3 hours ago
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
They make the profits on creating artificial scarcity.
"Peak oil" is pure military-industrial-complex propaganda.
Steve Watson, Alex Jones & Paul Watson | October 04 2005
Publicly available CFR and Club of Rome strategy manuals from 30 years ago say that a global government needs to control the world population through neo-feudalism by creating artificial scarcity. Now that the social architects have de-industrialized the United States, they are going to blame our economic disintegration on lack of energy supplies.
Globalization is all about consolidation. Now that the world economy has become so centralized through the Globalists operations, they are going to continue to consolidate and blame it on the West's "evil" overconsumption of fossil fuels, while at the same time blocking the development and integration of renewable clean technologies.
In other words, Peak oil is a scam to create artificial scarcity and drive prices up. Meanwhile, alternative fuel technologies which have been around for decades are intentionally suppressed.
This year in particular we have seen a strong hike in oil prices and are being told to simply get used to it because this is the way it is going to be. In the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita gas prices have shot up amid claims of vast energy shortages. Americans are being asked to turn off lights, change thermostat settings, drive slower, insulate homes and take other steps. Meanwhile the oil companies continue to make record profits.
Even The New York Times pointed out that the recent "energy crisis" seems to be purely tactical:
"To Mr. Bush's critics, the call for conservation smacked of showmanship, or of shutting the garage door after the S.U.V. had been stolen. After all, the president has spent the past weeks dropping into the hurricane region from the fuel-guzzling Air Force One, which the Air Force estimates costs $40,000 an hour to fly."
Flying in the face of the so caFlled peak oil crisis are the facts. If we are running out of oil so quickly then why are reserves being continually increased and production skyrocketing?
in the 1980s OPEC decided to switch to a quota production system based on the size of reserves. The larger the reserves a country said it had the more it could pump.
Earlier this year Saudi Arabia reportedly increased its crude reserves by around 200 billion barrels. Saudi Oil Is Secure and Plentiful, Say Officials.
“These huge reserves enable the Kingdom to remain a major oil producer for between 70 and 100 years, even if it raises its production capacity to 15 million barrels per day, which may well happen during the next 15 years,”
Is this the normal course of behaviour if we are currently at the peak for oil production? The answer is no, it's the normal course of action for increasing production.
There have also been reports that Russia has vastly increased its reserves even beyond those of Saudi Arabia. Why would they do this if they believed there would be no more oil to get hold of? It seems clear that Russia is ready for unlimited future production of oil.....................http://www.prisonplanet.com/Pages/Oct05/041005oil.htm
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Saturday, October 18, 2008
War Propaganda > World War I
Demons, atrocities, and lies
Defining Propaganda
The word "propaganda" has already been used several times, and the reader may wonder how this term is being used. The definition of propaganda has been widely debated, but there is little agreement about what it means. Some argue that all persuasive communication is propagandistic, while others suggest that only dishonest messages can be considered propaganda. Political activists of all stripes claim that they speak the truth while their opponents preach propaganda. In order to accommodate the breadth of the CPI's activities, this discussion relies on Harold Lasswell's broad interpretation of the term. "Not bombs nor bread," wrote Lasswell, "but words, pictures, songs, parades, and many similar devices are the typical means of making propaganda." According to Lasswell, "propaganda relies on symbols to attain its end: the manipulation of collective attitudes."
Propagandists usually attempt to influence individuals while leading each one to behave "as though his response were his own decision." Mass communication tools extend the propagandist's reach and make it possible to shape the attitudes of many individuals simultaneously. Because propagandists attempt to "do the other fellow's thinking for him," they prefer indirect messages to overt, logical arguments. During the war, the CPI accomplished this by making calculated emotional appeals, by demonizing Germany, by linking the war to the goals of various social groups, and, when necessary, by lying outright.
Emotional Appeals
CPI propaganda typically appealed to the heart, not to the mind. Emotional agitation is a favorite technique of the propagandist, because "any emotion may be 'drained off' into any activity by skillful manipulation." An article which appeared in Scientific Monthly shortly after the war argued that "the detailed suffering of a little girl and her kitten can motivate our hatred against the Germans, arouse our sympathy for Armenians, make us enthusiastic for the Red Cross, or lead us to give money for a home for cats." Wartime slogans such as "Bleeding Belgium," "The Criminal Kaiser," and "Make the World Safe For Democracy," suggest that the CPI was no stranger to this idea. Evidence of this technique can be seen in a typical propaganda poster that portrayed an aggressive, bayonet-wielding German soldier above the caption "Beat Back The Hun With Liberty Bonds." In this example, the emotions of hate and fear were redirected toward giving money to the war effort. It is an interesting side-note that many analysts attribute the failure of German propaganda in America to the fact that it emphasized logic over passion. According to Count von Bernstorff, a German diplomat, "the outstanding characteristic of the average American is rather a great, though superficial, sentimentality," and German press telegrams completely failed to grasp this fact.
Demonization
A second propaganda technique used by the CPI was demonization of the enemy. "So great are the psychological resistances to war in modern nations," wrote Lasswell "that every war must appear to be a war of defense against a menacing, murderous aggressor. There must be no ambiguity about who the public is to hate." American propaganda was not the only source of anti-German feeling, but most historians agree that the CPI pamphlets went too far in portraying Germans as depraved, brutal aggressors. For example, in one CPI publication, Professor Vernon Kellogg asked "will it be any wonder if, after the war, the people of the world, when they recognize any human being as a German, will shrink aside so that they may not touch him as he passes, or stoop for stones to drive him from their path?"
A particularly effective strategy for demonizing Germans was the use of atrocity stories. "A handy rule for arousing hate," said Lasswell "is, if at first they do not enrage, use an atrocity. It has been employed with unvarying success in every conflict known to man." Unlike the pacifist, who argues that all wars are brutal, the atrocity story implies that war is only brutal when practiced by the enemy. Certain members of the CPI were relatively cautious about repeating unsubstantiated allegations, but the committee's publications often relied on dubious material. After the war, Edward Bernays, who directed CPI propaganda efforts in Latin America, openly admitted that his colleagues used alleged atrocities to provoke a public outcry against Germany. Some of the atrocity stories which were circulated during the war, such as the one about a tub full of eyeballs or the story of the seven-year old boy who confronted German soldiers with a wooden gun, were actually recycled from previous conflicts. In his seminal work on wartime propaganda, Lasswell speculated that atrocity stories will always be popular because the audience is able to feel self-righteous indignation toward the enemy, and, at some level, identify with the perpetrators of the crimes. "A young woman, ravished by the enemy," he wrote "yields secret satisfaction to a host of vicarious ravishers on the other side of the border."
Anti-German propaganda fueled support for the war, but it also contributed to intolerance on the home front. Dachshunds were renamed liberty dogs, German measles were renamed liberty measles, and the City University of New York reduced by one credit every course in German. Fourteen states banned the speaking of German in public schools. The military adversary was thousands of miles away, but German-Americans provided convenient local scapegoats. In Van Houten, New Mexico, an angry mob accused an immigrant miner of supporting Germany and forced him to kneel before them, kiss the flag, and shout "To hell with the Kaiser." In Illinois, a group of zealous patriots accused Robert Prager, a German coal miner, of hoarding explosives. Though Prager asserted his loyalty to the very end, he was lynched by the angry mob. Explosives were never found.
The War to End All Wars
Emotional appeals and simplistic caricatures of the enemy influenced many Americans, but the CPI recognized that certain social groups had more complex propaganda needs. In order to reach intellectuals and pacifists, the CPI claimed that military intervention would bring about a democratic League of Nations and end warfare forever. With other social groups, the CPI modified its arguments, and interpreted the war as "a conflict to destroy the threat of German industrial competition (business group), to protect the American standard of living (labor), to remove certain baneful German influences in our education (teachers), to destroy German music - itself a subtle propaganda (musicians), to preserve civilization, 'we' and `civilization' being synonymous (nationalists), to make the world safe for democracy, crush militarism, [and] establish the rights of small nations et al. (religious and idealistic groups)." It is impossible to make rigorous statements about which one of these appeals was most effective, but this is the advantage that the propagandist has over the communications scholar. The propagandist is primarily concerned with effectiveness and can afford to ignore the methodological demands of social science.
Dishonesty
Finally, like most propagandists, the CPI was frequently dishonest. Despite George Creel's claim that the CPI strived for unflinching accuracy, many of his employees later admitted that they were quite willing to lie. Will Irwin, an ex-CPI member who published several confessional pieces after the war, felt that the CPI was more honest than other propaganda ministries, but made it clear that "we never told the whole truth - not by any manner of means." Citing an intelligence officer who bluntly said "you can't tell them the truth," G.S Viereck argued that, as on all fronts, victories were routinely manufactured by American military authorities. The professional propagandist realizes that, when a single lie is exposed, the entire campaign is jeopardized. Dishonesty is discouraged, but on strategic, not moral, grounds.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon 1808-1865
Proudhon's essay on What Is Government?
To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be place[d] under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality. (P.-J. Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, translated by John Beverly Robinson (London: Freedom Press, 1923), pp. 293-294.)
Article on world domination
April 16, 2007
The Politics of the Useful Threat
It Didn't Start with the Neo-Cons
By CARL G. ESTABROOK
"Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business."
Michael Ledeen, rightist, neocon, and promoter of war with Iran, in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute in the early 1990s, as quoted in National Review Online
It's generally known that the regime of war and torture that the Bush administration has visited upon the Middle East was planned and supported by a group of American intellectuals called collectively neoconservatives. The name is merely a label, not a description: there is nothing remotely conservative about this gang of statist reactionaries. But it is important to realize that their views are not different in kind from those entertained by the shapers of American foreign policy for generations. The neocon position was simply at an extreme end of the (rather narrow) spectrum of American policy options, all of which were animated by the same basic principles -- such as the necessity for the US to control Middle East energy resources.
It is often pointed out that the war policy followed by the current administration had been set out in detail by the neocons in the 1990s, well before the disputed election of 2000 and the attacks of 11 September 2001. "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," a notorious neocon report prepared for the Israeli right wing in 1996, recommended the inculcation of "Western values" [sic] in the Middle East -- in fact an aggressive new policy of advancing right-wing Zionism. Summing up a decade's agitation, the neocon Project for a New American Century published a report just before the 2000 election that conceded that their wished-for "process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor." When it arrived on 9-11, they capitalized on it. If their advice was treasonous, they took Patrick Henry's advice and made the most of it.
In part owing to the guidance of the neocons, the Bush administration is probably the most dangerous in American history -- not just because they are particularly stupid and vicious, although they probably are -- but because circumstances have given them, at least momentarily, a relatively free hand in international affairs:
* the fall of the Soviet Union, although undoubtedly an advance for true socialism, reduced the hindrances to the use of American military power after 1991; and
* the criminal attacks of 9-11-2001 provided an unparalleled excuse for the exercise of American state terror, even though US actions in ostensible response to those attacks, notably the invasion of Iraq, bore little or no relation to them. (One leading neocon in the Pentagon actually proposed just after 9-11 that the US should bomb South America or Southeast Asia as "a surprise to the terrorists.")
Add to those respectively negative and positive encouragements for an aggressive American foreign policy what seems to be an increased American willingness to use nuclear weapons, as well as policies that have the predictable effect of encouraging the spread of nuclear weapons. The world could hardly fail to notice that the Bush administration refrained from attacking one member (North Korea) of the "axis of evil," its official hate-objects, which had developed a nuclear weapon, while savaging another (Iraq), which had not, despite hysterical American charges; meanwhile they contemplated attacking the third (Iran) before it could develop such a weapon. The conclusion was obvious: the possession of nuclear weapons is a necessary defense against American aggression.
The Useful Threat: the Soviets and After
The fall of the Soviet Union, occurring at the end of the first Bush administration, was not however an unmixed blessing for the US government. It made undeniable what had been merely obvious before - the ascendancy of American military power. Despite generations of hysterical US government fear-mongering about Soviet threats -- in 1947, when the Truman administration was considering how to sell to the American public a policy of a permanent wartime economy coupled with aggressive interventions abroad, Senator Arthur Vandenberg told the president to "scare hell out of the American people" -- the Soviet Union never presented an authentic military threat to the US, or even to western Europe, with the single if substantial exception of the nuclear stand-off. From the Churchill-Stalin agreements in the fall of 1944, each side generally observed the demarcation of its sphere of influence -- until the US violated its promise at the time of the unification of Germany and extended NATO to the Russian border. With an economy no more than a third the size of that of the US, the USSR produced an equivalent military as a defense against the world-dominating role that the US took on after World War II.
The situation was quite plain to American policy-makers in those days. State Department analyst George Kennan wrote in a top-secret document in 1948, "We have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its population ... In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity ... To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives ... We should cease to talk about vague and ... unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better." Of course, the idealistic slogans could be saved for selling the policy to the US populace, but policy-makers shouldn't be distracted by them.
The Cold War was in fact quite functional for both the US and the USSR. Each could use the threat of the other to keep its own clients in line. When the Carter and Reagan administrations killed tens of thousands of people in Central America, it was to stop communism; when the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, it was to prevent the CIA from restoring capitalism. But the disappearance of the USSR made such excuses, always vacuous, now impossible. The naïve and pliable Colin Powell reported that, when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, USSR president Mikhail Gorbachev said to him, "General, I am sorry ... you will have to find a new enemy"; Powell "jokingly" responded that he didn't want to find a new enemy -- and give up all his troops, funding of $300 billion a year, and an anti-communist crusade that had been trumpeted for thirty years.
Providentially, the jihadists arrived on 9-11 to fill the gap. But they didn't come out of nowhere: they were in fact conjured by American policy running back to the immediate post-WWII administrations, Democratic and Republican alike. Noam Chomsky points out that "after World War II, the US was by far the dominant world power, and control of Middle East energy reserves became a leading foreign policy goal, as it had been for its predecessors. In the 1940s, US planners recognized that (in their words) Gulf energy resources are 'a stupendous source of strategic power' and 'one of the greatest material prizes in world history.' Naturally, they intended to control it -- though for many years they did not make much use of it themselves, and in the future, according to US intelligence, the US itself will rely on more stable Atlantic Basin resources (West Africa and the Western hemisphere). Nevertheless, it remains a very high priority to control the Gulf resources, which are expected to provide 2/3 of world energy needs for some time to come. Quite apart from yielding 'profits beyond the dreams of avarice,' as one leading history of the oil industry puts the matter, the region still remains 'a stupendous source of strategic power,' a lever of world control. Control over Gulf energy reserves provides 'veto power' over the actions of rivals, as the leading planner George Kennan pointed out half a century ago. Europe and Asia understand very well, and have long been seeking independent access to energy resources. Much of the jockeying for power in the Middle East and Central Asia has to do with these issues. The populations of the region are regarded as incidental, as long as they are passive and obedient..."
Of course these populations can become a severe problem for US control. "Domestic radicalism," whether of the left or right, if it threatens to wrest control of a country's energy resources from the West and employ them for the purposes of that country's populace, must be countered.
Modes of Control: Israel and Religion
For a generation after WWII, the US saw secular Arab nationalism as the most dangerous form of domestic radicalism in the Middle East, and it countered with two instrumentalities: Israel and religion. In 1967 Israel defeated Egypt's Nasser, the leader of international Arabism, and was adopted by the US as its chief client and Middle East watchdog. To mop up secular Arab nationalism, the US and Israel encouraged the growth of Islamist movements, up to and including the Palestinian party Hamas, whose origins were funded by Israel to counter the secular Palestine Liberation Organization. The present struggle between Fatah and Hamas in the Occupied Territories is a direct result of the US adoption of the imperialist's oldest maxim, "divide et impera" -- but with the division being accomplished by religion.
In pursuit of this policy, the Carter administration (1977-81), in the most expensive CIA operation in history, recruited fanatic Islamist fighters (eventually including Osama bin Laden) and sent them into Afghanistan to worry the Soviet Union -- before the Russian invasion of that country, according to Carter National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. "We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war," he said. To the objection that the policy was worse than a crime, it was a blunder, Brzezinski replied, "What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?" The US was to discover that "some stirred-up Muslims" could trouble Americans as well.
When the Reagan administration (1981-89) came to power, they announced that they would replace President Carter's feckless "human rights" foreign policy with a new slogan: "war on terror." Of course the terror that they had in mind -- recent popular uprisings in Latin America -- was still ascribed to the fell influence of international communism, but the new slogan was a recognition that the excuse was wearing thin, once Gorbachev became the Soviet leader.
The sudden departure of the USSR in 1991 was entirely unexpected by American policy makers. In fact, one of the first appearances of the neocons in battle dress had been as "Team B" in the 1970s, an outside group (approved by Director of Central Intelligence George H. W. Bush) who countered estimates by CIA intelligence officials known as Team A. They argued that the CIA was ignoring the aggressiveness of the Soviet Union and vastly underestimating its military power. Of course they were wrong on both points, but that didn't matter: their views became the basis for the massive arms buildup that began under Carter and accelerated under Reagan.
The Bush-1 administration (1989-93) tried to fill the gap caused by the loss of the communist menace with narcoterrorism: they killed a lot of Panamanians to put a former CIA asset (and incidentally a head of state) into a Miami jail. The Clinton administration (1993-2001), shown the way by Bush-1 in Somalia, where the killing of another thousand people by the US went unremarked (except for the propaganda movie Black Hawk Down), seized on "humanitarian intervention" to bring a recalcitrant Serbia, on the border between Europe and the Middle East, to heel in 1999. Democrats now try to contrast the Clinton administration with that of Bush Jr., but in fact the former showed the way for the latter. And even if the estimates of almost three quarters of a million people dead in Iraq as a result of Bush's war are accurate, as they seem to be, it may still be the case that Clinton is responsible for more dead Iraqis. The sanctions against Iraq imposed by the UN after the Gulf War of 1991 -- in fact administered by the US and the UK -- killed at least a half million children alone, according to the two UN administrators who resigned in protest of the "genocidal" US policies.
How We Live Now: Hegemony or Survival
Paradoxically, it took the first major engagement of the US military after the disappearance of the USSR -- the attack on the prostrate country of Iraq -- to reveal its severe limitations. The defeat of the US occupation of Iraq -- the American writ now barely runs even in Baghdad, despite the "surge" -- was almost immediately replicated in the humiliation of US client Israel by the irregulars of the Lebanese Shi'ite Party of God.
But the present situation is extremely hazardous: a predator becomes more dangerous when wounded, as Chomsky has recently said. The US government's trumped-up charges against Iran resemble a losing gambler's doubling of the stakes. The US has shown that it is willing to go to great lengths to prevent losing control of Middle East energy. As Iran flirts with Russia and China and hints that it will become part of an Asian energy grid, the US sees the fundamental principle of its long-term policy at risk.
As President Chavez pointed out at the United Nations, quoting Noam Chomsky, the US rulers show themselves willing to risk even the survival of the species in pursuit of global hegemony. It's primarily the responsibility of the American people to stop them.
C. G. Estabrook is a retired visiting professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a co-host of "News from Neptune"; he can be reached at: galliher@uiuc.edu. A shorter version of this piece was submitted to a local "progressive" paper, The Public I, which refused to publish it in a dispute stemming from their objection to the paragraph about the Clinton administration. He can be reached at: galliher@uiuc.ed
"Free" Education and Literacy
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Barry Dean Simpson
A common view promoted by advocates of "free" or public education is that a system primarily based on fees would cause many children to forego an education. Subsequently, literacy rates would decline, and America would slide down a slippery slope toward low economic growth and stagnation. Whether education is part and parcel to economic growth is not the concern of this article. Rather, the charge of illiteracy in a fee-based or privatized system seems to be weak at best, considering the history of education in America and England.
England's system of education was not completely "free" until 1870. However, literacy and attendance had been steadily climbing for hundreds of years. In 1640, male literacy in London was more than 50%, and more than 33% in the countryside. These rates were obtained under a privately administered fee-based educational system.[i] As the demand for education rose during the Industrial Revolution, however, private schools grew to supply consumer needs. By 1818, one of every fourteen people in the total population attended school for some period. Twice as many children attended school only ten years later. A Government Report of 1833 (criticized for underreporting attendance levels) found a 73% increase in the number of schooled children between 1818 and 1833.[ii] During 1833, 58% of attendees paid full fees, while only 27% received endowments for education.[iii]
The private system continued to grow in England. Attendance in day school had reached one of every 8.36 of the total population by 1851, and one of every 7.7 by 1861. The Education Act of 1870 provided "free" schools for the entire population. In 1975, however, after over 100 years of "free" schooling, the figure dropped only to one of every 6.4 citizens.[iv] The private investment in education in England prior to the Education Act is phenomenal considering the circumstances. The wages of children were still an important part of the average family budget. Eddie West estimates that a full one percent of Net National Income was spent on day-school education alone in 1833. This figure exceeds that of America in 1860. Moreover, it exceeds the figures of 1860 Germany and 1880 France where education was free and compulsory.[v] West argues that the goal of educating 100% of the population is unattainable. But if universal education means at least 90% attendance, then a private system of universal education had been achieved in England by 1860—a full ten years before education became "free."[vi]
The situation in America roughly parallels that in England. In 1650, male literacy in America was 60%. Between 1800 and 1840, literacy in the Northern States increased from 75% to 90%, and in Southern States from 60% to 81%. These increases transpired before the famous Common School Movement led by Horace Mann caught steam. Massachusetts had reached a level of 98% literacy in 1850. This occurred before the state's compulsory education law of 1852. Senator Edward Kennedy's office released a paper in the 1980s stating that literacy in Massachusetts was only 91%.[vii]
While some people might wonder exactly what literacy entailed during the early Nineteenth Century, anecdotal evidence points to a highly educated and refined populace. In his book Separating School and State, Sheldon Richman gives a variety of examples of the sophisticated nature of America's readers. Thomas Paine's Common Sense sold 120,000 copies to a population of three million—the equivalent of ten million copies in the 1990s. Noah Webster's Spelling Bee sold five million copies to a population of less than twenty million in 1818. Walter Scott's novels sold the same number between 1813 and 1823—the equivalent of sixty million copies in the 1990s. James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans also sold millions of copies. Scott and Cooper are certainly not written on today's fourth-grade level. Travelers to America during the period such as Alexis de Tocqueville and Pierre du Pont were amazed at the education of Americans.[viii] The reading public of Victorian England is so famous that numerous books and college literature courses are devoted to the subject. In fact, England eventually passed a paper tax to quell a public the leaders felt was too smart.
The reason behind the successes of private, fee-based systems should be elementary to any student of economics: Private businesses are consumer oriented. The feedback of profit and loss tells an entrepreneur when they satisfy, or fail to satisfy, the needs of consumers. Entrepreneurs who continue to lose eventually cease to be entrepreneurs. Conversely, profit is a reward to entrepreneurs who correctly anticipate consumer wants. A brief look at the private schools of the period attests to these facts. Private schools offered a varied curricula to students. While public schools concerned themselves with the three R's, private schools offered courses in geography, bookkeeping, geometry, trigonometry, surveying, French, German, history, and sometimes dancing.[ix] Specialty and night schools emerged to meet the growing demand of consumers. Many states cut local funding for schools after the American Revolution, but private education thrived.
Why then, did Mann and other so-called reformers lead a call-to-arms to bring public, free schools to all children? One reason is that consumers preferred the quality of the private schools. Although attendance per se did not decline from 1830 to 1840, attendance in public schools began to fall faster and faster. Mann and his followers developed many arguments to attack the private schools. Such arguments ranged from bad parents who refused to educate their children, to calls of private education being "undemocratic." Economic arguments concerning economic growth, crime, and educated voters were also used in an attempt to solidify the position of public schools. Once educators and administrators organized into powerful lobbying groups, the die of our modern public system was cast. Few people can afford to pay for education twice: once through fees, and once through the fiat of taxation.
Most people now realize the failure of public schools, even those who seek only to reorganize a bad system. Parents certainly realize this fact, since private and home schooling is again on the rise. Apparently, many people find that paying twice for education is better than receiving little education at all. Economic theory shows us that private businesses cater to the needs of diverse consumers far better than bureaucracies. History tells us that a private system is feasible, that those at the bottom of the ladder will gain the education they need, and that literacy will not suffer if the mass of the pubic education system disappears—if only we will listen.
By Barry Dean Simpson
A common view promoted by advocates of "free" or public education is that a system primarily based on fees would cause many children to forego an education. Subsequently, literacy rates would decline, and America would slide down a slippery slope toward low economic growth and stagnation. Whether education is part and parcel to economic growth is not the concern of this article. Rather, the charge of illiteracy in a fee-based or privatized system seems to be weak at best, considering the history of education in America and England.
England's system of education was not completely "free" until 1870. However, literacy and attendance had been steadily climbing for hundreds of years. In 1640, male literacy in London was more than 50%, and more than 33% in the countryside. These rates were obtained under a privately administered fee-based educational system.[i] As the demand for education rose during the Industrial Revolution, however, private schools grew to supply consumer needs. By 1818, one of every fourteen people in the total population attended school for some period. Twice as many children attended school only ten years later. A Government Report of 1833 (criticized for underreporting attendance levels) found a 73% increase in the number of schooled children between 1818 and 1833.[ii] During 1833, 58% of attendees paid full fees, while only 27% received endowments for education.[iii]
The private system continued to grow in England. Attendance in day school had reached one of every 8.36 of the total population by 1851, and one of every 7.7 by 1861. The Education Act of 1870 provided "free" schools for the entire population. In 1975, however, after over 100 years of "free" schooling, the figure dropped only to one of every 6.4 citizens.[iv] The private investment in education in England prior to the Education Act is phenomenal considering the circumstances. The wages of children were still an important part of the average family budget. Eddie West estimates that a full one percent of Net National Income was spent on day-school education alone in 1833. This figure exceeds that of America in 1860. Moreover, it exceeds the figures of 1860 Germany and 1880 France where education was free and compulsory.[v] West argues that the goal of educating 100% of the population is unattainable. But if universal education means at least 90% attendance, then a private system of universal education had been achieved in England by 1860—a full ten years before education became "free."[vi]
The situation in America roughly parallels that in England. In 1650, male literacy in America was 60%. Between 1800 and 1840, literacy in the Northern States increased from 75% to 90%, and in Southern States from 60% to 81%. These increases transpired before the famous Common School Movement led by Horace Mann caught steam. Massachusetts had reached a level of 98% literacy in 1850. This occurred before the state's compulsory education law of 1852. Senator Edward Kennedy's office released a paper in the 1980s stating that literacy in Massachusetts was only 91%.[vii]
While some people might wonder exactly what literacy entailed during the early Nineteenth Century, anecdotal evidence points to a highly educated and refined populace. In his book Separating School and State, Sheldon Richman gives a variety of examples of the sophisticated nature of America's readers. Thomas Paine's Common Sense sold 120,000 copies to a population of three million—the equivalent of ten million copies in the 1990s. Noah Webster's Spelling Bee sold five million copies to a population of less than twenty million in 1818. Walter Scott's novels sold the same number between 1813 and 1823—the equivalent of sixty million copies in the 1990s. James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans also sold millions of copies. Scott and Cooper are certainly not written on today's fourth-grade level. Travelers to America during the period such as Alexis de Tocqueville and Pierre du Pont were amazed at the education of Americans.[viii] The reading public of Victorian England is so famous that numerous books and college literature courses are devoted to the subject. In fact, England eventually passed a paper tax to quell a public the leaders felt was too smart.
The reason behind the successes of private, fee-based systems should be elementary to any student of economics: Private businesses are consumer oriented. The feedback of profit and loss tells an entrepreneur when they satisfy, or fail to satisfy, the needs of consumers. Entrepreneurs who continue to lose eventually cease to be entrepreneurs. Conversely, profit is a reward to entrepreneurs who correctly anticipate consumer wants. A brief look at the private schools of the period attests to these facts. Private schools offered a varied curricula to students. While public schools concerned themselves with the three R's, private schools offered courses in geography, bookkeeping, geometry, trigonometry, surveying, French, German, history, and sometimes dancing.[ix] Specialty and night schools emerged to meet the growing demand of consumers. Many states cut local funding for schools after the American Revolution, but private education thrived.
Why then, did Mann and other so-called reformers lead a call-to-arms to bring public, free schools to all children? One reason is that consumers preferred the quality of the private schools. Although attendance per se did not decline from 1830 to 1840, attendance in public schools began to fall faster and faster. Mann and his followers developed many arguments to attack the private schools. Such arguments ranged from bad parents who refused to educate their children, to calls of private education being "undemocratic." Economic arguments concerning economic growth, crime, and educated voters were also used in an attempt to solidify the position of public schools. Once educators and administrators organized into powerful lobbying groups, the die of our modern public system was cast. Few people can afford to pay for education twice: once through fees, and once through the fiat of taxation.
Most people now realize the failure of public schools, even those who seek only to reorganize a bad system. Parents certainly realize this fact, since private and home schooling is again on the rise. Apparently, many people find that paying twice for education is better than receiving little education at all. Economic theory shows us that private businesses cater to the needs of diverse consumers far better than bureaucracies. History tells us that a private system is feasible, that those at the bottom of the ladder will gain the education they need, and that literacy will not suffer if the mass of the pubic education system disappears—if only we will listen.
Prostitution Theory 101
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By Yvonne Abraham and Sarah McNaught
OCTOBER 27, 1997: Few things have divided feminists as much as the sex industry. Theorists who agree on a vast swath of issues -- economic equality, affirmative action, even sexual liberation -- often find themselves bitterly opposed over pornography and prostitution.
Most 19th-century feminists opposed prostitution and considered prostitutes to be victims of male exploitation. But just as the suffragette and temperance movements were bound together at the turn of the century, so too were feminist and contemporary moral objections to prostitution. Women, the argument went, were repositories of moral virtue, and prostitution tainted their purity: the sale of sex was, like alcohol, both cause and symptom of the decadence into which society had sunk.
By the 1960s and '70s, when Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer asserted that sexual liberation was integral to women's liberation, feminists were reluctant to oppose prostitution on moral grounds. Traditional morality, Greer argued, had helped to repress women sexually, had made their needs secondary to men's. That sexual subordination compounded women's economic and political subordination.
Today, some feminists see hooking as a form of sexual slavery; others, as a route to sexual self-determination. And in between are those who see prostitution as a form of work that, like it or not, is here to stay.
Radical feminists such as lawyer Catharine MacKinnon and antipornography theorist Andrea Dworkin oppose sex work in any form. They argue that it exploits women and reinforces their status as sexual objects, undoing many of the gains women have made over the past century.
Others detect in this attitude a strain of neo-Victorianism, a condescending belief that prostitutes don't know what they're doing and need somebody with more education to protect them. Some women, these dissenters point out, actually choose the profession.
Feminists who question the antiprostitution radicals also point out that Dworkin and MacKinnon sometimes sound eerily like their nemeses on the religious right. Phyllis Schlafly, a rabid family-values crusader, has even cited Dworkin in her antipornography promotional materials. This kind of thing has not improved the radicals' image among feminists.
At the other extreme from Dworkin and MacKinnon are sex-radical feminists like Susie Bright and Pat Califia. They argue that sex work can be a good thing: a bold form of liberation for women, a way for some to take control of their lives. The problem there, though, is that the life of a prostitute is often more Leaving Las Vegas than Pretty Woman (see "Pop Tarts").
Many feminists fall somewhere in between the rad-fem and sex-radical poles. Wendy Chapkis, professor of sociology and women's studies at the University of Southern Maine and the author of the Live Sex Acts: Women Performing Erotic Labor (Routledge, 1997), is one of them. For nine years, Chapkis studied prostitution in California and the Netherlands, as well as in Britain and Finland, and conducted interviews with 50 sex workers. Chapkis says she sees the profession as it is: many of her interviews confirmed much of the ugliness that radical feminists abhor, as well as the empowerment that sex radicals perceive.
"I don't think prostitution is the ultimate in women's liberation," she says. "But I think it's better understood as work than as inevitably a form of sexual violence." What prostitutes need, she argues, is not a bunch of goody-goodies looking down on them, but decent working conditions.
Chapkis believes prostitution should be decriminalized. Just because it can be lousy work doesn't mean it should be stamped out, she argues. After all, she says, "there are lots of jobs in which women are underpaid, underappreciated, and exploited." Criminalizing the profession just exacerbates prostitutes' problems by isolating them from the law and leaving them vulnerable to abusive pimps and johns. "In a profession where women traditionally are not treated well, aren't empowered, and should be able to go to the police for protection and assistance," she says, "we make the police an extra obstacle, another threat."
In the Netherlands, by contrast, where prostitution is decriminalized, police and prostitutes are on the same side: hookers speak at police academies to educate the officers about their work, and Chapkis says the communication pays off in safer working conditions for the women.
But what of the radical feminists' claim that prostitution is too patriarchal to be tolerated? Chapkis points out that many things in modern life began as patriarchal institutions -- marriage, for example. Problems within marriage, she says, can be addressed without resorting to abolition: these days, marital property is distributed more fairly, and abused wives have places to go for help. Even Catharine MacKinnon has found a way to reconcile herself to the idea of getting married. Why can't prostitution be similarly transformed?
Still, Chapkis isn't so naive as to see prostitution as benign. There are no easy generalizations about sex workers' lives, she says: "I interviewed street prostitutes who feel powerful and in control and are making a lot of money, and I met many high-class call girls who hate their jobs."
Either way, Chapkis is certain that the only option is decriminalization, which would prevent prostitutes from getting arrested. "I'm as concerned as any of the abolitionists to deal with the problems of prostitution -- violence, drug use, poverty," she says. "But you can't solve those problems by further criminalizing prostitution, driving it further underground. [That makes] it more difficult for women to access what help there is."
Which is where a lot of prostitutes' organizations stand, too. Tracy Quan, director of the Prostitutes' Organization of New York (PONY), a support group of more than 300 sex workers, has been in the movement to decriminalize prostitution since 1975. "Prostitutes are just a part of the whole mix of society, whether people like it or not," she says. "Prostitution must be treated like an industry."
But many workers are careful to distinguish between decriminalization and legalization, which would create new laws and regulations governing the industry. That, many sex workers and advocates believe, would only place additional demands on women whose lives are difficult enough already.
Carmen, a 28-year-old who has been a sex worker for four years, questions the benefits of legalization, as demonstrated in Nevada. "Under the current system," she says, "if you are arrested and incarcerated, you are put behind bars. Legalization would be the same thing. You're being put behind barbed wire, and it is dictated to you where you can go, when you can go there, and who you can talk to. That's certainly not enticing to me."
Norma Jean Almodovar of COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics), a national advocacy and assistance organization for sex industry workers, explains that "those of us who are out-and-out whores want our [fellow workers] to be free." Quan adds that although some prostitutes find that legal brothels such as those in Nevada work for them, others choose illegal action because they want to be in control.
"Nevada doesn't encourage hookers to become madams," Quan says. "And, to us, it is very much an industry just like any other money-making career. We want to know there is a level of hierarchy where upward mobility is possible."
And many prostitutes are as cynical about the government and the cops as they are about pimps and johns. "There have been numerous examples of how law enforcement officials have used laws as a form of extortion," says Almodovar. " 'Blow me for your license' is not the answer."
Sarah McNaught can be reached at smcnaught@phx. com.
By Yvonne Abraham and Sarah McNaught
OCTOBER 27, 1997: Few things have divided feminists as much as the sex industry. Theorists who agree on a vast swath of issues -- economic equality, affirmative action, even sexual liberation -- often find themselves bitterly opposed over pornography and prostitution.
Most 19th-century feminists opposed prostitution and considered prostitutes to be victims of male exploitation. But just as the suffragette and temperance movements were bound together at the turn of the century, so too were feminist and contemporary moral objections to prostitution. Women, the argument went, were repositories of moral virtue, and prostitution tainted their purity: the sale of sex was, like alcohol, both cause and symptom of the decadence into which society had sunk.
By the 1960s and '70s, when Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer asserted that sexual liberation was integral to women's liberation, feminists were reluctant to oppose prostitution on moral grounds. Traditional morality, Greer argued, had helped to repress women sexually, had made their needs secondary to men's. That sexual subordination compounded women's economic and political subordination.
Today, some feminists see hooking as a form of sexual slavery; others, as a route to sexual self-determination. And in between are those who see prostitution as a form of work that, like it or not, is here to stay.
Radical feminists such as lawyer Catharine MacKinnon and antipornography theorist Andrea Dworkin oppose sex work in any form. They argue that it exploits women and reinforces their status as sexual objects, undoing many of the gains women have made over the past century.
Others detect in this attitude a strain of neo-Victorianism, a condescending belief that prostitutes don't know what they're doing and need somebody with more education to protect them. Some women, these dissenters point out, actually choose the profession.
Feminists who question the antiprostitution radicals also point out that Dworkin and MacKinnon sometimes sound eerily like their nemeses on the religious right. Phyllis Schlafly, a rabid family-values crusader, has even cited Dworkin in her antipornography promotional materials. This kind of thing has not improved the radicals' image among feminists.
At the other extreme from Dworkin and MacKinnon are sex-radical feminists like Susie Bright and Pat Califia. They argue that sex work can be a good thing: a bold form of liberation for women, a way for some to take control of their lives. The problem there, though, is that the life of a prostitute is often more Leaving Las Vegas than Pretty Woman (see "Pop Tarts").
Many feminists fall somewhere in between the rad-fem and sex-radical poles. Wendy Chapkis, professor of sociology and women's studies at the University of Southern Maine and the author of the Live Sex Acts: Women Performing Erotic Labor (Routledge, 1997), is one of them. For nine years, Chapkis studied prostitution in California and the Netherlands, as well as in Britain and Finland, and conducted interviews with 50 sex workers. Chapkis says she sees the profession as it is: many of her interviews confirmed much of the ugliness that radical feminists abhor, as well as the empowerment that sex radicals perceive.
"I don't think prostitution is the ultimate in women's liberation," she says. "But I think it's better understood as work than as inevitably a form of sexual violence." What prostitutes need, she argues, is not a bunch of goody-goodies looking down on them, but decent working conditions.
Chapkis believes prostitution should be decriminalized. Just because it can be lousy work doesn't mean it should be stamped out, she argues. After all, she says, "there are lots of jobs in which women are underpaid, underappreciated, and exploited." Criminalizing the profession just exacerbates prostitutes' problems by isolating them from the law and leaving them vulnerable to abusive pimps and johns. "In a profession where women traditionally are not treated well, aren't empowered, and should be able to go to the police for protection and assistance," she says, "we make the police an extra obstacle, another threat."
In the Netherlands, by contrast, where prostitution is decriminalized, police and prostitutes are on the same side: hookers speak at police academies to educate the officers about their work, and Chapkis says the communication pays off in safer working conditions for the women.
But what of the radical feminists' claim that prostitution is too patriarchal to be tolerated? Chapkis points out that many things in modern life began as patriarchal institutions -- marriage, for example. Problems within marriage, she says, can be addressed without resorting to abolition: these days, marital property is distributed more fairly, and abused wives have places to go for help. Even Catharine MacKinnon has found a way to reconcile herself to the idea of getting married. Why can't prostitution be similarly transformed?
Still, Chapkis isn't so naive as to see prostitution as benign. There are no easy generalizations about sex workers' lives, she says: "I interviewed street prostitutes who feel powerful and in control and are making a lot of money, and I met many high-class call girls who hate their jobs."
Either way, Chapkis is certain that the only option is decriminalization, which would prevent prostitutes from getting arrested. "I'm as concerned as any of the abolitionists to deal with the problems of prostitution -- violence, drug use, poverty," she says. "But you can't solve those problems by further criminalizing prostitution, driving it further underground. [That makes] it more difficult for women to access what help there is."
Which is where a lot of prostitutes' organizations stand, too. Tracy Quan, director of the Prostitutes' Organization of New York (PONY), a support group of more than 300 sex workers, has been in the movement to decriminalize prostitution since 1975. "Prostitutes are just a part of the whole mix of society, whether people like it or not," she says. "Prostitution must be treated like an industry."
But many workers are careful to distinguish between decriminalization and legalization, which would create new laws and regulations governing the industry. That, many sex workers and advocates believe, would only place additional demands on women whose lives are difficult enough already.
Carmen, a 28-year-old who has been a sex worker for four years, questions the benefits of legalization, as demonstrated in Nevada. "Under the current system," she says, "if you are arrested and incarcerated, you are put behind bars. Legalization would be the same thing. You're being put behind barbed wire, and it is dictated to you where you can go, when you can go there, and who you can talk to. That's certainly not enticing to me."
Norma Jean Almodovar of COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics), a national advocacy and assistance organization for sex industry workers, explains that "those of us who are out-and-out whores want our [fellow workers] to be free." Quan adds that although some prostitutes find that legal brothels such as those in Nevada work for them, others choose illegal action because they want to be in control.
"Nevada doesn't encourage hookers to become madams," Quan says. "And, to us, it is very much an industry just like any other money-making career. We want to know there is a level of hierarchy where upward mobility is possible."
And many prostitutes are as cynical about the government and the cops as they are about pimps and johns. "There have been numerous examples of how law enforcement officials have used laws as a form of extortion," says Almodovar. " 'Blow me for your license' is not the answer."
Sarah McNaught can be reached at smcnaught@phx. com.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
New Generation of Homeless Vets Emerge
www.firstworldwar.com/posters/images/pp_us_03.jpg
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Jan 20
New Generation of Homeless Vets Emerge
By ERIN McCLAM
Programs Reaches Out to Homeless Veterans
Veterans Explain: Who Is a Hero?
LEEDS, Mass. (AP) -- Peter Mohan traces the path from the Iraqi battlefield to this lifeless conference room, where he sits in a kilt and a Camp Kill Yourself T-shirt and calmly describes how he became a sad cliche: a homeless veteran.
There was a happy homecoming, but then an accident - car crash, broken collarbone. And then a move east, close to his wife's new job but away from his best friends.
And then self-destruction: He would gun his motorcycle to 100 mph and try to stand on the seat. He would wait for his wife to leave in the morning, draw the blinds and open up whatever bottle of booze was closest.
He would pull out his gun, a .45-caliber, semiautomatic pistol. He would lovingly clean it, or just look at it and put it away. Sometimes place it in his mouth.
"I don't know what to do anymore," his wife, Anna, told him one day. "You can't be here anymore."
Peter Mohan never did find a steady job after he left Iraq. He lost his wife - a judge granted their divorce this fall - and he lost his friends and he lost his home, and now he is here, in a shelter.
He is 28 years old. "People come back from war different," he offers by way of a summary.
This is not a new story in America: A young veteran back from war whose struggle to rejoin society has failed, at least for the moment, fighting demons and left homeless.
But it is happening to a new generation. As the war in Afghanistan plods on in its seventh year, and the war in Iraq in its fifth, a new cadre of homeless veterans is taking shape.
And with it come the questions: How is it that a nation that became so familiar with the archetypal homeless, combat-addled Vietnam veteran is now watching as more homeless veterans turn up from new wars?
What lessons have we not learned? Who is failing these people? Or is homelessness an unavoidable byproduct of war, of young men and women who devote themselves to serving their country and then see things no man or woman should?
---
For as long as the United States has sent its young men - and later its young women - off to war, it has watched as a segment of them come home and lose the battle with their own memories, their own scars, and wind up without homes.
The Civil War produced thousands of wandering veterans. Frequently addicted to morphine, they were known as "tramps," searching for jobs and, in many cases, literally still tending their wounds.
More than a decade after the end of World War I, the "Bonus Army" descended on Washington - demanding immediate payment on benefits that had been promised to them, but payable years later - and were routed by the U.S. military.
And, most publicly and perhaps most painfully, there was Vietnam: Tens of thousands of war-weary veterans, infamously rejected or forgotten by many of their own fellow citizens.
Now it is happening again, in small but growing numbers.
For now, about 1,500 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan have been identified by the Department of Veterans Affairs. About 400 of them have taken part in VA programs designed to target homelessness.
The 1,500 are a small, young segment of an estimated 336,000 veterans in the United States who were homeless at some point in 2006, the most recent year for which statistics are available, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
Still, advocates for homeless veterans use words like "surge" and "onslaught" and even "tsunami" to describe what could happen in the coming years, as both wars continue and thousands of veterans struggle with post-traumatic stress.
People who have studied postwar trauma say there is always a lengthy gap between coming home - the time of parades and backslaps and "The Boys Are Back in Town" on the local FM station - and the moments of utter darkness that leave some of them homeless.
In that time, usually a period of years, some veterans focus on the horrors they saw on the battlefield, or the friends they lost, or why on earth they themselves deserved to come home at all. They self-medicate, develop addictions, spiral down.
How - or perhaps the better question is why - is this happening again?
"I really wish I could answer that question," says Anthony Belcher, an outreach supervisor at New Directions, which conducts monthly sweeps of Skid Row in Los Angeles, identifying homeless veterans and trying to help them get over addictions.
"It's the same question I've been asking myself and everyone around me. I'm like, wait, wait, hold it, we did this before. I don't know how our society can allow this to happen again."
---
Mental illness, financial troubles and difficulty in finding affordable housing are generally accepted as the three primary causes of homelessness among veterans, and in the case of Iraq and Afghanistan, the first has raised particular concern.
Iraq veterans are less likely to have substance abuse problems but more likely to suffer mental illness, particularly post-traumatic stress, according to the Veterans Administration. And that stress by itself can trigger substance abuse.
Some advocates say there are also some factors particular to the Iraq war, like multiple deployments and the proliferation of improvised explosive devices, that could be pulling an early trigger on stress disorders that can lead to homelessness.
While many Vietnam veterans began showing manifestations of stress disorders roughly 10 years after returning from the front, Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have shown the signs much earlier.
That could also be because stress disorders are much better understood now than they were a generation ago, advocates say.
"There's something about going back, and a third and a fourth time, that really aggravates that level of stress," said Michael Blecker, executive director of Swords to Plowshares," a San Francisco homeless-vet outreach program.
"And being in a situation where you have these IEDs, everywhere's a combat zone. There's no really safe zone there. I think that all is just a stew for post-traumatic stress disorder."
Others point to something more difficult to define, something about American culture that - while celebrating and honoring troops in a very real way upon their homecoming - ultimately forgets them.
This is not necessarily due to deliberate negligence. Perhaps because of the lingering memory of Vietnam, when troops returned from an unpopular war to face open hostility, many Americans have taken care to express support for the troops even as they solidly disapprove of the war in Iraq.
But it remains easy for veterans home from Iraq for several years, and teetering on the edge of losing a job or home, to slip into the shadows. And as their troubles mount, they often feel increasingly alienated from friends and family members.
"War changes people," says John Driscoll, vice president for operations and programs at the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. "Your trust in people is strained. You've been separated from loved ones and friends. The camaraderie between troops is very extreme, and now you feel vulnerable."
The VA spends about $265 million annually on programs targeting homeless veterans. And as Iraq and Afghanistan veterans face problems, the VA will not simply "wait for 10 years until they show up," Pete Dougherty, the VA's director of homeless programs, said when the new figures were released.
"We're out there now trying to get everybody we can to get those kinds of services today, so we avoid this kind of problem in the future," he said.
---
These are all problems defined in broad strokes, but they cascade in very real and acute ways in the lives of individual veterans.
Take Mike Lally. He thinks back now to the long stretches in the stifling Iraq heat, nothing to do but play Spades and count flies, and about the day insurgents killed the friendly shop owner who sold his battalion Pringles and candy bars.
He thinks about crouching in the back of a Humvee watching bullets crash into fuel tanks during his first firefight, and about waiting back at base for the vodka his mother sent him, dyed blue and concealed in bottles of Scope mouthwash.
It was a little maddening, he supposes, every piece of it, but Lally is fairly sure that what finally cracked him was the bodies. Unloading the dead from ambulances and loading them onto helicopters. That was his job.
"I guess I loaded at least 20," he says. "Always a couple at a time. And you knew who it was. You always knew who it was."
It was in 2004, when he came back from his second tour in Iraq with the Marine Corps, that his own bumpy ride down began.
He would wake up at night, sweating and screaming, and during the days he imagined people in the shadows - a state the professionals call hypervigilence and Mike Lally calls "being on high alert, all the time."
His father-in-law tossed him a job installing vinyl siding, but the stress overcame him, and Lally began to drink. A little rum in his morning coffee at first, and before he knew it he was drunk on the job, and then had no job at all.
And now Mike Lally, still only 26 years old, is here, booted out of his house by his wife, padding around in an old T-shirt and sweats at a Leeds shelter called Soldier On, trying to get sober and perhaps, on a day he can envision but not yet grasp, get his home and family and life back.
"I was trying to live every day in a fog," he says, reflecting between spits of tobacco juice. "I'd think I was back in there, see people popping out of windows. Any loud noise would set me off. It still does."
---
Soldier On is staffed entirely by homeless veterans. A handful who fought in Iraq or Afghanistan, usually six or seven at a time, mix with dozens from Vietnam. Its president, Jack Downing, has spent nearly four decades working with addicts, the homeless and the mentally ill.
Next spring, he plans to open a limited-equity cooperative in the western Massachusetts city of Pittsfield. Formerly homeless veterans will live there, with half their rents going into individual deposit accounts.
Downing is convinced that ushering homeless veterans back into homeownership is the best way out of the pattern of homelessness that has repeated itself in an endless loop, war after war.
"It's a disgrace," Downing says. "You have served your country, you get damaged, and you come back and we don't take care of you. And we make you prove that you need our services."
"And how do you prove it?" he continues, voice rising in anger. "You prove it by regularly failing until you end up in a system where you're identified as a person in crisis. That has shocked me."
Even as the nation gains a much better understanding of the types of post-traumatic stress disorders suffered by so many thousands of veterans - even as it learns the lessons of Vietnam and tries to learn the lessons of Iraq - it is probably impossible to foretell a day when young American men and women come home from wars unscarred.
At least as long as there are wars.
But Driscoll, at least, sees an opportunity to do much better.
He notes that the VA now has more than 200 veteran adjustment centers to help ease the transition back into society, and the existence of more than 900 VA-connected community clinics nationwide.
"We're hopeful that five years down the road, you're not going to see the same problems you saw after the Vietnam War," he says. "If we as a nation do the right thing by these guys."
_____________________
TC
Unafraid Of Burning In Hell
The problem is not nearly as bad as the article states. I know this because I Bill O'Reilly on FOX NEWS said that there are some homeless veterans but not very many of them. The government probably inflated the statistics to make themselves look bad.
_________________
_________________
Ramblings
Ramblings
They say the Austrian Hapsburg Empire succumbed to inbreeding in the upper eschelon of it's ruling class. Contolled education has been a success, wealthy inbreds are secure in control and are not accountable to their own policies. Still the working man votes for those that hurt him most, over and over again.
Expansion of the Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Turks were descendants of Turkoman nomads who entered Anatolia in the 11C as mercenary soldiers for the Seljuks. At the end of the 13C, Osman I (from whom the name Ottoman is derived) asserted the independence of his small principality in Sogut near Bursa, which adjoined the decadent Byzantine Empire.
Gazis from all over Anatolia hitched themselves to Osman's rising star, following the usual custom of adopting the name of their leader and thus calling themselves Osmanli. Their fight for their religion, holy war, was called gaza, and was intended not to destroy but to subjugate the non-Moslem world.
Within a century the Osman Dynasty had extended its domains into an Empire stretching from the Danube to the Euphrates. In Bosnia, Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia the conquered Christian princes were restored to their lands as vassals, while the subjects were left free to follow their own religions in return for loyalty. The Ottomans accepted submissive local nobility and military commanders into their service, along with their troops, instead of killing them.
The empire was temporarily disrupted by the invasion of the Tatar conqueror Timur, who defeated and captured the Ottoman Sultan Bayezit I at the Battle of Ankara (1402). However, Mehmet I (1389-1421), the Restorer, succeeded in reuniting much of the Empire and it was reconstituted by Murat II and Mehmet II. In 1453, Mehmet II conquered Constantinople, the last Byzantine stronghold.
During the reigns of Murat II and Mehmet II the devsirme system of recruiting young Christians for conversion to Islam and service in the Ottoman army and administration was developed. The Christians in the army were organized into the elite infantry corps called the Janissaries. Urban families, those with particular skills vital to the local economy, or families with only one son were excluded in this devsirme system. From the poor families' point of view, it was a great chance for their sons to be offered a high level of education especially in the palace which would provide good future prospects.
The empire reached its peak in the 16C. Sultan Selim I (r. 1512-20) conquered Egypt and Syria, gained control of the Arabian Peninsula and beat back the Safavid rulers of Iran at the Battle of Caldiran (1514). He was succeeded by Suleyman I (the Magnificent, r. 1520-66), who took Iraq, Hungary and Albania and established Ottoman naval supremacy in the Mediterranean. Suleyman codified and institutionalized the classic structure of the Ottoman state and society, making his dominions into one of the great powers of Europe.
Enlarge Map
[img]http://images.encarta.msn.com/xrefmedia/aencmed/targets/maps/mhi/T012843A.gif[/img]
Gazis from all over Anatolia hitched themselves to Osman's rising star, following the usual custom of adopting the name of their leader and thus calling themselves Osmanli. Their fight for their religion, holy war, was called gaza, and was intended not to destroy but to subjugate the non-Moslem world.
Within a century the Osman Dynasty had extended its domains into an Empire stretching from the Danube to the Euphrates. In Bosnia, Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia the conquered Christian princes were restored to their lands as vassals, while the subjects were left free to follow their own religions in return for loyalty. The Ottomans accepted submissive local nobility and military commanders into their service, along with their troops, instead of killing them.
The empire was temporarily disrupted by the invasion of the Tatar conqueror Timur, who defeated and captured the Ottoman Sultan Bayezit I at the Battle of Ankara (1402). However, Mehmet I (1389-1421), the Restorer, succeeded in reuniting much of the Empire and it was reconstituted by Murat II and Mehmet II. In 1453, Mehmet II conquered Constantinople, the last Byzantine stronghold.
During the reigns of Murat II and Mehmet II the devsirme system of recruiting young Christians for conversion to Islam and service in the Ottoman army and administration was developed. The Christians in the army were organized into the elite infantry corps called the Janissaries. Urban families, those with particular skills vital to the local economy, or families with only one son were excluded in this devsirme system. From the poor families' point of view, it was a great chance for their sons to be offered a high level of education especially in the palace which would provide good future prospects.
The empire reached its peak in the 16C. Sultan Selim I (r. 1512-20) conquered Egypt and Syria, gained control of the Arabian Peninsula and beat back the Safavid rulers of Iran at the Battle of Caldiran (1514). He was succeeded by Suleyman I (the Magnificent, r. 1520-66), who took Iraq, Hungary and Albania and established Ottoman naval supremacy in the Mediterranean. Suleyman codified and institutionalized the classic structure of the Ottoman state and society, making his dominions into one of the great powers of Europe.
Enlarge Map
[img]http://images.encarta.msn.com/xrefmedia/aencmed/targets/maps/mhi/T012843A.gif[/img]
War Quotes
War Quotes
The pioneers of a warless world are the youth that refuse military service.
- Albert Einstein
A country cannot simultaneously prepare and prevent war.
- Albert Einstein
I love the smell of Napalm in the morning
- Apocalypse Now
Never has there been a good war or a bad peace
- Benjamin Franklin
I may be compelled to face danger, but never fear it, and while our soldiers can stand and fight, I can stand and feed and nurse them.
- Clara Barton
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together and if we are to live together we have to talk.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
All men are brothers, like the seas throughout the world; So why do winds and waves clash so fiercely everywhere?
- Emperor Hirohito
Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.
- Ernest Hemingway
They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.
- Ernest Hemmingway
Lee Harvey Oswald, shooting from the top floor of the Book Depository was able to take 3 shots from an old Italian bolt action rifle. From a distance of over 258 feet and shooting at a moving target he was able to score 2 hits including a headshot. Now does anybody know where he learned to shoot like this? In the Marine Corps ladies!
- Full Metal Jacket
Now your soul may belong to Jesus, but your ass belongs to the Marine Corps
- Full Metal Jacket
What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?
- Gandhi
Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.
- General William Westmoreland
I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.
- George McGovern
Join the army, meet interesting people, kill them
- Graffiti At Bromley
Older men declare war. But its the youth who must fight and die!
- Herbert Hoover
Naturally, the common people don't want war ... but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.
- Hermann Goering
Zeus most glorious and most great, Thundercloud, throned in the heavens! Let not the sun go down and the darkness come, until I cast down headlong the citadel of Priam in flames, and burn his gates with blazing fire, and tear to rags the shirt upon Hectors breast! May many of his men fall about him prone in the dust and bite the earth!
- Homer - The Iliad
Violence is the first refuge of the incompetent
- Issac Asimov
Instead of building newer and larger weapons of mass destruction, I think mankind should try to get more use out of the ones we have.
- Jack Handey
I am going to explain to you why we went to war. Why mankind always does to war. It is not social or political. It is not countries that go to war, but men. It is like salt. Once one has been to war, one has salt for the rest of one's life. Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because it is the one thing that stops women from laughing at them. Night fell again. There was war to the south, but our sector was quiet. The battle was over. Our casualties were some thirteen thousand killed--thirteen thousand minds, memories, loves, sensations, worlds, universes--because the human mind is more a universe than the universe itself--and all for a few hundred yards of useless mud.
- John Fowles, "The Magus" ( $ )
"Let someone else get killed!" "Suppose everyone on our side felt that way?" "Well then I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn't I?" "Englishmen are dying for England, American's are dying for America, Germans are dying for Germany, Russians are dying for Russia. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting in this war. Surely so many countries can all be worth dying for?" "Anything worth living for," said Nately, "is worth dying for." "And anything worth dying for," "answered the old man, "is certainly worth living for."
- Joseph Heller, Catch 22
War is the continuation of politics by other means
- Karl Von Clausewitz
You know the real meaning of PEACE only if you have been through the war
- Kosovar
Anyone, who truly wants to go to war, has never truly been there before!
- Larry Reeves
Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Once and for all the idea of glorious victories won by the glorious army must be wiped out. Niether side is glorious. On either side they're just frightened men messing their pants and they all want the same thing - not to lie under theearth, but to walk upon it - without crutches.
- Peter Weiss
La vengeance est un plat qui se mange froid
- Pierre Ambroise Francois Choderios de LaClos (1741-1803
Only the dead have seen the end of war
- Plato
Today we did what we had to do. They counted on America to be passive. They counted wrong.
- Ronald Reagan
History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.
- Ronald Reagan
There are always so many conjectures as to the issue of any event that, whatever the outcome, there will always be people to say: "I said then that it would be so," quite forgetting that among their innumerable conjectures, many were to take the very opposite effect.
- War and Peace, "Leo Tolstoy" ( $ )
I think that technologies are morally neutral until we apply them. It's only when we use them for good or for evil that they become good or evil
- William Gibson
The Imperial German Government will not expect the Government of the United States to omit any word or any act necessary to the performance of its sacred duty of maintaining the rights of the United States and its citizens and of safeguarding their free exercise and enjoyment.
- William Jennings Bryan,Secretary of State
The United States is like giant boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it, there is no limit to the power it can geberate.
- Winston Churchil
Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.
- General William Westmoreland
War Quotes
The pioneers of a warless world are the youth that refuse military service.
- Albert Einstein
A country cannot simultaneously prepare and prevent war.
- Albert Einstein
I love the smell of Napalm in the morning
- Apocalypse Now
Never has there been a good war or a bad peace
- Benjamin Franklin
I may be compelled to face danger, but never fear it, and while our soldiers can stand and fight, I can stand and feed and nurse them.
- Clara Barton
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together and if we are to live together we have to talk.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
All men are brothers, like the seas throughout the world; So why do winds and waves clash so fiercely everywhere?
- Emperor Hirohito
Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.
- Ernest Hemingway
They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.
- Ernest Hemmingway
Lee Harvey Oswald, shooting from the top floor of the Book Depository was able to take 3 shots from an old Italian bolt action rifle. From a distance of over 258 feet and shooting at a moving target he was able to score 2 hits including a headshot. Now does anybody know where he learned to shoot like this? In the Marine Corps ladies!
- Full Metal Jacket
Now your soul may belong to Jesus, but your ass belongs to the Marine Corps
- Full Metal Jacket
What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?
- Gandhi
Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.
- General William Westmoreland
I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.
- George McGovern
Join the army, meet interesting people, kill them
- Graffiti At Bromley
Older men declare war. But its the youth who must fight and die!
- Herbert Hoover
Naturally, the common people don't want war ... but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.
- Hermann Goering
Zeus most glorious and most great, Thundercloud, throned in the heavens! Let not the sun go down and the darkness come, until I cast down headlong the citadel of Priam in flames, and burn his gates with blazing fire, and tear to rags the shirt upon Hectors breast! May many of his men fall about him prone in the dust and bite the earth!
- Homer - The Iliad
Violence is the first refuge of the incompetent
- Issac Asimov
Instead of building newer and larger weapons of mass destruction, I think mankind should try to get more use out of the ones we have.
- Jack Handey
I am going to explain to you why we went to war. Why mankind always does to war. It is not social or political. It is not countries that go to war, but men. It is like salt. Once one has been to war, one has salt for the rest of one's life. Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because it is the one thing that stops women from laughing at them. Night fell again. There was war to the south, but our sector was quiet. The battle was over. Our casualties were some thirteen thousand killed--thirteen thousand minds, memories, loves, sensations, worlds, universes--because the human mind is more a universe than the universe itself--and all for a few hundred yards of useless mud.
- John Fowles, "The Magus" ( $ )
"Let someone else get killed!" "Suppose everyone on our side felt that way?" "Well then I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn't I?" "Englishmen are dying for England, American's are dying for America, Germans are dying for Germany, Russians are dying for Russia. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting in this war. Surely so many countries can all be worth dying for?" "Anything worth living for," said Nately, "is worth dying for." "And anything worth dying for," "answered the old man, "is certainly worth living for."
- Joseph Heller, Catch 22
War is the continuation of politics by other means
- Karl Von Clausewitz
You know the real meaning of PEACE only if you have been through the war
- Kosovar
Anyone, who truly wants to go to war, has never truly been there before!
- Larry Reeves
Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Once and for all the idea of glorious victories won by the glorious army must be wiped out. Niether side is glorious. On either side they're just frightened men messing their pants and they all want the same thing - not to lie under theearth, but to walk upon it - without crutches.
- Peter Weiss
La vengeance est un plat qui se mange froid
- Pierre Ambroise Francois Choderios de LaClos (1741-1803
Only the dead have seen the end of war
- Plato
Today we did what we had to do. They counted on America to be passive. They counted wrong.
- Ronald Reagan
History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.
- Ronald Reagan
There are always so many conjectures as to the issue of any event that, whatever the outcome, there will always be people to say: "I said then that it would be so," quite forgetting that among their innumerable conjectures, many were to take the very opposite effect.
- War and Peace, "Leo Tolstoy" ( $ )
I think that technologies are morally neutral until we apply them. It's only when we use them for good or for evil that they become good or evil
- William Gibson
The Imperial German Government will not expect the Government of the United States to omit any word or any act necessary to the performance of its sacred duty of maintaining the rights of the United States and its citizens and of safeguarding their free exercise and enjoyment.
- William Jennings Bryan,Secretary of State
The United States is like giant boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it, there is no limit to the power it can geberate.
- Winston Churchil
Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.
- General William Westmoreland
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
The Wright Brothers flew their powered glider for 5 years before flight finally was recognized as "possible".
During those 5 years, pedestaled scientists were religiously touting their onerous conclusions that "heavier than air flight was "Impossible!" If any of those scientists bothered to weigh a bird they'd know better
-------------------------------------------------------------------
subject: Freedom to Fascism
A video on the heist of a nation.
http://freedocumentaries.net/media/75/Freedom_to_Fascism/
;;;;;;;;;;;;;
Karzai- British troops made security in Afghanistan worse.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Since driving the Taliban from power, Afghanistan with it's new bumper crop of Opium is once again under threat from the Taliban. Reports have it the Taliban control most of the country, with only major towns and cities secured by host troops. Is stability in the country advantageous (profitable) to the power brokers ?
......
25 January 2008 BBC
Number 10 rejects Karzai claims
Downing Street says UK troops have shown "bravery and determination"
Downing Street has hit back at claims by Afghan President Hamid Karzai that the arrival of British troops made security in his country worse.
The Times reported that Mr Karzai blamed inadequate troop numbers in the southern Helmand Province for helping the Taleban regain its control.
A Downing Street spokesman said he "wouldn't accept" UK presence had helped insurgents to take hold.
He said UK troops had "suffered losses" to aid Afghanistan's development.
The Times said Mr Karzai, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, told a group of journalists that "there was one part of the country where we suffered after the arrival of the British forces", referring to Helmand.
Both the American and the British forces guaranteed to me they knew what they were doing and I made the mistake of listening to them
Hamid Karzai
Afghan President
He said the mistake was allowing the US and the UK to replace the province's sitting governor.
"Before that we were fully in charge of Helmand. When our governor was there, we were fully in charge. They came and said, 'Your governor is no good.'
"I said 'All right, do we have a replacement for this governor; do you have enough forces?'" Mr Karzai said.
"Both the American and the British forces guaranteed to me they knew what they were doing and I made the mistake of listening to them. And when they came in, the Taleban came."
'Bravery and determination'
But asked if the UK would accept that British troops' presence had allowed the Taleban back in, Prime Minister Gordon Brown's spokesman replied: "Of course we wouldn't accept that.
Our armed forces have suffered losses and shown great bravery and determination
Prime minister's spokesman
"We are working alongside the Afghan government in order to drive out the Taleban from Helmand."
He said the UK's strength in Afghanistan had been to "work with the Afghan government and to extend the authority of the Afghan government throughout the province to allow economic and political development".
"And it's to that aim that our armed forces have suffered losses and shown great bravery and determination."
He added that the UK was working closely with the Afghan authorities to resolve "political and economic and military issues in Helmand".
Mr Brown and Mr Karzai were to meet in Davos for talks.
Mr Karzai had long talks with Gordon Brown in Kabul last month
The prime minister's spokesman said the meeting was expected to be brief and he stressed that the two leaders had long talks during Mr Brown's visit to Kabul last month.
Labour MP David Crausby, member of the Commons Defence Select Committee and who visited Helmand in September, told BBC Radio 4's The World at One that he agreed with Mr Karzai on troop numbers.
But he added that the finger of blame should not be pointed at Britain or the US.
"That's been the fault of some of our Nato allies who haven't provided the sort of support that they really ought to supply, and they haven't supplied the right number of troops in the difficult areas of Afghanistan," Mr Crausby said.
"Britain's done more than its share of providing troops in Afghanistan and it's taken on a very different, difficult region in Helmand province."
....
(add this post as a comment to post above)
I don't believe Bin Laden was the legitimate reason Afghanistan was invaded, cornering Iran certainly was. The invasion of Iraq made it complete, with Turkey and Pakistan as allies. Iraq certainly did not go as planned, the invasion was a failure, it bogged down far too many troops. Without the draft, invading Iran was put on hold. What to do with Afghanistan in the interim, make it profitable by increasing opium production, practicaly the only reason Europe shows interest in allying themselves against the war on terror, furthermore it undercuts the monopoly India has on the legal opium trade, India being the largest producer of the narcotic
;;;;;;;
11 in tme political, news etc.
;;;;
Article is dated, yet still relevant in this present climate of free trade.
..
The Wright Brothers flew their powered glider for 5 years before flight finally was recognized as "possible".
During those 5 years, pedestaled scientists were religiously touting their onerous conclusions that "heavier than air flight was "Impossible!" If any of those scientists bothered to weigh a bird they'd know better
-------------------------------------------------------------------
subject: Freedom to Fascism
A video on the heist of a nation.
http://freedocumentaries.net/media/75/Freedom_to_Fascism/
;;;;;;;;;;;;;
Karzai- British troops made security in Afghanistan worse.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Since driving the Taliban from power, Afghanistan with it's new bumper crop of Opium is once again under threat from the Taliban. Reports have it the Taliban control most of the country, with only major towns and cities secured by host troops. Is stability in the country advantageous (profitable) to the power brokers ?
......
25 January 2008 BBC
Number 10 rejects Karzai claims
Downing Street says UK troops have shown "bravery and determination"
Downing Street has hit back at claims by Afghan President Hamid Karzai that the arrival of British troops made security in his country worse.
The Times reported that Mr Karzai blamed inadequate troop numbers in the southern Helmand Province for helping the Taleban regain its control.
A Downing Street spokesman said he "wouldn't accept" UK presence had helped insurgents to take hold.
He said UK troops had "suffered losses" to aid Afghanistan's development.
The Times said Mr Karzai, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, told a group of journalists that "there was one part of the country where we suffered after the arrival of the British forces", referring to Helmand.
Both the American and the British forces guaranteed to me they knew what they were doing and I made the mistake of listening to them
Hamid Karzai
Afghan President
He said the mistake was allowing the US and the UK to replace the province's sitting governor.
"Before that we were fully in charge of Helmand. When our governor was there, we were fully in charge. They came and said, 'Your governor is no good.'
"I said 'All right, do we have a replacement for this governor; do you have enough forces?'" Mr Karzai said.
"Both the American and the British forces guaranteed to me they knew what they were doing and I made the mistake of listening to them. And when they came in, the Taleban came."
'Bravery and determination'
But asked if the UK would accept that British troops' presence had allowed the Taleban back in, Prime Minister Gordon Brown's spokesman replied: "Of course we wouldn't accept that.
Our armed forces have suffered losses and shown great bravery and determination
Prime minister's spokesman
"We are working alongside the Afghan government in order to drive out the Taleban from Helmand."
He said the UK's strength in Afghanistan had been to "work with the Afghan government and to extend the authority of the Afghan government throughout the province to allow economic and political development".
"And it's to that aim that our armed forces have suffered losses and shown great bravery and determination."
He added that the UK was working closely with the Afghan authorities to resolve "political and economic and military issues in Helmand".
Mr Brown and Mr Karzai were to meet in Davos for talks.
Mr Karzai had long talks with Gordon Brown in Kabul last month
The prime minister's spokesman said the meeting was expected to be brief and he stressed that the two leaders had long talks during Mr Brown's visit to Kabul last month.
Labour MP David Crausby, member of the Commons Defence Select Committee and who visited Helmand in September, told BBC Radio 4's The World at One that he agreed with Mr Karzai on troop numbers.
But he added that the finger of blame should not be pointed at Britain or the US.
"That's been the fault of some of our Nato allies who haven't provided the sort of support that they really ought to supply, and they haven't supplied the right number of troops in the difficult areas of Afghanistan," Mr Crausby said.
"Britain's done more than its share of providing troops in Afghanistan and it's taken on a very different, difficult region in Helmand province."
....
(add this post as a comment to post above)
I don't believe Bin Laden was the legitimate reason Afghanistan was invaded, cornering Iran certainly was. The invasion of Iraq made it complete, with Turkey and Pakistan as allies. Iraq certainly did not go as planned, the invasion was a failure, it bogged down far too many troops. Without the draft, invading Iran was put on hold. What to do with Afghanistan in the interim, make it profitable by increasing opium production, practicaly the only reason Europe shows interest in allying themselves against the war on terror, furthermore it undercuts the monopoly India has on the legal opium trade, India being the largest producer of the narcotic
;;;;;;;
11 in tme political, news etc.
;;;;
Article is dated, yet still relevant in this present climate of free trade.
..
Peak Oil is a Corrupt Globalist Scam
Religious Intolerance
Case example.
When the Emperor Gratian (375 AD) signalled that the state religion would not tolerate paganism by removing the statue of Victory from the Roman Senate, Ambrose formulated an argument that if Rome were a Christian empire, no other religion, including paganism, could be tolerated. In his debate in the Roman Senate with Ambrose, pagan Symmachus argue eloquently for religious tolerance, but Ambrose argued that there was one and only one correct religion and all others should be stamped out.
This position soon became the church's position and had two far-reaching consequences. From the fourth century onwards, one of the principal characteristics of Christianity was its intoleranc, in fact, often extremely homicidal intolerance of other religions. For Rome, however, this religious intolerance was one of the central reasons for the disintegration of the Roman Empire. In many ways, the Roman Empire held together because of its religious tolerance. Subject states did not enjoy being under the empire, but the cultural and religious freedom that they had at least made it bearable. When the Christian Empire began to suppress native religions under Roman control, they soon rebelled. These rebellions fractured the empire in pieces at a point in time when migrating Europeans were invading the frontiers.
So much for gluttony, lead pipe, mad Barbarians and pre-Machiavellian ideals being responsible for the decine and fall.
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
No surprise at all, insurance companies have all sorts of clauses, high deductables, abilty to drag out payment and settle for cents on the dollar once a customer decomes desperate and destitute. This takes place across the board, not just on homeowners insurance.
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.britains-smallwars.com/main/index1.html
Britain's Small Wars Site Index 1945 onwards. Interesting information, from Muscat and Oman to the Mau Mau brutal repression.
127
Gun Control
Douglas L. Bailey.
It still is pertinent today because it gives insight into the nature of the way our government works:
There are 10,000 "Second Amendment gun rights" organizations in the United States. Still, we keep losing the battle to "keep and bear arms." Why?
Some of the groups on "our side" do an excellent job of targeting anti-gun politicians for defeat at the polls. The problem is that the unconstitutional anti-Second Amendment laws those politicians enact remain on the books generations after those politicians are defeated. Those laws are enforced by federal judges.
The solution is a simple one. We need to work on removing those judges from the federal bench. It isn't that hard. We've done it before.
Every federal judge takes a solemn oath to support the United States Constitution. 28 U.S.C. 453. Violation of that oath is grounds for impeachment. Here is all there is to it:
1. Write your congressman. Demand that he bring a bill of impeachment against a particular federal judge: When Gerald Ford was an obscure congressman from Michigan in 1969, he "took down" Abe Fortas in this fashion. Fortas at the time was slated to be the next Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
2. When your congressman gives you some excuse, such as "separation of powers," write back to him and point out that separation of powers is a political maxim, not a technical rule of law. In Atkins vs. United States, (Court of Claims 1977) (quoting Felix Frankfurter, U.S. Supreme Court Justice 1939-1961, separation of powers in this regard is contradicted by the Constitution itself: "The House of Representatives shall choose their speaker and other officers; and shall have the sole power of impeachment." Article I, Section 2, Clause 5, United States Constitution.
"The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish." Article III, Section 1, U.S. Constitution.
The obvious question is, how can courts created by Congress, be equal to Congress and independent of it? The obvious answer is, they can't. When our republic was founded the federal courts below the Supreme Court were looked upon as an arm of Congress.
"The judges, both of the supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behavior ... " Article III, Section I, U.S. Constitution.
Notice that the Constitution itself does not state "life tenure," it states "good behavior." Bad behavior, as Gerald Ford pointed out in 1969, is anything Congress says it is.
3. If your congressman refuses to act, campaign against him. Suffice it to say that the next congressman will "do the job".
4. Congress can pass all the anti-gun laws it feels inclined to. Only a federal judge can send an American citizen to prison for a violation of one of those laws.
5. The Second Amendment is as much a part of the Constitution that federal judges swore an oath to uphold as any other.
It still is pertinent today because it gives insight into the nature of the way our government works:
There are 10,000 "Second Amendment gun rights" organizations in the United States. Still, we keep losing the battle to "keep and bear arms." Why?
Some of the groups on "our side" do an excellent job of targeting anti-gun politicians for defeat at the polls. The problem is that the unconstitutional anti-Second Amendment laws those politicians enact remain on the books generations after those politicians are defeated. Those laws are enforced by federal judges.
The solution is a simple one. We need to work on removing those judges from the federal bench. It isn't that hard. We've done it before.
Every federal judge takes a solemn oath to support the United States Constitution. 28 U.S.C. 453. Violation of that oath is grounds for impeachment. Here is all there is to it:
1. Write your congressman. Demand that he bring a bill of impeachment against a particular federal judge: When Gerald Ford was an obscure congressman from Michigan in 1969, he "took down" Abe Fortas in this fashion. Fortas at the time was slated to be the next Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
2. When your congressman gives you some excuse, such as "separation of powers," write back to him and point out that separation of powers is a political maxim, not a technical rule of law. In Atkins vs. United States, (Court of Claims 1977) (quoting Felix Frankfurter, U.S. Supreme Court Justice 1939-1961, separation of powers in this regard is contradicted by the Constitution itself: "The House of Representatives shall choose their speaker and other officers; and shall have the sole power of impeachment." Article I, Section 2, Clause 5, United States Constitution.
"The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish." Article III, Section 1, U.S. Constitution.
The obvious question is, how can courts created by Congress, be equal to Congress and independent of it? The obvious answer is, they can't. When our republic was founded the federal courts below the Supreme Court were looked upon as an arm of Congress.
"The judges, both of the supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behavior ... " Article III, Section I, U.S. Constitution.
Notice that the Constitution itself does not state "life tenure," it states "good behavior." Bad behavior, as Gerald Ford pointed out in 1969, is anything Congress says it is.
3. If your congressman refuses to act, campaign against him. Suffice it to say that the next congressman will "do the job".
4. Congress can pass all the anti-gun laws it feels inclined to. Only a federal judge can send an American citizen to prison for a violation of one of those laws.
5. The Second Amendment is as much a part of the Constitution that federal judges swore an oath to uphold as any other.
Some Rantings on the Naming of America
If blame is to lie with someone, it is with map maker,Martin Waldseemüller. Americo Vespucci never asked to have the continents named after himself.
Aside from the Vikings, the Portuguese were the most likely to have discovered the Grand Banks and coastal lands, there are reports of "what was to become" St Johns being populated by Portuguese and Basque cod fishermen (there are archaelogical wrecks and settlements in the Sainte Lawrence estuary belonging to Basque sailors that possibly pre-date 1492). Even early English charts of the Cape (cape cod) were called 'Cabo Bacclava' that is - Cape Cod in Potuguese. The Portuguese discovered the Azores in 1450, it was soon after that boatloads of dried Cod reached the shores of Europe, breaking the monopoly on the Hanseatic League on the salt trade. Salt and Cod went hand in hand, whomever controlled either, was most likely to find out the trade secrets, Baltic Europe was not rich in Salt, most salt was traded from central Germany Bay of Biscay and other southern European areas. It was not long before the Bristol voyages followed Portuguese or Basque routes to the New World.
Still early exploration is full of conjecture and historical errors, look at the Saga's for example, they were proved to be a fraud. Still people today believe the Vikings actually sailed passed Cabo Bacclava and discovered a few islands in the area (?). There is a whaling museum in that area that has this historical error on public file - as historical fact.
If blame is to lie with someone, it is with map maker,Martin Waldseemüller. Americo Vespucci never asked to have the continents named after himself.
Aside from the Vikings, the Portuguese were the most likely to have discovered the Grand Banks and coastal lands, there are reports of "what was to become" St Johns being populated by Portuguese and Basque cod fishermen (there are archaelogical wrecks and settlements in the Sainte Lawrence estuary belonging to Basque sailors that possibly pre-date 1492). Even early English charts of the Cape (cape cod) were called 'Cabo Bacclava' that is - Cape Cod in Potuguese. The Portuguese discovered the Azores in 1450, it was soon after that boatloads of dried Cod reached the shores of Europe, breaking the monopoly on the Hanseatic League on the salt trade. Salt and Cod went hand in hand, whomever controlled either, was most likely to find out the trade secrets, Baltic Europe was not rich in Salt, most salt was traded from central Germany Bay of Biscay and other southern European areas. It was not long before the Bristol voyages followed Portuguese or Basque routes to the New World.
Still early exploration is full of conjecture and historical errors, look at the Saga's for example, they were proved to be a fraud. Still people today believe the Vikings actually sailed passed Cabo Bacclava and discovered a few islands in the area (?). There is a whaling museum in that area that has this historical error on public file - as historical fact.
A TIME FOR WAR
1993
The soldiers they scramble for the beach
cut them down
like whores in heat
the families mourn
while the waves wash
the blood and stench from the shore
moaning, crying screams of agony
everywhere
as the bullets cut and rip the flesh
for the dead heroes
fresh cut flowers and tears
shiny well groomed graves
go visit, go cry
but you don't ask why
1993
The soldiers they scramble for the beach
cut them down
like whores in heat
the families mourn
while the waves wash
the blood and stench from the shore
moaning, crying screams of agony
everywhere
as the bullets cut and rip the flesh
for the dead heroes
fresh cut flowers and tears
shiny well groomed graves
go visit, go cry
but you don't ask why
Solutions for a Sustainable World
The Swamp
The WIYO's
This is a fine introduction to their music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qhVYPKBxWw
This one is a sneak on a Commander Cody song. Pretty smart there. :D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu_tLBGdmk4&feature=related
This one takes the cake, a three piece jug band.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXuyRXhU-nY&feature=related
Anyone familiar with these guy's ?
I love this kind of music live.
Saturday, December 1, 2007 (dated)
WIYO's
THE WIYOS play and compose Old-Timey American music inspired by the early American musical idioms of the 1920s and '30s. Gleefully subverting genre distinctions, their music comes from a time before commercial formatting separated blues from country, ragtime from gospel, and swing from hillbilly.
With an instrumentation of washboard/harmonica/kazoo, resonator guitar/banjo, upright bass and three harmony vocals, THE WIYOS' live performance transports audiences back to an era before TV and mass-media were the main sources of entertainment. Their sound is reminiscent of days-gone-by when live bands could be heard both on the radio and at community dances, juke joints, and house parties. With infectious exuberance and theatrical skill, they create a visual spectacle in the tradition of vaudeville-esque performers such as Fats Waller, the Hoosier Hotshots and Uncle Dave Macon. Their on-stage physical comedy recalls the silent films of Laurel & Hardy, Keaton and Chaplin.
Formed in New York City during the summer of 2002, THE WIYOS took their name from the toughest gang to prowl the streets of old New York (The Whyos, circa 1890). Like the traveling bands of the depression era, they have taken to the road full-time, touring extensively in the USA, Canada, France, The Netherlands and The United Kingdom. Playing theaters, bars, street corners, art auctions, pig roasts, and listening rooms, The Wiyos unique charisma transcends typical social boundaries. They appeal to everyone from hipsters to seasoned music connoisseurs, from children to bikers.
Everywhere they play, THE WIYOS charm and amuse audiences with their exuberant style of old-timey music, passionately carrying this rich musical heritage into the 21st century.
[img]http://www.caffelena.org/photos/wyos-D-01325.jpg[/img]
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Democratic peace theory
The democratic peace theory, liberal peace theory, or simply the democratic peace is a theory and related empirical research in international relations, political science, and philosophy which holds that democracies—usually, liberal democracies—never or almost never go to war with one another.
The original theory and research on wars has been followed by many similar theories and related research on the relationship between democracy and peace, including that lesser conflicts than wars are also rare between democracies, and that systematic violence is in general less common within democracies.
History
The democratic peace theory is a relatively new development. One explanation is that democratic governments were scarce before the late 19th century. Although the philosophical idea has circulated since Immanuel Kant, it was not scientifically evaluated until the 1960s.
Kant foreshadowed the theory in his essay Perpetual Peace written in 1795, although he thought that constitutional republics was only one of several necessary conditions for a perpetual peace. Kant's theory was that a majority of the people would never vote to go to war, unless in self defense. Therefore, if all nations were republics, it would end war, because there would be no aggressors. Other explanations have been proposed since, but the modern theory is principally the empirical claim that democracies rarely or never fight (Ray 1998).
Dean Babst, a criminologist, was the first to do statistical research on this topic. He wrote an academic paper supporting the theory in 1964 in Wisconsin Sociologist; he published a slightly more popularized version, in 1972, in the trade journal Industrial Research. Both versions initially received little attention.
Melvin Small and J. David Singer (1976) responded; they found an absence of wars between democratic states with two "marginal exceptions", but denied that this pattern had statistical significance, starting the academic debate. This paper was published in a political science journal which finally brought more widespread attention to the theory, as did Michael Doyle's (1983) lengthy discussion of the topic. Rudolph J. Rummel was another early researcher and drew considerable lay attention to the subject in his later works.
Maoz & Abdolali (1989) extended the research to lesser conflicts than wars. Bremer (1992) and Maoz & Russett (1992) found the correlation between democracy and peacefulness remained significant after controlling for many possible confounding variables. This moved the theory into the mainstream of social science. Supporters of Realism in international relations and others responded by raising many new objections. Other researchers attempted more systematic explanations of how democracy might cause peace (Köchler 1995), and of how democracy might also affect other aspects of foreign relations such as alliances and collaboration (Ray 2003).
There have been numerous further studies in the field since these pioneering works. Most studies have found some form of democratic peace exists, although neither methodological disputes nor doubtful cases are entirely resolved (Kinsella 2005).
Influence
The democratic peace theory has been extremely divisive among political scientists. It is rooted in the idealist and classical liberalist traditions and is opposed to the previously dominant theory of realism. However, democratic peace theory has come to be more widely accepted and has in some democracies affected policy change.
Presidents of both the major American parties have expressed support for the theory. Former President Bill Clinton of the Democratic Party: "Ultimately, the best strategy to ensure our security and to build a durable peace is to support the advance of democracy elsewhere. Democracies don't attack each other. Current President George W. Bush of the Republican Party: "And the reason why I'm so strong on democracy is democracies don't go to war with each other. And the reason why is the people of most societies don't like war, and they understand what war means.... I've got great faith in democracies to promote peace. And that's why I'm such a strong believer that the way forward in the Middle East, the broader Middle East, is to promote democracy. The United States Congress has passed the Advance Democracy Act which states: "Wars between or among democratic countries are exceedingly rare, while wars between and among nondemocratic countries are commonplace, with nearly 170,000,000 people having lost their lives because of the policies of totalitarian governments.
Former European Commissioner for External Relations Chris Patten: "Inevitable because the EU was formed partly to protect liberal values, so it is hardly surprising that we should think it appropriate to speak out. But it is also sensible for strategic reasons. Free societies tend not to fight one another or to be bad neighbours. The A Secure Europe in a Better World, European Security Strategy states: "The best protection for our security is a world of well-governed democratic states.
Some fear that the democratic peace theory may be used to justify wars against nondemocracies in order to bring lasting peace, in a democratic crusade (Chan 1997, p. 59). Woodrow Wilson in 1917 asked Congress to declare war against Imperial Germany, citing Germany's sinking of American ships due to unrestricted submarine warfare and the Zimmerman telegram, but also stating that "A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations" and "The world must be made safe for democracy.
Some point out that the democratic peace theory has been used to justify the 2003 Iraq War, others argue that this justification was used only after the war had already started (Russett 2005). Furthermore, Weede (2004) has argued that the justification is extremely weak, because forcibly democratizing a country completely surrounded by non-democracies, most of which are full autocracies, as Iraq is, is at least as likely to increase the risk of war as it is to decrease it (some studies show that dyads formed by one democracy and one autocracy are the most warlike, and several find that the risk of war is greatly increased in democratizing countries surrounded by nondemocracies). According to Weede, if the United States and its allies wanted to adopt a rationale strategy of forced democratization based on democratic peace, which he still does not recommend, it would be best to start intervening in countries which border with at least one or two stable democracies, and expand gradually. Also, research shows that attempts to create democracies by using external force has often failed eventually. Gleditsch, Christiansen and Hegre (2004) argue that forced democratization by interventionism may initially have partial success, but often create an unstable democratizing country, which can have dangerous consequences in the long run. Those attempts which had a permanent and stable success, like democratization in occupied Japan after World War II, mostly involved countries which had an advanced economic and social structure already, and implied a drastic change of the whole political culture. Supporting internal democratic movements and using diplomacy may be far more successful and less costly. Thus, the theory and related research, if they were correctly understood, may actually be an argument against a democratic crusade (Weart 1998), (Owen 2005), (Russett 2005).
Definitions
Research on the democratic peace theory has to define "democracy" and "peace" (or, more often, "war").
Democracy
Democracies have been defined differently by different theorists and researchers; this accounts for some of the variations in their findings. Some examples:
Kant (1795) opposed direct democracy since it is "necessarily despotism, as it establishes an executive power contrary to the general will; all being able to decide against one whose opinion may differ, the will of all is therefore not that of all: which is contradictory and opposite to liberty." Instead, Kant favors a constitutional republic where individual liberty is protected from the will of the majority.
Small and Singer (1976) define democracy as a nation that (1) holds periodic elections in which the opposition parties are as free to run as government parties, (2) allows at least 10% of the adult population to vote, and (3) has a parliament that either controls or enjoys parity with the executive branch of the government.
Doyle (1983) requires (1) that "liberal régimes" have market or private property economics, (2) they have polities that are externally sovereign, (3) they have citizens with juridical rights, and (4) they have representative governments. Either 30% of the adult males were able to vote or it was possible for every man to acquire voting rights as by attaining enough property. He allows greater power to hereditary monarchs than other researchers; for example, he counts the rule of Louis-Philippe of France as a liberal régime.
Ray (1995) requires that at least 50% of the adult population is allowed to vote and that there has been at least one peaceful, constitutional transfer of executive power from one independent political party to another by means of an election.
Rummel (1997) states that "By democracy is meant liberal democracy, where those who hold power are elected in competitive elections with a secret ballot and wide franchise (loosely understood as including at least 2/3rds of adult males); where there is freedom of speech, religion, and organization; and a constitutional framework of law to which the government is subordinate and that guarantees equal rights."
Weart (1998). See Never at War.
Non-binary classifications
The above definitions are binary, classifying nations into either democracies or nondemocracies. Many researchers have instead used more finely grained scales. One example is the Polity data series which scores each state on two scales, one for democracy and one for autocracy, for each year since 1800; as well as several others. The use of the Polity Data has varied. Some researchers have done correlations between the democracy scale and belligerence; others have treated it as a binary classification by (as its maker does) calling all states with a high democracy score and a low autocracy score democracies; yet others have used the difference of the two scores, sometimes again making this into a binary classification (Gleditsch 1992).
Young democracies
Several researchers have observed that many of the possible exceptions to the democratic peace have occurred when at least one of the involved democracies was very young. Many of them have therefore added a qualifier, typically stating that the peacefulness apply to democracies older than 3 years (Doyle 1983), (Russett 1993), (Rummel 1997), (Weart 1998). Rummel (1997) argues that this is enough time for "democratic procedures to be accepted, and democratic culture to settle in." Additionally, this may allow for other states to actually come to the recognition of the state as a democracy.
Mansfield and Snyder (2002, 2005), while agreeing that there have been no wars between mature liberal democracies, state that countries in transition to democracy are especially likely to be involved in wars. They find that democratizing countries are even more warlike than stable democracies, stable autocracies or even countries in transition towards autocracy. So, they suggest caution in eliminating these wars from the analysis, because this might hide a negative aspect of the process of democratization. A reanalysis of the earlier study's statistical results emphasizes that the above relationship between democratization and war can only be said to hold for those democratizing countries where the executive lacks sufficient power, independence, and institutional strength. A review cites several other studies finding that the increase in the risk of war in democratizing countries happens only if many or most of the surrounding nations are undemocratic. If wars between young democracies are included in the analysis, several studies and reviews still find enough evidence supporting the stronger claim that all democracies, whether young or established, go unto war with one another less frequently (Ray 1998), (Ray 2003), , while some do not .
Wars and lesser conflicts
Quantitative research on international wars usually define war as a military conflict with more than 1000 killed in battle. This is the definition used in the Correlates of War Project which has also supplied the data for many studies on war. It turns out that most of the military conflicts in question fall clearly above or below this threshold (Ray 1995, p. 103).
Some researchers have used different definitions. For example, Weart (1998) defines war as more than 200 battle deaths. Russett (1993, p. 50), when looking at Ancient Greece, only requires some real battle engagement, involving on both sides forces under state authorization.
Militarized Interstate Disputes (MIDs), in the Correlates of War Project classification, are lesser conflicts than wars. Such a conflict may be no more than military display of force with no battle deaths. MIDs and wars together are "militarized interstate conflicts" or MICs. MIDs include the conflicts that precede a war; so the difference between MIDs and MICs may be less than it appears.
Statistical analysis and concerns about degrees of freedom are the primary reasons for using MID's instead of actual wars. Wars are relatively rare. An average ratio of 30 MIDs to one war provides a richer statistical environment for analysis.
The monadic peace and the dyadic peace
Most research is regarding the dyadic peace, that democracies do not fight one another. Very few researchers have supported the monadic peace, that democracies are more peaceful in general. There are some recent papers, which find a slight monadic effect. Müller and Wolff (2004), in listing them, agree "that democracies on average might be slightly, but not strongly, less warlike than other states," but general "monadic explanations is neither necessary nor convincing". They note that democracies have varied greatly in their belligerence against non-democracies. The most militant democracies since 1950 have been India, Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Wars
The straightforward argument for the democratic peace is: given the number of wars over the past two centuries, if democracies fought each other as often as any other pair of states, there should have been many wars between democracies. Instead, depending on the study, there have been zero or very few. A review lists many studies finding that this peacefulness is statistically significant.
Possible exceptions to no wars
Several researchers find no wars between well-established liberal democracies. Jack Levy (1988) made an oft-quoted assertion that the theory is "as close as anything we have to an empirical law in international relations".
Others see one or two exceptions. Some wars commonly suggested as exceptions are the Spanish-American War, the Continuation War and, recently, the Kargil War. Some of those who see exceptions regard them as marginal cases.
Other authors simply describe war between democracies as "rare", "very rare", "rare or non-existent".
The question of no or few wars may be unimportant. Bremer (1992, 1993), who strongly supports the democratic peace, argues that it is impossible to prove a probability of exactly zero wars between democracies; thus is "fruitless to debate the question of whether democracies never or only very rarely fight one another". It is only possible to show a decrease in the probability of war.
However, at least one researcher (Rummel 1983) has argued that one exception will disprove the theory. Most researchers disagree (Gleditsch 1992).
Lesser conflicts
One problem with the research on wars is that, as the Realist Mearsheimer (1990, p. 50) put it, "democracies have been few in number over the past two centuries, and thus there have been few opportunities where democracies were in a position to fight one another". Especially if using a strict definition of democracy, as by those finding no wars. Democracies have been very rare until recently. Even looser definitions of democracy, such as Doyle's, find only a dozen democracies before the late nineteenth century, and many of them short-lived or with limited franchise (Doyle 1983), (Doyle 1997, p. 261). Freedom House finds no independent state with universal suffrage in 1900.
Wayman (1998), a supporter of the theory, states that "If we rely solely on whether there has been an inter-democratic war, it is going to take many more decades of peace to build our confidence in the stability of the democratic peace".
Thus, despite the studies mentioned earlier, some argue that there is not enough data to show that the absence of wars between democracies is statistically significant, especially if trying to check for the possible influence of external factors (see also the discussion in the section on criticism and counter-criticism).
Many researchers reacted to this limitation by studying lesser conflicts instead, since they have been far more common. There have been many more MIDs than wars; the Correlates of War Project counts several thousand during the last two centuries. A review lists many studies that have reported that democratic pairs of states are less likely to be involved in MIDs than other pairs of states.
Another study finds that after both states have become democratic, there is a decreasing probability for MIDs within a year and this decreases almost to zero within five years.
When examining the inter-liberal MIDs in more detail, one study finds that they are less likely to involve third parties, the target of the hostility is less likely to reciprocate, if the target reciprocates the response is usually proportional to the provocation, and the disputes are less likely to cause any loss of life. The most common action was "Seizure of Material or Personnel".
Studies find that the probability that disputes between states will be resolved peacefully is positively affected by the degree of democracy exhibited by the least democratic state involved in that dispute. Disputes between democratic states are significantly shorter than disputes involving at least one undemocratic state. Democratic states are more likely to be amenable to third party mediation when they are involved in disputes with each other .
In international crises that include the threat or use of military force, one study finds that if the parties are democracies, then relative military strength has no effect on who wins. This is different from when nondemocracies are involved. These results are the same also if the conflicting parties are formal allies . Similarly, a study of the behavior of states that joined ongoing militarized disputes reports that power is important only to autocracies: democracies do not seem to base their alignment on the power of the sides in the dispute .
Conflict initiation
Most studies have looked only at who is involved in the conflicts and ignored the question of who initiated the conflict. In many conflicts both sides argue that the other side was initiator. Several researchers, as described in (Gleditsch, Christiansen & Hegre 2004), have argued that studying conflict initiation is of limited value, because existing data about conflict initiation may be especially unreliable. Even so, several studies have examined this. Reiter and Stam (2003) argue that autocracies initiates conflicts against democracies more frequently than democracies do against autocracies. Quackenbush and Rudy (2006), while confirming Reiter and Stam'
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