Mark

Per usual with the defenders of government torture they make up tautological stories to justify it. Abhorrent doesn’t begin to describe the corruption of Dennis’s trying to justify what the U.S. government has done. Vileness doesn’t begin to describe his trying to fob this sophistry off on Ayn Rand’s ethics. For a bit of the real world Dennis can’t trouble himself to look at, see the articles collected at Torture USA.

Today is Wednesday, September 7, 2011. Tomorrow will be Thursday, September 8, 2011. Get your video-capture or audio-record program ready. The event will be broadcast over the Internet starting at 1 p.m.: www.911anniversary.ARIevents.com

9/11 – A Decade Later: Lessons for the Future Thursday, September 8, 2011 Free and open to the public. National Press Club 529 14th Street NW Washington, D.C. 20045 The program will feature three panel discussions, presenting a range of viewpoints, all in favor of U.S. entanglement with Israel: • Upheavals in the Middle East: Assessing the Political Landscape 1:00 - 2:05 p.m. Panelists: Yaron Brook, Efraim Karsh, Daniel Pipes, Walid Phares Moderator: Elan Journo. • The Islamist Threat: From AfPak to Jyllands-Posten and Times Square 2:10 - 3:15 p.m. Panelists: Peter Brookes, John David Lewis, Diana West Moderator: Elan Journo. • Iran, Israel and the West 3:25 - 4:30 p.m. Panelists: Elan Journo, Efraim Karsh, Clare Lopez, Michael Rubin Moderator: Yaron Brook. Reception afterwards. Hobnob with the neocons! Free food! About the panelists Yaron Brook – ARI Peter Brookes – Heritage Foundation Elan Journo – ARI Efraim Karsh – Middle East Forum John David Lewis – ARI, Duke University Clare Lopez – Center for Security Policy Daniel Pipes – Middle East Forum Walid Phares – Foundation for Defense of Democracies Michael Rubin – American Enterprise Institute Diana West – Washington Examiner syndicated columnist For those who can’t make it, the panels will be live-streamed on ARI’s event website.

That would be Sept 3. It was sold sometime between Sept 3 and 5 inclusive, but are you sure it was Sept 3?

The above makes two points: 1. Because an anti-war group: ... A. Publicized the U.S. government’s terrorist watch list (the point being that practically all the people listed were innocent), and ... B. Other groups passed out their writings at anti-war protests, the federal government is therefore justified in investigating the group for criminal activity. 2. The fact that the FBI investigates a group is grounds for you to suspect the group of criminal activity. 1 is the hallmark of a police-state. 2 assumes the honesty of the FBI despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. Look into the FBI behavior in the following: The frame-up of Edgar Steele (the fact that he was once the free-speech defense lawyer for some nut spouting nonsense is irrelevant). Oklahoma City bombing. Frame-up and attempted murder of Randy Weaver and murder of his wife at Ruby Ridge. Waco, Branch Davidian massacre. Vince Foster murder. Downing of TWA flight 800. Anthrax hoax. “Sue” dinosaur theft. Underwear bomber, especially with regard to Kurt Haskell. See Government Corruption on ARI Watch. For more see the work of Rodney Stich. By the way, Rodney Stich is 88 (89?) and became deathly ill a few months ago. He discontinued his blog a few days ago.

I’m a bit out of my depth on these subjects. The following is just thinking out loud. This addresses just one or rather a pair of JR points: that the intellectual content of Christianity is minuscule, and that even a dolt can comprehend it after ten minutes of exposure. Christianity might appear to be without much intellectual content but this might be only because we have grown up in a Western civilization. True, we could have an even better Western civilization, in a manner of speaking, without the Christians subverting it, but historically they did not altogether subvert it or merely hang on, they made some positive contributions to Greek culture, and we take them for granted, like the air. Greek culture, benevolent though it was compared to other cultures up until then viewed a man as ultimately a creature of the state, Athens as well as Sparta and Rome. Christianity introduced a kind of individualism: man was a creature of God, in whose image he was and to whom alone he was responsible. Somewhere AR once quipped, quoting Scripture, that Christianity said “Love your neighbor as yourself.” OK, love yourself, we can argue about your neighbor. It’s true the hazy ideas of Christianity, such as do unto others etc and a kind of equality that could grow into either justice or communism, mixed up with a perverse cult of Jesus, are simple ideas. But the Church later elaborated and justified them like manufacturing the lower 6/7 of an iceberg given the visible tip. Isn’t the history of Objectivism similar? It started with what had come to be common sense – to AR anyway, perhaps via Aristotle and the Declaration – and only years later did AR write An Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Properly presented even a dolt – a higher grade dolt anyway – could understand the common sense part, the libertarian part we might say, even if it would take years to understand the justification. Another point: Because only a tiny percent of the population has the capacity and inclination to study philosophy doesn’t mean that their cultural influence is proportionate. People do tend to take what’s given to them, and teachers, journalists, writers do the dishing out. Those are the only ones needing the full treatment. I had an example of this docility in the music line some years ago at an office party. The radio was tuned to some rock music trash. I changed it to a better station and insisted it stay there, despite many hard and cold looks. But after a while everybody, it seemed, liked the change. (More flashy analogy than reasoned argument perhaps.)

“... the personalities in the [Objectivist] movement, especially at “the top,” ... have turned many people off. That’s why having leaders like Yaron Brook ... is important ...” The personalities in the French revolution, especially at the top, have turned many Frenchmen off. That’s why having leaders like Robespierre is important. Which is to say, regarding Yaron Brook it’s just the opposite. This clown has turned away countless would be Objectivists. His pro-war writings are well-known, as is the absence of his anti-police-state writings. His economic writing is problematic. He claims banks are, generally speaking, innocent, the feds made them act irresponsibly. In a lecture he once said that the various wars in the Middle East have nothing to do with the economic downturn. Apparently he thinks that over a trillion dollars and counting spent on war materiel and destruction doesn’t affect our economy. This is Objectivism? Goodbye Objectivism, with well-financed creeps like this promoting it, or claiming to. Birds of a Feather reveals their true nature.

There’ve been lots of good posts by Martin Radwin. Some idiot -- trying to prove that Ayn Rand approved of U.S. torture -- brought up Mickey Spillane, whose early thrillers Ayn Rand had admired. Their lead character Mike Hammer, besides being fictional along with the situations and actions, was a private individual acting in a private capacity. Ayn Rand once reviewed Mickey Spillane’s thriller Day of the Guns (“Book Report” The Objectivist Newsletter October 1964) and castigated Spillane for presenting as a hero the character Tiger Man, a government agent -- G-man in the parlance of those days -- whose job was to commit extra-judicial murders in a good cause, very like Jack Bauer and his extra-judicial tortures. As for what Ayn Rand might have thought of Mr. Yoo, see: Ayn Rand on Torture Here are George Washington’s thoughts on torture (both quoted in ARI Watch): “Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner] ... I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause … for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country.” -- George Washington, Charge to the Northern Expeditionary Force, Sept. 14, 1775. “In New York, Washington had wept while watching through a spyglass as the British massacred Americans who had surrendered. But Washington, Fischer writes, ‘often reminded his men that they were an army of liberty and freedom, and that the rights of humanity for which they were fighting should extend even to their enemies.’ To the American officer in charge of 221 prisoners taken at Princeton, Washington said, ‘Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of the British army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren.’” -- a review of the book Washington’s Crossing by David Hackett Fischer, about George Washington during the Revolutionary War. As for torture helping to find Bin Laden, assuming it was Bin Laden: After Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman, not to mention WMD and other lies, why give this credence merely on a fed’s say so? (In fact there are many reasons to suspect the story is false.) But assuming it is true, what was Bin Laden doing that finding him as soon as possible after almost ten years helped defend the U.S.? Afterward, business as usual with the Administration -- even they don’t care about it. U.S. torture probably resulted in the deaths of more Americans than 9/11, see this review of How to Break a Terrorist, a book by “Matthew Alexander” (military, apparently retired) and John Bruning: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/torture-it-probably-killed-more-americans-than-911-1674396.html For real world reports of U.S. torture see: http://www.ariwatch.com/Links.htm#Torture

One criticism of Jeff R.’s article: though he argues convincingly that AR was too hard on fast/hack writers at one point he addresses AR’s motivation and says she was “envious” of them. I don’t believe it. Anyway, not proven, not by a long shot, not at all.

Advice to debaters: Playground name-calling won’t convince the better people in the audience. Years before 9/11 either directly or by furnishing financing and materiel, the U.S. has been killing people and/or blowing up things in the middle east: Libya, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran. (Not to mention Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Uzbekistan and many others in which the U.S. props up their murdering dictators.) It should come as no surprise when the U.S. gets attacked in response. Our – as in Americans’ – enemy consists of corrupt elements within the U.S. government who use 9/11 (a criminal act by stateless terrorists some of whom were knowingly allowed into the country) like Hitler used the Reichstag fire: as a pretext for yet more war abroad and yet more police state at home. ARI is all for the war and supports the growing police state by remaining silent about it. Pacifist? It’s the people at ARI who are the pacifists, pacifists in the face of empire abroad and a police state at home. The latest terrorist attempts have been entrapment operations (Portland, Dearborn, the Bronx). The “Underwear Bomber” (Northwest Airlines Flight 253) was even more of a fraud than the others. Read what one of the victims, Kurt Haskell, has to say about it on his wife’s blog: http://ariwatch.com/Links.htm#HomeGrownTerrorism Ignoring this is somehow the opposite of pacifism? If you want to engage the actual enemy you might start by reading the work of a real hero instead of watching stupid television serials about Jack Bauer. I refer to Rodney Stich, a former government agent and a famous whistleblower. See http://ARIwatch.com/Links.htm#rodneystich

Thus Reidy intended earlier that Yaron Brook squabbles also with Binswanger and Bernstein, besides Peikoff. What were these squabbles? Reidy writes that he “followed up” on my links above – whether he read much in less than an hour twenty minutes is another question – and apparently didn’t like what he saw, relieving himself as he did of the usual epithets. The subject of U.S. torture is non-trivial and I think ARI Watch offers a penetrating analysis of ARI’s position on it as expressed by Peikoff, Binswanger, Epstein and somewhat Brook. One more article in the series is planned: “Yaron Brook on Torture”. The previous articles are listed in: Torture and Intrinsicism Dana Marie, You need the hide of a rhinoceros to participate in these “Objectivist” forums. Mark

ARI Watch doesn’t worry much over squabbles within ARI. It addresses issues like government institutionalized torture, support for Israel, war, etc. Yaron Brook (president of ARI) doesn’t just put up with Leonard Peikoff (ARI’s founder) regarding these issues, they’re on the same page. (I don’t know who you mean by Peikoff’s cohort.) Some ARI people will be featured in the new documentary “Ayn Rand and the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged” (first known as “Is Atlas Shrugging?”), but it’s produced and directed by Chris Mortensen. I don’t think ARI has a part in the production. (It’s scheduled for release 7 October 2011.) In any case Atlas Shrugged doesn’t need a documentary to promote it, and one featuring the likes of Berliner, Bernstein, Binswanger, and Brook without opposition – and consequently promoting them (and ARI) – is a poor way to spread Ayn Rand’s ideas. See: Harry Binswanger on Torture and Who’s Who and the other articles on ARI Watch.

Dana Marie, This post is prompted by > I ... really like Yaron Brook and think he is a wonderful advocate of Objectivism and Capitalism. You might take a gander at ARI Watch – a critical review of the Ayn Rand Institute, critical from a pro-Ayn Rand perspective. Mr. Brook of course is the president of ARI. I wouldn’t trust him. Best wishes, Mark

There are no reputable descriptions of the trajectory of Forrestal’s fall, specifically how far from the building he landed. Except that just maybe in one of the photographs in the appendix to the Willcutts Report (Princeton’s Seeley Mudd library PDF “second half” page 214) you can discern the chalk outline of a body. If so, then he landed two feet or so from the wall. And keep in mind that he bounced off a projecting ledge before landing there. It makes little difference. Even a strong man could not throw very far a large, ungainly and struggling (weakly, having been garroted) 150 pounds out a window hole about two feet deep. However there are at least half a dozen good reasons to believe Forrestal did not kill himself. See Why Suicide / Why Murder

Then there’s the assassination of James Forrestal in 1949 soon after he’d retired as Secretary of Defense. See the Willcutts Report produced by the Naval Medical Corps' investigation into his death, and the Nurse’s Notes made during the round-the-clock watch kept on Forrestal from the time he was admitted to Bethesda Naval Hospital to the time he disappeared. (He went out a 16th floor window.) Any list of true conspiracies should mention CIA cocaine trafficking For more information on that government conspiracy and many others see Government Corruption

The most famous Pragmatist was John Dewey, best known for his work on education -- "socialization" instead of academic study, “service,” opposition to the Montessori Method, and in spite of that, "learn by doing." Less known is this amazing little book about his visit to Russia in 1928: Impressions of Soviet Russia Did Tara Smith happen to mention it in her talk?

Mike, About working with “people from ARI who [are] maybe turned off by the events surrounding the purges of people such as John McCaskey and Robert Tracinski.” The case of John McCaskey – and that of George Reisman and his wife Edith Packer – differs from Robert Tracinski’s in that Tracinski left ARI on his own initiative. At least that’s how he tells it, see Who’s Who - Robert Tracinski You might say his reputation was purged, after the fact, by ARI tagging his archived Op-Eds with a harsh note saying that he’s no longer associated with them. The note was probably a reaction to his later writings about the relation of philosophy to cultural change, which contradicted Peikoff’s ideas. While he was there Tracinski was a pea in the ARI pod. Especially, he participated in all the crazy propaganda coming out of ARI from 2001 to 2003: pro-war (“The Case for ‘Destabilization’” etc) and Israel worshipping (“We Are All Israelis Now” etc). He left not because of any difference with ARI on political issues. He promotes the same today, with Iran substituted for Iraq. Who cares what happens to such a person in ARI’s little squabbles? If the Rational Mind Institute seeks to attract people who care about Tracinski then I think it’s off to a bad start. To change the subject a bit, if your new Institute does address current events, here’s what I’d like to see it write about: government corruption beyond the corruption that inheres in the welfare state. I mean a criminal, gangster kind of corruption. The work of former federal agent Rodney Stich is a good place to begin learning about this subject.

Regarding Herbert Levine's statement quoted above, WSS wrote that it The following is from the book Eco-freaks by John Berlau, as seen on Google books: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ... except for a few commentators such as Steven Milloy, the "junk science" columnist for FoxNews.com, there has been very little coverage about one of 9/11's most important whistleblowers: the late scientist and inventor Herbert Levine. Although he never envisioned a situation such as the 9/11 attacks, had Levine's words been heeded, much of the ensuing tragedy could have been avoided. Ever since the WTC complex was built in the early 1970s, Levine warned everyone he knew that the buildings were largely unprotected against fire. Harvard physicist Richard Wilson recalls Levine telling him in 1991, "Whenever I pass by there, I worry. If a fire breaks out above the 64th floor, that building will fall down." [37] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Unfortunately the footnote doesn't seem to be online. Here's a link to an article by Steven Milloy, and a response by John Young, who says he's an architect, disagreeing with it: http://cryptome.org/wtc-junksci.htm

The following is from the newsletter Access to Energy, founded by Petr Beckmann and published by his chosen successor Arthur B. Robinson. It was written right after the 9/11 attack. That accounts for the numbers in the title, which are based on about 10,000 dead rather than 3,000. Of course that doesn't affect the point of the article. Terrorists 1,000 and Enviros 5,000 (pdf) After quoting one of the WTC designers saying that the towers were designed to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707: ------------------------------------------------------ Not so widely quoted -- apparently spiked by most media -- was the statement, often made about the Trade Towers in the 1970s by expert in the insulation of steel building columns Herbert Levine, that "if a fire breaks out above the 64th floor, that building will fall down." See "Asbestos could Have Saved WTC Lives" by Steven Milloy, Fox News, September 14, 2001 at www.foxnews.com. ------------------------------------------------------ The "9/11 truth movement" is for the most part nutty, but that doesn't mean that U.S. government corruption didn't have a hand in 9/11. See for example: The 9.11 Heroin Connection by Daniel Hopsicker , September 6, 2006 Quoting the ARI Watch Links page about his website: About the drug connection between terrorist hijacker Mohamed Atta and the owner of the Venice, Florida flight school Huffman Aviation. “The biggest lie told about the September 11th attack was the first one: ‘19 hijackers moved through Europe and America unnoticed.’ ”

Those who've followed the earlier discussions about the McCaskey affair will find nothing new in the article below, except perhaps that Leonard Peikoff has disappeared his statement from peikoff.com and that ARI has made finding their own statement difficult. Still, the article does have the virtue of presenting the important points of the affair all in one place, with links to original sources. It was a bore to write, it might not be any more interesting to read, but obviously it needed to be on ARI Watch. The Ayn Rand Institute vs. John McCaskey

Hitchens is no Orwell in any respect. Far from being iconoclastic he went with the flow. He followed the money, from Left to Neo-Right. Norman Finkelstein had his number years ago, in a review of his book The Long Short War: "It's not exactly a martyr's fate defecting from The Nation, a frills-free liberal magazine, to Atlantic Monthly, the well-heeled house organ of Zionist crazies."

A good synopsis of DIM, especially as applied to the 2004 presidential election, can be found here: http://ariwatch.com/PresidentialElections-2.htm#DIM The synopsis is buried in the middle of a long article, hence the #DIM in the webpage address.

And gentlemen. I never asked to be secure. I don't want to be secure. You get on a plane. Before TSA your chance of dying from a terrorist attack was infinitesimal. Can you live with that? I know I can. After TSA -- and scan & grope -- your chance of being seriously annoyed is 100%. Can you live with that? S&G has nothing to do with security. It's about power lust and war profiteering. What has been your experience at the airport since S&G ? Your mental attitude towards the pathetic creeps who take such a job? (I emphasize mental, insult this scum and go to prison.)

I said above that Danielle rejected my post pointing out the omission of <a href="http://ARIwatch.com/">ARI Watch</a> from her list. Turns out it was her spam filter that rejected it, not her. She eventually put it up.

Danielle Morrill neglected to include ARI Watch and she rejected my post pointing out the omission. In September the number of unique visitors to "ARI Watch" was 2,243, which exceeds that of several sites on her list. (There were 3,088 visits and 5,723 pages viewed.) However this number is a little misleading because there are non-Objectivist webpages attached to "ARI Watch". So to be (un)generous, cut that in half. It would still make her list. Whatever its traffic "ARI Watch" is a significant intellectual force. If you Goggle<br> Any Rand "most any subject addressed on ARI Watch" there's a good chance "ARI Watch" will be on the first page. For example here are a few rankings as of today: Ayn Rand neocon ..... # 1 (same for 'neoconservative')<br> Ayn Rand wwii .......... # 1 (same for 'world war ii')<br> Ayn Rand torture ...... # 1 Ayn Rand Israel ........ # 1 Ayn Rand war ........... # 7 Ayn Rand Institute .... # 9