Francisco Ferrer

It appears that that Levin simply took Randy Barnet's idea from four years ago and repackaged it for sale to his radio audience. Perhaps the next Constitutional convention will approve an amendment to abolish involuntary servitude, so that no man or woman is ever subject to the military draft again. What's that? We already have such an amendment? And the Supreme Court does not enforce it? Well then, we need to make them promise to uphold it, make them take an oath like say, "I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God." That should make limited government work. If a justice breaks his oath he can't get into the Kingdom of God.

I am not familiar with the Liberty Amendments plural, only with the Liberty Amendment singular: Section 1. The Government of the United States shall not engage in any business, professional, commercial, financial or industrial enterprise except as specified in the Constitution. Section 2. The constitution or laws of any State, or the laws of the United States shall not be subject to the terms of any foreign or domestic agreement which would abrogate this amendment. Section 3. The activities of the United States Government which violate the intent and purpose of this amendment shall, within a period of three years from the date of the ratification of this amendment, be liquidated and the properties and facilities affected shall be sold. Section 4. Three years after the ratification of this amendment the sixteenth article of amendments to the Constitution of the United States shall stand repealed and thereafter Congress shall not levy taxes on personal incomes, estates, and/or gifts. Nine states have already endorsed it. Is this what Levin has in mind?

I agree that the American public has been misled about the scope of Communist horror. The Gulag Archipelago should be required reading in school. As to who would have won the war, there are historians that believe the Soviet Union would have won even without U.S. intervention. (I hesitated to link this video because the historian's excuses for and praise of Stalin turn my stomach, but he makes the point that Hitler probably would have continued his campaign of ethnic cleansing on a massive scale if Germany had won the war). I went back and checked the links you provided. According to my reading of the linked articles, Stalin killed 22 million of his own people and Hitler killed 20 million people through various mass murders, giving Stalin a slight edge in terms of mass murders. However, the figure of 20 million killed by Hitler doesn't include the number of soldiers or civilians killed as the result of prosecuting the war. It only includes the number killed through extermination campaigns. Since, we are discussing whether the U.S. should have entered the war, in my view, it is only fair to also consider the number killed as a direct result of the war. Unfortunately, those figures are not readily available, but I suspect an additional 20 million deaths could be attributed to Hitler's part in WWII. That would make Hitler, by far, the greater mass murderer. 1. World War II began immediately after Germany invaded Poland. But the Soviet Union invaded Poland at the same time. Why not blame Stalin equally for all military and civilian deaths that followed? 2. One side in a conflict, even if it is the aggressor, cannot be charged with every injustice committed by the other side. If a bank robber hides in an apartment building, and police tear gas sets the building on fire, killing hundreds, it is not the bank robber who is the killer. Similarly, FDR, Churchill, Curtis LeMay and Arthur Harris must assume the moral burden for the destruction of German civilian population centers (which included children, the elderly, prisoners and many others who had zero to do with Hitler's rise to power). 3. If we are to include indirect casualties, we must add to Stalin's total the 76 million that died at the hands of Mao, whose rule in China was made possible in large part due to the assistance of the Allies, including Stalin and FDR. In any case, you are ignoring my earlier point: there is no moral or strategic justification in going after one aggressor nation by materially aiding another nation which is only marginally less aggressive--especially when the second nation presents over the long term more of a mortal threat than the first one. Since Stalin was a Georgian, the centrally planned starvation of millions of Ukranians and the ethnic cleansing of Chechens--to take just two examples--can hardly be counted as acts against "his own people." It matters very little to a victim whether or not his murderer speaks his own language. In any case, communism in the 1930s was a far greater threat to the world than Nazism for this reason: the number of nations in which the majority might be susceptible to the appeal of Aryan socialism is a dozen at the very most. On the other hand, the number of nations in which the majority could potentially fall for the seductive but false appeal of Marxism is close to 100%. Marxism has proven itself to be the world's most marketable, exportable ideology. For that reason it was criminal for FDR to give supplies to Stalin and Mao. Their ideology alone was too dangerous a weapon. I guess I wasn't very clear. When I said that I didn't know what might have happened in the future, I meant to say that there was a very real possibility that the outcome would have been worse --- that the probability of something much worse happening would have been much higher than the probability that the outcome would have been better. You can dispute that point, but you can't simply ignore it. Your example with Goldwater doesn't pass the smell test. I mean, I wasn't alive at that time and don't know that much about Goldwater, but the idea that Goldwater would have escalated the cold war into a shooting war is pure speculation with no supporting evidence. The Great Depression example is even worse. Why would the people have revolted if the economy had recovered quickly --- the most likely result if someone like Calvin Coolidge had been president --- instead of dragging on for a decade? The problem is that some assertions have more merit than others, so you can't just dismiss any discussion about what might have happened if we had followed a different course. Each possibility has to be argued on its own merits. Darrell My examples of what might have happened in the U.S. after the election of Barry Goldwater as president or during the Depression without the New Deal are no more speculative than the claims you've made about 1940s Europe without U.S. military intervention. If you want supporting evidence from me, then I'll ask the same of you.

There is a difference in our two views because you're still poring over the dead past, while my frame of reference is the present. How were you able to come to the conclusion that "America engaged Russia's help to defeat the Nazis. It was a case of using evil people to kill evil people," without "poring over the past"? Did you merely glance at the past? Does the person whose understanding of the past that comes from quick glimpses have a sounder knowledge of it than one who pores over it? In any case you still have not dealt with this question I previously posed to you: If Hitler and the Nazis were not the source of rights, and the civilians of Germany and the rest of Europe were solely responsible, why was it necessary for the United State to form an alliance with the Soviet Union? Enjoying the rights of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness in America is conditional to living a life deserving of them. Just one example, I served my country in the military and so I enjoy those rights. There are also many others, for life has many facets. Did FDR, who did more to reduce the rights of Americans than any other modern president, live a life deserving of the rights of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness in America? If not, then surely he should have been sitting in a jail, not shaking hands with Joe Stalin and sending half of Europe into slavery. Again... you're still stuck in the dead past. That is why you don't hold the view that you are the only obstacle to enjoying your own life, and I do. Let us then stipulate that "you are the only obstacle to enjoying your own life." How does that premise lead to the conclusion that FDR was right to send American tax money to the second most brutal killer of the 20th century? I am still waiting for you to back up your claim that my criticism (and Rand's criticism) of FDR's support of Stalin has anything to do with Howard Zinn or leftists at major universities. You're still in the dead past. And you also left out that what I said applies the micro direct personal everyday face to face interactions between people. I'm speaking on a personal level because that is within my sphere of influence, and so is also directly my own personal responsibility. If you are concerned only with your sphere of influence, wouldn't your influence be more likely to have an effect in a nation raised on the philosophy of the Founding Fathers rather than that of Karl Marx? Yes. It's my own personal responsibility not to become collateral damage from the stupidity of others. Then you should pay for any part of the gravel that gets chips of your car paint on it.

Since Obama has nothing to do with me or my day to day personal life, I honestly can't complain as I consistently continue to enjoy my life, my liberty and my pursuit of happiness regardless of who happens to occupy the Oval Office. This is due to the fact that government is not the source of those rights. I'm the one who is solely responsible, as it is impossible to enjoy those rights without first living a life which is deserving of them. In Post #26 you wrote, "America engaged Russia's help to defeat the Nazis. It was a case of using evil people to kill evil people." But why go to that trouble? After all, Hitler and the Nazis were not the source of rights. The civilians of Germany and the rest of Europe were solely responsible, "as it is impossible to enjoy those rights without first living a life which is deserving of them." So why bother to send soldiers off to Nazi-occupied Europe or any other place? Why not just enjoy one's life, liberty and pursuit of happiness regardless of who happens to occupy the Chancellery in Berlin? Instead of "using evil people to kill evil people," why not just say, "There is no obstacle between me and my life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, except me." (Post #29) How silly. They have absolutely nothing to do with me or my life as they can only influence their own kind. With most of my life behind me I have discovered this moral principle to hold true by my own personal experience. In face to face real world interactions, I've observed that people treat me exactly as decent as I am. And even if they are not, they treat me as if they were. So it really doesn't matter what is taught in leftist universities, government subsidized "medrasas," or public high schools. Even if 99% of Americans believe their government should be a dictatorship of the proletariat, they will continue to treat the 1% "exactly as decent" as they are. Perhaps supporting evidence for this can be found in history books that are not "someone else's version of what happened." Blame... no. Responsible... yes. Each of us is personally responsible for where we are at any given moment due to the undeniable fact that we have free choice. If you get mugged, you gave the mugger your sanction to become his victim. If a plane flies into your office, you freely chose to go to work that day. If you don't grow up and take personal responsibility for your own life... who will? Therefore, if my gravel truck dumps a two-ton load on your car, the responsible party is you, not I. After all, you have free choice, including the choice not to park in that particular spot on the street. Paying for your own car's damages will teach you to grow up and take personal responsibility for your own life.

You have adopted the leftist version of history. Every government sanctioned and subsidized University with Howard Zinn's leftist textbook version of history in it... which is all of them. I've read Zinn's book. I suspect you haven't. Nowhere in it does he criticize FDR for his alliance with the Soviets. On the other hand, Ayn Rand has. Read her "The Roots of War." If I am a leftist for criticizing FDR, then Ayn Rand must have been one as well. Apparently you didn't learn much. Had you ever considered how foolish it is to publicly announce that you are hiding your wealth from the government? That is irrelevant to the question of whether or not one can learn something from studying tyrants. And I haven't made any statement about having broken U.S. laws. You should read more carefully. It is now. For you have adopted someone else's version as your own. My position is that my own direct personal experience of the consequences set into motion by my own actions in the present trumps other peoples' versions of the dead past. Sure it's entertaining to talk about those versions as long as the perceived wrongs of others in the dead past don't become distractions diverting attention away from our own personal wrongs in the present. If you can give your valuable time to the Objectivist Living forum to discuss World War II history without being too distracted, I suppose others can do the same. No. It means that the government treats me exactly as decent as I am, because it answers to exactly the same higher moral law that I do. Delighted to hear that Obama is being decent to you and is answering to higher moral laws. And I suppose the leftist university professors are doing the same. Is that complaint an indication of the success of someone else's version of FDR on your life? What do you mean "someone else's version"? A few lines above you wrote, "It is now. For you have adopted someone else's version as your own." Do you even bother to read your own stuff? Truth is an island surrounded by a sea of lies. And reality hands down the final verdict through the consequences of our actions of whether we are standing on dry land or swimming with the sharks. I see you didn't answer my question about the mugger and the 767 hijacker.

Thanks for your comments. I agree completely. I just want to point out that your thoughts on the subject vary somewhat from Rand's. In her 1966 essay, she wrote, "The victims do not have to add self-inflicted martyrdom to the injury done to them by others; they do not have to let the looters profit doubly, by letting them distribute the money exclusively to the parasites who clamored for it. Whenever the welfare-state laws offer them some small restitution, the victims should take it . . . ." I take this to mean that anyone who has in the past been looted by the government may help himself to any portion of the government's treasury whenever the opportunity arises. I take the words "whenever the welfare-state laws offer them some small restitution" to mean "take anything that's up for grabs."

Yes. Your view of someone else's version of what happened. You have your wish. For Universities already flourish under the financial blessing of the government for the purpose of imprinting leftist jihadis. I'll call you on this one. 1. Explain how my criticism of Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt's aid to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics constitutes or is even remotely related to "imprinting leftist jihadis," and 2. Name one major university where such a criticism is regularly taught. In specifically what way? How does pondering someone else's version of a dead President help you to hide money? Studying the way FDR seized gold from the private citizens of America teaches me how I can better conceal my own wealth. Next, why is it necessarily "someone else's version of a dead President"? Why can't it be my version? Are you taking the absurd position that a man must doubt everything except what he's seen himself, in his own lifetime? The government treats me exactly as decent as I am. This means that I am the only one who is responsible for my own direct personal experience of getting the government I deserve. Great, that means that the government does not take any of your money to give to the Democrats in Washington. The IRS was not so kind to me. We are the only ones who can be our own worst threat by how we live in the present. Everything else is just old dust bunnies left in the corners to be squabbled over by blind scribes. By that calculus, if you get mugged on the street, you are to blame, not the mugger. If a hijacker flies a 767 into your office building, you are to blame, not the hijacker. Yes. And one is true... while the rest are lies.Then your claim in Post #29 that "Truth is singular. It's versions are mistruths" is false. Versions are not necessarily mistruths.

Obviously, when the government reaches into every area of human life, avoiding government benefits is quite tricky. I am familiar with Rand's answer to the question of student aid. But if the premise is that the recipient of aid has already paid or will someday be paying for those goodies through taxes, is there then any form of government aid one should not accept? What about free day care, Head Start, housing vouchers, weatherization subsidies, heating bill subsidies, cell phone subsidies, free legal advice, or food assistance? Wouldn't all government benefits be fair game if one has paid taxes?

You mean stolen money, stolen labor and sometimes stolen lives. See Conscription in Israel. Every army on earth is maintained by some kind of theft. However, consider the alternative: the bad guys with their slave army and Objectopia with no army. Who do you think will survive? If it's strictly a question of survival, then it may be smarter to be a bad guy. Mao lived longer than Rand, didn't he? There are some whose consciences are not troubled by forcing someone else to spend three years guarding the border. But if three, why not five? If five, why not ten? Isn't it about having the best military that coercion can extract? However, some Objectivists (and Aristotelians in general) would argue that rather than mere survival, we should seek the virtuous life. Eudaimonism, human flourishing, or the noble soul is the ideal. How many slaves can one get away with owning, how many skulls can one pile up before that noble soul evaporates?

You mean stolen money, stolen labor and sometimes stolen lives. See Conscription in Israel.

The U.S. did not simply form an alliance of convenience. Under FDR, the U.S. rescued the Soviet Union from economic collapse, set up a propaganda wall to conceal Stalin's atrocities from the world, helped Stalin capture and murder Russians fleeing to the West, provided the USSR with the weapons necessary--including atomic--to make it a major power, and gave it the keys to half of Europe (so that it could lock up half of Europe). The Soviets killed far more innocent people than evil people--and FDR made it possible with eyes wide open. In college... That makes sense. Government subsidized medrasas teach that view today. What view do you mean? That Franklin Delano Roosevelt helped extend communist slavery to one-third of the human population? If true, may many "medrasas" (whatever they are) bloom. Thinking about FDR helps me to get better at concealing my wealth from government-salaried looters. That's quite impressive. That means either that none of the laws in the U.S. interfere with your freedom or that you are happy to comply with all existing laws. The fact that millions of young Americans are blissfuly uninformed about the "dead past" keeps them from being distracted by the notion that government could be any sort of threat to them. The definition of version is "A description or account from one point of view, especially as opposed to another." Your version (A) of what happened last night is that Bluto stole your wallet. Bluto's version (B) is that you gave him the wallet and told him to keep it. Since A and B are both versions, must they both be mistruths?

It is more complex than that: there is first the matter of entering or not. There is also the matter of what side to enter on. For example, Finland at different points fought with both the Axis and Allied powers. The alliance with Stalin happened only because the American public was misled about the nature of the Soviet horror state and is misled to this day. Very few citizens even now know that the communists were the chief mass murderers of the 20th century and that arming them may be described as literally a game of Russian Roulette. So there can be no discussion about what should have been the proper course of action in 1940 without first knowing the actual Russian threat and how much FDR concealed it. You fretted about "the very real possibility that the Soviet Union would have won WWII an taken over all of Western Europe too," and I merely pointed out that the president who took the military course of action you endorse would have been primarily responsible if such a take-over had happened. The link provided broke Soviet atrocities into several periods. Comparing Germany and Russia in the same time span shows that Soviet murders were greater. The truth of World War II is that Hitler was a vicious mass murderer, and in order to stop him the U.S. made common cause with an even worse murderer. For argument, let's give Stalin the benefit of a doubt and stipulate that Hitler had a higher per annum body count. Now then, by what moral logic does one argue that we must give military aid and logistical support to a killer of 18 million in order to dispatch a killer of 20 million? Does anyone realistically believe that Stalin was the sort of fellow who would reward a handout from a capitalist nation with future loyalty and good deeds? Is that how he treated his fellow commies? I responded to your claim "You don't know what the future might have held if the U.S. had not gotten involved," by pointing out that uncertainty about the future is frequently used to justify government intervention. It is true that we don't know the future with absolute preditability, but that is hardly an argument for empowering statists. I never claimed that the reason the U.S. should not have aided the Soviets was because we couldn't be sure what would happen. In fact, one can make the argument that strengthening a monster will probably increase the likelihood of future bloodshed. For comparison let's look at another alternate history. Suppose (as Ayn Rand wished) Goldwater had been elected in 1964 instead of Johnson. Isn't it possible a President Goldwater might have escalated the cold war with the Soviets into a hot war? Yes. Isn't it possible hundreds of millions would have died from thermonuclear blasts in major cities and from the radiation poisoning that would have followed? Yes. Are those sufficient reasons to argue that the election of LBJ was good for the world? I say no. But I can offer no airtight proof that a freer America and not a nuclear wasteland would have been the ultimate outcome of a Goldwater victory. Could the Great Depression have been avoided? I say yes. But I will never be able to offer a convincing argument to someone who thinks that a laissez-faire approach ignores all of the possibilities for what could have happened if the U.S. had made a choice different from the New Deal. Over the years I've argued with more than a few who are convinced that without the New Deal, the hungry masses would have risen up and installed a brutal Marxist dictatorship. (Revised 9:18 pm)

The U.S. did not simply form an alliance of convenience. Under FDR, the U.S. rescued the Soviet Union from economic collapse, set up a propaganda wall to conceal Stalin's atrocities from the world, helped Stalin capture and murder Russians fleeing to the West, provided the USSR with the weapons necessary--including atomic--to make it a major power, and gave it the keys to half of Europe (so that it could lock up half of Europe). The Soviets killed far more innocent people than evil people--and FDR made it possible with eyes wide open. In college when I turned away from the state idolatry of public schools and started reading independently. Incidentally, the books The Roosevelt Myth, Roosevelt's Road to Russia, Operation Keelhaul, and Are the Russians Ten Feet Tall, which detail the role Washington played in keeping Stalin in power, were all either recommended in Ayn Rand's newsletter or sold through her associate Nathaniel Branden's book service.

Only because FDR wished it. The Soviet Union did not become a military powerhouse as a result of socialist efficiency or native Russian fighting prowess. It was saved from extinction and raised to the military equal of the U.S. by FDR. Lend-Lease provided the Soviets with a constant stream of raw materials and manufactured goods. Roosevelt's goal was not simply to weaken the Nazis, but to make Stalin ruler of half of Europe. See Roosevelt's Road to Russia. He cheerfully helped the Soviet secret police round up escapees in Operation Keelhaul. He gave Stalin all he needed to become the military equal of the U.S. See Hearings regarding shipment of atomic material to the Soviet Union during World War II. And he prevented anything negative about the Soviets from reaching American citizens. US 'helped Russia cover up Second World War Katyn Forest massacre' The statistical comparison I used was for the same span of time: 1933-1945. The same argument can be made for any governmental intervention. Things might have been a lot worse if we hadn't had a UN, foreign aid, the Vietnam War, food stamps, the Federal Reserve, TARP, TSA, etc.

In fact, the Soviet regime, supported by the U.S. government, killed more innocent people than evil people. As Ayn Rand put it, “World War I led, not to [Wilson’s] ‘democracy,’ but to the creation of three dictatorships: Soviet Russia, Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany. World War II led, not to [Roosevelt’s] ‘Four Freedoms,’ but to the surrender of one-third of the world’s population into communist slavery.” (“The Roots of War,” The Objectivist, June 1966) The problem I have with the above argument is that it ignores who was being killed and who was fighting. Germany didn't just invade the Soviet Union. If it had, it is unlikely that the U.S. would have gotten involved. Instead, Germany also invaded Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Egypt. It also attacked Great Britain and attacked American ships in the Atlantic --- probably Canadian and other country's ships too. Some of those countries might not have been worth saving, but some certainly were. The U.S. had a direct interest in defending its trading partners and its trade routes. It had an indirect interest in defending the (relatively) free countries of Europe. It probably had an interest in defeating Soviet Communism too, but at what cost? By the end of the war, the Soviet Union had something like 500 divisions each composed of roughly 10,000 to 15,000 men and had something like 20,000 tanks, many of which were quite good. Remember, the biggest tank battle in history was fought on the Eastern Front. By entering the war, the United States helped to free the Western democracies. If the U.S. had not entered the war, it is possible that the Soviet Union would still have won and would have continued to drive west, mopping up the rest of Europe. Still, it might have been better to follow Patton's advice (in the movie) and roll back the red tide. I'm not sure what the real Patton said, but here is a clip. Darrell World War II began when two murderous regimes simultaneously invaded Poland. World War II ended when FDR and Churchill agreed to allow the more murderous regime to continue to occupy Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe.

Of course not. It was a situation of evil people killing evil people. No outcome is ideal. Fascism, Communism and Nazism are all evil secular ideologies created by evil people in their own image. Good people can never completely destroy evil people. They can only prevent themselves from being completely destroyed... ...which in this case is exactly what they did. First of all, what "good people" are you referring to? It cannot be the FDR administration. For you have stated in Post #16 that "Good people never ignore evil." Yet FDR personally supervised propaganda that hid the murderous nature of Stalin's rule. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_to_Moscow Secondly, you have yet to make the case that giving aid to Stalin, who killed more people than Hitler, was a necessary action to prevent the U.S. from being destroyed.

If the Nazis had not been defeated I very well might have ended up as a cake of soap on some Nazi's bathtub. Ba'al Chatzaf To paraphrase Ayn Rand, is there anyone with an ounce of self-esteem who would value the lives of one, 100, or even one million Soviet citizens above his own? In the value system of Me (or insert other name here) no price in the blood of others is too high for the life of Me. The problem is that it is exceedingly difficult to form moral principles or policy prescriptions entirely from the Point of View of Me. Alas, those who least benefited from FDR's propping up of Stalin's regime are not here to make their case.

Agreed. Therefore, since the wartime governments of the U.S. and Great Britain did not condemn Stalin's murders but in fact produced propaganda to conceal them (for example, FDR’s Office of War Information made sure the script for the film Song of Russia was approved by the Soviet Embassy), we cannot say they were made up of "good people." Therefore, the actions of the U.S. and Great Britain in fighting one evil (Hitler) by supporting another, greater evil (Stalin) cannot be justified. In fact, the Soviet regime, supported by the U.S. government, killed more innocent people than evil people. As Ayn Rand put it, “World War I led, not to [Wilson’s] ‘democracy,’ but to the creation of three dictatorships: Soviet Russia, Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany. World War II led, not to [Roosevelt’s] ‘Four Freedoms,’ but to the surrender of one-third of the world’s population into communist slavery.” (“The Roots of War,” The Objectivist, June 1966)

I also hold that irrational belief. One of the myths of World War II, is that the military opponents of Nazi Germany helped prevent genocide. In fact, genocide within Allied countries exceeded that of the Nazis by several million during the period 1933-1945. See http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NAZIS.CHAP1.HTM and http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE4.HTM Defending evil with evil... an interesting approach. I suppose you mean a defense such as this one: "The Hitlerite scoundrels have made it a rule to torture Soviet prisoners of war, to kill them by the hundreds, to condemn thousands of them to a death by starvation. They violate and kill the civilian population of the occupied territories of our country – men and women, children and elderly, our brothers and sisters. They have made it their aim to enslave or exterminate the population of Ukraine, Belorussia, the Baltic republics, Moldavia, the Crimea, and the Caucasus. Only villains and bastards devoid of honor and fallen to the level of animals, can permit themselves such outrages against innocent unarmed people.” --Joseph Stalin, quoted in Richard Overy, The Dictators: Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia. W. W. Norton & Company, p. 120. In other words, as long as Nazi evil exists, ignore the far greater evil committed by its military enemy, the Soviet Union.

I also hold that irrational belief. One of the myths of World War II, is that the military opponents of Nazi Germany helped prevent genocide. In fact, genocide within Allied countries exceeded that of the Nazis by several million during the period 1933-1945. See http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NAZIS.CHAP1.HTM and http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE4.HTM