraq and are living in squalid refugee camps, genocide, ethnic cleansing on a massive scale, US use of chemical weapons such as white phosphorus and depleted uranium, all of these unspeakable horrors have happened right in front of our eyes, and all that most people, including most objectivists, can say is that this has perhaps been an unfortunate mistake. I wonder if they would think it all nothing more than an unfortunate mistake if millions of Americans were killed and driven from their homes in an attack launched by a foreign government against us. I post here with little hope that it will change anyone's mind. I do it only because it is the truth and needs to be said. Martin

G-D has nothing to do with it. And pity won't help us. What you are seeing is the reductio ad absurdum of democracy. Ba'al Chatzaf Mr. Silber is speaking poetically. He is a hardcore atheist who knows perfectly well that God does not exist. Incidently, since you are also an atheist, why do you label God as "G-D"? This is the label used by some Jews, based on the idea that God is so great that it is not proper even to spell out God's name directly. Since you also believe that God does not exist, why do you adhere to this convention? Martin